Mojave Crossing

"You know where that gold is?" I asked mildly. "You could save me trouble if you told me."

"I care nothing for your trouble!" She tossed her head. "When Se@nor Sackett comes he will make a fool of you."

"He'd better hurry. My friends are coming."

She said nothing to that, for now we could hear the drum of the horses' hoofs.

"If you change your mind," I said, "you come to me. Seems a shame, a pretty girl like you, mixed up with this crowd."

She started to reply, then tightened her lips.

There were twenty wiry, tough-looking vaqueros with Roderigo, and they looked disappointed when it proved there would be no fight.

"You had better come away with us," Roderigo said, "Old Ben wishes to see you."

"Ben Mandrin?"

"Si." He smiled. "And the Se@norita Robiseau."

Chapter Six.

The house was a long adobe with several doors opening on a veranda. The place was old and mellow. There were some huge old oaks about, and a few sycamores. The shade was a welcome thing after the long ride's heat, and I pulled up there and sat my saddle a minute or two, just looking around.

If they didn't take it away from Old Ben, this place might become Roderigo's, and I didn't blame him for wanting it. There was a feeling of lazy good will about it, from the smell of the barnyard and the jasmine around the house to the shade of the huge old trees.

The house was L-shaped and rambling, and opened on a view that showed the sea away off to the west-- just a hint of it beyond the round shoulder of a hill. In between was grassland, brown now and parched from the drouth, with here and there a cultivated patch of corn or beans, or some other row crop.

A door opened and, looking past my horse's head, I saw Dorinda standing there, wearing a lovely dress and looking more beautiful than she'd a right to.

"Won't you get down and come in? Mr.

Mandrin would like to see you."

She turned. "Juan, will you take care of the gentleman's horse?"

Stepping down from the saddle, I whipped dust from my clothes with my hat and walked across the yard.

The feeling up my spine warned me that somebody was watching--not Dorinda, and not Juan.

She held out her hand to me, smiling with her lips. It was a wide, pretty smile showing beautiful teeth, but her eyes did not smile.

They were cautious, somewhat worried eyes.

"Thank you, Mr. Sackett. Thank you very much for all you did. When they came to get me we thought you were dead."

"Handy," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Otherwise they might have made sure."

She let her eyes rest on my face a moment longer, as if trying to judge how smart I was, or how dangerous. ...

"It was all a mistake."

"There's men dead out there on the Mojave would be surprised to hear it," I said bluntly.

When she started to answer me I cut her short. "Ma'am, I didn't come to call on you. I came to see Ben Mandrin."

His voice came deep and booming. "And so you shall! Come in, Mr. Sackett! Please come in!"

He was sitting in a great old rocker, and whatever I had expected a pirate to look like, it was not this. He had never been tall--not like me, anyway--but he was broad-shouldered, and my guess was that he had once been a mighty powerful man. It showed in the size of his bones. His wrists were as large as mine, which are ten inches around, and he had strong, well-made hands, flat across the knuckles ... a fighter's hands.

He had a broad, heavily boned face and deep-set eyes; his heavy shock of black hair was mixed with gray. He had to be upwards of seventy years old, but he didn't look it.

Only you could see at a glance that something was wrong with his legs. He had them covered by a blanket, but I could tell they were thin, almost like there was nothing there at all.

There was an old scar over one eye and another on his cheekbone, but he did not look sinister, as they say of such men. He looked like a strong old man who had lived a life.

He was old, all right, a body could see that, but I could see a whole sight more. Old as he was, and with those crippled legs, there was a lot of iron in him yet.

"So you're Sackett?" he said. "Dorry told me of you. You sound like a fighting man."

The scar over his eye held my attention, and he noticed it. "Saber," he said. "That was a long time ago, a lifetime away."

"Off Hatteras," I said, "and they thought it killed you."

Well, both of them were surprised. Dorinda turned sharply to look at me, and the old man caught the arms of his chair and pulled himself out of his slump. "Now how could you know that?" he said.

"There were few enough who knew."

"You raided the Carolina coast too often,"

I said. "The man who gave you that cut over the eye was my grandfather."

He glared at me for a minute, then he chuckled. "He was a fighter," he said. "Best hand with a blade I ever saw--butar one."

He took a good look at me. "There's another Sackett here. Is he kin of yours?"

"I reckon. He's a Clinch Mountain Sackett, and we don't hold with them ... but we aren't pirates."

There was a mighty hard look in those eyes of his ... gave a man something to think about. Had he been a younger or even a healthier man, you'd think twice before giving sass to him. But I thought he liked this talk, and it came over me that it had probably been a time since anybody gave him back man-talk. Because of his wealth and his being crippled and all, they'd more than likely soft-talk him.

"That was a long time ago," Ben Mandrin said.

"I've become a rancher and a stable citizen."

His eyes glinted with a kind of tough humor. "Or hadn't you heard?"

"I heard, and I believe it ... up to a point."

He chuckled again and, glancing over at Dorinda, he said, "I like this man."

Then he turned his eyes back to me. "How'd you like to work for me?"

"I'm not hunting work. I'm hunting thirty pounds of gold that was taken from me, and when I find it I'm riding back to Arizona. And furthermore"--I looked right at Dorinda--

"I've got an idea who to ask about it."

Oh, he got it all right! Old Ben missed mighty little. He glanced at her, then back at me. "You're wrong, my friend--she has been with me."

He gestured toward a chair. "Sit down, and we'll talk a bit of ships and sabers and the Carolina coast fifty years ago ... or how much did your grandfather tell you?"

He turned to her. "Dorinda, bring us a bottle of wine--a very good bottle, that will bring memories around us."

We sat silent then, listening to her retreating footsteps. From the sound of them, the wine must have been somewhere at the far end of the house, and it was a great way off, it seemed.

"You helped her in the desert, Sackett, and for that I thank you."

Surprised, I was, for I'd been thinking he knew nothing of her leaving the pueblo. "I went for water, and when I started back, they had her. I stumbled as one of them shot at me, and he thought me dead."

"And you lay still? She does not know that I know."

He lighted a long black cheroot, then gave me a sharp glance. "Did she get your gold?"

"As to that, I couldn't say, but I would believe her a woman to know where gold was. I think"-I tried to put it so he would take no offense--

"she has a nose for gold, if you'll not mind my saying so."

She came back then, walking along the veranda toward us, and we sat silent, waiting. The bottle she brought was Madeira, of a kind they call Rainwater, although no storm that I have seen brought such water from the sky.

"I would have preferred Jamaica," he said, "but it is hard to come by in California."

We tasted the wine, and it was good. I thought him a fine old man, but I trusted the wine more than I did Old Ben Mandrin; and I trusted him a bit more than I did that black-eyed witch woman. Surely, I thought, this was a strange way for a tall and homely cowhand and miner to be treated, and it gave me an uncomfortable feeling to think that it was likely he would lose all this.

Roderigo had told me a little more during our ride from the pueblo to Greek George's ranch. Turner, the man from the bank, had relied on Dorinda to persuade Old Ben to sign the notes; and Turner would get cash from Dayton and his friends, while they would take over the note and get the ranch. Even without the note, they would have Old Ben lashed to the mast, for he was broke and down to his last bit of money.

The drought had ruined the crops and his range, and there was nothing left for him but to yield up the rancho ... but what would he do then, a crippled old man?

There was none of that in his talk now, for once the wine warmed his blood he talked of the old days off the Carolina coast, and of the fight with my grandfather. They had fought on a bloody deck--my grandfather being one of a make-up crew that had gone off to intercept him when there was no warship about equipped to handle the job. They had fought a desperate fight, with both men wounded and bleeding before the cut that felled Old Ben.

As we talked he kept his eyes on me, or looked off and seemed to be listening to the sound of my voice, although it was rare indeed that I had chance to speak. But it seemed to me there was something on his mind, something dark and secret that he held within himself.

Dorinda listened, and occasionally she went from the room and returned. I noticed she drank no wine ... was there purpose in that? Or did she simply not drink at all? Sometimes she seemed impatient, wishing me to be off, no doubt, for all of our talk was taking us no place.

It was in my own mind to leave, until suddenly Old Ben said, "You must stay the night, Sackett. You can snug down here--there's room enough and more. It will be time enough to go off hunting your gold in the morning."

He looked at me sharply as he replaced his glass on the table. "Roderigo said you had planned to buy mules or horses and pack goods back to the mines to sell. Is that still in your mind?"

"When I have my gold."

He waved his hand at the broad acres around me. "They plan to take all this from me, but there's mules enough, and I could let you have some ... for a small price. I'll have some run up for you to look upon."

He caught hold of his cane suddenly as if to get up, then stopped and said to Dorinda, "Tell them to come for me, and show Mr. Sackett to a room." He paused again as if thinking.

"To Pio's room," he added.

She looked surprised, but left the room, and when she came back two vaqueros came with her.

They picked Old Ben up, chair and all, and carried him from the room. When they had gone I finished my wine and put down the glass.

"I have never seen him like this," Dorinda said, puzzled and disturbed. "He has never talked so much to any stranger."

"It was because of the old times," I said. "My mention of the fight off Hatteras brought it all back to him."

Some of her puzzlement seemed to go away.

"Yes, yes, that must be it," she said.

She was a beautiful woman, but now I could see a coldness there that I had not noticed so much before, although I was ever wary of her.

"But in Pio's room!" she went on. "He has never allowed anyone in that room but the old governor."

"Pio Pico?"

"They were friends ... are still friends, I think, although he comes out but rarely now." And she said no more.

There were four of us at supper, Old Ben, Roderigo, Dorinda, and myself, but now Old Ben talked little. He broke in once to say, "There was some shooting around Mora, in New Mexico, in which some Sacketts were involved.

One of them married a Mexican girl."

"They are my brothers," I said.

He ate with good appetite, I noticed, but drank no more wine--only several cups of the blackest coffee this side of Hell itself. I drank my own share, but I was used to cow-camp coffee which will float a horseshoe.

Tired, I was, and ready for the bed, and we sat about very little after supper was over.

In my room was a huge old four-poster bed, the finest bed I had ever seen, and on a marble-topped table were a bowl and a pitcher of water.

There was a chair and a thick carpet on the stone-flagged floor. The room had one window, and an inner door that evidently connected with Old Ben's room.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I considered the situation, and none of it made sense. All I wanted was to get my gold back and get out on the trail back to the mines, yet here I was, a guest in an old Spanish hacienda, the guest of a former pirate.

True, I had my outfit back, but the country was filled with my enemies--and all through no fault of mine. Only trying to help a girl who, it now seemed, was tied in with my enemies ... enemies I'd made because of her.

Tired of trying to figure it out, and deciding I was pretty much of a fool, I pulled off my boots, washed my face and hands, and started to undress.

And then the door from Old Ben Mandrin's room opened and he stood there, hanging on a pair of crutches, and looking at me with devil's laughter in his eyes.

