Wraiths of the Broken Land (6 page)

“This is better,” Patch Up opined from the wagon bench. “Not that I mind getting kicked in the behind for eleven straight hours.” He arched his back and elicited seven cracks.

Brent looked over at his brother. “Stevie.”

“Yeah?’

“You’re gonna be in charge of makin’ camp, so keep an eye out for someplace hidden private.”

“We ain’t stayin’ in town?” Stevie looked as if a soft pillow had just been yanked out from beneath his head.

“We don’t want people knowin’ all of our faces or our number,” explained Brent. “Mr. Stromler and I will talk to Ojos, and Long Clay’ll watch from outside, but the rest of you stay back.” Stevie would not win them any advantage in this rendezvous (and it was possible that he would be truculent) and Brent well knew the affects that men like his father and Long Clay had upon people.

“Okay. I’ll make camp.” Stevie was apparently too tired and sore to argue.

“Patch Up will help you.”

Long Clay, who had not turned around once since they left Leesville, looked at the cowboy. “Brent.”

“Yeah?”

“After your meeting, you’re coming with me.”

A chill descended Brent’s spine. Up until that moment, he had assumed that Long Clay was going to garner the needed Mexican dollars by himself.

“Your father isn’t capable right now.” Long Clay turned away.

John Lawrence Plugford, tightly clasping the bridle lines of the two palfreys upon which he intended to seat his saved daughters, said nothing.

“I can go,” volunteered Stevie.

“No you can’t,” said Brent.

The cowboy knew that he had no choice.

The riders endeavored a decline that was steep enough to pull sweat-dampened hair from their brows, and ahead of them, on the southwestern horizon, a mountain range emerged from the ground. The sharp peaks swelled like the sails of approaching warships.

After a twenty-minute descent, the terrain underneath the caravan leveled out. Yucca, cacti and a few hills shaped like turtles interposed themselves between the assemblage and the rising range. Presently, the riders entered a thick copse and wended its dark vegetation.

Stevie pointed out a clearing that was concealed behind a dense cluster of yuccas. “How ‘bout there?”

“Good,” said Brent. “Once we eyeball the town, you come back here and throw camp.”

“I will.”

“Make sure Pa eats. It’s been three days for him.”

“I’ll try to get somethin’ in him.”

“Stevie and I will hold him down if he refuses,” added Patch Up.

“Get somethin’ in.” Brent ruminated for a moment. “Pour soup into his whiskey if you have to.”

The caravan emerged from the woodlands, and the brothers, the negro and the dandy pulled up alongside the two senior men. Forty miles away from the riders stood the dark brown mountains that had consumed the major part of the southwestern horizon.

Brent surveyed the flat plain on the near side of the range, looking for the border town that he had hoped to descry more than an hour earlier. Several miles from his current location, he saw an unnatural ochre luminance upon the land. Relief ran down his spine like warm water squeezed from a sponge. “That’s it.” He pointed. “Gotta be Nueva Vida.” He looked at the dandy and inquired, “What’s that mean? Nueva Vida?”

“It means New Life.”

Brent heard the sound of crackling tinder. He looked to his left and saw that Long Clay was laughing.

Chapter VIII
A Thoughtful Mexican

Humberto Calles leaned his guitarrita case against the wall in the back room of the bar where he regularly performed and, from his beaded, fringe-adorned vest, withdrew his pocket watch. The hands were fixed at nine seconds after eleven seventeen, the exact moment that some careless horse had compressed its mechanisms. When Humberto had found the pocket watch, a circular corpse lying upon a street in Mexico City (where he visited seven of his cousins twice a year), he had pocketed it and planned to have it repaired. Two days later, the balladeer returned home to Nueva Vida and learned that his mother, Gabrielle, had passed away alone in the night. He had mourned her for several months, and shortly afterwards, impregnated his wife Patricia with the child who was to become their first daughter, Anna.

The fifty-four-year-old Mexican believed in the Savior—and often contemplated less-renowned spirits who had not suffered quite so spectacularly—and wondered at portends and hidden significances.

Because Humberto had found the watch shortly after midnight, he was certain that it had been stomped upon in the evening, rather than at the nine seconds after eleven seventeen that occurred in the morning. (It was very unlikely that the little machine—even crushed—would sit upon a Mexico City avenue unclaimed for thirteen hours.) He knew that his mother had died on the night that he had found the watch, and he often wondered if perhaps she had passed away at the exact moment that its hands had been stopped by the misplaced hoof. He believed that this concurrency was likely, and often contemplated its significance.

Ultimately, Humberto had decided not to repair the broken machine. Nine seconds after eleven seventeen was a moment that he was meant to contemplate, frozen forever like a photograph upon a little crushed face.

