All day, Xitla crept on, stopping frequently to rest and ease her back. She did not want to be eaten by a puma or a bear. Long before she reached the spot where Lorenzo trained the horses the shadows had begun to fill the canyon. When she got to the place Xitla saw at once that she had not traveled in vain: the rope that was used to restrain the young horses was still tied to the hitching post. It was a good long rope, as she had remembered. She could tie one end to the skinning post and throw the other end to the white man, so that he could pull himself up. Maybe he would continue to sing his strange love song to her; maybe his member would rise up with the song.
On the way back, though, hobbling slowly through the darkness with the coiled rope, Xitla felt a deep fear growing in her. At first she thought it was fear of the bear or the puma, but, as she crept along, pain from her back shooting down her leg, Xitla realized she had made a terrible mistake. She had allowed the white man’s strange love song to drive judgment and reason out of her head; an old vanity and the memory of coupling had driven out her reason just as the shadows were driving the last light out of the canyon. Because she remembered a time when vaqueros would ride one hundred miles just to look on her beauty, she had forgotten that she was an old bent woman nearing the end of her time.
Now that Xitla was caught in the darkness, far from camp, she realized that she had been a fool. What was it to couple with a man anyway? A little sweat, a jerk, a sigh. The pain shooting down her legs grew more intense. Now she had put herself at the mercy of Bear and Puma, that was bad; but now, as she crept along, a worse fear came, the fear of Ahumado. He was dying somewhere. Xitla knew he must have gone to the south, to their home, to seek the Tree of Medicines; but something was eating at his leg and he would not reach the tree. The pain in her leg came from Ahumado; perhaps Spider had bitten him, or Snake, or Scorpion. A poison was killing Ahumado; those who tasted the poison leaf died of poison when their time arrived. But Ahumado’s time was Xitla’s time too, and she would suffer it without even the protection of her little shelter at the camp. It was Ahumado who had made the prisoner show her his member and turn her head, Ahumado who had made the white man sing her love songs in the old tongue—perhaps the words Scull used were in the language of the first human beings, words which no one could resist. Because of it, she had been lured away, far from her little store of herbs and plants, things that might have helped her scare away Bear and Puma—all for a rope to save the white man, for a jerk and a sigh. Ahumado had made it all happen, so that, as he was dying, a death more cruel than his own would come to Xitla.
She crawled faster, carrying the rope, although she knew well that such haste was foolish. Her fear grew so strong that she threw away the rope she had come so far to get. The rope was only another trick of Ahumado’s; its loop was the loop of time that would close and catch her soon. It was all a joke of Ahumado’s, Xitla realized. He had put the white man in the pit to tempt her, to awaken her loins again, to draw her away from camp, where she had herbs and leaves to protect her. She had the black leaves that made a bad smell when burned—if she put them in the fire, then Puma would let her alone. Puma did not like the smell the black leaves made when they were burned.
Xitla was only halfway back to camp when the night began to end. She had traveled slowly; often she had to stop and rest. Now the light of day was beginning to whiten the sky overhead; when the light sank into the canyon Xitla saw something near the canyon wall, not far ahead. At first she thought it was Puma. She yelled and yelled at it, hoping to scare it away. Puma would sometimes run from people who yelled.
It was not until the animal began to glide toward her that Xitla saw it wasn’t Puma, it wasn’t Bear: it was Jaguar. Around her neck she had a little red stone; the stone had hung around her neck all her life. The red stone was Parrot. Xitla clutched it in her hand as Jaguar came. Xitla knew that Jaguar would not stop for Parrot. Jaguar was coming to eat her. But Ahumado too was dying—dying of poison somewhere to the south. He would not reach the Tree of Medicines. Xitla clutched the red stone tight and sent a message to Parrot. She wanted Parrot to find the body of Ahumado and peck out his eyes.
50.
