The Last Ride

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.