Lando

We both stayed there listening and, like fools, neither of us had sense enough to get back out of the firelight--like the Tinker had done that night when Baker, Lee, and Longley paid us the visit ... and a few dozen other times along the trail.

We both just sat there and let whoever it was ride right up to the fire.

And when that slim-legged, long-bodied horse came into the firelight and I saw who it was, I couldn't believe it. Nor could Miguel.

If we'd seen the ghost I'd been expecting, we wouldn't have been more surprised.

It was Gin Locklear.

Chapter Six.

She rode side-saddle, of course, her skirt draped in graceful folds along the side of the horse, her gloved hand holding the bridle reins just as if she hadn't ridden miles through bandit-infested country to get here. She was just as lovely as when I last saw her.

She taken my breath. Coming up on us out of the night so unexpected-like, and after all the goings-on outside of camp ... I hadn't a thought in my head, I was that rattled.

It came on me that I'd best help her from the saddle and I crossed over and took her hand, but it was not until she was actually on the ground that I saw the dark shadows under her eyes and the weariness in her face.

"Miguel," I said, "you handle the horse.

I'll shake up some fresh coffee."

I dumped the pot and rinsed it, and put in fresh water from the spring. Then I stirred up the fire.

"I had to shoot a man," Gin said suddenly.

Those big eyes of hers handed me a jolt when I looked into them. "Did you kill him?"

"I don't think so."

Miguel turned toward us. "It would have been better had he been killed. Now he will speak of a beautiful se@norita riding alone to the south, and others will come."

"There were two men with him," she said, "but this one held my bridle when they ordered me from the saddle. They were shouting and drinking and telling me what they were going to do.

"Of course, they did not see my gun and did not expect me to shoot, but I did shoot the man holding the horse, and then I got away. One of them had hold of my saddle and he tried to grab me. He fell, I think."

"Where was this?"

"Outside of Matamoras. Only a few miles out."

Then she said, "I came to help. Jonas and the Tinker have been arrested--Jonas, at least. He was recognized."

"Recognized? By whom?"

"They came looking for him, just as if they knew he would be there."

My first thought was of Franklyn Deckrow. He was the one with the most to gain if Jonas was not permitted to return. Of course, he might have been seen by someone who remembered him from prison.

It was little enough I knew of the Deckrow deal, but from all I'd gathered Deckrow had run the plantation into debt and Jonas believed it had been done deliberately so Deckrow could later buy up the mortgages and gain possession. If so, he could have sent a rider on a fast horse to Matamoras.

"You shouldn't have come," I said. "This is no place for a woman."

"The place for a woman," she said, smiling at me, "is where she is needed. I ride as well as most men, and I have a fine horse. Also, I've lived on a ranch most of my life."

"Did you see anybody as you came along the trail?"

She looked at me curiously. "Not for miles. I've never seen a more deserted road, and if I hadn't seen a reflection of your campfire I might have gone right on by."

"You didn't circle the camp?"

"No."

Miguel was looking at me now, and I noticed he had his rifle in hand.

"There was somebody around the camp. Somebody or some thing."

Miguel stared uneasily at the blackness beyond the fire. Neither of us liked to think there was somebody or something out there whom we could not see.

"Maybe we should go, se@nor?"

"No, we'll sit right here and let the stock rest up." That was my plan, but the arrival of Gin had put a crimp in it. If outlaws were going to come hunting her, we'd be in trouble a-plenty.

"Come daybreak," I said, "we'll move the herd."

"Where, se@nor?"

"Yonder, I think we can find a place to hold the cattle. Maybe some of the other men will get through. That Tinker--he's a sly one. If he had any warning, no law is going to latch onto him."

Gin made herself comfortable on my bed. I stirred up the fire and finished off what coffee the three of us hadn't drank, and ate a couple of cold tortillas.

At daybreak the wind was off the sea, and you could feel the freshness of it, with a taste like no other wind.

Wide awake, I thought of those initials of pa's. Pa had left that sign, and he'd left it for himself, or mayhap for me. He was a planning man, pa was, and one likely to foresee. ... I think he taken time deliberately to teach me where that gold was. The trouble was, I'd gone ahead and forgotten.

Some things I did remember. He'd taught me to mark a trail, Indian fashion. Now, suppose he had marked this one? If he had, he would have added his own particular ways to it, but meanwhile, I planned to look around. If I found no sign I was going to drive that herd where I felt it should go, with no scouting for grass, or anything. Maybe out of my hidden thoughts would come the memory of what pa had taught me, to guide our way.

I taken a circle around camp, and I found no sign--nothing left by pa that I could make out.

That isn't to say I didn't find sign of another kind, and when I seen that track I felt a chill go right up my spine that stood every hair on end.

What I found were wolf tracks, but wolf tracks bigger than any wolf that ever walked-- any normal sort of wolf, that is. These wolf tracks were big as dinner plates.

Well, I stopped right there, looking down at those tracks, and the other two came over to look.

Miguel's face turned white when he saw the tracks, and even Gin kind of caught at my arm.

We had both heard tell of werewolves, and certainly Miguel knew the stories about them.

Me, I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of where those tracks were. Soon I scouted around, and a far piece away, like whatever it was had been taking giant strides, I found another track, this one set deep in the sod.

The tracks circled about the water hole at the spring. Whatever it was, it was trying to get to water, but the water had been lighted by our fire, with one of us setting awake.

All of a sudden I saw something that made me forget all about werewolves and ha'nts and such.

Far as that goes, I'd never heard tell of a thirsty ghost.

What I saw was something back in the brush, and at first it didn't look like much of a find, except that there was no reason for it being where it was. It was a broken reed, and it lay right on the edge of a bunch of mesquite.

Taking up the reed, I drew it out, and you know, there were several pieces of reed stuck one into another until they were all of eight or nine feet long. Stretched out, they reached from the spring's pool to the brush nearby.

"What is it?" Gin asked.

"Somebody wanted a drink, and wanted it bad, so he made a tube of these reeds, breaking them off to be rid of the joints and putting them together so he could suck water through them. He must have siphoned water right out of the pool into his mouth while I was just a-setting there."

Nobody said anything, and I nosed around a mite, studying the brush, and finally finding where the man or whatever it was had knelt.

There, too, I found the wolf tracks.

"Two-legged wolf," I said, "wearing some kind of coarse-woven jeans or pants. See here?" I showed them the place in the brush. "That's where he knelt whilst siphoning the water."

Following the tracks back from the brush, I said, "He's big--look at the length of that stride. I can't match it without running."

I studied the reed tube again. "Canny," I said. "Like something the Tinker might do."

"We should go," Gin suggested.

"No," I said, "not without what we came after.

We have come too far and risked too much."

"But how can you hope to find it?" Gin said.

"You've no idea where to look."

"Maybe I have. Maybe I am just beginning to recollect some things pa told me."

The wind was blowing harder and the sky was gray and overcast. The cattle wandered to the water in small groups, then returned to the bedding ground to graze or rest. They showed no restlessness, and seemed content to hold to the low spots out of the wind.

I cut some sod with a machete, and made a wall to protect our fire from the wind, adding just enough fuel to keep some coals. Miguel was worried, which I could see plain enough, and so was Gin.

Meanwhile I was doing some figuring. Jonas was in prison, and the Tinker might well be, so that left whatever was to be done up to me. Gin was with us, which she hadn't ought to be, the country being torn up with trouble the way it was, and somewhere close by was that ship filled with gold.

Jonas needed his share to get his mortgage paid off, and the Tinker wanted his. As far as that goes, I wasn't going to buck or kick if somebody handed me some of that there gold.

Around the fire at breakfast, Miguel told me a mite about Herrara. He was a lieutenant of General Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, usually called Cheno, and part of the time he was a soldier with a legitimate rank, and part of the time an outlaw, depending on who was in power in Mexico and on his own disposition at the moment.

Of good family, Cortina had become a renegade, but one with a lot of followers. He was a shrewd fighter, risking battle only when it suited him, and running when it didn't. He was a man of uncertain temperament, but dangerous enough and strong enough to handle the pack of wolves that followed him.

Frequently, they raided across the border into Texas and had run off thousands of head of Texas cattle. Yet he had good men following him, too, and on occasion he could be both gallant and generous. But generally speaking, he was a man to fight shy of.

As for Herrara, he was one of the wolves, fierce as an Apache, and by all accounts treacherous.

Leaving Miguel by the fire, with his horse saddled, to keep an eye on the cows, Gin and I rode off through the brush, hunting the water's edge.

We hadn't far to go. A long gray finger of water came twisting through the grass, leading some distance away to a larger body of water like a bay.

There we could see the white, bare bones of an ancient boat, much too small for what we were looking for ... which, anyway, was by all accounts down under water.

My Henry was in the saddle boot, and Gin carried one also. But what I kept ready to hand was that Walch Navy. I liked the feel of that gun.

As we rode we saw nothing--only a low shore of gray-green grass, the gray water looking like a sheet of steel, the reeds bending under the wind, gulls wheeling and crying overhead.

Whitecaps were showing on the water.

It might have been a world never seen by man. No tracks, no ashes of old fires, nothing man had built but the stark white ribs of that old boat.

"It's cold," Gin said.

Her face looked pinched, and the place was depressing her, as it did me.

Yet, wild and lonely as it was, the country had an eerie sort of charm like nowhere I'd ever seen. Toward the Gulf I could see the dunes of sand heaped by wind and wave, and somewhere out there was a long bar that stretched miles away to the south.

A barren desolate land. In spite of this, the place seemed to be working a charm on me.

"Let's go back," Gin said.

We turned and made our start, riding along the shore. The wind was blowing stronger, the brush and reeds bending before it. A few cold, spitting drops of rain began to fall.

The place to which we had driven the herd was in a cul-de-sac, with the sea on three sides--long arms of the sea where the water had flowed in over low ground or the working of the waves had hollowed it out.

To the east was a long, snake-like arm of the sea that nowhere was over a quarter of a mile wide. South and southwest the coves were wider.

The grass was good, and the cattle were protected by thick brush from the worst of the wind. Most of these cattle had at one time or another grazed along the shore, and like Shanghai Pierce and his "sea lions," as he called the longhorns that swam back and forth from the coast to Padre Island, they were used to the sea and were good swimmers.

"I like it," I said suddenly, gesturing toward the country around us. "It's almighty wild and lonely, but I take to it."

We drew up and looked back. The sweep of the shore had an oddly familiar look to it that started excitement in me. I frowned and tried to remember, but nothing came.

"Pa must have told me about this place," I said. "I can feel it. This here's where the gold is, somewhere about here."

"Your father must have been an interesting man."

So, a-setting there in the chill wind, I talked about him as I recalled him, big, powerful and dark, straight and tall. An easy-moving man who never seemed in a hurry, and yet could move swift as any striking snake when need be.

"He'd never let be," I said, "not with him knowing where that gold is. He'd come back for it.

Ma never wanted him to go back.

"You see, before pa and ma met, he had trouble with her brothers, the Kurbishaws, and over this gold. There were three of them, led by Captain Elam. The other two were Gideon and Eli.

"I never got the straight of it, although from time to time I'd hear talk around the house, but they were after the gold the same time pa was, and they tried to run him off. Pa never was much on running, as I gather.

"Later on, with some of this gold in his jeans, he went to Charleston and cut quite a swath about town. And there he met ma. They taken to each other, and it wasn't until she invited him home that he met her brothers face to face and knew who they were."

"It sounds very dramatic."

"Must have been, pa being what he was and those Kurbishaws hating him like they did. I knew little about it, but I gathered more from talking with the Tinker and Jonas ... that helped me to piece together things I'd heard as a child."

We walked our horses on, the dun's mane blown by the wind. It gave me an odd feeling to know that pa had more than likely watched and walked this same shore, maybe many times, a-hunting that gold.

Odd thing, I'd never thought of my pa as a person. I expect a child rarely does think of his parents that way. They are a father and a mother, but a body rarely thinks of them as having hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires and loves. Yet day by day pa was now becoming more real to me than he had ever been, and I got to wondering if he ever doubted himself like I did, if he ever felt short of what he wished to be, if he ever longed for things beyond him that he couldn't quite put into ^ws.

"You'd like pa," I said suddenly. "The more I think of him the more I like him, myself. I mean other than just as a father. I figure he's the kind of man I'd like to ride the trail with, and I guess that's about as much as a man can say."

Ahead of us I saw a mite of grass bunched up, and I drew rein sudden and felt my breath tight in my throat. Gin started on, but when she saw my face she stopped.

