The Baron Range Read online

  12

  MATTEO MIGUELITO AGUILAR looked across the room at the man who had just come into the cantina. There was something familiar about him, but he could not remember where he had seen him before. His clothes were dusty and wrinkled; his hat looked as if it had been dragged behind a horse. He wore an old flintlock pistol tucked into his belt and carried a pouch and powder horn. He wore spurs on his battered boots, small-roweled and rounded, like a vaquero’s, and the heels were hardly worn at all.

  Matteo knew the man was not a Mexican, although he wore the garb of a vaquero. His hair was black and straight and his cheekbones burned with the blood of Yaqui or Apache. The man must have balls, he thought, to come into a Mexican cantina. Alone, at that.

  The man ordered mescal at the bar. He dropped some pesos on the boards that clanked as they struck together. The barkeep, a rotund Mexican wearing a grimy apron, did not look at the man, but grabbed a glass and poured it full, then snatched up the pesos and returned to his conversation at the end of the bar with two women and a rheumy-eyed campesino from Sonora.

  The cantina was almost empty. One other table was occupied by two horse thieves who wore wide-brimmed straw hats and spoke the gutter language of illiterates. Matteo had come in to meet a man who owed him money and to get away from the house where he lived with his wife and son. She was an ambitious woman who constantly nagged him, complaining that she lived in a hovel when they were entitled to be rich. But he owned a fine house in Matamoros, and he knew it was temporary. He would go to his family’s ranch and claim it when the time came.

  The man at the bar turned and looked for a table. On an impulse, Matteo motioned to him and pointed to an empty chair at his own table. The man hesitated for a moment, then strode toward him.

  “Sit down,” Matteo said in Spanish.

  “Many thanks,” the man replied.

  “Do I know you?” Matteo asked. “Your face is familiar to me.”

  “You were just a boy when last I saw you, Matteo.”

  Matteo’s face darkened. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  “Mickey Bone.”

  “I do not know anyone by that name.”

  “Miguel Hueso.” Mickey sipped the mescal and kept his eyes on Matteo as he drank.

  “Yes. The mestizo. You worked for Baron. You do not work there anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, there was trouble.”

  “No. I am looking for my people, the Lipan Apache. The Querechos.”

  Matteo leaned forward. Perhaps this was the man he was destined to meet at such a time in his life. Now he remembered him, for even when he was a boy, Hueso was a man who was spoken about. He was a mysterious man, a half-breed Apache, part Yaqui, perhaps, who had been raised by Mexicans. He was a man born to be with cattle. A tracker, a good shot. His father had spoken of him often.

  “The Lipan are all gone, or else begging on the streets of Laredo and Juarez or hiding in the mountains. You do not want to find them, Mickey.”

  “I think I do,” Mickey said.

  “They can give you nothing.”

  “They can give me back my spirit. It is scattered to the winds. I am not a white man. I am not a Mexican. I am not even an Apache anymore.”

  “Where did you get these thoughts, my friend?”

  “Do you know Juanito Salazar? The one who is from Argentina?”

  “Ah, yes, that one. He is very wise, they say. I remember seeing him with Martin Baron when my mother would talk to them and sell them land.”

  “Yes, Juanito is a very wise man. He seems to know the heart of an Indian, although his knowledge is very old, from another time, perhaps.”

  “I know nothing of this,” Matteo said. “He is just greedy like the rest of the gringos.”

  Mickey swallowed half of his mescal. “I do not think so,” he said.

  “He does not know your people. He must have had a reason to send you away.”

  “He did not send me away. He said that I must follow the journey of my heart. He said that if my people called to me in my dreams then I must find them and go to them and find out who I am.”

  “That is a strange thing to say. Will you have another drink?”

  “I just stopped in to taste the mescal before I ride on to the south.”

  “Well another drink, then. Two is better than one, eh?”

  “I will have one drink with you, Matteo. If you will answer a question from me.”

  “The string is attached, eh? Very well, ask your question and I will answer it.” He lifted an arm and beckoned to the barkeep. “Two more,” he called out.

  The low-ceilinged cantina was dimly lit, with a dirt floor covered with sawdust, tobacco spit and urine. The bar itself was just a wide board resting on a pair of barrels, with no stools. The tables were made from scrap lumber, the chairs from half-barrels covered with worn cowhide and brass tacks. Three lanterns shed the only light in the dimly lit room. If the cantina had once had a name, it was now gone from memory and the paint on the false front washed away by wind and rain.

  The barkeep brought the bottle of mescal and poured two drinks. He swept up the coins Matteo had laid out for him.

  “Now, Mickey,” Matteo said when the barkeep had gone back to his conversation at the far end of the board bar. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “Why did you leave the Rocking A?”

  “You do not know?”

  Bone shook his head.

  “My uncle Benito murdered my mother and stepfather. And then he told me the mentiras, the lies. He said that Victoria was not my real mother. He said that Pilar, his wife, had given me to the light.”

  “You do not believe this?”

  “No. I think Benito would have killed me, too. So I ran away. I have taken a wife. I am just waiting for the day when I can go back and kill them all, Benito and Pilar and that little blind hijo de puta Lázaro.”

