Rides a Stranger

by Bill Brooks

  Wind blew through the open spaces—the windows and door and holes in the rotted roof—and I spent some time reading the old catalogue pages whichever old boys who had lived there before had tacked up over the years. I wondered where those old punchers were today, what they’d seen and how many of them died as broke as the day they were born and how many had married and how many of them came to bad ends or ended up preachers or store clerks or outlaws or lawmen.

  Thing with old buildings is they got a history same as any man—the history of all who lived in them—the weddings and funerals that took place in them, the love and hate that hid between their walls, and that was something that always interested me, the history of buildings.

  The horses snorted their restlessness and I talked to them, some in Spanish, the little bit I’d learned down in Texas, calling them sweetheart and just making up things to talk to them about. And before I knew it my thoughts turned to Fannie and our time spent there on that prairie grass together where the fenceline ran true as God’s finger, the wire glazed by the sun, and I couldn’t help but smile even in light of the heartbreak she caused me, because no matter how bad those things turn out—and they always turn out bad—your mind just naturally remembers the good parts. And in spite of nothing what we shared being true, I still considered myself a lucky man to have been part of it. Anytime a beautiful woman gives herself to you, consider yourself lucky.

  Clouds passed before the sun, creating great shadows over the grass—dark shapes moving like something alive—and it made for a pretty sight.

  Then I heard the whicker of horses and all that pleasant mood changed in a heartbeat.

  Two riders topped a slight rise and sat surveying the lay of things. One looped his leg ’round his saddle horn and fumbled in his coat pocket till he came out with makings and rolled himself a shuck. They were both wearing bat-wing chaps and I could see they had rifles in their scabbards. They sat there for a time, the wind carrying smoke from the one’s cigarette. One of their horses whickered and then one of mine answered. The riders both turned and looked toward the line shack.

  A piece of bad luck on my part if they decided to ride down and take a look.

  They did.

  I drew my revolver because I sure as shit didn’t want to have to shoot those old boys with my rifle, which I easily could have. I didn’t want to shoot them at all, but if I did shoot them it would be because they wouldn’t leave me any choice, and it would have to be close-in work.

  They rode down the slope cautious, looking for where the sound of the horse had come from. It was that little racer I’d bought off the liveryman.

  They got close then circled the shack, never suspecting a horse would be inside with another horse and a man holding a pistol.

  “Where you think it come from?” one of them said.

  “Hell if I can make it out, down from around here somewhere.”

  “I don’t see no horse, do you?”

  “I don’t see no horse neither.”

  “I heard it said they’s ghost horses in this country.”

  “I ain’t never heard nothing like that. What the hell’s a ghost horse anyways?”

  “I guess it’s just some old horse or something, I don’t know. It was a Indian told me.”

  “Indian?”

  “Pawnee Indian.”

  “Listen.”

  “What is it?”

  They stopped circling the shack.

  I stepped out behind them with the Merwin Hulbert cocked and aimed.

  “You boys step down from those horses.”

  They looked ’round slow.

  “Don’t make me shoot you all.”

  One was young, the other quite a bit older.

  The older one said, “Why you want to shoot us?”

  “Because you all might ride back and get some others and come back here and shoot me.”

  The younger one said, “Shit, that don’t hardly make no sense.”

  “Yeah, it does,” the older one said. “That’s the fellow was with Chalk Bronson the other day.”

  “This isn’t a debate,” I said. “Get off those mounts. And do it cautious; I’ve not had my coffee yet and my hands are a little shaky, and I’ve got the pull on this trigger set light anyway so it wouldn’t take much—might even just go off by itself.”

  They stepped down holding their reins.

  “What you all doing back here?” the older one said. He had iron gray moustaches—an old boot who wasn’t ever going to do anything but run cows and ride fence and work for men like Waco. “You got some sort of death wish?” he asked.

  “Take that rope, junior, and tie your partner up,” I said to the younger one.

  He looked sheepish.

  “I’ll shoot you in the knees,” I said. “Do it.”

  He unhooked his rope and wrapped it around the old man, and I said, “Truss him up good, like a mossy horn steer.”

  He said, “I’m sorry, Bob.”

  And the old man said, “Don’t you worry none about it, I know it ain’t nothing personal you got against me, Torrence.”

  When he got old Bob trussed up, I said, “Sit down on the ground.” And when he stood defiant, I went and shoved him down and told the kid to lay facedown next to Bob, and he did and I took Bob’s rope and trussed the kid up good.

  “Now what?” Bob said.

  “Now nothing,” I said.

  “Well ain’t this the shits.”

  “I reckon maybe it is.”

  I hauled them one by one inside the shack and set them up against the wall and said, “Once I get my business done here, I’ll let some of your pals know where you are if you ain’t worked yourself loose from those ropes.”

  “They’s wolves all over this country,” the younger one said. “And snakes.”

  “Too cold for snakes and I’ll bet there’s not been a wolf seen in these parts for ten years,” I said. “I don’t guess you have to worry about nothing but me.”

