These Is My Words (40 page)

Next I tried talking to him in Mexican, and he perked right up. He made his horse walk slow around us, and was near Melissa and April when he stopped, blocking Rose from moving. He said something in Mexican but I couldn’t hear. He had hair black as a gun barrel and straight. He had a half empty bandolier over one shoulder, and a shotgun in a saddle holster, plus two pistols stuck in his belt without holsters. One of his hands was resting on the butt of one of the pistols, and he was tapping it with his fingers. After a long time of looking at us all, the man lifted off his hat and let it hang on his back, and he grinned real big and said, Ola, señorita.

Then he began to tell me I was real pretty and that Melissa was a fine young girl, and that he was interested in finding a young wife like her. He wanted to know did Melissa know how to cook. Harland was bristling like a porcupine, but I told him to keep still. By that time, we could all tell he wasn’t a real Mexican and was talking with an accent, because we’d been talking it since we were young. Melissa sat stiff as a poker, and April started to whimper and put her hands over her eyes.

It’s all right, honey, I said to April.

Harland said, No, she can’t cook a lick. And besides she’s my girl and we’re going to get married.

I suppose he thought that would turn the man’s mind away, but I don’t think Harland knew just what the fellow was really after. The man quit smiling and looked at us like he was sizing us up again, then just like lightning he pulled a pistol and held it right to Harland’s head. He said in English, She is not engaged any more, my friend. You see, it’s so sad, poor el novio is dead, and he pulled back the trigger until it clicked.

He was watching Harland and didn’t see me reach for my rifle and put my right hand in my pocket. I shot the pistol right through my apron. All the children around me squealed and immediately began to cry. The man doubled over and aimed his pistol at me, so I shot again and he fell off his horse. The horse shied and bucked around, but that fellow must have been strung with barb wire because he managed to drag himself up into the saddle again. As he rode away I kept my rifle aimed at the middle of his back.

Then he headed north down the road. If he had only kept on going he would have been all right. But the man stopped, dead center in the road, as Harland and Melissa were settling the little ones and getting our breath. Over the sight of my barrel I saw him turn and raise one hand like he was waving, but when I blinked and saw the sun flicker off metal in his hand, I pulled the trigger. I saw the pistol fly from his hand just before his horse took off through the cholla with him barely alive, hanging on with his arms around the horse’s neck.

Clover started hollering Whoohoo! Shoot ’em, Auntie Sarah! Then Charlie started crying at the top of his lungs. We were a sober bunch by the time we got to town, and went straight to the Marshal’s office to tell him what happened. After all the times I have driven to Tucson alone, to meet someone with bad intentions on the day I had a wagon load of children to look after just set me back on my heels. If we weren’t so close to town, I would have turned back and taken Clover home.

I didn’t quite know what to make of his reaction, because he acted like the whole thing was a kind of excitement. He asked me if he could shoot the gun, too. I thought for a while, and then asked him to sit beside me on the wagon seat, and we talked about how dangerous it was to hold a gun, and how bad I felt for shooting that man. He is a little fellow, but I think he began to understand that what happened was not playing. My little April just stared with wide eyes while I talked. I’m fairly certain she understood without being told, and the poor child looked terrified for the last hour of our trip. She is not even four years old, but has grown up knowing some rugged times.

That night after supper, Melissa hugged and kissed me, and we talked about it all again as we bathed the little ones and put them to bed. She was still a bit shaken up, and was afraid of having nightmares later on. Jack came home about nine o’clock, and when I told him what happened, he was upset and went right away to talk to the Marshal. He found out that a man with long black hair, riding a sorrel, had come into town and the doctor took three bullets out of him before he died.

They looked, Jack said, like a familiar caliber.

Well, I said, he was tough as an old boot. And he was going to kill Harland and take Melissa away, as if I wouldn’t fight back.

He must not have been from around here, Jack said, or he’d have known better.

June 1, 1887

The Marshal came to our house this morning and asked me about the fellow on the road. Then he asked Melissa and Harland to tell him what happened, too, the same story three times. Then he nodded and said it sounded like a case of self defense, which also covers defending your loved ones. Well, Jack got mad and asked him right out what call did he have for questioning my word.

