Gabriel had had enough. His face screwed itself into all the apology he could muster, and he tugged James to get him moving. But James said, “We could pay.”
The man paused. “Pay?”
“Yeah. Show him the coin, Gabe.”
Gabriel cut the boy with his eyes and cursed him under his breath.
The man stepped closer still.
“Show him the coin, Gabe,” James repeated.
Gabriel still hesitated. He took a half step away but froze as the barrels of the gun anticipated further movement. Behind the man, the young woman appeared in the doorway. She watched them with frightened eyes, whether for them or because of them Gabriel couldn’t tell. He reached into his pocket, brought the coin forth, and held it up at eye level.
The man resumed his one-eyed squint. “Where’d you get that?”
“What?”
“Where’d you get that?” Without waiting for an answer, the man let his rifle fall from vigilance and strode forward. “Give it to me.” He stretched out his hand and beckoned, like a father about to reprimand a wayward child.
Gabriel snapped his hand into a fist around the coin. He stepped back but thrust his chin forward and looked as hard as he could at the man. “No. I think we’ll keep it and move on.”
The man’s jaw dropped open. “You’ll what?” He swung the rifle back on the job, at chest level. It trembled slightly in his grip. “You trying to give me a reason? That coin’s worth more than the both of you. You gonna give it?”
“No.”
“Why shouldn’t I pull, then?”
Gabriel held his squinting gaze, all his effort directed. In the man’s creased eyes and in the ragged lines that were his eyebrows and in the sour twisted flesh there was an unreasoning and consuming hatred. Gabriel knew that he’d not seen such a hopeless creature yet, for in this man’s hatred his life was unredeemable: his procreation a curse, his seed poison, his intentions tainted far back into his past. He saw all this, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that the man could shoot them dead. But still, with a calm entirely at odds with the tumult in his head, Gabriel answered the man’s question. “Might frighten them.” He nudged his chin toward something behind the man.
“Huh?” The man turned around and, seeing the woman and children, began ranting at them to get back into the house.
Neither boy hesitated for a moment. They both spun and ran upriver as fast as they could. Gabriel waited to hear the gunshot, waited for the impact that must come with it. But only the man’s curses followed them, warnings never to show themselves again, damnation brought down upon their kin and their forefathers’ kin, promises that he’d shoot on sight next time and make nigger sausage with the remains. All of his words came strangely clear to Gabriel’s ears, full, complete sentences that rang in his head even after he’d dropped down beside the river and put the man far behind them.
They moved on a half-mile or so before collapsing on the riverbank, panting and rolling in the dust like two fish fresh from the water, struggling for life. It was some time before James spoke. “I thought homesteaders were supposed to be neighborly. You reckon that old man’s the one got that girl knocked up?”
“Probably.”
“He’s an evil son of a bitch, ain’t he? He’d put Pinkerd to shame. We told him no, though. Didn’t we? Old bastard asked and we told him no.” He grinned and nudged Gabriel on the shoulder playfully.
“Yeah, I told him no. Fat lot of good it did us.” Gabriel didn’t seem as impressed by this fact as James was, although there was an odd, almost satisfied calm in his voice. He opened his fist and studied the coin still held there, moist and shining against his skin. “James, if you ever open your fool trap like that again, I’ll wring your neck. I swear to God I will. We ain’t gonna spend it unless we have to. I mean have to. You hear me?” James reminded him that half the coin was his, but Gabriel slipped it into his trouser pocket and looked back toward the homestead, which was out of sight. “Anyway, what now?”
AROUND DUSK THE TWO BOYS ENTERED THE RIVER fully clothed. The water was shaded just enough to have gone black and was colder than Gabriel expected. He felt his skin tighten as the current wrapped around him and swirled him downstream, gently, slowly, yet with a power conspicuous in its ease. His feet dangled beneath him, and the plains slipped by from this strangest of angles, as if he’d become part of the vein of the world and could look out at the passing skin of it.
