Up there on the rimrock I sat down and let my legs hang over and looked to the west.
Tyrel had Drusilla, and Orrin had the law, at least, and most womenfolks catered to him, but what did I have? What would I ever have? Seemed like I just wasn't the kind to make out with womenfolks, and I was a lonesome man who was wishful of a home and a woman of my own.
Folks had it down that I was a wanderin' man, but most wanderin' men I've known only wandered because of the home they expected to find ... hoped to find, I mean.
Looking westward the way we were to ride, I wondered if I'd find what I was hunting. Flagan had said there were some other Sacketts out there. No kind of kin to us that we knowed of, but good folks by all accounts, and we'd fight shy of them and try to make them no trouble.
Glancing back, as I stood up to go back down the cliff trail, I glimpsed a far-off campfire, a single red eye, winking, but with evil in it.
Somebody back yonder the way we had come, somebody trailing us, maybe.
Charley McCaire? Or Andre Baston?
Or both?
Chapter XII
About noontime a few days later, we rode up to San Luis, and the first man I saw was Esteban Mendoza. He'd married Tina, a girl Tyrel had helped out of a bad situation some years back during the settlement fight.
'Ah, senor! When I see you far away I say to Tina it is you! No man sits a saddle as do you! What can I do for you?'
'We want to get under cover, and we want a good bait for our stock.'
When he had shown us where to put our horses, he stopped to talk while I stripped the gear from my appaloosa. 'Is it trouble, amigo?'
I warned him about the kind of people who might be riding our trail, and then I asked him, 'Esteban, you've been here awhile now. Who is the oldest man in town?
I mean, somebody with a good memory that can reach back twenty years?'
'Twenty years? It is a long time. A man remembers a woman, a fight, perhaps a very good horse for twenty years, but not much else.'
'This is a man--several men--who came through here headed for the San Juans and Wolf Creek Pass.'
He shrugged. 'It is a long time, amigo.'
'One of them was my father, Esteban. He did not come back from that ride.'
'I see.'
Esteban started away, and I spoke after him. 'These men who follow me. One of them was with my father then. You be careful, and warn your people. Start nothing, but be wary. They are hard men, Esteban, and they have killed before.'
He smiled, his teeth flashing under his mustache. 'We have hard men, too, amigo, but I will pass the word. They will know. It is always better to know.'
We ate, but I was restless, and, good as the food was, I was uneasy. It seemed every time I came to San Luis there was trouble, not for the town or from the town, but for me. It was a pleasant little village, settled in 1851, some said.
Stepping outside I stood for a moment, enjoying the stars and the cool air.
Looming on the skyline to the west was the towering bulk of Mount Blanca. My father had been here, in this village. San Luis was a natural stop if you came from the south or the east.
The wind was cool from off the mountains and I stood there, leaning against the bars of the old corral, smelling the good smells of the barnyard, the freshly mown hay, and the horses.
Tyrel and his vaqueros came out. The men rounded up all their horses, and Tyrel said good-bye to me. They were headed back to Mora for the time being, and I told Tyrel that he would hear from us as soon as we knew anything.
Esteban came up from the town walking with an old man--looked like a Mexican.
'You must sit down, amigo,' he said to me. 'This man is very old, and he is much shorter than you.'
There was a bench under an old tree and I sat down beside the old man. 'Viejo,'
Esteban said, 'this is the man I told you about, Tell Sackett.'
'Sackett,' he mumbled crossly, 'of course there was a Sackett! A good man--good man. Strong--very strong! He had been to the mountains for fur but now he was going back for gold.'
'Did he say that, viejo?'
'Of course he did not! But I do not need to know what he say. He speaks of the mountains, of Wolf Creek Pass, and I tell him not to go. He is wasting his time.
Others have looked and found nothing.'
'Were they here long?'
'Two, three days. They wanted horses, and Huerta sent to the mountains for them.
They were impatient to be off, and of course ... well, two of them did not want to go. I did not think Sackett wanted to go. I think he did not like these people. Neither did the other man ... Petgrew.'
Now I just sat quiet. Petgrew? Was it a new name? Or had I heard it before and not remembered? There had been another man, but what happened to him, anyway?
Was Petgrew the name of the man Philip Baston had told us about? More than likely. I remembered finally. It was Pettigrew.
'It is cold in the mountains when the snow falls,' I said. 'They would not be able to last through the winter.'
'They were not there after the snow fell. They came out in time. At least, three of them did. The big young man whom I did not like--he came out. So did the handsome one, who was cruel.'
'And the other?'
His thoughts had wandered off. 'Cold, yes it is cold. Men have lived. If they know how to live sometimes they can, but food ... most of them starve.
'It is not only the cold. We were worried for them and thought of going out for them. Twenty years ago--I was a young man then--scarcely sixty years I had. And until I was seventy I could ride as well as any man in the valley ... better.
Better.
'Two of them came down, and I was over near the pass then and saw them coming.
'I hid. I do not know why--I was not afraid of them, but I hid. They rode right past me. One of their horses caught my scent. Oh, he smelled me, all right! But they were stupid. They do not live with horses so they do not know.
'They rode past, but they did not stop in San Luis. They went to Fort Garland.'
'You followed them?'
'No, I did not follow. Later, I heard of it. This is not a big country for people. What one does here is heard of, you know? Somebody sees. It is something to tell when we have so little to tell.
'No, I did not follow. I went up the mountain. I was curious, you see. Like the bear or the wolf I am curious.
'Only two track--two horses. No more. I find elk tracks. Ah! That is something!
We need meat, so I trailed the elk and killed it, and when I had the meat it was late, and it was cold, and my horse, it was frighten--very frighten.
'To go down the mountain? The wind was rising. It is colder when the wind blows, and home lay far out across the plains ... those plains can be terrible, terrible when the wind blows.
'High up the mountain there was a cave. Several times I had sheltered there. So had we all. I mean, men from this village and the Fort. We knew of the cave.
'So I went higher up the mountain in the snow, and I reached the trail up there.
It was a mistake--or it was the good God speaking to me. On the trail were the tracks of three horses ... three? Yes.
'Now I had to take cover and build a fire to warm me. It was very cold. I rode down the trail to the cave and I took my horse inside. I put him behind me. And then I went with my axe to cut a tree. One must be very careful to cut a tree when it is frozen. It is easy to cut a leg. I was careful.
