The Baron War

by Jory Sherman

  Peebo finished loading his rifle. “Can’t see a damned thing,” he said. “Don’t know if the powder went down the barrel or down my pants-leg.”

  “Let’s go,” Anson said, and he eased his horse toward the road.

  There was nobody there. He and Peebo kept to the shadows along the right side as they headed toward the Box B. Then Anson heard a rustling ahead and reined in his horse.

  Peebo stopped also, right next to Anson. The two stood staring down the road. Anson saw a dark lump that resembled a body. The shape was less than fifty feet away, and beyond, he thought he saw another body lying in the road. But it might have been a tree shadow or just a peculiar shade of chiaroscuro in the landscape of the night itself.

  The rustling sound continued, sporadically, but neither man could determine its source.

  “What is it?” Peebo asked.

  “I don’t know. That could be a body yonder on the road.”

  “I make it out a dead man, son.”

  “Can you see what that is just beyond it? Another ten, fifteen feet.”

  “Nope. It looks like something, though.”

  “Yeah, it looks like something,” Anson said, a sarcastic twang to his voice. “Every goddamned thing looks like something.”

  “’Specially at night.”

  “Don’t get smarty now, Peebo.”

  “That sound might be coming from off in the woods.”

  Anson turned his head to the left, then to the right. He kept doing this until he located a place where the noises might be coming from. They didn’t last long enough for him to be sure, but he pointed off to the right. “I think those rustlin’ noises are comin’ from over yonder,” he said.

  Peebo stared in that direction. “Yep, seems likely. Some animal, maybe, rustlin’ around.”

  “Or a man,” Anson said. “A wounded man.”

  Before Peebo could reply, Anson rode slowly forward, closing in on the first lump in the road. When he drew parallel to it, he stopped. Peebo rode up.

  “That’s one dead man, I reckon,” Peebo said.

  “He’s not moving. And it’s a man, all right.”

  “I don’t hear that sound no more.”

  Anson listened. It was true. There was a silence around them now except for the thundering deadness of the body lying in the road. Anson felt his skin ripple as if it was trying to crawl off his back. He could smell the scent left by the man, as he had voided just before death. Anson turned his face away as if to avoid the scent of the man’s bowels.

  “There,” Peebo said. “There it is again.”

  Anson looked down the road. Another body lay some fifteen or twenty feet away. He was sure it was a body now. A rifle lay next to it.

  He figured these two men might have been shot by Timo and his companions. If so, the men he and Peebo had shot should be a short distance ahead. He heard the rustling sound again. And, then, he heard a man moan.

  “Over there,” Peebo whispered, loud enough for Anson to hear.

  “I hear it.”

  “That’s a human yonder.”

  “Maybe,” Anson said.

  “No ‘maybe.’ Ain’t no critter makin’ that sound.”

  Then they both heard it. A single word. “Ayúdame. Help me.”

  Anson felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck, like the faint silent tatter of a spider’s legs prancing on his spine.

  “I heard that,” Peebo said.

  “You watch the road,” Anson told him. “I’ll see what’s what.”

  Anson rode toward the moaning sounds. He was wary, but he already had a sickening boil in his gut, a swirling that told him what he might find. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and veered toward it, his rifle leveled at the figure on the ground from hip level.

  “Anson,” groaned the man. “Ayúdame. Please help me.”

  “Quién es?”

  “Soy Paco.”

  “Paco?”

  “Yes.”

  Anson quickly dismounted. He tied his horse’s reins to a small mesquite and dashed over to the wounded man. He bent down and looked into the face of one of his own men, Paco Castro.

  “Where do you hurt?” he asked Paco in Spanish.

  “In my stomach. I took the ball in my stomach.”

  “What you got there, son?” Peebo called.

  “Come on, it’s Paco Castro.”

  Peebo rode up as Anson was knifing away Paco’s shirt, his sharp blade ripping through the fabric. He felt hot sticky blood on his hands. He could not see in the dark, so when Paco’s belly was exposed, he felt around it, probing with his fingers, the size and depth of the wound.

