Long Ride Home (Ss) (1989)

by L'amour, Louis

  Mooney winced when he saw the wound. A bullet through the thigh. And it looked as ugly as any wound he had seen in a long time. Turning to the trees, Mooney began to gather dry sticks. When he started to put them together for a fire the girl sprang at him wildly and began to babble shrill protest, pointing off to the west as she did so. “Somebody huntin’ you, is there?” Tensleep considered that, looked at the man, the girl, and considered himself, then he chuckled. “Don’t let it bother you, kid,” he said. “If we don’t fix this old man up fast, he’ll die. Maybe it’s too late now. An’,” here he chuckled again, “if they killed all of us, they wouldn’t accomplish much.”

  The fire was made of dry wood and there was little smoke. He put water on to get hot. Then when the water was boiling he went to a creosote bush and got leaves from it and threw them into the water. The girl squatted on her heels and watched him tensely. When he had allowed the leaves to boil for a while, he bathed the wound in the concoction. He knew that some Indians used it for an antiseptic for burns and wounds. The girl watched him, then darted into the brush and after several minutes came back with some leaves which she dampened and then began to crush into a paste. The old man lay very still, his face more calm, his eyes on Mooney’s face.

  Tensleep looked at the wide face, the large soft eyes that could no doubt be hard on occasion, and the firm mouth. This was a man he had heard many stories of the endurance of these Tarahumara Indians. They would travel for fabulous miles without food, they possessed an unbelievable resistance to pain in any form. When the wound was thoroughly bathed, the girl moved forward with the paste and signified that it should be bound on the wound. He nodded, and with a tinge of regret he ripped up his last white shirt the only one he had owned in three years and bound the wound carefully. He was just finishing it when the girl caught his arm. Her eyes were wide with alarm, but he saw nothing. And then, as he listened, he heard horses drawing nearer and he got to his feet and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. His horse had stopped among the uptilted rocks that surrounded the water hole.

  There were three of them, a well-dressed man with a thin, cruel face and two hard-faced vaqueros. “Ah!” The leader drew up. He looked down at the old Indian and said, “Perro!” Then his hand dropped to his gun and Tensleep Mooney drew.

  The Mexican stopped, his hand on his own gun, looking with amazement into the black and steady muzzle of Tensleep’s Colt. A hard man himself he had seen many men draw a pistol, but never a draw like this. His eyes studied the man behind the gun and he did not like what he saw. Tensleep Mooney was honed down and hard, a man with wide shoulders, a once broken nose, and eyes like bits of gray slate.

  “You do not understand,” the Mexican said coolly. “This man is an Indio. He is nothing. He is a dog. He is a thief.”

  “Where I come from,” Mooney replied, “we don’t shoot helpless men. An’ we don’t run Injuns to rags when they’re afoot an’ helpless. We,” his mouth twisted wryly, “been hard on our own Injuns, but mostly they had a fightin’ chance. I think this hombre deserves as much.”

  “You are far from other gringos,” the Mexican suggested, “and I am Don Pedro,” he waved a hand, “of the biggest hacienda in one hundred miles. The police, the soldiers, all of them come when I speak. You stop me now and there will not be room enough in this country. For you to hide, and then we shall see how brave you are.

  “That’s as may be,” Mooney shrugged, his eyes hard and casual. “You can see how big my feet are right now if you three want to have at it. I’ll holster my gun, an’ then you can try, all three of you. Of course,” Mooney smiled a pleasant, Irish smile, “you get my first shot, right through the belly.”

  Don Pedro was no fool. It was obvious to him that even if they did kill the gringo that it would do nothing for Don Pedro, for the scion of an ancient house would be cold clay upon the Sonora desert. It was a most uncomfortable thought, for Don Pedro had a most high opinion of the necessity for Don Pedro’s continued existence.

  “You are a fool,” he said coldly. He spoke to his men and swung his horse.

  “An’ you are not,” Mooney said, “if you keep ridin’.”

  Then they were gone and he turned to look at the Indians. They stared at him as if he were a god, but he merely grinned and shrugged. Then his face darkened and he kicked the fire apart. “We got to move,” he said, waving a hand at the desert, “away.”

