Until Darkness Disappears (A Saga of Texas)

by Will Cook

  “We’re going to try,” Beeman said, and went on eating. He was pleased that he could keep command of the situation when others went to pot emotionally. He felt that Gary would be this way—calm, deliberate, and, if not sure of himself, at least giving the impression to others that he was.

  Lovering went back to his office, and Beeman stopped at his own quarters to get his gloves and to put up his side arms. He dropped two pieces of lead into his palm, then joined Lovering. The man had a double-barreled shotgun on his desk, and Beeman broke it open, took out the shells, and racked the gun.

  “We don’t want any shooting, Mister Lovering.”

  “I want to see you convince the cowboys of that,” he said, and gnawed on his cigar.

  Ben Stagg, escorting Emily Brail to Camp Verde, took the train as far as the tanks where he sent the Indian policemen back. Accompanied by the woman, he caught the morning mail wagon to the post, and on the way he met an ambulance with Lieutenant Flanders and Sergeant Wynn leading a ten-man escort. They stopped to have a little conversation, and, after they had gone on, Flanders knew who Emily was and how Beeman was making out. Ben Stagg knew that the ambulance and escort were going to the tanks to meet Senator Jason Ivers and his wife.

  Gary was in his office when Stagg hauled onto the post. He had Emily Brail wait in the outer office and went in to give Gary the dispatches Beeman had written. Gary waved him into a chair and thumbed through the reports, a thick sheaf. “Mister Beeman is not averse to penmanship,” Gary said, putting the reports aside for the moment. “How is he getting along?”

  “Tolerable well,” Stagg said. He told Gary about Skinner’s death, and that he’d brought Emily Brail back. “The cowboys came to the agency around midnight. Beeman and Lovering was waitin’ in the office . . . Lovering under the desk.” He paused to chuckle. “While the cowboys stormed inside and raised hell, Huckmyer and the detail made off with their horses. Finally the cowboys got through threatenin’ Beeman, and, after promisin’ to ride south and tear the damned sub-agency up by the roots, they came out, and there warn’t no horses.” He choked back a laugh. “No horses, just Huckmyer and the detail. A couple of guns got pulled, and some more threats was made, but Beeman convinced them that they didn’t really want to get hung for shootin’ unarmed troopers. The upshot was that they got to fightin’. Turned out bad again for the cowboys.”

  “Again? Was there another… ?”

  “All there in the report, Major. Anyway, as I was sayin’, Beeman has twenty-six cowboys locked in the stockade, charged with disturbin’ the peace, trespassin’ on government property, threatenin’ a public officer, displayin’ firearms in a rude and threatenin’ manner, usin’ profanity, and failure to disburse on lawful order. He’s got ’em bound over to federal court in Fort Reno.”

  “My Mister Beeman did all this?” Gary asked.

  Stagg grinned. “He’s a piss-cutter, ain’t he? I’d say he was a better man than he ever knew. Plays it light-footed, Jim. A real fire-breather when he gets his back up. If he ain’t careful, he’ll make a big reputation for himself.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Figured you would be. Seems like you’ll just have to write him up in a couple of dispatches. Nothin’ else you can do.” He got up. “Can I bring the woman in now?”

  “Yes,” Gary said. “And thank you, Ben. There’s nothing like an eyewitness account.”

  Stagg went out, and then Emily Brail came in. Stagg closed the door behind her, and Gary came around his desk and handed her into a chair. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “You brought your children? I ask, because I’ll want to see that you have suitable quarters.”

  She looked at him questioningly. “Quarters? I thought I was going to be locked up.” She folded her hands in her lap and studied them. “I thought the lieutenant was sending me here to jail, and I didn’t say anything to him because he’d let me take a bath and I . . . .” She simply let it trail off and sat silently, staring down.

  Jim Gary lit a cigar, went behind his desk, and sat down. He studied her and said: “How old were you when you were taken?”

