Big Bend

by John Benteen

  “You say they hanged Stewart for being in with Sheep Kelly. Who’s Sheep Kelly, and was Stewart really in with him?”

  “Sheep Kelly’s the man’s gonna kill you if you keep on after him,” Concho said. “And no, Stewart wasn’t in with him. I mean, he didn’t make no money out of Sheep. Of course he had to buy supplies for Sheep and his outfit and let ’em water at his ranch when they come through with thirsty stock, but there wasn’t no way around that. Had to, or Sheep woulda wiped him out and took his woman. Only way to keep his goods and his wife was to do that—but you don’t hang a man for doin’ what he can’t help.”

  “What about you? You worked for Stewart? Why didn’t you throw in with Kelly instead of wanderin’ around the desert?”

  “Two reasons. Kelly from Alabama and he can’t abide folks my color and I can’t abide bastards like him. Other reason, Miss Nora. She hate Sheep Kelly’s guts; with her man dead, she wouldn’t go near Kelly. And where she go, I go. It been like that for a long, long time. Besides, we got a score to settle in North Wells.”

  Ramsey stared at him for a moment. Then he asked, “What’s a woman like her doing on a desert ranch anyhow? She doesn’t look the kind would be happy out here in this hell-hole.”

  Concho’s face, which had relaxed a little, now hardened to a black mask, and suddenly his eyes were cold and deadly. “I reckon there ain’t one bit of that that’s any of your business, Mister Man.” And Ramsey saw that his hand had tightened on the Colt.

  “All right, forget it,” Ramsey said. He took the empty coffee cup, rinsed it with water from a canteen, and poured himself coffee. “Let’s go back to Kelly. Who is he? What am I up against?”

  “You up against a lotta bad men,” Concho said, almost with satisfaction. “Kelly, he’s a deserter from the cavalry. He killed a man in some kinda barracks-room brawl and checked out ahead of a court-martial and a firing squad. Come down here into Big Bend and holed up. There already more than a few deserters down in here, but they just little bitty operators until Kelly come in. Maybe they shoot some prospector and lift his grubstake or steal a beef or two or maybe even a mine payroll if they’re feelin’ biggity. But Kelly, that penny-ante stuff ain’t for him. All this fightin’ and revolution start in Old Mexico, them armies just pick all the northern states along the Rio Bravo clean as a whistle, and still they got to have somethin’ to eat and somethin’ to ride, and they got mucho pesos to pay for it. That when Kelly start liftin’ stock outside and runnin’ it through here to the border.”

  “How many men has he got?”

  Concho grinned. “However many he needs. Maybe fifteen, twenty whites his own stripe. But these Mescan buscaderos, they’ll lend him more any time he needs ’em.”

  “To fight on this side of the border?”

  “Sho. Kelly’s valuable to ’em, he’s their supply line. And gringo beef tastes better anyhow. That Denning and his people, they just lucky they didn’t bump into Kelly. Sheep coulda had a hundred Mexes detached for service under him, and it woulda been a short horse and soon curried if it had been him Denning’s crowd hit up against. Instead, they just bumped into some big Revolucionario patrol across the river and got away after a measly little fight. But Kelly, he’s an old-time cavalry first sergeant. If he’d been in command, he’da surrounded and wiped ’em out before you could say Jack Robinson.”

  He paused. “Now, mister, you understand why you might jest as well turn around without any fuss and all three of us ride back to North Wells? This ole Big Bend ain’t no place at all for one lone man, no matter how big the ideas he’s got.” He looked at Ramsey appraisingly. “You ain’t any kind of gunhand, neither. If you was, I’d never have slipped that fawty-five away from you. I bet you never even been in a gunfight.”

  “I was in one a few nights ago.”

  “You kill yo’ man yet?”

  Sam said: “Then. One of Kelly’s.”

  Concho smiled condescendingly. “Yo’ first?”

  “Yeah,” Sam grunted.

  “Kelly got plenty more where he come from.”

  “I can’t help that,” Ramsey said.

  Concho began to make another cigarette. “You are a dee-termined man, ain’t you?”

  “I aim to git my horses back,” Sam Ramsey said.

  ~*~

  The woman came up the draw from the spring. As she stepped into full view, Sam Ramsey, despite himself, gaped.

