The Dark Land

by Jory Sherman

  “How come?”

  Randy’s face took on a quizzical look. “Cooper don’t owe no back taxes. He’s a freed slave livin’ on land the government give him. Got him a shack and a garden, a mule and a plow.”

  “Christ, Randy.”

  “You think Thorne and Grimley might go there?”

  “Abel Thorne’s pa was a damned slave trader. Thorne’s got no use for the Negro race, to hear him tell it.”

  “That don’t sound good, Major.”

  “Let’s see if we can pick up Thorne’s tracks by and by,” Brad said. He walked to his horse and pulled himself up into the saddle.

  In moments, the five men were heading to the southwest, over ground blown trackless by the winds of the day and night before.

  They followed an old wagon road that was still used by some, for it cut through groves of mesquite sprung up from seeds dropped by longhorn cattle in their dung as they wandered the open spaces seeking grass long before Americans began settling in Texas. But the ruts were long gone, the road worn down by riders traveling between the scattered ranches and farms that the valley now harbored in the wake of long dead pioneers who had left their bones and their blood on the plain, along with Apaches and Comanches, horses and cattle whose skulls lay bleached white and scattered like broken pottery from the Rio Grande to the Nueces River and beyond.

  Brad began looking for tracks, but only saw those of the roadrunner, the jackrabbit, the coyote, and the wild turkey. Ten miles further on, they passed an old adobe, its sod roof caved in, its bricks crumbling to dust, and still no horse tracks, nor any sign that men had passed that way.

  “There’s another adobe, in better shape, about two mile ahead,” Randy said. “Might be a hidey place.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Brad said, his voice flat; the expression on his face seemed to be coated with a patina of grimness, as if shadowed by a passing cloud.

  After another hour, Brad called a halt and told his companions to have a smoke. He rolled a quirly for himself as he surveyed the land ahead and mentally calculated how far they had come.

  “This isn’t strictly a military operation,” he said, “but I think I’d better issue some orders.”

  “Orders?” Gid asked.

  Brad’s lips curled in a faint smile. “Suggestions.”

  Randy and Lou laughed right away. Gid looked at them and then laughed himself. Paco’s expression did not change, rigid as ever.

  “Gid, you ride drag. I’ll ride point with Randy, who knows the country better than any of us. Lou, you take the right flank, but keep within twenty yards or so. Paco, you ride on my left. I think we need some eyes looking around us from now on. Agreed?”

  “Sounds like a good order to me,” Lou said, grinning.

  “Probably a damned good idea,” Randy said. “This damned Texas brush can hide a whole lot of things.”

  “I don’t mind riding in the rear,” Gid said, “as long as it don’t last forever.”

  Brad looked at him. “You don’t like riding drag?”

  “I don’t like looking at horses’ asses all damned day.”

  Brad and the others laughed, including Paco, this time.

  “Which horses’ asses are you talking about?” Brad asked.

  “Well, not you, Major,” Gid said, looking at the others. And they all laughed again.

  “That’s good to know,” Brad said. “Although I’m a pretty good horse’s ass at times.”

  “Most of the time,” Randy said, and there was more laughter as the men smoked and their horses switched their tails at the biting flies, their muscles quivering to shake off those that their tails could not reach.

  The men finished their smokes and when Brad gave the signal, they dropped into formation. Randy looked at Gid in the rear and at Lou and Paco on their flanks. “Looks like a military expedition to me,” he said.

  “It may well turn out that way, Randy,” Brad said.

  “I can’t get over you and Phil Sheridan. Times sure do change.”

  “And the man who doesn’t change with them gets left behind,” Brad said.

  “I ain’t never goin’ to be no Yankee.”

  “Neither am I, Randy. I think the idea is to be an American. The war’s over and we’ve got to set aside our differences with the North and get on with our lives.”

  “First, though, we have to take care of these damned carpetbaggers.”

  “No, first we take care of Abel Thorne,” Brad said firmly.

  “Yeah, I reckon.”

  “How much farther to that other adobe?” Brad asked.

