by Paul Bagdon
“You keel heem?” Arm asked as I reined in near where he sat.
“You betcha.”
“Bueno. Back-shootin’ sumbitch, he no deserve to leeve.”
I didn’t bother to point out that the buffalo man hadn’t shot from anywhere near Arms’s back. I figured a man who’s just missed death by the slightest part of an inch deserves to say whatever he cares to.
I stepped down from my horse to help Arm onto his. He tried to push me away, cursing in Spanish, but I saw he was wobbly on his feet and that the places on his face where he’d cleaned away the blood were a sickly, pale white. He slumped a bit in his saddle, once he was mounted.
“Teresa and Blanca will doctor up that ditch in your forehead,” I said.
“Boolsheet. I don’ need no doctorin’. Ain’t nothin’ but a scratch, no?”
“No. It needs to be fixed a bit.”
The Spanish cursing continued.
We rode back to the ranch at a walk and I noticed that Arm had both hands grasped on his saddle horn with his reins tied together just above his hands. It was full dark when we got back. I helped him off his horse and walked him into the house. I called the women down from their room and set them to work in fixing my partner.
Our horses—as well as the mare, the colt, and the stud—needed looking after an’ I took care of all of them. The stallion actually hustled over to me when I climbed down into the corral with a bucket of grain and a flake of hay jammed under my arm.
The women had Arm stretched out on his bed on his back with a yellowish salve packed into his wound. Teresa was just wrapping a piece of cloth cut from a sheet around his head while Blanca held him steady as I walked into his room.
“Jake,” Arm said, “these women, they will give me no tequila. You will fetch a bottle?”
I looked at Blanca. She shook her head negatively.
“Later on,” I said.
“First, you will take a bowl of broth, then maybe a seep of tequila,” Teresa said.
“Seep, my ass. I wan’ the whole damn bottle.”
“There is no need to talk like the campesino,” Blanca said sternly. “We are not putas. You weel show a little respect, Armando.”
“Damn leetle,” Armando grumbled, not quite loud enough for the women to hear.
Teresa mixed a couple of pinches of a grayish powder into the bowl of beef soup for Arm and he slept quietly the entire night, without the tequila. In the morning he was as pleasant as a rattler in a bucket of boiling water. He tried to stand but fell back onto his bed. After another bowl of soup he slept the day away.
I talked with the women in the kitchen. “The powder, it makes for sleep an’ healing. ’Fection is the only problem an’ we don’ see none of that. Lots of blood he lost, though. He needs the rest.”
“Suppose he has a concussion or some such thing?” I asked.
“No ’cussion. None. His ojos are same,” Teresa said.
“Equal, is what she means,” Blanca said.
I went out to take care of the chores. After mucking out the stalls and cleaning the corral a bit, I fed the whole crew. I noticed that the colt had his nose in the air a good part of the time, and that the mare held her tail slightly raised from her rear end. I took a closer look and almost whooped with joy—I was pretty sure she was ready to be bred.
The problem was the stud—he was the big question. I didn’t doubt that the mare would accept him, but I was concerned how he might damage her—some stallions get pretty rank, jamming their tool into the wrong orifice, or biting at a mare as he mounted her. If Arm was in better shape we could put ropes on the bay and wrestle him away from the mare if we needed to. But, he wasn’t. The women, I’m afraid, would be useless—and there’s the danger of catching a hoof in the head.
That left me two choices, and I needed to decide quickly since a mare stays in heat only a short time, particularly during winter. I could try it alone, or I could scramble into Hulberton and ask Tiny to come out and help me.
It didn’t take long to make the decision or to saddle my horse and haul for town. On the way, I had some thoughts about the man I’d killed the day before. I felt no guilt or sorrow whatsoever —to me the shot I fired into him was of no more consequence than plugging a rabid coyote. I compared that with how I felt after Arm’s gunfight with the kid and then decided there were simply no comparisons to be made, and put the whole matter outta my mind.
