A small band of cowboys, chasing outlaws upon the southern Plains, happens upon a dubious sanctum. Despite their disparate life experiences, not a one of them is prepared for that which awaits them within.
***Content warning: This episode touches upon the realities of slavery, racism, and Indigenous genocide. Listener discretion is advised.***
Thank you for listening! If you have any feedback or inquiries regarding the show, please feel free to drop me a line at darkerpasturespodcast@gmail.com.
A small band of cowboys, chasing outlaws upon the southern Plains, happens upon a dubious sanctum. Despite their disparate life experiences, not a one of them is prepared for that which awaits them within.
***Content warning: This episode touches upon the realities of slavery, racism, and Indigenous genocide. Listener discretion is advised.***
Thank you for listening! If you have any feedback or inquiries regarding the show, please feel free to drop me a line at darkerpasturespodcast@gmail.com.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]
NARRATOR
Humanity deems itself the pinnacle of creation, and heir to the throne of every land upon which its collective feet tread – and perhaps those of other worlds. It deems other life forms inherently lesser, somehow never quite as truly alive as members of its own order. And it tells stories, both ancient and new, about how all of the universe is birthright, and a gift shaped solely for its own benefit – even fashions gods after its own image.
Too seldom does it gaze long at its own reflection, and wonder if any of these tales it tells itself contain even a small measure of merit, or wonder if any of the gods it claims could care one wit about its well-being or its doings.
But there are many mirrors eagerly ready to offer us that chance for sobering reflection – especially in lonely and strange places, in darker pastures.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]
NARRATOR
Episode Twenty-Three: El Sepulcro.
(Sparse Western music, sounds of blustery winter wind)
NARRATOR
The seven men arrive like sand blown on the wind, their skin, clothes, and mounts greyed by a patina of mingled alkaline dust and dried sweat. They ride in the bruised dusk, these windblown shadows, at one with their horses, beneath a sky halved in war between sharp fire-death golds and insidious ink-stain purples. Despite the clear skies and the bright sun, the dying day has been cold, and the wind that curls out of the north bites to the very bones of the riders. Beneath their ashen guises of sweat and soil, the men are of disparate cast in both feature and frame, and yet there is a certain kinship between them all in their easy grace on horseback, in their stoic acceptance of this rugged, rainless land and its many hardships and threats, both stark and subtle.
No word passes between them. None has passed for hours. They have ridden for two days, ridden west from Tascosa and out into the arid vastness of the Llano Estacado, these lean men with revolvers glinting at their sides, with rifles and scatterguns scabbarded upon their saddles. They have come despite the danger – come seeking it, even.
The one named Juan Luna rides at their fore, keen eyes squinted against the bitter wind and fixed upon the earth before him. Shrugging into the serape of red, black, and white pattern upon his shoulders – a thing of blended Saltillo and Puebloan style – he scarcely slows his pace, despite the cruel weather and the gathering dark, somehow picking out the fading trail of the men they hunt.
Near behind him rides the one they often call the Kiowa, or the Indian, and occasionally Douglas – though this is not his name, only a misinterpretation of a thing he sometimes calls himself, which itself is also not his name. His true name he has left behind, back with the heartache of war and death and a peace which is just as bitter, with the Quaker agents the government sent to tell his people they could not hunt, but must farm the lifeless Oklahoma soil, planting crops that will never grow for their sustenance, to tell them that they must leave their tipis and live in houses that cannot be moved like the white men. The Kiowa has left his name behind, and that heartache – or he has tried, but he carries it still in the shadowed recesses of his heart, along with an abiding loneliness.
From time to time these two men, Kiowa and Hispano, sign to one another quickly in the Hand Talk of the Plains Nations, which they alone among the party know. They two also know this country better than the others, having lived and travelled upon it more thoroughly, and from time to time they consult briefly about their way forward without uttering a single sound.
Behind them ride the Willers twins, Frank and Herb, not a day over seventeen. Usually boisterous and unruly, the cold and the grim demeanor of the older men, and perhaps also the gravity of their chosen task, has quieted their voices that still bear the clear mark of their Tennessee mountain origins.
Next come Thaddeus Drake and Elam Forrester, both men born into slavery on Texas ranches, before the end of the war saw them freed. Elam was only a boy when he was emancipated, though already well-versed in the ways of horse and saddle, and he is uncommonly both ahorse and on foot. Thaddeus was already a man when the Union’s victory ended his bondage, and he is very old in the reckoning of those who ride the cattle trails, well into his thirties, balding, and sporting a stately beard streaked with silver around the mouth. His voice, deep and lordly as thunder over the high plains, is often the first raised in song around a night’s campfire, but today he is as silent and stern as the others.
