“Any of them like to steal again?”
“No sir.”
He stared off at the purple eastern sky. Then looked at Reuben and I had a hunch what was on his mind, what he wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer to. So I told him.
“It was just me dealt with them.”
“Just you all four?” He cut a look at Reuben.
“Yessir.”
He nodded at the Sharps. “With that.”
“Yessir.”
Until that moment I hadn’t really thought about how he might react to the news that I’d killed four men. I had probably assumed he would approve—after all, I’d only done what I had to do to get our horses back. Who could object to that? Not until I saw the way he looked at the Sharps did it occur to me how very differently he might see the whole thing—how differently most people would.
“You got any idea what could’ve happened to you-all down there? Not just from them thieves but from the police, from the goddamn rurales? From some bunch of bandits you might’ve come on?”
“I guess we could’ve had a little trouble, yessir.”
“A little trouble. Yeah, you could call it that.”
He’d never told me or Reuben very much about his younger days, but Frank Hartung had, and so I knew Uncle Cullen had never been a shrinking violet. Many a time when Uncle Cullen wasn’t around, Frank had entertained us with stories of the bar fights they’d been in, tales of broken noses and lost teeth, blowed-up ears and black eyes and the different times they’d been tossed in the El Paso or the Las Cruces lockup till they sobered up and bailed out. But he’d never mentioned a knife or a gun in any of the fight stories. The only story Frank ever told us that involved a weapon was about Uncle Cullen’s older brother, Teddy, who was found dead in an alley in Alpine one frosty morning. He was nineteen years old and had been stabbed a bunch of times. They knew it happened in a fight because his face was bruised and his knuckles all skinned. There were rumors of a girl and of a jealous boyfriend but nobody the local police questioned admitted to knowing anything about it, and whoever killed him was never found out. Teddy had been something of a loner, Frank told us. “A man friendless as Teddy,” he said, “has got the least chance of all in this world.”
If either Frank or Uncle Cullen ever killed a man, they did a good job of keeping it secret from us. But I really didn’t think there was any such secret for either of them to keep.
In the last of the light before the closing gloom hid his face, Uncle Cullen looked at me in a way he never had before, like he was staring at somebody he wasn’t real sure he recognized.
“I always did believe,” he said, “that a fellow gets to be eighteen, he’s old enough to make his own decisions, be he fool or be he wise. But Jimmy, I want you to promise me that as long as you continue living on the YB you won’t never go across that river again without my permission.”
I promised.
He turned to Reuben. “And you best promise me the same, least-ways till you’re a grown man too and decide for yourself what to do and where to do it.”
Reuben promised.
“All right, then,” Uncle Cullen said.
He jutted his chin toward the porch, where Aunt Ava’s shadowy figure still stood. “You boys go on and get you some supper,” he said. “Miss Ava told Carlotta keep yall a warm plate in case you got back tonight.”
As we headed for the house, I still felt the look he’d given me. A look you give a stranger.
Aunt Ava stepped out of the shadows to meet us at the top of the porch steps. She gave Reuben a hug and told him to wash up before he sat at the table. He said yes mam and went inside. Then she took my free hand in both of hers and went up on her toes to kiss me quick on the mouth. I stood there in astonishment and watched her go into the house, and after a moment I went in too. It was the only kiss she ever gave me.
She never mentioned the rustlers even once, and Uncle Cullen never referred to them again. As far as I knew Reuben never spoke of them to anybody. When Falcone came with the trailers for his horses the next day, Uncle Cullen told him they had came splashing from across the river onto YB land and when he saw their mark he thought it damn strange that Falcone’s stock was so far south and on the Mexican side. Falcone said he was sure the horses had been rustled. He figured the herd got loose of the thieves somehow. Uncle Cullen said that must be it and he told Falcone he should consider himself lucky. Falcone said if he was lucky the horses wouldn’t have been stolen in the first place.
We worked the roundups, Reuben and I, worked the brandings, worked at trimming manes and tails and bundling the hair for shipping. We tracked down strays and mended fences. If anyone had asked me what I expected to be doing in the years ahead I would’ve thought it was a fool question. What else would I be doing but living and working at the YB? Uncle Cullen had done it all his life and there was no reason to think Reuben and I wouldn’t do the same.
But things can change pretty damn sudden, of course. And one night that summer they did.
Every year, the Veterans’ Club held a Fourth of July Firecracker Dance at the old fairground just off the Marfa road, about halfway between the YB ranch and town, and that year Reuben and Chente and Uncle Cullen and I drove up there in our old truck. My uncle had been a devil of a dancer back before he had the heart attack and was forced to start taking it easy, but he still liked to go to dances and tap his foot to the music and watch everybody and criticize their dancing styles, and he liked to have a drink or two with neighbor ranchers and catch up on things. He tried to cajole Aunt Ava into going along with us, but she never was one to socialize and she said for us to all go ahead and have a good time.
It was the biggest turnout ever, at least two hundred people, lots of them families, both Mexican and Anglo, and there were plenty of high school girls from Marfa as well as girls from the local ranches. A pair of bands took turns providing the music—a string band from Alpine and a ranchera group from Marfa. The dance floor was a large patch of hardpacked dirt with rows of colored lightbulbs strung overhead. It was a moonless night and the sky was crammed with stars. There were bleachers and tables and benches, openfire pits smoking with slabs of ribs, a scattering of concession stands selling cold drinks and cotton candy and hot dogs. The air was rich with the aromas of it all—and with a taint of booze. Prohibition was on its last legs by then but was still in force and the bootleggers were still doing good business, especially since the sheriff didn’t give a damn, being a drinking man himself. Almost every table had a jug or three on it and the only ones making a secret of their drinking were men who didn’t want their wives to know and boys who’d been told by their daddies they were too young yet.
We’d brought a jug of hooch too—me and Reuben and Chente—and every once in a while we’d take a break from dancing and go out to the truck in the parking lot and have a snort. I’d slipped the jug behind the truck seat before Uncle Cullen came out of the house and got in. Not that he’d say anything to me about drinking—hell, I was only a month shy of nineteen—but he’d for sure climb all over me for letting Reuben drink, and he might yet have tried taking a belt to Reuben’s ass if he caught him at it. Uncle Cullen of course had his own jug on hand—“to ward off the chill,” he said, of the July night.
After about an hour of whirling around the floor with different girls, I settled on the one I wanted, a Mexican honey named Rosa Elena. She was in the country illegally and spoke just enough English to understand her duties as a housemaid for a prosperous Marfa family. They treated her well and had invited her to come with them to the dance. She was round-hipped and bright-eyed and a dozen guys were after her and had been cutting in on each other all through the early evening. We were just starting our second dance together when one of them came up to cut in on me, but she held to me and whispered that she wished we could stay partners. So I turned the guy down—and all the others who tried cutting in after him, and I refused to surrender her between numbers. One of the cowboys I shook my head at didn’t take it too well, and for a moment I thought the fool might try to start something. But he didn’t do anything more than give me a tough look and mutter under his breath before backing off. The word must’ve got around that we were paired for the evening, because we were left pretty much unbothered from then on.
At one point while I was dancing with Rosa, I saw Chente and Reuben sneaking off to the parking lot for
