Charlie knelt by the door to the smokehouse. “These tracks,” he said, “come from bullfighting fandango boots. Seen enough of them lately. Only tracks on top of them come from your feet, Mama.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, holding a fist against my forehead.
Charlie looked shaken and angry at the same time. “I’m sure.”
The four of us rode to Albert and Savannah’s house, and we barely slowed as we went in the door. Their family was seated at the table, about halfway done with breakfast. Before I could ask if they’d seen Willie, Chess called out, “That boy stole Sarah’s best mare and run off. El Rudolfo says the prime stock is missing.”
“And at least one man, maybe two,” Charlie said.
Albert jumped up and looked toward the back porch, then came back and said, “I thought Willie was asleep on the porch. Ezra, run to Granny’s and see if he’s in there again.”
Ezra came back and said no one was there, and no horse tracks went close to Granny’s house. We backtracked toward my place and followed the trail. The tracks went north, then turned off the road, leading east, almost to the Wainbridges’ fence. From there, the tracks joined up with those of another horse. Two miles farther, the horse hooves were nearly lost in the tracks of more cattle than any of us could speculate, headed due south—toward Mexico.
Chapter Eighteen
August 8, 1906
Rudolfo was coiling a rope. Before him on his desk lay two pistols and some cleaning rags. The room smelled of kerosene. His face was dark and his eyes glinted with a sinister fire I’d never seen in him. Anger made him seem much younger and far more dangerous than I’d ever known my long time compañero. “Sarah,” he said, “I’m going with the men to find the cattle thieves for only one reason. To keep them from hanging all of the rustlers. I’ll bring el sobrino home to you.”
“I’m going along,” I said.
Rudolfo lowered his voice. “No. You will not go with us.”
“Why not? They’re my cattle, too.” And it’s my lunatic nephew they’re after.
“In case I fail.”
In case he failed to find them or failed to stop a lynching? I knew without question that rustlers and murderers would stand side by side under the nearest live oak tree. Just knowing they’d made a running iron made them guilty. It’s just a bent poker that can add a line or hook to a brand, and when it heals, a rustler can claim those cows as his. If I could get Willie back alive, I might have a chance to talk to a judge in town. Rudolfo said, “Escuche. Will you listen? Get one of the men to organize the drive with the remaining cattle, and start for the well at Picacho. We’ll meet them with the stolen herd on the road. I’ll cut out some of your brand and leave them. Wait here until I return.” He was packing bullets into a double bandolier. He was mighty sure of himself. Still, that seemed the more practical thing at the moment.
I said, “Take them all—all that you find—to sell. But if you find fifty, I promised Udell Hanna a stake for a couple of years. Reckon he’ll be going along, too, so tell him to cut fifty for himself and take the rest to Tempe. I’ll sort out what to do when I see what money is left. Sell them all. I can’t pay the hands. I’m flat busted.”
The large clock on the mantel ticked loudly ten or more times before Rudolfo said, “Fifty for Señor Hanna.” He began methodically stoking bullets in the chamber of one pistol, and when it was full, he sighted in on something near the fireplace. “If there are fifty, you will need them yourself. We’ll make a hard bargain with both the bandoleros and the cattle buyers. I’ll get your money and our cattle. Another thing. Hanna is not going.”
“Why not?”
“Cujillo is helping him build a house. If he stays in this valle, he has no time to drive cattle.” He came and stood before me. “When I return, we will talk.”
I couldn’t read Rudolfo’s face. Seemed like he might be wishing I’d throw my arms around his neck and beg him to stay or to send the new neighbor in his place. For a moment, I searched in my heart for that tug I used to feel when Jack would ride off, bound to take on some band of warriors or outlaws that no one in their sure mind would face. All I felt was hollowed out again. I said, “Rudolfo?”
“¿Si?”
“I know you’ll do the right thing,” I said. But I didn’t feel sure of that at all.
He nodded, fit his hat squarely on his head, and left without a backward glance.
