The Hardest Ride

by Gordon L. Rottman

  “I ain’t seen a tree one.”

  “That’s why they call it that; the Devil don’t like trees. Empty land, good for nothing. Hotter ’n hell most of the year, excepting winter, it colder ’n hell. The españoles, they look for the cities of gold.” He didn’t have to say he thought they were fools.

  “Any injuns out here?”

  “No, they not stupid.”

  “But Mexes live out here?”

  “Some stupid ones. They say white man can’t live here.”

  “Best not say that to none of the boys.”

  “I don’t.”

  Wish he hadn’t told me.

  »»•««

  It got colder, but the rain stopped. The sky became a giant gray blanket floating down trying to smother man and animal in the mud. We didn’t belong here. The sun was just a myth. A glowing haze filled the air between the clouds and the earth. Couldn’t see more than two hundred yards. The ground rose higher. The hard ground was covered with a gray paste. Dry, it would have been sand and limestone dust.

  We gnawed jerky and corn dodgers for dinner without stopping. Lew tolerated a whisky bottle he carefully unwrapped from newspaper to be passed down the line, once.

  Mid-afternoon. Dodger came in. “We spotted ’em. Two banditos bringin’ up the rear. They were just ploddin’ ’long. We saw those three from San Miguel join up with ’em.”

  “That gives them nineteen. They see you?” asked Clay, all anxious.

  “Nope. We hung back. Gent’s goin’ to move up once in a while to check on ’em.”

  We were on their tail again. That perked me up.

  “What now?” asked Lew.

  “Depends,” the boss said. “If they stop while it’s still light enough to see where they bed down, we hit them at dusk. If not, if they keep moving ’til after dark and no fires, then it might be best to hit them at dawn.”

  “Or,” said Lew. “We could get around the other side of ’em during the night and let ’em ride into us in the mornin’.”

  Clay nodded. “Might be best. Something they’d not expect. We gotta see what they do, bed down or keep going. Dodger, ride back to Gent, pronto. Make damn sure they don’t see you two.”

  »»•««

  The wind picked up. “It feel not as cold to you?” I asked Flaco.

  “Sí. That wind come from southeast.”

  That’s strange. The wind blew steady, not in gusts, and it got sorta warmer.

  All a sudden the gray haze disappeared, and there were big ragged blue holes in the low clouds. Ahead of us and to the left, the tops of mountains could be seen. The clouds over us weren’t moving, even with this wind streaming across the ground. Those mountains to the left, to the south, big soft white clouds were sitting atop them like the overflowing tops of cotton wagons. It was like they were resting atop the mountains with something pushing them over to fall down the sides. As the sky cleared more, far to the north the rolling clouds were black and charcoal gray reaching to heaven. Lightning flashed inside them. Looked like a war was going on.

  “As God is my witness…” started Flaco.

  “He ain’t.”

  “God didn’t finish this part of the world.”

  “Maybe he’s finishing it now,” I said.

  He cut his eyes to me, gave me a tight grin.

  We came up on Gent and Dodger.

  Gent reported, “We had to pull back when it cleared up. They still ain’t seen us far as we know.”

  “They shorely picked up their pace,” said Dodger tying his hat on with a bandana, the brim bent over his ears.

  Gent and Dodger stayed up ahead of us.

  We were maybe an hour behind them, I thought. Maybe hit them tonight or in the morning. I kept thinking about Marta. Hitting them, that made me antsy. So many things could go wrong with all that lead flying.

  “Glad we ain’t up in them ol’ mountains,” said Sessuns with his reefer coat wrapped around him.

  The mountains to the north were lost in the gathering blackness. It looked like it was already night over there, but the true darkening night sky was in the east. The winds were gusting now and swirling hard around us. It’s like the cold north wind coming out of the mountains is fighting the warmer wind out of the southeast as night came toward us. We could hear thunder now from the north.

  Flaco shook his head. Clay and Lew had their heads together. “What you say, Flaco?” asked Clay riding up and looking to the north.

  “We need to hunker down for a bad blow.”

