Eye of the Wolf

by Theodore V. Olsen

  He lay face down for many minutes, almost insensible. Feeling trickled back to his loosened muscles; so did the chill of the bare rock. Will-Joe dragged himself to a sitting position and wrapped himself in his blanket, the sluggish reflex of instinct.

  He no longer thought. Too spent to function, his body and brain settled into a cocoon of waiting. For morning. For warmth. For life-giving movement…

  Today had been too warm for cooking inside, so Rainbow Girl was preparing a mutton stew in a ring of blackened stones in front of the hogan. As she sat on her heels slowly stirring it, she kept her eyes on the kettle and listened to the talk between her grandfather and Tsi Tsosi.

  They were standing a little distance off, the white man holding his horse's reins and talking in English, Adakhai replying in Navajo. It must be a matter of combative pride between them, since each spoke the other's tongue. Like most of the younger Navajos, she knew something of the white man's language, but it was hard to follow such a conversation.

  She watched them from the corners of her eyes.

  "I told you before how it is, Grandpa," Ulring said. "You go hiding that kid or helping him, a whole lot of trouble is going to get unloaded right here."

  "I have heard you." Adakhai's face was a crusty mask. "Another thing Yellow Hair said is that he will drive us away from here when his suns are not so short."

  "Well, now maybe we can forget I said that." Ulring slapped his reins idly against his palm, almost smiling. "You could make things a little easier for us both, John."

  "How can I do that?"

  "Listen, that kid isn't one of yours any more. He went away from you a long time back. Why stick your neck out? All he's brought you is trouble."

  "He did not bring the trouble."

  "Don't get hard-nosed, now. Let's talk about it. All right, say I believe you, say you don't know where he is now. Give me a couple of your boys, your best trackers. All I want is for 'em to find him for me. Just lead me to him, that's all. Now that's not a lot for what I'm offering."

  "What do you offer?"

  "Things have been sort of rough for you people, haven't they? They don't have to be."

  "What passes with you, Yellow Hair? Do you beg?"

  "You don't see it." The reins slapped down hard on Tsi Tsosi's palm. "I'm not talking about any middle ground. You scratch my itch, I scratch yours. Or I see to it you're run out of the country. That's the choice. Make up your mind. Now."

  "Listen to what I say, Yellow Hair." Adakhai lifted a knobby-jointed hand from his robe and held it palm up, fingers spread. "Do you know how many ways a man can die? The country is big, and Tsi Tsosi goes often alone. Maybe one day he will not come back. It would take only one man. One gun or one bow."

  "Listen—"

  "No. You have spoken. Now hear an old man. My young men are my eyes, they are my hands. If I point a finger, their eyes turn as I direct. Their hands will show as many guns as I say. But it will take one. Only one."

  Rainbow Girl watched the blood fill Ulring's face. His blue winter eyes turned on her and she knew that he was thinking back to when he had struck her and understanding why, at last, Adakhai had found his courage.

  "I get it, Grandpa," he said softly. "Jesus, but you siwash sons of bitches are going to regret this."

  He wheeled with a choppy driving step, swung into his saddle, turned his animal and sent it loping away. Adakhai stood as he was, looking after him.

  Rainbow Girl wrapped a rag around her hand and lifted the simmering kettle by its bail and pulled it off the fire. Then she rose and walked to the hogan, opened the reed door and stooped inside.

  Will-Joe Cantrell lay in his blankets close to the piñon log wall, his body half-raised. He was peering out through a chink between the logs and bark mats, and his hand resting at his side was fisted around his pistol.

  "Could you hear?" she asked.

  He lay back and gazed at the roof. "Some of it. Enough."

  She knelt down beside him, palms pressed together between her knees. "If he had come in here, you would have shot him."

  "Yes."

  "Maybe you could have shot him through that hole."

  "I thought of it."

  He sounded faintly irritated and she knew he did not want to talk about it. In his place, she thought, she would have shot Tsi Tsosi. At least she believed so. But it was not Jahzini's way. He had a personal feeling about his fight with the white man. Maybe his white teacher had taught him to feel in that way. They were a strange people, the Belinkana. She thought she knew Jahzini, but he was part white too and maybe his white teaching woman understood him better. She gazed at his face, troubled, trying to read his thoughts, wondering.

