by Ward, Marsha
The air cooled in the room, and James knew dawn was near. The chill worked into his flesh, and he stretched his shoulders to rid them of tightness.
“Hello in the hotel.”
Men came awake around the room, and James turned his eyes toward the street, where the shadows of night were turning gray. Two men in suits stood in the road. One held up a ramrod with a white bit of cloth tied to the top.
“We want to come in and talk,” one man yelled. The other man waved the ramrod back and forth.
“Is that you, Alton?” One of the hotel defenders rose up and looked out the broken window. “Come in. We got something to show you.”
“We’re unarmed, Archie.”
“You showed your white flag,” Archie said.
Several men hauled the flour sacks away from the door and let the outsiders come in. The man called Alton took off his hat and stepped into the room. He saw the candles burning on the counter.
“That’s a lot of wax going up in—” Alton stopped and stared at Amparo as James stepped backward to protect her body from mischief.
“Why, it’s a girl, a Mexican woman. What’s going on here?”
“My wife.” James measured out his words, working to keep his voice flat and steady. “The men who escaped last night shot her.”
“Escaped? Who escaped? Nobody could get through those lines out there.”
James raised his chin. “Frank Blue and John Dunn and two others left last night. If they couldn’t get through, they’re out in the alley, but they’re not in the hotel.” He clamped his jaw to keep from saying more.
“And who are you? Are you new to these parts?” Alton didn’t like James. James didn’t like him, either.
“Just passing through.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Looks like you passed through on the wrong day of the year, stranger. Sorry you lost your...wife. We’ll see to it that she’s buried in the town plot, at town expense.”
James caught hold of the counter behind to steady himself, to keep his hands from tearing open the man’s throat. Then he spoke, but the voice was a stranger’s.
“I reckon my Amparo girl couldn’t rest good in the ground of this trash heap you call a town. Your hellish little fracas took her away from me, but you aren’t going to keep her.”
He had to stop and get a breath, to ease the choking that made his voice shred his ears. “You get me a priest to see her soul to the other side, and I’ll take care of laying her body to rest.”
“I can’t get a priest in here, man. You’re under siege by the sheriff!”
“Allowing as how I had no hand in this uprising, I expect you to take a message to your sheriff for me. I’m taking my wife out of this town today, shriven or not, so tell him to hurry that priest on in here.” The strain of keeping a hold on his temper shook his body.
Alton blinked his eyes several times. “All right, all right. I’ll talk to him.” He backed away from James and went over to Archie, who seemed to be the leader now that Blue and Dunn were gone.
The two of them talked, discussing what to do now that the prisoner had fled. Alton pulled out his pocket watch, muttering about a time limit. Archie’s face set in hard lines. James turned his back, gripped the edge of the counter, and rocked backward, his arms extended. He looked at Amparo, took several deep breaths, closed his eyes. Then Archie said, “You do that. We’ll wait here.”
James cleared his throat and called out, “Don’t forget the priest.” He didn’t look around at Alton as the man and his companion left, banging the door behind them.
~~~
James felt as though his head was stuffed with cotton. He knelt on the floor by a splintered keg of nails as a brown robed priest worked through a service that confused him. Philo stood beside James, patting the young man’s shoulder. Men whispered from their groups against the walls.
James shut his eyes. Amparo! his soul cried. Amparo, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone!
Chills racked his body as he bowed his head. Dear God, send her back. Ma. Ma, she can’t be gone. I need her. God in heaven, I need her! Sweat poured from his brow.
Philo tapped him on the shoulder, and James looked up. The priest had finished, was turned toward him, looking at him with pity, no, compassion in his eyes.
“Paz, mi hijo,” he said, his arm looping in the air. Then his hand was on James’s shoulder, patting, then coaxing him to his feet.
“Thank you.” James rose, stiffly, then put his hand into his pocket and drew out a coin. “For your trouble,” he said, giving it to the padre.
“Fo’ the poor,” the priest answered in halting English. “Go in peace, my son.”
James closed his eyes and shivered. What peace was there for him now? When would he ever have peace again?
Philo led him toward Amparo’s body. “You’d best get gone while the sheriff’s still of a mind to let you go, son. I’ll see to it your supplies get packed and loaded.”
James nodded. Amparo. He put out his hand and covered her face with a flap of her cloak. My wife. I’ll bury you on the mountain. He straightened his shoulders and shook off the lethargy that tempted him to sit amid the ruins of the store goods on the floor. Then he took Amparo’s body in his arms and turned toward the door.
~~~
James held the sorrel down to a walk as it ascended the steep mountain trail that led to Ratón Pass. In his hand he held the lead line tethered to Amparo’s horse, which carried the gray shrouded burden of his wife’s body. Next in line, the mule plodded along, and the Mexican’s dog trotted mournfully behind them all. Before mid-afternoon he reached Uncle Dick Wooton’s tollgate.
“I’m looking for four men,” he grunted as he paid the toll to the keeper. “They would have passed through here last night.”
“Uncle Dick would know. You’ll have to wait a couple of hours to talk to him. He’s gone on an errand.”
“I can’t wait,” James said, taking a fresh grasp on the sorrel’s lead rope. “I’ll find them myself.”
