Snake Eyes (9781101552469) (12 page)

Felix was not married, and none who knew him were surprised. He was not a man to show tenderness to any woman but his mother, and there were many who doubted that she, if she was still alive, would be an exception.

Verdugo had never seen so many sheep in his life and, as they streamed into the valley, he kept his distance, standing close to the old mule, Rodrigo, and wondering what kind of world he had entered just to earn a few more dollars from Snake.

Mike put Verdugo to work that afternoon, cutting and carrying firewood to camp. He told the Mexican that there was to be a big feast that night, since Oriola had brought vegetables and fruits from Cheyenne, a large wagonload of foodstuffs, along with another chuck wagon. They would have roast mutton and wine and there would be singing and dancing. He told them that they had just buried one of their herders and this was a way to set aside grief and welcome the new herd.

“You will meet all who are here, Jorge,” Mike said. “And, if you want to work, we will make a Basque out of you. After all, some of the same blood runs in our veins.”

“I am truly grateful to you, Mr. Garaboxosa. My poor family is starving, and I need the money.”

“And you shall earn every centavo, my Mexican friend. We thrive on hard work.”

Verdugo found himself liking the man he had been hired to spy on. He saw the women crowd around the wagon that carried the vegetables, fruits, and wine, eagerly unloading the goods and carrying them to the various huts in their aprons. Children laughed and ran about, helping to carry the smaller items, trailing small puppies in their wakes and laughing all the while.

The sheep camp, Verdugo soon saw, was much different from the sober cow camp. Here, there was life and laughter, and yes, even joy. But he knew that the cattlemen hated the sheepmen, yet he had not taken sides. He would do his job, but he must keep in mind that he worked for the German, Schneck, and should not bear sympathy for Garaboxosa and the sheepherders.

He would pretend to be friends with them, but he would do his job of spying and report all that he found out to Schneck.

Verdugo would do these things, but he would be very sad to betray such people. They were like his own, in many ways, and they made him homesick for Jalisco, where there was much dancing and singing, and much poverty. These people were not Spanish or Mexican, but they looked similar and their ways were more like the ways of his own people, his own family.

He had never tasted mutton, and he did not know if he could eat a sheep.

But he would make friends and try to understand these strange people who found joy in work and spoke a different language.

When he squinted his eyes and listened to their laughter and their lilting language, he saw his own people. He cut the wood and carried it to the log cabins and to the large fire ring near the two chuck wagons. He sweated and strained in the brisk mountain air, and for the first time in a long while, he was happy.

And the sheep did not smell so bad after all.

When Brad rode back into the valley, he was unprepared for the sight of so many sheep streaming out of the timber and flocking to their new home in the mountains. He sat on his horse for a long time on the rimrock, staring down at the flurry of activity around the wagons, especially the wagon piled high with sacks of potatoes, baskets of oranges, peaches, apricots, cucumbers, onions, and apples. He listened to the joyous cries of the children floating up to him like watery, quivering globes from a bubble pipe, and the women in their colorful dresses, chattering like magpies in the Basque language, oddly musical and as universal, somehow, as laughter.

Sheep poured into the valley in liquid wooly streams that flowed over the new grass in a dazzling white cascade, bleating and flexing their boundaries while the little black-and-white dogs chased deserters back into the flocks where they were swallowed up on the rippling woolen tide.

He rode down to the valley, taking the path that led him past the place where he had shot the man in hiding above the talus slope. He found a path through the woods that led him to the graveyard where there were two crude crosses at the head of two fresh mounds of dirt. The crosses were made of straight limbs nailed together. Someone had cleared away much of the brush and small saplings to make a level space, but had left the tall pines and a graceful pair of spruces. A little farther on, in a less than ideal place, there was another grave, unmarked, and he surmised that this was the place where the sheepmen had buried the would-be bushwhacker.

As he passed that grave, there were signs that at least one human had defecated on the grave. There would probably be more such deposits made by the angry men in the camp. He rode to the stable, which was only a large lean-to with log sidewalls where large twenty-penny nails had been driven so reins and ropes could be looped to hitch up the animals. There were some barrels sawed in half and tarred to hold water and feed.

He dismounted, led Ginger inside, dug out a halter from his saddlebag, and hitched him to a pair of offset nails where one of the barrel halves served as a watering trough. He dug into a sack of grain, corn, and wheat and placed it in another barrel half, which he moved within range of Ginger. The horse began to nibble on the grain while Brad unsaddled him. He hung the reins and his canteen on a lone nail higher up, set his saddle on its side next to the foundation log, and lugged his saddlebags, rifle, and shotgun to the log hut he shared with Joe Arramospe. He sat them next to his bedroll and walked outside to help unload one of the supply wagons.

Brad picked up a stack of blankets and asked a woman standing near him, “Where do you want these?”

The woman laughed and waved a finger at him.

“No, no,” she said. “You leave in wagon.”

“Huh?”

“No take blankets. Blankets stay. Tents stay.”

He set the blankets back down in the wagon and looked at the other items in the bed.

There were small tents, axes, saws, ropes, boxes of matches, sacks of beans, flour, sugar, and baskets of apples, apricots, and other fruits.

Leda walked up to him and pushed him away from the wagon. She, too, wagged a finger at him.

“This wagon for women,” she said.

Other women walked over and surrounded him and the wagon. They all had smiles on their faces, indulgent smiles, as if they had just caught one of their children with his hand in the cookie jar.

