Bitter Trail and Barbed Wire

by Elmer Kelton

  “Tom, don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  Shaking his head, he pulled the bottle out of her grasp. She took a step backward, raising her hand and touching a forefinger to the corner of her eye, wiping away a stray tear.

  “Tom, I’ve never seen you like this. You’ve never been a hard drinker. What’s wrong?”

  Tom made no sign he had heard her. His eyes stared blankly off into the distance.

  Luisa moved in again and placed her hand against his cheek. “Is it something I have done, something I have said? I didn’t know I had done anything to displease you. I didn’t mean to.”

  The sadness in her voice seemed to move him. He looked up at her and shook his head. “No, Luisa, it isn’t you. You could never do anything to displease me.”

  She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Then it can’t be anything so bad that you want to drink yourself to sleep. Come on, Tom, let’s go to bed. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  He shook his head. “Once I do what I have to, I doubt if I’ll ever sleep again, unless I drink myself to it.”

  Alarm showed in her eyes. “What have they asked you to do this time, Tom? Is it something dangerous again?”

  “Dangerous? No, not especially. Not for me, anyway.”

  “Then don’t let it trouble you so.” She kissed him again. “Forget it for now. We’ll go to bed.”

  He studied her with a brooding gaze. “You may not feel that way about me after tomorrow. You may have nothing but contempt for me.”

  Luisa stiffened. “Tom, what sort of job have they given you?”

  Tom’s head tilted over. He stared at the floor a minute, then took another long drink. “They’re sending me to kill Frio Wheeler.”

  Luisa gasped. “Tom, you can’t!”

  “I never would have thought I could. But they’ve shown me that it has to be done. I’m the one who must do it.”

  Hands over her face, Luisa walked slowly to the bedroom door and turned. “But why?”

  “Because his death could shorten the war. Maybe not much, but even a few days would save a great many men. One man’s life against all those others. When you look at it that way, you see why it has to be done.”

  “Not just one man’s life, Tom. He’s your friend. When you destroy him, you’ll also destroy yourself.”

  “All right, two men. What are we worth, two of us against all those who might be saved?”

  “What of your sister, Tom? She’s in love with him. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I saw it that night at the fandango. You’ll break her heart.”

  “She’s young.”

  “She’ll hate you.”

  Angrily he shouted, “For God’s sake, Luisa, don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I’ve run it through my brain a thousand times already? Why do you think I’ve been nursing this bottle all night? Maybe if I drink enough I can blot all these things out of my mind. Maybe if I’m drunk enough I can do what I have to without my conscience dragging me back. Maybe if I stay drunk afterward I won’t have to listen to my conscience at all.”

  Luisa dropped down upon a chair and began to sob. Presently the empty bottle fell clattering to the floor. Looking up, she found that Tom had slumped over, asleep. Slowly she pushed to her feet, stooping to pick up the fallen bottle. She stared a while at the sleeping man and blinked back tears. Finally, making up her mind, she wrapped a heavy woolen shawl around her shoulders and went out into the chilly night.

  She started up the dark street, walking hurriedly. A pair of Union soldiers stepped in front of her before she reached the main plaza. She brushed past them, ignoring their remarks, thinking that it was hard to tell much difference between Confederate soldier and Yankee when they came across the river to Matamoros. Or Mexican soldiers, either, for that matter. Their wants were simple and predictable.

  She was uncertain which house was the one she sought. She chose one and nervously rapped on the wooden door. She saw a light flicker as someone brought flame to a candle from banked coals in the fireplace. The door opened partway and a man’s head showed against the dim light. His eyes widened at the sight of the slender woman standing there.

  “Hello,” he said. “You sure you got the right house?”

  “I am looking for the Señor Plunkett.”

  He stammered. “W … well, I’m him, but I sure didn’t send for you.”

  “I must talk with you. It is most urgent, about Señor Wheeler.”

  Plunkett said, “Give me a minute to get some pants on, then come on in.”

  He was buttoning his shirt when she entered the room. He modestly turned away until he had the last button done, all the way to the collar. “Now, what’s this about Frio?”

