The Red Pony Read online

  "Come back? Back where?"

  Gitano's whole straight body leaned forward a little. His right hand described the circle of the hills, the sloping fields and the mountains, and ended at his hat again. "Back to the rancho. I was born here, and my father, too."

  "Here?" she demanded. "This isn't an old place."

  "No, there," he said, pointing to the western ridge. "On the other side there, in a house that is gone."

  At last she understood. "The old 'dobe that's washed almost away, you mean?"

  "Yes, senora. When the rancho broke up they put no more lime on the 'dobe, and the rains washed it down."

  Jody's mother was silent for a little, and curious homesick thoughts ran through her mind, but quickly she cleared them out. "And what do you want here now, Gitano?"

  "I will stay here," he said quietly, "until I die."

  "But we don't need an extra man here."

  "I can not work hard any more, senora. I can milk a cow, feed chickens, cut a little wood; no more. I will stay here." He indicated the sack on the ground beside him. "Here are my things."

  She turned to Jody. "Run down to the barn and call your father."

  Jody dashed away, and he returned with Carl Tiflin and Billy Buck behind him. The old man was standing as he had been, but he was resting now. His whole body had sagged into a timeless repose.

  "What is it?" Carl Tiflin asked. "What's Jody so excited about?"

  Mrs. Tiflin motioned to the old man. "He wants to stay here. He wants to do a little work and stay here."

  "Well, we can't have him. We don't need any more men. He's too old. Billy does everything we need."

  They had been talking over him as though he did not exist, and now, suddenly, they both hesitated and looked at Gitano and were embarrassed.

  He cleared his throat. "I am too old to work. I come back where I was born."

  "You weren't born here," Carl said sharply.

  "No. In the 'dobe house over the hill. It was all one rancho before you came."

  "In the mud house that's all melted down?"

  "Yes. I and my father. I will stay here now on the rancho."

  "I tell you you won't stay," Carl said angrily. "I don't need an old man. This isn't a big ranch. I can't afford food and doctor bills for an old man. You must have relatives and friends. Go to them. It is like begging to come to strangers."

  "I was born here," Gitano said patiently and inflexibly.

  Carl Tiflin didn't like to be cruel, but he felt he must. "You can eat here tonight," he said. "You can sleep in the little room of the old bunkhouse. We'll give you your breakfast in the morning, and then you'll have to go along. Go to your friends. Don't come to die with strangers."

  Gitano put on his black hat and stooped for the sack. "Here are my things," he said.

  Carl turned away. "Come on, Billy, we'll finish down at the barn. Jody, show him the little room in the bunkhouse."

  He and Billy turned back toward the barn. Mrs. Tiflin went into the house, saying over her shoulder, "I'll send some blankets down."

  Gitano looked questioningly at Jody. "I'll show you where it is," Jody said.

  There was a cot with a shuck mattress, an apple box holding a tin lantern, and a backless rocking-chair in the little room of the bunkhouse. Gitano laid his sack carefully on the floor and sat down on the bed. Jody stood shyly in the room, hesitating to go. At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?"

  Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I worked down the Salinas Valley."

  The afternoon thought would not let Jody go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?"

  The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head. "Once--when I was a little boy. I went with my father."

  "Way back, clear into the mountains?"

  "Yes."

  "What was there?" Jody cried. "Did you see any people or any houses?"

  "No."

  "Well, what was there?"

  Gitano's eyes remained inward. A little wrinkled strain came between his brows.

  "What did you see in there?" Jody repeated.

  "I don't know," Gitano said. "I don't remember."

  "Was it terrible and dry?"

  "I don't remember."

  In his excitement, Jody had lost his shyness. "Don't you remember anything about it?"

  Gitano's mouth opened for a word, and remained open while his brain sought the word. "I think it was quiet--I think it was nice."

  Gitano's eyes seemed to have found something back in the years, for they grew soft and a little smile seemed to come and go in them.

  "Didn't you ever go back in the mountains again?" Jody insisted.

  "No."

  "Didn't you ever want to?"

  But now Gitano's face became impatient. "No," he said in a tone that told Jody he didn't want to talk about it any more. The boy was held by a curious fascination. He didn't want to go away from Gitano. His shyness returned.

