Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  “I always did say you could have sent him back.” Fredi looked embarrassed and defensive. “Well, I did!”

  “Not much help, Fredi,” Hansi sighed. Magda noted that for once, he looked his age, weary beyond words. “He is not happy. I will be the first to admit. We had such hopes that all would be as it should have been; that he would become ours again as readily as did Grete, and it would only take some little time.”

  “You do not have enough time.” Magda spoke kind and stern; things were past the time of sparing feelings. It was time to be honest, for everyone’s sake. “Grete was a little child, still. This one thinks he is a man, and he will not be kept wrapped in cotton-wool while he forgets five times the number of years that his sister spent among them. Will you wait until he harms someone, fighting? Or steals a horse and meets up with a posse, a rope and a strong tree branch? I think not, Hansi.” Hansi sighed again, acknowledging the truth of her words. “So, what do we do with him? He cannot work in any of our stores. He knows no more of letters and numbers than a baby.”

  “I’d take him north on a trail drive with me,” Fredi allowed, “just to get him away from the city. He knows horses, doesn’t he then?” He chuckled at his own wit.

  Hansi immediately looked more cheerful. “That would knock some of the idiocy out of him, hey? Nothing like working a young sprout stupid to keep him out of trouble!”

  “Save that once we crossed into Indian Territory, I could trust him with one of my own horses no farther than I would throw them both,” Fredi added, depressingly. “No, not such a good idea, perhaps. Sorry, Hansi. ”

  “He could come up to our place and work the round-up, though,” Sam spoke for the first time. He seemed quite cheerfully surprised when everyone turned to look at him. “I’d make sure he was busy enough. Setting him to work with horses and cattle—it’s not like letters and numbers would do him any good anyway. I think Mama and I could convince him to stay and work . . . wouldn’t you, Mama?” he added with an anxious look in Magda’s direction.

  Hansi chuckled, with heavy wit, “None dares disobey your Mama, Samuel! I daresay she can even make our wayward son behave himself!”

  “So what do you say, Mama?” Sam looked as pleading as he had, that summer day that Mr. Berg the hermit brought them a puppy to train up as a watchdog. The Hanging Band had poisoned their former watch dog before Carl Becker’s murder. “May we take Cousin Willi home with us?”

  “Please, Magda?” Liesel whispered. “You will take care of him? Please? For me? I cannot bear to have him with us, but to think of him outcast . . . .” She dissolved into tears again. There was nothing for it but to acquiesce.

  “We will take him to the ranch,” Magda sighed. “But I should like to speak to him, now that this has been decided. And we must remain at least until the baby is born.”

  “Of course,” Hansi agreed, already much cheered, “I will have George bring him down.”

  “No,” Magda answered, “I will go to him. If you will excuse me,” She rose, as all the gentlemen arose, and took her leave of Hansi’s paneled study.

  She climbed the stairs, rehearsing in her mind what she might say to her nephew. She dismissed George, and tapped lightly on the door. Receiving no answer and thinking that he might very well have climbed out the window again, she turned the cut-glass knob and went in. Willi lay flat on the bedstead, looking up at the ceiling overhead with eyes which clearly saw something other than ornate plasterwork. He didn’t speak or look in her direction and Magda snorted—so that’s how he wished to play it. She had no doubts about him being Hansi’s true son. All of his brothers had been sullen and disobliging at that age.

  “Willi,” she commanded crisply, “I have something to tell you. Samuel and I are taking you to our ranch in the hills, in a day or so. You have had enough time to loaf around. This is not good, when there is work to be done.”

  “Women’s work!” he answered scornfully, still not looking in her direction.

  “Not women’s work,” she corrected him sternly. “Men’s work. Not silly games with bows and arrows. Work with horses, hunting for our cattle.”

