The Mule Tamer III, Marta's Quest

by John Horst

  Curtin opened it to the stench of mildew and dirty sea water. He looked through it. His journal was there, at least partially. The leather cover intact, the pages dissolved into a pulp, unreadable. He took this out and closed the case, called in a clerk and instructed him to burn the rest. It was beyond use now. He looked through what was left of his journal, looked at it and remembered all that he’d written about his trip south, his time with Rebecca and felt even lower, now his words, memories of the most exciting days of his life gone as Tolkenhorn prattled on about the gold prospect.

  “It’s good, thinly dispersed but good.”

  This brought Curtin out of his trance. He looked on at the young engineer, smug, ugly, small-minded, sitting behind his desk. The young man smoked a cheap cigar and blew smoke at his desk. Curtin looked down at the man and saw him, leaning over his papers, like a child hoarding candy. In a quick movement Curtin snatched them away as the man swiped for them, lunged at Curtin who put a palm on the lad’s forehead and pushed him back into his chair. “Sit down!”

  Tolkenhorn interjected, “Easy, Robert, no need for violence!”

  “Shut up, Miles.” He studied the reports. “You’ll need cyanide.” He thought about that, too. Marta’s contract specifically banned it. He decided to say nothing for now. Again, he thought, no need to show his hand to Tolkenhorn or the mining company.

  He went off to his own office and Tolkenhorn followed. He brought a bottle and two glasses and Curtin realized that the boozing was commencing earlier and earlier for the sot lawyer these days. The old man changed, physically in just a short time since Curtin left for Maryland. He looked a little more yellow, especially around the eyes. He now had a visible tremor all the time. He pleasantly called out to Curtin as he downed the first glass. “You look good, Robert! The trip did you good. Sorry we couldn’t get our first goal accomplished, but at least you got ‘em down here.”

  “Them?”

  “Sure, sure. The girl and her sister.”

  “I don’t remember you saying you wanted the sister. Why’d you say that, Miles?”

  “Oh, no, nothing, nothing in it, Curtin, my boy.”

  “I’m not your boy.”

  “Take it easy, take it easy.” He lifted a hand, waved innocuously. “Good news about the gold, eh? This is some rich goddamned land, Robert.” He saw he was not making progress and tried to change the subject. “So,” his eyes became slits, “have any luck on your journey down?”

  “I told you, no, she doesn’t want to sell.”

  “No, not that kind of luck, you, know, between the sheets, they’re quite a pair of lookers.”

  “I…” Curtin stood up and thought about smashing Tolkenhorn’s ugly yellow face. He stopped himself. Stood over the man. He picked up the bottle and threw it out the window. He looked on at Tolkenhorn and, without saying a word, pointed to the door and ordered him out.

  Adulio worried over the girls’ saddles as they prepared, well before daylight for a half day’s hunt. “Señorita please let me send a couple of the men with you. There’s a lot going on these days, Federales and bandits and revolutionaries. I do not think it is a good place for the two of you to roam.”

  “We’ll be fine, Adulio. It will be a sad day when I can’t go out on my own ranch without an armed guard, and besides, you know Rebecca is the best shot in the land.”

  Adulio looked on at the completely feminine Rebecca, the least threatening human being he’d ever known. He blew air between his lips. He knew his arguments were wasted on Marta. “As you please.”

  They were off looking for Coues deer as the ranch hands reported an abundance of them this spring. The winter had been mild and there had been no drought now for several years. They rode along as the sun came up and Marta was in a talkative mood.

  “Have you seen Curtin?”

  “Yes.” Rebecca smiled. They’d been sneaking visits to each other every night. He even spent one night in her bed. It was thrilling as they were afraid the staff would discover them. Curtin was so nervous these days, almost paranoid. He expected that everyone was spying on him.

  “You sure do love him, don’t you?” Marta was making her own peace now with Curtin, trying hard to not upset her sister.

