Gabriel's Story (22 page)

Whether Dallas would have understood the man's words was doubtful, but Marshall seemed to grasp them clearly enough. He swung on the man, drew his pistol, and stopped him with the butt of it. The impact across his mouth knocked out four of his front teeth. He stumbled backward and fell flat on his back. He struggled to his feet, but Marshall hit him again with the pistol, across the forehead this time. As the man stood, dazed, Marshall swung the full force of his kick to the man's groin. He went down.

Marshall stared at him a moment. “I can't stand to hear my men talked about that way, leastways not by yourself. Dallas may be the son of a whore and a mongrel dog, but it ain't your place to say it.” He turned to the others. “Damn! Just when I was enjoying the afternoon, too. Dallas, you damn horny toad, what are you playing at? Now look what you've gotten us into. Look at this fella. Just a minute ago we were doing a little polite conversating. But you had to act a fool, and he had to go and get uppity.”

Rollins, so excited that he sprayed moisture with his words, stood before the man with his fist swinging low before his face, waiting for the slightest provocation to lash out. “Damn right, he got uppity! Mexicans are the uppitiest sons of bitches next to niggers! But now look at him.”

The man's eyes rolled. He tried to stand, even reached out toward Marshall, for support or to do him injury. Marshall slipped away from his fingers and pushed Rollins back in the same motion. All his attention was focused on the man's movements, on the gurgling sound his throat was making and the blood that poured freely from his forehead and the corners of his mouth. Dunlop walked toward the man with outstretched arms, but before he reached him, Marshall tossed his gun to his left hand and punched the man with his right. The blow snapped the man's head around and sent flying a froth of blood and spit. The man fell on his face and groveled in the dirt.

Dunlop stooped over him as if he would help but feared to touch him. Marshall looked at the Scot with revelation in his face.

“Look at him, Dunlop. The worm does turn, doesn't it?”

Shouts from Dallas redirected their attention. He had the woman on her knees, with his pistol aimed dead at her forehead. He was yelling at her, and she was trying to respond but could scarcely utter a word for his cursing. Caleb slipped behind the woman, took the knife from her, threw her down, and bound her hands and legs as he would bind a calf for branding. Dallas turned his gun on the two girls, who stood in such complete shock that they seemed to understand nothing, not even the function of the weapon aimed at them.

A moment passed in stillness, each person frozen in a posture of crime or torture, each stunned at the prospect of what the next moment might bring. The tinkling of the river played in the silence; a crow called in the distance; the horses watched the human antics with apprehension. Gabriel felt he could scarcely breathe. He stood trapped by the stretched moment in time.

It was Dallas who broke the stillness. He smiled. Whether the smile was enough to change the direction of the men's actions or whether they had shared a plan from the outset, Gabriel couldn't say. But he watched it unfold, an almost silent chain of actions that couldn't have been smoother if choreographed. Caleb dragged the woman across the ground and set her beside her husband. Marshall waved his hand toward the girls, and Rollins and Dallas took them inside. The girls walked like numb creatures to be directed, with no fight, just eyes hungering for their parents, seeing their state and then following the men's directions. Dallas broke the silence by asking if the other men figured the girls were virgins. Marshall said he figured they were. Yes, he figured they were. Then they were gone into the house.

Gabriel looked at James, and he back. They both looked at Dunlop, who pulled his eyes slowly from the man at his feet. His gaze passed over the boys and fell on the house. He stared at it with an emotion that grew as the silent seconds passed. His cheeks trembled; his jaw worked up and down as if he would speak. He mumbled something, shook his head, and stumbled forward. He moved in a trancelike state, carried forward by something beneath his conscious mind. His steps were wild and clumsy and barely kept him upright. And they were short-lived.

Caleb was up and over the picnic table and to Dunlop in a few strides. He kicked the man's feet from under him, drew his gun as he fell, and landed on top of him, his knee digging into Dunlop's back, the muzzle of his pistol pressed into his neck. Dunlop cried out, sounds that were not words, that were not even protests of pain but howls of a torment that language couldn't explain. His feet thrashed in the dirt and his fingertips gripped the earth, but Caleb held him down.

