Fire on the Mountain (13 page)

The old man set about fortifying the house. We closed all the heavy wooden shutters and hooked them on the inside. We bolted and barred the kitchen door and the back door and stacked mattresses against both, supporting the mattresses in place with tables, chairs and bedsteads. We filled the washtub and all of our buckets, mason jars, and rum jugs with water, in case the enemy should try to cut the waterline from the tank outside. We left the main entrance open, for the time
being, since we still expected a few hours or even days to pass before the seige began.

There was not much more we could do for the present. The old man sent me off to Peralta’s house to see if Cruzita was ready.

I’d enjoyed the military preparations—they seemed so practical—but this child’s errand annoyed me. As I stumbled through the August gloom under the whispering cottonwood trees, remotely aware of the nighthawk’s booming over the wash, I resolved to do something dramatic and significant. I wasn’t sure what. First of all I’d steal that revolver out of the truck again and make sure it remained in my possession. That would be a beginning.

I passed the corral. Three horses waited there, hoping for grain. There was Blue and Skilletfoot and Grandfather’s stallion, Rocky. The others were gone.

I entered Peralta’s house through the open front door, into a hot, crowded lamplit room where Cruzita sat among a litter of cardboard boxes and ancient suitcases. She was packing a trunk with clothes and household utensils. The holy pictures still hung on the walls: Jesus with his bleeding heart; the Madonna and child, obvious gringo types; and a tinted photograph of the Pope with miter and crozier.

Cruzita still wept a little as she worked, but I noticed that she’d washed her face and brushed her hair, and that the children, running around through the transformed house, looked clean and neat. She could accept the inevitable: Grandfather and I could not.

I wondered where she would go. As I helped her finish stuffing the trunk she volunteered the information: she and the children would stay with relatives in El Paso until Mr. Vogelin sent for them; Eloy would work for his brother, who owned a small bar and package store in Las Cruces, only twenty miles from El Paso. They’d manage.

I heard a car coming down over the
barrancas
. I left Cruzita, ran outside and watched the car come near. It
was Lee in his big automobile. The lights washed over the yard, swung past the corral and the shining eyes of the horses and came to a bead on Grandfather’s pickup as the car stopped. The lights went out. I ran to greet him.

He looked pretty serious but gave me a smile as I grabbed his arm. “Hi, Billy, what’re you all excited about? Where’s the old man?”

“In the house. Gosh, Lee, I’m glad you came.”

He put his arm around my shoulders. “I hope I’m not too late, Billy.”

We went in the house and found Grandfather by the fireplace in the parlor, cleaning his shotgun and carbine by the light of the kerosene lamps.

“This looks like war,” Lee said, with a tired smile.

Grandfather grunted some kind of answer as he drew a clean white patch from the bore of the carbine. With the action open he held the gun up to the light and peered through the barrel. “Where you been?” he said.

“What? I just heard about it,” Lee said. “Those dirty rotten. … John, I want to tell you, I want to tell you that’s the lousiest dirtiest trick I ever heard of. Cowardly and sneaky. Something like this ought to be written up in every paper in the country. Maybe it will be. Maybe if we get enough publicity we’ll scare off the Air Force yet. Stranger things have happened.”

Grandfather said nothing—just broke open the double-barreled shotgun.

“We don’t need publicity,” I said, horning in where I knew I wasn’t needed. “We need ammunition.” I remembered the revolver in the truck. I started toward the door.

“Stay here, Billy,” the old man said. “Keep your little paws off that revolver.”

Lee came nearby and patted my shoulder. “He’s a good boy, John. You ought to be mighty grateful to have a boy like this around.”

The old man squinted through the shotgun barrels at the lamplight. “Look pretty good,” he muttered. But
he threaded a new patch through the eye of the cleaning rod.

A short silence as we watched him at work: Lee said, “I suppose you’re sure this is what you want to do. Fight them off with guns, I mean.”

“Well …” Grandfather grinned slyly at Lee. “It’s traditional.”

Lee paused again before speaking. “Are you really planning to—you really expect an attack?” He looked at the barricaded windows.

“They drove nearly all my stock off today,” the old man said. “I expect I’m next.” He looked around for me. “Cruzita ready?”

“Yes sir. Just about.”

