Free Novel 1974 - The Californios (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

place.”
    “Forget it,” Wooston said, “this here’s as good a camp as we’re likely to find.” He turned toward Silva. “They far ahead of us?”
    Silva hesitated, thinking. Then he shrugged. “Maybe an hour, two hours. No more.”
    “What’s wrong?” Wooston’s eyes searched Silva’s.
    “I do not like this place,” Silva said, “and something is wrong.”
    “Wrong? How?”
    “The Old One leads them. He guides them.”
    “So?”
    “Something is wrong, Señor. He no longer tries to get away.”
    “What’s that mean?” Wooston was frowning and King-Pin Russell had stopped loosening his saddle to listen.
    “If he no longer tries to get away it is because he wishes us to catch up, and if he wishes us to catch up, there may be a trap, no?”
    “Trap, Hell! Any trap will be for them, not us.”
    Russell turned to Silva. “A trap? Now where would they be likely to try that?”
    Silva hesitated, looking from one to the other. “This place,” he said, “I think this is the place. This is the trap.”

 
     
    Chapter 9
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    S HORTLY BEFORE NOON the Old One led them to a creek. “We will rest for a few minutes and water our horses.”
    Sean glanced up at the mountainous ridge before them.
    Judging from the growth they were probably three thousand feet or so above sea level, and at a guess the ridge before them, running roughly east and west, was three to four thousand feet higher.
    He crossed to his mother. She was kneeling by the stream, washing the dust from her face with a damp cloth.
    “I think we are close,” he said.
    “You are right.” He extended a hand and she took it and rose. “I wonder why he stopped?”
    “To rest, he said.”
    She glanced around. “He is gone. So is Montero.”
    Sean turned quickly. The horses were there, but the two old men were gone.
    Mariana came to them. “Is this the place?”
    “No,” Sean said, “but I am trying to decide where we are.” He nodded ahead. “That could be Pine Mountain…and if it is, this might be the Piedra Blanca.”
    “You do not know?” Mariana asked.
    He shrugged. “There are no maps of this country. Men give names to places, but who knows which creek is the one named? Who knows which mountain? Sometimes a man would name creeks and mountains and then another would come who did not know about the first one and he would name them all over again.”
    They waited beside the creek, resting and talking in a desultory fashion.
    Sean was nervous and worried. From time to time he walked back toward the way they had come, but the trail was visible for only a hundred yards or so. He checked his guns again and again.
    Suddenly they reappeared, Montero coming down off the rocks into the little hollow. Immediately he went to his horse and tightened the cinch. “We go now,” he said.
    Juan appeared a moment later and they rode off up a steep, winding trail that led into a notch in the mountain wall that had once been a stream bed.
    The area was thick with forest. Several times they saw Indian writing, faded and old, upon rocks. Twice deer ran away before them. The gorge narrowed until they rode single file, each horse scrambling up the slippery, water-worn rocks in turn.
    They topped out suddenly on a long plateau or mesa, scattered with trees, but mostly covered with yellowing grass. They saw deep tracks, and nothing else. Juan led out, riding straight across the mesa toward the northwest. He dipped down through the trees and drew up on a sandy shore beside a running creek. Opposite there was a high, rocky wall, around them a ring of such walls.
    “We will stop here,” he said, and got down.
    It was a quiet place, haunted yet beautiful. The cottonwood leaves rustled gently and spread wide over the hard-packed earth and sand, offering shade and shelter. There was a spring among some rocks that flowed down toward the creek. On the far side were the fallen walls of a stone cabin of some kind, only a few stones remaining in place.
    “We