Gabriel took a step toward them, but he was stopped before he could even form a clear thought. Caleb didn't change his grip on Dunlop, but his eyes flashed a threat at the boy. Gabriel froze, and the man went to work binding Dunlop's hands. He didn't feel the need to check the power of his threat. And indeed, there was no need.

Gabriel stood immobile, James at his side, watching. Caleb tied the parents together, back to back, with efficient, silent motions. He then sat biting his fingernails, listening to the stony silence that came from the house, watching the couple and the boys with his coal-black, narrow eyes. When the men emerged from the house, they did so triumphantly, throwing about jokes and laughter, pushing one of the girls before them, the one who had shoved Dallas. She was bound at the wrists and blindfolded. There followed an argument that Gabriel caught very little of, as he was staring at the girl. She stood as still as he, head straight, chin raised, and jaw set tight. Her blouse was ripped open down the front and her skirt was crumpled and soiled. She stood until Rollins grabbed her by the wrist and led her toward the horses. She walked with a limping, pained progress, but she did not fight.

The argument, which Gabriel had missed, had been won for the moment by the baser demons of the men's nature. The whole group mounted and rode, the girl on one of her father's horses, a long-legged gelding that was strung by the halter behind Rollins. Dallas led a paint mare away in a similar fashion, loading her up with various objects that he took a fancy to. Only Caleb stayed behind. As Gabriel reached the rise on the far side of the house, he cast one last glance back. Caleb sat a few feet away from the couple, seeming from the distance like a friend sharing the afternoon. A form stepped from the house: the other girl. With that last glimpse, the land pushed its elbow in between them and the homestead was no more.

THEY CARRIED ON THROUGH THE TANGERINE HIGHLIGHTS of dusk and for several hours into the night. The group's mood sombered as the darkness deepened. Dunlop rode with his hands tied behind his back, silent, eyes distant, letting the horse tag along behind the others of its own accord. The girl was similarly bound, although blindfolded as well. Gabriel watched her from his position several horses behind, trying to read her body and gain some understanding of her thoughts. But she gave few signs to decipher. She sat on her horse with an erect back, with a balance she maintained with her legs alone, with a calm that was somehow defiant and defeated at once. The bright red handkerchief that was fastened around her eyes remained until they stopped and made camp, until they'd built up a fire and broken out the mescal stolen from the girl's home. Only when the tone of revelry had been reestablished did Rollins yank the scarf from her eyes, with the air of a magician.

The rapists toasted their deeds and talked of penetration and blood and the joy of total power as if there were no such thing as remorse, as if the louder their voices were, the less shame they felt, as if they would shout it up to God and see him blush. Rollins proposed that the girls had enjoyed it, that all women have something in them that likes it that way, that there is a little she-cat in them who may scream and fight but needs it like all the rest. He tried to get the girl to answer this claim, but she stared stonily into the air above the fire. Marshall said he figured that theory was based on some faulty logic, but Rollins stuck to it, saying he could tell she'd liked it and would soon be liking it again.

But despite their words, none of the men touched the girl that night. They grew quieter. They sat, one and all, beneath a canopy of low-hung stars. The night was so clear and the air so delicate that Gabriel found himself wishing he could breathe in the stars and so take on their light, wishing he could touch them and be pulled up toward them, away from this place and these men. Before long, Rollins slept, snoring, his head thrown back. Dallas sat out on a ridge nearby and seemed for once to wrestle with his thoughts. Marshall lay on his back and talked to himself in a low murmur. James lay on his side next to Gabriel, head clasped firmly in his hands, silent.

Gabriel watched them all, especially the girl, who sat cross-legged, bound, and still. She neither moved nor stretched nor slept, but just stared. She didn't return his gaze. He looked back at the small fire of mesquite before him. The flames were like spirits captured within the wood, beings stretching up their arms into the night and tasting the air of freedom. They made him think back to the girl's parents. What had happened to them? He tried to convince himself that Caleb had stayed behind only to make sure they were properly bound and could not give chase or run for help. That must have been it. That had to have been it, for they must not die. At least, if they lived, nothing was irrevocable yet. There was still hope. He went to sleep arguing with himself, painfully aware of how hollow his words sounded.