Grandfather turned his face to Lee. “You want to help me some tonight?”

Lee lifted his hands in a gesture of surprise. “Why do you think I’m here?”

“Just asking. Well, if you want to help me, how about taking Cruzita and her kids to town and bailing out Eloy and putting them all on the El Paso bus. No, I have a better idea. Take them all direct to El Paso. Them—and something else.”

I stood up.

“Sit down, Billy,” Grandfather said.

I sat down. The front door stood open; moths and millers swarmed against the screen.

“Okay,” Lee said. “You mean tonight?”

“Right away. Right now.”

“You staying here?”

“That’s right. I left this ranch for the last time today. I learned my lesson. Next time I leave it’ll be in a box, feet first, unless the Government gets off my back.”

“They won’t.” Lee glanced uneasily at me. “Billy …”

“Take him,” the old man said. “Pack him on the train. And make sure—”

“Wait a minute,” I howled, rising again.

“Make sure he’s still on that train when it leaves.”

“No,” I cried. “No. I won’t go. I want to stay. Please, Grandfather.”

“His suitcase is in the hallway,” Grandfather said. “All packed. Take him out of here, Lee.”

“Sure.” Lee looked at me again, smiling but obviously embarrassed. “Guess you’re going home, Billy.”

“Please,” I shouted, “please, Grandfather, don’t make me go. Not now. You need me. I want to help. Please.”

“Get your suitcase, Billy,” he said.

“I’ll get it.” Lee strode out of the room, returning in aa moment with my bag in his hand. “Is everything in here?” he asked both of us.

“I didn’t pack it,” I said bitterly.

“It’s all in there,” the old man said. “All his gear. Take him, Lee. If you need a rope there’s a rope in the pickup.”

“My hat,” I said weakly. I took my rotten and crumpled straw hat off the deer horns by the fireplace. And reconsidered. “I’m not going,” I said. “Sir, I’m not going. You can’t make me go, Grandfather.”

The old man laid the shotgun on the table. Leaning on his hands, he looked me over carefully. The cigar stub was still in his mouth. “What did you say, Billy? Maybe I ain’t hearing so good tonight.”

“Come on, Billy,” Lee said, while I gaped at Grandfather, framing a plea in my mind. Good God, what could I say? I was numb with shock and disappointment and the feeling of helplessness.

Lee wrapped his big fingers gently around my upper arm. “You’re under arrest, Billy. Let’s go.”

“Sorry I can’t offer you a drink tonight, Lee,” Grandfather said. “I could but I think we ought to get these women and children off the place and get Eloy out of jail as soon as possible.”

“He’s been there plenty of times before,” Lee said.

“I know.”

“What do you mean,” I burst out, “Women and children? I’m no child. Don’t call me a child, sir.”

“He didn’t mean you, Billy.”

“I meant the woman and children and Billy Vogelin Starr,” Grandfather said. “Excuse me.”

Lee increased his pressure on my arm and nudged me toward the door. I leaned forward. My legs seemed to be paralyzed. “You want me to carry you?” Lee asked.

My legs came slowly alive. “I’ll walk. Gimme that suitcase.” I took the heavy bag from Lee’s hand, crammed the hat on my head and started forward, lugging the weight. Before pushing open the screen door I stopped for a final appeal to the old man. His back was turned to me and he looked bulky as a bear. “Grandfather …” I began.

“Goodbye, Billy.” He wouldn’t look at me.

Suddenly I dropped the suitcase, ran to him, hugged him around the waist and began to blubber. The old man squeezed my shoulder, kissed me on the forehead and shoved me roughly toward Lee.

“Send him home, Lee. Please get him out of here.”

Lee grabbed me and grabbed my suitcase and together we stumbled out of the house and into the night. We felt our way to the big car under the trees. Beyond the leaves hung a sea of shimmering stars. Lee pushed me into the car and slammed the door. We drove to Cruzita’s house.

By the time we got Eloy out of jail and drove the sixty miles to El Paso it was too late to catch the night train. Lee and I walked across the international bridge over the Rio Grande, inspected some of the Juarez night life, walked back into El Paso and spent the night in a hotel room. My train was due to leave at nine-twenty in the morning.

I couldn’t sleep that night. Several times I got up and padded to the bathroom and padded back to my bed. Each time I noticed Lee watching me with a wary eye.

