by Elmer Kelton
Tom said bitterly, “Who? A wounded man, a couple of women, maybe one or two Mexicans? Remember what I told you, Major: My sister is there. I don’t want her hurt.”
“We’ll get this over with in a hurry. She won’t be hurt.”
Won’t be hurt! The major’s words struck Tom like some sardonic joke. Killing Frio was the worst hurt they could do her.
They rode out into the open. Tom’s sight was blurred, for last night’s drinking had left its mark. But he saw the horse in front of the rock house. He made out a man standing behind the mount. He made out Frio’s black hat.
Quayle said, “That him?”
Tom swallowed and looked down. “It’s him.”
Quayle waved his arm and shouted, “Charge!”
In an instant the troopers were in a gallop. The first rush left Tom behind. He had no wish to be up front. He had no wish to be here at all. He let the soldiers take over. Sick at heart, he watched the fugitive swing into the saddle and spur northward toward the heavy brush.
“Run, Frio!” he found himself whispering. “For God’s sake, run!”
Tom touched spurs to his horse then and tried to catch up with Quayle, but already he was too far behind. The troopers hit the brush. The heavy limbs lashed at them, the thorns clutched and tore. But the soldiers had seen their quarry. They spurred through the brush like Mexican vaqueros born to the chaparral. They started a ragged pattern of shooting, but it was of no real avail. There was no chance for accuracy from horseback at a speed like this, through a thorny tangle of brush that grabbed at a man and tried to pull him out of the saddle.
For a mile or more they ran. The horses were beginning to labor. But the fugitive’s mount was slowing more. In despair Tom watched the soldiers making a slow but steady gain. Of a sudden now he wished that by some miracle he could place himself on that horse up yonder, that he could take the soldiers’ bullets instead of Frio.
To hell with the major! To hell with the Union! He wished he could call back the day, could have another chance at the decision he had made. Tears burned his eyes and trailed down his cheeks.
“Run, Frio! For God’s sake, run!”
The soldiers shouted in excitement. Blinking hard, Tom saw that the quarry’s horse had gone down. It lay kicking on the ground. In the brush the fugitive began to run afoot, limping as if the fall had hurt his leg. It occurred to Tom that Frio was making a pretty good account of himself for a man who had been wounded so badly.
Quayle signaled, splitting his riders, sending half of them around one side, half around the other. They would ring Frio and then close in on him. In a few minutes he would be a dead man.
Tom knew the situation was out of his hands now. Nothing he could do would help Frio. He stopped his horse and sat slumped in the saddle, the tears streaming. He wished God would see fit to strike him dead. Oblivion now would be a blessing.
Eyes closed, he could hear the soldiers threshing through the brush. They shouted to one another. Above them all he could hear the loud commands of Major Quayle. Finally came the exultant yells of the men as they cornered their prey.
A volley of shots echoed through the chaparral.
“Frio!” Tom cried. “Oh, God!” He touched spurs to the horse and put him into a run. The choking veil of gunsmoke still clung in the thick brush. Tom spurred past the soldiers toward the still figure he could see lying broken on the ground. He slid his horse to a stop and was off running.
The body lay facedown, torn half apart by the troopers’ bullets. Major Quayle rode up and stepped out of the saddle as Tom gently started to turn the body over.
Tom looked into the dirt-covered face and felt his heart bob.
Major Quayle suddenly began to curse. “That’s not Wheeler!”
Tom slowly shook his head, his chin dropping. He folded Blas Talamantes’s hands carefully and wiped dirt from the Mexican’s face. Tears burned in Tom’s eyes.
“No, Major,” he said tightly, “it’s not Frio Wheeler. You’ve killed the wrong man!”
* * *
FRIO’S WOUNDS BURNED as if a hot branding iron had been shoved against his shoulder. From its stickiness, he knew it was bleeding afresh. They had carried him here into the thickest of the brush, for he had little strength to support himself. He had leaned heavily upon Amelia and Natividad. María had followed along with Chico. The little woman had a broken-off catclaw limb and was walking backward, scratching out their tracks as she went.
