Big Bend

by John Benteen

  Besides, he was counting on the fact that the herd could not be pushed all the way to the Rio without halting for water and graze on the way. Somewhere south of the Santiagos, the rustlers would have to lay over for rest, or, in this country, they’d kill the horses. That would give him a chance to close the gap.

  As the setting sun painted mountains and desert with fantastic colors, he oriented his map. The Chisos Mountains were the biggest range down there, and in their heart was a basin that had once been the hiding place of Apaches. Maybe there was graze and water there—if he lost the trail, that was where he would head.

  The map—and what information he’d picked up here and there—told him little else. The old Comanche war trail, from Mexico to the Panhandle, was the one main road of this country, and keeping on in his present direction, he’d strike it tomorrow. From it fanned out a few pathetic trails after it had crossed the natural fortress of the Santiagos—they led, probably, to the five or six widely scattered ranches where a few hardy souls struggled to wrest enough graze from the desert to support a handful of cows and sheep. Far to the west, at Terlingua, there was a mine still in operation and a tiny settlement around it, another, also far west, at Study Butte. Less than a hundred inhabitants, all told, in those thousands of square miles, and below the Rio, it was even more desolate, the lone settlements of Boquillas and San Vicente hugging the river, and beyond them only uncounted miles of desert, mountains, and chaparral.

  He made no fire. A can of cold beans and some leathery tortillas were his supper. After he had eaten, he drank freely from his canteen, knowing he could refill it at the spring. Then, with the hobbled horses making comfortable sounds in the darkness, he leaned back against his saddle and lit a cigarette.

  Probably, he thought, he was as much fool as Shan Williams had called him. But he had to keep on, even if it meant he died out here, for without his horses, he had nothing and was nobody. If he did not get his horses back, he felt as if he would cease to exist anyway.

  He had brought plenty of tobacco, and he lit another cigarette as soon as the first one was gone. It was not right, he thought, for a man’s life to come only to that—a herd of horses and no more. But that was the way it was with him, and it was too late to help it. Maybe if things had been different fifty years ago, maybe if the Army had never sent his father south; if it had only sent him to Wyoming or Montana instead—

  By the time he finished the second cigarette, it had grown bitterly cold, and he put on his heavy jacket. The rising wind clashed and rattled the willows and cottonwood sprouts around the spring. Ramsey spread his blankets, hoping no sidewinder or scorpion would come to share their warmth, lay down, pillowed his head against his saddle, and tried to sleep.

  But, even trail-weary as he was, sleep was a long time coming. The wind played mournfully around outcroppings and updraws; it rustled creosote and rattled dried canes of ocotillo and the blades of yucca and Spanish bayonet. Animals were coming to drink at the spring, too; he heard a faint grunting and an occasional squeal down in the draw that meant javelinas, the lean, musky little wild pigs of the desert; once there was a snort that sounded like a startled deer. He had been through so much, had been so tense and alert all day that, as soon as he fell into a doze, the slightest sound brought him up with his hand on the holstered pistol near his head.

  Presently, though, not even his taut-strung nerves could keep him awake any longer; at last he fell into a sleep as deep as if he’d been slammed over the head with a stone.

  And when he awakened, it was daylight. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a pair of enormous, dusty black boots planted in the sand ten feet away; and the second thing was his own pistol, trained squarely at his head, the big gun almost lost in the huge, black hand that held it.

  “Don’t move,” a deep voice said. “Jest lay there, mister.”

  At first Sam Ramsey, doped with sleep, had thought it was a dream. The voice drove all sleep from him and proved it wasn’t. He opened his eyes wider, without lifting his head, and stared at the apparition between himself and the rising sun.

  The Negro wore a straw sombrero, brim and crown alike tattered and frayed. His face was black as anthracite and glistening with sweat; his eyes were in shadow, but his thick lips were curled back in a kind of snarl and his teeth gleamed startlingly white. He was a giant of a man, with tremendous shoulders and lean, rawboned arms and legs; he wore a filthy flannel shirt, an equally filthy neckerchief draped around his neck, and a pair of tattered chaps. He was squatting flatfooted, like a Mexican, and the .45 in his hand did not waver.

