Streets Of Laredo ld-2

by Larry McMurtry

  "A dollar and a quarter, then?" Wesley Hardin asked. "Red can pay you. He owes me money. If he wants to throw in seventy-five cents for himself, he can have the second turn and you'll be two dollars richer before you even eat breakfast." Maria turned and walked out the door. The killer gave her a hot look, but he didn't follow. He was shuffling cards.

  She walked past the dead pig, and went to Joey's house. When she pushed inside, her feet and hands were cold, although it had only been a short walk. The woman who smelled was crying, and so were the two girls. The door to Joey's room was open. He was gone, and so was his rifle.

  Maria ran out of the house, hoping he was still in sight; maybe he would at least let her ride with him for a while, out of the bad town.

  But Joey wasn't in sight, and neither was Grasshopper. Joey was gone, and he had stolen her horse. Maria felt that she must be the most foolish mother in the world, to ride so far in the winter, into the place of the Texans, for such a boy. Now she was afoot, and tired, in a town where the men were hard. Call was coming, and The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See was somewhere around.

  Maria began to weep, at her own folly.

  She knew her son. She should never have given him a chance to steal her horse. Now she was really in trouble. She remembered the killer's hot look.

  She would have to cross the cold river again, to get back home, and this time she would have no horse to warm her at night.

  "Did he say anything when he left?" she asked the white woman, once both of them had stopped crying.

  "Maybe he just went to hunt antelope," she added.

  "He didn't say nothing. He don't usually say nothing, in the morning," Beulah said. "I didn't want to make him mad, so I didn't ask. He gets real mad if you ask." "Yes, he thinks somebody crowned him king," Maria said. "Do you have any food I could take?" The white woman looked hopeless.

  "We don't have no food," she said.

  Her face was streaked with tears. She, too, had made a mistake in coming to Crow Town, Maria thought. Probably this white woman had made many mistakes. Now she wasn't young, she smelled bad, and she was in a bad place with no food.

  It would not be easy for her, or for the fat girls, either.

  "I'm going to Mexico. Do you want to go home with me?" Maria asked the two girls.

  If the three of them traveled together, it might be warmer. Then she remembered the pig she had killed--there was her food.

  The girls were very young. They looked scared.

  "We don't have nobody, in Mexico," Gabriela said. Her sister seemed numb. She wouldn't speak. "We don't have nobody here, either. We don't have nobody." "Do you know anybody with a horse we could borrow?" Maria asked. "I killed the pig, but he is too big, I can't drag him. I can butcher him, but I can't drag him. I need a horse, for a little while." At home, she had always done the butchering, whether of pigs or of goats. None of her husbands were good at it. Benito wouldn't even try to butcher. He hated blood, and butchering would have made him sick. Then, in the end, he was butchered himself, and hung like a carcass, his own blood draining.

  "I'll get Red's horse," Beulah said.

  "He don't feed it much. I don't know if it can drag a pig." Then Beulah realized what Maria had said.

  She had killed the pig! She had killed the pig, the devil pig.

  "She killed the pig!" Beulah told the girls. "She killed the pig!" The girls looked stunned. They had both feared the pig, particularly when they had to go into the bushes. The pig watched them; it liked their droppings. Marieta couldn't grasp it. She thought the woman must be a witch, to be able to kill the great pig.

  Maria went with Beulah to get the horse.

  She hitched it to a rope tied to the pig's feet and, urging the skinny horse, dragged the pig slowly to Joey's house. The horse was afraid of the dead pig, and kept shying and flaring its nostrils. It would have liked to run, but hitched to the pig, there was no way for it to run.

  There was no tree to hoist the pig, but Maria didn't care. She wanted the blood; it would be easier to get if she hoisted the pig, but she couldn't. She found a knife in the house. She sharpened it on a rock as best she could, and let the pig's blood drain into a rusty bucket. It was not easy to handle so much blood. Maria finally found three buckets and filled them all with the pig's blood. She took the liver and the sweetbreads and then began to cut the meat into strips. The blood was still warm, and soon she was covered with it. The white woman and the two girls got excited at the thought of so much meat. Some of the other women in the village heard that the pig was dead, and came to watch the butchering. Two of them were old Mexican women whose men had worked for the railroad until they died. They lived in Crow Town because they were too old and too weak to go anywhere. But they knew about making jerky, and they had better knives than the one Maria had found.

  She told them they could have meat, for there was far too much to carry on her journey.

  The wind got colder, but the women were excited at the thought of the meat. Also, their great enemy, the pig, was dead, and they would eat him. They were all covered with blood. At one point, John Wesley Hardin came to the place where the butchering was taking place, and stood looking at the excited, bloody women for a few minutes. He said nothing; he just looked. The women's arms were black with blood, as they cut deeper and deeper into the carcass of the great pig. The women were so hungry that they sliced bits of liver and sweetbreads and ate them raw. Maria didn't care. She wanted only to get her jerky and start back for Ojinaga. She missed her children, Rafael and Teresa. She knew she would not be able to smoke the jerky very well. It would be half raw, but it would keep her from starving as she walked home.

