The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (5 page)

I dragged the pig over to a tall tree between
the house and barn that I’d noticed had butchering
arms screwed into a large branch. I removed
the throwing rope from the pig as the women
approached with a pair of medium-weight chains
from the barn. They cut into the pig’s hocks, inserted
a pair of hooks, and hefted the animal up
as if it were a kitten. There was a cauldron off to
the side with a pit under it for a fire. There was a
good stock of wood already in it. Blanco struck a
match to some kindling and got the fire going at
several points. When Teresa stuck a fourteen-inch
blade into the pig’s anus and cut upward, I
turned away and went back into the barn. I’d
seen butchering before, but that didn’t mean I
enjoyed watchin’ it. I heard the guts dump out of
the animal and strike the ground, and it made
me shudder.

I stood in the barn, listening to the minor
creaks and groans that are always present in such
a massive wooden structure. I looked around
again, and shook my head in disbelief.

We’ve got everything we need now—land, house,
barn, and money. There’s stock around. Tiny will
know who owns what we might need and we’d crossed
mustang herd tracks several times as we rode from
Hulberton. It wasn’t going to be easy to find the right
horses, because temperament was just as important as
physical traits. A horse that’s lazy, or fights his owner,
or fights too often with the other horses would be no
good to us. Both my horse and Arm’s were geldings—
and they didn’t quite make the grade of what we wanted
as breeding stock, even if they’d been stallions.

Mustangs tend to be a bit nutsy because they’ve
been free for so many generations, and they were all
rope-shy and distrustful. Sometimes a mustang can be
brought down and made into a useful horse, but there
was always the chance he’d revert to type and pull
some kind of a stunt like rolling on his rider. Still,
generalizations
never apply to all of anything, be it horses,
dogs, or people. All I knew was that it was going to
take some looking to find what we were after, but both
Armando and I were dead-on convinced that the horses
we needed existed.

That evening Arm wasn’t at all interested in a
plate of pork chops—one of his favorite feeds. His
thumb looked bad—hugely swollen and skintight
with that shiny red of illness. His only interest
was another jug of tequila and his bed. Blanca
and Teresa checked him out and both shook their
heads in dismay. Teresa rattled off some Spanish
to Arm. He answered in English: “I don’t have no
goddamn infection.”

The ladies were back before full light the next
morning. Arm was both listless and surly, if those
two attributes can both function at the same time,
which they apparently can. I sat with him as the
sun rose.

“Look,” I said, “you do what Blanca and Teresa
tell you without handing them a ton of shit. I’m
going out with the glasses to take a peek at whatever
mustangs I cross. If your thumb isn’t better
by the time I get back, we’ll have to find a doctor
somehow.”

“Doctors, they are boolshit,” he said. “Busted
thumbs don’ need no doctors.” His eyes were
closing. I let him drift back to sleep and then left.

We’d won a pair of U.S. military binoculars in a
poker game in Yuma a couple of years back. We
were careful of them and rarely used them. I took
them tucked in their case along with me.

The temperature wasn’t real bad and my horse
was frisky. I let him sunfish a bit when I settled in
the saddle and ran him for a mile or so until he
clamed down. It gave me a strange feeling to realize
that I was riding on land my partner and me
owned.

I crossed a herd’s tracks within a couple of hours
and followed them easily. It was beyond midday
when I topped a little ridge and saw the herd—
maybe forty head—clustered around a small water
hole. Most were mares. The honcho stallion
was a roan, and he stood off from the rest, muzzle
high, testing the breeze. The breeze was coming
from them to me, which stopped the stud
from catching my scent. I looked him over
through the glasses. He wasn’t much of a horse.
His front end had no chest to speak of; it looked
like his forelegs came out of the same hole. His
legs were almost ruler straight with no angle to
the pasterns. His spine sagged, and his ass, although
large and powerful-looking, wouldn’t do
anything
for him because I doubted that he had
any wind, given the scrawniness of his chest. I
figured it wouldn’t be too long before some young
stud kicked holes in him and took over the herd.

There were a couple decent-looking mares at
the water, but nothing the Busted Thumb would
have any interest in.

I rode back to the ranch, a bit disappointed. I’m
not real sure of what I was expecting from the
mustangs, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it.

