A Tale Out of Luck (11 page)

Max Welton’s braes are bonnie where early falls the dew

And ’twas there that Annie Laurie gave me her promise true

Gave me her promise true, which ne’er forget will I

And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I’d lay me down and die

“By God, you
can
play a little.”

Jay Blue saw something almost childlike in Jubal’s face, and hope took hold in his heart once more. He gave the second verse a bit more tempo, and sat up so he could sing it better.

Her brow is like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan

Her face it is the fairest that e’er the sun shone on

That e’re the sun shone on, and bright blue is her eyes

And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I’d lay me down and die

Jay Blue never bragged about it, but he could outsing anybody in the lower Pedernales Valley, and he could see that his voice had gotten to Jubal. After all, the mustanger had been up here for Lord knows how long listening to that camel bray.

Skeeter spoke up from the kitchen, anxious to lighten the gloom in the cave. “He’s pretty good, huh, Mr. Hayes? Jay Blue can play about anything with strings on it. Comes by it natural from his daddy. The captain plays a guitar real good.”

“Do tell,” Jubal said, proceeding cautiously. “I don’t guess you know ‘Camptown Races’?”

“Know it?” Jay Blue blurted. “That’s the first song I ever learned!” He switched keys to D, and set to fingerpicking to the gait of a trotting cow pony.

Oh, the Camptown ladies sing this song

Doo-dah! Doo-dah!

The Camptown race track’s five miles long

Oh, doo-dah day!

As he played and belted out the old standard, Jubal rose from his chair, urging Jay Blue to continue with nods of his head and graceful swirling motions from his fingertips. He dashed into the bed chambers and came out two chord changes later with a fiddle and a bow. He blew dust from the instrument, plucked the strings, tuned one, and put the chin piece under his jaw.

Gwine to run all night!

Gwine to run all day!

I’ll bet my money on a bobtailed nag

Somebody bet on the bay!

“Take it, Mr. Hayes!” Jay Blue shouted, hammering out a steady rhythm for the fiddler to follow. Jubal attacked the strings with his bow, and to Jay Blue’s joy and surprise, the albino turned out to be a fine fiddle player! Before too long, Luz and Skeeter were dancing hook-in-wing in the kitchen, Jubal was tapping his toe while playing, and Jay Blue was singing the last verse, his voice ricocheting off the stone walls. There was a turnaround and a tag at the end of the tune that both musicians nailed as if they had rehearsed it, and—as players unaccountably do after the final stroke of a lively number—both the fiddler and the banjo picker busted out in spontaneous laughter for no reason at all.

Jubal took the fiddle out from under his chin and laughed right up at the ceiling. He turned and grinned at Luz. “I’ll be damned!” he said. “I ain’t had so much fun in . . .”

He failed to finish his sentence when he saw Jay Blue returning the banjo to its hiding place behind the churn. “That
was
fun,” Jay Blue agreed. “But, like you said, I guess that settles that.” And he donned the most cocksure smile he could muster, for he knew that if his case was not won now, never would it be.

Jubal lost his hold on his smile, grasping the fiddle and bow pleadingly in his hands, glancing between Jay Blue and the languid banjo. Stillness and silence hung in the cave for an uncomfortably long while. Then Jubal heaved a sigh of surrender.

“Shit,” he groaned. He pointed with his bow. “Pick up the banjo, boy. Then we’ll talk horse business.”

16

T
HE MUSTANGER
and the cowboys had put the musical instruments aside and retired outside to the small rock-fenced square that Jubal referred to as his courtyard. He had lit a kerosene lantern and a corncob pipe, and motioned for his visitors to sit on the two chairs they had carried from the kitchen. Jubal himself sat on a flat rock that crowned a stretch of the low stone enclosure.

The camel, Thirsty, came to stare at them.

“Mr. Hayes,” Skeeter asked, “where in thunder did you come by a camel?”

“He just wandered up. He’s a good watchdog, so I let him stay. The U.S. Army experimented with camels to cross the desert from Texas to California, back before the war. The Confederates captured the herd, and branded ’em with a CSA, but never knew what to do with ’em. I guess they just turned ’em out. The Indians think I’m a ghost and ol’ Thirsty’s a demon, so they stay the hell out of our canyon.”

“And what about the Steel Dust Gray?” Jay Blue said, anxious to get down to business. “Some say he’s a ghost, too.”

