The Searchers

by Alan Lemay

  But he could not help seeing that Amos was changing. Or perhaps he was seeing revealed, a little at a time, a change that had come over Amos suddenly upon the night of the disaster. At the start Amos had led them at a horse-killing pace, a full twenty hours of their first twenty-four. That was because of Lucy, of course. Often Comanches cared for and raised captive white children, marrying the girls when they were grown, and taking the boys into their families as brothers. But grown white women were raped unceasingly by every captor in turn until either they died or were “thrown away” to die by the satiated. So the pursuers spent themselves and their horse flesh unsparingly in that first run; yet found no sign, as their ponies failed, that they had gained ground upon the fast-traveling Comanches. After that Amos set the pace cagily at a walk until the horses recovered from that first allout effort, later at a trot, hour after hour, saving the horses at the expense of the men. Amos rode relaxed now, wasting no motions and no steps. He had the look of a man resigned to follow this trail down the years, as long as he should live.

  And then Amos found the body of an Indian not buried in the ground, but protected by stones in a crevice of a sandstone ledge. He got at this one— and took nothing but the scalp. Martin had no idea what Amos believed about life and death; but the Comanches believed that the spirit of a scalped warrior had to wander forever between the winds, denied entrance to the spirit land beyond the sunset. Amos did not keep the scalp, but threw it away on the prairie for the wolves to find.

  Another who was showing change was Brad Mathison. He was always the one ranging farthest ahead, the first to start out each morning, the most reluctant to call it a day as the sun went down. His well-grained horses—they had brought four spares and two pack mules—showed it less than Brad himself, who was turning hollow-eyed and losing weight. During the past year Brad had taken to coming over to the Edwardses to set up with Lucy—but only about once every month or two. Martin didn’t believe there had been any overpowering attachment there. But now that Lucy was lost, Brad was becoming more involved with every day that diminished hope.

  By the third day some of them must have believed Lucy to be dead; but Brad could not let himself think that. “She’s alive,” he told Martin Pauley. Martin had said nothing either way. “She’s got to be alive, Mart.” And on the fourth day, dropping back to ride beside Mart, “I’ll make it up to her,” he promised himself. “No matter what’s happened to her, no matter what she’s gone through. I’ll make her forget.” He pushed his horse forward again, far into the lead, disregarding Amos’ cussing.

  So it was Brad, again, who first sighted the Comanches. Far out in front he brought his horse to the edge of a rimrock cliff; then dropped from the saddle and led his horse back from the edge. And now once more he held his rifle over his head with both hands, signaling “found.”

  The others came up on the run. Mart took their horses as they dismounted well back from the edge, but Mose Harper took the leads from Mart’s hands. “I’m an old man,” Mose said. “What ever’s beyond, I’ve seen it afore—most likely many times. You go on up.”

  The cliff was a three-hundred-foot limestone wall, dropping off sheer, as if it might be the shoreline of a vanished sea. The trail of the many Comanche ponies went down this precariously by way of a talus break. Twenty miles off, out in the middle of the flats, lay a patch of haze, shimmering redly in the horizontal light of the sunset. Some of them now remembered the cat-tail marsh that stagnated there, serving as a waterhole. A black line, wavering in the ground heat, showed in front of the marsh haze. That was all there was to see.

  “Horses,” Brad said. “That’s horses, there at the water!”

  “It’s where they ought to be,” Mart said. A faint reserve, as of disbelief in his luck, made the words come slowly.

  “Could be buffler,” Zack Harper said. He was a shag-headed young man, the oldest son of Mose Harper. “Wouldn’t look no different.”

  “If there was buffalo there, you’d see the Comanche runnin’ ’em,” Amos stepped on the idea.

  “If it’s horses, it’s sure a power of ’em.”

  “We’ve been trailin’ a power of ’em.”

  They were silent awhile, studying the distant pen scratch upon the world that must be a band of livestock. The light was failing now as the sunset faded.

