Paxton and the Lone Star (36 page)

At that moment, bent low over Torbellino, he first heard the whistle of Firetail's breath. He dared a glance to his right. The great roan's head was even with his own, then inched ahead, even with Torbellino's. Horrified, Ramez watched the great legs driving up and down, the hooves drumming the packed earth, the heaving chest gulping in huge draughts of the frigid air. And in that same instant, he thought he heard his father's voice in his ear. “Don't let him win,” he had said. “Do anything but lose.”

Less than a hundred yards away, the labyrinth of boulders loomed above them. A vague hollowness ate at Ramez's stomach. His throat burned. Panic tore though him, made him slash at Torbellino until the blood welled from the steaming white flanks. Even so the roan pulled ahead and swerved in front of him, blotting out the world. Never before in a race had Torbellino seen another horse's tail or eaten another horse's dust.
Do anything but lose.
But he'd never lost. Never in his life. An O'Shannon didn't lose, didn't know the meaning of the word. Not Luther O'Shannon. Not Luther O'Shannon's son.

Both men slowed their mounts as the first boulders flashed by and the incline steepened. Firetail picked his way through the route True had chosen the day before. Behind him and to his right, Torbellino followed a slightly longer but smoother path as he heaved his way upward. Ramez took chances, drove the white stallion on, and suddenly, as the horse faltered, saw the pink flecks in the saliva that flowed from his mouth. Torbellino was coming abreast of Firetail, but only because he was being driven beyond his limits. True Paxton knew it, too, Ramez could tell. The
gringo
's horse had strength to spare, was taking the climb with ease. Torbellino had spirit, but was broken, finished. There was a chance he would gain the height first, but he was so tired his chances of winning had diminished to near zero.

Do anything but lose.
Ramez could see the look of disgust on his father's face.
Do anything but lose.
The son had failed the father once again.
Do anything but lose.
Torbellino stumbled. Ramez jerked viciously on the reins, pulled him upright, slashed him with the quirt.
I
will have land and money.
Had he said that?
Now you have neither money nor land.
His father would say that.
Do anything but lose!

The roan gained the height first and Torbellino broke out of the boulders right behind him. The wind rushed past Ramez's ears. Pounding hooves. The labored scream of Torbellino's breathing. His father's voice thundering in his brain. His own boasts, come back to haunt him. The muted laughter of the
peónes.
Crazed, Ramez forced Torbellino into one final surge that took him abreast of Firetail on the narrow trail and then, as the blood-streaked white stallion, so magnificent only five short minutes earlier, broke, just as he started to fall back, winded, Ramez jerked him to the left, deliberately into the roan.

True braced himself. In that lengthening time given to men in a crisis, he realized what Ramez had done, saw with terrible clarity that which he had considered the day before, and then was too busy to think past each dizzying second.

They were off the trail and over the side. The valley floor tilted crazily below. Firetail was bracing, relaxing, leaning back, throwing his weight to one side or the other to keep his balance. Close at his side, showering him with rocks and dirt, Torbellino followed, with Ramez caught in the devastating consequences of his folly. True leaned back, set Firetail almost on his haunches, helped him around the first boulder. The same stone caught Torbellino's front legs and broke them. With a shrill whinny of pain, Torbellino collapsed and rolled over with Ramez caught in his saddle. Ramez screamed and tried to jump free, but couldn't. The ornate pommel stabbed him in the belly, bursting his abdomen as the full weight of more than half a ton of horse rolled over him once, and then again and again and again, tumbling like a great broken doll that spilled, instead of sawdust, real blood and entrails.

True saw none of this. His world encompassed a space no larger than himself, his horse, and the next boulder racing uphill to meet him. The ground in front of him slanted sickeningly. He pulled his right foot out of the stirrup and shoved hard against the side of the hill. Firetail skewed to his left, and pointed into the slide again. Chips of flying limestone cut True's cheeks and slashed his hands. A boulder inflated to fill the horizon and reach out with what seemed like a life of its own to smash into his arm. He could feel the bone give, was sure he heart it snap, though he felt nothing.

