Straightening up, I looked all around, taking my time. Whoever had made that
marker intended for it to be seen, but not by just anybody. Nobody would see it
unless he was trained to look for sign.
It stood all by itself, though. I mean, there was grass all around and some
brush, but no other markers. That meant that what it was intended to mark was
close by, within the range of my eyes. It was up to me to see it. Yet, looking
all around, I saw nothing. The clouded sky, the gray, whitecapped water, the
green grass growing just short of knee-high, the scattered brush, the reeds
along the shore …
The reeds!
Reaching up, I taken my Henry from the boot. “You stand watch, Gin. Watch
everything, not just me.”
For two, three minutes I didn’t move. I stood there beside my horse and I
studied those reeds, and I studied them section by section, taking a piece maybe
ten foot square and studying it careful, then moving on to another square.
Trailing the bridle reins, I stepped away from the horse and worked my way
carefully through the reeds. What I had spotted was an open space among the
reeds, which might mean an inlet of water, for there were several such around.
However, when I got to that open place—minding myself to break no reeds and to
move with care—I found a low hive, a mound-like hut of reeds made by drawing the
tops together and tying them, then weaving other reeds through the rooted ones.
It was maybe eight feet long by four or five wide.
Room enough for a man to sleep.
“I’m friendly,” I said, speaking low but so I could be heard. “I’m hunting no
trouble.”
There was no answer.
Easing forward a bit, I spotted the opening that led inside, and kneeling, I
eased forward. I spoke once more, and there was no reponse. Then I stuck my head
inside.
The hut was empty.
The ground inside must have been damp, so close to the water, and it had been
covered by several hastily woven mats of reeds, with grass thrown atop of them.
I backed out and stood up.
My father had taught me to build an emergency shelter just thataway from reeds,
cane, or slim young trees. He taught me when I was six years old, and I’d not
forgotten.
Pa was here. I was sure of it now. That marker, just the way he used to use
them, something to call attention, not necessarily to indicate a trail … and
now this.
When I got back to the horse I put a foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over
the saddle. Gin was waiting for me to tell her, and I did.
“Pa’s close by,” I said. “I’ve got an idea that prisoner Herrara is hunting is
my father.”
“You’re sure he’s near?”
So I told her what I had seen, and explained a bit about it. If he was close by,
he would find me—unless he was lying hurt. Even so, he would find me or let me
know some way, so I turned and we started back to the herd. We rode more swiftly
now, eager to get back.
There was so much inside me I wasn’t looking out as sharp as I should have. We
came riding around the brush, and there were fifteen or twenty riders, and down
in the middle of them was Miguel.
Miguel was on the ground, and his face was all blood. A thick-set Mexican was
standing over him with a quirt in his hand. Herrara sat his horse nearby.
Only thing saved me was they’d been so busy they weren’t listening, and a horse
on soft sod doesn’t make a whole lot of disturbance. Lucky for me I was carrying
that Henry out in the open. She swung up slick as a catfish on a mudbank and I
eared back the hammer.
They all heard that.
Their heads came around like they were all on string, but the one I had covered
was Herrara himself. “Call that man off,” I said, “or I’ll kill you.”
He looked at me, those black eyes flat and steady as a rattler’s. I’ll give him
this. There was no yellow showing. He looked right into that rifle barrel and he
said, “You shoot me, senor, and you are dead in the next instant.”
Me, I wasn’t being bluffed. Not that day. I looked right along that barrel and I
said, “Then I’ll be the second man to die. When I fall, you’ll lie there, to
make me a cushion.”
We looked at each other, and he read me right. Whatever happened, I’d kill.
“And the lady? What happens to her if we die?”
“We’d never know about that, would we?” I said. “I think she’d take care of
herself, however, and if anything happened to her, I don’t think Cheno would
like it.”
“What do you know of Cheno?”
“Me? Next to nothing, but the senorita’s family were good friends to Cheno’s
family when he lived north of the border. How else would a mere woman have the
courage to ride alone into Mexico?”
He was listening, and I think he believed me. Sure I was lying. Maybe her family
had known the Cortina family, and maybe they never had. But I was talking to
save the lady trouble, and maybe some talk for my own skin as well.
He did not like it, because it tied his hands, and he wasn’t letting up yet.
“Why do you stop here?”
“Hell,” I said offhand, “you’re a better cowman than I am. I ran the legs off
those steers getting them up here. I got a girl north of the border, and I
wanted to get back. Those other hands never showed, so we pushed ’em hard and
nearly killed our horses. We had to rest.”
It was true, of course, and I made plenty of sense, and that was one thing I had
planned just that way. I wanted that story to tell if he came up on us again.
“Has anyone come to your camp other than the senorita?” he asked then.
“If they did, I didn’t see them. We’ve been hoping somebody would come by who
had some frijoles to sell. We’re short on grub.”
He asked a few more questions, and then they rode off, but I’d a hunch they
would leave somebody to watch, or maybe none of them would go very far.
Miguel’s face was cut and swollen. He had been lashed several times across the
face and struck once with the butt because he could tell them nothing. Now he
washed the blood from his face and then looked around at me. “Careful, amigo.
That one will kill you now, or you shall kill him. You faced him over a gun and
made him back up.”
“Twenty-five miles to the border,” I said. “Can we make it in one run? Maybe
losing a few head?”
Miguel shrugged. “With luck, senor, one can do anything.”
Me, I was doing some studying, and it came to me that whatever was going to
happen would happen fast now. Tomorrow night—or perhaps the next—we would be
driving for the border. And we’d have the gold with us.
But I wasn’t thinking of that gold, I was thinking of Pa. My father, whom I had
not seen for eight years, was somewhere out there in the darkness.
The question was: did he know I was here?
Chapter Seven
Miguel shook me awake an hour after midnight, and I sat up, feeling the dampness
caused by the nearness of the Gulf. The fire was a glowing bed of coals and the
coffee pot was steaming. Gin was asleep, her head cushioned on her saddle.
“It’s quiet,” Miguel said, “too damn quiet.” He looked very bad this morning,
his face still swollen, and blood from an opened whipcut tracing a way across
his cheek.
“We’re going to make a run for the border,” I said. “You get your sleep.”
He was dog-tired, and he hit the blankets and was asleep before I could drink my
coffee. He’d taken time to saddle my dun before waking me, which was like him. I
thought of his wife back in Texas and knew that whatever else happened, he must
get back to her. And he would not go unless with me. He was that loyal.
The cattle were resting and quiet. They’d had grass and water a-plenty and were
fixing to get fat. Or maybe they were stoking up for what was to come. Among any
bunch of cattle, as among humans, you will find a few staid, steady characters,
and there were a couple of such steers in this herd that I’d been cultivating.
These had been wild cattle; but cattle, horses, or men, no two are quite alike,
and these I’d chosen showed a disposition to be friendly. It was in my mind that