Mojave Crossing (1964) (13 page)

The gold lay right there on the table where it had spilled, and Roderigo couldn't seem to take his eyes from it. Nolan Sackett ate with good appetite, but the others, including that sallow devil with the black eyes, hadn't much taste for eating. Dayton started several times to speak, but each time he gave it up, for there was just nothing he could say.

Finally, Old Ben spoke up. "You have tasted my hospitality"--his voice was dry, but there was a cutting edge to it--"now get out! And you, Dayton ... if you ever show up on my property again, for any reason whatsoever, I shall have you horsewhipped!"

Dayton almost staggered when he got to his feet, for he was a whipped man already, and it showed.

Oliphant got up and, more leisurely, so did the black-eyed gunman and Nolan himself.

Dayton looked over at Dorinda. "You coming?"

"Do you take me for a fool?" Oh, she was beautiful, all right, but she had a wicked tongue. "I left you before because I knew you were a tin-horn, and you brought me back by force. If you ever try it again, I'll kill you myself!"

Old Ben chuckled, and Dayton went white as a man can get and still live, then he ducked out of the door.

Nolan Sackett leaned over the table and scooped up the gold and swept it into the sack.

"Dayton," he called, "you forgot somethin'!"

Nolan paused, filling the door with his bulk.

He hefted the sack in his hand, and then he turned back and looked at Old Ben. "Now, I wonder," he said, kind of musing out loud, "where would a man get this kind of gold? Minted gold, and quite a lot of it, some of it old, mighty old."

He put on his hat. "This I got to contemplate ... I got to contemplate." And he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Old Ben was clutching the edge of the table with both hands. Some of the abrasions and cuts had opened and there was blood on the edge of the white cloth.

"Kill him!" he said. "Sackett ...

=ill him!"

I stared at him, and then I said, "I've got no call to kill him."

"You damned fool!" Old Ben shouted.

"Kill him. I say!"

Nobody moved, and Old Ben's face turned dark with angry blood, his eyes glared, andfora minute there I thought he'd have a stroke.

"That man," he said, "will be the death of some of us. Remember what I say."

"Not me," I replied. "I've nothing at stake here."

He looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time. "Yes ... of course. I had forgotten that."

Nobody made any comment, but I guess we were all figuring on the amount of unfinished business there was at that table. Dorinda Robiseau was suddenly on her own, but with no expectations of money like she'd had, having been promised part of this deal.

Old Ben Mandrin, whom I'd admired for his guts, suddenly began to look like a mighty mean, cantankerous, evil old man. He had saved his ranch, but he had Nolan Sackett to worry about; for however you looked at it, there had been a pretty definite threat in what Nolan said.

Nolan Sackett knew, as anybody would, that such gold had to come from somewhere. Old Ben had apparently been broke. Turner had assured Dayton that this was so. Roderigo, his own grandson, had believed him broke. Then Old Ben shows up with a sack full of minted gold and pays off his debt.

Where had the gold come from?

About that time I suddenly began to look at my hole card. And it was well that I did.

The old man had gotten that gold--of which the amount he'd paid to Dayton was only a small part -comon his middle-of-the-night ride with me. When he left me on that pass and turned off along the ridge, he had gone to that gold.

Was this all of it? Or was there more?

Pushing back from the table, I got up and went to my room where, I got out my gear.

Something told me to get out of this house, and I wanted to ... badly.

Roderigo followed me as I carried my gear out and dumped it on the edge of the veranda. "You're leaving?" he asked.

"Yes."

"My grandfather wishes to see you. He said he had promised you mules."

So he had ... and I was going to need those mules. "All right," I said, and we walked back inside.

He still sat at the table, although in just the few minutes I had been gone it had been cleared.

He looked tired now, and I couldn't wonder at it after all he had gone through. He had let down now, and the weariness of that long ride and the crawling among the rocks was getting to him. For the first time since I had met him, he looked his years.

"You helped me," he said when Roderigo had gone from the room, "when there was nobody else I dared call on. I'm having them drive in some mules, and I shall make you a present of twenty."

"That's a lot of mules."

He shrugged. "There are several hundred on the place. There are over six thousand head of cattle here or elsewhere that I own, and nearly a thousand horses. It is a small payment for what I owe you. Besides"--and a little of the Old Ben flashed into his eyes--"x will lighten the load on my range. Unless it rains, and rains well before summer sets in, I'll lose a good many head of stock."

He scratched out a bill of sale for the mules and passed it across the table. "Roderigo knows of this. It will be all right."

Then he hitched around in his chair and looked up at me. "Did the sight of that gold make you less of an honest man?"

"I can't see that having gold has bought you very much."

He grunted. "All this? What do you call this?"

"How many people can you trust? When you were in trouble you had to reach out for a stranger to help you."

"Maybe I was a fool to do that."

"That's your problem." I folded the bill of sale and put it in my shirt pocket. "What are you going to do about her?"

"Can't cage an eagle, boy.

She'll have to go. I could keep her here and give her anything she wanted, and soon she'd start to hate me because she'd be tied to me. You make bars of gold and an eagle will bite at them, frying to get out."

"You can see she doesn't leave here broke.

Hell of a thing, for a woman to be broke."

He swung around in his chair. "You're too damned sentimental, Sackett. It'll get you nowhere. Still, if you're hunting a job you can have one here. I'll give you a working share."

"No."

