by Jory Sherman
Luz Aguilar looked up as Mickey rode around the corner of the house. She was still young and beautiful, Mickey thought, but like most of the Mexican women in their teens and twenties, and Apache, too, she would grow old before her time. Too much work, too many children in a short span of time, too much trouble with their men—all these things served to age the women on the frontier or away from civilization. Luz was probably no more than eighteen, but already there were shadows under her beautiful brown eyes and little spider marks where she frowned.
Luz did not speak to him as he rode up close to her, nor did she stop what she was doing. Instead, she continued to scrub the clothes in her hands, dipping them into water bubbly with lye soap and raking them across a board that had been glued with small battens to make the surface rough.
“Where is Matteo?” Mickey asked.
“Miguelito has gone to the brasada, to El Rinc6n,” Luz said. She moved her head to indicate where her husband was. Mickey had forgotten that Luz called him by his middle name, Miguelito.
“And the vaqueros? Where are they?”
“They are with Miguelito.”
“Who is watching over the cattle?”
“The men come back in the evening. Miguelito, he stays out there. The young boys should be watching the cattle. Did you not see them?”
“No, I did not see them.”
“Well, they were probably asleep. They are lazy boys. Like their mothers.”
“Why does Matteo not come back with the men?” Mickey asked.
“He stays out there to be with God,” she said.
Mickey did not know what to say. From Luz’s tone she did not like her husband to be away. He wondered why Matteo had gone to that wild brush country, the brasada, and why he took the men there and why he did not return with them in the evenings.
“Miguelito wants to see you,” Luz said, unexpectedly.
“I have just returned from Mexico,” Mickey said.
“You are to go over to the brasada right away.”
“How will I find him? Out there?”
“You will see where he has gone. He left signs.”
Mickey nodded and looked off in the distance. The brasada was a desolate place, a maze of mesquite and swampy ground where a man could get lost and never come out. He had seen some of that brush before, with his people, the Lipan, who considered it a sacred place. Some of his people had seen visions while inside there, and some had never returned after venturing deep inside the labyrinth. Was this what Matteo was looking for as well? But why were all the hands there, too? Had Aguilar gone crazy?
Luz startled him again when she asked: “Where is your wife? Dawn.”
“She is with the People, down in Mexico. She waits for my return.”
“That is good that she waits for you,” Luz said, and Bone thought she meant more than she had spoken about.
“Yes,” he said. “I will ride over to El Rincón and look for Matte—Miguelito.”
“Go with God,” Luz said.
Mickey Bone nodded and spurred his horse, headed away from the house. He looked back once, but Luz was hanging more clothes up and it was as if he had never been there.
He passed more cattle grazing on the prairie’s sparse grasses. These were part of the herd Aguilar had brought up from Mexico when he claimed the Rocking A Ranch from his uncle, Benito. This had been Matteo’s plan and Bone had agreed to work for him. Matteo had killed Benito and Benito’s wife, Pilar, Matteo’s own mother. Since that day, Bone had gone back to Mexico to sell some horses for cash and he carried that money with him now.
There were some boys watching the herd. They had truly been asleep, but when they saw him, they rose out of the grasses in their white trousers and shirts looking like diminutive wraiths and picked up their sticks and tried to look busy and responsible. They shaded their eyes and watched Bone as he rode past, but they did not wave, nor did he give them any sign that he had noticed them.
Dogs emerged from the brush, chased after the boys, and wagged their tails. One or two barked at Bone, but did not chase after him. They sniffed him over a long distance and then turned tail and ran back to their young masters. Soon, Bone left the pasture and rode the sloping land as the mesquite got thicker, following a wide path that was marred with horses’ hoofprints.
The trail was bordered by mesquite stumps and the pathways littered with the bark of dead trees, some rotting to dust, others so old they were turning to stone. Bone felt as if he were riding through a graveyard. After a time, he could no longer see the cleared ranch land, and the concourse of trails and roads intersected and intertwined into a bewildering maze. But he followed the tracks of horses that were most recently engraved in the soil and these led him to the top of a low hill where he could see the surrounding terrain.
