For a long time they waited there in the darkness, blankets wrapped tightly around them for warmth. The stars stood out with a piercing brightness in the winter sky. Natividad de la Cruz pushed to his feet, speaking sharply under his breath when his leg brushed against the hostile spines of a prickly pear. “I think, Mr. Frio, the yanquis have gone. If you like, I will go see.”
Frio nodded painfully. “I doubt they’ve left us anything to go back to. But go look.”
The moon came up while Natividad was gone. Its silver light made the bushes stand out in bold relief. At least, thought Frio, they wouldn’t have to stumble along in darkness, pierced by thorns at every wrong step.
He shivered inside the blanket. Amelia McCasland leaned to him, her body pleasantly warm. Another time it might have been different, but her presence brought him little comfort now. Pain pulsed in his shoulder, almost enough to make him cry out. It was as if the bullet were still lodged there with its white heat. Frio knew he would have a fever later. His mind dwelled on Blas Talamantes. He wondered where the Mexican was, wondered if death had come swiftly and with mercy, or if Blas had lain and suffered as Frio suffered now.
Presently they heard brush snapping. Natividad was calling softly. He knew the direction but not the exact place.
Amelia answered, “Here, Natividad.”
The Mexican moved cautiously into the big clump of pear, avoiding its thorns. He gazed down gravely at Frio. “Mr. Frio, the yanqui soldiers have gone. We can go back to the house if you like.” He paused and said, “But, as you say, there is no house.”
Amelia looked at Frio, tears in her eyes. Then, squaring her shoulders, she said, “We will go back, Natividad, to whatever is left.”
Natividad blinked, not following her reasoning. He shrugged and said, “Of course, señorita. Here, I will help you.”
Gently he helped Frio to his feet. The wounded man closed his eyes tightly a moment, shaking his head. His brain seemed to swim aimlessly, and he cringed against a sharp shaft of pain. With Natividad’s support, Frio made his way out of the pear.
It took them longer to get back to the clearing than it had taken to reach the pear in the first place. For one thing, there was not the pressure of pursuit. Secondly, there was the dread of seeing what lay in wait for them. Amelia took the lead. María trailed, holding onto Chico’s hand. The little woman moved with her head down, but she did not let her grief blind her. She held to the boy, keeping him from walking into thorns, catching him when he stumbled.
Amelia stopped at the edge of the clearing. Frio heard her gasp, “Oh, Frio, oh no!”
Frio blinked, trying to clear the glaze from his eyes. In the moonlight he could see the bare rock walls and the glow from inside them. Though the walls would not burn, they probably were badly cracked from the heat of the blazing roof. The smaller house that Blas and María had used was gone, too, part of one wall caved in, flames still licking hungrily at the wooden beams. The troopers had set fire even to the brush jacales that old Salcido Mendoza had built long ago for his vaqueros and their families. The Yankees had not left a thing standing above ground except the corrals and the rock walls.
Anger surged again in Frio Wheeler, a helpless anger that hurt all the more because all he could do was stand here and look. He couldn’t even stand were it not for Natividad holding him up.
“We could as well have stayed in the brush,” Frio gritted. “We’ll have to sleep in the open anyway.”
Natividad eased Frio to the ground. Frio sat with his fist balled as tight as he could make it. So many things he could think of now, things they should have done. They should have taken more blankets with them, for the ones they had would not be enough to shield them from the night’s cold. They should have taken some food, too, for everything in the houses had been burned. And guns … There had been a couple more guns in the bigger house. Chances were the soldiers had found those and confiscated them if they had made any search before they put the place to the torch. Burn them or steal them, it didn’t matter much now; the guns were gone. All Frio had was the one rifle.
Natividad gingerly dragged some of the slow-burning wood out of the two houses, careful lest he sear his hands. He piled it together, then fetched wood from Blas Talamantes’s woodpile. Presently he had a fire started between the ruins of the two houses. He said, “We need this tonight, I think.”
María had been silent. Now, she asked, “What of Blas?”
Frio said, “Not much anybody can do for him now. Natividad will go look for him in the mornin’.”
They spread their blankets near the fire so they would have its warmth through the night. Natividad brought up enough wood to last until day, piling it where he could reach it as it was needed. Chico was the first to drop off in fitful sleep. Before long he was moaning, caught in the clutch of some nightmare.
Sitting close beside Frio, Amelia said, “He was like that for a while after we first came here. Then he got over it. I guess today has brought the scare back to him.”
“Poor button,” Frio replied. “He must think his saints are almighty angry with him.”
María Talamantes leaned over the boy, shaking him a little to try to stir him out of the dream. In Spanish she said, “It’s all right, Chico. It’s all right.” She sat on the ground and took the boy in her arms, folding him to her bosom and rocking her body gently back and forth. Somehow in comforting the boy she seemed to find solace for herself.
Natividad got up and brought his blanket. He put it over the little woman and the boy. He said simply, “With this fire, the blanket is too warm for me.” He sat nearer the blaze and gradually dozed off to sleep, his chin dropping to his chest.
