I told him I could tell him that.
“But I’ve got to go to the bottom of this.”
I said: “Yes, Harley.”
“I’m with you, I’m with you,” he kept saying. He went to his horse and pulled out a pretty fair Winchester. He began slinging it around, snapping open the breech and so on. “I haven’t used this gun since they deputized me at Los Piños.”
I said, “Oh Harley, have you been to Los Piños?”
“You bet,” said Harley, “I was there.”
He put the gun back and led the animal around and mounted. “Well—at Santa Rosa at the Muleshoe.”
Though I knew my brother was a liar, it was a cure for loneliness to see him.
Harley waved as he rode off.
Within fifteen seconds I was on Blacky and getting out of town fast toward the south pass over the big ridge. But as I rode along I was worried and thought till my brains ached. When I had come to Socorro I was weak and did not eat much of the bartender’s food. But on getting to the grove, from there on could not recall being weak. And then had decided I would rampage and kill off quite a few. But even while talking to Harley had even felt this idea shrinking up inside of me. Decided then and there this strong feeling cannot stay long with a man. All that was left of my feeling at the grove was that at least I would call out Hunter Boyd at Santa Rosa or shoot him on sight.
Wondered how I looked to people. Both on the way to Reamer’s Livery Barn and later getting out of town after seeing Harley I had noticed people shrunk away from me in doorways and such, though Reamer had not seemed scared. Decided some had heard like the men at the saloon and some had not.
18
Lohman Goes to a Party
It was near night when I got into Santa Rosa, a pretty town. I was still on the watch for the Boyds, but had seen nothing of them. Saw nothing in town to lead me to believe they were there. Stopped in a saloon to ask the way to the Bradleys and was directed well. There was a big moon and clouds that looked as if nature might be shaping for a cold spell, but the night was pleasant.
Seven miles north of town I saw the Bradley place and was knocked flat by it, it was so big. It was a typical Mex house with low construction and extending everywhere. From it came the strong smell of flowers. There was a patio with some nice-looking trees, and a lot of the grounds were walled in all the way to the barns.
I wanted to just stop, deliver the notes Amos had asked me to. I was still thinking of either the Oklahoma or Wyoming proposition. I felt shy about hitching and going to the door. But as I got near the house I could tell something was going on, for music was being played. You could hear a good deal of talk inside the house and on the patio.
The house door was closed. A lot of light was coming from the windows around it, but I banged the door, at first easy, then hard. The door flew open and I was knocked flat by seeing Amos Bradley.
He stared at me, and then yelled and laughed, and then said: “Get in here fast as you can.”
I walked in. He closed the door. There were some people coming across a big low room around the corner from where I stood, and I could not see them, but hear their voices coming closer.
Amos started across the room in usual fast style, me behind him. I would of been embarrassed just to be there, with the girls I saw and everybody else dressed fit to kill, all feeling good from what they had drunk. But now it was worse, with me in my stole boots but elsewhere rags that many a man would of been thrown out of a saloon for. Well, I was scared as a rabbit but followed close behind Amos, to not be seen, but he walked too fast. All at once here I was in the middle of the room. Amos was far ahead, so I found no cover.
Then he turned, seeing this good-looking woman who was in charge standing near where they had food and drink on the table. She was a beautiful, middle-age Spanish woman dressed up to make a fit partner for a rich vaquero. I saw her eyes meet Amos’s eyes, as if saying who is this you are bringing here, so Amos suddenly wheeled and led me sort of into the hall, I walking like a led horse. This was the hall we had come from. We went up some small steps there, which puzzled me for the house had a big set of steps inside the big room. Now these little, narrow steps were like opening up a cupboard door and going up steps inside.
Up there was an office Amos had fixed for himself and a little bedroom.
He got me up there then in the other room, lighted a lamp and closed the door. All this time whenever I started to say something, he made signs to keep mum. But he kept smiling, so I knew he was not exactly angry about seeing me.
There was a little bed in the room. There was nice furniture and the whole house seemed to smell of flowers. I could also smell food cooking, and now the music I could hear plain from down in the patio.
I got in a word then. I said: “I thought you were in Oklahoma.”
Amos said: “I thought you were dead.”
I told him not yet.
“Well, we couldn’t get through,” Amos said. “We couldn’t get through, so we came back. Everybody up around Clayton told us not to try it. Those Utes are making some trouble. They say they have hooked up in places with the Comanches. That is possible. But anyhow we could not get through and so are back here. This is a good thing. You are just in time for the party tonight. One of my daughters, my own kid, is getting herself engaged, and this is a sort of half-American half-Mex shindig we are putting on here. You will fit in fine. There is so many damn squaws here that you will practically be snowed under, which will be good for you. Also your friend, Nita, is here naturally and will be glad to see you.”
I told Amos I could not think of staying. How the Boyds were hot on my trail. I filled in as much as seemed wise about what had happened since he saw me, just to warn him and make him understand my presence in the house was dangerous and would continue to be.
But he just sat there and laughed at me. “You mean to say Hunter Boyd or any of his bums would come here? Listen, Hunter Boyd is in Santa Rosa.”