Late that night Gabriel awoke. His eyes first took in the stars, which looked strange to him. They had rotated their positions, the familiar ones slipping from the sky while new ones came to take their place. He thought he had woken for no reason, until he realized that somebody was standing at the edge of the firepit, not more than ten feet away from him. The fire had died down to embers, but its faint red glow and the bone-white highlights cast by the stars illuminated the shape enough to give it form. He felt his pulse quicken. A tingling surged through his body, as if his blood had just come alive with tiny bubbles.

The man was hatless, his shoulders stooped. He teetered a little, cleared his throat, and lifted a bottle. The moonlight sparkled on the glass. There followed a sound that at first Gabriel couldn't place. It was a dry rasp, a gurgle, an expulsion of air just ordered enough to resemble speech. He listened, but it wasn't until the silence after the sound that he knew what it was. Caleb had spoken. Gabriel held so still that even his breathing ceased. He waited, and the voice came again. This time, with effort, he made sense of the sound.

“I could have you all.” The man tilted the bottle again. After he'd drunk, he stood teetering once more. “All of you, right now.”

Gabriel could just make out his eyes, thin crescents in highlight, but he couldn't tell where his gaze was directed. He tried to guess but was stunned by a realization that chilled him to the core. If he could see Caleb's eyes, then . . . He slammed his eyes shut. A moment later he heard an expulsion of air, a guttural noise, and two soft grunts. It took him a second to realize that the sounds put together made laughter. The bottle fell to the ground. There was a rustling of boots on earth, and then he knew that the man had moved away a few feet and collapsed.

Gabriel listened for any sounds to follow, but there was nothing except the whisper of a high wind and the men's snores. It was only after several minutes of tense awareness that he realized he was not the only one awake. He could just make out the outline of the girl, still upright, still staring before her, eyes and ears as alert as Gabriel's.

THE MORNING BEGAN WITH ARGUMENTS. Marshall protested the kidnapping of the girl. He said he cared not a lick for her well-being and liked the taste of her himself, but he figured they'd had her already and ought to just get moving. No use slowing themselves and giving some greasers an excuse to track them. Dallas and Rollins put up a united front, calling forth all possible strands of logic, from the improbability that anybody would even come upon the farm within the next month to lessons on the biological necessity of the relief the girl could offer. They'd already seen she could ride. Hell, in a day or two they'd probably have her cooking and doing the washing for them. Dallas even suggested that they could sell her once they got to California, thus earning hard cash to boot.

But in the end, Rollins responded with action rather than words. He strode over to the girl, reached around her shoulders, and yanked open the torn front of her dress, exposing her chest. His rough hands cupped the small orbs that were her breasts, and this brought a smile to his face. He squeezed them, measured the weight of them, looked up at Marshall, and said, “Tell me you don't want these along with us.” He slid one hand down and cupped the spot between her legs. The girl twisted her head to the side and spat. She set her jaw, and that was all. “And this down here, sweet as a Georgia peach and you know it. Come on, Marshall, my yanker's been one swollen-up lonely son of a bitch for too long now. If we're going to hell, let's do it right, let's take a little pussy with us.”

Marshall looked at the man with disgust. “I guess thinking with your head don't have anything to do with your outlook, does it?” Rollins didn't feel he needed to answer. Marshall's eyes drifted over to Caleb. He exchanged a long look with the man, then sighed. “I guess she ain't got much to live for anyway . . . But if some son-of-a-bitch Mexican comes hunting her, I'll serve you both up on a platter for him. Can't stand a man who takes a little twat that seriously. Makes me wonder if your mother loved you proper.”

So decided, they broke camp and moved on, inconvenienced only briefly by Dunlop, who launched into a vitriolic tirade against the men and their actions. Marshall stripped off one of his own socks, stuffed it in the man's mouth, and bound it tight, saying, “There. Now don't eat it, Dunlop.”