Pinto Lowery (21 page)

“You're certain?”

“Ain't nobody ever certain,” Pinto said, resting his chin on his chest. “I only know to trus' what's happened before to happen again. Been folks trusted me before. I let 'em down each and every time. No more. It'd mean too much dis time.”

She intertwined her fingers with his own, and Pinto's heart skipped a beat. There was a yearning inside him just then, and he only barely fought it off.

“Might be bes' fer me to go tomorrow,” he announced. “Give me time to gather my things tonight and say my good-byes come mornin'. Time yet to run in some horses.”

He meandered on a quarter hour, but he knew Elsie wasn't listening. She just stood at his side, searching his eyes for a response to her unspoken pleas. He steeled himself against emotion, though, and after a bit she returned to the house. He walked back later, alone with his thoughts.

He announced his leaving to the children after supper that night. Truett nodded sadly. Winnie cried openly, and she wouldn't quiet until Pinto agreed to rock her on his knee.

Later, up in the loft, Ben and Brax appeared.

“You can't go,” Ben declared matter-of-factly. “Cousin Ryan's told Tru he can go north again this summer, and we'll need you here.”

“Won't even Jared be 'round to keep a watch on us,” Brax added. “We done some figurin'. Maybe if Ben and I was to go with you huntin' horses, we'd have it all finished early so you could help tend the cornplants come summer.”

“Sure,” Ben said, grinning. “We'd make a regular horse-huntin' outfit!”

“And I been practicin' my ropin' real hard, Pinto,” Brax said. “I ain't got chin whiskers and such, but I can ride. Your big black even lets me sit atop him.”

“I still got my mouth organ,” Ben pointed out. As he blew a trail song, Pinto paled. For an instant, there in the dark, it seemed as if Muley Bryant had come back from the dead.

“You all right, Pinto?” Brax asked, touching his hand to Pinto's clammy forehead. “You appear sick.”

“Can't go anywhere if you're feverish,” Ben said in an almost cheerful voice. “I'll fetch Ma.”

“I'm fine,” Pinto insisted. “Was only rememberin'. Look, boys, I appreciate yer offer. It's generous to a fault. But where I'll be headin's no place fer boys. Stay here and get some growin' done.”

“You'll come back when you get the horses caught?” Ben asked.

“Got to sell 'em, don't I?” Pinto asked. “Anyhow, I wouldn't jus' ride off and never see friends again. Not 'less somethin' come along and blew me off to Kansas or Wes' Texas, or maybe Colorado Terri dory.”

“Ma'll miss you bad,” Ben declared. “Winnie, too.”

“And you?” Pinto asked.

“I won't have no big black horse to feed,” Brax mumbled. “Nor anybody to spin stories in the loft.”

The eleven-year-old collapsed against Pinto's side. A tear cascaded down the boy's cheek and fell on Pinto's wrist.

“Be missin' you boys, too,” Pinto confessed as Ben edged closer. “But you'll do fine. Got de makin's o' good men in you.”

Ben held his mouth organ to his lips and tried to manage a melody. The lips quivered, and a sort of unharmonic sob came out.

“Can't take me to heart, you know,” Pinto whispered. “All I ever was's a bit o' wind blew through off de Llano. Be forgot in a year.”

“You're wrong, Pinto,” Ben said, rubbing his eyes dry. “Not ever forgot.”

“Not ever,” Brax echoed.

“Nor you, boys,” Pinto said, pulling them close for a moment. And knowing it would be better for all of them if it wasn't so.

He thought to leave before breakfast that next morning, but Elsie was up earlier than usual, and Ben appeared with the Winchester to insure Pinto didn't escape.

“Plan to shoot me, Ben?” Pinto cried in surprise.

“Brax asked Ma if maybe we could hole you in the foot. Not enough to cripple or anything. Just enough to keep you here. She said you were old enough to make up your own mind.”

“What do you figure?” Pinto asked as Ben relaxed his grip and let the rifle's barrel drop toward the ground.

“Don't mean you come to the right choice, just cause you're grown. Better for everybody if you was to stay.”

“Can't,” Pinto declared.

“Then I don't suppose a rifle'd hold you. 'Specially not one without any bullets in it. But you can come eat some breakfast. Fresh sausage and blueberry muffins. Mexican omelet.”

