Fire on the Mountain (18 page)

“Yes sir.” I sipped on my rum Coke.

“Listen, John,” Lee said, “I wonder if it ever occurred to you that you might be acting kind of selfish about all this. For the sake of some mysterious kind of—point of honor, you are losing your home, depriving your kin of considerable benefits, and maybe risking your own liberty. Because you know damn well if you keep this up you’re going to wind up in jail. In a Federal prison. Maybe worse, if you shoot some poor soldier boy who’s only trying to do his duty. Did you ever think of that?”

“I’ve thought of it.”

“Well think about it some more. And think hard. You don’t have much time left. Maybe only a few days.”

“Maybe only a few hours,” I volunteered.

Lee looked at me. “Why don’t you go for a ride, shorty? Those horses need some work.” His white smile shone through the twilight; that mouthful of perfect teeth.

“Will you go with me?”

He hesitated. The smile weakened, returned. “Yes! Let’s go. Right now.” He emptied his glass and jumped up. “Come on, Billy, we’ll have a race.”

“I’ll race you,” I said, feeling high and glorious myself. I finished my drink and stood up.

“You two be careful,” the old man said. “Don’t pitch into some gopher hole in the dark and break your fool necks. Think of the horses.”

“We’ll think of the horses, John. You think of Billy and your daughters. Come on, Billy.”

I jumped off the porch and started at a run toward the corral. Lee came running after and caught me halfway.
Putting his arm around my shoulders he slowed me to a walk. He was panting a little. “Now you listen to me.” Panting. “Billy, you listen. You have some influence over your
crazy
grandfather. Right? He loves you. He might listen to what you say. You understand?”

I nodded.

“All right. You should try to use this influence you have—in a sensible way. Don’t keep on encouraging the old man. You understand? Try to make him listen to reason. You understand me?”

“No.” I said. “No I don’t, Lee.”

“What’s the use—you’re just like him.”

We reached the corral, climbed through, and bridled old Blue and Grandfather’s big sorrel. Skilletfoot as usual would be left out. I threw myself up on Blue’s back and struggled to a sitting position, clutching the mane. Lee vaulted onto the back of the stallion.

“Go ahead, Billy. I’ll give you a ten-second start.”

“Where we going?”

“Twice around the pasture. Close to the corners. Go ahead. One—two—”

I kicked Blue with my heels and he leaped forward, through the open gateway of the corral and into the field of twilight. At a dead run I bore straight for the southeast corner, counting to myself. When I reached the number eleven I heard a wild whoop from Lee and knew he’d started.

Reins loose in my right hand, left hand twisting the wiry hairs of the mane, I beat my heels on Blue’s flanks and watched the fence come toward us. At the corner we pivoted sharply and raced toward the south-west. In my rear I heard the sod-muted thunder of the stallion’s hooves.

“Let’s go, Blue,” I shouted, my body forward over his neck, my chin between his ears. The wind rushed by, the gloom parted wonderfully before us, I felt the beating of my mount’s great heart between my knees, the surge of his muscles under my body.

The corner rose before us, we turned and galloped
north, along the fence and the ledge of the river. Iron clashed on stone, sparks flashed in the velvet air. “Come on, Blue, come on,” I panted in his ear. But old Blue was doing his best already; there was no further response. Sucking wind like a steam engine, he neared the northwest corner, swung right and galloped heavily upslope toward the ranch buildings. Halfway there Lee came alongside on the slick-gaited Rocky and bellowed at me:

“Shag him, Billy!”

The sorrel flowed steadily past us in a gleam of sweat and silken strength, pulled ahead, and created a gap which grew wider at every pace. When we turned at the northeast corner by the corral Lee was three lengths ahead and old Blue was beginning to falter. We were licked but he kept on running. I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d tried.

Lee was waiting for me inside the corral, brushing his horse, when Blue and I trotted in.

I slid off, removed the bridle and sloughed the gobs of lather off Blue’s trembling shoulders and chest. “Some race,” I said in disgust.

“Old Blue did pretty good,” Lee said. “He’s a big-hearted old brute. Here.” He gave me the brush.

“Next time I’ll ride the stud,” I said.