"Orlando, what is it?"

It was a small tuft of grass kind of bunched up, and some other grass stems had been used to tie a knot around the top of the bunch.

There it sat, kind of out of the way and accidental-like, but it was no accident. Maybe many men used that trail marker--no doubt Indians did. But I knew one man who'd used it, and who knew I'd spot such a thing.

My pa.

"Gin"--I couldn't speak above a whisper--

"pa's been here."

She looked at me, her eyebrows raised a little. "Of course, when he found the gold."

"No ... recent. Maybe the past two or three days."

Swinging down, I slid an arm through the loop of the bridle reins and squatted down to look closer. That marker had been made within the past couple of days, for the broken grass used to tie around the bunch was still green.

Straightening up, I looked all around, taking my time. Whoever had made that marker intended for it to be seen, but not by just anybody. Nobody would see it unless he was trained to look for sign.

It stood all by itself, though. I mean, there was grass all around and some brush, but no other markers. That meant that what it was intended to mark was close by, within the range of my eyes. It was up to me to see it. Yet, looking all around, I saw nothing. The clouded sky, the gray, whitecapped water, the green grass growing just short of knee-high, the scattered brush, the reeds along the shore ...

The reeds!

Reaching up, I taken my Henry from the boot.

"You stand watch, Gin. Watch everything, not just me."

For two, three minutes I didn't move.

I stood there beside my horse and I studied those reeds, and I studied them section by section, taking a piece maybe ten foot square and studying it careful, then moving on to another square.

Trailing the bridle reins, I stepped away from the horse and worked my way carefully through the reeds. What I had spotted was an open space among the reeds, which might mean an inlet of water, for there were several such around. However, when I got to that open place--minding myself to break no reeds and to move with care--I found a low hive, a mound-like hut of reeds made by drawing the tops together and tying them, then weaving other reeds through the rooted ones. It was maybe eight feet long by four or five wide.

Room enough for a man to sleep.

"I'm friendly," I said, speaking low but so I could be heard. "I'm hunting no trouble."

There was no answer.

Easing forward a bit, I spotted the opening that led inside, and kneeling, I eased forward. I spoke once more, and there was no response. Then I stuck my head inside.

The hut was empty.

The ground inside must have been damp, so close to the water, and it had been covered by several hastily woven mats of reeds, with grass thrown atop of them.

I backed out and stood up.

My father had taught me to build an emergency shelter just thataway from reeds, cane, or slim young trees. He taught me when I was six years old, and I'd not forgotten.

Pa . Was here.

I was sure of it now. That marker, just the way he used to use them, something to call attention, not necessarily to indicate a trail ... and now this.

When I got back to the horse I put a foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over the saddle. Gin was waiting for me to tell her, and I did.

"Pa's close by," I said. "I've got an idea that prisoner Herrara is hunting is my father."

"You're sure he's near?"

So I told her what I had seen, and explained a bit about it.

If he was close by, he would fine me-- unless he was lying hurt.

Even so, he would find me or let me know some way, so I turned and we started back to the herd.

We rode more swiftly now, eager to get back.

There was so much inside me I wasn't looking out as sharp as I should have. We came riding around the brush, and there were fifteen or twenty riders, and down in the middle of them was Miguel.

Miguel was on the ground, and his face was all blood. A thick-set Mexican was standing over him with a quirt in his hand. Herrara sat his horse nearby.

Only thing saved me was they'd been so busy they weren't listening, and a horse on soft sod doesn't make a whole lot of disturbance.

Lucky for me I was carrying that Henry out in the open. She swung up slick as a catfish on a mudbank and I eared back the hammer.

They all heard that.

Their heads came around like they were all on string, but the one I had covered was Herrara himself.

"Call that man off," I said, "or I'll kill you."

He looked at me, those black eyes flat and steady as a rattler's. I'll give him this.

There was no yellow showing. He looked right into that rifle barrel and he said, "You shoot me, se@nor, and you are dead in the next instant."

Me, I wasn't being bluffed. Not that day. I looked right along that barrel and I said, "Then I'll be the second man to die. When I fall, you'll lie there to make me a cushion."

We looked at each other, and he read me right. Whatever happened, I'd kill.

"And the lady? What happens to her if we die?"

"We'd never know about that, would we?" I said.

"I think she'd take care of herself, however, and if anything happened to her, I don't think Cheno would like it."

"What do you know of Cheno?"

"Me? Next to nothing, but the se@norita's family were good friends to Cheno's family when he lived north of the border. How else would a mere woman have the courage to ride alone into Mexico?"

He was listening, and I think he believed me.

Sure I was lying. Maybe her family had known the Cortina family, and maybe they never had. But I was talking to save the lady trouble, and maybe some talk for my own skin as well.

He did not like it, because it tied his hands, and he wasn't letting up yet.

"Why do you stop here?"

"Hell," I said offhand, "you're a better cowman than I am. I ran the legs off those steers getting them up here. I got a girl north of the border, and I wanted to get back.

Those other hands never showed, so we pushed 'em hard and nearly killed our horses. We had to rest."

It was true, of course, and I made plenty of sense, and that was one thing I had planned just that way. I wanted that story to tell if he came up on us again.

"Has anyone come to your camp other than the se@norita?" he asked then.

"If they did, I didn't see them.

We've been hoping somebody would come by who had some frijoles to sell. We're short on grub."

He asked a few more questions, and then they rode off, but I'd a hunch they would leave somebody to watch, or maybe none of them would go very far.

Miguel's face was cut and swollen. He had been lashed several times across the face and struck once with the butt because he could tell them nothing.

Now he washed the blood from his face and then looked around at me. "Careful, amigo. That one will kill you now, or you shall kill him. You faced him over a gun and made him back up."

"Twenty-five miles to the border," I said.

"Can we make it in one run? Maybe losing a few head?"

Miguel shrugged. "With luck, se@nor, one can do anything."

Me, I was doing some studying, and it came to me that whatever was going to happen would happen fast now.

Tomorrow night--or perhaps the next--we would be driving for the border. And we'd have the gold with us.

But I wasn't thinking of that gold, I was thinking of pa. My father, whom I had not seen for eight years, was somewhere out there in the darkness.

The question was: did he know I was here?

Chapter Seven.

Miguel shook me awake an hour after midnight, and I sat up, feeling the dampness caused by the nearness of the Gulf. The fire was a glowing bed of coals and the coffee pot was steaming.

Gin was asleep, her head cushioned on her saddle.

"It's quiet," Miguel said, "too damn' quiet."

He looked very bad this morning, his face still swollen, and blood from an opened whip-cut tracing a way across his cheek.

"We're going to make a run for the border,"

I said. "You get your sleep."

He was dog-tired, and he hit the blankets and was asleep before I could drink my coffee.

He'd taken time to saddle my dun before waking me, which was like him. I thought of his wife back in Texas and knew that whatever else happened, he must get back to her. And he would not go unless with me. He was that loyal.

The cattle were resting and quiet. They'd had grass and water a-plenty and were fixing to get fat. Or maybe they were stoking up for what was to come.

Among any bunch of cattle, as among humans, you will find a few staid, steady characters, and there were a couple of such steers in this herd that I'd been cultivating. These had been wild cattle; but cattle, horses, or men, no two are quite alike, and these I'd chosen showed a disposition to be friendly. It was in my mind that I might need a couple of steady steers, and these two I'd fed a few choice bunches of grass or leaves.

Truth of the matter was, I was scared. Both Gin and Miguel were looking to me, and I wasn't sure I was up to it. I had never been in a real shoot-out difficulty, and it worried me that I was trusted to handle whatever came.

Wind moaned in the brush. Finishing my coffee, I put aside my cup and, shoving the Henry into the boot, mounted up and rode out to the herd, singing low. Water rustled along the shore of the inlet, sucking and whispering among the reeds and the old drift timbers. Once it spat a few drops of cold rain.

This time of night, I was thinking, would be the time to run. Herrara would have us watched, but on a cold, unpleasant night there might be a chance.

Twice I rode wide of the herd to get a better over-all look, and I rode with care, pistol to hand. There was nothing to see, less to hear.

But bit by bit something was shaping up in my mind.

There was this long arm of the sea to the east of us, and that other wider arm to the west and south. We were on a point, with water on two sides. Dimly, I recalled some tracings pa had made in the earth at the back door of the cabin one day as he talked. It was like this point ... down there on the very point he'd made a cross of some kind.

Tomorrow ... I would go there tomorrow.

It was coming up to day when I turned back toward camp. The cattle were on their feet, most of them cropping grass. If what I thought proved true, we might be lighting a shuck out of this country come nighttime. And believe me, I wanted to be shut of it.

When I rode up to the fire I saw Gin was up and drinking coffee. How she'd managed to get her hair to looking like that, I don't know. She reached across the fire's edge to fill Miguel's cup ... but it wasn't Miguel.

It was pa.

He was setting hunched up to the fire with a blanket over his shoulders and a cup of coffee held in both his hands. He looked thinner than I had ever seen him, his face honed down hard.

He looked up when I walked that dun into the fire's circle of light, andfora minute or two we just stared at each other like a couple of fools.

"Pa?" I said. It was all I could get out.

He got up, the blanket falling to the ground.

He was a big man, even now with almost no flesh on him. He'd been that prisoner who escaped, and Lord knows how long he'd been mistreated in that prison.

"Son?" He had a hard time with the ^w.

"Orlando?"

"It's been a long time, pa."

No ^ws came to me, and it seemed he was no better off. He had left me a child, and found me a man. Swinging down, I trailed my reins and stepped out to face him.

He was taller than me, but raw-boned as he was now, he was no heavier than my one-eighty.

He thrust out his hand and I took it. "You're strong," he said. "You were always strong."

"You've had some grub?"

"Coffee ... just coffee, and some talk with Gin."

Gin, was it? He wasted no time getting down to cases. "You'd better eat," I said. "Come daybreak, we're going down to the Point."

"Ah?" he was pleased. "So you did remember?"

"Took me a while, but it was coming to me."

"Gin said you'd recognized the shelter--andthe marker, too."

"You'd better sit down and wrap up," Gin advised. "You aren't well."

She put the blanket around him when he sat down andwitha tiny prick of jealousy I couldn't help but think that if pa were shaved and fixed up they'd make a handsome pair.

I got out the frying pan and mixed up some sourdough, listening to them talk the while. He had the pleasant voice I'd remembered, and the easy way of moving. Glancing over at them, it came over me that pa was here ... he was alive.

I'd been too stunned to take it in rightly before, and it was going to take some getting used to.

His eyes were on me as I shook up that bread, and I suppose he was wondering what sort of a man I'd become. But there was something else in his mind, too.

"You speak as if you'd had no schooling," he said. "Not that it's better or worse than most men speak out here."

"We'll have to talk to Caffrey," I said.

"He used your money for his own self. I've been caring for myself at your old cabin since I was twelve." Looking up at him, I grinned.

"With some help now and again from the Cherokees."

"I worried about Caffrey," pa said, "but I was in a hurry to get off. And that reminds me.

We'd best get out of here. If they find me with you, you'll all be shot."

"Not without that gold," I said. "We came this far for it."

"There's some all ready to go," pa said.

"I've taken it out myself. The rest--most of it--w take time."

Gin looked over at me. "Orlando, I think he's right. He's a sick man. The way his breathing sounds, he may be getting pneumonia."

The ^w had a dread sound, and it shook me.

Miguel was sleeping, but it came on me then that we'd best move the cattle a little way, like to new bedding grounds, but hold them ready for a fast move when darkness came.

"Is that gold where it can be laid hands on?"

I asked.

"It is."

"We'll move the cattle on to the end of the inlet and bed down there, like for night. Short of midnight we'll make our run."

My mind was thinking ahead. Gin probably was making the right guess, for pa looked bad. He had been lying out in the brush without so much as a coat, just shirt and pants. Even his boots were worn through and soaked.

Leisurely, we rounded up the cattle, with pa keeping from sight in the brush, and we walked them on not more than a mile. Then, late afternoon, we built ourselves a new fire and settled down as if for the night.

Rounding up those placid steers I'd been keeping my eyes on, we brought them up to camp.

Then, with pa resting, we waited the coming of night.

Miguel was restless. He never was far from his horse, and he worried himself until he was taut as a drumhead, watching the brush, listening, afraid something would go wrong before we could get away.

"I'm going into Guadalupe," I said to him.

"We need a couple of horses."