Well, the idea that I should “get one of the men” to put together a trail drive rankled me no end. It was my place as an owner. I’d put together seven drives of our last ten. But Rudolfo was taking most of his hands and Charlie, while Gilbert, Chess, Shorty, and Flores were headed north with the remaining cattle. They’d need hands, and we’d have to choose from the strangers Rudolfo had hired, and hope they’d take orders from me. Usually, I just said things plain out, and I expected to be listened to. Handling strangers could sometimes take a kind of sweet talk that was not abundant in my makeup. I’d have to count on my trail boss, and I’d have to choose him carefully.
Gilbert knew business, but I needed someone as boss the other riders would listen to because they respected him, not because he was my son. If he’d had even three more years on him, I’d have used him for the job. I decided finally on Flores. Aubrey wanted to go, so Gilbert could show him the way. Soon as Rudolfo caught up to them the next day, he could put Charlie as a ramrod. Gil and Chess planned to leave the following morning with a wagon headed for Tucson to outfit the chuck, then come back and meet the herd on its way. The herd would move slowly. Should be well out by the time they got together.
The food would have to be bought in town on credit. I gave Gilbert the last cash I had, the twenty-dollar gold piece from under the candle stand. I told him to keep it for an emergency on the trail, such as a doctor’s care if someone got hurt bad. We’d pay the supply bill and the payroll when the cattle were sold. I asked him to put it to every one of the men that way, too, seeing if they’d work for a promise and then get paid at the end, for I hadn’t any more real cash than six bits I could rub together.
While we ate at my kitchen table, just Gilbert and Chess and I, a little sprinkle of rain settled all the morning’s dust. It came with just a whisper of a breeze and no lightning or thunder close by at all. Gilbert said the Wainbridges were both gone, too, along with the cattle they’d held behind the fence during the fire. It seemed to him, he said, that Willie had been in cahoots with Dustin and Cole Wainbridge, and they’d rustled cattle even before the fire. Before we’d finished our meal, the rain quit and the clouds scattered like they were a herd just come to graze a spell and move on.
With half the cattle gone, a third of them dead—we’d lost count—and the rest moved, I was looking at being retired from the cattle business by the next morning. And, by then, all these chairs would be empty but mine. Had I really lost all? My cattle, my savings money, and maybe even part of my land to pay the debts on the windmill and pay Granny for the well? Not in all my life had I felt so much as if I were rolling my wheels backward. None of this had been easy to build or hold on to, but in the past it was all going uphill, and anytime I turned around and looked to see where I’d come from, why, I was always better off than before.
While they went about packing up, I went to pull some water and look at my garden. It had been a hardscrabble square of land, about a quarter acre, when Jimmy first built the fence around it. He was only thinking of keeping out a jackrabbit or so and hadn’t known about the javelina packs. Nor had he estimated the mess a coyote chasing a mouse through rows of lettuce could make. I had used string and wire and added a row of ocotillo branches around Jimmy’s wire fence, then put cholla buds at the bottom to keep the critters from digging under it. About half those ocotillo had taken roots and sprouted. Over twenty years of hoeing and weeding, spading in wet leaves, paper, and manure, the ground had turned rich and black. Now it was scattered with cholla burrs and thorns, every inch. I started at one corner, raking.
; An hour later, I checked on the sourdough rising on the sideboard for biscuits. The smell of that night’s pot of beans and beef wafted through the open kitchen window. I did the evening feed. I tried to imagine that I’d sold my land and moved off this place for good and all. Taken Granny, Chess, and the boys to town. Left Savannah and Albert behind, along with the Maldonados and Hannas, everything familiar.
