swimmers.
'I like it,' I said suddenly, gesturing toward the country around us. 'It's almighty wild and lonely, but I take to it.'
We drew up and looked back. The sweep of the shore had an oddly familiar look to it that started excitement in me. I frowned and tried to remember, but nothing came.
'Pa must have told me about this place,' I said. 'I can feel it. This here's where the gold is, somewhere about here.'
'Your father must have been an interesting man.'
So, a-setting there in the chill wind, I talked about him as I recalled him, big, powerful and dark, straight and tall. An easy-moving man who never seemed in a hurry, and yet could move swift as any striking snake when need be.
'He'd never let be,' I said, 'not with him knowing where that gold is. He'd come back for it.
Ma never wanted him to go back.
'You see, before pa and ma met, he had trouble with her brothers, the Kurbishaws, and over this gold. There were three of them, led by Captain Elam. The other two were Gideon and Eli.
'I never got the straight of it, although from time to time I'd hear talk around the house, but they were after the gold the same time pa was, and they tried to run him off. Pa never was much on running, as I gather.
'Later on, with some of this gold in his jeans, he went to Charleston and cut quite a swath about town. And there he met ma. They taken to each other, and it wasn't until she invited him home that he met her brothers face to face and knew who they were.'
'It sounds very dramatic.'
'Must have been, pa being what he was and those Kurbishaws hating him like they did. I knew little about it, but I gathered more from talking with the Tinker and Jonas ... that helped me to piece together things I'd heard as a child.'
We walked our horses on, the dun's mane blown by the wind. It gave me an odd feeling to know that pa had more than likely watched and walked this same shore, maybe many times, a-hunting that gold.
Odd thing, I'd never thought of my pa as a person. I expect a child rarely does think of his parents that way. They are a father and a mother, but a body rarely thinks of them as having hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires and loves. Yet day by day pa was now becoming more real to me than he had ever been, and I got to wondering if he ever doubted himself like I did, if he ever felt short of what he wished to be, if he ever longed for things beyond him that he couldn't quite put into ^ws.
'You'd like pa,' I said suddenly. 'The more I think of him the more I like him, myself. I mean other than just as a father. I figure he's the kind of man I'd like to ride the trail with, and I guess that's about as much as a man can say.'
Ahead of us I saw a mite of grass bunched up, and I drew rein sudden and felt my breath tight in my throat. Gin started on, but when she saw my face she stopped.
'Orlando, what is it?'
It was a small tuft of grass kind of bunched up, and some other grass stems had been used to tie a knot around the top of the bunch.
There it sat, kind of out of the way and accidental-like, but it was no accident. Maybe many men used that trail marker--no doubt Indians did. But I knew one man who'd used it, and who knew I'd spot such a thing.
My pa.
'Gin'--I couldn't speak above a whisper--
'pa's been here.'
She looked at me, her eyebrows raised a little. 'Of course, when he found the gold.'
'No ... recent. Maybe the past two or three days.'
Swinging down, I slid an arm through the loop of the bridle reins and squatted down to look closer. That marker had been made within the past couple of days, for the broken grass used to tie around the bunch was still green.
Straightening up, I looked all around, taking my time. Whoever had made that marker intended for it to be seen, but not by just anybody. Nobody would see it unless he was trained to look for sign.
It stood all by itself, though. I mean, there was grass all around and some brush, but no other markers. That meant that what it was intended to mark was close by, within the range of my eyes. It was up to me to see it. Yet, looking all around, I saw nothing. The clouded sky, the gray, whitecapped water, the green grass growing just short of knee-high, the scattered brush, the reeds along the shore ...
The reeds!
Reaching up, I taken my Henry from the boot.
'You stand watch, Gin. Watch everything, not just me.'
For two, three minutes I didn't move.
I stood there beside my horse and I studied those reeds, and I studied them section by section, taking a piece maybe ten foot square and studying it careful, then moving on to another square.
Trailing the bridle reins, I stepped away from the horse and worked my way carefully through the reeds. What I had spotted was an open space among the reeds, which might mean an inlet of water, for there were several such around. However, when I got to that open place--minding myself to break no reeds and to move with care--I found a low hive, a mound-like hut of reeds made by drawing the tops together and tying them, then weaving other reeds through the rooted ones. It was maybe eight feet long by four or five wide.
Room enough for a man to sleep.
'I'm friendly,' I said, speaking low but so I could be heard. 'I'm hunting no trouble.'
There was no answer.
Easing forward a bit, I spotted the opening that led inside, and kneeling, I eased forward. I spoke once more, and there was no response. Then I stuck my head inside.
The hut was empty.
The ground inside must have been damp, so close to the water, and it had been covered by several hastily woven mats of reeds, with grass thrown atop of them.
I backed out and stood up.
My father had taught me to build an emergency shelter just thataway from reeds, cane, or slim young trees. He taught me when I was six years old, and I'd not forgotten.
Pa . Was here.
I was sure of it now. That marker, just the way he used to use them, something to call attention, not necessarily to indicate a trail ... and now this.
When I got back to the horse I put a foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over the saddle. Gin was waiting for me to tell her, and I did.
'Pa's close by,' I said. 'I've got an idea that prisoner Herrara is hunting is my father.'
'You're sure he's near?'
So I told her what I had seen, and explained a bit about it.
If he was close by, he would fine me-- unless he was lying hurt.
Even so, he would find me or let me know some way, so I turned and we started back to the herd.
We rode more swiftly now, eager to get back.
There was so much inside me I wasn't looking out as sharp as I should have. We came riding around the brush, and there were fifteen or twenty riders, and down in the middle of them was Miguel.
Miguel was on the ground, and his face was all blood. A thick-set Mexican was standing over him with a quirt in his hand. Herrara sat his horse nearby.
Only thing saved me was they'd been so busy they weren't listening, and a horse on soft sod doesn't make a whole lot of disturbance.
Lucky for me I was carrying that Henry out in the open. She swung up slick as a catfish on a mudbank and I eared back the hammer.
They all heard that.
Their heads came around like they were all on string, but the one I had covered was Herrara himself.
'Call that man off,' I said, 'or I'll kill you.'
