Mojave Crossing by Louis L'amour

Author:Louis L'amour [L'amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-07-19T16:45:43+00:00

six

The house was a long adobe with several doors opening on a veranda. The place was old and mellow. There were some huge old oaks about, and a few sycamores. The shade was a welcome thing after the long ride’s heat, and I pulled up there and sat my saddle a minute or two, just looking around.

If they didn’t take it away from Old Ben, this place might become Roderigo’s, and I didn’t blame him for wanting it. There was a feeling of lazy good will about it, from the smell of the barnyard and the jasmine around the house to the shade of the huge old trees.

The house was L-shaped and rambling, and opened on a view that showed the sea away off to the west - just a hint of it beyond the round shoulder of a hill. In between was grassland, brown now and parched from the drouth, with here and there a cultivated patch of corn or beans, or some other row crop.

A door opened and, looking past my horse’s head, I saw Dorinda standing there, wearing a lovely dress and looking more beautiful than she’d a right to.

“Won’t you get down and come in? Mr. Mandrin would like to see you.”

She turned. “Juan, will you take care of the gentleman’s horse?”

Stepping down from the saddle, I whipped dust from my clothes with my hat and walked across the yard. The feeling up my spine warned me that somebody was watching - not Dorinda, and not Juan.

She held out her hand to me, smiling with her lips. It was a wide, pretty smile showing beautiful teeth, but her eyes did not smile. They were cautious, somewhat worried eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Sackett. Thank you very much for all you did. When they came to get me we thought you were dead.”

“Handy,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Otherwise they might have made sure.”

She let her eyes rest on my face a moment longer, as if trying to judge how smart I was, or how dangerous ...

“It was all a mistake.”

“There’s men dead out there on the Mojave would be surprised to hear it,” I said bluntly.

When she started to answer me I cut her short. “Ma’am, I didn’t come to call on you. I came to see Ben Mandrin.”

His voice came deep and booming. “And so you shall! Come in, Mr. Sackett! Please come in!”

He was sitting in a great old rocker, and whatever I had expected a pirate to look like, it was not this. He had never been tall - not like me, anyway - but he was broad-shouldered, and my guess was that he had once been a mighty powerful man. It showed in the size of his bones. His wrists were as large as mine, which are ten inches around, and he had strong, well-made hands, flat across the knuckles ... a fighter’s hands.

He had a broad, heavily boned face and deep-set eyes; his heavy shock of black hair was mixed with gray. He had to be upwards of seventy years old, but he didn’t look it.

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