  "Would you like to come down to the barn and see the stock?" he asked.

  Gitano stood up and put on his hat and prepared to follow.

  It was almost evening now. They stood near the watering trough while the horses sauntered in from the hillsides for an evening drink. Gitano rested his big twisted hands on the top rail of the fence. Five horses came down and drank, and then stood about, nibbling at the dirt or rubbing their sides against the polished wood of the fence. Long after they had finished drinking an old horse appeared over the brow of the hill and came painfully down. It had long yellow teeth; its hoofs were flat and sharp as spades, and its ribs and hip-bones jutted out under its skin. It hobbled up to the trough and drank water with a loud sucking noise.

  "That's old Easter," Jody explained. "That's the first horse my father ever had. He's thirty years old." He looked up into Gitano's old eyes for some response.

  "No good any more," Gitano said.

  Jody's father and Billy Buck came out of the barn and walked over.

  "Too old to work," Gitano repeated. "Just eats and pretty soon dies."

  Carl Tiflin caught the last words. He hated his brutality toward old Gitano, and so he became brutal again.

  "It's a shame not to shoot Easter," he said. "It'd save him a lot of pain and rheumatism." He looked secretly at Gitano, to see whether he noticed the parallel, but the big bony hands did not move, nor did the dark eyes turn from the horse. "Old things ought to be put out of their misery," Jody's father went on. "One shot, a big noise, one big pain in the head maybe, and that's all. That's better than stiffness and sore teeth."

  Billy Buck broke in. "They got a right to rest after they worked all their life. Maybe they just like to walk around."

  Carl had been looking steadily at the skinny horse. "You can't imagine now what Easter used to look like," he said softly. "High neck, deep chest, fine barrel. He could jump a five-bar gate in stride. I won a flat race on him when I was fifteen years old. I could of got two hundred dollars for him any time. You wouldn't think how pretty he was." He checked himself, for he hated softness. "But he ought to be shot now," he said.

  "He's got a right to rest," Billy Buck insisted.

  Jody's father had a humorous thought. He turned to Gitano. "If ham and eggs grew on a side-hill I'd turn you out to pasture too," he said. "But I can't afford to pasture you in my kitchen."

  He laughed to Billy Buck about it as they went on toward the house. "Be a good thing for all of us if ham and eggs grew on the side-hills."

  Jody knew how his father was probing for a place to hurt in Gitano. He had been probed often. His father knew every place in the boy where a word would fester.

  "He's only talking," Jody said. "He didn't mean it about shooting Easter. He likes Easter. That was the first horse he ever owned."

  The sun sank behind the high mountains as they stood there, and the ranch was hushed. Gitano seemed to be more at home in the evening. He made a curious sharp sound with his lips and stretche
d one of his hands over the fence. Old Easter moved stiffly to him, and Gitano rubbed the lean neck under the mane.

  "You like him?" Jody asked softly.

  "Yes--but he's no damn good."

  The triangle sounded at the ranch house. "That's supper," Jody cried. "Come on up to supper."

  As they walked up toward the house Jody noticed again that Gitano's body was as straight as that of a young man. Only by a jerkiness in his movements and by the scuffling of his heels could it be seen that he was old.

  The turkeys were flying heavily into the lower branches of the cypress tree by the bunkhouse. A fat sleek ranch cat walked across the road carrying a rat so large that its tail dragged on the ground. The quail on the side-hills were still sounding the clear water call.

  Jody and Gitano came to the back steps and Mrs. Tiflin looked out through the screen door at them.

  "Come running, Jody. Come in to supper, Gitano."

  Carl and Billy Buck had started to eat at the long oilcloth-covered table. Jody slipped into his chair without moving it, but Gitano stood holding his hat until Carl looked up and said, "Sit down, sit down. You might as well get your belly full before you go on." Carl was afraid he might relent and let the old man stay, and so he continued to remind himself that this couldn't be.

  Gitano laid his hat on the floor and diffidently sat down. He wouldn't reach for food. Carl had to pass it to him. "Here, fill yourself up." Gitano ate very slowly, cutting tiny pieces of meat and arranging little pats of mashed potato on his plate.