I was shaking in my chair, and holding tight to a coffee cup so my hands wouldn’t shake. I looked into my lap and hoped he wouldn’t notice the hole in my apron pocket that I washed but hadn’t patched yet.

The Marshal said that during the night someone dragged that man’s body out of the doctor’s surgery room and laid him up on a board by Dunbaker’s Cantina with a note pinned on his shirt reading, “Murdered on the road to Tucson.” Must have been that he had some friends in town, he said.

I looked at Jack. He looked back at me.

Well, the Marshal said, all I’m saying is this is a harsh place to raise a family, and Ma’am, I’d keep that pistol handy and watch your back, even inside the fort.

July 14, 1887

Harland is taking his test today. He was so nervous he didn’t sleep at all last night. I helped him study every day that he’s been here, and he said he wished it was me taking the test for him, and that I’d do a better job.

I have always wondered about those tests and the gumption it takes to pass one. If I didn’t have these little ones to watch, I’d sure be in there trying. So while he was writing, I happened to say that to Mrs. Fish, and she just smiled and said, I’ll order one for you and you can take it, too. I tried and tried to tell her that I’m not ready and I’d never pass, but she said, You’ll never know if you don’t try.

As I wait here for Harland to come home, it keeps running through my mind what Mrs. Fish has done. She has gone and written the United States Board of Normal Education that I have learned enough to pass a twelfth grade advancement. I begged her not to aim so high, and she said Nonsense, nonsense. I told her I was a wife and mother and she said, Does that make you stupid?

I’ll never have time to study with this houseful. My test will come in two or three weeks. Oh, blessed heavens, what have I gotten into?

July 17, 1887

They are building a university, it says in the
Citizen
. I am not sure why they need one here, as there are probably not even thirty young people in this town interested in going to it. But, the government has given the money and some ranchers have given the land, and it is in full swing. Education is a hard enough thing to come by in the Territories. The thirteenth Territorial Legislature, a pit of two headed rattlesnakes if there ever was one, had voted awhile back to allot money for the building of a University right here in Tucson. Of course, they only did it to atone for the shenanigans they pulled with all the illegal pay raises and complementary gratuities they voted in for themselves, but in the end it will be the children here who will benefit. In the calm of a morning you can hear the hammers going and men shouting orders to each other. After the bugle blows, though, all I can hear are the sounds of the fort and my children. I am glad that I speak some Mexican, because many of the other women here do not know much English.

I suppose it is known around town that I killed that bandito. Some folks are suddenly much more friendly with my family and seem downright glad to invite us in, and others turn up their noses and shy away. Mrs. Larcena Page said she’d trust me with her own grandchildren, and know they’d be safe. Well, I’d like to see the woman that wouldn’t defend her kin any way possible, and see what she’s made of. Anyone who hasn’t got some backbone has no business trying to live in the Territories.

My two children run me ragged some days, but this afternoon I am taking them in the buggy and we are going to drive over to that university land outside of town, and have a look. I am going to tell them both that they will go to that new school house when they are bigger, and get ready. Every time I think of that test coming for me from the Board of Education, my heart jumps up and down like beans on a hot stove.

Harland and Melissa and little Clover will head back to the ranch in a couple of days. He will have to wait a long spell for his grade. But he felt confident he knew everything. I’m proud of my little brother, and I wish Ernest could be here to see how tall Harland is. When we get his score, I’ll write Ernest about it. I have yet to open that history book that Jack gave me on my last birthday, so tonight while I stirred gravy and mashed potatoes, I propped it open on the table and began to read a paragraph at a time.

August 1, 1887

The children and I were out at the clothesline this morning, and while I hung sheets they were playing peekaboo under them, squealing merrily each time they popped out from under a damp white sheet flapping over their heads. I chased them and surprised them by being behind first this one then that. This kind of silly fun pleases me and we were all winded and giggling, when a man walked up to me sort of sheepish with his hat in his hands.

