Treasure Mountain

*

Chapter I

"To Kill A Man, My Dear, Is Not Always To Make An End Of Him." The statement was made by Andre Baston.

"But after twenty years? Twenty years?" said the woman.

"A lifetime to you, Fanny, but only yesterday to a man like your Uncle Philip."

"But how could anyone know? It all happened so long ago, and so far away!"

"Nevertheless, a man is here in New Orleans and he is asking questions. His name is Sackett."

"What?"

"Orrin Sackett. He is an attorney, a lawyer. He has the same name as the man who went to the western mountains with Pierre."

Fanny Baston was small, slender, voluptuous, and beautiful. Her shoulders were soft and amazingly white, her lips were warm and a little full, and her eyes were large.

She shrugged. "What difference can it make? Let him ask his questions. We simply know nothing. Who is left who could possibly know anything?"

Andre scowled. "I do not know. Nobody, perhaps. But I do not like him asking questions. If Philip ever found out ..."

"It would be the end," Paul said. "The end. He would cut us off, leave us nothing."

"You, perhaps," Fanny said to Andre. "But I was a baby. Not five years old. And Paul, you were not even in your teens. We had nothing to do with it."

"Do you think that would matter?" said Paul. "Uncle Philip only needs an excuse to cut us all off. You too. You aren't exactly his pride and joy, you know."

"Then," she leaned forward, dusting the ash of her small cigar into a saucer, "kill him. Kill this Orrin Sackett and drop him in the bayou before he can even be connected to us. Kill him at once."

Andre was no longer surprised at anything his niece said. "You have an idea?"

"Do it yourself, Andre. He would not be the first." She looked up at him and smiled. "Why not? Find an excuse, challenge him. There is not a better shot in New Orleans, and as for a rapier ... how many men have you killed, Andre? In duels, I mean?"

"Twelve," he replied. "You have a point. It might be the answer."

"You are too bloody," Paul objected. "If you want him killed, there are other ways. We might get him into one of the concert-saloons--the Buffalo Bill House, for example. Williams would take care of him for us."

"No." Fanny spoke sharply. "No, Paul. If there is killing to be done, the fewer who know the better. And nobody outside the family."

"She's right," Andre said, "but this is all so premature. This Orrin Sackett cannot know anything. Pierre was obviously French, obviously from Louisiana. He brought Sackett back here to outfit before we started west, but Sackett never left the river front. I don't know what stirred this up, but all we have to do is sit quietly and allow it to pass. If he gets close then we can act." He shrugged, looking down at the tip of his cigar. "After all, New Orleans may take care of him without our help. He would not be the first."

"Have you seen him?" Fanny asked.

"Yes. He's a big man, nearly as big as I am. Perhaps even as big. He's a good-looking fellow, dresses well, seems to know his way around."

Paul looked up. "Andre, wasn't there some disturbance down on the waterfront a few years back? Some trouble involving some Sacketts?"

"I believe you are right, Paul. I do recall something of the kind. An attempt was made to rob one of them and there was a fight--quite a bloody one."

"That could be the answer, Uncle Andre," Fanny suggested. "A Sackett returns ... a revenge killing."

She was right, of course. It was a simple, logical method if it became necessary. He would make a few inquiries. If any of the old crowd were around he might just drop a word here and there. Anyway, this was all over nothing. This Sackett knew nothing, could know nothing.

A thought suddenly occurred to him. He still had the map. He had kept it, believing it held a clue to the treasure. None of them knew he had it, for he had never mentioned it to anyone. After all, when one holds the only clue to the location of thirty million in gold one does not talk about it. The stuff was there. He had taken the time to look up the old reports turned into the government those many years ago, and of course, there was mention of the gold the French army had mined--thirty millions!

He had been thinking of going back to look for that gold, and this was probably the time. He was forty years old now, stronger and more able than ever. He must think about the future, and he had little faith in what Philip might leave them.

Philip liked none of them too well, and with good reason.

What did Sackett know?

Orrin Sackett, standing before his mirror in the Saint Charles Hotel, combed his hair carefully, set his cravat in place, and left his room. At the head of the stairs he paused momentarily and touched his left side lightly. The Smith and Wesson Russian he carried was resting easily. No trouble was expected, but habit remains with a man.

So far the trip had netted him exactly nothing. He had doubted from the first that they would uncover anything. New Orleans was a big city. Twenty years had passed, and the clues he had were slight. Still, if it would please ma there was no effort he would not make.

After all, what information did he have? Twenty years ago a man of strong French accent wanted to make a trip to a certain place in the western mountains. That implied that he had made a previous trip or that he had knowledge of someone who had made such a trip.

Pa had been asked to guide this Frenchman, and the trip was expected to last but a few months--time to get there and return.

What would take a man to lonely mountains at the risk of being killed by Indians? Furs? To trap furs a man had to remain the winter through. A mine?

Perhaps. He might wish to ascertain if the mine was worth development. Yet ... wasn't it more likely that he knew of gold already mined? Or thought he did?

When Orrin added up all the information he had, he was looking for a Frenchman, probably from Louisiana, who had some previous connection, direct or indirect, with someone who had been to the western mountains. Flimsy as that was, it did much to clear the field, for not many Frenchmen had gone west from Louisiana.

From Canada ... yes. Of course, France had controlled all of Louisiana for a time, and, during the period of the Mississippi Bubble and John Law, great efforts had been made to find gold and silver. Law had promised his investors wealth and he made every effort to discover it--or indications of it.

This Frenchman had not wanted a large party. Yet, it was unlikely that they had actually gone alone. Hence one of the party might have returned, or there might be a relative who knew something about the affair. The trouble was he had no starting point. Yet, the simplest way was often the best, and that meant checking the obvious sources--in this case, government records of mines, claims, and exploring expeditions in the back country.

Another way, equally simple, was to meet some of the older citizens and start them recalling their youth. It sometimes required patience, but he had an interest in such things and could afford a few days. Or he could get some discussion started of the John Law period--the most likely time for any mineral exploration.

Bienville, during his governorship, had waited little time searching for nonexistent minerals. His had been a more practical, down-to-earth approach, and, had he been let alone to proceed as he wished, the colony might have been successful long before it was.

At dinner Orrin sat quietly and alone, listening to the idle talk around him and enjoying the lights and music. He had always enjoyed dining alone, for it gave him time to think as well as to absorb the atmosphere around him. And tonight the dining room was filled with attractive, beautifully gowned women and handsomely dressed men.

The two tables closest to his were occupied: one of them by a group of people of his own age or younger, the other by a very handsome older couple, a distinguished-looking man with a beautiful woman, her hair almost white, her eyes remarkably youthful.

He ordered his meal when the waiter appeared. "And the wine, sir?"

"Chateauneuf-du-Pape," he said quietly. The older gentleman turned his head and glanced at him. Their eyes met, and Orrin smiled. "An excellent wine, sir," the man said.

"Thank you. Anything less would not fit the surroundings."

"You are a stranger here?"

"I have been here more than once. But this is the first opportunity I have had to relax in a long while." Orrin watched the waiter open his wine, tasted it, then said to the old man, "I am interested in some mining claims in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. I have heard rumors to the effect that people from New Orleans located mines in that area."

The old man smiled, "I doubt that, sir. There was much talk of gold, of course, and stories of discoveries in the Far West, but nothing came of it, nothing at all."

"Men did go out there, however?"

"A few. Adventurers or fools. Oh, yes! I believe the French government did send a military detachment to the West at one time, but that was very long ago."

"Did you know any of those who went west?"

"No ... no, I think not. We were planting sugar then and were much too busy to think of such things. And I believe very few did go."

"What of Pierre?" His wife suggested.

"Pierre?" he frowned. "Oh, yes! But that was later. He never came back, so we never did know what he went after, exactly. Some wild-goose chase, I expect. The Bastons were a mixed lot. Not very steady, you know. Chopping about from one thing to another. They still are, for that matter."

"Charles!"

"Well, it's true, and you know it. That Andre, for example, he is nothing but a--"

Suddenly a man was standing by the table. "You were saying, LaCroix?"

Orrin glanced up. The man was tall and broad, strongly built with a face that might have been carved from granite. The eyes were cold and blue, the face clean-shaven but for a waxed mustache.

"You were speaking of me, LaCroix?"

Orrin was shocked when he glanced at the old man, for his face had gone white and stiff. He was frightened, but even as Orrin looked, the man's pride asserted itself and he started to rise.

Instantly, Orrin was on his feet. "I am afraid you have the advantage of me, sir. We were talking of my old neighbors, Andy and Bert Masters. Do you know them, then?"

"Who?"

Andre Baston faced sharply around.

"If you know them," Orrin said, smiling, "you'll understand. Andy, he was a moonshiner. Came from Tennessee and settled down here in the bayous and took to makin' whiskey--by the way, what did you say your name was? Mine is Sackett.

Orrin Sackett."

"I'm Andre Baston. I do not understand you, sir." Andre's tone was cold. "I understood this man to say--"

"Sure you did. The Masters were a no-good lot. I never did figure that was even their name. Even the 'shine they made wasn't much, but one thing I'll give ol'

Andy. He had him a couple of the best coon-hounds--"

"I am afraid there is some mistake," Andre said coldly. He stared into Orrin's eyes. "You, sir, I do not like."

Orrin chuckled. "Now, isn't that a coincidence? I was just about to say the same thing. I don't like you, either, but while we're on the subject, what did happen to Pierre?"

Andre's face went pale with shock, then reddened. Before he could speak, Orrin said, "Not that I care, but folks ask questions when a man disappears.

Especially a man like Pierre. He wasn't alone, was he? Man should never go into wild country alone. Of course, that always raises the question of what happened to those who were with him? Did any of them get back?"

Orrin thrust out his hand. "Nice talking to you, Mr. Baston, maybe we can sit down for a real confidential talk one of these times."

Abruptly, Orrin sat down, and Andre Baston walked away.

The old man was sunken in his chair, his face gray. His wife looked across at Orrin. "Thank you, oh, thank you! You saved his life, you know. They have never liked us, and Andre Baston is a duelist."

"He is?" Orrin glanced at Andre. He was seating himself at the adjoining table.

"Was he with Pierre on that trip west?"

For a moment there was no reply, and then the woman spoke softly. "We must go now, monsieur. It is late and my husband is tired."

LaCroix got to his feet slowly. For a moment Orrin thought he was about to fall, but he stiffened his shoulders. Then he looked down at Orrin. "I am not sure. I believe he was."

Orrin got to his feet. "I have enjoyed the conversation. If I can be of any assistance--"

"Thank you."

He sat down again, watching them walk slowly away, two fine, proud people.

Suddenly, a voice spoke. "Mr. Sackett? I am Fanny Baston, and my uncle is very sorry for the way he acted. He believed it was his name he heard."

Orrin Sackett looked up into the eyes of one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Quickly, he got to his feet. "It was a natural mistake," he said.

"We must make amends. We would not wish you to leave New Orleans thinking us inhospitable." She put her hand on his. "Mr. Sackett, would you come to dinner at our home? Thursday night?"

"Of course," he said. "I'd be glad to come." When she seated herself at her own table, she looked at her brother and uncle. "There!" she said. "Now it is up to you! What did we come here for, anyway?"

Chapter II

We Sacketts been going down to New Orleans ever since there was a town yonder.

This time I wasn't going to see the lights or dance the fandango, but to help Orrin work out a trail. The trail along which we had to read sign was twenty years cold, and it was the trail of our own father.

Pa was what you'd call a wandering man, a mountain man in his later years, who understood the trapping of fur and how to get along with the red man.

He had been to the shining mountains a time or two, but the last time he never come home. That wasn't so unusual as to raise sweat on a man, for those were perilous times, and many a man went west and nobody saw anything of him after that but maybe his hair at some Indian's belt.

We boys knew the country ways, and we figured pa was thrown from his horse somewhere on the high plains, got caught without water, or run short of powder and lead with the Indians closing in. There was a sight of things could happen to a body in western lands, and betwixt us we'd come up against most of them.

The trouble was with ma.

She was growing old now, and with the passing of years her memories turned more and more to pa, and to wondering what had become of him. She was fearful he might be stove up and helpless somewhere back in the hills, or maybe held hostage by some Indians. Of a night ma didn't sleep very well, and she'd set up in her old rocker and worry about pa.

Now pa was a knowing kind of a man. He could make do with mighty little, and, given time, he could edge himself out of any kind of a fix. We boys figured that if pa was alive he'd come home, one way or t'other.

We were living in New Mexico now. Tyrel was trying to sell his holdings near Mora, figuring on moving west to the new town of Shalako. Orrin was busy with his law practice, but he said he could take some time, and I guess I was actually free to roam. Anyway, no woman, except ma, would worry for me.

"I'll go to New Orleans, Tell," Orrin told me, "and I'll check what records I can find. When you come along down I'll try to have a starting place."

The three of us set down with ma to talk over pa's last days at home to find some clue to just where he was going. The Rockies are a wide and wonderful bunch of mountains, but they aren't just one range. There are hundreds of them, so where in the high-up hills do you begin to hunt for a man?

Do you start hunting sign in the Black Hills or the Big Belts? The Absarokas, Sawatch, or Sangre de Cristos? Do you search the Greenhorns, the Big Horns, Wind Rivers, San Juans, La Platas, the Needles, Mogollons, Lintas, Crazy Mountains, or Salish? The Abajos, Henrys, Peloncillos, the Chiricahuas, or the Snake Range?

Do you cross the Black Rock Desert or the Painted? Do you search down in Hell's Canyon? On the Green or the Popo Agie?

Where do you hunt for one man where armies might be lost?

New Orleans was a far piece from the fur-trapped streams where the beaver build, but it was there the trail should begin, for it was there pa headed when he rode away from the Cumberland Hills of Tennessee.

Cities made me uneasy. A body couldn't blaze a trail in a city, and folks weren't out and out what they seemed. Usually, they made it a point to show one face while hiding another.

Orrin was city-wise. He could read city-sign the way I'd track a mustang horse across a flat-rock mesa. Of course, Orrin was also a fair hand at tracking and nigh as good in a shootout as me or Tyrel. Orrin had started early to reading law, packing a copy of Blackstone in his saddlebags and reading whenever there was time. He was also an upstanding, handsome man, and when he started to talk even the rocks and trees had to listen. We Sacketts were English and Welsh mostly, but Orrin must have taken after the Welsh, who have the gift of speaking with a song in their words.

New Orleans wasn't no new place to me, like I said. We Sacketts, along with other hill folks from Kentucky or Tennessee, been floating rafts of logs downstream for a coon's age, but the places I knew best weren't likely to be on Orrin's callin' list. Come to think of it most of those places were joints where I'd gone to roust out our shanty boys to get them started home. Places like Billy Phillip's 101 Ranch, Lulu White's Mahogany Hall, the Five Dollar House, and the Frenchman's. Or maybe Murphy's Dance House on Gallatin Street.

You had to be a man with the bark on to even go into those places. I never paid 'em much mind, but when you went downriver with a shanty-boat crew you wound up in some mighty rough places. I usually had to lead the fight that got them out, and those fights aren't for the delicate. It was fist, skull, an' batter 'em down, and you stayed on your feet or you got tromped.

The Saint Charles Hotel was a mighty fine place, the like of which I'd not seen before. In my dusty black suit and boots I didn't shape up to the kind of folks they quartered there.

The clerk had his barn slicked down like he'd been licked to be swallered, and he looked at me like I was something a dog dragged up on the porch. "Yes?" he said.

"I am hunting Orrin Sackett," I said. "He's bedded down here."

The clerk took down a big register and checked the list. "Oh, yes! Mr. Sackett.

But he is no longer with us. He's been gone--let's see--he left on the twentieth, sir. He's been gone two days."

Now that just didn't set right. Orrin had said positive that he would meet me at the Saint Charles today. So if he was gone, he'd be back.

"You sure? He was to meet me here."

"I am sorry, sir. Mr. Sackett checked out and left no forwarding address."

"He took his duffle, his bags, an' like that?"

"Of course, he--" This gent held up suddenly like he'd thought of something.

"When I think of it, he did leave his saddle here and a rifle, I believe."

Now I was worried. No Sackett goes off anywhere without a saddle and a Winchester. It just didn't stand to reason Orrin would.

"I guess you better let me have a room," I said. "The same room he had if it's available."

He hesitated, evidently not sure if I could stand the traffic, but I took out my poke and shook him out a couple of double eagles. "You set that by," I said, "an" when she's et up, you give me a whistle.

"Whilst you're about it, send up a tailor. I got to order some Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes."

That room was most elegant. Had a big flowered bowl and pitcher, and there was a bathroom right down the hall. I set my gear down and took a quick look around.

The room had been cleaned so there'd be nothing of Orrin's left, but I knew Orrin real well and had an idea where to look.

Under a corner of the rug, pasted there neat as could be, were two gold pieces.

That was a trait of Orrin's--it was getaway money in case he got robbed or whatever. Now I knew for sure something was wrong, wrong as all get-out. If he had reason to leave his saddle and rifle, Orrin would never leave without his getaway money.

Right then I set down and went to figuring. Gettin' yourself robbed, knocked on the head, or killed in New Orleans in these 1870s was about the easiest thing a body could do, but Orrin was no pilgrim. He'd been where the bear walks an' the buzzard roosts, and he was uncommon shrewd in the ways of men.