  The situation would not stop worrying Carl Tiflin. "Haven't you got any relatives in this part of the country?" he asked.

  Gitano answered with some pride, "My brother-in-law is in Monterey. I have cousins there, too."

  "Well, you can go and live there, then."

  "I was born here," Gitano said in gentle rebuke.

  Jody's mother came in from the kitchen, carrying a large bowl of tapioca pudding.

  Carl chuckled to her, "Did I tell you what I said to him? I said if ham and eggs grew on the side-hills I'd put him out to pasture, like old Easter."

  Gitano stared unmoved at his plate.

  "It's too bad he can't stay," said Mrs. Tiflin.

  "Now don't you start anything," Carl said crossly.

  When they had finished eating, Carl and Billy Buck and Jody went into the living-room to sit for a while, but Gitano, without a word of farewell or thanks, walked through the kitchen and out the back door. Jody sat and secretly watched his father. He knew how mean his father felt.

  "This country's full of these old paisanos ," Carl said to Billy Buck.

  "They're damn good men," Billy defended them. "They can work older than white men. I saw one of them a hundred and five years old, and he could still ride a horse. You don't see any white men as old as Gitano walking twenty or thirty miles."

  "Oh, they're tough, all right," Carl agreed. "Say, are you standing up for him too? Listen, Billy," he explained, "I'm having a hard enough time keeping this ranch out of the Bank of Italy without taking on anybody else to feed. You know that, Billy."

  "Sure, I know," said Billy. "If you was rich, it'd be different."

  "That's right, and it isn't like he didn't have relatives to go to. A brother-in-law and cousins right in Monterey. Why should I worry about him?"

  Jody sat quietly listening, and he seemed to hear Gitano's gentle voice and its unanswerable, "But I was born here." Gitano was mysterious like the mountains. There were ranges back as far as you could see, but behind the last range piled up against the sky there was a great unknown country. And Gitano was an old man, until you got to the dull dark eyes. And in behind them was some unknown thing. He didn't ever say enough to let you guess what was inside, under the eyes. Jody felt himself irresistibly drawn toward the bunkhouse. He slipped from his chair while his father was talking and he went out the door without making a sound.

  The night was very dark and far-off noises carried in clearly. The hamebells of a wood team sounded from way over the hill on the county road. Jody picked his way across the dark yard. He could see a light through the window of the little room of the bunkhouse. Because the night was secret he walked quietly up to the window and peered in. Gitano sat in the rocking-chair and his back was toward the window. His right arm moved slowly back and forth in front of him. Jody pushed the door open and walked in. Gitano jerked upright and seizing a piece of deerskin, he tried to throw it over the thing in his lap, but the skin slipped away. Jody stood overwhelmed by the thing in Gitano's hand, a lean and lovely rapier with a golden basket hilt. The blade was like a thin ray of dark light. The hilt was pierced and intricately carved.

  "What is it?" Jody demanded.

  Gitano only looked at him with resentful eyes, and he picked up the fallen deerskin and firmly wrapped the beautiful blade in it.

  Jody put out his hand. "Can't I see it?"

  Gitano's eyes smoldered angrily and he shook his head.

  "Where'd you get it? Where'd it come from?"

  Now Gitano regarded him profoundly, as though he pondered. "I got it from my father."

  "Well, where'd he get it?"

  Gitano looked down at the long deerskin parcel in his hand. "I don't know."

  "Didn't he ever tell you?"

  "No."

  "What do you do with it?"

  Gitano looked slightly surprised. "Nothing. I just keep it."

  "Can't I see it again?"

  The old man slowly unwrapped the shining blade and let the lamplight slip along it for a moment. Then he wrapped it up again. "You go now. I want to go to bed." He blew out the lamp almost before Jody had closed the door.

  As he went back toward the house, Jody knew one thing more sharply than he had ever known anything. He must never tell anyone about the rapier. It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was a truth that might be shattered by division.

  On the way across the dark yard Jody passed Billy Buck. "They're wondering where you are," Billy said.

  Jody slipped into the living-room, and his father turned to him. "Where have you been?"