He swung himself around and lowered himself into the chair. "I need help, boy. I need your help."

Me, I just stood looking at him. He was dressed for riding, in an outfit that had once fitted him, but did so no longer.

"We've got to ride nearly twenty miles before daybreak," he said. "Pull your boots on."

It looked like I was never going to sleep in a bed.

"You in shape for a twenty-mile ride?" I said.

"No ... but I'll ride it. Leave that to me."

I could only stare at him. "Why me?" I said. "You've got men around. You've got Roderigo." And then I grinned at him. "And you've got Dorinda."

He brushed the suggestion away. "An old man's fancy. Look, son, you're young.

You're strong. There will be many women for you, but for me she may be the last. I'll not be saying she's mine, for she isn't, and I am sure she has nothing of the kind in mind.

"She looks like a passionate woman, but she isn't, son. Take it from me, the great courtesans of the past--and Dorinda is like them-- were never passionate, loving women. They were cold, calculating. They used the emotions of men for their own purposes, they were all show, all promises. A passionate woman gets too involved for straight thinking, she becomes too emotional ... not Dorinda. She's thinking all the time."

"Then why not be rid of her?"

"Like I say, she may be the last beautiful woman to pay me attention. Most of us pay for love in one way or another, and I paid for her attentions by signing that note." A wolfish gleam came into ^th hard old eyes. "Now with your help, I'm going to serve them what they have coming."

"It don't sound right to me."

"That's why I chose you. You're honest."

I just kept looking at him. I'd grown up on stories of him, and I could see they were true.

He was an old devil, but I found myself liking him. And sympathizing with him, too.

"What you got in mind?" I asked cautiously.

"A ride to the west ... to a place out in the mountains."

"You're in no shape. Tell me what you want done, and I'll do it."

The wolf in him showed his teeth. His eyes danced wickedly. "This I shall do myself." The smile disappeared. "All I am going to do is save my ranch, and injure no man."

A moment I thought about it, but I was getting nowhere. I was no hand to ferret out the plans of other folks. Maybe I just ain't smart, maybe there ain't enough wolf in me ... I don't know. I can face up to guns or fists, but believe me, I can't plot and figure out ways to deceive.

No use my trying to study out what he had in mind. I knew I was going to help him, because if an old man in his kind of shape had the guts to try to ride twenty miles, I was going to help him. And I knew I wanted to see the old devil outsmart those who would rob him of what was his.

"All right," I said.

"Get horses," he said, "and hurry.

We've far to go."

When I started for the door, he hooked my arm with a crutch. "The window," he said. "Our doors will be watched."

The window went up soundlessly, and I eased out into the still night. Stars were out, and somewhere an owl talked in a treetop. Moving on cat feet, I made the corral where my horses were. It taken only minutes to get them out and saddled, the two best of them. Then I led them back in the darkness close to the house.

I managed to get Old Ben through the window, but he helped me some. When I lifted him to the saddle, I was sure surprised. He was light, but there was power in his arms and shoulders and hands ...

I could feel that.

Mounting up, I led off into the night, and then he took over. He could ride, all right. He put his horse westward into the mountains, and I trailed behind, fearful all the time that he might fall off and hurt himself.

The wind was cool on our faces. The black of the mountains loomed above us. We rode steadily westward, and there was no talk between us, although, worried as I was about him, my eyes kept straying his way. But he rode steadily, although with his weakened, crippled legs, I could not guess how he managed it.

These were dark and silent hills. There were cattle here, and horses, but they slept their own sleep and we saw none of them. Once, we saw distant lights ... we slowed our pace and walked our horses carefully through the dust so as not to awaken the sleepers in the village surrounding a ranch. In those years much of the population clustered in such tiny villages gathered about the ranches.

We turned suddenly into the mountains, mounting by a narrow trail only faintly seen. The ground was lighter in shade where it was worn by the passing of men or cattle. As we climbed I fancied I could smell the sea; and suddenly, when we topped out upon a ridge, I knew it for truth. There it lay, broad upon our right, the great ocean of the Pacific.

He drew up then and looked seaward. I could not see his eyes in the darkness, but it seemed to me there was a longing in him, a longing for the deep waters.

It was in me to understand this, for I knew my own bit of longing for the wild places. I am a man not given to cities, nor the crowded walks of men. I like the long winds upon my face, the stirring of miles of grass bending before the wind, the cloud shadows upon the plain, the lure and lift of far hills.

Below us and a little behind us, dark against the moonlit sea, a point thrust into the waters. He swept a hand toward it, and along the shore. "Malibu," he said, "Rancho Malibu."

He glanced at the stars, and pushed on, although the trail was rough. By the feel of it, it was one rarely traveled. We dipped into hollows and emerged from them, and now he seemed to be doing his best to lose me, to prevent me from ever retracing my steps.

Suddenly he turned at right angles and dipped into a gap or pass in the mountains, and when he had gone but a short distance, he drew up.

"Help me down," he said, as I dismounted.

Reaching up, I lifted him from the saddle, and he sagged in my arms, then drew back.

"No crutches," he said. "They'd be no use to me here." Iron came into his voice.

"Wait for me here ... I shall be a while."

He could not walk, but crawled away into the black darkness where no moonlight fell. I lighted a cigar, cupping my hands well to conceal the point of flame, and prepared to wait.

To what strange place had he brought me? And why had he crawled off in the darkness alone?

Once, a long while after he had left me, I heard a stone rattle distantly in the night, and I knew that it fell off into space, for a long time later I heard it strike.

I was thinking that old Ben Mandrin was no fool, and I knew that whatever he did, it was something he wished desperately to do. But he was no man to be either questioned or doubted, so I just stayed there and listened into the night ... listening both for him, and for trouble that might come.

Several times I glanced at the stars to check the time that passed, and they gave me no comfort. It was a far ride back to the ranch for a tired old man, and daylight might find us on the trail.

What then? What if they carried his breakfast to his room and found him not there? Or what if his heart failed, on this ride and he died with me?

Would anyone believe my story?

Restlessly, I tramped up and down, impatient for his return. Was he only a few yards off, listening, perhaps with amusement, to my restless pacing? Or had he gone far away and fallen, injuring himself? But I heard no call for help, and the night was clear and cool.

Finally, I sat down, lighted a fresh cigar with caution, and waited. I thought of what odd turns there are in the life of a man. It was strange that I should be here with this old pirate of whom I had only heard as a boy, and had known now only a matter of hours.

There were no trees here, only the black chapparal. Some of the bushes were almost as tall as a man, but most no more than waist high, yet there were game tunnels beneath them, trails long used by lion or coyote or bobcat. They formed a maze that covered all this chaparral country with hidden trails, to be followed by wild creatures or by a man, if he chose to crawl. Here, atop this ridge, the chaparral was thin, for the ridge was broken by jagged rock outcroppings or by gigantic boulders, bare and time-eroded.

The stars waned. Impatiently, I ground out the stub of my cigar and got to my feet.

The horses, heads up, ears pointed, were looking off into the night, toward the direction in which Ben Mandrin had crawled. Nostrils dilated, they looked along the ridge.

Stepping out away from them, I spoke softly, "Ben?"

No answer came.

It was too dark to see tracks, and although I had risked lighting the cigars, to hold a light while trying to make out tracks seemed too chancy. This was a high ridge, and the country was alive with outlaws. If I started out to search for him, I might miss him in the darkness. I had no idea how far he had gone, nor even if he had persisted in the direction in which he started, for that might have been only to give me a false idea.

My head was aching, for the riding had set that wound on my skull to throbbing. It hadn't amounted to much ... a bullet that cut a furrow in my scalp and skinned away some hair, but it also left a lump there big as a hen's egg.

Waiting had given me time to think, and precious little time I'd had before for pondering. But I still didn't know who had been chasing Dorinda when I first met up with her, or why, although it began to look like she might have wanted to get out of this deal with Old Ben. But why?

What was her stake in all this? And who had got her into x? There must have been something promised to her.

... And where was Nolan Sackett?

Most of all, where was my gold?

Again I looked at the stars. The hour was late, and there was but little time left to us. I got to my feet and walked off into the darkness, listening.

There was no sound.

He was out there alone, and something had gone wrong, I was sure of it now. It wasn't in me to abide longer with that crippled-up old man out there on the rocks and in the dark of night.

So I started out after him.

We were high up on a hog-backed ridge, with the mountains falling away toward the sea on one side and on the other a deep hollow, * what in this country they call a potrero, because usually those hollows are good pastureland. There wasn't much chance of getting lost up here because a man had mighty little room to move around in.

* Where Lake Sherwood now lies, and the valley beyond.

It was the dark hour that comes before daylight, and I worked my way along carefully, straining my eyes to see if he lay on the ground, passed out. A couple of times I called softly, but nobody gave back reply.

Suddenly I came to where the trail, if you could call it so, broke in two, with one way going on along the hogback, the other seeming to go out along the shoulder of an even higher ridge. That last looked a mighty bad place to go.

Here I must take a chance, for there was no time to search out both ways. The ridge would shield any light that showed from the land side, and as for the sea, I'd have to chance it. So, kneeling down, I struck a match, held it cupped in my hands, and checked the ground.

It was there, plain as a skunk on a log. The old man had dragged himself along here and taken that higher ridge trail.

Only it wasn't a trail. It was a thread of rock hung in space over several hundred feet of steep fall. Dark as it was, I couldn't see how far it was, but it was a-plenty.

So I started out along that shoulder. After a while the trail widened out, then narrowed down.

I'd walked a couple of hundred yards from my horse before I stopped to call out again. And this time I heard a faint stirring up ahead of me. Whether it was game animal or man, I couldn't tell, but I moved on, and suddenly there he lay in the trail ahead of me, face down on the rock and sparse grass where he'd been crawling.

His hands were skinned and chewed up from the rocks.

Beside him in the trail was a big sack full of something. I wished for the moon, which had gone from the sky a long while back. Well, there was mighty little time, so I scooped him up in my arms, and then reached down and got a hold of that sack, which was fearful heavy. Somehow, sweating and panting, I got them both back to our horses, and loaded up.

He came out of his faint when I was hoisting him up. "Can you hang on, or should I lash you up?"

"You start, boy, and you ride like hell. I'll stay with you."

He grabbed my wrist, and believe me, that old devil still had the power to hurt in that grip of his. "Boy," he said, "I've got to be stretched out in bed before there's anybody afoot at the ranch. Don't you worry about me. You just get me there."

I taken him at his word. Those horses were fixed up and a-raring to go, and we lit out of there fast, high-tailing it down off that mountain.

We hit that little village at a dead run, and a moment after we raced through, somebody ran into the trail and yelled after us, but we headed across the plains toward the ranch. And he stayed with me.

Old and weak he might seem, but there was grit in him, and we almost ran the legs off those horses until we were within a hundred yards or so of the ranch.

