Pinto Lowery (13 page)

“What was that?” Ben screamed.

“Was Cannonball!” Brax cried, hugging Pinto's side.

“No, it wasn't,” Pinto said, prying Brax loose and crawling over to where the Henry rested in a blanket. “Get down, boys! Ain't you never heard a Comanche?”

Instantly a new fear gripped the youngsters. Brax burrowed his way into the straw. Ben rushed for the ladder.

“Got to get to Ma,” Ben explained.

“Stay where you be,” Pinto ordered. “You go runnin' down dere, yer ma's apt to shoot yer fool head off. Watch de barn door. May be dem visitors'll sneak in behind us. I got to keep an eye on de house.”

“Ma's there!” Ben argued.

“So's her shotgun,” Pinto pointed out. “I expec' she'll know what to do with it.”

Pinto, meanwhile, edged his way to the large loft window and studied the ground below. A pair of skulking figures approached the corral. Pinto's black backed nervously and reared its forelegs at a slight-shouldered raider.

“They're after your horse,” Brax said, crawling over beside Pinto. “Look there!”

A second Indian climbed the corral rails while a third made a run at the house. Pinto aimed the Henry over their heads and discharged a shot at each. The Comanches in the corral flattened themselves and shouted angrily toward the well. The small figure racing toward the house continued on. As he flung open the door, Elsie's shotgun blew him back into the yard.

“Lord, he's blown to pieces,” Brax said, hiding his eyes.

“Is Ma all right?” Ben asked, leaving his lookout post long enough to have a peek. A rifle spit yellow flame from the well at the loft then, and the bullet sliced a splinter from the window frame an inch from Ben's shoulder.

“Get down, fool boy!” Pinto shouted. He then watched the well, and when a shadowy shoulder slid off to one side, Pinto fired. His bullet struck the raider low, and he howled in pain. The two Comanches at the corral dashed to the aid of their friend and helped him limp away. One returned and tried to swing open the corral gate, but Pinto discouraged him with a close shot. The Indians shouted defiantly before creeping to their horses and riding away.

Only then did Pinto smell the smoke.

“They've fired the barn!” Ben howled.

Pinto took a final glance below, then hurried the boys down the ladder. By that time Elsie had stepped out onto the porch, and Truett was drawing a bucket of water from the well. The fourteen-year-old dashed over and splashed the water against the yellow flames licking the west wall of the barn.

“No, bes' wet some blankets,” Pinto instructed as he arrived. “Never get 'nough water on it in time that way.”

“Fetch 'em, Ben!” Elsie hollered, and Ben sped off toward the house. Brax followed his brother. They returned shortly with two blankets apiece. Little Winnie brought a third.

“Keep pullin' water,” Pinto told Truett after dampening the first two blankets. He handed one to Elsie, and the two of them set to beating down the growing flames. In a few minutes Ben and Brax joined the work. Truett then filled buckets and wet the blankets again. Afterward he threw a bucketful into the worst of the flames when it wasn't needed to keep the blankets wet.

Pinto worked furiously. The boys and Elsie were at his side at first, but smoke and heat sent them retreating periodically. Except for flashing a look at the big black pawing the dirt of the corral, Pinto barely paused. He blamed himself for the fire, and he wasn't about to leave the Oakes family fatherless and barnless to boot.

They were close to an hour halting the fire, and another hour tearing the still-smoldering planks off the wall and drowning them proper.

“Pinto, you all right?” Ben asked when the mustanger finally dropped to his knees and coughed smoke from his lungs.

“By and by it'll pass,” Pinto mumbled hoarsely. “Swallowed some smoke.”

“You've burned the hair off your wrists,” Elsie observed. “Ben, go fetch that goose grease.”

“Later on you'll need your needle, too, Ma,” Ben told her. “He's burned the right leg right off his britches.”

Pinto studied his reddened knee and shook his head.

“I thank you for what you done, mister,” Truett managed to say. “Was good thinkin', usin' them blankets.”

“No, jus' de bad luck o' battlin' barn fires before,” Pinto said, coughing again. “You live to grow older, you pick up a thing or two.”

“'Course I can't say much for your shootin',” Truett added. “I swore you had that 'un by the well dead to rights.”

“Lamed him,” Pinto explained.

“And the ones in the corral?”