  “More than anything.” She responded automatically, without even giving her answer a thought. She considered that. It had been this way for as long as she’d known him, from the very first day, when she saw him playing with the rebozo lady’s child.

  They played cat and mouse with a small herd all morning, they would kill only bucks as it was too early for the babies to be weaned and they did not want to risk taking a mother. It was good sport, as they’d have a shot, then look for antlers. None that they had in range ever sported headgear and they ended up stopping by a shady area, near good water for a long lunch.

  This was when Marta was happiest. She was home, in her element. She didn’t think about her days with the bandits when she was in the desert. She thought about her people, her people for the past thousands of years, the pottery shards, projectile points, pictographs all made her appreciate, feel at home, feel no longer out of place, second class. She was mostly an Indian, likely, if any, only the tiniest bit of Spanish blood was running through her veins. She liked being an Indian, she was proud of being an Indian and she could be an Indian here.

  Rebecca took it all in stride. Since the age of around thirteen, she lost interest in hunting and camping. She always went, first with her father, then with Marta. It wasn’t that she disliked hunting or rough living, it was just that it no longer, perhaps never did really interest her. That was the way with Rebecca. She was in training to be the perfect mother, always putting the needs of others before hers. She went hunting and camping for them, for others, because it made them happy and it made them even happier when she was there. She was magic to a party, as everyone loved her and everyone felt happier when Rebecca was around.

  She was, deep down, a thoroughly good person. She smiled as she watched Marta look over their surroundings. She smiled to herself, knowing that Marta was especially happy because Rebecca was there. She and her sister were together and it could be seen, even felt, in Marta’s demeanor and mood.

  She looked carefully and now realized that they were in the center of an abandoned home. Here and there the remnants of a wall could be seen poking out among the sand and cactus and scrub brush, and Rebecca wondered at what transpired all the many years ago when the place was the home of some ancient family. It was a good piece of desert and was probably even better a thousand years ago, even more abundant with wildlife. The family likely had no interest other than in just living, staying alive, staying fed, hydrated, together as a family. As it had for Marta, it made Rebecca feel connected to the land.

  She sat down on the ground, near where the fire pit likely existed and she closed her eyes and imagined she could smell the mesquite wood burning, the tortillas cooking on the flat stone nearby, just there. Over in a corner a father or grandfather made arrows and in another, children were skinning a rabbit or armadillo. In another corner an old grandmother worked on a green deer skin. She’d make it soft and useful. They’d all be talking happily or maybe singing or maybe not. Maybe they’d all be working quietly, waiting for the food to be ready. Maybe they’d go out and sit under the stars and other members of their little tribe would make up a big fire and they’d sit around it and sing and just live. Just be alive.

  They gave up on hunting and rode their horses north to the oil fields and up on a rise they looked down on them, dozens and dozens of wells, Robert Curtin’s harvest. They weren’t pretty, but necessary to the enterprise and the women looked on and then at each other. They had mixed feelings about the blight to the land.

  They rode on a little further and discovered a work party, an animated man, a gringo, covered in oil shouting orders to men who scurried around him, under a great iron derrick. Black liquid shot from the ground and they were trying their best to contain it.

  The
man in charge was amusing as he cursed continuously as he worked and ordered his men around. He was a Canadian who worked for the mining company and directly for Robert Curtin. If he were not presently coated in the black substance, he would have displayed a head covered in red hair and lily white skin. He was a big man whose family hailed from Scotland originally, a hundred years ago, then moved on to Canada to seek their fortunes.

  He wasn’t a mean boss and he never cursed his men, he simply cursed. Mostly everything was a goddamned thing, for example, a wrench was a goddamned wrench, the drill bit was a goddamned drill bit and so on.

  He blinked hard to clear his eyes as the women approached. He held up a hand for them to stop. “No goddamned smoking, ladies!” They weren’t smoking but that is how he greeted all visitors, no matter who they were. If a child would have approached, he would have admonished him for smoking. It was hard-wired into him, just as certain as cursing. It was second nature to him.

