Country of the Bad Wolfes

BLACK HORSE

Only a month after Bruno’s wedding, the hacienda celebrated Roger Samuel’s fifth birthday. The fiesta was held at the Rancho Isabela, and John Roger provided wagon transport for everyone from the compound and both villages. There were the usual fiesta delectations of roasted sides of meats and tablefuls of food and vats of beer chilled in mountain ice, the usual fireworks and music and dancing. The dance floor was a wide clearing of packed dirt, and boys with sprinkler cans of water were charged with keeping down the dust. A large piñata, shaped like a horse and covered with colorful paper and filled with wrapped candies, hung from a tree branch. Each child in turn would be blindfolded and allowed five swings with a wooden pole—one swing for each year of Rogerito’s life—to try to break the piñata as it was made to jounce about on the end of its rope. By custom the birthday boy was allowed to go first and have a few extra swings, as it was deemed good luck for everyone present if he were the one to break the piñata. Felicia Flor and Vicki Clara stood side by side and gave Rogerito loud cheers of encouragement but the best he could manage was to snap off one of the horse’s legs, which contained only filler paper. Then his brother, next in line, with his first swing shattered the piñata and set the other children scrambling after the shower of treats.

The twins too had come to the party, and after the piñata ritual they clapped Juan Sotero on the shoulder and praised the power of his swing. They told Felicia Flor—whom they had first met on her wedding day—that marriage certainly agreed with her, as she looked even prettier than a month ago. She blushed and kissed them. Vicki Clara hugged Juanito and congratulated him for his smash of the piñata, then curtsied to Roger Samuel and said, “Most excellent sir, may I have the honor of a dance on this glorious day?” The boy smiled and said, “Yes, mam,” and took her hand and they headed for the dancing ground. “Your next dance is with me, Victoria!” Blake Cortéz called after them, and Vicki looked over her shoulder and blew a kiss at him.

John Roger and John Samuel were surveying the proceedings from up on the ranch house porch, sitting side by side and sipping bourbon newly arrived from Louisiana. Now the twins and Juan Sotero were making their way toward the main corral, and John Roger was aware of John Samuel’s attention on them. He had been unsure the twins would be here today, on John Samuel’s domain, but their distaste for their older brother was outweighed by their fondness for their nephews. It nettled John Samuel, John Roger knew, to see their easy camaraderie with his sons. Only last week Vicki Clara had confided to John Roger that although she had no doubt of her husband’s love for their sons and theirs for him, they never seemed at true ease with each other. She believed it troubled all three of them that this was so, but the obligation to do something about it rested with John Samuel, who was after all the father. Yet he seemed incapable of making the correct gestures, of saying to them the things a father should say. Her disclosure had discomfited John Roger more than she knew, reminding him too well of his own paternal failings.

Among the horses trotting in circles in the main corral—the lot of them nervous from the crack and bang of the fireworks—was a splendid appaloosa John Samuel had bought the week before and given to his son for his birthday. Roger Samuel was elated by the horse. John Roger thought it a fine gift, though the appaloosa was as yet too much mount for the boy, who had only recently learned to ride. “I know that,” John Samuel said. “I want him to have that horse to look forward to. At the rate his riding’s improving he’ll be astride that beauty long before his next birthday, you’ll see.”

But no horse in the corral drew more attention than a black Arabian stallion John Samuel had acquired at the same time as the appaloosa, buying both horses from a dealer he’d met through Vicki’s father. He got an especially good price on the Arab because the dealer, who had a reputation for honesty and no wish to be later accused of foisting bad horseflesh, said the animal was prone to outbreaks of mean temper and he himself had been duped when he bought it. They were a demanding breed, Arabs, but a mean one was a rarity unless the horse had been mistreated as a colt, and perhaps this one had been. Whatever the case, the dealer said, it was the strangest Arabian he’d ever set eyes on. When it got in a temper it turned ornery as a mustang. It was a change that had to be witnessed to be believed, much like a gentleman of good breeding all of a sudden carrying on like a drunken dockworker. But John Samuel had seen no indication of bad disposition in the horse, and he anyway believed that even if the Arab was ill-tempered, the trait was an acquired one and would not be transmitted in breeding, and so the horse still had great stud value. Maybe yes, maybe no, the dealer had said. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Everybody on the hacienda had since heard what followed. The first man at Rancho Isabela to try to saddle him was Bruno Tomás—and the black rammed him into the stable wall so hard Bruno thought he’d never be able to draw breath again. Rogelio Méndez was the next to approach the black with a saddle and it bit him in the shoulder so hard he still couldn’t lift his arm over his head these four days later. When they finally did manage to get a saddle on the Arab, it threw off one rider one after another and each time tried to stomp the man while he was crawling away for his life. None of the wranglers had ever seen an Arabian exhibit such wild-horse malice. One try on it was enough for most of them—the rest wouldn’t try the horse even once. “According to Bruno, that black nearly wiped out the ranch roster,” John Samuel told his father. Not a man who had tried to ride the horse was unbruised or unsprained, at the least. When John Samuel heard that Bruno had put the Arab in the main corral with the other horses rather than isolate it in a smaller corral, he thought his cousin was foolhardy to put the other mounts at such risk. But when he rode out to the ranch he was stunned to see the Arab in easy mingle with the other horses, docile as a cart pony. Watch this, Bruno said, and went into the corral and saddled the black without meeting resistance and mounted it and hupped it out the gate. Bruno rode the Arab two miles out and back and reported that the horse had been a model of Arabian conduct. The problem seemed solved. Keep the black with the other horses and its demon was pacified.