The man shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He eyed Amparo’s body as he lifted the pole, but didn’t say anything further as James and his animals passed through the gate and proceeded along the toll road.
Although the icy afternoon wind blowing off the mountain slashed at James’s nose and froze his cheeks, the furnace blazing in his belly kept him from feeling the cold. He could think of nothing but the cloak wrapped girl behind him.
“Amparo!”
It surged out of him from down deep, across his lips, then was gone into the valley behind him on the cutting wind. Nothing was left but the hole in his heart, and the burning rage, and the task at hand.
“Soon,” he cried. He couldn’t say more than one word at a time. He had no yen to try. “Soon,” he repeated, looked at the pistol he wore belted to his hip, then touched the second gun thrust into his waistband. It was the one he had given to Amparo for protection when he had to leave her alone and go back along the trail for his runaway horse. He stroked the hard wood of the handle, wanting to feel something she had touched, yearning to feel her hand under his. Then he thrust the yearning aside. He had much to do.
As James neared the summit of the pass, he veered off the trail toward the stand of trees where he and Amparo had camped on their first trip over the mountain. Sight of the place loosened his tongue, and he half turned in the saddle to speak.
“Hush, girl, it’s cold, rocky ground up here, but there’s wind enough to keep the stink of hate out of your nose.” Then James reseated himself and squinted against the wind that whistled through the trees just as it had on the night they camped there.
He recalled how Amparo had laid aside her home made cloak to prepare their meal, how she shivered as she cooked, and how he then had retrieved her cape to keep her warm.
“You won’t have to abide the cold now that you’ve got that warm cloak. You’ll lie snug here, girl.”
James dismounted, tied his horse, and tightened his nerve
s for the job ahead. Loosening the ropes binding Amparo’s body to the horse took more time than he’d thought with his fingers stiff from the cold, but he finally lowered the gray wrapped load from the horse’s back and into his arms.
She was all he had, and he held her close to his chest for a long moment, breathing in long, shuddering gulps. Now he was obliged to put her to rest, so he walked a few feet beyond the site of their old camp and went to one knee to lay her body on the ground. Then he returned to the animals and twisted the pick and shovel free from the pack. Two paced steps gave him the length he needed, and he marked the measurement with two large rocks.
James lifted the pick, swung it overhead, and plunged it into the earth. A sudden flaring of his rage fed his strength, and as he worked, he began to grunt in time with the blows, “They...will...pay. They...will...pay!”
He hacked the grave into the shoulder of the mountain, stopping once to remove his coat. The ground was frozen, and the pick seemed reluctant to bite, but he forced it between the earth and rocks with regular swings. The shock of the blows chased up his hands, his arms, and into his back, but the pain of his muscles never matched the hurt of his grief. It was a live thing, growing within him, and from time to time it frightened him.
Once, he rested the pick to catch his breath, with his chest heaving to regain the air stolen from him by the robber wind. His lungs ached, burned by the frozen vapor he sucked into them. He looked over to the horses, which stood nose to tail, huddled together to wait out the wind. The old dog poked his nose between the pair of animals to get warmth from them.
Then James tossed the pick aside and took up the shovel, digging and flinging the rocky earth over his shoulder to deepen the hole. The sweet odor of blood pricked his nostrils, and as he hauled himself out of the hole to find the pick again, he noticed that his palms, worn beyond blisters, were bleeding.
A movement in the forest drew his eye, and he thought, Wolves. I’ve got to go deeper to keep her safe from varmints.
As he worked with the pick, James tasted sweat flowing into his open mouth. He was breathing with great gasps, and the salty liquid dripped off his chin and froze in icy streaks on the blood soaked front of his shirt.
He looked down at the brownish stain. That’s Amparo’s blood, he thought, and wiped his bleeding palm across his chest, adding new stains. Now my blood and her blood are mixed. Then he wondered if the wetness running down his cheeks was sweat or tears, but it didn’t matter...it didn’t matter at all.
Some time later, he stood in the hole, panting from the effort of squaring the grave, and his mind wandered to the whisper that had come to his ears before he left the town.
“They went south, bound for the fort. Someone will notice four men on three horses.”
“They will pay,” he muttered, and climbed out to finish his work.
James knelt beside his wife’s body and bared Amparo’s face to run his fingertips along the angle of her jaw, storing up forever the feel of her smooth brown skin. He forced his voice to be calm and whispered, “Goodbye, little wife. Our time—” He had to swallow. “Our time was so short.”
Smoothing back a stray bit of hair from her face, he noticed that one of her ear bobs, the aretes he’d given her in Santa Fe, was missing. He felt the loss like a physical blow to the pit of his stomach, and hunched over for a moment. When he recovered, he removed the remaining adornment, closing his fingers over the gold and emerald and ruby arete, warming the cold out of it against his palm. Then he knotted the earbob into a corner of his handkerchief and thrust it into his pocket. He left the silver combs in her hair where she had placed them.
He covered her face, lifted her body and carried it to the grave. The dog stood at the edge of the hole, whimpering and sniffing. Then it howled. James suppressed a shudder.
