Before Honor, page 4
Wayford’s trigger finger relaxed as his gaze took in the barn’s unexpected occupant. Straw clung to the boy’s worn blue jeans and equally worn workshirt as well as a mop of tousled black hair. The rancher released a soft sigh of relief.
“Here I was expecting some bloodletting drug smuggler, and what I got me is a scared little wetback.” Wayford lowered the shotgun, watching the boy’s fright-filled eyes follow the dipping muzzle. “What in hell are you doing here?”
The boy did not answer, but stood clinging to the bundle while his gaze flitted between the rancher’s face and the scattergun.
“Qu hace usted aqui?” Wayford repeated in border Spanish. “Qu hace en mi...” He stumbled, unable to recall the word he needed.
“Granero,” the boy spoke softly. “The word you look for is granero. You were trying to ask what I was doing here in your barn.”
Wayford shook his head in amazement. The Mexican’s English was almost perfect. His accent was one of word emphasis rather than pronunciation. Many Anglos in the Big Bend region often picked up the same inflection from living in an area with such a large Mexican population.
“I never was that good with Mex lingo,” the rancher answered. “Just picked up what I could from the folks around here. A man can’t get very far in this country ‘less he can speak a little Mex—and understand a hell of a lot more than he lets on.”
The boy gave a nervous nod. His attention centered on the shotgun. “You seem to speak clearly enough.”
“Which ain’t got hide nor hair with my question— what are you doing here in my barn?” Wayford pressed.
“Sleeping.” The boy tilted his head toward the stall. “The straw was more soft than the ground, and it was much more warm in here than outside.”
Wayford’s eyes narrowed. Maybe he drew conclusions too quickly. The boy spoke English too well to be from south of the Rio Grande. “You from hereabouts? You in trouble with the law, tryin’ to hide out?”
“I am in no trouble.” The boy shook his head. “My name is Miguel Santos Joaquin Ramos. I come from across the Rio Bravo—from the village of Santa Maria. I am looking for work as many of the men in my village have done.”
The rancher chuckled. “I was right; you are a wetback!” He never liked the term “alien.” It made a man, or boy in this case, sound like he was some bug-eyed monster who had stepped out of a Hollywood science fiction movie. “Illegal immigrant,” which was popular with politicians afraid of alienating voters of Mexican descent, was totally meaningless, a bureaucratic term that said nothing. It was just about average for politicians.
“Wetback?” The boy’s face twisted with befuddlement. “What is this wetback?”
“You.” Wayford eased down the shotgun’s hammers. “A Mexican that swims across the Rio Grande and is in this country illegally.” He watched Miguel Ramos nod in acceptance, then added, “And you’ll sure as hell be neck deep in trouble if Immigration catches up with you.”
“Federates?” The boy’s eyes darted about as though he expected to find immigration officers hidden in the barn’s shadows.
“The federates—the boys from Immigration—they catch you above the border without a green card, and they’ll haul your brown ass over to El Paso and dump you in Juarez. Then you’ll know what trouble really is. It’s a hell of a long way from Juarez to Santa Maria.”
Miguel stiffened—whether in fear or pride, Wayford could not tell. Neither would do him much good if Immigration found him. Times were hard and money tight. Illegal Mexicans were not seen as a source of cheap labor as they once had been. Even native Mexican-Americans in the area did not want them around; they saw their south-of-the-border cousins as competition for the few jobs available.
“I am not afraid of being a long way from my village.” The tone of Miguel Ramos’s voice said that it was pride, not fear, that straightened his spine. “I have walked a long way since I left my village a week ago…”
Wayford edged back his hat and studied the young man. Miguel Ramos walked a fool’s path. Yet, the rancher admitted feeling admiration for his courage. Over a hundred miles of hard country, some of the worst God had decided to place on this planet, lay between the Wide W and the Rio Grande. More than half that distance consisted of the rock and sand of the Chihuahuan desert; the other half was simply hot and dry. How a man, let alone a boy, could survive a walk through hell on earth was beyond Wayford. Yet, every day men and boys waded across the Rio Grande in search of wealth above the border.