About then I pulled up and set my saddle. Orrin was knowing in the ways of men, but his record was no good when it come to reading sign on women. Tyrel or me, we were more suspicious, maybe because women hadn't paid us so much mind as they had Orrin. He had takin' ways, and kind of expected women to like him, which they usually did. More than that, he was a downright friendly man, and if Orrin was in trouble you can bet there was a woman somewhere around. Of course, you can say that of most men.

After the tailor had come to measure me for a couple of suits, I talked to the boy who showed him up to the room. "This here room," I said, "was occupied until a couple of days ago by a handsome big man with a nice smile. You recall him?"

"I do."

"Now, I am his brother, so you can talk free. Did he have him a woman around?"

"He did not. He was in his room very little. I remember him, suh. He was most thoughtful, suh."

"Did you see him with anyone else? I've got to find him." I put a silver dollar in his hand. "You ask around. Come to me as soon as you hear tell of him and I'll have another of those for you."

Disappearing is one of the least easy things to do if a body has any recognizable way of living. We all set patterns, and if we break them somebody is sure to notice, although it may be somebody we don't even know.

Orrin was a man easy to notice and easy to remember. He never made it a point to be nice to folks ... he just was. It was him. He was polite to everyone, a man folks talked to mighty easy, a man with a pleasant way about him who would sooner avoid trouble than have it. He could put you off guard and turn a conversation from trouble into casual talk better than anybody I ever knew.

At the same time he was strong, as strong as me, I expect, and I never took hold of anything that it didn't move. He was a fine boxer, a better than average Cornish-style wrestler, and a dead shot with either hand. Peaceful man though he was, I never knew anybody to take more pleasure in a plain or fancy knockdown and drag-out brawl. In spite of his easy-going ways, if you shaped up to tear down his meathouse you'd bought yourself a packet of trouble.

So I just idled about, listening and talking to a few folks about my brother, but nobody recalled anything helpful. People around the Saint Charles remembered him and so did a boy at the corner who sold newspapers, a man down the street at a secondhand book store, and a girl who served him coffee a couple of times in a restaurant down the street a few blocks. An old Negro who drove a carriage for hire told me about him going there.

It was a small place under a wrought-iron balcony. There was a table near a wide window looking out on the street. Now I'm a coffee-drinking man and always kind of had an urge for the coffee they brew down Louisiana way, so I took a table by the window and a right pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes brought me coffee. Right off I asked about Orrin.

"Oh, yes! I remember him very well, but he has not been in lately. Not for two or three days."

"Did he come here often?"

"He surely did. And he always sat right where you're sitting. He said he liked to watch people walking along the street."

"Was he always alone?"

"Yes--always. I never even saw him speak to anyone until the last time he was in.

He spoke to a lady who comes in sometimes."

"Young?"

"Oh, no. Mrs. LaCroix is--well, she's past sixty, I'd say."

"Did they have coffee?"

"Oh, no. They just spoke. Well, she did talk to him a little. She was thanking him for something. I--I didn't listen, you know, but I couldn't help but hear. It was something that happened in the dining room at the Saint Charles. I have no idea what it was about except that Mr. Sackett avoided trouble for them, somehow."

Well, that was something.

Orrin never was much inclined to just sit around and drink coffee, so if he came here more than once he had him a reason. Orrin liked to watch the people pass, did he?

What people? There was a lot of folks yonder, and somebody was passin' every minute, but I had an idea he wouldn't sit here just on the chance somebody would pass ... he must have known somebody would go by there, or maybe there was somebody he could watch from where he sat.

I sat there about half an hour when the waitress returned to my table. The other folks who had been drinking coffee were gone.

"Sit down," I suggested. "My front name is Tell, short for William Tell, a man my pa favored for his arrow shooting and his way of thinking. It's mighty nice, just to set and watch the folks go by. I've seen more people in the last half hour than I see in two months out yonder where I've been, and I've never seen so many people afoot."

She was amused. "Do you ride everywhere?"

"A man wouldn't be caught dead without a horse, ma'am. Why, when Eb Parley was to be buried out yonder they laid him out in the hearse nice an' proper, an' d'you know what the corpse done? He got right up out of the coffin straddled a horse, an' rode all the way to the bone yard; then he crawled back into the coffin and they buried him peaceful."

At that moment a man walked out of the saloon across the street. He was a huge man with heavy shoulders, the biggest hands and feet I ever did see, and a wide, flat face. He wore boots, a red sash about his waist, and a nondescript gray coat and pants.

"Who's that?"

She looked quickly, then away. "Don't let him see you looking at him. That's Hippo Swan. He's a notorious bully. He used to be overseer at the Baston plantation before they lost their slaves. Now he just hangs around the dance-saloons."

When I returned to the hotel I went to the desk. "Did my brother leave no message at all when he left?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Sackett, I did not see your brother that day. He sent a messenger for his valise."

"Just that? No written message?"

"Of course. We would never give a guest's baggage to anyone without an order. In fact, we have it on file." He got out the message. It was written on ordinary tablet paper, and the handwriting was nothing like my brother's excellent script.

Opening the register to my brother's entry I laid the two signatures side by side. There was no resemblance.

The clerk's face grew flushed. "I am sorry, sir. I think I had better call the manager."

Chapter III

Up in my room, I sat down to do some figuring. Orrin was surely in trouble, and it was serious trouble by the look of it. He was not a man to seek difficulties, and he had a smooth tongue for them when they came, so what could have happened?

He had not returned to his room. Somebody else had picked up his luggage, using a forged note to do it. Whoever came for the valise hadn't dreamed there'd be a rifle and saddle locked up at the hotel. Folks visiting in New Orleans rarely came equipped like that.

Looked to me like the only lead I had was that woman he'd spoken to in the coffee shop--Mrs. LaCroix--the name was not uncommon.

She had been in the dining room of the Saint Charles, and Orrin had helped her with some difficulty. Now that would be like Orrin. No Sackett ever stood by with a woman needing help. Looked to me like the dining room was the place to start inquiries.

Missing two days ... I was scared.

Orrin could be just one of many to be robbed or killed. The only lead I had was what took place in the dining room and that might be nothing at all. Of course, there was that time, years back, when we came downriver with a raft of logs and had that shindig on the river front, but more than likely nobody remembered that. Still, a look along the dance-saloon route might turn up something.

Come to think of it, I had a friend down yonder. There was a woman down there, a mighty notorious woman now, from what I heard. She'd been a hard case even as a youngster when I helped her out a couple of times. Bricktop Jackson was now figured to be as tough as they come, a mighty handsome woman with a figure like nothing you ever saw, but a woman who could, and would, fight like the dirtiest waterfront brawler you ever did see. Bricktop was a thief, a murderer, and a lot of other things, but she would know what was happening along the mean streets, and maybe she would tell me.

There was a tap on the door. I took up my Colt and shoved it down behind my waistband, then opened the door. It was that Negro bell man that I'd given the dollar to.

"Mr. Sackett?" He stepped in and closed the door behind him. "I have some information, suh."

Well, I went down into my pocket for a dollar, but he wasn't hungry. He said, "Your brother had an altercation, suh. He exchanged a few words with Mr. Baston, suh."

"Baston?" Where had I heard that name?

"Andre Baston, suh."

He said it like it was a name I should know. When I looked puzzled he said, "Andre Baston is thought by some to be the most dangerous man in New Orleans, suh. He has killed twelve men ... in duels, suh; with pistol, knife, or rapier he is considered the best."

In some places that might not have meant so much, but New Orleans was no ordinary town.

"What happened?"

Briefly, he explained what had happened in the dining room, but it did not come to much. There had been some words, but it was purely a small matter, and, had anybody but this here Baston been involved, nobody would have paid it much mind.

"Those people he was talking to? Was their name LaCroix?"

"Yes, suh. It was. They are fine people, very fine people, suh."

"And the Bastons?"

This Negro was a fine-looking man of fifty or so, with an inborn dignity and obviously some education. His distaste for gossip was evident, but there was something more here, too. Now I ain't given to second sight, but feelings show through, and it was right plain that this man liked the LaCroix people, but not the Bastons.

"There are many Bastons, suh. Some of them fine people. Most of them, in fact.

Old Mr. Philip, suh ... before the war, suh, I was one of his people. He was a fine man, a fine man."

"What about Andre?"

He hesitated. "Mr. Sackett, I would have no dealings with him, suh."

"You did say he had killed twelve men."

"I said he had killed twelve men in duels, suh. There have been others, suh, when the arrangements were less formal."

Well, that didn't get me anywhere. Orrin had exchanged a few words with Baston and they had parted. If I could talk to the LaCroix people they could tell me what was said, but the lead did not look promising. It looked to me like Orrin had just dropped off the world.

Two days more of hunting and inquiring left me exactly where I was when I arrived. Now Orrin had been missing four days. And then I located the LaCroix family.

When I was shown into the library where they were sitting they seemed surprised.

Mr. LaCroix got up quickly, but he was a mite stiff, I could see. He was a fine-looking man, well up in years. "Mr. Sackett? I am sorry. I was expecting--"

"My brother, I guess. Orrin's a sight better looking than me."

"You are--"

"William Tell Sackett, ma'am. Fact is, I came to see if you had seen my brother?"

"Seen him? Of course. He sat beside us at dinner one night, and I believe Mrs.

LaCroix saw him at the coffee shop one day."

"Yes, I did. It was. A chance meeting but a fortunate one as I wished to thank him again."

"Sir? What happened that night? I mean, if you don't mind. You see, Orrin's been missing for four days."

Well, they exchanged a look, and it was a scared look.

"If you could tell me just what happened, it might help," I suggested. "I've heard a good deal as far as Baston is concerned, but what happened there in the dining room?"

Betwixt them, they laid it out for me, and all of it made sense except that last question about what happened to Pierre. When I brought that up they told me Orrin said he was interested in some mining claims out in the San Juans, which is about what Orrin would say to cover his reasons for asking questions. It might give him a lead on somebody who left New Orleans for the wild lands to the west, as it seemed likely to have done.

It began to look like Orrin had thrown that Pierre question in there on chance.

It was one of his lawyer's tricks, and it had taken Andre Baston off guard ... but it might have gotten Orrin killed, too. A body just didn't play games with a man like Baston.

"This Andre Baston now? Was he alone?"

"He was joining his niece, Fanny, and nephew at a table near your brother."

"And this Pierre they spoke of?"

"Pierre Bontemps. He was Andre's brother-in-law. He went west on some wild venture. Pierre was that way, always going off somewhere at the least excuse. He was killed out there, by Indians, it was said. Andre got back."

It still didn't shape up to much. Orrin had exchanged a few words with a man with a reputation as a duelist, and he had said something to which I gathered Baston's reaction was mighty strong.

A few more questions, and it began to look like when pa went west it was with Pierre Bontemps, Andre Baston, and some others. I had no idea how many others and who they were.

After a little more talk I got into a carriage and returned to the Saint Charles. When I stepped down from the carriage, Hippo Swan was standing on the curb opposite the hotel. And when I saw him I remembered where I'd heard the name Baston before. The girl in the coffee shop had said he had once worked for someone named Baston.

When I reached the door, I glanced back. Hippo Swan was lighting a cigar, but he was holding the match up higher than necessary, or so it seemed to me.

A signal? If so, to whom?

Well, now. Chances were I was just seeing shadows where none existed, but it costs nothing to play if safe. Nobody had left any messages at the desk for me so I started on up to my room.

The window, I recalled, looked over the street out front. A body standing in that window could easily see a match struck down there on the street. Turning around on the stairs I went back down to the desk. The clerk was gone, but the Negro I'd talked to earlier was standing there.

"Is there anyone in the room adjoining mine? The one with the door opening into mine?"

He consulted the register. "Not at present, suh."

I put a silver dollar on the desk. "Could you let me have it for a few minutes?"

He looked straight into my eyes. "What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Sackett?"

"Well, now. I'm kind of a cautious man. It seems to me that one Sackett disappearing is enough, and if somebody was inside my room now, somebody who was waiting for me, he'd be likely to be waiting beside the hall door."

"It is likely, suh." He pushed the key toward me and my dollar as well. "Would you like me to call the hotel officer, suh?"

"Thank you ... no."

Turning away I started for the steps. He spoke after me. "Good hunting, suh."

I walked softly down the carpeted hall and opened the room next to mine, then ever so gently I put the key into the lock, careful to make no sound. I ran quickly around to my own door, fumbled with the knob, then swore softly, muttering something about the key.

I ran back to the door in the adjoining room and opened it suddenly.

There was a little light from the window, and the bulk of a man waiting by the door. A shadow moved as the door swung wide ... there was another man!

They came for me, both of them. They were big men and were probably considered quite tough. They came for me, one from each direction. I had my knife and I had my Colt, but the Colt seemed an unfair advantage, and no doubt there was folks asleep upstairs or around me. I stepped in to meet them as they came at me from two sides, but I hooked a toe behind a chair and kicked it in front of the one coming from the right, and, as he fell over it, I lowered the boom on the second one with a good right fist.

He was ambitious, that gent was, and he was coming in fast, so when he met my right fist halfway he was driving right into it with all the thrust of his legs.

There was a splat, then a crunch, as his nose folded like an accordion under my fist. As he hit the floor I kicked him in the side of the head.

The first man was starting to get up, but I was through fooling around. I put the point of my knife against his throat right over the jugular vein, and I said, "I don't care if I do or I don't. What d' you think?"

He was sure of one thing, and he didn't need to be sure of anything else. One twist of that blade and tomorrow morning they'd be throwing dirt over him.

He held right still. "For God's sake, mister! Don't kill me! I didn't mean nothin'!"

"Who set you up to this?"

"I don't--"

That knife point dug a mite deeper. A tiny push now and he'd be bleeding on the carpet. "You tell me. You tell me who sent you and what you were to do with me."

"Swan sent me. The Hippo. We was to lay you out and pack you out the back way and down to the swamp."

"Get up, then." I took a step back and let him up, and I didn't much care if he wanted to open the ball or not, but he'd had all he wanted. There was a trickle of blood down his neck and it scared him. He was only scratched, but he didn't know how much and he was so scared he was ready to cry.

"Take that," I pointed my foot at the other man, "and clear out of here. Next time you tackle a Sackett, you be sure his hands are tied."

He backed away from me. "I had nothin' to do with that. It was him," he gestured to the man on the floor, "an' Hippo. They done it."

For a moment I looked at him, then, the edge of my blade up, I stepped toward him. "Where did they take him?"

His voice was a whisper. "To the swamp. To a houseboat on the bayou. I don't know which one."

"Get out!"

He stooped, lifting the other man with an effort, and staggered out. Closing the door after him I lit the light, then I closed and locked the door to the adjoining room. There was a spot of blood on the point of my knife and I wiped it clean.

There was a light tap on the door. It was the Negro again. "The key, suh? I supposed you might be through with it."

"Thanks--I am. But I believe I've broken a chair."

He glanced at it. "I hope that wasn't all," he said quietly. He gathered the pieces. "A chair can be replaced."

"What's your name?" I asked him, suddenly aware that I wanted to know.

He did not smile. "Judas, suh. Judas Priest."

"Thank you, Judas."

The Negro turned at the door. "Two of them, suh? That's doing very well, suh."

"You saw them?"

"Oh, yes, suh! Of course." He slipped his hand into his pocket, and it came out wearing a very formidable set of brass knuckles. "We couldn't allow anything to happen to a guest! Not at the Saint Charles, suh!"

"Much obliged. That's what I'd call service. I'd better put in a good word for you to the management."

"If you don't mind, suh, my participation would have been entirely my own responsibility."

"Thank you, Judas."

He drew the door shut after him, and I dropped down on the bed. Orrin was in a houseboat on a bayou. That was mighty little to know, for there were dozens of bayous and probably hundreds of houseboats.

Orrin might be dead, or dying. Right now he might be needing all the help he could get. And I could not help him ...

Chapter IV

Settin' on the side of the bed I gave thought to my problem. I had to find Orrin and almighty quick. They had no reason I could think of for keepin' him alive, but Orrin was a glib-tongued man and if anybody could find them a reason, he could.

There seemed no rhyme or reason to it. Most killings these days started from nothing, some measly argument that suddenly becomes all-fired important. But even allowing for that there still seemed to be more to it.

When it came right down to it, I had little to go on, and nobody ever accused me of being brighter than average. I can handle any kind of a fightin' weapon as good or better than most, and I'm rawhide tough and bull-strong, but when it comes to connivin' I ain't up to it. Straight out an' straight forward, that's me.

Orrin had come to town lookin' for some sign of that Frenchman who had gone off with pa to the western mountains, and a small chance of finding it, yet somehow he had evidently come up with something. Then, settin' at table he had struck up conversation with those LaCroix people and a name had been dropped. Out of the words that followed, Orrin, always good at keeping a witness off balance, asked what had become of Pierre? And he struck a nerve.

Pierre had not returned from a trip to the western lands. Andre Baston had been on that trip. Andre had not liked that question about Pierre, so what could a body figure from that? Maybe he had run out and left Pierre in a fight. Maybe he had taken something that belonged to Pierre ... and maybe he had killed Pierre.

All that was speculation, and a man can get carried away by a reasonable theory.

Often a man finds a theory that explains things and he builds atop that theory, finding all the right answers ... only the basic theory is wrong. But that's the last thing he will want to admit.

Pa had left New Orleans for the western lands at about that time. The name Sackett had jolted Andre when Orrin spoke it. And right after Orrin had introduced himself as a Sackett and prodded Andre Baston with the name of Pierre, Orrin disappeared.