Both he and Elam were friends with one of the men left dead on the cantina floor in the wake of an argument about cards, and they yearn for a justice which they know the law, already barely extant in this western country, does not seek on behalf of men like their dead friend, like them – men born with skin a few shades too dark, or with the wrong last name.
Bringing up the rare, a little distance away from his fellows, rides Ward Hewitt. Grim silence is his custom, and has been ever since his time in Camp Sumter, which also left his face gaunt and his blue eyes hard and hollow and staring. He is only a little younger than Thaddeus, and unlikely to drive cattle north ever again after this winter, growing too old for that work. In truth, even their current errand sits heavily with him, but he alone among the party was deputized by the beleaguered sheriff in Tascosa, and to Ward duty is a sacred thing, to be discharged at all pains.
As the disc of the sun settles on the western horizon, Ward drifts back from his distant reverie and suggests they find a place to pass the night, his voice still carrying a hint of his ever-receding youth in Maine. Elam protests, saying that the fleeing gunmen already have too much of a lead as it is, but Thaddeus attempts to calm him, reasoning that tracking in the dark is a fool’s errand, and that the killers are also likely to bed down and wait out the cold too. Grudgingly, Elam nods, his brow furrowed with suppressed frustration.
Juan gives a low call of surprise, and, following his gaze, the other men see the pale walls of a mission rearing from the dusty plains, in the hollow beneath a rocky escarpment about a half mile distant from them. As if by wordless assent, all the riders draw up their horses to gaze at the structure in mingled wonder and disconcertment. Some are new to these far western reaches, some have travelled here before, but all of them know that the mission should not be there, that the Spanish did not indulge in the extravagance of such construction this far removed from the centers of their imperial power and wealth, in wild desolation so sparsely peopled.
And yet, there it stands, like a bleached buffalo skull upon the wind-scoured Llano.
They sit their horses for a long moment – too long, as the last light is falling away quickly now. Finally, the Kiowa says that the mission is likely the best shelter for miles around, and that is some chance they may even find sign of their quarry there.
Ward agrees in a tone that is just shy of command. Most of the men accept this – Ward has worked as a trail boss for some years now, and many of them have ridden with him. Only the Willers twins, still green and full of youthful pride, give any sign of balking, but they urge their horses forward along with the others.
As they approach, it becomes plain that there is no visible light emanating from within, that the mission must stand abandoned. Still, they move cautiously, for the pale adobe church is more than large enough to hide three desperate men, perhaps even a single small fire in its guarded bowels.
With a hint of alarm creeping into his soft voice, Juan observes that there is no crucifix ornamenting the peak of the roof, or the little belltower.
Probably just fell off, one of the Willers twins says.
After a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of a horse snuffling and the steady patter of hooves on the scant grass and hard-bitten dust, Juan adds that there is no wall, there are no other buildings at all.
What the hell does that matter? the other Willers twin asks.
Es extraño, Juan says to himself, then answers the boy in English, saying that this far from a city or town, there should be more than just the church, there should be buildings for people to sleep and work and eat in, for storage.
You’re jumpy as a hare, the Willers boy laughs mockingly.
Juan makes no reply. A nebulous memory is coalescing in his mind, one from his childhood in the village. Vaguely he remembers whispered tales of a strange and terrible place, somewhere in the wide and lonely plains, a place known only as El Sepulcro. His tio Rodrigo once said, after one cup too many of wine, that from without, El Sepulcro seemed a holy place, inviting and beautiful, but that should one be unfortunate enough to wander inside, that soul would find it was la corte del Diablo – the Devil’s court. As a boy, Juan believed it to be only one of so many myths and legends of the plains, the common fare of jesters, tale-tellers, and drunkards, and he had forgotten it altogether as a man, until this moment.
Seeing those pale walls now, incongruous and uncanny, brings a chill deeper than any wintry wind, one that settles in the very core of his being.
These musings are interrupted by a small sound from the Kiowa, who gestures something Juan cannot make out in the growing gloom, then dismounts in a single, smooth motion from his spotted dun mustang and stoops to pick up something from the earth. Rising, he holds aloft a spent rifle cartridge for the others to see as clearly as they may in the failing light. Its unweathered surface glints in the evening sunlight, plainly not having lain in the elements for long.