Lean back in the saddle. Keep his head up. Good boy. Good boy.

Death was in the winter dust. Death in the noise, in the preternatural quiet, lurking to either side and ahead. Death waiting for one slip, one miniscule misjudgment. Just one.

Gradually, the world straightened and Firetail's wild, sliding ride slowed as the slope bottomed out. Legs stiff, head up, eyes wild, the stallion stopped and stood trembling on flat ground. A rock sang by, bounced and rolled to a stop. Another half dozen, then another three, and one final stone. And then silence. Slowly, still dazed, True slid from Firetail's back, staggered to one side, and leaned against a boulder. At first he thought he was going to throw up, but the sudden pain in his arm and the dim, faraway memory of snapping bone brought him back to his senses. As if in a drunken stupor, he unbuttoned his coat and slung the broken arm inside it. Only then did he have the presence to check Firetail.

The roan's sides were heaving. His coat was dark with sweat and caked mud where the dust had clung to him. His head bobbed up and down as he breathed. Though a gash had been ripped in his left rear leg, all four hooves were planted squarely on the ground. Not yet able to talk, True stumbled toward him and walked around him, checking each leg carefully. It was a miracle, but there were no broken bones. Then he went to look for Ramez O'Shannon and Torbellino.

Vision blurred, the world swam away and came back. Half hidden behind a great boulder, Torbellino's battered hind quarters lay twisted in a loose pile of small stones that had slid over him. True limped in that direction. What was left of Ramez lay behind the boulder. His fine clothes were torn and soaked with blood. One leg bent upward beneath his torso. His back was twisted in a grotesque angle. Only his face, so finely chiseled, so brittlely handsome, was untouched. He looked terribly small and frail, like a child.

As if in a dream, True whistled Firetail to him and bade him stand still during the dizzying, numbing chore of lifting the corpse one-handed over the roan's withers. Firetail shied at the extra weight, but calmed down quickly when True mounted and headed him back toward town. The ride was a nightmare that unfolded as he watched, awake and vaguely curious as to its outcome. Soon, from what direction he wasn't sure, he was joined by a half score of riders come to see what had caused the delay. At their head, he led the shocked, silent procession through the streets of San Antonio and across the plaza to the finish line and the waiting crowd.

No one cheered. No one rushed to greet him when they saw the broken body draped across his horse, the blood running down the roan's leg, the blank, white look on True's face.

The drama played itself out slowly, as if it had been rehearsed and each participant knew his role to perfection. His face a mask of emotionless calm, Luther O'Shannon stepped from the crowd and stood alone. The staring onlookers, unconsciously stepped backward. Elizabeth gasped and tried to run to True but was restrained by Hogjaw. “You have to let him do it himself,” the mountain man whispered in her ear.

True walked Firetail to the post, reached out his good right arm and, with a bloody hand, jerked the saber free.

The crowd sighed as one. Luther O'Shannon's face, drained of color, revealed nothing.

True turned Firetail, stopped him in front of O'Shannon. O'Shannon gestured curtly with one hand. Two of his men hurried forward and gingerly lifted the broken corpse from Firetail's withers and laid him on the ground. Luther O'Shannon remained perfectly still.

A whisper rippled through the crowd. True's eyes raked over it. The whisper faded quickly. The crowd was silent again.

True threw the saber down in front of O'Shannon. It hit the packed earth with a dull, mournful clang.

“Our land,” he said, spraying a red mist from his swollen cut lips, and then waited.

The silence grew. At last, Luther O'Shannon, his eyes hooded and feverish with hatred, nodded. When he spoke, his voice was a harsh, anguished whisper that held no tint of the terrible lust for vengeance that already consumed his being. “Your land,” he said. “But not yet paid for, Paxton. Not yet in full.”

True nodded his understanding and turned away from O'Shannon to see Elizabeth and the tears of love on her face. He nudged Firetail, who walked toward her as she broke from Hogjaw's grip and ran to him.

The roan stopped.

True looked down as she touched his leg. A look stilled her before she could speak.

