Scent of Tears

by M. Juan Knecht

  Chapter Twelve

  The smell of the gunpowder and the spilled intestines of Don Tomasino diminished in my mind over the next two days. Driving cattle is a monotonous routine, broken up by quick moments of fear. The cattle were spooked by something the second night but luckily, no one was injured in the stampede. When morning came, we were short forty head. We were able to recover those who escaped that day, putting us one day behind schedule. The crew fell into the routine of travel. We were fed, saddled and out on the trail by daylight. Because I feared the snow, we pushed the cattle as hard as they would let us throughout the day. I would ride ahead and find a place to camp an hour before sundown. When you added a stop now and then to water along a creek or river, it was a long day in the saddle.

  As we pushed further north, the nights became colder and frost coated the ground. We no longer had the wagon. Three of the saddle horses were used as pack horses to carry the supplies that had been carried in the wagon. It made setting up camp more difficult and breaking camp in the morning more time consuming, as well. I assigned a vaqueros who showed ability to pack the horses and balance the load and put everything on the horses. While he was occupied with that, the rest of us started the cattle. He was very good at his job, which was appreciated by all. The packs were so heavy, we rotated the horses, packing them one day and riding them the next.

  The stoutest and gentlest horse was picked to carry Lucinda’s expensive heavy canvas bedroll and tent. I hoped the wagon would get back sooner rather than later. I was going to suggest that she leave the tent behind, but she would have nowhere to dress. Any delay caused me to be apprehensive about the cold weather we were sure to hit before we got the cattle to Oregon.

  As we ambled along the day after the stampede, the young Castro boy rode up alongside me.

  “May I ask a question, Señor Horn?”

  I nodded. The boy pursed his lips together and I could tell he was trying to phrase his question carefully.

  “Do you think you can show me the secrets of the bridle horse?”

  “What makes you think I know?” I asked him, surprised.

  “When you sort off the local cattle that get mixed in with our herd, your roan mare seems to know what the cattle are going to do before they do. I see the way she slides without you having to... how do you say, tighten the reins. Can you teach me to ride a horse like that?”

  “What about your uncles? They are fine horsemen.”

  “When I ask, they tell me to watch and learn, and not to bother them. I can see you are a kind man and would help a novice,” he said.

  “If you remind me tonight at the campfire, I will tell you a few of the things that a much better horseman have told me,” I replied, thinking of the kindness and patience Genero had shown me when I was learning.

  After our conversation, I would visit with the boy after dinner. During the days that followed, I would watch him quietly trying different things that I had suggested on his horse. It made me feel good to help him. True horsemen are born and always recognize one another. In that place and time, it wasn’t often an accomplished horseman would share his secrets. The young men were expected to figure it out for themselves. Genero had helped me, gently coaching me every day. I felt a responsibility to pass on what I had learned. I had never been looked up to as a reins-man before. I came to relish my conversations with the boy in the evenings. When his uncles harshly insisted he not bother me, I gave him the second-best horse in my string, so they would know I considered their nephew an apprentice.

  Don Topo had sent good vaqueros with me. My little band of geldings were the best horses I could select. Well-mounted stockmen, who knew what they were doing, could move cattle without difficulty. The heifers grew tired as we pushed them twelve or more miles a day. They began to stay still at night where they were bedded down and stayed there until morning.

  On the evening of the fourth day, Lucinda announced after dinner that she was tired of smelling her own sweat and was going to bathe in the creek.

  “Is that a good idea? We don’t know who is lingering around this country. You don’t know what kind of stream you are dealing with and it is getting dark.”

  “Charlie, you sound worse than the nuns who teach at the mission. Not everything in life merits your concern. If you are worried, bring your rifle and watch me,’ she replied. “You can even do the dishes while I bathe. Let’s go before it gets too cold.”

  I had yet to catch my breath at the prospect of watching her bathe when Lucinda whirled around and marched off toward creek. The cattle had been watering in the creek before we bedded them down so we had to hike some distance upstream to get clear of the cow manure. It was about six in the evening and the shadows lengthened. The creek looked swift and cold, though I couldn’t tell how deep it was. I lugged the dish-pot to the bank and started scouring the dishes and cooking implements with sand before washing them off. Lucinda walked ten yards upstream and took off her boots, blouse and skirt. She had brought fresh clothes with her and started to wash the skirt and blouse she was wearing, as well as her socks.

