by Jory Sherman
Anson soon determined the walker’s direction by the signs of the path he had already discovered. Each person, each animal, he knew, had a purpose when moving. Once one could fathom a creature’s purpose, the tracking became easier. The man who had made the impressions in the earth, who had tried to conceal his presence, was in a hurry, Anson now knew. Whatever he had come for, whatever he had been looking for, had been found, and now his purpose was to get away as fast as possible. The earth was less disturbed now. The man had dragged part of a branch behind him and used it like a broom, sweeping away his tracks in a general way. But, to Anson’s practiced eye, he could see the marks the leaves attached to the small limb had left and, beneath, he saw the faint outlines of a moccasin track, just enough shape to these that he knew a man on foot had made them.
Anson became so absorbed in the tracking, that he all but forgot about Lorene. She was still there, in the back corner of his mind, but she was no longer the dominant presence. Instead he found himself totally absorbed in the spoor, his focus so intense that he blocked out almost all other thought.
Some thirty yards behind a clump of wind-stunted oak trees, he came into a clearing and his gaze caught the branch the walker had tossed aside. Then, two or three feet away, he saw a clean set of moccasin prints. He saw where they were headed, toward more brush on the other side of the bald spot of land, and he hurried to close the distance. He did not look back, but he could hear Lorene running to keep up.
A few feet beyond the fringe of grass, he saw where the man had tied his horse. The grass was beaten down in several places, and when he bent over to look more closely, he saw the chopped grasses where the horse had grazed. In another place, he found clear hoofprints and these he examined carefully, cataloguing each track in his mind until he had all four separate.
Anson huffed a breath in and out and stood up straight, listening. There was not a sound, but he already knew that the rider had long gone. He took a few more paces and saw where the man had mounted and ridden off to the south, toward the Rocking A, the nearest ranch. He stood looking in that direction for several moments until Lorene came up close behind him and touched his arm.
Startled, he turned and came face-to-face with her, so close she took his breath away.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Anson?” Her voice was pitched low and it was soft and lyrical and twisted into him like a skewer and he felt impaled on the sound of it.
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“You were tracking someone,” she said. It was a flat, factual statement, not a question.
“Yeah, somebody was watching Ma’s funeral.”
“‘Somebody’?”
“A man I once knowed. Knew,” he corrected himself.
“Who is he?”
“An Apache named Mickey Bone,” he said, and the voicing of Bone’s name set his blood to racing. Yes, he knew it was Bone. He knew his moccasin track, knew the track of his horse. One moccasin had a crease in it near the heel, the other had a nick in it just under the big toe. And the horse was even easier to identify. Its shoes were worn down and one heel was uneven. He knew both tracks well, having seen them before.
“An Indian?”
“He used to work for my pa.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“I reckon he could be,” Anson said.
Lorene feigned fright and stepped so close to him, her breasts pressed into his chest and her nipples burned him where they touched. “I’m scared,” she said.
His arms hung by his sides then, without volition, arose and wrapped around her. He pulled her close to him.
“No need to be scared,” he said. “Bone’s already miles from here.”
“How do you know?”
“He saw what he came to see and now he’s riding back to the Rocking A. I reckon he’s working for Matteo Aguilar again.”
“I heard my uncle and your father talking about Aguilar. He is a bad man?”
“I reckon so,” Anson said, and he felt her burrow into him until his chest was on fire from the pressure of her soft breasts, and he felt the sky close in on him and the earth rise beneath him until he was snared in that small place where the grass was high and the brush thick and the outside world a vanished presence known only to memory, and that dimming by the second.
“I’m frightened again,” Lorene said.
“There’s no need.” Anson’s voice was gruff, with gravel in it, barely audible even in the hush of the moment.
“I feel safe with you,” she said.
“Uh, we’d best get on—get on back, I mean.”
“Can’t we stay awhile?”
Anson felt himself melting inside, for her words were charged with meaning, stirred his manhood, and he was drawn into the heat of her, the fire in her loins as she pressed closer to him, rubbed his leg with her hand, stroked it until he no longer needed to hear her speak to know that she wanted him. She pushed her loins into his and jolted his flesh with a surge of electricity and he felt the blood drain from his brain and swell in his manhood until he could feel his member throb against her, against that secret place between her legs and the sky that was close began to spin and his knees turned to jelly, no longer able to support him.
They sank to the ground and her weight atop him was light and of no consequence and he drew her even closer to him and found her mouth with his and she responded with a savage eagerness that surprised him while his body turned to fire and his manhood to stone.
“I want you,” she breathed, and her words were like a firewind tearing through him as he found his hands and they were searching for the buttons on her garments and her hands were severing his shirt from his body and the rustle of cloth was the sound of great walls tumbling, opening a breach into a city of pure gold, a treasure beyond human imagination, and he raced through the opening on a plundering quest and they coupled like lovers in a garden, joining together in desperation as if they were the only two people on earth left alive after some cataclysm that had claimed all else, leaving them to seed the earth so that their kind could spread to all corners of the land when all others were dead and gone.
