Authors: Alan LeMay
The people had aged like the house, except a little faster and a little plainer to be seen. Mart saw at first glance that Aaron was almost totally blind. Tobe and Abner were grown men. And Mrs. Mathison was a little old lady, who came out of the kitchen into the cold to take him by both hands. “My, my, Martie! It’s been so long! You’ve been gone five—no, it’s more. Why, it’s coming on six years! Did you know that?” No; he hadn’t known that. Not to count it all up together that way. Seemingly she didn’t remember they had been home twice in the meantime.
But the surprise was that Laurie was still here. He had assumed she would have gone off and married Charlie MacCorry long ago, and she had quit haunting him once he swallowed that. She didn’t come out of the house as he unsaddled, but as he came into the kitchen she crossed to him, drying her hands. Why did she always have to be at either the stove or the sink? Well, because it was always coming time to eat again, actually. They were close onto suppertime right now.
She didn’t kiss him, or take hold of him in any way. “Did you—have you ever—” Resignation showed in her eyes, but they were widened by an awareness of tragedy, as if she knew the answer before she spoke. And his face confirmed it for her. “Not anything? No least trace of her at all?”
He drew a deep breath, wondering what part of their long try needed to be told. “Nothing,” he said, finally, and judged that covered it all.
“You’ve been out so long,” she said slowly, marveling. “I suppose you talk Comanche like an Indian. Do they call you Indian names?”
“I sure wouldn’t dast interpret the most of the names they call us,” he answered automatically. But he added, “Amos is known to ’em as ‘Bull Shoulders.’ ”
“And you?”
“Oh—I’m just the ‘Other.’ ”
“I suppose you’ll be going right out again, Other?”
“No. I think now she was dead from the first week we rode.”
“I’m sorry, Martie,” She turned away, and for a few minutes went through slow motions, changing the setting of the table, moving things that didn’t need to be moved. Something besides what she was doing was going through her mind, so plainly you could almost hear it tick. Abruptly, she left her work and got her coat, spinning it over her shoulders like a cape.
Her mother said, “Supper’s almost on. Won’t be but a few minutes.”
“All right, Ma.” Laurie gave Mart one expressionless glance, and he followed her, putting his sheepskin on, as she went out the door to the dog-trot.
“Where’s Charlie?” he asked, flat-footed, once they were outside.
“He’s still in the Rangers. He’s stationed over at Harper’s, now; he’s done well enough so he could politic that. But we don’t see him too much. Seems like Rangers live on the hard run nowadays.” She met his eyes directly, without shyness, but without lighting up much, either.
A small wind was stirring now, shifting the high overcast. At the horizon a line of blood-bright sunset light broke through, turning the whole prairie red. They walked in silence, well apart, until they had crossed a rise and were out of sight of the house. Laurie said, “I suppose you’ll be going on to Austin soon.”
“We’ve got to. Amos put up a thousand head—Of course, the Rangers can’t collect until a judge or somebody declares Debbie dead. But they’ll do that now. We got to go there, and straighten it out.”
“Are you coming back, Martie?”
The direct question took him off guard. He had thought some of working his way up toward Montana, if the Rangers didn’t lock him up, or anything. They were having big Indian trouble up there, and Mart believed himself well qualified to scout against the Sioux. But it didn’t make much sense to head north into the teeth of winter, and spring was far away. So he said something he hadn’t meant to say. “Do you want me to come back, Laurie?”
“I won’t be here.”
He thought he understood that. “I figured you’d be married long before now.”
“It might have happened. Once. But Pa never could stand Charlie. Pa’s had so much trouble come down on him—he always blamed himself for what happened to your folks. Did you know that? I didn’t want to bring on one thing more, and break his heart. Not then. If I had it to do over—I don’t know. But I don’t want to stay here now. I know that. I’m going to get out of Texas, Mart.”
He looked stupid, and said, “Oh?”
“This is a dreadful country. I’ve come to hate these prairies, every inch of ’em—and I bet they stretch a million miles. Nothing to look forward to—or back at, either—I want to go to Memphis. Or Vicksburg, or New Orleans.”
“You got kinfolk back there?”
“No. I don’t know anybody.”
“Now, you know you can’t do that! You never been in a settlement bigger’n Fort Worth in your life. Any gol dang awful thing is liable to happen to you in a place like them!”
“I’m twenty-four years old,” she said bitterly. “Time something happened.”
