THOMAS EIDSON
The Last Ride

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Penguin UK Ltd in 1995

This edition 2004

Copyright © Thomas E. Eidson 1995

Thomas E. Eidson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007181353

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007396832

Version: 2016-03-23

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DEDICATION

For my parents Genevieve and Richard

‘None of us will ever forget Erwin Street …’

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Thomas Eidson

About the Publisher

ONE

Brake Baldwin spotted the horseman as he rode clear of the tamarisk trees. He pulled his spectacles down, watching over the newspaper to see that the stranger was actually coming in, then shoved them back and went on reading. It was late evening, storm clouds gathering in a lowering sky. A poor-will was calling from the hills behind the barn. The sound was off – he didn’t know why. The thick-trunked cottonwoods near the creek were blackening in the dusk, night closing over the small valley of the New Mexico ranch.

He returned to the newspaper’s headline: PRESIDENT DECLARES WILD WEST DEAD. Amazing. Just like that: it was over. Eighteen eighty-six and gone – a finger snap. Santa Fe was getting ready, the paper said, to celebrate with a parade of modern inventions and a concert in the old Plaza. That should be worth the seeing, he thought.

The bay mare in the pasture whinnied at the stranger’s horse, but got no response, Baldwin glanced back up – the rider was moving slowly in the dying light, the wind running hard ahead of the approaching rain. He kept his eyes on him longer this time, noticing something different, but the stormy twilight was too far gone to be good for seeing any distance.

Not liking the tenseness in his shoulders, Baldwin mumbled his grandmother’s saying: You weren’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl. The man and the horse were coming through the orchard now, the trees singing in the building storm. The animal’s head was down and it looked ready to collapse. Behind him, he heard the barn open. Mannito had seen the rider, as well. The old Mexican was nearing seventy-five, but he had the delicate senses of one grown old dodging Mescaleros and Chiricahuas and their Apache brethren. Fortunately, those days were nothing but mean memories. Maybe the newspaper had it right; maybe the Wild West was dead.

He heard another door, and the sound of shutters closing, and knew Maggie was back caring for the woman and her children. She had been going round the clock with these three for days. She wasn’t a regular doctor, but she had nursed over twenty years and was better at it than most, running a little infirmary of sorts. Mostly her patients were poor Mexicans like the woman and her kids.

The rider emerged slowly from the shadows and Baldwin focused on him, wanting to smile, but the battered Sharps rifle lying across the saddle kept him somber. Patterns had been tattooed into the stock of the old weapon with brass tacks, Indian style. He tucked the newspaper under his arm, dropping his hand slowly, the reflex surprising him since he hadn’t worn a gun in years.

‘Malo,’ Mannito whispered. ‘Bad.’ The little Mexican, hat in hand against the wind, was squinting through the darkening night at the stranger, then he turned and slipped away into the shadows, most likely gone to his shotgun, Baldwin figured.

The rancher stood straighter. The rider had stopped his horse a few yards away, and sat staring at him. ‘Evening,’ Baldwin said.

The man nodded. Baldwin’s eyes moved slowly over him. He was old, maybe in his seventies, and big, close to six-six, deathly lean, but paunching some. Whether white or mixed breed, it was impossible to tell. At one time he must have been built like a range bull – now he was all bones, ridges and valleys. His rough face was burned to umber and looked slapped together with pieces of wet clay that didn’t fit just right; the heavy nose had been broken, maybe more than once, and he appeared tired or drunk, or both. His get-up was odd: frontier, Indian and Mexican. People had stopped dressing like this forty years ago. Baldwin’s eyes went back to the brutal features of the man’s face.

A little black and white terrier, the size of a good bootjack, was perched on the horse’s rump, its fur up against the storm, looking like a circus dog Baldwin had once seen. Without warning, it took a flying leap off the horse, tumbled over the ground and then trotted nervously around the rancher’s legs – just out of kicking distance – growling as though it weighed a hundred pounds instead of ten.

‘He bite?’ Baldwin hollered against the increasing roar of the tempest.

The old man nodded again, appearing to Baldwin for a moment like a demon riding in this dark wind. He was wearing a Pawnee medicine shirt made from an eerie blue-colored buckskin and covered with bright golden stars of silk that had been sewn on, and trimmed at the sleeves with a black fringe. A beauty. Gauntlet gloves covered his massive hands and a long black kerchief was clasped tight against his thin neck with a silver ornament; strangest of all, he was bare-legged, wearing a long Apache breechcloth. His body was painfully gaunt. Baldwin chewed on the inside of his lip for a second, wondering who the hell this old bastard was. He looked as though he belonged in a Wild West show; everything about him seemed old, as if he and his animals had ridden out of some ancient canyon lost to time.

‘I’d rather he didn’t bite me.’

‘Chaco,’ the stranger said firmly, trapping a cough in his throat.

Lightning flashed in the hills behind them, illuminating the old giant’s harsh face for an instant, then thunder rolled slowly across the valley. The little dog had stopped growling when the stranger called his name, and he lifted his leg now where he stood and peed a yellow stream that Baldwin swore was directed at him; then he bolted forward, took one high bound, hit the man’s stirrup, twisted, touched momentarily on his thigh, then – with the man leaning out of the way slightly – hopped nimbly back into place on the rump of the horse. It had happened so fast that Baldwin wasn’t certain how he had done it.

‘Pretty slick.’

The old man didn’t respond.

Someone lit the lantern in the kitchen of the ranch house and the light from the window made the stranger’s holster and cartridge belt sparkle in the night, every inch decorated with rough silver hammered from Mexican coins. He looked seedy and old but hard, his eyes small and dark, and he was carrying enough hardware to dust half the Mexican army. Baldwin wondered if he was just show. The old man was staring at the kitchen window.

‘Join us for supper?’ Baldwin called against the wind.

The little gray, her eyes half-closed, jumped at the sound of his voice in the squall. She was old and bony like the man who rode her – an Indian Chickasaw pony, with lots of Spanish and not a little wild blood in her veins. She was being followed by a young, claybank-colored mule that nibbled playfully at the old man’s stirrup. ‘Alice,’ he said, waving the jenny away. Reluctantly, she obeyed. Neat trick, getting a mule to do anything, Baldwin thought.

‘Baldwin place?’ The old man’s words were slurred, but made sense, the voice deep and shaded Indian.

The rancher just watched him, pulling his hat down hard on his head.

‘Man on the road told me,’ the old giant offered, stifling another hard cough that made him wince behind his eyes, and taking a pull on a whiskey bottle.

‘Your name?’ Baldwin called.

‘Samuel Jones.’

Baldwin studied him a moment longer, then said, ‘Brake Baldwin. Those animals could use a feed.’

Baldwin turned and started walking towards the barn, knowing Mannito had him covered from inside, and figuring the stranger probably knew it too. He didn’t look like any pilgrim. Not remotely. Baldwin stopped and glanced back at him. He was still staring at the kitchen window, as if hypnotized by the light, his hair and clothes whipping wildly in the gusts.

‘Fresh horse tracks in those hills,’ the old man called, without taking his eyes off the house.

‘Probably drifters,’ Baldwin yelled over the growing gale.

‘Eight. None shod.’ The stranger paused, continuing to stare at the window. ‘One outrider. Not drifters.’

Baldwin felt the tenseness in his shoulders again and shrugged it off, figuring the old man was playing for attention. They had been bothered by Mexican bandits a few years back, and Indians before that. But all had been calm and friendly as of late. He turned and started once more for the barn. The stranger glanced a final time at the window, then clucked the gray forward and followed. It was quieter inside, and somewhere in the dark interior Baldwin could hear Mannito trying to stifle a laugh.

‘Is that a Mexican?’ the old man asked.

Baldwin watched him for a moment, then said, ‘The answer is he works for me.’

‘Then tell him not to laugh at me.’ The old man was coughing hard, as though he were trying to expel something from his lungs, then he began breathing in little gulps like a turkey that had been run in the sun.

‘I said he works for me. There’ll be no trouble. If that’s tough to understand, you can move on.’

Mannito stepped from the shadows, carrying his shotgun. Chaco darted for his boots. ‘Alto!’ the Mexican boomed. ‘Halt!’ The tiny terrier sat, raising his front paws as if he was pleading for his life.

The stranger seemed surprised the dog had quit the assault and he stared at Mannito for a moment, the little man grinning back at him. Then he took another long drink from the whiskey bottle he was carrying and walked to the barn window, looking once more at the house. Lightning flashed again, illuminating the gaunt and exaggerated features of the rugged face. He looked, Baldwin thought, like a candidate for a lynching. Then the southeaster hit, rain slashing hard against the roof and walls.

Baldwin uncinched the Mexican saddle from the belly of the gray, watching the old giant over the horse’s back. The saddle was big, with a heavy silver-plated horn and long, hooded, tapaderos stirrups.

‘Something interest you?’ the rancher asked.

‘Just looking.’

‘It’s just a house.’

The old man didn’t say anything.

‘We’re used to slick horns in these parts, not Mexican,’ Baldwin said, running his hands over the finely crafted silver and staring at the Spanish surname etched in the metal.

The stranger turned and watched him for a moment. ‘The man who owned that gear tried to kill me.’

Baldwin looked at him and couldn’t tell whether he was bulling, but he knew the old man wasn’t Spanish, not even half.

‘What happened to him?’

‘I was riding with the Chihenne,’ the stranger said, ignoring the question.

Warm Spring Apaches. That was a new twist – most of the old trail tramps in these parts claimed to have ridden with the outlaws. He let it drop, figuring the old coot wasn’t going to tell him if he’d robbed or killed the man anyhow. ‘Mannito will rub your animals down.’

‘No. He keeps his hands off them.’

Baldwin looked into the man’s leathery face, at the small, deeply sunken eyes that appeared in some way to have seen too much of life. He finished sizing him up slowly, figuring that at one time he could have been real trouble, then said, ‘Mister. Don’t start it.’

The old giant walked to the gray and began rubbing her thin back with a fistful of clean straw, the bottle clutched in his other hand. He towered over the little horse.

‘No trouble. But I don’t want him touching my animals. I don’t trust Mexicans.’

Baldwin could see his jaw muscles knotting as he worked.

‘Mucho mierda,’ Mannito said, turning on his heel and walking off.

‘What does that mean?’ Jones asked, in a voice that still had the ability to make a person nervous.

‘Forget it,’ Baldwin said.

Baldwin watched her in the yellow light of the Rochester lanterns, remembering the newspaper story about the things of the future, the trimmings and fixings of civilization, and wishing Maggie had them now. She had returned from the infirmary and was at the kitchen stove. From behind, her slim frame showed fetchingly through the cotton dress. Her thick brown hair, shining in the lantern light, was swept to the side and caught in a simple ponytail. A lot of men bragged how beautiful their wives were. Baldwin never had. Maggie possessed such an abundance of God-given attributes that bragging seemed just to carry the point to excess. She was the kind of woman who looked her best in bright sun.

Their two eldest children were looking at him. He finished strapping on his pistol, then held a finger playfully to his lips. The home was soft shadows, mixes of browns and reds, and smelled of burning wood and baking. Maggie and he had hand-hewn it themselves. There was style and comfort to its heavy lines.

Downstairs was one room, big and open two stories – giving the feeling of soaring space. Constructed of unpeeled logs, the heavy walls were calked with white adobe and decorated with deer heads and Indian blankets. Harp-lanterns hung on heavy chains from the ceiling, their glow creating pleasant yellow pools throughout.

Lily, their seventeen-year-old, had returned a few days earlier from the Salutaire Boarding School for girls in Denver and was reading in front of the massive stone fireplace, where a pleasant fire burned. He had noticed changes in her. For one, she was fully a woman now. He had seen a package among her things marked the ‘Peerless Bust Developer’; and she dressed fancier, and called him ‘father’ instead of dad. And, like all near-grown youngsters, she thought she knew more than she did. But then she had always felt that somehow she’d had a hand in the Creation. He watched her a moment longer. Her mother’s great beauty had passed on to her in full measure, and that was fortunate because, unlike Maggie, appearances were important to Lily.

James sat at the kitchen table fidgeting with a model train. He had just come in from riding fence and was still wearing his hat and chaps, his rope coiled on the floor. He was wide shouldered for fifteen. Baldwin winked at him and tiptoed up behind Maggie, slipping his arms around her waist, his shirt damp from the rain.

