House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“Mexican families across the river. They know nothing about Mr. Beckman. They don’t even know his name. They simply say there is a man with hair like a woman who lives by one of the old missions and that he will pay large amounts of money for a pretty girl who is a burden to her family.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“They do not go to the police because they are afraid they will be sent back to Mexico. Will you answer a puzzle for me? We all know that starving people will eat members of their own family. Knowing this, why should we be surprised at anything they do?”

“You’re a grim fellow, Andre.”

“You avoid the problem. Tell me now, do you want to knock on Mr. Beckman’s door? Maybe we will save a young girl’s life. Or maybe not. Maybe after we leave, he will pick up his telephone and have your son killed. Do you want me to park in front? I’m waiting.”

A red spark still burned in the hills beneath a patch of blue sky. Hackberry picked up his saddlebags from the backseat and set them on his lap. “Head down to those Spanish ruins,” he said, removing a spyglass from one of the bags. “We’ll see what Mr. Beckman is up to. Maybe he’ll take us to my son.”

“He is not a stupid man.”

“Like me?”

“Why would you say such a thing about yourself?”

“Because I made a mess of my life and hurt many people in the process. The one I hurt the most was my son, and I cain’t forgive myself for it.”

Andre looked straight ahead and said nothing until they arrived at the ruins, then it was only to ask if Hackberry wanted him to go to town for food.

“That’s a good idea,” Hackberry replied. “Maybe get something for the night air, too.”

“You mean brandy?”

Hackberry thought about it, his hands dry and rough as he rubbed one on top of the other. “I could sure use one of those Cherry Mash candy bars. They’re a treat, aren’t they?”

AS ANDRE DROVE away, Hackberry spread his slicker on the ground by a crumbling stone wall and used his saddlebags as a cushion for his back, then draped his blanket over his shoulders and pulled the segments of his spyglass into a long tube. He could see shadows moving on the shades of the lighted second-story windows, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. He gazed through the spyglass until his eye became tired and watery, and the sky filled with bats and swallows.

He could not get Andre’s story of the kidnapped children out of his mind, and he wondered how Andre had not gone mad. He also wondered if he was soon to join the ranks of those who carried images in their heads that were the equivalent of hot coals.

The moon resembled a wafer broken crookedly in half from top to bottom. Beneath it, the sun had refused to die, creating a bowl of light between the hills that dimmed and grew in intensity and then dimmed again, like the refraction of candles on the inside of a gold cup.

Not far away was the site where 188 men and boys were killed on the thirteenth day of a siege that had left Mexican soldiers piled to the top of the walls surrounding the mission known as the Alamo. On the last night of their lives, did the moon rise in the same fashion, signaling that an ancient event of enormous significance was about to repeat itself? The buglers behind the Mexican ramparts were blowing “El Degüello,” black flags flapping on the regimental staffs, signaling no quarter. Did the men and boys defending the mission’s walls hold hands and tremble as they assembled for a final prayer? Did their fear suck the moisture from their throats and mouths and leave them with a thirst that could never be slaked? Surely the dust blowing from the plains in clouds that looked like swarms of insects wouldn’t conspire to clog their nostrils and mix with their sweat and turn their faces into death masks before their time? This could not happen to them, could it?

An even more troubling thought confronted him. Was the cruciform shape of the ruins where he sat a coincidence or a suggestion of the fate about to be imposed on his son?

Hackberry untied one of his saddle bags and removed his Peacemaker and the bowie knife that was honed with an edge like a barber’s razor and sheathed in a double-layer deerskin scabbard. At what point could a man justifiably go to the dark side and take on the

characteristics and deeds of his enemies? He knew stories from old Rangers about the raids on Indian encampments, and the denial of mercy to even the smallest or the oldest in the tribe. The rationalization was always the same: The Indians, particularly the Comanche, had committed atrocities against innocent farm families and missionaries or sometimes a lone trader whose wagon was loaded with pots and pans and machine-made clothes and whiskey. But Hackberry always had the sense that the thundering charges upon the wickiups and the storm of bullets and the burning of the Indians’ food and blankets and buffalo robes were intended to be repeated until there was not one Indian left alive south of the Red River.

He felt very weary, in the way he had felt weary when he had committed himself to a dissolute life, and no sooner had he closed his eyes than his head nodded on his chest. He felt his pistol slip from his grip and his bowie knife slide off his thigh. In his dream he saw Ishmael as a little boy in a suit and tie and short pants and shoes with buckles, an Easter basket on his forearm, a pet rabbit inside it. Ishmael looked up into his face. Why did you leave us, Big Bud?

I didn’t aim to.

That’s what you did.

It just happened. I didn’t have a lot of smarts back then. I walked off without knowing the awful mistake I’d made.

You could have come back.

I tried. I wrote and telegrammed your mother. I never got a reply, no matter where I sent my messages.

We were poor and needed your help. Why wouldn’t she answer?

It was obvious. She wanted shut of me.

Help me, Big Bud.