Pinto Lowery Read online

Pinto rushed over to where Faye was tending little Ted. The child was a lump of shudders. His face was already paling, and blood stained his trouser leg, collecting in a pool on the dusty ground.

  “Give me a try, ma’am,” Pinto said, taking cloth strips torn from Faye Tubbs’s petticoats and binding the bloody wound. “Had practice at such, you see.”

  “I’ve heard stories,” the woman said, fighting to regain her composure. It wasn’t easy. Already the odor of burning wagons filled the air, and smoke blended with the gray morning to obscure the horizon.

  “Look after him good, Lowery,” Elmer pleaded, sitting beside his son with a face paled by shock and fear.

  “He won’t die, will he?” Alice asked.

  “Where’s Tom?” her mother added.

  “Safe, I pray,” Pinto muttered as he glanced at the barn. The outlaws were driving the last of the horses out toward the open range. As they left, Pinto recalled Big Nose Joe Hannigan’s words.

  I know all about de itch to ride, Pinto thought as he spat dust from his mouth. He had the urge to be anywhere else than the Tubbs place at that moment. Anywhere else!

  Chapter 2

  Pinto discovered Tom Tubbs cowering in a corner of the barn. The boy gazed anxiously toward where Muley Bryant lay facedown just inside the door, and Pinto nodded with understanding.

  “Dey had no call to do that,” the mustanger said as he helped Tom rise. “Nor to raid yer pa, neither.”

  “Nor to shoot Teddy,” Tom mumbled as they reached the door.

  “Hoped you didn’t know ’bout that,” Pinto said, shaking his head.

  “Saw most of it,” Tom explained. “Guess you know they might have kilt me if I’d stayed out there.”

  “Didn’t shoot me,” Pinto pointed out. “Weren’t altogether hard o’ heart. Let yer ma and Alice be. Was gold dey come fer.”

  “Sure,” Tom grumbled. Then, when his mother spotted him, he raced to her side. The Tubbs family circled around Ted and offered comfort and encouragement. Pinto took note of that.

  “You don’t belong there, Pinto,” he told himself. And he walked back to the barn to tend Muley.

  By late afternoon little Ted was resting comfortably in his bed. A doctor had come out from Cleburne to dig the bullet from the youngster’s hip, and what fever had ensued broke an hour later.

  “Thank God for that,” his mother had proclaimed.

  Elroy Tubbs, meanwhile, had collected a group of neighbors, chased down his horses, and was readying himself to set out after the outlaws. The posse showed little enthusiasm for the task ahead, though. They had no hunger for an ambush.

  Fool’s errand, Pinto thought. Big Nose Joe Hannigan and his outfit weren’t going to be brought to bay by a band of shotgun-wielding farmers and shopkeepers.

  As for the Hood County sheriff, Murray Ralls, he contented himself with sending telegrams.

  “Let them politicians in Jacksboro worry themselves sick over that gold,” Ralls told Tubbs. “Ain’t a penny of it mine.”

  Tubbs was visibly disappointed when Pinto refused to join the posse.

  “I expected loyalty from you, Lowery,” the freighter complained. “And after all, they were none too friendly toward you.”

  “Somebody ought to tend Muley,” Pinto argued. “He got killed, remember?”

  “Wrap him in a blanket and dig him a hole,” Tubbs suggested. “We can’t do him any good now. Better to punish the ones who killed him.”

  “Wasn’t but a boy, and a simple one at thad,” Jonas Birney, one of the neighbors, agreed.

  “Maybe,” Pinto admitted. “Still, he ought to be cleaned up respectable. A proper place should be dug, with a marker put up. We should get a preacher to read words over him. If he’s got family ...“

  “He doesn’t,” Tubbs said, spitting as he slung a saddle onto the back of broad-backed brown stallion. “There’ll be no crowd of mourners, either. Now come along.”

  “Might be he’ll have jus’ one soul at his buryin’,” Pinto replied. “Me! He’ll have thad one, though. Muley never dealed me false, nor gave me call to doubt him. I’ll see right done him.”

  “You may just do it jobless!” Tubbs hollered. “Let’s go, men. Lowery wouldn’t be any use in a fight anyway.”

  Pinto glared as the riders set off northward. What would Elmer Tubbs know o’ fightin’? he wondered.

