Squirly had a wide-bladed sheath knife, but no sidearm or rifle. He didn’t feel the need for protection, for he didn’t much care, so he told himself, what happened to himself. But as he dismounted and tied the horse’s reins to a mesquite bush, he wished he had a scattergun. He knew the buzzards and probably the coyotes too who had feasted on this poor old cowhand were just going about their lives, making their living as they could, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He slid the great knife out of its sheath and shouting as if he had just found religion, Squirly Ross barked and howled and ran at the teeming mass of flapping birds. He got within kicking distance of a few and let loose with a fresh round of whoops, when he recognized the profile of his old friend, Mitchell. The man’s cheeks were pocked with fresh wounds from the birds’ claws and beaks, but there was no mistaking that high, narrow face, downturned mouth, as if he himself smelled what had become of his body and didn’t much like it. The man’s hat hadn’t rolled all that far, fetched up as it had on a tumble of rocks.
Despite his best efforts, Squirly Ross cried then for his old friend, for the times they had had years before, for the times they would never have in the future. He’d been more excited about Farthing’s visit than he had been for anything about his life in Turnbull for years. But no more.
It took all his vigilance to keep the buzzards away from him and the long, prone body of his friend while he knelt beside the body and scrabbled in the dirt with his bare hands and with his big knife. It took the better part of two hours to dig a trench long and deep enough to roll in the body of the man who was perhaps his only friend in the world, a man who got himself killed because he’d been summoned by Squirly.
Again, sobs bucked his old shoulders. He did grope the body where he could, just in case the poke was still about somewhere, though he’d doubted he’d find it. He felt certain that the little foreigner had taken it all after he’d killed Mitchell. Trick was to prove that the little well-dressed foreigner had done the vile deed. And as near as Squirly could figure, there was little way he could prove it.
Finally, he rolled Mitchell’s body into the shallow grave, but had to rejigger it, as half of the man faced down, while the other had been disjointed somehow and faced nearly skyward. It was then that Squirly saw the bullet wound on the man’s upper back. The front, where the shot would have exited, had been chewed away by varmints. He got him righted around, facing skyward, and laid the man’s hat on his face, and mumbled a few nearly silent words. It was harder than he expected it would be. Finally he said good-bye.
By the time he’d finished mounding rocks on his friend’s grave, enough he figured to keep the birds and digging varmints out of it, the buzzards had really set to on the corpse of the horse. He shooed them away. Most of them hopped hissing a few feet back, their wings held open as if they were great hooded snake heads ready to strike. But they kept their distance enough for him to search the pecked-at saddlebags. He turned up nothing of value, save for a small cameo rimmed in gold, picturing a young woman. It looked to be a painted photograph. She was a looker, for sure, and Squirly wondered who she was, what she meant to Mitchell, and where she might be now. He nibbled at his bottom lip, then returned to Mitchell’s grave. Immediately, the shiny black birds crawled back onto the carcass of the horse, jabbing at it in their feeding frenzy. The picked-over thing rocked and moved as if shaking in its sleep.
Squirly removed a goodly little pile of rocks from the grave and pushed the cameo brooch down as far as he could in the crevices between the remainder of the rocks covering his friend’s head, then mounded up the rocks again.
He had no way of making a marker, so he decided to just leave it be as it was. He mounted the old horse, wanting to put some distance between himself and the sad scene before he had to make that night’s camp in a few hours. As they walked away, he took a pull from the bottle and saluted his dead friend with a silent toast. “Should be easier, somehow, especially considering I ain’t seen him in so long.” Should be, he told himself, but it ain’t.
Chapter 32
“He took a nasty knock to the head. I think he’ll pull through, but the Middleton man…he’s been shot, Espy.” Callie slid Espy’s medicine bag to the rear of the wagon and hefted it.
Despite her firmness and usual lack of emotion, Esperanza’s eyes widened and a hand covered her mouth. “Is he…?”
