A Tale Out of Luck Read online

  There was a trail here, to the left of the gap, that led up to a bluff. From the bluff, a man could see a good forty miles to the east. Jubal’s mustang pony made the climb without hesitation. At the top, the mustanger dismounted and looped his reins around a hackberry sapling. He took off his gloves and reveled in the cool air that slipped between his fingers. He fished around in his saddlebag until he felt the telescope.

  As the dying light of the setting sun painted his wild shocks of golden hair a shade of orange, Jubal slid his telescope over the rocky summit of the bluff to search his back-trail for trouble. It took only moments for movement to catch his eye.

  Closer behind than he might have expected, he saw those two boys from the fort—the ones who had lost the blooded mare. It surprised him that boys so young could have followed his trail so quickly, but then again he had given little attention to covering his tracks. He watched them as they crossed Honey Creek at the same place he had crossed less than a half hour ago.

  He collapsed the telescope and groaned. He could easily lose them. Now that he knew he was being trailed, he could hold to the rocky places that left no sign. It was almost dark and he was almost home. They’d never find his place. The slave hunters had tried, before the war, and had never gotten close.

  But, judging from that corpse he had seen in the buckboard back at the fort, there was Indian trouble brewing. He wouldn’t want to live with the knowledge that he had left those boys in the wilderness to get scalped. He shook his head as he rolled onto his back and saw the first star of the night twinkling in the gray sky above.

  How the hell did I get stuck wet-nursin’ two fool cowboys?

  He rode down from the bluff and waited at the gap. Within a few minutes, the cowboys appeared.

  “You boys lose your way?” he asked, his voice startling them. They only shrugged at him, not knowing how to explain themselves.

  “We need your help,” the one called Jay Blue finally managed to say.

  “I’ll help you keep your scalp tonight. Then you can be on your way tomorrow. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll never tell a soul where I live. I don’t like company.”

  “We promise!” said the one called Skeeter.

  “Agreed,” Jay Blue added.

  Jubal scowled at them. “Come on, we’re runnin’ out of daylight.”

  Staying on the heels of Jubal’s mustang pony, Jay Blue let his mount watch the trail as he took in the grandeur of this hidden canyon—a place beyond all previous explorations of his home surrounds.

  Cliffs two and three hundred feet tall rose among rugged hills and craggy draws on every side. Spring-fed rivulets twined through heavily timbered ravines. Freshwater dripped among mosses and ferns in places that seldom saw sunlight. Soon the canyon opened into a wider basin surrounded by steep hills and sheer cliffs, and Jay Blue noticed Jubal bearing to the right, onto a faint trail that led through thick brush.

  Once they had trotted through this brush, they came to a hidden side canyon that opened wide at the mouth, but narrowed toward the head the way the flare of a bugle curved inward as it swept toward the mouthpiece. He also noticed that someone had built a stout fence of cedar rails across the belled opening of the canyon. The fence and the canyon walls enclosed a fine pasture, watered by a spring creek that meandered through it. And up toward the narrow head of the canyon, a few hundred yards away, Jay Blue could see a good set of corrals, clearly meant to hold and train wild horses.

  Yet there was still no cabin in sight.

  As Jubal continued on at a trot, the trail began to cling to the right-hand canyon wall in a gradual ascent. Leaning toward the cliff on his right side, away from the void to the left, Jay Blue noted that places on the cliff wall looked almost polished, as if this were a very old trail, brushed by the touch of many a traveler.

  Risking a glance toward the more dangerous side of the trail, he could now look down into the canyon and the stout corrals. The horses in those corrals noticed the riders, threw their heads high into the air, and whinnied a welcome.

  And the trail went higher still as the canyon wall pinched inward toward the opposite cliff face. Soon, Jay Blue could look down into a chasm only twenty feet across, and a hundred feet deep. Here, the little stream tumbled over the head of the canyon in a sparkling thread of water and frayed into white froth before it hit the canyon floor.

  As he looked back in admiration of the gossamer waterfall, his mount wheeled around a dogleg to the right just as something groaned a hideous guttural strain in Jay Blue’s ear. He wrenched his neck around, shocked to find the huge snout of a camel staring at him.

