The Crossing

  He looked up. He smiled. He said that in any case the ox knew enough to work so as to keep from being killed and eaten and that was a useful thing to know.

  He came forward and hazed the animals up out of the river. They clambered out along the gravel shore and blew and craned their necks. The old man turned, his stick on one shoulder.

  Esta lejos de su casa? he said.

  The boy said that he had no home.

  The old man's face grew troubled. He said that the boy must have a home but the boy said that he did not. The old man said that there was a place for everyone in the world and that he would pray for the boy. Then he drove the oxen out through the willows and the sycamore wood in the new dusk and was soon gone from sight.

  When he got back to the fire it was almost dark. The dog stood up and the girl came forward to take the sleek and dripping animals. He walked around the fire and turned his saddle where it stood to dry.

  She wants to go to Namiquipa to see her mother, Boyd said.

  He stood looking down at his brother. I guess she can go wherever she's a mind to, he said.

  She wants me to go with her.

  Wants you to go with her?

  Yeah.

  What for?

  I dont know. Because she's afraid.

  Billy stared into the coals. Is that what you want to do? he said.

  No.

  Then what are we jawin about?

  I told her she could take the horse.

  Billy squatted slowly with his elbows on his knees. He shook his head. No, he said.

  She aint got no other way to go.

  What the hell do you think is goin to happen if somebody sees her ridin a stolen horse? Hell. Any horse.

  It aint stole.

  The hell it aint. And how do you aim to get it back?

  She'll bring it back.

  It and the sheriff. What did she run off for if she wants to go back?

  I dont know.

  I dont either. We come a long ways to get that horse.

  I know it.

  Billy spat into the fire. I sure would hate to be a woman in this country. What does she aim to do after she gets back?

  Boyd didnt answer.

  Does she know the kind of shape we're in?

  Yeah.

  Why wont she talk to me?

  She's afraid you'll leave her.

  That's why she wants to take the horse.

  Yeah. I guess.

  What if I wont let her take it?

  I reckon she'd go anyways.

  Then let her.

  The girl came back. They stopped talking even though she could not have understood what they said. She arranged their cookware in the coals and went off to the river for water. Billy looked at Boyd.

  You aint above runnin off with her. Are you?

  I aint goin nowheres.

  If push come to shove.

  I dont know what that would be.

  If you thought she'd be left on her own or they wouldnt be nobody to look after her or somebody would bother her. Like that. You aint above just goin with her. Are you?

  Boyd leaned and pushed the blackened billet ends of two sticks forward into the small coals with his fingers and wiped his fingers on the leg of his jeans. He didnt look at his brother. No, he said. I guess I aint.

  In the morning they rode out to the crossroads and here they took leave of the girl.

  How much money have we got? Boyd said.

  Damn near none.

  Why dont you give it to her?

  I knew this was comin. What do you propose to eat on?

  Give her half of it.

  All right.

  She sat the horse bareback and looked down at Boyd with her black eyes brimming and then she slid from the horse and put her arms around him. Billy watched them. He looked at the sky to the south all troubled with weather clouds. He leaned and spat dryly into the road. Let's go, he said.

  Boyd boosted her onto the horse and she turned and looked down at him with her hand to her mouth and then reined the horse around and set off on the narrow dirt road east.

  THEY RODE ON SOUTH along the dusty road, doubled once more upon Billy's horse. The dust blew off the crown of the road before them and the roadside acacias twisted and hissed in the wind. Late in the afternoon it darkened over and rain began to splatter in the dirt and to rattle in their hatbrims. They passed three men in the road riding. Illsorted horses and worse tack. When Billy looked back two of them were looking back at him.

  Would you know them Mexicans we took the girl off of? he said.

  I dont know. I dont think so. Would you? I dont know. Probably not.

  They rode on in the rain. After a while Boyd said: They'd know us.

  Yeah, said Billy. They'd know us.

