The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Alright, alright—don’t get your diapers in a bunch, junior.” I turned my back to him and started walking off toward the trees. “We’ll go and let you get back to playin’ cowboys and idjits.”

  When I led my mount from the thicket a moment later, I found Freckles waiting with his .45 drawn.

  “Why don’t you try that again, asshole?” he snarled menacingly—or would’ve if his voice hadn’t cracked. Still, his S&W was menace enough for me.

  “May I have your permission to flee in terror now?” I said. “Sir.”

  “That’s better,” the young puncher said. “Sure. Go. And don’t come back.”

  As I saddled myself, he kept the gun aimed so as best to remove what little brains I have.

  There was no way to thank Suicide or say a proper farewell, so Old Red and I just rode off, leaving the only friend we’d met so far to glare at us from behind a mask of contempt.

  The kid, meanwhile, stared bull’s-eyes at our backs. The thing I tried not to think about (and thought about all the more as a result) was that there were dozens more like him between us and San Marcos.

  And us and the truth.

  12

  Bob’s Place

  Or, I Smell a Trap, and a Foul Wind Blows Our Way

  We rode north hard all of five minutes before my brother veered off eastward. Another five minutes of that, and he was veering once more, to the southwest this time. Fifteen minutes later, we hit barbed wire again, and from then on we followed the Lucky Seven’s fence line due south.

  We were doubling back, albeit in a roundabout way. Doubling back to where and why, though, I had but a vague notion—and no way to test it out. Our mounts were moving too fast to allow for any talk. There was nothing for me to do but hang on and try to enjoy the ride. And there would have been plenty to enjoy, if I’d been in the right frame of mind, for a Hill Country autumn’s a beautiful thing to see.

  Rolling knolls stretching out to the horizon like waves on a choppy sea. Tall junipers and yellowed oaks battling to lord it over dark pockets of shinnery. Thick carpets of bluebonnets and verbena so blinding-bright with color they made the cloudless sky above look as gray as dishwater.

  All of it so lush, so lovely, so scenic.

  So perfect for an ambush.

  The glint of sunlight off rifled steel—that’s what I was straining my eyeballs to see. We might as well have been riding through a coal mine for all the pleasure I took from the scenery. All I saw around me was a pretty, pretty grave.

  Fortunately the Lucky Seven’s fence gave out before my nerves did. Round about noon, the big ranch’s taut, straight wire gave way to the raggedy lines and rotting posts of a smaller outfit, obviously undermanned. We didn’t have to search for any gate—the fence was down in so many spots we had our pick of places to enter.

  So enter we did. Old Red finally slowed his horse to a trot and steered us onto the new spread.

  “A bit bold, ain’t it?” I said. “Invitin’ ourselves onto a stranger’s land?”

  “This ain’t a stranger’s land.”

  “Ahhhh. Bob.”

  It was as I’d suspected. We were paying a call on the fellow Suicide had mentioned: Bob Harris.

  “Who is he, anyway?” I asked.

  “Another old hand from the Seven. A friend.”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta say, Brother…friendship don’t seem to count for much around here. Just look at Bales and Big Bess—and it was nice of Suicide to point us the right way and all, but I wish he’d had the guts to stick up for us.”

  “He did enough. Got his name for takin’ crazy risks. Can’t blame him if he finally got over the habit.”

  “Has it occurred to you there might be more to it than that? Like maybe he’s pullin’ a Big Bess on us? Settin’ us up to get dry-gulched? Cuz it has occurred to me.”

  “Why should he do that? He had a gun on us already. He could’ve done whatever he pleased.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. But what about this Bob feller, then? Friend or not, he ain’t seen you in five years. He might take us for rustlers and go for his rifle.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen…and if you had eyes in your head ’stead of rocks, you’d know why.”

  I looked around, trying to use my eyes and my brains and my rocks and whatever else I had in my head to read trail sign with. A stony rise, a zigzagging trail up the slope, sparse greenery cropped clear down to the sod—that’s all I saw.

  “Uhhh…Bob’ll know we ain’t rustlers cuz…there’d be nothing to steal on a grubby little spread like this?”