She tensed, then smiled. ‘I knew you were there. Go wash up – supper’s ready.’

‘Geronimo’s older brother is joining us.’

‘Who?’

‘A crazy pretend-Indian. Meanest-looking face I’ve ever seen. And a strange caravan of animals.’

She turned back in his arms and smiled up at him. ‘Not teasing?’ After all the summers and winters, her skin was only beginning to show soft lines at the edges of her mouth and under her eyes. Still a great beauty.

‘No. Brutal looking. White. Dressed half-buck. Boasts he once rode with the Chihenne. Looks sick and drinks too much – I suspect he’s come for doctoring.’

Lily had joined them and stood scrunching up her handsome face, her skin soft and white. It took a tremendous effort to keep it covered from the sun in this country. ‘White man riding with Apaches – another old liar.’

‘Lily, it’s Sunday,’ her mother chided, then smiling again, she looked up at her husband. ‘It’ll be fun to have the company.’

As fast as it had come, the rain had gone. Jones was sitting on a bale of hay, a frown on his haggard face, and staring at the muzzle of Dorothy Baldwin’s shotgun, when Baldwin returned to the barn. The little terrier was tugging hard at the girl’s pant leg.

‘Dot?’

‘I caught this Indian. Mister – get your gawddamn dog off me or I swear I’ll shoot him.’ The young jenny mule was nudging the girl from behind in a friendly way.

Baldwin could hear Mannito snickering in the shadows. He also heard the same two words: ‘Mucho mierda.’ The old man heard them, too, casting a glare in the direction of the little Mexican.

‘Chaco,’ Jones wheezed. The dog let go and hopped up on the bale of hay.

‘Dot, come here, please,’ Baldwin said, turning and walking toward the door.

He tried not to smile. The young mule was following Dot like a big dog, pushing her playfully from behind. Eleven years old and a firecracker with copper-colored hair, bright eyes and a sunburned face, Dorothy Baldwin went at life with a vengeance. She was tall and awkward, and looked unlicked. For certain, she would be pretty one day, but for now she was just thin and boyish. She pushed the jenny away with a gentle shove.

‘The man is a guest – you don’t go pointing loaded guns at just anybody,’ Baldwin said. ‘We’ve had that talk.’

‘Okay. But he looks dangerous. Have you seen him close?’

‘Yes, but that’s no reason to point a cocked gun at a man. Just stay away from him. And watch your language.’

The little dog darted into the house ahead of them, sat, and took to looking pitiful, shivering as though he was in the middle of a blizzard. Alice the mule would have followed if Dot hadn’t stopped her. Maggie started laughing.

Baldwin noticed that Jones had scraped the mud from his clothes, and when he pulled his hat off, it was obvious he had oiled his long hair. He was holding a scraggly bunch of desert flowers in one huge hand, and smelled of whiskey and tobacco, but also of some sweet tonic. A bright red bandana was tied around his head, Apache-style. He was a fierce-looking desert peacock. And a nervous one. For a second, Baldwin had the feeling he might flee.

Maggie was setting a platter of biscuits on the table and laughing at the little dog, when the old man stepped inside. She looked up with a welcoming smile. Then, as her eyes met the stranger’s, her face suddenly changed, the smile disappearing. Lily had stepped backwards and stood with a hand to her throat.

‘Maggie, this is Samuel Jones.’

Maggie Baldwin continued to support herself against the table, a crucifix swinging slowly from her neck.

‘Maggie?’

She straightened up.

‘Ama,’ the old man said shakily.

Maggie studied his features. Then, in a quiet voice that Baldwin had never heard before, and never wanted to again, she said, ‘Get him out of this house.’

‘Maggie?’

‘Get him out of this house!’

Samuel Jones left his flowers and fled with his little dog.

At the sound of knocking, Maggie turned toward the open bedroom window, staring out into the darkness and slowly rubbing her hands together as if they hurt. She knew her husband was in the doorway behind her. She didn’t turn.

She was remembering things she hadn’t thought of in more than twenty-five years, and she didn’t like the fact that she was thinking about them now. She rubbed her face, then ran her hands through her hair.

‘He’s not Indian,’ Baldwin said.

‘I know.’

‘He called you Ama.’

She just shook her head.

Baldwin waited a while before he spoke again. ‘Who is he?’

She didn’t respond.

‘Maggie?’

‘I don’t want to talk.’ The words sounded as if they hurt.

‘Maggie, this is silly.’

She turned and looked up into his face. ‘Please. Don’t ever tell me that anything related to that old man is silly.’

Jones and Mannito had guns out when Baldwin walked back into the barn. This was becoming a bad habit and Baldwin didn’t like it. The Mexican was crouched near the stranger’s saddlebags, his ancient scattergun pointed up at the man at an angle guaranteed to separate the top of the body from the bottom; Jones stood with a small silver-plated parlor gun in his huge fist, a brutal scowl on his face. Baldwin was surprised to see the old man carrying a ‘hideout’ gun. He was full of tricks – and though aged and sick, Baldwin sensed he would be tough to take down.

‘The Mexican was in my bags,’ the old man said in a deathly quiet voice. Then he began hacking hard.

‘Bandito,’ Mannito remarked.

‘None of your funeral,’ Jones said, trying to catch his breath.

‘Put those damn guns down,’ Baldwin snapped.

Baldwin watched to see where the old man carried the little pistol, but Jones turned away and slipped it into hiding without Baldwin ever spotting where. He was slick. ‘Mannito – leave us alone.’

‘Mucho mierda,’ the Mexican called back over his shoulder.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t give a damn what it means.’ Baldwin paused. ‘Who are you to my wife?’

The old man ignored him, squatting and repacking the belongings Mannito had pulled from the saddlepack, his backbone and shoulder blades sticking painfully through his shirt, his neck thin and leatherlike. There was a raw dignity to him, and Baldwin felt sorry for him. He didn’t know why. He knew he wasn’t going to tell him anything about Maggie. And for some reason, Baldwin liked that about him.

‘You can stay a day or two – just keep away from my family.’

Somewhere in the darkness outside, a horse whinnied. Baldwin cut the lantern flame and stepped into the night, wondering at his own sense of misgiving. Something he couldn’t describe was triggering a nagging thing in his brain. He heard a hammer cock behind him. Jones had slipped out of the barn, staying back in the deeper shadows of the doorway where he couldn’t be seen. Nobody’s fool, Baldwin thought. The battered Sharps was resting in the crook of the man’s arm, natural like.

Mannito came next, shotgun at the ready, stepping close beside the towering old giant, sharing the shadow. Whatever was bothering him, was nibbling at these two as well, he figured. They looked crazy side by side: ill-matched and ancient warriors – pointedly ignoring one another. The old giant’s countenance was as fierce looking as any Baldwin had ever seen. Standing there watching him, Baldwin wondered again if he was just show. He turned back to the darkened pasture.

The big bay had her ears cocked forward, staring out intently toward the night. Her foal was looking in the same direction. Baldwin couldn’t see anything, but he was fairly certain there was a strange horse out there somewhere.

‘Hello?’ he called into the darkness.

Silence.

‘Come in and have a hot meal,’ Baldwin hollered into the night. No reply. But he sensed something out beyond his vision. Maybe a rider, he figured, or maybe just a wild horse.

‘They’re out there,’ the old man said, the words sounding ominous.

Mannito nodded.

‘Something, anyway,’ Baldwin said.

The front door to the house opened and Maggie came out carrying her medicine bag. She looked tired and that bothered him, because she rarely got sick or worn out. She seemed to hesitate in the light that spilled from the house windows, then stepped off the porch and walked slowly through the shadows toward the one-room adobe sitting some fifty yards behind the big house. To folks in these parts the little building was known as Baldwin’s sickroom. Old man Jones turned where he stood and followed her with his eyes. Baldwin couldn’t figure him. Or Maggie.

Mannito moved off in the direction of the adobe, and Baldwin knew the little man would wait until Maggie was safely back in the house before he turned in. Jones drifted after him. Baldwin got his rifle, and went for a walk through the darkness. He found nothing.

Maggie had spent the night in the sickroom and she was kneeling beside the bed of the Mexican woman, trying to get her to take some broth, the woman refusing and turning her head weakly away on the pillow. The morning sun flooded through the door and windows of the adobe, making the room bright and clean looking, and reflecting off the rows of medicine bottles on the table.

Maggie mopped the woman’s brow, stroking her long damp hair for a moment, then moved to the children’s beds. A boy and girl, six or seven years old. They were thin and haggard, burning hot, their ragged clothes drenched with perspiration. She wiped each small face with a damp cloth. None of the three was conscious. That frightened her. She had no idea what to do. They wouldn’t last long this way, burning with fever. She had seen small children go quickly in this condition.

She fought the panic rising in her breast. She had tried to sweat the illness out of them, starting the small stove in the adobe and closing the windows, but the fever hadn’t broken, and their temperatures soared. She had administered laudanum and acetate of lead and bismuth, because, with the diarrhoea and the dehydration, the illness had the symptoms of cholera. But there was no relief. And rarely did cholera victims linger, usually dying in a day or two at most. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face, and felt helpless.

Maggie took her Bible and knelt beside the children’s bed and read the Twenty-third Psalm out loud, then recited the Lord’s Prayer. Exhausted from three days of hard nursing, she slumped into the rocker in the center of the room and fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of her mother and sister. Drifting until she felt something wrong.

She woke with a start. The clutch of wild desert lilies was standing in a coffee can on the medicine table. Maggie’s eyes darted to the bed where the little Mexican boy lay. There was a toy bow decorated with feathers and beads and three small arrows leaning against it. She could tell from the whittle marks on the wood that it was freshly cut. Maggie tensed, sensing someone else in the room with her, and turned toward the little girl’s bed. Samuel Jones was bending over the child.

‘What are you doing?’

He straightened and held up a little wooden doll for her to see. It was painted in reds and greens and blues. He smiled at her and bent once more over the child. ‘Hopi Tihus,’ he said, placing the small wooden figure in the child’s hands.

‘You don’t have any right being in here,’ Maggie said.

Jones walked over and arranged the lilies in the tin can. He looked almost comical trying to position the delicate stems with his massive hands. Finished, he turned and glanced around the infirmary. ‘It’s nice.’

‘Please leave.’

Dressed in his Indian clout and wearing his blue medicine shirt and strings of beads, he looked wild. He nodded and held his hand out toward her. Mannito was standing behind him in the doorway.

‘Boil and give the liquid to them, Ama.’ He was holding a small leather poke.

She tensed at the sound of the name. ‘Please don’t call me that.’ She waited a moment. ‘And I don’t trust things from you.’

He turned and handed the bag to Mannito and left. The little Mexican stepped inside, looking at the contents of the small poke.

‘What is it?’

‘Cannot tell,’ he said, pouring some into the palm of his hand. ‘Dried plants.’ He squinched his face. ‘Insecto things.’

Mannito looked at the children. ‘Pobre hijos,’ he said sadly, handing her the small bag. ‘Poor children.’

‘You don’t think I should give this to them?’

‘No harm, señora,’ he said, turning and leaving.

Outside, Maggie could hear Jones beginning to chant, ‘Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey!’ She looked through the doorway, and saw him sitting cross-legged on the ground smoking a long Indian pipe, looking very solemn. She closed her eyes and shook her head, and clutched her Bible closer to her as if it were a talisman against the heathen chanting.

Samuel Jones returned to the barn, staying there through the afternoon and into the dusk of evening. During this time, he worked on his leather, spreading out his saddle, bridle, the mule’s pack equipment, boots, gloves, holster and cartridge belts, and cleaning them with rags and small brushes, then rubbing them carefully with saddle oil.

Dot was lying on her belly on top of a bale of oat hay reading a book, and watching him. She had never seen anyone work over equipment with such tedious care and detail, picking the edges and seams clean of dirt with a little pocket blade, massaging the oil deep into the leathers. She was solemnly impressed. Mannito offered him some Mexican oil. Jones shook his head and looked angry. Dot could tell most of the equipment was old, but the care given it had obviously been painstaking and it had weathered the years well, patched and restrung periodically with new rawhide, each piece dark and pliant, like aged objects of art.

When the leather was done, he laid his weapons out on a piece of canvas and began to work on them in the same careful, exacting way – oiling, checking springs and tightening screws, stropping the blades of his various knives, war axes and arrow heads. For a reason she couldn’t explain, Dot enjoyed being around him, watching him work. Chaco stayed close to him, leaving him only to visit the old Mexican periodically, but always returning promptly. The pony and the mule stayed close as well – looking like house pets – an oddly loyal bunch of animals.

