The Baron Brand Read online

“Well, I damned sure love ever’ one of mine, so let’s keep after them thievin’ Apaches.”

  “Just be careful, Peebo. Go slow.”

  Peebo looked at Anson with a quizzical expression on his face, but said nothing. Instead, he hitched his pants and continued following the horse tracks. Anson sighed and fell into step behind Peebo.

  Anson lost all track of time. His throat and mouth were dry, his shirt clung to his back, glued down by sweat. The stitch in his side had gone away and was now replaced by pains in his calves. His feet felt wooden, becoming more numb with each step.

  “Peebo,” Anson called. “Whoa up.”

  Peebo turned around. “Huh?”

  Anson halted in his tracks. “We have to talk.”

  “We’re wasting time, son. You can talk while you walk.”

  “No, I think we’ve gone far enough. This is crazy. We’re not going to catch up with Culebra and his bunch. He’s probably laughing at us right now.”

  Peebo turned and walked back to where Anson stood. He waited a moment before he spoke. “Look,” he said, “I know it’s hot and we’re thirsty, but the way to walk down these Injuns is to keep on after them.”

  “They know we’re following them, Peebo. They’re not going to let us catch them.”

  “Well, that’s true. But, we’re goin’ to catch ’em anyways.”

  “Damm it, Peebo, I’m sayin’ we need to get to the ranch, get some help. We’re walking into trouble.”

  “If you’re scared—”

  “I’m not scared,” Anson said.

  “Go on, then. Go back to the damned ranch. I aim to get my stock back.”

  “Peebo, if you want to work for the Box B, you’ll damned sure learn to take orders.”

  “From who?”

  “From me, for one.”

  “You ain’t the boss,” Peebo said.

  “Until another one comes along, I am.”

  “Sheeeit.”

  Anson stalked up to Peebo and stood square facing him. His eyes turned hard as black agates. Peebo stood his ground, but a few flickers of worry ticked at the corners of his eyes.

  “What you aimin’ to do?” Peebo asked.

  “Talk sense into you, if I can. If not, then you can go your own way. You won’t ride for the Box B.”

  “You didn’t offer me the job here, Anson. Your pa did.”

  “A lot’s happened since then, Peebo. Make up your mind.”

  “By damn, Anson, you caught me plumb by surprise. I didn’t know you was the ramrod of the Box B.”

  “It don’t make no difference. You can’t take orders here, no ranch worth its salt will take you on.”

  Peebo took off his hat, slapped it against his leg, spangling dust particles into miniature clouds.

  Anson watched and waited to see what Peebo would do. His gaze did not flicker or waver as he skewered Peebo with a hard look that showed his resolve to hold the new hand in check.

  “Well, doggone it, Anson, I just hate to lose them horses.”

  “I know. Sometimes we have to take what we’re given and let it go at that.”

  “I hate to have a bunch of ignorant red savages get the best of me.”

  “Well, they only got some horses from you. They took Jorge’s life.”

  “Yeah, I know. Cut you a deal, Anson.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We go on another couple of miles so I can get a fix on where they’re heading for sure, then I’ll walk back to the Box B with you.”

  “They’re headin’ for Mexico.”

  “I know. I just want to make sure.”

  “All right, Peebo,” Anson said, a sigh in his voice, “we’ll go a little farther. But, when I say quit, I mean quit.”

  “Yes sir,” Peebo said, slamming his hat back on his head and flashing that wide grin of his. “You bet.”

  Anson was not deceived. Peebo was not broke to the halter yet. He would buck again. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this whole thing,” he said.

  Peebo did not say anything as he started walking down the horse tracks again. Ten minutes later, he came to a stop, looked back at Anson.

  “Find something?” Anson asked.

  “Anson, you might have been right, them feelin’s of yours. Take a look at the tracks.”

  Anson bent down, then straightened up. He walked around in a circle, shaking his head the entire time. When he came back to Peebo, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Well?” Peebo asked. “What do you make of them tracks?”

