ReadWest

by Elmer Kelton

  He took off his excuse of a hat and shouted back, for he was still at some distance from the cabin. “Can’t right now, girl. Got to be traveling. Next time maybe.” He cut his gaze to Matthew’s little log shed and corrals. “Where’s your other horse?”

  “Grazing out yonder someplace. Him and the milk cow both.”

  “Better fetch him in,” Kennemer said grimly. “Better put him and this one in the pen closest to the cabin if you don’t want to lose them. And stay close to the cabin yourself, or you may lose more than the horses.”

  Matthew felt the dread chill him again. “Comanches?”

  “Don’t know. Could be. Fritz Dieterle come by my place while ago and told me he found tracks where a bunch of horses crossed the Guadalupe during the night. Could’ve been cowboys, or a bunch of hunters looking to lay in some winter meat. But it could’ve been Comanches. The horses wasn’t shod.”

  Matthew could read the trapper’s thoughts. Kennemer was reasonably sure it had not been cowboys or hunters. Kennemer said, “I come to warn you, and now I’m going west to warn that bunch of German farmers out on the forks. They may want to fort-up at the best house.”

  Matthew’s thoughts were racing ahead. He had been over to the German settlement twice since he and Rachal had arrived here late last winter, in time to break out their first field for spring planting. Burk Kennemer had told him the Germans—come west from the older settlements around Neu Braunfels and Fredericksburg—had been here long enough to give him sound advice about farming this shallow-soil land. And perhaps they might, if he could have understood them. They had seemed friendly enough, but they spoke no English, and he knew nothing of German. Efforts at communication had led him nowhere but back here, his shoulders slumped in frustration. He had counted Burk Kennemer as his only neighbor—the only one he could talk with.

  “Maybe I ought to send Rachal with you,” Matthew said. “It would be safer for her there, all those folks around her.”

  Kennemer considered that for only a moment. “Too risky traveling by daylight, one man and one girl. Even if you was to come along, two men and a girl wouldn’t be no match if they jumped us.”

  “You’re even less of a match, traveling by yourself.”

  Kennemer patted the shoulder of his long-legged brown horse. “No offense, boy, but old Deercatcher here can run circles around them two of yours, and anything them Indians is liable to have. He’ll take care of me, long as I’m by myself. You’ve got a good strong cabin there. You and that girl’ll be better off inside it than out in the open with me.” He frowned. “If it’ll make you feel safer, I’ll be back before dark. I’ll stay here with you, and we can fort-up together.”

  That helped, but it was not enough. Matthew looked at the cabin, which he and Kennemer and the broken-English-speaking German named Dieterle had put up after he finished planting his spring crops. Until then, he and Rachal had lived in their wagon, or around and beneath it. “I wish she wasn’t here, Burk. All of a sudden I wish I’d never brought her here.”

  The trapper frowned. “Neither one of you belongs here. You’re both just shirttail young’uns, not old enough to take care of yourselves.”

  Matthew remembered that the old man had told him as much, several times. A pretty little girl like Rachal should not be out here in a place like this, working like a mule, exposed to the dangers of the thinly settled frontier. But Matthew had never heard a word of complaint from her, not since they had started west from the piney-woods country in the biting cold of a wet winter, barely a month married. She always spoke of this as our place, our home.

  He said, “It seemed all right, till now. All of a sudden I realize what I’ve brought her to. I want to get her out of here, Burk.”

  The trapper slowly filled an evil black pipe while he pondered and twisted his furrowed face. “Then we’ll go tonight. It’ll be safer traveling in the dark because I’ve been here long enough to know this country better than them Indians do. We’ll make Fredericksburg by daylight. But one thing you’ve got to make up your mind to, Matthew. You’ve got to leave her there, or go back to the old home with her yourself. You’ve got no business bringing her here again to this kind of danger.”

  “She’s got no home back yonder to go to. This is the only home she’s got, or me either.”

