One Step Over the Border (8 page)

“We got four steers, three cows, two calves, and that young brown-and-white bull that’s been followin’ behind us for a couple
miles. They all have one of those brands on it. Sounds right to me.”

“The bull hasn’t come close enough for us to read the brand, so I think we can let him trail along for a while.”

“Laramie, did you ever wish you got married when you were younger?”

“Geez, where did that come from?”

“You mentioned the bull… that reminded me of Grey-bull, Wyoming… and Juanita. She had a kid. What was his name?”

“Philippe.”

“How old would he be now?”

“Eleven, twelve, I guess.”

“He must be playin’ Little League. You or me could be sittin’ in the stands at a Little League game in Rock Springs yellin’
for our boy when he came up with two outs and the bases loaded in the ninth inning.”

“I think they only play seven innings in Little League.”

“Make ’em throw you a strike, Philippe!” Hap hollered.

Laramie stared at his partner. “You had too much sun?”

“I guess I was ponderin’ how much of my life I’ve wasted on this Juanita thing. I’m goin’ to be in my forties before I ever
watch my kid’s Little League game.”

“Is this going anywhere?” Laramie demanded.

“Don’t you ever think about things like that?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to have kids?”

“I don’t think so. Are we going to round up some cows or just talk all day?”

Hap watched Laramie ride north. It wasn’t the first time his partner had iced up over the subject of family. He reckoned if
he hung around long enough, Laramie would open up on the issue. But not today. Hap turned Luke south and trotted him to the
edges of the trail.

When the tracks swung north of a brush-filled ravine, Laramie signaled Hap to shouting distance. “We got a cow down there.
She’s dropping smaller and smaller sign. It hasn’t crusted over yet.”

“Ain’t this a wonderful business?” Hap shouted back. “We get to spend our day studyin’ cow manure.”

“And to think, my mamma wanted me to be a lawyer,” Laramie called back.

“From what I can tell, this ain’t all that much different.”

“One of us ought to push the bunch up around to the head of this ravine. The other can plow the brush and try to jump it out.”

Hap stood in the stirrups to survey the rugged tangle of brush and rocks. “I reckon I know who will do what.”

“You got the best cow pony, even if he is wearing one boot. Tully won’t cut brush unless he sees your horse do it first.”

“Luke’s so smart, maybe I could just send him down by himself.”

“Holler up, if you need help.”

“Yeah. I’ll just call you on your cell phone.”

“You laughed at me when I suggested we get cell phones,” Laramie said.

“It’s sorta like trainin’ wheels on a bicycle. If you know what you’re doin’, you don’t need ’em.” Hap turned Luke to the
right and laid just enough spur to switch gaits. There was a gradual slope to the descent, but the trail choked down quick
until the dead brush combed hair furrows in the black gelding’s shoulders.

Brindle clumps of cow hair clung to fresh-broken brush as Hap picked his way through the ravine. “Lukey, we got one down here
somewhere. But I’m not sure we can flush her out. I can’t see more than three feet in this tangle.”

The further he descended, the taller the brush. By the time he reached dry sand at the bottom, the sun was blocked. He rode
in the shadows with no air movement. Steam rose off the ground like cold water poured on a hot rock.

Luke’s ears twitched as he stared at the north wall. Back in the brush, Hap spied a cow bedded down.

“Hey-yah!” he yelled. The cow raised her rear legs, then her tail. She relieved herself, then trotted farther up the gully.

Hap studied where the cow had lain and noticed a small cave carved into the limestone cliff. Dead brush formed a tunnel too
short for Hap to ride, so he dismounted to investigate what looked like ribbons and flowers perched at the cave’s mouth.

He tied his horse to a mesquite limb and crawled on his hands and knees, avoiding the pile just dropped by the cow. “It looks
like a shrine or a marker, boy,” he called out as if Luke had an opinion on the matter.

When he reached the opening, he deliberated on each object. At the front, three green glass jars held the remnants of once-alive
flowers. Dry, brown petals carpeted the floor in front of the jars. An ornate plastic cross was wedged into the limestone
with a battered and crucified plastic Jesus attached. At the back of the cave, a dust-covered picture frame of turquoised
copper filigree rested like a silent witness to a sad, haunting story.

He plucked up the framed picture and held it out in the variegated light of the brushy ravine. He blew on the glass. Dust
fogged his eyes and mouth. He coughed and squinted as he wiped the glass with the elbow of his black shirt.

The words engraved in the brass plate:
Nuestra Miranda
.

“Darlin’, I don’t know your story, but you were way too young to die down here.”

A brown-faced girl with black hair in a starched white dress smiled at him. On the back of the picture was written,
Niña bonita de Rufugio Álvarez Estrada y Francisca Dominga Estrada
.

Hap yanked out his red bandanna, wiped the photograph clean, then did the same for the vases. He pulled off his hat, wondering
why a child’s shrine would be hidden in such a lonely place.

“Well, darlin’, I wish I had a flower to stick back in them vases. They look abandoned. But you got to understand, with this
dry wind a real flower don’t last more than a few days.”

He tugged off his turquoise and black horsehair hatband, then laced it around the photograph like a necklace for the little
girl.

He swatted a buzzing horsefly, then wiped his eye.

He couldn’t figure why he would become melancholy over a stranger or tear up like his mamma watching her soap opera on television.

He crawled back to where the brush thinned enough to stand. He remounted and plodded west, until he sighted the cow’s rump.

“There she is, Lukey. Let’s run her at the brush at the end of the barranca. She can open it up and we’ll ride through without
losin’ any more blood.”

