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Title: The Searchers
Author: Le May, Alan (1899-1964)
Date of first publication: 1954
Edition used as base for this ebook:New York: Harper & Row, undated
Date first posted: 4 December 2019
Date last updated: 4 December 2019
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1634
This ebook was produced byAl Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Teamat http://www.pgdpcanada.net
Publisher's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
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by Alan Le May
This book was published serially under the title THE AVENGING TEXANS
TO MY GRANDFATHER, OLIVER LE MAY, WHO DIED ON THE PRAIRIE; AND TO MY GRANDMOTHER, KAREN JENSEN LE MAY, TO WHOM HE LEFT THREE SONS UNDER SEVEN.
"These people had a kind of courage that may be the finest gift of man: the courage of those who simply keep on, and on, doing the next thing, far beyond all reasonable endurance, seldom thinking of themselves as martyred, and never thinking of themselves as brave."
THE SEARCHERS
Chapter 1
Supper was over by sundown, and Henry Edwards walked out from the housefor a last look around. He carried his light shotgun, in hopes the restof the family would think he meant to pick up a sage hen or two--ahighly unlikely prospect anywhere near the house. He had left his gunbelt on its peg beside the door, but he had sneaked the heavy six-gunitself into his waistband inside his shirt. Martha was washing dishes inthe wooden sink close by, and both their daughters--Lucy, a grown-upseventeen, and Debbie, just coming ten--were drying and putting away. Hedidn't want to get them all stirred up; not until he could figure outfor himself what had brought on his sharpened dread of the coming night.
"Take your pistol, Henry," Martha said clearly. Her hands were busy, buther eyes were on the holster where it hung empty in plain sight, and shewas laughing at him. That was the wonderful thing about Martha. Atthirty-eight she looked older than she was in some ways, especially herhands. But in other ways she was a lot younger. Her sense of humor didthat. She could laugh hard at things other people thought only a littlebit funny, or not funny at all; so that often Henry could see the prettysparkle of the girl he had married twenty years back.
He grunted and went out. Their two sons were on the back gallery as hecame out of the kitchen. Hunter Edwards, named after Martha's family,was nineteen, and as tall as his old man. He sat on the floor, his headlolled back against the adobe, and his mind so far away that his mouthhung open. Only his eyes moved as he turned them to the shotgun. He saiddutifully, "Help you, Pa?"
"Nope."
Ben, fourteen, was whittling out a butter paddle. He jumped up, brushingshavings off his blue jeans. His father made a Plains-Indian sign--afist pulled downward from in front of his shoulder, meaning "sit-stay."Ben went back to his whittling.
"Don't you forget to sweep them shavings up," Henry said.
"I won't, Pa."
They watched their father walk off, his long, slow-looking steps quietin his flat-heeled boots, until he circled the corrals and was out ofsight.
"What's he up to?" Ben asked. "There ain't any game out there. Not shortof the half mile."
Hunter hesitated. He knew the answer but, like his father, he didn'twant to say anything yet. "I don't know," he said at last, letting hisvoice sound puzzled. Within the kitchen he heard a match strike. With somuch clear light left outside, it was hard to believe how shadowy thekitchen was getting, within its thick walls. But he knew his mother waslighting a lamp. He called softly, "Ma... Not right now."
His mother came to the door and looked at him oddly, the blown-out matchsmoking in her hand. He met her eyes for a moment, but looked away againwithout explaining. Martha Edwards went back into the kitchen, movingthoughtfully; and no light came on. Hunter saw that his father was insight again, very far away for the short time he had been gone. He waswalking toward the top of a gentle hill northwest of the ranchbuildings. Hunter watched him steadily as long as he was in sight. Henrynever did go clear to the top. Instead he climbed just high enough tosee over, then circled the contour to look all ways, so that he showedhimself against the sky no more than he had to. He was at it a longtime.
Ben was staring at Hunter. "Hey, I want to know what----"
"Shut up, will you?"
Ben looked astonished, and obeyed.
From just behind the crest of the little hill, Henry Edwards could seeabout a dozen miles, most ways. The evening light was uncommonly clear,better to see by than the full glare of the sun. But the faint roll ofthe prairie was deceptive. A whole squadron of cavalry could probablyhide itself at a thousand yards, in a place that looked as flat as aparade ground. So he was looking for little things--a layer of floatingdust in the branches of the mesquite, a wild cow or an antelopedisturbed. He didn't see anything that meant much. Not for a long time.
He looked back at his house. He had other things, the stuff he workedwith--barn, corrals, stacks of wild hay, a shacky bunkhouse for sleepingextra hands. But it was the house he was proud of. Its adobe walls werethree and four feet thick, so strong that the first room they had builthad for a long time been called the Edwards Fort. They had added on toit since, and made it even more secure. The shake roof looked burnable,but it wasn't, for the shakes were laid upon two feet of sod. Theoutside doors were massive, and the windows had heavy battle shuttersswung inside.
And the house had luxuries. Wooden floors. Galleries--some called themporches, now--both front and back. Eight windows with glass. He had madehis family fairly comfortable here, at long last, working patiently withhis hands through the years when there was no money, and no market forcows, and nothing to do about it but work and wait.
He could hardly believe there had been eighteen years of that kind ofhanging on. But they had come out here that long ago--the same yearHunter had been born--drawn by these miles and miles of good grass, freeto anyone who dared expose himself to the Kiowas and Comanches. Ithadn't looked so dangerous when they first came, for the Texas Rangershad just punished the Wild Tribes back out of the way. But right afterthat the Rangers were virtually disbanded, on the thrifty theory thatthe Federal Government was about to take over the defense. The Federaltroops did not come. Henry and Martha held on and prayed. One year more,they told each other again and again... just another month... onlyuntil spring.... So the risky years slid by, while no military helpappeared. Their nearest neighbors, the Pauleys, were murdered off by aComanche raid, without survivors except a little boy less than two yearsold; and they heard of many, many more.
Six years of that. Then, in 1857, Texas gave up waiting, and the Rangersbloomed again. A tough line of forts sprang up--McKavitt, Phantom Hill,Bell's Stockade. The little strongholds were far strung out, all the wayfrom the Salt Fork to the Rio Grande, but they gave reassurancenonetheless. The dark years of danger were over; they had lasted out,won through to years of peace and plenty in which to grow old--or sothey thought for a little while. Then the War Between the States drainedthe fighting men away, and the Kiowas and Comanches rose up singing oncemore, to take their harvest.
Whole counties were scoured out and set back to wilderness in those waryears. But the Edwardses stayed, and the Mathisons, and a few morefar-spread, dug-in families, holding the back door of Texas, drivinggreat herds of longhorns to Matagordas for the supply of the Confederatetroops. And they waited again, holding on just one year more, thenanother, and one more yet.
Henry would have given up. He saw no hope that he would ever get afoothold out here again, once he drew out, but he would gladly havesacrificed their hopes of a cattle empire to take Martha and theirchildren to a safer place. It was Martha who would not quit, and she hada will that could jump and blaze like a grass fire. How do you take awoman back to the poverty of the cotton rows against her will? Theystayed.
The war's end brought the turn of fortune in which they had placed theirfaith. Hiring cowboys on promise, borrowing to provision them, Henry gota few hundred head into the very first drive to end-of-track at Abilene.Now, with the war four years past, two more drives had paid off. Andthis year he and Aaron Mathison, pooling together, had sent north morethan three thousand head. But where were the troops that peace shouldhave released to their defense? Bolder, wilder, stronger every year, theComanches and their Kiowa allies punished the range. Counties that hadsurvived the war were barren now; the Comanches had struck the outskirtsof San Antonio itself.
Once they could have quit and found safety in a milder land. Theycouldn't quit now, with fortune beyond belief coming into their hands.They were as good as rich--and living in the deadliest danger that hadoverhung them yet. Looking back over the years, Henry did not know howthey had survived so long; their strong house and everlastingwatchfulness could not explain it. It must have taken miracles of luck,Henry knew, and some mysterious quirks of Indian medicine as well, topreserve them here. If he could have seen, in any moment of the yearsthey had lived here, the endless hazards that lay ahead, he would havequit that same minute and got Martha out of there if he had had to tieher.
But you get used to unresting vigilance, and a perpetual danger becomespart of the everyday things around you. After a long time you probablywouldn't know how to digest right, any more, if it altogether went away.All that was behind could not explain, exactly, the way Henry felttonight. He didn't believe in hunches, either, or any kind of spiritwarnings. He was sure he had heard, or seen, or maybe even smelled somesign so small he couldn't remember it. Sometimes a man's senses pickedup dim warnings he didn't even recognize. Like sometimes he had known anIndian was around, without knowing what told him, until a little laterthe breeze would bring the smell of the Indian a little stronger--a kindof old-buffalo-robe smell--which of course had been the warning beforehe knew he smelled anything. Or sometimes he knew horses were comingbefore he could hear their hoofs; he supposed this came by a tremor ofthe ground so weak you didn't know you felt it, but only knew what itmeant.
He became aware that he was biting his mustache. It was a thin blondmustache, trailing downward at the corners of his mouth, so that it gavehis face a dour look it didn't have underneath. But it wasn't a chewedmustache, because he didn't chew it. Patiently he studied the long sweepof the prairie, looking steadily at each quadrant for many minutes. Hewas sorry now that he had let Amos go last night to help the Mathisonschase cow thieves; Amos was Henry's brother and a rock of strength. Itshould have been enough that he let Martin Pauley go along. Mart was thelittle boy they had found in the brush, after the Pauley massacre, andraised as their own. He was eighteen now, and given up to be the bestshot in the family. The Mathisons hadn't been satisfied anyway. Thoughthe should send Hunter, too, or else come himself. You can't ever pleaseeverybody.
A quarter mile off a bedded-down meadow lark sprang into the air,circled uncertainly, then drifted away. Henry became motionless, exceptfor his eyes, which moved continually, casting the plain. Five hundredyards to the right of the spot where the meadow lark had jumped, a coveyof quail went up.
Henry turned and ran for the house.
Chapter 2
Martin Pauley had found this day a strange one almost from the start.Twelve riders had gathered to trail some cow thieves who had bit intothe Mathisons'; and the queer thing about it was that five out of thetwelve soon disagreed with all the others as to what they werefollowing.
Aaron Mathison, who owned the run-off cattle, was a bearded, calm-eyedman of Quaker extraction. He had not been able to hold onto the part ofhis father's faith which forswore the bearing of arms, but he stillprayed, and read the Bible every day. Everything about the Mathisonplace was either scrubbed, or raked, or whitewashed, but the house wascramped and sparely furnished compared to the Edwards'. All the moneyAaron could scrape went into the quality of his livestock. Lately he hadgot his Lazy Lightning brand on ten head of blood bulls brought on fromKansas City. These had been held, by the chase-'em-back method, with asmall herd on the Salt Crick Flats. This was the herd that was gone.
They picked up the churned trail of the stolen herd shortly after dawn,and followed it briskly, paced by the light-riding Mathison boys ontheir good horses. Martin Pauley lagged back, dogging it in the earlyhours. He had a special grouch of his own because he had looked forwardto a visit with Laurie Mathison before they set out. Laurie waseighteen, like himself--straight and well boned, he thought, in terms hemight have used to judge a filly. Lately he had caught her unwary grayeyes following him, now and then, when he was around the Mathisons'. Butnot this morning.
Laurie had been flying around, passing out coffee and quick-grabbreakfast, with two of the Harper boys and Charlie MacCorry helping heron three sides--all of them clowning, and cutting up, and showing off,till there was no way to get near. Martin Pauley was a quiet boy, darkas an Indian except for his light eyes; he never did feel he cut much ofa figure among the blond and easy-laughing people with whom he wasraised. So he had hung back, and never did get to talk to Laurie. Sheran out to his stirrup, and said, "Hi," hardly looking at him as shehanded him a hunk of hot meat wrapped in bread--no coffee--and was goneagain. And that was the size of it.
For a while Martin kept trying to think of something cute he might havesaid. Didn't think of a thing. So he got bored with himself, and took awide unneedful swing out on the flank. He was casting the prairierestlessly, looking for nothing in particular, when presently he foundsomething that puzzled him and made him uneasy.
Mystified, he crossed the trail and swung wide on the other flank totake a look at the ground over there; and here he found Amos, doing thesame thing. Amos Edwards was forty, two years older than his brotherHenry, a big burly figure on a strong but speedless horse. He was somedifferent from the rest of the Edwards family. His heavy head of hairwas darker, and probably would have been red-brown, except that it wasunbrushed, without any shine to it. And he was liable to be pulled backinto his shell between rare bursts of temper. Just now he was ridinglumpily, hands in his pockets, reins swinging free from the horn, whilehe guided his horse by unnoticeable flankings with the calves of hislegs and two-ounce shifts of weight. Martin cleared his throat a fewtimes, hoping Amos would speak, but he did not.
"Uncle Amos," Martin said, "you notice something almighty fishy aboutthis trail?"
"Like what?"
"Well, at the jump-off I counted tracks of twelve, fifteen poniesworking this herd. Now I can't find no more than four, five. First Isupposed the rest had pushed on ahead, and their trails got tromp out bycows----"
"That's shrewd," Amos snubbed him. "I never would have thunk of it."
"--only, just now I find me a fit-up where two more ponies forkedoff--and they sure didn't push on ahead. They turned back."
"Why?"
"Why? Gosh, Uncle Amos--how the hell should I know? That's what itchesme."
"Do me one thing," Amos said. "Drop this 'Uncle' foolishness."
"Sir?"
"You don't have to call me 'Sir,' neither. Nor 'Grampaw,' neither. Nor'Methuselah,' neither. I can whup you to a frazzle."
Martin was blanked. "What should I call you?"
"Name's Amos."
"All right. Amos. You want I should mosey round and see what the rest of'em think?"
"They'll tell you the same." He was pulled back in his shell, fixing tobide his time.
It was straight-up noon, and they had paused to water at a puddle in acoulee, before Amos made his opinion known. "Aaron," he said in tonesmost could hear, "I'd be relieved to know if all these boys realize whatwe're following here. Because it ain't cow thieves. Not the species wehad in mind."
"How's this, now?"
"What we got here is a split-off from an Indian war party, running wildloose on a raid." He paused a moment, then finished quietly. "Maybe youknowed that already. In case you didn't, you know it now. Because I justtold you."
Aaron Mathison rubbed his fingers through his beard and appeared toconsider; and some of the others put in while he did that. Old MoseHarper pointed out that none of the thieves had ridden side by side, notonce on the trail, as the tracks showed plain. Indians and dudes rodesingle file--Indians to hide their numbers, and dudes because the horsesfelt like it--but white men rode abreast in order to gab all the time.So the thieves were either Indians or else not speaking. One t'other.This contribution drew partly hidden smiles from Mose Harper's sons.
Young Charlie MacCorry, a good rough-stock rider whom Martin resentedbecause of his lively attentions to Laurie Mathison, spoke of noticingthat the thieves all rode small unshod horses, a whole lot like buffaloponies. And Lije Powers got in his two cents. Lije was an old-timebuffalo hunter, who now lived by wandering from ranch to ranch,"stopping by." He said now that he had "knowed it from the fust," andallowed that what they were up against was a "passel of Caddoes."
Those were all who took any stock in the theory.
Aaron Mathison reasoned in even tones that they had no real reason tothink any different than when they had started. The northeasterly trendof the trail said plainly that the thieves were delivering the herd tosome beef contractor for one of the Indian Agencies--maybe old FortTowson. Nothing else made any sense. The thieves had very little start;steady riding should force a stand before sundown tomorrow. They hadonly to push on, and all questions would soon be answered.
"I hollered for a back track at the start," Amos argued. "Where's themain war party these here forked off from? If they're up ahead, that'sone thing. But if they're back where our families be----"
Aaron bowed his head for several moments, as if in prayer; but when hishead came up he was looking at Amos Edwards with narrowed eyes. He spokegently, slipping into Quakerish phrasings; and Martin Pauley, who hadheard those same soft tones before, knew the argument was done. "Theecan turn back," Aaron said. "If thee fears what lies ahead or what liesbehind, I need thee no more."
He turned his horse and rode on. Two or three hesitated, but ended byfollowing him.
Amos was riding with his hands in his pockets again, letting his animalkeep up as it chose; and Martin saw that Amos had fallen into one of hisdeadlocks. This was a thing that happened to Amos repeatedly, and itseemed to have a close relationship with the shape of his life. He hadserved two years with the Rangers, and four under Hood, and had twicebeen up the Chisholm Trail. Earlier he had done other things--bossed abull train, packed the mail, captained a stage station--and he had doneall of them well. Nobody exactly understood why he always drifted back,sooner or later, to work for his younger brother, with never anyunderstanding as to pay.
What he wanted now was to pull out of the pursuit and go back. If he didturn, it could hardly be set down to cowardice. But it would mark him asunreliable and self-interested to an unforgivable degree in the eyes ofthe other cowmen. A thing like that could reflect on his whole family,and tend to turn the range against them. So Amos sat like a sack ofwheat, in motion only because he happened to be sitting on a horse, andthe horse was following the others.
His dilemma ended unexpectedly.
Brad Mathison, oldest of Aaron's boys, was ranging far ahead. They sawhim disappear over the saddle of a ridge at more than two miles.Immediately he reappeared, stopped against the sky, and held his rifleover his head with both hands. It was the signal for "found." Then hedropped from sight beyond the ridge again.
Far behind him, the others put the squeeze to their horses, and liftedinto a hard run. They stormed over the saddle of the ridge, and werelooking down into a broad basin. Some scattered bunches of red specksdown there were cattle grazing loose on their own. Aaron Mathison, withhis cowman's eyes, recognized each speck that could be seen at all as anindividual animal of his own. Here was the stolen herd, unaccountablydropped and left.
Brad was only about a mile out on the flats, but running his horse fullstretch now toward the hills beyond the plain.
"Call in that damn fool," Amos said. He fired his pistol into the air,so that Brad looked back.
Aaron spun his horse in close circles to call in his son. Brad turnedreluctantly, as if disposed to argue with his father, but came trottingback. Now Aaron spotted something fifty yards to one side, and rode toit for a closer look. He stepped down, and the others closed in aroundhim. One of the young blood bulls lay there, spine severed by the whackof an axe. The liver had been ripped out, but no other meat taken. Whenthey had seen this much, most of the riders sat and looked at eachother. They barely glanced at the moccasin prints, faint in thedust-film upon the baked ground. Amos, though, not only dismounted, butwent to his knees; and Martin Pauley stooped beside him, not to lookwise, but trying to find out what Amos was looking for. Amos jabbed thecarcass with his thumb. "Only nine, ten hours old," he said. Then, toLije Powers, "Can you tell what moccasins them be?"
Lije scratched his thin beard. "Injuns," he said owlishly. He meant itfor a joke, but nobody laughed. They followed Mathison as he loped outto meet his son.
"I rode past five more beef kills," Brad said when they came together.He spoke soberly, his eyes alert upon his father's face. "All these downhere are heifers. And all killed with the lance. Appears like the lancewounds drive deep forward from just under the short ribs, clean throughto the heart. I never saw that before."
"I have," Lije Powers said. He wanted to square himself for his misfirejoke. "Them's Comanche buffler hunters done that. Ain't no others leftcan handle a lance no more."
Some of the others, particularly the older men, were looking gray andbleak. The last five minutes had taken them ten years back into thepast, when every night of the world was an uncertain thing. The years ofwatchfulness and struggle had brought them some sense of confidence andsecurity toward the last; but now all that was struck away as if theyhad their whole lives to do over again. But instead of taking ten yearsoff their ages it put ten years on.
"This here's a murder raid," Amos said, sending his words at Aaron likerocks. "It shapes up to scald out either your place or Henry's. Do youknow that now?"
Aaron's beard was sunk on his chest. He said slowly, "I see no otherlikelihood."
"They drove your cattle to pull us out," Amos hammered it home. "We'vegive 'em free run for the last sixteen hours!"
"I question if they'll hit before moonrise. Not them Comanch." Lijespoke with the strange detachment of one who has seen too much for toolong.
"Moonrise! Ain't a horse here can make it by midnight!"
Brad Mathison said through his teeth, "I'll come almighty close!" Hewheeled his pony and put it into a lope.
Aaron bellowed, "Hold in that horse!" and Brad pulled down to a slammingtrot.
Most of the others were turning to follow Brad, talking blasphemies totheir horses and themselves. Charlie MacCorry had the presence of mindto yell, "Which place first? We'll be strung out twenty mile!"
"Mathison's is this side!" Mose Harper shouted. Then to Amos over hisshoulder, "If we don't fight there, we'll come straight on!"
Martin Pauley was scared sick over what they might find back home, andLaurie was in his mind too, so that the people he cared about were intwo places. He was crazy to get started, as if haste could get him toboth places at once. But he made himself imitate Amos, who unhurriedlypulled off saddle and bridle. They fed grain again, judging carefullyhow much their animals would do best on, and throwing the rest away. Thetime taken to rest and feed would get them home quicker in the end.
By the time they crossed the saddleback the rest of the riders were farspaced, according to the judgment of each as to how his horse might bestbe spent. Amos branched off from the way the others took. Miles wereimportant, now, and they could save a few by passing well west ofMathison's. Amos had already made up his mind that he must kill hishorse in this ride; for they had more than eighty miles to go beforethey would know what had happened--perhaps was happening now--to thepeople they had left at home.
Chapter 3
Henry Edwards stood watching the black prairie through a loophole in abatten shutter. The quartering moon would rise late; he wanted to see itcoming, for he believed now that all the trouble they could handle wouldbe on them with the moon's first light. The dark kitchen in which thefamily waited was closed tight except for the loopholes. The powdersmoke was going to get pretty thick in here if they had to fight. Yetthe house was becoming cold. Any gleam of light would so hurt theirchances that they had even drawn the coals from the firebox of the stoveand drowned them in a tub.
The house itself was about as secure as a house could be made. Theloopholed shutters, strap-hinged on the inside, were heavy enough tostop a 30-30, if not a buffalo slug, and the doors were even better.Nine or ten rifles could hold the place forever against anything butartillery. As few as seven would have their hands full against a strongwar party, but should hold.
There lay the trouble and the fear. Henry did not have seven. He hadhimself, and his two sons, and Martha. Hunter was a deadly shot, andBen, though only fourteen, would put in a pretty fair job. But Marthacouldn't shoot any too well. Most likely she would hold fire until thelast scratch, in hopes the enemy would go away. And Lucy... Lucymight do for a lookout someplace, but her dread of guns was so great shewould be useless even to load. Henry had made her strap on a pistol, buthe doubted if she could ever fire it, even to take her own life in eventof capture.
And then there was Deborah. The boys had been good shots at eight; butDebbie, though pushing ten, seemed so little to Henry that he hadn't lether touch a weapon yet. You don't see your own children grow unlessthere's a new one to remind you how tiny they come. In Henry's eyes,Debbie hadn't changed in size since she was brand new, with feet nobigger than a fingertip with toes.
Four rifles, then, or call it three and a half, to hold two doors andeight shuttered windows, all of which could be busted in.
Out in the work-team corral a brood mare gave a long whinny, thenanother after a moment's pause. Everyone in the kitchen held his breath,waiting for the mare's call to be answered. No answer came, and after awhile, when she whinnied again, Henry drew a slow breath. The mare hadtold him a whole basket of things he didn't want to know. Strange ponieswere out there, probably with stud horses among them; the mare's nosehad told her, and the insistence of her reaction left no room for doubt.They were Indian ridden, because loose ponies would have answered, andhorses ridden by friends would have been let to answer. The Indians wereComanches, for the Comanches were skillful at keeping their poniesquiet. They wove egg-size knots into their rawhide hackamores, so placedthat the pony's nostrils could be pinched if he so much as pricked anear. This was best done from the ground, so Henry judged that theComanches had dismounted, leaving their ponies with horse holders. Theywere fixing to close on foot--the most dangerous way there was.
One thing more. They were coming from more than one side, because nonewould have approached downwind, where the mare could catch their scent,unless they were all around. A big party, then, or it would not havesplit up. No more hope, either, that the Comanches meant only to breakfence on the far side of the corrals to run the stock off. This was afull-scale thing, with all the chips down, tonight.
Lucy's voice came softly out of the dark. "Debbie?" Then more loudly,with a note of panic, "Debbie! Where are you?" Everyone's voice soundedeery coming out of the unseen.
"Here I am." They heard the cover put back on the cookie crock at thefar end of the room.
"You get back on your pallet, here! And stay put now, will you?"
Long ago, hide-hunting at the age of eighteen, Henry and two others hadfought off more than twenty Kiowas from the shelter of nothing more thana buffalo wallow. They had fought with desperation enough, believingthey were done for; but he couldn't remember any such sinking of theheart as he felt now behind these fort-strong walls. Little girls in thehouse--that's what cut a man's strings, and made a coward of him, everybit as bad as if the Comanches held them hostage already. His words weresteady, though, even casual, as he made his irrevocable decision.
"Martha. Put on Debbie's coat."
A moment of silence; then Martha's single word, breathy and uncertain:"Now?"
"Right now. Moon's fixing to light us up directly." Henry went into afront bedroom, and quietly opened a shutter. The sash was already up tocut down the hazard of splintering glass. He studied the night, thenwent and found Martha and Debbie in the dark. The child was wearingmoccasins, and hugged a piece of buffalo robe.
"We're going to play the sleep-out game," he told Debbie. "The one whereyou hide out with Grandma. Like you know? Very quiet, like a mouse?" Hewas sending the little girl to her grandmother's grave.
"I know." Debbie was a shy child, but curiously unafraid of the openprairie or the dark. She had never known her grandmother, or seen death,but she had been raised to think the grave on the hill a friendly thing.Sometimes she left little picnic offerings up there for Grandma.
"You keep down low," Henry said, "and you go quietly, quietly along theditch. Then up the hill to Grandma, and roll up in your robe, all snugand cozy."
"I remember how." They had practiced this before, and even used it once,under a threat that blew over.
Henry couldn't tell from the child's whisper whether she was frightenedor not. He supposed she must be, what with the tension that was on allof them. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the window hehad opened. Though he couldn't see her, it was the same as if he could.She had a little triangular kitty-cat face, with very big green eyes,which you could see would be slanting someday, if her face ever caughtup to them. As he kissed her, he found tears on her cheek, and shehugged him around the neck so hard he feared he would have to pull herarms away. But she let go, and he lifted her through the window.
"Quiet, now--stoop low--" he whispered in her ear. And he set her on theground outside.
Chapter 4
Amos pulled up at the top of a long rise ten miles from home; and hereMartin Pauley, with very little horse left under him, presently caughtup. On the south horizon a spot of fire was beginning to show. The glowbloomed and brightened; their big stacks of wild hay had caught and weregoing up in light. The east rim still showed nothing. The raiders hadmade their choice and left Mathison's alone.
For a moment or two Martin Pauley and Amos Edwards sat in silence. ThenAmos drew his knife and cut off the quirt, called a romal, that wasbraided into his long reins. He hauled up his animal's heavy head; thequirt whistled and snapped hard, and the horse labored into a heavy,rocking run.
Martin stepped down, shaking so hard all over that he almost went to hisknees. He reset his saddle, and as he mounted again his beat-out ponystaggered, almost pulled over by the rider's weight. Amos was out ofsight. Mart got his pony into an uncertain gallop, guiding the placementof its awkwardly slung hoofs by the light of the high moon. It wasblowing in a wind-broke roar, and when a patch of foam caught Martin inthe teeth he tasted blood in it. Yet the horse came nearer to gettinghome than Martin could have hoped. Half a mile from the house the animalstumbled in a shallow wash and came down heavily. Twice the long headswung up in an effort to rise, but flailed down again. Martin drew hissix-gun and put a bullet in the pony's head, then dragged his carbinefrom the saddle boot and went on, running hard.
The hay fires and the wooden barn had died down to bright beds of coals,but the house still stood. Its shingles glowed in a dozen smolderingpatches where torches had been thrown onto the roof, but the sod beneaththem had held. For a moment a great impossible hope possessed Martin,intense as a physical pain. Then, while he was still far out, he saw alight come on in the kitchen as a lamp was lighted inside. Even at thedistance he could see that the light came through a broken door, hangingskew-jawed on a single hinge.
Martin slowed to a walk, and went toward the house unwillingly. Littleflames still wandered across the embers of the hay stacks and the barn,sending up sparks which hung idly on the quiet air; and the house itselfshowed against the night in a dull red glow. On the back gallery lay adead pony, tail to the broken door. Probably it had been backed againstthe door to break the bar. By the steps Amos' horse was down, kneesfolded under. The heavy head was nodded lower and lower, the muzzledipping the dust; it would never get up.
Martin stepped over the legs of the dead Comanche pony and went into thekitchen, walking as though he had never learned to walk, but had to pulleach separate string. Near the door a body lay covered by a sheet.Martin drew back the limp muslin, and was looking into Martha's face.Her lips were parted a little, and her open eyes, looking straight up,appeared perfectly clear, as if she were alive. Her light hair wasshaken loose, the lamplight picking out the silver in it. Martha hadsuch a lot of hair that it was hardly noticeable, at first, that she hadbeen scalped.
Most of the batten shutters had been smashed in. Hunter Edwards lay in aheap near the splintered hall door, his empty hands still clawed as ifgrasping the duck gun that was gone. Ben had fallen in a tangled knot bythe far window, his gangly legs sprawled. He looked immature andundersized as he lay there, like a skinny small boy.
Martin found the body of Henry Edwards draped on its back across thebroad sill of a bedroom window. The Comanche knives had done eery workupon this body. Like Martha, Henry and both boys had been scalped.Martin gently straightened the bodies of Henry, and Hunter, and Ben,then found sheets to put over them, as Amos had done for Martha.Martin's hands were shaking, but he was dry-eyed as Amos came back intothe house.
When Martin had got a good look at his foster uncle, he was afraid ofhim. Amos' face was wooden, but such a dreadful light shone from behindthe eyes that Martin thought Amos had gone mad. Amos carried somethingslim and limp in his arms, clutched against his chest. As Amos passedthe lamp, Martin saw that the thing Amos carried had a hand, and that itwas Martha's hand. He had not drawn down the sheet that covered Marthafar enough to see that the body lacked an arm. The Comanches did thingslike that. Probably they had tossed the arm from one to another,capering and whooping, until they lost it in the dark.
"No sign of Lucy. Or Deborah," Amos said. "So far as I could find in thelack of light." The words were low and came unevenly, but they did notsound insane.
Martin said, "We used to practice sending Debbie up the hill toGrandma's grave--"
"I been up. They sent her there. I found her bit of buffalo robe. ButDebbie's not up there. Not now."
"You suppose Lucy--" Martin let the question trail off, but they hadworked so much together that Amos was able to answer.
"Can't tell yet if Lucy went up with Debbie to the grave. Not tilldaylight comes on."
Amos had got out another sheet and was tearing it into strips. Martinknew Amos was making bandages to fix up their people as decently as hecould. His hands moved methodically, going through the motions of doingthe next thing he ought to do, little as it mattered. But at the sametime Amos was thinking about something else. "I want you to walk to theMathisons'. Get them to hook their buckboard, and bring their womenon.... Martha should have clean clothes put on."
Probably Amos would have stripped and bathed the body of his brother'swife, and dressed it properly, if there had been no one else to do it.But not if a walk of fifteen miles would get it done a more proper way.Martin turned toward the door without question.
"Wait. Pull off them boots and get your moccasins on. You got a long wayto go." Martin obeyed that, too. "Where's them pegs you whittled out? Ifigure to make coffins out of the shelves."
"Behind the woodbox. Back of the range." Martin started off into thenight.
Martin Pauley was eight miles on the way to Mathisons' when the firstriders met him. All ten who had ridden the day before were on their wayover, riding fresh Mathison horses and leading spares. A buckboard, somedistance back, was bringing Mrs. Mathison and Laurie, who must no longerbe left alone with a war party on the loose.
The fore riders had been pressing hard, hoping against hope that someonewas left alive over there. When they had got the word from Martin, theypulled up and waited with him for the buckboard. Nobody pestered at himfor details. Laurie made a place for him beside her on the buckboardseat, and they rode in silence, the team at a good trot.
After a mile or two Laurie whimpered, "Oh, Martie... Oh, Martie..."She turned toward him, rested her forehead against the shoulder ofhis brush jacket, and there cried quietly for a little while. Martinsat slack and still, nothing left in him to move him either toward heror away from her. Pretty soon she straightened up, and rode beside himin silence, not touching him any more.
Chapter 5
Dawn was near when they got to the house. Amos had been hard at work. Hehad laid out his brother Henry and the two boys in one bedroom, and puttheir best clothes on them. He had put Martha in another room, and Mrs.Mathison and Laurie took over there. All the men went to work, silently,without having to be told what to do. These were lonely, self-sufficientpeople, who saw each other only a few times a year, yet they workedtogether well, each finding for himself the next thing that needed to bedone. Some got to work with saw, boxplane, auger, and pegs, to finishthe coffins Amos had started, while others made coffee, set up a heavybreakfast, and packed rations for the pursuit. They picked up and sortedout the litter of stuff the Indians had thrown about as they looted, puteverything where it had belonged, as nearly as they could guess,scrubbed and sanded away the stains, just as if the life of this housewere going to go on.
Two things they found in the litter had a special meaning for MartinPauley. One was a sheet of paper upon which Debbie had tried to make acalendar a few weeks before. Something about it troubled him, and hecouldn't make out what it was. He remembered wishing they had acalendar, and very dimly he recalled Debbie bringing this effort to him.
But his mind had been upon something else. He believed he had said,"That's nice," and, "I see," without really seeing what the little girlwas showing him. Debbie's calendar had not been hung up; he couldn'tremember seeing it again until now. And now he saw why. She had made amistake, right up at the top, so the whole thing had come out wrong. Heturned vaguely to Laurie Mathison, where she was washing her hands atthe sink.
"I..." he said. "It seems like..."
She glanced at the penciled calendar. "I remember that. I was over herethat day. But it's all right. I explained to her."
"Explained what? What's all right?"
"She made a mistake up here, so it all--"
"Yes, I see that, but----"
"Well, when she saw she had spoiled it, she ran to you...." Her grayeyes looked straight into his. "You and I had a fight that day. Maybe itwas that. But--you were always Debbie's hero, Martie. She was--she'sstill just a baby, you know. She kept saying----" Laurie compressed herlips.
"She kept saying what?"
"Martie, I made her see that----"
He took Laurie by the arms hard. "Tell me."
"All right. I'll tell you. She kept saying, 'He didn't care at all.'"
Martin let his hands drop. "I wasn't listening," he said. "I made hercry, and I never knew."
He let her take the unlucky sheet of paper out of his hand, and he neversaw it again. But the lost day when he should have taken Debbie in hisarms, and made everything all right, was going to be with him a longtime, a peg upon which he hung his grief.
The other thing he found was a miniature of Debbie. Miniatures had beenpainted of Martha and Lucy, too, once when Henry took the three of themto Fort Worth, but Martin never knew what became of those. Debbie'sminiature, gold-framed in a little plush box, was the best of the three.The little triangular face and the green eyes were very true, andsuggested the elfin look that went with Debbie's small size. He put thebox in his pocket.
Chapter 6
They laid their people deep under the prairie sod beside Grandma. AaronMathison read from the Bible and said a prayer, while Martin, Amos, andthe six others chosen for the pursuit stood a little way back from theopen graves, holding their saddled horses.
It wasn't a long service. Daylight had told them that Lucy must havebeen carried bodily from the house, for they found no place where shehad set foot to the ground. Debbie, the sign showed, had been picked uponto a running horse after a pitifully short chase upon the prairie.There was hope, then, that they still lived, and that one of them, oreven both, might be recovered alive. Most of Aaron's amazing vitalityseemed to have drained out of him, but he shared the cracking strainthat would be upon them all so long as the least hope lasted. He madethe ritual as simple and as brief as he decently could. "Man that isborn of woman..."
Those waiting to ride feared that Aaron would get carried away in thefinal prayer, but he did not. Martin's mind was already far ahead on thetrail, so that he heard only the last few words of the prayer, yet theystirred his hair. "Now may the light of Thy countenance be turned awayfrom the stubborn and the blind. Let darkness fall upon them that willnot see, that all Thy glory may light the way of those who seek...and all Thy wisdom lead the horses of the brave.... Amen."
It seemed to Martin Pauley that old Aaron, by the humility of hisprayer, had invited eternal damnation upon himself, if only the searchfor Lucy and Debbie might succeed. His offer of retribution to his Godwas the only word that had been spoken in accusation or in blame, forthe error of judgment that had led the fighting men away.
Amos must have had his foot in the stirrup before the end of the prayer,for he swung into the saddle with the last "Amen," and led off without aword. With Martin and Amos went Brad Mathison, Ed Newby, CharlieMacCorry, Mose Harper and his son Zack, and Lije Powers, who thought hisold-time prairie wisdom had now come into its own, whether anybody elsethought so or not. Those left behind would put layers of boulders in thegraves against digging varmints, and set up the wooden crosses MartinPauley had sectioned out of the house timbers in the last hours of thedark.
At the last moment Laurie Mathison ran to Martin where he sat alreadymounted. She stepped up lightly upon the toe of his stirruped boot, andkissed him hard and quickly on the mouth. A boldness like that wouldhave drawn a blast of wrath at another time, but her parents seemedunable to see. Aaron still stood with bowed head beside the open graves;and Mrs. Mathison's eyes were staring straight ahead into a dreadfulloneliness. The Edwardses, Mathisons, and Pauleys had come out heretogether. The three families had sustained each other while the Pauleyslived, and after their massacre the two remaining families had looked toeach other in all things. Now only the Mathisons were left. Mrs.Mathison's usually mild and kindly face was bleak, stony with aninsupportable fear. Martin Pauley would not have recognized her, even ifhe had been in a mood to notice anything at all.
He looked startled as Laurie kissed him, but only for a second. Heseemed already to have forgotten her, for the time being, as he turnedhis horse.
Chapter 7
Out in the middle of a vast, flat plain, a day's ride from anything, laya little bad-smelling marsh without a name. It covered about ten acresand had cat-tails growing in it. Tules, the Mexicans called thecat-tails; but at that time certain Texans were still fighting shy ofMexican ways. Nowhere around was there a river, or a butte, or anylandmark at all, except that nameless marsh. So that was how the "Fightat the Cat-tails" got its foolish-sounding name.
Seven men were still with the pursuit as they approached the Cat-tailfight at sundown of their fifth day. Lije Powers had dropped out on theoccasion of his thirty-ninth or fortieth argument over interpretation ofsign. He had found a headdress, a rather beautiful thing of polishedheifer horns on a browband of black and white beads. They were happy tosee it, for it told them that some Indian who still rode was wounded andin bad shape, or he would never have left it behind. But Lije chose tomake an issue of his opinion that the headdress was Kiowa, and notComanche--which made no difference at all, for the two tribes wereallied. When they got tired of hearing Lije talk about it, they told himso, and Lije branched off in a huff to visit some Mexican hacienda heknew about somewhere to the south.
They had found many other signs of the punishment the Comanches hadtaken before the destruction of the Edwards family was complete. Moreimportant than other dropped belongings--a beaded pouch, a polishedironwood lance with withered scalps on it--were the shallow stone-piledIndian graves. On each lay the carcass of a horse of the Edwards' brand,killed in the belief that its spirit would carry the Comanche ghost.They had found seven of these burials. Four in one place, hidden behinda hill, were probably the graves of Indians killed outright at theranch; three more, strung out at intervals of half a day, told ofwounded who had died in the retreat. In war, no Indian band slacked itspace for the dying. Squaws were known to have given birth on the backsof traveling ponies, with no one to wait for them or give help. Thecowmen could not hope that the wounded warriors would slow the flight ofthe murderers in the slightest.
Amos kept the beaded pouch and the heifer-born headdress in his saddlebags; they might help identify the Comanche killers someday. And forseveral days he carried the ironwood lance stripped of its trophies. Hewas using it to probe the depth of the Indian graves, to see if any wereshallow enough so that he could open them without falling too far back.Probably he hoped to find something that would give some dead warrior aname, so that someday they might be led to the living by the unwillingdead. Or so Martin supposed at first.
But he could not help seeing that Amos was changing. Or perhaps he wasseeing revealed, a little at a time, a change that had come over Amossuddenly upon the night of the disaster. At the start Amos had led themat a horse-killing pace, a full twenty hours of their first twenty-four.That was because of Lucy, of course. Often Comanches cared for andraised captive white children, marrying the girls when they were grown,and taking the boys into their families as brothers. But grown whitewomen were raped unceasingly by every captor in turn until either theydied or were "thrown away" to die by the satiated. So the pursuers spentthemselves and their horseflesh unsparingly in that first run; yet foundno sign, as their ponies failed, that they had gained ground upon thefast-traveling Comanches. After that Amos set the pace cagily at a walkuntil the horses recovered from that first all-out effort, later at atrot, hour after hour, saving the horses at the expense of the men. Amosrode relaxed now, wasting no motions and no steps. He had the look of aman resigned to follow this trail down the years, as long as he shouldlive.
And then Amos found the body of an Indian not buried in the ground, butprotected by stones in a crevice of a sandstone ledge. He got at thisone--and took nothing but the scalp. Martin had no idea what Amosbelieved about life and death; but the Comanches believed that thespirit of a scalped warrior had to wander forever between the winds,denied entrance to the spirit land beyond the sunset. Amos did not keepthe scalp, but threw it away on the prairie for the wolves to find.
Another who was showing change was Brad Mathison. He was always the oneranging farthest ahead, the first to start out each morning, the mostreluctant to call it a day as the sun went down. His well-grainedhorses--they had brought four spares and two pack mules--showed it lessthan Brad himself, who was turning hollow-eyed and losing weight. Duringthe past year Brad had taken to coming over to the Edwardses to set upwith Lucy--but only about once every month or two. Martin didn't believethere had been any overpowering attachment there. But now that Lucy waslost, Brad was becoming more involved with every day that diminishedhope.
By the third day some of them must have believed Lucy to be dead; butBrad could not let himself think that. "She's alive," he told MartinPauley. Martin had said nothing either way. "She's got to be alive,Mart." And on the fourth day, dropping back to ride beside Mart, "I'llmake it up to her," he promised himself. "No matter what's happened toher, no matter what she's gone through. I'll make her forget." He pushedhis horse forward again, far into the lead, disregarding Amos' cussing.
So it was Brad, again, who first sighted the Comanches. Far out in fronthe brought his horse to the edge of a rimrock cliff; then dropped fromthe saddle and led his horse back from the edge. And now once more heheld his rifle over his head with both hands, signaling "found."
The others came up on the run. Mart took their horses as they dismountedwell back from the edge, but Mose Harper took the leads from Mart'shands. "I'm an old man," Mose said. "Whatever's beyond, I've seen itafore--most likely many times. You go on up."
The cliff was a three-hundred-foot limestone wall, dropping off sheer,as if it might be the shoreline of a vanished sea. The trail of the manyComanche ponies went down this precariously by way of a talus break.Twenty miles off, out in the middle of the flats, lay a patch of haze,shimmering redly in the horizontal light of the sunset. Some of them nowremembered the cat-tail marsh that stagnated there, serving as awaterhole. A black line, wavering in the ground heat, showed in front ofthe marsh haze. That was all there was to see.
"Horses," Brad said. "That's horses, there at the water!"
"It's where they ought to be," Mart said. A faint reserve, as ofdisbelief in his luck, made the words come slowly.
"Could be buffler," Zack Harper said. He was a shag-headed young man,the oldest son of Mose Harper. "Wouldn't look no different."
"If there was buffalo there, you'd see the Comanche runnin' 'em," Amosstepped on the idea.
"If it's horses, it's sure a power of 'em."
"We've been trailin' a power of 'em."
They were silent awhile, studying the distant pen scratch upon the worldthat must be a band of livestock. The light was failing now as thesunset faded.
"We better feed out," Brad said finally. He was one of the youngestthere, and the veteran plainsmen were usually cranky about hearingadvice from the young; but lately they seemed to listen to him anyway."It'll be dark in an hour and a half. No reason we can't jump them longbefore daylight, with any kind of start."
Ed Newby said, "You right sure you want to jump all them?"
Charlie MacCorry turned to look Ed over. "Just what in hell you think wecome here for?"
"They'll be took unawares," Amos said. "They're always took unawares.Ain't an Indian in the world knows how to keep sentries out once thenight goes cold."
"It ain't that," Ed answered. "We can whup them all right. I guess. Onlything... Comanches are mighty likely to kill any prisoners they'vegot, if they're jumped hard enough. They've done it again and again."
Mart Pauley chewed a grass blade and watched Amos. Finally Mart said,"There's another way...."
Amos nodded. "Like Mart says. There's another way." Mart Pauley wasbewildered to see that Amos looked happy. "I'm talking about theirhorses. Might be we could set the Comanch' afoot."
Silence again. Nobody wanted to say much now without considering a longwhile before he spoke.
"Might be we can stampede them ponies, and run off all the whole bunch,"Amos went on. "I don't believe it would make 'em murder anybody--that'sstill alive."
"This thing ain't going to be too easy," Ed Newby said.
"No," Amos agreed. "It ain't easy. And it ain't safe. If we did get itdone, the Comanch' should be ready to deal. But I don't say they'lldeal. In all my life, I ain't learned but one thing about an Indian:Whatever you know you'd do in his place--he ain't going to do that.Maybe we'd still have to hunt them Comanches down, by bunches, by twos,by ones."
Something like a bitter relish in Amos' tone turned Mart cold. Amos nolonger believed they would recover Lucy alive--and wasn't thinking ofDebbie at all.
"Of course," Charlie MacCorry said, his eyes on a grass blade he waspicking to shreds, "you know, could be every last one of them bucks hashis best pony on short lead. Right beside him where he lies."
"That's right," Amos said. "That might very well be. And you know whathappens then?"
"We lose our hair. And no good done to nobody."
"That's right."
Brad Mathison said, "In God's name, will you try it, Mr. Edwards?"
"All right."
Immediately Brad pulled back to feed his horses, and the others followedmore slowly. Mart Pauley still lay on the edge of the rimrock after theothers had pulled back. He was thinking of the change in Amos. Nodeadlock now, no hesitation in facing the worst answer there could be.No hope, either, visible in Amos' mind that they would ever find theirbeloved people alive. Only that creepy relish he had heard when Amosspoke of killing Comanches.
And thinking of Amos' face as it was tonight, he remembered it as it wasthat worst night of the world, when Amos came out of the dark, into theshambles of the Edwards' kitchen, carrying Martha's arm clutched againsthis chest. The mutilation could not be seen when Martha lay in the boxthey had made for her. Her face looked young, and serene, and hercrossed hands were at rest, one only slightly paler than the other. Theywere worn hands, betraying Martha's age as her face did not, with littlerandom scars on them. Martha was always hurting her hands. Mart thought,"She wore them out, she hurt them, working for us."
As he thought that, the key to Amos' life suddenly became plain. All hisuncertainties, his deadlocks with himself, his labors without pay, hisperpetual gravitation back to his brother's ranch--they all fell intoline. As he saw what had shaped and twisted Amos' life, Mart felt shakenup; he had lived with Amos most of his life without ever suspecting thetruth. But neither had Henry suspected it--and Martha least of all.
Amos was--had always been--in love with his brother's wife.
Chapter 8
Amos held them where they were for an hour after dark. They pulledsaddles and packs, fed out the last of their grain, and rubbed down thehorses with wads of dry grass. Nobody cooked. The men chewed on coldmeat and lumps of hard frying-pan bread left from breakfast. All of themstudied the shape of the hills a hundred miles beyond, taking a line onthe Comanche camp. That fly speck, so far out upon the plain, would beeasy to miss in the dark. When the marsh could no longer be seen theyused the hill contours to take sights upon the stars they knew, as eachappeared. By the time the hills, too, were swallowed by the night, eachhad star bearings by which he could find his way.
