Caleb scoffed, “Seth, don’t go getting sentimental, you heard Joe, if it ain’t us, wolves will take him down eventually. Soon enough, he’ll go lame and the pack’ll pull him down and chew him up. Them critters catch the scent of someth’n hurt for ten miles; in a day or two he won’t be nothing but a meal on three legs.”
Seth handed his rope to Joe and dismounted. He moved forward, a few paces back but it felt like he was standing under the stallion. Its nostrils were flaring, its eyes searching him. From the ground, he could fully behold its enormity. It was like the stories Mr. Bibbs taught in class. The ones with knights and armored mounts—he thought of that drawing of a knight and steed, both covered in black armor, the knight holding a gold shield. The black had his own armor in the muscles that pulsed in his chest and in the golden fire in his eyes.
Seth looked at Gabriel, who was also staring at the stallion, he too mesmerized by it. Seth spoke, “Uncle Gabriel, we got no right to kill him, he ain’t ours yet, I say cut him loose.”
Gabriel cleared his throat, spat, and said, “Interesting statement coming from a man holding a rope around its neck.”
“No, I mean it wouldn’t be right for us to kill him.”
“Not right. What’s right got to do with any of this. Rights? I heard talk of rights before, still don’t know what they were talking about. I don’t know about rights, but what I do know is that if he weren’t lame, you would’ve studded him for a hundred dollars a hump. Yep, and next month at the county fair you would of paraded him in front of forty fools each pay’n two bits to watch him hump. We would’ve stood as proud owners telling folks this black’s McCallum stock. Yep, fool, see what come out the Criss-Cross Ranch, nothing but the finest. And I reckon we both would’ve soaked up their oohs and aahs, told the story of how you roped him. That’d be some good story telling to see them little girls Caleb likes to see tittering. I reckon that’s true too, ain’t it Seth?”
Seth took off his hat and held it in both fists, mashing its well-worn fabric with a nervous twisting. He looked up at the black. “Yes, sir. I reckon you’re say’n I’m talking out both sides of my mouth.”
Gabriel went on, “When a man does a thing, consequences come with it, there’s no dodging it. What’s done is done—that horse’s yours. So, you do with yours what you think is right.”
Seth fixed his hat and put it back on his head. He breathed deeply without taking his eyes off the black. He looked at his uncle and asked, “Sir, can I borrow the fifty.”
Gabriel handed down the long-barreled rifle and tossed a three-inch round. The round’s tip had been hollowed out at the point. The hollowing gave it a menacing flat dull look. The round had been designed to blunt-stop a brown bear; that is, if you were lucky enough to hit it square.
Seth raised the butt of the rifle in his shoulder and strained to steady the weight of the barrel. He sighted in between the animal’s eyes; at the close range, he ignored the metal sights and estimated the round’s trajectory from his appreciation of the true barrel. He squared the muzzle at the space between the eyes; it was tufted with black mane. He squeezed gently on the trigger; the report shook the entire ridgeline and a flock of sparrows nesting in the trees cascaded into the sky, filling the air with squawks.
The round hit the animal with a sickening thud; it shuddered, and was thrust backward a half-step. It regained itself and rose again to its full height a moment before it collapsed straight down, folding into itself.
The tremendous thud ran through the ground, the waves rippling under Seth’s boots, sending rhythms up through his groin and into his ribs. He cradled the rifle lengthwise across his chest, the long barrel resting in the crook of his elbow. The stallion lay like a sphinx, the blood where the round penetrated barely discernible amidst the black tuft of mane. Seth freed the ropes from its neck, straining to lift its massive head.
They headed down from the high ground, dreading the long three-day ride back to the McCallum ranch.
As the pack of two legs departed, she watched without motion in the shade of a low bush. Her silhouette in the shadows framed a pair of pyramid ears marking her as the catamount of the highlands. She gazed with detached menace as the kill lay in the grass without being fed upon. She pounced and sank her teeth deep into the back straps of the horse, her mouth filling with hot blood as she wrenched free a great husk of flesh with a single twist of her neck. She fed for an hour before she heard the pat-pat of their paws. The dozen surfaced from the tall grass with their ears pricked, tongues lolling and tails high. She knew this pack. The gray was wise and he sent two to the west to seek the cradle of her cubs—she snarled, the loose blood and flesh splaying from her mouth, and bounded away.
