Louis L'Amour - The Lonely Men

Hours later, when we had bathed and eaten a good dinner at his table, we sat about smoking the Don's Cuban cigars. I was never much of a hand to smoke, but did from time to time, and this was one time I joined in.

Dorset and the children had gone off with the Don's daughters, and the boys and me we stayed with our host.

"You have a dangerous road before you. I can let you have a dozen riders," he said.

"No. You may need them. We've come this far, and we'll ride on." Sitting back in the big cowhide chair, I told him the whole story, and he listened without comment. At the end he said nothing for several minutes. "I have news of your family. I wish you could have known it sooner. The woman you speak of was married to your brother Orrin, but they have separated. She was the daughter of Jonathan Pritts, the man who led the men who tried to seize the Alvarado Grant.

It was your brother Tyrel who led the fight that defeated him, and when Orrin found his wife was involved, he left her. She has hatred for all who bear the name of Sackett. You were to be killed, amigo."

It seemed unreasonable that a woman would go to such lengths to get a man killed, a man who had done her no harm, but it all tied up into a neat package.

And there wasn't much I could do about it. Maybe the best way to get even would be just to get back alive, so all her plotting would come to nothing.

In the quiet of the lovely old hacienda, all that lay outside seemed far away, not something that lurked just beyond the adobe walls. But deep in our hearts not one of us thought himself free of what was to come.

The miles of the desert that lay between us and the relative safety of Tucson could be nightmare miles. They were ever-present in our minds, but they were a fact of our lives to be taken in stride.

Old Don Luis talked quietly and easily of the problems of living among the Apaches. As Pete Kitchen had survived north of the border, so had he survived south of it. He had his own small army of tough, seasoned vaqueros, fighters every one of them.

As he talked he glanced over at Rocca. "If you ever want a job, senor," he said, "come to me here. There is a place for you. I have two vaqueros here who grew up with the Apaches."

"It is a good place," Rocca said. "It may be that one day I shall come riding here."

Long after the others had turned in, I sat in the quiet of the old Don's study and talked with him. The walls of the room were lined with shelves of leather-bound books, more than I had ever seen, and he talked of them and of what they had told him, and of what they meant to him.

"These are my world," he said. "Had I been born in another time or to another way of life I should have been a scholar. My father had this place and he needed sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place. It has been good to me. I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the page of life that was left open for me.

"There is tonic in this." He gestured toward the out-of-doors. "I have used the plow and the Winchester instead of the pen and the inkstand. There is tonic in the riding, in the living dangerously, in the building of something.

"I know how the Apache feels. He loves his land as I do, and now he sees another way of life supplanting his. The wise ones know they can neither win nor last, but it is not we who destroy them, but the times.

"All things change. One species gives way to another better equipped to survive.

Their world is going, but they brought destruction to another when they came, and just so will we one day be forced out by others who will come. It is the way of the world, the one thing we know is that all things change.

"Each of us in his own way wars against change. Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.

"I have lived well here. I should like to see this last because I have built it strong and made it good, but I know it will not. Even my books may not last, but the ideas will endure. It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy."

He paused and looked at me. "You are bored with an old man talking."

"No, sir. I am learning. We are a people who have hungered after learning, Don Luis, and who have had too little of it. I mean we Sacketts. Our mountain lands had thin soil, and they gave us nothing more than just a living until we came west."

I looked at him and felt ashamed. "I can barely read, sir. It is a struggle to make out the words, and what they mean. Some I hunt down like a coyote after a rabbit. I look at those books with longing, sir, and think of all the things they might say to me."

I got up, for of a sudden there was a heavy weariness upon me. "My books have been the mountains," I said. "The desert, the forest, and the wide places where the grass grows. I must learn what I can from the reading I can do."

Don Luis got up also, holding out his hand. "Each of us must find wisdom in his own way. Mine is one way, yours another. Perhaps we each need more of what the other knows.... Good night, senor."

When I went outside I walked through the gate to smell the wind, to test the night. By the wall near me a cigarette glowed, cupped in a hand. "How goes the watch?" I asked in Spanish.

"Well, senor." He held the cigarette behind the wall in the darkness. He bowed his head and drew deep, the small red fire glowed and faded again. "We are not alone, senor. Your friends and ours, they are out there ... waiting."

So they had caught up with us. Now there would be hell to pay in Sonora.

Turning on my heel, I went back into the house. The old Don was just leaving his study.

"You have many horses?" I asked.

"All you need," he assured me.

"Can you give us three apiece? I can't pay you now, but -- "

"Do not speak of pay," he interrupted. "Your brother is the husband of my old friend's granddaughter. You may have the horses." He looked closely at me. "What will you do?"

"Your vaquero says they are waiting out there now. I think he is right. And so I think we will take our chances and run for it. We'll switch horses without stopping ... maybe we can outdistance them."

Don Luis Gsneros shrugged. "You might," he said. "I will have the horses ready at daybreak."

"An hour before," I said. "And gracias."

Chapter 12

The horses were ready and we were mounted, the children with us. The Don's men were posted on the walls to cover our going. My horse was restive, eager to be away, but I glanced around at Dorset. In the vague light her face seemed pale, her eyes unusually large. I suspected mine were the same.

"The tall pine yonder," I said, and pointed in the direction. "Ride for it, ride hard. They will be close around, with their horses well back from where. They wait. With luck, we can ride through them and be away before they can get off more than a shot or two."

Sixteen men were on the walls, rifles ready for firing. Other men stood by the gates, prepared to swing them open.

Don Luis walked over to me and held up his hand, and I took it. "Vaya con dios, amigo," he said gravely, and then he lifted a hand to the men at the gates and they swung them wide.

We went through the gates with a rush at the same instant as all sixteen men fired. Some had targets chosen, having spotted lurking Apaches, others fired at bits of likely cover.

We hit the trail running, with Spanish Murphy and myself in the lead. I saw the dark form of an Apache rise up almost directly before me and chopped down to fire with my pistol, but the horse struck him and knocked him rolling. A hoof spurned his body, and then we were past and running, with the vaqueros on the wall picking targets from those we drove from hiding.