Vickie Britton, page 4
34
much work around the ranch, and they worked only off and on and at the simplest of jobs. Tavas, no doubt, had taken them in out of pity, knowing they had little money and nowhere else to live.
A face peered curiously out of the last house as I walked by. I saw Graciana, Esteban’s wife, leaning against the sagging door frame. Beneath the faded blue dress her frail body was swollen with the child she carried.
I waved to her as I passed by. She returned my greeting with a quivering smile, tossing back the deep auburn hair hanging over her pale face to reveal sad, dark eyes. Poor girl. If the rumors I’d heard about him were true, hers couldn’t be an easy life, being married to Esteban.
A vision of Esteban, handsome despite the bold manner and perpetual sneer, crossed my mind. Brad had told me he mistreated his wife, spent most of his wages in town on women and beer. I’d encountered Esteban once or twice on my brief visits back since he’d been hired on last summer. He was an arrogant, shiftless sort, though in all fairness I’d discovered nobody could break a horse quite as fast as he.
Like a silent apparition, Graciana withdrew inside the house. I resumed my walk. Behind the wooden fence, where a couple of milk goats watched me with placid eyes, the well-worn road broke off into a steep, rugged path, seldom used now except for an occasional run up into the distant mountains for firewood.
The trail forked off into two directions. The first led to an abandoned prospector’s cabin high on the hillside, then snaked back toward the lip of Black Canyon. I’d never liked taking that trail. It seemed sinister, even in daylight. The sage was dense there, the blue-black juniper growing more twisted and spiny the closer one came to the canyon.
35
The way I’d chosen followed the sunny ledge of the gold-crested hillside for a time, then sloped gently into the heart of the cool, green meadow.
I’d not climbed far when an acrid smell invaded my nostrils. Mushroom clouds of smoke billowed up to me in the sporadic gusts of wind, stinging my eyes and burning my throat. I moved toward the edge of the rocks to peer over the ledge. In the barren fields directly below me, Victor was struggling with a restless fire. He was burning the carcass of the dead bull.
I strained my eyes against the afternoon sunlight. A sensation of uneasiness washed over me as the hulking, simple-minded giant of a man slowly turned his head up toward the ledge, as if some keen animal instinct warned him he was being observed. I wondered if he could see me well enough against the glare of sunlight to identify me. The uncomfortable feeling magnified as I imagined those vague, gray-black eyes of his watching me.
Guillermo’s friend wasn’t ‘right’. Whenever there was a particularly unsavory job about the ranch, such as the disposing of carcasses, it usually fell to Victor. He didn’t seem to mind. Though I’d never been afraid of him, I disliked the thought of him watching me so closely. I backed away from the ledge, feeling comfortable again only when I knew I was far from his range of vision.
As I continued upon the trail, my thought remained on Victor. The sudden sight of him had called to mind that uncanny tale Guillermo had revealed to me long ago…
“I first met Victor when Tavas and I hired on to herd sheep for a big outfit near Winnemucca,” Guillermo had begun that afternoon outside the barn.
36
“He was just a kid then. Big, clumsy, scared as a pup. Didn’t know much English. Sort of latched himself on to me. Claimed my family knew his, though I never could place the name.
“Herding sheep’s lonesome business,” Guillermo had continued, his thin, brown hands busy with the braided rawhide rope he was mending. “You’re given a band of sheep and it’s your job to see that they stay out of trouble. They give you a dog to keep the sheep from wandering off and a gun to keep the coyotes away. Damned isolated work. Sometimes you don’t see another soul for weeks upon end except for the supply wagon making the rounds or another herder wandering into your camp.
“Victor’s path crossed mine the evening of the blizzard. I’d stopped to visit with him a spell.” Guillermo’s brow furrowed. His hands were suddenly still upon the broken riata in his lap. “We were eating supper when the storm blew in. Within minutes, it was so dark you couldn’t see an inch in front of your face. Nothing we could do but wait it out.
“Snowed all that night and into the next day.”