What I had to do now was find one houseboat where there might be four or five hundred, and the only way I knew to look was to head for Gallatin Street, and after that the swamp. I spoke reasonable Spanish of a Mexican sort, and a few odd words of French, picked up in Louisiana or up along the Canadian border. I'd need them words. New Orleans had been a French and Spanish city for nearly a hundred years before it became American, and a lot of folks along the bayous spoke only French, like along the Bayou Teche, where the Cajuns lived.

First off, I needed somebody who knew the bayous, so I'd start down yonder where folks have all manner of secret knowledge. Time was I knowed a few folks.

Somebody had told me Bricktop was gone.

Bricktop Jackson was meaner than a grizzly bear with a sore tooth and apt to be on the prod most of the time. There toward the end she hung out with a man named Miller who had an iron ball where his hand had been. One time he come home with a whip and tried to take it to her. She took the whip from him and beat him half to death, so he tried a knife, and she took that and fed it to him five or six times. Miller got tired of it then and up and died on her. They'd fit many a time before, but he spited her this time, and when the law came and found him they carted the Bricktop off to prison.

At one time I'd helped her a mite, not even knowing who she was, and I don't know whether that surprised her more than me going on about my business. Only she told folks I was one man she'd go to hell for. I think she went to hell for a lot of men.

But along the river a man meets a sight of strange people, and I never had no preaching in mind. I'd made a friend hither and yon, and it seemed likely there were a few down on the mean streets, so I went there.

The folks who decided what sin was never walked Gallatin Street in its wild days. Had they done so, their catalogue of evil would have stretched out a good bit, and we'd have a hundred commandments rather than ten. It was thieving, brawling, and murderous. There was the Blue Anchor, the Baltimore, the Amsterdam, and Mother Burke's Den. (The Canton House was closed after Canton kicked a sailor to death.) Nobody needed to hunt for a place in which to get drunk or robbed, and nine times out of ten if it was one it was surely the other.

Tarantula juice was the cheapest drink, two gallons of raw alcohol, a shaved plug of tobacco and half a dozen burnt peaches mixed in a five-gallon keg of water. If they stinted on anything it was the alcohol, but in the meaner dives they were inclined to add almost anything to make up the volume.

From joint to joint I went, keeping a weather eye open for a face I knew. All were familiar. I guess you could find them on any waterfront in the world, swaggering, tough, ready with fist or knife, and in Murphy's dance-saloon I struck it rich. I'd ordered a beer--his beer was usually safe--and was looking around when a tall, slim man with a gold ring in his ear came up alongside me.

He was a long-jawed man with yellow eyes, and he was wearing a planter's hat with a bandana tied beneath it and a brown coat with a scarf about his neck. He was thin, but with a whipcord look of strength about him.

"You can trust the beer, Sackett, and Murphy too, up to a point."

"Thanks," I said, "but can I trust a stranger with a ring in his ear?"

"I'm the Tinker," he said, and that explained everything to a man from our hills.

The Tinker was a tinker, he was also a pack-peddler who roamed the back mountain trails to sell or trade whatever he could. He was a man from foreign places who seemed always to have been amongst us, and although he looked thirty he might have been ninety. He had wandered the lonely roads through the Cumberlands and the Smokies and the Blue Ridge. They knew him on the Highland Rim, and from the breaks of the Sandy to the Choccoloco. Among other things, he made knives of a kind like you've never seen, knives sold to few, given to none.

"I'm glad to see you, then, for I need someone who knows the bayous."

"I know them a little," he said, "and I know those who know them better. I have people here."

The Tinker was a gypsy, and among that society he was held in vast respect.

Whether he was a king among them, or a worker of magic, or simply a better man with steel, I never knew.

"They've got Orrin," I said. "A man named Andre Baston's behind it, and Hippo Swan."

"When a Sackett breeds enemies," the Tinker said, "he never looks among the weak for them. They are a wicked lot, Tell Sackett."

"You know me then?"

"I was among them who rode to the Mogollon when trouble was upon you there. I rode with your cousin Lando, who is my friend. Where will you be if I have anything to tell you?"

"The Saint Charles. If I am not in, there is a man of color there, Judas Priest, you may speak to him."

"I know the man. And who does not?"

"You know him, too?"

"He is a friend to have."

The Tinker stood away from the bar and motioned to a man who loafed not far away. He put his hand on my arm. "This is Tell Sackett, a friend of mine."

"Of course," he said.

The Tinker looked around at me. "Now you will not be bothered," he said. "Go where you will in New Orleans but I cannot answer for the swamp or the bayous."

All around us was a sweaty, pushing, swearing, pocket-picking, poke-slitting lot, but now as I turned to leave they rolled away from me, and the way was easy. Among the crowd I saw the Tinker's friend and some others with him, and usually one of them was close to me. The gypsies had their own way of doing things in New Orleans, and there were always more of them about than one believed.

I was tired from my search through the dives. I turned back toward the hotel when suddenly Hippo Swan was before me. "Bring him to the Saint Charles, Hippo,"

I said. "If I have to come after him, you will deal with me."

He laughed, and glanced around for his men, but they had disappeared and there was an open space around us. He did not like it. He was afraid of no man, but something had happened here that he could not judge, for he had come with a half dozen men and now he was alone.

He had white skin, thick lips, and small, cruel eyes almost hidden under thick flesh. He was even larger than I had at first believed, with great, heavy shoulders and arms, and hands both broad and thick.

"I will deal with you, will I? I shall like that, me bucko, oh, I shall like that!" he said.

I did not like the man. There is that in me that bristles at the bully, and this man was such a one. Yet he was not to be taken lightly. This man was cruel because he liked being cruel.

"If he's harmed, Hippo, I'll let the fish have what's left of you."

He laughed again. Oh, he was not worried by me. I always thought a threat an empty thing, but in this case I had a brother to help, and if a threat might hold them off even a little, I'd use it.

"What's one Sackett more or less?" he scoffed.

"Nothing to you, but a lot to the rest of us."

"Us? I see only one."

I smiled at him. "Hippo," I said quietly, "there are as many of us as there need to be. I've never seen more than a dozen at one time except when great-grandpa and great-grandma had their wedding anniversary. There were more than a hundred men. I did not count them all."

He didn't believe me. Neither did he like the way his men disappeared from around him, nor the look of some of the dark, strange faces in the crowd.

Perhaps they were the same he had always seen, but suddenly they must have seemed different.

"I'll choose my time," he muttered, "and I'll break you--like that!" He made a snapping motion with hands that looked big enough to break anything, and then he walked away from me, and I went back to the Saint Charles and changed my clothes for dinner.

My new suit had come, and it fit exceedingly well. All the clothes I'd had since the time ma wove and stitched them with her own hands I'd either made myself from buckskin or they were hand-me-downs from the shelves of cattle-town stores.

It seemed to me that I looked very fine, and I looked away from the mirror, suddenly embarrassed. After all, why get big ideas? I was nothing but a country boy, a hill boy if you wish, who'd put in a few years and a few calluses on his hands from work and on his behind from saddles.

What was I doing here in this fine suit? How many times would I wear it? And what was I doing in this fine hotel? I was a man of campfires, line camps, and bunkhouses, a drifter with a rope and a saddle and very little else. And I'd better never forget it.

Yet sometimes things can make a man forget. Orrin had a right to trust women. He was easy to look at, and he had a foot for the dancing and an ear for the music and a voice to charm the beaver out of their ponds.

None of that was true of me. I was a big, homely man with wide shoulders, big hands, and a face like a wedge: hard cheekbones, and a few scars picked up from places where I shouldn't have been, maybe. I had scars on my heart, too, from the few times I'd won, only to lose again.

Soft carpets and white linen and the gleam of expensive glass and silver, they weren't for the likes of me. I was a man born to the smell of pine knots burning, to sleeping under the stars or under a chuck wagon, maybe, or to the smell of branding fires or powder-smoke.

Yet I polished my boots some, and slicked back my hair as best I could, and, with a twist at my mustache, I went down the stairs to the dining room.

The traps that life lays for a man are not always of steel, nor is the bait what he'd expect. When I came through the door she was setting there alone, and when she looked up at me her eyes seemed to widen and a sort of half-smile trembled on her lips.

She was beautiful, so beautiful I felt my heart ache with the sight of her.

Suddenly scared, I made a start to turn away, but she got to her feet quickly but gracefully, and she said, "Mr. Sackett? William Tell Sackett?"

"Yes, ma'am." I twisted my hat in my hands. "Yes, ma'am. I was just aimin' to set for supper. Have you had yours yet?"

"I was waiting for you," she said, and dropped her eyes. "I am afraid you'll think me very bold, but I..."

"No such thing," I said. I drew back a chair for her.

"I surely dread eatin' supper alone. Seems to me I'm the only one alone, most of the time."

"Have you been alone a lot, Mr. Sackett?" She looked up at me out of those big, soft eyes and I couldn't swallow. Not hardly.

"Yes, ma'am. I've traveled wild country a sight, and away out in the mountains and upon the far plains a body sets alone ... although there's camp-robber jays or sometimes coyotes around."

"You must be awfully brave."

"No, ma'am. I just don't know no better. It comes natural when you've growed--grown-up with it."

My collar felt tight, but then I never did like them stiff collars. They chafed my neck. My gun had twisted over on my belly and was gouging me. I could feel the sweat on my forehead and I desperately wanted to wipe it away.

"Your face looks so--so hard! I mean the skin! Like mahogany."

"It ain't much," I said, "although it cuts less than most. Why, I mind the time--"

Well, I caught myself in time. That there was no story for a genteel girl like this here. She suddenly put her hand up to my face.

"Do you mind? I just have to see if it's as hard as it looks!" Her hand was soft, like the feathers on a dove. I could feel my heart pounding, and I was afraid she'd hear it. It had been a long time since any woman made up to me like that.

Suddenly somebody was beside the table. "Mr. Sackett, suh? A message for you, suh." And then in a slightly different tone, he said, and it was Judas talkin', "How do you do, Miss Baston?"

Chapter V

That name did just what Judas figured it would do and brought me right down out of the clouds. He shot down my balloon with one word, and it was well he did so, because it was only filled with hot air, anyway. No girl like this one would set her cap for a man like me unless there was double-dealing in it.

She smiled just as brightly, but it seemed to me there was a mean kind of anger in her eyes. Right then she could have shot Judas Priest.

For a moment there I forgot the message I had in my hand, but it was Fanny Baston who brought my attention back to it.

Judas had disappeared without even getting a reply from her, but I reckon he wasn't expecting one. Miss Baston glanced at the note in my hand. "Something always interrupts whenever I start talkin' to a good-looking man, Mr. Sackett.

You can attend to that later, if you don't mind."

I just smiled at her. I had my good sense back now, or part of it. "It might be important."

Unfolding the note, I read: Absinthe House. 11 o'clock tonight. And it was signed with a profile of the Tinker. One quick, but amazingly lifelike line.

I folded the note and put it in my shirt pocket and buttoned down the flap. I had a feeling she was itching to put her dainty white hands on it. She'd get it only over my dead body. I had a feeling she'd thought of that, too.

"I was lookin' forward to meetin' you, ma'am," I said, and then I lied to her.

"Orrin, he said he'd met you and was plannin' to see you soon."

Her eyelids flickered with annoyance. She had not expected that, but folks who deal in crime should recall that folks like to talk, and will tell most everything, given a chance. She had no way of knowing that I hadn't seen or heard from Orrin.

"I am afraid you have gathered the wrong impression," she said. "I only met your brother briefly, but I found him most attractive. As a matter of fact, that was why I came here tonight. He was to have called on us and did not, and then they told me you were here. Where is your brother?"

"I was just goin' to ask you that question, ma'am. He's a man never fails to keep an appointment, so something serious must have happened. We had some business here in town."

"If we could help, Mr. Sackett, you have only to ask. We have many friends here.

Our people have lived in New Orleans since shortly after it was founded."

"Must have been mighty hard on the menfolks back in those times," I said. "There weren't many women around. Not until they sent in the correction girls."

Bienville, when he was governor down here and had girls sent in from France to make wives for his men, got a shipload of eighty-eight or nine girls from a prison or "house of correction" in Paris. They were a bad lot, causing no end of trouble, so after that they shipped in some girls from the better classes, each of which was given a small chest of clothing and what not. These were a good lot of girls, serious and skilled at making a home, and they were called filles A la cassette--the casket girls.

Now as New Orleans folks have told me, nobody wanted to claim a correction girl as an ancestor, so the way it sounds all those girls died without issue, as the saying goes. And everybody who claims ancestry from those days claims a casket girl. This I knew from talk I'd heard, but I played it like I never heard of casket girls.

"No reason why some of those correction girls shouldn't have turned out all right," I said. "You've no reason to be shamed by it."

Her face flushed angrily and she said sharply, "We had nothing to do with correction girls, Mr. Sackett! The Bastons descended from a very fine family--"

"I've no doubt," I agreed. "Anyway, a mill doesn't turn on water that's past, and no doubt your folks are contributing a great deal to the welfare of Louisiana right now. Why, I'd say there's probably a number of upstanding citizens among them."

From all I'd heard I knew the family had pretty much gone to seed. Philip was the only one folks seemed to respect. The others had pride, an old home, and a willingness to do anything as long as it wasn't work. One branch of the family had turned out honorable men, planters, public servants, soldiers, and the like; the other, and that was the line Andre and Fanny belonged to, had turned to gambling, spending, slave trading in the days when they could, and a lot of questionable activities.

Fanny Baston did not like me. I could see that plain, and she was very rapidly beginning to wish she'd never come here on what was, I suspected, a kind of fishing expedition.

Yet she stuck to the job, I'll give her that. "If you have business we would be glad to help. Would you mind telling me what it is?"

Now I'd been giving thought to all of this, and it seemed to me there could be only two reasons for the Bastons getting all heated up. They were afraid we were trying to discover something or uncover something.

They'd likely not be interested unless there was money in it. Pa had taken off to the western mountains with Pierre ... for what?

It looked to me like Pierre knew, or thought he knew, where there was gold. From the fact that the trip was supposed to be a quick one, the gold must have been dug already, which meant hidden treasure.

"As a matter of fact," I said, "Orrin an' me were trying to trace down our pa.

He disappeared down thisaway some years back."

"Isn't it possible that he's dead?"

"Surely is, ma'am, only we want to know. Ma's getting on in years, and she worries about it. I suspect pa went west guiding some hunters, if he didn't get himself killed right here in town. Anyway, soon's we find out we're going home."

"To Tennessee?"

"No, ma'am. We live in New Mexico now, but we're fixing to move to Colorado and settle in the La Plata mountain country. Some of the boys are already there.

Tyrel's in Santa Fe ... unless he's on his way down here."

"Here?" Seemed to me there was anxiety in her voice, and I guess she was wondering how many she'd have to deal with.

"Yes, ma'am. Tyrel may come, too. He's the best of the lot at uncovering things.

He's been a marshal in several towns out yonder. He's used to investigations."

We ordered some grub and talked of this and that for a while. It was early yet, and I had time to waste until that meeting with the Tinker. If he'd sent for me it meant he'd uncovered something, and it had to be something pretty positive or he wouldn't call me.

Fanny seemed anxious to leave Orrin out of it, and she chatted away, telling stories about the French Quarter, the old homes, and the plantations. "I'd love to show you ours," she told me. "It is a lovely old place, magnificent oaks with long Spanish moss trailing from them, flowers, green lawns ... it is lovely!"

"I'll bet it is," I said, and meant it. There were some beautiful places around, and as for me, if I had to be in a city, there was no place I'd rather be in than New Orleans ... if I had time on my hands. It had beauty and it had atmosphere, and as for the mean streets, well, they added color and excitement to the town.

"You mentioned Colorado," Fanny said. "Where do you plan to live?"

"Like I said, some of the boys have settled on the La Plata. That's pretty much down in the southwestern corner, just beyond the San Juans."

Well, I'm too old a fisherman not to know when I'd had a nibble, and I had one.

Just what it was about her expression I don't know, but I knew she was interested when I mentioned the San Juans.

Now that's no little string of hills. There are fourteen peaks that go up fourteen thousand feet or more, and that's some of the most rugged country in the world. When it starts to snow back in there you either light a shuck and get out fast or you dig in for the winter.

"What is it like? I have never seen a mountain."

Well, I just looked at her, but I wasn't seeing her. I was seeing the La Plata River where it comes down from the mountain country, picking up little streams as it comes along, tumbling over the rocks, shaded by trees, chilled by the snow water, catching the color of the sky and the shadows of clouds. The stillness of beaver ponds, broken only by the widening V of a beaver swimming, mirroring the trunks of the aspen, catching the gold of the sun. Canyons quiet as the day after the earth was born, heights where the air was so clear the miles vanished and the faraway mountains of New Mexico showed themselves through the purple haze.

"Ma'am," I said, "I don't know what it is you are wishful for in this life, but you set down of a night and you pray to God that he'll let you walk alone across a mountain meadow when the wild flowers are blooming.

"You pray he'll let you set by a mountain stream with sunlight falling through the aspens, or that he'll let you ride across an above-timberline plateau with the strong bare peaks around you and the black thunderheads gathering around them--great, swelling rain clouds ready to turn the meadows into swamp in a minute or two ... you let him show you those things, ma'am, and you'll never miss heaven if you don't make it.

"There's majesty in those peaks, ma'am, and grandeur in the clouds, and there's a far and wonderful beauty in the distance.

"Have you never looked upon distance, ma'am? Have you never pulled up your horse where your trail drops off into a black, deep canyon? Brimful with darkness and shadow? Or seen a deer pause on the edge of a meadow and lift its head to look at you? Standing there still as the trees around you to watch it? Have you never seen the trout leaping in a still mountain lake? Ma'am, I have, and before God ... that's country!"