  His face, she noted, was still smeared and crusted with blood. There were already purple bruises under his eyes, and bruises from Peter’s fingers on his throat. He appeared appallingly young, terribly lost. She took a towel from the washstand and dampened it from the water pitcher. He flinched away from her, still scowling. “Hold still!” she commanded him again and began daubing at his face.

  “Not a game,” he insisted, screwing his face up as she scrubbed at the dried blood. “Practice. My father showed me the same.”

  “Hansi? Shot arrows at you?” She was astonished. “Don’t be silly, he never did any such thing.

  “Not him,” he answered, scornfully, “my Indian father, Pahchokotovt, the Black Otter.” To that, there was very little to say, since it was so plain already. Magda squeezed out the cloth and again daubed at his face. Really, he was another one such as her husband had been, not much inclined to talk about those things and people who mattered most to him. In all of Carl Becker’s life he had only brought himself to speak to her more than two or three times of his older brother Rudi, cut down in the massacre at Goliad when he was a boy hardly older than this one was.

  “You should tell me about him, then,” Magda commanded. “About that family. Which I hope does not include the husband of a sister who tries to choke the life out of you. Otherwise, you will not gain much in returning to them.”

  “No,” he made a sound which she thought might have been a laugh, but that it made his face and throat hurt. “Only a brother. He is dead at the Adobe Walls fight. He believed the medicine man who said he had painted himself with a magic paint. Bullets would not harm him. He lied.” Willi shrugged, his voice flat and toneless as if he had squeezed all emotion, all grief out of it. “I did not want to come here. But Bald Head of the Agency, he said I must. So did my father. He came to me and said, ‘Oh my son, the Bald Head says you have a father living who has searched long for you. As I have loved you, so must this white father love you also. As I grieve so will he have grieved.’ My mother, Ta'yetchy—She Who Rises at Dawn—she wept and cut her arms, hearing this. But my father was not moved.”

  “He sounds like an honorable man,” Magda commented, although the words nearly choked her, to say such about a man who might very well have been one of the raiders who had tortured Rosalie.

  “He is a brave warrior,” Willi affirmed stoutly. “He took many horses, led many raids against our enemies.”

  “How did he come to be your father?” Magda asked. She could not bear to ask if this Black Otter was one of those who had led the raid into the Pedernales, in that year after the war.

  “He gave a horse to the man who owned me. I could not carry wood or water, having broken my leg. The old woman who once was wife to his father thought I showed promise.” Willi shrugged again, his face still expressionless, “If I did not, she still would have a slave. I crawled to the next camp. The old woman helped me. She told Black Otter I might make a warrior after all. He gave a horse to my owner and brought me to his lodge. He said that I would be brother to his son. That is all.” And he pressed his lips together and would not say any more. Magda reflected philosophically that it was more than anyone else had ever gotten him to say. When his face was as clean as she could get it, Magda returned to her original plan.

  “My sons and I returned to our land. We have many cattle there now. We think you should come to work there. We also have many horses,” she added, with calculation. “And my sons say the hunting is very fine. Would you like to do that?” His response was an indifferent shrug. Remorselessly she pressed on. “We will pay a salary of thirty dollars a month. If you choose instead, you may have a horse every two months. Are we agreed?” Another indifferent shrug. Magda rose from the chair where she had sat to clean his face. “Then I ask a promise; that you work for us loyally. You will not run away. You will not treat my sister so.
”

  “My Indian mother is Ta'yetchy, She Who Rises at Dawn. The fat white woman is nothing,” he explained, with cruel indifference. “But horses are all. I will work so.”

  And with that, she had to be content.

  * * *

  Letter to Princess Irina Cherkevsky, written from the B-R Ranch, Near Comfort, Kendall County, April 15, 1876:

  My dear Irina;

  My fears regarding my prodigal nephew, miraculously returned from captivity amongst the savage Indians, were in the end fully justified. He has been given into my care, by my sister and Brother Hansi, following upon a series of unfortunate events and one propitious one. Anna has given birth to a healthy daughter, who has been christened Rose, in dear memory of our own younger sister, so cruelly slain when he and his sister were first taken captive. Upon her safe delivery, my younger son and I took our departure with Willi in custody, leaving Lottie to remain at school until the end of term.

