The Last Ride. Thomas Eidson

pulled his hat off, tossing it behind him and rolling up his sleeves. His hair was a dead white color. Jones was watching him closely.

      ‘Keep your hands off her.’

      Jones placed the pistol’s muzzle against the gray’s skull.

      Mannito dropped to his knees between the animal’s legs. She was kicking in her death throes. Alice darted in again, nipping at him. He paid no attention.

      Mannito drummed once more with the tips of his bony fingers on the swollen loin, listening for the organs below. Time was running out, he knew. He turned his head toward Jones, concentrating, trying to visualize the critical spot.

      Staring up at the old giant, Mannito knew that they were friends, even if Samuel Jones wasn’t consciously aware of it. The idea of this friendship with Jones seemed an odd thing to the little Mexican. Nevertheless, he was sure it existed. It didn’t matter that Jones had never uttered a single kind word to him. Kind words were nothing. The two of them shared, Mannito knew, far more than words, shared more than just their two long lives. They instinctively understood one another. And understanding, he had always felt, was the foundation of true friendship. The evidence was everywhere. They had both lost their wives, lost most of their children, had lived hard existences, in solitude, far away from their own kind. They were poor men, but men who possessed another kind of wealth: they believed in something far greater than themselves. That was true wealth. These things, Mannito felt, bound them as amigos.

      As further proof of their friendship, Mannito recalled that since Jones’ arrival, the old giant had silently shared the barn work: tossing hay, cleaning stalls, and filling water troughs. Mannito greatly respected this about his friend. Though deathly ill, he was no loafer. He was a man of character who mindfully paid his own way. The week before, Mannito had found his burro, Peso, carefully brushed and curried, the animal’s hooves cleaned and polished, and its little weathered halter expertly spliced with fresh rawhide. He had thanked Jones. But the old man had simply ignored him. Still, they both knew. Mannito smiled to himself as he stared at Jones, pleased that he recognized these little signs that betrayed their friendship.

      From that day forward, Mannito had talked to him whenever they were in the barn. Jones never answered but Mannito sensed that he listened and calculated and weighed the things he said. These one-sided conversations cut the loneliness. He wished Jones had longer to live. Wished that he would acknowledge their friendship.

      ‘I’m warning!’ the old man bellowed, pointing the pistol at Mannito, and struggling to stand. ‘You hurt her and I’ll splatter you all over this ranch.’

      Mannito looked back at the old horse. He knew his friend Jones would not shoot him but he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t turn the little gun on himself if they lost the gray. Mannito’s hands were shaking. He had never tried to save a horse with the bloat. The long, thin metal trocar was slippery in his sweating hands.

      He looked up at Jones and tried to smile, prayed silently to Jesus’ Mother, then leaned forward and plunged the huge pin into the gray’s paunch. Jones raised the little pistol; then he heard a loud shhhhhhishing and watched in amazement as the mare’s belly shrank like a punctured ball.

      Even more astonishing was the effect on the old horse. She stopped panting and moaning and lay still on the grass. Minutes later, she struggled to her feet and started to graze again, as if nothing had happened. Jones pulled her away from the wet plants and looked down, stunned, at the little Mexican. Mannito just squatted and grinned up at him, then began to laugh, looking like a small wrinkle-faced monkey, enormously tickled that he had saved the old horse.

      ‘Damn bueno thing, right?’ the Mexican said, holding up the large pin. ‘A damn good thing.’

      Chaco was dancing on his hind legs. Alice was sniffing the gray. Jones nodded, still shocked at the mare’s miraculous recovery. Mannito held out his small hand for the rope that was looped around the horse’s neck.

      ‘I walk. She needs to move. I watch her. Muy bueno,’ he said, running his hands over the old pony. ‘I walk,’ he said again, sticking his hand closer to Jones.

      Jones looked at the man’s hand, then his face. He still looked stunned.

      ‘I walk,’ Mannito said once more.

      Jones continued to look at him. Finally, he handed him the rope. He nodded at the little man again, but said nothing. It was enough. Mannito understood.

      ‘It was nothing, viejo,’ the Mexican said.

      Darkness was falling hard. Baldwin and Lily hadn’t returned from checking the herd in the high pastures. Jones was growing concerned. Baldwin was smart enough. Since the night of the sandstorm, Jones had noticed that he had been wearing his pistol and sticking close to his oldest daughter. But the man wouldn’t believe that anyone but a love-struck cowboy had chased his Lily. Jones had tried to convince him otherwise. So had Mannito. But he wasn’t listening. Jones studied the rust-colored mountains surrounding the little valley, hoping the rancher’s stubbornness hadn’t got him and the girl into trouble somewhere out on the trail.

      Hard-headed and hard to scare, Baldwin was like most of the men who built things out of this wilderness. That was why the People had such a hard time with them, Jones knew. They did what they had to do to survive. They weren’t bad people, just tough and self-reliant. And for the past few days, Brake Baldwin’s cows – all the future his family possessed – had been dropping calves, unattended, in this rough country. Some of these animals, the rancher knew, would need his help or they’d die. Therefore, Brake Baldwin had headed for the high pastures, no matter what, and taken his daughter with him so he could keep a protective eye on her.

      Mannito had been left at the house to watch over Maggie. In the rancher’s mind, Maggie was safe. Some young cowboy had simply fallen dumbstruck over Lily. The girl certainly had the looks to rattle a man. But Jones didn’t have it figured exactly that way. There was more to it, he felt. He just didn’t know what it was for sure.

      From conversations overheard in the barn, he knew that James and Dot would take the wagon and spend the night in the little railhead town. So that afternoon, after watching the gray to make certain she was truly recovering, and leaving the Mexican with Maggie, he had taken a Baldwin horse and trailed the two youngsters well out onto the desert, until he was convinced they were safe. Three times, he rode wide of the wagon’s trail by a mile on either side to see that there were no horse tracks following them. Nothing.

      Satisfied, he had returned to the ranch, arriving late in the day, his body shot through with a numbing exhaustion. Chaco barked to announce their arrival from his perch on the horse’s rump. Maggie was sitting on the porch. She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. Mannito was standing hidden in the shadows of the barn, holding the reins of a fresh horse, his ancient shotgun slung across his back. Alice was braying happily.

      ‘Los niños?’ Mannito asked, mounting the horse he held and pointing toward town. ‘The children?’

      Jones nodded.

      ‘I ride to Señor Brake.’ He stopped and looked hard into Jones’ face and started to say something else, but then seemed to think better of it. Jones could tell he was tense. It was a feeling they shared. Finally, Mannito just smiled and said, ‘Good night, viejo.’

      Jones didn’t say anything.

      Mannito watched him a moment longer, something obviously on his mind, then he turned the horse and began to kick hard for the hills that were fading in the gathering purple dusk.

      Jones would have ridden with him, but he didn’t want to leave Maggie unguarded. Whatever was wrong, might involve her as well. He followed the dark speck of the little Mexican and his galloping horse for a while, trying to figure out what the man had wanted to say to him. He wasn’t sure. But he had definitely wanted to say something.

      Jones turned and gazed through the deepening shadows at the darkened house. The moon was rising over the rim of the mountain. Maggie was right: he didn’t belong here. That was why he had never come before. It wasn’t fair to her.