There was gray in the sky and a light was going in one of the vaquero shacks, but we slipped in, and I got him back through my window. Then I got him into his own bedroom, and he locked the heavy bag in a closet at the head of his bed.

Outside, I hurriedly stripped the gear from the horses and turned them into the corral.

Nobody was around, so I rubbed them down, and was working over them when a vaquero came out.

Well, he pulled up short when he saw me there working, but I just raised up and said, "Buenos dias, amigo." Then I added in English, "When do we eat around here?"

"Poco tiempo," he grunted, and went inside. So I kept on working over my horses, rubbing them down carefully, then forking hay into the corral, and going to the bin for a healthy bait of corn for each. They'd earned it.

When I walked to the house and stepped up on the veranda, Dorinda was standing there. She gave me a sharp glance and said, "You're up early."

"Now, ma'am," I said gently, "no such thing. You take any mountain boy ... he'd be apt to be up this early. Why, back to home we'd had the cows milked by this time, or if 'twas winter, we'd be out runnin' a trap line."

"I had no idea you were from the mountains," she said, and I don't know why, but suddenly I knew she lied.

"Have you seen Mr. Mandrin?" she asked.

"Me? Is he up and about?"

She came up close to me. "Tell," she put a hand on my sleeve, "please don't think me ungrateful. I've wanted to thank you for all you did and tried to do, but it wasn't possible. You see, those men would not have understood.

Someday I'll explain--was "Don't bother," I said. "Anybody who'd try to take an old man's ranch away from him doesn't owe me anything, least of all, explanations."

She stiffened up, her face went white, and those black eyes turned to poison, quick as that. "You are a stupid fool!" she said contemptuously.

"I shall explain nothing!"

She turned away from me, and I was just as pleased. I wanted no truck with that black-eyed woman, but the way I saw it, my troubles had only just begun.

About a half-hour later, when I was hungry enough to chew my own boots, they called us to breakfast, and about that time there were horses riding up outside.

One glance through the window sent me stepping back to my room to pick up a gun. It wasn't in me to wear a gun to any man's table, but this here was different. So I taken up a pistol and shoved it down behind my waistband within easy grasp.

Outside there I'd seen Dayton and Oliphant, that city man I'd first seen with Dayton and Dorinda. With them was Nolan Sackett. It was the first time I ever laid eyes on kinfolk of mine when I wasn't pleased.

There were some others, too, and one of them was a wiry, sallow-faced man with the snakiest black eyes you ever did see. He had a tied-down gun which some gunfighters favor, and a way about him that told me he figured himself a handy man with a gun.

When I walked into the dining room Old Ben Mandrin was already settin' up to table, and he looked at me just as perky as could be. "You're walking into trouble, boy," he said. "Are you with me?"

"I reckon we share enemies," I said.

Roderigo came in suddenly, and he glanced quickly at me--doubtfully, I thought, like maybe of a sudden I wasn't to be trusted.

The others showed up at the door.

"Come in! Come in!" Old Ben was smiling and easy, and it throwed them. I mean they didn't know what to make of him, for without doubt they had come to lay it on the line and tell him the ranch was theirs and he'd have to get off. You could see it in their eyes.

We all sat down to table, and me, I couldn't figure where I stood in all this. Seemed to me I wasn't getting any nearer the gold I'd lost, nor had I any clue as to where it was.

And Dorinda wasn't about to tell me, if she knew.

All my life I've been getting myself tangled up where it was none of my affair, and never could figure out why. Maybe it was just that I followed the easiest line, maybe I wanted too much to do things for folks, maybe I was just easily persuaded. Anyway, I was tangled up now.

Right from the start when I saw the black-eyed woman a-settin' there looking at me, a homely man, I knew I was shaping up for trouble. Yet no sooner am I shut of her than I get tangled up with this old man, and from what I'd seen of him he was fit to care for himself. ...

Well, maybe not that night up on the mountain.

If I hadn't carried him out of there he'd be waitin' for buzzards by now. But with a tough old man like that, you can't be sure.

This Dayton was a rugged man in his own way, but all polish and surface. I didn't take to him. But now he'd brought me face to face with my kin.

Nolan Sackett came in a step or two behind him, and we looked at each other across the room.

"You could be in better company," I said, right off.

He grinned at me. "Show's on you," he said. "You're one of those preachin' Sacketts."

He was as broad in the shoulders as I, and a right powerful man, maybe twenty pounds heavier, with a big chest and thick arms that swelled out his shirt sleeves until they were like to bust. His face was wider than mine, with a blunt jaw and a nose that had been broken sometime back, but he had the Sackett look to him, all right, and all we Sacketts favor, more or less.

"I never drew a gun on no Sackett,"

I said, "and I hope you don't fix it so's I have to."

"You could leave out of here," he said. He had a tough, insolent way about him, but he was curious, too, for here we kinfolk had met up away out in California, a far piece from the Tennessee mountains.

"You finally clean out them Higginses?" he asked.

"Tyrel fetched the last one."

"They were fighters. I mind the time two of them had me cornered up on McLean Rock, and me with a bullet in me."

"Was that you? My brother Orrin told me of it. He toted you down off the mountain, piggy-back. Ten, twelve miles."

Dayton was irritated. "We came on business, Nolan. In case you've forgotten."

Nolan ignored him. "Rose Marie Higgins came around on mule back ... one of the Trelawney girls with her. She came to find where those Higginses were so's they could have Christian burial."

"Orrin, he went back up and dug for them both," I said, "and he spoke words over them, and read from the Book. Then he wrote them--their people, that is. He wrote them to tell where the graves were.

"Given time," I said, "we Smoky Mountain and Cumberland Sacketts always bury our dead, we bury them Christian."

"Like out on the Mojave?" Nolan said, wicked-like.

"Wasn't much time," I explained, "and I had a woman with me. Had there been time, I'd have read over them."

"Nolan ..." Dayton was getting almight upset over our talk.

"You came on business," Nolan said, "so get on with it."

"It concerns you!" Dayton declared angrily.

"If anything goes wrong ..."

"I know," Nolan said patiently, "if anything goes wrong I've got to do the fightin'.

That's what I'm paid for. All right, you settle your affairs, and when fightin' time comes around, I'll be there."

"I hope you ain't," I said. "I never read over no Sackett, and I ain't honin' to."

"You tell me where at you keep the Book,"

Nolan said. "I'll be doin' the readin'."

"Come, come, gentlemen!" Old Ben, he looked as cheerful as a 'possum eatin' persimmons. "No business until after we've eaten."

"I hate to spoil your appetite, old man," Dayton said, in that nasty way he had, "but I came to foreclose. I own this ranch."

Glancing across the table, I happened to notice Dorinda. She was looking at those raw, chewed-out hands of Old Ben's like she couldn't believe what she saw.

"Your hands, Mr. Mandrin! You've hurt your hands!"

Chapter Seven.

For a minute there, the roam was as empty of sound as if everybody had suddenly lost their voices, even their power to breathe. Old Ben Mandrin, supposedly moving only from his bed to a chair and back again, had the palms of his hands raked and lacerated like nothing you ever saw. They weren't bandaged ... there was no real need of that, but they were raw and plenty sore.

The question in everybody's mind but mine was, how did they get that way? And the old coot was enjoying it. Why, I don't think he'd had so much fun since the last time he made somebody walk the plank ... if he ever did.

Dayton was studying him, his eyes hot with suspicion, and Oliphant was almighty worried. Nolan Sackett, he just threw a hard look at Old Ben's hands, then at his face, and then Nolan went to eating.

Old Ben gestured carelessly. "It's nothing, Dorinda, don't worry your mind about it."

He looked too self-satisfied to please Dayton. By all Dayton's figuring, the old man should be worried sick and begging for a way out, but there he sat, all smug and smart, those old devil eyes of his brighter than a raccoon's.

Old Ben tied into his food like he'd earned it, and there for a while nobody had anything to say.

Me, I was fair-to-middlin' hungry, but most of all what I needed was sleep. There'd been none the night before, and very little for some time past, and it was going to do my eye and my shooting no good, if it came to that.

When Old Ben sat back to enjoy his coffee he said, "Old man my age doesn't have many pleasures, and what he has he figures to pay for.

"When Dorinda here started being nice to me, and seemed to set her cap for me, I knew something was in the wind. Turner had introduced her to me as his niece, but Turner had never mentioned a niece before, and when she started offering to care for me and the like, I was suspicious.

"Then when Turner asked me for a loan to keep his bank afloat, I gave some thought to it.

He'd loaned me cash a time or two a long while back ... or rather, his father had, and I owed the bank some help.

"Meanwhile, Dorinda was still around the place, fetching and carrying for me of her own free will, making me more comfortable, fixing the blanket over my knees, puffing a pillow back of my head, and moving about the place, swishing her skirts.

"Think that doesn't do a lot for an old man? It did for me. Now, I had no fancy in my mind that she was starting to care for me. Maybe when I was fifty, or even a mite later, but not now; but I could still enjoy her being there and watching her move around.

"You've got to admit she's pretty much of a woman, and she was always the lady. But you've got to admit she keeps what she's got so you know it's there."

He chuckled. "I reckon I'll miss her."

"Get to the point," Dayton said. "I want you out of here ... today."

That Dayton now ... he was a man I could come to dislike.

Old Ben's eyes turned on Dayton like a pair of six-shooters, and he said, "You are to be disappointed, Mr. Dayton. I am not leaving.

You are not taking my property, which is worth fifty times that note I signed for Turner, and which you now hold. You are not taking my property now ... or ever."

He had changed so sudden it startled a body.

Here he was--or seemed to be--a doddering old man talking about a young woman ... and then his tone changed and those old eyes of his changed, and Dayton knew right away that he was facing into trouble.

"What do you mean?" Dayton leaned forward.

"Why, you damned old fool! That note's due and you know it, and I'm granting you no time. Every friend you have who might lend you money is in as bad shape as you are because of this drought! Now you get off this ranch, and get off now!"

That Ben Mandrin was a hard old man. He chuckled, one of the meanest chuckles you ever heard, and he said, "Why, Mr. Dayton, I'm going to surprise you. I'm going to pay you your petty little note ... with interest!"

He reached down under the table, and from between his knees, which had been covered by his blanket, he took a sack that he set out on the table in front of all of us.

"There it is, Mr. Dayton, figured down to the last penny ... and in gold."

When he set that sack down there in the middle of the table we all heard the chink of coins, but Dayton couldn't believe it. He grabbed that sack and jerked it open, spilling those gold coins out on the cloth.

They were gold, all right, and enough to pay off that note, that paltry little sum for which Dayton and Oliphant planned to steal more than a hundred thousand acres of land in one of the loveliest places a body could find.

No, Dayton couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it. He knew Old Ben was out of cash. He knew nobody around could afford to loan him money, in his own mind he had already owned the ranch and was thinking of how he could advertise back east and start selling it off, as others were doing.

