A Tale Out of Luck (10 page)

Hank reholstered his Colt. “If you ever bother this girl again, I’ll aim lower.”

Milliken turned to pick up his hat. “I gotta git this wagon back to the ranch,” he said, unable to look Sam Collins or anyone else in the eyes.

“Some of you men help me carry this body inside,” Sam said.

Several men immediately turned back to the saloon, but three stayed to lay hold of the corpse and drag it from the wagon bed.

Flora watched Hank step up on the boardwalk as Milliken shook the reins of the mule team and trundled away, shooting one last glance of hatred over his shoulder. Hank spoke low, but she heard him.

“Sorry about the window, Sam. Put it on my account. And, Sam . . .” He leaned closer. “Pull those arrows out of the body and stash ’em somewhere safe.”

15

M
ERCIFULLY
, the sun dimmed to a warm orange glow as Jubal Hayes rode through the gap that led to the rough canyon country he called home. He pulled his scarf from his face and enjoyed the cool air that rushed unfettered into his lungs. He took the shaded spectacles from his eyes and placed them carefully in a pocket of his worn jacket. This was his favorite time of day, when he could bare his flesh and sensitive eyes to the dying sunshine like any normal man. The money in his pocket made this particular evening just that much sweeter.

There was a trail here, to the left of the gap, that led up to a bluff. From the bluff, a man could see a good forty miles to the east. Jubal’s mustang pony made the climb without hesitation. At the top, the mustanger dismounted and looped his reins around a hackberry sapling. He took off his gloves and reveled in the cool air that slipped between his fingers. He fished around in his saddlebag until he felt the telescope.

As the dying light of the setting sun painted his wild shocks of golden hair a shade of orange, Jubal slid his telescope over the rocky summit of the bluff to search his back-trail for trouble. It took only moments for movement to catch his eye.

Closer behind than he might have expected, he saw those two boys from the fort—the ones who had lost the blooded mare. It surprised him that boys so young could have followed his trail so quickly, but then again he had given little attention to covering his tracks. He watched them as they crossed Honey Creek at the same place he had crossed less than a half hour ago.

He collapsed the telescope and groaned. He could easily lose them. Now that he knew he was being trailed, he could hold to the rocky places that left no sign. It was almost dark and he was almost home. They’d never find his place. The slave hunters had tried, before the war, and had never gotten close.

But, judging from that corpse he had seen in the buckboard back at the fort, there was Indian trouble brewing. He wouldn’t want to live with the knowledge that he had left those boys in the wilderness to get scalped. He shook his head as he rolled onto his back and saw the first star of the night twinkling in the gray sky above.

How the hell did I get stuck wet-nursin’ two fool cowboys?

He rode down from the bluff and waited at the gap. Within a few minutes, the cowboys appeared.

“You boys lose your way?” he asked, his voice startling them. They only shrugged at him, not knowing how to explain themselves.

“We need your help,” the one called Jay Blue finally managed to say.

“I’ll help you keep your scalp tonight. Then you can be on your way tomorrow. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll never tell a soul where I live. I don’t like company.”

“We promise!” said the one called Skeeter.

“Agreed,” Jay Blue added.

Jubal scowled at them. “Come on, we’re runnin’ out of daylight.”

Staying on the heels of Jubal’s mustang pony, Jay Blue let his mount watch the trail as he took in the grandeur of this hidden canyon—a place beyond all previous explorations of his home surrounds.

Cliffs two and three hundred feet tall rose among rugged hills and craggy draws on every side. Spring-fed rivulets twined through heavily timbered ravines. Freshwater dripped among mosses and ferns in places that seldom saw sunlight. Soon the canyon opened into a wider basin surrounded by steep hills and sheer cliffs, and Jay Blue noticed Jubal bearing to the right, onto a faint trail that led through thick brush.

Once they had trotted through this brush, they came to a hidden side canyon that opened wide at the mouth, but narrowed toward the head the way the flare of a bugle curved inward as it swept toward the mouthpiece. He also noticed that someone had built a stout fence of cedar rails across the belled opening of the canyon. The fence and the canyon walls enclosed a fine pasture, watered by a spring creek that meandered through it. And up toward the narrow head of the canyon, a few hundred yards away, Jay Blue could see a good set of corrals, clearly meant to hold and train wild horses.

