by James Wade
“She shot the head of that snake yonder,” the boy said and pointed, and Randall saw the blur of the snake’s twitching body, and Mara stamped at the earth. “Saved your life.”
“Wasn’t saving him,” the woman said. “Saving that horse. All tied up like that, couldn’t have got away if it wanted to.”
Randall was still breathing heavy and the sweat followed worn salt tracks down his face and he recognized the boy.
“Tadpole,” he said, and the boy seemed pleased, and the woman began to comfort Mara and tell her it was alright. Randall saw that her skin was chocolate and her hair black and braided behind an olive hat. She wore brown breeches and a white blouse and her gun belt was rough, faded leather and when she turned to look at Randall her eyes were dark and unforgiving.
“Yessir,” Tadpole said, “and this here’s Miss Charlotte, and her paint horse named Storm. ’Course you already know ol’ Pumpkin.”
Randall and the woman looked at one another and he still was unsure what was happening but thought it important to climb to his feet. He turned back to the boy and his horse and the horse called Storm. Storm was gray and white and spotted with an almost silver mane and was well appointed with a dark leather saddle atop a green and white serape.
“How’d you all find me?” he asked.
The woman ignored him and turned back to the horse and resumed her comforting tones.
“Well, I heard all the fellas talkin’, sayin’ you’d probably get lost or die, or maybe get shot, or accidentally shoot yourself, or—”
“Tadpole,” Randall said, and the boy took his meaning.
“Anyhow, I got started a couple days after you, but you weren’t too hard to follow, and then I met Miss Charlie here on the road and she was nice enough to give me some food, and after I told her about Harry and about you, she said she ought to come with me to make sure I find you.”
Randall looked again at the woman, and she was watering Mara from her hat and nary a drop had been spilled.
“We actually come up on you last night,” the boy continued. “But it looked like you was having a go of it with that bottle, so we figured we’d let you sort things on your own ’til morning.”
“How kind,” Randall said, embarrassed.
“We didn’t want to get mistook for whatever you kept shooting at with them empty guns,” the woman said, and Randall could find no playfulness in her voice.
“Oh, well, I was just messing about,” he managed.
“It ain’t nothing to worry yourself about, Mr. Dawson. I seen drunk fellas before,” Tad said. “Shoot, I even been drunk a time or two myself. That all don’t matter though, we’re here now and ready to help you track down them devil Bentleys.”
“Now hold on, I didn’t say you could stay. I’m on a personal—and dangerous—quest here. I gotta move fast and stay quiet.”
“Move fast? Shit, Mr. Dawson, excuse my language, but you might as well be mounted up on a turtle, as slow as you been moving. Putting that horse to waste is what you’re doing.”
“Well, I didn’t want to wear her out. I rode her hard the first few days.”
“That’s what you call hard? Jesus Christ.” The boy looked incredulous. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Mr. Dawson. Them boys’ll be having tea with the president in Warshington, DC, by time you catch up to ’em.”
The woman laughed and Randall turned to her.
“You responsible for this?” he asked and her face turned back to hard iron. “You think it’s a good idea to bring a boy on this sort of trip?”
She didn’t flinch.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be on this sort of trip, least from what I’ve seen and what the boy’s told me. And since you asked, no, I don’t like the idea of him going off with you, and I told him as much before we rode up. But seeing as how he ain’t gonna listen to neither one of us, I figured I better stick with him to make sure don’t no harm come his way.”
“Uh-huh, so you intend to ride with me as well?”
“Not riding with you, riding with the boy.”
“Alright, well, I’ll tell you what I told the boy. Nobody is coming with me. I forbid it.”
“Forbid it?”
“Yes, ma’am, you heard me.”
“Then you hear me, Mr. Dawson. This here is a free country. My father fought and died to help make it so. I ain’t wearing no chains, and I ain’t gonna act like I am, neither. This boy tells me these men killed your son. That ain’t right. And as much as two wrongs don’t make a right, there’s a sense of justice to seeing them men pay for what they did. You may not think you need my help, but I promise you, sir, when them guns are loaded it’s a different world. That’s the world I live in.”
Randall considered her words and softened his tone.
“I can appreciate your position, and I am grateful for your offer. However, I must decline. I cannot be responsible for putting a woman and a child in harm’s way. I just cannot.”
“Good,” the woman replied. “That settles it. We’ll just go on and put ourselves in harm’s way, then you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”
Randall shook his head.
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Charlotte Washington.”
“Where’s your people?”
“In the grave. All except my sister. She went up to Chicago to be a lady.”
“And that didn’t appeal to you, I gather.”
“Nossir, it most certainly did not. I headed west from a town in Texas called Jefferson, looking to make it all the way to California.”
“Well, you know I’m headed the opposite direction, don’t you?”
“There’s always time, Mr. Dawson. That boy talks too much, but he’s a good boy. I can’t rightly let him go off with somebody like you. No offense.”
“Hard not to take offense, Miss Washington. But please, call me Randall.”