  Dodger came hightailing back. “Gent wants to know what ya wanna do. It looks bad.”

  “We’re going to stop up yonder,” Clay said, pointing toward a low ridge. It looked like it’d give a little shelter from the strengthening north wind, now an endless roar.

  “There’s a big arroyo up ’head, couple hundred yards across. We cross it and that little ridge is just yonder,” shouted Dodger.

  “Let’s get a move on, then,” answered Clay.

  Any more words spoken were only fighting the raw wind. You can’t win that loud of an argument.

  Flaco and I crossed the arroyo first to check out the other side where Gent waited. The low sandy and gravelly bank crumbled as the horses slid down, their forelegs out stiff and scooting on their haunches. The sides were only eight feet high. The bottom was flat, bare sand and gravel. The wind came down the arroyo from our right like an express train. It’d blow a dog off its chain. Lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled like long ways off cannons. I could feel the thunder. Then I could feel the ground shudder right through Cracker’s legs. Cracker’s ears laid back. I heard a low rumble. Flaco shouted, and I looked back and the other boys were too, and pointing to the right. At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then it made sense, a wave of water spanned the arroyo. It looked like the ground had lifted up with all the sand and gravel and rocks it was carrying, and up-rooted plants were coming with it. The wind made white caps on top of the water.

  Cracker sawed himself around as the first sheet of sand-colored water swept around his hooves. Cracker didn’t have to be urged none. We could feel and hear it rush past, getting deeper by the second. I’d seen Hill Country flashfloods coming down the narrow rocky riverbeds, but this was like the earth was slowly surging toward us. Then another sheet came through reaching Cracker’s belly. He surged through the thick water, and his feet were off the bottom. Times like this you let the horse do the thinking. He lunged forward, his ears down and eyes wide. In seconds, the sand-gray waters was brimming the top of the bank. The current pulled me off the saddle, and I clung to the saddle horn. Flaco hung on the bank edge trying to drag up his horse. Cracker pushed forward kicking hard, reached bottom and bounded up the bank as I fell off, but kept the reins. He dragged me out of the water, stopping when we were clear. Both of us were breathing hard. It’d been a near thing.

  “It come out of the mountains,” said Flaco, jerking his head to the north.

  No one said nothing more. We watched for a piece. The horses just stood, the way they like to wait.

  Clay was staring at the far bank with Gent over there by his lonesome. I looked over there too. We’d been so close, ready to end this. It was not enough man interfered, now God did too.

  I never missed anyone so much.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  No fires were allowed that night. The rainstorm blasted through with lightning crashing like the gates of hell closing. I smelled brimstone. We hunkered down in the pounding rain, but it blew through in a couple of hours. I had to change into dry clothes.

  It got cold enough for frost to crust on everything, and I mean everything—the plants, the ground, the horses, us. The sun was so pale that it might as well not have bothered to climb into the sky. Soon after it did, a drizzle started. The cold rose just above freezing. No fires in the morning either.

  Nobody said much, not like other mornings. Only a lot of coughing and hacking, hocking snot, passing the bottle, and building smokes. Even
the horses seemed out of sorts.

  Musty staggered out of the mesquite looking kind of raw and folding up pages from the Montgomery Ward Wish Book. “My belly done shit so much I ain’t gonna have to for the resta my life.”

  I checked the flooded arroyo before light and heard running water. Gent waved at me from the other side where’d he’d spent a lonely night.

  By midmorning, the water went down to a foot and not too fast. We started across, but the bottom sand and gravel had turned to a deep places, In places the horses struggled and snorted and bucked their way through. Some of the boys got cold wet feet going in over knee-deep having to lead and argue their horses across. Sessuns lost a boot, and it took Dodger’s help to find it and pull it out of the gravelly muck.

  “Hell without the heat,” Dodger groused.

  Once across we moved out. Clay had this idea El Xiuhcoatl might have been stopped by another flooded arroyo, but we only came across a few narrow shallow ones. No telling how far ahead of us they’d gotten.

  By noon, cold, wet, and hungry, we were pretty miserable.

