by James Wade
We ate the last of our food and agreed it was not satisfying, and I apologized to the horses because there was no water. The coming down was slower than the climb and the horses shied and took cautious steps and we dismounted and led them so they might see it was safe, and when even then they did not trust us we took off our shirts and covered their eyes and led them anyway. The arid east side of the Guadalupes held no conifers or mountain grasses, and the descent back into desert seemed rapid and unnatural. Near the base of the mountains, where the hills and caverns sloped down into flat, dry terrain we found what I thought could be the last stream in all the world and there the horses took their water as it flowed down from greater heights.
We crossed into Texas ahead of the dusk and followed an old Indian game trail down into the lowlands and through the salt flats, and I thought about the Mescalero and whether or not they’d all been cleaned out and I imagined them hiding in their caves even now and waiting until the new world collapsed in on itself and the old ways of living returned.
The wind had left scattered a collage of dried junipers upon the desert floor and there they appeared as a collection of bones, brittle and rotting, and a graveyard to navigate without disturbing those who came before us.
The light fading, we topped a ridge of rock and chamisa and sat our horses for a while and looked out over the terrain both new and familiar.
“Texas don’t look all that different,” Shelby said.
“They got Rangers here. Folks say they’re the best lawmen in the country. That’s different.”
“You still think old dandy Dawson is gonna come a-huntin’ us?”
“I would. If it had been my boy.”
“Well, it whatn’t your boy, it was his, and I’m telling you that sumbitch ain’t gonna do nothing. He was hoping the marshals would get us and they didn’t, and sometimes folks just get away.”
“And you reckon we’re them folks, huh?”
“Hell, why not? So long as we stick to the plan. No more using the name Bentley. We’re the Crawfords. Just a couple good old boys looking for some work.”
“What happens they get ’em a poster with our likeness?”
“You know, you’re starting to aggravate the shit out of me. There ain’t gonna be no poster.”
“And if there is?”
“If there is,” Shelby spit his words through gritted teeth, “them Rangers are busy settling rich folks’ disputes over cattle land. Damn, little brother, it’s like you’re hoping to get caught.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe that’s what we deserve.”
“To hell with that. What happened was an accident,” he said, then grinned. “If anybody got what they deserved it was that spoiled little shit.”
I looked at Shelby’s face, long and thin and his nose hooked. He had deep-set purple scars from pimples past and wore his hat tilted back just enough to push down on his ears and let his curly blond hair come creeping out onto his forehead. Like my mother, his eyes were burning amber. His grin stretched into a smile and showed his crooked yellow teeth and he laughed until he coughed, and I knew my brother was a bad man but I knew I couldn’t leave him. He was all I had left.
6
He came to the trading town of Mesilla just before dark and found the square alive and festive with Mexican comerciantes and men playing music and the smell of smoking meats, which brought spit to his lips.
A young boy came and took Mara’s reins and Randall protested. The boy looked up and said nothing and pointed to a stable. At the stable an old man eyed first the boy, then the big Arabian, and only after filling a bucket with water and pulling out a large brush did he look at Randall and spit onto the straw-covered ground.
“One dollar,” he said and Randall obliged and the man scratched his bald head and pointed to a feed trough.
“One dollar,” he said again and Randall said he had his own oats and the man scoffed and waved his hand.
“You’ll take good care of her, I assume?” Randall asked and the man waved his hand again without looking up, and the boy grabbed Randall’s arm and pulled him back toward the square.
“Best food is there,” he said, pointing to an auburn pueblo near the stagecoach line.
He continued to point and show Randall the best clothes, best knives, and best girls.
“What about the sheriff ?” Randall asked. “Law man?”
“Sheriff is there,” the boy pointed and Randall followed his direction to a short, paunchy Mexican man with a thick mustache and tin-plated badge. He held a cigar and leaned in closely to a señorita selling oranges and grapefruit by the bag, and the girl laughed at his words uncomfortably and shied away. The sheriff seemed pleased enough to put the cigar back into his mouth.
“Sheriff,” Randall said, approaching, and the man appeared immediately vexed and bade the girl give him a moment to deal with official business.
“I’m on the trail of two murderous men, brothers, who killed my son and a man who worked on my ranch.”
The sheriff waited and when nothing more came he puffed his cigar and laughed.
“Two brothers?”
“Yes, have you seen them?”
The sheriff looked around in an exaggerated fashion, then removed the cigar from his mouth.
“My friend, there are many brothers in this very square.”
“I have a likeness,” Randall said and produced the papers from his pocket.
“Oh, yes,” the sheriff said and Randall saw the recognition on his face.
“You’ve seen them,” he said, but the sheriff shook his head.
“No, but I have seen these drawings. They sit with many other drawings of faces that come to this place from people who want me to solve their problems. But why should I care about these faces?”
