by David Xavier
They lit the fires and sat in counsel. Salomon showed a bag of gold dust and fingered the particles. The Chumash leader handled the dust with large eyes. He cut orders and waved his arms, and several males stood and sprinted off, calling out to others in the village, gathering more.
Salomon and Arturo slept the night in one of the mud huts and listened to a soft rain settle around them. Arturo held his short shotgun on his chest. They whispered in the dark as small figures walked about outside the walls of woven sticks.
“You think they will cut our throats and scalp us?”
“The Chumash are peaceful farmers and fishermen,” Salomon said. “They do not collect scalps.”
Later he added in the darkness, “But they bury their enemies alive.”
They woke to the sound of stones bouncing off the hut walls. Salomon sat up and looked through a window made from a flap of deerhide. The boys ran off browncheeked in the morning light. At their door was set on a woven mat a bread loaf and a dried meat, a saucer of nuts and a gourd of herbal murk. The Chumash leader approached the men and pointed to the sunrise and swung his arm to where it would set and to where it would rise again. Arturo looked at Salomon.
“One more day,” Salomon told him.
They sat in the shade against the mud hut while women and girls brought them beads to try on and woven hides to pet, and boys reappeared every so often to stare at a distance.
It took a week for the Chumash men to return but when they did the ground quivered at their approach. They had rounded up or stolen unmarked cattle in such numbers that Salomon and Arturo would not be able to move them without help. The Chumash leader sifted gold sand between his hands, wasting much of it, blowing the remaining dust from his palm and watching its magic with a simple smile. He appointed men from his village to drive the herd north to Salomon’s land.
The Chumash did not speak as they moved the herd except to shriek when the cattle slowed or wandered. Nor did they stop or let up in their pace. Blowing sand and dry wells did not turn them back, they continued, and when the cattle began to run at the smell of water, the naked indians took advantage and hollered behind them until every last cow crowded knee-deep in the creek.
They left the two vaqueros without so much as a hand waved, vanishing back to where they came. There the two sat on a ridge overlooking their new herd wandering below them like ants. Arturo turned to look one last time as the Chumash rode away into the prairie, disappearing one by one as if slipping through some unseen slit in a giant canvas painting.
“Why do they shriek that way?”
Salomon sat watching his herd in silence. Arturo sat for a time, then sighed and waved over the herd.
“We don’t have enough land for this much cattle.”
“We will buy more,” Salomon said. “We will buy more land and we will gather more cattle.”
“If they wander at all, they will wander off the rancho.”
“They won’t be here long enough to wander.” He nodded to the blackened tree stump. “Get what we have left.”
Arturo put his arm in up to his shoulder, searching inside the stump with small changes to his expression. He yanked his arm out and cursed, shaking his hand. He held his hand and looked at the stump, kicking it once, then twice, and some furred animal went flashing out.
The two set out again, riding further south to Montecito, pale streets and bleached walls as they rode in near midday. The streets were quiet but for horses tethered to rails and a few walkers crossing between buildings. Small shacks spread gray beyond town limits and people moved about them. They ate in a dark cantina while Arturo slipped coins to a young and disinterested castanets dancer and ordered drinks. The dancer accepted Arturo’s coins and danced around the table for him, but her eyes stayed on Salomon as he leaned over his plate.
Arturo soon found himself staring at a collection of empty glasses before him and began to nod his head and lean too far over. He forgot about the dancer and stood. He dropped too much money on the table and wandered outside, leaving the young woman to circle Salomon and swish her skirt against him as he ate, and try to ease onto his lap between bites. When he was done, Salomon pushed his plate away and stood. The girl caught her feet on the floor before she toppled over. He looked at her for the first time as he wiped his mouth, and she smiled and reached for him but he fended with an arm and went outside.
The sun baked the streets dry and the air seemed choked with dust. Salomon moved just his eyes from one end of the street to the other. Arturo’s horse was still tied at the rail, the street was empty. Salomon turned to face the building. He squatted and scanned the gap between walkway and dirt, and duckwalked along to call his name into the black crevice that a drunk may find a cool invite during a hot day.
He walked the town, the white adobe of lasting buildings divided by the boards of hastymade boom storefronts crammed skinny between walls. The hurry had come and gone in Montecito and moved north, leaving a checkered pattern of old and new, durable and not, and leaving a small population of disillusioned easterners to mix with the Californios. Salomon squatted here and there and leaned in at inscriptions on wallboards and scribbles on hot clay. He called out down one alley. One man glanced back at the call but continued on. Men and women walked here the way they did in the Monterey of his youth.
A crack of gunfire sounded against the building walls, and horses stamped at the rails and tossed their heads. Any townsfolk ducked inside doorways. Salomon stepped out in the street, his eyes searching. Another gunshot, and a rider appeared in the street, kicking his horse and shouting. Salomon stepped aside as the rider came near, but he and the rider startled each other with recognition. The rider pulled rein and changed looks between pleased and baffled atop his restless horse, glancing back. It was the type of glance he had not given Salomon the last time he had seen him, leaving his rancho with his head hanging and shoulders slumped.
