Winter Rain полностью

It was weeks later as they followed a course slightly east of south that the riders no longer came across any outflung settlements of white men. Instead, they rode toward the distant, gleaming, snow-draped walls of the adobe huts that seemed to squat on the valley floor, what proved to be a settlement of farmers and sheep herders nestled among steep-sided bluffs on one side, those buttes and canyon walls taking the unwilling eye and leading it upward toward the clouds and peaks mantled in white one upon the other.

“You s’pose we’re in Mexico already?” Jonah asked.

With a shrug Two Sleep replied, “Never ride this far. Ute country. Far into Ute country. Don’t know, Jonah Hook.”

“Long as it’s been since we left Brigham Young’s City, it still don’t seem we’ve come far enough to be in Mexico. Maybe these here Mexicans live north of Mexico.”

“No matter, Jonah Hook. We still go south—still ride till the land of the traders who buy your sons.”

“Comancheros.”

“Yes, comancheros. We ride into land of the comancheros.”

They had pushed off the sangre-hued hills, colored by the blood of infinite sunsets spread prayerfully on this ancient land, wending their way down, down to that village of adobe shacks, mud-and-wattle jacales, cramped streets of solid-wheeled carretas, a village where farmers and shepherds knew little English. But unlike Brigham Young’s Mormon settlers, these brown-skinned people would in their own way try to help the stranger come among them that waning winter as Jonah learned 1868 had died and 1869 had already ushered itself in.

There would be days and weeks, months and seasons to come learning more and more of the language as he and Two Sleep pushed on east of south, struggling over mountains and crossing valley floors, only to recross and return time and again to familiar villages and ranchos when a fickle clue or rumor ran itself out like the trickle of water in this arid land. As the miles became years, Jonah knew more of the right words to use, better to pose his questions while the seasons turned and the winds cleansed the land with each unfathomable tilt of the earth away from the sun.

As they had realized that first winter afternoon riding into that first village where nothing but Spanish was spoken, the two strangers come from the land of the north had long known the one word that was sure to get a map drawn with a stick in the dirt, perhaps scratched on a table or stone hearth with a chunk of charcoal—or only as simple a gesture as a nod and a pointing of the arm with the name of a new village to try.

That lone, powerful word never changed across the last four winters as Jonah Hook asked his one question—his first and last question in this distant, sunny land.

“Comancheros?”

25

Winter 1872-1873

HE HATED THE taste of tequila.

Like someone had boiled down a winter-old pair of longhandles in a copper kettle as they distilled the cactus juice. It turned his stomach just hitting his tongue. Not like the corn whiskey a man got back home in Virginia, even Missouri. Corn whiskey betrayed its punch and potency behind a taste more genteel on the tongue. Like a proper southern gentleman who could shake your hand with civility or kick you in the head like a mule.

But not this tequila. It was a drink as crude as the people who brewed it behind every poor mud-and-wattle jacal huddled beneath the never-changing sky like trail droppings from the passing of the sun itself. Some varieties proved to be more bitter than others, but the best of them no better than sour. He hated having nothing else to drink—warm, milky water, or this goddamned tequila.

But that never stopped Jonah from pouring more of the saddle varnish from the garrafas, the pitchers of fired clay. Never stopped him from bringing the glazed cups to his lips at every stop, every village and cantina, every brothel or barn. More times than he cared to remember, Jonah and Two Sleep had spent nights in any sort of dosshouse where they might lie with the whores for the cost of a few centavos. When there were no beds to be had, no matter the price, sleeping with their animals among the fragrant hay of barns and liveries at no cost at all had done nicely.