“Yes. They’ll be couple more weeks. But we were all going to Tucson.”
“You go on, then. But not without Uncle Albert. April will be there when I get back.” He stood and finished off the water. “I’m going to change my shirt. Sorry for the holes I got in this one.” Long as the holes were not in his hide, it’d be easy enough to mend. And just like that, Charlie was gone again.
Rudolfo lay fretful in his bed. The bedroom in the hacienda was one room I’d never seen before. He was a good-size man, but he looked small in the large bed. Luz went ahead of me, “Papa,” she whispered. “Doña Elliot is here.”
Rudolfo opened his eyes. “Sarah! At last a woman with some sense. These girls have stolen my last shred of dignity. Luz! You two hiding there by the door. Andelé.”
“Luz,” I said, “stay right here.”
Rudolfo cocked his head at me. “Ah, yes. Business to discuss, but circumstance dictates honor, too. You’ve already heard, then, that we found them but didn’t catch them. My men have some of your herd. I think about a hundred total. Did Carlos—”
He meant Charlie. “He told me. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
“What happened here while I was gone? My daughters act as if nothing has passed. All they have to do is open their eyes. Only my Elsa was clever as you.” He winced and drew a ragged breath, holding his ribs, before he continued. “Gone to a convent. What a good wife she would have made some man.”
If, I thought, any man could have been found equal to Rudolfo’s expectations. Perhaps Elsa had found the only “Man” who could. I told him about finding Mr. Hanna’s sheep pinned in a line, where they died, and about our searching for the start of the fire. Rudolfo listened with his eyes half-closed, so I thought he might have fallen asleep.
Suddenly, he interrupted me and said, “Nothing else? ¿Furtivamente?”
I told him of Lazrus, but again he stopped me, waving one hand and grimacing. “No, no. Did that boy of yours come back? I thought he was headed this way.”
“No.”
“Then it was a trick. He has learned fast, that little testarudo. Turned coyote overnight. He promised he would surrender and go home. Return your money, too, as long as we let him pass. I would not have let him, but, of course, Carlos was not there when El Coyote escaped. Never mind. I’m going to live to see him hang. Murdering thief.”
I stepped back. “He didn’t murder you.”
“Tried.” He coughed a spell. “Help me up, Sarah.” He reached for me, pulling himself to the side of the bed, coughing all the while.
When he got quiet, I said, “Do you need me to bring a chair?”
“I need you to bring me my pistols. And get those girls to hurry up with my shirt. I’m going with the cattle. We’ll ride to the stockyards at Hayden’s Ferry. We’ll find more strays along the way.”
“You’ve got no business on a horse.”
“What? This? It doesn’t hurt. What pains me is the rib I broke. The bullet tore skin, nothing more.”
“You cough like you’ve got the ague. Something in the lungs.”
“Smoke, that’s all. Luz! ¡Los pantalones! Sarah, that shirt! There, on the chair.”
I handed it to him. “If you find Willie, I want you to bring him here.”
He studied my face a long time before he said, “You want him back?”
Everything about Willie had gotten so complicated, I didn’t know what to think. “Yes, I do.” I watched him doing buttons, brazenly, as if we were already married. “What about cattle? How many did you get?”
“Eh?”
“Most of them were mine.”
“Unos cuantos.” He shucked the pistols into holsters and tied down the straps.
My ribs pressed in painfully, as if I’d been shot, too. ““¿A donde?”
“Polinar Bienvenides takes the few of them north. You wait here.”
“I’m really tired of being told that. It doesn’t look to me as if you’re going to spend time in bed healing up, riding off to Tempe. I could go with you if I pleased. I could. Well, you do what you’re a mind to. I won’t leave my place untended. I’m going home. There’s work to do.” I was both sorry and beholden to him for chasing after Willie and getting shot. My riding by his side surely wasn’t going to get my chores done, nor fetch my herd. What it would do was make him think I wanted to be with him.
He looked as angry as he’d seemed when he first left. He raised his head and said, “Go, then.”