Mose Harper mapped his course by solemnly cutting notches in the rim ofthe hat. His son Zack grinned as he watched his father do that, but noone else thought it comical that Mose was growing old. All men grew oldunless violence overtook them first; the plains offered no third way outof the predicament a man found himself in, simply by the fact of hisexistence on the face of the earth.
Amos was still in no hurry as he led off, sliding down the talus breakby which the Comanches had descended to the plain. Once down on theflats, Amos held to an easy walk. He wanted to strike the Comanche horseherd before daylight, but when he had attacked he wanted dawn to comesoon, so they could tell how they had come out, and make a finish. Theremust be no long muddle in the dark. Given half a chance to figure outwhat had happened, the war party would break up into singles andambushes, becoming almost impossible to root out of the short grass.
When the moon rose, very meager, very late, it showed them each other asblack shapes, and they could make out their loose pack and saddle stockfollowing along, grabbing jawfuls of the sparse feed. Not much more. Atiny dolloping whisk of pure movement, without color or form, was akangaroo rat. A silently vanishing streak was a kit fox. About midnightthe coyotes began their clamor, surprisingly near, but not in the keythat bothered Mart; and a little later the hoarser, deeper howling of aloafer wolf sounded for a while a great way off. Brad Mathison driftedhis pony alongside Mart's.
"That thing sound all right to you?"
Mart was uncertain. One note had sounded a little queer to him at onepoint, but it did not come again. He said he guessed it sounded like awolf.
"Seems kind of far from timber for a loafer wolf. This time of year,anyway," Brad worried. "Known 'em to be out here, though," he answeredhis own complaint. He let his horse drop back, so that he could keepcount of the loose stock.
After the loafer wolf shut up, a dwarf owl, such as lives down prairiedog holes, began to give out with a whickering noise about a middledistance off. Half a furlong farther on another took it up, after theyhad left the first one silent behind, and later another as they cameabreast. This went on for half an hour, and it had a spooky feel to itbecause the owls always sounded one at a time, and always nearby. WhenMart couldn't stand it any more he rode up beside Amos.
"What you think?" he asked, as an owl sounded again.
Amos shrugged. He was riding with his hands in his pockets again, asMart had often seen him ride before, but there was no feel of deadlockor uncertainty about him now. He was leading out very straight, sure ofhis direction, sure of his pace.
"Hard to say," he answered.
"You mean you don't know if that's a real owl?"
"It's a real something. A noise don't make itself."
"I know, but that there is an easy noise to make. You could make it,or----"
"Well, I ain't."
"--or I could make it. Might be anything."
"Tell you something. Every critter you ever hear out here can sometimessound like an awful poor mimic of itself. Don't always hardly pay tolisten to them things too much."
"Only thing," Mart stuck to it, "these here all sound like just one owl,follering along. Gosh, Amos. I question if them things ever travel tenrods from home in their life."
"Yeah. I know.... Tell you what I'll do. I'll make 'em stop, being'sthey bother you." Amos pushed his lips out and sounded an owl cry--notthe cry of just any owl, but an exact repeat of the one they had justheard.
No more owls whickered that night.
As Mart let his pony drop back, it came almost to a stop, and herealized that he was checking it, unconsciously holding back from whatwas ahead. He wasn't afraid of the fighting--at least, he didn't thinkhe was afraid of it. He wanted more than anything in the world to cometo grips with the Comanches; of that he felt perfectly certain. What hefeared was that he might prove to be a coward. He tried to tell himselfthat he had no earthly reason to doubt himself, but it didn't work.Maybe he had no earthly reason, but he had a couple of unearthly ones,and he knew it. There were some strange quirks inside of him that hecouldn't understand at all.
One of them evidenced itself in the form of an eery nightmare that hehad had over and over during his childhood. It was a dream of utterdarkness, at first, though after a while the darkness seemed to reddenwith a dim, ugly glow, something like the redness you see through yourlids when you look at the sun with closed eyes. But the main thing wasthe sound--a high, snarling, wailing yammer of a great many voices,repeatedly receding, then rising and swelling again; as if the soundcame nearer in search of him, then went past, only to come back. Thesound filled him with a hideous, unexplained terror, though he neverknew what made it. It seemed the outcry of some weird semihumanhorde--perhaps of ghoulish and inimical dead who sought to consume him.This went on and on, while he tried to scream, but could not; until hewoke shivering miserably, but wet with sweat. He hadn't had thisnightmare in a long time, but sometimes an unnatural fear touched himwhen the coyotes sung in a certain way far off on the sand hills.
Another loony weakness had to do with a smell. This particularly worriedhim tonight, for the smell that could bring an unreasoning panic intohim was the faintly musky, old-leather-and-fur smell of Indians. Thequeer thing about this was that he felt no fear of the Indiansthemselves. He had seen a lot of them, and talked with them in thefragments of sign language he knew; he had even made swaps with some ofthem--mostly Caddoes, the far-wandering peddlers of the plains. But ifhe came upon a place where Indians had camped, or caught a faint scentof one down the wind, the same kind of panic could take hold of him ashe felt in the dream. If he failed to connect this with the massacre hehad survived, it was perhaps because he had no memory of the massacre.He had been carried asleep into the brush, where he had presentlywakened lost and alone in the dark; and that was all he knew about itfirsthand. Long after, when he had learned to talk, the disaster hadbeen explained to him, but only in a general way. The Edwardses hadnever been willing to talk about it much.
And there was one more thing that could cut his strings; it had takenhim unawares only two or three times in his life, yet worried him mostof all, because it seemed totally meaningless. He judged this thirdthing to be a pure insanity, and wouldn't let himself think about it atall, times it wasn't forced on him without warning.
So now he rode uneasily, dreading the possibility that he might go topieces in the clutch, and disgrace himself, in spite of all he could do.He began preaching to himself, inaudibly repeating over and overadmonishments that unconsciously imitated Biblical forms. "I will goamong them. I will prowl among them in the night. I will lay hands uponthem; I will destroy them. Though I be cut in a hundred pieces, I willstand against them...." It didn't seem to do any good.
He believed dawn could be no more than an hour off when Brad came up towhisper to him again. "I think we gone past."
Mart searched the east, fearing to see a graying in the sky too soon.But the night was still very dark, in spite of the dying moon. He couldfeel a faint warm breath of air upon his left cheek. "Wind's shifted tothe south," he answered. "What little there is. I think Amos changed hisline. Wants to come at 'em up wind."
"I know. I see that. But I think----"
Amos had stopped, and was holding up his hand. The six others closed upon him, stopped their horses and sat silent in their saddles. Martcouldn't hear anything except the loose animals behind, tearing at thegrass. Amos rode on, and they traveled another fifteen minutes before hestopped again.
This time, when the shuffle of their ponies' feet had died, a faintsound lay upon the night, hard to be sure of, and even harder tobelieve. What they were hearing was the trilling of frogs. Now, how didthey get way out here? They had to be the little green fellows that canlive anywhere the ground is a little damp, but even so--either they hadto shower down in the rare rains, like the old folks said, or else thismarsh had been here always, while the dry world built up around.
Amos spoke softly. "Spread out some. Keep in line, and guide on me. I'llcircle close in as I dare."
They spread out until they could just barely see each other, and rode atthe walk, abreast of Amos as he moved on. The frog song came closer, soclose that Mart feared they would trample on Indians before Amos turned.And now again, listening hard and straining their eyes, they rode for along time. The north star was on their right hand for a while. Then itwas behind them a long time. Then on their left, then ahead. At last itwas on their right again, and Amos stopped. They were back where theystarted. A faint gray was showing in the east; their timing would havebeen perfect, if only what they were after had been here. Mose Harperpushed his horse in close. "I rode through the ashes of a farm," he saidto Amos, "Did you know that? I thought you was hugging in awful close."
"Hush, now," Amos said. "I'm listening for something."
Mose dropped his tone. "Point is, them ashes showed no spark. Amos, themdevils been gone from here all night."
"Catch up the loose stock," Amos said. "Bring 'em in on short lead."
"Waste of time," Mose Harper argued. "The boys are tard, and theComanches is long gone."
"Get that loose stuff in," Amos ordered again, snapping it this time. "Iwant hobbles on 'em all--and soon!"
Mart was buckling a hobble on a pack mule when Brad dropped on one kneebeside him to fasten the other cuff. "Look out yonder," Brad whispered."When you get a chance."
Mart stood up, following Brad's eyes. A faint grayness had come evenlyover the prairie, as if rising from the ground, but nothing showed ashadow yet. Mart cupped his hands over his eyes for a moment, thenlooked again, trying to look beside, instead of straight at, anunevenness on the flat land that he could not identify. But now he couldnot see it at all.
He said, "For a minute I thought--but I guess not."
"I swear something showed itself. Then took down again."
"A wolf, maybe?"
"I don't know. Something funny about this, Mart. The Comanch' ain't beentraveling by night nor laying up by day. Not since the first hundredmiles."
Now followed an odd aimless period, while they waited, and the lightimperceptibly increased. "They're out there," Amos said at last."They're going to jump us. There's no doubt of it now." Nobody deniedit, or made any comment. Mart braced himself, checking his rifle againand again. "I got to hold fast," he kept telling himself. "I got to domy share of the work. No matter what." His ears were beginning to ring.The others stood about in loose meaningless positions, not huddled, notrestless, but motionless, and very watchful. When they spoke they heldtheir voices low.
Then Amos' rifle split the silence down the middle, so that behind laythe quiet night, and ahead rose their hour of violence. They saw whatAmos had shot at. A single file of ten Comanches on wiry buffalo ponieshad come into view at a thousand yards, materializing out of theseemingly flat earth. They came on at a light trot, ignoring Amos' shot.Zack Harper and Brad Mathison fired, but weren't good enough either atthe range.
"Throw them horses down!" Amos shouted. "Git your backs to the marsh andtie down!" He snubbed his pony's muzzle back close to the horn, pickedup the off fetlock, and threw the horse heavily. He caught one kickinghind foot, then the other, and pig-tied them across the fore cannons.Some of the others were doing the same thing, but Brad was in a fightwith his hotblood animal. It reared eleven feet tall, striking with forehoofs, trying to break away. "Kill that horse!" Amos yelled. ObedientlyBrad drew his six-gun, put a bullet into the animal's head under theear, and stepped from under as it came down.
Ed Newby still stood, his rifle resting ready to fire across the saddleof his standing horse. Mart lost his head enough to yell, "Can't youthrow him? Shall I shoot him, Ed?"
"Leave be! Let the Comanch' put him down."
Mart went to the aid of Charlie MacCorry, who had tied his own horsedown all right and was wrestling with a mule. They never did get all ofthe animals down, but Mart felt a whole lot better with something forhis hands to do. Three more of the Comanche single-file columns were insight now, widely spread, trotting well in hand. They had a ghostly lookat first, of the same color as the prairie, in the gray light. Thendetail picked out, and Mart saw the bows, lances bearing scalps likepennons, an occasional war shield carried for the medicine in itspainted symbols as much as for the bullet-deflecting function of itsiron-tough hide. Almost half the Comanches had rifles. Some trader,standing on his right to make a living, must have taken a handsomeprofit putting those in Comanche hands.
Amos' rifle banged again. One of the lead ponies swerved and ran wild asthe rider rolled off into the grass. Immediately, without any otherdiscernible signal, the Comanches leaned low on their ponies and came onat a hard run. Two or three more of the cowmen fired, but withouteffect.
At three hundred yards the four Comanche columns cut hard left, cominginto a single loose line that streamed across the front of the defense.The cowmen were as ready as they were going to be; they had gotthemselves into a ragged semicircle behind their tied-down horses, theirbacks to the water. Two or three sat casually on their down horses,estimating the enemy.
"May as well hold up," Mose Harper said. His tone was as pressureless asa crackerbox comment. "They'll swing plenty close, before they're done."
"I count thirty-seven," Ed Newby said. He was still on his feet behindhis standing horse.
Amos said, "I got me a scalp out there, when I git time to take it."
"Providin'," Mose Harper tried to sound jocular, "they don't leave yourcarcass here in the dirt."
"I come here to leave Indian carcasses in the dirt. I ain't made nochange of plan."
They could see the Comanche war paint now as the warriors rode in plainsight across their front. Faces and naked bodies were striped andsplotched in combinations of white, red, and yellow; but whatever thepattern, it was always pointed up with heavy accents of black, theComanche color for war, for battle, and for death. Each warrior alwayspainted up the same, but it was little use memorizing the paintpatterns, because you never saw an Indian in war paint except when youcouldn't lay hands on him. No use remembering the medicine shields,either, for these, treated as sacred, were never out of their deerskincases until the moment of battle. Besides paint the Comanches worebreech clouts and moccasins; a few had horn or bear-claw headdresses.But these were young warriors, without the great eagle-feather warbonnets that were the pride of old war chiefs, who had tallied scores ofcoups. The ponies had their tails tied up, and were ridden bareback,guided by a single jaw rein.
Zack Harper said, "Ain't that big one Buffalo Hump?"
"No-that-ain't-Buffler-Hump," his father squelched him. "Don't talk sodamn much."
The Comanche leader turned again and circled in. He brought his warriorspast the defenders within fifty yards, ponies loosely spaced, racingfull out. Suddenly, from every Comanche throat burst the screaming warcry; and Mart was paralyzed by the impact of that sound, stunned andsickened as by a blow in the belly with a rock. The war cries rose in ahigh unearthly yammering, wailing and snarling, piercing to his backboneto cut off every nerve he had. It was not exactly the eery sound of histerror-dream, but it was the spirit of that sound, the essence of itsmeaning. The muscles of his shoulders clenched as if turned to stone,and his hands so vised upon his rifle that it rattled, useless, againstthe saddle upon which it rested. And at the same time every other musclein his body went limp and helpless.
Amos spoke into his ear, his low tone heavy with authority butunexcited. "Leave your shoulders go loose. Make your shoulders slack,and your hands will take care of theirselves. Now help me git a couple!"
That worked. All the rifles were sounding now from behind the tied-downhorses. Mart breathed again, picked a target, and took aim. One Comancheafter another was dropping from sight behind his pony as he cameopposite the waiting rifles; they went down in order, like ducks in ashooting gallery, shamming a slaughter that wasn't happening. EachComanche hung by one heel and a loop of mane on the far side of his ponyand fired under the neck, offering only one arm and part of a paintedface for target. A pony somersaulted, its rider springing clear unhurt,as Mart fired.
The circling Comanches kept up a continuous firing, each warriorreloading as he swung away, then coming past to fire again. This was thefamous Comanche wheel, moving closer with every turn, chewing into thedefense like a racing grindstone, yet never committing its force beyondpossibility of a quick withdrawal. Bullets buzzed over, whispering"Cousin," or howled in ricochet from dust-spouts short of the defenders.A lot of whistling noises were arrows going over. Zack Harper's horsescreamed, then went into a heavy continuous groaning.
Another Indian pony tumbled end over end; that was Amos' shot. The ridertook cover behind his dead pony before he could be killed. Here andthere another pony jerked, faltered, then ran on. A single bullet has tobe closely placed to bring a horse down clean.
Amos said loud through his teeth, "The horses, you fools! Get themhorses!" Another Comanche pony slid on its knees and stayed down, butits rider got behind it without hurt.
Ed Newby was firing carefully and unhurriedly across his standing horse.The buzzbees made the horse switch its tail, but it stood. Ed said, "Yougot to get the shoulder. No good to gut-shot' em. You fellers ain'tleading enough." He fired again, and a Comanche dropped from behind hisrunning horse with his brains blown out. It wasn't the shot Ed wastrying to make, but he said, "See how easy?"
Fifty yards out in front of him Mart Pauley saw a rifle snake across thequarters of a fallen pony. A horn headdress rose cautiously, and therifle swung to look Mart square in the eye. He took a snap shot, aimingbetween the horns, which disappeared, and the enemy rifle slid unfiredinto the short grass.
After that there was a letup, while the Comanches broke circle and drewoff. Out in front of the cowmen lay three downed ponies, two deadComanches, and two live ones, safe and dangerous behind their fallenhorses. Amos was swearing softly and steadily to himself. CharlieMacCorry said he thought he goosed one of them up a little bit, maybe,but didn't believe he convinced him.
"Good God almighty," Brad Mathison broke out, "there's got to be someway to do this!"
Mose Harper scratched his beard and said he thought they done just finethat trip. "Oncet when I was a little shaver, with my pa's bull wagons,a couple hundred of 'em circled us all day long. We never did get 'emwhittled down very much. They just fin'y went away.... You glued tothe ground, Zack? Take care that horse!"
Zack got up and took a look at his wounded horse, but didn't seem toknow what to do. He stood staring at it, until his father walked acrossand shot it.
Mart said to Amos. "Tell me one thing. Was they hollering like that thetime they killed my folks?"
Amos seemed to have to think that over. "I wasn't there," he said atlast. "I suppose so. Hard to get used to, ain't it?"
"I don't know," Mart said shakily, "if I'll ever be able to get used toit."
Amos looked at him oddly for some moments. "Don't you let it stop you,"he said.
"It won't stop me."
They came on again, and this time they swept past at no more than tenyards. A number of the wounded Comanche ponies lagged back to the tailof the line, their riders saving them for the final spurt, but they werestill in action. The Comanches made this run in close bunches; theattack became a smother of confusion. Both lead and arrows poured fastinto the cowmen's position.
Zack whimpered, "My God--there's a million of 'em!" and ducked downbehind his dead horse.
"Git your damn head up!" Mose yelled at his son. "Fire into 'em!" Zackraised up and went to fighting again.
Sometime during this run Ed Newby's horse fell, pinning Ed under it, butthey had no time to go to him while this burst of the attack continued.An unhorsed Comanche came screaming at Amos with clubbed rifle, and sofound his finish. Another stopped at least five bullets as a compadretried to rescue him in a flying pick-up. There should have been another;a third pony was down out in front of them, but nobody knew where therider had got to. This time as they finished the run the Comanchespulled off again to talk it over.
All choices lay with the Comanches for the time being. The cowmen gottheir backs into the job of getting nine hundred pounds of horse off EdNewby. Mose Harper said, "How come you let him catch you, Ed?"
Ed Newby answered through set teeth. "They got my leg--just as he comedown--"
Ed's leg was not only bullet-broken, but had doubled under him, and gotsmashed again by the killed horse. Amos put the shaft of an arrowbetween Ed's teeth, and the arrowwood splintered as two men put theirweight into pulling the leg straight.
A party of a dozen Comanches, mounted on the fastest of the Indianponies, split off from the main bunch and circled out for still anothersweep.
"Hold your fire," Amos ordered. "You hear me? Take cover--but let 'embe!"
Zack Harper, who had fought none too well, chose this moment to harden."Hold hell! I aim to get me another!"
"You fire and I'll kill you," Amos promised him; and Zack put his rifledown.
Most took to the ground as the Comanches swept past once more, but Amosstood up, watching from under his heavy brows, like a staring ox. TheIndians did not attack. They picked up their dismounted and their dead;then they were gone.
"Get them horses up!" Amos loosed the pigging string and got his ownhorse to its feet.
"They'll scatter now," Mose Harper said.
"Not till they come up with their horse herd, they won't!"
"Somebody's got to stay with Ed," Mose reminded them. "I suppose I'm theone to do that--old crip that I be. But some of them Comanch' mightcircle back. You'll have to leave Zack with me."
"That's all right."
"And I need one fast man on a good horse to get me help. I can't movehim. Not with what we got here."
"We all ought to be back," Amos objected, "in a couple of days."
"Fellers follering Comanches don't necessarily ever come back. I got tohave either Brad Mathison or Charlie MacCorry."
"You get Mathison, then," Charlie said. "I'm going on."
Brad whirled on Charlie in an unexpected blast of temper. "There's aquick way to decide it," he said, and stood braced, his open hand readyabove his holster.
Charlie MacCorry looked Brad in the eye as he spat at Brad's boots andmissed. But after that he turned away.
So three rode on, following a plume of dust already distant upon theprairie. "We'll have the answer soon," Amos promised. "Soon. We don'tdast let 'em lose us now."
Mart Pauley was silent. He didn't want to ask him what three riderscould do when they caught up with the Comanches. He was afraid Amosdidn't know.
Chapter 9
They kept the feather of dust in sight all day, but in the morning,after a night camp without water, they failed to pick it up. The trailof the Comanche war party still led westward, broad and plain, marked atintervals with the carcasses of buffalo ponies wounded at the Cat-tails.They pushed on, getting all they could out of their horses.
This day, the second after the Fight at the Cat-tails, became thestrangest day of the pursuit before it was done, because of somethingunexplained that happened during a period while they were separated.
A line of low hills, many hours away beyond the plain, began to shove upfrom the horizon as they rode. After a while they knew the Comanchesthey followed were already into that broken country where pursuit wouldbe slower and more treacherous than before.
"Sometimes it seems to me," Amos said, "them Comanches fly with theirelbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse ahorse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying yoursaddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and ridesit twenty miles more. Then eats it."
"Don't we have any chance at all?"
"Yes.... We got a chance." Amos went through the motions of spitting,with no moisture in his mouth to spit. "And I'll tell you what it be. AnIndian will chase a thing until he thinks he's chased it enough. Then hequits. So the same when he runs. After while he figures we must havequit, and he starts to loaf. Seemingly he never learns there's such athing as a critter that might just keep coming on."
As he looked at Amos, sitting his saddle like a great lump of rock--yeta lump that was somehow of one piece with the horse--Mart Pauley waswilling to believe that to have Amos following you could be a deadlything with no end to it, ever, until he was dead.
"If only they stay bunched," Amos finished, and it was a prayer; "ifonly they don't split and scatter... we'll come up to 'em. We'rebound to come up."
Late in the morning they came to a shallow sink, where a number ofposthole wells had been freshly dug among the dry reeds. Here the trailof the main horse herd freshened, and they found the bones of an eatenhorse, polished shiny in a night by the wolves. And there was the Indiansmell, giving Mart a senseless dread to fight off during their firstminutes in this place.
"Here's where the rest of 'em was all day yesterday," Amos said when hehad wet his mouth; "the horse guards, and the stole horses, and maybesome crips Henry shot up. And our people--if they're still alive."
Brad Mathison was prone at a pothole, dipping water into himself withhis tin cup, but he dropped the cup to come up with a snap. As he spoke,Mart Pauley heard the same soft tones Brad's father used when he nearedan end of words. "I've heard thee say that times enough," Brad said.
"What?" Amos asked, astonished.
"Maybe she's dead," Brad said, his bloodshot blue eyes burning steadilyinto Amos' face. "Maybe they're both dead. But if I hear it from theeagain, thee has chosen me--so help me God!"
Amos stared at Brad mildly, and when he spoke again it was to MartPauley. "They've took an awful big lead. Them we fought at the Cat-tailsmust have got here early last night."
"And the whole bunch pulled out the same hour," Mart finished it.
It meant they were nine or ten hours back--and every one of theComanches was now riding a rested animal. Only one answer to that--suchas it was: They had to rest their own horses, whether they could sparetime for it or not. They spent an hour dipping water into their hats;the ponies could not reach the little water in the bottom of theposthole wells. When one hole after another had been dipped dry theycould only wait for the slow seepage to bring in another cupful, whilethe horses stood by. After that they took yet another hour to let thehorses crop the scant bunch grass, helping them by piling grass they cutwith their knives. A great amount of this work gained only the slightestadvantage, but none of them begrudged it.
Then, some hours beyond the posthole wells, they came to a vast sheet ofrock, as flat and naked as it had been laid down when the world wasmade. Here the trail ended, for unshod hoofs left no mark on the barrenstone. Amos remembered this reef in the plain. He believed it to beabout four miles across by maybe eight or nine miles long, as nearly ashe could recall. All they could do was split up and circle the wholeledge to find where the trail came off the rock.
Mart Pauley, whose horse seemed the worst beat-out, was sent straightacross. On the far side he was to wait, grazing within sight of theledge, until one of the others came around to him; then both were toride to meet the third.
Thus they separated. It was while they were apart, each rider alone withhis tiring horse, that some strange thing happened to Amos, so that hebecame a mystery in himself throughout their last twenty-four hourstogether.
Brad Mathison was first to get around the rock sheet to where MartPauley was grazing his horse. Mart had been there many hours, yet theyrode south a long way before they sighted Amos, waiting for them far outon the plain.
"Hasn't made much distance, has he?" Brad commented.
"Maybe the rock slick stretches a far piece down this way."
"Don't look like it to me."
Mart didn't say anything more. He could see for himself that the reefended in a couple of miles.
Amos pointed to a far-off landmark as they came up. "The trail cutsaround that hump," he said, and led the way. The trail was where Amoshad said it would be, a great welter of horse prints already blurred bythe wind. But no other horse had been along here since the Comanchespassed long before.
"Kind of thought to see your tracks here," Brad said.
"Didn't come this far."
Then where the hell had he been all this time? If it had been LijePowers, Mart would have known he had sneaked himself a nap. "You lost abed blanket," Mart noticed.
"Slipped out of the strings somewhere. I sure ain't going back for itnow." Amos was speaking too carefully. He put Mart in mind of a man halfstopped in a fist fight, making out he was unhurt so his opponentwouldn't know, and finish him.
"You feel all right?" he asked Amos.
"Sure. I feel fine." Amos forced a smile, and this was a mistake, for hedidn't look to be smiling. He looked as if he had been kicked in theface. Mart tried to think of an excuse to lay a hand on him, to see ifhe had a fever; but before he could think of anything Amos took off hishat and wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. That settled that.A man doesn't sweat with the fever on him.
"You look like you et something," Mart said.
"Don't know what it could have been. Oh, I did come on three-fourrattlesnakes." Seemingly the thought made Amos hungry. He got out a leafof jerky, and tore strips from it with his teeth.
"You sure you feel--"
Amos blew up, and yelled at him. "I'm all right, I tell you!" He quirtedhis horse, and loped out ahead.
They off-saddled in the shelter of the hump. A northering wind came upwhen the sun was gone; its bite reminded them that they had been ridingdeep into the fall of the year. They huddled against their saddles, andchewed corn meal. Brad walked across and stood over Amos. He spokereasonably.
"Looks like you ought to tell us, Mr. Edwards." He waited, but Amosdidn't answer him. "Something happened while you was gone from us today.Was you laid for? We didn't hear no guns, but... Be you hiding anarrow hole from us by any chance?"
"No," Amos said. "There wasn't nothing like that."
Brad went back to his saddle and sat down. Mart laid his bedroll flat,hanging on by the upwind edge, and rolled himself up in it, coming outso that his head was on the saddle.
"A man has to learn to forgive himself," Amos said, his Voiceunnaturally gentle. He seemed to be talking to Brad Mathison. "Or hecan't stand to live. It so happens we be Texans. We took a reachin'holt, way far out, past where any man has right or reason to hold on. Orif we didn't, our folks did, so we can't leave off, without giving upthat they were fools, wasting their lives, and wasted in the way theydied."
The chill striking up through Mart's blankets made him homesick for theEdwards' kitchen, like it was on winter nights, all warm and light, andfull of good smells, like baking bread. And their people--Mart had takenthem for granted, largely; just a family, people living alone together,such as you never thought about, especially, unless you got mad at them.He had never known they were dear to him until the whole thing wasbusted up forever. He wished Amos would shut up.
"This is a rough country," Amos was saying. "It's a country knows how toscour a human man right off the face of itself. A Texan is nothing but ahuman man way out on a limb. This year, and next year, and maybe for ahundred more. But I don't think it'll be forever. Someday this countrywill be a fine good place to be. Maybe it needs our bones in the groundbefore that time can come."
Mart was thinking of Laurie now. He saw her in a bright warm kitchenlike the Edwards', and he thought how wonderful it would be living inthe same house with Laurie, in the same bed. But he was on the emptyprairie without any fire--and he had bedded himself on a sharp rock, henoticed now.
"We've come on a year when things go hard," Amos talked on. "We get thistough combing over because we're Texans. But the feeling we get that wefail, and judge wrong, and go down in guilt and shame--that's because webe human men. So try to remember one thing. It wasn't your fault, nomatter how it looks. You got let in for this just by being born. Maybethere never is any way out of it once you're born a human man, exceptstraight across the coals of hell."
Mart rolled out to move his bed. He didn't really need that rock in hisribs all night. Brad Mathison got up, moved out of Amos' line of sight,and beckoned Mart with his head. Mart put his saddle on his bed, so itwouldn't blow away, and walked out a ways with Brad on the dark prairie.
"Mart," Brad said when they were out of hearing, "the old coot is justas crazy as a bedbug fell in the rum."
"Sure sounds so. What in all hell you think happened?"
"God knows. Maybe nothing at all. Might be he just plainly cracked. Hewas wandering around without rhyme or principle when we come on himtoday."
"I know."
"This puts it up to you and me," Brad said. "You see that, don't you? Wemay be closer the end than you think."
"What you want to do?"
"My horse is standing up best. Tomorrow I'll start before light, andscout on out far as I can reach. You come on as you can."
"My horse got a rest today," Mart began.
"Keep saving him. You'll have to take forward when mine gives down."
"All right." Mart judged that tomorrow was going to be a hard day tolive far behind on a failing pony. Like Brad, he had a feeling they werea whole lot closer to the Comanches than they had any real reason tobelieve.
They turned in again. Though they couldn't know it, until they heardabout it a long time after, that was the night Ed Newby came out of hisdelirium, raised himself for a long look at his smashed leg, then put abullet in his brain.
Chapter 10
By daylight Brad Mathison was an hour gone. Mart hadn't known how Amoswould take it, but there was no fuss at all. They rode on in silence,crossing chains of low hills, with dry valleys between; they werebeginning to find a little timber, willow and cottonwood mostly alongthe dusty streambeds. They were badly in need of water again; they wouldhave to dig for it soon. All day long the big tracks of Brad Mathison'shorse led on, on top of the many-horse trample left by the Comancheherd; but he was stirring no dust, and they could only guess how far hemust be ahead.
Toward sundown Amos must have begun to worry about him, for he sent Marton a long swing to the north, where a line of sand hills offered highground, to see what he could see. He failed to make out any sign ofBrad; but, while he was in the hills alone, the third weird thing thatcould unstring him set itself in front of him again. He had a right tobe nerve-raw at this point, perhaps; the vast emptiness of the plainshad taken on a haunted, evilly enchanted feel since the massacre. And ofcourse they were on strange ground now, where all things seemed faintlyodd and wrong, because unfamiliar....
He had dismounted near the top of a broken swell, led his horse aroundit to get a distant view without showing himself against the sky. Hewalked around a ragged shoulder--and suddenly froze at sight of whatstood on the crest beyond. It was nothing but a juniper stump; not foran instant did he mistake it for anything else. But it was in the formof similar stumps he had seen two or three times before in his life, andalways with the same unexplainable effect. The twisted remains of thejuniper, blackened and sand-scoured, had vaguely the shape of a man, orthe withered corpse of a man; one arm seemed upraised in a writhinggesture of agony, or perhaps of warning. But nothing about it explainedthe awful sinking of the heart, the terrible sense of inevitable doom,that overpowered him each of the times he encountered this shape.
An Indian would have turned back, giving up whatever he was about; forhe would have known the thing for a medicine tree with a powerful spiritin it, either telling him of a doom or placing a doom upon him. And Marthimself more or less believed that the thing was some kind of a sign. Anevil prophecy is always fulfilled, if you put no time limit upon it;fulfilled quite readily, too, if you are a child counting littlemisfortunes as disasters. So Mart had the impression that thismysteriously upsetting kind of an encounter had always been followed bysome dreadful, unforeseeable thing.
He regarded himself as entirely mature now, and was convinced that to befilled with cowardice by the sight of a dead tree was a silly andunworthy thing. He supposed he ought to go and uproot that desolatetwist of wood, or whittle it down, and so master the thing forever. Buteven to move toward it was somehow impossible to him, to a degree thatsuch a move was not even thinkable. He returned to Amos feeling shakenand sickish, unstrung as much by doubt of his own soundness as by thesense of evil prophecy itself.
The sun was setting when they saw Brad again. He came pouring off a longhill at four miles, raising a reckless dust. "I saw her!" he yelled, andhauled up sliding. "I saw Lucy!"
"How far?"
"They're camped by a running crick--they got fires going--look, you cansee the smoke!" A thin haze lay flat in the quiet air above the nextline of hills.
"Ought to be the Warrior River," Amos said. "Water in it, huh?"
"Didn't you hear what I said?" Brad shouted. "I tell you I saw Lucy--Isaw her walking through the camp----"
Amos' tone was bleak. "How far off was you?"
"Not over seventy rod. I bellied up a ridge this side the river, andthey was right below me!"
"Did you see Debbie?" Mart got in.
"No, but--they got a bunch of baggage; she might be asleep amongst that.I counted fifty-one Comanch'-- What you unsaddling for?"
"Good a place as any," Amos said. "Can't risk no more dust like you justnow kicked up. Come dark we'll work south, and water a few miles below.We can take our time."
"Time?"
"They're making it easy for us. Must think they turned us back at theCat-tails, and don't have to split up. All we got to do is foller totheir village----"
"Village? You gone out of your mind?"
"Let 'em get back to their old chiefs and their squaws. The old chiefshave gone cagy; a village of families can't run like a war party can.For all they know----"
"Look--look----" Brad hunted desperately for words that would fetch Amosback to reality. "Lucy's there! I saw her--can't you hear? We got to gether out of there!"
"Brad," Amos said, "I want to know what you saw in that camp you thoughtwas Lucy."
"I keep telling you I saw her walk----"
"I heard you!" Amos' voice rose and crackled this time. "What did yousee walk? Could you see her yellow hair?"
"She had a shawl on her head. But----"
"She ain't there, Brad."
"God damn it, I tell you, I'd know her out of a million----"
"You saw a buck in a woman's dress," Amos said. "They're game to putanything on 'em. You know that."
Brad's sun-punished blue eyes blazed up as they had at the potholewater, and his tone went soft again. "Thee lie," he said. "I've toldthee afore----"
"But there's something I ain't told you," Amos said. "I found Lucyyesterday. I buried her in my own saddle blanket. With my own hands, bythe rock. I thought best to keep it from you long's I could."
The blood drained from Brad's face, and at first he could not speak.Then he stammered, "Did they--was she----"
"Shut up!" Amos yelled at him. "Never ask me what more I seen!"
Brad stood as if knocked out for half a minute more; then he turned tohis horse, stiffly, as if he didn't trust his legs too well, and hetightened his cinch.
Amos said, "Get hold of yourself! Grab him, Mart!" Brad stepped into thesaddle, and the gravel jumped from the hoofs of his horse. He leveledout down the Comanche trail again, running his horse as if he wouldnever need it again.
"Go after him! You can handle him better than me."
Mart Pauley had pulled his saddle, vaulted bareback onto the sweatywithers, and in ten jumps opened up all the speed his beat-out horse hadleft. He gained no ground on Brad, though he used up what horse he hadin trying to. He was chasing the better horse--and the better rider,too, Mart supposed. They weighed about the same, and both had been onhorses before they could walk. Some small magic that could not be taughtor learned, but had been born into Brad's muscles, was what made thedifference. Mart was three furlongs back as Brad sifted into the lowhills.
Up the slopes Mart followed, around a knob, and onto the down slope,spurring his wheezing horse at every jump. From here he could see thelast little ridge, below and beyond as Brad had described it, with thesmoke of Comanche camp-fires plain above it. Mart's horse went to itsknees as he jumped it into a steep ravine, but he was able to drag itup.
Near the mouth of the ravine he found Brad's horse tied to a pin-oakscrub; he passed it, and rode on into the open, full stretch. Far up thelast ridge he saw Brad climbing strongly. He looked back over hisshoulder, watching Mart without slowing his pace. Mart charged through adry tributary of the Warrior and up the ridge, his horse laboring gamelyas it fought the slope. Brad stopped just short of the crest, and Martsaw him tilt his canteen skyward; he drained it unhurriedly, and threwit away. He was already on his belly at the crest as Mart dropped fromhis horse and scrambled on all fours to his side.
"God damn it, Brad, what you doing?"
"Get the hell out of here. You ain't wanted."
Down below, at perhaps four hundred yards, half a hundred Comanchesidled about their business. They had some piled mule packs, a lot ofsmall fires in shallow fire holes, and parts of at least a dozen buffalodown there. The big horse herd grazed unguarded beyond. Most of thebucks were throwing chunks of meat into the fires, to be snatched outand bolted as soon as the meat blackened on the outside. No sign ofpickets. The Comanches relied for safety upon their horsemanship and thegreat empty distances of the prairies. They didn't seem to know what apicket was.
Mart couldn't see any sign of Debbie. And now he heard Brad chamber acartridge.
"You'll get Debbie killed, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Get out of here, I said!" Brad had his cheek on the stock; he wasaiming into the Comanche camp. He took a deep breath, let it all out,and lay inert, waiting for his head to steady for the squeeze. Martgrabbed the rifle, and wrenched it out of line.
They fought for possession, rolling and sliding down the slope. Bradrammed a knee into Mart's belly, twisted the rifle from his hands, andbroke free. Mart came to his feet before Brad, and dived to pin himdown. Brad braced himself on one hand, and with the other swung therifle by the grip of the stock. Blood jumped from the side of Mart'shead as the barrel struck. He fell backward, end over end; then wentlimp, rolled slackly down the hill, and lay still where he came to rest.
Brad swore softly as he settled himself into firing position again. Thenhe changed his mind and trotted northward, just behind the crest of theridge.
Mart came to slowly, without memory or any idea of where he was. Sightdid not return to him at once. His hands groped, and found the rockyground on which he lay; and next he recognized a persistent rattle ofgunfire and the high snarling of Comanche war cries, seemingly somedistance away. His hands went to his head, and he felt clotting blood.He reckoned he had got shot in the head, and was blind, and panic tookhim. He struggled up, floundered a few yards without any sense ofbalance, and fell into a dry wash. The fall knocked the wind out of him,and when he had got his breath back his mind had cleared enough so thathe lay still.
Some part of his sight was coming back by the time he heard a softfootstep upon sand. He could see a shadowy shape above him, swimming ina general blur. He played possum, staring straight up with unwinkingeyes, waiting to lose his scalp.
"Can you hear me, Mart?" Amos said.
He knew Amos dropped to his knees beside him. "I got a bullet in mybrain," Mart said. "I'm blind."
Amos struck a match and passed it before one eye and then the other.Mart blinked and rolled his head to the side. "You're all right," Amossaid. "Hit your head, that's all. Lie still till I get back!" He left,running.
Amos was gone a long time. The riflery and the war cries stopped, andthe prairie became deathly still. For a while Mart believed he couldsense a tremor in the ground that might mean the movement of manyhorses; then this faded, and the night chill began to work upward out ofthe ground. But Mart was able to see the winking of the first stars whenhe heard Amos coming back.
"You look all right to me," Amos said.
"Where's Brad?"
Amos was slow in answering. "Brad fit him a one-man war," he said atlast. "He skirmished 'em from the woods down yonder. Now, why fromthere? Was he trying to lead them off you?"
"I don't know."
"Wha'd you do? Get throwed?"
"I guess."
"Comanches took him for a Ranger company, seemingly. They're long gone.Only they took time to finish him first."
"Was he scalped?"
"Now, what do you think?"
After he had found Mart, Amos had backed off behind a hill and built asignal fire. He slung creosote bush on it, raised a good smoke, and tookhis time sending puff messages with his saddle blanket.
"Messages to who?"
"Nobody, damn it. No message, either, rightly--just a lot ofdifferent-size hunks of smoke. Comanches couldn't read it, because itdidn't say nothing. So they upped stakes and rode. It's all saved ourhair, once they was stirred up."
Mart said, "We better go bury Brad."
"I done that already." Then Amos added one sad, sinister thing. "All ofhim I could find."
Mart's horse had run off with the Comanche ponies, but they still hadBrad's horse and Amos'. And the Comanches had left them plenty ofbuffalo meat. Amos dug a fire pit, narrow but as deep as he could reach,in the manner of the Wichitas. From the bottom of this, his cooking firecould reflect only upon its own smoke, and he didn't put on stuff thatmade any. When Mart had filled up on buffalo meat he turned wrong sideout, but an hour later he tried again, and this time it stuck.
"Feel like you'll be able to ride come daylight?"
"Sure I'll ride."
"I don't believe we got far to go," Amos said. "The Comanch' been actinglike they're close to home. We'll come up to their village soon. Maybetomorrow."
Mart felt much better now. "Tomorrow," he repeated.
Chapter 11
Tomorrow came and went, and showed them they were wrong. Now at last theComanche war party split up, and little groups carrying two or threehorses to the man ranged off in ten directions. Amos and Mart picked onetrail at random and followed it with all tenacity as it turned anddoubled, leading them in far futile ways. They lost it on rock ledges,in running water, and in blown sand, but always found it again, and kepton.
Another month passed before all trails became one, and the pairedscratches of many travois showed they were on the track of the mainvillage at last. They followed it northeast, gaining ground fast as thetrail grew fresh.
"Tomorrow," Amos said once more. "All hell can't keep them ahead of ustomorrow."
That night it snowed.
By morning the prairie was a vast white blank; and every day for a weekmore snow fell. They made some wide, reaching casts and guesses, but theplains were empty. One day they pushed their fading horses in a two-hourclimb, toiling through drifts to the top of a towering butte. At itscraggy lip they set their gaunted horses in silence, while their eyesswept the plain for a long time. The sky was dark that day, but near theground the air was clear; they could see about as far as a man couldride through that clogging snow in a week. Neither found anything tosay, for they knew they were done. Mart had not wept since the night ofthe massacre. Then he had suffered a blinding shock, and aninconsolable, aching grief so great he had never expected to cry again.But now as he faced the emptiness of a world that was supposed to haveDebbie in it, yet was blank to its farthest horizons, his throat beganto knot and hurt. He faced away to hide from Amos the tears he could nolonger hold back; and soon after that he started his horse slowly backdown that long, long slope, lest Amos hear the convulsive jerking of hisbreath and the snuffling of tears that ran down inside his nose.
They made an early, snowbound camp, with no call to hurry any more orstretch the short days. "This don't change anything," Amos saiddoggedly. "Not in the long run. If she's alive, she's safe by now, andthey've kept her to raise. They do that time and again with a littlechild small enough to be raised their own way. So... we'll find themin the end; I promise you that. By the Almighty God, I promise you that!We'll catch up to 'em, just as sure as the turning of the earth!"
But now they had to start all over again in another way.
What Mart had noticed was that Amos always spoke of catching up to"them"--never of finding "her." And the cold, banked fires behind Amos'eyes were manifestly the lights of hatred, not of concern for a lostlittle girl. He wondered uneasily if there might not be a peculiardanger in this. He believed now that Amos, in certain moods, would ridepast the child, and let her be lost to them if he saw a chance to killComanches.
They were freezing miserably in the lightweight clothes in which theyhad started out. Their horses were ribby shells, and they were out offlour, grease, block matches, coffee, and salt. Even their ammunitionwas running dangerously low. They were always having to shoot somethingto eat--a scrawny antelope, a jackrabbit all bones and fur; nothing theyshot seemed to last all day. And it took two cartridges to light afire--one to yield a pinch of powder to be mixed with tinder, a secondto fire into the tinder, lighting it by gun flash. They needed to gohome and start again, but they could not; there was much they could do,and must do, before they took time to go back.
President Grant had given the Society of Friends full charge of theIndian Agencies for the Wild Tribes, which in the Southwest Plainsincluded Indians speaking more than twenty languages. Important instrength or activity were the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Wichitas; theOsages, a splinter of the Sioux; and, especially, that most murderousand irreconcilable alliance of all, the Comanches and Kiowas. The gentleand unrequiring administration of the Quakers very quickly attractedconsiderable numbers of these to the Agencies as winter closed. Besidesgovernment handouts, this got them a snow-weather amnesty from thetrouble stirred up by their summer raids. Traders, Indian Agents, andarmy officers ransomed captive white children from winter peace-loverslike these every year. Failing this kind of good fortune, the situationstill offered the best of opportunities to watch, to listen, and tolearn.
Mart and Amos swung south to Fort Concho, where they re-outfitted andtraded for fresh horses, taking a bad beating because of the poor shapetheir own were in. Amos seemed to have adequate money with him. Mart hadnever known how much money was kept, variously hidden, around theEdwards' place, but during the last two or three years it had probablybeen a lot; and naturally Amos wouldn't have left any of it in the emptyhouse. The two riders headed up the north fork of the Butterfield Trail,laid out to provide at least one way to El Paso, but abandoned evenbefore the war. Fort Phanton Hill, Fort Griffin, and Fort Belknap--setup to watch the Tonkawas--were in ruins, but still garrisoned by worriedlittle detachments. At these places, and wherever they went, they toldtheir story, pessimistically convinced that information was best come byin unlikely ways, being seldom found where you would reasonably expectit. Amos was posting a reward of a thousand dollars for any clue thatwould lead to the recovery of Debbie alive. Mart supposed it could bepaid out of the family cattle, or something, if the great day ever camewhen it would be owed.
Laboriously, sweatily, night after night, Mart worked on a letter to theMathison family, to tell them of the death of Brad and the manner inwhich he died. For a while he tried to tell the facts in a way thatwouldn't make his own part in it look too futile. But he believed thathe had failed, perhaps unforgivably, at the Warrior River, and that ifhe had been any good, Brad would still be alive. So in the end he gaveup trying to fix any part of it up, and just told it the way ithappened. He finally got the letter "posted" at Fort Richardson--whichmeant he left it there for some random rider to carry, if any shouldhappen to be going the right way.
At Fort Richardson they struck north and west, clean out of the State ofTexas. Deep in Indian Territory they made Camp Wichita, which they weresurprised to find renamed Fort Sill--still a bunch of shacks but alreadyheavily garrisoned. They stayed two weeks; then pushed northward again,far beyond Sill to the Anadarko Agency and Old Fort Cobb. By a thousandquestions, by walking boldly through the far-strung-out camps of athousand savages, by piecing together faint implications and guesses,they were trying to find out from what band of Comanches the raidersmust have come. But nobody seemed to know much about Comanches--not evenhow many there were, or how divided. The military at Fort Sill seemed tothink there were eight thousand Comanches; the Quaker Agents believedthere to be no more than six thousand; some of the old traders believedthere to be at least twelve thousand. And so with the bands: there wereseven Comanche bands, there were sixteen, there were eleven. When theycounted up the names of all the bands and villages they had heard of,the total came to more than thirty.
But none of this proved anything. The Comanches had a custom thatforbade speaking the name of a dead person; if a chief died who hadgiven himself the name of his band, the whole outfit had to have a newname. So sometimes a single village had a new name every year, while allthe old names still lived on in the speech of Comanches and others whohad not got the word. They found reason to think that the River PonyComanches were the same as the Parka-nowm, or Waterhole People; and theWidyew, Kitsa-Kahna, Titcha-kenna, and Yapa-eena were probably all namesfor the Root-eaters, or Yampareka. For a time they heard the Way-ah-nay(Hill Falls Down) Band talked about as if it were comparable to thePennetecka (Honey-eaters), which some said included six thousandComanches by itself. And later they discovered that the Way-ah-nay Bandwas nothing but six or seven families living under a cut-bank.
The Comanches themselves seemed unable, or perhaps unwilling, to explainthemselves any more exactly. Various groups had different names for thesame village or band. They never used the name "Comanche" amongthemselves. That name was like the word "squaw"--a sound some earlywhite man thought he heard an Indian make once back in Massachusetts;the only Indians who understood it were those who spoke English.Comanches called themselves "Nemmenna," which meant "The People." Manytribes, such as the Navajo and Cheyenne, had names meaning the samething. So the Comanches considered themselves to be the total populationby simple definition. Nothing else existed but various kinds of enemieswhich The People had to get rid of. They were working on it now.