  He shifted the pack on the burro and loaded the old man on the burro’s back. “This may kill you, Old One,” he said, “but unless I miss my guess, that hombre will be back with friends.”

  The girl understood at once, but refused to mount with him, striking off at once into the brush. “I hope you know where you’re goin’,” he said, and followed on, trusting to her to take them to a place of safety.

  She headed south until suddenly they struck a long shelf of bare rock, then she looked up at him quickly, and gestured at the rock, then turned east into the deeper canyons. Darkness fell suddenly but the girl kept on weaving her way into a trackless country and she herself seemed tireless.

  His canteen was full, and when the girl stopped it was at a good place for hiding, but the tinaja was dry. He made coffee and the old man managed to drink some, then drank more, greedily.

  He took out some of the meat and by signs indicated to the girl what he wanted. She was gone into the brush only a few minutes and then returned with green and yellow inflated stems. “Squaw cabbage!” he said. “I’ll be durned! I never knowed that was good to eat!” He gestured to indicate adding it to the stew and she nodded vigorously. He peeled his one lone potato and added it to the stew.

  All three ate, then rolled up and slept. The girl sleeping close to her father, but refusing to accept one of his blankets.

  They started early, heading farther east. “Water?” he questioned. “Agua?”

  She pointed ahead, and they kept moving. All day long they moved. His lips cracked, and the face of the old man was flushed. The girl still walked, plodding on ahead, although she looked in bad shape. It was late afternoon when she gestured excitedly and ran on ahead. When he caught up with her, she was staring at a water hole. It was brim full of water, but in the water floated a dead coyote.

  “How far?” he asked, gesturing.

  She shook her head, and gestured toward the sky. She meant either the next afternoon or the one following. In either case, there was no help for it. They could never last it out.

  “Well, here goes,” he said, and swinging down he stripped the saddle from the horse. Then while the girl made her father comfortable, he took the dead coyote from the water hole, and proceeded to build a fire, adding lots of dry wood. When he had a good pile of charcoal, he dipped up some of the water in a can, covered the surface to a depth of almost three inches with charcoal, and then put it on the fire. When it had boiled for a half hour, he skimmed impurities and the charcoal, and the water below looked pure and sweet. He dipped out enough to make coffee, then added charcoal to the remainder. When they rolled out in the morning the water looked pure and good. He poured it off into his canteen and they started on.

  Now the girl at last consented to climb up behind him, and they rode on into the heat of a long day. Later, he swung down and walked, and toward night the girl slipped to the ground. And then suddenly the vegetation grew thicker and greener. The country was impossibly wild and lonely. They had seen nothing, for even the buzzards seemed to have given up.

  Then the girl ran on ahead and paused. Tensleep walked on, then stopped dead still, staring in shocked amazement.

  Before him, blue with the haze of late evening, lay a vast gorge, miles wide, and apparently, also miles deep! It stretched off to the southwest in a winding splendor, a gorge as deep as the Canyon of the Colorado, and fully as magnificent.

  The girl led him to a steep path and unhesitatingly she walked down it. He followed. Darkness came and still she led on, and then suddenly he saw the winking eye of a fire! They walked on, and the g
irl suddenly called out, and after a minute there was an answering hail. And then they stopped on a ledge shaded by towering trees. Off to the left was the vast gorge; somewhere in its depths a river roared and thundered. Indians came out of the shadows, the firelight on their faces. Behind them was the black mouth of a cave, and something that looked like a wall with windows.

  The old man was helped down from the burro and made. comfortable. An old woman brought him a gourd dish full of stew and he ate hungrily. The Tarahumaras gathered around, unspeaking but watching. They seemed to be waiting for something, and then it came.

  A man in a sombrero pushed his way through the Indians and stopped on the edge of the fire. Obviously an Indian also, he was dressed like a peon. “I speak,” he said. “This man an’ the girl say much thank you. You are good hombre.”

  “Thanks,” Mooney said, “I was glad to do it. How do I get out of here?”

