“I don’t want to be shot at all,” Marwood countered. “I am looking at this situation from a narrowing field of choices. They are all of them bad. But some are less bad than others. We can fight our way out of this, but we have to be smart about it.”
“I spent time in a Mexican cárcel,” Lovich said aloud. “You don’t want to know what those bastards fed us, or what they did to us. I don’t want to go back there again. I’m for Texas.”
“What about Cibola?” Botis asked. His eyes remained on Marwood. In truth they had never left his.
“Hang Cibola,” Marwood answered. “I want to get my ass out of this trouble first.”
The rest of the men had nothing more to say.
Marwood walked up to Botis and said low so the others could not hear, “I want to find Cibola, too, Captain. That I am willing to hold off on something I have wanted answered my entire life . . . that should tell you where I’m standing right now.”
Botis faced around to the Tonkawas. “What do you say about this, Red Thunder? I want your opinion as well.”
The younger Tonkawa drew a deep breath. “Comancheria is a death sentence for every man who enters,” he said. “Despite what white people think, Indians are not all alike. Tonkawas have no special immunity from the savage leanings of the Comanche nation. I hold the best course of action is the one proposed by Mar. These are my words, and I want my counsel to be considered.”
Jubal Stone leaned into Bill Rota and elbowed his ribs. “That sly old Tonk speaks better American than you do, old man.”
“Aye,” Rota said, “he’s a smart old dog.” He lowered his voice to Stone. “We are a long way from the sea, Jubal.”
“You speak it plain enough,” Stone muttered back.
“So where do we go?” Spaw asked aloud. “I’ll ride anywhere you boys say. I don’t care none.”
“I say we ride through the state and kill every goddamn Texan we see,” Ed Gratton said. His black eyes burned with hatred.
“Ed’s right,” Jubal Stone said. “We can’t let these people push us around.”
“I’m for that,” Broadwell echoed. “I’m tired of being hoorawed by these motherless sons of bitches.”
“Well, we can keep west a little ways out and ride up through Santa Angela,” Marwood said. “I would study on that.”
Doc Quillen lifted his head for the first time. “Fort Concho is at Santa Angela,” he warned. “And to get there we got to ride right past Fort Stockton.” Someone groaned. None of them wanted to see Buffalo Soldiers ever again.
“We can whip them,” Ed Gratton said. “They ain’t nothing.”
“I’ve been to Fort Stockton, Ed,” Doc Quillen said quietly. “You think that bunch we ran into out west was a bugger bear? They got the 9th Cavalry in Stockton, boys. Them mean niggers is known all over this here back country. They ain’t near a patch to fool with. There ain’t a man alive who can tie a can to their tail, believe you me.”
“Yes, Doc, but they are looking for us everywhere,” Marwood said. “This is all empty land. The Mexican border is more settled than West Texas, until you hit the really deep desert. And what good are we there without food and guns? At least in Santa Angela we are near enough to Comancheria to jump if we have to. That’s all Comanche borderland up that way, and it leaves us the option if the captain wants to take it.” Marwood shrugged. He was out of words. “That’s all I have to say. I guess I’ve spoken my piece. I’m like Spaw, I’ll do whatever you boys want.”
An unsettled quiet fell over the company. They waited for Botis to decide their final fate.
“It’s your decision, Cap,” Lovich said gruffly. He leaned on his rifle to take the weight off his bad leg. “I’ll kick their peckers in line if that’s your call.”
“I agree with Mar to this extent,” Botis began. “We have to get out of this open country. Santa Angela is our best bet for now. We can re-provision and . . .” He stepped back and motioned for Marwood. “Mar, I want to talk to you.”
The two walked off together until they created some distance between themselves and the weary band.
“Look, I am not hiding anything from you,” Botis said. “I want you to know that much.”
“I think you are, Captain,” Marwood said. “I think you have been all along. I think all this taking on jobs and working for the Governor to kill Apaches has been a ruse that works to your benefit. I think you have a definite plan of what you want to do. Like I said before, I am not kicking about it. I want to get out of this trap and make some breathing room before we push on.”
