by Jake Logan
“We’re close,” he told Belle. “He lives four miles or so east.” He mounted and noticed the five horses at the hitch rack in front of the general store.
“They came in while you were inside. They’re not cowboys,” she said under her breath with a frown. “More like hired guns.”
Slocum nodded. Then he spotted the one standing guard on the front porch, cradling a Winchester in his arms. Not a good sign. They were either being cautious or up to no good. He dismounted and shook his head at her not to say a word. Keeping an eye on the storefront, he fumbled with his latigos until four men came out laughing and talking with lots of bravado in their voices.
None were familiar and the leader, with a red silk kerchief tied around his neck, saw Belle, took off his hat, and bowed. “My honor, madam moiselle.”
She gave him a short nod and checked the gray.
“Ah, I see you have a husband. Ah, it is my bad fortune. But you are a most beautiful lady. Let’s ride. Good day.” He vaulted into the saddle to show off and waved to her as they galloped away.
“Who were they?” she asked.
Slocum swung in the saddle. “Just who you thought they were. Hard cases. But why have hired guns in this country?”
“I don’t know.”
“They weren’t passing through either.”
“What now?”
“Go see my old buffalo hunting amigo.”
“You have never been to his place?”
Slocum shook his head, still concerned about the presence of the five gunmen. They were being extremely cautious. Leaving a guard with a rifle outside while they went in a store meant they expected trouble in the sleepy town. Something was astir.
“Don Jeminez and his wife Juanita used to live on a small ranch south of Las Vegas. Last time I saw them down there, she had just inherited a rancheria and they planned to move up here.”
“Is it a large one?”
“Large enough for several families. These ranches were set up more like community cooperatives. The owners live in the village and they have so many livestock permits on the commonly owned range. It began a long time ago under the Spanish when, because of the Comanche and Apache, they needed communal protection to live out here.”
“So it’s a lot different than what we do, say, ranching in Texas.”
“Yes, there’s many different ways with the Mexican people in the region. The king of Spain even gave their ancestors this land.”
“I’m anxious to meet your friends.”
“But more anxious to get a bath.” They both laughed and Slocum wondered, riding across the vast land covered with brown short grass, what those five hard cases were doing out there. Up to no good—probably.
5
Rancho de Vaca sat on a knoll under some cottonwoods that had been planted long ago and that rustled in the afternoon wind. A series of small irrigated fields were set below the hillside. Many were green with alfalfa, and half-dead corn plants with long ears drooped down. Rows of well-weeded frijoles, black beans, and peppers lined others. Boys in their teens from under straw hats looked up from their hoeing at Slocum and Belle and waved.
Slocum and Belle rode across the hollow-sounding plank bridge. In the small ditch underneath it, the turbulent irrigation water rushed to water some crop down along the ditch system. The exterior fortress wall that surrounded the place remained, but the tall gates had long ago been removed and used elsewhere. He led the way through the narrow passage to the open square, and dismounted to water their thirsty animals.
“Where do Don Jeminez and Juanita live?” he asked the woman busy washing below the pump.
“You are here to see them?”
“Yes, we are old amigos.”
The woman nodded to Belle, who had dismounted and removed her hat. “Tia, go run up and tell Juanita she has company down here,” the woman said to a young girl of perhaps twelve wearing a thin, flowered dress that hardly fit her.
Her bare feet took her away before Slocum could even stop her. “Juanita might be busy,” he said.
The woman, back at her washing, shook her head. “One is never too busy in this village for company.” Then she laughed. “So few ever come, we usually celebrate even a second cousin coming by.”
Slocum undid the girths on the four horses. “They still call this place Rancho de Vaca?”
“Yes, a very important name, huh? Place of the Cow.”
“Doesn’t everyone have cattle here?”
“Some have sheep too. But things are bad here.”
“Bad here? I don’t understand?”
The woman looked up at the sight of another woman and the girl coming at a run and nodded. “Juanita can tell you all about it.”
“Slocum! I never expected you. And who is this lady?” Juanita stood five-six, tall for a Mexican woman. Her slightly curled black hair carried some threads of gray, but she stood straight-backed and her beauty radiated despite her age. “I can’t wait until my husband sees you. He will be so excited.”
They hugged, and Slocum introduced Belle.
“Oh, Señora, I am so glad to met you.” And they hugged.
“Some men mistook her husband for an outlaw and killed him,” Slocum said. “We are on our way to Texas looking for one of those men.”
“Oh,” Juanita said, and put her arm around Belle’s shoulder. “Come with me. Slocum, bring the horses. My husband will be so excited to see you both.”
“Can we have a fandango tonight?” the washerwoman shouted after her.
Juanita stopped and looked at Belle. “What do you think?”
“Sure.” Belle shrugged.
“Sí. Pass the word.” When she turned back to Belle, Juanita said, “You will have a good time. Mexican people always have good times.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
The horses were put up and fed some hay, and Slocum rested in a hammock under the ramada while inside the women were busy bathing. Sounding like magpies, they laughed and talked as he rested his eyes. Grateful for the reprieve from being in the saddle all day, he felt the Abbott brothers had lost his track again. But the ranny with the red bandanna in town bothered him—he knew him from somewhere else and his gut feelings weren’t good. He fell asleep.