  “Another mile or two, maybe. I haven’t been this way in a while and that windstorm did some rearranging of real estate. Like that live oak over there. It seems a mite more bent over than I recollect.”

  Brad laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “things change. Even the land.”

  A half hour later, Randy put out his arm to stop Brad. Brad held up his hand and the others reined in their horses. It was very quiet and Randy did not speak for several seconds.

  “There’s that adobe, yonder,” Randy said, “just beyond that clump of low mesquite. You look close, you can just see a corner of it.”

  “I see it,” Brad said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Don’t look to be nobody there,” Randy said.

  “Could be a nest of rattlesnakes inside,” Brad said. “You wouldn’t see or hear them until it was too late.”

  “I see what you mean. What do you want to do then?”

  “Let’s take it slow and easy. You and Lou go around those trees and come up on the right side. If you see any tracks, stay off them. I’ll send Paco and Gid around the left to flank me.”

  “You going to ride straight on in?”

  “Yeah. It’s one way to find out if anybody’s inside. If I draw fire, you come at a lick.”

  Randy nodded.

  Brad turned to Gid and motioned to him. Gid rode up. Brad told him what he wanted him and Paco to do. Lou rode over then. “You and Randy circle those trees and come up on the right of that little adobe yonder,” Brad said.

  “I don’t see no adobe,” Lou said.

  “Trust me, Lou. It’s there. Easy does it. I’ll ride up slow and we’ll see what’s what.”

  Brad watched the others ride away on either side of him. When he was satisfied they were far enough on their courses, he clucked to his horse and moved forward up the road. He loosened the Colt in its holster and kept his hand alongside in case he had to draw it quick.

  As he rode closer, more of the abandoned adobe shack came into view. He angled left, so that he could see more of it. So far, so good, he thought, but he could hear his own breathing and the heartbeat in his left temple. He was traveling at such a slow pace that his horse’s hooves made very little sound. If anyone was asleep inside, they might not hear him come up. If he was careful.

  Gradually, he gained a three-quarters view of the adobe. Its roof was thick with sod and had not caved in, so it offered shelter from the rain or hail. Its bricks were worn from wind and weather; the windows were boarded up, so that he could not see inside either the side window or the one in back. He studied the ground and saw no tracks other than old, deep ones that were now filled with soil but still had some definition. Some were cart tracks, others were cattle and horse tracks made during some long-ago time when mud covered the road thick enough so that the impressions held, baked hard by the sun after the rains that made the mud.

  As he drew ever closer to the adobe hut, Brad closed his hand around the butt of his pistol. His breathing grew shallow and his gut tightened until it was rock-hard. He watched his horse’s ears as they twisted, turning to pick up any sound. He no longer saw his companions and he felt very alone as he rode the last few yards to the house. He turned his head slightly and then twisted quickly in the saddle. There was that shadow again, or so he thought, off to his right. But when he looked he saw nothing, no one. Still, he had the strong sense that someone was watching him
and he could not shake the feeling. His eyes told him he was mistaken, but his mind clouded over with the thought that he was being watched.

  As he rode close to the adobe, his horse grew skittery and balked, stepping sideways in a wary sidle. Brad sniffed the air as a barrage of scents assailed his nostrils. He fought the horse back to his original course, reining him hard to turn him; when the animal calmed down, Brad knew what he was smelling: human excrement, fresh and odorous.

  He rode around to the front of the adobe and drew his pistol. The front door was missing and, with the sun on the other side, the interior was dark, seemingly vacant. He saw no horses, but when he looked down at the ground around the adobe, he saw many tracks and piles of horse dung and bare places where they had urinated.

  He looked up and saw Lou and Randy just coming into view. He holstered his pistol and waved them on in. Then he turned and saw Paco and Gid off to the left. He beckoned for them to ride up. He dismounted and let his reins trail as he started to walk toward the doorway of the adobe.