“... work is what I look for. I am young, and I am strong. I will work hard.”
The boy’s voice brought Wayford from his reflections. The rancher drew his lips in a thin line and sucked at his teeth. “Son, if you’re lookin’ to find work here, you’re shit out of luck. Times ain’t all that easy right now. Even if I had the spare money to take on a hand, I’d still have to turn you down. The Immigration Service just sends you wetbacks home. They lay a stiff fine on the man who hires you. I can’t afford no fine, no matter how big or small, right now.”
The rancher paused, looking for some reaction on the boy’s face that indicated he understood. There was none. “What I’m sayin’ is you got to move on—vamoose. The sooner the better. The immigration boys have taken to droppin’ in on ranchers hereabout to make sure we ain’t hidin’ nobody like you.”
Miguel Ramos did not move. Nor did his expression change. He remained motionless, staring at the old rancher.
Wayford felt a touch of exasperation. A lifetime of dealing and working with Mexicans taught him they all had a common habit—abruptly losing the ability of understanding plain English when they heard something that did not suit their ears.
“Son, don’t go and make this hard for either one of us. I can’t afford to keep you here. It’s not the way you’d like it to be, but that’s the way of it. Now, this barn’s got two doors. Take your pick, whichever you like, but it was time you was using one of them. Hasta la vista! Adios!” Wayford pointed to the barn’s doors with the shotgun.
His grip tightening on the cloth bundle, the young Mexican nodded. He turned, took two steps toward the barn’s rear door, and stopped. He looked back at Wayford; his gaze met the rancher’s eyes.
“Señor, I understand all that you have said, but it is not easy for me to go.” He paused, his eyes rolling downward for an instant. His chest heaved when he looked back up. “It has been a long week since I left my village. The way was farther than I knew. I did not bring enough food with me—only a few tortillas and some water. I ate the last of the tortillas three days ago.”
Again Miguel Ramos paused. His voice remained steady, but a plea twisted his brown face. “I do not want to put you in trouble with the federates, but I am hungry. If you can find it in your heart, I would like some food.” He hastened to add, “I am not a... mendigo... a beggar. I will work for the food. Work hard. The work of a man.”
“Dammit to hell, boy.” Wayford shook his head. “Didn’t you understand what I said about the immigration boys? You’re asking me to put myself in a damned uncomfortable position. Don’t you understand that?”
“Si, I understand,” the boy answered, “but my belly does not hear as well as my ears.”
“Damn!” Wayford could not escape the boy’s eyes. It had been a hell of a long time since a man had come to the Wide W looking for handouts. Back in the seventies he and Lizzie had fed more than one confused soul, whether he was a soldier back from Vietnam wondering why his country had turned against him or some shaggy-haired hippie trying to “find himself” or get his head “straight.”
Miguel Ramos was not that different from those young men. They all had the same lost looks on their faces, like stray dogs begging for table scraps. He had never refused a dog or a man. Even considering turning the boy away knotted his gut. It was the color of the boy’s skin that made him hesitate. That realization tautened the knots.
“Son, I’m goin’ against my better judgment, and I guess I’ll end up payin’ for it if those boys in green decide to pay me a surprise visit. But I reckon I can spare three square meals for a day’s work.” Wayford wanted the words back the instant he spoke them. Odds were a thousand to one against the Immigration Service checking the Wide W today. But he was in no position to be taking odds, no matter how heavy they were in his favor. A fine for working a Mexican national would be all it took to break him.
“Thank you, señor.” A broad smile spread from ear to ear across the boy’s face. “You will not be sorry. I am a good worker. I will show you.”
Wayford held out a hand to halt the boy. “Now don’t go gettin’ all excited. You got to understand up front that I ain’t offerin’ a steady job. We’re talkin’ about me feedin’ you three meals and only that. There ain’t no money involved. After today, you’ll be on your way and out of my hair. You understand that plain and clear, don’t you?”
“I understand. It is clear.” Miguel’s head bobbed up and down in agreement.