Botis mulled this over. “I mentioned at the bodega you might jump one way or the other,” he reminded Marwood. “Or for yourself. I continue to remain of two minds on that point, son. You’re a good man, but you’re a hazard.”
Marwood refused to speak to that.
Botis kept silent for a bit. “I know you had reservations about that village in Mexico,” he allowed.
“I got to thinking what a man told me in Laredo about a line crossed. I saw it crossed in Sand Creek.”
Botis scowled. “You know what a line in the sand is, Mar?” he asked. “It’s something a man can erase and redraw for his own benefit.”
Marwood removed his hat. He looked at it in his hands, put it back on and squared the brim. “Botis,” he said in a clear voice, “I don’t want to set myself up against you. But if I wanted to light out I’d do it, and neither you or any of your men, or your damn Indian spies, would be able to stop me.”
“That’s not the point I am trying to make,” Botis said. “I’m not Chivington. I will let no man step in my way. Not even a man I respect. Not even a man I would die for. Not even you.”
Botis turned on his boot heel. His hands were in the deep pockets of his leather jacket. The sun burned full on his face.
Standing before them was a massive juniper tree. It rose seven feet high, with thick intertwined limbs. Long, snake-like trailing branches sprawled over an expanse half the size of any decent town plaza. It was petrified and brown, of ancient lineage and with a hard, sapless core. The berries were brittle, desiccated by red-hot winds. It had been dead so long there was no chaff under the limbs or piled around the base of the trunk. The needle-like leaves had been blown away. The only living thing it housed was a spider, which staged its silk net across a V-shaped branch lying close to the ground.
Botis ranged his eyes over the ancient plant.
“Hard to believe something that big could ever die,” he said with wonder.
CHAPTER 15
Pecos County, fifty miles south of Fort Stockton, west of the deep blue green and cavernous, Pecos River. Mid-June day, sun hot enough to sear skin, and a drum-rattling wind.
They rode past old tipi rings and wickiup sites overgrown with thick scrub. Charred stones that had once ringed age-old fires. The obdurate ground was covered with flint shards and other prehistoric artifacts of no modern use to anyone.
It was in this field Bill Rota dismounted. He passed the reins behind his back and kicked through the thin stony soil, searching for arrowheads.
By this time his thoughts were often of the sea and the whaling ships upon which he had worked. Stone’s reminiscence about his sailing days brought all the old memories of harvesting spermaceti rushing back with untrammelled ferocity. The white curve of sail; the bite and splash of salt wind. A whale breached to leeward and you went out after it with your heart pounding and blood in your eyes. When you made the kill it was a feeling you had conquered something so immense it would one day roar back to life and overwhelm you with its crushing power. So you had to hold it back as best you could, and live with the knowledge of what you had done. But, that, too, was a kind of immortality, and every whaler knew it when he set out from Nantucket, with the shadow of the ship long across the morning sea while he stood at the rail smoking a clay pipe.
Rota
squatted on his boot heels and furrowed his stubby fingers through the dry dirt, turning up flint flakes. He had garnered a large collection of arrow points in his fifty-odd years. He long wondered at the slow progress of making war upon men and animals alike with spear, harpoon, and iron. Long blood rivers of time and civilization. He looked up and behind him. The rest of the party had kept on riding, and did not notice his absence.
He watched his horse cropping mouthfuls of grass and studied the dry, futureless land around him, and the dry, futureless future still before him. The sea, the sea. One last time, he thought, before he died. Dip his hand into salty spume and taste the yesteryears of his life. How far to the sea? Weigh anchor and ride a southern course to Del Rio. Find a way across the Seminole Canyon without breaking his damn neck. Follow the del Norte back down to Laredo. Then set a new course and ride the evenstar until you reach the Port of Corpus Christi. Perhaps he could work passage on an outward-bound ship. A ship to anywhere. The Mother sea. Salt water tied to the coursing blood of every man’s veins. The sea, his life. Was Mary alive? He turned the iron wedding ring on his finger. They’d all be grown now, his sons. Storms in my heart. Before I die. The idea took hold. He nodded to himself. Yes. One last time, before I die.
