by Stephen Bly
“It’s sorta like trainin’ wheels on a bicycle. If you know what you’re doin’, you don’t need ’em.” Hap turned Luke to the right and laid just enough spur to switch gaits. There was a gradual slope to the descent, but the trail choked down quick until the dead brush combed hair furrows in the black gelding’s shoulders.
Brindle clumps of cow hair clung to fresh-broken brush as Hap picked his way through the ravine. “Lukey, we got one down here somewhere. But I’m not sure we can flush her out. I can’t see more than three feet in this tangle.”
The further he descended, the taller the brush. By the time he reached dry sand at the bottom, the sun was blocked. He rode in the shadows with no air movement. Steam rose off the ground like cold water poured on a hot rock.
Luke’s ears twitched as he stared at the north wall. Back in the brush, Hap spied a cow bedded down.
“Hey-yah!” he yelled. The cow raised her rear legs, then her tail. She relieved herself, then trotted farther up the gully.
Hap studied where the cow had lain and noticed a small cave carved into the limestone cliff. Dead brush formed a tunnel too short for Hap to ride, so he dismounted to investigate what looked like ribbons and flowers perched at the cave’s mouth.
He tied his horse to a mesquite limb and crawled on his hands and knees, avoiding the pile just dropped by the cow. “It looks like a shrine or a marker, boy,” he called out as if Luke had an opinion on the matter.
When he reached the opening, he deliberated on each object. At the front, three green glass jars held the remnants of once-alive flowers. Dry, brown petals carpeted the floor in front of the jars. An ornate plastic cross was wedged into the limestone with a battered and crucified plastic Jesus attached. At the back of the cave, a dust-covered picture frame of turquoised copper filigree rested like a silent witness to a sad, haunting story.
He plucked up the framed picture and held it out in the variegated light of the brushy ravine. He blew on the glass. Dust fogged his eyes and mouth. He coughed and squinted as he wiped the glass with the elbow of his black shirt.
The words engraved in the brass plate: Nuestra Miranda.
“Darlin’, I don’t know your story, but you were way too young to die down here.”
A brown-faced girl with black hair in a starched white dress smiled at him. On the back of the picture was written, Niña bonita de Rufugio Álvarez Estrada y Francisca Dominga Estrada.
Hap yanked out his red bandanna, wiped the photograph clean, then did the same for the vases. He pulled off his hat, wondering why a child’s shrine would be hidden in such a lonely place.
“Well, darlin’, I wish I had a flower to stick back in them vases. They look abandoned. But you got to understand, with this dry wind a real flower don’t last more than a few days.”
He tugged off his turquoise and black horsehair hatband, then laced it around the photograph like a necklace for the little girl.
He swatted a buzzing horsefly, then wiped his eye.
He couldn’t figure why he would become melancholy over a stranger or tear up like his mamma watching her soap opera on television.
He crawled back to where the brush thinned enough to stand. He remounted and plodded west, until he sighted the cow’s rump.
“There she is, Lukey. Let’s run her at the brush at the end of the barranca. She can open it up and we’ll ride through without losin’ any more blood.”
As the trail ascended, the ravine walls tapered off on both sides, and he sensed they would soon be back up on the prairie. “Don’t give her time to even think about turnin’ around,” he coaxed his black horse.
The dense undergrowth at the top of the grade grew no higher than a three-rail fence. He spied Laramie, sprawled with his hand back on Tully’s rump, waiting for him to exit.
Hap spurred his black gelding to a gallop. The trail widened and the panicked cow stampeded straight ahead. But the cow spun left at the last moment and stumbled to a stop just short of the brush wall.
Without any knee commands, Luke dodged after the cow with just a quick turn, leaving only an unsaddled Hap to charge the brush. Propelled over the horse’s neck, he dropped the reins and felt his hat tumble off as he flew through the four-foot brush wall at the end of the ravine.
His right hand slapped a prickly pear cactus as he tried to stop the tumble. When he reeled to his feet, shaking his thorn-pricked hand, Laramie leaned over and drawled, “Say, mister, you didn’t happen to see a horseback Wyoming cowboy pushing a cow out of that barranca, did you?”