  “Ai, de mi,” Paco bleated.

  “It is bad, Paco. Very bad.”

  “I know. Can you get the lead ball out? I can feel it still in my stomach.”

  Peebo dismounted and walked over to the two men. He knelt down and felt Paco’s forehead.

  “He’s hotter’n a two-dollar pistol,” Peebo said, wiping his sweat-stained hand on his trouser leg.

  “Cálmate,” Anson said to Paco. He gently lifted the man at the small of his back and felt underneath. He felt more blood and what felt like the shattered ends of two or three ribs. The ball had gone straight through Paco and he was bleeding out pretty fast.

  “Do you feel the galena?” Paco asked.

  “Yes,” Anson lied. “I will take it out.”

  “I do not want to die, Anson. I have a wife…”

  “I know. Wait.” Anson let the man down gently and pulled back his bloody hand from underneath him. He did not look at Peebo for fear he would give it away that Paco did not have long to live.

  But Peebo must have understood, for he spoke to Anson for Paco’s benefit. “Lucky you could feel that ball. Should be easy to get out.”

  “Yes,” Anson said. “It is near the skin. In a good place.”

  “Ai, duele mucho, tanto,” Paco said.

  “I know,” Anson said in Spanish. “Esperate pocos minutos, eh?”

  Paco closed his eyes but his face was contorted in pain. He seemed to be gathering his strength so that Anson could dig the ball out of his back, or stomach.

  Anson looked at Peebo then, and shook his head. Peebo nodded.

  “Dios mìo, el dolor, el dolor,” Paco chanted in a weak voice. “Hace mucho dolor.”

  “I have to tell him, Peebo. He is very religious,” Anson said.

  “Yeah, I reckon.”

  “What? What?” Paco asked.

  “Paco, you are dying,” Anson said in Spanish. “Pray. I will tell your wife you died a brave man.”

  “Did you take the ball from me, then?”

  “Yes,” Anson lied. “I am not able to stop the blood.”

  “Is there nothing you can do?”

  “No, there is nothing.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  “Yes, you pray,” Anson said.

  Paco began to pray in a soft voice. He reached out and grabbed Anson’s hand, then squeezed it. He held that tight grip until his voice faded away and, finally, he sighed and released his last breath. His hand relaxed and fell away.

  Anson choked on something in his throat and stood up, gasping for breath. “He’s gone, Peebo.”

  “May he rest in peace.”

  “Peace? What is that?” Anson asked bitterly.

  Peebo kept his mouth shut. After a moment, he remounted his horse and waited for Anson to leave the body of the dead cowhand.

  Finally Anson turned and walked to his horse.

  “I can’t see your face, son, but I’ll bet you got blood in your eye.”

  “You’re damned right I do. Come on, let’s ride. I might not know what son of a bitch killed Paco, but I’ll damned sure know when I’m finished.”

  “How’s that?” Peebo asked.

  “I aim to kill every one of those men who rode by here.”

  “All by yourself?” Peebo asked.

  “If necessary.”

  “Lead on
out, son. I reckon I’ll surely foller you.”

  Anson slapped his horse’s rump with the trailing ends of his reins and the horse bucked from a standstill into a trot that grew into a gallop.

  Peebo had to put the spurs to his mount to catch up with Anson. They rode along the side of the road so close to the mesquite trees they felt the slap of the limbs on their legs and shoulders.

  Anson only slowed when they came upon more bodies in the road. Riderless horses stood hipshot next to the woods like frozen statues, and none whickered when Anson stopped to examine the brands to see if he had lost any more men.

  “I count four, so far,” Peebo said.

  “Well, you’re going to count a hell of a lot more before daylight, Peebo.”

  Then Anson was off again and Peebo rode hard to catch up.

  Peebo felt as if he was chasing after a madman and he hoped the blood in Anson’s eye didn’t blind him to the danger that lay ahead on this dark and solemn night.

