by Gene Hackman
The men had not left but were spread around the clearing, apparently looking for him. Jubal skirted the tree line and started once again to crawl. He realized the farther he went, the more he would be cut off from his sister. Never mind, he would deal with that later. First, these men.
The setting sun turned the raging fires that were once his home into a fiery pink mist. He took a last glance at the sad bundle that was his mother and continued to the root cellar. With the slide-action Colt steady on the door, he let out his breath and squeezed the trigger softly.
A man with a battered straw hat caught a round in the neck. He dropped his rifle and sat on the ground, both hands swatting at his neck as if shooing a pesky bee.
Gripping his throat, he tried to squelch the bleeding. Jubal slid another bullet into the chamber, aimed, and fired it squarely into the center of his forehead. The man’s sweat-stained hat spiraled backward. Arms outstretched in surrender, the renegade seemed to melt into the earth.
The other men scurried down behind his father’s overturned hay wagon, several with antiquated, single-shot weapons. Jubal hit the ground as the balled rounds ripped at the earth around him. Forcing himself to be calm, he once again reloaded.
The men called out to Jubal, denouncing him, describing in detail what they would do to him. All the while bullets plowed into the ground close to Jubal.
They continued to fire, one of the younger men skipping over a pile of clothing to charge toward the root cellar. As the man drew a long-barreled .44 from his holster, Jubal’s bullet caught him in the chest. Stumbling, he tried to reach Jubal, pounding his pistol at the soft earth. Moving within twenty feet, he slipped to his knees and then slowly eased to his side, as if preparing for a nap.
Several rounds splintered the root cellar’s plank door, a long thin piece of wood catching Jubal in the side of the head, opening a wound. For an instant he couldn’t see. He wrapped his bandanna around his forehead to stop the bleeding and fired several more shots into the distant hay wagon.
The intense pain from his gashed head gave him some welcome courage. His family had suffered, and this pain seemed to make him one with them. He thought of Pru, her bloody dress, and pa, Jubal Thaddeus Young, Sr., a man striving to make a life for his kinfolk, killed now by his own son’s hand. Jubal had a moment when he thought maybe his father would forgive him his death and be proud of him.
Be the man…, he would have said. Jubal prayed that it be so.
Jubal rose and heard what he thought was a hornet, then a high whistling sound and a shocking pain in his left hip. An arrow protruded from his body. It had not penetrated the skin of his back but stopped somewhere inside his lower waist. Jubal dropped back down on the native grasses to crawl below a small rise in the earth beyond view.
Scuttling along on his right side, he was careful so the arrow did not catch in the heavy foliage. With all the weapons in play, rifle and pistol rounds eating up the earth around him, Jubal thought it odd he would be hit by, of all things, an arrow.
His mission was too dangerous, and from the looks of the house it would be a miracle if anything survived the fire. He would have to go back empty-handed up the steep trail leading to Morning Peak and Sultan’s Castle. But Jubal didn’t know what else he could do for his sis.
If these men could track, and he knew at least the man with the bow could, then they would trail after him, but he knew the rocky path so well he was confident they couldn’t get around him. He glanced at the farmhouse, it continued to burn.
They would follow.
He wanted them to follow.
Hours had passed since Jubal had first come upon the attack. He deemed himself safe for now, having barely made it out of the bloody grounds of the homestead, inching along on his good hip. Grasping the embedded arrow with his left hand, he clawed and elbowed with his right. The ghostlike image of a tall gray-haired man kept him going. Jubal knew him. He felt as if he were missing something, a reason. It eluded him. The figures darting about his family’s property were mere phantoms without motive. His lack of memory, the why of this kept him strangely alert.
Jubal limped across an open meadow. Looking down at the protruding arrow, he thought it must have glanced off his hipbone. The length of it jutted out from his bleeding upper leg like an errant tree branch.
A stand of ponderosa pine lay ahead. He pushed on, glancing back often to see if he was followed. Not yet.
At a cliff overlooking what his sister referred to as “Young’s Valley,” once again he found his sister’s retreat, the small opening where two large rocks formed an inverted V.
