the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) (21 page)

"We've nothing to heat it in," I protested.

She gave me a disgusted look. "Tony has a canteen. Hang it over the fire and it will heat fast enough. And don't look at me like that. I've treated wounds before. You seem to forget that I grew up in an army camp!"

"I didn't know." Tony was stripping the covering from his canteen, and rigging a forked stick he could prop it over the fire with. I broke sticks, built up the flame.

"How'd you get here?" I asked.

"On a horse, stupid. They're bringing a rig, but I knew it would take too long. So I just came on ahead to see what I could do."

She was working as she talked, cleaning the wound as best she could, using some kind of antiseptic on a cloth, after bathing it with water.

Nobody had any illusions. She might know a good deal about gunshot wounds, as well as other kinds, but doctors themselves knew mighty little, and there were no hospitals anywhere near. Survival usually meant reasonable rest and a tough constitution--and mostly the latter. Yet I'd seen men survive impossible injuries time and again.

Tony had taken her horse, walked him around a little and was rubbing him down. That horse had been running, all-out and too long. Seeing her there bending over the fire, I could only shake my head in wonder. She hadn't hesitated, but had come as fast as a horse would carry her.

I asked about that. "Switched horses twice," she said, "at the Stirrup-Iron and at the Indian camp."

My hair stiffened on the back of my neck. "Indiancamp?Where ?"

"About twenty miles east. A bunch of Kiowas."

"You got a horse fromKiowas ?"

"Why not? I needed one. I just rode into their camp and told them a man had been hurt and I needed a horse, that I carried medicine in my bags. They never asked another question, just switched horses and saddles for me and watched me ride off."

"Well, I'll be damned! Of all the gall!"

"Well, what could I do? I needed the horse and they had a lot of them, so I just rode right in."

"They had their women with them?"

"No, they didn't. It was a war party." She looked up at me and grinned. "I startled them, I guess, and they just gave me the horse without any argument ... Maybe it was the medicine bag."

"More likely it was your nerve. There's nothing an Indian respects more, and they may have thought some special kind of magic rode with you."

I looked at Fuentes, and he merely shrugged and shook his head. What could you do with a girl like that? Nevertheless, we both felt relieved. Neither of us knew too much about wounds, although Fuentes was better than I. We had nothing with us to treat such a wound, and I knew nothing of the plants of the area that an Indian might have used.

After a while, she came out to where I stood. There was a faint gray light in the east, and we stood together, watching the dark rims of the hills etch themselves more sharply against the growing light.

"I thought it was you," she said. "I was frightened."

"I'm glad you came. But you shouldn't have, you know. You just lucked out with those Indians. If they'd seen you first, the story would be different now."

"Tory shot him?" she asked.

So I told her how it was, and just what had happened. "Now that you're here, Fuentes and me will ride up on the mesa and bunch those cattle again. They won't have strayed far."

"What will happen now?"

Considering that question had got me nowhere, and I'd done a lot of considering since Tory fired that shot. We could only wait and see.

"I don't know," I replied.

It could be a shooting war, and I knew how that went. It could begin with scattered gunfights, and then it could turn into drygulching and no man would be safe--not even passing strangers, who might be shot simply because if they were not on the shooter's side they must be on the other.

A thought occurred to me that I'd not considered before. "I rode in from the northwest," I said, "an' had no reason to think about it. But where's your supply point? This is a long way from anywhere."

"San Antonio," she replied. "We get together. Your outfit, ours and Balch and Saddler. Each of us sends two or three wagons and each sends drivers and a couple of outriders. Sometimes the soldiers from Fort Concho meet us and ride along to protect us."

"But if you didn't go to San Antone?"

"Then there isn't much. Oh, there's a stage station that has some supplies for sale, a place called Ben Ficklin's, this side of the fort about four miles. There's a place across the river from the fort called Over-the-River. There's a supply point there, several saloons, and a few of those houses that men go to. The boys tell me it's very, very rough."

If somebody was to the south of us, Lisa's people, whoever they were, must be getting supplies at one of those two places. It was possible--but hardly likely--they would go to San Antonio alone, through Kiowa and Apache country. Yet even a ride to Ben Ficklin's or Over-the-River would be rough. But suddenly I knew it was a ride I had to make.

Come good daylight, Tony and me, we cut loose from camp and headed for the high ground. A few of our cattle had already found their way down to the creek for water, but we couldn't wait on the others.

They were scattered some, but we swung wide and began bunching them. By now, most of them were used to being driven and we were going toward water. Here and there, some bunch-quitter would try to cut off by himself just to be ornery, but we cut them back into the herd and drifted the cattle down off the mesa and scattered them along the creek to get tanked up on water.

It was close to sundown before we had them down there, and Tony rode in close to me, hooked a leg around the pommel and dug out the makings. He tilted his sombrero back and said, "She likes you?"

"Who?"

He looked disgusted. "Ann Timberly ... The senorita."

"Her? I doubt it."

"She does. I know it. If you want to know about romance, ask me. I have been in love ... oh, dozens of times!"

"In love?"

"Of course. Women are to be loved and I could not permit it that they linger and long for some gay caballero to come along. It is my duty, you see."

"Tough," I said, "I can see how it pains you."

"Of course. But we Mexicans were made for suffering. Our hearts accept it. A Mexican is happiest when he is sad ... sad over the senorita, whoever she may be. It is always better to be brokenhearted, amigo. To be brokenhearted and sing about it--rather than win the girl and have to support her. I cannot think of loving just one. How could I be so cruel to the others, amigo? They deserve my attention, and then ..."

"Then?"

"I ride away, amigo. I ride into the sunset, and the girl, she longs for me ... for a while. Then she finds someone else. That someone is a fool. He stays with her, and she becomes without illusion, and always she remembers me ... who was wise enough to ride away before she realized I was no hero, but only another man. So I am always in her eyes a hero, you see?"

