Mojave Crossing (1964) (14 page)

So I swung into the saddle and looked down at my big hands resting on the pommel, work-hardened hands, used to pick handle, shovel, axe, and rope. And to guns also.

"It does not matter, amigo. If he has the gold that is mine, and that also which belongs to my friends, I shall ask him for it."

"You wish to die?"

"Nobody wishes to die."

So I turned the stallion and rode away from the ranch, and toward the pueblo.

All that remained now was to get my gold, and the man to see was Sandeman Dyer. Or ... was I too suspicious? Was this a trap? Had the information been planted, in hopes that it would reach me?

It was dark when I came again to the pueblo of Los Angeles, and there were lights in many homes and other buildings. I came into town by the old brea pits road, and left my horse at the town's best livery stable. And so I returned to the Pico House, and my room there.

A man with a flat-brimmed white hat sat in the lobby reading the Star. He looked at me over the edge of the paper, only his eyes showing between paper and hat brim.

My few things were in my room, to which I added my rifle and the gear recovered with my horses.

Only the gold was gone now.

I was tired ... bone-weary. I felt as if I had been drugged. Tonight I should search out Sandeman Dyer, but I was too tired. Tonight I would rest, at last, in a bed.

I peeled off my shirt, and filled the basin with water and washed, then combed my hair. Standing before the mirror I looked at myself, seeing the old scars, marks of old wounds from gun battles and from the war, and here or there the finer, thinner scars of knife wounds. Those scars showed me how lucky I had been.

It was not in me to believe myself fated to die at any given time. Deep within me I knew, having seen many men die, that no man is immune to death at any time at all. During every moment, walking or sleeping, we are vulnerable ... I could die tonight ... tomorrow.

Young men do not like to believe that. Each has within him that little something that says: Others may die, but not me, not me. I shall live.

Despite all those who die around him, this is what he believes. But I did not believe it, and I had never believed it from the first moment I saw a good man die, when the evil lived. I could believe in no special providence for any man. Tomorrow, when I went hunting my gold, a bullet or a knife might kill me.

But it was not in me to refrain from going. Nor could I call this bravery. My determination held none of that. It was simply because it was in me to go.

I had never learned how to hang back from what it was up to me to do.

Sitting down on the bed, I reached for a dusty boot. One hand upon the toe, the other on the heel, I waited, just a moment longer. Weariness made me sag inwardly, made me cringe at the sound of footsteps in the hall outside my door.

After a moment there was a light tap on the door and, stepping across to the door's side, my hand on my gun, I asked, "Who is it?"

"A letter for you, sir. It arrived yesterday, but I expected to see you at the desk."

"Slip it under the door."

There was a moment's hesitation, and then the letter appeared. It was addressed in a flowing masculine hand, one I had never seen before.

Ripping open the brown envelope, I found a sealed letter within, and with it a short note. I read the note first.

Mr. Sackett, Dear Sir:

When the mail from the stage you saw wrecked in the canyon was brought to us it was found to contain this letter to you, addressed in care of me. As it may be of importance, I am sending it forward.

Hardy.

Then I opened the letter, and when I unfolded the closely written pages, I saw that it was from Ange.

Dropping upon the bed, I read it through, which I could do with a bit of work, for I'd little enough time at school in my boyhood, and read but slowly.

She had been ill. ... She was well. ...

Did I wish her to come back? And then almost in the next sentence ... she was coming back. She would take the first stage. She would meet me in Prescott.

I folded up the letter and thrust it into my pants pocket. Then I pulled the pants off and got into bed. Drawing the blankets up, I stretched out carefully, for the bed was made for a shorter sleeper than I, and slowly I let my long body relax against the comfort of the mattress.

Ange ... my own Ange ... Ange was coming west. She would meet me in Prescott.

Then I sat bolt upright.

Ange would meet me in Prescott, where I would be arriving with another woman!

Presently I lay back on the bed and tried to relax once more, but no matter how I tried ...

Suddenly, I was wide awake. Somehow I had fallen asleep, but something, some faint noise, had awakened me in spite of my exhaustion. Starting to move, I caught myself in time. Somebody was in the room.

The door was closed. The window was open the merest crack, yet somebody was inside the room.

A faint creak told me that whoever it was stood right beside the bed. Through the slit of a scarcely opened eye I saw the loom of a dark figure, the faint gleam of light on a knife blade, and I threw myself against him, knocking him back to the floor.

Choking with fear and fury, I rolled on top of him and grabbed at his knife wrist, bending it sharply back toward the floor. I grabbed him by the belt with the other hand and heaved myself up, lifting him with me, and swung him bodily at the window.

With a tremendous crash of glass he went through it and I heard a wild, despairing yell, then the thud as he struck in the street below.

The door, I then noticed, was ever so slightly ajar. Pushing it shut, I shot the bolt and went back to bed. Cold night air blew through the broken window. Vaguely I heard excited talk in the street below ... but I decided I wasn't interested.

Presently heavy boots rushed up the hall and there was a frenzied knocking at my door.

Lifting my head, I said, "Damn it, go away! Can't a man sleep around here?"

Somebody started to reply, and I added, "If I have to get out of bed again, somebody else goes into the street. Now you goin' to leave me be?"

There was a subdued murmur, then quiet footsteps going off down the hall. I pulled the blankets around me, and in a few minutes I was asleep.

It was broad daylight when I woke up.

Sunlight was streaming in through the broken window, and I got out of bed. Still a mite foggy from the heavy sleep, I went to the basin, washed, and dressed.