Mart and Amos did learn a few things from the Comanches, mostly in theway of tricks for survival. They saved themselves from frozen feet bycopying the Comanche snow boots, which were knee length and made ofbuffalo hide with the fur turned inside. And now they always carriedsmall doeskin pouches of tinder, made of punkwood scrapings and fatdrippings--or lint and kerosene, which worked even better, when they hadit. This stuff could be lighted by boring into dry-rotted wood with aspinning stick. But what they did not learn of, and did not recognizeuntil long after, was the mortal danger that had hung over them as theywalked through those Comanche camps--such danger as turned their belliescold, later, when they knew enough to understand it.
Christmas came and went unnoticed, for they spent it in the saddle; theywere into another year. Mart was haunted by no more crooked stumps inthis period, and the terror-dream did not return. The pain of grief wasno longer ever-present; he was beginning to accept that the people towhom he had been nearest were not in the world any more, except,perhaps, for the lost little child who was their reason for being outhere. But they were baffled and all but discouraged, as well as raggedand winter-gaunted, by the time they headed their horses toward home,nearly three hundred miles away.
Night was coming on as they raised the lights of the Mathison ranch twohours away. The sunset died, and a dark haze walled the horizon, makingthe snow-covered land lighter than the sky. The far-seen lights of theranch house held their warmest promise in this hour, while you couldstill see the endless emptiness of the prairie in the dusk. MartinPauley judged that men on horseback, of all creatures on the face of theworld, led the loneliest and most frost-blighted lives. He would havetraded places with the lowest sodbuster that breathed, if only he couldhave had four walls, a stove, and people around him.
But as they drew near, Mart began to worry. The Mathisons should havegot his letter two months ago, with any luck. But maybe they hadn't gotit at all, and didn't even know that Brad was dead. Or if they did know,they might very likely be holding Brad's death against him. Mart turnedshy and fearful, and began to dread going in there. The two of them werea sorry sight at best. They had been forced to trade worn-out horsesfour times, and had taken a worse beating every swap, so now they rodeponies resembling broke-down dogs. Amos didn't look so bad, Martthought; gaunted though he was, he still had heft and dignity to him.Thick-bearded to the eyes, his hair grown to a great shaggy mane, helooked a little like some wilderness prophet of the Lord. But Mart'sbeard had come out only a thin and unsightly straggle. When he hadshaved with his skinning knife he was left with such a peaked,sore-looking face that all he needed was a running nose to match. Hisneck was wind-galled to a turkey red, and his hands were so scaly withchap that they looked like vulture's feet. They had no soap in manyweeks.
"We're lucky if they don't shoot on sight," he said. "We ain't fitten toset foot in any decent place."
Amos must have agreed, for he gave a long hail from a furlong out, androde in shouting their names.
The Mathison house was of logs and built in two parts in the manner ofthe southern frontier. One roof connected what was really two smallhouses with a wind-swept passage, called a dog-trot, running between.The building on the left of the dog-trot was the kitchen. The familyslept in the other, and Mart didn't know what was in there; he had neverbeen in it.
Brad Mathison's two brothers--Abner, who was sixteen, and Tobe,fifteen--ran out from the kitchen to take their horses. As Abner held uphis lantern to make sure of them, Mart got a shock. Ab had the same blueeyes as Brad, and the same fair scrubbed-looking skin, to which no dirtever seemed to stick; so that for a moment Mart thought he saw Bradwalking up to him through the dark. The boys didn't ask about theirbrother, but they didn't mention Mart's letter, either. Go on in, theysaid, the heck with your saddles, Pa's holding the door.
Nothing in the kitchen had changed. Mart remembered each thing in thisroom, as if nothing had been moved while he was gone. His eyes ranaround the place anyway, afraid to look at the people. A row ofshined-up copper pots and pans hung over the wood range, which couldfeed a lot of cowhands when it needed to; it was about the biggest inthe country. Everything else they had here was homemade, planed orwhittled, and pegged together. But the house was plastered inside, thewhole thing so clean and bright he stood blinking in the light of thekerosene lamps, and feeling dirty. Actually he smelled mainly of junipersmoke, leather, and prairie wind, but he didn't know that. He felt asthough he ought to be outside, and stand downwind.
Then Aaron Mathison had Mart by the hand. He looked older than Martremembered him, and his sight seemed failing as his mild eyes searchedMart's face. "Thank thee for the letter thee wrote," Mathison said.
Mrs. Mathison came and put her arms around him, and for a moment heldonto him as if he were her son. She hadn't done that since he was ableto walk under a table without cracking his head, and to give him a hugshe had to kneel on the floor. He vaguely remembered how beautiful andkind she had seemed to him then. But every year since she had graduallybecome dumpier, and quieter, and less thought about, until she had nomore shape or color than a sack of wheat. She still had an uncommonlysweet smile, though, what times it broke through; and tonight as shesmiled at Mart there was such wistfulness in it that he almost kissedher cheek. Only he had not been around people enough to feel as easy asthat.
And Laurie... she was the one he looked for first, and was most awareof, and most afraid to look at. And she was the only one who did notcome toward him at all. She stood at the wood range, pretending to getready to warm something for them; she flashed Mart one quick smile, butstayed where she was.
"I have a letter for you," Aaron said to Amos. "It was brought on andleft here by Joab Wilkes, of the Rangers, as he rode by."
"A what?"
"I have been told the news in this letter," Aaron said gravely. "It isgood news, as I hope and believe." Amos followed as Aaron retired to theother end of the kitchen, where he fumbled in a cupboard.
Laurie was still at the stove, her back to the room, but her hands wereidle. It occurred to Martin that she didn't know what to say, or do, anymore than he did. He moved toward her with no clear object in view. Andnow Laurie turned at last, ran to him, and gave him a peck of a kiss onthe corner of his mouth. "Why, Mart, I believe you're growing again."
"And him on an empty stomach," her mother said. "I wonder he doesn'tbelt you!"
After that everything was all right.
Chapter 12
They had fresh pork and the first candied yams Mart had seen since ayear ago Thanksgiving. Tobe asked Amos how many Comanch' he hadconverted in the Fight at the Cat-tails.
"Don't know." Amos was at once stolid and uncomfortable as he answered."Shot at two-three dozen. But the other varmints carried 'em away. Worsescared than hurt, most like."
Tobe said, "I bet you got plenty scalps in your saddle bags!"
"Not one!"
"He just stomp' 'em in the dirt," Mart explained, and was surprised tosee Amos' eyes widen in a flash of anger.
"Come morning," Amos said to Mart, wrenching clear of the subject, "Iwant you borry the buckboard, and run it over to my place. The boys willshow you which team. Round up such clothes of mine, or yours, as gotoverlooked."
That "my place" didn't sound just right to Mart. It had always been"Henry's place" or "my brother's place" every time Amos had ever spokenof it before.
"Load up any food stores that wasn't stole or spoilt. Especially anyunbust presarves. And any tools you see. Fetch 'em here. And if any myhorses have come in, feed grain on the tail gate, so's they foller youback." There was that "my" again. "My horses" this time. Amos had ownedexactly one horse, and it was dead.
"What about----" Mart had started to ask what he must do about Debbie'shorses. Debbie, not Amos, was heir to the Edwards' livestock if shelived. "Nothing," he finished.
When they had eaten, Aaron Mathison and Amos got their heads togetheragain in the far end of the room. Their long conference partly involvedtally books, but Mart couldn't hear what was said. Laurie took hersewing basket to a kind of settle that flanked the wood range, and toldMart by a movement of her eyes that she meant him to sit beside her.
"If you're going over--over home," she said in a near whisper, "maybe Iought to tell you about--something. There's something over there....I don't know if you'll understand." She floundered and lost her way.
He said flatly, "You talking about that story, the place is haunted?"
She stared at him.
He told her about the rider they had come on one night, packing uptoward the Nations on business unknown. This man had spoken of headinginto what he called the "old Edwards place," thinking to bed down forthe night in the deserted house. Only, as he came near he saw lightsmoving around inside. Not like the place was lived in and lighted up.More like a single candle, carried around from room to room. The fellowgot the hell out of there, Mart finished, and excuse him, he hadn'tmeant to say hell.
"What did Amos say?"
"He went in one of his black fits."
"Martie," Laurie said, "you might as well know what he saw. You'll findthe burnt-out candle anyway."
"What candle?"
"Well... you see... it was coming on Christmas Eve. And I had thestrongest feeling you were coming home. You know how hard you can knowsomething that isn't so?"
"I sure do," Mart said.
"So... I rode over there, and laid a fire in the stove, and dustedup. And I--you're going to laugh at me, Martie."
"No, I ain't."
"Well, I--I made a couple of great gawky bush-holly wreaths, andcluttered up the back windows with them. And I left a cake on the table.A kind of a cake--it got pretty well crumbed riding over. But I reckonedyou could see it was meant for a cake. You might as well fetch home theplate."
"I'll remember."
"And I set a candle in a window. It was a whopper--I bet it burnedthree-four days. That's what your owl-hoot friend saw. I see no doubt ofit."
"Oh," said Mart. It was all he could think of to say.
"Later I felt foolish; tried to get over there, and cover my tracks. ButPa locked up my saddle. He didn't like me out so long worrying Ma."
"Well, I should hope!"
"You'd better burn those silly wreaths. Before Amos sees 'em, and goesin a 'black fit.'"
"It wasn't silly," Mart said.
"Just you burn 'em. And don't forget the plate. Ma thinks Tobe busted itand ate the cake."
"It beats me," Mart said honestly. "How come anybody ever to take suchtrouble. I never see such a thing."
"I guess I was just playing house. Pretty childish. I see that now.But--I just love that old house. I can't bear to think of it all darkand lonely over there."
It came to him that she wanted the old house to be their house to makebright and alive again. This was the best day he had ever had in hislife, he supposed, what with the promising way it was ending. So now, ofcourse, it had to be spoiled.
Two rooms opened off the end of the kitchen opposite the dog-trot, thelarger being a big wintry storeroom. The other, in the corner nearestthe stove, was a cubbyhole with an arrow-slit window and a buffalo rug.This was called the grandmother room, because it was meant for somebodyold, or sick, who needed to be kept warm. Nowadays it had a couple ofrawhide-strung bunks for putting up visitors without heating thebunkhouse where the seasonal hands were housed.
When the family had retired across the dog-trot, Amos and Mart draggedout a wooden tub for a couple of long-postponed baths. They washed whatmeager change of clothes they had, and hung the stuff on a line back ofthe stove to dry overnight. Their baggy long-handled underwear andfootless socks seemed indecent, hung out in a room where Laurie lived,but they couldn't help it.
"What kind of letter you get?" Mart asked. The average saddle trampnever got a letter in his life.
Amos shook out a pair of wet drawers, with big holes worn on the insidesof the thigh, and hung them where they dripped into the woodbin."Personal kind," he grunted, finally.
"Serves me right, too. Don't know why I never learn."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
"I been fixing to tell you," Amos began.
"That ain't needful."
"What ain't?"
"I know that letter ain't none of my business. Because nothing is. Ijust set on other people's horses. To see they foller along."
"I wasn't studying on no letter. Will you leave a man speak? I say Imade a deal with old Mathison."
Mart was silent and waited.
"I got to be pushing on," Amos said, picking his words. Passing outinformation seemed to hurt Amos worse every day he lived. "I won't bearound. So Mathison is going to run my cattle with his own. Being's Ican't see to it myself."
"What's he get, the increase?"
"Why?"
"No reason. Seemed the natural thing to ask, that's all. I don't give aGod damn what you do with your stock."
"Mathison come out all right," Amos said.
"When do we start?"
"You ain't coming."
Mart thought that over. "It seems to me," he began. His voice soundedthin and distant to himself. He started over too loudly. "It seems tome----"
"What you hollering for?"
"--we started out to look for Debbie," Mart finished.
"I'm still looking for her."
"That's good. Because so am I."
"I just told you--by God, will you listen?" It was Amos' voice raisedthis time. "I'm leaving you here!"
"No, you ain't."
"What?" Amos stared in disbelief.
"You ain't telling me where I stay!"
"You got to live, ain't you? Mathison's going to leave you stay on. Helpout with the work what you can, and you'll know where your grub's comingfrom."
"I been shooting our grub," Mart said stubbornly. "If I can shoot fortwo, I can shoot for one."
"That still takes ca-tridges. And a horse."
Mart felt his guts drop from under his heart. All his life he had beenvirtually surrounded by horses; to ride one, you only had to catch it.Only times he had ever thought whether he owned one or not was when somefine fast animal, like one of Brad's, had made him wish it was his. ButAmos was right. Nothing in the world is so helpless as a prairie manafoot.
"I set out looking for Debbie," he said. "I aim to keep on."
"Why?"
Mart was bewildered. "Because she's my--she's----" He had started to saythat Debbie was his own little sister. But in the moment he hesitated,Amos cut him down.
"Debbie's my brother's young'n," Amos said. "She's my flesh andblood--not yours. Better you leave these things to the people concernedwith 'em, boy. Debbie's no kin to you at all."
"I--I always felt like she was my kin."
"Well, she ain't."
"Our--I mean, her--her folks took me in off the ground. I'd be dead butfor them. They even----"
"That don't make 'em any kin."
"All right. I ain't got no kin. Never said I had. I'm going to keep onlooking, that's all."
"How?"
Mart didn't answer that. He couldn't answer it. He had his saddle andhis gun, because Henry had given him those; but the loads in the gunwere Amos', he supposed. Mart realized now that a man can be free as awolf, yet unable to do what he wants at all.
They went on to bed in silence. Amos spoke out of the dark. "You don'tgive a man a chance to tell you nothing," he complained. "I want you toknow something, Mart----"
"Yeah--you want me to know I got no kin. You told me already. Now shutyour God damned head!"
One thing about being in the saddle all day, and every day, you don'tget a chance to worry as much as other men do once you lie down atnight. You fret, and you fret, and you try to think your waythrough--for about a minute and a half. Then you go to sleep.
Chapter 13
Mart woke up in the blackness before the winter dawn. He pulled on hispants, and started up the fire in the wood range before he finisheddressing. As he took down his ragged laundry from behind the stove, hewas of a mind to leave Amos' stuff hanging there, but he couldn't quitebring himself to it. He made a bundle of Amos' things, and tossed itinto their room. By the time he had wolfed a chunk of bread and someleavings of cold meat, Tobe and Abner were up.
"I got to fetch that stuff Amos wants," he said, "from over--over at hishouse. You want to show me what team?"
"Better wait while we hot up some breakfast, hadn't you?"
"I et already."
They didn't question it. "Take them little fat bays, there, in the nighcorral--the one with the shelter shed."
"I want you take notice of what a pretty match they be," said Tobe withshining pride. "We call 'em Sis and Bud. And pull? They'll outlug teamstwice their heft."
"Sis is about the only filly we ever did bust around here," Abner said."But they balanced so nice, we just couldn't pass her by. Oh, she mightcow-kick a little----"
"A little? She hung Ab on the top bar so clean he just lay thereflappin'."
"Feller doesn't mind a bust in the pants from Sis, once he knows her."
"I won't leave nothing happen to 'em," Mart promised.
He took the team shelled corn, and brushed them down while they fed. Helimbered the frosty straps of the harness with his gloved hands, andmanaged to be hooked and out of there before Amos was up.
Even from a distance the Edwards place looked strangely barren. Hard tothink why, at first, until you remembered that the house now stoodalone, without its barn, sheds, and hay stacks. The snow hid the blackchar and the ash of the burned stuff, as if it never had been. Up on thehill, where Martha, and Henry, and the boys were, the snow had coveredeven the crosses he had carved.
Up close, as Mart neared the back gallery, the effect of desolation waseven worse. You wouldn't think much could happen to a sturdy house likethat in just a few months, but it already looked as if it had beenunlived in for a hundred years. Snow was drifted on the porch, andslanted deep against the door itself, unbroken by any tracks. In thedust-glazed windows Laurie's wreaths were ghostly against empty black.
When he had forced the door free of the iced sill, he found a still coldinside, more chilling in its way than the searing wind of the prairie. Athin high music that went on forever in the empty house was the keeningof the wind in the chimneys. Almost everything he remembered wasrepaired and in place, but a gray film of dust lay evenly, in spite ofLaurie's Christmas dusting. Her cake plate was crumbless, centering apattern of innumerable pocket-mouse tracks in the dust upon the table.
He remembered something about that homemade table. Underneath it, aninch or so below the top, a random structural member made a littlehidden shelf. Once when he and Laurie had been five or six, theMathisons had come over for a taffy pull. He showed Laurie the secretshelf under the table, and they stored away some little square-cutpieces of taffy there. Afterward, one piece of taffy seemed to be stuckdown; he wore out his fingers for months trying to break it loose. Yearslater he found out that the stubbornly stuck taffy was really theironhead of a lag screw that you couldn't see where it was, but onlyfeel with your fingers.
He found some winter clothes he sure could use, including some heavysocks Martha and Lucy had knitted for him. Nothing that had belonged toMartha and the girls was in the closets. He supposed some shut trunksstanding around held whatever of their stuff the Comanches had left. Hewent to a little chest that had been Debbie's, with some idea of takingsomething of hers with him, as if for company; but he stopped himselfbefore he opened the chest. I got these hands she used to hang onto, hetold himself. I don't need nothing more. Except to find her.
He was in no hurry to get back. He wanted to miss supper at theMathisons for fear he would lash out at Amos in front of the others; so,taking his time about everything he did, he managed to fool away most ofthe day.
A red glow from the embers in the stove was the only light in theMathison house as he put away the good little team, but a lamp went upin the kitchen before he went in. Laurie was waiting up, and she was putout with him.
"Who gave you the right to lag out till all hours, scaring the rangestock?"
"Amos and me always night on the prairie," he reminded her. "It's wherewe live."
"Not when I'm waiting up for you." She was wrapped twice around in atrade-blanket robe cinched up with a leather belt. Only the little highcollar of her flannel nightgown showed, and a bit of blue-veined instepbetween her moccasins and the hem. Actually she had no more clothes thanhe had ever seen her wear in her life; there was no reason for the rigto seem as intimate as it somehow did.
He mumbled, "Didn't go to make work," and went to throw his rag-pickingsin the grandmother room.
Amos was not in his bunk; his saddle and everything he had was gone.
"Amos rode on," Laurie said unnecessarily.
"Didn't he leave no word for me?"
"Any word," she corrected him. She shook down the grate and droppedfresh wood in the firebox. "He just said, tell you he had to get on."She pushed him gently backward against a bench, so that he sat down. "Imended your stuff," she said. "Such as could be saved."
He thought of the saddle-worn holes in the thighs of his other drawers."Goddle mighty," he whispered.
"Don't know what your purpose is," she said, "getting so red in theface. I have brothers, haven't I?"
"I know, but----"
"I'm a woman, Martie." He had supposed that was the very point. "We washand mend your dirty old stuff for you all our lives. When you're little,we even wash you. How a man can make out to get bashful in front of awoman, I'll never know."
He couldn't make any sense out of it. "You talk like a feller might justas leave run around stark nekkid."
"Wouldn't bother me. I wouldn't try it in front of Pa, was I you, solong as you're staying on." She went to the stove to fix his supper.
"I'm not staying, Laurie. I got to catch up with Amos."
She turned to see if he meant it. "Pa was counting on you. He's runningyour cattle now, you know, along with his own----"
"Amos' cattle."
"He let both winter riders go, thinking you and Amos would be back. Ofcourse, riders aren't too hard to come by. Charlie MacCorry put in for ajob."
"MacCorry's a good fast hand," was all he said.
"I don't know what you think you can do about finding Debbie that Amoscan't do." She turned to face him solemnly, her eyes very dark in theuneven light. "He'll find her now, Mart. Please believe me. I know."
He waited, but she went back to the skillet without explanation. So nowhe took a chance and told her the truth. "That's what scares me,Laurie."
"If you're thinking of the property," she said, "the land, thecattle----"
"It isn't that," he told her. "No, no. It isn't that."
"I know Debbie's the heir. And Amos has never had anything in his life.But if you think he'd let harm come to one hair of that child's head onaccount of all that, then I know you're a fool."
He shook his head. "It's his black fits," he said; and wondered how hecould make a mortal danger sound so idiotic.
"What?"
"Laurie, I swear to you, I've seen all the fires of hell come up in hiseyes, when he so much as thinks about getting a Comanche in his riflesights. You haven't seen him like I've seen him. I've known him to takehis knife..." He let that drop. He didn't want to tell Laurie some ofthe things he had seen Amos do. "Lord knows I hate Comanches. I hate 'emlike I never knew a man could hate nothin'. But you slam into a bunch of'em, and kill some--you know what happens to any little white captivesthey got hold of, then? They get their brains knocked out. It's happenedover and over again."
He felt she didn't take any stock in what he was saying. He tried again,speaking earnestly to her back. "Amos is a man can go crazy wild. Itmight come on him when it was the worst thing could be. What I countedon, I hoped I'd be there to stop him, if such thing come."
She said faintly, "You'd have to kill him."
He let that go without answer. "Let's have it now. Where's he gone,where you're so sure he'll find her?"
She became perfectly still for a moment. When she moved again, one handstirred the skillet, while the other brought a torn-open letter out ofthe breast of her robe, and held it out to him. He recognized the letterthat had been left with Aaron Mathison for Amos. His eyes were on herface, questioning, as he took it.
"We hoped you'd want to stay on," she said. All the liveliness was gonefrom her voice. "But I guess I knew. Seems to be only one thing in theworld you care about any more. So I stole it for you."
He spread out the single sheet of ruled tablet paper the torn envelopecontained. It carried a brief scrawl in soft pencil, well smeared.
Laurie said, "Do you believe in second sight? No, of course you don't.There's something I dread about this, Martie."
The message was from a trader Mart knew about, over on the Salt Fork ofthe Brazos. He called himself Jerem (for Jeremiah) Futterman--animprobable name at best, and not his own. He wasn't supposed to tradewith Indians there any more, but he did, covering up by claiming thathis real place of business was far to the west in the Arroyo Blanco,outside of Texas. The note said:
I bougt a small size dress off a
Injun. If this here is a peece of
yr chiles dress bring reward, I know
where they gone.
Pinned to the bottom of the sheet with a horseshoe nail was a two-inchsquare of calico. The dirt that grayed it was worn evenly into thecloth, as if it had been unwashed for a long time. The little flowers onit didn't stand out much now, but they were there. Laurie was leaningover his shoulder as he held the sample to the light. A strand of herhair was tickling his neck, and her breath was on his cheek, but hedidn't even know.
"Is it hers?"
He nodded.
"Poor little dirty dress..."
He couldn't look at her. "I've got to get hold of a horse. I just got toget me a horse."
"Is that all that's stopping you?"
"It isn't stopping me. I'll catch up to him. I got to."
"You've got horses, Martie."
"I--what?"
"You've got Brad's horses. Pa said so. He means it, Martie. Amos told uswhat happened at the Warrior. A lot of things you left out."
Mart couldn't speak for a minute, and when he could he didn't know whatto say. The skillet started to smoke, and Laurie went to set it to theback of the range.
"Most of Brad's ponies are turned out. But the Fort Worth stud is up.He's coming twelve, but he'll outgame anything there is. And the goodlight gelding--the fast one, with the blaze."
"Why, that's Sweet-face," he said. He remembered Laurie naming that coltherself, when she was thirteen years old. "Laurie, that's your own goodhorse."
"Let's not get choosey, Bub. Those two are the ones Amos wanted to tradefor and take. But Pa held them back for you."
"I'll turn Sweet-face loose to come home," he promised, "this sideFiddler's Crick. I ought to cross soon after daylight."
"Soon after-- By starting when?"
"Now," he told her.
He was already in the saddle when she ran out through the snow, andlifted her face to be kissed. She ran back into the house abruptly, andthe door closed behind her. He jabbed the Fort Worth stud, hard, withone spur. Very promptly he was bucked back to his senses, and all butthrown. The stallion conveyed a hard, unyielding shock like no horseMart had ever ridden, as if he were made all of rocks and iron bands.Ten seconds of squealing contention cleared Mart's head, though hethought his teeth might be loosened a little; and he was on his way.
Chapter 14
When Laurie had closed the door, she stood with her forehead against ita little while, listening to the violent hammer of hoofs sometimesmuffled by the snow, sometimes ringing upon the frozen ground, as theFort Worth stud tried to put Mart down. When the stud had straightenedout, she heard Mart circle back to pick up Sweet-face's lead and that ofthe waspish black mule he had packed. Then he was gone, but she stillstood against the door, listening to the receding hoofs. They made acrunch in the snow, rather than a beat, but she was able to hear it fora long time. Finally even that sound stopped, and she could hear onlythe ticking of the clock and the winter's-night pop of a timber twistingin the frost.
She blew out the lamp, crossed the cold dog-trot, and crept softly toher bed. She shivered for a few moments in the chill of theflour-sack-muslin sheets, but she slept between two deep featherbeds,and they warmed quite soon. For several years they had kept a big gaggleof geese, especially for making featherbeds. They had to let the geeserange free, and the coyotes had got the last of them now; but the bedswould last a lifetime almost.
As soon as she was warm again, Laurie began to cry. This was not likeher. The Mathison men had no patience with blubbering women, and gavethem no sympathy at all, so Mathison females learned early to do withoutnervous outlets of this kind. But once she had given way to tears atall, she cried harder and harder. Perhaps she had stored up every kindof cry there is for a long time. She had her own little room, now, witha single rifle-slit window, too narrow for harm to come through; but thematched-fencing partition was too flimsy to be much of a barrier tosound. She pressed her face deep into the feathers, and did her best tolet no sound escape. It wasn't good enough. By rights, everybody shouldhave been deep asleep long ago, but her mother heard her anyway, andcame in to sit on the side of her bed.
Laurie managed to snuffle, "Get under the covers, Ma. You'll catch you achill."
Mrs. Mathison got partly into the bed, but remained sitting up. Herwork-stiffened fingers were awkward as she tentatively stroked herdaughter's hair. "Now, Laurie.... Now, Laurie...."
Laurie buried her face deeper in the featherbed. "I'm going to be an oldmaid!" she announced rebelliously, her words half smothered.
"Why, Laurie!"
"There just aren't any boys--men--in this part of the world. I thinkthis everlasting wind blows 'em away. Scours the whole country plumbclean."
"Come roundup there's generally enough underfoot, seems to me. At leastsince the peace. Place swarms with 'em. Worse'n ants in a tub ofleftover dishes."
"Oh!" Laurie whimpered in bitter exasperation. "Those hoot-owlers!" Hermind wasn't running very straight. She meant owl-hooters, of course--aterm applied to hunted men, who liked to travel by night. It was truethat the hands who wandered out here to pick up seasonal saddle workwere very often wanted. If a Ranger so much as stopped by a chuck wagon,so many hands would disappear that the cattlemen had angrily requestedthe Rangers to stay away from roundups altogether. But they weren'tprofessional badmen--not bandits or killers; just youngsters, mostly,who had got into some trouble they couldn't bring themselves to faceout. Many of the cattlemen preferred this kind, for they drifted on oftheir own accord, saving you the uncomfortable job of firing good loyalriders who really wanted to stick and work. And they were no hazard tohome girls. They didn't even come into the house to eat, once enough ofthem had gathered to justify hiring a wagon cook. Most of them had jokedwith Laurie, and made a fuss over her, so long as she was little; butthey had stopped this about the time she turned fifteen. Nowadays theysteered clear, perhaps figuring they were already in trouble enough.Typically they passed her, eyes down, with a mumbled, "Howdy, Mam," anda sheepish tug at a ducked hat brim. Soon they were off with the wagon,and were paid off and on their way the day they got back.
Actually, Laurie had almost always picked out some one of them toidolize, and imagine she was in love with, from a good safe distance.After he rode on, all unsuspecting, she would sometimes remember him,and spin daydreams about him, for months and months. But she was in nomood to remember all that now.
Mrs. Mathison sighed. She could not, in honesty, say much for thetemporary hands as eligible prospects. "There's plenty others.Like--like Zack Harper. Such a nice, clean boy----"
"That nump!"
"And there's Charlie MacCorry----"
"Him." A contemptuous rejection.
Her mother didn't press it. Charlie MacCorry hung around a great dealmore than Mrs. Mathison wished he would, and she didn't want himencouraged. Charlie was full of high spirits and confidence, and mightbe considered flashily handsome, at least from a little distance off. Upclose his good looks seemed somehow exaggerated, almost as in acaricature. What Mrs. Mathison saw in him, or thought she saw, wasnothing but stupidity made noisy by conceit. Mentioning him at all hadbeen a scrape at the bottom of the barrel.
She recognized the upset Laurie was going through as an inevitablething, that every girl had to go through, somewhere between adolescenceand marriage. Mrs. Mathison was of limited imagination, but herobservation was sound, and her memory clear, so she could rememberhaving gone through this phase herself. A great restlessness went withit, like the disquiet of a young wild goose at the flight season; as ifsomething said to her, "Now, now or never again! Now, or life will passyou by...." No one who knew Mrs. Mathison now could have guessed thatat sixteen she had run away with a tinhorn gambler, having met him, insecret, only twice in her life. She could remember the resultingembarrassments with painful clarity, but not the emotions that had madeher do it. She thought of the episode with shame, as an unexplainableinsanity, from which she was saved only when her father overtook themand snatched her back.
She had probably felt about the same way when she ran off a secondtime--this time more successfully, with Aaron Mathison. Her father, aconservative storekeeper and a pillar of the Baptist Church, hadregarded the Quakers in the Mathison background as benighted and misled,more to be pitied than anything else. But the young shaggy-headed Aaronhe considered a dangerously irresponsible wild man, deserving not a whitmore confidence than the staved-off gambler--who at least had the senseto run from danger, not at it. He never spoke to his daughter again.Mrs. Mathison forever after regarded this second escapade as a sound andnecessary move, regarding which her parents were peculiarly blind andwrong-headed. Aaron Mathison in truth was a man like a great rootedtree, to which she was as tightly affixed as a lichen; no way of lifewithout him was conceivable to her.
She said now with compassion, "Dear heart, dear little girl--Martin willcome back. He's bound to come back." She didn't know whether they wouldever see Martin Pauley again or not, but she feared the outrageousthings--the runaways, the cheap marriages--which she herself had provedyoung girls to be capable of at this stage. She wanted to give Lauriesome comforting hope, to help her bridge over the dangerous time.
"I don't care what he does," Laurie said miserably. "It isn't that atall."
"I never dreamed," her mother said, thoughtfully, ignoring the manifestuntruth. "Why, you two always acted like--more like two tomboys thananything. How long has... When did you start thinking of Mart in thisway?"
Laurie didn't know that herself. Actually, so far as she was consciousof it, it had been about an hour. Mart had been practically her bestfriend, outside the family, throughout her childhood. But theirfriendship had indeed been much the same as that of two boys. Latterly,she recalled with revulsion, she had idiotically thought CharlieMacCorry more fun, and much more interesting. But she had looked forwardwith a warm, innocent pleasure to having Mart live with them right inthe same house. Now that he was suddenly gone--irrecoverably, she feltnow--he left an unexpectedly ruinous gap in her world that nothing leftto her seemed able to fill. She couldn't explain all that to her mother.Wouldn't know how to begin.
When she didn't answer, her mother patted her shoulder. "It will allseem different in a little while," she said in the futile cliché ofparents. "These things have a way of passing off. I know you don't feelthat way now; but they do. Time, the great healer..." she finishedvaguely. She kissed the back of Laurie's head, and went away.
Chapter 15
After days of thinking up blistering things to say, Mart judged he wasready for Amos. He figured Amos would come at him before they werethrough. Amos was a respected rough-and-tumble scrapper away from home."I run out of words," Mart had heard him explain many a tangle. "Wasn'tnothing left to do but hit him." Let him try.
But when he caught up, far up the Salt Fork, it was all wasted, for Amoswouldn't quarrel with him. "I done my best to free your mind," Amossaid. "Mathison was fixing to step you right into Brad's boots. Come tothink of it, that's a pair you got on. And Laurie--she wanted you."
"Question never come up," Mart said shortly.
Amos shrugged. "Couldn't say much more than I done."
"No, you sure couldn't. Not without landing flat on your butt!" Mart hadalways thought of Amos as a huge man, perhaps because he had been aboutknee high to Amos when he knew him first. But now, as Amos for a momentlooked him steadily in the eye, Mart noticed for the first time thattheir eyes were on the same level. Mrs. Mathison had been right aboutMart having taken a final spurt of growth.
"I guess I must have left Jerem's letter lying around."
"Yeah. You left it lying around." Mart had meant to ball up the letterand throw it in Amos' face, but found he couldn't now. He just handed itover.
"This here's another thing I tried to leave you out of," Amos said."Martha put herself out for fifteen years bringing you up. I'll feel lowin my mind if I get you done away with now."
"Ain't studying on getting done away with."
"'Bring the reward,' he says here. From what I know of Jerem, he ain'tthe man to trust getting paid when he's earned it. More liable to try tomake sure."
"Now, he ought to know you ain't carrying the thousand around with you!"
"Ain't I?"
So he was. Amos did have the money with him. Now there's a damn foolthing, Mart considered. Aloud he said, "If he's got robbery in mind, Isuppose he won't tell the truth anyway."
"I think he will. So he'll have a claim later in case we slip throughhis claws."
"You talk like we're fixing to steal bait from a snap trap!"
Amos shrugged. "I'll admit one thing. In a case like this, two guns gotabout ten times the chance of one."
Mart was flattered. He couldn't work himself up to picking a fight withAmos after that. Things dropped back to what they had been before theywent home at all. The snow melted off, and they traveled in mud. Thenthe weather went cold again, and the wet earth froze to iron. More snowwas threatening as they came to Jerem Futterman's stockade, where LostMule Creek ran into the Salt Fork. The creek had not always been calledthe Lost Mule. Once it had been known as Murder River. They didn't knowwhy, nor how the name got changed, but maybe it was a good thing toremember now.
Jerem Futterman was lightly built, but well knit, and moved with a lookof handiness. Had he been a cow-horse you might have bought him, if youliked them mean, and later shot him, if you didn't like themtreacherous. He faced them across a plank-and-barrel counter in the murkof his low-beamed log trading room, seeming to feel easier with abarrier between himself and strangers. Once he had had another name.Some thought he called himself Futterman because few were likely tosuspect a man of fitting such a handle to himself, if it wasn't hisright one.
"Knew you'd be along," he said. "Have a drink."
"Have one yourself." Amos refused the jug, but rang a four-bit piece onthe planks.
Futterman hesitated, but ended by taking a swig and pocketing the halfdollar. This was watched by four squaws hunkered down against the walland a flat-faced breed who snoozed in a corner. Mart had spotted four orfive other people around the place on their way in, mostly knock-aboutpackers and bull-team men, who made up a sort of transient garrison.
The jug lowered, and they went into the conventional exchange of insultsthat passed for good humor out here. "Wasn't sure I'd know you standingup," Futterman said. "Last I saw, you were flat on your back on thefloor of a saloon at Painted Post."
"You don't change much. See you ain't washed or had that shirt off,"Amos said; and decided that was enough politeness. "Let's see thedress!"
A moment of total stillness filled the room before Futterman spoke. "Yougot the money?"
"I ain't paying the money for the dress. I pay when the child isfound--alive, you hear me?"
The trader had a trick of dropping his lids and holding motionless withcocked head, as if listening. The silence drew out to the crackingpoint; then Futterman left the room without explanation. Mart and Amosexchanged a glance. What might happen next was anybody's guess; theplace had an evil, trappy feel. But Futterman came back in a fewmoments, carrying a rolled-up bit of cloth.
It was Debbie's dress, all right. Amos went over it, inch by inch, andMart knew he was looking for blood stains. It was singular how oftenpeople west of the Cross Timbers found themselves searching for thingsthey dreaded to find. The dress was made with tiny stitches that Amosmust be remembering as the work of Martha's fingers. But now the pocketwas half torn away, and the square hole where the sample had been knifedout of the front seemed an Indian kind of mutilation, as if the littledress were dead.
"Talk," Amos said.
"A man's got a right to expect some kind of payment."
"You're wasting time!"
"I paid twenty dollars for this here. You lead a man to put out, and putout, but when it comes to----"
Amos threw down a gold piece, and Mart saw Futterman regret that hehadn't asked more.
"I had a lot of other expense, you realize, before----"
"Bull shit," Amos said. "Where'd you get this?"
One more long moment passed while Jerem Futterman gave that oddappearance of listening. This man is careful, Mart thought; he schemes,and he holds back the aces--but he's got worms in his craw where thesand should be.
"A young buck fetched it in. Filched it, naturally. He said it belongedoff a young'n----"
"Is she alive?"
"He claimed so. Said she was catched by Chief Scar the tail end of lastsummer."
"Take care, Jerem! I never heard of no Chief Scar!"
"Me neither." Futterman shrugged. "He's supposed to be a war chief withthe Nawyecky Comanches."
"War chief," Amos repeated with disgust. Among the Comanches any warriorwith a good string of coups was called a war chief.
"You want me to shut up, say so," Futterman said testily. "Don't bestanding there giving me the lie every minute!"
"Keep talking," Amos said, relaxing a little.
"Scar was heading north. He was supposed to cross the Red, and winter-inat Fort Sill. According to this buck. Maybe he lied."
"And maybe you lie," Amos said.
"In that case, you won't find her, will you? And I won't get thethousand."
"You sure as hell won't," Amos agreed. He stuffed Debbie's dress intothe pocket of his sheepskin.
"Stay the night, if you want. You can have your pick of them squaws."
The squaws sat stolidly with lowered eyes. Mart saw that a couple ofthem, with the light color of mixed blood, were as pretty as any he hadseen. Amos ignored the offer, however. He bought a skimpy mule load ofcorn for another twenty dollars, with only a token argument over theoutrageous price.
"I expect you back when you find her," Futterman reminded him, "to paythe money into this here hand." He showed the dirty hand he meant.
"I'll be back if I find her," Amos said. "And if I don't."
Little daylight was left as they struck northward along Lost Mule Creek.The overcast broke, and a full moon rose, huge and red at first,dwindling and paling as it climbed. And within two hours they knew thatthe lonely prairie was not half lonely enough, from the standpoint ofany safety in this night. Mart's stud horse told them first. He began toprick his ears and show interest in something unseen and unheard, off ontheir flank beyond the Lost Mule. When he set himself to whinny theyknew there were horses over there. Mart picked him up sharply, taking upshort on the curb, so the uproar the stud was planning on never comeout. But the horse fussed and fretted from then on.
Though the stud could be stopped from hollering, their pack mule couldnot. A little farther on he upped his tail, lifted his head, andwhipsawed the night with a bray fit to rouse the world.
"That fool leatherhead is waking up people in Kansas," Mart said. "Youwant I should tie down his tail? I heard they can't yell at all, failin'they get their tail up."
Amos had never seen it tried, but he figured he could throw off on thatone by percentage alone. "That's what I like about you," he said. "Mancan tell you any fur-fetched thing comes in his head, and you'll cleaveto it for solemn fact from then on."
"Well, then--why don't we split his pack, and stick a prickle pear underhis tail, and fog him loose?"
"He'd foller anyway."
"We can tie him. Shoot him even. This here's the same as traveling witha brass band."
Amos looked at him with disbelief. "Give up a fifteen-dollar mule forthe likes of Jerem? I guess you don't know me very well. Leave the brutesing."
The thing was that nothing answered the mule from beyond the creek. Thestud might have scented a band of mustangs, but mustangs will answer amule same as a horse. Their animals were trying to call to riddenhorses, probably Spanish curbed.
"I see no least reason," Mart said, "why they can't gallop ahead anddry-gulch us any time they want to try."
"How do you know they haven't tried?"
"Because we ain't been fired on. They could pick any time or place theywant."
"I ain't led you any kind of place they want. Why you think I swung sofar out back there a few miles? That's our big advantage--they got touse a place I pick."
They rode on and on, while the moon shrunk to a pale dime, and crossedthe zenith. The mule lost interest, but the stud still fretted, andtried to trumpet. The unseen, unheard stalkers who dogged them werestill there.
"This can't run on forever," Mart said.
"Can't it?"
"We got to lose 'em or outrun 'em. Or----"
"What for? So's they can come on us some far place, when we leastexpect?"
"I can't see 'em giving up," Mart argued. "If this kind of haunting hasto go on for days and weeks----"
"I mean to end it tonight," Amos said.
They off-saddled at last in the rough ground from which the Lost Mulerose. Amos picked a dry gully, and they built a big tenderfoot fire on apatch of dry sand. Mart did what Amos told him up to here.
"I figure I got a right to know what you aim to do," he said at last.
"Well, we might make up a couple of dummies out o'----"
Mart rebelled. "If I heard one story about a feller stuffed grass in hisblanket and crawled off in the buckbrush, I heard a million! Comemorning, the blanket is always stuck full of arrows. Dozens of 'em.Never just one arrow, like a thrifty Indian would make do. Now, you knowhow hard arrows is to make!"
"Ain't studyin' on Indians."
"No, I guess not. I guess it must be crazy people."
"In poker, in war," Amos said, "what you want is a simple, stupid plan.Reason you hear about the old flim-flams so much is they always work.Never try no deep, tricky plan. The other feller can't foller it; itthrows him back on his common sense--which is the last thing you want."
"But this here is childish!"
Amos declared that what you plan out never helps much any; more liableto work against you than anything else. What the other fellow had inmind was the thing you wanted to figure on. It was the way you usedhis plan that decided which of you got added to the list of the latelamented. But he said no more of dummies. "You hungry? I believe they'llstand off and wait for us to settle down. We got time to eat, if youwant to cook."
"I don't care if I never eat. Not with what's out there in the dark."
Only precaution they took was to withdraw from the ember-lighted gully,and take cover under a low-hung spruce on the bank. About the firstplace a killer would look, Mart thought, once he found their camp. Martrolled up in his blankets, leaving Amos sitting against the stem of thespruce, his rifle in his hands.
"You see, Martie," Amos went back to it, "a man is very liable to seewhat he's come expecting to see. Almost always, he'll picture it all outin his mind beforehand. So you need give him but very little help, andhe'll swindle hisself. Like one time in the Rangers, Cap Harker offeredfive hundred dollars reward for a feller----"
"Now who ever give the Rangers five hundred dollars? Not the Texaslegislature, I guarandamtee."
"--for taking a feller alive, name of Morton C. Pettigrew. Cap got thedescription printed up on a handbill. Middling size; average weight;hair-colored hair; eye-colored eyes----"
"Now wait a minute!"
"Shut up. Temperment sociable and stand-offish; quiet, peaceable, andalways making trouble."
"Never see such a damn man."
"Well, you know, that thing got us more than forty wanted men? Nearevery settlement in Texas slung some stranger in the calabozo and nailedup the door. We gathered in every size and shape, without paying a cent.A little short red-head Irishman, and a walking skeleton a head taller'nme, and a Chinaman, and any number of renegade Mex. Near every one of'em worth hanging for something, too, except the Chinaman; we had toleave him go. Cap Harker was strutting up and down Texas, singing'Bringing home the sheaves,' and speaking of running for governor. Butit finished him."
"How?"
"Marshal down at Castlerock grobe a feller said he was Morton C.Pettigrew. We sent a man all the way back to Rhode Island, trying tobreak his story. But it was his right name, sure enough. Finally we hadto make up the reward out of our own pants."
Mart asked nervously, "You think they'll try guns, or knives?"
"What? Who? Oh. My guess would be knives. But you let them make thechoice. We'll handle whichever, when it comes. Go'n to sleep. I got holdof everything."
All they really knew was that it would come. No doubt of that now. Thestud was trumpeting again, and stammering with his feet. Mart was nothappy with the probability of the knives. Most Americans would rather beblown to bits than face up to the stab and slice of whettedsteel--nobody seems to know just why. Mart was no different. Sleep, theman says. Fine chance, knowing your next act must be to kill a man, orget a blade in the gizzard. And he knew Amos was a whole lot morestrung-up than he was willing to let on. Amos hadn't talked so much in amonth of Sundays.
Mart settled himself as comfortably as he could for the sleepless waitthat was ahead; and was asleep in the next half minute.
The blast of a rifle wakened him to the most confusing ten minutes ofhis life. The sound had not been the bang that makes your ears ring whena shot is fired beside you, but the explosive howl, like a snarl, thatyou hear when it is fired toward you from a little distance off. He wasrolling to shift his probably spotted position when the second shotsounded. Somebody coughed as the bullet hit, made a brief stranglingnoise, and was quiet. Amos was not under the spruce; Mart's firstthought was that he had heard him killed.
Down in the gully the embers of their fire still glowed. Nothing wasgoing on down there at all; the action had been behind the spruce on theuphill side. He wormed on his belly to the place where he had heard theman hit. Two bodies were there, instead of one, the nearer within twentyfeet of the spot where he had slept. Neither dead man was Amos. And nowMart could hear the hoof-drum of a running horse.
From a little ridge a hundred feet away a rifle now spoke twice. Thesecond flash marked for him the spot where a man stood straight up,firing deliberately down their back trail. Mart leveled his rifle, butin the moment he took to make sure of his sights in the bad light, thefigure disappeared. The sound of the running horse faded out, and thenight was quiet.
Mart took cover and waited; he waited a long time before he heard a softfootfall near him. As his rifle swung, Amos' voice said, "Hold it, Mart.Shootin's over."
"What in all hell is happening here?"
"Futterman held back. He sent these two creeping in. They was an easyshot from where I was. Futterman, though--it took an awful lucky hunk oflead to catch up with that one. He was leaving like a scalded goat."
"What the devil was you doing out there?"
"Walked out to see if he had my forty dollars on him." It wasn't theexplanation Mart was after, and Amos knew it. "Got the gold pieces allright. Still in his pants. I don't know what become of my four bits."
"But how come--how did you make out to nail 'em?"
What can you say to a man so sure of himself, so belittling of chance,that he uses you for bait? Mart could have told him something. There hadbeen a moment when he had held Amos clean in his sights, without knowinghim. One more pulse-beat of pressure on the hair-set trigger, and Amoswould have got his head blown off for his smartness. But he let it go.
"We got through it, anyway," Amos said.
"I ain't so sure we're through it. A thing like this can make troublefor a long, long time."
Amos did not answer that.
As they rode on, a heavy cloud bank came over the face of the loweringmoon. Within the hour, snow began to fall, coming down in flakes so bigthey must have hissed in the last embers of the fire they had leftbehind. Sunrise would find only three low white mounds back there,scarcely recognizable for what they were under the blanketing snow.
Chapter 16
Winter was breaking up into slush and sleet, with the usual freezingsetbacks, as they reached Fort Sill again. The Indians would begin toscatter as soon as the first pony grass turned green, but for thepresent there were many more here than had come in with the early snows.Apparently the Wild Tribes who had taken the Quaker Peace Policyhumorously at first were fast learning to take advantage of it. Threehundred lodges of Wichitas in their grass beehive houses, four hundredof Comanches in hide tepees, and more Kiowas than both together, werestrung out for miles up Cache Creek and down the Medicine Bluff, wellpast the mouth of Wolf Creek.
Nothing had been seen of the Queherenna, or Antelope Comanches, underBull Bear, Black Horse, and Wolf-Lying-Down, or the Kotsetaka(Buffalo-followers) under Shaking Hand, all of whom stayed in or closeto the Staked Plains. The famous war chief Tabananica, whose name wasvariously translated as Sound-of-Morning, Hears-the-Sunrise, andTalks-with-Dawn-Spirits, was not seen, but he was heard from: He sentword to the fort urging the soldiers to come out and fight. Still, thosein charge were not heard to complain that they hadn't accumulatedIndians enough. A far-sighted chief named Kicking Bird was holding theKiowas fairly well in check, and the Wichitas were quiet, as ifsuspicious of their luck; but the Comanches gleefully repaid thekindness of the Friends with arrogance, insult, and disorderly mischief.
