He held his pistol on me. “Who are you?” His voice rang with authority.
“A prisoner. They’ve held me six years.”
“Six years?”
A horse was tied to the hitchrail and he jerked loose the tie-rope. Heavier
firing sounded outside the court. “Come! And be quick!”
He raced from the court to where other Texas riders were milling. “Wrong place!”
A man shouted at the rider beside me. “Flores’ place is half a mile up the
road!”
“There are two hundred men there!” I yelled at them.
The man beside me said, “Let’s go!” And he led the racing retreat at a dead run
down the valley. After a mile or two they slowed to a canter, then to a walk. I
glanced at the stars, and there was the North Star, beckoning us on.
“They’ll be after us,” the man beside me said, and there was no time for
questions.
Closely we rode on, and fast, for the Rio Grande lay miles to the north. The
night was cool, and the air fresh on my face. Sometimes when we passed close to
a rock face we could feel the heat still held from the day’s hot sun.
We slowed to a walk again, and the man I rode beside turned in his saddle and
looked at me. “Six years, you say?”
As briefly as possible, I explained. Not about the gold, exactly, but enough to
let him know they had wanted to learn a secret I alone knew. When I mentioned
Herrara, he nodded grimly. “He’s one I’d like to find myself.”
“Do not waste your time,” I said. “From now on you need pay him no mind.”
He glanced at me and I said, “He was using a whip on me when you came shooting
into the patio, and his men rushed away.”
“He is dead, you think?”
“He is dead. Without a doubt, he is dead.”
“My name is McNelly,” the rider said then. “These are Texas Rangers.”
Thirty of them had crossed the river to strike a blow at the outlaws who were
raiding ranches and stealing cattle north of the border—and sometimes south of
it, as well. Las Cuevas had long been the outlaws’ headquarters, and it was Las
Cuevas for which the Rangers had aimed. But mistakenly they were led to a ranch
that belonged to the Las Cuevas owner, only a short distance away from the main
ranch buildings. It was that mistake that had saved my life.
At the Rio Grande the riders turned on command. The outlaws were not far behind.
“You, Sackett,” the captain said, “go on across the border. You’ve had trouble
enough.”
“If you’ll grant me the pleasure, Cap’n,” I said, “I’ll stay. There’s men in
that crowd who have struck me and beaten me, and I owe them a little. Besides,”
I added, “I carried off their shotgun. It is only fair that I return the loads
from the shells.”
Here at the river the air was still cooler because of the dampness rising from
the water—and it was free air. For the first time in years I was out in the
night, with free air all about me.
The outlaws came with a rush, sure they would catch the Rangers at the border
before they got across the river, but they were met with a blast of gunfire that
lanced the night with darting flame. One rider toppled from his saddle, and his
fall as much as our fire turned their retreat into a rout. They vanished into
the mesquite.
Several Rangers rode out to look at the body, and I followed McNelly. “Well,” I
said, “seems to me if you had to kill only one, you got the right one. That
there is Flores himself.”
We swam the river back to the Texas side and I followed on to their camp, which
was on the bank of a creek a few miles back from the river. Reckon I looked a
sight. My shirt was in rags and the only pants I had were some castoffs they’d
given me when my own played out. There I stood, bare-footed and loaded down with
guns.
“You’d better let us stand you an outfit,” McNelly commented dryly. “You’re in
no shape to go anywhere in that outfit.”
They were good boys, those Rangers were, and they rigged me out. Then, to raise
some cash, I sold one of them my pistol for six dollars—it was the spare I’d
picked up (I’d come away with three) and I sold the shotgun for twelve to
McNelly himself. The Captain had taken Flores’ gold-and-silver plated pistol off
the body—it was a rarely beautiful weapon.
The horse I’d ridden across the border was a handsome, upstanding roan.
“Anybody asks you for the bill of sale for that horse,” McNelly commented, “you
refer them to me.”
The first thing I did was to head for the creek and take a long bath, getting
shut of my old clothes at the time. When I lit out for Rio Grande City, come
daybreak, I felt like a different man.
Yet being free wasn’t what it might have been.
First off, I didn’t know where to go. McNelly had heard nothing of my Pa, and
only remembered some talk of Jonas Locklear being dead several years back. What
had become of his land, he didn’t know.
So there I was, a free man with no place to go, with a rightful share in gold
that might have already been spent. But something I did own, if I could find
them. I owned a mare and a mule colt.
I showed up in Brownsville wearing shirt and jeans that didn’t fit, a pair of
boots that hurt my feet, and a worn-out Mexican sombrero. Dark as I was and
wearing cartridge belts crossed over my chest, I even looked like a Mexican.
I walked into a cantina and leaned on the bar, and when the bartender ignored me
I reached out my Henry and laid it across to touch the back bar.
“I want a whiskey,” I said, “and I want it now. You going to give it to me, or
do I take it after I put a knot on your head?”
He looked at me and then he looked at that rifle and he set the bottle out on
the bar. “We don’t cater to Mexicans in here,” he said.
“You do wrong,” I told him. “I’m no Mex, but I’ve known some mighty fine ones.
They run about true to form with us north of the border—some good and some bad.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were a Mexican.”
“Pour me a drink,” I said, “and then go back and shut up.”
He poured me the drink and walked away down the bar. Two tough-looking cowhands
were sizing me up, considering how much opposition I’d offer if trouble started,
but I wasn’t interested in a row. So I just plain ignored them. Anyway, I was
listening to talk at a table behind me.
“He’s wise,” one man was saying. “He hasn’t squatted on range the way most have
done. Captain King clears title on every piece he buys. That’s why he’s held off
on that Locklear outfit—there’s a dispute over the title. Deckrow claims it, but
his sister-in-law disputes the claim.”
“Bad blood between Deckrow and her husband, too. It’ll come to a shooting.”
“Not unless Deckrow shoots him in the back,” I said, “that’s the way he killed
Jonas Locklear.”
Well, now. I’d turned and spoken aloud without really meaning to, and every face
in the room turned toward me.
One of the men at the table looked at me coldly. “That’s poor talk. Deckrow’s a
respected man in Texas.”
“He wouldn’t be the first who didn’t deserve it,” I said. “You see him, you tell
him I said he was a backshooter. Tell him I said he shot Jonas Locklear in the
back, and Deckrow was riding with Mexican outlaws at the time.”
There wasn’t a friendly face in the cantina, except maybe for the other man at
that table. “And who might you be?” he asked quietly. “We’d like to tell him who
spoke against him.”
“The name is Orlando Sackett,” I said, “and I’ll speak against him any time I
get the chance … Jonas,” I added, “was a friend of mine.”
“Orlando Sackett,” the man said thoughtfully. “The only other Sackett I know
besides Falcon was killed down in Mexico, five or six years ago.”
“You heard wrong. I ain’t dead, nor about to be.”
Finishing my drink, I turned and walked out of the place and went across the
street to a restaurant. A few minutes after, a slender blue-eyed man came in and
sat down not far from me. He didn’t look at me at all, and that was an odd
thing, because almost everybody else at least glanced my way.
In Rio Grande City I’d gotten myself a haircut and had my beard shaved off. I