Read the Novel “Sons of the Dawn: A Basque Odyssey” here by Hank Nuwer

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                               Sons of the Dawn

                               By Hank Nuwer

                              A novel of Old Nevada

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          “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear”   

-Aesop

Prologue: Avalanche

November 30, 1885

Spain

Once upon a winter’s day in the snowbound Pyrenees when one brother was four and the other three, their parents drowned the red coals in their hearth and strapped the boys to a small sled for a journey. The mother placed a lamb’s wool cap over the curls of the older brother who accepted it with a quiet smile, then jammed a second cap over the black locks of her younger son who squirmed and yanked it away.

The parents planned to brave the bitter winds of the snowbound Pyrenees Mountains to attend Mass in an ancient monastery run by Jesuit fathers. Halfway to their destination, wet flakes of snow swirled in a fury, blinding the parents but delighting the brothers who caught them on their tongues. After a frantic search for cover, with eyelids frozen shut and toes turned to brick, the parents escaped the frigid conditions, huddling for three days in a small cave over a fire of tinder and charcoal, giving every scrap of packed mutton to their sons. The blizzard blotted out the lights of the monastery thousands of feet above them.

         At noon of the third day the screeching wind stopped and the wispy sun appeared. The father reassured his wife that they had survived the storm. The warmer air brought a new danger, that of avalanche. As the starving parents and boys left the snow-blocked cave mouth to take the sled to the monastery, the earth trembled and a wall of white rumbled. A moment later an explosion assaulted their ears.

         A man of God departed that same hour from the monastery after a week of penance and prayer to help him overcome e doubts about his vocation. A widow’s lonely eyes had settled on his face during one Sunday sermon, and he had looked back, a sin that shamed him. Now, his sin forgotten, he witnessed the family’s peril and made a hurried sign of the cross.

In that brief moment between life is and life is no more, the priest chewed his mittens as the tableau unfolded. He saw the father drop to his knees in prayer and the mother spread her coat to cover the boys on the sled. After the crushing wall of snow passed over all, the witness to the horror pressed forward on snowshoes with an oath on his lips instead of a prayer.

After the priest made his treacherous way downhill his eyes flicked this way and that to survey the disaster site. Frustrated, he muttered a prayer to the Blessed Virgin and then his eyes shifted. He saw the jutting end of the father’s shepherd’s crook protruding from the snow. Using his mittens to scoop snow, he uncovered the lifeless papa first, then the still mother and her babies beneath her, still strapped to the sled. The monsignor saw that the wool coat the mother wore had provided an air pocket for the buried children. The monsignor unstrapped the children and pounded their backs, driving air into their lungs.

         The younger child wailed, and the older boy sucked great breaths of air that drove the blue color from his cheeks. The monsignor fell on his knees in the snow and blessed the miracle children. Mumbling a prayer over the parents, he stuffed the younger boy into a pocket in his wool coat and the larger boy into a deer-hide backpack. Realizing their lives remained in peril unless taken to shelter, he trudged on snowshoes back to the monastery faster than he had ever traveled before. Snowflakes had begun falling again, and it would be summer before the woman and man could receive a Christian burial.

         This kindly and charitable monsignor was Paulo Bilboa. His own church was a hilltop church called St. Mammes in the countryside outside Guernica, two days of steady walking west of the Pyrenees. His prolonged search of church records produced no relatives willing to care for the brothers, but he learned at the monastery through a search of records that the boys’ names were Anton and Nikolas Ibarra.

After praying for guidance he asked the civil authorities to help him adopt them, counting on the isolation of St. Mammes to overcome the resistance to the adoptions that the Vatican otherwise might register. Thus, he took Anton and Nicky to his parish in the province of Biscay in the heart of the Basque country and enlisted the widows in his congregation at the St. Mammes hilltop church to convert his tiny rectory into a nursery. He decided the boys were a gift from God, and his Church forbade priests to marry.

         As the adopted sons grew older, the monsignor taught them all he had learned in a seminary and much he knew from life itself. Such knowledge added to whatever learning the local one-room schoolhouse master could offer. In addition, Anton and Nikolas—nicknamed Nicky—haunted the Monsignor’s wall of shelved books to while away the lonely hours. Anton loved the stories he read in the Bible and in books about heroes such as El Cid and Don Quixote, and he drew illustrations of his favorite scenes. Thanks to Monsignor’s patient insistence, his young charges learned five languages—Latin, Spanish, English, French and Basque.  This love of learning distinguished the brothers from certain Basques in the high country who dismissed studying as foolishness fit for monks.    

Chapter 1: The Stone Lifter

October 30, 1897

A blue oxcart paused alongside an ancient, thick-trunked oak sprouting autumn leaves as red spilled blood. In days yore kings entertained nobles from northern Spain under boughs wide as the spread wings of giant buzzards. Monsignor Bilboa, the cart driver, had taken the curving path made of crushed stones from the village church of St. Mammes to attend the day’s Basque games in the stately city of Guernica. He held the ox team’s reins in his left hand. He made the sign of the cross as if he could look into the future and see the terrible event that one day would occur on this peaceful spot.

His beloved adopted son Anton, an athlete of sixteen, stepped down from the cart. He was entered in the stone-lifting event. He touched a gnarled limb of the oak for good luck.

Stone lifting was the most popular sport in northern Spain. Big strong competitors like Anton hoisted boulders as tall and big around as a wagon wheel. The event thrilled spectators but harbored danger. A slip of an ankle might bring four hundred pounds of granite crashing around his ears. The tree reassured him that thousands of good Basque men and women had stood on this very spot and that thousands more after him would do the same.

He turned to his brother Nicky and asked if he also wished to touch the ancient oak for luck. Nicky, olive-skinned and as slight as Anton was light-colored and massive, jumped down from the cart and reached high to knock twice on the lowest limb.

“So much luck you bring me by touching the great oak,” Anton said to Nicky with a shy smile. “How can I lose?”

 “How can a tree bring luck?” asked Nicky, an energy ball that exasperated the schoolmaster by always asking questions. He spanked trail dust from the oversized beret, blouse and knickers that the monsignor’s housekeeper had sewn for him.

“This oak is not any ordinary tree,” said Anton. He too dusted his clothing and straightened his flat black cap over his ears in the Basque way. “The great council of Guernica always held its democratic assemblies under this oak,” he said, reciting what schoolbooks had taught him. 

“That makes it special, even sacred, Nicky,” chimed in Monsignor Bilboa, never losing an opportunity to teach a lesson. “In 1492 the Catholic king and queen of Spain wished to unite the far-flung outposts of Spain into one nation after invaders were driven from the kingdom. They swore an oath under this oak that the Basque peoples of Biscay would enjoy special privileges for all time.”

“So the tree is a national treasure?” asked Nicky.

“Revered by poet and shepherd alike,” said Monsignor, nodding.   

“But we Basques don’t want to be part of Spain, do we?” countered Nicky.

“No, Nicky,” said Anton. “We want to be left alone as an independent state. Let the greedy kings and queens of Spain plunder its colonies overseas and all the rest of Spain.”

A great shout like a wave crashing on a beach came from the Guernica plaza.

“Hurry, hurry, Anton,” said Nicky. “The games soon start.”

“You two run ahead,” said Monsignor. “I’ll follow in the oxcart.”

Anton jogged like a prizefighter into town. Nicky followed right on his boot prints, taking two steps to every one of his brother’s. The excitement was everywhere. Basque competitions like this had been held for fifty years.

At the town stable the young giant passed his painted rendering of a famous legend associated with St. Mammes. Monsignor could not afford to buy Anton even his schoolbooks but the young giant painted murals on the walls of homes and businesses, which gave him the pocket change he needed for such purchases.

The blacksmith had commissioned Anton to create this mural to brighten the walls of the livery stable. The painter chose to celebrate a legend that supposedly had occurred in the twelfth century when a feudal lord named Falcones heard that local nobles had plotted his overthrow. Legend said he rang the bell from the St. Mammes church, knowing all the lords would come to investigate. Anton’s mural depicted the murderous Falcones and his henchmen ambushing the startled nobles.

Anton now frowned as he ran. He saw that the face of Falcones in the mural was peeling and needed retouching. He made a note in his mind to get back here in a day or so to finish the job.

Anton and Nicky now entered the ancient and beautiful walled city of Guernica. Because Anton was the only stone lifter living in the countryside near Guernica, and competing in his first event ever, local children called out his name and merchants swatted his broad back as he passed. Anton was a sentimental favorite, competing as he was against two grown men from distant villages who had been in the annual Basque Games for four years each. The shouts of idlers as they placed bets for or against the young giant echoed off the russet roofs of village houses to send dogs howling for shelter.

Anton felt tremendous pressure. He was a man now he knew, and no longer could he make the excuses of a boy should he fail. He represented not only himself and his family honor as an Ibarra, but the cheers told him all the citizens of Guernica were putting their faith in him to make them proud.

The shop owners of Guernica had locked their doors for the afternoon so they might join the hundreds of spectators drawn from each bay and hilltop in Biscay. Loudest of these was a candlesmith, boasting to visiting revelers that they were soon to see the strongest boy in all Spain. Likewise the blacksmith who had commissioned the mural now informed a passing stranger that Anton was stronger not only than anyone in Spain, but any man living in God’s entire world.

“Just look at him,” the blacksmith said, pointing to the boy’s muscles straining the confines of his tunic. “I’ve watched him lift a colt over his head as easily as if it were a kitten.”

Nicky squeezed past the ample bellies of shopkeepers and housewives to see Anton’s event. His brother took small even breaths to steady his nerves and stretched every muscle so that he wouldn’t tear a tendon when he lifted the stone.

Anton looked over the heads of the villagers in the crowd, tuning out the cheers and catcalls. He breathed deeply to take courage from his beloved ancient hills and the tops of the silver-leafed, sinewy olive trees.

A gnarled hand stretched from a long black sleeve and touched Nicky on the shoulder. “Let us pray Anton will honor the memory of your dear late parents,” whispered Monsignor as he rejoined the boy.

“Yes, yes,” said Nicky. “He will, don’t you worry.”

A young woman’s shouting distracted Nicky. He scanned the crowd. Clarisse Millex, tallest and boldest of the village lasses, chanted some doggerel she was always making up about Anton. Nicky giggled. Clarisse inspired his brother to do silly things such as carving the initials “CM” into the bark of madrone trees. Among the Guernica girls in their long black dresses and veils, Clarisse stood out in her white dress with blue silk sash like a songbird among ravens.

 “Anton the Stone Lifter, big and tall.

Show them who is the strongest of all.”

Anton stopped concentrating and gave a shy wave of acknowledgment. Eleven months older than Anton, Clarisse had a way of reddening the giant’s cheeks by winking at him as she now did. Nicky saw that his brother had to turn his gaze away from her lest he lose all poise.

         One of the three judges for the stone-lifting competition pressed a goatherd’s horn to his lips. After the harsh notes had silenced the crowd, he announced that the event was at hand. The three contestants drew straws from a cup to see who lifted first.

“You go first, son,” a second judge said to Anton who displayed the shortest straw of the three.

With the bright sun of summer roasting the back of his neck, Anton performed deep knee bends.  He knew the importance of warming up to protect his spine. Ever since Monsignor had brought him to his first Basque games as a tot, he had studied the techniques of the champion lifters. Nicky and Monsignor often teased him when they caught him in the rectory practicing his form in front of a looking glass, or out in a field where he hoisted huge rocks as easily as if they were pebbles.        

Before lifting, Anton riveted his eyes on two burly men on a wooden bench waiting their turns. His hairy-armed, muscular opponents stared back, contempt on their faces as dark as their beards. They intended their baleful stares to intimidate, looking for any psychological edge to win. He stared back, masking nervousness with cold, unblinking eyes and folded arms that accentuated his powerful biceps and triceps.

         The first competitor on the bench was Charles Etcheberia, a bear of a man from Durango, a village to the south. He had shoulders wide as the yoke of an ox and a hateful glare that would frighten a lion. He possessed the confident air of a firstborn son destined to inherit his family’s farm. The Basque way of life made younger siblings—unable by custom and law to inherit property—scramble from the nest to work in distant countries lest they stay put in Spain to endure poverty.

The second opponent was Henry Navarre, a roaring braggart newly moved from the nearby town of Vitoria to Guernica where he sat all day in the same cafe that Nicky worked to earn a little dinero washing plates and cups. A man mountain of three hundred pounds, Henry’s stomach hung over his rope belt nearly to his thighs and his face bore a permanent sneer.

         The villagers hushed as Anton poised his powerful legs to use as levers. His strategy was to raise the boulder in a single motion, taking as much pressure as possible off his spine. Other competitors preferred sacrificing their bodies by slowly rolling the huge stone up their legs and bellies and then thrusting upward.

         A single shrill voice pierced the silence. “You can do it, my brother.”

         “Quiet, Nicky,” whispered Monsignor Bilboa, waving a finger in his son’s face. “Let him concentrate.”

         Anton squatted, ready to throw his muscles into the lift. Before he could, however, a tiny white dog ran up and licked his face—right on the nose.

The crowd erupted in laughter. Anton shook his head and grinned. Nicky sighed, relieved that his brother remained unflustered. The stone lifter patted the dog on its rump, and it ran off to find affection elsewhere.

         Anton hunched over the four-hundred-fifty-pound granite boulder. It reposed in a ring made from whitewashed rocks. When he made his move it was too swift for all but the sharpest eyes to follow. One moment the boulder reposed on the ground, and the next it balanced firmly on the right shoulder of the giant. The veins in Anton’s forehead and biceps bulged like rain-swollen streams. The onlookers gasped and applauded as one, save for the hissing villagers who had wagered on Charles or Henry. Clarisse beat her hands together and whistled through her teeth.

         Nicky raised his arms and shouted and generally did his part to keep the cheering going while two strapping young seconds—Anton’s friends Ramiro and Etienne—relieved Anton of his stone burden. These two burly six footers struggled with the boulder after they plucked it from his shoulder. Anton had to help them lower it to the ground for the next contestant to try, and then he raised one hand to thank his supporters, his eyes squarely on Clarisse. She blew him a saucy kiss.

         Although the crowd’s cheering had quieted, Nicky whistled and stomped his feet. The Monsignor again wagged a finger that told him to stop making a scene. Anton turned his gaze to his brother and mouthed thanks. Shyly, the stone lifter’s eyes shifted back to Clarisse, her eyes like chestnuts upon him. She pointed to the stray white dog that had just jumped into her arms and gave him that familiar wink, causing Anton’s cheeks, pink with exertion, to grow even redder.

         Anton strode to the bench. Henry flashed him a sneer of hatred as he took a seat. Charles ignored them both, merely rubbing his hands together as if he could not wait one second longer for his opportunity to lift the stone.

         At the judge’s signal, Charles entered the ring, while Anton took the vacant bench seat. He glanced sideways at Henry and saw the other man’s eyes focused on Clarisse. Anton had heard from Nicky that Henry had boasted in the café that Bernard, his wealthy oldest brother, intended to marry Clarisse. “Never in a thousand years will she marry him,” Nicky had retorted, causing the café owner to remind him to mind the dishes and his own business.       

         Anton winced. His boots pinched his toes. His feet had grown inches in the last year, and he had hoped to paint more murals to pay the town cobbler to make him a new pair. He slid both boots off and kicked them under the bench for a minute of relief. Henry pursed his thick lips, then fashioned a crafty sneer that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
         Those in the crowd supporting Charles cheered as he wrapped his huge hands around the rock with the spread-fingered grip that he thought would give him the best leverage. He grunted like a wild boar and the rock came off the ground as if weightless.

But Charles balanced the weight on his left knee first and then paused when he lifted the stone chest-high, losing momentum, causing him to stagger off balance to his left. The crowd gasped as the huge man’s left leg buckled. He weaved from side to side and toppled like a lightning-struck pine, screaming as a bolt of pain shot through his leg clear to his neck. The boulder stuck in the sandy soil of the ring.

Although Henry chuckled and stayed on the bench, Anton ran over in his stocking feet to assist Charles’s helpers. They led him to a grassy patch where the injured lifter twisted in the dust, heaving and squeezing his injured hamstring.
         Anton patted the unfortunate opponent on the back, praying silently that he himself be spared from such a calamity. Charles gasped as a spasm of pain overtook him and a spray of saliva involuntarily came from his mouth. The spray covered Anton’s chest and he choked on the scents of garlic, wine and red meat.

Retching, Anton failed to notice what Nicky saw. Henry, seated on the bench with a sly smile on his moon of a face, had snatched two sharp small pebbles from the ground and inserted one each into Anton’s goatskin boots as Charles was led away by his supporters to the village doctor.

Nicky tried to warn his brother while Anton’s seconds stripped off his shirt and brought him a bucket of water to wash. For the last time, Monsignor ordered they boy to hush or go back this minute to the rectory at St. Mammes. No one ever argued with the Monsignor, ever.
         Nicky watched, agitated. Henry grinned like an ape as he entered the ring for his turn as the bare-chested Anton sat back down. The other stone lifter wore a sleeveless dyed sheepskin vest that displayed upper arms as wide as axe handles. Although his wealth was limited as the second-born son of a wealthy Vitoria landowner, he had no lack of ego.

Henry spat on his hands, bent, and wrestled with the boulder. His body quivered when the rock reached his belly. With another breath he brought the boulder to his left shoulder as his supporters from his home town crowed like roosters. He gave a hoarse bellow of triumph that could have been heard in Vitoria.

Having been taught proper sportsmanship by Monsignor, Anton joined the villagers in applause, lifting his hands to ask his supporters in the crowd also to cheer his rival.

Henry and Anton had tied. End of the first round.

         Henry’s brawny helpers took the boulder from him. Three bulky townsmen, directed by the judges, placed a new boulder in the ring. This one was a granite spheroid and weighed five hundred pounds. The crowd buzzed. No one really had expected the competitors to require a stone so enormous.
         Nicky closed his eyes to relieve the tension. Anton put on his boots and edged his way into the ring. The stone lifter’s legs began twitching as if they were rubber. He had given all he had on the last lift. A kernel of doubt stirred inside Nicky. Could his brother even get an extra fifty pounds off the ground, let alone shoulder the boulder?
         Clarisse, on the other hand, had no doubts. The determination on Anton’s face had put all doubt out of her mind that he might fail. Anton had confided in her one afternoon on one of their long walks that he followed an unwritten eleventh commandment, Thou Shalt Not Quit.

         The young giant concentrated, and then relaxed his muscles. He listened to the voice in his head. Give the lift your best and be done with it. Think about failing and you will fail. Concentrate on technique and results will follow.

         Anton addressed the stone.

Nicky whispered to Monsignor. “Henry put pebbles in Anton’s boots.”

          “That lummox, Henry,” said Monsignor.

         Nicky’s mouth dropped at the anger in his guardian’s voice. Monsignor never said a bad word about anyone but the devil.

         Anton wrestled with the boulder, and the moment he lifted it he felt the stones in his boots cut his heels like diamonds on glass. Instead of bringing the boulder cleanly onto his shoulder, he began to stagger. Somehow he managed to get the rock chest-high in spite of his agony, but no higher. A cry of frustration came from his throat like something a wounded lion might emit. The boulder fell from his hands, bounced an inch from one boot, and stayed on the floor of the ring. There was a collective groan of disappointment from the onlookers who had bet on him.

         Ashamed, Anton swiveled his head toward Henry. He saw the man’s smirk. The gloating glint in the man’s eyes added to Anton’s humiliation.

Anton resisted the urge to drop his head to his chest. He had done nothing wrong. With an effort he kept his head high.

Then a single set of hands began clapping. Anton saw Clarisse applauding first and then heard Nicky and Monsignor join her. In another instant all the supporters of Anton cheered as one, drowning the few jeers from those villagers who were fans of Henry.       

Anton limped to the bench and removed his boots. He shook out the pebbles and rattled them in one fist as Henry entered the ring. He resisted the urge to throw the stones into the man’s sneering mug, instead letting them fall at his own feet unnoticed by anyone but Clarisse, Nicky and the Monsignor. One judge saw the stones and frowned, but his shrug told Anton nothing could be done.
         Henry flexed his muscles under his sheepskin vest to show off for the crowd, and then bent to work. Quickly he raised the boulder to his knees.

Monsignor watched Henry’s technique with a critical eye. “He came up too quickly, I think,” he said to Nicky.

Henry pitched forward and nearly lost his center of gravity. He fought mightily to keep from capsizing sideways and brought the boulder up inch by inch until it rested on his shoulder. Henry gave a murderous yell of triumph that made mothers in the crowd clap their hands over their children’s ears.

         The judges huddled. Their jaws worked in unison. At last, one judge blew the goat horn for attention, and they announced their decision to the plaza.

         “We have a winner,” said one, a slender merchant named Emile with a patch over one eye.

He presented Henry with a small silver trophy cup.       

Clarisse ran up to Anton and hugged him. “Be proud anyway, Anton,” she said.

Nicky was next with a hug. “You had him beat, so he had to cheat,” he shouted, aiming his comment so Henry a few feet away could hear.

Monsignor clapped Anton’s back. “A splendid effort, my boy,” he said. Next to reach Anton were his helpers Ramiro and Etienne. Each shook Anton’s hand.

         Then Anton lifted up both arms overhead, acknowledging the few lingering cheers from his supporters. Once more he looked shyly at Clarisse. She gave him a broad wink before departing to return to her father’s cottage.

Anton debated what to do next. The rules of good sportsmanship called for the opponents to acknowledge one another when a contest was ended. Yes, he needed to be a bigger man than his opponent. The young giant walked over to Henry who still hopped on one leg, and extended a congratulatory hand.   

Henry spat on the ground, turned, and limped away. “Young boys should not compete with real men,” he said.
         Anton reddened. “Real men should not cheat young boys,” he growled.
         Henry balled fists as big as hams, but Anton turned and gave him a view of his broad back.

Henry threw him a parting boast. “I can out lift, outgun and outfight any man,” he roared.

         Nicky stuck his tongue out at Henry. “He can out-throw out more bull than any man, that’s for certain,” he said to Anton.

         As the shopkeepers and others in the crowd left the plaza, two workmen stopped their oxcart in front of the boulder Henry had abandoned. Anton watched as they struggled with the rock. They could not budge it.

         Anton walked over to the boulder, bent, and jerked the weight to his shoulder. When he had it under control he took a step forward and placed the boulder on the back of the cart so the workmen could haul it away.

         “That proves you were better, Anton,” Nicky shouted. “Next year you will trounce him for sure.”               

         Monsignor removed a coarse clean rag from his old deerskin backpack and handed it to Anton.

The young giant pressed the cloth against his sweat-soaked hair and neck. “Next year for certain,” he vowed.

         The sound of advancing hoof beats interrupted his words. Monsignor and the boys looked up and saw a dust cloud raised by a dozen horses bearing soldiers dressed in the gaudy uniforms of Spain headed toward the plaza. 

“There may be no next time if they catch you,” said Monsignor. “Run, boys, run fast.”

Chapter 2: Flight

Although amazed to see their foster father sprint, Anton and Nicky matched him step for step. He guided them down a side street into an alley behind a row of ancient row houses with walls made from hard-baked mud.

Anton exchanged a baffled glance with Nicky as they loped easily behind their protector. Each had the same thoughts. What had come over Monsignor? What had made him so fearful?

Monsignor stepped into a doorway.  He panted until he caught his breath.

“Soldiers,” he said.

“Yes, we saw them,” said Nicky. “What of it?”

          “Yes, what are you saying, Padre?” said Anton.

“I’d heard it rumored that the military of Spain was combing the villages to conscript young men,” said Monsignor, gulping for breath. “It must be true.”

“But why?” asked Nicky.

“They want to find young men to make fresh soldiers to protect its colony in Cuba from the Americans,” said Monsignor.

Nicky and Anton stepped out of the protective doorway and peered down the alley. The dozen soldiers in blue uniforms had dismounted and swarmed down the main street. They began chasing two broad-shouldered young men and soon gained on them.

         Anton balled his fists. The two boys running like frightened mule deer were Ramiro and Etienne. When the soldiers reached the pair, they threw them roughly to the paved street, and then pulled out rope to tie their hands behind their backs. In less than thirty seconds Anton saw the soldiers toss his friends like cordwood onto the back of a mule-drawn wagon. Rivulets of blood ran from Ramiro’s forehead and lips.

“They hurt Ramiro, Monsignor,” said Anton.

         The giant took a step toward the soldiers to intercede but Monsignor grabbed him by the arm. The graveyards in Spain were filled with the stones honoring Basques who had gone as soldiers. “They have guns,” said Monsignor Bilboa. “If you interfere they will kill you.”

Nicky grabbed Anton by the forearm to restrain him. The soldiers looked around the street for more prey. Seeing no one they departed toward the west side of town in search of more young men to kidnap for the Crown’s service.

“Back to the oxcart, boys, and let’s hurry for home,” said Monsignor. “If we lag the soldiers surely will snatch you both.”

Chapter 3: Monsignor’s Decision

That evening, the brothers recited the Lord’s Prayer with Monsignor to conclude a supper of salted cod the church’s housekeeper had prepared in a tomato and pepper sauce. They offered up the prayer for the safety and souls of Ramiro and Etienne.

After the dishes were put away, Monsignor Bilboa brought the brothers into the small book-lined study where he discussed all serious matters.

“Some time ago I had begun to dream of places far away, of worlds that stretched nearly beyond his imagination, where my two sons might find a life better than what a poor priest can give them,” he said.

        Anton raised a hand to protest. “We are very happy here.” “How long can that last?” said Monsignor. “I have taken a vow of poverty and have no land to leave you, and now I fear you and Nicky will be taken and sent to Cuba to fight.”

“Nicky is too little to be a soldier,” said Anton.

“I’m not little,” said Nicky with a pout.

“No, he is not too little,” agreed Monsignor. “He could serve as a cabin boy on a trooper ship or carry a drum into battle.”

Monsignor cleared his throat. He handed the brothers a newspaper that a traveler had given him that morning.

Anton and Nicky read the front page. War between Spain and the United States seemed a certainty. The headline said La Guerra es cerca— war was nigh.

“The American press lusts for war,” said Monsignor. “The too-proud Spanish government would have every one of its soldiers fight to the death—even though the cause is hopeless.”

“Why hopeless, Monsignor?” asked Anton.

“Cuba lies right off the coast of Florida,” said Monsignor. “America can ship fresh battalions to the harbors of Havana in a day. It can take Spain weeks to get reinforcements there from across the sea.”

“What has war to do with us Basques?” asked a puzzled Nicky.

“My son, for hundreds of years Basques have been forced by Spain’s monarchs to become soldiers or conquistadors,” explained Monsignor. “Many a Basque shed his red blood in the Americas, and many a boy like you turned into a brute soldier and in turn shed the innocent blood of the natives.”

 “They cannot make us,” Nicky said.

“They can make you,” said Monsignor. “You saw how they plucked those strong boys Ramiro and Etienne off the streets.”

Anton frowned. “Conscription is illegal in Spain.”

“No, the old law forbidding military conscription of Basques was abolished,” said Monsignor. “That is why you and your brother must leave home. In Nevada they cannot touch you.”

“Nevada?” exclaimed Anton, broad shoulders dropping a foot. “That is where Basque herders boast they go to earn their fortune and come back to their villages years later with their heads down and not a cent in their pockets.”

“Yes, that happens, but not always do they fail. I have a stepbrother who left this province for Nevada many years ago,” said Monsignor. “He left Spain with twenty dollars and a steamship ticker but made good in the New World. He has written me an answer to a letter I had sent some months ago.”

“I did not know you had a stepbrother,” said Anton.

“Yes, my father remarried after my own dear mother died,” said Monsignor. “Raoul and I were never close.”

“Will we live with him?” asked the practical Nicky.

“Raoul has need of herders to watch over his great bands of sheep,” said Monsignor. “Shepherds live outdoors, not with him at his ranch.”

“Outside with the sheep?” scoffed Nicky.

Monsignor held his hand up to stop the protests. “Yes, it is the custom in Nevada.”

“We never have had more than one or two sheep here in our pasture,” countered Anton. “How will we take care of thousands?”

“You will learn, my boy,” said Monsignor.

“How can he fit thousands of sheep on an acre of land?” asked Nicky, thinking of Monsignor’s small pasture.

Monsignor gave a raspy chuckle and ruffled Nicky’s dark mop. “Grazing sheep isn’t like here in Spain where it is done on a small hillside. Raoul received one hundred and sixty free acres in Nevada from the government of Abraham Lincoln and since then has added thousands of acres more,” he said. “The government leases additional thousands of acres of public lands to the ranchers to graze cattle and sheep.”

Nicky, a pup ready for a romp, now perked up at the prospect of a new adventure. He plucked an atlas off one of Monsignor’s shelves that contained many of his thumbprints already in the page corners.

“Nevada–here it is,” said Nicky, thumping the page.  “Where is Raoul’s ranch?”

“White Pine County in the eastern part of the state,” said Monsignor.

Anton took the book and squinted at the page. “White Pine County looks like empty desert.”

“One can find beauty there,” said Monsignor in a stern tone. “God created the desert just as he did our province’s forests.”

“You are right, Monsignor,” said Anton, blushing. “I spoke out of turn, and I am sorry.”

“Will you come with us, Padre?” interrupted Nicky, a tremor in his voice.

“My home is here, my boy,” said Monsignor. “My whole world is my little church at St. Mammes.”

Monsignor’s face was solemn. The brothers once had seen him cry after a letter announced the death of his mother, and his eyes now had that same squinty, wet look.

Anton looked closely at Monsignor. What he saw was a spindly man of forty-five, tall and stoop shouldered, a fringe of gray hair encircling his bald skull. “With all respect, Monsignor Bilboa, this is our home also. Have we displeased you that you send us away?”

“No, never have you displeased me.”

“Still you make us leave?” asked Nicky, scratching the few beginning hairs under his chin. “Can’t you just let us hide until the soldiers go?”

Monsignor had long fingers like talons. Now they drifted over two pieces of paper on the long wooden table that served as a desk. “I must show you my brother Raoul’s letter,” said Monsignor. “Even if the soldiers were not a threat he offers an opportunity that the Basque homeland cannot offer poor boys.”

The folded letter had two steamship tickets and a bank check inside it. The back of the letter contained a hand-drawn map. The envelope bore Raoul’s return address. In the right-hand corner a cluster of red one-cent United States stamps with Benjamin Franklin in profile.

Nicky bounded from the table and came back with a black notebook filled with stamps. He clutched the envelope from Monsignor’s brother and spoke with pleading.

“I don’t have these Ben Franklins, Monsignor. Can I steam them off the envelope for my collection?”

Monsignor removed his glasses and polished them with a white handkerchief he pulled from one long black sleeve. “Yes, Nicky.”  He huffed, and then continued. “Anton, my son, please read the letter.”

Anton marked the date on the letter. Raoul had been written many weeks earlier. Mail evidently traveled at a snail’s pace from America to the Basque lands of Spain. He cleared his throat and began reading.

My Dear Brother:

Thank you for your letter and the holy cards. Your kind words reached us on a cold fall day and warmed our hearts. Yes, I am well and so is Martina. She grows strong and smart and beautiful like her late mother.

I have considered your request that I take Anton and Nicky into my care as sheepherders. As it happens, the ranch is shorthanded. Your two boys will need to be trained. I have a good man named Tubal whose rheumatism limits his time outdoors, but he is wise and knows the back country.

Enclosed are steamer tickets and a bank check that will cover all the costs of getting them to Nevada. They must work off this money. It is a loan and not a gift. You will need to get them by coach to the seacoast of France where they can board a ship. The Spanish Navy keeps an eye on Spanish harbors looking for sturdy boys to pluck like grapes off a vine.

Tell the boys to always speak English in America, not Basque or Spanish. This conflict with America is no time for anyone to advertise that he is a Spaniard.  

May God bless and keep you and give you good health.

Yours truly,

Your brother, Raoul

1. When Anton and Nicky arrive they can do a good service for me. A well-known breeder of Australian shepherd dogs named Thatcher lives in New York. I hope I can trust them to pick a good pup.

“Do you understand all this, my sons?” asked Monsignor Bilboa.

“A puppy!” shouted Nicky.

“It is for herding sheep and not for playing,” said Monsignor Bilboa, wagging a finger of warning.

Nicky ignored him. “A puppy!”  He turned to Anton and saw his brother running a sleeve across his wet eyes.

“There is no choice?” asked Anton. He had been thinking of how empty life might seem without Monsignor Bilboa, without life in the beautiful old towns of Guernica and St. Mammes, and—he blushed at this thought—without Clarisse.

“None, my son.” Monsignor got up from the table, placing his big hand on Anton’s broad shoulder. “I will write Raoul immediately to expect you both.”

Nicky looked puzzled. “Will we have to fight for Spain in Nevada, Monsignor?”

 “The war is only in Cuba, my boy,” said Monsignor, flipping the pages of the atlas and pointing to Cuba due south of Florida.  “In Nevada you will be safe.”

Much later Monsignor understood that he could not have been more wrong. It would take time and numerous letters from Anton and Nicky to reveal what dangers awaited his sons in Nevada.

Chapter 4:  Streets Lined with Silver

         The next day Anton and Nicky drove the oxcart to Guernica. Anton packed his paint and brushes to retouch the paint on the blacksmith’s mural of Falcones ambushing the nobles. Nicky put on an apron and got ready to report for his last day washing dishes.

         Anton dropped Nicky off at the café. The younger brother jumped to the ground and looked around warily.

         “Remember, if any soldiers wander into the café run as if twenty devils chased you, Nicky,” said Anton. He clucked to the ox, and the cart lurched forward.

Nicky walked inside the café and frowned. Henry Navarre nursed a picon punch at his favorite table.  Henry stirred the bitter orange drink and grumbled after taking a sip.

         “So we are cheating our regular customers now, are we?” he said to the waiter, an old man who would have been bald except for two tufts of hair sprouting like bleached carrot tops from his ears.

         “Henry, Henry, always the complaining,” said the waiter. He bobbed up and down like a puppet.

         “Me always complaining—no, no,” said Henry. “It is this café that always takes advantage. This drink is nothing but seltzer water and ice.”

         “Henry, always you complain and yet always you come back here,” the waiter said.

         Nicky put down a dirty plate and began sweeping the floor, leaning over the broom handle to eavesdrop.

         “You will hear me complain no more when I am in America. There they will give a man all the picon in his drink that he pays for,” said Henry.

         “In America? What you trying to say here?” demanded the waiter.

         Henry reached into his sheepskin vest and waved a letter in the face of a waiter. It was written in Basque and the waiter saw it came from the United States. Nicky recognized the stamps. They were the same Ben Franklins already in his album.

         “Come here, boy,” the waiter said to Nicky. “You read, don’t you?”

          “English, Spanish, French and Basque,” he said. “Monsignor insisted we learn them all.”

         “Don’t boast, boy,” admonished Henry. “Just read it.”

Nicky scanned the letter. It had a fresh punch stain. He began translating. This letter from Henry’s uncle in Nevada promised the world. He offered Henry a job to ride the range protecting the lives of his shepherds. In return he would be paid in cash or lambs, his choice.