  “Hell, we ain’t even seen their shirttails,” muttered Jerry.

  “Swallow your grousing,” I told him. “We’ll see them any time now.” I hoped.

  The ground became more rock than sand and gravel, and it was hard to follow tracks. Usually some rocks get kicked out of the ground, and it’s easy to spot the holes and dirty darker undersides of the rocks. The rain, though, filled up the holes and washed the turned rocks.

  We came across a lame horse, worn out looking, left by the banditos. It had a Thursday Ranch brand, stolen no telling how long ago. I felt sorry for it.

  We pushed hard, always the ground rising, the country turning more barren and rocky. By late afternoon, everyone was really down and cold and wet.

  Musty said, “To think last August I was doin’ a rain dance.”

  “Did it rain?”

  “Nope. A successful rain dance is a matter of timin’.”

  The last hot meal we’d had was breakfast the day before. The four meals in the meantime were nothing but cold jerky, corn dodgers, hardtack, and sometimes canned beans. I can tell you, hardtack’s hard enough without it being frozen. The horses ate no better. There was next to nothing to graze on.

  I rode back to report to Clay we hadn’t seen nothing. Lew said, “We need to hang on the feed bag, boss. The boys and animals are gettin’ grouchy. Need some hot chuck.”

  Clay looked around gauging the foggy mist. “Make it so. Small fires making little smoke. The wind’s to the north so they’ll not smell it.”

  We cooked up beans, rice-tomatoes, bacon, and lots of coffee. The bottle went around, two or three times. Some splashed a whisky shot in their coffee. I wolfed my share and hustled back to Flaco to relieve him to go chow down.

  Musty stirred a thick, gray and lumpy looking concoction in his own pot. It smelled like life was something it had long forgotten.

  “What you cooking up?” I asked.

  “It’s my particular grease gravy stew. Its real good ifin y’all’s real hungry,” Musty said.

  “What makes it gooder?”

  Lew said, “’Cause it’s good ifin y’all’s starvin’ to death and ain’t got no sense of smell.”

  I went back to the low rise I’d left Flaco and didn’t find him. His red necktie hung on a tall yucca stalk telling me he’d gone ahead. I took the necktie and followed his tracks. Cresting another low rise, I saw his horse at the bottom of a higher ridge.

  Lying beside Flaco, we looked across a broad pan, flat ground stretching for maybe three, four miles. I couldn’t make out the ground clearly owing to the low ground-hugging fog, but we could see through clear air a high escarpment cut with huge ravines.

  “That the Estacado Múzquiz, hundred vara high.”

  “How high’s that in feet?”

  “I don’t know, over three hundred foot maybe. You see that dark place down the side of the estacado?” He’d handed me the field glasses.

  “Got it.”

  He stuck his arm out with his hand pointing up, palm outward. “Three finger’s width to the left.”

  I did the same and peered through the glasses. There was an angled line of black dots on the escarpment. I had to watch close to make out they were moving.

  “Almost thirty horses. Some without riders, packs and spares.”

  A queer feeling ran through me. I looked at each little dot. I knew one of them was Marta. It was hard to breath. “Head back and tell Clay. They’re saving you chow. Don’t eat whatever Musty’s having.”

  »»•««

  The crew sat their horses at the bottom of our ridge. Clay came up to our ridge and watched the last of the dots crest the distant escarpment. “Soon as they’re over we’re going.” Endless higher ridge crests lay beyond the escarpment.

  “Maybe it better we wait,” said Flaco. “Wait ’til night.”

  “Hell, then they’ll get further ahead, and we might lose their trail up that slope,” said Clay.

  “They might leave a lookout to watch behind them and stay until full night.”

  Lew lay there too. “Not so, boss, about losin’ the trail at night. Look here. See that big rock outcroppin’ to the right of where they climbed the escarpment?”

  “Yep?” He said it so it sounded like, “So what?”

  “After dark we aim to the right of the outcroppin’. Don’t make no difference where we strike the escarpment. Then we turn left and keep goin’ ’til we come across the outcroppin’. Can’t miss it, must be hundred feet tall. We look for the trail right past that.”

