Miguel glanced at him. 'Don Luis knows most things, senor. A rider brought news from the Vegas.'
They remained with the herd while we rode into town.
We walked over to the La Fonda and left our horses in the shade. It was cool inside, and quiet. It was shadowed there like a cathedral, only this here was no cathedral. It was a drinking place, and a hotel, too, I guess.
Mostly they were Spanish men sitting around, talking it soft in that soft-sounding tongue of theirs, and it gave me a wonderful feeling of being a travelled man, of being in foreign parts. A couple of them spoke to us, most polite.
We sat down and dug deep for the little we had. Wasn't much, but enough for a few glasses of wine and mayhap something to eat. I liked hearing the soft murmur of voices, the clink of glasses, and the click of heels on the floor. Somewhere out back a woman laughed, and it was a mighty fine sound.
While we sat there an Army officer came in. Tall man, thirtyish with a clean uniform and a stiff way of walking like those Army men have. He had mighty fancy mustaches.
'Are you the men who own those cattle on the edge of town?'
'Are you in the market?' Orrin said.
'That depends on the price.' He sat down with us and ordered a glass of wine. 'I will be frank, gentlemen, there has been a drought here and a lot of cattle have been lost. Most of the stock is very thin. Yours is the first fat beef we've seen.'
Tom Sunday glanced up and smiled. 'We will want twenty-five dollars per head.'
The captain merely glanced at him. 'Of course not,' he said, then he smiled at us and lifted his glass. 'Your health--'
'What about Don Luis Alvarado?' Orrin asked suddenly.
The captain's expression stiffened a little and he asked, 'Are you one of the Pritts crowd?'
'No,' Tom Sunday said, 'we met the don out on the Plains. Came west from Abilene with him, as a matter of fact.'
'He's one of those who welcomed us in New Mexico. Before we took over the Territory the Mexican government was in no position to send troops to protect these colonies from the Indians. Also, most of the trade was between Santa Fe and the States, rather than between Santa Fe and Mexico. The don appreciated this, and most of the people here welcomed us.'
'Jonathan Pritts is bringing in settlers,' Orrin said.
'Mr. Pritts is a forceful and energetic man,' the captain said, 'but he is under the false impression that because New Mexico has become a possession of the United States ... I should say, a part of the United States ... that the property rights of all Spanish-speaking people will be tossed out the window.'
There was a pause. 'The settlers--if one wishes to call them that--that Jonathan Pritts is bringing in are all men who bring their guns instead of families.'
I had me another glass of wine and sat back and listened to the captain talking with Tom Sunday. Seems the captain was out of that Army school, West Point, but he was a man who had read a sight of books. A man never realizes how little he knows until he listens to folks like that talk. Up where I was born we had the Bible, and once in a while somebody would bring a newspaper but it was a rare thing when we saw any other kind of reading.
Politics was a high card up in the hills. A political speech would bring out the whole country. Folks would pack their picnic lunches and you'd see people at a speech you'd never see elsewhere. Back in those days 'most every boy grew up knowing as much about local politics as about coon dogs, which was about equal as to interest.
Orrin and me, we just set and listened. A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn't learn anything else I was learning how much I didn't know. It made me hungry to know it all, and mad because I was getting so late a start.
We'd picked up a few more head of cattle coming south and the way it was going to figure out, each of us would have more than a thousand dollars of his own when we'd settled up. Next day Orrin and Cap went to the stage office and arranged to ship east the gold we'd found in the wagon.
The itch to see the town got the best of me so I walked outside. Those black-eyed senoritas was enough to turn a man's good sense. If Orrin would look at some of these girls he'd forget all about Laura. It was no wonder he fell for her. After a man has been surrounded for months by a lot of hard-handed, hairy-chested men even the doggiest kind of female looks mighty good.
Most of all right now I wanted a bath and a shave. Cap, he followed me.
'Seems to me there's things around town need seeing to,' I suggested.
'You look here, Tyrel, if you're thinkin' of what I think you're thinkin' you'd better scout the country and study the sign before you make your move. If you figure to court a Spanish gal you'd also better figure to fight her man.'
'Seems like it might be worth it.'
This was siesta time. A dog opened one eye and wagged a tail to show that if I didn't bother him he'd be pleased. Me, I wasn't of a mind to bother anybody.
Taking it slow, I walked down the dusty street. The town was quiet. A wide door opened into a long, barnlike building with a lot of tubs and water running through in a ditch. There was homemade soap there and nobody around. There was a pump there, too. It was the first time I ever saw a pump inside a house. Folks are sure getting lazy ... won't even go outside the house to pump.
This here must be a public bathhouse, but there was nobody around to take my money. I filled a tub with water, stripped off and got in and when I'd covered with soap, head to foot, three women came in with bundles of clothes on their heads.
First off I stared and they stared and then I yelled. All of a sudden I realized this here was no bathhouse but a place to wash clothes.
Those Spanish girls had taken one look and then they began to shriek, and first off I figured they were scared, but they weren't running, they were just standing there laughing at me.
Laughing!
Grabbing a bucket of water I doused myself with it and grabbed up a towel. Then they ran outside and I could hear screams and I never crawled into my clothes so fast in all my born days. Slinging gun belt around me at a dead run I beat it for my horse.
It must have been a sight, me all soapy in that tub. Red around the gills. I started Dapple out of town on a run and the last thing I could hear was laughter. Women sure do beat all.
Anyway, I'd had a bath.
Morning was bright and beautiful like nine mornings out of ten in the high desert country. We met the captain and turned the cattle over to him. We'd finally settled on twenty dollars a head, which was a very good price at the time and place.
First off, as we rode into town, a girl spotted me. She pointed her finger at me, gasped, and spoke excitedly to the girl with her, and then they both began to look at me and laugh.
Orrin was puzzled because the girls always noticed him first and paid me no mind. 'Do you know those girls?'
'Me? I never saw them before in my life.' But it gave me a tip-off as to what it was going to be like. That story must be all over Santa Fe by now.
Before we reached the La Fonda we'd passed a dozen girls and they all laughed or smiled at me. Tom Sunday and Orrin, they hadn't an idea of what was going on.
The La Fonda was cool and pleasant again, so we ordered wine and a meal. The girl who took our order realized all of a sudden who I was and she began to giggle. When she went out with our order, two or three girls came from the kitchen to look at me.
Picking up a glass of wine, I tried to appear worldly and mighty smug about it all. Fact was, I felt pretty foolish.
Orrin was getting sore. He couldn't understand this sudden interest the girls were taking in me. He was curious, interested and kind of jealous all to once.
Only thing I could do was stand my ground and wear it out or high-tail it for the brush.
Santa Fe was a small town, but it was a friendly town. Folks here all wanted the good time that strangers brought. Those years, it was a town at the end of things, although it was old enough to have been a center of