I’ll never forget the strange look in Guillermo’s eyes as he continued his tale, a look of mingled horror and pity. “Sheep were all dead. Frozen. We brought the dogs in with us. We were stranded up there on the mountains, cut off by the snowdrifts.” His voice seemed to come from far away, as if he was reliving that dreadful experience, again seeing the sight of stiff, frozen sheep upon a white mountainside.
“We were half-dead ourselves, shivering inside that makeshift canvas tent.” The sharp, brown eyes in that rugged, sun-weathered face clouded with disturbing memories. “Tried to make it back down the mountain, but the snow drove us back into that icy prison. Food was
37
running out. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll still remember that bitter cold…
“I was shaking with chills, half out of my head with fever. Victor, he nursed me, spooning food into my mouth, giving me his own wraps to keep me alive.”
Guillermo had stopped talking. Suddenly, he turned that keen, penetrating gaze of his upon me. “We’d almost given up hope when we heard the sounds of dogs and men. Tavas and the rancher had come looking for us.” His steady gaze never faltered as he continued, “Know what that damned fool Victor did? Took up the old rifle and laid fire on them.”
“But, why?” I asked in amazement.
Guillermo shrugged. “Mind had snapped. ‘Sheeped’, they call it. He’d gone sheeped. Driven mad by the loneliness, the cold, the isolation.”
“Did…did he harm anyone?”
Guillermo shook his head. “Wrestled the gun away from him before he had a chance to do any damage, thank God. Sometimes in my sleep I can still see him crouched inside that tent, firing for all he was worth at our rescuers. That experience is something we’ll both carry to our graves. It scarred us both for life, but in different ways.”
“Is that why you look out for him?”
“I owe him my life,” Guillermo said, looking down at his boots. “He’s a good man. Only what happened up there broke his mind, made him simple. He doesn’t cause any trouble. If some of the men don’t understand him, at least they have the good sense to leave him be. Otherwise, they have me to account to.”
I’d been so lost in thought about Victor, it was with an element of surprise I realized I’d almost reached my
38
destination. Now, anticipation quickened my steps as I recognized the smooth gray stones marking the beginning of the stream. The meadow. My secret place.
As I stepped into the clearing, a sudden stab of loss shook me, an indeterminable pain making me think of the table back in the kitchen, bare of its traditional checkered cloth. I tried to choke down vast waves of emptiness, disappointment, as I looked about desperately, searching for a landmark to reassure me this was truly the place of my daydreams.
I’d remembered the scene in springtime, in the prime of its glory. Now, the encroaching winter had already made itself felt. The trees stood pale and ghostlike. Even the evergreens were browned at the tips from the cruel harshness of a first frost. Summer drought had dried the stream to a mere trickling. There hadn’t yet been enough snow high on the mountains. Long, restless fingers of ice water groped blindly into the stony jaws of the rough boulders. Only after next spring’s thaw had coaxed the snow down from the mountaintop would the creek flow freely again, giving life to the surrounding trees and bloom to the yucca. Everything seemed brittle and dried now, from the withered cactus to the bare-armed aspen rattling their bleached bones and whispering of death.
I sat on my boulder, shaken, deprived of my sanctuary. The place was the same but the experience so different from what I’d imagined. Huddled in my sweater against the miserable cold, face buried in my hands, I longed for things past. When would I ever learn that the process of life is a liquid thing? Seasons change, people change, nothing can endure forever.
“Anna?”
39
I started at the unexpected sound of my name in this secluded place, glanced up to where the restless black stallion and its rider waited.
Ivan. My gaze brushed over him, taking in tanned, split-leather boots, faded Levi’s, the flash of the silver belt buckle at his lean hips. The open button of his plain work shirt casually exposed the bronze of his sturdy chest. He was hatless. I remembered that Ivan could never keep track of his hat, wondered briefly where he’d left it this time. Dark hair, damp and tousled from riding, fell in untamed waves about his forehead.