  “We better feed out,” Brad said finally. He was one of the youngest there, and the veteran plains-men were usually cranky about hearing advice from the young; but lately they seemed to listen to him anyway. “It’ll be dark in an hour and a half. No reason we can’t jump them long before daylight, with any kind of start.”

  Ed Newby said, “You right sure you want to jump all them?”

  Charlie MacCorry turned to look Ed over. “Just what in hell you think we come here for?”

  “They’ll be took unawares,” Amos said. “They’re always took unawares. Ain’t an Indian in the world knows how to keep sentries out once the night goes cold.”

  “It ain’t that,” Ed answered. “We can whup them all right. I guess. Only thing …Comanches are mighty likely to kill any prisoners they’ve got, if they’re jumped hard enough. They’ve done it again and again.”

  Mart Pauley chewed a grass blade and watched Amos. Finally Mart said, “There’s another way....”

  Amos nodded. “Like Mart says. There’s another way.” Mart Pauley was bewildered to see that Amos looked happy. “I’m talking about their horses. Might be we could set the Comanch’ afoot.”

  Silence again. Nobody wanted to say much now without considering a long while before he spoke.

  “Might be we can stampede them ponies, and run off all the whole bunch,” Amos went on. “I don’t believe it would make ’em murder anybody—that’s still alive.”

  “This thing ain’t going to be top easy,” Ed Newby said.

  “No,” Amos agreed. “It ain’t easy. And it ain’t safe. If we did get it done, the Comanch’ should be ready to deal. But I don’t say they’ll deal. In all my life, I ain’t learned but one thing about an Indian: What ever you know you’d do in his place—he ain’t going to do that. Maybe we’d still have to hunt them Comanches down, by bunches, by twos, by ones.”

  Something like a bitter relish in Amos’ tone turned Mart cold. Amos no longer believed they would recover Lucy alive—and wasn’t thinking of Debbie at all.

  “Of course,” Charlie MacCorry said, his eyes on a grass blade he was picking to shreds, “you know, could be every last one of them bucks has his best pony on short lead. Right beside him where he lies.”

  “That’s right,” Amos said. “That might very well be. And you know what happens then?”

  “We lose our hair. And no good done to nobody.”

  “That’s right.”

  Brad Mathison said, “In God’s name, will you try it, Mr. Edwards?”

  “All right.”

  Immediately Brad pulled back to feed his horses, and the others followed more slowly. Mart Pauley still lay on the edge of the rimrock after the others had pulled back. He was thinking of the change in Amos. No deadlock now, no hesitation in facing the worst answer there could be. No hope, either, visible in Amos’ mind that they would ever find their beloved people alive. Only that creepy relish he had heard when Amos spoke of killing Comanches.

  And thinking of Amos’ face as it was tonight, he remembered it as it was that worst night of the world, when Amos came out of the dark, into the shambles of the Edwards’ kitchen, carrying Martha’s arm clutched against his chest. The mutilation could not be seen when Martha lay in the box they had made for her. Her face looked young, and serene, and her crossed hands were at rest, one only slightly paler than the other. They were worn hands, betraying Martha’s age as her face did not, with little random scars on them. Martha was always hurting her hands. Mart thought, “She wore them out, she hurt them, working for us.”

  As he thought that, the key to Amos’ life suddenly became plain. All his uncertainties, his deadlocks with hi
mself, his labors without pay, his perpetual gravitation back to his brother’s ranch—they all fell into line. As he saw what had shaped and twisted Amos’ life, Mart felt shaken up; he had lived with Amos most of his life without ever suspecting the truth. But neither had Henry suspected it—and Martha least of all.

  Amos was—had always been—in love with his brother’s wife.

  Chapter Eight

  Amos held them where they were for an hour after dark. They pulled saddles and packs, fed out the last of their grain, and rubbed down the horses with wads of dry grass. Nobody cooked. The men chewed on cold meat and lumps of hard frying-pan bread left from breakfast. All of them studied the shape of the hills a hundred miles beyond, taking a line on the Comanche camp. That fly speck, so far out upon the plain, would be easy to miss in the dark. When the marsh could no longer be seen they used the hill contours to take sights upon the stars they knew, as each appeared. By the time the hills, too, were swallowed by the night, each had star bearings by which he could find his way.

