Mojave Crossing (1964) (7 page)

That something must mean a hide-out, a camp. And that meant grub. It also could mean a horse for me.

Hunkered down among those big old rocks, I gave study to the problem. If the men driving the horses were thieves, they wouldn't take it kindly of me to come upon them, and they might start blasting at me with firearms. Nevertheless, they would have grub, which I needed, and they would have horses.

For maybe a half-hour I held my place, and gave the time to studying the country around.

You never saw such a jumble of boulders, heaped-up rock, and cactus in your life.

And then of a sudden I recalled what I'd been told about a balanced rock near a Hidden Valley, a rock like a huge potato.

For there, not more than a few hundred yards off, was just such a rock.

The trouble was, in a jumble of rocks such as that a man might look for years and not find the entrance to the valley unless he was mighty lucky, or found some tracks. And there was likely a lookout somewhere up among the rocks. No matter--I had to take my look.

Right at that moment I didn't much care. I was hungry, and I was dead tired, and I had been put upon by the men hunting that woman. They had taken my outfit and they had left me for dead, and before this thing was over they would pay through their hides.

So I started to follow those tracks.

"You huntin' something?"

The voice came out of nowhere. I was smart enough to freeze right in my tracks, and when I looked up I saw a man standing there with a Winchester aimed at my belt buckle. He was a rough-looking character wearing a flat-brimmed hat and beat-up chaps.

"You're damned right I am," I said irritably. "I'm hunting three square meals and a horse."

He chuckled at me. "Now you don't tell me you come all this way afoot?"

"No," I said, "I been set afoot. And when I get up in the middle of a horse I'm headed for Los Angeles to find those who left me."

"You a Los Angeles hombre?"

"Arizona," I said. "I started over here to buy horses and goods to take back, and in Hardyville I ran into th woman."

He lowered his rifle. "You don't look like the law," he said, "so come along. We can feed you, anyway."

He walked over to some rocks and he said, "You've got to crawl." He indicated a hole where two rocks sort of leaned together, and I got down and crawled through the hole. When I stood up, I was inside of Hidden Valley.

From where I could see, it looked to be at least a half-mile long, although some of it may have been out of sight. The two walls of rock, mostly heaped-up boulders, were only a few hundred feet apart. Scattered over the bottom of the valley, there must have been sixty or seventy head of good horses.

This gent who showed me in pointed with his Winchester and we walked along the wall of rock where there were some caves and a spring ... and lots of bees buzzing about.

There was a smidgin of fire going, and three or four gents sprawled around. They sat up when we came into sight.

"What you got there, Willie?" It was a tall man with some teeth missing. "You caught you a pigeon?"

"You think I'm a pigeon," I said, "you just stack your duds and grease your skids and I'll whup you down to a frazzle. ... After I've been fed."

So they asked me about it, and I laid it on the line for them, having no cause to lie, and they listened. Only thing I didn't tell them was that last shot fired at me. Seemed to me they'd be more sympathetic if they figured I'd been left afoot a-purpose.

Willie put down his rifle and shook out a cup and filled it with coffee. "Start on that.

Even if we decide to shoot you, you'll take it better on a full stomach."

"They'd no cause to set you afoot," the tall man said irritably.

Like the Good Book said, I had fallen among thieves, but they were a rough and ready lot, having no bones to pick with me, and no man likes it to be set afoot.

When I'd eaten a mess of beans, some sourdough bread with honey, and about two pounds of good bacon, I pushed back and relaxed with another cup of coffee.

"We'd better give him a horse, Charlie," Willie said. "If he eats like that we can't pack grub enough to feed him."

Charlie rolled a smoke, and when he had lit up he said, "Did you get a good look at any of those men?"

When I had given a description of them--and I'd not found it necessary to tell about the men killed in the gun battle further north--Charlie looked over at Willie and said, "This here friend of yours has bought himself a packet. I figure we should let him have a horse."

Willie and Charlie Button they were, and known men. Somehow they had come upon this Hidden Valley and were using it to hide stolen stock ...

I had my own hunch about that, believing they had learned of it from Peg-Leg Smith, who devoted more time to horse stealing than to losing mines.

"What I can't figure," I said, "is how you get those horses in here in the first place.

That's a mighty small hole for a horse."

I didn't get an answer to this.

"You tell me you like to travel by dark,"

Willie said. "All right, you rest up today. When dark comes we'll give you a horse and point you right. The rest is up to you."

"I'll be obliged."

They never said ary a word about me saying nothing about their hide-out, nor did they need to.

Sure enough, Willie showed me out through the same hole by which I crawled in, and when we got outside there was Charlie and a couple of others with a fine-looking sorrel horse.

"The horse is yours," Charlie said. "You ride him on out of here."

Well, I couldn't avoid it somehow. I just looked at Charlie and said, "How good is my title to this horse?"

Charlie grinned at me. "If you're ridin' west your title is good; if you're ridin' toward Arizona, it ain't good."

Title or not, those boys loaned me a good horse. He just reached out those long legs of his and went away from there, and with the bait of grub they packed for me, I made an easy ride of it.

The hotel of Mr. Gabriel Allen was the place to put up, and when I'd paid my bit from the few dollars of gold in my pockets, I arranged for a bath and bought a razor and soap.

Nobody had got at the money in my pockets, carried for day-to-day expense, so now I went the whole hog and spent twelve dollars for a new suit of clothes. Things seemed almighty high here in the city, for I could have bought the same suit in Prescott for ten dollars.