Jubal puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “We both come to this country about the same time,” he began. “That stallion and me. The first time I saw him, he was a three-year-old, I’d guess. He wore a hackamore and had bloody gouges in his side, so I knew some mean son of a bitch had tried to break him. Most mustangs fear men. That gray—he hates ’em. And I don’t blame him.

“Next time I saw him, he’d rubbed that hackamore from his head and had gathered a few mares. He had come here lookin’ for his freedom—like me. He had escaped, and had to hide to keep from being caught and whipped—like me. But I wanted to catch him—a beautiful horse like that. I guess I thought we could help each other. Maybe I was wrong.” Jubal struck a match on the rock wall and cupped his hand around it to relight the tobacco in his pipe.

“Were you a slave, Mr. Hayes?” Skeeter asked.

Jubal nodded. “Born lookin’ like this, you can imagine my master wasn’t too happy with my folks. An albino ain’t fit for work in the fields. So that slave master sold my folks to two different buyers. I never knew ’em.”

“You’re an orphan, like me,” Skeeter said.

Jubal looked at him. “Maybe you understand a little, then. But I was a slave, too. Like I said, I couldn’t work in the fields, but they kept me around as a curiosity and put me to work tendin’ horses. I became a good jockey, and my slave master bought me my shaded spectacles so’s I could race. We had a big race in San Antonio, and I escaped there, and run off to hide in these hills. That seems well nigh a lifetime ago.”

“So that’s when you first saw the Steel Dust Gray?” Jay Blue asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Jubal nodded. “The story come up through Fredericksburg that the Steel Dust Gray was caught in the wild as a two-year-old colt, and killed a man tryin’ to break him down around Bandera. Some German settlers I sold horses to over on the Pedernales told me to leave him be, or he’d kill me, too, but I still thought I could catch him.

“I taught myself and trained my horses to rope by watchin’ the vaqueros, but I never could get close enough to that stallion to throw a loop at him. So I learned to charm these mustangs.”

“How do you charm a wild animal?” Skeeter asked, amazed.

“You boys know what a horse whisperer is?”

Skeeter put his hand in the air, as if he were in school. “You mean like when your voice gets hoarse,
and you try to whisper
?” He rasped the last few words.

Jubal shook his head, a look of disgusted disbelief on his face. “I’m amazed you two scatterbrains put up with each other. Just listen, will you? There are men who can whisper in a horse’s ear—in some kind of secret horse language—and the horse will just do whatever the horse whisperer says to do.”

Jay Blue smirked. “Are you tryin’ to tell us you’re a horse whisperer?”

“Me? Hell, no, son, I’d be lyin’ to you if I told you that. I’ve tried whisperin’ to ’em, and it don’t work for me. Even when I talk right out loud to ’em, they don’t understand me right off. But sooner or later, I get my meanin’ across to ’em. No, I ain’t no horse whisperer. I’m more of what you’d call a
mustang mumbler
.”

Smoke billowed from Jubal’s mouth in the lantern light as he busted out in laughter and slapped his knee. Skeeter joined him, and even Jay Blue had to chuckle.

“Mustang mumbler! That’s a good one!” Skeeter declared.

“What I learned to do was go out and live among ’em. I become one of ’em. After a while, they’ll accept me into their band, and they’ll learn to trust me. They’ll follow me anywhere. That’s how I led that string into the corrals at Fort Jennings today. You saw me.

“So, anyway, after charmin’ and pennin’ many a mustang, I went after El Grullo’s herd. Took a long time, but every day he’d let me get a little closer to the herd. I was camped real close one night when I woke to the feeling of the ground shakin’. Ol’ Steel Dust was on me in no time. He stomped my head pretty good, and bit me once or twice. I tried to get up and run, but he whirled and kicked. Broke my arm right here between the wrist and elbow—I heard it crack. He drove me out of my own camp where I couldn’t even get to my gun to fire it and spook him off. I got behind a mesquite tree, and managed to stay away from him. But he wasn’t done. He turned back to my camp and stomped everything that smelled like me. Broke a good Winchester rifle. Then he went after my gelding and spooked him so bad that he set back and broke his lead rope and run off, leavin’ me busted up, afoot, and without a gun, a long way from home. Turned out it was one of the best things ever happened to me.”

“What do you mean?” Skeeter said. “Sounds like your luck was runnin’ even lower than ours has.”

