The Storm Family 6

by Matt Chisholm

  The woman returned with the blankets and the man covered the upper and lower part of his body, leaving the area around the navel bare.

  “Maybe...” he said and got down on both knees beside Mart who was now trembling from head to foot from the shock of the pain. He hoped to God the woman didn’t notice.

  The man started pulling back the clothes further exploring to the region at the side of Mart’s left hip. The man dipped the rag into the water, squeezed it a little and started to wipe at the hip. The pain shot through Mart again. He shuddered and clenched his teeth again. This was a Hell of a thing to happen in front of a woman. Then it dawned on him what was happening.

  He’d been shot in two places, not counting the scalp.

  But he didn’t remember the third shot. Maybe he was unconscious when that came.

  “You mean I have another bullet in my hip?” he demanded hoarsely.

  The man raised his eyes, looked at him a moment, then started to gently feel the hip with his fingertips.

  “No,” he said, “but I reckon you’re the luckiest man in New Mexico right now. That lead hit you at an angle. It made one heck of a mess of your belly, passed around the hipbone and is lodged here right under the skin. I can feel it.”

  Mart thought about that for a moment. If this was being lucky, by God he’d hate to meet bad luck.

  He looked at the woman. She nodded. He reckoned that was the nearest she could get to a smile.

  “Can you get it out?” Mart asked.

  “Sure,” the man said, “I can get it out and I aim to do that right now.”

  Mart thought that he had never seen hands so steady nor hands so sure. Straightway, he had confidence in this stranger whose name he didn’t know. He worked with a finely honed knife and a small pair of pincers, and within a minute or two he was holding up a small dark object covered in blood between the arms of the pincers. He was smiling.

  “There she is,” he said. “Now she’s out, you have a chance.”

  The woman said: “You don’t have to make it feminine.”

  “Woman was always a thorn in man’s side,” the man said in gentle raillery. The woman snorted softly.

  The man sank back on his hams and regarded Mart.

  “I shouldn’t really move you,” he said. “But we can’t leave you here for too many reasons to go into now. If we leave you, you’ll die most likely. On the other hand several hours’ journey in the buckboard could kill you.”

  Mart didn’t like what the man was saying, but he liked the way he said it.

  “You don’t know me,” Mart said. “I ain’t so durned easy to kill.”

  “A reason for living helps,” the man said.

  “I have the best reason for living in the world,” Mart told him.

  “What’s that?” the man asked.

  “To kill the men who did this to me.”

  The man sighed and he and the woman looked at each other.

  “Your innards are torn some,” the man said. “I have to sew you up and it isn’t going to be easy in this light.”

  “I’d be obliged,” Mart said, “if you’d get sewing.”

  The next half-hour was just about the worst in Mart’s life. He knew all the possibilities, for in his thirty-six years he had received more than his fair share of other men’s lead. His body was marked with ugly souvenirs of combat, some gained in good causes and some in bad. Somehow he had always come through alive. He knew that somewhere around was the small piece of lead that would be the end of him. Maybe it was this one. Maybe his system was already poisoned. God knew he had lain there long enough with it in him for the poison to do its deadly work. He could bleed internally.

  Whatever were the possibilities, the stranger sewed him up and then came the moment when they would have to lift him into the buckboard. They backed the vehicle up to him and the woman arranged the blankets to receive him. Then they lifted him, the man taking his shoulders and the woman his legs. She seemed to be as strong as a man. They hurt him like Hell, but he managed not to make a sound.

  When they had him lying in the vehicle, the woman said: “I’ll ride with him and hold him.” The man said something Mart didn’t hear. They lifted up his upper body and the woman climbed in and Mart sank back against her, lying across her thighs with her arms around him. His face rested against a firm small breast.