There was no way he could deny that, although he wished to. We had no mount for pa, and if we made a run for it, we'd be riding from here clean to the border.

Miguel shrugged. "I think it is safe enough," he admitted reluctantly, "and we have reason to get horses."

Gin had money. She had more than I did, which wasn't much, so she turned over a hundred dollars to me and I saddled up the dun. Just before I left, I walked over to where pa was lying, with Gin setting beside him. No question but he looked bad.

"You take it easy," I said. "I'll get two, three horses and come back."

"What about pack horses? For the gold?"

"Packs would make the Mexicans mighty curious, so I figured on steers. Nobody will pay any attention to the herd."

"They'll be seen."

"Maybe ... but with horns moving, and the dust, the shifting around of the animals ... I think we've got a chance."

It was a mite over four miles to Guadalupe, and not even a dozen buildings when I got there, most of them adobe. There was a cantina, a closed-up store, and the office of the alcalde, with a jail behind it. The rest were scattered houses and one warehouse.

In a corral were several rough-looking horses, but nobody was around. The air was chill, offering rain. At the hitch-rail of the cantina stood more horses, three of them led stock. I tied up the dun and went inside.

It was a low, dark room with a bar and several tables. Three men were at the bar, two of them standing together, their backs to me. A broad-shouldered Mexican with a sombrero hanging down his back by the chin-strap, and crossed cartridge belts on his chest, stood at the end of the bar, a bottle before him. He looked like a Herrara man to me. The other two were lounging with a bottle between them. The Herrara man was obviously interested in them.

Walking up to the bar, I put my elbows on it and ordered a beer.

The operator of the cantina accepted my money and flashed a brief smile at me, but in his eyes I thought there was a warning, an almost imperceptible gesture toward the Herrara man, if such he was.

"Holding cattle outside of town," I said suddenly. "We've played out our horses. Know where I can buy a couple, cheap?"

For maybe a minute nobody made any sign they'd heard me, and then the man next to me said, "I have three horses, and I will sell--but not cheap."

It was the Tinker.

Without turning my head, I picked up my bottle of beer and emptied the rest of it into my glass. "Another," I said, gesturing.

"I saw them," I added, "at the rail. They are fit for buzzards."

"They are good horses," The Tinker protested. "I had not considered selling them until you spoke. The buckskin ... there is a horse!"

"I'll give you eight dollars for him," I said, and tasted my beer.

For half an hour we argued and debated back and forth. Finally I said, "All right, twelve dollars for the buckskin, fifteen for the bay--the paint I do not want."

The Tinker and his silent companion, at whom I had not dared to look for fear of drawing attention to him, seemed to be growing drunk. The Tinker clapped me on the shoulder. "You are a good man," he said drunkenly, "a very good man! You need the horses--all right, I shall sell you the horses. You may have all three for forty dollars and a good meal ... it is my last price."

I shrugged. "All right--but if you want the meal, come to camp. Forty dollars is all the money I have."

There on the bar I paid it to him in pesos, and we walked outside, the Tinker talking drunkenly. The Herrara man's eyes were drilling into my back.

"He's watching us," the Tinker said as I stopped to look over the horses.

Straightening up, I looked into the eyes of the other man--Jonas Locklear.

"Cortina had me turned loose," he said, "on condition I get out of the country. He didn't want Herrara to know for the present."

Mounting up, we rode swiftly from the town.

By the time we reached camp it was near to sunset.

Pa was up, had a gun strapped on that Miguel had taken from our gear, and he was watching the sun.

"The only place they can watch us from," he said, "is that dune. It looks over the whole country around here. It's over seventy feet high, and in this country that's a mountain--along the coast, that is. If we wait about ten or fifteen minutes, the sun will be shining right in the eyes of anybody watching from that dune. That's when we'll go for the gold."

We now mustered six rifles, a good force by anybody's count, for Gin could shoot--or said she could, and I believed her.

We made beds ready, built up the fire, and put coffee on, and grub. Miguel was cooking.

When the sun got low enough, Pa, the Tinker and me took a few canvas bags we'd brought along a-purpose, andwith two steers we headed off into the brush. One of the steers showed old marks that looked like he'd been used as a draft animal sometime in the past. Both were easily handled.

As we walked, pa said, "I dove for this gold, got it out of the sand on the bottom. Most of the hull is still intact, and most of the gold will be inside, but I brought up enough to make it pay.

We'll take this and run; then we'll wait for things to simmer down, and come back."

Then pa told us some about how things were in Mexico. Right about this time Cortina had gathered a lot of power to him, but he was dependent on some of the lieutenants he had, of whom Herrara was one. The situation was changing rapidly, and it had changed several times over in the period of the last thirty years. Even in the last six or seven years there had been power shifts and changes, and changing relationships with the United States.

Not many years before, a Mexican cavalry detachment had crossed the border to protect Brownsville from a Mexican bandit, a fact known to few Americans except those in the immediate vicinity.

In the northern provinces of Mexico there was much division of feeling as to the United States, and the northern country had many friends south of the border. North of the border many citizens of Mexican extraction had fought against Mexico for Texas. It was difficult to draw a line, and there was a constant struggle in process for power below the border.

Pa told me some of this, and some I'd had from Jonas while riding south when there had been time to talk.

Pa led us in such a way as to keep bushes between us and the dune he thought was the lookout post, until we arrived right down on the shore of the inlet. There on the point, right where I'd planned to look, there was where pa stopped.

"The ship," he said to me, "lies off there, in no more than five fathoms of water."

He glanced over his shoulder at the sun, then stooped and took hold of a tuft of grass and pulled on it; he caught hold of another bunch with the other hand. A big chunk of sod lifted out like a trap door, and in a hollowed-out place underneath was a tin pail and several cans, loaded with gold.

There was no time to lose. Working as swiftly as we could, we sacked it up, for the sun was going down and in a few minutes we'd stand out like sore thumbs out there on that point. Tying the sacks two and two, we hung them over the backs of the steers, and then replaced the sod. We started back as if driving two straying steers.

As darkness came we clustered around the fire, eating. Miguel and Jonas finished first and, mounting up, went out to circle the cattle. The rest of us went through the motions of going to bed. One by one the others moved off into the darkness, but Gin and me, we still sat by the fire and I stoked the flames a mite higher.

"He's quite a man," she said suddenly.

"Pa?"

"Yes. I've never known anyone quite like him."

Me, I hadn't anything to say. I didn't know enough about my own father, and there'd been little time for talking. Also, as the time drew near we were getting worrisome about what we had to do.

You bed down a bunch of steers and they'll finally settle down to dozing and chewing their cuds; but after a while, close to midnight or about there, they'll all stand up and stretch, crop grass a bit, and then lie down again. That was the time we picked to move them--catch them on their feet so there'd be less disturbance.

Finally we left the fire, adding some more fuel.

I rigged some branches nearby so they'd sort of fall into the fire as others burned, giving anybody watching an idea the fire was being fed, time to time.

Away from the firelight, I moved up to my dun in the darkness and tightened the cinch. "You got it in you to run," I said, "you better have at it tonight."

We waited ... and we waited. And those fool steers, they just lay there chewing and sleeping. Then, of a sudden, an old range cow stood up. In a minute or two there were a dozen on their feet, and then more.

Moving mighty easy, we started to push them.

Miguel was off to one side to get them started north, and Jonas had gone up the other side.

We pushed them, and a few of them began, reluctantly, to move out. It took us a while to get them started and lined out, and we did it without any shouting or hollering.

We walked them easy for about a mile, then we began to move them a little faster. Not until we had about three miles behind us did we give it to them.

It was a wild ride. I'll say this for Gin, she was right in there with us, riding side-saddle as always, but riding like any puncher and doing her job.

Only I noticed she was keeping an eye on pa, too.

It made me sore, only I didn't want to admit it. I told myself somebody had to keep an eye on him, the shape he was in. Nevertheless, I was a mite jealous, too. I reckon it's the male in a man ... he sees a pretty woman like that and wants to latch onto her. She was a good bit older than me, of course, though a whole sight younger than pa.

We had those cattle lined out and we kept them going. After a ways we'd slow down to give them a breather, but not so slow that they could get to thinking what was happening to them. Then we'd speed them up a little. After six miles or so, the Tinker, he swung in beside me. "We'd best hang back, you and me," he said, "sort of a rear guard."

The night wore on.

Once when we came up to water we let them line out along the creek bank and drink. We had ten miles behind us then, but by daybreak we hoped to have a few more, because it wouldn't take free-riding horsemen long to catch up, and when they did there'd be hell to pay.

We had managed to keep in sight those steers carrying the gold. We'd lashed that gold in place, throwing a good packing hitch over it, and there was small danger of it falling off--nevertheless, somebody always had an eye on that gold.

The dark skies began to gray. We were more than half way there, but we still had miles to go. The cattle had slowed to a walk. They'd have been plenty angry if they hadn't been so tired.

Pa looked awful. His face was drawn and pale, but he was riding as well as any of us. His eyes were sunk into his skull, and they looked bigger than anybody's eyes should.

We pushed on, walking them now, trying to create no more dust than we had to.

There was a place east of Matamoras where it looked like the border swung further south, and so would be nearer to us. We turned the herd that way, skirting a sort of lake or tidewater pool.

It was just shy of noon and we were within five or six miles of the border when they came at us.

It was about that time, just before they hit us, that I had my brain-storm. It came to me of a sudden and, saying nothing to anyone but the Tinker, I rode up to Gin.

"Look, you and pa take those two steers and you move out ahead. If we have to make a fight of it, we'll do it better without having to think of you."

"I can fight," pa said.

His looks shocked me, and he was coughing a lot and his forehead was wet with sweat. His cheeks were a sickly white, but I was sure he was carrying a lot of fever in him.

"Do like I say," I insisted. "You two light out and head for the border. If we have to, we'll make a fight of it and cover for you. With that money, you can help us out if we should get caught."

"If you aren't killed," pa said.

"I'm too durned ornery to die," I said.

"Anyway, we got to go back to Tennessee and talk to Caffrey, you and me together."

Gin convinced him, and they taken those two steers and drove them off ahead of the herd.

They hadn't been gone more than a few minutes when we saw that dust cloud come a-helling up the road after us. The Tinker and me, we just looked at each other, and then the lead began to come our way. I was sort of glad, for I'd not wish to start shooting at folks when I ain't sure of their plans.

That old Henry came up to my shoulder sweet and pretty, and my first shot taken a man right out of the saddle. At least, I think it was my shot.

We both fired, and then we turned tail and got away from there, racing past the herd like Jonas and Miguel were doing.

We started to swing the herd and in no time at all had them turned between us and those men after us. We tried to stampede them back into those fellows, but only a few of them started--the rest were too almighty confused.

All of us were shooting, riding and shooting, and then they cut around both sides of the herd at us and our horses were too blown to run. We made our fight right there.

Dropping off my horse, I swung him around and shot across the saddle. There were guns going off all around me, and I'd no time to be scared. his'Lando!" the Tinker shouted, and grabbed at me. "Ride and run!"

Both of us jumped for the saddle, and as we did so I saw a man wearing a black suit come out of that bunch. He had a shotgun in his hands, and as Jonas turned toward his horse he let him have both barrels.

Miguel was down, and now Jonas, and it needed no sawbones to tell me Jonas was dead. Before I could more than try a shot at that rider in the black suit, he was gone.

But not until I'd seen him.

It was Franklyn Deckrow. The Tinker had seen him, too.

We lit out. We were running all out when I felt my horse bunch up under me, and then he went head over heels into the sand, pitching me wide over his head.

Last I saw was the Tinker giving one wild glance my way, and then he was racing away.

From that look on his face, I was sure he figured me for a dead man.

Reaching out, I grabbed for my Henry, which had fallen from my hand. A boot came down hard on my knuckles, and when I looked up Antonio Herrara was looking down at me. And from the expression of those flat black eyes, I knew I'd bought myself some trouble.

It was going to be a long time before I saw Texas again ... if ever.

Chapter Eight.

The bitter days edged slowly by, and weeks passed into years, and then the years were gone, and still I remained a prisoner.

By day I worked like the slave I'd become, and was fed like an animal, and by night I slept on a bed of filthy straw and dreamed of a day when I would be free.

Always I was alone, alone within the hollow shell of my mind, for outside the small world in which I lived with labor, sweat, and frightful heat, no one knew that I lived, nor was there anyone about me to whom I could talk.

The others with whom I worked were Indians---

Yaquis brought to this place from Sonora, men self-contained and bitter as I, yet knowing nothing of me, nor trusting anyone beyond their own small group.

