The English Horses

by William A. Luckey

  His hand placed on Burn’s shoulder felt bone, not flesh. The face and hands were burned from weather, making English look more Indian than anything else. The eyes opened. Davey’s fingers were sticky from the man’s fever. Those eyes stared without blinking, then closed, and Davey let out a big gulp.

  “He’s asleep, Davey. Doctor Lockhart left a bottle of laudanum and said to use it liberally, as any thrashing would open the wounds. He also said to spoon broth into Mister English whenever possible. He’s much too thin.” She let her head sink back on the rocker’s support. “But we know that, don’t we. His chances aren’t good. Lockhart said without your quick acting with the flour, he would be dead now.” She stuttered on the next words. “Thank you.”

  A vein throbbed in Davey’s temple and he wanted to rub it but was afraid to stop her talking.

  “I’ll fix you a meal, Davey. He’ll sleep a while. We need to get you fed.” It wasn’t much, but she had spoken his name.

  Time slowed. A week passed since they had brought in the mesteñero and he was still alive. Meiklejon didn’t come out of his room much. Souter gave the orders as usual, but there was no shadow of the boss behind him. Davey figured the man was carrying some big guilt over the accident.

  Souter told Davey to harness up a team and go to Datil for the Socorro supplies. He picked a team of good sorrels, part draft, part mustang, harder than hell to drive, but tireless, steady travelers once they got lined out. It was a long stretch between the ranch and Datil by wagon road, about twenty extra miles. Souter gave the job to Davey to get him off the ranch before he started up more fights.

  Just yesterday the doc had swung past, come in from near Omega where a woman had lost her husband and two children to the smallpox. Doc had washed up well before he went in to see English. Wounds were septic, Lockhart said. Badly infected—couldn’t be helped—couldn’t be treated except to wash them with heated water, use laudanum to dull the pain, and keep hoping for the best. The belly wound was worse, the smell enough to make a strong man puke. The doc was bitter, dark-tempered when he asked did Davey have another trick like the flour to save English’s life. Then the doc stared down at Burn, shook his head. Spoke his mind to his patient.

  “Son, I don’t know what good we’ve done you. Your suffering ain’t fair, boy, and for that I’m sorry.” Brutal words that laid on more guilt.

  Before he left, Lockhart put a bigger bottle of laudanum on the table. Spoke directly to Miss Katherine with a special slowness. “Be careful, miss. Too big a dose can kill him, weak as he is.”

  When the doc was gone, Souter had taken charge. He sent Red for a curandera, wife to Enselmo Ortega, a sheepherder in Quemado. She’d come to help and she’d come with her own ideas. She was going to use plants from the land, she said. Sage and purple coneflower. It was only after English had his belly wrapped and packed with the herbs, and smelled decent, that Davey caught up the sorrel team and left on Souter’s errand.

  He felt the team’s sudden tiredness through the lines and let them come to a walk. They’d reached the base of the mountains, a long way still from Datil. This stretch of the road was sided with pine and some fir, scatterings of meadows where he imagined deer would come in at dawn to feed. It was too peaceful, tempting a man to draw the team off the road, unhitch, and let the tired horses graze while he rested his back at a tall tree, chewed a bit of grass himself, and tried to make sense of the past weeks and the endless raw anger raging within him. Instead, Davey drove on, mindless and numb.

  He came out of his self-pity once when a dark colt with a ragged white scar appeared on a ridge, to the side of the team. The colt whinnied. Davey stopped the team and the off-sorrel whinnied back. It was the mesteñero’s orphan mustang—maybe he was lonesome for company and Davey could rope him, bring him in for English to see.

  The colt snorted, lowered his head, then flicked his tail and was gone. Davey hoped it wasn’t a bad sign.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The supplies were piled up outside the small hut that served as a sometimes post office. It was well past dark when Davey got in, and he loaded up alone, tacked a note to the door saying Thanks to the driver and that the L Slash had what they needed. He turned the now docile team around, headed once more for home.

  He had to stop around three in the morning, by his crude reckoning. It was god-awful dark. His eyes burned, but mostly the team needed a drink and a few minutes rest and some grass, before they tackled the long uphill pull to the L Slash cutoff. It wasn’t a long trip home in miles, no more than five or so, but whatever Meiklejon had ordered was heavy, and Davey could read that the team was working too hard at each small rise.

