“He don’t like nobody to be in his room,” Marieta said. “He’ll beat you, when he comes back.”
“I can beat, too,” Maria said.
All she could find to take was one blanket and a good knife. She wrapped all the meat she could carry in a sack. While she was packing, the women of Crow Town began to crowd into the house. All were wearing what coats they had. All carried parcels of meat. Only old Naiche didn’t come. Beulah had put on her coat too. Marieta and Gabriela had not dressed warmly. They looked scared.
Beulah spoke for the women.
“We want to go when you go,” she said. “We don’t want to stay here. We’re all going to die, if we stay here.”
“You might die harder, if you go with me,” Maria warned. She did not want to lead the women across the bad land, between Crow Town and Mexico. The meat would not last. She had only three bullets left for her pistol. The women did not look strong. They would freeze or starve, or drown or give up. Her statement had been the truth: dying in Crow Town would not be good, but dying in the borderlands in winter might be worse. At least in Crow Town, there would be shelter.
Then she remembered the railroad. It was only two days’ walk south, or a little more. The women might make it to the railroad. Then maybe a train would stop for them. She had seen two trains. She didn’t know what made trains stop, but she thought that maybe a train would stop for the women, if they waved at the men who drove the train.
It was a hope, at least. Maria could understand that the women did not want to die in Crow Town. It was not a good place. The crows flew through the snow, or walked in it. Three sat on the bare ribs of the great pig. As the cold deepened, the cawing of the crows seemed to grow louder. Maria felt feverish. She would have liked to rest in Joey’s bed for a day or a night, but she was afraid. If the men caught her, they would not care that she was feverish. They might tie her and keep her until she became like the other women in the town. Her heart might die within her, as their hearts had.
Maria couldn’t risk that. Her children needed her. Even now, she worried that Billy Williams wouldn’t take care of them well enough. Rafael might be growing thin, for sometimes he forgot to eat. Teresa was careless sometimes, and burned herself on the stove. What if she had burned herself badly? Who would hold her in the night and help her with the pain?
“I will take you to the railroad, if you will try to keep up,” Maria said. “That’s the best I can do. I have to leave you at the railroad and go home to my children.”
When the time came to leave, Marieta and Gabriela wept. They had no warm clothes; they didn’t want to go.
“My feet freeze, even when I’m in the house,” Marieta said. “I don’t want to walk in the snow.”
“I want to wait for Joey,” Gabriela said. “He don’t have no one else to help him.”
“Joey thinks she’s pretty,” Marieta said. She was bitter that her sister had been favored. She didn’t like Joey anymore. But her feet got very cold, just sitting in the house. Someone had told her that if your feet froze, they had to be cut off. She was afraid that if she went with the woman, her feet would freeze. The person who told her what happened to frozen feet was Red Foot, who sometimes visited her. He would only pay her a dime, but it was a dime at least. Red Foot liked to be behind her; she could hear him panting in her ear, like a dog. He said frozen feet had to be sawed off with a saw.
“Me and Gabriela, we better stay,” Marieta said.
“Don’t be weak,” Maria said. The two girls were just girls, not too much older than her own girl. She didn’t want to leave them to the rough men. If she had to take the women, she would take the girls, too.
“These men will use you till you’re sick,” Maria said. “I will wrap your feet so they won’t freeze.”
While the girls sat, looking scared, she cut up sacks and wrapped their feet in many layers. She found an old pair of chaps that had worn thin and used the leather to make tight wrappings around the sacks. She didn’t think the girls would freeze, for the worst cold didn’t come with snow.
When Maria was ready, all the women looked scared. It was dark and the snow was still blowing. Some of the women wanted to wait until morning, but Maria wouldn’t hear of it.
“Do you want a parade?” she asked, angrily. She had enough responsibilities, without these women balking.
“You know what we are to these men,” she said. “Look between your legs—that’s what we are. That’s why they even let us be alive. Do you think they will let us all walk off, and not do something about it?”