Yet there was still no cabin in sight.

As Jubal continued on at a trot, the trail began to cling to the right-hand canyon wall in a gradual ascent. Leaning toward the cliff on his right side, away from the void to the left, Jay Blue noted that places on the cliff wall looked almost polished, as if this were a very old trail, brushed by the touch of many a traveler.

Risking a glance toward the more dangerous side of the trail, he could now look down into the canyon and the stout corrals. The horses in those corrals noticed the riders, threw their heads high into the air, and whinnied a welcome.

And the trail went higher still as the canyon wall pinched inward toward the opposite cliff face. Soon, Jay Blue could look down into a chasm only twenty feet across, and a hundred feet deep. Here, the little stream tumbled over the head of the canyon in a sparkling thread of water and frayed into white froth before it hit the canyon floor.

As he looked back in admiration of the gossamer waterfall, his mount wheeled around a dogleg to the right just as something groaned a hideous guttural strain in Jay Blue’s ear. He wrenched his neck around, shocked to find the huge snout of a camel staring at him.

“God Almighty!” he cried, his pony shying a bit at the strange beast.

“That ain’t God, boy. Just ol’ Thirsty.”

As they passed by the hindquarters of the camel, Jay Blue noticed a CSA brand, but his question about how a camel with a Confederate brand might end up in the Texas hills got caught in his throat as he looked beyond the animal to the high shelf extending above the head of the canyon. There was a whole hidden pasture up here—as big as the one fenced in on the canyon floor, and rimmed all around by its own cedar-rail fencing, beyond which were wooded peaks and limestone outcroppings. The spring creek that fed the waterfall snaked through this level pasture like a torpid water moccasin.

Sweeping around to the right, his eyes now caught sight of some smoke coming from a small earthen dome, and then he saw a woman tending a loaf of bread inside the oven. This sight shocked him even more so than the camel. She was a small, trim-figured woman, brown-skinned, with black hair, somewhat younger than Jubal.

“God Almighty!” Jay Blue repeated.

“Save a few God A’mighties,” Jubal suggested. “You’re just gettin’ started.”

The woman had noticed Jay Blue and Skeeter now, and looked even more astonished than they did to see Jubal bringing company home.

“It’s alright, honey,” the mustanger said to the woman. “They’re just muchachos.”

Beyond the woman, and the earthen oven, Jay Blue saw that the sheer canyon wall had followed the trail around the dogleg to this high, hidden pasture, and now he noticed the cave sunk into the side of this cliff face. An adobe wall and a grass-thatched, lean-to roof expanded the cave into a domicile of respectable space, especially considering the possibility that the cave might extend quite some distance into the rock. A low, exterior wall of neatly stacked stone enclosed a yard that included a good-sized Spanish oak, the tree having shed most of its leaves for the coming winter.

“Might as well light and turn your horses into the pasture to graze,” Jubal said.

Jay Blue and Skeeter followed his advice as the sky darkened, revealing a legion of stars.

“We’ve got grub with us,” Jay Blue said. “We’d be glad to cook some up.”

“Fair enough. Bring what you’ve got into the kitchen.”

The woman had taken the loaf of bread from the earthen oven and gone into the cave. Now Jay Blue entered, followed by Skeeter. Looking around the cave, and the adobe wing that expanded it, Jay Blue had to admire the way the albino hermit lived.

The adobe lean-to extension served as a kitchen and dining area. There was one small wooden table, handmade, and only two chairs. An adobe fireplace near the entrance included iron fittings to facilitate the hanging of cooking vessels over the fire. Where the cave joined the kitchen addition, a large, stuffed buffalo hide served as a couch or daybed, flanked by typical household odds and ends—a butter churn, a candlestick, a stack of split firewood, and a keg of flour. A dark passageway led deeper into the cave, presumably to the sleeping chambers.

“Boys, this is my wife. Her name is Luz.”

The cowboys put their foodstuffs on the table, dragged their hats from their heads, and greeted the woman. She smiled shyly and nodded.

Speaking Spanish, Skeeter offered to help Luz get the cooking started. An hour passed pleasantly enough as the four unlikely dinner companions cooked and ate. Jay Blue didn’t see any need to ruin a good meal with an argument, and he could sense that Jubal was not going to agree to chasing the mustang that had stolen his daddy’s mare without some persuasion. So, it wasn’t until Skeeter offered to help Luz clear the table that Jay Blue broached the subject.

