“We ain’t exactly got all the time in the world.”
“I don’t figure they’re still after us.”
“How do you know that? Even riding the way we was we couldn’t have gained more than a half day on them and we done shot that already.”
“Them Mexicans take a nap every afternoon. They don’t get up till somebody cuts a bean fart and tells them it’s dinner time. They’re way back yonder someplace.”
“All right, we ride till last light, then cut the string and swim it. Fair enough?”
“We’ll talk about it then. In the meantime you study on what it’s going to be like coming out on the other side of the river. I’m talking about wore-out mounts, wet powder, and not a piece of money in your britches.”
Ten miles farther up the river, when the red sun was just striking the tops of the oaks and willows on the far side, they saw the ferry moored in the shadow of a huge cypress. In their exhaustion they didn’t wait for the ferry-keeper to come out of his cabin but rode their horses across the split-oak planks onto the barge. Son slid down from the buckskin he was riding and leaned his arms and head against the horse’s withers.
“You don’t have money for pay,” the woman said. Her legs and clothes were spotted with the wet sand from the river bottom. Her face was drawn, the metallic complexion almost discolored like uneven bronze, and Son saw her flinch as she pulled her buttocks back on the horse’s rump and drew her knees up on its side.
“Don’t worry about it,” Son said. “I’ll give him a chunk of lead to chew on if he don’t want nothing else.”
“I not give you rifle for that.”
“I ain’t going to shoot nobody. We just ain’t bargaining with none of these people.”
“Hey, get your ass out here,” Hugh shouted at the cabin. “We got people and stock on board here waiting to get taken across.”
An old man with white whiskers and white hair hanging in knotted strands from under his flop hat stepped through the low cabin door and walked toward them with his back still bent. His face had the softness of a baby’s, and even in the diminishing twilight Son could see the blue veins in his fish-white arms.
“I always yell at the wrong people,” Hugh said.
The old man picked up a long shaved pole that was leaned into a branch of the cypress tree and squinted up at their silhouettes against the late sun’s fire. His gums were pink and without a tooth.
“What you boys and this Indian woman going to give me for poling you across? I don’t take no Mexican scrip,” he said.
“We ain’t got money of any kind,” Son said. “We’ll cut out that pinto for you.”
“Wait a minute,” Hugh said. “That’s worth five American dollars across the river.”
“What else we got to trade, Hugh?”
“Before you boys start arguing, them horses ain’t worth shit to me,” the old man said. “But if you’re G.T.T.’s, which I figure you are, and you’re fixing to join up with Sam Houston, you don’t pay nothing for this trip.”
The old man dropped the pine rail into place between the lashed posts on the stern and slipped the mooring line loose so the ferry could swing out into the current on the rope that extended across the river.
“Did them Mexicans do something pretty bad to you?” Hugh said.
“I come here as a colonist with Stephen Austin fourteen years ago. They throwed him in prison in Mexico City, and they been giving Americans hell ever since. The taxes you can’t pay they take out of your larder or drive out of your pen. If that ain’t enough for them, the jefe comes back and takes all the tools and harness out of your barn. Then they sell it to them drunk Indians that come over from Louisiana.”
“To tell you on the square, mister,” Hugh said, “we’re G.T.T.s all right, but we ain’t planning to sign on in no army. So maybe you still got your fare coming.”
“If you boys stay in Texas, you’ll join up with Houston or Bowie, one.”
“You know James Bowie?” Hugh said.
“I taken all them boys across,” the old man said.
“I mean you ferried Jim Bowie from Louisiana across this river?”
“All them people come across on this ferry.” The old man’s light blue eyes turned away toward the water with his lie.
“We’re looking for a horse trader on the other side named Jack Tyler,” Son said.
“I know where he’s at,” Hugh said.
“You ain’t been here in years, Hugh. You don’t know he’s alive.”
“He’s alive, all right,” the old man said. “You watch him, too. He’ll sharp you out of the nails in your horse’s shoe.”
“How far?” Son said.
“I told you where it’s at,” Hugh said. “We catch the trace just beyond the next rise and ride about five miles. Ain’t that right?”
“He ain’t there no more,” the old man said. “Some buffalo hunters didn’t like his whiskey one night and burned him down. He’s about ten miles further on now at a regular town.”
“There ain’t no town there,” Hugh said.
“There sure as hell is. Jack Tyler’s got a saloon and a couple of stock barns there, and two fellows from Tennessee built themselves a store.”
The ferry bumped onto the mudflat under the overhang of trees, and the old man dropped the rail on the bow.
“What do you want for the trip? We don’t ask for nothing free,” Son said.
“You got what I want up there on the horse, but I done got too old for that.”
Son looked away from the old man’s face and avoided the woman’s eyes, which he knew were upon him.
“Give him the knife,” he said.
“You sure can give away what ain’t yours,” Hugh said.
“Give him the damn knife.”
“You can have this gut ripper,” Hugh said. “I lost the whetstone, but you put one to it and you can lop a young pine in half with it.”
“You stick it in one of them Mexicans for me and we’ll be even,” the old man said.
“Suit yourself,” Hugh said. “Tell me, you taken any Frenchmen across of recent?”
“Last week I did. Five of them. They was wearing coats and pantaloons like New Orleans dandies.”
Son and Hugh looked at each other.
“What kind of business was these Frenchies on?” Hugh said.
“You got me. Only one of them talked English, and he was such a mean-looking sonofabitch I didn’t care to hold no conversation.”
“Was they headed up the trace?” Son said.
“If you’re going across east Texas, there ain’t no other way to go,” the old man said.
They walked the string of horses off the ferry into the trees and rode up the embankment. The shadows around them were deep purple, like a bruise, and the last crack of red sun was burning into the western horizon.
“That’s him, ain’t it?” Son said.
“Maybe.” Hugh was biting down on his lip and staring through the darkening trees.
“Who else comes through this country dressed like that?”
“I didn’t reckon he’d get ahead of us. If he’d figured us right, he should have headed south for the Coast. That’s what we ought to done, and he should have knowed it.”
“The old man said they crossed last week. Maybe they pushed on to Bexar.”
“It might be our luck they’re setting at Jack Tyler’s place waiting for us, too. Ain’t this a slop jar full of it? I thought we’d be drinking whiskey tonight with Jack instead of sleeping in a cold woods again like a bunch of niggers.”
“We can’t take these horses no farther, anyway, Hugh. Let’s bed down by that drainage.”
“That sonofabitch must have sniffed every bush we pissed on since we swum across the Mississippi.”
The wind blew across the river in a cold gust behind them and rattled pine cones along the ground.