Willie gave work a fair start, trying to make amends. At half past four the next morning he crawled out of bed after I’d called him only once, then went out with Charlie and Gil to feed stock. All the boys who’d drunk from the tobacco water had been drinking clean water again and seemed to have recovered.
Having Granny and Willie staying here and my boys gone from the house sure made things seem strange. It was as if I’d exchanged families with someone else. Granny puttered around, quiet most of the time; then she’d do something like leave a measuring cup of the front porch, forgetting why she’d taken it there in the first place. Willie was noisy and clumsy, catching his long-toed boots on every chair and table leg without fail. That’s another reason I believed he was lying, saying he was nineteen years old. Both my fellows spent a couple of years being clumsy when they grew so fast. But by nineteen, my boys had found their feet.
The boys had left their gear at the bunkhouse, and I figured I’d no choice but to let them. In that, there was little difference from having them away at college. But the brittle air around my supper table the night before had worn on me. I’d tried asking them to let up on Willie a little, and they’d agreed to it, but I don’t think they give him a minute’s peace.
When the boys returned from their chores, we had our breakfast, and Granny insisted she’d do the dishes so we could get to work. “After all,” she said, “the rest of my day is just setting and rocking. Roll that quilt down, Sarah, before you leave for the roundup. Think I’ll do a piece on it.”
I pulled the ropes. The quilt came down into place. It was her Granny’s Garden piece. She’d gotten it so far finished that it was put in layers, pinned to the quilt frame, and ready for the process of quilting to begin. I smoothed its surface, admiring the many little pieces that made a pattern under my hands. I said, “We’re going to work the colt for a bit before we head down to Baker’s place.”
My mama paid no attention, just went about gathering her scissors, thread, and thimbles. Then she set up her chair and pulled up an empty one next to her. She patiently threaded two needles. She’d work with one until it was gone, then the other, and then rethread them both. The extra chair, though, was a sad tug at my heart. Anytime we worked a quilt, it was the thing to do to set out an empty chair. It was for the missing woman. The friend who might call, just as you’d sat to quilt, and who might bring a loaf of bread, lend a hand, do a square. As I watched her concentrate on her tiny, even stitches, every one of them a bare eighth of an inch between, I sensed the empty chair was for me, and it filled me with an uneasy longing.
There are times I miss the things I haven’t done in my life. The things Savannah is so good at doing, like taking up the empty chair. Like wrangling all those children into good-minded human beings. My three have gone, it seems to me, like a whirlwind. April runs off soon as the door opened, Charlie balks at my every word, and Gilbert just seems happy to flit from one chore to the next without a thought for the future at all.
As I stood there in the doorway, looking at my mama, needle just whipping like a tiny silver dart, that empty chair told me I’d have to make time for more. Not as if I didn’t work enough, but somehow there had to be an extra hour in the day that I could spend with her. I felt as if my mama needed me more than she used to, and that no matter what else I got done, I was not taking care of that need.
The men and I went to the barn and worked on getting Pillbox and Hunter out to the corral. Gilbert started in talking to the horses, and after a time, Pillbox let him get his hands on Hunter. He petted the colt all over, lifting his feet one at a time, stroking his back. The third time he touched Hunter’s back leg, the colt lifted it without any tugging. Gilbert held the little hoof in his hand for a second and tapped on it with his fingers. He was teaching the horse about getting shod—not to wiggle, and not to be afraid of something hitting his foot. All the while, the look on my youngest son’s face was purely spiritual. He was a natural horseman.
Pretty soon, Pillbox’d had all she could take of Gil messing with her baby, and she squealed. That meant it was time to saddle our rides, pack a little food, and fill canteens. The boys said they’d do the horse work while I wrapped them each a sandwich, so I headed for the house.
