Pinto Lowery Page 9

  Pinto had laughed. If he had the chance, he’d let Ben have a turn at the Henry.

  They came upon the first traces of the pigs near a shallow bend just upstream from where the Decatur road crossed the West Fork of the Trinity. There was a considerable wallow there, and several runs torn in the underbrush beyond.

  “I know pig leavin’s when I see ’em,” Ben declared. “Ain’t I shoveled enough o’ their dung into Ma’s garden?”

  “Me, I don’t have to see it,” Brax remarked. “I can smell pig.”

  “’Less you can call ’em to you, bes’ quiet down,” Pinto urged. “Pigs ain’t altogether senseless. Dey got ears.”

  The three hunters started cautiously into the underbrush. Pinto had seen a boy lamed by a javelina sow once. Big mama hog just bent that boy’s leg back and snapped it above the knee. Wild or tame, a hog wasn’t a creature to trifle with. The Oakes boys knew that, and they kept a sharp lookout for trouble. But it was Pinto who first spied the pigs.

  They’d made themselves to home in a nest of boulders. It was a regular pig town, with mamas and papas and plenty of little squeakers.

  “Don’t shoot the mama hog,” Brax whispered as Pinto readied his rifle. “She’s got babies.”

  “They all got babies,” Ben objected.

  “Shhh,” Pinto pleaded.

  “That ’un,” Brax said, pointing to a young boar intent on quarreling with some elder. Pinto half smiled. Then he steadied the Henry and fired.

  The rifle knocked the pig a foot in the air and threw it down, dead. Ben swung the Springfield toward a big sow, but Pinto shook his head.

  “Here,” Pinto said, waving Ben over while the pigs whined and squealed. The mustanger helped the twelve-year-old aim the Henry. Then Ben pressed the trigger, and the sow fell over on one shoulder and died.

  “I didn’t want to kill the mamas,” Brax grumbled as a piglet raced down the run.

  “I couldn’t tell from thirty yards away,” Ben explained. “All I knew was to pick out a big ’un.”

  The two boys set to arguing, and Pinto left them behind. He tended to the throat cuts, then hacked a branch off a willow.

  “What you doin’, Pinto?” Ben called.

  “Makin’ a drag fer de pigs,” Pinto answered. “Can’t do de butcherin’ here. See about tearin’ some yucca into strips. We’ll weave us a thatch.”

  “A what?” Brax asked.

  “Thatch,” Pinto said, tearing a yucca strip and showing the boys how to make a mat.

  Ben said, grinning, “Sometimes we can hardly figure out what you’re sayin’, Pinto. All that muddle o’ East Texas talk. Pa says East Texans talk like they got mush in their mouths.”

  “Ain’t how a man talks’s important,” Pinto declared. “It’s what he says.”

  “Maybe,” Ben agreed. “But it does help considerable if you can tell what he did say.”

  They went on bantering back and forth for a quarter hour. By then the drag was finished, and Pinto hauled the bloody pigs over and tossed them onto the yucca mat.

  “Time we headed back,” Pinto announced.

  “Not without us havin’ a swim,” Ben argued. “Ma said we could. I asked her.”

  “Me, too,” Brax added. “You need a wash, anyhow. Got blood all over you.”

  “Yeah, I got some on me,” Ben noted. “My kill.”

  “Sure, a poor sow,” Brax grumbled.

  “It’ll taste mighty good, won’t it, Pinto?”

  “You boys goin’ to quarrel or swim?” Pinto asked as he sat on the bank and pulled off his boots. In seconds the youngsters managed to peel off their clothes and splash into the Trinity. By the time Pinto joined them, they were ready and met him with a wall of water. He was half an hour getting his revenge.

  “How’s it feel, killin’ somethin’?” Brax asked later when the three of them sat on the bank drying.

  “Ain’t like you’d think,” Ben volunteered. “Not excitin’ exactly. Kind of cold, somehow. I felt like askin’ that pig to forgive me.”

  “Not altogether a bad notion,” Pinto observed. “Indians say prayers ’fore dey start a hunt. Ask de animals to give ’emselves up so de people can live.”

  “I think I’m doin’ that from now on,” Ben declared.

  “Do you figure they do that when they hunt men?” Brax asked. “Comanches kilt Grandpa Oakes. Figure they prayed first?”