Then she thought of old Naiche. She was Indian, Comanche. Probably, the women had not asked her to go. When Maria inquired, several of the women claimed not to know where old Naiche lived. Finally, Beulah told her.
Maria went through the snow to the little hovel of dirt and branches where Naiche lived. The shelter was made of thin mesquite branches, bent together at the top. There were many spaces between the mesquite limbs, but old Naiche had covered them with some of the rotten buffalo hides. It was a flimsy dwelling, so low that Maria had to go almost to her hands and knees to get through the opening. The wind sang through the small, smoky room, but Naiche didn’t seem to mind. She sat with her bucketful of strippings and her armful of guts. Now and then, she would dip into the bucket and nibble from the squeezings of the dead pig.
“I don’t see well, no more,” Naiche said, when Maria stooped low and came in. “Too much smoke.”
“We’re leaving. You should come with us,” Maria said. “I will take you to the railroad. It’s not a long walk. This is not a good place for a woman.”
Old Naiche shook her head.
“The train don’t have no place to take me to,” she said. “All my people are dead.”
“They are not all dead,” Maria replied. “Billy Williams says there are many of your people in the Territory. The train could take you to them, if you will get up and come with me.”
“No, there are only whites in the world now,” old Naiche said. “I have all this food. You got it for me. I want to stay here and eat this food.”
“Bring it, I’ll help you carry it,” Maria said. She knew it was no use, trying to save a woman as old as Naiche, but she wanted to try. The women of Crow Town were too sad. Even with her eyes half gone from smoke, the old Comanche woman had more life left in her than any of them. She didn’t seem discouraged, to be living in a small hovel made of mesquite sticks, with rotten buffalo hides to cover it and protect her from the cold breath of the norther.
“Come, try,” Maria said. “I don’t know what will become of you if I leave you here with these men.”
“I don’t worry about these men,” Naiche said. “Look. I’ll show you what I have.”
She bent, and began to dig with her hands by the little fire.
“This fire don’t go out,” she said, as she was digging. “I only let it go out in the summer, when it is hot. When the norther comes, I let the fire burn so my scorpions won’t freeze.”
Naiche uncovered a pit, so near the fire that the glow of the coals lit it. Maria looked in and saw that the pit was full of scorpions. She didn’t like scorpions; she didn’t count, but there were many scorpions in Naiche’s little pit, and also a few of the long centipedes with the red legs. Old Naiche had made a roof over the pit, with little sticks and a badger skin to cover it and keep the scorpions in.
“When they sting me, it don’t hurt,” Naiche said. “If men are bad, I will go around and put scorpions in their clothes. I did it to old Tommy, because he stole my tobacco. When he was drunk, I put three scorpions in his pants, and they stung him where he is a man.”
Old Naiche grinned. She had few teeth. Maria, too, was amused, at the old woman’s vengeance and her cleverness in keeping a pit of scorpions near her fire. Billy had once told her that the Apaches sometimes kept scorpions because they needed their poison.
“Are you Apache?” Maria asked, thinking she had made a mistake about Naiche’s tribe.
“Run away again,” Maria said. “I will take you to my home. I have two children who are damaged. My girl is blind and my boy cannot think too well. Come to my home, and I will take care of you. We’ll leave the others at the railroad, but you can come to Mexico with me.”
But again, Naiche shook her head.
“My time is coming,” she said. “It will come when I finish this food you gave me. I do not want to go away and miss it. When you miss your time, then you cannot rest.
“Besides, I like the crows,” Naiche added. “I have one that comes to my house and tells me secrets. That is why I know I have to stay here and wait for my time. She is up there now, my crow.”
Maria had no more time. She saw that she could not persuade the old woman, and she needed to be far from town with the other women when morning came. Maybe if it was still snowing, the men would be too lazy to follow the women. That was her hope, and her only hope. The women she was taking away were ugly, dirty, and weary, but they still had the places between their legs. The men wouldn’t like losing those places. Maybe they would pursue them, and maybe they wouldn’t. But Maria had to go, and go at once.