Tiny was enthusiastic about the breeding, and he had no work that day, anyway. He saddled up and we hustled back to the Busted Thumb. Tiny looked over the mare, noticed she was pissing frequently, saw the colt sniffing the air to catch her scent and revel in it, because that was all he was going to get to do, and then looked in on the stud. He, too, was spending a good deal of his time with his muzzle pointing upward, drawing in the scent of the mare.
We had Blanca tear off another piece of sheet. She grumbled, “All our sheets, they go to wounded men and puta horses.”
Tiny wrapped the mare’s tail near her genitals to keep it out of the way. We decided to bring the mare to the stallion rather than attempting to bring the stud into the barn. We tied the mare outside the corral. She immediately began squealing and backing up to the fence. Tiny grinned. “This little lady is real ready,” he said.
We opened the gate to the corral, dropped loops over the bay’s neck and tied him to the snubbing post. It was more than clear that he was as ready as the mare; it looked like he’d grown a slightly shorter third hind leg.
As it turned out, I could have probably taken care of the breeding by myself. We led the mare into the corral, backed her to the stallion, and he climbed on as easily and smoothly as a dowager settling in a church pew. The deed itself took only a few minutes. Tiny was ready to guide the bay’s tool if it slipped out, but it didn’t. When it was obvious the deed was done we led the mare back to her stall in the barn.
We visited with Arm, who was still a tad woozy but becoming more alert, drank some whiskey, and then rode out to see if the buzzards had gotten to the buffalo man yet. They had. Six or eight were circling above and there was an equal number chowing down.
“I never had no use for them sonsabitches,” Tiny said. “Hell, I’ll take a deer when I need meat, but dropping shaggies from a half mile away and then tearing their hides off and leaving fifteen hundred or so pounds of good meat to rot jus’ ain’t right. I seen the results of a big stand once, an’ it ’most made me puke. There must have been twenty buffalo on the ground and a crew was staking them out and making the cuts so that their mule team could drag off the hides. All that meat gone to waste…” He let the sentence die. We watched as one of the larger vultures dragged a length of pinkish white intestine from the corpse in its beak and flailed its six-foot wings at the others to keep them away while he ate.
We went back to the ranch and had lunch, a couple of tastes of whiskey, and then took the mare back to the stud. Both of them were still interested and went through the process again.
Tiny wanted to beat the dark to Hulberton and he rode off with my thanks. Maybe five minutes later he came back as I was unwrapping the mare’s tail.
“You’d best keep a close eye on this gal,” he said. “We had a audience when we was breedin’. I seen their tracks—it was three, maybe four men.”
We’d been too busy to pay much attention to anything but the mare and the stud during the mating. I vowed I’d keep a close watch on our buckskin mare. I supposed I could have bundled up and slept out in the barn by the mare’s stall, but it was cold enough to wreck a brass monkey, and I’d gotten right used to sleepin’ in a real bed the past few months. I thought—very briefly—of bringing the mare into the mudroom at night. Then, I realized what Teresa an’ Blanca would have to say about that. Hell, if I’d done it, we’d probably have mare stew for supper the next dinner.
Instead, I leaned some planks on the inside of the stall door and strung some tin cans—hoof ointment, udder balm, canned peaches, and so forth across the inside
, just above the planks. It wasn’t a perfect alarm system, but it was better than nothing, and I figured the noise would wake me up.
Arm came down for breakfast the next morning lookin’ pretty good, except for the cloth wrapped around head. He ate with his usual voracious appetite. As he crammed his face I filled him in on the breeding and the tracks Tiny had seen.
“Tiny,” Arm said, “he can make a bell quick as can be, no? We get one an’ hang it on the stall door an’ there ya go.”
It was a good idea.
“We ride when I feenesh grub,” Arm said, “get the bell today.”
“Your ass we ride. You’re not ready for it. Ride your bed today an’ maybe tomorrow…”
“Mañana? Boolsheet.”
We took it easy making the ride and Arm didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects. We scouted out the spot where Tiny had seen the hoofprints in the snow and followed them into town, where they were quickly lost in the ruts and the mass of other tracks. There was no surprise there—we knew where they’d lead us. Tiny said he could bang out a bell with no trouble. “It’ll have the tone like I made it outta a lump of soap—’cept it’ll be loud.