Frio groaned despite himself, for the wound was blindingly painful.
Amelia said, “This is far enough. He’ll die if we keep this up.” While Natividad held Frio on his feet, Amelia found a thick clump of shoulder-high prickly pear, growing so tightly that at first glance there seemed no way into it. But she found a way and beckoned. “In here. If we’ll all huddle in here, they may not find us.”
Pear thorns dug into their legs like tiny needles of fire, but there was no time to worry about that now. They moved into the heavy clump. María came last, dragging the catclaw limb to brush away the sign of their passing. It wouldn’t fool a good tracker, but it might be overlooked by the Yankees.
“Wrap Frio in this blanket,” Amelia said to Natividad. She had taken command with all the firmness of a soldier. “We may have to lie here a long time, and he’s going to be cold.” They laid him out in a narrow spot between the prickly pears, one edge of the blanket beneath him. Amelia stayed on her feet and watched until the others had bundled themselves and were lying flat upon the ground. Then she crawled under the blanket beside Frio. She found him trembling from cold. She pulled her body against him and drew the blanket up tightly, hoping her own warmth would protect him. With that wound, pneumonia could come easily.
“It’s going to be all right, Frio,” she whispered.
Presently they heard a far-off volley of shots. María screamed, “Blas! Blas!”
Then came a deadly silence. They could do nothing except lie there and listen to the little woman alternately sobbing and praying. Amelia buried her face against Frio’s chest and let her own tears flow.
Much later they heard men and horses approaching slowly. Chico whimpered. María’s voice spoke quietly, steady now with resignation, “Easy, little one. Easy, so they do not hear.”
The soldiers had fanned out in the brush and were combing it slowly, knowing the man they sought must be hiding there. Amelia turned and lay quietly, her breath ragged in fear. She knew the cold presence of death. At ground level was a small opening through the pear plants, and she could see a Union soldier moving in her direction. His gaze moved carefully back and forth. She held her breath, certain he was going to spot her. She wanted to pull the blanket back over her face but was afraid the movement would catch his eye. A scream rose in her throat. She clamped her teeth together.
The soldier rode close, peering over into this heavy growth of pear. Amelia’s fingers closed on the rifle. If that trooper saw them, she would shoot him, even though she knew it would bring the others on the run. They wouldn’t kill Frio without a fight; not without killing her too!
The soldier saw nothing. He pulled away. Amelia let her breath out slowly and loosened her hold on the rifle. Her heart seemed to race.
The line had passed. Unless they came this way again, Frio was safe.
She saw another movement then. Another rider was coming, one not in uniform. This man trailed along behind the soldiers, not taking part in the search. Amelia squinted, trying to make out his face.
He moved closer, and recognition came with a shock.
“Tom!” she cried out. Immediately she wanted to bite off her tongue. Tom McCasland reined up. He had heard. His gaze searched through the prickly pear, and their eyes met.
She lay paralyzed in fear, watching her brother, sure he was going to call back the soldiers.
Then Tom tore his eyes away from her. He dropped his chin and rode on.
With dusk came the smoke, drifting slowly southward from the direction of the house. Frio
sat up weakly. “They’re burnin’ us out,” he said. A great sadness came over him. He knew Blas was dead.
María stood up, weeping quietly. Frio wished he could go to her.
“María,” he said bitterly. “I promise you this: I promise you they’ll pay!”
12
For a long time they waited there in the darkness, blankets wrapped tightly around them for warmth. The stars stood out with a piercing brightness in the winter sky. Natividad de la Cruz pushed to his feet, speaking sharply under his breath when his leg brushed against the hostile spines of a prickly pear. “I think, Mr. Frio, the yanquis have gone. If you like, I will go see.”
Frio nodded painfully. “I doubt they’ve left us anything to go back to. But go look.”
The moon came up while Natividad was gone. Its silver light made the bushes stand out in bold relief. At least, thought Frio, they wouldn’t have to stumble along in darkness, pierced by thorns at every wrong step.
