Payback at Morning Peak (16 page)

The woman finished her chores and stepped to the door of the house.
“Adios, muchachos, vaya con Dios.”
She grabbed the rifle with her free hand and started through the door.

Pete had his pistol out and cocked it, the sound unmistakable. The woman stopped in the threshold of the door, her back to the men. She slumped just slightly, knowing she would be in for a long night.

The morning sun found the men still packing double heading north. They rode for an hour without speaking. Finally, Ed pulled a canteen loose from his saddlebag and took a long draught. “You seem kinda with yourself this morning. What is it?”

Pete half smiled. “I went against my better judgment with that old gal.”

“Really? It sounded like you were having right good sport with her. Kept me awake most of the night.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean the leaving her alive to go to the law.” They rode on for a spell, then stopped. “You see that mesa up ahead, half a mile or so?”

Ed looked and nodded.

“Hop off and head up there. I’ll meet you later. Probably a couple hours.” He laughed in his peculiar way.

“The walk will do you good, cowboy. I gotta go back and take care of business.”

Big Ed slid off the back of the horse. “Ah, come on, leave it. That gal did everything you asked, let her be.”

Pete ignored him, turned the horse, and started back toward the house by the river.

After a mile, Jubal made his way out of the ravine, thinking it would be too easy for the Wetherford party to be waiting around one of the many turns.

Out on the vast plain once again, he looked to the north. The wind had picked up and the occasional flurry of snow twirled about like small dust devils. Jubal thought he saw smoke miles to the northeast. He couldn’t be sure, as the sky and plain were the same gray smudge. He rode onto a small mesa and cupped his hands around his eyes to see where it was coming from. It would appear, then vanish. A movement, and a sound like the wind trying to find its way.

At last a train came into view about five miles away, appearing suddenly out of a gully as it labored its way north. It occurred to Jubal that Wetherford might abandon yet another horse and go north on the train. More than likely, he thought.

It grew warmer and the snow changed to drizzle, then rain. The northern sky was blanketed with streaked vertical stripes of a downpour dominating the vast open panorama to the east toward the mountains. Jubal dismounted and led Frisk over the bank of a steep arroyo with an overhanging large piñon dangling from its edge. The arroyo was eight to ten feet deep and ten yards wide, and provided protection from the deluge.

The arroyo looked as if it stretched for miles, winding its way eventually up into the foothills close by and then into the mountains. Jubal crouched down below Frisk’s belly, trying to stay dry. The center of the creek bed began to fill, the gradually slanted floor trickling with just the beginnings of a stream coming off the hills to the east.

Jubal found some joy watching the creek quickly meander through the arroyo, starting first to form a narrow wandering flow and then continuing to expand. To the east about forty yards the arroyo turned and disappeared, debris now beginning to pick up on the far bank where the stream curved.

Jubal was surprised to see a stray coyote hustling along the damp earth in the direction of the running water. It trotted past, intent on its journey, seeming not to notice the horse and huddled rider. Several times, the animal attempted to scale the sides of the arroyo, only to slip back and scamper farther along. It seemed desperate, almost in a panic, its clawing and futile struggle appearing unnatural. Jubal’s knowledge of coyotes was limited to hearing them and shooing them away from the farm, but he had never seen one so blindly afraid. Before it disappeared around a distant curve, the animal looked back toward the mountains. Jubal, in his hunched-over shelter, marveled at the mysterious behavior.

The rain continued in strange patterns. It would pelt down hard, making it difficult for Jubal to see more than a couple of yards in front of him. Then it would let up briefly, then shower down again in pea-sized drops just short of hail. Breathing became difficult, almost as if the driving force of the rain had pushed out all the oxygen from the surrounding air. Frisk remained still.

Jubal heard, above the rain, the rumblings of thunder from the east. The downpour lasted for nearly an hour. The stream was full. Jubal wished he could be under the shadow of Morning Peak to see the dark earth being saturated.