I put my horse in his stall with fresh water and
walked into the house and up to Armando’s
room. The ladies had taken the wrapping off his
thumb and had his arm extended out to the side.
The thumb was huge, grotesque-looking, and
little trails of red were running from it down his
forearm. “Infection?” I asked.

“Sí,”
Teresa answered.
“Mal infección.”

The room reeked of tequila and Arm was
passed out. Blanca was sharpening a short knife
on a stone, dipping it into a glass of tequila every
so often. Teresa told me—through hand motions
and by grasping my arm—what she and Blanca
wanted me to do: hold Armando’s arm extended
out while Blanca drained the infection and
poured in a brownish liquid from a large vial she
had wrapped in a thick wool cloth.

I did as I was told. I held my partner’s arm out—
keeping my hands as far away from his thumb as
I could.

Blanca stood over Arm. His thumb was up and
pointing at her, and the little red trails seemed to
have gotten larger. I noticed, too, that there was a
musty scent of sweetish rot around Arm’s hand.

Blanca was handy with her knife. She cut a
slash the length of Arm’s thumb. I gagged as
greenish pus spurted several inches into the air,
following her blade. She let the wound bleed for
several minutes and then carefully uncorked her
vial. Her eyes met mine and the message was
clear:
hold on.
She poured the brownish liquid
into the cut. Armando was instantly awake and
screaming in pain. Teresa, sitting on his right
arm, was bounced about like a bronc man on a
rank horse.

Blanca waited for a few moments and poured a
second time. Armando began another scream—
and then passed out. I thought he was dead.

Teresa climbed off his arm and helped Blanca
resplint and rewrap the thumb. Then both women
stood back from the bed.
“Muy bueno,”
Blanca
said. Teresa smiled.

It took me a moment to see that Arm’s chest
was moving normally as he breathed, and that
he seemed in no discomfort. I damned near ran
down the stairs to the kitchen and the cupboard
with the tequila in it. Then, I got drunk. But before
I did I handed each woman a fifty-dollar bill
when they came downstairs. Their eyes widened:
fifty bucks was a ton of money to them. The surprise
on their faces faded, to be replaced with
wide, happy smiles.

They left in their farm wagon shortly afterward.

Not having Arm to talk to and drink with felt
strange. I sat out on the porch until dark and then
went inside, lit a lantern, and sat in one of the big
chairs and stared at the wall.

Rain is as rare as an honest riverboat gambler
in West Texas. Sometime during the night after
Blanca and Teresa treated Arm, however, a light
rain began—and kept on falling for the next three
days.

In a sense, it was a gift to Armando: during
that time he alternated between sleeping, watching
rain snakes course down the windowpanes,
and drinking tequila. He seemed content enough
during his rain-enforced recuperation.

I, on the other hand, was going crazy. I had
nothing to do, no one to talk to, and was sick of
eating pork chops. Midday of the second day I
saddled my horse, pulled on my slicker, and rode
to Hulberton, tense all the way because I could
feel my horse’s hooves sliding when they should
have purchasing traction. I made it there, though.

I found Tiny sitting on a bale of straw. There
was no fire in his forge. Only two of his stalls had
horses in them, and his for-sale horses were clustered
under an A-frame shelter he’d built in his
corral.

His face lit up when I rode in—as mine did
when I saw him. “Pull up a bale,” he said, “an’ we
can both be bored to death together,” he said.
“How’s Arm’s paw?”

“Real good. Blanca and Teresa fixed him up
jus’ fine. Those are great ladies, Tiny.”

“Sure ’nuff. But I gotta show you somethin’
they done for you boys. Damn, Jake, them fifties
were more’n their families had saw in their best
year.”

We went to the rear of his barn. Leaning against
his baled hay was a fourteen-foot, twelve-inch
board of wood painted a pure white. On it were
the precisely painted words, the busted thumb
horse ranch.

“We had to go to the sherrif,” Tiny said, “to do
the spelling right. I ain’t much at it. Pretty sign,
ain’t it? All you boys gotta do is get uprights an’
nail her up.”

I ran my hand along the sign. “Damn,” I said,
“they sanded this plank. It’s as smooth as a baby’s
ass.”

“Yep. They spent some time an’ some muscle
on it, Jake.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know no
Spanish, but I’ll make sure Arm thanks the ladies
proper. That sign’s beautiful.”