“Salomon.”
“Hello, Marquez.”
“You have left your rancho.”
“I know it.”
“I am happy to see you again. I would buy you a drink, but I am in a bad way right now.”
“You had better get on.”
Marquez glanced again, his horse stepping nervous beneath him. He jerked his head.
“Things did not go my way.”
“Nor the other man’s way, I’d say.”
“He was not a man. He was a cheat and a liar and a thief, and I had to shoot him for it.”
“You had better get on.”
“I wish I had time. Which way will you leave town?”
“I’m going south.”
Three men with pistols drawn had run into the street where Marquez had come from. They looked around and pointed. They fired and looked, and came trudging down the street with pistols up.
Salomon ducked when they fired and the air whistled, and he stepped away. Marquez held his rein and his horse sidled near.
“I will wait for you, south.”
“Well, go and wait already and quit talking.”
“What brings you to Montecito?”
“Get on, I said.”
Marquez smiled, glancing once at the approaching men. “Don’t worry. These men can pull a trigger but they do not know how to hit anything.”
Another gunshot and a watery crack of bone and blood, and the horse bellowed and kicked, staggering beneath Marquez, sinking to the dust. He pulled at the reins, a man wrestling a dying beast onward. The horse crawled and Marquez stood over it with his feet planted on the earth at either side of its neck, fighting with the reins before pulling his pistola and aiming between the whites of rolling eyes. He did not fire. Instead, he looked to his attackers and leveled the gun at them and fired while the horse writhed and cried beneath him. The men scattered left and right. Marquez holstered the smoking pistola and crouched whispering over his dying horse, gathering an arm under its screams.
“Better do it,” Salomon said. “Better do it now.”
“Do it now. It is suffering.”
But Marquez’s hand began to tremble and he looked at Salomon with wet eyes. Another shot came, whistling the air between them. Salomon pulled his pistolas and stepped out, facing the gunshots. He fired once to splinter the wall on the right side of the street and send the man there deep into cover. He held his other pistola aimed steady at the left side. A face peeked out momentarily and Salomon fired there. He holstered his guns and took Marquez by the shirt, dragging him from the guttural croaks of the animal. Shots fired behind them as they ducked between two buildings and stopped there. Marquez stared at the ground with his back to the wall while Salomon shucked his pistolas empty and reloaded, ramming the paper cartridge down and placing the cap. He cocked the hammers back and put one eye around the corner. The horse made a final choking sound and lay still.
“What do these guys want?”
Marquez did not answer. Salomon turned.
“Marquez.”
He brought his head up. He swallowed. “To kill me, Sal.”
Salomon just looked at him.
“Well, what else?” Marquez said. “Shooting at me that way.”
“I mean what for?”
“Their brother cheated me on the price of this pistola.”
Salomon glanced at the gun.
“I am not a good man, Sal.”
“You had better reload.”
He looked out again from behind the wall. Across the street one man’s feet were stepping behind a horse trough. His hat was moving along above it. Another ran with loud feet down a boardwalk to the nearest shop door. He bounced off the door, shook at the handle, and continued to the next, where he slipped inside and hid behind flowered pots with blooms curled and hanging in the window. A moment later he looked out. Salomon shook his head.
“I don’t see the third man. There were three of them.”
Marquez pulled his hammer back. He made the sign of the cross with his gun hand.
“May their brother enter the gates of heaven.”
Salomon looked back.
“I will not run into him there,” Marquez said without expression. Then he nodded. “You get out of here, Sal.”
And he stepped past Salomon with his pistola held out. Salomon crouched and looked from the horse trough to the shop door and back. He looked to the far end of the street, yet found no third man. Marquez walked into the silent street with his pistola aimed at the shop door.
The man behind the trough put his eyes high enough to see. He brought his head up in full.
“What the hell are you – go back.”
Marquez swung his pistola and fired. Water burst over the edge as if a hand had slapped the surface, and the man fell back. Salomon could see beneath the trough the man’s backside in the dirt where his boots once tread. He was replacing his hat and patting his body for a hole that was not there. The man in the shop door put his head out twice, ducking away each time Salomon raised his pistolas.
“Marquez. Get back.”
But he did not. Marquez stood in the street, reloading his pistola. The man at the shop door stuck an arm out and aimed, but Salomon fired there before he could squeeze the trigger. The man ducked away again and cursed. The man at the horse trough was still gathering himself.
“We don’t want you, stranger,” the one in the door called out. “We want Emilio Marquez. He is a murderer.”
“I am here,” Marquez said. He holstered his pistola, not yet reloaded, and pulled his knife low and charged.
Salomon ran out. The man at the door lifted his gun again and fired. Marquez froze in place just yards from the shop door, peppered by grit and bitter powder, almost blinded by the gunshot but unscathed. The man at the trough stood with his pistol outstretched, and Salomon fired there in midstride, again slapping the water and startling the man off his feet.
