Pinto Lowery Read online

  “And the plantin’? Tendin’ the crop? Who’s to do that?” Richardson asked.

  “We’ll manage,” she declared.

  “With his help?” Richardson exclaimed. “You know he’ll ride off to chase ponies any day. Men like that don’t last anywhere.”

  “I’d judge that’d be my lookout,” Pinto growled. “You made yer offer, and I thank you fer what kindness you showed us in de pas’. Maybe you’d bes’ leave now ’fore I go to losin’ my temper.”

  “Elsie?” Richardson called.

  “You heard Pinto,” she answered. “He’s better at holding his temper than I am. Go before I let loose a right hand guaranteed to cost you a pair of teeth!”

  Richardson started to reply, but the color in Elsie’s face had risen, and the rancher threw his arms in the air and stomped away.

  She then rested her head on Pinto’s shoulder, and he held her a moment. Two women nearby whispered, and one pointed blatantly. Several others quickly collected, and Pinto stepped away.

  “It’s my doin’,” he said, gazing at the ground. “I took too many liberties.”

  “Nonsense,” Elsie argued. “You never did a thing I didn’t welcome.”

  “You don’t unnerstand, Elsie. It’s not you findin’ a man. It’s me! If you took to Richardson dere, folks’d be happy fer you. But me? I ain’t but a patchwork quilt, a bunch o’ cow leavin’s somebody’s romped on too much. Bes’ excuse me now. I done ’nough harm fer one day.”

  He didn’t see Elsie again until it was time to head home. Mostly he’d hung around the wagon, looking after the mules. He hadn’t been so far away to miss the gossip mumbled nearby.

  “There he is there,” a woman might say. “The hired man, Lowery. I heard ...”

  The last part might be about Elsie, or it might be about consorting with Indians. It was startling how many rumors could grow from a simple thing. Each one of them hurt worse than a Comanche lance would have.

  Pinto spoke of it neither on the way home nor in the days that followed. He was out in the fields from dawn to dusk, breaking sod or clearing rock. He returned at day’s end bent over with weariness. He didn’t complain, though. Truett and Ben worked the other mule those same long hours. Brax and Winnie were out with their mother, alternately tossing seed and spreading manure.

  The only relief came on those rare occasions when they splashed into the creek and washed away their fatigue in the chill water.

  “Never knew I had so many places to get sore,” Truett remarked.

  “Nor me,” Pinto said, collapsing in the shallows. “Give me a range pony to break anytime.”

  “Might be better if we rode out and roped us some,” Truett said, grinning. “Good ponies are fetchin’ a high price, what with cattle roundup time nearin’. And who knows what corn’ll bring?”

  “Better come dear this year,” Pinto said, rubbing his shoulders. “Now we got mos’ of it in de ground, too late to think o’ mustangin’.”

  “Maybe so,” Truett confessed.

  “Now lookee there,” Pinto said, smiling as he waved Truett closer. “What do you know?”

  “Somethin’ wrong?” the young man asked anxiously. “Don’t got leeches on me, do I?”

  “No, somethin’ else,” Pinto said, touching a finger to the corners of Truett’s lip. “Gone and grown a moustache.”

  “Yeah, been expectin’ somebody to notice,” Truett said, standing stiff and straight. “Chin hairs, too.”

  “Oh, that ain’t so much,” Ben muttered.

  “Be shavin’ ’fore long,” Pinto declared. “Mighty big thing if you ask me.”

  “I’ll be shavin’, too,” Ben boasted.

  “Yeah?” Truett asked. “Shavin’ what? The fuzz on your legs?”

  “That’ll cost you,” Ben screamed, charging his brother with fury in his eyes. Truett fended off the raining blows until one finally landed on the whiskered chin. Then the two elder Oakes boys erupted in a short exchange of fists that left Ben’s nose and eye puffed up and Truett’s chin dented. Meanwhile Brax managed to run off with his battling brothers’ clothes.

  “Now that’s a fool thing to fight over,” the eleven-year-old shouted from the cover of a tall willow. “Be a time explainin’ to Ma how you come to bloody each other. Not to mention walkin’ all the way to the house bone naked.”

  It was a mistake. Battered and weary, Brax ’s taunts ignited fresh fire in his bothers. It was all Pinto could do to keep Truett from skinning Braxton with a knife. And Ben was for hanging the fool.