  “God Almighty!” he cried, his pony shying a bit at the strange beast.

  “That ain’t God, boy. Just ol’ Thirsty.”

  As they passed by the hindquarters of the camel, Jay Blue noticed a CSA brand, but his question about how a camel with a Confederate brand might end up in the Texas hills got caught in his throat as he looked beyond the animal to the high shelf extending above the head of the canyon. There was a whole hidden pasture up here—as big as the one fenced in on the canyon floor, and rimmed all around by its own cedar-rail fencing, beyond which were wooded peaks and limestone outcroppings. The spring creek that fed the waterfall snaked through this level pasture like a torpid water moccasin.

  Sweeping around to the right, his eyes now caught sight of some smoke coming from a small earthen dome, and then he saw a woman tending a loaf of bread inside the oven. This sight shocked him even more so than the camel. She was a small, trim-figured woman, brown-skinned, with black hair, somewhat younger than Jubal.

  “God Almighty!” Jay Blue repeated.

  “Save a few God A’mighties,” Jubal suggested. “You’re just gettin’ started.”

  The woman had noticed Jay Blue and Skeeter now, and looked even more astonished than they did to see Jubal bringing company home.

  “It’s alright, honey,” the mustanger said to the woman. “They’re just muchachos.”

  Beyond the woman, and the earthen oven, Jay Blue saw that the sheer canyon wall had followed the trail around the dogleg to this high, hidden pasture, and now he noticed the cave sunk into the side of this cliff face. An adobe wall and a grass-thatched, lean-to roof expanded the cave into a domicile of respectable space, especially considering the possibility that the cave might extend quite some distance into the rock. A low, exterior wall of neatly stacked stone enclosed a yard that included a good-sized Spanish oak, the tree having shed most of its leaves for the coming winter.

  “Might as well light and turn your horses into the pasture to graze,” Jubal said.

  Jay Blue and Skeeter followed his advice as the sky darkened, revealing a legion of stars.

  “We’ve got grub with us,” Jay Blue said. “We’d be glad to cook some up.”

  “Fair enough. Bring what you’ve got into the kitchen.”

  The woman had taken the loaf of bread from the earthen oven and gone into the cave. Now Jay Blue entered, followed by Skeeter. Looking around the cave, and the adobe wing that expanded it, Jay Blue had to admire the way the albino hermit lived.

  The adobe lean-to extension served as a kitchen and dining area. There was one small wooden table, handmade, and only two chairs. An adobe fireplace near the entrance included iron fittings to facilitate the hanging of cooking vessels over the fire. Where the cave joined the kitchen addition, a large, stuffed buffalo hide served as a couch or daybed, flanked by typical household odds and ends—a butter churn, a candlestick, a stack of split firewood, and a keg of flour. A dark passageway led deeper into the cave, presumably to the sleeping chambers.

  “Boys, this is my wife. Her name is Luz.”

  The cowboys put their foodstuffs on the table, dragged their hats from their heads, and greeted the woman. She smiled shyly and nodded.

  Speaking Spanish, Skeeter offered to help Luz get the cooking started. An hour passed pleasantly enough as the four unlikely dinner companions cooked and ate. Jay Blue didn’t
see any need to ruin a good meal with an argument, and he could sense that Jubal was not going to agree to chasing the mustang that had stolen his daddy’s mare without some persuasion. So, it wasn’t until Skeeter offered to help Luz clear the table that Jay Blue broached the subject.

  “About us goin’ home,” he began.

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” Jubal repeated. “You had no business followin’ me in the first place.”

  “Well, I was thinkin’ maybe I could offer you a business proposition.”

  “Business?” Jubal laughed. “I live in a cave. What the hell use do I have for business?”

  “Horse business,” Jay Blue added.

  “You can forget about that mare.”

  “How would you like to have the first colt out of that Thoroughbred mare?” He watched Jubal’s eyes as he made the offer, and he could have sworn he saw a momentary flash of interest, though it was hard to tell with those empty gray eyes that shot flashes of pink and red when the light danced across them just right.

  “You’re awful free with your daddy’s horseflesh, son.”

