Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  Until she remembered the roll of money she’d taken out of the stranger’s sand-dusted pocket last night. The dollars were wound up tight like a cactus bud, so much largess that she couldn’t really figure it and knew she’d get beaten if she tried to use any of the bills in town. A quarter she could maybe get away with, though. In between the hat and the quarter, she figured killing that stranger had been a blessing in disguise.

  In a few hours, she had the big bronc under saddle and gentle as a kitten, and thirty cents in her little leather bag.

  “It’s ’cause Nat’s so skinny,” Jar grumbled, rubbing a bruise on his ass. “Ain’t fair.”

  “You’re just as skinny as Nat, Jar. But you’re a helluva lot meaner.” Monty hadn’t seemed put out to give her the coins, not at all. Probably because the Boss offered his official hands a dollar for turning a demon bronc into a trustworthy mount. Not that Nettie minded; it was thirty cents more than she’d had yesterday. She could feel it thumping against her leg as she clucked the white stallion into a gentle canter that would make any so-called gentleman proud.

  When the lunch bell rang, Monty jerked his chin at her. Stunned, she nearly swallowed a fly; in ten years as Monty’s shadow, this was her first invitation to join the wranglers for grub at the ranch house. She tied up the bronc, loosened his saddle, and patted his neck before slipping on her serape and tucking her pigtails more tightly under her hat. Other than finding her real family, Nettie’s greatest wish in life was to get hired on as a wrangler, but Pap had told her a thousand times that nobody would hire a girl to do such work, not even as a cook, and especially considering the color of her skin. Her worst nightmare was a life spent at Pap and Mam’s beck and call, never finding freedom. Probably not until they were dead. Or she was. As it stood, lunch with the men of the Double TK was as high as she knew how to hope.

  Nettie walked slightly behind Monty, Poke, and Jar, pulling her hat down low and hoping the boss wouldn’t notice her until she’d got a full plate and managed to put it away. The food was bound to be better and more plentiful at the Double TK, and she’d even had the luck of tasting beef jerky here a few times over the years, when Monty had seen her looking rangier than usual and had tossed her a few strips like it was nothing.

  Inside the ranch house, the men ate like it was a paying business. Golden squares of sunlight painted the long table and glinted off spoons and tin plates. The boards were straighter and nicer than the ones at Pap and Mam’s house, the chinks between them filled neatly, and a little cross hung on a blacksmith’s nail by the open door, not that anyone prayed. Nobody much talked while they chewed, and the cook handed her a bowl like everyone else’s, with jackrabbit stew slopping over the side and a crust of cornbread to mop it up with. She nodded her thanks and sat down on the bench between Monty and Poke.

  Half starved as she was, Nettie was the first one done with her food. When she put her bowl down on the table, more stew appeared in it. She kept her jaw from dropping, nodded her thanks, and shoveled in the rest. All the cowpokes around her did the same until the old cook was scraping his ladle across the bottom of the black kettle and shrugging his shoulders in response to the cowpokes’ complaints and lazy threats. There were nine fellers kept on at the Double TK, although that number went up and down depending on the time of year, when they were running a herd, who had the trots, who’d gotten excitable with a pistol, and who’d gotten stomped to death in the round pen or broken a leg during a stampede. Wrangling was a dangerous life, but so was living with two drunks who thought you were a slave, Nettie figured. She’d lost her best blanket smothering the flames the one time a still-drunk Mam had tried to cook breakfast when Nettie and Pap were both in bed with the ague, and she hadn’t had the poor sense to fall sick again.

  “Who gentled that fancy white bastard?”

  Boss Kimble strolled in like a damn giant, a hanky delicately tucked into his shirtfront as he ate what looked to be half a fried prairie chicken. The wranglers’ eyes shifted uncomfortably around the table, each man wishing he could own up to the feat. But the person who had done it couldn’t admit it, so Nettie placed her empty bowl on the table, wiped her lip, and settled her hat more firmly over her eyes.

  “New boy did,” Monty said, poking a thumb at her. “Name’s Nat Lonesome.”

  Nettie’s head jerked up, but not so much that anyone could see her complete surprise. Monty kicked her under the table, and she nodded to Boss Kimble in acknowledgment.