We went back up to the front of the barn. “You
ain’t got much hay,” Tiny said. “And what I seen
there was cactus spines an’ prairie dog shit. I just
got a load of green trefoil mix in. I can let it go for
twelve cents a tight bale.”

“I’ll tell you what, Tiny—you haul the shit outta
our barn an’ sell us a thousand bales at your
price. Can you do it?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Now, we got some crimped oats but it’s
all piss-poor. You want to empty our bins an’ refill
’em with your feed?”

“Well, sure.”

“How about a heavy mix of molasses in the
grain? Can you do that?”

Tiny chuckled. “Can I make my ol’ lady scratch
my back an’ call, ‘Oh God, oh God?’ I can mix
grain an’ molasses, Jake—don’t you worry none
about that.”

“Good.”

Tiny looked embarrassed. “ ’Course, we’re talking
about some money here. The hay—an’ that
fancied-up grain, an’ the delivery—will run
maybe…”

I held up my hand. “I don’t give a damn. Tell
me what you need an’ I’ll give it to you right now.”

“On delivery is good,” Tiny said. “Includin’,
’course, a taste of ol’ man Ven Gelpwell’s tequila.”

We sat on our bales for another minute or so.

One of the horses in a stall whinnied for whatever
reason.

“That fella’s catchin’ the scent of mare out there
who’s lookin’ for a stud,” Tiny said. “I ain’t
gonna
breed him. He’s a nice enough horse, but he’s as
clumsy as a drunk an’ got no speed, either. Good
temperament, but hell—that ain’t gonna take him
too far.”

“No. I s’pose not. Me an’ Arm are lookin’ for
fine brood mares an’ a stud horse that’s…
well…he’s gotta be the best.”

Tiny nodded. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know if
this is any good, but I had an Apache in here yestiddy
for me to fix up a bad hoof crack on his
pony. He said he seen a big mustang herd—
maybe a hundred head or so—with a stud runnin’
the show. He said the stallion was the
fantasmo horse.”

“Fantasmo?”

“Yeah—as good as they get: faster, stronger, all
that. Can’t be killed or captured.”

“Where was this herd?”

“Up near the foothills—maybe thirty miles,
kinda south-southeast.”

“You know this Apache fella?”

“No—I never seen him before.”

“You get his name?”

“He Who Walks Far. Thing is, he’s a hostile.

Busted the reservation, shot up some soldiers,
took a few scalps, wrecked a couple white girls.”

“Well,” I said, “me an Arm want to see this
stud horse—if he’s real. We don’t give a damn
’bout the hostile. This Apache who done the little
girls don’t deserve life, and we’d just as soon put
a bullet in him, an’ maybe we will some day. But,
what we’re lookin’ for is horses.”

“Well, according to this Apache, he’s supposed
to be a big, tall bay. He said this fantasmo’s eyes
glow like fire in the night an’ his hooves strike
sparks when he runs.” Tiny sighed. “I wouldn’t
get too excited, though—the Indian mighta been
eatin’ them mushroom buds that make them see
things, or maybe he jus’ dreamed all that stuff.
Every so often there’s a rumor ’bout a fantasmo
horse, but it never amounts to nothin’. Still, I hear
talk every now an’ again.”

“What about the herd, though? You think that’s
real?”

“Yeah. Fact is, I
know
it is, ’cause I seen them
maybe a year ago. Me an’ my brother-in-law was
out hunting and we seen tracks, first. Then, later,
we seen the herd. They were far off an’ there was
lots of dust ’round them an’ we couldn’t see no
tall bay, but I’ll tell you this, Jake: we seen a hundred
or more mustangs. They was out south an’
east, maybe twenty or twenty-five miles from
town. That don’t mean nothin’, though. You know
how them mustangs range.”

We sat there for a while, watching the rain.
“What about our packer, Tiny?” I asked. “If me
an’ Arm set out, can that boy take it?”

Tiny plucked a length of straw out of the bale
he was sitting on and stuck it in the corner of his
mouth. He chewed a bit before he spoke. “That ol’
packer looks like he was put together outta clay
twigs. But—an’ here’s the thing—have you ever
took a good look at the way he’s put together?”

“Well, we were in a hurry an’ Arm—”