 “So it is true?  You go to America?” asked the waiter.

         “Yes, to White Pine County and my uncle’s ranch. The streets of Nevada are lined with silver, they tell me.”

         Nicky’s eyes widened at this revelation. Wait until Monsignor and Anton hear this. He handed the letter back to Henry who snatched it with a snap of his big wrist.

         “Take care you do not find a grave instead of silver in the ground, Henry,” said the waiter, tugging at the tuft in his left ear. “My family has sent three sons to America. One died when cattle ranchers dragged him on the ground behind a horse. The other two have been gone three years and not one word. America, bah. America is no good.”

         “No, you are wrong, sir,” said Henry. He thumped the table with his fist.  “There I will make my fortune and come back here to buy land.”

         The waiter shook his head, refilled Henry’s punch cup, and shuffled sideways like a crab to bow before two merchants from a distant city wearing frilled shirts and high beaver hats.

The two exchanged low whispers and glanced sideways at Henry and his sheepskin vest, then snickered and peeled off their gloves before choosing seats at a far table.

         Henry recognized their respectability but seemed oblivious to their mockery. He was thinking that when he returned home from America he would dress in apparel as stylish as theirs.

Henry pushed his tangled nest of hair off his sharp-rising forehead and used his fingers to give it a semblance of brushing. Inside Henry’s mind there clearly were gears whirring. Why should he not have wealth like these two?

         “What is on your mind, Henry?” the waiter asked after serving the gentlemen their coffee.

“It is all so unfair, all opportunity for wealth in the province depending on the lottery of birth order, on one’s inheritance,” Henry said. “Had I been the first-born male in my family it would be me who would rule the roost.”

 “These are the way things always have been for us Basques,” the waiter said.

         Nicky found himself feeling a little sorry for Henry, though not for long, remembering how this burly man had cheated Anton in the stone lifting. As the middle child in a family of three boys, Henry had no chance of inheriting his father’s farm that had more sheep than one could touch with a walking stick in a day.

         “Your eldest brother will inherit all?” asked Nicky.

 “Yes, that miser with bad teeth—Bernard, half my size,” said Henry. He ran a hand over the unruly whiskers he wore to cover his absent chin and wiped away a splotch of punch. He folded the letter and returned it to a pocket of his sheepskin.

“You see why I must go to America?” he said to the waiter, putting down his cup.

“Perhaps it is for the best you go,” the waiter said with a shake of his head. “Another cousin of mine to the south wrote me the other day. The army had snatched fifty young men from his village to send them to Cuba. Maybe they take you if you stay.”

         Now the two well-dressed men jumped into the conversation. “To fight for the glory of Spain is an honor,” said the elder of the two.

         “Glory?” asked the waiter, baffled by the comment. “What glory is there in war and death?”

         “I’ll tell you what glory, sir,” snapped the younger of the two men, slamming a coin on the table as they left the café. “It is the satisfaction of knowing one has acted like a man and not like a pipsqueak.”

         The waiter tugged at a tuft of ear hair. “Brave talk from gentlemen so rich they can pay substitutes to serve in the army in their place.”

Chapter 5: Soldiers

         It was growing dark outside when the waiter closed the café. Nicky gave notice that this was his last day of work and shook his hand.

         The waiter scratched an ear. “I am sad because of this news, Nicky, but your Monsignor is right to send you away,” he said. “If you stay you will be put in a uniform as sure as night follows day.”

         Anton was waiting outside the café in the oxcart. Nicky saw he had a smudge of red paint under his nose.

The ride home was tense for the two boys worried that the soldiers might post sentries at the great oak of Guernica, but they passed the sacred tree without incident. Tired, they looked forward to whatever meal the housekeeper might have put together as they arrived at St. Mammes. Monsignor stepped outside when he heard the cart and gave them a wave before going back to the dinner table.

After brushing the ox and turning it out to pasture, Anton and Nicky headed toward the rectory along a path created with flat stones. They paused when they heard horses on the road near the hillside.

         Anton saw the flash of drawn swords reflected in moonlight. “Spanish soldiers,” he cried.

         A second later, the leader of the soldiers wheeled his horse and headed straight at them at a fast clip, followed by the others.

         “They see us,” Nicky said. “Head up the hill. We have only one chance.”

The brothers scrambled up the brushy, rocky hilltop above the church. Nicky turned and saw five soldiers leaping from their saddles. Hampered by their swords and riding boots, the men lumbered up the hill, passing huge white boulders made of fossilized seashells that dotted the slanted slope, evidence that this hilltop once had been submerged in the ocean.

         Nicky had discovered the narrow slit in the earth by happenstance, and only Anton shared his secret of the cave’s existence. Normal walking traffic to the hill stopped at the chapel below, making it unlikely any visitor would stumble upon the cave.  As a result, the two brothers had a special clubhouse cave all to themselves.

         Anton had been stupefied the first time Nicky took him to the cave. His little brother confessed that he had discovered the entrance three years earlier on a hot summer’s day. Over time, he said to Anton, he had explored every cavern. He knew of no other entrance except for the main one.

         “How did you ever find this cave?” Anton had asked.

         “As I picked berries off a bush, cold air brushed across my face, Nicky said to Anton. “A second later I found this tiny opening. I squeezed inside, and I found myself in the first of many caverns.”

Now the brothers plunged into a thicket of bushes and halted in front of a gigantic boulder.  Anton had placed it there to make the cave’s entrance undetectable. Nicky turned and saw that the brush blocked his sight of the pursuers, which also meant the soldiers could not see them.

         “Hurry, Anton,” he said.     

Anton bent before a monstrous rock weighing a couple hundred pounds. He rolled it back as if it weighed no more than a teacup, and Nicky scrambled inside the hidden cave. In another moment Anton too was inside and the boulder blocked all entry.

The brothers crawled along the narrow entrance until it opened into a cavern with a ceiling twenty feet tall. Nicky lighted the hurricane lamp he kept on a ledge inside a cave wall.

         “Safe,” Anton whispered. He shook his fist at the bluecoats he imagined stomping in confusion overhead.

“They must be going crazy wondering how two people could vanish in the night,” said Nicky.

         “Maybe we better stay the night to be safe,” murmured Anton.

         “Monsignor will worry,” said Nicky.

         “By now he’s seen the bluecoats searching all over the hillside. He’ll figure out where we’ve gone.”

         “I’m hungry,” said Nicky. “Let’s eat.”

The brothers hoarded tins of evaporated milk and peaches in the cave. They also stored empty feed sacks that served as blankets. The night would be cold here in the cave but not unbearable.

“Do you think they will wait all night?” asked Nicky.

“Not likely,” said Anton. “The soldiers won’t wait around hoping to nab just two of use when there are so many more young men to capture in the province.”

Chapter 6:  Buried Children

Anton and Nicky savored the tinned peaches in silence. Nicky’s mind went back to the day he had discovered the cave. He had run back to the rectory and made a torch from an oil-soaked rag he’d tied around a branch from a silver birch.

After he had lighted the torch, Nicky discovered evidence that human beings eons ago had lived or visited here. On the cave floor he found dried scat, bits of primitive stone weapons, the blackened remains of a fire pit, and best of all, three faded primitive paintings of a bison, a deer and a horse. The paintings thrilled Nicky, and he imagined the artist or artists seated on a rock, painting in darkness save only for the light of a campfire.

         “Why bring me here now if you have kept this secret so long?” Anton had asked on that first visit of his, his eyes fixed on the beautiful cave paintings.

         “I began digging near the fire pit, and I found something yesterday I needed to show you,” Nicky had answered.  “I’m sorry I did not share this wonderful secret earlier, Anton.”

         Anton aimed the light of the torch at a small stack of bones. He saw two skulls and well preserved bones that Nicky had painstakingly reconstructed to show the clear skeletal outlines of two infants.

         “Babies,” Anton observed. He made the sign of the cross.

         “I think maybe they died of cold or sickness,” Nicky said.

         “What makes you say that?”

         “I checked all the bones,” Nicky said. “Not a mark on them. If they had died violently I think their skulls might show fracture marks.”

         Anton thought this over. “Why would someone bury them near the fire pit?”

         “Maybe some broken-hearted mother buried her two infants here,” Nicky said. “Maybe she wanted the souls of her babies to feel safe.”

         Anton pondered this. “So you think the mother buried the babies near the warm fire?”

         Nicky’s cheeks blushed in the torchlight. “It’s just my theory.”

         “I think it is a good one, Brother,” said Anton. “What do you think about these paintings?”

         “Maybe a hunter painted them to thanks his gods for good hunting,” Nicky said.

         “Or maybe he painted them before the hunt, praying that his aim be true,” mused Anton.

         On many of their subsequent visits the brothers brought a handful of purple and yellow wildflowers to the cave, placing them over the dirt above the children’s bones. They had reburied the two infants deep in the ground lest a wildcat wander into the cave and scatter the remains. The burial spot showed itself as a mound.

         Now Anton and Nicky spent the night sleeping on these very mounds, hoping the soldiers would abandon their search and find easier pickings in neighboring villages.

“Should we take something to America that reminds us of this place?” Nicky asked the next morning as he yawned and stretched.

         “We can’t carry much on the steamship,” said Anton. “Maybe something small?”

         Nicky took the torch to a crevice in the side of the cave where he and his brother had cached spear points and arrow flints. There also was a blow tube made from a bird’s hollow bone marked by a paint mixture that the primitive artist had used to color his wall animals.

         Nicky pondered the choices. At last he handed Anton a flint spear point that still held the grooved opening where some unknown warrior ten or fifteen thousand years ago had attached his spear.

         “Here is your lucky piece,” Nicky said. “You can fit it with a strip of rawhide and wear it around your neck.”

         Anton touched the sharp edge of the spear point. “Aii,” he said, examining his index finger where a drop of blood bubbled. “It is still sharp.”

         “The warrior who made it knew what he was doing,” Nicky said.

         “He had to,” said Anton. “Only the smart and swift stood a chance of living more than twenty years.”

         Nicky’s thoughts went to the trip halfway around the world that Monsignor had dictated that he and Anton take. “We must be both smart and swift, too,” he said, extinguishing the torch as he began to crawl out of the entranceway.

         Anton also put out his torch and breathed a farewell prayer directed toward the ancient bones before moving the giant rock at the entranceway.

         “Please God,” he said.  “Make it so one day I can return to St. Mammes. I wish to die here and be buried here, not in a foreign land called Nevada.”   

Chapter 7: At Sea

November 25, 1897

The first night at sea on a ship, Anton could not sleep. His mind seemed unable to rest, causing his body to toss like the ship itself bound from France to New York. He listened to his brother’s breathing, punctuated by the monotonous drone of seawater splashing against the ship’s sides. Nicky slept alongside Anton on a greasy ship’s cot, a heavy patched coat folded under his head for a pillow. They each had a small wool afghan crafted by one of Monsignor’s widowed parishioners to use as a blanket to keep the chilled night air off their bones. Unlike his brother, Nicky fell asleep without any trouble the second his head touched the cot.

Anton thought back to all the events of past days and how quickly everything he cared for in his life had been lost. Monsignor Bilboa had paid a Basque fisherman to smuggle the brothers to a port city in France. They were in that city only one day before stepping onto the gangplank of a gigantic, four-masted steamship.  Moored less than 300 feet away from their ship, a Spanish merchant ship had docked and was taking on supplies, causing the brothers to hide behind a lifeboat until they were safely out to sea.

         Over one thousand passengers crammed like lemmings into below-deck quarters. By the third day of travel the brothers found the odors of sweat, fever and hoarded food almost unbearable. They sought asylum on an open deck whenever possible to breathe the clean salt air.

         “Riffraff like you two better stay away from passengers in first-class and second-class cabins,” a steward with facial features like a weasel’s had had when they once dared to try entering a restricted area. “Keep in steerage with the other low-class passengers.”

         “Why do you call it steerage?” Nicky asked, biting his tongue to ignore the insult.

         “It’s down in the hold with steering gear like the rudder,” came the reply. “Mind that you steer clear of trouble while you’re down there.”

         The brothers heard from one friendly steward–who once smuggled them a loaf of fresh bread to be kind–that the ship’s crew treated the first-class passengers like royalty. There was a reason for this privileged treatment. When the ship docked, each member of the crew expected to pocket lucrative tips from the wealthier passengers in exchange for favors aboard ship. Passengers in steerage never offered so much as a franc at journey’s end.

         Remembering the advice from Monsignor’s brother, the brothers kept to themselves as most passengers in the male section of steerage did. Always they guarded a canvas bag containing a change of clothes and a check from Raoul to cash in New York.

         To pass the time as the ship bounced like driftwood on the sea, the Ibarras read and reread a Bible, an English grammar, and a Paris newspaper they had purchased for a penny at their departure port.  The paper reported that the government of Spain had overstretched its reach when it had tried to maintain a colony so close to Florida. In an editorial the brothers read that American business leaders supported an insurrection of Cubans who wanted independence.  If Spain abandoned Cuba these American businessmen imagined themselves grabbing millions of dollars in profits from sugarcane, tobacco and rum.

The steamship carried all manner of passengers. Many of them were males from Spain intent on avoiding conscription. The day they boarded, Nicky saw Anton staring at one burly passenger who was seated on a deck chair, a thick blanket pulled up to his chin.

“What’s wrong?” Nicky asked.

“It is Henry,” said Anton. “Like a bad penny he has turned up here.”

In time Henry recognized the Ibarra brothers. However, he seemed content to limit contact to addressing a sneer in Anton’s direction every now and then. They could see that the voyage was excruciating for him. He had a delicate stomach and hated the rocking of the ship, vomiting over the ship’s rail no less than one hundred times. He threw up so often that the ship’s crew joked among themselves about the big man who fouled his sheepskin with vomit like a baby—though they never said so to his face.

          Neither brother much cared for water travel, although they weathered the trip without getting seasick.  The meals the ship provided the lowest-paying passengers were greasy stews flavored with unscaled, nearly inedible flakes of salted cod. They picked at their meals and by the day felt their pants grow looser around their waists.

“Please blast this miserable cod and stale bread and the cook who made it,” Nicky joked before one unmemorable dinner, turning the traditional pre-meal blessing into a mock curse.

After every miserable evening meal such as this one, the brothers retired early to the cots, hoping to fall asleep before the vicious snoring of their neighbors robbed them of rest.

One night, when deprived of sleep, Anton sat up in his cot with his arms hugging his knees and told Nicky about his sad departure from Clarisse.

 “I knocked on the door of her small cottage, and her father answered. He insisted that anything I had to say to her should be said in front of him,” recalled Anton. “He stood there like a prison guard frowning at me as I broke the news to Clarisse that I was leaving.”

 “`This departure is definite?’ she said to me. `You cannot change your mind?’”

“I cannot change Monsignor’s mind,” Anton said he told her. “Clarisse reached for my hand, but her father slapped it away.”

Nicky in turn told Anton that Clarisse’s father came now and then into the café for a coffee.

“He was a penny-pinching man who never tipped,” said Nicky. “One time I heard him tell the waiter that he had put his foot down. `Clarisse, you must drop this poor church mouse Anton that has not so much as a goat to call his own.’”

Anton looked miserable. “You sound just like him.”

“What did you do after he threw you out?”

“What could I do in his own house?” Anton said. “I took my hat off the hook and left.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Yes, she disobeyed her father and ran after me and kissed me on the cheek. `You write me, Anton Ibarra,’ she said. `You write me.’”

“You told her you would, of course?”

“Of course,” Anton said. He kept talking but Nicky heard nothing as he fell asleep. Much later Nicky awoke and thought he heard Anton groan in the dark, but whether his brother actually did so or he just imagined it was unclear to him.

Chapter 8: A Fresh Start

 February 18, 1898

The steamship pulled into New York harbor on a Sunday morning long past its scheduled arrival day after many delays caused by bad weather. Since leaving port, the ship had picked up three more passengers due to births, but three passengers died due to dehydration caused by dysentery. Anton and Nicky joined other passengers and crew in a thundering cheer at the first sight of the gleaming Statue of Liberty. It was a mere dot when they first saw the Mother of Exiles but soon they were close enough to see every fold and crease in her garment.

The legs of the brothers wobbled after being so long at sea when they stepped on the firm ground of an immigration holding pen called Ellis Island. Officials told the Ibarra brothers to take their places in a long line with other immigrants from steerage. Officials in stiff hats and gold bars on their shoulders interviewed Anton and Nicky separately and together. They inspected the papers Monsignor had organized for them inside a leather pouch tied around the neck of each youth.

The interviewers humbled Nicky and Anton, using wooden sticks to pry open their eyelids and to probe their open mouths for sores or white patches signifying disease.

“Why do you poke us?” asked Nicky, speaking in English. He remembered Monsignor Bilboa’s admonishment never to speak a word of Euskera, the native Basque tongue, except in private to his brother.

“Never can tell what we find,” said a steward. “One time we had a ship with half the passengers sick with smallpox. We shipped their fannies back home fast, you bet, on the same boat that brought them.”

“You can see that my brother and I are healthy and strong,” chimed in Anton.

“You speak English like a native,” said the friendly official to Anton. “You should have no trouble finding work.”

“My brother and I already have jobs,” said Anton, pulling Raoul’s letter from his carpet bag. “We are herders of the sheep of my uncle in Nevada.”

The steward smiled. “Why didn’t you tell me that you have a sponsor?” said the official. “We speed this immigration process up for those who have jobs waiting.”

The steward soon admitted them to the United States after a hurried stamping of papers and scrawling of notations in a record book. As the brothers departed they heard curses screamed in Basque from some passenger with a deep voice.

“It’s Henry,” Anton said.

“His nerves are frayed,” said Nicky.

The brothers observed Henry at the front of the line. A surly immigration official shook his fist and threatened to put him back on the next ship to Europe. Seasick and disoriented, knowing barely a dozen English phrases, Henry had stopped washing his face and arms two days before the voyage ended. His disheveled clothing was freckled with vomit. He was unshaven, and the skin on his cheeks was blotchy and flecked with scales.

“Henry looks like he came across the ocean on a raft,” remarked Nicky.

Anton nodded and ran over to the official who had been nice to him. “I know this man,” he said in English. “He has a job in Nevada.”

“That true?” the official said to Henry.

Henry did not understand. Anton translated into rapid-fire Basque.

         Henry held out the letter from his relative.

“All right,” said the official to Anton after scanning it. “Tell your friend to clean himself up. I guess we can send him on his way to Nevada.”

Anton translated. Henry gave a great heaving moan of thanks and tried to embrace the steward. The man recoiled. “No, no, get away,” the steward cried.

Nicky put a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. As soon as Henry’s papers were stamped, he and the brothers headed toward the exit. They passed a long line of dispirited persons standing listlessly in a holding pen. These were the infirm and aged that the immigration officers had ordered back to Europe. “Whole families have been split in two, knowing that they will never see one another again except in heaven,” said Anton.

“That was not going to happen to us,” Nicky said. “When I was back there in line I vowed that we both would enter the United States or we would return home together.”

Anton nodded. “I made that same resolution.”

“It was not going to happen to me, either,” added Henry. “Before going back I would have taken that steward by the throat and shaken him like a rat.”

Anton rolled his eyes.

“No, Henry,” said Nicky. “That isn’t how you make someone listen to you.”

“What do you know?” snapped Henry. “You only a boy.”

Nicky started to retort but Anton held up his hand. “Trust me on this, Henry, you need to start using your head in this country, not your fists.”

“You not worry about me,” came the reply from Henry. “I have brains and brawns.”

Nicky slapped his forehead in disbelief. “Henry, I want to say you are your own worst enemy, but I know that’s not true.”

“What you mean?” asked Henry.

“With your attitude you’ll have no trouble wherever you go picking up enemies,” said Nicky, adding a wink meant for his brother’s eyes.

Chapter 9: New York

The first day in America was cold but free of snow. As Anton and Nicky read a street sign marked Wall Street they looked for it on the map Raoul had provided. Shuffling a dozen paces behind them was Henry with his heavy footlocker on his shoulder. Anton had promised to take him to the train station and order his ticket.

After using the hand-drawn map from Raoul to locate a bank, the brothers exchanged the check for U.S. currency. A block from the railroad station they entered what they thought was a café, but actually was a saloon where hard-looking men swilled beer from enormous schooners. Anton and Nicky took a table in a corner, but Henry put down his footlocker near the door, gave an offhand wave of farewell, and marched to the bar in front of an oversized mirror lined with bottles. A waiter took the brothers’ order, and they gasped at what he told them they had to pay for a bowl of corned beef and cabbage with a loaf of bread.

“I guess the money from Raoul isn’t worth as much as we thought, Nicky,” said Anton.

         The brothers watched Henry point to a mug on the bar and gesture as if he were swallowing air. The bartender, a sharp-tongued little man who walked with a cane and a limp, rolled his eyes.

“Another foreigner,” he complained to no one in particular.

Spreading his hands on the sticky bar’s surface the bartender glared at Henry. “Speak up, what do you want?

         Henry tried to think of the English word for the beverage. Back home there was a foamy drink like this made from sloe berries. That was it. “Beer, please,” he said.

         “That’s better, fellow,” said the man, rolling his eyes. “All I ask is that my customers speak English in this establishment.”

         The waiter threw a schooner under a spout but accidentally set the full glass down hard on the curved rim of the bar in front of Henry. Foamy beer slopped over the edge of the mug and wet Henry’s lap from bottom button to top. At a nearby table two ruffians jabbed one another with elbows and cackled. It looked as though this big foreign bruiser had wet his pants.

         Henry had reached the ends of restraint. He pounded the bar with his giant fist and sent another mug an inch into the air. With a roar he vaulted catlike over the top of the bar, and he accosted the surly waiter who now turned white as a corpse.

         Shouts of support or protest came from the patrons, and a shrill whistle from the street sounded in response to the commotion. Anton and Nicky stood up in fear, not knowing if they should help Henry or stay out of the fracas. A policeman with a brass badge ran inside the main room brandishing his billy club. Henry yanked it from his hand and tossed it and him aside. Six more policemen came with clubs into the saloon and finally threw Henry on the street’s cobblestones, but not before he had smacked the waiter sharply on the rump with the man’s own cane.

 “I no foreigner,” shouted Henry, his back flat on the cobblestones. “I am American now.”

The brothers ran outside, leaving their food untouched. Anton spoke quickly in English, telling the officers that the surly waiter was to blame for the ruckus.

         I don’t know,” said one officer, rubbing his jaw where one of Henry’s fists had landed. “Does this man have a job?”

         “Show them your letter, Henry,” said Anton.

         Another of the officers who seemed in charge read the soiled paper. He nodded to his companions. “He has a job.”

         Glad to be rid of one more troublemaking foreigner—a “Black Basco” one of them called Henry by way of insult—the police accompanied him to Grand Central Station and promised to keep him there until his departure.

The brothers watched Henry walk off, bleeding and frustrated, no doubt recalling the warnings about America that the waiter at his café had given him.

“At least he’ll have plenty of room on the train to stretch out,” Nicky said.

“What do you mean?”

“Given the way he looks and smells, I bet no one wants to share a seat with him all the way to Nevada,” Nicky replied, chuckling.

Chapter 10: War at Hand

The brothers went back into the saloon and saw that two other patrons had taken their bowls of food. Stunned and hungry, they left and walked toward a district of brownstone tenements, amazed how many people lived in a single building. They risked getting lost, even with the map, their heads turning this way and that to absorb the unfamiliar sounds and scents and sights. Here a horse-drawn carriage ran amuck. Over there police beat an intoxicated man with clubs. In front of a house lit by a red light, a crone wearing seemingly a quart of perfume approached Nicky with an offer that turned his ears crimson.

Anton and Nicky had differing views regarding this loud and confusing island city where men wore top hats and the women wore fancy bonnets and dresses that showed off waists so narrow that Anton’s two hands could have wrapped around them.

“I could see myself living here,” said Anton. “I soon would pick out neighborhoods where I felt comfortable. I’ll bet I could get work painting murals and signs for businesses. In two or three years I would have the money to pay for a ship’s passage for Clarisse to come here and be my bride.”

“No New York for me,” said Nicky, putting his palms out as if shoving the city away. “I love open spaces too much, Big Brother. I can’t wait to get to Nevada.”

As they walked the brothers self-consciously observed one another’s goatskin boots, flat caps and ballooning homespun shirts, seeing no one on the streets remotely dressed as they were until they came to sections of the city where Italian, Polish, Chinese and Scandinavian languages rolled off the tongues of inhabitants. Anton’s giant frame earned some stares and giggles from boys and girls his own age.

“I think he is a gorilla escaped from the zoo,” said one youth who ran away laughing with a pack of urchins at his heels.

The brothers stared at skyscrapers some twenty stories tall and looked up with such wonder that they nearly toppled onto their backs. They passed shop windows that had hanging hams and sides of beef that might feed hungry boys for a month. A street vendor sold them boiled meat that he served them between slabs of black bread. As they ate, a newsboy hawking copies of a New York newspaper approached them on a park bench.

“War is a-coming. Read all about it,” shouted the urchin.

         Anton pressed a coin into a crusted palm that had not seen soap and water in a month.

         “Thanks, big fellow,” the boy said.

         The front page contained a sensational editorial calling for an invasion of Cuba to send the Spaniards packing.   

Anton finished reading and tossed the newspaper in a trash container. A tramp in torn shoes scuttled over to the container to grab what he would use as his blanket for the night.

 “Not every man in America makes his fortune here,” said Anton.

After another half hour of wandering, the brothers walked into a theater. They paid a coin each for admission to see a short film depicting American soldiers training to do battle with Spanish troops. The flicker, as the movie was termed, showed brief footage of anti-American Spanish citizens rioting in Cuba.

The text on the flickering screen’s accompanying footage was patriotic and violent, promising that America would vanquish the Spanish Navy if war were to come. The film was over in less than ten minutes. Anton and Nicky came out shaken, aware that Ramiro and Etienne might die for a cause they did not support.

“If Monsignor did not send us here, we might be in the Cuban jungle fighting for our lives,” said Nicky.

Anton blew wind through his cheeks, the wise decision of their foster father to send them from Spain fully apparent to him at last. “These Americans seem so eager for war,” he said.

Silent for a time the bothers tramped alongside a river bearing commercial traffic. They gaped at freighters two times larger than the ship that had brought them from Europe.

         A plump, long-tailed rat ran past Nicky’s feet, and his eyes bulged. “We don’t even have dogs that big in Spain.”

         Anton laughed. “Speaking of dogs, should we do the errand for our patron Raoul?”

         “Yes,” joked Nicky. “But maybe then we can harness a couple rats to a carriage and save ourselves the train fare to Nevada.”

Chapter 11: Back from the Dead

         At the Thatcher kennels on Canal Street a dozen dogs bayed as the brothers approached a three-story house. Anton rapped the ornamental doorknocker shaped like a bear’s head. “I could make one just like it of clay,” said Anton, “only I could make it more realistic.”

         A Chinese boy answered the door, opening it only partway. “Yes?”

         “Mr. Archibald Thatcher?” said Nicky.

         “Hardly,” said the valet in a singsong voice punctuated by giggles. “Do you have a letter of introduction?”

         Anton reached into the pouch and pulled out the letter Monsignor’s brother had sent.

         “I cannot read English yet,” said the valet, taking it from him. “Come into this outer room and I will see if Mr. Thatcher can meet with you.”

         As they waited, Anton and Nicky inspected the parlor’s furnishings and oil paintings. Sturdy tables held statues of bronze, gleaming under a coating of wax to protect the delicate surface of each work of art. These statues reminded Anton of the wolves and birds of prey he had loved to fashion out of clay. He regretted how he had to leave behind all his fondest creations in his room at the rectory.

Anton’s eyes went to the paintings that depicted rugged cowboys and determined Indians locked in mortal death struggles on the plains. He admired the way the horses of the riders, both cowboy and Indian, alternately blended and contrasted with the background hues of rock and prairie.

Nicky read aloud the name of the artist who had conceived this raw but spectacular work. “Charles M. Russell,” he murmured.

In addition to a collector of art, this Mr. Thatcher was a sportsman. Mounted trophies of mountain sheep, deer and wild boar seemed ready to leap for freedom. The overhead gaslights carried the discarded antlers of deer.

         “You better watch it that he doesn’t put your head on his wall, Anton,” joked Nicky.  He looked up. A well-dressed man with graying mutton-chop side-whiskers stood in the doorway with folded arms.

         “Sorry, sir,” said Nicky, his face as red as a garnet.

          “You are here for the Raoul Bilboa pup?” asked Mr. Thatcher.

         “We are,” said Anton, ears also red.

         “Don’t be upset, boys,” said Mr. Thatcher, his tanned face breaking into a smile. “Did you notice my rather unusual trophy over here by the lamp?”

         Anton and Nicky blinked and exchanged glances. The trophy had the head of a jackrabbit hare and the antlers of a pronghorn antelope. “It’s a jackalope,” said Mr. Thatcher with a straight face. “They grow wild all over Nevada. They are very rare. They can run forty miles an hour and hop over a sheep wagon. You can only catch one if you’ve tied a string to a carrot and dangled it into his rabbit hole.”

         Nicky’s eyes grew wide but Anton chuckled. He was quick to understand that his host was teasing them with a tall tale.

         “Everyone knows that you cannot eat one,” said Anton.

         Now it was Mr. Thatcher’s turn to wrinkle his nose and look perplexed. “Why, pray tell, son?”

         “Even if you skin them they jump right out of the pot,” joked Anton.

         Mr. Thatcher gave an appreciative groan and then chuckled. He patted his small paunch. “That makes a perfect meal for me because I need to lose a few pounds.”

Next it was Anton who turned the conversation to business.

         “The puppy for the Bilboa ranch?” he inquired.

         “Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Thatcher. “But first let me show you a little American hospitality.”

         He introduced his assistant Chen Ling to the brothers. Ling had been in America just six months after taking a ship from Shanghai, China, according to Mr. Thatcher. Ling brought a tray into the parlor that held cold glasses of milk and large slabs of a pound cake.

         Nicky’s eyes grew big. Involuntarily Anton felt his mouth water. “Thank you, thank you,” said Nicky.

         After the hungry visitors had their fill, Mr. Thatcher led them through the house and out a back door. He housed his dogs in kennels in a stable that also contained horses and a jersey milk cow.

         “Anton, this American city has both skyscrapers and livestock,” said Nicky.

         Anton inhaled the scents of the stable and again found himself homesick for Spain. He again thought of his comfortable room shared with Nicky in the home of Monsignor. He recalled the shelves lined with ribbons and trophy cups he and his brother had won as awards in athletic events. He missed the stable behind the rectory where Monsignor boarded a horse and a goat—a nasty-tempered nanny that sent Anton into a tree when he was eleven.

         Nicky stood transfixed before the kennels, his heart melting. He checked the mesh cages and saw that all were Australian shepherds. The last kennel contained a white female shepherd with blue splashes on her chest and tail. Eleven playful pups surrounded her. Ten were white or mostly white, but Nicky’s eyes stayed fixed on one big pup that was blue in color with streaks of white on its chest and tail.

         “They are weaned, housebroken and trained in all the expected simple commands, Mr. Ibarra,” said Mr. Thatcher to Anton. “All are spoken for by buyers who want them, but I promised first choice to your employer Raoul, long one of my best customers.”

         Anton looked troubled. This was the first time anyone had ever addressed him as “Mister,” and he felt old beyond his age. What if he made a bad decision and brought an unsuitable dog to the Bilboa Ranch?

         Nicky was unaware of Anton’s bewilderment. He stood quaking, wanting to dive into the kennel and to take all the pups in his arms.

         “Mr. Thatcher,” said Anton in a grave voice. “I am not sure what I should look for in a dog.”

         “Ah, humility and modesty and honesty in a young man,” said Mr. Thatcher. “What a rare combination.”

         Mr. Thatcher placed his coat neatly on a sawhorse, plucked off his cufflinks—tiny bison made of silver—and rolled up his sleeves. Mr. Thatcher had not always lived an easy gentleman’s life judging from those biceps, mused Anton.

         In another minute, Mr. Thatcher changed from host to instructor. The two brothers listened as if school were in session. Mr. Thatcher used the puppies to give a series of training tips that Anton and Nicky memorized.

         “What one looks for in a working dog is not what one looks for in a house pet,” said Mr. Thatcher.   

         He pointed out the pups’ eyes, heads, body conformation, legs fore and hind, shoulders, neck, coat and disposition. “This one’s legs are too short,” he said, grabbing an all-white male. “He’ll never be a runner. No sheep ranch for him.”

         Nicky squirmed as he listened. He saw the blue pup was more aggressive than the others. He was everywhere, chewing on their ears, lips and tails. His chest was puffed out. He was proud and cantankerous. His triangular ears stuck out comically.

         “I like this dark blue pup,” said Nicky.

         “Why, son?” asked Mr. Thatcher.

         “The blue one’s got—spirit,” said Nicky, searching for the right American word.

         “Nicky, you may be a future breeder,” gloated Mr. Thatcher, a teacher whose favorite student had given a right answer. “A dog’s personality is important. In this pup you have a working dog that won’t back down from a predator, can be taught to herd and control sheep, and who is loyal and protective of its master.”

Nicky stooped to engulf the pup in his arms, laughing as it licked him from jaw to brows. “He’s so friendly.”

Mr. Thatcher nodded. “The pup knows he is lucky to be alive,” he said. “He was the last of the eleven pups and not breathing when he came into this world. I held him to my own lips and breathed into his mouth and nostrils until he stirred and his heart thumped right in my hand.”

Anton interrupted. “It’s as if he came back from the dead.”

Mr. Thatcher scratched his head. “I had not thought of it that way,” he said.

         “What’s his name?” asked Nicky.

         “Oh, I leave the name to you, son,” said Mr. Thatcher.

         Anton was going to interrupt with a suggestion, but Nicky’s seriousness silenced him. Dog-loving Nicky must pick a name.

“Choose wisely,” Mr. Thatcher said. “The pup must live with the name all his days.”

         “Well, sir, like Anton said, this pup came back from the dead.”

         “Yes, Nicky?”

         “Lazarus came back from the dead,” said Nicky, “I remember Monsignor telling us about the man in the Bible who walked out of his own tomb.”

         “Lazarus?” said Mr. Thatcher. “Unusual but a pretty name.”

         “Well, like Lazarus, he’s lucky to get a second chance at life,” countered Nicky, thinking aloud.

         “You want to call him Lucky?” said Anton.

         “No, that’s too common a name,” Nicky said. “It has to be Lazarus.”

         “Ah, Lazarus, a good biblical name for a western dog,” said Mr. Thatcher, slapping his own thick thighs. “A herding dog in the wilds of Nevada needs to be lucky to survive all he’ll face.”

         Nicky took a deep breath. The decision on the name was now up to the puppy. “Lazarus!” he called.

         The pup opened sleepy eyes.

         “He knows his name,” said Nicky.

         “He has a new name and soon, like us, a new home, ” said Anton.

         “Let’s work a bit with him,” said Mr. Thatcher. “Australian shepherds respond to voice and hand signals. It is important you not confuse them by changing gestures, words or tone when you train them.”

         “Choose one signal and stick with it—right,” said Nicky.