  32

  BONE WAITED. DEEP in the shadows of a mesquite grove, he sat his horse without moving a muscle, a shadow within a shadow, invisible to any eye but the owl’s. For some time now, he had been listening to the sounds coming from the nearby road, and the sounds told him much, but not all.

  He had heard the Frenchman’s voice and the liquid sounds of the Mexicans talking among themselves, then had heard Reynaud order Obispo to follow the tracks off the road, his own tracks. He had seen the two pass by moments ago and wondered if Reynaud meant to shoot Obispo in the back. Or perhaps Matteo had sent both men to kill him, and that was why they were following his old trail.

  If Obispo was a good-enough tracker, he would find the new trail and come back to this place. Bone wondered whether he should just wait for them or ride on, back to the Rocking A, where he planned to get Dawn and take her away, to another place.

  All this time, since he had left Anson, he had been thinking of Dream Speaker and the many things the old man of the tribe had told him. Riding through the dark it had seemed to him that he was the only man alive on the earth, that he was the last of all human beings, and he tried to imagine how it must have been for those Dream Speaker had told him about, those who had lived long ago and then vanished, like smoke on the wind, never to be seen again.

  He had given the strange stone to Anson and he wondered why, but deep down, he knew. He felt that Dream Speaker had wanted him to find the stone and to give it to someone, to Anson, perhaps, so that the talking signs in the stone could finally be heard by someone alive in another time.

  Dream Speaker was dead, Bone knew. Gone to the dust that claimed all living things. But his spirit lived on and Bone could feel him now, near him, whispering in his ear, so soft he could not make out the words.

  The sound, however, took Bone back to a time when Dream Speaker was alive, when they sat together on the mountain, smoking the pipe and looking at the sky.

  Dream Speaker had picked up a handful of dirt. He held it in his open right hand, then poked his left index finger into the mass, spread it around on his palm. “Do you know what this is, Hueso?”

  “Dirt.”

  “Yes, it is dirt, but where did it come from?”

  “I do not know, Dream Speaker. Perhaps it was always here.”

  Dream Speaker had looked up again at the sky. He extended his left arm and pointed to a floating white cloud. “It came from beyond that cloud, beyond that part of the sky you can see now with your eyes.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Many, many winters ago, the old ones knew all this and they told their children and their children told their children and I heard it from my grandfather.”

  Dream Speaker closed his hand and tipped it. The dirt started to pour from his half-open fist and trickle back down onto the ground. “So it is,” he said, “that the dust from the stars settled on the earth and we humans were created from this same dust. That is all we are. That is all that anything is, in the sky, on the earth, and in the sea.”

  “It is not much, I think,” Bone had said.

  “No, it is everything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we can see it and think about it, that is why. And it can see us and think about us. This is what my grandfather told me and he had heard it from his grandfather. All is nothing and nothing becomes all, over and over, ever and ever.”

  “It does not make sense.”

  “Perhaps we come from the stars and we go back to the stars one day.”

  “No sense to that at all, Dream Speaker.”

  “Life is endless. That is the sense of it. It becomes and then it goes away. It comes back changed. This is what we must see as we watch our bodies grow old and wither. This is what I see. I see myself becoming as the babe again, no teeth, no hair, no sense. All a circle, all life a circle, and the sky a circle. We see ourselves going away and we meet ourselves coming back.”

  “Coming back?”

  Just then a golden eagle had floated over them, floated on the sky itself, its wings outstretched, unflapping, and it had soared and floated in a wide circle. Dream Speaker had looked up at the eagle and so had Bone.

  “Who is that eagle, Hueso? Is that your father? Maybe it is my father, or your mother. Maybe it is my grandfather.”

  “It is an eagle. It is a bird.”

  Dream Speaker had smiled then, and his wrinkled face resembled the rugged mountains with their creases that were valleys, their hard ridges that were the color of rusted iron.