  “They didn’t eat Grandpa,” Ben muttered.

  “Killin’ men’s different,” Pinto told the boys.

  “How?” Ben asked.

  “You kilt men, ain’t you, Pinto?”

  “In de war,” Pinto answered. “Mos’ly, though, we jus’ shot off our rifles with everybody else. You never knew fer sure you killed a man or not. Twice, though, I fired right at a fellow. Firs’ was a tall one with a big mustache. Second one was only a boy, no bigger’n a flea. But he had his rifle, so I couldn’t do anything else’n drop him.”

  “It was war,” Ben said, offering a reassuring nod.

  “Been times since, too,” Brax said, scowling.

  “Three of ’em,” Pinto confessed. “On de trail to Wichita I dropped a raider. Den I come to be Comanche charged.”

  “And the other?” Brax asked.

  “Don’t much remember,” Pinto lied.

  “We know ’bout it,” Ben whispered. “Jared came by to say the Defiance posse come across two men out past Willingham Creek. Said they happened to be Hannigan cousins.”

  “How you figure I did it?” Pinto asked.

  “They found Henry casings across the river,” Ben explained. “And some tracks.”

  “I heard about them Hannigans,” Brax said, inching closer to Pinto. “Will they come to our place?”

  “Might,” Pinto admitted. “I hear dey went up Kansas way.”

  “Pa’s there,” Ben pointed out. “And Tru.”

  “I’m afraid,” Brax said, resting his head on Pinto’s shoulder.

  “No point to that, Brax,” Pinto argued. “Man faces life as he comes across her, a day at a time. Nothin’ else he can do.”

  “Ain’t easy when you’re ten,” Ben said, rising and drawing his brother over.

  “Nor when yer older,” Pinto told them. “But it’s what needs doin’.”

  They set about getting dressed then, and afterward hauled the pigs back to the farm. Pinto skinned the beasts and tacked the hides to the barn wall. He butchered the meat and took it to Elsie. She already had Ben and Brax building up a fire, so Pinto headed back to drag the carcasses away from the house.

  They were most of the day cooking the meat, and it was near nightfall when they finally had their feast. Pinto gnawed ribs like there was no tomorrow, and the boys seemed to eat their weight. Even little Winnie gobbled away.

  “I fear we were more in need of fresh meat than I’d imagined,” Elsie declared when even Ben admitted he was full.

  “Well, we’ve all o’ us been workin’ hard,” Pinto observed. “Body needs somethin’ solid in him now and again.”

  “Like half a pig?” Brax asked, laughing.

  “Didn’t see you passin’ up any ribs, Brax,” Pinto said, and Winnie giggled her agreement as Ben gave his brother a halfhearted poke.

  That was when Pinto first heard the intruders. His face paled, and the others noticed. Instantly silence befell the farm.

  “There,” Ben said, pointing toward the barn door.

  “And there!” Brax said, shrinking back toward his mother as he pointed toward a shadow beside the woodpile.

  “Res’ easy,” Pinto said, throwing a fresh log on the fire. “Elsie, maybe Ben can help you to get de food put by. Brax, you take Winnie along.”

  “Ben, fetch the meat,” Elsie instructed. “I’ll get the shotgun.”

  “No, you stay inside,” Pinto urged. “Ain’t work fer a shotgun.”

  The rising flames illuminated the first of the visitors slinking beside the barn door. A second and third followed, and Brax was right about the one
by the woodpile. Pinto drew out his pistol and watched them turn toward the fire.

  “Wolves!” Brax shouted from the doorway. “Pinto, come on.”

  “Not wolves,” Pinto declared as he read the starvation in the poor beasts’ eyes. They’d been drawn by the carcasses and had surely picked them clean. Now half-satisfied hunger drove them to try for more.

  “It’s jus’ some poor ole farm dogs,” Pinto announced. “Maybe run off a place like dem pigs. Gone wild.”

  “Pinto, come along inside!” Elsie shouted. “Wolf or dog, they’ll chew you down to the bone if given half a chance.”

  “We’ll throw ’em some meat!” Ben suggested.

  “You do, and they’ll be here every night,” Pinto explained. “Get!” he shouted, firing off the first two chambers of his pistol. The dogs drew back, uttering low growls. Then one of them made a charge at Pinto. The Colt turned to meet the threat. A yellow flash exploded from the pistol, and the dog whimpered and fell.