The sheriff turned back but the girl had been replaced by her grandmother, and his shoulders slumped and he said that Randall should visit with him inside of his office.
Firecrackers popped nearby though Randall could think of no occasion, and a man hammered away at the piano inside a cantina. Along the wooden storefronts there were candles set into small sacks filled with dirt and overhead from roofs and trees flapped streamers of blue and red and green. The sheriff said nothing as he walked. Randall followed. The music stopped and a man tumbled out of the cantina clutching a stab wound in his belly, and the sheriff turned to watch and still did not speak, and the music began again. Randall moved to help, but the injured man cursed at him in Spanish and pushed him away with a bloody hand. The sheriff laughed and beckoned Randall keep up; they were almost there.
The office was at the end of the square and it was filled with electric light and the smell of mescal and tobacco. The sheriff gestured for Randall to sit in a wooden chair, but he instead stood by the only cell and wondered how often it was without occupancy. The sheriff seemed not to mind and sat behind a plain oak desk and relit his cigar and the two men lived in the silence of the moment until the sheriff spoke.
“Who are these men, these brothers you are looking for?” he asked and studied Randall closely, as if he were more interested in the man than the answer.
“Grifters, from Arizona, around the Payson area,” Randall said, then hesitated. “They tried to rob me of horses—and cattle too, I’d imagine. Killed my son, my only son. I tracked them south through the territory. Folks at the border said they headed east from there, which would bring them through your area.”
“You tracked them?”
“Yes.”
“You are a tracker?”
Randall didn’t answer.
The sheriff nodded as if he was remembering something long forgotten.
“And these brothers,” he said, “why is it that they came to rob you?”
“Sir?”
“I have seen many robbers and bandits. They steal from stages and banks, mostly, a
nd trains. So why is it these brothers stole from you?”
“Well, I don’t know what you want me to say. I own a lot of land, a lot of cattle. I expect that makes me a target.”
“A target.”
“Yes, sir, a target.”
“And you are not knowing these brothers before they come to rob you?”
Randall hesitated.
“I knew their father. He was the sheriff, but he was a drunk so I had him replaced.”
The man nodded as if he understood something no one else could.
“I’ll ask you another question, señor,” he said and ashed his cigar onto the stone floor. “If you had to shoot at a bird, you would choose a sparrow or a vulture?”
“What?”
“Which bird are you choosing to shoot at? The sparrow or the vulture.”
“The vulture, I suppose.”
“Why is this?”
“What?”
The sheriff rolled his eyes and outside there were more firecrackers and the music was part of the night as much as the air and the stars and the stench of the cigar.
“Why shoot the vulture?”
“Well, it’s larger, easier to hit. I suppose it’s also an unsightly bird. I doubt it would bring me the same guilt as if I shot a sparrow.”
“I agree,” the sheriff said. “It is a bastard bird. It preys on the dead and dying. It makes a much better target, yes?”
“Yes, fine.”
“Men like these brothers who did this bad thing to you, they also choose which bird to shoot at. Are you understanding me?”
“You’re saying I’m a vulture? That it’s my fault?”
“There is no fault, señor, only targets and choices. You’ll drink with me, yes?”
The sheriff ignored Randall’s declination and pulled an amber bottle from somewhere in his desk and took a long drink of it and closed his eyes. He extended the bottle to Randall who again refused and again the sheriff seemed not to mind and turned the bottle to his lips once more.
Randall saw wanted posters by the dozens crammed into a wire basket near a small stove. The sheriff saw him looking and shrugged.
“Like I say, why should I care about these faces?”
“These are bad men,” Randall protested. “They should be brought to justice.”
“Whose justice? Yours? God’s?”
“The justice of the law.”
“Ah, yes, the law. The law that is made against my people and my family who have lived in these lands for two hundred years. The law that is made against the red men who are here longer than us all. This is your law?”
“Fine, then the justice of the Lord God who said thou shalt not kill.”
“Ah, a divine punishment.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“I call it disillusionment. There is no divinity here. No grace. Conquest, killing—these are things which come from nature, not God.”
“It’s not natural to kill another person. God or no.”
“Is it not?” the sheriff raised his brows.
“I don’t believe we’re born that way, nossir.”
“It is true, we are born with nothing save the will to live. The goal to survive. Our every action bent toward it. A child crying for food, for sleep, for comfort. Yes, this is a natural thing. A thing the child does without choosing. But when the child grows, does its nature not change?”
“I can’t say.”
“But you can say there is a difference in a man and a baby, yes?”
Randall was growing impatient. He nodded.
“Well,” the sheriff said.
“But that doesn’t mean the nature is different. A man, even a bad man, is taught what he knows. And he can only know what he’s taught.”
“Is this true?”
“Yes, of course it is.”