  Actually there wasn’t much to tending Muley. The poor boy was hardly marked. Except for the hole in his chest, it looked like he was sleeping. Oh, there was the blood, sure, but it was washed off easily enough.

  Not all the Tubbses shared Elmer’s disdain for the slain stableboy. Tom offered a clean shirt, and Alice supplied an old pair of her father’s shoes. Muley had decent enough trousers set aside for rare ventures into Cleburne for church. Pinto provided stockings and a string tie from his own scant belongings.

  “Wish I could put yer mouth organ in here with you,” Pinto lamented as he and Faye wrapped Muley in a time-worn quilt. “But I guess dey’ll give you a harp to play up yonder.”

  “Sure, they will,” Tom said by way of comfort.

  Pinto dug the grave alone. He found a spot half a mile up the road where a clump of willows crowded a spring. Even on that gray February afternoon the place seemed halfway cheerful.

  “It’ll do,” he announced as he struck a spade into the hard ground. “And come spring dere’ll be flowers.”

  It was young Tom who nailed a pair of white pickets into a cross and inscribed Muley’s name in carefully drawn letters.

  Martin Bryant, horse lover, Tom had thought to write.

  “Never knew he had a proper name,” Pinto said as he eased the body to its resting place.

  “Everybody’s got a proper name,” Alice declared. “Or did have. Muley told me his last Christmas when we had that barn dance. He was all elbows and knees mostly, but he never did anybody harm.”

  Pinto began the brief memorial by reading from a battered Bible. He’d barely begun when Faye Tubbs rode up atop a wagon. In the bed little Ted looked out, pale and battered but alert.

  “He oughtn’t to’ve lef’ his bed,” Pinto grumbled.

  “Muley was my friend, too,” Ted argued. “I had to come say good-bye.”

  The words spoke for the whole company, and Pinto said as much. He then read two short passages, and Faye added a fourth from memory.

  “Rest easy, Muley,” Tom said when Pinto announced it was time to fill in the grave.

  “No more hogs to feed,” Alice whispered.

  “You’ll break some hearts up there,” Faye added as she draped an arm over Alice’s shoulders. “And chase some good horses, I’m certain.”

  “Be lonely on de Llano,” Pinto said last of all. The others climbed into the wagon, and Faye drove them home. Pinto stayed and shoveled earth over his young friend. It wasn’t the first time he’d buried a comrade. At least this time there’d been time to wash away the blood and see a proper hole was dug. Just the same, death had a way of leaving a man cold and hollow when it passed close by. Pinto Lowery hoped to give the grim reaper a wide berth for a time.

  Elmer Tubbs returned near dusk the day after the burial. The freighter said little. He was trail-worn and dust-choked. After embracing his wife and looking in on Ted, he marched to the barn.

  Pinto was looking after Tubbs’s weary horse at that moment.

  “Well, at least you’ve put yourself to some use,” Tubbs grumbled. “Come dawn have me a fresh mount saddled. Ready one for yourself as well. You ride tomorrow, either with me or on your own.”

  “Was only waitin’ fer you to get back,” Pinto answered, motioning to where his two horses stood ready for hard travel. He’d rolled his belongings in a blanket and tied them atop the pack horse.

  “Be some winter left,” Tubbs growled, twirling a watch fob. “You’ll wish you’d decided elsewise.”

  “Likely,” Pinto replied. “Wouldn’t be de firs’ mistake I made. Still, I can’t work for a man’s got no time to
honor his dead. And if I did, I’d have to think hard on stayin’ with anyone fool enough to hunt dem Hannigans. Thad’s fer de law, or maybe de army. Yer sure to come to grief on dem men’s trail.”

  “You said your piece. Now get along with you!”

  “I got good-byes to make,” Pinto said as he led the horse to an empty stall. “And dere’s wages I’m owed.”

  “Well, you don’t expect me to have money for wages after yesterday!” Tubbs yelled. “And for a coward!”

  “Mister Tubbs, I’d watch my words,” Pinto said, slapping the horse into its stall and turning red-faced toward the freighter. “I’m owed money, but I can take thad in trade. Thad little chessnut mare’ll square us. You write out a bill ’o sale. As to what you jus’ said, you repeat it and I’ll give you a nose to match Joe Hannigan’s. Yer enditled to your opinions, but no man thad stayed at his fire when I was freezin’ my toes off at Petersburg’s fit to judge honor nor duty. Not by my way o’ thinkin’. You want yerself a fight, I’ll oblige!”

