A Woman Clothed in Sun

by Jeanne Williams

  He sat in front of Matt, independent and yet trustful, little Comanche-Mexican, whose mother had hid him through a massacre and carried him through the desert to drink at the saving spring an old coyote had dug. He was this country.

  I’m not the country, Matt thought. But it’s mine. Just as Rachel is.

  Surely by spring she’d know that, too, let him bring her home. Their years of separation, guilt, hurt and anger would heal, and they’d really begin to live.

  Through the winter a black bull with a white stripe along the backbone and the great chest of his fighting ancestors, the best sire Don Celestino had sold Matthew, grazed by himself while the younger bulls fed companionably near each other. The steers scattered about, with their own kind or the cows, many of them heavy with calves they began to throw as rain and sun restored the grass, making it tall enough for easy feeding.

  Tattered winter hair rubbed off on brush and rocks to show healthy bright coats of all colors. Young bulls explored around the heifers, but none was rash enough to challenge the crusty old lineback patriarch either for his sun-warmed private slope or any heifer he chose.

  “There’s not enough meat on him,” Matt said to Quil as they sat looking over the herd. “I’m going to bring in a heavier sire if I can find one.”

  “They’ll fight.”

  “May the best bull win,” Matt retorted. “Hell, I won’t get one of those fat-legged shorthorns that can’t forage, but I want to breed up the beefiest thrifty stock there can be.”

  Quil frowned, shoving his hat back and rubbing the mark it left. “Where you going to sell this beef? There’re cows all over Texas, anywhere there’s graze. If you won’t sell to the army, what will you do?”

  “I’ll drive them to a market.”

  “You’ve got one hell of a long drive comin’!”

  “Maybe so. And it wouldn’t be worth it with just our stock because of the time and having to hire hands. But if I went through Texas collecting cows other ranches wanted to sell, picking up hands to help as the herd grew, I ought to get a pretty fair lot of cattle up to Kansas where they’d ship to Chicago at a good profit.”

  “What’s the difference selling beef to soldier Yanks or civilian Yanks, except several thousand miles and heaps of trouble?”

  “It’s the difference between maybe five dollars per head in Texas and fifty dollars up north. Anyhow, I don’t know who’s eating that Illinois beef, do I?”

  “No, you can hope it all goes to an old ladies’ home!” said Quil in disgust.

  Matt grinned, slapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You want to hold your part of the cows out?”

  “No,” Quil grunted. “As long as we’re partners, I’ll go with your brainstorms!”

  “Your cattle can, but not you, Quil. One of us has to stay here.” Matt chuckled. “Next year you can go up the trail.”

  “I’ll bet you next year neither of us goes.” Quil looked over the long wide meadow and the herd of mixed black and Mexican cattle. “If we keep breeding up the stock, don’t overgraze or overload our water, we ought to make out pretty well in the long run.”

  “Which I aim to shorten all I can!”

  The two looked at each other, one burned brown and starting to gray, the son of plantation gentry, the other ebony warmed with copper, born of a slave and a dispossessed Indian.

  “It’s been four years since we started,” Quil said. “We did lose the war time except for what the women saved, but don’t get in a rush, Matt.”

  “We can’t sit here till the world outside gets hungry and comes begging for beef!”

  “I might,” drawled Quil. But he laughed and Matt grinned back, turning at a distant sound.

  “Riders!” Quil said, squinting toward the pass.

  “Probably those vaqueros Don Celestino promised,” Matt said. But both men loaded their guns before they whirled their horses to go meet the strangers.

  Four vaqueros had come from Tres Coronas, eager to try their luck on the Texas side of the Rio, on the ranch of the legendary Norteño, Don Mateo, whose feat against the Comanches was still celebrated in corridos sung by campfires and on feast days.

  Macedonia and Pancho Cruz were brothers in their mid-twenties, born to their saddles, tough and leather-skinned. Both had fought with Matt against the Comanches. Paco, brother of Luz and the dead Changa, looked and acted so much like the Monkey one could almost believe they were the same person, and Juanito stuck to him like a burr.