He searched for something to say, and came up with the most stilted remark he had ever heard. “I wouldn’t want anything untoward to happen to you, Laurie,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I’ve been long gone. But I was doing what I had to do, Laurie. You know that.”
“For five long years,” she reminded him.
He wanted to let her know it wasn’t true that he hadn’t cared what happened to her. But he couldn’t explain the way hope had led him on, dancing down the prairie like a fox fire, always just ahead. It didn’t seem real any more. So finally he just put an arm around her waist as they walked, pulling her closer to his side.
The result astonished him. Laurie stopped short, and for a moment stood rigid; then she turned toward him, and came into his arms. “Martie, Martie, Martie,” she whispered, her mouth against his. She had on a lot of winter clothes, but the girl was there inside them, solider than Estrellita, but slim and warm. And now somebody began hammering on a triangle back at the house, calling them in.
“Oh, damn,” he said, “damn, damn—”
She put her fingers on his lips to make him listen. “Start coughing soon’s we go in the house. Make out you’re coming down with a lung chill.”
“Me? What for?”
“The boys put your stuff in the bunk house. But I’ll work it out so you’re moved to the grandmother room. Just you, by yourself. Late tonight, when they’re all settled in, I’ll come to you there.”
Jingle-jangle-bang went the triangle again.
That night Lije Powers came back.
They were still at the supper table as they heard his horse; and the men glanced at each other, for the plodding hoofs seemed to wander instead of coming straight on up to the door. And next they heard his curiously weak hail. Abner and Tobe Mathison went out. Lije swayed in the saddle, then lost balance and buckled as he tried to dismount, so that Tobe had to catch him in his arms.
“Drunker than a spinner wolf,” Tobe announced.
“Drunk, hell,” Abner disagreed. “The man’s got a bullet in him!”
“No, I ain’t,” Lije said, and went into a coughing fit that made a fool of Mart’s effort to fake a bad chest. Tobe and Abner were both wrong; Lije was as ill a man as had ever got where he was going on a horse. At the door he tottered against the jamb, and clung to it feebly, preventing them from closing it against the rising wind, until the coughing fit passed off.
“I found her,” Lije said, still blocking the door. “I found Deb’rie Edwards.” He slid down the side of the door and collapsed.
They carried him into the grandmother room and put him to bed. “He’s out of his head,” Aaron Mathison said, pulling off Lije Powers’ boots.
“I got a bad cold,” Lije wheezed at them. He was glassy-eyed, and his skin burned their fingers. “But I’m no more out of my mind than you. I talked to her. She spoke her name. I seen her as close as from here to you....”
“Where?” Amos demanded.
“She’s with a chief named Yellow Buckle. Amos— you mind the Seven Fingers?”
Amos looked blank. The names meant nothing to him.
Aaron Mathison said, “Will you leave the man be? He’s in delirium!”
“Be still!” Mart snapped at Aaron.
“I got a cold,” Lije repeated, and his voice turned pleading. “Ain’t anybody ever heard of the Seven Fingers?”
“Seems like there’s a bunch of cricks,” Mart said, groping for a memory, “west of the Wichita Mountains.... No, farther—beyond the Little Rainies. I think they run into the North Fork of the Red. Lije, ain’t Seven Fingers the Kiowa name for them little rivers?”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Lije cried out eagerly. “Do this get me my rocking chai’, Amos?”
“Sure, Lije. Now take it easy.”
They piled blankets on him, and wrapped a hot stove lid to put at his feet, then spooned a little soup into him. It was what Mrs. Mathison called her “apron-string soup,” because it had noodles in it. But Lije kept on talking, as if he feared he might lose hold and never be able to tell them once he let down.
“Yellow Buckle’s squaws was feeding us. One comes behind me and she puts this calabash in my lap. Full of stewed gut tripe.... She bends down, and makes out like she picks a stick out of it with her fingers. And she whispers in my ear. ‘I’m Deb’rie,’ she says. ‘I’m Deb’rie Edwards.’ ”
“Couldn’t you get a look at her?”
“I snuck a quick look over my shoulder. Her head was covered. But I seen these here green eyes. Greener’n a wild grape peeled out...”
“Was that all?” Amos asked as the old man trailed off.
“I didn’t see her no more. And I didn’t dast say nothing, or ask.”
“Who’s Yellow Buckle with?” The answer was so long in coming that Mart started to repeat, but the sick man had heard him.