That was two days ago. Then yesterday one of the other hands had tried to saddle it in the corral and the Arab knocked him down and started stamping on him as the other horses formed a circle around the action like spectators at a street fight. The bloodied wrangler was barely conscious when some of his fellows at last managed to drag him out of the corral. Somebody suggested that maybe Bruno was the only one the black would abide. But when Bruno entered the corral and picked up the saddle, the Arab bared its teeth at him and growled like a guard dog, and Bruno quick-stepped out of there. That settled it for John Samuel. No more trying to ride the black, not by anybody. The horse would be strictly for stud.

At the corral, the twins were talking with Bruno and Rogelio, who by turns gesticulated toward the Arab, no doubt relating the whole calamitous tale. Then one of the twins—not John Roger nor even anyone at the corral could know it was James Sebastian—took a hackamore bridle off a post and swung himself over the top rail into the corral.

John Samuel leaned forward in his chair. “What’s he think he’s doing?” John Roger was wondering the same thing.

The other horses shied from the twin as he went up to the Arab with his hand raised to it. The black lowered its head to his hand and he stroked its nose. Then ran the hand along the horse’s flank and then rubbed himself against the horse and patted its neck and spoke into its ear. He slipped the hackamore over its muzzle and sprang onto its back as lightly as a cat. Jesus, John Roger thought. The other twin opened the gate and the rider hupped the Arab out and went loping toward the open country. Then heeled the horse into a gallop and bore directly for a rise some five hundred yards from the corral and vanished over it. Now everyone was aware that one of the twins was riding the crazy black and they were all giving their attention to the distant rise. John Roger saw Vicki Clara and Roger Samuel join the other twin by the corral gate. The twin picked up Roger Samuel and stood him on the top rail for a better view.

John Samuel was slumped in his chair. “If he harms that stud. . . .”

“He won’t,” John Roger said. “You know that.”

They could track the horse by the dust plume, which widened and thinned as the horse drew farther away. And then the plume began to regain form and density and they all knew the horse was heading back. When it came galloping over the rise, James Sebastian was standing on its back. Standing with his hands in his pockets and his hat flapping behind him on its chin thong. Standing on that speeding horse with the ease of a man on a rocking railcar platform. The witnessing crowd raised a great cheer. James Sebastian dropped astride the horse and took up the rein and slowed the animal to a canter, then to a trot as they approached the corral. The ranch hands gathered around him, yelling congratulations while being careful not to get behind the horse or within biting lunge of it.

John Roger saw Vicki Clara blow the rider a kiss. Saw Juanito Sotero push through the men to run up beside the horse and hop up and down, his hands raised to his uncle. The twin reached down and took the boy’s hand and hauled him up to sit astraddle before him.

John Samuel stood up. “God damn it.”

“Oh come, John,” John Roger said. “You were no older the first time I took you for a fast ride.”

“You’re my father. And it wasn’t bareback.”

Now little Roger Samuel was tugging at the rider’s leg. And now Vicki Clara was speaking to the mounted twin. The rider said something to Juan Sotero and then eased him down off the horse and pulled Rogerito up to replace him. Holding the boy against his chest with one arm, his other hand on the rein, the twin hupped the Arab into a canter and headed off. And again roused the horse to a gallop before going over the rise. As before, they were gone for some minutes before booming back into view and still at full stride. It would hardly have been a wonder to anybody in the crowd if the rider had again been standing on the horse and this time with the child on his shoulders—but they were seated as before, though even at this distance they could see the boy pumping his arms in the air like an exulting Comanche. They could not hear, as could James Sebastian, the boy whooping like an Indian too. James was just about to rein the horse down from its gallop when it dropped from under them.

He felt himself airborne in a slow somersault. Felt the boy detach from him as weightless as if they were underwater. Lost sight of him. Saw his own feet against the sky. His next awareness was of lying on his back in the settling dust and staring at bright thin clouds. He felt himself breathing but had no pain. Then tried to sit up and pain exploded in his right forearm. He cursed and gasped and struggled one-armed to his feet.

The Arab was on its side and trying to get up on broken front legs, its head lunging up repeatedly as if it could will the rest of its body up after it, shrilling its agony with every try. Beyond the horse lay the boy. A wee form huddled on his side as if in nap. Unaware of the rider bearing toward him at full gallop and the others far behind him, James went over to the boy. He saw blood in his ear. Hooves came pounding and a cloud of dust rolled over him—and then John Samuel was screeching, “Get away from him!” and slammed both hands into James Sebastian’s chest, staggering him and jarring such pain through his arm he nearly threw up.