  Mose Harper mapped his course by solemnly cutting notches in the rim of the hat. His son Zack grinned as he watched his father do that, but no one else thought it comical that Mose was growing old. All men grew old unless violence overtook them first; the plains offered no third way out of the predicament a man found himself in, simply by the fact of his existence on the face of the earth.

  Amos was still in no hurry as he led off, sliding down the talus break by which the Comanches had descended to the plain. Once down on the flats, Amos held to an easy walk. He wanted to strike the Comanche horse herd before daylight, but when he had attacked he wanted dawn to come soon, so they could tell how they had come out, and make a finish. There must be no long muddle in the dark. Given half a chance to figure out what had happened, the war party would break up into singles and ambushes, becoming almost impossible to root out of the short grass.

  When the moon rose, very meager, very late, it showed them each other as black shapes, and they could make out their loose pack and saddle stock following along, grabbing jawfuls of the sparse feed. Not much more. A tiny dolloping whisk of pure movement, without color or form, was a kangaroo rat. A silently vanishing streak was a kit fox. About midnight the coyotes began their clamor, surprisingly near, but not in the key that bothered Mart; and a little later the hoarser, deeper howling of a loafer wolf sounded for a while a great way off. Brad Mathison drifted his pony alongside Mart’s.

  “That thing sound all right to you?”

  Mart was uncertain. One note had sounded a little queer to him at one point, but it did not come again. He said he guessed it sounded like a wolf.

  “Seems kind of far from timber for a loafer wolf. This time of year, anyway,” Brad worried. “Known ’em to be out here, though,” he answered his own complaint. He let his horse drop back, so that he could keep count of the loose stock.

  After the loafer wolf shut up, a dwarf owl, such as lives down prairie dog holes, began to give out with a whickering noise about a middle distance off. Half a furlong farther on another took it up, after they had left the first one silent behind, and later another as they came abreast. This went on for half an hour, and it had a spooky feel to it because the owls always sounded one at a time, and always nearby. When Mart couldn’t stand it any more he rode up beside Amos.

  “What you think?” he asked, as an owl sounded again.

  Amos shrugged. He was riding with his hands in his pockets again, as Mart had often seen him ride before, but there was no feel of deadlock or uncertainty about him now. He was leading out very straight, sure of his direction, sure of his pace.

  “Hard to say,” he answered.

  “You mean you don’t know if that’s a real owl?”

  “It’s a real something. A noise don’t make itself.”

  “I know, but that there is an easy noise to make. You could make it, or—”

  “Well, I ain’t.”

  “—or I could make it. Might be anything.”

  “Tell you something. Every critter you ever hear out here can sometimes sound like an awful poor mimic of itself. Don’t always hardly pay to listen to them things too much.”

  “Only thing,” Mart stuck to it, “these here all sound like just one owl, follering along. Gosh, Amos. I question if them things ever travel ten rods from home in their life.”

  “Yeah. I know.... Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make ’em stop, being’s they bother you.” Amos pushed his lips out and sounded an owl cry—not the cry of just any owl, but an exact repeat of the one they had just heard.

  No more owls whickered that night.

  As Mart let his pony drop back, it came almost to a stop, and he realized that he was checking it, unconsciously holding back from what was ahead. He wasn’t afraid of the fighting—at least, he didn’t think he was afraid of it. He wanted more than anything in the world to come to grips with the. Comanches; of that he felt perfectly certain. What he feared was that he might prove to be a coward. He tried to tell himself that he had no earthly reason to doubt himself, but it didn’t work. Maybe he had no earthly reason, but he had a couple of unearthly ones, and he knew it. There were some strange quirks inside of him that he couldn’t understand at all.