  Kennemer’s face went almost angry. “I buried a woman once in a place about like this. I wouldn’t want to help bury that girl of yours. Adios, Matthew. See you before dark.” He circled Deercatcher around the cabin and disappeared into a motte of live-oak timber.

  Rachal stood in the doorway, puzzled. She had not intruded on the conversation. Now she came out onto the foot-packed open ground. “What was the matter with Mr. Kennemer? Why couldn’t he stay?”

  He wished he could keep it from her. “Horsetracks on the Guadalupe. He thinks it was Indians.”

  Matthew watched her closely, seeing the sudden clutch of fear in her eyes before she firmly put it away. “What does he think we ought to do?” she asked, seeming calmer than he thought she should.

  “Slip away from here tonight, go to Fredericksburg.”

  “For how long, Matthew?”

  He did not answer her. She said, “We can’t go far. There’s the milk cow, for one thing. She’s got to be milked.”

  The cow had not entered his mind. “Forget her. The main thing is to have you safe.”

  “We’re going to need that milk cow.”

  Impatiently he exploded, “Will you grow up, and forget that damned cow? I’m taking you out of here.”

  She shrank back in surprise at his sharpness, a little of hurt in her eyes. They had not once quarreled, not until now. “I’m sorry, Rachal. I didn’t go to blow up at you that way.”

  She hid her eyes from him. “You’re thinking we might just give up this place and never come back ...” She wasn’t asking him; she was telling him what was in his mind.

  “That’s what Burk thinks we ought to do.”

  “He’s an old man, and we’re young. And this isn’t his home. He hasn’t even got a home, just that old rough cabin, and those dogs and hogs ... He’s probably moved twenty times in his life. But we’re not like that, Matthew. We’re the kind of people who put down roots and grow where we are.”

  Matthew looked away. “I’ll go fetch the dun horse. You bolt the door.”

  Riding away, he kept looking back at the cabin in regret. He knew he loved this place where they had started their lives together. Rachal loved it too, though he found it difficult to understand why. Life had its shortcomings back in east Texas, but her upbringing there had been easy compared to the privations she endured here. When she needed water she carried it in a heavy oaken bucket from the creek, fully seventy-five yards. He would have built the cabin nearer the water, but Burk had advised that once in a while heavy rains made that creek rise up on its hind legs and roar like an angry bear.

  She worked her garden with a heavy-handled hoe, and when Matthew was busy in the field from dawn to dark she chopped her own wood from the pile of dead oak behind the cabin. She cooked over an ill-designed open fireplace that did not draw as it should. And, as much as anything, she put up with a deadening loneliness. Offhand, he could not remember that she had seen another woman since late in the spring, except for a German girl who stopped by once on her way to the forks. They had been unable to talk to each other. Even so, Rachal had glowed for a couple of days, refreshed by seeing someone besides her husband and the unwashed Burk Kennemer.

  The cabin was as yet small, just a single room which was kitchen, sleeping quarters and sitting room combined. It had been in Matthew’s mind, when he had nothing else to do this coming winter, to start work on a second section that would become a bedroom. He would build a roof and an open dug run between that part and the original, in keeping with Texas pioneer tradition, with a sleeping area over the dog run for the children who were sure to come with God’s own time and blessings. He and Rachal had talked much of their plans, of the ad
ditional land he would break out to augment the potential income from their dozen or so beef critters scattered along the creek. He had forcefully put the dangers out of his mind, knowing they were there but choosing not to dwell upon them.

  He remembered now the warnings from Rachal’s uncle and aunt, who had brought her up after her own father was killed by a falling tree and her mother was taken by one of the periodic fever epidemics. They had warned of the many perils a couple would face on the edge of the settled lands, perils which youth and love and enthusiasm had made to appear small, far away in distance and time, until today. Now, his eyes nervously searching the edge of the oak timber for anything amiss, fear rose up in him. It was a primeval, choking fear of a kind he had never known, and a sense of shame for having so thoughtlessly brought Rachal to this sort of jeopardy.

