Big Bend

by John Benteen

  Late in the afternoon, they started out again. Far to the south, an immense escarpment reared itself, a wall of striated rock that glowed fantastically, gorgeously, in the final rays of the sun on the Mexican side of the river, Concho said, in Coahuila.

  Now they fought their way through some of the worst country they had encountered yet. It was a nightmare of climbing in and out of defiles and up and down ridges. They stumbled over rocks and lost their footing in slides of loose gravel; their chaps deflected cactus thorns from their legs, but the brutal barbs of cholla that slid in with amazing ease lacerated their bodies above the waist. They circled and twisted and zigzagged, and Ramsey would have been completely lost if it had not been for the ever-present landmarks of the escarpment and the Chisos. But this detour, Concho said, was necessary. They had to avoid the traffic from the main crossings of the Rio at Boquillas and San Vicente, which moved up and down across the level land.

  “We close to Chilicotal now,” Concho told Ramsey when they rested before dawn. “That where they hold the stock when they bring it in. But if I right, they ain’t nobody there now. We got to be careful, anyhow. We work our way around the foot of that there mountain yonder. It’ll take us nigh on to all day, likely, but that’s jest right, cause it’ll bring us out to Stewart’s ranch at nightfall. That’s when we want to git there, in case somebody’s camped around there.”

  Sam Ramsey, pulling the fishhook barbs of cholla from his arm, only grunted. Stewart’s ranch, food, rest, weapons ... these all seemed to him now only an impossible dream. They would never reach it. They were doomed to struggle across the desert forever, always tormented by hunger, thirst, and bleeding feet, clawed at by a thousand barbed plants, baked by sun and frozen by the night winds.

  “Tomorrow night,” Concho said. “Tomorrow night, man, we’ll eat ... ” He gnawed at the final remnant of javelina and tossed the last bone over his shoulder. Then he picked up his crutch and flung it from him, too. “Don’t need that bastard no longer,” he said. “It only slowin’ me down, now.” Then he arose. “Come on,” he said. “We got some open country to cross, and we better git it done before daylight.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was three hours after sundown the next night when they made Stewart’s ranch—or what was left of it. The wooden outbuildings were only piles of ashes, their sun-dried timbers consumed completely by the flames. The ranch house itself, small, two-roomed, of adobe, had been gutted by fire as well; in the starlight, it was stark as a skull, its glassless windows like empty sockets, its tin roof collapsed inward. Only the corrals of pole and woven wire remained, their open gates creaking in the breeze. As his eyes swept the ruins, Sam Ramsey felt first a kind of sickness and then something of Concho’s and Nora’s anger. Here was a man’s lifework destroyed, wantonly—waste, senseless waste.

  “Denning and his outfit did a thorough job,” Ramsey said thinly.

  “Yeah, didn’t they?” Concho grunted. He stood there motionless, arms at his sides, his big hands clenching and unclenching. Then he gave an odd, soft sigh. “Well, we still got them to deal with. Later.”

  The ruined ranch lay on a flat between two humped hills. Even its windmill had been burned, blades, gears, pipes, all a collapsed and twisted pile of metal in the ashes of the wooden tower. No water trickled now from the mouth of a pipe that fed two tanks, one for stock, the other carefully covered, for human consumption, and both tanks were dry. There was water, though, in a spring nearby, where the land fell away in a shelf. Cattle had trampled and muddied it. “The Mexes ain’t rounded ’em all up yet,” Concho grunted, as they drank.

  “Where’s the cave?” Ramsey asked.

  Concho pointed to the east. “Up yonder on the mountainside. You can’t see it from down here. I’m sure there ain’t nobody found it yet. We always went up to it a different way each time, so’s not to make any trail.”

  Ramsey’s stomach growled with hunger. “Then let’s go,” he said.

  Under cover of darkness, they crossed the flat, and then Ramsey followed Concho as the black man wove his way up a steep, talus-strewn slope, taking advantage of a network of small washes and gullies. They were at the cave before Ramsey even saw it: One moment, Concho was there; the next, he had vanished. When Ramsey blurted in surprise, Concho answered in a whisper: “In here.” Then Ramsey saw the small crescent of darkness behind boulders on the narrow shelf they had reached. He dropped to hands and knees, wondering how many rattlers had taken refuge here tonight, and crawled in. He could see absolutely nothing, not even Concho, somewhere in there ahead of him.

