He could tell that some of the warriors still thought he might be a ghost, but after they watched him eat for a while they got over their suspicions. Then they all wanted to brag about the great raid they had been on. Several warriors talked so fast that Kicking Wolf had to delay his eating in order to listen politely. They were men of his own band, and yet he felt like a guest. The warriors had been off fighting together, whereas he had been on a quest of a different kind. His own vision was still damaged; he still saw two where there was one. The men talked to him about all the whites they had killed and all the captives they had taken.
“I don’t see so many captives,” Kicking Wolf said. “There are only two girls and one of them looks as if she might die tonight.”
Then he looked at Red Hand.
“I found you because you were singing so loudly,” he said. “If the bluecoat soldiers were after you they could find you too. You didn’t even put out a guard. The bluecoats could sneak up and shoot you all down with rifles. Buffalo Hump would not be so careless if he were here.”
“Oh, he went to the Great Water, with Worm,” Red Hand said. “We don’t have to worry about the bluecoat soldiers. They tried to fight us and we chased them away.”
Red Hand had an arrogant side that was apt to come out when he was questioned or criticized. Once Buffalo Hump had hit him in the head with a club when he was talking arrogantly. The blow would have killed most warriors but it only made a lump on Red Hand’s head.
“I am only telling you what any warrior should know,” Kicking Wolf said. “You ought to post a guard. Though I have traveled a long way and am tired I will be your guard tonight if no one else wants to.”
Before anyone could speak or offer to stand guard Red Hand started talking about the rapes he committed while on the raid. While Kicking Wolf was listening he happened to glance across the fire and when he did he got a shock: he thought he saw Three Birds sitting there—the sight was so startling that Kicking Wolf began to shake. He thought perhaps the men had been right at first to consider him a ghost. Perhaps he was a ghost. He was becoming more and more disturbed when the warrior who seemed to be Three Birds stood up and went to make sure that the captive girls were tied well. At that point Kicking Wolf saw that the warrior was not Three Birds, but his brother, Little Wind. The two brothers looked so much alike that it was confusing. But the warrior seeing to the girls’ bonds was Little Wind. He had been away on a hunt when the Buffalo Horse was stolen—he might not even know that his brother, Three Birds, had helped Kicking Wolf take him.
“Your brother, Three Birds, did a brave thing,” he told Little Wind, when the man came back and sat down.
Little Wind received this news modestly, without comment. Like Three Birds he seldom spoke, preferring to keep his sentiments to himself.
“He helped me steal the Buffalo Horse from Big Horse Scull,” Kicking Wolf informed him.
“Yes, everybody knows that,” Red Hand said rudely. “The two of you went away with the Buffalo Horse and missed the great raid.
“None of us had time to go look for you,” Red Hand added, in such a rude tone that Kicking Wolf would have hit him with a war club if one had been handy.
“You be quiet! I have to tell Little Wind that his brother is dead,” he said, a statement that caused Red Hand to shut up immediately. The death of a warrior was serious business.
“I hope he died bravely,” Little Wind said. “Can you tell me about it?”
“I did not see him die,” Kicking Wolf said. “He may even be alive but I don’t think so. He went with me to Mexico, to the Yellow Cliffs where the Black Vaquero has his camp.”
The warriors who had been moving around, doing small chores, stopped at this moment. The camp became silent. There were no more rude comments from Red Hand. All the warriors knew that to go willingly to the country of Ahumado required great courage. It was a foolish act, of course, for any warrior who wanted to continue with his life; but it was the valor of the act, not its wisdom, that stilled the warriors now. They stood or sat where they were, quiet, in awe. For two warriors to go alone into Mexico and put themselves at the mercy of the Black Vaquero was a thing of such manliness that the warriors wanted to be quiet for a time and think about it.
Kicking Wolf waited a bit, in silence, for the news of what he was saying to be absorbed.
“I stole the Buffalo Horse and took him to Mexico,” he said. “I took him to Ahumado—I wanted to do it.”
He saw that the warriors understood him. Many warriors would leave the band for a few weeks, to go on a quest, or see someplace they wanted to see. Such journeys became a part of the strength of a warrior.