The thunder from the hills and mountains seemed to be increasing. The sound, Jubal thought, maybe wasn’t thunder—not coming from the sky but down lower through the canyons to the east. At a lull in the torrent, Jubal looked toward the mountains. They had cleared, though it was still overcast in the upper sky and a mist persisted in the largest of the canyons. It seemed to be moving downward. A cascade of water bounded over the edge of a distant cliff, the raging stream packed with trees, limbs, and chamisa rolling like wayward balls down the steep rock face.

The coyote must have sensed something long before Jubal’s instincts alerted him. A flood. The water ran off into the canyons and built into a raging wall.

Jubal mounted Frisk and attempted to regain the high ground where they had descended earlier. They made it nearly halfway up the water-soaked wall, then slipped back down. He dismounted and tried leading Frisk up the slippery clay embankment. Each time they would get nearly to the top, but no farther.

The noise became louder. Jubal remounted Frisk and began a hurried, determined gallop west, down the arroyo and away from the now-thunderous onslaught.

After a hundred yards there was still no easy access out of the trench. He knew the farther into the flatland he rode, the more the arroyo’s walls would descend, until at last becoming level with the endless plain.

As he rode, the walls did shorten. But as the arroyo turned, it deepened as the valley curved back east toward the mountains. He dismounted and, with the reins in his hand, tried once again to lead Frisk up the steep side wall. She would make it nearly all the way, thrashing with her hind legs for purchase as the wall got steeper. Then, despite Jubal’s urging, she would stumble back into the now-ankle-deep water.

The roar from the oncoming flood had gotten impossibly loud.

Ahead, he could see a tributary spurring off to the right. Jubal headed for it. As he neared, a loud prolonged rumbling preceded a wall of water that emptied into the arroyo from the tributary.

He was trapped.

The water carried broken trees, stumps, and branches that drove hard into the arroyo wall opposite the formerly dry tributary. In moments the flood coming from behind Jubal caught up with him and then met the tributary. He scrambled off of Frisk and grabbed her mane with both hands just above her withers as the water whirled them in circles before carrying them down the tumultuous arroyo.

A giant limb from a tree passed wickedly close to Jubal’s head. He contemplated latching onto the treelike raft, but decided he would feel best if he survived with Frisk rather than leaving her behind.

They continued their chaotic journey. Between spitting out the brackish water and fending off tree limbs, Jubal had all he could handle, but he continued encouraging Frisk to do her best. The beast’s eyes were wide with fear, her legs slowing, she must finally have realized she
was floating. A dead squirrel moved past, then a bush of yellow flowers hung up on the back of Frisk’s head before drifting away.

Jubal struggled to stay alive.

It once again began to rain.

At last Frisk snorted and seemed to get taller. Jubal realized the earth at least on this side of the arroyo began to ascend upward. Jubal struggled to hold on to Frisk’s mane as the animal gradually pulled herself out of the steep ditch. Jubal suddenly found himself standing upright next to a shivering Frisk. They were safe.

On a rise nearby, a copse of piñon looked like a welcoming shelter. Jubal led Frisk by the reins and tied her to a limb. The rain had stopped but the roaring floodwaters continued to carry debris down the arroyo. Jubal sat on the rise and watched as first a small wide-eyed deer came paddling by and later a dead horse floated downstream. It looked like the mare that he had shot earlier, its bloated stomach rising just above the muddy water. It would be many miles before the animal found its final resting place.

Exhausted, he drifted off to sleep under a sheltering pine. When he awoke, he rummaged through his soaked saddlebags. Fortunately, the tin box where he had sealed his matches seemed intact.

He foraged and found a few broken pine boughs. In a small opening in the earth, he found a nest of dry tinder secreted away by varmints. When he lit a match, the twigs and small branches caught, and the larger limbs Jubal had stacked to the side dried quickly. Frisk eased closer to the fire as Jubal swept her hide with a flat piece of wood. The water poured from her long hair. After taking care of Frisk,
he took off his clothes and, tying his shirt to a piñon tree branch, twisted it vigorously to wring it as dry as possible. After doing the same with his pants and long underwear, he hung them in a branch above the fire and stood close to the burning wood, dancing naked forward to back, trying to stay warm.

