Lando (1962) (17 page)

"I'll have a little of my own back. I want the hide off him, but I want to break his pocket, too. With a Caffrey, that will hurt the worst."

The Tinker was silent for several minutes, and there was no sound in the room but an occasional crackle from the fireplace and the faint hiss of the coffee pot.

We sat still around the room--the Tinker with his long, narrow face and gold earrings, Doc Halloran standing and looking long, lean and serious, with the black eyes of Juana and Manuel in the background.

"Deckrow's in town," the Tinker said finally, glancing around at Juana. "He's looking for you."

"His daughter is with him?"

"They're going to San Antonio. There's a lawsuit over the estate." He looked at me.

"Your father should be here tomorrow, your father and his wife."

"He married Gin?"

"Love match--f the start. He's in great shape again and looks fine; and Gin, she's beautiful as ever. But Franklyn Deckrow claims the estate through his wife, and he claims he bought up mortgages. I don't understand lawing, but that's the way of it. The trouble will be settled in either San Antonio or Austin, but they're going to San Antonio now, then on to Austin, I think."

"I'll have to be there," I said. "I've evidence to offer."

Juana looked at me, and fear showed in her eyes.

"Does he know? Se@nor Deckrow, does he know?"

"He knows ... my eyes were on him and he saw it."

"Then tomorrow, when you fight?"

Doc and the Tinker, they just looked at me, and I said, "Deckrow was with Herrara's and Cortina's men that night. It was he and nobody else who killed Jonas. Shot him dead. It was Deckrow who tipped them off that we had come into Mexico after gold--they were expecting us."

"He'll kill you. He'll have to."

Looking down at my big hands, I shrugged.

"He'll try."

That night I lay long awake, watching the red glow of the coals and thinking back over my life, and it didn't add up to much. I'd set out to become rich in the western lands, but going after that LaFitte gold had been my ruin. Maybe even starting west with the Tinker had been the finish of me.

When this was over I would go on ... there were other Sacketts out in New Mexico, near the town of Mora. I would go there.

There was nobody for me here. Pa had married Gin, and he would be thinking of another family, and rightly so. It was true that I had felt strongly about Gin, but the physical needs of a man speak loud with a woman like her about, and there doesn't have to be anything else between you--alth she was a man's woman in so many ways, and not only of the bed.

When I found a woman of my own, I hoped she would be like Gin. She and pa--I had seen it right off. They were for each other.

Me? Who was there for me? I was a man with nothing. A man with great shoulders and tremendous power in his hands, but nothing else. I owned a horse taken from horse thieves, and a mule bred by stealth, and nothing at all of which I could be proud.

It was little enough I had in the way of learning, and in my mid-twenties I'd laid no foundation for anything.

Tomorrow there would be a horse race and then a fight, andwith luck I should win one or both. Yet then there would remain the matter of surviving to enjoy my winnings. Horse-racing and fighting, these are not things upon which a man can build a useful life.

Tomorrow I would meet Dun Caffrey in the ring, with my fists. He was a skilled fighter, and I was only one with great strength and good but long-unpracticed training. If I whipped Caffrey, I'd have some of my own back; and if I could settle the matter of Deckrow and live, then I'd go west and start again as I had wished to do.

One thing I had learned in these years: I could now speak Spanish. Somewhere, at sometime in the future, it might help.

Westward I had come to grow rich in the land, but six years had passed and I had no more than at the beginning.

At last I slept, and when I awakened day had come and the coals were smoldering, with only a faint glow of red here and there. The room was empty.

Clasping my hands behind my head, I tried to organize a day that would not organize, for there were too many factors outside my grasp. Before the day was over I would have repd Dun Caffrey what I owed him, or would have taken a fearful beating.

But the greatest danger lay not in losing, but in winning. In losing I would take a beating; in winning, there was every chance I might be shot.

The Tinker and Halloran came in together. "The race will be run at ten o'clock," Halloran said.

"The course is all laid out--one half-mile from a standing start."

"All right."

"The fight will be at one o'clock. Eighteen-foot ring. It's all set up in the stock corral.

Those who cannot get up to the ring will find a seat on the fence."

"How many horses in the race?"

"Five, including your mule. Nobody thinks a mule can run, except a few who came in from Oakville. Right now the betting is seven to one against your mule."

From my shirt pocket I took forty dollars, every cent I had in the world. "At those odds, or anything close," I said, "you bet it on the race. If we win, bet whatever's in hand on the fight.

"Meanwhile," I said, "I'm going to take a walk around."

This here town of Beeville, along about the time we were there--y could walk three blocks in any direction and be out in the country. And some of those blocks you'd walk would be mighty sparse as to buildings.

It was a cattle-trail town and ran long to saloons and gambling houses. The folks who lived in the country around were mostly raising cattle. The rest of them were stealing cattle. Both industries were in what you might call a flourishing condition when we came into town.

There was considerable money floating about town, and not an awful lot to do with it but drink or gamble. When it came to ranching, there were several successful men around Beeville; but in the cattle-rustling business the most successful man was Ed Singleton.

The town was about evenly divided between the ranchers and the thieves, and each knew the others by name and occupation. You could hang a cattle thief back in those days, but the trouble was you had to catch him at it. Singleton and those others, they were almighty sly.

There was a lot of betting on both the fight and the race, some of the folks even betting on me, sight unseen. There's folks will bet on anything, given a chance.

Quite a crowd was in town. Some, like I said, had come over from Oakville, but there was a whole crowd from Helena, too. Helena was an old stop on the Chihuahua trail and, like Beeville and Oakville, it was a rough, wild town, and those men from Helena were as tough as they come.

