The Serpent's Bite (34 page)

Tomas lifted his hand, and the train stopped. Scott noted that they had reached the trailhead of Eagle Pass. Tomas dismounted and moved forward on foot assessing the pass.

From the perch on his horse, Scott looked upward. A fog was beginning to settle on the mountain, and the rain was continuing in a steady downpour.

“Are we going up in that mess?” Scott asked.

Tomas observed the sky.

“We go over. We be okay. Horses take us. No problem.”

“We can't very well stay here,” Courtney said, pulling up her horse. “Tomas is right. Let's move. We're wasting time.”

Scott remembered how it had been on their earlier trek, how they had to dismount to traverse the narrowest of the switchbacks. Again he observed his father, who was hunched over and listless. His complexion was ashen.

“My father is beat,” he said. “This is not a good idea.”

Courtney reined her horse to pull up beside her father.

“You okay, Dad?” Scott heard her say. Her hypocrisy filled him with contempt. He turned his attention back to Tomas, who had mounted his horse.

“He won't be able to walk on the narrow switchbacks,” Scott said. “It will be too dangerous.”

“He stay in saddle then,” Tomas said. “I lead his horse.”

“That means you have to lead two horses.”

“I tole you. I take care.”

He remembered Tomas's words in referring to Harry earlier. A chill ran through him. He looked up at the sky.

“Just be careful.”

“No worry. I take care.”

Tomas nodded and turned away, his eyes scanning the ascent. Scott returned to where his father sat on his horse. He looked wan, enervated.

“We're going to start the ascent,” Scott explained. “You'll stay mounted. Tomas will lead your horse in the tight spots.”

“He knows what he's doing,” Courtney interjected. “We'll be on the other side in no time.”

Tomas signaled that they were ready to move out. He had changed the order of the string with Temple's horse directly behind him, followed by Scott, and Courtney holding up the rear. As Tomas moved his horse forward, Temple followed, but Scott held back and let Courtney pull abreast of him. He leaned toward her.

“I know about the pills,” he hissed, watching her expression. He hadn't been certain up to that moment. Her expression clearly revealed her guilt.

“Fuck you,” she said, her teeth clenched, her jaw raised belligerently. Suddenly he saw it all, her intent.

He had glanced her way while having his intimate conversation with their father. She and Tomas were in deep
conversation. He and his father were so thoroughly involved that he had paid little attention. Only now, watching her, the memory of them together, their odd intimacy suggested something conspiratorial and ominous. An epiphany exploded in his mind, a sense of danger so compelling that it prompted an instant reaction. As if by rote, he knew what had to be done.

“And something else, little sister.”

Her eyes narrowed. She cocked her head, waiting. Intuitively, he sensed that Tomas and Courtney had conspired about taking some action, although he could not be certain.

“He changed his will,” he blurted. “We've been virtually cut out. He will change it back to where it was when he gets home. And he will instruct his bankers about our stipend. It means that if he doesn't survive this, we're shit out of luck.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I didn't ask you to.”

“But he had promised Mother—”

“Broke it, kiddo. He reassessed.”

“Are you bullshitting me?”

She looked toward her father, who was already out of hailing range, following Tomas who was not looking back. Temple was slumped over the saddle. The rain had become more intense with the wind shifting, so that it came at them from the summit in slanting gusts.

Scott shook his head, fearing that any further explanation would reveal his sudden ploy.

Courtney replied but a burst of thunder prevented Scott from hearing her response. Suddenly, as if it were a fit of temper, she kicked her horse and tried to put it ahead of his. He quickly blocked her and turned into the pelting rain to begin
the ascent. He could barely see ahead of him. Looking back, he saw Courtney following. The trail was narrowing, and it would be impossible to get ahead of him.

Looking into the oncoming rain, he could see no sign of Tomas or his father.

T
omas had navigated the twenty-three switchbacks on ten-thousand-foot Eagle Pass numerous times. Often he had shut his eyes and dozed as the horses lumbered steadily and carefully upward then downward through the terrain. He had been here through heat, cold, rain, and snowstorms and was familiar with every turn and potential hazard.

Harry had led a horse train over the pass for years without a single mishap and was proud that he could give his clients this touch of danger, which he exaggerated in his effort to prove that he was giving them their money's worth. To many it was the highlight of the trek and gave them lots to talk about for years.

Tomas had been a cook in a broken-down motel at the outer edges of West Yellowstone. Harry had found him the day his boss announced that the motel was being bought by developers, who were putting together a pricey resort for upscale people who wanted to enjoy the Western experience and the newly developed ski slopes beginning to dot the area.

By then, Tomas had been in
El Norte
for two years, having jumped the border from his village in central Mexico. He had worked on a ranch in Mexico and was familiar with horses and the hard life it entailed with little compensation. He was the middle child of seven children, and because he had done well in school, his parents had hopes that one day he would return from the states a rich man and rescue them from a life of poverty and drudgery. His girlfriend had promised to wait.

In desperation, he had followed the well-worn trail to the States, hoping to make enough money to send back home to his impoverished family and build a nest egg for marriage to a girl he had known almost all his life.

He had learned all the survival skills of being an illegal alien in a country that offered better wages, opportunity, and upward mobility while dodging the authorities that viewed him as a renegade and interloper. He had learned by the example of others in his predicament to camouflage himself, fade into the background, armor himself against any insult or abuse, and use silence to obliterate any expression of understanding from his features and body language.