“Your turn to bathe,” Juanita said, waking him. “The water is hot. Toss out those clothes. We’ll wash them while you clean up. There is a robe you can wear while they dry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and swung his legs over the edge. Mopping his whisker-grizzled face with his palms, he combed his hair back with his fingers. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Oh, yes, and my husband will be so glad to see you. Now get going, we have things to cook for tonight and work to do.”
“He’s out checking cattle?”
“Yes. I expect him to be home by dark.”
“Why do you sound so hard when you talk about him?” Slocum looked her in the eye. Something was wrong here.
She wiped her upper lip on the back of her fist. “I worry much for him. The Texas ranchers have pushed many cattle on our land like they own it.”
“I wondered why we saw these five rannies in town.”
“Killers—they have shot several of our people in the back.”
“And your husband?”
“I worry every day he rides out that they will kill him.”
“I understand—” He rose and stretched his arms over his head. “I’ll get my bath and get out of your way.” He winked at Belle as she came out on the porch brushing her hair. “You two make quite a bossy team.”
Belle pretended to hit him with the hairbrush when he went by. “You’ll see bossy.”
After his bath, he put on the robe and met Belle in the doorway. She was holding a sheet over one arm and some scissors in her other hand. “You need a haircut.”
He ran his hand over the back of his head. “I do. I guess you give shaves too?”
“For a price.”
“I am a poor man.” He turned his palm
s up at her.
“We’ll see later how poor you are. Get out there on the stool.”
“My, my, why did I bring you here? You’ve not been here a half hour and you have taken on Juanita’s ways.”
Belle swung the sheet around him and tied it at the back of his neck. “I like her,” she said softly in his ear.
The snip of the blades and the locks of her cuttings dropping on his shoulders and chest made him realize how long his hair had become. Good, he would be cooler too. He winked at her when she looked at her work. She gave him a scowl and went back to snipping. “You may hate me after this.”
“Not likely.”
“Juanita sounds concerned about the Texans,” she said.
“I need to learn more about them.”
“What can you do? Get yourself killed?” She frowned her thin brows at him.
“I don’t plan on letting that happen.”
“Good, I would be upset.”
He patted her leg as she reached over him to cut some more.
She stopped, closed the scissors, and looked hard at him. “Careful, I might make a mistake.”
“I doubt that.”
They both laughed and she went off to borrow a razor, brush, and soap from Juanita. He studied the small village. Brown children at play with sleepy burros. Women with their washing in baskets on top of their heads. Others using yokes to carry water in buckets. The place was like an anthill of activities. Gentle people who loved the land and each other. Not many conveniences here that one found in cities, but the people here probably never knew about them and wanted to stay here on their land.
She returned and began to soap his face with a hairbrush. “This is such a gentle place,” she said. “The meadowlarks sing. The doves do their mournful calls in the trees. A rooster or two brags, a hen cackles. Milk cows moo. All the different sounds I have heard are like music—soothing music.”
“Wait till they play their instruments tonight. Then there will be real music.”
“I hope so. But I’ve fallen in love with this place.” She began to scrape his face.
Head back, he sat still. When she wiped the blade clean on a towel, he said, “It is an island in a sea of brown grass.”
“Yes, it is.” And went back to shaving him.
Two milk-fat goats were being cooked. Great pans of chopped onion, sweet peppers, and hot peppers were being roasted. Several women came and began to make tortillas of wheat flour and corn on griddles they brought and fired with mesquite sticks. Squatted around their work, they chattered in Spanish. Some young and pregnant, others with small babies, some older and bossier. For the most part they had grown up in this place or nearby or been brought as brides here.
Slocum enjoyed the red wine Juanita brought him and lay back in the shaded hammock catching some of the women’s words. “—oh, she is pregnant at last—” “They worked hard at it.” Laughter, and a sage voice. “Good thing it doesn’t happen every time.” More laughter.
He wondered about his friend and those invaders. Sounded to him like the gentle pastoral people here were being edged out of their grass by gunfighters and high-handed ranchers. It was a long ride to Santa Fe to complain. Most of the lawmen in this land were like the people, quiet spoken, not accustomed to handling hard cases who were gun-handy.
Their fathers and grandfathers had repelled the Comanche and Apache for centuries. It was a location too dry and unwanted by dirt farmers, most of whom passed by wondering how anyone lived out here and then hurried on their way to California. First the Spanish flag flew over them, then the Mexican one, and now the stars and stripes—and they remained tending their flocks and cattle, growing produce and hay in their plots, and living much as their ancestors had since the king sent them up the Rio Grande to homestead this hostile land.
Slocum could see the cross on top of the small chapel where the priest came by every third or fourth Sunday. Inside, candles were lit for special needs as these men and women sought help from the Virgin Mary and the saints and prayed on their own to cleanse their souls and prepare themselves for another week in the priest’s absence. Their religion supported the community.
But they also partied hard at the drop of a hat. Fandangos, fiestas all brought music, special food, laughter, and excitement to these people living in the dust. Slocum looked forward to the evening, recalling many he’d attended as a buffalo hunter.
