El Paso Way (6 page)

Regardless of all that bothered him, Pang kept riding. As day began to break, he could see the light's reflection on the shallow pools of the Santa Cruz. He rode to the river and dismounted to let the horse drink and rest. Rest, however, was something that Pang didn't need. He couldn't remember a time when he had had such high adrenaline, and he felt a passionate desire to keep moving, but the lather that had surfaced on the horse around the shoulder billet and bridle told him that the horse did not share his feelings.

After the horse drank, Pang decided to walk it a ways down the riverbank. He supposed that not being hasty was a good thing, as his father had taught him that many times. A sadness crept through him as he remembered an old Chinese proverb that his father once told him:

A wise cat does not try to outrun a dog, but does catlike things to avoid him.

With such thoughts in his mind, and the spirit of his father hovering around him, Pang tried to utilize this wisdom. The riverbank was higher than his head, and he figured that it would be difficult for his pursuers to see him, but he knew, too, that they would follow his tracks. All he had to do was look at the water to realize that tracks underneath the water could not be seen as easily, so he acted like he was heading back north, then mounted the horse, went into the water, and with his hands on its neck coaxed the animal to turn back south. He rode slowly in the river for almost a mile, then exited the water on the west side and with his voice was able to get the horse to lope.

The desert sun reached a high morning plane before Pang felt the need to stop again, and when he noticed a bluff ahead it looked like a good place to hide out of sight while he rested. The horse seemed to follow the direction of the river naturally, but to get it to go any other direction was quite a task for the inexperienced rider. Pang had learned, however, that when he got frustrated and reached down to the side of the horse's head and pulled the bridle, the horse turned in that direction. Before long he realized that the reins, which to Pang at first were just strips of leather hanging from the horse's head, could be used to turn the horse in the direction that he needed to go. He was upset with himself for not figuring that out sooner, and even more so since the horse had stepped on one of the reins and broken it, making it much shorter than the other one. Regardless, Pang and the horse communicated better, and getting it to go wherever he wanted it to go was a much simpler process.

As they approached the bluff, the horse followed a wildlife trail that led behind the bluff and then between three smaller ones. Several boulders, surrounded by prickly pear, yucca, and barrel cactus, decorated the base of each bluff, and the rocks made an inviting place to hole up for a bit and rest.

Pang rode up to the boulders to dismount, and the horse suddenly whinnied and backed away. Pang tried to hold him steady but didn't know how to, and before long the horse reared. It became uncontrollable and lunged forward so quickly that Pang fell to the ground, landing on his hip. He grimaced at the pain, rolled to his side, and watched the horse gallop away—and then he heard what had spooked the horse, a rattlesnake, only about six feet away, coiling inwardly, pulling its head back to the center of the coil, and fluttering its tail from underneath.

Pang rolled to his back and tried to crawfish away. He drew his feet back and hunched to his knees, and this sudden movement seemed to alarm the snake into a fury, but rather than spring at him, as Pang had thought it would do, the snake seemed to be lifted off the ground. It squirmed uncontrollably, and as it slowed and the dust settled around it, Pang could see blood, and a straight wooden shaft with feathers on its end stuck in the snake's head. An arrow, Pang had learned, that was used by the natives of this land.

The event dumbfounded and frightened the young Chinaman. He looked around him to see who could have shot the arrow, and a silhouette of a man in a broad hat appeared at the top of the big bluff, holding a bow with another arrow laid across it. The man stepped slowly down the bluff, and Pang's limbs seemed locked and unable to move.

“You okay,
señor
?” The man's voice was somewhat youthful and friendly.

Pang could only nod as the man came closer, his bodily features and the details of his face and clothing becoming more clear.

He looked similar to a lot of Mexicans that Pang had seen in Tucson, with a wide straw sombrero and a serape, but his skin tone was a bit lighter, and his eyes were a lighter brown. Pang had never seen a Mexican who carried a quiver and bow. Under his serape he wore lightweight trousers, homemade and not the kind sold in the town mercantile. His boots, however, were leather, with cobbled soles and square toes, just like those sold by the street merchants.

As for this man's age, Pang figured him to be in his late teens or early twenties, about his own age, with a hint of a black mustache in the early stages of growth. Besides the uniqueness of a quiver and bow, this man also wore a string of stone beads around his neck, with a wooden cross at the end, all tucked under the leather strap of the quiver that ran from the top of one shoulder to underneath the opposite arm.

“I saw you come into the bluff,” the young man said as he cautiously inspected the snake, then removed the arrow nocked in his bow and put it back in the quiver. “You will not have to worry about that rattler anymore.”