  “More?” Pinto asked.

  The dogs seemed to understand. One and then another slipped away.

  “They gone?” Ben finally asked.

  “Seems so,” Pinto answered. “Get me a spade, Ben. Bes’ I bury that dog ’fore dey come back to eat it.”

  Chapter 10

  It was mid-July when Truett Oakes appeared between the waist-high stalks of com plants in the fields beyond the house. Pinto couldn’t help grinning as he watched Ben and Brax rush over to their brother and pull him from the saddle. The three boys rolled into a ball, crushing plants and raising dust for a quarter hour. Then Truett kicked his way free.

  “Ben, figure you can tend my horse?” the elder Oakes asked.

  “Sure,” Ben agreed. “But we got plants left to thin.”

  “Seems to me we thinned enough of ’em,” Truett said, pointing to the trampled stalks. “Brax, maybe you can collect the tools and come along later.”

  “I can,” Brax replied with a grin.

  Truett glanced but a moment at Pinto. There was something unspoken on the fourteen-year-old ’s face.

  “Comin’, Pinto?” Ben asked as he took Truett’s horse and started for the barn.

  “No need him quittin’ early,” Truett said sharply. “We got some family business to tend.”

  They walked perhaps ten feet when Pinto overheard Brax ask, “Where’s Pa?”

  * * *

  Pinto had a nose for knowing when and where he was wanted, and he judged right that at the moment he was neither one where Truett Oakes was concerned. It didn’t take any great notion of sense to tell something had happened to Tully. A man wouldn’t send his boy riding home alone across that stretch of country without a good reason. Pinto counted a hundred ways you could snap a leg or take fever between Wise County and Kansas, and there were just as many lurking on the way home.

  “Bes’ to stay here and leave ’em to have their talk,” Pinto told himself. “Dey’ll fetch me if I’m needed.”

  The summons wasn’t long in coming. Little Winnie ran out and clasped Pinto’s hand.

  “Ma said to bring you to the house, Pinto,” the little girl explained. “Somethin’s happened to Pa.”

  Pinto nodded somberly and hurried to keep pace with Wtnifred’s flying feet. In no time they were sitting on the porch on one side of Elsie. The three boys were on the other.

  “I don’t see why he’s here,” Truett growled. “This is for family to decide.”

  “Pinto’s mostly family,” Ben argued.

  “He’s kept us safe while you were away, Truett,” Elsie said. “And what’s happened effects him, too. You haven’t forgotten we owe him money.”

  “Here!” Truett shouted, tearing a money belt from his ribs and flinging it at Elsie’s feet. “Here’s money. Plenty of it. Mr. Richardson gave me full wages for the both of us. Steer money’s there, too. Ain’t much by way of replacement, though.”

  “No, it’s not,” Elsie admitted. “Still, it’s no call to shout at your mother or to act uncivil toward friends. Whether you believe it or not, I number Mr. Lowery among the very best friends we’ve known.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Pinto said, rising. “I wouldn’t bring a family trouble, not when it seems to have a fair slice already. I’ll be over to de barn.”

  “Stay,” Elsie insisted. “We need your counsel.”

  “We do not!” Truett objected. “It’s for me to decide things.”

  “What things?” Elsie cried. “Who your brothers will live with? What charitable aunt or cousin will take Winnie in? Without this farm we won’t be able to feed them.”

  “Cousin Ryan’s made a fair offer,” Truett argued. “With that money we could buy ...“

  “What?” his mother asked. “A shop where I could take in washin’? We’re a long way from givin’ up this land. Before any of you boys could walk, Tully and I were makin’ a go of it here. I see no reason to sell our home!”

  “But Pa was the one saw to the plowin’,” Truett declared. “Was him did the heavy work. I promised him I’d take care of things. I’m the man here now.”

  “You’re little more than a boy, even if your heart’s as big as Texas. You don’t know town life. I do,” Elsie said, lifting ’Ii:uett’s chin. “We’ve made do half the summer with you and your father both gone. It’s an extra hand we’ve added, don’t you see?”

  For a moment a world of silence rained down on them. Grief and confusion muted the children. Elsie had begun to tremble, and Truett was red-faced angry.

  “What’s happened?” Pinto finally asked, hoping to break the spell.

  “It’s Pa,” Ben whimpered.