After supper, I rode a circuit from Cujillo’s place to Hanna’s, Maldonado’s, and then home by way of Albert’s. It would take months to repair and rebuild all that had been lost. But I had water at last. Rain coming. I got back to the last hill south of my house just as the sun was setting and the sky turned to deep azure in the east. From there, clouds painted yellow and red and copper stretched across a turquoise sky that reached westward from one end of the horizon to the other. The earth glowed, as if it had been overlaid with gold, and in the far distance, the hills turned shades of faded purple. It was a sight I had witnessed before, but unlike the rays of sunlight, I had never seen anything this fine in a picture painting. I wished I knew how something so beautiful could exist in this hard old land. It looked as if Providence had repented for making our lives so troublesome and had sent a bouquet of colored clouds perfumed with the smell of wet creosote and clay. My heart swelled at the beauty of it.
With whatever money Gilbert got for the stock he had, and however many Rudolfo could rescue, I’d start over, too. I’d take the advice I gave to Udell, and just dig in. I could never sell this land. I felt a hard band let loose around my ribs and I took in a long breath. This was my home. I turned my pony toward the candlelight shining in my parlor window.
Chess turned in early, and in less than ten minutes I heard snoring coming from the back porch. I sat awhile by the open window in my parlor with just a single lamp lit. I could see Harland’s painting of a San Francisco that would now be forever changed hanging on the wall near the bookshelves. The clock ticked loudly. Somewhere east, coyotes played and tussled and yelped. On the far wall, nearly hidden by a chest where I kept linens and extra blankets, were some tiny faded blue handprints. My April had made those on the wall with a bottle of blueing the day I found Jack nearly dead out on the hillside. I reckon if I hadn’t known the hands were there on the wall, I’d have believed it was just a shadow. So much of life is a shadow, fleeting as a moment.
The lamplight was drawing critters against the screen window so thick I couldn’t see out. So I blew the flame out and just sat there rocking in the dark. The sun set around half past nine. By then, the one star I watched for every year came out. In a couple of months, another would come up with it, too. In the fall, they’d make a triangle with the moon, which was always something to see. The first and biggest one, I’d named for Jack long ago.
Rudolfo will find Willie and bring his ragged hide back here with my money. Charlie and the men will find my cattle and bring them back, too. I smiled at myself. I had been so mad when Rudolfo told me to get a man to arrange the cattle drive, but I really needed these men around me to do things. None of us could manage without the others. The trouble with me was that there was just one man I wanted, and he wasn’t much for taking care of things, even when he had been here.
Just as real blackness seemed to close in, a yellow glow shone in the eastern sky. I feared more wildfire, but soon as I saw the round light appear, I calmed. I put my hands together on the windowsill and laid my chin atop them, then waited until the moon rose above the hill. At least the moon still came over the same notch in the mountains. The only thing I’d been able to count on lately was that things change. Reckon a person has to take comfort in the eternity of a few things. On the beam over the porch, two doves cuddled together next to the wall. They rubbed their necks this way and that against each other and then settled like two gray stones. This ranch would be here long after I was gone. For my boys and their children, April’s too, if they wanted it. I savored the smell of land. Even the soft perfume of the old wooden sill under my hand was good. It was all good, and we’d made it through the worst. As Granny used to say, we’d lived over it, but we didn’t look like much come this side. I had to smile.
Morning came misty and verdant, as if the very earth beat with a rhythm of life and lust and heat, with the cattle drive moving. As if it all might recover from the fire. As if someday there’d be a reason to go on, scourged and tried, but alive. Yesterday, I’d worked from the smallest hours to the greatest, and nothing but more work stared me in the face. Today, there was hardly a blessed thing to do but wait. How fast life can turn its course. On a nickel, as the boys say, and give you some change.
Shiner stayed with me. I had only a few chickens, Savannah’s gift, to feed. There was no need to haul water to the remuda anymore, just a little for the ones left in the corral. Most of my riding stock was gone with the men, one direction or the other, and all I had left were my wagon team, the old horses, and Hunter.