He had quickly learned all the back alleys and secret pathways to negotiate through the spiderweb of interconnecting strands among his outcast countrymen that kept him free to earn wages triple what he could earn in Mexico. Working his way from Los Angeles to Montana, he had acquired cooking skills, learned from watching chefs at various restaurants where he had done menial labor in LA, and easily found work at various short-order rural beaneries eager to employ illegals with useful skills at low wages.

Since he had no family ties and because of his circumstances, he was wary of any relationships with men or women. He could work long hours to earn more money even at below-legal wages. Because he was alone with his thoughts and observations most of the time, he had learned to study the Anglo people with whom he had to interact. He had self-trained himself to listen and watch them carefully and adapt himself to what he imagined was the way he should be safely perceived by them.

In the little spare time he had, he had taken up reading fiction, finding used paperbacks in both English and Spanish, mostly mysteries and thrillers, that gave him a broad picture of what he assumed was an accurate depiction of human nature in all sorts of circumstances.

Reading filled his mind with plots, images, and ideas about pitfalls he might encounter and of what was realistically possible to achieve in his own life. Although the English editions were difficult at first, they eventually improved his vocabulary, however not his accent, and they had developed in him an understanding of the American idiom.

Through the treks with various clients, he had learned the ways of the gringo, who could be observed intimately in the isolated setting of the wilderness. Many, he had discovered, were arrogant and spoiled and would ignore his presence as if he wasn't there. Admittedly some were pleasant and kindly, like Temple, but the bulk seemed to take him for granted, a working prop for their gratification.

His strategy was to make himself absolutely indispensable to Harry, whose alcoholism was cutting into his expertise as an experienced outfitter. But Tomas had watched him and listened carefully until he was able to absorb all the wilderness skills that Harry had acquired. He already knew a great deal about horses, mules, and other animals, and he quickly learned to do any chore assigned to him and was able to carry out any order that Harry or his clients could command, without visible complaint.

He knew he was treated as someone alien and practically invisible but had intuited that a display of competence as an employee in whatever capacity and a willingness to obey
orders and do whatever was required to please his employer would insure his employment. Harry had offered a perfect marriage of what he required, long stretches away from prying eyes, work that he could do with competence, a knowledge of horses, camping skills, hardships, and living under minimum conditions of comfort. In his tent away from Harry and his clients, he read his paperbacks by searchlight.

In addition to adopting a silent expressionless persona, he was an extraordinarily skillful cook and all-around wilderness handyman who could easily adapt to Harry's escalating abuse. Short, with a dark complexion that was a sure sign of his Indian antecedents, he knew exactly the way he was perceived and had developed a stance that could skillfully put himself in the same category as a pebble, to be hardly noticed and largely ignored.

In the four years he had worked for Harry, the man's drinking had changed what was once a tolerant personality to a cruel and mean-minded person, whose abuse of Tomas had escalated in direct proportion to his growing alcoholism. By making himself indispensable to his drunken boss, he had begun to sense his own growing domination over his employer, for whom he could play the role of lackey and actually encourage his drinking by burying large quantities of booze in designated spots at various campsites.

Occasionally there were perks. Forced by circumstances to be largely celibate, he occasionally visited prostitutes in those parts of Montana that were safe for illegals to fornicate among their own, and it was not uncommon to fuck a horny, usually older, female client who stayed back in camp while Harry took the others on his various side adventures. He had
learned, by careful observation and surreptitious listening to the conversation among Harry's clients, intimate details about their lives and what kind of people they really were.

Stripped of the amenities of civilization, he had learned that people tended to reveal more of their real selves than they did in their more orderly lives in urban environments. Lately, he had begun to realize that while he was sending money home, his own life was passing swiftly by and his vague hope of financial independence was an empty dream. Worse, his last phone call to Mexico had revealed that his sweetheart had tired of waiting and had married someone else.

With eyes wide open and attuned to find a way out of his static circumstances, he waited for the moment, meaning an opportunity to better his life. In his mind, that meant money. He had come to
El Norte
for money. He had grabbed at every miserable employment for money. Money was the route to his salvation. Money was the manna from heaven. He had learned that only money could free him from this forlorn and lonely life. Nothing was worse than being without money. In Mexico this had been the perpetual condition of his family.

Then the Temples had arrived: a rich man hoping to restore the bonds of fatherhood with his two weird adult children. It startled him to see the brother and sister fucking, but it put the idea of blackmail in his head. He knew they saw him as just another dumb faceless illegal, an ignorant wetback, an abused and put-upon piece of human shit. He listened carefully to their intimate talk and knew he had found the possibility of a golden opportunity.

Blackmail was a well-worn plot in his paperback reading. He had gambled on their fear of exposure, and it had seemed
to work. He had panicked them and got them to react to his threats. It gave him the impetus as well to settle the score with his employer. For a long time he had contemplated the method, and his success with the Temples had goaded him to put his plan into action.

He had no illusions about what he was up against. Despite his attempt to make it seem as if a grizzly had accidentally killed Harry, he knew that an investigation by experts might eventually uncover his ploy, and the authorities might figure out how it had occurred. The woman had already hinted that she suspected what had happened.