Fire on the Mountain Read online

  We drove on across the salt fiats of an ancient lakebed, where the heat shimmered up in palpable waves. Through the layers of heat and light I watched the dislocated outlines of the mountain ranges flow together, floating on a yellow sea of haze. In that country, fantasy and mirage were always present.

  After the lakebed we passed clay hills with the shape of giant beehives, turrets and ledges of sandstone, and a wild garden of yuccas with stems ten feet tall. The road slipped into a broad wash, we churned through the soft hot sand and up the other side through thickets of willow and tamarisk, where a group of the old man’s bald-faced Herefords lay shaded up, waiting for the sun to sink before they’d rise and resume the search for something to eat. The cab of the truck filled with fine dust, a layer of it coating the dashboard, where I wrote my name with my finger: BILLY VOGELIN STARR.

  We didn’t try to talk much during the drive, with the truck bouncing like a bronco, the motor roaring, the bitter alkali getting in our eyes and teeth. Grandfather stared straight ahead from under the brim of his grimy hat and clutched at the bucking wheel; I kept looking all around, feeding my eyes and mind and heart on the beauty of that grim landscape. Hard country, the people call it. A cow might walk half a mile for a mouthful of grass, and five miles for a drink of water. If the ranch had been mine I’d have sold the cattle and stocked the place with wild horses and buffalo, coyotes and wolves, and let the beef industry go to ruin.

  We topped the final rise and won our first view of the ranch headquarters, a mile ahead and a thousand feet below. There was the grove of cottonwood trees surrounding the ranch-house, the windmill and water tank, and the cluster of sheds, corrals, barn, bunkhouse and other outbuildings nearby, all spread out on a bench of land above the arid bed of what was called the Salado River, where a trickle of hard water meandered from one bank to the other.

  Grandfather stopped the truck, shut off the motor, and sat for a while staring down at his home, a sad and perplexed expression on his wind-burned leathery face.

  “Everything looks the same as ever, Grandfather,” I said. “Like it did last year and the year before. The way it should.”

  He stirred, champed on the cigar, reached over and put his big hand, his gripping machine of bone and muscle and hide, on my shoulder. “I’m mighty glad you’re here, Billy. Stay awhile this time.”

  At that moment I was ready to forsake my other home, forsake my mother and father and little sister and all my friends, and spend the rest of my life in the desert eating cactus for lunch, drinking blood at cocktail time, and letting the ferocious sun flay me skin and soul. I’d gladly have traded parents, school, a college education and career for one dependable saddle horse. Later that night, of course, alone in bed, the deadly homesickness would strike me faint.

  “Sir, if you’ll let me, I won’t go back. I’ll never go back. I’ll stay here and work for you for the rest of my life.”

  The old man laughed. “You’re a good boy, Billy.” He squeezed my shoulder. We gazed down at the ranch for another minute or so, then Grandfather raised his arm and pointed toward Thieves’ Mountain. “That’s where we’ll be tomorrow. Looking for that pony. We’ll spend a night at the old line cabin and I’ll show you some lion tracks.” He turned the ignition key and started the engine. At the same time I saw the contrails of three jet planes coming out of the north and blazing white across the clean clear blue of the sky. I pointed to them. “Three jets, Grandfather. See them, way up there?” More beautiful, I thought, even than vultures.

  The old man didn’t share my sentiment. “Trespassers,” he muttered, the smile fading from his face. His good humor had vanished again. We talked no more on the drive down to the ranch. Parking the truck under the trees, Grandfather walked in silence toward the house, ignoring the dogs that leaped at us, barking with happiness. Wolf, the big German police, leaped on my chest and lathered my face with his wet tongue, and a couple of pups I’d never met before galloped and rolled around us like idiots.

  Everything looked and smelled and sounded marvelous to me: the fat trees with their trunks like the legs of gigantic elephants and their masses of translucent, quaking acid-green leaves; the windmill clanking and groaning as it turned in the breeze and pumped good cold water up out of the rock; the saddle horses snorting at the water trough in the corral; the milk cow bawling and the hens squawking; the sound of an angry baby howling over in the mud hut where the Peralta family lived. Best of all was the sight of the ranch-house with its massive walls of adobe brick and its small square windows like the gunports of a fortress.