  He found the dun horse grazing by the creek, near a few of the speckled beef cows which a farmer at the old home had given him in lieu of wages for two years of backbreaking work. He had bartered for the old wagon and the plow and a few other necessary tools. Whatever else he had, he and Rachal had built with their hands. For Texans, cash money was in short supply.

  He thought about rounding up the cows and corraling them by the cabin, but they were scattered. He saw too much risk in the time it might take him to find them all, as well as the exposure to any Comanches hidden in the timber. From what he had heard, the Indians were much less interested in cattle than in horses. Cows were slow. Once the raiders were ready to start north, they would want speed to carry them to sanctuary. Matthew pitched a rawhide reata loop around the dun’s neck and led the animal back in a long trot. He had been beyond sight of the cabin for a while, and he prickled with anxiety. He breathed a sigh of relief when he broke into the open. The smoke from the chimney was a welcome sight.

  He turned the horses into the pole corral and closed the gate, then poured shelled corn into a crude wooden trough. They eagerly set to crunching the grain with their strong teeth, a sound he had always enjoyed when he could restrain himself from thinking how much that corn would be worth in the settlements. The horses were blissfully unaware of the problems that beset their owners. Matthew wondered how content they would be if they fell into Indian hands and were driven or ridden the many long, hard days north into that mysterious hidden country. It would serve them right!

  Still, he realized how helpless he and Rachal would be without them. He could not afford to lose the horses.

  Rachal slid the heavy oak bar from the door and let him into the cabin. He immediately replaced the bolt while she went back to stirring a pot of stew hanging on an iron rod inside the fireplace. He avoided her eyes, for the tension stretched tightly between them.

  “See anything?” she asked, knowing he would have come running.

  He shook his head. “Not apt to, until night. If they’re here, that’s when they’ll come for the horses.”

  “And find us gone?” Her voice almost accused him.

  He nodded. “Burk said he’ll be back before dark. He’ll help us find our way to Fredericksburg.”

  Firelight touched her face. He saw a reflection of tears. She said, “They’ll destroy this place.”

  “Better this place than you. I’ve known it from the start, I guess, and just wouldn’t admit it. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  “I came willingly. I’ve been happy here. So have you.”

  “We just kept dancing and forgot that the piper had to be paid.”

  A silence fell between them, heavy and unbridgeable. When the stew was done they sat at the roughhewn table and ate without talking. Matthew got up restlessly from time to time to look out the front and back windows. These had no glass. They were like small doors in the walls. They could be closed and bolted shut. Each had a loophole which he could see out of, or fire though. Those, he remembered, had been cut at Burk Kennemer’s insistence. From the first, Matthew realized now, Burk had been trying to sober him, even to scare him away. Matthew had always put him off with a shrug or a laugh. Now he remembered what Burk had said today about having buried a woman in a place like this. He thought he understood the trapper, and the man’s fears, in a way he had not before.

  The heavy silence went unrelieved. After eating what he could of the stew, his stomach knotted, he went outside and took a long look around, cradling the rifle. He fetched a shovel and began to throw dirt onto the roof to make it more difficult for the Indians to set it afire. It occurred to him how futile this labor was if they were going to abandon the place anyway, but he kept swinging the shovel, trying to work off the tension.

  The afternoon dragged. He spent most of it outside, pacing, watching. In particular he kept looking to the west, anticipating Burk Kennemer’s return. Now that he had made up his mind to it, he could hardly wait for darkness, to give them a chance to escape this place. The only thing which came from that direction—or any other— was the brindle milk cow, drifting toward the shed at her own slow place and in her own good time for the evening milking and the grain she knew awaited her. Matthew owned no watch, but he doubted that a watch kept better time than that cow, her udder swinging in rhythm with her slow and measured steps. Like the horses, she had no awareness of anything except her daily routine, of feeding and milking and grazing. Observing her patient pace, Matthew could almost assure himself that this day was like all others, that he had no reason for fear.

