by Jory Sherman
Anson glanced briefly at the bed. “I—I can’t, Pa.”
“I know, son.”
“I can’t hardly believe she’s gone.”
“Me neither. Let’s wait outside. I can barely breathe in here.”
Anson was only too eager to leave the room. He closed the door after his father emerged. They stood there, waiting for the doctor who had examined Caroline before her death.
After a brief conversation about funeral arrangements, Anson changed the subject. He didn’t want to think about his mother anymore. He mentioned his concerns about Matteo Aguilar.
“He wants our ranch, our land,” Martin said.
“My land,” Anson insisted. “Ma turned the ranch over to me, and you have no say in it. I’m going to respect her wishes.”
“Boy, I sure raised a son of a bitch,” Martin said.
“You never raised me, Pa. You left us and that’s why I own the Box B.”
“I could fight that ownership. Now that your ma’s gone…”
Anson looked his father straight in the eye. His jaw hardened for a moment. “Pa, I run this ranch. I own it, not you. Now, if you want a fight, you’ll get it. And you’ll lose.”
Martin tried to suppress his anger. He balled up his fists, but he did not throw a punch at his son.
“Go ahead,” Anson said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Martin shook his head. “No,” he said, “I know you’re not.”
Before tempers flared, they heard the horses come up. A few moments later, Lucinda let the men into the house. Anson and Martin waited. Then they heard the footsteps on the stairs. Dr. Patrick Purvis walked toward them.
“Doc,” Martin said.
“Hello again, Mr. Baron.”
“Call me Martin.”
“All right. I’m sorry your wife died so suddenly.”
“Well, you said she didn’t have long.”
“I’ll take a look if you don’t mind.”
“Go right on in, Doc,” Martin said.
Neither Martin nor Anson spoke as they listened to the mysterious sounds from inside the room. When the door opened again and Purvis came out, they both seemed relieved. The doctor was carrying his satchel and a sheet of paper. He handed the paper to Martin.
“I’ve filled out a death certificate for your wife, Mr. Baron.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Now, I need to ask both of you a few questions.”
“How come?” Martin asked.
“I’m concerned about your health, Mr. Baron.”
“Martin.”
“Perhaps we should talk privately,” Purvis suggested.
“Privately?” Martin looked at Anson, a puzzled look on his face.
“It’s a personal matter, sir,” Purvis said. “Concerning you and your wife.”
“I think my son should hear what you have to say,” Martin said.
“It’s a delicate matter, Martin.”
“Anson’s a grown man.”
“Very well,” Purvis said. “I have to ask you this question because it concerns your own health, your future.”
“Go ahead,” Martin said.
“Were you and Mrs. Baron intimate the past few years—since she, ah, contracted her illness?”
“No, we were not close. Why?”
Purvis looked relieved. “The nature of her illness, the disease…”
“Come on, Doc, spit it out,” Martin said. “I know she had the pox.”
“Do you know where she got it?” Purvis asked.
“She was violated, Doc. By an Indian. Against her will.”
“And, the, ah, man she, ah, who, ah, did this—is he alive?”
“He’s alive, as far as I know. Why?”
“Because, if he infected her, then he will also die. You said your wife had the pox, and I suppose that’s a good-enough name for a disease we know little about.”
“Just what was it that killed my wife?” Martin asked.
“Well, sir, the disease is venereal. That is, it can only be contracted through, ah, intimacy, we believe. I’ve seen cases like this in Galveston, and the literature is teeming with examples from Europe, centuries ago, until the present time.”
“I’m trying to follow you, Doc.”
Anson shifted the weight on his foot, feeling more uncomfortable by the moment.
“If you do not have the disease and the person who raped your wife does not have the disease, then she must have contracted it from someone else; someone with whom your wife was intimate.”
Anson and Martin exchanged looks.
“You mean,” Martin said, “my wife was sleeping with someone who had this disease, right?”
“Yes, Martin, that’s exactly right. Now, do you know who this person is? For, as a physician, I am obliged to find this person and treat him. Even if I can’t save this person’s life, he deserves to know that he, too, is going to die from this particular type of pox.”
Martin’s eyes blazed with a lambent fury.
Anson dropped his head, closed his eyes, and uttered a soft curse. Then he began to shake his head slowly in disbelief.
3
ROY KILLIAN TRIED to make sense out of the confusion that had intruded, by degrees, into his already complicated life. First, his mother had run away with the surveyor David Wilhoit, married him, and moved onto Matteo Aguilar’s Rocking A Ranch. Then his mother had leased his thousand-acre Lazy K Ranch to a strange woman, Wanda Fancher, who, along with her mother Hattie, had moved in with Roy. Now David and Ursula, Roy’s mother, had fled the Rocking A and were living in Roy’s expanding household. If all that were not enough, Wanda had told Ursula that she and Roy were engaged to be married.
David had brought the news that Matteo Aguilar was planning to attack the Box B and take back his family lands—lands that Martin Baron had paid cash for and which he legally owned. Martin had given Roy a thousand acres of that land to start up his Lazy K and, if Aguilar made good on his threat, that transaction was in jeopardy. And Roy had plans to buy even more land, when he could, and be almost as big as the Box B or the Rocking A. He knew he had a long way to go before he could attain that goal. Texas was big, he knew, and everything in it had to be big, including his puny little Lazy K.
