Springerville wasn’t much of a town. The hurry-up of its founding showed in the shacks nailed together with gaping holes below the roof, signs posted advertising lumber, general mercantile, bank, even lawyers. But there was no doubt on Springerville’s heart. It wanted money and it offered goods and services in alarming variety to insure that little cash made its way through town without changing hands at least once. It was Jack’s kind of town. He had made money here as well as spent it. Cattle a man didn’t have to raise and fret over sold real quickly at a bargain price, and that same money bought what passed for pretty women and all the good friends found in a whiskey bottle. There wasn’t much more Jack Holden wanted.
The child who came flying out of the office near the shipping pens was not part of Jack’s expectations. The boy had Jack’s sister’s bright red hair that came from some long-departed ancestor. The boy stopped at the office door, a knife appearing in the boy’s hand that he used to clean his nails. A pretty child, Jack thought. When the boy finally moved, perhaps because of noises from the office interior, Jack saw it in the boy’s direct stare and knew he was trouble. Pale gold eyes flecked with darker color and set deeply in the skull, and shaded by thin lashes so pale they held no color. Jack’s father all over again.
Jack always had thanked his ma for her looks that had become his own oft-mentioned handsomeness. This boy was Jack’s pa—pure trouble. Jack removed his off-side boot from the stirrup, introduced himself, and offered the boy a mount up. The youngster climbed on, and Jack let the nervous bay prance through the tangle of shipping pens so familiar to him. At his back he could hear voices and the inevitable sound of a rifle cocked and readied.
“What kind of hell’d you raise back there?”
There was a simple answer, and it came in a familiar twang that brought the full realization of who rode behind him. The voice was his father’s, and no mistaking its irritated tone.
“I asked to be paid, and the man said he owed me nothing. So I hit him.”
“You got a horse, or do we have to find you one, and the outfit to go with it?”
The boy had few graces. He shrugged. Jack could feel the gesture.
“Got a bronc’, and gear. Bought ’em near Salinas. They belong to me.”
The voice rose at the end of the declaration, and Jack knew the kid had been challenged to keep his outfit. Older hands on a drive would chouse a kid, give him the bad jobs, the rough unwanted broncos, the tail end of the drag, meaning to find out the kid’s worth before they had to depend on him.
Jack guided the bay as the thin hand pointed out a small pen holding a sorry yellow mare. The boy slid off the bay without talking, and Jack pulled leather when the horse leaped forward and began bucking hard. When he brought down the bay, there was the boy, holding the saddled mare, watching with bleak eyes at the bay’s antics.
“That bronc’ ain’t much,” the boy said.
They talked some. The boy, who answered to John, said he’d come in three days past. He had slept in the shed, fed the sorry mare from leavings out of the pens, but didn’t think he’d taken enough to equal the $5 he had paid for the mare’s keep. John also had had to fight for his $20 for the drive, which the boss had not wanted to pay. By the boy’s account, he’d won the battle, had the mare and a $20 coin in his pocket.
“How’d you eat, boy?” Jack was curious.
The kid looked at him with contempt. “Ladies to towns…they feel sorry for an orphan kid like me. They feed better’n any company office could. Take me to their bed, iffen I wanted them to.” The last was said in defiance, and Jack looked away, careful not to see too much of himself in that anger.
“You got a last name, boy?” Maybe this would give him a handle he could use.
“Ain’t the same as yours…the one you use. Ma told me I was to keep the family’s name, not change it like you done.”
“You do what your ma says, boy.” The image of his sister birthing out this throwback felt strange. Jack shook and put the bay off stride. The jolt put some sanity back in his thinking. He was stuck with the boy, and there was a job to be done.
The thought that he must change entered his mind briefly—find honest work, not meet up with Refugio. It wasn’t much of a thought and didn’t last long, not past looking sideways at the boy and seeing those odd eyes and the angry mouth. He was nothing more than Jack Holden. The eyes flickered, and Jack knew he was caught.
“I know you’re a thief…Uncle. Heard it in Springerville.”
The harsh wording stung Jack. Uncle. There was a pause in which both parties counted time and held back on temper.
“Don’t expect your ma thought any different when she sent you. Word travels far, and she knew how to find me.” He paused, letting the boy sort through that thought. “Tells me you already got a head start in trouble back home.” A ghost of something hidden in those flecked eyes, and Jack half bowed, mocking the recognition from his wayward kin.
“Ma said you was quick,” John said. Admiration was clear this time but only for a moment. “Got the same thing done to me that the old man done you. I paid him back, the son-of-a-bitch. Sold off his best bull, spent the money on whiskey and women.”
Jack took another good look at the scowling boy. “Well, kid, you ain’t but fourteen yet.”
The boy laughed, his wide mouth stretched thin, but the smile and sound never got to his eyes. Looked something like his ma for a moment, as close as Jack could recall, but she had a sweetness that this kid would never handle.
“Yeah, it took the old man bad that a boy got him. Laid on the belt hard enough, but that bull didn’t come runnin’ back . . . that money already got spent out of a whore’s purse.” The laughter again; Jack winced. “Guess it took me ’bout as long as you to get tired of the whippings. Guess I wanted revenge and you just wanted out.” The child had no mercy.
Jack’s voice echoed inside his head. “I got business ahead. Man I got to see. You ride with me, you work. No questions . . . no talking ’bout what you see. You take orders, you’ll get a decent horse, get enough to eat. Won’t offer more’n that.”
“No matter to me…Uncle. Guess I’m your boy now.”
The words were straight, but Jack heard an disturbing undertone. Nothing this boy did would be for less than his own gain. But right now it was necessary for him to work for his Uncle Jack. Jack shivered. “You keep your mouth shut, boy. Do as you’re told and we’ll get along.”
They went looking for Refugio in one of the many unnamed cañons of the back country. Jack’s eyes moved quickly as they entered the narrow file. The rock walls, up too close, suggested the confines of a prison cell. The boy rode behind Jack, forced into silence by the pressing rock. Jack didn’t trust the boy at his back. Refugio was far more honorable.
He reined the bay left around a fallen boulder, canon and the cañon opened up to a surprising valley, with lush graze ringed by a flowing stream. Cattle bawled and stamped and grazed like everyone’s cattle. The dumb beasts knew nothing about ownership or stealing. They only knew the indignant pain of altered brands and the eventual knife across their blood-drenched throats.
Refugio separated himself from a low fire and walked to greet his new partner. Two other men, indistinct except for the vague shadows of their moustaches, looked up, shrugged, and went back to their chores. Irons stuck out from the fire like an angry porcupine. “Ah, mi amigo! You have brought a friend?” Refugio stared at the boy, then studied Jack’s face. “He is of your family, señor. I did not know the outlaw Jack Holden had kin in these parts.”