“Ahumado caught us,” he said. “He tied me to a horse and made the horse run away. He wanted to kill me but Big Horse Scull found me while I was in the blackness and cut me loose.”
“Ah’s!” came then from several warriors—exclamations and looks of puzzlement. Why would Big Horse Scull do such a thing?
“I did not see him,” Kicking Wolf said. “I only saw his track. But now I see two things where there is one.”
Little Wind waited patiently for Kicking Wolf to tell him more about his brother.
“Three Birds decided to go with me to the Yellow Canyon,” Kicking Wolf said. “Even though I told him I would seek Ahumado, he decided to come. When we found Ahumado he was behind us. He tied me to a horse and made the horse run. That is the last time I saw Three Birds. Ahumado kept him.”
The warriors continued to be silent. All of them had heard what Ahumado did to Comanches when he caught them. They knew about the cages, the pit, and the sharpened trees. Little Wind felt proud of his brother, for doing such a brave thing. In his life with the tribe Three Birds had never been considered especially brave. He did not lead the hunt when buffalo were running in a great stampede. He had never gone off alone to kill a bear or a cougar, though such a thing was common enough. Several of the warriors at the campfire had done such acts of bravery. Three Birds was seldom in the front of a charge, when there was an attack. His main skill as a warrior had been his ability to move quietly—that was why Kicking Wolf had chosen him to help steal the Buffalo Horse.
Since his wives and children had all died of the sickness Three Birds had been sad—Little Wind knew. He still had his quietness of movement, but he did not join in things. Little Wind thought his brother’s sadness might explain why he had decided to do such a brave thing.
When Kicking Wolf finished talking he stood up to go sit on guard, as he had offered to do when he arrived and found that the camp was unguarded. But, when he stood up, Red Hand quickly gestured for him to sit again. Red Hand had always liked Kicking Wolf and was ashamed that he had been rude to him, earlier. Kicking Wolf had done a great thing, a thing that would be sung about for many years. He should not have to listen to rudeness. It was just that his sudden appearance had startled everyone a lot. Some had taken him for a ghost. Red Hand had sought to challenge the ghost with his rudeness. But, now that he had heard Kicking Wolf’s story, he was eager to make amends.
“I see that you are hungry,” Red Hand said. “You should eat some of this deer meat. I will stand guard tonight.”
Kicking Wolf politely accepted Red Hand’s offer. He stayed where he was, but did not eat much of the deer meat. Now that he was back with the warriors of his own band, a great tiredness came over him. He lay down in the warm ashes of the fire and was soon asleep.
22.
PEARL COLEMAN pushed down her sadness every morning and tried to make her husband a sizable and tasty breakfast. She sat Long Bill down to a good plate of biscuits and four tasty pork chops. Then she told him, as she had every morning since his return, that she wanted him to quit the rangers and quit them now.
“I can’t stand you going off in the wilds no more, Bill,” she said, beginning to weep at the memory of her recent ordeal. “I can’t stand it. I get so scared my toes cramp up when I get in bed. I can’t get to sleep with my toes cramping up like th
at.”
Though he appreciated the biscuits and the pork chops, Long Bill let his wife’s remarks pass without comment—he also let her tears flow without trying to staunch them. Tears and entreaties for him to quit the rangers had become as predictable a part of the morning as the sunrise itself.
“There’s worse things than cramped toes, Pearl,” he answered, a biscuit in one hand and an unhappy look on his face.
He said no more than that, but Pearl Coleman felt exasperation growing. For the first time in her marriage she felt herself in opposition to her husband, and not casual opposition either. About the need for him to quit the rangers immediately she was right and he was wrong, and if she couldn’t get Bill to accept her view then she didn’t know what to think about their future as husband and wife.
“I’d be the one to know what’s bad better than you,” she told him. “I was here. I had four arrows shot into me, and I lost our baby from being so scared. I got so scared our baby died inside me.”
