Novel 1974 - The Californios (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page A

carefully he placed the second boot on the floor.
    Would someone lie awake waiting for the second boot to be dropped?
    Were there always two boots?
    Was everything always and forever what we expect it to be? Or is that merely a way we have of looking at the world so it is comfortable to live in?
    He lay back on the bed, blew out the candle, and closed his eyes.

 
     
    Chapter 6
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    A LTHOUGH THE HOUR was early the heat was intense in the narrow canyon. Montero led the way, followed closely by Eileen Mulkerin and behind her, Mariana. They were followed by a couple of packhorses and then Sean.
    The horses plodded slowly for the trail was winding and difficult. There was no breeze in the canyon. Several times they saw cattle, wilder than the deer. One magnificent red bull, head up, nostrils flaring, glared at them trying to decide whether to charge, but as they kept on their way, ignoring him, he snorted, threw up his tail, trotted a couple of yards after them, then tossed his head and went off over the hill.
    All was still. They heard no sound but the hoofs of their horses and the occasional buzzing of bees. On the narrow, rocky trail they could move but slowly and by midmorning they were no more than ten miles from the ranch. Several times Montero had dropped back to dust over their tracks, doing so each time they passed a branch canyon.
    Sean rode with his rifle in his hands. At this point he was expecting no trouble but was aware that it could come at any moment.
    His life in the mountains, the desert, and at sea had sharpened his senses until alertness was a way of life. At sea he had learned to sense the slightest change in the movement of the ship through the water, the creak of the rigging, or the slap of a sail.
    Yet having grown up herding cattle, riding the range in the rough desert mountains of southern California, one of the greatest cattle raising areas in the world at the time, he knew the wild country in all its moods.
    Montero reached a widening of the trail and stopped to let the horses catch a breath. Sean rode to the head of the column.
    “How much further?”
    Montera shrugged. “Sundown…no sooner. It is not far to where the trail branches, a short distance only. We will take the left.”
    “Isn’t that Saddle Rock Peak?” He indicated a clump of rocks atop a low peak some distance off to their right. “I have not ridden this way in a long time.”
    “It is Saddle Rock…and as close as we come. We ride north and a little east.”
    Sean dismounted and walked his horse back into the shade, seating himself on a rock near the women, who had also gotten down to rest their horses.
    “Will he stop to eat?” Mariana asked.
    Sean grinned at her. “Hungry? No, I don’t think he will…yet. He’s heading for a place where there’s water. Dry as these hills are, there’s water if you know where to find it. Montero has handled cattle in these hills long enough to know most of them.”
    “Not all?”
    “Only the old Indians know all of them.”
    He gestured. “Lobo Canyon lies yonder. I killed my first lion over there. Nine feet long he was and crouched on top of a boulder trying to decide whether I was dangerous or not. I was twelve then, and I guess he decided I was pretty small stuff. His tail was lashing…getting set to jump…so I shot him.”
    Once more they started on, following a dim trail westward toward the highest peak in the immediate area, a blunt sandstone shoulder that was part of a long ridge that ended in another bold peak to the west and south.
    Suddenly Montero turned north and began to follow a still dimmer trail that seemed to be leading up the sandstone peak itself. Several times Sean saw the tracks of sandals here, and recognized them as those left by the Old One.
    He was alive then. The old man was not dead. He felt a curious excitement as well as relief, for all the way along he had been fearing the old man had passed on. How long since he had seen him? It had not been