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Title: The Unforgiven
Author: Le May, Alan (1899-1964)
Date of first publication: 1957
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harper & Brothers, undated
Date first posted: 8 December 2019
Date last updated: 8 December 2019
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1635

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






THE UNFORGIVEN

by Alan Le May





    To my daughters JODY and MOLLY, in the belief
    that no little girl ever knows how much she is loved.




CHAPTER 1


Dancing Bird River was the Zachary family's name for a little
run of live water ten miles below the Red, in the unsettled country west
of the Wichita. Their soddy was cut into a slope beside it, in the last
miles before the deep-grass petered out into the flinty apron of the cap
rock. Some sketchy pole corrals marked this place as a cattle stand, but
the house itself hardly showed. Its forward walls were built of the same
mud and grass-roots into which it was dug, and so was its roof, which
had a good stand of feed. It squatted low and lonely, backed like a
badger into the hill; and its nearest neighbor was eighteen miles away.

Inside this hole in the ground, late in the afternoon of March 15, 1874,
a dark-haired girl of seventeen was getting ready to put supper on. Her
name was Rachel Zachary.

Her brothers had saddled before daylight, and had been gone ever since;
but through most of this day, Rachel and her mother had found their
absence a relief. The soddy was not a cramped one, as soddies went. The
slit of a bedroom Rachel shared with her mother wasn't much, but the
main room was big for a dugout, even with bunks for the three boys
filling one end. And they worked doggedly at keeping things picked up.
"Put away one thing, put away all," was the first rule of life, indoors.
Yet with five people in one room and a fraction, the paraphernalia of
even the simplest living hung from the beams, dripped from the walls,
and kept the place forever cluttered. They were seldom weather-bound;
the boys rode longest when the weather was worst. But on days when they
did stay in, the place soon seemed packed with people.

High above the prairie a mat of black rainless clouds moved steadily
across the world in a seemingly inexhaustible supply, dimming the
afternoon to a twilight that would merge imperceptibly with the early
dark. Under this overcast a wind from the north blew tirelessly, as it
had for many days. Sometimes it rose briefly to the fury of a full
norther, sending hundred-foot sand-devils spinning across the Red into
Texas; but mostly it just blew, hard and monotonously, hour after hour,
day in and day out, until silence became unrememberable.

That wind might have come a thousand miles, Rachel knew, without finding
many people in its path to be bothered by it. Up in Indian Territory,
along the tributaries of the Washita, it must be ripping at some
hundreds of buffalo-hide lodges, sheltering such of the Wild Tribes as
were insolent enough to be wintering on Agency rations. The mile-long
villages of those hostiles could have mounted enough warriors to engulf
a brigade, yet made no more impression upon the vast emptiness of the
Territory than a dribbled pinch or two of sand. Surely the wind-moan in
the cottonwoods along the Dancing Bird River must have been the
lonesomest sound on earth.

About midafternoon Mama had gone to their bedroom for a nap. The
partition was no strung-up horse blanket, such as was common to soddies,
but a decently solid turf wall, plastered with home-burnt lime. Once the
heavy door had closed, Rachel was alone with the sound of the wind. She
didn't mind that; at least, not for a while. Rachel Zachary was a shy,
thin girl, lightly boned and not very big, but with considerable wire
built into her by the kind of places in which she had been raised. The
Zacharys had shifted ground a good deal, though not all of them
understood why, always toward untamed land. Now, though, they had stuck
it out in this one remote soddy for going on five years--more nearly a
third, than a quarter, of Rachel's entire life. While she could not help
knowing that this was a desolate and sometimes menacing place in which
to live, she seldom thought about it any more.

This year had begun with high hopes. Just lately, in January, Texas had
got hold of its own government at last, for the first time since the
War. Now the Rangers would come back, and the Border Battalions, and
settlers would get some help in their everlasting defense against the
Wild Tribes. At the same time, the beef market at Wichita was winding up
to boom again, after a series of collapses that had left the Zacharys
about as cattle-poor as they could stand. They were going to be rich,
like as not--soon, this year, this very summer.

Only, first they must get through this deadly, dragging time of waiting,
while winter held on, and on, as if spring were never coming back to the
world again. Ben, Rachel's oldest brother, had ridden down the Trinity a
month ago to look for trail hands. He should get back any day now, with
a corrida of at least twenty men--thirty, if he could find them--and
immediately all this dull marking of time would be over. There would be
a great swarming of men and horses, and hard-pressing action every day,
as their first huge herd of the year was made up for the drive to
Wichita.

Ben was twenty-four, old enough to seem at the full power of maturity
from the standpoint of seventeen. He had been head of the family since
he was twenty, when they had lost their father in the roily waters of a
cattle crossing, far to the north. He was their rock of strength, upon
whom they leaned in every situation of doubt. Perhaps they all felt at
loose ends when Ben was gone. Certainly he could take care of himself
anywhere on the frontier if anybody could--even in a wolf-howl of a town
of three or four hundred people, like Fort Worth. Yet sometimes Rachel's
throat hurt as her thoughts skirted the possibility that they might
never see him again, for this could happen out here, as Papa had already
proved. Was he overdue? Well--not really; not quite yet.

She knocked the ash off the wood coals in the fireplace, and set on the
three-legged skillet they called a spider. Then she looked at the clock
on the mantel beam. It was one of the few truly nice things they had,
with a little ship rocking away on painted waves where the pendulum
might be expected.

It said exactly eleven minutes of four. She remembered that hour all the
rest of her life.

She had been fooled by the unnaturally early dusk; it was still too
early to start cooking anything. She set the spider off the coals, and
went to one of their two real windows. These, even more than the clock,
were their special pride, for they had eighteen panes of real glass
apiece. They looked south across the Dancing Bird, so Rachel had to lean
her temple against a cold pane to look eastward, past the corrals and
downstream. She was hoping, for about the thousandth time, to sight a
distant disturbance that would be Ben, at the head of his grand corrida.

_Maybe he's remembered to fetch me some pretty anything-he-could-get. To
make just one nice dress...._ She knew perfectly well he had
remembered; he always remembered, though often he might be prevented.
The shakier question was what it would look like. Men didn't know
anything about yard goods. With the best intentions in the world, he
might bring her something perfectly awful. In which case she would make
it up and wear it anyway--for years, likely--rather than see him
chagrined, after he had tried.

He wasn't coming of course. Men never did come while their women watched
for them. Only when least expected. But they always watched,
nevertheless, so now Rachel went to their north lookout, to see if
Cassius and Andy were riding in. The lookout was no more than a
tiny-paned tunnel through the sod wall. It was set high, and though Cash
could stand flat-footed to fire through it, and Ben might even have to
stoop a little, Rachel had to stand on a box to see out. This brought
her eyes only a few inches above the ground at the back. Yet this
worm's-eye view commanded a surprising reach of prairie, for the land
fell away behind the soddy, to rise again in swells and gentle ridges
rolling northward to the end of sight.

Most of the time the prairie was worth looking at, for it changed
constantly, like the sea, to which so many have compared it. People
thought of the deep-grass as brown, but usually it looked almost
anything else--purple, or gold, or red, or any kind of blue; for a
little while each year, as spring came on, it even looked green. Often,
when cloud shadows crossed the long swells, the whole prairie stirred,
and seemed to mold and flow, as if it breathed. But nothing like that
was to be seen out there now. The land lay winter-defeated, lightless
and without color. Out of those dead spaces her brothers would presently
come jogging. But she could not see them yet.

Behind Rachel the shadows were growing in the corners, crawling toward
the banked embers on the hearth. They brought a faint, penetrating
chill, felt more in the heart than in the fingers or the skin, as if the
earth itself were dying, instead of just this one bleak day between the
winter and spring. And now for once, Rachel became strangely aware of
the awful emptiness of this far lost prairie where they lived; and a
loneliness took hold of her, with a hollow sinking of the heart.
Afterward she came to believe that she had recognized this at once for a
premonition of something unknown and dreadful already beginning to
happen to them as this daylight failed. But it wasn't true, for no clear
thought of any kind came to her, then.

Just as she turned away from the lookout, something out there changed,
and she looked again without knowing what she had seen. The first ridge
was scarcely a furlong off, and they kept its crest burned off, to
deprive horse-thieving enemies of cover commanding the house. On this
burn had appeared a dark, narrow object, about three feet high. It
looked a little like a scorched rock; only, it had never been there
before. She tried to see it better by looking beside it, instead of
straight at it; she looked away and glanced back; she moved her head in
circles, as an owl does, when it is trying to give shape to something
unknown. "What _is_ that?" she whispered; and her whisper was lost in
the sound of the wind.

Now the object moved, and the mystery cleared, but without reassurance.
She had been looking at the upper half of a man, whose horse was hidden
by the swell of ground. The oddly behaving visitor now pushed onto the
crest of the burn, and stopped again. Even at an eighth of a mile,
Rachel could judge that there stood about the sorriest horse she had
ever seen in her life; and somehow she knew that the rider was old too,
and in all ways as poorly as his horse. She supposed he would ride on in
when he had looked them over enough to suit him, and usually she would
have welcomed any such diversion. But this time she felt an
unaccountable dread, almost a horror, of his coming nearer.

He came no nearer, then. She watched him as long as he was there, yet
somehow she never saw him leave. He was there, and then he was gone.
Rachel whipped on a coat, meaning to saddle a pony and ride that ridge.
She saw it as her bounden duty to keep an eye on the fellow, and see
what he was up to, for his actions had no reason unless he meant them
harm. At the door she took the Sharp & Hankins carbine from its pegs,
and clashed open its sliding barrel, to load. Then she stopped, knowing
that she was not going out there, could not go out there. A nameless
fear held her powerless to leave the house.

She heard her mother moving about in their bedroom. Soundlessly she
eased the sliding barrel back into its seat, and returned the Sharp &
Hankins to its pegs. She was building up the fire by the time Matthilda
Zachary appeared, misty-eyed and yawny from her nap. "Did I hear a
sound?" she inquired vaguely.

Rachel hesitated. Often Matthilda was so absent-minded she missed half
you said, but she was capable of sharp flashes of observation, too, all
unexpected. She came up with one now. "Thought I heard you breech the
Sharp & Hankins," she said.

They spoke with the trailing double vowels of the cotton lowlands, from
which most of the early Texans had come. Matthilda was strict with her
children about those lapses she regarded as "po' white"; but her own
soft speech made the carbine a "Shah-up 'n' Hay-'nkins."

Rachel was silent a moment more, then blurted it out. "There's something
spooky going on out there! Back of the north ridge." She saw she had her
mother's startled attention. "Some awful old long-hair--he's been
watching us. Sitting the dreadfulest old horse, out on the burn..."
She put a lot more to it, about how she came to look, and all, but
actually she hadn't seen much more.

"Poor old man," Mama said.

"_What?_" She had not conveyed one speck, evidently, of her lonely
dread.

"Some old hunter, doubtless; been alone so long he was likely too shy to
come in. No matter how much he wanted. What a shame! We'd have fed him,
so gladly, if only he'd known."

"Yes, and filled the house with smells," Rachel said sharply. "And
fleas, too! I bet he's been with every fat old squaw that never heard of
soap between here and--"

"Rachel! I won't have you speaking so unkindly!"

Rachel said, "Well, I think he's harmful to us," and was disturbed to
hear a tremor in her own voice.

"Touch of cabin fever," her mother said, gently deprecating. Cabin fever
was their name for the sensitive, weepy mood that sometimes came on
prairie women in the weeks while spring held off. It came from being
shut in, hearing too few voices repeating the same dull things for too
long. The tiniest things became magnified into horrid slights and
dangers, until you were downright unlivable. And the last thing you
wanted to hear was that your troubles were imaginary--especially if you
knew it to be true.

Mama said with unwelcome sympathy, "I think this waiting time, between
the false spring and the green-up, is just the very meanest time of the
whole year." She dipped a pan of cold water from the barrel at the door,
freshened her face at the wash shelf, and emptied the pan into the slop
pail that served as plumbing. She polished the pan to a tinny shine with
a clean flour sack, before hanging it up. At the fireplace she pulled
the teakettle forward on the hob, so that the boys would have warm water
when they came in.

Rachel bided her time in a sulk, confident of getting more of a hooraw
out of her brothers. They jogged in pretty late, and took a while
shoveling nubbin corn to a dozen winter horses that had come in to be
fed. The women never knew when to have supper hot, having no way of
telling how long the boys would fool around on chores like that.
Matthilda set out candles, and as she lighted them with a fatwood
splinter, her hair caught their yellow glow in its silver mist.
Matthilda's hair had been white since she was thirty, nearly twenty
years ago. Nobody remembered when her hair was any other color, except
after she washed it, when it was blue. But they remembered when she had
been light and bouncy of step, with quick ungnarled hands, and they
still saw her that way, for the changes in these things had come slowly,
unseen.

As the yellow candlelight came up, the air outside seemed to turn a
darker and more icy gray. Rachel closed the heavy shutters, as they must
always do when they made a light inside. The north lookout was now a
lightless eye, staring in at them. Rachel stepped onto the chest to pull
shut its slide, and a shiver crossed her shoulders. _Somebody stepped
over my grave_, she thought. It was what they said when they shivered
without feeling cold. She had half expected to find a weird ancient face
looking in from close outside. "What _are_ they doing out there?" she
complained, her patience dwindling.

But when her brothers finally came in, their reaction to her story was
just as big a letdown as her mother's had been. She built it up all she
could, this time, but Cassius was washing and spluttering, and Andy was
noisily trying to straighten a spur, all the way through.

"I don't know what's got into this soap," Cassius said when she slowed
up. "Bites like a black-foot weasel."

"Same soap," his mother told him. "You've chapped your hands again.
Those buck gloves fend nothing but rope burns. You should have worn your
mittens, like I said."

"Cash! Did you by any chance," Rachel demanded, "hear one word I said?"

"Oh, sure. Sounds a little like some old joker stands in need of horse
flesh. Andy, remind yourself to go put up the bars. So's we'll know
where at to start tracking from, come morning."

Rachel could have killed him. Cassius Zachary, twenty-one, was slim,
black-haired, and was starting a mustache, not long enough to twist,
yet, but sharply trimmed. He did nearly everything well, and carried
himself as if he knew it. Ben often said Cassius had most of the brains
in the family, and sometimes this seemed to be true. Like the easy way
he picked up languages. Lots of people spoke Spanish, of a sort, and
some even a dribble of Comanche; but Cassius could handle the weird
Kiowa tongue, which had seventy-four vowels, besides a lot of clicks and
nasals, and had to be sung. Of course, Ben spoke it, too, but only
because he had labored and sweat over it. Not Cassius! He had heard it,
hadn't he? So he knew it. Naturally. Nothing to it. Matthilda said he
had learned to read when he was three. And hadn't cracked a book since,
Ben sometimes added. Cassius liked raising hell and cattle. Didn't want
to know anything else.

And he could come up just a little bit too happy-go-lucky for any use,
Rachel was thinking now.

But Andy, by his want of sense, went back on her worst of all. He was
not yet sixteen, but already tall, and moved well, so that strangers
must have thought him older. As small children he and Rachel had stood
together against a world of adults, consoling each other when wronged
and left out of things. Rachel had always liked to think she had raised
Andy herself, almost single-handed, so that he was virtually her own
little child. Only, there wasn't much left of that illusion any more. He
was outgrowing her, getting away from her; he could ride horses she
could not ride, and go places she could not go, disappearing into the
vast unknown world of men. All this made him the more exasperating when
he came up with something stupid, and he was an expert at it. So now he
looked as owlish as he ever had at eight years old.

"Don't you know what that was you saw? That--" he made it weighty--"was
the Ghost of the Bandit!"

This sober idiocy left Rachel speechless, so Cassius took it up. "Ghost?
In all this wind? He'd blow away."

"What about the Skeleton in Spanish Armor, down on Devil's River? _He_
don't blow away."

Cassius pretended uncertainty. "Well--no; but--you take all that
ironware he's got up in--"

"How about that whole platoon of spooks, down on Phantom Hill? Seen time
and again, drilling in line!"

"I know, but is it a good _straight_ line? Weather regardless?"

"It's perfect," said Andy stoutly.

Most of the feel of danger had left since the men came in. But they had
spoiled her story, and Rachel was hurt. One of the little sadnesses that
women endured out here in the lonelies was that of never having anything
to tell their menfolk when they came home. If the first potato had
sprouted in the root cellar, or a jumping mouse had eaten out of
Rachel's hand, that was news to be treasured, told to each separately,
and discussed at length. Mostly there was nothing at all. Quite a few
pronghorns came in sight of the house, of course, and blacktail deer;
often they saw a coyote, sometimes a lobo. But the men saw such things
all the time. You couldn't interest them with anything short of a bear.
And tonight, when for once Rachel had been full of a story to tell them,
they wouldn't listen.

She drew into herself, and shut up. Next evening, as twilight closed off
another dark, windy day, she felt haunted for a little while, and stole
a few glances at the north ridge, to see if the sinister figure would
reappear. Nothing happened, though, for two days more.

Then, at the end of the third day, the stranger came again.




CHAPTER 2


Matthilda saw him first. This was hardly to be expected, for
her eyes were far from the best in the house. One of the things that
made Matthilda look younger than she was, lively and interested always,
was her bright wide-eyed gaze, which may well have been the result of
trying hard to see. On this night, though, she had not far to look. She
had taken her sewing basket to a south window, and as her hands worked
she kept glancing at the prairie across Dancing Bird River, in hope of
seeing Ben coming in. She was very often there. It seemed to Rachel that
Ben had hardly got out of sight before Mama had started watching for
him.

Rachel was in the root cellar, a sort of pit they had dug as an
afterthought into the hill behind. It went down four feet below the
level of the floor, and could be got into, awkwardly, through a hole at
the base of the wall, behind a wooden slide. Fumbling down there in the
dark, Rachel had filled her apron with potatoes, when she heard her
mother gasp. Immediately wood clattered on wood as a chair went over;
and Rachel bumped her head as she came scrambling out. Matthilda stood
at the window, so motionless that she looked rigid, staring at something
outside. Rachel cried out, "Mama!" and the potatoes bumped across the
floor as she went to her mother.

Just outside, no more than two long steps from the window, sat a
strange-looking rider; and Rachel knew at once that this was the man she
had seen on the ridge. The startling thing was the concentration with
which he leaned from the saddle to peer in. Rachel saw a colorless
straggle of beard, some stringy long hair flying loose from under a
pulpy wool hat, and an Indian-trade kind of rifle too long for a saddle
boot, carried across the withers. And the horse--how could so old a
horse be living, let alone worked? Age had turned it a flea-bit white,
showing patches of black hide, and scabs of mange. The lip dangled slack
below long outthrust teeth, and the unseeing eyes had the staring look
of pain peculiar to animals of enormous age. Not a muscle stirred in
horse or man, yet the wind made a flicker of movement all over them--a
small flying of lank hair and wispy mane, a shimmer of tatters.

The sky was full of mud again, and what little light it had left was
behind the horseman, so that he sat in a darkness of his own. A man
without a face, except for that wind-wavered suggestion of a beard. And
yet, even in that first moment of shock--was there something familiar
about him? This frightened instant had a feeling of being relived, as if
the same thing had happened someplace else, long ago.

"Pull back," Rachel whispered. "Mama--come away!"

Matthilda said uncertainly, "Can he--can he see us?"

Perhaps there was some doubt of it, what with the darkness of the room,
and a possible sky reflection on the panes between, but Rachel felt him
to be looking straight into her face. "Of course he can! _Please_ don't
stand there--" She drew her mother out of line.

"I didn't hear a thing," Matthilda said, bewildered. "I just looked up
and--"

Her daughter whisked to the door, and the Sharp & Hankins came off its
tree nails into her hands. The sliding barrel clashed twice, chambering
a cartridge. Matthilda cried out, "Wait--don't--"

"Ben said to--" Rachel jumped the heavy bar from its slot, and forgot
what she was saying as the door creaked wide.

"Rachel! Don't go out there!"

But Rachel was only standing on the stoop, looking frightened, and a
little silly, as she stared upcreek and down. No one was in sight as
Matthilda came to her side.

"He--he's around the corner of the house," Matthilda whispered.

"Let me go! I'll put a ball through his hat!"

"No! You come in here--please, Rachel, please--"

That breathy, frightened note had not come so strongly into her mother's
voice since Rachel could remember. She hesitated, listening for a sound
of hoofs, but the great organ-toned wail of the wind through the
cottonwoods scoured away all sounds. Strands of hair whipped across her
face, stinging her eyes. Suddenly Rachel wanted to be inside, behind the
heavy door, within the thick walls. She was looking meek as she obeyed.

Matthilda's hands were unsteady as she barred the door; she crossed to
warm them by the fireplace, so that her back was to the room. This was
not like her. The stranger hadn't actually done anything much. Maybe he
had been trying to see if anybody was home, never dreaming that women
lived here. At first glimpse of them he had fled like a scalded cat. Yet
Matthilda, always first to make allowances, had no word of reassurance.
She seemed numbed.

Rachel said, "We know that man, from someplace. I've seen him before, a
long while back."

"Fiddle," said Matthilda absently.

But Rachel was beginning to remember, not the man, but a happening that
was the same. Long ago--six or seven years?--when they lived on the San
Saba.... She began setting the table in shaky silence.

This time the boys came soon. Rachel saw Andy, first, jogging homeward
around the upper bend of the Dancing Bird; and in a few moments more
Cassius appeared, looking so sure of himself, so easy in the saddle,
that Rachel was comforted in the uncertainty of this dusk. Still,
neither of them, nor the two together, could quite take the place of
Ben, who could make everything seem all right just by coming into sight.

She held her tongue when they came in, waiting to see what her mother
would tell them; for she had a wicked little plan. A name that had been
playing tag with her, teasing her by dancing just out of her reach, had
now come clear into her mind. She judged it would serve to get Cash's
attention this time. Certainly there had been enough fuss and
to-do--yes, and mystery made of it, too--that time on the San Saba, long
ago.

"Any word of Ben yet? Any sign at all?" Matthilda always asked that
first, nowadays; although, unless she was thinking of smoke signals, it
was hard to see how she expected any kind of word to outtravel Ben
himself.

"Nope." Cassius scooped a handful of homemade soft soap, and began to
wash. "You all have a good day around here?" He always asked that, too.

"Well..." Matthilda wavered, and would not meet Rachel's eyes. "Just
a middling ordinary day, I reckon."

Quiet again, under the sound of wind, while Cassius bent low to souzle
his face and hair. Rachel waited a moment more, watching her mother.
Then--"Abe Kelsey was here," she said.

The effect was explosive. Cassius straightened so sharply his heels
lifted off the floor. Rachel was dumbfounded; she had almost scared him
through the roof. Well, not scared him, maybe--startled him, more like.
His eyes went to his mother, not to Rachel, and held with a hard
questioning. _Good lord, I've pulled a trigger. What trigger?_

She had been stretching it, of course; she had no memory of what anybody
named Kelsey looked like, way back yonder. She had meant to admit, in a
minute, that she hadn't really recognized the stranger. She guessed she
had better snatch that mysteriously powerful name back, and in a hurry.
Confession was on the tip of her tongue. Then suddenly it was too late
for that.

"I was going to tell you," Matthilda said to Cassius, and her voice was
coaxing him not to be mad.

Rachel's heart contracted. Her mother had recognized the stranger and
had not let on. When you live so close to people, and they hold things
back from you, it makes half-seen things stir in shadows that come all
around you. Part of cabin fever.... Cash still stood there, water
from his face running down his limp old buckskin shirt, and puddling on
the floor from his dropped hands.

"She doesn't mean he came in," Matthilda said. She was faltering now,
and near to tears. "He--just sat out there and--looked--"

"How long ago?"

"Well--I guess--it might have been--"

"Twenty minutes," Rachel said clearly.

Cash shifted as if he would rush outside, but changed his mind without
moving a step. "But the light was failing. You couldn't have told
if--Wait. How far out was he?"

"About seven feet," Rachel said. "He leaned down close, to look in."

"Seven--" He stared at her blankly a moment, and his next question
fairly crackled. "How come _she_ knew him?" he demanded of his mother.
"Did you tell her who--"

Matthilda shook her head, and her eyes were ominously shiny. "Why, the
child can't have seen Abe since--why, she can't have been more than ten
years old. And not even then, unless--and anyway, he's so changed, Cash,
just dreadfully. It's uncanny she remembers him now."

_More uncanny than you think. This man was faceless, for all I saw._
Aloud Rachel said, "A man of that name had an ambuscade with Papa, back
in the earlies."

"Papa had falling-outs with a lot of people." Cash reached for a towel,
wishing he were shed of the whole thing.

"But Kelsey kept nosing around."

"The child's right, Cassius," Matthilda murmured.

"There was something more to it," Rachel said. "Something queer, that I
was never let to know."

"All you need to know is I don't want him around! Let him smell
gunpowder--you all hear me?"

It was as if Ben himself had come into the room. No, more as if Papa had
come into the room; Ben was quieter. Andy was sitting there gaping, with
no more idea of what was happening than Rachel had. Mama went to the
table, so that she was behind Andy and Rachel; but Rachel knew at once
that Mama put a finger to her lips. "Don't talk so much in front of the
children," Rachel put it into words for them.

They made no answer to that. "Bring your carbine," Cassius told his
brother, making his tone ordinary. "We'll put the gate poles up."

As they let themselves out, the wind whisked at everything in the house,
and set the pans to swinging, but perhaps it was less violent than
before. The women moved immediately, both at once, to get supper on. The
wheels of daily living began to turn again, as they must always turn, no
matter what.

"He's going back where he came from, now," Matthilda said, and Rachel
knew she meant Abe Kelsey. "Hear how the wind's dying? Going down more
and more, as he gets farther and farther away."

It was the kind of sign some of the Indians believed. The Zacharys took
no stock in such heathenisms, but out here you could sometimes get mixed
up, and confuse the things you really believed with things that just
sort of came with the country. But it was true that the wind was
abating. This should have made the night a better one for sleep, but it
did not. Their bedding was turning clammy again for want of sun, so that
they were chilled and sweated, seemingly both at once. Rachel knew she
should have baked their blankets before the fire, but had put it off,
hoping for a chance to get the outdoor smell of sunshine into them.

Perhaps it was the very quiet that woke her in the first hour after
midnight, so lightly she slept that night. Once she was full awake, she
heard her mother crying, two yards away, in the other bed. Matthilda
wept so softly, her face pressed so hard into her pillow, Rachel never
would have heard her at all if the wind had held.




CHAPTER 3


Cassius and Andy had to wait for daylight to pick up Abe
Kelsey's trail. They followed it easily enough, until they had gone
about four miles. Then it disappeared.

They cast some long circles, and found it again around noon. This time
the trail led off in a new and unlikely direction; it took them nearer
the house than they had been all morning, before they lost it
completely. Cassius blew up, and sat cussing so long he turned red in
the face.

The trouble with Cash was that he knew exactly who he was after, and
why. He thought of Abe Kelsey as a varmint that had to be killed before
a worse thing happened, and he was in a sweat to get it over with. But
he didn't know how much Andy knew. Nothing, he hoped.

Actually, Abe Kelsey was a most unfortunate man; about as unfortunate as
a man can get, perhaps. He was even famous for it, in his own part of
the world, which was limited to the prairies south of the Arkansas. Andy
and Rachel may have been the only natives of the Texas frontier over ten
years old who did not know who he was.

For his story had a riddle in it, and this kept it alive. He had once
had a wife and a young son. But he located at Burnt Tree, a tiny
settlement of three or four families thirty miles out of Round Rock; and
the Kiowas destroyed it in 1863. Kelsey must have married late, for he
had been middle-aged even then, and his little boy was only seven when
Abe lost him, along with his mother, in the Burnt Tree Massacre.

Supposedly. Two years later somebody brought Abe a rumor that his son
was alive, a captive in the lodge of a Kiowa named Pacing Wolf. Abe went
up there--and swore forever that he found his son. The boy had even
answered to his name. And now a queerness came up. That the Kiowas
claimed the boy to be neither white nor a captive, but of mixed blood
and their own, was surprising to nobody. But men who had known the
Kelsey boy came forward to declare that they had seen the boy dead and
had helped to bury him. Thus was born an enigma never completely
answered.

But the lower counties were well salted with men who had themselves lost
wives or children, or had otherwise been brought too close to the
persistent massacres. These were very ready to believe Abe's story
without any special scrutiny at all; they angered, and they were men who
acted on their angers. Hell-bent couriers raced out in five directions,
carrying Abe's appeal for help in recovering his little son. And a posse
of more than thirty riders swarmed into their saddles in answer to the
call.

William Zachary, then of Round Rock, was one of those who believed Abe
because he wanted to believe him. Old Zack, as William was called before
he was forty, had ridden with Abe Kelsey in a number of earlier
pursuits; he knew Abe as only a so-so Indian-fighter, given to
unexpected foolishness and sudden blunders. Yet Zack did not see how
even Abe could mistake his own son, only two years gone.

With Abe to guide him, Zack rode on ahead to scout Pacing Wolf's
village, days before the posse was complete. He hoped to make a deal for
the boy without a fight that would put the captive child himself in
deadly danger; or failing that, he wanted to form a strategy of attack
that would promise success. He named a rendezvous on Cache Creek where
Abe and he would meet the posse.

Abe and Old Zack beat the more unwieldy posse across the Red by more
than a week; found Pacing Wolf; and rode openly into his camp. At this
point, Zack had already gone to great effort and great risk--and had
framed himself into the false position of his life.

For, the instant Zack laid eyes on the boy he knew they had wasted their
time. The Pacing Wolf boy was white, or nearly so, but there all
resemblance ended, so far as Zack could see. Young Kelsey would have
been only nine, in 1865, and all Abe had hold of was a great lout at
least thirteen years old. He had actually been on the war trail already,
and had the scalp of a little Negro child, to prove it.

Zack talked to the boy in two languages, neither of which Abe Kelsey
understood. The boy was fluent in Kiowa, and knew a little Spanish, but
about the only English word Zack could trap him into recognizing was
"squaw." He said he had always lived in the lodge of Pacing Wolf, his
father, and knew nothing at all about Kelsey except that he was a bad
nuisance and got him laughed at. He offered Zack a Mexican concho to
shoot Kelsey; couldn't do it himself, for a Kiowa believed that his own
medicine would turn on him if he killed a crazy person, or even
seriously harmed one.

As for answering to his name--the young savage answered to Set, for
Set-Tayhahnna-tay, which means Texan bear. And Kelsey's boy happened to
be named Seth.

Time was going to prove that all this common sense could but barely hold
its ground, in public opinion, against the father's total conviction;
years later people would still be arguing over it. For a door of doubt
had been left open, forever.

Not in Zack's mind. He was convinced that Abe was absolutely wrong,
beyond any shadow of doubt, and he told him so, in no uncertain terms.
Abe was thrown into an uncontrollable rage, in which he tried to kill
Zack, and Zack had to take his carbine away from him. Unfortunately,
Zack lost his own patience in this flurry, and smashed the lock of the
carbine on a rock. Kelsey carried the broken breechlock with him a long
time, and it gave his own version of the story substance for
unimaginative listeners.

But a far more unlucky thing happened before Zack got back to Texas.
Instead of turning back across the Red, Zack pointed his pony toward
Fort Cobb. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy had been able to spare
troops for a real campaign in the Indian country, though each side was
accused of efforts to turn the Indians against the other. The Federals
had, however, intermittently garrisoned Fort Cobb, up in Indian
Territory. Old Zack carried a list of brands worn by some hundreds of
horses known to be in the hands of Indians under Federal protection.
Zack's bold demand upon the Fort Cobb commandant was for a release of
the horses--or a strapping indemnity. He had a case, and later it was
going to rage in the courts for a quarter of a century. Zack almost, but
not quite, got something on account.

What he did not know was that the Fort Cobb cavalry was out on one of
its recurrent patrols along the Red. Abe's belated posses, charging out
of Texas to rescue little Seth, ran smack into a squadron of yellowlegs
on Cache Creek. The handful of Texans were told to get the hell back
where they came from, and fast--before they were set upon for taking
military action, and out of uniform at that. Whatever opportunity for
rescue there had been was destroyed in five minutes, and never recurred
again.

Abe Kelsey forever believed, and persuaded whom he could, that Old Zack
had betrayed the rescue party to the damyankees; thereby purchasing the
friendship of the Kiowas, and perpetual immunity to their raids, at the
price of Abe's son. A stigma of Indian-loving, involving a betrayal
totally unforgivable under any code on earth, was thus prooflessly
affixed to one of the greatest Indian-fighters, perhaps, that Texas ever
knew.

Delusion and frustration seemed to unhinge Kelsey's mind, after that. He
became hipped on at least winning the confidence of the supposed son who
denied him. Endless failure only narrowed and hardened his obsession,
until he was willing to become an Indian himself, if that would do it.
He tagged the Kiowas around, living on what scraps they threw him. He
ran whisky to them when he could get whisky, guns when he could get
guns. He even scouted out easy kills for them among his own people,
which would have made him deadly dangerous if the Indians had trusted a
word he said.

And still the Kiowas would have none of him. Fearing to kill or maim a
crazy man, they abused him in every other way they could think of, in
hopes of driving him away. They robbed him of everything he got hold of,
they dumped him in rivers, they played games in which they threw him
about. And the boy he thought was his son would do nothing but spit on
him.

For all this, Abe blamed William Zachary.

After Kelsey became a squaw man, the Zacharys were able to face down his
libel, to some extent. They must have faced it down, or they wouldn't be
here. For there was no such thing as a lone cattleman, and never could
be, on open range. No practical fence was known. All winter the Zacharys
rode themselves saddle blind, trying to hold their cattle. Yet every
spring found half of their cows long gone, and their range cluttered
with pilgrims, sometimes of three hundred brands. They had to calf-brand
for them all, drive the beef with their own, and get the market money
back to the owners; meanwhile depending on others to work their own
far-strayed cows.

Even in this hateful state of interdependence, Kelsey had been unable to
stop them. But presently Abe found another weapon to use against the
Zacharys--a far more potent one than his unprovable charge of betrayal.
It was a weapon so strange to them that they knew no defense against it;
yet so deadly that Kelsey could punish and drive them with it. Even if
they killed him--which Old Zack would have done if Abe had not eluded
him--it might someday destroy them.

Before Old Zack died, under his drowning cattle in that far, lost river
crossing, Abe Kelsey had all but smoked the Zacharys out of Texas.

So now Cassius was furious, baffled, and talking to himself. "Close by,
someplace. Less'n six miles from the house, by God. Must be watching us
now--"

"How's that?"

"Shut up until you're spoken to!" Cash yelled at Andy.




CHAPTER 4


Now Ben got back at last, to the great secret relief of
Cassius. Even the weather seemed to have changed for his homecoming. The
cloud mat was gone, the sun blazing bright; and the wind gave place to a
gentle breeze, still dry, and smelling more of last year's wild hay than
of new grass, but of a pleasant warmth. Cash and Andy, having trailed
Kelsey and lost him, were cow-hunting to the south that day, toward the
Little Beaver, trying to bunch the scattered and winter-driven cattle
for a ready gather. As they rode they looked often to the southeast,
hoping for a dust that would mean Ben was finally coming in from Forth
Worth, and points beyond. They could see a long way in the clean air,
but nothing showed.

They were looking the wrong way. In the middle of the morning they were
puzzled by a considerable dust, big enough for a company of cavalry, but
far to the southwest. Nothing lay in that direction short of Fort
Griffin--more than ninety miles away, for a horse, which is always
having to go around something. Between lay an unholy loneliness. Buffalo
hunters, men bolder than angels and dirtier than wolves, crossed this
wild land in slaughter seasons. Sometimes they came upon the charred
skeleton of a cabin, and camped upon its graves. Other times they ran
into Kiowa-Comanche war parties, and found out how came the graves
there. During the war, and the nine years since, the undefended frontier
had been pushed eastward a hundred miles.

They went on with their work. Along about noon the dust was replaced by
a signal smoke. They watched it go up in puffs and long sausages, bitten
off sharply at earth level, blurring out into long scraves of nothing as
they rose; and they recognized one of the family signals. It meant, "I'm
coming in."

Andy let out a long yell--"Wa-a-a-a-ah-hoo!"--of pure celebration.
"Whoppee!" he added, finding he had enthusiasm left over.

Cassius took a more nonchalant attitude, now that Ben was actually in
sight, for he resented his own relief. "Well, I'll chew up a
whistle-pig," was his comment. "What in all hell is he doing down
there?"

"Maybe he taken a short cut," Andy suggested. Away from the house they
dropped very easily into the looser speech of the cowhands among whom
they worked, having learned very early in life that this was wise.

They rode southwest toward the dust, and closed on the corrida in a
couple of hours. They saw from a long way off that Ben had fetched home
some thirty riders and a wagon--about the most successful hiring of
hands they had accomplished yet. And he had around fifty head of loose
saddle stock; for their range leaked horses so badly, all year round,
that they had to bring in replacements every year, on land that should
have produced a market surplus. So far, so good, Cassius admitted,
subject to a closer look. He had wanted to go after the corrida himself.

Ben himself loped ahead to meet them at near half a mile, and the
brothers exchanged a brief, hard handshake. Ben was big, shock-headed;
as a boy he had been round-faced and chunky, and even now that he was
gaunted, he was so heavily boned that people thought of him as burly,
which he was not. Where Cassius had inherited old Zack's flash, Ben had
his father's force and authority. Four years as head of the family had
aged him to look more than thirty, instead of his rightful twenty-four,
which was perhaps why he seemed steadier than his father had been, or
his brother would ever be.

"Well, another damned rickety, wamber-jawed wagon, I see," was Cash's
opening comment. "But that's all right, I can fix it, in a few hundred
hours."

"Had to have it for the cook," Ben explained mildly. "Crippled, of
course--or why's he a cook? This here's a spring wagon; Mama will be
crazy about it. How _is_ Mama?"

"She'll be fine, soon's you show her how to drive two wagons."

"I figure she can run between them," Ben said, to ditch an argument that
did not interest him. He blamed himself for the way he and his brother
graveled each other, almost on sight. Maybe Ben had inherited
responsibility for his brothers too suddenly, and too soon. He got along
all right with Andy, because he still thought of Andy as a little boy,
in whom any reasonable competence came as a surprise. But Cassius was
another matter. He expected great things of Cash--and he wasn't about to
get them. The upshot would be that they would lose Cassius pretty soon,
in just about the first year he thought the family could stand on its
feet without him.

"I guess they must have moved Fort Worth," Cash said now. "I always
thought of it as more to the eastward, like."

Ben explained reasonably that he had picked up a few hands there, but
not enough. Seemed the Chisholm Trail dreened off most of the Tarrant
County riders. So he had turned southwest, racking down the ruts of the
old Overland Mail another hundred miles, past the ruins of old Fort
Belknap, all the way to Fort Griffin.

"Where a man can find all the damned hide hunters he wants," Cash said.
"Them stinkies must have laughed theirselfs sick at the mention of work.
No cowhands, of course."

"The buffaloes make it bad, all right," Ben admitted. Only a few
stragglers troubled the Dancing Bird nowadays, but farther west there
were still buffaloes aplenty. Pretty hard to boon a man with a
slow-death job a-horseback, when he could get rich just banging a gun.
Only thing, you had to have your own wagon outfit. Hide hunters with
wagons weren't looking for gunbangers; what they wanted was skinners.
All those riders, who had sifted down there like sand into the toe of a
sock, would sooner starve than skin buffaloes. So Ben had been able to
hire some, such as they were.

Both brothers had things they wanted to talk about, but not in front of
Andy, or with the overemphasis of haste. So, "Come have a look," Ben
said.

They rode back, now, along the straggle of newly hired cowhands, who
numbered twenty-eight, plus a cook who drove a six-horse team in the
drag. In the performance of these men could lie the difference between
calamity and a great year. From the Dancing Bird to Wichita was a drive
of only two hundred and sixty or seventy miles--no drive at all,
compared to some Old Zack had made to Abilene from below the Neuces
River; and they could expect wohaw--a tribute paid in gifts of beef--to
satisfy the roving bands of Indians, who had no stomach for a fight with
an armed crew anyway. Nevertheless, several thousand head of wolf-wild
stock must not only be moved, but in some degree coddled, through uneasy
country every mile of the way. The herd could get into big trouble any
time, any place, if its trail hands were not up to snuff.

Seen from this standpoint, the new hands Ben had to show his brother
looked none too encouraging. As usual, the greater number were
youngsters; born misfits, mostly, hangdog and unsure of themselves, but
with wretched hats cocked jauntily, as if they hoped they were
dangerous. One thing was pretty plain about them all. These were wanted
men, or thought they were, or they would not have been here. The Dancing
Bird was too far from town and too close to the Kiowas to be easy to
hire for, no matter where you looked for men. At Fort Griffin you took
what you could get. Yet Ben believed he saw a certain toughness, or the
makings of it, in these downwind drifters; and he was hoping his brother
would see it too.

Cash looked them over with a show of indifference. He had bossed a trail
herd when he was nineteen, and believed he had proved himself a cowman.
But Zeb Rawlins, with whom they pooled their drives, had been
disappointed in the returns, and had never okayed Cash to drive again.
Ben might blame himself, but actually most of the ill-nature with which
Cash had greeted Ben's return grew out of Cash's resentment over having
been unfairly shelved.

"Looks like you did all right," he finally brought himself to say.

So much for that. Ben now sent Andy back to the remuda to cut out any
five of the new horses he wanted, for his own string. And the two older
brothers drifted off to the flank, where they could talk alone.

Cassius waited until they were beyond earshot of the corrida, before he
fired his cannon. "Abe Kelsey was here."

Ben's startled glance acknowledged that he had heard, but he didn't say
anything right away. "Close to the house?" he asked at last.

"Rode up to a window. Leaned down to look in."

Another pause; then two questions more. "What kind of a horse was he
on?"

"A mighty sorry horse, the way they tell it. I didn't see him. Mama and
Rachel saw him."

Ben nodded, gravely. If Kelsey rode a bad horse, it meant the Kiowas
still took away his horses as fast as he could steal them; so he had
gained no influence with them, or favor. Well, that was something.

And his other question: "Does Rachel--?"