“I seen... Fox Moon... and Bull Eagle... Singin’ Dog …Hunts-His-Horse—I think it was him. Some more’ll come back to me. Do it get me my chai’ by the stove?”
“You’re never going to want for anything,” Amos said.
Lije Powers rolled to the edge of the bunk in a spasm of coughing, and the blood he brought up dribbled on the floor.
“Lije,” Mart raised his voice, “do you know if—”
“Leave be now,” Aaron Mathison commanded them. “Get out of this room, and leave be! Or I put you out!”
“Just one more thing,” Mart persisted. “Is Yellow Buckle ever called any other name?”
Aaron took a step toward him, but the thin voice spoke once more. “I think—” Lije said, “I think— some call him Cut-face.”
“Get out!” Aaron roared, and moved upon them. This time they obeyed. Mrs. Mathison stayed with the very ill old man, while Laurie fetched and carried for her.
“It upsets a man,” Aaron said, all quietness again, when the door had closed upon the grandmother room. “But I find no word in it to believe.”
Mart spoke up sharply. “I think he’s telling the truth!”
“There’s a whole lot wrong with it, Mart,” Amos said. “Like: ‘I’m Deb’rie,’ she says. Nobody in our family ever called her ‘Deb’rie’ in her life. She never heard the word.”
“Lije says ‘Debrie’ for the same reason he says ‘prairuh,’ ” Mart disputed him. “He’d talk the same if he was telling what you said, or me.”
“And them Indians. Fox Moon is a Kotsetaka, and so is Singing Dog. But Bull Eagle is a Quohada, and never run with no Kotsetakas. I question if he ever seen one!”
“Can’t a sick old man get one name wrong without you knock apart everything he done?”
“We was all through them Kotsetakas—”
“And maybe passed her within twenty feet!”
“All right. But how come we never heard of any Yellow Buckle?”
“We sure as hell heard of Scar!”
“Sure,” Amos said wearily. “Lije was the same places we been, Martie. And heard the same things. That’s all.”
“But he saw her,” Mart insisted, circling back to where they had begun.
“Old Lije has been a liar all his life,” Amos said with finality. “You know that well as me.”
Mart fell silent.
“You see, Martin,” Aaron Mathison said gently, “yon lies a foolish old man. When you’ve said that, you’ve said all; and there’s the end on it.”
“Except for one thing,” Amos said, and his low voice sounded very tired. They looked at him, and waited, while for several moments he seemed lost in thought. “We’ve made some far casts, looking for a chief called Scar. We never found him. And Aaron, I believe like you: We never will. But suppose there’s just one chance in a million that Lije is right, and I am wrong? That one slim shadow of a doubt would give me no rest forever; not even in my grave.” He turned his head, and rested heavy eyes on Mart. “Better go make up the packs. Then catch the horses up. We got a long way more to go.”
Mart ran for the bunk house.
In the bunk house Mart lighted a lamp. They had cracked their bedrolls open to get out clean shirts, and some of their stuff had got spread around. He started throwing their things together. Then he heard a scamper of light boots, and a whisk of wind made the lamp flutter as the door was thrown open. Laurie appeared against the dark, and she showed a tension that promised trouble.
“Shut the door,” he told her.
She pressed it shut and stood against it. “I want the truth,” she said. “If you start off again, after all this time—Oh, Mart, what’s it supposed to mean?”
“It means, I see a chance she’s there.”
“Well, you’re not going!”
“Who isn’t?”
“I’ve dallied around this god-forsaken wind-scour for nearly six long years—waiting for you to see fit to come back! You’re not going gallivanting off again now!”
It was the wrong tone to take with him. He no more than glanced at her. “I sure don’t know who can stop me.”
“You’re a wanted man,” she reminded him. “And Charlie MacCorry is less than half an hour away. If it takes all the Rangers in Texas to put handcuffs on you—they’ll come when he hollers!”
He had no time to fool with this kind of an ambuscade, but he took time. He was clawing for a way to make her see what he was up against, why he had no choice. Uncertainly he dug out the doeskin packet in which he carried Debbie’s miniature. The once-white leather was stained to the color of burlap, and its stiffened folds cracked as he unwrapped it; he had not dug it out for a long time. Laurie came to look as he opened the little plush case and held it to the light. Debbie’s portrait was very dim. The dust had worked into it finally, and the colors had faded to shades of brown stain. No effect of life, or pertness, looked out from it any more. The little kitty-cat face had receded from him, losing itself behind the years.