The light started to fade as Jubal eased himself into the cave, where he was greeted by the sound of his sister’s soft, forced breathing. A strand of light from a gap at the top of the boulders illuminated her pale face.
He felt remorse. His search for the medicine had not only been worthless, but he had also been rewarded with a deep wound.
He watched his sister, wondering what to do next. How to deal with his own fierce pain of the arrow was beyond him.
Prudence stirred. “What would pa say?” she asked. It was almost as if she had read his mind. “Pa once said to me, ‘Prudence, when all else fails, simply smile.’ It’s a little harder done than said. Wouldn’t you say, Jube?”
“Pa was full of sayings.”
“Was?” she asked.
Jubal was happy to hear his sister once again speaking clearly, but she’d caught him off guard. He tried to cover his mistake. “Oh, I just mean he’s always saying these… platitudes. I think that’s the word. Anyhow, he’s funny sometimes, right?”
Quiet for a long time, Pru worried Jubal when she finally spoke. “I’d been picking flowers.” Her voice softened. “I think I was running and calling out to ma. Then, a smell like somebody’s sweat. Is Butternut okay?”
Jubal didn’t answer. He sat at her side, the arrow jutting out of his left hip, the blood flow fortunately stanched.
“A man was mean. He did hurtful things.” Her voice began to fade. “I want ma. Please get her.”
He wished he could.
Pru raised her clenched fists and made feeble striking movements into the air. She cried out.
Jubal once again stroked her forehead. “Try to relax if you can. It will be better soon.” He pushed his arm under her neck and brought her head close to his own. He kissed her softly on the cheek. Her eyes opened wide.
“I love my brother Jubal. He’s funny and kind.…”
Then she was gone.
TWO
“We should split up, go our separate ways. There’s gonna be a price to pay when the law finds out about this.” Billy Tauson stood by the burnt farmhouse, his prematurely gray hair in contrast to bits of charred embers clinging on his dark tailored jacket. “Dammit all to hell. I didn’t mean for this to get all crazy. Where in Christ’s sake is Wetherford?”
The men crowded about, tending to a young wounded cowboy.
“How you feeling, Ty?” one of them asked.
“Poorly. My vision’s gone all jiggled. I need something for the hurt. It’s getting me down.”
The men glanced at one another, pretty sure the youngest of their hearty band wouldn’t see another sunrise.
This whole plan had been a debacle from the beginning. Tauson had promised his group of misfits a hearty supper in town and a night of drinking if they would accompany him out to his former ranch and scare the devil out of what he described as “the new tenants.”
It had gone all wrong. Instead of hollering and frightening the folks when they arrived, the first thing rowdy Pete Wetherford did was ride down the older man of the farm as he came out of the barn. As the fellow lay on the ground trying to catch his breath, Wetherford tied the man’s arms above his head, tossing the end of his lariat over the corbel above the hayloft door. Laughing, he passed the rope around his saddle horn and spurred his horse forward, sending the farmer into the air, kicking and thrashing.
Billy Tauson tried to settle everyone
down, but Wetherford’s actions had driven the mob wild, and they soon lit the farmhouse ablaze. The woman, Bea, was trapped in a small outbuilding, where Wetherford raped and beat her, then left her begging on hands and knees for mercy as she succumbed to the pleasure of his friends.
Then the shooting from the forest. Tauson had ducked behind a fallen oak. “Whoever that bastard is, he’s gotta be stopped. Wetherford, you and your brother Al circle ‘round to that fellow’s left flank.”
Pete looked over his shoulder at Billy. “How’s about you and your shot-to-hell cousin Ty kiss my skinny behind?” He snorted at his own remark. “It’s that brat bastard son of the farmer. I’m fixing to just lie here and wait the little prick out. Okay, Mr. Boss Man?”
Billy Tauson sucked on his teeth, wishing he had the huevos to call Pete Wetherford out. But for now, he’d wait.
A few random shots came from the woods, and then nothing for nearly an hour.
When Tauson had finally called out that “the little shit skedaddled,” there began an onslaught of arguing back and forth on whether to pursue him, but when things finally settled, the men broke out their jugs of rotgut whiskey and began to get even more drunk.