They held a tense silence, and as they neared the house, both boys sank up to their chins in the water. At the house, all was as it had been on their initial approach. It was quiet, save for the occasional clink and clatter of dinnertime activities. The front door, while they still had a view of it, was closed, and it appeared that the man and the children were at supper. The stream of smoke had thickened, and with it came the scent of frying meat. This scent alone was enough to firm their plan.
“You ready?” James whispered.
Gabriel nodded, and together they scrambled up the clay bank, slipping and dripping and cursing the slick surface. A few steps from the water, they crouched and listened. All was as before. They slunk forward again, sticking to the worn path by the river, coming up around the back of the house. Gabriel thanked God twice: first when he saw that this side of the house had no window and again when they reached the barrels set against the wall, on which lay several bundles of carrots, tomatoes, turnips, and, most mouthwateringly beautiful, three large melons.
The boys set to stuffing their pockets. This was done in a few seconds. They continued to grab more, wedging carrots into armpits, cradling turnips as delicately as if they were babies, each holding a melon on top of it all. Only when neither could conceive of balancing more did the boys turn and tiptoe away, following the riverbank and keeping to the windowless side of the house. James looked over at Gabriel, a grin splitting his face. He looked as if he wanted to talk, but Gabriel shook his head. A few steps further on, though, and James couldn’t help himself. “We did it,” he whispered. “Easy as—”
“Nigger boys, freeze!”
The call came from behind them. Both boys halted in midstride. Before they had time to confer, the man yelled again, instructing them to turn. They did so, rotating slowly. The man had his rifle aimed dead at them. He held it there for the longest few seconds that Gabriel had yet experienced, those two barrels, the two holes therein, as clear to the boy’s eyes as if the space of seventy yards didn’t separate him from them.
The man lowered the rifle a moment. He pursed his lips and seemed to consider the possibilities. He looked as though he might talk, then decided not to. He shrugged, said something that Gabriel couldn’t make out, then swung the gun up again and shot. Gabriel saw the buck of the gun and the stirring of air at its barrel. The next instant, James whirled as if some force had snatched him up by the head and spun him like a top. The vegetables in his hands flew out in every direction, and he landed spread-eagled on the ground. Before Gabriel could even think what this meant, the boy was back on his feet and flying away.
Gabriel tore out behind him, his booty thrown to the wind. With his runner’s stride, he was soon abreast of James, then past him. He didn’t question the boy’s defiance of death at that moment, but felt only the frantic need for motion, each second, each fraction thereof, too long a space of time, his strides too slow for the workings of his mind. He heard the rifle once more. He thought he sensed the slug’s passage above his head, and then he saw the scuff of dust that marked a bullet’s impact rise before them. He ran on, unaware of the pounding in his chest or the pain in his legs.
They didn’t stop moving until the house had fallen well behind them. This time they were on the far side of it, and they came to rest relieved at this and breathing heavily. James took some time to find his voice. When he did, he showed Gabriel the nick in his left ear, which, despite his worries, was no more than a bruised redness on his earlobe. He replayed the scene, swearing on the body of Jesus that he’d never heard anythi
ng as loud as that bullet. It was the force of its sound that had lifted him from the ground that way. He looked at his friend with all seriousness. “These people don’t play, Gabe. If he’d’ve aimed two inches to the left, I’d be a dead nigger, just like he said.”
Gabriel put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He felt awkward over this tenderness, but he let it lie there. “He didn’t get you, though. We got him.” He rummaged through his pockets and displayed his findings on the ground before them. “Look, we got something—near a dozen carrots, some turnips too.”
“Shit. I can’t eat no raw turnip. Anyway, I ain’t even hungry no more.”
“You will be. Give it a few minutes.”
“Near lost it all for twelve carrots.” James shook his head at the thought of it.
“Not even gold ones, either,” Gabriel said.
It took James a few seconds to look at Gabriel. His jaw dropped with shock when he saw the smile on Gabriel’s face. “You think that’s funny? Now you’re suddenly gonna have yourself a laugh?” Gabriel couldn’t help nodding. “That’s not even a slight bit funny.”