  She had washed her hair, and the long chestnut fall of it, still in damp strings, cascaded down her back and caught the glint of sunlight. Her tanned face shone with cleanliness, and there was a new sparkle to her eyes. She had washed out the white blouse and put it back on herself to dry and carried her hat in hand and her brush-jacket over her arm; and the damp fabric of the blouse molded itself to breasts that were large and rich and rounded. There were new life and vitality in her eyes and face and in her step as well; and now Sam Ramsey could see that, even under these circumstances, she was more than ordinarily pretty; she had beauty.

  She sat down on Ramsey’s blanket next to the fire, cross-legged, and gave her head a shake that fanned the hair into the full light and heat of the sun. Her eyes were large and their lashes long; her nose was straight, almost aristocratic, her lips perfectly shaped and red, her chin firm. Though she was bronzed, her skin had not yet taken on that leathery texture common to most ranch women. Ramsey revised his estimate of her age; she was not more than twenty-five.

  She said, “I don’t guess you’ve got a comb or brush.”

  “A brush.” He reached in his sack and handed it to her, and her look of delight at the sight of it was completely feminine. She began to brush her hair, and Ramsey stared at her, feeling a completely involuntary thrust of desire. Then he became aware of Concho’s gaze on him, hard, cold, threatening and jealous, and he wrenched his eyes away. The business of making a cigarette bridged a tense interval.

  Then Ramsey said, not particularly to Concho, “We’re back to where we started from. You want to go to North Wells and I want to find my horses.” He blew smoke. “I’ve got a proposition to make you two.”

  Concho’s voice had fresh hostility in it. “Mister, you in no position to make anybody propositions.”

  “All the same, I’m gonna do it. Concho, I’ll say it again. You can kill me and take my horses and goods, but you ride into North Wells or even near it, nobody but you and her, and you’ll be a dead man and no telling what’ll happen to her, long before you ever get to Tom Denning. Denning’s the big dog in the whole county. He knew what he did here was murder, but neither him nor any of his men have ever breathed a word of it. Against him and the other big ranchers, you won’t have the chance of a snowball in hell—by yourself.”

  “As good a chance as you got against Kelly by yourself.”

  “I won’t argue that,” Ramsey said. “That’s my whole proposition. You help me, I’ll help you.”

  “You go to—” Concho began, but Nora Stewart had laid aside the brush and was staring at Ramsey. “Hush a minute, Concho,” she said.

  Then she asked Ramsey, “Just what do you mean?”

  Cautiously, Ramsey stood up. “I’ll never catch Kelly by followin’ his trail; he’ll always be ahead of me. But he’s got to stop and water and graze those horses somewhere and—” He looked directly at Concho. “And I’ll bet a purty you know where.”

  Concho did not answer that.

  “I need a guide,” Ramsey said. “Somebody to take me the short way to wherever Kelly will stop with my horses before he pushes on across the Rio. I’m not asking anybody to fight for me or to take any chances for me—all I want is somebody to swing me out ahead of Kelly to make up for the time I’ve lost. From then on, I’ll be on my own.”

  “And dead in jig time,” Concho said.

  “That’s a chance you’ll have to take. If I am, you’ve lost nothing. You’ll still have my horses and outfit. You can still go on to North Wells, only a few days late.”

  “And—suppose f
or the sake of supposin’—you do come out alive?” Concho asked. “What great benefit we gonna git then?” Sam Ramsey said, “You get my protection when we all three ride into North Wells together.”

  “Your protection? And jest who the hell are you?” Concho’s face twisted in a sneer.

  Ramsey looked down at him, and now his voice crackled. “All right,” he snapped, “I’m gonna give it to you straight. You’re a nigger, Concho, and anybody in North Wells that wants to shut your mouth can fill you full of lead and nobody’s gonna worry any more about it than if you were a stray dog.”

  Concho sprang to his feet. “Why, you goddamned—”

  “Shut up and let me finish!” Ramsey flared. “Niggers and Mexicans are fair game in a town like North Wells—and so’s any white woman that runs around alone with a black man. The minute you’re spotted by anybody that remembers you—and don’t forget, there’s eighteen of ’em—you’re a dead man, no questions asked. And as for her”—he jerked his head toward Nora—“they ain’t goin’ to ask her but one question: What were you and that nigger doin’ out there in that desert together all that time? And they’ll answer it their way and she’ll be rousted out of town before your corpse is cool!”

