The English Horses

grass.”

The old man stayed put on the mule while Davey worked with the team. The sorrel and the mealy bay showed temper when he tried backing them into the traces and Davey cursed both animals as t hey kicked and stepped over the lines.

The old man allowed it could be the mule. “Horses don’t take to Bert, he’s some contrary and they know it. Get me in the wagon, and turn the old son loose. Bert won’t follow and he won’t worry ’bout being left alone. And no honest, respecting thief would try to steal him. By the time this leg gets set and wrapped, old Bert’ll be filled with this here good grass, and ready to carry me home.”

The white mule wandered out of sight. The team backed up right smart and stood while Davey finished his work. Only the team breathing in unison and the fat old man’s wheezing broke up the daytime sounds. Davey climbed in, pushed a place for himself against the old man’s bulk, and picked up the lines, talking to the bay and the sorrel as they moved as a team, eager to be gone from the white mule’s miserable being.

The old man spoke up finally. “The name’s Eager Briggs. I seen you…working for that Englishman to the L Slash. He ain’t so bad, for a foreigner. I knew old Littlefield. Your Englishman, he’s right ’bout the wire. I don’t much like it myself, too old for that. Dangerous, spiteful stuff. But it’s the only way now. Open range’s gone, too many folks crowding in.”

Davey listened to the old man and was reluctant to think him right. But now that Briggs had got his mouth open, he didn’t stop. “You be Davey Hildahl…come over from Arizona. With a reputation behind you that you swung a wide loop, hired out your gun. Got ridden out of good country ’cause folks didn’t trust your name.”

These were words for fighting, but Davey didn’t bother. An old man earned some few privileges, and talk was one of them.

Briggs shook his head, a sour smell coming from him. “Ain’t easy to understand, you being the peaceful one to the L Slash.”

These words were a steel trap, closing in on Davey. He’d thought that time in Arizona long gone. It had been close to three years since he’d left. He’d never killed a man, never even let off a shot. Just rode with the wrong bunch. Now an old man with a broken leg was recalling all the supposed truths. He grinned, and shook the lines to the slowing team.

Briggs rambled on. “Son, I come up from Texas. Too many years ago to make a difference. And I come up the same way you did, from over west. Had a sheriff after me, asking questions ’bout what I knowed and seen. What I did. No one else to blame but my youth, son, and my greed. Now I got over that, like you done…it seems to me.”

Davey said the first thing that came to mind. “How’d you break that leg? It don’t look pretty, and it sure don’t smell recent.”

Eager Briggs smiled, and that wasn’t a pretty sight, either. Few teeth, and the wrinkled face folded up in layers of fat and grease. “Mule kicked me, ’course. Kicked me before, but this’s the first time it took. Broke the leg bone clear through and I set it, then the durned mule went and kicked me again. More’n I could set this time. Curandero said I waited too long…herbs ain’t strong enough. Need a doc, he said. So I’s headed to Socorro.”

Two miles of silence, with Davey hoping the worst of the revelations were done. Then the old man began talking about things too close to Davey’s mind.

“I seen that mestenero you got to the L Slash. I seen him before.” Then he changed direction. “You know, I rode out of places years back ’cause they was stringing that wire. Rode out o’ Kansas in ’Seventy-Seven. They was putting up wire faster’n my buckskin could pace a mile. Had a talk once with a man, setting on his land and guarding it with a musket. Black powder it was, big enough to stop a whole family o’ grizzlies.”

Davey was only half listening, so tired he could barely see through swollen eyes, but, at least, the team was pulling half decently now, the mealy bay doing his share. Eager Briggs’s words became a lullaby. Until Briggs got back to a bitter name. Then Davey came up awake.

“Yes, sir, I seen that mestenero before. Thought so the night he and Donald, they got to drinking, and ole Donald he got to talking. Mestenero did some bragging of his own ’bout where he’d been, where he’d come from. Yes, sir, I knowed that boy when he was a young ’un.”

Davey’s head snapped up, but Briggs talked on like he never knew Davey had almost been asleep. “Down in Texas, when he was a button. He was working ’longside his pa, fighting with his two sisters. Had him a pretty ma, real pretty.” Here the old man sighed, the explosion of hot breath stunning Davey. “It was right sad.”

Davey looked over. His passenger was wiping tears from his eyes, then pulling at his long, reddened nose and mumbling something from the folds of his mouth. “Yes, sir, he looked just like his pa back then. Eyes and such, that black hair. Now men used to say John English was part Indian. I never believed it, so I asked John, plain as could be. And he said his family was Welsh, come from a long line o’ these Welsh…a thick-headed lot he called them. He laughed, said his boy waslike him at that age. He was a tough one, John English. Big son, more’n six feet, and only got one arm, lost it in that damned war.”

“Burn English is a runt, Mister Briggs. You’re thinking about someone else you knew…said it was a long time ago.”

Briggs shook, like maybe he was laughing, instead of crying. “There’s more to it, son. Sorry, I was there when it happened.” He choked off, wiped his eyes, and then the corners of his mouth, and Davey was glad he didn’t have to be staring at Eager Briggs all this time.

“It took the whole family. The boy got terrible sick with the fever. He lived, but never grew much after. Couldn’t have been more’n thirteen when he got sick. Big as he is now…never got much bigger. He was a tough one, that boy. After his folks. …He worked horses and kept to himself. Local ranchers hired him. Not like his pa, friendly and such. Took me in one time I was poorly. His ma…she was a pretty thing. He ain’t much like neither of them…they was good people, though, and they taught their boy well.”

Davey thought of English. What Briggs was saying, it all made sense.

“Yes, sir, heard tell of the boy after that. Shot two men for stealing his bronc’. Got shot his self, but went after the bastards. He were only a kid, but that pistol made him full-sized. Killed one man in a cantina, other died later. Boy disappeared. Guess he thought the law wanted him.”

Maybe that was what Davey felt—a kinship, from looking over his shoulder. Kept a man lonesome and even downright unfriendly.

Eager Briggs rubbed the leg that was broke, above the knee, squeezing the swollen flesh. The wattles along his sagging jaw flipped sideways and made Davey think of an old rooster. He clucked to the team, found his mouth dried out. His eyes burned and were sore.

He stopped at the doc’s office. It was dusk and Davey was tired. Briggs came partway around to Davey’s side to deliver a final opinion. “You watch…Mister Donald’s going to make a try for those mares. There’ll be hell to breakfast when that boy finds out. Donald ain’t got the heart to keep his word. He don’t know the English boy like I do. Them Englishes fight for what’s theirs.” The old man rubbed his damp, toothless mouth before spitting out the rest of his thinking. “You pay attention, Davey. That boy killed two men when he was sixteen, for taking one horse. You think much of him, you’ll keep watch, keep him outta the same trouble here. Go ’long now, I got me a doc to see.”

Chapter Fifteen

Davey put the team up at the livery, careful of Billy McPhee’s temper and the mealy bay’s heels. He made a deal with Billy to bed down in the hay; in exchange he gave up his matches and would feed out come morning. Finally he checked in at Miller’s General Mercantile, telling Miller he’d be back early the next morning.

That left getting a meal, for his belly was snapping his backbone. On that errand he passed Dr. Lockhart’s office and saw a light, and, without thinking, he knocked hard. The doctor brought him into a bright room stinking of spoiled meat and disinfectant and Eager Briggs, who had his leg propped in a chair and was chewing a chicken leg