“Get down and come up to the fire,” Jacob said. “Coffee’s on, and we’ve got some grub, such as it is.”
“Thankee, thankee much! I’ve been ridin’ all day and I’m mighty tired an’ almighty hungry!”
Monte, his rifle in his left hand and his pistol in its holster near his right, came in from the dark, flanking the stranger. Then Francisco and Alejandro came in. The rest stayed out, away from the fire. Diego was with the horses, and I suspected Jaime was, too.
He came on up to the fire, taking a look around as he did so. Seeing those men coming in from the dark seemed to make him a mite nervous, and you could almost see him counting.
“Come from Los Angeles,” he said, although we did not ask. “Headin’ for the Colorado.”
“Well, that’s different, anyhow,” Monte commented. “Since that gold strike up north, everybody is headin’ that way.”
“Gold is where you find it,” the stranger said easily. “I figure they’ve got to eat, so I’m thinkin’ of drivin’ cattle north. No matter whether they find gold, they’ve all got to eat.”
Nobody had much to say to that. He drank coffee, seemed about to speak, then changed his mind. Finally he said, “Seen a corral yonder. You catchin’ wild stuff?”
“Here an’ there,” Jacob said, “catchin’ an’ breakin’.”
“Must be gold down here, too, feller knew where to find it.” “Like you said,” Jacob said mildly, “gold is where you find it. We figure folks will have to ride to get anywhere, so we’re breakin’ horses to sell.” “Seen any Indians?” I asked innocently. “I mean Mohaves? Or Piutes? This is nervous country, so many of them around. Although,” I added, “they don’t often come this side of Tehachapi Pass.”
He looked around as if seeing me for the first time. “No? Why not?” “Superstitious,” I said, “or what we’d call it. They don’t like the spirits up yonder.” I indicated the Tehachapis. “There’s a spell on this country.” “You don’t seem much skeered,” he said contemptuously. “We aren’t,” I said. “We’ve got our own medicine man. He’s out there now,” I added, “casting spells on our enemies, whoever they may be.” “I don’t put no stock in such things,” he said. “I didn’t either,” I replied. That this man was a spy, I had no doubt. He carried no blankets, yet he was supposed to be traveling for days. His horse hadn’t even worked up a sweat, yet he implied he had come far, and he did not eat like a man who had missed even one meal.
“I didn’t either,” I repeated. “Until that man”-I was lying cheerfully now-“stole our medicine man’s horse.
“This fellow just rode up and threw down on him with a pistol and took his horse. Our medicine man just stood there and said, ‘Did you ever have a broken back? Somehow I see you with a broken back.’
“The horse thief, he laughed sarcastic-like and said he’d had no broken back. At that moment the medicine man lifted a hand, and that horse started to buck. Next thing you know, that horse thief was on the ground. “He started to get up and he cried out and sweat broke out all over him. Our medicine man, he went and mounted his horse. He said to that horse thief, lyin’ there, he said, ‘You said you didn’t have a broken back. Well, you’ve got one now.’ And then he just rode off an’ left him lyin’ there.” “What happened?”
I shrugged. “What could happen? It was August. It was the Mohave Desert. If he was unlucky, he’d have lasted two, three days. If he was lucky, he’d have died the first night.”
He glanced from one to the other of us, but nobody was smiling. Monte said, “Aw, he’s a good feller, long as you don’t cross him.” My eyes dropped to the stranger’s gun. The thong was slipped off the hammer.
Now, a riding man would want that thong in place unless he expected trouble. Alejandro had moved slightly. He was now seated right behind the stranger. He spoke softly. “You didn’t tell us your name.”
“Just any name will do,” I said. “We need something for the marker.”
“What?” He started to get up, then sank back. “What marker?” “Suppose horse thieves rode in and attacked us now?” I said. “We might be suspicious of you, or the thieves might think you were one of us. At least you’d be one less to share things with. We’d have to have a name for the marker on your grave. Shame to bury a man without leaving something to show where he passed.”
He put down his cup. “Maybe I should be ridin’ on,” he said, “ride while it’s cool, y’ know?”
He got to his feet very carefully. He started to brush off his pants, which would put his hand near his gun, and then thought the better of it. “Mount up,” I said, “and ride. When you see Fletcher, tell him to come anytime he’s ready.”
Thirty-four
When it was daybreak, I walked down from our breakfast fire carrying a piece of bread, and when I reached the corral gate, I held it out to the black stallion. He shied away, tossing his head and rolling his eyes, but I talked quietly and held the bread out to him.
One of the mares came up and reached for it, and I broke off a bit and let her have it. This mare was one that had been handled quite a bit, I thought. Anyway, she took the bread from my hand. The stallion seemed interested, but he was wary. I talked to him a little, but he held off, and finally I left the bread on the top rail of the gate and went away. I suspect the mare got it, but did not know.
Jacob was getting up from the fire, holding his cup in his hand. “I figure we should move ‘em,” he said. “I don’t like that crowd.” “Me neither,” Monte said. “I think they had something in mind last night. I think they were out there, ready to come in. I think he was going to start it.” “Martin saw something moving out there, and the horses were restless.” Jacob sipped his coffee, his eyes on the scattered oaks along the mountainside. “Maybe it’s the Injun stories, but I don’t like this place. Or maybe it is just that I want to go back. I’d never have believed it, but that woman’s got me thinkin’ of business, wheelin’ an’ dealin’ like she does. It’s like poker, only it takes longer to rake in the pot.”
He looked at me, a faint twinkle of humor in his eyes. “Anybody told me I was becoming a city man, I’d of been ready to shoot him, but there it is.” My thoughts were on Meghan, and I agreed. “Why not?” But when I said it, I was looking at the hills. There was a place back there where a creek came down a canyon, with oaks on the mountainsides. I wanted to ride up that canyon alone sometime and drink out of that stream.
Ramon came up to the fire, leading a line-back dun from the herd. It was a horse to which he had given special attention. He dropped the reins, and getting his cup, poured coffee from the blackened pot. The others had gone, wandering off to catch up their horses. Most of them had already rolled their beds. “We go now?”
“Jacob does not like it here.”
“And you?”
“I like it.” Nodding toward the hills, I said, “There is something up there for me. And in the desert there is something.”
“You come back?”
“When I can.” I threw the rest of my coffee on the ground. “It is an old place. I can feel that. It has changed, but it has been here. When I look at those mountains, I see the centuries pass like seasons. “My father often said that men talk of what they call the ‘Old World.’ It is no older than this, if as old. Men had the Bible and they had the Greeks. They knew of the Egyptians and Babylon, so when the scholars began to dig, it was to find familiar things, things of which they had read. Whatever they found tied into something, and when they found something strange, they shied from it because it would have no place, no connection.
“Who knows when men first came here? Who knows how many people were here before you whom we call Indians? So much decays. So much disappears in the passage of years.”
“You must come back.”
The coals had burned down to nothing, only a few faint fingers of smoke rising. I looked at the dying red of the coals and thought of Meghan. Did she ever think of me? Why should she? I was only a boy who had sat beside her. I looked around. What would she think of my desert? Of these, my mountains? Was it vain to think of them as mine? Yet they were mine in a secret place in my mind. They were mine because I belonged to them and them to me. Or was this simply a romantic idea I had because my father and mother had sought a refuge in the desert?