But Borregos Plaza was the first place I would come to, and I was drawing close to it—at least, the way distances go in that country.
At daybreak I dipped into the Palo Duro, feeling uneasy because this was the heart of the Comanche country; but I rested in a clump of willows until nigh on to sundown, letting the dun eat that rich green bottom grass, and drink the water there. When the shadows started reaching out, I saddled up and scouted a way out of the canyon I was in, and I breathed easier when I was back on the plains.
The tiny cantina at Borregos Plaza was bright with lights when I walked my horse up the trail to the settlement. Dogs barked, and here and there I glimpsed movement in a darkened doorway. Strangers were welcome at Borregos Plaza, but the Mexicans who lived there had learned to be wary of them, too. It was a wild, rough land, and the few men who rode there were often wild, rough men.
Swinging down in front of the cantina I tied the dun and, ducking my head, went through the door. There was a bar about twenty feet long, and four tables with chairs around them. A fat Mexican in a white shirt stood behind the bar, his forearms on the bar. Two leather-chapped vaqueros stood near him, drinking. At one of the tables sat two older men, one with white hair.
The room was small, immaculate, and cool, with that sense of spaciousness one gets from Mexican building. All eyes turned on me, a big, dusty, travel-stained man. I went up to the bar, and ordered a drink.
“You have come far, senor?”
“Too far … ran into a war party of Kiowas.”
“You were fortunate. You are still alive.”
“No figuring on Indians. I rode right through them. Nobody lifted a hand.”
They exchanged glances. It took nerve to ride through a bunch of Kiowas, and they knew that if I’d shown any weakness I would be dead now. But nobody knew how scared I’d been, and I wasn’t planning on telling them.
“You will be hungry, senor? If you will sit down my wife will bring food to you.”
“Gracias.” I walked over to a table and dropped wearily into a chair, then I removed my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. I could have fallen asleep right there.
The senora brought a plate of beans, beef, and tortillas to the table, and a pot of coffee. It was late, and the others drifted out to go home. The Mexican came out from behind the bar and sat down and filled a cup with fresh coffee.
“I am called Pio…. You want a place to stay?”
“No … I’ve slept out so long I’d never be able to sleep inside. I’ll go out under the trees.”
“You won’t have trouble. Those who live here are good people.”
“Are there any other strangers around?”
“There was a man … he rode through here yesterday but he wasn’t around long. He acted as if somebody was following him.”
He looked up into my eyes but I grinned at him. “You got me wrong. I ain’t after anybody. I’m just riding north, going up to Romero, and then if things look good, maybe over to the Colorado mines.”
He was skeptical, I could see that, but he was a good man, and he was willing to wait for any further information.
Me, I knew better than to start anything in these quiet little places. They were quiet because they were left alone. The men here, each man in each house, had a buffalo gun and he could shoot. Each man in this town had fought Indians, renegades, and whoever wanted a fight. If a man started trouble in one of these little western towns he was setting himself up at the end of a shooting gallery. Moreover, it was an even-money bet that Pio knew about the shooting down country. News like that travels fast.
After I’d eaten and had drunk a quart of coffee, I went outside and led my horse into the trees and beyond them to the meadow. Then, stripping off the saddle, I gave him a careful rubdown while he fed on a bait of corn I’d gotten from Pio. Western horses got mighty little corn, but that dun had it coming; and thinking of him made me think kindly of that old man back there who had given him to me.
Before this, I hadn’t dared to strip the saddle from him for fear I might have to light out again, to light a shuck, as the saying was.
It was a quiet night. I could hear the rustle of the cottonwood leaves, and sometimes heard subdued sounds from the plaza. There was a coyote out on the knoll making music at the stars. Rolled up in my blankets, two of them, atop my poncho, I slept like a baby … a baby who’d never known a night in his life when there mightn’t be trouble.
Sunup was a rare fine thing. Washing my face in the water that poured into the horse trough, I glanced over at the buckboard standing in front of the cantina. A Mexican was hitching a fresh team to the buckboard, and the rattle of the trace chains was the only sound in the little street, shaded by the huge old cottonwoods.
My fingers had to do for a comb, something I’d not owned in more than a year, but I saddled up before I went into my saddlebags for my razor, which I stropped on my belt. Then I shaved, using the still end of the horse trough for a mirror. It made me look some better, although I’d never win no prizes for looks, not with that broken nose of mine.
When I’d finished shaving, I dabbed whiskey on my jaws for a shaving lotion and then led my dun across to the hitch rail. A man living my land of life never would let himself get caught without a gun or a saddle horse.
I went inside, where Pio was standing over a table at which three people were sitting, but the first one I saw was the girl.
She was young … maybe seventeen. Most girls were married at her age, or soon after. She had kind of dark red hair and brown eyes. … She was beautiful … taller than most girls … and shaped like music.
The old man with her was rail-thin and waspish, with hard gray eyes and a gray mustache mixed with red. You could see at a glance that he was a man with no give to him, and a man that no man in his right mind would try to cross. The third man was a breed … I’d say half Indian, anyway. A slight-built man, he was, and past middle age.
When I sat down at a table Pio’s wife came in with a plate of food, a heaping plate, for she had noticed the night before that I was a good feeder. She was one of those women who like nothing better than to see a man sit up to table and put away the food.
A couple of times the old man glanced my way, and once the girl did. I heard Pio say something about “Romero …” but his voice trailed off.
Pretty soon he came over to my table and dropped into a chair. He motioned to his wife for a fresh pot of coffee and we started in on it, Pio being as good a hand at putting it away as I was myself.
“Those people,” Pio said, “they go north.”
“Yeah?”
“I fear for them. She is young, the senorita. And the men … good men, but not plainsmen.”
“What are they doin’ out here then? No man in his right mind brings a woman like that into this country.”
Pio shrugged. “I brought mine. What must be done must be done. Perhaps there was no other place.”
There were questions I could have asked, but it was none of my business. I was lighting out of here right soon, and more than likely I wouldn’t be back this way again.
Only that pack train of Nathan Hume’s kept sticking in my mind. If all that gold was up there in those mountains, maybe I should just look around. I wanted no part of that outfit I’d left behind, but it was likely I’d be there before them.
“It is said you are an outlaw, senor?”
I looked up at him, but I did not speak. It was said, but I didn’t much like it.
“I think, myself, you are an honest man, and a caballero. I think you are one to be trusted.”
“You think whatever you like.”
“Those three … they need help.”
My hand was reaching for the bean pot, but it stopped halfway.