by Jory Sherman
Anson merely smiled and kicked his horse in the flanks.
The Mexicans were waiting in a copse of trees, mixed mesquite and scrub oaks, wreathed in veils of blue-gray smoke from their cigarillos that smelled, on the morning air, like burning rope. There were five of them, none of whom Peebo recognized, although he thought he might have seen one of them the evening before, talking to Anson when it was getting dark.
“Listo?” Anson asked.
The man apart replied. “Estamos listos.”
“Follow me and Peebo, Timo.”
The lone man nodded. Four cigarettes went out like winking sparks. Peebo saw that the men carried rifles and all wore two pistols in their belts, old cap-and-balls, that rode high on their hips. The rifles were short-barreled carbines, single-shot muzzle-loaders jutting out of handmade scabbards, with large trigger guards and single triggers. He could see, even in that early light, that some of the rifles were rusted and had long since lost their bluing. They appeared to have been made in Mexico, but they could have been manufactured in Spain, Peebo reckoned.
“You don’t need to know all their names, Peebo,” Anson said. “The head man is Timoteo Fuentes. They’re all dead shots.”
“Where in hell did you find them?”
“They have been working for me for over a year. I keep them away from the others because they double as guards and hunters. But everyone is a true vaquero and can rope and ride with the best of them.”
“Were these the hands you were going to take to go after that white bull?”
“They’re about the only ones who aren’t superstitious about el diablo blanco.”
“Christ, you mean business, don’t you?”
“I always mean business, Peebo.”
Peebo snorted and looked back at the men who were following him, Anson, and Timo. Their faces bore no expression. They were dark Mexicans, more Indian than Spanish blood in their veins, he guessed, with high, florid cheekbones and oriental eyes, no moustaches or beards, bandannas lazed around their necks, ball-and-powder pouches were slung to their shoulders, and each kept one hand on his rifle stock, ready to jerk it free of its scabbard.
The wind stayed down and the sun rose in the sky until it beat down on them like Vulcan’s hammer, and Peebo felt the sweat run down his sides and legs and into his boots. He slapped at flies without making any noise and listened to the swish of his horse’s tail as it drove off the ones he missed.
When they reached the edge of the property around the Aguilar ranch house, Bone’s tracks veered off to the west and Anson followed those until he sighted the casitas surrounding Matteo’s home. Voices drifted to their ears from an unseen location beyond Matteo’s house. Anson held up his hand, halting the small column.
“We go on foot from here,” Anson said to Peebo. He spoke to the Mexicans in Spanish, telling them to dismount. All of them slipped their rifles from their scabbards and stood waiting for their orders. Peebo slid his rifle from its boot and checked the flint and pan. There was a thin haze of powder in the small bowl and he closed the frizzen. “I told the Mexicans to spread out and lie flat on the ground,” he said to Peebo.
“I heard you. I speak a little Mexican myself, you know.”
“Yeah. Well, you and I are going to sneak up to Matteo’s house and see what all the jabbering’s about. Think you can stay low and keep quiet?”
“Son, just think of me as a piece of stone rolling across a thick old rug. I won’t make a sound. You goin’ after Bone?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure he was spyin’ for Aguilar.”
“Lead on,” Peebo said, with a wave of his hand.
Peebo followed Anson’s movements as they hunched over and started moving through cover toward the main ranch house. The voices grew louder as they approached. They went from tree to tree and then Anson lowered himself to the ground in a squat, and duck-waddled closer. Peebo began to see an opening and the silhouettes of men walking back and forth. As they came to the edge of the clearing around the house, Peebo’s eyes widened.
Matteo was barking orders to marching men, a dozen, while others were taking positions behind wagons and trees, going after one another in mock attacks. Reynaud stood beside Matteo. Mickey Bone was some distance from the marchers, watching them with narrowed eyes from his perch on the top rail of a small corral.