A thousand times I planned escape, a thousand times the plans crumbled. Doors that seemed about to open for me remained closed, guards who showed weakness were replaced. My hands became curved to grip the handles of pick, shovel, or mattock. My shoulders bulged with muscle put there by swinging a heavy sledge. Naturally of great strength, each day of work made it greater, building roads, working in the mines, clearing mesquite-covered ground.

Sometimes alone in my rock-walled cell I thought back to that first day when, in a square adobe room, I was questioned by Herrara. My wrists bound cruelly tight, I stood before him.

He stood with his feet apart, his sombrero tipped back, and those flat black eyes looked into mine. He smiled then, showing even white teeth; he was a handsome man in a savage way.

"You put a gun upon me," he said, and struck me across the face with his quirt.

It was the beginning of pain.

"There is gold. Tell me where it is, and you may yet go free."

He lied ... he had no thought to let me go, only to see me suffer and die.

"The gold is gone. They took it with them."

"I think you lie," he said and, almost negligently, he lashed me again across the face with the quirt, and the lash cut deep. I tasted my blood upon my cut lips, and I knew the beginning of hatred.

That was the beginning of questioning, but only the beginning.

There was gold. He knew it and was hungry for it, as the others had been before him. The original commandant, whose name I never knew, had been his uncle. In the telling, the amount of gold supposedly hidden on the shore had grown to a vast amount.

To tell him was to die, and I lived to kill him, so I told him nothing. After each questioning I was taken to a cell and left there, and each time I feared I would die; but deep within me the days tempered a kind of steel I had not known was there.

Herrara I would remember, and another man, too. I would remember Franklyn Deckrow, who had betrayed us to them, and who had killed Jonas, his brother-in-law. It was something to live for.

And I would live. No matter what, I would survive so that these men might die.

No help could come to me, for they believed me dead. Jonas had fallen, and Miguel too, although he might have somehow gotten away. They had forced me to bury Jonas, but Miguel's body was nowhere around. I hoped for him. But the Tinker had looked back and seen me lying there, and I knew he believed me dead.

Suddenly, one night, I was moved. Out of a sound sleep I was shaken awake, jerked to my feet and led away. Herrara rode beside me.

"Your friends do not give up," he said, "and they have powerful friends in Mexico, so we must take you where you will never be found."

The place to which they took me was a ranch owned by an outlaw named Flores, an outlaw who raided Texas ranches for their stock and so was ignored by the law of the province.

Duty called Herrara away to the south, so the beatings ended, but I was put to work among the Yaqui slaves. Most of the Yaqui prisoners had been sent away to work in the humid south where they soon died. Only a few were kept in the north.

The work was preferable to the cell, and I gloried in my growing strength. We were fed corn and frijoles and good beef, all of which was cheap enough, and they wanted my strength for the work I could do.

A dozen times I tried to smuggle messages across the border. Twice they were found and I was beaten brutally.

"Tell me," Herrara said to me on one of his sudden visits, "tell me where is the gold and you shall have a horse and your freedom." But I did not tell.

Herrara had become powerful. The outlaws supported him and he protected them and derived income from their raids into Texas. Night after night men rode away from the Flores ranch and raided over the border, returning with cattle, horses, and women.

No other Mexican came to the ranch to visit, and I gathered the outlaws were hated by those who lived nearby, but they were people cut off from authority who could do nothing.

When I looked down at my hands, I saw them calloused and scarred, but powerful. My shoulders and arms were heavy with muscle, and my mind sharpened by endless observation and planning, was cunning as an animal's is cunning.

No day passed without its plan for escape, no possible opportunity went unnoticed by me.

Always my senses were alert for the moment.

Then came another Herrara visit. The heavy oaken door grated against the stone, and he stepped inside. He held a pistol and a heavy whip, the cat-o'-nine-tails which is used aboard ship.

Behind him in the doorway were two men with guns.

"It is the end," he said. "I shall wait no longer. Tonight you will tell me, for if you do not, these"

--he held up the whip--?w take out your eyes."

The cat hung from his hand by its stubby wooden handle, and from its end dangled nine strips of rawhide, each with a tip wrapped in wire. It was a whip that could cut a man to ribbons, or bite at his eyes, cutting them from his head in a bloody mess.

And in that moment I knew that I could no longer wait. I must kill him and be killed.

He moved toward me, and I remained where I was, crouched in the corner with one heel braced against the wall, ready to lunge at him. My thick forearms rested upon my knees, and I waited, watching him like the cornered animal I had become.

We were at a smaller ranch, half a mile from Las Cuevas, the headquarters of Flores. It was November 19, 1875. The date is one I shall never forget.

A mistake was made that night, and upon such mistakes do men's lives depend; by such mistakes are men's lives lost--or saved.

Outside my cell, beyond the walls about the ranch, beyond the border even, events had marched forward, and tonight men rode in darkness, moving along the cactus-lined trails.

As Herrara came toward me, he had his pistol ready, for he was a clever man and knew what must be in my mind. The whip was poised for a blow, but I was hard to get at, for the corner was a partial protection.

My tongue went to my lips. Within me burned a kind of cold fury, welling up from the deep hatreds that had grown within me, until nothing mattered but my hands upon his throat.

He would strike me. His bullet would tear into my flesh, and perhaps the bullets of those others in the doorway, but my hands must reach his throat.

These hands that only a day or so before had bent and twisted an iron horseshoe--^the hands must reach that throat and lock there. Surely, I would be killed, but surely I should kill him first.

He flipped the whip at me, but I did not move. He lifted the whip to strike downward, and he brought it down hard over my head and shoulders, but still I did not move. Suddenly his own anger burst within him, the hatred of me because I kept him from the wealth he wanted and the position it would buy, the hatred of me for holding out so long against him.

His lips curled from his teeth and the whip drew back for a mighty blow at my face. Those wire-twisted whipends would tear at my eyes.

His own hatred had mastered him--I saw it in his face.

Suddenly, from outside there was a crash of gunfire, the race of pounding hoofs, shrill Texas yells.

The men at the door wheeled and ran toward the court. Even Herrara was caught, gripped by shock in the middle of his blow. And in that instant I leaped.

My left hand gripped the gun-wrist, my right seized his throat, not a grip around the neck, but the far more deadly grip of the Adam's apple and the throat itself.

His gun exploded, but the muzzle had been turned aside, and the roar was lost in the concussions of the shots outside. I smashed him back bodily against the stone wall with stunning force. My right hand gripping his throat held him on tip-toes against the stone, and my other hand gripping his gun-wrist ground his knuckles against the roughness of the stone wall.

Brutally, I ground the flesh against the stone, rasping it back and forth until he struggled to scream and his fingers could no longer grip the gun.

I released my hold upon his throat and stepped back. He struck weakly at me with the cat, but then, my feet wide, I hit with my left fist, then with my right, rolling my shoulders for the power it gave. One fist struck his ribs, crushing them; the other his face.

His head bounced against the wall, and glassy-eyed he started to fall toward me. I struck him again, and when he fell forward that time I knew that he was dead.

Quickly, I stripped off his gun belt and picked his pistol from the floor.

The passage outside the door was empty, and I ran along it, turned down another, and was in the living quarters of the ranch house. A door stood open, as it had been left when the shooting called the men out, and I smashed through it.

The room was empty and still. My footsteps padded on the bare floor as I crossed to the gun case. Picking up a chair with one hand, I swung it and smashed the glass. I reached in for a shotgun and filled my pockets with shells.

A Henry rifle was there, and I took that also, and two belts of cartridges that hung from a chair. And then as I turned away I saw a familiar sight. In the corner of the gun cabinet was my old Walch Navy .36 with the initials C. B. scratched on it. Quickly, I took it up and thrust it into my waistband with another pistol that lay there.

No one appeared in the passage as I ran, and I went through the door to the long veranda outside.

There I stopped in the shadows.

Mounted men were racing back and forth, and the red lances of gunfire stabbed the darkness. A Texas yell broke out, and a shot caught a Mexican upon a balcony. He fell head-long from it and landed nearby. The rider wheeled his horse, and in that instant he saw me.

The pistol swung at me to fire and I shouted, "ationo! I'm an American!"

He held his pistol on me. "Who are you?"

His voice rang with authority.

"A prisoner. They've held me six years."

"Six years?"

A horse was tied to the hitch-rail and he jerked loose the tie-rope. Heavier firing sounded outside the court. "Come! And be quick!"

He raced from the court to where other Texas riders were milling. "Wrong place!" A man shouted at the rider beside me. "Flores' place is half a mile up the road!"

"There are two hundred men there!" I yelled at them.

The man beside me said, "Let's go!" And he led the racing retreat at a dead run down the valley.

After a mile or two they slowed to a canter, then to a walk. I glanced at the stars, and there was the North Star, beckoning us on.

"They'll be after us," the man beside me said, and there was no time for questions.

Closely we rode on, and fast, for the Rio Grande lay miles to the north. The night was cool, and the air fresh on my face. Sometimes when we passed close to a rock face we could feel the heat still held from the day's hot sun.

We slowed to a walk again, and the man I rode beside turned in his saddle and looked at me.

"Six years, you say?"

As briefly as possible, I explained. Not about the gold, exactly, but enough to let him know they had wanted to learn a secret I alone knew.

When I mentioned Herrara, he nodded grimly.

"He's one I'd like to find myself."

"Do not waste your time," I said. "From now on you need pay him no mind."

He glanced at me and I said, "He was using a whip on me when you came shooting into the patio, and his men rushed away."

"He is dead, you think?"

"He is dead. Without a doubt, he is dead."

"My name is Mcationelly," the rider said then.

"These are Texas Rangers."

Thirty of them had crossed the river to strike a blow at the outlaws who were raiding ranches and stealing cattle north of the border--and sometimes south of it, as well.

Las Cuevas had long been the outlaws' headquarters, and it was Las Cuevas for which the Rangers had aimed. But mistakenly they were led to a ranch that belonged to the Las Cuevas owner, only a short distance away from the main ranch buildings. It was that mistake that had saved my life.

At the Rio Grande the riders turned on command. The outlaws were not far behind. "You, Sackett," the captain said, "go on across the border. You've had trouble enough."

"If you'll grant me the pleasure, Cap'n," I said, "I'll stay. There's men in that crowd who have struck me and beaten me, and I owe them a little. Bess," I added, "I carried off their shotgun. It is only fair that I return the loads from the shells."

Here at the river the air was still cooler because of the dampness rising from the water--and it was free air.

For the first time in years I was out in the night, with free air all about me.

The outlaws came with a rush, sure they would catch the Rangers at the border before they got across the river, but they were met with a blast of gunfire that lanced the night with darting flame.

One rider toppled from his saddle, and his fall as much as our fire turned their retreat into a rout.

They vanished into the mesquite.

Several Rangers rode out to look at the body, and I followed Mcationelly. "Well,"

I said, "seems to me if you had to kill only one, you got the right one. That there is Flores himself."

We swam the river back to the Texas side and I followed on to their camp, which was on the bank of a creek a few miles back from the river.

Reckon I looked a sight. My shirt was in rags and the only pants I had were some castoffs they'd given me when my own played out. There I stood, bare-footed and loaded down with guns.

"You'd better let us stand you an outfit,"

Mcationelly commented dryly. "You're in no shape to go anywhere in that outfit."

They were good boys, those Rangers were, and they rigged me out. Then, to raise some cash, I sold one of them my pistol for six dollars--it was the spare I'd picked up (i'd come away with three); and I sold the shotgun for twelve to Mcationelly himself. The Captain had taken Flores' gold- and silver-plated pistol off the body--it was a rarely beautiful weapon.

The horse I'd ridden across the border was a handsome, upstanding roan.

"Anybody asks you for the bill of sale for that horse," Mcationelly commented, "you refer them to me."

The first thing I did was to head for the creek and take a long bath, getting shut of my old clothes at the time. When I lit out for Rio Grande City, come daybreak, I felt like a different man.

Yet being free wasn't what it might have been. First off, I didn't know where to go.

Mcationelly had heard nothing of my pa, and only remembered some talk of Jonas Locklear being dead several years back. What had become of his land, he didn't know.

So there I was, a free man with no place to go, with a rightful share in the gold that might have already been spent. But something I did own, if I could find them. I owned a mare and a mule colt.

I showed up in Brownsville wearing shirt and jeans that didn't fit, a pair of boots that hurt my feet, and a worn-out Mexican sombrero. Dark as I was and wearing cartridge belts crossed over my chest, I even looked like a Mexican.