  “My Lord,” my brother groaned. “I knew you was blind, but I thought you could smell, at least.”

  I sucked in a long, deep snort—and was rewarded with singed nostrils and a soured stomach.

  “Sweet Jesus, how’d I miss that?” I swept off my hat and waved it before my face. “What do you think ol’ Bob raises down here? Polecats?”

  “Something close to it. Don’t you remember…well, hey there, little feller!”

  Someone, it seemed, had gotten a whiff of us.

  Standing on a shelf of exposed granite at the top of the bluff was a shaggy black and white dog. It returned Gustav’s greeting with a single bark, then turned tail and darted over the hill.

  At last I knew why Bob Harris wouldn’t have to worry about rustlers, and why Suicide had said the spread had a “little herd,” “of sorts.” I knew, too, who my brother had been about to mention: Kaiser Wilhelm, the orneriest and by far smelliest of all the animals we’d looked after as boys back on the family farm.

  When we crested the hill, we beheld a host of Wilhelms and Wilhelminas spread out in the valley before us—hundreds of grazing, bleating, reeking goats. There was a small farmhouse, too, and a barn and a stable and what looked like a half-built windmill water pump. The herd-dog was streaking toward the house yipping and yapping.

  A dark silhouette appeared in the doorway.

  As Old Red and I rode down into the dell and on into the barnyard, the shadowy figure took on a definite shape—and a lovely one, at that, for stepping outside came a beautiful young woman. Yes, her blond hair was frizzy and her gingham dress grimy and her face haggard, I saw upon coming closer. But all this was but a smudge on a fine piece of china. There was no missing the splendor of what lay beneath.

  To say Gustav sat up and took notice would be an understatement. The second the woman moved into the light, he went bolt upright in his saddle, muttering something I couldn’t make out.

  “Hush, Gus,” the woman snapped.

  She was looking down as she said it, though, and I quickly realized it wasn’t my brother she was talking to—it was the whimpering dog that was now dancing around her feet.

  Old Red cleared his throat and tried again to speak. “Lottie. It’s me.”

  “Gus! Hush!” the woman hollered at the dog. She hadn’t heard Gustav at all.

  A thickset man appeared behind her. He was half sodbuster (the half with tattered overalls and square-toed work shoes) and half cowpuncher (the half with the battered Stetson and the bowed legs). Surprisingly enough, he was all smiles, though I could tell from the quizzical wrinkling of his eyes he had no idea who we were.

  “Help you, boys?” he said.

  Gustav swept off his hat and forced his lips into a trembly little crescent, the best stab he could make at a smile.

  “Hello, Bob. Hello, Lottie.”

  Man and woman alike looked like they’d just seen a ghost—and I’m not just succumbing to cliché there. The gal went pale and took a step back, bumping into the fellow standing stiffly behind her, his smile now an O of slack-jawed shock.

  “Gus?” the woman said.

  Suddenly she was running toward my brother.

  He fairly threw himself from the saddle to meet her.

  Then, there before my eyes, was a sight I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years: my brother with his arms around a woman.

  The last time, it had been our dear Mutter he’d been holding
, her clinging tight as Gustav got set to go off in search of work as a drover. My mother had wept then, and this young Lottie, whoever she was, did the same now. It almost looked like Old Red himself was on the verge of tears, though I had to dismiss that as a mere mirage, the man being no more capable of crying than a stack of pancakes.

  Yet why was he wiping a sleeve across his face as he and Lottie ended their embrace? Why did he suck in a snorking sniffle? Why did his eyes seem to glisten as he beamed (Gustav Amlingmeyer…beaming!) at the woman before him.

  I looked over at the stocky goat rancher, Bob, certain that this was his wife Old Red had just wrapped himself around. There wasn’t the slightest hint of resentment on his round face. Rather, his grin returned, bigger than ever, even as his wife took Gustav’s hands in hers.

  My brother tried for another smile. Again he couldn’t quite pull it off, though he seemed to be getting better with practice.

  “Oh, Gus,” Lottie said. “Welcome back.”

