Crossers (28 page)

The painting was finished in two weeks. The pale brown walls shone like wet sand, and the blue on the door and window frames mimicked the color of the Arizona sky. The sight of the house changed Blaine’s feelings toward his new employee. “Looks like it was just built,” he said with some exaggeration. “Damn good job. Hell, with the outside lookin’ like this, can’t have the inside lookin’ like it does, so he might as well do it.”

But Gerardo continued to maintain a distance, hardly exchanging more than a buenos días or a buenas tardes with Miguel. Castle often reflected on Gerardo’s comment and once thought he grasped its meaning. It was a moment on another trip to the Western Union. A man hurriedly wheeling a shopping cart laden with groceries and a screaming child—the Western Union was in the Safeway—accidentally crashed into Miguel, almost knocking him down. The howling kid had put the reckless cart-pusher in a bad temper. Instead of apologizing, he snarled, “Watch where you’re going!” Castle stepped in and said, “You should watch where you’re going,” and came close to getting into a fistfight, which he would have lost—the man was twenty years younger and as many pounds heavier than he. With the altercation over, Miguel looked silently at Castle as he rubbed his ribs. It was then that Castle saw him through the hard, unsentimental eyes of the old vaquero. Miguel was a natural-born victim. Hadn’t he said as much himself?
“All my life my luck has been bad.”
A peculiar kind of bad luck, though, a contagious bad luck. He had a sweet, sad, hapless quality that elicited tender feelings in people like Castle and Sally at the same time that it provoked, indeed, seemed to
invite
, the blind cruelty in the world to strike him; and because that cruelty was indiscriminate, it was as likely to fall on others—Héctor and Reynaldo came immediately to mind—as on him.

This perception no sooner came to Castle than he dismissed it as nonsense, hoodoo, what his aunt would have called spooky thinking. Later, when Gerardo’s presentiment proved accurate, he would wonder if it was a mistake to trust his reason over his instincts. Miguel was not responsible for the events that took place on the San Ignacio that summer, no more than he’d been responsible for the deaths of his friends; yet such an uncanny occurrence of misfortunes followed his arrival that he seemed to be their cause. It was as though his mere presence had summoned a malice—the senseless malice Castle sought to evade—to come in, come in.

Ben Erskine

Transcript of interview with Martín Mendoza, 75
,
conducted at Mr. Mendoza’s residence in Patagonia
,
Arizona, on August 30, 1966. This transcript has
been translated from the Spanish by the AHS.

Ghosts and bones.

That is what I think of when I think of that old ranch, the IB-Bar. Don Benjamín put the bones in the ground, and sometimes their ghosts, you know, walked around. I think soon my bones will be in the ground, too, but they will be next to the bones of my wife and I will be happy there, so my ghost will not walk around. Do you hear how I speak? A lot of people like my voice, they say it sounds like the voice of one who speaks on the radio. A doctor has told me that I have in my throat a cancer, from too many cigars, and it is this cancer that will soon put my bones in the ground. Many of them are broken. I was a vaquero from the time I was a boy. Bad horses have thrown me. Bad cows have smashed me against the boards of corrals.

I was Don Benjamín’s good friend. We rode together for many years, more than twenty. We captured wild bulls in the mountains. We captured the gray horse, the one he called Spirit. We took guns into Mexico for the Yaqui. I have Yaqui blood, you know. My mother was Yaqui, and her father, my grandfather, was a very fine deer dancer, a pure Yaqui, what is called Yoeme, a man with magic in his heart. You know, in this world there are people with magic in their hearts and people with disturbances in their hearts.

I do not know what was in Benjamín’s heart. He was a gringo, and their hearts are difficult to know. My wife Lourdes was a little afraid of him. Sometimes she told me, “There is a devil in that man.” She said she could see it, this demon she could feel it. I thought she was being foolish. Then, one day, maybe I saw this devil with my own eyes.

So now I will tell a secret. I have been the guardian of this secret for a very long time. I had sworn to Benjamín I would never tell it, but he is dead now ten years, so I do not think his soul will be angry with me.

I think it was in the year 1919. It was in the summer, a good summer when a great many squalls blew in from the southwest and brought rain that was badly needed. A good summer, yes, but a bad time. There was war in Mexico, and bandits and rebels crossed the border all the time to make raids on ranches for horses, for cattle, whatever they could steal. Benjamín and me, we never went anywhere without our pistols and rifles. We had loaded Winchesters in our houses and taught our wives to shoot them for when we were not there.