The two women hurried toward the wreckage of the little camp.
“Did Brandon do it?”
“I don’t know, Espy. I don’t think so. Let’s worry about that later. We’re closer to the Dancing M than we are to town, but we have to get them back to the ranch soon.”
Espy nodded once and, bunching her skirts and apron in one brown hand, hurried ahead of Callie. “Brandon. Brandon, my baby boy!” The boy’s mother slapped his cheeks lightly, and his eyelids fluttered open.
“Ma? Why are you…here?”
Before she could answer, the other man moaned and Callie hastened to him, trailing a bundle of cloth for bandages and clutching the tin coffeepot full of water.
Esperanza did not leave her son’s side, but pointed at Middleton. “You can see he is on fire with fever, Callie. Wet his head and mouth with water, quickly!”
The young woman swabbed his forehead and his eyes almost opened. She squeezed water on his lips, and his tongue worked to catch the drops. The effort, it seemed, was too much for him, and soon he grew still.
Esperanza set her son’s head down on a wadded horse blanket and turned her attention to Brian Middleton’s wound. She peeled away the sopping, gritted shirt that had matted into the wound. Callie saw that it was worse than she expected—the ground beneath him was nearly black with his drained blood. It looked as though he was bleeding out right before their eyes.
“Callie! Listen to me, girl. Pay attention….”
Callie did as Espy bade her and within minutes they had the unconscious man’s wound bound.
Espy grunted. “I do know that he still has blood left in him. Probably enough for a lifetime of rude comments….” She winked at Callie and that one simple gesture made Callie’s heart sing, and she marveled at the woman’s fortitude in the face of this situation.
The two women soon managed to carry the big man to the wagon. His feet hung out the back, so Callie bent his legs at the knees enough to slide the tailgate back in place. Brandon’s eyes would not focus, though he was now awake and mumbling, nothing of which made sense to Callie as she tossed into the wagon the last of the camp’s gear.
As Esperanza made ready to leave, she mentioned that Middleton had been riding a rental mare from the livery. Callie scanned around them quickly, but if it had been there it was now gone from sight. She knew that someone would have to pay Silver Haskell for her—for Callie was sure she would end up as coyote bait—but the old nag’s fate was the least of her concerns right now.
Callie tied her horse behind the wagon. She climbed aboard and snapped the reins hard on the old work team’s backs. Esperanza reached back to steady Brandon as he swayed, seated beside the prone form of his older half brother. Callie worked the buggy whip, tickling the backs of the now-churning team, the steel-rimmed wheels of the work wagon cutting into the mealy, dry earth.
The first few minutes of the journey back to the Dancing M were quiet, with Esperanza steadying her son’s sagging body against the jarring wagon ride. The older woman gritted her teeth each time the wheels clunked into yet another road rut, all the while keeping a sharp glance on the jostling, bouncing body of the little boy she used to know, aware she could well be looking at a dead man.
Finally Callie broke the silence. “Will he make it, Espy?”
The older woman looked up at Callie and saw she’d been near tears. A long silence followed, and then Espy spoke. “We will see what we will see. I can do nothing until we get home. Except to apologize to you for the way I spoke the other day.” Espy frowned and squeezed Callie’s arm, then continued. “You’re a good girl, a good friend. I wa
s afraid you might get in trouble with your father by talking with me. Now that Rory is gone, I am not wanted in these parts—that is plain enough. We will move on soon.”
“No, Espy. Don’t say that. Who will run the ranch?”
“The ranch belongs to Mr. Middleton now.”
Then it occurred to Callie that Brandon had referred to the stranger as his “brother.” But until now she’d not given herself time to think about it. “Is Middleton…”
Espy nodded. “Yes, he is Rory’s son by his wife of long ago. She died and the boy was sent back to the East, to a place called Providence, where his mother’s family was from.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes with thick fingers. “But now he is grown and he has come back to claim the land that has been left to him.”
