trail.
We both just sat there and let whoever it was ride right up to the fire.
And when that slim-legged, long-bodied horse came into the firelight and I saw
who it was, I couldn’t believe it. Nor could Miguel. If we’d seen the ghost I’d
been expecting, we wouldn’t have been more surprised.
It was Gin Locklear.
Chapter Six
She rode sidesaddle, of course, her skirt draped in graceful folds along the
side of the horse, her gloved hand holding the bridle reins just as if she
hadn’t ridden miles through bandit-infested country to get here. She was just as
lovely as when I last saw her.
She taken my breath. Coming up on us out of the night so unexpected-like, and
after all the goings-on outside of camp … I hadn’t a thought in my head, I was
that rattled.
It came on me that I’d best help her from the saddle and I crossed over and took
her hand, but it was not until she was actually on the ground that I saw the
dark shadows under her eyes and the weariness in her face.
“Miguel,” I said, “you handle the horse. I’ll shake up some fresh coffee.”
I dumped the pot and rinsed it, and put in fresh water from the spring. Then I
stirred up the fire. “I had to shoot a man,” Gin said suddenly.
Those big eyes of hers handed me a jolt when I looked into them. “Did you kill
him?”
“I don’t think so.”
Miguel turned toward us. “It would have been better had he been killed. Now he
will speak of a beautiful senorita riding alone to the south, and others will
come.”
“There were two men with him,” she said, “but this one held my bridle when they
ordered me from the saddle. They were shouting and drinking and telling me what
they were going to do.
“Of course, they did not see my gun and did not expect me to shoot, but I did
shoot the man holding the horse, and then I got away. One of them had hold of my
saddle and he tried to grab me. He fell, I think.”
“Where was this?”
“Outside of Matamoras. Only a few miles out.”
Then she said, “I came to help. Jonas and the Tinker have been arrested—Jonas,
at least. He was recognized.”
“Recognized? By whom?”
“They came looking for him, just as it they knew he would be there.”
My first thought was of Franklyn Deckrow. He was the one with the most to gain
if Jonas was not permitted to return. Of course, he might have been seen by
someone who remembered him from prison.
It was little enough I knew of the Deckrow deal, but from all I’d gathered
Deckrow had run the plantation into debt and Jonas believed it had been done
deliberately so Deckrow could later buy up the mortgages and gain possession. If
so, he could have sent a rider on a fast horse to Matamoras.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I said. “This is no place for a woman.”
“The place for a woman,” she said, smiling at me, “is where she is needed. I
ride as well as most men, and I have a fine horse. Also, I’ve lived on a ranch
most of my life.”
“Did you see anybody as you came along the trail?”
She looked at me curiously. “Not for miles. I’ve never seen a more deserted
road, and if I hadn’t seen a reflection of your campfire I might have gone right
on by.”
“You didn’t circle the camp?”
“No.”
Miguel was looking at me now, and I noticed he had his rifle in hand.
“There was somebody around the camp. Somebody or some thing.”
Miguel stared uneasily at the blackness beyond the fire. Neither of us liked to
think there was somebody or something out there whom we could not see. “Maybe we
should go, senor?”
“No, we’ll sit right here and let the stock rest up.” That was my plan, but the
arrival of Gin had put a crimp in it. If outlaws were going to come hunting her,
we’d be in trouble a-plenty.
“Come daybreak,” I said, “we’ll move the herd.”
“Where, senor?”
“Yonder, I think we can find a place to hold the cattle. Maybe some of the other
men will get through. That Tinker—he’s a sly one. If he had any warning, no law
is going to latch onto him.”
Gin made herself comfortable on my bed. I stirred up the fire and finished off
what coffee the three of us hadn’t drank, and ate a couple of cold tortillas.
At daybreak the wind was off the sea, and you could feel the freshness of it,
with a taste like no other wind. Wide awake, I thought of those initials of
Pa’s. Pa had left that sign, and he’d left it for himself, or mayhap for me. He
was a planning man, Pa was, and one likely to foresee … I think he taken time
deliberately to teach me where that gold was. The trouble was, I’d gone ahead
and forgotten.
Some things I did remember. He’d taught me to mark a trail, Indian fashion. Now,
suppose he had marked this one? If he had, he would have added his own
particular ways to it, but meanwhile, I planned to look around. If I found no
sign I was going to drive that herd where I felt it should go, with no scouting
for grass, or anything. Maybe out of my hidden thoughts would come the memory of
what Pa had taught me, to guide our way.
I taken a circle around camp, and I found no sign—nothing left by Pa that I
could make out. That isn’t to say I didn’t find sign of another kind, and when I
seen that track I felt a chill go right up my spine that stood every hair on
end.
What I found were wolf tracks, but wolf tracks bigger than any wolf that ever
walked—any normal sort of wolf, that is. These wolf tracks were big as dinner
plates. Well, I stopped right there, looking down at those tracks, and the other
two came over to look. Miguel’s face turned white when he saw the tracks, and
even Gin kind of caught at my arm.
We had both heard tell of werewolves, and certainly Miguel knew the stories
about them. Me, I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of where those
tracks were. Soon I scouted around, and a far piece away, like whatever it was
had been taking giant strides, I found another track, this one set deep in the
sod.
The tracks circled about the water hole at the spring. Whatever it was, it was
trying to get to water, but the water had been lighted by our fire, with one of
us setting awake. All of a sudden I saw something that made me forget all about
werewolves and ha’nts and such. Far as that goes, I’d never heard tell of a
thirsty ghost.
What I saw was something back in the brush, and at first it didn’t look like
much of a find, except that there was no reason for it being where it was. It
was a broken reed, and it lay right on the edge of a bunch of mesquite.
Taking up the reed, I drew it out, and you know, there were several pieces of
reed stuck one into another until they were all of eight or nine feet long.
Stretched out, they reached from the spring’s pool to the brush nearby.
“What is it?” Gin asked.
“Somebody wanted a drink, and wanted it bad, so he made a tube of these reeds,
breaking them off to be rid of the joints and putting them together so he could
suck water through them. He must have siphoned water right out of the pool into
his mouth while I was just a-setting there.”
Nobody said anything, and I nosed around a mite, studying the brush, and finally
finding where the man or whatever it was had knelt.
There, too, I found the wolf tracks.
“Two-legged wolf,” I said, “wearing some kind of coarse-woven jeans or pants.
See here?” I showed them the place in the brush. “That’s where he knelt whilst
siphoning the water.”
Following the tracks back from the brush, I said, “He’s big—look at the length
of that stride. I can’t match it without running.”
I studied the reed tube again. “Canny,” I said. “Like something the Tinker might
do.”
“We should go,” Gin suggested.
“No,” I said, “not without what we came after. We have come too far and risked
too much.”
“But how can you hope to find it?” Gin said. “You’ve no idea where to look.”
“Maybe I have. Maybe I am just beginning to recollect some things Pa told me.”
The wind was blowing harder and the sky was gray and overcast. The cattle