  Pinto strode up to Elmer Tubbs so that their chins near touched. Fury darkened the mustanger’s brow, and Tubbs gave way.

  “Thought not,” Pinto muttered as he walked past Tubbs and hurried along to the house. It took but half an hour to bid Alice and the boys farewell. He swapped a few words with Faye as well, but he wouldn’t answer her questions.

  “With Elmer off chasing those Hannigans, I’d feel safer if you stayed,” she told him. “What’s got you in such a hurry to ride?”

  “I won’t speak ill of a man in his own house,” Pinto finally told her. “You’ll have to trus’ me do have my reasons.”

  Pinto then stepped onto the porch and located Elmer Tubbs.

  “Here’s your bill of sale, Lowery,” the freighter announced. “Now you know the road west, I believe.”

  “Sure do,” Pinto said, accepting the paper. He then walked to the corral and threw a rope over the chestnut’s neck. Pinto wasted not a moment in leading the animal to the barn. There he climbed onto a spotted mustang, tied off the pack horse and the chestnut to his saddlehorn, and started west.

  By daybreak Pinto had passed through Cleburne and was winding his way north into the wild Brazos country. The Brazos had a way of running swift and wide in late winter and early spring, and he had the devil’s own luck finding a reliable ford. Only when he and his horses were across on the north bank did he feel he’d finally escaped the confinement of the Tubbs place. And even then he hadn’t eluded the haunting emptiness that had filled Muley’s stone-cold eyes.

  “Boy never had a chance,” Pinto muttered as he halted along the river. “But den we don’t any o’ us have much o’ one.”

  Tired and wracked with hunger, Pinto hobbled his horses and left them to graze atop a nearby hill. He dangled a baited hook in the shallows and snared a fat river-catfish. In no time he’d built up a fire, skinned and gutted the fish, and was enjoying a breakfast of sorts beneath the early morning sun.

  There was something cheering about daylight. It chased off the gray February mists and brought a warming glow to the land. That particular morning it put Pinto in mind of morning chores, though, of Muley grumbling about hog slop and horse dung.

  Pinto finished off the catfish and sighed. He then walked to the packhorse, untied a blanket, and rolled it out onto a clover-covered slope. After kicking off his boots and loosening his belt, he sprawled on the blanket and let sleep whirl him away from his grief.

  It didn’t entirely work. For a time Pinto did drift through a world of fluffy clouds and sweet silence. Then he found himself crawling through the rock-strewn Pennsylvania hell to the south of Gettysburg. The whole of the Marshall Guards, or at least what was left of the company after Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, was creeping through the Devil’s Den, exchanging long-range rifle shots with Yankee sharpshooters.

  Minie balls stung the rocks, sending deadly splinters of lead and stone into many a man. George Lowery had hesitated before continuing.

  “What you feared of, Georgie?” Jamie Haskell had called as he rushed forward. “Cain’t them Yanks kill you but once.”

  “Jamie!” Pinto had cried, leaping toward his foolhardy friend. The two of them got to within a hundred yards of Little Round Top when a pair of cannons fired from the hilltop. A giant boulder up ahead simply disintegrated. Smoke and powder blinded the charging Confederates. Pinto never saw the steel fragment that took Jamie’s legs. He himself was thrown back against a fallen tree with such force that a bone in his leg snapped.

  “Move along, Lowery!” the captain urged as he waved his sword overhead. “We close to got ’em.”

  “No, they got us,” Jamie called, grinning as he sat in a sea of his own blood.

  “Fool boy,” Pinto had scolded as he dragged himself to his friend’s aid. “Done it dis time!”

  “Yup,” Jamie said, staring down at the stubs attached to his lacerated waist. “You’ll write my mama.”

  “Lord, Jamie, you know I will,” Pinto had gasped as he fought to collect his wits. “I’ll tie off de stubs and ...“

  “Fool’s errand,” young Haskell had announced. “I’m plum blown in half, George Lowery. Teach me to run ahead like a peach-fuzzed kid!”

  Pinto recalled laughing. They didn’t sport a dozen chin whiskers between them that summer of 1863. Barely nineteen. It had seemed old enough. Now it was painfully young. But for Jamie Haskell, it was as old as he’d ever get.

  George Lowery had stayed with his friend in spite of a fierce artillery exchange around noon. By then Jamie had bled out his life, but Pinto had been reluctant to leave.

