The Crossings Read Free Page A

features.
    She had just met the Valenzura sisters. Old Eva, Maria, and Lucia.
    Her guardians in hell.

FOUR

    " WHAT THE GODDAMN KIND OF FIRST-THINGIN-THE-MORNING HORSESHIT IS THIS? "
    The calfskins layered across the cabin's floor had seemed sufficiently large for three the night before but now seemed much too small for two. I awoke to the bellowing of a huge bearded bear of a man in sweat-stained long johns staring at my feet directly across from his balding head. What had been merely an admittedly large, yet gently snoring figure in the dark was now the red-eyed face of hostility. It seemed likely as not that he would reach over and tear off my feet and beat me with them.
    Where was Hart when I needed him?
    Then I smelled the coffee.
    "Easy, Mother. The gentleman's name is Marion T. Bell."
    He was standing at a scorched blackened stove which might well have dated back to the War of 1812.
    "Bell? I never hearda no goddamn Bell!"
    He got up and stepped into a pair of frayed grey trousers and pulled up the suspenders and that was that, he was dressed. I couldn't remember for the life of me where I'd put my own and didn't want to move just yet. Not until he'd settled down some. I watched him stomp across the floor to Hart and Hart pour something steaming brown and nearly as thick as syrup out of a stained tin pan.
    He divided the stuff evenly into three tin cups and handed one to Mother who drank it straight away.
    It was possible to imagine at that moment that his lunch might be a Joshua Tree burst aflame.
    "Thought we could use a third hand."
    "Him? Christ on a cross, Hart. He's green . Look at him!"
    He turned to me. I was up and searching for my shirt and pants. I found them easily enough, neatly folded on the only chair in the room, my boots beneath the chair. Hart's doing.
    "Yer green , ain't ya! Jesus Christ, Hart. You throw this dumb green kid at me first thing in the goddamn morning and I dunno what to think, I really don't. I dunno what the hell's on your mind sometimes. You know that? God damned if I do. 'Spose we could use a third body out there, though. Yeah, I guess we could. Can he ride? He can ride, can't he? Can you ride, goddammit? "
    "He rode with Scott into Mexico City."
    "Win Scott? That dry tit? Well what the hell. I'm Mother Knuckles you're Marion T. Bell. Pleased to meet ya."
    He put out his hand.
    It was a handshake I will not readily forget.

    It was not my own horse but a young sorrel they had me on that day and I won't forget her either, because while I knew nothing of the nature of our undertaking she knew everything. We found five horses grazing in an arroyo, beautiful creatures, chestnut and bay — not at all like the tough unlovely beasts descended from the Spanish breed but tall and strong — and we herded them stricken with some primal fear of us yelping riders through a long wide wash directly into the box canyon I learned that Hart and Mother had used many times before, Mother working left and Hart working right and the horse Suzie and I center, the easiest position to hold because the wild horses would naturally want to break to either side.
    Suzie did the work and all I had to do was hold on — a daunting enough proposition in itself with her darting left and right according to the horses' movements ahead of her, riding at a far faster speed than any I'd ever had need of before and then once we'd trapped them, riding back and forth across the mouth of the canyon turning on a dime to discourage three of them from bolting for freedom while Hart and Mother choke-roped the other two to the ground, looping and tying off the ropes around the forelegs first and then the back, returning to their horses to repeat the process with two of the three chestnuts until finally Mother took the fifth and last alone.
    For a man the size of Mother, it was amazing to watch him work with such sheer dexterity and speed. You more or less expected it of Hart. But Mother was a revelation. The power in him was