by Max Evans
He got up and dogtrotted over to his shack. In a minute he was back, and nervous. When he handed me the paper it was wet from his palm. I unfolded it and read:
The Savage cried to the Moon Mother,
"I am great.”
The moon glistening in the heavens did not answer.
Again, louder, the Savage shouted, "I am great.”
The silence was even more profound.
Then in fury the Savage waved Sinewy arms and clenched fists: "Oh, Moon Mother, is it that you do not hear? I am great.”
Silence.
Softly, arms drooping:
"What am I, then, Moon Mother, shattered voice though I am, Moon Mother? Speak to me. With your glorious fight enfold me.”
Silence.
The Savage hurled himself upon the jagged rocks and beat them with fists of blood.
"Moon Mother, after these next words, I can no longer speak.
Oh, Moon Mother, I know what I am. I am nothing.”
A deep and solemn voice roared from the skies.
The vines trembled in the wind.
Dust boiled up around the Savage;
The dust encloaked the Savage.
And he heard:
“You have at this moment, O, Savage, achieved the ultimate of flesh and bone.
You are great.”
I sat very still for a while; then I said, “Levi, I like it.” I didn’t know if it was a good poem or not but I knew I liked it.
He took the poem, folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. “Let’s go get our friend out of jail,” he said.
Eight
I could wait no longer. I had to know. Jealousy ate at me like
a starved dog tearing at the belly of a fresh-killed rabbit. It
drove me to think about Josepha.
I would have to be alone with her, and sober, and give us both time and a fair shake. I was not sure it was possible to love her, but I wanted to very much. Certainly I felt a tenderness toward her and I felt comfortable in her presence. But that seemed pretty puny compared to the way I felt about Mona. She enveloped my being the way a shuck enfolds an ear of corn.
Anyway, I picked up Josepha in her native village of Sano, New Mexico. We, in this country, felt that Sano was a southern outpost for Hi Lo. It was still no place for Josepha. Did she hang on there because of me? The thought was pleasing. At the same time it made me uneasy. I couldn’t ask her and she would never tell.
She said, “If you like, we could drive to Papa’s cabin. It is ten miles into the desert. He has kept it since before I was born. It is an old mining claim, and he will never stop believing in its potential value.”
“Yes,” I said, “we could be alone there.”
“Yes, alone,” she echoed, so softly I could hardly hear.
We said nothing more as the pickup bounced along. It was nice not to have to talk. So many things were right about Josepha.
Ahead, and somewhat below on a long rocky shelf, I could see the cabin. It was lonely in the afternoon sun. It gave the appearance of never having been lived in. If someone were to open the door and step out, it would seem like a resurrection. The vast empty land around the cabin emphasized the fragility of man-made things. The wind would whip the dust into it and over it, and particle by particle, splinter by splinter, it would disintegrate. But today and tonight it would play its role.
Off to the northwest was a ridge a mile and a half long. Scattered about its length were rocks, cactus, and occasional bunches of grass. Under the shade of one projecting rock lolled a coyote, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s. He panted and waited for night to come. By the light of the moon he would seek out the desert mouse, the rabbit, or anything else to fill his belly. If he had no luck, the following day he would simply dine on grasshoppers, ants, or weeds—anything to exist and avoid man.
Half a mile down the mesa in a shallow hole I visualized a cottontail rabbit slumbering in the cool of the earth. He, too, waited for night to nibble and scratch in the sparse vegetation for survival. He would listen and watch carefully for the coyote, the eagle, and the owl, but he would never die of old age.
Forty yards from the rabbit I could see in my mind’s eye a lizard squatted motionless by a sun-soaked boulder. There was absolutely no movement. He blended into the earth as if part of it. If a stray bug or insect happened by, his sticky tongue would dart out in a movement so fast it would seem never to have happened. The next day and the next will be the same for the lizard, the rabbit, and the coyote.
The eagle circling high in the sky, slowly, smoothly, awful-eyed, would see the gleam of the sun on our pickup as we wound toward the waiting cabin. He would watch only from curiosity; we were not his meat.
