He looked like a Herrara man to me. The other two were lounging with a bottle
between them. The Herrara man was obviously interested in them.
Walking up to the bar, I put my elbows on it and ordered a beer.
The operator of the cantina accepted my money and flashed a brief smile at me,
but in his eyes I thought there was a warning, an almost imperceptible gesture
toward the Herrara man, if such he was.
“Holding cattle outside of town,” I said suddenly. “We’ve played out our horses.
Know where I can buy a couple, cheap?”
For maybe a minute nobody made any sign they’d heard me, and then the man next
to me said, “I have three horses, and I will sell—but not cheap.”
It was the Tinker.
Without turning my head, I picked up my bottle of beer and emptied the rest of
it into my glass. “Another,” I said, gesturing.
“I saw them,” I added, “at the rail. They are fit for buzzards.”
“They are good horses,” The Tinker protested. “I had not considered selling them
until you spoke. The buckskin … there is a horse!”
“I’ll give you eight dollars for him,” I said, and tasted my beer.
For half an hour we argued and debated back and forth. Finally I said, “All
right, twelve dollars for the buckskin, fifteen for the bay—the paint I do not
want.”
The Tinker and his silent companion, at whom I had not dared to look for fear of
drawing attention to him, seemed to be growing drunk. The Tinker clapped me on
the shoulder. “You are a good man,” he said drunkenly, “a very good man! You
need the horses—all right, I shall sell you the horses. You may have all three
for forty dollars and a good meal … it is my last price.”
I shrugged. “All right—but if you want the meal, come to camp. Forty dollars is
all the money I have.”
There on the bar I paid it to him in pesos, and we walked outside, the Tinker
talking drunkenly. The Herrara man’s eyes were drilling into my back.
“He’s watching us,” the Tinker said as I stopped to look over the horses.
Straightening up, I looked into the eyes of the other man—Jonas Locklear.
“Cortina had me turned loose,” he said, “on condition I get out of the country.
He didn’t want Herrara to know for the present.”
Mounting up, we rode swiftly from the town. By the time we reached camp it was
near to sunset. Pa was up, had a gun strapped on that Miguel had taken from our
gear, and he was watching the sun.
“The only place they can watch us from,” he said, “is that dune. It looks over
the whole country around here. It’s over seventy feet high, and in this country
that’s a mountain—along the coast, that is. If we wait about ten or fifteen
minutes, the sun will be shining right in the eyes of anybody watching from that
dune. That’s when we’ll go for the gold.”
We now mustered six rifles, a good force by anybody’s count, for Gin could
shoot—or said she could, and I believed her. We made beds ready, built up the
fire, and put coffee on, and grub. Miguel was cooking.
When the sun got low enough, Pa, the Tinker and me took a few canvas bags we’d
brought along a-purpose, and with two steers we headed off into the brush. One
of the steers showed old marks that looked like he’d been used as a draft animal
sometime in the past. Both were easily handled.
As we walked, Pa said, “I dove for this gold, got it out of the sand on the
bottom. Most of the hull is still intact, and most of the gold will be inside,
but I brought up enough to make it pay. We’ll take this and run; then we’ll wait
for things to simmer down, and come back.”
Then Pa told us some about how things were in Mexico. Right about this time
Cortina had gathered a lot of power to him, but he was dependent on some of the
lieutenants he had, of whom Herrara was one. The situation was changing rapidly,
and it had changed several times over in the period of the last thirty years.
Even in the last six or seven years there had been power shifts and changes, and
changing relationships with the United States.
Not many years before, a Mexican cavalry detachment had crossed the border to
protect Brownsville from a Mexican bandit, a fact known to few Americans except
those in the immediate vicinity.
In the northern provinces of Mexico there was much division of feeling as to the
United States, and the northern country had many friends south of the border.
North of the border many citizens of Mexican extraction had fought against
Mexico for Texas. It was difficult to draw a line, and there was a constant
struggle in process for power below the border. Pa told me some of this, and
some I’d had from Jonas while riding south when there had been time to talk.
Pa led us in such a way as to keep bushes between us and the dune he thought was
the lookout post, until we arrived right down on the shore of the Met. There on
the point, right where I’d planned to look, there was where Pa stopped.
“The ship,” he said to me, “lies off there, in no more than five fathoms of
water.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the sun, then stooped and took hold of a tuft of
grass and pulled on it; he caught hold of another bunch with the other hand. A
big chunk of sod lifted out like a trap door, and in a hollowed-out place
underneath was a tin pail and several cans, loaded with gold.
There was no time to lose. Working as swiftly as we could, we sacked it up, for
the sun was going down and in a few minutes we’d stand out like sore thumbs out
there on that point. Tying the sacks two and two, we hung them over the backs of
the steers, and then replaced the sod. We started back as if driving two
straying steers.
As darkness came we clustered around the fire, eating. Miguel and Jonas finished
first and, mounting up, went out to circle the cattle. The rest of us went
through the motions of going to bed. One by one the others moved off into the
darkness, but Gin and me, we still sat by the fire and I stoked the flames a
mite higher.
“He’s quite a man,” she said suddenly.
“Pa?”
“Yes. I’ve never known anyone quite like him.”
Me, I hadn’t anything to say. I didn’t know enough about my own father, and
there’d been little time for talking. Also, as the time drew near we were
getting worrisome about what we had to do.
You bed down a bunch of steers and they’ll finally settle down to dozing and
chewing their cuds; but after a while, close to midnight or about there, they’ll
all stand up and stretch, crop grass a bit, and then lie down again. That was
the time we’d picked to move them—catch them on their feet so there’d be less
disturbance.
Finally we left the fire, adding some more fuel. I rigged some branches nearby
so they’d sort of fall into the fire as others burned, giving anybody watching
an idea the fire was being fed, time to time.
Away from the firelight, I moved up to my dun in the darkness and tightened the
cinch. “You got it in you to run,” I said, “you better have at it tonight.”
We waited … and we waited. And those fool steers, they just lay there chewing
and sleeping. Then, of a sudden, an old range cow stood up. In a minute or two
there were a dozen on their feet, and then more. Moving mighty easy, we started
to push them. Miguel was off to one side to get them started north, and Jonas
had gone up the other side.
We pushed them, and a few of them began, reluctantly, to move out. It took us a
while to get them started and lined out, and we did it without any shouting or
hollering. We walked them easy for about a mile, then we began to move them a
little faster. Not until we had about three miles behind us did we give it to
them.
It was a wild ride. I’ll say this for Gin, she was right in there with us,
riding side-saddle as always, but riding like any puncher and doing her job.
Only I noticed she was keeping an eye on Pa, too.
It made me sore, only I didn’t want to admit it. I told myself somebody had to
keep an eye on him, the shape he was in. Nevertheless, I was a mite jealous,