  Concho stood there with his eyes savage and his black face working, glistening with sweat. His fingers were curling and opening and curling again around the Colt he held at his side. “You don’t stand a chance of gettin’ at Denning by yourself,” Ramsey went on harshly. “You need a white man’s protection. The people in North Wells don’t like me worth a damn, but they know my word’s good and they respect me. If we go to Sheriff Shan Williams and I speak for you and lay your charges in front of him, then it’s a law matter.”

  “A law matter,” Concho snapped. “That’s dandy, ain’t it?”

  “Williams deputized those men. They were actin’ under his authority. But he didn’t authorize a lynchin’, and when he finds out they committed one while wearin’ his badges and lied to him in the bargain about it, he’s man enough to see they’re brought to trial. All of ’em. Maybe it’ll never go past that, maybe they’ll all be acquitted, but at least the truth will be out and they’ll have to live with it. And maybe that’ll be more hell in the long run than they bargained for.”

  Concho spat. “Trial,” he said, and spun the cylinder of the Colt.

  “You going to kill all eighteen of ’em?” Ramsey asked with biting sarcasm. “You know what they’ll do to you after being alone with a white woman?”

  For a moment, the campsite there on the rim of the barranca was silent, the three figures poised in the glaring sun. Then Concho raised the gun. “Mister,” he said, and now the intent on his face was beyond question, “you done signed your own death warrant with that foul mouth of your’n. Nobody talks about this lady that way and lives.” He eared back the hammer to full cock. And in that instant, Nora Stewart sprang between him and Ramsey, so that the gun was pointed at her breast.

  “Put that thing down, Concho,” she snapped, “and don’t be a fool!”

  He reached out with one big hand. “Miss Nora, you stand clear.”

  “No! Don’t you see that he’s right?”

  “Ain’t nobody goin’ to even hint about you—”

  “Stop it and put up that gun!” she commanded. “You think that after where we came from that talk bothers me? Ramsey’s right; we need him. Put it away, Concho!”

  The huge Negro stood there tensely, not moving, only his face working curiously. Then his giant frame trembled strangely and the hand holding the gun dropped. “Noracita,” he said, and his voice had gone gentle. “Noracita, I was only trying to protect—”

  “I know,” she said. She put out a hand and took the Colt from him and he offered no resistance. Deftly, she eased the hammer down and handed the gun butt-first to Ramsey. “Here,” she said. Her eyes met his directly. “This puts us at your mercy. Concho used all the cartridges we had to feed us.”

  His eyes still locked with hers, marveling at the beauty of her and at the iron in her beneath the surface, Sam absently stuck the Colt in his belt. “There’s plenty more in that bag yonder,” he heard himself say, “if that’s a .45 he’s carrying. He can help himself.”

  “It’s not important,” she said. And she turned away. “He can load up after we talk,” she said.

  It was she and Ramsey who did the talking. Concho sat apart, long arms locked around bony knees, face shadowed and unreadable under his hat brim, though Ramsey could feel the pressure of glowering, inimical eyes.

  She had married Hank Stewart two years before, Nora said. “He was ... a good man.” Her voice did not quite falter. “As good as any woman could want. He was a kind man; there aren’t many of those. And the people who killed him are going to pay for it, one way or another. He was ready to feed them and shelter them and ... and they hanged him and burned everything he had built and ran off his stock and ... You couldn’t live in this country without making some kind of peace with Sheep Kelly, but that didn’t mean he was a rustler.” She shook her head. “Anyway, we’re going to hold you to it. You’re our passport out of this desert and you’re to speak for us in North Wells when we make our charges.”

  “I gave you my word,” Ramsey said. “But first, my horses.”

  “We saw Kelly pass with them,” Nora said.

  “What kind of shape were they in?”

  “He’d been pushing them hard. They looked like what Hank would have called ganted. That’s all I can tell. We were holed up in some rocks on a butte; they went by on the flat below us.”

  “Headed where? The Chisos basin?” And Ramsey looked at Concho.

  The Negro did not speak. After a moment, Nora said, gently: “Concho.”

