"Care to hear a story? About Hart back then?"
"Sure."
I was as curious about Hart as I'd ever been. He was still a mystery to me. I knew a little about Mother. He'd come from Missouri, never married and his father was a Presbyterian preacher of Scots-Irish ancestry — long dead from the bottle. His sister and two brothers remained back east. All Hart would say was he'd been around here and there. On Hart any light shed was welcome.
"Well, this was a couple months before we met and I heard about it a while before then.
"Hart's herding cattle and a wagon full of salt beef and hardtack through an arroyo, few miles north of Puebla. He's hired on for three dollars a day, pretty good money, right? The leader's a fella named Charles Berry — he was the one that told me all about this so you got to know it's not some made-up story — fella from Rhode Island, of an entrepreneurial nature you might say, who figures to make himself a tidy bit of money courtesy of the U.S. Cavalry. There's two other drovers beside Hart and fifty head of beef.
"So this Mex rides down into the arroyo. Small fella dressed to beat the band — high boots with big silver spurs, big white sombrero, buckskin breeches, white shirt, red silk sash around his waist, bridle and saddle both covered with studded silver— and he rides up smiling on this fine chestnut stallion and Berry's thinking, can't be no trouble here, this Mex has got landowner written all over him. So he pulls up the wagon and they commence to chattin'.
"Hart's working the cattle and watching and pretty soon he sees that the Mex ain't smiling anymore and he's pointing up the arroyo. He sees Berry look in that direction so he looks too and sure enough, there are seven or eight men up there pointing army-issue carbines down at them. They talk a little more but not so casual this time and Berry gets down off the wagon and strolls on over.
"'Boys,' he says, 'they're taking our goods and cattle and I don't see how we can stop 'em. What we're going to do now I guess is just ride off a ways and that means we get to keep on living. Hart, I'll ride with you.' Hart gives him a hand up onto his horse and off they go — and Berry's feeling lucky to still have a tongue and a pecker on him, never mind the beef.
"When it gets toward evening they're oh, maybe half a mile away. Country's like this is here, half prairie, half scrub. They find water for the horses and settle in for the night, figuring to make Puebla by early afternoon. And then Hart comes up with his proposal.
"He's been thinking it over he says and if Berry will part with fifteen dollars over his three dollar a day salary he'll bring him back his herd and the wagonload of salt beef and hardtack to boot. All they've got to do is stay where they are for three, maybe four nights. Just stay put and wait on him. Well sure, says Berry. So Hart borrows a double-barrel shotgun from one of the other drovers, loads it with sixteen buckshot, saddles his horse and rides back the way they come."
We arranged the rocks in a tight wide circle and Mother adjusted them to his liking and then started piling on the tinder and wood inside.
"It's after midnight by the time he finds the herd. They're settled down into a clearing. Now, Hart's been riding this herd a good two weeks by then so the cattle know him, they're used to him, and they don't make a fuss about him being there. So he just lays down amongst 'em. Lays right down in the middle of the herd facing the stars with the shotgun across his chest. He waits and the cattle mill around some.
"And pretty soon one of the Mex herders rides in close enough and Hart lets him have a barrel and that's the end of the herder. The cattle start moving, naturally. They're stomping and snorting and jumpy as hell what with the shotgun blast and the gunpowder and the smell of blood and Hart can feel stampede in the air but it ain't happened yet.
"So a second herder comes riding toward the shot, cursing his buddy and no doubt wondering what in the hell would make him do a damn fool thing like firing off a round in the middle of a herd of beef and Hart stands up and gives him the second barrel, blows him right out of his saddle. Then moves off into the brush opposite their campsite.
"Cause then of course there is a stampede. And while the Mex are all running around and chasin' their ponies and saddling 'em and then runnin' them into a lather trying to stop the damn thing Hart just punches his blanket roll into a likely-enough pillow and lies down to get some sleep.
"Next night, same thing.
"Except this time the second rider's wise to him once he's shot the first. So Hart has to hunt him down through a mess of half-crazed pissed off cattle disturbed by gunfire two goddamn nights in a row. Hart gets him, though.
"Third night he can only manage to kill the first one but that's just fine because now they're down to three riders from the original eight and they haven't gotten far with all the roundup work they been doing, they're pretty dispirited, so the next afternoon Hart says the hell with it and they're rolling down a wash when he catches up to them, shotgun cradled in his arm and tells the Mex driving the wagon that he's the one who shot his buddies and that he can either give up the cattle and the wagon or they can have it out right then and there.
"Next day he rides back to where Berry and the others are waiting with all but four head of cattle. Berry said in all truth he had to give it to the Mex — they were nasty little sons of bitches but they were pretty good herders to come out of three stampedes with only four head unaccounted for. By then Hart's bushed, so Berry sends the other two boys back for the supply wagon and they find it right where Hart said he'd left it though there was nothing to stop the Mex from taking that at least.
"'Cept of course the worry that Hart might come after 'em again."
Hell of a story, I thought. Were it not Hart he was talking about but some other man unknown to me I'd have written it up as soon as I got to pen and paper. But I didn't think he'd care to be the subject of a story in a New York daily.