  “Thirteen, I think.”

  “And how old are you now?”

  “Twenty-four. I think that’s right.”

  Gary turned to the filing cabinet, searched through it a moment, then opened a folder. “You were visiting an aunt near Victoria in the summer of ’Seventy-Seven when your horse came back without you. There was a search that lasted several weeks, then the Texas Rangers came across sign of a Comanche raiding party returning north from Mexico. It was supposed that you had been taken prisoner. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. My horse threw me. I was afoot when the Comanches found me.”

  “Would you like to tell me about your captivity?”

  She raised her eyes. “You know about it. What’s there to tell? I gave birth to my first child the next fall. He died when he was ten days old. Two squaws held me while a third cut off a finger and slashed my arms.”

  “Did you ever try to escape?”

  “Yes, but after the first time I never tried again. How do you know all those things you have on the paper?”

  “People see things and remember them and tell me during questioning. We have a boy here, Tom Smalling, who first said he had seen someone your age, someone answering your description. So we started a file, adding to it when we could. Then we got the boy Teddy. He knew you and told me other things. Finding people is a difficult task, Emily.”

  “And after you find them?”

  “We try to build back the life you’ve lost.” He closed the folder. “We’ll have to check and find out if any of your people are alive. We’ll have to talk some more, and you’ll have to tell me all about your family.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” she said.

  “No one will force you. You can live here, work if you like, go to classes if you want to. You can even leave if you want to. There are no locks on the gate, and the guards will not stop you.”

  She studied him carefully. “Why was I brought here?”

  “To give you time to think,” Gary said. “Here there is no one to blame you for anything, or to make you do what you don’t want to do. Here you can live in surroundings you once knew. You can’t just go back eleven years and pick up. We don’t claim you can. But maybe you can find a way onward, to get past those lost years.”

  “What about my children? One is four, the other a little over two.”

  “They’re your children,” Gary said gently. “No matter what, we can’t change some things, or deny them. You love them . . . what more is there? I have children, and I love them. It’s the same.”

  “I want to believe you. I wanted to believe you when you came to my fire that night. You have a good face.”

  “I think in time you may believe me,” Gary said. “You may believe in others, too. We have a difficult task here, Emily. Any of the boys can tell you that we try to make them understand that all the people in the world are not good. There are some who will always call them redskins, and there isn’t really anything anybody can do about it. But they learn to live with themselves, live with the past, and plan a better future.”

  “When do I have to leave here?”

  “When you want to. Stay a week, a month, a year . . . it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to leave when you know you’re ready, when you know you can face anyone and anything.”

  “Will it ever come to that?”

  He shook his head. “Who can know? We all grow stronger, or weaker. Either way, we learn to get along with it. Now I will call one of the sergeants and have you shown quarters.” He wrote on a piece of paper. “Give this to the sergeant, and what you want will be brought from the quartermaster. We don’t live very fancy, Emily, but we have plenty to eat, and clothes, and I know you’ll want a pretty dress.”

  “Mister Beeman gave me this one.”

  “That’s because Mister Beeman is a fine man,” Gary said. “He has a wife and a
child. They’ll want to meet you.”

  “Do they live here?”

  “Of course.”

  She got up, brushed at her hair with her hand, and then she smiled. “Will they know what I’ve been?”

  “They’ll know that you’ve suffered a lot,” Gary said. “Other than that, what is there to know?”

  Chapter Two

  Llano Vale supposed that no other man alive could do what he was doing now, reaching back into the recesses of his memory, past the present generation to a time when all Texans made war against the Indians, and each male child became a fighter when he could lift a rifle, fire it, and reload it. They were the years of no palaver—when a man saw an Indian, he fired, not bothering to ask intent. And the Indian, a victim of custom and superstition, drew no distinct line separating friend and enemy. The white man was the enemy.