I meant to go to Savannah’s and fetch some more pies the girls had made, so I told them I’d need the wagon hitched, too. Before long, I handed the three boys their lunches. They left, leading an extra horse for me to use when I got there later. I also planned to see if Mary Pearl would be allowed to come stay with me for a bit, now that Willie was fitting in. Maybe having her around would take away some of the strangeness that seemed to have taken up residence with me. I was glad to care for my mama, and Willie seemed to be doing better, but I still felt lonesome. Felt like I’d been uprooted.
As I headed for Savannah’s house, just to give myself time to think on things, I drove down a path we rarely used—a circle to the north side—where the land rose a little steeper. Besides, it would cut to the acreage that Mama had now deeded away to the railroad. I could see if anything had been laid there, like fence wire or tracks. I often rode the coyote trails around my land, instead of the roads. Seemed if you wanted to see things clear, you had to get them in a different light. When I got to the last little hill overlooking Granny’s old place and Albert and Savannah’s, I put on the brake and stepped out.
I took a walk up on the ridge. Standing on top there, I looked into the desert for a long spell, watching for any new post or the least little sign that it no longer belonged in our family. The quiet was what startled me. Quail are never quiet during the summer. Woodpeckers, bees, all kinds of critters make noise the livelong day. But here, I didn’t see or hear a sign of life. Not a coyote. Not a bird. First thing I thought of was that a mountain lion might be near. Waiting, hunting, while everything else fled. This kind of silence wasn’t about birds and critters hunkering down for a storm coming. Before rain, the quail run around in a panic, warning one another about every drop until it gets too thick to see, and then they have to run and hide. The sure thing was, if nothing was stirring, something had scared them.
As I turned to head back down the slope to the wagon, something moved. It was an awful feeling—wishing I had a pistol in my pocket like the old days, but knowing I couldn’t reach the rifle under the seat in the wagon. I stopped breathing, trying to pick out where I had seen the shadow move a second earlier. Wild burros and other critters move around the desert all the time. I was worried to take a step until I knew what it was. I held my breath. Behind a stand of brushy ironwood and fallen mesquite, where a finger cholla had grown near to the top of it, a large dark form moved again.
The animal snorted. Not a horse. A mule. It stepped from behind the brush a little, cropping at something on the ground. It was a large black animal. A puma skin was tied to its back. The claptrap fixed to the skin made it unmistakable. The animal belonged to the water witch. I searched the area all around it. Even sniffed the air for the reek of Lazrus. The only thing moving was the mule, which was eating; the only smell the sweetness of coming rain.
I looked in every direction. A lizard whipped out of the weeds at my feet. Turning around again, I ran down the slope too quickly, startling my horse. I half-expected Lazrus to appear out of the very air, the way he’d done before. When I got on the buckboard, I still thought he’d spring up before me. I loosed the brake and snapped the reins harder than needed, jerked the wagon out of its shadow, and made tracks for Savannah’s house.
Albert insisted on driving back with me to make sure everything was all right. I told him I was wanting someone to stay with Granny while we worked the herd. Well, Mary Pearl had her heart set on riding out with us and working, and the two little boys together could be more trouble than they’d solve, so Savannah decided to ride back with me and spend the day helping Granny work her quilt. As we drove the short way back to my place, Savannah put her hand on my arm. “You take good care, with that heathen around here.”
“I will,” I said. “Chess is going to be out in the barn most of the day. Are you afraid to stay with Granny?”
“Not if you leave me a shooter,” Savannah said.
“Why, Savannah! Are you telling me you’d let a vent through Lazrus’s hide?” I meant it to lighten the mood, but Savannah was having no cheering up. She glowered, first at me, then at the land around us, as if she expected him behind any bush, peering at us. She wanted him to see the intent on her face.
Savannah said, “If I find it’s him writing love letters that have got my girls in a stir, I’ll let a vent so’s a jackrabbit could jump through sideways.”
Her talk startled me. It wasn’t like Savannah to let a vent in anyone. “Who’s in a stir?” I asked quietly.