  Bone drank the mescal and studied the face of Matteo. He saw etched there all the hatred of the years in exile. Swirling in the depths of Matteo’s brown eyes he saw pain and anger mingled with the resolve to avenge his mother’s death.

  “When will you do this?” Bone asked.

  “I do not know. I want to have power when I go back to the Rocking A. I want to have money, lots of money. I will do this, Mickey. And someday I will go back there and kill my uncle and his wife, those mentirosos.”

  “Then that is what you must do,” Bone said. He could understand it. Matteo felt cheated out of his birthright. Sometimes he felt the same way, as at this very moment. He wanted to find his people and learn from them who he was, who he might have been if he had not been captured by Mexicans and raised in another culture.

  As if reading his thoughts, Matteo asked Bone: “Do you know your father, Mickey?”

  “No. I do not remember him much.”

  “I remember mine. Jaime Aguilar was a great man. And he was married to a noble woman. My mother wanted us to have the biggest and best ranch in Texas. She helped my father obtain the Spanish land grants. It was only hard times that forced her to sell some of the Aguilar lands to that gringo Baron.”

  “He will buy more from Benito, I think.”

  Matteo’s eyes flashed and he clenched a fist, then smashed it hard onto the table until the glasses clattered like dice in a cup. “No! Baron will get no more land.” The others in the room paid no attention to this outburst, did not even look up.

  “And if he does?”

  “Then I will take it back. Mickey, I have been talking secretly with some Apaches I met. They are men who come to my small ranch down south and I give them beef and tobacco. They will help me when I take back my father’s ranch.”

  “Apaches are like the leaves that blow in the wind, Matteo. They do not believe anyone owns the land. They believe the Great Spirit gave it to them and that they are the ones who should watch over it. They do not like houses that do not move, t
hat block their hunting trails. They believe the land belongs to them and the buffalo, and if they do not fight to get it back, they will be like the buffalo, gone forever.”

  Matteo laughed harshly. “That is why they do not own land, why they will never have anything. They will be driven off like the buffalo.”

  “I think this is so,” Bone said. “I know it. They do not yet know it. But I too am Apache.”

  “You are no longer an Apache. You have crossed a line. You are like the Mexicans who are no longer Spanish. You must mix in with the races that own the land, the Mexicans and the norteamericanos. That is how you will survive. I will take back all the land that was once my father’s.”

  “Baron will fight you.”

  “I know. But if I have the Apaches on my side, he will not win.”

  “The Apaches may not help you. And if they do, they will only turn on you and take back what you have taken.”

  Matteo laughed again. “We will see, eh? Maybe they will become my children. I will feed them and take care of them and they will work, become vaqueros.”

  Bone finished drinking the mescal, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Well, I am leaving now,” he said. “I wish you good luck.”

  Matteo stuck out his arm, grabbed Bone by the wrist.

  “When I go back to the rancho I want you with me, Mickey. I will make you a good offer to come and work with me.” He released his grip on Bone’s wrist and sat back in his chair. He held up his glass to the light and nodded at Bone. “You and I will be ricos.”

  “I may not come back from that place where I go.”

  “You will come back. You have had a taste of the beef that grows on that land up there. You can never get the taste out of your mouth. You will come back with a wife of your own and you will want to live on the land so that you will not blow away like the leaves that drop from the oak trees in winter.”

  “I do not know.”

  “When you go to the mountains and find your people, look at how they live. Ask them if they know of me and how I treat them. Then make up your mind.”

  “You have talked to the Lipan?”

  “Yes. Some of them are tired of begging, but they are afraid of the Mexicans. They are thinking of going up north where they might be treated better.”

  “I will see them. I will ask them what they think.”

  “Good. Then you come to see me and we will go back to the Rocking A together. You will never have to worry about a home again.”

  Bone looked into Matteo’s eyes for several seconds, but he could no longer read what was in them. He knew only that Matteo was a formidable man. He had grown from the skinny, big-eyed child who had run away in the night. He had grown into a man and he would surely take back what had been taken from him.

  “I will see you, Matteo,” Bone said simply, and turned away.

  “I am sure you will, Mickey.” He watched Bone as he left the cantina and smiled. He knew it was no coincidence that Bone had come here on this night. He believed in fate and he believed in his own destiny, the promise his mother had made to him.

  “You will inherit this ranch,” she had said, “and you will be the most powerful man in Texas. People will respect you and pay you tribute. You will be a very great man someday because Aguilar blood flows in your veins. Do not ever forget that.”

  And Matteo Miguelito Aguilar never had, never would.

  13

  URSULA LOOKED ACROSS the table at her husband, Jack Killian, a man she hardly knew anymore. But she felt the powerful tug of him, the magnetism he generated even after all the years they had been separated. He seemed changed somehow, but she did not know in what way. He was older, of course, but there was something in him that she could sense but not identify.

  “You look well, Jack.”

  “I am well. Yes.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  “You sent us money from time to time.”

  “When I had it to send.”

  “Roy missed you.”

  Roy hung his head, embarrassed. He had been watching his mother and father, dazed that they were sitting at the same table together, still elated that his father had given him a pistol and was going to buy him a horse.