“Why sure, Billy. And we’ll hang a sack of grain under his belly. And you’ll give me a bigger start.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You did pretty good. Don’t get mad.”

“I’ll race you back to the house,” I said. “On foot.”

“You win already. Let’s walk.”

We gave the horses each a double handful of grain, turned them loose and walked back to the ranch-house, toward the red glow of the old man’s cigar. Again Lee tried to sweet-talk me into compromise. Arm over my shoulders, he said,

“Billy, old buddy, I want you to do me a favor. Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Talk to your grandfather. Tell him not to go on with his crazy idea. Tell him to use his head.”

I was silent.

“Will you, Billy? It’s for his own good. You don’t want the old man to get shot, do you? Or locked up in prison for the rest of his life?”

“No.”

“Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere. Will you ask him to take DeSalius up on that last offer?”

I hesitated.

“Will you?”

“No.”

“My God, you sound just like the old man.”

“I think he’s in the right, Lee. Don’t you?”

After a moment Lee said, “I don’t really know, Billy. To tell the truth I don’t really know.”

“You’re going to help him, aren’t you?”

The tall man squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry about that. That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

Gratefully I smiled up at Lee.

“Who won?” the old man shouted as we approached the house. The owl behind the wash echoed his call.

“We did,” Lee answered, hugging me close.

“Lee won,” I explained as we climbed the porch steps, “But he was riding Rocky.”

We sat beside the old man and listened to the owl. The darkness was settling in fast, the lights fading over the mountains and the stars emerging, one by one, from the violet sky.

After some talk about the horses, the dry spell and the falling water table, Lee and Grandfather returned to the subject of real interest. This time Lee pursued it farther and with a greater intensity than ever before, as if with the knowledge that this might be the final opportunity to drive a wedge of logic and sense into the old man’s bitter mind.

“It’s not only the practical side of the thing,” Lee was saying, as I half-dozed, half-listened nearby, “you also have to think about the question of justice. Now you
never before reared up on your hind legs and defied the law, the country and the Constitution. As long as you weren’t personally affected by what was going on, you seemed to consent to the laws and customs and so on. Many other people have to go through what’s happening to you, John, and you never protested against it before.”

“They have their choice,” the old man said.

“All right. It’s easy to say that now. But maybe the Government is really in the right here. If they need your land for the sake of the national security shouldn’t you give it up? Which is more important, your property or the national safety?”

“Nobody’s safe when the Government can take away his home.”

“Nobody would be safe in a world run by the Soviet Union.”

“All right,” Grandfather said, “there’s no safety anywhere. I don’t want safety. I want to die on my father’s ranch.” Grandfather puffed on his cigar: the red coal flared and faded, casting a dim transient light over the tough features of his face.

I smuggled more rum into my soda pop.

“Sometimes we have to make a choice between evils,” Lee said. “Maybe in a case like this military necessity is more important than your private desires. Am I right or wrong?”

“Wrong,” I said, lifting my glass.

“You be quiet, child,” the old man said to me. Quietly. To Lee he said, “I can see the sense in your argument. Not much but some. But all my feelings go against it. This is my home. I was born here. My father worked and fought all his life for this place. He died here. My mother died here. My wife almost died here. Now I want to die here, when I’m ready to die. I will not live here part-time as some sort of charity ward of the Government, while they think up new ways to wedge me off completely. No, by God, I can’t do that. I’ll fight it out with bullets before I’ll do that.”

Lee was silent for a while, as he stared with his good earnest eyes at the old man, at the floor, at me, at the old man again. “I know how you feel. I share that feeling. Didn’t I spend ten years of my own life on this place? But look, John—” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “Does the land really belong to you? Is it really yours? Does the land belong to anybody? A hundred years ago the Apaches had it, it was all theirs. Your father and other men like him stole it from the Apaches. The railroad company and the big cattle companies and the banks tried to steal it from your father and from you. Now the Government is going to steal it from you. This land has always been crawling with thieves. How do you suppose that mountain over there got its name? A hundred years from now, when we’re all dead and buried and forgotten, the land will still be here, will still be the same worthless dried-out burnt-up parcel of sand and cactus it is now. And some other fool of a thief will be stringing a fence around it and hollering that he owns it, that it belongs to him, and telling everybody else to keep out.”