  “You must send someone to warn him. They are going to his place to kill him.”

  Plunkett’s mouth dropped open. “Who?”

  “The yanqui soldiers. Tom McCasland is going to take them.”

  “McCasland?” Incredulous, Plunkett said, “But he’s Frio’s friend.” He stared at her, not knowing whether to believe her or not. Recognition slowly came to him. “I know you. You’re Señora Valdez. I’ve seen you with McCasland.” His eyes narrowed. “Tom McCasland’s your man. Why would you come and tell me this?”

  The tears started again, and she turned half away. “To save Tom. They tell him he must do it for his country. But if he helps them to kill his friend, Tom will die too, inside. I would save him that.”

  “He ever finds out you came and told me, you’re liable to lose him.”

  “At least I will know he is not eating his own heart away, remembering that he killed his best friend. Better to lose him and know he is alive than to have him and know that the spirit in him is dead.”

  Plunkett nodded slowly, his eyes grave. “You’re a brave woman, Señora Valdez. You made the right choice. I know a man who can make the ride. He’ll leave before daylight.”

  She turned toward the door, her shoulders slumped. “Thank you, Señor Plunkett.”

  He let her get halfway through the door before he said, “I promise you one thing: Nobody will ever find out from me how I knew about this.”

  She said, “Thank you, señor. But Tom will know anyway. He will guess.”

  She disappeared into the night.

  11

  The rough rock walls were without ornamentation of any kind—not a picture, not a crucifix. In his first hours here, Frio had lain with a blazing fever and stared with glazed eyes at the dark door of death, which had loomed wide and open in the gloom just beyond the foot of the bed. Later, fever subsiding but the bedclothes still sticking to his body, he had studied those bare walls until he knew every crack, every little squeeze of mortar. In their rough shape and from the shadows that lay across them he could make out vague pictures of faces and mountains and horses and cattle.

  Most of the fever was gone now, though a lingering weakness continued to hold him down. He was tired of lying here this way when there was so much that needed to be done. Experimentally he swung his legs off the cot and let his bare feet touch the earthen floor. His head swirled. He had to hold it in his hands. The wound began to throb afresh.

  Cooking in the other room, Amelia McCasland heard him move. She dropped a stirring spoon into an iron pot and came to see about him. Frio pulled the blanket up to cover himself.

  “Frio,” she scolded, “you lie back and be still. You’ll break that wound open again.”

  His head was swimming so much that it was hard to keep his eyes on her. “Just wanted to see how I’d feel sittin’ up. I can’t stay in bed forever.”

  “You’ll stay there awhile longer if you want to live. Now lie down!”

  Grudgingly he pulled his feet up and stretched out again. It was true he felt much better this way. He doubted he could get to the front door afoot. He had lost a lot of blood.

  “I’ve got to be up and out with my wagons.”

  “Happy Jack can take care of the wagons for one trip, at least.�
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  Frio’s face twisted. A glowing anger had remained banked inside him since the night Florencio Chapa had so coldly killed Felix and had put the whip to Frio. “Just takin’ care of them isn’t enough. I want those wagons to roll far and fast. I want to show the Yankees how much war goods I can haul. I want to show them I’m a long way from bein’ dead—that they wasted the blood money they paid Chapa.”

  Amelia said, “You’re hating too hard, Frio. Hate is a cruel master.” She sat on the edge of the cot, put her warm hand gently to his face, and tried to force a smile. “Try to put the hatred away. Be glad you can lie back and rest. Be glad you can spend some time here with me.”

  He reached up and took her hand. “You know people are goin’ to talk, you stayin’ in the same house with me.”

  “The condition you’re in, what could happen?” She wrinkled her nose. “It’ll take more than talk to hurt me anymore. Anyway, I’ll let you make an honest woman of me anytime you want to.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “Someday, Amelia, when I can, I’ll take you with me down to Matamoros. We’ll be married there.”

  She leaned down and kissed him. “I’m only sorry it took a bullet in the back to make you say that.”