  “Did you, boy?”

  “I wondered where you was, Daddy, I sure did.”

  Jack laughed, tousled his son’s hair. Roy drew away slightly.

  “Still don’t know me, do you?” Jack said.

  “I have to get used to you, I guess.”

  “You’ll have time for that.”

  Ursula broke in. “Do you have to go into Fort Worth right away, Jack? Can’t you stay the night?”

  Jack looked at his wife, surprised. He looked around the room, a small space between the front room and the kitchen. There was not much that had changed. He had built the sod house with sweat and muscle, had furnished it with cheap furniture built by Mexican carpenters. Ursula had decorated the house with what she had: scraps of cloth, a rug she had bought since he’d gone, little knickknacks here and there. It was a cool, comfortable place.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d want me around that long.”

  Ursula looked coyly at him, drawing herself up straight in her chair, tilting her head slightly. “Why, Jack, you been gone a long time. A woman doesn’t forget her man just like that. Stay the night, please.”

  Jack looked at his son, then back at his wife. He seemed to regard her curiously, as if they had never met. She knew he was wondering about her, how she might have changed, how it might be to lie in bed with her again, and she could feel his warmth across the table, and once again longed for his loving arms.

  “I reckon it won’t hurt none to stay the night. Get an early start in the morning.”

  “Good,” Ursula said, her smile radiant. “Roy, why don’t you put up your daddy’s horse and grain him?”

  “Rub him down if you want, Roy,” Jack said.

  “Sure, Daddy. I’ll take real good care of your horse. He’s a mighty fine-looking gelding. What’s his name?”

  “I call him Nomad. Do you know what that word means?”

  “Kind of like a gypsy,” Roy said.

  “Close enough. It means wanderer. Maybe a desert wanderer. Like me.”

  Roy got up from the table. His mother gave him an indulgent smile, hoping he would take a long time to put up Jack’s horse. “Don’t hurry none, Roy,” she said. “You take real good care of Nomad.”

  “I will,” Roy said and dashed from the room. The front door banged shut a few seconds later.

  “It’s good to have you home, Jack. I missed you. Worried about you.”

  “I treated you bad, Urs.”

  “We don’t need to talk about that now. Since you’re staying, I’ll fix you a good supper like I used to and we can talk about old times. I want to know what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

  Warily Jack Killian leaned back in his chair and brought the coffee cup to his lips as if he wanted to put space and objects between him and Ursula. He glanced sidelong at her as if to assess whether or not he was being judged. Ursula softened her look and smiled at him in reassurance.

  “I guess not much, when it’s all toted up,” he said. “Maybe I was trying to find something.”

  “And did you find it?” Ursula asked softly.

  “I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly. Maybe something I had inside all the time, or what I was made of.”

  “You always knew what you were made of, Jack. You took up with a pretty bad bunch.”

  “I reckon,” Jack said, leaning forward. He did not feel so threatened now. Ursula thought that he looked as if he detected a glint of understanding in her eyes, and she wondered if he might have discerned something in the way she asked questions. Perhaps she appeared more sympathetic than he might have expected. She hoped that he accepted her curiosity as coming from a friend, not an enemy. “I thought they was good boys, but then I seen what they was doin’ to Har
desty. He went plumb loco doin’ the bad things.”

  “And you?” Ursula asked, her eyebrows curving to arches.

  “A man gets out there beyond the law, Urs, somethin’ happens to him. He don’t notice it at first, but one day he’s gone and done somethin’ so bad it makes him sick inside. He knows he’s done wrong, maybe not by any law that’s wrote down, but wrong for him, and he gets to knowin’ his days all have numbers on them and the numbers are gettin’ smaller. Finally he knows if he don’t go somewhere and make things right, he ain’t never goin’ to get another chance.”

  “Is that what happened to you, Jack?” Ursula’s voice was very quiet.

  “Not all of a sudden. I had some pure mean in me that had to get out or wore off and I just kept goin’ deeper and deeper into badlands and I was plumb hell-bent on killin’ something, me or somebody else, and I got to where I didn’t much give a damn.”

  “And then,” Ursula almost whispered.

  “And then,” Jack said, letting out a breath so that it sounded like a faraway wind building up, “I run into some men with dreams of building a big ranch, the biggest ranch in the whole world, and I guess some of what they were doing made me see how damned worthless I was.”

  “Worthless?”

  “I wanted to kill a man I didn’t even know. Worse, I don’t think he was the right man. I mean he might have been the man who hanged my brother, Hardy, but he might not have been. I was going to kill him anyway because I had gone so far beyond the law that I thought maybe I was the law and I could do any damned thing I wanted.”

  “Maybe you’re too hard on yourself, Jack. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “No, but not because I didn’t want to. I wanted to and I was stopped from killing him. I was driven out of a place that took me in when I had nothing. My horses had been stolen, my dogs killed brutally. I had nothing but a rifle and no good sense when a man named Juanito Salazar came and fed me, and his friend, Martin Baron, gave me a place to stay, a horse, a job. And then gave me back my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He gave me a choice. To live and give up on killing a man, Benito Aguilar, or to ride away”