For Frio there was little sleep. The fever grew. He sweated awhile, then chilled. His half-numbed mind slipped off into swirling dreams of violence and movement, to short flights of fancy—some angry, some happy, some frightening, some sad. The faces of Blas Talamantes and Tom McCasland and Florencio Chapa kept coming to him, again and again. He could see his wagons and feel the cold, muddy water of the Rio Grande. He imagined he could hear the guns in far-off Virginia and see the men there low on ammunition, short of guns, waiting for his wagons to bring these things across the river from Mexico. Half-awake, he peered with glazed eyes into the crackling coals of Natividad’s fire and saw Brownsville aflame. He could hear the screams of Amelia McCasland, trapped inside the blazing store with her dying father. Another moment he would be back with Tom McCasland in the pleasant years before the war, riding across this ranch, putting their brand on the unclaimed cattle they found. There was no reason to the images he saw, no logical sequence.
He lay until dawn, dozing a little, then half awakening, never a moment free from the torment of his stiffened shoulder. Amelia slept fitfully beside him. With daylight it seemed to him that his fever was gone, and he could see clearly. He watched the sunrise. He saw Natividad reach out to put more wood on the fire, then stand up and stretch himself, his breath making a small patch of fog in the sharp morning air.
Quietly, trying not to awaken the others, the Mexican said to Frio, “There is no food. The boy will be hungry.”
They all would be, but it would hurt the boy most of all.
As if in answer, Blas Talamantes’s milk cow bawled beside the corral gate. Natividad carefully walked over and opened the gate so she could go in. The cow smelled her way suspiciously up to the ashes of what had been the small brush shed where Blas had been accustomed to milking her. She stood there dumbly and bawled.
Natividad kicked around the ashes of Blas and María’s house and found a few blackened pots and pans. He also found a tin bucket. He carried them out to the creek, kneeling to scour the black from them with sand, then washing them clean with water. He held the bucket up to the rising sun to check it for holes. There weren’t any. Next he found what was left of a pitchfork, half of the wooden handle burned away. He walked out to the nearest prickly pear and broke off all the spiny pads he could carry. He speared these, several at a time, on the tines of the pitchfork and held them over the fire, burning the thorns away. Done with that, he carried the fire-cleaned pear to the cow and fed it to her. While she chewed, he knelt and milked her.
Returning, he held the bucket up proudly for the awakening women to see. Amelia and Maria went to the charred remains of the houses and poked around for salvage. They found little. There was no food except the bucket of milk.
Frio said, “Natividad, we are afoot. They must have run off the horses. Can you shoot?”
Natividad shrugged. “Not the best. But maybeso I find us some kind of game.”
Frio shook his head. “Not likely, not close to the house. I was thinkin’ you might find a cow someplace around, or a steer. Take the rifle and shoot one. We’ll have beef anyway. That’s a start.”
Taking the rifle and the few cartridges, Natividad disappeared into the brush. After a long time they heard two shots. The Mexican returned, his shoulders bent under the weight of a quarter of beef. He said apologetically, “He was not a fat steer, but in the dry time one cannot choose.…”
Frio said, “You did fine.”
“I will go back and bring more of the beef before the wild hogs find it.”
Amelia sand-scoured an iron skillet she had rescued from the ashes. Using tallow from the fresh-killed beef, she soon had beef frying over the coals. By the time Natividad came back with another quarter, Amelia had steak cooked and ready to eat.
Frio drank a little of the warm milk, but he left most of it for María and the boy. What he wanted most was hot coffee. Texans here on the border had been comparatively fortunate in respect to coffee and some of the other imported goods. While the rest of the Confederacy was forced to do without, South Texans continued getting many of these things in limited amounts out of Mexico. But now there would be no coffee for Frio. It had gone up in flames.
Later, a couple of the loose horses came drifting in, for this was home. The Mexican penned them.
“Natividad,” Frio said, “I’d be much obliged if you would go out and find Blas. Bring him in so we can bury him decently. Then I’d like you to ride to Matamoros. and tell Hugh Plunkett what happened. You ought to be able to smuggle some supplies across the river on pack mules or burros and bring them here.”
“Sí, I can do that. But it is not good to leave you here this way. You cannot defend yourself.”
Frio shrugged painfully. “What choice do we have? You just hurry. Tell Hugh Plunkett we need help here. He’ll find a way to send it.”
The Mexican fashioned a hackamore out of some rawhide rope he found. Mounting bareback, he rode off and was gone an hour. When he came back, he was walking, leading the horse. Frio looked away, not wanting to watch. He knew that bundle across the horse’s back had to be Blas. María Talamantes arose, crossed herself, and went slowly out to meet Natividad. Then she walked back, moving along dry eyed beside her husband’s body.
They wrapped Blas in one of the blankets and buried him in a shallow grave. They placed rocks over him so the wolves would not dig him up. María would not want to leave him here forever. Someday, when she could, she would want to move him to consecrated ground.
