Fire on the Mountain (15 page)

What could I do now? I didn’t know. I couldn’t think of a thing. I turned toward the flats, trudged on, on and on, down the slope, across the mile-wide dry lake, past the big corrals and loading pens, up the ridge
beyond and then down the last winding mile of the road to the Salado and the ranch buildings.

When I finally got there I was too tired to eat. Instead of going to the house I headed straight for the corral and barn, still bound by the idea that I must hide.

I rolled through the rails of the corral, drank my fill from the trickling pipe at the head of the water trough, and staggered into the harness and saddle room.

The last thing I saw, before wrapping myself in a saddle blanket and crumbling to the straw on the floor, was the pale band of the dawn over the
barranca
. My eyelids closed, my head stopped spinning, the tears dried out on my cheeks, and the world, the whole wide world with its mountains and police and lions and horses and women and men melted away like a dream.

The mockingbird clattered like a crow outside the window. Sunlight streamed in massive dusty bars through the room, coming from the west. When I opened my eyes and found myself in my bed in the bunkhouse I was not at all surprised. Nothing could have seemed more natural. But when I remembered what had happened the day before and what would happen today, I rolled quickly out of bed and reached for my clothes, draped over the chair.

As I dressed I became aware of low voices on the bench outside, under the shade of the cottonwoods. I heard my grandfather; I heard Lee Mackie. I had no recollection whatsoever of being carried in here, but I did remember that I’d gone to sleep in the barn under a saddle blanket.

Stepping cautiously to the door, I opened it a crack and peeked outside. There they were, the old man smoking his cigar, Lee whittling on a stick and talking to him. The sun was close to the peak of Thieves’ Mountain—I’d slept through the entire day.

My stomach rumbled like a bear. I was ferociously hungry. And frightened too. I didn’t know how I could face the old man’s wrath and I couldn’t see how I might escape it. It didn’t occur to me to try to hide again. Too late for that sort of foolishness now. After a long hesitation, and impelled more by hunger than by bravery, I opened the door and walked out.

I stood there, blinking in the evening glare.

“Hungry, Billy?” That was the first thing Grandfather said to me.

“Yes sir.”

“Your supper’s ready in the ranch-house. On the stove. Go wash your face, get your hair combed, eat, and come back out here. We want to talk to you.”

“Yes sir.” I moved dully toward the house. Lee had smiled at me but the old man looked very stern.

In the dark barricaded kitchen I cleaned myself up a little, very quickly and very little, and took the covered tin plate off the stove. Beans, meat, fried potatoes. I gobbled it all down in two minutes and helped myself to seconds out of the cast-iron pot. Drank about a quart of water and ate some more potatoes. At last I felt strong enough to go out again and face my punishment.

The two men stopped their conversation as I approached.

The sun was out of sight by now and the bats and nighthawks were at work. In the purple twilight you couldn’t be too sure of anything.

“Sit down, Billy,” Grandfather said.

I sat down. Lee put his big warm hand on my knee. “You sure gave us a scare, old horse,” he said. “We had all the cops and sheriff’s deputies of six counties looking for you yesterday. If you ever try any damn fool thing like that again why we’re through, old buddy, we’re not inviting you to New Mexico again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And paused. “I won’t do it again.” And paused again. “I just had to get back here.”

“It’s a good thing we spotted your tracks last night. We saw where you detoured around the guards and came meandering down the road. We might be down in El Paso right now looking for you and the Air Force would be swarming all over this place.”

I was too ashamed to say anything.

“We didn’t tell your mother,” Lee went on. “And that’s another good thing for you. If she ever hears
about this she’ll never let you out of her sight again and you know it.”

I knew it and kept silent.

Grandfather grunted, cleared his throat, removed the cigar for a moment. “I’m gonna let you stay one more week, Billy. Just one more week. Then you’re going home. Understand?”

“Yes sir.”

We all fell silent. I listened to the bats clicking, the rush of the nighthawks, the nervous clucking of the chickens as they went to roost for the night in the hayshed. I heard the hooves of our last three horses in the corral as they came in for water.

“Well, I ought to get home,” Lee said. “Supper’ll be cold and Annie’s going to be mad at me again.”