I spent the morning coaxing Hunter to eat. The cow’s milk wasn’t sitting well. He tried to chew the hay, but what he liked was the leaf. I knew better than to give him nothing but leaf. In the barn, I carried a sheaf of hay to a worktable and took a knife to it, cracking and chopping that hay into baby-size pieces, almost like grain. Then I mixed it with some oats and a little molasses and a chopped apple. He snorted over it suspiciously, then took a little bit. Hunter dropped more than half of it as he tried to chew it, but it looked like he was pleased with the recipe, for he went after the stuff he’d dropped and ate plenty to make his little sides fill out. I gave Rose and the others a couple of apples each on my way to the house. Rose’s leg was looking bad, what with the skin peeling away and flesh showing through, but she was getting around better.
Then I sat and wrote April and Morris and told them the whole of what had happened. I’d mail it tomorrow, after Rudolfo got back with Willie. I folded the letter and put it under the sugar bowl on the table. I fetched a rocking chair from the porch and turned it over my head, carried it up and put it under the dead jacaranda tree, where I could see the whole of the graveyard. Amidst the calls of quail and mourning doves, I listened to the sounds of peace. This place, this day—this quiet, quiet day—felt to me as safe from all the world’s harms as resting in my papa’s lap when I was little. In my papa’s arms, all my problems were regularly salved by a few kisses and a story and a nap. I pulled my hair out of its ties and raised my skirt to let the air waft around my ankles, then leaned back and closed my eyes to think.
I woke up when a stray twig from the tree whisked across my arm. All was quiet. The commotion of my life had moved on. I saw myself on Mama’s front porch, in her life, happy in her role as Granny and happy, too, to live alone in her little house. No longer did she seem addled to me. Just worn-out. Boneaching tired, so that just putting on her shoes was an awesome effort. I stood up, careful of the snarled branches over my head. There on one of them was the tiniest green dot. A leaf bud. The tree was alive.
I touched the blistered bark gently, as if it had been Aubrey Hanna’s burned face. If there are no cows to mind and no men to cook for, I reckon to build a little flower bed here by the graves. Maybe I’ll begin tomorrow at sunup and have it done before they all get back. When Rudolfo brings Willie, that boy is going to spend the next month hauling rocks and manure to build a flower bed at this graveyard. I’ll work that boy down to manageable size. He’s been asking to be taken down a peg since he strutted in here.
Yonder over the southern hills, thunderheads rose above the filmy clouds hovered low. In the midst of them, lightning flashed, making the clouds look as if the insides were on fire. The air around me had taken on that leaden feeling of another impending storm, still and hot as an oven. I left off feeling at peace, but I didn’t take on the worry and trouble that had been mine over the last days. After all, Rudolfo will bring my money, too, for surely they couldn’t have spent it all by now. I don’t think even four men living high and wild could burn through over a thousand dollars in a day or two.
I moved my feet, which made a little gecko slip from under the chair, headed for the grass. “You sassy thing!” I said, laughing. “Hiding under there, peeking at my ankles like a heathen.” Lands, it was hot. I picked up the chair again and lugged it back to the porch and drew myself a drink of water from the olla. Sweet and cool. I finished the rest of my chores with a song. All this would turn out fine.
When I opened the door, I caught my breath. From where I stood, I could see the back door to the other porch. It was swaying gently, halfway open. I started toward it to close it. Then remembered I had shut it tightly when I took my bath. I left the house from the front door. Someone else had left it ajar.
I’d let down my guard and someone had come in the house. I reached behind the door for my shotgun. It was there. Without trying to be quiet, I racked it and made sure it was loaded. I went through my house room by room, but found nothing but my own footsteps answering me. On the back porch, the screen door was latched from the inside. Anyone going out that way would have had to leave it unlatched. That didn’t mean someone couldn’t have gone out the front. I had been asleep. I went through every bedroom before I set the shotgun back in its place in the kitchen. Another, closer peal of thunder rang just as I did. Lightning close by lit the room for a second like daylight and something flashed.
“Aunt Sarah! Are you home?”
I turned with a start, banging the table with my hip. I said, “Who is that?”