Mariana's Knight

by W. Michael Farmer

  He nodded to the rifle hanging over the door. “I’ll teach ye how to be a expert with that there buffalo rifle. Ye can shoot at those bastards from half a mile away and kill ever’ one of ’em with it if’n ye want to, but ye gotta be able to survive in this here desert to do it. Ye was lucky onct. Not likely to be again. I know a few tricks fer makin’ do in the desert, but ol’Yellow Boy there, he growed up in it. He’ll teach you to live in it and to make it support ye as if it was yore friend. He’ll teach ye a lot of other Apache tricks, too. Of that, I’m shore. When the time comes, we’ll saddle up and go get those bastards. But it shore as hell is gonna take a while fer ye to heal and grow and git smart and good with that there gun. It’s a-gonna be a powerful lot of work. Ye ready to work, wait, and learn?”

  I bowed my head and looked at the rough shack floor, realizing how big my talk had sounded when I had no idea of what it meant. I said, “Yes, sir, I can wait. I’ll work real hard, and I promise I’ll learn everything you can teach me, just so those murderers don’t get away.”

  Rufus nodded and leaned over to give me a gentle pat on the leg. “Don’t worry ’bout that. They’s justice a-comin’. They ain’t gittin’ away. We’re a-gonna get ’em.”

  The need for more sleep suddenly rushed over me, and I yawned and said, “Rufus, I’m very tired now.”

  He nodded, helped me lie back, and fixed my arm so it lay comfortably on my chest. I don’t remember much after that except that he and Yellow Boy seemed to be talking from far away as I drifted off.

  I woke up in the middle of the night from a troubled sleep with a deep thirst and needing to pee in the worst way. Rufus helped me up so I could pee off the edge of the porch, and he gave me a dipper of water. It was cold on the porch, but the wind had died to a light breeze, and the stars were twinkling in a black velvet sky. Looking down the side of the Organs toward the south, I could see a weak glow in the sky over El Paso.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE RANCH

  When I awoke on the morning after the Dripping Springs men had stopped by, an old coal-oil lantern with a soot-blackened chimney was the only light in the shack. The most delicious smell of frying bacon, biscuits, and coffee I can remember filled the shack. The biscuits were cooking in the old, crusty, black Dutch oven I remembered from the day before. Beside it on the stove, an old, beat-up coffeepot was steaming away.

  I pushed myself up with my good arm and asked Rufus, “Where’s Yellow Boy? He promised to help us. Has he decided he won’t?”

  Rufus looked over his shoulder and said, “Naw. He’s a-gonna help us. He’s just slipped back to the reservation fer a while a-visitin’ with his family. Oughter be back in a few weeks, maybe by the time ye’re healed up.”

  My lower lip trembled when I whined, “Are you sure he’s going to help us?”

  Rufus’s grin spread another inch under his whiskers. “Now don’t git yore drawers in no wad, Henry. Why, shore, he’s a-gonna help us. He’s just a-visitin’ his wife—you remember, his number-one wife.” Rufus stirred a pan of refried beans, then took the bacon out of the pan and put it on a tin plate. “How’d ye sleep, little man?”

  I yawned and said, “Pretty good I think. I don’t remember any bad dreams. My arm doesn’t throb anymore either, but my face hurts.”

  “Well, git on up then, if’n ye’re strong enough I’ll show ye around the place after we eat. They’s some hot water and a towel over on that little table next to the door. Wash the sleep outta yore eyes and see if’n ye can wash off that there poultice on yore face, too. It’s a-needin’ changin’. I’ll dress it with a new poultice. Then we’ll eat, and I’ll show ye around the place.”

  At breakfast, I kept packing my jaws with victuals like a squirrel. Rufus just spread some honey on a biscuit and dawdled with his eating pan. He kept saying, “Don’t make yoreself sick eatin’ too much now. They’s lots to see. I want ye to see it all. Hope ye’re a-gonna like it here.”

  When we finished, he collected the plates and put the rest of the beans and the last bits of burned bacon in our leftovers. He put all the pans and plates out on the porch for Cody to lick clean.