He grabbed Marquez again by the collar and yanked him away, and him rubbing his eyes and face like that of a sooted blacksmith. The man at the trough was brave now, as they had fired their pistolas empty. He stepped forward and took careful aim, his barrel panning, and fired. He looked through the smoke and cursed.
They ran the boardwalk with heads lowered and ducked into an alley between buildings. A bystander ran by them with his hands raised, and Salomon held a gun on him until he ducked into the nearest door. They came out the other side toward the saloon, Salomon running with Marquez’s collar in one hand, passing alley after alley on their way. They pulled up when the third man appeared from between buildings ahead of them, dust rising as his boots skidded to a stop. He raised his pistol and pointed from one to the other. His eyes were big and blinking, his mouth twitching. If he was a brother of the dead man, he must have been the youngest. Marquez knocked Salomon’s hand off and stepped away, urging the man to fire at him. The young man grit his teeth and stepped forward.
The boom of the gun magnified against those building walls and a cloud of white smoke swept like fog over an animal yell. Salomon crouched and found he had pulled his knife. He was moving forward in a squatwalk with one hand extended in the smoke and his knife hand cocked. Marquez was on his back, searching his body with both hands, his head up and squinting.
The ground where the young man had been standing was cleared. He was laying several feet off, smeared in the dirt, steam rising from his body. Arturo stumbled from the alley with his short shotgun smoldering. His eyes were mere slits. He fell against the wall with one shoulder.
“Sal? Did I hit you?”
Salomon had put his knife away and was reloading his pistolas. He cocked both guns.
“There are two more behind us. Get to our horses.”
Arturo staggered and fumbled to reload his shotgun, spilling blackpowder and fowling balls. Marquez took him under the arm and they ran together like some upright four-legged being. Salomon followed in a backpedal.
One of the men stepped out in the distance and raised a rifle to his shoulder. Salomon fired and the man raised his foot as the dirt beneath it burst upward. The man went to one knee. His rifle muzzle flashed, even in the daylight, and blackpowder curtained him. Salomon toppled backward. From the ground he raised his gun but could not aim. He could not hold his pistola.
The second man appeared on a storefront, closer. Salomon switched hands and fired blindly as he rolled away. A board cracked above the man’s head and he ducked away.
Marquez was mounted on Arturo’s horse and leading Salomon’s Comanche pony by rope. He gestured past Salomon.
“What the hell is wrong with your man?”
Arturo was walking forward with his shotgun aimed from his hip. He fired it, a boom loud as a lightning strike. He staggered his steps and took his time to wrestle the strap over his shoulders to wear the shotgun at his back. Then he pulled his pistola and fired into the smoke. The two men were standing side by side now in the haze, reloading and firing back with shaky hands.
Arturo appeared from the gray cloud shaking his head. The cloud seemed to cling to his clothing as he stumbled out, gunshots swirling the veil behind him.
Marquez wheeled the horse and charged past him, low in the saddle, holding his blade out at head level to a man standing. He disappeared into the gray, the smoke churning after him. Salomon and Arturo stood watching. There was an exchange of yells and a muted fall, a trampling of hoofs and another yell. Then silence. Salomon reloaded. His arm was numb and hanging at his side. There was little blood.
After a moment, Marquez emerged, he and the horse painted two shades of red. He chinned his shoulder and licked his lips. The scene behind him still rang in their ears as the smoke wafted over two bodies, the bitter powder and dust still dried their mouths. Marquez looked down at Salomon.
“My apologies.”
They
escaped to the Los Padres Hills, where Arturo pulled his glowing blade from their fire and Salomon bit down on a shank of live aspen. Tree sap ran from Salomon’s teeth and he spat it out chewed and mashed, and collapsed clutching his shoulder. Arturo held the pulped remains of a ball on his knife blade, eyeing it in the firelight. Marquez stirred the flames and looked over.
“Are you even sober yet, doctor?”
Arturo did not answer.
“You are a goddamn crazy bastard, you know that?”
The flames caught Arturo in a smile and Marquez swallowed. Arturo flipped the deformed metal into the night with a ping and sat plunging his blade into the dirt at his feet between inspections. He nodded, shaking his knife and squinting over the blade at Marquez.
“I know.”
Marquez craned his neck. Salomon was curled up unmoving in the flickering shadow beyond Arturo’s shoulder. He motioned toward the breathing heap in the dark.
“I was his lead vaquero on his rancho. Together we have punched more cattle than I wish to count and slept under all the stars of the universe. The stars I don’t mind counting.”
Arturo turned his face halfway from the fire.
“I grew up with him.”
“Seems like so long ago.”
Arturo stared into the glow, his face appearing in and out of the night at the reoccurring flames. “Seems like this morning.”
Salomon woke during the night with fever. He sat close to the fire and shivered. He stuck a cold hand from his blanket several times to throw more branches over the flames, returning each time to huddle and shiver again in his grapple with the night. At one point he ran aching into the dark and returned dragging a branch rustling with dead leaves. Marquez woke once to the crackle behind him. The forest was as light as day and he turned with big eyes to see the fire blazing as tall as a giant and Salomon standing wavy in heat alongside it, almost embracing it with his good arm.