The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [218]
“What I saw is a very hideous thing to behold, more frightening than elves, more terrible than devils.” He paused, then said quietly, “What I saw was a nagual.”
He waited, certain they had never heard of this, for it was an old Mexican legend. Spainhower was smiling, but half-squinting curiosity was in his eyes. Dodson was watching, waiting for him to go on. Still Ofelio hesitated and finally Spainhower said, “And what’s a nagual supposed to be?”
“A nagual,” Ofelio explained carefully, “is a man with strange powers. A man who is able to transform himself into a certain animal.”
Spainhower said, too quickly, “What kind of an animal?”
“That,” Ofelio answered, “depends upon the man. The animal is usually of his choice.”
Spainhower’s brow was deep furrowed. “What’s so terrible about that?”
Ofelio’s face was serious. “One can see you have never beheld a nagual. Tell me, what is more hideous, what is more terrible, than a man—who is made in God’s image—becoming an animal?”
There was silence. Then Val Dodson said, “Aw—”
Spainhower didn’t know what to say; he felt disappointed, cheated.
And into this silence came the faint rumbling sound. Billy-Jack Trew said, “Here she comes.” They stood up, moving for the door, and soon the rumble was higher pitched—creaking, screeching, rattling, pounding—and the Butterfield stage was swinging into the yard. Spainhower and Dodson and Billy-Jack Trew went outside, Ofelio and his nagual forgotten.
No one had ever seen John Stam smile. Some, smiling themselves, said Marion must have at least once or twice, but most doubted even this. John Stam worked hard, twelve to sixteen hours a day, plus keeping a close eye on some business interests he had in Mesilla, and had been doing it since he’d first visually staked off his range six years before. No one asked where he came from and John Stam didn’t volunteer any answers.
Billy-Jack Trew said Stam looked to him like a red-dirt farmer with no business in cattle, but that was once Billy-Jack was wrong and he admitted it himself later. John Stam appeared one day with a crow-bait horse and twelve mavericks including a bull. Now, six years later, he had himself way over a thousand head and a jinete to break him all the horses he could ride.
Off the range, though, he let Ofelio Oso drive him wherever he went. Some said he felt sorry for Ofelio because the old Mexican had been a good hand in his day. Others said Marion put him up to it so she wouldn’t have Ofelio hanging around the place all the time. There was always some talk about Marion, especially now with the cut-down crew up at the summer range, John Stam gone to tend his business about once a week, and only Ofelio and Joe Slidell there. Joe Slidell wasn’t a bad-looking man.
The first five years John Stam allowed himself only two pleasures: he drank whiskey, though no one had ever seen him drinking it, only buying it; and every Sunday afternoon he’d ride to Mesilla for dinner at the hotel. He would always order the same thing, chicken, and always sit at the same table. He had been doing this for some time when Marion started waiting tables there. Two years later, John Stam asked her to marry him as she was setting down his dessert and Marion said yes then and there. Some claimed the only thing he’d said to her before that was bring me the ketchup.
Spainhower said it looked to him like Stam was from a line of hard- headed Dutchmen. Probably his dad had made him work like a mule and never told him about women, Spainhower said, so John Stam never knew what it was like not to work and the first woman he looked up long enough to notice, he married. About everybody agreed Spainhower had something.
They were almost to the ranch before John Stam spoke. He had nodded to the men in the station yard, but gotten right up on the wagon seat. Spainhower asked him if he cared for a drink, but he shook his head. When they were in view of