Dot liked the old horse, a grulla – mouse gray they called her kind of coloring in these parts. Though worn-out, pigeon-toed and scrawny, the little animal was a scrapper; the child figured she had to be to tote the tall old man and his heavy silver saddle over these dry lands. And there was something else about her, something like pride, that the child saw deep in the milky pools of her eyes. No crockheaded nag, not in Dot’s opinion. Others might jest, but the gray, she thought, was a mighty fine animal. As for Alice the jenny, she was simply divine sweetness; as easygoing and happy a beast as Dot had ever seen, never devious or ornery. But when it came to the little ratter, the girl just calculated he was of no account. Selfish, full of himself and nasty mean.

Dot watched the old man working on his rifle. His rough face still scared her some; but she was getting used to his long silences and took no offense, even when he refused to answer her questions. She hated the hacking coughs that choked his breath off, making him gasp for air in a strangling way; it was the only time he looked out of control, but she was growing accustomed to these spells. He never commented on them, still, she figured, he had something decidedly wrong.

So mesmerized was Dot by the old man, that she left the barn only after her mother had clanged the dinner bell impatiently for the third time. Then she rushed her eating until her father told her to slow down. She didn’t like the silence at the table. They had always had lively conversations. She wondered how this old man had the power to change the way they talked to one another. It was odd. He was no ordinary person, she decided. She liked that.

Back in the barn, she leaned against a bale of hay, studying him for a while, then started reading her book again. Mannito and her father had begun shoeing horses in the lantern light, the hearth fired and glowing, the barn smelling of burning wood, stock, and feeds. It was her favorite place. She loved the sounds, the smells, the activity.

When he had finished putting his weapons away, Jones did something that shocked her; he went to the stall her father had told him he could stay in, and returned with a book in one hand and his tiny glasses in the other. Dot guessed the book surprised them all, since Mannito and her father stood holding the hoof of a big roan horse up in the air, staring at the old man so long that the animal almost fell over. Jones ignored them, pulling his spectacles onto his harsh face and sitting on a hay bale, soon engrossed in the volume. The longer she watched him, his eyes concentrating behind the little glasses, the more curious she became. He looked strange in his wild Indian outfit studying the pages of the book as though he was sitting in the Santa Fe public library. Finally, the curiosity became too much.

‘What you reading?’

Jones didn’t look up from his page. ‘A book.’

She turned red and started to say something smart about his rudeness, then saw her father smiling at her, and the anger passed. As Mannito went outside into the dark, Baldwin saw him look at the old giant and mutter, ‘Mucho mierda,’ again. If Jones heard the words he didn’t let on.

‘Tie that colt up,’ Baldwin called after him. ‘He’ll get himself burned in here.’

The bay fought them some, worrying about her youngster, tossing her head and dancing, until Baldwin put a half-hitch on her nose and tightened it down. She didn’t want any part of that and settled nervously into the familiar routine of shoeing. They had positioned her against the side of a stall and Mannito leaned into her with his shoulder, pushing her weight to the opposite foot, so he could easily lift the one he wanted. He was wiry and agile, and moved fast, scraping, cutting, and filing, removing excess hoof and shaping what remained, careful not to cut the frog. Then, taking the metal horseshoe blanks that they bought from a company in St Louis, he checked them against the bay’s hoof until he had a close fit. Satisfied, he grabbed the shoe with a long pair of tongs and buried it in the hot coals of the hearth, Baldwin pumping the bellows.

Soon the metal was glowing pink and Mannito pulled it out and began to hammer on it with his small sledge. Dot loved the rhythm of the clanging sound, the bouncing of the hammer off the anvil as Mannito worked. He checked the shoe on the hoof again, took another couple of strikes on the metal, then, satisfied, plunged it into a pail of water, the water spitting, steam hissing. Leaning into the horse again, he bent next to her, picked up her hoof, hammer in hand and nails sticking out from his mouth, and quickly hammered the shoe onto the hoof, clipping and filing the ends of the nails off. Baldwin steadied the mare, talking to her, rubbing her ears.

The rancher glanced at Mannito’s small back as the Mexican worked. ‘What does mucho mierda mean anyhow?’ he asked quietly.

The little man looked up and said, ‘Much shit, señor.’

‘Great,’ Baldwin said. ‘No more trouble. Okay?’

‘Okee, Señor Brake.’ Mannito grinned.

Baldwin was still holding the bay’s head and Mannito was just bending over and pulling the horse’s final hoof onto his aproned thigh, when the foal squealed. Not a normal nicker, either, but a shrill-pitched cry of pain and fear.

The bay exploded at the sound, cow-kicking and bucking, sending Mannito sprawling and dragging Baldwin across the barn as he held onto her halter. Dot scrambled up a stack of hay to safety. She looked for the old man. He had disappeared into his stall, returning moments later with his Sharps, and slipping into the night.

‘The light,’ he called back to Baldwin.

The rancher and Mannito followed him into the darkness. It was easy to spot – the grizzled fur standing out in the night against the darker shadows. The wolf had made a pass at the foal’s throat but missed, catching its shoulder instead.

‘Damn brazen beast,’ Baldwin said. The animal was disappearing into the shadows, Chaco hot after him. The old man whistled at the little dog and he slid to a halt and raised his leg on a post. Jones bent and put his Sharps through the fence rails, bringing the beaten old stock to his shoulder. Baldwin was squinting hard, trying to follow the light smudge of fur streaking away through the shadows of the pasture. He lost it. Thought he saw it again. No. It was too late.

If the old man had wanted a shot, he should have taken a quick one as soon as they walked out of the barn. But Baldwin figured his reflexes were too worn for that. At least he hadn’t got excited and shot the colt by mistake.

Jones continued to stand bent over, looking down the long, heavy barrel of the old rifle into the night. There was no doubt in Baldwin’s mind that the rifle could reach the distance, but there was nothing to see.

‘Too fast for us,’ Baldwin said, trying to ease the old man’s embarrassment at not taking a shot. Mannito nodded. Chaco barked pridefully. The old Mexican laughed at him.

‘You wouldn’t be so jo-fired brave if that wolf stopped running,’ Dot called to the little dog. She hadn’t cared much for him since he’d grabbed her pants leg.

Baldwin was walking toward the trembling foal and the bay, when the Sharps exploded in the blackness, flashing like lightning, the heavy concussion catching the rancher by surprise and causing him to step sideways.

‘Lord Almighty – Jones! What are you doing shooting into total dark—’

The single yelp in the far distance caused him to stop talking and turn and face the old man. At that moment, he looked at him differently – would always look at him differently. First the book, then this shot in the dark. He was a strange one, not to be dismissed. Not easily understood. Maybe the shot was pure luck, but something in the way the old man slowly stood and pulled the long, hot cartridge from the breech, slipping it carefully into his belt to be reloaded, said it wasn’t. The old giant could handle himself. In fact, at that instant Baldwin wondered whether, even near death, he could kill Jones if he had to. The thought seemed crazy and he wondered why it had come to his mind. But he knew one thing for certain, Jones was dangerous.

‘Madre de Dios!’ was all Mannito could manage. ‘Mother of God.’ He said it over and over.

‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ Dot muttered.

‘Dot,’ Baldwin said sternly.

‘Sorry.’

‘I thought you wore glasses,’ the rancher said to Jones, as the old man turned and started back toward the barn.

‘Close up. I see fair at a distance.’

‘I’d say.’

The door to the ranch house opened and Maggie stepped out on the porch carrying a shotgun. ‘Brake,’ she called, peering into the darkness.

‘Everything’s fine, Maggie. Mr Jones just shot a wolf.’

Maggie didn’t reply for a moment. Then she said, ‘He’s good at killing things,’ and went back inside.

Baldwin watched the side of the man’s face, but his expression didn’t change. Dot looked confused by her mother’s comment, and Baldwin put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.

Carrying lanterns on horseback, Mannito and Baldwin found and finished the hip-shot wolf on the south slope. Twenty more yards and he would have made the tree line and safety. They calculated the shot at a thousand feet. In cracking blackness. Twenty yards to the trees. Studying on it, the rancher knew it hadn’t been a luck shot. The old man had waited until the wolf hit the slope and started the climb – knowing he would be winded and moving slower, and at some point would stop and look back at the danger. They always did. When they figured they were safe, they always stopped and looked back. That was the moment an experienced hunter waited for; and Jones had done just that. But at night – how had he seen him?

‘That old bastard doesn’t need a lot of room to dance,’ he said to Mannito.

‘Madre de Dios!’ was still all the Mexican could manage to say about the amazing shot.

TWO

The two days that Baldwin had said Jones could stay on the place had stretched to four. The rancher wasn’t certain why, unless it was that he felt sorry for the old man. He guessed he did. It was early morning on the fourth day, the air cold, mist rising off the watering tanks. Baldwin was leaning on a shovel in the pasture watching Maggie as she walked slowly from the house toward the western slope. He wondered anew who this old man was, and how he fit in her life. Or didn’t fit.

Samuel Jones appeared as good at doctoring as he was at shooting – the two Mexican kids were now darting over the yard as though they had never been sick. Their mother was still bedridden, but improved. Regardless, the old giant’s success hadn’t softened Maggie. Baldwin had never seen her behave the way she did to Samuel Jones. She was against him from the moment she saw him. It was crazy.

He could see the little picketed enclosure out of the corner of his eye. Maggie’s sister, Thelma, and Julia, Mannito’s wife, were buried there. And Maggie visited their graves whenever something was bothering her.

Baldwin tightened his grip on the shovel. The old man had walked out of the barn, moving in his careful strides in Maggie’s direction, the mule and the little dog trailing along behind. He was barechested and wearing a battered black cowboy hat, a Sioux hair pipe breastplate, breechcloth and deerskin boots – a crazy mix. His Indian tales and dress were a hodgepodge of tribes: Pawnee, Apache, Sioux, Navajo. Stiffly old-fashioned and out of touch, Jones might also be losing it a little in the head. And Baldwin knew he drank too much.

Maggie was standing by the picket fence, her head bowed, her Bible held in both hands. If she knew the old man was beside her, she didn’t let on. Jones took his hat off and looked down in the same manner. She didn’t acknowledge him for a long while. They just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, like a couple about to be hitched, the mule nibbling at the old man’s boots. Chaco sat beside Maggie, as if he might be giving her away at the make-believe wedding. The two Mexican kids lined up behind them, the boy with his toy bow and the little girl with the Tihus doll, seemingly sensing that this was a solemn event. Baldwin jumped the creek.

Maggie was talking to the old man now. Moments later, as if they were actors in some strange kind of play, she whirled and slapped his face, then the two of them were turning and marching away; Maggie to the house, the old man back to the barn.

That was it. Baldwin could accept a lot of things, but when Maggie took to slapping strangers who drank too much, who carried heavy hardware and shot the way the old man did, it was high time to end it.

Baldwin let his eyes adjust to the barn’s weak light. Mannito had ridden out with James and Dot to check the calving, turning the stock out before he left. The barn was quiet, shafts of sunlight slanting into the shadows from the open windows, a few flies buzzing lazily in the air. Baldwin glanced around for the man. Nowhere.

‘Jones?’

No response. He turned and walked a few paces down the row of stalls. The old man had been sleeping in the last one on fresh straw Mannito had pitched for him. The Mexican had a heart. Interestingly, the two ancient warriors seemed, Baldwin thought, to have struck some sort of truce. Not friends, but willing to co-exist in the barn. Baldwin stopped and listened. Chaco was whining.

The old man was sprawled face first in the stall, the dog lying on top of him and licking the back of his head. Chaco bared his teeth as Baldwin knelt beside the man.

‘I’m not going to hurt him, boy.’

The little dog growled but didn’t move when he felt for Jones’ heart. He rolled him over, and Chaco hopped out of the way, continuing to growl beside them. Blood trickled out of the side of Jones’ mouth. He still had a fair heartbeat and was breathing. Baldwin propped him against a bale of hay, spreading a blue Indian blanket over him, and waited. The little dog sat looking mournful by the old man’s side. Baldwin got the feeling that Chaco had witnessed this scene before, and didn’t like it.

Jones tossed and turned and mumbled for a while. Twice, Baldwin heard him call out, ‘Yopon.’ Lost in his own shadow world, Samuel Jones was struggling desperately against something Baldwin couldn’t see but sensed.

