Pinto Lowery (11 page)

“We took fingers once,” Joe explained. “Makes a man think hard 'fore he takes to followin'.”

“And you cut 'em off him live?” a horrified bandit asked.

“This time,” Joe explained. “Mostly the fool's already dead, though. Take that boy in Defiance.”

The words bore into Pinto's soul like fire brands. Without thinking he raised the old Henry and took aim. At the last minute Joe Hannigan knelt over to pick up the ears, though, and Pinto's bullet missed the big-nosed villain and splintered the cheekbone of a younger outlaw at his side.

“Coley?” Pat yelled as the young bandit clasped his face and rolled his eyes back into his head. Then the knees buckled. The outlaw died before he hit the ground.

“Over across the creek there!” Joe yelled, ducking behind his horse.

Pinto paid it little mind. He was angry now, full of fury. He scanned the hillside and located each outlaw in turn. Mostly they kept to cover. Jimmy, though, made a run for his rifle. Pinto fired, and the Henry sent a round slicing into the young raider's side and down into his insides. Jimmy threw back his arms and clawed the air.

“Best we bring him along, Joe,” Pat said, inching his way toward the wounded man.

“No need,” Joe said, firing a pistol ball through Jimmy's head. “Only slow us down. Get mounted. Let's put some space 'tween us and that there posse.”

Pinto fired twice more, but the Hannigan gang moved quickly. In an instant it seemed they were atop horses and riding north. They left the better part of their camp behind. What did that matter? They'd only steal what they needed later.

“Leas'wise dey gone north,” Pinto muttered. The Oakes place was south. It was in that direction that Pinto Lowery turned.

After his encounter with the Hannigans, Pinto never again slept soundly in the loft of the Oakes barn. Even the slightest sound brought him rushing to the loft window, Henry rifle at the ready. Word came that the Hannigans were raiding Chickasaw trading posts up in the Nations and robbing stagecoaches in Kansas. To others Big Nose Joe was a distant threat at best. For Pinto the broken-nosed bandit lurked in every shadow.

Elsie took note of his unease and quizzed him about it.

“It's not somethin' the children've done, I hope,” she said. “Ben and Brax can be awful pests, and Wmnie's forever carryin' on about the chickens or some such nonsense. It must be tiresome to a man.”

“Is it tiresome fer you, ma'am?” Pinto asked.

“I fear I'm used to it.”

“Me, I'm not,” Pinto confessed. “See, de thing is, a man can get pure tired o' what he's used to. It's de fresh times keep him alive. Hate to confess it, but I gone and got real fond o' dem youngsters. Feels like fambly almos'. Be missin' it when yer man gets back and I ride back onto de Llano.”

“Haven't you ever considered starting a family of your own, Pinto?”

“Pondered many a thing. But I been wanderin' too long. Too many wild ways in me fer a woman to tame.”

“You make it sound like breakin' a mustang.”

“Ain't it jus' so? Way I figure things, a horse'd be easy compared to gentlin' a stubborn ole cuss like me.”

She laughed at the words. Then she rested a hand on his shoulder. It remained but an instant, and thereafter Elsie hurried to get her washing done. Pinto watched her with a perplexed look on his face. Then he, too, set off to tend his chores.

Summers weren't entirely to be spent working, though. Pinto had told his mother that often enough. As he slaved away in the cornfields, thinning plants under a blistering June sun, he recognized the first traces of despair creeping across the faces of his young helpers. Neither Ben nor Brax were of a size to long endure heavy toil, and Pinto brought that fact to Elsie's attention.

“Don't you figure I know it's wearin' 'em down?” she asked angrily. “How else's the work to get done, Pinto? Tully and Truett aren't back yet, and if the plants aren't thinned, they'll not a one of 'em grow a proper ear. Soon we'll have to tote water to 'em as well. Farmin's not an easy life. For man or boy. Next year we'll have Winnie out there, too. And as it is, she works half the day helpin' me with washin', cookin', and tendin' the garden.”

“Didn't mean to complain,” Pinto apologized. “Was only thinkin' a spot o' swimmin', maybe some noontime fishin', even a hunt, jus' might raise some spirits.”

“Fresh meat would be welcome enough,” Elsie admitted. “We've eaten about as many of the chickens as we dare. I thought to butcher a hog, but with Tully not accounted for, best we save the hogs against winter need.”

“He'll be along 'fore long,” Pinto reassured her. “Ole Richardson was haulin' a fair number o' pitiful critters. He'll be givin' 'em time to fatten up for sellin'.”

“I'm certain you're right,” she said. “Still, it does give cause for a hunt. Tru and Jared Richardson shot a pair of wild pigs up near the river crossin' in April. Fair number of 'em, to hear Tru talk of it.”

“Shot myself a javelina once,” Pinto said, scratching his chin. “Was eleven. Javelina's a sort o' wild hog.”

“I know,” Elsie said, smiling. “I was born and reared in Texas, Pinto. These pigs down on the river don't have tusks, though. I'd guess they wandered off some abandoned farm durin' one of the Indian scares.”

“Not much to sing about, shootin' a pig without tusks,” Pinto muttered. “But I'd guess de meat'll be tasty jus' de same.”

“We'll turn it slow, on a spit over a bed of coals. Basted with honey.”

“Can already smell it,” Pinto said, nodding. “Bes' I get a pair o' boys and set about shootin' it. Elsewise smellin's all we'll be doin'.”

And so early the next morning Pinto led Ben and Brax out toward the Trinity. Ben's shoulders sagged beneath the weight of the ancient Springfield rifled musket, a relic of the war. Pinto wasn't sure a man could hit what he aimed for with the piece since the rifling was worn nigh smooth, and the hammer didn't always strike the cap quite right.

“Tru took it into Defiance when a travelin' gunsmith come through,” Ben had explained. “Man said twenty Yankee dollars'd fix it just fine. That was the price he was askin' fer one o' those new Winchesters.”

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.”