Don’t mean nothing, Frank Willers says.
Not by itself, Thaddeus replies, more circumspect.
The other men are silent a moment. Ward says at last that that there’s no use in guessing what it might or might not mean, then spurs his grullo gelding onward toward the mission. The rest of them exchange a look, and follow after him.
But they have not ridden far when Elam points out a handful of unfired paper cartridges for a revolver lying in the dirt.
Judas in Hell, Herb Willers swears.
They ride forward more quickly now, drawing up only twenty paces before the white adobe church, sliding out of their saddles, and readying their weapons. Speaking in whispers to one another, Thaddeus is assigned the dull duty of minding the horses, while the Kiowa and Elam are chosen to go before the others and reconnoiter, as the others fan out and encircle the building to cut off any possible escape. Keeping low to the earth, the hunters creep through the deepening dark toward the waiting mission, which squats like an eerie and expectant visitant from unknown gulfs of night.
The wind moans keenly over the rocky escarpment, carrying with it now sparse flurries of powdery snow. The five men lying in wait shiver, weary and nervous and impatient, watching Elam and Douglas cautiously make their way toward the front entrance.
The two scouts reach the door, peer into the gloom. Elam makes a motion for the others to wait, and then the two of them slip inside.
Standing beside the horses with a 10-gauge Parker double-barrel resting on his shoulder, Thaddeus offers up a quiet prayer. He prays that he can only return to Tascosa and to Josefa, the Tejana widow with whom he has shared a roof these last three years, ever since he quit the cattle trails for good, to his dull but usually comfortable work in the stables near the cantina.
Juan thinks only of the home that is no longer his, the small parcel of his family’s land which he still dreams of one day winning back from the white squatters who have driven them away and whom no legal authority of the New Mexico territory seems inclined to displace. Unconsciously, he runs a finger along the lengthy barrel of his five-shot Texas Paterson, checks to make sure his long knife is tucked into its usual and easily accessible place on his belt.
Frank Willers sweats despite the cold, and the worn old Walker revolver, older than he is, feels slick in his hands. He licks his lips and watches the mission anxiously. A little distance to his left, his twin Herb starts when he hears a swift fluttering over his head, and turns to see a large pallid bat’s black silhouette against the last orange tendril of day. Muttering to himself, Herb shifts the Henry rifle in his hands and turns back toward the mission.
Ward alone does not yet have either of his weapons in hand, neither the Starr revolver nor the Remington 1858. He simply sits and watches, still as the thirsty hills, his eyes seeming as cold and void as the shrill north wind.
They wait. There is no sound from within the mission. The wind rises, falls, rises again. The powder snow begins to lightly pepper the dead yellow grass and dusty earth.
Once more, Herb thinks he hears the bat flying over his head. He looks up in anxious annoyance only to realize that this is not what he is hearing. His mouth opens wide in a cry that never comes, and then he is gone, gone, away in the dark and far beyond the helping reach of any of his fellows – had they even marked his passing.
Still, the silence from within.
One the horses screams with fright, and then the others join it, their sharp wild voices cutting the night as they buck and wheel and scatter.
Goddamn, is all Thaddeus has time to say, before he is moving to stop them all bolting away into the night and leaving them steedless in the freezing wilderness. He has no more mind to spare for what is happening in the old mission.
What in all creation is that ruckus about? Frank asks his absent brother. When no reply comes, he turns toward Herb’s hiding place, and finds only the Henry lying neglected in the dust.
Hell’s bells, where you got to, Herb? Frank hisses, then slowly bellies his way over to the place where the rifle was dropped. The night has grown so dark, with only the thinnest sliver of moon to light it now, that he can just make out a patch of darkness beside the repeater, which momentarily confuses him. When he touches it, feels the faintest hint of tacky warmth, he lets out a short, sharp cry which is soon cut off.
(Harsh, distorted Western music fades in)
NARRATOR
Somewhere from the other side of the mission, there is the sharp report of a pistol shot, then another, and another.
Juan races toward the yawning door of the place which he can only think of as El Sepulcro, firing a fourth shot at the great shadow bearing down on him from the darkling heavens. In the instant of the shot’s flash, he receives a hallucinatory image of the thing’s face, hideously reminiscent of fox, snake, and toad – and yet also somehow human, or at least simian.
