live with their uncle Stephen. The uncle didn’t know they were coming but they were sure he would be glad to see them, him and Aunt Beulah both.
They each had a half-dozen peanut butter sandwiches in their bindles and they were quick to offer me one. I was so hungry I took it down in about four bites and they insisted I have another. I said it was a long way to Houston and they were going to need all the food they had but they said ah hell, we was hobo buddies, wasn’t we. So I took the sandwich. I asked if they had any money and they said they sure did, they had four bits apiece. I gave them two dollars, which they refused until I convinced them I wasn’t paying for the sandwiches, I was only helping out some hobo buddies who could use a little dough on their long trip. I said they could pay me back next time we ran into each other. “Well…in that case,” Charlie the older one said, “all right then.”
We went through Spofford, Uvalde, Hondo, the floor of the car vibrating so hard it was tough to get any sleep. When the train began to slow on its approach to the San Antonio yard, I shook hands with the boys and wished them luck. I secretly hoped they wouldn’t get robbed and maybe worse by the first wolves they ran into.
The train didn’t seem to be going all that fast now, but I didn’t know how deceptive train speed could be.
“They say you supposed to try and hit the ground running,” young Fred said.
“So I’ve been told,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”
I tossed out my saddlebags and bedroll, then crouched low at the edge of the car floor—and then jumped and tried to hit the ground running.
I went tumbling and flapping every which way and it was a wonder I didn’t crack my skull. I gashed a cheek and banged up a knee and cut my elbows and pretty much felt like I’d been stomped by a herd of horses. I sat up and saw Fred and Charlie looking back at me from the boxcar. I waved like the landing had gone just perfect and they waved back.
The knee was bloody and hurt like a sonofabitch and at first I was afraid I’d broken it. But I could stand up and hobble around so I knew it was just badly bruised. I picked up my hat and went back and got my saddlebags and roll and then gimped on out to the nearest road and found a bus stop. About an hour later a bus came along with a sign saying DOWNTOWN. I got aboard and went into San Antonio, where I hadn’t been since shortly after I was born.
I didn’t do much of anything during the next two weeks except sleep and read and let the knee heal up. When I wasn’t reading I’d sit in the tattered armchair by the window and smoke and watch the street and sidewalk traffic passing by. For exercise I’d do sitting pushups off the arms of the chair, raising and lowering myself till my arms were burning and about to cramp, then I’d rest a bit and then do another set until I couldn’t raise myself off the chair at all. Then I’d sleep some more. I kept both revolvers under the pillow.
I wanted to know how things were at the YB but I didn’t think it was a good idea to write to Aunt Ava directly. Even if I didn’t put a return address on the envelope, somebody at the post office could be keeping an eye on her mail, with instructions to let the sheriff know about any letter that looked suspicious. It wasn’t really very likely they’d go to all that trouble but I didn’t want to take any chances. It was even less likely, though, that they’d be watching the vaqueros’ mail, and after lying low for more than a month I finally wrote a note to Esteban. I asked how things stood and how my aunt was doing and said to tell her I was all right. I didn’t tell him where I was living but said to write me back in care of general delivery at the post office on Commerce, which was two blocks from the Nopales.
By then I was already getting around with a cane, and in another week or so I didn’t need it anymore. I took my meals at a little Mex cafe down the street. I went for a stroll every morning in a nearby park, limping less every day. I’d sit on a bench in the sun and read the local papers. Every afternoon I’d check in at the post office. One day Esteban’s letter was waiting for me.
He wrote in a scrawl and mostly in Spanish as bad as his English, but with a few English phrasings mixed in, pretty much the way he usually talked. He said the police had questioned him and some of the other vaqueros about me but the boys all said they had no idea where I might have gone, which was of course the truth. There was a warrant out on me for murder, he said, and there was a reward of five hundred dollars for information leading to my capture. He said he could be a rich man if only he knew exactly where I was living. Maybe he was joking and maybe not. And he said that, in case I didn’t know it, the senora had sold the ranch.
She had done so only a few days after the funerals of Don Cullen and Don Reuben. And then a week after the sale, she departed on the train from Marfa with only two bags of belongings. She told everyone she was going to live with a cousin in Albuquerque and gave her new address to a few people. But it was common knowledge that when her bookstore friend Mrs. Morgan had tried to contact her shortly after she moved, the Albuquerque post office said there was no such address in town. Where she had truly gone, Esteban wrote, no one could say.
As for Chente, he had been convicted of assault and sentenced to six months in the county jail. It was doubtful he would receive an early release for good behavior, as he was always fighting with the other inmates. The new owner of the YB—now called the Blue Range Ranch—was a kind man named Colfax who had become rich in the oil business but had always wanted to raise horses. Mr. Colfax had kept on all of the hands and retained Esteban as the foreman. Esteban said he was glad the Blue Range would be strictly a horse ranch, and he concluded with the hope that I was safe and in good health and advised me to go with God.
That was that.
And why I lied to Daniela about how I’d come to leave the YB.
Over the next two months I worked at several different jobs in San Antonio and hated them all. I carried a hod for a construction gang, worked with a road-tarring crew, laid sewer pipe on a municipal project, drove a water truck for the city. I didn’t stick with any of them for more than a few weeks. I was busting my back for peanuts and choking on the boredom. I was drunk almost every night and getting into bar fights.
One night in an alley behind a saloon I beat the shit out of a tough-talking merchant sailor who had a couple of inches and about thirty pounds on me. He’d been bullying everybody in the bar and they were glad to see me cool him, and my drinks were on the house the rest of the night. Among the spectators was a guy who had a friend who owned a cathouse at the south end of town and was in need of a good bouncer. The last good one who’d worked there had got stabbed in his sleep by a jealous girlfriend, and the two he’d hired since had both got their asses whipped by rough customers. Was I interested in the job? Sure, why not? The next day he took me out to the place, the Bluebonnet Dance Hall, and introduced me to the owner, a Mr. Stanley, and told him about the way I’d handled the sailor. And I got the job.
The place called itself a dance hall and on the ground floor that’s what it was. The “dance hostesses” did their whoring on the second floor. I’d check in around five o’clock and usually not leave till three or four in the morning, depending on how much business the joint was turning. I’d sit in a chair at the foot of the stairs to the second floor and keep an eye on things in the dance parlor and I was within easy call of the floorwoman upstairs if any of the girls had trouble with a customer.
The only troublesome guys we had in there during my first weeks on the job were drunks who either couldn’t get it up or couldn’t get off for some other reason and thought their three dollars bought them all the time they’d need to get their satisfaction. But the house limit was fifteen minutes unless you ponied up another three bucks. If a customer got unreasonable about it the floorwoman would call down for me and I’d go up and persuade the guy to get his clothes on and take his leave. I hardly ever had to get rougher with any of them than an armlock. Only now and then did I have to punch somebody in the gut to put an end to the argument. I carried the Colt under my jacket but Stanley had told me I’d better never pull it unless some customer pulled a piece first. The job required
