I walked into a cantina and leaned on the bar, and when the bartender ignored me I reached out my Henry and laid it across to touch the back bar.
"I want a whiskey," I said, "and I want it now. You going to give it to me, or do I take it after I put a knot on your head?"
He looked at me and then he looked at that rifle and he set the bottle out on the bar.
"We don't cater to Mexicans in here," he said.
"You do wrong," I told him. "I'm no Mex, but I've known some mighty fine ones.
They run about true to form with us north of the border --some good and some bad."
"Sorry," he said. "I thought you were a Mexican."
"Pour me a drink," I said, "and then go back and shut up."
He poured me the drink and walked away down the bar. Two tough-looking cowhands were sizing me up, considering how much opposition I'd offer if trouble started, but I wasn't interested in a row. So I just plain ignored them. Anyway, I was listening to talk at a table behind me.
"He's wise," one man was saying. "He hasn't squatted on range the way most have done. Captain King clears title on every piece he buys. That's why he's held off on that Locklear outfit--there's a dispute over the title. Deckrow claims it, but his sister-in-law disputes the claim."
"Bad blood between Deckrow and her husband, too. It'll come to a shooting."
"Not unless Deckrow shoots him in the back,"
I said, "that's the way he killed Jonas Locklear."
Well, now. I'd turned and spoken aloud without really meaning to, and every face in the room turned toward me.
One of the men at the table looked at me coldly. "That's poor talk. Deckrow's a respected man in Texas."
"He wouldn't be the first who didn't deserve it," I said. "You see him, you tell him I said he was a back-shooter. Tell him I said he shot Jonas Locklear in the back, and Deckrow was riding with Mexican outlaws at the time."
There wasn't a friendly face in the cantina, except maybe for the other man at that table.
"And who might you be?" he asked quietly.
"We'd like to tell him who spoke against him."
"The name is Orlando Sackett," I said, "and I'll speak against him any time I get the chance. ... Jonas," I added, "was a friend of mine."
"Orlando Sackett," the man said thoughtfully.
"The only other Sackett I know besides Falcon was killed down in Mexico, five or six years ago."
"You heard wrong. I ain't dead, nor about to be."
Finishing my drink, I turned and walked out of the place and went across the street to a restaurant.
A few minutes after, a slender blue-eyed man came in and sat down not far from me. He didn't look at me at all, and that was an odd thing, because almost everybody else at least glanced my way.
In Rio Grande City I'd gotten myself a haircut and had my beard shaved off.
I still held to a mustache, like most men those days, but it was trimmed careful. In the six years below the border I'd taken on weight, and while I was no taller than five-ten, I now weighed two hundred and ten pounds, most of it in my chest and shoulders. Folks looked at me, all right.
As I ate, I kept an eye on that blue-eyed man, who was young and lean-faced and wore a tied-down gun. Presently another man came in and sat down beside him, his back to me. When he turned around a few minutes later and he looked at me, I saw he was Duncan Caffrey.
He'd changed some. His face looked like it always did, but he was big and strong-looking. His eyes were a lot harder than I recalled, and when he put his hand on the back of the other man's chair I noticed the knuckles were scarred and broken. He'd been doing a lot of fighting.
Reminded me of what the Tinker had said about the knuckles of Jem Mace, that champion fighter who'd trained him.
Caffrey looked hard at me, and he sort of frowned and looked away, and suddenly it came on me that he wasn't sure. True, I was a whole lot heavier than when he'd last seen me, and a lot darker except where the beard was shaved off, and even that had caught some sun riding down from Rio Grande City.
When I stood up and paid for my supper I saw in the mirror what was wrong. The mustache changed me a good bit, and the scars even more. I had forgotten the scars. There were three of them, two along my cheek and one on my chin, all made from the cuts of that quirt, which had cut like a knife into my flesh, and no stitches taken in the cuts.
Outside on the street a sudden thought came to me. If that blue-eyed man was a killer, and if Caffrey was pointing me out to him, then I'd better dust out. With my hands I was all right, but I hadn't shot a six-shooter, except for the other day, not in six years.
Riding out of town, I headed east, then circled and took the north road. A few days after, I pulled up at the jacal where I'd left the mare.
A young woman came to the door, shading her eyes at me. She looked shabby and tired. The little boy who stood beside her stared at me boldly, but I thought they were both frightened.
"Do you not remember me, se@nora? I rode from here many years ago--with Miguel and Se@nor 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."