Shortgrass Song (71 page)

Caleb was thankful that Red Hawk didn't mistake him for an outlaw when he came around to the north wall. He wondered what Shorty was doing. Dying? Reloading? One way to find out. He finished replacing the empty cartridges, took in a breath, and swung back around the corner.

He fired blindly, his shot hitting Shorty's boot. The little man was streaming with blood, climbing up the overlapping log ends at the corner of the old cabin. Caleb fired his revolver and saw his shots hit flesh with horrible impact, but Shorty held on and kept climbing. Tommy White Fox made his shots count, too, and Shorty's blood fell like raindrops.

Caleb heard Tess scream as the outlaw fell in through the open roof. She wailed in terror as Caleb ran for the door. He expected to see Shorty dead but found the little man wrestling with Tess! She was his match in size and strength—she exhausted from rough treatment and he wound weakened—and they flung each other against the walls as if in a violent dance. Shorty started to moan the death song again, which, accompanied by Tess's hoarse screaming, raised the hairs on Caleb's neck. He used his pistol like a club on the little man's blood-spattered head until he tore Tess from the outlaw's grasp.

She clung to him from behind, sobbing. Caleb leveled his revolver on Shorty. To his astonishment, the bullet-torn man pulled himself from the dirt, blinded by the flow of his own blood, gurgling with every gasp for breath. Shorty drew a knife from a scabbard on his belt and staggered at Caleb. The drifter's last round slammed Shorty against the wall and left a red smear where he slid to the ground.

The ringing and the dull throb in his ears muffled Tess's gasps. He felt her trembling embrace, and then the sharp sting of wounds. He looked down at his bullet-ripped clothing, tested himself for broken bones. The frame was sound, but the flesh was torn at the right calf, the right hip, and the left shoulder.

He heard the faint shuffling of moccasins. Tommy White Fox appeared in the twilight beyond the doorway, a body over his shoulder. The young Indian eased Cole Gibson to the ground, turned the sightless eyes to the sky, and straightened the arms and legs.

Caleb stepped through the doorway, Tess still clinging to him. He put his arm around her. Red Hawk was coming with Long Fingers. The chief's head was hanging, but his legs were wobbling under him, a bullet having creased his skull.

Tommy White Fox looked excitedly at Caleb. “Did you see the old man counting coup?” he asked.

“No,” the musician admitted.

Tess had stopped crying, and she was looking at the bodies. “Are they all dead?” Her speech sounded choked. She had Shorty's blood on her face and all down the front of her dress.

“The bad ones are all dead,” Caleb said, not sure whom she was asking about.

She sniffed and wrapped her arms around her own waist. “I want to wash myself off.”

“The river's cold. You'd better wait.” He was trying to give thanks. It was hard. Cole was dead. Dead without firing a shot.

She shook her head. “I don't want to wait.”

Caleb went with her toward the Washita. They passed the body of Angus Mackland, turned the corner, and saw the dead horse.

“Caleb,” she said.

“What.”

“You ain't gonna make me pick no more bones, are you?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“Please don't make me go back to that farm. I don't want to stay there all alone.” She started crying again as he led her to the river.

EIGHTY-SIX

The fence ran for miles over the rolling New Mexico plains, catching tumbleweeds and coaxing whistles from the wind. Five tight strands, without a gate in sight. The pony Caleb had bought from Long Fingers didn't care much for high stepping. He had to let down every strand but the bottom one to get the horse across.

He remembered the days when he could ride from San Antonio to the Sacramento Mountains without crossing a single fence. Now cattlemen had parceled the open range into pastures. It would never be the same. It was just as well that he was settling down. It was time to wed Marisol and take her home to Holcomb Ranch. Then, like the song said, he could camp by the gravestone every spring to tell Pete some wild stories.

He would have some to tell this spring, what with that fight on the Washita to talk about—Shorty with eleven bullet holes in his body, Long Fingers returning to his village in glory.

