The Searchers

by Alan Lemay

  “Why, Laurie—” he faltered. “Why, Laurie—”

  “You’re not bringing anything back,” she said, and her contempt whipped him across the face. “It’s too late by many years. If they’ve got anything left to sell you, it’s nothing but a—a rag of a female—the leavings of Comanche bucks—”

  He turned on her with such a blaze in his eyes that she moved back half a step. But she stood her ground then, and faced up to him; and after a while he looked away. He had hold of himself before he answered her. “I’ll have to see what Amos wants to do.”

  “You know what he wants to do. He wants to lead the yellowlegs down on ’em, and punish ’em off the face of creation. He’s never wanted anything else, no matter how he’s held back or pretended. Amos has leaned way backwards for love of his brother’s dead wife—and not from regard for anything else on this earth or beyond it!”

  He knew that was true. “That’s why I’ve stayed with him. I told you that a long time ago.”

  “Amos has had enough of all this. I knew it the minute he stepped in the house. He’s very patiently gone through all the motions Martha could have asked of him—and way over and beyond. But he’s done.”

  “I know that, too,” he said.

  She heard the fight go out of his voice, and she changed, softening, but without taking hope. “I wanted you, Mart. I tried to give you everything I’ve got to give. It’s not my fault it wasn’t any good.”

  She had shaken him up, so that he felt sick. He couldn’t lay hands on the purposes by which he had lived for so long, or any purpose instead. His eyes ran along the walls, looking for escape from the blind end that had trapped him.

  A calendar was there on the wall. It had a strange look, because it picked up beyond the lost years his life had skipped. But as he looked at it he remembered another calendar that hadn’t looked just right. It was a calendar a little child had made for him with a mistake in it, so that her work was wasted; only he hadn’t noticed that then. And he heard the little girl’s voice, saying again the words that he had never really heard her say, but only had been told, and imagined: “He didn’t care.... He didn’t care at all....”

  “Do you know,” Laurie said, “what Amos will do if he finds Deborah Edwards? It will be a right thing, a good thing—and I tell you Martha would want it now. He’ll put a bullet in her brain.”

  He said, “Only if I’m dead.”

  “You think you can outride the yellowlegs—and Amos, too,” she read his mind again. “I suppose you can. And get to Yellow Buckle with a warning. But you can’t outride the Rangers! You’ve been on their list anyway for a long time! Charlie MacCorry is only seven miles away. And I’m going to fetch him— now!”

  “You so much as reach down a saddle,” he told her, “and I’ll be on my way in the same half minute. You think there’s a man alive can give me a fourteen-mile start? Get back in that house!”

  She stared at him a moment more, then slammed her way out. When she was gone Mart put Debbie’s miniature in his pocket, then retied his packs to be ready for a fast departure in case Laurie carried out her threat; and he left the lamp burning in the bunk -house as he went back to the kitchen.

  Laurie did not ride for Charlie MacCorry. As it turned out, she didn’t need to. MacCorry arrived at the Mathisons in the next fifteen minutes, stirred up by the squatter to whom Amos had laid down the law in the Edwards house.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “If you’d come in and faced it out, like you said,” Charlie MacCorry told them, “I don’t believe there’d ever been any case against you at all.”

  Four years in the Rangers had done Charlie good. He seemed to know his limitations better now, and accepted them, instead of noisily spreading himself over all creation. Within those limits, which he no longer tried to overreach, he was very sure of himself, and quietly so, which was a new thing for Charlie.

  “I said I’d come in when I could. I was on my way to Austin now. Until I run into Lije as I stopped over.”

  “He spoke of that,” Aaron Mathison confirmed.

  Resentment kept thickening Amos’ neck. He shouldn’t have been asked to put up with this in front of the whole Mathison family. Mrs. Mathison came and went, staying with Lije Powers mostly. But there had been no way to get rid of Tobe and Abner, who kept their mouths shut in the background, but were there, as was Laurie, making herself as inconspicuous as she could.