Brad looked around and saw Mike staring at him. Some of the children wandered over and joined the women, tugging on their mothers' skirts. A small girl in pigtails had a wide grin on her face and looked at him as if he had trespassed on sacred ground.

“I don't understand,” Brad said to Leda.

She took his arm and led him away from the wagon, away from the others who were all staring at him as if he were the village idiot.

“Mr. Storm,” Leda said, “that wagon for us. We go tomorrow. In morning, we all go to camp on river. Tonight, we eat much. We dance. We sing. Then, we all go to river.”

Brad listened to her and saw the others still looking at him with baleful eyes and twisted grins.

Mike walked over and put an arm around Leda. He hugged her, and she kissed him on the cheek.

“Did I do something wrong, Mike?” Brad asked.

Mike stepped a foot away from Leda. He looked at Brad.

“No, but that wagon there is for the women. Two of my men will drive it downriver to a camp where they will stay. All of the women and children are leaving in the morning. We have work to do, and they must go where they are safe.”

Brad nodded that he understood.

“I feel stupid,” he said.

“Not stupid,” Leda said. “You my hero. You hero to all, Mr. Storm.”

Brad looked helplessly at Mike.

“I feel like a fool,” Brad said.

Mike opened his mouth as if to reply and reassure Brad, but Leda shushed him.

“You go, Mikel,” she said. “I talk Mr. Storm. Go, go.” She made a brushing motion with both hands. Mike turned and left to join his men.

Leda slid Brad's arm in the crook of her own arm and the two walked over to a stack of logs. She pushed him down onto one of them and sat beside him.

“English no good,” she said. “You please forgive.”

“Your English is good enough, Mrs. Polentzi.”

“You call Leda. No Mrs. Polentzi, eh?”

“All right, Leda. But you must call me Brad, then.”

“You listen, eh? Brad.” She smiled. “We Basque people. Men tend the sheep. Women cook the food. Mikel, he take the sheep to other valley. Send women and children to camp on river. The men come back when leaves fall and get women and little boys and girls. We wait for the men. You find man who killed Eladio and my Rafael. You kill him. Make Leda very happy.”

“I will do my best, Leda,” he said.

She patted him on the hand.

“You hero,” she said.

Brad wished he were anyplace else but where he was. He was touched by Leda's sincerity, but he was uncomfortable sitting there with Polentzi's widow. He felt out of place. Yet he knew that she probably needed to talk, that she was still grieving for her husband.

As they spoke together, Verdugo approached. He carried a log in his arms. He put it on the back of the pile, out of sight of Leda and Brad. He waited and listened as the two continued to converse with each other.

“Tomorrow,” Leda said, “I go with other women and children down to river camp. When you kill Snake, you come and tell me.”

“I might just capture Snake,” he said. “Take him to jail.”

“You bring Snake to river camp. I kill him.”

“I couldn't do that,” he said. “If I catch him, he must stand before a judge. He must have a fair trial.”

“Snake not give Rafael fair trail. Not give Eladio fair trial.”

“No, but that's the law. I am a detective, and I am sworn to uphold the law.”

“Bah,” she said and spat into the dirt. “There no law here. No law for Basque in America.”

“That's not true, Leda,” he said. “The law says that all men are equal in its eyes.”

“Law blind, no?”

“The law isn't blind, Leda. Justice is blind. That is the lady with the scales in her hand. The statues, you know?”

“I know,” she said. “Law, justice. No justice for Basque. No law.”

Verdugo slipped quietly away. He knew that the women and children were leaving in the morning. They were going to some camp down on the Poudre. He could tell that to Schneck and collect his twenty dollars and forget about these people and their sheep.

Brad saw, out of the corner of his eye, the man who walked into the woods. He knew that he was a Mexican, not a Basque, but that was all. He tucked the information away in a corner of his mind. He thought it strange that Mike would have a Mexican working for him, but perhaps he was hired to free up the Basque herders.

“You come tonight,” Leda said. “You eat with Leda. We dance, eh?”

“Yes, I'll dance with you, Leda. I'm very sorry about your husband.”

“You kill one man, but Mikel say he not Snake.”

“No, he wasn't Snake, but he worked for him.”

“Cattlemen no good,” she said.

“They do not like sheep eating the grass up here. Not all cattlemen are bad. I am a cattleman.”

“I know. Mikel, he tell me. But he say you different. You detective.”

“This is my last job as a detective. I am going back to my cattle ranch after I catch Snake.”

“You catch him,” she said. “You kill him. You kill Snake.” He started to protest, but she got up and walked to where the women were standing. They were all watching the sheep that swarmed into the valley.

Brad spotted Mike and Joe. He got up and walked over to them.

“Where are you putting all these sheep, Mike?” he asked.

“There is another valley beyond this one,” he said. “Higher up, maybe a thousand feet higher. They will go there for a month or so, then come back here.”

“I think I saw that valley this morning,” he said.

Brad pointed in the direction of the valley where he and Sorenson had met up and talked.

“Yes,” Mike said. “Big valley.”

“I think Snake wants that valley for his cattle,” Brad said.

“Well, we will be there. We will not let him come in with his cattle.”

“First come, first served,” Joe said.

“You might have a fight on your hands.”

“How do you know this, Brad?”

“I made a friend who works for Snake,” he said. “He is not a cattleman. He's a scout. He doesn't like Snake, and he has agreed to work for me. As a spy.”