“Good luck comes in mighty peculiar packages sometimes, gentlemen. While I was limpin’ home with a busted head and a busted arm, I stumbled across a camp of Comanches. They had been on a raid, and had a captive.” He pointed toward the entrance to the cave with his pipe stem. “It was Luz. Don’t ever ask her about it, because she don’t like to think about it, much less talk about it.

“It was dusk. They were makin’ camp. Luz was tied up. So I waited until almost dark and gave ’em my demon-on-furlough-from-hell routine.” Jubal began to laugh. “I walked into their camp half naked, painted with dried blood, howlin’ like a peacock. They lit out of there so fast that they left Luz and all kinds of handy things behind—bows and arrows, food, knives, buffalo robes . . . They didn’t even bother to round up their spare horses, so I caught a few. Me and Luz rode home in style.”

“Wasn’t she scared of you?”

“You can only get just so scared, son. She was already scared well-nigh to death when I found her. Once she figured out I wasn’t a ghost, we got along just fine. She set my broken arm and nursed me back to health. If that stallion hadn’t attacked me that night, I never would have found that woman, and I’d be one lonely hermit to this day.”

“I don’t see our streak of bad luck turnin’ out that way,” Skeeter said. “At least not with Jay Blue in charge.”

Jay Blue rolled a lazy look of disapproval Skeeter’s way, but said nothing.

“Well, don’t worry, Jay Blue ain’t in charge,” Jubal declared. “I am. I swore I’d never go after Steel Dust again, but maybe it’s time. You boys can rope, so we’ve got one shot at catchin’ that mare, and maybe even El Grullo himself, if he don’t kill us all. I know where he’s headed with that mare. I know his patterns. He’s goin’ to one of his favorite little canyons. I’ve got a mustang trap built in that canyon. If we can get a couple of ropes on him, we can pen him there.”

A smile had begun to form on Jay Blue’s face. “We can do this, Mr. Hayes. I told you, we could help you.” He stood and rubbed his hands together, as if he was ready to get started that very moment. “Daddy’s sure gonna be surprised when we ride back with that mare!”

“Don’t start countin’ chickens just yet,” Jubal warned. “We got some hatchin’ to do first.” He stood and gently tapped the ashes out of his pipe, onto the flat rock atop the stone fence. “We’d best get a few hours of sleep if we’re goin’ mustangin’ tomorrow. We’ll be up by three thirty and mounted by four.”

“I’ve got a good feelin’ about this,” Jay Blue said, nudging Skeeter as they returned to the cave.

“Oh, crap,” Skeeter replied. “That’s what you told me about goin’ to town to see that barmaid, and my life’s been a bad dream ever since.”

17

B
EFORE HE EVEN FOUND
the strength to open his eyes, the Wolf felt himself wake from sleep. A great burning mass tortured his midsection. Another glowed through his eyelids. But in spite of the balls of fire inside and out, he felt chilled.

He forced his eyes open and saw the sun on the horizon. Was it rising or setting? He hoped this was not the eternity of the Shadow Land. The missionaries on the reservation had promised it would be free of pain, but this was like no misery he had ever felt. He closed his eyes again.

Visions, dreams, and memories intermingled until he could not tell one from the other. He thought he remembered having awakened before, in the cold water where he had hidden himself like a wounded varmint. He had dragged himself out of the water. But when? How long ago? And how far had he crawled?

Again, he opened his eyes. The sun had risen a bit, having broken free of the horizon. Dawn. Now he recalled the battle. He had fought well at first. He had shot that big soldier in the shoulder with an arrow, then dragged his grandfather, Chief Crazy Bear, away. He had picked up a stick and fought with that. Then his medicine had gone bad, and now he lay here, helpless—useless to his people. Had they escaped? Where was his cousin, Crooked Nose? His friends? The women and children? The soldiers?

He felt the gaze of Father Sun upon him, shaming him for lying there like a coward. He had to get up. Summoning all his strength, he pushed his body from the ground until he was on his knees. The pain in his torso was horrific, but he choked his groans of agony back down his throat. He tried to look around, but the images swam. He could focus only on the ground from which he had risen, finding it stained with his own dried blood. He refused to look at his wound.

Trying to rise to his feet, the Wolf stumbled back down to his knees. The scraping of his palms and knees in gravel and thorns was nothing compared to the torments of his fevered wound. Then he saw a slender tree limb lying on the ground—one that had been swept down the stream in times of flood and deposited here. He crawled toward it. Taking the piece of driftwood in hand, he found it strong enough to support him.