He reached under his pant leg and removed a knife from a sheath attached to his boot. He picked up the snake by the arrow and laid it out on one of the boulders. Pang rose slowly to his feet and watched in awe as the man removed the arrow, placed it back in his quiver, then began to cut open the snake from head to tail.

“You ever eat rattlesnake?”

Pang shook his head as he watched the man lay the knife flat and slice the skin away from the snake.

“I tried it once,” the young man said, “and decided there are too many other good things to eat. But Father Gaeta likes it, so I will take it back to him. The skin I will tan and use to make something someday.”

The young man folded the skin and put it in a pouch in his quiver, then cut off the tail of the snake and handed it to Pang. Pang accepted it slowly.

“Keep it. It will remind you of the dangers of the desert.”

The young man then cut off the head of the snake and threw it into the rocks; then he turned to Pang and grinned. “We'll leave that for the flies and ants. Nature must always get its share of the kill. Like Father Gaeta says, even nature has its tithes.”

Pang was not quite sure what to think of this man, but fear was something that he did not feel. If anything, he felt safe, but in a peculiar way—one that only human instincts could allow.

The young man wiped both sides of his knife on his pant leg, then put it back in the boot sheath. “So what is a Chinaman doing out in the dessert alone?”

Pang was afraid to answer, to give too much away, not knowing enough about this man.

The young man looked at Pang intently. “When I first saw you, I could tell that the horse you rode was not your own. That is one thing that I've learned about men who have horses. When they are riding their horse, together they are like one person. That was not the case with you.”

Pang began to worry about how much this man actually knew about him, but still he was too taken by the moment to know what to say or do.

“Well,” the man said, “so long as you are not a bad man, you are welcome at the mission. I know enough about Tucson to know how the Chinese are treated there. You are from Tucson, aren't you?”

Pang nodded.

“I am Enrique Osorio. I live at a mission south of here. But not for long. I'm preparing for a trip to El Paso. Do you have a name,
amigo
?”

Enrique stared at the Chinaman, waiting for an answer, and Pang thought it best to tell him. “Pang Lo.”

Enrique smiled. “
Bueno.
Seen a lot of Chinamen in Tucson, but you're the first one I've ever met. Kind of funny to do so way out here in the desert.”

Enrique coiled up the skinned snake meat and held it in his hand as he turned and walked away. After a few steps he stopped, turned, and looked back at the Chinaman. “You going to stay here? I'm afraid the horse you were riding is making its way back to the city, and it's a long walk back.”

“I can't go back there.”

“Well then, why don't you come with me?” Enrique held up the snake meat. “Father Gaeta will likely make a rattlesnake stew, and you can join us for supper.”

Though the snake meat was not inviting at all, Pang knew that there was nothing more he could do but to give himself a chance to know this young man called Enrique. He felt sure that if the man had wanted to kill him, he would have done it already or, more simply, would have let the snake do it for him.

Chas Dutton

The sheriff and his posse tracked Valdar southeast from the cottonwood where they found the gambler hanging dead. The silence that came upon them after seeing the man hanging there—a man normally impeccably dressed with a rosy complexion and abiding smile, hanging nude and pale, his flesh battered and bloody, intestines pulled from a single slice in his stomach and hanging to the ground, and flies buzzing all around—left a lasting, surreal, and chilly air. It was so wildly vile that three of the posse members deserted the search. Dutton wanted to chastise them, but the problem was that he understood. It was a lot, too, for this simple man, formerly known to most as a hardworking cowhand whose ability to handle anything from rustlers to Indians, and reputation for dealing with them in a fair and honest manner, earned him the majority vote for the office of Pima County sheriff. He was a big man, six-foot-three, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. His eyes were a dusty green that peered out over a long and narrow nose and a bushy brown mustache that made his nostrils almost impossible to see. He was a congenial man, especially to children and elderly women, but to most men he was also bold and pragmatic, which was the only way he knew to sort the strong from the weak.

Most of his duties involved serving warrants and subpoenas and conducting an occasional theft or shooting investigation, but never anything overly dramatic. Most of the unnecessary excitement he experienced came when whiskey was involved, but in this case, with Valdar, the trouble had nothing to do with drunkenness. This was utter evil.

Valdar was the most notorious criminal known in the territory, and even the famous lawman Wyatt Earp, from nearby Tombstone, avoided going after him. But Dutton had heard from several sources that Earp and his deputized brothers used their positions in law enforcement for personal gain and put little effort into anything else. Such a code was not within Dutton's ways. He despised nepotism, and even though it was something he could not safely reveal, he despised racism as much.

