Fire on the Mountain (3 page)

Grandfather rose from his chair. “Let’s go out on the porch, Billy. Eloy should be tracking along now.”

“When’s Lee coming, Grandfather?”

“I don’t know for sure; sometime tonight, he said.”

We pushed open the screen door of the kitchen and stepped out on the long verandah, which enclosed and shaded the west and south walls of the house. Great spokes of sunlight radiated into the sky above Thieves’ Mountain, gilding the undersides of the fleet of small cumulus clouds, clear and definite in shape, which
floated there on one invisible plane of air. Close by, blue-black and stark against the sunset, the nighthawks swooped upward and then plunged like bullets through the swarms of insects hovering above the cattle trails along the wash. Bats flickered through the twilight around the corral and water tank, making a strange noise that always reminded me of the crackling of a bad electrical connection. The Mexicans of the Southwest had the custom of catching a bat when it was asleep during the day and nailing it, alive, to the barn door in order to frighten away
las brujas
—the witches. There are plenty of witches in New Mexico, some good, some bad, all unreliable and all with a weakness for fooling with other people’s livestock. I didn’t believe in witches myself—but I knew they were there.

“Here comes Mr. Peralta,” I said, as a horse and rider appeared at a walking pace from out of the willow groves along the almost-waterless river. Eloy Peralta, Grandfather’s only full-time ranch hand, was a good man, good at anything worth doing, and willing to work about 364 days a year for $150 a month, plus room and board for himself and family. He was being exploited, of course, but perhaps didn’t know it, or if he knew it, didn’t care. He seemed to enjoy such things as stringing barbed wire, shoeing horses, branding calves, and arguing with my grandfather, and when he got mad and quit, as he sometimes did, he knew he could always come back the next day.

“I quit!” he roared as he came toward us through the gloom on the tired, lathered horse. “Gee-whiz Christ and bloody Mary!” He checked the horse by the porch steps and looked at us. A grin flashed in his saddle-colored face when he saw me. “Billy-boy! Welcome back to the worthless and burned-up and eat-out-no-good-run-down Vogelin drag strip.” He pulled one foot from the stirrup, eased his short leg up and rested it on the neck of the horse. The horse, old Skilletfoot, reposed on his bones, switching his tail at the gnats and letting his head hang down between his forelegs. I returned
the greeting. There was a short silence as Peralta stared at the sunset and picked sandburs off his pants leg.

“Better go home and eat your supper, Eloy,” Grandfather said. “I don’t want to hear about it right now.”

Peralta grunted in disgust. “No, you don’t want to hear about it. Listen, Meester Vogelin, I think we better go someplace else, maybe New York, Pennsyl—what’s that place, Billy?—Pennsylvania, okay? I don’t want to work on no bloody drag strip no more.”

“Go home and eat and shut up,” Grandfather said wearily.

“Sure, okay, shut up. Maybe we
Shut
our eyes too, huh? That might help.” He picked at the burrs on his jeans. “Today they were not chasing the jacks, Meester Vogelin.”

“No? What were they chasing?”

“I don’ know. What was it? I don’ know. A thing long and white and shiny, come down like an arrow and start to burn up. Three jeeps and the men in the yellow tin hats, they all race after it, hey! like crazy men.”

“Did they tear up that fence again?”

“Fence? No, I fix that. No, they find the gate this time and leave it open, one two three cows get out. All the afternoon I hunt these three cows. When I try to talk to the wild men they make me stay away from where they are, they run the jeep at me and scare the horse and scream at me to stay away, stay away!” Peralta imitated the men in the yellow tin hats, waving his arms and howling quietly. “Stay away! stay away! you dirty Mexican.”

“Did they call you that?”

Peralta hesitated. “I think so.”

“What did you call them?”

Peralta hesitated again, glancing at me. “I don’ call them nothing, the dirty gringos. Maybe they hear me, I don’ know. I go away, hunt the cows. Then the big truck comes with the red lights and the siren, like this.”
He tilted back his head, removing his hat, and howled gently at the sky, like a siren. He stopped. “Tomorrow we maybe find the cows.”

“Eloy, you shouldn’t talk like that in front of the boy.”

“I know and I am very sorry.”

“Go home and eat. Get off that poor horse. God, look at his feet, he’s cast two shoes again.”