That black-eyed witch woman looked at the gold, and then she looked across the table at Dayton, and those black eyes were pure poison. "So now, Mr. Dayton," she said coldly, "where do we go from here?"

Roderigo looked as surprised as any of them; only Nolan Sackett seemed to take it without any excitement. He just looked over at Old Ben and said, "All right if I finish eatin' before I go?"

"By all means," the old devil said.

"Please enjoy yourvs. After all"--and he sounded mighty sarcastic--"y are my guests."

The gold lay right there on the table where it had spilled, and Roderigo couldn't seem to take his eyes from it. Nolan Sackett ate with good appetite, but the others, including that sallow devil with the black eyes, hadn't much taste for eating. Dayton started several times to speak, but each time he gave it up, for there was just nothing he could say.

Finally, Old Ben spoke up. "You have tasted my hospitality"--his voice was dry, but there was a cutting edge to it--"now get out! And you, Dayton ... if you ever show up on my property again, for any reason whatsoever, I shall have you horsewhipped!"

Dayton almost staggered when he got to his feet, for he was a whipped man already, and it showed.

Oliphant got up and, more leisurely, so did the black-eyed gunman and Nolan himself.

Dayton looked over at Dorinda. "You coming?"

"Do you take me for a fool?" Oh, she was beautiful, all right, but she had a wicked tongue. "I left you before because I knew you were a tin-horn, and you brought me back by force. If you ever try it again, I'll kill you myself!"

Old Ben chuckled, and Dayton went white as a man can get and still live, then he ducked out of the door.

Nolan Sackett leaned over the table and scooped up the gold and swept it into the sack.

"Dayton," he called, "you forgot somethin'!"

Nolan paused, filling the door with his bulk.

He hefted the sack in his hand, and then he turned back and looked at Old Ben. "Now, I wonder," he said, kind of musing out loud, "where would a man get this kind of gold? Minted gold, and quite a lot of it, some of it old, mighty old."

He put on his hat. "This I got to contemplate ... I got to contemplate." And he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Old Ben was clutching the edge of the table with both hands. Some of the abrasions and cuts had opened and there was blood on the edge of the white cloth.

"Kill him!" he said. "Sackett ...

=ill him!"

I stared at him, and then I said, "I've got no call to kill him."

"You damned fool!" Old Ben shouted.

"Kill him. I say!"

Nobody moved, and Old Ben's face turned dark with angry blood, his eyes glared, andfora minute there I thought he'd have a stroke.

"That man," he said, "will be the death of some of us. Remember what I say."

"Not me," I replied. "I've nothing at stake here."

He looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time. "Yes ... of course. I had forgotten that."

Nobody made any comment, but I guess we were all figuring on the amount of unfinished business there was at that table. Dorinda Robiseau was suddenly on her own, but with no expectations of money like she'd had, having been promised part of this deal.

Old Ben Mandrin, whom I'd admired for his guts, suddenly began to look like a mighty mean, cantankerous, evil old man. He had saved his ranch, but he had Nolan Sackett to worry about; for however you looked at it, there had been a pretty definite threat in what Nolan said.

Nolan Sackett knew, as anybody would, that such gold had to come from somewhere. Old Ben had apparently been broke. Turner had assured Dayton that this was so. Roderigo, his own grandson, had believed him broke. Then Old Ben shows up with a sack full of minted gold and pays off his debt.

Where had the gold come from?

About that time I suddenly began to look at my hole card. And it was well that I did.

The old man had gotten that gold--of which the amount he'd paid to Dayton was only a small part -comon his middle-of-the-night ride with me. When he left me on that pass and turned off along the ridge, he had gone to that gold.

Was this all of it? Or was there more?

Pushing back from the table, I got up and went to my room where, I got out my gear.

Something told me to get out of this house, and I wanted to ... badly.

Roderigo followed me as I carried my gear out and dumped it on the edge of the veranda. "You're leaving?" he asked.

"Yes."

"My grandfather wishes to see you. He said he had promised you mules."

So he had ... and I was going to need those mules. "All right," I said, and we walked back inside.

He still sat at the table, although in just the few minutes I had been gone it had been cleared.

He looked tired now, and I couldn't wonder at it after all he had gone through. He had let down now, and the weariness of that long ride and the crawling among the rocks was getting to him. For the first time since I had met him, he looked his years.

"You helped me," he said when Roderigo had gone from the room, "when there was nobody else I dared call on. I'm having them drive in some mules, and I shall make you a present of twenty."

"That's a lot of mules."

He shrugged. "There are several hundred on the place. There are over six thousand head of cattle here or elsewhere that I own, and nearly a thousand horses. It is a small payment for what I owe you. Besides"--and a little of the Old Ben flashed into his eyes--"x will lighten the load on my range. Unless it rains, and rains well before summer sets in, I'll lose a good many head of stock."

He scratched out a bill of sale for the mules and passed it across the table. "Roderigo knows of this. It will be all right."

Then he hitched around in his chair and looked up at me. "Did the sight of that gold make you less of an honest man?"

"I can't see that having gold has bought you very much."

He grunted. "All this? What do you call this?"

"How many people can you trust? When you were in trouble you had to reach out for a stranger to help you."

"Maybe I was a fool to do that."

"That's your problem." I folded the bill of sale and put it in my shirt pocket. "What are you going to do about her?"

"Can't cage an eagle, boy.

She'll have to go. I could keep her here and give her anything she wanted, and soon she'd start to hate me because she'd be tied to me. You make bars of gold and an eagle will bite at them, frying to get out."

"You can see she doesn't leave here broke.

Hell of a thing, for a woman to be broke."

He swung around in his chair. "You're too damned sentimental, Sackett. It'll get you nowhere. Still, if you're hunting a job you can have one here. I'll give you a working share."

"No."

"You turn down a million dollars awful easy, boy. This ranch will be worth it. You'll live to see it. Is it so easy to turn down a lot of money?"

I just looked at him, and buttoned up that pocket that held twenty mules. "Mister," I said roughly, "I could have had it last night, up there on the mountain. I could have rolled you off that cliff and come back and turned in ... nobody would have known the difference."

"Thought of it, did you?"

"No ... but look at it yourself."

"But you brought me back." He looked up at me, those hard old eyes appraising me. "That's why I need you here. I need an honest man."

"What about Roderigo?"

He snorted. "He's honest enough, I think, and he'd try. But he's weak ... he's a gentleman. He would try to fight clean, and he'd lose. You'd fight them the way they'd fight you, and you'd win."

"Good-bye, Ben Mandrin," I answered him.

I walked to the door and stood there a moment, looking back at him. He had that blanket over his knees and he kept one hand under the blanket, and I wasn't going to turn my back on a man like that.

"I hope you got all you wanted last night," I said. "Nolan Sackett or somebody in that crowd could track a squirrel across a flat rock."

"So can you," he said. "So can you."

I stepped out of that door backwards ... after one quick look to be sure the yard was empty.

Chapter Eight.

She was standing near the corral when I walked out there, a rarely beautiful woman, with her black eyes and red lips, and that way she had of moving and looking at a man.

She was wearing a dark red dress that really stood out against that old pole corral, and it looked to me like she had fixed herself up kind of special. So right away I began to wonder what it was she was after.

"No one else could have done it," she said. "It had to be you." She put her hand on my sleeve.

"Thank you for helping him."

That was sort of a leading statement, so I just said, "Ma'am, I've got to saddle my horse.

They're rounding up some mules for me."

"You're a rare man, Tell Sackett. I wish I had known you long ago."

"You think it would have made a difference? We'd have both gone the same ways we have gone."

"What are you going to do?"

"Arizona ... I'm headed back for the mines."

"Across that awful desert?" She shuddered. "I hope I shall never see another desert."

"It's the way I've got to go. If there's anything I want, it's back there."

"Is there a girl?"

Well, now, how could I answer that when I didn't know myself? There had been a girl. And then she had gone back east to visit some folks of hers, and when she was due to come back she just didn't come. Nor was there any letter that I ever got. ...

Ange ... Ange Kerry.

"No, ma'am," I said, "I don't think there's a girl. Looks to me like I'm a lonesome man riding a lonesome country, and I don't see no end to it."

"There could be, Tell."

Well, sir, I looked down into ^th big black eyes and saw those moist lips, and thinks I, if this here's a trap, they surely picked the right kind of bait.

"Ma'am," I said, "you're a lot of woman on the outside."

She stiffened up like I'd slapped her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I sure don't cut no figure as a man knowing women, but it seems to me what you wear is a lot of feeling where it shows.

I don't think there's very much down inside. I'd be like that old man in there ... I'd as soon make love to you, ma'am, but I'd want to keep both your hands in sight. I'd never know which one held the knife."

Oh, she was mad! She started as if to slap me, her lips tightening up and her face kind of flattening out with anger. But she held herself in.

She was keeping a tight rein on her feelings, and she waited for a moment or two before she replied.

"You're wrong, you know. It's just that I've not found the right man ... I've had to hold myself in, I've had to be careful. For you I could change. I could be different."

"All right," I said suddenly, "suppose we give it a try. I'll saddle a horse for you, and you can ride back to Arizona with me. If you still feel the same way by the time we get to Prescott--was She caught my arm again, stepping up so close I could really fill my nostrils with that sweet-smelling stuff she wore. "Oh, Tell, just take me with you! I mean it! I'll do anything! I'll love you like you've never been loved! I'll even go into the desert with you. I'll ride all the way to Dallas if you suggest it."

Then Roderigo rode back in with two vaqueros and they had my mules. I'll give him this--he had gone along to be sure they were the best, and they were. Every mule of them was good ...

I'd go a long way to find their equal. These were not the little Spanish mules, but big ones from Missouri, valuable animals on the frontier.

"If you like, we will hold them, se@nor, then they will be no expense until you are prepared to load them and go."

"I'd be obliged."

He stood there, fidgeting around while I saddled up the stallion and made ready to start for town.

"Be careful," he said, "in riding across La Nopalera. Men have been killed from ambush there."

"Gracias." One last thing he had to tell me before I rode out. He came up to me as I gathered the reins and reached for the saddle horn.

"The man who was here--the slight one with the black eyes?"

"Yes."

"He was a partner ... a friend. That one was on the desert also, and he is the one who knows of your gold, amigo. I have it from them." He jerked his head to indicate the vaqueros. "There are few secrets, se@nor, if one listens well."

"Do you know his name?"

"Dyer ... Sandeman Dyer."

I knew that name ... from long ago. It stirred memories that brought with them a smell of gunsmoke and wet leather. ...

Why is it that smells are so strongly associated with memories? But it is usually the smell that inspires the recall of the memory, and not the other way, as happened to me now.

"Do you know him?" Roderigo asked.

"Maybe ... I'm not sure."

"Be careful, se@nor. It is said that he is a very dangerous man ... and he has many friends.