The two returned and the lupine pack howled and twisted about the carcass, snapping for the next three hours at each other to ascertain their turn in the feed. Bellies extended, they began again their wandering. Two solitary coyotes waited for the perfect dogs to disappear into the tall grass and began ripping at the flesh that held tight to the bones as the sun dipped behind the heights to the west. The dusk raised three red foxes from a nearby den and their dark eyes danced with the snapping coyotes for the flesh, the scavenger ritual dragging in an ever-widening arc the stallion’s legacy. In the heat of the next day turkey buzzards in the air tasted the stench on the wind and fell from the skies to tear at the viscera, debating the issue of ownership with a murder of crows. In the cool of night, carrion beetles polished the bones in the darkness and left nothing for the fly to propagate.
Early the next morning, the herd returned, led by a reddish roan that kicked at the grass where his ancestor had fallen, the only trace of the fallen king the impression in the grass. The sun rose up strong over the east hills on the third day and the bent grass arched and vaulted toward the radiance. By midday the plateau was a wave of tall brown and sea-green grass rolling in the wind.
CHAPTER THREE:
THE WHITE LION
* * *
The day Seth killed the black, Gabriel’s brothers, Luke and Eli, and Luke’s son, Kyle, were finishing the day’s work forty miles to the south of the high plateau. The Criss-Cross ranch lay in the middle of a three-sided bowl, with high ground to its north, east, and west. Its southern boundary spread out flat, allowing the Criss and Cross creeks to meander toward, but never reaching, the south mountains. The creeks fed the rich grazing lands that stretched to the south and anointed North County as prime horse country.
On the reverse slope of the north hill overlooking the McCallum’s ranch, a renegade warlord sat high in the saddle. He was adorned in garments of white, except for his head, on which sat a black bowler hat. His horse was a grayish-white mare; blood was running harmlessly down its hindquarters.
He eyed the ranch’s defenses and counted the number of ranchers and the horses in the pen. He studied the ranch house; its front door faced east and he could see three men, two bent at the shoulders, betraying their age. They were closing the gate to the pen that held two-dozen horses. He could see the stallions stirring in a separate pen, and knew the studs had caught the scent of his mare on the breeze as the aroma of her blood ambled down the valley and mixed with the honeysuckle and rosewood that blanketed the hills. The scent and stirring of the stallions was no matter, he thought, this would all be over soon enough. He wanted the horses, needed them, to push the hundred and fifty head of stolen cattle south past the mountains.
Two women, girls, conversed with a young man on the porch. They were sweeping the porch with brooms and occasionally bursting out in laughter. At times, they pretended the brooms were dance partners and they flowed and swayed in long simple frock dresses.
The twenty of his band he had sent moved upon the ranch from the east. They had been crawling toward the ranch for two hours. They approached like snakes through the fields of high grass that was occasionally dotted with dogwoods and a single copse of white pine. The twenty slithered at the speed of the wind, the top of the grass moving as if only to the
whim of the breeze and therefore never betrayed their approach. To the onlooker, there was nothing to fear but a soft wind.
The renegade in white surveyed the grass that hid his warriors and he knew it had once been cut down to shear a long flat field before the hacienda, but like everything he had noticed on this raid, North County had some time ago lost its fear of the wastelands and the grass had been allowed to grow wild and long.
The twenty were a motley bunch, some dressed in women’s silk underwear, others wearing wigs; some still covered in clown’s clothes. Ten years earlier they had fallen upon a wagon train headed west. It had been a traveling circus, a carnival of sorts. The warlord was still wearing the pelt of a white lion he had stripped from a display case after he had disemboweled its former owner. He watched as the twenty descended like a mist; they were clear of the tall grass and making the final approach to the ranch house over the last hundred yards of clear land. Each savage moved with the contours of earth, zigzagging back and forth but never crossing each other’s paths. To him, it seemed an elaborate, ritual dance. The twenty stepped with no sounds and their barefooted feet were raised high with each step so as not to stir dust.