“I will give you this advice,” she said to Naiche. “Do not put your scorpions on the killer with scabs in his hair. He don’t care about women. He will sting you worse than you sting him.”
Old Naiche didn’t answer. She looked into the smoke, the smoke that had ruined her eyes. Again she dipped her hand into the bucket of strippings from the pig’s guts.
Maria crept out. The snow had stopped, which made her fearful. She had to hurry, and she had to get the women moving. Several crows sat on top of old Naiche’s hut. Maria wondered which one was the crow that had told the old woman secrets. She wondered, but she did not have time to find out. The snow had stopped. She had to get the women and the two scared girls, and go.
3.
WHEN MOX MOX and his men rode into Crow Town, he made the men ride their horses back and forth over old Naiche’s little brush shelter, trampling her to death.
At first, the horses shied, and didn’t want to crash through the shelter. Mox Mox pointed to a sandhill, about one hundred yards away.
“Go to the top of it and blindfold them shittin’ horses,” he instructed. “Head them for this brush and keep on spurring.”
Old Naiche heard. While the men were blindfolding the horses, she tried to crawl out, but Mox Mox was waiting for her with his leaded quirt. He quirted her in the face until she gave up. She crawled back into her hut and waited for the hooves to bring her darkness. Soon she heard the horses coming hard. The crows began to caw. Naiche tried to be ready, but she had begun to feel regret for not going with Maria. It was a sharp regret, so sharp it made it hard for her to be ready.
But the horses were coming hard, whether or not she was ready. Naiche clawed open her little pit and dug quickly with one hand into her scorpions and centipedes. She raked a handful of them up and shoved them under her blanket. Perhaps one of them would bite The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See. The horses were closer. Naiche still had scorpions in her hand when they crashed through the branches of mesquite.
The hooves did not immediately bring her death, though they broke both her hips and crushed one hand.
“She’s still stirring—ride again,” Mox Mox said. The men wheeled their horses and rode again, and again. Because they couldn’t see, the horses were frightened. Soon the men stopped racing. They merely spurred their mounts, causing them to jump into the broken branches. The rotten buffalo robes were soon kicked away, the mesquite branches broken.
“I guess that will teach her,” Hergardt said. He was German, the largest of the seven men. He was also, by common consent, the dumbest. Hergardt was so dumb he often put his boots on the wrong feet. He was strong and would pull his boots on without looking, as easily as most people pull on socks. Later, he would wonder why his feet hurt.
Hergardt rode a big bay horse. The other men dismounted and began to pile the broken mesquite limbs into a pyre, but Hergardt kept riding his horse back and forth over the body of old Naiche.
“What will it teach her?” Mox Mox asked him, looking at the body of the dead woman. A hoof had broken her neck. “I could cook you for a week and it wouldn’t make you smart,” Mox Mox said. “Being burnt just teaches you that you’re burnt.”
Mox Mox had found Hergardt in San Francisco, when he returned from his years on the sea. He had gone to sea to escape Goodnight, who had pursued him all the way to the Great Salt Lake. Mox Mox knew he could not go back to the Southwest for a while. Goodnight had been too persistent. Mox Mox put out the story of his death at the hands of the Ute, and went to sea for seven years.
Hergardt was making his living as a wrestler when Mox Mox docked in San Francisco. He wrestled all comers for a dollar a bout. Mox Mox began to promote him and soon had the price up to ten dollars a bout, although Hergardt was far from invincible. Many smaller, quicker men beat him.
“You deserve to be burnt, but it wouldn’t teach you nothing,” Mox Mox observed. “Stop riding over her. She’s dead. It’s time to light the fire, Jimmy.”
Jimmy Cumsa lit the branches. He was a Cherokee boy from Missouri, very quick in his movements; almost too quick, in Mox Mox’s view. Mox Mox liked to have a sense of how his men worked together, if there was a fight. Six of them he could keep up with, but Jimmy Cumsa—Quick Jimmy, they called him—was so swift that Mox Mox could seldom anticipate him. He would see Jimmy in front of him one minute, and the next minute, Jimmy would be behind him.