“About us goin’ home,” he began.

“Yeah, tomorrow,” Jubal repeated. “You had no business followin’ me in the first place.”

“Well, I was thinkin’ maybe I could offer you a business proposition.”

“Business?” Jubal laughed. “I live in a cave. What the hell use do I have for business?”

“Horse business,” Jay Blue added.

“You can forget about that mare.”

“How would you like to have the first colt out of that Thoroughbred mare?” He watched Jubal’s eyes as he made the offer, and he could have sworn he saw a momentary flash of interest, though it was hard to tell with those empty gray eyes that shot flashes of pink and red when the light danced across them just right.

“You’re awful free with your daddy’s horseflesh, son.”

“He won’t mind. As long as he gets her back.”

“Well, he’s gonna mind plenty then, ’cause he ain’t gettin’ her back. She’s gone.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Hayes. If I don’t find that mare, I can’t go home!”

“No,
you
don’t understand, son.
I don’t care
.”

In his frustration, Jay Blue bolted up from his chair. “What do I have to do to make it worth your while? What do you want? Just name it.”

Jubal gawked at him. “You are as dense as that rock wall, son! You’ve got to get it through your head. That mare is
gone
. She’s a shootin’ star. She’s gone as Grandpa’s teeth. You’ll catch up to
yesterday
before you catch up to that mare. If she’s runnin’ with that silver stud, she can’t never be caught.”

“Why not? Why is it so impossible?”

“Because he’ll spirit her away to the wildest edges of his ranges, and you’ll never find her.”

“But you can. You’re the best there is, Mr. Hayes.”

“I ain’t a fool, son. You can’t flatter me. I know that stallion. He’s a ghost horse one day and a demon the next. He ain’t natural. He can be wilder than a deer at high noon and meaner than a cornered bear at midnight. I ought to know. I’m part mustang myself when I’m out there among ’em. I tried for years to catch him, and . . . well, I never did.”

“But with Skeeter and me helping you, you’ll have a better chance.” Again, a glint in the mustanger’s eyes told Jay Blue that his argument appealed.

But then Jubal shook his head emphatically. “I said
no
!”

Skeeter and Luz sensed the argument heating up, and turned from the tub of warm water they were using as a washbasin.

Jay Blue felt as if he would explode. It wasn’t often he ran up against somebody every bit as hardheaded as he was. “Fine, then. We’ll do it without you.”

Jubal laughed in ridicule. “Son, you got no experience mustangin’ and there’s Indian trouble brewin’. You don’t know what you’re up against. Forget about that mare. You lose things in life that you can’t get back. That’s part of livin’.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Hayes, I’ve got to go after the mare.”

“You’ll just get yourself scalped. And your friend, too.”

“Maybe Skeeter won’t even go with me, but I aim to get that mare back or die tryin’. I’m not gonna have one stupid mistake hang over my head the rest of my life.”

“It’s liable to be a short life, hardheaded as you are.”

Jay Blue shrugged and sat down on the stuffed buffalo hide couch. “If nobody wants to help, I’ll do it myself.”

“Well, I guess that settles that,” Jubal said.

A cold sadness seemed to well up from the depths of the cave and settle around the inhabitants like quicksand. Skeeter and Luz slowly turned back to the dishes. Jubal sat at the table, his jaw set. Jay Blue flung himself back on the couch, throwing his arms out in exasperation, like a man crucified. But as the fingers of his left hand extended beyond the cushions of the hand-stuffed couch, they fell against something that answered his touch with a familiar twang.

Turning his head to the left, he saw what he had missed before. Leaning back in a natural crevice of the cavern wall, obscured by the butter churn, he recognized the strings and frets of a musical instrument. Leaning his head forward for a better look, he counted four tuning pegs on the headstock, and knew he was looking at the neck of a banjo. He grabbed it, lifted it, and rested it on his thigh.

“Hey, put that down,” Jubal warned. “You can’t play that thing.”

Jay Blue answered with a cold, businesslike tone: “With all due respect, sir, I beg to differ.” Strumming the strings, he found the instrument in tune. He made a chord and strummed it. He wasn’t in much of a mood for anything jolly, so he sang a mournful verse that suited his temperament, changing chords as he strummed.