We drove on, up and down ridges and gullies, twisting right, then left. The sound of the motor must have been noted by a thousand living creatures of this cactus-pronged land.
We stopped. I took her hand to help her out; it was warm and small. It was a hand made for touching, for holding.
We walked down past the cabin with wordless understanding. The spring was so small I wondered how it had ever been discovered at all. But it gave life to a mighty expanse of country. The tracks of the wild things in the shallow mud of its banks told the story. We sat in a small patch of grass and studied the water. From what depths did it come? And if the drought moved in on us as it threatened to do, would it last or would it hide in the guts of the earth to wait for the clouds to come and lure it out again? Or would it be brave and deny this drying, brown death and stay to give itself with courage and generosity to the wild things it sustained?
The wind came taunting, but not as strong as usual, whipping a tiny wave across the shallow water and blowing the long thick hair from Josepha’s shoulders.
I buried my head in the sweep of her neck and held her a long while, savoring her smell. I was at peace for a moment. Slowly I sensed her blood come to life. I kissed her lips, and she held me close to her, without strain, with complete ease. A warmth, a sweetness as of all the fruits of the earth wrapped us around in our completeness.
We lay upon the barren land. The sun dipped and the wind died. Coolness came.
We arose and walked slowly to the cabin. Josepha unlocked the door. She lighted the oil lamp and looked around the room. There was a fine layer of dust over everything. She walked to the bed and pulled the top cover away, then she blew out the light and lay down.
I stood motionless in the middle of the room. The twilight cast blue shafts of light across the room. Out through the tiny window I could see the cactus standing dark green, almost black. It was still as life and death. Then I heard the subtle rustle of a woman undressing.
I followed and lay beside her. It was as nearly perfect as anything I ever knew, or will know.
Later we talked quietly, at peace with each other and ourselves.
“Tell me you love me, Pete. Say it.”
“I love you,” I said, and hoped to God I did.
With loving hands she pulled my head against her breast and caressed my temples. “Oh, darling,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said, but did not know.
The coyote raised his head, bared his fangs, and howled straight up to the heaven. Josepha shivered, and pulled me tighter against her.
But I knew it wasn’t enough. Not yet.
Nine
When Big Boy Matson was ten years old, his father had started lending him out to other ranches. By the time he was twelve he was able to do a man-sized job of cowpunching.
One of the men he worked with was Horsethief Willy. Big Boy was very fond of him. A lot of his ideas on life originated with this man who had once been accused of stealing a horse. They didn’t prove the charge, but he got a nickname for life. To get acquainted with men like Horsethief Willy, Delfino Mondragon, and Levi Gomez is to begin to understand the Hi Lo country.
Horsethief had taken a liking to Big Boy and had taught him all the old-time tricks of horsebreaking and training. He also starte
d him riding bareback broncs at rodeos.
Now, Horsethief was a good bronc rider, but if it was asked around Hi Lo what else he could do, a clear answer would be hard to get. One thing was certain: he could mess up worse than any man I ever heard of.
For instance, there was the time he took on a fence-building job for the C-Bars, and they lost three square miles of land on the deal. In the beginning, Horsethief had sighted the fence line out in good shape, but then he started drinking some of Vince Moore’s bootleg whisky, after which the fence veered off about forty-five degrees in the wrong direction. Not only that, but before his boss caught on, he had dug holes and strung wire and posts for over a mile out into the middle of a section of land belonging to the Federal government.
Now, Horsethief had every right in the world to know what Vince’s bootleg whisky would do to a man. He had been working for Vince about a month. One day Vince took the family into town for his daughter’s wedding. He told Horsethief that it was time to start feeding some silage to the cattle. The grass had been a little short, and it was getting well on into winter;
Vince had a lot of sour mash soaking in his whisky still in preparation for later bottling and dispensing to a select clientele around Hi Lo. Horsethief, who had never had any experience with stills, mistook this to be silage. Wanting to do the best job possible, he fed a good bit of it to Vince Moore’s scrubby old cows. The hound dogs got into it, too.