  Then a match flared. In its light, he saw that they were in a small, domed room of rock. Not much more than ten-by-twelve, its roof was just high enough for a man on his knees. The floor was clean-swept; along one wall were neatly stacked canned goods and rolled blankets. That much he glimpsed before the match went out. Concho muttered, struck another one, and then there was the more substantial light of a candle.

  “See?” Concho said. “Ever’thing’s still in order.” He chuckled happily and slapped two cased rifles leaning against the blankets. “Even the guns and ammo! Me and Stewart put in many a hour’s work here—see them water barrels along the back wall? We refilled ’em jest before Denning’s outfit hit us.” He scooped up some of the cans. “Beans and canned salmon, here—” And he tossed the food to Ramsey. “There a alcohol stove somewhere around here, but I ain’t gonna wait to cook.” He had found an opener and was already opening cans. When he was through, he tossed it to Ramsey and handed him a spoon.

  They ate like wolves. And yet, surprisingly, their stomachs had shrunken so they could hold only a fraction of the contents of the cans. Then Concho began unrolling blankets. “Here you go, man. We’ll sleep tonight! Don’t even hafta worry about keepin’ any kinda guard.”

  Ramsey gingerly pulled off boots that seemed glued to his feet. His socks were a bloody pulp, his feet a stinking rawness. Concho, smoothing his own blanket pile, glanced up. Then he said, “Wait a minute, man. We got to take care of them feet.”

  “With what?” Ramsey said dryly, but Concho was already searching among the stores. When he turned around, he had a metal first-aid kit in his hand. He set it down, crawled to the back of the cave, and in a moment returned with a clean rag and a pan full of water in which there was a bar of soap. He sat down cross-legged at the end of Ramsey’s blankets. “Lemme have the right one first.”

  “You can’t—” Ramsey protested, but Concho already had his ankle. “You washed out them bandages of mine, didn’t you?” he grunted. Then, as gently as any woman could have, he sponged the dirt away from raw flesh. Ramsey bit his lip as iodine stung him. After which, adeptly, Concho applied bandages of gauze and tape. Then he crawled to the entrance with the pan of water and dumped it.

  When he came back, Ramsey said, “Much obliged.”

  “Por nada,” Concho said, not looking at Ramsey. “I wish to hell we had some spare boots and socks up here. Them rider’s boots ain’t worth a damn for what we got to do. But maybe the tape’ll make it easier.” He crawled into his blankets and pulled them up about him. “Good night,” he said, and in a moment his snore filled the cave.

  Ramsey slid down in the blankets. For the first time in days, his feet were free of pain; now there was only a throbbing ache that, by contrast, was almost pleasurable. As the blankets trapped his body’s warmth, he slid easily into his first good sleep in a week.

  What awakened him was a sound; and it brought him upright out of unconsciousness—though he could not place it, an alarm of some sort. Then he heard it again, and in the pie-slice of sunlight that fell through the cave entrance, he saw Concho working a rifle bolt, the weapon across his knees, an open box of ammunition beside him.

  Before he could speak, Concho said: “Easy. We got company.” He pointed to the mouth of the cave; then, with the gun cradled in his arm, he crawled forward, out onto the boulder-rimmed shelf beyond the cave’s entrance.

  Blinking sleep
away, Ramsey seized the other weapon, pulled it from its case, and scooped up a clip of cartridges. With his heart pounding, but the weight of the ’03 Springfield good and reassuring against him, he crawled after Concho. They had slept late. Outside, the sun was hot and bright.

  Concho lay on his belly, peering through a natural rifle port between two rocks. Ramsey squirmed up beside him and Concho moved to let him look. Squinting against the light, Ramsey saw, spread out on the flat nearly a half mile below them the ruins of the ranch. Then he drew in his breath. Two saddled horses were tethered to the wire of the corral. And two men—they wore the high-crowned charro hats and tight pants of Mexicans—were poking at the ashes of a burned outbuilding.

  “Who are they?” Ramsey whispered, though it would be impossible for normal speech to be heard at that distance.

