Wolves At Our Door

by J P S Brown

  That was when the earthen floor and Dolly Ann’s contempt for him came in handy for Rafa. He set his cup down and walked up behind her without a sound, reached under her arms, clamped a hand over her mouth, and grabbed her breast. He rubbed himself against her butt while he mauled both breasts and punished her, pinching her breasts so hard he bruised them. She kicked up her heel between his legs and came so close to his private parts that she scared him and he let go. She spun to face him and slammed four straight-armed blows into his mouth and nose and only stopped when he fell out the door onto his back. Rafa jumped up and looked around to see if anyone had seen him spill out the door, then turned and walked away toward the tree where his horse was tied.

  Dolly Ann leaned into the wall and suffered the pain in her breasts. She stayed in the kitchen until she heard the vaqueros head back to the corral. She straightened up and prepared to go back to her job at the branding fire. She was not sure she had inflicted any damage on Rafa when she knocked him down, but she intended to make sure he at least went home with a bloody nose that day. She did not want to tell her grandfather what he had done, because the old man would murder him. She could still taste the palm of Rafa’s hand in her mouth, but she would not scream that she had been violated or whine to the men. She wanted to go back to work, and she wanted Rafa to try to insult her again so she could land a precise combination of jabs, crosses, and hooks on his doltish head for her edification and for the entire Sierra Madre to see and include in its storied history. She could be darned sure that before sunrise tomorrow everybody within fifty miles would know about the lumps she put on Mr. Rafa’s head.

  To scream accusations at Rafa was also the wrong thing to do. After all, she did not feel that she had a complete right to work with these vaqueros. Their women never went near a corral. Men wanted to cuss when a calf kicked them, wanted to step away from the fire to relieve themselves when they had to. The women respected this and stayed away from the corral when their men worked cattle.

  The crew was always so polite and respectful to hershe did not want to cause them trouble. They did not carry on and banter with her, but they watched her back in the way that they thought they were supposed to. She would not call them out to defend her honor. She was there because she wanted to be there, not because she was needed. They were quietly protective of her, watching out for her safety, but modestly. Dolly Ann saw that her Pappy watched her with concern. He did not have a good poker face. She had sent him distress signals without meaning to, and she was sorry, but maybe that was only right. She needed to resolve the outrage that she felt and Pappy could help her do that. He could keep Rafa from getting away while she savaged the coward with a combination or two.

  That gave her an idea for an alternative way to get even with Rafa. What would happen if she went to her Pappy and pantomimed her accusation of Rafa without uttering a word? Rafa used the weapons of a coward. That meant he was probably afraid of what she would do next, so he might not let her get close enough to punch him out. Well, what if she only made a mad face and pointed a finger at him. She bet he would run like a coyote. She would only mouth the accusations silently and express it on her face. She could get even with him that way without anyone else knowing the reason.

  The crew was weaning big calves off their mothers and putting them in a separate pen. One hundred and sixty healthy calves and their K mothers bawled their hearts out for each other. The crew had to shout into each other’s ears to be heard.

  During a lull in the work, but not in the din of the bawling cattle, y Dolly Ann left her post and walked across the corral toward her grandfather, as though she needed to talk to him. She stopped by her Pappy’s horse, mouthed words that made him bend down from his saddle so he could hear them, then pointed at Rafa and showed her distress. Kane did not understand a word of it, but Rafa must have been sure that his atrocity was being discovered. When Dolly Ann pointed at him, Kane looked at him from under his hat brim. That made Rafa think that Jim Kane had just been sicked on him and his life was not worth a nickel.

  Rafa climbed down off the fence. Dolly Ann mouthed something like, "Stop him, Pappy, he’ll get away."

  Rafa ran for his horse, but he was not under the tree where he had left him. Jacobo had led the Lupino horses away to new shade. In a panic, Rafa turned back toward Kane and Dolly Ann. "I didn’t mean to do it," he shouted, and then he hit the trail at a run for La Golondrina and his mama. Before he went out of sight, he lost his hat and his hair stood on end. Jacobo watched as though he thought his brother had gone crazy.