Alone in the back room of the bar, Humberto clicked the long fingernails of his plucking hand upon the inert pocket watch, thinking of his deceased mother and waiting for the Americans.

A cool shadow slinked across the table and covered the tarnished metal. Marietta kissed the top of Humberto’s bald head, set down a glass of red wine and said, “En la casa.” (The owner of the bar always gave the performer of the night a free drink [and Marietta always gave Humberto a second one when the boss had his back turned]).

“Gracias amigita.”

The thirty-year-old woman smiled, complimented his performance and asked after his associates from America.

Humberto replied that he would allow them twenty more minutes.

Marietta smiled at him, set a lingering kiss upon his right cheek (a quarter of an inch away from his mouth) and walked away.

If Humberto were not a happily married man, he would have danced an intimate duet with the buxom (and flirtatious) barmaid and revealed to her the tender and patient affections of a fifty-four-year-old artist who appreciated women far more than did any hombre her own age. He would have shown her real and selfless lovemaking…

Humberto drank a deep draught of red wine and sighed at the concepts of fidelity and monogamy to which he was shackled. He would remain faithful to his wife for the remainder of his life, and he would never caress or be caressed by a new woman ever again.

There were many reasons to hope for an afterlife.

A pale hand pulled aside the checkered cloth at the entrance of the bar, and a dusty gringo cowboy who had a brown hat, wavy hair, a gun on his right hip and a frown walked inside, followed by a tall blonde gentleman who wore a thick mustache beneath his big nose, a royal blue tuxedo and a charming little derby. They halted beneath a candelabrum, noticed the wax drippings upon the stone floor, took a step to their left and scanned the establishment.

Marietta walked over to the men and said, “You gentlemens are here to meet with Ojos?” (Humberto was pleased that she had remembered to use his alias.)

“Si, Señorita,” replied the tall gentleman. He removed his hat, tilted his head forward and said, “Nosotros queremos hablar con Ojos, por favor.” The gentleman’s pronunciation was flawless.

Marietta pointed to the revolver that sat upon the cowboy’s hip. “You pistola. I need. You can no have guns in here.”

The cowboy scanned the bar, looked back at her and lifted his hands. “Take it.”

The barmaid withdrew the weapon from the holster. “You ask me for the pistola when you leave. I am Marietta.” She slid the gun into her red and brown dress. “I now take you to Ojos.”

“Gracias amiga,” said the gentleman.

Slowly, the cowboy nodded.

The woman escorted the gringos past the tenanted stone-and-tile bar, around three inebriates who threw knives at a plank that was decorated by a blue chalk drawing of an angry bear, beneath a large wooden statue of some bizarre three-headed pagan god that the owner had found in the badlands and hung like a piñata, past a table where two old men played checkers, in-between two long benches that were packed with hombres who drunkenly sang a refrain from one of the songs that the balladeer had performed two hours ago and down three steps, into the sunken backroom wherein sat the Mexicano whom the Americanos had come to Nueva Vida to meet.

Humberto stood up and extended his right hand toward the dusty cowboy. “I am Ojos. You are John Lawrence Plugford or the son?”

The cowboy clasped the proffered hand. “I’m the son. Brent.”

As they shook, Humberto saw something that could have been either distrust or distaste flash across the gringo’s face. They released each other.

“I am Thomas Weston,” announced the gentleman, as he extended his hand.

Humberto shook with him and saw no look of distrust or distaste flash across his face.

“Me llamo Ojos.”

The balladeer released the gentleman’s hand and motioned to the cushioned stools that surrounded his table, which was decorated with red, brown and green tiles. “Please sit.”

The gringos sat upon the stools.

Humberto looked down at the Americanos and inquired, “What would you like to drink?”

“We wouldn’t,” said the cowboy.

The balladeer sat upon a cushioned seat opposite the gringos and inquired, “Do you mind if I drink the wine that’s already been poured for me?”

“We ain’t here for any kind of social.”

Humberto knew that Brent Plugford was not well-educated.

The cowboy set his hat upon the table, reached beneath his beige shirt, extricated a worn grouch bag and pulled the strap over his head. “Your gold.”

Humberto took the proffered pouch, set it upon the table, loosened the purse strings, glanced inside and saw variegated scintillating nuggets.

“There’s no hagglin’,” the cowboy stated, “that’s every crumb we got.”

“This appears to be the amount promised in the poster,” remarked the balladeer.

“You can put it on a scale, so you know it certain true.”

“I doubt that you’d ride all the way down here and attempt to cheat me of an ounce.”

“I’m honest,” stated the cowboy, as if what he said were a well-established fact. “Now tell me ‘bout my sisters.”

“As I wrote in the letter,” Humberto said, “I know the identities of two men who have had dealings with one or both of your sisters. Nine weeks—”

“How?” interrupted the cowboy, openly suspicious. “How you know that these men know my sisters?”

