"I do not think they had followed us, amigo.
It may be they go to San Antonio. He would want riders for protection. It is said there are many thieves."
Sitting on the edge of the bed after he left, I turned my mind again to the situation. Maybe this was the showdown that had to come sooner or later. Dun Caffrey would be here, Deckrow ... how many others?
Doc Halloran came back before midnight.
His long, friendly face was serious, and he stood looking down at me. "Well, the fight is set," he said. "And we've got the mule entered in the race, but I think we've bit off more than we can chew."
"What happened?"
He touched his tongue to his lips. "I bet five thousand on the mule, but they roped me in and egged me on, and I went over my head. I've bet twenty-five thousand on you to whip Dun Caffrey."
You know, I thought he'd gone crazy. I looked up at him and listened to him say it again.
Twenty-five thousand! Why, that was--it was impossible, that's what it was.
"They were ready for me," he said. "After all, this is a business with them. I mentioned having a fighter, and they doubted it--sd nobody would stand a chance with Caffrey. Then they kept egging me on until they told me to put my money where my mouth was. And I did."
"Doc, for that much money they'd murder fifty like us. I won't fight. Tell 'em the bet's off."
"I can't ... they made me put up the money. They've got me over a barrel."
The Bishop ... he would have a gang ready to tear down the ropes and mob us if it looked as if I was going to win. He would be ready for us.
"They put up their money too, didn't they?"
"Of course." Halloran paced the floor.
"Sackett, if I lose this bet I'll be back punching cows. It's everything I've been able to earn or save in forty-five years. I don't think I could do it again, and I can't imagine how I was such a fool."
I got up. "Don't let it worry you.
I'll fight him. I'll beat him, too. But we've got to get somebody to guard that saloon safe, if that's where the money is. If there's no other way, they'll rob the safe."
"That's just it. The Bishop has men in town.
He has several who have agreed to stay in the saloon and keep watch. Sackett, we're through. We're whipped!"
There was a tap on the door, and I slid that Walch Navy out of my waistband.
"Open it," I said to Juana. "Just pull it open and stay out of the way."
She pulled the door open and a man stepped into the doorway. He was tall and very lean, with yellow eyes and gold rings in his ears. his'Lando," he said, "I figured it was you."
It was the Tinker.
Chapter Nine.
He stepped into the room and closed the door carefully behind him. The room was dimly lit, with flickering fire on the hearth and a candle burning.
The dark shadows lay in the hollows of his cheeks, and I could see little more of him than the gleam of his eyes and the shine of the gold of his earrings.
"When I heard of a man with a racing mule," he said, "it had to be you."
He stepped up to me and thrust out his hand, and a feeling came into my throat so I couldn't speak.
I was not a man with many friends, but I wanted the Tinker to be one of them.
"You're heavier," he said, "and by heaven, you're a man!"
When I'd introduced him around, we all sat down. Experience had not made me a trusting man, and we'd been apart for a spell of years. But he was my friend, I was sure of that, and right now I needed him.
"The mule can run," I said, "he can really scat."
"He'll need to." He shot me a shrewd look. "Do you know whose money is against you? The Bishop's, that's whose. The Bishop's money and Caffrey's. Your Caffrey isn't only a fighter, he's a gambler--and he's a big one.
The Bishop and him, they're partners."
"You know about the fight?"
"It's talked about. This is an Irish town, and you know the Irish--they love a good fight with the knuckles."
"I'll have a little of my own back. I want the hide off him, but I want to break his pocket, too. With a Caffrey, that will hurt the worst."
The Tinker was silent for several minutes, and there was no sound in the room but an occasional crackle from the fireplace and the faint hiss of the coffee pot.
We sat still around the room--the Tinker with his long, narrow face and gold earrings, Doc Halloran standing and looking long, lean and serious, with the black eyes of Juana and Manuel in the background.
"Deckrow's in town," the Tinker said finally, glancing around at Juana. "He's looking for you."
"His daughter is with him?"
"They're going to San Antonio. There's a lawsuit over the estate." He looked at me.
"Your father should be here tomorrow, your father and his wife."
"He married Gin?"
"Love match--f the start. He's in great shape again and looks fine; and Gin, she's beautiful as ever. But Franklyn Deckrow claims the estate through his wife, and he claims he bought up mortgages. I don't understand lawing, but that's the way of it. The trouble will be settled in either San Antonio or Austin, but they're going to San Antonio now, then on to Austin, I think."
"I'll have to be there," I said. "I've evidence to offer."
Juana looked at me, and fear showed in her eyes.
"Does he know? Se@nor Deckrow, does he know?"
"He knows ... my eyes were on him and he saw it."
"Then tomorrow, when you fight?"
Doc and the Tinker, they just looked at me, and I said, "Deckrow was with Herrara's and Cortina's men that night. It was he and nobody else who killed Jonas. Shot him dead. It was Deckrow who tipped them off that we had come into Mexico after gold--they were expecting us."
"He'll kill you. He'll have to."
Looking down at my big hands, I shrugged.
"He'll try."
That night I lay long awake, watching the red glow of the coals and thinking back over my life, and it didn't add up to much. I'd set out to become rich in the western lands, but going after that LaFitte gold had been my ruin. Maybe even starting west with the Tinker had been the finish of me.
When this was over I would go on ... there were other Sacketts out in New Mexico, near the town of Mora. I would go there.
There was nobody for me here. Pa had married Gin, and he would be thinking of another family, and rightly so. It was true that I had felt strongly about Gin, but the physical needs of a man speak loud with a woman like her about, and there doesn't have to be anything else between you--alth she was a man's woman in so many ways, and not only of the bed.
When I found a woman of my own, I hoped she would be like Gin. She and pa--I had seen it right off. They were for each other.
Me? Who was there for me? I was a man with nothing. A man with great shoulders and tremendous power in his hands, but nothing else. I owned a horse taken from horse thieves, and a mule bred by stealth, and nothing at all of which I could be proud.
It was little enough I had in the way of learning, and in my mid-twenties I'd laid no foundation for anything.
Tomorrow there would be a horse race and then a fight, andwith luck I should win one or both. Yet then there would remain the matter of surviving to enjoy my winnings. Horse-racing and fighting, these are not things upon which a man can build a useful life.
Tomorrow I would meet Dun Caffrey in the ring, with my fists. He was a skilled fighter, and I was only one with great strength and good but long-unpracticed training. If I whipped Caffrey, I'd have some of my own back; and if I could settle the matter of Deckrow and live, then I'd go west and start again as I had wished to do.
One thing I had learned in these years: I could now speak Spanish. Somewhere, at sometime in the future, it might help.
Westward I had come to grow rich in the land, but six years had passed and I had no more than at the beginning.