"You turn down a million dollars awful easy, boy. This ranch will be worth it. You'll live to see it. Is it so easy to turn down a lot of money?"

I just looked at him, and buttoned up that pocket that held twenty mules. "Mister," I said roughly, "I could have had it last night, up there on the mountain. I could have rolled you off that cliff and come back and turned in ... nobody would have known the difference."

"Thought of it, did you?"

"No ... but look at it yourself."

"But you brought me back." He looked up at me, those hard old eyes appraising me. "That's why I need you here. I need an honest man."

"What about Roderigo?"

He snorted. "He's honest enough, I think, and he'd try. But he's weak ... he's a gentleman. He would try to fight clean, and he'd lose. You'd fight them the way they'd fight you, and you'd win."

"Good-bye, Ben Mandrin," I answered him.

I walked to the door and stood there a moment, looking back at him. He had that blanket over his knees and he kept one hand under the blanket, and I wasn't going to turn my back on a man like that.

"I hope you got all you wanted last night," I said. "Nolan Sackett or somebody in that crowd could track a squirrel across a flat rock."

"So can you," he said. "So can you."

I stepped out of that door backwards ... after one quick look to be sure the yard was empty.

Chapter
Eight.

She was standing near the corral when I walked out there, a rarely beautiful woman, with her black eyes and red lips, and that way she had of moving and looking at a man.

She was wearing a dark red dress that really stood out against that old pole corral, and it looked to me like she had fixed herself up kind of special. So right away I began to wonder what it was she was after.

"No one else could have done it," she said. "It had to be you." She put her hand on my sleeve.

"Thank you for helping him."

That was sort of a leading statement, so I just said, "Ma'am, I've got to saddle my horse.

They're rounding up some mules for me."

"You're a rare man, Tell Sackett. I wish I had known you long ago."

"You think it would have made a difference? We'd have both gone the same ways we have gone."

"What are you going to do?"

"Arizona ... I'm headed back for the mines."

"Across that awful desert?" She shuddered. "I hope I shall never see another desert."

"It's the way I've got to go. If there's anything I want, it's back there."

"Is there a girl?"

Well, now, how could I answer that when I didn't know myself? There had been a girl. And then she had gone back east to visit some folks of hers, and when she was due to come back she just didn't come. Nor was there any letter that I ever got. ...

Ange ... Ange Kerry.

"No, ma'am," I said, "I don't think there's a girl. Looks to me like I'm a lonesome man riding a lonesome country, and I don't see no end to it."

"There could be, Tell."

Well, sir, I looked down into ^th big black eyes and saw those moist lips, and thinks I, if this here's a trap, they surely picked the right kind of bait.

"Ma'am," I said, "you're a lot of woman on the outside."

She stiffened up like I'd slapped her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I sure don't cut no figure as a man knowing women, but it seems to me what you wear is a lot of feeling where it shows.

I don't think there's very much down inside. I'd be like that old man in there ... I'd as soon make love to you, ma'am, but I'd want to keep both your hands in sight. I'd never know which one held the knife."

Oh, she was mad! She started as if to slap me, her lips tightening up and her face kind of flattening out with anger. But she held herself in.

She was keeping a tight rein on her feelings, and she waited for a moment or two before she replied.

"You're wrong, you know. It's just that I've not found the right man ... I've had to hold myself in, I've had to be careful. For you I could change. I could be different."

"All right," I said suddenly, "suppose we give it a try. I'll saddle a horse for you, and you can ride back to Arizona with me. If you still feel the same way by the time we get to Prescott--was She caught my arm again, stepping up so close I could really fill my nostrils with that sweet-smelling stuff she wore. "Oh, Tell, just take me with you! I mean it! I'll do anything! I'll love you like you've never been loved! I'll even go into the desert with you. I'll ride all the way to Dallas if you suggest it."

Then Roderigo rode back in with two vaqueros and they had my mules. I'll give him this--he had gone along to be sure they were the best, and they were. Every mule of them was good ...

I'd go a long way to find their equal. These were not the little Spanish mules, but big ones from Missouri, valuable animals on the frontier.

"If you like, we will hold them, se@nor, then they will be no expense until you are prepared to load them and go."

"I'd be obliged."

He stood there, fidgeting around while I saddled up the stallion and made ready to start for town.

"Be careful," he said, "in riding across La Nopalera. Men have been killed from ambush there."

"Gracias." One last thing he had to tell me before I rode out. He came up to me as I gathered the reins and reached for the saddle horn.

"The man who was here--the slight one with the black eyes?"

"Yes."

"He was a partner ... a friend. That one was on the desert also, and he is the one who knows of your gold, amigo. I have it from them." He jerked his head to indicate the vaqueros. "There are few secrets, se@nor, if one listens well."

"Do you know his name?"

"Dyer ... Sandeman Dyer."

I knew that name ... from long ago. It stirred memories that brought with them a smell of gunsmoke and wet leather. ...

Why is it that smells are so strongly associated with memories? But it is usually the smell that inspires the recall of the memory, and not the other way, as happened to me now.

"Do you know him?" Roderigo asked.

"Maybe ... I'm not sure."

"Be careful, se@nor. It is said that he is a very dangerous man ... and he has many friends.

He rode in from the north some weeks ago, and twenty men rode with him. There have been raids and robberies since--notobody knows for sure, but it is believed that he is the one who leads them.

"He is a gunman, se@nor, very dangerous.

He has killed a man in Virginia City, and another in Pioche of whom we know."