“At that distance you couldn’t have recognized him.”
“Oh, I’ll know him!” Kate looked at me. “Conn, that man wanted to kill me. He wanted me to go down and be trampled under those hoofs, and no one would ever guess I had been shot.”
“How will you know him?”
She hesitated, an instant only. “He wore a black and white cowhide vest, like you’d get from a Holstein cowhide.”
How long since either of us had seen a Holstein cow? The Holstein was dairy stock, and at the moment I doubted if there were a dozen Holsteins west of the Mississippi. Certainly I’d never seen one in Texas, although I’d not say it was impossible. And the chances of two such vests in this area were slightly beyond reason.
The sky was a vast plain of blue above the gray-green of the plain below, and wherever we looked there was only the long grass bending, rippling under the touch of the wind.
“Did you see anything else that would identify the man with the cowhide vest?” I asked as we rode along. “The one who shot you?”
“Only that he seemed to be thin … or that was the impression I got. At the distance, I couldn’t be sure.”
This woman who rode beside me was the woman I loved, and the woman I had loved … how long? From the moment we met, I knew. Yet in all our years together I had found no way to tell her, no opportunity to talk of love. Only too rarely had I talked to women, and words did not come easy to me. And I lacked confidence in my ability to say what I meant, what I felt. Nor did I have any idea that she would listen.
Now, as we rode, my mind was filled with thoughts of her.
How many times had I, in the course of our time together, turned to look at her profile against the light? Finely made and lovely she was, strong and courageous, and fit to mother a race of sons for such a country as the Big Bend.
She was of that country and, like myself, she knew when she reached it that she had come home at last. She loved it as if born to it – the far reaches of the Big Bend country, the Bend itself, and the land beyond. From Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos to El Paso del Norte, from Fort Davis to Ojinaga or Lajitas.
That was our country, and the very names were a special land of music to our ears; for the names were born of the country itself, names such as Slickrock Mountain and the Mule Ear Peaks, Black Mesa, Yellow Hill, and the Blue Range, Left-Hand Shut-Up and Banta Shut-in, the Chinati Mountains, Frenchman Hills, and the beautiful loneliness of The Solitario, Wildhorse Mountain, Saltgrass Draw, and the Mariscals – she knew them all, as I did.
We had ridden the land together, scouting the stark hills, seeking out the lonely water holes, or the tanks that might become sources of water after the rains. She rode with grief, and I with a restlessness born of fear that this way of life, too, might pass.
Not since I was a young boy had I known anything like a home, nor felt there was a place where I belonged. Despite the thoughtfulness of the family of Jim Sotherton, I was a stranger there; and returning to my own country, I was a stranger again.
I thought back to the fall of 1858 when, just back from England, I bought a ticket in St. Joseph for Salt Lake, twenty-one days by the stage, which stopped every few hours to let the mules graze or water. No through stage route, with frequent stations for changing horses, had yet been organized, but I did not mind the leisurely ride, for I was slowly getting again the feel of my own country.
At Salt Lake I dismounted from the stage into a town buzzing with rumors of a gold strike at Pike’s Peak, so with almost the last of my money I bought a horse and a pack mule and rode over the mountains to Cherry Creek and the diggings.
On the first night, in came a husky miner who stared hard at me and then said, “Say, now, ain’t you the kid who killed Morgan Rich?”
Every head turned, for it was a time when “bad men,” men reputed to be bad men to tangle with, were much talked of. They were matched in many an argument, and debates raged as to who was the fastest and the best shot. Their various merits were discussed like those of race horses, foot racers, or prize fighters. And Morgan Rich had been a known man.
“That was a long time ago,” I said, and turned to leave. He caught my arm.
“Aw, come now!” he protested, “let me buy you a drink!”
“I don’t drink,” I replied, which was almost true.
“Think you’re too good to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently. “If you think I’m afraid -”
“I am sure you are not,” I said, and walked out. And when daybreak came I was far from camp, riding away.
That should have ended it, but it did not. Only two nights later a thin, dark man with greasy eyes recognized me and commented aloud, “This here’s that would-be gunfighter that McCloud ran off Cherry Creek.”
“You’re a liar,” I told him quietly, “and if McCloud says any such thing, he’s a liar.”
“You can’t talk that way to me!” So there it was, and if I allowed the story to continue it would hound me wherever I went. “You’re wearing a gun,” I said, putting it squarely up to him.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t want any part of what he had. He had believed me to be a bluff, and now he had been fairly called, with death lying before him like an open hand of cards … all black.
He was only a loud-mouth. He did not want to fight, but now he was faced with the same alternative as I, both of us caught by a way of life neither of us wanted. Yet he must fight or be treated contemptuously, as a coward. Wildly, desperately, he grabbed for his gun.
And I killed him.
It was not in me to do so, but it was the rules of the game in the land and the time in which we lived. Before the day was over, I drifted again, this time to Santa Fe.
Later, in Austin, Texas, I joined the Rangers, and for two years I rode the border on the side of the law.
The war came suddenly, unexpectedly to me, who had avoided controversy, and was often far from sources of news. But when it came I resigned from the Rangers and rode north to join the Union cavalry. And it was to Captain Edwards – now Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards – that I went.
He was a bachelor, a tall, austere man, lonely as I had been, but a man with a deep love for those same wild lands from which I came. So we sat long and talked of England and the Continent, where he had been as a boy, and then of Texas and the border country and the Indians.
My Ranger experience, my knowledge of scouting and Indian lore, qualified me in his estimation, and he convinced others. I was given a commission, and rode with Phil Sheridan’s cavalry.
Sheridan looked at me coolly at first when we met. “You’re a Texan?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “and when the war is over I shall be a Texan again. I simply do not approve of secession. I am fighting, sir, to preserve the Union.”
“So am I,” he replied.
When the war was over I had the rank of captain, and no more future than a spent bullet.
Drifting into Mexico, I encountered an old enemy, a fugitive from Texas law, now a power in Chihuahua City, and married into a good Mexican family. We had words. He was quicker to speak than to draw a gun, although he was anxious to try. He would have done better to have talked less, or talked more pleasantly.
A tall, handsome Mexican glanced at the body, and then at me. “I never liked him,” he said, “but -“. He shrugged. Then he said, “If you do not have a fast horse, I could lend you one.”
It was a tactful suggestion, for which I was grateful. “May I buy you a drink?” I said.
His eyes twinkled faintly. “Of course … some other day… and north of the border.”
In other words, to hurry would not be amiss. When I mounted, the North Star was gleaming in the sky, pointing the way to Texas.
Days later, my horse scarcely dry from crossing the Rio Grande, I rode into the life of Kate Lundy.