  “And you had my bond of a thousand head of cattle, in token I’d come back,” Amos said. “Or did you pick them up?”

  “We couldn’t, very well, because you didn’t own them. Not until the courts declared Deborah Edwards dead, which hasn’t been done. I don’t think Captain Clinton ever meant to pick them up. He was satisfied with your word. Then.”

  “Captain, huh?” Amos took note of the promotion. “What are you—a Colonel?”

  “Sergeant,” MacCorry said without annoyance. “You’ve been close to three years. Had to come and find you on a tip. Your reputation hasn’t improved any in that time, Mr. Edwards.”

  “What’s the matter with my reputation?” Amos was angering again.

  “I’ll answer that if you want. So you can see what us fellers is up against. Mark you, I don’t say it’s true.” No rancor could be heard in MacCorry’s tone. He sat relaxed, elbows on the table, and looked Amos in the eye. “They say it’s funny you leave a good ranch, well stocked, to be worked by other men, while you sky-hoot the country from the Nations to Mexico on no reasonable business so far as known. They say you’re almighty free with the scalping knife, and that’s a thing brings costly trouble on Texas. They say you’re a squaw man, who’d sooner booger around with the Wild Tribes than work your own stock; and an owlhoot that will murder to rob.”

  “You dare set there and say—”

  “I do not. I tell you what’s said. But all that builds up pressure on us. Half the Indian trouble we get nowadays is stirred up by quick-trigger thieves and squaw men poking around where they don’t belong. And your name—names—are a couple that comes up when the citizens holler to know why we don’t do nothing. I tell you all this in hopes you’ll see why I got to do my job. After all, this is a murder case.”

  “There ain’t any such murder case,” Amos said flatly.

  “I hope you’re right. But that’s not my business. All I know, you stand charged with the robbery and murder of Walker Finch, alias Jerem Futterman. And two other deceased—”

  “What’s supposed to become of Yellow Buckle, while—”

  “That’s up to Captain Clinton. Maybe he wants to throw the Rangers at Yellow Buckle, with you for guide. You’ll have to talk to him.”

  Watching Amos, Mart saw his mind lock, slowly turning him into the inert lump Mart remembered from long ago. He couldn’t believe it at first, it was so long since he had seen Amos look like that.

  “I’ll ride there with you, Amos,” Aaron Mathison said. “Sol Clinton will listen to me. We’ll clear this thing once and for all.”

  Amos’ eyes were on his empty hands, and he seemed incapable of speech.

  “I’m not going in,” Mart said to Charlie MacCorry.

  “What?” The young Ranger looked startled.

  “I don’t know what Amos is of a mind to do,” Mart said. “I’m going to Yellow Buckle.”

  “That there’s maybe the worst thing I could hear you say!”

  “All I want to do is get her out of there,” Mart said, “before you hit him, or the cavalry hits. Once you jump him, it’ll be too late.”

  “Allowing she’s alive,” Charlie MacCorry said, “which I don’t—you haven’t got a chance in a million to buy her, or steal her, either!”

  “I’ve seen a white girl I could buy from an Indian.”

  “This one can talk. Letting her go would be like suicide for half a tribe!”

  “I got to try, Charlie. You see that.”

  “I see no such thing. Damn it, Mart, will you get it through your head—you’re under
arrest!”

  “What if I walk out that door?”

  Charlie glanced past Aaron at Laurie Mathison before he answered. “Now, you ought to know the answer to that.”

  Laurie said distinctly, “He means he’ll put a bullet in your back.”

  Charlie MacCorry thought about that a moment. “If he’s particular about getting his bullets in front,” he said to her, “he can walk out backwards, can’t he?”

  A heavy silence held for some moments before Amos spoke, “It’s up to Sol Clinton, Mart.”

  “That’s what I told you,” Charlie said.

  Amos asked, “You want to get started?”

