|
Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Old Man from Pueblo Ande
Tom Sheehan
They were near Pueblo Ande, at the old walls, and talking to the old man who could have been 70 or 90 and no difference to them. And he could have been as old as the mountains or the winds that played around up there. And that no difference either. He might have been as old as the walls. Maybe he had put the last stone in place. It was all gone now, or almost. Like him, the old Mex.
And Thorsen, riding up front of him like he was the only trail blazer in the world, was acting funny, thought the kid; had been acting that way for a week or more, since they had pulled off the last robbery, stuffed themselves with carry-off money, all currency.
Thorsen said, in a casual way, but hard, like a final wish being made with disappointment already loaded up in it: “Don’t get upset with him. It won’t count. He only speaks Mex, that old man, so you can shoot him if you want. If you do, watch your trail though. They all say he talks to the mountain gods. You and I know they’re up there, they talk so much to us who can listen good.” He let out a laugh, a long laugh that had echoes and said, “If we could only speak Mex, we’d know better.”
Thorsen laughed all the way out of Pueblo Ande, on the trail to Escalendo on the river, the young woman Cielo in her new place on the edge of Escalendo, a nice little cabin an old man had died and left to her, and Thorsen showing eager all over the place. It was his regular style after a job was done, the proceeds gone their ways, the kid’s share showing a bump on his saddle bag, Thorsen’s caught up in his shirt as though it might get away from him otherwise.
The kid didn’t care what Thorsen felt like, what he knew, what the girl Cielo might say to him in the night, what he had said that one time about his sister and Thorsen not knowing he was right behind the door in the cantina. He kept hearing the words and all that time he kept seeing the eyes of the old Mex staring at his pistols all the time, like he might have been juicing up a curse.
The kid was thinking up a dust storm: “I should have done it. Should have shot him right there. Who the hell will miss an old Mex like that? It wouldn’t bother Thorsen at all.”
But all down the trail from Pueblo Ande, the kid couldn’t shake the old man’s eyes from the back of his head, like they were in there, staring him out of his mind, seeing what he was thinking, what he might do if he saw him again, what Cielo really said to Thorsen in the night. If she meant it.
Three times Thorsen spoke back over his shoulder to the kid and the kid didn’t hear him or couldn’t hear him, locked up the way he was.
Thorsen was smarter than the kid, that’s why he was the boss, and now the boss knew what was working at the kid: it was nothing but the old man, just like he had figured.
If someone else got rid of the kid, he wouldn’t have to do it. His conscience would be clean. He could tell his sister Melva how it went. She’d understand. Real beauties always understand what you tell them.
The kid was a killer from the first time out, shooting the stage driver when he was just trying to set the brake so the horses wouldn’t run away with folks aboard.
“I thought he was going for a shotgun,” the kid said, but there was no real apology in it; just plain fact for a shooter. Thorsen had seen them before. Mickey Crystal showed it early, and Crazy Albert from Alberta, and Thorsen’s first pard, Slip Mackro.
It would all go so quick it could take someone’s breath away. They’d throw off guilt like an old shoe on the trail. “Shucks,” they’d say, or “Tough,” or “Served him right,” or a plain old off-handed “Ouch.” That’s how they looked at death from their hands, saw it drifting off as if there never were any consequences.
But there were consequences; serious ones.
Slip had gone missing in a wild hotel fire that had been set; Crazy Albert fell off a cliff when his horse got stung by a whip. Mickey, as good as a shooter can get, also became a liability, and a victim; Thorsen knowing he couldn’t carry their weight for longer than a few jobs. Two at the most. Three if they were lucky and had any money left over.
But the kid was the only one with a great looking sister who sizzled under Thorsen’s skin. He’d lasted for four jobs now. But the old man from Pueblo Ande had done his job. It would be easy. He thought on it more; how it might look best to Melva when he told her, in the kitchen before they went to bed … never in the bed. She could move in any room better than any woman he ever knew, and that included Cielo
Maybe, he thought, on the bridge over Little River, at the gorge, where the downriver waterfall at the end of the gorge and the half mile of rapids would swamp a man to death on the rocks … steal his hat, his guns, maybe his boots, and leave him so far downstream it might be a month before he landed some place, all bubbly and pimply and marked for Hell.
“Listen, Melva,” he would say, “there was an accident down the river, near the gorge below Escalendo.” He’d hold his breath, let go a moan from down in his gut, take her lightly by the arm, and say, as light as his touch, “It’s Rico. His horse fell off the bridge when it broke under us. I was a little ahead of him. I almost went. I looked real fast. But I didn’t even see his horse in the water. They must have been deep down in the water. I raced downstream, but nothing showed up. I waited for hours and hours, just hoping.”
He’d shake his head, hold her lightly, let her cry against him, show her into the bedroom, let her lie down, cover her, say, “I’ll be outside. I’ll wait until you’re sleeping good. I’ll see you tomorrow, if you want some company.” He’d walk away, stop, and say, “And I’ll go down river again. See what I can do.”
That ought to do it.
Now all the old man had to do was go to work on the kid.
Every few hundred yards he’d take a skinny look at the kid, look at his eyes, and check his expression, measuring the old man’s gift. The gift would show. It’d be in the kid sure as snakebite has its way, slow, sure, or sometimes it might hit like a .45-.70, not leaving anything tied up.