I walked down the street, keeping away from the knots of men arguing here and there, and finally I stopped by the corral to look at that ring. It looked big enough, and small enough, too.

A man stopped beside me, looking through the corral bars at the ring. He glanced at me out of a pair of hard, measuring eyes, and thrust out his hand, "Walton. I'm sheriff. You fought much?"

"When I had to. Never in a contrivance like that."

"He's an experienced man, and a brute.

I've seen him fight." He paused. "You must think you can beat him."

"A man never knows," I said, "but when we were kids I broke his nose and his jaw. I outsmarted him that time," I said, "maybe I can again."

"This is a grudge fight?"

"If it isn't, then you never saw one. His pa used to beat me, and he robbed me. This one tried to bully me around. I figure he knows a lot more about fighting than I do, but I figure there's a streak of coyote in him. It may be mighty hard to find, but I'm going in there hunting it."

Walton straightened up. "There's fifty to a hundred thugs in town that nobody can account for without considering the Bishop. I'll do what I can, but I can't promise you anything."

"In this country," I said, "a man saddles his own broncos and settles his own difficulties."

Walton walked away, and after a bit I went back to the house and saddled the roan. Time was shaping up for the race.

Manuel had led the mule out. "They want to know his name," he said.

"What did you call him?"

Manuel shrugged.

"All right, call him Bonaparte, and let's hope that track out there isn't Waterloo."

The Tinker came out and mounted up, and Doc Halloran too. One of the others who showed up was a husky Irishman with a double-barreled shotgun.

"I'm a mule-skinner," he said, "and I bet on him. In my time I've seen some fast mules, and I saw this one run over to Oakville."

The Bishop was out there, and Dun Caffrey. I noticed they had at least two horses in the race.

"Manuel," I said, "how mean can you be?"

He looked at me from those big dark eyes.

"I do not know, se@nor. I have never been mean."

"Then you've got only one chance. Get that mule out in front and let him run. Those two"

--I indicated the horses--?are both ridden by tough men. One or both of them will try to block you out if you look like you'd a chance, so watch out."

"I will ride Bonaparte," he said--?x is all I can do, but it is a proud name."

They lined up, and the way Bonaparte walked up to the line you wouldn't have thought he'd anything in mind but sleep. One of those Bishop horses moved in on each side of him.

So I walked across to the Bishop. I walked up to him right in front of everybody.

"Tinhorn," I said, "you better hope those boys of yours don't hurt that kid. If they do, I'll kill you."

He thought it was big talk, but he made a little move with his head and two husky shoulder-strikers moved up to me. "Caffrey will kill you," the Bishop said, his voice deeper than any I'd ever heard, "but these can rough you up a little first."

One of them struck at me, and the Tinker's training was instinctive. Grabbing his wrist, I busted him over my back into the dust, and he came down hard. Coming up in a crouch, the other man missed a blow and I saw the glint of brass knuckles on his hand. My left hand grabbed his shirt collar in front and took a sharp twist that set him to gagging and choking. With the other I grabbed his hand, forcing his arm up so that everybody within sight could see those brass knuckles.

Now, like I've said, I was an uncommon strong man before those years in prison. My fingers wrapped around his hand just above the wrist and began to squeeze, squeezing his fingers right up to a point, then I brought his hand down and let those knuckle dusters fall into the dust. At the same time I slipped my hand up a little further and shut down hard with all my grip.

He screamed, a hoarse, choking scream. And then I put my thumb against the base of his fingers and my fingers at his wrist and bent it back sharply. Folks standing nearby heard it break.

Then I walked out to Manuel.

"You ride it clean, kid," I said. I spoke loud enough so all could hear. "If either of these make a dirty ride, they'll get what he got."

Somebody cheered, and then the pistol was fired.

Those horses taken out of there at a dead run, most of them cutting horses and expert at starting from a stand.

My mule, he was left at the post.

They just taken off and went away from there, but Manuel was figuring right. He held the mule back, and sure enough, those two riders to right and left crashed together. They had risked what I'd do rather than what the Bishop might do. If Manuel had been in there, he'd have been hurt, and bad.

Then Manuel let out a shrill whoop and that Bonaparte left out of there like he had some place to go and it was on fire.

He was two lengths behind before he made his first jump, but I'd never realized the length of his legs before. He had a tremendous stride, and he ran--he ran like no horse I'd ever seen.

There was no way for me to see the finish. It was a straightaway course, and several of them seemed to be bunched up at the end.

Suddenly one of the judges, a man on a white horse, came galloping back.

"That damned mule!" he yelled. "The mule won by half a length!"

Back at the Mexicans' cabin nobody had much to say. The Mexican folks who owned it stayed out of sight most of the time and Juana stayed with them. I had made a bit of money and Halloran cut me in on what he'd made on the race, as well as giving a bit to Manuel.

That I did too.

Those two races had made that boy more money than he and Juana had seen since Miguel died.

Me, I stretched out on the bed and lay there, resting up for the fight. My stomach felt empty and kind of sick-like, and I began to wonder if I was scared. True enough, I'd whipped Caffrey, but he was no fighter then, just a big, awkward boy, and I might have been lucky. Now he had been out among men, he had proved himself against known fighters, defeating them all, and there's no escaping the worth of experience.

Between bouts he'd had a plenty of sparring with experienced fighters, and was up to all manner of tricks that only a professional can come by. But I thought of Jem Mace, who'd taught the Tinker. He had been a master boxer, one of the great ones. Never weighing more than one hundred and sixty pounds, he had been the world's champion, defeating men as much as sixty pounds heavier.