When he had eased Amparo down into the hole, James laid her body flat along the bottom and climbed out to stand at her head. The mourning dog nudged his leg, and he reached down to comfort it with a stroke on the head.
“First your master, then your mistress, old dog,” he whispered. Then James shrugged on his coat, removed his hat, and recited words he’d learned to read in childhood.
“Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”
His voice cracked on the final words, and he squeezed his eyelids tight for a moment. Then he muttered, “She’d have done all the rest, if she’d had a chance.”
James stooped to gather a fistful of cold earth, and held it a while to warm it before he scattered it onto Amparo’s body. Then the pain built up and exploded out of him like a field piece, and he cried out, “Amparo! Oh, Amparo, te amo all my days!” He listened, but there was no whisper of her sweet voice returning the vow.
The shovel worked awkwardly in his hands as he filled in the grave, for he was shuddering with a weariness that came up from his toes. The sun was near to going down when he mounded the earth and piled stones on top as an extra protection against animals. He picked up his tools and retied them to the mule’s pack in the last light.
Bunching the lead ropes of the spare horse and the mule in his raw fist, he mounted the sorrel, whistled up the dog, and rode along the shoulder of the mountain to the road leading into New Mexico. The trail of Frank Blue.
Chapter 18
James rode most of the night. When the moon rose, he stopped to chuck Amparo’s saddle into the brush and cinch his own in its place on her horse’s back. He also took an hour’s rest when he feared he was so tired he would slip from the saddle.
As the light increased with coming dawn, he slowed down to check the tracks on the road. When he’d gotten about fifteen miles from the tollgate, he pulled up to dismount and sort the hoof marks into patterns.
The tracks that caught his eye were at least a day old, but that was the right time, and three horses made them, including one with deep tracks, possibly from the weight of two men. He studied the length of the horses’ strides and the shape of the shoes, then he mounted and settled Amparo’s black horse into a ground eating trot. Before long, he was out of the pass and onto the flat land below it.
James stopped at mid morning to grain the animals and water them in a stream. He stood back a ways and waited for the horses to fill up. Then he hobbled them and turned them loose to graze on the weeds growing beside the water while he rested for a spell, hat over eyes, back against a stunted tree trunk.
His grumbling stomach woke him about noon. He saddled the sorrel, ignored his hunger, and stepped into the stirrups. Then he cut sign, pleased—as far as he could be pleased—that the prints he was following still showed on the road. A short way along, the tracks moved off the road and swung north a bit until they arrived back at the stream. James followed, riding warily.
“Well, old dog, do you reckon they’ve seen our dust and wonder if I’m Gutiérrez?” asked James. He thought about his question for a while, then answered it out loud. “No. I reckon they’d not expect anyone to be coming after their hides in New Mexico.” He loosened his rifle in the scabbard anyway.
He followed the tracks for an hour. They still lay along the bank beside the stream. Soon, however, James noticed that the horses had taken shorter strides. He got down to look over the hoof prints.
“Maybe those men are looking for a camping place,” he muttered over his shoulder to the dog. James glanced to the west where the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains angled up to meet the sky. Another, smaller range lay closer to hand. “I reckon they’re heading for the mountains, not the fort, but they couldn’t make it in one day’s ride.” He stood up, easing the cramps in his belly by drinking from his canteen and walking around for a moment.
After remounting, James rode forward at a walk, looking for sign that the men had holed up along the river. When he found a place where their horses had gone down the shallow bank, he di
smounted and took the rifle from the boot. Then he walked the animals a few yards back the way they had come to a side canyon where he could hide them. There he tethered them—including the dog—then he walked nearly all the way toward the place the horses had disturbed, stopping five yards short of the spot. He carefully went down the bank to the creek side, keeping trees between him and the likely location of the camp.
In the brush at the edge of a cleared spot, James stopped to make sure the men had gone. Then he circled and looked for sign. Boot tracks and trampled grass around a blackened circle of stones told him where the fire had been. He counted four sets of man tracks and three places where horses had left their mark. The bit of black broadcloth snagged in a bush could have come from John Dunn’s suit.
Before James could give himself up to satisfaction, he had to know these tracks belonged to the men he was after. He went over the camp again. The tinned tomato cans scattered near the fire could have come from any store besides Philo’s.
A worry gnawed his belly like a hungry gopher, and he nudged one of the cans with his foot. It skittered off into the ashes. Then he looked down, and grunted in surprise.
Something picked up the afternoon light in the place where the can had been, something small and shiny. James bent and lifted it in his fingers, then almost dropped it again.
It was Amparo’s missing arete, the gold and emerald and ruby ear bob he had thought was lost from the pair he bought her on the morning before they left Santa Fe! A feeling cold as a cavern seeped into James’s bones as he straightened up.
“Frank Blue, sure as I stand here,” he muttered. The earring cut into his clenched fist. “Amparo didn’t let this go without a fight.” After a moment, he opened his hand and looked at the earring again, then fished his handkerchief out of his pocket, and tied the precious find beside its mate.
He stepped into the trees and followed the tracks that appeared to have been made when the men left the camp. The signs went back up the bank and continued west. Satisfied, James returned to his animals.