He rode in from the north some weeks ago, and twenty men rode with him. There have been raids and robberies since--notobody knows for sure, but it is believed that he is the one who leads them.

"He is a gunman, se@nor, very dangerous.

He has killed a man in Virginia City, and another in Pioche of whom we know."

So I swung into the saddle and looked down at my big hands resting on the pommel, work-hardened hands, used to pick handle, shovel, axe, and rope. And to guns also.

"It does not matter, amigo. If he has the gold that is mine, and that also which belongs to my friends, I shall ask him for it."

"You wish to die?"

"Nobody wishes to die."

So I turned the stallion and rode away from the ranch, and toward the pueblo.

All that remained now was to get my gold, and the man to see was Sandeman Dyer. Or ... was I too suspicious? Was this a trap? Had the information been planted, in hopes that it would reach me?

It was dark when I came again to the pueblo of Los Angeles, and there were lights in many homes and other buildings. I came into town by the old brea pits road, and left my horse at the town's best livery stable. And so I returned to the Pico House, and my room there.

A man with a flat-brimmed white hat sat in the lobby reading the Star. He looked at me over the edge of the paper, only his eyes showing between paper and hat brim.

My few things were in my room, to which I added my rifle and the gear recovered with my horses.

Only the gold was gone now.

I was tired ... bone-weary. I felt as if I had been drugged. Tonight I should search out Sandeman Dyer, but I was too tired. Tonight I would rest, at last, in a bed.

I peeled off my shirt, and filled the basin with water and washed, then combed my hair. Standing before the mirror I looked at myself, seeing the old scars, marks of old wounds from gun battles and from the war, and here or there the finer, thinner scars of knife wounds. Those scars showed me how lucky I had been.

It was not in me to believe myself fated to die at any given time. Deep within me I knew, having seen many men die, that no man is immune to death at any time at all. During every moment, walking or sleeping, we are vulnerable ... I could die tonight ... tomorrow.

Young men do not like to believe that. Each has within him that little something that says: Others may die, but not me, not me. I shall live.

Despite all those who die around him, this is what he believes. But I did not believe it, and I had never believed it from the first moment I saw a good man die, when the evil lived. I could believe in no special providence for any man. Tomorrow, when I went hunting my gold, a bullet or a knife might kill me.

But it was not in me to refrain from going. Nor could I call this bravery. My determination held none of that. It was simply because it was in me to go.

I had never learned how to hang back from what it was up to me to do.

Sitting down on the bed, I reached for a dusty boot. One hand upon the toe, the other on the heel, I waited, just a moment longer. Weariness made me sag inwardly, made me cringe at the sound of footsteps in the hall outside my door.

After a moment there was a light tap on the door and, stepping across to the door's side, my hand on my gun, I asked, "Who is it?"

"A letter for you, sir. It arrived yesterday, but I expected to see you at the desk."

"Slip it under the door."

There was a moment's hesitation, and then the letter appeared. It was addressed in a flowing masculine hand, one I had never seen before.

Ripping open the brown envelope, I found a sealed letter within, and with it a short note. I read the note first.

Mr. Sackett, Dear Sir:

When the mail from the stage you saw wrecked in the canyon was brought to us it was found to contain this letter to you, addressed in care of me. As it may be of importance, I am sending it forward.

Hardy.

Then I opened the letter, and when I unfolded the closely written pages, I saw that it was from Ange.

Dropping upon the bed, I read it through, which I could do with a bit of work, for I'd little enough time at school in my boyhood, and read but slowly.

She had been ill. ... She was well. ...

Did I wish her to come back? And then almost in the next sentence ... she was coming back. She would take the first stage. She would meet me in Prescott.

I folded up the letter and thrust it into my pants pocket. Then I pulled the pants off and got into bed. Drawing the blankets up, I stretched out carefully, for the bed was made for a shorter sleeper than I, and slowly I let my long body relax against the comfort of the mattress.

Ange ... my own Ange ... Ange was coming west. She would meet me in Prescott.

Then I sat bolt upright.

Ange would meet me in Prescott, where I would be arriving with another woman!

Presently I lay back on the bed and tried to relax once more, but no matter how I tried ...

Suddenly, I was wide awake. Somehow I had fallen asleep, but something, some faint noise, had awakened me in spite of my exhaustion. Starting to move, I caught myself in time. Somebody was in the room.

The door was closed. The window was open the merest crack, yet somebody was inside the room.

A faint creak told me that whoever it was stood right beside the bed. Through the slit of a scarcely opened eye I saw the loom of a dark figure, the faint gleam of light on a knife blade, and I threw myself against him, knocking him back to the floor.

Choking with fear and fury, I rolled on top of him and grabbed at his knife wrist, bending it sharply back toward the floor. I grabbed him by the belt with the other hand and heaved myself up, lifting him with me, and swung him bodily at the window.

With a tremendous crash of glass he went through it and I heard a wild, despairing yell, then the thud as he struck in the street below.

The door, I then noticed, was ever so slightly ajar. Pushing it shut, I shot the bolt and went back to bed. Cold night air blew through the broken window. Vaguely I heard excited talk in the street below ... but I decided I wasn't interested.

Presently heavy boots rushed up the hall and there was a frenzied knocking at my door.

Lifting my head, I said, "Damn it, go away! Can't a man sleep around here?"

Somebody started to reply, and I added, "If I have to get out of bed again, somebody else goes into the street. Now you goin' to leave me be?"

There was a subdued murmur, then quiet footsteps going off down the hall. I pulled the blankets around me, and in a few minutes I was asleep.

It was broad daylight when I woke up.

Sunlight was streaming in through the broken window, and I got out of bed. Still a mite foggy from the heavy sleep, I went to the basin, washed, and dressed.

When I had pulled on my shirt I looked out of the window, but there was nothing in the street to show where anybody had fallen.

Now one thought and one only was in my mind. Today I was going to see Sandeman Dyer.

When I came down the steps it looked like everybody was waiting for me. The manager of the hotel--leastways I figured it to be him-- came up and told me I'd have to pay for breaking the window.

"Breaking the window? Mister, I broke no window. I didn't even touch it. If you want to get paid, you find the man who went through it. You collect from him."

He started to argue, and I said, "Look, mister, I don't like to get mad. Last night was once, and far's I can see, that's enough. Maybe I should point out that you got bigger windows down here."

Well, he kind of drew back, but I stepped right after him. "Also, you might spend some of the time you seem to have to waste after me and find out how that thief had a key ... and he had one. You in the habit of givin' keys to thieves?"

I'd spoken loud, and several of the folks standing about moved closer to listen. That man began to worry.

"Ssh!" he said. He was all of a flutter to get shut of me now. "Forget it. I am afraid I was mistaken." And he hurried off.

I turned then to look at those people around me and I said, "Anybody here know where I can find a man named Dyer? Sandeman Dyer?"

Nobody seemed to know a thing. You never saw such vague folks in your born days. Everybody had been interested up to that point, and then nobody was. In less than two minutes after I spoke that name the lobby was empty.

I went outside, where sunlight lay on the dusty street and upon the walks. Pausing on the corner, I looked across the Plaza in the direction of Sonora town ... an unlikely place to look for Dyer.

Closer to me was the Calle de los Negros, better known as Nigger Alley, and Tao's gambling house.

Taking my time, I strolled here and there about the town, looking into store windows and watching the horse cars. Most of them seemed to be going out Spring Street to a place called Washington Gardens.

On the streets the folks themselves were a sight to behold, and when it came to the Californios themselves, you never saw such a dressed-up lot of folks. Many wore short jackets of silk, figured calico, or beaded buckskin, white linen shirts open at the neck, black silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely around the neck, and pants of velveteen or broadcloth, or sometimes of beautifully tanned white buckskin, and nearly every one wore a silk sash, usually bright red. The serapes ranged from Indian blankets to fine broadcloth.

The handsome outfits these men had, made me look a poor mountain boy, even in my new twelve-dollar suit. Why, I fancy it must have taken a thousand dollars or more to get some of them dressed. And their saddles and bridles! You never saw so much silver. And two-thirds of them, I was sure, with dirt floors in their houses.

Here and there you still saw men with long hair, and some of them with it not just to their shoulders. In some cases it was braided. The younger ones had taken to trimming their hair, Anglo fashion, but not all of them.

Everywhere a body looked there were black-eyed se@noritas, flirting with you with quick, teasing glances that made the red climb right up a man's neck. Me, I already had two women on my hands, when I wasn't fairly used to one, and more trouble shaping up than you could shake a stick at.

As I went about the town, everybody I asked about Sandeman Dyer was warning me about him. But I was more fearful of what would happen when I rode into Prescott with that black-eyed witch girl and found Ange a-waiting for me than I was of what was ahead of me right now. Ange was a red-haired girl, and she was one with a mind of her own, and she'd had will enough to survive in the high-up mountains of Colorado before I found her there.

[Sackett, Bantam Books, 1961.]

Suddenly a rider turned into Main Street from Spring, and I saw it was that black-eyed gunman who had been at Old Ben's ranch. He rode past, not noticing me, heading for the Calle de los Negros. He would be going to Dyer, I could lay a bet on it.

But just as I turned to follow, a voice spoke behind me. "You take my advice and you'll leave Dyer alone."

It was Nolan Sackett.

We stood there facing each other in the street, two mighty big men, both of us armed, and both carrying the scars we'd picked up since we left Tennessee, and a few from before that.

"If he's a friend of yours, you just tell him to hand over my gold. I got no quarrel with him."

Nolan didn't even smile. "Don't be a fool, man! You came out of that alive, and you're damned lucky. Now let well enough alone."

"I'm going after my gold."

He looked disgusted and mad all to once.

"Look," he said irritably, "you're kin of mine, or I'd let you go your way and get killed. Dyer has forty men around him, and he himself is one of the most dangerous men alive."

"So he sends a man to knife me in the dark?"

Nolan had an odd look in his eyes.

"Believe me, Tell, that man never came from Dyer. Dyer just couldn't care less about you."

He shoved his hat back on his head, and there was a worried look in his eyes. "For a man who says he minds his own affairs, you can pick up trouble faster than anybody I ever did see.

You'd be right smart if you just climbed up on that stallion of yours and lit out for the high-up desert.

There's three or four passels of folks here just a-honin' to see you dead and buried."

"You tell Dyer to have my gold ready. You go right along and tell him."

"Damn it, if you come against him you'll be facing me. I'm with him."

"Like I say, I never drew iron on ary a Sackett, but if you stand between me and what's rightfully mine they can bury you along with Sandeman Dyer."

"There'll be forty men, damn you!"

"Seems to me Dyer can't be too sure of himself if he needs all that company. You go stand beside him, Nolan, and when they bury me they can dig the grave wide enough for the lot of us."

When he had gone I stood there on the street, staring off toward the hills. Maybe I was crazy. After all, why not get into the saddle and ride away? Most of that gold was my own ... and true, it represented my stake for the future.

