The Baron Range Read online

  “And you rode away,” Ursula said calmly, but there was tension in her voice. She knew what she felt was more than curiosity, more an urgent gladness that Jack was going to open his heart to her, show her his soul.

  “I rode away, but I should have stayed, Urs. I rode away because I was full of hate and hurt. I wanted to avenge Hardy’s death, or thought I did.”

  “But that wasn’t the real reason, was it, Jack?”

  “No. I really wanted to kill myself, I think. I had lived in a dark world so long I couldn’t see any light. I couldn’t get out of my own damned cage. I had been so far beyond the law, I didn’t know what the law was no more.”

  Ursula sighed. “My,” she said.

  “I rode as far away from the Box B ranch as I could, but I kept feeling the pull of that land. And that Juanito had told me some things that made me think. And I thought and thought and rode and rode and I didn’t know where I was going. And I didn’t care.”

  “What things did this man tell you, Jack?”

  “Juanito talked about life, but he talked about it like no man had ever talked about it. He made it seem a precious thing, almost holy, you know? He said life was all there was and it was everything and it never stopped with death, but went on and became something else forever.”

  “He sounds like a preacher.”

  “No, he never preached, it just come out of him like breath and sunk in deep, and it seemed real ordinary, yet way beyond ordinary, and I could see that he took life serious but wasn’t afraid of death. Now, that was something I never seen before.”

  “You’re not afraid of death, are you, Jack?”

  “I don’t know, Urs. Sometimes I am. Until I met this Juanito, who is from Argentina, I thought death was just the end of everything. You died and didn’t have no memory and it was all over. So I guess I didn’t care.”

  “But Juanito told you different,” she said.

  “Sort of. It just kind of came out of him in little ways, hardly noticeable unless you thought about it. And when I was riding away from my own death, I kept thinking of all that he said and trying to put it together in my mind, trying to put it all in one piece so I could see what all it was.”

  “And did you?” she asked, her voice almost breathless, so soft she could hardly hear it herself.

  “Not right away, and not even now. But enough of it so that I knew Juanito was probably right, that life is not something that just happens for a time, but has been happening before time and goes on beyond time.”

  “That’s pretty deep,” she said.

  “I know, and it don’t make sense sometimes. Only if you could hear Juanito talk and how he says these things, then you know he’s right on the mark.”

  “So you changed,” she prompted.

  “I guess so. I ended up on the Brazos and met Charlie Goodnight, and he had that same fire in his eye I seen in Baron’s. He hired me on and it was like going back to the Box B, only I was some smarter, I guess, and I got to thinking maybe life was pretty good without revenge and without stealing. Maybe some men was right in putting down roots and staying put and I was wrong in being footloose and hell-bent and maybe I should slow down and learn some things.”

  “And you did.”

  “I reckon. I got to thinking about you and Roy and what I had give up and then Charlie said he had this idea to take cattle and drive them a long ways and sell ’em and then someday open up trails all over and take beef from Texas to places where they didn’t grow none. I liked that notion, so I said I’d like to scout for him since I had rode that country where he was going, and he said I could have the job. I told him I wanted to bring my son down to go with me and he said that was all right. So here I am.”

  Ursula reached over and touched the back of Jack’s hand, tapped it gently. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’m glad you’re taking Roy with you. Maybe it was meant to be.”

  “Urs, I’m damned sorry I stayed away so long.”

  “Well, you’re back now. Water under the bridge.”

  She drew her hand back and picked up her tin coffee cup. She brought it to her lips, regarded Jack over the rim with a sense of wonderment. She wanted to pinch herself or yell out her happiness, but she had the feeling that Jack was sitting on the edge of his chair like a bird perched to take flight at any instant. She did not want to startle him, scare him away. He would leave again soon enough, and this time it would be different. She would not have Roy to keep her company, to keep her mind off the terrible loneliness she felt every day and every night.

