That first night, after the girl, he had stopped to grill strips of lamb in the lee of a cliff and despite the wind-driven grit, found it delicious and hoped the rest of the back-strap would keep until he could once again risk a fire. It was fresh meat that was helping his arm, he was sure. It was cool up here even in the daytime, and he hoped what he had left of the lamb would stay good for a while yet. If not, he would have to cut it into thin strips and hang them to dry. There was a tiny little seep at the back of the declivity, and if he dug it out just a little, made a basin in the mud, he thought it might make enough water to get along. You had to walk right up to this hiding place to find it, and he felt very fortunate that he had noticed it at all. A man might stay safely hidden here a good long time… were it not for those three trackers. There was a growing resentment in him toward the three, and he began to have bad thoughts about them. He exercised even more caution in regard to the sign he left behind, thinking to slow their progress even more.
There was no urgent need to be on his way north and while he didn’t waver in that eventuality, he was a man of extraordinary perseverance—well tutored in the value of patience—he could wait.
Long ago in Sonora he had killed a very important man, for pay, and had to stay out over three months living off the land alone, and a sparse land at that. The Federales had brought in the most feared of government trackers, Yaquis, from northern Chihuahua. They were men to reckon with, and finally he had to kill two of them, before the others quit and went home. They probably wouldn’t have quit even then if he had not eaten part of one as a warning. Even Yaquis have their limit. He would discourage these Indios del Norte one way or another. Everyone has their limit.
He wished now that he had lain in wait for one of those outlying searchers, one with a rifle. Guns were hard to come by where he was from, and he had never developed any particular skill with one; but he did know how to shoot. The important thing with a gun was to have the cojones to instantly, and without thinking about it, be willing to kill a man—anything less made it a liability. Hesitation was what got you hurt in his opinion. He maintained that guns might even be a hindrance for a man of his skills; yet, where these long ranges were involved, it might be handy to have one. He had stealthily passed by several herders’ camps before dawn that morning, knowing they would have dogs to alert them, and probably a gun of some sort handy. Once things settled down, he would venture forth at night and see what could be done. It was all just a matter of time.
As he rested himself in his little sanctuary, his thoughts turned to Tressa and their lives in the little village in Mexico. How far away those days now seemed. It was hardly believable that their life had been so simple. It was difficult, yes, but little ever changed in that village. Should one grow up there and know his limits, there was very little stress involved, and the days melted away like butter… until Tressa decided it wasn’t good enough, and began pushing him to do better. First it was just a pair of new shoes, then a store-bought dress, and finally then… a better house. “Luca, do you not see what the Baca’s have done with their casita? Why shouldn’t we have such as that? Surely a man of your abilities should be able to provide as well as old man Baca, who only runs a few goats for a living. Maybe if you found a job on the fishing boats over on the Baja?” She pouted and fussed, and coiled her hair around one finger and tugged at it. “Elsa Sanchez and her new husband went to Puerto Penasco, and now he is gutting fish for the turistas down on the docks. He only works four or five hours in the afternoon, when the boats come in, no more than that, and already he is making three times what he made here in the village, and that for six days a week hard labor.” She smiled out the window as though she could see all the way to Puerto Penasco, “You should see their new house, Luca. He and his cousins built it—with an inside toilet no less.” Here the credibility of the thing was stretched to the limit, and secretly she wondered if Elsa Sanchez had lied to her mother about the toilet. No one here in the village had such a convenience, and most would not know how to operate it if they did. Tressa’s voice became even more petulant, “All I know is that I am the one to deserve so fine a thing as that. Elsa Sanchez don’t know her ass from a hole in the ground anyway.” The inequity of it brought a tear, and it was all she could do not to weep outright at her misfortune.
“What?” Luca had said, “Move away from our place here, where we were born, and go to strangers in a strange place to find our living? I don’t think so, Tressa. Making adobes was good enough for my father, and he had six children to feed. We have none and only feed ourselves. This is good enough.”
But Tressa was young, quite good looking in a provincial sort of way, and she was attracted to that life she saw, on the rare occasions they took the bus to Hermosillo. She harped so insistently and grew so unpleasant that finally he relented and they moved to Guaymas, where she had cousins who she said might help them get a new start. Work, though, was scarce, and eventually their situation became desperate, and this caused Luca to be drawn into a very different life indeed.
He became an “enforcer” for a local group involved in all sorts of dubious enterprises. It was a business he knew little about, other than it required certain people to be beaten, and sometimes, worse. He had always been good at beating people up and had been the scourge of the village children and later the young rakes who hung out at the cantina. Happily, this job required little previous experience, at least in the more serious requirements of the position, and from the beginning it seemed to be in the natural order of things and what he had been meant to do. After only a few months, he conceded, and admitted to Tressa she had been right all along, and this was an easier, more enjoyable way to live.
Tressa only sniffed and said, “I tol’ you so. We were wasting our lives in that little hole of a village. Now you are making good money, and we have a chance to be someone.”