He was upset with himself for not handling the situation with the Chinaman differently, but he was a law officer, and there was no law to help the Chinese. In fact it was an unwritten law in most communities led by anti-Chinese groups that to help them would be social and political suicide. Though that was wrong—and he felt it in his gut—his job was to enforce the law established by the people and not bend it. But now, with Valdar having killed the gambler, Dutton wasn't the only white man wanting justice. There was now also the rest of the posse, and any crime against a white man would bring the bounty hunters out in droves. This was the reality that Dutton would have to face, ranged against a criminal who usually committed his atrocious acts only against Mexican and Indian villages, which, at the very least, were socially out of the sheriff's jurisdiction. Because he had never interacted with or investigated him before, Valdar was pretty much a legend to Dutton. But ever since that Chinaman had come into the saloon, the legend had quickly come to life.

One thing Dutton was grateful for was the information that the Chinaman gave him. If someone had come to him with only a report of the gambler's murder, then he would not have known that Valdar had women. Because he did know it, he was certain that Valdar was on his way to Mexico to trade, which made sense judging by the direction of the tracks they followed toward the Dragoon Mountains, north of Tombstone. This direction meant only one thing to Dutton, which was that Valdar and his bandit sidekicks, with the women, were headed for El Paso, where just across the border were the people he would see for his trade.

As the mountain range became clearer, and the posse reached a higher elevation, they could see for miles behind them.

One of the posse members named Jackson loped forward to Dutton. “Riders comin', Sheriff.”

Dutton stopped his horse, and the rest of the posse stopped theirs, and they looked down across the desert plain, at the band of some twenty riders who headed straight toward them, a large cloud of dust trailing behind the band.

“Who do you reckon it is?” Jackson said.

Dutton pulled a brass telescope out of his saddlebag and peered off toward the riders.

“It's Deputy Bain,” Dutton said.

“Bain? What's he doin'?”

Dutton pushed the telescope closed and stuffed it back in the bag. “I don't know, but they seem to be in a hurry. Jackson, you come with me. The rest of you hold up here for a bit.”

Dutton and Jackson rode down the slope to meet Bain and the other riders. The large band slowed as they approached, and the dust cloud spread and rose all around them.

“Our prisoner escaped, Sheriff,” Deputy Bain said.

“Prisoner?”

“The Chinaman, sir. They threw piss in my face and—”

“You left your post and formed this posse to go after one harmless Chinaman?”

“But, sir—”

“Bain, I want you to head back to town, right now! You forget about that Chinaman and sit tight in that jail until I get back, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The rest of you, join up with us if you want. We have a vicious murderer to apprehend.”

* * *

It was almost dark when Enrique rode into the mission on his donkey, riding double with the Chinaman. Enrique hadn't gotten much out of him on the trip. In fact, Enrique had done most of the talking. It wasn't that he blabbed about this and that as though he had the gift of gab, but more that he was trying to get the Chinaman to respond relative to what he was saying. He was sure that Pang was in some kind of trouble, but all he really wanted to know was if he appeared to be at fault, or if it was like most cases with the Chinese, that he was facing a typical act of discrimination.

“I was born and raised in this land,” Enrique had said. “My mother was born in Hermosillo and had twelve brothers and sisters. Her father brought her family to Nogales after the Mexican War, and they had a
rancho
there. Have you ever been to a real
rancho
?”

“No,” Pang said.

“My grandfather was the son of a Spaniard, and all their lives they had worked as
vaqueros
. One day a handsome young Tohono O'odham Indian came to my grandfather's ranch to trade for beef, and my mother said that she fell in love with him instantly. So I am a half-breed, but for some reason my grandfather always called me a
Criollo
. I never asked him why. Do you know your family history?”

“Some of it,” Pang said.

But the Chinaman didn't elaborate as Enrique had wanted him to; therefore the trip back to the mission was mostly a one-sided conversation.

The priest didn't say much as the two men dismounted from the donkey, and after Enrique introduced the Chinaman to him, all he said was “Welcome,” but he did look on with a questioning, curious stare.

Enrique showed Father Gaeta the snake skin, but the priest's eyes grew wider when he showed him the meat.

“Ah, I was wondering what I'd make for supper!” the priest said.

Enrique grinned as he stuffed the meat back into the cotton sack and tossed it to the priest. “Enjoy your feast, Father. I will be content with a jerky meal tonight.”

“How about you, Pang?” the priest said. “Would you care for some of my scrumptious rattlesnake stew?”

“No, thank you. I am not hungry.”

Pang's response softened the mood, and Enrique thought it best to unpack from his hunt and prepare for supper.