I told him I had heard that in Socorro.
He waved his hand with a sneer about Boyd and kept talking about him. “Listen, this house is well taken care of, so don’t you fret about Hunter Boyd and his bums and his crazy sons. I cannot handle Boyd maybe in the clear or even in this man’s town on the broad street, but here I can handle him. This place is well taken care of. Know what you are going to do? You are going to this party, whether you like it or not. You stay here tonight. This is the safest place in Santa Rosa for you. Where’s your father?”
I had not told him this, but now I told him, even though it went against my father’s dignity.
“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no.” Then he got up from the bed and began talking to himself low, as he had up north. Then he began to curse and rave. Then he mumbled again, standing at the window looking out, which was strange as the music was playing down there in the patio, typical Mex music, with Amos mumbling all through it. Then he sat on the bed. I had not tried to stop any of this, as he was my host of course. Also because I saw it was relieving his mind.
Pretty soon he said, “Wait here.” The minute he was out of the room, I scanned from the windows and got the lay of the place in case of a quick slope down by a rope or by vines to get out of there. Whiles I was doing this Amos came back with a colored man.
Amos saw what was in my mind and said, “Oh no, you don’t, Tot. No getting out of this. Now here you are and here I am and here is where you will stay until I talk to Boyd tomorrow. This time I will have some heavy stuff to use on Boyd.”
They got a pair of Amos’s pants which I cuffed up from the bottom as he was a shade taller than me. Otherwise they fit fine. And Amos made me put on one of his silk shirts.
But first they brought up a tub with pails and the colored man helped me take a bath with hot water, which I surely needed, not having had a hot tub bath for a long time. Amos stood there and laughed at me, seeing how I enjoyed it. The man also cut my hair.
And while all this was going on Amos kept talking with
hardly a stop, explaining the household, saying that back some years he had been a ranch manager for this rich widow of a Mexican. How she had already three daughters, and he had finally married her and they had three more. But Nita was not any of these. She was an adopted daughter. She had been close to one of the girls. When orphaned the Bradleys had taken her in, like one of their own children.
Downstairs and Amos had arranged it for a surprise. So that when the girls of the house knew who I was, having been told about me by Nita, they came around me like a swarm.
The names of the three Mexican daughters of the house were Rosita, Mary and Conchita, and the oldest, Mary, and Conchita were married and had husbands and children. Then Amos’s children by his Mexican wife had the names Helen, Frances and Sophronia. The party was for Helen’s troth.
Well, it was some strange the way they acted. They said quite a good deal in Spanish, some of which was quite simple to understand. They kept coming up and looking at me very curious. Then they would all stand back in a row, looking at me, waving their fans.
They laughed a good deal among themselves, using many Spanish words to hook up with “caballero.”
They were soft in everything they did. They seemed kinder, except for my mother, than most women I had seen. They seemed to be more fluttery.
Well, the children were there, too, dressed up to kill like Mex women dress their children for best. Amos’s wife came in, who I had seen before. She was sure a beauty. I was surprised, she having had so many children. She looked no more than forty. She was a real Mex beauty, with a satin dress and a mantilla and headdress. I had never seen such black eyes in a woman. You could only guess her age when near enough to see the eye wrinkles. Of course she was pretty heavy painted. The girls did not wear much of this.
On a big table in one corner was the greatest variety of food ever—both Mexican and American. The tortillas were of fine flour and you could of floated them on the Grande. Then they had sugar tits and desserts.
Around the food table must have been about fifty and about fifty more dancing at this end of the patio where this orchestra was playing.
But then all of a sudden they began to fire off firecrackers outside. They had planned for some better fireworks later in the distance just beyond the edge of the grounds. It was a wonderful party.
When the firecrackers started, the crowd began to move outside and two of the girls, Rosita and Helen, stayed near me and I turned around in the silence and there was Nita.
I found out afterwards when she found I was there she went up and changed her dress again. I don’t know what she wore before. It made her blend in with the place, for there were flowers all over—this red flower hibiscus, some artificial, some real, and lilies—the Mex people are great for lilies. She seemed to come out of flowers.
Well, she just stood there, and we did not say a thing. We went out to the patio way at the far end away from the dancing. She showed me a little stone bench behind some lemon trees up against the wall, and we sat down there and with the shade of the trees between us and the house, the music seemed far away. We just kept sitting there. Finally I asked her how she was and she said fine. She asked me how I was and I said I was all right.
After the fireworks had finished, we moved further out in the patio. It may be I should have said something, knowing I was moving out soon, but have never been much of a talker, and of course I felt in a certain way about this girl. I could see she was nervous and maybe even angry at me for being so quiet.
Did not know how to handle this situation, so happened to think years back to Nevin, who could not seem to write a letter to a friend who had invited him to a party which he could not attend, because he was going to Fort Worth. He asked my mother what he should say. My mother said: “Well, Nevin, that’s what you should write your friend, merely tell him why and he will understand.” So Nevin wrote: “Dear Friend Joe, will be unable to attend your party being in Fort Worth on said date, Nevin Lohman.” Nevin would not change it for Mother and me, so all I did was fix the misspelled words.