Back at my place, I tended my horse and went to the barn to get some feed for Hunter. The ready oats had come unstacked; the hopsack bags had slid apart, as they did sometimes. I pulled the sacks apart slowly and carefully, for a stack of feed is as good a place as you’ll find for a snake to hide. Mice like the oats, and snakes like the mice. I had it all cleaned out underneath and put some boards at the sides to keep the stack leaned in on itself, and then started piling them up again.
From a long ways off, a man called out. It appeared to be Udell, and the closer he came, the more certain it appeared. He’d come with another remedy to get Hunter to drink. He had rigged up a big bottle he’d borrowed from the Cujillos, and he told me how to mix a good milk for the colt. Well, we took it to Hunter, and he balked at first, but then he guzzled that milk as if it was good as sweet cream.
We talked a spell and I told Udell about April and her family expecting me after the gathering. “I haven’t seen my daughter in so long,” I said.
“Stay all you like,” he replied. “You know, there’s more in my life that I regret not doing than what I have done. A man can work for forty years for his family and still lose it all and the family to boot. Stay with her. You don’t get second chances.”
“I want to be here when Willie comes back. Rudolfo Maldonado has been shot. Willie did it.”
Udell said, “Xavier Cujillo sent for a woman he called la cantadora. He said she’s got Maldonado fixed up. That cough he’s got is from dust he’s been eating. Least that’s what Cujillo told me. I’ll tend your place.”
I put out my hand to shake on his words, and he took it. So, we had a bargain, the two of us. “Udell, have you had supper?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Something sweet, then? I’ll put on coffee, if you’d care to stay. I took a pie out of the oven this morning. Charlie ate half of it, but there’s plenty left.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
I waved that thought away as I went toward the door. “Least I can do,” I said.
Udell said, “Mrs. Elliot—Sarah—I know you didn’t ask me, but since I’ve got nothing living at my place, and you have someone looking to do you harm, I’d be willing to stay here and keep watch for you. I’d leave you your privacy, of course. But I’d sleep better if you weren’t here alone.”
I said, “Well, I hadn’t asked because I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” I thought back to the times in my life that had put me in situations just like this. I felt as sure of Udell being a gentleman as I did of Lazrus being a maniac. “Reckon I’d be obliged.”
I made the coffee I’d promised him. We talked in the darkness, sipping our coffee. Then we hung the blanket up on the summer porch and turned in. In the morning, I carried the gun to the smokehouse to cut some steaks while Udell washed up, and then we had a breakfast together. When he went to get his horse, I followed him to where it was tied. Then I said, “Is that your pack over there?”
He walked to it, motioning to me to go to the house. I got my shotgun and then went back to follow him toward the lump on the ground. Lazrus’s shirt, smelling of bear grease and sweat, stained with streaks of brown, had been pinioned to the dirt with a sharpened shaft of wood. Udell jerked out the stave and kicked at the pile. A scorpion darted out, tail arched, ready to take on anyone who’d wake him at this hour. Under the shirt, my name was scratched deep into the dirt. The wood had pierced the S. Udell said, “Suppose I’ll go unpack my army Springfield. Never thought to point that at a man again. I’ll
be back shortly. You keep that with you all the time.”
“You’re doing a lot for a stranger.”
He smiled, the kind of smile when things aren’t really happy, but he wanted me to know he was sincere. He said, “A neighbor, you mean.”
Chapter Nineteen
August 20, 1906
At last, we were going to town. Rachel and Rebeccah were leaving home to teach school. Esther would begin her studies at the university. Joshua would go there soon as he got back from accompanying Granny to Chicago and back. My boys should have been with them, except for the trials we’d lived through this summer. I couldn’t pay their tuition anyway. Lands, that nearly breaks my spirit. Not in years have I been so low on cash.
We were used to having our grown boys riding with us. Albert would be the only man there. He’s not a bad shot, but he said it would be better if I carried his rifle, and he took the shotgun, for you don’t have to be but half paying attention to make use of a shotgun. Now anyone in the Territory knows I can pretty much hit what I aim at, but there could be those on the road not knowing me, people who’d not tangle with folks guarded by a few armed men.