  After breakfast, Rufus helped me get dressed. My coat was shredded from crawling under the mesquite, so he threw a blanket over my shoulders to break the morning chill as we stepped out on the front porch.

  The view from his porch was spectacular. Sitting there, I could look around the western edge of the tall canyon cliffs and see the Florida Mountains about sixty miles away to the west, and it was easy to see the top of Tortugas Mountain, just outside of Las Cruces. I could also see a few outbuildings around Las Cruces, but that bald little wart of a mountain on the edge of the desert and the valley hid most anything I might have seen in Las Cruces.

  The trail up to Rufus’s shack from the desert floor had two ruts and was a straight, sandy road that cut up from a dusty, slightly wider road that ran alongside the Organs. That road passed Dripping Springs Ranch, which was five or six miles away, crossed a trail over the Organs by Baylor Pass, and then crossed the road that went over San Agustin Pass. The mesquites and creosote bushes along the steep road up to Rufus’s place were just barely separated enough for a wagon to go through, so a wagon couldn’t turn around until it got up to Rufus’s yard.

  “Well, whatcha think of my place?” Rufus asked, after we’d walked out into the yard a ways.

  I was too busy taking in every detail to give much of an answer, so I just said, “It’s nice.”

  Rufus had painted the shack a light, turquoise-green color that matched the salt and loco weeds and a few old cacti that grew scattered around the front of his place. Its original color had faded from years of hard sunlight, but it still blended in well with the plants. The canyon walls, rising like guardians on either side of the shack, were rusty red with an occasional black streak down their faces. Those walls must have been five or six hundred feet high, and they shaded the canyon most of the time, except near midday and late in the afternoon, when the sun, setting behind the Floridas, caught the front edge of the shack. It was about a hundred yards between the south canyon wall to the side of the shack. The canyon wall on the north side was about thirty yards from the shack. On that wall about thirty feet off the canyon floor and just about even with the shack was a wide ledge where piñon bushes grew. There were a couple more ledges like it farther up the wall.

  Rufus saw me looking at them and said, “I made me a place to hide on that first ledge, even chipped me some hand and toeholds in the canyon wall so I could get up to it fast if I need to. I keep jars of water and some beans and salt pork stashed away up there in case I have to stay there a while to hide from Indians or banditos.”

  “Can we go look at it?” I asked.

  Rufus grinned and said, “Soon as yore arm heals and ye can climb.”

  We walked back to a small shed Rufus used for a barn. It was about forty yards southeast behind the shack. It sat surrounded by a corral, and the privy was close by on the other side of the corral fence. He’d stretched barbed wire from the corral all the way across the canyon to keep his cattle and his mules from wandering off. A little spring-fed stream wandered down a wide, shallow gully close by the south wall. He had dammed it up, and, using planks that he nailed and tarred together, channeled the water to watering troughs and a holding tank he used for the shack. The barbed wire fence had a big pole gate at the corral that blocked a path disappearing back into the canyon. I could hear cattle occasionally bawling somewhere deep within the walls of the canyon.

  When we walked over to his shed, I noticed a pile of rocks. It was about ten feet in diameter and three or four feet high at the center and sat between the house and corral. As I looked around, I noticed other, smaller piles scattered back down the canyon. “What are these for?” I asked.

  Rufus thrust out his chest and said, “Well, boy, I intend to make me a first-class place here one of these days. I’m a-gonna use rocks like old Frenchy Rochas did over to Dog Canyon a few year ago.
He even made his fences outta rock. So I’ve been gittin’ my buildin’ stones together ’fore I start.”

  “Can I help you get your rocks together? Since you’re helping me, I want to help you all I can.”

  “Shore, boy. That there’d be a mighty big help.” He chewed on the wad of tobacco in his cheek a couple of times and said, “Ye know, carryin’ rocks to them there piles might be good fer ye. It’d help make ye stronger than anybody might think ye was fer yore years.”

  “Oh, boy! Can I start this afternoon?” I pleaded.

  Rufus laughed. “Naw, son. Ye gotta heal up first. They’s plenty of time to work carryin’ rocks to them there piles. ’Sides, they’s some things ye gotta know ’fore ye start a-pickin’ up rocks in this here canyon.”