  Guapo, the fourth man, seemed to have no other name except this, describing his bold good looks. He had reddish-blond hair which was thick and wavy, green eyes and a peculiarly gentle voice. He was from Chihuahua, and had not been long at Tres Coronas.

  All four men knew their work. They settled quickly into the completed bunkhouse, mooned after Lupe and enjoyed her cooking. Although a castrating knife wasn’t used much on Tres Coronas, since Spanish respect for virility extended to livestock, the men expertly cut the calves not selected for breeding, and by the middle of May the hundred head of cattle Matthew was driving were herded down near the pass, marked with the brand all the stock now wore, a B joined to a quill, for the partners’ names.

  “Not too late to try the army post,” Quil remarked the day they finished the gather.

  “Yes, it is,” said Matt. “We leave at daylight. I’ll sell below the Nueces for ten dollars, below the Red for twenty-five dollars and the further I drive, the higher the price climbs.”

  “Till you’ll sell in Kansas or Missouri for whatever you can damn well get!”

  “Well, at least I’ll know I couldn’t have done better.” They were near the pass, and Matt yielded to the longing that had been building up during preparation for the trail drive.

  “Tell Lupe not to wait dinner on me,” he called, and turned Storm into the pass.

  What would he say to Rachel? What would she say to him? He tried a dozen things out in his mind, discarding them all. He’d tell her he was going away and ask her to stay in the meadow where she’d have more protection and company.

  Or perhaps he wouldn’t talk.

  Matthew rode near enough the sheep scattered about the river bottom to see their dripping eyes and noses, their sad countenances. Damn sorry beasts! Only the lambs, some very young, all stiltily longlegged, were gay, leaping up the rocks, jumping down, challenging one another for the highest spots with playful butts of their small heads.

  Santiago came over a crag and broke into a run, signaling, but Matt rode on to the small adobe, swung off his horse and strode to the door that faced the Sierra del Carmen and the Rio.

  Rachel came to her feet, her belly so swollen he stared in shock, then flushed hotly.

  “Are you well?” he asked, his lips stiff.

  “I’m fine.” Her skin was translucent, and she seemed much too small to carry her burden. But she wouldn’t go to the meadow.

  “Then I’ll send Lupe to you.” He felt angry, and helpless.

  Rachel said politely, “I hope you make a safe journey and get a good price for your cattle.”

  “Damn the cattle! Rachel—”

  “You don’t mean that.” She smiled faintly. “Good luck, Matt. When you get to a mail stage stop, could you send some silver to Tante Estelle? I want to pay her back what she loaned us, and I can now from the sheep.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that. When I sell the cattle, I’ll pay you back. That’s my debt.”

  “Just so it’s paid.” She went to a chest, took out a leather pouch that clinked softly, and handed it to him.

  There was so much between them, so much he couldn’t say. “Take care of yourself,” he growled and turned away before he packed her home by force.

  That wouldn’t work. For it to be any good she had to come of her own will.

  Would she ever?

  That night he asked Lupe to go to Rachel and stay until the baby came.

  Past the Pecos, north along the old Butterfield stage route, stopping off at ranches to pick up cat
tle, mostly longhorns, as wild as deer, with horns hooking sharply forward with a spread of six, seven, even eight feet.

  “I’ve been killing ’em for hides and tallow,” one rawboned rancher told Matt. “If you can sell them for anything over twenty dollars, you’re sure welcome to half of it.”

  He got to the Red River with three hundred head and three more hands, ranch boys spoiling to get away from home. If he swung west and missed the settled lands of the Five Civilized Tribes and other farmers, he’d be in Comanche country. East were outlaw gangs and more settlers along the Missouri and Arkansas borders. But from talk with ranchers and a few travelers, he decided to angle toward Missouri and sell the cattle the first chance he got, or at St. Joseph, if he had to drive that far.

  In Indian Territory, Cherokees rode out to demand the toll they were entitled to collect for grazing herds passing through their lands. Matt couldn’t pay the ten cents a head they asked, but he gave them four steers instead.