"That doesn't explain it, though," I said.
"Explain what?"
"The way he treats her. His problems with the Mex."
"Mex killed his stepbrother at Churubusco. Kid about your age, had he lived."
I saw Hart leading the horses up from the stream. Elena's horse among them. She wasn't with them. In his free hand he twirled the dice.
"I never did meet a man who loved his dice so."
Mother laughed and set a match to the kindling. "Hell, those belonged to his wife. Dealer in a saloon over in San Antonio, time they met. Tough, handsome woman, she was. Spirited I suppose you'd say. A little like this one here, only white. Ran off with a fella whose game was blackjack I believe."
Interesting, I thought. I'd learned more about Hart in a single conversation than I had in the past two months. Information about him was coming at me thick and fast and the thought occurred to me that it was as though somehow Elena was the catalyst for all that. Elena and whatever it was she was up to.
"I'd never have thought of him as married," I said.
"He ain't married, son. Not no more. 'Cept maybe to me."
I watched him pass us by and nod and tether the four horses and wondered if he knew we'd been talking about him from the silence between us and if he'd care one way or another. I was reaching for a piece of mesquite in the pile behind us when he walked over.
"I think you want to leave that," he said.
"Huh?"
"Back off a little."
I stood and took a step back and Hart kicked at the pile and I heard the snake's sharp rattle before I saw the thing coiling itself into a tight deadly ball, its attention moving from Hart to me directly in front of it just as Hart's boot came down squarely on its head.
"Jesus Christ, Hart!"
"Saw it crawl in there just now. You want to be more careful, Bell."
"You just stepped on the damn thing. They bite for chrissake!"
"Not if you step on them first, they don't."
It had easily been within striking distance of me. I was shaken. A snakebite wasn't normally a fatal thing if you got to it right away but you never knew and you wouldn't want to t
ry your luck.
"Hell, Hart. Don't you like life?"
"No more than that snake did, probably. But then I don't dislike it either."
I turned and saw Elena coming up the embankment.
Her clothes were wet and her hair was wet and she looked refreshed and younger and very lovely. Mother smiled.
"Hand me that rattlesnake, Bell," he said. "Mr. Hart just supplemented our rations. It's time for dinner."
The snake was tasty spitted over the fire and went nicely with the beans, salt beef and hardtack. By the time she was finished eating I thought Elena looked stronger. I was amazed at her powers of recovery. Her long hair gleamed in the firelight. I mopped my plate with the last of the bread and gathered up the others' to take to the river. Hart stopped me.
"Time we talked," he said.
He looked at Elena and I sat back down again and waited. Hart opened the whiskey beside him and we passed it around. Elena waved it away.
She drank some water from the canteen instead and told her story.
I knew full well that shortly after the war large parts of Mexico had become colonized by hundreds of white settlers attracted to the land, the cheap living and the notion of life as conquerors. I also knew that conquerors did not tend to be generous with the conquered. Especially the brand of soldier who'd campaigned in Mexico.
If he was regular army he'd probably already fought in the Indian wars at one time or another in the very recent past and to him a Mexican was just another half-caste Apache. Rape had been common during the wars on both sides and some men — far too many men — had developed a taste for it, for violence and a woman who'd let him do whatever he damn well felt like because she knew she needed to just to stay alive.
It was a taste they brought with them across the border into Mexico.
There was money in their pockets.
They could pay for what they wanted.
There was a market among their number growing fast as weeds in a graveyard and the Valenzuras supplied that market.
Elena, her sister Celine and the young woman whose name she never knew had tried to flee their fate there.
She had cut away their hobbles with a dull kitchen knife sharpened over time while the others slept and secreted in her skirt and they'd hidden in some scrub behind and below the hill she called Garanta del Diablo until darkness fell and then had tried their run. They got as far as the river.
"I pulled one of them off the Anglo girl and crushed his skull with a stone at the riverbank. But they'd already used the knife on her by then, on both of us. They thought it was funny that we should try to run away. A joke. So they toyed with us with their knives. I do not think they meant to kill us — we meant money to the sisters — but they were drunk and it was dark. The last I saw of my sister they were dragging her back across the river. I could not return for her unarmed but now I will. If I cannot have the horse and the rifle I will steal them somewhere else and go back and kill them until they kill me or else I will have my sister."
I don't think any of us knew what to say to that.
We just thought about it a while and passed the bottle.
"Out of curiosity, miss," Hart said finally. "How many you going up against?"
"Twelve, maybe fifteen and the three sisters. Unless there are buyers. There may very well be buyers. They began to clean us up the night before I left. In that case more. I would not know how many."
"Guards?"
"Only one. The settlement is in a canyon, hills north, south and west. They do not think they need more than one on the eastern side and a sentry on each hill. Though the guard from the night before last will still have a very bad headache, I think."
"Who are these buyers, exactly?" Mother asked.
"Brothel owners mostly. But also private clients, who are worse. The buyers don't matter. The one I kill first is Paddy Ryan."
"You mentioned that gentleman before, ma'am. Nasty sonovabitch with a letter D branded on his cheek, am I right?"
She nodded. Mother turned to me.
