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  “You looking for company, soldier boy?”

  “No. I’m looking for my wife, Shelia. She lives in number five.”

  “If she ain’t home, come back and see me.”

  Her proposition disgusted him. He was proud of himself—a married man. He didn’t need to be looking at other women. Not with his wife waiting for him only fifty feet away. The lights were out in number five. He knocked on the door, his heart beating like a runaway horse. He was downright ready to embrace his lovely wife.

  “Who’s there?” a sleepy voice shouted.

  “It’s your husband, darling.”

  Inside, hollering and shouting erupted. Hearing enough, he kicked in the cheese-box door with one heavy combat boot. It busted wide open. A woman screamed from under a blanket on the bed. A man pulling on pants danced across the floor and rushed out the door like Mark might be gonna shoot him. He damn-sure would’ve if he’d ‘a had him a gun. As it was, he ran after the man, who high-tailed it across the parking lot and behind another cabin.

  Furious and looking for someone to blame, Mark turned back to stare at the woman, who was pulling on a skirt and sweater. This wasn’t the Shelia he married. This wasn’t the teenager he had held with so much respect in the six months they were married before he went off to war. This was some cheating woman he didn’t recognize. No matter how hard he wished it, she was Sheila all right. Sour vomit rose from behind his tongue.

  He barely heard her pleading—how hard she’d had it, how she’d tried and tried to even find enough food to eat, how it was all his fault because he left her. He didn’t hear half her words. An evil enemy cornered him in that room, making him dizzy and sick to his stomach.

  She came over to hug him and plead for his forgiveness. Her and her mussed hair and smeared lipstick. Wanting none of that, he shoved her back on the bed and staggered to the doorway and out to Van Buren street. He flagged down a ride that took him over to Mesa. His old man lived with a Mexican wife somewhere in that vicinity.

  After several dead-end tries, he met a man on the street who told him that his dad lived down at Chandler on a cotton farm. He hitched a ride with a husband and wife to the road where they lived and walked the mile down to an adobe jacal in the middle of the tall, ripe cotton. No lawn, just dirt and oil spots with tractors and farm machinery parked all around the place.

  There were some black-eyed kids who ran to tell the people in the house a real soldier was out there. His dad came to the doorway and blinked at the sight of him.

  Dad’s hair and mustache had turned snow white. He looked twenty years older than when Mark saw him last.

  “That you, Mark?”

  “It ain’t Saint Nick.” They embraced. He got kind of teary and so did Dad. When it was over, both men snuffed and wiped their eyes.

  Dad slapped him on the back. “I didn’t expect you to come by so soon. How’s your wife?”

  “I don’t have one anymore.” He just wished everyone would stop talking about his wife.

  “Gawd, I’m sorry. I should’ve taken her in, but me and Lenore have three kids now. They’re your half-brothers. Except Lillie, she’s your half-sister. Times have been hard. I was doing day labor. We lived in an abandoned adobe. Nothing….” He looked down at callused hands like he was ashamed.

  Not sure what to say, Mark cleared his throat. “I know you must have tried. Do you still have a saddle?”

  “Sure, why?” The faded blue eyes glanced up.

  “I want to borrow it. I’m going to get me a horse and ride it to hell and back. Maybe find myself again somewhere out there.” He gave a toss of his head to anywhere.

  “You have a horse?”

  “No, but I can get one. I need to borrow the saddle.”

  “Aw, son, you sure that’s what you want to do? Get a job before they’re all gone. There’s so many soldiers coming home. Get a car and save your money. They say this next depression will be ten times worse than the last one.”

  “I don’t care. I’m going to try to drive the madness in my mind away.”

  “It must have been hell.”

  “Sure was, but the worst is coming home and finding a wife cheating on me. Things are so different from what I wanted them to be. I can’t tell you, but I am about to explode. I need to get away—clear my head.”

  Dad didn’t seem all that concerned. Instead, he turned to point to the woman. “You know my wife, Lenore?”

