"Give me some water." "Go ahead and do your worst." "You won't get a word out of me." "About what?" "You wouldn't be following me if you didn't think I knew the way." "Well, I'd like to pursue this line of inquiry, but I'm short on water and a long way from home." "Now, wait a minute." "Is that straight?" "You wasn't tracking me just to spy out the way he went?" "The way who went?" "Well, there ain't but one man in this territory loony enough to poke his nose into Paiute country." "That's Crowbait." "Why were you following him?" "Because he... he's my daddy." "That's why." "What were trying to do, bring him his dinner?" "Dinner?" "Shoot." "He can live for weeks on a pot full of soup made out of white sage and jackass rabbit bones." "He ain't going to live much longer unless I catch up with him right quick." "Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah." "That's rough country up there for a girl, even without Indians." "Don't you think I'd sooner as stayed home than send a man to warn him?" "I reckon it just ain't practical for a healthy boy to waste four days and maybe get his lights put out for a gal whose good opinion he don't value nohow." "Well, I'd be honored to have your good opinion." "You?" "Who are you?" "Ain't nothing I can pay you except maybe a share out of that..." "Ah!" "Share of what?" "Supposin' that you knew where there was enough silver to buy up half this territory, just waiting for you to carve it out of the walls with a pocketknife." "Well, most likely, I'd carry a pocketknife." "No, you wouldn't." "No?" "Not unless you was the world's biggest fool." "And you couldn't be that, not so long as Crowbait was alive." "What makes your father such an aggravated fool?" "One day last year, he comes upon the old Paiute chief over there, turtlebacked, down in a crevice with a busted hip." "And he hauls him home in one piece, more or less." "Well, the old chief wants to make some show of gratitude, so he blindfolds my daddy and takes him to a cave so rich in silver ore, you could read the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John" "in there without ever lighting a match." "And your father never found that cave again." "Mister, you turn him loose, and he'd smell his way back to that spot." "But, just as he's all nice and loaded up, the old chief puts the blindfold back on, and he tells him, now they're square." "And if Daddy, or any friend of his, ever tried to find that spot again... they'd douse his lights and stake him out for the vultures." "Well, then what's your daddy doing back up there now?" "That ain't none of your business." "Something to do with you?" "With this face that would turn back a sandstorm, do you think I'd ever live..." "get to live like a woman if I didn't have purt' near a fortune to throw into the bargain?" "Here..." "What's the matter with your face?" "I'm plain." "Deny it?" "Well, it's not your face." "No, I reckon it's just me in general." "What Crowbait wants is a princess." "Well, I ain't, and I can't change." "He made me like I am." "Let him buy me a prince." "Those Indians'll catch him." "Night before last, I found out... the old chief is dead." "And his son don't owe my daddy nothing." "You really be satisfied to have your father back?" "Empty-handed?" "Wouldn't that be a poor bargain to have a ton of silver and not one living parent?" "I reckon I'll settle for what I am." "Well, in that case, I'll do what I..." "Don't you touch me." "Don't you come another step." "Oh, Jubal." "Thank the Good Lord in Heaven you found me in time." "This here geezer was just about to..." "Didn't look to me like he was offering any harm." "Well, you just ain't a gentleman, or you'd take a lady's word for it." "No, I reckon I ain't." "Well, Mandy, I've been trailing you for two days now, hoping to catch up with you before one of them war parties did." "You going to help me find Crowbait?" "Well, no, I reckon we'll be lucky just to get home alive." "You yeller skunk." "You come all this way just to tell me that?" "You gonna go and find him, like you promised, and not pay no attention to this here ignorant thing?" "Which way?" "Now... the last thing he saw before they put the blindfold on him was a pile of rocks as high as a mountain." "Oh, well, thanks a lot." "He can't read too good, but he'd be sure to recognize this." "Now, don't ever let him get the advantage up." "He don't trust a living soul outside of me." "¶ ¶" "I ain't wasting another bullet to warn you." "Crowbait!" "My name's known to every dog in the county." "That don't make you any special friend." "That's just fine." "Now, get back on your horse and start making tracks." "Whoa, whoa." "Easy, old man." "Easy." "Where is she?" "Where is she?" "What did you do with her?" "Well, you two are one in the same family, all right." "The highlight of my conversation with your daughter was when she held a shotgun on me." "Well, you're here, and she ain't." "What happened?" "She wants you to know that the old chief is dead and she'd rather have a living parent than all the silver in that Indian cave." "She wouldn't have told a living soul where I was headed." "Not her." "Not unless maybe you tortured her." "Or maybe charmed it out of the poor little man-starved filly with them fancy city manners of yours." "Now, I went to considerable trouble to bring this thing out here to you." "I think I'll just let it go at that." "Hey, you!" "You on the square about my daughter and all?" "You wasn't fixing to bushwhack me." "Old man, if I was fixing to bushwhack you," "I'd wait until you were worth bushwhacking." "You don't head back right about now, you're going to be sorry somebody didn't bushwhack you before those Indians got hold of you." "You reckon, at my age, it makes any odds if I die of a bullet or a broken pump?" "Least I can do is try to leave her a stake." "Poor little thing, hungering for the life of a woman and not a prayer