“The Mexicans is rough on me sometimes,” Tyler said. “They come by and check my lot every couple of weeks, and they take anything I ain’t got a paper on.”
“We ain’t trying to bargain with you,” Son said. “Just look at the string, and we’ll take half the amount in American money and the rest in trade.”
“This is part of Mexico, boy, and you deal in Mexican money here.”
“If you want to talk to me, my name is Holland, and that woman out at the plank wasn’t taking no Mexican money for the drinks.”
“You got a real pistol for a partner,” Tyler said to Hugh.
“I got to admit I told him you’re a bit of a sharper, Jack. But go look at them horses. They’re a good string. They ain’t branded or shoed, and you got many an Indian pony just like them. You and me both know the Mexicans ain’t going to give you no trouble over them.”
“What do you need in goods?” Tyler said.
“Everything, including a new shirt for Son.”
“All right, you set here and I’ll be back. Holler at the woman if you want more from the pot.”
Tyler went back through the burlap curtain.
“You sure pick some mangy bastards for friends,” Son said.
“He is a little rank sometimes, but he’s still a friend. Don’t forget we’d be between a rock and a hard place if he wasn’t here.”
“What do you reckon he’ll offer on the horses?”
“Anything he can get away with. But figure it this way: an hour ago we didn’t have nothing between us except an empty rifle and some spent horses that ain’t worth their hides, and right now we’re eating his food and drinking his wine. Pass that cask over here again. I believe he put a whole block of salt in that stew.”
“You’re into your cup, Hugh, you got your mind on them women out there, and if you let him sharp us on this deal we’re going our different ways on the trace tomorrow.”
“Now, that’s a bad thing to say to a partner, ain’t it, White-Man’s-Woman?”
“I not White-Man’s-Woman,” she said. In the light from the oil lamp on the plank table her face looked as though it were cut out of mahogany. She held the wooden spoon balanced over the plate in her whole hand.
“Well, we ain’t got anything else to call you,” Hugh said. “I was just saying Son shouldn’t be rough on his partner.”
“You want bad women outside,” she said. “They take your round metal and give you sickness back for it.”
Hugh wiped the wine out of his whiskers with his hand, and poured again out of the cask.
“If this ain’t something,” he said. “A man spends three years locked in a pen, and when he gets out he’s got a couple of church deacons for company. You just take care of yourselves. I was through this country in 1821 when an Indian would put an arrow shaft through your back as soon as he caught you sleeping in the saddle.”
Hugh hit his hand on the table and knocked his plate into his lap. He stared at it blindly, then raked it with his palm onto the dirt floor.
“We’re going to need a block and tackle to get you on a horse tomorrow,” Son said.
“The last time I seen a block and tackle we was doing something else with it,” Hugh said. He raised his cup to his mouth and spilled most of it down his shirt front.
Jack Tyler came through the burlap curtain with a leather purse in one hand and a large holstered pistol in the other. He looked at Hugh, whose face was white and vacuous as he stared at the green neck of the wine cask.
“That’s a right fine string you got out there,” he said. “I’ll give you fifteen dollars American, the tack for two horses, all the grub and clothes you need, a dress for the woman, and I’ll throw in something extra you ain’t ever seen before.”
“Wait a minute, mister. That’s forty dollars worth of horses out there,” Son said.
“You said you wanted it in goods as well as money, Holland. I’m giving you the best deal you’ll catch between here and some Mexican trader up the trace.”
“You said saddles for only two horses,” Son said.
“An Indian don’t ride a saddle,” Tyler said.
“Three saddles, Jack,” Hugh said. “We don’t want no army ass-busters, either.”
“All right,” Tyler said.
“Hell, it is. You’re trying to sharp your friend when he’s got his head in the jug,” Hugh said.
“You look here at what I got in this holster,” Tyler said. “I reckon you heared about them, but you ever seen one before?”
“No, I ain’t. It’s a big sonofabitch, though, ain’t it? Will all them chambers really fire?”
“Sam Colt himself was through here about five months ago, and he left me this one for the bill he owed at the bar,” Tyler said. “We took it outside, and he knocked five slats out of my fence as fast as he could cock it.”
Hugh picked up the heavy revolver in his hand, pulled back the hammer on half-cock, and rolled the cylinder across his palm.
“It looks to me like all them caps would light with the first flash,” he said.
“You make up your own mind about it. I got all the powder and caps you need out front. Sam Colt said he figured out that turning chamber while he was carving a wood gun on board a navy ship.”
“Before this goes on no further, let’s make sure what we’re going to get for our horses, Hugh,” Son said. “We don’t want no woman’s dress, we don’t want no salted fatback for grub, and no bill in the morning for what you’re fixing to do tonight.”
“You all talk about it. I’m going to find some real company,” Hugh said.
“Damn you, it’s coming out of your share if you have to go hungry down the trace,” Son said.
Hugh careened through the curtain into the front room.
“Where can we sleep at?” Son said.
“I got some pallets fixed up in the back of the barn,” Tyler said. “I’ll send my Mexican woman over with some blankets. You want to take the bottle with you?”
“You can quit what you’re thinking, because I ain’t going to have liquor in my head when we count out our supplies tomorrow morning.”
“You ought to take it with you.”
“You just keep your dirty mouth to yourself, mister. And I’ll take the pistol so Hugh don’t forget what you already give him.”
Son and the woman walked through the crowded front room toward the door. Hugh was at one of the long tables by the fireplace with a Mexican woman on each side of him. He was telling a story and crashing his fist down on the planks each time he finished a sentence.
It was cold outside, and the wind was blowing hard out of the north. The few stars in the blue-black sky were low over the dark hills, and leaves were shredding from the clumps of oaks in the fields.
“Ice fall from the sky in the morning,” the woman said.
“What?”
“It comes from that star above the little hill.”
“That’s the end of the little dipper. It don’t have anything to do with the weather. People at home say it means Jesus is showing you ain’t got to reach up but just a little to see his plan.”
“You see.”
They went into the barn and walked between the stalls to the back, where hay had been piled and flattened under quilts beside one wall. In the darkness they could hear the wind ripping across the loft floor.
“I hate to think about the drunks that’s going to be sleeping with us later,” Son said.
“They stay all night in the saloon,” she said.
“Hugh won’t. They’ll throw him out on his butt as soon as he’s drunk enough to handle.”
“He sleep with bad women tonight. He not come here.”
Jack Tyler’s fat Mexican woman came into the barn with an angle lamp and four folded U.S. army blankets. In the yellow flare off the lamp she looked awful. She dropped the blankets on the hay.