All Things Left Wild

by James Wade

  Charlotte moved as if she were made of lightning. Before Randall could turn his head, she had a pistol drawn and lowered at the man’s head.

  The man looked at first confused, then angered.

  “You better tell this nigger to holster that thirty-eight,” he said to Randall. “These is my women and I’ll treat ’em however way I please, as the Good Book says is my right.”

  “Put it away, Charlotte,” Randall told her.

  “He don’t deserve to live,” she replied, thumbing back the hammer.

  The world around them moved, but they did not. Then forward came the woman called Geanie and she stood in front of the man and looked up at Charlotte.

  “Please,” she asked. “Don’t shoot him. He’s my husband. He takes care of us.”

  The man smiled a crooked smile as Charlotte lowered her gun. He spit and it landed in the dirt near Mara’s hoof.

  Randall eyed the man and felt his own violent urge growing.

  “We’re gonna head on down this road the way we were going,” Randall nodded to the man. “I suggest you do the same.”

  The man grunted and hurried his wife, or his whore, or both, down the road and the two girls in rags trudged behind and Randall’s bunch all just sat their horses and didn’t say anything and when somebody did it was Tad.

  “Sorry sumbitch we just crossed paths with,” he said, and no one argued. “Sure hate if he was my daddy.”

  He spit and shook his head.

  “Pumpkin,” the younger boy said in a matching tone and he too spit and shook.

  “Let’s get on down the trail,” Charlotte said. “I don’t much care to be no closer to that man than I got to.”

  * * *

  They rode in silence and nooned off to the side of the road and there was no shade and, the cold of the morning long gone, they began to sweat. A fire seemed too much trouble and time, so they ate cold beans and dried meat and there were berries fallen from bushes along a retired fence line and they ate those too.

  “You would’ve killed that man,” Randall said to Charlotte as if she herself were wondering.

  She nodded.

  “I imagine I would have,” she said.

  “That’s murder.”

  “It is,” she nodded again.

  “And the woman and the children? What would have happened to them, alone in the desert?”

  “They would have been free,” she snapped.

  “Free to die, maybe.”

  “Death is better than some things, Mr. Dawson,” Charlotte said, her voice cold and cutting. “Maybe you didn’t learn that growing up with money spilling out your ears. Some painful things in this life.”

  Randall was silent for a moment, then he nodded.

  “There are indeed,” he said. “Some of the men on my ranch, they had to drag me away from Harry’s body. I wouldn’t let anyone near him that night. I could smell the burning trees and hear the shouts of the men, but I just sat there, holding him. We were going to go hunting, once the weather cooled. This was going to be the year he took his first buck.”

  Randall swallowed his tears.

  “It was my pistol,” he said, soft and choked. “It was my pistol he tried to stop them with.”

  Charlotte came to him and put her arm around his back and his head slumped and he wept.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Randall raised his head and took a deep breath and opened his mouth wide. He stood.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be just fine.”

  Charlotte watched him walk away and felt inside herself both pity and desire. Desire to comfort him, to watch over him, somehow. Or perhaps, she thought, it was her failure to save her brother that was driving this need to protect the helpless. And Randall Dawson was nothing if not helpless.

  Randall left the camp for nearly half an hour and when he returned he acted as if nothing had happened. He fastened the strap under Mara and called to the others to mount up.

  “We oughta get off the main road,” Charlotte said. “There’ll be more water and better places to make camp if we head north a piece and then cut east.”

  “Too many banditos on the main road, anyhow,” Tad added.

  Randall drained the last of a cup of coffee and flung the crud from the bottom of the cup and squatted down on his haunches, bounced, and then stood back up and shook his head.

  “We can’t afford to lose time. Not to mention we have to ask the whereabouts of the Bentleys and the best place to do that is in towns along the road.”

  “Them boys weren’t going through no towns, Randall,” Charlotte said.

  He smiled. “Randall? ” he repeated, then nodded. “We’re still sticking to the main road. If you all disagree, you’re welcome to head back.”

  He took his empty cup and swung himself atop Mara and put her into the road.

  “He must be feeling better,” Charlotte said and clicked her tongue.

  “Pumpkin,” the small boy said and clicked his tongue in turn.

  15

  The world was black and in the blackness I saw the flames.

  The fire would clear out the ranch and send the men up into the hills with buckets and no one would be left tending the herd. Shelby said we’d pick what we wanted, horses and cattle, and ride out laughing. I told him there’s not much worse in the world than a horse thief, and he said ol’ Dawson had more than any one man ought to have. He told how Dawson had shamed our father and turned the town against him and asked if I loved my family and I thought of our mother and said yes.

  I asked about the law, and he said Dawson was a dandy and he’d be too scared to say anything. He told me most folks hated Dawson anyway, so we’d be heroes and the whores would bed us no charge and the men would buy us whiskey, and I said I didn’t too much care for all that, but I would like a horse of my own.