  “He won’t mind. As long as he gets her back.”

  “Well, he’s gonna mind plenty then, ’cause he ain’t gettin’ her back. She’s gone.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Hayes. If I don’t find that mare, I can’t go home!”

  “No, you don’t understand, son. I don’t care.”

  In his frustration, Jay Blue bolted up from his chair. “What do I have to do to make it worth your while? What do you want? Just name it.”

  Jubal gawked at him. “You are as dense as that rock wall, son! You’ve got to get it through your head. That mare is gone. She’s a shootin’ star. She’s gone as Grandpa’s teeth. You’ll catch up to yesterday before you catch up to that mare. If she’s runnin’ with that silver stud, she can’t never be caught.”

  “Why not? Why is it so impossible?”

  “Because he’ll spirit her away to the wildest edges of his ranges, and you’ll never find her.”

  “But you can. You’re the best there is, Mr. Hayes.”

  “I ain’t a fool, son. You can’t flatter me. I know that stallion. He’s a ghost horse one day and a demon the next. He ain’t natural. He can be wilder than a deer at high noon and meaner than a cornered bear at midnight. I ought to know. I’m part mustang myself when I’m out there among ’em. I tried for years to catch him, and . . . well, I never did.”

  “But with Skeeter and me helping you, you’ll have a better chance.” Again, a glint in the mustanger’s eyes told Jay Blue that his argument appealed.

  But then Jubal shook his head emphatically. “I said no!”

  Skeeter and Luz sensed the argument heating up, and turned from the tub of warm water they were using as a washbasin.

  Jay Blue felt as if he would explode. It wasn’t often he ran up against somebody every bit as hardheaded as he was. “Fine, then. We’ll do it without you.”

  Jubal laughed in ridicule. “Son, you got no experience mustangin’ and there’s Indian trouble brewin’. You don’t know what you’re up against. Forget about that mare. You lose things in life that you can’t get back. That’s part of livin’.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Hayes, I’ve got to go after the mare.”

  “You’ll just get yourself scalped. And your friend, too.”

  “Maybe Skeeter won’t even go with me, but I aim to get that mare back or die tryin’. I’m not gonna have one stupid mistake hang over my head the rest of my life.”

  “It’s liable to be a short life, hardheaded as you are.”

  Jay Blue shrugged and sat down on the stuffed buffalo hide couch. “If nobody wants to help, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Well, I guess that settles that,” Jubal said.

  A cold sadness seemed to well up from the depths of the cave and settle around the inhabitants like quicksand. Skeeter and Luz slowly turned back to the dishes. Jubal sat at the table, his jaw set. Jay Blue flung himself back on the couch, throwing his arms out in exasperation, like a man crucified. But as the fingers of his left hand extended beyond the cushions of the hand-stuffed couch, they fell against something that answered his touch with a familiar twang.

  Turning his head to the left, he saw what he had missed before. Leaning back in a natural crevice of the cavern wall, obscured by the butter churn, he recognized the strings and frets of a musical instrument. Leaning his head forward for a better look, he counted four tuning pegs on the headstock, and knew he was looking at the neck of a banjo. He grabbed it, lifted it, and rested it on his thigh.

  “Hey, put that down,” Jubal warned. “You can’t play that thing.”

  Jay Blue answered with a cold, businesslike tone: “With all due respect, sir, I beg to differ.” Strumming the strings, he found the instrument in tune. He made a chord and strummed it. He wasn’t in much of a mood for anything jolly, so he sang a mournful verse that suited his temperament, changing chords as he strummed.

  Max Welton’s braes are bonnie where early falls the dew

  And ’twas there that Annie Laurie gave me her promise true

  Gave me her promise true, which ne’er forget will I

  And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I’d lay me down and die

  “By God, you can play a little.”

  Jay Blue saw something almost childlike in Jubal’s face, and hope took hold in his heart once more. He gave the second verse a bit more tempo, and sat up so he could sing it better.