  By the end of the morning, every woman in Crow Town was behind Joey's house, helping Maria finish butchering the giant pig. All of them carried off meat, and then came back and helped Maria smoke hers over a little fire. They were beaten women, none of them young; only Gabriela and Marieta were young. Most of the women were old, within sight of their deaths. They had been thrown aside by their men, or their men had died, leaving them in this bad place, too spiritless to move on.

  All of them, even the oldest, had sold themselves, or tried, to the men who passed through Crow Town.

  Now they were excited, and not just by the meat. The pig had frightened them all. He had made their dreams bad, made them scared when they had to squat in the bushes. They had seen the pig eating dead men, on Hog Hill. They knew that when they died, the pig would eat them, too.

  Nobody would care enough about them to bury them deep enough, and the pig could even root up corpses that were buried deep.

  But now the tables had been turned, and it was all thanks to Maria. She had arrived out of the storm and had killed their enemy, the great pig. They had wet their arms with his blood, eaten raw bites of his liver, and waded in his guts, which spilled from his belly and spread over the ground when Maria opened it. An old Comanche woman whose husband had been shot by Blue Duck many years before knew how to strip the guts. She sliced the long, white pig gut into foot-long sections, stripping what was in them into a bucket.

  "Don't eat that, there could be people in it, parts of people," Beulah said. She had never liked the old Comanche woman, whose name was Naiche.

  Old Naiche was a tiny, wizened woman.

  She stood up to her shins in the pig guts, merrily pulling up stretches of gut, cutting off sections, and stripping the sections into her bucket.

  Beulah knew the pig must have parts of people in its intestines. It sickened her that old Naiche would fill a bucket with the contents of the guts.

  As the women worked, the men of the town came, in ones and twos, to watch the spectacle. None of them said anything. They stood in the wind, watching the bloody women cut meat.

  Though she continued to work, Maria kept one eye on the men. They were all watching her, and their eyes were hostile. She knew she would have to leave Crow Town that night, as soon as she had enough jerky to see her home. She was a new woman; the men who watched
her cut the pig were tired of the women they had, if they had any at all. Their women were worn out. Except for the two Mexican girls, they were all women whose hearts had died within them.

  They were broken and they didn't care what men did to them anymore. Men had used them until they had used them up. The women were excited that the pig was dead, but their excitement would be brief.

  In the next day, or two days, or a week, they would just be broken women again.

  Maria knew the men would be after her soon. They would be angry because she had stirred up their women.

  Most men didn't like women to be stirred up, about a dead pig or about anything. Life was much easier when women were broken, when they didn't dare express a feeling, whether happy or sad. It was not something to question; it was just how men were.

  By the middle of the gray, cold afternoon, the work was finished. There was nothing left of the great feral pig except its hide, its hooves and its bones.

  Old Naiche had even taken its eyes. She dropped them into a bucket with the strippings from the guts and hobbled off to her small hovel with them.

  Then she came back and got an armful of the sections of gut she had cut. The plentitude of guts made old Naiche happy. It reminded her of the buffalo times, long before, when she had often waded in piles of guts.

  In the late afternoon, as the winter sun was setting, the sleet turned to snow. Maria felt a bitterness growing in her toward Joey, her son.

  He had sneered at the trouble she had gone to warning him, and then he had stolen her horse. She had not expected thanks when she journeyed to Crow Town. Joey did not thank people, for nothing they did made him grateful. But she had not supposed he would steal her horse, and leave her on foot in such a place in the winter, among Texans. It was a cruel thing. It made her wonder if her son wished her dead. It was a long way back to Ojinaga, and there were many perils. With Grasshopper, she stood a better chance. Without a horse, it would be very difficult.

  She might freeze, or she might be taken by men who would be rough with her.

  There were horses in Crow Town; Maria had seen five or six. Some of the men who came to watch the butchering were mounted. But Maria had no money, and could not buy a horse. If she stole one and they caught her, she would be hung. That was for sure, they would hang her when they caught her.

  If there were no trees, they would stretch her between two horses until her neck broke or she strangled. She had seen the Federales hang men that way. They had stretched Benito's brother, Raul, between two horses. They had pulled so hard that they almost pulled Raul's head off. A Mexican hanging, the Texans called it, although they used it too, if they were too far from a tree.

  Maria decided to walk. That way, she could at least hide in the sage. She searched Joey's room, to see if she could find anything useful.

  She thought he might have left some money, but there was no money. Gabriela and Marieta tried to stop her from searching, for they were scared of Joey.

  "He don't like nobody to be in his room," Marieta said. "He'll beat you, when he comes back." "I can beat, too," Maria said.