  “Charlie, how are you supposed to watch over me if you won’t look in my direction?” she asked. It sounded like she was teasing me but with Lucinda, I never knew.

  “I didn’t know if I was supposed to look at you or not,” was all I could think of to say.

  “We’re married. What do you have to be embarrassed about?”

  “Since you put it that way,” I said and turned to look at her.

  She was sitting on a rock, her body submerged to the waist in the water, rubbing the dirty linen against a rock. A bar of soap was in one hand. In a minute, she put the soap on a rock, and hung the clothes she had been washing on a tree branch. She then began washing her hair. The water from her hair soon soaked the flimsy garment she wore under her blouse. I was suddenly looking at her breasts in all their glory. They were most certainly glorious, standing out from her narrow ribcage and accentuated with large dark tips. I tried not to gawk but it was hopeless. Lucinda made my awkwardness worse by looking directly at me and smiling, then holding the tips of her thumbs to her cheeks and sticking out her tongue. I was so mesmerized that I almost didn’t see the shadow moving under a tree next to the creek. I threw down the dishes and stumbled back to where my rifle lay, against a rock. I reached for the weapon and chambered a round. By the time I had gotten the butt of the gun under my cheek, I had lost track of whatever had cast the shadow.

  Lucinda stood up when she saw me shoulder the rifle and took a step back into the stream. As I looked around for the thing that had intruded on us, the look of fear on my face caused Lucinda to take another step back. In an instant, she was swept off her feet by the rapidly flowing water. She gave a muffled cry and then she was floating down the creek. I was still trying to figure out what was lurking on the bank. The second time Lucinda called my name, I saw she was in the middle of the creek, frantically attempting to stand. I saw her, and then she disappeared underwater.

  I ran to the edge of the creek near where I had seen her go under, then waded out into the freezing stream. I threw the rifle back on the bank. In the fading light, I caught a glimpse of Lucinda’s hair under the rippling current. I fought my way through the water to her and reached down in the cold, rushing stream and grasped her by the arm. I tried to pull from under the water, but she was stuck.

  I had no idea what I was dealing with. I knew there was maybe thirty seconds to go before she drowned, if she hadn’t already done so. I sunk down under the surface. Her struggles had kicked up enough sand that I couldn’t see much in the evening light. The only thing that made sense was that she was caught in an undertow, where the force of the current had hollowed out a passage beneath a tree trunk or a rock and the current was trapping her underwater. A half sunken tree limb stuck out from the water. It had to be what was holding her under. I had little time left to free her and the stream seemed too rapid to pull her loose from the current. In desperation, I attempted to ge
t under the partially submerged wood.

  I fought my way to the dead limb and without much hope, hunkered down. In the cold, roiling water I finally got under it and heaved skyward. On the first desperate push, my feet slipped on the rocks and I floundered. I got to my feet, set my boots in the sand and pushed up against the log with all my might. There was movement, a muted crack, and the tree trunk shifted enough for Lucinda to be swept under whatever was pinning her down. I saw her bob down the creek. I dove over the dead wood and swam after her. She was floating face down and I feared she had already drowned. In despair, I battled my way to her body. Gripping her undergarment, I tried to stop her. The cloth ripped away. I caught a foot and finally got enough control of her body to lift her face out of the water. All this time, I was silently telling her not to die, that I would be in so much trouble with her father if I let her die. I was completely out of air. It took a great deal of effort to drag her the final few feet through the stream to the bank. Once on the bank, I turned her on her side and hit her solidly in the center of her back. She coughed the creek water violently out of her lungs. I lay back on the bank to get my breath. We lay like that for several minutes. Then Lucinda sat up.

  “Where are my clothes?” she said.

  “They came off in the creek.”

  “Well, go get me something to put on,” she said, holding her splayed hands across her breasts.

  She looked vulnerable in the evening light with her black hair wet and tangled against her head and neck. Her face and hands were tanned a dark mahogany. The remainder of her body was almost porcelain white. I couldn’t imagine a female form any more perfect than hers.

  “Charlie, if you don’t quit staring and find me something to put on, the Castro brothers will be here looking for us. Do you want them to see me naked? Besides, I’m colder than the devil’s heart. Get me a blanket before I freeze to death.”