As the trail ascended, the ravine walls tapered off on both sides, and he sensed they would soon be back up on the prairie.
“Don’t give her time to even think about turnin’ around,” he coaxed his black horse.

The dense undergrowth at the top of the grade grew no higher than a three-rail fence. He spied Laramie, sprawled with his
hand back on Tully’s rump, waiting for him to exit.

Hap spurred his black gelding to a gallop. The trail widened and the panicked cow stampeded straight ahead. But the cow spun
left at the last moment and stumbled to a stop just short of the brush wall.

Without any knee commands, Luke dodged after the cow with just a quick turn, leaving only an unsaddled Hap to charge the brush.
Propelled over the horse’s neck, he dropped the reins and felt his hat tumble off as he flew through the four-foot brush wall
at the end of the ravine.

His right hand slapped a prickly pear cactus as he tried to stop the tumble. When he reeled to his feet, shaking his thorn-pricked
hand, Laramie leaned over and drawled, “Say, mister, you didn’t happen to see a horseback Wyoming cowboy pushing a cow out
of that barranca, did you?”

The shorthorn brindle cow blundered around the end of the brush and trotted over to the other cows, while Luke snorted out
of the ravine and refused to look at Hap.

“Glad to see your horse knows what he’s doing,” Laramie hooted.

Hap yanked a cactus needle from his hand. “If he knew anything at all, he would have fetched my dadgum hat.”

* * *

The red sun poised above the western horizon suspended for a last wink at the world before it plunged into night. Laramie
and Hap drove the little herd into a brush corral. While Laramie tended the horses, Hap built a trench fire and warmed up
a big can of beans and fried processed meat they had found in the larder.

The second coffee can contained Girl Scout thin mint cookies and a swarm of tiny white bugs. “I think we’ll pass on the cookies,
but we might read the 1994 September issue of
Western Horseman
.”

“Hap, do you get the feeling all this food is left over from Y2K or something? I don’t think we’ve ever worked for this cheap
of an outfit.”

“Yeah, the powdered milk came straight from government surplus. It says so on the box. If these meals get any worse, we can
just eat mud pies and save time.”

The boiled coffee was thin, but plenty hot. They didn’t talk much until they had scraped their tin plates clean. Hap waited
for the perfect moment, when the tin cup coffee was drinkable, but not cold. “I’m glad we only signed on for two weeks. I
got ripped up in the cantina and torn up flying out of the barranca—at this rate, I won’t have a square inch of skin left
in two weeks.”

Laramie plopped on the dirt and eased back against his saddle. “I can’t even remember what a soft chair feels like. So, you
found a grave at the bottom of the ravine?”

“Not a grave, a shrine. A purdy young girl. Such a shame. She’s got a grievin’ mamma and daddy someplace.”

“Some things are just too sad to ponder.” Laramie tapped his pocketknife on the rectangular tin container. “You want that
last bite of canned meat?”

“I didn’t want the first bite of canned meat. I’m hopin’ the grub gets better.”

Laramie snorted. “If we had that cell phone, we could call out for Chinese.”

“It’s hard to tell ’em where to deliver, when we don’t know where we are.”

Laramie sat up. “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s turn these bovines in to Greene tomorrow, draw our pay, and head on down the road.
Too many strange things, Hap. And he didn’t fill those larders. That food is old.”

“You know I ain’t never quit a job.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Laramie sighed. “Neither have I, but there’s been a few of them I never should have taken in the first
place.”

For the next three days, neither the work nor the menu changed.

On the third evening, Hap made his stand. “I ain’t eatin’ that stuff again. Do you remember that cook at the Circle YP? What
was his name?”

“Elmo Polly.”

“Yeah, you, me, Blackie, and Thumper went out with the wagon and had to eat his cookin’ for twenty-one days. I lost eighteen
pounds.”

Laramie stabbed a canned peach and sucked it into his mouth like a raw oyster. Truck headlights bounced down the dirt road
toward them. “Here comes Greene. Looks like you can complain to the boss.”

“I was hopin’ it was a pizza delivery guy.”

E. A. Greene glanced at the cattle milling in the brush corral. “I knew you boys could do it. I’m a fine judge of cowboy skills.
You’re as good a hand as your uncle Jake.”

“It’s my uncle Mike that knows you,” Hap corrected. “And he’s an accountant, not a cowboy.”

“Speaking of accounts,” Laramie pressed. “We need some of our pay.”

“What are you going to spend it on?” Greene pressed.

“Groceries,” Hap said. “All that stuff in the larder came over on a covered wagon.”

“Them kids with the main herd must have scarfed the fresh stuff. But I have a solution for that. Scoot over here.” He motioned
them to the back of his truck. E.A. pulled off his black-rimmed glasses and they hung tethered around his neck. “You boys
want free fine meals and make a hundred-dollar bonus tonight?”

“Tonight?” Laramie groaned. “We had a tough, hot day. We planned to shoot some pool, watch TV, and soak in the sauna.”

“That’s a little trail humor,” Hap explained. “It means we’re tuckered out. It’s been a long day. What kind of work do you
have at night?”

“Here’s the deal… now I ain’t sayin’ anyone rustled my cattle, but them dang kids with the herd let fifty head or so disappear.
I’m guessing they crossed the river about four miles up the road.”

“Across the Rio Grande?” Hap asked.

“I can’t officially claim someone stole them, if I didn’t see it happen. The Mexican government will report the cattle crossed
over on their own. There’s no extradition of cows. If I find some over there with my brand on it, they will sell them back
to me, at a tidy profit.”