Señora, he says, I have a message for you. He startled me good, and I collared my little ones and held them behind me. The man scuffed at the dirt with one foot, and then saw that the dust flew up towards my wash and said, I’m sorry, your clothes will be dirty again.

It was an accident, I said. What message? Who from?

From me, Señora, he said, and then put his chin down against his chest so hard I could barely make out what he was saying. The message, lady, is that I am not going to kill you.

Run to the house children, run fast and hide, I said.

No, Señora, there is no danger. I was real mad my brother Jaime was dead, and I swore to many people I would kill the hombre who did this thing. I found out it was you and I was going to avenge his blood with the life of the murderer. But you see I was real mad, and I had some liquor and he was my brother.

I watched him close and didn’t answer. He was looking as sad as anyone ever looked.

The man went on, After a while I buried him and then the Marshal tells me that the niños tell the story of my brother trying to steal the señorita. I know I made a vow to the Virgin to avenge my brother’s murder, but, lady, he was not a good man. I loved my brother but he did some things that were not right. So I came to tell you myself, I’m not going to kill you. I would have done the same thing to save my little Alejandra.

Well, I said, you can’t help what your brother was like. With a brother like you, he probably had some good in him somewhere, I heard myself say.

I don’t think so, he said. Jaime did a lot of bad things. He rode with some Apaches brutos, real bad ones, and did many things that broke our mother’s heart. Buenos dias, Señora.

The fellow walked away, his hat still in one hand, and while he walked he rubbed the back of his head with the other hand. I took up my wash basket and held it to me, feeling the cool of the wet things, shaking all over. Lands, I had put that day out of my mind so much, that if he hadn’t had second thoughts, it would have been an easy thing for him to kill me. I hurried inside to my children and found them quarreling over a toy pull cart, and I kissed and squeezed them and they were so startled they forgot their argument and went back to playing.

August 4, 1887

The hottest day of all time is the day I took my twelfth grade test. My hand is so sore from writing for five straight hours that I can hardly bear to write this journal. I did arithmetic and mathematics in the first two hours, and then history, and wrote an essay on “The Framing of the Constitution,” and another one on the issue of States’ Rights in regards to setting the groundwork for the Civil War, and then I had to answer some things about literature and grammar, translate some Latin paragraphs, and there was a long question about a book I have never heard of called The Iliad. Then a huge spelling test. Plenty of things I studied there were no questions about at all, and I asked Mrs. Fish if I couldn’t just answer another question, instead of the one I didn’t know.

It’s all done now. It will be three or four months before I get my test back. The United States Board of Normal Education will have written down—someplace in the Government Capitol Building for the whole world to see—that Sarah Elliot has failed. They will write to me about each question I failed. I have not even told Mama I took this test, only Jack and Mrs. Fish know about it.

Taking a school test is a new way to be afraid, and takes the knees right out from under you. If I’m riding a horse and get thrown, it’s just a matter of getting back on. And if I’m fighting for my life, there’s only living and dying to choose from. But taking that test, that’s like showing other people the inside of your thoughts, and just waiting for them to say, wrong, wrong, wrong, and you can have a thought that seems right but since you never went to school, maybe it isn’t. It’s over now, and I will just have to forget about it. I wish I’d never even gone this morning.

September 3, 1887

I have felt troubled ever since I pulled that fool stunt and took that school test. This morning I not only felt troubled but sick to boot. At first I thought I got a bad egg for breakfast, but, as I was sitting with Sterling Foster, one of my ranch hands, going over the cost of winter feed, it dawned on me to count back days. As soon as he left, I counted twice, using my fingers the third time.

Pregnant again. I am fit to be tied. This is not what I wanted now, not at all. Jack and I had agreed we’d wait a while longer. This is pure accident and just the dreariest news ever. I’m just not ready for another round of nursing and diapers and all night crying jags. I sat in my rocking chair and fretted and felt sorry for myself until I wanted to laugh. This happens when we’re trying not to have children. Whatever would it be like if we weren’t being careful? And Charlie will still be in diapers when this one comes. The only good thing is that I’ll have Juana to help.