I walked into a cantina and leaned on the bar, and when the bartender ignored me I reached out my Henry and laid it across to touch the back bar.

"I want a whiskey," I said, "and I want it now. You going to give it to me, or do I take it after I put a knot on your head?"

He looked at me and then he looked at that rifle and he set the bottle out on the bar.

"We don't cater to Mexicans in here," he said.

"You do wrong," I told him. "I'm no Mex, but I've known some mighty fine ones.

They run about true to form with us north of the border --some good and some bad."

"Sorry," he said. "I thought you were a Mexican."

"Pour me a drink," I said, "and then go back and shut up."

He poured me the drink and walked away down the bar. Two tough-looking cowhands were sizing me up, considering how much opposition I'd offer if trouble started, but I wasn't interested in a row. So I just plain ignored them. Anyway, I was listening to talk at a table behind me.

"He's wise," one man was saying. "He hasn't squatted on range the way most have done. Captain King clears title on every piece he buys. That's why he's held off on that Locklear outfit--there's a dispute over the title. Deckrow claims it, but his sister-in-law disputes the claim."

"Bad blood between Deckrow and her husband, too. It'll come to a shooting."

"Not unless Deckrow shoots him in the back,"

I said, "that's the way he killed Jonas Locklear."

Well, now. I'd turned and spoken aloud without really meaning to, and every face in the room turned toward me.

One of the men at the table looked at me coldly. "That's poor talk. Deckrow's a respected man in Texas."

"He wouldn't be the first who didn't deserve it," I said. "You see him, you tell him I said he was a back-shooter. Tell him I said he shot Jonas Locklear in the back, and Deckrow was riding with Mexican outlaws at the time."

There wasn't a friendly face in the cantina, except maybe for the other man at that table.

"And who might you be?" he asked quietly.

"We'd like to tell him who spoke against him."

"The name is Orlando Sackett," I said, "and I'll speak against him any time I get the chance. ... Jonas," I added, "was a friend of mine."

"Orlando Sackett," the man said thoughtfully.

"The only other Sackett I know besides Falcon was killed down in Mexico, five or six years ago."

"You heard wrong. I ain't dead, nor about to be."

Finishing my drink, I turned and walked out of the place and went across the street to a restaurant.

A few minutes after, a slender blue-eyed man came in and sat down not far from me. He didn't look at me at all, and that was an odd thing, because almost everybody else at least glanced my way.

In Rio Grande City I'd gotten myself a haircut and had my beard shaved off.

I still held to a mustache, like most men those days, but it was trimmed careful. In the six years below the border I'd taken on weight, and while I was no taller than five-ten, I now weighed two hundred and ten pounds, most of it in my chest and shoulders. Folks looked at me, all right.

As I ate, I kept an eye on that blue-eyed man, who was young and lean-faced and wore a tied-down gun. Presently another man came in and sat down beside him, his back to me. When he turned around a few minutes later and he looked at me, I saw he was Duncan Caffrey.

He'd changed some. His face looked like it always did, but he was big and strong-looking. His eyes were a lot harder than I recalled, and when he put his hand on the back of the other man's chair I noticed the knuckles were scarred and broken. He'd been doing a lot of fighting.

Reminded me of what the Tinker had said about the knuckles of Jem Mace, that champion fighter who'd trained him.

Caffrey looked hard at me, and he sort of frowned and looked away, and suddenly it came on me that he wasn't sure. True, I was a whole lot heavier than when he'd last seen me, and a lot darker except where the beard was shaved off, and even that had caught some sun riding down from Rio Grande City.

When I stood up and paid for my supper I saw in the mirror what was wrong. The mustache changed me a good bit, and the scars even more. I had forgotten the scars. There were three of them, two along my cheek and one on my chin, all made from the cuts of that quirt, which had cut like a knife into my flesh, and no stitches taken in the cuts.

Outside on the street a sudden thought came to me. If that blue-eyed man was a killer, and if Caffrey was pointing me out to him, then I'd better dust out. With my hands I was all right, but I hadn't shot a six-shooter, except for the other day, not in six years.

Riding out of town, I headed east, then circled and took the north road. A few days after, I pulled up at the jacal where I'd left the mare.

A young woman came to the door, shading her eyes at me. She looked shabby and tired. The little boy who stood beside her stared at me boldly, but I thought they were both frightened.

"Do you not remember me, se@nora? I rode from here many years ago--with Miguel and Se@nor Locklear."

There seemed to be a flicker of recognition in her eyes then, but all she said was, "Go away.

Miguel is dead."

"Dead, se@nora?"

"Si." Her eyes flickered around as if she were afraid of being observed. "He returned from Mexico, and then one day he did not come back to me. He was shot out on the plains-- by bandidos."

"Ah?" I wondered about those bandidos and about Franklyn Deckrow. Then I changed the subject. "When I was here I left a mare that was to have a colt. You promised to see to the birth and care for it."

Her eyes warmed. "I remember, se@nor."

"The colt ... is it here?"

The boy started to interrupt, but she spoke quickly to him in Spanish. I now spoke the tongue well, but they were not close to me and I missed the ^ws.

"It is here, se@nor. Manuel will get it."

"Wait." I looked at the boy. "You have ridden the colt?"

"The mule, se@nor? Si, I have ridden him." There was no frliness in his eyes. He was all of eleven or twelve, but slight of build.

"Does he run, then? Like the wind?"

Excitement came into his eyes and he spoke with enthusiasm. "Si, se@nor. He runs."

Juana came a step from the jacal. "He loves the mule," she said. "I am afraid he loves it too much. I always told him you would come back for it."

"You told him I would come back?"

"Si, se@nor. Miguel did not believe you were dead. He never believed it. But he was the only one. Although the se@nora--Se@nora Sackett--she sometimes thought you were alive."

"Se@nora Sackett?"

"Your father's wife, se@nor. The sister of Se@nor Locklear."

So Gin had married my father. She was my stepmother now. Well, thinking back, I could not be surprised. From the first, there had been something between them.

Juana came out to my horse as the boy walked reluctantly away to get the mule. "There has been much trouble," she said.

"Se@nor Deckrow lets us to live here, but he warned us never to talk to strangers, and he said if you ever came back, to send Manuel at once to tell him."

Just then my horse's head came up and I looked around, and there stood the mule colt.

No question but what it was a mule. It was tall, longer in the body than most mules, it seemed, andwith long, slim legs. But it was a mule, almost a buckskin in color, and like enough to any mule I'd ever seen.

You could tell by the way he followed that boy that there was a good feeling between them. But when I walked over, he stretched his nose to me.

"And the mare?"

"Wolves, se@nor, when this one was small.

If I had not come upon them, he would be dead also."

Rubbing the mule's neck, I considered the situation. "Manuel," I said, "I think you and Juana should come away from here. I think you should go to San Antonio, or somewhere. You'll need to have schooling."

"How? We have no money. We have no way to go. We have only our goats and a few chickens."

"You have horses?"

"No, se@nor. The horses belong to Se@nor Deckrow."

"Ride them, anyway, and you two come away to San Antonio." I paused. "If Deckrow hears you have talked to me, there may be trouble. Besides, I want a boy who can ride the mule ... I mean who can race him. Could you do that, Manuel?"

His eyes sparkled, but he said seriously, "Si, I could do it. He runs very fast, se@nor."

"He's bred for it," I said. "Can you go tonight?"

"What of the goats?"

"Goats," I said, "can get along. Leave them."

We didn't waste time. They'd little enough to take, and Manuel taken my horse and went out and caught up a couple of ponies in no time.

He was a hand with a rope, which I wasn't.

Lately I'd begun to think I wasn't a hand with anything, although all the way from Brownsville to the ranch I practiced with that Walch Navy, which I fancied beyond other guns.

The trail we chose was made by Kansas-bound cattle. Seemed to me I owed Miguel something, and I did not trust that Deckrow. So I'd be killing two birds with one stone by escorting Manuel and his mother to San Antone and getting Manuel to ride my mule for me.

"You think that mule can beat this horse?" I asked Manuel.

"Of a certainty," he replied coolly.

"He can run, this mule."

So we laid it out between us to race to a big old cottonwood we could see away up ahead, maybe three-quarters of a mile off. On signal, we taken off.

Now that Mexican horse was a good cutting horse and trained to start fast. Moreover, it was an outlaw's horse, and an outlaw can't afford not to have the best horse under him that he can lay hands on. That roan took off with a bound and within fifty yards he was leading by two lengths, and widening the distance fast. We were halfway to that cottonwood before that mule got the idea into his head that he was in a race.

By the time we'd covered two-thirds of the distance we were running neck-and-neck, and then that mule just took off and left us.

Oakville was the town where I decided to make my play, and by the size of my bankroll it was going to be a small one.

When you came to sizing it up, Oakville wasn't a lot of town, there being less than a hundred people in it, but it had the name of being a contentious sort of place. Forty men were killed there in the ten years following the War Between the States. It lay right on the trail up from the border and a lot of Kansas cattle went through there, time to time.

When we came riding into town I told Manuel and his ma to find a place to put up, and I gave them a dollar.

It was a quiet day in town. A couple of buckboards stood on the street, and four or five horses stood three-legged at the hitch-rails. When I pushed through the bat-wing doors and went up to the bar, there was only one man in the place aside from the bartender. He was a long, thin man with a reddish mustache and a droll, quizzical expression to his eyes.

"Buy you a drink?" I suggested.

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Don't mind if I do." And then he said, "Passin' through?"

"Mostly," I said, "but what I'd like to rustle up is a horse race. I've got a Mex woman and her boy to care for."

He glanced at me, and I said, "Her husband stood by me in a fight below the border."

"Killed?"

"Uh-huh. They've kinfolk in San Antone."

He tasted his whiskey and said nothing. When he finished his drink he bought me one. "Lend you twenty dollars," he suggested. "I'll meet up with you again sometime."

"What I want is a horse race." I lowered my voice. "I've got me a fast mule. If I can get a bet, I could double the ten dollars I've got. Might even get odds, betting on a mule."

He walked to the door and looked over the bat-wings at the mule, which was tethered alongside my roan. Then he came back and leaned on the bar and tossed off his whiskey.

"Man east of town has him a fast horse.

Come sundown he'll ride in. You mind if I bet a little?"

"Welcome it. You from here?"

"Beeville. Only I come over this way, time to time, on business. I'm buying cattle."

That man had him a horse, all right, and that horse had plenty of speed, but my mule just naturally left him behind, although Manuel was holding him up a mite, like I suggested.

That ten dollars made up to twenty, and the cattle buyer handed me twenty more. "Don't worry," he said, "I made a-plenty."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "You ever been over to Beeville? There's a lot of money floating around over there and they're fixing to have some horse races come Saturday. If you're of a mind to, we might just traipse over that way.

It's somewhat out of your way, but not to speak of."

"I'm a man needs money," I said. "I don't mind if I do."

"They're fixing to have a prize fight, too.

Mostly Irish folks over there--Beeville was settled by Irish immigrants back about 1830 or so." Then he went on, "Powerful pair of shoulders you got there. You ever do any fighting?"

"Don't figure on it," I said, "not unless I come up to a couple of men I'm looking for."

"Gambler over there," he said, "brought in a fighter. He nearly killed the local pride, so they're drumming up another fight to get some of their own back."

"I'm no fighter," I said, "not unless I'm pushed."

"Too bad. A horse race is all right, but if you could whip this Dun Caffrey, you could--"

"I'm pushed," I said. "I'm really feeling pushed. Did you say Dun Caffrey?"

"That was the name. He's good, make no mistake, and the Bishop is his backer."

Right then I recalled those scarred and broken knuckles I'd seen on Caffrey that time down on the border. But who would ever think Dun Caffrey would turn into a prize fighter? Still, he was strong, and he handled himself well. And maybe I'd been just lucky that day down in the field when I broke him up.

Those days a saloon was not only a place for drinking. It was a meeting place, a club, a place where business deals were made, a betting parlor, and an exchange for information. If you wanted to know about a trail, or whether the Indians were out, or who had cattle for sale, you went to a saloon.

"You make your bets on the fight," I said, "but you don't need to mention any name--j tell him I'm from Oakville, or just up from Mexico."

This cattle buyer's name was Doc Halloran, and he sized up to me like a canny one. "Dun Caffrey has won six fights in Texas, and more than that in Louisiana and Mississippi. He's a bruiser, but no fool. He's a gambler, and a companion of gamblers."