  Mark shook his head to clear it and studied the short, dark woman in her bright red and blue Mexican dress, her belly showing the baby inside. The snow on the mountaintop had not hurt his old man one bit.

  “Good to see you again.” Right away he could see what Dad saw in her. She had nice eyes.

  When she looked up, she smiled real sweet at him. “I heard you say you want to ride away on a horse?” She made a face.

  “Yes, I want to ride to the end of the world. Leave it all behind.”

  The caring in her dark eyes was believable. “I know a witch lives over in Gilbert that can help. She has treated many soldiers and they got better.”

  “Thanks. The horse ride’s all I need.”

  “Well.” She shrugged. “Have you eaten lately?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come, I have some enchiladas left. I will feed you. You look thin.”

  He ate her fare and then his dad showed him the saddle—a high back cantle western saddle, it had a good high fork to dally rope on. He’d kept it soaped and ready for use.

  “I can’t pay you for it now, but how much will I owe you?”

  “Is forty dollars fair?”

  “Yep. I’ll pay you whenever I get back.”

  They shook hands. That evening, he slept in a hammock under a squaw shade of palm fronds behind the house. It sure beat a foxhole with mortars flying over. In the night, he awoke to hear his father and Lenore talking about him in Spanish. Then they made love across the shelter in their hammock. His heart ached for what he’d lost—and him not doing anything to cause it but fighting that blamed war.

  Laying there in the quiet dark, looking up at a sky full of stars, he vowed that tomorrow he would go look for a horse. All he wanted now was to get away and not look back. He knew an Indian who lived up by Lehi who caught wild horses. His name was “Dirty Shirt” Jones. He could find him a suitable mustang to ride. A famous remount stallion had gotten loose and ran free for several years with those wild horses and had sired some damn good colts. He needed one of those outcroppings for himself.

  In the morning, along with his newfound half-kinfolk, he ate flour tortillas wrapped around scrambled eggs and pork chorizo with plenty of hot salsa on them. They were sweet kids and excited that their gringo brother was a real soldier. He thought back to his mother, who probably would frown at his father remarrying and producing so many little Mexican kids. But she had died years before, so that was that.

  His mother’s family had owned the ranch that he’d hoped to inherit as a boy. They buried her in Phoenix when he was in his mid-teens. She was a straight-backed woman who could, according to his father, stretch dollars until George Washington screamed. Then she made the Indian on the buffalo nickel cry real tears when she shoved him in a moldy old piggy bank. What would she have said about his planned horse ride? No telling, but she’d ’ve had something to say to him before he left, had she been alive. He still recalled her on that day he left for the army. Standing out in the yard, the wind whipping her hair. She raised one hand and held it there till he couldn’t see her any longer. Thinking about her, like to made him cry.

  The next morning he left the saddle at his father’s place, promising to come back for it. He went out to the highway and, before he walked back to Chandler, caught a ride on to Mesa. He’d stashed his war bag in a locker at the National Guard office the day before and they said it would be all right until he needed it again. Looking for a ride to Lehi from Mesa when he got out of the nice man’s ’37 Pontiac, he walked downtown to the Indian Pony Parking Lot
. There was an entire city block for Indians to leave their teams, single horses, and wagons while they shopped.

  He was sort of hanging around, looking things over, when he noticed a young squaw on one of the wagons. It was Alma Cornbird, a girl he’d known during high school. She smiled and spoke to him in Spanish. Wrapped in a bright colored blanket, she was less than five feet tall. Hard to tell her shape from that, but she wasn’t fat or pregnant like his stepmother. She was a full blood Pima or Maricopa, or maybe she came from a related tribe that lived around there.

  “Aren’t you Carl Shaw’s son?” she asked when she quit talking in Spanish. Everyone knew his father.

  “Yes, my name is Mark.”

  “You are a soldier. Is the war really over?” she asked in English, like she could not believe it.