For a moment she sat still, looking at me. "You are a strange man. Tell Sackett, and I don't believe I should know you long."

She got up suddenly. "You would ruin me for what I want, and I'd ruin you because of what I am."

"No, ma'am, I would not ruin you for what you want because all those things you want don't amount to anything. They are just little bits of fluff and window dressing that you think will make you look better in the eyes of folks.

"You think maybe having a mite more money will build a wall around you to keep you from what's creeping up on you, but it won't. Out there where I come from, there's folks that want the same things you do and will go just as far to get them, but all of them wind up on the short end of the stick.

"As for me, ma'am, I wouldn't ruin as easy as you might think. There's nothing you could offer me that I'd swap for one afternoon ride through the hills, and I mean it. Once a man has lived with mountains you can't offer him a home with a prairie dog."

She walked away from me then and I stood and watched her go, a beautiful woman, beautifully gowned. Never did I see a woman walk away from me but I regretted it. I had no woman now. Ange was gone. We'd had something fine there, for a little while. As for Dorset--she'd gone off and I did not know if ever we'd meet again.

Sitting alone, I had another glass of wine and thought about what was to come.

I knew the Absinthe House. It was a popular place in New Orleans, and a lot of the young bloods did their drinking there, and their meeting of each other. It was on a busy corner where two people meeting would not be noticed much.

I paid my bill and went out into the quiet warmth of the street. There were many people there, strolling, talking, laughing. From the cafes and the dance-saloons there was music, but I walked down along the avenue, hearing little of the talk, pausing from time to time to check my back trail.

At the corner where the Absinthe House stood there were many people walking back and forth. I went into the cafe, glanced around at the crowd there and saw no familiar face. As I turned, a short, thickset man appeared close to my side.

"This way, m'sieu." When we stepped around the corner, the Tinker was standing by a covered carriage.

We got in, the thickset man climbed to the driver's seat, and we rolled away.

"We have found him, I think. And there will be trouble."

"All right," I replied, "just let's get to him in time."

We turned into darker and darker streets. I recognized a sign here and there, and then at last we drew to a stop I heard somebody singing from a shack close by, a lonely, sad-sounding song.

Leaving our cab we started down a dark alleyway. A cat sprang away from beneath our feet. Somebody threw a bottle from a window and it broke upon other bottles.

We went up a few wooden steps to a small dock by the river.

All was still. No lights shone from this dock. From the neighboring dock, an open window cast a gleam of light upon the dark, swirling waters of the river. A boat was tied there, bumping against the underpinning of the dock, and on the shore a man waited. A dark man in a striped shirt that fit tightly over powerful muscles.

By the sound of his French he was a Cajun. He led the way down to the boat, and then we pushed off. There were three other men in the boat. I balanced myself on a thwart amidships and watched them hoist the small brown sail. There was little wind, but we caught what there was and moved out on the dark water.

We were off to find Orrin. Please God, he'd be alive.

"Quietly," the Tinker said, "it must be done quietly. They have more friends close by than we."

"You have a blade?" The man in the striped shirt asked.

"I do," I said, and no further words were spoken as we moved out along the river.

The night was still and warm. My mouth felt dry, and I was uneasy in the boat. I was at home in a saddle, but not here. My hand went again to the knife.

Chapter VI

The wind died, lost in the surrounding trees and brush. The only sound was the chunk of the oar at the stern. The water shone a dull black. Overhead a few stars showed themselves faintly in the ribbon of sky the trees permitted us to see.

We passed several boats tied up along shore, all dark and still. Twice we passed cabins where lights still showed, and from one came drunken arguing and shouting. We moved on, ghostlike, along the bayou.

I wondered if Orrin would be alive. There was small chance of it, although the Tinker, who had access to much information, believed he was.

I shucked my coat, wishing I had left it behind, but there had been nowhere to leave it. A man did not appear coatless in the evening at the Saint Charles.

"Not much further," someone said, and I touched the haft of my knife.

Orrin lay bound in the darkness. Now and then a spider or a daddy longlegs crept over his face. His shirt was soaked with perspiration, even where it had been stiff with blood. He needed a drink desperately, but the men who held him prisoner could not care less about his comfort.

They believed he knew something, believed he was after gold. Not for one minute had they bought the idea that he was only looking for information about his father. Somehow, something he had said had blown the lid off. He had frightened them. He didn't doubt that they intended to kill him when they had their information, so he had stalled, watching for a break.

They did not know his strength or agility. They had no idea of his skill with weapons and he had done nothing to lead them to believe he was anything more than a lawyer, a deskman.

He hadn't been taken in by Fanny Baston. She was beautiful, but there was something else about her, some unhealthy air that disturbed him. He had been careful. Every step of the way he had been sure that no one was behind him, that he was always ready. He had not suspected his drink ... not so soon.

Actually, although wary of trouble, he had not expected it. They were fishing to see what he knew, of that he was sure, and he suspected that when they decided he knew nothing they would bid him good night and that would be the end of it.

From the first, he had known that his mention of Pierre frightened them.

Obviously, something had happened on that western expedition that they did not wish known. That in itself was peculiar because jurisdiction would be hard if not impossible to establish, witnesses impossible to obtain.

From the idle talk over dinner, before things became serious, he had heard Philip mentioned several times. And Philip, he gathered, was well-off. Philip had also been close to Pierre. Whether they were blood brothers he had not grasped, but it was clear that there was a bond of affection between them.

The knockout drops were unexpected. All had been casual. Andre was at the table ... so were Paul and Fanny.

The drug was in the coffee, which was strong enough to cover the taste, and within a few minutes after he drank the coffee he realized he was in trouble.

But by that time his movements were slowed, his coordination affected. He tried to get up, but Andre contemptuously shoved him back into his chair. The last thing he remembered was their faces as they sat around watching him with casual disinterest, almost boredom, as he faded out.

Something was happening. A boat bumped against the side of the houseboat and men came aboard. There was low argument, orders, men running. Suddenly the door to the hatchway descending into the hold where he lay was opened. A lantern held high found him with eyes closed. The hatch closed again, and he heard the bar drop.

He could only guess what was happening. Either they were leaving here or they were expecting someone, and it appeared to he the latter.

In the bilge there was a little black, dirty water slopping about. Several hours before, Orrin had worked loose one of the boards, then another. He had been soaking the rawhide that bound his wrists in this water, and the rawhide was slowly stretching. Already he could detect some looseness ... just a little more.

Now he hooked a slightly loosened cord over a nail projecting from where he had removed the board, and he began to tug.

Sweat broke out on his forehead and his body. The rawhide cut deeply into his wrists, but he continued to work and strain. Nothing happened, but the rawhide did seem a little looser. Again he lay listening, his bound wrists in the water.

He could hear rats rustling somewhere forward. So far they had not come near him. Given time, they would.

Above, all was still. How many men were aboard? There had been two, but now there must be at least four, and they were waiting ... waiting in the darkness, armed and ready.

It had to be Tell, of course.

If anybody was coming to help it had to be his brother, for there was no one else. Tyrel was far away in New Mexico, and none of the others were anywhere around as far as he knew.

Rousing himself, he strained against the rawhide. Then he hooked it over the nail again and chafed it against the nailhead. The minutes passed. He worked, strained, tugged against the nail, and soaked the rawhide. He tried to turn his wrists inside the thongs, and they turned, ever so slightly.

Something furry brushed near him and he made a violent movement of repulsion.

The rat went scurrying. He hooked the thong over the nail again and jerked and tugged. Suddenly, something gave. The strain on his wrists slackened. He shook his wrists, twisted them, and the thongs came free.

He brought his hands around in front of him. His wrists were raw and bloody, the cuffs on his shirt were bloodstained. He opened and closed his hands--they worked.

Swiftly, he went to work on his ankles. Topside all was still ... he must remember that. In this quiet they could hear any unusual movement. He had no weapon, but he stood up slowly, making a noose of the rawhide. The piece from his ankles was all of five feet long. He tucked it into his belt and picked up one of the loose boards.

Not heavy. About six feet long and one by four inches. Not what he would like, but useful. He stretched his muscles and moved closer to the hatch. There was a door, then four steps to the deck. He moaned ... then again.

There was a stir topside. He grunted, thumped the deck, and then he heard soft footsteps. He heard fumbling with the hasp on the outside of the door, then a low call. "Hurry, Jake! Here they come!"

The door opened and the man with the lantern leaned forward and extended the lantern, peering into the dark hold.

With all the force he could muster, Orrin smashed him in the face with the end of the board, driving it with two hands, like a lance.

The man screamed and toppled over backward, his lantern falling, breaking, and spilling kerosene all over the steps. Flames sprang up, but Orrin leaped over them and lunged up the steps.

Somebody out on the water yelled, "Back off! Back off!" There was the roar of a shotgun. Orrin lifted the fallen man from the deck, slammed him against the bulkhead, and ripped a gun and a knife from his belt. He knocked the man sprawling and ran for the rail.

A huge man rushed around the corner and Orrin struck out with his fist, the fist that gripped the knife. The blow was wild, but it connected solidly, and he cut back and down with the blade. He felt cloth tear, heard a grunt of pain. A teeth-rattling blow caught him on the side of the head.

Orrin staggered, swung again, and then, knife still in hand, went over the rail into the water. Meanwhile, he was conscious of several gunshots, and a second bellow of the shotgun.

He came up in the dark water, felt the smack of a bullet on the water near him, then went under, turning at right angles. But he had seen the boat, and he struck out for it, swimming strongly.

His head came above water, and he said, "Tell!" in a low but carrying voice.

Instantly, the boat turned toward him. He dove, coming up on the far side. He grasped the gunwale of the boat. He saw the mast, several men, and light reflected on gun barrels. In the houseboat beyond, flames were leaping from the hatch and they could see men running with buckets, trying to put out the fire.

"Tell?" he whispered again.

"Orrin, damn you, when you get in be careful where you set. I got a new suit-coat folded on that seat, yonder."

Hands helped him in, and then the oar began, sculling the boat further away on the dark water. Orrin's head still buzzed with the blow he had received, and the raw flesh on his wrists was stinging with salt from the water.

"Anybody got anything to drink? I haven't had a swallow since morning time."

Somebody handed him a bottle. He drank. "Burgundy," he said, "but a poor year."

"What happened to you?" I said. "You've been missing for days."

Orrin chuckled, drank again, and said, "Well, you see there was this girl--"

"I met her."

"I'll bet. But did you ever see that house she lives in? All white, with pillars yet, and great big oaks all around, and lawns, and--"

"What happened?" I repeated.

"We had a nice drink, and then dinner. By that time I wanted to return to the hotel. We had coffee and when I came out of it I was on that houseboat yonder and they were asking me questions about Colorado--about something hidden there.

"What could I tell them? All we're looking for is pa, but they wouldn't believe that. They beat me around a little, but not near as much as you did a few times back home when we were tussling. They figured on using some red-hot irons next time, so I decided it was time I left."

He drank again. "I've heard of southern hospitality, but this is going too far."

A little breeze came in from the sea and we hoisted our sail. I picked up my coat and held it in my lap.

Setting there in the boat, I listened to the low rumble of talk between the men.

Somebody had warned the men on the houseboat and they had been waiting for us.

Only the scream of the man Orrin hit had warned us. As it was, they had shot too soon when we were still only a shadow on the water, and their old-fashioned guns had scattered shot too quickly.

Despite our precautions, we had been followed. Somebody had seen us leave, and they had brought word to the houseboat by some shorter route through the bayous.

Had Orrin made his break an instant later we'd have been within sight and range, and some of us, perhaps all, would be feeding the fish and the 'gators.

"Tell," Orrin edged closer in the boat. "We've stirred up more than we know.

There's been something lying quiet down here ever since pa disappeared, and we've upset the applecart."

"We'd better leave," I suggested. "It ain't worth getting killed over. Not just to find out what happened twenty years ago."

"Before we leave we'll make a call on Philip Baston. I think he could tell us something."

Well, we could do that, but I wanted to leave. New Orleans had always been a favorite town for me, but this time we just weren't likely to have much fun.

Yet what had happened those long years ago? And what did it have to do with us, and with pa? Somebody wanted to keep us from stirring muddy waters, but they also suspected we were here for some other purpose than hunting for pa.

Nobody was around when we tied our boat to the old dark wharf and came ashore.

The Tinker and Tomas, the man in the striped shirt, walked along with us to the Saint Charles.

It was almost daybreak and there was nobody about, and I was just as pleased.

Neither me nor Orrin looked like anybody you would expect to see at such an elegant hotel, but nobody saw us as we came in.

We'd slept maybe an hour when there was a discreet tapping on the door. It was Judas Priest. "I've drawn a bath," he said, "and if you will, gentlemen, take no more time than you need. Meanwhile, I will brush and press your clothing."

"What's up?"

"The law," he said gently. "The law will wish to talk to you. I suggest you look and talk as innocently as possible. It is easier to get into prison here than to get out, and Andre Baston still has friends in town."

He took out his watch. "At best you have an hour. Probably less."

An hour later we were seated in the dining room, bathed, shaved, and combed. Our clothing was pressed, our manner calm. Each of us was reading a newspaper when the law came in.

Chapter VII

The man who approached our table was short, thickset, and dapper, but there was about him an air of competence, as Orrin said. He looked to me like a tough man to handle in a brawl.

He glanced at a paper in his hand. "Orrin and William T. Sackett?"

"That is correct, sir," Orrin said, folding his paper. "What can I do for you?"

"My name is Barres. I am a police officer."

Orrin smiled. "It is always a pleasure to meet another officer of the law."

Barres was surprised. "You're an officer?"

"An attorney, if you will. However, both my brother and myself have been marshals or deputy sheriffs out west."

"I was not aware of that. You are in town on business?"

"Legal business, actually." Orrin took a coffee cup from the next table and filled it from our coffeepot. "We are looking into the question of our father's death. It was some years ago, but there is an estate involved and we are doing our best to ascertain the facts."

"I see." Barres seemed to be searching for an approach. He looked at the cuts and bruises on Orrin's face. "What happened to you?"

"Let us put it this way, Mr. Barres, we do not intend to prefer charges unless charges are preferred against us."

Barres sipped some coffee. "There was some sort of a shooting on the river last night. Can you tell me anything about it?"

"Off the record, Mr. Barres, I was kidnapped, held in a houseboat on a bayou for several days, threatened often, and beaten several times. I escaped, and while I was escaping shots were fired."

"Could you identify any of those involved?"

"Certainly. I can identify almost all of them. And, if it comes to a matter of a trial, I can produce evidence as well as witnesses."

Barres was disturbed. He had come here under orders to make an inquiry and probably an arrest. Certain powers in the parish would prefer to have both Sacketts behind bars, and at once. They would also prefer to keep them there.

Barres was not in favor of such tactics, but in the New Orleans of the seventies such things had been known to occur.

Furthermore, he had been told the Sacketts were a pair of thugs from Tennessee.

For years most of the trouble along the river front had been caused by Kentucky or Tennessee boatmen, so arresting such men was quite in the usual order of business.

That they stayed at the Saint Charles was the first surprise, the second was their opulent appearance, the third that one of them was an attorney. Under the conditions, Barres being no fool, he chose to proceed cautiously.

"Might I ask where you make your home?"

"Santa Fe. Until recently I was a member of the legislature from New Mexico."

Worse and worse. Such men were not apt to be bluffing if they said they had evidence.

"Mr. Barres," Orrin suggested, "I came here to discover, if I could, who went west with my father. Almost at once I found difficulties arising that suggested to me that much more might be involved than simply locating the place of his death and burial.

"Now if this case goes to court it is going to create a scandal. It is going to cause considerable embarrassment to many people. We have one more call to make in New Orleans and then we expect to leave. To avoid trouble I suggest we be allowed to do just that.

"I have been in politics and I know that no political figure likes to be embarrassed or found supporting the wrong side. If such a thing occurs, he would have no kind thoughts about the officer who opened the whole Pandora's box."

"You're suggesting I drop the whole affair?"

"Yes. Within forty-eight hours we will be gone, and it is unlikely we will return to New Orleans for some time."

"Off the record, will you tell me about it?"

"Off the record, yes." Refilling his own cup, Orrin proceeded to outline the events of the past few days, beginning with his arrival in the city.

He named names, and he pulled no punches. "I suspect, Mr. Barres, that you are aware of the situation. These people are criminal of mind and intent; they are extremely dangerous because they believe themselves untouchable, but they are also amateurs.

"We wanted only information. We suspected nothing criminal. We wished to involve no one. All we wanted was the time of departure from New Orleans and the probable destination. I suspect that information could have been given to us by any of the Baston family."

"And suppose I were to arrest you now? This minute?"

Orrin smiled pleasantly. "Mr. Barres, I am sure you have no such intention. I believe you to be an honest man and a capable one. You are also intelligent enough to know that I am prepared for that eventuality.

"Two letters have been mailed. One before the arrival of my brother, another since the events of last night. If we do not contact my brother Tyrel in Mora within the next few days, he will initiate an investigation at the highest state level."

Barres chuckled. "Well, you don't forget much, do you? Also, off the record, Mr.

Sackett, Andre Baston is a scalp-hunter. He's got a bloody record. Dueling is an old custom here. Usually, a little blood is drawn and that's the end of it ... but not with Andre. He kills. I think he likes to kill."

"I've met the kind."

"What I am saying is, be careful. He may try to pick a quarrel now."