         “Remember, these dogs descend from wolves. Herding is merely the natural instinct of a former predator chasing prey,” said the breeder.

         “Why do they call them Australian shepherds if their ancestors were from Europe?” asked Anton.

         “Who knows why a popular name catches on?” said Mr. Thatcher. “These dogs were the pride of many Basque herders in the Pyrenees mountains west of your home, boys. Truly, `Basque shepherd’ would have been a better name for the breed.”

         Mr. Thatcher took the pup from Nicky and put it through a half-dozen commands. Lazarus sat, heeled, retrieved, rolled over, shook paws, and fetched a stick. Then he did these again and again for Nicky, then Anton.

Lazarus looked exhausted after the session. The pup was a fast learner and curious. The breeder occasionally had to pull on a leash to get his wandering attention.

“Work patiently with this one,” said Mr. Thatcher. “He’s smart but has a bit of a mind of his own.”

Anton and Nicky hardly could contain their yawns. Their host pointed to a tiny office located between the kennels and the horses. “You boys sleep here tonight,” he said. “There are two sofas you can use. In the morning a carriage driver will drop you and the pup at Grand Central Station.”

“Thank you,” said Anton.   

“Mr. Thatcher?” implored Nicky. “Can Lazarus sleep with me?”

         “I thought you’d never ask,” came the reply accompanied by a grin. “But you growing boys must be hungry. I’ll send Chen Ling over with big glasses of milk and a bit of his famous sheepherder meat pie for you growing boys.”

         “Good night, good night, and don’t let the jackalopes bite, Mr. Thatcher,” said Nicky.

         The dog breeder looked over at the boy and roared with laughter. “No, no free nibbles for those rascals, eh?”

Chapter 12: Theft

         Misty darkness covered the New York streets like a robe when Chen Ling awakened Anton and Nicky after a good night’s sleep. He carried a tray of bacon and biscuits.  Sleepy Lazarus growled, but Ling won him over with bacon ends and a dish of milk.

         “Mr. Thatcher say tell you `this is last milk Lazarus should have,’” said Chen Ling. “On the train you give him water and ground food.” He handed over a sack containing about six pounds of meal.

         They saw no more of Mr. Thatcher. “He busy man,” said Chen Ling. “Already he is making money on Wall Street.”

         Chen Ling brought them over to a mule-drawn carriage, guided by a small, spry man in his seventies. “Mr. Thatcher provided this crate,” said the driver. “Put the pup inside and we are off.”

         The ride under lightly falling snow ended with a farewell wave from the driver. Anton and Nicky stood outside Grand Central Station, a building that could have swallowed all of St. Mammes. They watched laborers busy as ants unload crates of oranges and bananas. Inside the cage, Lazarus growled and scratched, wanting freedom.

         “I know we had breakfast, but I am hungry again,” said Anton. “Even my belly button has shrunk.”

         “Me, also,” said Nicky.

They watched an itinerant peddler sell apples from a basket. He had big jug-handled ears under a thatch of orange hair and floppy hat. Overhearing Nicky’s complaint, he landed at their feet like a condor and announced that he was at their service to help them.

“My name is Reuben Bench, and I’m a friend to the friendless,” the peddler said with a smile that reminded Anton of white piano keys. “How about a special sale on fruit? Two apples for a nickel. You can’t find a bargain like that in all New York.”

Anton did the arithmetic in his head. Back home he could get a full bag of apples for half that price.

The peddler saw the look of doubt. “How about three apples for a nickel?” he queried.

Nicky’s stomach growled.

Anton heard the sound. “All right,” he said.

He opened the carpetbag that held the American currency he had exchanged a day earlier except for a few dollars hidden inside the leather cover of a Bible that Nicky carried. Anton took out a change purse, extracted a coin, and returned the purse to the carpetbag.

“You’re a sharp negotiator,” said Reuben.

“Not even the slickest merchant in the market can cheat me,” Anton said.        

“Oh, most assuredly,” purred Reuben.

Reuben zigzagged on his stick legs when he spotted a policeman and went several yards to his left to steer clear of the officer. The station was crowded. “I’ll show you where to buy tickets,” said Reuben.

“We don’t need help,” said Nicky.

“They want a train headed west,” said Reuben a minute later to the ticket seller, ignoring Nicky’s objection. “Two full fares and a dog in baggage.”

“To Nevada,” chimed in Nicky. “It’s in White Pine County.”

“Thank you for the geography lesson, kind sir,” joked the ticket seller, but he winked and pointed to the 45-star United States flag on a pole over his boot. “Nevada is right next to Utah, the last state to join the Union just two years ago.”

“Thanks for the history and geography lesson, kind sir,” said Nicky, imitating the ticket seller’s voice perfectly.

The seller’s laughter filled his booth. “You nailed me with that one, son.”

Reuben’s eyes were razor slits as he watched several dollars leave Anton’s carpetbag for two tickets. The apple peddler walked them to the train platform. When a conductor with a pencil moustache and foghorn lungs called for all to board, Reuben said his farewell.

“Goodbye, gentlemens,” he said. “Keep your eye on that conductor. He looks a little shady.”

The boys’ heads spun to look at the conductor. They turned back to Reuben but he had hurried off. Anton shrugged and hoisted the crated dog, while Nicky bent to pick up Anton’s cardboard suitcase and the precious carpetbag.

“The carpetbag is gone—with Reuben,” said Nicky. He looked up angrily, seeing Reuben ascend a set of stairs leading to the city’s streets. “Now who is the shady one?”

Anton was ready to charge after Reuben but the conductor’s call rang out. “Last call for the westbounder—All aboard that’s going aboard.”

         “A friend to the friendless indeed,” said Anton, informing Nicky that they now only had the two dollars they had hidden in the Bible.

         Nicky winked and imitated Anton’s gruff baritone. “Not even the slickest merchant in the market can cheat me,” he said.     

         Anton laughed in spite of himself. “If I ever see Reuben again, Nicky, I may crush his apples and his head.”

         “Good,” said Nicky. “I like cider.”

Chapter 13: Sinclair’s Threat

         Steam from a wood-burning furnace hung over the train engine like a halo. The tracks seemed loose at times, tossing the brothers up and down in their seats, rattling their teeth. Inside, the car was a smoky stove. The two youths sat so far from it that they stayed chilled and wore their coats.

         Soon the youths found that sparks from the boiler were thrown back into the windows of their car. Once, passing a farmer’s field with dry corn stalks, a spark ignited a flash of fire, but the train went on before the brothers could see whether it flamed or burnt itself out.

         “I’m glad it’s cold enough that all the windows on the train are shut,” said Anton. “If they were opened, those sparks would burn our arms and faces.”

         Anton and Nicky found creative ways to beat hunger and thirst on the long ride. They strolled with seeming disinterest into the smoky club car where men in fancy vests and expensive hats gambled and sipped beverages in tall glasses. No one paid the brothers attention unless it was to gawk at Anton’s size. They walked up to empty tables and palmed handfuls of salty pretzels or dishes of roasted chestnuts.

         Every couple of hours they visited Lazarus, making certain he had his fill of water and ground meal. After he finished, they exercised him and continued his paper training.

         “You’re a smart one,” Nicky kept saying. Often he napped alongside the cage with the puppy asleep on his lap.

         On the third day out of New York while Anton slept, Nicky went to the club car where four men thumped cards angrily on a table. An enormous pile of silver, gold and bills reposed in disorganized fashion in the table’s center. One of the men, a prosperous rancher wearing an enormous cowboy hat made of beaver skin, tossed a losing hand on the table as the boy walked past him.

         “What have you got in your paws, boy?” snapped the man who Nicky soon learned was called Faro Sinclair.

         Startled, Nicky could remember no English. He answered the man in his native Basque tongue. When Sinclair’s eyelids blinked in confusion, Nicky said a few words in Spanish, and then covered his mouth in fear.

         “Oh, what do we have here?” Sinclair said to his companions. He eyed Nicky’s swarthy skin. “We have us a Spaniard—a Black Basco no less—amongst us.”

         “Ah, let the boy go, Sinclair,” said one of the players, a portly man. He wore an expensive suit that Nicky thought marked him as a lawyer or a banker. “He ain’t wearing any Spanish military uniform that I can see.”

         “Sure, I’ll let him go, but only after he empties his pockets.” He jumped up from the table and his hand of cards fell to the floor.

         Nicky stammered. “I—“

         “I what?” said Sinclair. He grabbed Nicky by the arm and twisted it. “Give it all up, Basco boy.”

         Nicky grimaced, reached into his pockets and dumped a pocketful of cracked and broken pretzels on the card table.

         “You see that?” said Sinclair, stepping on a pair of queens he had dropped. “Everyone knows all Spaniards are thieves. That’s why we got to fight them.”

         He twisted Nicky’s hand and arm a little more. Now Nicky cried out, this time protesting in English. “Stop.”

         “He said stop it, Sinclair,” said the well-dressed man, an easterner judging by his accent. “He’s only a boy, and I think he’s maybe starving.”

Faro Sinclair tried to answer the easterner but made a choking noise. Anton had padded into the club car without Sinclair noticing him. He had wrapped his forearm around Sinclair’s neck so tightly that the man’s white collar separated in two. He dangled him like a marionette.

         “Don’t ever touch my brother again,” said Anton in crystal-clear English.

         Sinclair, choking, released the boy. Nicky rubbed his wrist. He tried restoring circulation to his arm by rubbing it as Anton squeezed Sinclair’s neck a little harder.

         A stocky porter with skin darker than Nicky’s confronted Anton.

         “Son, I saw the whole thing, and you may be right as rain to do what you’re doing, but if you don’t put him down I’m going to have to ask you and your brother to get off this train at the next station.”

         Anton looked doubtful. Sinclair kicked helpless legs in the air.

         “You’ll forfeit your tickets if I put you off the train for cause,” said the porter.

         Anton dropped the rancher. The man bounced once.

         “You’ll pay for this,” Sinclair gasped, his face blue and crimson when he finally got enough air in him to bluster.

         Anton ignored the threat. “Don’t ever touch my brother,” he repeated.

Sinclair picked up his Stetson from the floor. “You’re lucky my pistol is locked away in the baggage car,” he said. “The next time I see you I can promise things won’t go your way, boy.”

         The Easterner put a friendly hand on Anton’s arm. “Why don’t you take your brother to the dining car for a quick bite?” he said, stuffing a greenback bill into the older youth’s pocket. “You’re to big to survive on pretzels.”

        
Chapter 14: The Artist

         Anton and Nicky followed the Easterner into the dining car like puppies on a fox hunt.

         Over heaping plates of potatoes and ham the brothers talked and Anton observed the Easterner.  He wore a blue striped tick shirt and a wide navy tie that only reached his third shirt button. His hair was long and no more tamed than a tiger’s fur. Anton observed that the man’s feet in riding boots were as small as a child’s.

         “Don’t let Faro Sinclair get to you,” said the Easterner. “The more he does the rough stuff to prove he’s the self-appointed protector of cattlemen’s privileges, the more he alienates himself from decent ranchers who don’t approve of his methods.

         Anton nodded. “What is it you do, sir?”

         “Book illustrator, painter and sculptor by day and husband by night,” he said.

         Anton’s eyes widened with interest. The Easterner said his name was Charles Russell. His wife Nancy forever chided, him for being a poor businessman. “I was born a Midwesterner, but now Montana is home. I rope steers as well as I ride mustangs.”

         “Really?” said Nicky.

         “Sure, I stink at both,” he said, cackling at his own moth-eaten joke. “But I’m able to paint and sculpt the buckaroos that do it well and that’s enough for me.”

         “Ever ride a jackalope?” asked Anton.

         “Ah ha,” said Mr. Russell. “All the time. Once I jumped on one’s back in Montana, and he bolted straight in the air. He didn’t come down again until we reached California.”

         Anton and Nicky laughed. Then Anton shyly acknowledged that he too liked to draw and carve and create clay sculptures.

         “You have any work with you?” asked Mr. Russell.

         Anton pulled out his cardboard suitcase and unsnapped it. Mr. Russell waited patiently as Anton yanked out his sketchbook. The artist expected to see little more than stick figures.

         “These truly are splendid,” said Mr. Russell. His voice raised a couple of octaves in appreciation as he looked over the falcons and other wildlife that Anton had captured in pen and ink. “Have you had a lesson?”

         Anton blushed, shaking his massive head.

         “He’s just good on his own,” boasted Nicky.

         “So you are a natural,” said Mr. Russell. “You are good, but good is not enough,” continued the artist. He demonstrated how to add shadows to a drawing with a few deft movements. “If you are to become an artist your skill must improve until it equals your passion.”

         As they worked, Nicky curled up on a bench and went to sleep. Mr. Russell hovered over Anton’s drawings and showed him advanced techniques. He explained complicated terms such as “breadth, dimension and shading.”  He stressed the importance of mastering ways to convey light and color. “They are as evident to the viewer as the artist’s signature,” said Mr. Russell.

 “I want to make drawings that tell a story from a bird or animal point of view,” confessed Anton.

         “Exactly right,” said Mr. Russell. “You must cultivate an eye that remembers all, a brain that forgets nothing, and an ear that no sound escapes. Only then will you become a great illustrator.”

         “I have another confession,” said Anton in a voice so strong that Nicky woke up and listened. “I want to work in clay, making great sculptures of animals.”

         With this Mr. Russell herded the boys to his private car and invited them in to meet his wife.

         “Dear, meet Anton and Nicky Ibarra,” he said. “My wife, Nancy.”

         Anton saw the eyes of Nancy Russell raise with disapproval over being interrupted while reading, but she asked them to sit down anyway in the tight compartment. Mr. Russell opened a trunk and showed them his latest creation, a sculpture of a red-tailed hawk that had snatched a snowshoe hare in its talons.

         Anton looked up in astonishment. “Your work hangs in the home of a Mr. Archibald Thatcher in New York.”

         “Why, yes,” said Mr. Russell. “He is a patron.”

         “We bought a pup from him for my uncle’s ranch in Nevada,” said Anton, answering a question he saw in the artist’s eyes.      He opened a suitcase containing the wings and talons and vertebrae of a dead hawk that he had collected while hiking in Wyoming. Mrs. Russell wrinkled her nose, excused herself, and told her husband he could find her in the dining car.

         “You must be a student of anatomy, knowing every bone and organ inside the specimen as well as you know their exterior flesh or feathers,” said Mr. Russell. “You also must spend as much time creating brambles and bushes as you do creating the bear cubs who play in them.”

         Anton listened, listened some more. “You want authenticity,” he said.

         “That is true of drawings and of men and women as well,” said Mr. Russell.

         Anton now understood that natural talent could take an artist or illustrator only so far. Mr. Russell was a jokester but when he painted he was all serious business. This was a profession that called for concentration, technique and skill—and maybe a little playfulness. Suddenly Anton was ashamed for not seeing all this previously.

         Mr. Russell saw the pained look. “Don’t get discouraged, son,” he said. “I have been drawing and making clay figures since I was a boy. Genius is not enough. You have to work at creating, and play at creating. I can see plain as daylight that you see that also.”

Chapter 15: The Basque Hotel

One day after Mr. and Mrs. Russell left the train with waves for the brothers, the train stopped at a dusty station in Nevada. A cheery emissary from Raoul was there to greet them.  He saw the purple glare that Sinclair flashed the two boys when the rancher too left the train, but they were preoccupied with unloading the dog crate and their meager belongings and missed it.        

“Two boys, one pup?” said the old man, a burly fellow of about sixty with a huge chest and back that had caved slightly into his belly region and bottom. “You must be Nicky and Anton.”

“And you are?” asked Anton, having learned from the Reuben encounter in New York to keep strangers at arm’s length until he knew them a little.

“Tubal Busca at your service,” the old timer said with a salute. “Here to take you to the greatest cultural institution in Nevada—the Basque hotel.”

The brothers blinked in confusion. This Tubal spoke neither straight Basque, nor straight English, but rather a mix of both in the same sentence.

Faro Sinclair strode past Tubal and the brothers, two lackeys behind him bearing a trunk and four packed carpetbags. “We’ll meet again, Bascos,” said Sinclair, biting savagely on the end of a cigar and strapping on the pistol he had retrieved from the baggage car.

A woman doused in perfume, evidently his wife, was there to collect him. “Welcome back, darling,” said the woman.

“Thank you, May,” said Sinclair. “For once you’re on time.”

Her smile faded at the hidden rebuke. “I guess I am,” she said.

Tubal scratched his head as the couple strode away.  “I not know you boys already so popular.”

The brothers laughed. Their tension evaporated.

Tubal piled the newcomers into a buckboard and drove along a wide street to a cheery two-story hotel. “Your home away from the sheeps,” said Tubal, sweeping a sun-spotted hand with a flourish.

Inside, the Basque hotel and boardinghouse resembled a beehive. The two brothers stared for this was far different from the slow pace Nicky had observed in the café back home. Young girls in traditional Basque dress ran this way and that, waiting on row after row of tables. Some of the older men waved and called to Tubal as he entered.  He found an empty table and made the brothers take seats.

“Nicky,” hissed Tubal. “Take off the cap.”

The hotel owner came over to the table as Nicky whipped off his cap. “Anton Zaga,” he said and threw them a hand to shake American-style. “Welcome to Nevada, the thirty-sixth state in the Union, and home of rattlesnakes, coyotes and buzzards like my good friend Tubal.”

Zaga smiled. Then he ran off to greet newcomers at another table with a similar greeting.

“Those all his daughters,” Tubal said pointing to the young women rushing everywhere with plates and glasses. Two of them shot Tubal a rude stare.

“They don’t look happy,” Anton said.

“Or nice,” added Nicky.

“They really mean,” whispered Tubal. “If it’s rattlesnakes or them, take the rattlesnakes.”

One of the Zaga daughters slammed down their meal, plates of spaghetti and leg of lamb served in spices. Her name was Mara. She hated the smell of sheep, and this old man reeked of sheep.

“Enjoy,” she barked in an annoyed voice.

“And that’s an order,” joked Tubal, but only after she was out of earshot.

Anton and Nicky chuckled. This Tubal was a young boy trapped in a middle-aged man’s body, Anton decided.

During the meal, Tubal confided to Anton that Raoul’s hired herders rarely stayed with him more than a few years at most. “Raoul’s heart is as hard as a year-old bread loaf,” joked Tubal. “The man he has out there now with the sheeps is on loan from the Navarre Ranch until I can train you.”

The big meal ended when Mrs. Zaga brought over a baked dessert called flan. Outside the hotel the brothers let Lazarus out of the cage to feed, water and exercise him.

During the eighteen-mile ride to the Bilboa ranch Nicky and the pup slept in back while Tubal told story after story.  Anton had never met anyone who talked so much. Tubal spoke with no breaks in his sentences for periods.

“My village was Muxika. My father he owned the mill to grind grain with giant millstones. I youngest with no chance to inherit land, and so I took a ship here in 1889 and come to Nevada to work for Raoul.”

“What was it like then?” asked Nicky.

“That winter it so cold that cattle and sheep died by the thousands. Tubal never slept. I stay awake day and night to move sheeps to the lowlands.”

“Did you lose many sheep?” asked Anton.

“A few, you always lose a few,” said Tubal. “The cowmen, they blamed us sheep grazers for the deaths of cattle. They say sheeps ate the best grass under snows, and there none for cattle.”

“Were they right?”

“Who is ever completely right? Who is ever completely wrong?”

“Tubal, you have been here so long,” said Anton. “I mean no disrespect, but why do you not own your own ranch?”

The camp tender scratched his beard and cocked an eye. “Tubal not save a dime. I spend on wine, cards and strange women.”

“At least you didn’t spend it foolishly,” said Anton with a laugh. “Don’t you want to go back home to Muxica?”

“Without nothing in my pants but my big bum?” said Tubal. “Only a fool go back without dinero.”

“Maybe one day you will make a fortune, Tubal.”

“Not Tubal,” he said, talking about himself in the third person. “I one of those Basques that strike it poor, not rich.”

“Do you ever hear from home?”

Tubal chuckled. “Sure, when a family member dies,” he said. “I must live on slave wages all my life. All I got is a pocket watch, a harmonica and a pipe. Save your money, Anton. Save your money.”

The ride went from one bump to another. Tubal passed the time holding the reins in one hand and blowing softly into a harmonica to play melodies from the homeland. Anton barely contained his homesickness as he listened, though the slow progress over the rutted trail made him sleepy. Tubal played on, indifferent to Anton’s yawns.

“This Raoul, what is he like?” asked Anton, after Tubal wiped the mouth organ dry.

“His greatest love is his beautiful daughter, Martina,” said Tubal, pocketing the instrument. “Raoul guards her like he guards his gold coins.”

The wagon hit a rut, awakening Nicky. “Are we almost there?” he asked sleepily, ruffling the coat of Lazarus.

Tubal laughed. “Yes, there is here at last, Nicky,” he said, pointing to a spot just ahead on the trail that had smoke curling from a chimney.

Chapter 16: Ends of the Earth

Tubal took the wagon through two gigantic posts connected by a third overhead post with a sign that said Bilboa Ranch. Anton jumped down to unlatch the gate. Two patches of ground to either side of the posts contained red hollyhocks, honeysuckle, day lilies, a gooseberry bush and tall evergreen shrubs. Kong, deep irrigation ditches cut and crisscrossed the vast fields, flanked by deep grass of such a rich green hue that Anton ached to paint a canvas on the spot. Over by the ranch house a carefully planted orchard of apple and cherry trees stood ready to share bounty when summer came.

“So this is Raoul’s ranch?” Nicky asked. “It is so big and yet so empty.”

“Almost like we are at the ends of the earth,” added Anton.

“Ends of the earth five miles back,” said Tubal, slapping his knee. “You way past them now.”

A large brown Australian shepherd with a chest as white as an egret’s plumage raced down the dirt path to greet the wagon. Lazarus, peeking out from behind Nicky’s back, wasn’t sure if he wanted to jump from the wagon or hide from this monster. Anton stepped down from the rig and grabbed the blue pup’s underside to place him on the ground.

         “Lazarus,” said Anton. “Meet your new friend.”

         “His name Peppy,” said Tubal, clapping road dust from his pants. Peppy ignored the pup, covering Tubal instead in slurping licks of affection.

         “Boys, meet real boss of Bilboa Ranch,” said Tubal as he roughed up the sheepdog’s fur.

         “Hola, Peppy,” said Nicky, jumping from his post on the wagon and petting Peppy. The dog snarled and showed white teeth. Nicky retrieved his hand as if it had been burned.

         “He particular who pets him except for me,” sniffed Tubal in his most regal tone. “Get acquainted with him pronto so he trusts you.”

Chapter 17: Nevada

         Years later Anton and Nicky would regard the next week as the most memory-packed time in their lives. It seemed to them that they had moved to another planet from Spain. They felt dwarfed by the vastness of Raoul’s empire.

         Their first two hours on the ranch were their own. They entered a low-slung bunkhouse that had a red entrance door and window frames with shutters painted bright red.  Dried peppers hung in clumps from rafters inside the bunkhouse. The whitewashed walls mostly were bare save for deer antlers and wild bighorn sheep horns that herders had collected over the years.

         “You have little free time,” said Tubal, rubbing his stiff back. “Write those who miss you.”

         The brothers sat at a long handmade table to write short notes to Monsignor Bilboa and Mr. Thatcher to let them know they had reached Nevada. In addition, Anton penned a much longer note to Clarisse, refusing Nicky’s nosy insistence on reading to him its contents.

         “Oh Clarisse,” said Nicky in a silly high-pitched voice when Anton protected his letter from baby brother’s prying eyes. “I am now in Nevada and am a millionaire already ten times over. Come join me and be my slave for life and kiss me passionately and wash my dirty, smelly, stinky socks.”

         Anton rolled his eyes and hit Nicky on the head with his beret.       

         After addressing the envelopes the brothers began to learn their way around the ranch bunkhouse.  Tubal showed them how to heat water atop a wood-burning stove so they could bathe.

         “I hardly bathe myself,” admitted Tubal. “The sheeps don’t mind.”

         “No,” said Anton. “But maybe Mara Zaga at the hotel minds.”

         “Good,” said Tubal. “She stay away from Tubal.”

         After tub baths, Anton and Nicky looked longingly over at the line of bunk beds in one corner. Before they could sleep, Tubal was back.

         “First a surprise,” said Tubal. He brought each of the boys a white shirt, beret, two pairs of pants, stockings and red and yellow neckerchiefs. “Compliments of Raoul,” he said. “Dress for dinner required. Peel off those dusty duds.”

         “Ready to take a bath, Tubal?” said Nicky, his voice cracking with mischief.

         Tubal sniffed his shirt. “No need,” he said. “Maybe next year when I get riper.”

Chapter 18: Martina

         The eyes of Anton and Nicky darted this way and that inside the mansion built by Raoul. The spacious main room made them feel small. Windows of spectacular stained glass reminded the brothers of the churches of Guernica.  Opulent in light, the room possessed coordinated colors of dark blues and greens. It was decorated with fine china and porcelain figurines, a far cry from the rugged masculine roost of Mr. Thatcher.

No, not Raoul but a woman of taste had designed this room, most likely the late Mrs. Bilboa, Anton and Nikki decided in whispers. Or maybe it had been Martina, that special daughter Raoul had mentioned in his letter to Monsignor.

         The room resembled a university library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The shelves contained more than one thousand books, many with leather covers and gilt edges. On another wall was a painted portrait of a dark-haired woman with an assured expression and Mediterranean beauty that the brothers deduced was Raoul’s late wife. A wooden ladder stood in a corner, ready to press into service if a volume from the upper shelves was desired. A large mirror dominated the room and the wallpaper had a milky background with delicate roses completing the pattern. Overhead was a chandelier with hanging candles that dropped down from fifteen-foot ceilings.

         “I shipped six thousand pounds of wool two years ago to a buyer in Chicago to get most of these furnishings,” said a slender man with a neat moustache and pressed frock coat. He came into the room from a stairway connected to more rooms on a second and third floor. “Raoul Bilboa,” he added by way of introduction. “Call me Uncle Raoul.”

         “You have an impressive library,” said Anton. He took a breath—“Uncle Raoul.”

         “Sit down here on the couch,” said Raoul. “Are you both readers?”

         Nicky spoke for both. “We are, sir,” said Nicky. “Anton prefers the novels that take his mind far away and nonfiction books that tell him all about birds and animals. I like biographies about great men and women and helpful books on practical subjects such as agriculture and science.”

         “Take what you want to the bunkhouse or sheep camp to read,” Raoul said. “Just return every book when you finish it and treat it like you would your own. Books are special and a hundred years from now that same book deserves to be in another person’s hands.”   

         “Yes sir,” said Anton, impressed already with his host’s manner of expression.

         Raoul looked past them. “Ah, you are about to meet Martina, boys,” he said. “Introduce yourselves while I see if the cook is ready to serve us.”

         Anton and Nicky jumped from the sofa and turned their eyes to the stairway. A small, delicate girl with sharp, carved features waved to them. She wore an embroidered blouse with ruffled sleeves and a gold brooch at the throat, lifting the bottom of her long skirt to navigate the stairs.

Nicky smoothed his long black hair back as if a cowlick might betray him as a bumpkin. To Anton’s amusement, as Nicky and Martina locked eyes his brother grew on the spot into an older, more sophisticated specimen. The silly head that had been talking in a goofy, high-pitched voice about dirty socks was now cool and suave.

         “I’m Martina,” she said. “Lemonade?”

         They gave their names and accepted the offer. Martina walked across the room to fetch a silver pitcher that rested on a Chippendale setting.

         “Ask her if she washes dirty, smelly, stinky socks,” whispered Anton to his brother. “And folds them neatly.”

         Nicky shot an elbow into his big brother’s ribs as Martina poured. “Truce?” begged Nicky.

         Anton stifled a giggle and mussed his brother’s hair when Martina wasn’t looking. “Truce.”

Chapter 19: Work at Dawn

         Anton and Nicky fell into bed and surrendered all thought to exhaustion.  Six hours later, it was as though they had no sooner tapped head to pillow than they were jolted awake by the clanging of a metal spoon against a pan. “Wake up, you sons of the dawn,” Tubal shouted.

         Anton sniffed the air and caught the heavy scent and sound of crackling greasewood and dried sheep dung burning in a wood stove. “What is it?” he managed to croak, his mind a whir as he tried to figure if he were in Spain, New York or—that was it—Nevada.

         “What is it he asks?” came Tubal’s indignant voice. “It morning, and you do not have boots on.”

         Anton wiped the grit from his eyes. “Coffee brews and eggs boil,” the old man said, lifting arms over his head to stretch his stiff back muscles. “What more could a man want, you betcha?”

         “Um, two more hours of sleep and a less ugly waiter, you betcha,” joked Nicky. He swung his legs onto the cold bunkhouse floor. “Whoa, now that’s cold.”

         He pulled the stockings out of his dusty boots, adding a ragged sweater over a thick shirt to fight the morning chill.

         Anton grabbed a hairbrush from his travel bag. He tried forcing a stubborn cowlick down, gave up, and mashed his black beret into the tips of his ears to warm them. He accepted a coffee from Tubal. The steam from the white enamel cup warmed his hands as he breathed in its aroma.

         “How is it? Tubal demanded.

         Anton sipped, made a face. “Awful—strong and bitter.”

         “Ah, perfect,” said Tubal, cackling. “It got the personality of a Basque.”

         He thrust a second cup into Nicky’s hands.

         Nicky sniffed the fumes coming from the thick beverage.  “I think this was made with the same hemlock leaves that killed the philosopher Socrates.”

         Tubal affected a hurt look and sniffed. “I boil my best old boots to make coffee, too.”

         Anton and Nicky grabbed ladder-back chairs and pulled them up to a table fashioned from a door on elevated blocks. Tubal washed the top clean before slamming down the tin plates containing four fried eggs, a hunk of black bread, and boiled Basque sausage meat packed inside spiced pig intestines.

         “Nice fresh eggs,” remarked Tubal, pulling up a chair as well. “Any fresher they be inside chicken.”

         As the diners ravaged their meal in silence Tubal kept up a cheerful clatter of words. “You brought appetites from Spain.”

A white full moon in a cloudless bright blue morning sky greeted the diners through the single bunkhouse window. After breakfast, Anton washed the dishes while Nicky dried. They folded and put away the empty feedbags they had used for blankets and swept the bunkhouse floor.

         When they opened the door and went outside a puff of granulated snow white and fine as sugar blew past their boots into the bunkhouse. Tubal put down a tin of leftovers and dried fish and made a small mound on a flat rock to serve as a meal for the sheepdogs. He pulled the fleece collar up to cover his neck and blew hotly on his hands, and then hauled gloves out of his bulging coat pockets.  A sheepdog materialized out of the dark and nuzzled Tubal’s stained, oily pants.

         “Good morning, Peppy,” said Tubal. “Here breakfast.”

         The white and brown dog bent and finished the meal in five or six gulps.

         As he ate, a blue younger dog approached Nicky.

“You mean, there was your breakfast,” said Nicky, leading the pup to a second mound of food.  “Good morning, Lazarus.”

“Make sure dogs eats every bite,” said Tubal.

“Why is that?” asked Anton.

“You invite a coyote or a big cat to wagon,” said Tubal.

“All right,” said Nicky.  He put forth a hand tentatively and rubbed Peppy’s coarse head. The sheepdog sighed his appreciation and then went to Anton for a second helping of affection.

         “Peppy thinks you two will do,” said Tubal. “Time for puppy school now.”

         “His name is Lazarus,” said Nicky.

         “You told me,” said Tubal. “What name is that for a dog? Why not Lucky?”

Chapter 20: Peppy and Lazarus

         Tubal led them to a low-slung outbuilding where he outfitted Lazarus with a collar and leash that the puppy fought. He also entrusted a brush for the pup to Nicky. Tubal reached into his deep pockets and found a tobacco pouch he had filled with nutritious strips of lamb baked and dried in the sun.

Tubal directed the pup and his new herders to a pen behind the bunkhouse where thirty sheep milled uneasily. Peppy ran toward them and made his leadership known. “Sheeps out to pasture when God give out brains,” said Tubal.

“Guess they’re kind of like stone lifters,” said Nicky, throwing Anton a sly look.

“That was a short-lived truce,” grumbled Anton.

The brothers hurried to join the old man. He was all business now, his weathered eyes entirely on the pup.

“Watch, Lazarus,” said Tubal. Opening the gate he shooed the flock out.  “Stay, Peppy.”

         The dog sat inside the pen on his haunches and panted anxiously as the last of the sheep faded into the distance, barely visible in the misty morning light. When they had gone about three hundred yards, Tubal lifted his hand over his head to signal. Peppy was off like a wind gust with the excited puppy toddling well behind him.  “Get them,” Tubal shouted.

Anton and Nicky marveled that any sheepdog could move so fast and get so much done. Peppy was a blur, nipping at the heels of the lead sheep without actually touching her to get the flock moving. In five minutes he forced the last stubborn straggler back into the pen. Tubal rubbed his bristly white beard with satisfaction and pulled a small piece of jerky from his pocket.  

“Every treat for dogs you cook,” said Tubal to Anton and Nicky as he held the treat in the air and watched Peppy salivate.

“No raw meat?” asked Nicky.

“Sheepdogs that taste blood no good and you must shoot,” said Tubal.

Nicky and Anton exchanged worried glances and had the same thoughts. Too much to learn, so much responsibility.

“Of course,” said Anton. “I understand.”

Peppy caught the jerky in midair, making short work of it.

“See how easy is herder’s life?” said a satisfied Tubal to the new herders. He pulled out a second piece of dried lamb to treat Lazarus as the panting pup ran up to join his masters. “Dogs do work, herder gets the credits.”

Chapter 21: The Apprentices

The week of apprenticeship for Anton and Nicky included many hours of backbreaking work. One day Tubal made them put in a dozen fence posts for a small corral near the bunkhouse where Raoul planned to break the occasional wild mustang captured on his ranch. That job done, Tubal trained them in giving thirty sheep a dip in a narrow trough.

Soon they were sweaty and smelled like disinfectant. The sheep-dip kept the stock free of blowflies, mites and ticks. Under Tubal’s stern direction, the brothers lifted, prodded, and pulled sheep through the trough, using a long staff with a hook on the end to make sure the sheep dip covered the heads and backsides of the sheep. The lower backs of the boys ached, and their eyes burned from the fumes of the solution.

When Tubal’s back was turned, Nicky pulled the protective bandana off his mouth, looked over at Peppy and Lazarus sleeping belly up in the sun, and mimicked the old man’s speech.

“Dogs do work, herder gets the credits, you betcha,” Nicky said, giving Anton a giggling fit with his perfect imitation of Tubal.

The days for their training passed quickly. Finally, before Tubal sent them into the desert, he invited them to modify their living quarters exactly as they wanted.

         “Sheep wagon be home next two years,” Tubal said. “Make it homey.”

         The boys marveled at what they found inside the wagon: a cast-iron stove with a pipe to take smoke outside; hand-polished oak cabinets; long benches that doubled as storage for beans, potatoes and flour; a gun cabinet with glass front; and a dining table that folded into the wall when not in use.