  "I just went out to see if I caught any rats in my new trap."

  "It's time you went to bed," his father said.

  Jody was first at the breakfast table in the morning. Then his father came in, and last, Billy Buck. Mrs. Tiflin looked in from the kitchen.

  "Where's the old man, Billy?" she asked.

  "I guess he's out walking," Billy said. "I looked in his room and he wasn't there."

  "Maybe he started early to Monterey," said Carl. "It's a long walk."

  "No," Billy explained. "His sack is in the little room."

  After breakfast Jody walked down to the bunkhouse. Flies were flashing about in the sunshine. The ranch seemed especially quiet this morning. When he was sure no one was watching him, Jody went into the little room, and looked into Gitano's sack. An extra pair of long cotton underwear was there, an extra pair of jeans and three pairs of worn socks. Nothing else was in the sack. A sharp loneliness fell on Jody. He walked slowly back toward the house. His father stood on the porch talking to Mrs. Tiflin.

  "I guess old Easter's dead at last," he said. "I didn't see him come down to water with the other horses."

  In the middle of the morning Jess Taylor from the ridge ranch rode down.

  "You didn't sell that old gray crowbait of yours, did you, Carl?"

  "No, of course not. Why?"

  "Well," Jess said. "I was out this morning early, and I saw a funny thing. I saw an old man on an old horse, no saddle, only a piece of rope for a bridle. He wasn't on the road at all. He was cutting up straight through the brush. I think he had a gun. At least I saw something in his hand."

  "That's old Gitano," Carl Tiflin said. "I'll see if any of my guns are missing." He stepped into the house for a second. "Nope, all here. Which way was he heading, Jess?"

  "Well, that's the funny thing. He was heading straigh
t back into the mountains."

  Carl laughed. "They never get too old to steal," he said. "I guess he just stole old Easter."

  "Want to go after him, Carl?"

  "Hell no, just save me burying that horse. I wonder where he got the gun. I wonder what he wants back there."

  Jody walked up through the vegetable patch, toward the brush line. He looked searchingly at the towering mountains--ridge after ridge after ridge until at last there was the ocean. For a moment he thought he could see a black speck crawling up the farthest ridge. Jody thought of the rapier and of Gitano. And he thought of the great mountains. A longing caressed him, and it was so sharp that he wanted to cry to get it out of his breast. He lay down in the green grass near the round tub at the brush line. He covered his eyes with his crossed arms and lay there a long time, and he was full of a nameless sorrow.

  3

  The Promise

  In a mid-afternoon of spring, the little boy Jody walked martially along the brush-lined road toward his home ranch. Banging his knee against the golden lard bucket he used for school lunch, he contrived a good bass drum, while his tongue fluttered sharply against his teeth to fill in snare drums and occasional trumpets. Some time back the other members of the squad that walked so smartly from the school had turned into the various little canyons and taken the wagon roads to their own home ranches. Now Jody marched seemingly alone, with high-lifted knees and pounding feet; but behind him there was a phantom army with great flags and swords, silent but deadly.

  The afternoon was green and gold with spring. Underneath the spread branches of the oaks the plants grew pale and tall, and on the hills the feed was smooth and thick. The sagebrushes shone with new silver leaves and the oaks wore hoods of golden green. Over the hills there hung such a green odor that the horses on the flats galloped madly, and then stopped, wondering; lambs, and even old sheep, jumped in the air unexpectedly and landed on stiff legs, and went on eating; young clumsy calves butted their heads together and drew back and butted again.

  As the gray and silent army marched past, led by Jody, the animals stopped their feeding and their play and watched it go by. Suddenly Jody stopped. The gray army halted, bewildered and nervous. Jody went down on his knees. The army stood in long uneasy ranks for a moment, and then, with a soft sigh of sorrow, rose up in a faint gray mist and disappeared. Jody had seen the thorny crown of a horny-toad moving under the dust of the road. His grimy hand went out and grasped the spiked halo and held firmly while the little beast struggled. Then Jody turned the horny-toad over, exposing its pale gold stomach. With a gentle forefinger he stroked the throat and chest until the horny-toad relaxed, until its eyes closed and it lay languorous and asleep.