The Baron Range

by Jory Sherman

  He harbored a powerful thirst after the night’s ordeal, hove to at sea with swells big enough to swamp the Mary E and rain so sharp and hard his flesh still stung from its needles. The roll and pitch of the boat had made him sick and he had lost all the food inside him. Now the emptiness was replaced with a gnawing hunger and thirst and his body begged for rest, for a sleep not jarred by the creak of wood and the crack of the rigging snapping like bullwhips in the darkness of the storm.

  Martin found the cantina he was looking for, near the center of the small village, relieved that it was still there. Miraculously, the storm had not hammered Matamoros, but had it done so, it would not have taken more than a few days to repair the damage, for the village seemed made of scrap lumber and earth and there was plenty of that all along the coast.

  The sign on the false front read CANTINA GRANDE, but it was not a large place. Yet, compared with the other buildings in town, it was the largest. Most were only adobes with dirt floors, a bar made of old lumber stretched across a couple of barrels. Cantina Grande had a real bar, crude, but made of whipsawed lumber and lacquered with mescal and tequila to a kind of wistful shine. The flooring was made of wood and at least three inches of sodden sawdust, so that it felt as if one were walking on rubber.

  Martin entered the cantina, ducking to keep from knocking his head on the doorway. The place was crowded with sailors and fishermen, men he knew from New Orleans, Galveston, and the Matagorda, and many he had never seen before. They crowded around tables and sat in corners on the floor and milled around the bar with cups and bottles in their hands. Some nodded at him and he nodded back. Others eyed him grimly as if he had just emerged from the sea that robbed them of all their possessions.

  Candles and coal-oil lamps glowed in strategic niches and corners and beams, giving little more than definition to the interior. The drinkers sat in complex patterns of shadows that continually shifted as men moved to and from under the lamps. The air was laced with the smells of alcohol and burning tobacco and hazy from the fumes of cigars, cigarillos, cigarros and pipes.

  At the center of the room, a large man sat like some decadent king at his throne, a bottle of mescal in one fist, a cigar in the other. He wore a torn shirt with horizontal stripes. His beard and moustache were trimmed neatly, in contrast to the thinning hair on his high-domed head. His laughter rippled through the room as he told story after story to the great entertainment of those seated around him. From the pile of money on the table in front of the man, Martin figured he was also paying for the drinks.

  Baron made his way to the crowded bar, where two Mexicans wearing grimy aprons were pouring drinks.

  “Qué quiere?” a bartender asked of him.

  “Tequila, una copa,” Martin replied.

  “Dos pesos.”

  Martin reached in his left pocket where he carried Mexican currency and pulled out a handful of pesos. He tossed two onto the bar. The barkeep snatched them up before they stopped rattling and handed Martin a cup of tequila. Martin stepped away from the bar, seeking a quiet corner somewhere in the crowded room.

  He leaned against a wall and turned his attention to the big man at the center table.

  “So here it was pitch-dark and I’ve got me this big fish on me line and I’m thinking it’ll bring me enough money to pay for the trip and give me a tidy profit besides. So I lands the fish and it turns out to be a dolphin and he breaks me line and he proceeds to tear up the deck and he’s got me tangled in the line and he throws the hook and it catches me in the shoulder and I’m ass over teakettle tryin’ with all me might to throw this dolphin back into the sea.”

  The others laughed and then the big man continued his story.

  “And that dolphin, he takes out me boom and tangles up the rigging and rips down me sail and breaks all the hatches open and I’m slitherin’ after him and every time I get close he leaps in the air and whips his tail and smashes the gunwales to splinters and I’m lookin’ for a gaff in the dark and wishin’ I had a harpoon or a belayin’ pin in me grasp and meanwhile this dolphin is reducin’ my boat to kindling wood with every bloomin’ flip of his tail and me lungs a-burnin’ and now sails droppin’ on me like shrouds and besides not bein’ able to see jackshit in the dark, I’m blind from bein’ draped in torn canvas and the boat pitchin’ and creakin’ and I fight me way out of the sail and dive at the dolphin as he skitters by me and I grab him by the tail. The next thing I know, I’m over the side and in the black water and not a heavin’ line to be had and me bein’ able to swim like a rock.”

