by Elmer Kelton
Later, a couple of the loose horses came drifting in, for this was home. The Mexican penned them.
“Natividad,” Frio said, “I’d be much obliged if you would go out and find Blas. Bring him in so we can bury him decently. Then I’d like you to ride to Matamoros. and tell Hugh Plunkett what happened. You ought to be able to smuggle some supplies across the river on pack mules or burros and bring them here.”
“Sí, I can do that. But it is not good to leave you here this way. You cannot defend yourself.”
Frio shrugged painfully. “What choice do we have? You just hurry. Tell Hugh Plunkett we need help here. He’ll find a way to send it.”
The Mexican fashioned a hackamore out of some rawhide rope he found. Mounting bareback, he rode off and was gone an hour. When he came back, he was walking, leading the horse. Frio looked away, not wanting to watch. He knew that bundle across the horse’s back had to be Blas. María Talamantes arose, crossed herself, and went slowly out to meet Natividad. Then she walked back, moving along dry eyed beside her husband’s body.
They wrapped Blas in one of the blankets and buried him in a shallow grave. They placed rocks over him so the wolves would not dig him up. María would not want to leave him here forever. Someday, when she could, she would want to move him to consecrated ground.
There was not even a Bible to read from, for that too had burned. Frio stood on weak legs beside the pile of rocks and recited from memory what he could. María prayed almost inaudibly. When they were done, Natividad de la Cruz mounted the horse bareback and started toward Brownsville.
* * *
FRIO SAW THE horseman approaching and thought at first it might be Natividad, coming back for some reason. Frio’s sight was still none too good. Soon, though, he could tell it was not Natividad. He pushed painfully to his feet and supported himself against one of the fractured rock walls. “Amelia,” he said evenly, “the rifle!”
She quickly handed it to him. With his left arm stiff, he didn’t know how he was going to handle it if the need came.
Amelia peered toward the rider and turned back worriedly to Frio. “If it’s the Yankees again, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where? I’ve got no strength to run, even if I wanted to. I ran last night. I’m not ever goin’ to run again!”
María came to stand with Amelia and Frio by the smoke-blackened wall. The boy Chico clung to María’s skirt. Frio tried in vain to make out some detail about the rider. All he got was a blur. “What does he look like?”
Amelia’s mouth dropped open. “It looks like…” Her chin came down, and her mouth hardened. “It looks like Tom.”
Anger struck Frio. His grip tightened on the rifle. “Reckon he’s brought the Yankees with him again?”
Amelia’s voice was strained. “I don’t see any sign of them.” She glanced at Frio’s rifle. “Frio, don’t do anything in anger. Don’t do anything you may regret.”
Frio said tightly, “The only thing I regret is that I went through all those years callin’ him friend.”
Amelia blinked and stopped her tears before they really got started. Gravely she watched Tom McCasland ride in. Tom reined up thirty feet from the ruined house. He started to swing his leg over the saddle.
Frio said sharply, “Stay right where you’re at! You’re not gettin’ off!”
Tom caught himself half out of the saddle. He stopped that way and let his eyes drift over the boy, the two women, and the wounded man who swayed there. Finally he said, “I’m gettin’ down. Shoot me if you want to.”
Frio raised the rifle, but he found he could not bring his left arm across. If he fired, he would have to do it one-handed. The recoil would probably tear the rifle from his weak grasp.
Frio said, “You got no business here. Get back on that horse.”
Tom replied, “Believe me, it took me a long time, workin’ up the courage to come back. I’m not leavin’ now.”
“You got your Yankee friends hidden yonder, someplace in the brush?”
Tom shook his head. “Slipped away from them in the dark. They won’t be back, not for a while. They rode half the night, afraid the fires would attract Santos Benavides and his Mexican militia.”
Amelia said bitterly, “Why didn’t you just keep riding with your Yankees, Tom? There’s nobody here who wants you!”
Tom flinched. He stared at her, hurt in his eyes. “I’m still your brother, Amelia.”
She shook her head. Her voice was like ice. “I had a brother once. His name was Bert, and he died at Glorieta. There is no other!”