  The saddle had always been a harbinger of joy, the horse a bellwether of freedom. Growing up in the territory I’d ridden ponies and mules, then mustangs and quarter horses. We kept a corral in back of the house and it sold with the land and the horses too after my mother turned ill. Sickness is expensive. Sickness and sadness and drink and all the horses gone.

  Our spread was part of Dawson’s now. Our house rented to tenant farmers when my father refused the offer to stay on. Our horses were Dawson’s horses, and I watched our lives dissolve into his and I knew I would never bring back my father from the bottle nor my mother from the dirt, but a horse to call my own sounded as fine a consolation as could be offered and so I went along with Shelby’s bad plan and in the end I killed a boy.

  The fire was set and, like my brother said, the men raced toward it with buckets aplenty. But the flames were too close to the stock pens and the horses were first unnerved and soon horrified and they cried and kicked and climbed atop one another in a wave of chaos and flesh. They crashed into the gate, which could not hold, and they went sprinting in all directions. The cattle had already made for the far prairies when the fire was little more than smoke, and so we stood, Shelby and me, motionless in the empty yard.

  “What now?” I asked, my eyes darting, my breathing fast.

  “Shit,” he said and kicked the dirt.

  “Let’s just go. Let’s get out of here before somebody sees us.”

  “Shit,” he said again.

  “Come on, brother, let’s get.”

  “Naw, there’s bound to be horses in that fancy stable barn yonder,” he said, pointing. “That’s where I’m headed.”

  Light was showing through one of the windows in the big house. I watched it, wary and anxious, but nothing moved. Reluctantly, I followed Shelby to the barn.

  Inside, the animals stamped and snorted and were all-around skittish on account of the smoke and commotion nearby. The barn was lit by a single oil-burning lantern and the shadows
of beasts rose up against the walls. To Shelby’s dismay, only two of the stables held horses. The rest were filled with goats and pigs. He grabbed a saddle from the wall and ran the strap under the belly of the bigger horse and fastened to him a jaw rope. I stopped staring and went to work on the other horse and within two minutes we were mounted and free of the stalls and in the center of the barn.

  The light from a second lantern uncovered us and our misdoings, bringing us forth from out of the shadows. The boy stood in the wide doorway, a lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  “The hell are you all doing in here?” he called, and I knew he could not be more than twelve.

  “Taking these here horses,” Shelby answered. “Now go on and get, before somebody gets hurt.”

  “My ass,” the boy hollered, then he turned his head out toward the twilight. “Hey! They’re in the barn! They’re stealing the horses! Hey!”

  I looked at Shelby.

  “Now or never, little brother,” he said and put his heels to the horse and together they plowed down the middle of the barn toward the door.

  The boy was taken aback and stumbled out of the way and onto his bottom. I had frozen, but now I put my mount forward toward the outside world. Before I reached the door the boy rose and leveled his pistol at Shelby’s back. I raised my rifle and flipped it as I rode. I swung the gun toward the boy just before he fired. My intention was to knock the pistol from his hand. Intentions, of course, are only hopes. And I should have given up on such things long ago.

  The boy tried to turn toward me and I could feel the butt end of the rifle meet his wrist or hand or arm. I couldn’t tell because the flash of gunpowder from the pistol caused me a half second of blindness and when I looked back the boy was slumped against the door frame, his face unrecognizable. Unhuman.

  Men had come into the yard and were unsure of what to do as we charged past on our stolen mounts. No one fired a shot or even yelled for us to stop, and then there was Randall Dawson, bucket still in hand, and we looked at one another. I saw his eyes and he saw mine and for the briefest moment we were connected by this awful thing, and I knew then that we always would be.

  That night I killed a boy made of flesh and a boy made of soul and together we died and one moved on to whatever comes next and the other was left to wander in the desert as a shell of skin and bone with only blackness beyond. And each day I became more convinced of my soul’s departure, believing it to be already in Hell or, perhaps, on the run somewhere, like me but in another world. And if all worlds are the same then I imagined my soul might find me again, in some familiar way, and maybe we’d be happy to see each other, or maybe it would kill me on the spot and hope that redemption is attainable through deeds, lest we both burn forever.

  * * *

  “Alright then, boy. Come around nice and slow. I ain’t figure Tom meant to kill you, but he sho’nuff got close.”

  The sunlight dimmed my eyes as I looked up and tried to make out the shape of the man speaking and the earth was spinning and my throat was raw. I moved to touch my head where it throbbed, but my hands were tied behind my back and I settled for the canteen as the man pressed it to my lips and tilted it back. I choked and the man laughed, though not unkind, and he said, “Easy, easy,” and laughed again and called out to the world behind me, saying I was awake, and his shout cut into my head and I tried to stand up but instead slid into the dirt and closed my eyes again.

  When they opened, the bearded man from the vista was in front of me, sitting on the ground with legs crossed and a blue-and-cream blanket laid out between us. My cheek rested against the red dirt and the man turned his head almost upside down so that we saw each other on similar planes.

  “Guess you weren’t alone,” I managed, and the man found great humor in this and asked that I join him for a drink.