  Someone knocked at the front door. Blas Talamantes and his wife came into the house. María carried a tin bucket of milk. Blas strode directly into the bedroom, taking off his big sombrero. “Ah, Frio, you feel a little better, no?”

  Frio nodded. “Some. How is everything goin’?”

  Blas shrugged. “Bueno. The cattle are thin, but mostly they still live. Maybeso it rains in the spring.”

  Standing in the doorway, María held up the bucket. “Madama, I have bring milk for the patrón. It will help to make him well.”

  Frio grimaced. “Milk!”

  María said, “You need it. You must drink it for strong.”

  Frio argued. “You need it worse than I do, María. You’re drinkin’ it for two.” The tiny woman was showing her pregnancy more every day.

  Blas placed his strong arm around his wife’s thin shoulder. “I burn prickly pear for the milk cow. Pear makes for plenty milk. We get enough for María and for you, too, don’t you worry.”

  María’s fingers went up to touch Blas’s hand, and she leaned her head down so that her cheek rested against the man’s arm. She said, “So long as I have Blas, I have no need for anything else.”

  Blas smiled down at her. In the moment of silence, Frio heard a running horse. Blas heard it too, for he turned his head to listen. The boy Chico burst through the door. Bundled in a coat twice too large for him, he had been playing outdoors.

  He said excitedly, “Somebody is come!”

  Through the open door they heard a man outside shouting, “Blas! Blas Talamantes!” It was a Mexican voice.

  Blas stepped to the door and hailed the man. “Aquí, Natividad. Slow down a little. You live much longer.”

  Natividad de la Cruz stepped hurriedly up onto the little porch. “There is no time to slow down. The yangui soldiers, they are not far behind me. Where is the Frio?”

  Blas’s smile was wiped away in a second. “Frio is here, in bed. We cannot move him.”

  “The yanquis will do more than move him!”

  Natividad, about the same age as Blas, was a one-time vaquero who worked for Hugh Plunkett in the cottonyard. Once Frio had brought medicine all the way from San Antonio for Natividad’s sick wife. She had died anyway, but the man’s gratitude had never changed. Natividad brushed past Blas and hurried to the bedroom.

  “Mr. Frio, you get away from here quick! The yanquis, they come for to kill you!”

  The color left Amelia’s face. Frio demanded, “How do you know?”

  “Señor Plunkett, he say for me to ride like the wind. My horse he is go lame, and the soldiers they pass me while I am finding another. I spur him hard and go around them, but they follow close. You got very little time.”

  Frio sat up shakily and put his feet on the floor again. Amelia protested, “Frio, you can’t go, not in your condition. Let them arrest you. What can they do?”

  Natividad said, “Pardon me, señorita, but Señor Plunkett he say they don’t come to arrest him, they come for to kill him!”

  Amelia cried, “You can’t ride a horse, Frio. You’ll tear that wound open and bleed to death!”

  “I can’t just lie here!”

  Blas had listened gravely. Now, voice urgent, he said, “I fix. Miss Amelia, you and María and Natividad, you take Frio out into the thick brush. Go as far as you can. Wipe out your tracks behind you. I take Natividad’s horse and lead the yanquis away.”

  He dropped his sombrero on the floor and took one of Frio’s hats from a peg on the wall. He slipped off his Mexican coat and put on one of Frio’s.

  Frio shook his head. “Too risky. I won’t let you do it.”

  Blas said sternly, “You can’t stop me. Hurry up now, all of you. Ándele!”

  Natividad helped Frio pull on a pair of pants and get boots on his feet. Frio tried to stand alone but swayed and nearly fell. Natividad caught and steadied him, pulling Frio’s good arm around his shoulder to give him support. He flung a blanket over Frio’s back to keep him warm when they went out into the chill of the open air.

  Tearful, María clutched at her husband. “Blas, Blas, don’t do it!”

  “Don’t worry, querida. It is pretty soon dark. They will think I am Frio. I let them follow, but I don’t let them get close.”

  María cried, “Blas, they will kill you!”

