He stepped up to me and thrust out his hand, and a feeling came into my throat
so I couldn’t speak. I was not a man with many friends, but I wanted the Tinker
to be one of them.
“You’re heavier,” he said, “and by heaven, you’re a man!”
When I’d introduced him around, we all sat down. Experience had not made me a
trusting man, and we’d been apart for a spell of years. But he was my friend, I
was sure of that, and right now I needed him.
“The mule can run,” I said, “he can really scat.”
“He’ll need to.” He shot me a shrewd look. “Do you know whose money is against
you? The Bishop’s, that’s whose. The Bishop’s money and Caffrey’s. Your Caffrey
isn’t only a fighter, he’s a gambler—and he’s a big one. The Bishop and him,
they’re partners.”
“You know about the fight?”
“It’s talked about. This is an Irish town, and you know the Irish—they love a
good fight with the knuckles.”
“I’ll have a little of my own back. I want the hide off him, but I want to break
his pocket, too. With a Caffrey, that will hurt the worst.”
The Tinker was silent for several minutes, and there was no sound in the room
but an occasional crackle from the fireplace and the faint hiss of the coffee
pot.
We sat still around the room—the Tinker with his long, narrow face and gold
earrings, Doc Halloran standing and looking long, lean and serious, with the
black eyes of Juana and Manuel in the background.
“Deckrow’s in town,” the Tinker said finally, glancing around at Juana. “He’s
looking for you.”
“His daughter is with him?”
“They’re going to San Antonio. There’s a lawsuit over the estate.” He looked at
me. “Your father should be here tomorrow, your father and his wife.”
“He married Gin?”
“Love match—from the start. He’s in great shape again and looks fine; and Gin,
she’s beautiful as ever. But Franklyn Deckrow claims the estate through his
wife, and he claims he bought up mortgages. I don’t understand lawing, but
that’s the way of it. The trouble will be settled in either San Antonio or
Austin, but they’re going to San Antonio now, then on to Austin, I think.”
“I’ll have to be there,” I said. ‘Tve evidence to offer.”
Juana looked at me, and fear showed in her eyes. “Does he know? Senor Deckrow,
does he know?”
“He knows … my eyes were on him and he saw it.”
“Then tomorrow, when you fight?”
Doc and the Tinker, they just looked at me, and I said, “Deckrow was with
Herrara’s and Cortina’s men that night. It was he and nobody else who killed
Jonas. Shot him dead. It was Deckrow who tipped them off that we had come into
Mexico after gold—they were expecting us.”
“He’ll kill you. Hell have to.”
Looking down at my big hands, I shrugged. “He’ll try.”
That night I lay long awake, watching the red glow of the coals and thinking
back over my life, and it didn’t add up to much. I’d set out to become rich in
the western lands, but going after that LaFitte gold had been my ruin. Maybe
even starting west with the Tinker had been the finish of me.
When this was over I would go on … there were other Sacketts out in New
Mexico, near the town of Mora. I would go there. There was nobody for me here.
Pa had married Gin, and he would be thinking of another family, and rightly so.
It was true that I had felt strongly about Gin, but the physical needs of a man
speak loud with a woman like her about, and there doesn’t have to be anything
else between you—although she was a man’s woman in so many ways, and not only of
the bed. When I found a woman of my own, I hoped she would be like Gin. She and
Pa—I had seen it right off. They were for each other.
Me? Who was there for me? I was a man with nothing. A man with great shoulders
and tremendous power in his hands, but nothing else. I owned a horse taken from
horse thieves, and a mule bred by stealth, and nothing at all of which I could
be proud. It was little enough I had in the way of learning, and in my
mid-twenties I’d laid no foundation for anything.
Tomorrow there would be a horse race and then a fight, and with luck I should
win one or both. Yet then there would remain the matter of surviving to enjoy my
winnings. Horse-racing and fighting, these are not things upon which a man can
build a useful life.
Tomorrow I would meet Dun Caffrey in the ring, with my fists. He was a skilled
fighter, and I was only one with great strength and good but long-unpracticed
training. If I whipped Caffrey, I’d have some of my own back; and if I could
settle the matter of Deckrow and live, then I’d go west and start again as I had
wished to do.
One thing I had learned in these years: I could now speak Spanish. Somewhere, at
sometime in the future, it might help. Westward I had come to grow rich in the
land, but six years had passed and I had no more than at the beginning.
At last I slept, and when I awakened day had come and the coals were smoldering,
with only a fault glow of red here and there. The room was empty. Clasping my
hands behind my head, I tried to organize a day that would not organize, for
there were too many factors outside my grasp. Before the day was over I would
have repaid Dun Caffrey what I owed him, or would have taken a fearful beating.
But the greatest danger lay not in losing, but in winning. In losing I would
take a beating; in winning, there was every chance I might be shot.
The Tinker and Halloran came in together. “The race will be run at ten o’clock,”
Halloran said. “The course is all laid out—one half-mile from a standing start.”
“All right.”
“The fight will be at one o’clock. Eighteen-foot ring. It’s all set up in the
stock corral. Those who cannot get up to the ring will find a seat on the
fence.”
“How many horses in the race?”
“Five, including your mule. Nobody thinks a mule can run, except a few who came
in from Oakville. Right now the betting is seven to one against your mule.”
From my shirt pocket I took forty dollars, every cent I had in the world. “At
those odds, or anything close,” I said, “you bet it on the race. If we win, bet
whatever’s in hand on the fight.
“Meanwhile,” I said, “I’m going to take a walk around.”
This here town of Beeville, along about the time we were there—you could walk
three blocks in any direction and be out in the country. And some of those
blocks you’d walk would be mighty sparse as to buildings.
It was a cattle-trail town and ran long to saloons and gambling houses. The
folks who lived in the country around were mostly raising cattle. The rest of
them were stealing cattle. Both industries were in what you might call a
flourishing condition when we came into town. There was considerable money
floating about town, and not an awful lot to do with it but drink or gamble.
When it came to ranching, there were several successful men around Beeville; but
in the cattle-rustling business the most successful man was Ed Singleton.
The town was about evenly divided between the ranchers and the thieves, and each
knew the others by name and occupation. You could hang a cattle thief back in
those days, but the trouble was you had to catch him at it. Singleton and those
others, they were almighty sly. There was a lot of betting on both the fight and
the race, some of the folks even betting on me, sight unseen. There’s folks will
bet on anything, given a chance.
Quite a crowd was in town. Some, like I said, had come over from Oakville, but
there was a whole crowd from Helena, too. Helena was an old stop on the
Chihuahua trail and, like Beeville and Oakville, it was a rough, wild town, and
those men from Helena were as tough as they come.
I walked down the street, keeping away from the knots of men arguing here and
there, and finally I stopped by the corral to look at that ring. It looked big
enough, and small enough, too.
A man stopped beside me, looking through the corral bars at the ring. He glanced
at me out of a pair of hard, measuring eyes, and thrust out his hand, “Walton.
I’m sheriff. You fought much?”