  I rolled over and got to my feet. On my way back to get her clothes, I saw that my rifle no longer lay on the bank. Reaching instinctively for my knife, I saw it to, had vanished in the struggle to rescue Lucinda from the creek. I wanted to curse, but thought it better to keep quiet. I gathered up the clothes she had been washing and backed away to where she was, handing them to her.

  “Put your clothes on and let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Oh, now you are going to start bossing me around,” she said. I saw the fire come back into her eyes. The near drowning had not dampened her temper.

  “Whatever was moving around in the trees when you were washing your clothes picked up my rifle. Let’s get the dishes and your boots and get the hell out of here,” I said in a whisper.

  Lucinda’s eyes widened, and she started moving. She was up and dressed and looking for her boots before I had the dish-tub loaded. In our flight back to camp it was as if we were once again little kids in Monterey, running from an unknown horror lurking in the darkness.

  “I lost the knife my father gave me because you had to have a bath. That really angers me.”

  “I’ll buy you another knife.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  Lucinda laughed and said, “Now we sound like we are married, Charlie.”

  “At least I had the forethought to set up your tent before you went swimming,” I said, and escorted her to it. I held the flap open as she scurried inside. I walked over to the boy and the two vaqueros, sitting by the fire. I told them I had seen something in the fading light. They responded by getting their rifles from the scabbards. There was nothing else to arm myself with so I stuck a butcher knife from the camp kitchen in my belt and took the short barreled shotgun with me to my bedroll. I would be roused at three in the morning to guard the herd, so I wanted to get some sleep.

  I slept a few feet from Lucinda’s tent as a protective measure. I wanted to be outside so that I could hear if there was a problem with the cattle. After an hour, she put her head out of the tent and woke me up.

  “Charlie, I need to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me tomorrow,” I replied.

  “I need to talk to you tonight. Come inside.”

  I started to tell her to talk to me from where she was, but a vision of her naked body flashed in front of my eyes and I found myself inside the tent.

  “What was it on the bank?” she asked when I was seated across from her. Lucinda had pinned up her hair and put on a silky robe.

  “No telling. I’ll look for tracks in the morning.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot?”, she asked.

  “I didn’t know what I would be shooting at. If it was a bear, I didn’t want to wound it in the poor light. If it was an Indian, I didn’t want to shoot him for no reason.”

  “If it was an Indian, he shouldn’t have been spying on me,” she replied.

  “If it was an Indian, maybe he lives here,” I said. I could see the wheels spinning in her head and her expression reminded me of Don Topo. She looked up and gave me a seductive smile which I found unnerving.

  She next spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “It was altogether a close call. I haven’t thanked you for pulling me out of the water,” she said. Although I had no experience with women, I thought I knew what form her gratitude would take.

  “I’ll need to go down and look at the tracks in the morning. I would like to get back the rifle Tiburcio gave me.”

  At that, her mouth dropped open as I expected it would. Her expression said all that needed to be said about his place in her thoughts.

  “Tiburcio,” she said in a hushed tone. It sounded like she was referring to a Catholic saint.

  “I never told you about his present to me?”

  “You damn well know you didn’t, Charlie Horn.”

  “It must have slipped my mind. Tiburcio stopped by to congratulate me on getting married and gave me rifle as a wedding present. It’s true what they say about him.”

  “What do they say?” Lucinda blurted out, eyes wide.

  “That he is a fine shot. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to get some sleep before it’s my turn to stand watch.”

  Lucinda ran her long fingers around the back of her neck. She tugged slightly on the collar of her robe.

  “You saved my life tonight,” she said.

  “You said that already.”

  I looked at her in the flickering candlelight and thought I had never seen anything so lovely in my life.

  “Perhaps I should thank you properly, Charlie,” she said. Lucinda pulled her robe open slightly. Now there was no mistaking her intent. The conflict I felt about her was like a living entity, kicking me in the heart.

  “I would love to experience your gratitude, but you still belong to Tiburcio. You aren’t something I want to share,” I said, and slipped out of the tent.

  “Don’t go, Charlie. How is your back? Even underwater, that limb made such a loud crack. It must have hurt you to lift it,” she said, speaking through the closed tent flap.

  “Other things hurt worse. See you in the morning.” I said. I went back to my blankets, though not back to sleep.

  Scent of Tears