Tom McCasland flexed his hands and looked down at his feet. “I guess I knew how it would be. But I had to come back anyway. I had to try and make you understand how it was … why I did it.”
She said, “I guess I know why. You’ve turned Yankee. You’ve betrayed your family, your friends.…”
Tom pointed out, “I could have called them back last night, but I didn’t.”
Frio put in, “It was too late by then to undo the damage. Blas was already dead.”
Tom’s gaze went to the slight figure of María Talamantes, and he winced as if in pain. María stared at him with a level, burning gaze. If she had had a rifle in her hands, she probably would have shot him.
“Frio, I had to do it. The Confederacy is losin’, there’s no doubt about that. The question is, how long will it hold on? This border trade helps keep the war goin’. With you gone, the trade would be badly crippled. They made me see that it was your life against the thousands who might be saved if the war was cut a little shorter. It was a bitter choice, but I had to do it.” Tom clenched his fists and said, “Now I’ve told you why I came. If you want to use that rifle, just go ahead.”
Frio’s hand tightened, but the rifle didn’t fire. He asked, “How come you changed your mind last night? Why didn’t you call the troops back?”
Tom shook his head. “I can’t rightly say. Lost my nerve, I guess. All of a sudden those thousands of men didn’t seem real to me. But you were real, Frio. You were my friend.”
Frio’s voice was harsh. “Friend? All these years Blas Talamantes was the best friend I had, and I didn’t have sense enough to see it till he died to save me.” He raised the muzzle of the rifle. “Now get back on that horse, Tom. If Amelia wasn’t here—if she wasn’t your sister—I’d kill you where you stand. As it is, I’ll let you go.” His eyes narrowed. “But one day we’ll meet and she won’t be there. When that day comes, Tom, I’m goin’ to kill you!”
The gray look of defeat was in Tom’s face. He swung onto the horse. To María he said, “I’m sorry. I wish it had been me instead of Blas.”
He glanced once more in despair at Frio and Amelia. Then he turned the horse around and rode away.
13
With a raw north wind lashing against the end-gates, the groaning wagons toiled through deep sand, mules straining against the harness. On the wagons, teamsters with serapes pulled up around their ears cracked whips and shouted at the mules to pull harder.
Down from the point of the wagon train came the rider, tall and gaunt, black whiskers grayed by trail dust, eyes steeled against the constant company of raw hurt. He rode with his left arm hanging stiff at his side, his heavy coat bulky with the thickness of a bandage wrapped around his shoulder. He paused at every wagon, his face dark as a storm cloud.
“Keep ’em movin’! Don’t let ’em hold back on you! We got to make the well before dark!”
He rode hunched, for every step the horse took drove a thin shaft of pain through Frio Wheeler’s shoulder. But he never held back. He had worn out two horses already today, moving up and down this line like some grim, avenging demon, roaring orders, driving, threatening. His face had thinned. Dark hollows had dug in under his eyes. And the eyes themselves had something burning in them that made a man instinctively step aside. No one had seen him smile in weeks now. He had always been a firm man when it came to the wagons, but now he had gone beyond firmness. Not a man on the
train was immune from the sharp lash of his angry voice.
He had been like this ever since he had caught up to his wagons on their way down from San Antonio, Happy Jack Fleet in charge. Frio had been a changed man. A couple of the more superstitious among his Mexican teamsters had speculated aloud if perhaps Satan himself had cast a spell upon el patrón. Perhaps the real Frio had died, and El Diablo had placed some malevolent spirit in his body to walk among men and do evil.
The Devil himself could not have driven the men much harder than Frio was doing. He had taken his last shipment of cotton by way of Rio Grande City and down to Matamoros in a day and a half less than any other freighter on the road. He had made the return trip with a cargo of English rifles, bar lead, powder, and mercury in two days less than anyone else. Now, this trip, it looked as if he was determined to shave time even from his own record.
“Patrón,” one of the teamsters argued, “this team, she is get very tired.”
“They’ll pull if you crack that whip!”