“Watching you burn people would teach me something, Mox,” Jimmy said. “It would teach me not to stay around you too long.”
“You been around me for a year. What keeps you, if you don’t like my ways?” Mox Mox asked.
Jimmy Cumsa didn’t answer. He was watching the hut burn. The old woman’s thin garments began to burn too.
He knew it irritated Mox Mox, when he didn’t answer a question, but Jimmy Cumsa didn’t care. He did not belong to Mox Mox, and didn’t have to answer questions. Jimmy was careful of Mox Mox, but he was not afraid of him. He had confidence in his own speed, as a rider, as a runner, and as a pistol shot. He was not an especially good pistol shot, but he was so fast it fooled people, scaring many of them into firing wildly, or doing something else dumb, that would cause them to lose the fight.
Mox Mox killed short people because they reminded him of himself—that was Jimmy Cumsa’s theory. He killed tall people because he envied them. He could be a killer, but he could never be tall. He could never be blond, because he had red hair; and he could never look you straight in the eye, because one of his eyes was pointed wrong. It looked out of his head at an angle. Mox Mox hated being short, regretted that smallpox had scarred his face, and was sorry that he was not blond, but the thing he hated most about himself was his crooked-looking eye. His greatest, most elaborate cruelties were reserved for people with well-set, bright blue eyes. When Mox Mox caught such a person, male or female, he tended to do the worst things to the eyes. If the person with the perfect blue eyes was tall and blond, then so much the worse for him or her.
Jimmy Cumsa wondered if fire was so hot that even dead people could feel it burning them. He had seen corpses twitch, while Mox Mox was burning them. It seemed to Jimmy that might mean even the dead had some feelings, enough feelings that they could respond to the heat of a fire.
Mox Mox had probably killed the old Comanche woman because she was short. She was about the same height as Mox Mox himself. Burning flesh smelled sweet—that was a fact soon learned, if you rode with Mox Mox. It didn’t matter why he had killed the old woman; she was definitely dead. The flimsy branches of her little hovel didn’t make much of a funeral flame. She wasn’t going to be burned very completely, Jimmy knew that.
Mox Mox didn’t seem to be paying much attention to this fire, or to the o
ld woman’s burning. Most likely, that was because she was dead, and couldn’t scream and plead. When people screamed and pleaded, Mox Mox got icy cool. He was like the sleet at such times. Never once had he spared a person he wanted to burn, not since Jimmy had ridden with him. It didn’t matter how loudly they pleaded, or how much money they offered him.
Peon got off his horse and began to piss into the flames. Peon was another runt, a little taller than Mox Mox, but not much. He had grown up in a swamp in Mississippi, and he slunk along, looking furtive and dirty, like some old swamp dog.
The two Mexicans were anxious to get the burning over with, so they could go to the cantina and drink. Oteros kept looking at the horizon, as if he expected to see a posse coming for him, with their hang ropes out.
Oteros was not afraid of Mox Mox, either. He was with him because he admired his business sense. He had met Mox Mox in jail, in San Luis Obispo. Mox Mox was about to be hung, for killing a boy. Oteros had very long arms and managed to reach out of his cell with one of his long arms and catch the jailer as the man was walking past with a plate of beans for an old bank robber who was being kept in the jail. Oteros held firmly to the jailer’s collar until he could get his pistol and beat his head in. Mox Mox got the jailer’s keys, and the two of them left. Oteros had been with Mox Mox ever since.
“I don’t like these crows,” Oteros said. “Why did we come here? There are too many laws in Texas.”
“He means lawmen,” Peon said. He understood Oteros and liked him, although Oteros was the most violent of the seven men and as likely to kill friend as foe when his temper was up, as it often was.
“He thinks there are too many lawmen in Texas,” he repeated, in case Mox Mox missed his point.
“There may be too many lawmen in Texas, but there’s still too many Apaches in New Mexico,” Mox Mox said. “I’d rather fight any lawman in the world than some old Apache with one eye and a weak bow. I’d kill the lawman, but the one-eyed Apache would probably kill me.”
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 258