Orrin smiled. "Mr. Barres, my folks were feudal stock. We youngsters cut our teeth on gun butts. Tyrel and me, we crossed the plains in '66 and '67. If Andre Baston wants a fight, he has come to the right place to get it."

Barres shrugged. As I set there watching and listening, I knew that he, like many another man, was fooled by Orrin's easy-going manner. Orrin was an agreeable man, hard to annoy or offend, but hell on wheels in action.

"And the one man you wish to see?"

"Philip Baston. You may come with us, if you like."

"Me?" Barres was startled. "Mr. Sackett, you just don't understand. The only way I could get into Philip Baston's house is through the servants' entrance. If we had to arrest him for murder it would have to be done by the chief himself, along with the chief prosecuting officer. Philip Baston owns half a dozen sugar plantations, at least four ships sailing out of New Orleans, and a lot of buildings here in town. He's worth millions, but he's a gentleman, sir, a gentleman.

"He rarely leaves his home except to visit with an old friend or two or to supervise his properties. He contributes to charity, and he's ready to help with anything for the betterment of the city." Barres paused. "You may have trouble getting to see him."

After Barres took his leave, we finished our breakfast. It was nearly midday, and I couldn't recall a time in my life when I was still setting about the table at such an hour. Orrin, he done a part of his work that way, and usually had a book propped alongside him. Me, I was out yonder with a rope and a saddle and a bronc.

"Speaking of duels," Orrin said, "as the challenged party I would have the choice of weapons. A few years ago there was a member of the legislature down here who was seven feet tall--he'd been a blacksmith or something. He was challenged by a famous duelist who was much shorter. The big man did not want to fight, thought it useless, so he accepted the challenge and suggested sledgehammers, in six feet of water."

"What happened?"

"It amused the duelist so much he withdrew his challenge and the two became friends."

A carriage took us up the circular drive to the door. The house was a story and a half in height with six Doric columns across the front, the windows barred with wrought iron. Stretching out in front of the house as far as the bayou was a lawn scattered with huge old oaks trailing Spanish moss. There were azaleas and camellias wherever we looked. It was a right fine place, and old.

Orrin sent in his card and we waited, seated in high-backed chairs the like of which I'd never seen. For my taste, there was kind of too much furniture in the room, me being used to Spanish ranch-house styles which were spacious, roomy, and cool.

We waited a few moments and then Philip Baston came in. He was a tall man, although not as tall as Orrin or me, and slender. He glanced at both of us. "I am Philip Baston. You wished to see me?"

"Sir," Orrin spoke quietly, "we do not wish to take more of your time than need be, although I confess there's a restfulness in this house that makes me wish to prolong my stay.

"My brother, William Tell Sackett, and I are trying to locate our father's grave. We understand he left here with your brother-in-law, Pierre Bontemps, and we thought you might be able to provide us with the date and destination."

Philip Baston considered that, and then said briefly, "Your father was known to Pierre through an acquaintance who was killed. It was known that your father was familiar with the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, and Pierre asked him to act as a guide and to share in the results, if any.

"They left here twenty years ago, almost to the day. My brother-in-law and I were very close, gentlemen, closer I might add, than I and my brother. He wrote to me from Natchez, and another letter came from the mouth of the Arkansas.

"I believe they went up the Arkansas from there to Webber's Falls, but that is pure guesswork. From there it was overland, but at that point they were together."

"Pierre Bontemps, my father, and--"

Philip Baston hesitated, and then said. "There were four more at the time. My brother Andre, then a very young man, a man named Pettigrew, and another named Swan."

"Hippo Swan?" I asked.

Baston glanced at me. "Do you know the man?"

"He was pointed out to me."

He seemed about to say something further, then turned back to Orrin. "There was one other ... a slave."

"His name?"

Again there was a moment of hesitation. "Priest. Angus Priest."

Orrin got to his feet. "One thing more, sir, and then we shall be on our way.

What were they after?"

Baston looked disgusted. "They were hunting gold buried by a French army detachment that mined it earlier. Supposedly this detachment was sent in there around 1790, and I believe there is some record of it.

"The reports vary, of course, but the consensus is that they dug some five million dollars in gold. The figure increases with each retelling of the story.

I think Pierre and Andre believed the figure was closer to thirty million. In any event, from one cause or another the strength of the detachment was cut until a final Indian attack left only five of them to escape.

"Pierre had a map. Your father told him he could take him to the location. So they started out."

"Thanks very much." Orrin thrust out his hand, and Philip took it. If he knew anything of our difficulties with his brother, he said nothing about it.

In the carriage we set quiet for a time, and then I said, "The gold could be there. There was many a place, them years, where a party of men could mine that much."

"Do you know the country?"

"Uh-huh. No city man's goin' to find anything up there, Orrin. That's almighty rough country, and she's high up. You've got a few months each year when a body can work, and then you have to hightail it out of there or get snowed in.

"Landmarks don't last in that high country, Orrin. There's heavy snow, wind, lightnin', an' rain. There's snowslides, landslides, and the passage of men and animals. Only the rocks last ... for a while."

"What do you think about pa?"

"I think he took 'em to the hills. I think he took 'em high up yonder, and I think there was blood, Orrin. Andre and them, they're runnin' scared. Something happened only Andre knows of and the rest suspect."

"What could they be afraid of now? Us?"

"No, sir. Of Philip yonder. That's a fine, proud old man, and he has money. I think the rest of them hope to inherit, but likely he doesn't approve of them, and if he found some cause to suspect what happened to Pierre, well, they'd have nothing."

"I think they have some notion of going for the gold."

"Likely."

"What do you think we should do?"

"I think we should catch ourselves a steamer, Orrin, and go back upriver hunting folks with long memories. There's always one, a-settin' by somewheres who'll recall. We want a man who can recall."

"Tomorrow?"

"I reckon. First, though, I've got a little something to do. I'm going to have a little quiet talk with a priest."

Chapter VIII

We packed our gear in the morning, and we booked our passage north, and as much as I liked that wonderful, colorful town, I was ready to hit for the high country again. I wanted to see the wide plains with the mountains in the purple haze yonder, and I wanted to feel a good horse under me and ride out where the long wind bends the grass.

First I had to talk to a priest--a Judas Priest. And he was nowhere in sight, nor to be found wherever I looked. He'd quit his hotel job. They spoke well of him, although they looked at me strangely when I asked after him, and they commented that he was an odd one.

"What do you mean--odd?" Orrin asked.

The man just shrugged and would say nothing, but I wasn't going to leave it at that, so I caught up with another porter I'd seen around and I took out a couple of silver dollars, tossed them and ketched them.

When I asked my question he looked at me and at those dollars. "He took to you, mister. He done tol' me so. He thought there was a charm on you. He thought you walked well with the spirits, mister. He said you follered the right, and the evil would never come to you."

"Where will I find him?"

"If'n he wishes to be found, he'll find you. Don't you look, mister. He's voodoo, he is. Pow'ful strong voodoo."

Well, no matter what he was, I wanted to talk with him. The slave who had gone west with Pierre Bontemps had been named Angus Priest, and I had a hunch there was more than one reason behind the help Judas had provided.

We saw nothing of Andre Baston, nor of the others. I had an urge to go hunting Hippo Swan, but I fought it down. We'd promised Barres we'd leave and take the ache from his thoughts, so we done it, but I left not thinking kindly of Hippo.

The river was a busy place them days. We took a stateroom called the Texas, the highest point on a river-boat except the pilothouse. It was said along the river that Shreve, for whom Shreveport was named, had named cabins for the various states, and ever after they were called staterooms.

Now I've no knowledge of the language or anything. I'm a fair hand with a rope and a horse, with some knowhow about cattle and reading sign, but words kind of interest me, and many a time I've covered miles out yonder where there's nothing but grass and sky, just figuring on how words came to be. Like Dixie Land. For a time they issued a ten-dollar note down there in New Orleans that had a ten on one side and a dix--French for ten--on the other. Folks began calling them dixies, and the word somehow got to mean the place they were used--Dixie Land.

At the last minute the Tinker showed up and wanted to go along with us, so the three of us headed north for the Arkansas. The Tinker showed for dinner in a perfectly tailored black suit, looking almighty elegant like some foreign prince, which among his own folks he probably was.

We set up to table, hungry as all get-out. We were giving study to the card on which they'd printed what grub was available when a soft voice said, "Something from the bar, gentlemen?" It was Judas Priest.

"I have been wanting to talk to you," I said.

He smiled with sly amusement. "Ah? Of course. I shall be available later." He paused a moment. "If you gentlemen do not object, and could use some good cooking on your way west, I would be pleased to accompany you."

"Can you ride?"

He smiled again. "Yes, suh. I can ride. And to answer your question, suh," he looked at me, "I look for a grave as well as you. I also look for the reason why there needs to be a grave."

"Come along, then," Orrin replied. "And we'll take you up on the cooking."

It was midnight, a few days later, when we transferred from our upriver steamer to the smaller steamer that would take us up the Arkansas. Judas, in his mysterious way, had transferred too, refusing any assistance from us.

Orrin went to his cabin, and I loitered on deck, watching the lights, of the big steamer as it pulled away, churning the water to foam as it made the turn. In the waves thrown up by the paddle wheels there was a boat, a small boat that seemed to have appeared from the other side of the steamer. I watched it idly, but it was dark after the steamer's lights and I could make out nothing. A little later I heard the dip and splash of oars. The boat was pulling in alongside a keelboat moored below us.

It seemed to me that two men, perhaps three, left the boat. I was tired now, and walked slowly forward to our cabin.

The Tinker moved from the shadow of some barrels. "Did you see that boat?"

"Yes."

"Somebody could have gotten off on the river side."

"You're a suspicious man, Tinker."

"I am a living man, my friend."

We stood together in the darkness watching the water as our small steamer got underway. If we did not get aground too often we'd soon be riding out for Colorado. Yet river travel was a chancy thing, subject to sudden lows or highs along the river, unexpected sand bars, snags, and all drifting matter. A pilot had to be a bit of a magician to do it well, and navigating these branches of the Big River was doubly difficult. Nor did they dare to go too far upstream for they might suddenly be left high and dry as a sudden flood played out.

"Your pa, now. You never heard anything after New Orleans?" said the Tinker.

"We never heard from him from there that I recall, but my memory is hazy, and it wasn't long after that before I took off to make my way in the world. Then the war came along and blotted a lot of memories for us who fought."

We were silent for a while, listening to the river whispering along the hull.

There was a light on that keelboat downstream now.

"When somebody is around home there's talk, and the talk awakens memories, so a body has many a thing fresh in mind that otherwise might fade out.

"There are sons and daughters of the same folks who have altogether different memories, and each one thinks he remembers better. The last one at home, of course, has had his memories renewed by talk. I suspect Orrin or Tyrel would recall better than me. Especially Tyrel. He never forgets anything."

"Your pa may have been murdered."

"Maybe."

"I don't like the feel of it, Tell. There's something that doesn't feel right about it," he said.

"Could be Andre took off and left them in a bind--pulled out--and he's shamed Philip may find out and cut them off. From all I could gather, Andre, Paul, and Fanny have gone through everything they have. They're in a tight for cash, and they've got to set right with Philip or go to work."

"There's more to it," said the Tinker and went in to the cabin.

There was some stirring around on the keelboat aft of us. I didn't pay it much mind, only to notice.

The river rustled by our hull. The deck below was piled high with cargo. I'd seen these riverboats so piled with bales of cotton that folks in the cabins had to live by candlelight even at midday. That water down there had melted from high-mountain snows not long since. It had trickled down, pure and cold from up where the glaciers still live, where the rivers are born.

Soon I'd be riding where that water came from. Here it was muddy with earth, with death and plants and bugs, and with whatever man left in it. Far up there where the snows were the water was pure and cold.

No getting away from it, I was wilderness born and bred and never was I wishful to be far from it. I like to bed down where a man can look up at the stars, where he can taste the wind to test the weather, and where he can watch the wild things about their business.

When a man lives with the wilderness he comes to an acceptance of death as a part of living, he sees the leaves fall and rot away to build the soil for other trees and plants to be born. The leaves gather strength from sun and rain, gathering the capital on which they live to return it to the soil when they die.

Only for a time have they borrowed their life from the sum of things, using their small portion of sun, earth, and rain, some of the chemicals that go into their being--all to be paid back when death comes. All to be used again and again.

Feet rustled on the deck behind me, a swift movement, and on instinct I squatted quickly, turned and lifted with all the thrust of my legs into an upward drive.

I felt legs across my back and shoulders, then the weight slid off me and over the rail into the water.

He'd been wet before he fell, which meant that he probably swam over, crawled up on the deck, and came at me from behind with a knife or a club. He'd jumped at me, and when I dropped he just carried right on over, helped a mite by my boost.

He went down a long way because we were a far piece above the water, and when he came up I called down, "How's the water there, son?"

He made reply, but it sounded almighty unpleasant, so I just turned about and went to our cabin. Orrin was asleep, and so was the Tinker.

I shucked my coat and boots, took my gun close to hand, and peeled to my long-Johns. I stretched out on the bunk and looked up into the blackness. It was going to be all right. I was headed back for the mountains ...

When the little steamer tied up at Webber's Falls, we were the first ones down the gangplank. "They're in town," I told Orrin and the Tinker. "Walk easy and keep your eyes open. You boys get us some grub and supplies at the store. I'll wait for Judas and then try to find some horses."

When Judas came off the boat I told him to meet us at the store later and to watch himself. There was a livery stable and a corral down the street. Strolling along, I stopped and leaned on the rails. A man with a straw hat and bib overalls came over to me. "Nice stock," he commented.

There were a dozen horses in the corral; all but two would be useless to us. Two were farm animals, the rest Indian ponies. The other horses, the two I fancied above the rest, were still not what I wanted.

"Not for me," I shook my head. "Isn't there anything better around?"

"Well," he said, "there's a man with a ranch the other side of town. His name is Halloran, Doc Halloran. He buys cattle, sells them, buys horses, races them.

He's got fine stock but he ain't in the trading business."

He hired me a rig and I stopped by the store. When I explained what I was about, the Tinker said, "Doc Halloran, you say? I'll go along."

Orrin was still buying, so we drove off.

It was an interesting place. A log house of five or six rooms, a handsome big barn, corrals, a well, some hay meadows, and a green lawn in front of the house.

A tall, lean man came from the house as we drove up. A couple of Indian cowhands were at the corral. I started to speak, but the tall man was looking past me at the Tinker. A broad smile broke over his face. "Tinker! Well, I'll be forever damned!"

"I hope not, Doc. Good to see you. This is Tell Sackett."

"Where's Lando? Is he still fighting?" He turned to me. "Are you kin to Lando?

He won me more money than I ever won anywhere else. Fight? That's the fightin'est man who ever walked."

"He's my cousin," I said. "We Sacketts run to boys and fighting."

"Come in! Come in! By the lord harry, this is great! Tinker, I've often wondered what became of you. Figured you must have gone back to pack-peddling in the mountains. What brings you to the Falls?"

"Headed west," I said, "and we heard you had some horses that weren't for sale.

We also heard they were the best stock anywhere around."

"How many d'you need?"

"Three packhorses, four head of riding stock, and we want stayers."

"I've got what you need. A few years back, just after I moved up here from Oakville where I met Lando an' the Tinker, I swapped for an appaloosa stallion.

A half-breed Injun from up Idaho way rode him into town. On the dodge, I reckon.

"Well, I bred that appaloosa to some Morgan mares I had here, and wait until you see 'em!" He stopped suddenly, looking from one to the other. "You boys ain't runnin' from something, are you?"

"No. Kind of scouting my father's trail," I explained. "Is there anybody around who was here twenty years ago? Somebody who might have outfitted another party with horses?"

"More than likely they outfitted at Fort Gibson, right up the line. Those days nobody stopped here very much. This place was started by a part-blood Creek who came in here a good many years back. He took over the saltworks up the stream.

Did right well. But anybody outfitting for the western ride would go to Fort Gibson."

We finished our coffee and got up. "Let's see those horses," I suggested. "We've got to get back to town. Orrin will be waiting."

There were three of them, sixteen hands, beautifully built, and in fine shape.

One was a gray with a splash of white with black spots on the right shoulder, and a few spots freckled over the hips, black amidst the gray. The other horses were both black with splashes of white on the hips and the usual spots of the appaloosa.

"We'll take them. How about packhorses?"

"There," he indicated a dun, a pinto, and a buckskin. "They're good stock themselves, mustang cross."

"How much?"

He laughed. "Take 'em and forget it. Look, when Lando Sackett whupped Dune Caffrey down to Oakville I went down for all I had, and with my winnings I bought this place and my stock. I built it up and I still have money in the bank.

"Take 'em along, an' welcome. Only thing is, if Lando fights again, you write me. I'll come a-runnin'."

"Thanks," I said, "but--"

"No buts." Doc Halloran shook his head at me. "Forget it. Reason I asked was you on the dodge," he said, "because three hard cases drifted in a few days ago.

They've been sort of hangin' around as if on the lookout for somebody."

The Tinker looked at me, and me at him. Then we sprinted for the buckboard.

Chapter IX

Orrin didn't make it sound like much when he told us of it after. He was in that there store, and it was like most country stores, smelling of everything that was in it--good, rich, wonderful smells of new leather, fresh-ground coffee, cured hams and bacon, spices, and the like.

He knew where we were going and how we'd have to live. We'd have fresh meat from the country around us, and we'd have what we could gather in the way of roots and such, only that wouldn't amount to much unless we happened on it.

