“Tadpole?” Randall called to him.
“Just Tad,” the boy replied. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’m sorry, son, but you have to stay.”
“The hell I do. Harry was my best friend. I want to kill them sorry suckers who done that to him.”
“Let me handle all that,” Randall said. “You stay here with your father and help work the ranch while I’m gone.”
The boy spit.
“Daddy don’t care what I do one way or the other. And no offense, Mr. Dawson, but you ain’t exactly no Texas Ranger or nothing.”
Randall grimaced but kept calm.
“You’re a good boy. A tough boy, I’m sure. So stay here in case the Bentleys double back. They may try to come back for the rest of the horses.”
The boy studied him, weighing his words and looking for what was truth and what was not.
“Alright then,” he said at last. “I’ll stay and guard the ranch.”
“I’ll see you when I get back,” Randall told him.
“Whatever you say,” the boy replied as he rode back toward the main spread.
* * *
Randall rode hard for two days, hoping to put enough distance between himself and the ranch so as to not change his mind and turn back, revealing himself a coward.
In each town he inquired after the boys and in Tucson a man said he’d seen them. He said two men on the horses Randall described had passed through, headed south. Randall paid the man and hoped his information was truth and then rode on.
Only one day later he crossed paths with a caravan of Mexicans who were escaping north so as to avoid the bloody business of revolutions. Randall flashed his posters around, asking if anyone had seen these hermanos gringos. An old man called to him.
“Yes?” Randall asked excitedly. “You’ve seen these men?”
The old man nodded and began to speak Spanish.
“No,” Randall waved his hands in front of the man. “No habla español. Inglés?”
“I speak English,” a younger man said and came and stood near his elder.
“He says he has seen these men. He has seen them in Mexico first and then in America. He says they go to uh . . . Tejas.”
“Texas, yes,” Randall encouraged the man.
“He says these are men who . . . uh . . . he says they are black and white.”
“No, no, they are both white,” Randall said, pointing to the likeness. “Both white. Dos gringos.”
The old man waved him off and continued speaking.
“He says souls are black and white,” the translator said. “Eh . . . one good and one bad.”
“I’m sorry,” Randall said. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“He says they go east. Tejas.”
* * *
Randall kept south for another half day, then turned east not far from what he believed to be the Mexican border. At night he built small fires and hoped any banditos or revolutionaries would leave him be.
The eastward hills outlined a disturbance in the distant curve of the earth’s plane, rising and falling in metered sequence like the breath of a newborn. The sun paused at its highest point, the apogee of the world observed, and even at its most distant positioning the warmth of its being enveloped all before it, some drinking in its energy, others seeking shelter from the harshness of its rays. And into such heat Randall walked, leading the horse behind him, unsure of what deliverance or disaster might be met on the road ahead.
In the late afternoon he ventured from the road to search for water and was quickly lost. He heard his wife’s words and saw now the truth in them. He could see the sun in the west but could discern nothing else, and the road was nowhere to be found.
Randall sat in the failing light like some desperado of old. He sat and there was nothing to be done. There may have been a time but such time had long passed and these things in motion were so set in a world far away and yet the same.
Mara stirred behind him and what colors did appear, and they were drawn fleeting across the makeshift sky in hues of purple and pink. The dusk is provisional, always, but no more so than the day or even the life. And when a life ends, there is still the changing sky. As when the dusk turns to night there are still the living, and neither depending on the other yet both existing and both unsure of how to do anything save carry on.
As he sat he thought of the nature of man and questioned it and wondered aloud if he actually hoped to find the men who murdered his son. He hated them, and that he knew, and he wanted them to suffer, but he had assumed it would be at the hands of other, more violent men.
“Is it my inexperience in the art of combat that stymies my courage,” he spoke to the night. “Or have I no courage to begin with?”
Perhaps, he thought, I am a coward and a dandy, as they say, and I rode out only because I know I will neither find nor face them.
“In fact,” he spoke again. “I’m certain I will encounter only myself on this quest and at such time will appease my own guilt with the notion that I at least tried.”
He thought of his grandfather, the great warrior and conqueror, and of his father, who spoke of the wildness of the territories as if it were the only way to truly measure a man’s soul. He was ashamed when he thought of their strength and vision and him having neither. But he shook away the thought and decided the future of the world would be crafted by civilized men and he then felt foolish for having agreed to such a primal and unsavory mission as he found himself on.
And if I do find them, he thought, and I somehow gain the upper hand and take my revenge, what then? What am I but a killer, all the same. No, I will put an end to this folly in the morning and Joanna will understand because she is a civilized woman of society and I am her husband and these violent means are not our way.
There is strength in knowledge and compassion, he told himself. There is honor in such things.
Still, sleep was slow coming and the coyotes were quiet and something moved in the dark and Randall tried to remember if he’d loaded his guns.
* * *
That night Randall dreamed his son was eaten by a black bear. They were in the Rim Country south of Longpine, deep in the forests that sloped up from Christopher Creek and the fall leaves had turned and the trees were tired and ready to be rid of the extra weight. The bear opened wide its mouth and began to swallow Harry whole and Randall’s guns would not fire and so he spoke to the beast as if it were a man.
“Let him go,” he begged the bear, and to Randall’s surprise the bear spit the boy out and he saw that it was not his son but himself, and his grandfather was close behind and he knew they were hunting.