  He was on the edge of unconsciousness now, but he said: “Ma’am, just leave me lie.” But she ignored him. The man brought Mart’s horse and tied him behind the buckboard, then the vehicle creaked and tilted as he climbed aboard. The lines slapped on the horses’ backs and they were moving. Mart groaned and the woman’s hard arms tightened around him and he heard her say: “Hang on. It’s all right, boy.” He thought he heard a kind of tenderness in her voice. She smelled of new-mown hay and woman. That was kind of nice. He drifted off as the buckboard pitched and lurched over the rocks. The man was talking to the horses in a horseman’s monotone.

  He awoke several times during the journey and he awoke to pain, but the pain was conquered each time by his extreme weakness and his desire for sleep. When he woke he told the woman to leave-him lie and that she must be cramped, but he didn’t seem able to get the message through to her, for each time he woke he was conscious of arms around him and her legs under him. The buckboard crashed and rolled, the steady plod-plod of the horses’ hoofs was unbroken. Once or twice it came to him that he was drifting off slowly into death, but that didn’t scare him.

  Then the buckboard was stopped and he heard voices. One of them was strange, but he couldn’t make out why. He was vaguely aware of lights and that men were staring down at him. The next thing he remembered was that he was being carried and he could smell Indian. Whoever held him was unusually powerful and was carrying him up steps.

  He was on a bed and they were stripping the clothes off him. He protested feebly at being exposed to the gaze of a woman, but they didn’t seem to take any notice of him. Maybe he didn’t make them hear.

  Next he was aware that something damp and cool was laid on his burning forehead and he knew that he was alone with the woman. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew right enough.

  It was dawn. There were cold shadows on the wall and the woman was gone. It was nice lying in a bed because he hadn’t done that in a long time. He wasn’t a man who sneered at comfort. His shaking had stopped, but he was very hot. His mouth seemed to be full of tongue and his whole body was a mass of pain. Outside the window he could hear a murmur of voices and they were alien. He was too weak to be curious. A horse trumpeted. There were faint sounds in the house. There were drapes of muslin hung across the ceiling. A fly buzzed busily. As sleep flooded over him it gave him a sense of luxury.

  The room was dark and there was a lamp burning. The room was quiet, but in it was a regular rhythm of sound. He lay listening trying to interpret it without any sense of urgency. His whole mind concentrated on it with pleasure. After a long while he associated it with the sound of a rocking chair and he turned his head toward it.

  Six feet from the bed, the man was sitting smoking a meerschaum pipe. They seemed to look at each other for a long time without speaking. Somehow there didn’t seem any need for words.

  Outside the house was a great dead silence.

  Mart wondered where he was. Yet he didn’t think to ask the man.

  He stared at the ceiling and studied himself. The pain was less, of that he was certain. He moved his legs and there was great enjoyment in doing so, as if he had never moved his legs before. Then he raised his right hand and stared at it and it seemed that he saw it for the first time.

  He looked at the man and said: “My name’s Martin Storm.”

  “I know,” the man said. “I went through your gear and I found your name on the fly-leaf of your book.”

  Mart smiled.

  “Could of been somebody else’s book,” he said.

  The man grinned.

  “It was also on your papers,” he said. He
didn’t seem abashed by the admittance that he had searched Mart’s effects. “I’m John McCord.”

  There was a stillness about the man that was entirely without furtiveness. He looked as if he were wholly in command of himself. Mart reckoned he was a man of some education.

  “I have your bed,” Mart said. “I’m real sorry.”

  The man shook his head—”It’s not my bed. This is the guestroom.”

  “Where is this?” Mart asked.

  “Just about on the edge of nowhere,” the man said. “You’re about ten miles from where we found you. If you survived that trip, I think you’d survive anything.”

  “The woman,” Mart said. “Your wife?”

  “No, she’s not my wife.”

  “She’s not here?”

  “No. She stayed with you for two days and two nights, then she left for her own place.”

  “Far?”

  “Twenty miles, give or take a mile.”

  “Alone?” The man nodded. “A woman ridin’ alone in this country.”

