That girl on the train. He remembered the clear, honest way she had looked at him, the grace of her movements. Why had he not met such a girl when he was still alive?
For now he would die, like a wolf as he had lived, a lone wolf, in a dark place, snapping at his wounds. He had lived with bared teeth, and it was proper that he die that way.
That Gaddis now, Kettleman reflected. He liked the fellow. He had a slow, easy, half-amused way of talking that Kettleman liked.
There was a fight building. The straw-haired man on the train — a warrior if he had ever seen one.
And suddenly then he thought of Porter Baldwin.
A shrewd, tough, dangerous man. A promoter. Hardly a Western man, but one who never moved without a purpose, and one with considerable experience in the knock-down and drag-out world of finance. He had been a blockade runner during the Civil War, running cotton and rifles through to the Confederate side, and selling information to the North.
He had been involved in the efforts to corner the gold market that Jim Fisk and Jay Gould had supposedly started.
If Porter Baldwin was out here, it was not because of cattle. There was money in cattle and they might be a side line for Baldwin, but he would not involve himself personally unless there was more behind it than the profits from cattle.
Well, it was no business of his. He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and went inside. When he awakened the sun was high, and it was the first good night’s sleep he had had in a long time.
The gnawing pain was in his stomach, so he got out of bed and prepared a light breakfast. He moved slowly, taking his time about everything. As he ate, he planned his day. He must first of all find the passage to the inner island of grass. It was doubtful that, after these years, any horses remained, though they had been fine stock, young and in good shape and, Flint had assured him, there was feed for a dozen head and a water supply fed by the same stream that flowed through this oasis.
The few articles of food he had brought with him were scarcely sufficient for three days of sparse living, so he must go after supplies, and he wanted to pick up a box of books he had shipped to himself at Horse Springs.
Two other cases of books and supplies he had shipped to Alamitos, not wanting to attract attention by appearing in either place too often, but he would need pack animals to get the stuff back here. However there was no hurry about anything but grub, and he wanted to get enough to last.
Flint had left the horses, a stallion and two or three mares, in the inner and larger basin. If they were alive they would be sixteen or seventeen years old. But there might be young stuff. The way to the basin lay through one of the long lava tunnels with which this place was riddled.
He walked down the passage Flint had made to join the cabin to the stable. He had simply taken slabs of rock without mortar and walled in an overhang of the cliff. In the back of the stable there was a manger built against the wall, a dark alcove behind it. Going into that stall he laid hold of the manger. It swung out on concealed hinges and he stepped back into the alcove and swung the manger into place behind him. The tunnel was there before him.
A shelf, head-high was on the right.
He put his hand up and found a few candles. He lighted one of them and walked into the passage. The height was uniform, not over eight feet, and the tunnel was for the greater distance about twice that in width. He counted nearly a hundred steps before he saw light.
He walked out into a little park.
There were perhaps three hundred acres of good grass here. Along the far side there were a dozen cotton-woods and some willows, and there were scattered pines.
Standing at the mouth of the lava conduit, he counted seven horses, heads up, staring at him. He took three steps into the open so they could see him plainly.
One horse, a big bay standing at least seventeen hands, threw his head up sharply and blew loudly. He trotted forward a few steps, then pawed the ground.
“Want to fight, do you?” Kettleman talked softly to the horse. “I’m friendly, old man. Don’t hunt trouble from me.”
His eyes went to the other horses. Young stock — a couple of three-or four-year-olds, and a couple that were not such young stock. There was another horse, a mare, that was considerably older.
Flint had been a quiet man with horses, but he made pets of them all. Kettleman called them, the long, crooning call that Flint had used.
The old mare’s head came around sharply. Did she remember? Did she remember enough?
Some said a horse did not remember for long, yet others claimed the opposite. He called again, and walked a few steps farther, holding out a piece of sugar as Flint always had.
Several of the horses began to walk away, the red stallion standing guard, head up, nostrils flared. The old mare stared at him. Tentatively, she came a step or two nearer, stretching out her nose as if to sniff.
He stood still, liking the warmth on his back. The sun was bright, a bee was droning among the brush near the wall of the park. He called again and went another step. The stallion shied, trotted a few steps to one side, then wheeled and trotted back. The mare stood her ground.
Yet she was nervous, and he did not want to frighten her. He waited awhile longer and then went toward her. Just as she was about to shy away, he tossed the sugar toward her. She flipped her head, but moved off only a few steps, and when he left, she came up and sniffed the grass to see what he had thrown. He saw her nibbling at the sugar, but he did not go back.
The day was early and he had brought a book. He sat on a flat rock with the sun on him and read. The stallion circled nervously for a time, and then went to feeding as had the others.
After an hour he put the book aside and studied the layout of the big pasture.
It was a near perfect oval, with lava walls fifty to sixty feet high. There was a permanent water source from the same spring that provided water for the cabin. It flowed under the lava and into this park, but Flint had told him there was another waterhole on the far side.
He was still tired from his walk of the previous day, and his leg muscles were stiff. There were few places a man might climb out of the oval, but nowhere a horse could escape. He was certain he was the only man these horses had seen, with the exception of the mare.
He spent most of the afternoon wandering about close to the tunnel mouth or reading, and then he retreated through the tunnel to the cabin and made some beef broth. Kettleman ate it slowly.
A few days more…
Pete Gaddis leaned on the mahogany of the Divide Saloon. It was early evening and he had been in town only a few minutes. There were a lot of strangers around, most of them riders for the Port Baldwin outfit.
Red Dolan, the bartender, came toward Gaddis and put his big, thick-palmed hands on the edge of the bar. The two were friends. Neither had known the other before coming to Alamitos but what lay behind them was much the same.
“Not like the ones we used to know,” Dolan commented, his eyes on the Baldwin riders. “Tough kids. Not like McKinney, or Courtright.” Dolan took the cigar from his teeth. “Did you know Long-Haired Jim?”
Gaddis grunted. “Rode through Lake Valley, one time. He was around.”
“Fast man. There were some good ones came out of Illinois. Courtright, Hickok — I could name a dozen.”
“Knew a man served with Hickok in the Army. He was a good man then, too. He used to laugh at the stories told about him — killing eight or nine of the McCandless gang.”
“They like to think we’re wild and bloody out here, those folks back East do. Why, that Nichols lied in his teeth, and knew it. Hickok was in a bad way, just gettin’ over a bear-scratching. He was in no shape for a fight then, and said so a dozen times. All the fighting he did on that day was with a gun.”