  The smell of urine was strong inside the adobe. Slivers of light shone through the boarded-up windows. When his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he saw where the men had laid out their bedrolls. He saw and smelled food and there was the scent of smoke. They had built a fire in the fireplace, a small one from the looks of the ashes, and scattered around were empty airtights that had once contained peaches and prunes. The stench inside was strong. Mingled with the scents of urine and food, was the pungent aroma of candle wax.

  Now, he thought, what would they need candlelight for, if they had a fire going? He walked around, looking for anything that might not have been there before the men stopped to get out of the wind. Something caught his eye and he walked over to a place near the hearth and picked up a scrap of paper. He couldn’t read it in the poor light.

  Brad stepped back outside. “They stayed here last night.”

  “Yeah, I can see their tracks,” Randy said. “They’re all over.”

  Brad studied the tracks for several moments. Then he looked up at the men sitting their horses.

  “They have a pack horse that’s carrying a lighter load this morning. So they have plenty of food. They can go a long way, I figure.”

  “How far ahead of us do you think they are?” Gid asked.

  “Maybe three hours,” Brad said.

  “This place sure stinks,” Lou said.

  “What you got in your hand?” Randy asked. “A piece of paper, looks like.”

  Brad held the piece of paper up so that he could study it. “It’s a map,” he said. “Or part of one. Take a look, Randy.”

  Brad walked over to Randy’s horse and handed Randy the scrap of paper. Randy looked at it, turned it upside down and sideways.

  “Well?” Brad asked.

  “Jesus,” Randy said. “Here’s the road we come up, and there’s the Worth place, and next to it, on this side, a little path leading to where the Coopers live.”

  “Are you sure?” Brad asked.

  “Did you look at it real close?” Randy asked. “Them little squares have writin’ under ’em.”

  “I didn’t notice,” Brad said. “What’s the writing say?”

  Randy handed the fragment of paper back to Brad. “Under the big square’s a W. That stands for Worth and is right on the road. That little square has a C on it. For Cooper. And what looks like bushes or something, is the word ‘niggers.’ ”

  Brad held the scrap close to his face. There was a line drawn from the road straight to the square labeled “C.”

  “Makes your blood run cold, don’t it?” Randy asked.

  “Like ice,” Brad replied.

  15

  * * *

  NORM WORTH HAD three stumps on fire and all three were smoking. He had poured coal oil on them the day before, then the wind had come up, so he didn’t light them until that morning. In the windless air, the columns of gray-blue smoke rose straight to the sky. It would take a good three days to burn the stumps out of the ground, but he had dug around them so that the fire could get plenty of air.

  He had borrowed Cooper’s mule to pull some of the small stumps, but these were the big ones, live oaks that he’d had to clear. He and Cal, his son, had sawed them off clear to the ground, but they were a nuisance and had to be removed.

  And where in hell was Cal, anyway? That kid was scarce as hen’s teeth when there was work to be done. And Hollie was taking her sweet time getting that sorry mule back to Joe Cooper’s place. Hell, it wasn’t more’n two mile through the woods.

  “Cal?” Norm called.

  There was no answer.

  “Calvin? Where in hell are you, boy? Are you playin’ with your pud again?”

  “Hoooo,” Cal called, from deep inside the barn, it sounded like.

  “Fetch me some more coal oil,” Norm yelled.

  “Comin’, Pa.”

  Cal Worth emerged from the barn carrying a glass jug half full of coal oil that had a cork in it. The oil sloshed as he ambled toward his father. Norm started digging in his overalls for a box of matches, but he kept his eyes on his gangly son, a boy of seventeen, motherless since he was fifteen.

  Norm’s wife, Abigail, had died of the pox in 1863. She had been a frail woman and had caught the disease, Norm thought, in Galveston when they all went there in the buggy to buy supplies for their farm. Hollie had been nineteen when her mother died, and she had taken her place, doing all the cooking and laundry, and tending to the garden.

  Cal handed the jug to his father. Norm waved it away. “Go over yonder and pour about two cups full on that stump what ain’t burnin’ so good.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Hell, boy, can’t you see? The one where the smoke ain’t no more’n knee-high.”