  Ramsey’s heart sank. Well, it was over before it had begun. They had left someone to cover their backtrail farther back than he had figured. And their lookout had taken him like a child snatching up a piece of candy.

  “Awright,” the Negro said. “Now that you awake, you can sit up. But no sudden moves.”

  Slowly, Ramsey raised himself. The dawn wind was chilly, and as the blanket fell away, he shivered.

  The Negro tipped back the straw sombrero. Now Ramsey could see his eyes. There was killing in them.

  “It feel different now, don’t it, you white trash?” the Negro said. “The shoe on the other foot now, ain’t it? How you like lookin’ at your executioner?”

  Ramsey blinked, not understanding.

  Then the Negro called, not loudly, but in a voice that carried, “Awright, Noracita. Everything under control now.”

  Ramsey could not control a start of surprise when a woman’s voice answered from down in the barranca. “Coming, Concho.”

  At Ramsey’s confusion, something glinted in Concho’s eyes. “Y’all give up too soon, didn’t you? You almost had us one time, but we was holed up and you rode right by. But it didn’t matter, anyhow—you knew we couldn’t live out on the desert with no water and no horses and only five bullets in the gun. You thought the desert would take good care of us and you wouldn’t never hafta worry about witnesses. But you was wrong, white man—and before I git through with you, you’re gonna know just how wrong you really was!”

  “I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” Ramsey heard himself say. Then motion in the gently sloping draw that led down to the spring caught his eye. Despite the gun, he sat up quickly and very straight as the woman came into view.

  The sun had burnt her so dark, it was hard to tell whether she was white, Indian, or Mexican. She wore a straw sombrero like the Negro’s, a denim brush-jacket, a long, divided leather skirt, and riding boots. She stopped for a moment, staring at the two men, and then she came toward them wearily, as if she were sore-footed. She took a position beside the Negro, whose height dwarfed her, and now Ramsey saw that she had chestnut hair and gray eyes and that her features were completely Caucasian. In fact, she must once have been very pretty; but now she was tired and drawn and powdered with dust. Her bosom was full beneath the brush-jacket and the smeared white shirt under it; her waist slender, and there was a good curve to her hips. He could not really tell, but if she were over thirty, Ramsey would have been wrong in his guess. He had no more idea what she was doing here than if some kind of flying machine had suddenly descended onto the desert.

  “Look at ’im,” Concho said, without turning his head. “Ain’t he one of ’em?”

  The woman was silent for a moment. Then she said, in a soft, husky, very weary voice, “I don’t know.”

  “He bound to be,” Concho said.

  “I don’t know,” the woman said again. “I thought I never would forget any of them, but I don’t remember him.”

  “That cut no ice,” Concho said. “Blood for blood, anyhow.” Until now, the pistol had not been cocked. It clicked as the big thumb eared back the hammer.

  “Wait,” the woman said. Her voice trembled. “I don’t want to see it. I’ve seen all I want to see; I can’t watch this.”

  “Then you go over yonder or back down to the water. I’m gonna make him stand up, clear of them blankets and that saddle, ’caus
e we don’t wanta ruin them. Then I gonna gut-shoot him. I think that only fair, don’t you?”

  “Concho—” she said hesitantly.

  “You go back down to the water and put yo’ fingers in yo’ ears. He gonna holler awhile.”

  The air was full of the smell of death. Ramsey was trembling. The woman did not move. “Git up!” Concho snapped. “Stand up slow and easy.”

  Ramsey pulled himself up out of the blankets. His legs were shaking and he had a terrible need to make water. He was afraid to speak lest it trigger the fatal shot, and yet, even in his fear, outrage was burning in him; and suddenly he heard his own voice, rasping, angry, and astonishingly controlled. “Goddammit, don’t I even get a chance to talk?”

  “How much chance y’all give Hank Stewart?” Concho said, rising to six and a half feet of height, a terrible blackness against the lightening sky.

  “Who the hell’s Hank Stewart? Another one of your horse-thief gang? He the one I shot the other night in my pasture?”