A man traveling doesn't have much time for stopping off to look or pick, so Orrin was buying sides of bacon, flour, meal, coffee, dried fruit, and whatever figured to be handy.

He also was buying some .44's for our Winchesters and pistols, and the man who owned the store took down a spanking new Smith and Wesson .44 and was showing it to Orrin.

Orrin had just put it down when those hard cases walked in. Now they weren't from the western lands, they were river men, mean as all get-out, but they didn't know Orrin. They'd been told they were to kill a lawyer ... now there's lawyers and there's lawyers.

Just like there was a dentist named Doc Holiday.

They came in the store at the front, and Orrin was back yonder at the counter.

He must have turned to look, as he would, but likely he was expecting the Tinker an' me.

Now those three spread out a little after they got through the door, and they were all looking at him. It was three to one, and Orrin spoke to the storekeeper out of the corner of his mouth. "You better get out. This appears to be a shooting matter."

"You know those men?"

"No, but they look like they're hunting."

One of them, who wore a tall beaver hat, noticed the gun on the counter. He had his in his hand. He smiled past some broken, yellowed teeth and a straggly mustache.

"There it is, mister lawyer. You better try for it."

Now that gun was brand new and empty. Orrin knew that, even if they didn't. He could also see these were river men, and while there'd been a sight of shooting and killing alonf the Mississippi, very little of it was based on fast drawing.

"If I reached for that gun, you'd kill me."

The man with the beaver hat gave him a wolfish grin. "I reckon."

"But if I don't reach for it, you'll kill me anyway?"

"I reckon we'll do that, too." He was enjoying himself.

"Then I haven't much choice, have I?"

"Nope. You sure ain't."

The other two men were shifting, one to get far over on his left. One of them was momentarily behind some bib overalls hung from a rafter.

"But if I don't want to reach for that gun, how about this?"

As Orrin spoke, he drew and fired.

Reaction time was important. The three would-be killers were sure that he was frightened, that being a lawyer he would not be a gunfighter, and that if he reached it would be for the gun on the counter.

Orrin had always been quick. And he was a dead shot. He fired and turned sharply to bring the second man in line, when there was the bellow of a shotgun behind him. The man farthest right cried out and ran for the door. He blundered into the doorpost and then almost fell through the screen door in getting out, a growing circle of blood on his back and shoulder.

The third man, who had been moving toward the left, dropped his gun and lifted his hands. "Don't shoot! For God's sake, don't shoot!"

Orrin held his gun ready. "All right," he said quietly, "move toward the door.

Your friend out there may need some help."

The man gestured toward the one with the beaver hat, who had a blue hole between his eyes. "What about him?"

"Take him out and bury him. Then if you want to kill somebody, go get the man who set you up for this."

"They said you was a lawyer!"

"I am. But out where I come from every butcher, baker, and candlestick maker has used a gun. Besides, haven't you ever heard of Temple Houston? He is old Sam Houston's boy, and a lawyer, too, but a dead shot. It doesn't pay to take anything for granted."

The man left, and Orrin turned to the storekeeper. "Thanks, friend. Thanks, indeed."

The old man was brusque. "Don't thank me, young man. I can't have folks comin' in here shootin' at my customers. It's bad for business."

That was the way it set when our buckboard came a hellin' down the street from Doc Halloran's place. We saw a man lyin' bloody on the boardwalk and another kneelin' by him.

The Tinker and me unlimbered from that buckboard and the kneeling man looked up.

"Don't go in there, fellers. That lawyer in there's hell on wheels."

"It'll be all right," I said. "I'm his brother."

"Who put you up to it?" the Tinker asked.

"A couple of dudes. We was to get fifty dollars a piece for you two. That's a sight of money, mister."

Orrin came through the door. "How much is it to your dead friend inside?" he asked.

The man stared from him to me.

"What about those dudes who hired you?" I said. "Two young men?"

"No, sir. A young man and a woman. Looked to be brother and sister."

"In New Orleans?"

"No, sir. In Natchez-under-the-Hill."

Orrin looked at me. "They are following us, then."

The man looked up. "Mister, would you help me get this man to a doctor?"

A bystander said, "We've no doctor here. The storekeeper usually fixes folks up when they're hurt."

"Him?" The man on his knees looked bleak. "He already done fixed him once."

Orrin spoke more quietly. "My friend, I am sorry for you. You were just in the wrong line of work, but if you'll take a closer look, your friend has just run out of time."

And it was so. The man on the ground was dead.

Slowly, the man got up. He wiped his palms on his pants. He was young, not more than twenty-two, but at the moment he was drawn and old. "What happens now? Does the law want me?"

Someone standing there said, "You just leave town, mister. We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard."

Judas came along when the shooting was all over, and we stayed the night at Halloran's. In the morning, once more in the saddle, we started west.

Four of us riding west, two from Tennessee, a gypsy, and a black man, under the same sun, feeling the same wind. We rode through Indian territory, avoiding villages, avoiding the occasional cattle herds, wanting only to move west toward the mountains.

We cut over the Rabbit Ear Creek country toward Fort Arbuckle. This was Creek Indian country. The land was mostly grass with some patches of timber here and there, mostly blackjack of white oak with redbud growing in thick clumps along the creeks.

We had grub enough, so we fought shy of folks, watched our back trail, and moved along about thirty miles or so each day. Arbuckle had been deserted by the army, but there were a few Indians camped there, trading horses and such. They were a mixed lot, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks mostly, with a few Pottawattomies. We bought some coffee from them, and I traded for a beaded hunting shirt tanned almost white, a beautiful job.

"Be careful," a Creek warned us, "the Comanches have been raiding south and west of here. They ran off some horses only a few miles west."

Glancing around at Judas, I asked, "Can you shoot?"

"I can, suh."

Well, that, was enough for me. He was no spring chicken but the first time I seen him top off a bronc I knew he'd been there before. He told me he could ride and he could, so when he told me he could shoot, I believed him.

As we rode out of Arbuckle and headed west up the Washita, I dropped back beside him. "Do you know any more about what happened than we do?"

"I doubt it, suh. Angus was slave to Mr. Pierre. Angus liked him, and Mr. Pierre was both a gentleman and a kind man. Angus was of an adventurous spirit, suh. He was a fine hunter and a man who liked the wilderness."

"Did you talk to him after plans were made to go west?"

"Once, only. He had met Mr. Sackett, your father, and liked him. Your father had very kindly advised him as to what he might encounter, the best clothing, and as to caution in all things.

"May I also say, suh, that he did not like Mr. Swan, and none of us cared for Andre Baston. Do not mistake it, suh, Mr. Baston is a very dangerous man."

We saw occasional antelope, and twice we encountered small herds of buffalo, but we did not hunt. This was Indian country and for the moment we did not need meat. We neither wanted to shoot their game, for this was on land allotted to them, nor to attract attention to us from wild Indians.

Several times we cut their sign. Comanches ... at least a dozen riding together.

"Raiders," Orrin said, and I agreed. Only warriors, no women, no travois.

This was all Indian country, about half wild and half friendly, and the friendly Indians suffered as much from the wild ones as the white men would. It was the old story of nomadic peoples raiding the settlements, and it has happened the world over.

Our camps at night were hidden, meals hastily prepared, and the fires kept to coals or to nothing at all. Judas proved an excellent camp cook, which pleased me. I could cook but didn't favor it much, and Orrin was no better than me. As for the Tinker, he kept silent on the subject.

We were coming up to the site of old Fort Cobb when Orrin, who was riding point, suddenly pulled up. A horse nickered, and then a dozen Indians rode over the crest of the hill.

Sighting us they pulled up sharp, but I held my hand up, palm out, as a signal we were peaceful, and they rode up. They were Cheyennes, and they had been hunting along Cache Creek. By the look of things they had been successful, for they were loaded down with meat.

They warned us of a war party of Kiowas over west and south and swapped some meat with us for some sugar. We sat our horses and watched them go, and I suggested we swing north.

For the next few days we switched directions four or five times, riding north to Pond Creek, following it for a day or so, then a little south to confuse anybody following us, and finally north toward the Antelope Hills and the Texas Panhandle.

This was open grass country with a few trees along the water courses, but little enough timber even there. We picked up fuel where we could find it during the day, and at night gathered buffalo chips. We were heading into empty country where there would be almost no water.

We came suddenly upon a group of some twenty horses, all unshod, traveling northwest by north. I pulled rein.

"Indians," I said.

The Tinker glanced at me. "Might they not be wild horses?"

"Uh-uh. If they were wild horses, you'd find a pile of dung, but you see it's scattered along and that means the Indians kept their horses in motion.

"The tracks are two days old," I added, "and were made early in the morning."

The Tinker was amused, but curious, too. "How do you figure that?"

"Look," I said, "there's sand stuck to those blades of grass that were packed down by the horses' hooves--over there, too. See? There hasn't been any dew for the past two mornings, but three days ago there was a heavy dew. That's when they passed by here."

"Then we don't have to worry," he suggested.

I chuckled. "Suppose we meet them coming back?"

We rode on, holding to shallow ground when we could find it. We were now coming into an area that undoubtedly has some of the flattest land on earth--land cut by several major canyons. However, those canyons were, I believed, much to the south of us.

I was pretty sure we were following much the same route pa would have taken in coming west. We'd switched around here and there, but nonetheless I believed our general route to be the one he would have followed twenty years before.

Their needs for water and fuel would have been the same as ours, and their fears of Indians even greater since this had been entirely Indian country in their time. The times when I'd traveled wilderness country with pa had been few, mostly in the mountains, when I was a very young boy. Yet I knew how his thinking went, for he had given us much of our early education, either by the fireside or out in the hills. He was a thinking man, and he had little enough to leave us aside from the almost uncanny knowledge of wilderness living that he had picked up over the years.

No man likes to think of all he has learned going up like the smoke of a fire, to be lost in the vastness of sky and cloud. Pa wanted to share it with us, to give us what he learned, and I listened well, them days, and I learned a sight more than I guessed.

So when we saw that knoll with the flat rocks atop it and the creek with trees growing along it, I said to Orrin, "About there, Orrin. I'd say about there."

"I'll bet," he agreed.

"What is it?" Judas inquired.

"That's the sort of place pa would camp, an' if I ain't mistaken, that there's McClellan Creek."

Chapter X

We spurred our horses and loped on up to the edge of a valley maybe a mile wide.

There were large cottonwoods along the banks of a mighty pretty stream that was about twenty feet wide but no more than six inches deep.

The water was clear and pure, coming down from the Staked Plain that loomed above and to the west of us. None of us relished that ride, but we had it to do.

"Marcy named this stream after McClellan," Orrin said. "He believed McClellan was the first white man to see it. Marcy was exploring the headwaters of the Red and the Canadian rivers on that trip."

"We'll camp," I said.

We scouted the stream for the best location for a camp and found it at a place where a huge old cottonwood had toppled to the ground. The upper branches and some leaves that still clung to them were in the water, but the trunk of the tree made a good break from the wind, and the other cottonwoods shaded the place. There was a kind of natural corral where we could bunch the horses.

First we staked them out to graze. The Tinker set watch over them whilst Judas whipped up the grub. Orrin and me, we nosed around.

The way we figured, we were right on pa's old trail, and we were wishful of looking about to see if he left sign. Now all men have their patterns of using tools, making camp, and the like. Time had swept away most things a man might leave behind, and this was a country of cold and heat with hard winds and strong rains coming along all too often.

This was likely a camp where they'd spend time. A long trek was behind them, the Staked Plain before them, and they knew what that meant.

It was a snug camp. When the horses had grazed enough on the bottom grass, the Tinker brought them in and we settled them down in the corral.

A man riding wild country keeps his eyes open for camping places. He may not need one at that spot on the way out, but it might be just what the doctor ordered on the way back. Camps, fuel, defensive positions, water, landmarks, travel-sign ... a man never stops looking.

We'd traveled steady, if not fast, and we'd lost time here and there trying to leave nothing an Indian would care to follow, yet I was uneasy. Too many attempts had been made to do away with us, and it wasn't likely we'd gotten off scot-free.

Leaving camp, I wandered off upstream toward where the creek came down from under the cap rock. It was good sweet water and there wasn't much of that hereabouts, for most of the streams were carrying gypsum, or salts, or something of the kind.

Andre Baston had evidently been with the parry when it reached here, so he would know of this water and would come to it. How many he would have with him I wouldn't be able to guess, but he would pick up some hard cases along the way and he'd be prepared for trouble.

The feel of the country isn't right, and something inside tells me, warns me.

What is it? Instinct? But what is instinct? Is it the accumulation of everything I've ever seen or smelled tickling a little place in my memory?

This is the kind of place I like. It is one of those lonely, lovely places you have to go through hell to reach. Many a man's home is just that, I expect.

Thin water running over sand-water so clear the whole bottom is revealed to you, and even a track left an hour ago may still be there ... like that one.

The track of a horse, and beyond it another. I waded the stream, following them.

A slight smudge of a hoof on the grassy bank, tracks going away toward the cliffs. I was careful not to let my eyes look that way, but turned and strolled casually along the stream bank for thirty or forty yards, and then I walked back to camp.

I stopped twice on the way back. Once to pick up some sticks for fuel, another time to look at a place where a rabbit had been sleeping. At camp I dropped the fuel.

Orrin had gone off downstream, and I had to get him back.

"Tracks," I told them. "Get your rifles and keep a careful eye open all around.

That was a shod horse, so they're here--or somebody is."

"How old was that track?" the Tinker wondered.

"Hour--maybe more. That water's not running so fast. It isn't carrying much silt, so it's hard to say. A track like that will lose its shape pretty fast, so I'd surmise not over an hour, and we've been here about half that time--maybe more.

"My guess would be they've seen us coming and they figured we wouldn't pass up a good camp spot like this. I think they are out there now ... waiting."

I took my Winchester, and I shoved two handfuls of shells into my pockets. I was already wearing a cartridge belt, every loop loaded.

"Take nothing for granted. They may wait until night and they may come just any time." Thinking about it, I said, "Make out to be collecting fuel, but sort of pick up around. Get everything packed except grub and the frying pan. We may move suddenlike."

The brush was thicker downstream, and there were more cottonwoods and willows. A few paths ran away through the brush--deer, buffalo, and whatnot. Moving out, I hung my Winchester over my shoulder by its sling, just hanging muzzle down from my left shoulder, my left hand holding the barrel. A lift of the left hand, the muzzle goes up, the butt comes down, and the right hand grabs the trigger guard.

With practice, a man can get a rifle into action as quickly as a six-gun.

Thick blackberry brush, some willows, and some really big cottonwoods. Orrin's tracks were there, and then Orrin.

He turned when he saw me coming. "Whatever happened, must have happened there--in the mountains, I mean, or on the way back."

"You think they found the gold?"

"Found it, or sign of it," he said. "Maybe it was late in the season before they located anything, and all of a sudden Andre or Pierre or somebody suddenly got the idea they should have it all."

"Andre got back, and Hippo Swan. They must have been the youngsters of the group."

Quietly then, I told him of the horse tracks and my feeling about them. We started back toward camp, taking our time and returning by a somewhat different route. We were only a few hundred yards downstream, but I'd caught no pattern to Andre's thinking, so I'd no way of knowing how he might choose to attack.

He was a fighting man, that much I knew, and I gathered that he'd not step back from murder. He didn't strike me as a man of honor, and from what I'd heard of his dueling and of his approach to LaCroix, I figured him to be a man to take any advantage.

"Orrin, there's no use in setting by an' lettin' him choose his time. Besides, we're lookin' to find what happened to pa, not to have a shootout with Andre Baston."

"What are you suggesting?"

"That come nightfall we Injun out of here, back south for the Red, follow it right up the canyon as far as we can go, then take off across the Staked Plains for Tucumcari or somewhere yonder."

We left our fire burning where the grass wouldn't catch, and we Injuned out of there, holding to the brush until it was fairly dark, then heading off to the south. For four mounted men with packhorses we moved fast and light and made mighty little sound.

By sunup we were twenty miles off, following along the route McClellan had taken in 1852. We camped, rested an hour or two, then turned west across the plains toward the canyon of the Red.

Finally the sandy bottom of the stream played out and the water was sweet where it ran over rock. The last tributaries must have been bringing the gypsum into the water.

We found a trail where a steep climb and a scramble would get us out of the canyon and we took off across country. I knew about where Tucumcari Mountain lay, a good landmark for old Fort Bascom. Twice we made dry camp, and once we found a spring. We stopped again when we met a sheepman who provided us with tortillas and frijoles. Our horses were taking a beating, so when we spotted a herd of horses and some smoke, we came down off the mesa and cut across the desert toward them.

Orrin eased his horse closer to mine. "I don't like the look of it," he said.

"That's no ordinary bunch of stock."

We slowed down to come up to the herd at a walk. We saw four men: three hard-looking white men and a Mexican with twin bandolier loaded with rifle cartridges. They were set up as if for a fight.

"Howdy!" I said affably. "You got any water?"

The sandy-haired white man jerked his head toward some brush. "There's a seep."

He was looking at our horses. Hard-ridden as they were, they still showed their quality. "Want to swap horses?"

"No," Orrin said, "just a drink and we'll drift." As we rode by I glanced at the brands, something any stockman will do as naturally as clearing his throat. At the seep I swung my horse, facing them. "Orrin, you an' the Tinker drink. I don't like this outfit."

"See those brands?" he said. "That's all full-grown stock, but there isn't a healed brand in the lot."

"They've just worked them over," I agreed. "They'll hold them here until they're healed, then drift them out of the country."