And they each saw wonders in their minds and hearts that day and they explored each other again and again until the sun began to fall away in the vault of the sky that had gone back into its dimension all blue and flocked with white clouds like some distant peaceful ocean where sails billowed full and haughty before the windy breaths blown by the gods themselves.
14
REYNAUD SAT IN a chair in one corner of Matteo’s room, cleaning one of his fine pistols. Matteo leaned over a small desk, scribbling notes, drawing lines and diagrams on a sheet of foolscap with the quill gripped tightly in his hand. The feather moved like part of a broken wing as he formed geometric-like icons: rectangles, squares, triangles. He stippled in small dots along certain lines and showed movement by inscribing primitive arrows pointing toward the geometries drawn from memory and the words of those who had been where he wanted to go.
“Bone give you all the information you need, Matteo?” Reynaud set the cleaned pistol aside for a moment, wiped his hands with a clean cloth, and reached for a snifter of brandy on the side table.
“He has very good eyes and he told me much of what I needed to know.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“He does not need your trust, Reynaud.”
“I mean he favors young Anson Baron. Maybe he did not tell you all that he saw.”
Matteo twisted around to look at Reynaud. “You are a man who is like a spider, Reynaud. You sit on the far edge of a web and wait for something to get caught in it. And, when nothing is caught in it, you begin to doubt the web and wonder whether it is working or not.”
“That is not a fair call on who I am, Matteo. I wait when I should wait. I move when I should move.”
“You have not moved very much.”
“You are calling the play, my friend.”
“I am calling the play because you have done
nothing since you came here. You lost the contraband to Martin and you did not go and kill him as you said you would.”
Reynaud finished off the brandy and arose from his chair, so smooth and silent, Matteo thought, like a snake. He continued to look at Reynaud’s eyes and Reynaud did not flinch from his gaze, but held his eyes on Matteo.
“Let me see what you have fashioned there,” Reynaud said, walking toward Matteo. “Is this your plan for attacking the Box B?”
“You are like those lizards from South America that change their colors when they slither from tree to leaf to stone.”
“A chameleon? You compare too many creatures, Matteo. Does that give you satisfaction?”
“It gives me a picture of who you really are, Reynaud.”
“Ah, first I am a spider, then I am a lizard. What next, pray tell?”
“Soon I will see if you are a coward as well,” Matteo said.
“Let me see what you have drawn,” Reynaud said, and Matteo marveled at how he could slide away from a subject and never blink an eye. It was a gift he had probably used effectively in New Orleans, dealing with other thieves and scoundrels. Luz had said that Reynaud was “oily” and he had wondered if she was talking about Reynaud’s speech or his appearance or his smooth manners around women. She was right, of course—Reynaud was oily, in the sense of being slippery and hard to tack down. He slid from one guise to another so that one talking to him never quite knew who he really was, nor what sincerity he possessed, if he possessed any at all.
Reynaud looked down at the drawing, pointed to a large square on the foolscap. “Is that the Baron house?”
“That is La Loma de Sombra where Martin lives.”
“Are those lines the roads? And those little triangles?”
“There is one road, and some trails. The triangles are the houses of the vaqueros.”
“And the dots are your men?”
“Yes.”
“You have split your forces,” Reynaud said. “Is that wise?”
“You are interested in my plan of attack, Reynaud?”
“Of course, Matteo. Am I not willing to fight by your side? I have a stake here, as well. After all, Martin Baron is my enemy, too. I will have his blood for sullying my sister.”
“I hope I can count on you to follow my orders and help lead one group of men.”
“I am at your service, Matteo.”
Matteo pointed to a rectangle he had drawn next to the large square. “This is the barn. Martin has a cannon in here, or did. He used that cannon when Cuchillo’s Apaches attacked La Loma de Sombra. The Apaches came at him from this small hill here.” He pointed to some squiggly lines he had drawn opposite the square and the rectangle. “The Apaches thought they had caught Baron by surprise. They had a short distance to ride, down this slope, and they were met by cannon fire. The Indians were chewed up and cut to pieces.”
“A cannon?”
“Yes, four-pounder. The Apaches had no chance. They were slaughtered as they came across the flat, here.” Matteo stuck a finger at a place on his map between the top of the hill and the barn. “He and his men shot those that scattered. With only a small force, he was able to defeat the Apaches and they have not visited the Baron rancho since that day.”
“So, you want men to attack the barn and some to attack the house?”
“Those dots I put behind, along that line of small triangles, are men who will come along and burn the houses of the vaqueros and then attack the house from behind, while these dots here,” he pointed, “are men who will attack the barn from the rear and the house from the side.”
“Humm,” Reynaud said. “It appears you have a good plan, as long as the cannon is inside the barn and facing the front.”
“That is the way it was with the Apaches.”