The following morning’s sun appeared as if the deluge of the century had simply not occurred, and within two hours Jubal had found the railroad tracks. He followed them for several miles, until he reached a group of stand-alone buildings in the wide-open plain. Signs reading
TAOS JUNCTION
and
DENVER & RIO GRANDE R.R.
hung on an old boxcar sitting to the side of the track. Next to the train station were a pair of wagons and a corral with a couple of horses. Jubal slid off Frisk and went up the steps into the railcar. An elderly man tended the desk inside.

“Good day, sir,” Jubal said. “I wonder if you could tell me your train schedule.”

The man looked down at a booklet. “You just missed the ten-forty to Antonito and on up to Alamosa. Won’t be another going that way until tomorrow, same time.” The old-timer looked up. “unless you want to go down south
to Espanola or Santa Fe, of course that would be later today, around six or so.”

“So the train stops here twice a day, one south, one north.”

“Not exactly.” The man got up gingerly from his swivel chair and motioned for Jubal to follow him outside. “If we have passengers or freight, we lower that big white ball there.”

A tall pole stood adjacent to the track. At the top, an angled board held a sphere nearly two feet in radius, attached by several lines through an arrangement of pulleys.

“Yep, just like a flagpole,” continued the man. “If the engineer sees the ball down, he stops the train. Otherwise, he highballs it right on through.”

“You say the train that just went through is going to Alamosa?”

“Right you are, son. Should be there around four this afternoon.”

“Excuse the questions, sir. But I’m looking for a couple dudes. One of them would have been looking poorly, as if he’d been in an accident, maybe limping.”

“Remember them well.” He paused. “Rode in asking directions, arguing about whether to take the train on up north to Colorado or not. Damned if they didn’t finally just ride off. Heavens to Betsy. They were still dickering when they disappeared over the horizon.”

Jubal mounted Frisk. “Much obliged, sir. How far would you say it is to Alamosa?”

“I’d say closer to seventy-five than eighty miles, sonny.”

Jubal nodded his thanks. He thought it might have
been better for him if the two men had taken the train, for he wouldn’t have to be so on the alert for an ambush. But one takes the sweet with the sour, as his ma used to say.

He reached down and patted his horse on the withers. “Keep a watchful eye, will you, Frisk?”

She snorted as if she’d understood.

They passed through Tres Piedras well into the night. No one was in view, as the small community wrapped itself into a cocoon of sleep. They pushed on through a wide gap in the rock structure.

Frisk was capable of being ridden all night. Jubal figured they would arrive in Alamosa sometime midmorning. Whether or not he himself would be up to the journey, he would find out soon enough.

He felt lucky they had the railroad tracks to follow, the path most of the time paralleling the ribbon of steel heading north. At one point in the middle of the night, Jubal dozed off and awoke to find Frisk had wandered off the path and was standing in a field, head down, joining Jubal in his late-night snooze. He eased off the big mare and walked her back to the trail. They continued like this for a number of miles, Jubal recalling the time when he had walked with his sister Pru alongside the buckboard on the way from Kansas to New Mexico.

“Jube, I’ll race you to the top of that hill, where that old tree is leaning out over the road.” Prudence skipped sideways along the rutted trail, egging Jubal on.

“What? I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Jubal Young. You’re just trying to cheat ‘cause you know I’m faster.”

“Faster, ho, ho. If you live to be a hundred you wouldn’t be as fast as me.”

“Ma,” Pru cried. “Count it off, one, two, three.”

Bea, driving the team of horses, yelled, “One, one and a quarter, one and a half, one and three quarters—”

Both of the children jumped the gun, and they were off. Pru was fast and Jubal had trouble passing her right at the finish. Under a tree, they both tried to catch their breath.

Jubal had just had his thirteenth birthday. Pru was ten and didn’t seem to mind the arduous trip from Kansas City into the “Wild West,” as she loved to call it.

“Ma, can Jube and I explore up over that funny-looking flat hill?” Pru asked once the two children returned to the buckboard.