It represented the cattle I wanted to buy to stock a ranch in Arizona. It represented a future for Ange and me, if future there was to be.

And those other folks who lost gold entrusted to me ... they could less afford to lose their gold than I could, although they would not lose near so much.

Nobody needed to tell me what I'd be going into, and I had no plan, no idea of what to do. Like I said, I never was much account at plotting or planning or working things out. All I know is to go bulling in and do whatever comes natural. Only thing I regretted was Nolan Sackett being there.

It went against me to fire on a Sackett of the blood. It would go hard to take lead from him, or to shoot him down where he stood. Even a Clinch Mountain Sackett was kin, and I wanted no shooting between us. Still, he had chosen his side, and now it was up to me.

Odd thing, the way a man is.

Trouble waited me there, I knew, maybe injury and death, but I turned around and started down the street, and headed right into x. Maybe I just didn't know any better.

Pausing on the corner, I taken out my six-shooter and spun the cylinder. She worked smooth and easy. A passerby gave me a sharp glance and hurried on past.

That man who took one look and hurried on was the smart one. He saw trouble and avoided it.

Only he didn't have all that gold awaiting him.

Tao's place was sure jumping. I mean, there were a lot of folks there, all of them gambling or drinking. By the time I reached the bar they had me spotted. Until that moment I'd have sworn I didn't know any but one or two of the men who had followed me out on the Mojave, but right away I recognized two of them here.

That black-eyed gunman was standing at the bar when I walked up to it, and he had a taunting, challenging sort of look to him that riled me. "You tell Dyer," I said, "that Tell Sackett is here, and wants to see him."

"He knows you're here."

Two men had walked over to a table near the door, where they sat down. Two other men strolled up to a card game and stood by, watching the play. A man playing at that table glanced around thoughtfully, then laid down his hand and cashed in his chips. He got up, kind of careless-like, and went out the door. He was a wise one ... he knew enough to get out before things busted wide open.

Nobody needed to tell me, after all, where to find Sandeman Dyer. The minute I saw him, I knew him.

He was sitting at a table in a little alcove, a man of less than medium height, with square shoulders, and a kind of angular face with high cheekbones. When a body first laid eyes on him it seemed that his face was out of kilter somehow, that maybe it was misshaped, but you couldn't find any one thing about it that was wrong by itself. It was just an impression you got.

He was smiling now, smiling easy and friendly.

And then I thought back to Shiloh, and I felt reason to worry, for when this man smiled he was dangerous indeed.

"Well, now, Sackett, it has been a long time. A very long time." And he held out his hand to me.

When I took it I knew how it would feel ... cold, and clammy. For I had shaken this man's hand before, and it meant no more now than it did then. He was a great one for shaking hands. I didn't make the mistake of forgetting his little tricks; only knowing Dyer, I knew it would not be now.

Sandeman Dyer--we called him Sandy then-- was a talker. He was a man with a love for the sound of his own voice. He was not only a talker, but a man who liked to parade what he knew, and he was almighty sure that he knew a whole lot more than anybody else. That easy smile of his, that easy laugh, they sort of covered the contempt he felt for anybody and everybody.

He was a bright man, all right, and a shrewd one. He was cunning like an animal ... it was a savage cunning ... but when the Good Lord put him together something went wrong. For he was a man without mercy, a man with cruelty so deeply ingrained in him that it was the most important part of his life. He was made up of cruelty and self-importance, I guess, in about equal amounts.

Yes, he loved to talk, to parade his smartness, but the trouble was he could stop talking awful sudden. ... He could break off in the middle of a sentence and kill you, or have you killed.

I'd seen it happen, for back there at Shiloh we were in the same outfit. The first time I saw it happen--the first time he shot an unarmed prisoner--I thought he'd gone wild from the pounding of the guns. Cruelty was a rare thing in the war. Fireside folks who talk about war and read about it, they figure it's cruel more often than not, but it simply isn't so. When you kill in war it is usually impersonal, except when you've seen a friend shot down, and then you strike back and hard ... if you can.

You kill in war because it is your job, and because you want to survive, and not because of any desire to kill. Cruelty takes time, and there is mighty little of that in war. But Sandy Dyer was a different kettle of fish.

The second time it was a major we'd captured, a handsome man of thirty-five, a gallant gentleman, who when trapped had surrendered. Come right down to it, he was my prisoner. That was what made me mad.

But when Dyer started talking to him nice and friendly like, I thought nothing of it. There were six of us there, and the prisoner. But mighty soon that talk of Dyer's began to take on a nasty edge I didn't care much for, and I said so. He paid me no mind.

"Got a family, Major?" Dyer asked, ever so gentle.

"Yes. I have a wife and two sons."

"Those boys, now. They in the army?"

"They are too young, sir. One is six and one is twelve."

"Ah ..." He looked up, innocent as a baby, and he looked right into t major's eyes and he said, "I wonder how many times your wife has been raped since this war started?"

It came so sudden we all sort of jumped, and three, four of us, we started to bust in. That major's face had gone white and he stepped forward and drew back his hand to strike, and Dyer stepped back out of reach and he said, "Major ... you ain't never going to know."

Well, I'd heard of men getting a gun out fast, but I'd never seen it. In the high-up mountains it was mostly rifles we used, and the repeating pistol was scarce twenty-odd years old, and mighty few of us had even seen one.

He just drew that pistol and shot that major right in the belly.

Me, I knocked him down.

He hit ground all in a heap and then he went sort of crazy. Rightly speaking, I expect he was crazy all the time. Later on, when the story was told around I began to hear of other things he'd done. Anyway, he came off the ground and rushed at me, and I hit him again.

There was trouble over that, and a sort of drum-head court-martial and he was discharged out of the service.

I heard afterward he'd joined Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson or one of those.

And now here he was, facing me across the table, and I knew he hadn't forgotten those times I'd hit him. I also knew he was dangerous as a cornered rattler and would strike, like a rattler in the "blind," without warning.

He was no rational man, and those others with him, they would do what he said.

Under my shirt I could feel cold sweat on my body, and I was scared. This here was a man I'd hoped never to see again, and I had walked right into hm. Only I had one advantage over the others he might have tangled with. I knew that when he started talking soft and easy, I'd have to be careful.

Another thing I knew. Before we parted one of us was going to die. There just couldn't be any other way.

"Thought you were an eastern man, Dyer," I said. Drawing back a chair, I sat down, but where none of them could get behind me without my seeing them. "I didn't expect to run into y out here."

"I don't expect you wanted to see me, did you, Sackett?"

"Why not?" I said carelessly. Then I added, "I hear one of your boys was good enough to bring my gold in off the desert. I take that kindly."

He smiled, and this time there was something like real humor in the smile. I could see he liked my way of putting it.

"I believe there was some mention of gold," he said, "but I understand it was found on the desert. I had no idea it belonged to you." He went on smiling at me. "I suppose you can identify it?"

Now I could see he was taunting me, being sure there was no way of identifying raw gold, but in that he was wrong. Truth was, I knew mighty little about such things, only what a body hears talking with miners and prospectors, but he didn't have to know that.

"Matter of fact," I said, "I can identify it. So can any good assayer. The amount of silver and other mineral associated with gold varies from place to place."

He didn't like that. Not so much because he thought I could identify the gold, as because he hadn't known this fact.

Sitting there, casual like and easy on the surface, I was doing some fast figuring. This was an unbalanced man, deadly fast with a six-shooter, andwitha hair-trigger temper. A normal man can be understood to some extent; but this man, though shrewd and calculating up to a point, was apt to do some damned fool thing--some damned deadly thing--on a momentary whim. It was like sitting on a keg of dynamite with a wet fuse.

You knew it was going to go, but you didn't know when.

The men he had with him were bandits, adventurers, drifters, men out to make easy money, or money that sounded easy, and they followed him because he had brains and daring, and because they feared to cross him. He had come south hunting money and trouble, and they were with him all the way.

The chances were that most of those men were good with guns.

Some were renegades left over from the War Between the States, others were just outlaws he'd picked up.

The way to whip a man is to keep him off-balance, and it seemed to me my best chance to get out of this alive, or with a shooting chance, was to keep him from thinking about it.

"'Member that time we met that outfit of Gray-backs on Owl Creek?" I said.

Glancing across the table at the others, I went on, "I never saw the like. Dyer here was on my left. There were six of us moving up to the creek in the late evening. It was coming up to dark, and it was still ... so still you could hear our clothes rustling as we walked.

"Dyer, he had himself a pair of Remington .36-31libre six-shooters that he spent a good part of his time polishing up. He had those guns belted on, and we all carried rifles.

"Well, sir, we were a-walking along, moving like a pack of Mescaleros, when suddenly we stepped into a clearing. And just as we done so, a party of Rebs came in from the other side, at least twenty in the outfit.

"They were as surprised as we were, only Dyer here, he acted quicker'n you could say scat.

He dropped his rifle where he stood and outs with those Remingtons ... you never heard such fire.

You'd have thought he had him one of those Smith-Percival magazine pistols that fire forty shots.

"He just opened up and went to blasting with both guns at once, and that whole party cut and run ... why, I don't think ary of us got off a shot, only Dyer. He downed three of them, wounded I don't know how many."

Folks somehow have a feeling when something is about to happen, and you'd be surprised how business had fallen off in just those few minutes since I came in. That first man who cashed in his chips, he began it. Maybe a dozen had drifted out since then.

But Sandeman Dyer was a man who liked to hear himself talked about. He sat back and ordered drinks, and we started talking up old times.

Yet all the time I was realizing that the fewer outsiders were in that place, the less chance I'd have. Not that Dyer would care much for witnesses. When it came on him to kill, nothing in the world was going to stop him ... it was a kind of madness.

The worst of it was, he was fast.

Was I quicker with a gun? I surely didn't know. The fact of the matter was, it wouldn't make an awful lot of difference, because when the shooting started, if he didn't get me the rest of them would. Only I made up my mind that no matter how much lead I took, I was going to keep shooting long enough to take him with me. For if ever a man needed to die, it was Sandeman Dyer.

So we talked the afternoon away, and finally I knew I had to let go of the bull.

What I mean is, I had a bull by the tail and I was safe as long as I hung on, but I had to let go sometime, and it was better to pick my own time than to wait until he got impatient.

So finally I said, "Well, it's been friendly, seeing you after all these years, but I've got to start back for Arizona. If you'll hand over my gold, I'll leave out of here."

His expression changed ever so little, his lids flickering just an instant as he adjusted to what I'd said. Our talk had kind of lulled everybody else into quiet. They were kind of scattered out, busy with their own activities, drinking, talking, sure there'd be no trouble.

They didn't know Dyer like I did.

"Why, sure!" He smiled at me with all the warmth of a hungry wolf. "I intended you to have it all the time." He turned his head to the man behind the bar. "Joe, open the safe and bring that sack of gold over here."