  “Sí. I’m still dressed like a soldier because I just got back from there. They can never cause another war. We bombed them flat.”

  “Do you have a wife?”

  There it was about a wife again. He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  “Me, either. I mean, I have no husband. He was killed in the Pacific last year.”

  “Was he an Indian?”

  “No, his name was Jeff Downs.”

  “I knew him. I’m sorry. I played football for Mesa High with him all four years.”

  “It was such a shame. Where are you going now?”

  “To see Dirty Shirt Jones. I need a horse.”

  She nodded, then sat down cross-legged in the little shade from her buckboard. “If you buy some wieners, we can cook them here and sleep under my wagon tonight. Tomorrow, we can eat the rest for breakfast and I will take you up there to his place. It is way too late to go home tonight.” She shrugged. “Without lights, we might get run over on the highway.”

  “Sure, I can do that, buy some wieners and buns. How will we cook them?”

  “There is plenty of wood around here. I will have the fire going when you get back.”

  He went to the nearest small family grocery store and bought a package of a dozen wieners, some buns, and Oreo cookies, plus some Milky Way candy bars. Good to see them again on the store shelf.

  Yes, Alma. The war is over. They even have candy bars coming back.

  Alma had a good cooking fire blazing when he returned. She sat on an old rug for their place to eat. When he drew the Milky Way out of the bag and showed her, her eyes went wide.

  “You bought that for me?”

  “Sure.”

  She stood on her toes and pursed her mouth to kiss him. He bent over and liked doing it. Then she hooked his neck to keep him down there and kissed his cheek twice more. “You are a mucho sweet hombre.”

  What would she have had to eat without his franks and buns? He didn’t bother to ask.

  She cooked two at a time on long sticks. Then, when they were kinda burned black in places, she took them off by squeezing a bun around them, lathered them in mustard, and handed them both to him.

  “You eat one,” he said.

  “No, I cook more.”

  “That fire will last. Eat with me.”

  She closed one eye to stare at him. “You want to spoil a squaw?”

  Did he want to spoil her? Why not? He’d fought a war that cost him his wife, didn’t he deserve some rewards? He smiled and nodded. “Yes, and more.”

  “Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “More than that? I better eat with you then.”

  They both laughed, and he halfway rose and kissed her again. The sun was fast fading and the fire reflected off her dark face. A nice-looking, little woman still wrapped in her blanket, though it was not cold. He knew her plans for the two of them for the night but was in no rush.

  They ate two apiece and left the rest for in the morning. She put them and the buns inside the hinged wooden box on her buckboard, so some stray dog wouldn’t find them. Then she brought out a painter’s stained canvas for a ground cloth and made them a bed under her wagon.

  The fire was about burned down, but she had more fuel stacked up for the morning. The parking lot was nearly empty. Only two other families were spending the night there. They were across the grassless city block from them. Streetlights kept things in sight. Her two buckskin horses were through munching on the Johnson grass hay. She probably cut that forage for them off a bar ditch bank on the way to town.

  Squatting down before him, she began to unlace his boots. The grin on her face made him know she was pleased he planned to stay the night with her.

  “We can undress under the covers,” she whispered.

  He agreed. He didn’t even feel bad for what he was set on doing. Somehow, it seemed right that this pretty girl would meet his needs in such a peaceful place.

  Up before dawn, she chewed on her third Oreo cookie of the day and had the fire going to cook a wiener breakfast while he dressed. He sat on his butt and re-laced his boots, knowing why his father had married Lenore. Mexican and Indian women were sure different from fussy gringos when making love. They were fierce at it—no barriers, no fussing, simply driving for the end.

  She took him to see Dirty Shirt Jones. The tall, broad-shouldered bachelor was older than Mark, a full-blood who got his name from wearing the same shirt until he wore it out. The horse-catcher stared at the squaw sitting out on her wagon seat.

  He nodded at Mark. “It is a shame her man died.”