  So he slipped their bits and let them graze a half hour while he built a smoke and leaned on a wheel, knowing if he laid down or even sat with his back up against something solid, he’d sleep and be even more late getting in.

  By the time he reached headquarters, Davey was nodding over the lines as the team set a good trot, eager for a nosebag of oats and a roll in the corral dust.

  There was little change in Burn English excepthe was sleeping better, or so Miss Katherine said Señora. The room smelled of the grassy plains now that Señora Ortega had her hand in the medicines.

  Each day he could, Davey poked his head inside the sick room or asked Miss Katherine for news, in the kitchen. The crew was busy gathering spring calves, driving steers out of the hills and draws. A sick man was poor excuse for conversation when wrecks and mountain cats and the tracks of big grizzlies and losses from the rustlers were the more usual bunkhouse gossip. Most of the talk was about rustlers; someone close to home was stealing from the neighbors.

  Finally Davey presented himself at the kitchen door, well after the big Sunday meal. Meiklejon tried to stop him, but Miss Katherine showed up and settled the matter, as she often did.

  “Ah, Mister Hildahl, you’ve come for your usual visit.”

  Davey squeezed past the boss, who stared into the distance as if Davey didn’t exist.

  She left him in the small room, alone except for the patient lying on the narrow bed. The room was dark and smelled sweet with the herbs and an undertaste of something putrid. Davey’s eyes watered, but he didn’t rub them; he knew from experience that only made the itch worse. It was the voice that galvanized him out of his trance.

  “Who’s there?”

  A weak voice Davey hadn’t heard for a long time. He grunted: “It’s me, Davey, come for a Sunday visit. Wanted to tell you I saw your colt a few days back. That leg healed fine…no limp and only a few white hairs. He’s looking right good for a durned mustang.”

  “Did you brand him?” English’s hand came up, grabbed Davey’s wrist, and, even half dead, there was strength in the smaller man. Davey was pulled close, so all he could see was the violent twisting of English’s features. “Did you brand him?”

  Davey nodded as he pulled his hand free. “Yeah, and cut him loose of the hobbles.”

  English was slow to hear the words. He coughed and slid both hands over his belly and shut his eyes. “How long I been here? Where…you brand that colt?” Then the hand got Davey again, but most of the strength was gone.

  Davey pulled up a chair and sat, let the hand cling to him. He thought of Miss Katherine sitting in the same chair through the long nights and days, dozing while she waited for Burn English to choose. Now Davey tried his own brand of comforting. “English, you rest. Let me tell you, and you listen, ’stead of pushing and making me mad.” He watched the drawn face, shadowed by a thin, dark beard, the eyes sunken deep into the bony skull. Usually lit with fire, the eyes were soft, downright friendly. Man must be weak as a new calf to show emotion. Davey wondered, as he did sometimes, what got the mustanger this far, what grew the fire and rage inside him.

  English nodded, all strength used up, and Davey did the talking. “You been here more’n two weeks now. She’s been tending you with a Mex woman. She got you smelling good…first time for you, I bet. Kinda like grass after a
good rain. Beats that mustang stink you favor.” English’s face tightened and Davey decided it wasn’t right teasing a sick man.

  “Got a hole in your belly and a cut cross your right leg goes up to your backside. Your neck got scratched some, but it’s clean now. Hands’re cut up, too, but they’re almost healed. Hell, you ain’t much worse than you been running the brush on a half-broke bronc’.”

  English surprised him; nothing new in that. “Yeah, my gut.” The man let it rest while he took in air. “Feel it…sleeping. Fire inside my bones.” That was a truth near as anyone could speak.

  Davey rested his arms across his chest, hunched over. English’s words dug deep.

  “Davey?” Too soft, Davey leaned over, close to the man’s mouth. “Saw things…heard voices. Like I wasn’t here.” Rested again, struggled for air. Davey wiped his friend’s wet face. “Where I was goin’…good enough. Strange…hearing about your own dying.”

  Like any lonesome man, English talked his own brand of talk. But not now, these were clear and precise pictures that shivered along Davey’s spine.