He was an odd character, Baldwin thought, as he glanced around. Beneath his brutal features there was a certain sensitivity and style. He had dressed the box stall into a home of sorts. There were sacred pahos – colorfully painted prayer sticks, decorated with feathers and kachina-like figures – hanging on the walls. Three southwest tribes made them: Pueblos, Apaches and Navajos, so he couldn’t be sure where these were from. A clutch of dried maize tied with red and blue beads hung next to the pahos. A large parfleche trunk of painted rawhide looked Apache.

He wondered again who this man was, this man Maggie hated. She had never mentioned any living kin. Looking around the stall, Baldwin felt as though he was sitting in the sacred hogan of a Zuni or Apache shaman. Was the old man a half-breed? His outfit was an odd collection from different tribes. Lined in a row on a bench sat six full bottles of mescal whiskey. He had arrived at the ranch fully illuminated and he hadn’t quit since. He had the habit. And Baldwin bet he could kick the lid off.

They just looked at each other for a while when Jones came to. The old man sat carefully picking straw from the blue blanket. When he had finished, he folded it neatly and stored it in the parfleche trunk. Baldwin watched. The blanket was obviously important to him.

Finally, Baldwin said, ‘How long have you been like this?’

Samuel Jones didn’t try to play games. ‘Six months, maybe seven.’

‘Much pain?’

‘Some.’

‘Seen a doctor?’

‘Both.’

The expression on Baldwin’s face said he didn’t understand.

‘Apache and white.’

‘And?’

Jones held his hand up in a loose fist, palm toward Baldwin, then dropped it as though he was tossing something to the ground. It was the silent language and Baldwin knew this gesture meant ‘bad’. He nodded at the old man, who just watched him and scratched the little dog’s head. Chaco looked happy again.

Maggie was sitting in the rocker on the porch, her Bible lying on her lap, her hands squeezing a twisted rag until the knuckles were cream white. Baldwin stood on the steps and watched her for a moment, then he turned his back and studied the valley. She gazed past him at the sandstone mountains.

‘He came to die,’ he said.

He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck. He turned and looked at her. She was crying without sound, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Who is he, Maggie? Why did he come here to die?’

‘I don’t care,’ she sobbed.

‘He traveled hard so he could end it here.’ He watched her. ‘Because of you. He calls you Ama. Who is he?’

Maggie seemed to convulse with her crying, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. He held her while she sobbed. When she finally stopped, she walked to the railing and stood looking out at the far mountains.

‘Maggie?’

‘He’s my father.’ She sounded exhausted.

They sat together on the porch until the sun had leaped the creek and started to drop toward the redstone of the mountains. Lily came out a couple of times but Baldwin shook his head and she went back inside. Maggie sat with her head clamped between her hands, gazing out across the pasture.

‘I want him gone,’ she said.

‘I thought both your parents were dead.’

Maggie shook her head slowly. They sat quietly for a while, then she again said, ‘I want him gone.’

‘No, Maggie.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s dying.’

‘He can die somewhere else. He got here, and he can leave the same way.’

‘We can’t do that.’

‘I can.’

‘No. We can’t. And,’ Baldwin hesitated, ‘he’s going to take his meals in the house.’

It was as if he had slapped her face. ‘I can’t have that man in my house. I can’t, Brake.’ She sounded desperate.

Baldwin pulled hard on his cigarette, then blew the smoke out in a long rush. ‘We have to, Maggie.’

‘Don’t ask that of me, please,’ she moaned.

‘He’s your father, Margaret.’

She was crying hard again. Her voice sounded controlled when she spoke. ‘I was ten when he left. Mother was carrying Thelma. We never had much – but we had something. We had an old farm. After he left we lost it all. Mother cleaned for people, washed clothes at night, cooked for the railroad.’ Baldwin watched her hands – they were twisting and pulling on the wash rag until he thought the material would tear.

‘She never stopped. She tried to give us something. But we were just drifters, town to town. Always searching for him. Always on some quest that neither Thelma nor I really understood. Never a home. No friends. All we had was the Godawful searching.’ Maggie looked off into the distance. ‘I loved him then, used to pray at night for him to come back. I’d pray every night, Brake, until I fell asleep. I thought I could will him to come home. I felt that everything would be okay if he would just return. He never did. And now that he’s come, and I see who he is, I know things wouldn’t have been okay even if he had.’

Maggie tipped her head forward onto her knees. ‘I think mother went a little crazy,’ she said quietly. ‘She never stopped acting like he was still with her. I used to hear her late at night – talking to him as if he was in the room with her – and I’d be terrified by the sounds. I came to hate him because she couldn’t stop loving him. I still do. She just broke and died.’ She raised her face to him. ‘That man you’re so worried about, Brake, killed my mother. I can’t have him here.’

She continued to rest her head on her knees for a while. Then she raised it and looked up at her husband. ‘He took up with an Indian woman. He left me and my mother for an Indian whore.’ She was sobbing softly. ‘I can’t have him here,’ she said again.

Baldwin stood watching the cottonwoods moving in the slow breeze, then he looked down at her. She seemed small and childlike, sitting there with her arms encircling her knees, her Bible clutched in one hand.

‘We have to do it,’ he said softly. ‘This isn’t about you and him.’

‘No? Then who’s it about?’

‘Our children. That old man is their grandfather.’

‘So?’

‘We can’t have them watch us drive him off, near dead the way he is, like he’s some scavenger. He’s their blood. They have a right to know him – good or bad. You and I don’t have a right to stop them.’ He paused. ‘And they’ll know him in our house.’

‘Then I’ll live in the barn.’

Baldwin studied her face and knew she meant it.

Lily had been arguing with her father for the past half hour. Now she was sitting stiffly on the fireplace hearth, sandwiched between her brother and sister, and looking worn out and near tears. Neither Dot nor James had uttered a single word. Not for, or against. Baldwin guessed their awkward quietness was due to their learning they were blood relations to Jones. But he knew there was more to it. They were frightened by their mother’s sad appearance. She was sitting in a chair a few feet away, preoccupied with seemingly dark thoughts. Normally lively and talkative, her melancholy bothered her younger children more than the news they’d just heard. Still, he figured they’d warm to their new grandfather soon enough.

But glancing at Lily and seeing the cold resolve behind her eyes, he knew she would fight kinship with the old man for a long time. Perhaps forever. Samuel Jones simply didn’t fit in her world. Didn’t fit at all. Since she was a youngster, Lily had wanted her life to be romantic, like the lives she read about in her magazines. He felt badly for her. But feeling badly wouldn’t change what was. Neither would daydreams or passing fancies. And Jones was blood kin.

Baldwin didn’t discount the fact that his oldest daughter had a feeling for the finer things. But he also knew that kind of person rarely fared well in this wilderness. She had to face reality, not try and wish things into something they weren’t.

‘He’s not my grandfather,’ she said morosely.

‘Yes he is. And you’ll treat him with respect,’ Baldwin countered firmly.

‘Mother?’

Maggie looked up at Lily, but didn’t respond. She and Brake had never interfered with one another in the handling of the children. And, upset as she was, Maggie wasn’t about to start now.

Brake respectfully gave his wife time to reply, then when he was certain she wasn’t going to do so, he looked back at Lily. ‘You don’t need to ask your mother how to behave toward your grandfather. None of you children do.’

It was near dark when Dot approached Samuel Jones at the far edge of the cornfield. The full moon was rising, shining over the tall plants and splashing light onto the old man. He looked mysterious in its pallid glow, sitting bare-legged on the ground in a worn yellow buckskin medicine shirt that was covered with green beads and white porcupine quills, a bright red blanket wrapped around his waist. He wore Apache boots with their curled-up toes, his hat gone and his long gray hair done up in thick braids covered in soft-looking deerskin; his ears held great brass wire rings. He was shaking a small Navajo rattle in one hand and chanting quietly. Chaco sat beside him. They both seemed to be looking at something in the shadows of the valley. She could smell alcohol on him.

Dot wanted to talk to him, but she felt a little nervous. The old man still had the meanest face she had ever seen. But she was getting used to him. She cleared her throat. Neither he nor his little dog moved. Then suddenly she was feeling strange – as though she was being watched. She looked nervously at the expanse of shadows around her, unable to shake the strange sensation. Nothing. But still the unsettling feeling wouldn’t leave her. Somewhere off in the darkness something disturbed a flock of tree sparrows and the little birds set up a racket with their constant chirping in the night. Slowly they settled down. She wondered what had spooked them.

Dot listened for a while, then she shrugged off the feeling of unease and turned back to the old man. He was looking over his shoulder at her. Chaco was showing his teeth, as if he was smiling or maybe eating sour grapes.

Dot stepped closer. ‘Are you really my grandfather?’

‘Is that what your mother says?’

‘That’s what my pa says.’

He nodded. ‘I guess I am.’

Dot crossed her arms and scrutinized the side of the old man’s face, then turned and studied the young corn plants for a while, cogitating on things in her head. She looked back at him and asked, ‘What should I call you?’

He didn’t answer.

‘What do others call you?’

‘Jones.’

She shook her head. ‘My pa would make me say Mr Jones or Grandpa Jones. And that doesn’t seem right, us being closely related.’

He didn’t respond.

‘Pa said you once lived with the Sioux.’

He nodded.

‘What did they call you?’

‘Gut eater.’

‘That’s not going to work,’ she said quickly. She couldn’t imagine herself sitting at the dinner table next to Lily and saying, ‘Gut eater, please pass the gravy.’ She scratched at an itch and puzzled on the problem for a moment.

‘Maybe just Grandpa.’ She paused. ‘Is that okay?’

He nodded and Dot nodded in return, and grinned. She suddenly enjoyed the thought of calling this wild-looking old man, Grandpa. Something about him, a thing that seemed dangerous and different, made her like being around him and being blood kin. She didn’t care what Lily thought.

‘Where you from?’

‘The mountains.’

‘Which?’

‘Madres of Mexico.’

Dot squinted her eyes at him. ‘You funning me?’ She knew Mexico’s Madres mountains were a good six hundred miles south. Six hundred miles of dry waste. She marveled that the old gray pony had gone the distance carrying the huge silver-covered saddle and her grandfather.

He reached out a big hand and stroked the little dog’s back, the hand gnarled and badly busted up.

‘You came all this way just to see ma?’ Dot asked, her eyes on the old hand with its liver spots.

‘My daughter,’ he said, as if the words explained everything.

Dot thought for a while, then said, ‘How come you never came before?’

The old man didn’t answer.

They both went to listening to the long-eared owl in the cottonwood near the creek. She hunted the pasture almost every night. Lily had named her Veronica. Crickets were loud in the cool air. Dot tipped her head back and looked up at the stars that seemed close enough to touch, and wiggled her toes in the sand. She loved the ranch.

‘If you’re Indian, then I’m Indian. Right?’

‘I’m Indian – but not blood Indian.’

‘How can that be?’

He pointed at his chest.

‘That’s nothing.’

The old man didn’t reply.

Dot felt that she had won the point. And a moment later, she started in again, feeling more at ease with his brutal features. ‘Ma says you aren’t a Christian.’

He stared at the night.

‘That true?’

‘Once.’

Dot studied his face, waiting for him to explain. When he didn’t, she said, ‘I’ve never known a heathen.’

He nodded.

‘Why are you sitting out here in the dark?’

The old man took a long time to answer, as though deciding whether or not to dismiss her. Finally he said, ‘I’m talking to the spirit powers.’

‘Who’s that?’ She scrunched up her face and looked as if she thought he might be crazy.

He watched her for a few moments. ‘If you can’t learn about things, then go and leave me be.’ His voice was firm and deeply serious.

Dot put her hands on her hips and started to sass, then changed her mind, and didn’t know why. ‘What are you talking to them about?’

‘Things. My things. They are of no importance to you.’

She shifted her weight onto one bare foot and placed the other against the inside of her leg.

‘Where are they?’ Dot looked nervously around her, thinking again of the sparrows that had been disturbed at their night roost.

Jones had resumed his chanting and didn’t respond. The moon’s glow was on him fully now, and he looked like a holy man to her.

Dot squatted down and absent-mindedly reached a hand out to touch the little dog. He snapped at her and she jumped back, a drop of blood welling on a finger. She waved the stinging hand in the air and then sucked on the bite. The spell of the moment was gone. ‘I ought to shoot him,’ she said angrily. The little dog eyed her back and seemed just as angry.