"There's some good stock there," the Tinker said. "Some of the best."

When Orrin and the Tinker were in the saddle, I stepped down with Judas Priest.

He drank, and then me, and as I got up from the water, Orrin said, "Watch it, boy," to me.

They were coming toward us.

I waited for them. They didn't know who we were, but they had an eye for our horses, all fine stock although ganted down from hard riding over rough country.

"Where you from?" asked the sandy-haired man.

"Passin' through," I replied mildly, "just passin' through."

"We'd like to swap horses," he said. "You've good stock. We'll swap two for one."

"With a bill of sale?" I suggested.

He turned sharp on me. He had a long neck, and when he turned like that he reminded me of a turkey buzzard. "What's that mean?"

"Nothin'," I replied mildly. "On'y my brother here, he's a lawyer. Likes to see things done proper."

He glanced at Orrin, wearing several days' growth of beard, his clothes dusty.

"I'll bet!" he sneered.

"Better fill your canteens," I told Judas. "We may make a dry camp tonight."

"All right, Mr. Sackett," he said.

The sandy-haired man jerked as if slapped. "What was that? What did you call him?"

"Sackett," Judas said.

The other men backed off now, spreading out a little. The sandy-haired man's face was pale. "Now, see here," he said. "I'm just drivin' these horses across country. Hired by a man," he said nervously. "We were hired to drive these horses."

"Where's the man who hired you?"

"He's comin' along. There's a bunch of them. They'll be along directly."

"What's his name?" Orrin demanded suddenly.

The man hesitated. "Charley McCaire," he said finally.

Orrin glanced at me. McCaire was a gunfighter, a man with a reputation as a troublemaker, but one who so far had always kept on the good side of the law. He ranched in Arizona now, but he had several brothers who still lived in New Mexico and Texas.

"Orrin," I said, "keep an eye on these boys. I'm going to ride over and have a better look at those horses."

"Like hell you are!" the man said harshly. "You leave that herd alone!"

"Sit quiet," Orrin advised. "We're just wondering why the name Sackett upset you so."

Well, I trotted my appaloosa over to those horses and skirted around them a couple of times, then I bunched them a mite and rode back.

"Blotted," I said, "and a poor job. They read 888 and they should read Slash SS."

"Tyrel's road brand," Orrin said. "Well, I'll be damned!"

Chapter XI

The man's face was tight. "Now, you see here!" he said. "I--"

"Shut up," Orrin said sternly. His eyes went from one face to the other. "As of this moment you are all under arrest. I am making a citizen's arrest. Under the circumstances, if you do not offer resistance, I may be able to save you from hanging."

"We'll see about that!" the sandy-haired man yelled angrily. "You talk to Charley McCaire! And there he comes!"

Judas and the Tinker had spread out a little, facing the cattle drivers. Orrin an' me, we just naturally turned around to face the riders coming up to us.

There were seven in the group, and a salty-looking bunch they were.

McCaire was a big man, rawboned and strong. Once you had a look at him you had no doubt who was in command. A weathered face, high cheekbones, and a great beak of a nose above a tight, hard mouth and a strong jaw.

"What the hell's goin' on here?" he demanded.

"Mr. McCaire? I am Orrin Sackett. I have just made an arrest of these men, found with stolen horses."

"Stolen horses?" McCaire's voice was harsh. "Those horses carry my brand."

"Every brand is blotted," I said calmly. "Three Eights over a Slash SS. That's Tyrel Sackett's road brand."

Now a man expecting trouble had better not miss anything. To the right of McCaire, there was a younger man with lean, flashy good looks about him--one of those men you sometimes see who just doesn't seem to hang together, and he was acting a mite itchy and tight around the mouth.

As I looked, his horse sort of fidgeted around, and I saw that gent's hand drop to his gun.

"McCaire! You tell that man to get his hand off his gun! There needn't be any shooting here, but if he wants it, he can have it."

McCaire's head swiveled around and his voice rapped like a gavel. "Get your hand off that gun, Boley!" He turned to the rest of his men. "Nobody starts shooting here until I do! Get that?"

Then he turned his eyes back to me, and, brother, those eyes of his, cold gray against his dark, wind-burned features, looked into me like a couple of gun muzzles. "Who're you?"

"William Tell Sackett's the name. Brother to Orrin here, and to Tyrel, whose horses these are."

"Those ain't nobody's horses but Charley's," Boley said.

Orrin ignored him. "Mr. McCaire, you're known as a hard man but a fair one. You can read brands as well as any man ... and those are raw brands, Mr. McCaire, and there isn't a horse in that lot under four years old, nor are they mustangs.

Such horses would have been branded long since."

McCaire turned in the saddle to an older man near him. "Tom, let's go have a look." He said to the others, "You boys just sit your saddles and don't start anything."

Orrin started to ride off with them and glanced at me. I grinned at him. "I'll just sort of sit here, too, Orrin. No reason these boys should get lonesome."

Boley looked past me at Judas, then at the Tinker. "Who are them?" he demanded.

"What kinda people are you, anyhow?"

The Tinker smiled, flashing his white teeth, his eyes faintly ironic. "I'm a gypsy, if you'd enjoy knowing, and they call me the Tinker. I fix things," he added. "I put things together to make them work, but I can take them apart, too." He took his knife from its scabbard. "Sometimes I take things apart so they never work again." He dropped the knife back to its sheath.

Judas said nothing, merely looking at them, his eyes steady, his hands still.

Charley McCaire was at the horses now, him and that segundo of his. He would be able to see those were blotted brands, but a whole lot depended on whether he wanted to see them or not. We could always shoot one of the horses and skin him to look at the back of the hide--they read right that way. Trouble was, I didn't want to shoot no horse and wanted nobody else to. Moreover, there was no reason.

The brands had been blotted, all right. They hadn't taken the trouble to burn over the old brand, just added to it. So a blind man could see what had been done. But supposin' he didn't want to see? To recognize the fact would incriminate several of his own men and would also mean a respectable loss of the cash money such horses would bring.

Charley McCaire was a strong-tempered man, and what happened depended on how that temper veered. Me, I meant to be ready. Horse stealing was a hanging matter anywhere west of the Mississippi and some places east of it. It was also a shooting matter, and I had an idea this Boley gent knew aplenty about how those brands were burned.

Suddenly, McCaire reined around and came back on a lope.

Orrin followed just behind Tom. When we were all together again, Charley turned to face us. "Ride off," he said. "We're through talkin'."

"Charley," Tom said, "look here, man, I--"

"Are you ridin' for the brand or agin it?" Charley's face was flushed and angry.

"If you ain't with us, ride out of here."

"Charley! Think! You've always been an honest man, and by the lord harry, you know those brands are--"

Boley's hand dropped for his gun ... mine was covering him. "You draw that," I said, "and when she clears leather you'll be belly up to the sky."

Nobody moved. "All right, Charley," Tom said, "I've rode for your brand for nigh onto twelve year now, but I'm quittin'. You just keep what you owe me because a man cheap enough to read those brands wrong is nobody whose money I want."

"Tom!" It was a protest.

"No."

"Go to hell, then!"

"That's your route, Charley, not mine."

Tom turned his horse and rode slowly away over the bunch grass.

My gun was still in my hand. Boley was pale around the gills. He fancied himself with a six-gun, I could see that, but he wasn't up to it.

"That's a mighty rough trail you're choosin' for yourself," I said casually.

"This is a flat-out steal, McCaire, if you can bring it off."

"Don't be a fool! We outnumber you three to one!"

"You better look at your hole card, mister," I told him. "I'm already holding a gun. Now I don't know how the rest of your boys will make out, but I'll lay you five to one you an' Boley are dead."

"Take 'em, Uncle Charley," Boley said. "There's only two of 'em. That nigger won't stand. Neither will the other one."

"If you think I won't stand, suh," Judas said politely, "why don't you just step out to one side an' let just the two of us try it?"

Boley started to move, then stopped, his eyes on Judas Priest's gun. It was a Colt revolving shotgun.

"Finally got around to looking, did you? This here weapon holds four ca'tridges ... an' if I can hit a duck on the wing I believe I can hit a man in a saddle."

Well, this Boley sort of backed off and flattened his hair down. A shotgun has that effect on a lot of folks. It seems somehow dampening to the spirits.

"Mr. McCaire," Orrin suggested, "why not give this further thought? We've no desire for trouble. As a matter of fact, this man here and those with him have already been notified of their arrest for possession of stolen property and an apparent theft of horses."

"You're no officer!"

"I made a citizen's arrest, but even so, every lawyer is an officer of the court."

Charley McCaire was simmering down a mite, but I had my doubts whether he'd changed his mind. My gun was one thing he could not sidestep. After Boley's move I had drawn without starting anything, and fast enough so that nobody had a chance to do much about it. A man could see that somebody was going to get shot, and Charley was smart enough to see he was first man up on the list.

"How do I know you ain't bluffin'? I don't know what your brother's road brand is, or even that he's fixin' to move stock."

"Unless I am mistaken about my brother, Mr. McCaire, he's on the trail of this missing stock right now, and unless I am again mistaken I would say you're a lot better off with us than with him.

"Tyrel," he added, "doesn't have the patience that Tell and I have, and I think he's every bit as good with a gun as Tell, here. Back home we always figured him to be the mean one of the family."

We didn't want any shooting. The incident had happened unexpectedly, and now a wrong word could turn that meadow into a bloodbath.

The next thing we heard was a pound of hooves, and into the valley came Tyrel, riding straight up in the saddle, young and tall in a fitted buckskin jacket of the Spanish style.

Behind him were half a dozen riders, all Mexicans, sporting big sombreros, bandoliers, and six-shooters as well as rifles. I knew those vaqueros of Tyrel's and they were a salty lot. He wouldn't have a man on the place who wasn't a fighter as well as a stockman.

Believe me, they were a pretty sight to see. He always mounted his men well, and those vaqueros rode like nothing you ever saw. They were a bold, reckless lot of men, and they'd have followed Tyrel through the bottom layer of hell.

"Looks like you boys found my horses," he said. He glanced over at Charley McCaire, then at the others. Tyrel looked better than I'd ever seen him. He was six feet two in his sock feet; he must've weighed a good one-ninety, and not an ounce of it was excess weight.

"You'll find the brands altered," said Orrin.

Tyrel glanced at him. Orrin said, "This is Charley McCaire, of the Three Eights.

Some of his hands got a little ambitious, but it's all straight now."

The vaqueros bunched the horses and started them toward the trail, then held up.

The Tinker turned his horse and waited for Priest to come alongside. Then Tyrel turned to his men.

"We're taking our horses back," he said, "and, at the request of my brother we're making no further move, but if any of you ever see one of these men near any of my stock, shoot him."

The vaqueros sat their horses, rifles ready, while the rest of us bunched our stock and started moving. Then they rode to join us.

Glancing back, I saw McCaire jerk his hat from his head and throw it to the ground, but that was all I saw, and I was too far away to hear what he said.

Tyrel and Orrin rode point, and I guess Orrin was filling in the blank spaces on the horse stealing and then on pa. I trailed off to one side, away from the dust of the horses and riders. I needed to think, and a riding man is always better thinking off by himself. Leastways, that's the way I think best, if I think at all.

Sometimes I wonder how much thinking anybody does, and if their life hasn't shaped every decision for them before they make it. But now I had to consider pa. I had to put myself in his place.

The gold Pierre and the others were hunting seemed to be in the San Juans, and certainly, the last I heard, there was a lot of it. Also, that was a mighty bunch of mountains, some thundering deep canyons, and a lot of high, rough country no white man had ever ridden over.

Galloway and Flagan Sackett had moved some stock there near the town of Shalako and set up camp. They'd established no proper ranch yet, as they were still kind of looking around, but from all they'd said in their letters it was our kind of country.

I'd been to the San Juans before. It was in the mountains above Vallecitos where I'd found Ange and Tyrel as well as pa had been through Baker Park and the country around Durango. Pa had known that country pretty well--probably as well as anybody could know it without a good many years up there.

The way I figured it, we'd take the same route north Cap Rountree an' me had taken when we went back up the Vallecitos to stake our claims. We'd ride north from Mora, go up through the Eagle's Nest country and E-town, then to the San Luis Valley and west on the trail into the San Juans.

Suppose pa was still alive, like ma thought? Suppose he was busted up and back in a corner of the mountains he couldn't get out of? Or held by Indians? I hadn't a moment's thought that such could be true, but pa was a tough man, a hang-in-there-an'-fight sort of man, and a body would have to go all the way to salt him down.

We camped that night by a spring of cold, clear water where there was grass for the horses. When everybody was around the fire, I took my Winchester and climbed to the rim of the mesa. There was an almighty fine view up there. The sun was gone, but she'd left gold in the sky and streaks of red, as well as a few pink puffballs of cloud.

Up there on the rimrock I sat down and let my legs hang over and looked to the west.

Tyrel had Drusilla, and Orrin had the law, at least, and most womenfolks catered to him, but what did I have? What would I ever have? Seemed like I just wasn't the kind to make out with womenfolks, and I was a lonesome man who was wishful of a home and a woman of my own.

Folks had it down that I was a wanderin' man, but most wanderin' men I've known only wandered because of the home they expected to find ... hoped to find, I mean.

Looking westward the way we were to ride, I wondered if I'd find what I was hunting. Flagan had said there were some other Sacketts out there. No kind of kin to us that we knowed of, but good folks by all accounts, and we'd fight shy of them and try to make them no trouble.

Glancing back, as I stood up to go back down the cliff trail, I glimpsed a far-off campfire, a single red eye, winking, but with evil in it.

Somebody back yonder the way we had come, somebody trailing us, maybe.

Charley McCaire? Or Andre Baston?

Or both?

Chapter XII

About noontime a few days later, we rode up to San Luis, and the first man I saw was Esteban Mendoza. He'd married Tina, a girl Tyrel had helped out of a bad situation some years back during the settlement fight.

"Ah, senor! When I see you far away I say to Tina it is you! No man sits a saddle as do you! What can I do for you?"

"We want to get under cover, and we want a good bait for our stock."

When he had shown us where to put our horses, he stopped to talk while I stripped the gear from my appaloosa. "Is it trouble, amigo?"

I warned him about the kind of people who might be riding our trail, and then I asked him, "Esteban, you've been here awhile now. Who is the oldest man in town?

I mean, somebody with a good memory that can reach back twenty years?"

"Twenty years? It is a long time. A man remembers a woman, a fight, perhaps a very good horse for twenty years, but not much else."

"This is a man--several men--who came through here headed for the San Juans and Wolf Creek Pass."

He shrugged. "It is a long time, amigo."

"One of them was my father, Esteban. He did not come back from that ride."

"I see."

Esteban started away, and I spoke after him. "These men who follow me. One of them was with my father then. You be careful, and warn your people. Start nothing, but be wary. They are hard men, Esteban, and they have killed before."

He smiled, his teeth flashing under his mustache. "We have hard men, too, amigo, but I will pass the word. They will know. It is always better to know."

We ate, but I was restless, and, good as the food was, I was uneasy. It seemed every time I came to San Luis there was trouble, not for the town or from the town, but for me. It was a pleasant little village, settled in 1851, some said.

Stepping outside I stood for a moment, enjoying the stars and the cool air.

Looming on the skyline to the west was the towering bulk of Mount Blanca. My father had been here, in this village. San Luis was a natural stop if you came from the south or the east.

The wind was cool from off the mountains and I stood there, leaning against the bars of the old corral, smelling the good smells of the barnyard, the freshly mown hay, and the horses.

Tyrel and his vaqueros came out. The men rounded up all their horses, and Tyrel said good-bye to me. They were headed back to Mora for the time being, and I told Tyrel that he would hear from us as soon as we knew anything.

Esteban came up from the town walking with an old man--looked like a Mexican.

"You must sit down, amigo," he said to me. "This man is very old, and he is much shorter than you."

There was a bench under an old tree and I sat down beside the old man. "Viejo,"

Esteban said, "this is the man I told you about, Tell Sackett."

"Sackett," he mumbled crossly, "of course there was a Sackett! A good man--good man. Strong--very strong! He had been to the mountains for fur but now he was going back for gold."

"Did he say that, viejo?"

"Of course he did not! But I do not need to know what he say. He speaks of the mountains, of Wolf Creek Pass, and I tell him not to go. He is wasting his time.

Others have looked and found nothing."

"Were they here long?"

"Two, three days. They wanted horses, and Huerta sent to the mountains for them.

They were impatient to be off, and of course ... well, two of them did not want to go. I did not think Sackett wanted to go. I think he did not like these people. Neither did the other man ... Petgrew."

Now I just sat quiet. Petgrew? Was it a new name? Or had I heard it before and not remembered? There had been another man, but what happened to him, anyway?

Was Petgrew the name of the man Philip Baston had told us about? More than likely. I remembered finally. It was Pettigrew.

"It is cold in the mountains when the snow falls," I said. "They would not be able to last through the winter."

"They were not there after the snow fell. They came out in time. At least, three of them did. The big young man whom I did not like--he came out. So did the handsome one, who was cruel."

"And the other?"

His thoughts had wandered off. "Cold, yes it is cold. Men have lived. If they know how to live sometimes they can, but food ... most of them starve.

"It is not only the cold. We were worried for them and thought of going out for them. Twenty years ago--I was a young man then--scarcely sixty years I had. And until I was seventy I could ride as well as any man in the valley ... better.

Better.

"Two of them came down, and I was over near the pass then and saw them coming.