  “Happened the second week out,” ’Truett explained. “In the Nations. Pa’s horse found a gopher hole and pitched him off. Landed funny. A rib broke off and went through both lungs. Died spittin’ blood and callin’ out how I should take care of everybody.

  “We dug him a hole ’neath a cottonwood, and I carved his name in the side so folks’d know he come that way.”

  “Hard trail, that ’un,” Pinto muttered.

  “Next day raiders hit us. Shot Brent Lee all to pieces. Left him to be trampled by the cattle so there was hardly anything left to bury. Cousin Ryan hauled him back to the cottonwood so Pa’d have the company.”

  “Pa favored Brent,” Elsie said, swallowing hard.

  “There’s worse news I ain’t told you,” Truett added. “Half the stolen steers were ours. And we didn’t get top price for the ones we sold in Wichita. Still, if we pooled that with what’s been offered on the farm, we could buy a mercantile store, or maybe open up a roomin’ house in Decatur. You said yourself, Ma, it’s shameful how shy that town is of places to put up.”

  “It takes work to make a go of anything,” Elsie said, sighing. “What sounds to you like an answer’s only the worst kind of gamble. I don’t know anything about shopkeeping, and a rooming house wants boarders. If it hasn’t any, what do you do? Here we have com to grind, vegetables in the garden, and fresh meat for winter.”

  “There’s huntin’ and fishin’, too,” Ben pointed out. “Maybe Pinto’ll show us how to rope mustangs.”

  “He ain’t stayin’ !” Truett barked. “Wouldn’t be proper with Pa just dead to have a man around.”

  “He’s owed wages,” Elsie said, trembling as she tried to grasp the money belt.

  “I’ll count it out,” Truett offered. “Plus ten dollars extra for your trouble.”

  “Didn’t ask fer that,” Pinto said, accepting only the promised wages. “One thing’s bes’ learned early, too. Dollars ain’t de bes’ way to repay a man fer troublin’ himself. Dip o’ de hat and a handshake’s more fittin’ wage.”

  Winnie crawled over and hugged Pinto’s side, and he lifted her onto one shoulder and smiled.

  “Squared us, I figure,” the grizzled mustanger declared as he smiled at the girl. He then returned Winnie to her mother and turned to leave.

  “You can’t go,” Elsie objected. “We’ve got harvest t
o get in, and there’s ... “

  “Boy’s jus’ worried after what folks’d whisper,” Pinto replied. “I’m no farmhand. Be plenty o’ young hands’ll want work now they come back from Kansas. I never figured to stay all summer anyhow.”

  “You can’t just leave!” Elsie argued.

  “Never was one fer long good-byes,” Pinto told her. Ben and Brax raced over and blocked his departure, but Pinto easily lifted one and then the other out of the way and continued.

  “No,” Brax said, wrapping himself around one arm and pulling with all his might. “Not ’fore supper. Ain’t it enough Pa’s not come back?”

  Pinto lifted the ten-year-old into the air and tried to shake him free. That was when the tears began. A man that roamed the Llano, who’d fought with Bob Lee and outfoxed Comanches, grew a hardness. But Pinto Lowery’s resolve melted at the touch of those tears.

  “Stay to supper,” Ben pleaded. “Maybe the night. I expect we’ll all of us need a story.”

  “Please,” Elsie called from the porch.

  Pinto turned and looked Truett Oakes in the eye. It was up to Thu.

  “Guess one night wouldn’t hurt,” Truett grumbled. “Long’s you head off early tomorrow.”

  “Can leave right now if it’s what you want.”

  “Ain’t,” Ben announced, gazing hard at his elder brother. “Is it, Thu?”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you choose, Pinto,” Elsie declared. “Isn’t he, Truett?”

  “Don’t see how a day or so’d hurt,” the boy mumbled. “Sure.” But any fool could see the young man didn’t mean it.

  Chapter 11

  There was very little cheer in the Oakes house that night. Elsie did her best to bolster spirits by baking a pair of chickens and adding generous portions of fresh greens, together with mounds of potatoes. No one had much appetite, though. As it dawned on the little ones that their father wouldn’t be coming back, more than a few tears crossed cheeks. Elsie herself wasn’t much better. She pulled an old rocker out onto the porch and drew Winnie up on one knee. For a time the two of them hummed an old lullaby. Later they only rocked.