  He looked bony and wasted in the fresh calico shirt he wore, one of Adakhai's. His hands resting on the blanket that covered his legs were like brown claws. She knew that his body was lacerated with half-healed cuts and welts. It was a miracle that he had made it all this way, crawling sometimes, at other times hobbling on a forked pole with his broken leg held off the ground. It had taken him nearly a week. And he had been more dead than alive when he had stumbled into the village two nights ago.

  Adakhai entered the hogan and scraped the door shut behind him.

  "It is lucky he did not come with men," he said. "This time it was to ask a favor."

  Jahzini stirred his head. "I heard."

  "Next time it will be with the men."

  Rainbow Girl said, "I will look at the leg now." She lifted the blanket and loosened the splints on Jahzini's leg, cleaning off the poultice she had put on. She ran a finger along the bone and felt the ridge where it had begun to knit cleanly. It was a wonder, considering what he had put the leg through.

  Adakhai settled on his haunches, his eyes half-shuttered like a wrinkled lizard's. "Do you think, Jahzini, he has found the old man he sent after you?"

  "I don't think so. You know the place. Nobody goes there. But it has been a long time since Bloodgood went looking for me and maybe he thinks something has gone wrong. That's why he came today. It would be a thing like that, to make him ask your help."

  "Juthla hago ni" muttered Adakhai. "You must be gone from here, shiyaazh, before he comes again."

  "I've thought of this. I must leave these mountains." Jahzini's voice was heavy. "I bring you more trouble. There's no other way."

  "The Belinkana always mean trouble. I think of you. Your leg needs time before you move again. We will move you—"

  "There is a place," Rainbow Girl said quickly. Both men looked at her. "You know where it is, Jahzini."

  "Our cave." He smiled a little. "I remember how it was. A good place."

  "We will take you there," Adakhai said. "There are still his two men watching, so we will take you by night." He rubbed his belly. "Where is the food you made, Granddaughter?"

  Rainbow Girl went out to get the kettle of stewed mutton. Billy Hosteen was standing a little way off, staring at the hogan. He looked at her as if he would say something. Abruptly he turned and walked away.

  Ulring rode into the livery runway and swung slowly off his sorrel. It was dark and the place was deserted, the dim lantern burning. For a moment he stood leaning against his horse, one hand on the saddle leather, the other clenched so tight over the horn that the veins popped. Christ, he thought. Christ, take it easy.

  He straightened. "Claude!"

  A solemn brown-faced boy descended a ladder from the loft. He stood rubbing one fist in his eyes, gazing sleepily at Ulring. "I am Gregorio, señor. You want the horse put up?"

  Ulring stared at him. Rodriguez the owner's oldest boy. Sure. What in hell had he been thinking of? Claude, Jesus. He had seen Claude buried two weeks ago.

  "You're goddam right I want him put up. And snap your ass into it."

  The boy dropped his hand. "Yes sir, Mister."

  Ulring strode out. A flame of temper scoured his thoughts black and ugly. Goddam! Was he losing his grip on everything? That dirty old bundle of bones John Thunder… he had
gotten something in his belly besides corn liquor. Begging—he had come close to it, asking the old bastard for help. Christ, just wait till the other business was wrapped up and he could get a bunch of men up there. He would hit those stinking siwashes so fast and hard there wouldn't be any alive to reach the county line.

  Something had happened to Bloodgood. Must have. If there was a white man in these parts who could find that kid, it was Bloodgood. That he hadn't come for the rest of his money could only mean one thing.

  Ulring felt like a man holding the short end of nothing. Failure was the dirtiest word in his lexicon. Getting that kid had come to obsess him as no goal ever had, even Bethany. By now it had gone far beyond any peripheral danger the kid might pose; it was the failure that festered like a worsening gallsore.

  He headed for the Pink Lady. Get the Navajo stink out of his mouth with a drink, maybe he could think again. But his steps slowed. He saw the warm-squared light that was the front window of the McAllister home. Stared at it and felt his anger fed. She could not turn her back on him, by God, if that was what she thought, not in Frank Ulring's own town.

