Far Bright Star (3 page)

5

T
HEY PULLED THEMSELVES
into the saddles and turned onto the road bordering the rail bed. The old man slept in the shade of a shelter cloth with water and food. He’d done the best he could do. God knows he’d endured like experiences, if not worse, and too long he’d dallied with doctoring. He could not allow himself anymore distractions.

He stepped the Rattler horse along the edge of the dull tracks, swiveled in the saddle, and looked back into the shimmering emptiness. He stopped and waited and there came the shriek of an engine, the clang of a bell, and soon the clatter of the car wheels on the tracks began to sing.

The locomotive pushed a flat car with machine gunners whose uniforms he did not recognize. Then came the locomotive, the tender, the train faster now, the couplings rattling violently. Then was a hiss of steam and the rushing chain of iron and steel as if released and the wheels clacking and hammering the grade. Sparks and ballast flew as if not a train but a war machine whose travel was confined to flat steel rails.

Sunlight flashed through the swift openings, the wooden freight cars, black coaches, the knock of the wheels clipping over the rail joints the sound of clacking dominoes. More soldiers rode on the roofs of the cars, rocking to the train’s spasmodic motion. They did not wave, their staring eyes black as obsidian and there were armed men on the platforms staring down at him, rifle barrels dull in the clipping shadows. They were men in black broadcloth suits, American gunmen hired onto someone’s payroll.

The Rattler tossed its head and shifted impatiently.

A face in the train turned to look at him through a window. There was an instant of recognition and then it turned to streaking shadow and disappeared quick as thought. The train curved away and grew smaller and smaller. Its squat funnel disappeared. Its caboose disappeared and then it was swallowed in the distance by the tunnel. He listened to its shunting echoes and then there was silence again on the plain and his hearing retuned.

The smell of smoke and hot burnt steel was left in the train’s wake and down the line a sun-whited hacienda suddenly came into view as if freight delivered from the boxcars.

They followed the road for several miles where they passed through the walls of the hacienda. The buildings were low and rectangular, peeling plaster and decaying adobe. Inside the walls was a square and a dry fountain and atop a pedestal was the Virgin Mother. There was the statue of a little boy sitting with his knees drawn to his chest and held clasped in his arms. There was a birdcage with the bones of small dead birds. There were empty flower beds and cracked and tumbled basins as if time was a gentle hand. Dried cornstalks were scraping in a sprung breeze. He could hear them and then their sound stopped. From deep inside the warren of rooms came the sound of water in the darkness trickling into a basin. In the pens were white skeletons, gnawed bones sticking out of the rubble, and beyond were dead fields and a dying orchard.

The ground rose and then abruptly and soon they were threading a single track higher and higher. The unbearable heat throbbed against Napoleon’s body and then his lower back began to ache sharply. Increasingly he felt an urgency and to be done with this detail. The Rattler, its two ears cocked, started and quivered.

“What is it?” he whispered. “What is it?”

They followed the broken path beneath a wide-spreading shelf of rock and just when the trail petered out they came to a trickle of water and a patch of green. In the valley distant he anticipated the wild beeves and sure enough through the field glasses, he could see them from the rim. They stopped to allow the horses to drink and to tighten the clinches on their horseshoes. Napoleon dabbed at the cool water with his finger. Then he cupped the water and drank from his palm. He took a second drink and then rinsed his face and neck.

After they watered and rested he took Bandy and Preston down a path through the rocks, careful not to disturb the grazing animals.

“Bang. Bang,” Preston whispered, looking down on the beeves’ black shapes.

“They won’t be hard to kill from here,” Bandy said.

“It ain’t killing them what’s hard,” Napoleon said. “We could have kilt them from the rim.”

“What’s so hard then?”

“What’s hard is getting them out of there once they have been shot.”

“What’s the matter?” Bandy said.

“I don’t know,” he said, irritated the boy should intrude on his private deliberations. Then, before he could stop himself, he said, “Something ain’t right.”

“What is it?”

“I said I don’t know.

“But something.”

“Do you see something?” Preston asked, but how could he explain he was trying to see something beyond the range of the naked eye? How could he say he was trying to see a feeling he had? How to say, all is told and there is nothing unknown. It is simply yet to be revealed.

“Quit your yammering,” he told them. “I said, I don’t know, god dammit.”

Down below, the beeves began to move as he knew they would. He slid away from the rocks and the two men followed. They went back to the trickle of water, collected their horses, and rode to the top of the range. Then they crawled on hands and knees to a ridge where the beeves could not see them in the rocks or wind them on the air. The beeves were still a mile away and were moving higher and in their direction, but they could not see them yet.

