The Son Read Free

the tracks led right into the Garcia lands, which border the river, which, as it has been so dry, can be crossed nearly anywhere.
    “I do not mind old Pedro,” he said, “but his sons-in-law are as vile a pack of niggers as I have ever seen.”
    “You’ve been spending too much time with the Colonel,” I told him.
    “He does sabe his Mexicans.”
    “I have found just the opposite.”
    “In that case, boss, I am hoping you will learn me the various honest explanations for a cut fence leading to Pedro Garcia’s pastures while we are short two hundred head. Time was we would cross and take them back but that is a bit above our bend these days.”
    “Old Pedro can’t watch every inch of his land any more than we can watch every inch of ours.”
    “You’re a big man,” he said, “and I don’t see why you act like such a small one.”
    After that he had no further comment. He considers it a personal affront that a Mexican might own so much land in our day and age. Of course the vaqueros do not help: because of his weight and high voice they call him Don Castrado behind his back.
    As for Pedro Garcia, trouble seems to follow him like a lonely dog. Two of his sons-in-law are being pursued by the Mexican authorities for cattle theft, a notable accomplishment given that country’s views on such matters. I attempted to visit him last week, only to be turned back by José and Chico. Don Pedro no feel good, they told me, and pretended not to understand my Spanish. I have known Pedro my entire life, knew he would accept me as a visitor, but of course I turned my horse around and said nothing.
    Pedro has been shorthanded so long that the brush is overrunning his land, and for the past two years he has only managed to brand half his calves. Each year he makes less money, each year he cannot hire as many men, and thus each year his income decreases yet again.
    Still he has retained his good nature. I have always preferred his household to our own. We both enjoyed the old days, when it was a gentler land, with white caliche roads and adobe villages, not a thornbush to be seen and the grass up to your stirrups. Now the brush is relentless and the old stone villages are abandoned. The only houses built are crooked wood-frame monstrosities that grow like mushrooms but begin rotting just as quickly.
    In many ways Pedro has been a truer father to me than the Colonel; if he has ever had a harsh word for me, I have not heard it. He had always hoped I might take an interest in one of his daughters, and for a time I was quite infatuated with María, the eldest, but I could sense the Colonel was strongly against it, and, like a coward, I allowed the feeling to pass. María went to Mexico City to pursue her studies; her sisters married Mexicans, all of whom have their eyes on Pedro’s land.
    My greatest fear is that Sullivan is right and that Pedro’s sons-in-law are involved with the theft of our stock; they may not understand what the consequences will be; they may not understand that Don Pedro cannot protect them.
    A UGUST 11, 1915
    Sally and Dr. Pilkington are driving Glenn, our youngest, to San Antonio. He was shot tonight when we came across some riders in the dark. The wound is high in the shoulder and is certainly not life threatening and had it not been for the Colonel I would have gone to San Antonio with my son.
    The Colonel has decided that the shooters were our neighbors. When I protested that it was too dark for any of us to have seen the guilty parties, it was implied that I was a traitor.
    “If you’d learned anything I taught you,” he said. “That was Chico and José on those horses.”
    “Well, you must have eyes like a catamount to be able to see in the dark past a furlong.”
    “As you well know,” he told me, “my vision has always carried farther than that of other men.”
    About a quarter of the town (the white quarter) is downstairs. Along with the Rangers, all of our vaqueros, and the Midkiff vaqueros