John Samuel knelt beside his son. He gingerly raised him to a sitting position and James Sebastian saw the unnatural tilt of Rogerito’s head. John Samuel pushed the hair from the boy’s eyes and then eased him back down. Then stood up and looked at James Sebastian with tears coursing from eyes gone mad. He stalked stiffly to his horse, which sensed his rage and shied, but he lunged and caught the reins and pulled himself to the horse and drew the carbine from the saddle sheath. James Sebastian had no defense but to run at him, holding his broken arm to his chest, thinking to ram him with a shoulder and somehow grab the rifle. But John Samuel sidestepped and James struck him only a glancing blow and fell down on his arm and bellowed. He struggled to regain his feet, hearing more horses closing fast but keeping his eyes on John Samuel, who thumbed back the rifle’s hammer and aimed squarely into his face. And even as their father’s voice carried through the rumble of hooves—“Noooooo!”—John Samuel pulled the trigger.

The hammer dropped on an empty chamber. John Samuel howled his rage and ran at James Sebastian, swinging the carbine one-handed from side to side like a cumbersome sword amid another upheaval of dust, screaming “You kill everything! You kill everything!” He swung and swung and James Sebastian kept back-stepping and dodging. Then Blake Cortéz had John Samuel in a headlock from behind and James snatched the carbine from him.

Blake threw John Samuel to the ground and kicked him in the face, ripping his cheek to the bone. He dropped astraddle of him and grabbed him by the hair and began punching him in the face like he was driving nails. A clutch of men converged on him and grabbed him by the arms and collar and wrested him off John Samuel and dragged him well away and would not release him till he swore not to resume the attack. But still kept themselves between them.

John Roger saw none of that. He had gone straight to the boy and sat down and gathered him up with his arm and rocked him and wept. James Sebastian stared at his father’s hunched figure. Then over at the black horse, still bawling with every effort to rise. With a one-handed flick he worked the lever to open the breech and saw the empty chamber and the ready bullet levered into the breech from the magazine. He worked the lever again, inserting the bullet in the chamber, and walked over to the crippled horse. The black saw who it was and ceased its agonized struggle. It watched him and snuffled hard. James Sebastian set the rifle muzzle between its eyes and said, “You’re a damn fine horse.” And shot it. Then dropped the rifle beside the horse.

Blake Cortéz rode up, leading John Samuel’s mount by the reins. “You manage?” he said. James nodded and took hold of the mount’s saddle horn with his left hand and put his left foot in the stirrup and with a loud grunt and an awkward move pulled himself up onto the saddle.

Their father yet sat rocking the dead boy in his arms. He had not turned at the rifleshot. Seemed not even to have heard it. John Samuel yet lay supine, being attended to. They hupped their mounts and rode away, bearing wide around the ranch house.

They did not go back to the casa grande but to the compound stable, where they always left their rucksacks on arriving from the cove. Blake Cortéz told the stableman to fetch a couple of short wooden slats to serve for a forearm splint and some cloth strips to bind it. The man was quick to do it and then Blake told him and his helper sons to go outside. He would brook no witness to his brother’s pain as he doctored his arm. Both bones of it were broken and the top one dislocated and it took Blake several tries to align it properly. His own right hand was swollen thick as a mitten from punching John Samuel and was clumsy in its working. But it wasn’t broken and he knew his pain was picayune in comparison to James Sebastian’s. At Blake’s every effort to set the bones, James groaned through clenched teeth, his face pale and dripping sweat. When Blake at last judged by feel that the bone was set right he splinted the arm and bound it and fashioned a sling for it. He helped James Sebastian to get his rucksack slung across his chest and then shouldered his own and they headed for the river trail and the long hike home to Ensenada de Isabel. The stableman and his boys waited until they were into the trees and out of sight before going back into the stable.

Excepting John Samuel, who would for the rest of his life blame the twins for what happened, everybody who was there agreed that it was an accident. Some would say it must have been that the horse was frighted by a snake, though it might have been a rabbit, a turtle, an armadillo. But most would ridicule the idea of any such thing scaring a horse that was moving at a gallop. Besides, the horse didn’t try to veer, it had gone straight down, so it had to have stepped in a hole, a gopher hole, turtle hole, or on a large rock that gave way under its hoof. Some few others would say that the horse may have seen a snake or stepped in a hole or slipped on a rock, but given the horse they were talking about, the snake or the hole or the rock may have existed only in the crazy horse’s head. Who could know what really caused the black to fall? The only thing they all knew for sure was that, to the dead boy’s family, it could hardly matter. And that, had John Samuel not bought the crazy horse, his son could not have been killed by it.

The dark news came to María Palomina and Sofía Reina in a letter from Bruno Tomás. Mother and daughter cried together over the loss of a young kinsman they never had the chance to meet. John Roger’s own letter was later in coming and its sorrow even heavier and the more pathetic for being that of the boy’s grandfather. When Amos Bentley arrived for his regular visit and heard the news, he sat with the women for the rest of the day, listening without interruption when they wanted to unburden themselves to him, holding silent with them when they had nothing to say.