Mart and Amos were unlikely to forget Agent Hiram Appleby. This Quaker,a graying man in his fifties, looked like a small-town storekeeper, andtalked like one, with never a "thee" nor "thou"; a quiet, unimpressiveman, with mild short-sighted eyes, stains on his crumpled black suit,and the patience of the eternal rocks. He had watched the Comanches killhis milch cows, and barbecue them in his dooryard. They had stolen allhis red flannel underwear off the line, and paraded it before him as theouter uniform of an improvised society of young bucks. And none of thischanged his attitude toward them by the width of a whistle.
Once they watched a Comanche buck put a knife point to Appleby's throatin a demand for free ammunition, and spit in the Agent's face when itdidn't work. Appleby simply stood there, mild, fusty looking, andimmovable, showing no sign of affront. Amos stared in disbelief, and hisgun whipped out.
"If you harm this Indian," Appleby said, "you will be seized and triedfor murder, just as soon as the proper authorities can be reached." Amosput away his gun. The Comanche spat in an open coffee bin, and walkedout. "Have to make a cover for that," Appleby said.
They would never understand this man, but they could not disbelieve him,either. He did all he could, questioning hundreds of Indians in morethan one tribal tongue, to find out what Mart and Amos wanted to know.They were around the Agency through what was left of the winter, whileComanches, Kiowas, and Kiowa Apaches came and went. When at last Applebytold them that he thought Chief Scar had been on the Washita, but hadslipped away, they did not doubt him.
"Used to be twelve main bands of Comanches, in place of only nine, likenow," Appleby said, with the customary divergence from everything theyhad been told before. "Scar seems to run with the Wolf Brothers; aComanche peace chief, name of Bluebonnet, heads them up."
They knew by now what a peace chief was. Among Comanches, some old manin each family group was boss of his descendants and relatives, and wasa peace chief because he decided things like when to move and where tocamp--anything that did not concern war. When a number of familiestraveled together, their peace chiefs made up the council--which meantthey talked things over, sometimes. There was always one of the lot thatthe others came to look up to, and follow more or less--kind of tacitly,never by formal election--and this one was the peace chief. A warchief was just any warrior of any age who could plan a raid and getothers to follow him. Comanche government was weak, loose, and informal;their ideas of acceptable behavior were enforced almost entirely bypopular opinion among their kind.
"Putting two and two together, and getting five," Appleby told them, "Iget the idea Bluebonnet kind of tags along with different bunches ofNawyeckies. Sometimes one bunch of 'em, sometimes another. Too bad.Ain't any kind of Comanche moves around so shifty as the Nawyecky. Oneof the names the other Comanches has for 'em means 'Them As Never GetsWhere They're Going.' Don't you believe it. What it is, they like to lieabout where they're going, and start that way, then double back, andfork off. As a habit; no reason needed. I wouldn't look for 'em inIndian Territory, was I you; nor anyplace else they should rightfullybe. I'd look in Texas. I kind of get the notion, more from what ain'tsaid than what they tell me, they wintered in the Pease River breaks. Sono use to look there--they'll move out, with the thaw. I believe I'dlook up around the different headwaters of the Brazos, if I was doingit."
"You're talking about a hundred-mile spread, cutting crosswise--you knowthat, don't you? Comes to tracing out all them branches, nobody's goingto do that in any one year!"
"I know. Kind of unencouraging, ain't it? But what's a man to say? Whydon't you take a quick look at twenty-thirty miles of the Upper Salt? Iknow you just been there, or nigh to it, but that was months ago. Pokearound in Canyon Blanco a little. Then cut across and try the DoubleMountain Fork. And Yellow House Crick after, so long as you're up there.If you don't come on some kind of Nawyeckies, some place around, I'llput in with you!"
He was talking about the most remote, troublesome country in the lengthof Texas, from the standpoint of trying to find an Indian.
Amos bought two more mules and a small stock of trade goods, whichAppleby helped them to select. They took a couple of bolts of cottoncloth, one bright red and one bright blue, a lot of fancy buttons,spools of ribbon, and junk like that. No knives, because the quality ofcheap ones is too easily detected, and no axe heads because of theweight. Appleby encouraged them to take half a gross of surplusstock-show ribbons that somebody had got stuck with, and shipped out tohim. These were flamboyant sateen rosettes, as big as your hand, withflowing blue, red, or white ribbons. The gold lettering on the ribbonsmostly identified winners in various classes of hogs. They were prettysure the Indians would prize these highly, and wear them on their warbonnets. No notions of comedy or fraud occurred either to Appleby or thegreenhorn traders in connection with the hog prizes. A newcomer mightthink it funny to see a grim-faced war chief wearing a First Awardribbon, Lard-Type Boar, at the temple of his headdress. But those wholived out there very early got used to the stubbornness of Indianfollies, and accepted them as commonplace. They gave the savage creditfor knowing what he wanted, and let it go at that.
And they took a great quantity of sheet-iron arrowheads, the mostsure-fire merchandise ever taken onto the plains. These were made in NewEngland, and cost the traders seven cents a dozen. As few as six of themwould sometimes fetch a buffalo robe worth two and a half to fourdollars.
So now they set out through the rains and muck of spring, practicingtheir sign language, and learning their business as they went along.They were traveling now in a guise of peace; yet they trotted the longprairies for many weeks without seeing an Indian of any kind. Sometimesthey found Indian signs--warm ashes in a shallow, bowl-like Comanchefire pit, the fresh tracks of an unshod pony--but no trail that theycould follow out. Searching the empty plains, it was easy to understandwhy you could never find a village when you came armed and in numbers todestroy it. Space itself was the Comanche's fortress. He seemed to liveout his life immune to discovery, invisible beyond the rim of the world;as if he could disappear at will into the Spirit Land he described aslying beyond the sunset.
Then their luck changed, and for a while they found Comanches aroundevery bend of every creek. Mart learned, without ever quite believing,the difference between Comanches on raid and Comanches among their ownlodges. Given the security of great space, these wildest of horsemenbecame amiable and merry, quick with their hospitality. Generosity wasthe key to prestige in their communal life, just as merciless ferocitywas their standard in the field. They made the change from one extremeto the other effortlessly, so that warriors returning with the loot of aravaged frontier settlement immediately became the poorest men in theirvillage through giving everything away.
Their trading went almost too well for their purposes. Comanchedetachments that had wintered in the mountains, on the borders of Piuteand Shoshone country, were rich in furs, particularly fox and otter, farmore valuable now than beaver plews since the passing of the beaver hat.A general swap, big enough to clean out a village, took several days,the first of which was spent in long silences and casual conversationspretending disinterest in trade. But by the second day the Comancheminds had been made up; and though Mart and Amos raised their pricespast the ridiculous, their mules were soon so loaded that they had tocache their loot precariously to keep an excuse for continuing theirsearch.
Once the first day's silences were over, the Indians loved to talk.Caught short of facts they made up stories to suit--that was the maintrouble when you wanted information from them. The searchers heard thatDebbie was with Woman's Heart, of the Kiowas; with Red Hog, withWolves-talk-to-him, with Lost Pony in the Palo Duro Canyon. They heard,in a face-blackened ritual of mourning, that she had died a full yearbefore. Later they heard that she had been dead one month. Many Indiansspoke of knowing Scar. Though they never knew just where he was, he wasmost often said to ride with Bluebonnet--a name sometimes translated as"the Flower." Mart and Amos both felt certain that they were closing in.
That was the summer a sub-chief of the Nocona Comanches, named DoubleBird, tried to sell them a gaggle of squaws. They didn't know what hewas driving at, to begin with. He signed that he had something to showthem, and walked them out of his squalid ten-lodge village to the banksof the Rabbit Ear. Suddenly they were looking down at a covey of eightor nine mother-naked Indian girls, bathing in a shallow pool. The girlsyipped and sat down in the water as the strangers appeared. Double Birdspoke; slowly the girls stood up again, and went on washing themselvesin a self-conscious silence, lathering their short-cropped hair withbear grass.
Double Bird explained in sign language that he found himself long onwomen, but short of most everything else--especially gunpowder. How didthey like these? Fat ones. Thin ones. Take and try. Amos told the chiefthat they didn't have his price with them, but Double Bird saw noobstacle in that. Try now. You like, go get gunpowder, lead; he wouldlike a few dozen breech-loading rifles. Squaw wait.
Some of the young squaws were slim and pretty, and one or two werelight-skinned, betraying white blood. Amos looked at Mart, and saw thathe was staring with glassy eyes.
"Wake up," Amos said, jabbing him with a thumb like the butt of a lance."You going to pick some, or not?"
"I know one thing," Mart said, "I got to give up. Either give up and goback, or give up and stay out."
"That's just the trouble. Pretty soon it's too late. Longer you're out,the more you want to go back--only you don't know how. Until you don'tfit any place any more. You'll end up a squaw man--you can mark my word.You see why I tried to leave you home?"
During this time Mart had one recurrence of the terror-dream. He hadsupposed he would never have it any more, now that he had a pretty fairidea of how it had been caused. But the dream was as strong as ever, andin no way changed. The deathly dream voices in the reddish dark were asweird and unearthly as ever, only vaguely like the yammering war crieshe had heard at the Cat-tails. Amos shook him out of it, on the theoryhe must be choking on something, since he made no sound. But he slept nomore that night.
Nevertheless, he was steadying, and changing. His grief for his lostpeople had forked, and now came to him in two ways, neither one asdreadful as the agony of loss he had felt at first. One way was in theform of a lot of little guilt-memories of unkindnesses that he now couldnever redress. Times when he had talked back to Martha, hadn't had timeto read to Debbie, failed to thank Henry for fixing him up asaddle--sometimes these things came back in cruelly sharp detail.
The other way in which his grief returned was in spells of homesickness.Usually these came on him when things were uncomfortable, or went wrong;while they lasted, nothing ahead seemed to offer any hope. He had nohome to which he could ever go back. No such thing was in existence anymore on this earth. This homesickness, though, was gradually beingreplaced by a loneliness for Laurie, who could give him worries ofanother kind, but who at least was alive and real, however far away.
A more immediate frustration was that he could not seem to catch up withAmos in learning Comanche. He believed this to be of the utmostimportance. Sign language was adequate, of course, for talking withIndians, but they wanted to understand the remarks not meant for theirears. Maybe Mart was trying too hard. Few Comanche syllables hadanything like the sound of anything in English. But Amos substituted anycrude approximate, whereas Mart was trying to get it right and couldnot.
Then Mart accidentally bought a squaw.
He had set out to buy a fox cape she was wearing, but ran intodifficulty. His stubbornness took hold, and he dickered with her wholefamily for hours. At one point, Amos came and stood watching himcuriously, until the stare got on Mart's nerves. "What the devil yougawkin' at? Y'see somepin' green?"
"Kind of branching out, ain't you?"
"Caught holt of a good hunk o' fur--that's all!"
Amos shrugged. "Guess that's one thing to call it." He went away.
Mart fingered the fox skins again. They still looked like prime winterstuff to him. He closed the deal abruptly by paying far too much,impatient to get it over with. And next he was unable to get possession.Amos had already diamond-hitched the mule packs, and it was time to go.But the squaw would only clutch the cape around her, chattering at him.When finally she signed that she would be back at once, and ran offamong the lodges, Mart noticed that an uncomfortable number of Comancheswere pressed close around him, looking at him very strangely. Bewilderedand furious, he gave up, and pushed through them to his horse.
By the time he was set to ride, the young squaw had unexpectedlyreappeared, exactly as she had promised. She was mounted bareback on anold crowbait that evidently belonged to her, and she carried her squawbag, packed to bulging, before her on the withers. Behind her massed awhole phalanx of her people, their weapons in their hands. Martsign-talked at the scowling bucks, "Big happy present from me to you,"in rude gestures dangerously close to insult; and he led out, wantingonly to be away from there.
The Comanche girl and her old plug fell in behind. He ignored her for amile, but presently was forced to face it: She thought she was goingwith them. Brusquely he signed to her to turn her pony. She wheeled itobediently in one complete revolution, and fell in behind them again. Hesignaled more elaborately, unmistakably this time, telling her she mustgo back. She sat and stared at him.
Amos spoke sharply. "What the hell you doing?"
"Sending her home, naturally! Can't leave her tag along with----"
"What for God's sake you buy her for, if you didn't want her?"
"Buy her?"
"Mean to tell me----" Amos pulled up short and glared at him withdisbelief--"You got the guts to set there and say you didn't even knowit?"
"Course I didn't know it! You think I----" He didn't finish it.Comprehension of his ridiculous situation overwhelmed him, and he forgotwhat he had had in mind.
Amos blew up. "You God damned chunkhead!" he yelled, "When in the nameof the sweet Christ you going to learn to watch what you're doing?"
"Well, she's got to go back," Mart said sullenly.
"She sure as hell is not going back! Them bastards would snatch our hairoff before sundown, you flout 'em like that!"
"Oh, bloody murder," Mart moaned. "I just as lief give up and----"
"Shut up! Fetch your God damned wife and come along! What we need isdistance!"
Wife. This here can't be happening, Mart thought. Man with luck likemine could never last. Not even this far. Should been killed long ago.And maybe I was--that's just what's happened. This horse ain't carryinga thing but a haunted saddle....
He paid no more attention to her, but when they camped by starlight shewas there, watering and picketing their animals, building their fire,fetching water. They wouldn't let her cook that night, but she watchedthem attentively as they fried beans and antelope steak, then madecoffee in the same frying-pan. Mart saw she was memorizing theirmotions, so that she would someday be able to please them. He furtivelylooked her over. She was quite young, a stocky little woman, inches lessthan five feet tall. Her face was broad and flat, set woodenly, for thetime being, in a vaguely pleasant expression. Like most Comanche women,her skin was yellowish, of a lighter color than that of the males, andher hair was cropped short, in accordance with Comanche custom. Herlong, entirely unlearnable name, when Amos questioned her about it,sounded like T'sala-ta-komal-ta-nama. "Wants you to call her Mama," Amosinterpreted it, and guffawed as Mart answered obscenely. Now that he wasover his mad, Amos was having more fun out of this than anything Martcould remember. She tried to tell them in sign language what her namemeant without much success. Apparently she was called something like"Wild-Geese-Fly-Over-in-the-Night-Going-Honk," or, maybe,"Ducks-Talk-All-Night-in-the-Sky." In the time that she was with themMart never once pronounced her name so that she recognized it; heusually began remarks to her with "Look----" which she came to accept asher new name. Amos, of course, insisted on calling her Mrs. Pauley.
Time came to turn in, in spite of Mart's efforts to push it off as longas he could. Amos rolled into his blankets, but showed no sign ofdozing; he lay there as bright-eyed as a sparrow, awaiting Mart's nextembarrassment with relish. Mart ignored the little Comanche woman as hefinally spread out his blankets, hoping that she would let well enoughalone if he would. No such a thing. Her movements were shy, deferential,yet completely matter-of-fact, as she laid her own blankets on top ofhis. He had braced himself against this, and made up his mind what hemust do, lest he arm Amos with a hilarious story about him, such as hewould never live down. He did not want this Comanche woman in the least,and dreaded the night with her; but he was determined to sleep with herif it killed him.
He pulled his boots, and slowly, gingerly, doubled the blankets overhim. The Comanche girl showed neither eagerness nor hesitation, but onlyan acceptance of the inevitable, as she crept under the blankets, andsnuggled in beside him. She was very clean--a good deal cleaner than hewas, for the matter of that. The Comanche women bathed a lot when theyhad any water--they would break ice to get into the river. And oftensteeped themselves in sage smoke, particularly following menstruation,when this kind of cleansing was a required ritual. She seemed verysmall, and a little scared, and he felt sorry for her. For a moment hethought the night was going to be all right. Then, faint, but living,and unmistakable, the smell of Indian.... It was not an offensiveodor; it had to do, rather, with the smoke of their fires, with the furand wild-tanned leather they wore, and with the buffalo, without whichthey did not know how to live. He had supposed he had got used to thesmoky air of lodges, and outgrown the senseless fear that had hauntedhis childhood. But now he struck away the blankets and came to his feet.
"Need water," he said in Comanche. She got up at once, and brought himsome. A choking sound came from where Amos lay; Mart had a glimpse ofAmos' compressed mouth and reddening face before Amos covered his head,burying the laughter he could not repress. Anger snatched Mart, soviolent that he stood shaking for a moment, unable to turn away. When hecould, he walked off into the dark in his sock feet; he was afraid hewould kill Amos if he stood there listening to that smothered laughter.
He had figured out an excuse to give her by the time he came back. Heexplained in signs that his power-medicine was mixed up with a taboo,such that he must sleep alone for a period of time that he leftindefinite. She accepted this tale readily; it was the kind of thingthat would seem logical, and reasonable, to her. He thought she lookedmildly relieved.
At their noon stop on the third day, Amos believed they had come farenough to be safe. "You can get rid of her, now, if you want."
"How?"
"You can knock her on the head, can't you? Though, now I think of it, Inever seen you show much stomick for anything as practical as that."
Mart looked at him a moment. He decided to assume Amos was fooling, andlet it pass without answer. Amos doubled a lead rope, weighted it with acouple of big knots, and tested it with a whistling snap. "Show youanother way," he said; and started toward the Comanche girl.
Suddenly Mart was standing in front of him. "Put that thing down beforeI take it away from you!"
Amos stared. "What the hell's got into you now?"
"It's my fault she's here--not hers. She's done all she possibly couldto try to be nice, and make herself helpful, and wanted. I never seen nocritter try harder to do right. You want to rough something--I'm inreach, ain't I?"
Amos angered. "I ought to wrap this here around your gullet!"
"Go ahead. But when you pick yourself up, you better be running!"
Amos walked away.
The Comanche girl was with them eleven days, waiting on them, doingtheir work, watching them to foresee their needs. At the end of theeleventh day, in the twilight, the girl went after water, and did notcome back. They found their bucket grounded in the shallows of thecreek, and traced out the sign to discover what they were up against. Asingle Indian had crossed to her through the water; his buffalo pony hadstood in the damp sand while the girl mounted behind the rider. TheIndian had been the girl's lover most likely. They were glad to have himtake her, but it made their scalps crawl to consider that he must havefollowed them, without their at all suspecting it, for all that time.
Though he was relieved to be rid of her, Mart found that he missed her,and was annoyed with himself for missing her, for many weeks. After awhile he could not remember what had made him leap up, the night she hadcrept into the blankets with him; he regretted it, and thought ofhimself as a fool. They never saw her again. Years later Mart thought heheard of her, but he could not be sure. A Comanche woman who died acaptive had told the soldiers her name was "Look." Mart felt a strangetwinge, as of remorse without reason for remorse, as he remembered how asad-eyed little Comanche woman had once got that name.
He had realized she had been trying to teach him Comanche, thoughwithout letting him notice it any more than she could help. When shetalked to him in sign language she pronounced the words that went withthe signs, but softly, so that he could ignore the spoken speech, if hewished. She responded to his questions with a spark of hidden eagerness,and with the least encouragement told hour-long stories of wars andheroes, miracles and sorceries, in this way. He wouldn't have supposedhe could learn anything in so short a time after beating his skullagainst the stubborn language for so long. But actually it was a turningpoint; the weird compounds of Comanche speech began to break apart forhim at last. When next he sat among Comanches he became aware that hewas able to follow almost everything they said. Amos presently began toturn to him for translations; and before the end of that summer, he wasinterpreter for them both.
Understanding the Comanches better, Mart began to pick up news, or atleast rumors filtered through Indian minds, of what was happening uponthe frontier. Most of the Comanches didn't care whether the white menunderstood their tales of misdeeds or not. The Wild Tribes had as yetbeen given little reason to think in terms of reprisals. Returningraiders boasted openly of the bloodiest things they had done.
There were enough to tell. Tabananica, having again challenged thecavalry without obtaining satisfaction, crept upon Fort Sill in thenight, and got off with twenty head of horses and mules out of theAgency corral. White Horse, of the Kiowas, not to be outdone, took morethan seventy head from the temporary stake-and-rider corral at the Fortitself. Kicking Bird, bidding to regain prestige lost in days of peace,went into Texas with a hundred warriors, fought a cavalry troop, andwhipped it, himself killing the first trooper with his short lance.Wolf-Lying-Down walked into Sill in all insolence, and sold the Quakeragent a little red-haired boy for a hundred dollars. Fast Bear's youngmen got similar prices for six children, and the mothers of some ofthem, taken in a murderous Texas raid. The captives could testify to thewholesale murder of their men, yet saw the killers pick up their moneyand ride free. The Peace Policy was taking effect with avengeance--though not quite in the way intended.
Often and often, as that summer grew old, the searchers believed theywere close to Debbie; but Bluebonnet somehow still eluded them, and WarChief Scar seemed a fading ghost. They saw reason to hope, though, inanother way. The Comanches held the Peace Policy in contempt, but nowleaned on it boldly, since it had proved able to bear their weight.Surely, surely all of them would come in this time, when winter clampeddown, to enjoy sanctuary and government rations in the shadow of FortSill. For the first time in history, perhaps, the far-scattered bandswould be gathered in a single area--and fixed there, too, long enoughfor you to sort through them all.
So this year they made no plans to go home. As the great buffalo herdsturned back from their summer pastures in the lands of the Sioux and theBlackfeet, drifting down-country before the sharpening northers, the twopointed their horses toward Fort Sill. Soon they fell into the trail ofa small village--twenty-five or thirty lodges--obviously going to thesame place that they were. They followed the double pole scratches ofthe many travois lazily, for though they were many weeks away from FortSill, they were in no great hurry to get there. It took time for theIndians to accumulate around the Agency, and the kind they were lookingfor came late. Some would not appear until they felt the pinch of theStarving Moons--if they came at all.
Almost at once the fire pits they rode over, and the short, squarishshape of dim moccasin tracks, told them they were following Comanches. Alittle later, coming to a place where the tracks showed better detail,they were able to narrow that down. Most Comanches wore trailing heelfringes that left faint, long marks in the dust. But one bunch of theKotsetakas--the so-called Upriver branch--sewed weasel tails to theheels of their moccasins, leaving broader and even fainter marks. Thatwas what they had here, and it interested them, for they had seen nosuch village in the fourteen months that they had searched.
But still they didn't realize what they were following, until they cameupon a lone-hunting Osage, a long way from the range where he belonged.This Indian had an evil face, and seemingly no fear at all. He rode upto them boldly, and as he demanded tobacco they could see him estimatingthe readiness of their weapons, no doubt wondering whether he could dothe two of them in before they could shoot him. Evidently he decidedthis to be impractical. In place of tobacco he settled for a handful ofsalt, and a red stock-prize ribbon placing him second in the class forAged Sows. He repaid them with a cogent and hard-hitting piece ofinformation, conveyed in crisp sign language, since he spoke noComanche.
The village they were following, he said, was two sleeps ahead.Twenty-four lodges; six hundred horses and mules; forty-six battle-ratedwarriors. Tribe, Kotsetaka Comanche, of the Upriver Band (which theyknew, so that the Osage's statements were given a color of truth); PeaceChief, Bluebonnet; War Chiefs, Gold Concho, Scar; also Stone Wold,Pacing Bear; others.
Amos' signs were steady, casual, as he asked if the village had whitecaptives. The Osage said there were four. One woman, two little girls.One little boy. And two Mexican boys, he added as an afterthought. Asfor himself, he volunteered, he was entirely alone, and rode in peace.He walked the White Man's Way, and had never robbed anybody in his life.
He rode off abruptly after that, without ceremony; and the two riderswent into council. The temptation was to ride hard, stopping fornothing, until they overtook the village. But that was not the sensibleway. They would be far better off with troops close at hand, howevertied-down they might be. And the gentle Quakers were the logical ones tointercede for the child's release, for they could handle it with lessrisk of a flare-up that might result in hurt to the child herself. Noharm in closing the interval, though. They could just as well pick up aday and a half, and follow the Indians a few hours back to cut downchance of losing them in a mix with other Indians, or even a totalchange of plans. Anyway, they had to put distance between themselves andthat Osage, whose last remarks had convinced both of them that he was ascout from a war party, and would ambush them if they let him.
They made a pretense of going into camp, but set off again in the firststarlight, and rode all night. At sunrise they rested four hours for thebenefit of their livestock, then made a wide cast, picked up the trailof the village again, and went on. The weather was looking very ugly.Brutal winds screamed across the prairie, and at midday a blue-blackwall was beginning to rise, obscuring the northern sky.
Suddenly the broad trail they were following turned south at a rightangle, as if broken square in two by the increasing weight of the wind.
"Are they onto us?" Mart asked; then repeated it in a yell, for the windso snatched his words away that he couldn't hear them himself.
"I don't think that's it," Amos shouted back. "What they got to fearfrom us?"
"Well, something turned 'em awful short!"
"They know something! That's for damn sure!"
Mart considered the possibility that the Osages had thrown in with theCheyennes and Arapahoes, and gone to war in great force. Forty-sixwarriors could only put their village on the run, and try to get it outof the path of that kind of a combination. He wanted to ask Amos what hethought about this, but speech was becoming so difficult that he let itgo. And he was already beginning to suspect something else. This timethe apprehension with which he watched developments was a reasoned one,with no childhood ghosts about it. The sky and the wind were starting totell them that a deadly danger might be coming down on them, of a kindthey had no means to withstand.
By mid-afternoon they knew. Swinging low to look closely at the trailthey followed, they saw that it was now the trail of a village moving ata smart lope, almost a dead run. The sky above them had blackened, andwas filled with a deep-toned wailing. The power of the wind made theprairie seem more vast, so that they were turned to crawling specks onthe face of a shelterless world. Amos leaned close to shout in Mart'sear. "They seen it coming! They've run for the Wichita breaks--that'swhat they done!"
"We'll never make it by dark! We got to hole-up shorter than that!"
Amos tied his hat down hard over his ears with his wool muffler. Mart'smuffler snapped itself and struggled to get away, like a fear-crazedthing, as he tried to do the same. He saw Amos twisting in the saddle tolook all ways, his eyes squeezed tight against the sear of the wind. Helooked like a man hunting desperately for a way of escape, but actuallyhe was looking for their pack mules. Horses drift before a storm, butmules head into it, and keep their hair. For some time their packanimals had shown a tendency to swivel into the wind, then come onagain, trying to stay with the ridden horses. They were far back now,small dark marks in the unnatural dusk. Amos mouthed unheard curses. Heturned his horse, whipping hard, and forced it back the way they hadcome.
Mart tried to follow, but the Fort Worth stud reared and fought, all butgoing over on him. He spurred deep, and as the stud came down, reinedhigh and short with all his strength. "Red, you son-of-a-bitch----" Bothman and horse might very easily die out here if the stallion beganhaving his way. The great neck had no more bend to it than a log. Andnow the stud got his head down, and went into his hard, skull-jarringbuck.
Far back, Amos passed the first mule he came to, and the second. When heturned downwind, it was their commissary mule, the one with their grubin his packs, that he dragged along by a death-grip on its cheek strap.The Fort Worth stud was standing immovable in his sull as Amos got back.Both Mart and the stud horse were blowing hard, and looked beat-out.Mart's nose had started to bleed, and a bright trickle had frozen on hisupper lip.
"We got to run for it!" Amos yelled at him. "For God's sake, get a ropeon this!"
With his tail to the wind, the stud went back to work, grudginglyanswering the rein. Mart got a lead rope on the mule, to the halterfirst, then back to a standing loop around the neck, and through thehalter again. Once the lead rope was snubbed to the stud's saddle hornthe mule came along, sometimes sitting down, sometimes at a sort ofbounding trot, but with them just the same.
It was not yet four o'clock, but night was already closing; or rather ablackness deeper than any natural night seemed to be lowering fromabove, pressing downward implacably to blot out the prairie. For a timea band of yellow sky showed upon the southern horizon, but thisnarrowed, then disappeared, pushed below the edge of the world by thedarkness. Amos pointed to a dark scratch near the horizon, hardly morevisible than a bit of thread laid flat. You couldn't tell just what itwas, or how far away; in that treacherous and failing light you couldn'tbe sure whether you were seeing half a mile or fifteen. The dark mark onthe land had better be willows, footed in the gulch of a creek--or atleast in a dry run-off gully. If it was nothing but a patch ofbuckbrush, their chances were going to be very poor. They angled towardit, putting their horses into a high lope.
Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard andfelt before they could be seen. The ice particles were travelinghorizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity. Theymade a sharp whispering against leather, drove deep into cloth, andfilled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased,coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the sametime the wind increased; they would not have supposed a harder blow tobe possible, but it was. It tore at them, snatching their breaths fromtheir mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrownsacks of grain. The galloping horses sat back against the power of thewind as into breechings, yet were made to yaw and stumble as they ran.The long hair of their tails whipped their flanks, and wisps of it weresnatched away.
In the last moments before they were blinded by the snow and the dark,Mart got a brief glimpse of Amos' face. It was a bloodless gray-green,and didn't look like Amos' face. Some element of force and strength hadgone out of it. Most of the time Amos' face had a wooden look, seeminglywithout expression, but this was an illusion. Actually the muscles werehabitually set in a grim confidence, an almost built-in certainty, thatnow was gone. They pushed their horses closer together, leaning themtoward each other so that they continually bumped knees. It was the onlyway they could stay together, sightless and deafened in the howlingchaos.
They rode for a long time, beaten downwind like driven leaves. They gaveno thought to direction; the storm itself was taking care of that. Itwas only when the winded horses began to falter that Mart believed theyhad gone past whatever they had seen. His saddle was slipping back,dragged toward the stud's kidneys by the resistance of the mule. Hefumbled at the latigo tie, to draw up the cinch, but found his hands sostiff with cold he was afraid to loosen it, lest he slip his grip, andlose mule, saddle, horse, and himself, all in one dump. This thing willend soon, he was thinking. This rig isn't liable to stay together long.Nor the horses last, if it does. Nor us either, if it comes tothat.... His windpipe was raw; crackles of ice were forming up hisnose. And his feet were becoming numb. They had thrown away theirworn-out buffalo boots last spring, and had made no more, because oftheir expectations of wintering snugly at Fort Sill.
No sense to spook it, he told himself, as breathing came hard. Nothingmore a man can do. We'll fall into something directly. Or else we won't.What the horses can't do for us won't get done....
Fall into it was what they did. They came full stride, without warning,upon a drop of unknown depth. Seemingly they struck it at a slant, forAmos went over first. His horse dropped a shoulder as the ground fellfrom under, then was gone. Even in the roar of the storm, Mart heard thecrack of the pony's broken neck. He pulled hard, and in the same splitsecond tried first to sheer off, and next to turn the stud's head to thedrop--neither with the least effect, for the rim crumbled, and theyplunged.
Not that the drop was much. The gully was no more than twelve-feet deep,a scarcely noticeable step down, had either horse or man been able tosee. The stud horse twisted like a cat, got his legs under him, and wenthard to his knees. The mule came piling down on top of the whole thing,with an impact of enormous weight, and a great thrashing of legs, thenfloundered clear. And how that was done without important damage Martnever knew.
He got their two remaining animals under control, and groped for Amos.They hung onto each other, blind in the darkness and the snow, leadingthe stud and the mule up the gully in search of better shelter. Within afew yards they blundered upon a good-sized willow, newly downed by thewind; and from that moment they knew they were going to come through.They knew it, but they had a hard time remembering it, in the weary timebefore they got out of there. They were pinned in that gully more thansixty hours.
In some ways the first night was the worst. The air was dense with thedry snow, but the wind, rushing with hurricane force down a thousandmiles of prairie, would not let the snow settle, or drift, even in thecrevice where they had taken refuge. No fire was possible. The wind socycloned between the walls of the gulch that the wood they lighted inthe shelter of their coats immediately vanished in a shatter of whitesparks. Mart chopped a tub-sized cave into the frozen earth at the side,but the fire couldn't last there, either. Their canteens were frozensolid, and neither dry cornmeal nor their iron-hard jerky would go downwithout water. They improvised parkas and foot wrappings out of the fewfurs they had happened to stuff into the commissary pack, and stampedtheir feet all night long.
Sometime during that night the Fort Worth stud broke loose, and wentwith the storm. In the howling of the blizzard they didn't even hear himgo.
During the next day the snow began rolling in billows across theprairie, and their gully filled. They were better off by then. They hadgot foot wrappings on their mule, lest his hoofs freeze off as he stood,and had fed him on gatherings of willow twigs. With pack sheet andbraced branches they improved their bivouac under the downed willow, sothat as the snow covered them they had a place in which a fire wouldburn at last. They melted snow and stewed horse meat, and took turnsstaying awake to keep each other from sleeping too long. Theinterminable periods in which they lay buried alive were broken bysorties after wood, or willow twigs, or to rub the legs of the mule.
But the third night was in some ways the worst of all. They had madesnowshoes of willow hoops and frozen horsehide, tied with thongs warmedat the fire; but Mart no longer believed they would ever use them. Hehad been beaten against the frozen ground by that murderous uproar fortoo long; he could not hear the imperceptible change in the roar of thechurning sky as the blizzard began to die. This nightmare had gone onforever, and he accepted that it would always go on, until death broughtthe only possible peace.
He lay stiffened and inert in their pocket under the snow, movingsluggishly once an hour, by habit, to prevent Amos from sleeping himselfto death. He was trying to imagine what it would be like to be dead.They were so near it, in this refuge so like a grave, he no longer feltthat death could make any unwelcome difference. Their bodies would neverbe found, of course, nor properly laid away. Come thaw, the crows wouldpick their bones clean. Presently the freshets would carry theirskeletons tumbling down the gulch, breaking them up, strewing thempiecemeal until they hung in the driftwood, a thighbone here, a ribthere, a skull full of gravel half buried in the drying streambed.
People who knew them would probably figure out they had died in theblizzard, though no one would know just where. Mart Pauley? Lost lastyear in the blizzard... Mart Pauley's been dead four years... tenyears... forty years. No--not even his name would be in existence inanybody's mind, anywhere, as long as that.
Amos brought him out of that in a weird way. Mart was in a doze that wasdangerously near a coma, when he became aware that Amos was singing--ifyou could call it that. More of a groaning, in long-held, hoarse tones,from deep in the galled throat. Mart lifted his head and listened,wondering, with a desolation near indifference, if Amos had gone crazy,or into a delirium. As he came wider awake he recognized Comanche words.The eery sound was a chant.
The sun will pour life on the earth forever...
(I rode my horse till it died.)
The earth will send up new grass forever...
(I thrust with my lance while I bled.)
The stars will walk in the sky forever...
(Leave my pony's bones on my grave.)
It was a Comanche death song. The members of some warrior society--theSnow Wolf Brotherhood?--were supposed to sing it as they died.
"God damn it, you stop that!" Mart shouted, and beat at Amos with numbedhands.
Amos was not in delirium. He sat up grumpily, and began testing hiscreaky joints. He grunted, "No ear for music, huh?"
Suddenly Mart realized that the world beyond their prison was silent. Hefloundered out through the great depth of snow. The sky was gray, butthe surface of the snow itself almost blinded him with its glare. Andfrom horizon to horizon, nothing on the white earth moved. The mulestood in a sort of well it had tromped for itself, six feet deep in thesnow. It had chewed the bark off every piece of wood in reach, but itshoofs were all right. Mart dragged Amos out, and they took a look ateach other.
Their lips were blackened and cracked, and their eyes bloodshot. Amos'beard had frost in it now that was going to stay there as long as helived. But they were able-bodied, and they were free, and had a mulebetween them.
All they had to do now was to get through a hundred and ten miles ofsnow to Fort Sill; and they could figure they had put the blizzardbehind them.
Chapter 17
They took so many weeks to make Fort Sill that they were sureBluebonnet's village would be there ahead of them; but it was not. Theywere in weakened, beat-down shape, and they knew it. They slept much,and ate all the time. When they went among the Indians they movedslowly, in short hauls, with long rests between. Hard for them tobelieve that only a year and a half had passed in their search forDebbie. Many thought they had already made a long, hard, incrediblyfaithful search. But in terms of what they had got done, it wasn'tanything, yet.
Living things on the prairie had been punished very hard. The buffalocame through well, even the youngest calves; only the oldest buffalowere winter killed. Things that lived down holes, like badgers, prairiedogs, and foxes, should have been safe. Actually, animals of this habitwere noticeably scarcer for the next few years, so perhaps many frozedeep in the ground as they slept. The range cattle were hit very hard,and those of improved breeding stood it the worst. Where fences had comeinto use, whole herds piled up, and died where they stood. Hundreds hadtheir feet frozen off, and were seen walking around on the stumps forweeks before the last of them were dead.
After the blizzard, a period of melt and freeze put an iron crust on thedeep snow. A lot of the cattle that had survived the storm itself nowstarved, unable to paw down to the feed with their cloven hoofs. Horsesdid considerably better, for their hoofs could smash the crust. But eventhese were fewer for a long time, so many were strewn bones upon theprairie before spring.
Yet all this devastation had come unseasonably early. After the first ofthe year the winter turned mild, as if it had shot its wad. Once travelwas practicable, more Indians streamed into the sanctuary of Fort Sillthan ever before. Their deceptively rugged tepees, cunningly placed, andanchored by crossed stakes driven five feet into the ground, had stoodwithout a single reported loss; and the villages seemed to have plentyof pemmican to feed them until spring. Perhaps they had been awed by thepower of the warring wind spirits, so that they felt their own medicineto be at a low ebb.
They were anything but awed, however, by the soldiers, whom the PeacePolicy tied-down in helplessness, or by the Society of Friends, whosegentle pacifism the Wild Tribes held in contempt, even while theysheltered behind it. Appears-in-the-Sky, Medicine Chief of the Kiowas,who claimed a spirit owl as his familiar, in January moved out a shortdistance through the snow to murder four Negro teamsters. Two cowboyswere killed at Sill's beef corral, barely half a mile from the fort, anda night wrangler was murdered and scalped closer than that. Half a dozenQueherenna, or Antelope Comanches--the military were calling themQuohadas--stole seventy mules out of Fort Sill's new stone corral, andcomplacently camped twenty miles away, just as safe as upon theirmothers' backboards.
Both Kiowas and Comanches were convinced now of the integrity of theQuakers. They pushed into the Quakers' houses, yanked buttons off theAgent's clothes; helped themselves to anything that caught the eye, thenstoned the windows as they left. Those Quakers with families wereordered to safety, but few obeyed. Resolute in their faith, they stoodimplacably between their Indian charges and the troops. It was going tobe a hard, rough, chancy year down below in Texas.
Meanwhile Mart and Amos searched and waited, and still Bluebonnet didnot come in. As spring came on they bought new horses and mules,replenished their packs and once more went looking for Indians whoforever marched and shuffled themselves in the far lost wastes of theirrange.
Chapter 18
Most of that second trading summer was like the first. Being able tounderstand what the Indians said among themselves had proved of verylittle use, so far as their search was concerned. They did hear more,though, of what was happening back home, upon the frontier theirwanderings had put so far behind. Mart, particularly, listened sharplyfor some clue as to whether the Mathisons still held, but heard nothinghe could pin down.
In Texas the outlying settlers were going through the most dreadful yearin memory. At least fourteen people were dead, and nine childrencaptive, before the middle of May. Only a stubbornness amounting todesperation could explain why any of the pioneers held on. Bloodynarratives were to be heard in every Comanche camp the searchers found.A party of surveyors were killed upon the Red River, and their bodiesleft to spoil in a drying pool. The corpses of three men, a woman and achild were reduced to char in a burning ranch house, cheating theraiders of the scalps. Oliver Loving's foreman was killed beside his owncorral. By early summer, Wolf-Lying-Down had stolen horses within sightof San Antonio; and Kiowas under Big Bow, crossing into Mexico nearLaredo, had killed seventeen vaqueros, and got back across Texas with ahundred and fifty horses and a number of Mexican children.
General Sherman, who habitually took Texan complaints with a grain ofsalt, finally had a look for himself. He appeared in Texas along aboutthe middle of the summer, with an escort of only fifteen troopers--andat once nearly added himself to a massacre. Near Cox Mountain a raidingparty of a hundred and fifty Comanches and Kiowas destroyed a wagontrain, killing seven, some by torture. Unfortunately, for it would havebeen the highlight of his trip, General Sherman missed riding into thisevent by about an hour and a half. Proceeding to Fort Sill, Shermansupervised the arrest of Satanta, Satank, and Big Tree, showing a coolpersonal courage, hardly distinguishable from indifference, in the faceof immediate mortal danger. He presented the three war chiefs inhandcuffs to the State of Texas; and after went away again.
All this, the two riders recognized, was building up to such a deadly,all-annihilating showdown as would be their finish, if they couldn't gettheir job done first. But for the present they found the Comanches inhigh and celebrative mood, unable to imagine the whirlwind that was tocome. The warriors were arrogant, boastful, full of the high-and-mighty.Yet, luckily, they remained patronizingly tolerant, for the time, of thewhite men who dared come among them in their own far fastnesses.
During this time the terror-dream of the red night and the unearthlyvoices came to Mart only once, and he saw no copy of the unexplaineddeath tree at all. Yet the attitudes of the Indians toward such thingswere beginning to influence him, so that he more than half believed theycarried a valid prophecy. The Comanches were supposed to be the mostliteral-minded of all tribes. There are Indians who live in a poeticworld, half of the spirit, but the Comanches were a tough-minded,practical people, who laughed at the religious ceremonies of othertribes as crazy-Indian foolishness. They had no official medicine men,no pantheon of named gods, no ordered theology. Yet they lived veryclose to the objects of the earth around them, and sensed in rocks, andwinds, and rivers, spirits as living as their own. They saw themselvesas of one piece with a world in which nothing was without a spirit.
In this atmosphere, almost every Comanche had a special spirit medicinethat had come to him in a dream, usually the gift of some wild animal,such as an otter, a buffalo, or a wolf--never a dog or horse. By thetime a Comanche was old, he was either a medicine man, believed to knowspecific magics against certain ills or disasters, or a black-magicsorcerer, feared because he could maim or kill from far away.
You could never learn to understand an Indian's way of thinking, orguess what he was about to think next. If you saw an Indian looking atthe sky, you might know why you would be looking at the sky in hisplace--and be sure the Indian had some different reason. Yet sometimesthey ran into a Comanche, usually an old one, who knew something therewas no possible way for him to know.
"You speak Nemenna very well," an old Nocona said to Mart once. (Thenames of the bands were turning themselves over again; in a single yearthe name "Nawyecky" had fallen into almost total disuse.) Mart supposedthe old man had heard of him, for he had not opened his mouth. Hepretended not to understand, hoping to discredit a rumor of that kind.But the old Comanche went on, smiling at Mart's effort to dissimulate."Sometimes you come upon a spirit in the form of a dead tree," he said."It is blackened; it looks like a withered corpse, struggling to freeitself from the earth."
Mart stared, startled into acknowledgment that he understood the oldman's speech. At this the Comanche grinned derisively, but went on ingrave tones. "You do not fear death very much, I think. Last year,maybe; not this year any more. But you will do well to fear the eviltree. Death is a kind and happy thing beside the nameless things beyondthe tree."
He sat back. "I tell you this as a friend," he finished. "Not because Iexpect any kind of gift. I wish you well, and nothing more. I want nogift at all." Which of course meant that he did.
By middle fall the mood of the Comanches had begun to change. Raids werelacing into Texas at an unprecedented pace; Colorado was heavilyscourged, and Kansas hurt to the very borders of Nebraska. Almost everyvillage they came to was waiting in brooding quiet for a great war partyto return, if it were not whooping up a scalp dance to celebrate avictory, or a glory dance for sending a party out. But now both Texasand the United States Army were fighting back. The Texas Rangers were inthe saddle again, losing men in every skirmish, but making the Indianspay three and four lives for one. The Fort Sill garrison was stillimmobilized, but Fort Richardson, down on the West Fork of the Trinity,was beyond the authority of the Friends. From Richardson rode ColonelMackenzie with a regiment and a half of yellowlegs; his forced marchesdrove deep into the land of the Quohadas. Shaking Hand's Kotsetakas gotout of his way, and the great Bull Bear of the Antelopes, with such warchiefs under him as Black Horse, Wolf Tail, Little Crow, and thebrilliant young Quanah, threatened briefly in force but drew back.
Old chiefs were losing favorite sons, and you could see black deathbehind their eyes when they looked at white men. Warrior societies whoscalp-danced for victory after victory counted their strength, and foundthat in the harvest season of their greatest success they were becomingfew. The searchers learned to scout a village carefully, to see if itwere in mourning for a raiding party decimated or destroyed, before theytook a chance on going in. Over and over, white captives were murderedby torture in revenge for losses sustained upon the savage raids. Martand Amos rode harder, longer, turning hollow-eyed and gaunted. Theirtime was running out, and very fast; already they might be too late.
Yet their goal, while it still eluded them, seemed always just ahead.They never had come to any point where either one of them could havebrought himself to turn back, from the first day their quest had begun.
Then, as the snow came again, they struck the trail they had hunted forso long. It was that of twenty-two lodges led by Bluebonnet himself, andhe had a captive white girl in his village, beyond any reasonable doubt.The horse-trampled parallel lines left by the many travois led south andeastward, crossing the high ground between the Beaver and the Canadian;they followed it fast and easily.
"Tomorrow," Amos said once more as they rode. The captive girl had beendescribed to them as smallish, with yellow hair and light eyes. As theywent into camp at twilight he said it again, and now for the last time:"Tomorrow...."
Chapter 19
Mart Pauley woke abruptly, with no notion of what had roused him. Amosbreathed regularly beside him. Each slept rolled in his own blankets,but they shared the wagon-sheet into which they folded themselves, headsand all, for shelter from the weather. The cold air stiffened the slightmoisture in Mart's nostrils as he stuck his head out. Only the lightestof winds whispered across the surface of the snow. The embers of theirfire pulsed faintly in the moving air, and by these he judged the timeto be after midnight.
At first he heard nothing; but as he held his breath a trick of the windbrought again the sound that must have come to him in his sleep, sofaint, so far off, it might have been a whispering of frost in his ownears.
He closed his grip slowly on Amos' arm until he waked. "Whazzamatter?"
"I swear I heard fighting," Mart said, "a long way off."
"Leave the best man win." Amos settled himself to go back to sleep.
"I mean big fighting--an Indian fight.... There!... Ain't that abugle way off down the river?"
A few small flakes of snow touched their faces, but the night turnedsoundless again as soon as Amos sat up. "I don't hear nothing."
Neither did Mart any more. "It's snowing again."
"That's all right. We'll come up with Bluebonnet. Snow can never hidehim from us now! It'll only pin him down for us!"
Mart lay awake for a while, listening hard; but no more sound found itsway through the increasing snowfall.
Long before daylight he stewed up a frying-pan breakfast of shreddedbuffalo jerky, and fed the horses. "Today," Amos said, as they settled,joint-stiff, into their icy saddles. It was the first time they had eversaid that after all the many, many times they had said "Tomorrow." Yetthe word came gruffly, without exultation. The day was cold, and thesnow still fell, as they pushed on through darkness toward a dull dawn.
By mid-morning they reached the Canadian, and forded its unfrozenshallows. They turned downstream, and at noon found Bluebonnet'svillage--or the place it had seen its last of earth.
They came to the dead horses first. In a great bend of the river,scattered over a mile of open ground, lay nearly a hundred head ofbuffalo ponies, their lips drawing back from their long teeth as theyfroze. The snow had stopped, but not before it had sifted over thehorses, and the blood, and the fresh tracks that must have been made inthe first hours of the dawn. No study of sign was needed, however; whathad happened here was plain. The cavalry had learned long ago that itcouldn't hold Comanche ponies.
Beyond the shoulder of a ridge they came upon the site of the villageitself. A smudge, and a heavy stench of burning buffalo hair, still rosefrom the wreckage of twenty-two lodges. A few more dead horses werescattered here, some of them the heavier carcasses of cavalry mounts.But here, too, the snow had covered the blood, and the story of thefight, and all the strewn trash that clutters a field of battle. Therewere no bodies. The soldiers had withdrawn early enough so that theComanche survivors had been able to return for their dead, and be gone,before the snow stopped.