"That's as may be, but if you'll back me, I'll have at him."

"Are you in shape?"

"Six years at hard labor in a Mexican prison," I said. "Yes, I'm in shape."

We went into Beeville by the back streets and Doc Halloran took me to his own house.

When I got there I stretched out for a rest.

Juana and Manuel, they were there, too. Doc went out to rustle some bets on a horse race and to enter my mule. And he went to talk up this fight, too.

About sundown Manuel came back from rousting around. He was a mighty serious Mexican boy.

"There is great trouble, se@nor," he said. "I think we have been followed to this place, for Se@nor Deckrow is here. He rides in his carriage with the se@norita, but there are many men with him."

So I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked down at my thick, work-hardened hands, thinking. It was scarcely possible they had found us so quickly, nor would Deckrow be likely to bring the se@norita, Manuel had said. That would be Marsha, the little one.

Only she would be close to twenty now, and almost an old maid, for a time when girls married at sixteen or seventeen.

"I do not think they had followed us, amigo.

It may be they go to San Antonio. He would want riders for protection. It is said there are many thieves."

Sitting on the edge of the bed after he left, I turned my mind again to the situation. Maybe this was the showdown that had to come sooner or later. Dun Caffrey would be here, Deckrow ... how many others?

Doc Halloran came back before midnight.

His long, friendly face was serious, and he stood looking down at me. "Well, the fight is set," he said. "And we've got the mule entered in the race, but I think we've bit off more than we can chew."

"What happened?"

He touched his tongue to his lips. "I bet five thousand on the mule, but they roped me in and egged me on, and I went over my head. I've bet twenty-five thousand on you to whip Dun Caffrey."

You know, I thought he'd gone crazy. I looked up at him and listened to him say it again.

Twenty-five thousand! Why, that was--it was impossible, that's what it was.

"They were ready for me," he said. "After all, this is a business with them. I mentioned having a fighter, and they doubted it--sd nobody would stand a chance with Caffrey. Then they kept egging me on until they told me to put my money where my mouth was. And I did."

"Doc, for that much money they'd murder fifty like us. I won't fight. Tell 'em the bet's off."

"I can't ... they made me put up the money. They've got me over a barrel."

The Bishop ... he would have a gang ready to tear down the ropes and mob us if it looked as if I was going to win. He would be ready for us.

"They put up their money too, didn't they?"

"Of course." Halloran paced the floor.

"Sackett, if I lose this bet I'll be back punching cows. It's everything I've been able to earn or save in forty-five years. I don't think I could do it again, and I can't imagine how I was such a fool."

I got up. "Don't let it worry you.

I'll fight him. I'll beat him, too. But we've got to get somebody to guard that saloon safe, if that's where the money is. If there's no other way, they'll rob the safe."

"That's just it. The Bishop has men in town.

He has several who have agreed to stay in the saloon and keep watch. Sackett, we're through. We're whipped!"

There was a tap on the door, and I slid that Walch Navy out of my waistband.

"Open it," I said to Juana. "Just pull it open and stay out of the way."

She pulled the door open and a man stepped into the doorway. He was tall and very lean, with yellow eyes and gold rings in his ears. his'Lando," he said, "I figured it was you."

It was the Tinker.

Chapter Nine.

He stepped into the room and closed the door carefully behind him. The room was dimly lit, with flickering fire on the hearth and a candle burning.

The dark shadows lay in the hollows of his cheeks, and I could see little more of him than the gleam of his eyes and the shine of the gold of his earrings.

"When I heard of a man with a racing mule," he said, "it had to be you."

He stepped up to me and thrust out his hand, and a feeling came into my throat so I couldn't speak.

I was not a man with many friends, but I wanted the Tinker to be one of them.

"You're heavier," he said, "and by heaven, you're a man!"

When I'd introduced him around, we all sat down. Experience had not made me a trusting man, and we'd been apart for a spell of years. But he was my friend, I was sure of that, and right now I needed him.

"The mule can run," I said, "he can really scat."

"He'll need to." He shot me a shrewd look. "Do you know whose money is against you? The Bishop's, that's whose. The Bishop's money and Caffrey's. Your Caffrey isn't only a fighter, he's a gambler--and he's a big one.

The Bishop and him, they're partners."

"You know about the fight?"

"It's talked about. This is an Irish town, and you know the Irish--they love a good fight with the knuckles."

"I'll have a little of my own back. I want the hide off him, but I want to break his pocket, too. With a Caffrey, that will hurt the worst."

The Tinker was silent for several minutes, and there was no sound in the room but an occasional crackle from the fireplace and the faint hiss of the coffee pot.

We sat still around the room--the Tinker with his long, narrow face and gold earrings, Doc Halloran standing and looking long, lean and serious, with the black eyes of Juana and Manuel in the background.

"Deckrow's in town," the Tinker said finally, glancing around at Juana. "He's looking for you."

"His daughter is with him?"

"They're going to San Antonio. There's a lawsuit over the estate." He looked at me.

"Your father should be here tomorrow, your father and his wife."

"He married Gin?"

"Love match--f the start. He's in great shape again and looks fine; and Gin, she's beautiful as ever. But Franklyn Deckrow claims the estate through his wife, and he claims he bought up mortgages. I don't understand lawing, but that's the way of it. The trouble will be settled in either San Antonio or Austin, but they're going to San Antonio now, then on to Austin, I think."

"I'll have to be there," I said. "I've evidence to offer."

Juana looked at me, and fear showed in her eyes.

"Does he know? Se@nor Deckrow, does he know?"

"He knows ... my eyes were on him and he saw it."

"Then tomorrow, when you fight?"

Doc and the Tinker, they just looked at me, and I said, "Deckrow was with Herrara's and Cortina's men that night. It was he and nobody else who killed Jonas. Shot him dead. It was Deckrow who tipped them off that we had come into Mexico after gold--they were expecting us."

"He'll kill you. He'll have to."

Looking down at my big hands, I shrugged.

"He'll try."

That night I lay long awake, watching the red glow of the coals and thinking back over my life, and it didn't add up to much. I'd set out to become rich in the western lands, but going after that LaFitte gold had been my ruin. Maybe even starting west with the Tinker had been the finish of me.

When this was over I would go on ... there were other Sacketts out in New Mexico, near the town of Mora. I would go there.

There was nobody for me here. Pa had married Gin, and he would be thinking of another family, and rightly so. It was true that I had felt strongly about Gin, but the physical needs of a man speak loud with a woman like her about, and there doesn't have to be anything else between you--alth she was a man's woman in so many ways, and not only of the bed.

When I found a woman of my own, I hoped she would be like Gin. She and pa--I had seen it right off. They were for each other.

Me? Who was there for me? I was a man with nothing. A man with great shoulders and tremendous power in his hands, but nothing else. I owned a horse taken from horse thieves, and a mule bred by stealth, and nothing at all of which I could be proud.

It was little enough I had in the way of learning, and in my mid-twenties I'd laid no foundation for anything.

Tomorrow there would be a horse race and then a fight, andwith luck I should win one or both. Yet then there would remain the matter of surviving to enjoy my winnings. Horse-racing and fighting, these are not things upon which a man can build a useful life.

Tomorrow I would meet Dun Caffrey in the ring, with my fists. He was a skilled fighter, and I was only one with great strength and good but long-unpracticed training. If I whipped Caffrey, I'd have some of my own back; and if I could settle the matter of Deckrow and live, then I'd go west and start again as I had wished to do.

One thing I had learned in these years: I could now speak Spanish. Somewhere, at sometime in the future, it might help.

Westward I had come to grow rich in the land, but six years had passed and I had no more than at the beginning.

At last I slept, and when I awakened day had come and the coals were smoldering, with only a faint glow of red here and there. The room was empty.

Clasping my hands behind my head, I tried to organize a day that would not organize, for there were too many factors outside my grasp. Before the day was over I would have repd Dun Caffrey what I owed him, or would have taken a fearful beating.

But the greatest danger lay not in losing, but in winning. In losing I would take a beating; in winning, there was every chance I might be shot.

The Tinker and Halloran came in together. "The race will be run at ten o'clock," Halloran said.

"The course is all laid out--one half-mile from a standing start."

"All right."

"The fight will be at one o'clock. Eighteen-foot ring. It's all set up in the stock corral.

Those who cannot get up to the ring will find a seat on the fence."

"How many horses in the race?"

"Five, including your mule. Nobody thinks a mule can run, except a few who came in from Oakville. Right now the betting is seven to one against your mule."

From my shirt pocket I took forty dollars, every cent I had in the world. "At those odds, or anything close," I said, "you bet it on the race. If we win, bet whatever's in hand on the fight.

"Meanwhile," I said, "I'm going to take a walk around."

This here town of Beeville, along about the time we were there--y could walk three blocks in any direction and be out in the country. And some of those blocks you'd walk would be mighty sparse as to buildings.

It was a cattle-trail town and ran long to saloons and gambling houses. The folks who lived in the country around were mostly raising cattle. The rest of them were stealing cattle. Both industries were in what you might call a flourishing condition when we came into town.

There was considerable money floating about town, and not an awful lot to do with it but drink or gamble. When it came to ranching, there were several successful men around Beeville; but in the cattle-rustling business the most successful man was Ed Singleton.

The town was about evenly divided between the ranchers and the thieves, and each knew the others by name and occupation. You could hang a cattle thief back in those days, but the trouble was you had to catch him at it. Singleton and those others, they were almighty sly.

There was a lot of betting on both the fight and the race, some of the folks even betting on me, sight unseen. There's folks will bet on anything, given a chance.

Quite a crowd was in town. Some, like I said, had come over from Oakville, but there was a whole crowd from Helena, too. Helena was an old stop on the Chihuahua trail and, like Beeville and Oakville, it was a rough, wild town, and those men from Helena were as tough as they come.

I walked down the street, keeping away from the knots of men arguing here and there, and finally I stopped by the corral to look at that ring. It looked big enough, and small enough, too.

A man stopped beside me, looking through the corral bars at the ring. He glanced at me out of a pair of hard, measuring eyes, and thrust out his hand, "Walton. I'm sheriff. You fought much?"

"When I had to. Never in a contrivance like that."

"He's an experienced man, and a brute.

I've seen him fight." He paused. "You must think you can beat him."

"A man never knows," I said, "but when we were kids I broke his nose and his jaw. I outsmarted him that time," I said, "maybe I can again."

"This is a grudge fight?"

"If it isn't, then you never saw one. His pa used to beat me, and he robbed me. This one tried to bully me around. I figure he knows a lot more about fighting than I do, but I figure there's a streak of coyote in him. It may be mighty hard to find, but I'm going in there hunting it."

Walton straightened up. "There's fifty to a hundred thugs in town that nobody can account for without considering the Bishop. I'll do what I can, but I can't promise you anything."

"In this country," I said, "a man saddles his own broncos and settles his own difficulties."

Walton walked away, and after a bit I went back to the house and saddled the roan. Time was shaping up for the race.

Manuel had led the mule out. "They want to know his name," he said.

"What did you call him?"

Manuel shrugged.

"All right, call him Bonaparte, and let's hope that track out there isn't Waterloo."

The Tinker came out and mounted up, and Doc Halloran too. One of the others who showed up was a husky Irishman with a double-barreled shotgun.

"I'm a mule-skinner," he said, "and I bet on him. In my time I've seen some fast mules, and I saw this one run over to Oakville."

The Bishop was out there, and Dun Caffrey. I noticed they had at least two horses in the race.

"Manuel," I said, "how mean can you be?"

He looked at me from those big dark eyes.

"I do not know, se@nor. I have never been mean."

"Then you've got only one chance. Get that mule out in front and let him run. Those two"

--I indicated the horses--?are both ridden by tough men. One or both of them will try to block you out if you look like you'd a chance, so watch out."

"I will ride Bonaparte," he said--?x is all I can do, but it is a proud name."

They lined up, and the way Bonaparte walked up to the line you wouldn't have thought he'd anything in mind but sleep. One of those Bishop horses moved in on each side of him.

So I walked across to the Bishop. I walked up to him right in front of everybody.

"Tinhorn," I said, "you better hope those boys of yours don't hurt that kid. If they do, I'll kill you."

He thought it was big talk, but he made a little move with his head and two husky shoulder-strikers moved up to me. "Caffrey will kill you," the Bishop said, his voice deeper than any I'd ever heard, "but these can rough you up a little first."