And right then, I knew.

It had to be when I put my hand on that gold ... or when I reached the door with it.

More than likely it would be the last, for he would want to drag it out. He might shoot me in the back, but it was more probable he'd let me get almost to the door, drawing his gun behind my back, and then he'd speak to me, and when I turned he would let me have it.

In my mind, I counted the steps to the door, and it was far, much too far ... and once I was out in the open room he'd have a clear shot at me.

Suddenly, I realized something else. The afternoon sunlight was falling through the window over our heads, and when I reached that place in the center of the room or a bit beyond and turned, I'd have the sun's glare in my eyes.

Oh, I'll not say he'd seen it that way from the beginning, although with him you never knew. All this talk, when I thought I was getting him to relax and ease off the tension a mite, all that might have been just waiting until the sun was right.

For Sandeman Dyer knew I could shoot.

He had not spoken loudly, and few had heard him except those standing close by. The idle talk on the other side of the room continued, and I heard Joe close the door of the safe and walk back across the room. He put the gold down in front of Dyer and went back to his bar.

There was no sense in wasting time now. Reaching across the table, I said, "Thanks, Sandy," and picked up the gold ... with my left hand.

He was smiling, his eyes dancing with that odd light I remembered so well, and I knew he had not missed the left hand ... or my right hand on the edge of the table.

And then I stood up.

All of them were waiting, expecting some word from him. One word, one move from him, and they'd fill me so full of lead folks would be staking my grave for a lead mine.

Suddenly, turning, I thrust out my hand to him.

Instantly, I knew I'd done the wrong thing.

I'd had it in mind to hang onto him and walk him to the door with me, but the moment my hand went out, I knew this was when he would want to shoot me. It would please that mocking devil of insanity in him to shoot me with my hand thrust out to shake hands.

He had come to his feet, smooth and easy, and he half reached to take my hand, then dropped it for his gun.

My hand was outstretched ... too far from my gun, so I just lunged with it to stiff-arm him in the chest, but he stepped back quickly, backing into his chair.

For just an instant it had him off-balance, and I threw my left arm across my face and went crash -comthrough the window into the alley.

Believe me, it was a wild gamble, but I hit the window with a shoulder and went through, falling full length in the alley. As I fell, my hand had grasped my gun butt, so when I hit ground my gun came up with the hammer eared back.

And there he was, broad against the window's light. His gun flamed, but he had expected me to be on my feet and he was geared to shoot high. In almost the same instant that his gun flamed, I let the hammer fall, brought it back and fired again, so fast the two shots had but one thundering sound.

He buckled as if somebody had slugged him in the wind, and his gun went off again, harmlessly, in the air, as his finger tightened convulsively on the trigger.

Leaping to my feet, I spread my legs and shot twice more into his body as he fell back.

This was one man I wanted dead.

There was a rush of feet from inside, and then a voice spoke out, stopping them.

"Leave him be." It was Nolan Sackett.

"You boys just stand hitched."

Stooping down, I felt around for my sack of gold, and picked it up. Then I went up to the window. Dyer was sprawled dead on the floor, and they were just beginning to realize there was nothing to fight for.

"Any of you boys want a buy into th game?"

I said. "The pot's open, and bullets are chips!"

Nobody seemed to be holding high cards, so they stood pat. I said to Nolan, "I'm riding out of here. Want to come along?"

"You go to hell," he said politely.

Chapter Nine.

Sometimes the damned fool things a man does are the ones that save his bacon.

When I had my horses all together I tied lead ropes on them and started out of town, and I wasn't sorry to go. Only one thing bothered me, I'd come this far and hadn't seen the ocean sea.

It was over yonder, not too far out of my trail, so when I was heading west across La Nopalera, the big cactus patch that lay north of the brea road, I made up my mind of a sudden. I'd no wish to sleep the night at the Mandrin ranch, so what better than a ride down toward Santa Monica and the sea?

Of a sudden I decided to do it, for I might not come this way again. By such whims can a man's life be saved, as mine was saved that evening.

Turning off, I taken the trail for San Vincente Spring, from which Santa Monica, both the old town and the new, so I'd heard, took their water. It was a long ride, and despite the fact that I kept moving right along, it was nigh to midnight before I got where I could hear the sea.

There was a ranch house on the bluff, about a half mile back from the sea, but I was shy of folks and rode clear of it, although I was near enough that their dog barked at me.

The stars were out and a fresh wind from off the sea felt good against my face. Down at the end of the arroyo was a clump of trees, great big old sycamores, and some brush, but there were too many squatters, to judge by the campfires still going.

So I turned north along the shore until I found another canyon. Up that canyon about a quarter of a mile I found a clump of trees with nobody around, and I rode in, unsaddled, and bedded down.

It was sure lucky that nobody followed me all the way out there, for I slept like a hibernating bear until the sun found my face through the leaves.

My stock had made a good thing of it on the grass in the clearing, so I taken my time getting around. My saddlebags were empty of grub, and after a bit I saddled up and rode along the shore to the town.

After stabling my horses, I got me a room at the Santa Monica Hotel, and made a dicker with the manager, a man name of Johnson, to take my gold off my hands for cash money.

When he paid it over to me he gave me a sharp look and said, "You seem to be a nice young man.

If I were you I should be very careful, carrying that much money. There are thieves hereabouts."

"You don't say!" I said with astonishment.

"Well, thank you kindly. I shall be wary of strangers."

They had a bath house there where folks came to take the baths, and it seemed to me a good soaking couldn't but do me good. Whilst I was in the bath I laid my saddlebags close by and my pistol belt atop them where I could lay hand on the gun mighty easy. Several folks came by and looked at me and then at that gun, and they fought shy of me.

They were mostly older men, taking the baths for their rheumatism.

After a good meal I walked around town a little, looking at the schoolhouse, the churches, and the railroad, which had been built out there just a year or so earlier. Some folks were saying this would be the biggest seaport on the west coast ... at least, the biggest south of San Francisco.

A couple of times I went around to check my horses, and from the livery stable door I studied the town to make sure that nobody was following me, or that any of that Dyer outfit had showed up hunting me.

That night I slept, and slept well, in a hotel bed. I mean I just stretched out and didn't mind it a whole lot when my feet pushed out below the covers. I was sure enough in a bed, and nobody knew where I was. However, I slept with those saddlebags under the covers with me, and a six-shooter too. You might say I was not a trusting man.

Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it always seemed to me the best thing was not to put temptation in their way. Now that black-eyed witch girl ... she made a business of temptation.

When she was around, temptation was always in the way.

It was noontime when I showed up at that Mandrin ranch.

The way I figured, they'd be expecting me at most any other time, and I'd noticed that during dinnertime when they were inside eating, and right after when they took their siesta, the place was quiet as death.

After I thought that word, I tried to unthink it.

Death was riding at my heels these days, and I didn't want to charm it to me by thinking of it.

When a man rides as much country as I have, he gets a feeling for it, and wherever he rides, he looks around to get to know it. So it was that I knew just how to come up to the ranch unseen, and I was in the ranch yard and putting ropes on my mules before anybody came out of the house.

The one who appeared was a dark-eyed man wearing a white hat.

"Howdy," he said. "You'd be Tell Sackett."

"Seems like."

"You stirred a lot of talk yonder in the pueblo. Everybody's been wonderin' what became of you."

"I'm a driftin' man, so I drifted."

He stood there trying to size me up, and as I roped my mules together for better handling, I managed not to turn my back on him, nor to seem like I was thinking of such a thing. With mules fidgeting around the way they do, that was simple enough. All the time I was debating whether I should go inside and say good-bye to the old man.

This man with the white hat had a hurt arm, and he limped a mite, too. There was a cut on his face that might have come from broken glass. He looked like a man who might have been thrown out of a window and rolled down a porch roof before falling off into the street.

When I was ready to go I led my stock around in front of the house and looked over at White Hat.

"You," I said, "let's go in and see Old Ben."

"I seen him," he said, mighty sullen.

"He knows me."

"You walk in there," I advised him, "and you walk in ahead of me. Looks to me like you tripped over something too big for you already, so don't take chances on it happening again."

It didn't seem he liked that very much, but he walked in ahead of me. It might have been my suspicious mind that prompted it, but it seemed to me Old Ben was doing a lot of fussing with his blanket when I came through the door.

That black-eyed girl came down from her room, dressed for riding, an Indian girl following her with some bags and suchlike that a woman feels called upon to tote around.

"Well, Ben," I said, "this here's good-bye.

It's adios. If you plan to see me again, you'll have to come to Arizona."

His hard old eyes studied me, and they glinted with a touch of humor mixed with what might have been respect. "You killed Sandeman Dyer," he said. "Everybody allowed it couldn't be done."

"Every man is born with death in him," I said.

"It's only a matter of time."

Dorinda was standing there, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were wider than usual, her cheeks kind of pale. I wondered about that, for she was a composed sort of girl, who didn't get wrought up by trifles.

"All right, boy!" Old Ben said. "You have a nice trip. And thanks ... thanks for everything.

Not many men would have done what you did, and without pay."

"Those mules look pretty good," I said, "that's pay enough for a lot of trouble."

Glancing over at Dorinda, I said, "You ready?"

"Go ahead ... I want to say good-bye to Ben."

"All right," I said, and turned toward the door.

He was too anxious, that old man was. He had me dead to rights, but he was too anxious. Here I'd been ready for trouble for weeks, and expecting it from everywhere, but in that moment I forgot.

But he was in too much of a hurry.

First thing I knew, there was a whap of something past my ear, the heavy tunk as it hit the door jamb, and the bellow of a gun. Me, I was headed for the outside and there was nothing keeping me. I went out that door like I had fire in my hip pockets, and I'm not ashamed to confess it.

He fired again, and the bullet just fanned air where I'd been, and then I heard the damnedest job of cussing I've heard in my born days.

Around the corner of the house came White Hat, running full tilt with a rifle in his hands. But when he got where he wanted to be, my six-shooter was looking right down his throat, and I said, "You going to drop that rifle, or am I going to drag what's left of you out in the brush for the buzzards to pick over?"

He was a man of decision who recognized the logic of my argument, and he let go of that rifle as if it was hot.

"Los Angeles is quite a ways off," I told him, "and if you're going to walk it, you'd best get started."

About that time Dorinda came out the door just like nothing had happened, and I helped her into the saddle, keeping those horses between the door and me.

That was a mighty sour old man in there, and he was remembering that if anybody in the world knew where his cache of pirate gold was, it was a man named William Tell Sackett.

When we rode off I could hear him yelling for White Hat or somebody, only nobody was coming. They would, after a while, but they were bright folks, and kind of shy of shooting.

Once we were on the trail, it was pleasant to ride beside Dorinda, keeping the mules down the trail ahead of us, talking easy-like with that dark-eyed witch girl.

Not that I was ever much of a hand to talk to women.