Mart and Amos rode slowly across the scene of massacre. Nothingmeaningful to their purpose was left in the burnt-out remains of thelodges. They could make out that the cavalry had ridden off down theCanadian, and that was about all.
"We don't know yet," Mart said.
"No," Amos agreed. He spoke without expression, allowing himself neitherdiscouragement nor hope. "But we know where the answer is to be found."
It was not too far away. They came upon the bivouacked cavalry a scanteight miles below.
Chapter 20
Daylight still held as Mart and Amos approached the cavalry camp, but itwas getting dark by the time they were all the way in. The troopers onduty were red-eyed, but with a harsh edge on their manners, after thenight they had spent. An outlying vedette passed them into a dismountedsentry, who called the corporal of the guard, who delivered them to thesergeant of the guard, who questioned them with more length than pointbefore digging up a second lieutenant who was Officer of the Day. Thelieutenant also questioned them, though more briefly. He left themstanding outside a supply tent for some time, while he explained them toa Major Kinsman, Adjutant.
The major stuck a shaggy head out between the tent flaps, looked themover with the blank stare of fatigue, and spat tobacco juice into thesnow.
"My name," Amos began again, patiently, "is----"
"Huntin' captives, huh?" The shaggy head was followed into the open by ahuge frame in a tightly buttoned uniform. "Let's see if we got any youknow." Major Kinsman led the way, not to another tent, but to the wagonpark. They followed him as he climbed into the wagonbed of a coveredambulance.
Under a wagon-sheet, which the adjutant drew back, several bodies laystraight and neatly aligned, ice-rigid in the cold. In the thickeningdark inside the ambulance, Mart could see little more than that theywere there, and that one or two seemed to be children.
"Have a light here in a minute," Major Kinsman said. "Orderly's fillinga lantern."
Mart Pauley could hear Amos' heavy breathing, but not his own; he didnot seem able to breathe in here at all. A dreadful conviction came overhim, increasing as they waited, that they had come to the end of theirsearch. It seemed a long time before a lighted lantern was thrustinside.
The bodies were those of two women and two little boys. The older of thewomen was in rags, but the younger and smaller one wore clean clothesthat had certainly belonged to her, and shoes that were scuffed but notmuch worn. She appeared to have been about twenty, and was quitebeautiful in a carved-snow sort of way. The little boys were perhapsthree and seven.
"Both women shot in the back of the head," Major Kinsman said,objectively. "Flash-burn range. Light charge of powder, as you see. Thelittle boys got their skulls cracked. We think this woman here is onetaken from a Santa Fe stagecoach not many days back.... Know any ofthem?"
"Never saw them before," Amos said.
Major Kinsman looked at Mart for a separate reply, and Mart shook hishead.
They went back to the supply tent, and the adjutant took them inside.The commanding officer was there, sorting through a great mass of lootwith the aid of two sergeants and a company clerk. The adjutantidentified his superior as Colonel Russell M. Hannon. They had heard ofhim, but never seen him before; he hadn't been out here very long. Justnow he looked tired, but in high spirits.
"Too bad there wasn't more of 'em," Colonel Hannon said. "That's theonly disappointing thing. We were following the river, not their trail.Wichita scouts brought word there must be a million of 'em. What withthe snow, and the night march, an immediate attack was the only coursepermissible."
He said his troops had killed thirty-eight hostiles, with the loss oftwo men. Comanches, at that. A ratio of nineteen to one, as compared toColonel Custer's ratio of fourteen to one against Black Kettle at theBattle of the Washita. "Not a bad little victory. Not bad at all."
Mart saw Amos stir, and worried for a moment. But Amos held his tongue.
"Four hundred ninety-two ponies," said Hannon. "Had to shoot 'em, ofcourse. Wild as antelope--no way to hold onto them. Four captivesrecovered. Unfortunately, the hostiles murdered them, as we developedthe village. Now, if some of this junk will only show what Comancheswe defeated, we'll be in fair shape to write a report. Those Wichitascouts know nothing whatever about anything; most ignorant savages onearth. However----"
"What you had there," said Amos wearily, "was Chief Bluebonnet, withwhat's left of the Wolf Brothers, along with a few Nawyecky. Or maybeyou call 'em Noconas."
"Get this down," the colonel told the clerk.
It was going to take a long time to find out just who had fought anddied at the riverbend--and who had got away into the night and the snow,and so still lived, somewhere upon the winter plain. Even allowing forthe great number of dead and dying the Comanches had carried awayuncounted, somewhere between a third and a half of Bluebonnet's peoplemust have escaped.
They were glad to help sort through the wagonload of stuff hastilysnatched up in the gloom of the dawn before the lodges were set on fire.Some of the pouches, quivers, and squill breastplates were decoratedwith symbols Mart or Amos could connect with Indian names; they foundinsignia belonging to Stone Wolf, Curly Horn, Pacing Bear, andHears-the-Wind-Talk. The patterns they didn't know they tried tomemorize, in hopes of seeing them again someday.
Especially valued by Colonel Hannon, as exonerating his attack in thedark, was certain stuff that had to be the loot from raided homesteads:a worn sewing basket, an embroidered pillow cover, a home-carved woodenspoon. Hard to see what the Comanches would want with a store-boughtpaper lamp shade, a wooden seat for a chamber pot, or an album ofpressed flowers. But if someone recognized these poor lost thingssomeday, they would become evidence connecting the massacred Comancheswith particular crimes. One incriminating bit was a mail pouch known tohave been carried by a murdered express rider. The contents were onlyhalf rifled; some Comanche had been taking his time about opening allthe letters--no man would ever know what for.
But the thing Mart found that hit him hard, and started his search allover again, was in a little heap of jewelry--Indian stuff mostly: Carvedamulets, Mexican and Navajo silver work, sometimes set with turquoise;but with a sprinkling of pathetic imitation things, such as frontiersmencould afford to buy for their women. Only thing of interest, at firstsight, seemed to be a severed finger wearing a ring which would not pulloff. Mart cynically supposed that any stuff of cash value had stayedwith the troopers who collected it.
Then Mart found Debbie's locket.
It was the cheapest kind of a gilt-washed metal heart on a broken chain.Mart himself had given it to Debbie on the Christmas when she was three.It wasn't even a real locket, for it didn't open, and had embarrassedhim by making a green spot on her throat every time she wore it. ButDebbie had hung on to it. On the back it said "Debbie from M," painfullyscratched with the point of his knife.
Both officers showed vigorous disinterest as Mart pressed for thecircumstances in which the locket had been found. These wereprofessionals, and recognized the question as of the sort leading tofull-dress investigations, and other chancy outcomes, if allowed todevelop. But Amos came to Mart's support, and presently they found theanswer simply by walking down the mess line with the locket in hand.
The locket had been taken from the body of a very old squaw found in theriver along with an ancient buck. No, damn it, the colonel explained, ofcourse they had not meant to kill women and children, and watch yourdamn tongue. All you could see was a bunch of shapeless figures firingon you--nothing to do but cut them down, and save questions for later.But one of the sergeants remembered how these two bodies had come there.The squaw, recognizable in hindsight as the fatter one, had tried toescape through the river on a pony, and got sabered down. The old manhad rushed in trying to save the squaw, and got sabered in turn. Nothingwas in hand to tell who these people were.
Colonel Hannon saw to it that the locket was properly tagged andreturned to the collection as evidence of a solved child stealing.Restitution would be made to the heirs, upon proper application to theDepartment, with proof of loss.
"She was there," Mart said to Amos. "She was there in that camp. She'sgone with them that got away."
Amos did not comment. They had to follow and find the survivors--perhapsclose at hand, if they were lucky; otherwise by tracing them to whateverfar places they might scatter. This time neither one of them said"Tomorrow."
Chapter 21
They had been winter-driven that first time they went home, all but outof horseflesh, and everything else besides. But after the "Battle" ofDeadhorse Bend they went home only because all leads very soon staledand petered out in the part of the country where they were. Otherwise,they probably would have stayed out and kept on. They had lived on thewild land so long that they needed nothing, not even money, that theydid not know how to scratch out of it. It never occured to them thattheir search was stretching out into a great extraordinary feat ofendurance; an epic of hope without faith, of fortitude without reward,of stubbornness past all limits of reason. They simply kept on, doingthe next thing, because they always had one more place to go, followingout one more forlorn-hope try.
And they had one more idea now. It had been spelled out for them in theloot Colonel Hannon's troopers had picked up in the wreckage ofBluebonnet's destroyed village. Clear and plain, once you thought of it,though it had taken them weeks of thinking back over the whole thingbefore they recognized it. Amos, at least, believed that this time theycould not fail. They would find Debbie now--if only she still lived.
Their new plan would carry them far into the southwest, into countryhundreds of miles from any they had ever worked before. And so long asthey had to go south, home was not too far out of the way. Home? Whatwas that? Well, it was the place they used to live; where the Mathisonsstill lived--so far as they knew--and kept an eye on the cattle that nowbelonged to Debbie. Mart would always think of that stretch of countryas home, though nothing of his own was there, nor anybody waiting forhim.
As they rode, a sad, dark thing began to force itself upon theirattention. When they came to the country where the farthest-west fringeof ranches had been, the ranches were no longer there. Often only aghostly chimney stood, solitary upon the endless prairie, where once hadbeen a warm and friendly place with people living in it. Then they wouldremember the time they had stopped by, and things they had eaten there,and the little jokes the people had made. If you hunted around in thebrush that ran wild over all, you could usually find the graves. Theremembered people were still there, under the barren ground.
More often you had to remember landmarks to locate where a place hadbeen at all. Generally your horse stumbled over an old footing orsomething before you saw the flat place where the little house had been.Sometimes you found graves here, too, but more usually the people hadsimply pulled their house down and hauled the lumber away, retreatingfrom a place the Peace Policy had let become too deadly, coming on topof the war. You got the impression that Texas had seen its high tide,becoming little again as its frontier thinned away. Sundown seemed tohave come for the high hopes of the Lone Star Republic to which Unionhad brought only war, weakening blood losses, and the perhaps inevitableneglect of a defeated people.
On the morning of the last day, with Mathison's layout only twenty-oddmiles away, they came upon one more crumbling chimney, lonely beside alittle stream. Mart's eyes rested upon it contemplatively across thebrush at five hundred yards without recognizing it. He was thinking whata dreadful thing it would be if they came to the Mathisons, and found nomore than this left of the place, or the people. Then he saw Amoslooking at him strangely, and he knew what he was looking at. Surprisingthat he had not known it, even though he had not been here in a longtime. The chimney marked the site of the old Pauley homestead; the placewhere he had been born. Here the people who had brought him into theworld had loved him, and cared for him; here they had built their hopes,and here they had died. How swiftly fade the dead from people's minds,if he could look at this place and not even know it! He turned his horseand rode toward it, Amos following without question.
He had no memory of his own of how this homestead had looked, and nofaintest images of his people's faces. He had been taken over thisground, and had all explained to him when he was about eight years old,but no one had ever been willing to talk to him about it, else. And now,except for the chimney, he couldn't locate where anything had been atall. The snow had gone off, but the ground was frozen hard, so thattheir heels rang metallically upon it as they dismounted to walk around.The little stream ran all year, and it had a fast ripple in it thatnever froze, where it passed this place; so that the water seemed totalk forever to the dead. This creek was called the Beanblossom; Martknew that much. And that was about all.
Amos saw his bewilderment. "Your old m-- your father wagoned the SantaFe Trail a couple of times," he said, "before he settled down. ThemSanta Fe traders, if any amongst 'em died, they buried 'em ahead in thetrail; so every dang ox in the train tromped over the graves. Didn'twant the Indians to catch on they were doing poorly. Or maybe dig 'emup. So your father was against markers on graves. Out here, anyways.Knowing that, and after some argument, we never set none up."
Mart had supposed he knew where the graves were anyway. They had beenplainly visible when he had been shown, but now neither mound nordepression showed where they were. The brush had advanced, and under thebrush the wind and the rain of the years had filled and packed andplaned and sanded the sterile earth until no trace showed anywhere ofanything having crumbled to dust beneath.
Amos picked a twig and chewed it as he waded into the brush, takingcross-sightings here and there, trying to remember. "Right here," hesaid finally. "This is where your mother lies." He scraped a line withthe toe of his boot, the frozen ground barely taking the mark. "Here'sthe foot of the grave." He stepped aside, and walked around an undefinedspace, and made another mark. "And here's the head, here."
A great gawky bunch of chaparral grew in the middle of what must be theside line of the grave. Mart stood staring at the bit of earth, in noway distinguishable from any other part of the prairie surface. He wastrying to remember, or to imagine, the woman whose dust was there. Amosseemed to understand that, too.
"Your mother was a beautiful girl," he said. Mart felt ashamed as heshoved out of his mind the thought that whatever she looked like, Amoswould have said that same thing of the dead. "Real thin," Amos said,mouthing his twig, "but real pretty just the same. Brown eyes, almostwhat you'd call black. But her hair. Red-brown, and a lot of it. With ashine in it, like a gold kind of red, when the light struck through itright. I never seen no prettier hair."
He was silent a few moments, as if to let Mart think for a decentinterval about the mother he did not remember. Then Amos got restless,and measured off a long step to the side. "And this here's Ethan--yourfather," he said. "You favor him, right smart. He had a black-Welshstreak; marked his whole side of the family. It's from him you got yourblack look and them mighty-near crockery eyes. He was just as dark, withthe same light eyes."
Amos turned a little, and chewed the twig, but didn't bother to pace offthe locations of the others. "Alongside lies my brother--mine andHenry's brother. The William you've heard tell of so many, many times. Idon't know why, but in the family, we never once did call himBill.... William was the best of us. The best by far. Good looking asHenry, and strong as me. And the brains of the family--there they lie,right there. He could been governor, or anything. Except he was lessthan your age--just eighteen...." Mart didn't let himself questionthe description, even in his mind. You could assume that the firstkilled in a family of boys was the one who would have been great. It waswhat they told you always.
"Beyond, the three more--next to William lies Cash Dennison, a youngrider, helping out Ethan; then them two bullwhackers that lived out thewagon train killing, and made it to here. One's name was Caruthers, froma letter in his pocket; I forget the other. Some blamed them for thewhole thing--thought the Comanches come down on this place a-chasingthem two. But I never thought that. Seems more like the Comanch' wascoming here; and it was the wagon train they fell on by accident ontheir way."
"You got any notion--does anybody know--did they get many of theComanches? Here, the night of this thing?"
Amos shook his head. "A summer storm come up. A regular cloudburst--youdon't see the like twice in twenty year. It washed out the varmints'trail. And naturally they carried off their dead--such as there was.Nobody knows how many. Maybe none."
Waste, thought Mart. Useless, senseless, heartbreaking waste. All thesegood, fine, happy lives just thrown away....
Once more Amos seemed to answer his thought. "Mart, I don't know as Iever said this to anybody. But it's been a long time; and I'll tell younow what I think. My family's gone now, too--unless and until we findour one last little girl. But we lived free of harm, and the Mathisonstoo, for full eighteen years before they struck our bunch again. Youwant to know what I think why? I think your people here bought that timefor us. They paid for it with their lives."
"Wha-at?" No matter what losses his people had inflicted on the raiders,Comanches would never be stopped by that. They would come back to eventhe score, and thus the tragic border war went on forever. But thatwasn't what Amos meant.
"I think this was a revenge raid," Amos said. "It was right here theRangers come through, trailing old Iron Shirt's band. They cut thatbunch down from the strongest there was to something trifling, andkilled Iron Shirt himself. So the trail the Rangers followed that timehad a black history for Comanches. They come down it just once inrevenge for their dead--and Ethan's little place was the farthest out onthis trail. And it was a whole Indian generation before they come again.That's why I say--your people bought them years the rest of us lived inpeace...."
Mart said, "It's been a long time. Do you think my father would mind nowif I come and put markers on them graves? Would that be a foolishnessafter all this while?"
Amos chewed, eating his twig. "I don't believe he'd mind. Not now. Evencould he know. I think it would be a right nice thing to do. I'll helpyou soon's we have a mite of time." He turned toward the horses, butMart wanted to know one thing more that no one had ever told him.
"I don't suppose----" he said--"well, maybe you might know. Could youshow me where I was when Pa found me in the brush?"
"Your Pa? When?"
"I mean Henry. He always stood in place of my own. I heard tell he foundme, and picked me up...."
Amos looked all around, and walked into the brush, chewing slowly, andtaking sights again. "Here," he said at last. "I'm sure now.Right--exactly--here." The frost in the earth crackled as he ground aheel into the spot he meant. "Of course, then, the brush was clearedback. To almost this far from the house." He stood around a moment tosee if Mart wanted to ask anything more, then walked off out of thebrush toward the horses.
This place, this very spot he stood on, Mart thought, was where he onceawoke alone in such terror as locked his throat, seemingly; they hadtold him he made no sound. Queer to stand here, in this very spot wherehe had so nearly perished before he even got started; queer, because hefelt nothing. It was the same as when he had stood looking at thegraves, knowing that what was there should have meant so much, yet hadno meaning for him at all. He couldn't see anything from here thatlooked familiar, or reminded him of anything.
Of course, that night of the massacre, he hadn't been standing up betterthan six feet tall in his boots. He had been down in the roots of thescrub, not much bigger than his own foot was now. On an impulse, Martlay down in the tangle, pressing his cheek against the ground, to bringhis eyes close to the roots.
A bitter chill crept along the whole length of his body. The frozenground seemed to drain the heat from his blood, and the blood from hisheart itself. Perhaps it was that, and knowing where he was, thataccounted for what happened next. Or maybe scars, almost as old as hewas, were still in existence down at the bottom of his mind, long buriedunder everything that had happened in between. The sky seemed to darken,while a ringing, buzzing sound came into his ears, and when the sky wascompletely black it began to redden with a bloody glow. His stomachdropped from under his heart, and a horrible fear filled him--the fearof a small helpless child, abandoned and alone in the night. He tried tospring up and out of that, and he could not move; he lay there rigid,seemingly frozen to the ground. Behind the ringing in his ears began torise the unearthly yammer of the terror-dream--not heard, not evenremembered, but coming to him like an awareness of something happeningin some unknown dimension not of the living world.
He fought it grimly, and slowly got hold of himself; his eyes cleared,and the unearthly voices died, until he heard only the hammering of hisheart. He saw, close to his eyes, the stems of the chaparral; and he wasable to move again, stiffly, with his muscles shaking. He turned hishead, getting a look at the actual world around him again. Then, througha rift in the brush that showed the creek bank, he saw the death tree.
Its base was almost on a level with his eyes, at perhaps a hundred feet;and for one brief moment it seemed to swell and tower, writhing itscorpse-withered arms. His eyes stayed fixed upon it as he slowly got upand walked toward it without volition, as if it were the only thingpossible to do. The thing shrunk as he approached it, no longer toweringover him twice his size as it had seemed to do wherever he had seen itbefore. Finally he stood within arm's length; and now it was only apiece of weather-silvered wood in a tormented shape, a foot and a halfshorter than himself.
An elongated knot at the top no longer looked like a distorted head, butonly a symbol representing the hideous thing he had imagined there. Helashed out and struck it, hard, with the heel of his right hand. Thelong-rotted roots broke beneath the surface of the soil; and a twistedold stump tottered, splashed in the creek, and went spinning away.
Mart shuddered, shaking himself back together; and he spoke aloud. "I'llbe a son-of-a-bitch," he said; and rejoined Amos. If he still lookedshaken up, Amos pretended not to notice as they mounted up.
Chapter 22
Martin Pauley was taken by another fit of shyness as they approached theMathison ranch. He was a plainsman now, a good hunter, and a first-classIndian scout. But the saddle in which he lived had polished nothingabout him but the seat of his leather pants.
"I tried to leave you back," Amos reminded him. "A couple ofburr-matted, sore-backed critters we be. You got a lingo on you like aCaddo whiskey runner. You know that, don't you?"
Mart said he knew it.
"Our people never did have much shine," Amos said. "Salt of the earth,mind you; no better anywhere. But no book learning, like is born rightinto them Mathisons. To us, grammar is nothing but grampaw's wife."
Mart remembered the times Laurie had corrected his speech, and knew hedidn't fit with civilized people. Not even as well as before, when hewas merely a failure at it. But someway he was finally herded into theMathison kitchen.
Laurie ran to him and took both his hands. "Where on earth have youbeen?"
"We been north," he answered her literally. "Looking around among theKiowas."
"Why up there?"
"Well..." he answered lamely, "she might have been up there."
She said wonderingly, "Martie, do you realize how long you've been onthis search? This is the third winter you've been out."
He hadn't thought of the time in terms of years. It had piled up inlittle pieces--always just one more place to go that would take just afew weeks more. He made a labored calculation, and decided Laurie wastwenty-one. That explained why she seemed so lighted up; probably lookedthe best she ever would in her life. She was at an age when most girlslight up, if they're going to; Mexicans and Indians earlier. A look attheir mothers, or their older sisters, reminded you of what you knew forcertain: All that bright glow would soon go out again. But you couldn'tever make yourself believe it.
Laurie made him follow her around, dealing out facts and figures aboutKiowas, while she helped her mother get dinner. He didn't believe shecared a hoot about Kiowas, but he was glad for the chance to have a lookat her.
There was this Indian called Scar, he explained to her. Seemed heactually had one on his face. They kept hearing that Scar had taken alittle white girl captive. He showed her how the Indians described thescar, tracing a finger in a sweeping curve from hairline to jaw. Awell-marked man. Only they couldn't find him. They couldn't even findany reliable person--no trader, soldier, or black hat--who had ever seenan Indian with such a scar. Then Mart had happened to think that thesign describing the scar was a whole lot like the Plains-Indian sign forsheep. The Kiowas had a warrior society called the Sheep, and he got towondering if all those rumors were hitting around the fact that theKiowa Sheep Society had Debbie. So they went to see....
"A pure waste of time, and nobody to blame but me. It was me thought ofit."
"It was I," she corrected him.
"You?" he fumbled it; then caught it on the bounce. "No, I meant--theblame was on I."
"There's going to be a barn party," she told him. "Mose Harper built abarn."
"At his age?"
"The State of Texas paid for it, mainly; they're going to put a Rangerstopover in part of it, and store their feed there next year--or theyear after, when they get around to it. But the party is right away. Ibet you knew!"
"No, I didn't."
"Bet you did. Only reason you came home."
He thought it over, and guessed he would give her some real comicalanswer later; soon as he thought of one.
After supper Aaron Mathison and Amos Edwards got out the herd books andledgers, as upon their visit before. Aaron's head bent low, eyes closeto the pages, so that Mart noticed again the old man's failing sight,much worse than it had been the last time.
And now Mart made his next mistake, rounding out his tally for the day.He set up camp, all uninvited, on the settle flanking the stove where hehad sat with Laurie before; and here, while Laurie finished picking upthe supper things, he waited hopefully for her to come and sit besidehim. He had a notion that all the time he had been gone would melt away,once they sat there again.
But she didn't come and sit there. Had to get her beauty sleep, shesaid. Great long drive tomorrow; probably no sleep at all tomorrownight, what with the long drive home.
"Harper's is seven miles," Mart said. "Scarcely a real good spit."
"Don't be coarse." She said good night, respectfully to Amos and brisklyto Mart, and went off across the dog-trot into that unknown world in theother section of the house, which he had never entered.
Mart wandered to the other end of the room, intending to join Amos andAaron Mathison. But "G'night" Amos said to him. And Mathison gravelystood up to shake hands.
"It comes to me," Mart said, "I've been a long time away."
"And if we stayed for the damn barn burning," Amos said, "we'd be a longtime off the road." Amos believed he knew where he was going now. Allthat great jackstraw pile of Indian nonsense was straightening itself inhis mind. He could add up the hundreds of lies and half truths they hadridden so far to gather, and make them come out to a certain answer atlast.
"You be stubborn men," Aaron Mathison said, "both of you."
Mart tried to share Amos' fire of conviction, but he could not. "Man hasto live some place," he said, and slung on his coat, for they were tosleep in the bunkhouse this time. The coat was a long-skirted bearskin,slit high for the saddle; it was big enough to keep his horse warm, andsmelled like a hog. "The prairie's all I know any more, I guess." Hewent out through the cold dark to his bed.
Chapter 23
Mart was up long before daylight. Some internal clockwork always brokehim out early nowadays. In summer the first dawn might be coming on, butin the short days he woke in the dark at exactly half-past four. Hestarted a fire in the bunkhouse stove, and set coffee on. Then he wentout to the breaking corral into which they had thrown the horses andmules Amos had picked for the next leg of their perpetual trip.
He grained them all, then went back to the bunkhouse. He set the coffeeoff the fire, and studied Amos for signs of arisal. He saw none, so hewent out to the corral again. They carried three mules now, on accountof the trading, and a spare saddle horse, in case one should pull uplame when they were in a hurry. Mart picked himself a stocky buckskin,with zebra stripes on his cannons and one down his back. He snubbeddown, saddled, and bucked out this horse with his bearskin coat on; allhorses took outrage at this coat, and had to be broke to it fresh everyday for a while, until they got used to it.
He laid aside the bearskin to top off the great heavy stock horse hesupposed Amos would ride. Its pitch was straight, and easy to sit, buthad such a shock to it that his nose bled a little. Finally he got thepack saddles on the mules, and left them standing hump-backed in a sull.By this time the gray bitter dawn was on the prairie, but the whitevapor from the lungs of the animals was the only sign of life around theplace as yet.
Amos was sitting up on the edge of his bunk in his long-handledunderwear, peering at the world through bleary lids and scratchinghimself.
"Well," Mart said, "we're saddled."
"Huh?"
"I say I uncorked the ponies, and slung the mule forks on."
"What did you do that for?"
"Because it's morning, I suppose--why the hell did you think? I don'tsee no smoke from the kitchen. You want I should stir up a snack?"
"We're held up," Amos said. "We got to go to that roof-raising."
"Thought you said we had to flog on. Jesus, will you make up your mind?"
"I just done so. By God, will you clean out your ears?"
"Oh, hell," Mart said, and went out to unsaddle.
Chapter 24
The barn party was just a rough-and-ready gathering of frontier cattlepeople, such as Mart knew perfectly well. He knew exactly how thesepeople spent every hour of their lives, and he could do everything theyknew how to do better than most of them. What bothered him was to seesuch a raft of them in one place. They filled the big new barn when theyall got there. Where had these dozens of scrubbed-looking girls comefrom, in all shapes and sizes? All this swarming of strangers gave Martan uncomfortable feeling that the country had filled up solid while hewas gone, leaving no room for him here.
Mart had got stuck with the job of bringing along the pack mules, forAmos wanted to get started directly from Harper's without going back. Inconsequence, Mart hadn't seen any of the Mathison family after they gotdressed up until they appeared at the party. Aaron Mathison waspatriarchal in high collar and black suit, across his vest the massivegold chain indispensable to men of substance; and Mrs. Mathison was aproper counterpart in a high-necked black dress that rustled when she somuch as turned her eyes. They joined a row of other old-timers, a sortof windbreak of respectability along the wall, suggestive ofmysteriously inherited book learning and deals with distant banks.
But it was Laurie who took him by shock, and for whom he was unprepared.She had made her own dress, of no prouder material than starchedgingham, but it was full-skirted and tight at the waist, and left hershoulders bare, what time she wasn't shawled up against the cold. Hewould have been better off if he could have seen this rig at the house,and had time to get used to it. He had never seen her bare shouldersbefore, nor given thought to how white they must naturally be; and nowhe had trouble keeping his eyes off them. A wicked gleam showed in hereyes as she caught him staring.
"Honestly, Mart--you act as though you came from so far back in thehills the sun must never shine!"
"Listen here," he said, judging it was time to take her down a peg."When I first rode with you, you was about so high, and round as apunkin. And you wore all-overs made of flour-sack. I know because I seena yearling calf stack you wrong end up in a doodle of wild hay, and yousaid 'Steamboat Mills' right across the bottom."
She giggled. "How do you know I still don't?" she asked him. But hereyes were searching the crowd for somebody else.
He drew off, to remuster according to plan; and when next he tried to gonear her, she was surrounded. The whole place was curdled up withlashings of objectionable young jaybirds he had never seen before in hislife, and Laurie had rings in the noses of them all. Some of them woreborrowed-looking store clothes, generally either too long in the sleevesor fixing to split out someplace. But more had come in their saddleoutfits, like Mart, with clean handkerchiefs on their necks and theirshirts washed out by way of celebration. He took them to be commonsaddle pounders, mostly. But he imagined a knowingness behind theireyes, as if they were all onto something he did not suspect. Maybe theyknew what they were doing here--which was more than he could say forhimself. Tobe and Abner knew everybody and mixed everywhere, leavingMart on his own. Brad had been his best friend, but these youngerbrothers seemed of a different generation altogether; he had nothing incommon with them any more.
Some of the boys kept sliding out the back way to the horse lines, andMart knew jugs were cached out there. He had taken very few drinks inhis life, but this seemed a good time for one. He started to follow agroup who spoke owlishly of "seeing to the blankets on the team," butAmos cut him off at the door.
"Huh uh. Not this time." Amos had not had a drop, which was odd in thetime and place. Mart knew he could punish a jug until its friends criedout in pain, once he started.
"What's the matter now?"
"I got special reasons."
"Something going to bust?"
"Don't know yet. I'm waiting for something."
That was all he would say. Mart went off and holed up in a corner withold Mose Harper, who asked him questions about "present day" Indians,and listened respectfully to his answers--or the first few words ofthem, anyway. Mose got the bit in his teeth in less than half a minute,and went into the way things used to be, in full detail. Mart let hiseyes wander past Mose to follow Laurie, flushed and whirling merrily,all over the place. The country-dance figures kept people changingpartners, and Laurie always had a few quick words for each new one,making him laugh, usually, before they were separated again. Martwondered what on earth she ever found to say.
"In my day," Mose was telling Mart, "when them Tonkawas killed an enemy,they just ate the heart and liver. Either raw or fussy prepared--didn'tmake no difference. What they wanted was his medicine. Only they neverate a white man's vitals; feared our medicine wouldn't mix with theirs,seemingly, though they respected our weepons...."
Mart more than half expected that Laurie would come around and try topull him into a dance, and he was determined he wasn't going to let herdo it. He was making up speeches to fend her off with, while hepretended to listen to Mose.
"Nowadays," Mose explained, "they've took to eating the whole corpse, asa food. 'Tain't a ceremony, any more, so much as a saving of meat. Butthey still won't eat a white man. 'Tain't traditional."
Laurie never did come looking for Mart. She made a face at him once, asshe happened to whirl close by, and that was all. Holding back becametiresome pretty fast, with no one to insist on anything different. Hegot into the dance, picking whatever girls caught his eye, regardless ofwhom they thought they belonged to. He was perversely half hoping forthe fight you can sometimes get into that way, but none started.
He had been afraid of the dancing itself, but actually there wasn'tanything to it. These people didn't party often enough to learn any verycomplicated dances. Just simple reels, and stuff like that. Sashayforward, sashay back, swing your lady, drop her slack. You swing mine,and I'll swing yours, and back to your own, and everybody swing. Atthese family parties, out here on civilization's brittle edge, theydidn't even swing their girls by the waist--a dissolute practice to beseen mainly in saloons. Man grabbed his lady by the arms, and they kindof skittered around each other, any way they could. He got hold ofLaurie only about once every two hours, but there were plenty of others.The fiddles and the banjos whanged out a rhythm that shook the barn, andthe time flew by, romping and stomping.
Through all this Amos stood by, withdrawn into the background and intohimself. Sometimes men he had known came to shake hands with him,greeting him with a heartiness Amos did not return. They were full ofthe questions to be expected of them, but the answers they got were asshort as they could civilly be, and conveyed nothing. No conversationwas allowed to develop. Amos remained apart, neither alone nor withanybody. Small use speculating on what he might be waiting for. Martpresently forgot him.
It was long after midnight, though nobody but the nodding old folksalong the wall seemed to have noticed it, when the Rangers came in.There were three of them, and they made their arrival inconspicuous.They wore no uniforms--the Rangers had none--and their badges were intheir pockets. Nobody was turned nervous, and nobody made a fuss overthem, either. Rangers were a good thing, and there ought to be more ofthem. Sometimes you needed a company of them badly. Didn't need any justnow. So long as no robbery or bloody murder was in immediate view,Rangers ranked as people. And that was it.
That, and one thing more: Everyone knew at once that they were there.Within less than a minute, people who had never seen any of these threebefore knew that Rangers had come in, and which men they were. MartPauley heard of them from a girl he swung but once, and had them pointedout to him by the next girl to whom he was handed on. "Who? Him?" Theyoungest of the three Rangers was Charlie MacCorry.
"He enlisted last year sometime."
As they finished the set, Mart was trying to make up his mind if heshould go shake hands with Charlie MacCorry, or leave him be. He neverhad liked him much. Too much flash, too much swagger, too much to say.But now he saw something else. Amos and one of the older Rangers hadwalked toward each other on sight. They had drawn off, and were talkingsecretly and intently, apart from anyone else. Whatever Amos had waitedfor was here. Mart went over to them.
"This here is Sol Clinton," Amos told Mart. "Lieutenant in the Rangers.I side-rode him once. But that was long ago. I don't know if heremembers."
Sol Clinton looked Mart over without to-do, or any move to shake hands.This Ranger appeared to be in his forties, but he was so heavilyweathered that he perhaps looked older than he was. He had a droopingsandy mustache and deep grin lines that seemed to have been carvedthere, for he certainly wasn't smiling.
"I'm that found boy the Edwards family raised," Mart explained, "nameof----"
"Know all about you," Sol Clinton said. His stare lay on Mart with asort of tired candor. "You look something like a breed," he decided.
"And you," Mart answered, "look something like you don't know whatyou're talking about."
"Stop that," Amos snapped.
"He's full of snakehead," Mart stood his ground. "I can smell it onhim."
"Why, sure," the Ranger conceded mildly. "I've had a snort or two. Thisis a dance, isn't it? Man can't haul off and dance in cold blood."
"Mind your manners anyway," Amos advised Mart.
"That's all right," Sol said. "You know a trader calls himself JeremFutterman up the Salt Fork of the Brazos?"
Mart looked at Amos, and Amos answered him. "He knows him, and he knowshe's dead."
"Might let him answer for himself, Amos."
"Sol was speaking of us riding to Austin with him," Amos went onstolidly, "to talk it over."
Mart said sharply, "We got no time for----"
"I explained him that," Amos said. "Will you get this through your damnhead? This is an invite to a neck-tie party! Now stop butting in."
"Not quite that bad," Clinton said. "Not yet. We hope. No great hurry,either, right this minute. Best of our witnesses broke loose on us; gotto catch him again before we put anything together. Most likely, allwe'll want of you fellers is to pad out a good long report. Show zeal,you know." He dropped into a weary drawl. "Show we're unrestin'. Get ourpay raised--like hell."
"I guarantee Mart Pauley will come back to answer," Amos said, "same asme."
"I guess the same bond will stretch to cover you both," Sol Clintonsaid. "I'll scratch down a few lines for you to sign."
"It's a wonderful thing to be a former Ranger," Amos said. "It's the wayeverybody trusts you--that's what gets to a man."
"Especially if you're also a man of property," Clinton agreed in thatsame mild way. "Amos put up a thousand head of cattle," he explained toMart, "that says you and him will come on into Austin, soon as youfinish this next one trip."
"Aaron Mathison told me about this," Amos said. "I couldn't believe hehad it right. I got to believe it now."
"They know about this, then. They knew it all the time...."
"I stayed on to make sure. There's nothing more to wait on now. Go andtell the Mathisons we're leaving."
"Stay on awhile," Sol Clinton suggested. "Have a good time if you want."
Martin Pauley said, "No, thanks," as he turned away.
He went looking for Laurie first. She wasn't dancing, or anywhere in thebarn. He went out to the barbecue pit, where some people were stillpoking around what was left of a steer, but she wasn't there. Hewandered down the horse line, where the saddle stock was tied along thelength of a hundred-foot rope. He knew some of the women had gone overto Mose Harper's house; a passel of young children had been bedded downover there, for one thing. He had about decided to go butt in there whenhe found her.
A couple stood in the shadows of a feed shelter. The man was CharlieMacCorry; and the girl in his arms was Laurie Mathison, as Mart somehowknew without needing to look.
Martin Pauley just stood there staring at them, his head down a littlebit, like some witless cow-critter half knocked in the head. He stoodthere as long as they did. Charlie MacCorry finally let the girl go,slowly, and turned.
"Just what the hell do you want?"
A weakness came into Mart's belly muscles, and then a knotting up; andhe began to laugh, foolishly, sagging against the feed rack. He neverdid know what he was laughing at.
Charlie blew up. "Now you look here!" He grabbed Mart by the front ofthe jacket, straightened him up, and slapped his face fit to break hisneck. Mart lashed out by reflex, and Charlie MacCorry was flat on hisback in the same tenth of a second.
He was up on the bounce, and they went at it. They were at it for sometime.
They had no prize ring out in that country; fights were many butunrehearsed. These men were leathery and hard to hurt, but their knucklebrawls were fought by instinct, without the skill they showed with otherweapons. Mart Pauley never ducked, blocked, nor gave ground; he camestraight in, very fast at first, later more slowly, plodding andfollowing. He swung workmanlike, slugging blows, one hand and then theother, putting his back into it. Charlie MacCorry fought standingstraight up, circling and sidestepping, watching his chances. He threwlong-armed, lacing blows, mostly to the face. Gradually, over a periodof time, he beat Mart's head off.
They never knew when Laurie left them. A close circle of men packed inaround them, shouting advice, roaring when either one was staggered.Amos Edwards was there, and both of MacCorry's fellow Rangers. Thesethree stood watching critically but impassively in the inner circle, theonly silent members of the crowd. Neither fighter noticed them, or heardthe yelling. Somewhere along the way Mart took a slam on the side of theface with his mouth open, and the inside of his cheek opened on his ownteeth. Daylight later showed frozen splotches of bright red over asurprising area, as if a shoat had been slaughtered. Mart kept on movingin, one eye puffed shut and the other closing; and suddenly this thingwas over.
The blow that ended it was no different than a hundred others, except inits luck. Mart had no idea which hand had landed, let alone how he didit. Charlie MacCorry went down without notice, as if all strings werecut at once. He fell forward on his face, and every muscle was slack asthey turned him over. For a couple of moments Mart stood looking down athim with a stupid surprise, wondering what had happened.
He turned away, and found himself facing Sol Clinton. He spit blood, andsaid, "You next?"
The Ranger stared at him. "Who? Me? What for?" He stood aside.
A dawn as cheerless as a drunkard's awakening was making a line of grayon the eastern horizon. Mart walked to their mules after passing themonce and having to turn back. Any number of hands helped him, and tookover from him, as he went about feeding their animals, so he took timeto take the handkerchief from his neck, and stuff it into his cheek. Thesweat with which it was soaked stung the big cut inside his cheek, buthis mouth stopped filling up.
Charlie MacCorry came to him. "You all right?" His nose showed a brightblaze where it had hit the frozen ground as he fell.
"I'm ready to go on with it if you are."
"Well--all right--if you say. Just tell me one thing. What was youlaughing at?"
"Charlie, I'll be damned if I know."
Watching him narrowly, Charlie said, "You don't?"
"Don't rightly recall what we was fighting about, when it comes tothat."
"Thought maybe you figured I cross-branded your girl."
"I got no girl. Never had."
Charlie moved closer, but his hands were in his pockets. He looked atthe ground, and at the cold streak of light in the east, before helooked at Mart. "I'd be a fool not to take your word," he decided.Charlie stuck out his hand, then drew it back, for it was swollen todouble size around broken bones. He offered his left hand instead. "Goddamn, you got a hard head."
"Need one, slow as I move." He gave Charlie's left hand the leastpossible shake, and pulled back.
"You don't move slow," Charlie said. "See you in Austin." He walkedaway.
Amos came along. "Stock's ready."
"Good." Mart tightened his cinch, and they rode. Neither had anything tosay. As the sun came up, Amos began to sing to himself. It was an oldsong from the Mexican War, though scarcely recognizable as Amos sang it.A good many cowboys had replaced forgotten words and turns of tune withwhatever came into their heads before the song got to Amos.
Green grow the rushes, oh,
Green grow the rushes, oh,
Only thing I ever want to know
Is where is the girl I left behind....
Well, it had been sung a good many thousand times before by men whohadn't left anything behind, because they had nothing to leave.
Chapter 25
They angled southwest at a good swinging pace, their animals fresh andwell grained. At Fort Phantom Hill they found the garrison greatlystrengthened and full of aggressive confidence for a change. This wassurprising enough, but at Fort Concho they saw troop after troop ofnewly mustered cavalry; and were told that Fort Richardson was swarmingwith a concentration of much greater strength. Southwest Texas was goingto have a real striking force at last. They had prayed for this for along time, and they welcomed it no less because of a sardonic bitternessin it for those to whom help had come too late.
Beyond the Colorado they turned toward the setting sun, through acountry with nothing man-made to be seen in it. So well were they movingthat they outrode the winter in a couple of weeks. For once, instead ofheading into the teeth of the worst weather they could find, they wereriding to meet the spring. By the time they rounded the southern end ofthe Staked Plains the sun blazed hot by day, while yet the dry-countrycold bit very hard at night. The surface of the land was strewn withflints and black lava float; it grew little besides creosote bush,chaparral, and bear grass, and the many, many kinds of cactus.Waterholes were far apart, and you had better know where they were, onceyou left the wagon tracks behind.
Beyond Horsehead Crossing they rode northwest and across the Pecos,skirting the far flank of the Staked Plains--called Los Llanos Estacadosover here. They were reaching for New Mexico Territory, some hundred andfifty miles above, as a horse jogs; a vulture could make it shorter, ifhe would stop his uncomplimentary circling over the two riders, and lineout. Their time for this distance was much worse than a week, for halfof which they pushed into a wind so thick with dust that they wore theirneckerchiefs up to their eyes.
When finally they crossed the Territory line, they didn't even know it,being unable to tell Delaware Creek from any other dry wash unfed bysnows. Dead reckoning persuaded them they must be in New Mexico, butthey wouldn't have known it. Where were the señoritas and cantinas, theguitars and tequila, Amos had talked about? He may have confused thislately Mexican country he had never seen with the Old Mexico he knewbeyond the lower Rio Grande. Without meaning to, probably, he had madethe Southwest sound like a never-never country of song and illicit love,with a streak of wicked bloody murder interestingly hidden just under asurface of ease and mañana. The territory didn't look like that. Norlike anything else, either, at the point where they entered it. Therewasn't anything there at all.
But now the wind rested, and the air cleared. The country recovered itscharacteristic black and white of hard sun and sharp shadows. Mart dugDebbie's miniature out of his saddle bags to see how it had come throughthe dust. He carried the little velvet box wrapped in doeskin now, andhe hadn't opened it for a long time. The soft leather had protected itwell; the little portrait looked brighter and fresher in the whitedesert light than he had ever seen it. The small kitty-cat face lookedout of the frame with a life of its own, bright-eyed, eager, happy withthe young new world. He felt a twinge he had almost forgotten--sheseemed so dear, so precious, and so lost. From this point on he began topull free from the backward drag of his bad days back home. No, not backhome; he had no home. His hopes once more led out down the trail.
For now they were in the land of the Comancheros, toward which they hadbeen pointed by the loot of Deadhorse Bend. Here Bluebonnet must havetraded for the silverwork and turquoise in the spoils; here surely hewould now seek refuge from the evil that had come upon him in the north.
That name, Comanchero, was a hated one among Texans. Actually theComancheros were nothing but some people who traded with Comanches, muchas Mart and Amos themselves had often done. If you were an American, andtraded with Comanches from the United States side, basing upon the fortsof West Texas and Indian Territory, you were a trader. But if you were aMexican, basing in Mexico, and made trading contact with Comanches onthe southwest flank of the Staked Plains, you were not called a trader,but a Comanchero.
During the years of armed disagreement with Mexico, the Comancheros hadgiven Texans plenty of reasons for complaint. When thousands of head ofTexas horses, mules, and cattle disappeared into the Staked Plains everyyear, it was the Comancheros who took all that livestock off Indianhands, and spirited it into deep Mexico. And when great numbers ofbreech-loading carbines appeared in the hands of Comanche raiders, itwas the Comancheros who put them there.
Of course, Amos had once traded some split-blocks of sulphur matches anda bottle of Epsom salts (for making water boil magically by passing yourhand over it) for some ornaments of pure Mexican gold no Indian ever gotby trading. But that was different.
Mart had always heard the Comancheros described as a vicious, slinking,cowardly breed, living like varmints in unbelievable filth. These werethe people who now seemed to hold their last great hope of findingDebbie. The great war chiefs of the Staked Plains Comanches, like BullBear, Wild Horse, Black Duck, Shaking Hand, and the young Quanah, nevercame near the Agencies at all. Well armed, always on the fight, theystruck deep and vanished. Amos was certain now that theseirreconcilables did business only with the Comancheros--and that theFlower had to be with them.
Somewhere there must be Comancheros who knew every one of them well.Somewhere must be one who knew where Debbie was. Or maybe there isn't,Mart sometimes thought. But they're the best bet we got left. We'll findher now. Or never at all.
First they had to find the Comancheros. Find Comancheros? Hell, firstyou had to find a human being. That wasn't easy in this country theydidn't know. Over and over they followed trails which should have forkedtogether, and led some place, but only petered out like the dry riversinto blown sand. There had to be people here someplace, though, andeventually they began to find some. Some small bunches of Apaches, seenat a great distance, were the first, but these shied off. Then finallythey found a village.
This was a cluster of two-dozen, mud-and-wattle huts called jacals,around a mud hole and the ruins of a mission, and its name wasEsperanza. Here lived some merry, friendly, singing people in possessionof almost nothing. They had some little corn patches, and a few sheep,and understood sign language. How did they keep the Apaches out of thesheep? A spreading of the hands. It was not possible. But the Apachesnever took all the sheep. Always left some for seed, so there would besomething to steal another year. So all was well, thanks to the goodnessof God. Here were some guitars at last, and someone singing someplace atany hour of day or night. Also some warm pulque, which could bring on asweaty lassitude followed by a headache. No señoritas in evidence,though. Just a lot of fat squawlike women, with big grins and no shoes.
Once they had found one village, the others were much more easilydiscoverable--never exactly where they were said to be, nor at anythinglike the distance which was always described either as "Not far" or"Whoo!" But landmarked, so you found them eventually. They made theirway to little places called Derecho, Una Vaca, Gallo, San Pascual, SanMarco, Plata Negra, and San Philipe. Some of these centered on fortifiedranchos, some on churches, others just on waterholes. The two riderslearned the provincial Spanish more easily than they had expected; thevocabulary used out here was not very large. And they became fond ofthese sun-sleepy people who were always singing, always making jokes.They had voluble good manners and an open-handed hospitality. Theydidn't seem to wash very much, but actually it didn't seem necessary inthis dry air. The villages and the people had a sort of friendly,sun-baked smell.
They looked much happier, Mart thought, than Americans ever seem to be.A man built a one-room jacal, or maybe an adobe, if mud was in goodsupply when he was married. Though he bred a double-dozen children, henever built onto that one room again. As each day warmed up, the masterof the house was to be found squatting against the outer wall. All daylong he moved around it, following the shade when the day was hot, thesun when the day was cool; and thus painlessly passed his life,untroubled. Mart could envy them, but he couldn't learn from them. Whyis it a man can never seem to buckle down and train himself to indolenceand stupidity when he can see what sanctuary they offer from toil andpain?
But they found no Comancheros. They had expected a spring burst of furtrading, but spring ran into summer without any sign of anything likethat going on. They were in the wrong place for it, obviously. And thereal Comanchero rendezvous would be made in the fall at the end of thesummer-raiding season. They worked hard to make sure of theirComancheros by the end of the summer--and they didn't learn a thing. Thepaisanos could retreat into a know-nothing shell that neither cunningnor bribery could break down. A stranger could see their eyes becomeplacidly impenetrable, black and surface-lighted like obsidian; and whenhe saw that he might as well quit.