He looked up trail. Botis and the men were gone. Rota felt the silence and the ever-present sense of solitude men experience in the desert when faced with a decision that will change their lives.
He walked to his horse, picked up the trailing reins. He wasn’t quite sure yet. He swung the free ends across a cactus flower, making up his mind. He placed his foot in the stirrup and lifted his body into the saddle.
Before I die, yes, he thought, and before the storms of old age send me under the chop one last time.
He reined the horse around and rode south into the welcoming desert, and was never seen again.
Charley Broadwell was the first to notice Rota’s absence. He rowelled his horse and caught up to Botis riding point.
“Cap, Old Bill done lit a shuck on us.”
Botis looked over his shoulder at the tired string of riders cutting through the awful dust and heat. He spoke into Acheron’s ear, and kept riding.
Broadwell decided this was an invitation to offer up more information. “He was bringing up drag last I saw.”
“Very well, Charley.”
Broadwell figured he had done all he could. He rolled his bay back around and took up his usual position in line.
Red Thunder and Little Shreve were three furlongs out and riding swing. Botis made a slight motion and the two Tonkawa scouts came flying back on their bareback ponies.
Marwood watched Botis address the scouts. They peeled off and rode back down the train until their separate figures melted and warped into the forsaken desert heat.
The following day yellow dust clouds filled the sky ahead of them. Two-dozen cowboys were driving a long herd of bone-thin cattle along the Pecos River. Many of the cowboys were blacks, Mexicans, even a few Indians. They were headed for Sante Fe and parts north. Four thousand head stretched from sun to compass point, endless and unending all.
The mounted killers watched the tall, rangy beasts pass like a living river, and walk collectively into a wavering horizon of shimmering, blistering heat. Dirty, speckled beasts, bedecked of colour: brown and yellow-pale, bright black or blood red, and every combination thereof. There were great mossy horns on the steers, like fantastic medieval weapons. They ate anything in their path: mesquite bark, cactus paddle, the spines of cholla, and dead leaves. They could walk all day on a sup of water. They were more bone and sinew than muscle meat. They were even known to kill horses, and could stand their ground before packs of javelinas or rattling snakes. They were rumoured to chase coyotes come morn, and could walk all night under the stars.
The afternoon shuddered and waned and finally gave up the day. The lowing river of cattle ended, and the cowboys riding drag passed by without a word or a nod.
Botis and his exhausted men turned east and rode into their own shadows. An evening star rose above the low bare hills.
Jubal Stone spied smoke threading the pecan trees ahead. They were a mile out from the Pecos River when they neared the Horsehead Crossing ford. They heard a rhythmic clunk of an axe cutting through wood. They made for the spire of chimney smoke, halting in the yard of a log cabin, with chickens, pigs, and a few head of miserable stocker cattle.
It was a hardscrabble homestead. The ground was littered with cow and horse dung. A boy of fourteen chopped pecan wood beside the corner of the house. Another boy, a tow-headed lad of eight winters, collected wood splints for kindling in a blanket folded over his back.
Botis sat his horse while a man holding a short and deadly Mare’s Leg rifle emerged from the cabin.
“We have come for water,” Botis said.
The farmer stood in his tracks and looked them over. He turned his head and spat. “We have water.”
“I thank you, kindly.”
“Proud to offer,” the farmer said.
Botis came down off his big horse. He picked up a wooden pail and worked the handle of a pump. Sweet spring water gushed. He sat on the stone coping and let Acheron drink before he lifted the pail and drank himself.
The rest of the men took this as sign and slid from their saddles. They stood in line, patient confederates all, and waited to water up.
“How long have you settled in these parts?” Botis asked the farmer. Before he could answer, a woman appeared in the open doorway of the little farmhouse. She wore a pale yellow dress and black button shoes. Her face was lean and pinched, her pinned hair brittle and greying. She looked dry and used up, as if the land was killing her by small degrees.
