Mavericks

by Jack Schaefer

  "He - was - hit - too!"

  There flashed through his mind Last Dollar's movements in the dusk of the evening, not noticed in his concentration on his own plight. An extra slowness and a favoring of the off foreleg. Wincing jerks when he was working to get the saddle off. As clear, as distinct, as certain of it as of anything in his life, he saw in his mind's eye the bulletripped blood-drained body of a stunted whipscarred sorrel mustang lying lifeless somewhere in the lower levels and the buzzards gathering.

  "They won't - ever - get here. They won't - know where - to look."

  And suddenly a flash of anger swept through him, anger at himself and his damnfool doing and what he had done to himself and to a willing hardtrying sorrel mustang.

  "He started - anyway - he tried - I can - too."

  He was over on his belly, pushing with his right foot, clawing with his left hand, hunching forward like a crippled inch-worm, headed down the canyon, when the blackness claimed him again and in a last unknowing frenzy he rolled over on his back.

  He struggled upwards as sounds penetrated to him, up, up out of the blackness into a few seconds of glowing glorious sunlight, and saw above him the sweaty homely worried faces of Petey Corle and Ansel Rak.

  "If you ain't a lame-brained crack-headed bentminded stubborn stupid misbred son of a wild jackass," said Petey Corle.

  He lay in Hardrock Harper's own bed in Hardrock Harper's own room. The doctor was through with him long ago, had gouged and cleaned and patched and sewed and bandaged him. There was good beef broth inside him. He had slept through the rest of the afternoon and on through the night and he could see another morning bright and welcoming out the open window. He could see Petey Corle, too, coming close to look in.

  "So he made it," said Jake Hanlon.

  "Last Dollar?" said Petey. "Oh, sure. Yeah. He made it. Only - well - you see - Shucks, Jake, we sure had us a time figgering out that scratching of yours."

  "Go get 'im," said Jake.

  "Yeah," said Petey. "Them scratches looked like a couple cockroaches crawled around with dirt on their feet."

  "Get 'im," said Jake. "Bring 'im around here. By the window."

  "Easy on that," said Petey. "No hurry. You ain't in any shape for it. But mebbe you'd like to know the boss an' the others lit out too. Figgered if them rustlers was heading through Elk Hollow like you scratched, they'd be sneaking down the other side, likely Pacheco Canyon. Sure enough. Picked up the sheriff an' a couple deputies, went around that way by truck, surprised 'em coming down, an' got 'em. The bosses too."

  "The hell with that," said Jake. "Last Dollar. I want to see 'im."

  "If you gotta know, you gotta know," said Petey. "He's done for. He was dead when we found him.

  Just a ways out past the corral. If you gotta know, when Ansel an' me was heading out, we found where he went down half a dozen times an' scrabbled up an' kept on coming."

  He lay on Hardrock Harper's bed and stared out the window into the distances of the strong stark land and there nudged around in his mind a remembrance of something heard long ago. Yes. Something about Daniel Webster, a big man not in shadow-making size but in all the ways that really make a man, the biggest man of his time in all the country, and one who knew horses. On his fine farm at Marshfield in Massachusetts he raised proud Morgans, high-stepping long-bodied loyal horses that took his carriage along any road at a hoof-slapping spanking gait. And when his favorites died, he buried them with their shoes on, standing up.

  He hammered on the side of the bed with the bowl that had held beef broth. When the cook came running, he spoke quick and sharp. When the cook came back with the small brown notebook from Hardrock Harper's desk in the next room, he flipped the pages and found his name and the penciled markings under it. He studied these and did some simple arithmetic. "Take it back," he said, "an' go find Petey for me."

  "Way ahead of you," said Petey Corle. "We figgered you wouldn't want the coyotes an' the buzzards to get him. We brought him in on a wagon a while ago. Figgered you might want him buried."

  "You're damn tootin' right I want 'im buried," said Jake Hanlon. "An' you're agoin' to do it my way. You're agoin' to bury him standin' up. Standin' up straight like he was alive an' ready to

  "Whoa there," said Petey. "It'll be bad enough laying him a foot or two under with mebbe some rocks on top to keep him safe. You know how the ground around here gets harder an' harder the deeper you go down. Why, shucks, man, the kind of hole you're blathering about, that'd be real work."