One of them struck at me, and the Tinker's training was instinctive. Grabbing his wrist, I busted him over my back into the dust, and he came down hard. Coming up in a crouch, the other man missed a blow and I saw the glint of brass knuckles on his hand. My left hand grabbed his shirt collar in front and took a sharp twist that set him to gagging and choking. With the other I grabbed his hand, forcing his arm up so that everybody within sight could see those brass knuckles.

Now, like I've said, I was an uncommon strong man before those years in prison. My fingers wrapped around his hand just above the wrist and began to squeeze, squeezing his fingers right up to a point, then I brought his hand down and let those knuckle dusters fall into the dust. At the same time I slipped my hand up a little further and shut down hard with all my grip.

He screamed, a hoarse, choking scream. And then I put my thumb against the base of his fingers and my fingers at his wrist and bent it back sharply. Folks standing nearby heard it break.

Then I walked out to Manuel.

"You ride it clean, kid," I said. I spoke loud enough so all could hear. "If either of these make a dirty ride, they'll get what he got."

Somebody cheered, and then the pistol was fired.

Those horses taken out of there at a dead run, most of them cutting horses and expert at starting from a stand.

My mule, he was left at the post.

They just taken off and went away from there, but Manuel was figuring right. He held the mule back, and sure enough, those two riders to right and left crashed together. They had risked what I'd do rather than what the Bishop might do. If Manuel had been in there, he'd have been hurt, and bad.

Then Manuel let out a shrill whoop and that Bonaparte left out of there like he had some place to go and it was on fire.

He was two lengths behind before he made his first jump, but I'd never realized the length of his legs before. He had a tremendous stride, and he ran--he ran like no horse I'd ever seen.

There was no way for me to see the finish. It was a straightaway course, and several of them seemed to be bunched up at the end.

Suddenly one of the judges, a man on a white horse, came galloping back.

"That damned mule!" he yelled. "The mule won by half a length!"

Back at the Mexicans' cabin nobody had much to say. The Mexican folks who owned it stayed out of sight most of the time and Juana stayed with them. I had made a bit of money and Halloran cut me in on what he'd made on the race, as well as giving a bit to Manuel.

That I did too.

Those two races had made that boy more money than he and Juana had seen since Miguel died.

Me, I stretched out on the bed and lay there, resting up for the fight. My stomach felt empty and kind of sick-like, and I began to wonder if I was scared. True enough, I'd whipped Caffrey, but he was no fighter then, just a big, awkward boy, and I might have been lucky. Now he had been out among men, he had proved himself against known fighters, defeating them all, and there's no escaping the worth of experience.

Between bouts he'd had a plenty of sparring with experienced fighters, and was up to all manner of tricks that only a professional can come by. But I thought of Jem Mace, who'd taught the Tinker. He had been a master boxer, one of the great ones. Never weighing more than one hundred and sixty pounds, he had been the world's champion, defeating men as much as sixty pounds heavier.

Thinking about it, I dozed off and did not wake up until the Tinker shook me.

"Move around," he advised. "Get the sleep out of you. Get your blood to circulating."

O'Flaherty, the Irishman who'd bet on our mule, came to the house. "I've not seen you with the knuckles," he commented, "but a man with sense enough to bet on a mule is a canny one, so I bet my winnings on you."

The Tinker was carrying a pistol, a rare thing for him, and the Irishman had brought his shotgun. Doc Halloran had bulges under his coat that meant he was wearing two guns, and I slipped mine into my waistband, too.

We mounted up and started for the ring, but I'd gone no way at all when someone called out to me, and when I turned I saw it was a girl in a handsome carriage. It was Marsha Deckrow, and she was more beautiful than I would have believed anybody could be.

Pulling up, I removed my hat. "Still the servant's entrance?" I said.

She showed her dimples. "I was a child then, Orlando. I must have sounded very snippy."

"You did."

"You're stern!" She laughed at me. "I'm sorry you were in prison. My father told me about it."

"I must be going on," I said, though to be honest it was the last thing I wished to do.

"You're going to fight that awful man. My father won't let me go, even though I promised to sit in the carriage and we needn't be close.

There's a knoll a little way from the corral, and we could keep the carriage there. But I'll watch. I think I've found a window."

"It is likely to be brutal," I said, "and he may whip me."

"Will I see you afterward, Orlando? After all, we're cousins, aren't we? Or something like that?

Your father married my aunt."

"Do you see them often?"

"With your father feeling the way he does about pa?

I should say not! In fact, we're on our way to Austin now."

I gathered the reins. The Tinker and Doc were waiting impatiently, and the time was soon. "You tell your pa for me," I said, "that he'd better drop that case. He'd best forget the whole thing.

He was working for Jonas in the beginning, and when this is over he won't even be doing that."

Her face hardened. "You're my enemy then?"

"I'm not anybody's enemy," I said, "but I know murder when I see it done. And betrayal, too."

The look in her eyes there for a minute--well, it wasn't what you'd rightly call pleasant; but then it was gone and she was all smiles. "After the fight, Orlando? Win or lose? Will you come?

Pa wouldn't approve, not one bit, but if you'd come to see me ... I'm staying with the Appletons, down at the end of the street. They hadn't room for pa, too, so he won't be there.

Do come."

"Well"--she was a mighty pretty girl--

"I'll see."

My stomach felt queasy when I dismounted at the corral, for there were a sight of folks sitting atop the corral fence, which had a board nailed on it all the way around so's men could look at stock when buying from the corral.

Inside, the yard had been sprinkled and then rolled or tamped until it was hard-packed.

They'd set four posts in the ground and had ropes around them, running through holes in the posts.

No sooner had I got down than a great yell went up from the crowd, and there was Dun Caffrey getting out of a carriage. He wore a striped sweater, and when he peeled it off, he showed a set of the finest shoulders a man ever did see.

He was some taller than me, maybe about three inches, and had longer arms. He would weigh better than me, for I was down to two hundred and six, whilst he weighed two hundred and thirty, and carrying no fat.

Folks crowded around--men in buckboards and spring wagons, men a-horseback and afoot.

Caffrey was wearing a pair of dark blue tights and some fancy, special-made shoes for boxing or handball. I wore moccasins and black tights--^the last the Tinker rustled up for me.

"They've got a set of gloves," Doc Halloran said, "and they offer to fight either way, with or without."

"Take 'em," the Tinker advised. "They protect your hands, and you'll hit even harder because of them. A lot of folks don't realize it, but a man hits harder with a bandaged hand and a glove than with a bare fist--m compact, better striking surface, and less danger of hurting your hands."

When we agreed, they brought a pair of gloves over and I shoved my hand down inside.

These were three-ounce gloves, and when my hand was doubled into a fist it was hard as rock.

"We fight London Prize Ring rules,"

Doc explained. "You fight until one man goes down, a knockdown, slip, or throw down, then you rest for one minute, and you toe the mark when you come up for each round, and the fight is to a finish."

"He knows," the Tinker said, dryly. He looked at me. "I hope you haven't forgotten what I taught you during those months of travel.

You can use a rolling hip-lock to throw him, and if you get hold of him, pound him until you're stopped."

Everybody had been taking notice of Caffrey, and when I slipped off my sweater, nobody was looking my way. I was brown as any Indian, and there were the scars of the old whip-cuts on my back and shoulders.

In spite of the difference in weight between us, I was better muscled and a little broader in the shoulders and quite a bit thicker through the chest.

Walton was to referee, and he made an announcement that he'd shoot the first man to come through the ropes or the first to try to tear down a post.

Around that ring those gamblers were gathered. Right off I could see that they'd outsmarted us, and the whole crowd against the ropes except right in my corner were his friends, and the men behind them were, too. My friends, and few enough of them there were, they were cut off, back some distance.

Suppose a whole rank started to move in on the ring? What would Walton do then?

Time was called and we walked out to toe the mark, and as soon as my toe touched it, Caffrey hit me. He hit me a straight left to the face, and it landed hard. I sprang at him, punching with both hands, and he moved around me like a cooper around a barrel. He hit me three times in the face without my landing a blow.

The crowd began to yell, and he came at me again, but this time I ducked my head against his chest and managed to hit him twice, short blows in the belly, before he put a headlock on me and threw me to my knees, ending the round.

When I walked back to my corner and sat on Halloran's knee, my lip was puffed from a blow, and there was a knot on my cheekbone.

I'll give it to him. He could punch.

"Stay close to him," the Tinker whispered.

"Keep your hands higher and your elbows in. Work on his body when you get the chance."

When time was called, Caffrey rushed from his corner and began punching with both hands. He hit me several times, almighty hard, but I got my head down against his chest again and hooked both hands hard to the belly. He tried to push me off then, but I stepped in fast and back-heeled him and he went down hard, ending the round.

As we went on it was nip and tuck, both of us punching hard. He was fast, and he was in good shape, and he moved well. The first six rounds were gone in fourteen minutes, but the seventh round lasted five minutes all by itself.

He'd pounded me about the head, but I wasn't really hurt. He'd drawn first blood --there was a trickle of it from my lip that had been cut against my teeth. He was unmarked, and the betting had gone up to three to one on Caffrey.

Opposite us a window had gone up in the second story of a house, and I could see a couple of women there, watching the fight. Another window in that same house was open, too, but nobody watched from it.

Round eight came up and I went out fast, slipped a left lead for my head and smashed him in the ribs. It taken his wind, and it shook him up. It was my first hard punch of the fight, and I think it surprised him. He backed off, studying me, and I stalked him. I made awkwardly as if to throw my right and he stepped in, hitting hard with his right.

My left arm was bent at the elbow, first at shoulder level, elbow near the hip, and I'd moved my left shoulder and hip over almost to the center line, while leaving my fist cocked where it was. As Caffrey threw that right, I let go with my left, letting it whip around, thrown by the tension built up by turning my shoulder forward and the weight behind it.

The blow struck high on his cheekbone and knocked him across the ring into the ropes. Eager hands shoved him back, but I was moving in on him and I struck him again with my left fist, but I was too eager with my right, and missed. He clinched and back-heeled me into the dirt, falling atop me and jerking his knee into my groin.

Throwing him off, I came up fast and mad, and hurt by that knee. He cocked his fist, and then Walton stepped in and stopped the round.

Twice after that he drove me into the ropes and once I was hit from outside the ropes, hit hard just above the kidney. I turned to complain and he knocked me down ... a clean knock-down.

The crowd was mad now. Arguments were starting all about us, and there were several fights going close to the ring, and one back beyond it. Once, wrestling in a clinch, I thought I saw movement at that empty window, and made up my mind to speak to Doc about it.

It was bloody fighting now. Moving in, I smashed him in the mouth with a right that split his lip and started the blood flowing. In a clinch he said hoarsely, "I'm going to kill you, Sackett!

Right here in this ring, I'm going to kill you!"

"I broke your bones once," I replied, "and I'll do it again!"

Catching his left arm under mine, I threw him off balance and hit him twice in the belly before I let go. We moved together, punching with both hands, and outside the ropes the crowd was shouting and brawling. Nothing could be heard above the din.

Deliberately, I still pounded away at his body, but his stomach and ribs were like rock. He cut a slit above my eye and knocked me into the ropes, and there someone struck me a stunning blow over the back of the head with something like a blackjack or sandbag.

Even as I fell, Caffrey rushed at me and struck me twice in the face. I fell forward, and was scarcely conscious as the Tinker and Doc dragged me to my corner. Yet when the bell rang I was on my feet.

Now he started after me, and, still feeling the effects of the blow over the head, I could not get myself together. My punches were poorly timed and lacked force, and Caffrey rushed at me, pounding away with both hands. Getting in close, I seized him bodily, lifted him clear of the ground, and slammed him down with such force that the wind was knocked from him.

"The one in the checked suit," Doc whispered, "he's the one who sapped you."

Glancing across the ring, I saw him there, a broad-faced man with coarse features, who was wearing a black hat.

Caffrey was wary of me now, and we circled a bit, and I backed him slowly toward the man in the checked suit. That man, I noticed, had his right hand out of sight under his coat. Near the ropes I moved in, feinted, ducked a left, and landed a right under the heart, pushing him back into the ropes. Smashing another blow to the belly, I deliberately pushed him against the ropes so the men crowded there must give way, then I struck hard at his head, but off aim just enough for the blow to miss, which it did.

It missed him, but it caught the man in the checked suit on his red, bulbous nose and smashed it, sending a shower of blood over him as he fell.

We slugged in mid-ring then, slugged brutally, taking no time, just punching away. The things that the Tinker had taught me were coming back now.