Reynaud stroked his chin and walked away, toward the window. He stopped, looked outside for a long moment, then turned back to face Matteo. “I, too, know Martin Baron, although not as well as you. He is not a stupid man.”
“No, he is not stupid.”
“He would find another place to put the cannon.”
“But where? There is only the barn.”
“And the house,” Reynaud said.
Matteo looked down at the foolscap with all of its diagrams and lines. His eyes narrowed to dark slits, then the lids drew back and he scowled. “Yes, he might put the cannon inside the house to fool me.”
Reynaud walked back over to the desk and pushed his outstretched index finger down onto the square that represented the Baron house. “I do not see any windows or doors here. He could put that cannon at any one of them.”
“Claro que si,” Matteo said. “That is true. But where?”
“You have to think like Martin does,” Reynaud said. “Where will he expect you to attack? If he does put the cannon inside the house, he will sacrifice the barn, perhaps. He will either let your men storm the barn and then wait until they come out to shoot them down, or he will just wait for you to rush the house.”
“Yes, Martin might do that.”
“I would say he would not worry about the back door. He could defend that, if necessary. But he will expect you to come through the front door to kill him.”
“So, he will put the cannon at the front door.”
“Or just inside. He would be waiting. When your men came through, he would touch off the powder and blow them to pieces.”
Matteo let out a breath and stood up. He paced the floor for a moment, back and forth in front of the desk. Then he stopped and looked at Reynaud. “If we had men waiting to come in the back door, they could rush it after the cannon first fires. Martin would not be able to get off a second shot. We would be on him like the locusts, like the swarming hornets.”
“He would not have a chance,” Reynaud said.
“I think this is a good plan,” Matteo said.
“You should have another group of men ready to charge the front door after the cannon fires, as well. They would keep him from reloading. It might be hand-to-hand combat at that point.”
“My men have been trained for all kinds of situations.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Reynaud said, his lips crinkled in a faint smile.
“We would lose a few men, no more than half a dozen, eh?”
“If that,” Reynaud said.
“It would be worth it to kill Martin and take back the land my family gave away.”
“Martin did not pay for the land?”
“That is beside the point. My people should never have sold our land to a gringo.”
“There is still the boy, Anson, to worry about. You cannot count on Bone to help you there.”
“If Anson is stupid enough to be inside the house, then he will die, too.”
“Then you must ask yourself another question, Matteo.”
“What is that?”
“Will Anson be in the house with his father?”
“I do not know,” Matteo said. “Perhaps he will not be there at all. Bone said that he was away branding wild cattle most of the time.”
“If he is not there when you attack, then what will you do when he returns to find that you have killed his father and have taken his home?”
“He will have only his friend, the blond-haired man, and a few vaqueros. There is nothing that he can do. I will squash him like a bug.”
“Ah, then there is nothing to worry about with Anson,” Reynaud said.
“I do not worry about him.” Matteo walked back to the desk and picked up the foolscap, held it up so that the light shone through it. “If you cut off the head of the snake, the body will die.”
“When do you plan to attack the Baron ranch?” Reynaud asked.
Matteo let the paper fall back on top of the desk.
“Within a week. At night.”
“You will attack in the night?”
“Yes. With luck, that cannon will never be fired. We will catch Martin when he is asleep. He will never wake up.
”
“If that is so, then you might want to consider a better way.”
“What is that?” Matteo asked.
“Have your men sneak up in the dark and surround the house. Set fire to it. Then, as Martin and his men run out, shoot them down. They will be lit by the flames.”
“I have thought of that. I want that house, as well as the land.”
“Then you have to make a decision, Matteo. If you want a victory without the blood of your men being spilled, you must sacrifice the house.”
“Yes, Reynaud, that is something I will have to decide.”
“And when will you do that?”
“I will sleep on it tonight. By tomorrow morning I will know what I will do.”
“Good. I look forward to seeing Martin’s corpse lying on the ground. It will give my family in New Orleans much satisfaction.”
“Not as much satisfaction as it will give me,” Matteo said. A moment later, after being silent, he looked at Reynaud. “I will have a drink of that aguardiente myself, I think.”
“It is good brandy, Matteo.”
“We will drink to our victory, Reynaud.”
“Yes.” Reynaud walked to the sideboard and picked up a snifter. Then he took the bottle and filled his and Matteo’s glasses. Matteo picked up his glass, held it up to the light.
“It is clear,” he said. “Muy fino.”
“To victory,” Reynaud said, clinking his glass against Matteo’s.
“A la venganza,” Matteo said.
“And what is that?” Reynaud asked.
“‘To vengeance.’”
The two men drank and smiled at each other.
Matteo’s cowled eyes seemed to hood his other thought as he drank. No matter what happened, he wanted to see Reynaud laid out on the ground alongside the body of Martin Baron. He wanted no witness riding back to New Orleans bragging about their victory. Reynaud would not be drinking brandy in celebration after the battle. A bullet in his back would wipe the smile from Reynaud’s face. Forever.