Cassius shook his head. "She hasn't found out anything. Only--this
floored me, Ben--she did call off his name. Whether Mama let something
slip, or she guessed it from--well, that ain't what signifies."

"No," Ben said slowly. "That ain't what signifies. You want to know
something?"

He pulled his horse to a walk, and Cassius waited. Looking at his
brother sidelong, Cassius saw he looked a whole lot tireder than a man
should, coming off so easy a trip--virtually a vacation.

"Cash," Ben said, "I had to kill a man."

He was looking straight ahead, so that Cassius was able to cover up his
first startled, even excited reaction. When Cash spoke his tone was
quiet. "The same thing?"

"It's always the same thing. But this time I had no warning. The guns
let off, and a stranger-boy I hired that day was down in the dirt. Seems
he pulled first, but he was baited into it. The bastard who done it
accused him of going to work for... a red nigger lover."

"But when did you--"

"Oh. Me. I stepped out in the middle, and the killer swung round on me.
I heard his hammer cock, so I fired."

They were silent awhile. Cash finally smiled a little. "Well, that makes
us even." He held out his hand, and Ben gripped it. "I run into pretty
near the same thing last year," Cash said. "I kind of figured you knew
about it."

Ben nodded. "Wasn't going to say anything, till you wanted to."

"Thanks, Ben." For a moment, there, they were probably closer than they
had ever been in their lives; and they weren't even thinking about it.
"We've got to catch this Kelsey and hang him," Cassius said. "We should
have tracked him down long ago. I'm thinking of the Rawlinses. No
scale-horn on earth ever come stubborner than old Zeb. And nobody hates
Indians worse. If Kelsey ever stirs him up we'll have a finish fight on
our hands. Else he'll gore us off the range."

"Damn the range," Ben said.

"What?"

Ben held his voice low, but a shake came into it, beyond his control.
"Cash, I know, I know in my heart, I'll go after them, and I'll kill
them, every man... the day they turn on her."

A shade of emphasis fell on the last word, "her," and that was where it
belonged. It was Rachel whom Kelsey had been able to turn into a
hostage, and a way to get at the Zacharys. In a dozen pioneer crises,
the Zacharys had been held defenseless by the special vulnerability of
this girl. And their great fear, keeping them forever on their guard
through these years, was that she herself would find it out. Their
perpetual vigilance in itself had made her far more precious to them
than another child could ever have been.

Rachel, called Rachel Zachary, had been raised in the belief that she
was their own. But she was not a Zachary, nor of any kin. Nobody knew
who she was, or could ever know. It was not even known of what blood she
might have come.

Abe Kelsey claimed he knew. He, and he alone, had been present when Old
Zack found a naked baby on the prairie, seventeen years ago; and this
gave him the color of authority, for some. After Kelsey turned on Old
Zack, these listened when Abe pointed to what he claimed was the
Zacharys' strange immunity to raids.

"Kiowas won't touch 'em. Never have, and never will! Bought themselves
Scott free when they sold out my boy. Even took in a red nigger whelp on
swap, to bind the deal. Go see for yourself! A squaw young'n as ever
was--growing up in the Zachary name!"

No worse nonsense was possible. If the Kiowas had believed for a moment
that the Zacharys were holding a Kiowa child, however fractional of
blood, they would have attacked without let-up. Yet it was the kind of
theory that easily took root in this blood-soaked ground. In the past
twenty years Kiowa and Comanche raiding parties had killed more than
eight hundred Texas settlers. Among them had been a great number of
women killed by incessant rape; and a lot of stolen children who died
most pitifully in captivity. The victims were not only scalped but often
gruesomely dismembered.

Ben thought that Texans should at least have learned by this time that
the Horse Indians used fast travel as a weapon, and great space as a
shield. Old Zack himself had helped teach the Kiowas that a blood-angry
posse might soon be charging in among their own lodges if they left too
short a trail. Kiowas raided from the top of Kansas to Santa Fe; they
could cross Texas at eighty miles a night to raid deep in Mexico, and be
back above the Red while the same moon held. Not how far away, but how
watchful, was the measure of safety on this frontier.

Yet people in the worst-hurt counties still built houses with
bullet-leaky walls and tinder roofs, without lookouts, rifle loops, or
battle shutters. They let their children wander unwatched, and left
their women alone for days while they fogged off on senseless errands.
They couldn't learn and wouldn't be told, and no amount of bloody murder
ever changed that.

Perhaps a man whose family had been chopped up could not be expected to
blame his own negligence. Easier on his peace of mind if he assumed he
had done the best possible job, and found other explanations for the
better results of others. There were people who asked too recklessly and
too often why war parties always passed up the Zacharys, exposed in
handy reach, to jump families two hundred miles beyond.

An unheard-of heresy crossed Ben's mind. _A man could learn to hate
Texas. He could learn to hate it all._

Ben himself never feared the Kiowas much. What he feared was a moment of
carelessness, at the wrong place or the wrong time, by one of his own
people.

They watched the moon. Kiowas on raid might attack by night or by day,
but traveled only by moonlight. When the moon was full, you could figure
war parties were sifting all over Texas, unseen; while in the dark of
the moon you wouldn't cut fresh sign of a single band. The Zacharys
allowed twelve days a month for the full moon, and lived differently,
then.

They watched the grass. Kiowas wouldn't try a long foray, or any at all,
until their war ponies were in shape. So the grass could tell you when
the danger time had come.

Most important thing to know of all was that Horse Indians never fought
well against walls. They raided for loot, which meant horses, and glory,
which meant scalps, and they liked to get them cheap. If your house was
proof against bullets and fire, its doors and shutters few and heavy,
the Kiowas were unlikely to come against you at all. Only--

Ben now saw something ahead that might change the whole quality of
danger on the Dancing Bird, past hope of survival. Suddenly he felt sick
in the pit of his stomach, and sick in his heart. A decision he had put
off for a long time, and that his father had put off before him, would
have to be stood up to, now.

"Bring 'em on," he ordered Cassius; and he rode ahead.




CHAPTER 5


Clear of the corrida, Ben jogged slowly, his eyes habitually
sweeping and quartering. With the Rawlinses, the Zacharys claimed by
right of use a strip some twenty miles wide by thirty or forty long,
coming to six or seven hundred sections. The sum total accomplishment of
Old Zack's life lay in their precarious hold upon this land. "Damn the
range," Ben had said to Cassius; and now he was wondering if he could
ever bring himself to mean it.

The Dancing Bird range was carrying upward of twelve thousand head,
about half of which the two families hoped were their own; not counting
as many again that carried their brands, but were scattered over half of
Texas. They had cows, all right. Everybody had cows, and virtually
nothing else. A handful of strays had escaped the early Spaniards, three
centuries ago; and these had multiplied into the countless wild cattle
that had tantalized and frustrated Texans since before the Alamo.
Hundreds of thousands had been killed for their hides, without making a
dent. Yet Texas beef remained valueless, until after the war, for want
of a market, or any way to reach one.

Then, as the Civil War ended, a railroad poked into Missouri, as far as
Sedalia. Ben remembered the excitement that swept Texas. Below the
Neuces, where wild cattle ran thickest, a cow might be worth two or
three dollars, but you couldn't get it, because nobody had it. The same
cow should be worth ten times that, and in cash, at the end of the
track. Hundreds of cow-hunting outfits swarmed into the deep brush.

From the Neuces to Sedalia was a drive of more than twelve hundred
miles, but William Zachary was only one of many who thought it could be
made. With scarcely a dollar, and no place to borrow any, he scoured the
brush country, contracting cattle from cow hunters on credit, on shares,
or any way he could. He drove north three thousand head, with nine tough
brush riders who brought their own grub, plus Ben, then sixteen. Ahead
of them and behind them a hundred herds strung out for five hundred
miles. Ben remembered his own boyish exultation, greater than he would
ever feel again, as 260,000 head of cattle were thrown into the great
march.

And he remembered the stunning, crushing disappointment of that year.
The Texans drove a thousand miles, to be stopped two hundred short of
their goal. Longhorns carried the deadly tick-transmitted Texas fever.
Kansas farmers, fearing epidemic among their own livestock, threw up a
quarantine barrier, stubbornly manned. The great herds were lost; and so
were some of the drovers, who tried to fight their way through, and
forever stayed in Kansas.

That was the first year. There had been seven since. The way north
became the Chisholm Trail, as the rails pushed westward across Kansas to
Abilene, then to Ellsworth, to Newton, and now to Wichita. Two and a
half million cattle had made the long march to the railheads, and still
they came on. Still the hearts of men and horses broke upon that cruel
trail; and still the promise of fortune shone at its end, fabulous as
the gold beyond the rainbow--and just as elusive, to most.

Of the seven years since Sedalia, three had been chancy, spotty years,
in which they paid off debts in money, to borrow again in cows. Three
years had been so bad that they had turned their weary herds and driven
them back to Texas--which was how the Dancing Bird got stocked. Of
"normal" years, in which successful drives found good markets, they had
seen exactly--

One.

Their spring drive in 1870 had paid off every cent they owed. But it was
also the last drive of Zack's life, for that was the year he died under
his drowning cattle, in the flash-flooded Witch River crossing.

They hadn't made a nickel since. One reason was the treachery of the
trail. Stampede, balk, scatter and give-out must be dealt with all the
time. Thirst and starvation spelled off high water and bogged prairies;
they had wars between rivals, banditry, stock diseases, failures of men
and breakdowns of horses. There were freak disasters, as in '69, when
grasshoppers stripped half the prairie. The trail boss was a
trouble-shooter, at all times so beset that the Indian danger,
ever-present and often deadly, was almost the least of his troubles.

But the market itself was more shifty than the trail. The arrival of too
many herds close together, or a shortage of cars, or a wobbly day on the
stock exchange--anything--could leave tens of thousands of head standing
unsold. For a good market, you first needed a country-wide corn surplus,
for an unfed longhorn was worse eating than a wolf. And next you needed
a shortage of farm cattle, for the huge longhorn, unhappily, was the
worst beef animal you could buy. Those vast bawling, earth-rumbling
herds set fire to the imagination, until you thought you were seeing the
advance of empire, over the prairie grass. But the desolate truth was
that trail cattle were of small importance to the meat supply; in its
best years, the Chisholm Trail delivered less than ten per cent of the
national kill. Only a special situation could make the low-grade wild
beef marketable at all.

In the years since their first costly drive to Sedalia, the Zacharys had
been neither lucky nor unlucky in their cattle dealings. They had simply
worked along among the inherent paradoxes of the cattle trade. It was a
way of life in which you might own ten thousand head of cattle, without
a pound of sugar in the house. You might carry your gold around on a
pack mule, while you knew you weren't worth a cent. You might strip your
range to bunch four thousand head, and find that you had gathered only
six hundred of your own. You could start out with two thousand head, and
in four years drive cattle worth half a million dollars; and in the end
come out with two thousand head of cattle still, except that now,
somehow, you owed for them all. You might even, in some long-dreamed-of
year, hide a powder keg of gold eagles under the floor of a mud hut--and
keep on making your own soap and candles, for lack of time to ride a
hundred and fifty miles to the nearest store....

Yet Ben believed his father had left them the means to wealth and power.
Here lay their great, deep-grass range, heavily stocked--even
overstocked, since the turnaround of the year before. A year of booming
markets was due, had to be due, for last year's light buying must result
in a national shortage. And the supply would be less, for many Texas
cattlemen were discouraged, and more were in no position to drive. All
winter long, Ben had made journey after journey, his pack mule loaded
with tally books, this time. He had traded his own distant strays for
cattle already on his range; when he had nothing to trade, he bought
outright--on Zachary credit--hundreds upon hundreds of cows actually
using the Dancing Bird grass. Their debts were sky-high again. Ben
himself only had a loose general idea of how much they owed.

But this year they could put up a herd with more big feeder beeves in
it, and more of them their own, than they had ever driven before. They
would make back everything they owed five times over--if only they could
make this year go right.

If the Zacharys took this year to move on, to some far-off new
land--Nebraska, Dakota, Montana--much more than a great year would be
lost. It was one thing for Old Zack to let go of things he had built up
himself, and start again. It was another thing altogether for Ben to
throw away a stake into which had gone eight years of his father's
life--and his life itself, at the end.

_I can't do it_, Ben thought. _I can't run. Not now. Not yet. We've got
to stand, now, here on this river Papa found. No matter what comes. No
matter what._




CHAPTER 6


Sometimes Ben felt awkward, and a little bit embarrassed, as
he came in sight of the house after being away for a while, for no more
reason than that they were always so danged glad to see him. But he
forgot that in the first moment he was there, for everything seemed
natural, easy, and familiar. He never supposed he knew how to be
homesick, nor realized how much he missed the people whom he left
behind, until he saw them again.

Tears were running down Matthilda's cheeks, and Rachel's eyes had a wet
shine, as Ben stepped from the saddle to the stoop. They hung around his
neck, asking stupid questions, and making all the fuss they knew how.
"Did you bring--" Rachel started to ask, then dropped it. He had never
yet failed to do the best he could, and now that he was here it didn't
even matter.

In the house, where everything was shined up fit to eat and sleep the
Governor, the best they had was ready to go onto the table, as soon as
the women could leave Ben alone long enough to get it on. It was Ben's
duty to say grace, now that he was home. They had always said grace once
a day, and ordinarily Ben's quick mumble didn't put much into it. They
had used the same few words all their lives, until nobody really
listened any more, or felt any meaning. But tonight, perhaps because he
had had a rest from it, Ben said the little prayer so that they heard it
again.

"Dear merciful Father, we thank Thee for these vittles, and for all Thy
blessings this day. Now guide us, and guard us, and shield us from evil,
we pray in Jesus' name.... Amen." The others made an inarticulate
sound on the "Amen."

At one time Rachel had secretly thought the first part should go, "We
thank Ben, mostly, for beating his saddle to death catching up with
these vittles--not helped much by all this frolicky weather we're being
booned with lately, either." And that short list of chores, repeated
daily on the evident theory that the Almighty could not retain, had
seemed to Rachel to be failing of attention, to judge by general
results. But conformity had shaped an attitude of piety by sheer habit,
and she no longer remembered her childish heresies.

Tonight they were all together again, all there were left of them, safe,
and snug, and fed; and Rachel was truly thankful. Ben saw how happy she
was, seemingly in all ways trustful of her world. He felt a hard twinge
of pity, of anger, seeing her so innocently unaware of the black
hostility that was hanging over her, ugly enough to darken the lives of
them all.

But if any except Ben had a worry it didn't show. Ben's return with the
corrida ended the long tyranny of winter for everybody. He brought the
spring, and the rebirth of their world. Rachel and Matthilda had seen no
women except each other for many long months on end. Now they would see
the Rawlinses, at least, practically all the time, for the two families
must work together closely, from here on. Or so they thought then;
because it had always been that way before.

After supper Ben brought in the slim parcels he had fetched home for
Rachel and Matthilda. He explained that he was sorry about not bringing
more. Had to carry everything in his saddlebags with his gear, till he
bought the wagon at Fort Griffin. They found he had brought a piece of
blue-checked gingham, too short, and a piece of red-checked, extra
long--had he thought they could use one to piece the other out? But
there was also nine yards of a flower-sprigged muslin that they wanted
to hug him for; only he was gone from there, down by the corrals with
the rest, by then.

By ten o'clock, when the boys came in, Matthilda had sent Rachel to bed;
and Andy, turning in at once, was soon asleep. After that, as the owls
began to fly, Matthilda seemed older than she had before, and Ben let
himself go tired. Only Cassius was still crisp as the three of them took
a look at the trouble they shared.




CHAPTER 7


"Cash and I talked to the hands," Ben told their mother.
"Didn't use Kelsey's name, of course. Just said, a horse thief. Told 'em
how he looks. And we put up a hundred dollars."

"A hundred--?"

"Those 'ramuses can't count over a hundred dollars. More would only
scare 'em."

Matthilda looked strangely vague, so that Ben wondered if she had
followed him. These vaguenesses were appearing oftener, as her age
advanced. But now she said, "What if they catch him?"

Ben and Cash exchanged a glance, and Ben said slowly, "Mama, we never
told them to catch him."

"What?"

"The hundred," Cassius said plainly, "is for his scalp."

Mama gave a little shuddering gasp. "But Abe couldn't fight them. He
wouldn't even try. Why, they'd have to shoot him with his hands up!"

"Yes," Cassius said.

The tears that came so easily nowadays sprang to Matthilda's eyes. She
said, "Poor old man," in a sort of plaintive whimper, and sat staring
into space. The boys waited in silence for the moment of emotion to
pass.

"If somehow, in spite of us, he sneaks up near the house again," Ben
said, "I want you to fort up, same as if he had the Kiowa nation behind
him. And he's got to be fired on. If nobody else is here to do it,
Rachel has to fire on him. And, Mama--for God's sake will you believe
me?--you mustn't stop her!"

Matthilda said nothing, but seemed to accept it.

"Now," Ben said to her gravely, "I'm going to ask you to think of
something else. I don't know if Kelsey has been around the Rawlinses, or
any neighbor. I'll warn Zeb, he's a squaw man and a thief. But Kelsey
has friends in Texas, even yet; and the old, black lie he started
against us is still alive, just as much as ever it was. If Kelsey gets
to the Rawlinses, they may listen to him, Mama--just as likely as not."

"That," Matthilda said, surprisingly matter-of-fact, "is something that
will happen, or it won't."

"Maybe it's bound to happen, someday," Ben said. "Maybe, if the
Rawlinses hadn't been looked on as no better than damyankees, they'd
have been told long ago. Mama, have you thought about what we'd best do,
when it does come?"

"Well, we'll have to stop seeing them, I suppose."

"There'll be trouble. No way to work the range with those people, once
they turn against us. Every county in Texas has had its gun feuds. We
can very easy have one of our own, right here."

"I know," Matthilda said.

"There's one thing more," Ben said; but now he was interrupted.

Rachel had appeared in the bedroom doorway, barefooted and in her muslin
nightie, her hair in long braids. She asked in a plaintive, little-girl
fashion, if she couldn't come out and sit up with the rest of them, for
a little while. She kept hearing their voices without being able to make
out the words. This was a teasing thing, and kept her from getting to
sleep.

Coaxingly, Matthilda asked her to keep trying, anyway. "The Rawlinses
will be over tomorrow, like as not. We don't want to look just awful."
Rachel's eyes went to Ben with a quick appeal, but he did not intercede.
The door closed softly behind her.

While she had stood there Ben had noticed again, unhappily, how pretty
she had become, still wide-eyed and child-like, yet so plainly a woman,
even in the shapeless night-dress. A new, fresh little flower of a
woman, as he saw her now, such as any Kiowa buck with eyes in his head
would surely want to own. How often would unseen eyes be watching her
this year? The Kiowas scouted this place all the time, for it lay on the
way they took in search of farther, easier kills. This girl whom he had
so long thought of as his sister had suddenly turned into murder bait.

For surely old Kelsey was now preaching to the Kiowas the same story he
had started against the Zacharys in Texas, long ago--though to a
different purpose. Strange that so cruel a people should set such great
store by their own children, their own kin, as the Kiowas did. The
deeper the gulch, the higher the hill, it seemed sometimes. So long as
that sick-minded old man was trying to cadge favor with the Kiowas, what
better way could he find than to lead them to a long-captive Kiowa
child? Not that they would ever believe one word the old loony said. But
if he kept on dinging the idea into their heads, one of them was sure to
see the advantages in it, pretty soon. A Kiowa who wanted to think
something generally found a way to prove it to himself.

Like, some young buck might get a Kiowa warlock to find out from the
spirits if, by any chance, the crazy old man had hold of something true.
He could hire one of the Owl Prophets, like Sky Walker, or Striking
Horse, for a sample, to consult an owl. With a couple of gift horses in
the offing for the prophet, it was wonderful how the owl would come up
with whichever answer was wanted, about nine times out of ten. And if a
single young war leader concluded that his people had a claim on the
girl he could very easily find great lashings of fight-loving young
bucks eager to take him at his word, and follow him all-out in a holy
crusade. Then you'd see Kiowas come against walls, and with all they
had.

"There's another thing," he began patiently, again. "This is going to be
an awful bad Indian year. Maybe the worst Texas has ever seen. You
realize more than a dozen people have been killed since the turn of the
year, right in the neighborhood of Fort Sill? They even stole a herd of
mules out of the fort's stone corral. And there's a hundred other
warning signs, as well."

Matthilda shrugged. Not that she underrated the Indian danger; on the
contrary, she feared the Kiowas unreasoningly. This year, as Ben
described it, sounded about like any other year, to her. "I've never
known the time," she said, "but what an Indian could lie right out there
on that ridge, and shoot down any one of us he picked."

Actually, a Kiowa out on the ridge was bound to be a scout, alone, or
with only two or three others. He wasn't going to start trouble in
decent shooting light unless he caught somebody far from support. Or, if
he was from a nearby war party, he wasn't going to give that show away,
either, by poking into the best-forted hornet's nest on the frontier.
Not without even a chance at a scalp. Matthilda would never know things
like that. To her the Wild Tribes seemed weird, unearthly, past hope of
comprehension; and their cruelties so repelled her that she was forever
denied a closer look. Ben was stumped. Nothing he could say seemed to
help his case. His mother already held the Kiowas in the greatest fear
she was capable of knowing, yet was unswayed by it.

He now attacked the key point of decision with a reluctance amounting to
dread, yet head-on, having found no other way to come at it. "Mama," he
asked, "would you be willing--just for this one year--to take Rachel off
to some safe place, like maybe Fort Richardson, or maybe Fort Worth--"

Matthilda was looking at him as if she couldn't believe her ears.

"Or Austin?" he tried again. "Even Corpus Christi--"

"Have you gone mad?" his mother demanded.

He knew what he was up against, then. He felt a moment of chill, almost
of panic; he had been hog-tied before now by this gentle, lovingly
inflexible will. He was hunting for a persuasion that would move
Matthilda; without that, he was helpless to care for them or defend
them. He could not very well take his mother and Rachel to Fort
Richardson in irons, with a demand that they be held secure. It came to
him that the fight of his life was not going to be made in the saddle,
or in the smoke of black powder, but here, now, in this room. And it
must be made with no weapons he knew how to use. Words never did come to
him the way a gun or a reata came effortlessly into his hands.

"We've pushed the work hard," he said, groping. "Cash and me both. We've
had a right to hope we'd be so far in the clear, before trouble broke,
it wouldn't matter. One good year--maybe this year--and you can school
Rachel in Switzerland, or--or--wherever--"

He saw how sadly his mother was looking at him. For a moment he glimpsed
a pity as deep as a sorrow, as deep as her love, so that he was
nonplused, and stopped. Matthilda no longer believed this hopeful story
of a fortune just ahead; she had heard it too many times, since Old
Zack's first disastrous drive to Sedalia.

Matthilda Zachary would have hated and feared the prairie if no Indian
had ever ridden it. The galling month-long winds; the dust that sifted
forever from the walls and roof of the hole in the ground where they
lived; the spreading stains of mud that leaked through with every rain;
the few poor things they had to do with, so that endless toil showed no
return; the cruelly harsh, home-boiled soap, which made cracked, hurting
hands the price of just keeping clean--all this Matthilda could have
forgiven. But she could not forgive what seemed to her the prairie's
vast malignance, as boundless as its emptiness, and as mighty as its
storms.

A grass fire, a blizzard, or a parching drouth was always dotting the
earth with carcasses, so that the deep-grass everywhere hid uncounted
bones. For all its birdsongs, its flowers, and its wind-turned grass,
the prairie kept changing into a horrid maw, that could swallow the
labors of whole lifetimes in one savage night. It had taken her husband,
and had even withheld his lifeless body, to be thrown away. The bright
will-o'-the-wisp he had followed, and which now led on his sons, was
part of a monstrous and cruel lie. _I know that, now_, she told herself.
_But men have the hearts of little boys. They love to make up big golden
dreams, to treasure as if they were true...._

"We'll talk about it when the good year comes," she answered Ben.

"Mama, I tell you--will you believe me just this once? You've got to get
her out of here now, before the first Kiowa Moon--or it's going to be
too late!"

"What little money we have wouldn't carry us a step out of Texas. And
I'll never take her to a Texas town again--never. I'll not see her heart
broken, and her life ruined, before my very eyes. Have you forgotten
Round Rock? And the San Saba? The whisperings, the snubs, the turned
backs--while the poor little thing turns bewildered, and so cruelly
hurt--How long can that go on before somebody says it to her face?"

"Says what to her face?" Cash asked sharply.

"Do I have to say it? I will then! Red nigger. _Red nigger!_"

It was strange to hear Matthilda speak the rough words, forbidden in her
house. She might pronounce "Negro" as "Niggra," but to her nothing on
earth could have been a nigger. The disused words had effective force,
even shock, as they heard her say them.

"Tell me," Matthilda said, "you could bear to hear your own little
sister called that?" Sometimes they could not tell whether Mama forgot
that Rachel was not her own, or whether she was just playing her chosen
role.

"I'll hear no man say it twice," Cash promised.

"It won't be said by a man, or to you. It's Rachel will hear it said."
Matthilda had left an infant daughter under the swept sand of a Round
Rock churchyard. From the very first, Rachel had fulfilled for Matthilda
a deep maternal need. Perhaps it was the same need that makes a mare
break loose, and travel a hundred miles to haunt a cactus patch, where
once she dropped a stillborn foal. Her face twisted now, and she sounded
as though she were crying, while her eyes remained strangely dry. "Have
you any faintest idea of what that would do to her?"

They supposed they knew how she'd feel; but maybe they didn't. Perhaps
men who live mainly in the saddle can never entirely put themselves in
the place of a young girl when the world turns its back upon her, and
draws off.

"She's so dear, so precious," Matthilda said. "How can you even think of
letting that happen to her?"

"I'd choose it before I'd risk her death," Ben said stubbornly.

"It's the same thing."

"What?"

"Do you believe she'd stay on a minute, once she thought she was drawing
harm? She wouldn't care where she went, or if she lived or died. We'd
never see her again." She was pleading with them to understand, and at
the same time despairing that they ever could. "I don't believe you know
her at all!"

"I sure don't see how it serves any useful purpose to hold her here,
trapped, in the one most dangerous place she can be!"

"I can protect her here," Matthilda said.

There it was, the softly indomitable purpose that came before everything
else in Matthilda's world. Because of it she had made Old Zack bring her
here, which he never would have done of his own accord, knowing how she
felt about the prairie. And because of it she stayed, in spite of every
appeal Ben could make. "I can protect her here." It was the end of
argument, standing stronger than hope or fear. Stronger than common
sense, too, of which it was the very opposite, Ben thought. He supposed
that what he faced here was a female way of thinking. To a male, plain
physical danger was the first consideration; it had better be, if he was
responsible for a family on the prairie frontier. Matthilda's
conclusions would always be in some part incomprehensible to him.

"What when the Kiowas come?" he asked her.

"Well, then, we'll fight, I suppose."

She knew no more about fighting than she knew about Indians, and would
be no help whatever if they were forced to a defense of the soddy.
Probably she could not have said a thing like that in so maddeningly
casual a way if she had known what she was talking about. Yet she had
touched the weakest point in his whole position. This place could be
defended, for the brothers, and Old Zack before them, had made sure of
that. Even overwhelmingly outnumbered, they stood a pretty fair chance
of giving attacking Kiowas a licking.

"Nothing more I can say," Ben mumbled, baffled and defeated.

But there was something he could say to Cassius, when their mother had
gone to bed. "You saw the hands I hired," he said.

"They look all right to me. I told you that."

"Could you take about twenty of 'em, and get four thousand head to
Wichita?"

Cassius flared up, roweled on the same old gall. "What the hell you want
to ask a thing like that for? You know it damn hootin' well!"

"All right," Ben said. "It's your herd, Cash."

"It's what?"

"I'm staying back."




CHAPTER 8


Five of the Rawlinses arrived next day, to visit overnight
while Zeb Rawlins and Ben straightened out their affairs.

"Let's not mention Abe Kelsey to them," Matthilda asked of Rachel. She
made it oddly confidential, and urgent.

"Why?"

"It just isn't needful. I can't see it's needful at all!" Tears came
easily to Matthilda's eyes, but Rachel was surprised, and a little
shaken, to see them appear now. "Promise me. Please promise!"

It was the last thing she said to Rachel before their visitors came.

Zeb Rawlins and his wife, Hagar, appeared first, with a team and rig.
All hands but Rachel and Matthilda were out horse hunting; they used ten
horses to the man, so driving in a hundred and fifty head more was the
first task of the spring work. The Rawlinses' two grown boys were out
with the hands, and Georgia Rawlins, nineteen, had tagged along, as
Rachel would have done had she been allowed. Zeb and Hagar Rawlins made
a peculiar couple, unlike in most ways, yet held uncommonly close
together by the circumstance that each had a handicapping "infirmity,"
of which they never spoke, and to which neither yielded an unnecessary
inch. "Two old crocks," one of them might say with curious tenderness,
when realizing that the other was concealing pain; but never a word
more.

The nature of Zeb's infirmity had been unclear. Zeb was tall sitting
down, and short standing up; his thick arms and shoulders had the great
strength that sometimes goes with this build. But he moved with a slow,
ponderous step, and always traveled by team, unable to mount a horse or
sit a saddle. The Zacharys, inventing an explanation, had once believed
that Zeb carried a bullet in his heart. Later the boys had learned what
Zeb had was a "rupture"--a hernia of the type for which outcountry folk
knew no remedy but the truss.

Impeded in movement, but a heavy eater still, Zeb had become vast of
heft and paunch; but he handled a team with great skill, once he made it
to the seat. He now wheeled his rig close to the house, to let his wife
dismount directly upon the stoop; then doffed his hat with a broad
gallantry, bellowed at Matthilda that he hoped she was well, M'am, and
was off like a runaway to look for the horse hunt.

Hagar Rawlins was taller than her husband, gaunt, grim-jawed, with
hollowed cheeks and deep-set eyes. Rachel was afraid of her, for she had
often caught Hagar eyeing her strangely, as if with antipathy, or
perhaps with some nameless suspicion. As soon as Hagar was afoot, her
own physical handicap was plainly visible, though puzzling as to origin.
She was not the sort of person you asked about such things. Something
was wrong with her ankles, as if the tendons had been cut; she painfully
shuffled and flapped, dragging or slinging her helpless feet in
misshapen moccasins.

Matthilda and Hagar embraced, as was customary, though it had always
seemed to Rachel that Matthilda brought all the affection there might be
in it. Hagar was from eastern Tennessee, "so fur back in the hills," she
liked to put it, "the sun don't _never_ shine." She could ridicule her
own background, but she was "easy throwed" by Matthilda, who was likely
to confide that her father had been schooled for the ministry, partly,
and had read Latin and Greek. Around Matthilda, Hagar would have sieges
of speaking carefully, in mincing forms she imagined elegant. Then she
would backslide, and catch herself again; so that her language kept kind
of running out and in, like a sliphorn.

But today Hagar brought news, and they could see at once that it had
changed her past all imagining. The Rawlinses had an older daughter
called Effie, who had been gone from the Dancing Bird country for a year
and a half. She had taken down with lung fever, and gone into a decline;
as a last resort she had been sent to Fort Worth for a prolonged
doctoring. No matter how many children you have, the one in danger
becomes precious out of all reason; and no light of faith had sustained
Hagar. "They never come back," was what she said the day she watched
Effie out of sight.

Yet Effie had rallied; Hagar now had word that her daughter's recovery
was complete, and she was coming home. To Hagar it was a miracle and a
resurrection. There was warmth, now, even serenity, in the deep-hollowed
eyes that had so often chilled Rachel; and a great weight seemed lifted
from them all. Perhaps none of them had realized the degree to which
this dour, strong-willed, and embittered woman had dominated their
prairie.

And more. While convalescent in Fort Worth, Effie had made good her time
by catching herself a young man, of pretty good family at that, by all
reports. She was bringing him home with her; they were to be
married--out here, in her father's house. The Zachary women spent little
time regretting the monotony of their lives; perhaps they did not even
know how barren of reward their lives actually were. Yet they treasured
every least diversion, and made the most of it. Now, suddenly, they had
a wedding to look forward to.

Rachel had never known Effie very well. She remembered her, perhaps
unkindly, as watery-eyed and washed-out, with a bluish, translucent
look. Thinking of Effie as a romantic figure was none too easy, but
Rachel took this hurdle in her stride. Immediately, she began to imagine
what the wedding would be like. Since she had never seen one, her mental
picture of it flowered most wonderfully, unrestrained by facts. She
couldn't seem to help seeing the whole doings spaciously mansioned, with
great numbers of handsome people coming to it. All were beautifully
dressed, especially the women, whose many-hued gowns were reflected in a
floor as brightly polished as wet ice. None of this would ever be. The
few families who might possibly get there had never seen the kind of
clothes Rachel was imagining, and never would in their lives. And the
wedding would have to contain itself in the log house of the Rawlinses,
which was hardly bigger than the Zachary soddy. As for polished
floors--the Zacharys at least had a wooden floor, long since scrubbed
white as bone, and it had never reflected anything yet. The Rawlins
floor was of dirt....

In her present mood Hagar talked readily and unabashed, in the language
of her own hills. The hampers she had brought, as was usual, carried a
huge baking of crackling bread, and much more. When Matthilda made the
conventional protest--"Why, Hagar, you shouldn't have!"--Hagar said,
"'Tain't nawthin', Mattie." Probably nobody else had ever addressed
Matthilda as "Mattie" in her life.

Along toward sundown they heard the first day's horse-gather coming in.
The deep-dug back wall often brought the sound of hoofs into the house,
through the earth, from a long way off. Today they listened for half an
hour to a faint humming in the ground, increasing slowly to a tremor,
then to the drumming of hundreds of hoofs, before at last they heard the
whooping of the hands. The riders were hazing and frolicking, showing
off because Georgia Rawlins was with them; they poured the herd in at
the gallop, running like a storm. The uproar sent a dust cloud sky high
as they choused the winter-wild stock into the long night corrals across
the Dancing Bird.

Georgia Rawlins came on in. She was a big girl a couple of years older
than Rachel, tall as her mother, and strongly made; handsome, rather
than pretty, but bright-eyed and full of bounce, from hours in the
prairie wind. She came in briskly, with a loud but shy, "Oh, hi,
everybody!" Her great shapeless riding skirt was held up in front of
her, avoiding both stumbles and embraces, for it embarrassed her to be
hugged by women. She bolted for the bedroom, to change into other
clothes she had carried in a roll behind her saddle.

This was the girl who would normally have been Rachel's best friend;
there was no choice of others. But both families tacitly understood that
Georgia was Cash's girl. Supposedly they would marry at some
undetermined time, when Cash got around to building a place to live.
This threat stirred up a certain amount of possessiveness in Rachel, so
that she very easily found faults aplenty in Georgia, and not much else.
Probably no girl would have seemed worthy to Rachel, where her brothers
were concerned. She took to noticing that Georgia moved like a tomboy,
always ready to climb a corral, or the like, in ways that showed her
legs; and could cuss like a man, though she wouldn't try it in front of
Hagar. _More like a man in girl's clothes_, Rachel told herself, but
without much conviction. If there was anything unfeminine about Georgia,
the boys didn't seem to know it.

Georgia reappeared in full-skirted blue cotton. The dress looked
familiar, for it was the only decent one she had, but Rachel had to
admit, with a twinge, that she looked all right. Georgia had a lot of
mouse-blond hair, which she had tied back with a blue ribbon. _Wrong
color blue_, Rachel hoped, without looking too closely. But she envied
Georgia's strap slippers, new since they had seen her. _Finally got
shoes on you, I see. Had to rope and throw you, of course. And
stockings, too--will wonders never cease. Now, if next you hear of
underwear..._

What Georgia thought of Rachel was not known. Most of the time she
seemed unaware of her.

Soon, though, the men began coming in, and no awkwardness of any kind
could long survive the excitement of a house full of people. The two
Rawlins boys, though lacking in flash, at least were young men who were
not Rachel's brothers. Charlie was the youngest Rawlins, and the one
nearest Rachel's age. He had sad, slow-moving eyes in a shy, quiet
face--an empty face, Rachel thought it. The Rawlins heavy-set strength
had missed Charlie. Only unusual thing about him, and it was kind of
ridiculous, was his great tangle of dusty-looking hair, which stood
straight up. He kept plastering it down with water, but it no sooner
stopped dripping than it began to spring up again, a tuft at a
time--Ping!--like wire busting loose in a freeze. Rachel knew that
Charlie's eyes followed her moonishly, whenever he thought she wasn't
noticing. She found this pleasantly exciting, even though she didn't
care anything about him.

Charlie's brother Jude, of an age somewhere between Ben and Cassius, was
a likely sample of what his father must have been, before salt pork and
inactivity crept up on him--bull-necked, hammered down in the legs, and
heavy of bone and muscle. Andy stood in awe of him, admiring his
strength.

"Why, he's got leaders in his wrists thick as the haft of a brand iron,"
Andy said once. "Thicker even."

"And Ben can throw him over his head," Rachel tacked onto it.

Jude stayed close to his father and Ben Zachary, listening doggedly, in
hopes of learning something.

Cassius was the one who outshone everybody, when he finally came in.
Ben, in his old, worn clothes, still looked like the boss; even while he
was talking with a courteous deference to Zeb Rawlins, Ben still looked
like the man in charge. But Cash was all dressed up, astonishing Rachel,
who had not noticed what he was wearing at breakfast, in the sleepiness
before dawn. Black leather shirt, wrapped high in the throat, like a
stock; black trousers, after he took his brush leggings off. Black,
silver-conchoed leather cuffs and belt. Rachel thought he looked
wonderful. Ben's eyes, though, may have been belittling when they rested
on his brother, as if he thought Cassius a fool.

After supper Ben and Zeb Rawlins got their heads together over the
bookkeeping that was to Ben the meanest chore in all the cattle
business.

Rachel saw that Zeb Rawlins kept slowly shaking his head, while Ben
might be having a hard time hiding his opinion that Zeb had the outlook
of a one-horse sodbuster. Zeb would reap half the benefit of Ben's
winter trades, but he had not okayed any buying. Hard feeling always
developed when two outfits started even, on the same range, and one came
out way ahead of the other; so Ben wanted to give Zeb half the profits
on purchased stock, while guaranteeing him against loss. But Zeb thought
Ben highhanded, and a plunger as well. He was stubbornly sitting back in
the breeching.

They didn't get far, and it was just as well.

Georgia, harder to squelch than a prairie fire, got Cash to his feet,
then Charlie and Jude; and of course Rachel. They pushed things back and
started up a singing game--a kind of a scamper, first, in which one
stood in the middle, and a boy chased a girl around him until he caught
her. Then others like that, with clapping and stamping for music, the
Rawlinses as tickled as kids with the noisy wooden floor. Couldn't have
been more childish, actually. "Stole old Blue! And I know who! Here I
come, and I see you!" Pretty silly, but plenty loud. Ben and Zeb had to
give up.

"If only Effie was here," Hagar kept saying. She was very much here in
their minds, a part of the great day acoming, that had been such a long,
long time on the way. With Effie, they had in this one room all who were
to have a part in the bust-up of the Dancing Bird range. Or rather, all
save one, who was in nobody's mind; unless, perhaps, the shadow of a
wretched and doomed old man sometimes crossed Ben's thought or
Matthilda's, like a ghost of the living, unasked and unwanted.

The room became hot; when the girls blew their hair out of their eyes,
little damp tendrils were left stuck to their foreheads. "Now swing the
other! That's the wrong one! Go right back where you started
from...." One rompy, let-yourself-go night like this had to last them
all for a long time. Rachel wanted to hold onto it, as if it were the
last night in the world.

It was the last, for these people as a group. They were never again all
together under the same roof.




CHAPTER 9


It began to rain; not in the good old soaker they really
needed, but in bursts that doused the prairie hard and briefly, with
spells of sunshine and rainbows between showers. Ben walked out
bareheaded in the first rain that fell. He spread his arms to it, and
turned his face up to be rained on, getting whopped all over with drops
as big as dollars. The Dancing Bird rose, and the grass started.
Winter-gaunted cows and horses gorged themselves into bloats and colics,
but all would be well with them now, for the time being.

In the house the women eyed muddy stains spreading upon the whitewashed
roof boards, and swore the sod roof must be shingled over this year for
sure. But the house would get no attention now. All day long Jude's
hammer rang at the forge, as he repaired the wagons and shrunk new iron
to the wheels. Every few minutes came a yell, the angry squeal of a
horse, and a splatter of hoofs, as somebody fought to get the hump out
of a range-wild pony.

Every year they had the same argument about whether Rachel was to be
allowed out around the hands. When she was little, Matthilda had feared
she would get her head kicked off, and later that she would hear too
much rowdy language. Now that she was a young lady, the objection was
obvious. About every third girl in Texas ran off with some young
cowhand, who might amount to something later, but showed no signs of it
at the time. Rachel always lost the battle, yet won the war. Gradually
she would begin sifting out, on useful errands that somehow became more
frequent by the hour; till even her mother got used to it, and accepted
that nothing was actually happening to her.

This year Ben felt that the whole thing had better be handled a
different way. He didn't say anything, but come afternoon, the day after
the Rawlinses' visit, he rode to the house, and hollered for an extra
slicker. When Rachel brought it to the stoop, he sung out, "Rachel's
with me, Mama!" And he had her up behind his saddle, and through the
Dancing Bird, before objection could be raised.

Only thing, he explained to Rachel, he wanted to see something before he
turned her loose on her wild lone, so she would have to stay put where
he told her. "Right--square--here," he said, letting her off on the
fence of the round busting corral.

She sat on the top rail, hugging her luck, for here was put on the best
show they had. Half a dozen of the best rough-string riders got a few
dollars extra for working the round corral. The corrida Ben had hired
was full of youngsters who had ridden before they could walk, and most
of the time since. They would fight anything that wanted to fight, so
long as they weren't crippled up. But the round corral busters were
expected to turn a mustang into a saddle horse without any wasted
roughing, and this took a kind of horse-savvy that had to be born in a
man.

