“This is my niece,” the patron said proudly. “Come to bring joy to a childless old man’s house. She is Linda Fernando de la Piña De Cava.”
Or something like that. Mexicans don’t arrange their names the way Texans do. They generally end up with the mother’s name and work in all the ancestors somewhere along the way.
But her calling name was Linda and that certainly fit her, for Linda means something more than beautiful in Spanish.
I had forgotten all about the horse. I was trying desperately to think of something to say when the patron indicated that we would excuse her. The Spanish are very protective about their womanfolk and I might have known she wouldn’t have been allowed to stay and talk, especially to a couple of dusty strangers like Les and myself.
“Con mucho gusto, ” she said. “Adios.” We bowed and she dropped us a curtsy and then headed for the door where she’d entered. I watched, hardly aware of what the patron and Les were saying. Then, just as she was about to go through the door, she suddenly turned and looked right into my eyes and made another curtsy. It was a long look she gave me, and it took me so by surprise that it was a second before I returned a bow. Then she was gone and I could hardly believe it had happened. But she had looked at me and it had been a special look just for me. But what would a beauty like that be wanting to pay attention to an old dusty cowboy like myself?
Not to say that I haven’t had my share of women when I’ve wanted, but none of them had resembled this little Spanish beauty any more than a sow’s ear resembles a silk purse.
But the patron was bidding us go and Les and I followed him out the door. He said the girl had been sent up from her parents’ ranch in Sabinas Hidalgo because of bandit trouble in that part of the country. I took the name down in my mind, vowing to remember it, and we walked out of the house, him telling us the details about the girl and his ranch and the country in general.
As we walked along he asked us how the cattle business was up around Fort Worth and that give us a little trouble, me and Les not being too well informed on the subject. We told him it was a little slow. Generally I don’t mind lying and, generally, I’m pretty quick with a good story when the occasion demands it, but I was starting to feel a little pressed inside. I don’t know whether it was the sight of the girl, or the great courtesy the old man was showing us, or what, but I was beginning to feel bad embarrassed. I’ve sailed under other colors from time to time, but generally I like to fly my own. My life ain’t been much and I’ve done a fair job of messing it up, but I’m not all that ashamed of myself.
The old man led us over to a corral full of big, clean-limbed animals and went pointing out this one and that and what was particularly good about this horse and what sire and dam that one was out of. I was feeling worse and worse and getting a little tired of leaning up there on the fence, smoking that good cigar and playing the country gentleman. I’d known it was going to be this way, but that only made me feel worse. Finally, I blurted out, “Let’s get down to business here, Don. How about giving us some prices on these animals? Them pedigrees and all is very good to listen to, but we ain’t buyin’ paper.”
Well, it was a rude thing to say and I was immediately ashamed, but I was feeling mad and mean and I couldn’t help it.
The old don never let on, just nodded gravely and pointed at one with his cigar and said this one was so many pesos and that one so many and so on.
They was all out of our reach. Translated into dollars, the least of ’em was somewhere around a hundred dollars. I looked over at Les, but he didn’t say anything, just kind of shook his head. He was about as embarrassed as I was. I took the cigar out of my mouth and looked at it for a second and then threw it on the ground and stalked over to my horse and got my silver spurs out of the saddlebags. My face was burning, but I was beyond thinking. I went back over to the don and thrust them spurs out at him.
“Here,” I said, “here’s a pair of silver spurs I give two hundred dollars for. We’re down on our luck and broke and we’ve got to have a horse. What will these buy?”
Well, it startled him, but he was so well-bred he like to have covered up. The way he took those spurs, so graciously, made me feel even more like trash than the way I was already feeling. He got them by the rewels and turned them this way and that and said they were certainly fine examples of silversmithing.
“That’s all well and good,” I said. “What will they buy?”
He smiled very gently and gave me a kind of sad pitying look and handed the spurs back. In Spanish he said: “I had understood you were cattle buyers. Have you no letter of credit from your bank? That would be acceptable to me.”
Now, by God, it looked like he was trying to make me squirm. “No,” I said, “we ain’t got no letter of credit. I’ve told you we’re down on our luck and needing a horse. Now what about it?” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Les kind of hanging his head, but I was past caring. I tried to hand the spurs back to the old gent, but he wouldn’t take them. He was high-hatting us all right, but I don’t guess I blamed him. I guess if we’d have come up and told a straight story, it would have gone different, but we’d come up with a mouthful of lies and misled him and now he was set on shaming us.
“Let’s go, Will,” Les said, lowly.
“No,” I said. “I’m trying to do some business here.” I looked at the old grandee. “Now, how about it? Will you give us a fair shake on these spurs? Maybe you don’t want ’em. I’m sure you’ve got much, much finer up in your big ranch house there. But will you do a favor for two strangers on the road? Or maybe they don’t understand hospitality in Mexico.”
He looked at me for a second, kind of sighed, and then walked off toward a little building at the other end of the corral.
“We better get out of here, Will,” Les said. “We’ve played the fool enough for one day.”
“Listen,” I said, whirling on him, still mad, “I told you it would be this way. But now that we’re here we’ll play it all the way.”