Gabriel went on smiling, almost chuckling. “It is, a slight bit, ain’t it?”
“No, I’m not gonna laugh. Don’t smile.” He pulled a stern face but couldn’t hold it. All jokes aside, life, and the continuation of it, tickled them both with playful fingers, and they felt the mirth of those who have felt the passing breath of death but not its sting.
They washed the carrots in the river and divided them. Their mouths were watering before the first bite, and James said he’d never thought a carrot looked so good. They crunched into them, one bite after the next, and in the space of twenty minutes the boys were left contemplating the turnips. “You gonna try it?” James asked. Gabriel said he would if James would, and James said the same. They passed another twenty minutes at a standstill, then they both went at it. The turnips were hard to bite and difficult to chew and sour. They left a knot in the boys’ stomachs and the next morning a taste in their mouths that they’d never forget.
ALL THE NEXT DAY THE BOYS WALKED on through the unchanging landscape. They reached no settlement and met no people, and all passed in monotony. By noon Gabriel’s head was throbbing with a thick wrap of pain that went from his eyeballs up onto his forehead, out over the temples, and all the way around to the nape of his neck. He begged silence of James, and they walked like two mute and impoverished monks. Only once during the day did they see a human, a horseman across the river and a good few miles off. If he saw them, he showed no sign. He simply traversed the horizon like a silhouette puppet on a distant stage and moved on.
They camped that night on a flat slab of rock that allowed no sleep, and they were walking again before dawn, under a light rain that disappeared as the sun rose. They drank often from the river, slurping the surface, sinking their faces into the water and coming up gasping and dripping and luxuriating in the refreshing chill of it. When they peed, they did so facing away from each other, the splash of their urine the only sound save for the wind. Emptied, they were slow to move on, each boy watching the play of the heat on the horizon. The pain in Gabriel’s head grew deeper, like an infection entering the bones of his skull. He felt as though his body were shutting down, his bowels constricting from lack of use, his muscles growing weak under the constant strain of work without fuel. James no longer talked of his feet, or of the journey west, or of much of anything. The two boys conserved their energy for the chore of movement, the task of steadying their dizzy heads and squinting in the white light of midday.
A little before dusk they came in sight of a settlement, which they took to be McKutcheon’s Station. James pointed it out, then fell to his knees and whispered a quick and heartfelt prayer. Gabriel’s body also went limp, as if the sight might be too much for his strained resources. He caught himself and shook his head. He immediately regretted doing so and stood blinded by a long contraction of pain. When it passed, he opened his eyes and nudged James into movement, saying, “Come on. You can’t walk on your knees.”
McKutcheon’s Station was a small conglomeration of buildings built of a white wood, weathered and parched but a far cry from the sod homes of the homesteaders. No more than a half-dozen in number, they faced each other along what might have been the main street in a large town but was little more than a central open space in this one. An extensive, although entirely empty, corral system stretched out from the eastern side of the settlement. Fences cut out onto the prairie in chaotic dimensions, rounded pens with thin shoots connecting them, like an equation writ large for celestial observers.
At the edge of the settlement they came upon Dunlop. He was sitting on a tree stump, rolling a cigarette with the utmost concentration. Beneath the trees nearby, the men’s horses grazed. They looked up as the boys walked in, studied them, then lowered their heads and fell to cropping the grass. Dunlop didn’t notice the boys until they were a few feet away. His head snapped up. He eyed them wearily, recognition only slowly taking hold of his features. “All right, lads? I wasn’t sure if I’d set eyes on you again,” he said. There was something a bit thick about his voice, a dryness in his throat, and more than the usual lilt of Scotland. His eyes were tainted a faint shade of red, and his cheeks were alive with a fur of reddish brown stubble. “You two are in a bit of a state,” he added.
Gabriel stood looking at him for some time, thinking that much the same could be said about him. But it was James who remembered the reason for their state. “You know where we could get some vittles?”
