Louis L'Amour: Mustang Man

Loomis pushed back from the table and was about to get up, so I put my coffee cup down and said, "Seen some folks headed that way. City folks ... young fellow and a girl."

You'd of thought I'd slapped him. "Didn't get their name," I said, "but the girl was called Sylvie. Matter of fact, there were three of them. I didn't cotton to 'em very much."

Penelope's eyes just got bigger and darker, it seemed like, but that old man went white as death. He sat down again, sat down hard, and for a minute or two he didn't say anything.

"You saw them?"

"Uh-huh ... unpleasant folks, I'd say." I looked up at Loomis from under my eyebrows. "You know them?"

He said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. "Not with favor, sir, not with favor. A most untrustworthy lot."

He got up again. "Come, Penelope. Daybreak will come all too soon."

After they had gone I saw Pio watching me. "What is it, senor? Who are those people you spoke of? He was afraid of them, I think."

So I told him a little about Sylvie and her brother, enough to put him on his guard against them. "I'd say they were touched ... off the trail somewhere in their heads, but what makes them dangerous is that they don't look it."

Whether he believed me I could not guess, but I left him to think about it and wandered outside. It was cool and pleasant under the old cottonwoods. The dun was living it up on that fresh green grass, with plenty of water close at hand.

But I wasn't looking forward to playing shepherd to that buckboard.

With my back to a tree where I could look down the street, I considered what lay ahead ... and kept an eye on that empty building across the street from the cantina. Had the flicker of movement come from there?

Time dragged slowly by, and I watched, half-dozing, yet my eyes were ready to catch any movement. Shadows fell around me, and I didn't think anybody could see me clearly--not to be sure, anyway. The dun was feeding right behind me, so nobody was going to come up on my blind side.

While I waited there I thought of tomorrow. Leaving town, we would go northwest along Punta de Aguas Creek, which emptied into the Canadian only a few miles off. Holding south of the creek, we could make Romero in three to four days, depending on how game they were to travel and how much trouble we had. With luck we could make ten, twelve miles in a day.

After a while I shifted the dun's picket pin to fresh grass, then, spurs jingling, strolled hack to the cantina and sat down inside. Pio was gone, but the senora came out and brought me a meal of buffalo steak, eggs, and beans. I sat where I could keep an eye on the adobe on the other side of the street. When I'd been there only a few minutes, Penelope Hume came in.

Now, I'm no hand with womenfolks. I'm a rough, hardhanded man, doing most any kind of work or getting into any kind of a fighting shindig. Womenfolks, especially the young, pretty kind, put a loop on my tongue to where it can scarce wiggle. And this Penelope, she was fresh and lovely, and land of sparkly when she laughed. Like I've said, she was a tall girl and well made. She was put together so that when she moved it had a way of making a man mighty restless.

"Mr. Sackett, may I sit down?"

Now there's things we don't know back in the Clinch Mountains, but a man knows enough to stand when a lady comes up to him, so I got up quick, almost spilling my coffee, and sat down only after she had been helped into her chair.

She looked across the table at me. "Mr. Sackett, I am glad you are going to show us the way to Romero, but I thought you should be warned. There's going to be trouble."

"I was born to it."

"I know. But you weren't born around Sylvie, Ralph, and Andrew."

"So you know them. Do they have another name?"

"Their name is Karnes. They are kinfolk, in a way ... there's no blood relation between us. But they knew ... well, they pried. They learned something only I was supposed to know; and now they are trying to get where we are going before we do."

I didn't ask any questions about that. The trouble was, these folks probably believed the secret of Nathan Hume's treasure was something only they knew. As far as the hiding place was concerned, if they knew that, it was something nobody else knew. But I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one who knew about that gold. Only most of the others didn't know as much as I did.

"What started you folks out here all to once?"

"My grandmother died, and when she died she mentioned a packet of letters in her will, and they were to come to me, as my father and mother were both dead.

Sylvie and Ralph were there, although they had no right to be. There was little enough to leave and, as I said, they were no blood relation. But they heard the reading of the will, and in it grandmother mentioned that in the packet of letters was an account of where Nathan Hume's gold was buried."

"Somebody must've got away and told about it. I mean, when Nathan Hume was killed."

"You knew about that?"

"He was a known man. He'd been taking pack trains from Missiouri to Santa Fe for years."

"Grandfather drew a picture, wrote a few lines, and gave it to an Indian boy. He thought the boy might get away, and if he did he was to mail this to grandmother. The letter was all addressed, everything. Well, the Indian boy did get away, and he sent the message."

"How about Sylvie?"

"After the reading of the will she was just too nice, and so was Ralph. Sylvie made some tea--What's the matter?"

"Sylvie offered me some coffee, one time."

"It may have been the same sort of thing. She made some tea, and I took it to my room, only I got busy writing letters and forgot to drink it. In the middle of the night I woke up and Sylvie was standing there reading the letters by candlelight.

"I got them away from her, but she was furious--she threatened me, laughed at me, said there was no gold, and even if there was I could never get it."

The sun had moved beyond the cottonwoods, throwing a shadow across the street and across our door. A dog trotted up the street and paused outside, and I watched him, for something worried him. He sniffed, trying to catch some scent that kept getting away from him.

It was a nice thing, setting here in this cool, pleasant room talking to Penelope Hume. "You said your folks were dead. What about Loomis--who is he?"

"He was a friend of my father, and of my grandfather too. He offered to help.

Flinch found us, or we found him, at Fort Griffin. He has been very loyal."

That answered one question for me. If I could answer the one about the adobe across the street I'd be happier, but I had a good idea about that, too. And I was watching the dog. He was a big dog, and part wolf by the look of him, with all a wolf's suspicion.

We talked of other things, Penelope and me. She told me of her home back in New York state, and I talked a bit about Tennessee, but more about the country we were in.

"Folks out here are a rough lot, ma'am. There's the good and the bad, and there's many a man who has come west to get away from something, some trouble he's had. You'll find men from the oldest families and with the best education working right alongside a cowhand who can't read or write.

"The trouble is, too many folks come just to get rich and then get out. They don't care what they leave behind as long as they can take riches with them."

All the time I talked I thought of how it seemed to set across the table from such a girl, me who owned nothing but a pistol, a Winchester, a beat-up blanket or two, and a borrowed horse. And likely would never have anything more.

"I'd better go," she said. "Mr. Loomis wouldn't like it at all if he knew where I was."

"You're all right with me," I said, "but ma'am, I'd not be trusting of folks.