In any case, it was all the same to him, and if the money made Tressa happy, he didn’t mind the work. He did occasionally have to go to jail for some little something, assault, or perhaps petty larceny, things that were part of his new job description and not considered particularly bad in their new neighborhood. One did what one must to get along—everyone there knew that.
In these short stints in jail he became more educated, particularly in things that came in handy in his new line of work, and before long he rose in his profession to the point he attracted attention from people outside the local organization, bigger and richer people, who offered more challenging jobs and paid more money. Luca might be considered by some to be an ignorant person, but too many confuse ignorance with stupidity, and these people later paid the consequences of their misconception.
Eventually, Tressa put away quite a little savings from Luca’s work and looked forward to a new house and an even more comfortable life, perhaps hiring a girl to help out and allow her a bit more freedom... though freedom to do what, she would not say. It was just then, when things were going so well, that he had been arrested, and this time on more serious charges, charges that would most certainly entail a lengthy prison sentence, causing Tressa to think it might be a good time to disassociate herself from him entirely. Suddenly, even the people he worked for… no longer knew him.
It happened that there were two Americans in jail, newly arrived and in bad need of protection. They prevailed upon Luca to help them out, and in return they shared with him the little money they received from relatives in the states, and in the idleness of their days, attempted to teach Luca English. Although it was in the redneck vernacular of their kind, Luca thought it something that would impress Tressa. And once his curiosity was aroused, he applied himself to the utmost of his ability. He repeated for Tressa the many stories the gringos had whiled away the hours telling him. These stories of America so lit a fire in Tressa that she no longer missed a single visiting day, as once she had done. She couldn’t get enough of how things were in the Ustados Unidos.
Mexico employs Napoleonic Law; meaning one must pr
ove himself innocent, instead of the other way around, and for Luca this proved problematic—in the end impossible. The lawyer Tressa had retained for him was young and a drunkard and came to him admitting he had no chance in court, advising Luca to just plead guilty and take the less severe consequences. Luca was assured the judge would go easier on him and he would not be gone so long this way.
It was not long after that Tressa quit coming to the jail, and word drifted back to him that she had disappeared, and to heap insult upon injury, with Luca’s own lawyer who, as it should turn out, had relatives in the United States. The lawyer required only a certain amount of money, he told Tressa, to get them both out of Mexico and to the promised-land—complete with green cards. They could make themselves a handsome living performing musica and the baile in his family’s bar. He told her the guittara was his real talent and that he could sing a bird off a limb. He would, of course, pay her back the expense involved—once they were established, and the money started coming in. He failed to mention that her part of performing would be waiting tables and eventually more base duties, should the opportunity present itself. Poor Tressa eventually found herself in even more dreadful circumstances than in the little village where they grew up.
Luca, truly alone now, finally had to approach his own family to engineer his release, though certainly they would have much preferred he remain where he was forever. It was not really an escape nor was it so much a release but rather a combination of the two, brought about through money and the endemic corruption of the system. He didn’t blame Tressa so much for all this, as she was young and not fully accountable in his eyes. The man she ran off with, however, would pay, of that he was certain. It only remained for him to find a way to the U.S., where he might find her and make things right between them. She had written him one last letter to the prison and by some miracle he had received it, though without the ten dollars she had sent as a peace offering. The letter had a return address for him to answer back and possibly tell her that he had forgiven her. Tressa had no idea he might one day actually show up in a place so far away. She had not thought him that clever. She herself would probably not have made it to the U.S. had it not been for the lawyer turned musician, and even he had finally lost interest, leaving poor Tressa pretty much to her own devises.
Luca had harmed no one on leaving his incarceration, which was part of the deal his uncles had made, and in fact he had intended to harm no one on this entire journey, should things have played out as planned. Now, of course, it was different. It was a slippery slope when once one lost his footing.
9
The Chase
Thomas and Charlie left their horses tied to a sparsely limbed juniper. They had let the horses graze only a few hours the night before as they didn’t trust them to the gunnysack hobbles they had made.
Harley, on the other hand, had left his mule, Shorty, loose all night, knowing it wouldn’t leave its companions. Even though Shorty was much smarter than either of the two horses, he had been raised by a mare, and for all equine social commitments considered himself a horse as well. While mules have many sterling qualities, they do have a few less endearing attributes as well, one of which is braying unpredictably and without any discernable reason. They get this from their donkey sires, and it is, unfortunately, an uncontrollable urge. It’s not the more refined neighing of the horse, mind you, a sound which might be carried away by any small wind, but rather a raucous, mind numbing blast that could carry, literally, for miles across open country. And that is why Harley and Shorty had been sent to search out a camp where he might obtain more food and possibly, if a clan member could be found, even the loan of a rifle and a few cartridges. It would be best that Shorty be far from the more delicate sunrise scouting mission.