Savannah lowered her voice and said, “Nearly every day, Mary Pearl finds a note pinned at the windowsill. She and Esther sleep on the top floor. Someone is putting up a ladder at night, right at their bedroom window. Rachel and Rebeccah swoon over the notes, too, trying to guess which one of the hands in these parts is so educated to write that way. They have long talks about it, discussing what sort of romantic notion has got him mucking stalls when he could be doing something grander with his fancy words. Truth is, there is no name on any note, neither for whom it is meant nor from whom it comes. Each girl imagines it is addressed to her, although they’d never say that to me. I know my girls, and I know what’s going on.” Then Savannah raised her voice and nearly shouted, “It’s a sorry, indecent way to go courting, and I’d never let one of my girls have any truck with the kind of sneak-thieving hooligan who’d do it. Never. Not as long as I have breath!”
Savannah had never spoken like that before. It was as close to a vow as she’d ever made in public, and vows were sacred things to Savannah Lawrence Prine, not tossed to the wind without thought. This one, hollered right out, was meant for someone to hear. We talked more about why she thought Lazrus was writing the notes. He’d said something to Chess about having been educated, but I couldn’t put him together with paper and quills and love notes to young girls. It just didn’t make sense. Of course, then I remembered the person we were talking about, and then I had to agree with her.
While Savannah said good morning to Granny and took a seat in the empty chair at the quilt frame, I got my old rifle from behind the bedroom door. I took an extra box of ready-load bullets to put in my saddlebag. I stopped in the parlor. Making sure the chamber was empty, I sighted in, aiming at the nail on the wall that held a string behind a picture.
Granny looked up from her stitching. “What’re you fixing to shoot?” she asked.
“Varmint,” I said. “If I see one. There’s been a two-legged one sniffing around. Lazrus. I saw his mule across the crick. Savannah thinks he’s nosing around there. If you feel the need, my kitchen pistol is on the top shelf in the pantry, next to the grease can that’s got the candle wax in it. Loaded. Remember it kicks like a mule.”
Without looking up, my mama said, “Makes you purty jumpy, don’t he?”
Savannah said, “The man is pure evil.”
Granny suddenly stopped her sewing, looked directly at me, and said, “You leave me that firing piece, I’ll make sure he gets the message.”
I laughed. “Mama! You never shot a gun at a man in your life.”
“Yes, I did. I never told you, but I did once. As a girl. Reckon I ain’t lost the knack. Never was no dead shot like you, but I can do it justice.” She turned from me to Savannah and back, nodding. “It ain’t something you forget how to do.”
Savannah held a needle at arm’s length and pushed the thread through its eye, making a knot faster than I could have even found the ends. She had a stern look on her face, but, as I’d seen her do many times, she smiled through her fierce determination. She said, “What hymn shall we sing first?” And that was the end of our talking about the prospects of two ladies needing powder and lead to get through the morning.
By the time I got to the Bakers’ place, work was in full swing, and plenty of dust hung in the air. It was good to leave my troubles hanging on the Bakers’ front gate and think of nothing but moving cattle. There’s strength in the solitude of work. Hot or not, dust and wind and every other torment, hard work is still peace compared to what can worry a person on the inside. On the back of that horse, I could leave behind thinking of my mama getting old, my brother Harland and his sad predicament, Lazrus tormenting me, and even Rudolfo.
Baker had a couple of Spanish dandies working for him. They weren’t much use, but in this kind of work, a good horse that knews its job could have a sack of potatoes in the saddle and still get it done. Willie did his share of sitting and watching and waving his hat when the cattle got too close to him. He fell off his horse at least twice that I knew of, and maybe more I didn’t. Watching him, I wondered how long it would take him to get planted in that saddle. Reckon it’ll depend on how much he wants it.
We didn’t slow down for lunch, just ate in the saddle. The afternoon was long and torturously hot. One of those Spanish fellows got in a fix with his horse and ended up in a thicket of cholla. He was a sorry sight, and his hide was going to smart for a few days. Plus, that accident took him and his brother off work more than an hour while the brother went to pulling thorns with a pair of pliers. Still, I’d never known a gathering without someone getting stove up one way or another.