“Aye, aye, some food’ll do you good.” Dunlop started to rise but found the motion awkward, as he still held the half-rolled cigarette in his hands. He tossed it away and led the boys into McKutcheon’s Station proper. It was even smaller than it had seemed from a distance. In fact, it was not a town at all. It was more of a way station for cattlemen on their journey north or south, dominated by McKutcheon’s General Store, with its adjacent McKutcheon’s Livery, which sat across the street from McK’s Watering Hole. There were a few other buildings, but all had an air of abandonment about them.
Dunlop led the boys across the main street and around to what appeared to be the back of a small building. He called out and was soon answered by an elderly Hispanic woman. She was dark-faced and wrinkled, with a bulging mass of oil-black hair trailing down her back. She eyed the boys with something like distrust but waved them toward a rough-hewn table set against a tree for support.
The boys sat slouch-shouldered on a bench, lacking the energy to swat at the flies that plagued their arms and faces. As Dunlop began the long chore of rolling another cigarette, he filled them in on the events of the last few days. Apparently Marshall had convinced neither the Mexican girls themselves nor McKutcheon on their behalf that they should go into prostitution. Marshall raised a bit of a fuss, but McKutcheon locked the girls away in his barnlike abode and would hear no more about it. Dunlop had seen no sign of them since the first night. Marshall and the others had then turned their full resources to drink. Thereafter, the time had passed in a sort of drunken haze of card games and shooting contests, in arguments and laughter, and occasionally in retching. It was this last activity that had taken Dunlop to the spot where the boys had found him, where he was fast deciding that he preferred the company of horses to that of men.
The Hispanic woman returned with two plates of refried beans and a platter of steaming corn tortillas. The boys eyed the food with silent awe. Both were slow in trying it, as if they doubted their ability to consume such fare and thought they were better off taking it in with their eyes. The woman seemed pleased by their reaction but wouldn’t leave until they began eating, scooping up big helpings of the beans with the tortillas and chewing with slow relish. Dunlop watched them for a moment, then turned away as the previous evening’s drink threatened to well up once more.
The food held James’s full attention for only a few moments. He kept chewing but managed to speak between mouthfuls. “Dunlop, what the
heck happened back there? What was that Dallas talking about, with them horses and all? Y’all weren’t horse-thieving for real, were you?”
Dunlop shook his head, a sad gesture more like a nod than a denial. “For Christ’s sake, lads, it was just a wee joke—just a laugh, really. An expensive joke, aye, but . . .” He explained that the butt of the joke was the ranch called Three Bars. He’d never seen the place properly himself, but he more than knew it by reputation. It was run by the dubious couple of Jim Rickles and Ugly Mary. Rickles was an Indian fighter and Civil War veteran who wore the wounds of those professions with distinction: a ragged scar across his forehead, from where his skull had been loosened by an Apache hatchet, and a left hand of three digits only, the other two severed by a Union bayonet. Ugly Mary was a former prostitute. It was said that she’d thrice had bottles broken over her head in barroom brawls. The first had knocked her cold, the second had only stunned her, and the third had just made her mad enough to shoot the man who had injured her. She was also famed for having once emasculated an unpleasant customer with her bare teeth.
“She did what?” Gabriel asked.
Dunlop nodded his head in answer. “Took away the very thing that God gave Adam.”
Rickles and Ugly Mary had retired from their lines and taken up ranching a few years ago, joining their holdings in a state of unsanctified matrimony. They scrounged together a motley crew of punchers from the far corners of the state and had been suspects in horse- and cattle-rustling debates ever since. Nothing had ever been pinned on them, but no honest ranch in Texas had any kind words for them, and Marshall seemed to have a particular loathing for them. Indeed, Dunlop suspected that Marshall had once been in some sort of partnership with them, a deal that had gone sour and left Marshall vengeful. “But who would’ve thought they’d have us turned out? It’s injustice all over again. I still can’t believe it. Aye, we stole a few head from them, but they stole them in the first place and everybody knows it.” He fell quiet, shaking his head at the whole thing and holding his cigarette out before him as if he were offering it to some invisible person. “Something has to be done, if Marshall ever sobers up long enough. He’ll make us all drunkards before he’s through.”
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