I picked up his rifle and said, “Albert, how long has it been since you blew the dust off this?”
“While, I reckon,” he said.
I checked the breech to make sure it was loaded. At that second, I heard a crash come from the kitchen. Snapping it shut quickly, we both ran to see what had happened. Savannah was already sweeping. She said, “Stop there at the door. It’s everywhere, and you’ll track it through the house. I just dropped three plates and my best bowl—the only one that didn’t have a chip in it. You’d think I could have been more careful.” She moved that broom in a flurry as bits of china and pottery came together in a heap. “Purely distracted. Can’t keep my mind on one thing for more than a minute.”
Albert said, “Well, honey, are you missing your girls already? Mary Pearl will be here. And, of course, Clover, Ezra, and Zack.”
“This is a natural part of the girls’ growing up. They should leave home,” Savannah said. “I’ve had their whole lives to prepare for it.”
I knew just how she felt. “Savannah,” I said, “all you can do is start looking forward to the days they’ll come to visit. As long as they’re not in the ground, they’ll come back to you.” If I could have stepped over the mess, I’d have hugged her.
She gave me a look that in half a minute went from anger to worry to sadness to resignation. “I wish I could be as strong as you,” she said.
“I’m not strong about it,” I said. “But think what it would be like if you kept them here? Can you just picture it, the girls all old maids, still bickering over hair ribbons, and you eighty-five, still cooking for an army every day?”
She laughed, shaking her head, and said, “Lands! What a thought. Shoo those chickens out the door.”
“It’s the only way to do it,” I said. In my heart, though, I knew I had no desire whatever to shoo my own chickens out the door. They were just leaving on their own, all big feet and pinfeathered.
Zachary would ride in the buggy with Savannah, the twins, and Esther. Ezra was to sit tall in his saddle on Big Boy and look grown. Last, Mary Pearl was to put on a pair of Clover’s pants, tuck her hair in her hat, and try to look for all the world as if she was a man riding with us. Mary Pearl said it made her feel really strange, and she was embarrassed to come out of her room in the pants. A man with his head in a carpetbag couldn’t mistake that girl for a fellow.
I said, “You need a big shirt. Get one of your papa’s and let it hang loose. Keep a bandanna on your neck, honey. If anyone comes up, you pull it up over your nose.” Nothing was going to hide those big brown eyes and their heavy fringe of lashes, though.
Savannah looked at her youngest daughter and said, “You’ll wear a coat.”
“Oh, Mama, the heat. I’ll perish!” Mary Pearl said. “See if the shirt will be enough. I’ll pull it way out. See? No waist at all.”
Ezra came from his room with a toy rifle Clover had carved for him, saying, “Here, Imp. If you’re going to look like a fellow, this can look like a rifle, too.”
I tried to travel light, so I had only the two carpetbags. Rachel and Rebeccah both had traveling trunks and a bag, plus sewing kits and hatboxes, and Esther had a valise and two bags, and nearly the same number of little boxes. Everyone had to bring things. The surrey wouldn’t hold the luggage and the family, too. So now Zack would ride with Ezra on Big Boy. The boys were plum tickled with the plan, since they have never gotten to take a horse to town. We tied another pony on back of the surrey. Albert had bought that horse cheap, and he’d gotten his money’s worth. They called him Flojo, but that horse was anything but lazy. He was a little Spanish thing, with pin ears and a turned-under nose. All trouble and a mile wide, I’d say.
I looked behind us as we moved up the road. Albert’s house was empty. Granny’s house was so empty, it looked abandoned, dusty, even on the outside. Farther up the road, my place was abandoned, too, except for Udell Hanna coming to feed each day. I thought about how close I was to riding away from it for all time. Reckoned I might yet be happy to have a small share in the pecan farm. At least that was still solvent. I just didn’t know how I’d go on if I had to take the charity of my brother’s family. The most familiar ground, my little cemetery—long out of view—felt to me if it were tearing loose from its bindings.