  Suddenly the woman stepped around beside Concho to confront Ramsey. She barely came up to the Negro’s biceps. She put a hand on Concho’s left wrist. “Wait a minute,” she said.

  “No need to wait. This buzzard—”

  “I said ‘wait!’” This time she snapped it, and it was an order.

  Concho hesitated. Then he said grudgingly, “Yes, ma’am.” But he did not lower the gun.

  The woman took a step closer to Ramsey, peering at him closely. Then she said, very softly, “I don’t think you were at the ranch.” Then she asked: “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  He licked dry lips, aware that the determination in Concho’s eyes had not abated. “My name’s Ramsey. I’m trailing a bunch of stolen horses—”

  “Morgans?”

  He forgot Concho, then. “You’ve seen ’em?”

  She did not answer that. She stepped back. “His saddle stock and pack animals,” she said to Concho, jerking her head. “Morgans like the ones Kelly was driving.”

  “Who’s Kelly?” Ramsey blurted, but they ignored him.

  “That cut no ice,” Concho said. He still had the gun up. “All the same, he could have been at the ranch. ’Sides, we need his gear.”

  “Where’re you from?” the girl asked.

  “North Wells.”

  “You know a man there, a big man that brought a bunch of people in here—his name’s Tom something.”

  “Denning.”

  “Why weren’t you with his crowd?”

  “I don’t travel with any crowd.”

  The woman looked at Concho and shook her head. “He wasn’t there,” she said. “I’ll swear to it.”

  “You can’t know everybody was there. He may be lyin’.”

  “This ranch,” Ramsey said, “that you keep talkin’ about. What happened there?”

  “Those riders from North Wells,” the woman said tonelessly, “murdered my husband.”

  Ramsey only stared at her for a moment. Denning had—?

  She went on, her voice still oddly flat. “My name’s Nora Stewart. We had a little ranch southeast of the Chisos. Not much, but it kept us alive. Me, Hank—my husband.” Here for the first time, her voice faltered. She swallowed hard. “And Concho,” she added.

  Her breasts rose as she sucked in a deep breath. “Ten days ago this man Denning and his outfit came back across the border. They’d had a fight, were all shot up. Like a bunch of ... of hydrophobic wolves, ready to slash at anything. They ... they accused us of being in with Sheep Kelly and his bunch and ... they hanged my husband and burned the ranch. Tore down our windmill, killed all our saddle stock ...” Her voice shook and faded, whether because of anger or grief, he could not tell. “No trial, no anything, wouldn’t even listen to Hank. Just … strung him up to the shed rafters like ... ” She shook her head and broke off.

  “Denning came back to North Wells,” Ramsey said. “He never mentioned nothing like this.”

  “A man tell murder on hisself?” Concho sneered. “They was gonna hang me, too, and maybe Miss Nora, for all I know. But I busted out from ’em and took Nora with me.” There was savage triumph on his face. “Killed one a them bastards, too. Jest one good hit with my fist.”

  “Denning lost two men. Said to Mescans near San Vicente.”

  “He only lost one to them. Lost the other to me,” Concho said proudly.

  “No wonder Billy Goodhue was primed to explode,” Ramsey said.

  “What?” Concho wagged the gun.

  “Nothing,” Ramsey said. Then he said, “I’ve got a horse ranch near North Wells. Denning wanted me to go with ’em, but I turned him down. I wasn’t at your ranch. I didn’t know anything about that killing.”

  “Then what you doin’ down here?”

  “Three nights ago a gang hit my spread, lifted my whole herd of Morgans. If I don’t git ’em back, I’m ruined. They didn’t bother to hide the trail, and it’s brought me this far.”

  “By yourself?” Concho’s tone was incredulous.

  “Nobody else to come with me. I—ain’t very well liked in North Wells.”

  “You gonna be liked a whole lot less when we come ridin’ in on your horses and give that Mister Denning what he got comin’ to him,” Concho said. “He owes us for one murder, a whole ranch layout, and better’n a hundred head of cows.”

  “He ran off your stock?”