  “Light, Davey. I could lie down and rest and not hurt. That was the promise.”

  English quit then, sagging deep into the mattress until Davey knew he would disappear. The fiery eyes closed, the large bony hands, covered with half-healed scarring, lay fragile on the stained blanket. Davey got up and walked to the door, glancing back at the cot and the exposed figure. He hoped that English would come awake his cantankerous self, and forget the voices, the light, and then maybe Davey would return for a visit.

  Gordon Meiklejon thought he’d tipped the young man quite well, and was surprised at the look on the boy’s wind-burned face. This messenger had brought the news that a great, snorting bull was arriving in Socorro, with Meiklejon’s name stapled to the entire railroad car in which the bull rode in its solitary glory. A trip to Socorro was in the making. Miss Katherine had her long list of needed supplies; it was mid-May and the winter reserves were depleted.

  Gayle Souter drove the wagon, pulled by a sorrel team, and Red Pierson rode with the foreman. Gordon was pleased with himself; he knew most of the men’s names by now. Pierson was a stout youngster who followed orders, yet could think for himself, if needed. This, Souter had repeatedly told Gordon, was a necessity in any good hand.

  The season was late to be putting the bull to the L Slash cows. Timed delivery of the calf crop was important to maximize their growth before the all-important fall gather, according to Meiklejohn’s schedule. But this was an experiment, and the bull’s first harem would be herded with him to the pasture north of the ranch.

  It was much easier ruminating over the matters of Edinburgh Supreme and his ladies than to consider the chaos at the ranch. The unwanted patient remained, better now but not yet well, and Miss Katherine showed the effects of his stay. The woman was drawn thin, and barely spoke even to her obvious favorite, Davey Hildahl. Hildahl was another matter entirely. Meiklejon refused to dwell on what he saw in the man’s eyes.

  When the procession arrived in Socorro, they first visited the rail yard where the magnificent Red Durham stood in its reinforced pen. The bull swayed impassively, chewing massive amounts of old hay, occasionally blowing long strings of mucus from its nostrils, bellowing, eyes closed, head back, as if proclaiming its potency to an indifferent world.

  Well satisfied with the purchase, Gordon waited while Souter took a closer look. Gordon watched his foreman—would Souter find the generosity to admit that Gordon had done the right thing in buying this animal? Souter took his time, but finally said it was a magnificent beast, indeed. Ought to make quite a change with the range cattle they were now running.

  Later, when he was settled in his room at the Southern, Gordon realized the crafty old foreman had not said anything approving Gordon’s choice. For that maneuver, Gordon smiled to himself, delighted with Souter’s gambit.

  Souter set Red to putting up the horses at Billy’s livery while he returned to the rail yard and the Red Durham bull. If he went into Billy’s, there’d be drinking and cursing and stories to swap with his old friend. Let Red deal with the hostler’s sour nature. But first he paid Red some of what the ranch owed him, warning the boy to keep out of trouble, especially to stay away from the liquor. “This ain’t a night on the town, son. We got hard work tomorrow and you best be ready. Find yourself a nice girl and talk to her, maybe buy you both a piece of pie.” He watched Red’s face, read the embarrassed anger, and grinned. Some t hings never changed.

  Souter cursed his own self. It was having the mesteñero on the ranch that had gotten to him, like he had gotten to the rest of the men. Meiklejon showed signs of the strain, but it was Davey’s hurt that hung on. Souter could almost see Davey coming to a wrong conclusion about blame and guilt. It was a wrong conclusion, but no one could tell Davey. The truth was that, whatever drove Burn English, it was the mesteñero who had sent the herd into the wire. It had been him and no one else, not Davey, not Meiklejon, that had acted in haste and killed the horses, and maybe himself.

  Souter rested a boot on the bottom rung of the fence and the red bull turned its enormous head, shook it violently against the spring gnats, and glared at Souter out of fiery eyes. Ugly son, but if that sac of his were any hint of potency, let the cows line up and put the ugly son to them. Souter wasn’t going to give his approval in any way Meiklejon would understand yet, but if the fancy red bull did its job and the calves carried that bulk of meat and bone, then Gayle Souter wouldn’t mind playing nursemaid to a slow-moving, mean-tempered son-of-a-bitch like Edinburgh Supreme.