Then, at Potrero, they ran into Lije Powers. They remembered him as anold fool; and now he seemed immeasurably older and more foolish than hehad been before. But he set them on the right track.
Lije greeted them with whoops and exaggerated grimaces of delight, inthe manner of old men who have led rough and lonely lives. He pumpedtheir hands, and stretched eyes and jaws wide in great meaninglessguffaws. When that was over, though, they saw that there wasn't so verymuch of the old man left. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks had fallenin; and his worn clothes hung on a rack of bones.
"You look like holy hell," Amos told him.
"I ain't been too well," Lije admitted. "I been looking for you fellers.I got to talk to you."
"You heard we came out here?"
"Why, sure. Everybody I seen in the last six months knows all about you.Come on in the shade."
Lije took them to a two-by-four cantina without even a sign on it wherewhiskey was to be had, for a new thing and a wonder.
"I been looking for Debbie Edwards," he told them.
"So have we. We never have quit since we seen you last."
"Me neither," Lije said. He had turned abstemious, sipping his whiskeyslowly, as if with care. When it came time to refill the glasses, hiswas always still more than half full, and he wouldn't toss it off, asothers did, but just let the glass be filled up. He didn't seem muchinterested in hearing what they had tried, or where they had been, oreven if they had ever found any clues. Just wanted to tell at greatlength, with all the detail he could get them to stand for, the entirehistory of his own long search. He droned on and on, while Mart grewrestless, then drunk, then sober again. But Amos seemed to want tolisten.
"Guess you heard about the reward I put up," Amos said.
"I don't want the money, Amos," Lije said.
"Just been doing this out of the goodness of your heart, huh?"
"No... I'll tell you what I want. I want a job. Not a good job, norone with too much riding. Bull cook, or like that, without no pay,neither, to speak of. Just a bunk, and a little grub, and a chai' by astove. A place. But one where I don't never get throwed out. Time comesfor me to haul off and die up, I want to be let die in that bunk. Not bethrowed out for lack of the space I take up, or because a man on the diedon't do much work."
There you had it--the end a prairie man could look forward to. Reachingout to accomplish some one great impossible thing at the last--as youronly hope of securing just a place to lie down and die. Mart expected tohear Amos say that Lije was welcome to the bunk in any case.
"All right, Lije," Amos said. But he added, "If you find her."
Lije looked pleased; he hadn't expected anything more, nor been sure ofthis much. "So now lately, I been talking to these here Comancheros," hesaid.
"Talking to 'em?" Amos butted in.
"What's wrong with that? Ain't you been?"
"I ain't even seen one!"
Lije looked at him with disbelief, then with wonder; and finally withpity. "Son, son. In all this time you been in the Territory, I don'tbelieve you've seen one other dang thing else!"
Not that these peons knew much about what they were doing, he admitted.They hired on as trail drivers, or packers, or bullwhackers, when thework was shoved at them. Probably wouldn't want to name their bosses,either, to a stranger who didn't seem to know any of them. You had tofind los ricos--the men who ran the long drives down into Old Mexico,too deep for anything ever to be recovered. He named about a dozen ofthese, and Amos made him go back over some of the names to be sure hewould remember them all.
"Old Jaime Rosas--he's the one I'd talk to, was I you." (He pronouncedit "Hymie Rosies.") "I swear he knows where Bluebonnet is. And thegirl."
"You think she's alive?"
"I figure he thinks so. I figure he's seen her. I all but had it outof him. Then I was stopped."
"How stopped? Who stopped you?"
"You did.... Jaime got word you was in the territory. He wouldn'tdeal no more with me. I figure he believed he could do better forhimself letting you come to him. Direct."
Find Jaime Rosas. It was all they had to do, and it shouldn't be toohard with the Comanchero willing to deal. He was around this bordersomeplace for a part of every year. Most years, anyway. Find him, andthis search is licked. Out of the rattle-brained old fraud of abroke-down buffalo hunter had come the only straight, direct lead theyhad ever had.
Amos gave Lije forty dollars, and Lije rode off in a different directionthan Amos took. Said he wanted to check on some Caddoes he heard wasrunning whiskey in. He always had seemed to have Caddoes on the brain.And Amos and Mart went looking for Jaime Rosas.
Chapter 26
They did find old Jaime Rosas; or perhaps he had to find them in theend. It was the heartbreaking distances that held them back from comingup with him for so long. You were never in the wrong place without beingabout a week and a half away from the right one. That country seemed tohave some kind of weird spell upon it, so that you could travel in onespot all day long, and never gain a mile. You might start out in themorning with a notched butte far off on your left; and when you campedat nightfall the same notched butte would be right there, in the sameplace. Maybe it was a good thing that a man and his plodding horse couldnot see that country from the sky, as the vultures saw it. If a mancould have seen the vastness in which he was a speck, the heart wouldhave gone out of him; and if his horse could have seen it, the animalwould have died.
Now that they knew the names of the boss Comancheros, the people weremore willing to help them, relaying news of the movements of JaimeRosas. If they had no news they made up some, and this could prove acostly thing. If a peon wanted to please you he would give you a tale ofsome kind--never hesitating to send you ninety miles out of your way,rather than disappoint you by telling you he didn't know.
While they were hunting for Jaime Rosas, Martin Pauley's nights becamehaunted for a while by a peculiar form of dream. The source of the dreamwas obvious. One blazing day in Los Gatos, where they were held upthrough the heat of the siesta hours, Mart had wandered into a church,because it looked cool and pleasantly dark within the deep adobe walls.Little candles grouped in several places stood out in bright pinpoints,some of them red where they had burned down in their ruby glasses. Martsat down, and as his eyes adjusted he began to see the images, life-sizeand dark-complected mostly, of saints and martyrs, all around him in thegloom. Painted in natural colors, with polished stones for eyes, theylooked a lot like people, here in the dark. Except that they wereunnaturally still. Not even the candle flames wavered in the quiet air.Mart sat there, fascinated, for a long time.
About a week after that, Mart dreamed of Debbie. In all this time he hadnever seen her in a dream before; perhaps because he rarely dreamed atall. But this dream was very real and clear. He seemed to be standing inthe dark church. The images around him again, like living people, butholding unnaturally still. He could feel their presence strongly, butthey seemed neither friendly nor hostile--just there. Directly in frontof him a candlelighted shrine began to brighten, and there was Debbie,in the middle of a soft white light. She was littler than when she waslost, littler than in the miniature even, and with a different look andpose than the miniature had--more of a side-face position. She didn'tlook out at him, or move, any more than the images did, but she wasalive--he knew she was alive; she fairly glowed with life, as if made ofthe light itself.
He stood holding his breath, waiting for her to turn and see him. Hecould feel the moment when she would turn to him coming nearer, andnearer, until the strain was unbearable, and woke him up just too soon.
The same dream returned to him on other nights, sometimes closetogether, sometimes many days apart, perhaps a dozen times. The wholething was always as real and clear as it had been the first time; and healways woke up just before Debbie turned. Then, for no reason, he quithaving that dream, and he couldn't make it come back.
Rumors found their way to them from Texas, most of them fourth-orfifth-hand tales of things that had happened months before. Yet therewas enough substance to what they heard to tell that the smolderingfrontier was blazing up into open war. A chief usually called Big RedFood, but whose name Mart translated as Raw Meat, charged a company ofinfantry close to Fort Sill, broke clean through it, and rode away. WolfTail drummed up a great gathering of warriors from many bands, draggingQuanah into it. For three days they pressed home an attack upon a partyof buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls, charge after charge, but were beatenoff with heavy loss. Every war chief they had ever known seemed to beup; but now Washington at last had had enough. The Friends were out ofthe Agencies, and the military was in the saddle. A finish fight seemedcocked and primed....
But they had had no news for weeks, the night they found Jaime Rosas.
They had come after dark into Puerto del Sol, a village with more peoplein it than most. It had no hacienda and no church, but it did have atwo-acre corral with high adobe walls, loopholed, so that the corralcould be fought as a fort. Several unnecessarily large adobe stores,with almost nothing for sale in them, looked a lot like warehouses. AComanchero base, sure enough, Mart thought.
The place had two cantinas, each with more volunteer guitar singers thanit needed, cadging for drinks. Amos picked the smaller and better of thetwo, and as they went in, Mart saw that in Puerta del Sol the cantinasactually did have señoritas, for a rarity. They had been overanticipatedfor a long time, due to Amos' original confusion of this country with apart of Old Mexico that was the whole length of Texas away. Theterritory dance girls had been disappointing, what few times they hadseen any--just stolid-faced little women like squaws, either too fat orwith a half-grown look. These of Puerto del Sol didn't look much better,at first.
Amos fell in at once with a smart-looking vaquero with leather lace onhis hat. A haciendado, or the son of one--if he wasn't one of the bossComancheros. Mart bought a short glass of tequila and a tall glass oftepid water clouded with New Mexico Territory, and took them to a tablein a corner. Amos didn't seem to like Mart standing by when he wasangling for information. Sooner or later he was likely to include Martin the conversation by some remark such as: "What the devil you hauntingme for?" Or: "What in all hell you want now?" Since the dreams of Debbiehad stopped, Mart was beginning to have a hard time remembering why hewas still riding with Amos. Most days it was a matter of habit. He kepton because he had no plans of his own, nor any idea of where to head forif he split off.
The vaquero with the expensive hat went away, and came back with ashabby old man. Amos sat with these two, buying them drinks, but heseemed to have lost interest. All three seemed bored with the wholething. They sat gazing idly about, with the placid vacuity common to thecountry, seeming to be trying to forget each other, as much as anything.Mart saw Amos make a Spanish joke he had worked out, something about themany flies drinking his liquor up, and the other two laughed politely.Amos wasn't finding out anything, Mart judged.
Mart's attention went back to the girls. There were five or six of themin here, but not the same ones all the time. They flirted with thevaqueros, and danced for them, and with them; and now and then a girldisappeared with one, whereupon another wandered in to take her place.They drank wine, but smelled mostly of vanilla-bean perfume and musk.These girls carried a sudden danger with them, as if death must be ahe-goat, and liked to follow them around. Mart himself had seen one caseof knife-in-the-belly, and had heard of a good many more. A girl let hereyes wander once too often, and the knives jumped with no warning atall. In the next two seconds there was liable to be a man on the dirtfloor, and a surprised new face in hell. The girl screamed, andyammered, and had to be dragged away in a hollering tizzy; but was backthe next night, with her eyes wandering just as much. Mart wondered if agirl got famous, and had songs made about her, if people pointed her outand said, "Five men are dead for that little one."
So he was watching for it, and able to handle it, when it almosthappened to him. The tequila had an unpleasant taste, hard to get usedto, as if somebody had washed his sox in it, but it hid a flame. As itwarmed his brain, everything looked a lot prettier; and a new girl whocame in looked different from all the others he had seen out here--oranywhere, maybe.
This girl was pert and trim, and her skirts flared in a whirl of colorwhen she turned. Her Spanish-heeled shoes must have been a gift broughta long way, perhaps from Mexico City. The shoes set her apart from theothers, who wore moccasins, at best, when they weren't barefootaltogether. She had a nose-shaped nose, instead of a flat one, andcarried her head with defiance. Or anyhow, that was the way Mart saw hernow, and always remembered her.
A lot of eyes looked this one up and down with appreciation, as if herdress were no more barrier to appraisal than harness on a filly. MartinPauley dropped his eyes to his hands. He had a tall glass in one handand a short glass in the other, and he studied this situation stupidlyfor a few moments before he swallowed a slug of warmish chalky water,and tossed off the rest of his tequila. He had drunk slowly, but a goodmany. And now the tequila looked up, fastened eyes upon the girl, andheld without self-consciousness, wherever she went. There is a greatindependence, and a confident immunity to risk, in all drinks made outof cactus.
An old saying said itself in his mind. "Indian takes drink; drink takesdrink; drink takes Indian; all chase squaw." It had a plausible,thoughtful sound, but no practical meaning. Presently the girl noticedhim, and looked at him steadily for some moments, trying to make up hermind about him in the bad light. Nothing came of this immediately; apeonish fellow, dressed like a vaquero, but not a good one, took hold ofher and made her dance with him. Mart sucked his teeth and thoughtnothing of it. He had no plans.
The girl had, though, and steered her partner toward Mart's table. Shefixed her eyes on Mart, swung close, and kicked him in the shin. One wayto do it, Mart thought. And here it comes. He drained a last drop fromhis tequila glass, and let his right hand come to rest on his leg underthe table. Sure enough. The vaquero turned and looked him over acrossthe table. His shirt was open to the waist, showing the brown chest tobe smooth and hairless.
"Your eye is of a nasty color," the vaquero said poetically in ChihuahuaSpanish. "Of a sameness to the belly of a carp."
Mart leaned forward with a smile, eyebrows up, as if in response to agreeting he had not quite caught. "And you?" he returned courteously,also in Spanish. "We have a drink, no?"
"No," said the vaquero, looking puzzled.
"We have a drink, yes," the girl changed his mind. "You know why? Thegun of this man is in his right hand under the table. He blows yourbowels out the door in one moment. This is necessary."
She extended an imperious palm, and Mart slid a silver dollar across thetable to her. The vaquero was looking thoughtful as she led him away.Mart never knew what manner of drink she got into the fellow, but shewas back almost at once. The vaquero was already to be seen snoring onthe mud floor. A compadre dragged him out by the feet, and laid himtenderly in the road.
She said her name was Estrellita, which he did not believe; it had apicked-out sound to him. She sat beside him and sang at him with aguitar. The tequila was thinking in Spanish now, so that the words ofthe sad, sad song made sense without having to be translated in hishead.
I see a stranger passing,
His heart is dark with sorrows,
Another such as I am,
Behind him his tomorrows...
This song was a great epic tragedy in about a hundred stanzas, eachending on a suspended note, to keep the listener on the hook. But shehadn't got through more than half a dozen when she stopped and leanedforward to peer into his eyes. Perhaps she saw signs of his burstinginto tears, for she got him up and danced with him. A whole battery ofguitars had begun whaling out a baile as soon as she stopped singing,and the tequila was just as ready to romp and stomp as to bawl into theempty glasses. As she came close to him, her musk-heavy perfume wrappedaround him, strong enough to lift him off his feet with one hand. Thetequila thought it was wonderful. No grabbing of arms in dancing withthis one--you swung the girl by taking hold of the girl. The roundneckline of her dress was quite modest, almost up to her throat, and hersleeves were tied at her elbows. But what he found out was that this wasa very thin dress.
"I think it is time to go home now," she said.
"I have no home," he said blankly.
"My house is your house," she told him.
He remembered to speak to Amos about it. The young well-dressed vaquerowas gone, and Amos sat head to head with the shabby old man, talkingsoftly and earnestly. "All right if I take a walk?" Mart interruptedthem.
"Where you going to be?" Amos asked the girl in Spanish.
She described a turn or two and counted doors on her fingers. Amos wentback to his powwow, and Mart guessed he was dismissed. "Wait a minute,"Amos called him back. He gave Mart a handful of silver dollars withoutlooking up. Good thing he did. Running out of dinero is anotherfirst-class way to get in trouble around a cantina señorita.
Her casa turned out to be the scrubbiest horse stall of a jacal he hadseen yet. She lighted a candle, and the place looked a little betterinside, mostly because of a striped serape on the dirt floor and acouple tied on the walls to cover holes where the mud had fallen out ofthe woven twigs. The candle stood in a little shrine sheltering apottery Virgin of Tiburon, and this reminded Mart of something, but hecouldn't remember what. He blinked as he watched Estrellita crossherself and kneel briefly in obeisance. Then she came to him andpresented her back to be unbuttoned.
All through this whole thing, Mart showed the dexterity and finesse of ahog in a sand boil, and even the tequila knew it. It was very youngtequila at best, as its raw bite had attested, and it couldn't help himmuch after a point. One moment he was afraid to touch her, and in thenext, when he did take her in his arms, he almost broke her in two. Thegirl was first astonished, then angry; but finally her sense of humorreturned, and she felt sorry for him. She turned patient, soothing andgentling him; and when at last he slept he was in such a state ofrelaxation that even his toe nails must have been limp.
So now, of course, he had to get up again.
Amos came striding down the narrow calle, banging his heels on thehard dirt. One of his spurs had a loose wheel; it had always been thatway. It never whispered when he rode, but afoot this spur made somedifferent complaint at every step. Thug, ding, thug, clank, thug,bingle, went Amos as he walked; and the familiar sound woke Mart from ahundred feet away.
"Get your clothes on," Amos said, as soon as the door was open. "We'reon our way."
Except for a slight queerness of balance as he first stood up, Mart feltfine. There is no cleaner liquor than tequila when it is made right,however awful it may taste. "Right now? In the middle of the night?"
"Look at the sky."
Mart saw that the east was turning light. "I suppose that old man seenJaime Rosas some far-fetched place. Maybe last year, or the yearbefore."
"That old man is Jaime Rosas."
Mart stared at Amos' silhouette, then stamped into his boots.
"He says Bluebonnet has a young white girl," Amos told him. "One withyaller hair and green eyes."
"Where at?"
"Rosas is taking us to him. We'll be there before night."
They had been in New Mexico more than two years and a half.
Chapter 27
They sat in a circle in the shade of a tepee eighteen feet across, threewhite men and seven war chiefs around a charred spot that would havebeen a council fire if a fire had been tolerable that day. The scrapedbuffalo hide of the tepee had been rolled up for a couple of feet, andthe hot wind crept under, sometimes raising miniature dust devils on thehard dirt floor.
Bluebonnet, the elusive ghost they had followed for so long, satopposite the entrance flap. Mart had long since stopped trying tobelieve there was any Comanche named Bluebonnet, or the Flower, orwhatever his damned name meant in words. He judged Bluebonnet to be amyth, the work of an all-Indian conspiracy. Every savage in creation hadprobably heard of the two searchers by this time, and stood ready tojoin in the sport of sending them hither and yon in chase of a chief whodid not exist. Yet there he was; and on the outside of the tepee, largeas a shield, the oft-described, never-seen symbol of the Flower wasdrawn in faded antelope blood.
An oddly shimmering light, a reflection from the sun-blasted surface ofthe earth outside, played over the old chief's face. It was the broad,flat face common to one type of Comanche, round and yellow as a moon.Age was crinkling its surface in fine-lined patterns, into which theopaque eyes were set flush, without hollows.
The other six war chiefs weren't needed here. Bluebonnet had them as acourtesy--and to reassure his village that he wasn't making foolishtrades behind the backs of his people. It wasn't much of a village. Itnumbered only fourteen lodges, able to turn out perhaps thirty or fortywarriors by counting all boys over twelve. But it was what he had. Hispride and his special notion of his honor were still very great, farthough he was on his road to oblivion.
Jaime Rosas had four vaqueros with him, but he hadn't brought them intocouncil. They were tall Indian-looking men, good prairie Comancheros,but he owed them no courtesies. The vaqueros had pitched a shade-fly oftheir own a little way off. Three of them slept most of the time, butone was always awake, day or night, whatever the time might be. Wheneverseveral were awake at once they were to be heard laughing a good deal,or else singing a sad long song that might last a couple of hours; thenall but one would go back to sleep again.
What was going on in the tepee was in the nature of a horse trade. Theevening of their arrival had been devoted to a meager feast withoutdancing, the atmosphere considerably dampened by the fact that Rosas hadbrought no rum. The council began the next morning. It was a slow thing,with long stillnesses between irrelevant remarks conveyed in signlanguage. One thing about it, no one was likely to go off half cocked ina session like that. From time to time the pipe, furnished byBluebonnet, was filled with a pinch of tobacco, furnished by Rosas, andpassed from hand to hand, as a sort of punctuation.
They were in that tepee three days, the councils running from forenoonto sundown. Even a cowboy's back can get busted, sitting cross-legged aslong as that. Jaime Rosas did all the talking done on the white men'sside. This old man's face was weathered much darker than Bluebonnet's;his dirty gray mustache looked whiter than it was against that skin. Hiseyes had brown veins in the whites and red-rimmed lids. All day long hechewed slowly on a grass stem with teeth worn to brown stubs; by nighthe would have a foot-long stem eaten down to an inch or two. He couldsit quiet as long as Bluebonnet could, and maybe a little longer; andwhen he unlimbered his sign language it ran as smoothly as Bluebonnet's,though this chief prided himself on the grace of his sign talk. Theunpunctuated flow of compound signs made the conversation all butimpossible to follow.
Rosas' hands might say,"Horse-dig-hole-slow-buffalo-chase-catch-no-enemy-run-chase-catch-no-sad."Mart read that to mean, "The horse is worthless--too slow for hunting orfor war; it's too bad."
And Bluebonnet's answer, in signs of smooth speed and great delicacy:"Stiff-neck-beat-enemy-far-run-still-neck-horse-ride-leave-tepee-warriors-pile-up."They had him there, Mart admitted to himself. He believed Bluebonnet hadsaid, "When a chief has run his enemies out of the country, he wants ahorse he can ride with pride, like to a council." But he didn't know.Here came the pipe again.
"I'll never get no place in this dang country," he said to Amos. "It's agood thing we'll soon be heading home."
"Shut up." It was the first remark Amos had made that day.
Toward sundown of the first day Bluebonnet admitted he had a young whitegirl, blonde and blue-eyed, in his lodge.
"May not be the one," Amos said in Spanish.
"Who knows?" Rosas answered. "Man is the hands of God."
Around noon of the second day, Rosas presented Bluebonnet with the horsethey had talked about most of the first day. It was a show-off palomino,with a stud horse neck and ripples in its silver mane and tail. Aboutwhat the old dons would have called a palfrey once. Mart wouldn't havewanted it. But the saddle on it, sheltered under a tied-down canvasuntil the moment of presentation, was heavily crusted with silver, andprobably worth two hundred dollars. Rosas gave the old chief horse andrig upon condition that no present would be accepted in return.Bluebonnet turned wary for a while after that, as if the gift might havedone more harm than good; but his eyes showed a gleam toward the end ofthe day, for what they talked about all afternoon was rifles.
Sundown was near on the third day when they came to the end at last. Theabruptness of the finish caught Mart off guard. Rosas and Bluebonnet hadbeen going through an interminable discussion of percussion caps, asnear as Mart could make out. He had given up trying to follow it, andhad let his eyes lose focus in the glow of the leveling sun upon thedust. He took a brief puff as the pipe passed him again, and was awarethat one of the warriors got up and went out.
Amos said, "He's sent for her, Mart."
The desert air seemed to press inward upon the tepee with anunbelievable weight. His head swam, and he could not recognize a singlefamiliar symbol among the next posturings of Bluebonnet's hands.
"He says she's well and strong," Amos told him.
Mart returned his eyes to Bluebonnet's hands. His head cleared, and hesaw plainly the next thing the hands said. He turned to Amos in appeal,unwilling to believe he had properly understood.
"The girl is his wife," Amos interpreted.
"It doesn't matter." His mouth was so dry that the thick words were notunderstandable at all. Mart cleared his throat, and tried to spit, butcould not. "It doesn't matter," he said again.
The warrior who had left the lodge now returned. As he entered, he spokea Comanche phrase over his shoulder, and a young woman appeared. Herform was not that of a little girl; it hardly could have been after thelost years. This was a woman, thin, and not very tall, but grown. Herface and the color of her hair were hidden by a shawl that must oncehave been red, but now was dulled by the perpetually blowing dust.
His eyes dropped. She wore heel-fringed moccasins, a prerogative ofwarriors, permitted to squaws only as a high honor. But her feet werenarrow and high-arched, unlike the short, splayed feet of Comanches. Theankles were tanned, and speckles of the everlasting dust clung to them,too, as if they were sprinkled with cinnamon; yet he could see the blueveins under the thin skin. She followed the warrior into the lodge witha step as light and tense as that of a stalking wolf. He realized with asinking of the heart that the girl was afraid--not of the Flower, or hiswarriors, but of her own people.
Bluebonnet said in the Comanche tongue, "Come stand beside me."
The young woman obeyed. Beside Bluebonnet she turned reluctantly towardthe council circle, still clutching the shawl that hid her face so thatnothing was visible but the whitened knuckles of one hand. On one sideof Mart, Amos sat, an immovable lump. On his other side, Rosas hadthrown down his grass stem. His eyes were slitted, but his glanceflickered back and forth between the girl and Amos' face, while he movedno other muscle. Over and over, white girls captured as children andraised by the Comanches have been ashamed to look white men in the face.
"Show them your head," Bluebonnet said in Comanche, Mart thought; thoughperhaps he had said "hair" instead of "head."
The white girl's head bowed lower, and she uncovered the top of it, tolet them see the color of her hair. It was cropped short in the mannerof the Comanches, among whom only the men wore long hair, but it wasblonde. Not a bright blonde; a mousy shade. But blonde.
"Show your face," came Bluebonnet's Comanche words, and the girl let theshawl fall, though her face remained averted. The old chief spokesharply at last. "Hold up your head! Obey!"
The girl's head raised. For a full minute the silence held while Martstared, praying, trying to persuade himself of--what? The tanned butonce-white face was broad and flat, the forehead low, the noseshapeless, the mouth pinched yet loose. The eyes were green, all right,but small and set close together; they darted like an animal's, cravingescape. Mart's mind moved again. Stare an hour, he told himself. Stare ayear. You'll never get any different answer. Nor find room for anypossible mistake.
This girl was not Debbie.
Mart got up, and blundered out into the reddening horizontal rays of thesunset. Behind him he heard Amos say harshly, "You speak English?" Thegirl did not answer. Mart never asked Amos what else was said. He walkedaway from the tepee of the Flower, out of the village, a long way outonto the thin-grassed flats. Finally he just stood, alone in thetwilight.
Chapter 28
Once more they went around the Staked Plains, passing to the south; butthis time as they turned north they were headed home. They traveled bylistless stages, feeling nothing much ahead to reach for now. Home, forthem, was more of a direction than a place. It was like a surveyor'smarker that is on the map but not on the ground: You're south of it, andyou ride toward it, and after a while you're north of it, but you'renever exactly there, because there isn't any such thing, except in themind. They were nothing more than beaten men, straggling back down thelong, long way they had traveled to their final defeat.
Fort Concho was deserted as they came to it, except for a token guard.But for once the emptiness had a difference. This was one garrison thathad not been withdrawn by the fatheaded wishfulness that had disarmedmore American troops than any other enemy. Three regiments under thecolonel were on the march, riding northwest into the heart of theComanche country. And these were part of a broad campaign, planned withthoroughness, and activated by a total resolution. For General Sheridanwas in the saddle again, this time with a latitude of action that wouldlet him put an end to rewarded murder once and for all.
North of Mackenzie's column, Colonel Buell was advancing; Colonel NelsonA. Miles was marching south from Fort Supply; Major William Price wascoming into it from Fort Union beyond the Staked Plains. And at FortSill, Colonel Davidson, with perhaps the strongest force of all, tojudge by the rumors they heard, hung poised until the other columnsshould be advantageously advanced. Under Sheridan there would be no moreof the old chase, charge, scatter 'em and go home. These troops woulddog and follow, fighting if the Indians stood, but always coming onagain. Once a column fastened upon a Comanche band, that band would befollowed without turn-off, regardless of what more tempting quarrycrossed between. And this would go on until no hostile could find a wayto stay out and live.
When they had learned the scope of what was happening, Mart knew withoutneed of words what Amos, with all his heart, would want to do now. Itwas the same thing he himself wanted, more than women, more than love,more than food or drink. They made a close study of their horses--astudy about as needful as a close count of the fingers on their hands.Each horse had served as his rider's very muscles, day in and day out,for months. The two men were trying to persuade themselves that theirhorses were wiry, and wise in tricks for saving their strength, insteadof just gaunted and low of head. But it couldn't be done, and not ahorse was left at Fort Concho worth saddling.
Finally the two rode out and sat looking at the trail, stale and all buteffaced, that the cavalry had made as it rode away. Up that trailhundreds of men were riding to what seemed a final kill--yet ridingvirtually blind for lack of just such scouts as Mart and Amos hadbecome. But the column had so great a start it might as well have beenon another world. Amos was first to shrug and turn away. Mart still sata little while more, staring up that vacant trail; but at last drew adeep breath, let it all out again, and followed Amos.
They plodded north and east through a desolate land, for this year thecountry looked the worst they had ever seen it. The summer had beenwickedly hot and totally dry; and on top of the drought great swarms ofgrasshoppers had come to chop what feed there was into blowing dust. Thefew bands of cattle they saw were all bones, and wild as deer. Only theaged cattle showed brands, for no one had worked the border ranges in along time. Yet, if above all you wanted the cavalry to succeed, you hadto look at the drought-ravaged range with a grim satisfaction. Thecavalry carried horse corn, something no Indian would ever do, and thedrought had given the grain-fed mounts an advantage that not evenComanche horsemanship could overcome this one year.
Toward noon of a colorless November day they raised the Edwardslayout--"the old Edwards place," people called it now, if they knew whatit was at all. And now came an experience worth forgetting altogether,except for the way it blew up on them later on. A thread of smoke rosestraight up in the dead air from the central chimney of the house. Theysaw it from a great way off, and Mart looked at Amos, but they did notchange the pace of their horses. Riding nearer, they saw a scratched-uphalf acre in front of the house, where Martha had meant to have a lawnand a garden someday. Here a bony rack of a mule was working on somerunty corn stalks. It lifted its head and stood motionless, a rag offodder hanging from its jaws, as it watched them steadily all the wayin.
They saw other things to resent. Most of the corral poles were gone forfirewood, along with a good many boards from the floors of thegalleries. The whole homestead had the trashy look of a place wherenothing is ever taken care of.
"Got a sodbuster in here," Amos said as they came up.
"Or a Mex," Mart suggested.
"Sodbuster," Amos repeated.
"I guess I'll ride on," Mart said. "I got no craving to see how thehouse looks now."
"If you hear shots," Amos said, "tell the Mathisons I ain't coming."
"Looking for trouble?"
"Fixing to make some."
That settled that. They tied their ponies to the gallery posts. Thelatch string whipped out of sight into its little hole in the door asAmos crossed the gallery. He kicked the door twice, once to test it, andonce to drive it in. The bar brackets never had been repaired very wellsince the dreadful night when they were broken.
By the woodbox, as if he wanted to take cover behind the stove, a gauntturkey-necked man was trying to load a shotgun with rattling hands.Automatically Mart and Amos moved apart, and their six-guns came out."Put that thing down," Amos said.
"You got no right bustin' in on----"
Amos fired, and splinters jumped at the squatter's feet. The shotgunclattered on the floor, and they had time to take a look at what elsewas in the room. Five dirty children stood goggle-eyed as far back asthey could get, and a malarial woman was frying jackrabbit; the stronggrease smelled as if fur had got into it. A dress that had been Martha'sdress hung loose on the woman's frame, and some of the children'sclothes were Debbie's. He might have been sorry for all these saucereyes except for that.
"You're in my house," Amos said.
"Wasn't nobody using it. We ain't hurting your----"
"Shut up!" Amos said. There was quiet, and Mart noticed the dirt, andsome big holes in the chimney, the walls, the window reveals, whereadobe bricks had been prized out.
"Been looking for something, I see," Amos said. "Let's see if you foundit. Hold 'em steady, Mart." Amos picked up a mattock, and went into abedroom, where he could be heard chunking a hole in the adobe with heavystrokes. He came back with an adobe-dusted tin box, and let them watchhim pour gold pieces from it into a side pocket; Mart guessed there mustbe about four hundred dollars.
"I'll be back in a week," Amos said. "I want this place scrubbed out,and the walls patched and whitewashed. Fix them gallery floors outthere, and start hauling poles for them corrals. Make all as it was, andmight be I'll leave you stay till spring."
"I got no time for----"
"Then you better be long gone when I come!"
They walked out of there and rode on.
Chapter 29
Nothing ever changed much at the Mathisons. The old, well-made thingsnever wore out; if they broke they were mended stronger than they werebefore. Pump handles wore down to a high polish, door sills showeddeeper hollows. But nothing was allowed to gather the slow grime of age.Only when you had been gone a couple of years could you see that theplace was growing old. Then it looked smaller than you remembered it,and kind of rounded at the corners everywhere. Mart rode toward it thistime with a feeling that the whole place belonged to the past that hewas done with, like the long search that had seemed to have no end, buthad finally run out anyway.
They didn't mean to be here long. Amos meant to ride on to Austin atonce, to clear up the killings at Lost Mule Creek; and if he got heldup, Mart meant to go there alone, and get it over. He didn't know whathe was going to do after that, but it sure would be someplace else. Hebelieved that he was approaching the Mathisons for the last time. Maybewhen he looked over his shoulder at this place, knowing he would neversee it again, then he would feel something about it, but he felt nothingnow. None of it was a part of him any more.
The people had aged like the house, except a little faster and a littleplainer to be seen. Mart saw at first glance that Aaron was almosttotally blind. Tobe and Abner were grown men. And Mrs. Mathison was alittle old lady, who came out of the kitchen into the cold to take himby both hands. "My, my, Martie! It's been so long! You've been gonefive--no, it's more. Why, it's coming on six years! Did you know that?"No; he hadn't known that. Not to count it all up together that way.Seemingly she didn't remember they had been home twice in the meantime.
But the surprise was that Laurie was still here. He had assumed shewould have gone off and married Charlie MacCorry long ago, and she hadquit haunting him once he swallowed that. She didn't come out of thehouse as he unsaddled, but as he came into the kitchen she crossed tohim, drying her hands. Why did she always have to be at either the stoveor the sink? Well, because it was always coming time to eat again,actually. They were close onto suppertime right now.
She didn't kiss him, or take hold of him in any way. "Did you--have youever----" Resignation showed in her eyes, but they were widened by anawareness of tragedy, as if she knew the answer before she spoke. Andhis face confirmed it for her. "Not anything? No least trace of her atall?"
He drew a deep breath, wondering what part of their long try needed tobe told. "Nothing," he said, finally, and judged that covered it all.
"You've been out so long," she said slowly, marveling. "I suppose youtalk Comanche like an Indian. Do they call you Indian names?"
"I sure wouldn't dast interpret the most of the names they call us," heanswered automatically. But he added, "Amos is known to 'em as 'BullShoulders.'"
"And you?"
"Oh--I'm just the 'Other.'"
"I suppose you'll be going right out again, Other?"
"No. I think now she was dead from the first week we rode."
"I'm sorry, Martie." She turned away, and for a few minutes went throughslow motions, changing the setting of the table, moving things thatdidn't need to be moved. Something besides what she was doing was goingthrough her mind, so plainly you could almost hear it tick. Abruptly,she left her work and got her coat, spinning it over her shoulders likea cape.
Her mother said, "Supper's almost on. Won't be but a few minutes."
"All right, Ma." Laurie gave Mart one expressionless glance, and hefollowed her, putting his sheepskin on, as she went out the door to thedog-trot.
"Where's Charlie?" he asked, flat-footed, once they were outside.
"He's still in the Rangers. He's stationed over at Harper's, now; he'sdone well enough so he could politic that. But we don't see him toomuch. Seems like Rangers live on the hard run nowadays." She met hiseyes directly, without shyness, but without lighting up much, either.
A small wind was stirring now, shifting the high overcast. At thehorizon a line of blood-bright sunset light broke through, turning thewhole prairie red. They walked in silence, well apart, until they hadcrossed a rise and were out of sight of the house. Laurie said, "Isuppose you'll be going on to Austin soon."
"We've got to. Amos put up a thousand head--Of course, the Rangers can'tcollect until a judge or somebody declares Debbie dead. But they'll dothat now. We got to go there, and straighten it out."
"Are you coming back, Martie?"
The direct question took him off guard. He had thought some of workinghis way up toward Montana, if the Rangers didn't lock him up, oranything. They were having big Indian trouble up there, and Martbelieved himself well qualified to scout against the Sioux. But itdidn't make much sense to head north into the teeth of winter, andspring was far away. So he said something he hadn't meant to say. "Doyou want me to come back, Laurie?"
"I won't be here."
He thought he understood that. "I figured you'd be married long beforenow."
"It might have happened. Once. But Pa never could stand Charlie. Pa'shad so much trouble come down on him--he always blamed himself for whathappened to your folks. Did you know that? I didn't want to bring on onething more, and break his heart. Not then. If I had it to do over--Idon't know. But I don't want to stay here now. I know that. I'm going toget out of Texas, Mart."
He looked stupid, and said, "Oh?"
"This is a dreadful country. I've come to hate these prairies, everyinch of 'em--and I bet they stretch a million miles. Nothing to lookforward to--or back at, either--I want to go to Memphis. Or Vicksburg,or New Orleans."
"You got kinfolk back there?"
"No. I don't know anybody."
"Now, you know you can't do that! You never been in a settlementbigger'n Fort Worth in your life. Any gol dang awful thing is liable tohappen to you in a place like them!"
"I'm twenty-four years old," she said bitterly. "Time somethinghappened."
He searched for something to say, and came up with the most stiltedremark he had ever heard. "I wouldn't want anything untoward to happento you, Laurie," he said.
"Wouldn't you?"
"I've been long gone. But I was doing what I had to do, Laurie. You knowthat."
"For five long years," she reminded him.
He wanted to let her know it wasn't true that he hadn't cared whathappened to her. But he couldn't explain the way hope had led him on,dancing down the prairie like a fox fire, always just ahead. It didn'tseem real any more. So finally he just put an arm around her waist asthey walked, pulling her closer to his side.
The result astonished him. Laurie stopped short, and for a moment stoodrigid; then she turned toward him, and came into his arms. "Martie,Martie, Martie," she whispered, her mouth against his. She had on a lotof winter clothes, but the girl was there inside them, solider thanEstrellita, but slim and warm. And now somebody began hammering on atriangle back at the house, calling them in.
"Oh, damn," he said, "damn, damn----"
She put her fingers on his lips to make him listen. "Start coughingsoon's we go in the house. Make out you're coming down with a lungchill."
"Me? What for?"
"The boys put your stuff in the bunkhouse. But I'll work it out soyou're moved to the grandmother room. Just you, by yourself. Latetonight, when they're all settled in, I'll come to you there."
Jingle-jangle-bang went the triangle again.
Chapter 30
That night Lije Powers came back.
They were still at the supper table as they heard his horse; and the menglanced at each other, for the plodding hoofs seemed to wander insteadof coming straight on up to the door. And next they heard his curiouslyweak hail. Abner and Tobe Mathison went out. Lije swayed in the saddle,then lost balance and buckled as he tried to dismount, so that Tobe hadto catch him in his arms.
"Drunker than a spinner wolf," Tobe announced.
"Drunk, hell," Abner disagreed. "The man's got a bullet in him!"
"No, I ain't," Lije said, and went into a coughing fit that made a foolof Mart's effort to fake a bad chest. Tobe and Abner were both wrong;Lije was as ill a man as had ever got where he was going on a horse. Atthe door he tottered against the jamb, and clung to it feebly,preventing them from closing it against the rising wind, until thecoughing fit passed off.
"I found her," Lije said, still blocking the door. "I found Deb'rieEdwards." He slid down the side of the door and collapsed.
They carried him into the grandmother room and put him to bed. "He's outof his head," Aaron Mathison said, pulling off Lije Powers' boots.
"I got a bad cold," Lije wheezed at them. He was glassy-eyed, and hisskin burned their fingers. "But I'm no more out of my mind than you. Italked to her. She spoke her name. I seen her as close as from here toyou...."
"Where?" Amos demanded.
"She's with a chief named Yellow Buckle. Amos--you mind the SevenFingers?"
Amos looked blank. The names meant nothing to him.
Aaron Mathison said, "Will you leave the man be? He's in delirium!"
"Be still!" Mart snapped at Aaron.
"I got a cold," Lije repeated, and his voice turned pleading. "Ain'tanybody ever heard of the Seven Fingers?"
"Seems like there's a bunch of cricks," Mart said, groping for a memory,"west of the Wichita Mountains.... No, farther--beyond the LittleRainies. I think they run into the North Fork of the Red. Lije, ain'tSeven Fingers the Kiowa name for them little rivers?"
"That's it! That's it!" Lije cried out eagerly. "Do this get me myrocking chai', Amos?"
"Sure, Lije. Now take it easy."
They piled blankets on him, and wrapped a hot stove lid to put at hisfeet, then spooned a little soup into him. It was what Mrs. Mathisoncalled her "apron-string soup," because it had noodles in it. But Lijekept on talking, as if he feared he might lose hold and never be able totell them once he let down.
"Yellow Buckle's squaws was feeding us. One comes behind me and she putsthis calabash in my lap. Full of stewed gut tripe.... She bends down,and makes out like she picks a stick out of it with her fingers. And shewhispers in my ear. 'I'm Deb'rie,' she says. 'I'm Deb'rie Edwards.'"
"Couldn't you get a look at her?"
"I snuck a quick look over my shoulder. Her head was covered. But I seenthese here green eyes. Greener'n a wild grape peeled out..."
"Was that all?" Amos asked as the old man trailed off.
"I didn't see her no more. And I didn't dast say nothing, or ask."
"Who's Yellow Buckle with?" The answer was so long in coming that Martstarted to repeat, but the sick man had heard him.
"I seen... Fox Moon... and Bull Eagle... Singin' Dog...Hunts-His-Horse--I think it was him. Some more'll come back to me. Do itget me my chai' by the stove?"
"You're never going to want for anything," Amos said.
Lije Powers rolled to the edge of the bunk in a spasm of coughing, andthe blood he brought up dribbled on the floor.
"Lije," Mart raised his voice, "do you know if----"
"Leave be now," Aaron Mathison commanded them. "Get out of this room,and leave be! Or I put you out!"
"Just one more thing," Mart persisted. "Is Yellow Buckle ever called anyother name?"
Aaron took a step toward him, but the thin voice spoke once more. "Ithink--" Lije said, "I think--some call him Cut-face."
"Get out!" Aaron roared, and moved upon them. This time they obeyed.Mrs. Mathison stayed with the very ill old man, while Laurie fetched andcarried for her.
"It upsets a man," Aaron said, all quietness again, when the door hadclosed upon the grandmother room. "But I find no word in it to believe."
Mart spoke up sharply. "I think he's telling the truth!"
"There's a whole lot wrong with it, Mart," Amos said. "Like: 'I'mDeb'rie,' she says. Nobody in our family ever called her 'Deb'rie' inher life. She never heard the word."
"Lije says 'Debrie' for the same reason he says 'prairuh,'" Martdisputed him. "He'd talk the same if he was telling what you said, orme."
"And them Indians. Fox Moon is a Kotsetaka, and so is Singing Dog. ButBull Eagle is a Quohada, and never run with no Kotsetakas. I question ifhe ever seen one!"
"Can't a sick old man get one name wrong without you knock aparteverything he done?"
"We was all through them Kotsetakas----"
"And maybe passed her within twenty feet!"
"All right. But how come we never heard of any Yellow Buckle?"
"We sure as hell heard of Scar!"
"Sure," Amos said wearily. "Lije was the same places we been, Martie.And heard the same things. That's all."
"But he saw her," Mart insisted, circling back to where they had begun.
"Old Lije has been a liar all his life," Amos said with finality. "Youknow that well as me."
Mart fell silent.
"You see, Martin," Aaron Mathison said gently, "yon lies a foolish oldman. When you've said that, you've said all; and there's the end on it."
"Except for one thing," Amos said, and his low voice sounded very tired.They looked at him, and waited, while for several moments he seemed lostin thought. "We've made some far casts, looking for a chief called Scar.We never found him. And Aaron, I believe like you: We never will. Butsuppose there's just one chance in a million that Lije is right, and Iam wrong? That one slim shadow of a doubt would give me no rest forever;not even in my grave." He turned his head, and rested heavy eyes onMart. "Better go make up the packs. Then catch the horses up. We got along way more to go."
Mart ran for the bunkhouse.
Chapter 31
In the bunkhouse Mart lighted a lamp. They had cracked their bedrollsopen to get out clean shirts, and some of their stuff had got spreadaround. He started throwing their things together. Then he heard ascamper of light boots, and a whisk of wind made the lamp flutter as thedoor was thrown open. Laurie appeared against the dark, and she showed atension that promised trouble.
"Shut the door," he told her.
She pressed it shut and stood against it. "I want the truth," she said."If you start off again, after all this time--Oh, Mart, what's itsupposed to mean?"
"It means, I see a chance she's there."
"Well, you're not going!"
"Who isn't?"
"I've dallied around this god-forsaken wind-scour for nearly six longyears--waiting for you to see fit to come back! You're not goinggallivanting off again now!"
It was the wrong tone to take with him. He no more than glanced at her."I sure don't know who can stop me."
"You're a wanted man," she reminded him. "And Charlie MacCorry is lessthan half an hour away. If it takes all the Rangers in Texas to puthandcuffs on you--they'll come when he hollers!"
He had no time to fool with this kind of an ambuscade, but he took time.He was clawing for a way to make her see what he was up against, why hehad no choice. Uncertainly he dug out the doeskin packet in which hecarried Debbie's miniature. The once-white leather was stained to thecolor of burlap, and its stiffened folds cracked as he unwrapped it; hehad not dug it out for a long time. Laurie came to look as he opened thelittle plush case and held it to the light. Debbie's portrait was verydim. The dust had worked into it finally, and the colors had faded toshades of brown stain. No effect of life, or pertness, looked out fromit any more. The little kitty-cat face had receded from him, losingitself behind the years.
Laurie hardened. "That's no picture of her," she said.
He looked up, appalled by the bitterness of her tone.
"It might have been once," she conceded. "But now it's nothing but achromo of a small child. Can't you count up time at all?"
"She was coming ten," Mart said. "This was made before."
"She was eleven," Laurie said with certainty. "We've got the Edwards'family Bible, and I looked it up. Eleven--and it's been more than fiveyears! She's sixteen and coming seventeen right now."
He had known that Debbie was growing up during all the long time theyhad hunted for her; but he had never been able to realize it, or pictureit. No matter what counting on his fingers told him, he had always beenhunting for a little child. But he had no reason to doubt Laurie. Hecould easily have lost a year in the reckoning some way, so that she hadbeen a year older than he had supposed all the time.
"Deborah Edwards is a woman grown," Laurie said. "If she's alive atall."
He said, "If she's alive, I've got to fetch her home."
"Fetch what home? She won't come with you if you find her. They neverdo."
Her face was dead white; he stared at it with disbelief. He stillthought it to be a good face, finely made, with beautiful eyes. But nowthe face was hard as quartz, and the eyes were lighted with the samefires of war he had seen in Amos' eyes the times he had stomped Comanchescalps into the dirt.
"She's had time to be with half the Comanche bucks in creation by now."Laurie's voice was cold, but not so brutal as her words. "Sold time andagain to the highest bidder--and you know it! She's got savage brats ofher own, most like. What are you going to do with them--fetch them home,too? Well, you won't. Because she won't let you. She'll kill herselfbefore she'll even look you in the face. If you knew anything at allabout a woman, you'd know that much!"
"Why, Laurie----" he faltered. "Why, Laurie----"
"You're not bringing anything back," she said, and her contempt whippedhim across the face. "It's too late by many years. If they've gotanything left to sell you, it's nothing but a--a rag of a female--theleavings of Comanche bucks----"
He turned on her with such a blaze in his eyes that she moved back halfa step. But she stood her ground then, and faced up to him; and after awhile he looked away. He had hold of himself before he answered her."I'll have to see what Amos wants to do."
"You know what he wants to do. He wants to lead the yellowlegs down on'em, and punish 'em off the face of creation. He's never wanted anythingelse, no matter how he's held back or pretended. Amos has leaned waybackwards for love of his brother's dead wife--and not from regard foranything else on this earth or beyond it!"
He knew that was true. "That's why I've stayed with him. I told you thata long time ago."
"Amos has had enough of all this. I knew it the minute he stepped in thehouse. He's very patiently gone through all the motions Martha couldhave asked of him--and way over and beyond. But he's done."
