The Baron Range Read online

  “Can you read ’em, Anson?”

  “Pretty much. You have to look at them a long time, figure out which is which. Juanito taught me some, Mickey Bone taught me more.”

  “Good. They may dim out on us, but we know where they’re headed.”

  “San Antonio?”

  “Looks that way,” Martin said. “But they could be headed any damn where.”

  “What about that kid following Cullers?”

  “What about him?”

  “What if he catches up to them before we do?”

  “Oh, I ‘spect he will. Maybe he’ll slow ’em down. Or get himself shot in the brisket.”

  They had picked up the tracks outside of Matagorda, tracks leading in a northwesterly direction. Apparently there had not been any travelers behind the men. From Martin’s reading of the sign, he thought that Cullers, Swenson and Hoxie had ridden pretty fast getting away from the settlement, but then had slowed their pace.

  They had left the crude road that circled the outlying houses around Matagorda and set off away from any heavily traveled route. Although Martin did not know if there was such a road to San Antonio, he supposed there was some way to get there, somewhere along the small road they had left behind. He had a rough idea where San Antonio lay by dead reckoning, and he supposed Cullers did, too. It would be the place a man would go if he wanted to lose himself or pick up supplies before venturing into the vastness of the Texas plain that stretched in every direction from that town.

  The going was rough at first until they left the sandy ground behind. Then they crossed through rougher country, but with more solid footing. Martin found places where Cullers and the others had tried to brush away their tracks, but the fourth horseman, who evidently was a fair tracker, left his horse’s hoofprints as visual as road signs.

  “That little feller knows his stuff,” Martin said to Anson at the end of that long first day. “Looks to me like he could track an ant in a windstorm.”

  “There was places when I could see only that one track. Looks like Cullers drug brush behind the horses.”

  “Yep, and he’s been going over hardpan when he could. Smart.”

  “Do you think we’ll catch him, Daddy?”

  “If that little chunk shows us the way, we’ll make better time than he is.”

  “How far ahead of us do you think they are?” Anson asked.

  “Better’n a day now, I reckon. They likely rode all night and we’ve been slowed looking for tracks. Might be two, three days before we catch sight of ’em.”

  “And how long before they get to San Antonio?”

  “Rough country here. They don’t have no grain, probably. They’ll have to find water and let their horses graze. A week or so. Maybe longer.”

  Anson let out a breath. He was used to riding, but not for days on end. He was already sore and stiff. He wished he could jump in a creek and just let the heat seep from his body and limber his muscles some. He hoped his father would find a place to bed down for the night. The sun was like a furnace full of dry logs, burning him even through his shirt and trousers.

  Still, they rode on, Martin in the lead, Anson following, trying to see what his father saw, trying to think the way his father thought. They crossed streams and let their horses drink. They rode into bewildering hills that ran in every direction, down into steep ravines, and up onto wooded hilltops so thick with trees they could not see more than twenty feet in any direction. They jumped quail and deer and heard the beating wings of wild turkey they could not see, and the horses began to spook at every sound, shy at every enigmatic shape of tree and rock.

  The sun crawled across the sky and burned into their eyes, though they pulled their hat brims down to shadow their faces, and they chewed on hardtack and jerky and drank sparingly from wooden canteens. Anson felt as if his body were bruised from his neck to the sole of his foot, and wondered if his daddy was not made of iron, for Martin never seemed to tire. Soon Anson’s eyes stung so much from dripping sweat that he was no longer able to see the track of a horse or an overturned pebble, and he wondered if his father was as lost as he felt.

  They rode over flat ground dotted with trees and wandered in and out of mesquite groves that seemed an impenetrable maze. Anson wiped the sweat from his brow and fought off the tiredness, glad to see that they were indeed once again following horse tracks and were not lost.