Into the round corral, half a dozen at a time, were hazed the horses
that had never before felt a rope--called "colts," whatever their ages
might be. All were geldings, age-hardened at full growth; the Zacharys
rode no mares, no fillies, and no colts under four. Like the longhorns,
the Texas mustangs came of Spanish stock, abandoned upon a strange
continent long ago. After running wild for three centuries, beset by
wolves, drouths, and bitter winters, they had a runty look, but an
almost incredible toughness and endurance.

With the range-wild colts came the meanest bad-actors from the rough
strings, the ratchet-heads that never knew when they were licked, but
had to be fought out all over again every spring. These knew what they
were up against, and were not afraid of it; they fought wickedly and
cunningly, bucking as they had never bucked when they were fear-crazed
colts. You didn't have to be thrown to get hurt riding horses like that.
Rough-string riders were smashed up and through before they were thirty.

Not every year, but once in every few hundred horses, a killer might
turn up. Usually there was nothing about him to warn you. Any colt was
likely to strike, or lash out, or try for you with a snap of the teeth
fit to take off your arm, as you worked around him. Or he might groan,
deep in his chest like an angering bull, as you snubbed him short for
saddling. None of this meant anything. A killer almost never charged a
man on foot, as a stallion might do; he might even stand quiet, as if
earlier handling had cured his fear of men. But when his rider was
thrown he turned like a lion, and trampled with whirling, stiff-legged
jumps, sometimes savaging with his teeth.

The rare killers hardly explained why nearly all the young riders wore
pistols; and neither did the unlikely chance of a dragging account for
it. If a thrown rider's boot caught in a stirrup, almost any horse would
kick him to death in a hurry. But this happened so seldom that few had
ever seen it, and it could be made impossible by using tapaderas, such
as the brush-country riders always wore on their stirrups. In any case,
neither a man slammed hard on the ground nor one stirrup-dragged by a
runaway was likely to draw and fire soon enough to do himself any good.
Even the bystanders, invariably taken by surprise, generally failed to
take effective action in time.

But the only boy you saw unarmed was one who hadn't been able to get
hold of a gun. They wore them belted snug and high if they were going to
ride, with a slitted thong on the hammer to keep the gun in the holster;
or slung them low, tied down to the thigh, if they expected to be afoot.
They wore guns to break horses or to brand calves, or when they weren't
working at all. Most of them took their guns to bed. A seven-pound gun
could develop an almighty heavy drag, in fourteen or sixteen hours of
riding, but only a thunderstorm could cause it to be laid away. For gun
wearing was a fashion; maybe it was a fashion set by men in trouble with
the law--but a fashion just the same.

So, when a rough-string boy who called himself Johnny Portugal came
sidling along the fence to where Rachel was perched, he was armed with a
huge hog-leg of a percussion revolver, like most of the rest. He leaned
an elbow on the top rail close to Rachel, and crossed his feet in a pose
of ease. His mouth seemed uncommonly full of large teeth, and the grin
he flashed as he looked up at her showed them all.

"You been living around here long?" Johnny asked pleasantly; and that
was as far as he got.

Perfect, for Ben's purpose, because nothing even remotely off-color in
Johnny's remark confused the issue. Ben had not set out to teach these
saddle tramps their manners; he didn't give a hoot whether they had any
or not. What he wanted was to warn them against messing around Rachel at
all.

Ben spun Johnny Portugal by the shoulder with his left hand, and with
his right hand swung what could be called a slap. His hand was open, and
the blow rang like a slap. But the heel of the hand carried Ben's full
weight from the heels. Johnny's feet seemed to fly up, his hat sailed
off, and his head cracked a five-inch pole as he hit the fence. He ended
sitting in the mud against the bottom pole, and in this position grabbed
for his gun. His thumb failed to flick the thong from the hammer on the
first try, and he had to start the draw again. Ben stood waiting with an
appearance of patience while Johnny Portugal fumbled. The gun came out
at last; and Ben instantly kicked it over the fence.

Cassius had come over the fence, and was standing beside his brother,
looking happy, and interested, as Johnny Portugal looked up. Rachel
remembered afterward that Cash had been fooling around nearby,
accomplishing nothing, all the time she had been sitting there. One
brother on each side of the fence, watching the bait Ben had put out.

"He gets it from our old man," Cassius told the seated man. "Old Zack
broke a Comanche's neck with a slap like that, right in the middle of a
Kiowa camp. Indians always called him Stone Hand." Well--that was the
way it was told in Texas, though the story had been fixed up a little,
by later narrators. Actually, the Comanche had only been knocked
out--which the Kiowas had taken as a good joke on the Comanche.

"I got time coming," Johnny mumbled, rubbing his head, and then his jaw.

"We pay off in Wichita," Cash said.

"I ain't fired?"

"What for? You're the party done all the sufferin', so far."

"You're lucky it wasn't my brother," Ben told Johnny.

"Tell me he hits any harder," Johnny said, "and I walk back to town!"

"He doesn't hit at all," Ben said; and they walked away.

Matthilda could have found no cause for complaint, after that, in the
averted eyes, the ducked hatbrims, or the wary circlings of cowhands who
had to pass Rachel. It was as if she had learned to rattle.




CHAPTER 10


While it lasted, the lively horse-handling made every day a
fiesta, but it was over in less than a week. The colts would have to
learn their work as it went along. The cook wagon and the bed wagon
began to roll. From here on the corrida would get home only every third
or fourth night, coming in long after dark and pulling out before the
first light. A couple of hands were left at the home layout, cleaning
out the well, or mending saddles, or burning lime; there were always
plenty of odd jobs to keep them busy while they served as a garrison.
And one of the brothers always came in overnight when the corrida was
out. This seemed all the precaution that was needed, for the moon was at
deep wane; and even when it waxed again, the Kiowas would remain pinned
for one moon more, while their ponies regained weight.

Almost every day Rachel rode out to the wagons with whichever brother
had slept home. The range hands were rounding up, cutting out the beeves
that would make up the first drive, and chousing them into bunches that
would finally be thrown into one great herd. The Zachary boys worked
cattle in the hell-for-leather way Old Zack had learned in the brush
country, where you rode full stretch or lost your cow. Often Zeb Rawlins
watched the parting of the cattle from his buggy, and Rachel knew he was
sometimes angered by what seemed to him a brutal roughing of the stock.
But she wasn't going to worry about old Zeb's opinions or anything else,
while these treasured days of the green-up lasted, to her the most
precious of the year.

Part of it was the good smells, of cows and horses, and leather, and
beans boiling, and salt pork frying, sometimes the spice of trampled
sage; while everywhere, and above all, the fragrance of young grass
responding to the rains made a magic like nothing else ever known. It
rose upon a new warmth, gentle, moist, and living, from the unlocked
vitality of the earth itself--the smell of hope, of promise, of a world
reborn. Under the ground and upon it and in the air, every
winter-deadened thing awoke, turned young and eager; and human hearts
rose singing in answer.

And partly it was the sounds. From the increasing herds came a
continuous bawling that is like no other music on earth, to cow-folks'
ears. Underneath it ran a perpetual soft, deep tone that was the voice
of the sod itself under the beating of innumerable hoofs.

Before long she was sleeping out with the wagons half the time.
Matthilda had never been so easygoing with her before. The truth was
that Matthilda had been unable to shake off the forebodings she had been
made to feel by Kelsey's appearance on the Dancing Bird. Often when she
looked at Rachel she seemed to see a shadow hanging over her, menacing
the child's place in the world, and her will to live--perhaps
threatening her life itself; and she was moved to a loving pity, in
which she wanted nothing in the world so much as for Rachel to enjoy a
free and happy time, in her innocence, while yet she could.

Out in the overnight camps, Rachel was the only one ever allowed to
sleep in a wagon, sheltered by its bowed canvas. Even Ben and Cash, even
the cook, slept on the ground, and would if it were under water. At
night the herd was quieter, though never entirely still. When a critter
lay down it made a big, contented-sounding "whoof," as it settled, knees
first, into the trampled grass. If there were thunderstorms they would
shuffle themselves all night, tense and ready to run, and all hands
might have to stay in the saddle. Even on quiet nights the cattle might
get restless, for no apparent reason, snuffy and always listening. What
did they listen for, spooks? Wolves? They could get themselves strung up
until the crash of a falling cigarette ash was enough to explode them,
and they would jump and go, all at once. One night when they broke they
like to ran down the wagon, rocking it as they blundered past, until it
almost turned turtle.

Singing to the cows seemed to quiet them, and help to keep them from
going snuffy, nobody knew just why. Maybe it covered up small sounds
that the cattle might think were suspicious, and gave them something
meaningless to listen to. Or maybe it kept them assured that the two or
three men who rode spur-jingling and saddle-creaking round them all
night weren't up to anything. So all night long some of the hands would
be singing out there, while they slowly circled the bedded herd.

The long rides between the wagons and the house, yellow-slickered in the
bursts of rain, were almost the best. It was only when she was alone in
the vastness of the night that the prairie ever made Rachel afraid. They
were getting a lot of rainbows; once she counted eleven in a day.
Between showers, all over the prairie, the meadow larks were singing.
When she was learning to talk, way back in the first year she could
remember, she had known the meadow larks were saying, "Happy--new
year--to you!" And they were saying it yet.

But the day came when Rachel realized, with a hard shock of
disappointment, that the spring work was almost over. She could not
understand how so big a herd as they were going to drive could have been
made up so soon. But now the long-winged chutes went up, for a quick
road-branding of the herd; and that was always the last thing they did.
As the hands began bunching the cattle for the push through the
squeezers, Rachel knew the lovely green-up time was done.




CHAPTER 11


Jude had forged eight stamp-irons for each of the two squeezes
they built, so that plenty of irons were always cherry red, no matter
how fast the critters came through. Using plenty of branders and plenty
of fires, they branded a cow on both sides at once; while ear-markers
cut a dangling strip of skin, called a jingle, on each ear, at the same
time. The cows went through there on the run.

For a road brand Cash was using a kind of Galloping X, only he said it
was a bird, and that it was dancing. Plenty big, and burned high on the
ribs, it could be seen as far as you could see the cow; and the jingles
served to identify an animal that so much as raised its head in the
middle of a herd. Zeb Rawlins had some grumbling to do about the size of
the road brand, which he declared cut down the value of the hide; and he
disliked the ear jingles, which seemed to him a senseless disfigurement.
Ben undertook the job of assuaging Zeb, and fending him off, determined
that the tough job ahead of his brother should be made no harder; and
the herd was branded as Cash wanted it.

Then suddenly all grumbling stopped. Georgia Rawlins, who had been
riding virtually alongside Cash every day, came out no more; Jude and
Charlie took to scouring distant corners of the range on their own, far
away from the wagons. Only old Zeb still sat lumpishly in his buggy,
watching over his interest with what looked like a jaundiced eye.

"Reckon they got the word," Cash said.

"Yes," Ben answered.

Together they rode to Zeb's buggy.

"Zeb," Ben said, "you got something you want to say to me?"

"Well, no; not now." Zeb scratched his jowls, looking them over with the
stoniest eyes they had ever seen in a human head. "Not right now..."

They knew they had got answer enough. Kelsey had been to the
Rawlinses--or else had stirred up somebody else, who had carried his lie
to them.

Cassius was for dragging the whole thing into the open, and at once.
Settle the matter once and for all, so far as it concerned the Rawlinses
and this range, in a single explosion, as violent as needful. He never
did have any use for a waiting game.

"Red niggers," he said through his teeth, furious enough to go to the
guns. "We're all of us red niggers to them, right now! You going to
stand hitched for that?"

"What about Georgia?"

"Georgia will stand by me or she won't," Cash said in his anger. "And
right now I don't care a hell's hoot which it is!"

Ben judged it was time to get his own back up. "Now listen here! You
bust up this drive, and you'll never boss another--you hear me? Because
I'll bust your God-damned back! You get that herd to Wichita, before you
talk feud-fight around me!"

Cassius wasn't worried about his back, or what his brother might do, but
the thought of having his drive broken up before it even started threw a
scare into him. He shut up.




CHAPTER 12


Rachel drove her mother out in the democrat wagon to see the
herd start off. Matthilda always announced, on the eve of every drive,
that she didn't believe she'd go out this time. The chill of the
darkness before dawn made her knees hurt, and when you'd seen one you'd
seen them all. But hot coffee and the excitement of the move-out always
changed her mind when morning came.

They began to hear the moaning of the cattle a long way off, and the
sound of the herd, coming to them across the long prairie miles, carried
a sense of its great mass, as vast in proportions as its importance to
their lives. For an hour the herd remained hidden from them by the roll
of the land, while its earth rumble increased imperceptibly, and its
voice developed until they could hear the bawling of individual cows.
Then they came out upon a ridge that Rachel had chosen the day before,
and below them moved the herd.

The first drive of the year always seemed new, as if it were the first
drive of the world. The longhorns themselves were spectacular--almighty
tall, gaunt, long-striding beasts, armed with horns spreading six,
eight, and even ten feet; and Cash was driving more than four thousand
head. They had moved some bigger herds than this, and driven them a
whole lot farther than this one had to go. But you couldn't look at this
broad, slow-moving belt of horned stock, seemingly stretched out as far
as the eye could reach, without feeling that here was the most
portentous pilgrimage ever undertaken by man.

Far out ahead the point rider rode at a walk, followed waveringly by the
lead cattle, a long way back, held loosely to the line by the forward
swing riders. No single critter had yet emerged as leader. Rachel picked
a slab-sided claybank steer, of great height and spread of horns, as the
one she'd bet on to be plodding in front when the herd raised Wichita,
someday, beyond the curve of the earth.

Behind the leaders the herd was a rebellious muddle for a mile and a
half, but a winding backbone, where the cattle were thicker, was already
beginning to show. In a couple of weeks the cattle would put themselves
into traveling order of their own accord. But even in this first
disorder, their very numbers gave the long straggle the effect of moving
at a measured pace, and with a great, slow majesty. They went past for a
long time.

A steer broke for the brush, so far off that it appeared no more than a
humping, tail-high speck; but as a pony streaked after it, closing in
long jumps, Rachel knew the rider was Andy. He got the steer by the
tail, and busted it end over end; whereafter it trotted back where it
belonged, satisfied. A hard disappointment was ahead for Andy, and
Rachel wondered if he knew it yet. Ben and Cash had told Andy a thousand
times that he couldn't be spared from home, but Andy wanted so badly to
go up the trail that he wouldn't believe they meant it. Only yesterday
he had cleaned and mended all his gear, and packed his bedroll ready to
go. But Ben would turn back tomorrow, with the six hands Cash was
leaving him, as soon as the herd was across the Red. And when he did,
Andy would be with them.

Up from the drag came the chuck wagon under its narrow-hooped canvas,
bounding most marvelously behind six apparently unbroken horses. It
looked like a runaway, but the brake wasn't on. This manner of driving
seemed to be one of the ways range cooks expressed their defiance of the
fate that had made them cooks. After the chuck wagon followed the bed
wagon, not visibly driven at all. Some unfortunate green hand with the
job of nighthawk, who herded the saddle stock by night and drove the bed
wagon by day, rustling wood for the cook in between, was probably
already asleep among the bedrolls, letting his team follow that of the
cook as it chose.

Behind the last cattle the cavy of saddle stock, something around a
hundred and seventy head, came wandering and loafing along, let to move
about as the ponies pleased. And finally Cash came loping from the
farthest tail, on his way up to the point. He came up the ridge to the
democrat wagon, and leaned from the saddle to kiss his mother and his
sister, then galloped forward. The point was already out of sight beyond
a distant rise.

Matthilda reached for Rachel's hand, and they held onto each other hard,
as the last of the great herd passed beyond them, and out of their
world.




CHAPTER 13


After the herd was gone, the work went on; and for a while it
seemed pretty lonely around the little soddy.

The Rawlinses came visiting no more; but the present coolness was easily
explained, entirely aside from any part that Abe Kelsey might have
played. Effie had been delayed, and Jude had stayed home to wait for
her. None of the Rawlinses, except Georgia, thought Cassius could handle
any part of the drive without Jude along, and Hagar had actually wanted
the drive held up, until after the wedding. Even Zeb saw that this was
ridiculous; the market would not wait for Effie, or anybody else. But
Zeb himself could not forgive Ben's failure to consult him before making
Cassius trail boss, for Zeb had hoped to put Jude in charge. Rachel
could understand why the two families had better stay away from each
other, for a while.

And Ben was gone all the time. Cash had left Ben with six men and Andy,
as well as both Rawlins boys--theoretically; though Jude was supposed to
ride and overtake the drive after his sister's wedding. There was no
Indian danger yet. The moon had been full as the herd rolled, but now it
was on the wane; the Kiowas would let their ponies strengthen on the
spring feed until the moon waxed again. Ben left two men at the
house--though even this seemed hardly needful--and worked a single wagon
far out. He was trying to catch up with the calf branding in the far
corners of the range, so that he could work closer home when the danger
time came.

Meanwhile, Rachel was having a harder and harder time getting away from
the house. The inside work had piled up some, during the green-up; but
aside from that, Matthilda seemed to feel lonelier, and less secure, as
Cassius got farther away. No sense to it, of course. But Rachel was
finding out that the less sense there is to a thing like that, the
harder it is to talk away. This quirk of the mind went back to the year
they lost Papa up there, in the crossing of the Witch River, Rachel
supposed. What few times Rachel did get out to the brandings, Georgia
was always there; that was what made her mad.

Andy rode home every day or so, but Ben got home only once during that
wane, and he might much better have stayed away. He came in very late,
and drank his coffee without sitting down. "You all right, here? I'm
fine. Work's going fair, I guess. No, they haven't heard from Effie,
far's I know. You folks need anything?" He filled his pockets with cold
vittles, and was actually at the door, when he turned back to cut
Rachel's girth for her, once and for all. "Oh, by the way--Sis--you'll
have to quit all this ramboodling around the country. You've got to stay
home."

"Now wait a minute!"

"For a lot of reasons," Ben explained. He had found Indian sign almost
every day he had been out. No big war parties, looking for fight--ponies
not ready, yet, to shake off a pursuit. Mainly horse thieves, playing
hide-and-sneak. But the whole Indian situation looked bad. Fort Sill
troops had been fired into--not just once, but three times that he knew
about. Ben predicted a full-out uprising, come summer. "Just wait till
their ponies are ready. Then you'll see!"

"Well, they're not ready yet! Never heard such a far-fetched excuse in
my life," Rachel argued. "What are you up to out there you don't want me
to know about?"

"Who, me?"

"What about Georgia? I notice she rides on the wild loose every day of
the world! Everyplace you do!"

"Who's Georgia? Oh, Georgia. I'm not running Georgia. It's you I'm
responsible for," Ben answered her, making out it was all a matter of
sweet concern for his sister's welfare.

Rachel was left low in her mind, and haunted by suspicions. Georgia
pretended to be helping with the tallies, but Rachel thought it was
mighty funny that she was always to be found tallying for Ben. Never
felt called on to help her own brothers, who got on fine without any
put-in from Georgia, seemingly. Not much to go on. Rachel couldn't
really convince herself that anything was wrong. All she knew for sure
was that a spring of seeming promise was turning into something pretty
tiresome, with fly season not even begun.

But now Abe Kelsey was in the Dancing Bird country again.




CHAPTER 14


Kelsey did not come to the house this time, though he might
have been on his way there. Neither Rachel nor Matthilda saw him. If
Rachel's understanding of her younger brother had been less acute, she
would not have known about the ugly thing that happened then, in those
days before the Kiowa moon.

One afternoon Andy rode in two hours before he could rightly be
expected, in a dusky rain; and Rachel ran down to the corral, a carbine
under her slicker, to unsaddle for him, in case he was of a mind to
catch up with a few chores. One look at Andy's face brought her up
short. He had a greenish pallor, for one thing, like something under
water.

"Andy! You're fetching down with something!"

"No--oh, no--I'm fine--" He tried to keep his face turned away from her
as he stepped down.

"Then you're hurt. Either a colt stacked you, or--" Another possibility
struck her. "Is Ben all right?"

He nodded, and pushed his rein into her hands; and he ran around behind
the trough shelter. She could hear him being sick back there, as soon as
he was out of sight. She tied the pony, and got a gourd of water from
the well by the Dancing Bird.

Andy gulped at it. "Tell me one thing. Was he here? Did you see him?"

Confused, she almost said, "Who, Ben?" Then she understood. "No," she
answered him. "I haven't seen him. But I think you have. Today."

"I didn't say..." He let it die out, and made a vague move toward his
pony.

She said, "You weren't going to tell me that, were you? And there's more
you haven't told me. _Which of you killed him?_"

"Nobody," Andy said, and looked as if he wanted to be sick again. He
drank the rest of the water. "We had a chance at him. But
somehow--something went wrong."

She got the rest out of him, then. Andy had been with Ben, a long way
out from the wagon, when Kelsey showed himself. He came toward them,
first, as if he wanted to talk--maybe had been watching for a time when
they were apart from the others. But when they pointed their horses at
him he lost his nerve, and ran for it. Andy thought he must be trying to
lead them into an ambush; he pulled up, yelling at Ben. But Ben went on,
so Andy drew carbine and followed. Kelsey rode a pretty fair horse this
time, but with no grain to it, of course. Ben closed on him fast, and
pulled his pistol. Kelsey took one look back, and the next thing he did
was unbelievable. He pitched away his rifle--and went tearing on with
his hands up, kicking his horse full stretch. Ben seemed flabbergasted;
plainly he didn't know what to do. He could have gone ahead and shot
Kelsey, but he didn't seem to think of that. He hesitated a few seconds,
then stuck away the pistol and shook out his reata. And the rest was a
nightmare.

Kelsey was jerked off his horse, but the loop had got an arm and a
shoulder, as well as the neck, and he hit the ground alive. Ben didn't
seem to know what to do about that, either. He just spurred on....

"When finally he stopped, and I come up, there wasn't nothing on that
reata but..."

Rachel let him skip that part of it.

"Ben threw away his reata, rather than step down and loose it," Andy
ended.

"You don't call that killing him?"

He shook his head. "We went back to the wagon, for tools to dig a grave.
And it started to rain. Took us two hours, before we got back where we
left him. And when we did... he was gone from there."

"Didn't you cut for sign?"

"It was raining hard by then. We couldn't find out anything." They never
did find out how Kelsey left there. "I never knew Ben to foozle so. I
suppose I should have shot Kelsey, somewhere in there. I guess," Andy
finished uncertainly.

"Why should you?"

Andy stood opening and closing his mouth. "Ben told us we had to," he
said finally.

They stood out there talking a long time, though Matthilda twice came to
the door of the house and banged on the triangle. Andy didn't know
anything more. But talking had got some of the kinks out of him, and he
returned to his normal color. They didn't have to explain anything to
Matthilda, which was just as well. The truth was that they didn't know
then just what had happened--whether Kelsey was alive, or dead, or what.

That night Rachel wept a little, silently, into her pillow, thinking
sentimentally about her brothers. She was sorry for Andy; in this mood
she thought of him as still the little innocent-eyed boy of whom he
sometimes reminded them. And she was sorriest for Ben, the one who had
always been so steady, so gentle, and so kind, yet had somehow been
driven to saddle not only himself but his brothers with a commitment to
murder. Perhaps he still did not know whether he had killed the old man
or not. But if he had, he had done it in the clumsiest way it could be
done, and she could believe he might be haunted all his life by that.

She hoped for a while that Kelsey was indeed dead, so that the whole
nightmare was over with. Then she thought how awful it was if the corpse
was stiffening somewhere out there under the brush tonight; and she was
horrified at herself, and filled with a sense of guilt.

_Why does he haunt us so? He has a reason. He had it before, and all
along. Or Ben would not have called his death. What evil thing was it we
did--or Papa did--long ago, that makes this happen now?_

She believed she would be able to make Ben tell her, now.

It did not work out that way. Before she ever spoke to Ben again,
another thing happened. This time it happened to Rachel herself, and to
nobody other, except as everyone in the family was affected by a
disaster to one. And the world as Rachel knew it turned from beneath
her, past all possible recovery.




CHAPTER 15


During the night the rain stopped; the skies were clear, the
day after Kelsey was dragged. Rachel plotted to get a horse saddled and
out of there. She meant to find Ben and at once. She knew about where
his crew was at work.

Only a year or so back, it had been hard to get Matthilda to go and lie
down, or to take any daytime rest at all. But her afternoon naps were
starting earlier this year, and lasting longer. On this day the
afternoon had hardly begun when the bedroom door closed upon her. Rachel
was out of the house in the same minute. She walked past the corrals,
and along the Dancing Bird, pretending to size-up the driftwood brought
them by the spring rise, in case Matthilda happened to be watching her
out of sight.

In another minute, as soon as she had given her mother a chance to doze,
she would have turned back to rope a pony.

She never got it done, for Ben appeared unexpectedly, and Georgia was
with him, stirrup to stirrup. They came surging up out of an arroyo some
distance downstream, and Georgia was laughing, having a great time. Then
Rachel saw her do an odd thing. Georgia's laughter stopped abruptly; she
checked, and whirled her horse in what looked very much like an attempt
to get out of sight. Too late, of course. Georgia recovered herself at
once, and stopped where she was. Her horse shied, she explained
afterward. It was not important. What mattered was the way Rachel took
it. For her resentment of this girl suddenly popped sparks like a sap
log.

_You weren't coming to the house at all. You tried to get back, without
I saw you. Rode here to be with him--but didn't want us to know! I knew
it was you made Ben hang my saddle up._

Georgia exchanged a word or two with Ben. Then both waved at Rachel, and
came on at a walk. Rachel saw she wasn't going to have any chance to
talk to her brother at all, not even here in their own house, what with
this interloper butting in.

_Sure. Come right on in. May as well, now. Make yourself right at home,
just as cool as a hung hog. I've had about enough of you!_ It never
occurred to her that Ben could be blamed.

She was getting ready to fix Ben something to eat, and wondering if she
could bring herself to set a plate for Georgia, when Georgia dismounted
at the stoop, letting Ben take her pony to the corral.

"Ben lost his reata," Georgia said as she walked in. "That's a man for
you. Doesn't even know where or how, seemingly. Had to come in to get a
rope."

Rachel must have known that it was jealousy had hold of her, a very
different jealousy than she had ever felt when Georgia was fooling
around with Cassius. For just a moment she wondered whether she had
better start a war she could not finish, or risk an open bust-up with
any member of that other family with whom they were already having
difficulty enough.

"Been seeing a good deal of Ben lately, haven't you?"

"I help keep the tallies. It frees a man for the work. Anyway, we have
to keep a cross-tally. For Pa."

"Who's cross-tallying for Cash? Oh, I forgot. Cash is way far up the
Wichita Trail. Out of sight, out of mind. I guess that's plenty easy,
for some."

Georgia answered shortly, but reasonably. She had not come looking for
this fight, and felt no need of it. "Get this through your head. I'm not
bespoke. Not to Cash or anybody else. When I am, I'll tell you."

She moved away, toward the wash bench; and Rachel, turning to the table,
picked up the long Bowie knife with which they carved, and cut a
paper-thin slice from the pot roast. The run of the honed blade through
the meat felt good to her in her present mood. She knew she had said
enough. She had a chance to drop it now--the last chance she would have
in her life; but she couldn't let it alone.

With her back to Georgia she said, "Ben isn't fixing to settle down. He
likes to ride free on the trails."

Georgia stood looking at her sideways. She hadn't angered yet. Her
riding had taken the winter softness off of her, and now she was
thoughtfully rubbing the palm of one hand on a hip bone. "Neither am I
fixing to settle down," she said. "Not for a while, anyway."

"Then why do you keep tolling them on--each behind the other's back? We
have a name for that, where I come from!"

Georgia's eyes seemed to go higher in her head, signaling that if Rachel
wanted fight she could have it, pretty quick. But what she said was,
"Oh, hell, Rachel! Why don't you quit acting like a brat?"

"I won't have you coming between Cash and Ben--you hear me?"

"I hear you very well," Georgia said slowly. "You sound like a spying
little sneak, to me."

Rachel's head came up. "I am Rachel Zachary," she said. "Everywhere
in--"

"You're what?" Georgia got in.

"Everywhere in Texas, they know who the Zacharys are. And do you know
how many people there are in Texas can give a Zachary slack? Not one!"

"That's right," Georgia answered. "It's a big pity you ain't one."

Rachel stared, no more than puzzled, then.

"You're no Zachary," Georgia made it plain for her. "You're no tittle of
relation to a Zachary."

"You out of your mind?"

"Why, I knowed it first time I seen you. Look at yourself! Where's the
Zachary bone? You got bones like a snuff stick. Look at your hide! The
sun ain't hardly touched you, and already you're the color of a red hog
in a mudhole. You couldn't pass for a Zachary in a thousand years!"

With shock, with bewilderment, Rachel saw that Georgia believed what she
was saying. She stammered out, "How do you think I got here--if--"

"You're nothing but a catch-colt, a foundling--picked up bare-nekkid in
the road, at that! You don't know who you be, or what--and you never
will! And everybody knows it."

Rachel's lips turned white, and curved in a little smile, while her eyes
went wide and fixed. The knife in her hand poised in front of her, edge
upward, and she moved toward Georgia, light and quick on the balls of
her feet.

From the bedroom door Matthilda screamed--"Rachel!"

She stopped short, and the knife clattered from her hand. Before her
eyes the room careened and darkened, so that she almost fell.

Georgia had retreated from her, stumbling over her awkward riding skirt.
She was not a girl who scared easily, but this time there was horror in
her eyes; for she knew she had never been nearer death in her life.
Before Rachel's vision had cleared she was gone.

Matthilda held Rachel in her arms, comforting her, crooning to her.
"There, now, there... dear girl... dear, dear little girl....
Everything's all right."

"What did she mean? Mama--what could she mean?" Rachel was shaking
weakly, but her mind was working again.

"Don't think about it. Put it all out of your mind--please,
Rachel--please!"

"She believes it. I'd have known if she was making it up. Mama--is it
true?"

Long ago, Matthilda had known this moment might come. In her mind she
had rehearsed what she would say, forming two opposite answers, hoping
to know when the time came which one to use. One was a straight-out
denial, relying upon vehemence and a pretended astonishment. "Why!
Shockin'! Fiddlesticks!" The other was meant to be a natural and easy
acceptance as of something unimportant. "Why, yes, dear. Of course.
Didn't I ever tell you? Never thought about it, I guess...." An
uneasy feeling had remained that neither answer could save the
tranquillity she desired for Rachel above all things. Some third way
seemed to be hovering just beyond her reach; she never found it.

But the years had come between, dimming the danger and the need. She had
almost been able to forget that Rachel was not her own, because she so
wanted to forget. Now as she reached for the answers she had devised she
could not remember what they had been.

She faltered, "Why--why, Rachel--why, I--" And in that moment of groping
it became too late.

"So it's true, then," Rachel said.




CHAPTER 16


For almost a week Rachel tried to find herself, while it
seemed to her that not a single familiar compass point remained. Her
whole identity had been struck away. These familiar people among whom
she lived were in reality strangers; they fed and sheltered her by
tolerance and charity, not in accordance with her rights, for she had no
rights. Sometimes she recalled moments of rebellion, and times she had
asserted herself, and she was shamed. There was self-pity in it, and a
chill of fear, as if she had been sleepwalking all her life upon the
edge of an abyss. _It must be people like me who become fancy girls_,
she thought, without ever having seen one in her life. Mama had
sometimes spoken with horror of the dreadful women who preyed upon the
cowboys, in the wild towns at the end of the trails, thanking God that
her sons would never go near women like that. But a girl who belonged
nowhere and to no one couldn't be expected to care where she was or what
she did, Rachel thought now. She wanted to get away, and lose herself
where nobody knew her, and who she was couldn't matter. Yet she did not
know how to turn her back on these people who had done everything for
her that had ever been done in her life.

She tried to find out how the Zacharys had come by her in the first
place. Matthilda was tempted to invent an elaborate story, giving Rachel
an inspiring family history and a romantic orphaning. She would have
done it, too, had she not known perfectly well that she would be tripped
up by it, soon or late. She compromised by telling part of the truth.
Rachel's natural parents were unknown, she admitted, and this was true.
But here she began changing the facts a little bit. Lots of wagons were
on their way to California, she said, and Rachel had accidentally got
left behind by one of them. At a rest-over camp, called Possum Stop. It
wasn't there any more. Nobody knew which wagon, or why the family never
came back to look for their baby. Maybe they'd been fooled on where they
lost her--looked a long time in some wrong place. Or... it was
possible something happened to them.... It came out a whole lot more
lie than truth, before she wiggled out of it, perhaps because so little
truth was known.

Matthilda tried to comfort Rachel every way she could think of, for she
was as miserable as the girl. She tried reasoning. "Every family has its
bad people, and its useless people, and its good people, and its great
ones. You are you. You can be what you want to be. What else matters?"
She tried religion, in her own conception of it, which was vague, but of
high integrity: "God is love. We are His children. We are bound together
and sheltered by our love for each other, and His love for us. For love
is what God is." Rachel wasn't listening.

She had often told Rachel that men hated to see women cry, and that she
must teach herself never to weep before anyone. But when everything else
failed, Matthilda herself fell back on tears. Now she let her lip
quiver, and her eyes brimmed. "I wanted a baby girl so much. I was so
happy making your little clothes. All of us loved you so, and wanted you
so--didn't you want us?"

Rachel did love Matthilda very dearly; which was not hard, for no
gentler spirit could be imagined. Matthilda could be shocked, or hurt,
but no one ever saw her angered; and she lived for her children to an
all but fatuous degree.

But now Rachel was cloyed and repelled. She hated herself for it, and
she pitied Matthilda, but that was the way she felt. Wanting to be left
alone, she pretended she was satisfied, and that everything was all
right.

She asked, "How much do the boys know?"

"Andy doesn't know. He wasn't born, then. And Cassius--well--I don't
believe he ever thinks about such things. Ben knows, of course; he was
seven, then. But we promised each other it would be our secret. We
wanted you to be just our own." Then, pleadingly, while those ready
tears threatened again: "We don't need to say anything to them. Or to
anybody. Ever." She wanted everything put back just as it had been
before. But Rachel did not feel that this could ever be.

_All my life I'll wonder who I am._

She stayed out of the house all she could. She doubted if either Ben or
Andy noticed that anything had happened to her, but she stayed away from
them, too, what few times they came in. She was watching the tadpoles in
a still slough of the Dancing Bird, without seeing them at all, when a
strange new idea came to her.

_Why, then, Ben isn't my brother. He isn't even my cousin. He isn't any
relation at all_....

Of course the same thing was true of Cash and Andy, but with them it
seemed to make small difference; her affection for them could stay the
same, whether they were brothers or just childhood friends. But with Ben
it was somehow a peculiarly disturbing, even frightening thought, hard
to get near to, after thinking of him as a brother for so long. She
circled it skittishly, as a puppy scouts a fascinating new thing that
may bite.

Ben had always been much in her thoughts, a good deal more than the
others had ever been. She had never realized before how often she
wondered where he was, and what he was doing, whenever he was out of
sight, which was most of the time. But now she reached into the past,
and most of the things she remembered best were mixed up with Ben. They
were the only ones in the family who kept playing jokes on each other.
Like the time Ben sneaked the little green frog into the water pitcher.
Rachel had not let on, but after she refilled his water glass the frog
was in that. Ben pretended not to see it--seemed about to drink it down,
when Mama squealed. Then they both had laughed so hard, over nothing
worth it, seemingly, for the others just stared at them, seeing nothing
funny.

Farther back. There were the talking animals--the dwarf owl, only as big
as your thumb; the spotted coyote, the mud hen, and the red mare. For a
couple of years, when Rachel was seven-eight years old, Ben had kept
bringing home accounts of conversations with such-like critters. They
told him all kinds of stories, mostly without much sense to them, and
never with any moral, unless it was useless. ("Never stick your head in
a clam," the mud hen had advised him.) Whatever became of them all? They
just kind of died out. Perhaps Ben knew when she outgrew them.

Still farther back, when she was four, five, and six. Moments of mixed
terror and delight while Ben was introducing her to horses. She had
first been on a horse in his arms, but later had stood barefoot behind
his saddle, arms around his neck, while he chased a dodging brush
rabbit, and almost roped it. Later, through overconfidence in an old
roping horse, he had got her a fall that knocked her senseless; but she
hadn't blamed him. Those were the same years when she had been most
afraid of the dark, and sometimes when she had been sent to bed alone he
had come and sung to her while she went to sleep. His songs were the
same woebegone, bloody, yet somehow soothing ballads the cowhands sang
to the cattle: "Pore young dying cowboy, Never more he'll roam, Shot
right through the chest five times, He ain't never coming home...."
Could it be that Ben had been only eleven years old when she was four?
She couldn't remember when he hadn't seemed as big and safe as a fort.

Even before that. When she was three, and had nightmares, she remembered
running in her nightie, over floors icy to her bare feet, to jump into
Ben's bunk; for he was the one who never sent her away.

In a few days she was thinking: _All I want is to wait on him, and take
care of him. Even if he married somebody else, I'd be happy if I could
just work for him all my life._ But later she knew it wasn't so. _No--I
couldn't stand for anybody else to have him. I'd rather die._

She began to light up again; and Matthilda was so relieved to see it
that she never dared to ask her what had come over her.

Rachel sent a note out to Georgia, next time Andy stopped home. "I take
pen in hand to say I'm right sorry," she wrote. "I had no call to act up
so. You taken me by surprise, first off. But I see now you told me
something I bad needed to know, and I'm right thankful."

Georgia's prompt answer was scrawled on a leaf from a tally book, and
appeared to have been written in the saddle. _During a fit of pitching_,
Rachel criticized, but was glad to get it. "Friend Rachel," it began,
and went on to express relief. She hadn't told anybody what their
Donnybrook was about, and hoped Rachel hadn't. All Ben knew was that she
"got run the Hell out with a bucher Nife." Laughed fit to die every time
he throwed it up to her. What she needed was her mouth sewed up, Georgia
finished.

Whatever it was the Rawlins family had gone so sour about seemed either
to have been withheld from Georgia, or had not affected her. So they
fixed it up, as they thought, and just about in time. For now the moon
was coming full again; and this time the Kiowa war ponies would be tough
and full of run.




CHAPTER 17


During grass season they were under the Kiowa Moon only a few
days more than half the time; but the fort up periods were such a
nuisance that they seemed to come directly on top of each other, and to
last forever.

While the moon was full you must never leave the house unarmed, and even
in broad daylight you must never go alone beyond gunshot of support. You
must fort up every night, battle shutters barred and weapons ready, as
if certain of attack while you slept. After dark you could strike no
light, and even the ashes on the hearth must be drenched, lest a coal
should wake and show a gleam. You must remember where the
plaster-covered loopholes were in the walls, and be ready to knock them
open with a blow. When a Kiowa scout came feeling out your defenses, you
had better whistle a shot or two over his head without hitting him, as a
persuasion to look farther. The water barrel must be kept filled from
the well by the creek, the homemade ammunition kept in supply, the
gunlocks taken down over and over. There was a lot more. The very
success of all these precautions made them the more difficult to
maintain; for it was pretty hard to keep up to scratch when nothing ever
actually happened.

Ben had been saving the work near home for the Kiowa Moon. Of the six
hired hands held back from the drive, he had meant to give half to Zeb,
for the Rawlins defense, but Zeb, perhaps in a spasm of thrift, had
accepted only two. Ben could only hope that the Rawlinses were getting a
little something done, now and then, over at their end of the range; for
though the Rawlinses were maintaining a taciturn truce, they could not
now join forces in a single range crew every day. Of his remaining four
men, Ben picked the best shots, a couple of boys named Tip and Joey, for
a permanent home guard; while with Andy and the other two he got on with
the calf branding, bringing all hands in every night.

Rachel and Matthilda, who were cooking for them all, made breakfast in
the dark, over a little Indian-sized fire that they masked as best they
could. But Ben waited for daylight before he saddled now, and spent a
while cutting for sign--sometimes a couple of hours, before leading off
for the work. Even so, the boys came in dog-tired at the edge of night.
They ate enormously and in silence, and were asleep with their clothes
on before the women could wash up and get out of the room. Yet
loneliness was banished from the Dancing Bird while so many people were
around, even if they were sound asleep.

Rachel watched her chance to catch Ben alone. For a couple of days it
seemed as though there was no way this could be done. He had turned
short of speech, and was showing strain, as if he did not like what his
houndlike casting told him was happening around there, during these
moonlit nights. Sometimes she thought he had guessed what she was up to,
and was wary of being pinned. But on the third day of the Kiowa Moon he
broke a stirrup leather, and had to stop in the saddle shed to rig
another. And there she cornered him.

"Funny how seldom you ever seen one. An Indian, I mean," he said, and
rambled on as if trying to avoid questions by doing all the talking
himself. "Once or twice I've seen a little speck, a long piece off, on a
ridge, where nobody ought to be, and that's about all. But there's lots
going through here, just the same. I've cut three trails in two days.
One of eight-ten horses, ridden in travel file, without any loose stock;
and another--"

"Ben," Rachel cut in, "is Abe Kelsey dead? Do we know yet if he's dead
or not?"

He did not look at her, but his hands stopped their work. When he
answered his words were toneless, without any ring, or jump. "He's
alive," Ben said.

She did not make him go into how he knew. He was lacing leather again
and would soon be out of there. "I have to know one thing," she came
straight at it. "What was the great hurt we did Abe Kelsey?"

"Us? Hurt Kelsey?"

"He hates us, Ben! Why? Because Papa wouldn't help him get back his
son?"

"The Kiowas don't have Kelsey's son--never did have him. Kelsey's boy is
in his grave at Burnt Tree."

"Sure looks like a father would know his own son."

"Would, huh? That one damn-fool notion has kept the whole thing
a-simmer! I talked to this Seth two years ago. In Kiowa, naturally. He
already had two squaws, and three-four kids. All this at sixteen? That
buck is twenty-two if he's a minute!"

"Ben, you mean to tell me that old man would fetch down a raid on us
just because Papa wouldn't--"

"A raid? Him? They wouldn't move an inch for him."

"I heard he's virtually one of 'em!"

"They'd have killed him long ago if he wasn't crazy. They bat him
around, and misuse him, and take his stuff away from him--you saw the
horse they left him with. But let him scout for them? Hell! They'd never
believe a word out of him."

