gentlemen. I am Don Louis Cis-neros.”
“I am Tell Sackett,” I said, and introduced the others.
He greeted them and then turned his eyes to me. “Yours is a familiar name,” he
said. “There was a Sackett who married the granddaughter of an old friend.”
“That would be my younger brother, Tyrel. He married into the Alvarado family.”
“Come in,” he said, and as we walked into the dim coolness of the interior, he
added, “We are old friends, my family and the Alvarados. I have heard much of
your family, amigo. Your brother stood between Alvarado and his enemies.”
Hours later, when we had bathed and eaten a good dinner at his table, we sat
about smoking the Don’s Cuban cigars. I was never much of a hand to smoke, but
did from time to time, and this was one time I joined in.
Dorset and the children had gone off with the Don’s daughters, and the boys and
me we stayed with our host.
“You have a dangerous road before you. I can let you have a dozen riders,” he
said.
“No. You may need them. We’ve come this far, and we’ll ride on.” Sitting back in
the big cowhide chair, I told him the whole story, and he listened without
comment. At the end he said nothing for several minutes. “I have news of your
family. I wish you could have known it sooner. The woman you speak of was
married to your brother Orrin, but they have separated. She was the daughter of
Jonathan Pritts, the man who led the men who tried to seize the Alvarado Grant.
It was your brother Tyrel who led the fight that defeated him, and when Orrin
found his wife was involved, he left her. She has hatred for all who bear the
name of Sackett. You were to be killed, amigo.”
It seemed unreasonable that a woman would go to such lengths to get a man
killed, a man who had done her no harm, but it all tied up into a neat package.
And there wasn’t much I could do about it. Maybe the best way to get even would
be just to get back alive, so all her plotting would come to nothing.
In the quiet of the lovely old hacienda, all that lay outside seemed far away,
not something that lurked just beyond the adobe walls. But deep in our hearts
not one of us thought himself free of what was to come.
The miles of the desert that lay between us and the relative safety of Tucson
could be nightmare miles. They were ever-present in our minds, but they were a
fact of our lives to be taken in stride.
Old Don Luis talked quietly and easily of the problems of living among the
Apaches. As Pete Kitchen had survived north of the border, so had he survived
south of it. He had his own small army of tough, seasoned vaqueros, fighters
every one of them.
As he talked he glanced over at Rocca. “If you ever want a job, señor,” he said,
“come to me here. There is a place for you. I have two vaqueros here who grew up
with the Apaches.”
“It is a good place,” Rocca said. “It may be that one day I shall come riding
here.”
Long after the others had turned in, I sat in the quiet of the old Don’s study
and talked with him. The walls of the room were lined with shelves of
leather-bound books, more than I had ever seen, and he talked of them and of
what they had told him, and of what they meant to him.
“These are my world,” he said. “Had I been born in another time or to another
way of life I should have been a scholar. My father had this place and he needed
sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place. It has been good to
me. I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written
words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the
page of life that was left open for me.
“There is tonic in this.” He gestured toward the out-of-doors. “I have used the
plow and the Winchester instead of the pen and the inkstand. There is tonic in
the riding, in the living dangerously, in the building of something.
“I know how the Apache feels. He loves his land as I do, and now he sees another
way of life supplanting his. The wise ones know they can neither win nor last,
but it is not we who destroy them, but the times.
“All things change. One species gives way to another better equipped to survive.
Their world is going, but they brought destruction to another when they came,
and just so will we one day be forced out by others who will come. It is the way
of the world, the one thing we know is that all things change.
“Each of us in his own way wars against change. Even those who fancy themselves
the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us
is convinced that our way is the best way.
“I have lived well here. I should like to see this last because I have built it
strong and made it good, but I know it will not. Even my books may not last, but
the ideas will endure. It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted
has roots no man can utterly destroy.”
He paused and looked at me. “You are bored with an old man talking.”
“No, sir. I am learning. We are a people who have hungered after learning, Don
Luis, and who have had too little of it. I mean we Sacketts. Our mountain lands
had thin soil, and they gave us nothing more than just a living until we came
west.”
I looked at him and felt ashamed. “I can barely read, sir. It is a struggle to
make out the words, and what they mean. Some I hunt down like a coyote after a
rabbit. I look at those books with longing, sir, and think of all the things
they might say to me.”
I got up, for of a sudden there was a heavy weariness upon me. “My books have
been the mountains,” I said. “The desert, the forest, and the wide places where
the grass grows. I must learn what I can from the reading I can do.”
Don Luis got up also, holding out his hand. “Each of us must find wisdom in his
own way. Mine is one way, yours another. Perhaps we each need more of what the
other knows…. Good night, señor.”
When I went outside I walked through the gate to smell the wind, to test the
night. By the wall near me a cigarette glowed, cupped in a hand. “How goes the
watch?” I asked in Spanish.
“Well, señor.” He held the cigarette behind the wall in the darkness. He bowed
his head and drew deep, the small red fire glowed and faded again. “We are not
alone, señor. Your friends and ours, they are out there … waiting.”
So they had caught up with us. Now there would be hell to pay in Sonora.
Turning on my heel, I went back into the house. The old Don was just leaving his
study.
“You have many horses?” I asked.
“All you need,” he assured me.
“Can you give us three apiece? I can’t pay you now, but — ”
“Do not speak of pay,” he interrupted. “Your brother is the husband of my old
friend’s granddaughter. You may have the horses.” He looked closely at me. “What
will you do?”
“Your vaquero says they are waiting out there now. I think he is right. And so I
think we will take our chances and run for it. We’ll switch horses without
stopping … maybe we can outdistance them.”
Don Luis Gsneros shrugged. “You might,” he said. “I will have the horses ready
at daybreak.”
“An hour before,” I said. “And gracias.”
Chapter 12
The horses were ready and we were mounted, the children with us. The Don’s men
were posted on the walls to cover our going. My horse was restive, eager to be
away, but I glanced around at Dorset. In the vague light her face seemed pale,
her eyes unusually large. I suspected mine were the same.
“The tall pine yonder,” I said, and pointed in the direction. “Ride for it, ride
hard. They will be close around, with their horses well back from where.they
wait. With luck, we can ride through them and be away before they can get off
more than a shot or two.”
Sixteen men were on the walls, rifles ready for firing. Other men stood by the
gates, prepared to swing them open.