I might need a couple of steady steers, and these two I’d fed a few choice
bunches of grass or leaves.
Truth of the matter was, I was scared. Both Gin and Miguel were looking to me,
and I wasn’t sure I was up to it, I had never been in a real shootout
difficulty, and it worried me that I was trusted to handle whatever came.
Wind moaned in the brush. Finishing my coffee, I put aside my cup and, shoving
the Henry into the boot, mounted up and rode out to the herd, singing low. Water
rustled along the shore of the inlet, sucking and whispering among the reeds and
the old drift timbers. Once it spat a few drops of cold rain. This time of
night, I was thinking, would be the time to run. Herrara would have us watched,
but on a cold, unpleasant night there might be a chance.
Twice I rode wide of the herd to get a better overall look, and I rode with
care, pistol to hand. There was nothing to see, less to hear. But bit by bit
something was shaping up in my mind. There was this long arm of the sea to the
east of us, and that other wider arm to the west and south. We were on a point,
with water on two sides. Dimly, I recalled some tracings Pa had made in the
earth at the back door of the cabin one day as he talked. It was like this point
… down there on the very point he’d made a cross of some kind.
Tomorrow… I would go there tomorrow.
It was coming up to day when I turned back toward camp. The cattle were on their
feet, most of them cropping grass. If what I thought proved true, we might be
lighting a shuck out of this country come nighttime. And believe me, I wanted to
be shut of it.
When I rode up to the fire I saw Gin was up and drinking coffee. How she’d
managed to get her hair to looking like that, I don’t know. She reached across
the fire’s edge to fill Miguel’s cup … but it wasn’t Miguel.
It was Pa.
He was setting hunched up to the fire with a blanket over his shoulders and a
cup of coffee held in both his hands. He looked thinner than I had ever seen
him, his face honed down hard. He looked up when I walked that dun into the
fire’s circle of light, and for a minute or two we just stared at each other
like a couple of fools.
“Pa?” I said. It was all I could get out.
He got up, the blanket falling to the ground. He was a big man, even now with
almost no flesh on him. He’d been that prisoner who escaped, and Lord knows how
long he’d been mistreated in that prison.
“Son?” He had a hard time with the word. “Orlando?”
“It’s been a long time, Pa.”
No words came to me, and it seemed he was no better off. He had left me a child,
and found me a man. Swinging down, I trailed my reins and stepped out to face
him.
He was taller than me, but raw-boned as he was now, he was no heavier than my
one-eighty. He thrust out his hand and I took it. “You’re strong,” he said. “You
were always strong.”
“You’ve had some grub?”
“Coffee … just coffee, and some talk with Gin.”
Gin, was it? He wasted no time getting down to cases. “You’d better eat,” I
said. “Come daybreak, we’re going down to the Point.”
“Ah?” he was pleased. “So you did remember?”
“Took me a while, but it was coming to me.”
“Gin said you’d recognized the shelter—and the marker, too.”
“You’d better sit down and wrap up,” Gin advised. “You aren’t well.”
She put the blanket around him when he sat down and with a tiny prick of
jealousy I couldn’t help but think that if Pa were shaved and fixed up they’d
make a handsome pair.
I got out the frying pan and mixed up some sourdough, listening to them talk the
while. He had the pleasant voice I’d remembered, and the easy way of moving.
Glancing over at them, it came over me that Pa was here … he was alive. I’d
been too stunned to take it in rightly before, and it was going to take some
getting used to.
His eyes were on me as I shook up that bread, and I suppose he was wondering
what sort of a man I’d become. But there was something else in his mind, too.
“You speak as if you’d had no schooling,” he said. “Not that it’s better or
worse than most men speak out here.”
“We’ll have to talk to Caffrey,” I said. “He used your money for his own self.
I’ve been caring for myself at your old cabin since I was twelve.” Looking up at
him, I grinned. “With some help now and again from the Cherokees.”
“I worried about Caffrey,” Pa said, “but I was in a hurry to get off. And that
reminds me. We’d best get out of here. If they find me with you, you’ll all be
shot.”
“Not without that gold,” I said. “We came this far for it”
“There’s some all ready to go,” Pa said. “I’ve taken it out myself. The
rest—most of it—will take time.”
Gin looked over at me. “Orlando, I think he’s right. He’s a sick man. The way
his breathing sounds, he may be getting pneumonia.”
The word had a dread sound, and it shook me. Miguel was sleeping, but it came on
me then that we’d best move the cattle a little way, like to new bedding
grounds, but hold them ready for a fast move when darkness came.
“Is that gold where it can be laid hands on?” I asked.
“It is.”
“We’ll move the cattle on to the end of the inlet and bed down there, like for
night. Short of midnight we’ll make our run.”
My mind was thinking ahead. Gin probably was making the right guess, for Pa
looked bad. He had been lying out in the brush without so much as a coat, just
shirt and pants. Even his boots were worn through and soaked.
Leisurely, we rounded up the cattle, with Pa keeping from sight in the brush,
and we walked them on not more than a mile. Then, late afternoon, we built
ourselves a new fire and settled down as if for the night. Rounding up those
placid steers I’d been keeping my eyes on, we brought them up to camp. Then,
with Pa resting, we waited the coming of night.
Miguel was restless. He never was far from his horse, and he worried himself
until he was taut as a drumhead, watching the brush, listening, afraid something
would go wrong before we could get away.
“I’m going into Guadalupe,” I said to him. “We need a couple of horses.”
There was no way he could deny that, although he wished to. We had no mount for
Pa, and if we made a run for it, we’d be riding from here clean to the border.
Miguel shrugged. “I think it is safe enough,” he admitted reluctantly, “and we
have reason to get horses.”
Gin had money. She had more than I did, which wasn’t much, so she turned over a
hundred dollars to me and I saddled up the dun. Just before I left, I walked
over to where Pa was lying, with Gin setting beside him. No question but he
looked bad.
“You take it easy,” I said. “I’ll get two, three horses and come back.”
“What about pack horses? For the gold?”
“Packs would make the Mexicans mighty curious, so I figured on steers. Nobody
will pay any attention to the herd.”
“They’ll be seen.”
“Maybe … but with horns moving, and the dust, the shifting around of the
animals … I think we’ve got a chance.”
It was a mite over four miles to Guadalupe, and not even a dozen buildings when
I got there, most of them adobe. There was a cantina, a closed-up store, and the
office of the alcalde, with a jail behind it. The rest were scattered houses and
one warehouse.
In a corral were several rough-looking horses, but nobody was around. The air
was chill, offering rain. At the hitch-rail of the cantina stood more horses,
three of them led stock. I tied up the dun and went inside.
It was a low, dark room with a bar and several tables. Three men were at the
bar, two of them standing together, their backs to me. A broad-shouldered
Mexican with a sombrero hanging down his back by the chin-strap, and crossed
cartridge belts on his chest, stood at the end of the bar, a bottle before him.