You just now got done sayin she dont speak no english.
That dont make it not cussin.
You dont make no sense. And what made you think them sumbucks back yonder didnt have pistols in their clothes somewheres?
I didnt think it. That’s why I thowed you the shotgun.
Billy leaned and spat. Damn, he said.
What do you aim to do with her?
I dont know. Hell. How would I know?
They turned the horses off of the road and set out upon a treeless plain. The flat black mountains in the distance made a jagged hem along the lower reach of the heavens. The girl sat small and erect with one hand holding on to Billy by his belt. Trekking in the starlight between the dark boundaries of the mountain ranges east and west they had the look of storybook riders conveying again to her homeland some stolen backland queen.
They made camp in the dry country on a rise where the night sank about them in an infinite deep and they staked the horses and left Bird saddled. The girl had yet to speak. She walked out in the darkness and they saw her no more till morning.
When they woke there was a fire on the ground and she was pouring water from the canteen and setting it to heat, moving quietly about in the gray light. Billy lay in his blanket watching her. She must have found more clothes among her possessions for she was wearing a skirt again. She stirred the water in the tin, though what she stirred he could not guess. He closed his eyes. He heard his brother say something in Spanish and when he looked out from his blanket Boyd was squatting by the fire crosslegged and drinking from his tinware cup.
He turned out and rolled his bedding and she brought him a cup of hot chocolate and went back to the fire. She’d browned tortillas in their small skillet and spooned them full of beans and they sat by the fire and ate their breakfast while the day paled about them.
Did you unsaddle Bird? Billy said.
No. She did.
He nodded. They ate.
How bad are you cut? Boyd said.
It’s just a scratch. He cut through my boot pretty good.
This country’s hell on clothes.
It’s gettin that reputation with me. What possessed you to run their horses off thataway?
I dont know. I just took a notion to do it.
Did you hear what he said about her?
Yeah. I heard it.
By sunup they’d broke camp and were set out once more across the gravel and creosote plain south. They nooned at a well in the desert where oak and elder grew clumped in the flats and they turned the horses out and slept on the ground. Billy slept with the shotgun cradled in his arm and when he woke the girl was sitting watching him. He asked her if she could ride caballo en pelo and she said that she could. When they set out again she rode behind Boyd so as to spell the horses. He thought Boyd would have something to say about it but he didnt. When he looked back the girl was riding with both arms around his waist. When he‑looked back later her dark hair was spilled over his brother’s shoulder and she was sleeping against his back.
In the evening they reached the hacienda of San Diego sited on a hill overlooking the tilled lands that ran on to the Casas Grandes River and to the Piedras Verdes. A windmill turned on the plain below them like a Chinese toy and dogs barked in the distance. In the long steep light the raw umber mountains stood deeply shadowed in their folds and in the sky to the south a dozen buzzards turned in a slow crepe carousel.
Border Trilogy 2 - The Crossing
III
IT WAS ALL BUT DARK when they rode past the main house and along the drive, past the porticoes with their slender carved iron posts, past the white plaster walls quoined with red sandstone blocks and the terracotta filigree along the upper parapets. The front of the house was faced with three stone arches and above them were carved the words Hacienda de San Diego in letters arched over the initials L. T. The tall Palladian windows were shuttered and the shutters were weathered and broken and paint and plaster were flaking from the walls and the portico ceiling was no more than bare wood lath all waterstained and buckled. They went on across the yard toward what looked to be the domicilios where smoke was rising against the evening sky and rode through the standing wooden gates into the courtyard and sat the horses side by side.
In one corner of the enclosure stood the carcass of an antique Dodge touring car long stripped of wheels and axles, of glass and seats. At the far end of the compound a cookfire burned on the ground and by its light they could see two gaudy caravan wagons with wash hung between them and passing back and forth before the fire both men and women in robes and kimonos who appeared to belong to a circus.
Qué clase de lugar es éste? Billy said.
Es ejido, said the girl.
Qué clase de gente?
No to sé.
He swung down and the girl slid from the back of Boyd’s horse and came and took the reins.