Frio finally reached the rear wagon, his throat raw from dust and shouting. Happy Jack rode there, his solemn, appraising eyes mirroring his quiet disapproval.
Frio ignored the cowboy’s unspoken but obvious opinion. “Damn it, Happy, can’t you keep these rear wagons pushed up? Way this train is all strung out, we’ll be the middle of next summer gettin’ to Matamoros.”
Happy met Frio’s hard gaze without giving any ground. “Way we’re goin’ we won’t get there at all. You’re fixin’ to have a bunch of dead mules on your hands. Maybe some dead mulateros too.”
“The faster we move, the more trips we can make. We’re doin’ it for the Confederacy.”
Happy’s mouth turned down. “A mule, he don’t know nothin’ about war. He only knows when he’s wore out. You can’t talk much patriotism to a mule.”
“They’ll get their rest.”
“When? That’s what you said the last trip, but they didn’t get any.”
Frio snapped. “If you don’t like the way I run these wagons, why don’t you just leave?”
Happy’s eyes reflected a quick anger, which he just as quickly shoved aside. “Because I know it’s that shoulder that makes you so damn mean, and I keep rememberin’ how you come to get that bullet in you. You thought I was in trouble, and you went to get me out.”
Frio wished he hadn’t spoken so sharply. If it weren’t for this shoulder.… “I’d have done it for any man on the train.”
“The point is, you did it for me. So I reckon I’ll stay on till you kill me. But you’re apt to kill yourself first, the pace you’re keepin’.” He frowned. “You ought to’ve listened to that doctor in San Antonio. He said you needed to be on your back instead of in the saddle. That shoulder still hurts you somethin’ fierce, don’t it?”
Frio didn’t look him in the eye. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re a liar. You was more dead than alive when you caught up to us and took over the train. You ain’t much better even yet. You’re so bad poisoned that if a rattlesnake was to bite you, he’d die.”
Frio lifted his right hand and gripped his left shoulder, his face twisting. “I know I been ridin’ all of you pretty hard. Had a lot on my mind.”
“You can’t win the war all by yourself.”
Frio lowered his hand, the fist knotted. “But I want them to know I’m still alive. I want them to know that they not only didn’t stop me, they made me work harder than I ever worked before. I want them to stand there by the river and count those cotton bales and curse the day they sent that patrol out to kill me.”
“That’s how you’re takin’ your revenge, puttin’ more bales across the river?”
Frio’s clenched teeth gleamed white against the black of his whiskers as he stared south. “For now, Happy. For now.”
* * *
RIDING AT THE head of the line, Frio kept his sharp gaze sweeping along the fringe of brush, watching for anything that didn’t belong—any movement, any patch of color. He didn’t believe for a moment that the Yankees had given up on killing him. Way up front this way, he would make a prime target for any sharpshooter lurking out yonder. From the bushwhacker’s viewpoint, though, it would be a risky proposition. Even though he could bring Frio down with an easy shot, the train’s outriders and Happy Jack would go into immediate pursuit. Anyone who fired on Frio would be committing suicide.
Frio figured it would take a deep loyalty to the Union, a deep hatred for him personally, or a big offer of money to persuade a man to take that kind of assignment.
Happy Jack’s quiet protest had forced Frio to recognize something he hadn’t wanted to see. The mules were wearing out, and the teamsters weren’t much better off. He had been driving them too hard. He knew his anger and hatred had given him a desperate strength and a dogged determination he couldn’t expect the other men to share.
It was almost dark when he sighted the well he had been aiming for. He saw three men standing beside it, holding horses. His right hand tightened on the saddle-gun that lay across his lap, but he kept riding. From a distance he could tell that all three were Mexicans. Close in, he recognized one as a militiaman he had seen in Rio Grande City. The others would be too. Their old clothes had worn ragged, and the men looked hungry. The Confederacy had been woefully slow in paying its militia, especially down here on the river, so far from the seat of government.
With typical Mexican exaggerated deference toward an Anglo, the ranking one of the three stepped forward, sombrero in hand. “Señor Wheeler, we have wait for you. I am Pablo Lujan. These are Aparicio Jiminez and Lupe Martín.”