  Martin stopped at a place where two creeks joined and rode up and down one, then up and down the other. He crossed both streams, rode a little ways looking at the ground, then rode back. He rode straight out from the forks and then back again. He stopped, rubbed his face with one hand. Then he took off his hat and scratched his head as Anson sat his horse and watched his father’s curious behavior. Finally Martin rode back to where they had stopped. Anson scanned the ground. He could see nothing wrong. All four sets of horse tracks led into the creek and he imagined they all came out on the other side.

  “What’s wrong?” Anson asked.

  “This has got me puzzled,” Martin said. “For some reason, two men rode up one creek and another man rode across the other.”

  “So they split up,” Anson said.

  “Looks that way. But that ain’t all.”

  “That isn’t all,” Anson said, correcting his father. Martin ignored him.

  “Right. That little feller crossed straight over and rode on. He didn’t follow either set of tracks. Just rode on as if he had lost the trail.”

  “And did he?”

  “I don’t think so. The tracks are all clear. Not wet anymore, but you can see the pocks left by the splashes of drops where the riders came out of the creeks. They didn’t ride very far either, as if they might know they were being followed and didn’t give a hoot nor a holler.”

  “So what do you think, Daddy? I can’t figure it out.”

  “Well, if that little feller ain’t careful, it looks like he’s going to get flanked on both sides, maybe. Or else he might be a little smarter than Cullers.”

  “How so?” Anson asked in his best grown-up voice.

  “Maybe he figured Cullers broke up his bunch just to throw him off the track and is going to meet up with his cronies somewhere up ahead. So the little guy is just saving himself some time.”

  “He’ll jump ’em when they come back together?”

  “Or lie in wait for ’em, maybe.”

  “A lot of maybes to this,” Anson observed.

  “Well, you can’t read a man’s mind. You can’t read four minds, neither.”

  “So what are we going to do? Do we follow one of the Cullers bunch, or two of ’em, or do we follow the little feller?”

  Martin laughed. “Good question,” he said.

  “And do you have an answer?”

  “Well, we could split up, you and me, or we could toss a coin and decide which way to go.”

  “Split up?”

  “That may be what they want us to do. If they know we’re behind ’em.”

  “And they’d have easy pickin’s, huh, Daddy?”

  “They might.”

  Anson waited as his father pondered the situation. The horses switched their tails and pawed the ground. Anson let his horse drink. He listened to its slurping sounds as it sucked water into its mouth and squeezed it past the bit. Martin’s horse whinnied and he rode it to the creek bank. It bowed its neck and drank even more noisily than the other horse.

  “Don’t give ’em too much water now,” Martin said, hauling in on the reins. “We’ve got a ways to go and I don’t want them log.”

  “Okay,” Anson said, then jerked his horse’s head away from the water. The horse fought the bit until Anson dug his spurs into its flanks and backed the animal away from the creek. “Stubborn son of a bit,” he said.

  “They’d drink until they’d drown themselves if you let ’em,” Martin said. He pulled his horse back, looked up at the sky. “Be dark soon. We’d better get a move on.”

  Anson said nothing, wondering what hi
s father was going to do. The sun stood in the western sky above the treetops. He figured they had maybe an hour of light left, at best. He squeezed his fingers together and held them up between him and the horizon and the sun, the top finger just under the sun. He knew that you could time the sunset that way, fifteen minutes to a finger. But the trees took up a couple of fingers, he figured. Maybe an hour and a half at most. He sighed and put his hand back down.

  “Two hours of riding,” Martin said as if reading his son’s mind.

  “An hour and a half.”

  “We can go a ways after the sun sets,” Martin said stubbornly.

  “We won’t go anywheres if we don’t set out”

  “Don’t you go getting smart now, sonny.”

  Anson winced. He didn’t like to be called that. It made him feel small and dumb.

  “I was just prodding you, Daddy. We been here a good ten minutes.”

  “More like five.”

  “Five, ten. And them others are still ridin’, likely.”

  “Well, we’re fixin’ to go,” Martin said. He drew in a breath as if he had finally made up his mind. He clucked to his horse, put spurs to its flanks. The horse splashed through the creek.

