Hondo (1953)

by L'amour, Louis

  “You been scouting for this patrol?”

  “This is about the twentieth day I had them out, Hondo. Many a scalp’s been took.”

  Angie looked down at Johnny. “You watch Lieutenant McKay, Johnny. That’s the kind of manners I want you to have.’ She turned back to the men. “And he has such handsome eyes. And that beautiful black, curly hair.”

  “That hair will be hanging from the top pole of an Apache wickiup.” He looked over at Buffalo. “This little-boy lieutenant will get you killed.”

  Buffalo shrugged. McKay was not the first he had seen come to Indian country. Nor, with luck, would he be the last. Some of them had it, some of them did not. Some were only pretty, some were all spit and polish, and some of them sharpened down into first-class fighting men. There had been Major Powell, for instance, up at Kearney. Had he taken the command the day Fetterman went out … It was useless to think of that. Fetterman had outranked him, forced the issue, and gone glory-hunting with eighty-odd better men.

  “You know how it is,” Buffalo said. “Us scouts got to get these young officers educated.”

  Suddenly he remembered. “Say, you reclect how you whupped me at the post? My medicine must have been bad. You busted off a tooth and it went to hurting so bad I had to go to the barber so he could pull out the rest of that tooth. Partner, that hurt! Did I catch you that day, I’d have set your sun for you. You’d never have seed another morning.”

  Angie came to the door, drying her hands. “Hondo, I notice the soldiers are starting their food fires. I naturally can’t invite very many to eat with us in the cabin, but if your friend Mr.—uh …”

  “Yeah, Buffalo will eat with us.” he turned to look at the big buffalo hunter. “We’ve known each other eight or ten years. You got to have a last name. Or have you?”

  Buffalo looked up sharply, offended. “Sure I got a last name. What do you think I am?” He tried to emulate the Lieutenant’s bow. “Mrs. Lowe, my name is …” He hesitated, and his face got red. “Baker. That’s what it is, Baker.” He sneered at Hondo. “Didn’t think I had any last name!”

  Buffalo looked around slowly. “Been tryin’ to figure what this place reminds me of, Hondo. It’s that ranch of your’n in California. Where we stayed before we went to fight with those people up north. Under a bluff just like this, creek and mesa spreading out …”

  Angie looked up at Hondo. “You have a place that looks like this?”

  “East of San Punas. Just like this. Reminds me all to …” He hesitated, took a quick look at Angie, and ended weakly, “Reminds me. It sure does.”

  “You can wash in the basin on the bench. Towel hangin’ right there.”

  “Wash? Towel? Oh, sure.”

  “It’s wonderful, Hondo. About your place, I mean. That our tastes are so similar. You picked a basin with a creek, as I did.”

  “I guess we could winter in the same lodge without nobody getting their throat cut in the night.”

  They stopped at the door, watching the camp settling down. There was an Indian up on the bluff again, but that was to be expected and Hondo said nothing until Buffalo walked up, drying his hands. Buffalo mentioned it, and he nodded. “Seen him. No use mentionin’ it to the Lieutenant. He’d send out a patrol to catch him, an’ these boys need their sleep.”

  Buffalo hung the towel on a peg near the door. “Don’t you peg the Lieutenant too low. He’s young, but he’s different than some. He’ll listen, an’ he ain’t afraid to ask questions. Most of ‘em figure they got to know it all.”

  Buffalo looked awkwardly at the table. Angie had taken out her red-checkered cloth and there were napkins of the same color by the plates. Buffalo looked around, embarrassed. “I ain’t et—ate—at a table like this in a coon’s age, ma’am. Reckon I’m some rusty.”

  She smiled. “We’re hoping you’ll eat with us often, Buffalo, so don’t be afraid.”

  Buffalo blushed, then as the significance of her remark reached him he looked quickly at Hondo and started to speak, but Hondo scowled at him and he closed his mouth.

  When they had finished, Angie got up and took down an apple pie and started to cut it, then she turned. “Hondo, would you like to ask the Lieutenant to join us for pie and coffee? I’m sure he’d like it.”