By the time Vince got home from the wedding his place had gone completely to hell. One old hound had passed out with his head hanging off the porch upside down; another thought he had something treed on top of the windmill and was stumbling round and round the mill, barking and falling down. The third dog had gone to help Horsethief control the riotous cattle. They were all over the place, butting heads like a bunch of young bulls. And there wasn’t a fence left standing anywhere. Horsethief had ridden down two good cow horses and was started on a third when Vince showed up.
He told Vince as soon as he saw him: "By God, I quit! Every goddam critter on this place has gone plumb crazy!”
When Vince found out what had happened, it was unnecessary for Horsethief to submit his resignation.
But the thing that really made it hard for Horsethief to get work with cattle ranchers in the area was the deal he pulled on Jim Ed Love. Jim Ed would have killed Horsethief if he thought he could have gotten away with it. He had gone on a buying trip to purchase some high-powered bull calves to raise for breeding purposes. He went through the Northwestern states, as well as Canada, buying them up. Whenever he had a full carload he had them shipped back down to Hi Lo. On the way back home he stopped over in Denver for a few days to big-shot around, and got to telling some of his cattlemen friends about these bulls. The whole bunch of them loaded up and came out to the ranch to see these amazingly virile creatures.
Horsethief proudly escorted them out to the pasture, saying: "By God, Jim Ed, that was the best-looking bunch of calves I ever worked on. We didn’t lose but two out of the whole bunch. Usually when a man castrates calves that age he has about a 10 per cent loss.”
There sat Jim Ed and his compadres looking at the highest- priced pasture of steer calves in the entire world. Needless to say, Horsethief’s employment was terminated on the spot. Everyone in the country laughed and kidded Jim Ed until he wouldn’t come to Hi Lo for over a month.
Horsethief knew one thing and one thing only—horses. No one ever had a complaint about a horse he had broken. A horse would gentle down or Horsethief would kill him. And he would rein well or get his neck broken. And he would handle a rope or wish he had. But it was never more evident that Horsethief’s talents did not extend to mechanical objects than when he bought a 1935 Chewy. The bowlegged, potbellied, badger-faced little devil looked as out of place working on this car as a brush-popping cowboy in an English tearoom. But work on it he did, just about day and night. Of course, it must be understood that Horsethief was on the road a lot, going from one job to another. Almost any time you traveled anywhere around Hi Lo, there would be Horsethief, pushing his car on foot or pulling it out of a ditch with a team of horses or changing a blowout or scraping the points.
When the radiator started leaking he just poured a sack of Bull Durham tobacco in it. When that didn’t quite do the job, he told Big Boy, "Well, by God, I threw a double handful of horseshit in there and it ain’t leaked a drop since. A man ought to start sackin’ that stuff up and sellin’ it for stopleak.”
He didn’t tell Big Boy that he had a hell of a time keeping the motor from catching on fire. The horse manure had stopped up everything else, too.
He had a neighbor clean the radiator out for him. In fact, everyone in the country at one time or another had worked on his car. How it kept on running was a mystery. It finally got to the point where the motor was so worn he had to carry a five-gallon can of used oil just to get into Hi Lo from his little two-by-four outfit about nine miles from town. Not only that, but he hauled a barrelful of water, too. What with jumping in and out, pouring water and oil in the car, it would take Horsethief most of the day to get to town. It’s no wonder he would sometimes stay over two or three days, resting up for the return trip.
He finally had to give up and trade the Chewy in for a newer job. He crawled under the 1939 model one day to work on the clutch, and a snake bit him on the leg. By the time he got into town the car was smoking, the rods had beat their way out into the fresh mountain air, and Horsethief’s leg was swollen and black.
They had to cut his leg off at the knee. It stopped his rodeoing for a while, but a year later the word got around that Horsethief was going to rope a bull from a Shetland pony in the next show. Everyone came.