  Her brow is like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan

  Her face it is the fairest that e’er the sun shone on

  That e’re the sun shone on, and bright blue is her eyes

  And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I’d lay me down and die

  Jay Blue never bragged about it, but he could outsing anybody in the lower Pedernales Valley, and he could see that his voice had gotten to Jubal. After all, the mustanger had been up here for Lord knows how long listening to that camel bray.

  Skeeter spoke up from the kitchen, anxious to lighten the gloom in the cave. “He’s pretty good, huh, Mr. Hayes? Jay Blue can play about anything with strings on it. Comes by it natural from his daddy. The captain plays a guitar real good.”

  “Do tell,” Jubal said, proceeding cautiously. “I don’t guess you know ‘Camptown Races’?”

  “Know it?” Jay Blue blurted. “That’s the first song I ever learned!” He switched keys to D, and set to fingerpicking to the gait of a trotting cow pony.

  Oh, the Camptown ladies sing this song

  Doo-dah! Doo-dah!

  The Camptown race track’s five miles long

  Oh, doo-dah day!

  As he played and belted out the old standard, Jubal rose from his chair, urging Jay Blue to continue with nods of his head and graceful swirling motions from his fingertips. He dashed into the bed chambers and came out two chord changes later with a fiddle and a bow. He blew dust from the instrument, plucked the strings, tuned one, and put the chin piece under his jaw.

  Gwine to run all night!

  Gwine to run all day!

  I’ll bet my money on a bobtailed nag

  Somebody bet on the bay!

  “Take it, Mr. Hayes!” Jay Blue shouted, hammering out a steady rhythm for the fiddler to follow. Jubal attacked the strings with his bow, and to Jay Blue’s joy and surprise, the albino turned out to be a fine fiddle player! Before too long, Luz and Skeeter were dancing hook-in-wing in the kitchen, Jubal was tapping his toe while playing, and Jay Blue was singing the last verse, his voice ricocheting off the stone walls. There was a turnaround and a tag at the end of the tune that both musicians nailed as if they had rehearsed it, and—as players unaccountably do after the final stroke of a lively number—both the fiddler and the banjo picker busted out in spontaneous laughter for no reason at all.

  Jubal took the fiddle out from under his chin and laughed right up at the ceiling. He turned and grinned at Luz. “I’ll be damned!” he said. “I ain’t had so much fun in .
. .”

  He failed to finish his sentence when he saw Jay Blue returning the banjo to its hiding place behind the churn. “That was fun,” Jay Blue agreed. “But, like you said, I guess that settles that.” And he donned the most cocksure smile he could muster, for he knew that if his case was not won now, never would it be.

  Jubal lost his hold on his smile, grasping the fiddle and bow pleadingly in his hands, glancing between Jay Blue and the languid banjo. Stillness and silence hung in the cave for an uncomfortably long while. Then Jubal heaved a sigh of surrender.

  “Shit,” he groaned. He pointed with his bow. “Pick up the banjo, boy. Then we’ll talk horse business.”

  16

  THE MUSTANGER and the cowboys had put the musical instruments aside and retired outside to the small rock-fenced square that Jubal referred to as his courtyard. He had lit a kerosene lantern and a corncob pipe, and motioned for his visitors to sit on the two chairs they had carried from the kitchen. Jubal himself sat on a flat rock that crowned a stretch of the low stone enclosure.

  The camel, Thirsty, came to stare at them.

  “Mr. Hayes,” Skeeter asked, “where in thunder did you come by a camel?”

  “He just wandered up. He’s a good watchdog, so I let him stay. The U.S. Army experimented with camels to cross the desert from Texas to California, back before the war. The Confederates captured the herd, and branded ’em with a CSA, but never knew what to do with ’em. I guess they just turned ’em out. The Indians think I’m a ghost and ol’ Thirsty’s a demon, so they stay the hell out of our canyon.”

  “And what about the Steel Dust Gray?” Jay Blue said, anxious to get down to business. “Some say he’s a ghost, too.”

  Jubal puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “We both come to this country about the same time,” he began. “That stallion and me. The first time I saw him, he was a three-year-old, I’d guess. He wore a hackamore and had bloody gouges in his side, so I knew some mean son of a bitch had tried to break him. Most mustangs fear men. That gray—he hates ’em. And I don’t blame him.