         “It’s like taking our own home with us,” said Nicky.

         Raoul stopped by to see how work on the sheep wagon progressed.  “I designed and hand-built much of the wagon,” said Raoul, displaying evident pride in his own workmanship. “You might say I have an engineer’s mind,” said Raoul. “I first imagined all the conditions this wagon might face spring, summer and winter, then planned accordingly.”

         “I see,” said Anton.

         “First thing was to figure a way to conserve every drop of moisture possible,” said Raoul. “I came up with a way to strap barrels of water to the wagon sides and back.”

         Raoul pointed out the network of pipes and gutters he had lining the roof. “That’s so that the occasional rains refill the barrels,” he said. “No water on earth tastes better than fresh rainwater.”

         “How do you keep bugs out of the water?”

         “Filters and screens,” said Raoul. “They can’t get in to your water supply.”

         Tubal took over the topic.  “Sometimes barrels not enough,” he said. “If herder not find water, he in big trouble.”

         Inside the wagon Raoul pulled out a drawer from a case showing them topographical maps of eastern Nevada. These had been carefully marked with inked Basque, Spanish, and English notations. The marks indicated where the water was pure or drinkable only if baking powder were added. Here and there on the maps were hand-drawn skulls.

         “What do those drawings mean?” asked a puzzled Nicky.

         Raoul’s lips tightened. “They signify poisoned waters.”

         “W-w-what?” stammered Nicky.

         “Cattle ranchers they do that,” said Tubal.

         “Why?” asked the outraged Anton.

         “Ask them, not me,” said Tubal. “Hate make people bad.”

         The first alteration, the youths decided, needed to be the sleeping area. The loft over a set of oak cabinets had been fine for a lone herder, but the two brothers required twice as much loft area to sleep undisturbed. In the one lone bare space of the wagon, right next to the folding table, Raoul helped the brothers construct a bunk bed.

         “It has to be a bit longer than standard to fit me,” said Anton.

         “We can make it longer,” said Raoul. “You won’t have much headroom when either of you sits up, but your toes won’t hang over the end.”

         Soon the bunkhouse was turned upside down into a carpentry shop. The sounds of sawing, hammering and sanding were heard through the afternoon and long into the night. The smell of pine and sawdust permeated the air. Finally, the bed stood tall and sturdy, and each brother sighed as he lay down to test it for a moment.

That task done, they repainted a long bench that would double as a bed for Tubal when he brought the herders food, water and necessities, Next, Raoul showed the brothers how to build shelves to store books and Anton’s sketch pads and art supplies. One shelf also held Nicky’s stamp album, a Bible, books on Nevada geography, sheep caretaking books and a thick ledger to keep a daily log on matters concerning the flock. 

At long last, only one more task remained. At Tubal’s suggestion, the brothers huddled to come up with a name for their sheep wagon.

“Lonely,” said Nicky. “It has to be Lonely.”

Tubal chuckled. “That says it all,” said Tubal.

In 10 minutes more, Anton hand-painted `Lonely’ in script on a wooden plaque and attached it to the side of the wagon.

         “Get all the rest you can,” said Raoul. “Tomorrow is the hard job.”

         “What’s that?” asked Nicky.

         “We must replace this old canvas on the wagon,” said Raoul. “We’ll get Tubal to help us.”

         The backbreaking job took a full day sunup to sundown. Raoul, Tubal and the brothers stretched the canvas with the aid of ladders, insulating the wagon to keep it cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

         When they finished, Raoul went back to his house to have a late dinner cooked by Martina. After bidding Raoul good night, Anton asked Tubal what he planned to do with the old covering.

         “Take to dumping ground.”

         “I’d like it,” said Anton.

         “You like taking canvas to dumping ground?” asked Tubal, puzzled.

         “No, I’d like to keep the old canvas,” said Anton.

         “For why?”

         “For my paintings,” came the reply. “I’ll cut the canvas into pieces and stretch each piece. There is enough here for twenty paintings, maybe more.”

         Nicky chimed in. “I can find wood and help you make frames, Anton.”

         “Thank you, Nicky,” said Anton. “That will give the paintings a natural look.”

         Tubal shook his head, puzzled. This new generation of Basque herders was getting stranger all the time. This herder thought he was an artist. “Hokay,” Tubal conceded, rolling his eyes. “Canvas all yours, Mr. Goya.”

         “Who is this Goya?” asked Nicky.

          “He Spanish painter, known for his nudes,” said Tubal

         “And much more,” said Anton, exasperated by Tubal’s narrow-minded view.

         “No, only nudes,” insisted Tubal, a stubborn look in his eyes.

         “Maybe one day I will paint you, Tubal,” said Anton.

         “No problem,” said the old man. “I keep my drawers on?”

         “Of course,” countered Anton, then added a mischievous grin. “I’d need the whole sheep wagon canvas to paint your big backside.”

         “No respect from younger generation,” grumbled Tubal. Then he roared a great laugh, enjoying Anton’s good-natured teasing.

         The next day, before Tubal planned to take the brothers through arroyos and dry lakes to the sage- and grass-rich sheep camp, he took Peppy and the buckboard to town, fulfilling his duties as camp tender. He handed the mercantile store proprietor Raoul’s long written list of items to stock the sheep wagon.

Three sacks of flour

A hundred-pound sack of cereal and wheat germ for the dogs

A fifty-pound sack of pinto beans

Twenty pounds of bacon

One sack of white rice

One sack of new potatoes

One sack of green apples

Salt block

Spices (pepper, dried oregano, rosemary, thyme)

Dried red chili peppers

Cans of peaches, vegetables, buillion, crushed tomatoes, Borden’s evaporated milk

Salt pork

Lye soap

Molasses

Liver oil for dogs and the herders

Coffee and tea

Artist paints and a palette, fine line pencils and clay for sculptures

              The merchant read the last line and raised his eyebrows. “Don’t ask,” said Tubal, shaking his head sadly. “These Basques not like old Basques.”

              “I guess not,” said the mercantile owner. “I do have a supply of paints and art supplies in the back room. May Sinclair fancies herself an artist.”

              Tubal loaded the buckboard, and the wooden wheels sank an inch into the muddy main street. He was about to leave when he tied the reins, dismounted, and ran back into the store.

         “I buy licorice straps,” Tubal said to the mercantile owner. “I bet the boys have sweet tooth.”

Chapter 22: The Letter

         Anton and Tubal had finished cleaning up after work when a short “woof” from Lazarus alerted them that a visitor was on the way to the bunkhouse. The hands of the brothers bore blisters and even powerful Anton massaged muscles in his legs that ached. The sound of buckboard wheels in the distance reached them.          “Hola, hola,” said Tubal as he pulled up, waving letters like a gift. He found Anton hunching over his sketchbook, Nicky tussling with Lazarus over a rope toy. “Mail call.”

         Anton and Nicky perked up. Lazarus rushed to greet Peppy with a flurry of wet licks. Peppy took a front paw and swatted the blue pup on its nose. “Anything from Spain?” Nicky asked.

         “Postcard for you from Monsignor Bilboa,” said Tubal to Nicky. “Nothing too interesting.”

         “You read my mail?” asked an astonished Nicky.

         “Of course,” said Tubal in a mock huff. “It not in envelope.”

         “What does he say?” said Anton.

         “It’s old news,” said Nicky. “Judging from the postmark it was mailed the day after we left St. Mammes.”

         “The world could change hands in that time,” said Anton. 

         “Everyone here worries about the bad news from Cuba,’” read Nicky, reading Monsignor’s crabbed handwriting. “I am well and miss you. I pray the Virgin watch over both my sons.’”

         Tubal had waited patiently.  Now he sniffed another envelope and rolled his eyes to he ceiling. “Now, good Master Anton, letter from Guernica with perfume. Ooh, la la.”

         “From Clarisse?” asked Anton, knowing right away he had made a mistake. The old man now had prime information in his teeth and would chew it the way a dog chews rawhide.

         The old man waved the letter over his head. “From Cla-aa—aa—rise, yah.”

Anton snatched the letter from Tubal and plopped onto his bunk.

         “Girls say same thing,” teased Tubal. “I dream of you. Pay my way to America.”

         Nicky giggled and Anton pursed his lips as he neatly opened the envelope with his penknife.

         Nicky had started to remind Anton to save him the stamp. He fell silent when he saw Anton’s grim expression. “Tubal, come outside, please, and help me take the sweaty saddle blankets off the team and air them out,” said Nicky.

         “But I want hear letter from Claaa—aa-risse,” protested Tubal, still in fine humor.

         Nicky threw on a sweater and grasped Tubal by the arm. “Quiet, please,” he whispered, throwing open the door. Lazarus jumped up and followed outside.

         The bunkhouse rattled from the heavy boots on the wooden deck outside, but Anton never looked up.

         He read the letter a second time as if he could edit its contents. Anton tried recalling where he was the day it was mailed—oh yes, aboard the ship, probably looking out at water and thinking of Clarisse across the sea….and the first and last kiss she gave him.

         He returned to the letter, drawn to its flowing, graceful perfect penmanship and remembering the fountain pen he had saved for so long to give Clarisse on her sixteenth birthday before he left for America.

Dear Mr. Ibarra:

There is no way to write what I must say except to write it.

We had talked about our hopes and dreams before you left, but then you did leave. My father and mother lectured me about my need to be practical. They said I am in Guernica and you are in America,

I did look around me. The villages are full of no-longer young women who promised their hearts to handsome young Basques who went to America.

The stories vary. This young Basque took to drink. This one met a woman in Reno and lost his heart. This one bought a ranch and is married to his work. But always the stories end as they started. The women are here, and the men are in America, and never will their fat dream of marriage become reality.

Some of these women waited three, five, ten years. What do they have but worry lines and no hopes? They are widows who never married.

One day after you left Spain, Bernard Navarre came to visit my father. The rumors of the Spanish soldiers coming here to take away the young men were not rumors at all. All over the Basque villages, mothers tore their hair and young girls lit altar candles.

Bernard told my father that he expected to be taken when the soldiers came. He is much older than me, but the soldiers take anyone who looks fit. He said he did not want to die without an heir, and he asked if he might take my hand in marriage.

Anton, I fought this very hard. I told them you were honorable, and you meant to return to me. He gave them a deadline of forty-eight hours. My parents never left my side, never let me sleep.

Let me skip the parts that can only hurt you, Mr. Ibarra, and I so hate being formal with my dear sweet Anton, but I am a married woman now, and formal I must be.

Before the soldiers could find Bernard and abduct him, Monsignor Bilboa consented to marry him and me immediately in the chapel at St. Mammes and forgave us the normal posting of the bans. He loves you so much, and I know this marriage hurt him so, but he could not deny our request.

During our wedding celebration the Spaniards heard the music and raided us. They took Bernard and some other eight young men with them. My head spins at all that has happened. I must stop now and mail this before I lose my nerve and fail to write at all.

                                                                        Clarisse

         Nicky and Lazarus came quietly back to the bunkhouse in the late evening. Anton was bent again over his sketchbook, working hard with a flurry of strokes. Nicky peered over his brother’s shoulder and saw a caricature his brother was completing. At an altar facing the unmistakable back and bald head of Monsignor Bilboa stood a couple taking wedding vows.

         Nicky recognized the image of Clarisse wearing a wedding veil and carrying a withered rose bouquet. Next to her in a wedding suit stood a monstrous leering goat, the contorted face recognizable as Bernard’s under the animal whiskers and horns.

         “Do you want to talk, Brother?” asked Nicky.

         “Never once will I discuss this,” said Anton, and tore the drawing in two.

Chapter 23: First Trek

         Martina had a surprise for the brothers when they rolled out of bed before dawn to start the first day of the trek. She came to the sheep wagon with her father and pressed fresh-baked apple pies into the hands of Nicky, Anton and Tubal. 

         Nicky, packing ground dog meal for the dogs, looked up when she approached and gave a bug-eyed stare at her.  She wore simple long yellow dress with a sash around her narrow waist that complimented her figure. Completing her outfit was a jaunty bonnet for she and her father soon would be on their way to attend Mass in town at the Catholic church.

         “I thought you three might enjoy pie later,” she said.

         “Will we ever,” said Anton, holding the crust close to his nose to take in its aroma.

         “Thank you, thank you,” said Nicky, blushing when he saw Raoul’s eyes go from him to his daughter and back again.  “You’re a terrific baker, Martina.”       

         She blushed bright red.

“You busy last night, Little Bit,” said Tubal, using the pet name he had invented when she was a toddler. Tubal already had the two big draft horses ready in their traces. He had named each horse Gus, because he said that way he only had to give a command just once when he talked to the horses. One Gus was black, the other white, like chess pieces.

         “Listen to Tubal, boys,” said Raoul. “He has been around sheep so long I swear he is part ram himself.”

         “I not ask which part, Boss,” said Tubal, but his mock leering grin showed that he appreciated the compliment. “We better go now.”

         After the brothers safely placed Martina’s desserts inside the wagon in the pie safe, they climbed next to Tubal. He clucked once. The oversized wooden wheels of the wagon lurched, and in another few minutes the sheep wagon passed through the gates of the Bilboa Ranch.

         Behind the wagon were Big Luis and Bertha, the mounts for Anton and Nicky respectively. Lazarus ran excitedly alongside the wagon at first, while Peppy, older and knowing the need to conserve energy, sat with panting tongue with his head touching Tubal’s knee. Tied to the back was also a third horse named Dolly that Tubal would use to get back to the ranch after teaching the brothers what he could about herding.

         “Another adventure, Brother,” said Anton.

         “That it is, that it is,” said Nicky. “Don’t you think Martina looked beautiful this morning?”

         “I think my little brother’s smitten, that’s what I think,” said Anton, laughing.

         “My heart does seem to have gone on a jackalope ride,” Nicky admitted.

Chapter 24: Sheep Camp

         The camp was a six-hour journey from the ranch. It was past noon when Tubal pulled the wagon next to the loaded horse and buckboard of the herder loaned to Raoul by the Navarre Ranch.

         Anton saw that the herder’s white tent already was folded and stashed in the back of the buckboard. Beyond the buckboard were some 2,000 sheep, each with a splotch of red paint to signify ownership by Raoul.

         “Why doesn’t he have a sheep wagon?” demanded Nicky.

Tubal explained that Raoul only allowed his most trusted herders to use his sheep wagon in the summer. Lesser herders had to make camp living in mere tents except in winter when Raoul relented and let them live in a wagon.

         A mixed breed sheepdog also lay in back of the wagon, a thin hemp rope connecting his collar to a small iron ring. Otherwise, the brothers realized, getting the canine guardian to leave the flock and his responsibilities would have been impossible.

         The herder, a wizened character named Pete who was even older than Tubal, chafed to get started for town right after introductions. Tubal knew the herder couldn’t wait to spend the small stack of bills owed him by Raoul. If he hurried he could make it to the Basque hotel before Zaga stopped serving dinner. Whatever meal the hotel served would be a feast compared to the hard bread and beans Pete had choked down for breakfast.

         “Any problems with sheeps?” asked Tubal.

         The herder shrugged. “One coyote,” he said. “I shoot but I hit air.”

         Tubal nodded but said nothing. He and Raoul were in the minority of stockmen who believed coyotes had as much right to the range as they had. Most were like Pete, claiming the only good coyote was a pelt hanging on a bunkhouse wall. Unless Tubal ran into the occasional coyote who killed lambs just for sport and left their bodies uneaten, or ripped the bag from an ewe’s belly to get at the milk, he was content to shoot his rifle in the air to send the predator packing.

Tubal had been around long enough to know that rodents and rabbits made up a good part of a coyote’s diet, and without the predators the smaller critters would breed in disturbing numbers unmolested. Most herders, like Pete, were no marksmen, and Raoul insisted that the surrounding sheep were in far more danger of catching a stray bullet than the coyote was.

         “No problems with cowmen?” asked Tubal.

         “Haven’t seen a one,” said Pete.

         “Looks most ewes gave birth already,” said Tubal.

         “Most, you betcha,” said Pete.

         “Everything nice and quiet then?” asked Anton in French.

         “Too quiet,” Pete said. “Tonight I want loud music and cheap wine at the hotel.”

         “Don’t get into any trouble,” said Tubal playfully in Basque. “Lots of music, less wine.”

         “At my age?” said the herder, cackling. “What mischief can an old man do even with the wine?”

         After Pete’s buckboard departed and was only a dust cloud in the distance, Tubal turned to the brothers. “I know Pete a long, long time,” he said. “When young he holy terror, always drinking and fighting. One time Zaga chained him to a chair to keep him out of fights.”

         “Really?” asked Nicky. “What happened?”

         “He sleep in chair,” said Tubal. “In morning Zaga unchain him and Pete, he go to the sheeps.”

Tubal informed the brothers that his plan was to spend a full week of camp with them and the flock. “Peppy and I teach Lazarus and you lessons in herding,” said Tubal.  “Bad habits never go away.” 

A natural teacher, Tubal never tried to humble dog or boy, encouraging them instead to think and become self reliant.

         “What do you want us to do, Tubal?” asked Nicky.

         “We camp here tonight,” said Tubal. “Tomorrow we move camp.”

         “We just got here,” said Anton with a laugh. “Always the joker.”

         “No, no joke,” said Tubal. “Sheeps clean out grass here. We have to move them.”

         Anton gazed out at the immense flock of sheep and lambs spread before him. Already Peppy and Lazarus were at work, forcing the stragglers at the far end of the flock to move closer to the others for safety. The dogs knew instinctively that an isolated lamb or small ewe made easy prey for a coyote.

         The next morning it was dark when Tubal awakened Anton with a tap on his arm. In the distance came the mournful cry of a coyote, as if it were protesting its lonely lot in life. Before leaving they sat at the table for a breakfast of apple pie washed down with condensed milk and molasses to sweeten it. Nicky forced himself awake and sat down.

         “We save you pie,” said Tubal, cracking his knuckles.

         “One slice?” said Nicky, outraged.

         Tubal burped and wiped the crumbs from his lips with a shirtsleeve. “You stay with dogs, Nicky,” said Tubal. “Make new pup listen to Peppy.”

         “I will,” said Nicky, eating his piece and laughing because Tubal had brought out a second slice out for the boy that he had been hiding just to tease him.

         “Anton wait in wagon at new camp site,” said Tubal. “I come back and you help me drive flock to him. Understand?” 

         “I’ll locate any strays,” said Nicky, nodding. “I don’t want to leave any sheep behind for that coyote.”

         After the dishes were cleaned and stacked the sheep wagon rolled off with Gus and Gus pulling and Dolly tethered in the rear. Anton watched Tubal as the old man held the reins loosely beside him. The old herder’s eyes shifted from this rocky landmark to that withered juniper. He reads the land the way a sea captain reads the sea, mused Anton.

         Not before late afternoon did Tubal pull the sheep wagon into a draw and begin unhitching the black and white team.  Talking every second as he worked, he directed Anton to build a campfire while he located a dozen flat rocks and stacked them.

         “What is that you build?” asked Anton.

         “A kind of marker.”

         “For Nicky?”

         “For everybody,” said Tubal.

         “I do not understand.”

         “When you find good camp with water, share it.”

         “Oh, so if I see a stack like that then grass and water cannot be far away?” asked Anton.

         “Yes, and you thank herder who put down rocks many ago years.”

         Anton walked this way and that gathering sticks of greasewood to build a fire. Tubal disappeared for a time to make sure a nearby spring-fed waterhole was in easy reach of the flock to come. He took the three horses and several empty containers with him.

         Tubal returned an hour later, his shirt drenched with cool water, and the horses loaded with fresh water.  He took casual steps until he saw Anton about to light the fire with a stick match. “No, no,” said Tubal, running up.

         “What is the matter?”

         “You no build fire before?” asked Tubal, handing Anton a water container.

         A little defensive, Anton responded that he had.  “Quite a few fires, yes.”

 “You not check wind.”      

Tubal showed Anton how to wet his finger and check the wind current.

         Anton held up a finger, wet it again. “From the west, I think.”

         “West, yes,” said Tubal. “Now get me flat rocks.”

         “But I am hungry now.”

         Tubal was patient. “You eat soon enough, Anton,” he said. “First build fire right way. Always watch for sparks. Always check draft.”

         “Like a fireplace?”

         “Yes,” said Tubal.

         The old man arranged and rearranged the rocks into back and side walls with the care of a poet arranging words. Finally satisfied, he went into the sheep wagon and brought out willow poles and two iron rods a little over a yard long. As Anton watched, Tubal lashed the pole corners with rawhide and then fashioned the rods into a primitive holder to hang cooking pots. He piled the wood to one side and lit a small pile of tinder first. Once the blaze started he added larger chunks of wood and stones to the fire pit.

         “I see now, Tubal,” said Anton, chastened. “I did nothing right.”

         “You see why you need flat stones?”   

         “So the fire will bounce off the stones on the back wall we built and give more heat?” asked Anton.

         “Yes, remember this in winter,” said Tubal. “Use stove for heat and cooking. Winter days short, nights long. You get much, much rest in sheep wagon.”

         “Much, much time for drawing and making clay animals, too,” said Anton.

         Tubal seemed not to hear. “Never gather wood to make one fire, always bring enough for two fires,” said the old man.

         “Why is that?”

         “You have the wood if there rain or blizzard,” said Tubal. “A herder with cold, wet feet no good as herder. Wood much harder to find then when I come to Nevada. Men from mines cut down trees.”

         “Oh, to burn for charcoal in their furnaces to process the ore?” remarked Anton. “How shortsighted,”

         Tubal shrugged. “You make do when you have to make do.”

         Tubal had the fire blazing. He chewed the end of his pipe until it died down, leaving hot coals for cooking. “Why you still talking, Anton?” he said, grinning. “Make beans and lamb stew. Tubal a hungry man.”

         Anton mixed together flour and cornmeal in a cast iron pot coated with olive oil. Positioned over the hot coals, the mixture baked into two crusty but delicious loaves of bread that were ready to devour about the time the beans and stew bubbled.

         “If you can’t work as artist or herder you can open a hotel,” Tubal joked as Anton set the table with plates and utensils for dinner.

         “Did you ever get lonely when you herded, Tubal?”

         “You betcha Tubal lonesome,” he said. “But never crazy.”

         “What do you mean?”

Tubal confided that many years ago a herder of Raoul’s could not adapt to the extended isolation, the grim Nevada alkali flats, and the ever-present threat from cowmen.

         “What happened to him?”

“This poor herder from Mexico ran bootless on bleeding feet to ranch with dead lamb in arms,” said Tubal. “Raoul paid his way back to Spain.”

“I hope I am made of stronger stuff.”

“I hope you are,” said Tubal. “Something strong is in soul of every Basque.”

“We are survivors,” said Anton.

         After the two had eaten heartily but in silence, each lost in private thoughts, Anton began scraping the plates. He soaked and dried them in a pan while Tubal saddled Dolly for the trip back to Nicky and the sheep.

         Tubal and Dolly were hardly a half-mile out of camp when Anton unwrapped his art supplies and a generous piece of canvas. He worked his brush cleanly and quickly with short, deft strokes. In ten minutes he had drawn what little he could remember of his mother and father pulling two boys on a sled. Then he put down his brushes, put down his tools, and cried as he had not cried since the day Monsignor had informed him his parents were never coming back.

Chapter 25: Song from the Old Country

         It took two days for Nicky and Tubal and the dogs to bring the flock to the new feeding grounds where Anton waited.

Anton had surprised two fat sage grouse while wandering in search of water holes. He in turn surprised Tubal and Nicky with a tasty meal of grilled fowl.

         After pushing back from the table, Tubal pulled out his harmonica. He played songs from the Old Country from memory.

         Anton requested a special tune, a raucous, passionate melody that reminded the boy of the celebrations in Guernica that always followed the stone lifting and other Basque games. When the tune ended, Tubal pretended not to notice the sadness in Anton’s eye, putting the instrument away and fetching his pipe. 

         “Why don’t you actually smoke your pipe, Tubal?” asked Nicky.

         “Tobacco costs money and chewing costs nothing,” said Jacinto. “Time for Tubal to teach now.” 

         Tubal’s schoolhouse was gigantic for it consisted of all outdoors.

         “What is tonight’s lesson?” asked Anton.

“Knot tying with rope and string,” came the answer.

         First Tubal taught the brothers the half-hitch and bowline. The next hour they left the wagon and in the last light of day learned to drop a braided lariat over a stubborn sheep, making a flexible loop called a hondo. In between they learned four or five useful knots to tie fishing line strong enough to hold even a twisting bull trout of fighting weight.

         “Why is the lariat so dirty?” asked Nicky.

         “Lariat made from horsehair,” said Tubal. “It kinks unless you stretch it first.”

         Nicky with his long-fingered, quick hands proved a natural at throwing a lariat, while Anton struggled, too muscle-bound to swing the rope back over his head to get the right arc and distance.

         When that lesson ended, Tubal taught the newcomers how to make felt liners to wear under their cowboy hats on cold mornings. They hand-constructed the felt from unspun long-fibered wool fleece, forming it into a malleable shape with the addition of hot water and soap made from lye and wood ashes. He showed them as well how to take an ordinary sleeping bag snugger by sewing felt on the inside as lining. “With fleece you have blanket and robe,” Tubal said.

         During the seven days of training the brothers saw that Tubal’s lessons seemed to be taught following a meal. Always he tapped his unlit briar pipe, chewed on the end, and then asked questions in his unhurried way.

         At dawn on the seventh morning, Jacinto pronounced the brothers prepared to depart.

         “You on your own now,” said Tubal.

         “Any last words of wisdom?” asked Anton.

         Tubal grinned. “Be like Tubal.”

Chapter 26: Trouble in Camp

         A cold and windy March turned into warmer April. Anton noted in the logbook that two hundred additional ewes had given birth. Many ewes were rearing twins or even triplets. Tubal’s visits were now only every three weeks. The Ibarra brothers were not exactly veteran herders, but neither were they ignorant beginners any longer that had to always be checked upon.

One night a couple hours before dawn a stubborn old ewe wandered off from the flock with its lamb. Peppy had stirred in his cot of straw and rags under the wagon. He wasn’t sure what troubled his sleep so. His ears cocked forward, and he stretched and yawned, awakening the puppy alongside him. Lazarus jumped up without a stretch, always eager for a romp or a run. Peppy listened for some other clue. Had it been a broken stick of greasewood he heard under the feet of a runaway ewe or lamb? Was he simply responding to an internal warning passed down to him from an ancestor?

         Whatever it was, Peppy felt the need to inspect. His masters were asleep in the wagon, and his independent nature needed no meddlesome herders to solve a problem for him. Lazarus whined and growled uneasily as Peppy trotted off, hoping that maybe the wagon door would burst open and there would be Anton or Nicky clambering down the steps to give him a pat and an order. When they failed to come, Lazarus took off hard after Peppy, already a long sprint ahead. An eager pupil, he was ready for whatever lesson the older dog planned to teach this night.

         Inside the wagon, Nicky bolted upright.  He had been dreaming of a walk through a beech and larch forest in the Old Country where Monsignor Bilboa liked to take his brother and him for trout fishing as a way to wind down after a Sunday mass delivered to herders in a hilltop meadow. In his dream a cougar had dropped from a tree and was challenging him for the speckled trout on his stringer. Nicky shook his head and listened. Nothing, he thought, or maybe just the wind.

         Just in case, he opened the wagon door and called for the dogs. No answer.

         By now the two dogs were a quarter-mile from the cabin and streaking past the quiet flock. They had the scent of the ewe and the lamb, and now there would be no sleep for them until one or both sheep was returned. 

         Their run took them eventually past the broken salt flats of a dry lake to a rocky canyon where vegetation indicated the presence of running water. For a minute, they lost the scent on a rocky ledge, and then picked it up again, pausing to inspect a tuft of wool caught on a bramble bush.  Peppy led the way, always the dominant one, while the youngster behind him stayed right on his plume of a tail.

         A horrific bleating came from the direction of a rocky ridge dead ahead. Peppy neither wondered nor cared what had made the ewe wander from the safety of the flock to face danger. Perhaps there had been no cause, no thought at all. She had put down one hoof and then the next and the next, while her young one followed, thinking only of milky sustenance to stave his constant hunger.

         What happened next took the blink of an eye. One moment there was the ewe pawing at a writhing, curling and then coiled snake. If she had a thought here, it likely was not fear but rather the wish to place herself between danger and her lamb. The next instant she was driven back in pain and surprise, the fangs of the rattlesnake driven deep into her muzzle, and its white venom already working its way through her arteries as her front legs gave way.

         The snake refused to let go of the sheep. Peppy hesitated until he saw the rattler stretch itself to its full four feet as the ewe foundered.  Without a bark and only a low growl in his throat, he crouched and sprang as if his legs had coils. 

Chapter 27: Snakebit

         Nicky told Anton he had had a premonition the day was going to be a hard one the minute they stepped down the stairs of the wagon. They set down the scraps of food for Lazarus and Peppy, but neither dog bounded over for a head rub, ear tug, and meal. “All night I had the bad dreams,” Nicky said.

         Anton raised an eyebrow. “About what?”

         “You and I were in an avalanche buried deep in cold snow.”

         “You’re just remembering the past.”

         “I don’t think so,” said Nicky. “In the dream we are not children but just as old as we are now.”

         The sky was a mean smoky gray and the wind included fifty-mile-per-hour gusts that penetrated the outer garments and the long underwear the two herders wore. No rain or snow fell yet at their elevation though the nearby mountain peaks, which stood 11,000 feet and some higher, were hidden by funereal thunderheads. The air was heavy with moisture nonetheless. The wind burned the cheeks and throats of the brothers until they brought their protective bandanas up nearly to their eyes to keep their faces from turning red as uncooked meat.

         “You look like a train robber now,” said Anton. “Put the dog dishes inside as Tubal reminded us and let’s mount up before it starts to pour.”

         In seven minutes flat they had Big Luis and Bertha saddled and on the move. A head count of the herd showed one old ewe missing, and Nicky said that he remembered her and thought she was with her three- or four-day old lamb. Each rider unsnapped the flap of a carbine holder in case a panther or coyote was around.

         “Let’s put some distance between us and maybe we’ll get lucky,” Anton suggested.

         They separated their mounts by about one hundred feet to cover more ground, much the way boys do when searching for a lost ball. An hour passed, and now needles of rain pelted them. The wind still whistled, and tumbleweeds large as wagons blew past the horses and riders.  Finally, they changed direction to push east past a series of craggy rocks, a stunted tree or two, and ravines so deep there were times neither Anton nor Nicky could see one another. Ahead was a canyon, from which came frantic barking, as Peppy and Lazarus heard the horses approach.

         Nicky was first to hear the barking and called to Anton. “Here, brother,” he said. They quickened the horses’ pace, but only a bit, for the cracked, rocky surface in the canyon might injure a hoof or leg if they were not careful.

         Now they were but ten feet from the dogs. Neither Peppy nor Lazarus was aware when the brothers leaped from the backs of Big Luis and Bertha with carbines drawn.

         Peppy was in midair with his fangs buried inside the yielding flesh behind the snake’s triangular head. The dog spun and danced, darted and leaped, while Lazarus barked and lunged frantically for the snake’s elusive tail. The snake’s jaws stayed wide open. Drops of venom fell harmless as raindrops upon the ground while Peppy’s jaws worked away as he twisted like a whirlwind.

         Nicky had his carbine raised, but Anton’s big hand pushed aside the barrel. “You might kill Peppy.”

         Peppy gained the advantage as the rattler’s strength faded. He shook the snake for a long time.

         Even after death, it writhed and twisted.

         Ten minutes later Peppy dropped the reptile and pawed the twitching body. Barking intently, Lazarus raced forward to grab the dead snake in exactly the same place behind the head.  He shook it vigorously and then raced past Anton and Nicky with the snake trailing from his mouth like a pennant. He dropped the snake into a dry gulley and ran back to the brothers with a look of pride on his puppy face as if he had slain the enemy.

         The brothers praised the dogs to calm them. Lazarus and Peppy lay down and watched as the rescuers turned to the ewe. She lay on her side, no longer breathing. Her lamb nudged her body, but it too was more dead than alive. Twenty feet from the orphan a trickle of mountain water flowed, no wider than a puddle, but clear and running and valuable in this arid land. A grove of aspens bore the initials of Basque herders that had camped here even twenty years earlier.

         The two brothers separated the lamb from its dead mother and Anton rubbed its underbelly to reassure it. Nicky knelt before the ewe and frowned. Puncture marks and a faint trace of blood marked the ewe’s muzzle, which was swollen three times its normal size and colored bluish-purple as if dyed. 

         “Are those tooth patterns on the muzzle?” Nicky asked Anton.

         “Yes,” said Anton. “The ewe must have wandered here for a drink and surprised the rattler on a flat rock. The snake did not want to let go.”

         He walked over to where Lazarus had dropped the snake and came back to Nicky with the carcass of the huge rattler.

         Nicky whistled.  “Big one,” he said. “What now?”

         “Nothing to do for the ewe,” said Anton, noting the blowflies congregating around her eyes. “The meat is ruined. Let’s see if we can help this little bum.”

         “I will wash the lamb by the stream.”

         As Nicky bathed the little wooly, Anton knelt upstream and tasted the spring water. “It’s cold and good,” he said and drank long and appreciatively.  Lazarus and Peppy watched him and then moved over to fill their bellies.

         Nicky finished cleaning the lamb, and then he moved upstream and also drank deeply.

         “Ah, that wets the whistle,” said Nicky. “Much better than the rain barrel water in camp.”

         “Let’s head back.”

         Nicky remounted Bertha. Anton handed him the inert lamb, bleating weakly once, twice, and then resigned to whatever the strong hands holding her wanted. The bum, as herders called all orphans, seemed to Nicky nothing but wool and bone, weighing no more than a hand towel.

         “Think I name this one `Bum Deal,’” said Nicky. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his extra sweater, swaddling the lamb in it to prevent shock and hypothermia. They galloped to the flock, the dogs running behind them.  The brothers looked everywhere for a surrogate mother for the bum.

         “How about her?” asked Nicky from his mount’s vantage point. He pointed to an older ewe. She had a single lamb nuzzling her for mother’s milk that contained every nutrient a newborn needs.

         “We can try,” said Anton, raising his bushy eyebrows. “I’m willing to see if the ewe is willing.”

         “Think she might drive him away?”

         “Possibly, then we’ll just have to rope her and milk her by hand,” said Anton. “Bum Deal needs the nourishment.”

         They eased the lamb onto the ground. The warmth from the ride had spurred energy and hunger in the orphan. It struggled to get up, fell, and then found its legs.

         Nicky picked the orphan up to hold under the ewe. Driven by hunger and instinct, Bum Deal fumbled for a teat with eager lips.

         Anton guarded the ewe’s head, ready to act should she turn her teeth on the intruder. “She’s taking him as if he were own,” said Anton, smiling.

         “Looks like she likes being a mother.” 

         “Bon appétit, Bum Deal,” said Anton, getting back on Big Luis’s back.  “I’ll take the dogs and check on the flock.”

         “I’ll go back to the stream and fill up the goatskins.”

