by James Wade
* * *
Randall rode a white Arabian called Mara and took with him five canteens of water, one pound of tobacco, a cherrywood pipe, enough dried meats and berries to last several weeks, and two gold-handled .41 caliber Colt Thunderers, neither of which had ever been fired by his hand. He left in charge a man name Roscoe who had once worked for his father and seemed the least likely to mutiny against the family.
He set out at midmorning and rode the length of the ranch. It was a crawling sky, the blue heavens outstretched and pulled thin over the forgotten world below. The clouds sat heavy and white like pale mountains in the distance, and the San Pedro flowed clear and steady, urged on by some unseen hand. Pronghorn deer moved into the river valley and took turns lifting their heads and watching for danger as the herd grazed. An exaltation of horned larks fluttered amid the twisting limbs of a lone cypress tree, streaks of yellow and black appearing and vanishing and appearing again.
Randall was a long time in the saddle as Mara climbed up above the valley, picking her way over the slip rock and gneiss. The vegetation thinned and what trees there were became shrunken, and by noon he’d reached the top of Wolf Mountain. Randall watered Mara from his hat and staked her to graze and when he put his hat back on the cool of the water dripped down his neck and made him shiver.
He walked to the far ridge and squatted and looked out across the hill country, the craters and cliffsides rising and falling and fading in the west to squinted-at lines upon dark horizons. His eyes strained to see further, yet still the land eventually gave out, blending into the gray and blue sky as if the earth itself ceased at such a point, and there was no one and nothing to tell him otherwise.
Horse and rider followed the ridgeline south until late afternoon when they came to the edge of the ranch. There they sat in the relative warmth of the autumn sun. Below them the San Pedro looked like a great river of rocks, the water navigating each boulder, flowing and unbroken despite the masses of granite and limestone and gneiss. To see it from the Wolf Mountain mesa, the river appeared snakelike, winding and bending through the cypress and mesquite as though its determination alone would always and forever outweigh the changing landscape and evolving world.
At the last planked bridge before the ranch gave way to the wild rimland of the territories Randall saw the boy sitting on a horse of muted orange, a rifle in his hand.
“Tadpole?” Randall called to him.
“Just Tad,” the boy replied. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’m sorry, son, but you have to stay.”
“The hell I do. Harry was my best friend. I want to kill them sorry suckers who done that to him.”
“Let me handle all that,” Randall said. “You stay here with your father and help work the ranch while I’m gone.”
The boy spit.
“Daddy don’t care what I do one way or the other. And no offense, Mr. Dawson, but you ain’t exactly no Texas Ranger or nothing.”
Randall grimaced but kept calm.
“You’re a good boy. A tough boy, I’m sure. So stay here in case the Bentleys double back. They may try to come back for the rest of the horses.”
The boy studied him, weighing his words and looking for what was truth and what was not.
“Alright then,” he said at last. “I’ll stay and guard the ranch.”
“I’ll see you when I get back,” Randall told him.
“Whatever you say,” the boy replied as he rode back toward the main spread.
* * *
Randall rode hard for two days, hoping to put enough distance between himself and the ranch so as to not change his mind and turn back, revealing himself a coward.
In each town he inquired after the boys and in Tucson a man said he’d seen them. He said two men on the horses Randall described had passed through, headed south. Randall paid the man and hoped his information was truth and then rode on.
Only one day later he crossed paths with a caravan of Mexicans who were escaping north so as to avoid the bloody business of revolutions. Randall flashed his posters around, asking if anyone had seen these hermanos gringos. An old man called to him.
“Yes?” Randall asked excitedly. “You’ve seen these men?”
The old man nodded and began to speak Spanish.
“No,” Randall waved his hands in front of the man. “No habla español. Inglés?”
“I speak English,” a younger man said and came and stood near his elder.
“He says he has seen these men. He has seen them in Mexico first and then in America. He says they go to uh . . . Tejas.”
“Texas, yes,” Randall encouraged the man.
“He says these are men who . . . uh . . . he says they are black and white.”
“No, no, they are both white,” Randall said, pointing to the likeness. “Both white. Dos gringos.”
The old man waved him off and continued speaking.
“He says souls are black and white,” the translator said. “Eh . . . one good and one bad.”
“I’m sorry,” Randall said. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“He says they go east. Tejas.”
* * *
Randall kept south for another half day, then turned east not far from what he believed to be the Mexican border. At night he built small fires and hoped any banditos or revolutionaries would leave him be.
The eastward hills outlined a disturbance in the distant curve of the earth’s plane, rising and falling in metered sequence like the breath of a newborn. The sun paused at its highest point, the apogee of the world observed, and even at its most distant positioning the warmth of its being enveloped all before it, some drinking in its energy, others seeking shelter from the harshness of its rays. And into such heat Randall walked, leading the horse behind him, unsure of what deliverance or disaster might be met on the road ahead.