  “It’s time, Lowery,” the captain had finally commanded. “Come on. I’ll help you along. You need some tendin’ your own self.”

  “Wait fer me to bury Jamie,” Pinto had objected.

  “Yanks’ll do it,” the captain argued. “We don’t get movin’ they might just have to bury us, too.”

  Pinto was determined to stay, but Merritt Hardy and Ben Turley arrived. They were tall, lean, and farmboy strong.

  “Ain’t leavin’ but one friend behind here,” Hardy declared as he handed over his rifle and picked up Pinto bodily. “Cap’n, you write ole Jamie’s name on him, hear? Only right those Yanks know what kind o’ man they gone and kilt.”

  The captain had scrawled Jamie’s name in his order book, then had torn out the page and tucked it into the boyish-looking corpse’s pocket.

  “Now get along with you!” the captain ordered as a fresh round of artillery fire began. Hardy struggled through the rocky ravine, carrying a pain-tortured George Lowery along as Turley and the captain followed.

  Pinto soon found himself sailing across the battlefield, soaring over the bloodstained wheatfields and orchards of Gettysburg. Later he found himself in a barn with his leg braced by a pair of oak splints. Only a threat from Ben Turley had prevented a harried doctor from cutting that leg off.

  “Best to lose a limb than your life,” the doc had argued.

  “One-legged man’s little use to Bob Lee and even less on the Texas plain,” Turley’d replied. “Now tend the break well as you can. Then I’ll take over. I got five brothers and two sisters back home in Jefferson, and there’s not a one of ’em’s not broke somethin’ or another.”

  Many a man died from amputation. Ben Turley surely saved Pinto’s life. But that only came after a world of pain and fever passed.

  There were men who might have returned to Texas with a lamed leg, but George Lowery fought on. He survived the confusion of the Wilderness when the First Texas threatened to mutiny if General Lee didn’t leave the front line. Then, at Spotsylvania Court House, he helped bury Ben Turley. Merritt Hardy froze in the Petersburg trenches in November of 1864. In fact, only nine of the original Marshall Guards lived to lay down a rifle at Appomattox.

  As the nightmare continued, faces of slain friends and murdered enemies appeared like phantoms in Pinto’s mind. He shook violently and flayed his hands at his sides. Scenes too horribl
e to describe tormented him.

  “War’s not the frolic we thought, eh?” legless Jamie whispered.

  “Should’ve ducked that last volley,” Ben Turley spoke. His mutilated face sent daggers of pain twisting and turning through Pinto’s insides.

  Finally Muley flashed his easy grin and spoke of the high times they would share chasing down range ponies.

  “No!” Pinto screamed as he bolted awake. He shuddered as he felt the damp sweat which soaked every inch of him.

  “We’ll have a time or two, won’t we?” Muley’s ghostlike voice seemed to whisper.

  “No, dis year it’ll jus’ be me,” Pinto replied. “Jus’ me and a thousand ghosts of men better’n I’ll ever be.”

  He blinked the exhaustion from his eyes and stared at the yellow sun high overhead. It was near noon, maybe a hair past. He’d slept hours, or had his eyes closed, anyway. He hadn’t had much rest, what with the nightmare and all.

  Almiys thought it was not buryin’ Jamie brought on his ghos’, Pinto mused. Now it seems buryin’ a man’s bones ain’t all you do to hush his ghos’.

  No, some things just weren’t to be set aside. Many would be with a man for all his days. Ever since Gettysburg George Lowery had blamed himself for not seeing Jamie to cover. After all, they were as close as brothers, the two of them. And now there’d been Muley. That sliver of a boy didn’t have the smarts to hide from a fight. No, it was Pinto who should’ve seen Muley to safety before setting off to the freight office.

  “Man’s got just a few chances in his life to stand tall,” old Grandpa Lowery had once said. The old man had done his standing at San Jacinto and again fighting the Mexicans with Winfield Scott.

  “I had my chances, too,” Pinto remarked as he rolled up his blanket and tied it atop the packhorse. “But I never been as strong as what was needed. And men’ve died on account o’ thad!”

  Pinto Lowery was thinking that over as he removed the hobbles from his horses and climbed atop the mustang. Maybe nex’ time’ll be different. Deep down Pinto hoped there wouldn’t be a next time. And all along he knew there would be.