“Hurryin' me on my way, eh?”

“Stuffin' you so you won't starve 'fore May's out.”

Pinto followed Ben to the house and washed his face and hands as he'd done a hundred times before. The breakfast was as tasty as any he'd ever eaten, and he lauded Elsie's efforts.

“She had a lot o' time to work on it,” Winnie explained. “We didn't sleep much last night.”

The six of them sat silently around the table then for close to a quarter hour. Finally Pinto rose and started for the door.

“Here,” Elsie called, offering a flour sack of food.

“Don't go,” Winnie cried, clamping hold of one leg.

“We all of us want you to stay,” Truett announced. “But only if you want. Ain't any obligation owed us. And we thank you for what you done already.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed.

It was likely rehearsed, and Pinto nodded his own thanks to Elsie for easing his escape. Nevertheless, after prying Winnie's fingers loose, he felt ten eyes on his back all the way to the corral. The big black was already saddled, and all Pinto had to do was tie his belongings atop the pack horse.

“You'll visit when you pass nearby, won't you?” Elsie called.

“Lightnin' strike me dead if I don't,” Pinto answered. Then he pulled the gate open and led out the horses. In another instant he was mounted and riding west.

Pinto Lowery was three days reaching open country. Passing through the scattered towns and ranches north of the Brazos, listening to the shouts of children swimming the river or mothers announcing supper ready, he was constantly reminded of the life he had just put behind him.

“Can't run forever, boys,” Captain Maven had said the morning they'd laid down their arms at Appomattox. “Sooner or later a man's got to make his stand, fight it out, and go home again.”

The words had rung hollow for what was left of the Marshall Guards. Home was a place left a thousand and a half miles behind. Who knew if the town still stood? And if it did, what man among them who'd left as a fuzz-cheeked child could return, scarred and bitter, to what he'd known before?

Once Pinto had delighted in the windswept plain and rock-studded hills of western Texas. Now the country was filling up with people, cows, and towns. He found few signs of mustangs, and when he did run down a pair of horses, they proved to be wearing Hood County brands.

“Comanche-stolen mos' likely,” Pinto grumbled. He left the animals in Palo Pinto in hopes their owner might fetch them.

“Might be they'd pay a reward,” Krug Mannion, the liveryman, explained.

“If they offer one, get 'em do send it to Elsie Oakes out in Defiance.”

“Family?” Mannion asked. “Didn't know you to have none.”

“Jus' tell 'em, won't you?” Pinto replied sharply.

“No skin off my chin either way, Lowery. Man comes to need family now and again, though,” Mannion added. Reading Pinto's frown, the liveryman added, “Only makin' conversation.”

“Didn't come lookin' fer any o' that,” Pinto barked. “Be on my way now.”

He rode off slowly, knowing Mannion was sure to laugh at the notion that a vagabond mustanger like Pinto Lowery should ever find a home. Yes, it was crazed idea. And yet Pinto saw Elsie and the children in every shadow, every dream. No matter how far he rode, he couldn't manage to shake the memory of that final farewell.

It was near the middle of April when Pinto finally came across mustangs. By then he was way up north of Buffalo Springs, near where the Little Wichita emptied into the Red River. Across to the north the Chickasaw traders always had horses to swap, and if worst came to worst, Pinto supposed he might pick up a few raw ponies and break them into proper trail mounts before turning south to Wise County.

“Maybe little ole Brax can even take a crack at one,” Pinto said, laughing as he envisioned the boy, yellow hair flying in all directions, battling to stay atop of a Chickasaw pony.

The white-faced stallion snorted and stomped as its rider lost his sense of direction.

“Can't help it, boy,” Pinto told the horse. “Ain't no escapin' their faces, it seems.”

Of course, the stallion wasn't the least interested in Pinto's day-dreams. The big horse had sniffed out its fellow creatures, and it now bolted across the low hills with rare abandon. Pinto gave a backward glance at his packhorse and held on tightly as he was jolted and jarred. He knew it was best to give the horse its head. After all, if there were mustangs close by, the black would run them down.