  When Hondo was gone, Angie turned quickly and looked at Buffalo. “Mr. Baker,” she said quietly, “I want to ask you a question. Did you know Ed Lowe? My husband?”

  “That no-a—” As the significance of her last words reached him, he broke off sharply. “Yes,” he said after a minute, “I knew him.”

  She hesitated, then turned back to her pie. That explosive beginning answered her question in part, at least. Buffalo Baker said no more, and when the Lieutenant came in, she was talking about the Indians.

  Buffalo excused himself and the Lieutenant sat down. He glanced quickly at Johnny, then smiled. Lieutenant McKay might know little of Indian fighting, but he understood the things a lonely woman wants to know. He talked briefly of things at the post, then of what women were wearing in Washington, New York, and Richmond. After several minutes he switched the subject. He glanced sharply at Hondo. “What do you think Vittoro will do now? Will he keep running?”

  “No. Not far, anyway. He’s ready to fight.”

  “Mr. Lane, my business is to command, but I’ve been thinking of what you said. I’m not above taking advice. You know the Apaches. What would you advise?”

  Hondo looked at his coffee. There was no doubting the earnestness of this man, and he had a sudden hope that whatever happened, this man might live. They needed men on the frontier who could learn.

  “Can’t advise you, Lieutenant. Only when you come up to him, it’ll be because he’s ready. If he’s ready it’ll be because he figures he can beat you or hurt you mighty bad. So when you come up on him, look around, because whatever you don’t expect, that’s what he’ll do.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When Buffalo had finished sharpening his knife, Hondo moved to the grindstone. Lennie Sproul lounged near the barn, and Hondo felt irritation strong within him. Lennie Sproul had been on the frontier for fifteen years, a lean, saturnine man with a cynical eye and a way of showing up with unexpected money.

  Hondo Lane possessed no quality of the hypocrite. He was a man whose likes and dislikes were obvious. His distaste for Sproul was especially obvious. The scout lounged nearer in his greasy buckskins and stood watching the knife edge on the grindstone.

  “Mighty fine rifle in your saddle scabbard. Always envied you that there gun. Hard to come by, that new issue.”

  “Keep your hands off it.” Hondo was short.

  Lennie Sproul watched the grindstone for several minutes while Hondo Lane’s anger mounted. Sproul was not here by accident. There was something on his mind.

  “Knowed you ten years,” Sproul said. “Never worked a day beside you.”

  “Don’t like you,” Hondo replied, testing the edge of the blade.

  “Figured you didn’t. But now I think you might admire to give me that there rifle.”

  Too astonished for reply, Hondo looked up, staring at Lennie, who answered with a broken-toothed smile. “Ways out of the post I come across some bodies. One of ‘em was this lady’s husband. Horse tracks around there, an’ one set belonged to your lineback.”

  Hondo waited, his heart pounding heavily, anger building hard within him. Not the irritation he had felt for a disliked and disagreeable man, but the hard anger of a man.

  “Nice setup you got here. Nice ranch, pretty woman.”

  Hondo took a slow, deep breath. He knew himself and he wanted no violence. Not the kind to which he was impelled.

  “You can get yourself killed acting like this.” He said the words slowly, taking his time, hoping the words would be a warning, that Lennie Sproul would know when to stop.

  There was no stopping in the mind of Lennie Sproul. He had felt Hondo Lane’s dislike keenly, but there had been nothing he could do. Now he saw the gun figh
ter’s strength and skill humbled, his proud, easy manner broken. Why, the man had a ranch here. There was no telling what all he might get from him, given time.

  Knowing triumph, he felt no discretion. “Could be I could get killed,” he said with a smirk, “or I can get that new-fashioned Winchester. You didn’t bushwhack that lady’s husband, but it could look mighty like it. Did she know what happened, I don’t reckon you’d set so well around here.’

  Hondo Lane dropped the knife and came up in one smooth, perfectly timed flow of motion. Lennie, too late, tried to step back. Hondo Lane’s right fist caught the angle of his jaw and knocked him thirty feet into a heap on the ground.

  The last staggering steps had carried Sproul past the lean-to stable and he had fallen in view of the cow corral.