  The road narrowed going up into the mountains. The country was all barren pinewood and the spare and reedy grass in the parklands looked poor fare for the sustenance of a horse. They took turns walking on the switchbacks, leading the horse or walking beside it. They camped in the pinewoods at night and the nights were cold again and when they rode into the town of Las Varas they had not eaten in two days. They crossed the railroad tracks and rode past the big adobe warehouses with their mud buttresses and their signs that said puro maiz and compro maiz. There were stacks of raw yellow slabcut pine lumber along the sidings and the air was rank with pinon smoke. They rode past the low stuccoed railstation with its tin roof and descended into the town. The houses were adobe with pitched roofs of wood shake and there were stacks of firewood in the yards and fences made from pine slabs. A boldlooking dog with one leg off limped into the street before them and turned to stand them off.

  Sic him, Trooper, said Boyd.

  Shit, said Billy.

  They ate in what passed for a cafe in that rawlooking country. Three tables in an empty room and no fire.

  I believe it's warmer outside than what it is in here, Billy said.

  Boyd looked out the window at the horse standing in the street. He looked toward the rear of the cafe.

  You reckon this place is even open?

  After a while a woman came through the door at the rear and stood before them.

  Que tiene de comer? Billy said.

  Tenemos cabrito.

  Que mas?

  Enchiladas de pollo.

  Que mas?

  Cabrito.

  I aint eatin no goat, Billy said.

  I aint either.

  Dos ordenes de las enchiladas, Billy said. Y cafe.

  She nodded and went away.

  Boyd sat with his hands between his knees to warm them. Outside gray smoke blew through the streets. No one was about.

  You think it's worse to be cold or be hungry?

  I think it's worse to be both.

  When the woman brought the plates she set them down and then made a shooing motion toward the front of the cafe. The dog was standing at the window looking in. Boyd took off his hat and made a pass at the glass with it and the dog went away. He put his hat back on again and picked up his fork. The woman went to the rear and returned with two mugs of coffee in one hand and a basket of corn tortillas in the other. Boyd pulled something from his mouth and laid it on the plate and sat looking at it.

  What's that? said Billy.

  I dont know. It looks like a feather.

  They poked the enchiladas apart trying to find something edible inside. Two men came in and looked at them and went on to sit at the table at the back.

  Eat the beans, Billy said.

  Yeah, said Boyd.

  They spooned the beans into the tortillas and ate them and drank the coffee. The two men at the rear sat quietly waiting for their meal.

  She's goin to ask us what was wrong with the enchiladas, Billy said.

  I dont know if she will or not. You reckon people eat them things?

  I dont know. We can take em and give em to the dog.

  You propose to take the woman's food out and feed it to the dog right in front of her own
cafe?

  If the dog'll eat it.

  Boyd pushed back his chair and rose. Let me go out and get the pot, he said. We can feed the dog down the road.

  All right.

  We'll just tell her we're takin it with us.

  When he came back in with the pot they scraped the food off the plates and put the lid on and sat drinking their coffee. The woman came out with two platters of richlooking meat with gravy and rice and pico de gallo.

  Damn, said Billy. Dont that look good.

  He called for the bill and the woman came over and told them it was seven pesos. Billy paid and nodded toward the rear and asked the woman what those men were eating.

  Cabrito, she said.

  When they walked out into the street the dog got up and stood waiting.

  Hell, said Billy. Just go on and give it to him.

  In the evening on the road to Boquilla they encountered a bunch of vaqueros looseherding perhaps a thousand head of raw corriente steers upcountry toward the Naco pens at the border. They'd been trailing the herd three days from the Quemada deep at the southern end of La Babicora and they were dirty and outlandishlooking and the cattle wild and spooky. They passed bawling in a sea of dust and the ghostcolored horses trod among them sullen and red-eyed with their heads lowered. A few of the riders raised a hand in greeting. The young gueros had pulled to a piece of high ground and swung down and they stood with the horse and watched the slow pale chaos drift west with the sun leaving the ground behind them smoking gently and the last cries of the riders and the last moans of the cattle drifting away into the deep blue silence of the evening. They mounted up and rode on again. At dark they passed through a hamlet on that high plain where the houses were of logs with woodshingle roofs. Smoke and the smell of cooking drifted on the cold air. They rode through the bands of yellow light that fell over the road from the lamplit windows and on into the dark and the cold again. In the morning on that same road they encountered wet and sleek coming up from the highcountry laguna south of the road the horses Bailey and Tom and Nino.