“Boys,” Pinto said, spitting a black sludge from his mouth. “My ole horse had 'em buffaloed. You go to killin' Indians, you get a whole lot o' war to fight.”

“Ma kilt one,” Brax said, gazing back at the figure lying near the porch.

Ben stepped carefully past the cotpse as he trotted over with the goose grease. Elsie treated Pinto's burns, then turned to where the little ones had gathered with Truett beside the body.

“Look at him, Ma,” Brax said, warily touching a bare leg. The chest and face were bloodied by buckshot, but from the waist down it seemed here was just a splinter of a boy. “No bigger'n me,” Brax added. “Wonder why he come to charge the house.”

“Confused most likely,” Truett said, turning the body with his toe so that the bloody horror wasn't staring up at them. “I remember we run across rustlers. I never shot at a man before, and I near ran my horse right into the middle of 'em, not knowin' better.”

“I didn't see how small he was,” Elsie complained. “I never would've ...”

“That knife he's carryin' is plenty big enough,” Pinto told her. “Might be he'd passed jus' eleven, twelve summers on de Llano, but that's all it takes fer a Comanche to learn to fight. Don't seem proper, gettin' killed so little, but den yer Pa fallin' off a horse ain't got much sense to it, neither.”

“Come along, children,” Elsie urged as she waved them toward the door. “Truett, maybe you'll ...”

“You'll need him to help with de little 'uns,” Pinto interrupted. “Thus' me to see dis 'un here's laid to res'.”

“I can come back and help dig the hole,” Truett offered.

“I figured do have a good look 'round anyhow,” Pinto explained. “Maybe if they see he's tended, they won't see a need to come back.”

“Tru?” Elsie called.

“Comin', Ma,” the young man answered.

They walked together to the house, leaving Pinto alone beside the small body. Pinto wrapped the cotpse in one of the smoke-blackened blankets and raised it across his weary shoulder. Strange it didn't weigh more.

He grabbed a spade and started walking. Soon he passed the barn and continued out toward the hillside beyond. When he halted, he heard a coyote howl in the distance.

“Oughtn't to be,” Pinto called. “People killin' each other. Oughtn't to be!”

The howls grew silent, but there was a stirring in the grasses. It stopped when Pinto gently laid the body in the grass and began digging the grave. He hummed the melody of an old hymn as he worked, and after laying the body in the warm ground, he filled in the trench and covered it with rocks.

“Res' easy, boy,” Pinto said as he touched the rocky cairn. He then turned and walked past a lurking shadow toward the barn.

Pinto fell in and out of a light sleep that night. There was an eerie whine to the wind, and the recollection of that dead sliver of a Comanche boy haunted him.

“Won't be de only one, neither,” Pinto muttered. He knew little Brax would be tossing anxiously. As to Elsie, well, who could know how a mother would feel looking down at another woman's slain child?

“Can't let it haunt you, Georgie,” the voice of Jamie Haskell whispered in a dream. “Was the enemy, you know.”

“Wasn't but a fool boy, no different'n you or me,” Pinto's voice answered the phantom as it had years before in Virginia. “Jus' followin' his cap'n, same's we did. Lot o' fool boys bound to die 'long dese Virginia rivers, Jamie. Lot of 'em.”

Well, a lot of Comanches had already died, and the rest were doomed to extinction, to hear the soldiers up at Fort Richardson tell it. Was a hard thing, losing your home, your friends, even your own heart. It's what happened when you came out on the short end of a war. Pinto Lowery knew.

*  *  *

Pinto was drifting through his netherworld of shadowy faces and stark phantoms when dawn greeted Texas the next morning. The sun didn't wake him, though. No, it took the sound of creaking rungs on the loft's ladder to do that.

“You up, Pinto?” young Ben Oakes called as he climbed. “Didn't get yourself Indian scalped durin' the night, did you?”

Pinto rubbed the fog from his eyes and glanced at Ben. The twelve-year-old peeked up at him with a mischievous grin. Pinto flung a handful of straw at the youngster and plunged his face into his blankets. It was no use, though. Brax was down below, and Winnie came trotting along shortly, cackling like a stepped-on hen.

What is it gives 'em their life
? Pinto asked himself. Like as not, a kid would be flat-out spent when you needed him to husk corn. Then when you were bone-weary and needed rest, he'd take to bounding around like a spring-born calf! And these three had as fine a reason to mope as anybody ever born.

