by Alan Lemay
Almost ten seconds after breath ended, Matthilda’s eyes opened, and turned right and left, as if searching the upper corners of her room. Rachel had heard of a final flare-up of consciousness in the last moment before death, and she wanted to cry out some word of good-by, but she was unable. Later she blamed herself, for she believed a smile would have come to Matthilda’s lips as she died, if Rachel had been able to speak.
Rachel drew the sheet over Matthilda’s face. Andy still stood looking down at the lifeless form, his face twisting and his breath coming hard, as he tried not to cry.
“The ladle,” Rachel reminded him. “I’ll do what’s left to be done, here.”
He nodded, and went back to his work. He was sniffling as he went, and wiping his nose on his bare arm; but his hands were still sure as he squatted upon the hearth.
The sun went down, and the ruddiness went out of the last daylight, but the drums kept on, building again and again from a softly pulsing beginning to a thunderous climax. Sometimes the off-key, “Hiyah, hiyah,” of medicine songs could be heard. Rachel brought water and clean clothes to the bedroom, and closed the door.
Alone, she put a bandage over the eyes, so that they would rest closed, and another to hold shut the jaw. As she bathed the body she marveled a little, as she sometimes had before, at how smooth and white Matthilda’s shoulders were, in contrast to her work-stringy forearms and gnarled hands. They’ll never touch you, she promised silently. They’ll never take away your pretty hair.
The body seemed an impersonal thing, as Matthilda had wanted it to seem. Something lay here, but too much else was gone. Like Matthilda’s dream of how she wanted them to live, someday, after the one great cattle year that had only just now come. She had held in mind a pleasant town—a country sort of town, as you saw it when she described it, yet with shiny touches of elegance about it, too. The houses, all painted white with green shutters, stood along mudless streets, where carriages wheeled handsomely in the shade of old trees. Each house lived in a picket-fenced garden, with sweet williams and cornflowers, and hollyhocks for a tall backing, and candytuft along the walks; and, of course, plenty of pansies. On quiet Sunday mornings the church bells tolled slowly, a peaceful sound, sweetly solemn. And in this town the time of the year seemed always to be early summer.
Rachel tried to think of Matthilda as having gone to such a place, but she could not. She had no feeling that Matthilda was anywhere at all.
She brushed the white hair, which still seemed to have more cool light in it than there was in the room, and dressed the body in Matthilda’s best clothes. The materials were pitifully cheap and worn, but well sewed, by Matthilda’s own hands. She stripped the bed, freshening it with one of their two best sheets, and covering Matthilda with the other one.
It happened to her the minute I was born. She could be alive and well, and taking care of her boys. She could have enjoyed them a long time. Except for me.
Unlike the others, she had a clear conviction as to what had caused this death. She believed that Matthilda had quite literally died of a broken heart. Yet…she had been sure of this for too long to feel it greatly, now that the inevitable was past. What she felt was a great weight of tiredness, held up by a single thin wire of resolution containing all her strength.
Chapter Forty
An hour had passed, but the slow twilight was still clear, and the drums were going as before, as she came out of the bedroom and closed the door.
“Well, anyhow,” Andy said, “these here will be the first toy soldiers ever did really fight, I guess. I stretched ’em into twenty more thirty-six caliber. For your Whitney.”
“That was rattle-headed.” Her tone was inert, and sounded cold, even to herself. “What will you do when the Walker’s empty?”
“I always got my knife,” he said—and immediately saw that he didn’t. “Hey—you seen my skin-out knife?”
She went back into the bedroom and got Andy’s narrow-bladed sheath knife, and his belt, from under her mattress.
“I figure you better wear this,” he said. “I’ll punch more holes in the belt, so’s you can—Oh. Somebody already….” He buckled the belt around her, and used the knife to cut off the long tag of strap left over. For himself he got the Bowie they used for a carver, and stuck it in his waistband, punching the blade through the cloth.