Jones paid no attention to their squabbling.

Dot stared at the old man for a few moments. He had turned his back to her and was shaking the rattle again.

‘Grandpa.’ Jones didn’t turn. ‘Grandpa. Can you find things?’

He didn’t answer.

‘With your chanting – can you find things?’

‘What things?’ he asked finally, not looking at her or stopping the steady shaking of the rattle.

‘A cat?’

‘How long has he been gone?’

‘She. Two weeks.’

‘That’s a long time. Coyotes like white men’s cats. I will see whether she still lives.’

She looked relieved. ‘Thanks. Her name is Harriet.’

He began to chant and then broke into a rough coughing spell. When he finished he sat catching his breath and staring at the darkness. ‘Stay out of the hills for a while.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t say anything else. She thought he was mean looking but funny. She liked the sound of his chanting.

‘Will you teach me Indian medicine?’

He looked off across the shadows in a serious way, not angry or annoyed, just quiet and appraising, and was starting to answer, when Maggie’s voice cut him off, ‘No. He will not. He will keep his pagan ways to himself. Or he will leave this ranch.’

Jones didn’t move.

Dot turned to see her mother standing a few feet away, watching the old man. ‘Ma, I need to find Harriet.’

‘You won’t find her through Indian magic. You’ll just make your soul sick. If you want Harriet, pray to the Lord.’

The old giant turned now and stared into Maggie’s face, his strange features hard to read. He studied her until she grew more upset.

‘If you have something to say: just say it,’ Maggie challenged.

He shook his head slowly.

She continued to glare at him. ‘No, go ahead. Please,’ she said, sarcastically, ‘say whatever you’re thinking.’

Jones tipped his head down and appeared to be examining the material of his blanket.

‘Say it,’ Maggie said firmly. ‘Be honest for once.’

‘Ma?’ Dot was squirming.

Jones looked up at his daughter’s face, examining her fine features, and seeing something else, her stubbornness, and sensing she wasn’t going to stop until he told her what was on his mind. Finally he said, ‘I was just thinking about what you told the child.’

‘What about it?’

He hesitated for a moment, then continued. ‘That she should pray to the Christian god.’ He stopped talking and it was apparent he didn’t want to continue, felt he had gone too far already. But it was too late.

‘Go on,’ she demanded.

The old man weighed his response carefully, then said, ‘It won’t work, that’s all.’

‘How dare you!’ Maggie exploded. ‘Dot. Go to the house, please.’

The two of them watched the girl trotting away. When she was out of earshot, Maggie turned slowly and stared angrily down at him. ‘Listen. You ran off with some Indian woman. That was your choice and your business. Now you’re here. Here because my husband has a good heart. But if you start teaching Dot your heathen beliefs—’ Maggie stopped and watched his face for a moment. ‘I’ll kill you. I promise.’

The old man turned and stared into the night for a while before he looked back at her. ‘It still won’t work,’ he said quietly. ‘Your god won’t find the cat.’

‘I can reach my God any time I want,’ she snapped, her voice trembling with anger. She turned and walked off toward the barn.

He began to chant once more, his voice rising in the night air, his eyes following her. He continued the droning singsong long after she was gone, calling on his power to tell him what was causing him to feel this nagging sense of dread. Was it simply a premonition of his coming death? Or was it his inability to accept the fact that Maggie hated him? Somehow he didn’t believe it was either.

Jones stopped, convinced he would receive no answer this night. He was struggling to stand, his breath coming in pained gasps, when suddenly his body stiffened, his eyes locking hard on a fleeting vision: a man’s face – Indian – a face beyond time and place, floating in the night sky. Then it was gone. The tree sparrows chattered again, then settled back to their roost.

Samuel Jones was shaking.

A couple of hours later, Baldwin saw Jones looking like a lovesick cow, standing in the moonlight and staring in through the barn door at Maggie as she sat reading her Bible in the lantern’s glow. She was held in a sort of reverential awe by the old man. It was crazy, but Baldwin understood it better now. Then Mannito had come out of the barn and joined Jones. Neither spoke, two solemn sentries in the night. The mismatched pair stood mutely side by side, straight and stiff, for more than an hour. Then Jones began to chant. And a few minutes later, Mannito had joined the chanting. Two old men, one Indian-in-his-heart, and the other, Mexican; two old men standing shoulder to shoulder in the darkness, chanting together like half-mad savages. Baldwin couldn’t figure it.

Maggie sat in the barn straw trying to read a passage from the New Testament in the lantern light, and trying unsuccessfully to block out the sound of the shrill chanting of the old men, ignoring the anger building in her breast. What was Mannito getting involved with him for anyway? Both of them crying in the dark like lunatics. It wasn’t like the little Mexican. Maggie pressed her lips together in frustration and watched a mouse scurrying in the shadows by the barn wall. The man had the ability to infect people with his crazy beliefs. She had seen it before.

Maggie tried to ignore the smell of fresh pine drifting in the air. The bough was hanging from the barn’s rafters overhead. She shut her eyes. She knew he had done it. He used to do the same thing in their old barn on the farm, whenever she and her cousins were going to sleep outside. She was surprised he had remembered. It was pinon-juniper, which meant that he had ridden miles into the high country to find it. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.

It certainly didn’t erase her knowledge of the Indian woman, or his sin against her mother. She imagined the woman with rotting teeth, dirty hair and body lice. Probably not far from the truth. He had left them for pagan vermin. She shook her head.

Maggie worked to shut out the monotonous incantations, but couldn’t. She clutched harder at her Bible, opening it to where her thumb marked a passage of Luke: ‘Ask and it will be given you.’ She had been reading the line over and over, remembering his insult about God not helping. She started to pray, then hesitated.

Maggie rarely asked God for anything. In fact she couldn’t recall ever having done it, except when the children were sick. If she had, she didn’t remember receiving anything that resembled a divine response. That last thought bothered her and she closed her eyes and her Bible and squeezed the little book hard. ‘Dear God. This may seem like a small thing. But I need Your help. I need to prove to Dot that You will help her if she needs You.’

Maggie felt silly, ungrateful, asking God for such a thing. She started to open her eyes but the shrill chanting had increased in volume and she clutched harder at the Bible, her resolve stiffening. ‘Lord. I need Your help to find Harriet the cat.’

The croaking of the grass frogs near the creek was loud in the summer night as Baldwin entered the barn. Mannito had retired to his room at the back of the cavernous structure. The three children were in the house getting ready for bed. Jones was asleep, or looked to be, wrapped in his Indian blankets on the ground in front of the barn, his faithful little band of animals dozing around him.

Maggie was still sitting on the blanket, still reading her Bible in the lantern’s pleasant light, the little lamp making a small hissing sound. The sound wasn’t loud enough to block the peaceful noises of the horses in their stalls, their animal warmth rising pleasantly in the cool air. Baldwin felt a slight chill across his shoulders. Something in the darkness beyond the barn door – something that seemed wrong or out of place – was still bothering him. He had tried to figure it, but couldn’t and shrugged off the uneasy feeling.

Though Maggie was aware that he was standing before her, she refused to look up from her book. He smiled to himself and settled down on the blanket with a playful groan. She continued reading.

‘Why don’t you come back to the house?’ he said quietly.

She shook her head.

‘I asked him if he wanted to sleep inside, but he won’t do it.’

‘He’s gone native,’ she said. ‘And he’s stubborn.’

‘Oh,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’m glad you didn’t inherit any of that.’

Maggie turned her head and looked at him and he realized he had said exactly the wrong thing.

‘Just joking.’ He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he said, ‘He’s sleeping out front. Come on back in.’

‘I can’t.’ Her voice was soft but firm sounding.

‘Why, when he’s not there?’

‘Because if I do, it’s like I’ve accepted him being here. And I won’t, Brake. I won’t let him have that victory over me.’

He watched her from the side for a moment. ‘This isn’t a sporting contest.’ He paused. ‘Think of the children.’

She tipped her head back to keep her tears from running and studied the shadows near the rafters of the barn. ‘I am. They don’t know about him. But I do. You wouldn’t want me to just forget what happened to my mother.’

He studied her for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes, I would.’

Through the thick adobe walls, they heard Jones begin his monotonous chanting. Maggie started to sob hard and Brake put his arms around her and held her tight against him.

‘I can’t,’ she cried. ‘It hurts as if it just happened.’

‘It’s just seeing him again after all those years – you’ll get over that.’

She shook her head. ‘Not until he’s gone.’

He examined her beautiful face in the soft light of the lantern, feeling the warm glow inside him again, and then stretched out on the blanket beside her. ‘You’ve got to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m too old to sleep on hard ground during cold nights.’

She laughed and cried at the same time, then listened to Jones’ soft litany. It was an oddly soothing sound, mixed with the rhythmic shaking of the rattle. A sound that seemed as if it might drift forever in the darkness.

Later that same night, Lily was in her downstairs bedroom brushing her hair and counting the strokes. She brushed 250 times, every night, stroking carefully from the roots to the ends of her brown locks to add luster. The house was still and quiet. Her family was asleep upstairs. All but her mother. Lily was proud of her opposing the old man. She felt the stirring of a slight breeze from the open window behind her, the fabric of the curtain ruffling softly.

Unhappily, her thoughts drifted back to Samuel Jones. She wondered what her school friends would think if they knew he was her grandfather. They’d laugh. Pure and simple. She shuddered at the thought. The one good thing about the ranch, perhaps the only good thing, was that it was stuck so far out in this wilderness that her friends would never visit. Would never find out about him. The place was like a tiny dust mote in a vast dirty universe. At least that would keep her school mates from accidentally stumbling across Samuel Jones. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell them about him. Ever. The old man was an embarrassment.

She studied her fine features in the dresser mirror and tried to figure what her mother would say if she knew about the bustle. She could guess what her father would say – or at least how he’d look at her. He would more than likely make a joke about it. And it wouldn’t be funny. She decided not to tell either one of them. She was grown now. Bustles were the vogue. She would wear it when she returned to school.

Lily lowered her arms to rest them. She was still watching herself in the mirror when she first got the feeling. It was a tingling sensation on the back of her neck that someone was standing behind her. ‘Dot,’ she said. ‘Don’t start sneaking up on me. You know I don’t like that.’

Lily turned and was surprised to see the room empty. The curtain fluttered slightly in the night breeze. She looked back to the dresser and resumed her strokes. Her eyes moved over the small marble bust of Lord Byron that her roommate had given her on the day they left school. She smiled. Sarah was such a sweet person. Lily stopped, the brush still to her hair, and listened. She could not shake the troubling feeling that someone was behind her. She turned again.

The room was empty. But Lily’s eyes were on the window curtain. It was drawn but she had the gnawing sensation that someone was outside. Trembling, she walked over and stood shaking in front of it. She reached out a hand and yanked the curtain back. Nothing but the night and the scolding of a bird in the distance.

THREE

‘He can find anything, just by dreaming about it. He conjures things,’ Dot said, exaggerating her talk with her grandfather, and pouring a line of peas out of a pod into the large bowl on the ground in front of her. ‘Even if it’s a tiny diamond buried in a mountain of sand, he can find it. Just like that,’ she said, snapping her fingers.

‘He’s a liar and a fool,’ Lily said.

‘You shouldn’t talk that way about him,’ James called back over his shoulder. ‘He’s our grandfather.’

‘Not mine.’

It was late afternoon and the three of them were working in the big vegetable garden down near the creek. The long lines and trellises of dark green plants – hot weather beans, tomatoes, onions, squashes, Mexican peppers and chard – seemed to overflow the space of the garden, thriving in the heat and bright sunlight of this dry land. Dot wasn’t looking at the plants; her thoughts were focused on how Lily was dressed. That was one of the things Dot admired about her sister.

Dot scrutinized her closely, trying not to let her notice. Lily was wearing a beautiful red mannish-tailored shirtwaist with padded shoulders and long gigot sleeves that puffed stylishly at the shoulders, and a long black skirt. Her shoes were the new high-buttoned black kidskins. She looked magnificent, Dot thought. Under her stylish hat, her soft brown hair was done in a Paris style: a chignon on top and the front hair carried back without parting. It was all the latest from New York and Europe, Lily had told her.

Dot felt her sister was one of the prettiest girls in the world. She and Lily were sitting cross-legged on a blanket shelling peas for the evening meal. James was working nearby opening the irrigation ditches that watered the sprawling rows of plants.