"_Then why are we so set on killing him?_"

He hadn't seen it coming. He had dug his own trap, and galloped straight
into it. He opened his mouth, and closed it, and for a moment wouldn't
look at her.

_I've got him, now. I'm within one inch of the truth, right this minute.
Ten seconds more, and all this mystery will be over_....

But Ben balked; he could think of no dodge, but he balked anyway. He met
her eyes, not with candor, but with plain obstinacy. "Horse thief," he
said shortly, and shut his mouth like a trap. He knotted the
stirrup-leather lacing, finished or not, and took his saddle by the
fork, to go out.

She was beaten, and she knew it. Nagging him would serve no purpose. She
asked him, "Does Seth ever come here, Ben?"

He stopped. "Maybe. I don't know. We find tracks where Indian ponies
come and go; sometimes moccasin tracks, close in. He could have been
here a lot of times. Why?"

"Want to see what he looks like."

He said with a startling intensity, "I pray God you'll never see his
face! Because if you ever do, there'll be war paint on it."

He left her; and she was disheartened as she thought how near she had
come to a glimpse behind a dark veil. They were coming no closer
together. He would go on treating her as a sister, even thinking of her
as one, probably, until Rachel herself made known to him that she was
undeceived. But he was preoccupied and edgy all the time now, so that
the time never seemed right.

Ben had been wrong about one thing. Seth came the next day, without war
paint, and in plain light.




CHAPTER 18


Texans always called him Seth. Even when they tried to say
Set-Tayhahnna-tay they couldn't get the singsong gobble to it that a
Kiowa would understand. He had been no more than a fable when Abe Kelsey
first called him Seth, a riddle, in an old man's tale. But since then he
had become a reality to be dreaded, in his own right. There were other
white and near-white warriors, such as Red Hair, Kiowa Dutch, and Kiowa
Frank, and perhaps many more less widely known. All of these had been
captured, enslaved, and finally Indianized, when very young; only one or
two of them remembered their native speech. The Kiowas had no chiefs,
either hereditary or elected, nor any other constituted authority with
powers of discipline. A war chief was any man who could scheme up a raid
and persuade others to follow him. The white war chiefs had made their
names in open competition, by the boldness, ingenuity, and ruthlessness
with which they made war on their own race. Most believed the white
warriors more savage than the Kiowas of blood, but this was because of
the resentment aroused by their anomaly of race. They could equal the
cruelty of their adopted people; they could not hope to exceed it.

On the day Seth came, Ben left the others hauling water to the house,
while he rode circle alone to read what news of the night had been
written upon the prairie soil. He was back in twenty minutes, and had
the up-horses moved to the corral nearest the house, where they were
covered by its guns. Then he brought Andy and the hands into the house
and forted up. The battle shutters had been opened to let in the first
sun, but now they were barred again. They pried the plugs out of one
shutter loophole at each of the two windows facing the Dancing Bird, and
opened two loopholes in the door.

Two cowhands were put at the window loops. The one called Tip was gangly
and hatchet-faced, and in this situation was tense enough to ring like
the blade of a knife. His eyes darted about the room, and came to rest
on the fireplace. "Ain't that chimney pretty big?"

"It's got iron hooks built into it, big as scythe blades," Ben told him.
"The buck that jumps down it will stay there."

Mama was puttering in a cupboard, pretending that nothing was happening;
but she was careful to make no noise, except for a soft, almost tuneless
humming, that was rapidly working on Rachel's nerves. She tried to think
of some way to tell Mama to stop, but none came to her. She opened the
ammunition chest under the rifle rack, got out a handful of rim-fires,
and took them to the cowhand called Joey. He was a tow-headed,
Dutchy-looking boy, with white eyelashes, and China blue eyes which he
was too shy ever to raise to Rachel. He thanked her without looking at
her.

Suddenly everybody was motionless and silent, a man at each loophole,
with no places left over from which to see out. Mama stopped her humming
and held perfectly still, her hands idle in the cupboard. Ben said,
"Ground your carbines, you fellows. I'll kill the man who shoots before
I tell him." Perhaps they didn't know him well enough to be sure whether
he would do it or not. He seemed so relaxed and easy, even pleased with
the whole situation, Rachel was not sure she knew him herself.

He spoke now in a queer, soft tone. "Sis... Speak of the devil. You
want to see what Seth looks like?... Let her look, Andy."

What she saw was astonishing. Three Indians sat their ponies on the near
bank of the Dancing Bird, in full view of the house at less than fifty
yards. They were recognizable at once as Kiowas; their strong,
flat-stomached build, prepotent in the Kiowa blood no matter how
diluted, could not be mistaken for that of any other Indian. They
carried carbines in their hands, but wore no paint, no headdresses. They
rode light Indian-made saddles with elkhorn trees or none, and the tails
of their ponies were blowing free, instead of clubbed for battle. In all
ways, these three were equipped for travel, not for fighting.

"There's fifteen or twenty more of 'em around someplace," Ben believed.
Kiowa warriors would take any risk to put you off your guard. "He's a
whopper, isn't he? Big as Satanta."

She knew then, for the first time, which Seth was. You couldn't tell he
was a white man, at the distance. Kiowas came in as many sizes as white
men did, but when they were big, they were big all over, heavy-limbed,
but never paunched like a Sioux or Comanche.

"Carbine, Andy," Ben said, still casual, still as if pleased, but
concentrated, now. He reached back without turning from the loophole,
and Andy put his own Spencer in Ben's hand. After working with Andy all
his life, Ben did not need to ask if a ball was chambered. "I'm going to
waste one," he said, raising his voice to reach Tip and Joey. "Now don't
be poking your muzzle out! I'll tell you when."

Ben took aim unhurriedly, but fired without delay. Rachel saw the Kiowa
ponies stutter their feet, yet they were held in place so closely that
their riders only swayed lithely at the hips; their heads and shoulders
were not displaced an inch. The three remained relaxed, and Rachel saw
that they were grinning. They glanced at each other, before their eyes
returned to the house. Seth raised his right hand in the peace sign.

Rachel was awe-struck. "Medicine," she whispered. "They think they've
got bullet-proof medicine!"

"Not them," Ben said. "I know all three. The one to the left of
Seth--there's a tough one! That's--that's--" he tried a Kiowa word--it
sounded like _G'yee-tau-tay_--under his breath. "Wolf Saddle, I guess
you'd call him." Kiowa names were shifty to translate; this one might
mean "Rides a Wolf," or "Wolf on his Back," for all Ben knew. "And the
other--" he hesitated again. Traveling Hawk? Wandering Eagle? "That's
Lost Bird," he settled for. "Meaner than Seth himself, if that's
possible. Those buggers know what they're doing." He handed the carbine
back to Andy. "They even know what I'm doing," he added.

The used shell went bouncing and twinkling across the floor as Andy
ejected it. A thin, sharp smell of black powder came to Rachel's nose,
bringing a nervous sense of urgency, and an impatience with Ben, who
could dally over shades of meaning, as if nothing deadly and immediate
was hanging over them. Yet he was right. The behavior of these Indians
did not explain itself; they had no exact parallel for it in their
experience. A thing like this had to be waited out. The worst thing you
could do was to let yourself be choused into any kind of move at all
before you knew just what was up.

Outside, Rachel saw Seth speak shortly to the others, then start his
horse straight toward the house, at a walk. His right hand was still up,
in the sign of peace. Wolf Saddle and Lost Bird followed on either side
of him, unevenly, despising any discipline of formation.

"Uh-huh," Ben said. "Well, I'm going out there."

Mama cried out, "Ben! Please! I won't let you--"

Ben was wearing a Colt's Dragoon revolver, in a holster black with years
of saddle-soapings. Both had belonged to his father. He had the weapon
close-belted on his left, butt forward, for a cross-draw in the saddle;
but now he loosened and turned the belt, so that the gun hung lower, and
on his right. He said, conversationally, "I'll have to ask you to be
quiet, Mama. I'd hate to have to shut you in your room."

"Why!" Mama gasped. Ben had never spoken to her like that before; but
Papa would have said it, and meant it. Matthilda did not speak again.

Ben took a look at his percussion caps. "Bar the door after me," he told
Andy. "You fellows--Tip and Joey--better poke your front sights out,
soon as I'm on the stoop. I won't shoot unless one of 'em swings gun on
me--and don't you cut loose until I do. All right, lay holt of this bar,
here, Andy."

He went out on the stoop, hatless, and stood lightly, his hands hanging
empty. The three Kiowas stopped in front of him, their ponies spread a
little, less than two horse-lengths away. Andy took the loophole Ben had
left, and each had his own, now, except Mama, whom Rachel forgot for the
next few minutes. When next noticed, Matthilda was at the table, her
Bible before her but unopened, her hands folded upon it; she sat staring
at nothing, and took no part in what followed.

Seth took a deliberate look at each of the carbine snouts, where they
now poked through the shutter loopholes, well to the right and left of
the door. He smiled a little, faintly contemptuous, mildly entertained.
Andy had not brought up his weapon, but Seth let them see that he
noticed the loopholes in the door, behind Ben, too. Rachel studied him
with the fixity of apprehension. His hair hung in two braids in front of
his shoulders, and looked to be a rusty red, in spite of its shine of
grease, which must have darkened it. A mixed-blood Kiowa might have had
hair that color.

But the low-bred face, punkin-rounded, and what they called owl-nosed,
showed an uneven splotching, as if it wanted to freckle. And the
narrow-set eyes were wrong. They were muddy blue, bloodshot by wind and
sun. The lashes were invisible, giving the eyes a baldish, lizardy look.
His shirt and leggings were of fringed buckskin, almost new, and his
moccasins were heavily decorated. It had cost a lot of Texan
horses--some of them doubtless Dancing Bird horses--to buy the squaws
who made him stuff like that. But the breech clout that converted the
leggings to trousers was of the dark blue cloth to be found only in
officers' tunics; and this might or might not have been given to him.

She was thinking of a story told of this white Indian. A dozen others
were told, and a hundred might be someday, without adding anything more.
Two years ago, far down near the Rio Grande, a small farmer had come
home to find the remains of his wife--or parts of them, for they were
not all in one place. Their four-year-old daughter was missing. Pursuit
was organized, and recovered what was left of the baby girl a hundred
miles away. The stripped and mutilated small body, a pitiful rag, had
been left impaled upon a broken post oak. Since then the two scalps had
been seen upon Seth's medicine shield, the wavy light chestnut of the
mother's hair beside a curly soft tuft of fine-spun pale gold. Surely
Ben must be wasting his time, trying to talk to Seth; for how could
anybody reach a kind of people who found honor and glory in a deed like
that?

Seth's eyes settled upon Ben, and held steadily, waiting for Ben to
speak first. The marauder looked self-satisfied, insolent and sure of
himself; yet Ben outwaited him. Finally Seth grunted, and began to talk
in signs, letting his carbine hang in the crook of his arm. The
conventionalized signs his hands made ran off smoothly, and very fast;
yet the message was simple, and Rachel could understand it well enough.
"We come as friends. We came to talk to our friend," Seth's hands said;
then added, "Sometimes friends are given gifts."

Those in the house understood no more, for now Ben did an exasperating
thing. He refused the sign language known to everybody on the prairie,
and made the Indians speak in their own tongue. To show off? To impress
them? Presently Rachel knew he had done it so those within would not
know what he said.

The Kiowa sentences came in slurred bursts, full of clicks, drawn-out
nasals, raised and lowered tones. Rachel saw Seth's companions intensify
their concentration as they tried to follow Ben's Kiowa; it had a right
to be pretty bad. At first Rachel tried to guess what was being said in
that outlandish tongue. She thought Ben might have told them that in his
understanding it was those who came to talk who brought gifts. Seth
smirked, and took from round his neck a slender gold chain, with
something like a quid of tobacco on it. He tossed this at Ben's feet,
but Ben caught it with the toe of his boot, and flipped it into his
hand. He barely glanced at it before putting the chain around his neck.
Seth seemed blanked by that. He paused a few moments, looking Ben hard
in the eye, which seemed strange in a man like that.

Now Seth went into a long, unhurried speech, and Rachel took a look at
the other two. Wolf Saddle was the chunkiest of the three, with a broad
and yellowish face, as if he might have Comanche blood. His brief
interjections seemed to be jokes, for whenever he spoke the other two
laughed.

The other Kiowa, called Lost Bird, was in some ways most remarkable of
the three. His skin had the dark yet ruddy sun-char of the full-blood
Kiowa; but his hair, greased though it was, looked to be auburn. His
face was smooth, lineless, placidly at rest. When Rachel had looked at
him for a moment, she realized a strange thing. This face was beautiful,
and in an odd way, as a girl's face should be beautiful. She was
fascinated, and at the same time repelled.

As if he felt her gaze, Lost Bird turned his head and looked her
straight in the eye; she felt as if the whole door was suddenly open in
front of her, and not just the loophole. His eyes were green, now--no, a
dark yellow. They darkened as he tried to see into the shadows behind
the loophole, until they seemed almost black, and surface-lighted. Yet
as he turned his eyes to Seth again they appeared the gray of pale
slate. She had a frightened sense of having known eyes like that before,
though she was certain she had never seen Lost Bird in her life. A
moment of uncertainty weakened her middle, so definite that she felt a
touch of nausea.

But he began to speak, and the illusion was gone. He spoke with broad
gestures, flowing or emphatic. His voice rose and fell; his chest
puffed, and his head lifted with hauteur. Yet he became smaller as he
spoke, until his threat was no more than that of a deadly weapon with
the legs of a fast horse, controlled by nothing with any depth of mind.
He had talked no more than a minute when he ended upon what was
obviously both a question and a demand. Ben was standing close enough to
the door so that Rachel saw a drop of sweat trickle down behind his ear,
only a few inches from her eye.

Instead of answering at once, Ben spoke in English to the people behind
him. "Andy. I want a few cartridges. But stay where you are. Let Rachel
bring them to you."

By his softened tone Rachel knew Ben was smiling, and she wondered if
the Indians knew by this how angered he was. Did you have to know him to
tell that? She became scared again, aware that he was close to an
explosion of temper that could bring disaster upon himself and them all.
She could not see his right hand, but felt sure it had not moved. _Never
touch your gun without you draw it, never draw it without you shoot to
kill_, Papa had taught.

"I want two fifty-caliber metallic, and one rim-fire forty-four," Ben
said.

Andy unbarred the door to put the three cartridges in Ben's hand. "Bar
it again," Ben said and Andy obeyed. They saw Ben toss one cartridge to
each Indian. Then he made a brief final statement in the Kiowa tongue.

The three sat quiet a moment more, their eyes fixed on Ben, faces as
expressionless as mud. None threw their cartridges away. Seth kept
tossing and catching the gift cartridge without looking at it. He took
another slow look at the carbine snouts sticking out of the shutters, on
his left and on his right, and he looked at the loophole where he knew
Andy must be. Then he spit at Ben's feet, and unhurriedly turned his
horse.

The others followed Seth, walking their horses slowly, their backs
exposed arrogantly to the carbines in the house. Andy softly lifted the
bar, and Ben slid inside. The Kiowas jumped their horses out of sight
over the cutbank of the Dancing Bird.

"That may be all, for now," Ben said; but he kept Andy and the hands on
watch for a long while more. Nobody on earth was Indian-wise enough to
say for sure whether an attack would come, or when.

"We're getting kind of low on metallic," Andy said, and it was a
question.

"I told them to use those when they came again," Ben answered him.

Mama let her lip tremble, now that it was over. She whimpered, "I only
wish those people would stay away."

Ben said, "There weren't any people here, Mama. Those were Indians."

Rachel moved close to Ben, so that she could make her tone low, yet
urgent, demanding. "What did Seth want of us?"

He turned to her slowly, took her face between his two hands, and for
some moments looked straight down into her eyes. He had never done that
before; and, though she met his gaze steadily, the unaccustomed fixity
with which his eyes probed into hers so flustered her that her mind
would not work. She had long had a notion that she could tell what he
was thinking, if he would meet her eyes, but this did not work for her
now. It came to her that she could not read his mind because he was
trying to read hers, so that all she could see was the questioning at
the front of his mind.

Then a twinkle appeared, and his face softened with the first warmth
before a smile. "They were trying to buy you," he told her.

It seemed so far-fetched, so unexpected, that she couldn't tell it from
the kind of foolishness with which he often put people off, when he
didn't want to answer them. She heard herself reply nonsensically, in
kind. "Well, did you sell me?"

"I held out for more horses."

But later she saw that she had no real reason to disbelieve his
statement of Seth's purpose. She was chilled, and shaken. There was
something dreadful about the impassable gulf between the Kiowa ways of
thinking and those of her own people. Sometimes it was hard to believe
that this strange bloody-minded red race was human at all. It was as if
giant lizards had come here on horses, mouthing and grunting their
unearthly language that so few white men had ever understood.

And there was something else. If Seth was determined, or believed
himself humiliated before the other war chiefs, the hard strike of his
answering raid would be the same as if sense and reason were behind it;
and the unbelievable cruelties in the event of victory would be no
different.

Mama suddenly exclaimed, "Ben! Take that dreadful thing off!" He had
forgotten Seth's gift, but now he took the gold chain from around his
neck, and looked at the dried human ear it carried as a trophy. Then he
threw it in the fire.




CHAPTER 19


Two days passed, and the moon was dead full, but Seth did not
return. No new Indian trails appeared upon Dancing Bird land. For the
moment the country seemed to have emptied of Kiowas. Ben doubled his
precautions, turning more irritable every day over the time lost from
the work while they scouted the terrain. But the prairie remained blank
and still.

Unexpectedly, on the sixth night of the Kiowa Moon--in the very heart of
danger--Effie popped up in the foreground of their lives again. Ben
brought the word when he came in at nightfall, the Rawlins split of the
crew having been joined up with his own early that morning. It seemed
that a rider had reached the Rawlinses pretty late the night before, and
hollered them up. His news was that Effie and her promised young
man--his name was Harry Whittaker--were only one day behind him. The
messenger had left them at Fort Richardson, when he was sent on ahead
with the word. They meant to come right on.

"Why, she must be home right now!" Matthilda marveled.

Ben supposed they were. The rider, whom Ben knew only as Gus, had come
from Fort Richardson in a day, having changed horses at the Rountree
ranch, forty miles out. Call it about seventy-five miles from Fort
Richardson to the Rawlinses, with a road of sorts for fifty miles of the
way--Effie's spring buggy should make it with fair ease in two days,
stopping overnight with the Rountrees.

These times and distances became of sharp interest, a little later.

The wedding was to be in four days, giving Effie three days with her
family, during which the family could get acquainted with their new
in-law. Matthilda was mildly shocked by what seemed to her an unseemly
haste about these arrangements. She was not at all sure it was decent.

"So long as _that's_ all you see to worry about," Ben grumbled.

"Jude and Charlie turned right around and high-tailed for home, soon as
they give--gave us the word," Andy complained. "Let theirselves right
out of a full day's work." Ben had been setting a furious pace, and Andy
had been trying to outdo him. Trying to get their pay raised, it looked
like to more easygoing men, who saw no call to get in a frenzy. "Not
that Jude and Charlie are any good around cattle. But they could anyway
try, couldn't they? Effie wasn't even looked for, until way late. They
could just as easy have put in a short ten-hour day--"

"They had to ride to meet their sister, of course," Mama told him. "It's
the least they could do."

"Trust them to do the least," Andy commented.

"Ben!" Mama rebuked them. "He's picking up all this unneighborliness
from you!"

Ben denied this. He didn't hold with all this galumphing around the
country in raiding season--with the moon right smack on the full, at
that. He understood this Whickaty, or Whittaker, or whatever his numpish
name was, had some side riders with him--didn't know how many. But the
fact that he had sent his rider, this Gus, riding far into the night all
alone, proved _he_ didn't know what he was doing. "Her brothers should
have met her in Fort Worth, if you ask me," Ben gave his opinion. "And
then kept her where she was!"

But he hadn't found out who the preacher was to be, though Harry
Whittaker surely must be bringing one. Didn't even know who-all was
coming. The Rountrees, doubtless--about six of them--but how many more?
How were his womenfolk to know what-all to bake, if he didn't even get
the main facts? Ben had made a failure of it, they made plain to him.

Ben grumped and complained. He supposed they would make him responsible
for getting them over there somehow, if they had to fight every foot of
the way. Needn't blame _him_ if it cost every scalp in the dang family.
He saw himself called on to whup the whole Kiowa nation, like as not,
with only five carbines including Rachel's--Mama would have to take the
driving lines, soon as they were jumped. She'd better get some practice
with the four-horse team, for she'd have to flog full stretch, when they
made their run for it. If anybody got through alive they'd be lucky.
"But of course all that means nothing to you folks. Not if some jug-haid
female is shot-gunning herself a man. Damn those people anyway!"

They were paying no attention to him. The Zacharys, by previous
arrangement, would go over the day before--which left them only two days
to get ready. They were in a panic over all the baking they must do. And
when it came to what they should take to wear! Weeks of forewarning
apparently had not readied them at all.

Rachel was excited for a little while, or thought she was, because she
had expected to be, once. But presently she became aware that the events
between had given the long-anticipated occasion too much chance to go
stale. Effie's wedding was only something that had happened to most of
the people in the world, up to now, and would go on happening forever
probably, to generations unborn. Too little had been said about whether
the Rawlinses really did want them, after all the coolness there had
been. And they were overriding Ben, again, on the subject of
precautions, which was exactly how people who should know better lost
their hair.

Matthilda, though, had a theory that if you worried enough about
something it didn't happen, and this often seemed to work. This time, as
they came in sight of the Rawlinses', it seemed to have worked again, up
to here, for they had met with no alarms on the way.

In dry seasons the Dancing Bird was no more than a few hundred yards of
stagnating slough, where the Rawlinses had built. They called it "The
Branch." The trees that had once fringed the water had gone into the
cabin, a considerable barn, and a line of stock shelters, and the brush
had been burned off to help the grass; so the whole place could be seen
in virtually naked detail, from a long way off. The peeled-log house
with its shake roof made the Rawlinses feel better-fixed than the
Zacharys, who lived in a hole in the ground. At the same time, the
Zacharys felt above the Rawlinses, who had no wooden floor, but lived on
dirt, like pigs.

Both families had hauled their few window sashes, hinges, and such-like,
from the ruins of a hamlet twenty-five miles to the east. Its name had
been New Hope, before its abandonment under the Indian threat, during
the war; everybody called it No Hope, now. No one ever expected its
people to come back. But Zeb Rawlins had a rigid puritanical streak in
his honesty. He searched out people who claimed to be property holders
in No Hope--including some who had never heard of it before--and paid
them off. While doing so he learned that the Zacharys had never taken
this trouble; and he had distrusted them, as on the shifty side, ever
since. The Zacharys, who took pride in the belief that their word was
hard money anywhere in Texas, would have been dumbfounded had they
known.

Andy rode to the wheel of the democrat wagon, as they came in view, and
offered to pick up some mullein leaves for Rachel. Girls rubbed their
cheeks with these leaves, to bring out a glow. It worked better for
other girls than it did for Rachel. Her skin was the even, biscuity tint
of a Plymouth Rock egg; a flush came slowly to it, and was soon gone.
But she was going to accept, when Andy added, "Charlie's home, you
know."

"What's that to me?"

He pretended surprise. "Why, I've kind of been looking for you two to
run off, 'most any time."

Matthilda made it worse by saying, "Now, don't tease her, Andy."

"What's wrong with Jude?" Rachel demanded. "You all holding him in
reserve?"

"It's only," Matthilda fumbled, "Charlie seems more your age. There
aren't so very many boys, out here on the--"

Rachel was furious. "I've got no more choice in the matter than a heifer
pent up with two bulls!!"

"Rachel!"

"Well--two he-cows, then. What one won't rise to--"

"Rachel, that's enough! Shockin'!"

Still beyond sound of a hail, they saw Georgia come out of the house.
She gave them a sketchy wave, as if uncertain it could be seen, and
trotted for the corrals. Rachel knew Georgia would be entirely game to
straddle a bareback horse, skirts and all, and come walloping out to
meet them. But another figure appeared in the doorway of the cabin, and
Georgia stopped.

Rachel restored herself by filling in the inaudible exchange.
"'GeorgYAW!'" she imitated Hagar. "'You git back yar!' 'Naow, Maw--'"
she switched tones, as Georgia was seen to answer back--"'I got a call
to the--' 'GEORGyer!'" They saw Georgia turn back. "'Aw, dern it, Maw,
heck,'" Rachel finished for her as she disappeared into the house.

Ben and the hands were riding the ridges far out on either side, and
Rachel's show went kind of flat. Andy seemed not to have heard, and Mama
just looked pleasantly good-natured and vague. Matthilda was often
smiling, often gay, but when you tried to remember when she had laughed
out loud, you couldn't think of any time. _Oh, well--Ben would have
laughed._ It was the last, nearest thing to a light or trifling moment
that they had.

Effie had not come home. Her brothers had expected to meet her only a
few hours out, but no one had come in that night. When there was no sign
of them next day, Gus and the two cowhands assigned to the Rawlinses had
been sent to search the road. But three days had now gone by, and no
word had come.




CHAPTER 20


A hot sun had come out--and to stay, though they didn't know
that yet; it had quickly dried the prairie. But Ben recalled that it had
rained pretty much all day and all night, while Gus was riding from Fort
Richardson, and most of the next day, too. Effie's party must have laid
over where they were. Even if they had started from Richardson, the
hub-deep mud might have turned them back. Some of that red clay took
time to dry. And if they lamed a horse...

Hagar said, "Yes, we thunk of that." Her deep-set eyes had receded into
her head, and she looked hollowed everywhere, as if she had not eaten or
slept.

"I'm sure they're all right," Matthilda said. "They're bound to get
here. I know they will."

"Yes," Hagar said without emphasis. "I expect they're safe somewheres,
Mattie."

Zeb had welcomed them quietly and gravely, and since had sat staring
into the fireplace. Once he said, "Being's Ben and Andy are here now, I
believe I'll just hitch up and--"

But Hagar said, "I'm going with you, if you do." And that was the end of
it.

Nobody could find much to say more. They had expected to find the cabin
thronged, but it had become a sad and awkward place to be. Rachel and
her brothers took their time carrying in all the fancy cooking they had
brought. More stuff piled up inside than there was any place for, and
every added hamper made plainer how different things were here than they
had expected. Hagar sat inert, looking cadaverous, even failing to
protest when Matthilda and Rachel got supper on.

As they gathered at the table, it was Hagar who pulled herself together
in an effort to dissimulate. "Like one time in Hog Scrape," she said.
"We had this here bull goose--" She checked herself, and looked timidly
at Matthilda. "He-goose--"

"Gander?" Matthilda suggested.

"This here bull gander," Hagar accepted. The men ate doggedly, as if set
on keeping up their strength, as Hagar rambled on. Hog Scrape was what
Hagar called the Tennessee hill village where she had been born;
actually it had some commonplace name. Willetsville? Like that. Over the
years she had piled up enough anecdotes about it to fill a history book.
Rachel had always thought her stories funny, and so had Ben. But most
people, looking for a point and not finding one, were only bewildered by
Hog Scrape. Hagar's own family took the tales in stolid silence. Tonight
Ben was preoccupied, and Rachel could not find the funny part, either,
under the layers of foreboding.

It seemed the gander had settled in Hog Scrape of its own accord. Didn't
belong to nobody. Used to sally up and down the board walk like he owned
it; dogs learned to slink out of his way. Got to know everybody,
friendly-like, and right neighborly, too--always helping folks out. Like
if a drunkard was asleep in the street, the gander would run the hogs
off, and make the teams go around him. Only, there was this lay preacher
they had in Hog Scrape, kept running the gander out of meeting. Claimed
he wasn't housebroken, rightly. Until finally the gander had enough, and
took exception....

She trailed off, as if she judged nobody was listening, and Matthilda
tried a politeness. "I used to know a... What was his name?"

"Harlow," Hagar answered. "Only name he answered to, anyway. Though,
naturally, he couldn't tell you; small use asking him."

Matthilda looked puzzled; she had meant the lay preacher. But Hagar's
stories generally escaped her, somewhere along the line.

"So Harlow called a feud on this here lay preacher," Hagar picked it up
again. "It seemed the gander made about the worst enemy a man could
have. Every time the lay preacher come in view, Harlow taken after him,
hissing, and wing-whopping, and tearing the feller's britches; and him
awhooping, and acussing, and abusting in anyplace on anybody, for cover.
Sometimes five times in an hour..."

She got up to fill a platter, shuffling painfully, but talking on,
unwilling to be helped, as always. She said it got so everybody was
throwed by such dern carryings-on, and there was talk of a law. Some
wanted a law against ganders, and others wanted it against lay
preachers--both had their followings. But in the upshot, one evening
when a cloud set itself down on Hog Scrape, the lay preacher thrun a
shot at the gander, and missed, and taken the constable in the leg. And
the constable, he answered fire, out of anguish; and--

She was coming back to the table when she stopped abruptly, and her
wandering story stopped. She stood looking downward, as if not seeing
the dirt floor, but something deep beneath. Zeb bumped table and bench
as he surged up ponderously, to go to her; but before he could leave his
place, Hagar let the platter fall. She dragged herself to a seat by the
fireplace, and there folded up.

"I can't go on," she said, and hid her face. "I can't play up no more."

Zeb came to her, and put his hands on her shoulders. "Best you lie down
a spell," he said gently. "I'll heat up some--"

"No," Hagar said in a dreadful voice. "No--I can't stand it back
there--all alone in the black dark--"

The Zacharys had no way to leave there. No place for them all to sleep,
either, until the main room was changed around, and shakedowns fixed on
the floor. The Zachary hands went out to spread their blankets in the
barn, and Ben and Andy slipped away to join them as soon as they could.
Georgia had a narrow bed, in a lean-to room like a horse stall, and she
offered this to Matthilda, then to Rachel. But there was not room for
both, and neither would desert the other. Georgia made more coffee, and
withdrew. At another time Rachel would have suspected Georgia of going
out a window to fool around the boys, but the notion had no interest for
her now.

At last Zeb, who had been dozing in his chair, made a feeble effort to
take Hagar off to bed; but retired alone when she refused. _Maybe he
doesn't want to be alone with her either_, Rachel thought. And after
that the three women just sat, while the night dragged on.

Rachel had been asleep in her chair when she was startled awake by
Hagar's voice. There was no clock in this room, but the embers in the
fireplace were low, as if the night was old.

"I pray God she's dead," Hagar spoke out strongly, her voice dry and
harsh in her throat.

"Hagar," Matthilda protested helplessly.

"I know whereof I speak," Hagar said. "I was in the hands of red
savages, long ago...."

And this became the dreadful night in which they learned what had
crippled Hagar, and made her strange. They did not know how to stop her,
or to close their ears, no matter how much they might wish forever they
had never had to hear.

Hagar had been orphaned, by the time she "come of full growth." Two
uncles and a brother were starting for California, by wagon across the
plains, and she had made them take her along. But they were late at
Independence; the last wagon train of the year had pulled out a week
before. They could not afford to lay over until spring, so they joined
one other belated wagon, and set out to overtake the train.

They never caught up. A woman and her three-year-old boy, from the other
wagon, and Hagar herself, were the only survivors when the Indians
struck. She had never known what Indians they were; all the Horse
Indians looked alike to an inexperienced eye. "In number, they was
eleven, after their wounded died."

She judged they knew how the savages had used her then, and the other
woman too. For a few days the two women took turns carrying the child as
they rode the bareback Indian ponies. But one day the mother could
comfort the little boy no more, and he began to cry. Hour in and hour
out he cried, until they came to a stream. There an Indian took the
child by the feet, and slung him high in the air, into the river. He was
hardly more than a baby; didn't know what swimming was, but there under
the river he fought for his life. Soon they saw him crawling to the
bank, slipping in the wet clay, but making it out of the water.

A young savage fitted an arrow, and shot the little struggling fellow in
the face. The child went under--yet, in a few moments appeared again,
floundering and strangling. The arrow had fallen away, but the little
face was streaming blood. The bow twanged again, and again the river
closed over the child's head. Then, unbelievably, the little boy
appeared one time more. One eye socket was empty, but he was trying
still. It took still another arrow before the child went down to stay,
under the muddy water.

The mother slumped to the ground, and could not be beaten to her feet.
The savages scalped her before they went on. Hagar worked herself free
of the horse upon which she was tied, and tried to get hold of the
bowman, to kill him with her hands. After that they always bound her
ankles together with rawhide, under the horse's belly, when they rode;
and that was how they crippled her forever.

"At first I prayed to die. Wouldn't you think, as time run on, the body
would die and let the soul go free? No; it ain't that way. I know now
why we're taught beasts have no souls. It takes the soul to tell the
body when to die. But the soul goes faint, and lies as though dead.
Naught is left but an animal, and the animal schemes to live...."
Hagar had at last stolen two of the fastest horses the savages had, and
got away. Some soldiers found her, finally, on a wagon trail.

"The body heals as best it can. But it was Zeb Rawlins raised me up
among the living again. A whole man, then, and a proud one, and I told
him all. Yet it was Zeb gave me back my soul. Or so I thought, until
this very now...."

Hagar's voice had gone lifeless, a dragging monotone; yet she felt the
need of telling them one thing more. "This one thing I know. The red
niggers are no human men. Nor are they beasts, nor any kind of earthly
varmint, for all natural critters act like God made them to do.
Devil-spirits, demons out of red hell, these be, that somehow, on some
evil day, found way to clothe themselves in flesh. I say to you, they
must be cleansed from the face of this earth! Wherever one drop of their
blood is found, it must be destroyed! For that is man's most sacred
trust, before Almighty God."

"Suppose," Matthilda said, with surprising self-possession, "suppose a
little child--a helpless baby--came into your hands--"

A dreadful glow came up behind Hagar's cavernous eyes. She extended her
hands, gnarled and clawed, and they were shaking. "A _red nigger_ whelp?
Into these hands?"

Matthilda remained steady, and rode it through. "I have no question to
ask," she said.

Hagar crumpled weakly, and her words were faint. "If Effie is in their
hands tonight... how can I ever again say... God's will be
done...."

Rachel held deathly still, hardly daring to breathe. She believed Hagar
Rawlins to be insane.

Ben was harnessed and hooked before dawn; and he found his womenfolks
more than ready to be taken home.




CHAPTER 21


Two days more, and the Kiowa Moon had waned. Matthilda thought
Ben should take Andy and his two hired hands and go help look for the
missing wedding party. But Ben had become wary since Seth's visit. Moon
or no moon, he would not leave his womenfolk alone.

It was Georgia who rode out to where Ben was working the calves, with
the word that Effie was dead. An ambush in the ruins of No Hope, only
twenty-five miles from home, had left no survivors. Those last rains, as
the year turned dry, had not only delayed discovery, but prevented
pursuit.

Ordinarily the Zacharys would have been expected to hurry back there.
But in this situation Georgia believed, and told Ben, neighborly custom
did not rightly apply. Shy off, she advised them, at least until her
sister's body was brought home. She'd be able to tell better, then, how
her mother was going to ride this thing out; and she would secretly
fetch word. Might be the Rawlins cabin would be no fit place for
visitors of any kind, she put it tactfully, for quite some time to come.

She and Ben agreed upon a rendezvous, where he could look for her at
certain times. By picketing her horse on the crest of a particular
ridge, she could let him know from about five miles off if she was
there; save him some of the ride. She'd come there any day she had
something they ought to know.

Now there was a strange delay. Ten days passed before the body of Effie
Rawlins was brought home. It turned out that Jude had gone on down the
Trinity, all the way to Fort Worth, to have a proper casket built. He
had even tried to get silver handles, but had not found them in supply.
The coffin he at last brought back was strong and heavy as a safe, with
the lid sealed down, and no way to open it intended.

But Hagar was determined to make sure for herself that the body Jude had
brought home was really Effie's. Though they did all they could to
restrain her, she got up in the night, found tools, and forced the
coffin lid.

Inside she found only a sealed lead box, about a foot wide, by thirty
inches long.




CHAPTER 22


Time was getting on to where they could begin hoping for Cash
to get home, pretty soon. They never could tell, within a matter of
weeks, how long their trail drivers were likely to be gone.

In the end of the soddy's main room, between the bunks that filled the
corners, stood a huge cabinet, with a leaf that let down to write on,
which they called the "secretary." Papa had made this, the winter his
broken leg was healing, and it was the only really good piece in the
house. Its main structure was of heavy walnut, but the doors and drawer
fronts were of fruitwood, covered with carvings of birds, leaves,
flowers--even a few antelopes and buffaloes could be found on it.
Within, along with their bushels of stock tallies, and the family Bible,
and a great pile-up of odds and ends they never used but didn't know how
to throw away, were stowed the logbooks of every drive they had ever
made. Three times they had made two drives in the same year, and once
they had made three, so that in the seven years since '67 they had
accumulated logbooks covering a dozen.

Rachel had dug these out, and had been poring over them since the drive
first rolled. But no part of that long push seemed ever to have gone
twice just the same. No two drives took exactly the same route, for one
thing. The Wichita Trail had a destination at its other end, but outside
of that it was no more than a name, and not any one particular way.
Weather made a big difference; in wet years the herd plugged slowly
through hock-deep mud, and every creek became both a hazard and a hard
day's work. The grass made a difference, for if it was poor the
weakening cattle must graze slowly all the way.

Thunderstorms could spook a herd into stampede after stampede, or a herd
could go "spoiled" of its own accord, and run four nights a week. What
with the time it took to gather, after a run, and the exhausted state of
the cattle, the boss might get to thinking he lived on the trail now,
making one drive his lifelong work. And the worse the conditions, the
more you needed a corrida of fast, game horsemen who knew how to handle
this wildhorn Texican stock. You never did have enough men like that.

After the first week or two Rachel didn't even know which river Cash
would be crossing next. Ben's old logs showed that he had not always
been sure himself. She found places where he had noted the time of
certain crossings, but had put the names in later with a blunter pencil.
Not so with Papa's logs. These were hastily scrawled, and sometimes
illegible, cross-scribbled in every direction with notes on losses,
stuff issued from the wagons, and every kind of thing. But if he didn't
know where he was, he said so. The boys made a great legendary figure of
Papa as a trail driver. They claimed nobody had ever seen Old Zack lie
down while he had a herd on the trail. Maybe once in a while you might
see him doze a little, sitting on the ground with his back against a
cook wagon wheel. But even then he would have a cup of coffee in his
hand, so that if he went full asleep it would spill on his legs, and get
him up from there. Any real sleep he had was actually in the saddle; he
used up about five horses a day.

Old Zack had left them no record for the drive from the Dancing Bird to
Wichita, for they were still driving to Abilene, far up in the eastern
part of Kansas, at the time of his death. Ben's second drive, in 1871,
had made Wichita in four weeks and two days, which was his best time,
and would have been a credit to his father. He also had made the same
drive in nine weeks and three days. Cassius had made one drive, which
the Rawlinses had sat out, in 1872, in five weeks even, which was
cracking good time. You could call six weeks good time, and seven weeks
pretty fair. No telling, though, how long they'd be held up in Wichita,
waiting to sell, and sometimes they had to load the cars, holding until
cars could be had. Call it a week or two--maybe a lot more. Then it
would take about ten days for the riders to get back. There was no part
of the operation not hedged all round with ifs and providings.

During this time occurred one of the small-seeming, unreadable things,
the seriousness of which was hidden at the time it happened. They lost a
horse, which was a commonplace if anything was, except that this one
went missing in broad daylight, out of the up-horse corral. Well,
somebody must have turned it out, though no one would admit it. The
animal was a sleepy old pony named Apples, because it had some
Appaloosie blood, shown in a pale, speckled wash across its
hindquarters. It might never have been missed, except that it happened
to belong to Andy, who called it his night horse; he hunted, and
complained, and harped on his loss, until everybody was sick of hearing
about Apples.

Cassius had now been gone upwards of six weeks, and they were coming
into the just-barely-possible area. The land was already yielding dust
again where the grass was poor, or the run off had scoured the earth
barren. So now they watched for a distant stir-up.

But when they sighted one, early in an unseasonably hot afternoon, it
was in an unlikely direction; and it was a Fort Worth posse that came
there, before ever Cash got home.

The light, intermittent dust the posse made was seen by Ben from where
he worked a long way off, and he judged at once that it could only mean
more trouble. He came on in, with Andy and his two hired hands. By
lathering the horses, he got home just ahead of the slower-moving posse.
Immediately he sent Andy up to the house, with word that Matthilda and
Rachel were to stay inside, whatever happened. And shortly after that,
nine riders came jogging around the corral to where the Zachary men
waited, sitting their sweated horses.

The man in front, gray-thatched and gray-mustached, with a dried-out
look, Ben knew for Sol Carr of Tarrant County. He had been a Ranger,
once, before the War Between the States, and would be one again, now
that Texas could bring the Rangers back. Ben did not know why his father
had disliked Sol Carr but remembered that this was so. For the time
being Carr was head of a loosely organized bunch of volunteers from the
Fort Worth neighborhood. They chased thieves and war parties, and some
of them rode all the time.

Behind Sol Carr and to one side, respectfully aloof, rode an Indian in
the butternut clothes of a cowhand, but with no dents or creases in his
hat. He had the squat look of a huge frog, and graying pigtails hung
beside his jowls. Ben believed this to be a Delaware called Humpjack,
who had scouted for troops and Rangers against the Wild Tribes since
long ago.

Most conspicuous, because they hung back and would not meet his eye,
were Jude and Charlie Rawlins. But Ben could have named three of the
five others. He had exchanged powers of attorney with them, for handling
drifted cattle. They nodded slightly, noncommittally and without
smiling, as he looked at them one after another; and this confirmed that
the posse was hostile. The chilling thing was that these were ordinary
men, who were Texans and cowmen, but not renegades, nor of any special
faction. Sometimes a kind of tide seemed to run across the empty spaces
of Texas, a tide of sentiment, of opinion, so that far-separated, lonely
settlers were swayed the same way all at once. To stand against such a
thing was to stand against the State. Sooner or later the guns would
start clearing their throats, and you might find yourself fighting feud
after feud, without any future or any end.

Behind the mounted men, a tenth man drove a light wagon, with a horse
tied to the tail gate; and the led horse was Apples.