  There was a strange grin on Concho’s face. “Unlucky folks,” the Negro said in a natural voice. “A couple of Revolucionarios passin’ through. They jest had to stop and poke around to see if there’s anything left they could steal.”

  “They alone?”

  “Yeah,” Concho said. “That’s how come they unlucky.” Then Ramsey saw that he had passed his arm through the sling of the rifle and drawn it tight.

  “Wait!” Ramsey heard himself blurt. “What are you gonna do?”

  Concho was up on his knees, now, an elbow braced on top of a rock. He pushed the stock of the rifle into his shoulder tightly. “Git us some hawses,” he said.

  “But you can’t just—” Ramsey bit off the words. Cold-blooded murder, he thought, staring at the unsuspecting men. One of them was squatting as he poked into the ashes; the other walked in circles around the building’s ruins. “You can’t possibly hit ’em at this distance,” Ramsey finished. “All you’ll do is warn ’em we’re here.”

  Concho did not answer. He was squinting down the rifle barrel. Then he raised his head, adjusted the field sight. “That oughta be about right,” he murmured, not to Ramsey, but to himself. “And there ain’t a bit of wind.”

  “Concho—” Ramsey began again; and then he shut up and began to load his own rifle. Concho was a natural force, raw, unstoppable—like a rockslide or a flash flood. And these men, if Concho’s aim was good, were doomed. But if Concho missed, Ramsey would have to try to kill them, too. Once warned, they could not be allowed to escape.

  Though they were nearly a half mile distant, the morning air was so clear that Ramsey could see them in detail. The one who had been squatting got to his feet and gestured to his companion with the stick he had used to stir the ashes. The sun glinted off gold braid in the brim of his sombrero and off the huge rowels of the spurs on his black leather boots. The other, taller, but not so richly dressed, nodded, as if receiving an order. Then he turned and walked toward the horses and the rifle thundered in Ramsey’s ears as Concho shot him in the back. He pitched forward on his face, heavily, and lay still.

  The other man stared, frozen, transfixed. Then he whirled, head swiveling wildly, and Ramsey would have sworn he could see the whites of his eyes. Suddenly he began to run toward the horses, and Concho fired again.

  He missed. A puff of dust bloomed at the heels of the running man.

  Ramsey heard Concho’s growled curse, the snick of the bolt, and the third shot, all blurred together in a single sound.

  The runner tripped, fell to his knees. He tried to rise; Concho fired again, and he collapsed.

  Concho turned to Ramsey, his big lips twisted in a triumphant grin. “There you are,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Ramsey. “There we are.”

  Concho ejected the spent round, locked another in the chamber. “Now, we jest lay doggo for a spell to make sure that shooting don’t bring nobody else.” He put his eye to the aperture between the rocks. “I’ll keep watch out here. Why don’t you open us up some breakfast?”

  ~*~

  Vultures were already wheeling high overhead when Concho at last deemed it safe to go down and claim the horses. With food packed into blanket rolls and their filled canteens from the cave slung over their shoulders, Ramsey and the Negro skittered down the slope and warily crossed the flat, guns ready. But they made the ruins of the ranch without alarm, and Concho went first to the man who had run and turned him over with his boot. Dark, sightless eyes stared skyward from a flat-nosed face with high cheekbones and a gash of a mouth.

  “Yaqui Injun,” Concho said. “That means he likely from Leon Sanchez’ outfit. Sanchez has got a lot of Yaquis in his bunch. That’s good; I’m glad they Sanchez’ men and not Villa’s.”

  “I thought Sanchez was part of Villa’s army.”

  “Everybody in the North part of Villa’s army now,” Concho said. “That because he winnin’. But Sanchez waited a long time before he took sides. Long enough so Pancho ain’t goin’ to trouble himself about two of Sanchez’ men bein’ bushwhacked. If they was his own, soon as he found out about it, he wouldn’t rest ’til he’d hunted us down like wolves.”

  “Just the same,” Ramsey said, “it might not be a bad idea to haul these bodies off and bury ’em.”

  “That just what I was thinkin’,” Concho said. Then he squatted and began tugging at the dead man’s boots. “These too good to throw away. They got flatter heels and look like they oughta fit you.”

  “I don’t want ’em,” Ramsey said.