They laid out their weapons, and the few loads. Once it was dark, anything that became mislaid would be lost forever. Rachel put six rim-fires in the pocket of her dress, for refilling the Henry’s magazine, and fetched the loading kit for the Whitney revolver. Each cylinder had to be charged with loose powder, then a ball and patch rammed home with the lever under the barrel, and a cap must be stuck on each nipple. She laid the things needed beside the powder horn on a corner of the table, where her hands could find them in the dark. Andy got the ax, and stood it by the door.
Now the drums built up to one more climax, and did not start again. They left a silence that rang in the ears. Andy said wonderingly, “Why, it’s just as if Mama has gone out there, and stopped them some way.”
Rachel said, “Stopped? They’re starting now, more like.”
Again the back wall brought them the sound of hoofs trampling about, somewhere nearby. But the horse movement formed no pattern, other than an unreadable shuffling about, and in a little while was quiet.
“Oh, say—by the way—” Andy had his eye glued to a loop-hole, and he kept it there. He was trying to sound about four times more casual than he knew how to do. “Remember to save your last shot. You will, won’t you? Count careful—just awful careful—every time you let off the six-gun. Because you’ll need one more, if they ever get in. You know?”
She didn’t answer him. She threw a bucket of water on the fire, and stepped away from the answering explosion of steam.
“Rachel? Did you hear?”
“I heard you, Andy.” No use arguing. But she had no intention of wasting even one lead soldier on herself, no matter what.
“The main thing is—” He broke off, and jumped for the buffalo gun. He had to replace its lost-off cap, and his hands shook as he tried to be quick about it.
Rachel got to a door loop. The twilight had lessened, but it was still clear. She saw at once what had roused him up. Two Kiowas sat their horses on the far slope of the Dancing Bird, above the holding corrals. Even at two hundred yards, and in failing light, she could not mistake the black and red snakes painted all over Wolf Saddle’s body, or the broad black and yellow bands that identified Seth. Immediately Andy’s .69 let go with its heavy blast.
A buffalo horn vanished from the side of Seth’s headdress; he was nine-tenths knocked off his horse, and almost went under its belly, but pulled himself up. She saw him pull off the remains of the war bonnet, and slam it down, before she turned away.
Andy was pouring a second full measure of gun-powder down the buffalo gun. “Oh, damn! That was Seth! Seth!”
He had missed a chance to take half the hell-fire out of the hostiles, and maybe lift the siege altogether, with a single shot. She judged he would have to be straightened out, if they were to be here long. “Had to shoot at his head, didn’t you? And yanked on the trigger, too—fit to bust it off! Why do you—”
“She kicked high on me,” Andy stuttered, almost in tears. “Honest, I centered square on his bellybutton! What-all powder did Ben have in this thing—a gallon? I should have drug down with my whole weight—” He banged home the rammer, and fitted a cap.
“Put that thing down! That’s her last charge, you’ve got in her now!”
“That’s Seth sitting out there—will you hear me? And Wolf Saddle with him—”
“Well, they’re not sitting out there any more.” Lowtoned, unhurried, she went on to take him apart; then put him back together again. “What was all that scrabbling around? You looked something like a man trying to wash a cat. You know better than that. Now get your dang head up, by God! Because we’ve wasted the last shot we’re going to. The
re’s not a man in Texas shoots any better than you do. Or handles anything else any better, either. So take your time. There’s a power of Kiowas out there, now. But come morning, they’re going to be mighty few. And you’ll be sitting with pancakes and honey to your fry-meat. Because that’s what I’m going to fix.”
He lowered the hammer of the big .69 to halfcock, set the weapon aside, and stood rubbing his shoulder. When he finally managed the shadow of a grin, she knew he was all right.
And now the Kiowas came, without gunfire, without war cries, without any sound heard within at all, until fifty-pound boulders crashed against both shutters at once, splitting the timbers, and loosening the deep-anchored frames. Others followed, and the same again, over and over, shattering the heavy wood….
Chapter Forty-one
After the fourth attack, not much was left of the battle shutters. Andy had split up the table to brace what busted pieces the first and second assaults had left hanging; and after the third they had tied up the splits and splinters into sort of a net with strings of rawhide they had saved to make a reata. But now only some long splinters remained, stuck picketwise along the sills.