Andy swung down. "That's my horse you got there! What's that contraption
you got on him?" Apples was carrying an Indian saddle of sticks and
straps; it looked to be broken.

Somebody shouted, "Let that horse alone, boy!"

"That thing's eating him in two! I got to get it off him!"

But Ben said sharply, "Come back here, Andy!" And his brother obeyed.

Carr dismounted now, without invitation, and Ben stepped down to meet
him. They stopped two paces apart, and did not offer to shake hands.
Both had left their carbines on their saddles, but Ben wore his holster
slung low on his right, and Sol Carr was similarly armed.

"We've been following out the No Hope massacre," Carr said to Ben, "and
we've been lucky. Found out quite a bit." He let an edge come into his
voice, as if he were talking to a man under arrest, or about to be. "I'm
here to learn the rest of it from you."

Ben flared up, but his voice remained quiet. Rachel, watching from the
house, heard no word of what followed.

"Those were your last words in that tone," he told Sol Carr, "while you
stand on my land."

"You can back that up, too," Carr said, dry as the dust, "just by taking
on all these men. How many do you figure you'll have time to get?"

"One," Ben said.

Maybe the old Ranger modified his tone, some, then--or maybe he didn't,
actually. Certainly his purpose was not softened.

"We taken a prisoner," Carr said. "A white squaw man, and I believe you
know him. Name of Abe Kelsey."

"We've been looking for Kelsey a long time," Ben said.

"That's as may be. What interests us, he was mixed up with them red
niggers at the massacre. Laying aside what he says he was doing there,
he anyway messed into it enough to get himself shot up. And we got him."

"Alive?"

"Just about. We got the names of the main war chiefs out of him. Seth
was there, and so was Wolf Saddle. But he says Lost Bird was the leader.
Though he may be protecting Seth, seein's he claims he's Seth's old
man."

"If he's alive," Ben demanded, "why haven't you hung him?"

"We may get around to it," Carr answered. "Meantime, he's spieled off a
whole string of charges against you. I thought you might want to face
him, and answer him. I've got him here, in that wagon."

"Let him lift his head," Ben said. "And I'll put a ball between his eyes
in the next tenth of a second!"

"You'd shoot an unarmed man?"

"Yes," Ben said.

"Then I better tell you what he says myself. Bein's I'm in better shape
to shoot back. He says, to start, the Kiowas used your place, here, for
their point of assembly."

"The three you named were here," Ben acknowledged. "We forted up, and
stood 'em off."

"He says Lost Bird learned from you that the people they massacred were
on the road, and there was no other way the red niggers could have
learned of it."

A stir of surprise ran over the posse as Ben laughed in Carr's face. It
was a nasty laugh, with promise of fight in it, yet unexpected. "The
Rawlinses are the people we have to work with," Ben said.

"They're also the damyankees that crowded in on your range," Carr
reminded him. "Your old man had his eye on this grass for a long time.
When he finally come to settle on it, Rawlins was ahead of him, and he
had to go splits. It's possible to believe you wanted them out of here."

"Oh, good God almighty," Ben said with contempt.

"There's plenty to say it's the Kiowas you have to work with, not
Rawlinses, if you want to last where you are. They say this foundling
girl, this foster sister of yours, you people have raised--"

He broke off, stopped by the blaze of pure murder that had lighted Ben's
eyes, contradicting his smile. "What about her?" Ben prodded him.

"They say she's the key to your understanding with the Kiowas," Sol Carr
went on coolly. He had been startled, but he was not the man to be
frightened. "Kelsey says your old man found the girl on the prairie, and
rescued her. And she proved out to be a Kiowa quarter-breed baby, lost
out of a drag litter--Lost Bird's half sister, out of a white woman
captive. They say the Kiowas are friendly because you're raising one of
their own."

"Carr," Ben said, "if you don't have enough Indian-savvy to know that's
impossible, it's no use to talk to you. You ought to know there's
nothing could bring the whole tribe down on us any quicker than if they
thought we was holding a captive Kiowa child!"

"I would have supposed so," Sol Carr admitted. "Only there's one thing
more. After the massacre, Abe Kelsey made his way here. His horse had
been hit; died about two miles out. He's showed us the bones, stripped
clean by the wolves. God knows he was in no shape to catch another. He
says you people gave him a horse. You gave him that horse, right there.
You helped him get away on it. And he got back to some of his red
niggers--what time he could keep up with 'em."

"That horse was stolen," Andy said. "Out of this corral right here. And
within an hour of noon!"

"Nobody around at all?" Carr said with disbelief.

"I had two men here all the time," Ben told him. He glanced at Tip and
Roddy, and found them looking blank, and frightened.

"Do you accuse the two men?" Carr asked sharply.

"I do not! I don't think they know anything about this at all."

"Yet somebody gave Kelsey this horse!"

In the moment of silence that followed, Ben saw Sol Carr look past him,
and start to say something more, then close his mouth again. Ben had not
known that Matthilda had left the house, until she spoke from behind
him.

"I did," Matthilda said clearly. "I gave him the horse."




CHAPTER 23


Matthilda had not explained to Rachel, as she left the house,
what it was she meant to do. Rachel made as if to go with her. Perhaps
she would not have obeyed an order from Matthilda to stay back; perhaps
Matthilda knew it.

"Ben won't like this," Matthilda said. "Please don't make him mad at
you, too."

That worked. Rachel stayed at the window, and watched Matthilda walk
down there, to butt in on the men, where she wasn't wanted. But mostly
her eyes were on Ben. She thought, _I ought to be there. I'm the one
should be beside him, now._ Suddenly she went and got the Sharp &
Hankins, and chambered a cartridge. If a fight broke, she was sure she
could not fail to get some of those who were against Ben. About one with
every shot, at this range, firing from a rest. After that she felt
better about staying where she was.

Down by the corral, Sol Carr lifted his hat to Matthilda, and spoke
courteously, covering his objections to being thrown off his line of
attack.

"I remember you, M'am," Carr said. "You are Mrs. Zachary."

"And you are Sol Carr," Matthilda responded, "who tried to do my husband
out of six thousand dollars."

Carr may have reddened a little, but his tone did not change. "I
understood you to say you gave Kelsey this horse. Did you realize, then,
he had come direct from the No Hope massacre?"

"I realize nothing of the kind. The day he came here was more than two
weeks after the massacre."

That stopped Carr for a moment or two; but he said, "He had been
wounded, though?"

"He had a gunshot wound in the limb," Matthilda said. "A new one. The
blood was fresh on the bandage. It wasn't a bad wound, then. I should
judge it's bad now--I can smell green-flesh from here. You'd better get
him some doctoring, or you won't get him as far as his trial!"

"M'am," Carr said, "this is his trial."

"I'll be interested to hear the verdict," Matthilda said saltily.

"What was your belief, then, as to how he got wounded?"

"I supposed he was caught stealing horses. Our horses, likely."

"You thought he was a horse thief," Carr said wonderingly. "You knew he
was a squaw man. You knew he's spread tales against you, to your great
harm. Yet you gave him a horse to get away on?"

"Yes," said Matthilda.

"M'am, in God's name--excuse me, M'am--why?"

"Poor old man," Matthilda said. "I was sorry for him."

"After all he's done, you tell me you were sorry--"

"Suppose one of my little children had been taken by red savages,"
Matthilda said. "Do you think there's anything I wouldn't do, any
lengths I wouldn't go to, to bring my child back to me? I have no doubt
I would go crazy, as crazy as Abe, before the end of it. Of course I'm
sorry for him!"

There were a lot more questions. Like, where were the two men Ben had
left at the house, while Matthilda was giving away Apples. Smoked out,
Tip and Joey admitted they had been reining a couple of colts, and had
jumped a loafer wolf. They had taken after it, to rope it, and run it a
far piece. Tip like to got a loop on it, but his colt spooked at the
rope, and throwed him. Joey had had a hard time catching Tip's colt for
him, so, all in all, they had been out of sight maybe two hours.

But the backbone of the posse's purpose, if it had been to involve the
Zacharys, had been broken for the time being, on the sheer incredibility
of Matthilda's honesty.

Rachel saw the posse leader step into his saddle, at the end of it. Then
Ben mounted, though he made Andy and the cowhands stay at the corral.
Matthilda turned away, and plodded slowly up the hill to the house, her
face white, but held as rigidly expressionless as she could make it.
Behind her all the horses began to shift and move; and it was Ben who
led out, not in the direction from which the posse had come, but
upstream.

As the wagon moved, Abe Kelsey dragged himself up with scaly old hands
to hang over the side. Clear up at the house, Rachel could hear him
plainly, wailing and pleading.

"I'm an old man--I'm a pore old man--I ain't got no friends--I ain't
done nothin'--I'm a pore old man--You got no right--"

She could hear him for a long time, over the sound of the hoofs, as the
cavalcade moved off, and trailed out of sight beyond the upper bend.
Mama reached the stoop then; she fumbled at the door, and Rachel opened
it for her. Matthilda was crying, now, quietly, and steadily; she could
not, or would not, answer any of the many things Rachel had to ask.
Without speaking a word, Matthilda went to her bed and hid her face
there, crying still.

It was almost sundown when Ben came back, and unsaddled slowly. A little
after that the posse passed, going back the way it had come, but on the
far side of the creek. The old man in the wagon no longer made any
sound; and Rachel knew, by this time, why the posse had gone upstream.
There was a big pin oak, up there, a whopper for its kind and place,
with a limb of suitable height and girth. An old tale had it that a
bandit had once been caught here, and hanged upon that tree. Some said,
and Andy liked to believe, that this ghost from long ago still haunted
the Dancing Bird. No matter whether that legend had any truth in it or
not.

The Dancing Bird had a ghost to haunt it now.




CHAPTER 24


Ben came in reluctantly. He didn't want to talk to anybody.
His black moods were uncommon, but when he was in them he could bite,
and he was in one now. Rachel knew no way to approach him, or question
him. He paced, sometimes beating a fist into his palm, his lips moving
in long strings of silent blasphemies. Or else he sat sullen and bitter
on the edge of his bunk, burning holes in the floor with his eyes. He
didn't hear you the first time you spoke to him, and when he did hear
you he snapped. When it was time to feed him he ate doggedly, straight
through one thing after another, with no idea of what he was putting in
his mouth. Later, Rachel would wish she had served him a cloth
hot-holder, to see if it would go down, but such an impertinence was
unthinkable while the black mood was on. She would as soon have bitten a
mule on the ankle as trifle with him, then.

Andy only picked at his food, and stuck close to Ben, refusing to meet
Rachel's eyes. A mumbled, "I d'know," was all she could get out of him,
and she knew it wasn't his fault. He had been told to shut up, and stay
shut up. She was alone, now, beyond the wall of this secretiveness;
everyone in the house knew things that she did not. The hands came in to
eat, but they kept their eyes down, and their mouths as close shut as
Andy's. The Kiowa Moon would soon be riding above them once more, and
Ben updated it a number of days. He wouldn't say just what he was
expecting to come against them; perhaps he was not entirely sure
himself. But it was plain he felt easier with all the carbines within
ready call.

Once Rachel asked him outright if it was horse stealing Kelsey had been
hung for. He said it was not.

"Mixed up in the No Hope massacre," he said.

Andy saw a chance to put-in, for once, without telling anything more
than Ben had said. "They charged him with aiding and betting on
hostiles."

"Abetting," Ben snapped. "Aiding and abetting, damn it!"

"What?"

"Nothing! Don't talk so much." But he let down enough to tell Rachel a
little bit more. "He was with Seth, when they killed Effie. By his own
admission."

"They were trying to pull us into it some way--weren't they?" she
pressed him. "Weren't they?"

He blazed up. "Who told you that?"

"Why--nobody--"

"Then forget it! And stop making up things!"

Sometimes she tried to find out what the Rawlinses had done against
them, or were waiting for a chance to do, but nobody would give her a
clue to that, either.

"No way to fight them," Ben said once. Sometimes, now, he seemed less
grim than discouraged, which was a new thing. "Jude and Charlie can
shoot, all right, if you give them all the time in the world. So can old
Zeb. But they don't know how to fight anything that shoots back. If they
hurry a shot it goes wild. Any one of us could put all three of them
down. Only... it would be like a man shooting a bunch of boys."

As bad as that, then. Bad enough to send Ben on the shoot, to smoke out
their neighbors, except that he wasn't ready for outright murder, yet.
She saw he was sorry he had said so much; and she could draw out nothing
more. Ben paced and fretted, sometimes pulling weapons off the gun rack
in an irritable pretense of examining them. He was like that now
whenever he was in the house. Daytimes the men loitered and puttered; no
more work on the range was attempted.

That waiting time lasted barely a week, as the Kiowa Moon came on,
though it seemed a lot longer than that. The seemingly hopeless stack-up
of chores melted away. The house got whitewashed, and even received a
wash of lime and brown sand on the outside. Only the mud-leaky roof
stayed the same, for lack of shingles. The cowhands took to playing
endless games of high-low-jack on a blanket under the trees by the
creek.

There was a day when Andy thought of something he could do; and it was a
different kind of thing than had ever entered his mind before. He
started out to build a pansy bed.

Matthilda had always had pansies, every year of their lives. Even when
time pressed hard, she had managed to grow a few, for seed to be saved
over. If they moved during the growing season, a few pansy plants had to
go along in bedding boxes, so that the little flowers would not be lost
out of their world. Matthilda loved the little faces, which came out
more distinctly upon her blooms than they ever did upon any others, and
in more different bright colors. Sometimes when Matthilda bent over a
bed of them, working the lumps out of the soil with gentle fingers,
Rachel could have sworn that all the little flowers turned upwards, and
peered into Matthilda's face, as if trying to talk to her. Why not?
Matthilda sometimes talked to the flowers.

The pansy bed Andy made beside the stoop was built up more than knee
high, with stones from the creek. He carried the first stones in his
arms up the slope, but later hitched the work team to the stone boat,
and went at it right. After a while, Ben and the cowhands got
interested, and pitched in, and before they were through they had a
raised bed on either side of the stoop, each six feet across, and so
solidly built that they were an easy bet to outlast the house by a half
a century. The boys hauled dirt from the corral, hoof-churned and
manured by five years of horse-critters; and lightened it by mixing in
sand. Matthilda hummed gaily, her face shining, as she set out the tiny
plants she had already started. Surely the pansies would grow here as
they had never grown before, if only they were still here to see them.

Suddenly the waiting days were over. Eight men of Cash's corrida got
back, with the reduced remuda, and both wagons. But Cassius was not with
them.




CHAPTER 25


Ben met the stripped-down corrida half way to the Red, and for
a few minutes had a great sinking of the heart as he saw from a long way
off that Cash was not with his wagons. He found Johnny Portugal
straw-bossing, in charge of bringing the wagons and the remuda home.
They still did not know Johnny Portugal's right name, and probably never
would, but he had turned into as steady and loyal a hand as they had,
since the day Ben had slapped him down in the round corral.

Cassius had ridden on ahead of them, Johnny told Ben at once. Said he
had a side trip he wanted to make, on the way home--something he wanted
to see, though he didn't say what. So, the morning of their fourth day
out of Wichita, he had taken a fast horse, and a spare on lead, and was
soon out of sight. He had told Johnny Portugal to take his time, so the
corrida wouldn't scare hell out of the family by getting home ahead of
him. Johnny said he had sure thought he was traveling slow enough; he
was eleven days out of Wichita. Which meant they hadn't seen Cash in a
week.

Ben took the corrida on in, and by the time he got home he had worked
out a lie. Cassius had always wanted to see where Papa was lost, he told
them, and Ben had explained to him how to find it. It would take him a
far piece out of his way, because the rivers were down now; the corrida
didn't have to take the roundabout way the herds took in flood season.
But the country Cassius would travel was safe now--no game in it, and so
no Indians. Johnny Portugal had really made very fast time; Cassius
could hardly be expected for two or three days yet. And so on and so
forth. Not a word of it had any relationship to fact.

He had supposed that Mama would assume at once that she had lost her son
to the dreadful trails, as his father had been lost four years before.
Ben himself thought it entirely likely that Cassius was dead, and that
they would never find out what had befallen him. A night-long hysteria
would not have surprised him. But Matthilda, who could dissolve so
easily over trifles, had a way of stiffening surprisingly when truly
serious and deadly threats hung over them. She accepted Ben's
conjectures as though they were entirely reasonable; and if fears
haunted her all through the dark hours, he was spared them.

Cassius came in the next day. He was gaunted and hollow-eyed; like his
father, he was another who could never be caught asleep while he bossed
a cattle drive. And he was saddle-weary to the bones from recent hard
riding. One of the two horses with which Cash had left the corrida was
dead, Ben learned later. The one he still rode was taxed so far past
endurance that it might never recover full usefulness. The carbine was
missing from his saddle boot, and Ben lent him his own, lest the loss
attract attention when they reached the house. But Cash himself was
sound, and in high spirits, in spite of his fatigue, and that was the
main thing.

As they rode in they agreed to stick with the story Ben had already
invented--that Cassius had visited Witch River, as a sort of shrine,
because his father had been lost there. Actually, so far as he knew,
Cash had been nowhere near it; didn't know it when he saw it, or how to
find it.

Nobody but Ben ever learned the story of where Cassius had been, or what
had been his errand. Ben himself was not told right away, or all at
once. Events at both ends of the Wichita Trail called for a making up of
minds, so that the tale of Cash's unaccounted days was easily pushed
aside.

But what Cash had done was of graver portent than he thought. He had
conceived a bold, brilliant, and wholly far-fetched stroke; execution
involved great personal danger, while the odds against accomplishing
anything useful were enormous--which were perhaps the factors that made
the plan irresistible to him, once he had thought of it. He was
unabashed to have obtained no immediate result. He might or might not
have set some wheels turning, but if nothing ever came of it at all, he
would not be surprised. What Cash did not realize, and perhaps never
fully understood while he lived, was that the action he took in those
eight days he was missing in Indian Territory might prove more dangerous
to them than anything that had ever happened to the Zacharys before.

Cash had begun by reasoning that Rachel was a Kiowa or she was not; and
the truth must be in existence somewhere. If it was, the place to find
it was in the lodges of the Kiowas themselves, for they had always kept
better records of their history than any other Indians on the plains. He
imagined that Striking Horse, a Kiowa warlock Old Zack had once known,
could probably lay hands on the facts if anybody could. So Cash had gone
to find out.

Four days out from Wichita he had left his corrida, and gone in search
of the renegade village with which Striking Horse traveled. The Kiowas
were already as good as at war. A furious burst of murders and scalpings
was rushing them toward a showdown that could destroy them. A Texican
who rode alone into a Kiowa village might not ride out again. "But
sometimes," Cash explained himself, "you have to call for the turning of
a card."

Striking Horse was an old man who for a long time had been what the
whites called a medicine chief. The term did not fit too well into the
patterns by which the Kiowas lived, for the Kiowas had no official
medicine men. A medicine, or spirit power, might deal with anything,
from wet joints to bullet proofing; almost every Kiowa warrior had a
power of some kind.

What Striking Horse had was a gift of prophecy supposedly conferred by
owls, which the Kiowas feared as more or less supernatural, and
connected with the world of the dead. He kept with him an owl skin with
a bladder in it, enabling him to produce an owl on order by secretly
inflating one; and the showpiece among his sacred possessions was a
giant thigh bone of a Man-eating Owl. A man had to be a strong warlock
indeed to fool around with owls.

Old Zack had once been Striking Horse's friend, up to a point, and in a
way. Striking Horse had been prominent in the Eagle Sign Society, a
group of magicians devoted to sleight of hand. It had amused Zack to
contribute to Striking Horse's reputation by some simple gifts.

And it was Striking Horse who had given Cash's father the name of Stone
Hand, the time Zack knocked a Comanche senseless with a slap. Cash had
reason to hope that the father's name would serve to place the son.

Striking Horse had the gray eyes of his Spanish mother, and the dark
skin of his father, who was half Crow; he was a Kiowa by virtue of only
a quarter of his blood. So Cash knew the Owl Prophet when he found him.
He did not find him quickly, or easily, or without certain moments of
great risk. But he got there.

Cash opened by giving Striking Horse his carbine, and all the ammunition
he had for it, with no strings whatever attached--thereby putting
himself just as far outside the law as the old Indian was.

After that, piecing out his battered Kiowa with quick-running sign
language, he had told the Owl Prophet about a medicine dream he claimed
to have had, in which he was shown a thing that actually happened, long
ago. He had seen a Kiowa village running away from a great force of
Tayhahnnas. While he watched, a baby was bounced out of a drag litter
unnoticed, and so was lost; and this was what the dream had been sent to
show him, for here it ended. He had even been made to know in what year
this thing had happened. But something was unclear. The baby had seemed
to be a Tayhahnna child, held captive by the Kiowas. Cash made out that
it was necessary to his medicine to know whether this was true, or
whether the lost baby had been a Kiowa child. This was what he had come
to find out from the Prophet of the Owls.

Striking Horse brought out his history calendar, and gravely spread it
before Cassius. This was a spiral figure, delicately drawn upon a
deerskin, and filled up with tiny pictures, each representing a summer
or a winter; for the Kiowas counted time by seasons, rather than years.
Each spring and fall the calendar keeper added a little drawing that
stood for an event. The single recorded event served to bring the season
back to him, reminding him of all other events. A number of Kiowas kept
these wheels, each one differently. The Owl Prophet's wheel went back so
far it had grown bigger than a grindstone.

The old Indian told Cassius to point to the time, on the calendar wheel,
when this thing happened in his dream. At first it didn't seem as though
this could be done. Counting back didn't get anywhere, for the calendar
keepers commonly left out seasons, or whole years. But Cash studied the
wheel; and presently saw a winter distinguished by a speckled face. He
had heard of a smallpox epidemic among the tribes during the winter
before Rachel was found. So now he pointed to the summer following.

After due thought, Striking Horse decided he didn't remember any baby
being lost that summer. Must have happened in some other village than
his own. He said he would ask some other calendar keeper sometime, when
he ran into one. If he found out, he would send word. He put the carbine
away, and offered Cash a smoke.

"I guess I was a damn fool," Cash said. "Wasted a carbine, likely.
Still... the Kiowas don't generally lie. Except to damyankee
commissions," he qualified it, "who lie all the time. He might find
out. I remembered afterward he never asked where to send word.
But I judge they know how to find us, all right."

_Yes, I judge they do_, Ben thought. _Too dang hootin' well._ He was
hiding a bitter anger, for his immediate conviction was that Cash had
made out death warrants for them all. The thin nonsense about a dream
could not have fooled Striking Horse for a minute. So here was Abe
Kelsey at their throats again; doubtless he had tried to tell the
Indians a thousand times that the Zacharys were holding a captive Kiowa
girl. Now old Kelsey was dead, and still they weren't shed of him at
all. He was even safe from them, for they could never again hope to hunt
him down and kill him as a solution to anything. He put Ben in mind of
John Brown, whose dead body had got into a song, and helped bring on a
war the South could not win. _And here we got another damned
hell-raising old hooter amoldering in his grave, while his mischief goes
marching on. I suppose the old son of a bitch ain't ever going to lie
still._

Small matter whether the Kiowas had believed Kelsey or not, now that
Cash had run to Striking Horse and virtually confirmed the whole thing.
_Cash didn't realize_, Ben told himself, keeping his mouth shut and his
face still until he could get hold of his anger. He had to remember that
the dangers with which Cash had been tampering had been far less plain
at the time Cash set off up the Wichita Trail. _He didn't know._...

"I don't know why we never thought of this before," Cash said. "Papa
could have proved long ago she hasn't a drop of Kiowa blood, right out
of those Kiowa history calendars. Easier then than now."

Ben saw, then, what had blinded Cassius to his mistake. Their mother's
wishful assumption that Rachel was of pure blood had stood in Cash's
mind as an unquestioned truth, without alternative, since before he
could remember. Only Ben knew why his father had never gone to the
Kiowas for an answer.

William Zachary had believed Rachel was a Kiowa child. Perhaps, for all
Ben knew, he had known it for certain.

No use to tell Cash that now. "You did a brave thing," was all Ben said,
at last.

But nothing about Striking Horse, or the missing eight days, came up to
mar the triumph of Cash's return, that first day.




CHAPTER 26


Cash had made his drive in thirty-one days, and it had leaned
him to the bone. By all accounts, he had no more than dozed against a
wagon wheel once in a while, and the rest of the time had slept in the
saddle, or not at all. Once his deals were made, the rest of his time
was spent in retrieving his cook and the best seven men that he had from
Delano, Wichita's whisky-and-women suburb, across the Arkansas River.

The same collection of saloons and dance halls had been called
Nauchville, when it stood outside Ellsworth, and Hide Park at Newton.
Each time the railhead advanced, these shaky buildings were pulled down
and flatcarred, to be set up again at the new shipping point, with the
same cadre of bartenders, faro dealers, and girls--plus the new faces of
additions and replacements. It was a cowhand's paradise, such as no man
could rightly appreciate until he had behind him the brutal hardships of
the trail. But Cash finally combed the men he wanted, heavily hung-over,
out of the sawdust floors of Delano. He believed he knew them, now; and
he was paying them the highest wages offered on any trail.

He could afford it, for he was riding the high wave of success. After
the heartbreaking drives from which the Zacharys had turned their cattle
back to trail them home again, after years in which they had dumped
whole herds at the price of hides in order to pay off their men, Cassius
had sold high at last.

Until Cassius got home, Ben had not touched the huge strongbox carried
in the cook wagon. It was built of heavy steel plates, and it took four
men to carry it into the house. Instead of padlocks, it had
blacksmith-welded iron straps, and they were the better part of an hour
getting it open at all.

Inside, sewed up in a great number of small deerskin pouches, Cassius
was carrying a little more than $104,000 in gold.

Ben was chilled as it got through to him what Cash had left in the hands
of the tough renegades Ben himself had hired in Fort Griffin. Cash
claimed he knew his men. Ben didn't believe anybody knew these men, or
any men, well enough to justify trusting them with a fortune like that.
Well--they had got there with it; that was the final answer to that.

They moved the carved secretary Papa had made--it weighed about a
ton--out into the middle of the room, to get at what they called the
Glory Hole. This was a trap door, fitted of random-length planks so as
not to show, with a keg set into the earth underneath, to keep their
money in. It had been empty, or nearly so, most of the time for quite a
while. But tonight they filled it up again; and tried to realize that
they were rich.

After Rawlins had been paid some thirty thousand dollars for his lesser
share of the herd, and they had paid off seventy-five or eighty other
brands for nearly a thousand strays they had driven and sold, and when
they had paid off twenty-two thousand in debts, they would still have
thirty thousand dollars left--a fortune, clear and unencumbered; plus a
couple of thousand head of breeders and young stock, not counting calves
and yearlings, standing on the range.

They could send Matthilda and Rachel to safety far away, to the east
coast, or abroad; they could do anything they wanted to now--if only
they could find out what it was. For now Matthilda balked. She feared
even to cross Texas with Rachel while Kelsey's hanging still had the
whole doomful dispute over her birth still fresh in everybody's mind.
They were certainly safe here, with a corrida, now with a strength of
twelve men plus the Zacharys themselves, right here on the place. She
wanted her sons with her, at least as far as the Mississippi, and they
certainly could not leave the work now. Wait till the work was done this
fall; it all would be easy, then.

She made it sound natural and sensible to delay their departure, for the
sake of safety alone. But Ben felt a deep foreboding. Rachel probably
came first, in his mother's heart; he was fairly sure of that. Yet he
began to doubt that she would ever leave her sons, of her own will.

After Matthilda went to bed Ben and Cassius still sat up, talking all
through most of Cash's first night home. Andy slept, unbothered, but
Rachel lay wakeful in her bed, listening to that ominous-seeming,
indistinguishable mumbling, on and on. And though she knew what times
they poured themselves fresh coffee, not one word they said came through
the heavy door. Bird songs were starting up along the Dancing Bird
before they quit. Yet they were up, red-eyed but unfriendly to sleep, in
the early dawn.

First thing they did was to send a rider down the Dancing Bird with a
note to Zeb Rawlins, naming the halfway point at which he must meet
them, late that day.




CHAPTER 27


Zeb Rawlins and his two sons met the three Zachary brothers on
a stripped and barren flat ten miles down the Dancing Bird. The wheels
of Zeb's buggy crackled as they cut through the baked and curling crust,
for here an endless network of earth cracks made cruelly visible the
damage this year had done the range. Jude and Charlie carried their
carbines in their hands as they rode on either side of their father; and
Zeb himself carried a long rifle in his lap as he drove. Saddle horses
and buggy team were freshly groomed and tail-plucked, and every inch of
rigging had been rubbed to a shine, under the film of the fast-gathering
dust. This spit and polish, as much as the weapons in their hands,
bespoke a predetermination that this showdown should be official, final,
and complete.

Each of the Zachary boys saw at a glance that only the two carbines were
repeaters. Jude's weapon was a Triplett & Scott, and Charlie's a Henry;
but Zeb's rifle, with its uncommonly long 30-inch barrel, was an old
cap-and-ball Snyder--the weapon of a man who means to shoot once, and
make the one shot do. The Zacharys left their carbines in their boots,
but they were wearing their revolvers. Cassius had his father's Dragoon;
Ben, his big Walker Colt, with a 9-inch barrel; and Andy, a Confederate
copy of the Whitney, with which he had proved to his brothers he could
"wipe their noses for them," if ever he got anybody to hold still for
it. All three wore their guns butt first on the left, for cross-drawing,
when in the saddle.

The two parties pulled up with the noses of their animals a horse-length
apart.

Zeb Rawlins sat motionless, looking so solid and immovable that the
buggy was made to look frail. Ben noticed how his great weight bore down
its springs. Probably these two had never had any chance of
understanding each other, from the first. Zeb had been born of
corn-country pioneers, up on the Ohio River; every time he had ever
mentioned such a thing as a "gant-lot," Ben had had to stop and figure
out all over again what he meant. If either of the two had actually
fought in the War, they would never have tried to work together at all.
Yet Ben no longer wondered how a man unable to ride could undertake to
whip the open range. Zeb had a motto: "When Bull takes holt, heaven and
'arth can't make him let go!" It was neither a slogan nor a preachment;
it was a description of the man.

"My brother sold your cows," Ben said shortly.

Zeb's eyes went to Cassius, who spoke briskly. "Twelve hundred and
nineteen head, as loaded at Wichita. Average for the herd, twenty-six
dollars and eight cents a head. Your pro-rate of cost, one thousand and
four. Leaves you thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and ninety-one
dollars and fifty-two cents."

Watching Zeb's face, Ben could see no change in his neighbor's dark and
heavy mood. Cash had described a great golden flood, all but
unbelievable, after the lean years that had gone before. Ben supposed
Zeb must already have had news of the market from another source. There
was a short silence.

"You'll be paid off in gold coinage," Ben said. "Say when and where."

"I'll send for what's due me," Zeb said.

They waited, until Zeb Rawlins was ready to go on.

"The charges made against you have not been fully proved," Zeb said.
"Not yet."

"Watch your God-damned mouth," Ben said; and he saw Zeb's jowls begin to
purple and shake.

"My daughter has been murdered," Zeb said, still speaking with slow
weight. "Her mistreated remains are under the ground. It's enough for me
that any part of the blame could be charged to you at all, by anybody
whatsoever. Yet I'll do this one thing more. I'll buy out any rights you
think you have here, together with whatever cattle of yours you don't
want to drive off. Figure up your price, and send me word what it is.
But I want to know soon!"

Ben answered so reasonably that Cash shot him a glance of angry
disbelief. "I might buy, or I might sell," he said. "Either way, I mean
to cross-brand, first. There's too many cows on this range owned by
marks on paper, and not enough owned by the right marks on cows. If you
want me to work yours, too, send a rep. It'll cost you the standard
fifty cents a head."

"I'll send a rep," Rawlins conceded. "See that you keep your damned iron
off the odd-brand cattle until he comes!"

Ben's voice rose in anger for the first time. "I'll brand any damned
critter I see fit!"

"All I want," Zeb roared back at him, "is to get you red nigger lovers
to hell off my range!"

"You've got no range," Ben said dropping back into his drawl again.
"This is Texican land. It'll take a sight more than a fat-gutted
damyankee son of a bitch to put me off it."

In the quiet that followed, Andy shortened his reins, and flipped the
ends out of the way of his draw.

"I'm sick of looking at them," Ben told his brothers. He turned his
horse; and the moment for gunfire went past.

But something else had happened that might build up to a bigger and
longer fight than any six men could have had, on the flats by the
Dancing Bird.

Up to here Ben's trouble had been that he loved the Dancing Bird country
for itself. Even the Kiowas had been a boon, in a way, holding this
grassland in trust for them, until some good year would enable them to
buy land scrip, and take it up. Ben had a hundred long-range plans. He
had picked a dozen places where he wanted dams, to establish permanent
water in far, dry grasslands where now only brief flash floods ran. He
had located clay he could haul from a long way off to line the tanks
behind the dams, so that the waters would not seep away. He was
experimenting with a hedge of wild-rose bramble to stop winter drift,
and the everlasting shuffle-up with half the brands in Texas. With
fences up he could grade up his stock, bringing in bulls that otherwise
wasted themselves on anybody's cows but your own. He meant to bring in
fruit trees, and Mexican labor to raise garden truck; he planned to
build such a house as would be a showpiece forever.

Now he had his good year; he could think in miles of land, instead of
pounds of powder. But if he was going to scrip this land, he had no time
to lose. Once the Rangers came back to make this border safe, the
country would flood with people, and all this beautiful grass would
begin to go under the plow, never to be recovered again. Confederate
Texas had sold land scrip by the wagonload, to finance the War. Much of
it was still knocking around, and could be cheaply had. But a lot of it
had been used to tie up land by map landmarks, as a speculation. Ben saw
reason to think that some of the country he now used was already the
private property of absentee owners who had never seen it yet. These
would have to be bought out at a stiff advance in price.

Because of this he could not expect to buy all of the range he used at
once. But he could get title to both sides of the Dancing Bird, though
he paid a thousand dollars a section, where once four dollars in scrip
would have been enough; he might be able to take up a part of the Little
Beaver, and a strip along the Red. With his water secure, he could count
on scooping up the rest in other good years, later on.

Or else--the returns from this one good year could be used to run away
once more. It had to be one thing or the other, and right away. History
would not stand back and wait much longer.

Once Ben would have been willing to give up the Dancing Bird, drive a
stocker herd to some new land, and start again, rather than drag his
family into a war he might not be able to win. But it seemed to him now
that if he gave ground this time, he would never make any stand again.

He no longer believed that he would ever be able to give up this land.




CHAPTER 28


A week passed. Ben and Cash alternated days on the range, one
staying in with two or three hands, picked for their interest in
gun-fighting. The range crew quickly whipped through the last of the
calf branding, and began to sort the cattle and shove them around. They
started cross-branding, adding the Dancing Bird brand to cattle
otherwise branded, but their own on paper. Whichever one was home spent
many hours a day at Papa's carved secretary, sorting and rebooking the
hopelessly complicated accounts and tallies.

The Rawlinses did send a rep, at last, and the Zacharys were glad to see
that Jake Rountree was the man who had let himself be talked into the
job. Jake was nearing fifty, a stooped, gaunt man with wild eyes and a
look of perpetual fatigue. The tired look may have been the result of
chronic malaria; some days he complained of a general ache. The years of
bad markets and irregular weather had all but squeezed him out of the
cattle business, so that his own outfit was hardly more than a token and
a hope of building again. Zeb Rawlins was paying him a strapping hundred
a month--had had to pay it, in order to get him, hard up as he was. Ben
promptly put a hundred a month of his own on top.

Jake knew cattle. Neither Cash nor Ben ever had any trouble with him.
"Trying to give everything away," was his only objection to the way they
were handling the bust-up. The Rawlinses, for the time being, stayed off
the range.

But afterward, when the parting of the herds was complete? Doubtless
Rawlins could comb up a corrida. He could even scrape up a corrida of
Yankee outlaws, if that was what he wanted; he could throw fifty killers
onto this range. Maybe both outfits would be cool and careful, at the
first. Then bickerings would begin, and presently somebody's temper
would break. Once the guns began to smoke, how could they ever be
quieted again? They didn't know. They did the work in hand, judging that
they would know how to handle what came next, some way, when they saw
what it was.

Meantime their debts had to be paid, a big job in itself; for all those
thousands were owed in dribbles, to hundreds of cowmen, spread out over
most of Texas. It was a job Ben felt he had to do himself; wanted to
find out what kind of friends he still had in Texas, for one thing. He
would be in the saddle many weeks, and he was eager to get at it. As
soon as he got Cash and Jake Rountree well started with the
cross-branding he would be on his way.

As Ben bored into the range work, setting a brutal pace for the corrida,
Rachel was watching the calendar in a little horse race of her own.
Ben's birthday was coming up; she wanted him to be home for it. She had
thought of something she could make for him, something that would have
no practical use at all, but which she hoped would look pretty to him,
and surprising.

The calendar had no chance in a race with Ben. Three days on the range,
three nights in a deluge of papers at the secretary, and that was it.

They were at breakfast when he told them that he would ride south in the
morning, leading the old bullion mule. No, he wasn't taking any men with
him.... Because he didn't need any, that was why.... Robbers? What
about robbers? Robbers had to take their chances same as anybody else.
Come fooling around him, they probably deserved it. Shanghai Pierce had
ridden all over Texas with a mule of money, time and again. So had Papa.
Ben judged he could handle it.

He was leaving Cassius with twelve men, including the cook, and Andy.
Four or five men, and either Cash or Andy, were going to be at the house
all the time. The place would never be unguarded, regardless of the
moon.

He shouted from the door for somebody to catch the mule up.

Mama exclaimed, "But I thought you said tomorrow!"

"Oh, sure; only thing, if I happen to be twelve, fifteen miles in the
right direction come sundown, hardly any sense in riding it two ways.
Pretty near amounts to a day. Though it's hardly likely; I expect to be
home, all right, if you want to set a plate--"

"Now, Ben, you can come home for dinner just this one last night,"
Matthilda pleaded. "Please, now, won't you?"

"I'll sure try," he promised. He was always shy, and embarrassed when it
came time for any big build-up of good-bys. They knew he had maybe
seized upon this way to get out of saying any at all. But Rachel could
only take a chance on it, and bake him a birthday cake ahead of its
time, in hopes he would come home, this last night he could.

When the cake was frosted, she made for Ben the creation she had
invented. Summer had turned hot early this year, and as they neared the
end of June the swampy sedge pockets along the Dancing Bird were
green-scummed and still. This was the kind of summer that made a good
firefly year. Some years they saw hardly any, but this time they were
all along the creek, all through the trees, by the middle of June. And
the ground cherries--the other thing she needed--were ready early, too.
These were tiny plants that hid under the deep-grass; they bore papery
little lanterns the size of a strawberry, each with two small yellow
berries inside. Experimenting, Rachel found she could get the twin
berries out of the little lanterns and put a firefly in each, instead.

So she made a firefly tree--and if there had ever been one in the world
before, she hadn't heard of it. She cut a dried-out smoke bush, a
skeleton of silvery twigs, about two and a half feet tall, and tied the
ground-cherry lanterns all over it, dozens of them--though they looked
like hundreds before she was through. After that she had to wait for
dusk, when the fireflies came out. Half the time she worried for fear
Ben wouldn't come home, and the rest of the time for fear he would come
early, before she was ready. If he came too soon she would have to wake
him up to show his cake to him; he always went sound to sleep, as soon
as he had eaten.

As soon as the first fireflies rose into the twilight she began lighting
the firefly tree. On an off went the little lanterns, more and more of
them lighting as she got fireflies into them, until by full dark the
whole firefly tree was alive, working all the time. It showed up well;
for, though they were about at the end of the current Kiowa Moon, they
lighted no candles, preferring to leave the shutters open for air.
Rachel stuck the contraption in the middle of the birthday cake, and
waited for Ben to come and see.

She sat up for a long time, in the dark beside the firefly tree; until
finally she put her head on her arms and went to sleep.

It was close to midnight when Ben got home. The ringing of his spurs
waked her. She raised her head as he came clumping in, and heard his
fingers slap his holster before he knew who was there, in the dark.

"I made you a cake," she said stupidly. "It's right here."

"Seems like some kind of a tumbleweed, or something, has grown up out of
it," he said, fumbling in the dark. "My God, am I as late as that?"

She started to say, "It's supposed to--" Then she realized that the
firefly tree was dark.

"There's a lightning bug climbing on it," Ben said. One little lantern
had gleamed weakly, once, and then quit. She shook the tree, but nothing
happened; the fireflies wouldn't light any more. Maybe they were dead.




CHAPTER 29


She tried to tell him how the firefly tree had been meant to
work, and had worked, before she went to sleep. She wanted to make him
see how pretty it had been, with the little lanterns lighting up all
over it, on and off, on and off. But in a minute she knew it didn't
sound like anything, just told in words. And she began to cry.

He took her in his arms, tangled his fingers in her hair, and let her
cry against his chest. He said, "I believe that was the very nicest
thing I ever knew anybody to do."

She realized then that she was actually close in his arms, there in the
dim dark, and she forgot about the firefly tree; but she still pretended
to cry a little, for a while more, so that he would keep on holding her.
She thought, _He knows I'm not his sister. Shall I tell him now? Shall I
tell him I know it, too?_

"Well, anyway," he finally said, "we can eat the cake."

They took it out on the stoop, in the faint light of the waning moon. He
sat with his back against the house, and when Rachel had cut the cake
she sat close by him, leaning against his shoulder, while they ate.
Before they were through, they ate it all.

They talked about how dry it was. Ben had been up at the source of the
Dancing Bird, and it was no more than a seep; though in the spring it
was a little waterfall nearly two feet high, and they called it The
Falls. Rachel admitted to Ben that whenever she was at the head of the
creek she always looked for the bird Papa had seen there that had given
the stream its name. Ben laughed a little, but as much at himself as
her. He said, "I always do, too."

"Papa was chasing Pawnees," she said, knowing this was wrong. She had
found she could always get him to tell her the old stories she liked by
pretending she didn't have the facts right.

