The Eye of the Hunter (5 page)

Against the left-hand wall of this natural pen stood a rock house, out of sight from where she was. Near the cabin was the entrance to the so-called fabulous Padres Mine with its pile of rubble. (“Dig here,” it said on the map!) She could see no one but smelled wood smoke and green chilis. A Mexican was cooking his supper down there—not Rip, for all he could cook was bacon and beans. There was simply no doubt that someone, possibly a cattle thief or smuggler, was going to have green chilis, fried and skinned in an iron skillet and probably served with melted goat cheese, plus badly scorched tortillas; along with, let's see—refried beans and
salsa picante
. Her nose, brought up on Mexican smells, read the aromas like items on a restaurant menu.

Frances dismounted and went toward the church, carrying Rip's carbine. She did not intend to be taken by surprise by whoever was camped down there. Two imposing but crumbling pilasters of rock and mud marked the church entrance. Set into one was an illegible sandstone plaque with a cross still visible in it. Looking right and left, she picked her way through the shell to the cemetery at the rear. Here, within a rectangle of stones laid without mortar to form a wall were aisles of graves, most of them slightly sunken, like cheeks where teeth were missing; they were unmarked, or commemorated only by rusty iron crosses. A few lichened stone crosses remained, and there were the rotten shreds of wooden markers. With the gun off-safety, Frances picked her way through the cemetery to a stone wall beyond which a trail led to a wash. There was a small orchard here with a depressing crop of blighted fruit. She stood among the gnarled fruit trees while she studied the canyon below.

Suddenly a banjo began a nasal twanging. A man's voice embarked on a song Frances knew well,
“Amor y Lágrimas
.” She smirked. She had tried to teach the song to Rip, playing along on her mandolin. But he considered Spanish an inferior language, and his banjo playing made her shudder. Smelling the chilis again, she thought,
Well, well, Rip Parrish! And when did we learn how to skin green chilis, hmm?

She went back for her horse and rode down the trail to the wash.

At the near edge of the stream, where it was less than a foot deep, the horse lowered its head and commenced noisily sucking up water and pawing at the stones in it. At the same time a dog somewhere in the camp began an uproar, and she could see it tearing through the camp now, toward the wash. The camp, forty or fifty feet beyond the sandbars, occupied slightly raised ground. A fire burned in a hole. The rock house was against the cliff, off to the left. A man sat by the fire, on a stump, the banjo on his lap. He was not playing now, merely plucking a random note now and then as he tried to see who was coming. She could not see the color of his roll-brim hat, but it was exactly the shape of her husband's high-crowned, teal-blue sombrero and had its wide-curled brim.

Roaring like a whole pack of hounds, the dog came splashing through the shallow stream, and she had to control the horse. But the dog, some kind of Australian sheepdog Rip had picked up, recognized her and the horse and ceased its barking. Sitting her horse, Frances ran a quick score of what she was up against. The camp was no overnight affair. A canvas food-safe hung from the branch of a tree; there was a little wood-pile of
manzanita
roots and some tools, and a dishpan and washtub hung against the wall of the cabin.

Frances rode on across the creek to the south bank and the man came to his feet and watched her approach. He wore a miner's blue chambray shirt, work pants, and heavy shoes, and it was Rip Parrish. Frances dismounted in silence, neither of them uttering a syllable. Without speaking, she loosened the cinches of her saddle, then went up and looked into his face. The firelight revealed that he was tired and out of sorts. He was unshaven, his jawline beard and drooping mustache were shabby, and his long black hair looked ragged.

“How she goin', Panchita?” Rip said, picking up a dusty wine bottle.

“Not very well, Rip,” Frances said.

“Don't call me Reep,” he said, mimicking her. “My name's Rip.”

“I wouldn't brag about it. Are you going to let those chilis burn to ash?”

“Don't you be worrying' about my dinner, Frances, ” Rip said. “And don't be figuring to stay. I don't encourage women henpecking after me.”

“Is this what you call buying cattle in Sonora?” Frances said. She pulled the pin out of her hat, dropped the hat on a boulder, and shook her hair out. And waited, smirking.

Rip had another pull of wine. “Is that a bit of fire I see in your flashing eyes?” he said.