         Before riding back to the little mountain stream to replenish the wagon’s fresh water, Nicky paused at the sheep wagon to load empty containers for fresh water onto the pack saddles of Gus and Gus.

         The sun burned directly overhead when Nicky and Bertha arrived at the stream. Predators already had made a meal of the dead ewe. Ravens picked at morsels from broken bone fragments. Only patches of wool here and there identified her remains as a sheep.

         Nicky tried to recall what Tubal had taught him about reading tracks.  One set of tracks was just shy of three inches long with big outer toes and narrower inside toes. Three remaining sets of tracks were smaller but the overall pattern was the same. Coyotes, no question.

         Bertha didn’t like the wild canine scent still in the air, neighing her displeasure and tossing her head. Nicky soothed her by rubbing her pink muzzle. “Don’t worry girl,” he said. “They’ve had their meal already and probably are miles away hunting their next one.”

         Then Nicky whistled in astonishment. On the ground were rounded prints some four inches or so wide with thick indentations where the pads touched.  No claw marks showed, meaning this was an animal that could retract its claws. Now he knew the real source of Bertha’s fear. She acted ready to buck as if she could feel the big cat that had stalked here landing on her back.

         “Anton will want to come back here to sketch these tracks,” he said to the horse. “Panther, I’d say, and a big heavy one too.”

         He looked toward a rocky hill covered with boulders in the distance. He went collected his carbine from its scabbard in case the big cat was still around and fancied horsemeat—or worse, he grinned at the thought—a fat Nicky rump roast.

         He was surprised at his own calm. He felt at home in this vast Nevada empire. He worried more about his horse running off and leaving him in the alkali dessert than he did a panther attack. Tubal had seen dozens of big cats while herding, and not one ventured close enough to give the herder much more than a wild shot. Tubal at first also had confused Nicky. He used so many English words to describe the big cats—cougar, painter, mountain lion, panther—that the boy thought Tubal must be describing four or five different animals instead of the same beast.

         Working quickly but alert for any warnings of an intruder coming back that Bertha might give, the boy bent to his work of filling the goatskins and containers with pure water for camp. Even more tracks and signs of scat lined the bank along the bubbling water. No doubt about it, this was an oasis worth filing away in his mind for future visits while herding.

         Water meant the difference between prosperity and failure in sheepherding, Nicky saw now. It meant life or death out here for herder and stock alike. Herders covered hundreds of miles over public lands winter and spring. Many times they passed the deep ruts where overland travelers had directed their Conestoga wagons. Even these many years later the herders still saw traces of oxen ribcages and bones and broken schooners and wooden dolls and great trunks everywhere they camped. Travelers heading to California or Oregon died in uncountable numbers in the unforgiving arid land called Nevada.

         Not only was it important to find water, but water had to be drinkable. Many lakes in Nevada virtually had dried to puddles, and it was deadly for animal or man to drink water too high in alkali salts. Without water, herders could go crazy, Tubal stressed. They hallucinated and saw waterfalls. They fell down and raved in a delirium. Man and beast without water for days resorted to lapping stagnant water that not only tasted horrific and smelled worse but came roaring back out of their parched throats as fast as it went down, followed by nausea, fainting, watery stools and dry heaves. Leaders of wagon parties barked urgent orders to all in their party to resist the mad urge to drink from stagnant waters, and yet thirst led many to disobey, and their bodies were either left there on the desert or buried in the shallowest of holes as the wagons rolled west, ever west, toward the Carson River or other potable waters.

Chapter 28: Hard Lessons

         On the first of May, Tubal arrived with supplies and this time a cake with frosting that Martina had baked. The camp tender pointed to the bare patches of ground and announced that it was time to move camp to a fresh feeding ground. The three Basques spent that long day helping Lazarus and Peppy move the balky sheep from the old camp site to another grassy site.

Tubal drove home a lesson during the evening meal. He had shaken his head several times while watching Anton and Nicky hurry the sheep along, but he had withheld constructive criticism—until now when he had their attention.

         “Today, you cover many miles on trail,” he began, his tone alerting the youths that he had something important to teach. They looked up from their cans of peaches packed in syrup.

         “Yes, yes, the lead sheep were so frisky,” agreed Nicky. “We must have gone two miles today.”

         “I see that—two miles, huh,” said Tubal, now taking a packet of tobacco from a shirt pocket. “All the sheeps were this eager to travel?”

         “No, Tubal,” said Anton.  “We had to sic Peppy and Lazarus on the sheep and lambs that lagged behind on the trail.”

     “Why you do that?”

         “Otherwise, the first sheep leader would have gone way ahead and might have run into coyotes while unprotected.”

         “Hmm, I see,” said Tubal, his voice dropping for emphasis.  “Tell me this, boys. Do we raise race horses or sheep?”

     Nicky sensed a trick question. “What do you mean, Tubal?”

         “How much weight do sheeps gain in a day?”

         Nicky and Anton closed their eyes and thought back to the herds they had seen back in the high hills of Spain while visiting herders and their flocks with Monsignor Bilboa. “Maybe a half-pound, I guess, or maybe a few ounces more?” said Nicky.

         “True and maybe a pound a day if the grass is high and the water is good and the lamb is in prime health,” chimed in Anton.

         Tubal fondled the bowl of his pipe and chewed the end. “Today, you think the sheeps gain a pound when you run them?”

         Nicky looked pensively at Tubal, and hung his head so that his long black hair fell over his forehead. He knew the answer.

         Anton took off his beret and twisted it in his hands in shame. “The trailing sheep, they probably lost weight, Tubal.”

         “Lost weight, hmmm?” noted Tubal.  “We have 2,000 sheeps here, yes?”

         “Yes, 2,000 sheep,” said Nicky, already miserable.

         “In you run them like this, what happens?”

         Anton understood the point. He deserved this lecture from Tubal and knew it.  “Raoul will lose maybe seven, eight, ten pounds of meat per sheep.”

         Tubal acted surprised. “I never been to school, but that sounds like a lot,” he said. “What, maybe twelve thousand pounds lost?”

     Nicky and Anton answered as one. “Yes, sir.”

         “That lot of money. I think Raoul might get mad,” said Tubal. “Now in winter if snows come you may push sheeps to walk fast to low ground.”

         The two nodded.

         “In winter only,” said Tubal. “If feed is scarce.”

“Well, tomorrow what if we put the dogs on those frisky leaders and make them turn back to the main flock while the slowpokes graze along the way?” asked Nicky.

“Good idea,” said Tubal. “Then we bring big fat sheep to market, not skinny ones.”

     Anton and Nicky nodded.   

         “Good, I think I turn in then and sleep,” said Tubal. “I one of the slow sheeps that needs his rest.” 

Chapter 29: Poisonous Plants

         The next day, Tubal again awoke before the brothers and lit the lamps and boiled coffee and eggs. He shook Nicky awake, informing him that he was accompanying him to search for water and grazing land.

              “You collect stamps, no?” said Tubal, whispering so as not to awaken Anton.

     “Yes, yes,” said Nicky, not quite fully awake.

     “Today we collect plants.” 

     Anton was now awake. “Plants?”

         “Yes, Anton, the boy and I find plants. The sheeps, they are stupid. You boys must learn the plants that kill them.”

         After the two departed Anton spent a restless day with the sheep. He was bored and nearly fell asleep on Big Luis. The dogs had left him, keeping the rear third of the flock from straying, He bolted awake as his horse shied and a grey shadow streaked toward a lamb munching sagebrush near its adopted mother.

“Bum Deal!” shouted Anton, as if the lamb might hear him.

         Alert at once, Anton had the carbine in his hands and elevated. Forty yards, now thirty, then twenty, the coyote—this was a big one—raced at its prey. At the last half-second, Bum Deal saw the threat and jumped sideways. The coyote snatched only a thick clump of wool and a strip of skin, missing the vulnerable throat.

         Growling and snapping, the coyote readied itself for a second charge. Anton closed his eyes, opened them, and squeezed off a shot. The coyote took a step forward as if about to charge, lowered its head and forelegs, and then settled upon the earth as if asleep.

         Anton kicked his spurs into Big Luis’ side. He approached the coyote with caution, remembering Tubal’s teaching to make sure the hunted was not merely stunned or wounded. “Many a herder has lost a couple fingers to a `dead’ coyote,” Tubal had warned Anton.

         Anton backed up. He saw little blood and guessed that his shot had merely creased the neck of the coyote. This one was five feet in length and almost two feet paw to shoulder. “You’re a big one, all right,” he said to the coyote. “I wonder how many rabbits a day you eat to get you so fat.”

         Peppy and a panting Lazarus came running out of a ravine in response to the shot. They rushed the body of the coyote, but stopped dead at Anton’s command. The coyote regained his senses, snarling as he faced the dogs with bared fangs.

         “Stay,” yelled Anton, and the dogs remained frozen.

         The coyote never hesitated. Tail between his legs, he raced away. The two dogs whined but stayed where they were, pleading eyes fixed on the herder as if begging to go after him. Anton considered firing his carbine but held the shot.

         “Maybe Mr. Coyote has learned his lesson,” Anton told the dogs, dismounting and rubbing their backs until the standing rough hairs on their necks retreated. “And Lazarus and Peppy, you have learned that the prairie wolf is dangerous and must be approached with caution.”

Chapter 30: Bum Deal

      Darkness had settled when Tubal and Nicky rode back to the camp. Anton had stew bubbling in the cast-iron oven. Anton had crammed mesquite sticks into the stove for fuel. The good sweet smell of wood chips also filled the room as he heated the mutton stew.

Tubal rolled his eyes, noting that the soft-hearted Anton had brought the white lamb into the sheep wagon. “What you have, a new pet?”

“Yes,” said Anton. “I have named him Tubal.”

         “Oh,” said Tubal gravely, noting the iodine-stained neck of the lamb where the predator had struck. “No, a `Tubal too smart to let coyote bite him.”

         Anton laughed. “All right,” he said. “He is not Tubal then but Bum Deal.”

         Nicky struggled through the doorway, clutching plants to his chest and chin. Lazarus bounded through the open door behind him, frisky and eager for attention. Nicky started to dump plants on the table, but Tubal shook his head and pointed to the wagon floor.      Tubal shook a stubby finger. “Put the pup outside,” he said. “Lazarus lick these, he could get sick, even die.”

          “Oh, right, right,” said Nicky. “I’ll put the lamb outside, too.”

“Good, good,” said Tubal, softening his tone. “First eat, then we talk plants.”

         Anton poured large glasses of water. He draped a towel over his arm and tried looking like a waiter back in Spain. Nicky giggled. He and Tubal snapped fingers for service.

         After the meal eaten at leisure, Tubal pulled out his pipe and pointed in turn to each plant. “Now Nicky, tell Anton what you learn today, ok?”

         “We found this one in large clumps by a creek bed,” said Nicky.  “It is called purple larkspur and looks a bit like a geranium until you look closer. Eating one or maybe even a couple plants causes no lasting harm. But just one day’s feeding on these makes an ewe bloat and then stagger and then twitch on the ground.”

         Tubal twitched his shoulders as if remembering what he had witnessed. He gave a nod of approval to Nicky.

     “How do you save them?” asked Anton.

         Nicky jumped on the question, glad to sound important.

         “By then, there is no saving them,” said Nicky. “You must shoot the sheep to be kind.”

         The lesson continued into the evening.

Here was the aptly named Death Camas with leaves like an adult onion’s and a pretty whitish-yellow flower in the center. Then there was lupine, named by the Latin word for wolf, because of its rapacious growth. “See pods here and gray hairs here?” said Tubal to Anton, pulling on his own fringe. “Like old man’s, no?”

         Tubal continued the lesson. He pointed to water hemlock, goldenrod, rabbit brush and locoweed, describing all as if he were a botany professor.

         Long after dark Nicky and Tubal washed their faces and announced plans to bed down. “Good night, brother,” said Nicky.

         “I’ll turn in after a bit,” said Anton. “I want to sketch each of these plants while they are fresh.”

         “Of course you do,” said Tubal, adjusted now to the strange ways of this young herder.  “Put plants in the stove to burn when you finish playing with them.”

           (# )

         In the morning, when Tubal got up creakily from a side bench and lit the wood stove and hurricane lamp, he saw now that the light illuminated a half dozen sketches pinned to one wall. The old man’s eyes traveled from sheet to plant. Seen this way, the plants displayed characteristics not even this veteran herder had taken heed of before.

         “Your brother sees with his eyes and soul,” said Tubal to Nicky, as the boy eased from the upper bunk without waking his brother. “I do not think he will remain a herder too much longer.”

         “I wish I could draw like that,” said Nicky. “That would sure make Martina notice me.”

          “You betcha,” said Tubal. “But do not worry, Little Rabbit. She notices.”

    “How do you know?”

         “I losing my hearing, not my sight,” he said. “Now I go back to ranch. Daylight is burning.”

Chapter 31: Gunshots

More than three weeks had passed since Tubal had left camp after his lecture on plants. The camp tender was two days late judging by the calendar, and the brothers were beginning to feel concern. They also wanted fresh vittles. Compared to most sheepherders, Anton was a good cook but even he found these last meals before the camp tender to be monotonous and tasteless. He recalled the fine stews and casseroles he and his brother had eaten as boys at Monsignor’s house. Such memories made him salivate and long yet again for the Basque Country of Spain. Well, if nothing else today he would bathe, he decided.

         Anton fired up three pots of water on the cook stove. He hauled out the shallow tub where he and his brother took their baths. Anton and Nicky differed from most of the other herders. The brothers bathed at every watering hole and washed their clothing at every opportunity. Some of the herders they knew wore the same shirt, pants, and underwear all the days they were with the sheep.

“It is a tossup which smells worse—the herders or the sheep,” Nicky once said to Anton after running into another wretched-smelling herder.

         Tubal still had not appeared after Anton set the table for dinner. He placed a plate of spiced beans, bacon and fried potatoes on the table as Nicky came in with Lazarus.

Nicky made small talk, but Anton failed to answer. He saw that his big brother’s eyes gazed inward as if his thoughts were far away.

         “What are you thinking, my brother?”

         Anton blushed. “I was thinking how many years remained before I could buy my freedom and go back to St. Mammes,” he said.

         Nicky knew that Anton itched to leave this enforced apprenticeship in Nevada and go back to Guernica, and, he had hoped in vain, to a wedding with Clarisse.  Now Clarisse was married, but Spain and Anton’s beloved province still beckoned.

         “Your head is here, your heart in the Old Country,” said Nicky, and punched his brother lightly on the arm to show he understood.

         Raoul had guaranteed each brother a flock of forty sheep and a cash payment if they lasted nearly two years on the range. Many a Basque herder had started with a similar small grubstake and made enough money on wool and mutton to eventually own a ranch. Many others sold their sheep and drank away the life they might have lived.

         “That is how I started when I first came to this country,” Raoul had confided in the brothers. “Then in 1888 the government offered settlers already in Nevada an additional 640 acres for less than a dollar an acre. I jumped on that deal, I tell you.”

         Nicky had said to Raoul that his dream was to stay in America and own a ranch in Nevada just as big and successful as Raoul’s. “I want to fill it with books and paintings and…daughters and sons—and dogs like Lazarus,” he said.

         “I wish to work in America long enough to find the money to return to Spain—when the Spanish army has forgotten about wanting me,” Anton had said to Raoul. “Some day, I hope to earn my living as an artist like that Mr. Charles Russell. But I want to fill my home with books and paintings and children and dogs like Lazarus, too.”

         Raoul had looked thoughtful, as if regarding Anton and Nicky as the sons he never had had. “Neither of you has ambitions that cannot be reached,” he said after choosing his words with care. “The man who can visualize his future is the only man who can shape that future.”

         Raoul’s words echoed in Anton’s mind as he ate the potatoes and pushed aside most of the beans. After eating, Anton and Nicky sipped fresh, strong coffee laced with black grounds at the bottom of their cups. “That’s the last of the coffee,” said Nicky, turning a container upside down.

         “We have a little tea,” said Anton. “Tomorrow it is your turn to cook and wash the plates,”

         “Yes,” came the reply. “And when that slowpoke Tubal gets here with fresh supplies, I’ll cook us bacon or ham and eggs instead of these rabbit droppings called beans.”

         “Always grumbling, brother Nicky,” observed Anton, but he said so with a smile.

         The brothers turned as an animal scratched at the door.

         “Lazarus and Peppy want breakfast,” said Anton. “They are getting impatient.” Always the first thought he had after eating breakfast was to feed the dogs and to give the horses a little feed to supplement whatever forage they found.

         Anton threw open the door and Lazarus bounded up the portable steps. He arrived inside the wagon first with the steadier older Peppy patiently behind him.

         Though growing fast, Lazarus was still all-puppy. Tiny splashes of his mother’s ivory white on his ears and tail offset his blue coat. He had one whitish blue eye and one dark brown making half his face look inquisitive and the other half look intelligent. All his running had toughened the bottoms of his paws, and he displayed an obsessive willingness to chase marauding coyotes to ruin their dreams of a fresh mutton meal. Unknown to Lazarus, a cornered coyote could made short work of even the largest dog,  but because dogs accompanied men with rifles,  there wasn’t a one who stood his ground when Lazarus came barking.

         Lazarus still had a few bad puppy tendencies to work out of him, although the blue dog often showed the instincts of a much older working dog. Still, when work was done, Lazarus liked teasing Peppy by biting the older dog’s tail, and only Peppy’s patience kept him from snapping back.

         Raoul had provided the brothers with Peppy, intending for the older dog to show Lazarus all he needed to know. Now Lazarus marched into the wagon as if he were the king of a kingdom, not Peppy who was smaller and stringier than the growing pup. He bent his back and invited each brother to pet him, pausing first to snatch a piece of warm mutton gristle that Anton offered as a gift.

         Anton put out a dish of water and a tin of dried food for Lazarus and some of the same for Peppy. Lazarus stood quivering with excitement, until Anton gave him the hand signal that permitted the dogs to start breakfast.

         While the dogs ate, Nicky swept the old planks of the wagon. Both brothers loved order, and they kept their camp and wagon spotless. Every jar and tool was tucked away.

         Anton often repeated an old Basque saying learned from Raoul that said you could judge a herder’s fitness as a shepherd by how well he tended his camp. “If a man cannot take care of himself and his camp, how could he be counted on to take care of his sheep?” Anton once said to Nicky when the latter complained that his big brother was too fussy about neatness.

         Anton went over to the wall alongside the stove and scratched an X through yet another day on the calendar nailed to a wall. He and Nicky stepped outside the wagon. Each lifted a hand to his eyes, and squinted but saw no cloud of dust accompanying a rider and pack horses.  “If Tubal doesn’t come today, we’ll have to eat a coyote,” joked Anton.

         As camp tender, Tubal brought replacement supplies only every third week, and he should have left days ago for the thirty-mile ride from the Bilboa ranch, according to the calendar day Anton had circled in black. The calendar, published as advertising by a tea company, was treasured by the lonely brothers as much for the photo of the female model in a red Christmas robe, as it was for keeping track of the camp tender’s comings and goings.

         “Another day closer to our freedom from the tyrant Raoul,” Anton usually joked as he put an X through a date on the calendar.

         The heads of the dogs snapped up in the middle of their breakfast. Gunfire broke the stillness, and made both brothers jump to their feet. Lazarus growled and both dogs bristled.

         “Revolvers, not rifles,” said Nicky. Anton nodded.

The two youths grabbed loaded carbines from a wooden case.

Each snatched a wool-lined coat from wall hooks and filled their pockets with rifle cartridges. As they buttoned the coats, two more pistol shots clearly rang outside far in the distance.

         Anton tied a rope to Lazarus’s collar. The dog seldom had been restrained and made a fuss. They put no such binding on Peppy who seldom strayed.

         “Lazarus hates it when he is leashed like that,” said Nicky.

         “Yes, but if those shots were fired by cowboys, we’d better keep him close,” said Anton “Some of those buckaroos would as soon kill a sheepdog as a coyote.”

         “True enough,” said Nicky, pulling his hat brim low over his eyes and surprising Anton by how menacing his kid brother suddenly looked. “Hombres like Sinclair would as soon shoot a sheepherder as a sheepdog.”

         Anton paused. Raoul had filled their heads with stories about the murderous dealings of cowboys like Sinclair, although he had added that many ranchers themselves in eastern Nevada grazed both cattle and sheep and bore no ill will to the hard-working Basques.

         Moreover, many Nevada cattle ranchers professed to like Basques such as Raoul, admiring his intelligence, work ethic and dogged determination. He had come to America with nothing but his dream and had succeeded as a rancher in a land of wide spaces and daily challenges.

         Still, even if Raoul’s stories were exaggerated in their details, many cowboys had mindless hatred for the “Bascos.” The brothers had heard from Martina that some renegade buckaroos had gunned down untold thousands of sheep and driven many other thousands to their deaths over cliffs where the meat just lay rotting.

         A few Basque herders also had suffered grim deaths in a land too spread out for justice to avenge such killings. Finding Bascos to kill or torment even in the vast Nevada outback was easy for evil buckaroos since they had only to stand waiting behind rocks at the most visited waterholes and wait for the herders to come to them. As a consequence, both brothers vowed to stay cautious as they looked out for the sheep and one another.

     “Should we take the horses?” asked Nicky.

         “No, those shots were close enough, much less than a mile, I’d say,” said Anton. “If they were fired by a bunch of men up to no good we ought to sneak up on them. Still, let us hope maybe it’s just another sheepherder shooting to drive away coyotes.”

    “Could it be Tubal shooting to get our attention?” asked Nicky.

   “He would fire, wait, maybe fire again,” said Anton. “Those shots were random.”

         A lunging Lazarus threatening to tear Anton’s arm from the socket as they went out the door and down the pull-down stairs of the wagon.

     Peppy followed, alert but calm.

     “You ready?” asked Nicky.

     “No,” croaked Anton, “but here we go, anyway.

Chapter 32: Tubal in Trouble

         Anton and Nicky agreed that the gunshots had come from a stand of aspens and willow trees that harbored a watering hole. They had collected water there, once piling a stack of rocks as a sign for thirsty herders to heed.

         Anton had last visited the grove a few days earlier when a black ram had wandered away. While there the herder had refilled as many water bottles as the draft horse Gus could carry back to the sheep wagon.

Although the mines had not spared many trees in this part of Nevada, some groves of aspen prospered. Anton was quick to notice when last here that this stand had drawn visits from passing sheepherders. Carvings scarred the white bark of aspens, mostly primitive drawings of horses, sheep and women left behind in the Old Country. The drawings had reminded Anton of the ancient cave paintings he so had loved in St. Mammes.

Anton then had pulled his knife from its sheath. His carved initials had joined the names of his countrymen immortalized on bark. On impulse he added Clarisse’s initials to the tree.  “Need to grow up and forget her, Anton,” he had said aloud, scolding himself.

         Now he was headed back to those same trees. In the time it took to reach the grove on foot, daylight had broken. The mountains in the distance had taken on a glorious purple and red coloring like the vestments of Monsignor Bilboa. Below the crest a wide patch of white snow remained at the top. The sky above the snow glowed pink and red like rose petals.

         They kept under cover as much as possible until they sighted the water hole. It looked deserted.

         “I don’t see any wild cowboys here,” said Nicky. 

“Quiet,” said the cautious brother Anton. “Let’s be sure before we’re dead-sure.”

         “Let the dogs search?” Nicky asked, gesturing to Peppy and Lazarus.

         Anton considered the idea, agreed, and slipped the rope from Lazarus’s collar. The two dogs bounded toward the aspen grove.      

A minute passed. Peppy and Lazarus yipped and barked.

         “They found something,” said Nicky.

         “So it appears,” said Anton.

         Anton and Nicky took off at a fast walk, crouching with rifles ready for trouble.

Instead of cowboys, however, the brothers found a man fighting for his life.

“It’s Tubal,” muttered Anton.

 “He’s been shot,” shouted Nicky, outraged at the pool of blood seeping from the old man’s body.

Chapter 33: Spilt Blood

         Tubal lay on his side in a small ravine downhill from the aspens. Someone had tied his arms behind his back. The brothers found neither his horse nor any pack mule or mules loaded with food and supplies.

Nicky made his way first to the old herder’s side. He whipped off his neckerchief to press it against the largest bleeding wound over Tubal’s knee.

Anton untied the dazed old man. He tried to help him stand, and when Tubal’s legs started to collapse, the young giant leaned him against his own broad shoulder.

         The fear in Tubal’s belly had worked into his legs, and they cramped, paining him. He grabbed Anton’s burly shoulders to keep from falling down.

“I was scared, very scared,” he told his rescuers, mispronouncing the word in English as “scairt.”

He shook his head, slowly recovering his equilibrium.

“Did someone jump you?” asked Nicky.

“Two men,” said Tubal. “One threw lariat and pulled me off Dolly.”

“We heard shots?” said Anton. “Yes?”

“They shot ground in front of me,” acknowledged Tubal. “They make me dance.”

“One must have ricocheted,” said Anton. “A slug tore through your pants.”

Nicky lifted the old man’s left pant leg to show him. A bullet had gone through the fabric. The blood still oozed into one boot. Anton held Tubal steady while Nicky got the boot off.

“The bullet went clear through,” said Anton. “In a way that is good. Makes it easier to clean.”

“We’ll bandage this at the wagon,” said Nicky, inspecting the wound. “Your boot kept you from some real damage. It could have severed the femoral artery. You would have died in minutes.”

Anton’s face flushed with outrage. “Do you know the men who did this to you?” he demanded.

“Man who threw rope, Bart Jackson,” said Tubal. “The shooter was Clyde Barnes. They work for Sinclair. They give me a hard time in town, but never like this.”

A look of fear came over Tubal’s face.

“What’s wrong? asked Anton.

“Well, this old head hit ground hard,” he said. “I see two Antons and two Nickys.”

“You can’t see?” asked Nicky.

“I see,” said the herder. “I see too much.”

A bark came from Peppy on the far side of the grove, followed by a long whinny.

“I think he may have found Dolly,” said Nicky.

“Stay here, Tubal,” said Anton, helping the camp tender to the side of the waterhole where he could bend to drink if he needed. “I’ll go after your horse with Nicky. We don’t know if those cowboys are still around.”

As the two boys left the grove, they heard hoof beats. A minute or so later Tubal’s horse Dolly and a pack mule loped toward them, with Peppy and Lazarus nipping at their flanks. The pack saddle clung by loosened straps to the midsection and chest of the mule, but it had been stripped of supplies. Nicky pointed. A cloud of dust rose like smoke in the distance.

“There go the two cowards who did this to Tubal,” said Nicky. “Should I ride after them?”

“No,” said Anton. “They’ve got too much of a head start. Even if you could, they might notice you and double back to set up a bushwhacking.”

Anton and Nicky brought the horse and mule to the watering hole to let them drink. As they did the brothers grabbed each of Tubal’s arms and guided the old man to his feet. Tubal, although stiff, was able to stand though shaky.

The old man inspected Dolly and the mule. Gunny sacks had been slit open with a knife so that flour now blew all over the sagebrush.

 “If I were ten years younger,” snarled Tubal. He left the threat unfinished.

“I found a message stuffed in an empty saddlebag on your horse,” said Anton, waving it.

“What it say?” demanded Tubal.

Anton handed him the note.

“Blast it,” said Tubal, his frustration turning to anger. “Even if I could read I see two notes where only one.”

Anton blushed and read the note. “You Bascos are trespassing on cattle territory. Move these sheep in 24 hours or blood will run.”

“More threats, always threats from Sinclair,” said Tubal.

“I wonder whose blood?” asked Anton. “Ours or that of the sheep?”

 “They want a range war,” said Nicky. He stroked the stock of the worn and scratched carbine that Raoul had issued him. “Maybe they should worry about their own blood staining the earth,” he said. “Raoul has every much as right as they do to graze sheep on this land.”

Anton admonished him. “This is not your country, Nicky,” he said. “You should not risk so much.”

“Brother, it is not your country,” said Nicky. “Nevada is now my home.  I love it here.”

“Because of Martina?”

“Her, sure,” said Nicky. “But also the land, the people, the opportunities. I feel like a man here already, or at least a boy doing the job of a man.”

Anton nodded. “That you are, little brother,” he said. “That you are.”

Chapter 34: Double Vision

         Slowly and with care, the brothers managed to get Tubal inside the sheep wagon. Although Barnes and Jackson had destroyed much of the replacement grub, Dolly’s saddlebag yet contained a slab of mutton and a few potatoes and onions had lay scattered back at the watering hole.

Anton put a bandage on a cut across Tubal’s forehead. He dressed the bullet wound, frowning as he did.

         “This is deep,” he said. “You need a doctor.”

         “This not first scar Tubal get,” the old man said stubbornly. “I ok, just woozy.”

         Nicky and Anton conferred. “One of us needs to take the stubborn cuss back to the ranch,” said Anton.

         “Of course,“ said Nicky. “I’ll bring fresh supplies back with me,”

         “Oh,” said Anton, chuckling. “So it is you who should go back to the Bilboa Ranch with Tubal, not me?”

         “I will make the enormous sacrifice and go,” said Nicky, trying to keep from laughing.

         “Yes, the enormous `sacrifice’ of seeing the smiling pretty face of Martina,” said Anton, pretending to be stern. “Not to mention the sacrifice of eating good food while I munch beans, beans, beans.”

         “Always the bickering with you two brothers,” grumbled Tubal. But he too smiled in spite of his throbbing head. Of all the herders he had known during his long years of service to Raoul, these two were the most fun to work with.

“Wait until you get old and girls a distant memory, boys,” said Tubal.

         “Anton must already be old then,” said Nicky. “Girls are already a distant memory for him.”

         Anton made a motion as if reaching for his carbine.

         Nicky’s eyes grew big. “Kidding, kidding,” he said.

         Anton shook his head in mock anger. He knew his brother was joking about Clarisse as a way to reduce Anton’s obsession over her marriage to Bernard. “Nicky, one day if Faro Sinclair doesn’t get you, I may have to shoot you myself,” said Anton, chuckling.

 #

         Lazarus tried to follow the horses of Tubal and Nicky. A quarter-mile from the wagon, Nicky dismounted and grabbed Lazarus affectionately by the ears.

         “You must stay, Blue Dog,” he said. “You still have sheep to guard.”

         Lazarus licked Nicky’s hand and began to trot away.

         “That is smart one, that Lazarus,” said Tubal with a grunt of appreciation for the pup. “He one day good as Peppy.”

         Lazarus stopped about a hundred feet away.

         “Go on with you,” yelled Nicky. “Go on.”

         Lazarus loped back to the wagon. He bounded over to where Peppy and Anton scouted the perimeter of the flock to locate and stragglers..

         Nicky and Tubal watched him race away until he was just a blue dot in front of a sea of white wool. Lazarus never looked back but went right to work.

Chapter 35: The Redhead

An hour before dawn Anton threw off his sleeping bag.  He jumped from the top bunk of his bed, landing on the balls of his feet as light as a cat in spite of his bulk. In the darkness he found the chair where he’d left his clothing before turning in. He threw on trousers and a coarse shirt fashioned from an old red blanket. He yawned and stretched, noting that his favorite shirt seemed way too snug across his shoulders and chest. He liked the way hard work put muscles on a fellow, he mused, as he thumped his feet into a pair of work boots.

         A little warmer now, he walked a couple feet to the sagging wooden table and fumbled in the total blackness until he located a canning jar filled with long wooden matches. He unscrewed the top of the jar that he kept covered, worried that a field mouse might bite a match head and accidentally start a fire.

         Anton lifted the hurricane lamp’s glass. He trimmed the wick before lighting the match. He opened the cook stove in the sheep wagon and ignited the dried sheep dung that Tubal taught him to use as fuel. In this timber-scarce region of eastern Nevada, whenever good wood was to be found, it was used for building houses and furniture, not for firewood.

         As he moved around the wagon with the aid of a hurricane lamp, he looked over at his artwork on the table and pronounced it “not bad” in his mind.

         Last night, bored with Nicky away, Anton had created ink sketches for clay sculptures of coyotes, eagles, and wild bighorn sheep. On the sketchpad he tried to make his blades of grass and sagebrush as authentic as the feathers and fur he penned so carefully. “How would Mr. Russell do this?” he asked himself.

         He shivered as the light night sweat on his body dried instantly in the cold air of the sheep wagon. What will it feel like to herd sheep in January or February?

Yesterday had provided a challenging afternoon for Anton. Three days had passed since Nicky and Tubal left him for the Bilboa Ranch.

The flock had stampeded twice, a stiff wind had blown down a clothes line filled with drying britches into a pile of fresh sheep dung, and Lazarus had come out on the losing end of a tiff with a skunk.

Around noon judging by the sun overhead Anton popped the last of the mutton Tubal had brought into a Dutch oven. The weather outside provided perfect light, and he leaned over an easel painting a portrait of Lazarus and Peppy. He snapped to attention as both dogs barked a warning and made him jump. Anton set down his brush and clambered up the stairs of the wagon.

         “One rider coming,” he spoke to the dogs as if they were Nicky. “Only one—but he’s coming fast.”

He unlocked the gun case and loaded his own carbine.  

“Maybe it is company, not an enemy,” he said to the dogs.

Out of the dust cloud came quite a sight. The rider, not much more than a boy in spite of his rangy build and good height, waved his hat and called out a passel of “halos” to make sure he had a welcome coming. Under that hat he possessed a wild banner of red hair that streamed like a pennant in the wind. Viewed up close, he had freckles to match, a huge marionette’s smile, and a smashed-in nose caused by a bad-tempered horse.

         “Hope you don’t mind company?” said the stranger.

         Anton shot the dogs a look as if to say, “You see? He’s company.”

         “I’d have asked my butler to leave my calling card earlier, but he must have had the day off,” joked the visitor, dismounting and sniffing the good smells of cooking. He unsaddled his mount and tethered it to a scrub brush in the shade of the wagon.

         “Come inside,” said Anton with a laugh. “I’ll show you around. Your butler has the same day off as my maid.”

The stranger announced his name and thus was something less than a stranger and someone not quite a friend. “I’m Orville Ruffing from the Broken B Ranch,” he said. “My friends call me Red.”

         “Why do they call you that?” asked Anton with a deadpan expression.

         Red threw a hand through his wild brick-colored mane. “I guess `Blue or `Chartreuse’ just didn’t suit my fiery personality,” he said laughing. “You got me there, feller, with a good joke, and if I don’t get your name soon you’ll be one ahead of me.”

         Anton spoke his name and threw out a hearty handshake.

         “Forgot to introduce me to your dog there,” said Red.

         “Lazarus,” said Nicky. “The other one is Peppy. He’s now under the wagon checking you out.”

         Lazarus trotted up to Red who squatted and balanced weight on his haunches.

         “Can you shake?” The pup lifted a paw.

         “Sit?”

         Lazarus went back on his haunches.

         “Good tricks,” said Red. “What else can he do?”

         “Rob stagecoaches.”

         “What?” exclaimed Red.  He laughed and shook his head. “You sure like to put a guy on.”

         “Ok, don’t believe me,” said Anton. “Just remember that when you see Lazarus’s face on a wanted poster.”