  The speaker paused and took a swallow of mescal, then wiped his corpulent lips on his half sleeve and took a puff from his cigar.

  “What happened then?” one of the listeners asked.

  “Well, sir,” the big man said, “I was caught with the hook and the line tangled ‘round the dolphin and he come overboard to join me in the water, like he was wantin’ to play and wrestle some more, and here he splashes next to me and starts beatin’ me sides with his tail and I’m flayin’ the water like a coot tryin’ to lift off with me wings and then the dolphin dives and I go right with him down to Davy Jones’s locker.”

  The big fellow paused again and took another swig of the mescal. He sucked on the cigar and blew a cloud of smoke into the lamplight, where it spread like an umbrella over the table.

  “How did you get away?” asked another at the table.

  And the speaker looked each man in the eye and cocked one of his own and leaned forward to speak confidentially. “To tell you the truth, me hearties, I didn’t get loose. I drowned.”

  There was a shocked pause and then the listeners broke into laughter, slapping their knees and doubling over with mirth.

  The storyteller’s eyes locked on Martin’s gaze. The man beckoned to him and Martin walked over to the table.

  “That was a pretty good story,” Martin said.

  “And all of it true, except for the drownin’. Rob Coogan’s me name, cap’n of the Whippoorwill.”

  “Was that your sloop I saw scattered along the shoreline?”

  “Aye, that was me home, alas and lack.”

  “Too bad, Coogan.”

  “Well, I’ve got me life and I can always get another boat so long as I can fish. And I’m the best fisherman in the Gulf, I don’t mind sayin’.”

  “So happens I could use a hand,” Martin said. “I’ve a small sloop. Be tight quarters for a man your size.”

  “I’ve slept in barrels and Mexican kips. I’ve slept on decks no bigger’n a widow’s hassock. If you’ll take me on, I’ll fill your lockers with the biggest fish in the sea. By the way, sir, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Martin Baron.”

  “Martin Baron. Now, where have I heard that name before?”

  “I have no idea,” Martin said.

  “You the Mary E?”

  “That’s my boat, yes.”

  “Know an Argentine by the name of Juanito Salazar?”

  “Yes. He used to be a friend of mine.”

  “Used to be?”

  “We had a falling-out. My fault. I haven’t seen Juanito in some time.”

  “Well, he’s been lookin’ for you. Met him in New Orleans. He raises beef, I think. Likeable sort.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “A month or two ago. He said if I run into you to ask you to come by the ranch. Can’t remember the name of it.”

  “The Box B.”

  “Yes, sir, that was it. He said some funny thing I’m tryin’ to recollect.” Coogan scratched his head with the hand that held the cigar. “Oh, I know what it was now. He said to tell you that he hoped you still had the dream. I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about, but he seemed some serious that I tell you that.”

  “Juanito said that?”

  “That’s what he said, right enough. Sit down now and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’ll sit with you. Hungry? I’m starved.”

  “Well, now, eatin’s an entirely di
fferent matter, one that takes concentration. I’ll have me a few more sips of the cup, I think, and then I’ll break bread with you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Well, do you, Martin?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Still have the dream.”

  Martin looked at Coogan, into his blue eyes. He thought he saw understanding and compassion there. The truth was, he couldn’t answer him. He did not know if he still had the dream or not. He often thought about the ranch and what a fool he had made of himself. But he couldn’t get the thought of Caroline’s betrayal out of his mind. Did he still have the dream?

  “I don’t know, Coogan. Maybe it wasn’t my dream at all. Maybe it was Juanito’s dream all the time and I was just riding on it.”

  “Well, now, Martin, you talk every bit as puzzlin’ as Juanito. That man is a river with plumb deep waters.”

  “Yes, I know,” Martin said, and when he thought about Juanito there was an ache in his heart, the kind of ache one feels for a lost friendship. He wondered if he would ever go back to the Box B and how he would look at Caroline when he saw her again. And he thought too of Anson, and the ache was there as well. Different, but an ache just the same.