For a while they had very easily defended the opened window holes from the opposite wall. The moon was up, and Seth was running out of warriors interested in silhouetting themselves for closerange guns within. Three had been hit there, but the only Kiowa surely killed was one who was shot in the throat, and fell inside. He bled in streams, and though they heaved him out as soon as they could, he left such a great, slippery puddle that Rachel had to fetch ashes by the bucket, to restore the footing.
In the fourth assault the Kiowas had used more gunfire, and used it better, than in any previous attempt. They had found out that those inside were covering the windows from positions at the back wall. Their riflemen fanned out, using the creek bed as an entrenchment; and a heavy blanketing fire poured in. If Andy and Rachel had not gone forward at the first shot, they might very easily have been killed in the next three seconds. They stayed against the front wall after that, reduced to taking in enfilade whoever might choose to climb in.
As the fire lifted, one quick rush was made, in files from both ends of the house. War hatchets struck the splinters away, and a leg came over the east sill. Andy all but severed it with a swing of the ax; and then stepped out from the wall to fire three times into a muddle of shadows at the other embrasure. The Kiowas broke off.
Now there was a letup, during which they had time to deal with a buck who was fooling around with an idea of his own. This one had lodged himself outside an end port with a single-shot. He couldn’t see anything inside, apparently; maybe didn’t want to put his face to the loop. He kept poking his rifle into the room to fire blind, at random angles. Except for the near corners, no part of the room was safe from him. Andy squirmed and dodged to the end wall, and stood waiting with raised ax.
Moonlight slanted through a shutterless window to shine cleanly on the bright-metal muzzle as it next appeared. Andy’s ax struck hard, and perhaps buckled the weapon’s barrel, for they knew by the odd sound of its explosion that the breech blew up. The barrel was driven deeper into the room, and stayed there, pointing at the floor.
“Never, never in all my life,” Rachel said, “did I hear of ’em hanging on like this. Not even for revenge—they’re satisfied to take any old scalp, anywhere, for that. Oh, Andy, what’s happening here?”
Andy wouldn’t admit he saw anything special about it. “Just one night? It’s common.”
“When they’re hurt like we’ve hurt ’em?”
“We don’t hit ’em as square as we hope,” Andy thought now. “I’m only sure we killed about one. Maybe two. I don’t know.”
“I could have stopped this, once,” Rachel said, and Andy had never heard a like bitterness in her tone. “I know what I’m called. I’m a red nigger. Cash should have let me go.”
“That’s nothing but Abe Kelsey’s damn lie! You’re Rachel Zachary, and don’t you forget it!”
I am Rachel Zachary. I said that once. Long ago. The day the world fell down…. “Seth believes it. Lost Bird even—”
“They’d never believe Kelsey. Not in a thousand years! He only drummed on it, till he put it in their heads.”
“All right.” If there was any difference, she didn’t see it.
“Most likely one of ’em had a medicine dream. That’s how they get to believe any old damn thing they want to, that ain’t so. Like, some of ’em think they’re bullet-proof. A critter that can believe that can believe anything. And that’s what happened. One of ’em wanted to own you, so he had a medicine dream. Or said he did.”
“They don’t even know what I look like,” she rejected it.
“Don’t they? They’ve watched you dozens of times. From the creek bed. From the ridge. From the brush.”
“You’d have found their tracks!”
“Yes,” Andy said oddly. “Time and again. Only Ben told us to shut up. One of them wants you for his squaw—or one of his squaws. We should have allowed for that. My guess is Wolf Saddle. I’m willing to bet…”
“Sure,” she said, and now the bitter edge could have whispered just as softly if it were slicing through a bull hide shield. “I’d make a good squaw. A dingin’ squaw. Once they fattened me up.”
Suddenly he turned angry. With her? Maybe with the world. “Don’t you play ignorant with me! Because I don’t give a hoot in hell where at you were born, or who to, or who by. I’m your brother. Raised that way, and I aim to stay that. Right up to the last breath I draw—and one long spit beyond!”