There is a warbling shriek like nothing he has ever heard before as the bullet drives home, and the thing arcs back upward, ponderously and unsteadily, on massive, membranous wings.
Ward is firing too now, his Starr in hand. One of the things crashes heavily to the earth with the sound of crunching bones and wet meat. The old Union soldier spares it only the briefest of glances before firing at the next winged shadow, and running toward the aperture into which the Hispano has just disappeared.
(Harsh, distorted Western music fades in)
NARRATOR
Within, there is pure darkness and the smell of death. Not familiar death, not the kind they have known on the trail or on the battlefield. It reeks of iron and salt and ammonia, and of a kind of sharp, wet rot.
The two men stand breathing hard in the darkness for a moment, ears pricked for any sign of the creatures, or of their fellows. Then Ward fumbles in his pockets, produces a match, summons a momentary brilliance. By its light, they can see that they are alone a sort of antechamber, at the other end of which stands another large set of double doors, partially ajar. Beyond that, the little light does not penetrate, and it soon gives way once more to absolute gloom.
Can’t go back out there, Ward says. Too exposed, and God knows how many of those damn things are waiting.
Madre de Dios, Juan breathes in his Puebloan-tinged Spanish. Que son?
Ward replies that he doesn’t know, but he counted at least four, and that they were unlike anything he’s ever seen before. Like wolf-apes with bat wings, he adds slowly.
Demonios del infierno, Juan murmurs, and Ward says that they just might be.
They hesitate a moment, and then Juan says that they should find out what happened to Douglas and to Elam. Ward agrees, and, striking another match to light their way, they move toward the inner set of doors and peer beyond it.
Before them stretches a long, narrow corridor, with no turns or branches.
No es posible, Juan says. No es una misión.
No, Ward agrees.
The second match dies, and Ward is fumbling for another when both men realizes that a faint, pale blue light is beginning to emanate from the corridor.
Juan utters a prayer in his native tongue. Ward only stands and stares down the length of the passage.
Finally, he turns to the Hispano and asks if they shall walk into hell together.
Juan hesitates a moment, then says that they should reload their revolvers first. With a sharp bark that Juan only belatedly recognizes as mirthless laughter, Ward agrees that it’s a good idea, and they do so before moving down the corridor, as straight and ineluctable as the road to death.
(Sound effect or music)
[Long pause]
NARRATOR
Thaddeus only to collect four of the horses, and leads them back toward the black hulking shape of the mission, limned by the sharp crescent moonlit and the silvery backwash of gathering cloud. Despite the cold, he is grateful for the thin layer of snow, for it makes it easier to find his way in the dark.
Only now that he has saved at least some of their mounts does he allow himself to consider the cause behind the gunplay he heard from the direction of the building. He wonders if any of the murderers they have come to bring to justice have survived, and what they will do with them if they have. More unhappily, he considers the possibility that some of his companions have not survived, and will have to be brought back to Tascosa draped over a horse like a saddlebag, or given a perfunctory and anonymous grave in this wide and pitiless expanse.
Then he sees something rise above the dark outline of the church, something impossible, something winged but as large or larger than a man. For a moment, he thinks it might be an angel, though he has never really believed that such things visit the world of living men, not at least since biblical times. But when the thing offers a high, keening cry and begins to dive toward him, he lets go of the horses’ gathered leads and brings up his shotgun, empties both barrels as the thing falls into him, full force. There is a sharp pain in his abdomen, and then another in his shoulder – he realizes the thing is both clawing at him and biting him.
The retired cowpuncher pulls a Bowie knife from his belt and gouges at where he thinks the face must be. The creature’s writhing intensifies, then subsides, and finally it is still.
Thaddeus lies, trying to gather his breath, trying to hold back the rising waves of pain that threaten to overwhelm him. Straining and squeezing, he manages to pull himself out from under the bulk of the flying predator – for all its size, it proves astonishingly light.
Yet when he stands, he realizes how gravely the beast has injured him, and how copiously he bleeds. He looks back toward the horses, which have scattered once again after this fresh terror, and then he slowly begins to make his way toward the building. Every step increases his agony, and the bleeding seems to show no sign of slowing.
But he thinks of Elam, and how he cannot bear to see yet another young man dead, cut down by the mindless cruelty of this world. He staggers onward.
Halfway toward the structure, he almost stumbles over the body of one of the twins. Turning it over with a pained oath, Thaddeus tries to make out which one it is, but between the darkness and the savaging of the features, he cannot tell. There seem to be two terrible wounds, like massive leech bites, one on each side of the neck, but there is surprisingly little blood upon the clothes or the snow.