  They continued on and watched out of the direct path of the oil spray. “Good afternoon,” Rebecca nodded and gave the Canadian and his crew a smile.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.” He rubbed his face clean as the men got the geyser under control.

  “Did you just strike oil on this one?”

  “No, ma’am, it was capped, we’re just harnessing up a nodding donkey to her.” He pointed off in the distance at the many pump jacks working away. It did indeed look like a pasture full of giant nodding donkeys. “It’s a goddamned good one.” He was proud.

  Rebecca grinned at him. He was a funny man. She liked the fact that he spoke so freely, so profanely in front of them, like a man who’d been out in the wilderness alone too long, he’d forgotten his civilized voice and this was the way with the Canadian. He forgot how to speak without profanity, forgot how to speak around ladies, not because he had no respect for them, he did, but because he was so wrapped up, absorbed in his work. It was nice to see.

  Marta forgot herself and started for her cigarettes as the Canadian admonished her again. “No goddamned smoking, ma’am, sorry.”

  It was Marta’s turn to smile. “No, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s just, goddamned, if you’ve ever been to a well fire, ma’am, it’s a goddamned mess.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’m Marta del Toro, and this is my sister, Rebecca Walsh.”

  He bowed. “Ladies.”

  “Is the work going well, Mister…”

  “Fitzgerald, ma’am. Frank Fitzgerald.” He raised a hand. “Would offer a hand, but I’m so goddamned dirty.” He grinned broadly and his white teeth shone brightly.

  Rebecca looked beyond him at the many jacks, cranking away, a constant, not pleasant din. Clank-clank, clank-clank, clank-clank, on and on. “Does that noise ever get on your nerves, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  He looked around them as if he’d seen the machines and heard the sound for the first time. “Naw, ma’am, goddamned music to my ears.” He wiped his arms with the filthy rag. “It sounds like singing to me.”

  “Really? What music?”

  “Well, hear it, clank-clank, clank-clank? That’s really another-dollar, another-dollar. Goddamned music to my ears.”

  “Another dollar?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He pointed at one of the nodding donkeys. “That there, every time it turns, every goddamned revolution is more goddamned money pulled from the ground. Three hundred fifty goddamned barrels a day, ma’am, each goddamned donkey pulling three hundred fifty barrels a day at sixty-one cents a barrel. Goddamned music to my ears, ma’am.”

  Rebecca looked on at the field before her. He’d gotten nearly a hundred nodding donkeys going so far, and more, many more to come. She calculated in her mind. She looked on at Marta and smiled in disbelief. “God damn!”

  They left the men to their work and headed home. It was mind boggling, the wealth derived from oil. Rebecca wondered at it. When would it ever end? Curtin told her that fields could last a year or a hundred years and he was certain Marta’s ranch would likely follow the path of the latter. It was rich and it was going to go on for a very long time. She soon realized that Marta’s fortune could very well be measured in something beyond millions and it was suddenly overwhelming. She looked on at Marta riding next to her and thought about her sister. It would be just another burden to bear. The gods were having a lot of fun with Marta del Toro, that was certain.

  Marta felt her looking at her and turned, smiled. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She felt like talking. “Do you realize how wealthy you are?”

  “Not completely, but yes, Rebecca. Yes, I have a good idea.”

  “I, just…”

  “What?” Marta grinned, she could see that Rebecca was struggling with something. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She became a little sullen. Her favorite person in the world, Marta. Why was everything always happening to Marta? Rebecca did not look at the vast wealth as necessarily a good thing. It would be just another thing to cause her dear sister anxiety and pain. Another cross to bear. It seemed the girl’s fate. Marta was constantly hanging on the tip of a great pendulum, swinging, riding from one extreme to another.

  First, to be born to a bandit gang, then to be born with such intelligence, then to be given the gift of the old man, who cultivated this great mind, then her own capture on the train and her mother rescuing her. Why did Marta have to be there?