“Things will work out,” Wanda said. “You shouldn’t worry.”
He and Wanda had walked out to the wooded part of the property, well away from the house, so they could talk without interruption. He had been sleeping on the floor of the main house. His mother and David had taken up temporary quarters in the new addition he, Hattie, and Wanda had built onto the main house.
“This is something your money can’t buy us out of, Wanda.”
“Do you love me, Roy?”
He looked at her, startled by her blunt question. There she stood, a petite, slender, beautiful woman, desirable as any he had ever met: self-assured, dainty, yet tough as a boot. Any man might want such a woman, he had to admit. She had inherited a great deal of money from her father. She was headstrong and knew what she wanted, and knew it when she had found it.
“I—I don’t know, Wanda. I sure like you an awful lot.”
“I need more than that, if I’m going to help you.”
“You’ve already helped me a heap, Wanda.”
“I knew you were the man I was looking for when I first saw you in the Longhorn Saloon. When you went after David that night to beat him up, I saw your passion, I saw the love you had for your mother.”
“Well, I still hate David for what he done.”
“What he did.”
“You’ve got to stop that, Wanda.”
“What?”
“Correcting my English.”
“I want people to respect you.”
“My English ain’t goin’ to help that none.”
“I know you can speak well and correctly when you want to, Roy.”
“Well, I want to talk the way everybody else does.”
“But you must set yourself apart,
Roy. You must be the leader I know you are.”
“I can’t hardly think with that house so crowded. I’m not gettin’ any work done. And I’m going to have to join up with Anson and Martin and fight Matteo to boot.”
“I know,” she said. “But first you must settle your differences with your mother’s husband. David seems like a very nice man and I’m sure he would like nothing better than for you to be his friend.”
Roy kicked at a clod of dirt left by the plow at the edge of the woods. “David worked for Aguilar when he met my mother. He was surveying land here that Martin Baron gave to me. I knew he was a skunk when I first saw him. Then he just grabbed up my ma and took her off to live with the enemy.”
“He knows he was wrong, Roy. Give him a chance.”
“He didn’t give me none.”
“Any.”
“I just don’t like the man.”
Wanda stepped up close to Roy and placed her hands on his cheeks. Her touch was gentle and Roy softened. “Do you want to know what I think?” she asked, her voice silken, almost a purr.
“What?”
“I think you were, are, very protective of your mother. From what she told me, your father left her alone to raise you and she was not exactly faithful to him.”
Roy’s face flushed with embarrassment. “She tell you that?”
“Yes. Your mother is a very honest woman. We stayed up last night, too, you know.”
“I can’t believe she’d tell you her whole life.”
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with men,” Wanda said. “Maybe that’s why they don’t get along. They keep too much inside them. A woman can talk to another woman about almost anything and know that her words will be understood.”
“I sure ain’t goin’ to tell no stranger my whole damned life.”
“Oh, Roy, Roy, you sweet man, you. Of course you wouldn’t. That’s one of the differences between men and women. But, surely you can hear David’s side of things, try and understand him.”
“Oh, I understand him, all right. He sniffed around my mother here like a dog in heat and then swup her up and carried her off without askin’ me. Like a sneak.”
“Roy, what happened was that David fell in love with your mother. She was the one who didn’t want to say anything. She didn’t want to hurt you.”
“She would have said something.”
Wanda let her hands fall away from Roy’s face. She laughed and shook her head. “No, Roy. David wanted to tell you. Your mother knew you would be mad, that you would feel abandoned, and she didn’t want to spoil what she and David had.”
“What was that?”
“The love between them. She knew what a hard time you had growing up without your father. She knew, as a woman knows, what her leaving might do to you. She planned to come back and explain everything to you when everything settled down.”
“She never did.”
“She couldn’t. Matteo Aguilar virtually kept them prisoners at his ranch. He’s a tyrant, from what I hear, and made demands on David that he had to meet. David wanted a nice home for your mother, and Matteo was paying him a handsome salary.”
“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Wanda didn’t correct Roy’s speech. She smiled and put her arms around his waist, drew herself up to him so that they were touching. Roy began to squirm slightly.
“Roy, I love you. I loved you from the moment I first saw you, and I want to make you happy. But neither of us can hope for any happiness until you make your peace with your mother’s husband. And I hope, in time, that you will come to love me, as I love you.”
“So many things happening,” he said. “So fast.”
“I know. Even though I’m eager to marry you, I’m in no hurry. If you’re not sure…”
“Wanda, I don’t know what I’m sure of or not sure of. I feel like every time I start somewhere, I wind up running into myself.”
Wanda laughed. A small hawk floated over the trees and out over the plain, its head moving from side to side as it scanned the ground. When it flapped its wings, both Wanda and Roy looked up.
“Hunting mice,” Roy said. He kicked at another clod. Wanda let out a breath.
“Are you going over to the Box B this morning?” she asked.