I was aware of the lean, hard-muscled strength of him as he leaped down from the saddle, dropping the reins to let Joshua wander by the stream. My heart hammered traitorously as he came toward me. We were so alone. Ever since my arrival last night I’d been in constant dread of such a meeting. Fearing his proximity, yet at the same time intoxicated by his nearness, I waited for him to approach.
Would I ever be able to look at him without pain? I compelled myself to meet those piercing, slightly tilted black eyes challenging me now.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said, his look questioning, searching.
Quickly, I wiped at the tears with the back of my hand. Sagebrush crackled beneath his heavy boots as he stepped over to join me. He stood, looking away toward the stream, giving me a chance to compose myself.
“You remembered?”
He turned toward me, white teeth flashing against slightly olive skin. “Your hiding place?” For a moment the old Ivan was back, laughing, teasing me with a smile. “Brad and Tavas never wised up, but I always knew where to find you. Like when you broke Alice’s precious Tiffany lamp—”
40
“You knew all along?”
He nodded wisely. “Even to the time you put that unsightly dent in Brad’s new car.”
I thought back to a time when the old blue Mustang Brad had relinquished to me last summer had been shiny and new. “It has plenty of scars on it now,” I replied. “But I still tremble when I remember how furious Brad was that day. He must have looked everywhere for me. If he’d found me…” I turned to him, suddenly puzzled. “Why didn’t you give me away?”
Lips that had been so quick to smile were drawn into a bitter line. The quivering trees threw windswept shadows across his face, outlining the harsh angle of his high cheekbones, delineating the aquiline nose, the well-formed mouth, throwing his quicksilver eyes into darkness. “I figure everyone’s entitled to have some place where they feel safe. Some place…uninvaded.” The somberness clouding his features crept into his voice as he added, “Lately, I’ve taken to coming here myself.”
We’d been talking so easily it was almost as if the years had fallen away. Now, his dark and bitter words reminded me of how much had changed. He was a troubled man, a man in need of sanctuary.
“I’m afraid we didn’t give you a proper welcome last night,” he said. “My wife…can be difficult.”
“It’s all right.”
I glanced at his drawn face, noticing the tightness beginning again at the corners of his mouth. The very mention of Colleen had forced a barrier between us. What kind of a woman is she to have put that bitter look of disillusionment into his eyes?
41
“I’m glad you decided to come home, Anna,” he said softly. I was touched by the sincerity in his voice. “It means so much to all of us.”
For a moment, we were both silent. “I saw Tavas this morning,” I said finally.
“He hasn’t long now,” Ivan replied with a shake of his head. In a voice tinged with irony, he added, “Funny how I always thought of him as immortal. An ancient god who would never die…” Despite their many differences, I was reminded by his words of the strange bond of respect that had always existed between them.
“Today he could speak of nothing but the Devil’s Gate,” I said. “I believe the fate of the ranch is the only earthly matter that troubles him now. Even his own suffering is insignificant to his worry about what will happen once he’s no longer here…”
Ivan stood gazing down at the valley below us, smoke-green with sagebrush, purpled with long afternoon shadows. His changeable eyes were glowing with sudden light as he turned to me.
“I’m suddenly seeing so many things the way Tavas must see them. I can understand his years of struggling, of hard work, of inspiration. Why, every part of this ranch is a part of him, an extension of his very soul.”
I could see the conflict raging within him as he confessed.
“I’ve spent so damned much of my life fighting to escape, but something always lures me back here.”
I could easily comprehend the meaning behind his words. I’d felt the same way so many times myself. It was as if the Devil’s Gate was the only place in the world where I truly belonged.
42
“I believe Tavas discovered something here, Anna,” he continued. “A taste of that inner peace, that sense of accomplishment most of us are doomed to spend our entire lives seeking.”
Caught in the golden glow of early evening, his face was alight with a sudden desire, a yearning for some dream of his own left unfulfilled. Now his luminous black eyes focused upon me, lingering wistfully upon my hair, my eyes, my face, almost as if I should have played an important part in that dream.