“Eliz … abeth …” he said, focusing with great effort on her. “Will … you … marry … me?”

She caught him as he fell.

PART FOUR

1835

Chapter XXV

They built with cedar, and stone, and mortar crushed and mixed with their own hands. Working together, they raised four walls and a roof for each family—not much as houses went, but winter was almost over and it was time to plow and sow. No one complained. They were home at last.

The two months since the race on New Year's Day had flown quickly. A splinted and patched-up True and taken title to what had been Ramez O'Shannon's land the day after the race. Less than a week later, feeling the need for more land and with the advice of Raphael Sanchez and the consent of the other settlers, True and Joseph had traded the fifteen hundred
hectares
plus three thousand dollars for a six thousand-
hectare
tract twenty miles south of San Antonio and just east of Luther O'Shannon. True and Joseph owned the land, of course, but as they had promised, they offered to parcel it out equally among all seven families and Andrew, share and share alike with an eye to water and grass and wood, and on more than favorable terms. At a little under three square miles per family—not a great ranch to be sure, but a decent start—the urge to remain together was overpowering. Nels Matlan sent word to Washington-on-the-Brazos declining the teaching job they had offered him. Scott Campbell quit his job at the stable. Buckland Kania decided to sell most of his share back to True and Joseph and, debt free, build his church on what was left and make it the center of his circuit. Even the Kempers, who had dreamed of easy empires, chose to establish their trading post near their fellow travelers.

By the end of January, the land had been divided and a small collection of cabins, sufficiently distant from one another for privacy yet close enough to afford a modicum of protection and mutual benefit, had sprung up. They called their settlement Agradecido, the Spanish word for grateful. And if anyone worried about the threat their neighbor to the west might pose, they put it out of mind when the griefstricken O'Shannon vacated his
hacienda
and moved to Mexico City during the first week of February. In any case, Ramez had spilled his own blood and the settlers were guiltless. Not a one of them, though, no matter how lofty his ideals or how deep his friendship for True, would have changed his name to Paxton. Not for a moment.

And not for a moment did True wish to be anything other than a Paxton. He reveled in his new life with Elizabeth on land he could call his own. He loved the smell of the freshly turned earth and watched avidly for the first shoots of spring wheat to appear. At night, he learned the coyotes' songs, by day, the whistle of the cardinals and the soft hoot of the doves. He noted where the sun rose and set, how the wind bent the grass, when the clouds carried rain. Each day he carefully exercised his arm and felt the muscles grow around the knitting bone. And at last, when the first week of March had passed, he decided it was time to do a full day's work.

Determined, he tilted a barrel of seed corn, caught the lower rim with his right hand, and reached around the middle with his left arm. A bushel, he told himself. Sixty-six pounds plus the weight of the barrel. Just enough for a decent test. He exhaled, inhaled, exhaled … and lifted. Pain stabbed through his arm and turned his stomach, but the bone didn't give. As he stood and held on, the pain receded and left no more than a vague, deep ache.

“My God, I knew it! You couldn't wait, could you?” Elizabeth said from the doorway. “I married the stubbornest man in all creation.”

True gritted his teeth and forced a grin. “It's been nine weeks since Hogjaw set it, and I've been working up to this. Nine weeks is time enough for anyone to go about dangling his hand. I either have two good arms or I don't.”

“I'm more worried about your head and what's obviously rattling loose inside,” Elizabeth replied archly, spinning in the doorway and reentering the cabin.

The imperious performance set True in motion. He let loose a wild whoop, dropped the barrel, and charged the doorway, leaping through and catching Elizabeth midway across the room. Smothering her scream against his chest, he picked her up and tossed her onto the down mattress.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, discovering the answer as he fought aside her kicking legs and bunched her skirt around her waist. “True! No!” She pummeled his chest, trued to get a knee between his legs, and failed. “It's the middle of the day, True!”

“Sorry ma'am. I can't hear. Something loose in my head.”

“I take it back,” Elizabeth shouted. “I take it back.”

“Eh?” True said, holding her down with his weight until he undid his trousers. “What's that? What's that?”