Territory (6 page)

He lay on his side, his head on one outstretched arm. His other arm was flung out before him. One knee was drawn up in front of him. The other leg …

It seemed to bend backward against the joint, a long, smooth curve. In fact, all of him was long, reaching out in many directions. He was unimaginably heavy.

He felt the ephemeral things move on his skin. The roots of mesquite trees shuddered in him as wind swung their branches. A mouse skittered through his dust, rushing from shade to shade. Water coursed over him, wearing a smooth trough down to his bones. At the edge of him, pressed up to his belly on the northeast, the town was a gentle, irregular scratching of activity.

A hawk took the mouse, the force of its strike like a leaf falling. Many men’s boots, many horses’ hooves, many wheels rolling and banging, touched him like spatters of rain. Blood soaked into the sand of him and dried, and meant less than sweat drying in a breeze.

For those were quick things. He was slow, ancient, strong. His bones defied time and animal lives, defied wind and water, defied the sunrises that warmed them, the cold nights that gnawed them with so little effect.

Even his blood was slow: dense soft threads of stone, rich and cool, thick in his veins. He felt the power in it feeding his lungs, his brain, the thousand-year pulse of his heart. He existed to contain that power. He kept it inside him, safe, alive.

A hot steel fang bit into him. It carved into his side, struck again, again.

It was carving the blood from his veins. And that blood ran in a firestorm over him, devouring the ephemeral things, cracking his invulnerable bones in a white explosion of pain—

Jesse lurched awake. His hands clenched on the mattress ticking. His lungs burned for air. He hoped he hadn’t screamed.

For a long time he lay flat, staring at the ceiling. He could still feel his dream-body, the one made of stone and sand. And silver. The blow, like a pick into rock … and then what? Destruction. Death.

What had Lung said? That Tombstone should have been auspicious. Something was wrong, something Lung thought Jesse ought to be able to fix.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and pushed the dream away.
I am going to Mexico.

 4 

Mildred was right about increasing the print run. By the end of the day the shelf by Harry’s desk was empty, and she was glad she’d remembered to pull a copy for herself.

“What is it about bad news that makes people buy their own papers?” Mildred asked as she cleaned ink off her fingers. “On good days, they read other people’s castoffs. Bad news is just as willing to wait an hour as good.”

Harry plucked a cigar out of his humidor, then closed and locked his desk. “My, you’re as sour as me these days.”

“As bad as that?”

“Maybe not quite. But give you a few years, and you’ll be a real newspaperman.”

“Thank you, Harry. I’ll take that in the spirit in which it was meant.”

“How do you know what I meant?”

Mildred looked across the type case at him, surprised. Harry shrugged into his coat.

“You ready to go?” he asked. “I’ll lock up.”

Mildred jammed her hat on her head. “Yes, boss.”

Harry followed her to the front door. “You’ll have to choose your ground one of these days, Millie.”

She looked into his face for a hint of a joke. But he was grave. “What’s this, Harry?”

“You’re not a wife, or a whore, or a saint like Nellie Cashman. And you’re not a girl or an old hen. I don’t believe you’re working here until some fellow gets down on one knee and holds out a ring. So who are you fixing to be?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’m the eccentric Widow Benjamin.”

“You’re living like a prospector. Looking for Nature to make your fortune for you. And even prospectors have an answer when someone asks ’em what they do for a living.”

“No one ever asks a lady what she does for a living.”

“Doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have an answer if the question came up. What’s yours?”

Mildred stared. “I set type.”

Harry stood, half frowning, in the door. “Go along, then,” he said at last. “There should be news worth setting by morning.” He closed the door between them, and the lock clacked home.

For a moment she considered banging on the glass and demanding that Harry explain himself. But even he might not be sure what he meant. In the past months, she’d listened to him think aloud, usually on town politics. He would contradict himself, or leave conclusions half-made, until the day an editorial would land on her copy stand. Then she would see the result of the refining process she’d been listening to.

She’d let Harry take his time. So long as it didn’t lead him to firing her, she refused to fret over it.

But as she walked toward Fremont, she fretted. Who was she fixing to be? Curious question; weren’t people who they were, regardless of what they wanted? Shaped by parents, teachers, friends, a husband or wife, by past decisions and necessities?

She’d left Philadelphia because there was only one person she could be there: her parents’ daughter, a suitable man’s wife, the mother of sons who would inherit the things that passed through her hands that would never be hers. She couldn’t have stayed and told her father, “I’m going to be someone else.” Could she?

Her boots banged on the board sidewalk.
Walk like a lady,
their mother used to scold when she tried to copy Eli’s walk. Then Eli had suggested they both learn to walk silently like Indians. It was years before she realized that he’d done it to save her from scolding.

Austerberg’s stood on her left, across the street. The green-and-white striped awning was fading in the hard sun and wind-driven dust. But the windows sparkled, and “Austerberg’s Dry Goods” shone on the glass in gold leaf.

If Mr. Austerberg had sent any message while trailing the would-be robbers, Lucy would be sure to relate it to Mildred. With Lucy, gossip was satisfyingly reciprocal. Now, if Mildred were a reporter, there’d be another name for it. Women gossiped; reporters collected information. She thought of Mr. Fox asking if she were a reporter. Was he joking? Or had she looked like— whatever reporters looked like?

