Crossing the yard Max looked at us, but he kept on heading the team for the barn. We walked toward him, approaching broadside, then Max turned the team straight on toward the barn door and we could see the wagon bed. Regalo wasn't in it.
Max stepped off the wagon and waited for us with his hands on his hips.
'He ain't here.'
Terry asked him, 'What happened?'
'He jumped off the wagon and I lost him in the dark.'
'And you've been looking for him.'
Max grinned that ugly grin of his. 'Sure,' he said. 'A man don't like to lose his top hand.'
Then, glancing at Terry, seeing a look on the boy's face I'd never witnessed before, I knew Max Repper was about to lose his top teeth.
Sure enough. Terry took two steps and a little shuffle dance and hit Max square in the mouth. Max went back, but didn't go down and now he came at Terry. Terry had his right cocked, waiting, and he started to throw it. Max put up his guard and Terry held the right, but his left came around wide and clobbered Max on the ear. Then the right followed through, straightening him up, and the left swung wide again and smacked solid against his cheekbone. Max didn't throw a punch. He wanted to at first, then he was kept too busy trying to cover up. I thought Terry's arms would drop off before Max caved in. Then, there it was, for a split second--Max's chin up like he was posing for a profile--and Terry found it with the best-timed, widest-swung roundhouse I've ever seen.
Max went down and he didn't move. Terry stepped inside the barn and came out with a hackamore. He looked down at Max and started to roll him over with his boot. But then he must have thought, What good will it do--He turned away, dropping the hackamore on top of Repper.
All Terry said was 'Long as the boy got away...that's the main thing.'
AFTER THAT EVERYTHING was quiet for a while. Of course what had happened made good conversation, and wherever you'd go somebody would be talking about the half-wild white boy who'd lived with Apaches. And they talked about Max Repper and Terry. Everybody agreed that was a fine thing Terry did, loosening Max's teeth...but Terry better watch himself, the way Max holds on to a grudge with both hands and both feet.
Terry went back to his diggings and Deelie wore her tragic look like he was off to the wars. Max would come in about once a week still, but now he didn't talk so much. Ordered what he wanted and got out.
Then one day a man named Jim Hughes came in and told how he'd seen the boy.
Jim had a one-loop outfit a few miles beyond Repper's place. I told him it was probably just a stray reservation buck, but he said no, he came through the willows to the creek off back of his place and there was the boy lying belly down at the side of the creek. The boy jumped up surprised not ten feet away from him, scrambled for his horse, and was gone. And Jim said the boy was wearing a red shirt, the back of it all ripped.
Max heard about it too. The next day he was in asking whether I'd seen the boy. He talked about it like he was just making conversation, but Max wasn't cut out to be an actor. He wanted to find that boy so bad, he could taste it, and it showed through soon as he started talking.
Within the next few days the boy was seen two more times. First by a neighbor of Jim Hughes's who lived this side of him, then a day later by a cavalry patrol out of Dos Fuegos. They gave chase, but the boy ran for high timber and got away. Both times the boy's red shirt was described.
Now there was something to talk about again; everybody speculating what the boy was up to. The cavalry station received orders from the commandant at Fort Huachuca to bring the boy in and be pretty damn quick about it. It didn't look good to have a boy running around who'd been stolen by the Indians. This was something for the authorities. Down at the State House Saloon they were betting five to one the cavalry would never find him, and they had some takers.
Most people figured the boy was out to get Max Repper and was sneaking around waiting for the right time.
I had the hunch the boy was looking for Terry McNeil. And when Terry finally came in again (it had been almost a month), I told him so.
He was surprised to hear the boy had been seen around here and said he couldn't figure it out. Thought the boy would be glad to get away.
'Why would he want to go back to Apaches?' I asked him.
'He lived with them,' Terry said.
'That doesn't mean he liked them,' I said. 'I could see him going back to those Mexican people, but Sahuaripa's an awful long way off and probably he couldn't find his way back.'
Terry shook his head. 'But why would he be hanging around here?'
'I still say he's looking for you.'
'What for?'
'Maybe he likes you.'
Terry said, 'That doesn't make sense.'
'Maybe he likes red shirts.'
'Well,' Terry said, 'I could look for him.'
'It would be easier to let him find you,' I said.
'If that's what he wants to do.'
'Why don't you just sit here for a while,' I suggested. 'The boy knows you come here. If he wants you, then sooner or later he'll show up.'
Terry thought about it, making a cigarette, then agreed finally that he wouldn't lose anything by staying.
Right in front of me Deelie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him about twelve times. I thought: If that's what having him around just a little while will do, what would happen if he agreed to stay on for life?
DURING THE NEXT four days nothing happened. There weren't even claims of seeing the boy. Terry said, well, the boy's probably a hundred miles away now. And I said, Either that or else he's closing in now and playing it more careful. Repper came in once and when he saw Terry he got suspicious and hung around a long time, though acting like Terry wasn't even there.
The night of the sixth day we were sitting out on the porch talking and smoking, like we'd been doing every evening, and I remember saying something about working up energy to go to bed, when Terry's hand touched my arm. He said, 'Somebody's standing between those two buildings across the street.'
I looked hard, but all I saw was the narrow deep shadow between the two adobes. And I was about to tell Terry he was mistaken when this figure appeared out of the shadows. He stood there for a minute close to one of the adobes, then started across the street, walking slowly.
He came to the steps and hesitated; but when Terry stood up and said, 'Regalo,' softly, the boy came up on the porch.
Deelie turned the lamp up as we went inside and I heard Terry asking the boy if he was hungry. The boy shook his head. Then we all just stood there not knowing what to say, trying not to stare at the boy. He was wearing the torn red shirt and looking at Terry like he had something to tell him but didn't know the right words.
Then he reached into his shirt, suddenly starting to talk in Spanish. He pulled something out wrapped in buckskin, still talking, and handed it to Terry. Then he stopped and just watched as Terry, looking embarrassed, unwrapped the little square of buckskin.
Terry looked at the boy and then at me, his eyes about to pop out of his head, and I saw what he was holding...a raw gold nugget.
It must have been the size of two shot glasses; way, way bigger than any I'd ever had the pleasure of seeing. Terry put it on the counter, stepped back, and looked at it like he was beholding the palace of the king of China.
He just stared, and the boy started talking again in that rapid-fire Spanish like he was trying to say everything at once. Terry looked at the boy and he stared some more until the boy stopped talking.
'What'd he say?' I asked him.
Terry took a minute to look over at me. 'He says this is mine and that he'll show me a lot more. A place nobody knows about...'
