Somewhere south in Sonora

Elbert limped out to Mort Cotton’s stables next morning. Mamie saw him coming, her head hanging out above the half-door. She began nodding in a way that made him know she was pawing the ground, though he couldn’t see her feet. It wasn’t hay she wanted. Was it word of the one who did not come, or more of the Road, she was asking for? Elbert wouldn’t have confided to any one the humility he felt, as he moved close. All through a painful night, he had dreamed of the mare running from him, fighting his approach and presence. She would stand up on her hind legs and strike at him when he came near. Ugly lot of sleep torments, in which Mamie was always getting hurt—his fault—but nothing to them after all. Here she was fresh and blithe as usual, nudging, nosing, ready as a child to begin all over again. A fine lift went through him, that she didn’t hold a grudge.

He had to rub his eyes after a moment ... Mexico, riding South, plazas at night, camps in the open, days in the saddle, the freedom he had dreamed of.

... In the next ten days all business was finished in San Forenso and Elbert was healed enough to begin his course in horsemanship under Mort Cotton—the actual riding part. So far as words went, the drill had begun at once.

‘What you need is hardenin’, young feller, and that comes gradual. You’ve been sittin’ on cushions all your life and a stock-saddle ain’t like that. The soft side of a stock-saddle is placed next to a horse. You got to learn to fit to it, because it’s made not to give. After that, you’ve got to learn to ride easy. It ain’t like sittin’ on a box in a grocery store. You can always tell a man with no sense to a horse, sitting up and takin’ it for granted, that a horse is meant to carry him. A man’s weight’s got to be alive—part of his horse—not a dead weight like a pack-mule carries. Bob Leadley used to say a good deal at the last that there’s plenty of good “riders” but only one in a hundred real horsemen.’

‘I’ve heard him say that,’ said Elbert. Times like this, he wished Mort Cotton wouldn’t stop. The old cattleman was altogether unlike Mr. Leadley, but the two had been so much together, that a feeling of closeness to Bart’s father came to him as he talked and rode with Mort. There was much still he needed to know about the old days.

‘... I wasted a lot of time hatin’ Letchie Welton,’ Mort Cotton once said. ‘But there’s no good in that. Old Bob found that out, too. You wouldn’t fancy him a fightin’ man, but I saw him flare up. Letchie Welton can thank me that he lived for Lon Bimlock to kill him. It was at the hearin’ back in Bismo, and Letchie was tellin’ our fellow townsmen that he had a suspicion right at the beginning that Bart was in with the other three in the murder of old Batten. That, he said, was why he insisted on Bart bein’ allowed to ride on with the posse—so he could watch him. As it happened Bart got away. No question in his mind, Letchie Welton gave down at the hearin’, but that Bart had killed Palto to prevent him squealin’, before ridin’ out to connect up with his share of the loot. “Didn’t he want to stay up all night in order to let Palto go free?” Letchie wanted to know.... As I say, I had my work cut out to keep old Bob from killin’ our deputy sheriff that day.

‘... No, sir, we weren’t exactly right—never have been, Bob and me, since that night in Red Ante,’ Mr. Cotton observed, another time. ‘They talk of shell-shock these days. It wasn’t shells that got us, but we were shocked men just the same. It worked this way: We never could stay long where men were—never could get along in the settlements any length of time. We took up prospectin’ to get up into the mountains alone, but we couldn’t be too close, even to each other, for very long. I’ve seen Bob go apart to smoke of an evenin’, after we’d worked separate ridges all day, and I’ve felt the same way. It was quite a while before we came to know we were so different. I began to see it in Bob, and gradually it worked out that he could see it in me.

‘I wouldn’t have believed it of Bismo, and Bob couldn’t, but that town wasn’t wrought up over what happened in Red Ante, like we were. Seems as if Bob and me took the full shock of that, though we were slower catchin’ on, than young Bart was. Palto’s bein’ a Mexican seemed to make it all right for Bismo. A greaser had murdered a white man and a whole Mexican village of men, women and children couldn’t pay for that.... Always a man of law, Letchie Welton was. Bismo called him a trail-burner for bringin’ in his man, and made him sheriff afterward. He held his job until three or four years back when he was shot from his horse, as I told you, on the trail of Lon Bimlock. They say Letchie was sleepin’ his last sleep before he touched ground that day, havin’ taken Lon’s forty-five between the eyes.’

There was a lot of inexpressible feeling in Elbert’s chest as he listened to certain observations of Mr. Cotton on the relationship between Bob Leadley and his son. It made him draw a step nearer that mystery of mysteries, his own father. ‘Bob was a strong man with men before Bart came,’ Mort once said. ‘Then gradually on that one point they came to think of him as the favorite fool of the diggin’s. Some said he was too easy, some said he was too hard, but all said he was wrong.

‘... But I was tellin’ you about the last days in Bismo. You see Bart couldn’t come back if he had wanted to. It got worse against him as weeks passed and Marguerin wasn’t brought in. Rueda was caught and hung, his last words bein’ that Marguerin had done the killing. Word reached Bismo that Marguerin and Bart were together in Mexico, ridin’ with Monte Vallejo, who was just a bandit-leader down in Sonora in those days, but high up in Sonora politics right now—apt to be the big gun if the Government turns over. Also we’ve heard various times that Bart is still ridin’ with Monte Vallejo—that’s one of the things Bob must have wanted you to know.

‘Bob was down in Mexico five years back and might have come up with Bart, except as he tells it, all at once the rurales began to take an interest in his case. They couldn’t do enough to help him find what he was after. You see the rurales are a strong body of men, workin’ sort of alone-like, mainly on the side of the Government, and hell-bent after all bandits, when they feel like it—’

‘How did the rurales find out what Mr. Leadley was down there for?’ Elbert asked.

‘Now as to that, my mind’s at rest. Letchie wasn’t done for at that time. He tipped ’em off, as I see it—always a man of law, Letchie was. And, of course, the rurales would be interested in a white man down there, lookin’ for his son who was said to be ridin’ with Monte Vallejo, for the rurales have been tryin’ to get their hands on Vallejo for years, but you see the common people like the big bandit, and are not so strong for the rurales, who lord it over ’em and feel important, havin’ the law on their side.

‘Old Bob always kept track of Monte on Bart’s account. He used to bring me translations from the Mexican papers, how Monte had burned this, and beaten his way through that, and how the rurales had just missed capturin’ him. If I was you, I wouldn’t try to cross the Border straight down from here. Ride east for three or four days, takin’ your time and make your crossing at Nogales. You’ll be able to get in there, more quiet and unwatched, and you’re more apt to be closer to the scene of operations of the man you’re lookin’ for. It won’t be long before you’ll be hearin’ of Monte Vallejo’s doings. He’s ’specially active right now. If Bart’s still with him—that’s another thing. Anyway take it easy, an’ take your time—’

‘I know that road south of Tucson to Nogales—worked at Heaslep’s drivin’ a truck,’ said Elbert, ‘I might stop off for a day or two to see a couple of friends of mine—’

‘So long as you don’t tell anybody what you’re out on,’ warned Mr. Cotton. ‘I’m sure Bob would have advised you this way—if he’d had time.’

‘I’ll be careful about that,’ Elbert said, and yet his pulse pricked up at the thought of another sight of Cal and Slim.