The Hi-Lo Country

by Max Evans

  To the west of Sano the purple hills are spotted with scrubby pinon trees. A wood road winds from the village into the hills, and several excursions yearly are made over this wagon trail for firewood. If by chance a wood hauler happens upon a browsing deer, he will usually come up from the floorboard of his horse-drawn wagon with a thirty-thirty, especially if the local game warden is in another area. This meat is also dried for the family larder. All in all, the people barely manage to get by.

  One definite advantage exists: there is little work to do, for there is little to work on. What small amount of cash that does filter into the village comes from old-age pensions, those who can qualify for relief and from relatives who are away or in the army. Most of this is spent on clothing, wine and beer.

  The school bus makes the road five days a week to Sano and takes the children into Hi Lo for their education. After they quit or finish school, most of them go to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Utah, or California. So by and large Sano is inhabited by the old and the very young. But for the annual fiesta dance they come from Hi Lo, Ragoon, and the surrounding ranches by the score.

  I looked out at the cactus as Big Boy herded the pickup along the bumpy dirt road. A great cloud of dust rolled away behind us and gradually settled back onto the dusty earth. I wondered what was in the far distant purple hills. It was certain there must be tons of gold, just waiting for discovery. And I was equally certain that back in the interior of the mountains lay a peaceful valley of rich grasses and tall trees.

  I started to ask Big Boy if he had ever ridden in these desolate mountains when the village came into sight. We were early, still an hour until sundown. The town was full of cars, most of them parked in front of Sano’s one bar.

  Old Delfino Mondragon, rip-roaring drunk, came running over to us yelling, “Amigos! A drink for my amigos from Hi Lo!”

  We took it. Then we bought a round of drinks, and then two more. Now it was night. The sun’s heat had faded and the night air was cool. It was time for the dance.

  I thought of going down the street and picking up Josepha O’Neil, a half-Spanish girl whose father ran the one and only grocery in Sano. Jim O’Neil had married a beautiful Spanish girl long ago. Six children had resulted, all of them gone now but Josepha. Many people wondered why anyone as pretty as she should remain in this lonely, isolated place. I, too, wondered.

  I had gone out with her off and on since before the war. There were times when I felt I might be falling in love with Josepha, but I could never say for sure. I decided not to mention her to Big Boy. She would be at the dance anyway.

  We drove across the street and up from the bar about two blocks to what had once been the town hall. The dance was on. The orchestra consisted of a guitar, a violin, and a banjo. They were playing an old Spanish love song when we walked in. The lights from the lanterns were as soft as the music. At once a mellow feeling, part whisky and part atmosphere, stole over me.

  I glanced across the half-filled dance floor to the benches against the wall, where a couple of dozen senoritas and ranchers’ wives were sitting. The ranchers were still clustered in small lots talking shop and slipping out now and then for a drink. In an hour or so they would be dancing on till daylight, yelling and having a big time.

  I saw Josepha; she was looking at me. She was lovely with her dark Mexican hair and light, slightly freckled Irish skin. Her eyes were big and lustrous with a sweet tenderness to complement her almost lush body. I was on my way toward her, when I saw Mona.

  Mona Birk, wife of Les Birk, foreman for the C-Bars outfit northeast of Hi Lo. I had seen her around for years, had danced with her a few times, but I didn’t really know her. Her hair was almost as black as Josepha’s, but it had a reddish cast to it. The lines of her face were more pronounced—definite high cheekbones and a flowing jaw line that made me think of the head of an ancient statue I’d once seen in a magazine. Her eyes were medium size but gave a feeling of great depth and perception. I always felt after I’d looked into her eyes that if she cared to make the effort she could answer any question in the world. Her skin was white and transparent, as if the blood coursed very near the surface, flowing not through veins, but in a solid mass.

  When she stepped in front of me and said in that soft voice that seemed always to whisper, “Hello, Pete,” I just grabbed her by the arm and steered her out on the dance floor.

  “How’ve you been, Mona?” She came to me like silver foil.