As Bone rode up to the thick mesquite forest known as the brasada, he heard voices in the distance.
The trail disappeared into the dense thicket of trees and brush. The voices he heard were muffled and he could not determine their directional source. As he rode toward the dark opening, a rider appeared carrying a rifle. Bone did not recognize him.
“What do you want?” the vaquero asked.
“I am Bone. I come to see Matteo.”
“Follow me,” the man said.
“What are you called?” Bone asked, in Spanish.
“I am called Isidro,” the man said.
Isidro followed a twisting course through the brasada, ducking under the mesquite branches, crossing small sloughs, over dry packed ground where the sun shone like a beacon through the green leaves. Along the way, Bone heard rifle fire that startled his horse, single shots and volleys, and the occasional bark of a command.
Presently, Isidro rode into a wide clearing on high ground, a place that stirred some primordial memory in Bone’s mind as he looked at the remnants of adobe structures, little crumbling dwellings and the stark detritus of jacals that had rotted away.
At the far end of the clearing, Bone saw the vaqueros gathered in a cricle. As he rode closer, he heard the stern voice of Matteo giving orders to fire. Isidro melted away, back into the brush. One moment he was in front of Bone, and then he was gone.
Another Mexican rode out to see who Bone was, challenged him in Spanish.
“I am Bone. I have come to see Matteo.”
“Come, then,” the rider said, and Mickey saw that the man was heavily armed, with two pistols, two rifles, powder bags, horns and shot pouches hanging over his chest.
As Bone rode closer, following the sentry rider, he noticed that some of the men were performing military maneuvers. One line of men would fire their rifles and then kneel down, while a second phalanx would step up and fire theirs as the first shooters reloaded their rifles. Puffs of white smoke billowed from the muzzles and settled in the grasses so that there was a pall of smoke yards wide in front of the riflemen.
“There is Matteo,” the sentry said to Bone. “Over there.” He pointed to the man standing off from the shooters.
“I see him,” Bone said. The sentry nodded and rode back to watch the road. Bone rode across the meadow, dismounted, let his reins trail. His dun horse began to graze. Matteo looked over at Bone, barked an order to the shooters. They broke up ranks and walked to the shade of a clump of mesquite and started building smokes.
Matteo started walking toward Bone.
Bone noticed that some of the men started packing up their rifles, saddling their horses. He saw that there were flattened places where they sat, probably to rest and eat their lunches during the day. It was as if they did not want to be near the crumbled adobes and the decayed remains of the jacals.
“You have returned from Mexico,” Matteo said. It was not a question.
Bone nodded.
“Good. You can stay here with me tonight. We will talk.”
As Matteo and Bone stood there, the men in the mesquite finished their smokes and walked off into the woods. They returned a few moments later riding their horses. Sm
all groups began to ride off toward the woodcutter’s trail. None of them waved, none spoke as they passed Matteo and Bone.
“It is good you do not ask questions,” Matteo said. “But I will tell you everything when they have all gone.”
“It is your business, Matteo.”
“And you are a part of it, my friend.”
Matteo’s face, as always, was a mask. Bone knew that Aguilar was a man who thought things through before he spoke and that he had big plans for himself, a purpose, always, and he would tell what was on his mind when it suited him. He was a man who commanded respect, although he was still young. There was something inside him that was strong, like iron, and people sensed that about him. He seldom smiled. He was a serious man and Bone liked that about him.
When all the men had left the meadow, it was very quiet. Matteo brought out the makings, built a smoke. He handed the papers and tobacco to Bone. Bone rolled a cigarette. Matteo held up his burning glass and lit their smokes.
“Bring your horse, Mickey,” Matteo said. “We’ll put him up and feed him. There is a corral in the brasada, out of sight.”
