Maria left the house. Her head was hurting. She felt she might be feverish, from almost freezing in the black water. In her fever, she could not control her thoughts. She didn’t know where Captain Call was, but in her mind he was close, so close that he might come and kill Joey that very day if she didn’t do something quickly. She saw smoke coming from the roof of another low, lumpy building. Maybe that was the cantina. A row of crows sat on the roof of the building. The row went all the way around the low roof. Now and again, a crow would fly up, wheel, come back to the building, and take its place in the row. When the crows flapped their wings, a little rain of sleet fell from their feathers.
Maria heard a snort and looked around to see a large pig following her. The pig was the color of sand. She had the pistol that Billy Williams had insisted she take. She took the pistol and pointed it at the pig. The pig was not just large, it was giant. Maria’s hands felt a little warmer. She was in a better state to shoot than she had been back when Famous Shoes showed up. The pig snorted again, but it didn’t charge her. She had seen pigs charge people in Ojinaga, when the pigs were angry for some reason. She didn’t know whether the great sandy pig was angry, or when it might charge her.
The pig stopped and looked at her, but again, it didn’t charge. Maria turned and trudged on toward the cantina. It was hard to walk. The sand seemed to fill the street. There were no horses outside the cantina, though Maria saw a glow under the uneven wooden door. Perhaps the wild man was there, in the cantina, the man Joey might listen to.
When she was almost to the cantina, she heard the great pig snort again, and when she turned, it was trotting toward her. Without thinking, she pointed the pistol at the pig and shot. She wanted to scare it away, and she knew sometimes loud noises frightened pigs. When the church bell rang in Ojinaga, the pigs and goats became nervous for a bit. She did not expect to hit the pig, with the sleet blowing. She had not shot a pistol since Benito’s time. He had enjoyed shooting and would let her shoot with him, although he was stingy about bullets and did not want to let a woman use too many of them.
To Maria’s surprise, the big pig slid forward on its snout, almost at her feet. Then it rolled over, a great hill of hair, and some blood ran out its nose. She waited for the pig to get up. One of its legs was twitching; then it stopped. The giant pig was dead.
The door to the cantina opened, and two men stepped out. One was skinny and had scabs on his face. The other was an older man and he limped. Both looked taken aback. The great pig lay dead, and a woman with sleet in her hair stood over it with a pistol in her hand.
The scabby man was not pleased. The older man just looked surprised.
“You killed our pig—what kind of wild slut are you?” the scabby man asked.
“I’m Joey’s mother,” Maria said. “If you’re his friend, I would ask you to tell him to leave and go to the Madre. Captain Call is coming. I don’t know where he is, but I think he’s close.”
“How close?” Wesley Hardin asked.
“I don’t know. His deputy is over by the river,” Maria answered. “Famous Shoes is taking him to meet Call.”
“That old Indian ought to be shot,” Wesley Hardin said.
“She kilt the devil pig,” Red Foot said. “I can’t believe it. Hundreds of people have shot at that pig. Now this woman just walks into town and shoots the sonofabitch dead.”
“I guess the killer instinct runs in the family,” Wesley Hardin said. “It’s too damn breezy to stand out here worrying about a dead pig.”
He looked hard at Maria. She thought he looked crazy. He reminded her of old Ramon, when he was in one of his fits.
“Come on inside, but I’ll take the gun,” Wesley Hardin said, reaching for Maria’s pistol.
She drew back. “Why do you want my gun?” she asked.
“I don’t like to be inside small buildings with women who shoot pistols, that’s why,” Wesley Hardin said. “You just killed the local pig. You might do the same to me, if I get unruly.”
“Not if you’ll help my son,” Maria said. The man was still reaching for her gun, and she still drew back.
“No, thanks, I live for myself,” John Wesley replied.
“Captain Call will kill him,” Maria said. “For all you know, he might kill you, too.”
“No, they ain’t paying him for me, they’re just paying him for your boy,” Wesley Hardin said. “Call’s economical. He don’t kill just anybody that needs killing. He just kills when he’s paid.”