  “Finally,” Anson muttered, and spurred his own horse, following after his father.

  His father did not veer right nor left, but followed the big horse with the small man atop it. Anson shrugged, hoping his father knew what he was doing.

  Anson caught up with his father, rode alongside him. “How far ahead do you figure they are by now?” he asked.

  “A day, at least.”

  “Will we ever catch up to them?”

  “Tomorrow, maybe. If they go to San Antonio, we might find them there.”

  “Well, I hope we find them before then.”

  “Why?” Martin asked.

  “If they get all the way to San Antonio, they might get away.”

  “They might at that.”

  They rode in silence, Martin reading tracks, for about thirty-five minutes; then Martin suddenly pressed his horse to a gallop, leaving Anson behind. Anson slapped his horse’s rump and spurred him. He looked at the ground and saw the reason his father was galloping ahead. The rider they were following had done the same thing. The length between the hoofprints and the deepness of the tracks showed him that the young man had gotten in a hurry all of a sudden.

  23

  STRIPPED OF ALL his weapons and his horse, Bone followed Big Rat deep into the sierra. He was surrounded by the other men who had challenged him when he first rode up. The way seemed familiar to him somehow, although he could not recall if the path they were taking was the actual one he had trod as a boy. He looked up at the peaks of the mountains and studied their broad faces. He felt strangely at peace, although he knew that for the moment, at least, he was a prisoner.

  They walked for an hour, and that hour stretched to two, and yet Bone did not feel tired. He looked at each bend of the trail with wonder and he felt at home the deeper they went into the mountains. He marked time by the sun, and when they had walked a little over two hours, climbing ever higher, ever deeper, into the sierra, they crossed over a saddleback ridge and descended into a long, narrow valley. He looked around to see if this was the Apache encampment, but he saw no people, no signs that anyone lived there.

  No one had spoken to Bone on the entire trek into the mountains, nor did anyone explain to him why they had come into this valley. He saw no smoke, heard no noise as the procession moved across the edge of the valley toward the southern end of it, where shadows deepened in a wooded place.

  As they neared the woods, Bone saw a mirror flash in the sun, and he saw one of the Kickapoo tilting his tin mirror. Soon a man stepped from the shelter of the trees and held up a single hand, palm out. Big Rat signed back to him and the man disappeared back into the woods.

  Bone felt the circle of men around him tighten, so that he was walled away from escape. He knew he would be shot if he started to run. But he did not want to run. He was curious, and he wanted to see if his people would accept him after all his years away, living with the Mexicans and the gringos.

  Bone’s guards moved even closer to him as they entered the woods, where the shadows were deep under the scrub pine and juniper. Still, he saw no one ahead of them. The trail was narrow and very difficult to see—a game path, he decided, ancient and smoothed down now from moccasin feet.

  To Bone’s surprise, the trail led to a clearing surrounded by rugged mountains rising high above it, throwing it into shade from the falling afternoon sun. There, like some forgotten image, stood the camp, with tents and lean-tos built against the mountain. He saw a path leading to higher elevations directly behind the camp—an escape route, he imagined—and atop a huge boulder stood an armed Apache, looking down upon the camp.

  “Come,” Big Rat said, and broke away from the others, headed for one of the small tents at the edge of the clearing. One man followed behind Big Rat and Bone, carrying Bone’s rifle and pistol and his saddlebags.

  The other men halted and split up, each going in a different way. Bone followed Big Rat to a tent where two men squatted by a spread-out blanket. They grunted to Big Rat and motioned for him to squat down. He turned to Bone and signaled for him to do the same. The man behind them stepped forward and placed Bone’s possessions on the blanket. Then he turned and walked back through the meadow.

  Bone squatted with the three other men. None said a word for several moments.

  “This man,” Big Rat said, “was once called Counts His Bones. He was captured by the Mexicans who came to our village many seasons ago, and he has lived with them as a slave.”

  “He looks very clean,” said one man.

  “He does not look like an Apache,” said the other.