  "What’s wrong with him?" Kane asked.

  "I wonder why he’s acting like that?" Dolly Ann said.

  Jacobo mounted his horse and trotted after him. Dolly Ann did not think the Lupinos would be back, so she told her Pappy what Rafa had done.

  This poisoned Kane against Rafa Lupino for good. He dismounted, led Lagarto out of the corral, went to his bedroom, got his rifle, and carried it outside. Che Che had overheard what Dolly Ann told her grandfather and he told Juan Vogel. Juan Vogel tried to dissuade Kane from going after Rafa with the rifle. They could expect Jacobo to bring the state and federal law and probably the Sierra’s military patrol down on Kane if he even scratched Rafa’s skin. Kane said that in that case it might be a good idea if he eliminated Jacobo too. That way he would make sure no Lupino returned to La Golondrina to accuse him of being half~assed. Vogel took the rifle away from Kane as Jacobo and Rafa reappeared on the trail.

  "Let them get all the way back before you do anything," Vogel said.

  "Look, I’ll smile at them for you." He smiled and waved to the Lupinos. Kane watched them come on and did not smile.

  "Give me the rifle," Kane said.

  "No. I don’t care what you do to him with your bare hands, but I don’t want you to kill him. Think of Fatima and the old man. Let them handle him. In the meantime, let him come all the way into the yard. You’re so old and slow that he can outrun you, so I’ll get ready to cut him off if he tries to get away. Just talk to him a minute before you do anything." Kane mounted Lagarto. He could do what he now planned to do a whole lot better horseback.

  Rafa hailed Kane with a wide grin. Vogel sat his horse beside Kane’s as the Lupinos approached. Kane unfastened his eight-strand, sixty-foot reata and built a three-foot loop in the end. The hand that held it rested on the swell of his saddle. The loop hung along his leg on the side away from Rafa.

  Rafa untied his horse, mounted, rode over, and stopped in front of Kane.

  "I thought the female said something that made you angry with me, meestair;" he said.

  "She said nothing to me. You ran because you’re a coward and she knows it. The girl discovered your cowardice only by pointing a finger at you. That’s all she had to do to make you run, cowardly dog that you are."

  The vaqueros gathered around to listen.

  "Isn’t that the lowest kind of filth any Arab like you can become, a cowardly dog?" Kane asked.

  Rafa’s grin faded and his eyes glowered at Kane. "You’re wrong, meestair, and so is the female. All I did was tell her that I could get a lot of money for a female like her. It’s a pity she’s no businesswoman, for she must know that she would be better off if she spent her time in a perfumed bath waiting to be serviced than in a dirty corral collecting bull testicles in front of a crew of men."

  "What did you say?" Kane asked.

  "You mean about the perfumed bath, or the bull testicles?"

  "No, before that. You said something about being able to get a lot of money. For what? Tell me again. I’m old and don’t hear well anymore."

  "Open your waxy ears to reason, meestair, and consider what I told you when you were in my father’s house. I’ll gladly cut you in. I guarantee you, I can get a fortune for your female, and you can have her out of your hair, out of your corral, and far away where she won’t cause trouble with your neighbors again like she did today/’

  "That’s what I thought you said," Kane said. "That’s the th
ird time one of you sons of filthy bitches have said you can get a lot of money for my granddaughter. You son of a bitch, the third time’s the charm."

  Kane rammed Lagarto into Rafa’s lighter horse and knocked him down. Rafa spilled out from under the horse onto his back. Kane rode over the top of him and lashed his ears with the reata. Rafa howled and ducked his head under his arms. Kane lashed his hands, then lashed at his eyes, then lashed his hands away from them.

  Kane dismounted, but only to get his breath. He positioned the hard, thick, rawhide honda on the down side of the loop and brought it down on the top of Rafa’s head. It bounced off his head and spattered blood every time it struck. Rafa’s head turned bloody and Kane’s reata bathed itself in it and became more efficient as a weapon. Blood flew into Kane’s face. When he thought he had blinded the coward, he stopped.

  "Please don’t beat my brother any more, Jim," Jacobo said.