  “We’ll wait for daylight. Seeing there’s two of you. And allowing for the attitude you take.” He spoke to Aaron. “I’ll take ’em out to the bunk-house; they can get some sleep if they want. I’ll set up with ’em. And don’t get a gleam in your eye,” he finished to Mart. “I was in the bunk house before I come in here—and I put your guns where they won’t be fell over. Now stand up, and walk ahead of me slow.”

  The lamp was still burning in the bunk house, but the fire in the stove was cold. Charlie watched them, quietly wary but without tension, while he lighted a lantern for a second light, and set it on the floor well out of the way. He wasn’t going to be left in the dark with a fight on his hands by one of them throwing his hat at the lamp. Amos sat heavily on his bunk; he looked tired and old.

  “Pull your boots if you want,” Charlie MacCorry said. “I ain’t going to stamp on your feet, or nothing. I only come for you by myself because we been neighbors from a long way back. I want this as friendly as you’ll let it be.” He found a chair with the back broken off, moved it nearer the stove with his foot, and sat down facing the bunks.

  “Mind if I build the fire up?” Mart asked.

  “Good idea.”

  Mart pawed in the woodbox, stirring the split wood so that a piece he could get a grip on came to the top.

  Charlie spoke sharply to Amos. “What are you doing with that stick?”

  From the corner of his eye, Mart saw that Amos was working an arm under the mattress on his bunk. “Thought I heard a mouse,” Amos said.

  Charlie stood up suddenly, so that the broken chair overturned. His gun came out, but it was not cocked or pointed. “Move slow,” he said to Amos, “and bring that hand out empty.” For that one moment, while Amos drew his hand slowly from under the tick, Charlie MacCorry was turned three-quarters away from Mart, his attention undivided upon Amos.

  Mart’s piece of cordwood swung, and caught Mac-Corry hard behind the ear. He rattled to the floor bonily, and lay limp. Amos was kneeling beside him instantly, empty-handed; he hadn’t had anything under the mattress. He rolled Charlie over, got his gun from under him, and had a look at his eyes.

  “You like to tore his noggin’ off,” he said. “Lucky he ain’t dead.” “Guess I got excited.”

  “Fetch something to make a gag. And my light reata.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  They didn’t know where the Seven Fingers were as well as they thought they did. West of the Rainy Mountains lay any number of watersheds, according to how far west you went. No creek had exactly seven tributaries. Mart had hoped to get hold of an Indian or two as they drew near. With luck they would have found a guide to take them within sight of Yellow Buckle’s Camp. But Sheridan’s long-awaited campaign had cleared the prairies; the country beyond the North Fork of the Red was deserted. They judged, though, that the Seven Fingers had to be one of two systems of creeks.

  Leaving the North Fork they tried the Little Horse thief first. It had nine tributaries, but who could tell how many a Kiowa medicine man would count? This whole thing drained only seventy or eighty square miles; a few long swings, cutting for sign, disposed of it in two days.

  They crossed the Walking Wolf Ridge to the Elkhorn. This was their other bet—a system of creeks draining an area perhaps thirty miles square. On the maps it looks like a tree. You could say it has thirty or forty run-ins if you followed all the branches out to their ends; or you could say it has eight, or four, or two. You could say it has seven.

  The country had the right feel as they came into it; they believed this to be the place Lije had meant. But now both time and country were running out, and very fast. The murder charge against them might be a silly one, and liable to be laughed out of court. But they had resisted arrest by violence, in the course of which Mart had assaulted an officer with a deadly weapon, intending great bodily harm. Actually all he had done was to swing on that damn fool Charlie MacCorry, but such things take time to cool off, and they didn’t have it. No question now whether they wanted to quit this long search; the search was quitting them. One way or the other, it would end here, and this time forever.

  Sometimes they had sighted a distant dust far back on their trail, losing them when they changed direction, picking them up again when they straightened out. They hadn’t seen it now for four days, but they didn’t fool themselves. Their destination was known, within limits, and they would be come for. Not that they had any thought of escape; they would turn on their accusers when their work was done—if they got it done. But they must work fast now with what horse flesh they had left.