  Just inside the Missouri border a sheriff arrested Matt, but when they went into town to see a judge about Matt’s right to drive through the area, Matt suggested a friendly drink, and in a little over an hour both judge and sheriff were so blissfully drunk they didn’t know or care when Matt left. He caught up with the herd, which his men, with Guapo as temporary trail boss, had started driving back into Indian territory as soon as Matt and the sheriff were out of sight.

  After driving west a bit, they headed north into Kansas, crossed the Kaw, and got the herd to St. Joseph.

  Guapo couldn’t swim, and his horse scrambled out on the Missouri bank without him. Matt and the others went along the river throwing in limbs, the ends of their ropes, anything they thought Guapo might catch hold of. They were about to give up when a red head appeared downstream beneath some willows. In a minute, he walked up the shallow part, streaming water, puffing, but alive.

  “How’d you do it?” Paco marveled.

  “I walked on the bottom.” Guapo spun the rowels of his silver spurs and slapped the water from his pants. “This stuff was heavy enough to weight me on the river bed, so I just held my breath and walked.”

  “It was the devil tugging at your ankles,” Paco laughed.

  They reached St. Joseph with two hundred and eighty cows. Matt sold them for shipment to Illinois at forty dollars a head.

  After paying off the three young hands and turning over twenty dollars a head to the ranchers who’d trailed cattle with him, Matthew sent Guapo and the other vaqueros home while he went hunting the bulls and cows to put beef on his herd.

  After expenses, he’d cleared seven thousand dollars on that drive. He was prepared to spend every dime of his share on the right stock to develop the kind of cows to command a market when scrub cattle weren’t worth shooting. He talked to local cattle dealers and left Storm at a livery stable while, prepared with the names of several Durham breeders, he took a train to Kentucky.

  He shipped fifteen bulls and seven cows to San Antonio, went back to Missouri for his big gray horse, and collected his Durhams in San Antonio. Compared to longhorns, Spanish or Mexican cattle, the Durhams were amiable creatures, easy to drive so long as they weren’t pushed. Matthew hired two young brothers, Cal and Wes Biggs, to help get the purebred stock back to the meadow. They drove the Durhams into the long valley one noon in early fall.

  Matthew rode ahead, hoping crazily that Rachel would be at the house. She was well, Lupe told him, and had beautiful twins, a boy and girl born in June. Matt forced her from his thoughts to concentrate on getting his herd settled.

  He wasn’t about to let tough native cattle walk or gore prize Durhams to death. They’d kept the best cows for breeding, and the pick of these were held in the home meadow, along with the Durham bulls and cows. The other select cows were taken to one of the outside pastures along with the best native bulls.

  “We need the toughness of the Spanish, Mexican and longhom breeds along with the meat of the prize stock,” Matt told Quil: “One of these days a railroad will come close enough so cattle won’t walk off their beef on the way to market.”

  “But for now we can’t raise more meat than can walk itself,” grinned Quil. He gazed at the Durhams, so short-legged and broad compared to the native bunch. “I know it’s the way to improve a herd, but I guess I’ll always like the ornery old stuff better—the ones that rustle for themselves, go without water, and fight lions and coyotes off their young.”

  “We’ll always have their blood around,” said Matt. “The Big Bend won’t ever shelter stock that can’t forage and shift for itself to some measure. And even if it could,” he added softly, “I wouldn’t want it to.”

  He thought of Rachel and was consumed with longing. That afternoon he rode to the river. He had the excuse of returning the money he’d sent Tante Estelle.

  She was nursing one child while the other slept in a cradle. Matt stooped to enter the door and stood awkwardly watching the tiny thing in his wife’s arms. Both babies had a fluff of soft dark hair, tiny perfect fingers, long eyelashes and fragile-looking necks.

  “This is Jonathan.” She smiled at the infant against her smooth full breast who set his fists against her and tugged at the nipple like a puppy. “Melissa’s asleep.”

  The twins didn’t look like anyone but her. “They’re quite a pair,” Matt ventured. They scared him silly. He’d probably drop one or break its bones if he tried to hold it, but weren’t they something? “Why don’t we take them home?”

  “I hear you made a good sale and bought some blooded Durhams,” she remarked.