“Hell, he’s left. He’s walked off on us.”
“No, he hasn’t. He ain’t the kind that would do that. Let’s wait and see what happens.”
Pretty soon the old patron came walking out of the building he’d gone into, give us the barest kind of nod and went on up to the house. We watched him step up on the porch and go in. Les said: “See? What’d I tell you?”
But before we could make a move, an old peon came down toward us in a kind of shuffling run and asked that we please wait patiently, that a horse was being brought us. I thanked the old man and looked over at Les, but didn’t say anything. We leaned up against the fence and spit and I rolled a cigarette and pretty soon another peon came around the stable, a-horseback himself and leading an old grey that had been fitted out with a rope bridle and one of them wooden, high pommeled saddles you’ll see the peons using. Me and Les pushed away from the fence and the rider brought the grey up and got down and said the horse was for us.
Well, that grey would go about seventeen hands, and he was near that old in years and the most hamhocked, swaybacked critter I had ever seen. In addition he had about the longest neck it’s possible for a horse to have and still keep his balance. It damn near swung from side to side when he walked. I’d been standing there kind of idly tapping my spurs together, but I put them in my back pocket and just shook my head at the peon who was holding out the grey’s reins to me.
“No thanks,” I said. “We may be broke and out of luck, but we ain’t lost our head. I ain’t about to give you no two-hunnert-dollar pair of spurs for a plug like that.”
“He is not for your spurs,” the peon said to me severely in Spanish. “He is for twenty-five dollars American and you are to pay Don Fernando when you have the cash. He will trust you.”
“I’ll just bet he will,” I said.
“Do not criticize the horse, Senor. It is clear that he is old and not pretty, but he is strong and well and is a good traveler. He will take you forty miles i
n a day.”
Well, I ain’t used to having peons stand around and read me off, but this one was making a good job of work out of it. I walked around the horse a couple of times and looked in his mouth and it was true that he was clean-limbed and pretty solid and his teeth showed I’d been about three or four years too high on his age. I looked over at Les and he shrugged.
“Get on your horse,” I told him, and then I mounted up. The peon was still holding out the reins of the grey and I reached over and took them. Then I reached in my pocket and drug out our little stake and counted out twenty-five dollars and pitched it to the ground. “Tell the don we won’t bother him for his trust.” I wheeled, taking the grey on lead, and put my horse into a lope out the front gate.
CHAPTER 4
A Need to Travel
The grey led all right, but after we got out of sight of the ranch house I got down and tied his reins to the pommel and took a turn through his halter with my lariat rope so I wouldn’t have to snug him up so close. I was still feeling pretty bad.
“Say,” Les said. “That girl, that Linda, she was really something, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I said shortly, getting back up.
“You reckon on a young girl like that would know anything? I mean about a man, in bed.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you clam up.”
He looked over at me, a little startled, ’cause he and I always been able to talk pretty freely together. “What’s eating you?”
“Well, you really are trash,” I said, “if a man treats you like it and you don’t even know it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
I started to kick my little mare into a lope, but drew back on her. There wasn’t any sense taking something out on my good horse that was none of her doing or her fault. “I’ll put it this way,” I finally answered. “If he’d known what we was after in the first place and what kind of quality we was, do you reckon he’d of introduced that little niece of his to us so nicely?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Well, you’re a damn fool if you can’t see what you are, Leslie Richter.”
I was still boiling when we got back into the little village, and the sight of Tod still pawing around on that damn fat old whore didn’t do a thing for my temper. He was sitting at the table and, from the look of his face and the sweat on him, you could see he’d been getting better acquainted with the tequila. We clumped in and sat down and I told the wench to move off.
“Hell,” Tod said. “What’s biting you? This here hot tamale ain’t so bad.” Then he looked up at her and run his hand in under her dress. “Are you, Gordo?”
“Get her outa here, I told you. I bet you’ve even had that pig in bed. Wouldn’t put it past you.”
The tequila had made him whiskey-brave. He sulled up and give me a defiant look. “Well, so what if I have. You was the one that paid for it, so I reckon that makes it your business, don’t it?” He looked at me, getting braver because I was being calm and quiet. “Hey, don’t it? Don’t it?”
I guess it was the thought of that girl still on my mind and then coming back and seeing that bitch and him pawing around on her. Hell, I don’t care what he sticks. It ain’t none of my business, nor my concern, but he was pushing me a little hard. Normally I would have let it pass. I got up. “C’mon outside, Tod,” I said.
“Go to hell,” he said. “You go outside.”
Leslie was looking at me narrowly, but my being so calm was putting him off. “No, come on. I got something I want to show you. Got you a horse.”
Tod looked at me and then Leslie, and his cousin nodded. “C’mon,” I said. “He’s right out here.” I walked around the table and I could hear his and Leslie’s chairs scraping as they got up and followed. I went out the door and then Tod came out. He seen the horse and pushed his hat back on his head and asked me if I was playing a joke.
“No joke,” I said. “That’s your horse.”