Long Bill’s own view was that the raping Pearl had endured had probably killed the baby, but he didn’t say so; he ate another biscuit and held his peace. The overwhelming relief he felt when he saw that Pearl was alive had subsided, drained away by the new problem of adjusting to what had happened to her.
One thing Long Bill had to face immediately was that Pearl had been raped by several Comanches. On his anguished long, nervous ride home he had half expected to have to cope with the knowledge of rape; but once he got home and discovered that Pearl actually had been raped he was so shocked that, so far, he had not even attempted the conjugal act that in normal circumstances he looked forward to so much.
Not only that, Pearl didn’t want him to attempt it.
“They done it and you wasn’t here to help me,” she told him, weeping, the first night he was back. “I can’t be a wife to you no more, Bill.”
All that night, and every night since, Pearl lay beside her husband, her legs squeezed together, so desperately unhappy that she wished one of the Comanche arrows had killed her.
Long Bill, beside her, was no less unhappy. He and the rangers had buried thirteen people on the ride back to Austin. Now, lying beside his unhappy wife, he thought of all the battles he had been in and reflected that a single well-placed bullet could have spared him such a painful dilemna.
“How many done you?” he asked Pearl, finally.
“Seven,” Pearl admitted. “It was over quick.”
Long Bill said no more, then or ever, but if seven Comanches had violated his wife then it didn’t seem to him that it could have been over very quick.
Since his return, day by day, life had gotten harder. Pearl cooked him lavish, delicious meals, but, in bed, lay beside him with her legs squeezed shut, and he himself had no desire to persuade her to open them.
Through the long, anxious nights on the trail he had wanted nothing more than to be home and in bed with his wife. Now, though, he left the house the minute supper was over, to sit late in the saloon every night, drinking with Augustus McCrae. Gus drank to ease his broken heart, Long Bill to blur his own vivid and uneasy thoughts. Sometimes they were even joined by Woodrow Call, who had his own worries but wouldn’t voice them—the most he would do was take a whiskey or two. By this time everybody in Austin knew that Maggie Tilton was pregnant, and many people assumed the baby was Woodrow Call’s, a fact not of much importance to anyone except the young couple themselves.
Austin had the great raid to recover from. Most of the townspeople had homes or businesses to repair; they also had griefs to grieve. The fact that a young Texas Ranger had got a whore pregnant was in the normal order of things, and no one thought the worse of Woodrow or of Maggie, because of it. Few had the leisure to give the matter more than an occasional thought.
Night after night the three of them, Long Bill, Gus, and Call, sat at a table in the back of the saloon, all three troubled in mind because of difficulties with women. Augustus had lost the love of his life, Long Bill’s wife had been shamed by the red Comanches, and Woodrow’s girl was carrying a child she insisted was his, a child he could not find it in him to want, or even to acknowledge.
“How would a whore know if a child is one man’s or another’s?” he asked one night. Long Bill was nodding, so the question was mainly directed at Gus, but Long Bill snapped to attention and answered.
“Oh, women know,” he said. “They got ways.”
To Call’s annoyance, Augustus casually agreed, though he was so drunk at the time that he could scarcely lift his glass.
“If she says it’s yours, it’s yours,” Gus said. “Now don’t you be fidgeting about it.”
Call had asked Gus because Gus had made a study of women, more or less, while he himself had devoted more attention to the practicalities of ranger life on the frontier. Since Maggie had immediately claimed the baby was his, and had remained firm in her opinion, he thought there might be some medical or scientific basis for her conviction, and if there was he was prepared to do his duty. But he wanted to know the science of it, not merely be told that women knew about such things.
“Maggie’s honest, that’s the point, Woodrow,” Gus reminded him. Though drunk, he meant to see that Woodrow Call did not evade the responsibilities of fatherhood.
“I know she’s honest,” Call replied. “That don’t mean she’s right about everything. Honest people make mistakes too.
“I’m honest, and I’ve made plenty,” he added.
“I even make mistakes,” Long Bill admitted, ruefully. “And I’m as honest as the day is long.”
“Pshaw, you ain’t!” Gus said. “I expect you told Pearl you was standing guard at night, so you lied within the hour. Ain’t that true?”
