James Burke - Two for Texas

“That don’t change nothing. I still want a piece of that Mexican.”

“I don’t like to tell you things all the time, but what you let get done to yourself out here saved us from going back to the pen. If it had been me when I was your age, I would have cut that fellow from his belly button right up to his throat. And that’s how I spent all the years I did in Frenchy jails. It ain’t good to look back sometimes and figure how many years you lost because you didn’t know how to stick a hot iron in water.”

“Hugh, if you ain’t slick as wheel grease.”

“I think you’re starting to learn something. In fact, that’s about the smartest thing you ever said. I’m right proud of you.”

It began to rain softly that night, and inside the tepee they cooked a stew of the raccoons Hugh had killed and ate it from the clay bowls with their fingers. A few rain drops fell through the chimney and hissed on the hot stones around the fire, and Son could hear the wind beginning to blow more strongly in the pines. He lay under a buffalo robe with his head on a blanket and listened to Hugh’s outrageous stories while the woman slept on the opposite side of the fire.

“I don’t give a damn if you believe me or not,” Hugh said. “I knowed Dan’l Boone. Me and my daddy met him at a place called Bean’s Station in Tennessee when he was an old man.”

“What kind of work did your daddy do?”

“He was good at doing things wrong. It was a talent with him. He was so good at it that people would find out how he done something and then turn it around when they done it themselves. He dug water wells on high ground, planted his seed just before a storm, built the smokehouse next to the bedroom, hired a drunkard to run his still, penned his hogs in a hollow that flooded each year, put lye-water on infected warts, and set fire to his own beard every time he lit his pipe.”

Son felt his face begin to glow with sleep and the warmth of the fire, then he heard Hugh’s voice faintly above the rain and the wind in the trees. In a bright corner of his mind he saw the pine logs flare briefly and crumble into ash.

He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when he heard the tepee flap open and felt a spray of rain across his face. Iron Jacket stooped his head as he came inside, and behind him a streak of lightning jumped across the black sky. His wet hair was unbraided, and he wore a Mexican enlisted man’s coat with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders.

“Close the flap, Iron Jacket,” Hugh said. “I ain’t fond of sleeping in the mud.”

“The old man comes,” the Indian said.

“What is it?” Hugh said.

“Come to tepee.”

“Are them Mexicans back?”

“You talk with me.”

“Just say what it is. I ain’t going out in that rain.”

The Indian looked at him with his flat hazel eyes.

“No more talk here,” he said.

“You’re right, Son,” Hugh said, as he put on his boots. “There’s crazy people everywhere these days.”

Son tied the flap to the lodge pole again after Hugh and Iron Jacket stepped out into the rain. The shallow red ditch around the edge of the tepee was almost filled with water. He looked across the dead fire and saw the woman’s outline move under the blankets.

“What’s that about?” he said.

She didn’t answer, and he picked up a small pine cone and threw it in her direction.

“Don’t let on like you’re asleep,” he said. “You people can hear a frog hop while you’re sleeping.”

“The Mexicans shamed Iron Jacket in front of the village.”

“I don’t know how you can shame an old thief like that. It sure didn’t bother him none when he pointed us out to that lieutenant.”

“He’s leader of the Choctaws because he always has food and clothes for the people. With no horses to sell back to the Americans, we will have no food when the brown moon is finished.”

“What do you mean you won’t have no food? These woods is full of deer and everything else.”

“The Choctaws are not real hunters. They fish — back across the river where the Americans come from. The Mexicans make Iron Jacket a warrior in front of the village because he steals for them. They give him the buffalo robes they trade from the white hunters. Now the Choctaws will have nothing.”

“You still ain’t answered my question. What’s that old sonofabitch got in mind for Hugh and me?”

“Bad.”

“You’re a regular blabber mouth, ain’t you? What’s he going to do? Tell the Mexicans I caught a ball in my side?”

“He wears the iron shirt to make the people believe he’s a warrior. But he sends others to fight and steal for him.”

Hugh unfastened the thong on the tepee flap and stooped inside with a muddy blanket over his head. Water dripped out of the tangle of hair over his eyes.

“Get that fire started again. You won’t believe what that dumb bastard wants to do,” he said.

“He wants to get even with a bunch of Mexicans tonight.” Son picked up a handful of dry pine needles and rotted twigs and placed them on top of the flat cook-stone in the center of the fire pit. He begun striking two pieces of flint into the edge of the needles.

“How did you know that?”

“I just guessed. In fact, let me guess a little more. He wants to burn their stockade down, but he’d like us to do it.”

“He ain’t that dumb, and I ain’t, either. I didn’t know it, but that lieutenant really stuck a bayonet up his ass out there today. The only reason these Choctaws follow Iron Jacket around is because nobody ever goes hungry or gets cold while he’s taking care of them with the Mexicans. But right now he ain’t worth a wad of spit with his people.”

Son watched the pine needles catch slowly, and he fanned the sparks into the kindling.

“So what are we going to do?” he said.

“He wants to steal all them horses back tonight, and any others they got, besides.”

“And you said we’d go.”

“Damn right, I did. He’s going to raid their herd, anyway, and when he gets done we better not be around here.”

“I don’t want to offer no problem, but what are we going to ride?”

“You can’t wait to start asking questions, can you? Like I’m some old fool that don’t know how to take a squat by himself. He’s got six horses hid out in the trees that he was going to sell to the Texians on his own. The Mexicans keep all their herd in a meadow about two miles south of their stockade, and they don’t leave more than three or four pickets on guard at night. When we hit the herd, his people are going to fold up everything and head for the Brazos. They figure they can’t do no worse there than what that lieutenant’s been doing to them around here.”

The fire flared and lighted the inside of the tepee. Son could see the dark spots of rain on the stitched deer skins.

“What do we get out of it besides a couple of mounts?” he said.

“I told him I wanted at least eight head. We can run them between us without no trouble, and we’ll sell them off to a trader I know the other side of the Trinity. What do you think?”

“It’s not as good as raising that lieutenant’s belly button a few inches, but it’ll have to do.”

“All right, that’s it, then. We’re going to see Jim Bowie, and we’ll have some hard dollars in our pocket when we do.”

The woman hit Hugh on his sleeve with her fingertips. The firelight wavered on her face.

“I go with you,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” Son said.

“I don’t belong to Iron Jacket’s women again.”

The pine cones snapped in the fire pit, and Hugh looked steadily at Son.

“It’s going to be tough for her if she has to go back with them fat squaws again,” Hugh said.