“I guess you’ll have to sort that out with yourself. Either way, the boy’s coming with you and so am I.”
The woman walked past Randall and he watched her go.
“C’mon, Tad,” she called back to the boy. “Let’s get our horses.”
Randall felt the boy clap him on the back as he passed by.
“I always figured I was meant to track down bad guys.”
* * *
They rode east and the dirt road they followed turned from a deep-red clay to a brown sand and the foliage shrank before their eyes, mesquite and juniper making way for shadscale and rabbitbrush. There was a stillness to the country that stirred in Randall waves of anxiety and fear, as if he were trespassing through a time not his own, perhaps even a different world.
Randall thought the country a land of waste and unmet need. The dirt set thick upon his brow and breeches, and when the wind blew the dust rose up from the ground in spirals, as if the devil was reaching out from the underworld with long, thin fingers. The sky was neither bright nor dull, and no matter the passing of time and dirt Randall saw no change in the distant mountains, as if he and the others were bound to ride forever in some desert purgatory between worlds, never reaching a destination and never turning back.
The hills rose and faltered like the waves of a stagnant alien sea, and the three horses moved along dutifully as the sun gave chase to the moon and ascended to its position atop all the world and the world in turn embraced the change as it must, having no say in such matters.
The country before them was familiar in its sprawl, and no one spoke yet still the wind carried with it voices. When Randall looked about he saw no one and wished the ghosts would speak up so that he might hear their words. He wondered then about such a notion and about the language of the dead, and he concluded it was still his language or at least it was a language he would understand.
The vegetation, what little there was, began to th
in and soon the land offered up only catclaw and creosote and the dried ash-gray stalks of dead yucca.
“The Lake of Souls.” Charlotte pointed and Randall saw the expanse of crusted earth to his left. “It’s a sacred place to the Strassi.”
“How long has it been dry?”
Charlotte shrugged. “Since your people came.”
Randall opened his mouth to speak but could think of no words worth saying so he nodded because there was nothing left to do. He turned to the dried lake and from it came a hot wind. The air washed over him and he heard one thousand voices and they spoke in Spanish and English and Comanche and he heard their screams and laughs and pleas.
Randall stopped and sat his horse and the others kept on and he listened harder. Soon the air was thick around him, and he reached to feel his heart where it pounded in his chest. Black birds flew overhead. He strained his ears but did not hear his son. The birds descended in a flurry of squawks and flapping wings and the voices rose with the dry wind and Randall could not move or breathe and soon he felt the feathers engulf him and the claws and beaks tore at his clothes and flesh.
“Mr. Dawson,” Charlotte said, and he opened his eyes and there were no birds or wind, and Charlotte looked at him with concern. “Let’s keep moving.”
He nodded and put Mara forward and gave her her head and turned again to look at the dried lake. His horse soon fell into step with Storm.
They rode well into the night, but the moon was strong and the path clear and any ground they’d given by stopping was reclaimed and then some and there was game aplenty and Charlotte shot two rabbits and by Randall’s estimation she could have shot many more had the need arisen. He watched her aim and fire and her body was so fluid, as if it were as comfortable with killing as it would be floating along in a soft stream. Who was this woman, somehow both graceful and terrifying?
In a narrow canyon draw where the water ran down after rains and the cliffs above guarded against the harsh desert sun, bands of chokecherry, wafer ash, and wild plum had grown into one another and it was there Charlotte said they should make camp. There was water nearby for the horses and a grove of wolfberries, which Tad began to pick and eat at a frantic pace.
Charlotte led the horses, following the headward erosion of the stream channel, and soon found trickling water that led to a greater source and there she filled their canteens while the animals drank.
Randall stacked wood and moved stones and lit a flame to warm the night.
Charlotte returned and roasted both the rabbits and they ate until they were overly full and tossed their bedrolls and blankets near the fire and there they lay with stomachs too large to sleep.
“My daddy says the Indians are still holed up out this way,” Tad told them. “Says there’s caves all through these hills and the Indians are just running through ’em, waiting to pop up and get ’em some scalps.”
Randall drew on his pipe thoughtfully.
“I seen me an Indian back in Arizona,” Tad continued. “He was all dressed up too, like how they do on war parties.”
“And he let you live?” Randall asked, raising an eyebrow.
Tadpole looked down, “Well, I mean, it was a picture of an Indian, anyhow. But he looked real mean.”
“Indians ain’t mean. No meaner than any other folks,” Charlotte told him, and Randall listened. “They’s good and bad people, no matter if you Indian or African or any other thing.”
“Well, my daddy always said black folks are lazy and dumb, but I sure enough know you ain’t neither of those. So I reckon if he’s wrong about that, he’s probably wrong about Indians too.”
That seemed to please Charlotte and she smiled and stood and went off to find a tree and Randall watched her go and tried to act natural when she turned and caught him staring.
He too stood and used the fire’s light to gather more wood and he gathered more than was necessary. When Charlotte returned she eyed the large stack and scoffed, and Randall mumbled something about being prepared.