  They'd clambered up into the road with half a dozen other horses all of them still dripping water and they trotted and tossed their heads in the cool of the morning. Two riders came into the road behind them and hazed them up out of their cropping at the roadside grass and drove them on.

  Billy neckreined the horse to the side of the road and swung his leg over the pommel of the saddle and slid down and handed the reins up to Boyd. The bunched horses advanced curiously, their ears up. Their father's horse tossed its head and let out a long whicker.

  Aint this somethin? said Billy. Aint this somethin?

  He watched the riders. Young boys themselves. Perhaps his age. They were wet to the knees and the horses they rode were wet. They'd seen the riders and seen them rein to the side and they came on more cautiously. Billy pulled the shotgun from the scabbard and unbreeched it to see that it was loaded and breeched it shut again with a quick upward jerk. The advancing horses stopped in the road.

  Shake out a loop, he said. Dont let that Nino by.

  He stepped out into the road with the shotgun in the crook of his arm. Boyd boosted himself over the cantle and pulled the lasso tie and paid out the rope in his hands. The other horses had stopped but Nino came on along the edge of the road, his head up, testing the air.

  Whoa Nino, Billy said. Whoa boy.

  The two riders coming along behind stopped. They sat their horses uncertainly. Billy had crossed the road to head Nino and Nino tossed his head and came back into the road.

  Que pasa? called the vaqueros.

  Drop a loop on that son of a bitch or take the shotgun one, Billy said.

  Boyd brought the loop up. Nino had already sized up the space between the man afoot and the man horseback and he bolted forward. When he saw the rope come up he tried to check but he lost footing on the packed clay of the roadway and Boyd swung the loop once and dropped it over his head and dallied the rope to the saddlehorn. Bird turned and planted himself in the road and squatted on his haunches but the Nino horse stopped when the rope hit him and stood and whinnied and looked back at the riders and the horses behind.

  Que estan haciendo? the riders called. They were sitting their horses where they'd first stopped. The other horses had turned and taken to grazing by the roadside again.

  Pull a piece of that small rope and build me a hackamore, Billy said.

  You aim to ride him?

  Yes.

  I can ride him.

  I'll ride him. Make it longer. Longer.

  Boyd looped and tied the hackamore and cut the rope with his claspknife and pitched the hackamore to Billy. Billy caught it and walked Nino down along the length of the catchrope talking softly to him. The two riders put their horses forward.

  He slipped the hackamore over Nino's head and loosed the catchrope. He talked to the horse and patted it and then pulled the catchrope off over the horse's head and let it fall to the ground and led the horse over to where Boyd sat the other horse. The loop of rope went scurrying over the dirt. The riders stopped again. Que pasa? they called.

  Billy pitched the shotgun up to Boyd and then jumped and pulled himself up over the horse's back with both hands and swung a leg over and reached for the shotgun again. Nino stamped in the road and tossed his head.

  Dab your twine on old Bailey yonder, Billy said.

  Boyd looked out down the road at the two riders. He put the horse forward.

  No moleste a esos caballos, the riders called.

  Billy reined Nino to the side of the road. Boyd advanced upon the horses where they stood leisurely cropping the roadside grass and threw his loop. The throw anticipated the Bailey horse and as he raised his head to move away he raised it into the loop. Billy sat his father's horse watching. I could do that, he told the horse. In about nine tries.

  Quienes son ustedes? the riders called.

  Billy rode forward. Somos proprietarios de estos caballos, he called.