WHEN SCULL REALIZED the old woman was no longer in the camp above him, he fell, for the first time, into raw panic, a kind of explosion of nerves that caused him to hop wildly around the floor of the pit, cursing and yelping out strange words; he emitted cries and bursts of language as if he were farting fear out of his mouth. He became afraid of himself; if he could have bitten himself to death at that time, he would have. He leapt on top of the mound of earth he had heaped over the three corpses and sprang at the wall of the pit several times, hoping to claw his way out of it by main force.
But it was hopeless. He could not leap out of the pit. When he exhausted himself he fell back, his eyes raw and stinging with the dirt that fell in them when he leapt at the walls of the pit.
Scull tried to calm himself but could not stifle his panic. He knew the old woman’s absence might be only temporary; perhaps she had had to hobble a little farther than usual to gather the corn she brought him. Perhaps she had even journeyed to another village, to bring back someone who would help him out of the pit. He used all his force of mind to try and find a rational reason why the old woman’s absence was temporary, but it was no use; the panic was violent and strong, so strong that he could not stop hopping around the pit, gibbering, mewling, cursing. There were many reasons why the old woman might only be gone temporarily, but Scull could not calm himself even for a second by thinking of them. He knew the old woman was dead, she would never be back, and he was alone, in a stinking pit in Mexico. His heart was beating against his ribs so hard he thought it might burst, and hoped it would; or that the arteries of his brain would pop and bring him a quicker death than starving, day by day, amid the scorpions and fleas—for fleas were one of the worst torments of the pit. They were in his hair, his armpits, everywhere. If he sat still and focused he could see them hopping on his bare leg. From time to time, crazed, he tried to catch them and squeeze them to death, but they mostly eluded him.
With the old woman there Scull could manage a little hope, but now his nerves told him all was lost. The old woman was dead; he was stuck. He knew he should resign himself, but for hours he was fired with panic, like a motor, a dynamo. He jumped and jumped; it was as if lightning ran through him. He could not make himself stop jumping; he saw himself soaring with one miraculous jump all the way up, out of the pit. He jumped and gibbered all day, until dusk.
Then he collapsed. When the sunlight of a new day woke him, he was too drained to move. He still had a little water, and a few scraps of food, but he didn’t drink or eat, not for several hours; then, in a rush, he choked down all the food, drank all the water. Though he knew there would be no more he didn’t care to ration what there was. He wanted to put sustenance behind him. He had, he thought, fought well; he had held out against torturous circumstances longer than many a man of his acquaintance would have, excepting only his second cousin Ariosto Scull. But the fight was over. He had seen many men—generals, captains, privates, bankers, widowers—arrive at the moment of surrender. Some came to it quickly, after only a short sharp agony; others held to their lives far longer than was seemly. But finally they gave up. He had seen it, on the battlefield, in hospital, in the cold toils of marriage or the great houses of commerce; finally men gave up. He thought he would never have to learn resignation, but that was hubris. It was time to give up, to stop fighting, to wait for death to ease in.
Now he even regretted killing all the rattlesnakes. He should have left one or two alive. He could have provoked one or two to strike him; while not as rapid as the bite of the fer-de-lance that had killed his cousin Willy in a matter of seventeen minutes, three or four rattlesnake bites would probably be effective enough. Scull even went over and examined the dead snakes, thinking there might be a way to inject himself with the venom; it would ensure a speedier end. But he had beaten the snakes until their h
eads were crushed and their fangs broken; anyway, the venom must have long since dried up.
After his day of hopping and jumping, raging and gibbering, clawing at the walls and spewing fragments of old orations and Greek verse, Inish Scull settled himself as comfortably as he could against the wall of the pit and did nothing. He wished he had the will to stop his breath, but he didn’t. Whether he wanted it or not, his breath came. It was a bright day; to look up at all with his lidless eyes was to invite the sun into his brain. Instead, he kept his head down. His hair was long enough to make a fair shade. He wanted to let go the habit of fighting, to die in calmness. He remembered again the Buddhist, sitting calmly in his orange robes by the Charles River. He had no orange robes, he was not a Buddhist, he was a Scull, Captain Inish Scull. He thought he had fought well in every war he had been able to find, but now was the day of surrender, the day when he had to snap the sword of his will, to cease all battling and be quiet, be calm; then, finally, would come the moment when his breath would stop.
