The Crossings Read Online Free PDF Page B

at Hart and watched him as he dismounted his blaze-face black and walked over and took his rifle, walked back to the horse and shoved it in its scabbard and then returned and bent down to her suddenly and took her cheeks between his fingers and squeezed.
    She was cut deep there and it must have hurt like hell but she said nothing.
    "You want to remember something, woman," he said. "Your little friend died all over me last night. That matter to you? Do you give a good goddamn about that? I don't think you do. This what we get for helping you?"
    He squeezed harder. Blood seeped through the bandage beneath his thumb.
    "Hey, Hart," I said. "Jesus, Hart!"
    She was a thief but she was hurt and a woman and I was nearly down off Suzie when Mother reached over and stopped me.
    "Leave it be, son."
    "You do that, Bell," he said, and then to her, "now are you going to talk to me? Because I'm a little tired of you looking at me in Apache, if you get my meaning. You stole from me and you stole from Mother and Bell over there and I want to know why and if you don't start talking to me soon I may just take the roan and leave you under this goddamn shade tree for the wolves and coyotes this evening. Because I am looking at one damn fool here, doing what you're doing."
    He released her and stood away. Finally she nodded. "Can I have a drink of water?" she said. The first words in English we'd heard out of her.
    "Hell," said Mother, "you can have dinner . We all will. Then we'll talk. That okay with you, Hart?"
    "That's fine, Mother."
    Now what's your goddamn name? he said and she told him.

    We got her on the horse and rode in the rapid-falling sunset to a creek we knew of where the mustangs liked to take their water evenings. She told us she wanted a bath, that it would make her feel much better and nobody tried to talk her out of it. Hart said he'd come along. The horses needed watering he said and our canteens needed filling. It didn't seem quite proper to me but nobody tried to talk him out of it either. Not even her. I could only figure she wasn't much for privacy.
    Mother had thought to bring along fresh bandages so replacing them after her bath wasn't going to be a problem.
    We watched them descend the slope to the stream, Hart leading our horses and Elena the one she'd stolen from Mother and then we set about gathering what firewood the meager scrub around us had to offer.
    "What's his problem, Mother?" I asked when we were nearly through.
    "Who? Hart? You mean with the Mex?"
    I nodded.
    "Hell, Hart knows the Mex well. Most of 'em are still half Indian you understand. So you got to show 'em your cojones . Get them to respect you. Otherwise they're liable to slit your throat one night just because they like the shine of your boots. You know that Hart was a drover during Win Scott's Puebla campaign."
    I said I hadn't. I was surprised to hear it in fact and told him so — that I was with Scott myself and Hart knew that and so did he. So why hadn't they told me?
    "Hell, I was there too," Mother said. "I never told you, neither."
    "Why?"
    "You never asked, Bell. Anyhow that was where we met, Hart and me. Summer of '47, just after Santa Anna got his ass handed to him at Cerro Gordo, just before the push to Mexico City."
    "You were garrisoned there? In Puebla?"
    "Nope. Supply train. Hell of a time for everybody, though, no matter where you were."
    "I know. You had Santa Anna on the one hand scurrying around scrounging for troops and cash and us just sitting there waiting for reinforcement and filling up the goddamn hospitals. For months in that garrison we lost twelve or so men every day to heat and dysentery and all you could do was wrap them in the shit-stained blankets they died in and dump them into those pits they had outside there. Some dazzling military mind, that Scott had. Bastard never stopped drilling those boys though they were lucky to get half rations. And there he is, waiting for the 9th New England Regiment I think it was to