“It’s not so much a lie as that Pearl don’t need to know everything,” Long Bill replied. It was true that he lied to Pearl about his evenings in the saloon, but he didn’t think Pearl minded. In fact she might even prefer to have him out of the house until it was time for them to sleep. Otherwise, they would have nothing to do but sit in their chairs or lay in their bed and brood about the fact that they were no longer husband and wife as they had been.
“The point is, Maggie ain’t a mistake,” Gus told Call. “She’s a blessing and you’re dumb not to see it.”
“I am right fond of Maggie,” Call said. “But that don’t mean the child is mine. I’d just like to know if there’s a way she can be sure about the father.”
Gus, in a poor mood anyway, was annoyed by the very tone of Woodrow Call’s voice.
“If I say it’s yours and Bill says it’s yours and Maggie says it’s yours, then that ought to be enough for you,” he said hotly. “Do you need the dern Governor to say it’s yours?”
“No,” Call said, making an earnest effort to stay calm about the matter. “I just want to know for sure. I expect any man would want to know for sure. But you can’t tell me for sure and Bill can’t either. I don’t know what the Governor has to do with it.”
Silence followed. Augustus saw no point in pursuing the matter further. He had been in many arguments with Woodrow Call but had never, so far as he could recall, succeeded in changing his mind. Long Bill must have felt the same. He stared at his whiskey glass and said nothing.
Call got up and left. He had taken to walking by the river for an hour or more at night, but, on this occasion, had left his rifle in the bunkhouse and strolled back to get it. Since the raid no one ventured out of town, day or night, without a rifle.
“Woodrow’s hard to convince, ain’t he?” Long Bill said, once Call left.
Augustus didn’t reply. Instead he reached in his pocket and took out a letter he had received the day before, from Clara. He had already memorized the letter but could not resist looking at it again:
Dear Gus,
I write in haste from St. Louis—tomorrow a boat will take us up the Missouri River. I trust that you are safe. If you are in Austin when you get this letter you will have heard that Ma and Pa were killed in the
big raid.
I only got the news two days ago. Of course it’s hard, knowing that I will never see Ma and Pa again.
As you are my oldest and best friend I would like you to do this for me: go and see that they are well buried in the cemetery, there by Grandma Forsythe. I would appreciate it if you would hire someone to care for their graves. It is not likely, now that I am a married woman, that I will return that way for many years, but it would be a comfort for me to know that their graves are being cared for. Perhaps a few flowers, bluebonnets maybe, could be planted above them in the spring. My Ma was always taken with bluebonnets.
I hope you will do this for me, Gus, and not be bitter about Bob. Once we are settled in Nebraska I’ll send money for the caretaker.
It’s hard to write you, Gus—we’ve always just talked, haven’t we? But I mean to practice until I get the hang of it. And you need to write me too, so that I’ll know you’re safe and well.
Your friend,
Clara
She don’t know, Augustus thought, as he carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Merely seeing her writing caused such yearning to swell up in him that he didn’t think he could stand it. Despite himself tears welled in his eyes.
“I reckon we can tell about that baby of Maggie’s once it’s born,” Long Bill said. He spoke mainly to cover his friend’s embarrassment—merely getting a letter from Clara had brought tears to his eyes.
Gus, though, didn’t seem to be listening. He put the letter back in his pocket, scattered some money on the table, and left.
Long Bill sat alone for a while, drinking, though he knew it was about time he went home to Pearl. No doubt she’d be in bed with her Bible, trying to pray away troubles that just weren’t willing to leave. Gus’s girl had married someone else, as women would. Maggie Tilton had become pregnant, as women would. But his wife had been shamed by seven Comanche warriors, causing her to lose a baby that had been legally and pleasurably conceived.
Now he wasn’t sure that there would be any more such pleasure for himself and Pearl. Her ample flesh, which had once drawn him to her night after night, now repelled him. He didn’t mind that Pearl kept her legs squeezed together. Every night now he scooted farther and farther from her, in the bed. Even her sweat smelled different to him now.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 84