  “Where’d you come from, son?”

  Monty cleared his throat. And Nettie didn’t like to lie, so, keeping her voice low and husky, she told what wasn’t quite a lie, because Pap had threatened to send her there in chains more than once.

  “They tell me Tanasi, but I don’t rightly remember.” Another kick—a warning. “Boss.”

  The boss nodded, eyeing her up and down. “I reckon you’re too young to ride steer.”

  “Young, maybe. But I can break a bronc stallion, Boss. Reckon I can handle some piddly ol’ cows.”

  “I got two more likely fancies from the last raid. You break ’em as nice as you gentled up that white stallion, and we’ll take you on. Pays a dollar a week, meals and board. Bring your own saddle. That suit you?”

  Nettie shook her head and swallowed down her heart, which had jumped right up into her throat. Lord, she wanted to say yes. But even though she’d been told all her life she was worth nothing, she still knew she was worth more than the first offer.

  “Heard you pay a dollar a bronc, Boss. Heard Lance Morgan pays a dollar fifty.” She made like she was looking over her shoulder, out the glassless window, and down toward the Morgan Ranch on the other side of the river. She remembered what Monty had told her once: If you got nothing to lose, you might as well double your bet.

  The boss grunted, his eyes narrowing at her from a tan web of wrinkles. “Cowpokes got loose lips at the saloon, I reckon. That’s top-hand pay. For real sons of Durango.”

  She bristled, snorted like a bull. “This is Durango, Boss, and I reckon I’m as real as anybody.”

  “But you’re brown. And more importantly, you’re green, son. A quarter a bronc and two dollars a week is the best I can do.”

  God damn if it wasn’t everything Nettie’d ever wanted in her useless, goddamn life.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  “I ’spect that’s awful low, Boss, but if you let me break a bronc to keep for myself, you got a deal.”

  Boss Kimble stared at her, and she knew that he couldn’t catch anything but a glint of her mud-dark eyes under the hat. But still she felt like he saw straight through to her soul and out the other side.

  He chewed his fat lip for a minute and spit a glob of chicken fat on the dirt floor. “We took over a hundred head last night, so I reckon that’s fair. Montague, make sure he don’t choose nothing too fancy from the second-tier pen. Nothing fancy, you hear?”

  “Well, sure, Boss. Sounds right fair.”

  “Then why we jawin’ around the table, boys? Get back to work. I ain’t paying you to stare.”

  The benches scooted back, and the wranglers battered Nettie with shoulder punches and claps on the back. She absorbed it all and nodded at each man, unable to hide her grin. It was possible that Pap would report her to the sheriff as a runaway, but as the sheriff was as drunk and useless as Pap, they’d probably never get around to chasing her and wouldn’t think to look at the ranch next door. Ain’t nobody had money to post for a reward, anyway. Probably couldn’t even describe her clear enough for a Wanted poster, considering nobody ever looked her in the face. Now that Nettie thought about it, she couldn’t figure out why she’d never tried to get on at a ranch before, considering she had all the skills a wrangler needed, minus the drinking and whoring.

  Once they were outside, she punched Monty in the arm. She didn’t have the right words, and thank you wasn’t something she’d had cause to say before. All that came out was “Hope I do good.”

  But the old cowpoke u
nderstood. He punched her back, but softly. “It’s gonna be hard, but you’ll do fine. Now let’s go pick out your bronc.”

  Out in the second-string pen, Nettie began to realize that Pap had been feeding her lies all her life. The second-string horses were far nicer than anything Pap had ever sold or traded, but he’d always claimed his horses were the best and it was Nettie’s fault they never sold for shit.

  Most of the mustangs in Boss Kimble’s herd were just young, green, short, or rangy. One, like her old mule, Blue, was missing an eye and seemed mighty pissed over it. A few horses had hoof cracks or other injuries that would either heal up or turn them into stew, if they couldn’t keep up on the trail. But there was plenty of fine horseflesh hiding in the herd, and she and Monty settled on a kind-eyed, dust-colored appaloosa mare as long and skinny as Nettie herself, too ugly to catch a gentleman’s fancy. The black-freckled mare took to the saddle easily and had a jouncy trot, but her breath and hooves were good and she had an intelligent sort of face. Nettie decided to call her Ragdoll in memory of a toy she’d once seen a rich little girl with blonde curls showing off in Gloomy Bluebird’s general store. She didn’t know what to do with a doll, but damned if she hadn’t wanted one with a powerful yearning.