He wondered how Tess was getting along. She would be at the ranch when he arrived with his family. He had sent her with a letter addressed to Buster, and another to Amelia, asking them to find some work for her. He had made her swear on her life not to tell how they had met at Seymour.

Yes, he would have some stories to tell this year. But what about the spring after that? And the one after that? What kind of adventures would he have raising a herd of children on the ranch? Oh, well, it was just a song. He didn't have to live it out.

Dread swept him up as he mounted the horse. He would have to face his father. If he was going to stay at Holcomb Ranch, he would have to arrive at some kind of truce with the old man. It was going to be harder than making the charge at the Washita.

But he would have to do it. Caleb was twenty-nine years old and knew no home. He was torn between Holcomb Ranch and Peñascosa, the mountains and the plains, the campfire and the stove. His style of life had aged him beyond his years. Creases marked his face like branches of a canyon. Seasons in the saddle had so strained his leg joints that he could hardly climb a staircase.

It was time. He was going to marry Marisol and take her back to Holcomb Ranch.

His mount stepped nervously over the wire and waited as he tapped the staples back in with a rock. It was Indian summer in southern New Mexico. Dazzling sunlight streamed over the peaks of the Sacrarnentos. He spurred the horse and headed for the last barbed wire gap between him and Peñascosa.

The next fence was one Caleb had helped build a few winters ago. When first he saw it, he thought he noticed a man standing along the fence line on the side of a hill. But when he got closer, he could see it was just a dead antelope hanging by one hind foot.

He had seen it happen with deer and antelope many times. Jumping a fence, they usually tucked their hind feet against their bellies, hooves pointing forward. Oh, if they were really pressed by something, they'd clear a fence all stretched out, with the hind hooves pointing straight back. But usually they'd just hop over with legs in the tucked position, and sometimes they didn't hop high enough.

All it took was for one hind hoof to get hooked under the upper strand, then the leg would act as a lever as the weight of the animal carried over, and the second highest strand completed the fatal twist. It had happened here, to this buck antelope.

As he rode near enough, the drifter could see the upper two strands twisting together around a leg stripped of hide. The buck had thrashed around some time before coyotes came to rip out the tender spots. They would return for the rest tonight.

He remembered stretching that top strand. “Sorry, ol' buck,” he said and rode on down the fence line to the gap.

He had to get down to open it when he got there. The vaqueros had recently rebuilt the gap, stretching its strands taut as banjo strings. It consisted of nothing more than five short lengths of wire between two cedar poles that stood on top of the ground. Wire loops held the cedar poles to the fence posts set in the ground at either side of the gap. In place, it looked much like any other section of fence. Unhitched, it served as a limp wire gate that could be swung to one side, wide enough for a wagon to drive through.

Caleb had to lean his shoulder into the cedar pole to slip the wire loop over the top of it and open the gap. He wished Javier's vaqueros wouldn't string their gaps so tight. It was a contest among them to see who could build the tightest one and still be able to open it.

Closing the gap was more difficult than opening it. After leading his horse through, he positioned the bottom of the cedar pole in the lower wire loop and tried to push the top of the pole near enough to the fence post to slip the upper loop over it. He had to put his left shoulder against the pole and pull toward the fence post while his right hand groped at the wire loop and tried to slip it over the top of the pole.

He finally succeeded but pinched the first two fingers of his right hand under the tight wire loop. “Ouch!” he yelled, jerking his fingers out of the bind and startling his horse. “Damned bobwire,” he muttered, sucking his injured fingers. They were going to hurt when he made his chords with Javier in the alcalde's mansion tonight.

That's where he would break the news to them. He would get down on one knee and propose to Marisol in the
casa consistorial.
Sylvia would shriek with joy, then weep with sorrow to think of Marisol leaving. Some of the children would mutter about having to leave, but Angelo would be ready. He had always wanted to go to Colorado. It would be an image they would long remember in the village of Peñascosa: Caleb on one knee, asking the mother of his children to join him in marriage.

The village came into view as he rounded the last curve in the river valley. No one saw him arrive. Javier had done away with guards since the Mescaleros had settled down on their reservation and the honest cattlemen had pressed the outlaw Texans out of the country. He turned his horse into the corral and hung his saddle.