“More likely tears. We've got some serious talking to do. Would you like to go first?”

“First and last, Panchita. I have put up with your namby-pamby moralizing bullshit as long as I mean to. I'm going to say this once only. I have just come back from Sonora, broke and tired and needing none of your womanly carping and mincing around. I intend—”

“Oh, I don't propose to mince!” Frances cut in, rage making her breathless. “That's over. Do you know the meaning of that song you were singing, ‘
Amor y Lágrimas
'? It means ‘Love and Tears,' and you've given me a year and a half of
lágrimas
and mighty little
amor
, and I'm having no more of it, Rip Parrish.”

“Reep! Reep! My name ain't Reep.” Rip smirked. “Can't you even speak English?”

Her accent was a sore point. People in Nogales snickered at it, too. Her eyes flashed, but she ignored his sarcasm.

“Don't you realize there are idiots like you all over this border digging for the so-called ‘Treasure of the Padres'? Not to mention the lost mines, the lost Army gold, the lost thees, the lost that? Well,
Reep
, eet's going to be the lost Spider Ranch een a few more months!”

“You might be surprised, woman.”

Frances pressed the back of her hand to her brow. She was just about finished. Her hand dropped wearily and she exclaimed, “Oh, I do hope you'll surprise me! What have you found? A broken seventeenth-century teacup in the popular Sears, Roebuck pattern?”

Rip grinned and offered the wine bottle. “Like your spunk, Panchita. Have a snort—for the road....”

With scorn she looked him over, head to foot, but with the clear vision of a stranger this time. When he was on display, like a blooded horse, he could be
muy caballero
, handsome and courtly. But the lips that looked as sensitive as a poet's were more given to uttering the most insensitive things. She waved the bottle away.

“Why did you speak to me that day in the cemetery?”

“That's easy. I needed a new woman for my new ranch, along with my new clothes. Part of the outfit.”

“So it had nothing to do with respect for Papa, as you told me? Putting flowers on his grave was just like, like, bringing me a bottle of perfume?”

“Tears your mind up, don't it?” Rip grinned.

“‘He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,/Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.' Papa told me about that poem of Tennyson's,” said Frances. “And now at last I understand it.”

Rip gulped the mouthful of wine he had just taken and gave an angry roar. “Papa, Papa, Papa! I am so fed up hearing about that old horse-doctor of a
papa
, I could puke! I tell you, woman, it's like living with a ghost in the house!”

Frances's mouth trembled in hurt. “He was the finest doctor this country ever saw,” she said. “The most compassionate and the most tireless.”

Rip stabbed a finger in her face, making her tilt her head back. “Your famous papa! Famous for leaving a town full of dope fiends!” He laughed.

Frances had to clear her throat before she could speak. “He did just exactly what all the other doctors in this nation did, and you know it and they know it. As for Nogales doctors—Tracy or Halleck or Sherwood or Fish—they all put opium in their soothing syrups and tonics, and some used morphine sulphate. Catarrh powders, Mrs. Winslow's—it had morphine, for heaven's sake, and recommended for children!”

Rip moved toward her, his smile taunting and warning. Frances backed away. “Well, then, tell me, Miz Parrish—why
do
they only blame Papa?”

Frances struck at his face, and he leaned back, saying, “My, my!”

“They blamed him because he practiced in the capital of Sonora in the winters and here in the summer. I suppose they felt it was disloyal to them—but he practiced there first when we came from the East for Mama's health. He treated the governor's family, and all the most important people in Hermosillo, as well as—”

Rip blew a hooting note across the neck of the wine bottle and slugged down a mouthful. “Maybe he was a little too important—to you, that is....”

“What do you mean?” Haughtily.

“You may be a married woman, Frances, but in your heart you're still an old maid, and always will be. You're the unnatural bride of that old horse-doctor of a father.”

With hurt and rage she stared at him. Rip tickled her chin. Frances slapped his hand away.

“Know something, though?” Rip said. “The most important woman I ever had in my bed was you. That's a fact, Panchita. Was fornication one of your subjects at ... where was it, Swarthmore?”