  "There ain't no work too much for that boss."

  "Lookahere now," said Petey. "You're lying there likely running a fever an' making too much out of this. What he did was almighty lucky for you but it wasn't so blamed special. Most any hoss'll come back to where he's been getting his feed regular."

  "With a bullet hole in 'im an' so wobbly he goes down?"

  "Ah, shucks," said Petey. "He was just trying to get to where he knew he'd be took care of."

  "No," said Jake Hanlon. "I know what I know an' there ain't nobody goin' to tell me different. He was doin' it for me. He was payin' me back for what I did for him once. I don't give a hoot in hell how much work it is. I got fifty-three dollars to my name in the book right now. It's yours iffen you do it my way."

  In the warm bright welcome of another morning he lay on a cot outside just behind the corral and watched the other men, using ropes looped over two stout beams spanning the deep grave, lower Last Dollar into his last home. Two men held hard to the ropes to keep him upright while others shoveled in the clean adobe earth of the southwest and tamped until the legs were firmly encased and enough of the body to keep it steady and the ropes were pulled out and the beams removed and Petey Corle climbed down in to hold the whip-scarred head up while more earth rose around it and held it firm too. And Petey Corle climbed out and still more earth rose to the level of the land and above in a roughly rectangular mound that would weather away and merge indistinguishable into the land again under the winds and the rains and the strong golden sunlight of old New Mexico.

  "That's right," said Jake Hanlon. "That's the way I want always to think of 'im. Standin' up. Facin' forward."

  4

  OLD JAKE HANLON lies on the canvas cot in the one room of the crumbling ranch house whose ceiling still shuts out the sky. He is reassuring himself that he is really awake. During the last few minutes before this one he has emerged from a deep sleep into a curious kind of half-sleep, half-dreaming, half-aware that he ought to be awake but somehow not quite sure that he ever would be again. He lies still but his eyes move, scanning the familiar smoke-darkened roof boards overhead, and he knows that he has made it into another morning.

  He rolls his head and sees that the patch of sunlight through the windowless window frame in the east wall is not shining on the west wall over the cot. It has crept down over him, past him, to the floor. The morning has been getting away from him. He has overslept by several hours.

  He raises an arm to flip the blanket away and discovers there is no blanket over him. He hitches his thin old legs over the side of the cot and sits up and as his feet hit the floor with a boot-clunk he realizes that he is fully dressed. Almost. All but his hat. It is lying on the floor by the cot.

  Time is curiously mixed up for him, the sequence of things a jumble in his mind. Conscious effort is required for him to sort them out, to focus on the immediate present and relate it to what has happened before. Yes. He remembers now. Yesterday has been a strenuous day. Well, strenuous for him at his age, with a jouncing for several hours and more in a too-small saddle and a long hike home. He has been almighty tired on his return to the ranch house and has lain down for a snatch of rest before getting supper and here it is morning again. Late morning. Just about getting-up time for many townfolk, but late morning for him.

  At least he will not have to bother to dress. Simply reach out and pick up his hat and put it on. A good thing. He does not feel quite up to fighting with his pants on this particular
morning. The boots either. As a matter of fact, he does not feel quite up to any of his usual morning activities, not even going out for a bucket of water. As a matter of fact again, he has forgotten to put the bucket outside under the trickle from the spring. It rests on the floor, neglected and accusing, over by the rickety table. Another good thing. He will not have to go out and get it. There is probably enough water left in it for this morning's coffee. He should be making that coffee right now. He needs a real breakfast, having had no supper last night.

  He sits on the cot edge, staring at the patch of sunlight on the floor. It has two strips of shadow across it, made by the two pieces of wood he has wedged into the window frame a few days ago when he has noticed that the top of the frame has rotted and begun to sag.

  Why does that patch of sunlight seem to be speaking to him, to be reminding him of something about himself? Of course. It is urging him to remember something that has happened less than two months ago, early in this very summer.

  He sits there staring at the golden patch with its strips of shadow and no longer is he Old Jake Hanlon sitting on a canvas cot in a crumbling ranch house. He is Old Jake Hanlon, yes, but he is sitting on a hard thin mattress on a hard plank bunk in a small sparse room in a solid stone building and those strips of shadow are made by iron bars set into a window to his left.