As he walked up the lane, he heard a grinding noise and saw an old farmer named Salo pushing ears of corn into a hand-cranked mill that stripped the kernels from the cobs. He shouted, but the old man could not hear above the noise of the machine, so he walked over to the corncrib and put his hand on Salo's shoulder.

The old man turned. His eyes opened wide.

“Howdy, Salo,” Caleb said with a grin. “Where's my little
mamacita?
”

Salo didn't answer. He grabbed another ear of corn, pushed it into the mill, and turned the crank with new vigor.

“Hey,” Caleb said, nudging the old farmer again.

Salo ignored him. Something was wrong.

Caleb left the corncrib behind and took quicker strides toward the alcalde's house. He rounded the crook in the lane and came to Marisol's door. Just as he put his hand on the latch, he looked across the footbridge toward the alcalde's mansion and saw her there. Her back was turned and she was kneeling at the woodpile, but he recognized her thick mane of long, black hair. Relief swept over him. She was safe.

She looked around at him when she heard his boots clogging across the footbridge, spurs ringing with every step. She rose, holding her armload of stove wood in front of her.

“Hola, querida,”
he said, smiling and putting his hand under her chin. He stooped over her to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned her cheek to him.

“Hey, what's wrong?” he asked.

She would not look at him.

“Here, give me that wood and come tell me what's wrong.” He put his arms under the load of fuel.

“No, please,” she said, but he lifted the burden from her arms anyway. She brushed her hair away from her face and looked away.

Caleb got the wood situated and turned for Marisol's house. He sensed after a few steps that she wasn't following. “Well, come on,” he said, looking back. He froze, his mouth hanging open. Marisol was pregnant.

Caleb had never seen her pregnant with any of their children. They had each come into the world between August and October, while he was gone. But now it was late November and she was pregnant yet. The sight bewildered him. He thought back to the spring of the year. He had left Peñascosa in March. But she was not
that
pregnant. Not eight months. Maybe five or six. She clasped her hands in front of her stomach and looked at the ground beside her with an expression of utter shame.

He continued to stare at her, openmouthed, until the load of wood began to tire his arms. He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn't work until he cleared his throat. “Who?”

She didn't answer, but she cast her eyes a little higher, and glanced at the alcalde's mansion.

“Javier?”

Marisol looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. “Sylvia is dead,” she said. “She got sick and died just after you left in the spring.”

“Was it Javier?” Caleb said.

She covered her face with her hands.

He dropped the load of wood and stalked toward Javier's door, anger and shame boiling up in him.

“What are you going to do?” she asked as he passed. He didn't answer, but she saw him put his hand on the butt of his revolver. “No!” she screamed, grabbing his arm.

He shook loose, pulled the Colt out, cocked it, marched for the kitchen door of Javier's house. Above Marisol's screaming, he heard singing coming from the kitchen. Holding the pistol in front of him, he opened the door and flung it hard against the adobe wall.

The singing ended and children screamed. Caleb saw Javier sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, children of all sizes around him, some hiding behind him. Some were Javier and Sylvia's children. Some were Caleb and Marisol's. Angelo was sitting on the table in front of Javier, a guitar in his hands. Javier was teaching him. They had all been singing.

Marisol pulled at him from behind, but Caleb hardly felt her.

“Put that pistol away,” Javier said. “You are frightening the children.”

Caleb pointed the revolver at the ceiling and eased the hammer down. He let the weapon hang at his side, cold in his grip. Marisol squeezed by him to get inside. She rushed to Javier's side to protect the children. Marta was standing at the fireplace, staring at him in disbelief and fear.

“Take the children in the other room,” Javier said, getting up. “Take them!” he repeated.

She herded them away.

“Come outside,” Javier said to Caleb.

They stepped out, and Javier closed the door to the kitchen. He walked to the woodpile and turned around to face Caleb. “If you want to shoot me, do it here. Not in front of the children.”