The Austerbergs had arrived a month after Mildred and David. They’d come from Cincinnati, via Texas. Frederick had a pleasant German growl that
reminded her of some of her father’s friends. “Too settled-down in Texas,” he’d complain, laughing. “Everybody runs a store. I want that, I can stay in Ohio!” David had called the Austerbergs commonplace, and made excuses not to accept their dinner invitations. But Mildred had gone, and never regretted it.

She paused to let a buckboard pass, nodding to the rancher who drove it. There was a black-and-white goat tied to the tail of the wagon and chewing on its tether. It rolled a milky blue eye at her as she passed behind it.

She stepped onto the sidewalk in front of Austerberg’s. Some movement made her look back.

The goat stood wide-legged in the street, shaking its head, as the buckboard went on. For a moment it seemed not to know it was free. Two horsemen rounded the corner, and the goat dodged them nimbly. The horsemen rode on.

Mildred teetered on the edge of the sidewalk. A lady didn’t shout in the street … “Hello!” she yelled. “Sir! In the wagon!”

No use; he would be surrounded by the buckboard’s noise. A man moving boxes into the shop beside Austerberg’s looked at Mildred, then at the goat. He picked up another box and turned away.

The goat started back the way it had come. It would pass her in a few seconds.

Mildred looked around and sighed. Where were the ten-year-old boys of the world when one needed them? She stepped into the street.

The trick to catching a goat or a donkey was to make it think one hadn’t the least interest in it until the last possible moment.
Now there’s something I would never have learned in Philadelphia.
She walked into the the street, leaned over, and pretended to tie her boot.

She heard the patter of the goat’s hooves.
Stay still, stay still
… Then she shot out her arm.

She had a fistful of frayed hemp rope with a bucking goat at the other end. She dug her boot heels into the dirt of the street as the goat threw its weight against the rope. Then it lowered its head and charged her.

She dodged and lost her balance. She flung an arm over the goat’s neck as it went by, and felt it stumble. And suddenly they were both on the ground in the middle of the street, and she was sitting on the goat.

She heard whooping and clapping around her, and looked up to see the walk lined with men—mostly men—cheering. Her face went hot.

“Mighty fine wranglin’!” shouted a gray-haired drover. “Goat-fighting!” added a stout man in a suit and a gold watch chain.

Then a man was bending over the goat and grabbing its rope. “You can get up now, ma’am. I’ve got the bas—beast.”

Mildred looked up to see the rancher from the buckboard. His face under the brim of his brown felt hat was younger than she’d first thought.

“I’m sorry I sat on your goat,” she said, and immediately regretted ever opening her mouth in her entire life.

But the young rancher grinned. “I don’t think much else would have worked. This fellow’s an awful hard case.”

He put out a hand. Mildred put hers into it. He pulled her to her feet, and she almost fell down again from the suddenness of it. “Sorry!” she said.

He steadied her. “No, no, I’m sorry. And grateful. My name’s Tom McLaury. My brother and I run cattle, over in the Sulphur Spring.”

“And goats.”

“A few. The Mexicans pay good money for ‘em. Goat cheese and
barbacoa.”

Mildred looked at the goat, who stared resentfully back. “If he’s destined for barbecue, I understand why he’d run for it.”

“Oh, no, ma’am. He’s got plenty of good years ahead. Poquito’s a first-class stud.” McLaury turned cherry-red.

Mildred laughed. “So I saved him from a terrible mistake.” She thrust out her hand again. “I’m Mildred Benjamin. Pleased to meet you.”

McLaury was still blushing, but he shook her hand and smiled. Then he looked down at her fingers. “You’ve got a busted seam.”

Sure enough, the thumb of her glove had pulled away from the palm, and the leather was torn.

“Ladies’ gloves aren’t made for ranch work, I reckon,” McLaury said. “I owe you a pair.”

She looked up into his smiling blue eyes, preparing to deny it. She saw the handsome lines of his long, tanned face, the sparkle of sweat in the golden brown hair at his temples, the early crow’s feet and thick eyelashes. There was admiration in his gaze.

“What I’d really like,” she found herself saying, “is to know what goat tastes like.”

He was startled; then he grinned. “Nothing easier. Why don’t I bring you some, next time we butcher a kid?”

“I’d like that,” Mildred said. “I work at the
Daily Nugget.”

“Then that’s where I’ll find you. Good day, now.” He tugged his hat brim and dragged Poquito down the street.

The street—they’d been standing in the middle of it the whole time. Mildred looked up. Her audience was dispersed, and the riders and wagons went
around her without a pause. She swatted hopelessly at the dust on her skirt and straightened her hat. Had she really stood talking to that man with her hat askew?

My brother and I.
Wouldn’t he have mentioned a wife, if he had one? She felt her face heat up again. Mildred Benjamin, she’d called herself, not Mrs. David Benjamin. What was she thinking?

Well, there was a question that answered itself. She gave her skirts a final, irritated shake and stamped up the sidewalk to Austerberg’s.

Lucy had seen the whole thing, of course. “Oh, Mrs. B, are you hurt? That was a brave thing you did.”

Lucy’s tone hinted that “brave” in this case meant “foolish.” “Thank you, Mrs. Austerberg. I’m fine. Awfully shabby, though.” Mildred held up her hand in the torn glove and looked sheepish.

Lucy came out from behind the notions counter, clucking in genuine concern. “And your nice dress, too. That’ll take a deal of cleaning.”

“Think how I’d look if we’d had rain,” Mildred said, laughing. Lucy smiled and shook her head, and Mildred knew she was forgiven her oddities.