Bone caught up the dun and followed Aguilar across the clearing. The sun was on its descending arc in the western sky and drew the long shadows from the trees, striped the grass. Matteo slapped Bone’s bedroll, squeezed one of the saddlebags.
“You do not have much food with you,” Aguilar said.
“Some hardtack, jerky.”
“We will eat and drink some wine. You will tell me how you did with the horses you took to Mexico.”
“I have the money for you.”
“I will get it from you later. I am training my men to fight. To shoot, to follow orders. My little army.”
Bone said nothing.
The two men came to a clump of tightly packed mesquite trees. Beyond, a corral stretched in a U shape, formed by mesquite logs and boughs. Just past the growing trees, there was an opening. Across this opening, there were fresh-cut logs, a makeshift gate to the large corral. Aguilar’s horse whinnied and trotted out to the gate. There were buckets inside with water and feed. Matteo opened the gate as Bone unsaddled the dun. A moment later, he slapped his horse on the rump and it ran inside past the gate. Aguilar’s horse sniffed noses with the dun and laid back its ears as Bone’s horse drank from one of the water buckets.
Matteo led Bone to his camp which was invisible from a few yards away, since it, too, lay inside a massive half circle of adobe bricks. Trees growing above the campsite served to break up the smoke from Aguilar’s fire. Over a supper of quail and rabbit, stale tortillas, fiery salsa, frijoles, the two men talked.
“There is trouble again with the Apaches. Cuchillo’s son, Culebra,” Aguilar said, chuckling. “Baron made a big mistake when he killed Cuchillo.”
“You are still friends with Culebra?”
“Yes. I buy horses from him, horses that he steals from Baron.”
“And cattle?”
“We do not need cattle. We need to sell what we have.”
“When? How?”
“I am watching, and waiting. This Martin will lead us to the markets. But I do not trust him. I think he is stealing some of my land.”
“Do you fear him?” Bone asked.
“I have some respect for him. I watch him.”
“It is not Martin that you should be watching, Matteo. It is the son, Anson.”
“The boy? Why, that one is still suckling at his mother’s breast. He is no older than I am.”
“Do you remember Juanito Salazar? He says that the young Baron is very strong. Even Culebra says this.”
“Anson Baron is a boy. And, yes, I remember Juanito Salazar. He was more dangerous to me than any of the Barons. He was a smart man. Muy sabio. Very wise.”
Bone did not add or subtract from what Matteo had said. He knew Anson better than Matteo did. He had liked the boy when he worked for Baron. Anson had wanted to go away with Bone when he left that place. He would have gone, too, if Bone had not sneaked away in the night.
Matteo looked at Bone a long time as he sucked the marrow from a rabbit bone. He pondered his face in the firelight, trying to read his eyes, trying to discern what Bone was thinking.
“You do not say much about the Baron boy, Mickey. Do you fear him as well?”
“I am not afraid of him.”
“But, you what?”
“I respect him, as you respect his father,” Bone said.
“That boy? Respect? Why?”
“He is stronger than the father, but the father is a strong man, too. Anson could be an Apache himself except for his birth.”
“What in the devil do you mean by that? He is a gringo.”
“There is something in him that is Apache, I think,” Bone said. “He is of the land more than he is of his parents.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Matteo said, a note of irritation in his voice.
“Maybe I do not know either.”
“You know. You tell me. If Anson Baron is to be my enemy, I want to know all about him.”
Bone looked away from the fire, into the sunset sky, at long thin clouds painted salmon and purple, all silver rimmed and tinged with gold patches. He daubed a tortilla in the grease of a clay bowl, his slender fingers roiling it around as if plucking some instrument of divination.
“When I went away from the Baron rancho to be with my people, Anson wanted to go with me. There was something in his eyes that almost made me take him. A wildness, maybe, the look of a wolf that wants to be free of the trap.”
“That does not tell me anything. Just that the boy is stupid.”