  Concho didn’t even look up. “Don’t be a damn fool,” he said.

  Even without socks, the boots were very comfortable. The bodies yielded, as well, two six-guns and plenty of ammunition for each. In saddle scabbards were Winchester rifles, and there was a bandolier of ammunition across each saddle pommel. The horses were good, but skittish, flanks marked by the big spurs, mouths ruined by spade bits. That discovery caused the last tatters of Ramsey’s regret at the ambush to vanish. The saddles were Mexican, with enormous flat horns and smooth-worn wooden seats.

  They loaded the dead men across the saddles and led the horses for nearly two miles. At last, at the foot of a big hill that was only a mound of sand, gravel, and shale, its only growth a few clumps of cactus, Concho halted. “Here,” he said. They unloaded the bodies and laid them in a hollow at the foot of the hill. Then, as agile as a jaguar, Concho ran up the side of the mound. Halfway up, he circled around until he was above the corpses and began to stamp his huge feet, pushing down rocks and gravel, digging out sand. Suddenly he jumped aside as a full-sized slide developed, boiling down the hillside in a cloud of dust. Tumbling rocks and gravel poured down in a cascade; when the high swirl of dust had settled, the bodies were entombed.

  Concho half ran, half slid back down. “The wind blow out what tracks we left,” he said. “A day’s time and nobody ever know what happened to ’em.” He took the reins of his horse from Ramsey and swung up into the saddle, his eyes gleaming. “Plenty of guns and two good hawses. We don’t git Nora back now, it our own damn fault. Come on, less ride. We kin make Sheep Kelly’s hide-out at the Mariscal mine by sunset, easy!”

  It was good to be armed and on horseback again. Ramsey felt renewed and invigorated. Sheep Kelly might have twenty men, Concho had said, and they would all be experienced fighters. Nevertheless, Ramsey no longer felt that the odds were impossible. He had no idea what lay ahead of them, but whatever it was, he felt equal to it once again—especially with Concho at his side.

  As Concho led him by a devious route, always keeping to cover, it dawned on Ramsey that the big Negro was the first really professional fighting man he’d ever seen in action; and that they were a breed apart. Sam Ramsey himself had been too young to sign up when the recruiter for the Rough Riders had passed through North Wells. And even as he was growing up, the old days of West Texas had passed: The Apaches were subdued; the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raiser’s Association had rustling well in hand; the government of Mexico seemed stable, and the border had been quiet. Until that night in his horse pasture, he personally had never been the target of a shot fired in anger, nor had he fired one himself.<
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  Now, he thought, he had changed. Somewhere along the way, the old Sam Ramsey had been lost and a new one had taken over. The man who called himself Ramsey now was like a tool tempered in fire and then annealed to new hardness. The new Ramsey looked at the old one and found him pathetic. The Sam Ramsey who had started out alone in blissful ignorance of the country he was entering and the kind of men he was going up against wouldn’t have lasted for the flicker of a match flame. But the new Sam Ramsey—the man he was now—was equal to whatever came. He had learned the virtues of endurance and caution and especially ruthlessness. And he had also learned that it was better not to be alone.

  That, he thought, watching Concho’s broad back rise and fall ahead of him, was the biggest change. Always, he had treasured his aloneness, his self-sufficiency. Now, it no longer seemed anything to treasure. Nor did he feel alone any more. Not only was there Concho, riding ahead of him, ready to fight alongside him, but there was Nora Stewart, too. Somehow she had entered his life, in the few short hours he had known her, and had become important to him—more important than his horses, more important than his aloneness, more important than his very life. It was strange, he thought, and nothing he could now make head or tail out of … but he was no longer a man alone.

  The sun rose to zenith, blazed down on them, baked them in a way to which he had now become accustomed; and as it finally slid down the brazen sky, Concho gestured toward the hump of a huge mountain not far distant to the south. “Yonder’s Mariscal,” he said. “That’s where the old mercury mine was. And that’s where Sheep Kelly hangs out now, and that’s where he’ll have Miz Stewart.”

  Ramsey tilted back his hat. The mountain ran almost north-south, its crest a good fifteen hundred feet above the flatlands. Like all mountains in this geological hell, its flanks seemed almost naked, devoid of cover.