  “You’d figure de work’d leave you three too tired fer such tomfoolery,” Pinto scolded them.

  “Got to admit one thing, Pinto,” Truett said. “Nothin’ like a romp or a fight to bring on a laugh.”

  And it was, Pinto decided, laughter which was the one salve for the worst misery.

  Chapter 18

  It took most of March, but the plowing finally did get done. Of course, that was but the first step in the long process of bringing corn to harvest. Even so, Pinto felt no small amount of satisfaction when he gazed out on the neat rows of cornfield. Even a mustanger had enough imagination to envision the tall amber stalks that would yield ear after ear come early autumn.

  “For a man who says he’s no farmer, you did a fair job of it,” Elsie told him. “I’ve been doin’ some thinkin’.”

  “Have you?” Pinto asked.

  “Winnie could move in with me permanent. She’s hardly been in her little room off the kitchen since Tully passed on. Wouldn’t take much to add a few feet to the back of that room. There’d be less room than you’ve got in the loft, but it’d have you back in the house with us.”

  “I don’t see how that would do, Elsie.”

  “You could stay there, or else maybe Ben and Brax would take it. You could share the big room with Tru. You two get along fine nowadays. Either way you choose. Or else if you’d like, Winnie and the boys could stay put, and you could—”

  “Elsie, bes’ hold up right dere,” Pinto interrupted. “That’d mean a weddin’, you know.”

  “Find that thought so hard to stomach, do you, Pinto Lowery?”

  “Never been much for settlin’ in one place too long,” he reminded her. “You got boys and little Winnie to grow.”

  “Takes a steady hand on the reins to get youngsters to the end of the right trail,” she told him.

  “Yer steady ’nough,” he argued. “I jus’ been hangin’ on here days now, tryin’ to figure a way to pull out. Time I was chasin’ ponies up de Brazos. Been a while gettin’ goin’, you know.”

  “Thought on it hard, have you?” she asked. “Have you considered maybe that’s not what you want to do?”

  “I’d be lyin’ to tell you I ain’t found somethin’ fine here this winter. Firs’ time since I can remember that I knew a place to call home. But I’m nobody to sink roots. And nobody to go countin’ on, Elsie. Sooner or later I’ll get to feelin’ roofed in, and I’ll have to ride.”

  “Seems to me it would have happened already if that was true.”

  “Wish I could half believe different. Really do. But I know myself better’n you do. It’s a better man I’d see you take as a husband dis time ’round. I’d prove a disappointment, jus’ like ole Tully. Ain’t sure I could abide that.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Ain’t nobody ever certain,” Pinto said, resting his chin on his chest. “I only know to trus’ what’s happened before to happen again. Been folks trusted me before. I let ’em down each and every time. No more. It’d mean too much dis time.”

  She intertwined her fingers with his own, and Pinto’s heart skipped a beat. There was a yearning inside him just then, and he only barely fought it off.

  “Might be bes’ fer me to go tomorrow,” he announced. “Give me time to gather my things tonight and say my good-byes come mornin’. Time yet to run in some horses.”

  He meandered on a quarter hour, but he knew Elsie wasn’t listening. She just stood at h
is side, searching his eyes for a response to her unspoken pleas. He steeled himself against emotion, though, and after a bit she returned to the house. He walked back later, alone with his thoughts.

  He announced his leaving to the children after supper that night. Truett nodded sadly. Winnie cried openly, and she wouldn’t quiet until Pinto agreed to rock her on his knee.

  Later, up in the loft, Ben and Brax appeared.

  “You can’t go,” Ben declared matter-of-factly. “Cousin Ryan’s told Tru he can go north again this summer, and we’ll need you here.”

  “Won’t even Jared be ’round to keep a watch on us,” Brax added. “We done some figurin’. Maybe if Ben and I was to go with you huntin’ horses, we’d have it all finished early so you could help tend the cornplants come summer.”

  “Sure,” Ben said, grinning. “We’d make a regular horse-huntin’ outfit!”

  “And I been practicin’ my ropin’ real hard, Pinto,” Brax said. “I ain’t got chin whiskers and such, but I can ride. Your big black even lets me sit atop him.”