“Please allow me to tell a short story that will answer all of your questions.”

“Go tell it.”

“Nine weeks ago, when I was in Mexico City visiting my cousins, I saw the notice, your reward poster, in a post office. Shortly afterwards, I wrote a song about the missing woman.”

“You wrote a song ‘bout my sisters?”

“Yes.”

Outrage blazed across the cowboy’s face. The gentleman clapped a gloved hand to his companion’s shoulder and squeezed.

“I apologize if I’ve upset you,” said Humberto.

The cowboy smoldered, unable to speak.

“Why did you write a song about them?” inquired the gentleman.

“Their story moved me. Even though gringo Texicans killed my father and stole land that rightfully belongs to Mejico, I thought of these innocent and beautiful women and I was…” Humberto shook his head. “I sympathized—I have two daughters myself—and I became angry with the world, a place where beauty is stolen and abused rather than appreciated.” He thought of his gorgeous cousin Elena, who had vanished twenty years ago and was presumed dead. To the cowboy, the balladeer said, “Your sisters are not the only women that have disappeared in this country.”

The cowboy gave an empathetic nod.

A flung blade pierced the right eye of the blue chalk bear.

Humberto glanced at the drunken knife-thrower and returned his attention to the gringos. “My heart was heavy when I wrote the ballad. In English, the title means, ‘That Which Cannot Be Stolen.’” The singer pointed to his guitarrita case. “I have a special guitar with four strings, which I play in bars like this one and on the street. I played the song, ‘That Which Cannot Be Stolen,” many times.

“Near the end of the ballad, there is a verse that describes one of the missing women in—”

“How did you know what she looked like?” inquired the gentleman.

“There were pictures on the reward poster.”

“Go on,” said the cowboy.

“Near the end of the ballad,” Humberto repeated, “there is a verse that describes one of the missing women in great detail. After I paint her portrait, I call out her name.” With ripping vibrato, Humberto sang, “Yvette!”

Tears rolled down the cowboy’s face.

“Afterwards, I sing the final verse. I describe the other woman in great detail and call out her name.” Humberto sang, “Dolores!”

The cowboy wiped away tears with the brim of his hat.

“I performed this song many times—in cities and in towns and twice inside locomotives. People were very moved by it.” (Humberto decided not to inform the gringos that the ballad was one of his most lucrative compositions.) “A few weeks ago, I came home to Nueva Vida.

“Eleven days ago, I performed ‘That Which Cannot Be Stolen’ in our town square, and when I sang out the names of the women, two men in the audience reacted very strongly. They paled. Their eyes became moist. They were frightened. And I was absolutely certain that they knew one or both of the women in the song.”

“Who are they?” The cowboy’s words fell like a blunt axe.

Humberto hesitated for a moment. “You must promise that the gentleman will speak to them in a civilized manner. They are—”

“Don’t put any goddamn terms to me,” spat the cowboy. “I paid you for this information.” He pointed at the grouch bag.

“It is quite possible that these men are unaware of your sisters’ plight.”

“You don’t know that at all.”

“You are correct,” Humberto admitted, “I do not know how they know your sisters. But these two men are important and have done many good things for this town. You must promise that you will not hurt or kill them.”

“We’ll do what we need to do,” said the cowboy, darkly.

Humberto closed the grouch bag and slid it across the tiled table. “You may reclaim your gold and go back to America.”

Hatred shone clear and bright upon the cowboy’s face.

Humberto drank from his glass of wine.

After the cowboy had calmed himself, he asked, “What if these good hombres of yours ain’t so good?”

“If either of these gentlemen are hurt or killed, I will relay the names John Lawrence Plugford and Brent Plugford to many bad Mejicanos.” Humberto let his threat sit in the air for a moment. “And if I should accidentally cut off my own head or carelessly stab myself twenty-nine times in the liver, there are other talkative people who will dispense this information to the banditos.”

“You’ve told others ‘bout our rendezvous?” The cowboy had a hard look in his eyes.

“Not yet—but I will if I feel unsafe when I leave this meeting or if you harm the Mexican gentlemen in any way.”

“Hell.” Brent snorted through his nostrils like a horse. “You’re a clever Mex’can.”

“One of many millions.”

The cowboy considered his options.

“As for the hombres who have imprisoned your sisters…” Humberto shrugged his shoulders. The execution of men who kidnapped and abused women did not trouble the balladeer.

The cowboy slid the grouch bag across the tiled table. “We’ll leave off these two that you’re connectin’ us with. My word’s good.”

“Bueno.” Although Humberto did not like the cowboy, he trusted him. “I know a place where these two gentlemen gamble and have drinks—a nice establishment.” The performer looked at the tall blonde gringo and said, “You will go there.”