Grandfather smiled and drew on the cigar. “I hope his name is Vogelin. Or Starr.”

“Why don’t you give in, old horse? Give in gracefully, like a gentleman, and let the generals make fools of themselves here for a while. Let them have their turn.”

“Let them. I’m willing. But I ain’t going to give in like a gentleman. If I have to give in I’m going to give in like an Apache. That’s part of the pattern, Lee. That’s the tradition around here.”

Lee stared hard at Grandfather before breaking into a smile. “You stone-headed old idiot. You
are
crazy. You must be crazy. Hand me that jug.”

“Billy, will you get us some more ice?” Grandfather asked.

“Yes sir.” I got up from the floor. The wall yawed toward me. I placed a hand on it to hold it up. “Ice,” I said.

“Now,” Lee said, after a deep sigh, “let’s begin all
over again. Let’s see if we can’t study this thing from some other angle. …”

“Keep trying,” I heard the old man say, as I staggered into the darkness of the kitchen, feeling my way toward the lamp on the table. But the first thing I felt on the table was not the lamp but the rifle and beside it the box of ammunition. I sagged against the table, leaning on it with both hands, and waited for my head to stop swimming.

Through the fog which enclosed me I heard, out in the night, the great horned owl crying for hunger. And in the brush and sand along the wash all the little animals, the rabbits and bannertail mice and ground squirrels, would be listening, frozen in terror.

I slept badly that night. Halfway through the night the nausea in my belly became unendurable. I crawled feebly from my bunk, wobbled to the doorway and vomited about a quart of rum, Coke, and half-digested supper onto the ground.

I felt so weak and foul and hopeless that I sank to my hands and knees, fingering my throat and trying to heave up my horrible stomach. Finally, emptied and exhausted, I crept back to bed and fell into uneasy sleep, with dreams of trouble and fear, barking guns and barbed wire, a ripped-open horse and a barren well, clashing through my mind.

The glare of day had returned and my bunkhouse room was full of a stifling heat when I woke up. My head throbbed like a drum, my mouth tasted of filth. I lay on my back for a long time staring at the cobwebs on the ceiling and the circling flies. When the heat became at last too much to take, I sat up and pulled on my jeans, shirt and boots, put on my hat and stumbled outside into the dazzle of daylight. Bearing toward the ranch-house, I tramped dizzily over the stones and weeds, aware of a dark thirst. The sun was high in the east, near eight o’clock, flaming dully through layer upon layer of dust and heat. Lee’s car was gone.

Approaching the house I saw Grandfather coming out of the cowpen with the milk pail in hand. He’d let me sleep through my morning chore and faintly ashamed, I mumbled my good morning without looking him in the face.

We entered the house and the kitchen, where the old man put the milk in the refrigerator. I found a cold breakfast of slab bacon and scrambled eggs waiting for me. I didn’t want to eat but it seemed necessary: we might be in for a busy day. I forced the greasy stuff into my mouth, chewed without pleasure and swallowed it down, somehow. Coffee seemed to help. I poured a second cupful.

“Billy, you’re going home tonight.”

“What?” His words came to me through a haze of dizziness and fatigue. “Going home?”

“Tonight.” Grandfather held an open letter in his hand. “This is from your mother. Lee brought it last night. She says if I don’t send you home within a week she’s flying out here to get you. She’s mad at me. Lee’ll take you down to El Paso again this evening. And this time we’re putting you on an airplane. Let’s see you try and stop an airplane.”

I could do that, too, I thought, if I wanted to. Aloud I said, “But you said I could stay another week, Grandfather.”

“That was the day before yesterday. Anyhow, we got these orders from your mother.”

I’d been expecting such an ultimatum to arrive. Besides, I was too sick and tired to protest anymore. With dull nerves and a heavy heart I finished my breakfast and washed the dishes.

As for the old man, he walked once more all through the house, inspecting the fortifications, preparing food and water supplies, checking the guns, counting the ammunition. He seemed to me more resolute, less agitated, than ever before. He came back to the kitchen and stood and watched me, polishing his glasses.