“Well then,” the priest said, “anyway, I do hope you'll make yourself at home.”

Enrique knew that the priest carried on like he wasn't concerned because that was his way; they both knew that the only reason a Chinaman would come in out of the desert was because he was in trouble. It was the level of his trouble that neither of them knew.

Pang sat at the entrance of the mission while the father prepared the stew and Enrique took the donkey to the stable. The Chinaman was still sitting there when Enrique came in with his saddlebags drooped over his shoulder and his sombrero hanging loose on his back from the thong around his neck. He coaxed the Chinaman inside and to sit at the wooden table where Enrique had eaten most of his indoor meals for the last seven years. He removed his serape and hung his sombrero on a peg near his bed. He walked up to a washbowl and rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. After washing his face and hands, he dried them on a towel then sat across from Pang at the table, poured him some milk from a stone pitcher, and cut some bread from a loaf and spread honey butter over it with the same knife.

He held the thick bread slice out in front of Pang. “You sure you're not hungry,
amigo
?”

The Chinaman merely shook his head, and then glanced nervously at the priest, who sat down next to him with a tin plate of steaming stew.

Enrique wrinkled his nose, then bit off a chunk of his bread and chewed. “The priest eating the serpent . . . must be another of his ways of ridding the earth of sin.”

Father Gaeta chuckled, and Enrique winked at the Chinaman. It was the first he had seen Pang smile, even though it was a slight smile and lasted only a few seconds. Then he was back to his uneasy demeanor, sitting away from the table on the chair, his hands in his lap and his shoulders somewhat stooped.

“So, Pang, what brings you to the desert?” the priest asked, after swallowing a bite of his stew.

The question didn't seem to be hard for the priest to ask so directly, as he took another bite of stew and awaited an answer from the Chinaman. The question certainly cut to the quick, especially since Enrique had been unable to get such an answer through his own roundabout and less direct methods.

“I am looking for someone,” Pang said.

The priest nodded as he chewed, then swallowed. “And who might that be?”

“A man named Valdar. He killed my father.”

Enrique felt as though he had just been jabbed in the stomach with a red-hot poker. It was the first he'd heard Valdar's name spoken in years, even though he had thought of him daily since the great tragedy of his family.

The priest had just put food in his mouth, but he stopped chewing for a moment as he looked at Enrique, then swallowed the food whole and wiped his mouth with his fingers. “Valdar . . . I see. When did this happen, my son?”

Pang looked at the priest. “A few days ago. He and two men came to our home. They took my sister and my fiancée, then killed my father. The law will not help me, so I will help myself.”

Enrique quickly rose from the table and went outside the mission. He ran to the river and stopped abruptly, breathing heavily. He looked west at the orange-and-purple sunset. He had never in his life felt so frightened and exhilarated all at the same time. He thought back to the day, almost a year ago, when he and the priest had returned from a trip to Tucson, and on the way back had argued about whether or not he was ready to go to El Paso to try and find his grandfather and sister Amelia. To settle the argument, the two of them sat down across from each other at the table. They both rolled up their sleeves, put their right elbows on the table and joined hands. They stared at each other, and after the priest counted to three, the challenge began.

Enrique had never beaten the priest at arm wrestling, and they had made an agreement that he couldn't leave the mission to start his journey until he received a sign. Enrique knew the priest would never let him win intentionally, that he wanted too badly for him to forget about Valdar and start a new life with a new direction. To “turn the other cheek,” he had said. But Enrique could never forgive, and never forget, no matter how hard the priest tried to get through to him with his biblical teachings.

When they were in Tucson, Enrique and the priest were drawn into a noisy alley where a crowd had gathered. A table had been set up and an arm wrestling competition was taking place. What was so ironic was that a very slender man, built similarly to the priest, had taken on a tall, stocky man, twice his size. But the slender man won in a very short time. He collected his winnings, and as he walked away, Enrique stopped him.

“How did you do that?”

The man grinned slyly and spoke with an Irish accent. “Arm wrestlin' is not a brutish sport, young lad.” He pointed at his temple with his index finger. “It's all up here. You look the other feller in the eyes and you never look away. All at the same time you think yourself to the win.”

Enrique looked back at the priest, who wrinkled his mouth, then said, “Rubbish.”

When they returned to the mission, Enrique had not forgotten what the Irishman had told him. He concentrated hard on winning and nothing else, staring into the priest's eyes and watching the sweat beads form on his forehead, his teeth ultimately gritting. It was the priest who looked away, and down at their fists, as Enrique's arm became the dominant one. After they'd gone more than three-fourths the way down, their fists slammed on the table.