We ate a sad breakfast in the hotel coffee shop and drove down to the Southern Pacific depot to wait for the train. Lee and I seemed to have little to say to each other that morning. In silence we walked around the lobby, studying the people, the magazines on the newsstand and the train schedules above the ticket windows. I hoped that train would never arrive. I hoped it would break down in Tucson or Deming, would fall into the river at Las Cruces. But it came.

Lee led me along with the mob out to the tracks and down past the aluminum cars to the car I was to ride in. The porter in his dark-blue suit stood waiting for us at the steps to the vestibule. Lee showed him my ticket, we entered the train and I climbed up on the seat and stowed my suitcase in the baggage rack. While I was getting tentatively settled in my place I noticed Lee talking to the porter and putting money in his hand—several green bills.

Outside the conductor looked once more at his gold
Hamilton on the gold chain. “All aboooord!” he yelped.

Lee came to me. “Goodbye, Billy. Now shake hands and—see you next year.”

He smiled down at me with that warm and handsome smile that always soothed my heart. We shook hands, he gave me a parting slap on the shoulder, turned and strode down the corridor out of sight.

I looked out the window as the train lurched forward. Lee was there, tall and slim in the crowd of Texans and Mexicans lining the platform. He took off his big hat and waved it at me as my car rolled past. I waved back and watched him, the people around him, and the station buildings slide away into the lost past.

Lost? Not yet. Not for me.

The conductor and porter stood in the rear of the car, talking. About me, perhaps; it seemed to me that they were each watching me with one eye. Even so I got up out of my seat and walked to the forward end of the car. I felt the eyes of the porter following me as I pushed open the door of the men’s toilet.

In there, alone, I looked out through the window at the greasy slums and freight yards of El Paso gliding by. We were already rolling fast, eastward bound, and I knew I’d have to jump this train quickly if I didn’t want to end up in the deserts of West Texas.

After waiting another minute or two, I stepped out of the toilet. The porter and conductor, though still facing me, were looking at a sheaf of papers in the conductor’s hand. I pushed through the door to the vestibule, into the roaring tent between cars, and looked about for the red-handled lever.

I found it at once, above the brakeman’s wheel. I wrapped my first around the handle and pulled it all the way down.

Nothing happened. For a moment. And then the air brakes hit and the great wheels locked and screeched
like banshees as the train slid forward over dry hot steel. I felt the coupling buckle beneath the deck I stood on, felt the whole train shuddering and twisting under the violence of the collision between velocity and mass. Through the glass of the vestibule door I saw the conductor lumbering toward me, his face red as a tomato. I opened the outer door, saw the cinders and tie ends moving past below, but not too fast.

I closed my eyes and leaped. I hit the ground with a numbing shock, and rolled ahead several times with the momentum of the train. When I stopped rolling I opened my eyes, found I was still alive, got up and began running. A clamor of shouts burst out behind me. I ran across the gleaming tracks in front of the advance of a whistling switch engine, stumbled and fell, got up again and kept on running, headed for the cyclone fence at the edge of the yards.

I reached the fence and climbed it with my fingers and the pointed toes of my cowboy boots, rolled over three strands of barbed wire at the top and dropped to the ground, leaving shreds of my coat and pants behind. I heard the whistles of the railroad bulls but nothing like that could stop me. Still running, I dashed across the street between fast-moving trucks and up a narrow alley.

My wind was coming hard now, my ribs ached with the sharp pain of my effort, but I would not stop. Past the garbage cans, over a sleeping wino, I kept going until I reached the next street, turned the corner and slowed to a walk, panting like a dog.

I saw a bus veer off to stop a block ahead. I tried to run again but could not and the bus pulled away before I reached the stop. There were a few people on the sidewalks—Negroes, Mexicans, hungover cowboys. None of them paid me any attention. I glanced back, saw no sign of pursuit. At the next corner I turned again, walking as fast as I could away from the railroad, and looked for a place to hide and rest.

Another alleyway. I stepped into it, comforted by
“the close walls, the backsides of flophouses, cafés, beer joints and small shops. A stairway led down to a cellar door. I stumbled down the steps and collapsed in a heap against the steel door, closing my eyes and pretending I was invisible.