Unable to understand what he is seeing, and knowing that understanding will avail little without action, Thaddeus rises and begins moving toward the mission once more.
When he enters the church, he is obliged to feel his way forward, so dark is the space beyond the door. As he moves forward, he wonders how wide and wet a red trail he is leaving behind him, before telling himself that such thoughts will do no good. So he thinks instead of Elam, and Juan, and of the young Kiowa man who he is fairly certain has never offered his true name. And he thinks of Josefa, and their little adobe house, and of the smell of the stables.
He is well past a second set of doors before he realizes it is no longer totally dark, and he wonders if it has taken him this long to notice because his sight is failing, or if there is no light and his dying mind is only conjuring up one final dream for him.
It’s then that he hears the muffled voices of Juan and Douglas up ahead, and a third voice he does not recognize. He cannot make out the words, but there is some subtle quality in that unfamiliar voice which sets his teeth on edge, makes his thoughts skitter like vermin in an unlit cellar.
After a few more paces, he staggers, slides partway down the wall to an awkward, leaning squat. Gathering his breath and his ebbing strength, he pushes himself back up, bracing himself against the wall and sliding along it the rest of the way.
The corridor terminates in an open doorway of a style almost arabesque. Were he not so weakened and addled by injury, he might contemplate that the wall beside him does not feel like stone or adobe, that the style of the interior architecture is like nothing he has ever seen before, that the faint bluish illumination around him has no apparent source.
But instead, he simply pushes forward, toward his companions.
The chamber beyond the doorway is round and domed. The light here is more intense than in the corridor, and by it, Thaddeus can make out the shapes of Ward, Elam, Douglas, and Juan standing in the room with him.
But in the center of the room, facing them, stands something like a nightmare.
It is tall and pale, shaped almost like a human, but so deathly thin and delicate, and somehow far too long. The eyes that burn in the distorted features are like a cat’s, except that the iris is a pale pink – or at least Thaddeus thinks it is, color is strange in the blue-tinted light. And spread behind it like a huge and rigid cloak are massive, pale, translucent wings.
Ah, the thing says, doing something with its mouth that might be an attempt at a smile, we have another guest.
A dream, Thaddeus thinks. This is a dying dream after all.
The flesh of the thing seems to ripple slightly, like lake water touched by the faintest breeze, and somehow the face seems a little less strange now.
Thaddeus begins to step forward, but the Kiowa turns and gestures for him to stop. Then his eyes go wide upon seeing the older man’s wounds.
What is this? Elam asks.
This? The thing spreads its arms expansively. The hands seem to have the wrong number of fingers. This is my home, my vessel. You have come without invitation, but you are welcome.
You are the Devil, Juan says.
The thing laughs, or perhaps it does not, but makes a sound not unlike laughter.
Stay away from it, Douglas says to Thaddeus.
Elam takes a step toward the thing in the center of the room.
Yes, it says. I am Master here. Come to me and I will make you welcome.
With a ragged, wordless cry of denial, Thaddeus pushes his way forward and grips Elam’s shoulder, pulling him back and crying for the other men to take him. Juan and Douglas obey, but Ward simply walks forward, walks toward the thing that calls itself Master.
Its flesh ripples again, and where there was once sexless smoothness, there is now the hint of femininity. The eyes are still large, but the face seems somehow more proportional.
I will make you welcome, the Master repeats.
The force of Thaddeus’s efforts seems to have torn something inside him, and the pain has changed, somehow at once duller and more profound. He takes a step toward the Master as well.
Welcome, you say, Thaddeus chuckles. Is that what your friends outside did?
Ah, yes, the Master replies. My servitors can be quite fearsome in their duties, and in their appetites.
Servitors? Elam asks. Then they are more of your kind?
The Master cocks its head and offers the almost-smile again, but this time it does something strange to Thaddeus, makes him think incongruously of Josefa and the pleasant warmth of her body.
Would you call a dog one of your kind? The Master asks lightly. They are very distant cousins, you might say, more distant even than dog and man. But they have their uses. They are excellent guardians, and all that they require is the occasional feeding, which I am happy to give them.
What are you? Ward asks. His voice is softer and more fragile than any of the other men have ever heard before.
I have no name in this world, the Master says.