         “Now that you mention it, I see his resemblance to the late Jesse James,” said Red, scraping his spoon over the bottom of his bowl. “But no offense, Mr. Lazarus, you do smell something fearsome.”

         Anton barked a command in Basque. Lazarus dropped to the ground and covered his face with his paws as if ashamed of losing his encounter with the skunk.

         “Now you have done it,” said Anton with a deadpan expression. “You’ve hurt Lazarus’s feelings.”

“Oh, I apologize Lazarus,” said Red. “It’s just that your brand of cologne takes a might getting used to.”

         Anton jerked his head toward the wagon “I have a kettle of mutton stew if that might fill your bones.”

         “Why, it might, indeed,” said the stranger. “I’m so hungry even beans and bacon would sound good to me.”

Thus, Anton’s friendship with Red Ruffing came out of a matter of life and death.

Red thought he would die if he had to eat one more beefsteak. Anton agreed that a steady diet of sheep and beans and bacon were killing him. He loved mutton, but the seven-day a week menu of mutton chops, lamb kebabs, lamb stew, grilled lamb, boiled lamb bellies and necks, lamb loins, sweetbreads—had gotten stale.

 “We cook with oil made from the fat in docked sheep tails—Raoul swears sheep-tail fat kept rheumatism away—and we even snack on smoked lamb’s tongue,” said Anton. “I swear, if I eat one more bite of sheep I may turn into one.”

“Mooooooo,” said Ruffing.  “Too late for me—I have had one beefsteak too many—now I’m a cow.”

         The herder and cowpoke bent their heads and began negotiating terms. “So we have a deal?” asked Red.

         “A deal,” agreed Anton.

         The next morning Red rode into camp bearing a thick package. “These are the real goods, big steaks,” Red said.  “Our cook agrees that this is a fair trade—beef for mutton.”

         “I have to ask you, Red,” said Anton. “How is it that you like coming out to see us when so many cowboys like as not would shoot us on sight?”

         Red thought a moment.

“You herders got nothing and we cowpokes got nothing,” he said. “Why fight over it?”

Anton fired up the stove and fried portions of beef and mutton about the size of a deck of cars. Soon he ladled out the food for his guest. “What can you tell me about Faro Sinclair,” he asked his guest.

“Nothing good,” said Red. “He’s my boss.”

         In between bites of food Anton and Red conversed as if they were old friends of many years instead of new acquaintances.

         “Raoul claims that Faro Sinclair is not particular about the men he hires,” said Anton.

“Raoul could not be more wrong,” same Red’s answer. “Sinclair wants men without a conscience who shoot true, ride tirelessly, and can stop a cattle stampede or drive away intruding Basque shepherds with equal skill.”

         Anton listened carefully as Red went on.

“Sinclair hires renegades such as Bart Jackson and Clyde Barnes that other ranchers had fired for various offenses,” declared Red. “He likes his men mean, lean and conscience-free. He has one rule for his cowboys:  `Do it my way or you’ll pay.’” 

“How is it you have you come to work for him, Red?” asked Anton. “You seem like a decent sort.”

         Red opined that Sinclair’s holdings were so vast that he also employed ordinary cowboys such as Red, many of them quick to move on when they saw firsthand how Sinclair increased his wealth by terror and thievery. “He pays better than any other cattleman,” said Red, “but I’ve already made up my mind to move on soon as I can find another outfit that will have me.”

         Now it was Anton’s turn to enlighten Red. He told him how Tubal and other Basques feared Sinclair’s might and wrath. How he and his brother had locked horns with the rancher on the train. “How does he get away with all this?” asked Anton.

Red explained that Sinclair was a master of political maneuvering. “The other cowboys say he’s always backing a corrupt politician for Nevada governor or senator,” said Red. “They tell me that has big coat pockets where he keeps them until he needs them for graft.”

“I saw his wife meet him at the train station. What’s she like?”

“Sinclair’s wife?” said Red, refilling his cup with tea. “She can cuss like a mule driver, and buckaroos that run afoul of her temper warned me that she has poison in her veins and a heart of pure mercury.”

Anton chucked. “Sounds like they deserve each other. What’s her name?”

“She’s a self-proclaimed entertainer who goes by May Day, a stage name she invented by shortening her real name, Madeline Daedalus. She plasters her face with rouge by the bucket, and she takes the train to Reno or San Francisco to load her closet with shoes and gaudy gowns.”

“So she acts and sings?” asked Anton, warming to this talkative stranger. “Professionally?”

“That’s all Sinclair’s doing,” came Red’s response. “Sinclair travels a lot and when he’s in Eureka or Virginia City he pushes opera houses to give his wife a bit part in their productions.”

“Is she a good singer?”

         “Depends who you ask,” Red said with a shake of his head. “May Day or the people with punctured eardrums running out of an opera house.”

Chapter 36: Dangerous Meeting

         Miles away from the sheep wagon, in the dining room of Zaga’s Basque hotel and boardinghouse, the attack on Tubal inspired the first official meeting of the Basque Wool Growers Association.

         Tubal sported a wide white bandage over his forehead under a beret, and he walked with a limp. A doctor had treated the herder, and the old man’s double vision had cleared. He still had a persistent headache from the beating, and his wounds were covered with salve and bandages, but the doctor promised a full recovery—although he said Tubal always would limp.

         The meeting began with a prayer and then a meal served family-style by Zaga’s daughters of various ages and temperaments.

Nicky’s stomach had begun growling as soon as the good scents of food wafted from the kitchen into the room, overcoming even the rancid smell of cigars in the room. Zaga’s daughters carried heaping plates of chuletada—lamb grilled over grape vines—and sliced ham, whipped potatoes, collard greens, garlic-stuffed mushrooms and cornbread.

Four daughters waited on Nicky’s table. They were twelve to sixteen in age, and each giggled and preened in front of Nicky, giving Tubal fresh ammunition for teasing. “I bet you wish Martina was here tonight,” said Tubal.

“Oh, yes,” said Nicky. “She about threw a fit when Raoul told her the meeting was just for men. She told him the day would come when women would get the vote.”

“Who can imagine such a thing?” said Tubal, shaking his head over such an unlikely proposition.

         After a waitress filled Tubal’s glass, he grew talkative. Nicky listened as the old man told him some of the legends that had grown up around Sinclair. Over time the rancher had bought, swindled, or bullied his way into possessing more than a dozen ranches in Nevada and California. On each ranch he had erected a Victorian house with spacious rooms designed by May Day.

“Sinclair does business at home,” explained Tubal. “Politicians come over for a steak and get Sinclair’s bribes for dessert.”

As Zaga’s daughters removed the dishes from the dinner and the meeting was set to begin, Tubal gave Nicky a rundown on the stock growers in the room.

         “That Old Man Zelala who has more acres than a coyote can cross in a week,” said Tubal. Nicky observed a short squat figure with a thatch of hair white as an egret’s feathers.

         “Next to him is Pete Aragon, mean and tough as Satan,” said Tubal. “He caught a rustler stealing sheep. He grabbed a whip and took skin right off the thief.”

         Nicky’s gaze shifted to another section of the room.

         “That Old Man Navarre—Felix Navarre,” said Tubal.

Nicky’s eyes grew wide. Tubal followed the boy’s pointed finger. “I know that huge man next to him,” said Nicky.

         Tubal took note of a heavy-set man with a patchy beard. He wore ill-fitting pants tied with a rope around a huge paunch, but he possessed broad, solid shoulders and fists like boulders. “I do not know him,” said Tubal. “He must be from the Old Country.”

         Tubal put down his glass. He noticed the tension in Nicky. “So, who is he?”

         “He is Henry Navarre, a rascal,” said Nicky. He sipped his cocoa and watched his introduction to democracy Nevada-style with fascination. Mainly the language spoken was Basque, but he recognized snatches of English, French and Spanish.

         Nicky shook Henry out of his head. He listened to long, animated speeches as the diners transformed themselves into an association with bylaws. Nominations for officers were followed by more speeches and voting. The group named Felix Navarre president by a show of hands. They appointed Raoul secretary-treasurer, a tribute to his reputation for honesty.

         Felix Navarre rose to his feet. The only noise came from the clinking of glasses and plates in the kitchen.

         “You all know me,” began Navarre, “but you do not know my nephew.”

         Henry stood, one hand touching the table for support. He wiped his thick lips with a napkin and raised one arm in greeting. A sneer instead of a smile framed his face.

         “My kinsman is Henry Navarre from the Old Province,” continued Felix. “We have tried to live as peaceful men but Sinclair and his kind will not let us. They have run off our flocks, poisoned waters, attacked our herders.”

         He pointed across the room at Tubal who bowed his head in embarrassment. A nasty murmur went through the room that reminded Nicky of a hive with stinging wasps.

         “Enough is enough,” said Old Navarre. “Beginning this week my nephew rides his horse from flock to flock, yours and mine,” he said. “If the buckaroos leave him in peace, he leaves them in peace.”

          “If they continue to harass us?” demanded a voice from the back of the room.

         Henry grinned his thick-lipped grin and pulled his dual pistols from their holsters to hold them aloft.

         Navarre folded his arms. “All in favor of my nephew guarding the association’s shepherds and flocks?”

“Wait,” cried Raoul. He raised his hand and was recognized. He stood and gave a short, passionate speech, urging caution and a respect for law.

“Remember the oak of Guernica,” he implored them. “Our grandfathers and their grandfathers’ grandfathers have stood for justice, not for vigilantism.”

Raoul had supporters, especially among the older ranchers who had revered the great tree of Guernica and what it represented. Nonetheless, hatred of Sinclair made many vote with angry hearts instead of their consciences.

Raoul sat. Sinclair’s thugs had ruled long enough, the voters decided, and it was time they answered violence with violence. The vote to approve Henry as protector of the flocks passed. Tubal and Nicky raised their hands in support of Raoul, but Aragon told them only ranch owners had votes that counted.

         The meeting broke up. Raoul, Tubal and Nicky left through a side door into the night. They walked to the livery stable where their horse and wagon were waiting. Raoul soon marched ahead, his lips in a tight line, and his head down.

Nicky whispered to Tubal. “What does all this mean?”

         “Bloodshed,” whispered Tubal. “Raoul sees it too.”

The old herder made the sign of the cross.

Chapter 37: Nicky’s Revenge

         Anton made dinner by rote.  With Nicky gone his loneliness increased, along with his sadness. Tonight his depression over Clarisse’s marriage made him wish he could lie down on his bunk and sleep forever. Anton looked in the mirror and could see dark circles pooling under his eyes.

Joyous barks of welcome outside the wagon from the dogs told Anton that his brother was back.

 “I am glad you are back, Nicky,” said Anton, embracing his brother.

         They went outside to the packhorse, stripped the sawbuck saddle, and brought fresh supplies into the wagon. Nicky’s return meant the cupboard now had canned peaches and evaporated milk, bacon, molasses as a sweetener, a roast of corned beef, lamb slices, fresh horseradish, sardines in oil, vegetables, and flour.

         “What else did you bring?”

         “Surprise, surprise,” shouted Nicky, “I brought you beans.”

         “I think I will be ill,” said Anton.

         “I am joking,” said Nicky. “We will have bacon and eggs tonight.”

“Good, let me give the dogs the beans and crusts I just cooked.”

“Good idea,” said Nicky. He whistled and Lazarus and Peppy came running into the wagon and headed for the plates on the floor.

         “Look at them lap the beans up,” said Anton.

          “If they have gastric distress from the beans, we’ll have to keep them in the sheep wagon while we sleep under it.”

         Anton went to the table and peeled potatoes and sliced bacon. He hummed a sad and melancholy Basque melody while Nicky read aloud the newspapers Martina had saved for him.  The news from Cuba was grim: American victories and Spanish defeats and the deaths of many young soldiers from both nations.

“What is the latest here in Nevada,” demanded Anton.

A cup of brewed tea in his hand, Nicky broke the news in droplets.

Tubal’s wounds were mending, he began, answering Anton’s most pressing question. “He threw his cane away but walks with a little difficulty.”

Nicky went on to summarize the meeting at the Basque hotel. “The sheepmen have hired a thug to protect their lands.”

          “Don’t they see a hired gun only antagonizes the cowmen?” responded Anton. “They will terrorize lone sheepherders, not respect them.”

         “True enough, true enough,” said Nicky.

Anton’s eyes went to the carbines behind locked glass in the cabinet. “Such nonsense,” he said with irritation. “We came to Nevada to avoid the shooting in Cuba. What would Monsignor Bilboa say?”

         Nicky finished his tea and ruffled Lazarus’s ears. “He does not understand Nevada,” said Nicky. “Anton, you remember Henry?”

          “That despicable beast?” said Anton. “How could I forget?”

“The association hired Henry to protect its members,” said Nicky.

Anton rolled his eyes with contempt.

“Brother, I have something I hate to tell you,” confessed Nicky. “Tubal and I sort of took revenge for you.”

Anton snapped out of his depression. “Nicky, please explain.”

          “The morning after the meeting at the hotel Tubal wanted to fix Dutch doors on the bunkhouse that had dry rot,” Nicky said by way of beginning the tale to Anton, patting Lazarus and Peppy while he talked. “While we worked, I told Tubal about the stone-lifting competition.”

          “Let me think about this Henry problem,” Tubal said to me.

As Nicky spun his tale of revenge, Anton chewed the tips of his fingers, mesmerized by the audacity of his brother and Tubal.         

Nicky began by telling Anton about how he stripped a long twig clean of bark and stirred a gooey mixture of red paint for the repainting of the doors.

         “Try not to get on your hands,” Tubal had warned. “No matter how fast you wipe it, this paint sticks.”

         “I understand,” Nicky had replied. But he stirred too hard, and some splashed on his work boots.

         “I warn you, Nicky,” said Tubal. “If that paint touches the sky, it sticks.”

         “It sure is thick,” said Nicky. He kept stirring until the color turned a uniform red, dark as sheep’s blood.

         By and by Tubal stroked his beard. “I now have the idea for getting Henry,” he said.

         The door was painted in ten minutes, and they hurried to the ranch house to let Martina know they were leaving the ranch. Since coming to the ranch Nicky had enjoyed his time with Martina, particularly when she had held his hands while they threw bread to ducks swimming in an irrigation ditch. The two had even exchanged a shy hug but neither was bold enough to attempt a kiss.

Martina was inside the main room, putting fresh linen on the great dining table.

         “What are you two looking so guilty about?” she demanded to know.

         “Promise not to tell your father?” said Nicky.

         Martina raised her hand as if swearing an oath. “Tell me, please.”

         They spilled the plan as she walked to the corral with them. There they loaded the buckboard with red paint and long-handled brushes. 

         Tubal clucked a command to Gus and Gus. They waved to Martina as they rode off. She gathered her skirts and ran back to the house.

Their destination was the twelve hundred-acre ranch of Henry’s uncle, Old Man Navarre, an hour’s ride north and east.

They left the wagon hitched to a juniper tree about a half-mile from the imposing, whitewashed main house. Nicky scrambled through the brushy fields, and Tubal followed crablike as fast as his sore leg allowed. Keeping a wary eye out, the two positioned themselves behind an outhouse near a low-slung bunkhouse, where Henry likely slept. The outhouse connected to a stone-lined path that led to the main ranch where the uncle and his housekeeper Mrs. Garcia lived.

        The two conspirators waited for more than an hour behind the outhouse, slapping at blowflies. One time Mrs. Garcia, a stout woman with her hair tied in a huge bun, came outside the main house to beat a rug, and they held their breaths.

         Observing that several boards on the back wall of the outhouse had parted from the uprights, Tubal used a pocket hammer to help them get a little looser. Looking inside, they could see just over the top of the twin seats in the facility. More time passed and the flies grew bolder, causing them to pull their coat collars over their ears. Their bubby good moods vanished like a doused campfire.

            “Maybe my plan not work,” said Tubal, rubbing his inflamed joints.

         “That lazy, no-good oaf Henry must have decided to sleep in past noon,” whispered Nicky.

         Dejected, the two conspirators had decided to go back to their horses when the bunkhouse door opened.

         “There is he,” said Tubal.

         “Ssh,” warned Nicky. “He might hear.”

         Henry walked heavily from the doorway into the light. He had a coffee cup in hand, as he stretched and yawned. His long red underwear, tied with a rope, drooped beneath the trousers covering his bulging belly.

         “He scratches every place he has a place,” whispered Tubal.

         “Must have fleas,” agreed Nicky, putting a hand over his mouth to keep from nervous laughter. “Like a shaggy buffalo.”

         Henry set down the coffee cup on a wooden trestle table wobbling from age. The two watched him scratch his bum again and then he looked over at the outhouse. Pulling the makings for a cigarette out of a trouser pocket, he rolled one, licked the paper, and lit it.

         “Big Buffalo Butt come take a dump,” said Tubal.

         “Sshh, sshh.”

         Henry lumbered down the path. Nicky marveled just how big the man was. That rope around his waist might encircle a horse’s girth. The man’s hands were like rocks and Nicky shuddered to think how a crushing blow from him might feel. He and Tubal exchanged looks and for the first time they realized the revenge for Anton they wanted might get them hurt. What if they were discovered?

         Now Henry was opening the outhouse door and out of their sight. The wooden latch sprang free, and they heard the door swing open on its rusty hinges.

         “Yes, yes,” muttered Nicky, as the big buffalo entered the trap.

         Henry flipped a wooden peg to lock the door. The conspirators bent even lower behind the pried-open planks. The cruel flies were forgotten now.

         Nicky opened the tin of red paint, careful not to spill any on his hands or clothing. Tubal dipped a long-handled paintbrush deep inside the can.

         Holding his breath against the outhouse smell and to keep from snorting with laughter, Nicky peeled back the boards. In between the two holes of the wooden seat rested a cardboard box filled with corncobs and newspapers. The eyes of Tubal grew larger as before him appeared a hairy and corpulent bottom big as two half moons. Now Tubal started to snicker like a four-year-old, forcing Nicky to clamp a hand over the old man’s mouth.

         The moment of truth had come.

         Tubal poked the wet brush through the empty slat. He moved it this way and that like an artist, swabbing every inch of the outhouse seat with the sticky red paint.

         Henry sat down before Tubal could jerk the brush back through the planks.

Henry’s bottom trapped the big brush. The cigarette shot out of his mouth, and the long red ash fell into the box of wadded newspapers. His bellow almost raised the roof of the rickety structure. He roared like an angry buffalo bull with an arrow in its side.

         Tubal and Nicky abandoned the brush and can of paint.

         Nicky ran from the outhouse like a jackrabbit toward the safety of the apple orchard. Tubal moved as fast he could, handicapped by his injured leg and his uncontrollable snorts of laughter. Snot poured from his nose like rusty pump water.

         In the sheep wagon, Anton listened with eyes as big as the stones he used to lift. “Then what happened?”

         Nicky sipped his cup of tea, enjoying every minute of being a storyteller. He paused and then spilled the rest.

         “From the orchard we saw Henry burst out the door in all his glory,” said Nicky, chuckling as if he were back there again.  “Unfortunately for Henry, he wasn’t the only one that had need of a toilet. Mrs. Garcia the housekeeper waltzed up the path. When Henry saw her he screamed like a banshee. She was caught off-guard and screamed right back.”

         “His pants were down?”

         “Yes, yes. So he turned his back to her.”

         “Which had Tubal’s `artwork’ all over it?”

         Now Nicky was snorting so hard he could barely get the rest out. “All she could see was red, red, red. Henry, he was so embarrassed that he ran back into the outhouse and locked the door.”

         “Mrs. Garcia?”

         “Madder than a dog with a can on its tail,” said Nicky. “She thought Henry had exposed himself on purpose.”

         “My lord, I almost feel sorry for the man,” said Anton, himself snorting. “Almost.”

         “Now Henry is big but Mrs. Garcia—so is she,” said Nicky. “First she tried forcing the door, but it stayed shut. She yelled and pounded and said cuss words in Spanish.”

         “What did Henry say?”

         “Nothing—dead silence. He must have been in there cowering.”

         “Then what?”

         “When he ignored her she backed up and came running right at that outhouse.”

         “Oh, no.”

         “Oh, yes. Tipped it flat with one big heave. The door faced up.”

         “Then comes the good part.”

         “The good part?”

         “Henry opened the door and that’s when the flames shot up.”

         “The what!”

         “Henry’s cigarette must have torched those old papers and corncobs.”

         “Oh, helped by the gas in the pit, no doubt,” said Anton, his eyes soaked with merriment.

           “I see Henry climb out of that box faster than he’s ever moved in his life. But his dragging long johns are on fire, and Mrs. Garcia tackles him to beat out the flames. Once the fire is out she takes her hand and starts whooping his red behind like nobody’s business.”

         Anton tried to talk in between snorts of laughter. “Then what?”

         “Tubal and I sneaked back to the horses and buckboard. We went back to the ranch to tell Martina our plan worked. Then I rode back to camp and here I am.”

         His story finished, Nicky howled with merriment. Anton pounded the rough-planked table laughing until he thought he might suffocate from laughter.

         Lazarus and Peppy looked from Anton to Nicky, Nicky to Anton, as if thinking, Heaven help us—Our herders have gone plumb loco.

Chapter 38: Gar and Goat

July 1, 1898

         Anton and Nicky adopted a regimen of studies and exercise to fight boredom in addition to working with the sheep. Starved as Anton was for any intellectual relief from bawling sheep and lonely trekking, he had discovered the classic novels of Mark Twain. In time he practiced his illustration skills drawing scenes from Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Nicky had a more practical bent and taught himself bookkeeping, anticipating the day he’d need to keep accounts.

         Every now and then the two practiced stone lifting when they found themselves around giant boulders. Anton’s chest had expanded to the size of a steamer trunk. He could dead-lift a stone weighing six hundred pounds and pull the sheep wagon a hundred feet from a stopped position with only his gloved hands and a rope.

Nicky remained wiry as he shot up in height, but he too had coils in his arms and easily lifted a stone that weighed two hundred pounds. Both brothers could swing an axe with either hand while chopping a dead cottonwood for stove fuel.

         Now and then they passed by the flocks of other Basques.  This fall day while seeking strays they ran into two Navarre herders originally from a French Basque province whose nicknames were Gar and Goat.  Gar was called that because he had leathery skin and a long and narrow pointy nose like the fish. Goat rarely bathed and this hygienic deficiency had not gone unnoticed by the hotel operator’s daughters who had dubbed the herder with that uncomplimentary nickname.

         At first Nicky and Anton welcomed the opportunity to converse in French with the two old-timers. They learned that Gar and Goat fancied themselves to be quite the traders. Whenever they passed other herdsmen the two Basques tried cutting a good deal for themselves. Old Man Navarre did not provide a sheep wagon for his herders except during the winter months. The rest of the year they slept inside a large tent made from felt.

         When Anton and Nicky stepped into their tent one day, the stench of dirty cooking pots, unwashed socks and dog dander made them choke as if they were suffocating at the bottom of a barrel of onions. They gagged so hard that running out of the tent was their only option.

         “I apologize, friends,” said Anton.

         “No matter,” said Goat. “Everybody do that.”

         “We trade out here,” said the amiable Gar.

         “We have this fine rosary,” said Goat, having had enough pleasantries for one day. “We take your axe for it.”

         “Sorry,” said Nicky, “We can’t cut wood with beads and a cross.”

         “Your knife then,” said Gar, pointing to the sheath at Anton’s waist.

         “We pray just fine without the beads,” said Anton, noticing that the chain had been twice broken and that the beads were strung out irregularly.

         Goat ran back into the tent. He came back with Western hand-tooled saddlebags. “These for the axe and knife?”

         Anton examined the saddlebags. The back carried the Sinclair ranch stamp.

         “One of Sinclair’s men gave this to you?” asked Nicky.

         “Not exactly,” admitted Gar.

         “That means what?” demanded Anton.

         Gar smiled, his taste for rock candy revealing absent and blackened teeth. “One of their pack horses get away from them,” he said. “He walk right into our camp with a heavy load, and we send him on his way with a light load.”

         “No load,” said Goat, correcting him. “Yes, that was a good day,”

         “That’s stealing,” said a horrified Nicky.

         “Finders keepers,” said Gar defensively.

         Anton and Nicky exchanged looks. “We have to go,” said Anton.

         “You no want to trade?” said Goat.

         “We have to go,” repeated Anton.

         Back at their own camp, Anton and Nicky got off their horses and greeted their dogs as they ran up. “Those two are insane crossing Sinclair like that,” said Nicky.

         Anton scratched his chin. He had to shave every other day now and his face felt itchy when he did not.  “Those fools were wrong to do what they did,” agreed Anton. “I hope Gar and Goat do not end up dead wrong.”

Chapter 39: Fair Trade        

Meetings with herders like Gar and Goat were infrequent for the brothers, but Red’s visits now came every fortnight and helped them overcome loneliness.

         That first trade of beef for their mutton between Anton and Red led to an enduring friendship that soon included Nicky. Red, it turned out, was a reader with a high school diploma earned in his hometown of Ely, and he too borrowed Raoul’s books, returning them in prime condition without so much as a dog-eared page.

         Red shared Nicky’s passion for collecting stamps. One evening Anton pulled out a canvas and sketched a pen-and-ink drawing of the two pouring over Nicky’s stamp album.  As he did, Anton eavesdropped on their bartering.

         “You have two of those Queen Isabella stamps from Spain,” observed Red.

         Nicky heard the wistfulness in his new friend’s voice. “Yes, yes,” he said. “You want one?”

         “I have two postmarked U.S. stamps with Columbus on them from 1893—one with Columbus wearing a beard and the other without a beard,” said Red. “That suit you for a swap?”

         They shook hands.

         “I have some Cuban colony stamps I can show you,” said Nicky.

         “Those might be worth something when the war is over,” said Red.

         Anton could not resist interjecting a political comment. “They are not worth the lives of the boys fighting over there,” he said.

         “No, you’re right,” said Red. “I know at least two cowhands fighting over there for the American side.”

         “It’s too bad Spain and America cannot get along like we do,” said Nicky.

         “Yeah, why do our countries spat like that?” asked Red.

         Anton thought a minute. “Too many profits in war for too many somebodies,” he said. “I hold the leaders of America and Spain responsible.”

         “Well, I think war between countries that ought to get along is a durn shame,” said Red.

         “Very shameful,” agreed Anton.

         “What’s the latest from Cuba in your papers?” asked Anton.

         “Heavy fighting for the city of Santiago,” said Red. “We—I mean, the United States—shipped 16,000 troops there, including the black soldiers from the Ninth Cavalry. The area is heavy with Spanish troops. Casualties are going to be heavy, they say.”

Somewhere along the way the conversations moved from the horrors of war to one another’s “some day” ambitions. Red learned that Anton wanted to be a painter and sculptor and move back to the Old Country, while Nicky wanted to own land in Nevada and run his own sheep operation. Red hoped to get a better job, confessing that he had more a manager’s mind than entrepreneurial skills, and that he hoped to save enough to get married.

         “I don’t have a gal picked out yet, but I will,” said Red.

         “I think you have it backwards,” said Anton, speaking with the wisdom of one who has been jilted. “You don’t pick one, one picks you.”

         “Well, I’ll be,” responded Red, now feeling himself very much a man of the world. “So that’s how it works.”

Chapter 40: Market

September 14, 1898

         The brothers had not been to town for months when they came in at last with the flock to help Raoul ship most of his stock to Chicago for the market. All that remained was breeding stock, and they were glad that Bum Deal and several other favorite sheep were spared. Raoul received a hefty stack of bills in payment from an agent, but he owed the brothers no payment until the following year. Thus, Anton and Nicky returned to the sheep camp without a dollar, while Raoul at the hotel studied a mail-order catalog and pondered whether he should buy one of those new-fangled horseless carriages.

         “After all this time all we have worked off the price of our steamship and train tickets,” Anton said to his brother as they left Raoul.

         “Don’t be upset,” said Nicky. “Next year at this time he pays us in sheep and cash on the barrelhead.”

         For a few weeks the brothers had a far easier time in the field as they worked with a flock much reduced in numbers. Still growing boys, they found their appetites greater than the store of supplies they had taken with them from town after the sale of sheep.

         One morning Anton woke up and found himself with a craving for fresh fish. Anton was the better shot of the two and once bagged a small elk in an open pasture of tall grass. Nicky was by far the better angler, reading creek waters as skillfully as if he did nothing else all day but fish.

         He moved over to the bottom bunk where Nicky lightly snored.  Nicky’s head rested on the saddle covered with a pillow he had fashioned from rabbit skins. As the flame of the lantern filled the sheep wagon with light, the sleeper covered his eyes with both arms.

         “Wake up you son of the dawn,” said Anton, doing his impression of Tubal.

         “You’ve ruined my dream, Anton,” joked Nicky in a sleep-husky voice.  “I was a powerful rancher about to propose to Martina Bilboa, the most beautiful girl in Nevada.”

         “Oh, it’s a good thing I stopped your dream,” said Anton in mock seriousness. “In another moment, Martina would have broken your heart to tell you she likes your handsome big brother more than she likes you.”

         He ducked. The cup of water that Nicky had taken to his bunk the night previously sailed right where Anton’s head had been and clattered against a fry pan hanging from a peg on one wall. Anton exploded in belly-shaking laughter.

         Nicky, whose voice was changing these days, even as he seemed to grow an inch a day, added his own high-pitched throaty laugh of merriment. It was an unusual day when one Ibarra brother failed to tease the other one.

         Anton opened a flour barrel whose wooden bottom was painfully visible. He scraped out the last two cups. He frowned when he lifted the top off a bench that was used for sitting and for storage. Only a handful of crusts of sourdough bread, three wrinkled potatoes, and two sheep tongues greeted him.

         “We may need a hammer or gunpowder to break those crusts apart,” said Anton. He opened two tins of evaporated milk and put the crusts in to soak to soften them a little. Similarly, he wrapped the last piece of hard cheese and put it in the coffeepot to soften it enough to make it palatable.

         Nicky pushed his way out of bed and put his clothes on before the warmth of the stove. He peered at the breakfast, such as it was. “Have we nothing else?”

         “Tubal should be here today with fresh supplies,” said Anton. “Anyway, we won’t starve. Almost a quarter gunnysack of dried beans remains.”

         “Beans, beans, beans,” grumbled Nicky, swinging his long legs out of the bottom bunk.  “They make me toot like a train engine.”

         “Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Anton said, pinching his nose with a thumb and forefinger as if keeping out a bad smell. . “Close your eyes and pretend the beans are juicy pieces of roast lamb.”

         “I will also close my eyes and pretend your ugly mug is the face of the lovely Martina Bilboa,” retorted Nicky, pulling on his boots quickly to get his bare feet off the cold, wooden planks. “It’s hard herding all these sheep without permission to eat even one.”

         “It’s our job to get every one of them to market,” said Anton, “I had an idea, Nicky. Before Tubal gets here, what if I watch the sheep and you ride out to get us fresh trout after you eat breakfast?”    

         “Really?” exclaimed Nicky. “I’ll take Lazarus for company.  

The hated beans reached boiling in a pot of water as Anton sliced and seasoned the remaining potatoes, frying the slivers in the frying pan with the dried mutton as a side dish. On the side he planned to serve a sliver of cheese and fresh-baked bread.

         “Anton, you will make a good wife,” joked Nicky, sniffing the smells coming from the cook stove.

         Anton curtsied like a ballerina, a comic sight at his size.

         “I don’t mind being a wife so long as I don’t have ugly children like you, Nicky,” he said.

         While Anton washed dishes, Nicky collected his pole, line and hooks. He and Lazarus hiked southwest of camp where Tubal once had mentioned existed a clear, cold trout stream at the base of a purple mountain. When they arrived, Nicky noted that he grass along a cutbank lining the stream was high and cool, and Lazarus took delicious pleasure rolling in the dewy leaves.  Insects were plentiful, and Nicky found locusts and dragonfly larva for bait.  Nothing hit for twenty minutes or so, and he walked the cutbank, trying his luck in drop-off holes and wider pools.

         Increasing his concentration, Nicky cast his line into a deep pool that might house a fish, and the bait rested for a second on the surface before sinking. A dark shape glided through the stream and snatched the dragonfly larva and hook full force. The trout leaped free of the water, looking like a drenched bar of gold in the sunlight.

Bringing it in was another matter. Nicky fought the fish for five minutes before guiding it to shore, barely daring to breathe lest the line snap.  Lazarus gave a rare bark as the fish flopped in the grass.

         “He’s a big one, pup,” said Nicky, admiring the golden speckled beauty as he held it by the hooked jaw. “It’s a cutthroat trout. Anton will sketch him before he cooks him.”

         Nicky took off his shirt, wet it, and wrapped the trout inside it to discourage flies. As he did, Lazarus whined and then growled.

Nicky heard the approach of horses.  He scrambled back into a thick clump of shrubs and high grass placing his hand gently over Lazarus’s mouth.

         The riders came through the high grass and Nicky saw that a tall red roan bore the brand of the Sinclair Ranch. The boy kept his hand on Lazarus’s muzzle.

“We’ll let them drink here and rest a bit, Barnes,” said the rider. Nicky recognized the gravelly voice as Sinclair’s. “Looks like a good place to find trout.”

         “Yep,” the other man said. “Wish I had my fishing pole with me, Faro.”

         Nicky held his breath. The thin-lipped man with the pockmarked face must be Clyde Barnes, one of the thugs who had roughed up Tubal.  A third rider joined the two. Her face was red as a piglet’s, and when she removed her bonnet Nicky saw that her hair was wet with sweat. Nicky recognized May Day, Sinclair’s wife.

         The three waved their Stetsons to swat at the stinging insects swirling around them as the horses drank from the stream. 

         Mrs. Sinclair began whispering to her husband in a low voice. Nicky heard him repeatedly deny some request of hers until finally he gave up to her nagging.

         “All right, May,” said Sinclair. “Have it your way.”

         “What is it, Boss?” asked Barnes.

         “You mind riding back to the ranch alone, Barnes?”

         “Guess not, why?”

         “May complains she is hot as the dickens and wants to cool off in the stream,” he said. “Can’t talk her out of it.”

         “Sure, Boss,” said Barnes.

         “Stop at a couple of our waterholes on your way,” ordered Sinclair, dismounting and taking the saddles and bridles from the mounts to let them graze. “Make sure no sodbusters or stinking sheepmen have gotten bold and taken them over.”

         As he talked he took rawhide thongs from his saddlebags pinning the forelegs of his horse and May’s mount so they could not wander off. The fields were rich with grass and dandelions for feed.

         As soon as Barnes was out of sight, May removed her long outer riding dress, modestly if comically left with a pair of scarlet bloomers. Nicky stifled a giggle as she walked along the cutbank not ten feet from him and piled the rest of her clothing neatly on the grass.

         She plunged right into the stream, shallow near the shore, only wetting her knees.  She waded a good twenty feet from Sinclair on shore before the cool waters covered her neck.

         Sinclair stood by the side of the stream aimlessly skipping rocks across the water. Finally the heat got to him, and he yanked off his kerchief to soak it in the stream and squeezed water over the back of his neck.

         Cooled off now and no longer grumpy, May wanted to play.

         “Come on, Faro, you stick in the mud,” she called.

         “I don’t want to.”

