Next morning he acted properly surprised and congratulatory when Quil announced the marriage plans. They went off, leaving Juanito with Matt, found a priest at Ojinaga and were back in four days, man and wife.
For Matt the only woman seemed to be Rachel. He could not lock her from his thoughts. Even swollen with what might be another man’s child, even holding the twins, her face so thin the bones looked sharp, she was beautiful and necessary to him in a way no other woman could ever be. Sometimes he almost started over to drag her home, but he knew she’d never forgive that.
The winter passed, and spring, with a fair calf crop. They culled the herd again and Matt left with the vaqueros, intending to pick up cattle on the way north as he’d done so successfully the summer before.
But it was a cholera year. He found that out before he got halfway out of Texas. And he heard that a man named McCoy had established a railhead promising fair prices at Abilene, Kansas, but the first shipment of longhorns had sold poorly in Chicago and the second lot found no buyer at all and had to be shipped to Albany, New York. A depression in the East had thrown thousands out of work, and people just couldn’t afford meat.
The two Cruz brothers came down with cholera and died. Shorthanded, with the northern market radically reduced, Matt took a hard-eyed look at the situation and decided to follow the advice of several returning drovers who’d lost their shirts trying to sell across the Red River. When they couldn’t sell their cattle, some ranchers had set up slaughtering sheds and pens along the Gulf Coast and were selling hides and tallow. The slaughterers weren’t paying much, but it was better than nothing.
Matt didn’t want to take the cattle back to the meadow. They’d use grass needed for better stock, and besides they’d been exposed to diseases along the trail.
No market. Can’t give ’em away. Well, what could you expect with General U. S. Grant, late of the Union Army, as President?
Next morning they swung east across rolling plains clumped with live oak and cedar, keeping north of the hill country till it sloped into the coastal plains. On the way they passed outfits chasing wild cattle out of the brush, killing them on the spot for their hides. Some of the skinners took branded cattle, too, and Matt kept a closer night guard than ever he had when trailing through Comanche country.
When they first caught a gleam of the Gulf, Matt rode ahead to find a buyer. The first two packeries he came to were small affairs—a slaughter shed and pens amid a jumble of pulleys and vats.
“Hell, no, I don’t want more cows,” said the owner of one plant, pausing over a carcass with a butcher knife in his hand, brushing off swarming flies. “I’m sellin’ salted tongues at ten dollars the barrel and prime beef at nine dollars for two hundred pounds. Goin’ broke! When I fill the contract I’m on now, I’m closin’ down here and headin’ back to the brush where I can make more just skinnin’ cows and leavin’ the carcasses.”
Matt struggled against hot nausea. The smell of offal, rendering meat and drying hides was worse than anything he’d ever smelled on a battlefield. As he started to turn away, the packer paused long enough to call after him.
“Try your luck in Rockport. Some big plants down there cornered the New Orleans market. And say, if you’d like a wagon of choice loin steaks for your outfit you can have ’em just for haulin’ them off. Hate to throw such good meat to the damn catfish!”
“Thanks,” said Matt. “May take you up on that!” Right then he didn’t think he’d ever feel like eating beef again.
He could smell Rockport long before he saw the sullen glint of the bay or could figure out what formed the hill where thousands of birds gorged. As he got closer to this mountain, he could scarcely believe his nose and eyes. It was a huge mound of rotting flesh and bone, a giant heap so alive with predators from maggots to dogs that the loathsome pile shimmered with movement.
Matt rode by as fast as he could, but there was no escaping the smell. Packeries spread along the bay. Boys were catching fish from the teeming swarms devouring waste from the plants which was dumped into the water.
A cattleman knew his animals were for beef, and though he’d fight to protect them, put his own life between them and blizzards, floods, rustlers or lions, his ultimate aim was to supply good strong meat. Matt liked to think his cattle were building bone and muscle and strength in hundreds of people he’d never see.
It sickened him to see beef rotting, turned from nourishment into pollution. Yet what could be done with it? What could he do with his own herd? Turn them loose to scatter in the brush? Many would still wind up in these packeries or be slaughtered for hides. He couldn’t take them back to the meadow where there already grazed the maximum number of cattle that could be kept in reasonable shape through the winter.