at turning a young fella's head with anything except the power of worldly goods." "She turned one young fella's head." "He was trying to keep her from coming up here risking her life trying to save you." "I ain't broke my back making her a rich woman just to feed Jubal." "Well... you're smart." "You're smart, all right, but you can't turn me back with them cheap tricks." "Mister, I'm so close to that treasure now that I..." "You can come along if you like." "Reckon if I got nothing worth killing me for," "I'm as safe with you as anybody else." "Once I'm carrying pay dirt, you better keep your eyes up front and your hands real innocent." "Maybe I can't read so good, but I'm a shrewd judge of character." "Reckon you better not try doing that." "Trace of arsenic in that water." "Guess I've took in so much in my time," "I'm just about immune." "Yup, I'm on a real bonanza this time." "I guess you figure when the time comes, you can outdraw me." "But I got a powerful edge on you, mister." "I'm more treacherous." "You can't say I didn't warn you." "Whoa!" "Anyway, I-I left you enough to make it back alive if you start right now." "Oh, no, old man." "I'm not gonna have that daughter of yours thinking that miserable, stinking, double-faced old desert rat she calls her father died heroically for her sake." "So you're gonna stick with me, then?" "That's right, old man." "What're you gonna do for water?" "Well, I think I can drink just about anything you can." "Think so?" "I've been drinking poison water for close on to 50 years." "Look at my hair and my nails." "Guess, by now, clean water would give me convulsions." "Hmm." "The first time you feel that arsenic working on your insides, mister," "I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the silver in Arizona." "Old man, if this silver's so close to the surface, how come you to need all this equipment?" "Well, you never can tell." "Mountain's like a woman." "Gotta know her moves." "Sometimes she just needs to be tickled." "Other times, only violence will do it." "Fulminate of mercury?" "Old man, you bounce that on the ground just one time, and they'll bury us with a teaspoon." "A man who ain't willing to take a gamble now and then has mighty little prospect of dying rich." "They's a familiar feel about this place, but I just can't seem to..." "Old man, how'd you get there the last time?" "Huh?" "Sure enough." "Never did see the outside of it." "I felt it, all right, blindfolded." "Can you read that, old man?" "Sure." "We'll be out of here before them Indians even get close." "¶ ¶" "¶ ¶" "Oh." "Well, looks like even the old chief didn't take trespassing very lightly." "His son catches us, he probably won't treat us that well." "Aah!" "You be easy with that fulminate of mercury, old man." "Easy." "I'll be easy." "I'll be easy." "I'll be easy." "I'll be easy, yeah." "You coming?" "Or am I leaving without you?" "Old man, you better come up here and take a look." "Ten percent if you help me haul it down." "I..." "I'm 68 years old." "I can't do it all by myself." "Want us to get caught by them Indians, now that I got my daughter a dowry fit for a princess?" "We're half caught right now, old man." "The only thing left for us to do is run, and that means empty-handed." "No!" "Down there." "Down there is all I ever got out of this life." "Let it be my gravestone, but I ain't going back empty-handed." "Maybe..." "Maybe we can make a deal with him." "Offer him half, two-thirds." "What does he want with it?" "All that stuff in there means to him is trouble." "It means just one thing- a stampede of greedy men into an area that's never been trouble before." "No, I ain't going, no." "Let 'em kill me." "Let 'em nail me to that wall in there." "It'll be the richest monument a man ever had." "Aah." "What in tarnation's that for?" "Get us out of here alive... maybe." "No, but you..." "you can't do that." "Get out of there." "You can't do that." "Oh, that'll-that'll blow up the cave." "I'd, uh..." "I'd never be able to dig it out again." "You can't do that." "Heaven, there's a fortune in that mountain." "I'd have kings begging to marry my daughter." "You ain't gonna give it back!" "I'll..." "I'll kill you if you try." "Old man, you better take cover." "I'll kill you if you light that powder." "Now, it doesn't take very much to trigger this gun." "You shoot me, and you'll never live to see me fall." "Now, you put down that gun, and you get behind a rock." "We're going back." "The mountain is closed." "We'll trouble you no more." "¶ ¶" "Lyin' egg!" "You brought the old fool back." "You break it to her." "I ain't got the heart." "Miss Amanda, about that silver mine- there isn't any." "Yeah, see what I told you, Mandy?" "The old man's a liar, on top of being a fool." "Jubal, who you calling a liar?" "Aah!" "Well, now, I think it's just about time you told your daddy the facts of life." "Well... you was always so full of talk about all the wealth and riches we's gonna have, you just took the heart plum out of Jubal." "I've been meaning to ask for her for a long time now." "Took a big city gunman to make you sit down and listen to your own daughter." "You see how hard it is to be a good father?" "I suppose you love him." "Yep." "You love her?" "Sure." "Stubborn- that's what I call it." "All right." "Get married." "Be happy." "I'll make out." "I don't need you, none of you." "I'd be obliged for just a cup of that coffee." "She makes a pot of coffee." "Won't you set and have some?" "Mr. Paladin?" "Come here." "How was that?" "Jubal, congratulations." "Get!" "¶ "Have gun will travel," reads the card of a man ¶" "¶ A knight without armor in a savage land ¶" "¶ His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind ¶" "¶ A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin ¶" "¶ Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?" "¶" "¶ Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home. ¶"