The marching men stopped at a command from Matteo, and scattered, threw themselves headlong and aimed their rifles at imaginary targets. Then a half-dozen Mexicans rode up on horseback and pointed their rifles at the concealed men. These riders flared out and circled, flanking those on the ground. It was a beautiful, smooth maneuver, worthy of any execution on horseback by the best plains Indians.
“Jesus God,” Peebo said softly.
Anson kept silent, looking at each man, and holding his gaze for several seconds on Reynaud, who wore a brace of pistols on his belt and was dressed in clothes more suitable for a parlor social than a rough ranch with dozens of Mexicans playing war.
Matteo barked an order and the marching men broke formation, encircled the house as those on horseback formed another, moving ring around them, mock-firing at the house as they rode. Peebo watched this maneuver, his scalp prickling at the precision the Mexicans demonstrated. The Mexicans on the ground ran in zigzag patterns, staying low, presenting difficult targets to anyone who might be besieged within the house.
“It doesn’t look good, Anson.”
“No. Those men are well trained.”
Matteo whistled and the men withdrew from their positions, gathered around him and Reynaud. Two women walked around the corner of the house, from the front, and headed toward the assemblage.
“Who are they?” Peebo whispered.
“One of ’em’s Matteo’s wife. I don’t know who the other’n is.”
A moment later Dawn walked over to stand by Bone, and Anson nodded.
“Bone’s wife,” Peebo said.
“Looks like.”
They could not hear what Matteo was saying, but the fighting men all were listening, leaning on their rifles, but not fidgeting. Peebo strained to hear, but Matteo spoke in rapid Spanish and he could only catch parts of certain words. At the end of his speech, Matteo raised one arm and made a fist with his hand.
“To victory!” he shouted in Spanish.
And the Mexicans all cheered and two or three among them began to order them to disperse. Soon the yard was empty, except for Matteo, Reynaud, Bone, and the two women.
“Looks like they’re just about ready to march on the Box B,” Peebo said, sotto voce.
“I heard Matteo say they would leave tonight,” Anson said.
“Son, you’ve got good ears.”
“I just caught part of it. I didn’t get the time. Could be right after dark, or just before dawn.”
“Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here. What are you going to do? Warn your pa?”
“No time for that.”
The two men slithered backward, careful not to make any noise, and when they were well out of earshot of Matteo and the others, they stood up and started walking back toward the place where they had left their horses with the Mexican hands. Peebo looked at Anson every few minutes. Anson seemed to be mulling over something in his mind, and Peebo kept silent, not wanting to break into his friend’s thoughts.
Instead Peebo thought about what he had just witnessed, while feeling an elusive sense of deep dread. Matteo’s band functioned like an army in miniature, responding to commands, executing precise maneuvers, moving swiftly and decisively on their targets with cunning and craft. He wondered if Martin and his small group of Mexican workers and friends could withstand the onslaught of a trained army such as Matteo had.
Anson stopped to relieve himself and Peebo unbuttoned his fly to stand alongside him under the shade of a mesquite tree. They watched their yellow streams roil the dirt and pock it with small holes such as doodlebugs make in the earth.
“It looks right bad, Anson. I don’t thin
k your pa realizes what he’s facin’ up to with Aguilar.”
“No, I reckon not,” Anson said, sliding the buttons on his fly through the fastening slits. “That’s why we’ve got to even up the odds some.”
“What are you aimin’ to do?” Peebo shook the dew from his penis and tucked the organ back in his trousers.
“I’ve been thinkin’ about that.”
“And?”
“The most reasonable thing to do would be to ride back and tell Pa what we seen and give him some help with our guns.”
“But you ain’t goin’ to do that, are you, son?”
Anson sighed. “Nope. We might not make it back in time to warn Pa, and even if we did, it would only cause confusion. Some of the hands might just light a shuck and leave us short on fighting men.”
“Well, we can’t stave off a bunch that size. Hell, they’d overrun us like cattle in a stampede, trample us to dust without so much as a howdy-do.”
“Yeah. True. We can’t go at them in any regular way. Matteo’s done a good job with his men. They act like damned soldiers.”