“A murderer must be taught to kill?”
Randall hesitated.
“Must his father also be a murderer?” the sheriff continued.
“I guess not.”
“So why then?” the sheriff asked. “Why do we kill? A wolf pup, its small almond eyes barely open, can be held and nurtured and trusted. But a grown wolf ? Less so. Nature has changed it. Hardened it.
“A man is not a wolf,” Randall said, exasperated.
“Is he not?”
“You can’t let killers go free.”
“And you, if you catch these brothers and their faces, you will arrest them? Give them a trial by the law?”
“If I can.”
“And if not?”
Randall was silent.
“We are all killers, my friend. Even those who have not yet pulled the trigger,” the sheriff spoke and looked beyond Randall at some commotion outside. Randall heard shouting. The sheriff rose and walked slowly across the floor and stood in the doorway smoking.
“There is war coming,” the sheriff said without turning back to Randall. “But already you know this. Who will be the winner? This you do not know. Nor do I. And so we wait.”
“I couldn’t care less about your war,” Randall told him. “I just care about my son.”
“Your son is my son, and your father is my father,” the man said. “And this war belongs to all of us.”
“Not me.”
“Well. We will see.”
* * *
Randall’s frustration hung about him like mites on a cur, and the breeze moved the streamers and he could see the blood on the wood where the man had refused his help. He wanted a drink, but the town made him uneasy. He was wary of the saloon and its hardened men who would stab a patron, and the sheriff who puffed his cigar and flirted with girls, and so instead he bought a clear bottle from a comerciante, who insisted he also take a string of red peppers.
“Have you seen two men?” Randall asked the merchant, pointing to the poster. “Two brothers on horseback?”
“Hermanos,” the man nodded.
“Yes, hermanos, have you seen them?”
“Hermanos,” the man nodded again and smiled and began tying more peppers to a string.
“No, have you—” but the man was not looking or listening and his hands were orange and brown and red with dirt and peppers and he smiled and nodded and waved as Randall walked away.
The man at the stable was asleep in his chair. A lantern hung from the rafters and the boy sat squat in the straw, playing at some imaginary story with carved wooden pieces in each hand. Randall breathed in the fresh, earthen aromas of cut hay and thought of his own stables, where the men had let mold spread into the bales and the animals had sickened, and he saw his son’s lifeless body and looked again at the boy. The child had come to the culmination of his game and smashed together the wooden figures until one broke.
From what Randall could tell, the horse had been brushed nicely and there was nothing missing from his saddle. He gave the boy five dollars and tipped his hat, and he’d only led Mara a few feet from the stable when the man awoke and took the money away.
Away from the square there were other structures, dimly lit with candles and girls leaned in the doorway and smiled. One girl asked Randall if he was lonely, and he kept walking, and the answer was yes. He was lonely and scared but if he turned back he knew it would eat him slowly, like a sickness, until there was nothing left of the man he hoped to be.
The town gave him caution, but so too did the desert. He made a small camp amid the saltbush and sage, not half a mile from the lights and music and reminders of life. He tried to pen a letter to Joanna but the words would not come and he stopped and blamed the clouds for covering the moon and hiding the light but in his heart he knew this to be false. He drank from the bottle and scrunched his face and it burned to swallow but was warm in his belly. After three laborious pulls he put the bottle in his saddlebag a
nd said that was enough. A few minutes later he reached for it again and began to laugh and think about his time at Mormont, and he felt warm despite the cool night.
He missed the structure and uniformity of his younger life. There were no decisions to be made, and when choices did present themselves the impact was usually limited to a morning hangover. There was a freedom in the fact that his life would come later. His dreams knew no limits so long as they were only dreams. It is the great folly of youth, he thought, that we should believe our lives more worth the living as they go on. He drank to such notions. Soon he was awash with drunkenness and he embraced its call and danced alone, poorly, to the distant music. He cried and spoke to himself and to others and to ghosts, though none were present. He drew his guns and aimed them into the night and pulled the trigger. The hammer slammed down with nothing to strike, but he continued to massacre the desert specters until even his imaginary bullets had run dry. And when all was lost, from his knees he shook his fists and vowed his vengeance.
“I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.”
He collapsed into the dirt. The clouds having moved on and the stars burning out above him, Randall listed the constellations in his head until he began to feel the spinning of the world. He rolled onto his side and shut his eyes, but the spinning lingered. He tried to think of Joanna and her naked form on his bed, but he saw only the woman from the doorway. The more he tried to control his mind the further into darkness it went, and there in a drunken version of sleep he was holding Harry’s corpse, and the sheriff was laughing at him and smoking a cigar, and Joanna’s arms were around both Bentley brothers, and his father lay dead in the street, and the great bear came to him and opened its mouth. “Are you lonely?”