The Drive to Mendoza

The old-timer saw him when he came over the hill in the late-day sunlight.  He was riding an old paint he looked none-too-steady on, and wearing a bandolero and a serape that looked a little too big on him, as if he had been half-starved out on the trail.

Just behind him came the rest of them, driving the scrawniest, mangiest looking herd of doggies the old-timer had ever seen.  They bleated and stumbled piteously, their hides all sagging beneath the once-proud, "NYY" brand.

"That the way to Mendoza?" the rider asked the old-timer when he got to him, pointing to the low, distant line of white adobe buildings, shimmering in the north Mexico heat.

"Ay-yup," the old-time said, squinting at the rider's face, which was covered by a strange mask.  "Say, don't I know you?  Ain't you—"

"The Cincinnati Kid," the man acknowledged right away.  "Yeah, that's what they call me."

"Nah.  It was somethin' else, if I reckon.  'The Ice Cream Sand—"

"I asked you a question, old man!  That Mendoza over yonder?"

The old-timer looked over the cattle drive that had pulled up behind him.   It was the most motley group he'd ever seen come out of the scrub country.  There was a tall fella with his arm in a sling, and another tall fella who was sitting backwards in his saddle.  On the box of the chuck wagon an old woman was wringing her hands and moaning out psalms and cliches.

Some of the hired hands were so young that they were obviously on their first cattle drive, and they kept falling off their horses.  One jittery kid everybody called "Sonny" shot himself in the foot, then managed to hop into the campfire some of the fellas had just got started.

"Yup, that's Mendoza, all right," the old-timer said, and spat through his two remaining teeth.  "But you don't wanna go there."

"Why not?"

"Cause the moment you set foot over that Mendoza line, yer gonna be encounterin' some of the toughest hombres south of the Rio Grande," the old-timer told him.

"Like who?"

"Why, there's Responsibility, an' Expectations, an'-an'..." The old-timer's voice went hoarse with fear for a moment.

"There's Hope.  John Q. Hope his own self," the old-timer croaked.  "You don't wanna mess with him, Kid.  He'll leave you gut-shot every time!  Why, there was a fella a lot like you, came through these parts seven years ago.  Name a Jesus, no less—"

"That's all right, old-timer," the mysterious young man in the mask told him.  "We're goin' to Mendoza.  And we're goin' a lot further than that.  We're goin' all the way to Glory!"

The old-timer took a final, appraising look at the Man Who'd Lost Weight, and at the collection of stumble-bums and no 'counts he'd brought along with him, and sighed.

"Well, all right then," he said.  "But don't say I didn't warn ya when you get yer nuts shot off."