“Well, I’ll just be goddam if I’ll be caught—” But he got no further because I suddenly wheeled into him and hit him in the face as hard as I could with my fist. It got him right in the nose and he went backward, blood already spurting, and hit the wall and fell down and bounced back up, a little dazed but more surprised, and I hit him again just as he began to cuss. This time I got him on the side of the jaw and he went down hard and just lay there.
Les jumped in between us and put his hands on my chest. “That’s enough!” he said. “That’s enough, Will! Now, dammit—”
But I pushed him out of the way and stood over Tod, my chest heaving a little. “Don’t you push me no more,” I said. “Don’t you ever push me again. You hear me? Do you hear me?”
He was up on his elbow by then, shaking his head and looking a little bewildered. “Hell, Will . . .” he said, and paused to wipe the blood out of his mouth. “What the hell did you go and do that for?”
“I ask you did you hear me?” I was getting my temper back and was already beginning to feel ashamed. I knew why I’d hit him and it really had nothing to do with him or that whore or anything he’d said. Les knew it too, I could see it in his face.
“What’d you hit me for?” Tod asked me again. “I never said that much.”
I heaved up a deep breath. “I know it,” I said. I reached down and got him by the shoulder and helped him up and leaned him against the wall. “I guess I’m just getting nervous. Guess I need to travel.”
Les got Tod’s hat for him and put it on his head. A little crowd of curious kids and old folks had kind of gathered up, but we shooed them away and went back into the cantina. Les said something to the Mexican woman and she went into the back and returned with a pail of water and some dirty rags. She was almighty curious about what had happened, but wasn’t none of us going to enlighten her. She helped Tod clean up his face and then brought us another bottle of tequila and we sent her away. We poured out all around and knocked the drinks off and I told Tod, again, that I was sorry.
“Hell, Will, sometimes you’re too quick. Was it about me sayin’ you paid for it? Hell, I was funnin’. I know why you paid her.”
“Forget it,” I said.
“Maybe you’re still sore about the gold?”
“I said forget it. I told you I was sorry.” He was starting to irritate me. Now that he’d gotten me to apologize he wanted to bleed me for all I was worth.
“Let’s drink up and forget it,” Les said.
“Yeah,” I said. It ain’t much sign of a man that he’d pick out something like Tod to let his spite out on. Les would have probably shot me if I’d of come that on him.
“I’m just needing to travel,” I said. “Tell you what, we’ll lay over here tonight to give them horses a good rest and then start out fresh tomorrow. Les, you go see about us a place to stay. Mind we ain’t got but about two dollars left.”
Next morning, early, I was standing in front of a piece of mirror in the livery stable trying to shave with cold water and lye soap and making a pretty good botch of the job. I’ve got a little scar that runs along just under my jaw from where a whiskeyed-up cowhand had tried to interfere with my breathing. Fortunately, he’d used a clean, sharp knife and it hadn’t left much of a scar. It don’t generally bother me except when I’m shaving, but, what with the cold water and dull razor and all, it was giving me considerable trouble. I stopped and went to examining my face and I guess that put me to thinking about the girl. I’m Creole-dark from my mother’s side, she being out of a good Louisiana family, and, in a way, I guess that was what put me onto the girl, Linda, so strong. I’ve got that same dark skin and black hair and dark eyes. Just like her.
I stood there, looking at myself, the razor still in my hand, but making no move. The face that looked back at me was getting older. There were no lines or bags or nothing like that, but I could see it maturing and the thought came to me that I was suddenly pushing thirty. The thought kind of shocked me. You start out on your own and you’re s
ixteen or seventeen and somehow you get the idea that you’ll stay that way. But you don’t. You get older. I stood there, looking at myself, wondering just what kind of pass I was going to come to. I don’t reckon the thought had ever entered my mind before, but suddenly there it was. I guess the thing that really started crowding my mind was the idea that I’d never really give no thought to nothing, had just simply kind of drifted along. At sixteen I’d just shucked out and from then on it don’t seem like I ever give five seconds to reflecting where I was going or what I intended on doing. Seemed like everything I’d picked up had come from just incidental moments.
I remembered riding back into Corpus after I’d been away some eight years and finding my mom and dad dead and the ranch confiscated. There’d been an old aunt of mine still living there and, for want of somebody better to talk to, I’d gone by to see her. She’d received me in her old house that was set just back from the harbor and asked me if I wanted coffee. It being the middle of the afternoon I’d told her I didn’t care for none. I was sitting in an old rickety chair that had some kind of velveteen covering on it, and me, being dusty and trail-worn, I’d felt a trifle out of place. After a little talk about my folks we’d sat looking at each other. Finally she’d taken note of the gun on my hip and said: “I see you’ve gone bad.” She said it mean with a kind of sneer in her voice and I’d brindled up. At that age I wasn’t ready for someone to tell me I’d gone bad. Sure, I’d done some things that folks might consider bad, but all in all I didn’t think of myself that way.
“I’ve done my best,” I said to her. “With what I had.”
“Yes,” she’d said. “I see that, Wilson.”
It didn’t take me long, after that, to make my adieus and get the hell out of there. I don’t know how that old lady had made my face burn the way it had, but she’d done it somehow.
The Bank Robber Page 4