  “Fine,” she said, “just fine.”

  “Kids all right?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. She was all fragrance and warm pressure. I suddenly felt hot. I danced with her off and on for an hour. Then I decided I’d better give it a rest. Her husband might get the idea I was enjoying myself.

  I went outside with Big Boy. He was beginning to feel his whisky, and reared back and let out a yell you could have heard all the way to Hi Lo if the wind had been right.

  “By the Lord A’mighty, Pete,” he said, “this is one hell of a fine dance.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and knocked back a big drink. Then I let out a yell myself. It sort of cleansed the soul.

  Big Boy said: “The only time to take a drink of whisky or let out a yell is when you’re by yourself or with somebody. It’s a sure cure for ulcers.”

  I started to tell him about Mona, but nature called and I had to go around to the side of the hall for a visit with the weeds. That was a mistake.

  When I got back inside, Big Boy had Mona, and there was no use kidding myself about the two of them. They went together like a span of black mules. Their cheeks were stuck together like a couple of copulating porcupines. But that invisible blackish mist that hovered over Big Boy seemed to envelop both of them as they danced.

  It hit me right in the gut, as if I had swallowed a five-pound chunk of ice. I was in love with her. I had been all along but had fought it off because she was another man’s wife—and he wasn’t even my friend. But this wouldn’t matter to Big Boy Matson. He had moved in and shot me out of the saddle just as I’d found out where I was riding. It hurt. Along with a lot of other people, I had my reason now to kill Big Boy. But he was my friend and saddle mate. Well, I should have told him. If I had he wouldn’t have touched her, ever. That’s the way he was about those he liked—those very few.

  The night was warming up and so was the music. Everyone was laughing and yelling and there was no trouble except inside of me. I saw Josepha dance by with a drunk cowboy and motion for me to cut in. I turned and went out to the pickup and took a long pull from the bottle.

  I stood there a few minutes and then I heard someone say, “Save one for me.” It was Josepha. I handed her the bottle. She took a small drink. “Why haven’t you danced with me tonight?” she said. “I’ve been waiting.”

  I looked away and said, “I’m sorry.” I was, too.

  “Mona Birk?”

  “Hell, no.” But I said it too quick and too loud.

  “She’s beautiful,” Josepha said quietly.

  “So are you,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.” We got into the pickup. “Would you like to go to a movie?” I asked.

  “In Sano? You’re crazy.”

  “I know.” I started the motor.

  “Let’s go to Ragoon,” I said, forgetting I had Big Boy’s pickup. “Not tonight. I just want to talk to you.”

  We drove along in silence, and then I said, “You worry me. Why do you stay here in Sano? You’re lovely and sensible. You could live better in Ragoon.”

  “Everyone asks me that.”

  “Well, why?”

  “My father,” she said. “He’s happy here. In other places I see so much that is not happy, maybe I am afraid to leave.”

  I touched her hair. “It would be wrong for someone like you not to be happy.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because you’re good. There are enough bastards in the world; they should take on all the suffering.” />
  “We are all bad. The last time I danced with you in Hi Lo I had bad thoughts.” She was smiling.

  I stopped the pickup and pulled her to me. “That was good,” I said.

  Headlights shone down the road, illuminating our faces as if purposely searching us out. “Damn,” I said, “there’s no place in the world you can be alone.”

  “Yes, there is. Drive on, I’ll show you. There’s a road that goes to the river.” A minute later she said, “Turn here.”

  It was only a narrow trail but it was passable. The cactus thickened and stood stark and black.

  “Careful,” Josepha warned. “Don’t drive too near the bank. It sometimes caves off into the river.”

  “River? You call that a river?” I laughed.

  “Well, to us it is. A little water seems like a lot.”

  The narrow stream disappeared into the earth here and there only to struggle upward again and again. The crickets drummed ceaselessly. Moonlight was tangled in the little ripples.

  I held her tight, needing to. “Josepha, what do you think of me? Really?”