  The Elkhorn Country is a land of low ridges between its many dust-and-flood-water streams. You can’t see far, and what is worse, it is known as a medicine country full of dust drifts and sudden hazes. You can ride toward what looks like the smoke of many fires, and follow it as it recedes across the ridges, and finally lose it without finding any fire at all. Under war conditions this was a very slow-going job of riding indeed. Each swale had to be scouted from its high borders before you dared cut for sign; while you yourself could be scouted very easily, at any time or all the time, if the Indians you sought were at all wary of your approach.

  Yet this whole complex was within three days military march from Fort Sill itself, at the pace the yellowlegs would ride now. No commander alive was likely to search his own doorstep with painful care, endlessly cordoning close to home, while the other columns were striking hundreds of miles into the fastnesses of the Staked Plains. Yellow Buckle had shown an unexampled craftiness in picking this hole-up in which to lie low, while the military storm blew over. Here he was almost certain to be by-passed in the first hours of the campaign, and thereafter could sit out the war unmolested, until the exhaustion of both sides brought peace. When the yellowlegs eventually went home, as they always did, his warriors and his ponies would be fresh and strong, ready for such a year of raids and victories as would make him legendary. By shrewdly setting aside the Comanche reliance upon speed and space, he had opened himself a way to become the all-time greatest war chief of the Comanches.

  Would it have worked, except for a wobbly old man, whose dimming eyes saw no more glorious vision than that of a chair by a hot stove?

  “We need a week there,” Mart said.

  “We’re lucky if we’ve got two days.”

  They didn’t like it. Like most prairie men, they had great belief in their abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.

  Then one day at daylight they got their break. It came as the result of a mistake, though of a kind no plainsman would own to; it could happen to anybody, and most it had happened to were dead. They had camped after dark, a long way past the place where they had built their cooking fire. Before that, though, they had studied the little valley very carefully in the last light, making sure they would bed down in the security of emptiness and space. They slept only after all reasonable precautions had been taken, with the skill of long-practiced men.

  But as they broke out in the darkness before dawn, they rode at once upon the warm ashes of a fire where a single Indian had camped. They had been within less than a furlong of him all night.

  He must have been a very tired Indian. Though they caught no glimpse of him, they knew they almost stepped on him, for they accidentally cut him off from his hobbled horse. They chased and roped the India
n pony, catching him very easily in so short a distance that Mart’s back was full of prickles in expectation of an arrow in it. None came, however. They retired to a bald swell commanding the situation, and lay flat to wait for better light.

  Slowly the sun came up, cleared the horizon haze, and leveled clean sunlight across the uneven land.

  “You think he’s took out on us?”

  “I hope not,” Amos answered. “We need the bugger. We need him bad.”

  An hour passed. “I figured he’d stalk us,” Mart said. “He must be stalking us. Some long way round. I can’t see him leaving without any try for the horses.”

  “We got to wait him out.”

  “Might be he figures to foller and try us tonight.”

  “We got to wait him out anyway,” Amos said.

  Still another hour, and the sun was high.

  “I think it’s the odds,” Mart believed now. “We’re two to one. Till he gets one clean shot. Then it’s even.”

  Amos said with sarcasm, “One of us can go away.”

  “Yes,” Mart said. He got his boots from the aparejos, and changed them for the worn moccasins in which he had been scouting for many days.

  “What’s that for?” Amos demanded.

  “So’s he’ll hear me.”

  “Hear you doing what? Kicking yourself in the head?”

  “Look where I say.” Mart flattened to the ground beside Amos again. “Straight ahead, down by the crick, you see a little wilier.”

  “He ain’t under that. Boughs don’t touch down.”

  “No, and he ain’t up it neither—I can see through the leaves. Left of the wilier, you see a hundred-foot trip of saw grass about knee high. Left of that, a great long slew of buckbrush against the water. About belt deep. No way out of there without yielding a shot. I figure we got him pinned in there.”