was They’re a rough crowd,” he admitted, shaking my hand. “There’s a few among them I want to float out of Los Angeles the first chance I get.
This town wants peace.” The Plaza was empty again. The light of dawn was yellow in the gray sky, with here and there a crimson streak.
I liked the smell of the air, for the wind was fran, off the sea. I untied my horse and stepped into the saddle.
Rowland’s deputy came back across the Plaza alone.
He took a cigar from his mouth. ‘It was a woman,- he said. “Went unto an empty room.
We could smell the perfume in there, and when she ran she forgot a glove.” He showed it to me. It was for a small hand-a hand that could pull a trigger as well as a man’s Could.
“See you,- I said, and rode out of town.
They were gone again, lost again out in the open again.
Where would they go?
Conchita was in the yard when I rode up, and she came over to me as her grandfather came out of the house.
“You are well?” Her eyes searched my face.
“A man passing by said there was a shooting in town.” When I had loosened the girth I went into the house with them.
Conchita put coffee on the table and her brother came to listen as I told them what had happened.
“And now amigo?” the old man asked.
“I shall ride on. Try to pick up the trail.” He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I am an old man, senior, and you must forgive me, but do you not think you waste your life? Those who lost the money have given it up now; they work and think of other things.
Their lives go on, as yours must also.
‘It does no good to follow and follow these men.
They will have their suffering. Believe me, this woman will bring evil upon them.
Such a woman will never cease from evil, and those with her will suffer. Leave them to their lives, senior, and find a place for yourself. The years pass swiftly, you will be an old man, with nobody, and with nothing to look back upon but the chase.” “It is something I must do. Sometimes I think that, just as a beaver must build dams, I must pursue these men.” “But all is changing around you. Even I, who am an old man, see that change. From day to day the law grows stronger. Men will work together, senior, and the lawless wig soon be pursued wherever they may go.” He was right, of course. Sitting there in the cool room, I could look out on the sunlit yard and far away to the hills that bordered the sea.
It was pleasant here, and there was land to he had. This valley was so beautiful it would attract people, and they would come and build homes here. It was the way of the world that nothing remains the same.
“I shall go on,” I said. “I have a little more of the money, and I shall send it back to my neighbors.” We talked long, drank good coffee, and then with the morning gone, at noontime I tightened the cinch and stepped into the saddle. They stood in the open, on the hard-packed ground, and waved a good-bye.
When I turned at last in my saddle to look back from the trail only Conchita was still there. She lifted her hand once more, and I answered with mine.
Was it to be always so-that I should come into the lives of people, get to feel close to them, and then ride on? Would there be no end to it?
For two weeks I cast back and forth, trying all the trails that led out of Los Angeles to the east, the north, the south.
Then finally at a wayside station in the desert a man heard me speak of them and turned to me. “I saw some folks looked about like you said.
A pretty blonde woman and two men. They came into Whiskey Flat from the southwest. They headed east out toward Walker’s Pass.” We talked a little longer, and I knew he had seen them, all right. One of the men, he said, had a bad cut over his eye and another on his cheekbone.
The other man, who was powerfully built, was wearing a leather coat and a black hat.
He drew me a map in the dirt outside the station, showing me Whiskey Flat, the trail to Walkers Pass, and our own location. We were at the new railroad town of Mohave. It had been called a lot of things before that.
Elias Dearborn had a stage station there as early as 1860, and later the Nadeau freight teams used to make stops there.
“Me trail here,” the man said, ‘goes up through Red Rock Canyon toward Walker’s Pass. It ain’t much of a trail, but I come down that way yesterday, and you’ve got you a good horse.
Carry plenty of water, though, and watch for rattlers. Seems to be a lot of them out year.” ‘Pack horse?” I queried.
The man shrugged. “Not much chance here. Horses are scarce.
Chavez and his outlaws-he’s got the ragged end of the old Vasquez crowd trailin” with him-they’ve stole most of the good horses around. You might pick up a mule.” I went on, and I found the trail hot and dusty. When I had been riding about two hours it had become so hot that I knew it would be foolish to go on. I reined over to one side and rode into a small canyon where there was an island of shade forty or fifty feet across.
Stepping down from the saddle, I poured a little water into my, hat and let my horse drink, then tied him to some brush and settled down against the canyon wall to rest.
It was very still. My horse nibbled at brush, then closed his eyes and dozed three-legged, ducking his tail at an occasional fly.
From where I sat I could see almost half a mile of the trail as it wound up into the canyon that led to the plateau beyond. A lizard Came out on a rock and studied me, his mouth gaping.
It was a place in which to sit and think about my own place in what was happening. One fact kept nudging me . . . I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Was my pursuit of Heseltine just a way of not looking forward to the future?
All the time they were running and I was following, the fact was staring me right in the face that a man may run all his life and get nowhere.
The trouble was I’d just never had a destination in mind that I wanted .. and yet I did want one. As long as pa had been alive I could think about being on my own, but postponing everything until that day when I would face the world alone. Then suddenly he was dead and I had those people to repay; and chasing Heseltine was just one more way of avoiding the day when I had to do and be all those big things I’d told myself pa was keeping me from doing and being.
With hat slightly tipped over my eyes, I watched the heat waves dancing, watched the trail as it went up through the rocks, where occasional ocotillo and some stunted josbuas grew.
All right, I said to myself, supposing you get all that money back from Heseltine, what will you do then?
Was I going to be a rancher?
Was I going to try gold mining?
There were a lot of things I hadn’t education enough to do, but even as I thought of that I could feel Con judys eyes on me and hear his dry comment. “You can read, can’t you? If you can read, you can learn.
You don’t have to go to school to get an education, although it is the best way for most of us, and anyway, all school can give you is the outline of the picture. You have to fill in the blank places yourself, later.” That was what he would say, or something like it.
The truth was that I had to face up to myself.
Maybe pa had never gotten anywhere, but he never quit trying, and no matter how much he got beat down he kept on getting UP.
There isn’t any bright, patent-leather world thaCs always shining, no matter what you do … you have to make your own world, and your own place in it.
For the first time I checked the money in the saddlebags. There was slightly more than twelve hundred dollars. I’d keep a couple of hundred, and send the rest back to Texas.
After a while, I dozed. My horse awakened me, blowing softly.