He shivered inside the blanket. Amelia McCasland leaned to him, her body pleasantly warm. Another time it might have been different, but her presence brought him little comfort now. Pain pulsed in his shoulder, almost enough to make him cry out. It was as if the bullet were still lodged there with its white heat. Frio knew he would have a fever later. His mind dwelled on Blas Talamantes. He wondered where the Mexican was, wondered if death had come swiftly and with mercy, or if Blas had lain and suffered as Frio suffered now.
Presently they heard brush snapping. Natividad was calling softly. He knew the direction but not the exact place.
Amelia answered, “Here, Natividad.”
The Mexican moved cautiously into the big clump of pear, avoiding its thorns. He gazed down gravely at Frio. “Mr. Frio, the yanqui soldiers have gone. We can go back to the house if you like.” He paused and said, “But, as you say, there is no house.”
Amelia looked at Frio, tears in her eyes. Then, squaring her shoulders, she said, “We will go back, Natividad, to whatever is left.”
Natividad blinked, not following her reasoning. He shrugged and said, “Of course, señorita. Here, I will help you.”
Gently he helped Frio to his feet. The wounded man closed his eyes tightly a moment, shaking his head. His brain seemed to swim aimlessly, and he cringed against a sharp shaft of pain. With Natividad’s support, Frio made his way out of the pear.
It took them longer to get back to the clearing than it had taken to reach the pear in the first place. For one thing, there was not the pressure of pursuit. Secondly, there was the dread of seeing what lay in wait for them. Amelia took the lead. María trailed, holding onto Chico’s hand. The little woman moved with her head down, but she did not let her grief blind her. She held to the boy, keeping him from walking into thorns, catching him when he stumbled.
Amelia stopped at the edge of the clearing. Frio heard her gasp, “Oh, Frio, oh no!”
Frio blinked, trying to clear the glaze from his eyes. In the moonlight he could see the bare rock walls and the glow from inside them. Though the walls would not burn, they probably were badly cracked from the heat of the blazing roof. The smaller house that Blas and María had used was gone, too, part of one wall caved in, flames still licking hungrily at the wooden beams. The troopers had set fire even to the brush jacales that old Salcido Mendoza had built long ago for his vaqueros and their families. The Yankees had not left a thing standing above ground except the corrals and the rock walls.
Anger surged again in Frio Wheeler, a helpless anger that hurt all the more because all he could do was stand here and look. He couldn’t even stand were it not for Natividad holding him up.
“We could as well have stayed in the brush,” Frio gritted. “We’ll have to sleep in the open anyway.”
Natividad eased Frio to the ground. Frio sat with his fist balled as tight as he could make it. So many things he could think of now, things they should have done. They should have taken more blankets with them, for the ones they had would not be enough to shield them from the night’s cold. They should have taken some food, too, for everything in the houses had been burned. And guns … There had been a couple more guns in the bigger house. Chances were the soldiers had found those and confiscated them if they had made any search before they put the place to the torch. Burn them or steal them, it didn’t matter much now; the guns were gone. All Frio had was the one rifle.
Natividad gingerly dragged some of the slow-burning wood out of the two houses, careful lest he sear his hands. He piled it together, then fetched wood from Blas Talamantes’s woodpile. Presently he had a fire started between the ruins of the two houses. He said, “We need this tonight, I think.”
María had been silent. Now, she asked, “What of Blas?”
Frio said, “Not much anybody can do for him now. Natividad will go look for him in the mornin’.”
They spread their blankets near the fire so they would have its warmth through the night. Natividad brought up enough wood to last until day, piling it where he could reach it as it was needed. Chico was the first to drop off in fitful sleep. Before long he was moaning, caught in the clutch of some nightmare.
Sitting close beside Frio, Amelia said, “He was like that for a while after we first came here. Then he got over it. I guess today has brought the scare back to him.”
“Poor button,” Frio replied. “He must think his saints are almighty angry with him.”
María Talamantes leaned over the boy, shaking him a little to try to stir him out of the dream. In Spanish she said, “It’s all right, Chico. It’s all right.” She sat on the ground and took the boy in her arms, folding him to her bosom and rocking her body gently back and forth. Somehow in comforting the boy she seemed to find solace for herself.