  As Nettie tested the mare’s canter and reining, Monty explained that most folks didn’t want to buy an ugly horse with almost no tail or mane, but that the native tribes bred ’em that way on purpose, so they wouldn’t get tangled up in the brush. Nettie didn’t care about the horse’s looks, as hair and beauty meant very little to her. What was the point of valuing something a body could never possess? To that end, she walked right into town that afternoon holding two long, black pigtail braids and traded them and a few faded bills from the stranger’s wad for a used Aztecan saddle. And there was another lie exposed: The storekeep was more than happy to take Nettie’s money despite her skin color. Whether it was the way her chin stuck out now that she wasn’t begging or the pride she felt after a day of good work, the man didn’t even try to cheat her.

  As the sun set and the cowpokes headed for the saloon, Nettie snuck back over to Pap’s land and into the old barn. He called to her from the porch, scratching himself in his drawers, but she didn’t answer. He wouldn’t bother getting out of his rocking chair to look for her until next morning’s breakfast didn’t make itself, considering his dinner came in a bottle. So long as she left Blue behind, maybe he wouldn’t call the sheriff at all. Nettie was getting surly and hard to feed as she grew out of being a child. To a man like Pap, half-breed horses were worth more than half-breed people, even ugly mules with only one eye. He said she was nothing but trouble, so maybe her leaving would be a kindness.

  Fetching the stranger’s clothes from the old wagon, she rubbed out the black spot on the shirt as well as she could and patched the hole over the breast with the saddle-mending kit Pap never used. The stranger’s fine boots fit well enough once she put on his thick socks, and there was even a sheath built into the leather that held a fancy knife shinier than any blade she’d seen before. His pants were of sturdier stuff, if an inch too short and speckled with black blood. Her old clothes and the stranger’s fancy jacket she left behind, gold buttons and all, to perplex Pap the next time he went to hide in the wagon bed when the storekeep came knocking with unpaid bills.

  As the stars trickled out, she went to sleep on the porch outside of the Double TK ranch house, dressed in the dead man’s clothes, his hat pulled over her eyes and her shorn head pillowed on her new saddle. When she woke briefly in the middle of the night, she was sure she saw a coyote watching her from the yard. “Git!” she hollered, half-asleep and dreamy. It shook its head and loped away.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Nettie was finishing up with a sweet little sorrel when things started to head downhill.

  The first sign of trouble was a wretched sort of wailing, like maybe a dog was dying in the worst possible way. She slipped off the sorrel and tied the mare to a post to go see what was wrong. Sitting a raw horse wasn’t wise when trouble was afoot, and she wasn’t about to get thrown in her first week as an official wrangler.

  “What is that?” she said, walking up to Monty, who’d sort of taken up as her boss, which was fine with her.

  He shook his head, his walrus mustache waggling sadly. “I don’t rightly. But it ain’t good.”

  They took off in the same direction the other available wranglers were headed, passing by Jar and Thomas, who were dragging each other out of a half-dug well to see what the fuss was about. A few of the cowpokes pulled out their pistols and cocked them, and Poke had his rifle in hand. The wail got louder as they got closer to the creek, and then a lumpy sort of critter crawled up from the arroyo.

  Boss Kimble galloped up on his dapple gray mare and skidded to a stop in front of the thing, which was mostly a pile of dirty blankets.

  “You’re on Double TK land. You here for good or ill?” He cocked his shiny silver pistol, pointed it straight down, and waited.

  The face that turned up toward him was gaunt, copper brown, and wet with tears.

  “Pia Mupitsi,” the woman said, then collapsed.

  They sent Nettie to tend the woman. She wasn’t sure if it was because they secretly knew she was a female and figured she’d be better at doctoring or because she was the newest wrangler or because she was closest to the woman’s own color and might provide some comfort. In any case, instead of breaking broncs under the unforgiving summer sky, she found herself spooning watered-down stew into a woman who couldn’t quit shaking. A woman who only said two words, again and again.