Of course, this wasn't actually the city--Los Angeles was still thirteen or fourteen miles off -comb prices were the same. I spent another dollar and a half for a white shirt, and when the man offered to throw in a necktie if I bought two more, I did so.

A boy on the corner blacked my boots for a nickel, so when I finally mounted up to ride into Los Angeles I was dressed for the city, and looked elegant enough for any of those fine homes along San Pedro or Main streets.

So I rode into town and put up at the Pico House, which was the biggest, finest-looking building I ever did see. It had been opened in 1870, and was all of three stories high and built of blue granite. It stood right on the corner of Main Street and the Plaza.

The room they gave me was almost as large as our whole cabin back in the mountains, and when I had brushed up and combed my hair again, I checked my gun. Somebody owed me some horses, thirty pounds of gold, and a couple of good saddles, and I was going to have them back.

Little was my worry over that black-eyed witch girl, for once free of the desert I'd an idea she could care for herself. And so far as she knew, I was dead back there on the sand of the Mojave.

Nonetheless, it was up to me to find out if she was getting a fair shake, and in the way of doing that I would have my gold back, and my horses.

This was the biggest town I ever did see, and I'd suspect there were all of ten thousand people in it.

I've heard tell of bigger towns ... come to think of it, New Orleans was bigger; but that had been long ago, and far away.

It seemed to me no town was large enough to hide that black-eyed woman, and I was right.

First person I saw when I came down stairs into the main lobby of the Pico House was Dorinda Robiseau.

She was across the room from me and she was talking to two men, dressed-up city folks. One of them was a big young man, handsome as all get out, but somehow he looked to me like a shorthorn. Although that slight bulge on the right side of his waist in front gave me to wonder. The other man, maybe fifty-odd years old, was shorter and square-shouldered.

Walking up to them, I said, "Ma'am, I'm glad to see you made it all right."

Her back had been toward me and there was an instant when it stayed toward me. Then she turned and looked me right in the eye and said, "I beg your pardon? were you speaking to me?"

The two men who stood with her both looked at me as if I had crawled out from under a log. The big young man started to speak, but I said, "When I got back and found you gone, I was some worried."

"I am afraid," she spoke coolly, "you have made a mistake. I have no idea who or what you are talking about."

Well, I started to explain. "Why, out there in the Mojave, ma'am, I--was The young man broke in on me. "You heard the lady. She doesn't know you."

He turned his back to me and took her by the arm, and they walked off and left me standing there.

Felt like a country fool, I did, them turning from me like that, and when I glanced around several people were looking at me and smiling with amusement. Made me mad, deep down. And me, traipsing over the desert, fighting and all to get her to safety, and then turned down like some stranger!

The more I thought of it the more it irritated me, and then it came over me that whilst I'd found her, I still hadn't my outfit back. I started to follow after them, but they were gone, clean out of sight.

There was a black carriage going away from the hotel, and mayhap they'd stepped into t.

Anyway, I was going to get my gold.

There were a hundred and ten saloons in Los Angeles about that time, but the one I'd been told to head for was Buffum's. It was the place to hear things, and was the most elegant in town. Buffum's ... that was the place.

Putting on my hat I stepped outside, and as I did so a man moved up beside me. He was a slender, dark young man. A Mexican ... or a Californian.

He spoke to me quietly. "It is of a possibility, se@nor, that we have interests in common."

"You're doing the talking."

"It is said the dark-eyed se@norita has been ill, and confined to her room. I think this is untrue. I believe she left Los Angeles and was brought back."

"Mister," I said, and I stopped and looked at him with no pleasant thoughts in my mind, "I expect what the lady does is her business."

"Ah? Perhaps. The se@nor is gallant, but is he also wise? The lady is not to be trusted, se@nor, nor those about her. And they are dangerous. Dangerous to me, but just as dangerous to you also. They will try to kill you."

It went against my nature to hear evil spoken of a woman, yet had I not myself figured her for a witch woman?

"We can talk at Buffum's," I said, "if you've got anything to say. I figure there might be somebody there that I'm hunting."

"There are a hundred and ten saloons in Los Angeles, of which Buffum's is only the finest, not necessarily the best place to look."

Maybe ... anyway, it was a place I'd heard tell of, and a place to start. Meanwhile, I had pondering to do. And it just might be this gent with me could point out some trail sign I'd missed.

Leastways, he knew the town, and I did not.

It came over me that he was probably shaping truth when he declared that black-eyed girl was not to be trusted. But she had been running scared ... of what?

Thinking back, I recalled something Hardy had said that night when I bought the horses from him before crossing the river. When he learned my name was Sackett he advised me not to tell Dorinda.

Why was that? What had my name to do with it?

At a table in Buffum's we ordered beer and sat back to watch. The place was crowded with a mixed lot of Spanish men and frontiersmen, businessmen and farmers.

"I was born here," my friend commented suddenly.

"My name is Roderigo Enriquez. I love this place, but it is changing, changing too much for my people."

As he spoke I saw across the room a man who looked like one of those I had seen that last night in Hardyville. He stood at the bar in conversation with another man whom I could not see because of those between us.

"My people are not thrifty," my companion went on, "and life in California has been too easy. They have not had to think about money, and there has always been enough to eat; so they are not able to compete in business with the Yankees. The lucky families are those into whom Yankees have married, yet even that is not always enough. As in our own case."

About that time I wasn't paying attention the way politeness demands, for I had my eyes on that man across the room. I was feeling the pistol on my hip, and was ready to move to follow him if he started to leave.