Free Mojave Crossing (1964) by Louis - Sackett's L'amour Page B

more than a half-dozen of them in my lifetime.
    The railroad had come to Los Angeles with its steam cars, and looking back I could see a train standing at the depot. Main Street led from the depot through part of Sonora town where some of the poorer Mexican and Californios lived, mostly in white-washed adobe houses. The Plaza was set with cypresses; this side of it was the Pico House and the Baker Block, two of the show places of the town. Most of the streets where folks lived were lined with pepper trees, but when we got away from the irrigation ditches it was almighty dry. Because of the bad drouth the last two years, things were in poor shape. The grass was sparse, and there was little else but prickly pear.
    With Roderigo leading, we cut over to the brea pits road through La Nopalera--the Cactus Patch [the area now known as Hollywood]--to a small tavern kept by a Mexican. Roderigo swung down and went inside, whilst I sat my horse outside and looked the country over.
    Only the faintest breeze was stirring, and the air was warm and pleasant ... it was a lazy, easy-going sort of day when a man felt called upon to laze around and do not much of anything. Only we had something to do.
    West of us lay the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas [now the Beverly Hills area], but looking along the edge of the mountains I saw a faint smudge of blue smoke, indicating where our destination lay. This was the adobe house of Greek George ... the very same place where Tiburcio Vasquez had been shot and wounded as he scrambled out a window, attempting to escape.
    Roderigo came out of the tavern, looking serious as all get out. "Se@nor, there are five men at the house of the Griego, but the man of your name is not among them."
    Well, I was some relieved. No Sackett had ever shot another, and I wasn't itching to be the first. We'd never had much truck with those Clinch Mountain Sacketts, for they were a rough lot, having to do with moonshining and perambulating up and down the Wilderness Trail or the Natchez Trace for no good purpose. But they were fighters ... they were good fighters.
    "We'll ride over there," I said. "I figure to lay hands on my outfit."
    He looked at me, and I'll give him this.
    He was game. He mounted up and swung his horse alongside of mine, and the only thing he did was to reach back and take the thong off his six-shooter.
    "I would like you to meet my grandfather," he said suddenly. "Old Ben would like you."
    "From all I've heard," I replied honestly, "I'd like to meet him."
    And I'd heard a-plenty. This here was a wise old man, although not too wise to be taken in by a pretty face. But he was not alone in that.
    We trotted our horses along the road that came down behind the adobe, and we swung down.
    The door opened and a man lounged there, a tough, kind of taunting smile on his face. "Well, look who's here! We figured you were lyin' dead out on the Mojave."
    "I take a lot of killing."
    "So you do." The man chuckled. "But we never make the same mistake twice."
    While he was making talk, I was walking toward him. Roderigo, so far as I knew, had not moved from his place by the horses.
    The man in the door straightened up and, grinning at me, suddenly went for his gun. He no doubt fancied himself a fast man, but I didn't even move to draw. I just fetched him a clout with one of my fists, which are big and toughened by a good many years of work with shovel, sledge hammer, and rope ... and he never got his gun clear.
    My fist caught him on the angle of his jaw and drove the side of his head against the door jamb. He slumped over and fell where he was, and at the same time I heard two quick shots from outside. Flattening against the door with my fist full of gun, I glanced over to see Roderigo holding a smoking pistol. There was a man with a Winchester slumped over a sill of the window in the ell of the house. He looked kind of dead to me.
    Inside three men were suddenly reaching for the smoky beams, and a pretty Mexican girl was