CHAPTER EIGHT

The sheriff hauled Lew Ralls away in handcuffs, and I don’t think I ever saw a man happier to get into a nice warm cop car. The funeral home in town sent its hearse out to collect the two bodies. After everybody left we all went to work cleaning up the mess. The upstairs landing was the worst. It seemed as though the man had bled at least a gallon onto the floor. By the time we’d finished the sun was up, and we were completely worn out.

Helena made breakfast. Before we all sat down to eat I got the bourbon bottle out of the cabinet and spiked everyone’s coffee. Nobody objected. I half drained mine in one pull, then splashed a couple more inches in my cup. I looked across the table at my aunt. Her age and the night’s events told on her face. She looked old and tired.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” I asked her tenderly.

She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve felt better and I’ve felt worse. I’ll get by.”

“I mean about…” I let my voice taper off, not knowing how to say it.

“You mean that son of a bitch I shot? Don’t you waste a minute worrying about that.”

“You’re sure about that?”

She regarded me with a smile that bordered on contempt. “You don’t think that’s the first man I ever killed, do you, Virgil?”

Nothing she could have said would have surprised me more. I could only shrug in confusion while Madeline gaped.

My aunt calmly sipped her cup and watched the two of us with amusement. “I was only sixteen at the time,” she finally said. “It was the summer of 1888, and he was a drunken cowboy, an Anglo with a reputation for meanness. He was after something I was determined to keep a little while longer, so he just decided to take it. I shot him in the throat with a little derringer my daddy had given me. It didn’t bother me then, and it doesn’t bother me now.”

“My God!” I said. “Sixteen? I had no idea.”

“No reason for you to. We never talked about it.” She smiled at Madeline. “The world only appears civilized, dear,” she said. “Underneath the surface it’s all savagery, and if you don’t fight back, you’ll go under.”

Obviously not knowing how else to respond, Madeline gave her a grave nod. My aunt turned back to me. “What now?” she asked.

The previous hours had caught up with me, and I realized I was starving. I began to eat in earnest, talking between bites. “The first thing I want to do is get a carpenter out from town and have the kitchen door replaced. And I want a door that’s as strong and easily secured as the front door. We should have done that a long time ago.”

“I’ll take care of that myself,” she said.

“Today,” I insisted.

“Done. Then what?”

“Madeline and I are going to leave. I want to get her away from La Rosa. If she stays here they’ll just try again.”

“I see. Where do you plan to go?”

“Press Rafferty’s place.”

Rafferty was an old family friend who’d fought with my father in the Spanish-American War. He lived in a wooded, remote section of the Neches River bottom a few miles east of Palestine in East Texas, an area whose inhabitants were noted for their clannishness and insularity. If there was anywhere in the state the girl would be safe, it was with Press and his daughter.

“I also intend to get hold of Charlie Grist and probably a guy I know down in the attorney general’s office. I plan to call Salisbury, too. I’m going to do my best to convince him that he doesn’t want to send anybody else out here. And I guess we better set up a schedule where our people can guard the house in shifts. At least for a while.”

She shook her head. “They were up all night, Virgil. And they’re getting old, like me. I think I’ll call some of our friends in other counties and see about having some guards sent over.”

“George Parr?” I asked with a smile.

She nodded. “Why not? I figure he owes us.”

“Just make sure he sends people who won’t try to lord it over our own vaqueros. Some of his deputies can be pretty high-handed.”

“He’ll know better than that,” she said tersely. “But I’ll mention it just the same. When are you leaving?”

“Late this afternoon. I’ve got to get some sleep first.”

“Fine. I’ll make arrangements for the carpenters to come about three so their hammering won’t keep you awake. How does that sound?”

“Lovely. Can I have a couple more eggs?”

*   *   *

My phone calls took over an hour. No one knew where Charlie Grist could be found, but I left a message for him to call me at a half dozen of his usual haunts. My friend in the AG’s office was also out of pocket. But Salisbury, the man I’d expected to be the most difficult to find, answered on the third ring when I called the Grotto Club in Beaumont.

“This is Virgil Tucker,” I said.

I’ll give him one thing: he had presence of mind. There was barely a pause before he replied with a noncommittal, “Yes?”

“I’m about to tell you several things you need to know, and I suggest you keep calm and listen. It’s for our mutual benefit.”

Once again there was the barest of pauses. “Go ahead.”

“Two of your men are dead and one is on his way to prison.”

“I don’t—”

“Also you should be aware that Madeline Kimbell is no longer at my ranch, and that my family is being guarded around the clock by commissioned law enforcement officers. Don’t send anybody else down here. If you do, you’re going to be stepping into something you don’t have the capacity to appreciate.”

“That’s all fascinating, but what—”

“Surely you know somebody who’s familiar with the political situation in South Texas,” I said. “Get them to brief you.”

“I’ll look into it,” he replied. By this time he was beginning to sound a little wary. For some reason hoods always think they have a monopoly on power and intimidation.

“I’m willing to give you my word that I can guarantee the girl’s silence in the future, and anybody who knows me will tell you that my word is good. In return I want your assurance that she and my family will be left alone.”

There came a long pause. Finally he spoke. “Well, that would be an interesting proposition if I really knew anything about—”

“You can cut the bullshit, Salisbury. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

I hung up and found myself covered in sweat. I’d walked a fine line during our conversation. On one hand, I had to sound firm and tough enough to convince him that I meant business about his thugs staying away from the ranch, while on the other hand I had to appear naive enough to make him think I’d be willing to accept his assurances. I fervently hoped I’d pulled it off. I desperately needed a little breathing room.