Matt set his shoulders and stopped at the largest packery. Its pens were full, but three slaughter sheds were in use, and at least his beef might not be tossed into the bay, because hundreds of barrels were being filled with tongues, portions of meat and salt brine. It looked like enough mess beef here to feed every army in the world.
A wagon load of barrels was driven off toward the docks as the shirtless man who’d been taking inventory stuffed his record book into his hip pocket and turned to Matt—with a look of impatience which changed to shock.
“Matt! By God, is it really you?”
It was like glimpsing a familiar face in a wavy mirror, the angles blurring, softening. Tom had always been a little pudgy; now his adolescent fat had hardened into sinewy bulges beneath his ribs which made his shoulders appear bull-like.
Matt stared at this burly man with yellow hair and sideburns, the younger brother Matt hadn’t seen since he’d gone off to West Point, though Tom had tried to get him lynched after Harry’s death. Tom had raped Rachel, too, but it was all ages ago, a lost war and a world ago, so Matt stared at this younger brother he should feel like killing and felt nothing but dull surprise.
“Well, Tom—” Matt broke off, shrugging. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll say it,” retorted the other, taking his shirt off a rail and buttoning it up. “Harry’s dead. The war’s over. You and I are alive and kicking! Let’s have a drink!”
In a saloon permeated with the smell of the packeries, Tom called for glasses and a bottle, tossed down two shots right away, rubbed off his mouth with his arm and grinned at Matt.
“So here we are! Looking for a job?”
“I’ve got a herd to sell.”
The bright blue eyes dug into Matt, revealing a shrewd mind in spite of the jolly exterior. “Reckon I could take up to a couple hundred, but prices are low. Can’t raise ’em, even for my brother.”
“Just so you don’t lower them,” Matt said. “How’d you get into this business?”
“Oh, I got into meat packing up at Gloryoak before the war. Kept it going one way and another even under Reconstruction, and when cattle got cheap enough to kill for hides and tallow, it was natural to open a packery down here.”
“It must be paying.”
“You bet! I slaughtered ten thousand head last year, and their hides made up part of the three hundred thousand hides that went out of Rockport and Corpus. Rawhide’s being used on ships now, and that’s helped the market. There’s always a need for tallow.” Tom laughed, clasping his thickly haired hands. “These prices on cattle can’t last forever, but while they do, I’m making a Killing!” He poured Matt another drink. “Sorry my good luck’s your bad news, Matt. Still, you can have a job with me anytime.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got a ranch to run.”
Tom squinted quizzically. “So that’s what you’re doing. Where are you?”
“West Texas,” Matt said, not caring to let Tom know exactly.
Tom raised his eyebrows and touched his lower lip with a slightly pointed tongue. “And Rachel? Does she flourish in your Eden at the end of the earth?”
“I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to ask.”
Tom chuckled, taking out h
is pocketknife and toying with the blade. “Funny about nerve. I don’t see how a man can cause his brother’s death and take his wife and forget it. Was she worth it?”
Matt couldn’t speak.
Tom pushed down the blade, thrust it back in his pocket. “How many cattle you got?”
“About two hundred head.”
“That’ll keep my plant running three-four days. Mixed quality?”
“I sure didn’t bring my best breeding stock!”
“Well, if they walked this far, they’re worth seven dollars a head.”
“Make it ten.”
“Hell, I may lose money at seven! Wouldn’t give more than five to anyone else.”
It was a ruinous price, but a price. Tom waved a hand toward the coast. “Try to do better if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings!”
Matt got up. “You can’t blame a man for trying!”
One large packer was processing his own scrub cattle and mesteños his men rounded up. Two weren’t bothering with meat and would pay only hide-and-tallow figures.
That kind of slaughter seemed downright wicked to Matt. To take animal life to feed human beings was part of things unless you were a Hindu or such, but wasting meat seemed outrageous. This whole coast swam in refuse that should have been food for thousands.