  All she could find to take was one blanket and a good knife. She wrapped all the meat she could carry in a sack. While she was packing, the women of Crow Town began to crowd into the house.

  All were wearing what coats they had. All carried parcels of meat. Only old Naiche didn't come. Beulah had put on her coat too. Marieta and Gabriela had not dressed warmly. They looked scared.

  Beulah spoke for the women.

  "We want to go when you go," she said. "We don't want to stay here. We're all going to die, if we stay here." "You might die harder, if you go with me," Maria warned. She did not want to lead the women across the bad land, between Crow Town and Mexico.

  The meat would not last. She had only three bullets left for her pistol. The women did not look strong. They would freeze or starve, or drown or give up. Her statement had been the truth: dying in Crow Town would not be good, but dying in the borderlands in winter might be worse. At least in Crow Town, there would be shelter.

  Then she remembered the railroad. It was only two days' walk south, or a little more. The women might make it to the railroad. Then maybe a train would stop for them. She had seen two trains. She didn't know what made trains stop, but she thought that maybe a train would stop for the women, if they waved at the men who drove the train.

  It was a hope, at least. Maria could understand that the women did not want to die in Crow Town. It was not a good place. The crows flew through the snow, or walked in it. Three sat on the bare ribs of the great pig. As the cold deepened, the cawing of the crows seemed to grow louder. Maria felt feverish. She would have liked to rest in Joey's bed for a day or a night, but she was afraid. If the men caught her, they would not care that she was feverish. They might tie her and keep her until she became like the other women in the town. Her heart might die within her, as their hearts had.

  Maria couldn't risk that. Her children needed her.

  Even now, she worried that Billy Williams wouldn't take care of them well enough. Rafael might be growing thin, for sometimes he forgot to eat.

  Teresa was careless sometimes, and burned herself on the stove. What if she had burned herself badly?

  Who would hold her in the night and help her with the pain?

  "I will take you to the railroad, if you will try to keep up," Maria said. "That's the best I can do. I have to leave you at the railroad and go home to my children." When the time came to leave, Marieta and Gabriela wept. They had no warm clothes; they didn't want to go.

  "My feet freeze, even when I'm in the house," Marieta said. "I don't want to walk in the snow." "I want to wait for Joey," Gabriela said. "He don't have no one else to help him." "Joey thinks she's pretty," Marieta said. She was bitter that her sister had been favored. She didn't like Joey anymore. But her feet got very cold, just sitting in the house.

  Someone had told her that if your feet froze, they had to be cut off. She was afraid that if she went with the woman, her feet would freeze. The person who told her what happened to frozen feet was Red Foot, who sometimes visited her.

  He would only pay her a dime, but it was a dime at least. Red Foot liked to be behind her; she could hear him panting in her ear, like a dog.

  He said frozen feet had to be sawed off with a saw.

  "Me and Gabriela, we better stay," Marieta said.

  "Don't be weak," Maria said. The two girls were just girls, not too much older than her own girl. She didn't want to leave them to the rough men. If she had to take the women, she would take the girls, too.

  "These men will use you till you're sick," Maria said. "I will wrap your feet so they won't freeze." While the girls sat, looking scared, she cut up sacks and wrapped their feet in many layers. She found an old pair of chaps that had worn thin and used the leather to make tight wrappings around the sacks. She didn't think the girls would freeze, for the worst cold didn't come with snow.

  When Maria was ready, all the women looked scared. It was dark and the snow was still blowing. Some of the women wanted to wait until morning, but Maria wouldn't hear of it.

  "Do you want a parade?" she asked, angrily. She had enough responsibilities, without these women balking.

  "You know what we are to these men," she said.

  "Look between your legs--that's what we are. That's why they even let us be alive. Do you think they will let us all walk off, and not do something about it?" Then she thought of old Naiche. She was Indian, Comanche. Probably, the women had not asked her to go. When Maria inquired, several of the women claimed not to know where old Naiche lived.

  Finally, Beulah told her.

  Maria went through the snow to the little hovel of dirt and branches where Naiche lived. The shelter was made of thin mesquite branches, bent together at the top. There were many spaces between the mesquite limbs, but old Naiche had covered them with some of the rotten buffalo hides. It was a flimsy dwelling, so low that Maria had to go almost to her
hands and knees to get through the opening. The wind sang through the small, smoky room, but Naiche didn't seem to mind. She sat with her bucketful of strippings and her armful of guts.

  Now and then, she would dip into the bucket and nibble from the squeezings of the dead pig.

  "I don't see well, no more," Naiche said, when Maria stooped low and came in. "Too much smoke." "We're leaving. You should come with us," Maria said. "I will take you to the railroad. It's not a long walk. This is not a good place for a woman." Old Naiche shook her head.

  "The train don't have no place to take me to," she said. "All my people are dead." "They are not all dead," Maria replied.