Wayford was less than certain it was all that clear in the boy’s mind, but he had to accept him at his word. “Good! Follow me into the house, and I’ll see about rustlin’ you up some breakfast. After that, we got a long day of work ahead of us.”
Chapter Three
Clint Wayford wrapped a pot holder around the handle of a cast iron skillet and lifted it from the stove. With a spatula he shoveled three fried eggs beside a pile of six sausage patties on Miguel Santos Joaquin Ramos’s plate. While the Mexican boy grabbed another tortilla and dug into his second helping of breakfast, the rancher refilled the two coffee cups on the kitchen table.
“Gracias Miguel managed to say without pausing while he cut a patty in half with the edge of his fork, speared the meat, and popped it into his mouth. “This is good. It is very good.”
Wayford smiled as he sat across the table from the boy and ladled two heaping spoonfuls of sugar into the coffee. “Son, that’s your stomach talkin’, not your taste buds. I know I’m not much of a hand when it comes to cookin’. Three days without eatin’ can make about anything taste good.”
“No, señor, this is good.” Miguel sopped up a pool of egg yolk from the plate with a tortilla and wolfed it down before he went to work on another sausage. “Even my beloved mother has never cooked meat such as this. It is full of... pimienta... pepper.”
Wayford smiled again and sampled the coffee. He had forgotten how much food a boy could put away. It had been a long time since a teenaged boy had sat at this table. Miguel’s hunger reminded him of—
The rancher swallowed another sip of coffee and retreated from the memories of Tom that welled in his mind. Twenty years did not dull the edge of pain when a man had lost his only son. Tom had been the son most men dream of to carry their name into future generations. At eighteen, Tom had been twice the cowman his father was and displayed an understanding of horseflesh that most men three times his age never grasped. If only he had stopped Tom from enlisting—
No, Wayford shook his head, refusing to sink into the morass of self-pity and guilt. Blame rested on no one’s shoulders, not his, not Tom’s, not the Army’s, not even a country torn asunder by an unpopular war. A freak accident during basic training left his son crushed beneath the body of an overturned supply truck. The rancher closed his eyes and drew a heavy breath. A freak accident without rhyme or reason—something that just happened.
“Do you live here by yourself alone, señor?” Miguel slowed to try the coffee. If he found it bitter, Wayford could not discern it in his expression.
“Clint, my name is Clint Wayford,” the rancher said. His gaze wandered around the kitchen. “There used to be a family here, but I’m alone now.”
“I am not used to such emptiness in a house.” Miguel went to work on another egg. “There are eight children in my family, Señor Clint. Four boys and four girls. Two are younger than me. Our house is always crowded.”
Wayford nodded. “And that’s why you came here, to help your family?”
“Si. I will send them money. It will help,” the boy answered. “In my village, I was an apprentice to my uncle. He is a maker of adobe bricks. It is a good profession, but in a poor country there is little money to be made even for one who is a master of his trade such as Uncle Carlos.”
“Work ain’t that easy to find here in the States. Times aren’t as good as they used to be. You might not find what you’re looking for here.” Wayford tried to explain working conditions north of the Rio Grande.
“Then I will go elsewhere,” Miguel said. “I must find work.”
Wayford silently wished him luck. Miguel Ramos was small for his eighteen years. He stood no more than five foot six and was built as slight as a quarter-horse jockey. If he made his way to a city like Dallas or San Antonio, he might find a job busing tables in a restaurant, but he was too slight for well-paying construction work. His future in the United States would not be as bright as his hopes. It never was for those who crossed the border illegally.
Miguel took another tortilla from the plastic bag and used it to wipe the remaining sausage grease and egg yolk from his plate. After downing that, he leaned back in his chair, grinned, and patted his stomach. “Muy bien.”
“Son, I know we struck a deal out in the barn, but I ain’t gonna hold you to it,” Wayford said. “If you’re of a mind, you can finish that coffee and be on your way. There’s no need for you to stay around here today. You got work to find.”
Miguel’s eyes widened then narrowed as he shook his head. “No, that would be wrong. I made a promise. I am a man of his word. You have fed me, and I will work for that food. It is what we agreed.”