I’ve made these things before. I just gotta nail some shoes on that gray over there, an’ I’ll whack out your bell.”
“Bueno. We wait in the saloon.”
The bartender looked at us strangely as we walked in and said, “Where’s Tiny? He ain’t gave up drinkin’, has he?”
“No,” I laughed. “He’ll be right over.”
“Whew,” the tender said. “The last time he give it up my profits went to hell.”
Arm and I had just about sat down when Dansworth walked over to our table. Even his gait showed his anger—he was stiff-legged and his heels struck the floor hard. His face was flushed and both his hands were clenched in fists. “I lost a good man yesterday,” he said.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. If we see him, we’ll tell him you’re lookin’ for him,” I said.
“Nex’ time, hire on a gringo who can shoot,” Arm said. “Maybe like Jake, here. You lookin’ for ambush work, mi amigo?”
Dansworth worth reached into his suitcoat pocket. “You pull that Derringer and I’ll kill you right where you stand,” I said. There was a rapping sound from under the table. “This .45 is pointed at your chest, Dansworth. The table won’t even slow the slug down.”
Dansworth removed his hand from his pocket, empty. “I hear you covered that buckskin mare with a good-looking mustang a couple times, he said, his voice quivering with anger. “She might throw a good foal. But I’ll tell you this: either the mare or the mare and the foal are going to be mine before I leave Hulberton.”
I looked at Arm.
He said, “Boolsheet.”
Dansworth sputtered a bit, little bits of spit escaping from between his lips. He spun on his heel and stomped back to where his cronies and flunkies sat at the rear of the saloon. “Nice visitin’ with you,” I called after him. “You might want to send one of your scum out to pick up what’s left of your buffalo man. Ain’t much left by now, but maybe you could bury him in a cigar box.”
I slid my pistol back into my holster. Arm did the same; his .45 had been resting on his lap, muzzle pointed at Dansworth. “Seems he no like us much,” Arm said.
“Hard to figure,” I said, “nice fellas like us.”
Tiny walked into the gin mill a half hour later, carrying what looked like a gallon-size bucket with a slight upward turn around its open end. There was a curl of steel to attach a rope to at the top.
“The theeng is,” Arm said as he waved to the tender for Tiny’s drinks, “suppose the rope is cut. Then the bell do nothing, no?”
“Yeah,” Tiny answered. “That’s why I made it so you can bang together a little rectangle of wood on the stall gate and nail the bell to it. Thataway, anyone screwing ’round with it is going to make noise.”
“How loud is this thing?” I asked.
Tiny banged the clapper against the body of the bell. The tone was unmelodic, but it was loud. He grinned. “You boys will hear that, I’m wagerin’.”
“Yeah, we will,” I said. “If it gets us through the winter, we can set up a bunk for one of us to sleep on as the mare comes closer to birthin’.”
“I was wonderin’ about the stud,” Tiny said. “Any chance Dansworth will try to steal him?”
“I’d dearly love to see him try. That horse barely tolerates me, an’ anyone else he’d stomp into the ground. He’s his own alarm system.”
“Damn. I had the thought of makin’ up a shoe for that screwfoot—lift it up a bit and level it to the ground. But unless we tied and threw him, there’s no way I could work on the foot.”
“Even then you’d have a bushel of trouble, Tiny,” I said. “And, hell, he’s gotten around on that foot jist the way it is for a few years. I’d just as soon let it be.”
We left within an hour, Arm and I both hot to build the little rectangle and attach it to the stall gate. Tiny refused money for the bell. I stuffed a bill into his pocket.
Our carpentry ain’t much, but we didn’t need much skill. The rectangle was a foot deep and attached to the stall gate with large nails. We banged the bell into place and swung open the gate. Tiny was right—it was pretty loud. “I’ll go on up to my room an’ you open an’ close the gate,” I said, “an’ see how much sound reaches me.”
