With Blood in Their Eyes

Chapter Ten: 1918

Chapter Ten 1918 Tom pulled them up to a line shack on the Hendricks ranch. They had ridden most of the day, not seeing anyone, as though the pursuit of them had just stopped. The line shack was small, more a pile of sticks than a building. Most of it was made from boards that looked like they’d been pulled off of packing crates. The roof and the doors were ocotillo stalks wired together. And the door was wired to the shack, fencing wire on both sides, for hinges on one side, a latch on the other. Inside was mostly rolls of barbed wire, stacked out here to save riding all the way back to the main ranch to run new fences or repair the old. There were cans of staples and an assortment of tools—shovels, picks, axes, a couple of comealongs for stretching wire, hammers, and pliers. There was a stack of wooden crates back in a corner under some wire and canvas. “I want you and Sisson to stay here,” Tom told John. “You’ll be safe here. I’m going to take the horses up a ways, then ride on into Hendricks’s. He’ll let us stay here a couple of days, maybe help us reprovision. At least we can get some good sleep around here before we head into the mountains.” “Which mountains?” Sisson asked. Tom pointed to the southeast. “Chiricahuas. Then from there into New Mexico and down into Old Mexico. I think when we get across the Chiricahuas, we can rest a little easier. They ain’t going to follow us up there. Then it’s down into Mexico, and we’re free.” Sisson snorted. “They’re going to follow us to hell.” Tom scowled. “Well, then, let’s avoid going to hell for a little while yet. What do you say? Besides, Mexico ain’t hell. It’s where we can get a fresh start. Mexico is going to be Power Heaven. We’re going to own that place.” “What if someone comes out here?” John asked. “No one’s coming out here.” “But what if they do?” “Well, John, you could invite them in, maybe see if they would be interested in playing some cards or such. Or you could just goddamned kill them. You decide.” Tom led the two horses about a mile from the shack before tying them off to a mesquite tree. It would be a hard run to go get them, but if the horses were 96 With Blood in Their Eyes found closer to the line shack, there wouldn’t be much mystery about where John and Sisson were. Likely the shack would be so blasted full of holes that the two wouldn’t know they were found until they were already dead. Better to make a long scramble to the horses than a quick trip to the grave. Tom rode on alone at a slow pace, plodding along like any cowboy who wasn’t anxious to come upon further work. Halfway into the ranch house and barns, he saw another lone cowboy off to the south. Or, likely, it was a cowboy. If he were mistaken for one, he could mistake a searcher for one, too. Cowboys were no threat. A lot of them were vaqueros, up from Mexico. The United States was a good place to work. Other than that, it meant nothing to them. Even American cowboys had little interest in the events of the world around them. They were laborers who took what they could get. They were solitaries who intentionally cut themselves off from the world around them. As long as they could eat, sleep, get drunk, and fuck once in a while, the world held little more interest to them. Mostly they were not antisocial but asocial. Cowboys were their own society. But there were some Mormons among them, and Mormons could never cut themselves entirely free of Mormondom. But, he figured, searchers would be going together, not out riding alone. Whoever you were, whatever allegiances you might have, you did not want to come up on three armed fugitives alone or even in a pair. You always wanted the advantage of numbers, and that advantage gave Tom the advantage in pursuit. He came on three cowboys before he found Billy Hendricks. Two of them were Mexicans and simply pointed when he asked, “¿Dónde está señor Billy?” The last was Jedkins or Judkins or something damned...