Then he grew enraged; his splotchy face turned red and white.
“It’s too damn cold to be standing in the wind. Give me the gun and come in, if you want to discuss your son.”
“If I come in, it will be with my gun,” Maria said.
The scabby man seemed to lose interest in taking her pistol from her. He looked again at the dead pig.
“I wish there was some way we could charge people that want to come and look at this pig you killed,” he said, shivering. He kicked the pig a time or two; his boots had holes in them. Maria could see his toe through one of the holes.
“These Texans are superstitious,” he said. “They think this pig was the devil. I could have killed it years ago, and I would have, too, if it had ever bothered me. I figured it was more interesting to let it live, so people would have something to be scared of.”
Maria followed him into the low building. No more was said about taking her pistol. There seemed to be a thin trail of blood leading into the cantina, yet the dead pig lay outside, in the sand.
The cantina smelled of tobacco, spit, and whiskey. The limping man had his boot off. The trail of blood had come from his foot. The man did not look well. He was shaking, and his sock was soaked with blood.
“What’s wrong with his foot?” Maria asked.
“I stomped it. The sonofabitch is a card cheat,” Wesley Hardin replied. “What’s the news, other than that Woodrow Call is on his way to Crow Town?”
“The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See is alive,” Maria said. “Famous Shoes saw his track.”
“Oh, Mox Mox?” Hardin said. “He won’t bother me. I’m meaner than he is. It’s bad news for anyone else who crosses his path, though. He’s meaner than most folks.”
Maria saw him looking at her as a man looks, although she was dirty from her ride. She was glad she had kept her gun.
“There’s a bed in that corner,” Wesley Hardin said, pointing. “Come crawl in it with me.”
Maria thought she should have known that was what he wanted when he invited her into the cantina. Killers she had known had not wanted women much. Their interest was in other things, as Joey’s was.
She said nothing, but she was glad she had her gun.
“You’re a fine one,” Hardin said. “You come in here and kill our best pig, and you ask me to help your killer son, but you won’t crawl in bed with me, even though I asked you polite. Have you got some old punch you bed down with, down in Mexico?”
Maria remembered that Billy Williams had warned her about Crow Town. It had been foolish for her to bother the killer at all. She didn’t know why she had thought he might help.
“A dollar and a quarter, then?” Wesley Hardin asked. “Red can pay you. He owes me money. If he wants to throw in seventy-five cents for himself, he can have the second turn and you’ll be two dollars richer before you even eat breakfast.”
Maria turned and walked out the door. The killer gave her a hot look, but he didn’t follow. He was shuffling cards.
She walked past the dead pig, and went to Joey’s house. When she pushed inside, her feet and hands were cold, although it had only been a short walk. The woman who smelled was crying, and so were the two girls. The door to Joey’s room was open. He was gone, and so was his rifle. Maria ran out of the house, hoping he was still in sight; maybe he would at least let her ride with him for a while, out of the bad town.
But Joey wasn’t in sight, and neither was Grasshopper. Joey was gone, and he had stolen her horse. Maria felt
that she must be the most foolish mother in the world, to ride so far in the winter, into the place of the Texans, for such a boy. Now she was afoot, and tired, in a town where the men were hard. Call was coming, and The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See was somewhere around.
Maria began to weep, at her own folly. She knew her son. She should never have given him a chance to steal her horse. Now she was really in trouble. She remembered the killer’s hot look. She would have to cross the cold river again, to get back home, and this time she would have no horse to warm her at night.
“Did he say anything when he left?” she asked the white woman, once both of them had stopped crying.
“Maybe he just went to hunt antelope,” she added.
“He didn’t say nothing. He don’t usually say nothing, in the morning,” Beulah said. “I didn’t want to make him mad, so I didn’t ask. He gets real mad if you ask.”
“Yes, he thinks somebody crowned him king,” Maria said. “Do you have any food I could take?”