  "You’re next, you son of a bitch," Kane said. "If you want to carry this piece of filth home after I kill him, don’t get close to me."

  "I’m pleading for his life, and for mine. He won’t bother you again. Please don’t hurt him any more."

  "To show you I’m merciful, I'll let you have him back now." Kane measured the bloody head, growled, "Yyyyyyy, vámonos," swung the honda down one more time, and split Rafa’s nose. He walked away coiled the reata, tied it on his saddle, led his horse to the shade of the veranda, and took a drink of water from the tin cup in the olla.

  That evening Lucrecia and Luci Martinillo rode in to Guazaremos to see Dolly Ann and Adan and found out that he had not returned to the roundup. Kane and Vogel sat down with Lucrecia to examine the situation. They believed that Martinillo had found something that the Lupinos wanted to hide, and it was not a racehorse. He had probably decided to skulk around and watch their opium operation for a while. The partners did not believe the Lupinos or their vaqueros were quick enough to catch Martinillo. As long as he did not want them to see him, they would not even dream he was there.

  After Lucrecia and Luci went to bed, however, Kane told Vogel that y he hoped Martinillo had not disappeared the way all other uninvited visitors to La Golondrina did.

  "He’s not disappeared, because he never appeared to anyone at La Golondrina," Vogel said. "I’m not worried. When he hunts, he’s a ghost. He’s there for his own reasons, and he’ll return when he’s satisfied. Don’t worry about him."

  The next day Dolly Ann begged Kane to let her go home with Lucrecia and Luci. She had never seen him act the way he had the day before. She knew of his reputation for settling differences with his fists man to man, but that meant clean hands, empty hands, not with weapons. She would never have believed that any cowboy’s tool could inflict the pain and damage, the humiliation that her Pappy’s reata had done to Rafa. The sight of Rafa being sliced up by Kane had been outrageous. The sight of Kane’s anger had been worse. She did not want to stay and help brand at Guazaremos anymore.

  Kane was glad to let her go. He did not like having her in the middle of the work any more than the crew did. He was old-fashioned about having women around the work. His mother, grandmother, and aunts had always stayed away from the corrals when cattle were being worked. They had never even worn trousers.

  The first female of his family who had ever come into the corral to work as a doctor had been his sister Maudy, although she had not handled the nuts. Kane’s mother would not have a mess of nuts in her kitchen. Testicles were for the dogs to eat, not for her daughter to clean and roll in cornmeal and fry in deep fat, and Kane’s mother was a seventh-generation cattlewoman. Some families messed with calf nuts, and some families did not.

  Kane had not ever eaten them at home, but in cow camp with other cowboys and vaqueros, he chowed down on them. His mother did not mind that, only she did not want them in the vicinity of her kitchen. The same went for the menudos of a beef: the brains, tongue, marrow gut, paunch, kidneys, heart, and blood. The men could have all the menudos they wanted, but they were not for her, or her daughter, or any of the other women in her family.

  The next morning, Lucrecia awakened Luci and Dolly Ann early, and they made ready to leave as soon as the crew saddled their mules. No one in the crew said anything about Dolly Ann leaving. They liked the sight of her pretty face and figure, and they liked the way she attended to them, but they were relieved that she would not work with them anymore. They could spit. They could pee in plain sight. They could cuss and make bawdy jokes. They could lash nasty Arabs and animals with their reatas, latigos, and ropes. Ribaldry would return to the Guazaremos corral, and with it glee when the crew recalled the sight of Rafa Lupino as he attempted to find his head with both hands and looked around to be sure that he did not leave any of his parts on the bloody ground when he left the area.

  Dolly Ann was relieved to leave the crew. She realized now that she made the men uncomfortable. She had not thought about that before yesterday. The men had shown no sign of it either, but then Rafa made her aware of it and embarrassed her. The blush that Kane noticed had been caused by the realization that she brought discomfort to the crew, not because Rafa’s insults hurt so much.