*   *   *

We left a few minutes before four that afternoon. Two guards were already posted at the gate, one Anglo and one Mexican, stone-faced, khaki-clad men in their forties who came armed with well-worn Winchester rifles and big revolvers. I stopped and spoke with them for a moment and learned that they were from Starr County. I also learned that a pair of deputies each from Hidalgo and Webb counties were on their way. I thanked them and drove off, then a few hundred yards down the road it hit me how absurd a system it was that my aunt could just pick up the phone and procure public employees to act as private guards as though she were ordering something from the Sears catalog. It was too much; I started laughing and I laughed and laughed until Madeline finally asked, “What on earth is wrong with you, Virgil?”

“Sorry,” I muttered and reached over to pat her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I was having myself a little fit to break the tension of the last couple of days.”

We rode along in silence for a few minutes, then she asked, “You don’t like that Martindale fellow, do you?”

“No, I sure don’t,” I replied, glancing over at her once again. “Is it that obvious?”

She gave me a nod. “What do you have against him?”

I gave her a quick rundown on Stubb. “He’s a bully and sadist,” I said in conclusion. “And one of these days he’s going to really hurt somebody.”

“Are there many others like him? People who hate Mexicans, I mean?”

I shook my head. “No, but most of the Anglos subscribe to the idea that Mexicans are an inferior people. Add to that the class system that’s in effect in the whole Spanish-speaking world and then you’ve got something very complex. Take Tía Carmen. She loves the families who live on the ranch. Yet when we got electricity out here she never considered putting it in the vaqueros’ homes or the bunkhouse. At least not until I mentioned it, then she was fine with the idea.”

“But why didn’t she think about it? I mean, she’s part Mexican herself.”

“Upper-class Mexican,” I said. “Aristocrats. It simply never entered her mind that Alonzo and Helena would sleep better at night in these awful summers we have here if they had an electric fan. But go into Mexico and see how the hands on the big ranches over there live. It’s both a class problem and a race problem, and I don’t know the answer.”

My voice tapered off and I stared down the road, brooding a little, as the Ford’s tires sang over the pavement.

“This part of the state is like a completely different country,” Madeline said.

“More like a different planet,” I said bitterly.

*   *   *

We made good time to San Antonio, but a few miles north of town on the road to Austin we got caught in one of those endless military convoys that were the bane of travel during the war years. At 9:00 P.M. I decided to find some place to spend the night. Finally, just outside San Marcos, I saw a sign that advertised an all-night truck stop café and a tourist court. I turned off the main road, then swung in behind an abandoned filling station and cut my lights.

“What are you doing?” Madeline asked.

“Checking to see if we’re being tailed. I don’t think we are, but still…”

I waited ten minutes, during which time no cars followed us. Then I cranked the engine, and we pulled in at the tourist court a few minutes later just as the night man was closing the office. Three dollars and we had the key to a cabin near the back of the lot where the car couldn’t be seen from the road. “We’re leaving early in the morning,” I told him.

“Fine,” he said. “The office opens at seven. If nobody’s here just drop the key in the mail slot.”

The room was clean with a big double bed and a bathroom with a deep, claw-footed tub. “Hungry?” I asked once we’d dumped our bags at the foot of the bed.

She nodded. “Do you think we’ve been followed?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I checked the rearview mirror pretty regularly since we left the ranch. But if I’m wrong, they’ll come at us in the night, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So we might as well get a good night’s sleep and try not to worry. I figure that if we’re still alive in the morning we’re in the clear. I also figure this Salisbury guy has enough sense to wait to hear what I have to say. But still, I wish you’d give me the whole damn story.”

“I’ve told you everything, Virgil,” she said. Her tone of voice was sincere but her eyes avoided mine.

“Bullshit,” I said. “There’s more to this business and you know it. I’ve been aware of that since the first night up in San Gabriel.”

I stared at her for a long while. She tried to hold my gaze, but her eyes faltered and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me that way,” she said. “I just can’t tell you. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

“What is it? If it would make the difference between us living or dying, then I have a right to know.”

“It won’t,” she said plaintively.

“Why not let me be the judge of that?”

She looked up at me, her face thoroughly miserable, yet still saying nothing. I continued to stare pointedly at her.

“It’s just that I’m afraid that I may have been the cause of Henry DeMour getting killed,” she muttered at last. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but that wasn’t it.

“What?” I exclaimed. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t ask me anything more about it, Virgil. Please.”

“No,” I said firmly. “What do you mean you may be responsible?”

She put her hands over her face and shook her head. I knelt down beside the bed and took her wrists and pulled her hands away. “Tell me,” I demanded.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” she wailed. “I didn’t mean for anybody to get hurt. I’ve never meant for anybody to get hurt, not in my whole life.”

She jerked from my grasp and turned and fell across the bed facedown, her whole body shaking with sobs. I was disgusted. I should have pressed the issue, but I didn’t. Most people cry at one time or another, and the truth is that women cry more readily than men. But the more honest of them don’t hide behind it. Madeline was hiding now, and I liked her a little the less for it. I let the subject drop and stood watching her impassively until she wound down. When she finally stopped I handed her my handkerchief and said, “Wipe your eyes and let’s go try that café.”

*   *   *

After we’d eaten, we returned to the room, where I gave her first shot at the tub. When she was finished I took a long, hot soak. I came out of the bathroom toweling my hair to find her standing at the foot of the bed in her gown and robe. She looked at me for a moment, then raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “Do you want to…?” She let the question hang unfinished in the air just as she had that first night at the Weilbach.

“Sure,” I said, and kissed her gently. I was still annoyed with her, but there was something so pathetic and disarming about the hesitant way she offered herself to me, something that made me think of a little girl lost in the woods. Of course, it could have all been good acting. I never really knew which. There were a lot of things about her I never knew.