“You ought to treat her good, Lee,” the old man said. “You got a good woman, treat her good.”

“You can count on that.” Lee sighed, stretching himself, and made an effort to stand up. “By God I’m tired. These last twenty-four hours just about got me licked.”

“Might have some more excitement in the next day or two,” Grandfather said.

“You can count on that too. I’ll be waiting. Just give me the word when you need me. I’ll be out again sometime tomorrow anyway. Why the hell don’t you get a telephone, John?”

“I never learned how to talk in them things.”

“You could learn.”

“Sure, I could learn. But I don’t want to get tangled up in telephone wire. I got enough trouble.”

Lee smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “You take care of this old crank, Billy. Maybe it’s a good thing you did come back.”

He stood up slowly, stretching his six feet and two inches toward the limbs of the tree, while I watched in dumb admiration. His gabardine suit was dusty and rumpled, his tie was loose, his new hat was already showing sweat stains, but still he looked like a gentleman and a Westerner. I’d have voted for Lee anytime.

“Wish I could stay,” he said.

“You go home and be nice to your wife. Get some sleep.”

“You’re right. Absolutely right. So long, you two. See you tomorrow.” He turned reluctantly away and walked, straight and tall, toward his lustrous automobile. If he was really tired he didn’t show it much.

The world grew darker as we watched Lee drive away. The old man unwrapped a fresh cigar.

“Grandfather,” I asked, “what’re those men doing in the jeep out by the east gate?”

“They’re guarding me,” he said, smiling. He lit the cigar. As he puffed on it the gnats withered away in our vicinity. “They’re there to keep people out, I guess. Reporters and sightseers and such. Lee says we’re in the newspapers now.”

“What will they do next?” “Who?”

“The Government.”

“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find out.” He puffed on the powerful cigar. “You know, Billy, your aunts want me to sell out. I got letters from all of them the other day. Even your mother wants me to sell out.”

“My mother!” For a moment I was too shocked to say more. “Aw no, Grandfather, not Mother. She wouldn’t. Not Mother. No sir. Maybe my father …”

“The letter is in your mother’s handwriting, Billy.”

“I don’t care. No sir, I don’t believe it. Why, she wouldn’t ever—I’ll bet my father …” But again I paused before uttering the thought, before speaking what I did not really want to believe.

“Want to do something for me, Billy?”

“Yes sir!”

“Give the horses a little workout before you turn in. They ain’t been rode for a week, any of them. I’m afraid to leave this place any more, even for half an hour. For all we know there’s a couple of Government agents right over there in the willows just waiting for a
chance like that. They weren’t there last night but they might be now. Come on, I’ll help you bridle them.”

We walked to the corral where the horses still lingered, though the pasture gate hung wide open. The horses were hoping for grain. We gave them each a double handful and bridled them. I didn’t bother with a saddle.

First I climbed up on Rocky, the big sorrel stallion—since he was the meanest and fastest I wanted to get that over with quick. As the horse finished his feed I watched the old man walking slowly toward the unlit ranch-house, his dim figure fading into the darkness under the trees. The dogs trotted beside him, whining at his knees, aware that something was wrong.

The big sorrel vibrated under me, snorting with impatience, stamping his foot. I turned him toward the gateway. He broke at once into a lope and I didn’t attempt to hold him back. As we cleared the gate he shifted into a full run, head and neck stretching forward.

The wind blew in my face. I hugged him with my knees, twisted my free hand in his mane, and let him go. We raced through the purple gloom straight south toward the fence, over the short tough yellow grass, the stones, the dried-out irrigation channels.

Tears of joy welled from my eyes, drawn out by the wind we were creating. As the dark stretch of the fence swept toward us I was fascinated for a moment by the wild notion of urging the horse over it, over the fence, and heading him toward the mountains and never coming back.

But we both had better sense. At the last instant I laid the rein on the side of his neck and we veered sharply to the right, gouging the sod as we leaned far over. Sparks flashed in the dark as the iron hooves struck on rock.

We ran westward now, toward the broad dim bed of the Salado. Again I was tempted by fantasy: I thought
of the yellow eyes, the mystic spring beneath the rock, the lion waiting for us in the hills.

