Off The Mangrove Coast by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: short stores, fiction
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2010-11-27T02:01:03.112000+00:00

SECRET OF SILVER SPRINGS

It was an hour after sunup when Dud Shafter rode the roan gelding up to the water hole at Pistol Rock. The roan had come up the basin at a shuffling trot, but the man who waited there knew that both horse and man had come far and fast over rough trails. The waiting man, Navarro, could understand that. The trail this rider had left behind him lay through some of the roughest country in the Southwest, a journey made no easier by the fact that several Apache bands were raiding and their exact location was anyone’s guess. He glanced appraisingly at the sweat-stained, sun-faded blue shirt the red-haired man wore, noted the haggard lines of the big-boned, freckled face, and the two walnut-butted guns in their worn holsters.

As the man drew up, Navarro indicated the fire. “Coffee, senor? There is plenty.”

Shafter stared down at the Mexican with hard blue eyes, and when he swung down he kept the horse between them. He stripped the saddle from the horse and rubbed it down briskly with a handful of desert grass, then walked toward the fire. He had not even for an instant turned his back on the Mexican.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said at last.

Squatting, he placed his cup on a flat rock, then lifting the pot with his left hand, he poured the cup full of scalding black coffee. Replacing the pot alongside the coals, he glanced across the fire at Navarro and lifted the cup.

“Luck!” he said.

After a moment, he put the cup down and dug in his pocket for the makings.

“You make a good cup of coffee,” he said.

Navarro lifted a deprecating shoulder and one eyebrow. His eyes had never left the big man’s carefully moving hands. It was simply something to say; Navarro was a good cook, coffee was the least of his achievements … and he had other abilities as well.

The Mexican wore buckskin breeches, hand-tooled boots, and one ivory-butted gun. His felt sombrero was fastened under his chin with a rawhide thong.

The sound of another horse approaching brought the heads of both men up sharply. Navarro touched his lips with his tongue, and Dud Shafter shifted his weight to face the opening into the basin.

A buckskin horse came through the opening at a walk, and a man sat that horse with a double-barreled express shotgun across his saddle bows. The man was a Negro.

“Howdy!” Shafter said.

“Join us,” Navarro added.

The Negro grinned and swung to the ground. He was shorter than either of the others, but of such powerful build that his weight would have equaled that of Shafter, who was a big man in any company.

He wore a six-shooter in an open-toed holster, but as he dismounted and moved up to the fire, he kept his shotgun in his hand. He carried his own cup, as did the others, and when he squatted to pour the coffee, the shotgun was ready to his hand.

Navarro smiled, revealing even white teeth under the black of his mustache.

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