51.
CALL AND GUS were moving cautiously into the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs when a great bird rose suddenly from behind a little cluster of desert mesquite. Five more rose as well, great bald vultures, so close to the two men that their horses shied.
“I hope it wasn’t the Captain they’re eating,” Augustus said. “It’d be a pity to come all this way and lose him to the buzzards.”
“It wasn’t the Captain,” Call said—through the thin bushes he glimpsed what was left of the body of an old woman. The vultures were reluctant to leave. Two lit on boulders nearby, while the shadows of the others flickered across the little clearing where the body lay.
“Must have been a cougar, to up her up like that,” Gus said. “Would a cougar do that?”
“I guess one did,” Call said. “See the tracks? He was a big one.”
They dismounted and inspected the area for a few minutes, while the vultures wheeled overhead.
“I’ve never seen a lion track that big,” Augustus commented.
A rawhide rope lay not far from the corpse.
“Why would an old woman be way out here alone?” Gus wondered. “All she had was this rope. Where was she going?”
“I guess we could pile some rocks on her,” Call said. “I hate just to leave a body laying out.”
“Woodrow, she’s mostly et anyway,” Gus said. “Why spoil the buzzards’ picnic?”
“I know, but it’s best to bury people,” Call said. “I believe she was crippled—look at her hip.”
While they were heaping rocks on the corpse Call got an uneasy feeling. He couldn’t say what prompted it.
“Something’s here, I don’t know what,” he said, when they resumed their cautious ride into the canyon.
“It might be that cougar, hoping for another old woman,” Gus said.
A few moments later, Augustus saw the jaguar. He was not as convinced as Call that Ahumado and his men had left, and was scanning the rocky ledges above them, looking for any sign of life. Probably if the old bandit had gone, he would have left a rear guard. He didn’t want to be ambushed, as they had been the first time they entered the Yellow Canyon, and he took particular care to scan the higher ledges, where a rifleman could hide and get off an easy shot.
On one of the higher ledges he saw something that didn’t register clearly with his eye. There was something there that was hard to see—he stopped his horse to take a longer look and when he did the jaguar stepped into full view.
“Woodrow, look up there,” he said.
Call could not immediately see the jaguar, but then the animal moved and he saw him clearly.
“I think it’s a jaguar,” Augustus said. “I never expected to see one.”
“I imagine that’s what got the old woman,” Call said.
For a moment, surprised, they were content to watch the jaguar, but their mounts were far from content. They put up their ears and snorted; they wanted to run but the rangers held them steady.
The jaguar stood on the rocky ledge, looking down at them.
“Do you think you can get off a shot?” Call asked. “If we don’t kill it, it might get one of these horses, when it comes nightfall.”
Augustus began to lift his rifle out of the scabbard. Though both men were watching the jaguar, neither saw it leave. It was simply gone. By the time Augustus raised his rifle there was nothing to shoot.
“He’s gone—it’s bad news for the horses,” Call said.
“I’ll never forget seeing him,” Augustus said. “He acted like he owned the world.”
“I expect he does—this world, at least,” Call said. “I’ve never seen an animal just disappear like that.”
All afternoon, as they worked their way carefully through the narrow canyon, they often looked upward, hoping for another glimpse of the jaguar—but the jaguar was seen no more.
“Just because we don’t see him don’t mean he’s not following us,” Call said. “We have to keep the horses close tonight.”
Suddenly the canyon opened into the space they remembered from the time they were ambushed. The cliffs above them were pitted with holes and little caves. They stopped for a few minutes, examining the caves closely, looking for the glint of a rifle barrel or any sign of life.