  “It is us, too. We are no different. He is of dust as we are of dust. The dust is just put together in a different way, like the sand paintings of the people who live to the west of us. I am that eagle and you are that eagle and that eagle is you and that eagle is me. We are all one thing. Look, I breathe, and I breathe the sky into my body and the sky is endless and it fills me with the spirits that have gone before and will come again some day.”

  “All of this is a big mystery to me, Dream Speaker.”

  “Yes, it is a mystery. It will always be a mystery because all life is a mystery. Ghosts are a mystery. That is as it should be.”

  “Why do you tell me these things if I cannot understand them?” Bone asked.

  “Because then you will know that when my body is dust, I am not dust. That I am alive and with you. I will be the air you breathe and the thoughts you think. I will be the ghost who leaves no shadow, but is like the shadow that you see out of the corner of your eye, the shadow that when you turn to see what it is, is no longer there. I want you to know that, although I die, I yet live.”

  “How will I know?” Bone had asked.

  “You will know.” Dream Speaker closed his right fist and struck his chest over the heart. “You will know here.”

  “In my heart?”

  “Yes, and here.” Dream Speaker tapped a bony fingertip on his forehead.

  “I will look for you,” Bone said, but he knew he was saying it only because he thought that was what Dream Speaker had wanted him to say.

  “No, do not look for me, Hueso. But, when you are not looking for me, when you are all alone and death is near, you will know that I am there, beside you and in your heart and in your head.”

  As it was now, Bone knew. Death was near. And so was Dream Speaker. He drew in a deep breath and thought of what Dream Speaker had told him. He looked up at the night sky and knew his breath had come from there, had traveled all that far way through the stars and the night and was now in his lungs, and he felt strong and alive. He felt alive in two ways, as if he were two beings, as if he were himself and the one watching himself. It was a good feeling, a strong feeling, and he saw a flitting shadow out of the corner of his eye and knew it must have been Dream Speaker, the ghost of the old man passing by.

  Bone turned suddenly to see if the shadow was real. He turned very quickly as if to catch it and make it reveal itself. But the shadow was not there and he thought, at first, that it must be a trick of the light from the stars, or something ca
ught in the corner of his eye, but then he listened to his heart and knew that Dream Speaker had been there and when he turned back to look in the direction of the hoof sounds, he knew that Dream Speaker was still there, not as a ghost or a shadow, but inside him, part of him, like the eagle they had seen that day, floating in the sky and seeing them as they were seeing him.

  Bone rode out from the bower in the mesquite and began to follow Obispo and Reynaud. He wanted to see what these two would do, and he was not afraid, because he knew Dream Speaker was with him and that he would be watching, too, to see what would happen.

  33

  ANSON MADE A hasty examination of the body in the middle of the road, feeling like a grave-robber invading a private tomb. The face, a frozen bronze mask, told him that it was one of Matteo Aguilar’s men. He and Peebo found two more dead men farther on.

  “That one’s yours,” Peebo said, pointing to the farthest one. “That other is the one I shot out of the saddle.”

  “How do you know?”

  “See that bandanna pokin’ out from under his hat?”

  “I see it.” There was a hole right through it which Anson could see when he leaned over and looked close.

  “That’s what I aimed at.”

  “Pretty good shot.”

  “He didn’t suffer none too much.”

  Anson rode on and looked at the man he had shot. It made him sick, not just from the smell, but he could see where his ball had entered the man’s chest, right at the heart, and there were bone-white ribs, splintered into darning needles, sticking out around it. He must have hit the man at an angle, because of the size of the hole, and the man’s right arm was smashed, bent at a sharp angle. There was a large hole in the side of the man’s chest and a pool of blood big enough to float a toy boat.

  Anson’s stomach heaved and he turned his horse away from the stench, gulped in air that bore no taint, held it until his lungs burned. He let his breath out and pulled his stomach in to keep from vomiting.

  “Gets you, don’t it, son?” Peebo said, as he rode up a moment later.

  Anson gasped.

  “A man don’t die pretty when he dies sudden like that.”