Lando

Locklear.'

There seemed to be a flicker of recognition in her eyes then, but all she said was, 'Go away.

Miguel is dead.'

'Dead, se@nora?'

'Si.' Her eyes flickered around as if she were afraid of being observed. 'He returned from Mexico, and then one day he did not come back to me. He was shot out on the plains-- by bandidos.'

'Ah?' I wondered about those bandidos and about Franklyn Deckrow. Then I changed the subject. 'When I was here I left a mare that was to have a colt. You promised to see to the birth and care for it.'

Her eyes warmed. 'I remember, se@nor.'

'The colt ... is it here?'

The boy started to interrupt, but she spoke quickly to him in Spanish. I now spoke the tongue well, but they were not close to me and I missed the ^ws.

'It is here, se@nor. Manuel will get it.'

'Wait.' I looked at the boy. 'You have ridden the colt?'

'The mule, se@nor? Si, I have ridden him.' There was no frliness in his eyes. He was all of eleven or twelve, but slight of build.

'Does he run, then? Like the wind?'

Excitement came into his eyes and he spoke with enthusiasm. 'Si, se@nor. He runs.'

Juana came a step from the jacal. 'He loves the mule,' she said. 'I am afraid he loves it too much. I always told him you would come back for it.'

'You told him I would come back?'

'Si, se@nor. Miguel did not believe you were dead. He never believed it. But he was the only one. Although the se@nora--Se@nora Sackett--she sometimes thought you were alive.'

'Se@nora Sackett?'

'Your father's wife, se@nor. The sister of Se@nor Locklear.'

So Gin had married my father. She was my stepmother now. Well, thinking back, I could not be surprised. From the first, there had been something between them.

Juana came out to my horse as the boy walked reluctantly away to get the mule. 'There has been much trouble,' she said.

'Se@nor Deckrow lets us to live here, but he warned us never to talk to strangers, and he said if you ever came back, to send Manuel at once to tell him.'

Just then my horse's head came up and I looked around, and there stood the mule colt.

No question but what it was a mule. It was tall, longer in the body than most mules, it seemed, andwith long, slim legs. But it was a mule, almost a buckskin in color, and like enough to any mule I'd ever seen.

You could tell by the way he followed that boy that there was a good feeling between them. But when I walked over, he stretched his nose to me.

'And the mare?'

'Wolves, se@nor, when this one was small.

If I had not come upon them, he would be dead also.'

Rubbing the mule's neck, I considered the situation. 'Manuel,' I said, 'I think you and Juana should come away from here. I think you should go to San Antonio, or somewhere. You'll need to have schooling.'

'How? We have no money. We have no way to go. We have only our goats and a few chickens.'

'You have horses?'

'No, se@nor. The horses belong to Se@nor Deckrow.'

'Ride them, anyway, and you two come away to San Antonio.' I paused. 'If Deckrow hears you have talked to me, there may be trouble. Besides, I want a boy who can ride the mule ... I mean who can race him. Could you do that, Manuel?'

His eyes sparkled, but he said seriously, 'Si, I could do it. He runs very fast, se@nor.'

'He's bred for it,' I said. 'Can you go tonight?'

'What of the goats?'

'Goats,' I said, 'can get along. Leave them.'

We didn't waste time. They'd little enough to take, and Manuel taken my horse and went out and caught up a couple of ponies in no time.

He was a hand with a rope, which I wasn't.

Lately I'd begun to think I wasn't a hand with anything, although all the way from Brownsville to the ranch I practiced with that Walch Navy, which I fancied beyond other guns.

The trail we chose was made by Kansas-bound cattle. Seemed to me I owed Miguel something, and I did not trust that Deckrow. So I'd be killing two birds with one stone by escorting Manuel and his mother to San Antone and getting Manuel to ride my mule for me.

'You think that mule can beat this horse?' I asked Manuel.

'Of a certainty,' he replied coolly.

'He can run, this mule.'

So we laid it out between us to race to a big old cottonwood we could see away up ahead, maybe three- quarters of a mile off. On signal, we taken off.

Now that Mexican horse was a good cutting horse and trained to start fast. Moreover, it was an outlaw's horse, and an outlaw can't afford not to have the best horse under him that he can lay hands on. That roan took off with a bound and within fifty yards he was leading by two lengths, and widening the distance fast. We were halfway to that cottonwood before that mule got the idea into his head that he was in a race.

By the time we'd covered two-thirds of the distance we were running neck-and-neck, and then that mule just took off and left us.

Oakville was the town where I decided to make my play, and by the size of my bankroll it was going to be a small one.

When you came to sizing it up, Oakville wasn't a lot of town, there being less than a hundred people in it, but it had the name of being a contentious sort of place. Forty men were killed there in the ten years following the War Between the States. It lay right on the trail up from the border and a lot of Kansas cattle went through there, time to time.

When we came riding into town I told Manuel and his ma to find a place to put up, and I gave them a dollar.

It was a quiet day in town. A couple of buckboards stood on the street, and four or five horses stood three- legged at the hitch-rails. When I pushed through the bat-wing doors and went up to the bar, there was only one man in the place aside from the bartender. He was a long, thin man with a reddish mustache and a droll, quizzical expression to his eyes.

'Buy you a drink?' I suggested.

He looked at me thoughtfully. 'Don't mind if I do.' And then he said, 'Passin' through?'

'Mostly,' I said, 'but what I'd like to rustle up is a horse race. I've got a Mex woman and her boy to care for.'

He glanced at me, and I said, 'Her husband stood by me in a fight below the border.'

'Killed?'

'Uh-huh. They've kinfolk in San Antone.'

He tasted his whiskey and said nothing. When he finished his drink he bought me one. 'Lend you twenty dollars,' he suggested. 'I'll meet up with you again sometime.'

'What I want is a horse race.' I lowered my voice. 'I've got me a fast mule. If I can get a bet, I could double the ten dollars I've got. Might even get odds, betting on a mule.'

He walked to the door and looked over the bat-wings at the mule, which was tethered alongside my roan. Then he came back and leaned on the bar and tossed off his whiskey.

'Man east of town has him a fast horse.

Come sundown he'll ride in. You mind if I bet a little?'

'Welcome it. You from here?'

'Beeville. Only I come over this way, time to time, on business. I'm buying cattle.'