  We climbed the steps onto the long verandah, passed under the rack of buckhorns and the horseshoe, and entered the cool dark interior of the house. At once I smelled the familiar fragrance of simmering pinto beans, of chili sauce and fresh-baked bread, and knew I was home again.

  Through the gloom of the parlor, advancing to meet us, came Cruzita Peralta, Grandfather’s cook and housekeeper. Plump, brown as saddle leather, handsome, Cruzita cried out with delight when she saw me and embraced me as she would a child of her own, half-smothering me against her ample and pneumatic bosom.

  “Billy,” she said, “it is so good to see you. My how big you get in just one year, now you come up to my neck, eh? Soon you be big and tall like a real man, taller than your grandfather. Only not so ugly, I think. Give me another kiss, my Billy. I bet you are hungry, no? Such a long trip, all by yourself, like a big man.”

  I managed to struggle free of her entangling arms and admitted that I was hungry, that I would like something to eat.

  “You better take care of your baby, first,” Grandfather said. “He’s awake again. Then come back and feed this boy. He ain’t had nothing to eat since we left El Paso.”

  Cruzita rushed out of the door and trotted through the sun-spangled shade of the trees toward her own house. The old man and I moved through the darkness toward the kitchen, where he fixed me up with a tall glass of ice water and mixed himself a highball of ice, rum and water. Stirring his drink, he sat down at the table and invited me to do the same. The long drive across the desert had burned us dry. Refreshed but tired, we sat in silence and waited for the woman to come back.

  I poured myself a second glass of water from the pitcher and looked around, sucking on the ice cube in my mouth. All looked the same as ever: black pot of beans on the stove, a row of pans hanging on the wall, geraniums in tomato cans on the window sill, the big stainless-steel refrigerator and freezer, which worked on bottled butane, standing in the alcove beside the stove, where the old man had placed them years before. He had no use or need for electricity, but he did like ice in his drinks. The refrigerator, the pickup truck, and the disposable toothpick, he confessed, were the three great achievements of modern man.

  Cruzita returned, the baby in her arms, which she placed on the floor away from the stove before serving Grandfather and me each an overflowing plate of fried beans, fried beef, fried eggs, and fried potatoes, all liberally spiced with red chili sauce. With the plates came thick slices of her new-baked bread, and butter, jam, milk, and coffee. With a good appetite I ate the meal I’d been anticipating for a day and a half and nearly two thousand miles on the train. As I ate I wiped the tears from my eyes, blew my nose, drank all the water and milk in sight, and added an extra touch of hot sauce to my beans.

  Finished, unwrapping a fresh cigar, Grandfather leaned back in his chair, tilting it against the wall. “Where’s Eloy?” he asked. Meaning Eloy Peralta, Cruzita’s husband and the old man’s hired hand.

  Cruzita poured him another cup of coffee. “He say he go to the north line, Mister Vogelin. He want to fix that break in the fence below the cinder cone, where the jeeps come through.”

  The old man growled. “Yeah, them soldier boys. By God, if they do that once more I’m gunning for them.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Grandfather gave me a brooding stare, looking at something inside his head. The expression softened. “Well, Billy, they like
to hunt jack rabbits, you see, these here soldiers from the Proving Grounds. They got nothing else to do, I guess, so they go barreling after the crazy scared jacks and bust right through my fence. Second time this year. You might think if they want a war so bad they could find one overseas somewhere and leave us citizens in peace.” He lit the cigar and partially disappeared behind a fog of gray smoke.

  From outside, the lowing of the milk cow reached our ears. Cruzita was washing the dishes and rinsing them off with boiling water from the kettle on the stove. “That cow,” she said, “always wants milking when I’m busy. Let her wait.”

  “She’ll jump the fence,” Grandfather said.

  “I finish these dishes first, damn cow.”

  “Maybe the calf got out. Ain’t that calf weaned yet?”

  “Two more weeks,” Cruzita said.

  The cow bawled again. With a clatter of noise she stacked the dishes in the drying rack, scooped up the baby from the floor, and bounced out of the kitchen. The old man and I watched her go.