  “They had this figured right down to the nub, Peebo. Now, they’ve got riders for every horse they stole.”

  “Looks that way to me, too. The boys on foot just waited here and now they’re a-horseback.”

  “We’ll never catch them now,” Anson said.

  “Not this day, we won’t.”

  Anson let out a long breath, looked around. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sun, shading his eyes. “Well, Peebo, one thing’s in our favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can follow a while longer. This is the way to the Box B.”

  “Be a long walk.”

  “At least I know where we can find water.”

  “I’ll bet them Apaches do, too.”

  Anson frowned. Culebra knew the country better than any living man. The Rio Grande Valley was his home, where he had grown up, where his father and ancestors were buried. Yes, the Apache would know where the creeks and water holes were, and they might be waiting for him and Peebo to come to the nearest one. It was something to consider as they walked their way toward the ranch.

  Less than ten minutes later, Peebo and Anson both heard the horse scream. The sound began as a high-pitched whinny, then dissolved into a terror-stricken series of shrieks that tore at their senses.

  “Horse in trouble,” Peebo said.

  “Sounded like my horse.”

  Both men cocked their rifles and hunched over, twisting their heads to see what might be at either side of the trail. They walked, bent over like hunchbacks, toward the place where they had first heard the horse.

  The screaming stopped and the silence seemed leaden, heavier than the thick air the two men breathed. Anson felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. In the eerie quiet, he gestured for Peebo to follow him.

  Anson held his breath as he stepped toward the source of the scream. He ducked under a mesquite branch, waited, listening for any sound.

  Ahead, a horse lay in a clearing, its hide twitching as if trying to shake off flies. Anson looked all around to see if any Apache might be nearby. Peebo came up behind him, breathing fast.

  “See anything?” Peebo whispered.

  “That’s my horse yonder. He looks hurt.”

  “Looks like blood on his hind legs.”

  Anson sucked in a breath, winced at the sight. “Wait here,” he said.

  Peebo started to say something, but kept his silence. He moved into Anson’s spot and kept watch.

  Anson reached the horse, knelt down beside it. The horse moved its head, looked at him with liquid brown eyes.

  “Oh, no,” Anson breathed. Then, he turned, beckoned to Peebo, urging him to come quickly.

  Peebo ran to Anson’s side, knelt down.

  “Jesus,” Peebo breathed. “Look what they done to your horse.”

  Anson fought back tears. The Apaches had slashed all four legs, cutting the tendons so that the horse would never walk again. Blood still oozed from the wounds, stained the ground. Flies clung to the open wounds like thick mats of hair.

  “You got to put him out of his misery,” Peebo said softly.

  “I—I can’t,” Anson said, and the tears broke from their ducts. He crumpled up as the sobs shook him. “Oh, God, how could they do this?”

  “Son, you walk on ahead. I’ll take care of it.”

  Anson lifted his head, looked at Peebo. “No,” he said, “I’ll do it. He’s my horse. I hate to see him suffer.”

  “Do it q
uick, then,” Peebo said, rising to his feet.

  Anson looked into the horse’s eyes, saw the pain flitting. The horse whimpered and that’s when Anson saw that its throat was slit, the wound so small he could hardly see it.

  He stood up, cocked his rifle. He put the muzzle behind the gelding’s ear and squeezed the trigger. The explosion deafened him as the horse shuddered, then lay still under a blanket of white smoke.

  Anson doubled over and began vomiting. He turned away from the dead horse and coughed up phlegm and liquid and remnants of food, staining the earth with the contents of his stomach. He staggered away, sicker than he had ever been, a rage boiling in him, choking off his ragged tears, blinding him to all danger, all that was around him.

  Anson gulped in air, stopped throwing up, and walked toward the waiting Peebo. With mechanical motions, he began to reload his rifle, pouring powder down the barrel, fishing for a patch and ball in his possibles pouch, the stench of acrid smoke and blood and death clogging his nostrils.

  “Home?” Peebo asked, as Anson drew near.

