The Dark Land Page 5

  Paco pointed and led out and Brad followed his Mexican friend along some dim trail that he could not see clearly, but knew was there. The wet shod hooves did not make much noise on the ground for a time and he was glad of that, because on such a night every little sound carried a long way, maybe for miles across the pewtered desert with its empty silence like the silence of an immense hall or a church with the star-sprinkled sky for a roof and the Milky Way spangling the dark like the moon on the river. It seemed, for a time, that he and his horse were part of another world that was not real, but belonged to the sky and the night and the whispering river behind them.

  Paco did not speak and they rode on through the trackless plain like wraiths, voiceless and without faces or names, and the land changed and they skirted deep arroyos and lancing cholla and treacherous nopales—the prickly pear—and the things of the desert took on ominous shapes. His senses prickled and danced as he rode through the strange, unknown world of the night with the stars so far away and cold and winking like wise eyes peeking through a black shroud and the moon shining now so bright he could not look at it directly else he turn eyeless and blind.

  Paco, a black shape against the black land, a centaur emerged from the mists of time, ahead of him, leading the way, the twisting, turning, cautious way, until the lanterns appeared in the distance, like fireflies flickering in a cactus garden, and then, looming larger until he thought they could be fallen stars turned to gold. Then he could see the jacales and smell the horses, smell the piss and dung and smoldering hides of them and before the horses in the rope corrals could whicker, Paco stopped and he rode up to him and waited, too, for a time. They dismounted and hunkered down behind a cactus-strewn hillock and lit the cigarettes they rolled and listened to the night sounds and waited without speaking as their own horses scrabbled for grass on the sparse landscape. The moon slid down the arc of the vaulted heavens and when they looked again, the lanterns had gone dark. They started walking toward the little village, leading their horses, holding their muzzles so that they would not give warning with their whinnies and when they saw the horses finally, Paco stopped again and they mounted up and drew their knives, which were honed to a surgical sharpness. They nodded to each other and separated to encircle the rope corral and converge on it from opposite directions.

  They kept their horses to a slow walk and it seemed to him that it took hours to get to that place where he would launch his charge, and by then he could see the Mexican vaqueros asleep around the embers of their campfire and smell the mezcal on their breaths as they breathed. When he saw Paco raise his arm, Brad jabbed the rowels of his spurs into his horse’s flanks and felt the wind blow on his face, the wind that had not been there before but was now generated by the running horse. When he reached the ropes, he leaned down and slashed them with his knife. The ropes parted and the corral collapsed. He sheathed his knife and drew his cap and ball and fired into the sky, pushing the freed horses before him. The sleeping Mexicans awoke and yelled and cursed, and the horses scattered the coals of the fire and raced past the jacales and toward the river, with Paco on one flank and he on the other, both bent over their pommels as rifles cracked like broken dry sticks behind them and lead balls whined in the air like whistling doves in flight.

  And the thunder of the hooves rose up around him and he felt pleasure race through him like the fire in his loins when he lay with his wife. He yelled at the horses and barked at those trying to break free of the pack and drove them back in to the galloping herd until there was just one rippling, surging throng racing with him, the moon on their backs like the glistening sheen on the river. When they slowed, finally, Paco turned to him and smiled and his smile shone brighter than the moon. They forded the river with horses docile from fatigue and as they reached the other side, his exultation was complete, his veins tingling as if he had drunk mezcal himself, filled his belly with the warm spirits brewed from the eternal plants that harbored the desert heat in their fibers and released them into his blood and brain in the form of liquid lightning.

  And he knew then what it was like to be rich, to own the earth and the sky and the most beautiful horses in the world, all sleek and shining from the moon and wet from the river as if newly born by some arcane and magical process.

  “It really you, mi amigo?” Paco said as he emerged from the copse of live oaks and mesquite, carrying his old rifle. Brad looked at him intently. Paco did not seem to have changed much. He was a short, wiry man, with a sun-bronzed face, thick mustache, long sideburns, and sparse, thinning black hair. He did not seem to have aged much. Perhaps the lines in his face were a little deeper, the creases around the mouth slightly more pronounced. But Paco walked with a steady firm gait and he held his head proudly and his back was straight, as always.

  Paco had never married, Brad knew, because he had grown up hating his father for beating his mother, and hating his mother for letting his father beat him. He trusted few men and no women at all.

  “Yes, Paco. Me’n a friend.” In Spanish he asked, “What passed here?”

  “Do you not see? Look at what is written on the wall of my adobe.”

  Brad turned to the burned adobe and saw what had been scrawled on the wall with charcoal: GO BACK TO MEXICO OR DIE.

  “Do you know who did this, Paco?” Brad asked as his friend walked up to them.

  “No. It happened before the sun rose up this morning. I was outside taking the piss when they started shooting at my house. I ran and hid in the trees. They tried to kill me, I think, but they did not see me.”

  “Paco, this is Gideon Tunstal. He and I are hunting these men. They will hang for what they did to you.”

  “You should shoot them when you see them, Brad. They are bad men. They killed my cow, my pigs, and stole my horses. You remember my horses?”