‘You heard what pa said,’ James continued, shoveling mud out of the first trench and watching the little stream of water snaking its way down through the vegetables.

‘And you saw mother’s face,’ Lily returned. ‘She didn’t look too happy about it. She just wasn’t going to fight father.’

‘And you are?’ James challenged, wiping at a mud smudge on his sunburned cheek.

‘No. I’m just not going to accept that man as my grandfather.’

‘Just because you don’t like him, that doesn’t mean he isn’t our grandpa,’ Dot said firmly, spilling another line of plump green peas into the bowl sitting between them.

‘He can be your grandfather if you want him to be, Dotty Baldwin, but he is not going to be mine. I don’t want anything to do with that stinking old man and his Indian ways.’ She was positioning a lock of her hair as she spoke.

‘Better not let pa catch you talking like that,’ James warned, shoveling piles of mud into the ditch to cut off the flow of water from the creek.

Lily ignored him and placed her bonnet back on her head, straightening the long satin bow. Dot was mad at her for talking badly about their grandfather. But she liked Lily. Not only was she pretty, she was smart and took chances: like going to Denver to school. Sure, she put on airs – but Lily was always good to her. Bought her things, books and pictures, and talked to her as though they were equals. She went back to shelling the peas. James was leaning on his shovel and watching Lily now.

‘Why do you wear that dumb hat when the sun is almost down?

‘It’s the stylish thing.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I would if it made any sense,’ James said, then he squinted his eyes and stared hard at his older sister’s beautiful face.

‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said quickly, as though trying to hide a secret. A moment later, he sneaked another furtive peek at her.

Lily began to look uncomfortable. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, running her hand carefully over her soft cheeks.

James shook his head. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘James, tell me.’

‘No, really, it’s nothing. I’m not even certain.’

‘Certain about what?’ Lily asked, suddenly alarmed.

‘Really, I don’t think it’s anything.’

‘James Baldwin – tell me!’ Lily looked anxious.

‘Okay, but don’t get mad at me. It’s just in this light,’ he said, squinting again and studying her face from a couple of angles, ‘I can see your resemblance to grandfather.’

Lily leaped to her feet and stomped off toward the house, wrapping her long flowing dress tight around her legs. James was rolling in laughter on the ground.

‘Don’t tease Lily,’ Dot ordered. ‘And don’t joke about grandpa.’

Jones was sitting quietly at the dinner table, his attention focused on the plate before him. He had only pretended to eat out of politeness. Baldwin studied the distant, haunted look in his eyes, and knew with certainty the old fellow wouldn’t last much longer. He wondered what was going on in his ancient heart. Baldwin sensed he wasn’t prepared to go on living but still wasn’t quite ready to die, a clock winding down.

Jones wasn’t moving at all, just gazing at his plate. He appeared to have receded to some distant place inside his mind, escaping this world. Baldwin didn’t blame him. His world had disappeared. The rancher noticed that the little finger on one of the man’s huge hands was missing, and the hands themselves were badly scarred. They belonged to a man who had fought the earth and its inhabitants hand-to-hand. Who was this old bastard? And what had his life been like, this man who’d fathered the woman he loved? Somehow tragic. That much he knew.

There were stories here. Not pretty ones. Why had he left his wife and daughters? Was he simply crazy? Baldwin didn’t think so. He figured the old giant had known what he was doing, however strange it might seem to others.

Lily was in her mother’s chair at the end of the table, wearing a frilly high-collared dress, ignoring the old man, and pouting.

‘I’ll clear the dishes,’ James said.

‘Before you do, son,’ Jones said, breathing hard, and leaning down and picking up a gunny sack from the floor, ‘I have things.’

He’d seemingly come here with a list of items, and was hurriedly checking them off, as though he might not finish. Baldwin figured he was right – Jones didn’t have the time. It was a shame.

The old man reached inside the sack, pulling out a pillow-sized parcel covered in brightly colored parfleche. He looked at Lily and held the package out to her. Already uncomfortable, she stood as though she might turn and run.

‘My wife’s.’

‘Grandmother’s?’ Lily asked, her voice incredulous.

The old man’s skin shaded red. ‘Yopon’s,’ he said quietly.

‘No thanks.’ Lily said.

‘Lily, it’s a gift.’ Baldwin’s voice was low and measured.

Lily took the package, her hand shaking, glaring at it, as if even holding it was distasteful.

‘What did you get, Lil?’ Dot asked excitedly.

As Lily unwrapped the package Baldwin saw the blue blanket he’d seen in the barn, and something else. Lily’s mouth opened, and she tossed the bundle down in disgust. ‘What is that?’

‘An eagle’s claw. The blanket belonged to Yopon,’ he said solemnly.

‘Why would any woman want that rotting thing?’ Her face contorted in a grimace.

‘Lil—’

‘To give her strength,’ Jones interrupted, ‘and the ability to flee from danger.’ He studied Lily’s face for a moment. ‘You may need that some day.’

‘That’s absurd,’ Lily said, suddenly looking past them all. Baldwin turned, following her gaze, and saw Maggie in the doorway.

‘Stop telling these children your Indian lies.’

‘Margaret,’ Baldwin said.

She kept her eyes on the old man’s face. ‘Brake, don’t. I won’t have him filling the children’s heads with pagan beliefs, glorifying himself and the devil. He’s nothing more than a man who abandoned their mother and grandmother for an Indian squaw. Nothing more than that.’ She walked to the table and glared down at the old man. ‘Admit it. You’re a blasphemer – a bigamist who loved savages more than your own family.’

Samuel Jones stared blindly at his plate as if coldcocked.

‘Margaret, that’s enough.’

Jones held up his hand to silence Baldwin.

‘No it’s not,’ Maggie said. ‘But I won’t interrupt the rest of his great Indian foolery.’ She climbed the stairs and disappeared into their bedroom, and seconds later, they could hear her crying.

Lily’s eyes flashed. ‘Why don’t you just leave? You don’t belong here.’

‘Lily,’ Baldwin said. ‘You’re not your mother. I won’t have you talking like that in this house.’

Lily stalked swiftly away from the table and into her bedroom, slamming the door.

Baldwin fought the urge to go after her, then Mannito sighed loudly and said, ‘Ahhh, the señoritas, bonita creatures, yes? Beautiful, yes?’

The kindness broke the spell, and the little Mexican and James laughed awkwardly. The old man didn’t move. Baldwin helped him from the table. Dot watched him hobble toward the door, and wiped her sleeve across her eyes.

Jones started hacking badly when they stepped into the night air, the sound deep and watery. Baldwin set him in the rocker and moved to the railing. The night was cool and starry. A lone coyote was yipping close to the house. Baldwin stepped down the porch to get a better look. The yipping stopped.

Baldwin waited a second, then said, ‘Maggie was wrong to—’

‘Don’t.’ Jones looked at him sternly. ‘I don’t want to hear bad said about Margaret. She’s a fine girl. I’m proud of her. She had every right to say what she did.’

Baldwin just nodded.

When Mannito left the house, he paused by Jones and draped the blue blanket over his thin shoulders. ‘Good night, viejo,’ he said, using the Mexican word for old man.

Jones shrugged him off.

It was after midnight. The fog had come in one the place fast from the creek bottom. Rarely did that happen, but when it did, the air was like a silt-laden river. Mists to lose a soul or a mountain in.

Lily had slowly followed the path to the outhouse behind the infirmary, bringing a candle with her and one of her fashion magazines. The little shack smelled awful, reminding her of all she hated about the ranch. People in cities were using indoor necessaries. She had tried to convince her father to buy one, but he’d only laughed.

She stopped reading and peered at the walls around her. The inside seemed gloomier than usual, the rough weathered boards wavering eerily in the dim candlelight. She guessed the unnerving sensation came from the haze of fog.

She was wearing a cabriolet bonnet to keep her hair from frizzing in the moisture, but suddenly her hair wasn’t important; she felt blinded by the cloth and yanked it off, sitting straighter and holding it in her trembling hand, not sure what was bothering her. She looked down at it, forcing her mind to other thoughts. The hat was a perfect example of what was wrong with this whole wilderness. Her father, and every other man in the territory, called this style a coal scuttle bonnet. No matter how many times she corrected him, it was still a coal scuttle bonnet.

Lily stopped and listened. The first hint of a sound had come to her. Something large. Perhaps a horse. She waited to hear it again, her pulse quickening. Nothing. Just the wind. It had a way of coming off the sandstone cliffs, shrill and crying, hurt and womanish sounding. She hated it. She went back to her magazine. Then moments later, it was there again: faint footsteps in the night. She sensed them as much as heard them. ‘Hello? … Mannito?’ she called. There was no answer.

She started to call out louder, then caught herself. The old man could be trying to scare her. He knew she didn’t like him, that she thought he was a fraud. She felt somewhat better, certain it was him.

She turned her head slowly to catch any sound. Nothing. Only the phantom perception of someone moving in the darkness. Lily fought the panic inside her. There was no lock on the door, just a simple wooden latch that could be yanked off with a hard pull, leaving her trapped. She got herself ready.

The night seemed tense with a strange silence. ‘Father! Mannito!’ She listened, knowing she was too far from the thick-walled house and barn to be heard, but hoping her screams would frighten the old man away. She stared at the door, sensing that it was about to be jerked open.

Lily darted out into the wall of dense fog, staying low, instinctively, and driving forward. Something moved in front of her; something dark in the night that grabbed for her and missed.

She ran twisting and dodging in sheer terror, unaware of where she was running, just doing it, afraid to scream. Then she fell tumbling into deep sand, realizing that in her panic she’d run away from the house toward the north slope. She crouched, her heart beating a ragged rhythm inside her chest, listening for sound in the darkness that surrounded her.

She waited a long time before she heard them again. Footsteps. He was looking for her. She got down in a tight ball, making herself as small as possible. The soft sound stopped.

Lily fainted when the hand touched her. She did not wake until she was being carried in someone’s arms, screaming her way out of a dazed, half-conscious nightmare.

‘Granddaughter,’ Jones said. ‘Hush.’

Baldwin studied the old man. They were standing in the barn and Lily had just finished accusing Jones of stalking her in the darkness. The night wind was blowing hard beyond the walls. Maggie had her arms around her daughters, holding them close and glaring at her father.

Jones had stripped to his breechcloth and deerskin boots and was rubbing red paint onto his face. He was paying no attention to any of them. The little Mexican watched him closely.

Outside, the wind was working itself into a hard blow, the fog gone. Maggie and her girls stood near the door, in the circle of faint lantern light, as if it gave them some sense of security. The Mexican stepped close to Baldwin.

‘What, Mannito?’

The little man turned and looked at the old giant, his face and body covered now by eerie red and black designs. ‘He did nothing, señor. He saved her, perhaps. Nothing more.’

‘From what?’

Mannito continued watching the old man as he prepared for battle with this thing of the night. ‘I don’t know. I just know this viejo, that’s all.’

Baldwin studied the little Mexican’s face for a moment, then nodded. Jones was carrying his bow and arrows and moving for the door now. Lily stumbled away from him, as though she expected him to try and slit her throat. Maggie stood her ground.

‘Brake,’ she called across the shadows, her eyes still on her father’s hideous red face, ‘he tried to frighten Lily.’

‘Ma, don’t say that,’ Dot pleaded.

Jones stopped in front of them. ‘Granddaughter. You’ll find your cat in five days.’

‘Poppycock,’ Maggie snapped.

He slipped silently into the darkness and the stinging sand.

Samuel Jones did not catch the night beast. Nor did they find tracks the following morning, the sandstorm having obliterated any trace. Any trace except for a blurred footprint that looked odd to Jones. Lily’s candle and magazine were still in the small shack. Her bonnet was gone. Baldwin thought it had been blown away by the wind. Jones did not. Neither did he figure that the dead sparrow he found lying behind the shack was there naturally.

With the pink smudge of dawn two days later, the gray pony was missing and Jones was stumbling wildly through the barn. The truce was broken. He charged Mannito in the corral, slamming the little man against the wall, pulling his knife and shoving it against the Mexican’s throat.

‘What did you do with her?’ the old man wheezed.

‘Que?’

‘Don’t give me Mexican! My horse – caballo – where is she?’

‘No se. I don’t know.’

‘You better say unless you want to lose a handful of brains.’

‘You loco? I don’t see your horse. She probably died. She’s old.’