  I own that I am not particularly solicitous upon his needs and his moods, as my sister was wont to be—indeed I am most indifferent. Do I seem a cruel and distant parent? Perhaps—but I have been inclined to treat my children as adults as soon as they gave evidence of responsibility and consideration to others, and they have so richly rewarded me! But my nephew; such are the oddities of his present character that he has been—if not particularly amiable in his address to me, at least considerably less hostile than he was to my poor sister! As you have counseled me, such are the ardors of men—nothing excites like indifference, romantically or otherwise!

  His older brother George departed with us. He is taking over management of a mercantile establishment in Comfort—do we not appear to be the very Rothschilds or de Medicis of commerce? Indeed, I think that Brother Hansi’s plan is to have a son, a nephew, or a grandson or some other connection or relative conducting profitable commerce in every important town of this part of Texas.

  I own that I am very glad to be returning to the ranch and the house that my husband built for me and that my son has so enlarged upon. Summers in the lowlands are most uncomfortably hot, but the hills are always somewhat cooler, so green and beautiful. There was a most curious incident, when we passed through Comfort and spent the afternoon at the store . . .

  Willi was not much interested in the shop, or what it contained, halfway along Comfort’s main street. They paused there at midday to let down George and his study valise. Willi and Sam had gone on horseback from San Antonio, but George rode with Magda in the sturdy old two-horse ambulance that, for all of Hansi’s riches, everyone vowed was still the most comfortable and commodious way to journey over a long distance. George had so little in common and less to say to his own brother, Magda realized sorrowfully. They drew up in front of the store building, already organized and opened by some local lads whom Hansi, at her advising, had hired as clerks. No, it was a mad dream that Willi would ever fall in with Hansi’s grand mercantile plans. She saw that now, by the contemptuous disinterest of expression as he looked at the place; tidy and stone-built, the very epitome of the German towns. The shop had rooms over it, already furnished, in which it was planned for George to live. Like Jacob and Elias, George was trained up to commerce and transport, having worked for Hansi since he was tall enough to climb into a wagon and take up the driving reins.

  “We will break our journey here and see to getting George settled,” she commanded the boys, as the tied their horses to the railing in front of the store building. “An hour or so, at most.”

  “We’re nearly home, then.” Sam clapped his cousin on the shoulder. “So let’s go find a drink, something to cut the dust!” Willi didn’t look terribly enthused about the prospect, but he followed after Sam.

  The inside of the store was dim, even though the double doors stood open to the street for light and fresh air. Magda looked around with approval; very tidy, as were all of the stores which she, Hansi and the boys had opened. The air was redolent with the smells of cheese, cured meat, coffee, dry goods, and a faint tang of kerosene. At the back of the store one of the young clerks was deep in discussion with a customer, a farmer in work clothes worn and threadbare. He was pleading in English for some consideration, for which the clerk shook his head. Both of them turned around at hearing George and Magda’s footsteps.

  “Oh, Mr. Richter, Madame Becker,” the young clerk blurted with relief, “I am glad you are here. I cannot make Mr. Tackett understand that I may not extend credit to him, since his farm is outside this district and I do not know him.”

  “It is our customary practice,” George answered, unhappy at having to admit it. “And we cannot make too many exceptions.”

  He did not like doing this; no young person of sensitivity liked to turn away someone in need. But if this young farmer was not known in the district, then who knew anything of his ability or inclination to pay his debts? It was a fine line, Magda knew to her cost. Too many a shopkeeper had been bankrupted by extending credit where it was not deserved.