  “No go.” The man shook his head. “This man, Don Pedro, he will seek you. Here you must wait … here.” He smiled. “He will not come. Here nobody will come.”

  Tensleep squatted beside the fire. That was all right, for awhile, but he had no desire to remain in this canyon for long. He could guess that the gorge would be highly unsafe for anyone who tried to enter without permission of the Tarahumaras. But to get out?

  “How about downstream?” He pointed to the southwest. “Is there a way?”

  “Si, but it is long an’ ver’ difficult. But you wait. Later will be time enough.”

  They brought him meat and beans, and he ate his fill for the first time in days. Squatting beside the fire he watched the Indians come and go, their dark, friendly eyes on his face, half-respectful, half-curious. The girl was telling them excitedly of all that happened, and from her excited gestures he could gather that the story of his facing down Don Pedro and his vaqueros was losing nothing in the telling.

  For two days Mooney loitered in the gorge. Here and there along the walls were ledges where crops had been planted. Otherwise the Indios hunted, fished in the river, and went into the desert to find plants. Deeper in the canyon the growth was tropical. There were strange birds, jaguars, and tropical fruit. Once he descended with them, clear to the water’s edge. It was a red and muddy stream, thinning down now as the rainy season ended, yet from marks on the walls he could see evidence that roaring torrents had raged through here, and he could understand why the Indios suggested waiting.

  “Indio,” he said suddenly on the third day, “I must go now. Ain’t no use my stayin’ here longer. I got to ride on.”

  The Indian squatted on his heels and nodded. “Where you go now?”

  “South.” He shrugged. “It ain’t healthy for me back to the north.”

  “I see.” Indio scratched under his arm. “You are bueno hombre, Senor.” From his shirt pocket he took a piece of paper on which an address had been crudely lettered. “Thees rancho,” he said, “you go to there. Thees woman, she is Indio, like me. She ver’ … ver’ … how you say? Rico?”

  “Yeah, I get you.” Mooney shrugged. “All I want is a chance to lay around out of sight an work a little for my grub. Enough to keep me goin’ until I go back north.” He rubbed his jaw. “Later, if I can get some cash I might go to Vera Cruz and take a boat for New Orleans, then back to Wyomin’. Yeah, that would be best.”

  Indio questioned him, and he explained, drawing a map in the dirt. The Indian nodded, grasping the idea quickly. He seemed one of the few who had been outside of the canyon for any length of time. He had, he said, worked for this woman to whom Mooney was to go. She was no longer young, but she was very wise, and her husband dead. Most of those who worked for her were Tarahumaras.

  They left at daybreak, and the girl came to the door of the house-cave to motion to him= When he entered, the old Indian lay on the floor on a heap of skins and blankets. He smiled and held up a hand whose grip was surprisingly strong, and he spoke rapidly, then said something to the girl. When she came up to Mooney she held in her hands a skin-wrapped object that was unusually heavy. It was, Mooney gathered, a present. Awkwardly, he thanked them, then came out and mounted.

  Once more his pack was rounded and full. Plenty of beans, some jerky, and some other things the Indians brought for him. All gathered together on the ledge to wave good-bye. Indio led him down a steep path, then into a branch canyon, and finally they started up.

  It was daylight again before they reached the rancho for which they had started, and they had travelled nearly all day and night. Lost in the chaparral, Tensleep was astonished to suddenly emerge into green fields of cotton, beyond them were other fields, and some extensive orchards. And then to the wall-enclosed rancho itself.

  The old woman had evidently been apprised of his coming, for she stood on the edge of the patio to receive him. She was short, like the other women of her people, but there was something regal in her bearing that impressed Mooney.

  “How do you do?” she said, then smiled at his surprise. “Yes, I speak the English, although not well.” Later, when he was bathed and shaved, he walked into the wide old room where she sat and she told him that when fourteen, she had been adopted by the Spanish woman who had lived here before her. She had been educated at home, then at school, and finally had married a young Mexican. He died when he was fifty, but she had stayed on at the ranch, godmother to her tribe.