So one day we were looking for some missing cattle, me and Benjamín and two young gringo vaqueros who worked for his hermano, for Señor Jeffrey. Parker and Bond, yes, I remember their names. We discovered that these cattle were stolen and taken into Mexico. We followed their trail into Mexico. A big rain fell and washed out the trail, and after the rain stopped, Benjamín said we must keep looking, so we did. Pretty quick we saw a herd of Herefords, which were like ours. We rode over to inspect the brands, and we discovered that they did not belong to us. Benjamín, he said, “It makes no difference, we will take these cattle.” I told him that this was not a good idea, but he did not listen. I had heard stories from him that long before he and Señor Jeffrey had taken Mexican cattle and had got away with it. Maybe he thought he would again.

But he did not. We were rounding up the cows when we were surprised by the owner and two of his vaqueros. We were so busy gathering the cattle that we did not see them ride up with their pistols drawn. They took our guns from us, and the owner—he was called Diego Puerta—asked who was our boss, and Benjamín said that he was. Don Diego said that me and Parker and Bond were free to go, but that Benjamín must come with him to explain himself to the rurales. We said no, we will stay with our boss, to do anything else would be, you know, very cowardly. But Don Benjamín, he was no coward, no, he was very brave. He said to us that there was no need for us to risk ourselves, and that we should do as Don Diego said and ride back to the border and report to Señor Jeffrey that he was arrested. This was, as I have said to you, very brave because the rurales would throw him in jail for a long time and maybe even hang him.

So we rode very fast to the line, but after we got across, we reined our horses and talked about what to do next. We felt very bad, leaving Benjamín like that.

Then we saw riders coming toward us from the south. In one more minute we saw that they were Don Diego’s vaqueros and they were leading two horses—Don Diego’s and Spirit. Don Diego was walking behind them with Benjamín, who had his special pistol—the Luger automatic—stuck in the back of Don Diego’s head. We could not speak. We thought that maybe we were seeing a vision.

Benjamín pushed Don Diego across the border, into the hands of Parker and Bond. He told them to hold on to Don Diego. Then, with his pistol aimed at the vaqueros, he went to the saddlebags on Spirit and took our guns from them and gave them back to us. He had recovered his gun and our guns! We were even more amazed. Then Benjamín grabbed Don Diego and pushed him down to his hands and knees and kicked him in the butt, you know, like he would kick a dog. He kicked him twice. He kicked him over the border, back into Mexico, and said that Don Diego should go back to where he came from. Parker and Bond were laughing. Don Diego stood up, very angry, and he called to his vaqueros, “Shoot him! Kill him!” But the vaqueros’ guns were in their holsters, and we had ours pointed at them, and there was nothing they could do. Don Diego mounted his horse and looked at Benjamín and said, “You are going to die for this.” Then he rode away with his men.

We rode toward the ranch. Parker and Bond laughed some more. They shook Benjamín’s hand, they slapped his back, they asked him how he had worked this magic. How had he, the captive, become the captor? Benjamín did not explain, he wished to keep his magic secret. Me, I was not laughing. I had a bad feeling. Don Diego was more than a ranchero, he was an hacendado, a man of great dignity. I thought Benjamín should have been happy to have won back his liberty. For him to kick Don Diego in the butt, to disgrace him and humiliate him before the very eyes of his men, that was going too far. On the ride home I whispered to Benjamín, “He means what he says. He will try to kill you.” Do you know what he said to me? “I know.” That was all. “I know.”

One day two men on horseback came to the ranch, old friends of Benjamín’s. They had fought with him in the Revolution. They came to him with a warning—Don Diego had offered a big reward to anyone who killed him. Two hundred and fifty dollars. In those times Mexico was full of desperate men who would have killed anyone for a few pesos.

The following days were difficult. They were most difficult for our women. La señora Ida was carrying a child, and so was Lourdes. She was angry with Benjamín and with me, too. “You were no better than the thieves who stole our cattle,” she said. “You will be lucky if God does not punish you.” We ate dinner together almost every night, the four of us, and I remember many nights when the ranch dogs started barking and Benjamín would place his Luger on the dining table, and we blew out the lamps and sat quietly in the dark, listening for footsteps, for the sound of horses’ hooves.

Now the thing I swore not to tell. This happened on a very hot day in September, after the squalls were finished. Benjamín and me had to go out and move some cattle from grazing land he rented from the government. We were going to move the cattle closer to a water hole. We rode down a road through country that was very good country for an ambush—a lot of hills and woods and arroyos and canyons. Both of us were on the lookout. It was very still, no wind, and the only sound we could hear were the calls of the Mexican jays. We listened for other sounds, you know, a man’s cough, or the snorting of a horse, or rustling in the brush. And we looked side to side into the trees for something that should not be there, like the shining of a rifle barrel in the sun.