  “Cruzita can do most anything, can’t she, Grandfather,”

  “She’s a good woman. She sure has spoiled me. How she can manage to look after all those kids and Eloy and the cow and the hens and me too is something I’m kind of afraid to ask about.” He puffed slowly on his cigar and stared at the dark ceiling through skeins of smoke. His own wife had died fifteen years ago in the hospital at Alamogordo. Watching his old and saddened face, I wondered if he was thinking now about that. I knew that something deep was troubling his mind. I wanted to ask but also knew that when he wanted he would talk to me about it.

  The dark and stillness of twilight was filling the room: sun going down beyond the barren snag of the mountain.

  Grandfather rose from his chair. “Let’s go out on the porch, Billy. Eloy should be tracking along now.”

  “When’s Lee coming, Grandfather?”

  “I don’t know for sure; sometime tonight, he said.”

  We pushed open the screen door of the kitchen and stepped out on the long verandah, which enclosed and shaded the west and south walls of the house. Great spokes of sunlight radiated into the sky above Thieves’ Mountain, gilding the undersides of the fleet of small cumulus clouds, clear and definite in shape, which floated there on one invisible plane of air. Close by, blue-black and stark against the sunset, the nighthawks swooped upward and then plunged like bullets through the swarms of insects hovering above the cattle trails along the wash. Bats flickered through the twilight around the corral and water tank, making a strange noise that always reminded me of the crackling of a bad electrical connection. The Mexicans of the Southwest had the custom of catching a bat when it was asleep during the day and nailing it, alive, to the barn door in order to frighten away las brujas—the witches. There are plenty of witches in New Mexico, some good, some bad, all unreliable and all with a weakness for fooling with other people’s livestock. I didn’t believe in witches myself—but I knew they were there.

  “Here comes Mr. Peralta,” I said, as a horse and rider appeared at a walking pace from out of the willow groves along the almost-waterless river. Eloy Peralta, Grandfather’s only full-time ranch hand, was a good man, good at anything worth doing, and willing to work about 364 days a year for $150 a month, plus room and board for himself and family. He was being exploited, of course, but perhaps didn’t know it, or if he knew it, didn’t care. He seemed to enjoy such things as stringing barbed wire, shoeing horses, branding calves, and arguing with my grandfather, and when he got mad and quit, as he sometimes did, he knew he could always come back the next day.

  “I quit!” he roared as he came toward us through the gloom on the tired, lathered horse. “Gee-whiz Christ and bloody Mary!” He checked the horse by the porch steps and looked at us. A grin flashed in his saddle-colored face when he saw me. “Billy-boy! Welcome back to the worthless and burned-up and eat-out-no-good-run-down Vogelin drag strip.” He pulled one foot from the stirrup, eased his short leg up and rested it on the neck of the horse. The horse, old Skilletfoot, reposed on his bones, switching his tail at the gnats and letting his head hang down between his forelegs. I returned the greeting. There was a short silence as Peralta stared at the sunset and picked sandburs off his pants leg.

  “Better go home and eat your supper, Eloy,” Grandfather said. “I don’t want to hear about it right now.”

  Peralta grunted in disgust. “No, you don’t want to hear about it. Listen, Meester Vogelin, I think we better go someplace else, maybe New York, Pennsyl—what’s that place, Billy?—Pennsylvania, okay? I don’t want to work on no bloody drag strip no more.”

  “Go home and eat and shut up,” Grandfather said wearily.

  “Sure, okay, shut up. Maybe we Shut our eyes too, huh? That might help.” He picked at the burrs on his jeans. “Today they were not chasing the jacks, Meester Vogelin.”

  “No? What were they chasing?”

  “I don’ know. What was it? I don’ know. A thing long and white and shiny, come down like an arrow and start to burn up. Three jeeps and the men in the yellow tin hats, they all race after it, hey! like crazy men.”

  “Did they tear up that fence again?”