"Only thing in this godforsaken territory bigger and meaner than me. Hell, you probably wrote about him, Bell, and don't remember. Ryan was at Churubusco, one of those saintly Irish Catholic bastards from the San Patricio Battalion who went over to the Mex side. Damn near stopped old Scott in his tracks, too. And one of just seven who lived to tell about it. That D is for deserter, ma'am."
"I do remember him now. 'Course I do. At the court-martial not one soul would speak up against him."
"Would you? How could you be sure they'd hang him for you?"
I also remembered being told just a while ago that Hart had lost a brother at Churubusco. As Mother said, the deserters nearly turned the tide there. I wondered how he felt about that. Looking at him you couldn't say.
"So Ryan's pimping now," he said. "Found his god at last."
"I think he has many gods now," said Elena. "Not just money."
"How's that?"
"The sisters...they worship the Old Ones. Ryan does too, in his way."
"And who would these Old Ones be?"
"The old gods of Mexico. Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. Tezcatlipoca, god of the moon and of the night. The sun god Huitzilopochtli. Tlazolteotl, Eater of Filth. Xipe, Lord of the Flayed. The old gods teach obedience. They teach resignation to the laws of earth and sky. Blood for bounty, blood for rain. Once the land oppressed us. Now men do. It is the same. For many of my people the Old Ones have never died. Why would they?"
In the sounds of these names I recognized the language I had heard her use last night by the fire — and felt the same chill at hearing it spoken again here. She'd told us of her father, a simple farmer. But I wondered who her mother had been and what terrible wisdom she'd imparted to her daughter.
"I told you of Ryan and the child at Garanta del Diablo. But I have seen worse."
"Like what?" said Hart.
"I have seen how my sister will die if she resists them. How she may already be dying. Because they will take their time. They always do."
We waited for more. But it wasn't forthcoming.
"Will you give me the horse and rifle?" she said.
We looked at one another across the fire.
"Mother?" Hart said. "It's your horse."
"It's your rifle," Mother said.
They nodded to her and handed her the whiskey and this time she drank.
At sunrise we watched her saddle up and ride away. Watched until she was no more than a speck on the long empty horizon.
"You sure she don't remind you of somebody?" Mother said.
Hart twirled his dice awhile longer and then turned and dumped his coffee onto the fire.
"Damn you, Mother," he said.
NINE
We caught up to her as she crested a hill overlooking the Colorado.
If she was happy to see us you'd not have known it.
We made our crossing.
We'd been lucky with the lack of rainfall of late so that there wasn't much current but Suzie and the other horses were pretty nearly swimming through the middle of it, hooves barely touching down and at times not touching down at all. On the other side we dismounted and unfastened the horse's girths and took off their saddles, allowing that they needed to get their wind back some after working so hard and I pulled my flask out of my saddlebag and passed it around and after a while we continued on.
By late mid-afternoon we'd reached a low flat ridge with sparse cover in the valley just beneath us and Elena stopped and pointed to the southwest.
"About half a mile," she said.
"All right," Hart said. "We'll head on down and wait till nightfall."
We started down slowly four abreast.
"You know where they're keeping her?" Hart said.
"Could be many places. Does it matter?"
"Unless you want to get us killed it might."
She seemed to consider that and then shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I will find her."
Hart shook
his head. She turned and studied him a moment.
"We don't get along too well, Mr. Hart. Why is that, do you think?"
"I respect what you want to do here, miss. It's family and I understand that. You're just goddamn sloppy going about it is all."
"That's not what I asked you."
"That's all you need to know about me and my being here, though."
"I don't think so."
"Look. Couple of years ago up to pretty recently I was spending a lot of time and giving a lot of thought to trying to kill you people so your people wouldn't kill me. It took some effort on my part but after a while I got real good at it. Now just because a few old men sign a piece of paper saying it's peacetime doesn't mean I all of a sudden feel all secure and happy in your company."
"I'm a woman, Mr. Hart."
"I'm well aware of that."
"You mean you saw me naked."
"That I did."
"So what did you see?"
"Nothing I haven't seen before and nothing real hard on the eyes particularly."
"You saw a Mexican. Half Indian. You saw an enemy, right?"
"Maybe."
"Of course you did. You saw someone who is not like you. Someone who does not even pray to your Christian god.
He smiled. "That much, at least, I don't hold against you."
"I didn't fight the war."
"I never said you did."
"Mother tells me that you lost a brother."
"Oh, Mother does, does he?"
He shot Mother a look that could have burned saguaro into the steaming sand. Mother caught that look and apparently found an urgent need to study the sky.
"A stepbrother, yes."
"Ask me what I lost, Hart."
"Okay. What did you lose?"
She didn't much like his tone. I didn't much blame her.
"Fine," she said. "To hell with you. It's none of your damn business."
And it was only when we finally reached the grove of sheltering junipers below that I guess she changed her mind.
"A mother," she said. "That's all, Hart. To you, a Mex woman. Dead with a baby inside of her because the only doctor for five miles around was too busy with wounded Anglo cabrones like you and Paddy Ryan at the time. You killed women, Hart. You all did. Every last one of you."