I stabbed a straight left to the mouth, then crossed my right to his chin. He hit me with a solid right and I staggered, but as he closed in I clinched, caught his right elbow in my left hand, and my right arm went around his body. Then I turned my hip against him and hurled him heavily to the dirt.

He was slow getting up, and suddenly I felt better. There was a cut over my eye, a welt on my cheekbone I could scarcely see over, and my lip had been split, but I felt better.

I had my second wind, and suddenly all the old feeling against the Caffreys was welling up inside me. They had robbed me and enslaved me, they had treated me cruelly when there was no chance to fight back. Now we would see.

When time was called I went out fast. I feinted and hit him with a solid right on the jaw.

His knees buckled, so I moved in fast to catch him before he could fall and bull him into the ropes.

If he went down he would have rest and might recover. Men tried to push him off the ropes so he could fall, but I held him there and hit him with both hands in the face with all the power I had.

When he started to fall away from the ropes I caught him with another punch, and then he did fall. Turning back to my corner, my eyes momentarily caught a flash of light.

Involuntarily I ducked, but there was nothing.

Glancing at the empty window, I found it still empty.

The gamblers were pushing hard on the ropes, and Sheriff Walton shouted at them to hold back, but they were pushing as a mass and there was no one he could single out for a shot, and he was not the man to fire blindly into a crowd.

When we came together again in the center of the ring, I said, "Dun Caffrey, you and your folks robbed me, now I shall have a little of my own back."

He cursed me, and beat me to the punch with a left that jolted me. There was power in the man.

He was a fighter--I'll give him that.

The crowd was shouting wildly, their faces red with fury at me. They had not expected me to last so long, yet here I was, in danger of beating their man.

Sweat trickled into my eye and the salt stung, and, momentarily blinded, I failed to see the right with which he knocked me into the ropes. Now it was he who held me there, and as he battered at me with both fists, several men pounded the back of my head and my kidneys from beyond the ropes. Had they left it to one man he might have done me serious injury, but so eager were they, and most of them drinking, that they interfered with one another.

I got my head down against his chest and again the great strength of me helped, for I bulled him away from the ropes and into the center of the ring.

As we broke apart, each ready for a blow, sunlight flashed again in my eyes--sunlight reflected from a rifle barrel. In the window which until now had seemed empty, a man was aiming a rifle at me.

Wildly, I threw a punch at Caffrey, deliberately throwing myself forward and off balance so that I fell to the ground, but even as I fell I heard the whap of a rifle bullet as it whipped past me, and then I was on my hands and knees in the dirt and all about me there was silence.

Looking up, I saw the crowd drawing back.

Slumped against a ring post was a man with a round blue hole over one eye and the back of his head blown away.

In that instant, the Bishop, never one to miss a chance, sprang into the ring holding up a watch and claiming I had been off my feet for the count of ten--t I had lost, I had been knocked out.

"No!" Walton shouted, and drawing his own gun, he said, "the fight will continue. May the best man win."

The thugs and gamblers crowded back again toward the ring, shouting angrily that the fight was ended, but before they could reach the ropes, a horse vaulted over them and a man with a shotgun sat in the saddle.

"Stand back from the ropes!" His voice seemed not to be lifted above a conversational tone, but it had the ring of authority. "We'll have no interference here."

The thugs stared at the shotgun and the man who held it, and hesitated, as well they might.

Captain Mcationelly was not a man who spoke careless ^ws.

"I would advise you," he said, "to look about you before any violence is attempted. I am Mcationelly, and the men you see are my company of Rangers. We will see fair play here, and no violence outside the ring."

Their heads turned slowly, unwilling to believe what they saw, but thirty mounted and armed men are a convincing sight, and I confess, it was pleased I was to see them.

Mcationelly spoke to his horse, which easily lifted itself over the ropes again. "Sheriff Walton," he said quietly, "whenever you are ready."

"Time!" Walton said, and stepped back.

It was a bloody bit of business that remained, for I found no streak of cowardice in Dun Caffrey. Many things he might have been, but there was courage in the man. He had had a few minutes of respite, and now he came up to the mark, fresh as only a well-conditioned veteran can be.

For the veteran knows better how to rate himself, how to make the other man do the work and exert himself; and Caffrey was prepared to give me a whipping.

But the fighting had served a purpose with me also. No veteran of many fights, nonetheless I had sparred much with the Tinker and he had shown me many things, and practiced me in their doing, and the fight thus far had served to bring them to mind.

So if it was a strong and skilled man I still faced, it was a different one he faced now.

My muscles were loose now, my body warmed up, and I was sweating nicely under the hot sun.

The rhythm of punching had become more natural to me, and my mind was working in the old grooves.

As I came in more slowly, my mind was thinking back to what the Tinker had taught me. Caffrey shot a left for my face and, going under it, I hit him with a right to the heart, rolling inside of his right. I smashed my left to the ribs, then hooked a right to the head over his left.

The right landed solidly, and Caffrey blinked.

Moving in, I shook him with another right and a left. For a long minute we slugged. I could feel the buzz in my head from his punches, the taste of blood from my split lip. I saw his fist start and brushed it aside, driving my right to his chin inside his left. He backed up, trying to figure it out, but whatever else he was, Caffrey was no thinking fighter. Weaving, I hit him with both hands.

Outside, the air was filled with sound, men were shouting, cheering, crying out with anger. Not with blood lust, but with the excitement of any dramatic thing-- and what could be more dramatic than a fight like this one?

He hit me with a left, but the steam had gone from his punches. I tried a light left, watching for the move I wanted. And it came again, the same too-wide left he had tried only a moment before. Only that time my right caught him coming in. My fist struck solidly on the point of his chin, like the butt of an axe striking a log, and he fell face forward into the dirt.

For a moment there I stood looking down at him.

This was the man whose father and mother had cheated me and robbed me, and who had gone on to riches on the money that should have been spent for my education, the education I'd always wanted. Yet, suddenly, I no longer felt any hatred, all of it washed clean in the trial of battle.

Stooping down, I picked him up and helped him to his corner, and as I stopped him there, where of a sudden there was nobody to receive him, his eyes opened and he looked around.

Me, I let go of him and held out my mitt.

"It was a good fight, Dun. You're a tough man."

He blinked at me, then held out his own hand and we stood there looking surprised, like two fools.

And then I turned and walked away and leaned against the roan, which had been led up for me. The Tinker was handing me my sweater. "Get into this," he said; "you'll take cold."

Taking it from his hand, I said, "I got to see a man."

"The one who tried to kill you? He got away."

"No, he didn't."

We walked, the Tinker and me, along the dusty street. Doc Halloran walked behind us with Captain Mcationelly and Sheriff Walton.

Their rig was coming down the street toward us, and there for a moment I thought he was going to try to ride right over us, but he drew up and stopped when we stopped, barring his way.

Marsha was there in the seat beside her father, and nobody else with them. They were alone, those two, but somehow I had a feeling they'd always been alone.

Deckrow's face showed nothing, but it never had.

His eyes looked at me, cold and measuring, with no give to them.

"You shot and killed your brother-in-law, Jonas Locklear," I said, "and it was you tipped Herrara off that we were in Mexico, and what for."

"I do not have any idea what you are speaking about," he replied, looking at me sternly. "I am sure I would be the last man to shoot my own brother-in-law."

"I saw you shoot him," I persisted, "and Miguel did also. That's why he died. That's why you tried to kill me today."

"You ought to be ashamed," Marsha said, "telling lies about my father."

You know something? I was sorry for him. He was a little man and nothing much had ever happened to him, andwith all his planning and figuring he could never make any money; while Jonas, who did all the wrong things, was always making it. And now he had to pay for it all.

Trouble with me was, I was a mighty poor hater. There was satisfaction in winning, but winning would have been better if nobody had to lose.

That's the way I've always felt, I guess.

Seems to me I'm the sort of man who, if a difficulty arose, might knock a man down and kick all his teeth out, but then would help him pick them up if he was so inclined, and might even pay the bill for fixing them--alth that's going a bit far.

"That property," I said, "the ranch and the house and all, belongs to Gin and your wife, unless a will said otherwise ... not to you.

"You've no claim"--I spoke louder to prevent his attempted interruption--?and you tried to get one through murder. I will take oath, here and now and in court, that you betrayed and then shot down your brother-in-law. Furthermore," I said, and lied when I said it, "I can get Mexicans to testify they saw it.

"You sign over all claims to Gin and your wife--"

"My wife left me," he said.

"You sign over all claims or I'll have you on trial for murder."

He sat there holding the lines and hating me, but he hadn't much to say. The trouble was, he was a man with a canker for a soul, and he would be eaten away with his bitterness at failure, nor did I care much.

It is wrong to believe that such men suffer in the conscience for what they do ... it is only regret at being caught that troubles them. And they never admit it was any fault of their own ... it was always chance, bad luck. ... The criminal does not regret his crime, he only regrets failure.

The Bishop was standing by listening, but I paid him no mind. There had been a time when he seemed awesome and dangerous, but that was a while back.

"You remember what I said, Deckrow," I told him, "because wherever it is this is settled, San Antonio or Austin or wherever, I'll be there."

When I came up to the house pa was there, and Gin beside him. He looked fine ... they were a handsome couple if I ever saw one--but I was sure I'd never get around to calling her ma.

I stepped down from the saddle and slid my Winchester from the boot, and pa looked at me.

"Somebody gave you a beating," he said.

"He didn't give it to me," I replied, "I fought for it."

"You'll be coming with us now? I've held your share of the gold ... it's been waiting your return."

"Buy something with it in my name. I'll come for it one day ... or send a son of mine for it."

"You're going back for the rest?"

"When I left Tennessee for the western lands it was in my mind to become rich with the goods of this world, but by planning and trade, not by diving for dead men's gold. I shall go on to the West."

"You still want me along?" the Tinker asked.

"We left Tennessee together. I left with you and a mule. It's fitting we hold to our course.

However, we never did make a dicker for one of your knives. Now, I'd give--"

"Stand aside, Gin," Pa interrupted, "there's trouble."

When I turned around it put me alongside of pa, although there was a space between us. And the Tinker stood off to one side of me.

And there facing us were the three Kurbishaws, three tall men in dusty black, Elam, Gideon, and Eli.

Pa was first to speak. "You've come a long way from Charleston, Elam ... a long way."

"We came for you."

"You will find most of the gold still there ... if you can get it," pa said coolly. "We've had ours."

"It isn't for gold any more," Gideon said.

"There's more to it."

"I suppose there is," pa replied, his voice still cold. "You hounded your sister to death; you hunted my son."

"And now we got him," Elam replied, his--and you."

Pa didn't want it, I could see that. He was talking to get out of it, to get it stopped, but they would not listen. Strange men they were, but I'd see their like again, in lynch mobs and elsewhere. They were men who knew what I did not--they knew how to hate.

"You wouldn't try me alone," pa said. "Now there's two of us."

"Three," said the Tinker.

"We've come a far piece since then,"

Elam said, "and we've lived as we might, by the gun."

"Why, then," pa said, "if you'll have it no other way--"

Gideon was looking at me, so when pa drew I swung up the muzzle of my Winchester and levered a shot into him. I saw the bullet dust him at the belt line, and worked the lever again and fired. He threw his gun hand high in a queer, dance-like gesture, and then he tried to bring it down on me. I stepped forward and shot again and my bullet went high, striking at the collarbone and tearing away part of his throat as it glanced off.

The sound of shooting was loud in the street, and then there was stillness, the acrid smell of gunpowder mixed with dust, and we three stood there, facing them as they lay. The last one alive was Eli, tugging at one of Tinker's knives sunk deep into his chest.

"If that's the only way," I commented, "to get one of those knives, I'll wait."

Looking down at them, I thought it was a strange trail they had followed, those three, and how in the end it had only come to this, to death in a dusty street, nobody caring; and by and by nobody even remembering, except by gossip over a bar in a saloon.

Seemed it was just as well a man did not know where he was headed when he was to come only to this--a packet of empty flesh and clothes to end it all.

In the end their hatred had bought them only this ... only this, and the bitter years between.

It always seemed that for me something waited in those western lands, something of riches in the way of land and living, and maybe a woman. And when I found her, I wanted her to be like Gin.

Younger, of course, as would be fitting, but like her.

Somebody likely to have no more sense than to fall in love with a Tennessee boy with nothing but his two hands and a racing mule.

About Louis L'Amour "I think of myself in the oral tradition--z a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--z a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600's and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier."

As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties--among them, an additional Hopalong Cassidy novel, Trouble Shooter.