  Marta herself had been rescued and given a new life. Then to be so dark in a lily white world, to be an outsider. Then to be so beautiful, sensual, attractive beyond comprehension, then to be so afraid of love. Poor Marta del Toro, Curtin was right, she was the consummate tragic hero.

  As they rode, and Rebecca pondered, they hit another little abandoned settlement and dismounted, looking for deer sign and discovering more remnants of their ancestors. Why couldn’t Marta have just been another peon? In a way, it would have been a better life. She could have been born to the bandit gang, but perhaps a little duller, perhaps not so precocious. She would have been one of the little girls who’d been left behind, not gone on the raid in el Norte, not been the little bandit boss Rebecca met when she was captured. She would have worn a simple skirt and peasant blouse and been wrapped up in her rebozo and not carried a six shooter and not worn vaquero clothes and her little vaquero gun rig and knife.

  Perhaps, once her Mamma and Daddy had killed all the bad men, Marta could have been allowed to go to San Joachim, or some other village. She could have married a good peasant and she’d have had three or four children by now. She would not have seen the rapes and the bad things. She would have not killed. She would not be afraid of sex or having sex or making love and having babies. She would not have become friends with the old man and read the book about the circles of hell.

  She would have been a simple peasant Indian woman, and maybe she would have been happy. Maybe she would have been illiterate, maybe she would not have ever learned French and Latin and the history of the world, but she would also not have learned of condoms or the bad dances and the ugly songs and dirty limericks. She would have been a good Catholic and gone to the annual festival in the nearest town every year and she would have raised her children and lived out her life. It would likely have been a far easier life than what she’d been living up until now, far easier than what was in store for her for the rest of her days.

  And then Rebecca thought of her own time with the bandit men. Marta had really saved her, long before her mother had arrived. It was Marta who stopped the bad men from raping her and it was Marta who helped her mother when she’d done her little trick with the mock crucifixions.

  So, in a way, it was all necessary, all this was necessary, had to come to pass, if Rebecca was to be sitting on this horse, right now, in the year nineteen-eleven, on the ranch of Alejandro del Toro. She wondered, wondered very earnestly, whether she would have given it all up. If an angel would come down from heaven right now and give Rebecca a choice, what would she choose? If the angel said that Mart
a could be a simple peasant woman, live a happy life as a peon and never know such things, but Rebecca Walsh would have to endure the bandit gang and whatever came to pass as a result, without the courageous Marta by her side, what would she choose? This made her very sad and she wanted to cry. She was giving herself a terrific headache.

  They dismounted and half-heartedly looked for more deer sign. Neither of them was much interested in hunting. Rebecca was not even looking down at the ground, but rather off in the distance, off into a vague distance that was not really even the distance at all, she was looking into the abyss of her thoughts and could just have well been anywhere in the world.

  Her musings were soon interrupted by a cloud of dust off to the west, they both knew by the size of it that half a dozen riders were approaching. They were not afraid, but cautious and quickly mounted up. If the riders’ intentions were bad, it would be better to fight or run ahorse than on foot. Rebecca and Marta were not averse to either.

  They were a small detachment of Federales with two prisoners. Their prizes were not impressive, two scrawny peons, not more than about thirteen years old. They were a couple of White Cigars, known as such because of their white clothing and because the huge straw sombreros they wore looked like puffs of smoke. They’d lost their hats, or rather they’d been knocked from their heads in order to add to their torture and were pulled along behind the mounted men with hemp ropes tied about their necks.

  Marta stood in the middle of the road, blocking the soldiers’ path. A captain rode up on her, his horse nearly touching noses with Pumpkin. He put up a hand, a little dramatically, as if he were stopping a troop of a thousand men. “Alto.”

  Marta rode past him as if he were invisible, and handed a canteen to each captive. They drank greedily as the captain lit a cigar. He was impressed with such impudence and surveyed the two beauties. They were well put together. He was not from this part of Mexico and did not know how famous they were. Marta finally addressed him. “Why are you on my land?”