  “No. But now that Hank’s dead, Sheep Kelly’ll snatch ’em up and them Mescans’ll fill enchiladas with ’em. He owe us for somethin’ else, too—ten days out in the desert on foot with no canteens an’ mighty little to eat.”

  Ramsey blinked. “For God’s sake, how’d you live ten days in this hell like that?”

  Concho grinned without humor. “Travelin’ at night. I know ever’ water hole and spring in the Big Bend country. If I didn’t, we’da been dead two days after we got loose. And I took me a six-shooter off that guard I mashed. Wa’n’t but five bullets, and we used all them up, but enough to get us a little meat now and then.” He looked at Ramsey’s heaped gear. “We gonna travel the resta the way to North Wells in style.”

  Ramsey said, “You will if you kill me. But that’s the only way.”

  “I ain’t particular,” Concho said. “I got me a mad on and I’d jest as soon kill you as anybody I know, except for that Denning hombre.”

  “You’ll have to do it,” Ramsey said. “Because I came here after my horses and I ain’t turning back. And I figure it’ll take every bit of outfit I brought with me to do what I come to do.”

  The woman had sat down, resting her head in her hands as if unutterably weary. Now she spoke again.

  “Look,” she said, “just give us a little food and lend us one of your horses. You do that, and we’ll make it to North Wells.”

  “Maybe,” Ramsey said. “But you’ll never make it out of North Wells again.”

  “You think not?” Concho’s grin was like that of a wolf.

  “You won’t,” Ramsey said. “Not if what you told me was true. There are eighteen men in North Wells that were mixed up in that hanging. They didn’t report it when they came in—they was over their madness by then and must have realized what they did. Not only hangin’ a man without a trial, but leavin’ a woman to die in the desert. They won’t want that gettin’ out.” His mind had grasped the facts now, and suddenly he was beginning to see how—if these two did not kill him—he might gain advantage from this meeting. “You”—he pointed at Concho—“you think the minute you show up in North Wells, they won’t recognize you and kill you? You won’t get to first base against Denning and that bunch.” He paused. “Not without help.”

  Nora Stewart had been listening intently. Now she said, “Mister, you’re driving at something. Help. What kind of help?”

  For the first time in this encounter, Sam Ramsey was able to smile faintly. “If you’ll make him put down my gun, we’ll cook up some coffee and some breakfast and I’ll tell you. Then, if you still want to kil
l me, at least I’ll have had a last meal.”

  Her gray eyes locked with his for a long moment. Her burnt and dusty face was expressionless, unreadable. Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

  “Put the gun away, Concho,” she said quietly, without looking at the Negro. “And let this gentleman make us some breakfast. I’m starving.”

  Chapter Five

  Ramsey was hungry, too, and the three of them ate like wolves. When the last bit of bacon grease had been sopped from the skillet and one final pot of coffee bubbled on the coals, Ramsey took out makings. Nora Stewart let out a sigh. “I’m almost beginning to feel human again.”

  Ramsey poured another cup of coffee and passed it to Nora. She drank it hungrily. For a while, the three of them sat in an odd, suspended silence. Then Nora had finished the coffee and passed the cup back to Ramsey and some light had come into her eyes. She even smiled a little, and she looked oddly shy. “One more thing,” she said hesitantly. “You wouldn’t happen to have soap ... and a towel?”

  Ramsey said, “Sure.” Again he searched the bag, brought out a small, worn towel and a bar of Octagon and passed them to her. She got stiffly to her feet. “I’m going to have a bath,” she said to Concho. “I’ve just got to have a bath.”

  “Go ahead,” Concho said. She started for the draw that led down to the spring, and Concho pulled Ramsey’s Colt from his waistband and laid it on his thigh, its muzzle pointing to Ramsey and his big hand covering grip and cylinder loosely. As Nora moved out of earshot, Concho said quietly: “Mister, if you even look towards that arroyo while she’s down there, I’ll blow you to Kingdom Come.”

  Ramsey said, “What do you think I am?” He poured the cup full of coffee and passed it to Concho. But he could not help thinking about her down there ... He frowned at Concho.