  He finished his cup and Coogan filled it again from his bottle of tequila.

  “Here’s to the storm and the sea,” Coogan said, clinking the bottle against Martin’s cup. “They giveth and they taketh it away.”

  And then Coogan laughed his hearty laugh and Martin smiled, glad to have some company at last. He had been a long time at sea, looking for something that was just out of his reach, something that was just beyond the horizon, just beyond the next sunset, the next port of call.

  52

  JACK KILLIAN WAS dying, and he was doing it the hard way. He took another swallow of whiskey and pulled on the Comanche arrow that was rammed into his abdomen just below his rib cage. The arrow moved a half inch, and then Jack’s fingers slipped from the shaft and the barb sank in again, more firmly than before.

  Jack tried to scream, but all he could do was make a throat sound that was just a gargled rasp.

  “Pa, you’ve got to let me ride back and get someone to help.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do, boy. That arrer got into my lung for sure.”

  “Then let me try and pull that arrow out.”

  “Hell, son, you’d pull out half my lung. It’s rammed up in there under my damned rib.”

  The Comanche had been on the ground and shot upward, piercing Jack’s abdomen, the arrow tip just ticking the left lung. Another Comanche, on the opposite side of Jack, had driven an arrow into Jack’s horse, dropping it out from under him. Jack hit the ground hard, sliding on his back down a slope and landing in a nest of ropy cholla. He had drawn his pistol and Roy had shot at the Comanches, but missed. It had been a brief fight. He and his son had been lucky to get away alive. As near as Jack could figure, there were only two Comanches lying in wait for them. But now they were stuck in a damned arroyo with no water, no food, and the trail herd a good three or four miles back, already smelling the Concho and maybe Comanches waiting just ahead, all hid out in the brush like a pack of rattlesnakes.

  Jack coughed again and little tiny specks of blood flecked the rag he held to his mouth. Roy winced. He did not like the rattling sound in his father’s chest, the blood coming up with the phlegm.

  “I got cholla needles in my backside,” Jack said. “Burns like fire. That’s the least of my troubles, for damned sure.”

  “Maybe I could push the arrow on through, Pa. Bend it some and … .”

  “God, you would kill me, Roy. Don’t you have no brains?”

  “I got as much as you. I didn’t ride over no rattlesnake.”

  “Damned red bastard should have been dead.”

  “Well, he wasn’t when he shot that arrow into you.”

  “You think you’re one smart kid, don’t you?”

  “No, Pa, I—I just don’t like to see you suffer none.”

  “Kid, I got to tell you something. Something important. So you just set still and listen, you hear?”

  “Pa, go on ahead. I’m listenin’.”

  “Once’t I was on a big ranch down in Texas. I seen land like I never seen before, and seen grass so green it hurt you to look at it in broad daylight. Grass where no grass grew before. And I seen rangy longhorns changed into fat beef cattle by breedin’ ’em with big-framed Argentine beeves. And I met men with a glint in their eyes and iron in their bones, and they had them a mighty dream.”

  Jack stopped talking and began to cough up blood and choke on it. Roy’s eyes filled with tears and his stomach knotted up like wet hemp. Jack wiped his sleeve across his mouth and smeared the blood so that the lower part of his face looked as if he’d been eating blackberries.

  Jack drank down another swallow of whiskey and gagged, sputtered, gasped as he fought to keep it down. His face turned purple for a few moments and Roy’s eyes glazed over with a shadowy film as he blinked back fresh tears.

  “Pa, let me ride for help. I—I don’t want you to die.”

  “Roy, you stay here, damn you. I don’t want to give it up alone.”

  “But you won’t let me help you.”

  “Just—just listen, while I get this all out. I ’member that country down in South Texas where Baron and Aguilar got so much land they don’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t have sense enough to stay with it. I had me a cocklebur under my saddle and I bucked everything what was good for me. You know?”

  Roy winced. “Well, you left me and Ma in Fort Worth and rode off after Uncle Hardy and we never thought you was comin’ back. We didn’t know if you was dead or what. I guess you had to go, but me and Ma felt awful bad about it.”