  Big Rat addressed the first squatting man. “Red Leg, you are right. He is very clean.” To the other, he said, “Drum, you too speak true. He does not look like an Apache. But he has the heart of an Apache and he seeks the spirit of his people. He has been lost to them for many seasons and now he wishes to come home. He wishes to eat with us and live with us and find his spirit.”

  Red Leg regarded Bone with an expression of deep contempt. He was a man in his forties, but his skin was wrinkled from the sun and from fasting, so that he looked very old. Drum, for his part, appeared to take no interest in Bone, but looked up and away at the clouds that floated overhead like the heads of thick dandelions.

  “We hear your words, Big Rat,” Red Leg said. “Do you want us to kill him and cut his head off? He may be a Mexican spy.”

  “I do not want this. I remember Counts His Bones. He fought the Mexicans. His mother and father were killed and their scalps taken away and sold for pesos. I would like to adopt him as my own son.”

  “What if this man is a Mexican spy?” Drum asked. “He will only sneak away and tell the scalp hunters where we live.”

  “Are you a Mexican spy?” Big Rat asked Bone in the tongue of the Lipan.

  “No,” said Bone and he made the sign the Apaches used sometimes to talk with other tribes who did not speak their language. “I have lived with the Mexicans, it is true. I was a slave. I have lived with the white men, too. But I am not a Mexican. I am not a white man. I am Querecho. I am Apache.”

  “He speaks well,” Drum said, finally looking at Bone directly. “You speak well, Counts His Bones.”

  “I speak what is true,” Bone said.

  “You have fat on your bones. Why do you come to this place where the people starve?”

  “I come to seek the spirit of my people. I do not know who I really am. I am not a white man. I am not a Mexican. I am Lipan. But I do not know what this means. I want to find what is lost. I want to find what was taken away from me when I was a boy.”

  Red Leg grunted. Drum was in his thirties, but he too looked older than his years. He had scars on his face and a deep booming voice that was like thunder rumbling from his chest.

  “Big Rat, you may ado
pt this man as your son. But if he is a Mexican spy, we will kill you both.”

  “That is good,” Big Rat said. “I will take him to my lodge and show him to my wife and my two daughters. My daughters will not remember him, but my wife knew his mother and father, Chanting Woman and Hopping Crow.”

  “Ah.” Red Leg nodded as if he had known the parents of Bone. “Take him to your lodge. We will eat the meat of a young deer we killed this morning.” He turned to Drum. “Call the women out and let them cook the deer.”

  “I will do that,” Drum said and stood up. He walked out into the meadow and called to the women, who suddenly appeared from all the lodges, the visible ones and the unseen. He told them about Bone and Big Rat’s adoption and the women and children all made strange sounds that Bone did not remember and many came to look at him when he stood up with Big Rat.

  “I will keep your weapons,” Red Leg said. “Until you prove yourself an Apache.”

  “Keep them,” Bone grunted absentmindedly. For he saw a young woman walk over with the others. She was very beautiful. She had the eyes of a doe and long lashes that quivered like the wings of the butterfly, and she looked at him boldly as she walked by.

  “Come,” Big Rat said, “or do you want to be gawked at all day by women and children?”

  “Who is that one?” Bone asked when he had found his speech.

  “That one? She is a slave girl. A Yaqui. Too young. Too stupid. Nobody wants her. She has a bad heart, a flapping tongue. She would drive a man crazy with her constant talk.”

  “I want her,” Bone said.

  “What?” Big Rat asked. “Did you come here to find your spirit or a stupid woman?”

  “Does not the spirit dwell in the heart of all?”

  “So it is said. But she is a Yaqui, child of very bad people.”

  “Who owns her?” Bone asked.

  “We all own her. She lives with two old women in the lodge next to mine. They beat her and she cooks for them.”

  Bone looked at the girl as she walked away. He was sure everyone in camp could hear his heart pounding. The girl looked back at him and he saw no meanness in her. And she did not look stupid. He was sure that she liked him, too.