  “Naw,” Concho said grudgingly. “Not the basin. That’s too much of a trap. He’ll swing around between the Chisos and Chilicotal Mountain and into Juniper Canyon, where he can git ’em out in a hurry. There ain’t much graze there, but there’s water at this time of year in some creeks that come down outa the Chisos. And there’s peaks he can put lookouts on where they can see clear to the Santiagos and spot anybody comin’. Then he’ll send somebody on ahead across the Rio to contact the Mescans and probably turn the herd over at San Vicente. Then he and his outfit’ll probably hole up in the usual place at the old mine on the toe of Mariscal, where there’s some old ’dobe shacks and it’s not a long jump across the border. All them places are like forts,” he said, his voice cutting. “Whole goddam United States Cavalry couldn’t take them horses from him in there. I don’t see how you figger to do it.”

  “Neither do I,” Ramsey said evenly. “But that’s my worry, not yours. All I’m askin’ you to do is guide me so I can look over the situation and figure out what to do. Can you swing me around so I can get there while the horses are still there without being spotted?”

  Concho spat. “They’ll be close to there now. We’ll hafta ride like bastards. But I kin do it. We’ll cut through the Santiagos at Dog Canyon an’ go down Tornillo Creek. If we don’t run into any Mescans comin’ up from Boquillas, we can wait ’til we’re past Chilicotal and swing west, but that’ll hafta be at night. Daytime, we’d be spotted sure. Any water we git between now and then, we’ll hafta dig outa the creek bed, and we won’t dare a fire.” He spat again. “There used to be a customs station at the Boquillas Ford, but it’s been shut down for years. The Mescans killed the last coupla agents th’ government sent in. The Mexes cross there and at San Vicente and range anywhere they want to, now.”

  “Who buys from Kelly? Villa?”

  “Sometimes,” Concho said. “Sometimes it’s another bully boy, kinda tinhorn Villa named Leon Sanchez. Each one of ’em commands his own outfit, but they work together. Mostly, Villa works farther west and it’s Sanchez raises hell around here.”

  He stood up, went to a canteen, and drank long and deeply. Lowering it, he said, “That’s another goddam thing—excuse me, Miss Nora. That man Denning can’t kill us no deader than Ke
lly, or especially if we bump into some Mescans. Even in the best of times, they wouldn’t balk at knockin’ off a couple of Norte Americanos for horses, guns, and ... and for a woman like Miss Nora. But right now, they just like a swarm of stirred-up bees, anyhow. This business of Americans takin’ over Vera Cruz has ’em ready to shoot any gringos on sight, no holds barred and no questions asked.” He rinsed his mouth and spat a stream into the sand. “It’s jest too damned dangerous to go back in yonder, and we ain’t gonna do it, Miss Nora. I never steered you wrong yet, and I ain’t steerin’ you wrong now. Don’t listen to what this hombre tells you. We’ll take a coupla his horses and enough outfit to git us to North Wells, and don’t you worry about the situation there, I’ll handle it. You know I kin do it—and without any help from him, either.”

  Nora Stewart was silent for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No,” she said; and there was a ring of iron in her voice.

  Concho turned, setting down the canteen. “What you mean, no?”

  “He’s right. Do you think I’m going to let them get away with what they did to Hank? Do you think I’m not going to make them pay? Oh, they’ll pay, all right—but we need him to help us see that they do.” Her hands were clenching and unclenching. “You know how it’s been, Concho. You know these Texas towns. Why do you think Hank chose the desert? We need somebody ... somebody they’ll listen to in North Wells. And we can’t expect Ramsey to help us unless we help him.”

  “Dammit, Noracita—”

  She flung her head around, eyes alight. “Concho, you heard me. I’ve made up my mind.”

  The huge Negro stood there, staring from Nora to Ramsey. His eyes, focused on Ramsey, were lambent with rage and hatred. But he drew in a breath that made his great chest swell, and then he let it out with a shuddering sound, and he said: “All right, Miss Nora.”

  Nora Stewart looked away from him. “Besides,” she said in a thin voice, “we owe Sheep Kelly something, too. It was Denning that hanged Hank. But it was Sheep that drew down the lightning. If it hadn’t been for Sheep, we could have lived forever in peace.” She looked at Ramsey. “We’re ready to go,” she said tonelessly, “when you are.”