by James Wade
“What can we do for you?” Randall asked.
The man smiled and for a long time said nothing. The birds began to return to the underbrush, though not as close as they’d once been.
“We’re looking for somebody. A couple of somebodies,” the man said, turning in his horse and staring out at the country ahead of him as if perhaps his quarry was watching from afar. “You all ain’t seen a little Mexican gal cross your path? She’d be riding with a boy about her age, goes by the name Crawford. Real name’s Bentley—Caleb Bentley.”
Randall and Charlie exchanged knowing glances and the man leaned back in his saddle.
“Y’all know the boy?” he asked.
Randall nodded. “He killed my son, back in Longpine, Arizona. We’ve been hunting him.”
“Well, hell. Killed one of ours too. Left him for the bears. Nasty business.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Randall said.
The man waved off his apology and looked again to where the road met the northern horizon.
“So, I’m guessing that makes you Randall Dawson?” he asked.
“Yessir, that’s right. The boys confessed, then?”
The man nodded.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Dawson. You got somebody up the road yonder waiting to get the drop on me and my boys?”
Randall looked confused. The man waited.
“No, huh?” he said. “That’s good.”
The man whistled and, from some place Randall did not see, a rider appeared in the road and he nudged an angry boy up before him.
“Serrano found this here young man trailing you. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”
Randall nodded, “Yessir, he belongs to us.”
“I don’t belong to nobody,” Tad shouted, and the man called Serrano gave him a boot to the back, causing the boy to fall on his hands in the dirt.
“We left him back near Fort Davis. He must’ve followed us . . . again,” Randall said. “He didn’t mean any harm.”
“I’m sure he didn’t,” the man said and smiled again and eyed the boy. “How old are you, son?”
Tad pushed himself to his feet and knocked the dust from his breeches.
“Old enough to go where I please without being harassed by folks,” he said.
The man’s smile grew and he laughed a boisterous laugh and the men around him followed suit.
“I like his fire,” the man said to Randall as he leaned over to smooth the mane on his palomino.
“Alright then,” the man said, slapping his thigh as if some predetermined timer had expired in his head, and he and the rest of the riders filed back into the road. “Rest assured, Mr. Dawson, I will kill Caleb Bentley and avenge your son. You all have nothing to worry about on that front.
“Let’s go, boys,” the man called, then motioned to Serrano. “Put the kid on a real horse, we can use his animal to carry water.”
“Pumpkin is a real horse,” Tad protested, “and I ain’t goin’ nowhere with y’all.”
“Wait,” Randall called, and the man turned his horse. “The boy is with us.”
“The boy was with you,” the man said. “Now he’s with me. I’ll make a fine man out of him.”
“No offense intended, sir, but I can’t let you take him.”
The motion along the road stopped and all eyes turned to the two men as they faced one another. Charlie rested her hands on her pistols.
“Mr. Dawson”—the man was still smiling—“I think you’ve misunderstood the situation here. Not only am I allowing you to go on living, I’m also going to kill the man you’ve come all this way to see die. In my view, you are in a great debt to me. Therefore, it is quite rude of you to make demands. Additionally, I have two dozen men to your one woman.”
Randall looked into the faces of the hardened men around him. He looked at Tad who shook his head and then at Charlie, her eyes calculating the angles.
“It’s your choice, Mr. Dawson,” the man said. “But either way I’m leaving with the boy.”
The man sat his horse, staring down at Randall, his arms crossed. The sun reached higher into the sky, locked in its never-ending quest to stay atop the world if only for a moment. The tar-like smell of creosote drifted across the plain on the back of a soft breeze. The algarita and Apache plumes bowed their heads in deference. But for the breathing of horses and men, the land lay silent.
The birds gave the first sign of the coming encounter. They again fled the stability of the bushes and swirled up, squawking, into the open disquiet. Hooves pounded the road, drawing near at a quickening pace.
“Mr. Dawson”—the man’s smile was gone—“you expecting friends?”
“I swear to you, I am not.”
“Army?” the man called to Serrano.
“Rangers,” he answered back.
“Rangers,” the man said, slowly. “Alright, boys, this is it.”
The men dismounted and stood in defensive positions near their horses.
“Mr. Dawson, if you truly had nothing to do with this, I suggest you and your woman slip away before the shooting starts,” the man said. “But if this is your doing, know that I’ll kill you both dead—and the boy too.”
“I’m not leaving without him,” Randall replied.
The approaching riders wore hats and badges and carried an assortment of long rifles and Colts. They formed a single line across the road and into either side of the brush.
“Lawrence Grimes,” one of the Rangers called. “Your day’s done come.”
“I’m not sure about all that, Hargrove,” the man answered.
“Sanford?” Randall shouted.
The Ranger rode forward with his pistol pointed at the sky.
“Randall?” he asked. “My God. I got your letter. These the boys killed Harry?”
Grimes looked to Randall, then to the Ranger, then back again.