But they saw nothing, only some eagles soaring across the face of the cliff.
“We ought to walk in, but we can’t leave the horses,” Call said. “That jaguar might be following us.”
“I think this camp is deserted,” Augustus said. “I think we came too late.”
They rode slowly into the deserted camp, a sandy place, empty, windy. Only a ring of cold campfires and a few scraps of tenting were left to indicate that people in some numbers had once camped there.
Besides the tenting and the campfires there was one other thing that suggested the presence of humans: the skinning post, with a crossbar at the top, from which a badly decomposed, mangled, and half-eaten corpse still hung.
“Oh my Lord,” Augustus said. He could barely stand to look at the corpse, and yet he couldn’t look away.
“They say Ahumado had people skinned, if he didn’t like them,” Call said. “I supposed it was just talk, but I guess it was true.”
“I ain’t piling no rocks on that,” Gus said emphatically. The bloated thing hanging from the crossbar skinning post bore little resemblance now to anything human.
“I’ll pass myself, this time,” Call said. He did not want to go near the stinking thing on the post.
In the pit, not far from where the two rangers stood, Inish Scull had slipped into a half-sleep. Many times he had dreamed of rescue, so many that now, when he heard the voices of Call and McCrae, in his half sleep, he discounted the words. They were just more dream voices; he would not let them tempt him into hope.
“We ought to search these caves,” Call said. “They might have had the Captain here. If we could find a scrap of his uniform or his belt or something at least it would be a thing we could take to his wife.”
“You look in the caves, Woodrow,” Gus said. “I’ll stand guard, in case that jaguar shows up.”
“All right,” Call said.
As Call started for the largest of the caves at the base of the cliff, Augustus noticed the pit. Because of the shadows stretching out from the pit it had been hard to see from where they entered the camp.
Curious, Augustus took a step or two closer—a stench hit him, but a stench less powerful than that which came from the swollen black flesh hanging from the skinning post. He stepped to the edge of the pit—from the stench it seemed to him that the pit might be a place where Ahumado tossed his dead. It could be that Captain Scull’s body might be there; or what was left of it.
He looked into the pit but did not at first see the small, almost naked man sitting with his head bent down in the shadows near one wall of the pit. Augustus saw some dead snakes, a broken cage, and a mound of dirt with the dirt not piled thickly enough to shut out the stench o
f death. He was about to turn away, disappointed, when the man sitting against the wall suddenly rolled two white lidless eyes up at him from beneath a long dirty mat of hair.
“Oh Lord! Woodrow . . . Woodrow!” Gus yelled.
Call, almost at the entrance to the first cave, turned at once and came running back.
“We found him, Woodrow! It’s the Captain!” Augustus said.
Inish Scull was still in his-half sleep, listening listlessly to the dream voices, when he felt a shadow slant across the pit. With his eyes exposed he registered shadows even when he was looking down or trying to shield his eyes. If a vulture or an eagle soared above the camp he saw its shadow.
But the shadow that slanted across the pit was not a shadow made by a bird’s wings. Scull saw a man looking at him from the edge of the pit; the man looked like the ranger Augustus McCrae. At the sight, panic stormed Scull’s nerves again. He vowed to be calm, but he couldn’t. He leapt to his feet and sprang at the wall, hopping from one side of the pit to the other. When a man appeared who looked like the ranger Woodrow Call, Scull sprang all the harder. He spewed out words in Greek and English, jumping frenziedly about the pit and at the walls. Again and again he jumped, ignoring the rangers’ words of calm. He jumped like a flea, like one of the thousands who had tormented him. He had become a flea, his duty to jump and jump, hopping up at the wall, hopping across the pit. Even when ranger Call slid down a rope into the pit and attempted to quiet him, to let him know that he was saved, Inish Scull, the Boston flea, continued to jump and jump.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 100
