True endings seldom catch all ravels.
When I returned from confessing Robert Flicker, it was in time to see Governor Henry Garnet Buckles of Texas come hero-striding into the ruins of my beloved Mission of the Virgin. He it was who had gathered up the great troop, of mixed “resigned” rangers and general Texas Indian fighters, that had rushed in to “save” the beleaguered army troops “in the very nick of Texas time.”
To me it seemed an inequity that this credit went to Governor Buckles, but Allison only laughed and told me not to “fret it.” He would settle, he said, for a writ of amnesty from his Honor, clearing him, Ben, of stealing that horse in El Paso. This paper was actually produced by the governor and signed in my presence. I could not believe any reward might be so mean and yet be greeted with such a grin by its receiver. But Allison intrigued me to the end.
He took the paper and waved a proper farewell to Governor Buckles when the governor, who was in Mexico in flagrante delicto of the law between his country and mine, gathered up his young son from out the prison of my linen closet, got back to horse with all his men and moved out of Casas Grandes that same afternoon. The army troops went with him. The entire column took the old river road north to Janos, and, by the peace and quietude of the four o’clock evening of the desert monte, the last traces of their unwanted dust had thinned into history.
The remove left Allison and myself alone with the poignant awkwardness of two men saying good-bye.
We delayed it to conclude important business in Casas Grandes.
There was the matter of returning, of all things, the twin hinny mules. These little brutes had wandered in off the roughlands after the Apache departure, and Allison, having borrowed them from Bustamante, suggested they be returned with the rest of the missing items to our alcalde.
Bustamante was beside himself to see his mulitas, which he naturally assumed to have been taken by the Apaches. He insisted that the same criminals had relieved him of the Walker Colt and the two butcher knives of the good Señora Bustamante. What the damnable indios had spirited away, the mayor proclaimed, the tall Tejano had retrieved, a miracle surely.
Indeed, nothing would do but that the Texas pistolero be given as good as he had brought back.
For the return of Tin Can and Mean Trick, would the señor so kindly accept a very nice entero which the alcalde had found running loose after the ranger ambush by Juh? The animal came with a good Texas saddle, bridle, rifle, scabbard, todo.
Well, what might an honest Texas horse thief do in such a case? Insult the mayor of Casas Grandes? Never. Graciously, Allison accepted back his own stolen horse and, after some toasting in the aromatic cantina of Elfugio Ruiz, the tall man and the short humpbacked priest went again up the rise to the sunset silences of my ruined mission.
Here we shook hands for the final time.
Allison told me that he believed he would not go home to San Saba immediately but would look around a bit for some people here in Chihuahua to whom he felt an accounting might still be owed.
“There’s always somebody left over,” he said. “This time it’s Santiago Kifer.”
I shivered at the memory of the name but nodded my understanding of his need to make the grim search.
“Ride a long life, Tejano,” I said, and I stepped back.
Allison swung up on the restless stallion.
“Luck, Padre,” was all he said.
But when he and the horse topped South Ridge below Mission of the Virgin, I saw him pause and take something from inside his flat-crowned Stetson. There was enough sun remaining to catch and glitter on the torn pieces of paper fluttering from his hand.
Was it the ransom note?
I never knew.
He rode on, and I could hear his clear, sweet whistling of The Yellow Rose of Texas long after the ridge hid him and the stolen El Paso stallion.