  Yet Vale understood that nothing was all bad, and there never had been a time when everyone hated the Indians. The country could be aflame, united in mass determination to wipe out the Indians, and there would always be those who could not bring themselves to kill when it came time to kill. The War Between the States had proved this to him. Union soldiers caught behind the lines had been sheltered now and then by Southern people, and he supposed that it had worked the same the other way around.

  His memory took him into the Rio Pecos country because he remembered people there. He spent two days asking around, but no one remembered these people except to say that there had been trouble, and they had moved on. The clerk at the courthouse thought they had gone north, near Pope’s Wells in New Mexico Territory. Llano Vale took the first available train.

  He pulled in at night, unloaded his horse, stabled him, and took a room at the only hotel. When he had breakfast the next morning, he attracted considerable attention because he was so big and his mane of white hair so long, and he wore weapons and said very little. It reminded them of the old times when dangerous men rode into town with their violence and rode out again after their angers had been spent.

  Llano Vale dropped a name here and there around the town and then spent his time on the hotel porch, watching everyone while they watched him. During the course of the day, Vale supposed that there was not one man, woman, or child who did not find some excuse to pass along Pope’s Wells’ main street and look him over. He understood that he was more than a man who just had come to their town. To them he was the past reaching out, an old hatred revived, vengeance arrived, the day of reckoning for someone. He caused them to look at each other and wonder about the hidden part of everyone’s past, and they wondered who would finally go to the hotel porch and end the waiting.

  The man’s name was George Schneider. He was fifty-three, a man who lived alone with his daughter, and he drove into town in a farm wagon and stopped in front of the hotel. He looked at Llano Vale a moment, then said: “It’s been nearly sixteen years, Llano.”

  “All of that,” Vale said. “Sit a spell.”

  Across the street all movement stopped on the sidewalk. Schneider said: “You always did draw a crowd, Llano.”

  “They stopped to see the trouble, George.”

  “Is that what you brought me?”

  Vale shrugged his massive shoulders. “I could round up a lot of people who’d say that’s all I ever brought anyone.”

  “I’d be among those,” Schneider said. He took out a pipe, filled it, and lit it. “We had some strong words the last time we saw each other, Llano. Are we going to take it up again?”

  “I didn’t come here for that,” Vale said. “And I wouldn’t lift a hand or a weapon against you, George.”

  “You know, I have reason enough to kill you, and there isn’t a jury in New Mexico who’d hang me for it.”

  “That’s about right.” He looked at Schneider, remembering him as he had been—younger, strong, a handsome man who had had bad luck with his women. “Are you going to kill me, George?”

  “No,” Schneider said, shaking his head. “What good would it do? Besides, a man has time during the years to think a thing out. She was ready to leave with you. You didn’t drag her away from me.” He looked at his work-hardened hands. “Then, too, I had the little girl to think of.”

  “You ran,” Vale said. “They all called you a coward back there.”

  “I don’t care what they called me,” Schneider said flatly. “I just couldn’t take a chance on getting killed and leaving that little girl alone.” He studied Llano Vale. “You’d have killed me. I wasn’t any good with a gun, or my fists, or anything else. I suppose that’s why Ilsa left me.” He sighed, and rekindled his pipe. “What do you want, Llano?”

  “Did you ever find out whose little girl she was, George?”

  “I never tried. She was all I had.”

  “She wasn’t Indian,” Vale said softly. “I think I can prove it.”

  Schneider’s manner became cautious. “What are you trying to say, Llano?”

  “That you picked her up on the prairie, thinking she was Indian. You raised her, convinced that she was part-Indian anyway. Now I’m sure she ain’t. They got a boy at Camp Verde who lost a sister. She’d be near the girl’s age. The boy ain’t sure where, but it’s worth trying to put together, George. If she’s got a brother, she ought to know about it.”

  “You want to take her away from me?”

  “I want to make things right,” Vale said. “Don’t you think I should, George?”