  There was so much warmth and affection in her words—and my brother responded to them with such an air of tender contentment—she might as well have said “Welcome home.”

  13

  A Home on the Range

  Or, Bob Talks Goats, and Gustav Gets Mine

  Usually, it’s my brother who hangs back, silent, when there’s socializing to be done, and I’m the one slapping every back. Out there on that goat ranch, it was just the opposite: Gustav was receiving such a warm welcome I almost expected his friends to break into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” while I might as well have been his pack mule for all the attention I was getting.

  Just because I note it, though, don’t think I was jealous. To the contrary, it warmed the cockles of my heart (whatever they are) to see Old Red greeted with such affection. More than once, Doc Watson described Sherlock Holmes as a friendless fellow who “loathed any form of society,” and I’d always assumed such a brand belonged on my brother, too. There were folks he tolerated and a few he trusted, but I would’ve been hard-pressed to name more than two of whom he was genuinely fond.

  After a round of merry my-Gods and look-at-yous, Bob and Lottie finally noticed the beefy, devilishly handsome cowpoke watching the reunion from atop his chestnut mare.

  “Surely that couldn’t be Otto,” Bob chuckled. “You said he never stopped talkin’, Gus.”

  “No, I said he never shut his mouth,” Old Red said. “You can see he’s been usin’ it for plenty of eatin’. Why, if his head was half as full as he keeps his belly, he’d be the smartest man alive.”

  “Hey!” I started to protest.

  “Oh, don’t let this old grouch fool you,” Lottie said, jerking a thumb at Gustav. “We could always tell he was proud of your book smarts.”

  “Oh, you could, could you?”

  I looked at my brother.

  “I never said any such thing,” he grumbled.

  “You didn’t have to,” Lottie said, and she and her husband snorted and shook their heads in a “Same old Gus!” sort of way.

  Bob started toward me with arm outstretched. “I’m Bob Harris, by the way.”

  I slid from my saddle, and Bob gave me a handshake so firm you could use it as an anvil.

  He nodded back at Lottie. “That’s Mrs. Harris, case you couldn’t guess.”

  “Can you believe it, Gus? He finally made an honest woman of me.” Lottie threw me a grin and a wink. “And let me tell you—that took some doin’.”

  “Lottie was a friend of Adeline’s,” Old Red explained gingerly.

  A co-worker of Adeline’s—that’s what he was really saying. Another of the Eagle’s soiled doves.

  “Ma’am,” I said, tipping my hat and dipping my head, the same as I would upon meeting Mrs. Grover Cleveland or Mrs. J. P. Morgan or any Mrs. Hoity-Toity you could name.

  “Sir,” Lottie joshed me back with a little curtsy. She was still smiling, but there was the stilted strain of effort to it now—a stiffness that had set in with but one word.

  Adeline.

  It turned Bob to a waxwork, too, and we spent the next long, painful moment just standing around waiting for the black cloud to blow over.

  Gus the goat dog broke the silence with a growl aimed my way, and Lottie bent down to ruffle his mottled chocolates-and-cream coat.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s standoffish at first, but once you get to know him, he’s just a big, fuzzy puppy.” Her smile broadened, loosened, lived again. “Why, how else do you think he got his name?”

  Everyone but the Guses got a laugh out of that. Yet there was something tolerant, even pleased about the way my brother rolled his eyes.

  “Well, go on, go on,” Lottie said, flapping her hands at us like she was chasing chickens out of the corn crib. “I may be an old harlot, but I know my duty. Bob, you show our guests around while I whip up something to eat.”

  “Oh, please, Lottie,” Old Red said, “you don’t have to—”

  “Now, now, Brother—one mustn’t be an ingrate. And anyway, I’ve got a reputation to live up to, thanks to you.” I swept my hat off and held it over my heart in a gesture of beseeching solicitude. “I’m mighty partial to biscuits and gravy, ma’am.”

  “I aim to please,” Lottie said, and she gave me another wink.

  Yes, she was a friend of my brother’s. Yes, I’d treat her like a lady. But at such a moment as that, it was hard not to look on her in light of her former profession—and think she’d probably been a “good earner” for Ragsdale and Bock.