We came to the top of a hill. Not too far ahead, on the road, we saw two mounted men approaching us. Benjamín pulled Spirit off the road and dismounted and drew his Winchester from the scabbard on his saddle. He did this very quickly and signaled me to come with him, and I did. We climbed up a big rock that looked over the road. We laid down there. I had my pistol out. We could see the riders, but they could not see us. They came closer—Mexicans, wearing straw hats and sandals and dirty white shirts. A big man and a small one. The big man rode in front, with a shotgun across the pommel of his saddle. The small man was not armed and rode a burro and led another with heavy sacks roped to its packsaddle.

I returned my pistol to the holster and said in a low voice, “Peons. They are not assassins.”

Benjamín whispered to me that maybe they were assassins who were trying to look like peons.

Pretty soon the big man on the horse was right below us. Benjamín jumped up and aimed the Winchester and shouted, “Halt! Hands up!” The big man was startled, as who would not be who finds himself on a lonely road and a man pointing a rifle at him from above? I think he thought we were bandits. He jerked his head around and yelled to the smaller one, “My son, watch out!” I do not know if Benjamín heard that. I know I did. When he did that, he turned around in the saddle, his shotgun slipped from the pommel and he went to grab it to keep it from falling to the ground, and that was when Benjamín shot him.

All of this happened, you understand, very fast. The big man fell from the horse, and his foot got caught in the stirrup, and the frightened horse ran very fast into the woods, dragging him. At the same time the small man dropped his lead rope and turned his burro to flee. Quickly, very, very quickly, Benjamín worked the lever of his rifle and shot him in the back, and he fell, and the riding burro and the pack burro both went crazy, bucking and jumping. One ran off in one direction, the pack burro in another direction. It crashed into a tree, it was so crazy, and the sacks came off and spilled the things inside.

“Let us make sure they are finished!” Benjamín said to me, and we climbed off the rock and followed the blood trail of the big man into the woods. We found him lying on the rocks of an arroyo not too far away. His horse had bucked his foot from the stirrup and had run away somewhere. Benjamín threw a rock at the big man to make sure he was dead. He was. There was a bullet hole in his shoulder, but the thing that killed him was his galloping horse dragging him over the rocks. His face and head were all smashed up, like somebody had beat him with a club. It was a terrible thing to see.

We ran back to the road to look at the small man. He, too, was dead. The bullet had gone right through him, made a big hole in his chest coming out. We saw that when we turned him over, and that he was not a small man but only a boy. Maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen. And that was when I knew I had heard correctly when I heard the big man call out, “My son!” I went over to see what had come out of the sacks on the pack burro. I found bags of tobacco and whiskey and beer bottles packed in straw, and I cried out, “Ayyy, Benjamín, they are not assassins, like I told you. They are smugglers. Smugglers and nothing more.”

Yes, that was all, and small-timers, too, a father and his son making some extra money smuggling whiskey and tobacco into Mexico. You see, in those times, before alcohol was forbidden in the United States, Mexicans would buy it in the United States and bring it into Mexico because whiskey, and tobacco, too, had big taxes on them.

“If they are smugglers,” Benjamín asked me, “why were they riding north with the contraband?” I answered him, “I don’t know. How can I know? But they cannot be assassins.”

I remember Benjamín going down on one knee, holding his rifle, and looking at the dead boy. He looked at him for a long time without saying nothing. I do not know what he was thinking. I did know what I was thinking, that my friend had murdered these two peons and that I was at his side when he did. I had fear of my own thoughts.

After a time Benjamín stood up and said he was sorry that this must happen. If he had known it was only a boy, he would not have shot him. If the big man had not gone for his shotgun, he would not have shot him. Me, I was not sure the big man had reached for the shotgun, and even if he had, what was Benjamín to expect, jumping up like that aiming a rifle at a man on a lonely road? But what did any of that matter?

Benjamín said we must bury them, and we did. Ghosts and bones! We dragged the boy to where his father lay in the arroyo, and we piled rocks on top of them. It took a long time. We buried the shotgun and the contraband, too, because, I think, Benjamín worried that someone might find them and ask questions. In those days, you know, gringos often got away with killing Mexicans, but because he had shot a little boy in the back, I think Benjamín feared he would not get away with it.

He said he was not going to speak of this to nobody, not even to his wife, Ida. And I was not to say nothing to nobody. He made me swear it. I will always remember how he looked at me—his eyes were gray and hard, like the metal of a gun. I was to take, you know, an oath, and I did, because I could not betray my friend, and for another reason. I was like Lourdes. I was a little afraid of him.