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

protected by thick brush from the worst of the wind. Most of these cattle had at one time or another grazed along the shore, and like Shanghai Pierce and his "sea lions," as he called the longhorns that swam back and forth from the coast to Padre Island, they were used to the sea and were good swimmers.
    "I like it," I said suddenly, gesturing toward the country around us. "It's almighty wild and lonely, but I take to it."
    We drew up and looked back. The sweep of the shore had an oddly familiar look to it that started excitement in me. I frowned and tried to remember, but nothing came.
    "Pa must have told me about this place," I said. "I can feel it. This here's where the gold is, somewhere about here."
    "Your father must have been an interesting man."
    So, a-setting there in the chill wind, I talked about him as I recalled him, big, powerful and dark, straight and tall. An easy-moving man who never seemed in a hurry, and yet could move swift as any striking snake when need be.
    "He'd never let be," I said, "not with him knowing where that gold is. He'd come back for it.
    Ma never wanted him to go back.
    "You see, before pa and ma met, he had trouble with her brothers, the Kurbishaws, and over this gold. There were three of them, led by Captain Elam. The other two were Gideon and Eli.
    "I never got the straight of it, although from time to time I'd hear talk around the house, but they were after the gold the same time pa was, and they tried to run him off. Pa never was much on running, as I gather.
    "Later on, with some of this gold in his jeans, he went to Charleston and cut quite a swath about town. And there he met ma. They taken to each other, and it wasn't until she invited him home that he met her brothers face to face and knew who they were."
    "It sounds very dramatic."
    "Must have been, pa being what he was and those Kurbishaws hating him like they did. I knew little about it, but I gathered more from talking with the Tinker and Jonas ... that helped me to piece together things I'd heard as a child."
    We walked our horses on, the dun's mane blown by the wind. It gave me an odd feeling to know that pa had more than likely watched and walked this same shore, maybe many times, a-hunting that gold.
    Odd thing, I'd never thought of my pa as a person. I expect a child rarely does think of his parents that way. They are a father and a mother, but a body rarely thinks of them as having hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires and loves. Yet day by day pa was now becoming more real to me than he had ever been, and I got to wondering if he ever doubted himself like I did, if he ever felt short of what he wished to be, if he ever longed for things beyond him that he couldn't quite put into ^ws.
    "You'd like pa," I said suddenly. "The more I think of him the more I like him, myself. I mean other than just as a father. I figure he's the kind of man I'd like to ride the trail with, and I guess that's about as much as a man can say."
    Ahead of us I saw a mite of grass bunched up, and I drew rein sudden and felt my breath tight in my throat. Gin started on, but when she saw my face she stopped.
    "Orlando, what is it?"
    It was a small tuft of grass kind of bunched up, and some other grass stems had been used to tie a knot around the top of the bunch.
    There it sat, kind of out of the way and accidental-like, but it was no accident. Maybe many men used that trail marker--no doubt Indians did. But I knew one man who'd used it, and who knew I'd spot such a thing.
    My pa.
    "Gin"--I couldn't speak above a whisper--
    "pa's been here."
    She looked at me, her eyebrows raised a little. "Of course, when he found the gold."
    "No ... recent. Maybe the past two or three days."
    Swinging down, I slid an arm through the loop of the bridle reins and squatted down to look closer. That marker had been made within the past couple of days, for the broken grass used to tie around the bunch was still green.
    Straightening up, I looked all around, taking my