  He looks up. The doorless door frame across from him has acquired a door, one made of a grillwork of iron bars, and a man is standing on the outside looking through at him, a middle-aged slightly stoop-shouldered man with a badge pinned to his shirt.

  "What did you have them deputies jug me for this time?" says Old Jake. "I ain't done nothin'."

  "It isn't anything you've done," says the man, slow, patient, friendly. "It's what you might be doing."

  "So what iffen I did lose ev'rythin' but my shirt at that game at Fogarty's last night," says Old Jake. "I did all the hollerin' I'm agoin' to do then. I ain't no vagrant. I ain't agoin' to pick no pockets. I ain't agoin' to roll no drunk for his pennies. Hank Harper'll always stake me. You know that."

  "I know it," says the man. "But I know a lot of other things too. Somebody's got to percolate sense into that stubborn head of yours sometime.

  It was five years ago I had you in here the first time. Do you remember what for?"

  "Course I remember," says Old Jake. "I did me a right good job messin' up Joe Simpson's truck. Used me a sledgehammer on it."

  "That's one of the things I'm thinking of," says the man.

  "Why, dogdamn it," says Old Jake. "He had it comin'. He was usin' that truck to chase what broomtails was left out on the flats. He'd chase 'em till they was hardly able to stand an' rope 'em an' tie a bunch of heavy old tires to 'em so they was anchored an' leave 'em out there in the sun an' the dry a couple days or more till he was ready to pick 'em up. Iffen I'd been younger, I'd of messed up him too."

  "That was your reasoning," says the man. "But the law didn't agree at all. Next time was three years ago. Do you - "

  "Course I do," says Old Jake. "I used me a stick of dynamite on Hal Freese's airyplane. He was usin' that thing to spot lil ol' broomies back in the canyons an' chouse 'em down onto the flats where he had a couple of sneakin' no-good bums that'd do anythin' for a dollar with another truck I couldn't get at to chase 'em till they was plumb wore out. They'd rope 'em an' sew up their noseholes with balin' wire so they couldn't hardly breathe an' just barely stay alive without movin' much of any. When he got around to it, he'd swing out in that truck an' haul 'em in with a winch an' cart 'em off to you know where. He had it comin' too. Double."

  "Maybe," says the man. "But the law didn't agree that time either. Harper had to bail you out of that one too. One of these days he's going to get tired of bailing you out. What makes you so allfired finicky about mustanging nowadays? You used to run them yourself. You and some of the other oldtimers."

  "Sure we run 'em," says Old Jake. "But we did it fair an' square. We run 'em on their own kind, on hosses. Didn't ring in no damn machines. An' once we had 'em, we treated 'em right. Most of us anyways. They was our pardners. We made 'em work, but not any harder'n we worked too. When we sold 'em, we sold 'em to men that needed 'em. We didn't go sellin' them to any-"

  "Yes," says the man, no longer so slow, so patient, but still friendly. "Yes. I know. But times change and anyone with a grain of sense has to change with them. It was twice I had you in here last year and both times on the same charge. Stealing horses."

  "You bet," says Old Jake. "I did me a pretty good job both times. An' I'd do it again."

  "See what I mean?" says the man. "You'd do it again. So I'm keeping you locked up till tomorrow afternoon. For your own good. You're too old to be tryin' such damnfool stunts anyway. It's Simpson again and he swears he'll use a gun on you if you try anything this time. He's bringing a truckload in sometime today. Claims he's cleaned out all of them left over by Domingo. Planning to haul them to Albuquerque tomorrow. You're going to stay right here until they're gone."

  Old Jake sits up straighter on the bunk. "Where's he puttin' 'em? In Martinez' corral?"

  "Forget it," says the man. "You're not going anywheres until after they leave town. You need anything to help you pass the time, just holler. There's somebody always on duty out here." The man turns away and fades out of sight.

  Old Jake stares at the doorway which is becoming just the doorless doorway of a crumbling old ranch house again, but he is sitting up straighter on the canvas cot and he feels better, much better. He feels like rustling up a good breakfast and stowing it away in his lean old stomach. He reaches and takes the hat and sets it on his head at a jaunty angle. He pushes to his feet and starts over to take the bucket.