  He sighed, spat, and watched dust rise and settle. Damned dry too soon. Always too dry or too damned wet…full of too much and too little. Souter hoped he had learned something in his fifty plus years, and change was part of that learning. He didn’t like the wire fence, but it was here, cutting off the range, and none of the change would go away, so he might as well stare at the ugly red bull and pretend he liked what he saw. At least until Edinburgh Supreme proved his worthlessness. Or sired a whole herd of ugly, fat, red sons-a-bitchin’ steak-carryin’ offspring.

  Constant work kept Davey tired, almost let him sleep. Redhazed anger followed him while he worked. He and two hands restrung the broken wire in the valley. Davey started calling it Skull Valley for the piles of bones. Remains of meat and hide still clung to the skulls, but the wire had been restretched and the rest of the ten sections had gotten fenced. It had taken more than a month of hard work and a lot of knuckle hide and cursing to get the job done.

  Right now Red, Davey, and Souter were trailing after the bull—had a name to go along with his fancy pedigree, Edinburgh Supreme. Davey thought naming a bull was dumb. They got born, serviced their cows, and died from old age or a deep wound, and a new bull took over the job. It was the nature of animals, and naming them didn’t make them into anything more than what they were.

  He was content to ride drag. The selected cows moved too quickly sometimes, kept the boys busy. But old Supreme, he walked like each step declared his majesty. Watching that heavy rump spring up and down could make a man think on all those future steaks. Ahead, Meiklejon rode his easy-gaited grullo. Souter hung to the left, out of the dust but ready for trouble.

  Riding in the wake of those massive hindquarters, Davey let his thoughts wander. Summer would fill out early spring’s promise—hot, dry, dusty. About usual for these mountains. Davey watched the great motion of the bull, and wondered where English’s horses watered now. The ten sections they’d fenced off included that watering hole. But Davey didn’t think the band would go back to their old prison.

  English was still to the ranch—weak, pale, even thinner if possible, but alive. Didn’t talk much, walked half bent. At least Miss Katherine no longer had a grim set to her. She even teased Davey about small things, and he’d enjoyed her laugh. She trusted him, looked to him for help. Maybe English’s accident held something of value after all.

  He thought about the mares.
Maybe they had figured out the wire. Maybe they were all right. But with the dry winds, little rain, no storms to fill up the streams and gullies, the water hole would look awful good. Maybe they’d moved on. The dark stallion now leery of these mountains…maybe they’d gone where no wire crossed their tracks.

  Davey knew he was thinking wishes and not facts. Horses were just that, horses, and the stallion would see water across a fence and hang around, wanting a drink. The foals would weaken as their mammy’s milk dried up. The mares would turn ribby and poor.

  He’d heard Meiklejon’s talk about the “necessity of preserving the bloodlines” and he hated the man for his callous misunderstanding. An animal that couldn’t survive the range without help had no business eating and shitting and sleeping and growing. It made no sense to breed hot-house stock. Not in southwest New Mexico.

  They guided the bull and its harem up the west side of the valley, not wanting to risk Supreme’s tender hoofs on the hard rock and flinty ground of the eastern trail. So they had to ride past the depression where the scattered bones and the new wire blended together, leaving Davey to keep score. He choused the bull into a labored trot, saw the huge sac swinging between the distended hind legs.

  Souter’s pale eyes said everything, and Davey reined in his bay, letting the bull come back to a walk. Souter knew. Souter counted the bones, hated the wire, but they both took the man’s wages, they owed him their loyalty.

  They entered the valley between high wooden posts once laced with thin railings that had now tumbled down the steep slopes. The cows scattered easily in the valley. The bull took its great ponderous time making the downhill trail, and finally stood, raising its head and bellowing an announcement of its evident intent.

  Davey laughed, and Souter joined in. Meiklejon looked on disapprovingly.

  After the cattle were scattered, Souter asked, too politely, if Davey would stay on a few days, keep track of the bull, and an eye out for rustlers. Jack Holden, in particular. Someone had been getting greedy. Holden had to be part of it. Davey said he didn’t much care. So Souter pulled out his good Winchester, handed it over to Davey with a pouch full of bullets. Guarding Edinburgh Supreme was serious business.