  Pia Mupitsi.

  Since nobody at the Double TK knew what that meant, including Nettie, the boss had sent Jar to town for Gray Hawk, the peculiar fellow who played the piano at the Leaping Lizard Saloon. Nobody knew what tribe he was from or if he spoke any languages or if he knew how to do anything but play the piano, drink, cheat at cards, and waste his money on whores. But everyone figured he was the best shot at identifying what had scared the woman bad enough to keep her crawling along through the brush. Her hands and knees were shredded, her torn feet weeping into rags she’d ripped from one of her blankets. Poor critter was parched and gaunt as a crow’s skeleton, her cheekbones sunken and her lips curling inward. Every now and then, she’d wake from her fever dreams and reach for Nettie’s chin and mutter something that always ended in Pia Mupitsi. Nettie couldn’t stand the scratch of her dry, dusty fingers and leaned away, just out of reach. Being touched made her skittish.

  The woman was in the midst of a troubling dream when the door to the bunkhouse opened and Gray Hawk brought in his peculiar funk of weeds and spices. He wore a patched-up costume taken off a dandy who’d been gutshot over a pair of aces at the Lizard, which contrasted oddly with his long, smooth hair and heavy, dark brows. He’d been known, from time to time, to get too drunk and forget how to play piano and start dancing around town with a blanket, howling mournful songs that made folk feel right unsettled and strangely guilty. Nettie was a little scared of him, but she was more scared of whatever Pia Mupitsi was. She moved away from the bottom bunk and slid her hat down, just in case Gray Hawk had the keen eyes of his namesake.

  “She say anything?” he asked, his voice deep and almost musical, like drumbeats.

  “Mumbling. Mostly about Pia Mupitsi, whatever that means.”

  Gray Hawk put a flat palm against the woman’s forehead, and her eyes startled open. She took his hand in hers and started yammering, and Gray Hawk nodded and looked over her shredded palms and spoke back in the same liquid language. Finally, the woman shuddered and fell back, insensible, and Gray Hawk pulled a leather pouch out of his candy-striped vest. As he fussed with his weeds, Nettie figured it was okay to ask him questions, considering he was about as low as she was on the totem pole.

  “What is that stuff?” She nodded at the greenish-gray powder in his hands.

  “Medicine.” He spit into the pile, mixed it with a finger. “Go. Bri
ng me a fat piece of aloe.”

  Considering she was a wrangler now, Nettie didn’t have to do what he said. But considering Gray Hawk was helping the woman, she figured she might as well. When she returned with an oozing green finger of aloe, he smudged that into his mixture, sang something that sounded like smoke, and smeared the spit-goop all over the woman’s hands as he chanted. She sighed in her sleep, a tiny smile of relief fetching up at the cracked corners of her mouth.

  “She has come very far.” Gray Hawk placed the woman’s arms at her sides, her ripped-up palms facing up so that the gunk would stick. They looked like pecked-over meat, which is what she would’ve been if the cowhands hadn’t heard her hollering. If the woman had crawled up on Pap’s land, she would’ve been nothing more than pig food.

  “Why?”

  Instead of answering Nettie’s question, Gray Hawk gently began to unwrap the woman’s feet, but the rags were dry and stuck together. Before he could ask, Nettie brought him the ewer of water. He took the rag she’d been using to bathe the woman’s forehead and dabbed the bindings until they pulled away to reveal feet just as chewed and raw as her hands. Nettie almost wanted to throw up, but that would’ve been goddamn embarrassing on her first day as a hand.

  “Why, I asked?”

  “Pia Mupitsi.”

  As if that told her any damn thing. Gray Hawk mixed up more of his spit medicine and applied it to the woman’s feet. It stuck on the pink soles of her copper-brown feet like a cow’s cud. Nettie’s feet had looked a little like that once, when she’d been between shoes and waiting for Pap’s old boots, and she winced in fellow feeling. Gray Hawk had used up all the aloe, so Nettie ran out for more and placed it in easy reach. He stared up at her, his brows scrunched down.

  “What are you?” he asked.