  She wished that she could just draw him into her arms and keep him from leaving. But, she knew Jack was uneasy, uncomfortable, even though he had changed. He was a man used to the wilderness, the freedom of the open places. He was like a wild thing, she knew, not yet tame enough to pet or feed by hand. She vowed to step carefully so that he would not jump and run away before she had the chance to make him feel at ease.

  “Do you want your coffee warmed, Jack?”

  “Good coffee. I’ll take some.”

  Ursula arose from her chair and walked the few steps to the kitchen. She returned with the coffee pot, poured it carefully into Jack’s cup so that the grounds would not flow out as rapidly.

  “It’s Arbuckle’s,” she said.

  “The best. Long time since I’ve had really good coffee. Some of the stuff the cookies made tasted like it was made with iron filings.”

  Ursula laughed. “You can taste the cinnamon in Arbuckle’s.”

  “That’s right.” Jack sniffed the tendrils of steam that rose from his cup. Ursula filled her cup and took the pot back into the kitchen, set it on the wood stove, next to the smoldering fire box.

  She paused by the kitchen window and looked out at the apple orchard she and Jack had planted. She was using apples she had dried last winter for her pies, but the trees were blossoming and there would be new apples in the fall. She had started a peach orchard and planted some persimmon trees in the years Jack had been gone, but they had not matured yet. And, she had tried to nurture Concord grapes without any success. The vines hung lifeless beyond the orchard next to the pig sty she and Roy had built so they could raise meat for the winter and now there was a smokehouse with hams curing in the mesquite smoke.

  “Would you like some ham for supper, Jack?” she asked when she returned to the table.

  “You got pork? I ain’t et none in many a moon.”

  “We’ve been raising pigs. We got a smokehouse, too.”

  Jack eyed her curiously. Ursula smiled. There was so much he did not know about her, secrets he would never know, if she could help it.

  “You surprise me, Urs. You done well by yourself, you and Roy.”

  “We’ve managed.”

  “More than managed, I’d say. You bake pies and sell them. I’ll bet you make some fine cider, too.”

  “I have some in the spring house. Would you like a taste?”

  He waved a hand in the air. “No, you might spoil me.”

  “I’d like to do that, Jack.”

  Jack squirmed in his chair. “Some time, maybe. I really want to go on this cattle drive with Goodnight.”

  “I know you do. And, it’ll be good for the boy. Make him grow some.”

  “You’ve done right well with him, Urs.”

  “Why, thank you, Jack. He’s been a right nice boy. A big help to me.”

  “I guess you can manage for a time without him.”

  Ursula suppressed a smile. Men were so gullible and Jack was no exception. “Sometimes the soldiers come out to help,” she said. “I do their laundry and they like my pies.”

  “Soldiers?” Jack said, his eyes blinking like semaphore lanterns.

  “From the fort. I get most of my business from the soldiers.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess you would,” he said lamely.

  “Real nice boys, too,” she said, with a saccharine tone that was deliberate. “Always willing to help a lone woman with the chores, bringing us cut
wood for winter, blankets and such.”

  “What such?” Jack asked.

  She recognized the nervous twitch in a neck muscle that had always given him away.

  “Oh, whatnots. Cloth and thread and beads, lye soap. Little things.”

  “You might want to watch what them soldier boys bring you. Them things might have a lot of strings stuck to ’em.” The drawl, too, told her that Jack did not want to hear that other men might be interested in her. She was sure that he still thought of her as his woman, even when he was far away.

  “Oh, I’m careful, Jack. I know my bounds.”

  “I’m mighty glad to hear that.”

  “Still, they do seem to know the way to a woman’s heart. Why, sometimes they’ll come out of a summer evening and bring their guitars and jews’ harps and serenade me and Roy. Real nice voices, too.”

  “I doubt they come out here at night to serenade Roy,” Jack said sarcastically.

  “Oh, Roy really likes it when they do that. Sometimes he hums along with them. The songs that he knows, of course.”