Old Zack had been chasing a Comanche raiding party, in the early days of
the War; it was that everlasting raiding and chasing that had kept
snatching him back every time he set out to enlist. This time the chase
had led them a long way through the dry, until finally their loose
horses had lit out, thirstblind and undrivable. And Zack himself had
left the trail to recover them. They had smelled the live water, running
freshly in the heat, a dozen miles away.

Downstream, the little creek disappeared in the sands; only four miles
of it ran all year round. Zack had followed upcurrent to where the water
came out from under a limestone ledge. And there on the flat rock just
above the water was dancing the strangest bird, some kind of a crane.
Zack knew sand-hill cranes, and whooping cranes, and every kind of
shidepoke, whether it lived in Texas or just passed through; but this
was none of them. It was bigger than a whooper, near five feet tall;
blue and white, with yellow legs and a red beak. Nobody had ever heard
of any such a thing. But there it was, reflected in the water as it
bobbed and wheeled and pirouetted with half-spread wings, the way
sand-hill cranes like to do, though only around their mates.

Papa sat neck-deep in the cool water under the ledge and watched the
dance, and the bird seemed not to mind him. And as he sat there the
notion came to him, he used to say, that this was no natural bird, but a
spirit bird, sent to him for a sign. The Indians would have called it
that. Papa told that part as if he didn't mean for you to believe
it--and yet as if he did more than half believe it, himself.

_Or maybe he didn't,_ Ben thought now, as a possibility occurred to him
that had never come to his mind before. _Might well be that Papa made
all that up, to kind of sugarcoat this last, farthest move, into the
very shadow of the Kiowas.... So maybe there never was a bird that
danced. Just only a fairy story._...

"I sure miss Papa," he told Rachel. "He's four years gone; and yet, this
year, I miss him more than I ever did before. We needed him, Sis. We
needed him bad."

In some ways he sounded weary, and about a hundred years older than he
was. But there was something else in the way he spoke that reminded her
of a little boy. _Now?_ she wondered. _Should I tell him now? "Sis." He
knows I'm not that to him. He pretends it to please Mama. Because he
thinks I believe it. Is this the time to tell him?_

She was afraid. She could not remember ever having been so much afraid
in her life. Ben was naturally good-natured, when not harassed, or
overworked too much. Maybe he hadn't minded being so nice to her as he
had always been, so long as the pretense that they were brother and
sister held up. But maybe he wouldn't like to think of her in any other
way; maybe he wouldn't have any use for her at all. There never seemed
to be a right or natural time to tell him. Nothing they talked about
ever led into it any way. She couldn't seem to find a way to tell him,
without it sounded far-fetched, and crude, and kind of out of a clear
sky. Like a rock plunked into the pancake batter, all unexpected out of
noplace.

She asked him where Witch River was, where Papa had died, and why nobody
outside the family ever seemed to have heard of it. It was a reached-for
question, to keep him out here on the stoop a little longer. Any time,
now, he might yawn and go to bed.

He explained--and this was new to her--that Witch River wasn't the right
name of anything. It only ran in the spring, or during hard rains. Just
one of the innumerable runoff channels that gullied the prairies
everywhere. Few drivers logged it, because they crossed it when it was
dry. Those who had trouble with it, during the spring melt, called it
the Death Crossing, or Deadman's Creek, or the Ghost Fork, since Old
Zack died there. Only the Zacharys called it Witch River, after a stock
joke Papa had used, just before he started his herd into the angry
water.

Old hands were always sending some greenie up to ask the boss what river
they had come to.

"Witch River," Old Zack would say.

"Why, this one, right here."

"That's right," Zack would answer, sending the boy back bewildered. If
the jokers in the swing could get the boy to say he guessed it must be
the Wright, they were satisfied. From there on the kid couldn't head his
horse into any stream, without somebody asking him if he was sure it was
the right river.

To Ben it seemed fitting that the river in which his father died should
be named after this country joke. He believed Old Zack would have chosen
to go to his death with any kind of makeshift, rather than with no joke
at all.

Now Ben told her about the day his father had died. The family knew, of
course, that Papa had been drowned, while crossing cattle, but Rachel
had never known Ben to feel like talking about it in any detail before.

Zack had reached Witch River late in the day, but he had ordered a
crossing anyway, though it would run on into the dusk, and maybe the
dark. They put the herd through in bunches of about five hundred, going
into the water where the banks were low. The current was running pretty
hard, but they had enough river-wise hands to press hard against the
leaders, lest they yield and be turned. Three bunches crossed all right.
But as they put the fourth into the water the light was failing, and
maybe the horses were tiring, for this time the leaders turned, and were
swept downstream with the current. The wild Texican cattle would do
that, sometimes, in spite of all hell and the best men in Texas.

The cows were carried downstream into a deeper, narrower channel, under
the nigh bank, where the faster water got hold of them. Here the south
bank was high and bluff, and even undercut; there was no way to turn
back. The riders who fought against the sweep-away found themselves
either too far across, or caught in the mix of the turned cattle--a
mortally dangerous place to be.

Ben himself was in the broad shallows on the far side. The lead cattle,
with thrashing hundreds behind them, rushed past and got below him in
the first moments, swimming with the fast current. Old Zack--Papa, to
Ben--was famous for his crossings. No disaster was in his record such as
caught him this time, all in a moment. Ben was running his horse at a
stumble through the shallows, trying to get downstream of the leaders.
So he was well placed to see what Papa did then.

Straight off the bluff came Zack's rocketing horse, winging far out over
the channel as it plunged to deep water. How far below was the river? To
Ben the bluff looked sky high--crowding fifty feet, maybe. But this
sounded like such a stretch that he always afterward called it "worse
than thirty." Not a record jump, but one hell of a piece of
cow-handling. Zack sounded the rebel long yell all the way down. An
explosion of water went up as the horse hit just ahead of the
leaders--and they turned.

As Papa came up he was trailing free from the saddle horn, on the
downstream side of his horse--you can be swept under your animal, into
the meat-chopping hoofs, from the upstream side. Papa's horse sunk its
hindquarters, treading for bottom, and found it. Man and horse surged up
onto sound footing, and all the hardest part was behind....

Once Papa had said, "All accidents are freak accidents. All dangers are
hidden dangers, by the very meaning of the word. Look out for the Indian
sharpshooter where there's no cover to hide him. Watch out for the
badger hole, far from where any badger should be. A man can ready
himself for anything on earth, if he knows it's there."

So now the unforeseeable struck from under the fast water. As Zack's
saddle horn came streaming up, something sodden whirled to the surface,
and shawled itself over the nose of his horse. The horse reared and went
over backward, and the current rolled over horse and man. They did not
reappear.

Ben sent the herd on, and stayed to search Witch River. The stream
emptied like a bucket in a day or two, and Ben found his father's horse,
along with some drowned cattle, in a mess of drift. And with the horse
was a drowned wolf. Now, how many drowned wolves have ever been seen?
Ben had never heard tell of one in his life. Those varmints refuse to be
drowned; too strong, too tough, too wary. Yet this one had come a long
way to surface right there, at the nose of Zack's horse, in that one
split second when Zack's life could be ended by it.

Though Ben rode downstream a long way, and later others rode, Zack's
body was never found.

Zack had been around forty-five when he died, but full of drive, and a
don't-give-a-damn quality, much like Cassius. So long as he lived, Ben
would never forget that soaring leap with its ringing rebel yell, the
spraddling horse against the sky above him, the incredibly tall sheet of
water that went up as horse and rider hit, turning the cattle. He
remembered it all, as if it had been last night. He had never been able
to get used to the idea that a man so much alive as Zack could just
suddenly be out of the world, completely and forever.

"Now the horses he rode are old," Ben said slowly, wonderingly; "and his
bones are sand in the sea."

They were silent. The fireflies that had failed Rachel were thick and
bright, stirrup-deep, all along the Dancing Bird. Rachel reached for
Ben's hand, and held it hard between both her own.

"I miss him still," Ben said. "He was all I ever knew to turn to, when I
didn't know what to do. I need him, so many times.... Rachel, Rachel
honey, I never needed him any more than I do this year."

_Now? Shall I tell him now? Maybe I could become what he needs,
instead._ But still she didn't know how to speak.

"He would have known what to do here," Ben said. "Papa knew how to face
anything down."

"No," Rachel said. "If you'll think back, you'll remember things he
turned his back on, trying to pretend they weren't there. You'll even
remember things he never faced, but gave ground to, and drew away."

_Now how does she know that?_ He was almost frightened, for a moment.
_How much does she know, and understand, that we think she's never
suspected?_ He decided to ignore it.

"He was a good man," Ben said, without change of mood. "The best man
ever forked a horse, I guess. There'll never be another like him."

Her whisper was intense, rebellious. "That isn't true!"

"What?"

"You're a better man than Papa ever thought of being," she told him.

"Rachel! Me?"

"You're steadier, and you hold on harder. You stick to your knittin',
where Papa was always getting switched off. Papa could no more stay with
what he was doing when the guns and saddles came out than a yearling
hound. You're the one people can tie to, Ben! And count on always."

"I--but--why, Rachel--" he was dumbfounded. "But, you loved Papa--I know
you did. Because--"

"I worshiped him. I would never have known he wasn't the best man in the
world, if I hadn't known you. But you're the best man."

He was silenced; and she didn't know whether he was touched, or only
astonished, and shocked by her heresy.

Presently he leaned over, and gently kissed her hair. He said softly,
"I'm right glad you think that, anyway."

_Now? Is this the time?_

But he stood up, and with an easy pull of one hand lifted her to her
feet. He said, "Now, you take care of everybody, while I'm gone."

And it was time to get some sleep.




CHAPTER 30


After Ben was gone, the summer ran on; and it was turning into
one of the driest they had known since they had been on the Dancing
Bird. The grass cured on the stem before it was halfway up, and the
range, heavily overstocked the year before, was overgrazed and haunted
by dust devils, wherever the livestock used. Trail men who drove late
would bust, as most had busted, the last three years in a row.

This year the things that had made Rachel's childhood happy didn't seem
to interest her any more.

Other years she had trapped pets, often collecting a regular zoo of
them. Once she had raised an elf owl, no bigger than a sparrow when it
was full-grown. Another time she had spoonfed a nest of ravens until
they flew. For several years one or another of them had come back, from
time to time, to squawk for handouts around the stoop, but fewer
appeared each year, until no more came home. She had tamed any number of
deer mice, and jumping mice. These were magical little creatures, with
delicate over-sized ears that the sun shone through. If one of them
tried to hide in the grass, with no dark place to crawl into, all you
could see of it was those sun-shot ears, like two glowing pink flower
petals, all alone. Once there had been a kangaroo rat that Ben had
caught for her somewhere in the dry, a bouncy, tassel-tailed bit of
fluff with no fear of people whatever.

Most exciting, and at the same time most disappointing, had been a
coyote pup. Cash had dug it out for her before its eyes were open, and
until it was nearly grown it had seemed to be turning into a dog. But it
had ended by snapping at her whenever she touched it, and had finally
run away. A few times afterward she had seen it sitting on a hummock to
watch her from a long way off, but it had never come home again, or
answered her call.

But this year what she remembered best was how much work pets make. Only
children had much fun, she guessed, and she wasn't a child any more.
Hadn't been for a long time. She dug up extra tasks for herself, which
in other years she had delayed as long as she could. She boiled down
antelope blood to a stickum, and made a couple of quarts of percussion
caps. She set up the big outside kettles, to begin the annual soap
boiling and candle making.

She was trying to forget another task that she knew she must someday
undertake. No one had assigned it to her; indeed, she would be prevented
if she were found out. Her restless industry was an attempt at escape,
for she dreaded this thing, and even saw reason for physical fear. But
she could not drive it from the back of her mind. The five hands who
were always loafing at home, a different combination every day, were a
help in putting off the job she feared. They played poker endlessly, on
a blanket laid in the dust by the creek, shifting position with the
shade; some of them followed her with their eyes whenever she was in
sight. These, with either Cash or Andy always around, gave her an excuse
for believing she could not slip away. But her time was running out.
July passed, and they were into August; she knew Ben might already be on
his way home.

Then the grasshoppers came.

When the first great cloud of them appeared in the north, Rachel didn't
know what they were. They had heard of northern Texas being devastated
by them in '68, but they had not amounted to anything on the San Saba.
At first she mistook the strange low darkness on the horizon for a dust
storm, and she watched for twisters. The billions of grasshoppers rolled
swiftly across the grassland, and only shreds and fibers were left where
they touched. The cottonwoods along the Dancing Bird turned to
skeletons, with only chewed tags and remnants of leaves left on the
branches. The day they were thickest they made it impossible to walk
outside. They covered you, and got down your neck, and tangled their
spiny legs in your hair. You could not set foot to the ground without
crushing them, or lay a hand upon anything without snatching it back
from a bristly, kicking handful of them.

It was the grasshoppers that gave Rachel a chance to get away. When they
had passed, the cicadas, which everybody called locusts, resumed their
metallic shrilling in the bare cottonwoods--what on earth did they find
to eat? But the cattle were left standing in helpless bunches upon the
stripped land; and the prairie moaned night and day with their bawling.
Cash worked as though possessed.

He sent riders in seven directions, hunting for belts and pockets of
grass the grasshoppers might have missed. When these were found, the
cows had to be moved to them, with Jake Rountree on hand to see that the
Rawlins cattle got an even break.

Zeb Rawlins himself was in Fort Worth, seeking a deal with somebody to
put together a corrida, with which he wanted Jude to drive a herd of
stockers to Wichita with the first cool weather. Jude was the drawback,
there; Zeb was not having an easy time finding the men he had to have.
But if word went down to him that he was coming out on the short end at
home, he might be able to flood the Dancing Bird with gun-toting riders,
and take over the whole range.

Cash still came in at night, or sent Andy, with three or four of their
crack shots, but only a couple of hands were left home to sleep away the
days. They had almost, but perhaps not quite, come into the first days
of their next Kiowa Moon.

"One day's work more," Cash kept saying, "and we'll have done what we
could." But at night there would again be just one day's work more,
still ahead.

No excuse was left. Rachel could get away now, and must, if she was ever
going to. Early one morning, when the locusts were already grinding away
in the heat of sunup, Rachel saddled a fast pony, and got away
unnoticed.

She pointed downstream, and to the east, toward the Rawlinses'.

She had told herself she was going there to try to make peace with
Hagar. The men were feisty enough, but there was a bare chance that they
would draw back from a war if Hagar could be made friendly again. Her
chance of getting through to Hagar was obviously not much, but if there
was any chance at all she could not forgive herself, ever, if she did
not take it.

Or so she had told herself, and told herself again as she rode.
Something else in the back of her mind was still unrecognizable in
shadows; she would not look at it, or let it out into the light. So well
had she suppressed it that she could not have named what it was, even if
she had dared to try.

Half a dozen horses shuffled themselves in the Rawlins saddle corral,
restless in the morning sun. They watched her approach, and whinnied at
her pony, so that she was announced from a long way off. Nothing else
stirred around the Rawlins place; the cabin was closed up,
tight-shuttered against the morning heat, and the chimney was smokeless.
Except for the corraled horses, the place might have been deserted for a
long time.

Rachel did not tie. When she had dismounted she led her pony to the
door, keeping hold of him, for she was frightened now, more so with
every step that she advanced. At the door she raised her knuckles to
rap, but still hesitated, all but unable to face the ordeal she had laid
out for herself. What, after all, could she possibly say?

She never knocked. The door was suddenly snatched open in front of her,
and Hagar was standing there, glaring at her with a total hostility. The
sunlight was pitiless upon the deep lines and roughnesses of her face,
and it was a death's-head face.




CHAPTER 31


Rachel tried to speak, and could not. She was seeing
devil-lights come up behind Hagar's eyes, the same dreadful glow she had
seen upon that awful night in this same house when they had heard the
story of Hagar's captivity. She wanted to turn, vault onto her horse,
and get away, but not a muscle would move.

"You," Hagar said. The word was voiceless, a rasping of breath in her
throat. She had not seemed to breathe at all, at first, but now she was
breathing hard, almost gasping for air. "You," she repeated. "You dare
to come here?"

"I--only--" Rachel could not remember a word that she had ever thought
of to say.

"You come here," Hagar said. "To this house. You come and stand afore
me." She had regained her voice, though it shook, and her words seemed
to choke her. "What blasphemy can there be, you would draw back from?"

Looking into the terrible eyes, Rachel was certain Hagar was insane. Yet
she still stood there.

"Squaw!" Hagar accused her. "Ki'way squaw! Yet you stand here afore me!"
Her voice still shook but rose strongly now. "Red nigger as ever was,
yet you dare face up to me? For now we know all. Your own brother put
knife to my little girl at No Hope--her dear pretty hair has been seen
on his shield! Yes, and he stopped by your place, as he rode to that
butchery, didn't he? Boasted to you of what he would do--and from you
rode straight to the massacre! And his knife--your own brother's
knife--it was at work when they cut apart her darling body--past all
decent laying out of it--leaving no part with another--"

Overrun by Hagar's storm of words, Rachel was in bewilderment. Hagar had
seemed to accuse Ben, or Andy--perhaps Cash, even, forgetting in her
madness that Cash had been far away. But Hagar's raving still poured on.

"Oh, I know you now! Dear God in heaven, how I know you! For I know the
work of red nigger squaws, when they be nigh a massacre, and get a
chance at the bodies. Had you been longside your brother, you would have
bloodied your hands like his own. But not again! All Texas knows the
truth now, save those too blind to see. You will be struck from the face
of this earth. You, and all your kin, and all who give you help or feed
you--you'll be hunted and driven--"

She lost her breath in a hard fit of coughing. Yet through it she
managed to force out, "Yet now--you stand afore--me--" Spittle foamed
and dribbled at the corners of Hagar's mouth, and it was flecked with
blood. She turned blindly from the door, went to her knees as her
crippled feet betrayed her, and clawed herself up again. "Rifle," she
croaked, as if someone were standing there to hand it to her. "M'
rifle--gi' me m' rifle--"

The spell broke, and Rachel could leave there. Perhaps she could have
moved before, had not some unaccountable inner compulsion held her
standing rigid to hear Hagar out. She had a scared moment in which her
pony reared and spun away from her, spooked by her billowing skirt as
she whirled. The leather burned through her fingers, and she all but
lost him. She made cast after cast of the split-rein, while the pony ran
backward from her, and she stumbled over her skirt, unable to quiet him.
But she got the rein over his neck at last, and a foot in the stirrup;
she was no better than lying across the saddle, but with him, as he lit
out.

No bullet came. In the Rawlins cabin, Georgia had finally got to her
mother, from wherever she had been, and caught Hagar as she stumbled
toward the door. Hagar had got down a heavy rifle musket, and was
fumbling to seat its coiled Maynard primer.

"Ma! You can't!" Georgia threw arms around her.

Hagar fought her daughter with an unnatural strength. Georgia's lip
split as an elbow struck her mouth, and a rib cracked as the musket butt
drove into her body. Yet she held on; and in a matter of moments Hagar's
cough came back, and the strength went out of her. She lost her grip on
the musket, and went to her knees. Georgia picked her up, and carried
her to her bed.




CHAPTER 32


When Rachel could gain her seat, her knee over the horn, she
bent low on the pony's neck, letting him bolt; and only then looked
back. Hagar had not reappeared in the open door. But still she urged the
pony flat out and belly to the ground, winging over gullies, sailing
high over brush they could more quickly have swerved to pass, wanting
only more space behind her.

By the time she pulled up, the pony was shaking as badly as she was, and
all the wind was beaten out of both of them by the headlong run. It took
her a while to recover herself sufficiently to take a look at what had
happened. None of it made much sense at first. The wildness of Hagar's
accusations had the effect of disconnecting all she said from reality,
blurring what basic meaning had been in it. Rachel had the impression
that Hagar had accused her of taking part in the No Hope massacre.

Going back over it, taking apart what Hagar had said, and looking at
each piece of it alone, she found that the meanings became more clear.
Hagar had not said Rachel was at No Hope; her reference had been to what
could be expected of squaws, if they were present at a slaying. And the
accusation of her brother--Hagar had not meant any of the Zacharys. Nor
had she meant Seth, who was a savage, but not a red savage. The mad
woman had been repeating some part of Abe Kelsey's babblings. She had
called Rachel a Kiowa squaw, whose brother had ridden with Seth.

Strangely, she felt no real surprise. She could not remember that the
possibility had ever come to the surface of her mind; certainly she had
never consciously considered it. Yet some part of awareness must have
been there, someplace. She found herself calm in the face of this
answer; it was almost as though she had felt relief, that the long
mystery and foreboding were over. _I think, now, that I already knew it.
I think I must have known it for a long time._

She unsaddled methodically and put away her saddle and bridle. With a
corncob she scuffed up the wet back of her pony, so that it would dry
without chilling. She walked into the house unexcited and unhurried; yet
Matthilda knew what had happened in the first moment that she saw her.

This time Matthilda did not panic. She had known for quite a while that
her struggle to stand off the inevitable was a hopeless one. She said,
"You've been to the Rawlinses'."

Rachel nodded. "The bones are out of the tree." It was an expression
they had brought with them from the San Saba, where the Indians had
formerly made tree burials; sometimes riders still came upon skeletons
in tattered wrappings, high above the ground among the branches.

Neither Cash nor Andy was home that day. More than either Ben or Andy,
Cassius followed the crash-on, bust-'em-down, keep-'em-hustled tactics
their father had brought out of the Big Thicket; and now he was trying
to complete the redistribution of the herds in an all-out rush, before
the Kiowa Moon came full. The two cowhands supposed to be garrisoning
the home layout were out looking for Rachel--poor trackers, obviously,
searching where she had not been.

So Rachel and Matthilda were alone, and now they said what little had to
be said about these bones, newly fallen from the tree.

"I should have told you the whole thing straight off, I guess,"
Matthilda admitted.

"Is this all of it, this time?"

"Yes; this is all of it." She told Rachel now how Papa, or Old Zack, as
everyone called him, had led a band of volunteers in pursuit of a party
of Kiowa raiders, who had cleaned out a whole string of isolated
settlers, apparently. This was back before the War, in '57, but the
Kiowas were always bad ones, even then. The raiders had captive children
with them, seven or eight, at first; Papa had sworn he would follow them
as long as horses made tracks. The Indians never did seem to learn how
tenaciously a man like Papa could hold on. He chased them all the way to
their village, far up the Salt Fork of the Brazos, and whipped their
warriors in a holding action they tried. He was less than an hour behind
them, at one point, as the village got away.

That was when he found her. Traveling villages carried all their
stuff--children, old folks, everything--on drag litters, or travois,
which were poles dragged behind a horse, with a buffalo-hide hammock
slung between. And there between the travois tracks, sat a white baby,
less than one year old--

"How do you know I was?" Rachel asked coolly.

"Why, by your teeth, of course. Seemed you had bounced out of a drag
litter, all unnoticed--"

"Indians have teeth. What made you think I was a white girl?"

"It was perfectly obvious. It always has been. It was only long after,
when Abe Kelsey got mad at Papa, he started that other outlandish
story."

Matthilda stated it as a simple fact, because that was what it was to
her, and always had been; for she had wanted it that way. "Papa carried
you more than two hundred miles in his arms," she said now. "Took him
two weeks to get you home. How many wild cows he roped and milked to
feed you, we'll never know. But Papa didn't mind. He loved you the
minute he saw you. And always after. Even more than as if--"

"If I was a captive child, why did nobody ever find out who I was?"

"Maybe we didn't try too hard--though we did do what we thought we ought
to. But you were so dear, and sweet, and we wanted you so--"

"It doesn't matter any more," Rachel said.

"Of course not. I don't know what difference it would make even if that
foolish story had been true. There's lots of Indian blood, in some of
the very finest southern families. Sam Houston himself married a
Cherokee girl. And General Pickett, who led the brave charge at
Gettysburg--he was married to an Oto woman--a northwest kind of Indian.
I don't know how people get so upset."

Having seen Hagar, Rachel knew how. But she said again, "It doesn't
matter."

Mama kissed her, and praised her for being so sensible. "You and I
aren't going to be here, anyway, come winter. We have money, now; it's
time to see to your education. We'll visit a while in New Orleans,
first. After that, maybe Charleston; maybe Richmond..."

_Always ready to run again_, Rachel thought, _every time the truth about
me catches up_. She said, "Could you ever really bring yourself to leave
Ben, and Cash, and Andy?"

For a fraction of a moment, then, the glint of a tear threatened, but
Matthilda forced it back. She was ready with this answer, too. She had
often controlled them by letting them see she was hurt; but she had
expressed self-pity so seldom that she could use it now, to confuse the
trail.

"We must be crazy people," she said, "to live in a leaky mud hut, at the
utter end of desolation, and put our money down a hole. The boys find
their work here; emptiness has some strange pull, for men on horses. But
it's a dreadful thing to be a woman, out on the prairie. A woman on the
prairie is an unwanted thing. Nothing but a burden and a tie-down,
keeping the ones she loves from doing what they want to do. Until they
can't stand it any more, and run away. Cassius will be gone soon, and
Andy too. And Poor Ben--he'll feel he must stay by us, drawing into
himself, and growing old too soon...."

Rachel saw now how drawn Matthilda looked, how terribly tired. She made
Matthilda lie down, and she sang the herd lullaby, about the pore
cowboy, shot five times right through his dang chest, until Matthilda
smiled and dozed. Then she slipped away.

Maybe they got too much practice in facing up to the worst, out there.
Rachel never doubted for a moment that she was of Kiowa blood. Too many
things bore it out besides the conviction Abe Kelsey's statement had
borne for so many. She remembered how Matthilda had always kept at her
to wear a sunbonnet and cotton gloves when she went outdoors in the
summer heat. How all the lemons they ever got hold of had been wasted
trying to make creams to keep her bleached. How she never had been
allowed to wear moccasins with beads, or any kind of an Indian-looking
thing....

The Kiowas had been stealing Spanish-Mexican women, and Texican women,
for somewhere upwards of half a century, and raising stolen white
children as their own. Many Kiowas had the same Spanish kind of olive
skin as she had--maybe lighter than her own would be, if she were out in
the weather as much. And plenty of them had wavy chestnut hair, far less
Indian than her own, which was straight black. Lost Bird had auburn
hair; and his eyes--

She felt her stomach try to turn over as she remembered Lost Bird's
eyes. Now she took down the little mirror that hung above the wash
bench, and studied her own eyes. They had always looked the color of the
mud in the bottom of a tadpole puddle, to her. But this time she took
the mirror to the darkest corner, and saw that her eyes were nearly
black. Then she stood sideways at a window and watched her eyes turn
green. And when finally she faced toward the bright sky she saw her eyes
go paler than a peeled grape; doubtless they would flash pale steel,
like the knife in Lost Bird's eyes, out in the full sun. _Is that why he
looked familiar, when I never saw him before?_ She could find no other
resemblance. But she could hear Hagar saying, "_Your brother stopped by,
on his way to No Hope._..."

She went to the slop bucket, and was sick. But when she had drunk a pint
of cold water, and washed her face, she knew what she had to do; at
once, tonight, before Ben got home. If only Cash and Andy would stay out
one night more...

Nightfall did not bring them home.

She located a sheath knife, and a belt that would carry it, and punched
holes in the belt so that she could strap it on. It was all she was
going to take with her. She had no destination, and no plan, except to
get away; to the west likely, and try for the cap rock breaks. Her
brothers were trackers, all of them, but so was she, enough of one to
know how to break her trail.

That night as she and Matthilda ate supper alone, she could not help
thinking that she was eating in this house for the last time, and a lump
hurt in her throat, so that she could hardly swallow her food. But
Matthilda was quiet, too, so that Rachel did not have to talk; and the
failing light helped her not to give herself away. They went to bed, and
Rachel lay listening for Matthilda's breathing to become regular, so
that she could creep out of the house.

But that was the night the travails of Matthilda's life caught up with
her. Something closed in, and something bore down, and something gave
way.




CHAPTER 33


Matthilda slept lightly, nervously. The twilight seemed to
hold on forever, and when at last it was gone the moon rose earlier, and
shone more brightly through the skeleton cottonwoods, than they had
expected of it, so soon. Four times before midnight Rachel stole out of
the bedroom, and each time Matthilda came broad awake.

"Rachel--you up--"

"Drink of water. It's hot tonight."

Then Matthilda would like some water too, so that she was fully waked up
again. And the patient waiting began all over again.

An hour after midnight Matthilda began to moan. Rachel thought her to be
having a nightmare, and tried to get out of the room. But Matthilda's
voice sounded, faint but wide awake, through the warm dark. "I don't
feel very good." It was almost a whimper. "I have the awfullest
pain...."

The pain seemed to be right in her middle, so they decided it was
indigestion. Rachel closed the shutters, and saw to it that the
loopholes were all plugged, so that she could build a fire. They had
drawn the coals at dusk, so she had to start anew, setting tinder to
burning with a flash of powder from the snaphaunce firelighter. She set
a kettle on, but lighted no candles, and fumbled by memory for the herbs
she supposed she should put together, verifying them close to the fire.
Finally she made a brew, believed to be good for indigestion, out of
peppergrass, ginger, and some pinches of stuff such as mandrake root.

This concoction, brought scalding hot, must surely have been the worst
thing she could have dished up, for it induced hard vomiting. A little
later, before her breath was entirely recovered, Matthilda gave a long,
groaning cry of pain, and went unconscious.

The next three hours went to make up the longest night Rachel had ever
lived in her life. Matthilda regained consciousness in half an hour, but
moaned continuously until daylight. She tried to lie quiet, but could
not; the sounds were wrung out of her against her will. Finally she took
to putting words to the moans, in an effort to get control. "Oh, mercy,
mercy... Oh, mercy, me... Oh, dear, oh dear me, oh deary, deary me...
Oh, mercy, mercy..." On and on forever, without end. Sometimes she asked
for water, but if she swallowed a mouthful she could not keep it down.

When Cash and Andy rode in together, in the first dawn, Rachel knew she
had never been so glad to see anybody before. Matthilda tried to smile
at them. "Something I ate," she whispered. They felt her forehead for
fever, but she was wet with sweat. A little later she seemed to doze,
out of sheer exhaustion; or perhaps she lost consciousness again, for
her breathing sounded strange.

"Seems like a busted blood vessel," Andy thought. "Somewhere in her
chest."

"You don't know what it is any better than I do," Cash set him back.
"All I know, it don't look like any natural kind of bellyache, to me.
I've got to get help."

Rachel was appalled. "All the way to--where? The Rountrees'? You won't
be back before tomorrow night!"

"I'll fetch Georgia Rawlins."

"They wouldn't let her come here if the world was falling down!"

"She'll come."

Matthilda rested more easily after the sun came up. Her breathing became
more natural, and she slept almost peacefully through the middle of the
day.

Cash brought Georgia late in the afternoon. They came in at the gallop
on beat-out horses--not windbroke, but spent to the last notch that they
could be without permanent damage. They would not work again in a month.
Cash let Georgia down at the stoop, threw her saddle on the ground, and
turned loose her horse. "Got to look around a minute!" he shouted, and
rode to the corral to get a fresh pony.

"What's the matter with him?" Andy asked the outdoors, afraid to speak
to Georgia.

"He's been fretty the last four miles," Georgia told them. "Something
spooked him. Didn't say what it was. Let's see your mother."

Matthilda had gone worse again, seemingly half conscious but unable to
recognize Georgia, and breathing with great labor. Georgia asked when it
had begun, and looked overpowered. "This is bad. She's bust a blood
vessel."

"I told you," said Andy.

"Shut up and fetch my saddle bags.... We've got to quieten her what
we can. Keep her warm. Wish we could get dry sheets around her. But I
don't dast mess with her. I sure hope I'm mighty wrong. She looks a
whole lot like a goner."

She pounded some dried leaves and pieces of root into a powder, and made
a tea of it. They got about a half a cupful into Matthilda; it was the
first liquid she had kept down so far. "Make her sleep, some, maybe.
Won't do no other good, though."

Rachel tried to find out how Georgia had got away from her mother.

"Ma? Never asked her. Just lit out."

"Don't she know you're gone?"

"Bound to. Saw me ride off with Cash, I reckon."

"But what will you tell her when you go back?"

"Hell, Rachel, how do I know? Maybe I'll tell her I'm carryin' by him.
Whatever seems needful."

"She'll kill you!"

"Not me. Oh, she's game to pull a trigger, all right! But me, I'm all
the girl she's got left."

That was the nearest they came to talking about Rachel's bad time with
Hagar. Listening, they became aware that Matthilda's breathing was
already quieter. Rachel was impressed and Georgia explained that it
seemed like there had been a power of sick folks around, wherever she
was. But she did not look confident; perhaps she was not entirely sure
she had not killed Matthilda, with her witch-woman herbs.

Now Andy roused them up, speaking in a low tone, but urgently. "Stand
over by the windows. No--one to each side. Get ready to bar them up. Not
yet!"

They could hear the hoofs of Cash's horse coming in, walking quietly.
Standing by the windows, but out of line, they could not see Cash, but
they knew he had given Andy some kind of signal.

"We got trouble," Andy told them. "But don't touch the shutters! We
can't let on we know it. Lest they never let Cash get here."

He pulled a loophole plug from the door, and stood behind it, ready to
swing it open. The sound of the walking hoofs came on, and on. How could
hoofs so near approach for so long, yet never seem to get here? Suddenly
Andy swung the door wide, and Cassius, bent low over the horn, jumped
his horse across the stoop and into the room. Andy slammed and barred
the door behind him. "Now fort up," he shouted.




CHAPTER 34


"I figure there's about a dozen of 'em," Cash said as he
dismounted. His horse seemed enormous, in here, making the house and
everything in it look smaller than they had ever seen it before; the
wooden floor boomed under the hoofs. "Knock open a loophole in the west
wall. Rachel--get one open in Mama's room. Georgia, pull the slide on
the north lookout--better bust out the glass."

They posted themselves as he told them, each alone, one to each side.
And after that there was silence in the house. Matthilda seemed to be
sleeping peacefully. Half an hour passed, and the sun went down. The
shuttered interior darkened, but a clear dry light remained outside; it
would not dwindle enough to harm marksmanship for the next two hours.

Cassius was trying to listen. "Georgia, for God's sake, stop that damned
clock!"

They had not heard the familiar ticking at all until Georgia stopped the
pendulum, and the little painted ship on its painted sea rocked no more.
When the ticking had stopped it left an emptiness that fairly rang in
their ears.

"See there!" Andy spoke from the west loophole. "One's riding in the
creek bed. I can bead right on his head!"

"I see him," Cash said.

"You want I should--"

"Let him come on."

Up over the cutbank of the Dancing Bird, squarely in front of the house,
came a single Indian rider. "Lost Bird," Cash said, so that they all
could hear it.

He came as he had come before, except that he rode bareback, and with a
war bridle, a single cord tied on the lower jaw. He was without war
paint, and his shirt was on; a four-inch silver concho shone in his
hair. And this time they could see he carried no weapon at all. It was a
strange thing for a Kiowa to present himself like that, entirely
unarmed. But that was the worst thing about Kiowas; they were always
doing something original, unpredictable, so you could never figure what
kind of way they were fixing to come at you.

"That gray he's riding is a famous racer," Cash said with a peculiar
detachment.

Lost Bird's right hand was raised in the peace sign. He did not lower it
as he pulled up five yards out, directly in front of the door, and made
his pony stand like a rock.

Cash said something in Kiowa, and Lost Bird began to speak. Andy had
returned to his station. Nobody was unglued from his loop to see Rachel
creep through the shadows to one of the front shutter loopholes.

She remembered the smooth, beautifully molded face, the small,
pleasant-appearing smile, the dark-reddish glow in the thick braids. But
his eyes were only dark slits now. Rachel felt the peculiar revulsion
that she had felt before. Lost Bird was speaking slowly in Kiowa, a
phrase at a time; and he matched his words with the conventional sign
language of the prairies that they all knew. So this time she knew what
he said.

"We many times take your people," he said, and though the sign language
does not translate well in its literal meanings, the thought came
through clearly; "You come, you want them, you buy. You pay us. We let
you take them back. Many times. All friendly. All good."

Cash said something through the door in Kiowa, and Lost Bird
acknowledged it with a brief grin. But he went on with the speech he had
doubtless carefully prepared. "Long ago," Lost Bird's signs said, "you
take a child of ours. You take my sister. We look for her very long. Now
we find. Now we come. We want her back now. She is ours. We pay. You pay
us, now we pay you. All friendly, all good. I give ten horses for my
sister. You give me. I take home."

Cash spat out an angry Kiowa phrase.

"Tell what you want more. Price is good. But I give more," Lost Bird's
hands said. "I do not leave this place without my sister. I have
twenty-two men. You have two men, three women--one very old. No good."

Cassius raised his carbine to the loophole, aimed steadily, and put a
bullet close past Lost Bird's ear. The black powder smell was plain in
the room as he reloaded. Outside, the gray war pony quivered, but did
not move its feet. Lost Bird was smiling, and the smile expressed more
contempt than he could have shown in any other way. He believed he knew
whom he was dealing with, and how their minds worked, and what Cassius,
particularly, would do and would not do.

"You shoot well," his hands said. "You do not shoot to hit. You hit me,
nobody in your house will see the sun again. You know that. Now listen.
I tell you all this again." He started over with the same prepared
speech as before. "Few times, we take your people...."

Rachel startled Cash by speaking almost in his ear. He didn't know how
she got there, standing at his elbow. "This is no good," she said.

"You get back where I put you!" he ordered her, through his teeth. He
was abruptly, bitterly angered, for her intrusion threatened a betrayal
of all their long efforts to shield her.

"There isn't going to be any fight," she said. "Let me by. I understood
what he said, this time."

"Never mind them damned Indian lies! You're going to--"

"He's telling the truth. I've known all about it for a long time. I'm
going to end all this trouble now!"

"You'll not go out there, because I'll stop you," he said; but he was
less sure of himself, thrown off by her revelation.

"Maybe you can stop me. But they'll be in here, while you have your
hands full with me. Now let me go."

He stared at her, bewildered by the flat, dead-sounding tone in which
she threatened outlandish, unbelievable things. "Is everybody crazy but
me?" he demanded. "By God, I know how to settle this!"

Out in the clear twilight, Lost Bird was patiently, slowly, going
through his smooth, clear signs. His gruff Kiowa phrases came steadily
to them, through the door. Cash raised his carbine again, and instantly
fired. Lost Bird's head jerked violently with the impact of the bullet;
he was dead as he fell. The whole back of his skull seemed to be gone as
he lay face down in the dirt. The gray war pony shied, found itself
free, and stampeded.

Cash had fired to kill, from cover and without warning, at a range from
which failure was impossible to him; while Lost Bird had sat horse
before him, unarmed, fully exposed under the peace sign. Any
justification would have to be found in the necessity Cash had believed
governed his decision. He never thereafter spoke one word in his own
defense, or gave any sign of regret.

"Oh, Cash, Cash!" Rachel cried out. "They'll never draw back now!
They'll fight till we're dead!"

"You can bet on it," Cassius said.

"They'll never let-up, so long as--"

He cut in harshly. "Then there's no use you going out, is there? Now get
back to your loop!"




CHAPTER 35


For a few moments stillness held outside. The zinging of the
locusts in the cottonwoods by the creek had been silenced by the
gunshots; and this made the quiet unnatural, as if the whole prairie lay
stunned.

Before the locusts could begin again, the "Wa-wa-wa-wah!" of a war cry
sounded from the creek, immediately followed by an uncountable chorus.
The creek bed seemed to be full of Kiowas, while yet no Indian but the
dead Lost Bird could be seen. Two rifles slammed, down there; then a
ragged volley. The windowpanes burst outside the battle shutters, and
fell tinkling.

"Close your slide," Cash called to Georgia, who stood at the back of the
room, at the north lookout. "Get down on the floor!"

Andy, at the end, complained, "I can't line up on nothing from here!"

"Stay there anyway." Cash turned away from his door loop, and leaned
against the plastered sod wall, at rest. A buffalo slug broke through a
shutter, and rattled, spent, across the floor. A little after that a
bullet nicked a splinter out of the side of the door loop where Cash had
stood, and lodged above the fireplace.

"They'll quit this, in a minute," Cash said.

He was right. The Kiowas were firing at the house in an expression of
anger; they had no plan to fit what had happened. The guns in the creek
bed fell silent, and Cash looked out again.

"Two-three of 'em have gone to popping up and down," Cash said, puzzling
everybody. "Guess they want to see what we'll do."

"What _will_ we do?" Andy asked him.

"Nothing," Cash said, but kept his carbine ready. He watched an Indian
leap straight up to expose half of his painted body, then drop from
sight again. Another tried it in a different place. Then a single
white-streaked warrior sprang out of the creek bed, and stood in the
open upon the bank. Cash fired, and the Kiowa came down in a heap. The
lip of the bank crumbled, and the body began to slide over the edge.
Cash fired again, and hit, he thought, before the body disappeared from
view.

That was the end of that experiment. The Kiowas could not be heard
withdrawing, but they could be expected to take council now. Ten minutes
passed without event.

"This might be a good chance to eat," Cash said. "They're not liable to
give us too many good ones, from here on in. Not for a while." He looked
for the Kiowas to try a jump at them in about the last of the dusk. He
believed they'd want to make use of poor light, on account of he'd
bothered them a little bit, he thought. They had had him all figured
out, just how he would act, only he hadn't acted that way. Still...
all he could say for certain was that no Kiowa was going to leave here
yet, unless to bring more. They would never leave the body of Lost Bird
lying out there in front, where it was. Rachel accepted that the body
out there was that of her brother, or perhaps a half brother--incredibly
of her own flesh and blood. Yet she felt nothing toward him, or toward
any of the Kiowas, other than the bitter enmity you feel for half-humans
who have come to destroy everything you love.

Georgia helped her push furniture around, and make a tent of blankets in
front of the fireplace, so that no gleam would show outside the ports.
They heated nothing but coffee. The boys had to stay on watch, and
wanted only cold meat and bread, such as could be eaten with one hand.
When each had coffee and a sandwich, Rachel remembered grace. Once, long
ago, when Andy was too little to be still when Papa bowed his head, she
had said a stupid thing in trying to quiet him, for she was little, too.
Her words came back to her now.

"Wait, Andy--Papa has to read his plate."

"What?"