  She also felt responsible for her Pappy’s awful, bestial anger and the beating he gave Rafa. She realized that none of it would have happened if she had stayed out of the corral. In the Sierra Madre, her place was not in the corral with the men and the dust, blood, snot, manure, and bull nuts. Lucrecia and Luci could use her a whole lot better at Las Animas. Her Pappy had never told her that. Neither had her brother. Her godfather Vogel had never even intimated that she was out of place. It had taken a coward like Rafa to make her aware of it. Maybe it was all right in a crew that included other women, all right inside her own family at the 7x, but it darned sure was not all right in a crew of serranos in the Sierra Madre where no woman ever worked in the corral.

  At Las Animas everything turned sunny for Dolly Ann. She and Luci and Lucrecia worked hard, and she did not have to worry that someone would be offended, tempted, or embarrassed by her presence. The three women all climbed aboard El Toro Buey’s broad back and rode out to clear and burn the brush of a mauguechi, a new field. They used axes and machetes to clear brush and trees off virgin ground. With the bull they dragged the brush into a pile and burned it. They would plant corn and beans on the clearing before the rains began in July.

  Dolly Ann helped sew, churn for butter, and turn sides of fresh jerky to the sun. She helped haul water in a bota, a canvas container that hung on the sides of a burro and carried five gallons on each side. She helped gather the cottontail rabbits they caught in snares on game trails. Dolly Ann loved it at Las Animas and forgot about boxing and school in buildings of concrete, glass, and steel. The youngsters who studied with her were lost without their eyeglasses, their ball-points, their combs, their cell phones, their laptops. They thought themselves mature and in control of all aspects of politics, religion, business, entertainment, and work in their lives. Luci and Lucrecia redefined the term "expertise" for Dolly Ann.

  She wondered if any of her fellow students would believe the story of the raid of the wolves on Las Animas. She had thought some of them were close friends. Now, nobody could be a friend unless she was a Lucrecia, a Luci, or a Marco Antonio. How could she ever fit in with that Tucson crowd of students again? Who among them had ever had to fight off a wolf, ride ten hours from a place like Las Animas to a place like Guazaremos in one uninterrupted journey, back home the next day, then up on the mountain to cut down brush and trees and drag the slash with a big old bull to be burned in a pile? Who among them had a grandfather who had whipped a man nearly blind because he insulted and manhandled his granddaughter?

  "Tell me about your friends, Muñeca," Luci said on the second evening after they arrived at Las Animas. "How do they dress? Do you go dancing? Tell my mama and me what you do for fun."

  Dolly Ann told them about her school and friends. Lucrecia was interested, but Luci was enthralled and wanted to know everythi
ng about Dolly Ann’s life. She kept Dolly Ann up long after Lucrecia went to bed. She wanted Dolly Ann to take her to the "United."

  Dolly Ann asked Lucrecia about Luci’s desire to leave home. Lucrecia did not want Luci to spend her life at Las Animas. She did not want to stay there anymore herself. She had grown too old to live alone in the Sierra without Martinillo. Since the drug wars, she had no neighbors. She had been happy at Las Animas with her children before the wars, but that time was over and her children were gone. Her husband stayed away at work with other men. She wanted to live in town near her remaining sons and their families and her former neighbors. No one could blame Luci for wanting a civilized life. Lucrecia asked Dolly Ann to take Luci home to the 7X. Dolly Ann promised that her Pappy would take her after the horse race.

  NINE

  The thugs from the camp in Culebra Canyon and their l helicopter searched for Martinillo four days. He stayed at the bottom of his chimney and hoped the searchers would not climb down to the ledge and investigate. He could stand and he could sit and rest his head on a bulge in the rock in front of him, and he could lie on his left side with his legs doubled. He slept that way because he could not lie on his back and stretch out.

  The searchers stopped on the edge of the cliff above him more than once to speculate about how to find him. After listening to them for four days, he did not think they had identified him, for he never heard his name called. They called him "the spy." Abdullah had been the one who shot him. Some of the thugs believed the spy had been hit, as Abdullah said. Others did not believe Abdullah had shot anyone, because no sign of a wounded spy could be found. Three footprints were found at the place where Abdullah indicated that the spy had been hit, but no blood.