The rancher did not feel up to an argument. He tilted his head in agreement. “Then we’ll finish up our coffee and get about our business.”
Wayford shifted his weight in the saddle, uncertain whether it was his body or the leather beneath him that creaked in protest. Movement gave no relief to the ache in his lower back. He cursed under his breath. The inescapable pain signaled a pulled or strained muscle. He grimaced with acceptance and tallied another malady resulting from his fall earlier. A throbbing head and a back that felt as though someone had tied a knot in it— what other ailments could he expect to beset him before the day ended, all because of one moment when his mind drifted?
“The horses, they turned here toward those hills.” Miguel’s voice broke in to the rancher’s thoughts.
Halting the bay he sat astride, Wayford turned to the young man, then looked to where Miguel pointed. He saw no sign of the runaway geldings. “What makes you think they’re up there?”
“The tracks go that way,” Miguel answered. “And the dog followed them. See?”
The boy’s pointing finger swung downward to direct the rancher’s eyes to the ground. Wayford saw nothing. He squinted, but the tracks refused to reveal themselves. From the corner of an eye, he caught Miguel’s questioning expression. He ignored it, stepped from the saddle, and walked to where the boy pointed. The tracks were there, exactly as Miguel had described them. A disgusted “damn” broke from Wayford’s lips.
“Is there something wrong, Señor Clint?” The Mexican boy eyed the rancher while the older man climbed back onto the bay.
“Nothing ’cept we got to ride a couple more miles before we catch up with them damned colts. That draw between those rises is the mouth to a box canyon. They won’t stop until they reach the end.”
A harsh bite cut a sharp edge to Wayford’s voice that he had not intended. He could not help it. He had sat less than ten feet away and missed the tracks the boy saw clearly. He told himself the day had been long and he was tired. Self-denial offered no comfort or success in disguising the discouraging chill that seeped through his spine and chest. His body found yet another way to betray him.
He added a drive into Alpine and a visit with an eye doctor to the mental list of matters to attend when there was time—and money. An image of himself walking from the optometrist’s office with inch-thick bifocals perched ponderously on his nose popped to mind and lingered there. The portrait left much to be desired. It was bad enough that he now kept a pair of reading glasses on the table beside his easy chair just to read a newspaper.
“Señor?” the Mexican boy asked.
Leaving the question unacknowledged, Wayford tapped the bay’s flanks with his heels and reined into the draw. Behind him Miguel clucked his own mount forward and moved beside the rancher for a moment before edging slightly ahead.
The young man’s action spoke louder than words. He recognized his companion’s eyes lacked the sharpness that had once been theirs. For an instant, the rancher contemplated urging the bay forward to retake the lead. He kept the impulse under tight rein. Vanity would not improve his vision; the boy’s eyesight was keener than his. Miguel had already proven he could catch signs Wayford overlooked.
Practical though it was, the situation rode on Wayford’s shoulders like a loosely cinched saddle on the back of a horse. It rubbed in five different wrong ways all at the same time. He stole a sideways glance at the young Mexican. A hot shame suffused his cheeks, ignited by the commingling of jealousy and contempt he felt for the boy’s ability. Miguel carried a passel of problems; he did not need an old man stacking his own shortcomings atop them.
Wayford’s gaze and thoughts shifted from the boy to the humpbacked hills rising around him. Time and again since his boyhood, he had ridden over every inch of this land and never failed to be caught up in a sense of wonder. Awe rather than beauty dwelled in its heart. Awe so immense, at times, it seemed as though in the blink of an eye it could swallow a man.
Some of the painters in the art books Lizzie used to buy and pore over in the evenings captured with their oils and canvas a sense of this land’s mood. These were not men like the American artist Remington, whose paintings Wayford and Lizzie had seen when they visited that Fort Worth museum. The rancher liked Remington’s renditions of range men with their horses and cattle. The paintings brimmed with daring, action, and adventure. Stories of real men living hard times almost jumped from the frames and came to life.