They waited and soon the beeves appeared, scrawny range cattle, but if spooked their lumbering bodies were capable of running like antelope.

“They’ll be tougher than Zip’s ass,” Napoleon said, snugging the butt of the Springfield to his shoulder.

“Who’s Zip?” Bandy whispered.

“How the hell do I know who Zip is. It’s a saying,” he hissed.

“Zip’s ass,” Bandy said, trying it out for himself.

Grazing beyond a thick band of creosote were the cows with their young and the vigilant bulls among them. He counted fifteen, five large, and stopped counting. The beeves had suddenly became uneasy. They were aware of a presence. He sniffed at the wind—rising and coming in. Why so uneasy?

He steadied in position and inside the eye of the prismatic scope he found the sight picture he wanted. He calculated three hundred yards. He set the range to correspond and placed his aiming point a little behind the shoulder blade and two-thirds down from the spine, a heart shot. The box magazine held five rounds. Breathing calmly, he squeezed the trigger and fired, absorbing the shock and feeling the grind in his shoulder.

He immediately adjusted the sight picture. The cross-hairs found their spot and another bull crumpled. A cow turned to look at the bull when it groaned. Then the cow fell, the shot breaking her neck when she looked up. A fourth cow began running, jinked left and went down, skidding nose first in the red dirt.

At the fifth report the herd hared off in a single curving direction. Their bony pitching bodies closed with the ground as their strides lengthened and dodged for safety. Five times he’d squeezed the trigger and the five large animals fell.

“Bravo,” Preston shouted, punching the air with his fist.

He waited until Extra Billy, Stableforth, and Turner rode out with knives to bleed the carcasses and only then did he sit up and pass the Springfield to Bandy who cradled it in his arms. He was starting to feel twitchy in the heat. He surveyed the surround, his eyes half closed to see better.

Bandy was holding out a canteen of water. He heard words. The boy was talking to Preston.

“Wheeler says there was a soldier who died at Fort Yuma and went to hell only to come back for his blanket. Ask me why.”

“Why?” Preston said.

“Because it was too cold down there in hell and I’d say right now it is hotter than Yuma ever was.”

“Over there,” Napoleon said and pointed to a dusty mountain pass. “We’ll get in there for the noon spell.”

He’d rest the men and the weary horses and perhaps a few moments of sleep for himself. Soon the wagons would come along. He’d chip ice to melt inside his mouth.

He told them to direct the others to follow and then rode into the blind spot where the trail was so thin there was not room to turn a horse around. On the other side the trail descended into a little box canyon, more an empty column of stone, where it wasn’t so bad a place to spend some time.

He knew the place well. He’d been there before, a place where there was a dry falls and water jetting from a port in the rock face, and at the base of the dry falls a series of water tanks, one lipping into the next. The bottom ones were full of sand, but higher up there was water. There was an alcove with ancient artwork and handprints made from blown paint. The last time he was there pollen was floating in the tank.

6

B
Y THE TIME
the others rode in Napoleon had unsaddled the Rattler horse. He told the horse to lie down and it rolled in the sand as if a great cheerful dog. He then yelled, Hup! and it scrambled to its feet where it shook and stood sheepishly for how undignified its display. It blinked its eyes as if shy and abashed and not the malevolent it truly was.

“Tend to your horses first,” he ordered them. “Then wash your faces and change your socks.”

The day only half over and already he was bone weary.

“Eat your food,” he said. He had to teach them how to live. He had to teach them how not to get killed by their own irresponsible behavior.

“If you’re pissin’ dark you need water,” he told them, and still they would get into trouble, not even smart enough to read their own piss.

He took off his boots and soaked his feet in the same water he washed his socks and then wrung them out. Their work done, there was now time. He let down his pants and rubbed his aching knees with an embrocation that smelled like turpentine. His knees went hot and then cold. He let the air take away the fumes before pulling his pants onto his hips. He put on another pair of socks and his boots and the wet socks he lashed to his saddle.

In his ditty bag he had a fat red apple, some dried beef and biscuit.

He lay back, folded his hands under his armpits and closed his eyes. When next he looked, they were gathered around Stableforth, peering at the something he held in his hand. It was a scorpion flexing its long tail. Stableforth tipped his hand and let it walk onto a stone where, crablike, it scuttled from sight.

“Stableforth says this were all a inland sea at one time.” It was Bandy talking from the midstream of his thoughts, the boy’s mind escaping his mouth.

On the high ground was Extra Billy, scanning the rocks and then looking his way. Napoleon gestured with an open palm—do you see anything? Extra Billy shook his head.