  “Yes.” He couldn’t help sounding a little proud. “Mixed with the best of our native cattle, they ought to improve the herd a lot.” He dropped a bag of silver on a chest. “This is for what you sent Tante.”

  And because he was nervous he went on talking about the Durhams until the little girl woke up and Rachel put the boy in his cradle while she soothed his sister with soft loving little sounds that melted Matt’s loins, made him hunger for the feel and sweetness of this woman who seemed completely absorbed in her children.

  Matt felt useless, unwanted, a big lanky intruder. “Are you ready to come home?” he asked gruffly when it grew clear she wasn’t going to have any real words or smiles or looks for him, that her attention was focused on whichever baby seemed to need her at the moment. Hell, he might as well have been Santiago!

  She glanced at him and if she wasn’t surprised, she gave a good imitation. “I am home, Matt.”

  “You’re joking! This sheep camp?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “So’s the meadow. Don’t be a fool, Rachel! I’ve got some dandy stock. In a few years we’ll really have something to be proud of!”

  “I’m proud of my babies!” She had one in either arm now.

  “You’re my wife. I can make you come.”

  Her eyes flashed, and she stared at him over the soft little heads like a cornered mother animal. “You can’t make me stay. Unless you chain me up, and then I wouldn’t be much use, would I?”

  Swearing, he spun away, bumping his head on the door. “When are you going to get rid of this nonsense?” he blazed.

  “I think you were gone three years.”

  “Three years!” Matt shouted. “Listen, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Changa went to Ojinaga whores,” she said.

  Maddened, he swung into the saddle before he lost all control and did things they’d neither ever forget.

  He rode to Ojinaga, he did buy a whore and he was still drunk when Quil found him and brought him home.

  Lupe and Quil got him sober, but craziness had settled into him. He had to either binge or go to the river and throw that proud bitch of a wife on her back, take her hating since she didn’t want him loving. Even crazy, he knew that would be the real finish of them, so he always managed to head for Ojinaga.

  Three more times Quil dragged him out of stinking rooms. Three more times Mart’s friends worked to get him over a gutful of ra
w tequila and rawer women. After the last bout, once he could sit up and drink black coffee, Lupe came to him and took his face in her hands.

  “Mateo, don’t do this again. When you need a woman, I can come to you.”

  She pressed his head against her full warm breasts, stroking his hair as if he were Juanito. Matt tried to sit erect and rebuke her with silence, but the sweetness of her woman’s body triggered some irresistible need, and he clasped his arms around her, crying for the first time in all his life as a man.

  Somehow he got through that winter, the second without Rachel. Lupe shared his bed whenever he seemed restless, which made him ashamed, for he was never with her in his heart, only with his body, and Lupe deserved better than that, even had she not been one of the builders of the meadow, the first of them to find the pass into the long valley.

  One night when Matt couldn’t sleep, he got up, hoping to rouse Lupe without waking Juanito. As he started to open his door, he heard voices.

  Lupe and Quil arguing?

  Matt stopped and put his ear to the door. “Sure, Mart’s my friend!” Quil was saying. “But I love you! Do you have any idea what it does to me when you go to him?”

  “Quil!”

  “Maybe I ought to get drunk and whore around so you’d feel for me.” There was a sound of struggle and when Quil spoke, his voice sounded heavy, drugged. “You wouldn’t marry me, woman. You said you were afraid because of that Comanche. Is it that all the time you’ve wanted Matt?”

  Hot and cold. Matt listened. How blind he’d been! Selfish, a fool! Too bound up in his misery to pay attention to his friends.

  “I love you, Quil!” Lupe was sobbing. “But I was afraid. And then Mateo—”

  Another silence. “Matt’ll have to get his own woman back or find another!” Quil growled. “We’re going to start out tomorrow to find a priest or a preacher and we aren’t coming back until we’re married.”

  Straightening, Matt grinned in the darkness. Good for Quil! When he’d finally laid it on the line, he’d done a bang-up job of it! Glad he wouldn’t have to pull any heroics to unite the lovers, Matt went back to bed.