  “I still got my mouth organ,” Ben pointed out. As he blew a trail song, Pinto paled. For an instant, there in the dark, it seemed as if Muley Bryant had come back from the dead.

  “You all right, Pinto?” Brax asked, touching his hand to Pinto’s clammy forehead. “You appear sick.”

  “Can’t go anywhere if you’re feverish,” Ben said in an almost cheerful voice. “I’ll fetch Ma.”

  “I’m fine,” Pinto insisted. “Was only rememberin’. Look, boys, I appreciate yer offer. It’s generous to a fault. But where I’ll be headin’s no place fer boys. Stay here and get some growin’ done.”

  “You’ll come back when you get the horses caught?” Ben asked.

  “Got to sell ’em, don’t I?” Pinto asked. “Anyhow, I wouldn’t jus’ ride off and never see friends again. Not ’less somethin’ come along and blew me off to Kansas or Wes’ Texas, or maybe Colorado Terri dory.”

  “Ma’ll miss you bad,” Ben declared. “Winnie, too.”

  “And you?” Pinto asked.

  “I won’t have no big black horse to feed,” Brax mumbled. “Nor anybody to spin stories in the loft.”

  The eleven-year-old collapsed against Pinto’s side. A tear cascaded down the boy’s cheek and fell on Pinto’s wrist.

  “Be missin’ you boys, too,” Pinto confessed as Ben edged closer. “But you’ll do fine. Got de makin’s o’ good men in you.”

  Ben held his mouth organ to his lips and tried to manage a melody. The lips quivered, and a sort of unharmonic sob came out.

  “Can’t take me to heart, you know,” Pinto whispered. “All I ever was’s a bit o’ wind blew through off de Llano. Be forgot in a year.”

  “You’re wrong, Pinto,” Ben said, rubbing his eyes dry. “Not ever forgot.”

  “Not ever,” Brax echoed.

  “Nor you, boys,” Pinto said, pulling them close for a moment. And knowing it would be better for all of them if it wasn’t so.

  He thought to leave before breakfast that next morning, but Elsie was up earlier than usual, and Ben appeared with the Winchester to insure Pinto didn’t escape.

  “Plan to shoot me, Ben?” Pinto cried in surprise.

  “Brax asked Ma if maybe we could hole you in the foot. Not enough to cripple or anything. Just enough to keep you here. She said you were old enough to make up your own mind.”

  “What do you figure?” Pinto asked as Ben relaxed his grip and let the rifle’s barrel drop toward the ground.

  “Don’t mean you come to the right choice, just cause you’re grown. Better for everybody if you was to stay.”

  “Can’t,” Pinto declared.

  “Then I don’t suppose a rifle’d hold you. ’Specially not one without any bullets in it. But you can come eat some breakfast. Fresh sausage and blueberry muffins. Mexican omelet.”

  “Hurryin’ me on my way, eh?”

  “Stuffin’ you so you won’t starve ’fore May’s out.”

  Pinto followed Ben to the house and washed his face and hands as he’d done a hundred times before. The breakfast was as tasty as any he’d ever eaten, and he lauded Elsie’s efforts.

  “She had a lot o’ time to work on it,” Winnie explained. “We didn’t sleep much last night.”

  The six of them sat silently around the table then for close to a quarter hour. Finally Pinto rose and started for the door.

  “Here,” Elsie called, offering a flour sack of food.

  “Don’t go,” Winnie cried, clamping hold of one leg.

  “We all of us want you to stay,” Truett announced. “But only if you want. Ain’t any obligation owed us. And we thank you for what you done already.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed.

  It was likely rehearsed, and Pinto nodded his own thanks to Elsie for easing his escape. Nevertheless, after prying Winnie’s fingers loose, he felt ten eyes on his back all the way to the corral. The big black was already saddled, and all Pinto had to do was tie his belongings atop the pack horse.

  “You’ll visit when you pass nearby, won’t you?” Elsie called.

  “Lightnin’ strike me dead if I don’t,” Pinto answered. Then he pulled the gate open and led out the horses. In another instant he was mounted and riding west.

  Pinto Lowery was three days reaching open country. Passing through the scattered towns and ranches north of the Brazos, listening to the shouts of children swimming the river or mothers announcing supper ready, he was constantly reminded of the life he had just put behind him.