‘She better not have!’

Jones threw the little man to the ground and stormed around the corner of the barn, whistling for the old horse. Baldwin and Lily had ridden out early to check the cows in the high valley, while James and Dot had gone for mail at the railhead. Alice, the mule, was braying in the distance. Jones headed in her direction.

The gray was on her side in the pasture, tongue out, bloating badly, breathing fast and shallow. Sometime during the night, she had broken into the field of dew-covered plants, and made a feast of it. Alice was running frantic circles around her, still braying.

The old man moaned from deep inside as he dropped to his knees beside her. Her belly was swollen twice normal size, rising above her backbone on the left flank. He knew she was dying and nothing he could do would save her. He had seen other horses die from the lush green forage of the whites.

The People thought it was the magic of white witches that killed their horses. He knew better. The killer was gas that blew the guts open. It was an ugly death. He didn’t want the gray to go through the agony.

He pulled the little pistol from its hiding place and sat next to her, stroking her head, and thinking back over the years they had been together. They had ridden through the worst of his life. She had never let him down. He admired her toughness and loyalty. His throat was tightening and he knew it was more than admiration he felt. The little mare was in terrible pain, panting hard, sweat covering her body.

The Mexican squatted near her middle and placed his hands on the enormous belly and felt around, drumming with his fingertips on the tight skin. Chaco approached the old horse slowly, sniffing her and whining, then he sat beside the Mexican, shivering. Mannito continued feeling the horse’s stomach. Jones watched him. The little man pressed with his hand at a spot between the stifle and the ribs and the gray squealed and tossed her head. Alice darted in and nipped at him. The old Mexican waved her off.

‘Leave the horse be!’ Jones snarled.

Mannito ignored him, continuing to explore the belly; then he stood and trotted off toward the barn. Chaco followed. When he returned, he was carrying a small wooden box. He squatted and rummaged inside it, pulling out strange-looking metal instruments and setting them to the side, until he finally found what he wanted. It looked like a foot-long hat pin. Jones didn’t like the determined look on the old Mexican’s face. He cocked the derringer. The gray was suffering enough, he wasn’t about to let the Mexican torture her more.

Mannito pulled his hat off, tossing it behind him and rolling up his sleeves. His hair was a dead white color. Jones was watching him closely.

‘Keep your hands off her.’

Jones placed the pistol’s muzzle against the gray’s skull.

Mannito dropped to his knees between the animal’s legs. She was kicking in her death throes. Alice darted in again, nipping at him. He paid no attention.

Mannito drummed once more with the tips of his bony fingers on the swollen loin, listening for the organs below. Time was running out, he knew. He turned his head toward Jones, concentrating, trying to visualize the critical spot.

Staring up at the old giant, Mannito knew that they were friends, even if Samuel Jones wasn’t consciously aware of it. The idea of this friendship with Jones seemed an odd thing to the little Mexican. Nevertheless, he was sure it existed. It didn’t matter that Jones had never uttered a single kind word to him. Kind words were nothing. The two of them shared, Mannito knew, far more than words, shared more than just their two long lives. They instinctively understood one another. And understanding, he had always felt, was the foundation of true friendship. The evidence was everywhere. They had both lost their wives, lost most of their children, had lived hard existences, in solitude, far away from their own kind. They were poor men, but men who possessed another kind of wealth: they believed in something far greater than themselves. That was true wealth. These things, Mannito felt, bound them as amigos.

As further proof of their friendship, Mannito recalled that since Jones’ arrival, the old giant had silently shared the barn work: tossing hay, cleaning stalls, and filling water troughs. Mannito greatly respected this about his friend. Though deathly ill, he was no loafer. He was a man of character who mindfully paid his own way. The week before, Mannito had found his burro, Peso, carefully brushed and curried, the animal’s hooves cleaned and polished, and its little weathered halter expertly spliced with fresh rawhide. He had thanked Jones. But the old man had simply ignored him. Still, they both knew. Mannito smiled to himself as he stared at Jones, pleased that he recognized these little signs that betrayed their friendship.

From that day forward, Mannito had talked to him whenever they were in the barn. Jones never answered but Mannito sensed that he listened and calculated and weighed the things he said. These one-sided conversations cut the loneliness. He wished Jones had longer to live. Wished that he would acknowledge their friendship.

‘I’m warning!’ the old man bellowed, pointing the pistol at Mannito, and struggling to stand. ‘You hurt her and I’ll splatter you all over this ranch.’

Mannito looked back at the old horse. He knew his friend Jones would not shoot him but he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t turn the little gun on himself if they lost the gray. Mannito’s hands were shaking. He had never tried to save a horse with the bloat. The long, thin metal trocar was slippery in his sweating hands.

He looked up at Jones and tried to smile, prayed silently to Jesus’ Mother, then leaned forward and plunged the huge pin into the gray’s paunch. Jones raised the little pistol; then he heard a loud shhhhhhishing and watched in amazement as the mare’s belly shrank like a punctured ball.

Even more astonishing was the effect on the old horse. She stopped panting and moaning and lay still on the grass. Minutes later, she struggled to her feet and started to graze again, as if nothing had happened. Jones pulled her away from the wet plants and looked down, stunned, at the little Mexican. Mannito just squatted and grinned up at him, then began to laugh, looking like a small wrinkle-faced monkey, enormously tickled that he had saved the old horse.

‘Damn bueno thing, right?’ the Mexican said, holding up the large pin. ‘A damn good thing.’

Chaco was dancing on his hind legs. Alice was sniffing the gray. Jones nodded, still shocked at the mare’s miraculous recovery. Mannito held out his small hand for the rope that was looped around the horse’s neck.

‘I walk. She needs to move. I watch her. Muy bueno,’ he said, running his hands over the old pony. ‘I walk,’ he said again, sticking his hand closer to Jones.

Jones looked at the man’s hand, then his face. He still looked stunned.

‘I walk,’ Mannito said once more.

Jones continued to look at him. Finally, he handed him the rope. He nodded at the little man again, but said nothing. It was enough. Mannito understood.

‘It was nothing, viejo,’ the Mexican said.

Darkness was falling hard. Baldwin and Lily hadn’t returned from checking the herd in the high pastures. Jones was growing concerned. Baldwin was smart enough. Since the night of the sandstorm, Jones had noticed that he had been wearing his pistol and sticking close to his oldest daughter. But the man wouldn’t believe that anyone but a love-struck cowboy had chased his Lily. Jones had tried to convince him otherwise. So had Mannito. But he wasn’t listening. Jones studied the rust-colored mountains surrounding the little valley, hoping the rancher’s stubbornness hadn’t got him and the girl into trouble somewhere out on the trail.

Hard-headed and hard to scare, Baldwin was like most of the men who built things out of this wilderness. That was why the People had such a hard time with them, Jones knew. They did what they had to do to survive. They weren’t bad people, just tough and self-reliant. And for the past few days, Brake Baldwin’s cows – all the future his family possessed – had been dropping calves, unattended, in this rough country. Some of these animals, the rancher knew, would need his help or they’d die. Therefore, Brake Baldwin had headed for the high pastures, no matter what, and taken his daughter with him so he could keep a protective eye on her.

Mannito had been left at the house to watch over Maggie. In the rancher’s mind, Maggie was safe. Some young cowboy had simply fallen dumbstruck over Lily. The girl certainly had the looks to rattle a man. But Jones didn’t have it figured exactly that way. There was more to it, he felt. He just didn’t know what it was for sure.

From conversations overheard in the barn, he knew that James and Dot would take the wagon and spend the night in the little railhead town. So that afternoon, after watching the gray to make certain she was truly recovering, and leaving the Mexican with Maggie, he had taken a Baldwin horse and trailed the two youngsters well out onto the desert, until he was convinced they were safe. Three times, he rode wide of the wagon’s trail by a mile on either side to see that there were no horse tracks following them. Nothing.

Satisfied, he had returned to the ranch, arriving late in the day, his body shot through with a numbing exhaustion. Chaco barked to announce their arrival from his perch on the horse’s rump. Maggie was sitting on the porch. She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. Mannito was standing hidden in the shadows of the barn, holding the reins of a fresh horse, his ancient shotgun slung across his back. Alice was braying happily.

‘Los niños?’ Mannito asked, mounting the horse he held and pointing toward town. ‘The children?’

Jones nodded.

‘I ride to Señor Brake.’ He stopped and looked hard into Jones’ face and started to say something else, but then seemed to think better of it. Jones could tell he was tense. It was a feeling they shared. Finally, Mannito just smiled and said, ‘Good night, viejo.’

Jones didn’t say anything.

Mannito watched him a moment longer, something obviously on his mind, then he turned the horse and began to kick hard for the hills that were fading in the gathering purple dusk.

Jones would have ridden with him, but he didn’t want to leave Maggie unguarded. Whatever was wrong, might involve her as well. He followed the dark speck of the little Mexican and his galloping horse for a while, trying to figure out what the man had wanted to say to him. He wasn’t sure. But he had definitely wanted to say something.

Jones turned and gazed through the deepening shadows at the darkened house. The moon was rising over the rim of the mountain. Maggie was right: he didn’t belong here. That was why he had never come before. It wasn’t fair to her. Wasn’t fair just to walk back into her life after all these years. If he hadn’t been dying, he wouldn’t have done it. But he was, and he had come to see her one last time. Now he had to move on. Any fool could have guessed how she would feel. He didn’t blame her.

Thinking on it, he figured he might return to the heart of old Chihenne country. The thought tugged at something that was hurt inside him. Yopon and he had been there years before. It was the last time they’d been together and free. He found himself retracing their wanderings in his thoughts a lot. He forced himself to stop.

He stood outside the barn, feeling physical pain like a deep boring inside his chest, and turned in a slow circle, studying the darkening trees, the barn, the pastures and the house. He wanted to remember everything here, everything about her, for as long as he could.

He took a pull on the bottle, then left it on the ground, and walked awkwardly toward her, not knowing where to place his hands. He stopped in front of the porch where she sat. Chaco trailed along behind him. Jones watched her for a moment, her eyes gazing past him, then he leaned forward and set a pure white chunk of quartz on the step beside her.

‘I found it in the hills. Thought you might like it.’

She didn’t say anything or look at the stone.

‘The Mexican went to find them,’ he said quietly. ‘They probably decided to spend the night with the herd, rather than try the hill trails in the dark.’ Jones knew that hadn’t happened. If they were spending the night, it was because something had gone wrong. He had watched them saddling up and saw nothing for making camp; no canvas, no grub sack, no skillets, nothing. He had seen Dot slip the eagle charm into Lily’s saddlebag when her sister had gone into the house. The child had a large heart. But then Lily had found it and tossed it angrily to the ground. Dot had retrieved it.

‘If they aren’t down by morning, I’ll go find them,’ he said, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘Then I’ll ride on.’ He turned and looked at her, seeming for a moment to soak her up with his eyes. ‘I used to think about you,’ he said quietly. ‘At night mostly. Where you were, and what you were feeling.’

She didn’t say anything for a long time, just continued to gaze past him at the hills. When she finally spoke, he was unable to see her face. ‘I don’t need anything from you any more,’ she said, her voice sounding tired. ‘Just go.’

He walked slowly past her into the house, deciding to sleep near her tonight so that he could keep an eye out, but also wanting to sleep one night in her home. Chaco sat down beside her.

Maggie contemplated the falling darkness, shutting out all thoughts of the man. She had been praying to God about the cat. Nothing had come to her. She was now convinced it was dead – convinced that was her answer from God. Harriet was lost.

She stood and picked up the quartz rock, studying it for a moment, then tossed it with all her might into the darkness. Chaco scrambled off the porch after it, barking as he ran. A few minutes later, the little dog returned with the rock, dropping it at her feet. She began to cry.

Morning light came grudgingly to the valley of the ranch. Baldwin and the others had not yet ridden down. Jones had awakened early in the darkness, unable to sleep, feeling both the searing pain, and something else, something anxious in a place deep inside him. Slowly, he shook it off and crawled stiffly out of his blankets. He had been lying on the floor in the big room of the house, his rifle next to him. Maggie had slept outside on the porch in the rocker. He had listened to the grating sound most of the night. It was silent now. He looked out of the window and saw her asleep in the chair. Chaco was lying beside her. Jones sat and watched her for a long time, listening to a white-winged dove calling.