In the late afternoon he ventured from the road to search for water and was quickly lost. He heard his wife’s words and saw now the truth in them. He could see the sun in the west but could discern nothing else, and the road was nowhere to be found.
Randall sat in the failing light like some desperado of old. He sat and there was nothing to be done. There may have been a time but such time had long passed and these things in motion were so set in a world far away and yet the same.
Mara stirred behind him and what colors did appear, and they were drawn fleeting across the makeshift sky in hues of purple and pink. The dusk is provisional, always, but no more so than the day or even the life. And when a life ends, there is still the changing sky. As when the dusk turns to night there are still the living, and neither depending on the other yet both existing and both unsure of how to do anything save carry on.
As he sat he thought of the nature of man and questioned it and wondered aloud if he actually hoped to find the men who murdered his son. He hated them, and that he knew, and he wanted them to suffer, but he had assumed it would be at the hands of other, more violent men.
“Is it my inexperience in the art of combat that stymies my courage,” he spoke to the night. “Or have I no courage to begin with?”
Perhaps, he thought, I am a coward and a dandy, as they say, and I rode out only because I know I will neither find nor face them.
“In fact,” he spoke again. “I’m certain I will encounter only myself on this quest and at such time will appease my own guilt with the notion that I at least tried.”
He thought of his grandfather, the great warrior and conqueror, and of his father, who spoke of the wildness of the territories as if it were the only way to truly measure a man’s soul. He was ashamed when he thought of their strength and vision and him having neither. But he shook away the thought and decided the future of the world would be crafted by civilized men and he then felt foolish for having agreed to such a primal and unsavory mission as he found himsel
f on.
And if I do find them, he thought, and I somehow gain the upper hand and take my revenge, what then? What am I but a killer, all the same. No, I will put an end to this folly in the morning and Joanna will understand because she is a civilized woman of society and I am her husband and these violent means are not our way.
There is strength in knowledge and compassion, he told himself. There is honor in such things.
Still, sleep was slow coming and the coyotes were quiet and something moved in the dark and Randall tried to remember if he’d loaded his guns.
* * *
That night Randall dreamed his son was eaten by a black bear. They were in the Rim Country south of Longpine, deep in the forests that sloped up from Christopher Creek and the fall leaves had turned and the trees were tired and ready to be rid of the extra weight. The bear opened wide its mouth and began to swallow Harry whole and Randall’s guns would not fire and so he spoke to the beast as if it were a man.
“Let him go,” he begged the bear, and to Randall’s surprise the bear spit the boy out and he saw that it was not his son but himself, and his grandfather was close behind and he knew they were hunting.
“Run,” Randall told the bear, but it would not.
“Run, please, there are men with guns coming. They want to hurt you.”
Around him the pine trees shed their needles and Randall heard his grandfather approach and he turned to look and saw instead Caleb Bentley on charging horseback.
The fool thinks he can ride down a bear, Randall thought. But the bear was gone and Harry in its place, scared and alone and unable to move.
“No!” Randall cried as the horse bore down on his son, and his voice came out as a great roar and he felt a thick black fur on his back and long claws on his hands and feet.
He awoke from this uneasy slumber and stared at his hands and the veins within them. He thought again of his father and grandfather. Of his son. He felt a growing violence within himself. He would not turn back.
He rode out and into the cool of the morning and the sun crested the horizon line and left backlit the uneven hills and mesas. The awakening world was aglow with orange and red and layered pink light, while to the west the sky was a deep dark blue, and all below it looked to the day’s coming. They gave what blessings they may and hoped for one thing or another and hoped for peace and hoped for rain; if all the hopes of all the world were drowned in a great sea, still the dark sky would brighten.
* * *
He regained the road, crossing into New Mexico on the third day. He vowed to keep to the main trails and in doing so he passed many travelers with wooden carts of peppers and oils and herbs, and the wheels rattled and bounced along the dry, rutted roads. They led mules loaded with garments and fabrics and waved at Randall and his fine horse, and he tipped his hat as he passed. At night he made camp not far from the trail and the coyotes yipped and cried and the stars shone in a way he’d never noticed and the fire reminded him of the stove and it all seemed like some dream. Randall Dawson the hunter, he thought to himself, and what a strange dream it is.
5
We left the caravan near Naco as they sought asylum in the new world. Outlaws as we were, Shelby and I slunk along the border, crossing back and forth like hunted prey. We saw no more of the revolution until we reached Agua Prieta.
The city was afire with unrest, unlike anything I’d ever seen. I’d heard tell of the savagery of the War between the States but never had I witnessed such atrocity as corpses piled in the streets and burned—or worse, left to rot.
We rode into town on a Tuesday and found the village beset at every turn by chaos and violence. Mobs, soldiers, assassins—it was like a childhood dream of heroism gone wrong. There seemed to be no boundaries nor reasoning to half the killings, and as the rebels began to don soldier garb the confusion only grew.
We inquired after the gambler named Calhoun but heard he’d fled or been killed or was leading a group of revolutionaries—depending on who was to be believed. Amid the growing carnage we escaped back into Arizona and then New Mexico.