  He paused outside the house. The blinds were pulled, but he saw her shadow move across one. Well, by God. He went up the path and rapped on the door.

  She opened it part way. "Good evening, Frank. I'm a little busy…"

  "I know. You've been busy close on two weeks."

  He stood staring at her, ready, so help him, to ram his foot in the door if she tried to close it. She was out of mourning—he noticed that at once—wearing a tidy blue-and-white-checked gingham, the lamp behind her building her hair to a shimmering corona. Desire and frustration jolted him like a fist.

  "I've called on you three times and it's the same thing… 'I'm busy, Frank.' One night it's preparation for tomorrow, school stuff. Another time you're getting ready for bed. Or else you're just plain tired. Well, I'm getting a little tired too, lady."

  She stood a moment, her face composed as a madonna's. Then gave a little resigned twitch of her shoulders and said "Come in," opening the door, stepping aside, closing it behind him.

  Ulring paused in the act of pulling off his hat He saw the two open trunks on the sola floor, one already stuffed lid-high with household articles. He must have interrupted her packing of the other. It was half-filled with clothes, and she had other clothes laid out, draped over the sofa and chairs. He swept his hat in a slow quarter-circle.

  "Now what's all this?"

  "I'm packing my things."

  She picked up a dress and began to fold it. He looked at the stuff again. This was no visit she was going on, not with everything but the kitchen stove in tow.

  "Beth—" He tried an indulgent chuckle. "Now listen, what is this? Are you thinking of leaving us?"

  "Not thinking, Frank." She raised her eyes. "I am leaving. For good and all. I'm going back to Boston."

  "But this is your home. Everything…"

  "Is being packed, as you can see. Mr. Rodriguez will put up the house for sale and send me the money when it's sold."

  "That greaser? You expect him to…"

  He let the words trail. There was a look in her face he had never seen. Not hatred—quite. Loathing perhaps. Or pity.

  "That's very typical, Frank. But I should know by now who my friends are. I think I do."

  She bent back to her work. Ulring gazed at her, swaying a little. His hat crushed to a damp ball in his fist at his side.

  "Why, Beth? Can you tell me why?"

  "All my living ties are in Boston. Why not? I have nothing here."

  "There's the school."

  "Summer vacation begins shortly. The town can bring in another teacher by fall."

  "All right!" He set his hands on the back of a chair and leaned across it. "What about us, then? You and me?"

  "What about us, Frank? I don't recall any understanding between us, do you?"

  Silence ticked in his head like a clock. The small rustlings as she packed the trunk rasped his nerves like miniature files. Finally he said raggedly:

  "That night. The time Claude was killed. The kid was here, wasn't he? Came to see you. He talked to you."

  "Yes, we talked."

  "You believed him. Goddam it, didn't you? Took that killer's word over mine."

  "Tell me something, Frank—" She picked up another dress and shook it out. "Why did you tell those men to shoot to kill, after you'd given me your promise to take Will-Joe alive?"

  "I wanted to spare you, that's why." He could be facile in this, having prepared an answer long ago. "It was a bad promise, I admit it. That kid is a rattlesnake. I knew it even if you didn't. And I was damned if I was going to risk the lives of good men taking him. Decent men… you know them. Didn't they deserve that much edge over a thieving, murdering breed?"

  A little smile tweaked the corners of her lips; she shook her head very slightly.

  "What does that mean?"

  "That I won't argue with you. Think what you please. You always did."

  "No argument, eh? No more pretty excuses. No horse manure about the pore little Injun bastard we all helped make what he is."

  "Well, I'd imagine you can recite it all for yourself now, Frank. Like a poem out of McGuffey's."

  He stared at her, feeling the raw heat stream from his brain through his whole body, desiring her in this moment of losing her as he never had before, seeing how lamplight made ivory of her flesh and limned with deep shadow the underswells of two breasts that were large and lovely, firm as ripe fruits. The fantasy he had entertained many times shook him with a fanged fury, peeling away demure gingham and dainty camisole, revealing her naked and bedded, red-gold hair fanned like flame on a white pillow, all her beauty pulsing only for him.