"I'm going to say grace." The locusts were going again, out in the
limpid twilight, but her low words came clearly through the quiet
of the room. "Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for these vittles,
the--the gifts of--" She faltered. Remembering the long ago had made
her remember Ben, too, and what this prayer had made her think when
she was half-grown. She had almost said, _these vittles, the gifts
of Ben's hard work_.... She recovered herself. "The gifts of Thy
love," she finished steadily. "Now guide us, and guard us, and keep
us from evil..."

Cassius' horse began to paw again, making a thunderous noise on the
wooden floor, so that the rest was lost. The horse was trying to fudge
around toward the smell of water, in the barrel by the door. Rachel got
him a bucket, unbridled, and fed him a loaf of bread; then put the
bridle back on. The animal drowsed after that, well-practiced in going
unsatisfied.

After that, Rachel chewed her bread and meat methodically. It seemed
dry, and sticky in the throat, all but impossible to wash down. But--_No
feed, no distance_, she was remembering; she made herself get through it
all. The motions of feeding people brought a hard ache into her,
sometimes in her middle and sometimes in her throat; too many memories
went with these people, and this room. The uneasy quiet left time to
think, which was the last thing she wanted to do; and she became more
miserable the longer the silence held. If she had not worked in a daze,
as if hit in the head, she might never have got through it at all.

They damped out the coffee fire, and folded the blankets, so that the
chimney could help keep the place aired. Cash and Andy opened more
loopholes, including two near the floor, at the ends of the front wall.
These were intended to surprise hostiles who crawled along the foot of
the wall, under the other gunports. Cassius talked over with them how
they must fight. He and Andy would defend the battle shutters because,
though he did not say so, these were an incomplete protection. No one
must fire from the same loop twice in a row. They must put backs to the
wall to load. When they moved about, they must duck under or step over
the lines of fire radiating inward from every port. Each must pocket the
cartridges he would need. A lot of their ammunition was out on the range
with the wagon, but Cash judged their supply would last the night.

When they were as ready as they were going to be, Rachel and Georgia
looked at Matthilda again. She slept so quietly now that they had to
bend low to hear her breath. They both felt her pulse. At first Rachel
could not find it at all.

"It's so weak," she whispered. "Just a cobweb."

Georgia didn't say anything. Something about Matthilda's pulse bothered
her more than its lack of strength. Seemed more of a quiver, than a
beat. But she was unsure what this meant.

After that there was nothing to do but wait. The last of the twilight
was falling very fast. Andy said, "Maybe they'll wait for the moon."
Nobody answered.

Suddenly Georgia moved. She was sitting against the dug-in back wall,
and now she put her ear to it. She tried to say something, but the words
only caught and whispered in her throat. On her next try the words came
louder than she meant, so that she startled herself, and them all.
"They're comin'!"

In another moment they heard the hoof-murmur coming into the room
through the earth of the hill into which they were dug; and soon after
they could hear the horses outside, all around them.

"Well, I'll be a son of a buck," Cassius said, nonplused.

Rachel ran toward Matthilda's room; Georgia went to the north lookout
slide.

"Leave that shut!" Cash said suddenly. "Rachel--plug the loops in there,
and come here! Andy--block the ports at that end! I see this now!"

They obeyed him, closing the ports by knocking home wooden plugs, fitted
long ago. Outside, the hoof-rumble rose and rose--an approach so unquiet
that it must certainly have been meant to be heard.

"Damn fool that I am!" Cash blamed himself. Ought to have guessed the
hostiles would try to come in here the quickest way. Only the door and
the two windows overlooking the Dancing Bird offered openings big enough
to admit a man. Except for gunports, the bedroom where Matthilda lay had
only some slits near the roof, to give air. Neither these nor the north
lookout were big enough to get in through. What Cash had imagined was a
crawling, swarming attack--Indians along the walls where the guns could
not reach, Indians digging under, Indians all over the roof, like ants
trying to get into an egg. The Kiowas could dig through the thick turf
with hatchet and ironwood lance, making their own gun ports, until the
place bristled with guns pointed inward. They could breach the walls and
come pouring in; they could level the house to the ground, if they had
to.

First defense against this kind of an attack was to pick off the Kiowas
as they rushed, before they got tight to the walls. If Cassius' cowhands
had been here, instead of bumbling around somewhere with a bunch of wet
cows, they might have fought off the whole Kiowa nation. Even loopholes
made by an enemy work two ways--until they become too many. As it was,
with only one gun to the side, their chief hope was to hurt enough
Kiowas to destroy faith in their medicine, so that maybe they would
quit.

But Cash now saw that he had wrongly imagined the whole thing. Mounted
warriors could do nothing against walls; they could only create
diversion and confusion, while delivering a badly aimed covering fire
for a dismounted attack. They would not bother with that against so few,
if they were coming from all sides. The attack would be frontal, against
the shutters, and perhaps the door.

He now posted Georgia and Rachel belly-down with cocked carbines at the
low ports in the front walls, near the ends. If their ports darkened,
they must fire, for Kiowas crawling along the base of the wall must pass
these ports to get to the shutters. Beyond this, they would play no
other part, until knifemen got into the room.

They were barely in position when the war cries broke the night wide
open, very near and all at once, an incredibly loud and inhuman
yammering. A file of mounted warriors streamed across the front of the
house, firing raggedly but continuously. Except for an occasional slug
that splintered through a shutter, little was to be feared from this
kind of fire. Andy and Cash several times raised their carbines, but
lowered without firing. The Kiowas were riding close, too close. Some
hung on the far sides of their saddle-less ponies, but even those who
sat straight up, firing coolly, whipped past the ports too fast for a
decent shot. What Cash did not want was to bring down a horse. A dead
horse would make a redoubt at too close a range.

The riders were circling the house now, reloading as they passed behind,
and the war cries never ceased. A warrior wearing a buffalo-horn
headdress pulled out of the circle and stopped his pony in the open,
signaling to the racing circle with his shield. Cash and Andy fired
together, and a scalp flew off the Kiowa's shield. The rider seemed to
fall on the far side of his bolting pony, but he never hit the ground.

"No good," Cash said. "He took cover, that's all. He was sitting up
again, going around the corner."

"Those black and yellow bands," Andy said. "In his war paint, and on his
shield--"

"That was Seth," Cash confirmed. "Wolf Saddle is the one painted up with
black and red snakes. Seems like he dropped out of this last round. That
one I put a crimp in, down by the creek, was Fast Otter, I think....
Look sharp, now, Rachel, Georgia!"

The circle of racing ponies went on unbroken, and the war cries screamed
continuously all round the house. Bullets still slammed into door
timbers, and the gunfire out there made the ears ring. But nothing was
hitting the shutters now. Cash went to stand by one window, and Andy by
the other. And now Rachel's carbine crashed.

"Get him?"

"My loop's still blocked," she fired again into whatever lay against it.
Then they heard Georgia's carbine go, at her port near the other end.

"Good girl," Cash said.

For a moment, then, Georgia let her carbine fall. She rolled away from
her gun port, sat up, and what sounded half like sobs and half like
laughter came through her fingers.

Rachel cried out, "She's hurt--she's shot in the mouth!" She ran to
Georgia, but attempted no aid. She threw herself upon her stomach across
Georgia's legs, and got her carbine muzzle to the loop Georgia had
abandoned. For a split moment she saw what she took for a leg outside
the port; she fired, and believed she hit it, but it was snatched away.

Georgia pushed her aside. She was breathing hard, and her voice shook,
but, "Nothing hit me," she said, and she took her porthole back.

An ax, swung by an enemy who stood in the protection of the wall, was
splintering into the shutter where Cash waited. He had an answer to
that. He coolly studied the angle of the ax blows, then struck the wall
nearby with the butt of his Colt. A shard of plaster fell, revealing an
opening the size of a half dollar. It showed no light, but as he fired
through it, the mud that plugged it went to dust and the ax blows
ceased.

At the other window the whole frame loosened, and the shutters cracked
and bowed inward, under the impact of a boulder no man should have been
able to lift. A split opened down the middle, and Andy fired through the
crack at a shadow beyond.

And suddenly that was all. The mounted Kiowas circled a few times more,
but their fire was thinning. Then both gunfire and war cries stopped
altogether, and the rear wall brought them the sound of horses going
away.

Matthilda had slept through it all, and still slept; making them believe
now that she might never wake.

Lost Bird's body was gone, when the three-quarter moon came up, but they
could see no other dead. Scoring up, they believed that three more
Kiowas had been hit, one of them hard. Andy still believed he had
touched up Seth, a little bit. Cash didn't think so. They feverishly
carpentered the broken shutters, finding out how hard it is to get
anything done right in the total dark.

When that was done, not much was left to do but wait.

"I guess I kind of slipped a stirrup, there for a minute," Georgia said
sheepishly.

"You did fine," they all assured her. And that was all that ever was
said about that.

Cash was encouraged, cocky, even, because they had come through a
full-out assault without any hurt. "See how easy? I misdoubt if there's
a Horse Indian alive knows how to fight against walls. If they can stand
getting shot, we can sure stand pulling the triggers. Just as long as
they want to keep up!"

He told them a story he had picked up from a cow hunter, way over to the
east of their range. There had been a big fight, up on the Staked
Plains--just lately, too. No more than three--four weeks ago--seemingly
about the middle of June. Twelve or fourteen buffalo hunters--Billy
Gibson was their ringleader--had moved into an old deserted place up
there, called Adobe Walls. And here they had been set upon by the
biggest passel of Comanches, along with a fair sprinkle of Kiowas, that
anybody had heard of in years. The story had it that there were sixteen
hundred Indians in it. "So, let's say, there maybe was about four
hundred Indians," Cassius trimmed it down. He didn't know who the war
chiefs had been, except that Quanah had been seen there.

Quanah had struck in the dark before sunup, and might have carried the
place, too; only some old dry-rotted roof timbers had happened to fall
in, and had got two-three of the hunters up, spoiling the surprise.

A couple of fellows sleeping outside in a wagon had got killed. But once
the twelve inside started firing, the savages never got any farther. The
fight went on about a day and a half, and the hunters believed they had
killed about fifty Indians. "Let's make that about ten Indians, more
likely," Cash pruned down the story again. One buffalo hunter had got a
slug in the arm, and that was all the damage inside.

"And there you have it: Walls is what you need! Nothing but walls. I bet
that us four, in this house, could whup a thousand of 'em with these
walls right here. If a thing can't be done a-horseback, why, they just
don't know how to do it at all. We've got those fools helpless out
there!"

None of them really believed their position was as good as that. But
they did begin to feel that maybe they had some sort of chance.

They talked about whether Cash's cowhands would hear the firing, far off
where they were. Cash had left them moving a herd southward from the
extreme northeast corner of their range, and the wind was from that way,
what little there was. He didn't believe they could hear. Not at worse
than twenty miles away. Besides, wet cows are always losing their
calves, when you chouse them around in bunches; nothing else could bawl
so much. Cash doubted if you could hear the world fall down, through all
that bedlam. If ever they got the idea he needed them, they'd come, all
right.

"There's about four of the hands call him 'Padre,'" Andy said, as if
that clinched it.

"Padre? Who, Cash? You mean like a priest?" Georgia looked blank. "Now
don't tell me he preaches to 'em!"

"It generally means they got crazy-helpless on snakehead," Andy
explained, "and their boss saved 'em from jail. Or maybe something
worse."

"Like what kind of worse?"

"Like being dead is worse."

"Well, they're sure missing a real meaty chance to return the favor."

Cassius made no comment on all that. He wondered out loud if the Rawlins
boys were liable to come looking for their sister. Georgia thought they
might. "Along about late tomorrow afternoon."

Rachel didn't speak his name, but Ben was the one she hoped would come.
He could have been back by now. He ought to have been back. _Ben, Ben,
aren't you ever coming home?_... Maybe he wasn't. Papa had proved to
them, four years ago at Witch River, that the Zachary men didn't always
come back.




CHAPTER 36


For three hours the people in the Zachary soddy waited, ready
to fight again, but no more attacks came on. Cash concluded that the
enemy would hold off, now, until the last darkness before dawn. He tried
to make the others get some rest. They remained fully dressed, their
carbines in their hands, and either Cash or Andy prowled the ports by
turns, watching the prairie by the light of the young moon. No one could
more than doze. They knew the Kiowas wanted them wakeful through this
part of the night, so that morning would find them fumble-handed, but
they couldn't help it. They stayed strung-up anyway, just as the enemy
wanted them to.

A little after midnight a bullet came wowling from the north ridge, and
broke a little pane in the blocked north lookout. Ten minutes later a
rifle whanged from the creek, chugging a ball into the door. During the
next couple of hours seven or eight more shots were fired, at irregular
intervals, and from various directions. It was the same game, to keep
them from resting when they ought to rest. Two hours after midnight, all
action ceased, and the night was still. Now the Kiowas would give them
every chance to go sound asleep, in time for the next assault.

Cash had them all up at their loopholes long before the first graying of
the sky. And now the Kiowas fooled him again. Daylight came clear and
strong. The sun came up, and the locusts began winding up again, after
sleeping out the cooling of the dry land between midnight and morning.
And no attack came at all.

Matthilda waked, and, though she was very weak, she seemed immeasurably
improved. Georgia made her a few spoonfuls of gruel, and it stayed down.
In their unbounded relief they let Matthilda lead them back to the
theory that she had suffered nothing worse than a severe siege of
indigestion, after all. Intent upon keeping his people up to scratch,
Cassius allowed them only a cold breakfast; but the sunlight outside,
and the increasing warmth of the summer morning, were favorable to the
illusion that the worst was over.

Cassius seemed partly puzzled, and partly suspicious; but he was
beginning to show what appeared to be a curious disappointment. Finally,
turning impatient, he threw open the outer door, and stood exposed upon
the stoop, his carbine in his hands. Nothing happened. He led his horse
out, mounted bareback, and rode it down into the creek to let it drink.
Andy and the two girls stood ready at the portholes while Cash did that;
but still nothing broke loose.

One thing, at least, was strange, and wrong. The up-horses were still in
their corral. Inconceivable that the Kiowas should have left them
unmolested, unless they were coming back. Before he came back to the
house Cash turned out all the horses but two, which he fed and watered.

"Nice big dust," Cash reported, "strung out to the west. The near end of
it is settling down; the head end of it looks about twelve miles away,
and getting farther. Like as if they're all heading back into the cap
rock breaks. Only thing... That dust looks just a little bit too big
and plain, to me. They don't need to raise that much dust. It's more
like the dust you might make dragging brush behind you, in the right
places."

"And I better light out, dragging some brush behind me in the right
places," Georgia said. "Your maw's all right now, far's I can see. I got
to get home--before my old lady runs _me_ into the cap rock breaks, neck
and neck with them Indians."

Cassius had to think about that a while, and he was in a quandary. If he
had been up against Comanches, he would have had a chance to figure out
what they would do. Comanches often fought bitterly, and with suicidal
courage. If a Comanche figured his medicine was right, you could expect
him to strike one more blow at you after he was dead. But they were not
imaginative, nor resourceful, by comparison to their Kiowa allies. They
were as liable as not to quit a fight when they had you licked, for no
better reason than that they thought they had fought enough.

But Kiowas were another matter; their tactics included every form of
trickery known to war or crime. Two Kiowas in a party of Comanches could
double its menace--and here they had nothing but Kiowas. Best thing to
assume was, whatever they seemed to be doing, they weren't doing that.
That big fat trail they were laying, out there to the west, had all the
look of a full scale drawoff. So it wasn't. They would be back again in
the first dusk, and tonight would see the hard attack, beside which last
night's attempted surprise was only a feel-out.

The safe and sure pattern of defense was perfectly plain. Cassius knew
he ought to keep Georgia right here where she was, and let old Hagar
fume as she might. Now that Georgia was past her first moments of
battle-impact hysteria, she was every bit as valuable as a man. They
ought to fetch a few buckets of fresh water from the well by the creek,
then spend the rest of the day strengthening the shutters and the door.
They could brace these with heavy props, using the floor planking, if
need be, and pegging fast to the joists, until no ram the Kiowas could
devise would take effect. And the root cellar should be ruggedly sealed
off. It had an air hole to the surface, much like a whistle-pig burrow,
plainly visible and easily enlarged--a tempting entrance for the first
buck who set eyes on it. Now that they were all battle-tested, and had
the hang of it, the four of them could probably hold out forever, with
only these simple improvements. A serious and organized job of digging
might be another matter, but this was so unlikely it hardly need be
considered.

Some Indians were getting hurt. At least one, and maybe three, not
counting Lost Bird, had been killed in action. Tonight they would hurt a
few more. The Kiowas wouldn't stay with a losing deal like that for more
than one more night; they weren't accomplishing a thing. Cash believed
they would round up as many Dancing Bird horses as they could find by
the light of the moon, and be gone before tomorrow morning. Except for
about one chance in a thousand of a lucky shot finding you through a
porthole, they could just about assume that a good cool, wide-awake
defense would bring them through without harm.

And none of this suited Cassius the least bit. He had been at his best
when they were beating off those first attacks, but he had solved that,
now, and knew how he could get fixed to do it more easily next time. But
he was no more comfortable waiting down a hole like a badger, patiently
and forever, than the Kiowas themselves would have been. To him, as to
the Horse Indians, the initiative was everything. A situation in which
the enemy had all the choices as to when, how, and whether they should
fight was intolerable to him. Every instinct Cash had was for attack--a
clever attack if practical, or head-on if that were the only way.
_Impose the terms of battle, and you will impose the terms of peace._ He
didn't remember who had said that; didn't think it was Hood. But Cassius
was no more likely to wait out an enemy than a horse is likely to take
refuge in a tree.

So now he had a different idea, and he judged he had better keep it to
himself. He had developed a certain amount of reticence, even
secretiveness, through having too many of his schemes sat upon as
chancy, and even ridiculous. Better not upset everybody, and get a lot
of arguments on his hands. Just do it.

He began by agreeing with Georgia that she must get home. The house
would be safe enough while he rode with her a good part of the way--far
enough to be sure she would make it safely, no matter what. He would be
back in the latter part of the afternoon, at the latest. Meanwhile, Andy
and Rachel were to stay forted up. He showed them how he wanted them to
traverse the ridges and the cutbanks of the creek with the telescope
sight of the buffalo gun, maybe two-three times an hour, until he got
back.

Matthilda had gone back to sleep. Cash went and took a last look at her,
assuring himself that she was indeed out of trouble. His fingers gently
touched her hair, careful not to disturb her. Then he saddled for
Georgia and himself, and took out.




CHAPTER 37


By midmorning the sun outside the portholes had a violence
that took all the color out of the prairie; everything showed in shades
of white, and the distances shimmered. The heat would be slow to leak in
behind the soddy's thick walls, but Rachel and Andy went barefoot, to
fit the weather outdoors. Rachel wore nothing but a starchless cotton
dress, and Andy shucked off shirt and undershirt, keeping on only his
pants. This would not generally have been thought decent, among
grownups, even in the same family. Rachel found it faintly consoling
that Andy still felt they were only a couple of kids from the same
litter, as though neither time nor anything that had happened had
changed that for him.

They blocked up all the portholes except one in the end, one in Mama's
room, and the two low ones in front. These, and the cracks in the split
battle shutters let in only a cool and shadowless twilight. Something
was missing in here; after she had thought about it a while, Rachel
decided it was flies. During the hot months the air was always full of
their buzzing, because of the corrals. But since they had not been
cooking the house had gone back to the cellar-like feel that never
entirely bakes out of places dug into the ground. The cooled fumes of
burnt black powder hung acridly in the still air, giving a strange edge
to the smell of the wood smoke that had steeped everything for a long
time. The flies had found their way out into the sun, and there was
nothing here to bring them back.

Matthilda called, faintly, and after a false start by both of them, Andy
stayed on watch, and let Rachel go. But his mother wanted him, too. They
stood beside her, and both held her nearest hand. She had a frail,
bloodless look, as if she had been sick for a long time. Her words came
to them in hardly more than a whisper, but her mind was now clear.

"Where is Cassius?" she asked them; and when they told her--"Then the
fighting is over, for now."

They had not known until then whether she had been conscious during any
of the firing, or had known that they were under attack.

"Be very watchful," Matthilda cautioned them. "They right often come
back."

They assured her they were well forted up, and on watch. Cash was sure
to be back, before night.

"The root cellar--be careful about the root cellar. So easy to dig into,
from outside. Of course you pegged the slide? But it never was strong
enough. A bullet could come right through those thin boards...."

Andy said stoutly that bullets could go two ways.

"You must rest now," Rachel said; but Matthilda held on to their hands.
They didn't want to pull away from her fingers, so weak in their
clinging.

"I may not be with you," Matthilda said, "when they come again.
Something's wrong with me--just awfully wrong--inside. If I pass away--"

Rachel cried, "It isn't going to happen!"

"I'm not afraid," Matthilda said. "It's only--I don't want to leave
you." Her lip trembled, but only for a moment. She went on quietly and
lucidly. "But maybe I must. Soon. If I do--you mustn't be afraid of my
body. It will turn all hard, and cold--but that won't be me. Just
something discarded, like an old coat. You must think of me as all
bright and new, someplace not too far away. And wherever I am, I'll be
loving you, always, always, with all my heart.... Don't go away. Not
yet..."

She closed her eyes for a moment. Tiny beads of new perspiration on her
forehead told them she was in pain, though her face was still. But when
she opened her eyes her voice was steadier, and sounded more like
herself, than before.

"Someday, when your time comes to pass away--I want you to remember how
it was this time, when you were born. Mama was waiting for you, with all
your little clothes made, and everything all ready for you, to take care
of you...." Her eyes were turning slowly, from one to the other of
them. She did not remember, now, that Rachel was not her own child; she
was thinking of Rachel as having been born to her, as she had always
wished it could be. "So it will be again. Mama will be there. And I'll
have everything ready for you, to take care of you, and make everything
all right. So you must think of it as a glad new time. You mustn't be
afraid."

Andy said softly, "I won't be afraid, Mama." Rachel could not speak.

Matthilda smiled at them, a wavering, gentle smile, without sadness; and
she let their hands slip from her fingers as she closed her eyes.

They wondered whether they should heat up some of the brew Georgia had
made; they were a little afraid of it, so long as Matthilda was able to
rest without it.

They watched, and the sun climbed; it was straight overhead. A haze that
appeared to be made of pure light crept halfway up the sky from the
horizon, increasing the glare. And now they saw the horsemen in the sky.

This country produced mirages every day, in the summer heat. Mostly
these were a shimmering near the earth, as of distant water riffling in
a breeze. Sometimes a cowhand came riding in through a knee-deep mirage
of this kind, and it would reflect him, exactly as if he were riding in
shallows. Other times the mirages changed different kinds of animals,
like antelopes, into huge shapeless things, unrecognizable, and strange
of movement. Then you could imagine that you were looking at the spirits
of those giant beasts, from another age, whose huge bones were sometimes
uncovered by the freshets. The Zacharys could only speculate on what
incredible animals had left those mighty bones deep in the ground; if
there was a book in Texas with a picture of a woolly mammoth in it, they
had never seen it. The Kiowas believed the bones to be those of the
Man-Eating Owl, a living monster of enormous spirit power. Watching the
vast shapes in a mirage you could almost believe they were right.

But today's mirage was different from any they had ever seen before.
Andy saw it first, and stood astonished for a moment, before calling
Rachel. Across the sky, miles above the land, rode a file of horsemen,
tall beyond natural proportions, on horses of a fantastic length of leg.
They seemed to come wavering into existence from the east, moving at a
walk across the sky until ten were in view at a time; then the leaders
shimmered into nothing as they passed on into the west. The riders in
the middle were the most distinct; you could judge them to be Indians,
for some seemed to carry shields. Neither size nor distance could be
judged. Except for their long legs, the horses could have been six feet
tall at the quarter mile. Or maybe they were a quarter of a mile tall,
at fifty miles. About twenty ghost riders had passed when the whole
thing became indistinct, and disappeared.

They had heard of things like that; yet Andy seemed shaken. Rachel would
have liked to help him believe the riders in the sky had been a natural
thing to see. But she didn't know what to say, for to her they had
seemed a sign, of unclear meaning, but ominous portent.

A little after the mirage gave out, a loud, dreadful cry came from
Matthilda's room. They rushed to her, and found her half on the floor.
When they had lifted her, she lay staring-eyed unconscious, her
breathing hoarse and full of struggle. Too late, now, to try Georgia's
brew; they could not expect a chance would come again.

When they had pulled themselves together, they went back to traversing
the ridges and the cutbank of the creek with the telescope sight of the
buffalo gun, as Cash had wanted. The weapon was an ancient .69-caliber
muzzle-loader, once a smoothbore, but now rifled for the expanding Mini
bullet they called a Minnie ball. So altered, the old gun deserved the
telescope sight they had fitted to it, for it took whatever charge
anybody dared to ram down it, and its range was fantastic. Because of
its great weight, Andy used the telescope to sweep the land from the
higher ports, while Rachel was responsible for the loopholes just above
the floor, overlooking the creek. She had put a few sticks of firewood
and a blanket at each port, for a gun rest, and she traversed by
hitching herself in a quarter circle behind the port, on her stomach.
They hadn't been finding anything.

But now, as Rachel worked the field of the scope past the base of a
cottonwood, she stopped, and went back. After a moment she adjusted the
great gun carefully upon its improvised rest and looked again.

She spoke softly. "Andy."

He had been chipping with a crowbar at the mud sides of the port at the
other end of the room, trying to give it a wider field of fire. His bare
feet were silent on the scrubbed planking as he came to her, but the
floor carried his tread, so that she knew when he was beside her without
looking up.

"Don't even breathe on this," she said, and made room for him. "But
quick! Look where I'm sighted."

He spraddle-armed over the gun, glancing along the side of the barrel to
place the scope's tight field, before putting his right eye to the
sight. Rachel saw his left eye focus and stare blankly, trying to see
through the wall. "That wad of leaves is a bust-off branch," she
explained, hiding her nervousness. "It's lying on that big alamo root,
where the bank cuts under. See, where the cross-hairs mark?"

She waited, then, while Andy looked for a long time through the scope.
From the grasshopper-stripped cottonwoods along the creek came the
zinging of the locusts--winding, winding, metallic and tireless, the
voice of the dry heat.

"The cross-hairs," she jogged him.

He spoke absently, as if his mind were out by the creek, but he didn't
seem to be seeing much. "She won't hit there, you realize. Ben's got her
sighted in at four hundred yards; God knows why. She'll overcarry more'n
a foot."

"I know all that!" She would never handle a gun with the ease of daily
use, as Andy did, but she remembered things better, and now she was
losing patience. "Do you see it or not?"

"See what?"

"_An eye._"

He tensed, but in another moment rolled clear of the gun and sat up.
"Nothing there now. Sun shows through."

She looked, and it was true. Only a glimpse of bright sand showed at the
cross-hairs, where before had been a lightless patch, obscured by
close-framing leaves, but presently resolving into part of a dark face.
She thought Andy was going to ask her if she was sure of what she had
seen, and she was ready to snap at him. But he raised no question, so
she backed up quite humbly, of her own accord. "Sometimes, you look at a
thing too hard, for too long, it begins to look like something else.
Like, maybe a bird was sitting there..."

Andy did not answer. He sat slackly, his eyes vacant upon the floor.
"It's changed," he said at last.

Rachel knew without asking that this referred to nothing outside.
Through their silence, under the spiraling zing of the locusts, they
were both hearing again their mother's struggle for breath. Something
was worsening. The breathing was louder, and a flat sound had come into
it, expressionless and not entirely human, like the impersonal creaking
of a door. Andy raised his eyes, and gathered himself uncertainly, as if
he would go to Matthilda; but Rachel moved her head faintly, and he
settled back.

"It couldn't just fall there," Andy said, and again her thought followed
his, this time back to the mystery by the creek. "Our trees don't have
any leaves, since the grasshoppers was here. That's a pulled-up
greasebush, brought from someplace. And it wasn't there early on. It's
never been there before. So--I guess you know what it has to be."

She knew, all right. But she just sat looking at Andy, her eyes widening
a little, and seeming to darken. Her mind was at a balk, weaving like a
horse that tries to refuse an ugly jump. She did not want to accept the
only explanation there could be, or to believe she had really seen what
she knew she had seen.

"That's a blind," Andy said. He spoke slowly, and he sounded tired,
rather than under strain. He seemed to be feeling his way, as if
everything that would happen here and everything they must do were parts
of a pattern worked out somewhere long ago, so that nothing was left for
them but to study out what it was. "They've put it there to spy on us
from, without letting on."

Rachel's face came alive as her composure broke, and her words were
breathless. "Then they're out there--all around us! Oh, Andy--" She
broke off, stopped by her brother's quick glance of surprise, of
appraisal. Perhaps a very great compliment to her was behind his
surprise that she could falter, but now she was shamed by it, and made
to get hold of herself. "They're watching us," she said more evenly.
"Now. They've come back."

"Beginning to, anyway. Might be they're kind of sifting back, by ones
and fews."

Rachel hitched herself nearer the big gun; her movements were jerky, and
her hands were shaking as she stretched them to the weapon. "I'll sight
her down--fix that overshoot--" Andy would be the one to fire, when the
time came, because of this gun's heavy kick. "He's bound to fill the
sights again, soon or late."

"Wait." Andy had gone back to thinking, methodically, carefully, wary of
hurrying into some panicky mistake. These spells of stillness were new
to him, and Rachel was not quite sure what they meant. He didn't look as
though he were thinking. More as if he might be going to sleep. "I
question," he said finally, "if it's a real good idea. Maybe they'll
bide their time, a spell, if we don't seem to know they're there. And
time's what we need. Cash is the one we have to make know."

They suspected, in spite of his taciturnity, that Cash meant to fetch
home his crew, and maybe even his wagon--by what miracle of hard riding
they could only imagine. But eleven men would melt to nothing in a
hurry, if they came high-looping into an ambush. Rachel wanted to try
making a smoke. In this still air, even a thread of smoke would rise
tall and straight into the sky; it would be seen from far away. They
could smudge it with wet rags and grease drippings, and soak a blanket
for sending the smoke up in puffs, lest it be mistaken for a cooking
fire gone out of hand. What they had no way to figure, Andy objected,
was how their brother would take it. "Cash sets no store by any size-up
us young'ns are liable to make." He said it without bitterness. He
judged Cash would as lief charge in headlong as lay back; he had been
that way all his life. Anyway, by the time they got through fooling with
a smudge and a blanket, the place would be smoked in fit to blunt an ax,
and hotter than hell's back oven besides. Which hardly seemed right,
with Mama in the shape she was in.

They finally decided that the only signal Cash could not very well
misread would be a sound of fighting. They would have to fire in bursts,
to make it sound real, or it would have the failing of any other kind of
signal. Two shots, nearly together, then one, at the space of a reload;
then wait a while to save ammunition, and run it off backwards. They had
not started their clock again, lest its loud tick interfere with
listening. But they had a little minute glass they had made, for boiling
an egg when they had an egg; its sand was measured to run through in
three minutes. Guessing at how far downstream their guns could be heard,
they thought they could make do with one burst to every three turns of
the glass.

For their first burst they used a Sharp's Fifty, and a cap-and-ball
Walker. Then Rachel watched the sand dribble through the minute glass
while Andy made the round of the lookouts, to see if the besiegers had
reacted. The Kiowas should be able to see that the shots from the house
were going wild, as if nobody knew anything, but you could never be
sure.

They went on with this for fourteen turns of the minute glass. The sun
would set in an hour more. Out on the cottonwood root by the creek the
uprooted greasebush still lay, its leaves curled now by the heat; but
the telescope sight had picked up no other sign that any enemy was near.
Rachel was worrying about the wasted ammunition.

"It's terrible, how fast the powder burns away. We're doing an awful
thing, here, if it turns out we're wrong."

"Well, we're not wrong," Andy answered her. "How can we be wrong?"

"We haven't a thing to go on, but just that one, lone, single sign."

"If you find one, lone, single bear track," Andy said stubbornly, "there
has by God been a bear."

"Yes, but what if--"

"_Listen!_" He sprang to a shutter loop, and put his ear to it. In a
moment he put his finger in his other ear.

Rachel tried to listen, then went to the bedroom door, and closed it
softly. Matthilda's breathing was quieter, but now they were trying to
hear something that perhaps could not be heard. After a moment Rachel
knew what it was. From eastward came a faint whispering that had to be
far-off riflery. Were war cries sounding with the guns? Rachel thought
they were. Perhaps she had not really heard them, but only knew they
must be sounding, in as big a fight as was going on, somewhere far away.
The distant whisper died away, rose briefly in a distinct rattle, then
ceased altogether. They did not hear it again.

"That's Cash!" Andy whispered. "He's run into a fight, way off there!"

"No, he hasn't! It's something else." She was voicing no more than a
wish. If he did not get back, they need not mourn for Cassius alone, but
for them all. Of course, if the firing had come from a brush between
Indians and a couple of companies of cavalry happening along--

"Oh, for God's sake," was Andy's only answer when Rachel suggested that.
No cavalry had ever been seen on the Dancing Bird yet.

"Seems like you're cussing a good bit," Rachel commented.

"I may stop that. Sudden-like, and all at once. Sometime tonight."

Rachel could think of only one thing she could be sure the day had
accomplished for them. She did not mention it to Andy, for no dust
anywhere gave hope that it was going to do any good. Yet it meant
something to her: Ben surely must be one day nearer home tonight than he
had been when this sun came up.

Instead she said, "Cash is all right. He'll come home. He _must_ come
home. So he will...."




CHAPTER 38


Cassius lay in the bottom of a dry coulee, resting, and trying
to save what strength remained to him. His left leg was broken below the
knee, so badly that a spike of bone was sticking out of it. He had bound
it as tightly as he could with strips of his shirt, splinting it
awkwardly with bits of drift, yet it was all he could do to drag it as
he crawled, and he had crawled a long way. The leg had been smashed by
his horse as it crumpled in front and over-ended, destroyed by a
bullet-broken shoulder.

Before his horse had been shot under him, he had got an arrow in the
back, which was an unfairness, for it had been shot from in front of him
as he charged, trying to close with his enemies. He had been lying low
on the neck, and the arrow's trajectory had carried it deep along the
length of a back muscle. He had got rid of the shaft, finally, by an
effort that almost knocked him out. But the sheet-iron head, a slender
three-inch cone of metal, had come off the shaft, and stayed. It was
still lodged in his back, somewhere down near his belt.

He believed he had killed four savages. One he had got in the first
brush, when they had discovered him and circled in on him. A dandy shot,
when he finally got it, but he had spent six cartridges before he made
it. The second he had got from behind his fallen horse, with the last
shot in his carbine. After that he had taken to the coulee, trying to
outwit the warriors by an interminable crippled crawling. The wound in
his back was bleeding fast, and he could find no way to stanch it. He
left a blood trail every yard of the way; and he had been able to make
use of it.

When the Kiowas had come into the coulee after him he managed to be some
distance from where they expected him, so that they followed his blood
trail along the bottom of the gully. And now he used a trick that
wounded bears used. Beyond a twist in the coulee he climbed out onto the
bank, and back-trailed a little. Until now he had kept the empty
carbine, sometimes using it as a crutch; but it wasn't much good to him,
so he dropped it in the bottom of the gully for bait. Waiting on the lip
of the coulee, just over the carbine, he had killed the first savage who
bent to pick it up, shooting him through the head with the Dragoon
revolver. Four or five others who were trailing them got the hell out of
there, and he wounded one as they got away. But he didn't count the ones
that were only wounded.

The last one he got with almost the same trick, but with an extra hitch
to it. The Kiowas circled, to come safely at the place where he had laid
in ambush; but he wasn't there when they got to it. As soon as the
coulee was clear he had rolled off the edge, half killing himself in the
fall, and once more started crawling. At a turn of the gully he climbed
out of it again, but this time he did not watch his back-trail. The
Kiowas halted, well clear of the place his blood trail disappeared
around the corner. They spotted the bit of buckbrush in which he was
hiding on the lip and knew he was waiting there. They left the coulee
and circled to a safe distance ahead; then back-trailed themselves, to
close from behind him.

Only they were wrong about the way he was facing. Once more he had
thought one step ahead of them; and he killed another Kiowa who crept
upon him from the supposedly safe direction.

He had missed, though, with every shot, as he fired at those who
retreated. The Dragoon was empty. He rolled himself into the coulee
again, and lay there. He was weak, now, and when he tried to drag
himself forward he made only a few inches.

_One more... Just one more red nigger..._

He concentrated everything he had in an effort of the mind, so great
that much of his pain was blanked off. He was trying to project himself
into the minds of the savages, into their very bodies. He began to see
them, one individual, and then another, wherever each was upon the
prairie; and they appeared to him in a detail far more complete than any
imagining he had ever experienced before. He seemed to sense not only
the intentions but the thoughts of each one; and he took heart as he
knew they were not leaving.

Presently he rolled himself to the side of the gully, tight against the
mud wall of the coulee, belly-down, but face turned outward. He drew his
Bowie knife from its sheath, though even this was a struggle, and
gripped it underneath his body. Then he waited, counting his own
heartbeats. He had to be alive, and conscious when they got there; but
it was going to be a horse race.

They came in time. He knew they were there before he saw them. He waited
with slitted eyes, unwinking; and at last they appeared around him.
Another arrow in the back, first, then another. He lay limp, but was
still breathing. Suddenly he was grabbed by the hair, and a knife sliced
his scalp.

He whirled, then, got the scalper by the wrist, and snatched him
downward. The Bowie knife struck upward, and went home to the guard in
the belly of the Indian. With his last effort Cash twisted, carving with
the knife point in a circle. Then he disappeared under a mass of as many
as could reach him, hacking and stabbing.




CHAPTER 39


When a quarter of an hour had passed without further sound of
riflery, Rachel opened the bedroom door, lest Matthilda regain
consciousness, and call too faintly to be heard. She seemed asleep, her
eyes closed, her breathing again so quiet that she seemed hardly to
breathe at all. The heartbreaking cycle they had gone through so many
times had come full circle once more, but without room for hope, this
time, that it was not already starting over.

A small breeze was beginning to move out of the northwest as the sun
lowered, and, though it didn't amount to much, what there was of it was
working against them. That mild and pleasant little stir of air would
have been welcome, and enjoyed, on any other summer evening they had
ever known. Tonight they blamed it for keeping any further news from
coming to them across the prairie miles. Raw-nerved, they felt that
every act of nature was wickedly opposing them.

In the absence of any further indications, they judged they had better
make ready to last out the night without help, regardless of what they
might believe, or hope. Each was trying to seem unworried, and each was
thinking how scared the other looked. They set about bracing each other
by turning their minds to the practical things they could do. Their
ammunition had better be tallied, about the first thing, they guessed.

The repeaters, to begin with. The faster of their two magazine carbines
was the Spencer, which loaded with a seven-ball tube. Its magazine, with
three extra tubes, accounted for twenty-eight rounds, and the Henry was
carrying six. But when they had emptied every pocket, and scraped out
the corners of the ammunition chest, they found only nineteen loose
cartridges more. In all, the repeaters had fifty-three rounds, which
might sound like a plenty, if you didn't know how fast those things
poured away lead. Every single round would have to be held back for the
desperation moments of close action; and even then, the rim-fires must
be hoarded with all care, or the magazine carbines would be out of
action in the first three minutes.

Nothing to do about it. They could cast bullets, and make caps, but they
didn't know how to refill the detonation rings of the rim-fires. The
close-shooting Sharp & Hankins would have been deadly in sniping action;
it might have hurt the enemy more than any other weapon they had. But it
was a slow-loading single-shot, and used the same rim-fires as the
repeaters, so it had to be put away.

For slow fire, they were left with only two cap-and-ball pieces. They
found only seven rounds for the breech-loading Sharp's Fifty. Its linen
cartridges were slow and finicky to make, but maybe they would have to
try, if the Zachary marksmanship they were so proud of was to do them
any good at all. The .69 buffalo gun was muzzle-loaded with loose
powder; but search brought to light only one more of the huge slugs it
fired, besides the one with which it was charged.

But their two cap-and-ball revolvers worried Andy the most. The big
Walker Colt was loaded in its six chambers--they carried its hammer on a
capless nipple--but had a reserve of only four more .44 balls. They had
used it in firing for noise, and hadn't found any way to get a good bang
from it, blank, without wasting lead. And Andy's treasured near-Whitney
had the six loads in its cylinders, and that was all. They rummaged past
hope without finding one .36 ball more. The revolvers were their final
recourse if the Kiowas swarmed in, and Andy meant the Whitney for
Rachel, because it was lighter, and bucked less, than the heavy Walker.

"We've got to make some--quick! Build up a fire--" He rummaged
frantically for the lead strips they melted down to fill the bullet
molds.

There were no lead strips.

"The saddle shed--there's lashings of 'em down there in a--"

He grabbed for the door bar; but Rachel had got there, and threw her
weight on it. "Andy--no, no, no--don't you dare leave me here!"

"It's our only chance to--"

"There's nothing down there! The door's stove in! Lead would be the
first thing they took!"

He knew it was true. The saddle shed door, nothing but rawhide on a
frame, was hanging antigodlin by one strap, visible from the house.

Andy scratched up one idea more. He pulled a battered two-foot chest out
from behind all the other plunder under his bunk. From this old toy box,
as Andy pawed everything out of it, came such a history of Andy's
childhood that Rachel could not bear to look. She glimpsed the remains
of a rag doll; Matthilda had seen no harm in giving a baby boy something
to love as he went to sleep. Andy had decided dolls were unmanly before
he was five years old, and Rachel had not known, until this moment, that
he had never been able to bring himself to throw this one away.

In the very bottom of the chest, where they had sifted by their weight,
lay tumbled some dozens of lead soldiers. There had been whole regiments
of them once, brightly painted and tall as your finger--Andy's share of
the loot Papa had brought home one time, after selling a big herd.

"Here--here!" He shoved a clutch of them into Rachel's hands, and clawed
for more. "Get the fire going! Where's the melt-ladle at?"

She packed all of their lightwood splinters into a solid heap, threw on
gunpowder, and set it burning with the snaphaunce. She had already blown
the flame white with the bellows when Andy stacked the rest of his
soldiers on the hearth.

"Get some bigger wood onto--no, I'll do it! Gimme that!" He took the
bellows from her. "Get the thirty-six mold out! It's the one makes eight
at a whack...."