  “What songs?”

  “Oh, ‘Green Grow the Lilacs,’ and some of the old hymns.”

  “The soldiers sing hymns?”

  “On Sundays they do.”

  Jack shifted his position in his chair and sipped some coffee. Ursula could almost see the thoughts in his brain churning around, twisting one way and then another, turning over and over like a chunk of meat roasting on a spit. She had to steel herself to keep from breaking out in laughter.

  “God, the soldiers ride way out here on Sunday nights? They must be soft. Why in hell aren’t they out chasing Comanches? Christ.”

  “Now, Jack, don’t get riled. They fight Indians and do a lot of hard work. But sometimes they don’t have nothing better to do and they are always nice to keep me and Roy company. No harm in that.”

  “No harm at all,” Jack said, but there was a thinness to his voice that belied his sincerity.

  Ursula said nothing. She finished drinking her coffee.

  “Anything I can do around here?” Jack asked. He seemed even more uncomfortable.

  “I’ve got some washing to do. You can either keep me company or visit with Roy. I’m almost finished.”

  “I think I’ll see what Roy is up to,” Jack said. He pushed his chair away from the table, swallowed the last of his coffee.

  “You might want to bring your things inside, put them in our bedroom,” Ursula said pointedly.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jack said, a gravelly husk to his voice. “I better do that, I reckon.”

  Ursula smiled indulgently, trying not to gloat. She felt almost like a black widow spider inviting its mate into her webbed lair. She knew that once the female spider had finished mating, she killed the male, wrapped him up in a silk cocoon and feasted on him at her leisure. But she wasn’t going to kill Jack. She was just going to take him to her bed.

  She set her cup down and walked toward the front room, with Jack following behind her. She deliberately swayed her hips so that he could see that she was still very much a woman. She stopped briefly at the front door and glanced back at her husband.

  Jack looked like a man who had been caught while watching a woman taking her bath.

  Ursula smiled coyly at him and pranced out the door, a becoming bounce to her step, a startling confidence in her mien.

  And Ursula smiled with satisfaction as she heard Jack clear his throat a few steps behind her.

  14

  THE MARY E bobbed at anchor in the harbor at Galveston, swaying gently on her moorings, graceful as a swan, a bright white sloop glistening in the afternoon sun. Other sailing ships were at anchor or were being unloaded at the docks, but none stood so proud as the small vessel, her tattletale whipping in the wind, her sails furled, her mainmast jutting up into the blue sky like a battle lance. Gulls wheeled in the air and terns shrieked along the shoreline, the busy city sprawled inland, teeming with carts leaving the docks, packed full of fish and trade goods from New Orleans.

  Martin thought of how much he owed that vessel he had mostly built with his own hands. The Mary E had helped him survive the harsh years on the Box B and made it possible for him to buy land from the Aguilar family and build a house for his wife and son.

  Martin, Juanito, and Anson had sailed the Mary E up from Matagorda, had rowed the dinghy into port that morning as the sun burnished the water of the bay so that it shone like gold in some alchemist’s cauldron.

  Martin felt a tug at his heart when he looked out at his boat and pointed her out to the man standing next to him. Anson too felt a nostalgic pang. He and his father had sailed for five leisurely days, Martin teaching him how to handle the rigging, set sail, steer by the stars and the sun. Anson’s legs were still quivering from the experience.

  During that time, Anson had felt closer to his father than ever before. And his father seemed a different person away from land, almost a part of the boat as it sailed on a close reach before the wind, curving so swiftly through the blue water that he felt they would capsize. But the Mary E hugged the waves and performed like a champion with Anson’s father at the helm.

  “Well, what do you think of her, Jerry?” Martin asked.

  Jerome Winfield was an old friend of Martin’s he had met in Galveston years before when he was sailing the Mary E up and down the Gulf. Jerry had worked on several boats, dreamed of owning his own someday. He was a few years younger than Martin, but older than Anson.