Behind Thorsen, his saddle bag bumpy, wanting to put his head down and sleep, the kid had finally moved his worries away from the old man at Pueblo Ande, left him sitting against the old wall, the sun dancing on his hands, part of his face, as the afternoon sun started its decline, as shadows moved like a lame horse, slipping onto verticals, falling down to gravel and grass, head off to evening.
From another scene, one he could not find background in, hazy, misty, damp as pre-dawn, Slip had winked at him, and Albert and Mickey, each of them like they were saying statements he had not heard before … and he wasn’t sure he was hearing it now. But he began listening.
The lisp in Slip’s voice came alive, but without words, and Albert had a way of stuttering that made you catch your breath sometimes, and Mickey could talk like a steam engine pounding down the tracks, none of it audible, understandable. The words didn’t come from any of them … just a feeling he tried to corral, tried to rope, and saw the noose slip off each time it seemed to fall correctly in place.
But what was unsaid came anyway, less than a whisper, but finally an understood statement … CAREFUL, KID.
The old man was looking not at his guns, but at his eyes. It was not his voice that spoke to him. His eyes said he should listen to whatever was said, from any source but one.
CAREFUL, KID.
He saw Thorsen slow down, fall in line with him at regular intervals, so regular he could almost time them. The geography came at him as he reflected on all he saw, heard, imagined, felt. The gorge was there off to the left and the roar of the water could be heard as it washed and slammed against the rocks and walls of the strict enclosure of the river. Often spray was seen in places flying up over an edge along the gorge, the roars coming thick as drum beats in one of the old villages near Tetu-twante or Val-merte in the canyons up north … one drum beating was loud in a canyon, 100 drums made it another world.
Coming out on top of an abrupt rise in the trail, he saw the bridge running over the gorge a few hundred yards ahead, and there was a minor sway in it as though the ground at each end trembled. The bridge was older than he was, he was told one time. Did it now tremble as he did, thinking of Slip and Albert and Mickey … and Thorsen?
CAREFUL, KID.
He heard Cielo laugh in the night, and Melva singing in another room, and Thorsen talking only the way he could. Once Slip had said, “For us, there’s never a wrong time. It always has to be right. If you ever think it’s the wrong time, you got to change your boots in a hurry or it’ll be all over for you.”
He looked it over, the whole view of the bridge, saw the trail coming up all the way to Escalendo, the shadows that would soon cross the bridge in slow motion.
Now, there was no doubt in his mind. This would be the place. The only place. He had to move fast. Hailing Thorsen, he said, “I gotta go in the woods. I’ll be right out. My gut is busting.”
His horse, nudged, trotted off the trail into the wooded area, as Thorsen waved that he’d wait for him.
Quicker than he had moved all day, he took his money from the saddlebag and hid it under some leaves, dropping a small log on it, and then filled his saddlebag with sticks and leaves so it looked like the money was still there.
He rode out rubbing his hands with leaves and throwing the leaves away to the wind. Some of them flew into the gorge. The kid, in a swift look, made up his mind that the leaves looked like currency caught in the wind and then floated down into the gorge and the river. It was the sign of signs.
The old man was smiling at him.
Thorsen smiled too, a new thought in his mind, though he didn’t say anything at all. He rode slowly onward, moving his head as though he was singing, things all in their rhythm.
Ahead the bridge was two-oxen wide, looked passable but possibly treacherous, at least faulty. It was wooden and often repaired as seen from the color of weather-beaten wood versus newer pieces of wood. The stanchions, two at each end of the bridge, looked solid enough, their feet caught down in crevices in the rock walls the thousands of years of flowing water had carved apart, split in a cataclysmic rumble and shaking.
As Thorsen neared the bridge, he looked back again at the kid a short way behind him and smiled and waved him on with a hearty voice. “Thing still looks good enough to get us across, Rico. Good enough to get us across.”
Thorsen rode onto the bridge, and eased his horse, which seemed somewhat unsure on his legs, but under control.
He smiled again.
And the kid thinking right then it was the first time Thorsen had ever called him by his born name.
As the kid came up to the entrance to the bridge, his horse treading gently, Thorsen was at least 20 feet ahead of him. His horse slowed again and it appeared he was waiting for the kid to come abreast of him.
“Now,” the old man said, mysteriously, from wherever, perhaps still sitting at the edge of the old wall, but it was Albert’s face the kid saw. Then the kid grasped his whip by the handle as it sat on the pommel and said loudly, “Hey, Ted,” calling him by his first name for this one time only, “this one’s for Albert.”
The lash went in a swift arc, snapped at the rump of Ted Thorsen’s horse and the horse stumbled when one leg broke through a plank. Thorsen and his horse flew off the bridge into the swift current below.
It took the kid a whole day to ride upriver to cross over at a fording, thinking of Melva and Cielo and Thorsen and Mickey and Slip and Albert, as well as the old man, all the way home.
He said to his sister, “Listen, Melva, there was an accident down the river, near the gorge below Escalendo.”
He held his breath, let go a moan from down in his chest, held her lightly by the arm, and said, as light as his touch, “It’s Ted. He didn’t make it.”
|
|
|
|
|
Send this story to a friend
|
|
|
|
|