The white woman looked hopeless.
“We don’t have no food,” she said. Her face was streaked with tears. She, too, had made a mistake in coming to Crow Town, Maria thought. Probably this white woman had made many mistakes. Now she wasn’t young, she smelled bad, and she was in a bad place with no food. It would not be easy for her, or for the fat girls, either.
“I’m going to Mexico. Do you want to go home with me?” Maria asked the two girls. If the three of them traveled together, it might be warmer. Then she remembered the pig she had killed—there was her food.
The girls were very young. They looked scared.
“We don’t have nobody in Mexico,” Gabriela said. Her sister seemed numb. She wouldn’t speak. “We don’t have nobody here, either. We don’t have nobody.”
“Do you know anybody with a horse we could borrow?” Maria asked. “I killed the pig, but he is too big, I can’t drag him. I can butcher him, but I can’t drag him. I need a horse, for a little while.”
At home, she had always done the butchering, whether of pigs or of goats. None of her husbands were good at it. Benito wouldn’t even try to butcher. He hated blood, and butchering would have made him sick. Then, in the end, he was butchered himself, and hung like a carcass, his own blood draining.
“I’ll get Red’s horse,” Beulah said. “He don’t feed it much. I don’t know if it can drag a pig.”
Then Beulah realized what Maria had said. She had killed the pig! She had killed the pig, the devil pig.
“She killed the pig!” Beulah told the girls. “She killed the pig!”
The girls looked stunned. They had both feared the pig, particularly when they had to go into the bushes. The pig watched them; it liked their droppings. Marieta couldn’t grasp it. She thought the woman must be a witch, to be able to kill the great pig.
Maria went with Beulah to get the horse. She hitched it to a rope tied to the pig’s feet and, urging the skinny horse, dragged the pig slowly to Joey’s house. The horse was afraid of the dead pig, and kept shying and flaring its nostrils. It would have liked to run, but hitched to the pig, there was no way for it to run.
There was no tree to hoist the pig, but Maria didn’t care. She wanted the blood; it would be easier to get if she hoisted the pig, but she couldn’t. She found a knife in the house. She sharpened it on a rock as best she could, and let the pig’s blood drain into a rusty bucket. It was not easy to handle so much blood. Maria finally found three buckets and filled them all with the pig’s blood. She took the liver and the sweetbreads and then began to cut the meat into strips. The blood was still warm, and soon she was covered with it. The white woman and the two girls got excited at the thought of so much meat. Some of the other women in the village heard that the pig was dead, and came to watch the butchering. Two of them were old Mexican women whose men had worked for the railroad until they died. They lived in Crow Town because they were too old and too weak to go anywhere. But they knew about making jerky, and they had better knives than the one Maria had found. She told them they could have meat, for there was far too much to carry on her journey.
The wind got colder, but the women were excited at the thought of the meat. Also, their great enemy, the pig, was dead, and they would eat him. They were all covered with blood. At one point, John Wesley Hardin came to the place where the butchering was taking place, and stood looking at the excited, bloody women for a few minutes. He said nothing; he just looked. The women’s arms were black with blood, as they cut deeper and deeper into the carcass of the great pig. The women were so hungry that they sliced bits of liver and sweetbreads and ate them raw. Maria didn’t care. She wanted only to get her jerky and start back for Ojinaga. She missed her children, Rafael and Teresa. She knew she would not be able to smoke the jerky very well. It would be half raw, but it would keep her from starving as she walked home.
By the end of the morning, every woman in Crow Town was behind Joey’s house, helping Maria finish butchering the giant pig. All of them carried off meat, and then came back and helped Maria smoke hers over a little fire. They were beaten women, none of them young; only Gabriela and Marieta were young. Most of the women were old, within sight of their deaths. They had been thrown aside by their men, or their men had died, leaving them in this bad place, too spiritless to move on. All of them, even the oldest, had sold themselves, or tried, to the men who passed through Crow Town.