  Uneasily, Mooney glanced through the wide door at the long table that had been set in an adjoining room. “I ain’t much on society, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon I’ve lived in cow camps too long, among menfolks.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “There will come someone tonight whom I wish you to meet. Soon he goes north, over the old Smuggler’s Crossing into the Chisos Mountains beyond the Rio Grande, and then to San Antonio. You can go with him, and so to your own country.”

  Suddenly, she started to talk to him of cattle and of Wyoming and Montana. Startled, he answered her questions and described the country. She must have been sixty at least, although Tarahumara women, he had noticed, rarely looked anywhere near their true ages, preserving their youth until very old. She seemed sharp and well informed, and he gathered that she owned a ranch in Texas, and was thinking of sending a herd over the trail to Wyoming.

  Suddenly, she turned on him. “Senor, you are a kind man. You are also a courageous one. You seem to know much of cattle and of your homeland. We of the Tarahumara do not forget quickly, but that does not matter now. You will take my herd north. You will settle it on land in Wyoming, buying what you need, you will be foreman of my ranch there.”

  Mooney was stunned. He started to protest, then relaxed. Why should he protest? He was a cattleman, she was a shrewd and intelligent woman. Behind her questioning there had been a lot of good sense, and certainly, it was a windfall for him. At twenty-seven he had nothing but his saddle, a horse and a burro and experience.

  “I am not a fool, senor,” she said abruptly. “You know cattle, you know men. You have courage and consideration. Also, you know your own country best. There is much riches in cattle, but the grass of the northland fattens them best. This is good for you, I know that. It is also good for me. Who else do I know who knows your land of grass and snow?”

  When he gathered his things together, she saw the skin-wrapped package. Taking it in her graceful brown fingers she cut the threads and lifted from the skin an image, not quite six inches high, of solid gold.

  Mooney stared at it. Now where did those Indians get anything like that?

  “From the caves,” she told him when he spoke his thought. “For years we find them. Sometimes one here, sometimes one there. Perhaps at one time they were all together, somewhere. It is Aztec, I think, or Toltec. One does not know. It is ver’ rich, this thing.”

  When dinner was over he stood on the edge of the patio with Juan Cabrizo. He was ‘a slim, wiry young man with a hard, handsome face. “She is shrewd, the Old One,” he said. “She makes money! She makes it like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I
work for her as my father worked for old Aguila, who adopted her. She was ver’ beautiful as a young girl.” His eyes slanted toward Mooney. “This Don Pedro? You must be careful, si? Ver’ careful. He is a proud and angry man. I think he knows where you are.”

  At daybreak they rode northeast, and Cabrizo led the way, winding through canyons, coming suddenly upon saddles, crossing ranges into long empty valleys. For two days they rode, and on the second night as they sat by a carefully shielded fire, Mooney nodded at it, “Is that necessary? You think this Don Pedro might come this far?”

  Cabrizo shrugged. “I think only the Rio Grande will stop him. He is a man who knows how to hate, amigo, and-you have faced him down before his vaqueros. For this he must have your heart.”

  There were miles of sun and riding, miles when the sweat soaked his shirt and the dust caked his face and rimmed his eyes. And then there was a cantina at Santa Teresa.

  Juan lifted a glass to him at the bar of the cantina. “Soon, senor, tomorrow perhaps, you will cross into your own country! To a happy homecoming!”

  Tensleep Mooney looked at his glass, then tossed it of It was taking a chance, going back into Texas, but still, he had crossed the border from Arizona, and they no doubt would not guess he was anywhere around. Moreover, he had crossed as an outlaw, now he returned as a master of three thousand head of cattle.

  “Senor!” Cabrizo hissed. “Have a care! It is he!” Tensleep Mooney turned slowly. Don Pedro had come in the door and with him were four men.

  Mooney put down his glass and stepped swiftly around the table. Don Pedro turned to face him, squinting his eyes in the bright light. And then the barrel of Mooney’s gun touched his belt and he froze, instantly aware. “You’re a long ways from home, Don Pedro,” he said. “You chasin’ another Indian?”