  “We all just gone sit here till what?” the old man said. “I got to take a piss. Piss all the time here lately—ever’ hour or so. Then when I try it takes me a while to get started and a while to stop. Goddamn but it ain’t like my life ain’t miserable enough, now I got to run into you.”

  “I sure as hell am sorry about your problems, Bob. You give me your word you won’t try anything stupid and I’ll untie you.”

  “You got my word. I spent all my stupid letting you catch me once.”

  I untied him and walked outside with him and watched as he went and stood off with his back to me and fumbled at his front and stood there with his back arched trying to relieve himself.

  I could hear him groaning. I felt bad in a way, because I knew we all get there someday—old like that with our plumbing messed up and our dignity gone but there wasn’t nothing any of us could do about it—and I hoped when it came my time somebody would show me a little respect.

  We probably stood there ten minutes before Bob finished up his business and I walked him back inside. I trussed him up again and he set down on his own accord next to his companion.

  “How many men has Waco got working for him?” I said.

  “All told? Maybe fifty,” he said.

  “They all stay close to the main house?” I said.

  The old man raised his tied hands and knuckled back his hat. He had a grizzle of growth on a face looked like scrub growing out of dry land cut by rain and wind.

  “Nah, they’re scattered all over this here land.”

  “You aim to kill us, mister?” the younger one said.

  “No, he ain’t aiming to kill us, Torrence,” Bob said. “He was aiming to do that, he’d already of done it.”

  They both looked at me.

  “He’s right,” I said. “Bob is.”

  They sat there with their legs crossed at their boots. We all waited for nightfall.

  It come dark and I led the horses outside after telling the two they best just keep quiet and let me go an
d do what I come here for, and Bob said, “What’d you come here for?”

  “I come for the girl,” I said. “And if you two follow me, help the others to follow me, and I get the chance, I’ll shoot you both, just so you know.”

  Bob shook his head, said, “I’m a puncher not some man killer. Torrence ain’t either.”

  Torrence shook his head too.

  “Well, then, you all take care. I fixed those ropes so you all should work free of them shortly enough.”

  Outside, I spanked their horses with my hat, slapping them hard two or three quick times till they run off, knowing they wouldn’t run off all that far but far enough to take those boys a while to catch up to them. Then I mounted up and rode off toward the grove.

  It took me about an hour to make my way to the trees, and I could see them against the night sky standing stiff and dark and went up toward them figuring if she was there she’d recognize me.

  She did, and stepped out.

  I handed her the reins to the racer and she mounted up. She had a satchel and said it was spare clothes, and I said we ought to get moving and rode away toward the south, away from the main ranch buildings.

  “How will we make our way?” she said, and I pointed up toward the sky.

  “Stars,” I said. “We’ll navigate like sailors do.”

  “That what you were once, a sailor?” she said.

  “No, but it don’t mean I can’t read stars.”

  We kept moving till sunup then stopped, rested the horses and let them graze a bit.

  “I figure we can make the border to Texas in two, three days,” I said.

  She was dressed in man’s clothing, rough coat, britches, low-heeled boots, and a felt hat with her hair tucked up under it. I watched her throat when she drank from the canteen. It was a nice delicate throat.

  I stood watching the direction we’d come from to see if we were being pursued. It was flat where we were now and you could see a pretty good distance. We’d left the main road earlier and cut overland but the grass, tall and dry as it was, left a clear trail for even a half-assed tracker.

  I didn’t see anything. Not yet, at least.

  “How you holding up?” I said.

  “I could use something for my head,” she said.

  “Maybe this would be a good time to consider getting off the booze and dope,” I said.

  “Yes, thank you for your advice,” she said sarcastically.

  “Just meant a clear head might be of some advantage when you’re being chased by a man like Johnny Waco.”

  She looked too at the direction we’d just come from.

  Except for the whisper of the wind over the brittle grass there didn’t seem to be anything alive except her and I.

  I shrugged and said, “Maybe he’s not going to come after you…”

  She laughed a short hard laugh.

  “He’ll be coming,” she said.

  “Maybe not. Maybe he figures you keep running away, what’s the point. Maybe he’ll just find himself another woman—one who will stay home.”

  She tightened the cinch on her saddle like a woman who knew a lot about such things, then mounted.

  “He’s coming,” she said and patted the satchel.

  “What’s in there besides some of your underthings?”

  She smiled. “Enough of his money to last me a very long time.”

  “The five hundred wasn’t enough for you?”

  “It’s not a matter of how much,” she said, “but whose.”

  “So you robbed him?”

  “Blind as a bat.”

  I looked back again and saw the column of dust from the road about the point we left it and cut across country.

  “Yeah, he’s coming,” I said.

  And we rode like hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  We stayed ahead of them as though we were out-racing our own shadows, and at one point Antonia came alongside me and shouted, “Follow me!” and I did without hesitation. I saw the town rise out of the grass and heard a train whistle blowing.