Only traces of paint remained on the little soldiers, but a picture
flashed into Rachel's mind of how bright they had been, and how pretty,
long ago. She kicked one under the table, and crawled after it. Before
she came out the other side she had managed to wipe her nose, without
blowing it, on the inside of her skirt. If the little cracks were
beginning to spread, she didn't want Andy to know it. Not yet. Not while
it could still be helped. As she brought the long-jawed bullet mold to
the hearth, the first drums started.

A rattling noise began it, like the sound of two ax helves pounding on a
log. Then a pair of medicine drums took it up, and finally, a flat loud
clamor, made by beating on sheets of hardened rawhide. All of these
noisemakers were struck in a unison as accurate as if a single giant
drumstick were hitting them all at once with every stroke. The sound
built and built, now and then ending with a final wallop like a cannon
shot, to start over softly, and build again. The whole thing had an odd
ventriloquism, so that sometimes the drumming seemed to be coming from
down the creek, then from behind a ridge, then from somewhere on the
prairie beyond the Dancing Bird.

Andy glanced up at Rachel, but they didn't say anything about the drums.
He skimmed the molten lead in his ladle. "Better take a look at Mama."

The red rays of sunset were striking through the high air-slits in the
bedroom, filling the narrow space with a strange ruddy light.
Matthilda's face quivered, and her eyes opened, as Rachel stood looking
down at her. For a moment she stared unseeing; then she knew Rachel, and
her face twisted weakly as she burst into tears.

"Darling girl," she said, as if the words were wrung out of her,
"darling, precious girl.... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

They never knew just what it was Matthilda so regretted as she died.
Maybe the last thought in her mind, as the light left it, was the
simplest kind of an apology for being unable to care for them, or even
herself, any more.

The snoring gasps called the death rattle began at once. Rachel tried to
call Andy, but before she could get control of her voice he was at her
side. He looked at Rachel, questioning, with the wide-eyed look that
sometimes made him seem a little boy. She nodded, dry-eyed. The rattle
stopped, and Andy moved closer; his competent hands gently pressed
Matthilda's ribs, and the effort to breathe began again. But the second
time it stopped, Rachel took Andy's hand, and wouldn't let him start it
any more.

Almost ten seconds after breath ended, Matthilda's eyes opened, and
turned right and left, as if searching the upper corners of the room.
Rachel had heard of a final flare-up of consciousness in the last moment
before death, and she wanted to cry out some word of good-by, but she
was unable. Later she blamed herself, for she believed a smile would
have come to Matthilda's lips as she died, if Rachel had been able to
speak.

Rachel drew the sheet over Matthilda's face. Andy still stood looking
down at the lifeless form, his face twisting and his breath coming hard,
as he tried not to cry.

"The ladle," Rachel reminded him. "I'll do what's left to be done,
here."

He nodded, and went back to his work. He was sniffling as he went, and
wiping his nose on his bare arm; but his hands were still sure as he
squatted upon the hearth.

The sun went down, and the ruddiness went out of the last daylight; but
the drums kept on, building again and again from a softly pulsing
beginning to a thunderous climax. Sometimes the off-key, "Hiyah, hiyah,"
of medicine songs could be heard. Rachel brought water and clean clothes
to the bedroom, and closed the door.

Alone, she put a bandage over the eyes, so that they would rest closed,
and another to hold shut the jaw. As she bathed the body she marveled a
little, as she sometimes had before, at how smooth and white Matthilda's
shoulders were, in contrast to her work-stringy forearms and gnarled
hands. _They'll never touch you_, she promised silently. _They'll never
take away your pretty hair._

The body seemed an impersonal thing, as Matthilda had wanted it to seem.
Something lay here, but too much else was gone. Like Matthilda's dream
of how she wanted them to live, someday, after the one great cattle year
that had only just now come. She had held in mind a pleasant town--a
country sort of town, as you saw it when she described it, yet with
shiny touches of elegance about it, too. The houses, all painted white
with green shutters, stood along mudless streets, where carriages
wheeled handsomely in the shade of old trees. Each house lived in a
picket-fenced garden, with sweet Williams and cornflowers, and
hollyhocks for a tall backing, and candytuft along the walks; and, of
course, plenty of pansies. On quiet Sunday mornings the church bells
tolled slowly, a peaceful sound, sweetly solemn. And in this town the
time of the year seemed always to be early summer.

Rachel tried to think of Matthilda as having gone to such a place, but
she could not. She had no feeling that Matthilda was anywhere at all.

She brushed the white hair, which still seemed to have more cool light
in it than there was in the room, and dressed the body in Matthilda's
best clothes. The materials were pitifully cheap and worn, but well
sewed, by Matthilda's own hands. She stripped the bed, freshening it
with one of their two best sheets, and covering Matthilda with the other
one.

_It happened to her the minute I was born. She could be alive and well,
and taking care of her boys. She could have enjoyed them a long time.
Except for me._

Unlike the others, she had a clear conviction as to what had caused this
death. She believed that Matthilda had quite literally died of a broken
heart. Yet... she had been sure of this for too long to feel it
greatly, now that the inevitable was past. What she felt was a great
weight of tiredness, held up by a single thin wire of resolution
containing all her strength.




CHAPTER 40


An hour had passed, but the slow twilight was still clear, and
the drums were going as before, as she came out of the bedroom and
closed the door.

"Well, anyhow," Andy said, "these here will be the first toy soldiers
ever did really fight, I guess. I stretched 'em into twenty more
thirty-six caliber. For your Whitney."

"That was rattle-headed." Her tone was inert, and sounded cold, even to
herself. "What will you do when the Walker's empty?"

"I always got my knife," he said--and immediately saw that he didn't.
"Hey--you seen my skin-out knife?"

She went back into the bedroom and got Andy's narrow-bladed sheath
knife, and his belt, from under her mattress.

"I figure you better wear this," he said. "I'll punch more holes in the
belt, so's you can-- Oh. Somebody already...." He buckled the belt
around her, and used the knife to cut off the long tag of strap left
over. For himself he got the Bowie they used for a carver, and stuck it
in his waistband, punching the blade through the cloth.

They laid out their weapons, and the few loads. Once it was dark,
anything that became mislaid would be lost forever. Rachel put six
rim-fires in the pocket of her dress, for refilling the Henry's
magazine, and fetched the loading kit for the Whitney revolver. Each
cylinder had to be charged with loose powder, then a ball and patch
rammed home with the lever under the barrel, and a cap must be stuck on
each nipple. She laid the things needed beside the powder horn on a
corner of the table, where her hands could find them in the dark. Andy
got the ax, and stood it by the door.

Now the drums built up to one more climax, and did not start again. They
left a silence that rang in the ears. Andy said wonderingly, "Why, it's
just as if Mama has gone out there, and stopped them some way."

Rachel said, "Stopped? They're starting now, more like."

Again the back wall brought them the sound of hoofs trampling about,
somewhere nearby. But the horse movement formed no pattern, other than
an unreadable shuffling about, and in a little while was quiet.

"Oh, say--by the way--" Andy had his eye glued to a loophole, and he
kept it there. He was trying to sound about four times more casual than
he knew how to do. "Remember to save your last shot. You will, won't
you? Count careful--just awful careful--every time you let off the
six-gun. Because you'll need one more, if they ever get in. You know?"

She didn't answer him. She threw a bucket of water on the fire, and
stepped away from the answering explosion of steam.

"Rachel? Did you hear?"

"I heard you, Andy." No use arguing. But she had no intention of wasting
even one lead soldier on herself, no matter what.

"The main thing is--" He broke off, and jumped for the buffalo gun. He
had to replace its lost-off cap, and his hands shook as he tried to be
quick about it.

Rachel got to a door loop. The twilight had lessened, but it was still
clear. She saw at once what had roused him up. Two Kiowas sat their
horses on the far slope of the Dancing Bird, above the holding corrals.
Even at two hundred yards, and in failing light, she could not mistake
the black and red snakes painted all over Wolf Saddle's body, or
the broad black and yellow bands that identified Seth. Immediately
Andy's .69 let go with its heavy blast.

A buffalo-horn vanished from the side of Seth's headdress; he was
nine-tenths knocked off his horse, and almost went under its belly, but
pulled himself up. She saw him pull off the remains of the war bonnet,
and slam it down, before she turned away.

Andy was pouring a second full measure of gunpowder down the buffalo
gun. "Oh, _damn_! That was Seth! Seth!"

He had missed a chance to take half the hell-fire out of the hostiles,
and maybe lift the siege altogether, with a single shot. She judged he
would have to be straightened out, if they were to be here long. "Had to
shoot at his head, didn't you? And yanked on the trigger, too--fit to
bust it off! Why do you--"

"She kicked high on me," Andy stuttered, almost in tears. "Honest, I
centered square on his belly-button! What-all powder did Ben have in
this thing--a gallon? I should have drug down with my whole weight--" He
banged home the rammer, and fitted a cap.

"Put that thing down! That's her last charge, you've got in her now!"

"That's Seth sitting out there--will you hear me? And Wolf Saddle with
him--"

"Well, they're not sitting out there any more." Low-toned, unhurried,
she went on to take him apart; then put him back together again. "What
was all that scrabbling around? You looked something like a man trying
to wash a cat. You know better than that. Now get your dang head up, by
God! Because we've wasted the last shot we're going to. There's not a
man in Texas shoots any better than you do. Or handles anything else any
better, either. So take your time. There's a power of Kiowas out there,
now. But come morning, they're going to be mighty few. And you'll be
sitting with pancakes and honey to your fry-meat. Because that's what
I'm going to fix."

He lowered the hammer of the big .69 to half-cock, set the weapon aside,
and stood rubbing his shoulder. When he finally managed the shadow of a
grin, she knew he was all right.

And now the Kiowas came, without gunfire, without war cries, without any
sound heard within at all, until fifty-pound boulders crashed against
both shutters at once, splitting the timbers, and loosening the
deep-anchored frames. Others followed, and the same again, over and
over, shattering the heavy wood....




CHAPTER 41


After the fourth attack, not much was left of the battle
shutters. Andy had split up the table to brace what busted pieces the
first and second assaults had left hanging; and after the third they had
tied up the splits and splinters into sort of a net with strings of
rawhide they had saved to make a reata. But now only some long splinters
remained, stuck picketwise along the sills.

For a while they had very easily defended the opened window holes from
the opposite wall. The moon was up, and Seth was running out of warriors
interested in silhouetting themselves for close-range guns within. Three
had been hit there, but the only Kiowa surely killed was one who was
shot in the throat, and fell inside. He bled in streams, and though they
heaved him out as soon as they could, he left such a great, slippery
puddle that Rachel had to fetch ashes by the bucket, to restore the
footing.

In the fourth assault the Kiowas had used more gunfire, and used it
better, than in any previous attempt. They had found out that those
inside were covering the windows from positions at the back wall. Their
riflemen fanned out, using the creek bed as an entrenchment; and a heavy
blanketing fire poured in. If Andy and Rachel had not gone forward at
the first shot, they might very easily have been killed in the next
three seconds. They stayed against the front wall after that, reduced to
taking in enfilade whoever might choose to climb in.

As the fire lifted, one quick rush was made, in files from both ends of
the house. War hatchets struck the splinters away, and a leg came over
the east sill. Andy all but severed it with a swing of the ax; and then
stepped out from the wall to fire three times into a muddle of shadows
at the other embrasure. The Kiowas broke off.

Now there was a let-up, during which they had time to deal with a buck
who was fooling around with an idea of his own. This one had lodged
himself outside an end port with a single-shot. He couldn't see anything
inside, apparently; maybe didn't want to put his face to the loop. He
kept poking his rifle into the room to fire blind, at random angles.
Except for the near corners, no part of the room was safe from him. Andy
squirmed and dodged to the end wall, and stood waiting with raised ax.

Moonlight slanted through a shutterless window to shine cleanly on the
bright-metal muzzle as it next appeared. Andy's ax struck hard, and
perhaps buckled the weapon's barrel, for they knew by the odd sound of
its explosion that the breech blew up. The barrel was driven deeper into
the room, and stayed there, pointing at the floor.

"Never, never in all my life," Rachel said, "did I hear of 'em hanging
on like this. Not even for revenge--they're satisfied to take any old
scalp, anywhere, for that. Oh, Andy, what's happening here?"

Andy wouldn't admit he saw anything special about it. "Just one night?
It's common."

"When they're hurt like we've hurt 'em?"

"We don't hit 'em as square as we hope," Andy thought now. "I'm only
sure we killed about one. Maybe two. I don't know."

"I could have stopped this, once," Rachel said, and Andy had never heard
a like bitterness in her tone. "I know what I'm called. I'm a red
nigger. Cash should have let me go."

"That's nothing but Abe Kelsey's damn lie! You're Rachel Zachary, and
don't you forget it!"

_I am Rachel Zachary. I said that once. Long ago. The day the world fell
down._... "Seth believes it. Lost Bird even--"

"They'd never believe Kelsey. Not in a thousand years! He only drummed
on it, till he put it in their heads."

"All right." If there was any difference, she didn't see it.

"Most likely one of 'em had a medicine dream. That's how they get to
believe any old damn thing they want to, that ain't so. Like, some of
'em think they're bullet-proof. A critter that can believe that can
believe anything. And that's what happened. One of 'em wanted to own
you, so he had a medicine dream. Or said he did."

"They don't even know what I look like," she rejected it.

"Don't they? They've watched you dozens of times. From the creek bed.
From the ridge. From the brush."

"You'd have found their tracks!"

"Yes," Andy said oddly. "Time and again. Only Ben told us to shut up.
One of them wants you for his squaw--or one of his squaws. We should
have allowed for that. My guess is Wolf Saddle. I'm willing to bet..."

"Sure," she said, and now the bitter edge could have whispered just as
softly if it were slicing through a bullhide shield. "I'd make a good
squaw. A dingin' squaw. Once they fattened me up."

Suddenly he turned angry. With her? Maybe with the world. "Don't you
play ignorant with me! Because I don't give a hoot in hell where at you
were born, or who to, or who by. I'm your brother. Raised that way, and
I aim to stay that. Right up to the last breath I draw--and one long
spit beyond!"

He got up, his bare feet silent, and went to set his ear against the
back wall.

"And another thing," he said, through the moon-tempered dark. "You're
not an Indian--not a red nigger kind, nor a Civilized Nation kind, nor
any other kind. So quit fooling around with the notion you might be, you
hear?"

_But I am. If I'd been a boy, and raised among 'em, I'd be Seth--no,
Lost Bird. I'm a girl--so I'd be one of Wolf Saddle's squaws. And I may
be, yet--until the first time I lay holt of a knife_--Suddenly a hard
twist of disgust sickened her, for she realized that a knife in
someone's belly was exactly what an Indian would think of, as easily as
he breathed. She remembered what Hagar had said about the knife work of
squaws, if they were on hand for a massacre... their bloodied hands...

Andy made his round of the lookouts and came back to her. He spoke
softly, from close by. "I didn't go to sound so mean, and cross. It
isn't you I'm mad at, Rachel. Ever."

The gentleness of his tone betrayed her, and she let herself slump,
where she sat at the foot of the wall. He sat down close beside her.
Awkwardly, but without self-consciousness, he took her in his arms, her
head in the hollow of his shoulder, his cheek against her hair. He said,
"You're the best sister anybody ever had. You're more than that. You're
all the family I've got left, for all I know." They had no reason to
think anything had happened to Ben; but apparently, in his exhaustion,
Andy was willing to concede that Ben was lost to them too. But--"We'll
fight 'em to a standstill," he said doggedly. "Forever, if they want.
Just you and me. So long as you stand by me, I'll fight 'em till hell
freezes. And then pelt 'em with ice."

He made her cry, at last. She wept grudgingly, without sound, holding
onto him tightly; and presently she knew that he was crying a little,
too. _No way out_, she was thinking. _No way out, ever. No matter what
happens, now...._

Or maybe there was. For now the Kiowas came again, in the weirdest way
yet.




CHAPTER 42


This time they didn't need the telltale back wall to hear the
horses come. They came fast, and from not far out, in a thundering
storm; and the war cries clamored as never before. A few guns fired wild
through the empty windows, without object, other than added noise. The
two stood with their backs against the forward wall, watching for any
part of a Kiowa to show inside; but no dismounted warriors came.

Instead, a heavy bump shook the very walls, and the door strained
inward; clods and plaster fell, loosened by the yielding anchorage of
the frame. A Kiowa rider was backing his horse against the door. It
would go, in a couple of seconds, driven inward by a thousand pounds of
bone and straining muscle. Andy got there, cocking the Walker, and for
an instant Rachel was certain Andy would be pinned as the door crashed
in. The bulging planks sprung a sudden three inches, spoiling his first
shot, but the Walker slammed again, and the door snapped straight. The
Kiowa horseman was on the stoop, and would stay there until picked up;
and his horse was splashing through the Dancing Bird.

The attack on the door made plain the whole secret of their precarious
defense. They could keep only two guns going--but there were only two
ways in. Seth must know that now; he had tried to make another way. But
this kind of an attempt on the massive door was almost certain death,
with the door loopholes placed as they were. All this racket and display
had to have some other object than the backing in of one horse as a ram,
for although the Kiowas had given up on the door, their yelling riders
still circled the house.

A new hoof-rumble began on the roof itself; boards cracked, in spite of
the depth of sod on top, and showers of dirt fell. All this was
bewildering, but without visible sense. Rachel did not know what
snatched her attention to the back wall. Surely she could have heard
nothing more; and when she tried to peer into the shadows the small
indirect light of the moon was not enough to tell her what she saw. She
went to the root cellar slide, and bent low.

A split had appeared in the boards of the slide. As she watched, the
blade of a hatchet struck through, and was wrenched back. She pulled
the .36 revolver Andy had made her wear, and fired wildly three times
through the slide as the hatchet struck again. The hatchet blade stayed
where it was, stuck halfway through, into the room. Andy was trying to
shout something to her, but she couldn't tell what it was. She got down
on the floor, which might have been what he wanted her to do. She dared
not leave the slide, yet to stay by it left Andy with the defense of
both windows in front, and a weakened door that would probably go down,
now, before any kind of a ram.

A touch of panic came into her. After four compound mistakes, the Kiowas
were at last finding more ways in than the two of them could defend. She
saw Andy fire through a wall port, and she started to him with some
unclear notion of shuttling between the front and back walls.

She didn't get there. Halfway across the room she was struck and borne
down by a great mass of dirt, sod, and broken boards from the roof as it
gave way. Her face hit the floor hard, and she lay stunned and
smothering, unaware of where she was or what had happened to her, until
Andy pulled her free. She sat against the wall where he put her,
strangled by the dust; and blood was running down her front from her
nose and cut mouth. But as her head cleared she saw what had happened. A
horse had broken through the roof with one hind foot, and was trapped
there, its leg stuck down through the roof beyond the stifle. The hoof
dangled loosely from a broken cannon, yet tried to kick.

One more way in? It might be, if the enemy could pull the horse clear.
Or the struggles of the horse might do it; dirt was still falling, and
the hole in the roof enlarging. Andy was watching the front again as
Rachel got up shakily. The holster of the Whitney dragged at her belt
unnaturally, and she found it filled with dirt. She drew, emptied the
holster, and tried to clean the weapon of its grit.

The rocketing horsemen thinned; a horse plunged downward past a window
as its rider jumped it off the front of the roof; and once more the
Kiowas broke off. The back wall brought diminishing hoof mutterings for
a little while, then was quiet. The defenders were left confused. The
two tries at the door and through the root cellar had been good ones,
and had threatened to finish them, yet seemed but feebly carried out,
without tenacity.

Actually, the pull-away had not been ordered. The warriors had drawn off
of their own accord, because their horses were blowing. Such failures in
following through were always putting a stumble into the tactics of the
undisciplined Horse Tribes. Some part of the thing that all the uproar
had been meant to cover was still going on.

Andy took the buffalo gun, and for some moments studied the position of
the struggling horse, which was still working deeper into the room
through the roof. He had to bend backward, awkwardly braced, to fire
upward, but the double charge of the .69 took effect through boards,
through turf, and through horseflesh. The great thrashing up there
stopped as the bullet found the heart. Andy turned away.

He was starting to say, "Do you think, if I'd mock an owl--"

One more wild random shot came in, not even well placed, but ricocheted
from the side of the west embrasure. Andy squealed from a suddenly
tight-shut throat, and went down.




CHAPTER 43


He pivoted as he fell, and came down partly on his side and
partly on his face, arms and legs jackknifing in an awkward heap. As
Rachel turned him over he was in the stunned moment between the first
shock of pain and its return in full force.

"I'm all right--I'm all right--" he said, without seeming to know how to
help himself. "You--your mouth's bleeding...."

For an instant she could not see where he had been hurt, but a rush of
blood was already puddling into the patch of moonlight two feet away. It
was the inside of his upper arm, just below the shoulder, and the back
muscle of his arm; the tumbling bullet had torn a jagged channel, so
deep that his arm seemed half severed. An artery was cut, and the bone
broken--perhaps shattered--so that when she straightened the arm it had
a joint where none should be.

She tore off the hem of her skirt and made a tourniquet. It had to go
almost at the armpit, the wound was so high up. Nothing was in reach for
a turn-stick except the barrel of the Whitney revolver, so she used
that. She twisted the heavy cord of cloth tighter, and tighter, and
still the blood ran in a pulsing stream.

Pain was returning, making muscles jerk all over his body.
"Don't--don't--" he kept saying through his teeth, while still the
pistol must be turned, and turned, and the tourniquet disappeared into
his flesh. When the rush of blood dwindled to a trickle, she tied the
Whitney where it was, and fetched the pillow from her bed. Ripped open,
this yielded masses of raw cotton in lumpy wads, as it had come from the
bale. He choked back a scream, then went unconscious, as she turned him
on his face to get at the wound.

It took bandage after bandage, for in spite of great handfuls of cotton
the blood kept coming through. After the bandaging she had to make
splints, and by the time that was done he was able to help her get him
to his feet. She half carried him, taking his whole weight when he
lurched, and got him onto his bunk. He was breathing hard and
irregularly, in gasps and gulps, but he cried out no more. "Walker--th'
Walker Colt--Bring me--"

She put the gun into his right hand, and after that he wanted water.
That was all, though. He was past noticing that the Whitney revolver was
in his tourniquet, so that she could no longer use a final shot as he
had wished. She got the Henry carbine, and started to refill its
magazine, but found it fully loaded. She didn't remember when she had
done that. She sat on the floor beside Andy's bunk, and what she was
feeling most was such a weight of weariness that she could hardly lift
her hands. Except for those few short dozes, twenty-four hours ago, they
had not slept in more than thirty-six hours. Her head ached, her balance
was poor, and a steady ringing filled her ears. And yet, there was still
that single thin thread of resolution to hold her up. It was stretched
taut, and near the cracking point, but it had not broken yet.

She could hear the Kiowas singing again, someplace a good ways off, not
so loudly this time. They were using a single drum, muffled by wetting
its stretched hide. She couldn't tell how many voices there were. She
tried to estimate the time by the position of the squares of moonlight
on the floor. Midnight was hardly past; the dawn had a long, long way to
come.

A soft, dragging sound was coming from someplace, as though the Kiowas
might be creeping close again, along the outside of the walls. Somehow
it didn't sound quite like that. It sounded as if it were here, near
her, in this room; yet she could see nothing move. After she had
listened a while she put her ear to the planking. The sound was coming
from under the floor.

This seemed out of all reason, yet the dragging sound went on, stopping
for minutes at a time, but always beginning again. There was a space
under the joists at this end of the room, of uneven depth, but with room
for one man to crawl around on his stomach. You could squeeze into it
from the root cellar; Rachel and Andy had explored it long ago. Papa had
brought out a bunch of friends to help him build their soddy, before the
family came out. They had used a pan of water for a level when they
built the floor, but while they were digging they didn't need to be so
particular, and for a level they had used a whisky bottle. Trouble with
that, there was whisky in it only at first, and after the bottle was
empty they had kept on using it for a level anyway. By the time they
were down to grade at this end they were working with more enthusiasm
than eye for straight. "There's a power of digging in a case of whisky,"
Papa had said.

So that was where something was dragging itself around, either
stealthily, or else feebly and with great difficulty. Now she remembered
the shots she had fired through the root cellar slide, when an enemy was
trying to chop his way in. Maybe one of the shots had creased one, or
skulled him, so that he had come to in the dark, not knowing where he
was. Or she might have put a bullet in his head. Men shot in the head
did not always die at once. She had even heard of a man who had been
shot straight through the temples, in the War, yet had lived, and had
recovered.

Maybe the savage dragging himself around under the floor was blind--or
even without any mind at all--just a body that lived, and crawled, not
knowing what it did.... The intermittent sound of the thing creeping
under there went on for a long time, and the distant singing went on,
and the moonlight on the floor would not move at all.

The big carved secretary lifted two inches and dropped again, with a
bump that shook the whole floor. She had to think for a while before she
knew what had happened, and she had forgotten how to think. One end of
the heavy walnut piece was standing on the Glory Hole, and the trap door
had tried to open. Whoever was under the floor was not mindless; he had
found the Glory Hole, and guessed that a trap door must be above it. Not
feeble, or weakened, either--he must have the strength of a grizzly.
Under the floor was no wounded man, crawling around blind, but a
stalking hunter, carrying out a plan. Maybe he had meant to locate them
by ear, and fire upward through the floor. Inching toward her, he must
have come upon the Glory Hole because she was beyond it.

As quietly as she could, Rachel hitched herself back into the corner by
Andy's bunk, where the deepest shadows were. She couldn't see the sights
of the Henry, but she would not need them, for she could fire along the
floor. She cocked the carbine and held it in her lap, ready to fire it
from there. The carved secretary began to quiver.

Slowly, slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the trap door of the
Glory Hole began to rise.




CHAPTER 44


Ben had ridden late and started early. His tired horse had
gone low-headed, and its running walk had slowed; though the bullion
mule, more lightly laden now, jogged steadily on his quarter. The sun
was going down as he came in sight of home approaching from the south,
across the Dancing Bird.

From a long way out, as he crossed a far rise, he saw that the chimney
showed no least haze of smoke beyond the bare trees; and suddenly he
knew that something was very wrong. He stopped a moment; then threw away
the mule's lead, pulled his carbine from its boot, and went on at as
hard a run as his horse had left. Behind the last ridge he stepped down,
dropping the reins, and ran forward to the crest on foot. And there he
stood for many minutes, looking at the soddy from across the Dancing
Bird, at two hundred and fifty yards.

The door of the soddy still stood, but the windows were black empty
holes, shutterless, with only a few splinters of framing where the glass
had been. A misshapen dead horse, bloating in the summer heat, lay on
the roof, its position queerly distorted, as if it were partly buried in
the roof itself. The red horizontal light of the sunset struck across
the house front, bringing out sharply some hundreds of pock holes, where
bullets had blasted cone-shaped craters, big as a man's hand, out of the
dry mud. The door of the saddle shed was torn out. That was about all
there was to see. But the empty corrals left this place more still than
it had ever been, since first anyone came here; not even a bird sailed
or whistled, anywhere along this sector of the Dancing Bird. No place
Ben had ever seen, not even No Hope, had ever looked more dead.

His carbine slid from his fingers into the dust; if he had been aware of
it he would not have cared, or supposed he needed it any more. He walked
to the creek, neither quickly nor slowly, but only plodding heavily, one
foot and then the other. Not even his sick dread of what he must face
within those walls could matter to him now. He reached the creek bed,
dropped into it, and waded the mucky shallows to climb the cutbank. Some
broad bloodstains, clotted but blackening, marked the slope; but he
walked across them unheeding, moving steadily uphill to the house. He
was within ten yards when a strange, unnatural sound from within the
dark soddy made him falter. What he heard, he knew as he came nearer,
was someone moaning and muttering some sort of gibberish, in a voice he
did not know. It sounded as much like Kiowa as anything else. He drew
his long-barreled Colt, and stepped over a window sill, into the soddy;
and there he stopped.

He was standing in a shambles. Great blood pools, some still clotting
and sticky-looking, most dried and darkening, spread under both windows,
over a great area in the middle of the room, and even showed where a
flow had run out of the fireplace, across the hearth, and onto the
floor. The carved secretary was lying on its face, the only whole piece
of furniture in the room. Broken glass, and a great litter of shattered
wood was everywhere, from splintered shutters and furniture put to the
ax in efforts at repair; the table was a pile of drift. Three walls, but
especially the back wall, were covered with the same bullet craters that
pocked the front wall outside. A leg of the dead horse hung down in the
middle of the room from a great sag in the broken roof. The clock was
bullet-smashed, the water barrel was split and overturned. No greater
havoc could have been expected if a regiment had fought here for a week.

The voice Ben had not recognized was Andy's, where he lay half out of
his bunk in a fever delirium; and he was begging for water. He moved
feebly and aimlessly in a kind of writhing, and his eyes saw nothing.

Rachel stood in the shadows at the far end of the room, a carbine in her
hands; and she looked so like a spook Ben hardly recognized her. Her
eyes stared at him like dead eyes, out of black hollows. One side of her
mouth was puffed enormously; her nose was skinned, and perhaps broken.
Blood smeared from her mouth and nose was crusted all over one side of
her face, and what remained of her dress was stiff with great dark
stains.

He failed to speak, on his first effort. On the second try he said,
"It's over, Rachel. Now everything's going to be all right."

She stood the carbine on its butt, out in the middle of the floor, as if
she were leaning it against an invisible wall. It balanced a moment,
then rattled on the planks as she turned away. She stumbled to the
bedroom door, and got it open. She almost reached the bed, but struck
its edge as she fell; and lay face downward on the floor.

He picked her up, and started to put her on her bed; but he saw the
sheeted corpse in the other bed, so carried her away. At the other end
of the soddy he found his own bunk smoothly made, untouched in all that
chaos. He stripped off the ruins of Rachel's dress, and put her poor
dirty little body between the clean sheets, before he went to Andy.




CHAPTER 45


Nine of the range crew came in soon after daylight. They had
lost the cook, whom the Kiowas had caught in his overturned wagon. And
they thought they had had a pretty bad time, until they saw what had
happened here. The two men who had gone missing when they went to hunt
for Rachel had not been seen again. And nobody knew where Cash was.

They moved both Andy and Rachel to improvised beds in the saddle shed,
and strapped Andy down to dress the wreckage of his arm. Ben himself
bathed Rachel, and made her as comfortable as he could. Sometimes, for a
few moments, she came half awake; she knew Ben then, but said very
little. She knew that Matthilda was dead, and that they had forted up,
and Andy had been hurt. For the present she didn't seem to remember much
more, and Ben was glad for that. He poured soup into her when he could,
and she slept.

Between stages of delirium, Andy was able to tell Ben what had happened
here, but only up to a point. He remembered Rachel's firing through the
root cellar slide, but he didn't know what had overturned the walnut
secretary, or what had happened in the fireplace--or maybe the chimney;
or what had busted the water barrel. He thought that after he was
wounded he had fired at something, from where he lay--maybe several
times. And he knew a gun had continued to let off near him, from as far
back as he could remember. He had the impression that he had lain there
many days.

Late in the morning, shortly after they buried Matthilda, a rider from
the Rawlinses brought word that Cash had been found, and he was dead.
But he didn't seem to know anything more about it, and rode away without
dismounting. They learned nothing else, until Georgia Rawlins rode in at
noon.

She said, somberly, "I'm glad to see _you_ here, Ben." Her face looked
bloodless under her tan, and very drawn; somehow harder, around the
mouth and eyes. She made Ben walk out to the creek with her, where they
could talk. "I sent a man. Did he get here? We found Cash."

He nodded.

She went on in a lifeless monotone, and told him of the night she had
spent here, describing that first night's fight as a "brush." After Cash
rode her home or pretty near, he seemingly had lined out to fetch his
crew in. But after the Kiowas cut him off, she believed, he must have
tried to fight his way home. The sign appeared to show that he had
fought a long way from where he was hit, and his horse killed, to where
he had ended. Georgia herself had gone out to identify him for certain.
She had sewed him into a wagon sheet; and they had buried him on the
hillside above the place where he fell.

"Ben, can it be, that was only day before yesterday, he was alive!" Her
face crinkled up, and the tears came. "I loved him, Ben. I was going to
marry him, soon as we could tell you. It was always him, I guess, in
spite of all different I knew I should do. It can't ever be no other
man."

She leaned against him, much as she would have leaned against a gentle
horse; and her tears wet his shirt. Her words came muffled. "You're the
better man. You're a better man than Cash ever could have been. But
somehow, nothing like that seemed to matter...."

She stood back, and dried her tears. "You want me to look at Andy's
arm?"

They walked back toward the saddle shed. Ben had sent a rider to bring a
surgeon from Fort Richardson, but he might have to go all the way to
Fort Worth. Might be days. If he didn't get here in time, Ben would have
to take off the arm himself, or they'd lose Andy, next. "Will you help
me, Georgia?"

"I'll help you all I can. Always."




CHAPTER 46


The swarm of hands cleaning up the house found two corpses
still hidden in it. Wolf Saddle was dead in the root cellar; and Seth,
shot through one eye, was in the Glory Hole. That the two war leaders
had died trying to come to close quarters was no coincidence. They were
the ones with no way to let go. Doubtless they would have chosen this,
rather than a return to the Kiowas in defeat and dishonor.

Only a few Kiowas, such as Kicking Bird and Hunting Horse, were able to
see that the tribe itself had little farther to go. Others of the Wild
Tribes would presently lose out as the buffalo vanished; but the Kiowas
would be whipped and driven, and broken as power, even before that. The
Kiowa raids into Texas and Mexico had never been in defense of their
lands. The Kiowa homeland had been north of the Red, in what had become
the Territory itself, since long before the Texans came. The Kiowas
raided for glory, loot, and sport.

And now the military was in charge, and the cavalry moving up. A handful
of hard-riding warriors, kept few by their very way of life, could no
longer use the Territory as a sanctuary from which to launch their
forays. Satank was dead, and his son, Sitting Bear; young White Wolf,
and Lives-in-the-Saddle, favorite son of Lone Wolf, died in a defeated
raid. Within six months Yellow Wolf, Rising Bird, Wild Dog, Singing
Tree, Striking Horse, Red Otter, and Lame Wolf would be dead. Of those
who survived, Lone Wolf, Satanta, Big Tree, Sky Walker, Woman's Heart,
War Eagle, White Horse, and Bear Paw, and fifty more--all those who had
been the hard cutting edge of the Kiowas--would be on their way to
imprisonment and exile. And the great Kicking Bird would die, poisoned
by the warlike of his own tribe, because he had preached the ways of
peace.

The vast areas the Horse Indians required, in order to live by the hunt,
could not much longer be held against a race that fed a thousand people
upon land the Wild Tribes needed to feed one. The buffalo, the one great
essential to nomadic life on the prairie, was already going, and would
soon be gone. The Kiowas as a people would survive, and someday
increase. But the Kiowas as the great war tribe of the southwest
prairies would be gone before the buffalo.

With more hands at work than there was room for, the soddy turned new
again overnight. The roof was mended, the floors scrubbed and
sandstoned; new battle shutters were built. A new smooth-over of plaster
dried overnight, and was whitewashed the next day. The place looked kind
of bare, but they moved Andy and Rachel into the lower bunks of the main
room. And still Rachel slept.

Now other people began to come; they were going to keep on coming for
days. People they had known long ago, and people they had never seen,
would travel from as far away as the Palo Pinto, as the story spread,
all of them eager to help in any way that could be found. Not one of
them all could remember having called the Zacharys Indian-lovers, or
ever questioning for one moment the origins of the girl Old Zack had
found upon the prairie, seventeen years ago. Only Zeb Rawlins, when at
last he came, would recall his errors, every one; and own to them as
forthrightly as he had stood against them.

For while Andy would become a hero, Rachel was going to be idolized. She
could have anything in Texas; she could have Texas. Though Ben didn't
believe she would want it, any more.

But up through the third day after the fight, the cowhands were able to
keep people out of the house. Andy was resting easier, and Rachel
asleep; and Ben sat on a box near the hearth, keeping an eye on them. He
didn't want to see anybody else.

A cowhand named Roddy came and hung around near the stoop, balancing on
one leg and then the other, and bashfully trying to see in; he didn't
want to disturb anybody by knocking. Ben went out to him.

"Indians lanced a caow last night," Roddy said. "Just out of pyore
meanness. Never took no part of her. Then they taken the lance, and
stuck it straight up in her ribs, plain to be seen. Right close here,
too. It's getting so they not only jump you, and steal you blind, and
murder the hell out of you. Next they got to come back and taunt you."

"What color was it?" he asked Roddy.

"Oh, I'd call it a kind of a yalla caow."

"No, damn it, the lance!"

"Oh, I'd call it black, mainly, with a lot of rawhide wrop--"

"Good God almighty! Where is it now?"

"Well, last I saw, the boys was horsing around--"

Ben recovered the thing, finally, and took it into the house. It was a
short lance, no more than eleven feet long--a good three feet shorter
than the typical fourteen-foot Kiowa lances. The shorter the lance, the
braver the Indian, everybody said. Its needle-tapered ironwood, from a
perfect shoot of the incredibly hard Osage orange, was stained black and
polished to ebony, except for two feet at the tip, which turned out to
be painted red, after the clotted beef blood was cleaned off. It was
Striking Horse's lance, all right. His medicine feathers had been
removed, but seven spaced ringlets of rawhide showed where they had
hung.

The hand hold, placed slightly toward the butt from the balance, was
wound with whang, aged iron hard, and worn to a black shine of its own
by half a century of use. But six inches of similar winding at the butt
did not belong there. Grease and charcoal had been rubbed into the
rawhide string to make it less conspicuous, yet it was new. Ben began to
suspect what he had here, when he saw that.

He picked at the winding with his knife. It was glued with boiled-down
antelopes' blood, but only at the ends. He unwound the whang, and found
it had secured a parchment-like tube of doeskin, which he was able to
slide off the butt of the lance. A strange, creepy excitement of
imminent discovery stirred his scalp; for he knew, now, and for sure,
what this was. Turning the tube in his hands, he read the message
picture on the outside, skillfully drafted in delicate, even lines.

An Indian, conventionally represented as having feathers sticking
straight up out of his head, was handing something to a white man
identified by a stovepipe hat. A wavy line from the Indian's head led to
a small drawing of a horse striking with its forefeet, and a similar
line led from the high hat to something like a gourd. "Striking Horse
gives Stone Hand a present." Couldn't have been any plainer.

He stood up for a look at Andy and Rachel, in the lower bunks at the end
of the room. Andy was restless in a fever doze. Two or three times a
minute his head rolled and he often murmured, unintelligibly. But Rachel
was sleeping quietly. Ben let his eyes rest on her for half a minute,
before he pried the tube partly open with his thumbnail.

The doeskin had been scraped very thin, but nothing had been done to
keep it soft. He supposed the drawings had been made while it was still
green, for now it had hardened in the shape of the ironwood butt, and
wanted to stay that way. He had a glimpse of something that might have
been the forequarters of a horse, and the speckled face by which the
Kiowas indicated 1857, the year of the spotted death, when Old Zack had
found a lost baby on the prairie.

So here was one more incomprehensible paradox of Kiowa integrity. Cash
had made his brash visit to Striking Horse at a time when the Dancing
Bird was being closely and almost continuously scouted, as the sign had
plainly shown. A raid in strength must already have been under debate.
When Cash asked the old warlock what child, captive or Kiowa, had been
lost by Kiowas in the year of the spotted death, he had as good as told
Striking Horse outright where that child was now. Ben did not doubt that
Striking Horse had used that intelligence, without hesitation and at
once, to unleash Seth's murderous assault. Never said he wouldn't.

But at the same time, Striking Bird had promised Cash to send him the
answer he wanted, if he could find it out. And now he had sent it--even
wrapped on his own lance, in token of validity--because he had said he
would. Only an Indian would see no contradiction in sending destruction
and the fulfillment of a promise almost hand in hand. The warlock's
answer would be the truth, for if he had not learned it he would have
sent nothing at all. This thing in Ben's hand held the secret of
Rachel's birth.

Shakily he pried at the brittle parchment; then stopped abruptly. Some
kind of warning had sounded inside his head, unclear in meaning, yet
definite as the dry buzz of a sidewinder. He sat down on a box by the
hearth, the tube dangling from his fingers, and his eyes brooding upon
the ash-banked coals; and he was wondering why he felt suddenly ashamed.
He was missing Cassius in a way he had not expected, for though he
grieved for his brother he had not expected to need him so soon. What
Ben realized now was that he had no one left to talk to, any more.

Andy had been clear-headed for a while today, but it wasn't the same
thing. Andy had felt it important to make Ben know that it was Rachel,
and not himself, who had got them through the siege. He thought he would
have gone to pieces very early in that night of terror and endless
desperation, if she had let him.

"She sure fought for her life," Ben said.

"No," Andy said. "No. She wasn't fighting for her life." Almost the last
he remembered was Rachel blaming herself, in the belief that she could
have prevented the whole thing, had she not moved too late. In those
last hours she admitted to Andy that she had been trying to slip away,
when Matthilda was taken down, without other plan than to lose herself
past finding; and so take out of their lives the disgrace and the danger
she had brought them. "It was me she was fighting for. Not herself. She
didn't care about her own life, one way or the other."

Ben believed it. And he saw now why he had drawn back from prying out
the secret of the doeskin scroll. Nobody, not even Andy, knew Rachel as
he knew her, or ever could. If she could not look to him for
understanding, she could not hope to find it on this earth. _Yet I was
fixing to ask one mean-minded question more_, he thought, _that I don't
even give a hoot about, one way or the other. She'd quit me, she ought
to quit me, if she knew it even entered my mind._

He leaned down and shoved the parchment into the heart of the banked
coals. A little shaving of flame had come alive at one end of it before
he turned away. He went and stood beside Rachel, looking down at her
somberly as she slept; and he had never felt more humble in his life.
_God help me to make it up to you. For without you I don't know how to
go on._

When he turned back to the hearth only a crinkled black twist remained
of the parchment scroll. He touched it with the toe of his boot, and it
went to dust.






[End of The Unforgiven, by Alan Le May]