  Of course Cal went to the wrong stump and his father had to berate him and direct him to the right one. Cal poured nearly half the jug on the stump, drowning out the weak fire. Norm stalked over to it and glared at Cal. “Put the cork back in that jug,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Cal said. He was not as tall as his father, who stood at five foot ten, all muscle from hard work, with thick bushy eyebrows and a shock of brown hair that Hollie tried to keep cut, but which grew straight and long down to his shoulders. Norm was clean-shaven, with steel-blue eyes, thin lips, and a small chin that came to a sharp point. Cal resembled his mother, but his features were weak and he tended to put weight on his middle so that he had a slight paunch. Norm knew that Cal wasn’t right in the head. He’d had a difficult birth and nearly died of suffocation when Abigail couldn’t strain him out of her womb. Norm had hoped Cal would grow out of his slowness, but was resigned to the fact that his son would always be slightly addled and just a hair or two off plumb.

  “Who’s coming’, Pa?” Cal asked.

  “Don’t know. Just be quiet.”

  Norm listened to the crunch of grit and gravel, the familiar clop, clop of iron-shod hooves. Then he saw the first horse appear carrying a heavyset man he did not know. Then, three more horses and three strangers, all well-armed.

  “Do you see ’em, Pa?”

  “It doesn’t look good, Cal. Just stay back. We’ll see what these jaspers have to say.”

  “Hello,” called the first man. “Mr. Worth?”

  “That’s far enough. State your business,” Norm said.

  “Are you Norman Worth?” The horses all stopped.

  “What if I am?”

  “Then I have important business with you, Mr. Worth. My name’s Jonas Grimley and I’m from the government.”

  “What government might that be, Mr. Grimley?”

  “The United States Government, sir.”

  “It don’t take no four men to deliver no government papers.”

  “Sir, these men are here to safeguard me.”

  “Well, you tell them to go on, and you ride up real slow and show me them papers. I ain’t goin’ to hurt you.”

  Grimley turned to one of the men and whisper
ed something to him that Norm couldn’t hear, then turned back to face him again.

  “Sir, if you’ll just step out and let me give you these papers, we’ll be on our way,” Grimley said to Worth.

  “What are the papers about?”

  “Taxes, sir. You owe taxes on your land and your place here.”

  “Cal, you listen up real good,” Norm said to his son. “You sneak out the back of the barn and go in the back of the house and stay there.”

  “How come, Pa?”

  “You just do as you’re told. Now git.”

  Cal shook his head and ambled toward the rear of the barn. Norm reached for the shot-loaded rifle. His hand touched the barrel and he left it there.

  “This won’t take long,” Grimley said.

  “No, it ain’t goin’ to take long at all, Mr. Grimley. Because I ain’t comin’ out, and unless you send those hardcases back to the road, you ain’t goin’ to serve me no papers.”

  “Let’s be reasonable, sir,” Grimley said.

  “That’s as reasonable as I aim to be,” Norm replied.

  More whispering among the men on horseback.

  “Tell you what,” Grimley said. “You’ve got what? Four thousand acres here, more or less?”

  “More or less,” Norm said.

  “I’ll make you an offer. Cash on the barrelhead. I’ll give you five cents an acre, throw in a hundred dollars for the house and barn. That’s probably more than the lumber is worth. A fair price and you won’t have any taxes to pay. You can take that money and start up someplace else, free and clear.”

  “Mr. Grimley,” Norm said, “my place ain’t for sale.”

  “If you don’t pay the taxes on it, the government will take it anyway, and I can buy it for much less. I’d just pay the taxes on it.”

  “Did you come here to insult me?” Norm said. “Or are you just a goddamned thief?”

  Grimley’s face swelled and flushed a roseate hue. He turned to the men behind him and spoke a few words just above a whisper.

  Norm’s fingers closed around the barrel of the rifle. Then, as he was pulling the gun toward him, Grimley turned his horse and started to ride away. The other men stayed where they were.