  “Llano, my wife thought you was some kind of a god. She’d have gone with you that night if the horse hadn’t thrown her and killed her. She left a note for me, and, because I couldn’t read English then, I took it to town and had the storekeeper read it to me. I don’t know whether it was her going that way or my letting everyone know about it that made me want to kill you, but you’re not going to take anything more away from me.” He got up from the porch, stepped up to the wagon, and hoisted himself onto the seat. “I’m going home. Come on my place and I’ll shoot you on sight.”

  “I’m working for the Army, George. I’ve got to talk to the girl.”

  “I’ve warned you.”

  Llano Vale said: “George, did you ever know me not to do what I had to do?”

  “Thought it would be like that,” Schneider said, and reached under the seat.

  Vale had no warning until he saw the gleam of the shotgun barrel, then he launched himself sideways out of the chair as Schneider fired.

  The charge hit him high, somewhere in the shoulder, and smashed him around and into the wall of the hotel. Schneider lashed at his team, wheeled them, and raced out of town as people poured across the street. Someone yelled to fetch the doctor.

  Vale was conscious when they carried him down the street to the doctor’s office, but he hardly realized he was seeing the doctor as he made his examination. Then someone clapped an ether cone over his nose and told him to breathe. A humming noise began in his head and increased for a moment, then blackness descended.

  Schneider’s team was lathered when he pulled into his yard. He flung himself down, after wrapping the reins around the brake handle, and dashed toward the house. The girl came out, drying her hands on her apron. She seemed surprised to find him in such a rush.

  “What’s wrong, Papa?”

  “We have to leave. Now! Right away!”

  She frowned, puckering her dark brows. “Why, Papa?”

  “I killed a man in town. The sheriff will be after me as soon as he can get here from Carlsbad.”

  She swayed against the door, her face growing white, but she didn’t burst into tears or lose control. “You think running away . . . ?”

  “Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “There is no other way! You pack what you can. I’ll write a note. The neighbors will take the stock.” He turned her and pushed her inside. “We have no time to lose. No more than an hour. Hurry!”

  He gathered a few valuables and a metal box containing his money. He packed two canvas traveling bags with clothes. He took all these things out to th
e wagon. Then he went inside the house that he had built with his own hands, and sat at his desk and wrote a note to his friend Oskar Hummer who lived four miles down the creek.

  Lieber Freund Oskar:

  Ich würde Ihnen sehr dankbar sein . . . I would appreciate it very much if you would take all my livestock and poultry as a gift from one old friend to another. By now you know what I have done, and, from what I have told you in confidence, you know why I must take Frieda and leave the country. It is possible that I will not get far, but I must go. I am too old now to give up my happy years, yet I always thought this would someday happen. I will tell Frieda everything and let her make up her own mind as to what she wants to do. But I know mat her parents are dead. It is a feeling I’ve had for a long time.

  Auf Wiedersehen

  George

  He left the note on the dining-room table and went outside to make sure the livestock had water and that there was corn pulled down from the crib to feed the hogs. Frieda came out of the house with some bedding and a canvas valise, and then they got into the wagon and drove away, taking the south road that would steer them clear of the town and anyone coming after them.

  Schneider drove south along the river because he could not help himself. He was a farmer who could not live in dry, arid places or bear to travel through them. Along the river the grass was good, and the trees grew thickly. He kept on going until it was nearly dark, and then he stopped to make his camp.

  He had not spoken much to Frieda since they’d started. He had tried, but the words weren’t ready to come out. Only after the fire had been built and the food was cooking and he had his pipe lit, did he feel he could speak.

  “I’m not a good man,” he said.

  She was startled. “Papa, that’s not so!”

  “What do you know . . . so young?” He shook his head. “I’m not a good man, Frieda. I’ve lived a selfish life. My Ilsa was a child, so much younger than I, but I could never understand that she wanted more of life than working hard on the farm and making a home. I could never understand why she had to have a pretty dress when she already had one to work in and one for Sunday.”