As it happened, the stallion raced into the midst of a small herd. Pinto counted twenty or thirty, and there were more besides. At first the animals shied away, but weeks in the open had wrung most of the human scent out of Pinto, and the lathered black was fast at work befriending mares.

“Don't know whether you'll bring 'em along or dey'll have you ridin' off,” Pinto declared as he pulled the stallion away. “Time we made some plans.”

Pinto's withdrawal was timely, for a buckskin stallion came running over moments later, snorting at the intruder that dared approach his harem.

“Not now, boy,” Pinto said as he fought to hold the big black in check. “I'll be wantin' more'n a bloody horse fer my trouble.”

And so, after retrieving the wandering packhorse from the grassland to the south, Pinto set about making plans. For the first time in days he was his old self, jabbering away about mustangs and searching out a hollow to serve as the jaws of a horse trap. He wasn't lucky enough to find the sort of box canyon that had served so well on the Brazos, but he did locate a steep ravine. In three days of sweat and agony Pinto erected fences walling off a thirty foot stretch on both ends. He slid the rails aside on the west end and double-lashed the ones on the east side. Finally he climbed atop the black stallion and set out to capture the buckskin's harem.

Pinto knew from the first he would never capture the whole batch. For one thing, the buckskin wasn't half as dominant as the black had been. A dozen other stallions ran with the herd, and many of them clearly had a mare or two to themselves.

“Be lucky to come up with three dozen,” Pinto told himself. Or two. But even ten good saddle horses would turn a handsome profit. And in the back of his mind crept the notion to save the best three mares and do a bit of breeding.

“You'd cooperate, wouldn't you, boy?” Pinto asked the stallion. The big horse snorted its response, and Pinto urged the animal into a gallop. In less than an hour's riding, horse and rider were closing in on the mustangs from the northwest.

“Yah!” Pinto hollered as he waved a blanket and set the horses running. “Yah!”

Instantly the mustangs took flight. As feared, a stallion here and there broke away with a mare or two. But many of the mares nursed colts or fillies, and they wouldn't abandon a young one, not even for the lure of freedom.

Pinto concentrated on the buckskin. The black closed on its rival with rare fury, and Pinto threw a rope over the tan horse and led it along. That buckskin, lathered and fiery-eyed, chortled and fumed as it ran along, held captive by Pinto's braided lariat.

Running at full gallop, the stampeding horses covered the distance to the ravine in a third of the time it had taken Pinto to ride north earlier that morning. As the bare fenceposts loomed close, Pinto released his grip on the lariat and left the buckskin to shoot ahead. Now trapped by the press of other horses, the stallion was forced past the makeshift corral along with those that hadn't split off from the harem. When the last colt galloped past, Pinto leaped to the ground and hurried to slide the rails into place. He was securing the final two when the buckskin, seeing the eastern edge of the ravine barred, turned to challenge the west end.

“No, yer a hair too late,” Pinto called to the frustrated horse. “Jus' as well. Bet you'd ended up Chickasaw trade goods or else table meat come winter. I won't work de spirit out o' you, nor use a geldin' knife.”

Pinto sat atop the rail fence the rest of that morning, mentally noting each horse in turn. He counted five stallions besides the buckskin. Three of them were full grown and sure to make good cow ponies. Two were barely more than yearlings and would want some growing. Of the sixteen mares, four were smart-looking and sure to breed fine ponies. Three of the others were branded, and Pinto cursed that for bad luck. He'd have a time managing more than ten mounts for Ryan Richardson and J. B. Dotham. Of the remainder, eight were colts and six were fillies. Near half the animals, in other words, would want rearing.

“Fine beginnin' fer a breeder,” Pinto noted, “but not any too promisin' for a trader.”

Maybe it was fate's way of edging Pinto Lowery toward a settled life. Or the big black's revenge for breaking him to saddle. Whatever, Pinto set to work gentling the stallions and working the edge off the mares. He didn't bother with the younger horses. Once their mamas were pliable, they wouldn't run, and the littler mustangs would make no break on their own.

The same day Pinto managed to stay atop the buckskin and race the animal three times around the corral, he shot a goose and turned the big bird on a spit. He was in rare good humor, and he passed the cooking time whistling old camp tunes and watching the big black frolic with the mares.

Suddenly the wind died away, leaving an unearthly quiet to haunt the hillside.