“Who was that damn billy goat?” one of the men called out. “He sure as hell knew how to handle that rifle.”
“Never mind about that little bastard,” Tauson said, “where’s that varmint Wetherford?”
“I’m a Wetherford,” said Pete’s brother Al, “and I resent your talking like that, Billy.”
“Sorry, Al, but what in God’s name gets into that brother of yours?”
Al Wetherford was the oldest in the group, which consisted of two Hispanics, Jorge and Oscar, a Ute Indian with a shriveled arm, the two drunks Ed and Robert, the brothers Wetherford, and leader Billy Tauson, along with the wounded young man, Ty Blake.
Tauson shuffled around the devastated farmyard, taking a long pull from one of the jugs. “I told all of you people we were just going to put a scare into these folks, didn’t I say that? Didn’t I?”
The Ute looked at Tauson. “Crook Arm keeps weapon in rawhides.” The tall bronzed Indian grasped his crotch with one hand, the other gripping a jug. “Save child-maker for squaw women.” He giggled and did a little dance in a tight circle, still holding himself while he took a deep slug of whiskey. The men stood around with half-smiles, enjoying Crook Arm’s dance.
“Well, hell’s fire,” came a voice from behind him. “That farmer came at us like the clappers from hell. I never seen such a determined bastard.” Pete Wetherford walked up behind the tall Billy Tauson.
“Where the hell you been, Petey?” Tauson was careful with him. It wasn’t that Pete looked formidable, it was more a sense of compressed energy that you didn’t want to mess with.
Pete took in the assembled group. “I been behind your old farmhouse, Billy. Heard everything you said. You got a burr in your saddle about me, boss?” He gave Tauson a mocking smile. “Truth be told, I been washing up. Seem to have gotten a little blood on me.” He winked at his brother Al.
Tauson stomped around the sad little vegetable garden. “Why’d you have to do that pile-o’-rags woman out there that way? All crumbled and nasty, lying dead. Why’d you do her like that? We didn’t come out here to rape and kill, dammit. I told you that on the way, didn’t I?”
“You said a lot of stuff, Billy. Mostly horseshit. You wanted us to be your strong right arm while you poked around like a rooster in heat, lording it over those sodbusters.” Pete looked for help from his buddies. “Would you all agree, fellers?”
Most of them kicked the dirt and shrugged their shoulders.
“Now,” Pete continued, “who was that little yellowbelly with the .22 rifle? I’d like to do some serious work on that youngster.”
The wounded Ty Blake called out to his cousin Tauson, “Billy, get me to a doctor, would you? I’m hurting real bad.”
Tauson turned toward him. “We got to scamper into the woods and find that kid with the rifle. Then we’ll come back and take care of you, Ty.” He called to the men, “Mount up. Let’s find that shooter before he takes off and spins a tale to the law.”
Al Wetherford spoke up. “Before, you told us we had to split up and hightail it out of here.”
“I know what I said, but now it’s better if we all hunt out that little rotter so there’s no witness to talk about all this.”
Pete looked at brother Al and rolled his eyes. His smile toward his boss Billy Tauson was not a warm, agreeable treat. An average-sized man, Pete made up for his lack of height with a wicked sense of self.
Tauson called out for Crook Arm to take the lead. They trailed out of the little valley, heading up toward the towering peak that looked down onto the formerly tranquil meadow.
Pete sidled up next to Al. “This jackanapes needs to be taken down a notch. Always ordering people around, it boils me.”
“You signed on for it. What did you expect? By the way, I saw you ride off with that bundled-up flower girl. What happened?”
“We had a quiet wedding in the glade back yonder.” Pete grinned. “She professed her undying love and insisted on anointing me with the flower of her virginity.”
“Oh, ain’t you the elegant talker.”
Pete grinned even more.
“Where is she?”
Pete gestured with his thumb. “I suspect she’s still lying in that pleasant grassy clearing, gazing at the setting sun, not thinking about a solitary thing.”