“You’re the first to die, Dawson,” he growled. “You understand that?”
“It wasn’t me,” Randall answered, stammering. “He’s my cousin, but I didn’t know they were coming.”
“The first to die,” Grimes repeated.
“Alright now,” the Ranger called out. “This doesn’t have to go bad. We just want Grimes and Marcus Freeman—and the Bentley brothers, who killed my cousin’s boy. The rest of you just throw down your guns and ride on from here.”
The Rangers inched their horses forward. The Lobos stayed on the ground. Randall and Charlie crouched near the mesquite, looking back and forth between Tad and the closing horsemen.
Tad’s eyes were wide and darting, he was covered in dirt and looked as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Serrano had partially shielded the boy with his horse and was paying him no mind as the greater threat was in front of them. Tad studied the knife tucked into the back of Serrano’s breeches. Randall saw it happen in slow motion—the boy yanked the knife out, and as the man turned, Tad plunged the blade into his chest.
“No!” Randall cried out, and the man fell to his knees, then slumped forward as if in prayer.
One of the Lobos fired at Tad and Randall didn’t wait to see if the boy was hit. He fired back and killed the man and one of the Rangers shouted, “Hold,” but it was too late. The sound of gunshots peppered the air around them. Randall tried to find Grimes but he had disappeared and all the men looked the same except for Charlie. She stood strong and dark and beautiful, a pistol in each hand, firing methodically and without hesitation at one target and then the next. The Rangers charged into the fray like the cavalries of old and the scene descended into an indiscernible amalgam of smoke and dust and bullets.
Bodies fell and piled upon the dirt with no favoritism to the righteous or the wicked or the disenfranchised. Randall fired and ducked and fired again. The lawyer turned rancher turned lost soul absorbed the madness of
the moment, his skin burning with a frightened adrenaline that was mirrored by the blistering iron barrels from which he administered some untouched, aching rage.
Bullets flew past his head and shells fell at his feet and when his rounds were spent he reloaded, searing his hands on the hot steel. The providence of his life fell away before him and only when there was no one to fire back did he realize he was screaming.
35
A man can feel his death if not see it and in such a feeling is a grasping. Regret of some one elusive thing, or more, and all of it nameless save the memories, and even the memories taste bitter and unfulfilled, and the outer is stripped away and inside is only ego and fear and an encompassing desire for more. More time. More life. More choices.
Our choice had been made and with it we felt heavy the inexorable but unhurried beauty of impending loss. And into its imminence we awoke from a restless few hours of troubled sleep and took hold of one another in a way both foreign and natural.
We lay panting in the grass and I had heard on awful authority the sensitivity of a woman in these moments but in Sophia I found only an unadorned sense of desperation. She rolled atop me and grabbed my face in her hand and kissed me and more and it was as if these little deaths might somehow prepare us more intimately for the finality of life, though the more our passion grew the less was I ready to say goodbye to any of it.
Strange that the urgencies of fleeting creatures and the sincerity therein are all set about in a world infinite, a world timeless. And when those imperatives are acted upon, satisfactory or not, the world continues its revelations, man his revolutions, and God His indifference to each.
We held each other that night, too scared to speak, too frightened even to move, as if one shift, one single imbalance, would provoke an early sunrise and cut short what little time we had together.
The stars bore out from the darkness, glowing indentations to remind us of all we don’t know. There are moments over the course of a life wherein that life is forever altered. I’d seen such moments. I’d felt my very lifeblood adjusting to some new flow. And there, under the quilted twilight of the desert, the feeling came once more. We needed one another, that girl and me. To what end, I couldn’t say, but if I was ever to find redemption, it would be by her side.
* * *
The winter had stayed wet. It snowed and when the snow broke it broke hard and the rain and sleet fell violently, as if the land and those upon it had called down the wrath of an angry God and the two of us, Sophia and me, burrowed into a hillside and into one another and into our minds, where we hoped to find strength enough to see us through, though we knew not how or how long that would be.
And so it was that we found ourselves in that strange but familiar tale in which men often linger. The matter of our past having not been left there but rather following, in both the literal and metaphysical sense, and our future thus an uncertainty dependent upon both the present and the trailing past but also the changing circumstances of the future itself, which can never be assured but only guessed at with a vague confidence by those bold enough to do the guessing.
I was not bold alone. I could not say if Sophia took anything of worth from my being beside her, but I drew from her bravery the way a rancher draws water from a well and for that I counted myself fortunate even in these the most dire of situations.
The next morning it seemed as if the world had reset some mystic clock and the red sky turned to dark, crawling clouds and for yet another day we could see the rain fall in sheets ahead of us and there was nowhere to go but into it. We reached the Pecos and it spilling over its banks and there was no way across or around and whatever distance we’d put between us and those following was sure to evaporate before the flooded waters and we looked to one another in a solemn and knowing way and headed for high ground to make our stand.