The shorthorn brindle cow blundered around the end of the brush and trotted over to the other cows, while Luke snorted out of the ravine and refused to look at Hap.
“Glad to see your horse knows what he’s doing,” Laramie hooted.
Hap yanked a cactus needle from his hand. “If he knew anything at all, he would have fetched my dadgum hat.”
* * *
The red sun poised above the western horizon suspended for a last wink at the world before it plunged into night. Laramie and Hap drove the little herd into a brush corral. While Laramie tended the horses, Hap built a trench fire and warmed up a big can of beans and fried processed meat they had found in the larder.
The second coffee can contained Girl Scout thin mint cookies and a swarm of tiny white bugs. “I think we’ll pass on the cookies, but we might read the 1994 September issue of Western Horseman.”
“Hap, do you get the feeling all this food is left over from Y2K or something? I don’t think we’ve ever worked for this cheap of an outfit.”
“Yeah, the powdered milk came straight from government surplus. It says so on the box. If these meals get any worse, we can just eat mud pies and save time.”
The boiled coffee was thin, but plenty hot. They didn’t talk much until they had scraped their tin plates clean. Hap waited for the perfect moment, when the tin cup coffee was drinkable, but not cold. “I’m glad we only signed on for two weeks. I got ripped up in the cantina and torn up flying out of the barranca—at this rate, I won’t have a square inch of skin left in two weeks.”
Laramie plopped on the dirt and eased back against his saddle. “I can’t even remember what a soft chair feels like. So, you found a grave at the bottom of the ravine?”
“Not a grave, a shrine. A purdy young girl. Such a shame. She’s got a grievin’ mamma and daddy someplace.”
“Some things are just too sad to ponder.” Laramie tapped his pocketknife on the rectangular tin container. “You want that last bite of canned meat?”
“I didn’t want the first bite of canned meat. I’m hopin’ the grub gets better.”
Laramie snorted. “If we had that cell phone, we could call out for Chinese.”
“It’s hard to tell ’em where to deliver, when we don’t know where we are.”
Laramie sat up. “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s turn these bovines in to Greene tomorrow, draw our pay, and head on down the road. Too many strange things, Hap. And he didn’t fill those larders. That food is old.”
“You know I ain’t never quit a job.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Laramie sighed. “Neither have I, but there’s been a few of them I never should have taken in the first place.”
For the next three days, neither the work nor the menu changed.
On the third evening, Hap made his stand. “I ain’t eatin’ that stuff again. Do you remember that cook at the Circle YP? What was his name?”
“Elmo Polly.”
“Yeah, you, me, Blackie, and Thumper went out with the wagon and had to eat his cookin’ for twenty-one days. I lost eighteen pounds.”
Laramie stabbed a canned peach and sucked it into his mouth like a raw oyster. Truck headlights bounced down the dirt road toward them. “Here comes Greene. Looks like you can complain to the boss.”
“I was hopin’ it was a pizza delivery guy.”
E. A. Greene glanced at the cattle milling in the brush corral. “I knew you boys could do it. I’m a fine judge of
cowboy skills. You’re as good a hand as your uncle Jake.”
“It’s my uncle Mike that knows you,” Hap corrected. “And he’s an accountant, not a cowboy.”
“Speaking of accounts,” Laramie pressed. “We need some of our pay.”
“What are you going to spend it on?” Greene pressed.
“Groceries,” Hap said. “All that stuff in the larder came over on a covered wagon.”
“Them kids with the main herd must have scarfed the fresh stuff. But I have a solution for that. Scoot over here.” He motioned them to the back of his truck. E.A. pulled off his black-rimmed glasses and they hung tethered around his neck. “You boys want free fine meals and make a hundred-dollar bonus tonight?”
“Tonight?” Laramie groaned. “We had a tough, hot day. We planned to shoot some pool, watch TV, and soak in the sauna.”