  “No, by God, we’re going to walk that sonofabitch down.”

  “Who?”

  “Culebra,” Anson swore, the very name a curse on his lips.

  13

  CAROLINE STALKED THROUGH the house in her white gown like a haunting wraith in the darkness. She stopped at unshuttered windows and peered out toward the stables and the barn, then crept away to wring her hands and dab her brow with a fluttering handkerchief.

  She passed the kitchen where Esperanza was still working, but said nothing, gliding by in ghostly silence to haunt the front room and peer through a window at the gray pewter yard so empty and lifeless at that hour, dimly lit by a fingernail sliver of moon, desolate and silent, not a creature stirring. Lazaro, she knew, was asleep in his room at the far end of the cavernous house, his blind eyes closed to the night he could not see. She was glad that Esperanza had brought Lazaro to her after the blind boy’s parents had been killed. He was someone to love, someone to love her. And she desperately needed that.

  She turned from the window and drifted into the den lit by an oil lamp turned low, its furniture shrouded in darkness, the desk, the chair, the table, the small settee where Martin often sat while she went over the books with him. She sat in the settee now and waited, listening to the soft sibilant creak of the house as the outside temperature fell. There was a window there, too, and she could see the treetops in the orchard, the scarves of clouds streaming across the velvet black sky, the pinholes of light where the stars blinked like faraway beacons, like ships she imagined on the sea, harboring sleeping sailors as Martin had once been, dreaming their secrets of the deep in rocking slumber.

  The silence of the room billowed around her, punctuated only by the soft clatter of dishes as Esperanza dried and put away the supper dishes, the soft whine of cupboard doors opening and closing on leather hinges and the purr of the breeze against the windowpanes.

  Caroline’s body jerked as she heard the back door slam shut. The sound startled her, even though she had been almost expecting it. She heard Esperanza’s muffled voice, then the boom of Martin’s timbral greeting to the criada.

  “She is in the little office room, I think,” Esperanza said, in Spanish, and Caroline held her breath, tried to will her suddenly fluttering heart to stillness.

  Boots boomed on the hardwood flooring, coming ever closer and Caroline braced herself for her husband’s entrance.

  “Caroline?”

  “In here,” she said, her voice almost a squeak.

  The footfalls sounded outside the door and then Martin was inside, squinting to see through the dimness. He came over to her and stood staring down at her face. Her lips quivered slightly, and she folded her hands to halt their trembling.

  “What in hell did you call me out of the field for?” he asked, his voice booming in the hollow quiet of the study.

  “Martin, don’t be loud,” she said.

  “I damned sure want to know why I had to drop everything and ride a dozen hard miles to see you sitting here in the dark like a mouse.”

  “Please, Martin,” she said, fighting back her tears.

  “Well?” His voice softened.

  “I—I’m frightened,” she said.

  “Of what?”

  She tried to avert her eyes from his. She felt his stare boring into her and now that he was here, she could not form the words she had said over and over in her mind all day long.

  “Martin, it—it’s that cannon. I can’t stand to see it out there anymore.”

  “The cannon?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “The cannon. So much blood on it. So many dead. Such cruelty. You must take it away. Take it away tonight.”

  “Tonight? Caroline, have you lost your senses?” His voice was loud again, querulous.

  “Y-yes,” she whimpered. “I—I think I have lost my senses.”

  She looked up at him again, her eyes wet with tears, her lips quivering. He reached down and took her hands, pulled her up.

  “Caroline,” he said softly, “what in hell’s happened to you? That cannon can’t hurt you. Can’t hurt anyone. It’s not loaded. It’s just sitting there.”

  “No,” she said, an urgency in her voice, “I can hear it. I can hear it roar and I can see the torn bodies, the pieces of flesh, and the screams, always the screams.”

  She shivered and shook against him. Martin held her tightly to him, smoothing her hair with one hand. She began to feel calm, but the visions of terror were still there.

  “I’ll sell the cannon,” he said.

  Caroline looked up at him. “Will you? Promise?”