The little girl on the porch, the one with tails, was the first to see the face of a warrior streaked with red paint; his hair tasseled with small bones. She let out a piercing scream and the whites reacted better than he would have expected; they did not even pause. The girl’s warning sent the whites bolting for the ranch house. He could see an old crow of a woman the moment before one of the old men slammed shut the window. She was already loading carbines and handing them to the men, grabbing more from above a stone fireplace and loading them without pause. She was methodical, without reckless haste. The two young girls dashed about the house slamming closed every window. He could hear the crossbars being lifted and slammed home, and realized his plan had gone from a quick raid to a siege.
He knew he didn’t have the time; he had been north too long already and needed to return to the lake to regain his strength. He had left a dozen dead in his pale wake of death through the cattle lands and the news would spread and the whites would mass to destroy him. Stroking the fur of the lion pelt, he considered committing the thirty in reserve. They lay flat against the reverse slope of the rise. Instead, he opted only to send down the two with the cannon.
The twenty opened the pen and drove the horses south. That should have ended it, and they should have immediately started south; that had been his command but he knew the twenty had seen the girls, seen their blond curls, and they were compelled to move on the house.
Rifle fire erupted from the crosses cut into the windows with rhythmic percussions; the three ranchers were staggering their fire, always keeping two loaded as one discharged.
He knew the horses should have been enough; he couldn’t afford to lose twenty, but they had seen the girls. Nothing but death would stop them.
The ones in the rut ran head-on, three dropping from the chest-shattering blasts of the ranchers’ .50 caliber buffalo rifles. They were thrown backward and down into the crushed stone of the path that led up to the front door. They didn’t even reach the shadow of the porch. The rest of the savages lay flat in whatever small pieces of cover they could find, clawing at the earth for cover. The ranchers aimed carefully and sent rock and dirt into the heads and faces of warriors who couldn’t claw low enough. One rose screaming, clutching at his face shredded by lead and rock, and as he stood, a second round hit him in the stomach. As he dropped to his knees a third shot sent the back of his skull flaying out in a thousand fragments.
He heard a rancher yell out, “Leave ’em screaming. We’ll finish ’em right when they give it up.”
The band clung to the ground begging for the dusk to end, darkness to fall, and for the cannon they knew the White Lion would send.
As darkness shrouded the hills, the three ranchers in the house gathered and parlayed in crouches behind the heavily reinforced front door. They spoke in hushed tones and whispers. The parlay was meant to last only a minute, to fix responsibilities for sectors of fire and decide turns for sleeping so each man could keep fresh for the rush they knew was coming. The two older men had helped Gabriel build the ranch, knew its strengths, and they were confident it could hold as it had in the early years.
The women were by the stone fireplace, cleaning and polishing the individual shell casings of dirt and dust, freeing the rounds from anything that might cause it to foul in the breech of the rifle. The cleaned shell casings glimmered in clay bowls on the table. The old woman was setting out bandages, oil for the lamps, and was stoking hot coals in the fireplace, keeping the coals red hot but not burning.
Except for the hushed tones of the men and the soft polishing of the shells, the house was silent.
The cannon shot hit the front door and the force of the explosion shattered it, sending shards of wood into each of the men. Kyle was shredded instantly and Eli decapitated. The oldest, Luke, who was crouching in the middle, dropped to both knees. He was blinded by the flash of light and a large shard of wood stuck out from his chest. It was pumping up and down in sync with the beating of his heart. He lightly caressed it in the fingers of both hands, mesmerized by the rhythmic sensation.