There was not even a Bible to read from, for that too had burned. Frio stood on weak legs beside the pile of rocks and recited from memory what he could. María prayed almost inaudibly. When they were done, Natividad de la Cruz mounted the horse bareback and started toward Brownsville.
* * *
FRIO SAW THE horseman approaching and thought at first it might be Natividad, coming back for some reason. Frio’s sight was still none too good. Soon, though, he could tell it was not Natividad. He pushed painfully to his feet and supported himself against one of the fractured rock walls. “Amelia,” he said evenly, “the rifle!”
She quickly handed it to him. With his left arm stiff, he didn’t know how he was going to handle it if the need came.
Amelia peered toward the rider and turned back worriedly to Frio. “If it’s the Yankees again, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where? I’ve got no strength to run, even if I wanted to. I ran last night. I’m not ever goin’ to run again!”
María came to stand with Amelia and Frio by the smoke-blackened wall. The boy Chico clung to María’s skirt. Frio tried in vain to make out some detail about the rider. All he got was a blur. “What does he look like?”
Amelia’s mouth dropped open. “It looks like…” Her chin came down, and her mouth hardened. “It looks like Tom.”
Anger struck Frio. His grip tightened on the rifle. “Reckon he’s brought the Yankees with him again?”
Amelia’s voice was strained. “I don’t see any sign of them.” She glanced at Frio’s rifle. “Frio, don’t do anything in anger. Don’t do anything you may regret.”
Frio said tightly, “The only thing I regret is that I went through all those years callin’ him friend.”
Amelia blinked and stopped her tears before they really got started. Gravely she watched Tom McCasland ride in. Tom reined up thirty feet from the ruined house. He started to swing his leg over the saddle.
Frio said sharply, “Stay right where you’re at! You’re not gettin’ off!”
Tom caught himself half out of the saddle. He stopped that way and let his eyes drift over the boy, the two women, and the wounded man who swayed there. Finally he said, “I’m gettin’ down. Shoot me if you want to.”
Frio raised the rifle, but he found he could not bring his left arm across. If he fired, he would have to do it one-handed. The recoil would probably tear the rifle from his weak grasp.
Frio said, “You got no business here. Get back on that horse.”
Tom replied, “Believe me, it took me a long time, workin’ up the courage to come back. I’m not leavin’ now.”
“You got your Yankee friends hidden yonder, someplace in the brush?”
Tom shook his head. “Slipped away from them in the dark. They won’t be back, not for a while. They rode half the night, afraid the fires would attract Santos Benavides and his Mexican militia.”
Amelia said bitterly, “Why didn’t you just keep riding with your Yankees, Tom? There’s nobody here who wants you!”
Tom flinched. He stared at her, hurt in his eyes. “I’m still your brother, Amelia.”
She shook her head. Her voice was like ice. “I had a brother once. His name was Bert, and he died at Glorieta. There is no other!”
Tom McCasland flexed his hands and looked down at his feet. “I guess I knew how it would be. But I had to come back anyway. I had to try and make you understand how it was … why I did it.”
She said, “I guess I know why. You’ve turned Yankee. You’ve betrayed your family, your friends.…”
Tom pointed out, “I could have called them back last night, but I didn’t.”
Frio put in, “It was too late by then to undo the damage. Blas was already dead.”
Tom’s gaze went to the slight figure of María Talamantes, and he winced as if in pain. María stared at him with a level, burning gaze. If she had had a rifle in her hands, she probably would have shot him.
“Frio, I had to do it. The Confederacy is losin’, there’s no doubt about that. The question is, how long will it hold on? This border trade helps keep the war goin’. With you gone, the trade would be badly crippled. They made me see that it was your life against the thousands who might be saved if the war was cut a little shorter. It was a bitter choice, but I had to do it.” Tom clenched his fists and said, “Now I’ve told you why I came. If you want to use that rifle, just go ahead.”
Frio’s hand tightened, but the rifle didn’t fire. He asked, “How come you changed your mind last night? Why didn’t you call the troops back?”
Tom shook his head. “I can’t rightly say. Lost my nerve, I guess. All of a sudden those thousands of men didn’t seem real to me. But you were real, Frio. You were my friend.”
Frio’s voice was harsh. “Friend? All these years Blas Talamantes was the best friend I had, and I didn’t have sense enough to see it till he died to save me.” He raised the muzzle of the rifle. “Now get back on that horse, Tom. If Amelia wasn’t here—if she wasn’t your sister—I’d kill you where you stand. As it is, I’ll let you go.” His eyes narrowed. “But one day we’ll meet and she won’t be there. When that day comes, Tom, I’m goin’ to kill you!”
The gray look of defeat was in Tom’s face. He swung onto the horse. To María he said, “I’m sorry. I wish it had been me instead of Blas.”
He glanced once more in despair at Frio and Amelia. Then he turned the horse around and rode away.