“We can rag their heels,” Peebo said. “Cut ’em up, scatter ’em, maybe.”
Anson looked at Peebo with a rigid intensity as if trying to read his mind.
“Just a quick suggestion,” Peebo said, after those moments of silence.
“Might slow ’em down some,” Anson said. “But it might get us killed, too. No, I think Matteo has probably thought of such a situation. He’ll have men front and back on the march and flankers. We wouldn’t have much of a chance.”
“Yeah, we might get off one shot apiece before he was down on us like stink on a skunk’s ass.”
“Let’s go,” Anson said. “We can talk along the way. I don’t want my hands to get jumpy.”
“Hell, they ain’t got nothin’ to be jumpy about. They didn’t see what we seen.”
As they approached the waiting Mexican hands, Anson stopped suddenly and Peebo almost bumped into him.
“There might be a way,” Anson said.
“To stop Aguilar?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m all ears, son.”
“What’s the best way to kill a snake, Peebo?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Chop it up into a dozen pieces. Stomp it to death.”
“Or cut off its head.”
Peebo thought about that for a moment. “You mean, kill Aguilar right off?”
“He’s the head of that snake back there.”
“I reckon.”
“You don’t like the idea,” Anson said.
“No, it makes sense. If you could get him off by hisself. But there’s something you’re not thinkin’ about, ’pears to me.”
“What’s that?”
“That snake’s got two heads. The Frenchie. Reynaud.”
“You think so?”
“Or maybe three heads.”
“Three?”
“Yeah. Bone.”
Anson drew in a breath as if to clear his mind. Peebo regarded him with solemnity.
“I almost forgot about Bone,” Anson said.
“I don’t know if them greasers would foller him, but ’twixt him and Reynaud, they might just get mad as hell if we kilt Aguilar, and come after us like hornets on fire.”
The Mexican hands started to walk their way, as if wanting to hear what the two men were saying. Peebo grinned at them, but they did not look as if they were fooled.
“Well, you got any better ideas?” Anson asked quickly.
“Nary a one,” Peebo said. “I just wisht we was chasin’ after that white bull instead of standin’ out here talkin’ about how you, me, and these here Mexicans are going to stop a damned army.”
“Well, we’re going to damned sure do something,” Anson said, as the Mexicans came up on them.
“Que pasa?” Timo asked.
Anson did not answer. Timo looked at Peebo, his eyebrows arched like caterpillars in midstride.
“You boys ready for a fight?” Peebo said, grinning as if he were inviting them to a fiesta on the president of Mexico’s manicured lawn.
20
URSULA SWAM THROUGH layers of sleep, struggling upward from the dream of drowning, fighting off suffocation. Shreds of scenes from the dream began to fray at the edges and fall off, like articles of clothing, and sink back down into the depths, out of memory, blurring as they fell until they vanished. The faces of people in the dream twisted and corkscrewed until they lost all identity and floated off like misshapen blobs of oily substance and the names attached to them no longer made sense.
But one of the dream people resembled her son, Roy, or represented him, while another seemed to be Martin Baron, and she was sure that another man had to be her dead husband, Jack Killian, for it was he who kept trying to hand her a rifle and when she finally took it, it came apart and she kept trying to put it back together, but the parts were all crooked, and the one who seemed to be Roy in a different guise, kept running away from her and when he stopped, he was using the broken rifle as a cane and he hobbled away and the man who seemed to be Martin took the cane and made a box out of it and the box kept getting bigger and bigger until it was a maze of boxes that became a house on a hill that was surrounded by faceless men carrying pitchforks and knives that flashed like lightning in a black stormy sky, and she wandered through the rooms of the house looking for her son and her dead husband and saw Hattie and Wanda sitting down at a table and they seemed to be praying in a foreign language that she could not understand and then she saw Roy sitting in the middle of the table. He was tied up with ropes that wriggled like writhing snakes and Wanda gave him a fork that, instead of tines, had four barrels that leaked smoke as if they were pistols that had been fired, and when she tried to enter the room, a man who looked like Matteo Aguilar appeared out of nowhere and barred her way and his face turned black and his eyes blazed red and he changed into David, who was crying red tears that filled the room and covered the table and the women ran away into a large box that closed up behind them and became a large empty field that bordered a stand of corn. As she approached, the cornstalks became rifles and they belched green smoke and bent their barrels to face her, and they boomed like thunder and she felt herself falling down, down, into a house that was like the one she and David lived in on the Rocking A and then it became a wagon filled with dead men who nevertheless cried out to her and seemed like lifeless beggars asking for money and they all disappeared when she was about to land in their midst and she moaned in terror as the dream broke off and left her breathless.