"I hid. I do not know why--I was not afraid of them, but I hid. They rode right past me. One of their horses caught my scent. Oh, he smelled me, all right! But they were stupid. They do not live with horses so they do not know.

"They rode past, but they did not stop in San Luis. They went to Fort Garland."

"You followed them?"

"No, I did not follow. Later, I heard of it. This is not a big country for people. What one does here is heard of, you know? Somebody sees. It is something to tell when we have so little to tell.

"No, I did not follow. I went up the mountain. I was curious, you see. Like the bear or the wolf I am curious.

"Only two track--two horses. No more. I find elk tracks. Ah! That is something!

We need meat, so I trailed the elk and killed it, and when I had the meat it was late, and it was cold, and my horse, it was frighten--very frighten.

"To go down the mountain? The wind was rising. It is colder when the wind blows, and home lay far out across the plains ... those plains can be terrible, terrible when the wind blows.

"High up the mountain there was a cave. Several times I had sheltered there. So had we all. I mean, men from this village and the Fort. We knew of the cave.

"So I went higher up the mountain in the snow, and I reached the trail up there.

It was a mistake--or it was the good God speaking to me. On the trail were the tracks of three horses ... three? Yes.

"Now I had to take cover and build a fire to warm me. It was very cold. I rode down the trail to the cave and I took my horse inside. I put him behind me. And then I went with my axe to cut a tree. One must be very careful to cut a tree when it is frozen. It is easy to cut a leg. I was careful.

"There was a good tree close by and some dead branches. I pull them in, and I tug on another, and I hear something.

"There was a sound, a small sound. Not the sound of a tree, not a branch breaking ... an animal sound. I pull the branch again, and then I see it, lying over the bank ... a branch of the tree is there, too, but it is a horse."

"A horse?"

"With a saddle. The horse try to get up. He cannot get up because he lies with his legs uphill. If his legs were downhill he could get up, I think.

"So I get his bridle. It is frozen stiff. I take the bridle and pull him over, pull his head over and hope he will keep it there. I get a rope on him, go back for my horse, and with my horse I get him up.

"When he is on his feet I look around. Where the horse was is a hollow in the snow. He must have struggled and worked himself down into the snow. He would have frozen there. But a horse, amigo? A horse with a saddle? I explain to myself that a horse with a saddle and no rider is not reasonable, you see?

"I look. Further down in the snow, I see him. A man lying there almost covered with snow. Near him are some tracks.

"It seems to me somebody has made the horse jump. He is frighten, this horse.

And when he jumps he falls, and the man is thrown and hurt, you see? Then I think somebody walks down to where he lies and hits him again, then leaves him in the cold.

"It will look an accident, you see? A man thrown, frozen to death. I think they did not want to trust to shooting ... people wonder, you know."

The old man's voice was slowing, and he was growing tired. I sat there in the darkness thinking back. A man must have returned with Baston and Swan, and for some reason they had decided to kill him. A man left unconscious in the snow at such a time would have small chance of survival, yet the human creature is amazing. Nobody knew that better than me. I had seen men survive from impossible wounds, seen them walk out of the desert or mountains. I'd had a few bad times myself.

"You saved him?"

"It was cold. It was starting to snow, and the man was not big, but heavy, very heavy, senor. I could not get him up the slope. It was steep ... steep, Many trees and rocks.

"The man was cold--he was freeze, I think. I could not carry him up the slope."

I waited, knowing he had to tell it in his own way, in his own time, yet I could see him there at the body of the unconscious man. Up above was a cave, shelter for the horses and himself, a good place for a fire, and fuel for it. And down below there an old man standing in the falling snow.

A time or two I'd had to carry unconscious men. It was far from easy. Up a slope like that? Not many men could manage it. Probably not one in a hundred.

What to do? The wind was rising, snow was falling, and with the rising wind the cold would grow more penetrating. Maybe the man would die, anyway. Perhaps he was almost dead. Why risk his life to save a stranger who was dying, anyway?

"To climb alone would be all. I left the man, and I climbed up. It was only a little way--a hundred feet, I think, perhaps a little more, you know?

"I got my blanket roll and I slid back down. Then into the snow I dug a hole. I built high the walls of snow around us, and I gathered sticks and laid some down and built upon them a fire.

"I rolled the man upon my bed, and the night long I kept the fire going, and I was alone so I talked to him. I talked to this man. I told him he was a lot of trouble to me. I told him there was a nice warm cave above and because of him I had to sit in the cold. I told him the only decent thing to do was to live.

"It was very cold ... mucho brio, senor. I shivered, swung my arms, danced in the snow, but most of the time I collected wood. There were fallen trees on that slope. And just a little way from there was a tangle of branches.

"I tried to climb up again, but it was too slippery from other climbs, so I went into the tangle and pulled myself up from tree to tree. Then I made a fire in the cave. I must think of my horses, senor. They were good horses, mine and the hurt man's horse, and it was not their fault they were in this cold place. I built a fire up there, and then I climbed down, and my fire down below was almost gone. Again I put fuel on the coals, and it burned up.

"I looked at the man. I felt his arms and his legs. I moved them. Nothing seemed broken, so only the head was hurt. I knew the man's face."

"Who was he, viejo? Who was the man?"

"It was Petgrew. And he did not die. He did not waste my time. He lived, senor.

By morning he was a little rojo. His face, senor, was flushed, and his breath was better."

"You saved him, then?"

"Ah? It was the good Lord who saved him, senor. I sat by him and kept the fire warm. I kept the fire for the horses, too. Up and down, up and down ... it was the longest night, the coldest night, and I was afraid all would die. The man, the horses, me.

"We were high up, senor. Perhaps ten thousand feet. You know what it is ... the cold."

"And the man? Where is he?" I paused. "What became of him, viejo?"

He put a trembling hand on my sleeve. "He did not leave us. He is here."

Chapter XIII

Morning lay bright upon the town when we rode out of the streets of San Luis.

The sky was a magnificent San Juan mountain blue, with puffs of white cloud scattered about.

Sunlight touched the snow upon the distant peaksv and as we rode there were no sounds but the beat of our horses' hooves and the creak of saddle leather. We four rode out with Esteban, rode west to the little ranch on the Rio Grande del Norte.

It was an adobe house with projecting roof beams--a comfortable house of several spacious rooms, a long barn, corrals, and a few fruit trees.

As we rode into the yard a man limped to the door, using a cane. He wore a six-shooter rigged for a cross-draw. He was a stocky man with a round, pleasant face, red cheeks, and a tuft of gray hair sticking up from the crown of his head. His eyes went to Esteban and he waved. "Buenos dias, amigo!" he said cheerfully. " 'Light an' set!"

There was a measure of caution in the glance he gave us, and I thought his eyes lingered on Orrin's face, then mine.

It was cool inside the house. "Set," he said. "I am Nativity Pettigrew, Connecticut born, Missouri bred. Who might you be?"

"I am Orrin Sackett," Orrin said, "and this here is my brother, William T.

Sackett." He introduced the Tinker and Judas, then sat down.

"Mr. Pettigrew, you were with my father in the mountains?"

Pettigrew got out his pipe and loaded it with tobacco. He turned his head toward an inner door, "Juana? Bring us some coffee, will you?"

He glanced around apologetically. "Don't like to be waited on, but with this game leg I don't get around so well no more." He tamped the tobacco firmly. "So you're Sackett's boys, are you? I heard tell of you a time or two, figured soon or late we'd come to meet."

A pretty Mexican woman entered with a tray of cups and a coffeepot. "This here's Juana. We been married nigh onto nineteen year."

We all arose hurriedly, acknowledging the introduction. She smiled--a soft, pretty woman, and very shy.

"We're tryin' to find out what become of pa," I explained. "Ma's gettin' on in years, and she's wishful to know."

He smoked in silence for a moment. "It ain't as easy as you think. I took a rap on the skull up yonder and my memory gets kind of hazy. I do remember that Baston, though, and Swan. Must've been one of them hit me.

"My horse spooked. Maybe they hit him, burned him, I don't know what. Anyway, he was always a nervous one and he just jumped right out there an' fell. Last thing I recalled, until several days later when I come to in the snow with that old Mexican--he's Juana's grandpa--a-settin' by the fire, tendin' me like.

"Good man. Saved my life, so I just figured I'd never find better folks than these, an' I settled down right here. Bought this place off kinfolk of hers."

"You had some money, then?"

Pettigrew smiled. It was a careful smile, and he looked down at his pipe, puffed a couple of times, and said, "I had a mite. They knowed nothing of it or they'd surely have taken it."

"What was the last you saw of pa?"

Pettigrew shifted a little in his hide-bottomed chair. "He took us there, right up Wolf Creek Pass to the mountain, but there was trouble making up. Your pa, he was a quiet man, minded his own affairs, but he didn't miss much. He got along fine with Pierre Bontemps. The Frenchman was a fine man, a flighty one, but strong, always ready to carry his share and more. Trouble didn't develop until we got up in the mountains along Wolf Creek.

"Bontemps had a map, but you know the wild country--unless a map's laid out with care she ain't worth the match to burn it with.

"Whoever made that map made it quick, and either he made it with no ken of how things are in the mountains or he was figuring on coming right back.

"We located some of the landmarks. One tree, all important to locating the gold, was gone. One rock wasn't shaped like it was supposed to be. Sackett found the other half of it down in a canyon where it had weathered and fallen off. Upshot of it was, we never found no gold.

"I had trouble with Baston, an' I up an' quit. I took off down the mountain. A couple of days later, Swan an' Baston caught up with me. They said they'd quit, too."

Orrin sat staring into the fire, listening. Finally he put down his cup. "And you know nothing of what happened to pa?"

"No, sir. I don't."

I didn't believe him. He was telling the truth up to a point, but he was holding back on quite a lot. So I figured to shake him up a little. "It's ma we want to know for," I said. "She's an old woman, close on to her deathtime, an' we are wishful that she rest easy, content that pa's gone on ahead of her to blaze the trail.

"We can't let it lay, and we ain't about to. We're goin' to worry at this until we find out what happened."

"After so long a time you won't find anything," he muttered. He stared into his empty cup. "Nothing lasts much, on them mountains."

"Can't tell about that. I once found a wolf carcass in a cave that must have been there years an' years. My brother an' me, we're readers of sign. We'll find the answer.

"Fact is, I spent some time a few years ago over on the Vallecitos. I still have some claims over there."

He looked up, surprised. "Are you that Sackett? I heard of some shooting over there."

"I done my share. I came in first, and I was the last to go."

He seemed restless, and I had a feeling he wanted us to go. A couple of times I heard rustling around in the kitchen and I wondered how much Juana knew of all this.

Finally, I got up. Orrin followed suit, and Judas and the Tinker wandered over to the door. "One thing, Mr. Petrigrew," I said, "if you had trouble with Baston and Swan, you'd best keep a gun handy."

He looked up sharply. "Why's that?"

"Because they're comin' along right behind us. I don't know why they want to come back, but they do. They may figure they missed something up yonder, and they'll be asking questions around."

"What?" he got up, struggling to his feet, weaving a little, and if ever I saw fear in a man's eyes, it was in his.

"They're coming here?"

"Not more than two days behind us, probably less. Yes, they are coming, and if I were you I'd get myself out of sight, and your wife, too. Better not leave anything they can get hold of."

We started back to San Luis where we scouted the town for Andre Baston and Swan, but there was nothing to be seen of them. I was coming out of the cantina, however, when I saw a man down by the corral. He turned sharp away when I glimpsed him, so I took notice. He looked an almighty lot like one of the hands who had ridden with Charley McCaire.

That set me to pondering. McCaire was a hard-as-nails man, used to riding roughshod over anything got in his way. He'd lost the game with us, but would he take it?

I wasn't worried about him tangling with Tyrel. Nobody worried about Tyrel.

Tyrel wasn't the kind you expected would be taken advantage of. He was a fair man, and not a trouble-hunting man, but I never knew anybody as ready to take up trouble if it came his way.

If Charley McCaire hunted trouble with Tyrel he just had my sympathy ... him or his boys. As for Tyrel's vaqueros, they liked him, and if he told them to they'd damp down the fires of hell.

Of course, that puncher, if it was him I saw, he might just have quit and drifted.

Still, I was going to keep my eyes open and give thought to my back trail.

We would be pulling out with daybreak, riding west into the mountains, and everyone turned in early against the riding to come.

One more time I went out to the corral to take a look around. All was quiet. The house was dark, the horses nickered a little when I came close because I was always packing little odds and ends of grub for them. This time I had a carrot for each, and I stood there by the rail listening to them crunch, when I heard a faint drum of hooves.

Now I was wearing a shootin' iron. So I just sort of faded back against the corral bars and scrunched down by one of the poles to get sight of whoever it was before they saw me.

The rider slowed down, walked the horse into the yard, hesitated, then slid down and trailed the reins. It was a woman.

I stood up and said, "Ma'am?"

She turned sharp, but stood her ground. "Who is it?"

I knew the voice, and it was Juana Pettigrew. "Tell Sackett, ma'am. I was just checking my horses."

"Here." She came at me and thrust something into my hand. "Take that, and say nothing." She looked up at me. "You are good people, you Sacketts. Tina has told me of you, and my cousin once worked for your brother at Mora. I want to help, and it is wrong for my husband not to give you this." Then she was in the saddle once more and headed back. It was a long, hard ride she had ahead of her.

Inside the house I squatted by the light from the fire. In my hand was a large brown envelope like I'd seen them use for deeds and the like. It was fastened with a twist of string, and I opened it.

What I saw stopped me cold. It was pa's handwriting.

For a moment there I just held those papers in my hand, my heart beating heavy.

Pa's handwriting ... and pa had been dead for twenty years ... or had he?

Juana had brought this to me, which meant that Nativity Pettigrew had it in his possession. He knew pa had a family, so why had he made no effort to get it to us?

April 20: Weather bad. Hard wind, rain turning to snow. Snow still on the mountains but Bontemps is wishful to proceed. He's got enthusazm enough for two.

Don't like this. Trouble has a smell to it, and Baston's a hard man. I've had words with Swan twixt over the way he treats Angus.

April 23: Clearing. Trail muddy, grass very wet. Horses about stove up. Nobody knows mountains but me. They've no idea how miserable it can be up yonder this time of year. They won't show me the map. If it's like most it just is no good.

I read on. The paper was old and rotting and some of the words were blurred.

April 26: In camp. Third day. Trail belly-deep in snow, drifts very deep. Only the fact they couldn't find anything in the snow is keeping them in camp.

Situation growing touchy. Pierre straightened Andre out today. Thought there'd be ... Angus steady. Pettigrew talks a lot, does his work. No idea where he stands.

April 29: Moved on today. Ground soggy with snow-melt. Occasional sleet.

April 30: Showed me map. No good. Hadn't been for ma and boys I'd not be here.

Chance to get enough to settle down, education, home for ma. Landmarks poorly chosen, same from several points, important tree gone.

May 4: In camp on mountain. Three days scouting, digging. Nothing. Utes scouting us. Pierre won't ... Utes or lack of treasure. Swan sullen, Andre furious.

Pettigrew quiet, secretive.

Orrin raised up from bed. "What is it?"

"Kind of a daybook. Pa's. Juana Pettigrew brought it to us. I ain't read it all yet."

"Better get some sleep. I think we're riding up to trouble. Whatever's there won't have changed by tomorrow."

"You're right." I was dead tired. We'd covered a lot of country and tomorrow there'd be more. Pa wasn't tellin' much, but a body could see how touchy things had become. Swan an' Andre sore, Pettigrew kind of bidin' his time, and Pierre still unwillin' to believe he'd lost the pot. Only maybe they hadn't. Pettigrew come out of it with enough to buy a ranch and stock it. Now that mightn't take so much, but it surely cost something.

Stretched out in bed I pondered the daybook. Pa wasn't much hand to write. He'd had some schoolin' and he'd read a lot, although his grammar was only a mite better'n mine.

Why would he write that stuff? Was there more to it than met the eye? Was he tryin' to leave us a message, feelin' he might not get back? But pa wasn't apt to think that way. He was a tough, capable man--but careful, too. Maybe the daybook was in case--just in case something went wrong.

Why had Juana brought it to me? Because it was pa's? Because it was intended for us? Or because she didn't want Pettigrew going off to the mountains again?

Now why had I thought that? Did the book have a clue to where pa was? Or where the gold might be?

Pettigrew came back with something, but Andre did not know it or he'd have robbed him. Or Swan would have.

Yet Andre may have come back with something, too. Suppose they had found some of the gold and not all of it?

Chapter XIV

Since reaching San Luis we had used Esteban's horses, but now we saddled our own mounts and were gone with the sun's rising. Clear and cool the morning was, and I breathed deeply of the fresh air from off the mountains Westward we rode, seeing the peaks loom up before us, the twin peaks of Blanca and Baldy looking from some angles like one gigantic mountain The old Indian traditions speak of them as one long, long ago.

We rode and we camped and rode again. At night I read to them from pa's daybook, and passed it at times to Orrin.

There had been growing animosity in the camp on the mountain Nat Pettigrew is a prying man, forever peering, listening, and poking about. He is able, does his share and more. He's a good man on a horse and handy with a rifle, but I do not trust him. Yet he is all for himself, and not for them.

May 20: This morning there was trouble. Swan struck Angus, knocking him down.

Pierre was on his feet at once and for a moment I was sure they would come to blows. I noticed also that Andre stood to one side making no effort to stop Swan, who is his man. Andre just stood there with a little smile on his face. I believe Andre hates his brother-in-law, and I wish I was free of them, and far away.