Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (54 page)

“I think you should bed down and watch your kid. Enough men are on shift. Schultz can do your time. I’ll tell him you said so.”

Vicente walked towards a smoldering fire pit and reached down near the hot ash of dead brush and cow dung, pulling up a tin plate with a wooden spoon in it. He walked over to Gabriel and handed him the warm dented plate.

“Her favorite. Slumgullion,” said Vicente, winking at Lil Bit.

Gabriel took the plate filled with leftover biscuits mixed with sugar water and raisins. A poor imitation of bread pudding, but she liked it.

Gabriel flicked his tongue against his front teeth. Bear followed them. Gabriel’s horse was never corralled with the others in the evening because he was a night ride, used only for emergencies. Along the trail her father used five other horses interchangeably. But tomorrow morning he wanted to ride Bear. Just in case.

Lil Bit couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that descended over the area. As they walked through the camp, there was no good-natured laughter from her father’s off-duty men after they finished eating boiled beef and pinto beans. No card playing or dirty joke telling. No Spanish or Irish or Negro songs shared over a harmonica or spoons slapped on knees. She didn’t want to look like an old croaker in front of him, but there was a tightening in her bowels and chest. Camp didn’t feel right.

They found their spot and unrolled their bedding. Lil Bit lit a kerosene lamp near her head, took off her hat, and clutched the book Gabriel bought in Texas that was shoved inside her bedroll. Gabriel handed her the plate after she was settled. She felt so much smaller without her hat on. The others thought she had suffered an illness that made her hair fall out. She was grateful they all liked her and respected her presence on the trail. She was a hard worker and she knew her father valued her contribution as a wrangler. She could ride her tail off just like her mama. Only Vicente knew the truth about her “illness”.

Lil Bit ate, picking out the raisins that had gotten too hard to chew. Her father surveyed the landscape again. The moon was a fine lady. Whoever was out there, her Papa and his men would see them coming miles away.

Bear snorted, stamped his front hooves on the ground. Some of the bedded down cattle responded to his agitation with anxious moans.

“Papa.”

Lil Bit’s scalp rippled under the bluish-white moonlight and the red glow of the kerosene lamp. She touched the top of her head.

“I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not upset. Honest,” she said. Her eyes were wide and her lips trembled.

Gabriel grabbed the pistol hidden in his bedroll. The night drovers circled around the groupings off cattle in opposite directions, rifles ready, searching for signs of wolves, or worse, rustlers. A new concern entered Lil Bit’s mind. Bounty hunters. She felt herself shudder thinking of them. How long could her Papa run from the law? Two years was a lifetime of running from a lynching. If her Papa ever got caught, what would happen to her?

“It stopped throbbing, Papa,” she said, rubbing gentle circles across her scalp.

“Shh,” he said. Bear settled down and Gabriel grabbed the loose reins and pulled the animal closer to them for cover. Peace settled over the clusters of steer close to them. Lil Bit heard relieved chuckles from some of the resting men. Total sleep was hard to come by on the trail. Even tired bones came awake at the slightest hint of trouble.

“What do you think it was?” asked Lil Bit.

Gabriel took off his vest. “Probably coyotes or wolves most likely.” He scooped his feet out of his boots and loosened the bandanna around his neck. He spread out his bedroll and plopped down on it next to her. Bear backed himself away from her father and flicked his tail. The horse would stand guard over them for the night.

Gabriel tucked his gun under his bedding and placed his Stetson over his face.

“Read me some of that book, babygirl,” he said.

She obliged by curling up closer to him, book in hand. She flipped open a page, then looked up at Gabriel’s hat.

“You listenin’?”

“I’m listening, babygirl.”

“No you ain’t. I can’t see your eyes.”

“I don’t need my eyes to listen. Now read.”

She waited a full minute and then she heard the familiar trembling snores escaping from under Gabriel’s hat. She rolled her eyes and laid the book on her chest. She stared at the night sky.

“Estrella, luna, sol…” The Spanish words Vicente taught her about the sky helped her relax. Because it was a light night, it was difficult to see a lot of the constellations.

She picked up the book again and slid her fingers along the cover. She loved the feel of the heavy gold embossing and the musty smell of the pages. Even though she didn’t understand all the words, she was grateful that Gabriel bought the book for her. It cost four days’ wages, and she squealed when she saw him pay the German merchant in Texas the full amount.