         “Afraid of a little water?” she taunted. “I know you can’t swim.”

         “Who’s afraid,” he said, miffed. Nicky thought he sounded like a four-year-old.

         “You are.”

         Sinclair released a puffed sigh. “Is there a day you don’t get your way, May?” he grumbled.

         In another moment Nicky saw the rancher strip down to a pair of long white underwear. Now his clothing and gunbelt lay on the cutbank grass with May’s dress and boots. Nicky saw that Sinclair had a once muscular body now gone in part to suet.

         He stepped into the water, making comical sounds as the cold water hit his baked flesh. In another minute he was atop his wife dunking her as she screamed and giggled. Soon they splashed and played like young otters.     

         Nicky thought back to the train recalling how Sinclair had humiliated him over a couple of pretzel crumbs and how it had taken weeks for the bruises on his neck and shoulder to fade from blue to yellow.

         “Time for sweet revenge served cold,” he whispered to Lazarus.

         He was quick as a striking hawk. He had their clothing and Sinclair’s gunbelt in his arms and was soon back out of sight behind the scrub bushes where the horses grazed. His knife flashed, cutting quickly through each mount’s rawhide hobbles. Then he gathered up the clothing and his trout and zigzagged away from the stream back to camp, tossing the gunbelt into a deep hole. He left May only her bonnet and Sinclair his hat for protection against the blistering sun.

         Now he was in the sheep wagon, repeating his escapade to Anton and Tubal who had arrived and was enjoying hot tea.

         “I was maybe a quarter-mile away when those horses realized they were free and bolted,” said Nicky, choked with giggles. “I don’t know which was galloping faster—the horses or the Sinclairs in their skivvies right behind them.”

Chapter 41: Big Trouble

November 20, 1898

         Ordinarily, Nevada’s high country in November attracted little precipitation, allowing herders usually to complete the trek to winter public lands on lower ground without much trouble. However the weather this particular November failed to cooperate the whole month long. Torrents of rain imprisoned Anton and Nicky in camp, delaying the essential task of moving Raoul’s sheep from the high country to the desert before winter snows buried all.

The downpours turned the trails to soup, making it unthinkable to move the wagon or sheep lest vehicle and animals sink in mud occasionally as dangerous as quicksand. 

         “If we had had any more rain, we would need Noah’s Ark, not a sheep wagon,” complained Anton to Nicky. They were returning from a predawn check on the flock, their slickers as wet and muddy as the ground they walked on.

         “Amen to that,” said the younger brother. “Mud or no mud, as soon as Tubal comes with supplies I think we better move these sheep from summer pastures to lower ground to take them through the winter—even if we must leave the wagon behind.”

         The mud forced many extra chores upon them. The brothers brushed Lazarus and Peppy and their horses a half dozen or more times a day to clean the mud from their coats. The sheep looked as if they were statues made of clay. Worse, Anton and Nicky were down to the hated beans and less than a half-pound of rice, rationing these meager supplies since they had no way of knowing if Tubal could get to them with the buckboard. They had not enjoyed coffee or canned milk in a week.

         On November 21 there was still no Tubal. Anton and Nicky faced the certainty of a bitter winter and certain death for the band of sheep if they tarried any longer.

         “We have no choice, Brother,” said Nicky. “I think we cannot wait for the ground to freeze. We must take our chances and move camp.”

         “Let us wait one more day for Tubal,” said Anton. “Then we go.”

         “These sheep have run out of grass,” said Nicky. “If they wander any further from the wagon we’re going to lose many of them to predators.”

         “All right, tomorrow we leave, with Tubal or without him,” agreed Anton.

         That evening temperatures at last dropped into the teens, freezing the ground at last. They were about to depart in the morning when the sound of hoof beats in the distance interrupted their final packing efforts. A few minutes later they heard a familiar voice shouting their names.

         “Hola, boys, hola!” said Tubal as he arrived at the wagon on Dolly accompanied by two packhorses. He dismounted. The boys saw that he could barely stand from exhaustion. The old man and the horses looked as if they had been coated in a pudding of earth.

         “The buckboard stick in the mud,” said Tubal. “Raoul say, Take Dolly and the pack horses and see if you can get through,’”

         “And here you are,” said Anton.

         “And here I are,” said Tubal. “I brought you big news.” He flashed a newspaper declaring in a bold headline that Spain, after months of bickering, had relinquished all claim to Cuba and agreed to a treaty with the United States.

         “The war is over?” asked Anton.

         “Over,” said Tubal.

         “I hope it is the last war the world will see,” said Anton. “The weapons man is making are getting more and more destructive. One day the planet itself will vanish in a plume of smoke unless man stops this savagery.”

         Tubal cocked an eyebrow. For once he did not feel like joking. “Too bad the world not have your wisdom, Anton,” he said simply.

         “Um, Tubal, what kind of food did you bring us?” asked Nicky.     

“Beans,” said Tubal.

         The brothers groaned.

         Tubal cackled. “And fresh bread, dried mutton, sardines, potatoes, rice, coffee and an apple pie Martina made for you,” he said. “When do we eat?”

         Anton laughed and grabbed a pot. “Right away.”

         “We eat and go,” said Tubal, who had seen sheep perish as the deadly consequence of getting caught in a Nevada blizzard. “Air smell like snow coming and my knees ache.”

         Working quickly, Anton set a big plate of steaming hot bread with cold sardines and fried potatoes on the table for Tubal, along with smaller plates for Nicky and himself. He hated to wake Tubal, snoring deeply on the lower bunk, but knew he must. They had to eat fast and get the flock on the curving oxbow trail to lower ground.

         After devouring a generous slice of Martina’s pie, Nicky collected the tin dishes to wash them. Tubal threw on his coat to wander outside to relieve himself but gave a frantic shout in the doorway. The brothers looked out sand could barely see. Huge wet flakes made the air look as if the insides of a featherbed had been exposed.

         “We leave now,” growled Tubal.

         “Leave the dishes, Nicky,” said Anton. “Go saddle our horses.”

         “I hitch Gus and Gus to the wagon,” said Tubal.

Anton sprang to action, tying Tubal’s horse and the pack animals in back of his wagon. Nicky already had set Peppy and Lazarus in motion and they had the sheep moving downhill at a fast clip. The brothers unhobbled Bertha and Luis and saddled them without a wasted second.

 “I make camp and wait for you, boys,” shouted Tubal, and he was off. In seconds the brothers heard the turning wheels of the wagon, the creaking axles, and the sound of departing hoof beats. They could not see the departing sheep wagon for the blizzard.

         “Go, Gus, go other Gus,” Tubal screamed into the wind.

The brothers knew Tubal would not stop to set up a new camp until he reached a point of safety and good feed. If the sheep wagon should stick in a snowdrift, Tubal would use the team with the packhorses to yank it free.

         Nicky whistled sharply. The dogs yipped and continued driving the flock through the wall of falling flakes.

         The flock needed little urging for once.  Lazarus and Peppy had rushed the heels of the lead sheep, and the flock moved as one like a school of minnows. The sound of sheep bells ringing filled the air.

         “You think this blizzard will let up?” shouted Nicky.

         “It’s going to be bad up here,” said Anton. “It can’t be this bad on the low ground,”

         The brothers and dogs drove the sheep relentlessly. A couple weaker sheep dropped behind. A pair of coyotes that had caught a scent quickly dispatched an older ram. The brothers heard the snarls and a frightened bleating, then silence returned.

         “We have to save the majority of the flock,” said Anton to Nicky.  The sound of additional yapping coyotes trailing them now reached them and seared their nerves. “The snow has kept the coyotes from the rodents they usually eat.”

         Nicky nodded and fired his carbine in the air. “The ones the coyotes get probably weren’t going to make the trek anyway,” he said. “But maybe a blast from this now and then will make them think twice before approaching.”

         Time passed slowly, but the brothers made progress. They dismounted at one point and stomped to get blood into stiffening feet, their horses trailing behind them. They went down the trail a thousand feet here, another thousand feet there. The whiteness of the snow itself helped illuminate some of the way down, but when the gusts howled they depended upon the instincts of Lazarus and Peppy to lead them. Leaving behind an oxbow on the trail, the winds increased to forty miles per hour, creating deep drifts that the sheep and dogs avoided as best they could.

At one point young Bum Deal slipped into a drift and went in over its head. Nicky looked and looked and finally located its air hole in the snow before he could rescue the sputtering sheep. He shook the thought out of his head that his parents had died in a similar snow-bound tight spot.

         All that night the brothers drove themselves and the flock. The sheep leaders wanted to halt, but Lazarus and Peppy never let them. At some point an hour after dawn the clouds in the sky broke apart, and a cold sun turned the snow to glass, improving visibility. The snow dwindled to a few scattered flakes and then ceased to fall entirely.

         Only when their feet felt like frozen clubs did the brothers halt to eat breakfast. Anton took a handful of tinder from his pack to build a fire as Tubal had taught him with chunks of greasewood in a clump of boulders. Nicky scurried here and there to find additional wood chunks to feed the flames. What he found was damp, and the fire burned with oppressive smoke that irritated the eyes. Neither brother complained, huddling quietly before the licking flames to remove their boots and to dry their damp socks. While their hasty breakfast cooked, they wolfed down strips of jerky meant for dog treats and gave the rest to Lazarus and Peppy.

         “We’ve gotten through the worst of it, Big Brother,” said Nicky.

“I pray so.”

         After a tasteless meal they led the band to lower ground where the snow lay white only in patches, and in midafternoon they permitted the sheep to graze and to regain strength in their legs before going on. As evening fell Nicky gave a shout as he spotted the sheep wagon alongside a babbling stream. Tubal had a roaring fire going outside the wagon with a pot of his dark and bitter coffee hanging from a rod.

The brothers saw that Tubal had hobbled the horses to give them leisure to rest and to graze without fear of them running off-but they saw no sign of the herder.

“I wonder what Tubal is doing?” mumbled Anton.

“Snoring inside the wagon, you betcha,” said Nicky with a laugh.

They ran with war whoops inside the wagon and pulled Tubal to his feet.

“Time to eat,” they shouted. “Up you son of the dawn.”

Tubal grumbled good naturedly but threw on his coat and followed the brothers outside to the fire. “I have bread baking in Dutch oven,” he said.

Nicky looked around his surroundings. He pointed to a huge boulder whose top had the outline of a human profile.

         “As the discoverer of this rock I hereby dub it Tubal’s Nose,” said Nicky with a grin.

         “You boys always name things after Tubal,” the old man snorted. “This is honor when you name big ugly rock after Tubal’s snout?”

         Nicky and Anton laughed at Tubal’s mock outrage. They were giddy with the relief of cheating death, ever mindful of their parents’ last seconds.

 “I not mind,” the herder said. “Just don’t name it `Tubal’s Big Bum’ or I might get mad.”

Chapter 42: Winter

May 15, 1899

         The winter passed in the lowlands in monotonous fashion. The brothers conducted the business of herding as if they had done it all their lives—and it felt to both that they had. When Tubal came with supplies these days, he found the camp in such good order that his only complaint was that he had nothing to complain about.

         Nonetheless Tubal always found that the brothers thirsted for conversation. He started bring the boys newspapers well-thumbed by Raoul, which they always thanked him for bringing. Today, the brothers rejoiced to read about world peace instead of war. Many nations had agreed to meet in the Netherlands on May 18 to begin disarmament talks.

         Tubal, though somewhat literate in Basque was not at all able to read English, yet he knew the history of White Pine and surrounding counties by heart that he’d heard told at the Basque hotel. Once he delighted the brothers, pointing out the falling-down wooden remains of a Pony Express mail station.

         “Many years ago Paiutes on warpath kill settlers,” Tubal had informed them. “But one Pony Express guy rode three hundred miles in thirty hours to deliver mail. He use eleven horses.” 

“I can’t believe he risked his life for mail,” said Nicky.

         “Oh, you’d want him to do it if it meant you’d get a perfumed letter from Martina,” said Anton. Nicky’s face turned red.

         Today, after catching up on news, the brothers asked Tubal without much hope if any mail had come. Tubal smiled broadly and dropped a postcard and a letter on the rough table. The postcard was for Nicky, hand-addressed to him with Martina’s name in the corner.

         Tubal looked pleased with himself. He had already read it and knew Martina said to Nicky she was thinking of him and looked forward to his next visit to the ranch.

         The letter was for Anton.    

         “Do you have that stamp, Nicky?” asked Tubal.

         “No,” said Nicky, his eyes on his brother’s face. He saw that the letter for Anton bore the signature of Clarisse. It had been mailed a full two months previously.

         Anton went to his bunk and slit the envelope open.

Dear Mr. Ibarra:

Please accept my apologies for intruding into your life like this. My mind has been all disordered lately, and I seem to be thinking less clearly with all my emotions a flush.

I must ask a favor. I hope you do not hate me for asking it.

The news from Cuba has devastated my father-in-law’s household.

My husband Bernard is dead, shot through the head while on guard duty by a sharpshooter on Kettle Hill in Cuba, according to the information we received from the military.

My father-in-law has taken his time composing a letter to Henry, asking him to return home as the next in line to inherit the family lands.  My request is that you spare Henry some of the pain he surely will feel when he gets the letter by breaking the sad news to Henry.

My life here is miserable. Bernard’s sisters resent me. I take my meals in my room. I do not want to burden you with my troubles, Mr. Ibarra. I close now and pray that God protects you and Nicky.

Sincerely,

Clarisse Navarre

         Nicky, seeing the pain in Anton’s face, started to exit the wagon. “Let us wipe down Gus and Gus,” Nicky said to Tubal. The old man, sensitive for once, nodded.

Anton stopped them before they went out.

         “I want to show you something first,” Anton said. He strode to the little-used storage compartment and pulled out a rolled canvas. He unrolled it and showed it to his brother and the old herder.

         “It’s a magnificent likeness of Clarisse,” said Nicky.

“Why do you torture yourself like this?” asked Tubal.

         “It helps me remember what Clarisse looked like,” said Anton. “Otherwise I am afraid her face will disappear from my memory the way the faces of our dear mother and father have faded for me.”

         “I have no memory of either mother or father,” confessed Nicky. “Sometimes I close my eyes and I picture my mother saving us in the avalanche, but that is my imagination at work, not my memory. I was too young to remember.”

         “She looks down from heaven over us as our own personal angel, don’t you think,” said Anton.

         “You betcha,” said Tubal, throwing a rough arm around the shoulders of both young men.  “Old men know that time takes away grief and leaves you the joy of love.”

#

Tubal, on these visits, never knew what mood he’d find the herders. One time he arrived to find out that the brothers had argued over dishwashing and had refused to talk to each other for three days. Tubal knew that herding in solitude got on anyone’s nerves and so he always memorized the latest jokes he heard at the hotel to tell them to the brothers. One day after Tubal unloaded supplies he sat at the table in the sheep wagon and nursed the tea and honey Anton had prepared for him. He cleared his throat as he often did just before telling a story.

         “A cowboy got fired from his ranch job and shows up at the camp of a Basque looking for work,” said Tubal, telling the joke in broken English.

         Anton and Nicky waited.

         “The Basque he say, `I don’t know if I can hire you. You got no experience with sheeps.’

         `Oh,’ the cowboy says, `trust me, I got plenty experience with the sheeps.’

         `Ok, OK,’  Basque guy says and he gives guy a try. `It is shearing season,’ he says, `you can do that and cut their tails and castrate them?’

         `Oh, yeah, yeah,’ guy says.

         They go outside and the cowboy takes the shears and his knife.  He grabs one and it’s clip, snip, snip, and he’s done.

         `Pretty fast, huh?’ the cowman say. 

         `Oh, very fast,’ says Basque. `Only I got just one question.’

         `Yeah?’

         `Why you do dat to my dog?”

         Nicky and Anton choked with laughter. Tubal reached into his pocket for his pipe.  Lazarus whined and looked into Tubal’s eyes.

         “Don’t worry, boy, those cowboys not snip-snip you,” the herder said and turned to Anton and patted his stomach. “What is to eat?

         “Grab a rock outside and sit down,” said Anton to the camp tender.  “We have a special treat. Two fat partridges wandered right into camp.”

         “Yep, they practically begged us to throw them in a stew,” said Nicky.   

An hour later, as the three finished second helpings, from outside the wagon came a warning bark from Lazarus. The brothers and Tubal scrambled for their carbines inside the sheep wagon. They opened the door of the wagon cautiously, standing off to one side lest someone pump bullets through the door.

         “It’s Red,” said Nicky, spotting a lean figure on horseback.

         “It is, but he’s not coming for small talk,” said Anton.

         “Not the way he’s pushing his horse,” agreed Nicky.

         Red Ruffing’s mare, Patsy, shuddered with soapy foam flying. He leaped from the saddle, stuttering and sputtering, trying to say too many words at once.

         “Slow down, Red,” said Anton. ”Would you like water?”

         “No,” said Red. “They’re on the warpath.”

         “Indians?” said Tubal.

         “Indians?” puzzled Red. “No, Sinclair’s men.” 

         “They surprised Navarre’s herders Gar and Goat using one of Sinclair’s waterholes over at the old Jensen homestead with that Basque Henry standing guard,” said Red. “They tied Henry up but the other two managed to get away. I’m afraid Sinclair means to hurt them bad if he catches them.”

         “How many is ‘they’?” asked Nicky, at once all business. 

         “Sinclair and his wife and two men,” said Red. “I come up over a ridge. Was going to water Patsy myself, but I stopped cold.”

         “Did they see you?” asked Nicky.

         “No, Sinclair’s men was whooping and cussing and shooting into the brush, hoping to nail the herders with a lucky shot,” he said. “I come straight here to fetch you.”

         Tubal jammed his unlit pipe between his clenched lips. “Better take the buckboard, boys,” he said. “Me and Lazarus will stay with sheeps.”

         “Yes, we’ll take Peppy,” said Nicky. “He’ll warn us should someone try to get the drop on us.”

          “Better rest Patsy and rub her down, Red. Tubal will dry your saddle blanket by the fire,” said Anton.

         Anton and Nicky hitched the big team to the buckboard, tying their mounts Big Luis and Bertha behind it in case they had to flee on horseback. Every rifle in camp went inside the wagon except for Tubal’s carbine, which never left his side.

          “If you get drop on them, good. If not, get the law,” Tubal said.

         “I know,” said Anton, checking the cylinders on his Colt. Nicky, for once silent as he held the reins in the buckboard seat, nodded. The wagon rode off with a great rattle from axles and wheels.

         Tubal helped Red cool down Patsy. The mare needed water after the grueling ride from the old Jensen place.  Afraid she might bloat, Red held the reins and allowed her small sips at a time. Lazarus pushed against Red’s knee, grateful for the small head pats he received.

          Tubal finished rubbing down Patsy. Her sucking of wind had evolved to normal breathing.

         “You welcome here anytime, Red Ruffing,” said Tubal, as the redhead put back his saddle blanket on Patsy.

         “Thanks, Basco, pard” said Red, grinning as he put the drier side of the saddle blanket on his mount’s back. “When I own my castle you can come over and put your feet up on my desk.”

Chapter 43: Range War

         Red’s directions led Anton and Nicky to the waterhole in a little over one hour. 

They saw that barbed wire surrounded the oasis, keeping life-giving water from a homestead freshly abandoned by a Swedish settler named Jensen and his wife. Refused access to the water by Faro Sinclair, the homesteaders had seen their crops wither and mule and milk cows grow lean.  Three months back, Jensen had surrendered his place to Faro Sinclair for the price of steamer tickets for two back to Europe.

         “You smell smoke?” said Nicky. Peppy’s nose was high in the air, sniffing.

         “There, I see the smoke,” said Anton, pointing. “Keep your carbine handy.”

         The team in front and the saddle horses behind the wagon tossed their heads uneasily as they came onto the old Jensen homestead. The acrid smell of flame and smoke filled their nostrils.

They brothers hid the buckwagon in a draw and moved toward the abandoned ranch house, staying low through brushy terrain that tore at their shirts and trousers.

“Heel, Peppy,” whispered Nicky.

         Anton motioned Nicky to stay behind him as they moved closer to the fire, which, they saw, was in the center of a sheep pen. Jensen’s sod house and a sod barn were untouched by the flames.

The brothers saw that thick piles of straw and alfalfa had been placed in a circle inside the pen and lighted to form a ring of fire.  No one seemed anywhere around, but—wait, was something moving in the center of the ring?

         “What do you make of this?” whispered Anton.

         “I think that’s a man in the fire,” said Nicky.

         Anton put his flattened hand to his eyes which watered badly now from the foul grey smoke.  “Keep that rifle ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”

         “Stay, Peppy, stay,” said Nicky, and ran after his brother.

         The brothers felt an adrenaline surge as they rushed toward the flames. As they got close up they saw the fire was spreading toward a figure in the center of the ring. Talons of flame—whipped by a steady east wind —leaped skyward. Feeling the heat sear their faces, they jerked their bandanas up from their necks over their mouths.

         “You see that man?” said Nicky, shouting over the crackle of the flames. “He’s staked to the ground.”

“We have to act,” said Anton. “In another minute the flames will reach him.”

          “Who is it?” said Nicky. “Gar or Goat?”

          “Neither, he’s big like me—must be Henry,” said Anton. “Someone put a feed sack over his head.”

         “Maybe we can put out some of the fire?” said Nicky. “Otherwise—-“ He left the obvious unsaid.

         “Grab a rake, Nicky,” said Anton.  “Whoever did this left rakes and a shovel.”

         They put down their weapons and turned their heads this way and that, trying to gulp clean air.  Instead, they inhaled soot and grit. The bright, sunny sky had been blotted out by smoke and darkness.  

They pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, throwing dirt on the cascading flames with the rakes and shovel. Their efforts looked hopeless, but then a path opened to the bound man wide enough for a mouse to pass. Anton’s muscles bulged as he dug, lifted, and threw, dug lifted and threw. Whatever Anton dug with the shovel, Nicky’s rake swept out of the way.

         “Can you get through, Nicky?” Anton said, grunting with effort.

         “Think so,” said Nicky. 

         Anton ripped the ancient stone cutting tool from his neck that Nicky had given him at the cave. “Here, use this to cut the bonds,” he said, pressing the souvenir into Nicky’s hand.

         While Anton threw every last bit of energy into battling the flames, Nicky took a running start and leaped over a burning hay bale, landing inches from the unconscious man. Quickly, he slit the bonds with the cave tool. By then Anton had cleared a wider swath and was beside Nicky.  He saw that the victim had been covered with dry alfalfa hay that smoldered at its tips and looked about to ignite.

         “It is Henry,” said Nicky. “He’s dead weight and too heavy to carry.”

         “I must,” growled Anton, bending his knees and wrapping his fists around Henry’s rope belt and collar as if competing in the stone lift. “Leave the feed sack on his head to keep his hair from catching fire.”

         “On count,” shouted Nicky. “On, two, three—lift,” he said.   

Anton grunted and hoisted Henry on his back and shoulders. The effort seemed to bend him in half. He felt every one of Henry’s three hundred crushing pounds.

         The flames tore at their clothing as the rescuers staggered through the small hole in the fiery ring.  Anton’s thick legs quivered as he put down Henry forty feet from the flames with the gentleness of a father putting a baby into a crib. Nicky ripped the feed sack from Henry’s head.

Nicky and Anton beat their caps against their charred trousers. Stinging brands had passed through the fabric into flesh.  Henry moaned as they next beat his tunic with their hands. Only his face and neck, protected by the sack, were free of burns. 

“Let’s get him into that sod house,” said Anton. “We can tear up drapes to clean and bind his wounds.”

“You do that, Brother,” said Nicky.

“Where are you going?”

“I see a big dinner bell out front of the shed,” said Nicky. “I have an idea to trap Sinclair.”

Chapter 44: Anton and Henry

Anton threw Henry’s arms around his neck and maneuvered him to the sod house, using the stock of his carbine as a crutch to propel without toppling.

Inside he saw that the couple driven off the land by Sinclair had left their possessions behind. The parlor had a table set as if the family would be back for supper. Henry cleared the table and lay Henry atop it. The table groaned under the man’s weight but held.

         Henry roused himself from unconsciousness and tried to make sense of his surroundings. He wanted to sit up and Anton assisted him, trickling water from his goatskin bag past the big man’s lips.

         “How did they ever get the drop on you like that, Henry?” asked Anton.

         “They sneak up,” said Henry, his voice hoarse and raspy from smoke. “I shoot to let Gar and Goat away. When I empty both guns Barnes got behind me and knocked me in head with axe handle.”

         “That was something Tubal taught me,” said Anton. “Never empty both pistols.. Always leave at least one bullet in the chamber of one pistol while you reload the other.”

         “I remember you from the stone lifting,” Henry said, peering into Anton’s face. “I was wrong to cheat. I sorry.

         “That’s good enough for me,” said Anton. “But I have some terrible news from home. Clarisse asked me to tell you. Bernard died in Cuba.”

         Henry looked as if Anton had put a knife in his heart. “It is my fault,” he said.

         “No, no,” said Anton. “It is not.”

         “You no understand,” Henry said. “I was jealous of my brother getting my father’s land, and I prayed God would take Bernard so I could inherit all.”

         “God does not work that way,” said Anton. “Your prayers had no connection with Bernard dying.”

         Henry looked relieved. “You are sure?”

         “More than sure,” said Anton.  “God never listens to evil prayers. My foster father the Monsignor taught me this.”

Anton had begun to clean Henry’s wounds and bind them with clean strips of cloth when a commotion in the yard of the ranch caught his ear.

A wild clanging of a bell in the yard sounded sharply, carrying its insistent sound well past the confines of the ranch area.

“The bell will bring the buckaroos who set me on fire,” said Henry, frightened.

Anton smiled in spite of the danger.  The bell ringer could only be Nicky, he reasoned, and his brother was no fool. Of course, thought Anton, Nicky is trying to duplicate the ancient trick of Falcones, luring Henry’s attackers back to the yard with the bell.

Minutes later the sound of hoof beats traveled through the open window to Anton. Nicky’s ruse had worked.

He rushed to the window with carbine at the ready and he spilled a pocketful of shells on the windowsill for fast reloading if need be.

The first riders were Sinclair’s stooges Barnes and Jackson. They had their guns drawn with arrogant sneers plastered to their faces. They drove straight to the remains of the fire.

“The big oaf is gone,” said Jackson.

“I tied him myself,” said Barnes. “Not even a galoot big as him could break free without help.”

A noise behind them from a rusting ploughshare spurred them to turn, but Nicky’s voice rang clear. “Move one inch and you’ll be six-feet in the ground,” shouted Nicky. “Drop the revolvers and step down from your horses with your hands behind your necks.”

The two men did as ordered.

Nicky stepped from behind the wagon. As he did so Gar and Goat also ran into the clearing where they had been hiding.

“We heard the bell in our camp,” said Goat.

“We grabbed our guns and ran back,” added Gar.

The herders’ carbines were cocked and ready. They ran up to Barnes and Jackson and threw Sinclair’s men to their knees.

Goat slapped the rumps of the horses belonging to Barnes and Jackson. The two mounts ran off.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the world’s stinkingest herders,” said Bart Jackson from his knees, his sunburnt and prickly bearded face contorted in a grin.

“You’ll soon be stinking also, hombres,” said Goat. “Maybe you rot in a grave.”

         Gar held an ancient rifle in two nervous hands. It was a battered affair and the wooden stock was splintered as if it had been used as a hammer. Goat had a Henry repeating rifle in his hands and gazed coldly at the pair of cowmen as if he were only one breath from pulling the trigger.

         “Hey, that’s my Henry rifle,” said Jackson. “You two must have been the skunks that stripped all my goods off my pack horse.”

         “Losers weepers,” said Goat.  “Maybe I give you back one bullet, hombre, in your belly.”

         Nicky felt his stomach drop. Goat looked anything like the fool he had been when the brothers had visited his tent. He was in control of another man’s life, and he looked dangerous. He was dangerous, Nicky saw.

         Anton looked out the window, carbine in hand, wondering if he should try to stop Goat by shooting him in the leg.

         But Nicky moved first. He could not hesitate or Jackson’s blood would run on the ground. He marched up to Goat and yanked the weapon away from him.

         “Walk away—now,” said Nicky. “So help me you will go to jail if either of these buckaroos is harmed. Cowardly shooting is not the Basque way.”

         Goat hung his head.

         Nicky turned his attention from the cowmen to Gar and walked purposely toward him with his weapon pointed low.  “Put it down, Gar,” he said.

         Gar dropped both hands to his side.  He dropped the battered weapon.

Anton looked out the window and gasped. During the confrontation between Nicky and the herders, Faro Sinclair and his wife May had taken advantage of the situation and entered the yard.

Anton saw them rush his brother. They must have dismounted and hidden their horses, he reasoned.

“Drop those guns, Basco boy,” said Sinclair, his voice loud as a thunderclap in the quiet yard. He held a revolver steady with both hands. “If you don’t you’ll have a third eye.”

Nicky stayed put, his finger inching toward the trigger on his carbine.

May Day raised a derringer about the size of a deck of cards.

“Don’t try, kid,” she said, her voice raspy and mean. “Drop the carbine, and I mean now.”

“You heard her,” said Sinclair. His lips twitched. “Drop it or I drop you.” 

Nicky tossed the weapon in front of him. Sinclair laughed and raised the revolver. Anton gasped. The cowardly rancher intended to fire at Nicky anyway.

A brown blur raced past Nicky and leaped at Sinclair with a ferocious snarl.

“No Peppy,” screamed Nicky, but it was too late. Sinclair’s weapon boomed, and Peppy dropped to the ground, his brown head blackened by powder burns.

Nicky rushed to Peppy and rocked him. Peppy licked the boy’s hand. The bullet had gone through one ear, shredding it, but he was alive.

“What are you two birds doing still on your knees?” shrieked May Day, her nerves shattered by the explosion. “Get up and make yourself useful.”

Barnes and Jackson scrambled to their feet. They retrieved their revolvers and the Henry rifle.

Sinclair bent over Nicky still holding Peppy. Anton in the doorway aimed the rifle at the man’s chest.

He hesitated.

Even if he dropped Sinclair, the other three surely would begin shooting, and Nicky and the two herders would die.

Sinclair raised a leg to kick Nicky in the head, but the sound of a weapon’s clicking hammer reached him.

         “You’re covered, Big Shot,” shouted a voice from alongside the sod shed. “Don’t move.”

Sinclair whirled and fired wildly. Simultaneously a bullet went through Sinclair’s black Stetson, blowing it and a patch of his grey hair off. The gunshot echoed in the yard.

Sinclair dropped his weapon and put his hand to his head. Blood covered one cheek.

“Now put the other hand there,” screamed the shooter, his voice agitated.

         Barnes stealthily raised his revolver along the side of his body.

When Barnes’s revolver came up, Anton squeezed his carbine’s trigger.  A bullet slammed into Barnes’ gun hand.

         Barnes screamed and shook his shredded thumb.

         May Day and Jackson had seen enough. They tossed their weapons down.

         Red Ruffing came into the open. Anton came running from the house. Both had weapons at the ready.

“Ruffing?” screamed Sinclair. “What the blazes do you think you’re doing?

“You’re a cattle man,” echoed May.

          “No, I’ve developed a taste for mutton,” said Ruffing, grinning at the brothers.

         Barnes unleashed a torrent of curses directed toward Anton. “You’ve ruined my shooting hand,” he said, blubbering.

         “Where you’re going you won’t need to shoot,” said Anton. “You can eat all the bread and water you want with your other hand.”

(#)

         After Anton patched up Peppy, he turned to the wounds of Sinclair and Barnes. Then Gar and Goat bound and gagged the rancher and his cronies with fencing wire.

Nicky fetched the hidden buckboard. Anton gave Henry a shoulder and led him to the wagon from the house.

Gar and Goat helped the brothers place Henry on the front seat.

         “You’ve got some burns,” Anton told Henry, “but nothing a big strong Basque like you can’t recover from.”

         Gar and Goat tossed the prisoners like firewood on the wagon’s rear.

         “You two put the fire out while my brother and I take Henry to the doctor and these other varmints to jail,” said Anton.

         Gar and Goat nodded.         

         “Then use Sinclair’s horses and go fetch Henry’s uncle,” said Nicky. “Henry will need kin by his side while he recovers.”

         Anton walked over to Peppy and gathered him in his arms.  He put him gently on the wagon alongside Henry and stroked the dog’s valiant head. Peppy wagged his tail.

         “You’re going to be just fine, Peppy,” said Anton, pushing tears of relief out of his eyes.

Chapter 45: Paradise Found

         With a summer diet of beans sticking in his throat, Anton encouraged Nicky to leave camp for a few days to bring back trout to camp for a change of diet.

Nicky rode Bertha through a steep and almost impenetrable canyon lined with trees. He passed a wooden sign with the name Hidden Spring scratched into the wood. After stopping at the spring to water his horse, Nicky had an eagle’s view of the valley thousands of feet below him.

         “So you discovered a new paradise?” asked Anton, when Nicky finally rode back to the camp with news of what he had found.

Nicky flashed a thick string of bright-colored trout wrapped in a dampened cloth.

         “No, not discovered,” said Nicky, “I rediscovered a paradise.”

He handed the fish to Anton to clean and emptied his pockets of faded red and cream and black bits of pottery shards.  “The Indians settled there hundreds of years ago,” said Nicky by way of explanation.

         Nicky went on to describe the canyon. He praised its small alpine lake above and its waterholes and deep pools with small, darting trout below, connected by a bubbling creek that undoubtedly was a roaring stream in spring.

“The walls of the canyon go straight up and take on a purple cast in the late afternoon,” said Nicky. “It is a place you must paint, Brother. Dozens of mountain sheep trek straight up the sheer walls, hopping from ledge to rock, snatching mouthfuls of forage along the way.”

         “No cowmen, no sheep?” asked Anton.

         “Not that I saw,” said Nicky, “and I rode everywhere.”

         “No settlers anywhere?”

         “In the valley below I found just one abandoned cabin nestled among some dwarf pines,” said Nicky. “There was a broken-down corral and some remaining fence posts although whatever barbed wire had been strung now was gone or trampled into the earth.”

         “No signs of life?”

         “Only signs of death. There were two wooden grave slabs under a cottonwood tree near the old cabin.”

         A few days later, Tubal visited the camp with fresh supplies. Nicky asked the camp tender to tell him all he knew about filing claims and checking for information on filings for ownership of land.

Taking Tubal’s advice, Nicky early in September rode Bertha into the tiny community of Baker, Nevada, a pretty place with the last flowers of fall gracing gardens in front of the cabins and places of business.   

         At a deed recorder’s office that doubled as a post office, the helpful man in charge gave Nicky a drink of water.

“Sounds to me you’re talking about the Widow Zane’s place in that valley,” the recorder said. “Lady moved here about three years ago. Come outside and I’ll point out her town cabin.”

Gathering all his courage, Nicky walked to the cabin and tied Bertha to a hitching rail.

He banged his cap against his pants and two puffs of trail dust rose into the air.

         He kept his cap off when a woman with a sun-lined face answered the door. Her eyes and mouth bore pained wrinkles that only heartache, loss and illness can carve.

