James Burke - Two for Texas

“You’re seeing yourself back in prison again. Forget it. We ain’t never going back there.”

“You was right about the whiskey. That mule must have four or five kegs slung on it.”

“In a half hour that camp is going to be like a crazy house. Out on the plains I seen them trade off everything they owned to keep the spigot open.”

“You reckon they’ll find out about Sana?”

“I doubt it. Even a drunk Indian knows what’ll happen to him if he turns against his own kind.”

“What?”

“They drive them out of the tribe. It’s like they don’t exist no more. It’s the worst thing that can happen to them. Come on, let’s lead our mounts down the other side of the hill and then cut southwest toward the Colorado. Sam Houston’s over in that country somewheres.”

Son continued to stare down the incline. Hugh pushed him in the rump with his boot.

“Let’s get moving. Stop worrying about her. She’s a smart girl. She ain’t going to get herself caught.”

“We should have taken her with us.”

“Sometimes you can’t do everything right, boy. She understands that. You ought to learn it, too. But if you really want to, you can send a ball down there in the middle of them. Then they’ll blow us into chicken guts and you won’t have these problems no more.”

“All right, let’s get out of here. You think they can cut our trail in the dark?”

“Maybe. But once we get to the hill country they ain’t going to have no trail to follow. The best tracker I ever knowed couldn’t follow deer sign through them rocks and hollows. Some of them stretches down by the Colorado ain’t got enough dirt for a lizard to dig a hole and fart in.”

They led their horses off the back side of the hill in the dark, and when they reached the tall buffalo grass in the field they mounted and rode toward the evening star that lay like a cold diamond on the horizon.

At sunrise they came out of a woods onto a large farm with rick fences bordering the fields and a smooth road that led back to a rambling house set among chinaberry and live oak trees. The blacks were already at work in the fields, clearing stumps with mules and burning them in huge trash fires. The house was painted white and had a breezeway through the center and a verandah that ran all the way around the building. In back were the barns and a dozen split-log slave cabins placed so neatly in a row that an arrow could fly the entire length of the front porches without touching a post. The blacks and mules moved about in the mist and the smoke of the trash fires like silent half-formed creatures.

“I bet we’re going to meet a white man that gets the most out of his darkies,” Hugh said.

Son felt a strange sense of discomfort when they rode their horses at a walk down the lane toward the house. It was the same feeling he’d had when he’d entered a public house for the first time in New Orleans and had been told by a slave to go around to the side door.

“I reckon that’s the overseer,” Hugh said. “Them kind sure look all alike, don’t they? One step above the niggers and about five down from any other white man.”

The overseer was a sallow man on horseback in a straw hat and wool coat with his trousers tucked inside his muddy boots. He rested a cup of coffee on the pommel of his saddle.

“Hello!” Hugh called.

The man nodded without replying.

“We need some directions and some breakfast if you got it,” Hugh said.

“We got food in the poke,” Son whispered.

“We ain’t got coffee and eggs and fatside.”

“Where you wanting to go?” the overseer said, his face a mixture of distrust and dislike.

“Well, that’s the problem. We ain’t quite sure,” Hugh said. “Can you give us breakfast? We got the money to pay for it.”

“You don’t pay no money on Mr. Reilly’s place. Ride your horses around by the back porch.”

“We thank you,” Hugh said.

“Tell him to stick his back porch up his butt hole,” Son said.

“What do you expect?” Hugh said. “You want a uniformed nigger to serve us on silver plate out on the verandah? Besides, the smokehouse is in back.”

They walked their horses through the live oaks and chinaberry trees around the side of the house. Wooden flower boxes were nailed below the shuttered windows. A terraced rose garden shored up with large rocks sloped down to a creek that was lined with willow trees and wild fern. Directly behind the back verandah was a log smokehouse, and they could smell the sides of salted pork dripping into the ash. A moment later a black man wearing a brushed coat and trousers and a shirt with a collar came out on the verandah and set a fire-blackened coffee pot and two cups on the table.

“You gentlemens set down. I’ll bring your breakfast directly, and Mr. Really will give you your directions,” he said, and disappeared through the door again.

“You ever seen a darky like that outside of New Orleans?” Son said.

“They got them like that in Natchez. They even teach them how to read and write so they can do the marketing.”

“There’s something about this place that just don’t hit my nose right.”

“You’re still remembering what them French gentlemen done to you in the courtroom,” Hugh said.

“That ain’t it. Figure it this way. Ever since we come across the Sabine we ain’t seen nobody with money like this. Any farms we run across was about forty acres of scrub land with one plow mule on it. How do you reckon this Reilly fellow keeps a hold of a place like this?”

“That is something to study on.”

“You damn right it is.”

The black man came through the door with a tray of grits, fried fatback, and scrambled eggs between his hands. Before the door could swing shut on the counter weight, he caught it with his shoulder for his owner to walk through. The white man was tall with an angular face and a beard that was squared below the jaw. He wore a shawl under his housecoat, and a large ring of keys hung from his belt. He looked as though he had been caught between undressing from the night and preparing for his day as proprietor of something very large and solid and his.

“How can I be of service to you gentlemen?” he said.

They were both surprised at his Irish accent.

“We was riding all night and didn’t feel like another cold breakfast and thought we might take advantage of your kindness,” Hugh said. “Besides, the trace petered out in them woods back there, and we got a little bit lost.”

“My overseer said you weren’t quite sure where you were going.”

“We’re headed down toward the Colorado and maybe over to the Guadalupe eventually,” Hugh said, and tore at a piece of fatback with his teeth.

“You won’t have any trouble, then. You’ll catch the trace again just west of my property, and you just stay in a southwesterly direction.”

“I figured it was kind of a dumb question to ask,” Hugh said. “But you can’t ever tell what’s waiting for you down the pike these days.”

“How’s that?” Mr. Reilly said.

“With the Mexicans and the Texians shooting at each other and a lot of crazy men waiting to rob you at every turn in the woods,” Hugh said.

“You seem well-armed enough to take care of yourself. Is that the Colt’s revolver I’ve been hearing about?”

“Yes, sir, it is. I can get off five balls with it and draw blood faster than a chicken getting pecked to death. Jack Tyler over by the Trinity give it to me. You ever heared of him?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know him,” Mr. Reilly said. “If you think you know your way now, I’ll be about my chores.”

“We was looking for somebody in particular down on the Colorado,” Hugh said.