No packery could better Tom’s offer, so gritting his teeth, Matt went back to make the deal.
“I thought you would,” smiled Tom, ticking off another wagon of salt beef. “But the price is down to six. Drops fifty cents an hour.”
“But—”
Tom’s eyes were chilling, bluff good nature congealed like the fat on his midriff. “It doesn’t pay to buck me, Matt.” He glanced at the afternoon sun. “If you wait till sundown, that six dollars a head drops to nothing.”
Matt almost wheeled without a word, but that wouldn’t put money in his pocket. “Two hundred head at six dollars,” he said, and rode off.
When the cattle were penned, Tom counted the money slowly, as if it pleased him to know his brother needed even a poor sum for these creatures whose raising was his life.
“There you are, Matt. Glad to help you out. If you go bust on cattle, I can always find some kind of job for you.”
“Reckon if it comes to that I’ll, find something closer to home,” said Matt.
Home would never be back at Gloryoak, but was the heart of the Chisos in the deep bend of the Rio.
“Why don’t you have dinner and stay the night with me?” Tom drawled. “Catch up on old times.”
“I’d rather start some new ones,” Matt said. He didn’t offer to shake hands.
Finding Paco and Guapo, he rode away, sick in body and spirit, from the stinking pens and flesh piles. None of them felt like eating much that night. They still seemed to smell that wretched putrefaction.
Rachel could really brag about her sheep now. Matt was exhausted, but the pitiful sale of his cattle and seeing Tom again had him harrowed up, and he wasn’t asleep when he heard a stealthy sound.
Instantly alert, he rolled to one side as something struck his head a glancing blow. He reached for his gun, but a boot stomped down on his hand, and this time whatever clubbed him didn’t miss.
He awoke with a sour blood taste in his dry mouth, and a splitting headache. He found himself at the bottom of a sprawl of arms and legs. Disentangling himself, he crawled free of his vaqueros’ bodies.
Paco had died fast, a knife across his throat, but Guapo’s face was set in a scream. His hands had been chopped off before someone finished him.
Why?
Matt looked dazedly around, limped to his saddlebags. The money was gone. So was his gun, and the horses had been stolen or wandered off. Storm would have to have been stolen or he’d be here. Staring at his dead men, Matt gagged. He had no shovel but he dragged them to a little arroyo and tossed rocks over them.
Poor Mamacita had lost another son. Matt shook his head over Guapo’s mutilation. Maybe the robbers thought he knew where there was more money. And they must have thought Matt was dead.
He might still be. There was no water and he was on foot and shaky. Not many houses around here, or travelers, either.
Matt started walking.
XX
Spring had always been the start of a year for Rachel, and living near the sheep made that more than ever true. When giant Spanish daggers burst into massive white bloom across the flats, when tiny wild-flowers blossomed, ocotillo blazed red and the creosote’s shiny green leaves sparkled against dainty yellow flowers, it was time for lambs to drop.
Even last year, when she had been heavy with the twins, Rachel had helped with lambing. Juanito had stayed with her for that period, and it was astonishing how deftly the boy could grasp a lamb who was having trouble being born and guide it to birth. He knew almost as well as Santiago how to guard the newborn from eagles, coyotes and buzzards, and how to put a ewe in a chute so she would have to let her lamb feed instead of blocking it by turning around.
Ewes often had twins, and Juanito would take one of these and tie the skin of a dead lamb around it. Thus disguised, the twin was brought to the bereaved mother who sniffed the familiar scent around her dead lamb’s tail and usually adopted it. In a few days the deceiving hide could be removed. It was important to take great care not to mix the lambs or herd them so close their odors got confused, since if this happened their mothers would reject them.
