Fistful of Reefer: A Pulpy Action Series from Schism 8

Watering Hole

Finally, all the goats either milled around in a loose, rasping herd clear of the field, or had collapsed from eating too much of the cáñamo’s green leaves. Nena and Chancho herded the able goats northward toward the next valley where they could counter the colic with basic roughage. Muddy tended to those who were too sick.

He knelt beside the first goat and massaged its stomach before jabbing a large 16-gauge needle into its bloated rumen. The goat bleated from the pinch. A noxious stream of gas purged through the puncture until the goat’s breathing returned to normal. The whites of its eyes flickered and rolled round right in its head as it belched in approval.

One by one, Muddy treated every goat he could get to in time. Only two suffered fatal colic. Thoroughly slimed in green, frothy puke he mounted his horse, Tripalo, and ushered the recovering goats northward until they got the hint.

At the southern edge of the field, Muddy stared at the two dead goats. When he’d first met Chancho, Muddy had insisted they raise goats rather than sheep. Goats did better in the arid hills. Besides, sheep were stupid animals. Goats were affectionate. Muddy couldn’t help himself. He felt a connection with them.

Angora had been bred for a specific use. Men kept and groomed the goats only to take from them what they wanted, as they did with his people—the unique product of a multi-facetted oppression. White people had found dark-skinned Seminoles useful as scouts and warriors. But each time they served their masters, the maroons were shorn—reduced to domestic animals. Now they were a shaved people—bald and useless. Monday “Muddy” Sampson feared their true skins would not return.

After being forced from his community upon marrying a Kickapoo woman, he felt the burden deeply. While not a hostile separation, the distance was real. Now he herded goats. He enjoyed the work, but it failed to fill his heart with passion like the stories passed on to him from his grandmother. He gritted his teeth. For all he knew, in a few short days he wouldn’t even be a goat herder. He would be a nothing, a fugitive without land or a people.

Muddy grunted. Speculation was Chancho’s job, not his. Work helped Muddy push the damning anger beneath the surface, and so he worked with all his strength.

At least a dozen goats had escaped toward the springs, following their natural inclination after colic, to do the worst possible thing and drink. The water sped up the off-gassing from the tender leaves and buds of m*******a, causing death. The goats needed roughage and time for their natural bacteria to recover from the shock.

Rather than wait for the others to return, Muddy stopped by the wagon to get his rifle and bandoliers. He and Tripalo would ride to the springs alone. The black gelding tossed its head and pranced as Muddy slid his father’s Spencer Repeating Rifle into its holster. Using the Blakeslee cartridge box in his saddle bags, he could fire twenty rounds a minute for three and a half minutes without stopping for more than a few seconds to reload. Having done that only once, he hoped never to again.

“Just in case.” Muddy stroked Tripalo’s neck, nudging him into a trot.

Almost eighteen hands high and as dark-skinned as Muddy, the gelding had been his horse for six years. Shot twice with lead and pierced once by an arrow, Tripalo had seen his share of violence. Muddy had been the only man to serve his entire time in the 14th Scout Troop of the U.S. Cavalry on the back of the same horse—a horse that, lacking legs, would tear at his enemies’ throats with his teeth.

The pair covered the ground between camp and the springs slowly, keeping a wary eye open for any trailing dust or signs of life. Muddy reckoned Chancho’s timetable for a potential hunting party to be accurate, but wild assumption served no purpose beyond the campfire.

He reined Tripalo onto a goat path meandering down a gentle slope and chose a northeasterly path underneath a ribbon of cottonwood trees to mask both sight and sound. Considerably taller than the average Anglo, Muddy dwarfed every Mexican he’d ever met and stood out on hilltops like night at noon. His size, an asset when his youthful blood had boiled, now served as a barrier.

Unlike language and culture, the fear inflicted by his size didn’t lessen with learning. The overwhelming black menace of his presence struck hard at people’s animal instincts, initiating fight or flight. Outside of his own people, he’d met only two who did not flinch when they first saw him—Nena and Chancho. It was no small thing.

He left the shade and climbed up the backside of a steep bluff overlooking the northernmost spring of the Upper San Felipe Springs. For a thousand feet beneath him the cool clear water filtered along the lateral strata of rock before emerging at multiple points along the bottom of the valley as it sloped southward toward the border.

As he drew near the crest, he steeled himself for conflict. He could find a dozen colicky goats or a hornet’s nest of unhappy ranchers rattled by the thought of demons, zombie goats, and witch doctors. Something essential and basic to his existence craved the violence, but he also knew that a normal life—love in the arms of his wife, possibly children—mixed with violence like blood and oil.

He hovered over the possible scenarios and landed on the side of the goats. He was a goat herder. The goats were his charge, and he would protect them. It was a simple, clean decision, the way he liked it. Dismounting, he lay on his stomach and inched forward for a look over the edge. What he saw in the valley of the springs, while not surprising, shocked him nonetheless.