“Stevens,” Frances said, snatching up the carbine and thrusting it against his chest as he put his hands on her shoulders. Rip backed off, startled. The dog squared off to Frances and, snarling, showed its fangs. But Rip kicked at the animal and it slunk away.

“Jesus Christ, Frances!” He gasped. “Don't you know yet when I'm funning you?”

Frances rattled the bolt of the carbine. “I'm not funning you, Reep Parrish,” she said. “I'm warning you that you've laid a hand on me for the last time. I'm going back to the ranch now, and I'll be gone when you come home.”

“Then let's shake hands on it,” Rip said. “It's over and done with. Adios, and don't come back.”

Frances heard a door binge creak. Rip turned his head and called sharply: “Hey! What did I tell you?” In the dusk she saw a woman wearing a black rebozo come from the cabin. She carried a shawl with its corners drawn up to make a sack. Smiling shyly, she came to where she could speak to Frances. She was Mexican, young and pretty, with the Oriental features of Southern Mexico.

“Please say to him I am sorry. I go back now. ”

Rip rubbed his face with his palms. He seemed tired and frustrated. “What's she say?” he asked Frances.

“She's leaving. I'm sorry, too,” Frances said to the woman. “I didn't know he had company. I'm his wife. You don't need to leave. I'm leaving, myself.”

“No, señora, excuse me, I must go. Adios, Reep.”

Frances felt sorry for the woman, probably a prostitute from Nogales or Oro Blanco. Swinging the laden shawl onto her back, she smiled at Frances and said, “The
rellenos
are burning, señora. Adios.”

“Adios, señorita. What is your name?”

“Cata-Catalina Cachora, a su servicio.”

“Mucho placer,”
Frances murmured.

The woman hurried off into the shadows, Rip's dog trotting with her. A few moments later Frances heard a burro's quick little hooves clattering up the trail. Then the carbine was suddenly torn from her hands, and Rip's palm slapped her cheek. He lunged, got his arms around her, and picked her up. He smelled of sweat, wine, and sulfur. (Sulfur? she thought. Is he smelting ore out here?) Laughing, ripping her shirtwaist open and pretending to snap at her breast, he carried her toward the cabin like a vandal's bride. Fiercely she struggled to scratch his face, to bite his neck, but he roared with laughter and locked her arms to her sides.

She stopped struggling and tried to think. Papa had told her something about an acutely sensitive part of a man's anatomy; that almost anything that happened to it, if it was forceful enough, was enough to “unman” him, as the saying went. When he reacted to her going limp by releasing her wrist, she reached down and squeezed and twisted with all her strength. Rip howled and sank to his knees, letting Frances sprawl on the ground. As she crawled away, he lay doubled up on the ground, gasping and moaning.

She looked around, sobbing in desperation. Even if she could reach her horse, the cinch was loosened and the saddle would turn under her; and, anyway, Rip's big Morgan could easily outrun the mare. She looked for the carbine, but he had slung it into the brush. She heard him swearing as he got to his feet. As he reached for her, she screamed, and the pure, instinctive, nerve-racking female sound startled him, giving her an instant to run for the cabin.

The small room was feebly illuminated by a candle in a cranberry votive glass before a
santo
on a table. The door was made from hewn poles. With all her strength she banged it closed and swung the bar into the wooden keeper. An instant later Rip crashed against it.

“Open the goddamn door!” he bawled. “I'm going to teach you that when I say frog, you better jump next time! I'm going to whip your backside raw, woman!”

He attacked the door with his fists, his shoulder, a rock; then, grunting curses, he tramped away.
Oh, my God
,
Frances
, she thought,
he will murder you after he rapes you
. She knelt before the shrine. Although she was a badly failed Catholic, she prayed. Then, opening her eyes as she heard Rip outside the door again, she saw something hanging behind the bed on which she was about to be sacrificed, like an Aztec maiden. She whispered,

“Dios Mio, te doy gracias! Gracias, Señor!”

She seized the holstered gun hanging from a nail and pulled out Rip's ornately engraved Colt. It was obviously loaded, since she could scarcely raise it to point it. Breathing like a frightened horse, she sat on the bed and waited, occupying herself in pulling the hammer back. As the thing went on full cock, it made a harsh sound like the snapping of an iguana's jaws.