A rifle was something Charlie should have thought of before they left home. He might even have stopped at his Aunt Annie’s place and borrowed one of her late husband’s guns. He had been quite the hunter and owned several different calibers. He’d kept plenty of ammunition too, if Clyde hadn’t shot it all up. Clyde liked to shoot, though like Charlie, he was a poor shot by any measure. Who could have known this venture would evolve into this. It had been intended as a daytrip to satisfy their curiosity, not the marathon it was turning out to be. He would have done things differently had he known how this little jaunt would play out.
Thomas led the way up the side of the ridge, staying low to the ground and taking what advantage of the terrain he could. Charlie followed and deferred to Thomas’s natural talent in the business. Since coming back from university, he had already learned a great deal from Thomas and was sometimes surprised to see how little of what he once thought he knew was of value out here. There was education… and then there was education, and he was finding one was often very different from the other. Thomas’s brand of education sometimes proved to be the more practical, even in Charlie’s more civilized line of work. He was still glad he had decided on the university and was proud of his accomplishments there, but now and then felt more than a little regret at missing out on certain aspects of a more traditional learning process. Harley and Thomas were self-sufficient in this country, and he was coming to the conclusion that it entitled them to a certain respect in that regard. It was in Charlie to learn these things too, and in time he would, but for now, out here, he must often defer to their judgment.
They crept their way to the top of the ridge, carefully adjusting their course to follow a screen of stunted underbrush interspersed with cedar and piñyon pine.
Thomas spent a good ten minutes glassing the upper rim of the bluff below Pastora Peak, then passed the glasses. “There must be dozens of good hiding places along that one rim alone.” He ran his tongue along his front teeth. “It’s no damn wonder the law never catches anyone out here. Too big a country, that’s all.”
Charlie looked through the binoculars for only a minute or so before handing them back. “Harley said his tracks were headed this way, and there’s no better cover above that rim that I can see. I suspect he’s right up there somewhere.”
Thomas nodded. “He’ll come loose by and by, I’m sure, but it could be awhile.” He hesitated. “We could always go back and report where we think he is and then go on home.” Thomas was thinking of his children and Lucy taking care of their sheep, and of old Paul T’Sosi, as he grew less able to help out in his old age.
Charlie narrowed his eyes at the rim. “No, they have plenty of supposed sightings already. I doubt they would attach much importance to ours—he’d get away, and go on doing what he’s doing. We need to stop him now, if we can.” He needs to pay his debt here first.” He turned his head and looked back the way they had come. “We’re not going home till it’s over.”
~~~~~~
Harley poked at the fire and handed out cold fry-bread to be warmed on sticks, and stirred the skillet of bacon with his knife. He had gathered quite a haul down in the camps, and all three watched greedily as the meat sizzled and popped in the pan. There would be enough for several more days, should they be frugal, but frugality would only come later, when they were again running out of provisions. The evening breeze was flowing down the mountain and would carry the smoke and smell of bacon down country. They were well hidden in a deep gully that opened up to a little grass-filled bottom, and their stock had been turned loose, one at a time, to graze. They knew better than to turn loose more than one, as two might form a conspiracy and quit the camp.
Thomas stared into the fire. “We’ll have to leave the horses if we’re going higher. They’ll be all right down here if we hobble them. There’s plenty of grass for a few days and water too, in those potholes under the bank… no need for them to go anywhere. I think they’ll be good here.”
Harley turned to see Shorty standing behind him. It was the mule’s turn to be loose, and he could smell fry-bread and thought he might get a bite if Harley was in a generous mood; if not he would grab Harley’s straw hat off his head and pitch it up in the air. That usual
ly worked when nothing else would. Harley would chuckle. His sister used to do that same thing when they were little. Shorty reminded him of her in a lot of ways. His sister was dead now, and he tried not to recall what she looked like.
“Shorty can travel in that kind of hobbles if he takes a mind.” Harley said this and considered various alternatives as he gauged the mule’s small feet, and finally just passed him a bit of fry-bread. “I guess I’ll have to side-hobble him—he won’ be able to go far that way.” The mule, satisfied with the trifling bribe, backed out of the firelight and returned to the horses with a smug look. Harley smiled after him. He’d had Shorty nearly twenty years, since they were both youngsters in fact, and hoped he might last another fifteen or twenty, not out of the question for a mule. It had something to do with hybrid vigor, he’d heard.
The next morning the three rose before dawn and returned on foot to the lookout spot of the day before. They made themselves comfortable and prepared to wait. Harley thought the first rays of the sun on the butte might make something more discernable. A different slant of light could make all the difference, he said.
As the first rays of the sun spilled over the rim, Charlie looked over at the other two. “You don’t think Shorty will start bellowing and give us away, do you?” Even Charlie knew burros and mules liked to meet the sun with their own particular greeting, though he thought Shorty might be out of range, what with a brisk wind being in their favor.
Harley didn’t take his eyes off the rim, his gaze locked on just a shadow halfway up a broken rock outcrop. “…I don’ guess that matters now… he knows we’re here.”
Thomas shifted the glasses in that direction while Charlie strained his eyes for a glimpse of something out of place.
Thomas nudged him and passed the glasses. “Yep, he knows.” They hadn’t foreseen this turn of events.
Mojado Page 7