The horse ran eagerly toward that fate, his thousand pounds of muscle and bone and blood and nerve and spirit barely touching the earth, as if our terrific momentum had given us wings. Rolling toward us was the bank of the river, a six-foot jump-off, the broad wash of sand, the grove of trees beyond, the desert and the hills and the mountains beyond that.

But for the second time I resisted the mad idea. We cut right again and galloped upslope back toward the corral and barn, toward the ranch-house and the old man, toward the road that linked us to the world of men and women. And I knew that I would never do what I had dreamed of doing—not in this life.

Three times I raced the splendid horse around the pasture, till I felt him begin to tire. I drew him back to a canter, to a trot, to a walk. We halted close by the corral gate, I slid off, gave the big sorrel a quick rub with the brush, pulled off the bridle, and turned him free with a whack on the shoulder. He sprang away, snorting in triumph. I untied old Blue and climbed on his broad back, my body trembling, my ribs aching with a pleasurable sort of pain, and my brain now free, devoid of all ideas but work.

When I was finished with Blue and the skillet-foot I walked slowly to my room in the bunkhouse. A pleasant fatigue pervaded my bones and flesh and I was ready for sleep again. The sunset by now had dwindled to a single streak of yellow among the stars and the black-blue clouds over the mountains. One of the dogs barked from his place on the ranch-house verandah, scented me out and went silent. The big August frogs clanked along the ditch, strange birds whistled in the depths of the cottonwoods, and an owl—the owl—spoke once from his perch somewhere in the grove by the wash, startling the rabbits and ground squirrels that crept about in the night.

My room seemed stifling and close, though both door
and window were wide open. As I’d done many times before, I dragged the steel cot out of the room into the open and prepared to bed down under the sky. I sat down on the bunk, tugged off my boots, peeled off the socks, and scraped my bare feet in the sand.

I looked toward the ranch-house. One light burned in the kitchen window but I heard no sound. I drew my corncob pipe from its hiding place in the foot of my bedroll, filled it with a cheap harsh workingman’s tobacco, lit up and smoked for a while, rubbing my feet on the rough ground.

Despite the birds and frogs, the ranch seemed unnaturally quiet, until I remembered that except for the milk cow and her calf, all our cattle—and half our horses—were gone.

I knocked the ashes from my pipe, hid it away, undressed and slipped into the sack. Hands under my head, I gazed at the sky. The Big Bear hung aloft, steady as rock, with the Pole Star above him.

The world was right. I could close my eyes.

With Cruzita gone, Grandfather had given me the chore of milking the cow. I didn’t care for the assignment but the calf was weaned, the job had to be done, even though we had little use for the milk: I wouldn’t drink much of it and Grandfather drank none at all.

I washed the cow’s udders, set the enameled pail in place and drew the milk while the cow ate the alfalfa in the manger. When I was finished I covered the pail, carried it into the kitchen, and put it in the big refrigerator.

We ate breakfast. The kitchen, with only one window open, was very dark and cool. As we ate we talked about the cow, about the horses, about my escape from the train. We agreed that my suitcase should have reached Pittsburgh by now. What would happen to it there? Neither of us cared. It simply meant that I’d run short on socks and underwear for a while.

After breakfast, as I was washing the dishes and the
old man inspected his shotgun, carbine and revolver for the tenth or twentieth time, we heard the dogs start to bark.

We looked out. Here came the Air Force again, two blue jeeps bristling with yellow helmets and radio antennae. Grandfather slammed shut the kitchen shutters, bolted them, blocked the window with mattress and bedstead, picked up his shotgun and stepped to the open front door with me close behind him.

The jeeps stopped out in the yard under the trees, fifty feet or more from the house. The men got out. Air Police, they were terribly overdressed for the desert summer, with their harness and pistols and badges and boots. Instead of coming toward the house they went to work at once nailing the familiar metal posters to the walls of our outbuildings, the signs in red, white and blue that said “U. S. Government Property—Keep Out.” The officer in charge of the project gave us a hard look as we watched from the verandah but said nothing to his men.