“But what about you and Brandon? Surely you two should have the land, as Mr. MacMawe’s wife and son.” They exchanged glances then, and in that flash of a moment Callie knew all she had never before learned about her friend’s life. “You never married?”
Esperanza looked out at the muted greens and shoe-leather brown and dusty red of the landscape as they passed through it, the horses running hard, their great sides heaving with each unaccustomed lunge down the road. Esperanza saw all this, but all she could do was shake her head once, twice.
There had been no wedding. Not that she’d ever expected one from Rory, but it would have been nice. Something simple there at the ranch. They could have invited friends, she would have made much food, tended her flowers, and kept the chickens in the coop for the day so they wouldn’t be underfoot. Perhaps she could have coaxed Brandon to play the fiddle that his father had bought him so long ago. That would have been nice.
A jutting rock in the hard-packed surface of the road jolted her from her daydream. Silly woman, she thought. There is no time for such thoughts. Nor will there ever be again. The world was an uncertain place, and lately she felt that that was about the only thing she had really learned for certain in her life.
Chapter 33
His morning chores complete, Mica had saddled his horse with the precision of a man who has done so more times than he can count. He’d thought about Callie for the past couple of hours and where she might be. Her father didn’t seem too worried, and the boy was off in his own head, saying and doing things that made no sense to Mica.
He had a thought that the girl might be visiting her friend Espy. He’d wanted to pay her a visit himself, especially since Rory passed on. He murmured a soft grunt of encouragement to the horse and nudged the big gray gelding into a steady trot.
As he passed under the arch leading to the Driving D’s ranch buildings, Mica wondered, not for the last time, what people might think of him should he take up with someone ten or so years his junior. He snorted at himself and said aloud, “Old man, ain’t nobody going to want to spend more time with you than they have to. Just a plain fact.” He smirked and continued on his way anyway, confident that at the very least he’d have himself a fine morning ride, and maybe at the end of it, a cup of coffee with an old friend. “What more can a man ask of life?”
The horse, as if in response, tossed his head and worked its nose up as if it smelled something unpleasant.
“Oh, hush, you. Ain’t nobody asked for your opinion.”
The horse repeated its head toss, then settled down to a slow lope along the trail leading southwest to the Maligno, then northwest for a couple of miles to the Dancing M. Within minutes, from far off up the road to the north, town way, he heard a wagon’s creaking rumble. It drew closer, each squeak and creak more distinct.
“Moving fast,” he said, turning his horse to face the rising dust cloud. As it drew closer, Mica visored his eyes with a calloused hand. He recognized it as a work wagon with two people on the bench and a horse snugged close behind. The closer they drew, the more Mica felt he might know one of them—that fawn hat, the gold hair bouncing, and was that a split riding skirt? Callie? It is Callie, he thought. But what’s she doing? And going that fast?
Long before the wagon drew abreast of Mica as he sat his horse beside the dirt track, waiting to see what this commotion was all about, Callie recognized the large black man, astride his distinctive gray, and stood in the wagon, swaying and gripping the steel armrest with one hand. “Mica! Mica!”
She was frantic, that much he knew, and beside her, huddled low and looking into the back of the wagon, was Esperanza.
“What’s the matter?” he shouted, though they were moving too fast to have heard him.
Espy rarely ventured this far from the ranch—hadn’t in months, not since Rory became ill. Except for the few times she’d had to retrieve Brandon from the jail, sleeping off another round.
He heeled his mount into a lope and shouted, but the wagon shot past and kept on going, headed toward the Dancing M, Callie waving to him, beckoning him. He nudged the horse harder and came up alongside.
There in the work box, he saw Brandon huddled at the front of the wagon, just behind the seat, his mother’s ample arms holding his head and shoulders. And stretched on the floor, his legs bent because of his obvious height, was a tall, rugged young man with thick red hair that looked the spitting image of Old Rory, back quite a few years when they were all three, Mica, Wilf, and Rory, good friends and full of themselves. Long before grayness and age had nibbled at their edges.