  “I doubt anybody’d touch her. She’s safe enough.”

  Mart lay there thinking about that woman and, doing that, he dozed off again. That’s all he seemed to do for days—wake, ask questions and then sleep again.

  Once he woke to find sunlight streaming into the room and there in front of him, watching him with mute curiosity was a young Indian woman. He could tell from her wide skirts and her colorful blouse that she was a Navaho.

  “Hello,” he said, “Who’re you?”

  She giggled, hid her mouth with her hand and hurried from the room. A moment later, McCord entered. He was shorter than Mart remembered him.

  “Who was that?” Mart demanded.

  “Betsy.” That was all the man offered. He sat on the edge of the bed and said: “How’re you feeling?”

  “Pretty good,” Mart told him. “Lyin’ here idle an’ gettin’ fat an’ sassy.”

  “I want you up today,” the man said. “You know you’ve been lying there for a week? You stay there much longer and your belly’ll be stiff as a rod.”

  “Walk?” Mart cried. He had never felt less like walking in his life and the curious thing was he had no wish to walk. He didn’t know what had come over him, but he wanted only to lie there and doze and wake. Which wasn’t like him at all. There had been always a burning active energy about him.

  “Betsy and I’ll help you,” McCord told him. “No time like the present. Let’s have you out of there.” He called out and the woman came, soft-footed. He spoke to her in her own language and they both helped Mart to the edge of the bed. The room reeled around him and he clung to them for a moment. Mercilessly, they pulled him to his feet. He closed his eyes and fought the overpowering nausea that assailed him.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “You’re doing fine,” McCord told him.

  Slowly, they walked him to the small glassless window. The glare of the brilliant sunlight hit him. He was shaking. The woman was tall and strong. He wondered what she was to McCord. Was he a squaw man? There was slight revulsion at the thought. But he had to admit that the Indian woman had a mighty nice feel to her and that she was made the way a woman should be made. She smelled clean and that was more than he could say for most squaws.

  He started taking in the scene before him, the endless vista of the desert. To the left a light wash of purple showed where the sage grew. Beyond were the distant pastel shades of the mountains. Suddenly, he was conscious of a powerful wish to be out there in the sunlight. He started to feel good. He was dizzy and weak still, but he felt good.

  “Say,” he said, “I’d sure like to go out there.”

  “Why not?” McCord said. “You can watch the comings and goings.”

  Mart wondered what comings and goings. He couldn’t see a soul in sight.

  Slowly and with great care, they half-carried him through the house. The room he had been in, he found, was raised above the rest of the floor level and they had to negotiate a half dozen steps down into a large room below. This, he knew at once was a trading-store. That answered one of his questions. The man was a trader. The place was full of trade-goods, boxes, barrels, bundles, Navaho blankets, rifles, jars. The walls were covered with loaded shelves and along one side of the vast room was a long counter of polished wood. They took him through this and out onto a raised platform in front of the house that was covered like a great stoop. Here, in the shade, was a rocker. They lowered him into it and he groaned with the relief of being off his feet. The woman went back into the house. Mart looked at McCord and found the man smiling down at him.

  “You’ll live,” McCord said.

  “Sure, I’ll live,” Mart agreed. “McCord, I’m goddam grateful to you.”

  “No call,” the man said. “It’s good to have company.” He turned and went back into his storeroom and Mart sat there gazing over the desert and listening to him puttering around. An enormous lazy tranquility came over Mart and he surrendered to it. He knew then that something had changed in him. The bullet in his guts, being found by the woman and being tended by McCord had somehow changed his pace and his mind. The restlessness had gone out of him. His brother Will always said this time would come and he never believed it. But Will was right. Damn it—Will was always right. He wondered about the folks at home up in the Three Creeks country. Pretty soon, he would be overdue and they get to wondering. He knew what Will would think. He’d think Mart was dead, reverted to his old ways and shot down in a gun-battle. Good old Will.