“Why you doing this, Mr. Dawson?” she asked him.
“Doing what?”
“Going off like this, chasing trouble.”
“I’m out to bring the Bentley brothers to justice.”
“Why not just let the law handle it?”
Randall hesitated.
“In truth,” he said, “my wife, Joanna, insisted I go.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“She insisted that a man—a real man, that is—would avenge his son.”
“A real man?”
“Yes. Something I believe she thinks me not to be. Something she may very well be right about.”
Charlotte was quiet again.
“In my heart, I suspect she may have sent me away in hopes of my being killed,” he said. “Though I have not spoken that thought aloud until now.”
The two of them lay on either side of the fire with Tadpole at their feet, his small frame no match for the Mexican blanket Charlotte had given him. Uncovered, she lay on her back with her arms behind her head and looked at the dark sky and her shirt raised just enough for Randall to see the smooth skin on her stomach and he quickly turned away.
“Do you believe this a fruitless endeavor?” he asked her.
“Can’t say.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“Ain’t my place to judge.”
“So you too. You don’t think I’m a real man.”
Charlotte propped herself on her elbows and leaned forward to look at him.
“I’ve known my share of fellas who I’d have a lot more faith in when it came to tracking and killing and all other matters of violence,” she told him. “But that didn’t make them worthy men. And so I don’t think your wife, with all due respect, knows what a real man is.”
“What makes a man worthy?” he asked.
“Kindness. Sure, it don’t hurt if he’s handsome and has a job. But most of all, he ought to be kind.”
“I’ve always been told I was too kind. My father, my grandfather before him—they wanted me to be much more rugged than I turned out.”
“No such thing as too kind, Mr. Dawson.”
“Well, I wish my father could hear you say that,” he told her.
9
In the morning we ate tinned fruit in silence and walked the horses down into a creek. The horses drank, and we splashed our faces with the cold water and ran our hands through our wet hair. We rode south through the Davis Mountains pass and came to a town called Valentine, where there was a mercantile and a smithy and a café all in a row. The short, flat buildings sat on dirt no different than the dirt before they started or the dirt that went on after they stopped, like somebody was walking and got tired and built a town.
We used the stolen money and bought a sack of oats for the horses and two cans of beans and one pack of dried beef, and Shelby bought whiskey even though he’d swore it off that same morning. He spit into the dirt outside the mercantile where the horses were tied.
“Not much money left from that old Mexican,” he said, and I asked how much.
“We can ride another day or two,” he said, “but we oughta find some work after that.”
I nodded and heard the thunder and wondered if it was in my head again, but when Shelby looked up I knew it wasn’t.
“Well,” he said. “Can’t outrun the rain, and I don’t feel like riding wet. Let’s go in and get us a cup.”
The mercantile had a wooden-roofed porch but the café did not. Dirt followed us in and a Mexican woman pushed us out of the way with her broom so she could sweep the threshold. A man with a white mustache and a sizable midsection nodded from behind the counter. Shelby asked for two cups of coffee and the man could not hide his disappointment that we were not eating also.
Shelby splashed whiskey into his cup and winked and we sat b
y the window and watched the sky blacken. Three cowboys came in as the rain began to fall and ordered beef hash and eggs and biscuits and the mustached man happily obliged.
The cowboys ate and talked and laughed aloud. Their hats were tall with curled brims and they spoke of a woman with whom a man had been in love. And they laughed again and said she’d run away with an Indian and the man had said she was captured but everyone knew the truth of it and behind his back they called him Injun Joe.
“Say,” Shelby said, turning his body in his chair to face them, “you boys know of any ranch work out this way? Me and my little brother are looking to catch on somewheres.”
One of the men spoke and said not much work was to be had and he lamented that the cowboy way was ending and said we’d be better off heading east and cutting timber in the pines.
“Sad state of affairs this country finds itself in,” he said, spitting on the wooden floor plank below him then staring up at the old woman with the broom. “Mexican vaqueros coming up and taking what little ranch jobs there are to be had. Cattle land being bought up by the oil men. Good cattle land too. Not any of that dusty shit like in New Mexico.”
The man’s companions shook their heads in agreement. Encouraged, he continued.
“Yessir, we’re the last of a dying breed. Thought about heading down south of the border and trying to find some work cowboying on one of them big haciendas the vaqueros are always going on about. You know, sort of do to them what they done to us up here. ’Course now the Mexicans have decided they’re gonna have them a civil war. Can’t do anything on their own, always gotta steal our ideas.”
The cowboys laughed and held up their cups for more coffee. The man rushed from behind the counter with a fresh pot.
The cowboy who’d spoken told us he and his bunch were headed west and offered that we might do the same if logging did not appeal to us.
“We’ll take our chances,” Shelby said, then asked how far to the timber country, and the cowboys conferred and said two weeks’ ride.
They advised we head north first to avoid the Lobos, but when I asked if there were wolves they said no and the old woman made a cross on her chest.