         “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Nicky, hoping his English was fluid enough to be understood. “Nicky Ibarra is my name.”

         “Call me Mrs. Zane,” came the reply. “Folks here call me the Widow Zane, a name I detest.”

         Her voice was a croak, and Nicky leaned forward to hear her.

“I can understand that, ma’am,” said Nicky. “I also understand you own an abandoned property in a valley some miles from here?”

         “Yes, my husband and I called it Bristlecone Ranch,” she said. “Some of those stunted pines on our place were alive when Jesus was alive.”

         “Yes, ma’am, I saw those,” said Nicky. “The views above the valley were lovely, especially near the high end of the creek. They reminded me of the hillside back home in Spain where my brother I were raised.”

         “Above the valley there was a creek that dropped fast in April and created a lovely waterfall,” said Mrs. Zane, her mind going back to a picnic with her husband after they first settled here. 

         “The creek is only a trickle now, but there has not been much rain here in August,” said Nicky.

         The woman looked at the sky, blue and cloudless. “No rain in August?” she said and smiled. “That’s not fresh news in Nevada.”

          “The creek should fill up in the spring after the heavy snows on the mountaintop melt.”

         Mrs. Zane brought her hand to her lips to cover a wracking cough. “Do you drink cocoa, Mr. Ibarra?” she asked after the coughing subsided.

         The room contained a sitting parlor with small bed and a kitchen no bigger than a ship’s galley.  She went to work on the wood stove and came back with cocoa served on a silver tray.

         Nicky looked at the tray. Monsignor’s housekeeper had served tea on a fancy tray like Mrs. Zane’s.

         “A relic of more prosperous days back in Ohio,” she said, giving a tight smile. “I hope to get back before I die, and I’m not well, as you can see. I come from a nice small woodsy town, Zanesville, right off the National Road.”

         Nicky sipped his cocoa. It had a bitter taste but was pleasant. “Named for your people?”

         “My great grandfather,” she said. “Now tell me why you have come to see me.”

         “I wonder if you might sell me your Bristlecone Ranch?” said Nicky. “My brother and I do not have much money, but we will have some to call our own when our commitment with a sheep rancher ends soon.”

         “You are Spaniards, you say?” she asked.

         “Basques from Spain,” said Nicky, relieved that she seemed to have no quarrel with his native land. “How did you come to live in Nevada?”       

         “My husband always wanted a homestead,” she said. “We were given one hundred and sixty acres by the government so long as we worked it.”

         “You were happy here?”

         “We were happy for a time,” she said. “We ran enough sheep to keep us in wool clothing and meat. We grew enough vegetables to keep us fed.”

         “You say `we.’”

         “My husband James, our daughter, Bella,” she said. “Gone now.”

         “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

         “A beast named Faro Sinclair caused their deaths,” she said. “After we put up a fence his men called us `nesters’ and drove off our only horse.”

         “Did they say why?”

         “A buckaroo named Barnes actually tipped his hat to me,” said Mrs. Zane. “`Sorry ma’am,’ he said, `Boss’s orders.’”

         “And that caused their deaths?”

         “James and Bella came down with influenza,” she explained. “I had no horse to go for a doctor. Bella lasted two days, James a day more—long enough to hear that his daughter was gone.”

         “I am truly sorry.”

         “This ranch would be for you and the brother you mentioned?” said Mrs. Zane.

         “Yes, ma’am.”

         “You are too young to have a wife, yes?”

         Nicky blushed as red as caboose paint.

“Too young now to have a wife,” she said, laughing, “but not too young to dream of one.”

Nicky nodded.

         “I loved my James since we were children in a one-room schoolhouse,” she said. “I had my dream come true, or I did until Sinclair ruined it.”

         “Sinclair and his wife and men are now in jail awaiting the arrival of a circuit judge to try them,” said Nicky. “If justice is done, they will grow old in their jail cells.”

         “I won’t get my hopes up, and that way I won’t be disappointed,” said Mrs. Zane. “Still, laws stand for something important even when they don’t always hold up in court.”

Chapter 46: Land Owners

         It was long after midnight when Nicky returned to the sheep camp. Anton puttered around the kitchen to put together a late supper for his brother as Nicky filled him in about his day.  

         “I made an offer for a valley paradise,” said Nicky, nibbling on a cracker.

         “What did she say to your offer?” asked Anton, handing his brother a cup of tea.

         Nicky inhaled the aroma and removed a loose tealeaf floating in the brew. He paused, keeping Anton in suspense. He set the cup on the table.

         “You and I are property owners,” said Nicky, jumping up to bear hug his brother. “We pay her so much a year for five years on one condition—“

         “—One condition?” Anton sounded suspicious.

         “We agree to care for the graves of her husband and daughter,” said Nicky. “Tending them once or twice a year was the only thing keeping her from joining her folks in Ohio.”

         “We will honor her family as we would want our own dear parents to be honored,” said Anton. “This story reminds me of the buried children in the cave of St. Mammes.”

         “I guess all peoples for all times have something in common,” said Nicky. “Burial grounds are sacred places.”

         “You’re right, Brother,” said Anton. “Human beings seem to need their sacred places.”

Chapter 47: Big Decision

September 25, 1899

         The second and final season in Raoul’s service rushed to its end as the herders began gathering the flock to take to town for the annual sale of sheep.

         Nicky found he loved herding and ranch life more than he could ever imagine. It made him melancholy some days that Anton’s dislike for the long hours, monotony, and loneliness of the life had increased in equal measure.

The brothers knew Raoul would try to pressure them to commit to another two-season term, but they were uncertain what they might say to him. Nicky wondered if he should begin a sheep ranching operation on his own even if it were on a shoestring budget. Anton wondered if he should go back to Monsignor’s with barely a dime over the price of train and steamship tickets in his pocket, or if he should work two more seasons for Raoul and then go back to Spain.

         By now Raoul saw he could depend on the brothers and recognized Nicky’s talents in particular with dog and sheep. He even had concluded that the Ibarra boy could be trusted with his daughter, Martina, reminding himself that he and his late bride had been their age when they met. Twice this year he even had allowed Martina to accompany Tubal to deliver supplies whenever an overnight stay was not required.

         On both occasions Tubal took his duties as chaperone to heart but permitted Martina and Nicky to take short walks with Lazarus for a few minutes of privacy. The old herder beamed at the sight of the handsome boy who had sprouted six inches in height over the last year to six feet and the beautiful girl he had known since an infant.

         “But always Tubal has coughing spells whenever I try to even hold Martina’s hands,” Nicky complained to Anton.

         “Can you blame him?” asked Anton, chuckling. “The way you look at her reminds him of the way the coyote looks at a lamb. You’re lucky he just coughs instead of pulling out his carbine when you drool over her like that.”    

         Nicky blushed but was glad to hear Anton joke.

As Anton grew lonelier by the day with only the companionship of Nicky and the dogs he sometimes went days without uttering more than a word or two.

         Anton wondered if he would have lost his mind had Raoul forced him to herd alone out of a tent instead of putting him with his brother. [

“Whenever you’re gone, Nicky, all I notice are the scorpions, sand fleas and skunks,” Anton once said. “Sometimes I think they give herders a dog for companionship to keep him sane, not just to help him round up sheep.”

         Fortunately for Anton, Nicky knew, his alienation stopped far short of any self-destructive behavior problems. His identity was invested in painting and sculpting. True, some of the insensitive herders like Goat and Gar mocked Anton’s artistic sensibilities, dismissing him as weak or eccentric.  But with Anton’s shoulders as wide as an ox yoke, his detractors made snide comments well out of his hearing.

Chapter 48: The Trial

September 29, 1899

         The trial of the Sinclairs and Sinclair’s men began and ended at the courthouse the day a circuit judge named Garland Craven drove to White Pine County in his black Ford horseless carriage. Anton and Nicky brought Raoul’s sheep into town under the watchful eyes of Lazarus. After the brothers safely placed the flock in railroad pens, they hurried to the courthouse.

         The brothers gasped at the sight of Gar and Goat in the courtroom. The two herders had left their foul-smelling tent and come to testify against the buckaroos for the murder attempt on Henry’s life. Old Man Navarre had purchased each of his herders a suit. After Goat and Gar had bathed and cut their hair at the Basque hotel, they looked more like bankers than herders.

         Henry wore his usual Levi’s but he too had bathed and shaved and looked the part of a credible witness. In the midst of his testimony he drew a gasp from the courtroom packed with Basques on one side of the room and rancher supporters on the other when he told the court about the ring of fire. At the judge’s request, Henry removed his shirt and displayed wide and deep burns across his chest, belly, arms and neck.

         “Can you point out the men in the courtroom who did this to you?” asked Judge Craven.

         Henry looked balefully at the defendants in their chairs. He pointed out Barnes, Jackson, Sinclair and May Day.

         “That man gave the orders,” said Henry, pointing at Sinclair. “He called me names I cannot say with women in the courtroom.”

         “Did May Day do anything to you?” asked the justice.

         “No, Your Honor,” said Henry. “She look for a minute and then ride off on her horse while Sinclair’s men tie me to some stakes.”

         “And these two?” said the judge, pointing to Barnes and Jackson.

         “There was nothing they did not do,” said Henry, trembling with the recollection. “They put me into a ring of brush and straw and lit the fire.”

         Other witnesses called by the attorney were twelve homesteaders and four former Basque sheep ranchers. All testified against Sinclair and his two henchmen.  They each told similar tales.

Of waterholes that were poisoned.

Of sheep intentionally stampeded and driven over a cliff.

Of herders who simply “disappeared” in the desert.

         Anton and Nicky were not required to testify, but Tubal took the stand and told the judge about the humiliating attack he had endured at the waterhole and how he might have died if the brothers had not rescued him. He removed his boot, rolled up his pants, and showed the court a jagged scar.

         The next witness called was Mrs. Zane, wearing the once-fashionable outfit with bonnet she had worn on her honeymoon. She had delayed her departure for Ohio to take the stand. She told how her horse had been driven off, and how she had been unable to take her daughter and husband to Baker for a doctor to save her loved ones.

         “Your honor, many a man has gone to the gallows in Nevada for rustling,” she testified. “To deprive another person or, in this case, whole family of their horse is a serious matter, particularly when deaths such as my child and husband can be traced to the defendants. What these defendants have done was nothing short of murder and horse thievery.”

         The six-hour trial ended with multiple guilty convictions against the Sinclairs and Barnes and Jackson.  The judge gave the two henchmen each a ten-year sentence, then ordered a stunned Sinclair to serve a thirty-five year term.

         “Ten years is for what you did to Henry Navarre,” said Judge Craven, a dandy with a gold pocket watch and hand-tied silk tie. “Ten years is for what you did to Mrs. Zane and her family. Ten more years is for what you did to these other witnesses who testified that you stole their ranches from them.”

         “What is the other five years for?” demanded Sinclair’s attorney, an oily man from Sacramento with cheeks the color of blood sausages.

         “Everything that skunk Sinclair did that nobody knows about,” said the judge.

He ordered Sinclair’s ranch sold and the proceedings used to compensate all those like Mrs. Zane who had lost their homesteads to Sinclair.

         “I also fine you the sum of five thousand dollars payable to Mr. Henry Navarre for lasting injuries received, as well as $1,000.00 to Mr. Tubal Busca for his injuries. Any moneys remaining after the victims are compensated should be used by the good townspeople of White Pine County to build a hospital.”

         The judge gave six months to Madeline Daedalus Sinclair, but suspended the sentence if May Day “promised never to show her face in Nevada again.”

         “You got it, Judge,” boomed May, batting her eyelashes. “I’m on the next stage out of town.”

         “You won’t have to, Miss Day” said Judge Craven. “Meet me at the livery stable, and I’ll give you a ride in my automobile.”

         “Why thank you, Judge Craven,” she said, using her most seductive stage voice.

         “Don’t get the wrong idea, Miss Day,” boomed Judge Craven. “I’m giving you a ride to the stage stop in the next county so that nobody in this courtroom arranges a vigilante hanging for you.”

         The judge slammed down his gavel, the noise drowning out May Day’s angry oath directed at him.

         “Her face is redder than her red bloomers,” Nicky whispered to Anton. White Pine County’s most notorious trial on record had come to an end.

         “Did you see the way the jury listened to those two mangy herders all spiffed up like that?” said Jackson, his ruined gun hand in a sling, as a bailiff led them out of the courtroom.

         “I think we’re lucky to get jail time,” said Jackson. “Looked to me like those jurors was ready to vote for a hanging.”

         “Shut up, you two magpies,” said Sinclair.

         Mrs. Zane left the courtroom, slipping past Sinclair and a marshal, headed for the train depot and the resumption of her life in Ohio.    

“You’ve ruined me,” said Sinclair, his hands bound behind his back.

         “No, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Zane. “You ruined yourself, you awful man.”

Chapter 49: Future Plans

September 30, 1899

         Anton and Nicky had never seen Raoul so excited.

“Earlier this year we shipped the sheep wool to San Francisco, and now we ship the mutton to the stockyards in Chicago,” he said to Nicky. “What other business pays you twice like that, huh?”

         Raoul clapped the brothers on the back, praising their work as herders and the life of a sheep man in general.

         “He’s trying to butter us up,” Nicky whispered to Anton.

         “Here comes his pitch,” said Anton.

“So now I ask you a question,” said Raoul. “Will you work another two year-term for me as herders?”

         Nicky took a breath.

“I have made up my mind,” he said. “I appreciate your offer, but it’s time for me to see if I have what it takes to run my own sheep operation.”

         Raoul looked crestfallen. He turned to the young giant. “Anton? What about you?”

         “Well, with the war over, it’s safe for me to return to Spain,” he said.

Raoul looked disappointed, but he managed to produce a smile and a handshake for each brother. From the big roll of bills in his money clip he peeled a small number off and paid Anton and Nicky their wages.

         “The sheep I promised you both have been taken by Tubal to a pen at my ranch,” said Raoul. “Tubal asked me to include the sheep you call Bum Deal.”

         Nicky hesitated. He looked behind him at Lazarus, his tail slowly wagging back and forth.

         “Something else you wanted?” asked Raoul.

         Nicky pointed to Lazarus.

         “You might as well take him,” said Raoul, chuckling. “Tubal tells me that dog thinks he’s your third brother.”

         “I think Lazarus is our third brother,” said Anton, laughing. Nicky knelt in front of Lazarus and gave the dog a hug of joy.

         “Besides, no matter what Tubal says I do have my moments of generosity,” said Raoul, blinking rapidly so that Nicky suspected a speck had gotten in his eye. “Especially when it concerns a certain young man who seems to have captured my Martina’s heart.”

         Anton and Nicky thanked Raoul. They went to the mercantile store and treated themselves to Levi’s, shirts and boots, planning to toss out the well-patched and soiled duds they had worn in camp.

         Tubal came into the store to buy a peppermint stick.

         “Where you boys going?”

“We are opening accounts at the First National Bank,” said Anton.

“Maybe Tubal should hold your money for you,” the herder suggested.

The brothers laughed so hard that Tubal pouted.

         “Maybe you should bank the money you get from the court settlement, Tubal,” advised Nicky.

         “No, Tubal have only one thing he want to do with the money.”

         “What’s that?” said Anton.

         “Buy round-trip steamship ticket to Spain.” said Tubal. “I visit my family in Muxica and treat them to the biggest feast they ever eat. Let them think I’m a rich man before I come home to Nevada, you betcha.”

         Zaga rented the brothers a room. Each in turn used the tub to rinse out the trail dust. Before spilling the water, Nicky gave Lazarus his first bath. With the dog’s gleaming coat and the new duds on the brothers, the three turned heads when they came into the now-crowded dining room.

         “You boys clean up good,” Zaga joked when he saw them.  “But you might want to take the price tags off those shirts.”         

         Anton and Nicky looked at one another and laughed, then yanked off the tags they had missed.

         The brothers walked across the main room to the map of Spain on one wall. Anton put a thick finger on the little dots marked Guernica and St. Mammes.

         “The stone lifter returns,” said Nicky.

         Zaga returned to the youths and motioned for them to sit family-style at his best table.

         “I have a proposition for you, Anton,” he said. “My oldest daughter Mara gets married this Saturday, and I have built her husband and her a small house to help them get started.”

         “Yes?” responded Anton, not seeing how he fit into this arrangement. Anton recalled how Tubal had referred to the oldest Zaga daughter as the most haughty and snappish of all the Zaga offspring. What poor fool had found her pleasing enough to wed?

         “I want you to paint their wedding portrait,” said Zaga. “Can you do that?  I pay you what you make in two months on the range.”

         “Oh, yes, definitely,” said Anton. “That is called a commission, I believe.”

          “Your meal today is free on me,” said Zaga, clapping him on the back. “I will put your painting of Mara on my walls and surely you will get other commissions.”

         A long and delicate feminine arm reached over Anton’s shoulder and set a basket of bread on the table.

“Anton the Stone Lifter, big as a tree,” a familiar voice

chanted inches from his ear. “I wonder if he remembers me.”

         Anton jerked his head up. He looked into a face from the Old Country, a little older now and maybe a bit careworn but as lovely as he remembered. She wore a simple black dress, the dress of a widow.

         Anton lacked words, but his brother always had words ready. “Clarisse, what are you doing here?” said Nicky.

         Clarisse put her hand saucily on her hip and smiled. “Putting bread on the table, sir,” she said in English. “I am your server.”

Chapter 50: Clarisse’s Journey

         Many hours later, after the last grumpy retired herders had consumed their fifth cups of coffee and gone upstairs to their rooms, Clarisse was free to sit with Anton and Nicky.

         “Where do I start?” she said, a smile covering her nervousness. She played with the large tortoiseshell comb in her dark black hair.

         “How did you get here?” asked Anton, finding his tongue.

         “Same as you, long ride by boat and long ride by train.”

         “But that was dangerous for a girl—a young woman—to travel alone,” protested Anton.

         “It was tiring but wasn’t too bad since I had a first-class ticket for the steamship,” said Clarisse. “A mangy red-headed apple seller named Reuben Bench tried to rob me at the train station in New York, but I grabbed his arm when he picked up my valise and twisted until he let go. A policeman said he had been trying to catch him in the act for months. He went off to jail in handcuffs.”

         “Oh,” said Nicky, winking at Anton. “I guess anyone with half a brain could smell that Reuben was up to no good.”

         “But what led you here?” persisted a red-faced Anton, ignoring Nicky’s grin.

         “Monsignor suggested I write Raoul to ask if he might have a position for me,” said Clarisse. “He did not, but he went to see Mr. Zaga here at the hotel, knowing that his oldest daughter was marrying and moving away. He offered me room and board, and so here I am.”

         “Just room and board,” said Nicky. “No salary?”

         Clarisse shrugged. “I was happy to get away from those harpies who called themselves my sisters-in-law,” she said. “After Bernard died, they convinced his father I had no right to the family inheritance. They were only too happy to buy me a first-class steamer ticket to get me out of the household.”

         “It is so sad you come just as Anton is getting his papers ready to leave America and go back to Spain,” clucked Nicky.

         Clarisse looked stricken.

         Anton used his new pointy-toed boots to kick his brother in the shin under the table.

         “He’s mistaken,” said Anton. “Here in Nevada a Basque from Spain can find a good life if he is willing to find out what his talents are.”

         “Yes, my mistake,” said Nicky, his eyes watering from knee pain. “Anton loves living in Nevada.”

         Anton regained his sense of humor, rendering a perfect imitation of Tubal’s fractured English accent. “Besides, I not go back to the Old Country with nothing in my pants but my big bum,” he said with a grin meant for Nicky. “I need a little dinero to take back with me.”

         Nicky’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you want to work with me to run the Bristlecone Ranch?”

         Anton responded, still keeping Tubal’s accent. “I come to Nevada to work the sheeps,” he said. “That is all I know and need to know.”

         “That’s wonderful, wonderful,” said Nicky. “That makes three of us to work the ranch?”

         “Three?” said Anton, puzzled at first. “Oh, I’ll bet our other partner has a crop of bright red hair and a taste for mutton.

         Clarisse smiled and then her handsome face grew serious. “Would you consider a fourth on the ranch eventually, my dear Anton?”

The heavy wooden door of the hotel swung open as Anton nodded and took Clarisse’s hand.

Raoul, vigorous as ever, barged through the hotel’s front door with Martina, Tubal and Mr. Thatcher. In his arms he had the clay figurine of a trumpeting elk that Anton had left in Raoul’s bunkhouse for safekeeping. At their heels was Peppy, his injured ear wrapped in bandages, but he scampered to Lazarus’s side with his old enthusiasm in display.

“Mr. Thatcher,” said Raoul, smiling broadly. “I think you know these two herders of mine.”

         Nicky and Anton leaped up respectfully. Mr. Thatcher clapped first one on the back and then the other. Then he rushed over to Lazarus sprawled contentedly on the floor alongside Peppy, and he scratched the dog’s ears and back. Lazarus rolled onto his back and offered his belly for another scratch.

Nicky looked shyly over at Martina. Her smile said she enjoyed the attention her beau and Anton were getting from the New York visitor.

Clarisse excused herself after an introduction to Mr. Thatcher and left for the kitchen. “I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee,” she said.

         “Anton, how is it possible that you have gotten even bigger?” said Mr. Thatcher. “Nicky, you too have shot up like an oak. I sent you away as boys, and now look at you, grown men at a young age.”

         “You are a long way from New York, sir,” said Anton.

         “That he is,” said Raoul. “He was on his way by train to Reno when an idea, he says, struck him.”

          “I was delivering three sheepdogs to a buyer in the Washoe Valley when the thought occurred to me that Nevada is a lot closer to most of my steady buyers than New York City is,” said Mr. Thatcher.

         “So, he came here with a proposition, Nicky,” said Raoul, grinning the grin he reserved for times when he was making money. “He wants to start a breeding kennel in Nevada for Australian shepherds, and he wants you to manage it for him.”

         “That’s right, Nicky,” said Mr. Thatcher. “Raoul tells me he never has seen anyone train a dog better than you did with Lazarus. As the sheep industry gets bigger and bigger out West, I’m just not able to keep up with delivering sheepdog pups like I need to do.”

         Nicky’s eyes widened. “You will pay me for this?”

         “Cash on the barrelhead,” said Mr. Thatcher. “Fifty percent for me as the breeder in New York, and you get the other fifty percent for training the pups and taking them to their new owners.”

         “You’ll need a ranch to keep and train the dogs,” said Raoul, beaming as he saw yet another way to make money. “You can use mine, say for fifty percent of what you make.”

         Nicky and Martina gave Raoul the same unblinking stare.

         “All right, we can negotiate a little,” said Raoul, looking hurt. “I was only joking. Say forty percent for me?”

         “Actually, Anton and I now have our own ranch in White Pine County,” said Nicky, rather enjoying the astonishment written on Raoul’s face.

         “In just two years?” said Raoul.

         “Nicky is a fast worker,” said Anton.

         Raoul’s head spun around to confront his daughter.

         “He’s not that fast, Daddy,” said Martina. She and Nicky blushed as red as a traditional Basque skirt. “My heavens!”

         Mr. Thatcher broke the uncomfortable silence that resulted.

“I think it is splendid that you have a ranch, and I’ll help you put in some kennels before I go on to Reno,” said Mr. Thatcher. “Now all that is settled, I want to speak to this big boy here. This morning I was enjoying Raoul’s hospitality at his ranch when I happen to visit the bunkhouse and see six of the finest clay animal statues I’ve ever seen in my life, as well as several wildlife paintings and line drawings on the wall. I asked Martina about the artist, and she told me it is you.”

         Now it was Anton’s turn to blush. “Yes, I am the artist.”

         “I want to purchase all six of them, Anton,” said Mr. Thatcher. “If you give permission, I plan on taking this one of the elk with me on the train and have you ship the rest to New York.  You’re on your way, Anton. One day you’ll be as famous an artist as Charles Russell.”

         Tubal could not stay quiet one minute longer. He frowned. “Say Mr. Big Shot Artist,” he said to Anton. “When you going to paint that picture of me?”

         “When Anton is famous, maybe he can hang your portrait in a museum,” said Mr. Thatcher.     

         “Famous or no I still not take off my drawers for him, you betcha,” said Tubal, standing his ground.

         Anton laughed. He walked over to the coat rack and pulled down his battered carpetbag from the shelf above it.

         “What this?” said Tubal as Anton thrust a rolled canvas into his hand.

         “A present,” said Anton, putting a hand over his mouth to hide a tiny smile.

         “Tubal, he loves presents,” said the herder.

         With the expectant eyes of all upon him, Tubal unrolled the canvas. The old herder saw his own face perfectly captured by Anton’s brush. There were lines on the subject’s face, softened by the laughter around his handsome eyes. In the distance, behind Tubal’s head, was a flock of white and black sheep, very small in size, every brushstroke perfect.

         “When did you do this?” demanded Tubal.

         “Much of it while you were visiting the wagon,” confessed Anton. “I did a series of sketches while you were napping or sleeping.”

         “Well, I be,” said Tubal. “Good thing I sleep a lot on the job.”

         Raoul gave Tubal a hard stare.

         “Oops,” said Tubal. “Sorry, Boss.”

         “It’s a wonderful likeness of Tubal,” said Mr. Thatcher. “What do you call it, Anton?”

         “Sheeps,” said Anton.

         “A perfect title,” boomed Tubal.

         The hotel door slammed open. Henry barged inside, carrying his steamer trunk. “I did not find the streets in Nevada paved with silver,” he said, “and I go back to my family as the rightful heir.”

         Raoul was first to respond. “So, it is goodbye then, Henry?”

         “That it is, Raoul,” said Henry. “It is goodbye.”

         “Are you looking forward to the voyage?” asked Anton.

           “Only the end of it and getting home,” Henry said. “I am not looking forward to losing my insides to seasickness a dozen times a day.”

          “Henry,” said Nicky in as innocent voice as he could muster, “I need to ask you one thing before you go.”

          “Yes?” responded Henry, hoisting the steamer trunk over one broad shoulder.

          “How long did it take to scrape all that red paint off your butt?”

          Henry digested the words. The trunk slipped from his shoulder and hit the planks with a crash.

         Nicky raced through the double doors first, but Henry was close on his heels for such a big man.

         “I hope Henry’s steamship not leave for a long time,” said Tubal. “I do not think Nicky and he come back anytime soon.”

Afterword

The great town of Guernica reached out to Anton in 1927, long after he and Clarisse had married and after their only child, a young giant they had named Dominic, had graduated from the state university with All America honors in football and a degree in history.

“Monsignor Bilboa wrote me that he is unwell,” Anton explained to his brother one evening at dinner. “It is only right that Clarisse and I go to St. Mammes and take care of him as he once took care of you and me.”

Anton and Clarisse waved from a train window to Dominic, Nicky and Martina, and their eight children standing on the platform. Nicky’s ranch empire now included not only the land he and his bride were gifted from Raoul, but also another thousand acres he had purchased near Baker adjacent to Hidden Springs Ranch.

Monsignor eventually recovered from what turned out to be a small stroke, but he was not his old energetic self. Anton and Clarisse agreed they never would get back to Nevada. They were needed in Spain to take care of the elderly priest.

The 1930s proved a time of terrible political unrest in Spain and the Basque provinces chafed under the corrupt Spanish government of the dictator Francisco Franco. As evil a leader as any nation ever has had, Franco hatred the independent Basques and their oak of Guernica, a perpetual symbol of a people who refused to submit to his tyranny. To disagree with Franco was to earn a ticket to jail. To condemn him was to earn a court conviction as a traitor to Spain and a public hanging.

Nonetheless, politics aside, everyday life in the Basque communities of St. Mammes and Guernica went on much as it had when Anton was a boy. Monsignor Bilboa was ancient now and shrunken even more in stature but still said his daily mass and visited the estate of Clarisse and Anton a quarter-mile from his church for Sunday lamb dinners.

Anton worked hard at his painting and sculpturing, but he kept in shape with handball and went on occasional safaris to Africa to get fresh ideas for his bronze animal sculptures.

He and Henry shared the chairmanship of the annual Basque athletic games, although their only head-to-head competition was limited to spirited but good-natured involvement in the tug-of-war pitting Henry’s team against Anton’s strong men.

Unrest in Spain reached a boiling point in 1937. Anton and Clarisse considered returning to America but instead remained, aware that ailing Monsignor’s health would not allow him to survive a demanding journey.

Then, days of true evil came to the province. Although not at war with Spain, Germany hatched a diabolical plan to attack an ancient and peaceful Basque city with the approval of the tyrant Franco. Germany picked Guernica as the target.

On April 27, 1937, Adolph Hitler, the German dictator, tested his military strength on the Basques, sending his mighty Air Force on a bombing raid. The city of Guernica since ancient days felt itself protected by the stone wall surrounding it. To German bombers a wall was no impediment, and their relentless pounding with bombs reduced Guernica to ashes and fallen brick, accompanied by a sorrowful loss of human life.

           For weeks after that treacherous event, Nicky and Clarisse scoured the mails and newspapers for any news from Spain, exchanging worried cross-state phone calls with Anton’s son who also heard nothing from his parents.

         Now grey around the temples but still fit enough to sink his own wells and compete in regional rodeo roping events, Nicky ran his business affairs from the modern office he had built on the Bristlecone Ranch.

         One day he looked up as his business partner Red Ruffing drove his pickup truck back from town with supplies and mail, including a large box securely bound with hemp cord and splashed top and side with many red stamps.  The return address carried the name Ibarra.

         “Here you are, Boss,” said Red, setting aside the less important mail. “It sure is heavy.”

         Then Red jammed a Stetson with jaunty feather over his bald head and departed. He recognized that this was a private moment for Nicky and Martina.

Nicky tore at the wrapper and opened the box with his penknife. As always he spared the stamps for his collection. The package contained a gift heavily protected with rags and tape. Inside the box was a long letter in Clarisse’s strong hand. A foreboding overtook Nicky as he began reading. With his rough hands he flattened the letter on the surface of his worktable so he could concentrate.

Martina entered the room, a gardening glove on her hand apprehensively held to her mouth.

Nicky kept reading, then paused, blinked and gazed into his wife’s face before breaking her heart as his own had just broken.

“It is Anton, Anton,” he said. “He is dead.”

She crossed herself. “How?”

“Clarisse says he was one of the hundreds upon hundreds of civilians killed by the German bombers.” He read a sentence aloud.  “Those not killed by the incendiary bombs were massacred by machine guns from the air as they tried in vain to reach the trees on the edge of the city.”

Nicky read on, gripping the letter so tight it would bear his fingerprints forever.

“Anton had left that morning for the market to bring back the goat’s cheese he so loved, and that spring day was so beautiful he walked to town instead of taking his car,” he read aloud. “My husband had promised to meet Henry at their favorite café where they loved teasing one another and reliving old memories of Nevada.”

           The letter confirmed what Nicky and Martina already had known in their hearts was true. They had read in the newspapers how the Nazi bombers had chosen a Monday when all in town would be shopping for food in the marketplace. There was not much news in the papers, and some of what was published was lies and foolishness from naïve reporters quoting Franco’s ridiculous assertion that the Basques had burned their own city. The little news that seemed trustworthy said that in addition to the city’s inhabitants a thousand or more Basques like Anton had come from the outlying villages to buy eggs, sardines, figs and other delicacies from vendors.  Nicky had hoped against hope that his brother had been one of the lucky ones to survive, but now that hope was extinguished like a campfire in a flood.

       “When the bombers went round and round, Anton and Henry were at the café. They helped many people rush into a merchant’s mansion and down the stairs to the cellar. The two managed to lead a hundred or more market shoppers to safety, including Monsignor,” continued the letter.

       “They could have stayed downstairs in that crowded basement where they were protected, but Monsignor begged Anton and Henry to save the oak if they could. They stepped back outside into the city burning like a bonfire. It must have broken Anton’s heart to see so many treasured buildings in flames with his painted murals on their scorched walls.

         “They ran to the great oak, which stood as it has for hundreds of years. One last plane buzzed low over them with machine guns blazing. Henry dove into a gulley, but Anton reached for a rock and threw it at the plane just before the bullets strafed him. Henry saw Anton’s last gesture. He died shaking his fist at the cowards in the sky.”

         Nicky’s voice broke.  “Anton, I know him,” he said. “He was trying to draw the enemy’s fire away from Henry and the great tree of Guernica onto himself, Martina.”

         “You are right, Nicky,” said Martina. “Poor Clarisse, twice now a widow.”

         Nicky returned to the letter.

“We buried him in a little cave on the high hill above Monsignor’s church. His will had asked that he be buried alongside an ancient fire pit where he was sure to have good company from the spirit world.”

Nicky could read no more. His wife took the letter from him and read aloud.

           “In the year before his death, Anton had worked on a casting he wanted to give to you and the Basque peoples of Nevada,” read Martina in a whisper.  “He finished it right before the bombing, but never had a chance to send it.”

          Nicky tore the rags and tape.  The statue Anton had created had been cast in bronze and protected with a coating of wax. He recognized Lazarus and Peppy nipping the heels of a balky lamb that could only be Bum Deal.  Behind the sheepdogs were two sturdy boys, one a giant and curly headed, and the other thin, tall, and wiry with a lariat ready to throw. The statue thrust him back in time nearly forty years.

        At the base of the statue was a bronze tag. Nicky read the last words of his brother on the tag through moist eyes. “Martina, Anton called it `Five Brothers.’”

Underneath the title was Anton’s signature.  

Martina saw Nicky rub one thumb over the signature as if wishing he once again could shake his brother’s hand.

      Martina rummaged through the paper in the box. “There is something else here,” she said. She pulled out a small cardboard container. She read the description handwritten by Clarisse on the box.

“Nicky, she sent these acorns from the great tree Anton died saving.”

(#)

           On a bright blue Nevada Sunday, Nicky arranged a simple ceremony at the family burial plot on the Bristlecone Ranch, with his own family, his elderly father-in-law Raoul, and Anton’s son attending. On a grassy, irrigated patch of land, one of Nicky’s grandchildren began the ceremony by planting the acorns from the oak of Guernica so beloved by Anton.

         Nicky held a letter in his hands. He read sacred words of prayer that Monsignor Bilboa had sent him for the occasion. He stood alongside the wooden grave slabs for Mrs. Zane’s husband and child and two flat memorial stones for Lazarus and Peppy.

Lazarus had lived a long, productive life as guardians of Nicky’s sheep. He had sired many sons and daughters for Mr. Thatcher to sell.

         At a nod from Nicky, Red Ruffing and three brawny ranch hands grunted as they lifted a four hundred-pound boulder from a ranch wagon and set it in place upon the Nevada earth.

     On it a local stonecutter had chiseled these simple words:

     Anton Ibarra—he was who he was – a son of the dawn.

         Tubal Busca—now walking with a cane but his mind sharp at ninety-nine years old—wet his tongue and brought his harmonica to his lips. He closed his eyes and played the jaunty Basque melody that Anton had requested him to play long ago in the sheep camp.

         The music floated with the wind reaching three blue sheepdogs guarding a flock of two thousand sheep bearing the brand of the Bristlecone Ranch.

The last notes awakened a coyote sleeping in the nearby brush. Its muzzle pointed to the sky as it sang a lament.