“Meester Vogelin, I cannot keep shoes on this hammerhead. We need the frying pans, I think.”

“We need a bullet,” Grandfather muttered. Peralta waved at me, grinning, and started toward the corral, with a cloud of gnats doing their molecular dance around him and his mount. “Tell Cruzita I’ll fix up the boy’s room,” the old man yelled after him, and Peralta nodded.

“You and me better get some sleep, Billy,” Grandfather said. “We’ll be leaving before sunup tomorrow.”

We took my luggage and the grits out of the pickup and re-entered the house. The old man led me through the enormous main room with its Indian rugs on the floor, past the cavelike fireplace where a stack of mesquite logs awaited kindling, under the antique rifles and game trophies mounted on the walls. Beyond the living-room we passed Grandfather’s office. The door was open. I caught a glimpse of the rolltop desk piled high with papers, ledgers and letters. On top of the desk stood photographs of the old man’s wife and his three daughters: my mother, living in Pittsburgh; Marian, living in Alamogordo; and Isabel living in Phoenix. All married, with children and problems of their own. Above the desk was an oil portrait of Jacob Vogelin, Grandfather’s father, the somber bearded Dutchman who had founded the ranch back in the 1870’s by first defrauding and then fighting off the Mescalero Apaches, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Goodnight Cattle Company, the First National Bank of El Paso, and the United States Government with its never-ending wars, depressions, and income taxes.

Past the office we followed the dark carpeted hallway which led to the bedrooms. The first two were closed; the third was open and we walked in. This was the same room I’d slept in during the two preceding summers but in the meantime the daughters had been using it during the occasional visits to Grandfather. The room bore the feminine stamp of their occupancy—flowered wallpaper, pink and pastel-green bedspreads, brocaded drapes and ballerinas’
tutus
hanging over the windows, shutting out the light and air.

We stopped just inside the doorway, looking around. “Do you like this room, Billy?”

I paused, then said, “It’s very pretty.”

“Does it give you a sort of suffocated feeling?”

“Yes sir.”

We were silent. “Tell you what,” he said, “you sleep here tonight. After we get back from our ride in the mountains we’ll clean up one of them rooms in the old bunkhouse, chase out all the vinegaroons and scorpions and sidewinders and fix you up proper. What do you think of that?”

“Yes sir.”

“What?”

“I think that’s a good idea, Grandfather.”

“Fine. That’s what we’ll do. Now let’s have a look at one of these here woman’s beds.” He turned back the corner of the green coverlet and discovered fresh sheets, smelling of soap and wind and sunshine, already laid. “Good old Cruzita, she’s been here before us. God bless her sweet heart.” A quilt lay over the foot of the bed. Grandfather unfolded it and spread it over the bed. “All right, Billy, you get your clothes off and get in bed and tomorrow we’ll—head for the hills. How long since you been on a horse?”

“Nine months.”

“Nine months? Yes, you better get some sleep.” He started to leave, but stopped by the kerosene lamp on the dresser. “Want me to light this lamp for you, Billy?” The room was half dark.

“No, Grandfather, I don’t need it.”

“Fine. Did you wash your face and brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“This morning on the train.”

Grandfather thought for a moment. “Fine. Well—good night, Billy.”

“Goodnight, sir.”

He went out, closing the door. Alone in the silence and darkness, aware of the strangeness of the room and the land I was in, I felt the first pang of homesickness. But instead of brooding over it I undressed, setting my new straw hat carefully on the bureau and lining up my new boots on the floor at the foot of the bed. Tired but unable to sleep, I opened a window and watched the sickle of the new moon floating in the west, and listened to the bullfrogs croak—to my ears a song sweeter than that of any nightingale.

Eventually I crawled into bed and lay there with my hands under my head, looking up at the dim ceiling. Another spasm of loneliness struck through me as I remembered home and my mother, who by this time would be tucking the covers around me and kissing me on nose, forehead and mouth before going downstairs. I found that I missed that familiar ceremony, missed it painfully, and when I felt something wet slide over my cheekbone I knew I was crying. For a while the shame of my tears overcame my nostalgia and I fell asleep. Fragments of dreams floated through my brain—the head of my horse plunging up and down as we climbed into the foothills, a black man grabbing my shoulder as I loitered in the vestibule of the roaring train, the clash of human voices in argument.