  “Yes, Paco,” Brad said, “I remember your horses. We will try and get them back for you.”

  Brad looked at the ruins of Paco’s place. The lean-to barn was still standing; the outhouse had not been damaged, but the hog pens were full of carcasses, and a pair of goats lay sprawled next to a stock tank, shot dead. What kind of man could perform such senseless acts, Brad wondered, but even as he asked himself that question, he knew. Abel Thorne. And there were men like him in every society. Perhaps he had learned such things from the Comanches. Or perhaps Thorne had taught them their devilish ways.

  “Come, I will see if I can find some coffee inside my house and a pot. I have the well and the pump and I know where I can get a horse.”

  “Why do you want a horse?” Brad asked.

  “Because, when you go after those men, I am going with you.”

  Gid and Brad exchanged glances that Paco did not see. He was already walking toward the burned-out hulk of his little adobe and, for a man his age, he had a surprising spring in his step.

  9

  * * *

  BRAD AND GID waited for Paco while he rummaged around inside his smoldering adobe. They built smokes and sat on the ground, listening to Paco banging around inside the casita.

  “I can’t figure this Thorne out,” Gid said. “What in hell does he want, anyway?”

  “Abel Thorne was a drifter before the war. Up from N’Orleans, I reckon, or so they said. He worked for me at roundup a time or two, vaqueroed for some other ranchers. Worked on the King, at Falfurrias, finally got enough money scrabbled together to buy him a small spread. Claimed he once knew the Bowie brothers, helped Jim and his brother smuggle Negro slaves out of N’Orleans.”

  “Was that true?”

  “I don’t know. But he had him some slaves; raised cotton and did some farming, had a few head of mixed-breed cattle. I saw one or two of ’em once, and they looked like they’d been ironed.”

  “Ironed?”

  “Brands changed with a running iron.”

  “Oh. A damned cattle rustler.”

  “Nobody ever proved anything. I heard he shot a man who called him out about some suspicious cattle up in Abilene, but
there were always rumors floating around this part of the country.”

  “Especially just before the war broke out,” Gid said.

  “Yeah. Thorne shot off his mouth over to Kingsville about the right to own slaves and I guess nobody paid him much attention. Turned out, he was smuggling slaves up from Galveston and Corpus Christi, takin’ ’em up north and lining his pockets pretty damned good.”

  “So, Thorne was not only a slave holder, but smuggling ’em in and sellin’ ’em. A damned slave trader.”

  “I reckon. I heard more about him after I joined the Texas Rangers. The Rangers had orders to bring him in for smuggling contraband and Rip Ford picked me, Randy, and Lou to go after him.”

  “You never told me that,” Gid said.

  “Forgot all about it. Before we could go after him, I joined the Union army and figured old Rip would take Thorne down. I guess he didn’t get the chance.”

  “War broke out before he could.”

  “We were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We never thought Texas would secede. Sam Houston argued against it. Then he retired and moved to Corpus Christi and those old boys up in Austin voted to secede from the Union. Caught a bunch of us plumb by surprise.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. Except that Thorne, it seems like, carries one hell of a big grudge around with him.”

  “The bastard.”

  Paco emerged from the gutted adobe, a look of chagrin on his face. He was carrying a battered old coffee pot that was burnt to a crisp. He was trying to rub off the soot, but not making much progress.

  “That pot’s got a hole in it, Paco,” Brad said. “Hold it up and take a look.”

  Paco lifted the pot, saw that there was a small hole on the bottom rim. He looked crestfallen just before he hurled the pot high into the air and watched it tumble to the ground.

  “I found a handful of coffee, too,” Paco said, patting one of his shirt pockets.

  “No importa,” Brad said, putting out his quirly. “We ought to get after those boys, anyhow. You said you had a horse to ride?”

  “Yes, I think so. Last night, one of the horses, she ran off and I could not catch her.”

  “Do you know where this horse is?” Brad asked.

  “I think she runs to the creek. She always does that when I am not looking.”

  “How far?” Gid asked.

  “I do not know. A mile, maybe. Maybe two. Maybe three.”

  Gid swore. Brad laughed.

  “I can pack double,” Brad said.

  “It is not far, I think,” Paco said. “The creek, she is not much far. Wait, I will get the bridle.”

  Paco ran over to the lean-to on spindly legs and disappeared in the shadows. He emerged a few seconds later, carrying an old worn leather bridle with a worn, thin bit. He climbed up behind Brad. “Let us go,” he said.

  Once mounted behind Brad, Paco pointed the way and the three men rode toward the creek.

  “We’ll want to get on those tracks, Gid, while they’re fresh.”

  “I could maybe follow them a ways and you could catch up with me,” Gid said.

  “We probably shouldn’t split up.”

  “Whatever you say, Brad.”

  “They’ll keep until we catch up Paco’s horse. You have a saddle, Paco?”

  “I sold the saddle last week for some food.”

  “You must be having a bad time,” Brad said.

  “No,” Paco said. “It was my stomach that was having the bad time.”

