The Last Ride

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 (#ulink_85b054f2-9300-5c4e-b8bf-c5f9fe9e4ff9)

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.