  “Marcus,” he called and a man came to cut my ties and it was the same man from before. He smiled, the man called Marcus, and helped me into a sitting position and told me he was glad I was feeling better and I was confused but nodded.

  “Do you know who I am?” the bearded man asked and produced two clay cups and a bottle and set them on the blanket and Marcus took that as a signal to leave, and so he did.

  “Where’s my brother?” I asked and I tried to turn and look around but I moved too fast and had to steady myself against the earth. “Where’s the girl?”

  “The girl is alive,” the man replied. “Thanks to you.”

  “And Shelby, my brother?”

  “Him too. For now.”

  I caught sight of the horse and my rifle, at least twenty yards away—too far to make a dash. The bearded man poured from the bottle and the cups filled quickly and he emptied one himself and motioned to the other with his hand.

  “Do you know who I am?” he repeated and I shook my head and he studied my eyes.

  “I know you,” he said, and I didn’t break my blank expression. I held his gaze and kept my voice steady.

  “I’m Edward Crawford,” I told him, and he laughed. It was a warm laugh, both boisterous and friendly and his eyes were in a perpetual smile and I felt at ease even in a situation where I should have been fearing for my life and the life of my brother.

  “Edward Crawford,” he said the name and tasted it on his tongue and it swam in his mouth until he could not contain it and it burst from his lips again as another laugh.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said and shook his head and pulled from his pocket a paper. A paper I did not need to see to know what was on it. “Apparently there’s a fella named Caleb Bentley that looks an awful lot like you.”

  I was silent.

  “What’s more, this Bentley, the one from the wanted poster here”—he tapped the likeness of my face with his forefinger—“he’s got a brother that looks an awful lot like the fella we got tied up over yonder by the creek.”

  “You a bounty hunter?” I asked.

  “I am,” he replied. “But not the kind that’s looking for you.”

  “What kind are you?”

  “My bounties aren’t collected in dollars, son. They’re collected in the souls of wicked men. Are you a wicked man, Caleb?”

  The light of the sun can do many things to a man’s sight, and a concussed state does not always provide images that deal in reality, but the fact remains: I watched the bearded man’s blue eyes fade to black as he stared at me, into me, and I could not move or speak and my breathing came heavy as the world around me spun.

  “No,” he said, as the darkness slipped away from us and a smile returned to his face. “I don’t believe you are.”

  He motioned again to the cup and this time I did not hesitate. The liquor was dark and warm and it slithered down inside of me like it was looking for a place to hide. The man clapped his hands together once and nodded and then spread out his arms.

  “Now, since you’re not a wicked man, and since you’ve shared this drink with me, I am obliged to answer whatever questions you may have.”

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “That’s a good first question. It shows loyalty to family, concern for others—very good, son. He’s just down the slope here from us, where the rest of the fellas are camped. He’s a little beat up, though to be honest he didn’t put up much of a fight, and as you may remember he is short by one ear, which of course was not our doing.”

  “Who are you and how come you run up on us hot like that?”

  “Yes, I apologize for that, and I know Tom just feels awful about that whack he gave you. It was purely precautionary, especially after you all but cut off poor Jacob’s face. But don’t feel badly about that. He disobeyed an order.”

  The man paused and shook his head as if reliving some grave disappointment.

  “He never listened,” the man said, then shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, we weren’t sure of your intentions nor w
hat would be your reaction when we took back what was ours.”

  “The girl.”

  “That’s right, the girl who you saved. An action, by the way, for which I am indebted to you,” he said, holding his arms out. “Now, as to who we are. I myself am General Lawrence Grimes. You’ve met Indian Tom, a name I’ve tried to get him to part with, but alas, he is a most stubborn breed of Apache. And Marcus Freeman, the dark-shaded gentleman who has looked after you so as to not have you do something stupid, like die. There are nineteen other men in our current camp, and a few dozen more down south, waiting patiently for our return. I could give you all of their names but it seems an exhaustion in both time and practicality.”

  “The Lobos,” I said, and the man nodded, pleased.

  “You’ve heard of us,” he said, almost giddy with delight.

  “Y’all gonna kill us, then?” I asked plainly, and the man measured either the question or his response.

  “Things like that are difficult to say. While I don’t intend to kill you, I can’t know that my hand won’t be forced. I can’t rightly give you my word, on account of there’s a chance I’d have no choice but to break it. But I can cut a deal with you that says as long as I have no cause to kill you, I most assuredly will not.”

  “Ain’t that the deal all men make with one another just by being in the world?” I asked.

  “Oh no, son, killing goes on without cause more often than not. But I promise that won’t be how you end,” and the man moved his face forward toward mine and there were tobacco lines down the white of his beard and overhead the buzzards waited for something ill-fated and when he spoke again it was with the voice of prophecy. “When you die, Caleb, there’ll be a cause.”

  I swallowed hard and waited until the man had settled back and then I pointed toward the makeshift camp down the ridge.

  “Alright. Let me go. My brother too,” I said. “And the girl. We’ll ride out today, and you won’t follow, and we won’t speak to a soul about any of this and that’ll be the end of it.”