Brimstone

29

WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO ALLIE on the front porch of the house we were renting. It was just after sunrise, and she was barefoot and in her nightgown. She and Virgil put their arms around each other. But they didn’t kiss, and when he stepped back and swung up onto his horse, she smiled at me and patted my cheek.

“Take care of each other,” she said.

I got up on my horse.

“Have somebody milk that cow every day,” Virgil said.

“I will,” she said.

None of us moved. Virgil looked down from the saddle at Allie.

“I’ll come back,” he said.

Then he wheeled the horse and I followed with the pack mule on a lead, and we rode up Third Street toward Arrow. Pony was mounted and waiting outside Pike’s Palace, and he swung in beside us as we rode south out of town. We stopped at the Ostermueller farm shack. Pony got down and spent maybe ten minutes looking at the ground, then mounted his horse and led us out toward the river where the tracks led.

Once we were into the open, I took the mule off the lead. He’d follow the horses, and if he didn’t, one of us could haze him back.

“You see more than one Indian?” I said.

“No,” Pony said.

“And two shod,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Tell if anyone’s riding the shod horses?”

“Need to see tracks when no one rides them, and tracks when someone does,” Pony said.

We rode south along the river most of the day. Pony rode quietly, looking at the tracks. Occasionally he would lean out of the saddle and study them, then he would resume.

“Don’t seem worried ’bout covering his tracks,” Virgil said.

“No,” Pony said. “But he don’t know I the one following.”

Virgil grinned.

“Figures we can’t track?” he said.

“Yes,” Pony said.

We came to a ford at the end of the day, and the tracks led into it. The sun was down, and it was hard to see the bank on the other side of the river.

“Might want to camp this side,” Virgil said. “Kinda hate to get caught in the middle of the river in the near dark by a man with a rifle.”

“We can cross in the morning,” Pony said.

We made a fire and cooked some bacon and beans. I took a jug from the pack, and we passed it around while the supper cooked.

“How long you work for Pike?” I said to Pony.

“Since wild times,” Pony said.

“Outlaw times,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Always the way he is now?”

“Sure,” Pony said.

“Big, friendly bear,” Virgil said. “Everybody’s friend.”

“Sure.”

“ ’Cept when he ain’t,” Virgil said.

Pony frowned for a moment, translating Virgil’s remark into whatever language he thought in.

“You mean when he kill people,” Pony said.

“Uh-huh.”

“He like to kill people,” Pony said.

“I know,” Virgil said.

Pony took a pull on the bottle.

“You no like that,” he said.

“Don’t mind it,” Virgil said.

Pony handed me the bottle.

“You ever fight with us when you was living Apache?” I said.

Pony smiled.

“Blue Dogs?” he said. “Sure, I fight.”

“I was a Blue Dog,” I said.

Pony nodded.

“Maybe we fought each other,” I said.

“Maybe,” Pony said.

“Does it matter?” I said.

“When I with Apache,” he said, “I tell them I fight for them, and I do. Now I with you. I tell you I fight for you. I will fight.”

“Even against another Indian?” I said.

“I am also Mexican,” Pony said, and almost smiled again. “And this man who has stolen the ladies. He not Chiricahua.”

“How do you know?” I said.

Virgil had the whiskey bottle. He took a drink and passed it on to Pony. Pony drank some and looked at me and might have smiled.

“No Chiricahua around here,” he said.