The group rode on for ten minutes, then dismounted, tied their horses to a fallen tree, and headed on foot up the far ridge of a steep canyon in search of that little bastard.
Stretched out in the dark cave, Jubal tried to sort his thoughts.
What had he done to merit this?
What had his innocent family done?
If he lived through this day, he would seek out answers to avenge his family.
What would his father do?
Be the man he’d taught him to be.
“Yes, Pa, but I can’t. I’m scared and hurting. Pru and ma are dead.”
Then think on it like this, son. If those varmints catch you, you’ll be hurting until hell wouldn’t have it.
An image floated across his memory, of his father trussed up outside the barn looking down at him. Jubal tried pulling his knees tight to his chest. The left leg wouldn’t go, too stiff.
He had to move, take care of the arrow, make some decisions, rest a bit. He closed his eyes, trailing off. He thought of his mother. What was it she had said? “If literature is to be your guide, Jubal, you could do worse than follow the lead of Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Dumas’s Edmond Dantès.” Together, they had read both classics, his mother constructing a tutorial on character and ethics from The Count of Monte Cristo. If only I had Edmond Dantès’s perseverance. He dreamt on, envisioning wreaking vengeance on the band of miscreants invading the farm.
He awakened almost immediately. Knowing he would have to do the deed. To suffer the discomfort now instead of the big pain later. He tried not to think on it.
Jubal sat up, running his fingers carefully around the skin of his waist, loosening his belt, remembering again.
Jube, you best inherit this belt now, no sense of me kidding myself any longer, it just doesn’t fit.
Moving the long arrow carefully, he searched for the jagged steel head embedded beneath his skin. Each tiny motion brought more pain. Jubal teared up, hearing his father’s voice.
You’re feeling sorry for yourself, son. Break that damn thing and push the rest of it on through the backside of the soft part of your waist… grab up that stick on the ground and bite down hard on it while you do it, so you don’t snip off your tongue.
Jubal raised himself to his knees, placing the feathered end of the arrow against the rock wall of the cave. He tried not to think on his mom’s suffering, what it must have been like to endure the savage assault, and once again saw his father swinging grotesquely from his tether outside th
e barn. He deserved this pain. He rested his head against the cool stone. Experimenting with a gentle push against the wall, he was rewarded with an avalanche of sensation. Deserve it or not, this is hellfire.
Jubal’s willful mind whisked him back to the street in front of the land office, remembering a man’s mean-spirited taunting of his father. It came back to him, the ride into town on the buckboard. The family together, Pru asking for soda pop. His mother eyeing a colorful scarf as they passed the general store. He recalled when the tall, gray-haired fellow in front of the land office looked back at his group of friends, the meanest-looking desperadoes Jubal had ever seen.
Now, in the cave, he began, his hands resting on the damp stone. He centered the feathered end of the arrow in a crevice in the wall. Whispering a short prayer, he pushed his body hard against the stone bulkhead, feeling the arrow thrust its way through the skin and out the back side of his waist. He reached down and snapped off the shaft six inches below the feathers, jamming the remains of the stick as far as he could, then reached back and pulled the remaining stem out of his body.
The stone walls blurred. The devil had started a massive fire, and it was licking at his guts. He heard screaming in the cave. It sounded like someone he knew.
THREE
Pete Wetherford was tired, which made him angry. He’d expended all his energy on the raid and his conquest, as he thought of it, of the two women. He trailed behind Indian tracker Crook Arm. “Hey, Chief, how much higher we gonna go? It’s dark. A feller could plunge off this damn canyon wall and bust a gut.”
Tauson replied for the Indian, “If you don’t shut your trap, Mr. Pete, you’re gonna get your ass shot off.”
“Not by you, boss. Yeah, that would be the day.”
“That little cocker kid would have to be deaf and blind not to hear us coming. So let’s all shut it down, okay?”
Pete was not only worn-out but had had a snootful of his leader, Billy Tauson. He slowed his pace to let Al catch up. “How you making it, Albert the mountain climber?”
Al leaned against a piñon. “I’ve either gotta stop smoking or playing with my pud. I can’t catch my damn breath.”