  “Lots of good men died.” Blinking back tears, he stared across the valley, seeing some of his best buddies standing all in a row. He reached out, but they were gone now. He shook his head to clear the memories. “I need a good horse.”

  “I know where there is a sorrel stallion, maybe three, maybe four. I have tried to catch him many times. He is pretty as his sire, the famous stallion. If you help and we catch two or three more, you can have him. We only catch him, he costs forty dollars.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “I’ll go get my saddle and be back in two days. We’ll go get him and those others.”

  Dirty Shirt motioned toward the woman with his head, his braids dangling. “Is she coming along to cook?”

  Mark studied her sitting out there in the yard on the spring seat just watching him. “I’ll ask her.”

  “We will need some frijoles.”

  “I can get some supplies. Two days and I will return.”

  Dirty Shirt bobbed his head in agreement.

  Outside Jones’s jacal, he stopped to speak to Alma. “I need to go back to Mesa, then go to my father’s and get my saddle. I’ll meet you back at Mesa. Then we’ll go horse chasing, if you’d like to go along.”

  “Me go, too?” She pointed at her chest in disbelief.

  “If you want to.”

  A small smile crossed her copper lips and she wrinkled her narrow, once-broken nose at him. “I have a saddle closer than his place that you can use. Save you a long trip.”

  “Good, then we can get some supplies tomorrow and I’ll use your saddle.”

  She stopped and lowered her head. “You can use it, but it is not really mine.”

  “Who owns it?” Before the words were out of his mouth, he realized it must have been Jeff’s.

  He touched her hand and whispered, “I am so sorry.”

  “I will be fine. I will be fine, but thanks for being so caring.”

  After the trip to the Lehi store to buy a hundred-pound sack of frijoles, flour, and lard, she bought some dried figs, dried apples, and raisins from some of her Indian friends. He bought a cheap straw western hat to keep his head out of the sun. The two of them gathered the saddle and some cooking utensils. They needed a few things from her small frame house, including an old sidewall tent. That night, they slept in her bed and didn’t leave to go to Dirty Shirt’s until the sun rose to wake them.

  On the way, they washed in the wide irrigation canal. No one came by while they were naked in the water. Wading in water up to her chin, she covered her mouth and started giggling.

  “One day, some of us were bathing right here.
A white man came driving by and kept watching us and looking back until he drove his truck off in the canal. We all laughed. We dried off and left him there. I guess he got a wrecker ’cause his truck was underwater except for the top of the cab. Next time we came here it was gone. Served him right for looking at naked Indian women.” She laughed some more. It felt good to join her.

  They arrived at Dirty Shirt’s place at dusk. She built a fire a short ways from the house and made Indian fry bread. He showed up in time to help them eat it.

  Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he said, “I am glad you are bringing her along. She can damn sure cook.”

  She looked sideways at him and frowned. “Why don’t you have a woman of your own?”

  “I would have to catch more horses to feed her.”

  “That would not hurt a big man like you.”

  “Why should I have one? I can go to the dance and find plenty drunk ones to make love to me.”

  “You are worthless,” she said in Spanish.

  “You find me a pretty one. I will think about making her my wife.”

  “Hear what he wants me to do?” She pointed at Dirty Shirt.

  “Find him one.” Mark chuckled, and she made a face at him too.

  “You are no better than him.”

  Everyone laughed, and Mark felt really good for the first time since he couldn’t remember when.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON THE NEXT DAY, THEY worked their way toward the Fort McDowell Reservation, Alma driving the wagon. Tied on behind were four extra horses to relay-chase the wild ones.

  This country, dry as it was, looked so good. Mark had missed mountains in the distance, the smell of sage in bloom, cactus reaching into a blue sky. The canal was a surprise to most, not expecting to see water in any quantity in Arizona. Just showed how little folks knew. Granite Reef Dam was the last diversion dam on the Salt River Project above Phoenix. There, they crossed the last bridge over the canal and turned east to parallel the river.