On a knoll overlooking the river we maneuvered the horses under an unlikely bur oak and climbed down and watched as the rain beat down and the cold made us shiver. I asked Sophia if there was room to the north but she said the river bent north and west and would cut us off and the only way was south, which would take us closer to those in pursuit and should we not slip by them before they made the river we would be pinned against it and outnumbered. She assured me they would be carrying fresh horses and would ride us down if it came to that and even if we shot our way out there would likely be another party trailing behind.
“I always figured I’d die in the rain,” I told her, and there was no response as she looked up into it as if maybe she could see beyond the clouds.
Lightning fractured the sky and kissed the horizon and the world from one end to the other was covered in dark and whatever dominion the sun once held had been ceded and this was the storm I had seen coming for what seemed like my entire life.
We waited and the horses with us and none in our party were too pleased and the longer we waited under the tree the more we figured it would end up being lightning that did us in.
I saw the first rider reach the river just after what should’ve been noon, though the gray sky made time seem void. I nudged Sophia’s shoulder and we watched the man to the south as he dismounted and walked the mud flats of the flooded river and he bent to the ground on occasion as if searching for something and then he stood for a long while and stared at the rushing water and the shore beyond. Finally he swung himself back into the saddle and turned his horse south and west and disappeared into the storm.
I recognized the horse and enough of the tall stiff man atop it but didn’t say anything. Instead I held on to some notion that I could be wrong—a notion Sophia quickly scattered to the wind.
“Indian Tom,” she said, and I nodded.
“Reckon he found tracks?” I asked. “That river’s still coming up. Could’ve washed them out.”
“He found them,” she answered, and my heart sunk over again.
An hour later four horsemen topped the last ridge before the river and stopped and sat their mounts for a while and I could pick out Tom but the others remained unknown at such a distance and I looked upon them as faceless angels of death.
“If there’s only four, we got a chance,” I said and as I spoke three more riders appeared on the ridge and joined the others and they all started down the hill toward the river, then turned north and put us directly in their path.
At the base of the knoll they all stopped again and I heard Marcus call out through the rain.
“Let Miss Sophia come on down to us and you can ride on. You got Lieutenant Grimes’s word on that.”
“Grimes down there?” I answered.
“Nossir, he ain’t.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to settle for killing y’all instead.”
“All seven of us, huh?” a voice asked, and I grimaced at the sound and Sophia looked at me wide-eyed.
“He send you after me or did you volunteer?”
“Volunteered,” Shelby answered.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
I crawled out from under the tree and laid on my elbows and stared down the hill at the riders and my own brother among them. I thought of what awaited on the other side and tried to make it pleasant but it was not and there was no time to change any of it. The men separated the horses in either direction around the hill and Sophia kissed me so hard I tasted blood but I thought maybe it was just the taste of what was to come.
I gave Sophia the pistol and boosted her into the tree and our look lingered before I tore away and put myself on the sweet end of the rifle.
The first face I saw was the man Averitt, the only one not smart enough to dismount, and he looked more terrified than me as his horse trudged up the slope. I did not bother asking forgiveness.
The rifle cracked backward and so too did the man’s head and then all things were set in motion at once. The horse bolted from under the dead man and crashed through un
derbrush atop the hill and a shot fired to my left. I levered another bullet as I spun and fired and the man fell. I heard Sophia shoot and saw another man dead near the tree.
When I turned back I saw Shelby and there was no time for either of us to think as a rifle fired from nearby and I felt the bullet punch my right shoulder and twist me down to the ground. Shelby froze as I fell and Marcus advanced on me and Sophia’s pistol was still firing and I tried to scramble for my gun but Marcus was on me and I closed my eyes and pictured Sophia the way she’d looked in my arms that morning and the gun sounded and I felt nothing as Marcus’s limp body fell into the grass next to me.
“Goddamn it,” Shelby said, as I used my left arm to pull myself up and look at the smoking pistol in his hand. “Goddamn it all, Caleb.”
He didn’t look at me, but instead looked back down the hill and took off his hat and wiped the rain and wet hair from his face.
“Y’all get the hell out of here. Now,” he said without turning toward me. I looked for Sophia and found her face in the tree and two men lay lifeless below her. Her eyes were searching and suddenly they widened and she screamed and I thought it was the sight of my wound but I heard my brother make a strained noise like a man trying to lift something too heavy to carry and I turned back to see him fall at Tom’s feet.
Sophia screamed again and dry-fired her empty pistol and the big Indian smiled at the metallic clicks and wiped his blade across his chest. I pushed myself up onto my feet, my arm dangling beneath the blood-soaked shirt.
“Stay back,” I told Sophia, but she did not and so the two of us stood together, unarmed in front of the giant man and he ran his tongue along the dull end of the blade and laughed and moved forward.
We both came to meet him and found he was faster than any man that size should be. In one motion he parried my flailing left, caught Sophia with a forearm that took her off her feet and then dodged my next punch while driving out with his knife and opening a thick gash above the right side of my chest.