Big Boy and I had bucked off that day and were sitting over on the fence when the announcer said: "Folks, we have a special act by one-time bronc rider Horsethief Willy. He is goin’ to rope a thousand-pound bull fresh in off the range, wild as a tiger and . . . he’s goin’ to do it on a little old Shetland pony that don’t weigh a third as much. Not only that, folks, but Horsethief says he is goin’ to jerk this bull down and get off and tie him up.”
All of us had been used to seeing Horsethief around so long that we didn’t even think about that wooden leg of his. Anyway, he didn’t limp much. There were lots of people at the show from out of town and a number of tourists that had no knowledge of Horsethief at all.
"Look at that little pot bellied son of a bitch,” said Big Boy. "He’s actually going to do it.”
He rode out on the Shetland, and even his short legs nearly dragged the ground. He reined into the roping box and shook out a big loop. The chute hand turned the bull out. The bull took off in a high lope, and Horsethief spurred like hell after him. The bull didn’t run very fast, not being too impressed by the opposition, but when he got to the other end of the arena Horsethief was still coming at full speed. The bull turned back, snorted, and tore off one way while the Shetland and Horsethief went the other. The loop went out and caught that big bull deep around the shoulders. Every cowboy there winced, knowing what a terrible stack-up there was going to be when the slack came out of that rope.
Well, I fell right off the fence at what I saw. The audience went wild. There were screams and shouts and eight tourists fainted. That bull just kept on going—and there on the end of the rope was Horsethief’s leg banging along on the ground.
Horsethief had fallen off the Shetland and was yowling out there in the arena, taking on like a man in a tubful of scorpions. Then he stopped moaning and began to laugh.
Pretty soon everybody caught on. The ornery outfit had tied the rope to his leg on purpose and had even gone so far as to paint it blood red. He had only wrapped the rope around the horn of the saddle so it would be sure to pull loose. The applause was tremendous. It was a fine way to retire from the rodeo game.
Big Boy went to town and bought a whole case of whisky and brought it back to the show, and all of us cowboys saluted our most recently retired associate about two
dozen times around.
Horsethief gave Hi Lo something to love in spite of itself.
Ten
When Nick Barnes told us they had found Steve Shaw dead, Big Boy threw his arms up in the air and yelled, “By the Lord A’mighty, fellers, let’s celebrate.”
Nick said, “That ain’t no way to talk about the dead.”
“The world’s a whole lot better off without him, Nick, and just because he’s dead don’t change what kind of a son of a bitch he was.”
I had to agree.
Two nights before I had sat in a poker game when Big Boy laid the wood to Steve Shaw. Usually Jim Ed played when Steve did, but Jim Ed had quit coming around Nick’s when Big Boy was there.
Steve always had so much money in his pocket that he high- played and bluffed the working cowboys right out of the game. But Big Boy drew the hand in low ball he had waited a lifetime for: the best in the deck, an ace to a five. Steve Shaw had a six high, and I was stuck and went broke on an eight. Everybody else fell out. Steve was eyeing that money like it was a naked virgin queen. Finally Big Boy shoved a hundred more in the pot, and Steve hesitated.
Big Boy said, “Hell, I’ve got you beat. I’ve got a five high.” Steve glared at him and then squinted at his cards.
“Come on, Steve, decorate the mahogany so you can see this little beauty of a hand.”
The sweat stood out on Steve’s yellow, thin face, and his murky blue eyes glinted. He was scared. I would have mortgaged my ranch with a hand like his.
“You really got it, Big Boy?”
“You pay to look, Steve. Too bad Jim Ed ain’t here to do your thinking for you.”
That did it. Breathing hard, Steve covered the bet. I guess the pot was $400 or $500.
Big Boy didn’t wait. He pitched the cards over to Steve face down and raked in the money. With trembling hands Steve picked up the cards and looked. He dropped them, stood up, and left without a word. He walked half a block down the street to the apartment he kept in Hi Lo and fell dead just as he closed the door behind him. It was two days before they found the body.