“That’s a little trail humor,” Hap explained. “It means we’re tuckered out. It’s been a long day. What kind of work do you have at night?”
“Here’s the deal… now I ain’t sayin’ anyone rustled my cattle, but them dang kids with the herd let fifty head or so disappear. I’m guessing they crossed the river about four miles up the road.”
“Across the Rio Grande?” Hap asked.
“I can’t officially claim someone stole them, if I didn’t see it happen. The Mexican government will report the cattle crossed over on their own. There’s no extradition of cows. If I find some over there with my brand on it, they will sell them back to me, at a tidy profit.”
Laramie rubbed his thin, chapped lips. “That sounds like quite a rip-off. But a border is a border. Not much we can do about that, right?”
“There is only one way to handle this. I need you to ride with me over the river and convince that fifty head of cattle to wander back into Texas before daylight. On their own, of course. But with the right argument, bovines can be reasonable. If I don’t, the ol’ boys on the other side will round them up by tomorrow and pen them in the corrals at Camargo, waitin’ for a buyer.”
Hap patted the side of Greene’s pickup, then tried to rub the stiffness out of his temples. “You want us to find your cattle in the dark?”
“He wants us to go to Mexico and steal cattle,” Laramie huffed.
“It ain’t stealin’ if the cows belong to you in the first place. Boys, if this was the border between Texas and Oklahoma, you’d just ride across, make a gather, and bring your branded cattle home.”
Laramie folded his hands behind his head and narrowed his eyes. “Mexico is a foreign country.”
“At times, so is Oklahoma,” Greene said. “Don’t worry. I’m ridin’ with you. That other crew doesn’t have the horse sense to run cattle across the river, much less gather at night. I’d rather you get the bonus than them.”
“You payin’ in advance?” Laramie asked.
“You need the money tonight?”
“No,” Hap mumbled.
“Yes,” Laramie corrected. “We might find something in Mexico we want to buy.”
“He might be right about that.” Hap dragged his boot heel across the dry yellow dirt. “Laramie’s a little worried we’ll wind up in a Mexican jail.”
“Trust me, boys. This is just the custom along the border. They run a few head over the river, and we go get ’em and bring ’em back.”
Laramie frowned. “I don’t like the idea of sneaking across the border like that.”
“I hoped you might like a little Mexican food. Angelina and Pete Lopez fix a fine meal. We’ll have us a feast. Then about midnight, we’ll bring my cows back across. Their daughter plays a nice acoustic guitar.”
“What’s the daughter’s name?” Hap asked.
“Can’t remember. One of those common Mexican names. She’s a music teacher. Must be about thirty by now.”
“Can you see the river from her folks’ backyard?”
“They had a place right next to the river, but it flooded out about ten, fifteen years ago. Don’t know if you can see the river now or not. What about it, boys? Let’s go get ourselves some genuine Mexican comida then bring my cows home.”
Hap rubbed his stomach. “Sounds mighty good, don’t it, partner?”
“I’ll ride over for supper,” Laramie said. “But I want to study the situation before I start bringing cows across the Rio Grande.”
The three men swam the horses across the river right after dark. The lukewarm muddy water left a gritty feel to their jeans and socks. They waited until they reached the cantina to pull their boots back on.
The two-story adobe building was a good one hundred feet wide, but only twenty-five feet deep. Within a half-hour they sprawled on a patio behind the Lopez café. Grapevines entwined the latticework awning, blocking the sun by day and the stars by night. The light breeze felt warm, like a propane burner set real low. Jeans still wet, they ate by candlelight and listened to guitar music dance out the open back door. The rest of the customers were crammed inside.
“Where did E.A. go?” Laramie asked. “I didn’t much appreciate his horse cutting in front of Tully. I got soaked from toes to nose.”
Hap motioned to the room above the café. “Said he had some phone calls to make. But he did give us some pay tonight.”
Laramie rolled up a huge Monterey tortilla, then scooped the chunky fire-drenched salsa and shoved it into his mouth. “That guitar player is quite a lady.” He choked out each word while grabbing for the water.