Mica looked down at the tall boy and knew then that what he’d overheard was true, that it was Rory’s first son, come home. But judging from the wad of red clotted cloth bound to his midsection, he didn’t know if the boy was alive.
Mica kept up with the wagon, and shouted over the rumbling din, “What’s happened, Callie?”
Only then did Esperanza look up, seeing him for the first time. Her face was a pale, cracked thing, an eggshell ready to collapse. Mica had never seen her look so delicate. Even so, her eyes were sharp and taking in everything about her. Mica thought the boy, Brandon, looked poorly too, though not as bad off as the big fellow. Espy’s son raised an arm, swatting at nothing, before letting it fall fatigued to his lap.
“Mica!”
He followed Callie’s shout to her worried face. “They’ve been hurt bad. Ride ahead and get the fire going. Clear the front room.”
He took all this in and nodded once, then sank spur and headed for the little house at the Dancing M. The entire road there, the haunted look in Espy’s eyes plagued him. Brandon didn’t look right. He must have taken quite a knock on the head. And the other one, the big fellow—what did she call him? Brian? He’d looked more dead than alive as he lay there jostling in the wagon.
Mica made it to the little house at the Dancing M and knew he didn’t have much time—but there were still glowing amber coals when he swung open the stove’s squawking door. The coals stirred bright when he blew on them, sparked to flame the brittle twigs he layered on from the battered wooden box.
The fire well in hand, Mica snatched up the large scorched kettle and another enamel bowl and grabbed the wire bail on a bucket on his way out the door, headed for the well.
He was halfway to the well when he heard the familiar creak and rumble of the buckboard roll closer with each passing second. He filled the vessels as the wagon, swirling in a great cloud of dust, rolled to a stop.
The horses’ muzzles were flecked with foam and their heaving hides bore the white lather of hard use. Callie circled to the back of the wagon and Mica hurried the buckets of water inside, setting them on the stove top, before rushing back out to lend a hand.
Leaning heavily on his mother, young Brandon, head lolling and eyes nearly closed, stumbled his way to the house, and Mica and Callie hefted the big young man, Rory’s oldest. Mica didn’t think there was much point—the young man looked to him to be gone. He’d seen enough men in such shape from his time as a buffalo soldier in the war. As they slid him from the wagon, Mica was shocked to hear a moan, low and thin like steam leaving a far-off train. He looked at Callie, but her pinched features were unreadable.
By the time they lurched across the dooryard with him sagging between them, Esperanza had dragged the table to the far wall and had prepped space enough for the two injured men to lie before the fireplace, on the wall opposite the cook stove.
The fireplace had been the house’s first heat and cooking source, and only years later had Rory added the second chimney for the cook stove. It was a concession he’d gladly made for Esperanza, since she was such a fine cook. It showed too, after time, on Rory’s big frame. The man had thickened, though he was as active as he had ever been. Mica used to tease him on his visits to the couple.
Visits that, on occasion, he’d arrange to coincide with mealtime. He made no apologies—the woman was an amazing cook. And as a man who’d spent years of his life in the kitchen and squinting through smoke over a Dutch oven on the trail, well, he knew food and fancied that he appreciated the work of a culinary master more than most. Galled him to no end to see a cowhand bolt down a wedge of mock apple pie with nary a thought, other than to gargle it back with a mouthful of hot coffee before climbing back into the saddle.
He’d visited her but once since Rory passed. He was afraid of giving people the wrong idea, and Espy seemed to have her hands full with the boy. He’d offered to help her with him, but she would have none of it. Now he shot a quick glance her way. Aged was how he’d describe her. She looked mighty tired and old. Guess we all are, he thought, as he eased the big man to the tabletop. He hoped like heck that the newcomer would live to feel the same.
Callie leaned over to remove the bandages wadded up on Brian’s gut, but Mica’s big hand stopped her.
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