Waking again, I remembered hearing a car or truck drive up to the ranch-house. My grandfather’s voice, solemn and bitter, brought me wide awake. I sat up in bed, listening. The sky through the window was brilliant with stars.

The old man stopped. I heard the tinkle of glass and ice and the distinct gurgle of liquid poured from a bottle with a narrow neck, then the quiet voice of another man, also familiar—the voice of Lee Mackie.

Spurred by a sudden excitement, I slid out of bed and listened hard but could not make out what was being said. Putting on my underwear I stepped to the door and opened it, quietly, and peeked down the hallway toward the living-room. The glass eyeballs of a stuffed antelope reflected the glow from a lamp; light wavered softly over the octagon barrel and silvery breech of the old .45 carbine cradled in the antelope’s horns. From where I stood I could see neither my grandfather nor Lee. But I could hear them clearly and what I heard quelled my original impulse to rush down the hall to greet my friend.

“Now listen carefully, old horse,” Lee was saying. “You know it won’t do any good at all to get fired up about this and declare war on the Benighted States of America. They got you where the hair is short and that’s all there is to it and you might as well make the best of it—I mean, take the sixty-five thousand.”

“The Box V is not for sale!” Grandfather thundered. A pause: I heard the old man’s sigh and a bang as he brought the glass down hard on the table, before bursting out again. “The Box V is not for sale. The Box V never was for sale. The Box V never will be for sale. And by God no pack of brass hats and soldier boys and astro—astronauts or whatever you call ’em is gonna take it away from me. I’ll die first. No—they’ll die first. Why I never heard of such a thing. Every citizen of Guadalupe County, every mother’s son in New Mexico, should be loading his guns right now.”

“Don’t talk foolish, John.”

“I mean it.”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“I’m not yelling. You’re yelling.”

“You’re hollering like a bull. You’ll wake the kid.” A brief spell of quiet followed that remark. Lee spoke
again, so gently that I had to step a few paces down the hall to hear. “You think any of these scum around here will stand with you, John? Do you? Don’t believe it.”

“Reese’ll go along with me. And Haggard maybe. You’ll go with me.”

“Me? What can I do, John? Listen, you know what the men in town think about this? You know what the Chamber of Commerce thinks about this?”

“I know, I know. They think—”

“They think this business’ll make ’em all rich. Richer. And they think you are loco. Senile, that’s the word, they think you’re just a crazy old man in his second childhood. And they’ll think worse than that too, if you know what I mean. Obstructing national defense. You against one hundred and eighty million Americans.”

“There ain’t that many. There can’t be.”

“Well there is. And they’re busy making more right now.”

“Well—they’re all back East somewheres. No kin of mine.”

“They’re all against you. At least they’re not with you. That goes for Reese and Haggard too; they’ll sell out without any trouble, you wait and see.”

“You’re with me.”

“I’m with you. But—”

“The boy is with me.”

“Billy is with you. But that’s—”

“Three men can stand off about a million of these—what do you call ’em—astro, astronauts.”

“Astronauts. Yeah. But they have the papers and the law. They have Acts of Congress, national emergency, eminent domain, right of condemnation, declaration of taking. What do you have?”

“What do I have?” My grandfather’s voice soared up again. “I have the land. My ranch. No government in the world is going to take it from me.”

A moment of silence. “I really ought to go home,”
Lee said. “Poor Annie waited up for me till twelve last night.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here tonight. I told the boy you’d be going with us tomorrow. How do you think he’d feel if you …”

“I know, John. I was only talking. I didn’t haul that horse fifty miles just for the ride, did I?”

I stood awkwardly against the wall of the hallway, half-naked and shivering, one foot going numb and my knee aching. I wanted very much to see Lee before I went back to bed. On the other hand I did not want them to know I had been overhearing their talk. Though what I’d heard seemed unbelievable anyway. Unable to decide, I shifted my position a little to relieve my stiffened limb. In the night silence the old man heard the movement.

“Billy?” he said. I gulped, unable to reply. “That you, Billy?” I heard the creak of a chair and Grandfather appeared in the doorway at the end of the hall, his glasses shining and his white mane aglow with the soft yellow night from the lamp. “Why aren’t you in bed?”