Natividad got up and brought his blanket. He put it over the little woman and the boy. He said simply, “With this fire, the blanket is too warm for me.” He sat nearer the blaze and gradually dozed off to sleep, his chin dropping to his chest.
For Frio there was little sleep. The fever grew. He sweated awhile, then chilled. His half-numbed mind slipped off into swirling dreams of violence and movement, to short flights of fancy—some angry, some happy, some frightening, some sad. The faces of Blas Talamantes and Tom McCasland and Florencio Chapa kept coming to him, again and again. He could see his wagons and feel the cold, muddy water of the Rio Grande. He imagined he could hear the guns in far-off Virginia and see the men there low on ammunition, short of guns, waiting for his wagons to bring these things across the river from Mexico. Half-awake, he peered with glazed eyes into the crackling coals of Natividad’s fire and saw Brownsville aflame. He could hear the screams of Amelia McCasland, trapped inside the blazing store with her dying father. Another moment he would be back with Tom McCasland in the pleasant years before the war, riding across this ranch, putting their brand on the unclaimed cattle they found. There was no reason to the images he saw, no logical sequence.
He lay until dawn, dozing a little, then half awakening, never a moment free from the torment of his stiffened shoulder. Amelia slept fitfully beside him. With daylight it seemed to him that his fever was gone, and he could see clearly. He watched the sunrise. He saw Natividad reach out to put more wood on the fire, then stand up and stretch himself, his breath making a small patch of fog in the sharp morning air.
Quietly, trying not to awaken the others, the Mexican said to Frio, “There is no food. The boy will be hungry.”
They all would be, but it would hurt the boy most of all.
As if in answer, Blas Talamantes’s milk cow bawled beside the corral gate. Natividad carefully walked over and opened the gate so she could go in. The cow smelled her way suspiciously up to the ashes of what had been the small brush shed where Blas had been accustomed to milking her. She stood there dumbly and bawled.
Natividad kicked around the ashes of Blas and María’s house and found a few blackened pots and pans. He also found a tin bucket. He carried them out to the creek, kneeling to scour the black from th
em with sand, then washing them clean with water. He held the bucket up to the rising sun to check it for holes. There weren’t any. Next he found what was left of a pitchfork, half of the wooden handle burned away. He walked out to the nearest prickly pear and broke off all the spiny pads he could carry. He speared these, several at a time, on the tines of the pitchfork and held them over the fire, burning the thorns away. Done with that, he carried the fire-cleaned pear to the cow and fed it to her. While she chewed, he knelt and milked her.
Returning, he held the bucket up proudly for the awakening women to see. Amelia and Maria went to the charred remains of the houses and poked around for salvage. They found little. There was no food except the bucket of milk.
Frio said, “Natividad, we are afoot. They must have run off the horses. Can you shoot?”
Natividad shrugged. “Not the best. But maybeso I find us some kind of game.”
Frio shook his head. “Not likely, not close to the house. I was thinkin’ you might find a cow someplace around, or a steer. Take the rifle and shoot one. We’ll have beef anyway. That’s a start.”
Taking the rifle and the few cartridges, Natividad disappeared into the brush. After a long time they heard two shots. The Mexican returned, his shoulders bent under the weight of a quarter of beef. He said apologetically, “He was not a fat steer, but in the dry time one cannot choose.…”
Frio said, “You did fine.”
“I will go back and bring more of the beef before the wild hogs find it.”
Amelia sand-scoured an iron skillet she had rescued from the ashes. Using tallow from the fresh-killed beef, she soon had beef frying over the coals. By the time Natividad came back with another quarter, Amelia had steak cooked and ready to eat.
Frio drank a little of the warm milk, but he left most of it for María and the boy. What he wanted most was hot coffee. Texans here on the border had been comparatively fortunate in respect to coffee and some of the other imported goods. While the rest of the Confederacy was forced to do without, South Texans continued getting many of these things in limited amounts out of Mexico. But now there would be no coffee for Frio. It had gone up in flames.