Frio brought himself stiffly down from the saddle, his face contorted until the shock of movement was past. He extended his hand. “I know you, Pablo. You’re with Colonel Benavides, aren’t you?”
“Sí, we make a little patrol, these vaqueros and me. Long time ago we hunt stray cattle. Now we hunt stray yanquis. You see any?”
Frio shook his head. “It’s been as peaceful as the inside of the Matamoros church, all the way down from San Antonio. You got trouble on this end?”
Pablo Lujan, nodding gravely, swept one hand in the direction of the brush. “There is sign. The yanquis, they have soldiers somewhere in the bosque. Some soldiers that are soldiers and some that are not soldiers.”
“Irregulars?”
“Sí, that is the word. They put a blue uniform on some of the renegados and call them soldiers. But they are still only renegados. They know how to find water, which the yanqui does not. They know where to look for the wagon trains, which the yanqui does not.”
Frio frowned, “It’s nothin’ new for the Yankees to hire outlaws and call them legal. They’ve done it right along.”
Lujan shrugged. “In their place, señor, would we not do the same? Even in Colonel Benavides’s company there are some among us who could never be priests.”
Frio’s mouth went aslant as he caught the humor in the Mexican’s eyes. Frio didn’t laugh, but he felt better for this encounter at the waterhole. He had always admired the simple, unquestioning logic of the Mexicans. They were a straightforward people in many ways, philosophically accepting life’s many contradictions. He liked their logic even when he couldn’t accept it for himself.
“What other news do you hear on the border?” Frio asked.
“We hear the Rip Ford is come pretty soon from San Antonio with many men to drive the yanquis back into the sea. Do you think this is true?”
Frio nodded. “I haven’t seen him. I’ve only heard the rumors. But I expect it’s true.”
“We hear he has ten thousand men.”
Frio shook his head. “One thousand would be more like it. Texas couldn’t even feed ten thousand.” It was always a mystery to him how rumors could magnify so much in war. They grew faster than a bunch of cottontail rabbits. Just such wild rumors as this had scared the Confederate General Bee into leaving Brownsville so precipitously.
But maybe this time rumor could play agains
t the Yankees. If they had heard the same ten-thousand-man report as these Mexican militiamen, they were probably getting nervous now in Fort Brown. And Rip Ford was a shrewd soldier. Maybe he had fostered the rumor himself.
Frio said to Lujan, “Keep tellin’ everybody it’s ten thousand. Old Rip may have the battle won before it starts.”
He looked back at his wagons, which were circling for a night’s camp near the well. “Pablo, we’d be tickled if you boys would stay and eat with us tonight.”
Lujan smiled. “What for do you think we wait here, Señor Wheeler? The militiaman must live off the land, and in this dry time the land is very poor. Sometimes, when God blesses us, we can eat with the wagons.”
It was well after dark when the mules had been watered and fed and the teamsters could settle down for supper. Frio had no appetite and took little food into his plate. He picked around on it, not eating half. Mostly he drank coffee, black and steaming.
Happy Jack’s appetite had suffered none. He finished a second helping of beef and beans and set his tin plate down on the bare ground beside him. He watched Frio sipping strong black coffee. “Frio,” he said, “you’re not goin’ to get any weller till you start eatin’ again. You don’t eat nothin’, just drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. You don’t get half a night’s sleep, either. You just pace around camp in the dark like a bobcat in a box.”
“Shoulder like this, a man can’t sleep much. As for food, who can eat much at such a time?”
Happy said, “I can.” He pointed his chin toward the three Mexican militiamen, who were scraping up all the leavings, letting nothing go to waste. “Don’t seem like dark times has hurt their appetite much, either. Them poor boys was hungry.”
Frio grimaced, watching the three. “It’s a long way to Austin, and a longer way yet to Richmond. Easy for the government to forget a handful of men down here on the border. But if it wasn’t for Benavides and his militia, the Yankees would have the Rio Grande plumb to Laredo and Eagle Pass. There wouldn’t be any border trade.”