We had made good progress by the time the dinner bell started ringing in the evening. My boys and I had just cornered a little bunch of five and were pushing them toward the holding fence when we heard it. Willie whooped loudly and let out a curse, saying “Let’s go, boys!” It caused the lead steer to dodge, and my pony took after him. I could still hear the boys, but I was too far away to do more than listen. I waved the loop in my right hand and turned that steer back to the bunch.
Charlie told Willie to hush, said that cussing insulted the cattle. Willie laughed at that. So Gilbert told him it rankled the horses, and Willie laughed all the harder. While he was laughing, Charlie snicked a quirt behind Willie’s back onto the flank of the pony he was on, and in a snap, Willie was riding nothing but dry sagebrush. Willie cussed the horse, cussed the ground he landed on, cussed the rock that scuffed his fancy boots, and cussed the cattle, too, for good measure. “Told you to watch it,” Charlie said to him. “That horse took all the insults he could, and left you high in the sky.”
Willie looked like he was just about to cuss Charlie, too, when all of a sudden he stopped, thought a minute, and said, “Hey. That horse don’t understand English.”
Charlie told him the horse understood English and Spanish, and even some Hungarian and French, because it had been bought at an international horse auction and it had picked up all those languages from the other horses there. Willie scratched his head, but he didn’t open his mouth the rest of the way to the fence.
When we got the bunch through the opening in the fence, we turned off to the house. The smell coming from the supper tables was heavy with pies and sweets, mixed with the scent of roasted meat and chicken. Stepping out of the saddle after a day like we’d had sometimes mades me feel I could barely walk. My legs would swing all cattey whompus and my shoulders always wanted to sway as if I was still riding. Willie took off ahead of us to get to the chow line. He scuffled through a little pack of chickens, sending them squawking out of the way of his fandango boots.
My sons and I took our places in the line of men, plates in hand. When Willie figures out about the horse’s English, he’ll be mad all over again. Well, he’s busting to act like he’s lived here all his life. Reckon if he had, it wouldn’t be so confusing to him. I said to my sons, “You boys see that you don’t ride him so hard he bucks and runs the other way. There’s a limit to what a boy can change about himself in a day.” They both muttered something about it needing a lifetime to change Willie.
Mrs. Baker had set out a load of good food on some planks laid on sawhorses, and there was plenty to go around. It looked like she was
cleaning out her larder and garden both, what with the spread of pickles and preserves tucked in between all the meats and fritters and such. I felt sorry I’d not spent more time with her. I hardly knew this woman, and now she was leaving. I couldn’t for the life of me remember her first name, and when I passed her, she gave me little more than the nod she gave the men.
As we gathered around the planks loaded with food, all we talked about was how the rain’s so late this year. There were fellows from Cochise County come to help, and vaqueros from Sonora, too, working for Rudolfo. Most owned their spreads, large and small. No one else had lost a well as I had, but we are all holding our breath, saying prayers, hoping and wishing for rain. I suspect we are all wondering who’ll be the next one to call it quits and sell off.
The sun was dipping into the trough between two hills as the boys and I headed home to do the sundown chores. This far into the summer, that meant it was around eight o’clock. Willie dawdled behind us about three lengths.
“Well,” I said, “when do you two figure to move back to the house?”
Charlie made a little face. “Mama, we’re kinda enjoying the bunkhouse.”
“Not enjoying, exactly,” Gilbert said.
I said, “Well, what, exactly?”
Gil turned to his brother. “Old Charlie and I have been talking about maybe building up a little house. There’s all this land. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a second house on it? Then the ranch would be a regular compound. Maybe you wouldn’t mind?”
“What’s wrong with the house we’ve got?”
“Not a thing,” Charlie said. “Truth is, Mama, we’re leaning toward glad Willie’s there. Gives you someone to get after besides us. I was just wanting a place of my own. Don Quixote said he’ll help me build it as long as he can sleep there now and again.”
Gilbert said, “You better remember my name, or you’ll lose the only help you got that knows which is the working end of the hammer.”