The lead savage came through the hole of the blasted door; he rose up from the smoke and dust wearing a jester’s hat and wielded a machete that had been shaped from a plow blade. He slipped with precision to the left side of the kneeling old man and slashed, splitting Luke’s Adam’s apple in half as the blade flowed smoothly through the old man’s neck. He spun to his right and was blinded by the muzzle flash, the old woman fired point-blank into the center of his chest.
She turned and dragged the girls with her to the far corner of the fireplace. She grabbed a second rifle from the table, turned, and fired, hitting a second savage in the left eye, the force of the round sending his eye socket and left ear peeling around the back of his head. She saw the shadows of five more coming through the smoldering ruins of what had been her front door. They were all screaming. She fired an old musket and hit the lead savage in the groin with a mix of rock and salt. He stumbled forward clutching at his crotch, smothered in blood, and the tattered remains of the blue cavalry pants he wore. She turned and grabbed the handle of a long knife; its blade lay in the red coals of the fire. It had been meant to slap onto the flesh of the men to stem the flow of blood in the event they had been wounded so they could keep fighting.
With the knife in one hand, she turned to the girls and in a steady voice said, “No matter what happens stay alive, don’t fight, give in. Gabriel will come for you. Take care of one another.” She caressed their faces with her free hand, and said softly, “The preacher will save you.”
She wielded around blade in her hand, but the savages now feared her. The lead warrior flung a small ax, the blade hit her in the chest and she gasped as she was thrown back against the fireplace. The hem of her dress caught fire and the billows of her linen dress flared out to the sides in wings of flames. A renegade naked from the waist up and wearing women’s dress bottoms seized her by the throat and threw her down on the table.
She was still clutching the knife and with her last effort, she jabbed the red-hot blade into the sides of his ribs and heard its sizzle as it scorched flesh.
The savage’s scream rang through the house. He fell off her, spinning like a dog chasing its tail as he tried to pull the blade free from between his ribs. A second warrior leapt onto her stomach with his knees and sent the blade of his knife through her chest, pinning her heart to the rough-hewn boards of the table.
The girls shuddered against each other, the young one sobbing in the corner. The savages were turning over tables, grabbing silverware and any shiny item. A huge figure approached the girls. The fires from the spilled oil lamps spread out in thin rivulets along the floor behind the monstrous figure. A savage moved in front of him to reach the girls and the huge figure grabbed him with one hand by his hair and tossed
him over a table like he was a man of straw. He moved toward them. The shape of the figure’s black bowler hat was stark in relief of the white mane. The long hairs of the mane distilled the fire that burned behind him into vibrating sparkles of light. The older girl could not see his face because it was encased in shadow, but she gazed at the shape: it was perfectly round. The rim of his bowler accentuated the orb making it appear as if he were Saturn rotating in total eclipse.
The White Lion stared down and decided the older one belonged to him. The two who fired the cannon had rights to the other—they had saved him much time. The rest could wait; there would be plenty of time for all during the long ride to the lake. He needed to move while still night. He was already long overdue.
Thunder shook the sky and lightning lit the landscape in brief flashes of brilliance, revealing the small army riding its wild ponies and dragging its ramshackle wagons and stolen cattle over the grazing lands. They headed for the Crossing, the single pass through the walls of the southern mountain. The bolts shattered the horizon; with each blast, the mountain appeared as a black monolith and echoed the crash of thunder. The band chased it like a lost ship after a beacon at sea.
The two girls were tied to the cannon’s caisson, which rumbled in the back of an old circus wagon that had been used to carry lion cages. As the wagon rolled and jostled toward the south, the flashes of light revealed two fevered silhouettes upon the young one.
CHAPTER FOUR:
THE LIGHTNING STRIKE
* * *
As the White Lion made his way south, lightning rolled along the night sky hitting Walker’s new stable and sending balls of flame rolling down the roof. The horses in their stalls neighed in harsh and guttural tones. Along with an old nag, goats, and a dog, the best breeders were under that roof—four stallions, each of which had already secured advance stud money for the breeding season. They were all high-strung horses and Walker knew the heat was pouring down onto their backs and the urge to flee the flames was scrambling their brains.
Angels of North County Page 2