He got up, his bare feet silent, and went to set his ear against the back wall.
“And another thing,” he said, through the moon-tempered dark. “You’re not an Indian—not a red-nigger kind, nor a Civilized Nation kind, nor any other kind. So quit fooling around with the notion you might be, you hear?”
But I am. If I’d been a boy, and raised among ’em, I’d be Seth—no, Lost Bird. I’m a girl—so I’d be one of Wolf Saddle’s squaws. And I may be, yet—until the first time I lay holt of a knife—Suddenly a hard twist of disgust sickened her, for she realized that a knife in someone’s belly was exactly what an Indian would think of, as easily as he breathed. She remembered what Hagar had said about the knife work of squaws, if they were on hand for a massacre…their bloodied hands…
Andy made his round of the lookouts and came back to her. He spoke softly, from close by. “I didn’t go to sound so mean, and cross. It isn’t you I’m mad at, Rachel. Ever.”
The gentleness of his tone betrayed her, and she let herself slump, where she sat at the foot of the wall. He sat down close beside her. Awkwardly, but without self-consciousness, he took her in his arms, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, his cheek against her hair. He said, “You’re the best sister anybody ever had. You’re more than that. You’re all the family I’ve got left, for all I know.” They had no reason to think anything had happened to Ben; but apparently, in his exhaustion, Andy was willing to concede that Ben was lost to them too. But—“We’ll fight ’em to a stand-still,” he said doggedly. “Forever, if they want. Just you and me. So long as you stand by me, I’ll fight ’em till hell freezes. And then pelt ’em with ice.”
He made her cry, at last. She wept grudgingly, without sound, holding onto him tightly; and presently she knew that he was crying a little, too. No way out, she was thinking. No way out, ever. No matter what happens, now….
Or maybe there was. For now the Kiowas came again, in the weirdest way yet.
Chapter Forty-two
This time they didn’t need the telltale back wall to hear the horses come. They came fast, and from not far out, in a thundering storm; and the war cries clamored as never before. A few guns fired wild through the empty windows, without object, other than added noise. The two stood with their backs against the forward wall, watching for any part of a Kiowa to show inside; but no dismounted warriors came.
Instead,
a heavy bump shook the very walls, and the door strained inward; clods and plaster fell, loosened by the yielding anchorage of the frame. A Kiowa rider was backing his horse against the door. It would go, in a couple of seconds, driven inward by a thousand pounds of bone and straining muscle. Andy got there, cocking the Walker, and for an instant Rachel was certain Andy would be pinned as the door crashed in. The bulging planks sprung a sudden three inches, spoiling his first shot, but the Walker slammed again, and the door snapped straight. The Kiowa horseman was on the stoop, and would stay there until picked up; and his horse was splashing through the Dancing Bird.
The attack on the door made plain the whole secret of their precarious defense. They could keep only two guns going—but there were only two ways in. Seth must know that now; he had tried to make another way. But this kind of an attempt on the massive door was almost certain death, with the door loopholes placed as they were. All this racket and display had to have some other object than the backing in of one horse as a ram, for although the Kiowas had given up on the door, their yelling riders still circled the house.
A new hoof-rumble began on the roof itself; boards cracked, in spite of the depth of sod on top, and showers of dirt fell. All this was bewildering, but without visible sense. Rachel did not know what snatched her attention to the back wall. Surely she could have heard nothing more; and when she tried to peer into the shadows the small indirect light of the moon was not enough to tell her what she saw. She went to the root-cellar slide, and bent low.
A split had appeared in the boards of the slide. As she watched, the blade of a hatchet struck through, and was wrenched back. She pulled the .36 revolver Andy had made her wear, and fired wildly three times through the slide as the hatchet struck again. The hatchet blade stayed where it was, stuck halfway through, into the room. Andy was trying to shout something to her, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She got down on the floor, which might have been what he wanted her to do. She dared not leave the slide, yet to stay by it left Andy with the defense of both windows in front, and a weakened door that would probably go down, now, before any kind of a ram.