So now this came to me and I decided to tell this girl why. I explained that not having anything to say was not because I did not care to talk to her, but that I had not had much practice. Had never been to a party like this at any time in my life, except just little bees at schoolhouses and once in a while go to sit and watch the older people dance.
She kept nodding her head and turning it away from me and then turning back, so that I thought maybe she was turning from me in disgust. But then I saw that this was not so.
I told her that I had never felt the lack of parties, not being used to them, and that I was a sort of outdoors person, been so all my life. Well, this was an interesting thing to talk about, I mean how people are different, so we talked about that awhile and here I found I was talking good, going from subject to subject with her. We discussed the various features of the earth and nature, and horses in which I found she was interested.
She saw after a while I was getting nervous and I admitted to her I wanted to know what was going on outside the house. I put this in a way not to scare her too much. Then all at once she said she had an idea about giving me a view of the outside. So we moved away from the party then, up the small stairs where Amos had first taken me, and on the landing just outside the door of the place he used for an office she showed me this small door in the wall. It was not secret, just part of the wall panel that swung out showing steps going up to a kind of tower.
She led the way up. In the part on the level with the hall, it was so dark I thought we ought to go back and get a light, but the stairs turned and from there on up after the first four or five steps of the turn, the moonlight showed the rest of the way from the broke-out windows at the top.
Well, she said when the house was built this was supposed to be a scanning place to sight Indians from. That tower must have taken a sight of rain in a fall, with the windows all broke out, but it was mostly stone constructed down to where the stairs began, so probably made no difference.
To the south I could see nothing, to the west nothing, but—whoap—over to the north there was a man and a mount standing motionless under a small tree, as if trying to keep in shadow. Then over eastward towards the Texas state line there were four others, with six mounts, standing near a small grove, so that they and the trees looked as if painted on the ground by the moonlight. Flat-like they were.
She noted all this with me, but neither of us said much. There was no doubt in my mind that the Boyds were watching the house, but what could I do? As we watched, the lone man got on his horse and rode south a piece and then got off again.
Well, here we are again, I said to myself. Can’t even shake the Boyds at this party. But as I thought of Hunter Boyd, I decided it had come to this—that I would have to call out Hunter Boyd in the open, or one of his sons, and at least have a kill-shot in their direction.
When we came down then, the girls joined up with us. Nita and I had little to say from then on that night because we were amongst folks. Two of the girls and two young Mex boys did a Mex dance in the house, with the orchestra coming in from outside. Most of the orchestra was by this time pretty far gone. The slow music was quaverish in spots, but when they got into a fast dance this did not show. They played their heads off. The dance was wonderful. One boy had knucklebones and danced to them after without music, the girls making a line behind him and following him around waving colored kerchiefs.
Amos came up, he having had a good deal to drink. He had had trouble with Mrs. Bradley, I could see from a distance. He was drinking tequila like water. He practically forced some on me. This I sipped at. He slapped me on the back considerable and told me to loosen up. I told him I understood and was for a fact enjoying myself, but had to think of my hand.
“Also, the eye.”
“Yes, the eye.”
He had a drink in his left hand then and grabbed my hand with his right, holding it up, starting to make a speech about my hand, but Mrs.
Bradley stopped him. She told him good. She saw I was embarrassed. She saw I did not want to drink. She said all this in Spanish, a lot of which I hitched onto, other words I lost. She next took my hand and led me over to the coffee. The coffee was wonderful compared to what I had packed and drunk back in Texas. It was sweetened to taste like sugar almost with a strong effect. I told her I could get drunk on this coffee, that this coffee was enough. She said it was the best way.
Nita had been standing with the other girls, all ordered to bed so the old folks could get the music people out of the house, also others who did not seem to wish to get home.
Mrs. Bradley was shooing the girls up and out, I knowing how strict they are, people like Mrs. Bradley. But Nita did not seem to mind, pressing my hand hard, and saying she would see me in the morning.
In bed I tried to sleep but first had no luck, but finally dozed off. When I woke up it was still dark but showing light in the east. Not likely to sleep again, so got up lit the candle and nosed around.
In the little office beside my room I could see pencils and paper, Amos’s, stashed. They were better stuff than I had ever seen before, especially the pencils. I could sure write well with them, so sat down and started a letter to Restow and it got longer and longer filled with my wanderings. I got out the stowed stuff I had kept from away back, though some of this I had left with Restow.
But I had many sheets of neat-ruled paper from the place up near Clayton where I had met the Bradleys and later at the Bawbeens where Mrs. Bawbeen gave me two more sheets of it. This was all pretty full, so I went on from there. The more I put down the better I liked doing it as when I started the harness list for my father back there.
I got it all up to the place where I met Jake and later the Hoffmans, but tried to write about how I had gone to the grove. Could not do this at this time, so decided to write later, leaving a gap and telling about Harley and the redhead bartender. Praised my people a good bit, they deserved it. I would of liked more people to know about my father, and how he was for a fact.
The Hell Bent Kid Page 11