  "Yeah… never had a chance." He stared; a muscle jerked in his cheek. "A man makes his chances. I always said so."

  "Frank…" Her eyes moved across his face. "I think you'd better leave."

  "Not tonight."

  The chair was between them. His hands tightened and flung it aside. He caught her by the shoulders and saw her eyes dilate and her mouth open. "Don't scream, Beth!" He jammed his hand over her mouth and his arm snaked around her waist like a cable, crushing her against him. With his face inches from hers, he said:

  "Now you hear me. You're not dumb. You know what I waited for two years… what I wanted. You wanted it too. I saw it like reading a book. Now you wanted it right, didn't you, all legal with ribbons on it? Sure. So did I. That miserable worthless pipsqueak, what was he, what good was he to anyone, least of all you? That's what I cut out of your life, like you cut off a gangrene foot." He raised his hand a quarter-inch from her mouth. "You ought to see that, what I really did, why I did it."

  "You're hurting me."

  Slowly, very slowly, he let go of her and she backed away a few steps. He followed her, keeping close, ready to grab her again if she tried to scream.

  "I see it, Frank." Her head moved from side to side, and he saw she was afraid now. "But you don't. Oh God, you don't see it at all."

  "What?" He put out his hand but stopped it short of her, his eyes stark as a wolf's, shaking with lust. "What don't I?"

  "Everything—"

  Her eyes were inured to him. Repudiation. Loss. It howled in his mind.

  His hand reached and seized and tore, ripping gingham. Pearly flesh shone and his eyes moved and softened and gently his hand moved, caressing, not holding. God, more beauty than he had dreamed, he could be tender, just let her be—

  The shrinking ripple of her flesh was communicated to his dreamily exploring hand. Instinct shot the hand up to lock her throat and throttled her scream on the first note. He shook her. Bitch. Strumpet. Whore. Good enough for the fondlings of a green-gutted worm like McAllister, but not for Ulring, eh? Your white flesh is an abomination and by whatever God no man will touch it, not when I've done—

  His hand became a vise. Her eyes glazed. Her fingers taloned on his hand and furrowed downward. Pain splinter
ed his fury. He swung her and let go and she was flung away, crashing against the wall.

  She hung there, her throat working soundlessly. Her eyes cleared but the expression in them did not change. Bitch. Harlot. He tramped toward her, shoulders up, his arms hanging. He reached again, both hands now lifting to her throat—

  Through the red haze he dimly knew that her right hand was moving, coming up past his sliver of awareness so that the elbow he raised to block it was too late. Something shattered against his head like a bomb.

  All went black for an instant. Then he was on his knees, waggling his head from side to side, hands clasped over his ringing ears. Feet running, a door slamming open, running again and then silence. Christ Jesus. He gazed down, holding his head. Broken bits of a glass chimney, the reek of coal oil. She had scooped a dead lamp off the table by the wall and swept it up at his head. What had hit him? The lamp's weighted base, that was it. Christ. He was bleeding over the ear. He looked at the bright smear on his palm with a vague feeling of surprise.

  Ulring staggered to his feet, leaning against the wall with his head down. The whirling floor steadied. All right, bitch, where are you? He remembered the sound of running. Ah, kitchen. Back way. Swaying uncertainly, he moved through the darkened house and stopped at the kitchen door. It hung wide open.

  He blinked at the night. "Beth," he said gently.

  He stood there a full minute, then tramped back to the sala. He stared broodingly at the trunks. His rioting tendrils of thought knotted back to a kernel of wet fury.

  He seized hold of the trunk of household goods, veins squirming in his temples as he strained it up and heaved it over. He kicked and stomped, crushing pans, smashing crockery, demolishing glassware. But his attention veered almost at once to the other trunk. Clothes. Hers. Things of daintiness, intimacy, night-things. He fingered a nightgown, pale thing of smoke and cobweb, then made fists and yanked them savagely apart till the gown hung in two shreds. He went through the trunk, pitching everything on the floor, tearing and trampling as he went. His spurs hooked in a delicate swirl of silk; he kicked and it tore like paper.