  He threw his arms around her and crushed her to him. He kissed her, then pushed her away. “Go now. No yanqui soldier can kill me, not when I have a son on the way that I have not even seen.”

  Blas hurried out to see about Natividad’s horse. Frio said, “Amelia, bring the rifle!” She got it. With Natividad to help her, she brought Frio out into the fading afternoon. The chill cut him at first like the sharp edge of a knife, María hurried along behind, carrying several warm blankets over one arm. She clutched Chico’s hand and dragged the boy in a run. She paused a moment to look back at her husband, who stood beside the horse, awaiting first sight of the Union soldiers.

  “Blas,” she called brokenly, “go with God!”

  He blew his wife a kiss and watched her until she and the others disappeared south into the brush. Blas turned then and kept his gaze on the Brownsville trail. A cold sweat broke across his face. It wasn’t long, perhaps ten minutes, when he saw the first bluecoat push warily out of the brush. Shortly he could see forty or fifty troopers. Their officer gave a signal. The soldiers spurred into a run toward the house.

  Blas waited only long enough to cross himself. Then he swung into the saddle and broke north, putting Natividad’s tiring horse into a lope. Blas purposely hunched over in the saddle, the way a wounded man would. It stood to reason they knew Frio was wounded, else why would they have come?

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw that they were following him as hard as they could run.

  Blas gritted his teeth and tore into the brush.

  * * *

  TOM MCCASLAND HAD ridden in torture all day. The whisky he had drunk last night still burned in his belly like a bank of coals, and his head throbbed as if someone were crushing his skull with a sledge. He had no recollection of going to bed. The last he remembered, he had still been sitting up in a chair. He hadn’t awakened until the impatient Major Quayle had sent someone this morning to find out why he hadn’t reported when he was supposed to. The major had ridden beside him in angry silence all day. Because of Tom, the patrol had been delayed more than an hour beyond its scheduled starting time. Twice they had to stop and allow Tom to be sick. Small wonder Quayle was disgusted with him.

  Well, Tom thought, what had they expected, asking him to do a job like this? They couldn’t expect a man to help kill his best friend and do it cold sober.

  For a while last night the liquor had at least numbed the edge of his guilt. Now nothing wa
s left but the dregs of the whisky, and the guilt was with him again, riding upon his shoulders with the weight of stone. It shrieked in his ear like some querulous old beggar-woman at the city plaza, berating a passerby for dropping no coin in her outstretched hand.

  When the war was over, he would have to leave this part of the country; he knew that. He realized he would be regarded from now on as a Judas. He could never hope to make people understand. His friends would turn away, loathing him. And his sister.… He shook his head sadly at the thought of her. When Frio died, Amelia would reject Tom with a hatred that probably would last the rest of her life.

  Yet, he knew what his duty was, and he would do it. But at what a cost!

  Perhaps when the war was over he would change his name. Maybe he would go west to California, for that was a new and growing land. Or even down into Mexico. He knew the Mexican people well, and by now he spoke their language almost as they did. He could start fresh.

  Or could he? Did a man ever really start fresh? No matter where he went, no matter if he changed his surroundings, his clothes, even his language, he would take his memories with him. He would take with him the cancerous guilt that eroded his soul. Not even the love of a woman like Luisa Valdez would be enough to offset that.

  Luisa! He remembered the shock in her face last night when he had told her what he was going to do. She could not have been more shaken if he had struck her with his fist. He had half expected her to turn her back on him and call him a betrayer. Yet, this morning she had seemed strangely calm. She hadn’t tried to argue with him. That was one thing about most Mexican women: They believed it was the man’s place to make the decisions. Right or wrong, they followed him.

  “It’s getting late,” Major Quayle said. It was the first time he had spoken to Tom in a couple of hours. “How much farther?”

  “We’re almost there. We’ll break out of this brush in a minute and into the clearing where the houses are.”

  The major turned to the sergeant. “Get the men closed up. Tell them to have their carbines ready. We’ll go in running. We’ll give them no time to set up a defense.”