  The vaqueros sat their horses. Behind them a truck had appeared in the road coming from Boquilla. It was too far off to hear but they must have seen the gaze of the other two riders shift for they turned and looked behind them. No one moved. The truck came on slowly in a thin and augmenting gearwhine. The dust from the wheels drifted slowly out over the country. Billy turned his horse out of the road and sat with the shotgun upright on his thigh. The truck came on. It labored past. The driver looked at the horses and at the boy sitting with the shotgun. In the bed of the truck were eight or ten workers all huddled like conscriptees and as the truck passed they sat looking out back down the road through the dust and motorsmoke at the horses and riders with no expression at all.

  Billy nudged Nino forward. But when he looked for the vaqueros there was only one of them in the road. The other one was already riding back south across the campo. He crossed to the standing horses and cut the Tom horse out of the bunch and hazed the rest of the horses up out of the road and turned and looked at Boyd. Let's go, he said.

  They advanced upon the lone rider with the loose horse trotting before them and Boyd trailing the Bailey horse behind by the catchrope. The young vaquero watched them come. Then he turned his horse off the road and out onto the grass swales and there he sat watching them pass. Billy looked off across the campo for the other rider but he had dropped from sight behind a rise. He slowed his horse and called out to the vaquero.

  Adonde se fue su compadre?

  The young vaquero did not answer.

  He put the horse forward again, the shotgun upright against his shoulder. He looked back at the horses grazing by the roadside and he looked again at the vaquero and then he fell in alongside Boyd and they rode on. A quarter mile on when he looked back the vaquero was in the road riding slowly behind them. A little way more he stopped and sat the horse quarterwise in the road with the shotgun on his knee. The vaquero stopped also. When they rode on again he rode as well.

  Well we're in it now.

  We were in it w
hen we left home, Boyd said.

  The other old boy's gone for help.

  I know it.

  Old Nino aint been rode much, has he.

  Not much.

  He looked at Boyd. Dirty and ragged with his hat forward against the sun and his face enshadowed. He looked some new breed of child horseman left in the wake of war or plague or famine in that country.

  At noon with the low walls of the hacienda at Boquilla shimmering in the distance five riders appeared in the road before them. Four of them had rifles which they carried across the bow of their saddles or held loosely in one hand. They curbed their horses sharply and the animals stamped and sidled in the road and the riders called loudly back and forth although they were none at any distance from another.

  The two brothers checked their horses. The Tom horse went trotting forward with its ears up. Billy turned and looked back. There were three more riders in the road behind them. He looked at Boyd. The dog walked over to the edge of the road and sat down. Boyd leaned and spat and looked south across the unfenced grasslands, the shape of the lake in the distance palely blown where it mirrored the cloudcover overhead. Five or six lean dun-colored steers had raised their heads to stare at the horses in the road. He looked back at the riders behind and he looked at Billy.

  You want to make a run for it?

  No.

  We got the fresher horses.

  You dont know what kind of horses they got. Bird couldnt keep up with Nino anyways.

  He studied the advancing horsemen. He handed the shotgun across to Boyd. Put this up, he said. Find the papers.

  Boyd reached back and began to unwrap the thong from the rosette on the saddlebag pocket.

  Dont set there with that thing, said Billy. Put it up.

  He sheathed the shotgun in the scabbard. You got a lot more confidence in papers than what I got, he said.

  Billy didnt answer. He was watching the riders advance along the road all five abreast now with their rifles upright save one. The Tom horse stood at the side of the road and neighed at the approaching horses. One of the riders scabbarded his rifle and took down his rope. The Tom horse watched him approach and then turned and started out of the road but the rider spurred forward and swung his loop and dropped it over the horse's neck. The horse stopped and stood just off the road and the rider let the coil of rope fall in the road and all came on.

  Boyd handed Billy the brown envelope with Nino's papers and Billy sat holding them and holding the hackamore rope loosely in his other hand. The insides of his legs were wet from the horse and he could smell him and the horse stamped and nodded and whinnied at the approaching riders.