  “It would embarrass me to tell you.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Tell me, please.”

  She cupped my face in her hands. “If you should leave me now, I would be terribly unhappy.”

  “Are you going to stay here all your life?” I asked.

  “I am not sure of anything right now. I’ll know later.”

  “Let’s walk by the river.” I took her hand, and we stood looking into the water. A coyote howled.

  “Listen,” I said. “I love to hear them howl.”

  “Did you know the Navahos believe the coyote will be the last living thing on earth?”

  I thought a minute. “Maybe they’re right.”

  “Old Meesa says they are dead lovers come back as coyotes, and they are howling for a love they never found.”

  “Meesa?”

  “She’s a witch. She can heal or hex almost anything.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes. So would you if you knew her.”

  “Come here; well talk about witches later.”

  She came. I kissed her a long time. I pressed the length of her harder against me; then I released her, took her by the arm, and led her back to the pickup.

  I took Big Boy’s heavy sheepskin coat from the seat and spread it on the desert sand. She waited silently. I took her hand and pulled her down across the coat.

  “Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise me one thing. If you can never really love me, tell me now, please.”

  “But I do, I do.”

  The coyote howled again, lonely and distant. A desert owl hooted. The cactus stood black all around. And I pretended that this sweet flesh beneath me was Mona’s.

  Five

  I heard later that Mona’s husband, Les, had tried to whip Big Boy that night. They had been pulled apart but the damage was done. The talk had started. Big Boy had said nothing about it on the way back to Hi Lo that morning, but I heard it around town a couple of times that Les had sworn to get Big Boy one way or another.

  I thought a lot about Mona, and I remembered that she always had a lot of men giving her attention, even when Les was around. He hadn’t ever paid much mind—at least, not on the surface. As far as I knew, she had never done any actual cheating; she— just sort of flirted. Maybe it wasn’t even that. It was more like an instinct she had for men. At least the men felt that way. No doubt a lot of them entertained other thoughts about her, but at a certain point a coldness came over her and a man felt like he would be violating all the rules if he went an inch further. She had been that way with me. But with Big Boy it was different. With him the fences were down, the gates were open.

  What she had was that indefinable thing that makes a woman stand out regardless of her beauty or lack of it. There was something deep about her, something untapped. I couldn’t help wondering what she saw in Big Boy, and resented him for it.

  A week later I saw Big Boy in Lollypop’s and we had a beer together. He said, “I’m quitting that money-starved Jim Ed Love and going to work on Hoover Young’s little outfit.”

  “The pay isn’t as good, is it?” I asked.

  “No, but he’s an old-time working cowboy. That’s the only kind that’s worth a damn any more.”

  “Lollypop, give us another beer,” I said.

  I wanted to ask him about Mona but didn’t. Instead he got to telling me some yams about Horsethief Willy, one of his favorite people around Hi Lo, and I got started in on old Abrahm Frink, my closest neighbor and one of the institutions in the area. We both got to laughing, and I thought that if Abrahm never did anything else worth while in this world, at least he gave me and Big Boy a lot of laughs.

  When I first moved into the Hi Lo country and bought my little outfit, Abrahm Frink’s name came up often. Things like: “That’s a good place you’ve got there, but you’ve picked yourself one hell of a neighbor.” Or, “Nobody can get along with that old buzzard. No one ever has.” Or, “He’s been there forty years, and all he’s ever done is fight and make trouble.” So it went. I was determined that I would be the one to break him down.

  Abrahm had a little two-bit bean and corn farm out in the middle of a lot of grass-covered ranch land. He had been offered twice what his place was worth just to get rid of him, but I don’t think any amount would have bought him out. He enjoyed trouble too much. He was one of the last homesteaders left. Nesters, the ranchers called them. His house was only a half-mile down the hill from my place. The reason for this intimacy in such an isolated country was the water—springs on each side of the fence between us. It was a long way in any direction to another ranch house.

