Free Lando (1962) by Louis - Sackett's 08 L'amour Page A

them. It carried eighteen bullets fully loaded.
    My mare I'd left back at Miguel's place. Her time was close and she would need care.
    Miguel's woman was knowing thataway, so the mare was in good hands.
    About noontime Miguel and me shook hands with the Tinker and Jonas, and then we crossed over the river and went into Matamoras.
    My horse was a line-back dun, tough and trail wise. Miguel was riding a sorrel, and we led one pack horse, a bald-faced bay.
    We put up at a livery stable and I started up the street after arranging to meet Miguel at a cantina near the stable.
    One thing I hadn't found to suit me was a good belt knife, and the Tinker wasn't about to part with one of his. I went into a store and started looking over some Bowie knives, and finally found one to please me--not that it was up to what the Tinker could do.
    I paid for the knife, and then ran my belt through the loop on the scabbard and hitched it into place.
    A moment there, I paused in the doorway. And that pause kept me from walking right into trouble.
    Standing not ten feet away, on the edge of the boardwalk, was Duncan Caffrey!
    He was facing away from me and I could see only the side of his face and his back, but I'd not soon forget that nose. I had fixed it the way it was.
    No sooner had I looked at him than my eyes went to the man he spoke with, and I felt a little chill go down my spine. I was looking right into a pair of the blackest, meanest, cruelest eyes I ever did see.
    The man wore a stovepipe hat and a black coat. His face was long, narrow, and deep-lined.
    He wore a dirty white shirt and a black tie that looked greasy, even at the distance.
    Stepping outside, I walked slowly away in the opposite direction, my skin crawling because I felt they were looking at me. Yet when I reached the corner and looked back, they were still talking, paying me no mind.
    Never before had I seen that man in the stovepipe hat, but I knew who he was.
    The Bishop.
    It had to be him. He had been described to me more than once, and he'd been mentioned by Caffrey that night when the Tinker and me listened from the brush.
    Now, nobody needed to tell me that there's such a thing as accident, or coincidence, as some call it. I've had those things happen to me, time to time, but right at that moment I wouldn't buy that as a reason for Dun and the Bishop being in Matamoras. Whatever they were here for was connected with me. That much I was sure of and nothing would shake it.
    Right there I had an idea of going back to Brownsville and telling the Tinker and Jonas.
    Trouble was, they'd think I was imagining things, or scaring out, or something like that.
    What I did do was head for the cantina where I dropped into a chair across the table from Miguel and said, "Enjoy that drink, because we're pulling out--tn."
    "Tonight?"
    "Soon as ever we can make it without drawing eyes to us."
    Sitting there at the table, I drank a glass of beer and told him why. Even down here they had heard of the Bishop, so Miguel was ready enough.
    "One thing," he said, "we must ride with great care, for there was ^w that a prisoner escaped from prison and is at large to the south of here. They believe he will come to the border, and the soldiers search for him."
    It was past midnight when we walked through the circle of lemon light under the livery-stable lantern. The hostler sat asleep against the wall, his serape about his shoulders. Music tinkled from the cantina ... there was a smell of hay, andof fresh manure, of leather harness, andof horses.
    As we walked our horses from the stable I leaned over and dropped a peso in the lap of the hostler.
    Riding past the cantina, I glanced back.
    I thought I saw, in a dark doorway next to the cantina, the boot-toes and the tip of a hat belonging to a very tall man. I could have been mistaken.
    We rode swiftly from the town. The night was quiet except for the insects that sang in the brush. A long ride lay before us. The cattle about which we had inquired