For several weeks, until all the lambs were dropped and properly owned by ewes, Rachel, Santiago and Juanito scarcely slept, but then the summer stretched peacefully as the lambs grew and played until the shearing some weeks later. That was when sheep lost their fleeces and looked gaunt and nicked for weeks afterward. Five or six men came in a cart, loaded with supplies, from Tres Coronas. The sheep were openned that night in the corral of cholla and ocotilo. Next morning Santiago and Juanito shooed sheep into a small pen with a platform while each shearer held down his sheep with a knee while forcing up its head with one arm and clipping away in long swift strokes, while the fleece, joined by its massed hairs, fell away like a garment, crusty, oily dark-gray on top with rich creaminess beneath.
As a shearer finished, Juanito ran up with a pot of creosote to daub on any cuts. If there were many nicks, he derided the shearer. Juanito was very careful with this chore. The tiniest untreated cut could narbor a blowfly. When its eggs hatched, a small nick would become a mass of worms feeding on flesh and working deep, so in spite of the impatience of some shearers to get on to the next animal, Juanito made sure each was thoroughly treated before shoving it through a chute leading outside where it huddled with other shorn creatures.
Rachel, at the platform, would fold the fleece and stuff it into one of the big bags by the cart, trampling on it to pack it down. Some shearers could do a hundred sheep in a long day broken by good solid meals of beans, tortillas and mutton.
Within three or four days the job was done. The shearers took the fleece-laden cart back to Tres Coronas, from where, within the week, a man would come with silver in a leather pouch, often bringing in his saddlebags small things Rachel needed.
The twins had been born a few weeks after the shearing last year. With Lupe’s help, the delivery hadn’t been too difficult, but it had seemed unending because several hours passed between Melissa’s birth and Jonathan’s. When Jonathan was breathing in the outside world, Lupe placed him against Rachel, who was floating free and exhausted, marveling at her daughter.
“A boy and a girl,” Lupe smiled. “They are perfect!”
She hadn’t asked questions or argued with Rachel about returning to the meadow, but a few weeks later when she was going herself, she held the twins and gazed at Rachel above their tiny heads.
“Mateo would be so happy to find them in his house when he comes home.”
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t bring them, Lupe, until I’m sure.”
“Sure of what?”
Sure that he really wants them. That he won’t wonder wh
o fathered them and come to begrudge their lives. And sure that in spite of everything he still loves me as I love him.
Rachel shrugged. Impossible to say everything she thought, and even that was only a small part of what she felt. She must not go back to Matt until they had both put everything behind them.
She’d been so happy last fall when Matt had ridden up, stared at her with those eyes that always turned her weak, full of need for him. But the sight of the babies had seemed to burn him. He’d acted terrified she might offer to let him hold them, and instead of talking about them he’d launched into a long account of his damned cattle and those Durhams he’d chased to Kentucky instead of coming right back after the trail drive to see how she was. No doubt if she’d died in labor he could have consoled himself by adding a few more prize cows to his stock!
It had been a lonely winter, but the twins had taken a lot of time and were endlessly beguiling as they constantly changed and did new things. Rachel’s heart hurt that it was Juanito or Santiago who watched Melissa and Jonathan crawl, stand, take their first steps. Wouldn’t Matt have had to love them, be proud of them, if he’d seen them? But he never came. And this summer he’d gone on another trail drive.
Rachel blinked back tears as she wondered if he’d ever come again, if he’d accept her children so she could consider him their father. She didn’t know, even now that they were past their first year, which man had given them to her, for they looked very much like her. She took them about her chores in a twin leather back-cradle Santiago had designed for her, but they were by now so heavy Rachel was glad they could walk a little.
The twins often napped on a serape, watched by one of the sheep dogs, who seemed to regard them as a strange kind of lamb.
Every evening Rachel put crumbs of food on a flat stone near the house and held the children while small birds came to feed, yellow-rumped warblers and their trilling ssit!, all kinds of wrens, including some with white throats, horned larks, mockingbirds, meadow-larks and blackbirds. A paisano came by their house each morning for scraps, and Jonathan especially adored this long-legged bird with its rudder tail, crested head, and shrill cry of koo-koo-kook! He mimicked it and the plaintive call of the mourning dove. Both children waved to the cliff swallows nesting along the banks of the Rio Grande, or waded toward sandpipers on the sandbar.
A Woman Clothed in Sun Page 26