Shoot, I wasn't any different my own self
, Pinto thought. He threw aside the blankets and hurried into his clothes. Then he collected his scant belongings and rolled them in the blankets.

“What'd you do that for?” Brax asked. “We cut fresh hay for the barn a bit ago, and it ought to last till harvest, don't you think?”

“It's bound to las' longer'n de need,” Pinto replied. “Now Truett's back, my job's done. Time I was chasin' ponies on de Llano.”

“No!” Ben objected. “You cain't go, not with Pa kilt. We need you.”

“We do,” Brax added, and Winnie, who had finally scaled the ladder, nodded her agreement. Pinto studied their somber faces and wished the laughter hadn't faded so quickly. He didn't like the notion his leaving would bring on sadness. There'd been enough of that already. Enough for a lifetime maybe.

“Not jus' everybody sees it that way,” Pinto said at last. “'Sides, children, I'm no excuse fer a farmer.”

“We raise cows, too,” Ben argued. “You can teach us to be mustangers.”

“Yer ma'd like that notion,” Pinto said, chuckling. “Now how 'bout givin' me a hand wid this gear. Ben, you figure you can saddle my horse?”

“Get myself trampled'd be more like it. That big black don't take to me,” Ben explained. “Nor to Indians.”

Pinto detected a hint of a grin on Ben's face. It faded fast, though, when Pinto started down the ladder.

“Toss down my blanket roll, will you?” Pinto called when he reached the barn floor. Brax shook his head, but Ben dragged it to the lip of the loft and nudged it over the edge. Pinto caught the bundle and threw it over one shoulder. He walked out the door and turned toward the corral. After leaving his gear atop the corral rail, Pinto started back toward the barn to fetch his saddle. Elsie cut him off halfway.

“That'll wait,” she hollered. “Breakfast's turnin' cold.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Pinto responded. Ben, Brax, and Wmnie flew out of the barn, collected him, and escorted him to the house. Pinto intended taking his bacon and eggs to the porch, but Elsie insisted otherwise.

“Don't figure it's proper, Ma,” Truett grumbled. “Eatin' with us. Takin' Pa's place.”

“He didn't, nor will he, take your father's place!” Elsie barked. “And I swear to you, Truett Oakes, if you ever again suggest such a thing I'll whip your backside raw! It seems to me you've been entirely too free with words since your return. And you've caused injury to a man who's done nothin' to merit it. I'm sorry, Pinto. I beg your pardon.”

“Only natural for him to be cross,” Pinto argued. “Trail drive addles de bes' men, and de firs' one's de worse o' all.”

“That's no excuse,” Elsie insisted. “Truett's been taught better, and I won't have his behavior cast doubt on that fact. Tully had his faults, but being lax in his duties wasn't one of them.”

“See, Tru, you've made her mad!” Ben complained. “And Pinto's talkin' about goin'.”

“But you ain't really leavin',” Brax said, adding, “are you?”

“His work's done,” Truett answered. “Can't keep him here forever, little brother.”

“But if he'd like, he's welcome to stay on however long he wishes,” Elsie declared. “Isn't he, Truett? And I believe you have other words to say, don't you?”

Truett hung his head and muttered something.

“Louder, so we can understand!” Elsie ordered.

“Was just meanin' to thank you for lookin' after things while Pa and I were off to Kansas,” Truett said. “And for what you did last night ... the fire and all. Indians, too.”

“And?” Elsie prompted

“You can stay if you care. 'Course we couldn't pay, and you're sure to want to chase horses.”

“Truett!”

“All I'm sayin's what everybody knows!” the fourteen-year-old replied.

Elsie prepared another lecture, but Pinto calmed the troubled waters by rising from his chair.

“I never aimed to cause a quarrel,” he told them. “Bes' I get on my way now.”

Truett started to reply, but Elsie hushed him. Pinto gave a departing nod to Ben and Brax, then lightly stroked Winnie's amber hair. She gripped his fingers, and he felt a powerful urge to hoist the girl onto his shoulders. Instead he lifted her chin, flashed a smile, and broke away. In five minutes' time he was busy saddling the black. Afterward he spread a blanket across the back of the packhorse and began tying down his belongings.