“She has a certain Spanish beauty.” Hap stabbed the pulled pork with his fork as if it were still alive. “And she is a teacher.”
“Not only that, she is treinta y uno.”
“But she’s never been to Wyomin’ and her name is Teresa.” Hap dismissed the guitar player with the wave of an iodine-tainted hand.
“Yeah, I could tell that was a setback for you.”
“But you got to admit this is better chow than that canned meat.”
“The food’s good, but I’ve never been very good at reading brands after dark. How are we goin’ to tell E.A.’s cows from someone else’s?”
“You’ve got the brand chart he drew out.” Hap chomped into a yellow pepper, and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I reckon…” he puffed, “… that’s all… we… need. That and a fifty-pound block of ice.”
In the glow of the cloud-shrouded moon, they discerned the silhouettes of shorthorn cattle from the ridge. When the moon popped between the clouds they could even see its distant reflection off the Rio Grande.
“This isn’t working, Mr. Greene,” Laramie reported. “We can see the cows, but can’t read the brand until they turn their rear ends to the moonlight. Maybe we should wait until daylight.”
“Boys, boys, boys. You got yourself worked up for nothin’. We don’t need the identical fifty head. Any fifty will do. It all balances out that way.”
Laramie sat straight up in the saddle. “We didn’t ride over here to find someone else’s cows.”
Greene flipped his hands as if swatting wasps. “Now, Laramie, if you had a neighbor take five oranges off your tree, you might hike over to his house and look in the fruit bowl. If he’s got ten oranges there, you’d only take five. That’s fair. But you wouldn’t worry about whether they are the same five oranges.”
Hap brushed down his black mustache with his fingertips. “You lost me comparin’ oranges to cows and international borders with backyards.”
“Trust me. This is my territory. I know what I’m doing. It’s the way things are done down here.”
Laramie leaned back on Tully’s rump. “Just because it’s the way things are done, don’t mean we’ll do it. We’ll cross back over to Texas and keep pushin’ your strays. You can do whatever you want here in Mexico.”
“I never figured you two for quitters.”
“We ain’t quitters,” Hap barked, “and we ain’t quittin’ this job.”
“Hap!” Laramie challenged.
“I’m goin’ to ride up and start cuttin’ my cows,” Greene s
aid, “while you two hash this out.”
Laramie and Hap rode over to a squatty mesquite tree, the only shadowy form without four legs and a tail.
“Hap, what do you think you are doing? This guy wants us to steal cows.”
“They stole some of his cows. He wants them back.”
“It isn’t retrieving lost cattle when you go across an international border. It’s a felony in a foreign country.”
“We agreed to the job.”
Laramie’s voice rose higher. “We agreed to come look at the job.”
“I can’t quit, Laramie.”
“Why? This isn’t a time to be bound by some stoic cowboy pride.”
“It’s a lot deeper than that. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, you’d better talk, partner, because in about ninety seconds I’m riding back to Texas with or without you.”
Hap knew Laramie deserved an explanation, but fought to stay calm enough to talk. “Give me a minute, here.” He rode close enough to Laramie that their chaps touched. “Uncle Mike plays a special place in Mamma’s life. The day Daddy died, I was with her. But she was beside herself. She loved that man as if he was life itself. I was only a kid, but I was just sure she was going to grab a gun and kill herself, just so she could be with him in heaven.
“Laramie, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Then Uncle Mike came over. He was big brother. He held her and rocked her and talked to her about times when they were kids. He stayed with us until Daddy was buried and to this day Mamma says he saved her life. He’s always been her hero. He got two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart in Nam. Uncle Mike said we should work for his ol’ army pal, E. A. Greene. I can’t go home and look her in the eye and tell her I let down Uncle Mike’s pal. I can’t do it, Laramie. You go on. But I have to stay.”
“Hap, you never told me any of that.”
“It’s been eighteen years since Daddy died and I can’t talk about it without tears in my eyes. I apologize for that, partner.”
“So what are we going to do, Hap?”
“You go on back to Texas.”