Finally, he forced himself to stop looking at her and wandered slowly through the empty dwelling, moving from room to room, examining things that he knew or guessed belonged to her, trying to visualize her in these rooms with these objects, sometimes holding them in his hands. He knew he was intruding. But he also knew that the only way he would ever be a part of her life was by this last moment of intrusion. This was his last chance to be alone with her – or at least, alone within her world. That would have to do him. He understood that. She would let him no closer.

It was sitting in the shadows on the dresser in the big bedroom. He studied it, unable to move for a while, adjusting his little glasses on his nose. It was almost a dream to him. He cupped it in his hands, committing it to what he knew was his fading memory. That scared him. He knew that when he left this room, he would never see it again. It was the only time in his life that he had felt the urge to steal. He couldn’t do it. Not from her. He had stolen enough from her life.

He let his eyes move slowly over it: a tintype. Maggie, a teenager, and her mother, Susan. He couldn’t pull his eyes off her face. She had been a good wife and mother; he felt the familiar remorse and forced his gaze and thoughts along. Why had she never remarried? She had such beauty. He shook his head sadly, knowing the answer too well. It didn’t matter. It was over. He could change nothing.

Their two images alone would have been enough to bring the sadness, but there was another person in the tintype: a small brown-haired girl of eight or nine. It was she who shattered whatever rigid structures were left inside his being, so that his emotional world sagged. A bittersweet pain coursed through him as he stood before the dresser.

He had never seen her before. He knew only that she had been born after he left, and that she was dead. Seeing her now was both a mysterious gift and a curse. He fought a moaning sound welling within him. He had heard that her name was Thelma. His throat tightened. It had been his mother’s name. He smiled wistfully: just like Susan to have honored him, even after he had dishonored himself. He kissed the photograph of this child he had never kissed in life, never known.

It was a long time before he could stop looking at her, staring so hard at the small face that her image began to blur. He relived times that he hadn’t thought of in a long while. Why had he left, when they had needed him so? He pulled himself up straighter and set the picture back in its place. He knew the answer. He knew he would do it again. He also knew with painful clarity what he had lost. And what he had found. He took his glasses off, then turned and walked out of the room.

He was riding stiffly, he and the gray picking their way carefully up a narrow trail through the pines on the western slope. Chaco was sitting on the pony’s rump. Alice ambled along behind with all Jones’ worldly possessions strapped to her back. He didn’t want to ride any more. He wanted only to lie down and sleep. He was ready to take the last long trail.

He fingered the old Sharps absently, every once in a while taking a pull on his bottle and turning to look back down at the ranch house. Earlier, he had tried to say goodbye. She hadn’t acknowledged him. It was best, he thought. It gave him a chance to look closely at her. He had placed Baldwin’s loaded shotgun across her lap. Still, she had not paid him the slightest mind. Not a glance.

He drew a shallow breath and told himself to stop. It was over. He tried to visualize Thelma’s small face, vaguely seeing her, the sadness creeping over him. Things were now so different from what he had once believed. Life had seemed so alive, so real and tangible, so easily toted up and carried from place to place. But he realized now it never had been; the things of greatest worth he had never touched.

An aspen, its bark girded by the claws of a bear, stood dying beside the trail, its yellow leaves dropping silently in the breeze. He watched the sunlight shining on the tree, making it look like a sparkling, spiritual thing, the leaves floating in random patterns down towards the earth, drifting away on their separate journeys. At one time, the tree had been a whole thing, unified in life and purpose, now it was disassembling, its different lives dying different deaths, each alone. He felt much like that.

Only superficially had he sensed life’s essence, the unseen things which held its true meaning, which throughout the years had touched him like a soft breeze to the skin. Now they were drifting away, leaving him to journey on without them. He was truly alone.

The hills were still, making the sounds of the animals seem loud and intrusive. It didn’t matter. If there was trouble ahead, whoever was going to cause it already knew he was coming, and what he was carrying, and from what direction he rode. He thought again of the Indian face – the face he’d seen in the vision in the cornfield two nights earlier – wondering who he was and what he wanted … and why he bothered him so.

He picked up Baldwin’s and Lily’s trail in the red clay above the pines, then spotted the hoofprints of the old Mexican’s horse; the little man was riding to the side so he could read the signs without ruining them. In a couple of places, he could see where Mannito had turned off and sat watching his back trail to see if he was being followed. The Mexican knew some things, Jones figured.

As soon as Jones saw the cactus, he cocked the hammer on the Sharps, squinting his eyes and studying the path through the broken plants. He sat still, and listened. The gray felt tense under him, her ears pitched forward. Chaco whined. He raised a hand to silence him.

The steer had been skinned in some blue bunch grass; its hindquarters were missing. Jones sat squatting next to what was left of the carcass, ignoring the buzzing flies and the stink, while he counted footprints and pulled as much information as he could from their sign. There was a mix of them. All moccasins – badly worn; not a prosperous bunch. He looked for the one who had gone after Lily the night of the sandstorm, some dark echo in his head tugging at him.

He found his glasses and fumbled them onto his face, and leaned down closer over the dusty prints. Different breeds: Chokonen, Chihenne and Mescaleros, all Apaches, but an odd, motley bunch. They didn’t figure to fit together.

His eyes, focused now behind the glasses, moved carefully over the tracks. He studied the criss-crossing, the repeated circles, the back-and-forth patterns. He looked up at the sky and tried to visualize each of the men, committing their walk, size, weight and habits to memory. When he felt he had a good picture, he looked back down at the dirt. Then he saw the lone set of footprints and understood why the track had appeared strange to him that night.

Apaches were all dangerous. This one, he sensed, was somehow worse. Jones moved closer, studying the imprint, the right foot turned and dragging some. It wasn’t a fresh wound, maybe lame from birth. He wondered what bothered him about the man. He was big. Short framed. There were splashes of dust at the front of the tracks indicating the Indian’s heaviness. Jones guessed him to be over 200 pounds.

He reached down and closed his eyes and touched the track softly, reading its telltale characteristics, feeling the disturbances in the earth. The bad feeling stole over him again and he pulled his hand away.

He could smell fire and saw smoke drifting near the crown of an oak. He moved cautiously toward it. A dark shape was swinging grotesquely from a branch in the tree. He stepped closer trying to stay out of the breeze and the nauseating smell it wafted. The object came into a fuzzy kind of focus: the green cowhide. It had been sewn into a big bag and a fire built under it. Lily’s dress was in the dirt next to the fire. ‘Bastardos,’ he muttered in Mexican, as if the word might reach those who had done this. It was a language the Apaches knew well.

Thick smoke rose and shrouded the hide and made it harder to see; then a breeze came and the smoke cleared, and he saw a small blackened foot protruding from a break in the tightly stitched seam. Staring at that foot and thinking of Lily’s grandmother and mother, Jones vowed to find the cripple – and kill him.

He took a deep breath and then held it and slit the stitching of green thongs; the cowhide flaps spread wide, releasing a cloud of putrid smelling steam, and Jones gagged on it, turning away. Death, in general, had never bothered him much. But this one did.

The body was curled in a tight ball and disfigured to the point where it was almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless, he knew it wasn’t Lily. He picked up one side of the cowhide and rolled the corpse onto its back. Mannito. The little Mexican was naked and covered with thousands of tiny puncture holes; but those had not killed him. His death had come from the green cowhide. The fire slowly drying it, shrinking it, until it finally crushed his ribs and suffocated him.

Jones studied the little man’s shattered face and felt the bad sense creeping inside his guts. He had never had much truck for Mexicans, but this one had been somehow different. In just a few days, they had come to a silent understanding; and he felt that the Mexican would have honored it. There was something about the little man that he had trusted. He felt pressure building in his chest and he stood quickly. He’d been close to few people during his life. Hard as it was for him to understand, he believed the little man could have been one of them.

Now he was gone. The Lame One and the other Apaches had tortured him to death. Jones felt the beast in him stir and struggled to control it. Killing a man was one thing – torture another. The disrespect of it bothered him.

He brought his pipe from the gray and lit it and squatted in front of the body. He blew smoke over Mannito, and sang his death song. It was an honor he would never have guessed he would bestow on a Mexican. For a long while he sat and watched the body. Mannito had saved the gray, had stood up for him. And Jones knew instinctively the little man had fought to save Lily. Those things counted by Samuel Jones’ reckoning.

Jones shifted on his haunches, his eyes moving steadily over the ground. The rancher’s tracks weren’t anywhere around. He hadn’t made it this far.

Chaco sniffed at Mannito’s corpse, then flopped down beside it and whined. That surprised him. The dog had seen a lot of death in his nine years of life. He had ignored it. Even children. Ignored it up until this day. Jones blew smoke over the body again to purify it and chanted while Chaco whined. The little Mexican had been different. That was certain.

He moved away from the body and squatted again and smoked, thinking through what had happened here. They had the girl. He figured she was still alive; for a time. Baldwin – probably dead. Most likely they’d ambushed him and Lily, shooting the rancher and grabbing the girl, and then, later, been surprised by Mannito. Somehow they’d caught the little Mexican alive, stripped him naked, put a rope around his chest and dragged him back and forth through the prickly pear. Afterwards, with a thousand cactus thorns impaling him, they’d beaten him with clubs and then sewn him up in the hide and hung him from the oak like a giant cocoon.

If he had the tiny man figured right, he hadn’t let out a cry. He was different. He deserved better. Jones could see where they had squatted and lounged around, drinking and smoking. Lily had been forced to witness the killing. ‘Bastardos,’ he muttered again. The Aravaipa had sat off alone, pointed so he could watch her. Jones felt the beast shifting again, and fought the urge to ride after them. He had to know more. He was too weak to chase wildly after anything. And they were expecting pursuit. So he would wait.

As Jones sat by the corpse, a large wolf spider scurried over Mannito’s body. Spiders were sacred beings and he felt this was an omen. ‘Hear, brother – attest my words. I will avenge this man.’ He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘This friend.’ He stopped talking and stared off into the bright sunlight at the distant hills. He realized now what Mannito had wanted to say to him last night in front of the barn. That they were friends. Jones wiped his mouth in the palm of his hand, looking down at the little body. ‘I heard you,’ he said. Then he looked away again and continued his oath, ‘I will avenge this man. The earth hears me, the spider hears me.’ Jones blew smoke in the four directions.

Samuel Jones closed his eyes and tried to rest for a moment in the scant shade of a mesquite bush. He was thinking about Lily and her chances, when suddenly the image of the Indian face was before his eyes again, looking so real that he sat bolt upright, clutching at his pistol and squinting at the surrounding brush. Nothing. Jones trembled and stood and walked the scare off. He knew now that it was the face of the Lame One.

Looking down at Mannito’s body again, he wondered where the small man’s clothes were. Then it came to him: they had made Lily put them on. They were about the same size. It could mean only one thing. They didn’t plan on killing her, so they had dressed her to ride. Hopefully, they’d keep her alive long enough. For what? His powers had been fading over the months. He had no idea where to start. All he wanted was to lie down and rest. That was all he ever wanted any more. That, and Maggie’s love.

Samuel Jones tracked the rocky ground hard for an hour until he found Baldwin chest-shot and nearly dead a quarter mile from the tree. He rigged a travois to the gray, placed the wounded man on it, and started out of the mountains, Mannito’s corpse slung across the mule. Halfway down, he came upon an Apache sprawled in the dirt, nearly decapitated by Mannito’s machete. He had been right, the little man had fought hard to defend Lily. He had been a warrior to respect.

FOUR

Maggie did not surprise him. She was dignified and under control, though he knew she was dying inside from the strain. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she pressed the compress hard against her husband’s wound and then wrapped the bandage tightly around his chest. He held the rancher upright on the bed, then together they laid him back carefully on the pillow.

Baldwin was unconscious. But he had a chance, Jones figured. Maggie had not acknowledged him. Not when he rode up to the porch, or even now as they worked side by side. The only word she’d spoken, she was again mouthing softly: ‘Lily.’ It was an old mantra of mourning that he had heard hundreds of times before in different tongues, but it was always the same. There was nothing he could do to console her.

He watched as she pulled a chair close beside the bed, dragging her medicine bag onto her lap, holding it as if willing its contents to save her husband. He wanted to hold her, comfort her. He had felt this same clawing urge for the past thirty years. But now with her near, it was almost overpowering. Sometimes when he had held one of the other children in his arms when they were small, he had closed his eyes and pretended he was holding her. It had been a self-deception that had made him cry.

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