  Gid and Brad laughed, but Brad felt a pang of sorrow for how things were going for his old friend. It seemed to him that the war had been hard on everyone in Texas, perhaps in the nation. And apparently the suffering was not over. As long as men like Abel Thorne still harbored hatred and sought revenge for what fate had handed them, the war would continue to cause hardship for many people.

  The horse stood hipshot in the shade of a scrimpy willow shading a bend in the creek with its drooping branches and thin leaves. The horse did not move when Brad and Gid rode up to it. It did not even whicker at the other horses, both of which eyed it warily.

  “Not much of a horse,” Gid said.

  “To me, he is beautiful,” Paco said, sliding down the rump of Brad’s horse, releasing his grip on the cantle just before his feet touched the ground.

  The horse was a gelding. Its pale sorrel hide looked moth-eaten, with several scabbed-over sores on its chest, flanks, and legs. Streaks of blood marked the recent fly bites it had suffered. Its ribs stood outlined against the hide like barrel slats and there was a distinct sway to its back.

  “I don’t think that sorry horse could make ten miles with Paco on its back,” Gid said.

  “Oh, no, he is a strong horse,” Paco said, grinning. “Muy fuerte.”

  “I’ve got some grain in one of my saddlebags,” Brad said.

  “He does not need the grain,” Paco said, slipping the bridle on the stolid horse, pressing the bit between its worn-down teeth. “He eats the nopal when I cut the spines off, and the salt grass.”

  “He don’t look like he’s eaten much lately,” Gid said.

  “Maybe he would like a little grain,” Paco said, taking off his hat and holding it out upside down.

  Brad climbed down out of the saddle, untied his bedroll, and removed his saddlebags. He poured two handfuls of oats mixed with dried corn into Paco’s hat. “See if he’ll eat this, Paco.”

  Paco took his hat over to his horse and held it under the horse’s muzzle. The horse sniffed and blinked. Then it switched its tail and scattered two of the blood-sucking flies on its rump. It poked its mouth inside the hat and worried the grain around before starting to take some into its mouth and grinding away at it.

  “That horse is plumb starved,” Gid said. “Look at it.”

  “I think he is a little hungry,” Paco said.

  Brad said nothing. He felt his gut tighten with the sadness of it. Paco was starving. His horse was starving. And some bastard had come along and killed his goats and hogs and burned down his house. He was beginning to hate Abel Thorne and he had never really hated anyone before. Not anyone he knew by name, anyway, and even that one time, it had only been for a little while. He had hated hard, then, but the hate had gone away, he thought, forever, when he heard a few simple words that were never even spoken aloud.

  She must have known he would be hurt. She must have known that even before she betrayed him, but he could not tell by looking at her face. She had been crying and the tears were still wet on her swollen face. And that hurt him, too. Way down deep.

  “Brad, I’m sorry,” Mary said. “I didn’t mean it to go that far. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You did hurt me. You hurt me now.”

  She reached over to touch his arm, but he pulled away from her and she drew back and that hurt him, too. To treat her like that. To be so cruel. To be as cruel as she had been to him.

  “Brad, I’m trying to apologize. I’m trying to make up to you. Is it going to be this way?”

  “Mary, I’ve got to know. Who was it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, Brad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid of what you might do.”

  “I’m not going to do anything. I just want to know who it was you took to our bed while I was gone.”

  “That would do no good. To tell you.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “You might do something we’ll both regret,” she said.

  “I still want to know. You owe me that much.”

  “No, please, Brad. I don’t want you to know. It—it just happened, that’s all. I—I don’t love him.”

  “You must have had some feelings for the man. There must have been some reason you did this to me.”

  “Brad, I didn’t do it to you. I did it to myself, and I’m deeply sorry. Can’t you just accept that?”

  “No. I want the name of the m
an.”

  Again, she reached out for him, but he drew away once more and found that he could not look at her, could not look into her smoky eyes, could not look at the tears welling up in them. It was as if he were afraid he might see someone else in her eyes besides himself.

  “Is it going to be this way, then, Brad? Are you going to draw a line in this house, in our bed, that I dare not cross?”

  “Damn it, Mary, I want to know who you did it with, and for how long you’ve been cuckolding me.”

  “No good would come of my telling you about it. Brad, I don’t love the man. I didn’t at the time. I was lonely. He passed by and was flattering to me. I let things get out of hand. He’s not in our life now and he never will be.”

  “Mary, you’ll force me to look into the face of every man I meet and wonder if he was the one. I won’t be able to trust anyone I know.”

  “It isn’t anyone you know, Brad. And you’ll never meet him.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I know. He doesn’t live around here and he’ll never come back.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “A week.”

  “A week. Well, I guess he had a high old time, the bastard.”

  “Brad, please.”

  “I want to know the son-of-a-bitch’s name, Mary. Now.”

  She got up from the bed where they were sitting and walked to the window. He knew she was crying. He could see her shoulders shaking. But she made no sound and that made it worse for him. She was tearing him apart inside. He couldn’t stand to see a woman cry and now he was beginning to feel as if he were the one who was at fault.