When I had pulled on my shirt I looked out of the window, but there was nothing in the street to show where anybody had fallen.

Now one thought and one only was in my mind. Today I was going to see Sandeman Dyer.

When I came down the steps it looked like everybody was waiting for me. The manager of the hotel--leastways I figured it to be him-- came up and told me I'd have to pay for breaking the window.

"Breaking the window? Mister, I broke no window. I didn't even touch it. If you want to get paid, you find the man who went through it. You collect from him."

He started to argue, and I said, "Look, mister, I don't like to get mad. Last night was once, and far's I can see, that's enough. Maybe I should point out that you got bigger windows down here."

Well, he kind of drew back, but I stepped right after him. "Also, you might spend some of the time you seem to have to waste after me and find out how that thief had a key ... and he had one. You in the habit of givin' keys to thieves?"

I'd spoken loud, and several of the folks standing about moved closer to listen. That man began to worry.

"Ssh!" he said. He was all of a flutter to get shut of me now. "Forget it. I am afraid I was mistaken." And he hurried off.

I turned then to look at those people around me and I said, "Anybody here know where I can find a man named Dyer? Sandeman Dyer?"

Nobody seemed to know a thing. You never saw such vague folks in your born days. Everybody had been interested up to that point, and then nobody was. In less than two minutes after I spoke that name the lobby was empty.

I went outside, where sunlight lay on the dusty street and upon the walks. Pausing on the corner, I looked across the Plaza in the direction of Sonora town ... an unlikely place to look for Dyer.

Closer to me was the Calle de los Negros, better known as Nigger Alley, and Tao's gambling house.

Taking my time, I strolled here and there about the town, looking into store windows and watching the horse cars. Most of them seemed to be going out Spring Street to a place called Washington Gardens.

On the streets the folks themselves were a sight to behold, and when it came to the Californios themselves, you never saw such a dressed-up lot of folks. Many wore short jackets of silk, figured calico, or beaded buckskin, white linen shirts open at the neck, black silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely around the neck, and pants of velveteen or broadcloth, or sometimes of beautifully tanned white buckskin, and nearly every one wore a silk sash, usually bright red. The serapes ranged from Indian blankets to fine broadcloth.

The handsome outfits these men had, made me look a poor mountain boy, even in my new twelve-dollar suit. Why, I fancy it must have taken a thousand dollars or more to get some of them dressed. And their saddles and bridles! You never saw so much silver. And two-thirds of them, I was sure, with dirt floors in their houses.

Here and there you still saw men with long hair, and some of them with it not just to their shoulders. In some cases it was braided. The younger ones had taken to trimming their hair, Anglo fashion, but not all of them.

Everywhere a body looked there were black-eyed se@noritas, flirting with you with quick, teasing glances that made the red climb right up a man's neck. Me, I already had two women on my hands, when I wasn't fairly used to one, and more trouble shaping up than you could shake a stick at.

As I went about the town, everybody I asked about Sandeman Dyer was warning me about him. But I was more fearful of what would happen when I rode into Prescott with that black-eyed witch girl and found Ange a-waiting for me than I was of what was ahead of me right now. Ange was a red-haired girl, and she was one with a mind of her own, and she'd had will enough to survive in the high-up mountains of Colorado before I found her there.

[Sackett, Bantam Books, 1961.]

Suddenly a rider turned into Main Street from Spring, and I saw it was that black-eyed gunman who had been at Old Ben's ranch. He rode past, not noticing me, heading for the Calle de los Negros. He would be going to Dyer, I could lay a bet on it.

But just as I turned to follow, a voice spoke behind me. "You take my advice and you'll leave Dyer alone."

It was Nolan Sackett.

We stood there facing each other in the street, two mighty big men, both of us armed, and both carrying the scars we'd picked up since we left Tennessee, and a few from before that.

"If he's a friend of yours, you just tell him to hand over my gold. I got no quarrel with him."

Nolan didn't even smile. "Don't be a fool, man! You came out of that alive, and you're damned lucky. Now let well enough alone."

"I'm going after my gold."

He looked disgusted and mad all to once.

"Look," he said irritably, "you're kin of mine, or I'd let you go your way and get killed. Dyer has forty men around him, and he himself is one of the most dangerous men alive."

"So he sends a man to knife me in the dark?"

Nolan had an odd look in his eyes.

"Believe me, Tell, that man never came from Dyer. Dyer just couldn't care less about you."

He shoved his hat back on his head, and there was a worried look in his eyes. "For a man who says he minds his own affairs, you can pick up trouble faster than anybody I ever did see.

You'd be right smart if you just climbed up on that stallion of yours and lit out for the high-up desert.

There's three or four passels of folks here just a-honin' to see you dead and buried."

"You tell Dyer to have my gold ready. You go right along and tell him."

"Damn it, if you come against him you'll be facing me. I'm with him."

"Like I say, I never drew iron on ary a Sackett, but if you stand between me and what's rightfully mine they can bury you along with Sandeman Dyer."

"There'll be forty men, damn you!"

"Seems to me Dyer can't be too sure of himself if he needs all that company. You go stand beside him, Nolan, and when they bury me they can dig the grave wide enough for the lot of us."

When he had gone I stood there on the street, staring off toward the hills. Maybe I was crazy. After all, why not get into the saddle and ride away? Most of that gold was my own ... and true, it represented my stake for the future.

It represented the cattle I wanted to buy to stock a ranch in Arizona. It represented a future for Ange and me, if future there was to be.

And those other folks who lost gold entrusted to me ... they could less afford to lose their gold than I could, although they would not lose near so much.