  "That fool sheriff thought he had me boxed," he says. "I showed 'im."

  The patch of sunlight with its two strips of shadow has moved out into the center of the floor, narrowed now by the angle of the sun climbing the sky outside. Old Jake has finished his late breakfast and has almost finished cleaning up after it and that is a good thing too because his spurt of energy is fading. He has not eaten much after all. And he is tired, very tired. It is not the familiar weariness of work, it is the weariness of time long and lived that is sunk deep into him.

  "Dogdamn it," he says. "Sure seem to need me plenty of sleep. Reckon forty winks won't kill off the whole day. Be up an' doin' this afternoon."

  He lies down on the cot and as his head lowers his hat is joggled loose and rolls once on the brim and falls with a soft plop to the floor. He wriggles until he has found a reasonably comfortable position. He lies still, staring up at the grained and knotholed patterns of the old roofboards between the time-grayed logs that serve as beams.

  Strange, how lying there on the cot sleep eludes him. His tiredness is not the kind that sleep will ever soothe away again. Only in his old mind does vitality cling with the tenacity of the long-ago years.

  Gradually his eyes lose their focus on the boards and beams above him. He no longer sees them. He sees instead a flat gray-plastered ceiling with a few cracks tracing tiny lines through the plaster. Now again he is in a narrow sparse iron-barred room in a thick-walled stone building. He is lying on the hard thin mattress on the hard plank bunk and a small grim grin shows on his gaunt old face ...

  "Help! Help!" screeched Old Jake Hanlon, thrashing about on the hard bunk. "Quick! I'm took bad!"

  "What's wrong in there?" shouted the deputy, running up to peer through the bars of the iron door.

  "Sick!" screeched Old Jake, doubling up in obvious agony. "I'm took sick bad! It's my innards! Get Doc Horn!"

  "Maybe just something you ate," said the deputy.

  "Ow-w-w-w-w!" screeched Old Jake, thrashing out and doubling up again. "I can't stand it! It's killin' me! Get the doci You want me to die in here?"

  "Wouldn't bother me much," says the deputy. "But all right. I'll get him."

  "Grabs me down here," said Old Jake, clutching at his belly. "Like someone was runnin' a hot brandin' iron
through me."

  "Hm-m-m-m-m," said Doc Horn to the deputy. "I've patched and sewed this old wreck so often I thought I knew every inch of him, inside and out. I'd have sworn there was nothing but worn-out gristle and rusty cast iron inside him. But it could be appendicitis. We'll have to tote him over to my office where I can keep a close eye on him. Might need an emergency operation."

  He lay on a starched white sheet on a rollaway bed in Doc Horn's emergency room, stripped down to his patched underwear and socks and with a thermometer stuck in his mouth. Doc Horn was bent over him gently pressing various portions of his lower anatomy.

  "Ow-w-w-w," moaned Old Jake around the thermometer. "That's it. Right there."

  "Hm-m-m-m," said Doc Horn. "If that's your appendix, it's done some fancy moving around."

  A telephone jangled somewhere and his old eyes brightened. He watched Doc Horn go to the door to the office and swing it wider and pass through the doorway and close the door behind him. Instantly he spat out the thermometer and sat up and swung his thin old legs over the side of the bed. Frantic in haste he pulled on his shirt without bothering with the buttons and struggled to get his pants on and up and fastened the belt without bothering with the fly. He hurried over to the one window and tugged at it and had it open. Reaching back, he grabbed his boots and tossed them out the open window. Grunting some but grinning to himself, he climbed over the windowsill and let himself down into the alleyway behind the building. Grabbing the boots again, he ran as fast as his old legs would let him along the alleyway and threw the boots over a chest-high adobe wall and heaved and hoisted and scrambled himself over after them.

  "No," said the man standing in the wide doorway of the riding stable. "I haven't seen hide nor hair of him. Have you tried the boardinghouse?"

  "Of course," said Sheriff Montoya. "Went there first thing. Mrs. Wilson says she hasn't seen him since she fixed breakfast for him this morning."