  “Can’t run forever, boys,” Captain Maven had said the morning they’d laid down their arms at Appomattox. “Sooner or later a man’s got to make his stand, fight it out, and go home again.”

  The words had rung hollow for what was left of the Marshall Guards. Home was a place left a thousand and a half miles behind. Who knew if the town still stood? And if it did, what man among them who’d left as a fuzz-cheeked child could return, scarred and bitter, to what he’d known before?

  Once Pinto had delighted in the windswept plain and rock-studded hills of western Texas. Now the country was filling up with people, cows, and towns. He found few signs of mustangs, and when he did run down a pair of horses, they proved to be wearing Hood County brands.

  “Comanche-stolen mos’ likely,” Pinto grumbled. He left the animals in Palo Pinto in hopes their owner might fetch them.

  “Might be they’d pay a reward,” Krug Mannion, the liveryman, explained.

  “If they offer one, get ’em do send it to Elsie Oakes out in Defiance.”

  “Family?” Mannion asked. “Didn’t know you to have none.”

  “Jus’ tell ’em, won’t you?” Pinto replied sharply.

  “No skin off my chin either way, Lowery. Man comes to need family now and again, though,” Mannion added. Reading Pinto’s frown, the liveryman added, “Only makin’ conversation.”

  “Didn’t come lookin’ fer any o’ that,” Pinto barked. “Be on my way now.”

  He rode off slowly, knowing Mannion was sure to laugh at the notion that a vagabond mustanger like Pinto Lowery should ever find a home. Yes, it was crazed idea. And yet Pinto saw Elsie and the children in every shadow, every dream. No matter how far he rode, he couldn’t manage to shake the memory of that final farewell.

  It was near the middle of April when Pinto finally came across mustangs. By then he was way up north of Buffalo Springs, near where the Little Wichita emptied into the Red River. Across to the north the Chickasaw traders always had horses to swap, and if worst came to worst, Pinto supposed he might pick up a few raw ponies and break them into proper trail mounts before turning south to Wise County.

  “Maybe little ole Brax can even take a crack at one,” Pinto said, laughing as he envisioned the boy, yellow hair flying in all directions, battling to stay atop of a Chickasaw pony.

  The white-faced stallion snorted and stomped as its rider lost his sense of direction.

  “Can’t help it, boy
,” Pinto told the horse. “Ain’t no escapin’ their faces, it seems.”

  Of course, the stallion wasn’t the least interested in Pinto’s day-dreams. The big horse had sniffed out its fellow creatures, and it now bolted across the low hills with rare abandon. Pinto gave a backward glance at his packhorse and held on tightly as he was jolted and jarred. He knew it was best to give the horse its head. After all, if there were mustangs close by, the black would run them down.

  As it happened, the stallion raced into the midst of a small herd. Pinto counted twenty or thirty, and there were more besides. At first the animals shied away, but weeks in the open had wrung most of the human scent out of Pinto, and the lathered black was fast at work befriending mares.

  “Don’t know whether you’ll bring ’em along or dey’ll have you ridin’ off,” Pinto declared as he pulled the stallion away. “Time we made some plans.”

  Pinto’s withdrawal was timely, for a buckskin stallion came running over moments later, snorting at the intruder that dared approach his harem.

  “Not now, boy,” Pinto said as he fought to hold the big black in check. “I’ll be wantin’ more’n a bloody horse fer my trouble.”

  And so, after retrieving the wandering packhorse from the grassland to the south, Pinto set about making plans. For the first time in days he was his old self, jabbering away about mustangs and searching out a hollow to serve as the jaws of a horse trap. He wasn’t lucky enough to find the sort of box canyon that had served so well on the Brazos, but he did locate a steep ravine. In three days of sweat and agony Pinto erected fences walling off a thirty foot stretch on both ends. He slid the rails aside on the west end and double-lashed the ones on the east side. Finally he climbed atop the black stallion and set out to capture the buckskin’s harem.

  Pinto knew from the first he would never capture the whole batch. For one thing, the buckskin wasn’t half as dominant as the black had been. A dozen other stallions ran with the herd, and many of them clearly had a mare or two to themselves.

  “Be lucky to come up with three dozen,” Pinto told himself. Or two. But even ten good saddle horses would turn a handsome profit. And in the back of his mind crept the notion to save the best three mares and do a bit of breeding.