  I was puzzled and a little frustrated that I couldn’t start getting big and strong right away. I asked, “Rufus, what do you have to know to pick up and carry a rock? Don’t you just pick it up and start walking? That doesn’t take training, does it?”

  Rufus’s brow wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed. “Naw, ye don’t jest pick it up and start a-walkin’. And don’t go a-gettin’ smart-mouthed on me now, boy. Lots times they’s bad critters under them rocks. Ye know, like rattlesnakes, scorpions, black wider spiders, or hundert leg centipedes. Those thangs’ll bite ye. Aye God, ye know ye been bit when they do, too. Why I seed men lose a fanger after a centipede got ’em. Ye gotta be careful when ye pick up a rock around here, son. They’s things under ’em that can kill ye.”

  I understood then I had a lot to learn and a short time to learn it, and I realized that old tobacco-chewing man was all that stood between death and me. I purposed right then to give Rufus the same respect I’d always given my daddy. I nodded, hung my head, and said, “Yes, sir. I didn’t mean to smart-mouth you. I won’t do it anymore.”

  Rufus nodded and said, “Ye’re a quick study, Henry. Ye’ll do fine.” He was quick to try to make up and asked, “How’s yore arm a-feelin’ in that there sling? Are ye warm enough with that blanket over yore shoulders? Ye wanna rest fer a while before we take us a walk up the canyon?”

  “No, sir, I’m ready to go now. My arm’s not throbbing, and the blanket feels good.”

  “All right then,” he said. “They’s some places I want ye to see up there, too.”

  “Yes, sir. I want to see it all.”

  We walked back past the shed where he kept his tools, harness, and some grain for his mules. He pulled a couple of poles down to make getting through the fence easy. When we were on the other side, he put them back in place and led off down the path through piñons that disappeared around a curve in the canyon walls. He called back over his shoulder, “Be kerful and don’t go a-steppin’ in no cow pies. It don’t make the shack smell too good if’n ye git that dirt on yore boots.” I saw the mischievous look on his face and laughed with him.

  We walked about a mile up the canyon. He had over a hundred head of cattle grazing on the best stand of gra’ma grass I’d ever seen. As we neared the end of the path, the sheer face of the cliffs in which the canyon ended rose up before us, dark and overpowering in the shadows. Looking at their smooth walls for the first time, I felt sure they couldn’t be climbed. But Rufus showed me a barely visible line of handholds that went right up the north wall cliff and disappeared up over the top.

  “I don’t know who fixed them places,” he said. “It’s easy to climb up to the top of them there cliffs using ’em. Why, I even done it myself onct. I ’spect it was Apaches or Pueblos made ’em. They’s probably a-fixin’ ’em a rabbit hole to ’scape in case they got trapped in this canyon. If’n ye foller them handholds up over the cliff there, ye’ll find a trail that takes ye across the Organs and down the other side ’bout where Aguirre Springs is.”

  I stood there frowning at the handholds, not understanding what Rufus had said about a rabbit hole. “It doesn’t look like a rabbit hole,” I said.

  Rufus put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Naw, and that mesquite bush you hid under out in the desert didn’t neither, but it was a rabbit hole nonetheless. Rabbit holes are hidin’ places and ’scape routes. A real rabbit hole always has two ’scape routes. Think on that next time ye need to pick a good hidin’ place, Henry.”

  I looked back up at the handholds in the cliff, and Rufus leaned down, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Now don’t ye go gittin’ no ideas ’bout goin’ up them thangs. One slip up high and ye’d be a goner fer shore.”

  I nodded and asked if I could see what they were like, and he let me walk over to it. I could barely stand on my toes and reach the first handhold with my unbroken arm.

  Rufus pointed toward a small crack in the south wall that was maybe twenty yards wide and ran for several hundred yards perpendicular to the main canyon before becoming impassable. To me it looked like a great place to play hideout. I noticed that there were mounds of dirt all the way down the length of the little canyon, every fifty or so yards, and it looked like bits of glass were scattered on the tops of them. “See that there crack in the world? What do ye think I use it fer?”

  I could only shake my head at the mystery.