And in others? Ward asks, his voice becoming almost dreamy. The Master’s flesh shifts and shimmers, and the femininity is no longer mere hint, the face no longer eldritch and repellent, but comely.
It has been so long, that I do not remember it, the Master replies, and the gentle sorrow in the statement is so genuine that Thaddeus feels a momentary pang of pity for it. Ward seems to be moved by the same sentiment, for he steps forward and reaches out toward the creature.
You look so like her, he says, and tears flow down his cheeks.
Yes, the Master says, and its wings unfurl and spread so very wide, and Thaddeus opens his mouth to shout when he sees that their interior is crimson and rowed with dozens and dozens of barbs like the thorns of a rose.
The Master steps toward Ward, embraces him, and the wings enfold themselves over the gaunt man’s form before Thaddeus can utter the cry he is gathering. Worse than any scream, there is only silence under those wings, which pulse slightly and rhythmically, the paler outside face darkening somewhat more toward red.
When the wings are opened once more, the grey and shriveled thing that falls to the floor, punctured in a hundred places, looks not at all like Ward.
Elam screams and empties his LeMat revolver at the Master. Almost half of the shots go wide of the mark, but those that strike true rip small, bloodless wounds in the Master’s flesh. What oozes from them is clear and smells sharp and ammonic. The Master only offers that almost smile, his flesh once more rippling and becoming by each second less human. Thaddeus shouts to Juan and Douglas to get the younger man out of there, to flee from this mouth of hell.
The Kiowa man is silent a moment, then seizes Elam and begins urging him toward the door. Juan, absorbed in horror, stands staring a moment longer, then turns and joins Douglas.
Do not be afraid, the Master smiles. I will make you welcome. With me, in me, you will live forever. You will see suns and worlds beyond counting, and you will never know hurt or decay again.
His vision blurring, Thaddeus slowly sinks to the floor, looking up at the Master.
What are you? Thaddeus says again.
I am older than your sun, it says. I am the living repository of a thousand worlds.
Thaddeus closes his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. When he does, the Master stands nearer, its eyes pink again, the pupil trilobate. It is offering a hand with too many fine, delicate fingers.
I am dying, Thaddeus says.
The Master nods.
Join me, he murmurs, in that voice that is too resonant to be human. Join me, and I will give you everything, everything that I am, everything that I may yet become.
Heavy silence stands between them.
Then, slowly, wanly, Thaddeus says that this world never gave him much, and always took away what it did, and he takes the alien hand, accepts the enfolding, barbed membranes like the tender embrace of a lover.
(Sound effect or music)
[Short pause]
NARRATOR
The three young men wait in the breathless dark of the antechamber until the first grey fingertips of dawn creep into the eastern sky. Only then do they make their way out onto the frosted llano, avoiding the cold and rigid bodies of the twins and of the things that look something like a massive bat, something like a snake-eyed ape, but are ultimately unplaceable and nameless under this blue-rimmed sky.
And only in the morning light do they see the remains of a tiny campfire, and of more spent cartridges, and of dried bloodstains in the dust in the lee of the mission’s walls, and they take it as a sign that there is no need to hunt the killers from the cantina any longer.
After some searching, they manage to find three of the horses wandering nearby, and mount up, leaving the thing that they took for a Spanish mission behind them. They have not gone far when the dwindling night behind them is split by a wail and a roar like nothing they have ever seen, and they turn to see the adobe structure rupture and fragment, and a pale orb rip itself from the bowels of the building and rise up into the sky, trailing blue flame, then receding higher and higher until it is nothing but a fading, pale blue star.
When it is gone, they turn their horses and ride back. They do not speak, for they are all alike awed and stunned by what they have seen, what they have guessed, and what they still cannot understand and likely never will.
As the sun rises into the sky, slowly melting away the frost and warming their stiff, sleepless bodies, they finally halt and gaze at one another.
Where you headed? Elam asks the other two.
Juan shifts in his saddle, and says he hasn’t made up his mind yet, not for sure, but maybe west, maybe to a little village he once knew.
Then he turns the question back on Elam.
Back to Tascosa, Elam replies. There’s a lady there’ll be missing old Thad. And there are more cattle to take north, more money to be made, come spring.
Juan Luna nods, and they look toward their silent companion.
Home, he says. I have been too long away.
And at last, he tells them his true name, before in friendship the three men part ways under the bright sun of the southern plains.
(Peaceful guitar music)
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]
NARRATOR
Story, narration, and arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]