  “I promise. Tomorrow. Get it out of your mind.”

  “I—I can’t … .”

  “You must,” he said, and she crumpled against him, weeping softly, her trembling rippling in every fiber of her body. Her sobs grew louder and she felt Martin’s body stiffen as if he wanted to flee from her arms.

  “Now, now,” he said. “It’s not that bad. Just don’t worry about it no more, darling. I’ll get some hands to haul it out of the barn in the morning.”

  “No,” Caroline said. “You must do it now. They come back, you know.”

  “They come back? Who?”

  “The savages. At night. They come back and I can hear the cannon boom, like thunder, and the screams. They’re all out there, all over again. In the morning. They’re there, lying in blood, their eyes … their eyes.”

  “Caroline. Stop it.”

  She whimpered and the tears burst forth from her eyes again and wet her face until it was shiny in the lamplight, shiny and wet as blood and she was sure that it was blood on her face and when she touched a hand to her cheek, it came away bloody, like always, and she could see the faces of the dead Apaches, painted hideously, the eyes vacant, staring into the sky.

  Martin shook his wife, held her away from him, stared into her weeping eyes and he could see the look of horror and disbelief on her face.

  “Please, Martin,” she whispered, “please do it now. Take the cannon away. I—I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “Caroline, what in hell’s wrong with you?”

  They both heard the swish-glide of sandals on the floor, a susurrant intrusion on their private world. Caroline turned, looked toward the doorway. Martin released his grip on her arms and she almost collapsed, but steadied herself, swayed there as he turned toward the door.

  Esperanza stood there, a dim figure, faceless, like a statue, a carving of wood that loomed there in silence, like some large bulto, the carving of a saint.

  “Esperanza? What do you know about this?” Martin asked, in Spanish.

  “She is like that every night when you are gone,” Esperanza said. “She sees the ghosts.”

  “There are no ghosts.”

  “For the señora, there are ghosts.”

  “Jesus,” Martin said.

  Esperanza crossed herself and turned away, shuffling off into the d
arkness, leaving the two Barons alone.

  “Jesus,” Martin said again.

  “He can’t help,” Caroline said, and her voice was soft and lost, like that of a child.

  The lamp flickered as if a wind had slipped into the room and it sputtered as if trying to speak, its hot oil hissing an unintelligible message in the darkness.

  14

  Luz AGUILAR FELT the piercing glare of the man’s eyes burning into her flesh as if he were probing for her heart, or for another place that was not so secret, but every bit as private. Her fingers dug into the mass of dough as if that were his flesh, the fat of his neck, and her rage transformed her fingers into iron daggers plumbing for the windpipe, squeezing off his air supply, choking the life out of him as she would wring the neck of a chicken.

  But she did not turn around to look at Reynaud. Instead, her eyes flickered with the burning hatred inside her, smoldered with the loathing she felt, the loathing that was like a clammy sweat between her legs, like the musky dew on her pubic hairs. For she knew that Reynaud was trying to peer through the thin cotton of the dress that clung to her naked body, trying to penetrate the cloth and feed his filthy mind with her image. She had seen the looks of such men before, before Matteo had gazed upon her with a look that was different from those lusting men of the Mexican earth south of the border.

  Her companion, working the harina de maíz in another clay bowl, Conchita Morales, was hidden from the man’s view, sitting as she was directly opposite Luz at the kitchen table of butcher block, lifted her head and saw the look in Luz’s eyes.

  “What passes?” Conchita whispered in Spanish.

  “That man, that feo cabrón, behind me. I do not like him. I do not like what is in his mind.”

  “And what is in his mind that you can see it?” Conchita asked lightly, for she could see part of the man’s body, the top of his head, from where she sat.

  “Do not make a joke of it, Conchita. You know what he is thinking. He is always looking at me.”

  “You are beautiful to look at, señora. Any man might look at you that way.”

  “He is different, this one, this filthy one. He knows my husband is out in the back working, and he stays around here like a fly hoping to drink the honey.”