A look of bleak despair returned to his face. Some dark thought had snuffed out that flicker of hope within him as swiftly as a careless finger brushes the light from a burning candle.
“It’s so damned easy, Anna,” he finished softly, “for a man to lose sight of his dreams.”
43
Chapter 5
Tavas had taken a turn for the worse. His final days were surely approaching. He no longer called anyone to his bedside, but spent the daytime as he did his nights, in a drugged-trance-like sleep. An aura of gloom, a sense of foreboding hung about the quiet house like a dense, shapeless shroud. Evenings after supper we’d taken to gathering together in what was the warmest, most cheery room of the big, drafty house. None of us wanted to be alone.
The family room was just off from the kitchen, close to the stairs. It was a huge room with an enormous stone fireplace and old but comfortable furniture made all the more homey by the fact that none of it made up a matching set. The faded, flowered couch had sat in the corner ever since I could remember. Near it was Tavas’s favorite black recliner, left disturbingly empty now even when the room was crowded, as if none of us dared to take his place. Three deep-cushioned easy chairs of varying patterns and colors, hung with Alice’s thick, white crocheting, were scattered lazily here and there at cozy angles about a blazing hearth.
The doctor had been called in again this evening. Though it was not his practice to make house calls, he always came. During each and every visit he made it a point
44
to explain that calls could no longer be made at the ranch. “It’s just not done,” he would insist in his most professional voice. “This is the last time I’ll see you at the house.” Tavas always listened to his tirade with the patience of a saint. Like many of the ranchers on Echegaray’s list, he’d never been to the doctor’s clinic. I doubted if he even knew where it was. Everyone in the area knew it took only a phone call to have gruff, kind-hearted old Dr. Echegaray materialize, no matter what time of day or night, battered black bag in hand.
Now, as I watched him climb the stairs, white head bowed, his aged and bent body moving slowly, I was filled with apprehension. Something in his manner tonight forewarned of bad news. He hadn’t paused to chat with Brad and me, but continued steadily toward the stairs, his white brow creased, his heavy jaw set. The only other time I’d seen that look of defeat in his eyes was the night Lucas had died.
I heard the sound of tapping heels across the oak floor as Alice moved toward the stairway to join the doctor at the head of the stairs. Then they both disappeared from sight.
Brad drew his chair closer to mine. The murmur of our voices was low above the crackling of the rosy fire as we continued to fill up the time by talking about summers long ago. Whenever there was a lull in our conversation, the silence took over. The ticking of the Grandfather clock in the corner seemed to grow louder and louder as if monitoring the minutes, the hours, Tavas had left to live.
Colleen didn’t join the rest of us in our nightly vigil. Most every evening she would drive into town in her red sports car. My gaze fell upon Ivan as he paced restlessly in front of the stone fireplace. He’d been silent and moody tonight, resisting any effort Brad and I’d made to include
45
him in our rambling, unfocused conversation. The crackling glow of the fire cast long shadows upon his dark face as he glanced up at the ponderous old clock, eyes suddenly narrowed, his lips tightening with growing annoyance. It was getting late. Colleen should have been home hours ago.
Someone was coming down the stairs. I turned at the sound of footsteps to find Alice, pale and wan from sleepless nights, singling me out with a beckoning finger. “He’s conscious now,” she said as I moved to join her on the staircase. “He’s asking for you.”
Quickly, I followed her up the stairs to his room. Now a dark and dreary chamber illuminated only by the weak glow of the small brass lamp near the bed, it seemed to have somehow grown smaller. So small that the darkness threatens to swallow me up, to engulf me. I moved toward Tavas’s bedside.
Tavas lay gray-faced and still upon his pillows, but his eyes were bright and alert. This time, no cigar dangled defiantly from his lips. His black cap had been removed, revealing the silver of his thinning hair. The veins of his temples stood out, unusually large and blue against his mottled skin. His strong, sharp features were contorted with pain he could no longer mask.