  Hondo Lane rushed after Lennie, who started to get up. He scarcely reached his feet before Lane struck him. Two hard punches, left and right. He hit the ground hard and Lane lifted a moccasined heel to stomp him when he saw Angie.

  She was just rising from the stool beside her cow, the milk pail in one hand, the stool in the other. Nothing was needed beyond her expression. She had heard it all.

  For a long moment their eyes held, searching, measuring, then she turned to walk away. Lennie seizing his chance, crawled a few feet, then got to his feet and hurried away, a hand to his jaw.

  At that instant Lieutenant McKay walked up to them. He looked at Lane. “We are about to leave, Mr. Lane.” He faced Angie. “Mrs. Lowe, I hope you will not mind if Hondo accompanies us for half a day. We’d like him to go with us as far as Single Butte. Its rough country, I heard, and none of the other scouts knows that country. He can be back by tonight, so you will not be alone long.”

  “No, of course not.”

  McKay bowed, then turned to Hondo. “If you will saddle up, Lane.”

  “Can’t go.”

  McKay looked at him as if he had not heard aright. A slight frown gathered between his brows. “You said you were not going?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why?” McKay was incredulous.

  “Gave my word I wouldn’t.”

  “Your word? To whom?”

  “Vittoro.”

  “Surely,” Lieutenant McKay expostulated, “a word given to an Indian desperado can’t be—”

  “Lieutenant,” Angie interrupted, “As an officer and a gentleman, surely you must agree that one’s word given to anyone is binding.”

  “Of course.” McKay flushed a little. “Sorry you must remind me, Mrs. Lowe. I forgot myself. Good day.”

  “Lieutenant,” Hondo called after him, and the officer turned, “you won’t have any trouble if you keep north of the butte. See it to the southwest about six miles out of here. You keep north. Country south looks flat, but she’s broken into canyons and washes.”

  “Thanks.”

  They stood together watching the Lieutenant walk away, carrying his back straight and walking as if on a drill field. The men were in the saddle, waiting. The sun was hot and the horses stamped restlessly, eager to be moving.

  Lennie Sprout rode by, moving to his place near the head of the column. His jaw was badly swollen, his right eye closed. An ugly cut had opened his other cheekbone. He did not look at them as he passed, and when Buffalo Baker drew up near them he looked curiously at Hondo Lane.

  “Lennie must’ve run into something,” Buffalo commented, biting off a corner of his plug tobacco. “Had it comin’, I reckon.” He gathered his reins. “Wish you was with us, Hondo.”

  “Sorry.”

  Buffalo lifted a hand. “See you.” He moved off to join Lieutenant McKay at the head of the column.

  Then the column was moving, and the dust rose around them, then settled slowly, and the sun shone brightly on the last of the horses, glinted from the carbines. Neither of them moved.

  Johnny walked down the trail of the horses and looked after them his world suddenly empty with their going. He had never before seen so many soldiers, so many horses. He stood, scuffing his toe in the dirt, liking the smell of the horses, and remembering the easy, rough-handed friendship of the soldiers.

  “Should have told you,” Hondo said at last. “Tried to … didn’t. It happened like this, Angie. I—”

  She turned sharply away. “I can’t talk now. I want to think. I need time. I’ll put your war bag outside the cabin.”

  He watched her go, then walked to the corral. Uncertainly he looked around, trying to recall something he had intended doing, but the thought would not come. There was nothing in him, nothing but a vast impatience and a vast restlessness.

  He looked up the trail the way the soldiers had gone, riding into battle. Because that was what it would be. Somewhere out there on some sun-blasted slope the Apaches would be waiting. Somewhere out there men would die.

  Buffalo was along … Luck to him, and to McKay and the others. That McKay, now, he was all right. Young, but he would grow into it. Proud, the way a young man should be, but conscious there was much to learn. He was the kind they needed out here. More officers like Crook, who understood the Indian.

  Hearing the door open, he looked around. She was putting his war bag outside the door. There it was, the end of whatever it had been, and all because of a small-caliber coyote who tried to shoot him in the back. He walked to the corral and led out the lineback. Then he went for his saddle.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The doob slammed and Hondo glanced around. It was Johnny. Hands in pockets, the boy walked slowly toward him, looking big-eyed at the saddled horse.