Lil Bit stuck a finger on a random page and opened the book back up. Her breath caught short. Her bandaged hand rubbed the picture she stared at. The black ink of the drawing was so detailed that Lil Bit thought she saw the woman in the picture moving. Especially the woman’s snake hair.

The woman looked just like her Mama.

Lil Bit read for the rest of the night until her eyelids drooped and the oil in the kerosene lamp burned out.

The screaming woke them up. Gabriel grabbed his rifle and shoved a pistol into Lil Bit’s trembling hands. The moon had risen to the top of the sky, its light a dim glow across the plains. Three gunshots cracked the still night, then more screams. The cattle stirred and stamped their feet.

Two men ran up towards them from the south.

“It’s Schultz,” one yelled, “There’s something wrong with his eyes.”

“Who’s shooting?” asked Gabriel.

“Casey, maybe,” the other man said. “He was with him.”

They found Schultz on his back, clutching at his eyes and screaming in pain. Gabriel pulled Schultz’s hands apart as Vicente held a lamp above his head. Schultz’s eyes were squeezed shut. Blood was splattered across the top half of his face and they all saw the skin there sizzle and break open with dark red pustules as if someone had thrown boiling water onto his face.

“Don’t touch it,” Gabriel said, pulling the men back.

“Papa look.” Lil Bit pointed to Schultz’s neck.

The bloody pus slid away; black lines like tiny blood vessels stretched under his skin, across his pale throat.

“Schultz, what happened to you?” asked Gabriel.

Schultz’s voice came out in a garbled whisper. His breathing slowed down. Vicente leaned in to hear him.

“He say,
demonio
,” said Vicente. “Demon.”

“Gabriel! Over here!”

Lil Bit saw Juanez, one of the drovers, waving at her father.

Schultz’s brother Casey was dead on the ground. His face was like Schultz’s, and his work shirt was ripped off revealing a perfectly round hole in his stomach the size of two fists. His intestines lay strewn next to him.

“Christ. Stand back, Lil Bit,” said Gabriel.

Lil Bit saw that Casey was missing the rest of his insides. Gabriel kneeled down to look at the wound.

“Where’s his gun, Papa?”

“No man did this,” said Gabriel.

They went back to Schultz. He was dead.

“No one sleeps for the rest of the night,” said Gabriel.

After the men buried the bodies, Lil Bit stayed awake wondering what kind of animal ate everything inside a man except for his intestines.

The herd stampeded into Ellsworth with a spent and shaken crew. Gabriel guided them to the stockyard as the men forced the long horns into tight lines, packing them into the fenced pens. Lil Bit hustled the horses into a separate holding pen where some would be sold with the cattle. She rode back and forth behind the stragglers, gripping the reins and adjusting Daphne’s gait when one of the horses got out of line.

When her work was finished, she helped Vicente secure the chuck wagon. Gabriel found her when she was done.

“Keep your eyes open, babygirl,” said Gabriel, pulling his hat low on his face.

They ate in a quiet tavern where the owners didn’t want to know the patrons, most of whom looked rough around the edges. They sat furthest away from the entrance and tucked into plates of sourdough biscuits, baked chicken with white gravy, and mashed butterbeans. Lil Bit topped everything off with the driest piece of vanilla cake she’d ever eaten. She had to down three glasses of water to rid her mouth of the taste. She wanted so badly to talk about the dead men, ask her father about the missing body parts and how a wolf or a coyote could make a hole in a man so neat and so round.

In late afternoon, after potential buyers had looked over the herds all morning, Lil Bit and Gabriel watched the auction, drank water in the oppressive heat, and listened to the rapid-fire slurred words from the auctioneer as he described the animals. Lil Bit kept mimicking the auctioneer’s voice in Gabriel’s ear, making him chuckle. She loved how the auctioneer would stomp his foot after yelling “Sold!” in a nasally twang.

Some of the herd would become beef, some breeders, and others were designated as future oxen. They watched men run their hands across flanks of cows and steers, bicker over starting bid prices, and saw their eyes glaze over with the amount of money they would make once the herds were loaded on the trains nearby and shipped back east. Lil Bit knew from her parents’ stories that it was less than ten years ago that her own people were up on those auctioning blocks too, Negro bodies shackled in lots, scrotums fingered, breasts prodded, human chattel bought and sold. She knew that some of these same men had bought more than beef in their lifetimes.