  “You think you can find that trail in the dark, on such rocky ground, Bud?”

  “Sure thing, boss. We can even use torches below the escarpment.”

  Clay nodded. “I like Lew’s idea yesterday about riding through the night and getting ahead of them. Letting them ride into us in the morning.”

  “That might be hard to do,” cautioned Lew. “In all those ridges and ravines up there it might not be possible to figure out which way they goin’. That’s if we can even find a way through to get ’head of ’em and not get good and lost.”

  “Good point,” agreed Clay. “Let’s grain the horses and take a rest until dark.”

  As the pale sun set below the mountains, it got colder, but at least the drizzle stopped. We could see our breaths.

  A half hour after dark we set out across the pan, probably bearing further to the right than we needed. Took us over an hour to reach the escarpment, another half to come across the outcropping, longer than we’d figured because the ground below the ridge was so broken and rocky. We made four torches from empty feed sacks soaked with coal oil. It took another half hour to find the trail. Didn’t see a track one, but I finally found some horse shit and corn husk tamale wrappings.

  It was hard to keep to the trail heading up the ridge, but we managed. Once up at the top we realized we weren’t getting ahead of nobody. We didn’t have to ride far to realize that in this maze of ridges, fingers, gullies and ravines, we’d get nowhere in the night but good and lost.

  A glum Clay called a halt, and we bedded down to pass another cold wet night. The earlier hot meal, as much as it had perked up everyone, didn’t help much now. Fred brought up the remuda, said that worn out Thursday Ranch horse tried to herd with the remuda, but couldn’t keep up. We had changed out horses before heading up the escarpment. Fred would keep the remuda at the bottom until it was light enough to haze them up.

  That long miserable day and night had been hard on everyone in different ways.

  Jerry made noises, “We’re goin’ nowhere ‘cept deeper into a cold hell.”

  “We’re chasin’ ghosts. Those girls are already dead,” said Sessuns.

  “Ya don’t know that,” said Dodger before I said anything.

  “They’re as good as dead or might as well be. Be better off dead seein’ how they been soiled,” Jerry said.

  “Ya two best keep t
hat crap to your own selves. Don’t use your kindlin’ up talkin’ ’bout it,” Dodger said.

  It wasn’t often I’d seen him with a look like that.

  “No one’s showing second thoughts, are you, boys?” I said, getting a mite heated.

  “Accept my apologies, Bud. I don’t mean nothing, neither does Sessuns. We only be spitting in the wind.”

  “Watch which way you spit, then.”

  They shut up. I hoped it would keep.

  I held Marta’s brown scarf tight.

  »»•««

  The trail wasn’t too hard to find in the weak dawn light. Flaco and I started out with me in the lead on a stocky dun I figured would do well in rough country. He was a sandy yellow, a good color for blending into the rocks and fog. The dun wasn’t too agreeable with being saddled. Dodger had helped, biting that sumbitch on the ear until he gave in.

  The trail led through a wide draw, its rocky sides about as tall as the two-story Fitch Hotel. Didn’t look like we’d be in danger of losing them. There were scuff marks aplenty.

  The dun’s head exploded in a spray of blood, brains, and skull fragments. He fell out from under me as limp as a blob of fat. The buffalo rifle’s crack echoed down the draw. My leg was pinned.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The second buffalo-getter bullet hit two feet from me, blowing mud and gravel all over. I could tell another rifle firing from up in the rocks weren’t no buffalo cannon, but a Winchester popping as fast as some bandito could lever it. The third buffalo bullet hit the horse making it jolt. Behind me rifles were going off steady. With the shooters so close, I played dead.

  Then it was over with, excepting our boys were still popping rounds, just to make sure. Flaco went tearing by—didn’t even look at me—followed by Gent. Dodger, Musty, and Snap came a running. “Ya good, Bud?” from Dodger.

  “Get me out from under this damn horse. It’s killing my leg.”

  It took some shoving and grunting to get me out. There were rifle shots from up ahead, but they died out quick.