Back in the mountains where I came from I never was much on talk, and my feet were too big for dancing; but along about midnight when the girls started walking out with their friends, I was usually around and about.

Only Dorinda was easy to talk to. She knew how to lead a man on to talk of himself, and somehow she soon had me talking of the hills back home, of Ma, of Tyrel and Orrin, of the Higginses, and even of the Trelawney girls.

Those Trelawney girls lived over the mountain from us, and they had the name of being a wild, harum-scarum lot, but they kept the dust rising on those mountain trails. There were eight Trelawney girls, all of them pretty, and whilst everybody else was feuding they had no feuds with anybody.

Busy as I was now a-talking, I found time to check my back trail. A man who travels wild country gets to studying where he's coming from, because some day he might have to go back, and a trail looks a lot different when you ride over it in the opposite direction.

Every tree, every mountain, has its own particular look, and each one has several appearances, so you look back over your shoulder if you want to know country. It also helps you to live a whole lot longer. Like now.

Somebody was rising a dust back there. Not a big dust ... but a dust. It seemed to me there were four or five horses, and they were walking just to keep the dust down so as not to attract attention.

Dorinda didn't look back none at all.

She was thinking, though, as I might have expected.

"It will serve him right," she said. "He tried to have you killed."

"Who?"

"Ben Mandrin. He knows you are the only one who could ride to where his gold came from. There must be a lot more of it there, or he wouldn't have wanted you dead."

"Could be."

"He had men waiting out in the cactus patch near the brea trail yesterday. They were out there all day, only you dodged them somehow."

"You got to give him credit for tryin'."

"I'd like to see his face when he finds the gold gone. It will be just what he deserves."

Now I took a careful look at her. It seemed to me she was doing a lot of thinking, and I hoped my Bible was still in my saddlebags. When I turned in tonight I wanted it under my pillow.

"There must be a lot of it," she said. "He told me about a ship he sank off the coast of Panama. It was loaded with gold from Peru. He told me how they had brought it ashore and up a canyon to the hiding place. It took them a week to get it all out of the ship and up to where they took it ... only working at night, of course."

"Now that there," I said, "would be a lot of gold."

"When we get it," she said, "we can go to New York, Paris, London ... everywhere. And you can buy the biggest, finest ranch you can find, and stock it with the finest horses and cattle."

"I sure could ... if I had that much gold."

"You know where it is ... and you have the mules to carry it away."

"That old man is crippled up. No telling what will happen in the future, and he may need that gold. If he don't, Roderigo might."

She turned in her saddle and stared at me like she figured me for crazy, and I expect she was right.

"You mean you're not going after it?"

"No, ma'am, I'm not. Maybe a few years from now when that old man is dead and gone, I'll come back and look around, and if he hasn't taken the last of it, I shall."

"Why, he tried to kill you! And after all you did for him!"

"That's his way. There's a mighty hard old man, Dorinda, a mighty hard old man. Right from the start I sort of half expected it. I don't think folks have ever been very friendly to him ... not unless they figured to get something for it."

Her eyes got narrowed down and mean. "Do you intend that for me?"

"Not necessarily. It's just the way it's been for him. But he owes me nothing. Look at the mules he gave me."

"Mules! When you could have all that gold?"

She took off her hat then, and the next thing I knew two Winchesters were looking over a rock at me, and I heard horses coming up from behind.

Dorinda's hand dropped over mine as I reach for my six-shooter.

"There you are, boys. Make him talk."

She drew away from me, taking my gun with her. I took a careful look around, but they had me. They had me dead to rights, and there just wasn't anything I could do about it.

There were six of them, and my Winchester was in the boot, and it might as well have been back in Prescott for all the good it would do me.

"Take him, boys. He's all yours."

Dorinda's black eyes showed all the witch in her now. I think she was ready to shoot me herself, only they still didn't know where all that gold was.

One thing I did know. There was no way out of this one.

Chapter Ten.

The way I'd taken in leaving the ranch was north into the hills. It had been in my mind, for I'd still no stock of goods to sell at the Arizona mines, to cross over the mountains to San Francisco Ranch where Newhall was building a town. Folks said he already had the finest hotel south of San Francisco there, and the railroad and stage line passed through the town.

Goods were reported to be as cheap there as in Los Angeles ... even cheaper, some said, because Fields, who ran the store, was trying to keep folks from riding all the way into Los Angeles to trade.

We'd ridden westward a ways and were just about to cut back into the hills and head north when these men moved down on me. No question but what that black-eyed girl had planned it that way. If I'd gone to where the old man had hidden his gold, these men would have followed and taken it from me. Now that I hadn't gone that way, they were going to force me to tell them where it was.

If I reached for my rifle I'd be dead before my hand fairly grasped the action, let alone got it clear of the scabbard. Yes, they had me dead to rights.

The place they'd picked to stop me was near a big rock at one end of a small valley ... and I had a strong hunch this was the very potrero that lay below the ridge where all that gold was hidden.

It was a pretty little valley, with some fine old oaks around, and we'd stopped almost in the shade of one of them. It was a still, warm afternoon, and I could hear the birds talking it up back in the trees and brush just off the trail.

They moved in around me in a narrowing circle.

I let my hands rest on the pommel and tried to see my way out, but my mind was a blank.

"He took the old man out that night, boys,"

Dorinda said, "so he's got to know where the gold is."

"He wouldn't take me to it. Do you think he's crazy?"

Nobody said anything, and then after a bit one of them spoke up. "How about that, ma'am?"

"How far can an old man crawl? It took them time to ride out and back, so if Old Ben left him up there, he can't have gone far. There's been no rain, so we should get a few indications of direction."

The black-eyed gunman tilted his Winchester.

"You going to tell us, mister? You going to take us there?"

Well, why not? It wasn't my gold, and once they had it they'd have no further use for me.

They might just let me go ... although they might figure it best to shoot me so's I couldn't come back at them.

"Far's I know, he got it all. Else do you think I'd not be up there looking?"

"If that was all there was," Dorinda said, "he'd not have cared in the least about you seeing the place. No, it took them several nights of work to take that treasure up there from the beach, so he couldn't possibly bring all of it away in one night."

"We'd have to pack grub," I said. "It's far from here, and I'm carrying nothing. I was figuring to stock up at Newhall's place."

"He's lying," Dorinda said. "I tracked them part of the way."

Now I taken another look at her. This witch woman certainly knew a sight of things no city girl should know. She had tracked us, she said, and I had a hunch she wasn't lying about that.

If she had tracked us, she must be pretty good.

"It's not far from here," she said. "I tracked them for several miles in this direction, and they couldn't have ridden much further than this."

They were all around me. There was no chance to make a move without getting killed, or at least badly hurt. My mules were over there feeding on the grass along with my spare horses.

"My guess is that we aren't more than a mile or two from it right now," Dorinda said, "and if I'd not been along he'd have gone right to it."

She turned toward a tall, tough-looking blond man. "Clymer, you and the Yaqui make him talk."

The Yaqui was flat-featured, a half-breed by the look of him, and a man who would know how to make a man die slowly. The Yaquis were said to be as good at that as the Apaches.

If I tried a run for it, there was no shelter close by. The trees were too scattered, and that big rock was almost sheer.

Time and again I'd been in tight spots, and somehow I'd come out of them, and it seemed as if this here one ought to be so easy. It was such a pleasant day, the sun made leaf shadows on the ground around, and a few high, lazy clouds drifted in the sky. There was no violence around ... except in that ring of silent guns, aimed at me.

It shouldn't happen like this, I told myself. This is all wrong. There should be shouts and guns exploding, and fighting; there should be blood and the smell of gunpowder.

There were none of those things, and here I was, flat against a wall, with no way out.

"Get down off that horse," Clymer said.

He was grinning at me, and I saw he was missing two teeth. "We're going to see what kind of stuff you got in you."

He gestured toward the Yaqui. "I seen him skin a man alive one time ... well, almost.

That feller got smart and done what we told him. Not soon enough, though, because when we let him be it was already too late."

There was a moment there when I thought about jabbing a spur into the stallion and taking my chances, but the trouble was, there wasn't any chance. Those guns just couldn't miss. Not all of them.

So I swung down, and they walked me toward a big old oak. Believe me, I was sweating.

I was scared, but I was determined not to show it, and I was watching every second for the break I hoped would come. Only it didn't come.

They walked me up to that tree, and suddenly I made up my mind. If they were going to kill me they might as well get it done. One thing I knew. Nobody was going to tie me up to a tree. Not unless I was dead or unconscious.

So I made ready. If I turned fast I might lay a hand on one of those rifles, and if I had one of those I'd take somebody with me when I passed in my checks.

"Hey," somebody said. "Who's that?"

A rider was coming along the road, coming slow and easy. He was a tall man who rode well up in the saddle, and he came riding straight on.

"Hell," one of the men said, "it's Nolan Sackett!"

"Get on with it," Dorinda said irritably.

"This is no affair of his."

He rode right on up to us, and despite what Dorinda had said, nobody did anything but watch him come, including me.

"Howdy, boys!" His eyes had plenty of time to take in the situation. "If you're after that gold I figure I should be in for a share."

"You're in for nothing!" Dorinda said angrily. "Get on with it, Clymer!"

Nolan, he looked over at me and grinned, and then he taken a pistol from under his coat and tossed it to me.

It was as simple as that.

He just flicked that pistol over and I reached up and snared it, and then we stood there with two guns on them, his and mine.

It caught them flat-footed and off guard.

They just didn't expect anything like that, for Nolan was one of them. The trouble was, he was also a Sackett, and blood runs thicker than branch water.

Dorinda didn't cut up and scream like some women might, although she was mad enough to fight a cougar. She just looked at him and then at me.

"You boys mount up and ride," Nolan told them. "This here's a cousin of mine, or some sort of kin, and whilst I might have let you shoot him, I don't cotton to seeing that Yaqui skin no Sackett out of his hide. You boys just ride out of here and count it time well spent."

"What if we don't?" Clymer asked belligerently.

"Well," I said, "you outnumber us, but by the time we get through shootin' a whole lot of you are going to be dead, and us, too, so what will you be fighting for?"

"The hell with it," one man said, and turned his horse; and after that they just drifted away, leaving us there with Dorinda Robiseau.

"Nolan," I said, "I've got it in mind to buy goods over at Newhall's place and pack them across the Mojave to the Arizona mines.

That's a lot of mules for one man."

"You got you a partner," he said.

He looked over at Dorinda. "You want to come with us, Abigail?"

"I'll see you in hell first," she said, and turning her horse, she rode off.

That was no way for a lady to talk.

A few miles down the trail I said to Nolan, "You called her Abigail."

"Sure ... didn't you know? She's one of those no-account Trelawney girls from back yonder in the hills."

Well, I'd be damned! So that was Abigail Trelawney. But it was kind of dark back of the schoolhouse that night, and I never could tell those Trelawney girls apart.