"I know that, too," he said.
She heard the fight go out of his voice, and she changed, softening, butwithout taking hope. "I wanted you, Mart. I tried to give you everythingI've got to give. It's not my fault it wasn't any good."
She had shaken him up, so that he felt sick. He couldn't lay hands onthe purposes by which he had lived for so long, or any purpose instead.His eyes ran along the walls, looking for escape from the blind end thathad trapped him.
A calendar was there on the wall. It had a strange look, because itpicked up beyond the lost years his life had skipped. But as he lookedat it he remembered another calendar that hadn't looked just right. Itwas a calendar a little child had made for him with a mistake in it, sothat her work was wasted; only he hadn't noticed that then. And he heardthe little girl's voice, saying again the words that he had never reallyheard her say, but only had been told, and imagined: "He didn'tcare.... He didn't care at all...."
"Do you know," Laurie said, "what Amos will do if he finds DeborahEdwards? It will be a right thing, a good thing--and I tell you Marthawould want it now. He'll put a bullet in her brain."
He said, "Only if I'm dead."
"You think you can outride the yellowlegs--and Amos, too," she read hismind again. "I suppose you can. And get to Yellow Buckle with a warning.But you can't outride the Rangers! You've been on their list anyway fora long time! Charlie MacCorry is only seven miles away. And I'm going tofetch him--now!"
"You so much as reach down a saddle," he told her, "and I'll be on myway in the same half minute. You think there's a man alive can give me afourteen-mile start? Get back in that house!"
She stared at him a moment more, then slammed her way out. When she wasgone Mart put Debbie's miniature in his pocket, then retied his packs tobe ready for a fast departure in case Laurie carried out her threat; andhe left the lamp burning in the bunkhouse as he went back to thekitchen.
Laurie did not ride for Charlie MacCorry. As it turned out, she didn'tneed to. MacCorry arrived at the Mathisons in the next fifteen minutes,stirred up by the squatter to whom Amos had laid down the law in theEdwards house.
Chapter 32
"If you'd come in and faced it out, like you said," Charlie MacCorrytold them, "I don't believe there'd ever been any case against you atall."
Four years in the Rangers had done Charlie good. He seemed to know hislimitations better now, and accepted them, instead of noisily spreadinghimself over all creation. Within those limits, which he no longer triedto overreach, he was very sure of himself, and quietly so, which was anew thing for Charlie.
"I said I'd come in when I could. I was on my way to Austin now. Until Irun into Lije as I stopped over."
"He spoke of that," Aaron Mathison confirmed.
Resentment kept thickening Amos' neck. He shouldn't have been asked toput up with this in front of the whole Mathison family. Mrs. Mathisoncame and went, staying with Lije Powers mostly. But there had been noway to get rid of Tobe and Abner, who kept their mouths shut in thebackground, but were there, as was Laurie, making herself asinconspicuous as she could.
"And you had my bond of a thousand head of cattle, in token I'd comeback," Amos said. "Or did you pick them up?"
"We couldn't, very well, because you didn't own them. Not until thecourts declared Deborah Edwards dead, which hasn't been done. I don'tthink Captain Clinton ever meant to pick them up. He was satisfied withyour word. Then."
"Captain, huh?" Amos took note of the promotion. "What are you--acolonel?"
"Sergeant," MacCorry said without annoyance. "You've been close to threeyears. Had to come and find you on a tip. Your reputation hasn'timproved any in that time, Mr. Edwards."
"What's the matter with my reputation?" Amos was angering again.
"I'll answer that if you want. So you can see what us fellers is upagainst. Mark you, I don't say it's true." No rancor could be heard inMacCorry's tone. He sat relaxed, elbows on the table, and looked Amos inthe eye. "They say it's funny you leave a good ranch, well stocked, tobe worked by other men, while you sky-hoot the country from the Nationsto Mexico on no reasonable business so far as known. They say you'realmighty free with the scalping knife, and that's a thing brings costlytrouble on Texas. They say you're a squaw man, who'd sooner boogeraround with the Wild Tribes than work your own stock; and an owl-hootthat will murder to rob."
"You dare set there and say----"
"I do not. I tell you what's said. But all that builds up pressure onus. Half the Indian trouble we get nowadays is stirred up byquick-trigger thieves and squaw men poking around where they don'tbelong. And your name--names--are a couple that come up when thecitizens holler to know why we don't do nothing. I tell you all this inhopes you'll see why I got to do my job. After all, this is a murdercase."
"There ain't any such murder case," Amos said flatly.
"I hope you're right. But that's not my business. All I know, you standcharged with the robbery and murder of Walker Finch, alias JeremFutterman. And two other deceased----"
"What's supposed to become of Yellow Buckle, while----"
"That's up to Captain Clinton. Maybe he wants to throw the Rangers atYellow Buckle, with you for guide. You'll have to talk to him."
Watching Amos, Mart saw his mind lock, slowly turning him into the inertlump Mart remembered from long ago. He couldn't believe it at first, itwas so long since he had seen Amos look like that.
"I'll ride there with you, Amos," Aaron Mathison said. "Sol Clinton willlisten to me. We'll clear this thing once and for all."
Amos' eyes were on his empty hands, and he seemed incapable of speech.
"I'm not going in," Mart said to Charlie MacCorry.
"What?" The young Ranger looked startled.
"I don't know what Amos is of a mind to do," Mart said. "I'm going toYellow Buckle."
"That there's maybe the worst thing I could hear you say!"
"All I want to do is get her out of there," Mart said, "before you hithim, or the cavalry hits. Once you jump him, it'll be too late."
"Allowing she's alive," Charlie MacCorry said, "which I don't--youhaven't got a chance in a million to buy her, or steal her, either!"
"I've seen a white girl I could buy from an Indian."
"This one can talk. Letting her go would be like suicide for half atribe!"
"I got to try, Charlie. You see that."
"I see no such thing. Damn it, Mart, will you get it through yourhead--you're under arrest!"
"What if I walk out that door?"
Charlie glanced past Aaron at Laurie Mathison before he answered. "Now,you ought to know the answer to that."
Laurie said distinctly, "He means he'll put a bullet in your back."
Charlie MacCorry thought about that a moment. "If he's particular aboutgetting his bullets in front," he said to her, "he can walk outbackwards, can't he?"
A heavy silence held for some moments before Amos spoke, "It's up to SolClinton, Mart."
"That's what I told you," Charlie said.
Amos asked, "You want to get started?"
"We'll wait for daylight. Seeing there's two of you. And allowing forthe attitude you take." He spoke to Aaron. "I'll take 'em out to thebunkhouse; they can get some sleep if they want. I'll set up with 'em.And don't get a gleam in your eye," he finished to Mart. "I was in thebunkhouse before I come in here--and I put your guns where they won't befell over. Now stand up, and walk ahead of me slow."
The lamp was still burning in the bunkhouse, but the fire in the stovewas cold. Charlie watched them, quietly wary but without tension, whilehe lighted a lantern for a second light, and set it on the floor wellout of the way. He wasn't going to be left in the dark with a fight onhis hands by one of them throwing his hat at the lamp. Amos sat heavilyon his bunk; he looked tired and old.
"Pull your boots if you want," Charlie MacCorry said. "I ain't going tostamp on your feet, or nothing. I only come for you by myself because webeen neighbors from a long way back. I want this as friendly as you'lllet it be." He found a chair with the back broken off, moved it nearerthe stove with his foot, and sat down facing the bunks.
"Mind if I build the fire up?" Mart asked.
"Good idea."
Mart pawed in the woodbox, stirring the split wood so that a piece hecould get a grip on came to the top.
Charlie spoke sharply to Amos. "What you doing with that stick?"
From the corner of his eye, Mart saw that Amos was working an arm underthe mattress on his bunk. "Thought I heard a mouse," Amos said.
Charlie stood up suddenly, so that the broken chair overturned. His guncame out, but it was not cocked or pointed. "Move slow," he said toAmos, "and bring that hand out empty." For that one moment, while Amosdrew his hand slowly from under the tick, Charlie MacCorry was turnedthree-quarters away from Mart, his attention undivided upon Amos.
Mart's piece of cordwood swung, and caught MacCorry hard behind the ear.He rattled to the floor bonily, and lay limp. Amos was kneeling besidehim instantly, empty-handed; he hadn't had anything under the mattress.He rolled Charlie over, got his gun from under him, and had a look athis eyes.
"You like to tore his noggin' off," he said. "Lucky he ain't dead."
"Guess I got excited."
"Fetch something to make a gag. And my light reata."
Chapter 33
They didn't know where the Seven Fingers were as well as they thoughtthey did. West of the Rainy Mountains lay any number of watersheds,according to how far west you went. No creek had exactly seventributaries. Mart had hoped to get hold of an Indian or two as they drewnear. With luck they would have found a guide to take them within sightof Yellow Buckle's Camp. But Sheridan's long-awaited campaign hadcleared the prairies; the country beyond the North Fork of the Red wasdeserted. They judged, though, that the Seven Fingers had to be one oftwo systems of creeks.
Leaving the North Fork they tried the Little Horsethief first. It hadnine tributaries, but who could tell how many a Kiowa medicine man wouldcount? This whole thing drained only seventy or eighty square miles; afew long swings, cutting for sign, disposed of it in two days.
They crossed the Walking Wolf Ridge to the Elkhorn. This was their otherbet--a system of creeks draining an area perhaps thirty miles square. Onthe maps it looks like a tree. You could say it has thirty or fortyrun-ins if you followed all the branches out to their ends; or you couldsay it has eight, or four, or two. You could say it has seven.
The country had the right feel as they came into it; they believed thisto be the place Lije had meant. But now both time and country wererunning out, and very fast. The murder charge against them might be asilly one, and liable to be laughed out of court. But they had resistedarrest by violence, in the course of which Mart had assaulted an officerwith a deadly weapon, intending great bodily harm. Actually all he haddone was to swing on that damn fool Charlie MacCorry, but such thingstake time to cool off, and they didn't have it. No question now whetherthey wanted to quit this long search; the search was quitting them. Oneway or the other, it would end here, and this time forever.
Sometimes they had sighted a distant dust far back on their trail,losing them when they changed direction, picking them up again when theystraightened out. They hadn't seen it now for four days, but they didn'tfool themselves. Their destination was known, within limits, and theywould be come for. Not that they had any thought of escape; they wouldturn on their accusers when their work was done--if they got it done.But they must work fast now with what horseflesh they had left.
The Elkhorn Country is a land of low ridges between its manydust-and-flood-water streams. You can't see far, and what is worse, itis known as a medicine country full of dust drifts and sudden hazes. Youcan ride toward what looks like the smoke of many fires, and follow itas it recedes across the ridges, and finally lose it without finding anyfire at all. Under war conditions this was a very slow-going job ofriding indeed. Each swale had to be scouted from its high borders beforeyou dared cut for sign; while you yourself could be scouted very easily,at any time or all the time, if the Indians you sought were at all waryof your approach.
Yet this whole complex was within three days military march from FortSill itself, at the pace the yellowlegs would ride now. No commanderalive was likely to search his own doorstep with painful care, endlesslycordoning close to home, while the other columns were striking hundredsof miles into the fastnesses of the Staked Plains. Yellow Buckle hadshown an unexampled craftiness in picking this hole-up in which to lielow, while the military storm blew over. Here he was almost certain tobe by-passed in the first hours of the campaign, and thereafter couldsit out the war unmolested, until the exhaustion of both sides broughtpeace. When the yellowlegs eventually went home, as they always did, hiswarriors and his ponies would be fresh and strong, ready for such a yearof raids and victories as would make him legendary. By shrewdly settingaside the Comanche reliance upon speed and space, he had opened himselfa way to become the all-time greatest war chief of the Comanches.
Would it have worked, except for a wobbly old man, whose dimming eyessaw no more glorious vision than that of a chair by a hot stove?
"We need a week there," Mart said.
"We're lucky if we've got two days."
They didn't like it. Like most prairie men, they had great belief intheir abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.
Then one day at daylight they got their break. It came as the result ofa mistake, though of a kind no plainsman would own to; it could happento anybody, and most it had happened to were dead. They had camped afterdark, a long way past the place where they had built their cooking fire.Before that, though, they had studied the little valley very carefullyin the last light, making sure they would bed down in the security ofemptiness and space. They slept only after all reasonable precautionshad been taken, with the skill of long-practiced men.
But as they broke out in the darkness before dawn, they rode at onceupon the warm ashes of a fire where a single Indian had camped. They hadbeen within less than a furlong of him all night.
He must have been a very tired Indian. Though they caught no glimpse ofhim, they knew they almost stepped on him, for they accidentally cut himoff from his hobbled horse. They chased and roped the Indian pony,catching him very easily in so short a distance that Mart's back wasfull of prickles in expectation of an arrow in it. None came, however.They retired to a bald swell commanding the situation, and lay flat towait for better light.
Slowly the sun came up, cleared the horizon haze, and leveled cleansunlight across the uneven land.
"You think he's took out on us?"
"I hope not," Amos answered. "We need the bugger. We need him bad."
An hour passed. "I figured he'd stalk us," Mart said. "He must bestalking us. Some long way round. I can't see him leaving without anytry for the horses."
"We got to wait him out."
"Might be he figures to foller and try us tonight."
"We got to wait him out anyway," Amos said.
Still another hour, and the sun was high.
"I think it's the odds," Mart believed now. "We're two to one. Till hegets one clean shot. Then it's even."
Amos said with sarcasm, "One of us can go away."
"Yes," Mart said. He got his boots from the aparejos, and changed themfor the worn moccasins in which he had been scouting for many days.
"What's that for?" Amos demanded.
"So's he'll hear me."
"Hear you doing what? Kicking yourself in the head?"
"Look where I say." Mart flattened to the ground beside Amos again."Straight ahead, down by the crick, you see a little willer."
"He ain't under that. Boughs don't touch down."
"No, and he ain't up it neither--I can see through the leaves. Left ofthe willer, you see a hundred-foot strip of saw grass about knee high.Left of that, a great long slew of buckbrush against the water. Aboutbelt deep. No way out of there without yielding a shot. I figure we gothim pinned in there."
"No way to comb him out if that's where he is," Amos said; but hestudied the buckbrush a long time.
Mart got up, and took the canteens from the saddles.
"He'll put an arrow through you so fast it'll fall free on the far side,you go down to that crick!"
"Not without raising up, he won't."
"That's a seventy-five yard shot from here--maybe more. I ain't usingyou for bait on no such----"
"You never drew back from it before!" Mart went jauntily down the slopeto the creek, swinging the canteens. Behind him he could hear Amosrumbling curses to himself for a while; then the morning was quietexcept for the sound of his own boots.
He walked directly, unhurrying, to the point where the firm ground underthe buckbrush mushed off into the shallow water at the saw grass roots.He sloshed through ten yards of this muck, skirting the brush; and nowhis hackles crawled at the back of his neck, for he smelled Indian--afaint sunburnt smell of woodfires, of sage smoke, of long-used buffalorobes.
He came to the water, and stopped. Still standing straight up he floatedthe two canteens, letting them fill themselves at the end of their longslings. This was the time, as he stood motionless here, pretending tolook at the water. He dared not look at the buckbrush, lest his ownpurpose be spoiled. But he let his head turn a little bit downstream, sothat he could hold the buckbrush in the corner of his eye. He wascertain nothing moved.
Amos' bullet yowled so close to him it seemed Amos must have fired athis back, and a spout of water jumped in the river straight beyond. Martthrew himself backward, turning as he fell, so that he came down on hisbelly in the muck. He didn't know how his six-gun came cocked into hishand, but it was there.
"Stay down!" Amos bellowed. "Hold still, damn it! I don't think I gothim!" Mart could hear him running down the slope, chambering a freshcartridge with a metallic clank. He flattened, trying to suck himselfinto the mud, and for a few moments lay quiet, all things out of hishands.
Amos came splashing into the saw grass so close by that Mart thought hewas coming directly to where Mart lay.
"Yes, I did," Amos said. "Come looky this here!"
"Watch out for him!" Mart yelled. "Your bullet went in the crick!"
"I creased him across the back. Prettiest shot you ever see in yourlife!"
Mart got up then. Amos was standing less than six yards away, lookingdown into the grass. Two steps toward him and Mart could see part of thedark, naked body, prone in the saw grass. He stopped, and moved backwarda little; he had no desire to see anything more. Amos reached for theIndian's knife, and spun it into the creek.
"Get his bow," Mart said.
"Bow, hell! This here's a Spencer he's got here." Amos picked it up. "Hethrew down on you from fifteen feet!"
"I never even heard the safety click----"
"That's what saved you. It's still on."
Amos threw the rifle after the knife, far out into the water.
"Is he in shape to talk?"
"He'll talk, all right. Now get your horse, quick!"
"What?"
"There's two Rangers coming up the crick. I got one quick sight of 'emat a mile--down by the far bend. Get on down there, and hold 'em off!"
"You mean fight?"
"No-no-no! Talk to 'em--say anything that comes in your head----"
"What if they try to arrest me?"
"Let' em! Only keep 'em off me while I question this Comanch'!"
Mart ran for his horse.
Chapter 34
No Rangers were in sight a mile down the creek when Mart got there. Noneat two miles, either. By this time he knew what had happened. He hadbeen sent on a fool's errand because Amos wanted to work on the Indianalone. He turned back, letting his horse loiter; and Amos met him at thehalf mile, coming downstream at a brisk trot. He looked grim, and veryugly, but satisfied with his results.
"He talked," Mart assumed.
"Yeah. We know how to get to Yellow Buckle now. He's got the girl LijePowers saw, all right."
"Far?"
"We'll be there against night. And it's a good thing. There's a party ofmore than forty Rangers, with sixty-seventy Tonkawas along with 'em, on'the hill by the Beaver'--that'll be old Camp Radziminski--and twocompanies of yellowlegs, by God, more'n a hundred of 'em, camped rightalongside!"
"That's no way possible! Your Indian lied."
"He didn't lie." Amos seemed entirely certain. Mart saw now that a dropof fresh blood had trickled down the outside of Amos' scalping knifesheath.
"Where is he now?"
"In the crick. I weighted him down good with rocks."
"I don't understand this," Mart said. He had learned to guess thegeneral nature of the truth behind some kinds of Indian lies, but hecouldn't see through this story. "I never heard of Rangers and cavalryworking together before. Not in Indian territory, anyway. My guess isSill sent out a patrol to chase the Rangers back."
Amos shrugged. "Maybe so. But the Rangers will make a deal now--they'llhave to. Give the soldiers Yellow Buckle on a plate in return for notgetting run back to Texas."
"Bound to," Mart said glumly, "I suppose."
"Them yellowlegs come within an ace of leaving a big fat pocket ofComanch' in their rear. Why, Yellow Buckle could have moved right intoFort Sill soon as Davidson marches! They'll blow sky high once they seewhat they nearly done. They can hit that village in two days--tomorrow,if the Rangers set the pace. And no more Yellow Buckle! We got to getover there."
They reset their saddles, and pressed on at a good long trot, loping onemile in three.
"There's something I got to say," Mart told Amos as they rode. "I wantto ask one thing. If we find the village----"
"We'll find it. And it'll still be there. That one Comanche was the onlyscout they had out between them and Fort Sill."
"I want to ask one thing----"
"Finding Yellow Buckle isn't the hard part. Not now." Amos seemed tosense a reason for putting Mart off from what he wanted to say. "Diggingthe girl out of that village is going to be the hard thing in whatlittle time we got."
"I know. Amos, will you do me one favor? When we find the village--Now,don't go off half cocked. I want to walk in there alone."
"You want--what?"
"I want to go in and talk to Yellow Buckle by myself."
Amos did not speak for so long that Mart thought he was not going toanswer him at all. "I had it in mind," he said at last, "the other wayround. Leave you stay back, so set you can get clear, if worst goeswrong. Whilst I walk in and test what their temper be."
Mart shook his head. "I'm asking you. This one time--will you do it myway?"
Another silence before Amos asked, "Why?"
Mart had foreseen this moment, and worked it over in his mind a hundredtimes without thinking of any story that had a chance to work. "I got totell you the truth. I see no other way."
"You mean," Amos said sardonically, "you'd come up with a lie now if youhad one to suit."
"That's right. But I got no lie for this. It's because I'm scared ofsomething. Suppose this. Suppose some one Comanche stood in front ofyou. And you knew for certain in your own mind--he was the one killedMartha?"
Mart watched Amos' face gray, then darken. "Well?" Amos said.
"You'd kill him. And right there'd be the end of Debbie, and all huntingfor Debbie. I know that as well as you."
Amos said thickly, "Forget all this. And you best lay clear like I tellyou, too--if you don't want Yellow Buckle to get away clean! Because I'mgoing in."
"I got to be with you, then. In hopes I can stop you when that minutecomes."
"You know what that would take?"
"Yes; I do know. I've known for a long time."
Amos turned in the saddle to look at him. "I believe you'd do it," hedecided. "I believe you'd kill me in the bat of an eye if it come tothat."
Mart said nothing. They rode in silence for a furlong more.
"Oh, by the way," Amos said. "I got something for you here. I believeyou better have it now. If so happens you feel I got to be gunned down,you might's well have some practical reason. One everybody's liable tounderstand."
He rummaged in various pockets, and finally found a bit of paper,grease-marked and worn at the folds. He opened it to see if it was theright one; and the wind whipped at it as he handed it to Mart. Thewriting upon it was in ink.
Now know all men: I, Amos Edwards, being of sound mind, and without any known blood kin, do will that upon my death my just debts do first be paid. Whereafter, all else I own, be it in property, money, livestock, or rights to range, shall go to my foster nephew Martin Pauley, in rightful token of the help he has been to me, in these the last days of my life.
AMOS EDWARDS
Beside the signature was a squiggle representing a seal, and thesignatures of the witnesses, Aaron Mathison and Laura E. Mathison. Hedidn't know what the "E" stood for; he had never even known Laurie had amiddle name. But he knew Amos had fixed him. This act of kindness, withliving witnesses to it, could be Mart's damnation if he had to turn onAmos. He held out the paper to Amos for him to take back.
"Keep hold of it," Amos said. "Come in handy if the Comanches go throughmy pockets before you."
"It don't change anything," Mart said bleakly. "I'll do what I have todo."
"I know."
They rode four hours more. At mid-afternoon Amos held up his hand, andthey stopped. The rolling ground hid whatever was ahead but now theyheard the far-off barking of dogs.
Chapter 35
Yellow Buckle's village was strung out for a considerable distance alonga shallow river as yet unnamed by white men, but called by Indians theWild Dog. The village was a lot bigger than the Texans had expected.Counting at a glance, as cattle are counted, Mart believed he sawsixty-two lodges. Probably it would be able to turn out somewherebetween a hundred fifty and two hundred warriors, counting old men andyouths.
They were seen at a great distance, and the usual scurrying aboutresulted all down the length of the village. Soon a party of warriorsbegan to build up just outside. They rode bareback, with single-rope warbridles on the jaws of their ponies, and their weapons were in theirhands. A few headdresses and medicine shields showed among them, butnone had tied up the tails of their ponies, as they did when a fight wasexpected. This group milled about, but not excitedly, until twenty or sohad assembled, then flowed into a fairly well-dressed line, and advancedat a walk to meet the white men. Meanwhile three or four scouts on fastponies swung wide, and streaked in the direction from which Mart andAmos had come to make sure that the two riders were alone.
"Seem kind of easy spooked," Mart said, "don't they?"
"I wouldn't say so. Times have changed. They're getting fought back atnow. Seems to me they act right cocky, and sure."
The mounted line halted fifty yards in front of them. A warrior in abuffalo-horn headdress drew out two lengths, and questioned them in signlanguage: "Where have you come from? What do you want? What do youbring?" The conventional things.
And Amos gave conventional answers. "I come very far, from beyond theStaked Plains. I want to make talk. I have a message for Yellow Buckle.I have gifts."
A Comanche raced his pony back into the village, and the spokesman fakedother questions, meaninglessly, while he waited for instructions. By thetime his runner was back from the village, the scouts had signaled fromfar out that the strangers appeared to be alone, and all was well up tohere. The two riders were escorted into the village through a clamoringhorde of cur dogs, all with small heads and the souls of gadflies; andhalted before a tepee with the black smoke flaps of a chief's lodge.
Presently a stocky, middle-aged Comanche came out, wrapped himself in ablanket, and stood looking them over. He was weaponless, but had put onno headdress or decoration of any kind. This was a bad sign, and theslouchy way he stood was another. Amos' gestures were brusque as heasked if this man called himself Yellow Buckle and the chief gave theleast possible acknowledgment.
Visitors were supposed to stay in the saddle until invited to dismount,but Yellow Buckle did not give the sign. He's making this too plain,Mart thought. He wants us out of here, and in a hurry, but he ought tocover up better than this. Mart felt Amos anger. The tension increaseduntil it seemed to ring as Amos dismounted without invitation, walkedwithin two paces of the chief, and looked him up and down.
Yellow Buckle looked undersized with Amos looming over him. He had theshort bandy legs that made most Comanches unimpressive on the ground,however effective they might be when once they put hands to theirhorses. He remained expressionless, and met Amos' eyes steadily. Martstepped down and stood a little in back of Amos, and to the side.Getting a closer look at this chief, Mart felt his scalp stir. A thinline, like a crease, ran from the corner of the Comanche's left eye tothe line of the jaw, where no natural wrinkle would be. They werestanding before the mythical, the long-hunted, the forever elusive ChiefScar!
The Indian freed one arm, and made an abrupt sign that asked what theywanted. Amos' short answer was all but contemptuous. "I do not standtalking in the wind," his hands said.
For a moment more the Comanche chief stood like a post. Amos had taken aserious gamble in that he had left himself no alternatives. If YellowBuckle--Scar--told him to get out, Amos would have no way to stay, andno excuse for coming back. After that he could only ride to meet theRangers, and guide them to the battle that would destroy Scar and mostof the people with him. It's what he wants, Mart thought. I have to stayif Amos rides out of here. I have to make what try I can, never mindwhat Amos does.
But now Scar smiled faintly, with a gleam in his eye that Mart neitherunderstood nor liked, but which might have contained derision. Hemotioned Amos to follow him, and went into the tepee.
"See they keep their hands off the mule packs," Amos said, tossing Marthis reins.
Mart let the split reins fall. "Guard these," he said in Comanche to thewarrior who had been spokesman. The Comanche looked blank but Martturned his back on him, and followed Amos. The door flap dropped in hisface; he struck it aside with annoyance, and went inside.
A flicker of fire in the middle of the lodge, plus a seepage of daylightfrom the smoke flap at the peak, left the lodge shadowy. The close aircarried a sting of wood smoke, scented with wild-game stew, buffalohides, and the faintly musky robe smell of Indians. Two chunky squawsand three younger females had been stirred into a flurry by Amos'entrance, but they were settling down as Mart came in. Mart gave thesmallest of these, a half-grown girl, a brief flick of attention,without looking directly at her but even out of the corner of his eye hecould see that her shingled thatch was black, and as coarse as a pony'stail.
Women were supposed to keep out of the councils of warriors, unlesscalled to wait on the men. But the two squaws now squatted on theirpiled robes on the honor side of the lodge, where Scar's grown sonsshould have been, and the three younger ones huddled deep in the shadowsopposite. Mart realized that they must have jumped up to get out ofthere, and that Scar had told them to stay. This was pretty close toinsult, the more so since Scar did not invite the white men to sit down.
Scar himself stood opposite the door beyond the fire. He shifted hisblanket, wrapping it skirtlike around his waist; and his open buckskinshirt exposed a gold brooch in the form of a bow of ribbon, hung aroundhis neck on a chain. In all likelihood his present name, assumed midwayof his career, commemorated some exploit with which this brooch wasassociated.
Amos waited stolidly, and finally Scar was forced to address them. Heknew them now, he told them in smooth-running sign language. "You," hesaid, indicating Amos, "are called Bull Shoulders. And this boy," hedismissed Mart, "is The Other."
Amos' hands lied fluently in answer. He had heard of a white man calledBull Shoulders, but the Chickasaws said Bull Shoulders was dead. Hehimself was called Plenty Mules. His friends, the Quohadas, so namedhim. He was a sub-chief among the Comanchero traders beyond the StakedPlains. His boss was called the Rich One. Real name--"Jaime Rosas," Amosused his voice for the first time.
"You are Plenty Mules," Yellow Buckle's hands conceded, while his smileexpressed a contrary opinion. "A Comanchero. This--" he indicatedMart--"is still The Other. His eyes are made of mussel shells, and hesees in the dark."
"This--" Amos contradicted him again--"is my son. His Indian name isNo-Speak."
Mart supposed this last was meant to convey an order.
The Rich One, Amos went on in sign language, had many-heap rifles. (Itwas that sign itself, descriptive of piles and piles, that gave Indiansthe word "heap" for any big quantity, when they picked up white men'swords.) He wanted horses, mules, horned stock, for his rifles. He hadheard of Yellow Buckle. He had been told--here Amos descended toflattery--that Yellow Buckle was a great horse thief, a great cowthief--a fine sneak thief of every kind. Yellow Buckle's friend had saidthat.
"What friend?" Scar's hands demanded.
"The Flower," Amos signed.
"The Flower," Scar said, "has a white wife."
No change of pace or mood showed in the movement of Scar's hands,drawing classically accurate pictographs in the air, as he said that.But Mart's hair stirred and all but crackled; the smoky air in the lodgehad suddenly become charged, like a thunderhead. Out of the corner ofhis eye Mart watched the squaws to see if Scar's remark meant anythingto them in their own lives, here. But the eyes of the Comanche womenwere on the ground; he could not see their down-turned faces, and theyhad not seen the sign.
White wife. Amos made the throw-away sign. The Rich One did not tradefor squaws. If the Yellow Buckle wanted rifles, he must bring horses.Many-heaps horses. No small deals. Or maybe--and this wassarcasm--Yellow Buckle did not need rifles. Plenty Mules could go findsomebody else.... Amos was giving a very poor imitation of a mantrying to make a trade with an Indian. But perhaps it was a goodimitation of a man who had been sent with this offer, but who wouldprefer to make his deal elsewhere to his own purposes.
Scar seemed puzzled; he did not at once reply. Behind the Comanche, Martcould see the details of trophies and accoutrements, now that his eyeswere accustomed to the gloom. Scar's medicine shield was there. Martwondered if it bore, under its masking cover, a design he had seen atthe Fight at the Cat-tails long ago. Above the shield hung Scar's shortlance, slung horizontally from the lodgepoles. Almost a dozen scalpswere displayed upon it, and less than half of them looked like thescalps of Indians. The third scalp from the tip of the lance had longwavy hair of a deep red-bronze. It was a white woman's scalp, and thewoman it had belonged to must have been beautiful. The squaws had keptthis scalp brushed and oiled, so that it caught red glints from thewavering fire. But Scar's lance bore none of the pale fine hair that hadbeen Martha's, nor the bright gold that had been Lucy's hair.
Scar turned his back on them while he took two slow, thoughtful stepstoward the back of the lodge and in that moment, while Scar was turnedaway from them, Mart felt eyes upon his face, as definitely as if afinger touched his cheek. His glance flicked to the younger squaws onthe women's side of the lodge.
He saw her then. One of the young squaws wore a black head cloth,covering all of her hair and tied under her chin; it was a commonplacething for a squaw to wear, but it had sufficed to make her lookblack-headed like the others in the uncertain light. Now this one hadlooked up, and her eyes were on his face in an unwavering stare, as acat stares; and the eyes were green and slanted, lighter than the deeplytanned face. They were the most startling eyes he had ever seen in hislife, strangely cold, impersonal yet inimical, and as hard as glass. Butthis girl was Debbie.
The green eyes dropped as Scar turned toward the strangers again andMart's own eyes were straight ahead when the Comanche chief lookedtoward them.
Where were the rifles? Scar's question came at last.
Beyond the Staked Plains, Amos answered him. Trading must be there.
Another wait, while Mart listened to the ringing in his ears.
Too far, Scar said. Let the Rich One bring his rifles here.
Amos filled his lungs, stood tall, and laughed in Scar's face. Mart sawthe Comanche's eyes narrow but after a moment he seated himselfcross-legged on his buffalo robes under the dangling scalps and theshield. "Sit down," he said in Comanche, combining the words with thesign.
Amos ignored the invitation. "I speak no more now," he said, using hisvoice for the second time. His Comanche phrasings were slow and awkwardbut easily understood. "Below this village I saw a spring. I camp there,close by the Wild Dog River. Tomorrow, if you wish to talk, find methere. I sleep one night wait one day. Then I go."
"You spoke of gifts," Yellow Buckle reminded him.
"They will be there." He turned and, without concession to courtesy, hesaid in English, "Come on, No-Speak." And Mart followed him out.
Chapter 36
Pringles ran up and down Mart's back as they rode out of that villagewith the cur dogs bawling and blaspheming again all around them, justbeyond kick-range of their horses' feet. But until they were out ofthere they had to move unhurriedly, as if at peace and expecting peace.Even their eyes held straight ahead, lest so much as an exchange ofglances be misread as a trigger for trouble.
Amos spoke first, well past the last of the lodges. "Did you see her?...Yeah," he answered himself. "I see you did." His reaction to thesudden climax of their search seemed to be the opposite of what Mart hadexpected. Amos seemed steadied, and turned cool.
"She's alive," Mart said. It seemed about the only thing his mind wasable to think. "Can you realize it? Can you believe it? We found her,Amos!"
"Better start figuring how to stay alive yourself. Or finding her won'tdo anybody much good."
That was what was taking all the glory, all the exultation, out of theirvictory. They had walked into a hundred camps where they could havehandled this situation, dangerous though it must always be. Whitecaptives had been bought and sold before time and again. Any Indian onearth but Scar would have concealed the girl, and played for time, untilthey found a way to deal.
"How in God's name," Mart asked him, "can this thing be? How could helet us walk into the lodge where she was? And keep her there before oureyes?"
"He meant for us to see her, that's all!"
"This is a strange Comanche," Mart said.
"This whole hunt has been a strange thing. And now we know why. Mart,did you see--there's scarce a Comanch' in that whole village we haven'tseen before."
"I know."
"We've even stood in that same one lodge before. Do you know where?"
"When we talked to Singing Dog on the Little Boggy."
"That's right. We talked to Singing Dog in Scar's own lodge--while Scartook the girl and hid out. That's how they've kept us on a wild-goosechase five years long. They've covered up, and decoyed for him, everytime we come near."
"We've caught up to him now!"
"Because he let us. Scar's learned something few Indians ever know: He'slearned there's such a thing as a critter that never quits follering orgives up. So he's had enough. If we stood in the same lodge with her,and didn't know her, well and good. But if we were going to find her, hewanted to see us do it."
"So he saw--I suppose."
"I think so. He has to kill us, Mart."
"Bluebonnet didn't think he had to kill us."
"He never owned to having a white girl until Jaime Rosas made him a safedeal. And down there below the Llanos we was two men alone. Up here, wegot Rangers, we got yellowlegs, to pull down on Scar. We rode squareinto the pocket where he was figuring to set until Davidson marched, andall soldiers was long gone. Scar don't dast let us ride loose with theword."
"Why'd he let us walk out of there at all?"
"I don't know," Amos said honestly. "Something tied his hands. If weknew what it was we could stretch it. But we don't know." Amos bent lowover the horn to look back at the village under his arm. "They'reholding fast so far. Might even let us make a pass at settling down atthe spring...."
But neither believed the Comanches would wait for night. Scar was asmart Indian, and a bitter one. The reason his squaws were on the honorside of the lodge where his sons should be was that Scar's sons weredead, killed in war raids upon the likes of Mart and Amos. He would takeno chances of a slip-up in the dark.
"We'll make no two mistakes," Amos said, and his tone was thoughtful."They got some fast horses there. You saw them scouts whip up when theytook a look at our back trail. Them's racing ponies. And they got nightwo hours of daylight left."
They reached the spring without sign of pursuit, and dismounted. Herethey had a good three-furlong start, and would be able to see horsesstart from the village when the Comanches made their move. They wouldnot, of course, be able to see warriors who ran crouching on foot,snaking on their bellies across open ground. But the Comanches hatedaction afoot. More probably they would try to close for the kill underpretense of bringing fresh meat, perhaps with squaws along as a blind.Or the Comanches might simply make a horse-race of it. The fast warponies would close their three-eighths-mile lead very easily, with evenhalf an hour of daylight left. Some Indians were going to be killed butthere could hardly be but one end.
They set to work on the one thin ruse they could think of. Mart kicked afire together first--about the least token of a fire that would pass forone at all--and set it alight. Then they stripped saddles and packs.They would have to abandon these, in order to look as though they werenot going any place. Bridles were left on the horses, and halters on themules.
"We'll lead out," Amos said, "like hunting for the best grass. Try toget as much more lead as we can without stirring 'em up. First minuteany leave the village, we'll ease over a ridge, mount bareback--stampedethe mules. Split up, of course--ride two ways----"
"Well put up a better fight if we stay together," Mart objected.
"Yeah. We'd kill more Indians that way. There's no doubt of it. But awhole lot more than that will be killed if one of us stays alive untildark--and makes Camp Radziminski."
"Wait a minute," Mart said. "If we lead the yellowlegs on 'em--or eventhe Rangers, with the Tonkawas they got--there'll be a massacre, Amos!This village will be gutted out."
"Yes," Amos said.
"They'll kill her--you know that! You saw it at Deadhorse Bend!"
"If I didn't think so," Amos said, "I'd have killed her myself."
There was the substance of their victory after all this long time: Onebitter taste of death, and then nothing more, forever.
"I won't do this," Mart said.
"What?"
"She's alive. That means everything to me. Better she's alive and livingwith Indians than her brains bashed out."
A blaze of hatred lighted Amos' eyes, while his face was still a mask ofdisbelief. "I can't believe my own ears," he said.
"I say there'll be no massacre while she's in that village! Not while Ican stop it, or put it off!"
Amos got control of his voice. "What do you want to do?"
"First we got to live out the night. That I know and agree to. Beyondthat, I don't know. Maybe we got to come at Scar some far way round. Butwe stay together. Because I'm not running to the troops, Amos. Andneither are you."
Amos' voice was half choked by the congestion of blood in his neck. "Youthink the likes of you could stop me?"
Mart pulled out the bit of paper upon which the will was written, inwhich Amos left Mart all he had. He tore it slowly into shreds, and laidthem on the fire. "Yes," he said, "I'll stop you."
Amos was silent for a long time. He stood with his shoulders slack, andhis big hands hanging loose by his thighs, and he stared into space.When finally he spoke his voice was tired. "All right. We'll staytogether through the night. After that, we'll see. I can't promise nomore."
"That's better. Now let's get at it!"
"I'm going to tell you something," Amos said. "I wasn't going to speakof it. But if we fight, you got to murder all of 'em you can. So I'lltell you now. Did you notice them scalps strung on Scar's lance?"
"I was in there, wasn't I?"
"They ain't there," Mart said. "Not Martha's. Not Lucy's. Not evenBrad's. Let's----"
"Did you see the third scalp from the point of the lance?"
"I saw it."
"Long, wavy. A red shine to it----"
"I saw it, I told you! You're wasting----"
"You didn't remember it. But I remember." Amos' voice was harsh, and hiseyes bored into Mart's eyes, as if to drive the words into his brain."That was your mother's scalp!"
No reason for Mart to doubt him. His mother's scalp was somewhere in aComanche lodge, if a living Indian still possessed it. Certainly it wasnot in her grave. Amos let him stand there a moment, while hisunremembered people became real to him--his mother, with the prettyhair, his father, from whom he got his light eyes, his young sisters,Ethel and Becky, who were just names. He knew what kind of thing theirmassacre had been, because he had seen the Edwards place, and the peoplewho had raised him, after the same thing happened there.
"Let's lead off," Amos said.
But before they had gone a rod, the unexpected stopped them. A figureslipped out the willows by the creek, and a voice spoke. Debbie wasthere--alone, so far as they could see she had materialized as an Indiandoes, without telltale sound of approach.
She moved a few halting steps out of the willow scrub, but stopped asMart came toward her. He walked carefully, watchful for movement in thethicket behind her. Behind him he heard the metallic crash as Amoschambered a cartridge. Amos had sprung onto a hummock, exposing himselfrecklessly while his eyes swept the terrain.
Mart was at four paces when Debbie spoke, urgently, in Comanche. "Don'tcome too close. Don't touch me! I have warriors with me."
He had remembered the voice of a child, but what he was hearing was thesoft-husky voice of a grown woman. Her Comanche was fluent,indistinguishable from that of the Indians, yet he thought he had neverheard that harsh and ugly tongue sound uglier. He stopped six feet fromher; one more inch, he felt, and she would have bolted. "Where are they,then?" he demanded. "Let 'em stand up and be counted, if they're notafraid!"
Mystification came into her face; she stared at him with blank eyes.Suddenly he realized that he had spoken in a rush of English--and she nolonger understood. The lost years had left an invisible mutilation asdefinite as if fingers were missing from her hand. "How many warriors?"he asked in gruff Comanche; and everything they said to each other wasin Comanche after that.
"Four men are with me."
His eyes jumped then, and swept wide; and though he saw nothing at all,he knew she might be telling the truth. If she had not come alone, hehad to find out what was happening here, and quick. Their lives mighteasily depend upon their next guess. "What are you doing here?" he askedharshly.
"My----" He heard a wary hesitancy, a testing of words before they werespoken. "My--father--told me come."
"Your what?"
"Yellow Buckle is my father."
While he stared at her, sure he must have misunderstood the Comanchewords, Amos put in. "Keep at her! Scar sent her all right. We got toknow why!"
Watching her, Mart was sure Debbie had understood none of Amos' TexanEnglish. She tried to hurry her stumbling tale. "My father--he believesyou. But some others--they know. They tell him--you were my peopleonce."
"What did you tell him?"
"I tell him I don't know. I must come here. Make sure. I tell him I mustcome."
"You told him nothing like that," he contradicted her in Comanche. "Hesmash your mouth, you say 'must' to him!"
She shook her head. "No. No. You don't know my father."
"We know him. We call him Scar."
"My father--Scar--" she accepted his name for the chief--"He believesyou. He says you are Comancheros. Like you say. But soon--" shefaltered--"soon he knows."
"He knows now," he contradicted her again. "You are lying to me!"
Her eyes dropped, and her hands hid themselves in her raggedwash-leather sleeves. "He says you are Comancheros," she repeated. "Hebelieves you. He told me. He----"
He had an exasperated impulse to grab her and shake her; but he saw herbody tense. If he made a move toward her she would be gone in the sameinstant. "Debbie, listen to me! I'm Mart! Don't you remember me?" Hespoke just the names in English, and it was obvious that these two wordswere familiar to her.
"I remember you," she said gravely, slowly, across the gulf betweenthem. "I remember. From always."
"Then stop lying to me! You got Comanches with you--so you say. What doyou want here if you're not alone?"
"I come to tell you, go away! Go tonight. As soon as dark. They can stopyou. They can kill you. But this one night--I make him let you go."
"Make him?" He was so furious he stammered. "You make him? No squawalive can move Scar a hand span--you least of all!"
"I can," she said evenly, meeting his eyes. "I am--bought. I am boughtfor--to be--for marriage. My--man--he pays sixty ponies. Nobody everpaid so much. I'm worth sixty ponies."
"We'll overcall that," he said. "Sixty ponies! We'll pay a hundred foryou--a hundred and a half----"
She shook her head.
"My man--his family----"
"You own five times that many ponies yourself--you know that? We canbring them--many as he wants--and enough cattle to feed the whole tribefrom here to----"
"My man would fight. His people would fight. They are very many. Scarwould lose--lose everything."
Comanche thoughts, Comanche words--a white woman's voice and form...the meeting toward which he had worked for years had turned into anightmare. Her face was Debbie's face, delicately made, and now in thefirst bloom of maturity; but all expression was locked away from it. Sheheld it wooden, facing him impassively, as an Indian faces a stranger.Behind the surface of this long-loved face was a Comanche squaw.
He spoke savagely, trying to break through to the Debbie of long ago."Sixty ponies," he said with contempt. "What good is that? One sleepwith Indians--you're a mare--a sow--they take what they want of you.Nothing you can do would turn Scar!"
"I can kill myself," she said.
In the moment of silence, Amos spoke again. "String it out. No move fromthe village yet. Every minute helps."
Mart looked into the hard green eyes that should have been lovely anddear to him; and he believed her. She was capable of killing herself,and would do it if she said she would. And Scar must know that. Was thisthe mysterious thing that had tied Scar's hands when he let them walkaway? An accident to a sold but undelivered squaw could cost Scar morethan sixty ponies. It could cost him his chiefship, and perhaps hislife.
"That is why you can go now," she said, "and be safe. I have toldhim--my father----"
His temper flared up. "Stop calling that brute your father!"
"You must get away from here," she said again, monotonously, almostdropping into a ritual Comanche singsong. "You must go away quick. Soonhe will know. You will be killed----"
"You bet I'm getting out of here," he said, breaking into English. "AndI got no notion of getting killed, neither! Amos! Grab holt that blackmule! She's got to ride that!"
He heard leather creak as Amos swung up a saddle. No chance of deceptionnow, from here on; they had to take her and run.
Debbie said, "What----?"
He returned to Comanche. "You're going with us now! You hear me?"
"No," Debbie said. "Not now. Not ever."
"I don't know what they have done to you. But it makes no difference!"He wouldn't have wasted time fumbling Comanche words if he had seen halfa chance of taking her by main force. "You must come with me. I take youto----"
"They have done nothing to me. They take care of me. These are mypeople."
"Debbie, Debbie--these--these Nemenna murdered our family!"
"You lie." A flash of heat-lightning in her eyes let him see anunderlying hatred, unexpected and dreadful.
"These are the ones! They killed your mother, cut her arm off--killedyour own real father, slit his belly open--killed Hunter, killedBen----"
"Wichitas killed them! Wichitas and white men! To steal cows----"
"What?"
"These people saved me. They drove off the whites and the Wichitas. Iran in the brush. Scar picked me up on his pony. They have told me itall many times!" He was blanked again, helpless against lies drilledinto her over the years.
Amos had both saddles cinched up. "Watch your chance," he said. "Youknow now what we got to do."
Debbie's eyes went to Amos in quick suspicion, but Mart was stilltrying. "Lucy was with you. You know what happened to her!"
"Lucy--went mad. They--we--gave her a pony----"
"Pony! They--they----" He could not think of the word for rape. "Theycut her up! Amos--Bull Shoulders--he found her, buried her----"
"You lie," she answered, her tone monotonous again, without heat. "Allwhite men lie. Always."
"Listen! Listen to me! I saw my own mother's scalp on Scar'slance--there in the lodge where you live!"
"Lies," she said, and looked at him sullenly, untouched. "You LongKnives--you are the evil ones. You came in the night, and startedkilling us. There by the river."
At first he didn't know what she was talking about; then he rememberedDeadhorse Bend and Debbie's locket that had seemed to tell them she hadbeen there. He wondered if she had seen the old woman cut down, who woreher locket, and the old man sabered, as he tried to save his squaw.
"I saw it all," she said, as if answering his thought.
Mart changed his tone. "I found your locket," he said gently. "Do youremember your little locket? Do you remember who gave it to you? So longago...."
Her eyes faltered for the first time; and for a moment he saw in thisalien woman the little girl of the miniature, the child of the shrine inthe dream.
"At first--I prayed to you," she said.
"You what?"
"At first--I cried. Every night. For a long time. I cried to you--comeand get me. Take me home. You didn't come." Her voice was dead, allfeeling washed out of it.
"I've come now," he said.
She shook her head. "These are my people. You--you are Long Knives. Wehate you--fight you--always, till we die."
Amos said sharply, "They're mounting up now, up there. We got to go." Hecame over to them in long, quick strides, and spoke in Comanche, butloudly, as some people speak to foreigners. "You know Yellow Bucklething?" he demanded, backing his words with signs. "Buckle, Scar wear?"