We stayed out of the towns and moved east and kept watch at night for the things we feared. Shelby would stay quiet most mornings and then when the sun was well overhead he’d open his flask and laugh and imagine himself running a ranch in Texas like folks talked about or going all the way to Florida and growing oranges, and he repeated to me how things would be just fine and each time he said the words he grew more desperate himself to believe them.
Shelby had long imagined a life different than his own. He raised me up at least for the most part and took to working in the saloons and learning from men older and harder than him. Longpine was a rough place in a country full of them, and Shelby thought himself rough, and maybe he was. He idolized the gamblers and gunslingers and the way they drank whiskey and bedded whores and talked tough like there was nothing in the world to fear. Shelby clung to these men as our father clung to whiskey, both escaping the pain of their losses and working toward a future different than the past. But salvation, if that’s what they were searching for, was slow in coming, and the sins of this life will surely follow us all into the next.
* * *
“Reckon it’s about time we named these horses?” Shelby called to me and for a while I ignored him and so he called again. “Bad luck to be riding a horse ain’t got no name, even if it is stolen.”
I said I wasn’t going to name my horse and said I didn’t believe in luck, and he told me to suit myself and that his was called Bullet.
In truth, I did want to name my horse and call it by its name and call it mine. But it didn’t sit well with me to do so because of everything that came with me sitting on back of it. I closed my eyes hard and tried to shake the memory away but it just made things worse, and now the dying feeling was on me again and I put my hand on the horse’s neck and breathed with him and it soothed us both.
He was a Missouri Fox Trotter, like my father used to ride when he was sheriff—seemed like all the lawmen back then rode Trotters. This one had a smooth chocolate coat with jet-black hair and a white splash just above his eyes. He was smaller than the quarter horse Shelby rode, but I could see he was surefooted and even across the rocky mesa-scattered plains he gave a comfortable seat.
We rode rogue through the High Pinos and spent hours a day searching arroyos and canyon draws for water, shooting rabbit and squirrel to stay fed. We crossed the Animas Plain and navigated the elevated passes between the Organ and Franklin Mountains and found ourselves at long last near the base of the pie-shaped Guadalupe peaks just north of Texas. The wind stalked us across the landscape, harassing our movements until we were forced to take shelter in the Carlsbad hills near the entrance of a forgotten cavern.
The sun set slowly, a shimmering red ball sinking to the bottom of some invisible sea, leaving a darkness that is always there, always waiting for the light to be snuffed out so that the world might return to its natural state.
That night the glow of our fire descended into the Chihuahuan Desert and across the once untamed Apache lands. To the south the long-stretching salt flats eventually gave way to the sloping deserts along the feet of the Franklin Mountains, wherein the wind had first manifested as if being called down by some ancient force set on blowing the world back to the way it once was.
“Brother,” Shelby said, as we lay beneath the mouth of the cave, looking out at the rotation of the night sky, “you reckon there’s only the one god?”
“You think there might be more?”
“I don’t know. The Indians got them a god, and Mexicans go on about the Virgin and whatnot. Tom Meechum said he met a Chinaman who had his own thoughts on the matter and they didn’t sound nothing like ours.”
“Well.”
“Just curious what you thought about it.”
“I don’t think too much about any of it.”
; “But you believe in God, don’t you? The Christian God?”
“I’m not sure what it is I believe.”
“That’s dangerous talk, little brother. Whether there’s one god or twenty, ain’t none of ’em as powerful as the Lord, I can promise you that.”
“Alright then.”
“I can promise you.”
“Okay.”
Cassiopeia moved overhead and below the cavern coyotes wailed and snapped at one another concerning the rights to some fresh carcass and in the end the one who’d made the kill had the spoils stolen, as is the nature of such things.
“You know, there was an old boy come in the bar one night. Think he was from down in Louisiana somewheres. Lake Charles, maybe. Anyhow, he was drunk enough to shoot turtles. I mean he’d got himself good and liquored up. Started talking about how God was gonna bring a great storm and cover the world in water. Like how he did with Noah.”
“Maybe he ought to.”
“He said everything used to be one big ocean.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
“Naw.”
“That desert out there was the bottom floor of a sea once.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Momma told me.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear. Her people was descended from the Mescalero.”
“So?”
“So this was their country back before everything.”
“Don’t mean it was no ocean.”
“It wasn’t an ocean then. It was back before there was people. That’s what Momma said.”
Shelby stayed quiet for a time, staring out. Then he rolled onto his side and pulled his blanket up over his shoulders.
“Ain’t no way,” he muttered and minutes later he was snoring.
* * *
The light broke the plain and we set out, starting through the Guadalupe Mountains just after dawn. The northwest side of the peaks were hidden from the rising sun and the cold winds cut through the dark morning as we climbed. The rising elevation turned the desert first to forest then to grassland and eventually gave way to the rock-covered summits, where we saw at once the sun and the plains and the days ahead of us.