After five hours, all three thousand heads of cattle were sold, the majority going to one particular meat packing company in Pennsylvania.

Gabriel completed the financial transactions, divvied up the money to the crew, and admonished them to keep some cash in their pockets for the trip home. The easy leg of the journey was done for them. Getting the money safely out of town without being robbed was a whole new mission. And now her father had to think of a new safer route to travel, this time with two dead cowpokes on his mind.

Gabriel and Lil Bit met up with Vicente at the chuck wagon. Gabriel gave him his cut and, for the first time, allowed Lil Bit to hold onto her own hard-earned cash.

Lil Bit and Gabriel took their horses to the old livery stable. It was a ten-minute walk from their rooming house. Vicente chose to spend the night in the chuck wagon inside the stable and save his money. They left him clutching a bottle of applejack cider and munching on a piece of old hard tack.

Lil Bit bathed and washed her hair with hard brown soap in cold water inside the rooming house wash room on the first floor. When she returned to their room she hopped onto the big lumpy bed and watched Gabriel mark sales figures in his small ledger book.

A sharp knock at the door startled them both. Lil Bit grabbed her pistol off the nightstand. Gabriel’s rifle was propped up against his side of the bed.

When he opened the door, a young thin-lipped woman stood there holding towels and an extra blanket.

“I don’t need anything else, thank you ma’am.” Gabriel eased the door shut.

The woman stepped forward, her ginger-colored hair pulled tight unto an upswept hairdo.

“They don’t always cater to niggers and Mex’cans in town.”

“Oh,” Gabriel said.

Lil Bit kept her hand on the pistol beneath the blanket. If the woman made a false move, Lil Bit would take her out without hesitation the way her Papa taught her.

“You don’t look much like a nigger up close, and I’m clean and all–” Her eyes were on his chest.

“I just want to sleep, ma’am.”

“Change your mind, my name’s Arlene.” Her gaze lingered on his shirtless mid-section and then she glanced up at his face. “I swear, you have the prettiest eyes.”

Gabriel locked the door. He shoved his gun back under the pillow.

“Papa, she ain’t even care I was in the room.” Lil Bit placed her pistol on the nightstand.

“That’s just nasty.”

Gabriel smirked and moved his rifle over by the door.

“That’s how they nickel and dime us to death in this town. Food, drink, and entertainment.”

“And women,” said Lil Bit.

“That’s entertainment, babygirl.”

“Ewwwwww,” she squealed, giggling afterwards.

Gabriel walked over to the open window in their room and pulled back the curtains a few inches. Lil Bit saw him frown.

“What is it, Papa?”

He didn’t answer. She climbed out of bed and peeked from the other window that was closed.

A negro cowpoke stood in the shadowed alley beside the tavern. He was looking up at their window. In the darkness they couldn’t make out his features but they could tell by the clothes that he wasn’t one of their crew.

Lil Bit glanced at the deep strain lines on her father’s forehead – the expression she knew meant he was weighing several near-impossible options. They’d often skipped town to avoid confrontations with thieves or bounty arrests.

Before he even said “Pack up,” she was putting on her denims and shoving her feet into boots.

There was another knock on the door, this one quieter. Lil Bit looked at the door, and then stared back out the window. The man outside was still watching their window.

“Ma’am, I said no thank you.” Gabriel grabbed his rifle and opened the door.

The brown-skinned man in front of them was taller and thicker than Gabriel. His hair was dusty and he reeked of horses and dank sweat.

“What do you want?” asked Gabriel as he pointed his rifle at the man’s chest.

“It’s all right,” said a husky voice behind the dusty man.

Lil Bit felt her heart fold into itself from the sound of that rich drawl. The man stepped aside and Odetta walked in from behind him.

“Mama?” said Lil Bit, brushing past her father.

“It’s me,” said Odetta.

Lil Bit threw her arms around her mother’s waist and buried her face into her chest. Gabriel moved behind Lil Bit and gently pulled Odetta’s face to his lips and kissed her. Lil Bit was smothered between her parents, her eyes blurry with long-held tears. She felt the world stop, wasn’t sure if any of them were breathing anymore.