Now they were excited, and not just by the meat. The pig had frightened them all. He had made their dreams bad, made them scared when they had to squat in the bushes. They had seen the pig eating dead men, on Hog Hill. They knew that when they died, the pig would eat them, too. Nobody would care enough about them to bury them deep enough, and the pig could even root up corpses that were buried deep.
But now the tables had been turned, and it was all thanks to Maria. She had arrived out of the storm and had killed their enemy, the great pig. They had wet their arms with his blood, eaten raw bites of his liver, and waded in his guts, which spilled from his belly and spread over the ground when Maria opened it. An old Comanche woman whose husband had been shot by Blue Duck many years before knew how to strip the guts. She sliced the long, white pig gut into foot-long sections, stripping what was in them into a bucket.
“Don’t eat that, there could be people in it, parts of people,” Beulah said. She had never liked the old Comanche woman, whose name was Naiche.
Old Naiche was a tiny, wizened woman. She stood up to her shins in the pig guts, merrily pulling up stretches of gut, cutting off sections, and stripping the sections into her bucket.
Beulah knew the pig must have parts of people in its intestines. It sickened her that old Naiche would fill a bucket with the contents of the guts.
As the women worked, the men of the town came, in ones and twos, to watch the spectacle. None of them said anything. They stood in the wind, watching the bloody women cut meat.
Though she continued to work, Maria kept one eye on the men. They were all watching her, and their eyes were hostile. She knew she would have to leave Crow Town that night, as soon as she had enough jerky to see her home. She was a new woman; the men who watched her cut the pig were tired of the women they had, if they had any at all. Their women were worn out. Except for the two Mexican girls, they were all women whose hearts had died within them. They were broken and they didn’t care what men did to them anymore. Men had used them until they had used them up. The women were excited that the pig was dead, but their excitement would be brief. In the next day, or two days, or a week, they would just be broken women again.
Maria knew the men would be after her soon. They would be angry because she had stirred up their women. Most men didn’t like women to be stirred up, about a dead pig or about anything. Life was much easier when women were broken, when they didn’t dare express a feeling, whether happy or sad. It was not something to question; it was just how men were.
By the middle of the gray, cold afternoon, the work was finished. There was not
hing left of the great feral pig except its hide, its hooves and its bones. Old Naiche had even taken its eyes. She dropped them into a bucket with the strippings from the guts and hobbled off to her small hovel with them. Then she came back and got an armful of the sections of gut she had cut. The plentitude of guts made old Naiche happy. It reminded her of the buffalo times, long before, when she had often waded in piles of guts.
In the late afternoon, as the winter sun was setting, the sleet turned to snow. Maria felt a bitterness growing in her toward Joey, her son. He had sneered at the trouble she had gone to warning him, and then he had stolen her horse. She had not expected thanks when she journeyed to Crow Town. Joey did not thank people, for nothing they did made him grateful. But she had not supposed he would steal her horse, and leave her on foot in such a place in the winter, among Texans. It was a cruel thing. It made her wonder if her son wished her dead. It was a long way back to Ojinaga, and there were many perils. With Grasshopper, she stood a better chance. Without a horse, it would be very difficult. She might freeze, or she might be taken by men who would be rough with her.
There were horses in Crow Town; Maria had seen five or six. Some of the men who came to watch the butchering were mounted. But Maria had no money, and could not buy a horse. If she stole one and they caught her, she would be hung. That was for sure, they would hang her when they caught her. If there were no trees, they would stretch her between two horses until her neck broke or she strangled. She had seen the Federales hang men that way. They had stretched Benito’s brother, Raul, between two horses. They had pulled so hard that they almost pulled Raul’s head off. A Mexican hanging, the Texans called it, although they used it too, if they were too far from a tree.
Maria decided to walk. That way, she could at least hide in the sage. She searched Joey’s room, to see if she could find anything useful. She thought he might have left some money, but there was no money. Gabriela and Marieta tried to stop her from searching, for they were scared of Joey.
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