Lando

have decided from that he was a gunman. Me, I'd seen a few gunfighters, and they wore their guns every which way.

'I'm Locklear. I own this place. Who are you?'

The man just looked at him, and then as a second man emerged, the first one said, 'Says he owns this place. Shall we tell it to him quick?'

'Might's well.'

'All right.' His eyes went from Locklear to the Tinker, and he said, 'You don't own this place no more, Mr. Locklear. We do. We found it abandoned, we moved in. It's ours, we're givin' you until full dark to get off the place. The ranch stretches for ten miles thataway, so you'd best make a fast start.'

Before Jonas could make reply, I broke in. Something about this man got in my craw and stuck there, and so I said, 'You heard Jonas Locklear speak. This here ranch is deeded and proper, and not open to squatters. You gave us till full dark. Well, we ain't givin' you that much time. You got just two minutes to make a start.'

His gun showed up. I declare, he got that thing out before I could so much as have it in mind.

'You draw fast,' I said, 'but you still got to shoot it, and before you kill me dead, I'll have lead in you. I'll shoot some holes in you, believe me. Now you take Cullen. When he was teaching me, he said--'

'Who? Who did you say?'

'Cullen'--I kept my face bland--

'Cullen Baker. Now, when he was teaching me to draw, he said to--'

'Cullen Baker taught you to draw?' He looked around warily. 'He ridin' with you?'

'He camps with us,' I said. 'What he does meanwhile I've no idea. Him an'

Longley an' Lee, they traipse around the country a good deal. Davis police, they've been hustling Cullen some, so he said to me, 'South, that's the place. We'll go south.'''

This black-jawed man looked from me to the Tinker, and then he sort of backed up and said, 'I'd no idea you was with Cullen Baker. I want no trouble with him, or any outfit he trails with.'

'You've got a choice,' I said, 'Brownsville or Corpus Christi. When the rest of them get here, I figure to have coffee on. Cullen sets store by fresh black coffee.'

They lit out, and after they had gone, the Tinker looked over at Jonas. 'Did you ever see the like? Looks right down a gun barrel and talks them out of it.'

'Cullen did camp with us,' I said, 'and there's no question that he liked our coffee.'

Took us until midnight to clean that place out, but we did it. And then we turned in to sleep.

Sunup found us scouting around the range.

Seemed like there was grass everywhere but no cattle, and then we did come on some cows and bulls in a draw, maybe twenty-five or thirty of them lazing in the morning sun. These were wild cattle. Owned cattle, mind you, but they'd run wild all their lives and were of no mind to be trifled with.

A longhorn is like nothing else you ever saw.

If a man thinks he knows cattle, he should look over a longhorn first of all. The longhorn developed from cattle turned loose on the plains of Texas, growing up wild and caring for themselves; andforthe country they were in, no finer or fiercer creature ever lived. There were some tough old mossy-horns in that outfit that would weigh sixteen hundred pounds or better, and when they held their heads up they were taller than our horses. They were mean as all get out, and ready to take after you if they caught you afoot.

Believe me, a man needed a six-shooter and needed to get it into action fast if one of those big steers came for him.

Times had changed in Texas. When the Tinker and Locklear had been here before, cattle were worth about two dollars a head, and no takers, but now they were driving herds up the Shawnee Trail to the Kansas railheads and paying five and six dollars a head, selling them in Kansas at anywhere from eighteen to thirty dollars each. A trail drive was a money-making operation, if a man got through.

'Tinker,' I said, 'if we want to get rich in these western lands we should round up a few head and start to Kansas.'

He grunted at me, that was all. Treasure was on his mind--bright, yellow gold with jewels and ivory and schlike. I'll not claim it didn't set me to dreaming myself, but I am a practical man and there's nothing more practical than beef on the hoof when folks are begging for it on the fire.

We rode down into a little draw and there was a jacal, a Mexican hut. Around it was fenced garden space and a corral. As we rode up, I sighted a rifle barrel looking at us over a window sill, and the man who appeared in the doorway wore a belt gun. He was a tall, wiry Mexican, handsome but for a scar on his jaw.

The instant his eyes touched Locklear he broke into a smile.

'Se@nor! Juana, the se@nor is back!'

The gun muzzle disappeared and a very pretty girl came to the door, shading her eyes at us.

'Tinker, Sackett ... this is Miguel,' Locklear said. 'We are old friends.'

They shook hands, and when Miguel offered his to me I took it and looked into the eyes of a man.

I knew it would be good to have Miguel with us. There was pride and courage there, and something that told me that when trouble came, this man would stand.

This I respected, forof myself I was not sure.

Every man wishes to believe that when trouble appears he will stand up to it, yet no man knows it indeed before it happens.

When trouble came at the river's crossing, I had faced up to it with the Tinker beside me, but it had happened too quickly for me to be frightened. And what if I had been alone?

Jonas and the Tinker were impressed by the bluff I worked on the man at the sod house, but I was not. To talk is easy, but what would I have done if he had fired? Would I indeed have been able to draw and return the fire?

My uncertainty was growing as I looked upon the fierce men about me, tough, experienced men who must many times have faced trouble. They knew themselves and what they would do, and I did not.

Would I stand when trouble came? Would I fight, or would I freeze and do nothing? I had heard tales of men who did just that, men spoken ofwith contempt, and these very tales helped to temper me against the time of danger.

Another thing was in my mind when I was lying ready for sleep, or was otherwise alone.

After the meeting with the man at the sod house I had known, deep down within me, that I would never be fast with a gun--at least, not fast enough.

Despite all my practice, I had come to a point beyond which I could not seem to go.

This was something I could not and dared not speak of. But at night, or after we started the ride south for Matamoras, I tried to think it out.

Practice must continue, but now I must think always of just getting my gun level and getting off that first shot. That first shot must score, and I must shape my mind to accept the fact that I must fire looking into a blazing gun. I must return that fire even though I was hit.

South we rode, morning, noon, and night.

South down the Shawnee Trail in moonlight and in sun, and all along the trail were herds of cattle--a few hundred, a few thousand, moving north for Kansas with their dust clouds to mark the way. We heard the prairie wind and the cowboy yells, and at night the prairie wolves that sang the moon out of the sky.

We smelled the smoke of the fires, endured the heat of the crowded bodies of the herd, and often of a night we stopped and yarned with the cowboys, sharing their fires and their food and exchanging fragments of news, or of stories heard.

There were freight teams, too. These were jerk-line outfits with their oxen or horses stretched out ahead of them hauling freight from Mexico or taking it back.

And there were free riders, plenty of them.

Tough, hard-bitten men, armed and ready for trouble.

Cow outfits returning home from Kansas, bands of unreconstructed renegades left over from the war, occasional cow thieves and robbers.

Believe me, riding in Texas had taught me there was more to the West than just wagon trains and cattle drives. Folks were up to all sorts of things, legal and otherwise, and some of them forking the principle. That is, they sat astraddle of it, one foot on the legal side, the other on the illegal, and taking in money with both hands