  The farmer turned his shapeless wide-brimmed hat in his hands. “I’m Sullivan Tackett—folks call me Sul—and I ain’t asking for all that much.” He was a young man, his face and hands sprinkled with mud-colored freckles, but already aged by hard labor in the out of doors, seeming proud but already diminished by the necessity of pleading with a shopkeeper. “Ma’am,” he nodded towards Magda with the courtly courtesy that the Americans usually extended towards women, “we’re just looking for just enough to tide us over the summer, till the crops come in an’ I bring the corn to the mill. I wouldn’t ask for myself, Ma’am,” he swallowed, seeming to steel himself for the ultimate abasement, the final dismantling of his manly pride, “but that I have three chirren, ma’am. We’re down to eating mush, with nettles and greens and cactus fruit. I dasn’t go hunting for game, can’t afford any more bullets no-how.”

  Sul Tackett turned his hat once more in his hands; just so had the Browns always looked so poor and no-account, rich in nothing but pride. But the Browns lived their hardscrabble life because they chose to, and this man had no choice. Magda wondered briefly if he was a connection of theirs, for he looked familiar enough.

  He turned his face full to hers, and she felt a prickling sensation down the back of her spine. Yes, she knew him—or not precisely knew him, but recognized him. She had stared at his freckled face, over the sights of Carl Becker’s Paterson. This was the young Confederate soldier who with his fellows had played a game of tormenting their dog, who had pointed their weapons at Sam as other soldiers looted the Becker place of everything valuable; even turning the chickens out of their pen, tumbling the filled milk pans onto the cellar floor, and smashing every stick of furniture. And then they had fired the barn and the bunkhouse, sending Magda and her children away in the dung cart, having taken from them in the space of less than an hour all that it had taken fifteen years of patient and careful labor to acquire!

  Magda felt as if she were turned to stone, turned to ice, her own heart frozen in her chest. It would hurt her to breathe. How dare he! How dare he come begging, after having cheerfully taken part in that robbery? “Oh, yes, be afraid,” she had raged on that awful day as she held the Paterson on him, “you in your homespun grey uniform… Be afraid, so afraid you are pissing yourself like an infant. Be afraid. You thought to amuse yourself tormenting a child and his pet, and now you see retribution, a fury in widow’s black . . . Your friends also frightened; they stand there uncertainly, not knowing what to do. They could shoot me, but then everyone will laugh at them.”

  “Ma’am?” queried Sul Tackett uncertainly. Magda made herself breathe, once and then again, realizing with a sense of both wonder and annoyance that he did not recognize her at all. In fact, George and his young clerk were now looking between them, not quite daring to say anything at all before Magda spoke. No, this was her decision.

  Just then, there was another light footstep in the doorway and Sam’s cheerful voice, “Mama, are you nearly ready? I can’t talk Willi into a drink a
t all, so why waste the time?”

  Magda looked towards her younger son; no, he wouldn’t have recognized this man. He had been a child, a child too caught up with rescuing his pet to pay much attention otherwise. The constriction around her throat loosened as Sam strolled farther into the store. What a contrast there was between them at this moment! Her son, with his open, happy face, his work clothes trail-dusty and worn but not to raggedness; full-blessed with prosperity and going to a comfortable home, the home they had reclaimed. This man, Sul Tackett, once one of their persecutors, now was marked with defeat and poverty. He was, Magda realized, going home from here to—as he said in his plea—a meal of corn mush and whatever wild greens his wife and children had been able to glean. Who could have foreseen such a reversal of fortunes, when the Beckers had been robbed in a single hour of home, property, and land? Now they had prospered and the Confederacy’s adherents had suffered, tasting to the last drop the bitter dregs of a cup of defeat and humiliation, of disenfranchisement, of slavery being abolished for once and all. Even the much-scorned Union Army, upon their return to the frontier, had been able to force the Indians to abandon their raids into Texas for once and all. It was over, Magda realized, accepting the final proof with a sense of wonder and relief—it was at last over. She and her children, why, they had won! Could anyone doubt that, looking between the two young men?