  Once our ponies were unsaddled and watered and turned loose in the corral, Bob took us on a walking tour of what he called the Lucky Two Ranch. It was a small operation—fifty acres and five times as many goats—but Bob took obvious pride in it. It’s the rare cowhand who doesn’t dream of running his own outfit one day, and Bob had pulled it off, in a modest sort of way.

  “So,” Gustav said as we took in the sight (and smell) of Bob’s grazing herd. “Goats?”

  Bob chortled and shrugged. “Why not? Actually, they’re a better fit for the Hill Country than cattle, and you know the bottom ain’t finished droppin’ out of the beef market—not now that you can get your head everywhere but the moon by rail. You said it yourself all them years ago, Gus. The days of the big cattlemen are through. The ones that can’t accept it, they’re just clingin’ to something dead and gone.”

  “That’s easy to do,” Old Red said dolefully. Then for once he seemed to recognize what a soggy-wet blanket he was, and he put a look on his face that aimed for chipper inquisitiveness…and only missed by half a mile. “So what breeds we lookin’ at here? Angoras, mostly?”

  “That’s right,” Bob said, and he launched into a lecture on the fascinating ancestry of the Mexican/American short-haired Angora goat.

  My brother managed to work in questions here and there—about breeding and feeding and mohair and the like—but it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. Eventually, my stomach got to rumbling so loud Bob made a crack about a thunderstorm rolling in, and I made my escape with an excuse about hurrying up the grub.

  Gus the mutt followed me back to the Harrises’ little homestead, and as we reached the barnyard, he raced ahead into the house to announce my arrival. Lottie was telling him to shut up when I walked in.

  “Sorry about all the barkin’ and growlin’,” she said to me. “He’ll get used to you sooner or later.”

  “Oh, that’s alright, ma’am. It’s nothin’ new to me.”

  Lottie smiled, the grin crinkling her skin with wrinkles even as it flushed up a youthful glow.

  “I tell ya,” she said, “I love Gloomy Gus to pieces, but it’d take a saint to put up with that man’s cussedness night and day.”

  “Just call me St. Otto.”

  I walked over to the dining room table (the “dining room” being, well, the table) and started setting out the cutlery and plates stacked there.

  After a final “Hush!” for Gus, Lottie got to stirring a musky-scented stew simmering a
top the potbelly stove in the corner.

  I didn’t bother asking what kind of meat was in it.

  “So how have things been for your brother, anyway?” Lottie asked.

  Mangy Gus curled up by her feet, black eyes fixed on me.

  “Oh, we’ve had our share of bad breaks the last five years, but we ain’t licked yet. In fact, I would say things was finally lookin’ up if only Gustav wasn’t so down. No matter how things go for us, he’s still a Gloomy Gus.”

  “I’m sorry it’s not a cheerier picture than that.” Lottie kept poking at the stew with her spoon, though surely it was stirred up plenty. “I’ve thought about Gus a lot since he left. I always hoped he’d find himself some kinda happiness somewhere.”

  “We’re workin’ on it.”

  I stepped back from the table to admire my handiwork.

  Mangy Gus growled at me.

  “Howzabout when he was with Adeline?” I said. “He seem happy then?”

  “Happier, I guess. The four of us had some laughs. But your brother was always the last to join in and the first to stop. I remember Adeline sayin’, ‘Gus, if I had a nickel for every time you smiled…I’d have fifteen cents.’”

  I cut loose with a chuckle. That was the sort of thing I wish I’d said. “What was she like, anyway? I barely know a thing about her.”

  Lottie finally stopped stewing over her stew and looked up at me. “She was a scared farmgirl is what she was. Not the brightest you’d meet, but sweet as could be. She stayed sweet, too. Despite everything.”

  “And she loved my brother?”

  Lottie gave the stew another useless stir. “I think Gus was the first kind man Adeline ever met. The first who didn’t treat her like some sow in the pen. She’d have done anything for him. Would’ve made him a good little wife.” Locks of long hair were falling over Lottie’s face like a veil, and she pushed them back with an angry sweep of the hand. “God knows that girl didn’t deserve what happened to her.”