She gasped for breath as she bobbed up like a cork in her bed, drawing precious air into her lungs as if she had actually been underwater and had suddenly surfaced. On waking, the last dregs of the terrible dream crumbled into dusty fragments that made no sense and dissolved into powdery scraps that blew into nothingness like smoke before a high wind.
She sat up, bewildered, felt beside her for David, knowing he was gone, had been gone all night. She looked down at the empty place where he should be and fragments of the dream began filtering up into her consciousness. She tried to hold the images steady in her mind so that she could study them and determine their meaning. She knew that they meant something. Then, she let them all go and slid over to the edge of the bed. She leaned down and felt under the bed for her slippers.
She put them on her feet and stood up. It was very early in the morning. The sun was not up, but she heard the clank of plates in the main quarters where her son lived with Hattie and Wanda. She smelled the fragrant aroma of coffee and the smell stirred still more memories of the dream.
She walked to the small dresser and looked down at the bowl of water she had filled the night before. She leaned over and dipped both hands in the bowl and splashed her face. The cobwebs lacing her brain began to dissipate, but the subtle portions of her dream eluded her, yet some crumbs still remained.
She heard voices through the walls as she dabbed a small towel at her face to dry it off.
She pushed her hair back with both hands and walked to the wardrobe David had built for her. It had no door on it, but her clothes hung there neatly on wooden pegs. She put a light wrapper on and padded toward the door.
She stepped outside and walked to the other door that led into Roy’s house. She knocked on it loudly, peering around in the darkness as if expecting to be attacked by some wild animal. More of the dream pushed up in her mind, disturbing little bits and pieces that still made no sense.
“Come in,” Wanda called. “Ursula, that you?”
“Yes,” Ursula said, pushing the door open. She was glad that it was not latched. She shuffled through the main room and into the kitchen and dining area where the lamps dispelled the gloom and dark from the other room. Wanda and her mother were sitting at the table in their robes, sipping coffee from tin cups just like cowhands.
“Good morning, Ursula,” Wanda said, in a cheery voice. “We couldn’t sleep.”
“’Morning.”
Wanda had her hair tied in curls and she looked as if she had fallen into a sack full of cotton and bolls had stuck to her hair. Hattie had her hair wrapped in a bandanna, but a few tufts stuck out and these were tied with white cloth, as well. Both women were red-eyed from lack of sleep and looked haggard, with bags under their eyes that looked like the shadows of mice.
“Coffee?” Wanda asked.
Ursula sat down and nodded. She cleared her throat of nightsand and waited while Hattie arose and got a cup from the cupboard and poured it full of steaming coffee. There was sugar on the table, but Ursula did not spoon any into her cup.
“Bad night?” Hattie asked, as Ursula stared down into the black pool of coffee in her cup.
“I had bad dreams,” Ursula said.
“Dreams are cautions,” Hattie said. “Portents.”
“I don’t know,” Ursula said.
“Ma, you don’t know anything about dreams,” Wanda said. “Don’t you go scaring Ursula.”
“Dreams don’t scare me,” Ursula said, “but this one disturbed me.” She finally picked up her cup and tipped it to her lips. Steam frosted her mouth for a moment as she blew on the liquid to cool it.