  He milked the cow, though he intended to leave the milk unused in the cabin, for it was habit with him as well as with the cow. The sun was dropping rapidly when he carried the bucket of milk to Rachal. Her eyes asked him, though she did not speak.

  He shook his head. “No sign of anything out there. Not of Burk, either.”

  Before sundown he saddled the dun horse for Rachal, making ready. He would ride the plow horse bareback. He climbed up onto his pole fence, trying to shade his eyes from the sinking sun while he studied the hills and the open valley to the west. All his earlier fears were with him, and a new one as well.

  Where is he? He wouldn’t just have left us here. Not Old Burk.

  Once he thought he heard a sound in the edge of the timber. He turned quickly and saw a flash of movement, nothing more. It was a feeling as much as something actually seen. It could have been anything, a deer, perhaps, or even one of his cows. It could have been.

  He remained outside until the sun was gone, and until the last golden remnant faded into twilight over the timbered hills that stretched into the distance like a succession of blue monuments. The autumn chill set him to shivering, but he held out against going for his coat. When the night was full dark, he knew it was time.

  He called softly at the cabin door. Rachal lifted the bar. He said, “The moon’ll rise directly. We’d better get started.”

  “Without Burk? Are you really sure, Matthew?”

  “If they’re around, they’ll be here. Out yonder, in the dark, we’ve got a chance.”

  She came out, wrapped for the night chill, carrying his second rifle, handing him his coat. Quietly they walked to the corral, where he opened the gate, untied the horses and gave her a lift up into the saddle. The stirrups were too long for her, and her skirts were in the way, but he knew she could ride. He threw himself up onto the plow horse, and they moved away from the cabin in a walk, keeping to the grass as much as possible to muffle the sound of the hoofs. As quickly as he could, he pulled into the timber, where the darkness was even more complete. For the first miles, at least, he felt that he knew the way better than any Indian who might not come here once in several years.

  It was his thought to swing first by Burk’s cabin. There was always a chance the old man had changed his mind about things...

  He had held onto this thought since late afternoon. Maybe Burk had found the tracks were not made by Indians after all, and he had chosen to let the young folks have the benefit of a good, healthy scare.

  Deep inside, Matthew knew that was a vain hope. It was not Burk’s way. He might have let Ma
tthew sweat blood, but he would not do this to Rachal.

  They both saw the fire at the same time, and heard the distant barking of the dogs. Rachal made a tiny gasp and clutched his arm.

  Burk’s cabin was burning.

  They reined up and huddled together for a minute, both coming dangerously close to giving in to their fears and riding away in a blind run. Matthew gripped the rawhide reins so tightly that they seemed to cut into his hands. “Easy, Rachal,” he whispered.

  Then he could hear horses moving through the timber, and the crisp night air carried voices to him.

  “They’re coming at us, Matthew,” Rachal said tightly. “They’ll catch us out here.”

  He had no way of knowing if they had been seen, or heard. A night bird called to the left of him. Another answered, somewhere to the right. At least, they sounded like night birds.

  “We’ve got to run for it, Rachal!”

  “We can’t run all the way to Fredericksburg. Even if we could find it. They’ll catch us.”

  He saw only one answer. “Back to the cabin! If we can get inside, they’ll have to come in there to get us.”

  He had no spurs; a farmer did not need them. He beat his heels against the horse’s sides and led the way through the timber in a run. He did not have to look behind him to know Rachal was keeping up with him. Somehow the horses had caught the fever of their fear.

  “Keep low, Rachal,” he said. “Don’t let the low limbs knock you down.” He found a trail that he knew and shortly burst out into the open. He saw no reason for remaining in the timber now, for the Indians surely knew where they were. The timber would only slow their running. He leaned out over the horse’s neck and kept thumping his heels against its ribs. He glanced back to be sure he was not outpacing Rachal.

  Off to the right he thought he saw figures moving, vague shapes against the blackness. The moon was just beginning to rise, and he could not be sure. Ahead, sensed more than seen, was the clearing. Evidently the Indians had not been there yet, or the place would be in flames as Burk’s cabin had been.