“I should. Martin’s wife is pretty sick. I want to find out what Anson and Martin are going to do about Aguilar.”
“Do you think Aguilar will really attack the Box B?”
“He’s pure mean, Wanda. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him.”
“Anything.”
“Yeah.”
“You might get hurt,” she said. “Do you have to join the Barons?”
“I’m beholden to them.”
“But Anson didn’t ask you to fight with him, did he?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“I admire your loyalty, Roy, but discretion is the better part of valor.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you should think hard before you get involved in someone else’s troubles.”
“’Way I figure it, we’re all trying to make a go at raising cattle and what happens to one of us, happens to all of us. I couldn’t hardly stay out of any fight Martin and Anson got into.”
“What if there’s a war, as they say there’s going to be—between the North and the South? Would you fight with the Barons no matter which side they were on?”
“I reckon I would.”
“That means you have no convictions of your own. You’d follow them blindly into any situation, no matter how foolish.”
“You make it sound like I’m stupid,” he said, bristling.
“Not stupid, Roy, just misguided. Friends are good to have, of course, but you must not place loyalty to friends above duty to family.”
“You sound like a preacher, Wanda.”
“I don’t mean to.” She touched the sleeve of his shirt, squeezed his arm. “I want you to be safe, Roy. I want you to make a go of this ranch. I will help you all I can, you know that.”
“I know you will.”
“Then promise me you won’t make any hasty decisions after you talk to the Barons. At least let me know before you leap into anything.”
“Wanda, I knew the Barons long before I met you.”
She stepped away from him, looked into his eyes with an intensity that made him want to avert his gaze. But he couldn’t.
“Well, you’re not going to marry the Barons,” she said. “You’re going to marry me.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“A woman always knows, Roy. I know what you really want. And I’m the only person on this earth who can give it to you.”
She pressed her body against his and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, drawing him even closer.
Roy became aroused; he blushed.
“I guess you do, Wanda,” he said.
“You’re damned right I do,” she said, and began to move her hips, nudging her loins into his with a grinding motion. Roy’s knees turned to mush and his legs quivered. He didn’t know if he loved Wanda or not, but at that moment he wanted her more than he wanted anything else in the world.
4
MATTEO AGUILAR KICKED the footstool, sent it clattering into the wall of the empty house. His anger showed in the hard sharp lines of his jaw, the quivering muscle beneath one of his high cheekbones, and in the crackling fires that lit his black eyes until they shone like polished obsidian.
“Puta. Pendejo. Chingaderos.” He spat the words out as if they were bitter bits from some vile seed he had cracked with his teeth. “The ungrateful bastard and his whore wife.”
Jules Reynaud stood in the doorway, slouching against the jamb, a thin smile on his lips. He admired passion and exulted in seeing another man’s anger displayed so visibly. It made him calm inside, and that calmness had been a benefit in many a brawl in New Orleans’ seedier dens of iniquity. Reynaud was a schemer, a planner, and he seldom fl
ew off the handle when his rage rumbled inside him like the thunderous voice of an erupting volcano.
“You hired the man, Matteo,” Jules said. “You gave him your trust.”
“I hired the bastard, but I never trusted that fucking gringo.” Matteo turned to look at Reynaud, his eyes still smoldering with fury. “I gave him this house for his bitch, and he runs away in the night, stealing two of my best horses.”
“You hired a horsethief.”
“I hired a surveyor. Un mentiroso. I think he lied about the survey where the whore’s son is squatted.”
“Roy Killian?”
“Yes. Roy Killian. That Ursula, his puta mother, is una bruja, a witch.”
“I think you are angry because she did not spread her legs for you, Matteo.”
“Shit. I could have had her.”
“You wanted her.”
Matteo waved a hand at Reynaud, turned, and began to survey the room. He walked around it, poking here and there, examining what the Wilhoits had left behind. “He did not take his surveying instruments.”
“Perhaps he means to return.”
“I will kill him if he shows his face here.”
“Yes. Then you could have his woman.”
“Do not speak of his woman. I do not want her.”
Reynaud smiled. Matteo disappeared into the bedroom and was gone for several moments. Reynaud stepped outside, began to roll a smoke. He heard noises from inside and knew that Matteo was kicking things around to vent his anger.
Matteo came outside, slammed the door behind him.
“Did they steal anything else?” Reynaud asked. “Besides your horses and your pride?”
“Reynaud, you have the fast mouth and the filthy mind.”
“I thought Wilhoit a poor choice for a gun when we tried to move those slaves up north.”
“And you were not such a good choice, either, eh?”
“We were outnumbered.”
“Well, we will see how you do when I take my men, my soldiers, and attack the Baron rancho. Come, let us walk back to the house. I want to tell you my plan.”
The two started walking toward Matteo’s house, passing the large barn where some of his hands were grooming the horses, doling out lead and powder for the upcoming raid on the Box B. It still galled him that Martin Baron had bought so much land from his forebears, land that had been granted to the Aguilar family by the Spanish—hundreds of thousands of acres—and now, Roy Killian, even, owned part of it. If Matteo did not stop the gringos now, they would someday own every piece of land from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. Matteo waved to the men, and they saluted him but said nothing.