He remembered one such fandago when he’d met Antonieta. He’d forgotten her last name. They’d been eight weeks out hunting without a bath or a good meal. They’d brought several hundred hides back, stacked six feet high on the oxcarts. They were hoping to soon be rich and they reached the Rancho del Norte in a blizzard. Dry snow flew past like a swarm of moths at a light as they fell in the door of the small cantina, more like grizzly bears than snow-covered men with a thirst and a hard-on.
“Ah, Señors, welcome to Rancho del Norte.”
Big Jim Donovan looked around and nodded. He was the only black man in the outfit. They waited for his real reply. “My, my, you’s got a fire. Going to warm my hands.” He pulled off the fringed gloves some squaw made for him, tucked them under his armpit, and held his fingers out to the fireplace’s crackling oak blaze. “I’d done give a couple of hides fur this fire last night.”
Everyone laughed and began to take off their stinking buffalo and bearskin coats. Slocum had not noticed the powerful aroma that they produced until the rise in temperature. The body odors coming off him made him wonder if he’d ever wiped his own ass in two months.
“Whiskey,” O’Neal said, and made a sweeping gesture down the short bar.
The little man called Arturo set up the bottles and glasses on the bar. “Two bits a shot,” he announced, and everyone nodded. He noted the contents of each bottle and charged them for the amount they drank. Not a bad price for rich men. Not too bad whiskey either.
The first drink cut the smoky taste from eating roasted buffalo hump twice a day out of Slocum’s mouth. They only had two big meals while out hunting—morning and night. The first one was before dawn and the last after sundown in the short days of winter. Slocum looked around the narrow building and motioned Arturo over.
“Is there a barbershop here?”
“No, but the señora, she might help you.”
“Where’s this señora live?”
Arturo held his hand up like an ax and when it fell, it indicated south of the cantina. “Last casa.”
“Last casa, huh?”
“Right, she is a very fine lady, the señora.”
“She have a name?”
“Ah, yes, Antonieta.”
With a confused nod, Slocum went and put on his coat. Campfire smoke and the constant cold and buffalo hunting had taken something out of him. His mind wasn’t clear—he stumbled around a lot.
“Where you going?” O’Neal asked him when he was dressed.
“Going to see a woman about a bath and a shave. You got my bar bill?”
“Hell, yes,” O’Neal said with the ends of his wet whiskers in his mouth. “Don’t freeze your pecker off out there. I ain’t taking a bath till springtime, if I do then.”
Slocum nodded and went outside. He led his horse after himself. Damn, the heat inside had made him forget how bitterly cold it was outside. At the house, he hitched his pony at the yard gate and walked through the crunchy snow to the front door. Wind whistled around the fur cap on his head when he knocked wondering if anyone could hear it.
“Oh, come in,” the short woman who opened the door said.
“Antonieta?” he asked.
“No, I will get the señora.”
“Wait,” he said, looking around at the tile floors and a fine painting of a matador on the wall. “There may be a mistake. Arturo said—”
“What did Arturo say?” The woman who came in was six feet tall with blond hair to her shoulders and large blue eyes. She walked toward him like a weeping willow tree in a gentle wind. The dark red dress was swirling aroun
d her legs. With no hesitation, she stuck her hand out.
He kissed it. “I am so sorry. I asked about a barbershop and he sent me here.”
“You must have ridden an animal here?”
“Yeah, ole Pecos. It’s out there.” He indicated over his shoulder.
“Why don’t you put him in my barn and hay and grain him. Ruby and I will begin to heat some water. No need to knock, come in the back door when you finish with him and we’ll be getting ready for you.”
How organized she was. “Yes, ma’am.”
He put his fur cap back on, tied it down, and went outside. She smiled and closed the door after him. It must have been zero out there. He led Pecos around to the barn, shoved the door aside, put him in a tie stall, threw him some hay—that pony didn’t know what grain was. He put the saddle and pads on a divider and took his .50-caliber Sharps in the buckskin sheath with him to the house.
Inside, he could see there was an entry room to leave his coat, cap, scarf, and leggings. He was busy putting it all up on wall pegs when she opened the door to the room a notch and smiled at him. “You must have found everything, Señor?”
“I sure hate stinking up your fine house,” he said, coming inside and combing his stiff hair back with his fingers.
“No problema. We always enjoy company, Señor.”
“Slocum, that’s my name.”
“Slo-cum,” she pronounced it with a Spanish accent.
“Yes, ma’am.” The kitchen smelled of cooking—things like onions and peppers and spices made his mouth water even standing there.
“When did you eat last?”
“Yesterday. We pushed hard to get here with the storm coming on.”
“My goodness, why, you must be starved.” She frowned at him.
“I’d rather get cleaned up first so I could savor it.”
She nodded. “Come with me.” She opened the door to an adjoining room. The copper tub steamed with hot water. A chair was set beside it, towels and a robe lay across it.
“I will rinse you when you get ready. Call me.”
“I can—”
“I have seen men before. Have no fear and call me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He toed off his boots to get undressed.