  “Fence? No, I fix that. No, they find the gate this time and leave it open, one two three cows get out. All the afternoon I hunt these three cows. When I try to talk to the wild men they make me stay away from where they are, they run the jeep at me and scare the horse and scream at me to stay away, stay away!” Peralta imitated the men in the yellow tin hats, waving his arms and howling quietly. “Stay away! stay away! you dirty Mexican.”

  “Did they call you that?”

  Peralta hesitated. “I think so.”

  “What did you call them?”

  Peralta hesitated again, glancing at me. “I don’ call them nothing, the dirty gringos. Maybe they hear me, I don’ know. I go away, hunt the cows. Then the big truck comes with the red lights and the siren, like this.” He tilted back his head, removing his hat, and howled gently at the sky, like a siren. He stopped. “Tomorrow we maybe find the cows.”

  “Eloy, you shouldn’t talk like that in front of the boy.”

  “I know and I am very sorry.”

  “Go home and eat. Get off that poor horse. God, look at his feet, he’s cast two shoes again.”

  “Meester Vogelin, I cannot keep shoes on this hammerhead. We need the frying pans, I think.”

  “We need a bullet,” Grandfather muttered. Peralta waved at me, grinning, and started toward the corral, with a cloud of gnats doing their molecular dance around him and his mount. “Tell Cruzita I’ll fix up the boy’s room,” the old man yelled after him, and Peralta nodded.

  “You and me better get some sleep, Billy,” Grandfather said. “We’ll be leaving before sunup tomorrow.”

  We took my luggage and the grits out of the pickup and re-entered the house. The old man led me through the enormous main room with its Indian rugs on the floor, past the cavelike fireplace where a stack of mesquite logs awaited kindling, under the antique rifles and game trophies mounted on the walls. Beyond the living-room we passed Grandfather’s office. The door was open. I caught a glimpse of the rolltop desk piled high with papers, ledgers and letters. On top of the desk stood photographs of the old man’s wife and his three daughters: my mother, living in Pittsburgh; Marian, living in Alamogordo; and Isabel living in Phoenix. All married, with children and problems of their own. Above the desk was an oil portrait of Jacob Vogelin, Grandfather’s father, the somber bearded Dutchman who had founded the ranch back in the 1870’s by first defrauding and then fighting off the Mescalero Apaches, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Goodnight Cattle Company, the First National Bank of El Paso, and the United States Government with its never-ending wars, depressions, and income taxes.

  Past the office we followed the dark carpeted hallway which led to the bedrooms. The first two were closed; the third was open and we walked in. This was the same room I’d slept in during the two preceding summers b
ut in the meantime the daughters had been using it during the occasional visits to Grandfather. The room bore the feminine stamp of their occupancy—flowered wallpaper, pink and pastel-green bedspreads, brocaded drapes and ballerinas’ tutus hanging over the windows, shutting out the light and air.

  We stopped just inside the doorway, looking around. “Do you like this room, Billy?”

  I paused, then said, “It’s very pretty.”

  “Does it give you a sort of suffocated feeling?”

  “Yes sir.”

  We were silent. “Tell you what,” he said, “you sleep here tonight. After we get back from our ride in the mountains we’ll clean up one of them rooms in the old bunkhouse, chase out all the vinegaroons and scorpions and sidewinders and fix you up proper. What do you think of that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What?”

  “I think that’s a good idea, Grandfather.”

  “Fine. That’s what we’ll do. Now let’s have a look at one of these here woman’s beds.” He turned back the corner of the green coverlet and discovered fresh sheets, smelling of soap and wind and sunshine, already laid. “Good old Cruzita, she’s been here before us. God bless her sweet heart.” A quilt lay over the foot of the bed. Grandfather unfolded it and spread it over the bed. “All right, Billy, you get your clothes off and get in bed and tomorrow we’ll—head for the hills. How long since you been on a horse?”

  “Nine months.”

  “Nine months? Yes, you better get some sleep.” He started to leave, but stopped by the kerosene lamp on the dresser. “Want me to light this lamp for you, Billy?” The room was half dark.

  “No, Grandfather, I don’t need it.”

  “Fine. Did you wash your face and brush your teeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “This morning on the train.”

  Grandfather thought for a moment. “Fine. Well—good night, Billy.”