"The medicine buckle," she said clearly.
"Get your hands on it. Turn it over. Can you still read? On the back itsays white man's words 'Ethan to Judith.' Scratched in the gold. BecauseScar tore it off Mart's mother when he killed and scalped her!"
"Lies," Debbie repeated in Comanche.
"Look and see for yourself!"
Amos had been trying to work around Debbie, to cut her off from thewillows and the river, but she was watching him, moving enough to keepclear. "I go back now," she said. "To my father's lodge. I can donothing here." Her movements brought her no closer to Mart, but suddenlyhis nostrils caught the distinct, unmistakable Indian odor, alive,immediate, near. For an instant the unreasoning fear that this smell hadbrought him, all through his early years, came back with a sickeningchill of revulsion. He looked at the girl with horror.
Amos brought him out of it. "Keep your rifle on her, Mart! If shebreaks, stun her with the butt!" He swayed forward, then lunged to grabher.
She wasn't there. She cried out a brief phrase in Comanche as she dodgedhim, then was into the brush, running like a fox. "Git down!" Amosyelled, and fired his rifle from belt level, though not at her; whilesimultaneously another rifle fired through the space in which Debbie hadstood. Its bullet whipped past Mart's ear as he flung himself to theground. The Comanche who had fired on him sprang up, face to the sky,surprisingly close to them, then fell back into the thin grass in whichhe had hidden.
Dirt jumped in Mart's face, and a ricochet yowled over. He swiveled onhis belt buckle, and snap-fired at a wisp of gunsmoke sixty yards awayin the brush. He saw a rifle fall and slide clear of the cover. Amos wasstanding straight up, trading shots with a third sniper. "Got him," hesaid, and instantly spun half around, his right leg knocked from underhim. A Comanche sprang from an invisible depression less than thirtyyards away, and rushed with drawn knife. Mart fired, and the Indian'slegs pumped grotesquely as he fell, sliding him on his face another twoyards before he was still. All guns were silent then; and Mart went toAmos.
"Go on, God damn it!" Blood pumped in spurts from a wound just aboveAmos' knee. "Ride, you fool! They're coming down on us!"
The deep thrumming of numberless hoofs upon the prairie turf came tothem plainly from a quarter mile away. Mart sliced off a pack strap, andtwisted it into a tourniquet. Amos cuffed him heavily alongside thehead, pleading desperately. "For God's sake, Mart, will you ride? Go on!Go on!"
The Comanches weren't yelling yet, perhaps wouldn't until they struck.Of all the Wild Tribes, the Comanches were the last to start whooping,the first to come to close grips. Mart took precious seconds more tomake an excuse for a bandage. "Get up here!" he grunted, stubborn to thebitter last; and he lifted Amos.
One of the mules was down, back broken by a bullet never meant for it.It made continual groaning, whistling noises as it clawed out with itsfore hoofs, trying to drag up its dead hindquarters. The other mules hadstampeded, but the horses still stood, snorting and sidestepping, tiedto the ground by their long reins. Mart got Amos across his shoulders,and heaved him bodily into the saddle. "Get your foot in the stirrup!Gimme that!" He took Amos' rifle, and slung it into the brush. "See canyou tie yourself on with the saddle strings as we ride!"
He grabbed his own pony, and made a flying mount as both animals bolted.Sweat ran down Amos' face; the bullet shock was wearing off, but he rodestraight up, his wounded leg dangling free. Mart leaned low on the neck,and his spurs raked deep. Both horses stretched their bellies low to theground, and dug out for their lives, as the first bullets from thepursuit buzzed over. The slow dusk was closing now. If they could havehad another half hour, night would have covered them before they wereovertaken.
They didn't have it. But now the Comanches did another unpredictable,Indian kind of a thing. With their quarry in full view, certain to beflanked and forced to a stand within the mile, the Comanches stopped.Repeated signals passed forward, calling the leaders in; the longstraggle of running ponies lost momentum, and sucked back upon itself.The Comanches bunched up, and sat their bareback ponies in a closemass--seemingly in argument.
Things like that had happened before that Mart knew about, though nevertwice quite the same. Sometimes the horse Indians would fight abrilliant battle, using the fast-breaking cavalry tactics at which theywere the best on earth--and seem to be winning; then unexpectedly turnand run. If you asked them later why they ran, they would say they ranbecause they had fought enough. Pursued, they might turn abruptly andfight again as tenaciously as before--and explain they fought thenbecause they had run enough....
This time they came on again after another twenty-five minutes; or, atleast, a picked party of them did. Looking back as he topped a ridge,Mart saw what looked like a string of perhaps ten warriors, barelyvisible in the last of the light, coming on fast at three miles. Heturned at a right angle, covered by the ridge, and loped in the newdirection for two miles more. The dusk had blackened to almost soliddark when he dismounted to see what he could do for Amos.
"Never try to guess an Indian," Amos said thickly, and slumpedunconscious. He hung to the side of the horse by the saddle strings hehad tied into his belt, until Mart cut him down.
Camp Radziminski was twenty miles away.
Chapter 37
Martin Pauley sprawled on a pile of sacked grain in Ranger Captain SolClinton's tent, and waited. With Amos safe under medical care, of sorts,Mart saw a good chance to get some sleep; but the fits and starts of awakeful doze seemed to be the best he could make of it. The Ranger wasstill wrangling with Brevet-Colonel Chester C. Greenhill over what theywere about to do, if anything at all. He had been over there for twohours, and it ought to be almost enough. When he got back, Mart wouldhear whether or not five years' search could succeed, and yet bealtogether wasted.
Camp Radziminski was a flattish sag in the hills looking down upon OtterCreek--a place, not an installation. It had been a cavalry outpost,briefly, long ago; and an outfit of Rangers had wintered here once afterthat. In the deep grass you could still fall over the crumbling footingsof mud-and-wattle walls and the precise rows of stones that had borderedmilitary pathways; but the stockaded defenses were long gone.
Mart had been forced to transport Amos on a travois. This contraptionwas nothing but two long poles dragged from the saddle. The attachedhorse had shown confusion and some tendency to kick Amos' head off, butit hadn't happened. Mart found Radziminski before noon to his ownconsiderable surprise. And the dead Comanche scout was proved to havetold the truth with considerable exactness under Amos' peculiarlyeffective methods of questioning.
Here were the "more than forty" Rangers, their wagon-sheet bedsscattered haphazardly over the best of the flat ground, with a singletent to serve every form of administration and supply. Here, too, werethe two short-handed companies of cavalry--about a hundred and twentymen--with a wagon train, an officer's tent, a noncom's tent, a supplytent, and a complement of pup tents sheltering two men each. This partof the encampment was inconveniently placed, the Rangers having beenhere first; but the lines of tents ran perfectly straight anyway,defying the broken terrain.
And here, scattered up and down the slopes at random, were the brushwickiups of the "sixty or seventy" Tonkawas, almost the last of theirbreed. These were tall, clean, good-looking Indians, but said to becannibals, and trusted by few; now come to fight beside the Rangers in alast doomed, expiring effort to win the good will of the white men whohad conquered them.
As Mart had suspected, the Army and the Rangers were not workingtogether at all. Colonel Greenhill had not, actually, come out tointercept the Rangers. Hadn't known they were there. But, having runsmack into them, he conceived his next duty to be that of sending themback where they belonged. He had been trying to get this done withouttoo much untowardness for several days; and all concerned were now fitto be tied.
In consequence, Mart found Captain Sol Clinton in no mood to discuss themurder charge hanging over Mart and Amos, by reason of the killings atLost Mule Creek. From this standpoint, Clinton told Mart, he had beenfrankly hopeful of never seeing either one of them again. Seeing's theysaw fit to thrust themselves upon him, he supposed he would have to dosomething technical about them later. But now he had other fish tofry--and by God, they seemed to have brought him the skillet! Come alonghere, and if you can't walk any faster than that you can run, can't you?
He took Mart to Colonel Greenhill who spent an hour questioning him inwhat seemed a lot like an effort to break his story; and sent him towait in Clinton's tent after. Sol Clinton had spoken with restraintwhile Mart was with them, but as Mart walked away he heard the openingguns of Sol's argument roar like a blue norther, shaking the tent walls."I'm sick and tired of war parties murdering the be-Jesus out of Texasfamilies, then skedaddling to hide behind you yellowlegs! What are youfellers running, a damn Wild Indian sanctuary up here? The chief purposeof this here Union is to protect Texas--that's how we understood it!Yonder's a passel of murderers, complete with Texican scalps and whitegirl captive! I say it's up to you to protect us from them varmints bystepping the hell to one side while I----"
They had been at it for a long time, and they were still at it, thoughwith reduced carrying power. Mart dozed a little, but was broad awakeinstantly as Sergeant Charlie MacCorry came in. Charlie seemed to haveworked up to the position of right-hand man, or something, for he hadstood around while Captain Clinton first talked to Mart, and he had beenin Colonel Greenhill's tent during Mart's session there as well. Hisattitude toward Mart had seemed noncommittal--neither friendly norstand-offish but quiet, rather, and abstracted. It seemed to Mart an oddand overkindly attitude for a Ranger sergeant to take toward a formerprisoner who had slugged him down and got away. And now Charlie seemedto have something he wanted to say to Mart, without knowing how to bringit up. He warmed up by offering his views on the military situation.
"Trouble with the Army," Charlie had it figured, "there's always somedamn fool don't get the word. A fort sends some colonel chasing all overcreation after a bunch of hostiles; and he finds 'em, and jumps 'em, andmakes that bunch a thing of the past; and what does he find out then?Them hostiles was already coming into a different fort under full-agreedtruce. Picked 'em off right on the doorstep, by God. Done away with thempeaceful Indians all unawares. Well! Now what you got?Investigations--boards--court-martials--and wham! Back goes the colonelso many files he's virtually in short pants. Happens every time."
He paced the tent a few moments, two steps one way, two steps back,watching Mart covertly, as if expecting him to speak.
"Yeah," Mart said at last.
Charlie seemed freed to say what he had on his mind. "Mart... I got apiece of news."
"Oh?"
"Me and Laurie--we got married. Just before I left."
Mart let his eyes drop while he thought it over. There had been atime, and it had gone on for years, when Laurie was always in hismind. She was the only girl he had ever known very well except thosein the family. Or perhaps he had never known her, or any girl, at all.He reached for memories that would bring back her meaning to him.Laurie in a pretty dress, with her shoulders bare. Laurie jokingabout her flour-sack all-overs that had once read "Steamboat Mills"across her little bottom. Laurie in his arms, promising to come tohim in the night...
All that should have mattered to him, but he couldn't seem to feel it.The whole thing seemed empty, and dried out, without any real substancefor him any more. As if it never could have come to anything, no matterwhat.
"Did you hear me?" Charlie asked. "I say, I married Laurie."
"Yeah. Good for you. Got yourself a great girl."
"No hard feelings?"
"No."
They shook hands, briefly, as they always did; and Charlie changed thesubject briskly. "You sure fooled me, scouting up this attack on Scar.I'd have swore that was the last thing you wanted. Unless you got Debbieout of there first. Being's they're so liable to brain their captiveswhen they're jumped. You think they won't now?"
"Might not," Mart said dully. He stirred restlessly. "What's happened tothem king-pins over there? They both died, or something?"
Charlie looked at him thoughtfully, unwilling to be diverted. "Isshe--Have they----" He didn't know how to put it, so that Mart would notbe riled. "What I'm driving at--has she been with the bucks?"
Mart said, "Charlie, I don't know. I don't think so. It's morelike--like they've done something to her mind."
"You mean she's crazy?"
"No--that isn't it, rightly. Only--she takes their part now. Shebelieves them, not us. Like as if they took out her brain, and put in anIndian brain instead. So that she's an Indian now inside."
Charlie believed he saw it now. "Doesn't want to leave 'em, huh?"
"Almost seems like she's an Indian herself now. Inside."
"I see." Charlie was satisfied. If she wanted to stay, she'd been withthe bucks all right. Had Comanche brats of her own most likely.
"I see something now," Mart said, "I never used to understand. I see nowwhy the Comanches murder our women when they raid--brain our babieseven--what ones they don't pick to steal. It's so we won't breed. Theywant us off the earth. I understand that, because that's what I want forthem. I want them dead. All of them. I want them cleaned off the face ofthe world."
Charlie shut up. Mart sounded touched in the head, and maybe dangerous.He wouldn't have slapped Mart's face again for thirty-seven dollars.
Sol Clinton came in, now, at last. He looked angry, yet satisfied andtriumphant all at once. "I had to put us under his command," the Rangercaptain said. "I don't even know if I legally can--but it's done. Won'tmatter, once we're out ahead. We're going to tie into 'em, boys!"
"The Tonks, too?"
"Tonkawas and all. Mart, you're on pay as civilian guide. Can you find'em again in the dark? Can you, hell--you've got to! I want to hitbefore sunrise--leave Greenhill come up as he can. You going to get usthere?"
"That I am," Mart said; and smiled for the first time that day.
Chapter 38
Scouting ahead, Mart Pauley found Scar's village still where he had seenit last. Its swarming cur dogs yammered a great part of every night, andtheir noise placed the village for him now. The Comanches claimed theycould always tell what the dogs were barking at--wolves, Indians, whitemen, or spooks--and though Mart only partly believed this hereconnoitered the place from a great way out, taking no chances. Hegalloped back, and met Captain Sol Clinton's fast-traveling Rangers lessthan an hour before dawn.
"We're coming in," he said to Captain Clinton, turning his horsealongside. "I should judge we're within----" He hesitated. He hadstarted to say they were within three to five miles, but he had been tovery few measured horse races, and had only a vague idea of a mile."Within twenty minutes trot and ten minutes walk," he put it. "There youtop a low hogback, looking across flat ground; and the village is insight beyond."
"In sight from how far?"
There it was again. Mart thought the hogback was about a mile from thevillage, but what's a mile? "Close enough to see trees, too far to seebranches," he described it.
That was good enough. "Just about what we want," Sol accepted it.Everything else had been where Mart had said it would be throughout thelong night's ride. The captain halted his forty-two Rangers, passing theword back quietly along the loose column of twos.
His men dismounted without further command, loosened cinches, andrelieved themselves without military precision. They looked unhurried,but wasted no motions. These men supplied their own clothes, saddles,and weapons, and very often their own horses; what you had here was abunch of individuals, each a tough and weathered fighting man in his ownright, but also in his own manner.
Behind them the sixty-odd Tonkawas pulled up at an orderly interval, abody of riders even more quiet than the Rangers. They stepped down andlooked to their saddles, which included every form of museum piece fromdiscarded McClellans to Indian-craft rigs with elkhorn trees. Each dug alittle hole in which to urinate, and covered it over when he was done.
A word from Clinton sent a young Ranger lacing forward to halt thepoint, riding a furlong or so ahead in the dark. They were in their lasthour before action, but the Ranger captain made no inspection. He hadinspected these men to their roots when he signed them on, andstraightened them out from time to time after, as needed; they knewtheir business if they were ever going to.
Clinton sharpened a twig, picked his teeth with it, and looked smug. Hehad made a good march, and he knew it, and judged that the yellowlegswould be along in about a week. He cast an eye about him for the twocavalry troopers who had ridden with them as runner-links with ColonelGreenhill. They didn't seem to be in earshot. Captain Clinton spoke toLieutenant Bart Lester, a shadowy figure in the last of the night."Looks like we might get this thing cleaned up by breakfast," he said,"against something different goes wrong." Before Colonel Greenhill comesup, he meant. "Of course, when's breakfast is largely up to Scar. Youcan't--Who's this?"
Charlie MacCorry had come galloping up from the rear, where he had beenriding tail. Now he pulled up, leaning low to peer at individuals,looking for Captain Clinton.
"Here, Charlie," Sol spoke.
"Hey, they're on top of us!"
"Who is?"
"The yellowlegs! They're not more than seven minutes behind!"
The toothpick broke between Sol Clinton's teeth, and he spit it outexplosively as he jumped for his horse. "Damn you, Charlie, if you'velet----"
"Heck, Sol, we didn't hear a thing until the halt. It's only just thisminute we----"
"Bart!" Clinton snapped. "Take 'em on forward, and quick! Lope 'em out alittle--but a lope, you hear me, not a run! I'll be up in a couple ofminutes!" He went into his loose-cinched saddle with a vault, like aComanche. He was cussing smokily, and tightening the cinch with one handas he started hell-for-leather to the rear. The word had run fast downthe column, without any shouting, and some of the Rangers were alreadystepping into their saddles. Charlie ducked his head between hisshoulders. "Knew I'd never git far in the Rangers." Mart followed asCharlie spurred after Clinton who was riding to the Tonkawas.
"We can run for it," Charlie offered hopefully as Sol pulled up. "Ibelieve if we hold the Tonks at a slow gait behind us----"
"Oh, shut up," Clinton said. He had to send the Tonkawas on, so that hisown men would be between the Tonkawas and the cavalry when they wentinto action. The Cavalry couldn't be expected to tell one Indian fromanother, Clinton supposed, in the heat of action. The Tonks would raceforward, anyway, pretty soon. No power on earth could hold those foolsonce the enemy was sighted.
"Hey, Spots!" Clinton called. "Where are you?"
Spotted Hog, the war chief commanding the Tonkawas, sprang onto his ponyto ride the twenty yards to Clinton. "Yes, sir," he said in English of astrong Texan accent.
"Tell you what you do," Clinton said. "We're pretty close now; I'msending you on in. I want----"
Spotted Hog whistled softly, a complicated phrase, and they heard itrepeated and answered some distance to the rear.
"Wait a minute, will you? Damn it, Spots, I'm telling you what Iwant--and nothing no different!"
"Sure, Captain--I'm listening."
"The village is still there, right where it was supposed to be. So----"
"I know," Spotted Hog said.
"--so swing wide, and find out which side the crick they're holdingtheir horses. Soon as you know----"
"The west side," the Tonkawa said. "The ponies are on the west side.Across from the village."
"Who told you to put your own scouts out? Damnation, if you've waked upthat village--Well, never mind. You go hit that horse herd. The hellwith scalps--run off that herd, and you can have the horses."
"We'll run 'em!"
"All right--get ahead with it."
"Yes, sir!" Spotted Hog jumped his pony off into the dark where a briskstir of preparation could be heard among the Tonkawas.
"I got to send Greenhill some damn word," Clinton began; and one of thecavalry troopers was beside him instantly.
"You want me, sir?"
"God forbid!" Clinton exploded. "Git forward where you belong!" Thetrooper scampered, and Clinton turned to MacCorry. "Charlie... No.No. What we need's a civilian--and we got one. Here, Mart! You go tellGreenhill where he's at."
"What when he asks where you are?"
"I'm up ahead. That's all. I'm up ahead. And make this stupid, will you?If he gives you orders for me, don't try to get loose without hearing'em; he'll only send somebody else. But you can lose your way, can'tyou? You're the one found it!"
"Yes, sir," Mart said with mental reservations.
"Go on and meet him. Come on, Charlie." They were gone from there, andin a hurry.
Galloping to the rear, past the Tonkawas, Mart saw that they werethrowing aside their saddles, and all gear but their weapons, and tyingup the tails of their ponies. No war paint had been seen on them untilnow, but as they stripped their shirts their torsos proved to beprepainted with big circles and stripes of raw colors. Great,many-couped war bonnets were flowering like turkey tails among them.Each set off, bareback, as soon as he was ready, moving up at the lope;there would be no semblance of formation. The Tonkawas rode well, andwould fight well. Only they would fight from the backs of their horses,while the Comanches would be all over their ponies, fighting from underthe necks, under the bellies--and still would run their horses theharder.
Once clear of the Tonkawas, Mart could hear the cavalry plainly. Thenoise they made came to him as a steady metallic whispering, made up ofinnumerable clinks, rattles, and squeaks of leather, perhaps fiveminutes away. Darkness still held as he reached them, and described theposition of the enemy to Colonel Greenhill. The hundred and twentycavalrymen wheeled twos into line.
"Has Clinton halted?" Greenhill asked.
"Yes, sir." Well... he had.
Some restrained shouting went on in the dark. The cavalry prepared todismount, bringing even numbers forward one horse length; dismounted;reset saddles; and dressed the line. Colonel Greenhill observed that heremembered this country now; he had been over every foot of it, andwould have recognized it to begin with, had he been booned with anydecent kind of description. He would be glad to bet a barrel offorty-rod that he could fix the co-ordinates of that village within adozen miles. If he had had so much as a single artillery piece, he wouldhave shown them how to scatter that village before Scar knew they werein the country.
Mart was glad he didn't have one, scattering the Comanches being thelast thing wanted. In his belief, the pony herd was the key. A Comancheafoot was a beaten critter; but let him get to a horse and he was a longgone Comanche--and a deadly threat besides. He felt no call, however, toexpound these views to a brevet-colonel.
"Tell Captain Clinton I'll be up directly," Greenhill ordered him; andwent briskly about his inspection.
Mart started on, but made a U-turn, and loped to the rear, behind thecavalry lines. At the far end of the dismounted formation stood fournarrow-bowed covered wagons, their drivers at attention by the bridlesof the nigh leaders. Second wagon was the ambulance; a single trooper,at attention by a front wheel, was the present sanitary detail. MartinPauley rode to the tail gate, stepped over it from the saddle, andstruck a shielded match. Amos lay heavily blanketed, his body looking tobe of great length but little substance, upon a narrow litter. By hisheavy breathing he seemed asleep, but his eyes opened to the light ofthe match.
"Mart? Where are we?"
"Pretty close on Scar's village. I was to it. Within dogbark, anyway.Sol sent the Tonks to make a try at their horses, and took the Rangerson up. He wants to hit before Greenhill finds what he's up to. How youfeel?"
Amos stared straight upward, his eyes bleak and unforgiving upon theunseen night above the canvas; but the question brought a glint of ironyinto them, so that Mart was ashamed of having asked it.
"My stuff's rolled up down there by my feet," Amos said. "Get me my gunfrom it."
If he had been supposed to have it, the sanitary detail would have givenit to him, but it was a long time since they had gone by what otherpeople supposed for them. Mart brought Amos his six-gun, and hiscartridge belt, and checked the loading. Amos lifted a shaking hand, andhid the gun under his blankets. Outside they heard the "Prepare tomount!"
"I got to get on up there." Mart groped for Amos' hand. He felt a tremorin its grip, but considerable strength.
"Get my share of 'em," Amos whispered.
"You want scalps, Amos?"
"Yeah.... No. Just stomp 'em--like I always done----"
Men and horses were beginning to show, black and solid against a generalgrayness. You could see them now without stooping to outline themagainst the stars, as Mart stepped from the wagonbed into the saddle.The cavalry had wheeled into column of twos and was in motion at thewalk. Mart cleared the head of the column, and lifted his horse into arun.
Chapter 39
Sol Clinton's forty-two Rangers were dismounted behind the last ridgebelow Scar's village as Mart came up. They had plenty of light now--morethan they had wanted or intended. Captain Clinton lay on the crest ofthe ridge, studying the view without visible delight. Mart went upthere, but Clinton turned on him before he got a look beyond.
"God damn you, Pauley, I----"
"Greenhill says, tell you he's coming," Mart got in hastily. "And that'sall he says."
But Clinton was thinking about something else. "Take a look at thisthing here!"
Mart crawled up beside Clinton, and got a shock. The fresh light ofapproaching sunrise showed Scar's village in clear detail, a scant milefrom where they lay. Half the lodges were down, and between them swarmedgreat numbers of horses and people, the whole thing busy as ahoof-busted ant hill. This village was packing to march.
A hundred yards in front of the village a few dozen mounted warriors hadinterposed themselves. They sat about in idle groups, blanket-wrappedupon their standing ponies. They looked a little like the Comanche ideaof vedettes, but more were riding out from the village as Mart and SolClinton watched. What they had here was the start of a battle build-up.Clinton seemed unsurprised by Scar's readiness. You could expect to finda war chief paying attention to his business once in a while, and youhad to allow for it. But--"What the hell's the matter with you people?Can't you count? That band will mount close to three hundred bucks!"
"I told you he might want this fight. So he's got himself reinforced,that's all."
A rise of dust beyond the village and west of the Wild Dog showed wherethe Comanche horse herd had been put in motion. All animals not in useas travois horses or battle ponies--the main wealth of the village--werebeing driven upstream and away. But the movement was orderly. Where werethe Tonkawas? They might be waiting upstream, to take the horses awayfrom the small-boy herders; they might have gone home. One thing theycertainly were not doing was what they had been told. Captain Clintonhad no comment to waste on that, either.
He pulled back down the hill, moving slowly, to give himself time tothink. Lieutenant Bart Lester came forward, dogged by the two uniformedorderlies. "Flog on back, boy," Clinton told one of them. "Tell ColonelGreenhill I am now demonstrating in front of the village to develop theenemy strength, and expedite his commitment.... Guess that ought tohold him. Mount 'em up, Bart."
The Rangers mounted and drifted into line casually, but once they wereformed the line was a good one. These men might shun precision ofmovement for themselves, but they habitually exacted it from theirhorses, whether the horses agreed to it or not. Mart placed himself nearthe middle of the line and watched Clinton stoically. He knew the Rangerwould be justified in ordering a retreat.
Clinton stepped aboard his horse, looked up and down the line ofRangers, and addressed them conversationally. "Well, us boys was luckyagain," he said. "For once we got enough Comanches to go around. Mightrun as high as a dozen apiece, if we don't lose too many. I trust youboys will be glad to hear this is a fight, not a surprise. They'reforming in front of the village, at about a mile. I should judge wewon't have to go all the way; they'll come to meet us. What I'd like todo is bust through their middle, and on into the village; give Greenhilla chance to hit 'em behind, as they turn after us. This is liable to beprevented. In which case we'll handle the situation after we see what itis."
Some of the youngsters--and most of the Rangers were young--must havebeen fretting over the time Clinton was taking. The Cavalry would be uppretty quick, and Colonel Greenhill would take over; probably order aretirement according to plan, they supposed, without a dead Comanche toshow. Clinton knew what he was doing, however. In broad daylight,lacking surprise, and with unexpected odds against him, he wanted thecavalry as close as it could get without telling him what to do. And hedid not believe Greenhill would consider retreat for a second.
"In case you wonder what become of them antic Tonks," Clinton said, "Idon't know. And don't pay them Comanches no mind, neither--just keepyour eye on me. I'm the hard case you're up against around here--notthem childish savages. If you don't hear me first time I holler, youbetter by God read my mind--I don't aim to raise no two hollers on anyone subject in hand."
He pretended to look them over, but actually he was listening. The linestood steady and perfectly straight. Fidgety horses moved no muscle, andtired old nags gathered themselves to spring like lions upon demand,before a worse thing happened. And now they heard the first faint,far-off rustle of the bell-metal scabbards as the cavalry came on.
"I guess this sloppy-looking row of hay-doodles is what you fellers calla line," Sol criticized them. "Guide center! On Joe, here. Joe, you justfollow me." Deliberately he got out a plug of tobacco, bit off a chew,and rolled it into his cheek. It was the first tobacco Mart had everseen him use. "Leave us go amongst them," the captain said.
He wheeled his horse, and moved up the slope at a walk. The first directrays of the sun were striking across the rolling ground as they breastedthe crest, bringing Scar's village into full view a mile away. A curioussound of breathing could be heard briefly along the line of Rangers asthey got their first look at what they were going against. A good twohundred mounted Comanches were now strung out in front of the village,where only the vedettes had stood before; and more were coming from thevillage in a stream. The war ponies milled a bit, and an increased stirbuilt up in the village beyond, in reaction to the Ranger advance.
Clinton turned in his saddle. "Hey, you--orderly!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Ride back and tell Colonel Greenhill: Captain Clinton, of the TexasRangers, presents his respects----"
"Yes, sir!" The rattled trooper whirled his horse.
"Come back here! Where the hell you going? Tell him the Comanches are inbattle line east of the crick, facing south--and don't say you seen amillion of 'em! Tell him I say there's a couple hundred. If he wants toknow what I'm doing, I'm keeping an eye on 'em. All right, go find him."
They were at a thousand yards, and the stream of Comanches from thevillage had dwindled to a straggle. It was about time; their number wasgoing to break three hundred easily. A line was forming in a practicedmanner, without confusion, and it was going to be a straight one. Itlooked about a mile long, but it wasn't; it wouldn't be much longer thana quarter of a mile if the Comanches rode knee to knee. Still, Martexpected a quarter mile of Comanches to be enough for forty-two men.
Clinton waved an arm, and stepped up the pace to a sharp trot. He wasriding directly toward the village itself, which would bring themagainst the Comanche center. A single stocky warrior, wearing a hornheaddress, loped slowly across the front of the Comanche line. Martrecognized Scar first by his short lance, stripped of its trophy scalpsfor combat. Incredibly, in the face of advancing Rangers, Scar washaving himself an inspection! At the end of the line he turned, andloped back toward the center, unhurrying. When he reached the center hewould bring the Comanche line to meet them, and all this spookyorderliness would be over.
Captain Clinton let his horse break into a hand-lope, and the fortybehind him followed suit in the same stride. Their speed was littleincreased, but the line moved in an easier rhythm. Scar's line stillstood quiet, unfretting. The beef-up from the village had stopped atlast; Scar's force stood at more than three hundred and fifty Comanches.
They were within the half mile. They could see the tall fan-featheredbonnets of the war chiefs, now, and the clubbed tails of the battleponies. The warriors were in full paint; individual patterns could notyet be made out, but the bright stripes and splotches on the nakedbodies gave the Comanche line an oddly broken color.
Now Scar turned in front of his center; the line moved, advancing evenlyat a walk. Some of the veteran Indian fighters among the Rangers musthave felt a chill down their backs as they saw that. This Indian was toocool, held his people in too hard a grip; his battle would lack thehelter-skelter horse-race quality that gave a smaller and betterdisciplined force its best opportunities. And he wasn't using a Comancheplan of attack at all. The famous Comanche grinding-wheel attack madeuse of horsemanship and mobility, and preserved the option to disengageintact. The head-on smash for which Scar was forming was all but unknownamong Comanches. Scar would never have elected close grips to a finishif he had not been sure of what he had. And he had reason. Coolly led,this many hostiles could mass five deep in front of Clinton, yet stillwrap round his flanks, roll him up, enfold him. The Rangers watched Sol,but he gave no order, and the easy rating of his horse did not change.
They were at the quarter mile. A great swarm of squaws, children, andold people had come out from the village. They stood motionless, onfoot, a long, dense line of them--spectators, waiting to see the Rangerseaten alive. Scar's line still walked, unflustered, and Clinton stillcame on, loping easily. Surely he must have been expecting some break,some turn in his favor; perhaps he had supposed the cavalry would showitself by this time, but it had not. What he would have done without anybreak, whether he would have galloped steadily into that engulfingdestruction, was something they were never going to know. For now thebreak came.
Out of the ground across the river the Tonkawas appeared, as if risingout of the earth. Nothing over there, not a ridge, not an arroyo, lookedas though it would hide a mounted man, let alone seventy; yet, by somemedicine of wits and skill, they appeared with no warning at all. Thetall Tonkawas came in no semblance of a line; they rode singly, and inloose bunches, a rabble. But they moved fast, and as if they knew whatthey were doing, as they poured over the low swell that had somehowhidden them on the flank of the Comanches. A sudden gabble ran alongScar's line, and his right bunched upon itself in a confused effort toregroup.
And now the Tonkawas did another unpredictable thing that no Comanchecould have expected because he never would have done it. On the openslope to the river the Tonkawas pulled up sliding, and dropped fromtheir horses. They turned the animals broadside, rested their firearmsacross the withers, and opened fire. In enfilade, at four hundred yards,the effect was murderous. Ragged gaps opened in the Comanche right whereriderless ponies bolted. Some of the bonneted war chiefs--Hungry Horse,Stiff Leg, Standing Elk, Many Trees--were among the first to go down, ascrack shots picked off the marked leaders. A few great buffalo gunsslammed, and these killed horses. Scar shouted unheard as his wholeright, a third of his force, broke ranks to charge splashing through theriver.
The Tonkawas disintegrated at once. Some faded upstream after the horseherd, but scattered shots and war cries could be heard among the lodgesas others filtered into the village itself. More gaps opened in Scar'sline as small groups turned back to defend the village and the horses.
"I'll be a son-of-a-bitch," Clinton said.
He gave the long yell, and they charged; and Scar, rallying hishundreds, rode hard to meet them. The converging lines were at a hundredfeet when Clinton fired. Forty carbines crashed behind him, ripping theComanche center. The Rangers shifted their carbines to their rein hands,drew their pistols. Immediately the horses cannoned together.
It was Mart's first mounted close action, and what he saw of it was allhell coming at him, personally. A war pony went down under his horse atthe first bone-cracking shock; his horse tripped, but got over thefallen pony with a floundering leap, and Comanches were all around him.Both lines disappeared in a yelling mix, into which Comanches seemed tolace endlessly from all directions. They rode low on the sides of theirponies, stabbing upward with their lances, and once within reach theynever missed. If a man side-slipped in the saddle to avoid being gutted,a deep groin thrust lifted him, and dropped him to be trampled. Onlychance was to pistol your enemy before his lance could reach you. Thegun reached farther than the lance, and hit with a shock that was final;but every shot was a snap shot, and nobody missed twice. You had fivebullets, and only five--the hammer being carried on an emptycylinder--to get you through it all.
A horse screamed, close by, through the war whoops and the gun blasting.Beside Mart a Ranger's horse gave a great whistling cough as itstumbled, and another as its knees buckled, then broke its neck as itoverended. The shoulder of a riderless pony smashed Mart's knee.Struggling to hold up his staggered horse, he pistol-whipped a lance athis throat; the splintered shaft gashed his neck, but he fired into apainted face. A whipping stirrup somehow caught him on the temple. Anunearthly, inhuman sound was cidered out of a Ranger as his knocked-downhorse rolled over him, crushing his chest with the saddle horn.
The Comanches became a mass, a horde, seeming to cover the prairie likea buffalo run. Then abruptly he was clear of it, popped out of it like aseed. The battle had broken up into running fights, and he saw that mostof the Rangers were ahead of him into the village. One last Comancheovertook him. Mart turned without knowing what warned him, and fired solate that the lance fell across his back, where it balanced weirdly,teetering, before it fell off.
He looked back, letting his horse run free as he reloaded; and now hesaw the stroke that finished the battle, and won his respect for thecavalry forever. Greenhill was coming in at the quarter mile, charginglike all hell-fire, in so tight a line the horses might have been lashedtogether. Scar massed his Comanches, and he outnumbered his enemiesstill; he struck hard, and with all he had. Into the packed war poniesthe cavalry smashed head-on, in as hard a blow as cavalry ever struck,perhaps. A score of the light war ponies went down under the impact ofthe solid line, and the rest reeled, floundered backward, and broke.Into the unbalanced wreckage the cavalry plowed close-locked, saberingand trampling.
Most of the village had emptied, but at the far end a great number ofComanche people--squaws, children, and old folks, mostly--ran likewind-driven leaves in a bobbing scatter. The Rangers were riding throughto join the Tonkawas in the running fight that could be heard far up theWild Dog; but they made it their business to stamp out resistance asthey went. The dreadful thing was that the fleeing people were armed,and fought as they ran, as dangerous as a torrent of rattlesnakes. Hereand there lay the body of an old man, a squaw, or a half-grown boy, whohad died rather than let an enemy pass unmolested; and sometimes therewas a fallen Ranger. Mart had to go through these people; he had to huntthrough them all, and keep on hunting through them, until he foundDebbie, or they got him.
A squaw as broad as a horse's rump, with a doll-size papoose on herback, whirled on him at his stirrup. Her trade gun blasted so close thatthe powder burned his hand, yet somehow she missed him. And now he sawAmos.
He couldn't believe it, at first, and went through a moment of fright inwhich he thought his own mind had come apart. Amos looked like a deadman riding, his face ash-bloodless, but with a fever-craze burning inhis eyes. It seemed a physical impossibility that he should have stayedon a horse to get here, even if some bribed soldier had lifted him intothe saddle.
Actually, witnesses swore later, there had been no bribed soldier. Amoshad pistol-whipped one guard, and had taken a horse at gunpoint fromanother...
He must have seen Mart, but he swept past with eyes ahead, picking histargets coolly, marking his path with Comanche dead. Mart called hisname, but got no response. Mart's blown horse was beginning to wobble,so that Amos pulled away, gaining yards at every jump; and though Marttried to overtake him, he could not.
Then, ahead of Amos, Mart believed he saw Debbie again. A young squaw,slim and shawl-headed, ran like a deer, dodging among the horses. Shemight have got away, but she checked, and retraced two steps, to snatchup a dead man's pistol; and in that moment Amos saw her. The whole setof his laboring body changed, and he pointed like a bird dog as hecharged his horse upon her. The lithe figure twisted from under thehoofs, and ran between the lodges. Amos whirled his horse at the top ofits stride, turning it as it did not know how to turn; it lost footing,almost went down, but he dragged it up by the same strength with whichhe rode. Its long bounds closed upon the slim runner, and Amos leanedlow, his pistol reaching.
Mart yelled, "Amos--no!" He fired wild at Amos' back, missing from adistance at which he never missed. Then, unexpectedly, Amos raised hispistol without firing, and shifted it to his rein hand. He reached downto grab the girl as if to lift her onto his saddle.
The girl turned upon the rider, and Mart saw the broad brown face of ayoung Comanche woman, who could never possibly have been Debbie. Herteeth showed as she fired upward at Amos, the muzzle of her pistolalmost against his jacket. He fell heavily; his body crumpled as it hit,and rolled over once, as shot game rolls, before it lay still.
Chapter 40
Only a handful of squaws, mostly with small children on their backs, hadbeen taken prisoner. Mart talked to them, in their own tongue and insign language, until the night grew old, without learning much thatseemed of any value. Those who would talk at all admitted having knownDebbie Edwards; they called her by a Comanche name meaning"Dry-Grass-Hair." But they said she had run away, or at leastdisappeared, three nights before--during the night following Mart andAmos' escape.
They supposed, or claimed to suppose, that she had run to the soldiers'camp on the Otter. Or maybe she had tried to follow Bull Shoulders andthe Other, for she had gone the same way he himself had taken. Trackershad followed her for some distance in that direction, they said, beforelosing trace. They didn't know why she had gone. She had taken no ponynor anything else with her. If she hadn't found somebody to help her,they assumed she was dead; they didn't believe she would last long,alone and afoot, upon the prairie. Evidently they didn't think much ofDry-Grass-Hair in the role of an Indian.
"They're lying," Sol Clinton thought. "They've murdered her, is aboutthe size of it."
"I don't think so," Mart said.
"Why?"
"I don't know. Maybe I just can't face up to it. Maybe I've forgot howafter all this time."
"Well, then," Clinton humored him, "she must be between here and CampRadziminski. On the way back we'll throw out a cordon...."
Mart saw no hope in that, either, though he didn't say so, for he hadnothing to suggest instead. He slept two hours, and when he awoke in thedarkness before dawn he knew what he had to do. He got out of campunnoticed, and rode northwest in a direction roughly opposite to that inwhich Camp Radziminski lay.
He had no real reason for doubting Clinton's conclusion that Debbie wasdead. Of course, if it was true she was worth sixty horses, Scar mighthave sent her off to be hidden; but this did not jibe with Scar's bidfor victory or destruction in open battle. The squaws' story didn't meananything, either, even if they had tried to tell the truth, for theycouldn't know what it was. The bucks never told them anything. His onlyexcuse, actually, for assuming that Debbie had in truth run away, andperhaps still lived, was that only this assumption left him any courseof action.
If she had run away it was on the spur of the moment, without plan,since she had taken nothing with her that would enable her to survive.This suggested that she had found herself under pressure of some suddenand deadly threat--as if she had been accused, for instance, oftreachery in connection with his own escape. In such a case she mightindeed have started after Mart and Amos, as the squaws claimed. But hehad a feeling she wouldn't have gone far that way without recoiling; hedidn't believe she would have wanted to come to him. Therefore, she musthave wanted only to get away from Comanches; and, knowing them, shewould perhaps choose a way, a direction, in which Comanches would beunlikely to follow....
He recalled that the Comanches believed that the mutilated, whether inmind or body, never entered the land beyond the sunset, but wanderedforever in an emptiness "between the winds." They seemed to place thisemptiness to the northwest, in a general way; as if long-forgottendisasters or defeats in some ancient time had made this direction whichDebbie, thinking like an Indian, might choose if she was trying to leavethe world of the living behind her. He had it all figured out--orthought he did.
This way took him into a land of high barrens, without much game, grass,or water. About a million square miles of broken, empty country layahead of him, without trails, and he headed into the heart of the worstof it. "I went where no Comanche would go," he explained it a long timeafter. He thought by that time that he had really worked it out in thisway, but he had not. All he actually had to go on was one more vaguenessput together out of information unnoticed or forgotten, such assometimes adds itself up to a hunch.
He drifted northwest almost aimlessly, letting his weariness, andsometimes his horse, follow lines of least resistance--which was what afugitive, traveling blindly and afoot, would almost inevitably havedone. After a few miles the country itself began to make the decisions.The terrain could be counted on to herd and funnel the fugitive as shetired.
Toward the end of that first day, he saw vultures circling, no more thanspecks in the sky over a range of hills many hours ahead. He picked upthe pace of his pony, pushing as hard as he dared, while he watched themcircling lower, their numbers increasing. They were still far off asnight closed down, but in the first daylight he saw them again, and rodetoward them. There were more of them now, and their circles were lower;but he was certain they were a little way farther on than they had beenwhen first seen. What they were watching still moved, then, howeverslowly; or at least was still alive, for they had not yet landed. Heloped his stumbling pony, willing to kill it now, and go on afoot, ifonly he could come to the end before daylight failed him.
Early in the afternoon he found her moccasin tracks, wavering pitifullyacross a sand patch for a little way, and he put the horse full out, itslungs laboring. The vultures were settling low, and though they were oflittle danger to a living thing, he could wait no longer for his answer.
And so he found her. She lay in a place of rocks and dust; the wind hadswept her tracks away, and sifted the dust over her, making her nearlyinvisible. He overrode, passing within a few yards, and would have losther forever without the vultures. He had always hated those carrionbirds of gruesome prophecy, but he never hated them again. It was Martwho picked--or blundered into--the right quarter of the compass; but itwas the vultures that found her with their hundred-mile eyes, andunwillingly guided him to her by their far-seen circles in the sky.
She was asleep, rather than unconscious, but the sleep was one of totalexhaustion. He knew she would never have wakened from it of herself.Even so, there was a moment in which her eyes stared, and saw him withterror; she made a feeble effort to get up, as to escape him, but couldnot. She dropped into lethargy after that, unresisting as he worked overher. He gave her water first, slowly, in dribbles that ran down her chinfrom her parched lips. She went into a prolonged chill, during which hewrapped her in all his blankets, chafed her feet, and built a fire nearthem. Finally he stewed up shredded jerky, scraped the fibers to make apulp, and fed it to her by slow spoonfuls. It was not true she smelledlike a Comanche, any more than Mart, who had lived the same kind of lifethat she had.
When she was able to talk to him, the story of her runaway came out veryslowly and in pieces, at first; then less haltingly, as she found heunderstood her better than she had expected. He kept questioning her asgently as he could, feeling he had to know what dreadful thing hadfrightened her, or what they had done to her. It no longer seemedunnatural to talk to her in Comanche.
They hadn't done anything to her. It wasn't that. It was the medicinebuckle--the ornament, like a gold ribbon tied in a bow, that Scar alwayswore, and that had given him his change of name. She had believed Amoslied about its having belonged to Mart Pauley's mother. But the wordsthat he had said were written on the back stayed in her mind. Ethan toJudith... The words were there or they weren't. If they were there,then Amos' whole story was true, and Scar had taken the medicine bucklefrom Mart's mother as she died under his knife.
That night she couldn't sleep; and when she had lain awake a long timeshe knew that somehow she was going to have to see the medicine buckle'sback. Scar had been in council most of the night, but he slept at last.Mart had to imagine for himself, from her halting phrases, most of whathad happened then. The slanting green eyes in the dark-tanned face werenot cat's eyes as she told him, nor Indian's eyes, but the eyes of asmall girl.
She had crawled out from between the squaws, where she always slept.With two twigs she picked a live coal out of the embers of the fire.Carrying this, she crept to the deep pile of buffalo robes that wasScar's bed. The chief lay sprawled on his back. His chest was bare, andthe medicine buckle gleamed upon it in the light of the single ember.Horribly afraid, she got trembling fingers upon the bit of gold, andturned it over.
How had she been able to do that? It was a question he came back to morethan once without entirely understanding her answer. She said that Marthimself had made her do it; he had forced her by his medicine. That wasthe part he didn't get. Long ago, in another world, he had been herdearest brother; he must have known that once. The truth was somewherein that, if he could have got hold of it. Perhaps he should have knownby this time that what the Indians call medicine is three-fourths thecompelling ghosts of early associations, long forgotten....
She had to lean close over the Comanche, so close that his breath wasupon her face, before she could see the writing on the back of themedicine buckle. And then--she couldn't read it. Once, for a while, shehad tried to teach Comanche children the white man's writing; but thatwas long ago, and now she herself had forgotten. But Amos had told herwhat the words were; so that presently the words seemed to fit thescratches on the gold: "Ethan to Judith..." Actually, the Rangerswere able to tell Mart later, Amos had lied. The inscription said, "Madein England."
Then, as she drew back, she saw Scar's terrible eyes, wide open and uponher face, only inches away. For an instant she was unable to move. Thenthe coal dropped upon Scar's naked chest, and he sprang up with a snarl,grabbing for her.
After that she ran; in the direction Mart and Amos had gone, at first,as the squaws had said--but this was chance. She didn't know where shewas going. Then, when they almost caught her, she had doubled back, likeany hunted creature. Not in any chosen direction, but blindly, runningaway from everything, seeking space and emptiness. No thought of thelimbo "between the winds" had occurred to her.
"But you caught me. I don't know how. I was better off with them. There,where I was. If only I never looked--behind the buckle----"
Sometime, and perhaps better soon than late, he would have to tell herwhat had happened to Scar's village after she left it. But not now.
"Now I have no place," Debbie said. "No place to go, ever. I want to dienow."
"I'm taking you back. Can't you understand that?"
"Back? Back where?"
"Home, Debbie--to our own people!"
"I have no people. They are dead. I have no place----"
"There's the ranch. It belongs to you now. Don't you want to----"
"It is empty. Nobody is there."
"I'll be there, Debbie."
She lifted her head to stare at him--wildly, he thought. He wasfrightened by what he took to be a light of madness in her eyes, beforeshe lowered them. He said, "You used to like the ranch. Don't youremember it?"
She was perfectly still.
He said desperately, "Have you forgotten? Don't you remember anythingabout when you were a little girl, at all?"
Tears squeezed from her shut eyes, and she began to shiver again, hard,in the racking shake they called the ague. He had no doubt she wastaking one of the dangerous fevers; perhaps pneumonia, or if the chillwas from weakness alone, he feared that the most. The open prairie hadways to bite down hard and sure on any warm-blooded thing when itsstrength failed. Panic touched him as he realized he could lose her yet.
He knew only one more way to bring warmth to her, and that was to giveher his own. He lay close beside her, and wrapped the blankets aroundthem both, covering their heads, so that even his breath would warm her.Held tight against him she seemed terribly thin, as if worked to thevery bone; he wondered despairingly if there was enough of her left everto be warmed again. But the chill moderated as his body heat reachedher; her breathing steadied, and finally became regular.
He thought she was asleep, until she spoke, a whisper against his chest."I remember," she said in a strangely mixed tongue of Indian-English. "Iremember it all. But you the most. I remember how hard I loved you." Sheheld onto him with what strength she had left; but she seemed all right,he thought, as she went to sleep.
[End of The Searchers, by Alan Le May]