  “Goin’ away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I come?”

  “You better stay with your mother. She’ll need you.”

  Johnny said nothing, kicking his toe into the dirt. He looked at the saddled horse with fear. Hondo Lane was going away, riding off without him.

  “Nobody ever stays,” he said.

  Hondo glanced at him, packing his saddlebags. He checked the ammunition. Enough, but not too much. He refilled the empty loops in his belt, checked his gun and rifle.

  “Pa rode off and never come back. Now you’re ridin’.” Johnny watched him, fighting back tears.

  Hondo turned his back. It was a lonely life for a kid. Only his mother here. The boy should have a father. He felt sick and miserable, thinking about that. This boy had no father, and it was his, Hondo’s fault. But he had never had a father, actually.

  Carrying his saddlebags to the lineback, he strapped them in place.

  “You take care of your mother, you hear?”

  “Yes,” Johnny watched him, slowly drawing back. “You ain’t comin’ back.” He said the words with sudden realization.

  Hondo finished strapping the pack, then turned and, taking his time, began to build a smoke. He knew how the boy felt, because he had felt like that himself. When they were the age of this boy it was an awful thing to see a friend ride off. Later you became used to it. Later you learned that nothing was for long. It was a pity you had to learn that.

  Hondo struck the match and lighted his cigarette. “Goin’ to the fort. Maybe you’ll come along someday. We’ll have us a hunt together.” He squatted on his heels. “You study sign, son. You remember what I taught you, an’ try to learn more. Man walking in tall grass, he kicks the grass away from him in the direction he’s travelin’. Horse or cow, their hoofs have a circular, swingin’ motion, so they knock the grass down an’ back. With them it points in the direction they come from.”

  Johnny had moved closer, but he did not look at Hondo. He stared at the ground, listening.

  “No two animals and no two men leave the same track. Like signin’ your name. Every one is different. You study at it, son. Readin’ sign comes mighty handy.”

  He squeezed the boy’s shoulder and got to his feet. His throat felt tight and choked up and he walked to his horse and gathered the reins. Then he put a hand on the pommel, and when he looked across the saddle, Angie was standing there, her f
ace showing nothing. A tendril of hair hung down by one ear, stirring a little in the wind.

  How white her shoulder was, where the dress pushed back from the tan! He felt himself tighten up inside, and then he said, “Didn’t have any choice. He cut loose at me.”

  “I knew you were lying … to make me think well of him. Poor Ed. He wasn’t the type of man to die well. I’m sorry now that I hated him so much … after I got to know how tawdry and weak he was. I guess he couldn’t help being that way. He never saw the beauty of this country. Not the way my father and I saw it. He called it the country God forgot.”

  Hondo held the pommel, afraid to let go, afraid this little sign of hope would turn the fates against him. It was like keeping his fingers crossed.

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “I know.”

  He hesitated, waiting a long minute. “You going to feel different about me?”

  “No one has any control about how they feel. I’m not going to change the way I feel about you.”

  Johnny had walked away, toward the stream. He did not want the man to go, but maybe his mother could do something about that. She always seemed able to do things about things.

  “What about him?” Angie asked.

  “What about him?” Hondo repeated the words thoughtfully. “Well, he’ll make a man. Got a good spread to his shoulders. Head works, too. Tell him something, he remembers. Moves good—light on his feet. Other night while you were asleep he climbed on my bunk an’ kissed me. Gave me a kind of funny feeling. First time I was ever kissed by a kid.” Suddenly he dropped the reins to groundhitch the lineback. “There’s things I’d rather do than this.”

  Johnny was squatting near the river looking at some tracks, and Hondo walked slowly toward him.

  Angie stared after him, feeling sudden panic as she realized what Hondo meant to do.

  Johnny looked up from the tiny writing of tracks he had found. “Hondo, what track is that?”

  Hondo squatted. “Squirrel there. This one with only four toes is the front foot. Back foot has five toes.” He indicated another, larger track. “Badger. Follow him and you’ll find holes where he dug out field mice or pad rates. He eats ‘em. See the claw marks? Those are his front feet. Never see the claws on his back feet. Always toes in a mite, too.”