“He is very smart. He learns quick. I think he will run the Baron rancho better than his father. I think he will make a very bad enemy for you.”
“Why? What makes him so strong?”
Bone swallowed bites of the grease-soaked tortilla before he answered. He drank from the goatskin of wine and took a deep breath.
“Why?” Bone replied. “Because Anson is not afraid of death.”
“How do you know this, Mickey?”
All Bone said was: “I just know.”
Matteo sat back and set his bowl aside. He reached for the bota and tipped it to his lips. He squeezed the skin and a stream of wine poured into his throat.
“We will see what young Baron is afraid of,” Matteo said. “If it is not death, it will be another thing, eh?”
Bone was silent, looking once again at the sky to the west, already turning black as a raven’s wing.
6
JORGE WINCED EACH time Anson plucked a spine from his back. Peebo Elves, a rifle in his hand, stood by the open door, looking and listening for any sign of Apaches. Tumbleweeds rolled across his line of vision, some coming to rest against the corral where his horses continued to eat. When he wasn’t doing that, he was watching each quiver of the Mexican’s flesh with obvious enjoyment.
“Seems to me,” Peebo said, “that if you pulled off his shirt, you’d get most of the stickers out.”
“No, no,” Jorge protested.
“I thought of that,” Anson said. “If you don’t stop shakin’, I might just do that.”
“This Culebra, how come he didn’t just cut your throat and lift your scalp?” Peebo asked the Mexican.
“He say it is a warning,” Jorge said. “He say to tell you he will make war on you, Anson.”
“Hell, looks to me like he already has,” Peebo said.
“It’s just talk,” Anson said. “We killed his daddy and he’s riled up.”
“I had the fear,” Jorge said in Spanish. He cried out as Anson pulled two thorns at once.
“Let me spell you, Anson,” Peebo said. “I think I can make better time.”
“No, no,” Jorge said again. “Anson, he does it good.”
Anson jerked a clump of spines from the small of Jorge’s back and the Mexican almost jumped off the bed. Then, Anson stood up. He looked at Jorge. There were spines still sticking in his legs and rum
p.
“Jorge, you got to take off your clothes and let Peebo do this for a while. I’m plumb tuckered out.”
Peebo grinned. “Get naked, Jorge. I’ll get them stickers out in no time at all.”
Jorge looked up at Peebo in dismay. Peebo smiled at him like some impish elf. Jorge shuddered.
“Come on, Jorge,” Anson said. “We ain’t got all day.”
Jorge unbuttoned his shirt. Peebo grabbed the collar and skinned the shirt down Jorge’s arms and jerked the shirt clean. Jorge let out a cry of pain. But, several spines came off with the shirt.
“Now, your trousers,” Peebo said.
Jorge looked sheepish as he reached for his belt. Anson nodded to him that he should continue.
Jorge untied the thong that held his pants up and slid them down off his legs, wincing at each inch of travel. He stepped out of them.
“Christ,” Peebo said. “He does look like a porkypine for danged sure.” Then, he began pulling spines from Jorge’s back and legs, his hands working smooth and swift. It was all Jorge could do to keep from dancing with the sharp pain. His body was so peppered with tiny drops of blood it looked as if he had the measles.
Anson watched Peebo work in fascination. Jorge’s eyes were closed and his flesh quivered like jelly each time a thorn came out.
“You know, Peebo,” Anson said, “we probably can’t pay you for a while. Money’s real scarce on the Box B.”
“Oh yeah?”
“That’s why me and Jorge been gatherin’ up strays without no help. We have only a few hands to take care of the herds.”
“Well, me and your daddy can work somethin’ out.”
“You and me, you mean,” Anson said.
“I reckon.”
“It’s kind of embarrassin’.”
“Well, your daddy said I could go to work for him. We never did talk pay.”
“Well, this might be a good time.”
“How do you figger to raise cash?” Peebo asked.