'Well, thank you kindly. I shall be wary of strangers.'
They had a bath house there where folks came to take the baths, and it seemed to me a good soaking couldn't but do me good. Whilst I was in the bath I laid my saddlebags close by and my pistol belt atop them where I could lay hand on the gun mighty easy. Several folks came by and looked at me and then at that gun, and they fought shy of me.
They were mostly older men, taking the baths for their rheumatism.
After a good meal I walked around town a little, looking at the schoolhouse, the churches, and the railroad, which had been built out there just a year or so earlier. Some folks were saying this would be the biggest seaport on the west coast ... at least, the biggest south of San Francisco.
A couple of times I went around to check my horses, and from the livery stable door I studied the town to make sure that nobody was following me, or that any of that Dyer outfit had showed up hunting me.
That night I slept, and slept well, in a hotel bed. I mean I just stretched out and didn't mind it a whole lot when my feet pushed out below the covers. I was sure enough in a bed, and nobody knew where I was. However, I slept with those saddlebags under the covers with me, and a six-shooter too. You might say I was not a trusting man.
Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it always seemed to me the best thing was not to put temptation in their way. Now that black-eyed witch girl ... she made a business of temptation.
When she was around, temptation was always in the way.
It was noontime when I showed up at that Mandrin ranch.
The way I figured, they'd be expecting me at most any other time, and I'd noticed that during dinnertime when they were inside eating, and right after when they took their siesta, the place was quiet as death.
After I thought that word, I tried to unthink it.
Death was riding at my heels these days, and I didn't want to charm it to me by thinking of it.
When a man rides as much country as I have, he gets a feeling for it, and wherever he rides, he looks around to get to know it. So it was that I knew just how to come up to the ranch unseen, and I was in the ranch yard and putting ropes on my mules before anybody came out of the house.
The one who appeared was a dark-eyed man wearing a white hat.
'Howdy,' he said. 'You'd be Tell Sackett.'
'Seems like.'
'You stirred a lot of talk yonder in the pueblo. Everybody's been wonderin' what became of you.'
'I'm a driftin' man, so I drifted.'
He stood there trying to size me up, and as I roped my mules together for better handling, I managed not to turn my back on him, nor to seem like I was thinking of such a thing. With mules fidgeting around the way they do, that was simple enough. All the time I was debating whether I should go inside and say good-bye to the old man.
This man with the white hat had a hurt arm, and he limped a mite, too. There was a cut on his face that might have come from broken glass. He looked like a man who might have been thrown out of a window and rolled down a porch roof before falling off into the street.
When I was ready to go I led my stock around in front of the house and looked over at White Hat.
'You,' I said, 'let's go in and see Old Ben.'
'I seen him,' he said, mighty sullen.
'He knows me.'
'You walk in there,' I advised him, 'and you walk in ahead of me. Looks to me like you tripped over something too big for you already, so don't take chances on it happening again.'
It didn't seem he liked that very much, but he walked in ahead of me. It might have been my suspicious mind that prompted it, but it seemed to me Old Ben was doing a lot of fussing with his blanket when I came through the door.
That black-eyed girl came down from her room, dressed for riding, an Indian girl following her with some bags and suchlike that a woman feels called upon to tote around.
'Well, Ben,' I said, 'this here's good-bye.
It's adios. If you plan to see me again, you'll have to come to Arizona.'
His hard old eyes studied me, and they glinted with a touch of humor mixed with what might have been respect. 'You killed Sandeman Dyer,' he said. 'Everybody allowed it couldn't be done.'
'Every man is born with death in him,' I said.
'It's only a matter of time.'
Dorinda was standing there, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were wider than usual, her cheeks kind of pale. I wondered about that, for she was a composed sort of girl, who didn't get wrought up by trifles.
'All right, boy!' Old Ben said. 'You have a nice trip. And thanks ... thanks for everything.
Not many men would have done what you did, and without pay.'
'Those mules look pretty good,' I said, 'that's pay enough for a lot of trouble.'
Glancing over at Dorinda, I said, 'You ready?'
'Go ahead ... I want to say good-bye to Ben.'
'All right,' I said, and turned toward the door.
He was too anxious, that old man was. He had me dead to rights, but he was too anxious. Here I'd been ready for trouble for weeks, and expecting it from everywhere, but in that moment I forgot.
But he was in too much of a hurry.
First thing I knew, there was a whap of something past my ear, the heavy tunk as it hit the door jamb, and the bellow of a gun. Me, I was headed for the outside and there was nothing keeping me. I went out that door like I had fire in my hip pockets, and I'm not ashamed to confess it.
He fired again, and the bullet just fanned air where I'd been, and then I heard the damnedest job of cussing I've heard in my born days.
Around the corner of the house came White Hat, running full tilt with a rifle in his hands. But when he got where he wanted to be, my six-shooter was looking right down his throat, and I said, 'You going to drop that rifle, or am I going to drag what's left of you out in the brush for the buzzards to pick over?'
He was a man of decision who recognized the logic of my argument, and he let go of that rifle as if it was hot.
'Los Angeles is quite a ways off,' I told him, 'and if you're going to walk it, you'd best get started.'
About that time Dorinda came out the door just like nothing had happened, and I helped her into the saddle, keeping those horses between the door and me.
That was a mighty sour old man in there, and he was remembering that if anybody in the world knew where his cache of pirate gold was, it was a man named William Tell Sackett.
When we rode off I could hear him yelling for White Hat or somebody, only nobody was coming. They would, after a while, but they were bright folks, and kind of shy of shooting.
Once we were on the trail, it was pleasant to ride beside Dorinda, keeping the mules down the trail ahead of us, talking easy-like with that dark-eyed witch girl.
Not that I was ever much of a hand to talk to women.
Back in the mountains where I came from I never was much on talk, and my feet were too big for dancing; but along about midnight when the girls started walking out with their friends, I was usually around and about.
Only Dorinda was easy to talk to. She knew how to lead a man on to talk of himself, and somehow she soon had me talking of the hills back home, of Ma, of Tyrel and Orrin, of the Higginses, and even of the Trelawney girls.
Those Trelawney girls lived over the mountain from us, and they had the name of being a wild, harum-scarum lot, but they kept the dust rising on those mountain trails. There were eight Trelawney girls, all of them pretty, and whilst everybody else was feuding they had no feuds with anybody.
Busy as I was now a-talking, I found time to check my back trail. A man who travels wild country gets to studying where he's coming from, because some day he might have to go back, and a trail looks a lot different when you ride over it in the opposite direction.
Every tree, every mountain, has its own particular look, and each one has several appearances, so you look back over your shoulder if you want to know country. It also helps you to live a whole lot longer. Like now.