“He says you can tell from the kind of dirt and what’s underneath the dirt,” Bandy was saying.

“How’s he know what’s underneath the dirt?” Napoelon said. “Has he ever been there?”

He could see the peak of Extra Billy’s Stetson bob once and a second time and then disappear.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “I didn’t think to ask.”

“Well, maybe next time you ought to before you go and tell everyone.”

“Wheeler says Preston’s got a map to a lost Spanish silver mine.”

“I told you to stay clear of Wheeler?”

“He don’t like you much either,” the boy said.

If it wasn’t gold it was silver. If it wasn’t silver it was copper. What man in this army didn’t claim to be in possession of a map, or know of a map, or have faith in the existence of such a map?

“What’s the matter now?” he asked the boy.

“I am still a boy to them.”

“You are a boy,” he said.

“Wal’ then you can go to hell too.”

“Do you know the way?”

“If there is better directions than you already have then I will let you know.”

He offered the boy a thin slice of apple from his knife blade. The boy took it and with his eyes closed he eased it into his mouth. His nose was bleeding from the heat and he took in his own blood with the apple slice.

He told the boy his nose was bleeding and to rub Vaseline inside his nostrils. The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve, smearing blood across face.

“Go wash your face,” Napoleon said.

Extra Billy was returning from the bush, buttoning his trousers. He liked Extra Billy. He was hard headed and as he drank enough liquor for three men he probably drank too much. It was his habit to drink himself sober and then get drunk all over again and the drunker he became the more sober and improved he appeared.

“That boy would eat a pig’s ass if he had to,” Extra Billy said.

“You got bottle fever without your bottle?”

Extra Billy hooked one thumb in his armpit and rocking on his heels, he looked away to the distance in front of him.

“I point-blank asked you a question,” Napoleon said, but still there was no reply. “Feeling the bottom?” he said more gently.

“Yessir, the bottom.”

“The bottom bottom?”

“Still the top bottom.”

“Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Watch the boy.”

“Mister in-one-ear-and-out-the-other?”

“He’s a trier.”

Rising up and down on the balls of his feet, Extra Billy shrugged—whatever.

“You drunk right now?”

“Nossir.”

“You ain’t lying?”

“Nossir. Swear to God,” Extra Billy said, and crossed his heart.

“What’s the matter with you then?”

“I feel like I’m pissing porcupines.”

“Something out there?”

Extra Billy made a sour face and shrugged—something.

“Best get to the doc when we return.”

“Sir,” Extra Billy then said, taking off his Stetson and holding it by its curled brim with both hands.

“Speak up.”

“Did you ever think of getting married?”

“I ain’t jumping into any ocean, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was just asking.”

“I never looked for any woman to make me happy.”

“I was just asking.”

“Well, I have never been asked that type of question before.”

“I was thinking about it.”

“You had surely better see the doc then.”

“Yessir,” Extra Billy said, and directionless he shuffled off.

Bandy returned to his side. He’d scrubbed his face and there was color showing in his cheeks. His lips and nostrils he’d lubricated with Vaseline and they shined.

“Does he ever say if I’m doing okay?” Bandy said.

“Who?”

“Who do you think? Your brother.” The boy had recently experienced a severe dressing-down from his brother. While practicing sword work on horseback he’d managed to cut the ears off a horse. Cutting the ears off a horse in mounted sword exercise or battle was not unusual; you just didn’t do it when Xenophon was your instructor.

“If you weren’t doing all right he’d let you know.”

“I don’t think he likes me.”

“Well, son. He’s often unfriendly to people he likes. He ignores me completely,” and to this the boy made a bashful grin.

He looked into the sun and his eyes filled with tears from the light and he wiped them away. He refocused his eyes. From somewhere came a bounce of light, as if the sun was being dazzled with a mirror.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“What?’

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head.

He then asked the boy if he’d changed his socks and when the boy said he did he told him to get up where Extra Billy had been, to stay out of sight, to see and not be seen, and the boy obeyed.

He rolled a cigarette and reclined against the curve of a dished boulder and let his eyes close. He slowed his breathing and his heart softened and it wasn’t long before he could hear his own blood.

“Sir, permission to speak.” He started against the rock, his right hand to the .45 he carried in a shoulder rig. It was Preston, a hand at his chin, waiting to speak.

“Quit the preamble and state your business,” he said, dusting cigarette ashes from his shirtfront.

“If a thing comes into my head, I just have to say it.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I have a weakness for pretty girls.”

“All men do.”

“Last night I drank too much and I threw up. I embarrassed myself.”

“That ain’t all you did.”

“Before you judge me, do you know everything that happened?”

“I know enough.”