  When I first met him he was about seventy-five years old, and half blind. He wouldn’t admit to being either. He wore a pair of two-dollar glasses from the dime store when he wanted to see something bad enough. He was tall, skinny, and straight as a string. He was so straight he canted back a little bit and looked stiff and brittle, as if he would break long before he would bend.

  His hat must have come to the Hi Lo country with him. Instead of the brim curling up, it curled down. When he stood out in the rain, water ran off it as it would off a steep pitched roof.

  A Dutchman, who had been his neighbor twenty years before, had hit him in the profile with a two by four. This left him with exactly one half-set of upper and lower teeth all on the same side. He chewed tobacco all the time on the side with the teeth in it, and it ran out the other side in chocolate streams that he wiped off first on the back of his hand and then on his shirttail. This absence of teeth created an easy exit for a mouthful of tobacco juice, and he could spit five yards to the left without turning his head.

  His wife was almost as tall as he was, duck-footed, big-ankled, and so dumb she laughed at everything you said. You could tell her that an epidemic of cholera had struck Ragoon and a thousand people had fallen dead the first day, and she would look at you, then slap her thighs, and laugh till she trembled. One morning I said “hello” to her, and it took her ten minutes to pull herself together. Maybe it was the only way she could survive after all those years on a bean farm and all those kids. They had kids running everywhere, aged from two to twenty-two. I never did try to count them. I don’t think Abrahm ever did either.

  They had me over to supper one night, and when we finished trying to beat the kids to what little there was on the table I was too tired to talk but willing enough to listen. Abrahm cussed out everybody in the country. To hear him tell it, there wasn’t a half-honest man within a week’s ride. Every last citizen of the Hi Lo country was a no-good, double-dealing cheat. Liars, thieves, backstabbers, blackmailers and rustlers were tame names, and they had done it all to poor old Abrahm. The government had ruined little men like him and given all the money to bastards like Jim Ed Love.

  “But by gorry I’ll show ’em, the no-good bastards! Them bastards will never get my place,” he said. Then he spit the fresh
juice of a new chew right out on the floor, and growled, “You goddam kids get to hell out of here so us menfolks can talk.”

  It sounded like the Chinese army in retreat. The little devils were snickering and whispering back over their shoulders at me as if they knew a big secret I wasn’t in on. Little girls, big girls, little boys, big boys, and middle-sized boys and girls . . . how in the world that man had time to raise a crop of beans I don’t know, but if there had been a good demand for kids he would have had the market cornered.

  Abrahm didn’t slow down. He covered everybody an inch thick in vituperation until he got to Big Boy Matson. Then he paused and said: “Now there’s a feller with enough guts to amount to something. The best cowhand in the country, when he likes his boss. The trouble with him is he don’t like anybody unless they’re a no-account something or other or an old worn-out cowboy. No, sir, come to think of it, he’ll never amount to a damn. Besides, it don’t make no difference anyhow; somebody’ll kill him before he’s thirty. You mark my words.” I wonder if he ever remembers saying that.

  It was my turn to order a beer. I did and for a little we sat without talking, staring out the window at the little graveyard on the hill above Hi Lo. To get my mind off that well-populated piece of real estate, I recalled the time I had borrowed a so-called work team from Abrahm.

  I figured the one way I could get along with Abrahm was to find and exploit something we had in common. So I told him I was thinking about breaking out a little patch of corn so I could have some horse feed through the winter. This seemed to go down well with him. He even volunteered to lend me a team of work horses and a two-wheeled plow. I decided that all these people who cussed Abrahm were wrong. Lending his work team was one of the most generous things one man could do for another. The trouble was, only two of the four horses had ever been hooked up to a plow before. It took me three days to get the harness on and hook the traces to the single trees and get out to the field. But it only took about three minutes for them to tear off at a forty-degree angle in a dead run and rip down two barbwire fences for a hundred yards on each side, bust up a plow, and nearly cut off one horse’s leg. By the time I got through paying for the damage on the worthless plow and the even sorrier horse, I was $150 in the hole, not to mention my lost time and the condition of my fences.