“Get back in there, woman,” the farmer said. She disappeared back inside the house. The farmer turned back to Botis. “We’ve been here nigh on twenty year’ all told,” he said. “Paid for in blood. My eldest, Quentin, got hisself killed on by a Comanch’ war party two years ago.”
“I am sorry about your boy,” Botis said.
“It’s a hard life,” the farmer replied.
“Yes.” Botis stared philosophically at the darkling sky, and the dark doorway into which the woman had disappeared.
“Texas is hard on dogs and women,” he said.
“Ain’t that a truth,” the farmer agreed, earnestly. The fourteen-year-old boy ceased his chopping. He listened to the men talk.
Botis picked up the drooping reins of his horse. “We would like to stay the night on your place. We’ll be out of your way come early sun.”
The farmer pointed. “There’s a crick down in the bottom of that draw. Good shade trees. You’re welcome to build your fire there.”
The creek lay fifty yards away. Botis walked toward it, leading Acheron. Marwood and the other men in the party followed, walking their horses.
They unsaddled the animals, kicked leaves into passable beds, pitched down their torn blankets, and collapsed like broken marionettes. Spaw got a fire going. The men drew near and let the miles of the long, deadly ride slough from their minds like old snakeskin. They cooked a tierce of white-tailed jacks Little Shreve had killed before going after Rota. He always carried a pouch full of rocks and could whizz one from the back of his pony. They ate the meat from the points of their knives.
They talked among themselves but little. Each man sat by the fire and kept his own counsel. Some smoked, or repaired leather reins and clothes. Ed Gratton unfolded a sewing pouch. He drew out a bone needle and white thread, and went to darning his torn stockings.
The night rushed in. Pale moon fire filled the sky. A coyote yipped on the flat and dropped quiet.
“You better come out of those trees,” Botis said to the gathering dark.
A shadow broke away from one of the trees and crunched through leaves and twigs. It was the fourteen-year-old boy come alone. He stood at the edge of the
firelight where Marwood sat. His eyes were filled with curiosity.
“Step up to the fire,” Botis said.
The boy hesitated like a deer caught in the open. He drew near.
“What are you doing here?” asked Botis.
“I want to ride out with your men.”
They looked at one another, directed their collective gaze back to the boy.
“You don’t know anything about us,” Botis said.
The boy looked like he might cry. “I know you’re living,” he said.
Some of the men looked down at their blankets or cleaned their guns. Botis held the boy’s gaze.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Franklin Perry. I’m called Frank, though. Mostly by my Pap.”
“Frank, belike your father needs you to stay around the house and chore,” said Botis. “You’d best head back before he gets to missing you.”
“Aw, he don’t care none what I do.”
“He might strap you some, he finds you here.”
“I guess I’ve been whomped a time or two already,” Frank said.
“He comes out here looking, I don’t want to have to shoot your daddy.”
The boy must have heard something in Botis’s voice—a welcoming tolerance. He did not quit the firelight.
“I have a gun,” he told them.
Botis raised his eyebrows.
“My Pap keeps it locked up. But I can shoot it good. We go hunting of a Sunday, him and me.”
Marwood scrunched aside. Frank squatted beside him on his thin shanks, eyeing the ring of fire rocks.
“I ran away from home once already,” he told them. His slender hands were clapped before him. A log popped in the fire, sparks flew. He shifted his weight to another leg. “I had enough of working daybreak to backbreak, so I lit out. I lived off the land for two weeks. I killed rabbits with a stick and got my leg tusked open by a wild boar. I was some kind of cold and hungry so I came home whipped dead. It was near midnight. I crept back in bed and lay there waiting for my Pap to hide me good. I heard his footsteps, and he stood in the doorway, and you know what he said? He said, ‘You got it out of your gut?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I guess I did.’ Then he went back to bed. That was last year. We never talked about it again, him and me.” The boy licked his mouth. “But I didn’t get it out,” he said with fierce pride. “I don’t think I can burn it out if I tried.”
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