Halfway to town, we edged our way down the arroyo grande on foot. A few of the planks had washed down the streambed at the bottom. Albert and the little boys fetched them, then set to bracing them into place with some rocks they’d hauled up at the edges. Savannah sat in the surrey, trying to stay out of the sun, but Esther got down, watching the boys work. She pulled a fine net around her face, for the mosquitoes in the arroyo were thick. Holding a canteen, she passed it to one, then another. I think Esther is plum worried about going to college, and afraid a mosquito bite on her face will brand her for the country girl she is.
I went to stand in the shade of the surrey. “Savannah,” I said, “how are you?”
“Melted down like a candle,” she said. “And worried, too.”
“About the new baby?”
“That one, and all the others.”
I said, “Look at Mary Pearl there. She won’t even get off the horse for anyone to see her in those trousers. You’ve raised them just fine.” Savannah got a satisfied look on her face.
Albert frowned and said, “Any man fooled by that getup would have to be stone-blind.”
The trip to town took no longer than it usually took us, but my lack of patience sorely taxed me. I wanted to gallop down the road, not wait for their overburdened wagon. As we turned up Soldier Trail toward the last bend and saw buildings in the distance, I felt purely giddy.
The sun was high overhead when we pulled up to the entrance circle of April and Morris’s grand house; a wide swath of packed gravel cut through the yard, all lined with pots of geraniums. Once everyone was out of the surrey, I knocked on the front door.
“Yes, madam?” a stranger said. The woman looked like a catalog picture in her gray dress, all starched and ironed in this heat. I knew April was planning to hire help, but the lady looked as if she should own this house.
Behind her, a lady in blue cried out, “Mama!” April came running, and I took that girl in my arms. Oh, she felt so good. Such pretty hair. So plump and real and warm. She kissed my cheeks and clung to me, and took away my breath. I breathed in the smell of her, the scent of lilac water in her hair. My three grandchildren waited in a row on the steps. After some hugs all around, we bustled into April’s “drawing room.” The room was set all about with gas lamps, fine rugs, and upholstered furniture. But first thing was not to sit and rest, for April wanted us to see changes they’d made to the house. It took nearly half an hour for April and Morris to give us a tour.
Then April said, “It’s past noon, and the girls need their naps. It’s hard enough to
keep them on any kind of schedule in this heat. I’ve got tea and cookies ready, though. Oh, Mother, I’ve found a perfectly wonderful cook, Yselle. She makes the best chiffon cake. Morris, ring for Lizzie, won’t you?”
Rachel and Rebeccah rushed to sit on either side of April, their arms around her waist. They had all changed into remarkable young women. The twins looked less alike now, since Rachel’d had rheumatic fever last year, but there was still an essence of the tres amigas who used to run endlessly between my house and Savannah’s. The girls sounded like a little flock of quail fluttering here and there. Rachel and Rebeccah had only nine days until their teaching started, and they wanted to spend every minute possible with April. I almost looked forward to the twins’ leaving, so I could have my girl all to myself.
It hurt, too, to see the babies. It was different from having my sons tease me that I was old, or for me to use my age as an excuse for some kind of laziness. Those times amounted to no more than squalling with no proof. This here was proof with no sound, proof that seeped into the small places in my heart, where I never allowed any nonsense. The place inside that I thought of as me had just been informed its owner was old. At home, when I was busy, there were days and weeks that flew by and I didn’t give time so much as a nod. I remembered Udell’s words about not letting a moment by, and suddenly my eyes filled with tears.
“Mother!” April said. She took the little girls from me and set them back on the floor, then leaned onto my lap and put her cheek against mine. It was such an odd thing for her to do. How could I explain to a beautiful lady in a silk dress that when I picked up her baby girl, I felt that lady’s long-ago chubby shape in my arms, smelled her sunshine-touched hair? That years and years of tiny memories flitted past my heart like a flock of birds spinning on invisible air? It was the smell of the little girls, slightly wet, somewhat soapy, the smell of porridge supper, and the taste of kissed-away tears. Here in my arms were the best parts of life, going on, blooming like a strong tree.