  One of them evidenced itself in the form of an eery nightmare that he had had over and over during his childhood. It was a dream of utter darkness, at first, though after a while the darkness seemed to redden with a dim, ugly glow, something like the redness you see through your lids when you look at the sun with closed eyes. But the main thing was the sound—a high, snarling, wailing yammer of a great many voices, repeatedly receding, then rising and swelling again; as if the sound came nearer in search of him, then went past, only to come back. The sound filled him with a hideous, unexplained terror, though he never knew what made it. It seemed the outcry of some weird semihuman horde—perhaps of ghoulish and inimical dead who sought to consume him. This went on and on, while he tried to scream, but could not; until he woke shivering miserably, but wet with sweat. He hadn’t had this nightmare in a long time, but sometimes an unnatural fear touched him when the coyotes sung in a certain way far off on the sand hills.

  Another loony weakness had to do with a smell. This particularly worried him tonight, for the smell that could bring an unreasoning panic into him was the faintly musky, old-leather-and-fur smell of Indians. The queer thing about this was that he felt no fear of the Indians themselves. He had seen a lot of them, and talked with them in the fragments of sign language he knew; he had even made swaps with some of them—mostly Caddoes, the far-wandering peddlers of the plains. But if he came upon a place where Indians had camped, or caught a faint scent of one down the wind, the same kind of panic could take hold of him as he felt in the dream. If he failed to connect this with the massacre he had survived, it was perhaps because he had no memory of the massacre. He had been carried asleep into the brush, where he had presently wakened lost and alone in the dark; and that was all he knew about it first-hand. Long after, when he had learned to talk, the disaster had been explained to him, but only in a general way. The Edwardses had never been willing to talk about it much.

  And there was one more thing that could cut his strings; it had taken him unawares only two or three times in his life, yet worried him most of all, because it seemed totally meaningless. He judged this third thing to be a pure insanity, and wouldn’t let himself think about it at all, times it wasn’t forced on him without warning.

  So now he rode uneasily, dreading the possibility that he might go to pieces in the clutch, and disgrace himself, in spite of all he could do. He began preaching to himself, inaudibly repeating over and over admonishments that unconsciously imitated Biblical forms. “I will go among them. I will prowl among them in the night. I will lay hands upon them; I will destroy them. Though I be cut in a hundred pieces, I will stand against them….” It didn’t seem to do any good.

  He believed dawn could be no more than an hour off when Brad came up to whis
per to him again. “I think we gone past.”

  Mart searched the east, fearing to see a graying in the sky too soon. But the night was still very dark, in spite of the dying moon. He could feel a faint warm breath of air upon his left cheek. “Wind’s shifted to the south,” he answered. “What little there is. I think Amos changed his line. Wants to come at ’em up wind.”

  “I know. I see that. But I think—”

  Amos had stopped, and was holding up his hand. The six others closed up on him, stopped their horses and sat silent in their saddles. Mart couldn’t hear anything except the loose animals behind, tearing at the grass. Amos rode on, and they traveled another fifteen minutes before he stopped again.

  This time, when the shuffle of their ponies’ feet had died, a faint sound lay upon the night, hard to be sure of, and even harder to believe. What they were hearing was the trilling of frogs. Now, how did they get way out here? They had to be the little green fellows that can live anywhere the ground is a little damp, but even so—either they had to shower down in the rare rains, like the old folks said, or else this marsh had been here always, while the dry world built up around.

  Amos spoke softly. “Spread out some. Keep in line, and guide on me. I’ll circle close in as I dare.”

  They spread out until they could just barely see each other, and rode at the walk, abreast of Amos as he moved on. The frog song came closer, so close that Mart feared they would trample on Indians before Amos turned. And now again, listening hard and straining their eyes, they rode for a long time. The north star was on their right hand for a while. Then it was behind them a long time. Then on their left, then ahead. At last it was on their right again, and Amos stopped. They were back where they started. A faint gray was showing in the east; their timing would have been perfect, if only what they were after had been here. Mose Harper pushed his horse in close. “I rode through the ashes of a farm,” he said to Amos. “Did you know that? I thought you was hugging in awful close.”