I snorted, watching a four-year-old with markings not unlike Ol' Brindle himself.

"We are but men, amigo. We are not gods, but any man can be a god or a hero to a woman if he does not stay too long. Then she sees he is but a man, who gets up in the morning and puts his pants on, one leg at a time like any other man. She sees him sour and unshaved, she sees him bleary from weariness or too much drink. But me? Ah, amigo! She remembers me! Always shaved! Always clean! Always riding the pretty horse, twirling his mustaches."

"That's whatshe remembers," I said. "What about you?"

"That is just it. I have the memory also, a memory of a beautiful girl whom I left before she could become dull. To me she is always young, gay, lovely, high-spirited."

"No memory will keep you warm on a cold night, or have the coffee hot when you come in from the rain," I said.

"Of course. You are right, amigo. And so I suffer, I suffer, indeed. But consider the hearts I have brightened! Consider the dreams!"

"Did you ever brighten any hearts around Ben Ficklin's?"

When he looked at me again, he was no longer showing his white teeth. "Ben Ficklin's? You have been there?"

"No ... I wish to know about it... And Over-the-River, too."

"Over-the-River can be rough, amigo. Only now they are beginning to call it San Angela, after DeWitt's sister-in-law, who is a nun."

"I'm studyin' on taking a ride down that way, to Over-the-River and Ben Ficklin's. Seems it might be a good idea to know who comes there, and what happens around about."

"Soldiers from Concho, mostly. Maybe a few drifters."

We cut out a couple of Balch and Saddler steers that wanted to join our bunch, and moved our stock toward the camp. When we came in sight, we saw the buckboard, horses unharnessed, and Ben Roper standing by the fire chewing on a biscuit. Nearby Barby Ann was talking to Ann.

Barby Ann gave me a sharp glance, no warmth in her eyes, then ignored me. Roper glanced at me and shrugged.

"How's the gather at the ranch?" I asked.

"Middlin'. We brung in a bunch, and we're fixin' to brand what we've got when you all come in to help."

"We'll be shorthanded to do much," I said. "Joe won't be around for a while, so there's just you, me, Fuentes and Danny."

Roper glanced at me, a sidelong look from the corners of his eyes. "You ain't heard? Danny never come back." He paused a moment. "I rode up to the line-shack to bring back any stock he'd gathered, and he wasn't there. Hearth was cold ... No fire for days, and the horses hadn't been fed."

He kicked a toe into the sand. "I picked up a trail. He was ridin' that grulla he fancies. Follered him south maybe seven or eight mile, then I come back. Looked to me like he knew where he was goin', or thought he did."

Suddenly Roper swore. "I don't like it, Talon. I think he got what Joe Hinge almost got. I think somebody killed him."

Chapter
20

When morning came again, with sunlight on the hard-packed earth, there was no change in Joe's condition. He had been hit hard, he had lost blood, and the exhausting ride in the buckboard had not helped. Yet his constitution was rugged, and such men do not die easily. We needed no foreman to tell us our duties. There were cattle to be moved to fresh grass, then watched over during the day, and the herd had grown in size. One man could no longer keep them in hand. Although during the early hours, when there was plenty of grass with the dew upon it, and when they'd had their fill of water, there was small need to worry.

Danny had not returned during the night, and we looked at the empty bunk, but no comment was made. Each of us at one time or another had found such empty bunks in the morning; sometimes a horse returned with a bloody saddle, sometimes nothing.

It was a hard life we lived and a hard land in which we lived, it and there was no time for mourning when work had to be done. There would be one man less to do the work. And one man less at the table, one horse less to be saddled in the morning.

Ben Roper was coiling his lariat when I walked to the corral and dabbed a loop on the almost white buckskin I'd come to like. He glanced at me as I led the horse through the gate. "You think he's tomcattin' around that Lisa girl?"

Both hands resting on the buckskin's back, I thought about that. "Not now," I said, "although that's likely what took him off south. Maybe he knew where she was, maybe he just went hunting. But I think he found more than he expected."

"Fool kid," Ben said, irritably.

"Well," I said, "we've all put in our time at being fools. He had no corner on it, and he was lonesome for a girl. The last time he was in the cabin," I continued, "he had fresh mud on his boots, and there was mud dropped from his horse's hoofs. Made me a mite suspicious." That was all I wanted to say.

Ben considered that. "Could be picked up in a lot of places. Lacy Creek, maybe ... or over east. The Colorado is too far east."

"The Colorado?"

He nodded. "We've got one here in Texas, too."

"The stolen cattle," I said, "seemed headed southeast. Do you suppose he got wind of something?"

He shrugged. "He might have gone off huntin' that gal and stumbled into something."

"You know anybody with a rifle that has kind of prongs on the butt plate?"

Ben considered that, then shook his head. "I seen 'em on one kind of a Sharps, and some of the Kentucky rifles had 'em. Yeah, I know." He began saddling up. "I've seen those marks, too."

"Ben, we've got to bait the rustler. He's hunting young stuff. Let's leave some where he can get it, then follow him."

"Maybe," Roper was doubtful. "There's just you, me and Fuentes now, and work enough for six--even if it doesn't come to a shootin' war."

"Barby Ann will make a hand. I mean, she'll pitch in and help, but we'll need more."

With our horses saddled, we went back to the bunkhouse. Joe had been moved to the ranch house, where Barby Ann could see to him when we boys were out.

I fed a couple of cartridges into my Winchester and carried it to the saddle. I slung the saddlebags, then put the Winchester into the boot. We were stalling. All of us were stalling. There was work to do and we knew it, but we were just sort of waiting around for something to happen.