  He became aware of softly rising dust. He watched it for some time and gradually became aware that in it were slowly moving figures.

  “McCord,” he called. “You have company.”

  The man came to the doorway and shaded his eyes against the glare.

  “Navaho,” he said.

  They came up to the house on its rise, unhurried, timelessly. They seemed to belong absolutely to their land. Two men, three women and a child—the two men mounted, one on a mule and the other on a spavined horse. The one on the mule was old, though still vigorous. Behind him, clinging to him, was a small boy. The horse bore a young man, wild of eye, long and lean of body, in his hand an old muzzle-loader. Driving two burros were the women, plodding stoically through the dust. Two were robust and young, the third middle-aged, her hair flecked with gray. As they came up, they greeted McCord, but they didn’t so much as glance in Mart’s direction. McCord shook hands with the men and patted the child on the head. Betsy came out of the house and spoke with them. None of them smiled and Mart knew that was because he was there. They’d be bright enough out of the presence of the stranger. The women tied the animals to the hitching rail, the men came and sat on the stoop away from Mart and squatted down. The boy stood behind the old man. McCord joined them and the women went into the house with Betsy. The men talked together for a while, then Betsy came out of the house with coffee and the Indians drank with an enormous show of pleasure, smacking their lips and belching. Listening to the soft murmur of their voices, Mart dozed.

  When he woke, he was astonished to find that it was evening. McCord was in a chair beside him, smoking his pipe.

  “Never saw a man sleep like you do in my life,” he said.

  Mart smiled. “Your guests gone?”

  “No,” McCord said. “They’ll stay over a day or two. Big thing them coming here. They came a long way. Betsy’s family. She gets a kick out of them coming. She keeps a white woman’s house, but she’s all Indian. I talk the language and I know their ways, but it’s not the same as being with your own people. She’d made up her mind she wanted to live like a white woman, so that was that. She keeps the place spotless and she cooks a treat, she doesn’t nag and I don’t have to beat her. We get along fine.”

  In the dim light of dusk, Mart regarded his companion. He had accepted the hospitality of a squaw man. He had never thought of himself as a prig, he’d womanized from El Paso to the Canadian border, but he knew that he was shocked.
r />   “I know what you’re thinking,” McCord said, “and you’re wrong. We’re married. Does that make it any easier for you?”

  Mart had the grace to blush.

  “Hell,” he said, “It’s no business of mine.”

  “You’re right there,” McCord agreed without feeling.

  “The old man,” Mart said, “that her daddy?”

  “Sure. That’s Carlos.”

  Mart started.

  “You don’t mean ...?”

  “The great Carlos? Sure, that’s him. I only marry into the best.”

  That got Mart to thinking. He’d grown up with stories of the mighty Carlos. That had been in the old days when the Navaho had been first cousin to the Apache and busting out all over, raiding, burning, thieving. But that was before Kit Carson and the army had put paid to their fun. Now they wove their blankets and tended their sheep, despised by the Apache and pushed from pillar to post by the whites. A defeated people could only pray for justice, never receive it.

  “He’s not much now,” McCord was saying, “kind of shrunk up. I reckon they should have killed him when they cut down his peach trees. It would maybe have been better if they’d massacred the whole tribe. They stuck ’em on the same reservation as the Apaches. Imagine that. Like putting you and me in prison with scorpions. After a while, they let Carlos go back home and tend his sheep. But he was as good as dead. He wasn’t a chief any more. Washington had appointed their own, men who didn’t mean a thing to the people. They also gave them agents who were busy seeing to their own profit and missionaries who only wanted to see everything that was Indian about them die. They think the Navahos are finished. But I have a feeling...”

  “You a real doctor?”

  “Oh, I learned some medicine once and I read it up after I got here. It was forced on me really. A void gets automatically filled. There was a slot here for a doctor, so I filled it. They come all the time for treatment.”