  We were practically off our horses before we fully had them stopped, the train just pulling away from the station. I helped lift her aboard one of the cars then ran to catch up and finally got aboard just as the train picked up speed. You could smell the steam off its engine, the hot cinder along the track.

  We found seats in one of the cars and sat across from each other and in a little while the train conductor came down the aisle asking for tickets. When he reached us I said we didn’t have any tickets and could we buy some from him.

  “Where you headed?” he said.

  “Where does this train go?”

  “All the way to Refugio.”

  “We’ll take two tickets to Refugio, then,” I said. “How much?”

  He was a short thick-set man in his middle years wearing a black cap and coat and his shoes were polished. A silver watch chain with a fob hung from his waistcoat buttonhole to the pocket.

  “It’s not policy to purchase tickets onboard,” he said. “I’ll have to put you off at the next stop and you’ll have to pay the ticket master there.”

  “Look,” I said, taking the envelope from my pocket with the city council money in it. I peeled off fifty dollars and held it out to him. “Do you think that will cover it—the fare?”

  “Mister, that’s way too much.”

  “You got a private car for rent on this line?”

  He nodded.

  “Would that cover the trip and a private car and your troubles?”

  “Yes sir, it would.”

  “Then if you wouldn’t mind.”

  He led us back up the aisle and into another car and through that one into a third that had private rooms on one side. He opened the door to one of them and let us in and told us that the dining car was one car back and lunch would be served—he pulled out his watch, the one hooked to the silver chain, and looked at it—in half an hour. I thanked him and closed the door.

  Antonia had taken off her hat and set it on the velvet-covered seat beside her. Her hair tumbled down to her shoulders, a nice dark brown thicket. She unbuttoned her coat and I could see the free weight of her breasts inside the peasant shirt, the V of it held loosely together with a thick string. She didn’t have those sleepy doped eyes now. They were alert and alive with excitement or whatever it was she was feeling after the chase. I sat down opposite her and took my own hat off and ran my fingers through hair that needed a cut and had shagged over the back of my collar. I felt the stubble on my jaw as well and realized I probably smelled like horse sweat but knew this wasn’t any time for worrying about formalities. She smelled like a cake of soap, what I smelled of her.

  She still held the valise on her lap, gripping the handle with both hands.

  “Did you take it because you wanted to make sure he’d come after you?” I said, thinking it was a damn dumb thing of her to do if she really wanted to be free of the guy.

  “He owes me this much and more,” she said. “But it’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I just wanted to take something from him I knew he cared about—like he took from me.”

  I looked out the window, the prairie slipping past in a hurry, the telegraph poles like tall straight lines, the train’s own squat shadow just down below. I could feel the vibration up through the soles of my boots.

  “Once we hit Refugio you feel safe enough to strike out on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “What about you?” she said. “Where will you go?”

  “Better neither of us knows where the other is headed.”

  “Why? I mean we pulled it off.”

  “I doubt a man like Waco will quit that easy. And if either of us is caught we can’t say about the fate of the other if we don’t know.”

  “You’d tell if he caught you?”

  “I might. You might too. I saw what he did to Chalk Bronson for some pe
rceived slight.”

  Her light demeanor changed just then.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “You were there.”

  “No, I went inside, remember.”

  “You weren’t curious?”

  “No. I mean I didn’t want to know, I suppose.”

  “He broke his hands,” I said. “He branded him and broke his hands after he had him beaten by a couple of his cowboys.”

  She turned her face away and I could see she was fighting back tears.

  “You still love him?”

  “Who, Johnny? I never loved Johnny.”

  “No, I mean Chalk.”

  She wiped at her wet eyes with the heel of her hand.

  “No.”

  “I think he does you, a little, as much as loving two women at the same time allows him to.”

  She looked at me then again, fiercely, intently.

  “Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” she said. “Love is.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I only come close to it one time, and not all that close.”

  “It hurts to the same degree it feels good.”

  Then we seemed to run out of words and after a little while she lay down across her seat using the satchel as a pillow and I said I was going to walk out on one of the platforms and have a smoke. She closed her eyes. I didn’t smoke, but used it as an excuse to go and have a drink in the dining car alone. The last thing I needed was for her to get drunk.

  I found an empty table and a black porter came over wearing a white shirt and black trousers and said, “Suh, we don’t serve nothin’ to eat for ’nother half an hour.”

  “Can I get a whiskey?”

  “Yas suh.”

  He went off and returned in a few moments with a whiskey and I paid him for it and sat there looking out the window and taking my time with it. In spite of everything, it seemed like high adventure to me—having a runaway wife of a real bad guy and a satchel full of his stolen money. And to think I could be clerking in some general store somewhere, selling notions to fat ladies in big hats. I asked the porter to bring me another whiskey when he came to get the glass and asked him when we were scheduled to pull into Refugio and he said around ten o’clock that evening.