  “And Hardy got himself killed down there, but it was his own damned fault. I thought it would be sweet medicine to kill them that killed him. But I was wrong, Roy. Dead wrong.”

  “Pa, it don’t make no difference. You don’t have to tell me about all that. It’s all in the past.”

  “No it ain’t. I seen something. I sure did. And Hardy was wrong. He went to the wrong place. And maybe I was guided there myself. Maybe … maybe I was supposed to go there too. Only I was supposed to make something right, not keep on doing wrong, like Hardy.”

  “Pa, I don’t understand.”

  “Listen, there’s a man down there you got to see. Not Martin Baron. He bought all his land from the Aguilar family. And that’s what you got to do, who you got to see, one of the Aguilar family. His name’s Benito Aguilar. He’s got him a lot of land and he’s gone begging. He needs cash money and you might be able to buy yourself some of that land and make a good life for yourself.”

  “Aw, Pa, I don’t want no land, honest.”

  “That land is dirt cheap now. But someday you and your sons will be rich. You do what I say, hear? You go see Aguilar and work for him or steal for him and you get yourself some land.”

  “I will if you want me to, Pa.”

  “Good. You do it. Never forget your promise to me, Roy.”

  “I won’t, Pa.”

  Roy sat down next to his father, but he looked back in the direction from where they had ridden, hoping some others on the drive would ride up and help save his father from an agonizing death.

  Jack was breathing with difficulty and he swallowed more of the whiskey, choking it down, belching blood back up. The blood was thin and milky, frothy, and now Roy could hear the wheezing in his father’s chest. He closed his eyes and prayed to a dim and uncertain god for his father’s life.

  They had driven the herd out of the Palo Duro Canyon, two thousand head. Jack had been the main scout through dangerous country and Mr. Goodnight had let Roy go with his father, against his better judgment. All of the men who rode for Mr. Goodnight were heavily armed, but Jack knew the country better and had told Charlie Goodnight that he had fought many an Indian.

  Roy had thought his father was dead, gone those long years from For
t Worth and nobody knowing what had happened to him. Word had come back from riders along the trails out west that both Hardy and Jack had been killed by Apaches or Mexicans, so Roy and his mother, Ursula, had thought Jack was dead.

  Then one day Jack had showed up out of nowhere, patched things up with Ursula and taken Roy with him. It had all happened so fast, Roy wondered now if he had done the right thing, leaving his mother all alone like that. But she had acted as if she had wanted him to go with his father, so he guessed it must have been all right.

  That had been six months ago, and they had worked the herds on the Palo Duro until Charlie Goodnight said the grass was high enough to make a drive to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. But he didn’t know of any trail and they hired Jack on to help them break one through dangerous country.

  Roy worshiped Charles Goodnight. He had never met a man like him before. And he knew his father liked him a lot, too. Goodnight had been grateful to Jack for telling him about Martin Baron, even though he knew there had been some trouble between Baron and his father.

  Roy had gotten all this in bits and pieces, but once he put it all together, he knew some of it. He knew that his uncle Hardy had been hanged for a horse thief by the Aguilars, and he thought that his father had tried to kill Benito, but something had happened. And now his father was telling him to go and buy land from a man he had tried to kill. Maybe, Roy thought, his father was so sick with the arrow in him that he was out of his head. But he didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to argue with his father while he was dying.

  The long shadows of afternoon painted stripes on the shallow walls of the arroyo, and Gamble’s quail piped somewhere amid the ocotillo and nopal that dotted the landscape. A lizard blinked at the two men from its perch on a rock embedded halfway up the right slope of the arroyo. A pair of doves whistled overhead, their shadows racing across the arroyo bed like swatches of cloth whipped by the wind.

  But Jack was hanging on, staying alive somehow, with that arrow feeding on him, drawing his blood out drop by drop, and pushing into his lung with every breath. Roy wanted to ride away as fast as he could and fetch help, but he knew his father wanted him to stay to the end, which seemed close now.