  “See those mounds of dirt? I put ’em in there myself. They hold up my targets, usually bottles I git from the saloons. Them mounds is ’bout fifty yards apart, and they’s ten of them. That there is five hundert yards. It’s where I practice with that there Sharps a-hangin’ over the door. Soon as yore arm’s well, I’m a-gonna teach ye how to be a deadly shot with that there old rifle. Think ye’d wanna learn that kinda shootin’, son?”

  I was so excited at the prospect of shooting that big old rifle I could only smile and nod. Rufus spat a long, brown stream, smiled, and tousled my hair.

  “Well, soon as yore arm’s mended, we’ll start a-shootin’. Let’s git on back to the house.” He started to go, then turned again and said, “Oh, I almost fergot the main reason I brought ye up here today.” In the east cliff wall, he pointed out the source of the spring that fed the little stream that watered the canyon. “That there spring is the reason this place survived the big drought, and its water is our lifeblood. Defend it with yore life, if ye have to.”

  “I will. I promise,” I told Rufus.

  “I know ye will, boy,” he whispered as he headed on. About halfway back down the path, he stopped and pointed my attention toward the canyon’s north wall. “Notice anything peculiar ’bout them bushes over there?”

  I stared for a little while before I realized there was a faint outline of some kind of a bulge about the size of a big door on the canyon wall behind the bushes. Pointing toward it, I said, “All I see is something that looks like a little bulge in the cliff. It kind of reminds me of the door to a cave in Ali Baba’s adventures when Daddy used to read to me and my brothers. Is it a door? Will it open if I say open sesame?”

  Rufus grinned and said, “I’ll be a-hornswoggled. Dang, if ye ain’t got sharp eyes an’ a good memory. Ain’t nobody else seed that door till I pointed it out fer ’em. Yes, sir. It shore is a door. Made it and fixed it up to look like part of the mountain, I did. It’s to cover up the entrance to a little mine I started. It ain’t very deep, but it’s dry, so I keep my extry supplies there. Wanna see inside it?”

  “I sure do.” We walked off the trail, and it was easier to recognize the door as we got up close to it. Rufus had made it out of wood then covered it with a thin cloth sack filled with a layer of rock and dirt the same color as the canyon wall. Then he’d used plaster mixed with dirt to hide the doorframe that held it in place.

  He fished around near the bottom of the door to find the latch that held it tightly closed. A blast of stale, cool air came floating out as he swung it back. He lighted a coal-oil lantern hanging on the back of the door and held it up so I could see inside. To me, the inside looked better than the US Treasury. It was filled with barrels of stuff, animal hides, an old saddle or two, a harness, tools, some old apple crates filled with potatoes, and a stack of neatly folded canvas tarps. Toward
the back, I could see the dim outline of a half a side of beef hanging from a small scaffold.

  He said, “Now, I’m showin’ this here hole to ye so ye know where it is, what’s in it, and how to get in it if ye need to get supplies or tools fer us or to hide yoreself. Only thing ye gotta remember is snakes like this place, too. They think it’s a dad-burn hotel. They’ll generally mind their own business if’n ye don’t bother ’em none. If they’s one here, just take that stick there and toss him outside. Ain’t no need to kill ’im, lessen ye have to. He’ll keep the rats and other vermin gone. Do ye foller me, son?”

  I nodded, but, in the back of my mind, I was certain I didn’t want to fool with any rattlesnake, especially not with just a stick. If I found one, it was going to be a goner.

  We left the mine, and Rufus closed the door and latched it again. He stepped back to admire it for a few seconds before he said, “Now don’t fergit to latch that there door after ye’re in there, or they’ll be more snakes than that there stick’ll take care of.” I nodded, and he led me down the path toward the house.

  By the time we got back to the house, I was worn out. Rufus helped me lie down on the cot for a siesta and said he was going to sit outside and whittle a while and enjoy the sun until it was time to cook our supper. That old cot sure felt good. It wasn’t more than two or three big yawns before I drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 22

  EDUCATION

  One day in late winter, we were sitting on the porch step watching one of those brilliant sunsets over the Floridas when Rufus asked, “Henry, what was the last thing ye read before ye left school to go to Lincoln with yore daddy?”