from both sides. Such business led to shooting sooner or later.
South we rode, toward the borderlands.
Our second day we overtook a fine coach and six elegant horses, with six outriders, tough men in sombreros, with Winchesters ready to use.
'Only one man would have such a carriage,'
Jonas said. 'It will be Captain Richard King, owner of the ranch on Santa Gertrudis.'
An outrider recognized Jonas and called out to him, and when King saw Jonas he had the carriage draw up. It was a hot, still morning and the trailing dust cloud slowly closed in and sifted fine red dust over us all.
'Jonas,' King said, 'my wife, Henrietta. Henrietta, this is Jonas Locklear.'
Richard King was a square-shouldered, strongly built man with a determined face. It was a good face, the face of a man who had no doubts. I envied him.
'King was a steamboat captain on the Rio Grande,' the Tinker explained to me in a low voice, 'and after the Mexican War he bought land from Mexicans who now lived south of the border and could no longer ranch north of the line.'
Later the Tinker told me more: how King had bought land from others who saw no value in grassland where Indians and outlaws roamed. One piece he bought was fifteen thousand acres, at two cents an acre.
Instead of squatting on land like most of them were doing, King had cleared title to every piece he bought. There was a lot of land to be had for cash, but you had to be ready to fight for anything you claimed, and not many wanted to chance it.
Brownsville was the place where we were to separate. At that time it was a town of maybe three thousand people, but busy as all get out. From here Miguel and I would go on alone.
Looking across toward Mexico, I asked myself what sort of fool thing I was getting into.
Everybody who had anything to do with that gold had come to grief.
Nevertheless, I was going. Pa had a better claim to that gold than any man, and I aimed to have a try at it. And while I was going primed for trouble, I wasn't hunting it.
First off, I'd bought a new black suit and hat, as well as rougher clothes for riding. I picked out a pair of fringed shotgun chaps and a dark blue shirt. Then I bought shells for a new Henry rifle. The rifle itself cost me $43, and I bought a thousand rounds of .44's for $21.
That same place I picked up a box of .36-31liber bullets for my pistol at $1.20 per hundred.
That Henry was a proud rifle. I mean it could really shoot. Men I'd swear by said it was accurate at one thousand yards, and I believed them. It carried eighteen bullets fully loaded.
My mare I'd left back at Miguel's place. Her time was close and she would need care.
Miguel's woman was knowing thataway, so the mare was in good hands.
About noontime Miguel and me shook hands with the Tinker and Jonas, and then we crossed over the river and went into Matamoras.
My horse was a line-back dun, tough and trail wise. Miguel was riding a sorrel, and we led one pack horse, a bald-faced bay.
We put up at a livery stable and I started up the street after arranging to meet Miguel at a cantina near the stable.
One thing I hadn't found to suit me was a good belt knife, and the Tinker wasn't about to part with one of his. I went into a store and started looking over some Bowie knives, and finally found one to please me--not that it was up to what the Tinker could do.
I paid for the knife, and then ran my belt through the loop on the scabbard and hitched it into place.
A moment there, I paused in the doorway. And that pause kept me from walking right into trouble.
Standing not ten feet away, on the edge of the boardwalk, was Duncan Caffrey!
He was facing away from me and I could see only the side of his face and his back, but I'd not soon forget that nose. I had fixed it the way it was.
No sooner had I looked at him than my eyes went to the man he spoke with, and I felt a little chill go down my spine. I was looking right into a pair of the blackest, meanest, cruelest eyes I ever did see.
The man wore a stovepipe hat and a black coat. His face was long, narrow, and deep-lined.
He wore a dirty white shirt and a black tie that looked greasy, even at the distance.
Stepping outside, I walked slowly away in the opposite direction, my skin crawling because I felt they were looking at me. Yet when I reached the corner and looked back, they were still talking, paying me no mind.
Never before had I seen that man in the stovepipe hat, but I knew who he was.
The Bishop.
It had to be him. He had been described to me more than once, and he'd been mentioned by Caffrey that night when the Tinker and me listened from the brush.
Now, nobody needed to tell me that there's such a thing as accident, or coincidence, as some call it. I've had those things happen to me, time to time, but right at that moment I wouldn't buy that as a reason for Dun and the Bishop being in Matamoras. Whatever they were here for was connected with me. That much I was sure of and nothing would shake it.
Right there I had an idea of going back to Brownsville and telling the Tinker and Jonas.
Trouble was, they'd think I was imagining things, or scaring out, or something like that.
What I did do was head for the cantina where I dropped into a chair across the table from Miguel and said, 'Enjoy that drink, because we're pulling out--tn.'
'Tonight?'
'Soon as ever we can make it without drawing eyes to us.'
Sitting there at the table, I drank a glass of beer and told him why. Even down here they had heard of the Bishop, so Miguel was ready enough.
'One thing,' he said, 'we must ride with great care, for there was ^w that a prisoner escaped from prison and is at large to the south of here. They believe he will come to the border, and the soldiers search for him.'
It was past midnight when we walked through the circle of lemon light under the livery-stable lantern. The hostler sat asleep against the wall, his serape about his shoulders. Music tinkled from the cantina ... there was a smell of hay, andof fresh manure, of leather harness, andof horses.
As we walked our horses from the stable I leaned over and dropped a peso in the lap of the hostler.
Riding past the cantina, I glanced back.
I thought I saw, in a dark doorway next to the cantina, the boot-toes and the tip of a hat belonging to a very tall man. I could have been mistaken.
We rode swiftly from the town. The night was quiet except for the insects that sang in the brush. A long ride lay before us. The cattle about which we had inquired were at a ranch southwest of Santa Teresa ... the gold lay somewhere off the coast we would parallel.
So far as we knew, pa was the only man who knew exactly where that sunken ship lay. The Kurbishaws had killed the man who told them of it, thinking they could find it from the description.
Captain Elam Kurbishaw's only map that showed the coast was vague, and had indicated only one inlet on that stretch of coast, where actually there were several. More to the point, there was a long stretch of coast that lay behind an outlying sand bar.
If the ship had succeeded in getting through one of the openings in the shore line, it would be lost in a maze of inlets, channels, and bays. Looking for it would be like looking for one cow that bawled in a herd of five thousand.
'Soldiers may stop us,' Miguel warned. 'It is well to give them no displeasure, for the soldiers can be worse than bandidos.'
As we rode along, my mind kept thinking back to Gin Locklear and that snippy little Marsha.
Marsha was fourteen ... she'd be up to marrying in maybe two years, and I pitied the man who got her. As for Gin, she was older than me, but she was a woman to take a man's eye, and to talk a man's tongue, too. It was no wonder Jonas set such store by her.
It lacked only a little of daybreak when we turned off the trail into the brush. We went maybe half a mile off the traveled way before we found a hollow where there was grass and a trickle of water. We staked out the horses and bedded down for sleep. Miguel took no time about it, but sleep was long in coming to me.
Thoughts kept going round in my mind, and pa was in the middle of them. I thought how pa was always