  “I’ve never seen her look better. All spruced up.” Jerry was a blond young man, rugged, slender, with piercing blue eyes and a quiet smile. “Who’s that on board?”

  Martin waved to the boat. Juanito waved back.

  “You don’t know?” Martin asked.

  “That isn’t Juanito, is it?”

  Martin laughed. “Who else?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen him since you two were last in New Orleans. Does he still have his boat?”

  “No, he sold his a long time ago. Like I should have.”

  “You like that Texas land, huh?” Jerry asked.

  “Well, it’s claimed me, pretty much.”

  “And you have a son. Anson, your father is a pretty good sailor.”

  “I know,” said Anson, a slow smile breaking on his face. He drew himself up proudly and thought of that first night at sea in the Gulf, just he and Juanito and his father, all alone in the dark, with the stars so close he thought he might touch them. They were under full sail with a light breeze blowing, the moonlight glinting silver on the water and the wake churning a phosphorescent green, like some magical bubbling spring. He felt as if he had been plunged into some strange new world where there were no trees, no cattle, no land, no coyotes, not even an armadillo or a roadrunner.

  “Well, son, what do you think of the sea?” his father had asked him.

  “I love it,” Anson had replied breathlessly. “It’s so peaceful.”

  “Now it is,” Juanito had said.

  “What do you do in a storm?” Anson asked.

  “Ride it out,” his father replied.

  “How?” asked Anson.

  “You tell him, Juanito.”

  “You reef all your sails, Anson,” Juanito said. “Throw out a sea anchor, kind of like a canvas balloon that fills with water instead of air. And then you find out what kind of man you are as the seas rise up against you, higher than the decks, and the boat pitches and wallows in the troughs of the ocean. You tie the wheel down, if you can, and hold on and think of good weather, calm seas.”

  “If it gets too bad and you can’t pump out the bilge, you bail,” Martin added.

  “It sounds scary,” Anson said.

  Martin had looked at Juanito and smiled. Juanito had begun to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Anson remembered asking.

  “Juanito doesn’t believe in fear,” his father had said.

  “You don’t get scared, Juanito?”

  “If you know who
you are, there is nothing to fear,” Juanito had said.

  “I know who I am.”

  “I mean inside you. The real you. The one who watches you.”

  “I guess I don’t understand, Juanito.”

  “There he goes,” Martin had said. “You’d better listen to him, Anson. He knows more than any man I’ve ever met. I’m not sayin’ you’ll understand him, but he knows a heap of things about life.”

  “Everything you see, everything you experience,” Juanito said, “is what you create in your own mind. If you carry fear with you, if you think as a fearful man, then you will be afraid.”

  “You’re saying if I don’t believe in fear, then I won’t ever have any.”

  “Something like that,” Juanito said. “The Buddha said that our life is shaped by our mind. He wrote that what we think, we become.”

  “Who is this Buddha?” Anson wanted to know.

  “A very wise man who knew the true meaning of life.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “He was a wise man in ancient times. He said that joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves. So think happy, be happy. A storm is a chance to experience nature, to be part of it, to learn from it.”

  “Is that true, Daddy?” Anson had looked to his father for confirmation.

  “I guess so. Juanito’s way makes more sense than getting rattlebrained every time a storm comes up. It makes sense when you think about it some.”

  Anson had thought about that conversation ever since that first night. He knew that Juanito wasn’t just a happy-go-lucky man, but a man who thought about things and lived his life the way he thought it ought to be. It was still hard to understand all the things Juanito had told him when they were out in the Gulf, but his curiosity had been piqued. He would chew over some of Juanito’s talk for a long time, he supposed.

  “Want to go out in the dinghy and look her over, Jerry?”

  “You bet I do, Marty.”

  “Anson, go on and pull the dinghy up close to the dock.”

  Anson ran out on the dock and got in the dinghy. He pulled it snug against the dock, waited for his father and Jerry to step in. They sat down a moment later.