I sat on my bed. The thunking of the bell would have awakened me, I’m sure of that. Since both Arm’s and my rooms faced the barn, I was sure the alarm would raise my partner, too. I went back out.
“Theese I don’ like much,” Arm said. He unlatched the stall gate and opened it very slowly. There was barely a sound from the bell.
“They gotta get in the barn, open the gate, get a halter on the mare, an’ lead her on out to wherever they’re takin’ her,” I said. “That alone would wake us up. They gotta have at least two men— maybe three. There’ll be some noise. I’m gonna sleep with the Sharps loaded up an’ leanin’ right next to my window.”
“I do same with my rifle, Jake. Ain’ nobody gonna steal our mare.”
The next day, the mare refused the stud, dropping her head to kick at him, and twisting and turning to get away. For his part, the bay didn’t seem overly interested, either. “She took good, no?” Arm smiled. “Now all we do is wait ’leven months an’ we see what we get. Ees funny—a woman can make a baby in nine months, but a horse, she need eleven.”
Winter lasts forever in West Texas. Arm and I did our chores and I continued working with the stallion, trying to get some of the shyness and aggressiveness out of him. I had no real reason to do that except that I liked the horse—he’d certainly never be a riding or ranch horse because of his warped foot.
The mare was a low-care animal. She was affable—sweet, even—and she never gave anyone any trouble. Even Teresa and Blanca would come out to the barn every so often and give the mare a treat, scratch her muzzle, stroke her neck.
The colt was a good horse, too. He was going to grow into something pretty large; his chest and the length of his legs showed that.
We were pretty sure the mare had taken. On a clear day we led her out to the corral and brought her in with the stud. He paid little attention and she was even less interested. Obviously, she was out of her heat cycle, but having the colt and the stallion around didn’t arouse any interest on her part. We took that to mean that she was pregnant, but it was really far too early to tell.
I put some time in with the Sharps and became right handy with it. I got to the point where I could fire it from my horse’s back, too. Arm went out target shooting with me every so often, but didn’t have a ton of interest in the buffalo gun. “The 30.30, it does what I want it to do,” he said. “I don’t need no cannon.”
We bought a little carriage for the ladies for Christmas and bought a trained horse—a nice bay that had some age on her—from Tiny to pull it. Blanca had mentioned how much they missed going to Mass on Sundays
and holy days. They both learned to drive quickly and every Sunday they rolled out to Hulberton in their best clothes, and a buffalo robe covering their laps.
“The church, it is important to them,” Arm said. “The surrey is good. It ain’t like we can’t afford to feed that ol’ hoss.”
It was coming spring when we began discovering more tracks around our place. The hoofprints didn’t come terribly close to the house, barn, or corral, but they were within seeing distance. I wasn’t surprised by the visitors. Dansworth was used to getting what he wanted in any manner he had to, and it was real clear he wanted the mare and probably the stallion, as well. Meanwhile, the damned fool was paying a dozen men or more to hang around the saloon, drink, play poker, grab an occasional whore, and to be available.
The mare had the slightest curve to her belly and Arm and I would have bet that she was pregnant. I don’t think that curve got by Dansworth’s men.
“You know,” Arm said one morning as we stood outside the barn, smoking, “Dansworth can do theese one of two ways: he can attack with his men and keel us, or he can steal out the horses.”
“I think I’d go with the attack—he not only wants our horses but he’s pissed off at us enough to want to see us dead.”
“We need some supplies, then, no? To make us an’ the women safe?”
“Yeah—a ton of ammunition, a couple more rifles that we can post by the windows and in the barn, and whatever Teresa and Blanca want.”
“Ees early yet,” Arm said. “Might jus’ as well go today, no?”
That’s what we did. We decided to take the packer along, because the ladies needed sacks of flour, coffee, and sugar. “Sumbitch!” Arm cursed as he strapped the rig on the packhorse. “Theese boy almos’ too fat for the rig. He is a gordo—eat allatime an’ do nothin’.”
“Well, why not give the ladies money when they go to the church, an’ let them haul what they need? Ya know? They got their surrey and all we got is a lard-assed packer.”
Arm agreed immediately.