“What do you know?”

“I know you shouldn’t ought to have cut that girl.”

“You hold it against me what happened, but I tell you she was stealing my money.”

“I surely don’t want to listen to all your puke,” he said, adjusting the brim of his Stetson. He could not believe how incredible this one. Last night when he found him he was drunk and the woman’s blood was saturating the little bed where she’d taken him behind the curtain.

“I am not a bad man,” Preston said as he toed the dirt with his boot.

“I don’t care if you’re the pope of Rome. You’re lucky I don’t stick a knife in you right now.”

“Give me another chance. Please.”

“Is that what you’re used to?” he said, but to this Preston had no reply. He folded his arms across his chest and with one foot in front of the other, he stared down at the ground.

Napoleon closed his eyes and opened them and cast them to the high rocks where Bandy was, the crown of his Stetson in view.

“I know someone by what they say and do,” Napoleon finally said.

“But a man doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s drunk.”

“Right now I just wish you’d shut the fuck up.”

“Don’t hold it against me is what I am asking.”

“I ain’t the one with reason for to hold a grudge.”

Bandy raised his head and grinned down at him. Napoleon held open a hand—okay? Bandy nodded and lowered his head again.

He understood how Preston could not accept his rebuke. Approval and forgiveness were the right and habit of this man’s station in life. What he did was done.

Napoleon wanted this conversation over. He made it a rule to stay away from people who talked too much and this one was a talker. Today they were all talkers and he’d about had enough of their talk. Then Preston was talking again.

“I am simply asking you to please don’t hold it against me.” Preston had worked himself up and his color was showing in his cheeks. In his way he’d confessed his role in what happened last night. He must have thought, what more could he do? When one confesses, forgiveness is required.

“Did you pay for your hump?” he said.

“What?” Preston said, his voice a quaver.

“Did you pay for your hump,” he said again, but Preston only stared at him, a young man’s thin tight smile on his face. By the look in his eyes it was clear he’d struggled with his behavior and failed before.

“I was off my head,” Preston declared. “When we return I will make restitution.” Preston then said he needed to take a short walk to concentrate his mind that he might recover the day and with that he dismissed himself.

“What’s up with Mister Moneybags?” Extra Billy asked.

“He ain’t nothing but a poisonous tick,” Napoleon said.

“He ain’t so bad.”

“He ain’t so good either.”

“A whore getting cut up happens.”

“You defending it?”

“I ain’t defending nothing.”

“You know what he done as well as I do cuttin’ that woman.”

“I know what he done. You ain’t telling me nothing.”

“He ought to be horsewhipped. Do around me what that man did and you will rue the day.”

“Him horsewhipped? Why, he’s going to be a senator some day. He was created by God, that one.”

“All the more reason.”

“The kid,” Extra Billy said. “I talked to him like you said.”

“What about him?”

“He don’t understand why we are here.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I tol’ him the army is here and he is in the army and that’s why he is here. But that other one.”

“Who?’

“Preston.”

“What about him?”

Extra Billy turned his palms to the sky and gave a shrug and he likewise dismissed himself.

Napoleon lit a new cigarette off the one he’d been smoking.

Don’t try to understand, he told himself. What seemed so strange and impenetrable earlier in the day seemed to have vanished, but his heart beat uneasily with the sense they should be moving. It pressed on his mind. He tired of his cigarette. He crumbled and scattered it away.

He closed his eyes for not more than a few minutes, when there came a commotion from the rocks. Preston and Turner were whooping and dancing backward as Stableforth pulled a nesting rattlesnake, thick as a man’s arm, from a wide crevice. He held it aloft by the throat as its body twisted and flashed white in the air. Its fanged mouth yawed open and its tongue slivered the air.

Turner held open a flour sack and once the snake was inside they tied off the sack and dropped the sack into another and then a third. This was their adventure and they would have it.

He looked to the sun. The wagons would be coming in with their blocks of ice. Their make-work detail would soon be over and he’d be rid of them.

“Let’s get cracking,” Napoleon said.

He pulled himself erect and dusted himself off. He walked into the bush and unbuttoned his fly. As he was doing his business he scanned the jagged rocks that rimmed the canyon, the hour just past the meridian. There was nothing to see and then suddenly a flash of arc-shaped light in the periphery of his vision and to the west, he caught sight of distant riders, one a woman with a parasol, passing ghostlike through the vast emptiness.

The devil ain’t a man, he thought. He’s a woman.

He watched them as they disappeared beneath the earth line. He didn’t know who they were, but they were familiar to him, as if prefigured in his mind. There would be trouble; he now knew it and with this knowing, some small part of him was relieved.