Hondo (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Turning, she went to him and thrust it back into the pocket from which it had fallen.

  For a long time she sat at the table, staring at the rain-streaked window. There was nothing to think of now, nothing to wait for. There was only the night and the steady rain falling, and the quiet, good sound of a man breathing heavily in his sleep. She knelt beside the fire, and banked it with a log, and then another, gathering the coals close.

  When she got up, she brushed her hands down, straightening her apron. She looked over at his broad back, at muscles relaxed and sleeping now. She wanted to touch him, to put her hand upon his hair….

  She turned quickly to her own bed and began to undress. A large drop hissed on the dying coals, a stick popped loudly. There was rain on the roof, but it was quiet in the house, and there was no fear. The man was back.

  CHAPTER 16

  WHEN SHE AWAKENED it was daylight and the house was silent. Suddenly, and with a start, she realized that Johnny was gone, and so was Hondo.

  Glancing through the window, she could see Hondo at the corral, Johnny beside him. They were pitching hay to the horses. Quickly she dressed.

  The ground was wet, and rain dripped from the eaves, but the rain had stopped for the moment. There was no break in the clouds. When she had breakfast started she returned to the mirror and fixed her hair more carefully.

  When she opened the door, Hondo glanced around. “Breakfast is ready!” she called, and he started to the barn with the fork. Together they trudged toward the house, and after Johnny had bathed, Hondo followed.

  His hair was freshly combed when he came in, but he was favoring his bandaged hand and his shoulder was stiff. He avoided her eyes, seating himself quickly. They ate in silence, and when his cup was empty she reached for the pot. “More coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  He was silent, brooding. Once he started to speak, then stopped.

  “After breakfast you’d better take off your shirt and let me fix it.”

  He gulped his coffee, then said quickly, “Not before I show you something.”

  He took the tintype from his pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it, and then at him.

  “Did Ed give it to you?”

  “No. I took it off his body.”

  She had known this. She had felt it from the moment she saw the tintype with the bullet scar. Now she waited, but she felt nothing. There was nothing to feel. Later, she knew she would. But Ed…For months now he had seemed like somebody who had never really been. Like someone who had walked across the page of her life and left no tracks.

  “He’s dead.”

  When she had spoken the words, tears came to her eyes. There were no sobs, just a welling of tears. She sat silent, and no words came to help.

  “I tried to tell you last night. I wanted to.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s…it’s like something that happened long ago. I guess I never really expected him to come back.”

  Hondo tasted his coffee and tried to find the words to tell her the rest of it. But how did you tell a woman you had killed her husband? One of you had to be in the wrong. He was not prepared to accept the blame for trouble he had not wanted. Nor was he sorry for Ed Lowe. He was sorry only because the dead man had been the husband of Angie.

  The door burst open and Johnny came charging back into the room. He rushed at Hondo, seizing his arm.

  “Look out for his hand, Johnny.” She crossed the room to the stove. “It’s very noble of you.”

  “Noble?” Hondo looked at her under his brows. “Me?”

  “You came in here to get us out.”

  “I’m going to give you something,” Johnny said. “My Indian emblem. Vittoro gave it to me, didn’t he, Mom?”

  He started off quickly to get the headband. Hondo shifted his feet under the table and allowed Angie to fill his cup again. He was deeply stirred. Johnny’s prize possession, and he wanted him to have it.

  Angie hesitated, putting the coffeepot back on the stove. “The Indians,” she said at last, “place such a great value on dying well. Did Ed die well?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Well.”

  Angie resumed the ironing halted by the coming of the Indians. Something in Hondo’s attitude disturbed her, but she could not explain her feeling. It was unlike him to be so silent.

  It was something about Ed. Something was wrong there, very wrong.

  Nevertheless, she said, “When Johnny is old enough, and when he has to be told, it will make him proud.”

  Johnny came in with his emblem. He placed it on the table before Hondo. “Here’s the emblem. You’re a chief now!”

  Hondo Lane turned away from the table and picked up the headband. He turned it in his hands, studying it. After a while he put it back on the table. Talking to a child…what did he know about that?

  “Johnny,” he said slowly, uncertain of what to say, “I’d like to take it, because that’s a mighty fine gift. Guess there ain’t anything you could give me that would be nicer. But you see, that headband was given to you, not to me.

  “It was given to you by Vittoro. He meant it for you. Now I’d like to have you give me something, but this is yours: Wouldn’t be right, nohow, to give it to me.

  “Vittoro, he’s a mighty big chief. Not many folks he likes. He must admire you quite some to give you that, so you stick by it.

  “You an’ me, Johnny, we got a lot of ground to cover together. Vittoro wants you to know how an Apache gets along. Good thing to know, too. You live in this country, you better know most of it. Man can never tell when he’ll be lost in the desert, have to feed himself, find water, maybe. All that you’ve got to learn.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  Hondo placed his hand clumsily on the boy’s shoulder. “I reckon I’d like that, son. I sure would. I guess I’ve learned so much I’m up to here with it. Need somebody to learn it from me.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN ANGIE WAS washing clothes at the edge of a pool in the creek, Hondo rode down the slope with an antelope slung behind his saddle.

  Angie looked up with a smile. “More fresh meat. We’re living high.”

  Johnny sat on a round rock some distance above the pool, fishing.

  Hondo swung down from the saddle and said quietly, “Don’t turn around too fast, but there’s an Indian up on the rim right now, just under that stunted pine.”

  “I can’t see him. You must have wonderful eyesight.”

  “Learned. There was one up there day before yesterday, too.”

  He ground-hitched the lineback near a patch of grass, then walked back, starting to roll a smoke.

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “To watch the boy, I think. Vittoro must set store by him.”

  He left Angie to her washing and strolled upstream to where the boy was fishing. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. It was cool under the cottonwoods, better than out there on the desert. Was he getting soft? Or had this life got to him?

  “If you want my opinion, you won’t catch any fish there.”

  “He never does,” Angie said, “but it keeps him amused.”

  “Might as well catch him a bass while he’s at it.” He glanced around, his brow furrowing. “Course, I don’t mean to interfere.”

  “Please do.”

  She dipped a boy’s shirt into the water, rinsing it. When she straightened up, she said quietly, “He needs a father. He’s getting to that age now. He loves me, but I’m a woman. Sometimes he tolerates me.”

  Hondo grinned. “Boys are that way. Wait’ll he gets older. He’ll do mor’n tolerate a pretty woman.”

  She flushed a little, but she was pleased. “He has lots of time.”

  “Grow up before you know it.”

  “I…I don’t wa
nt him to be here. Not when he’s older.”

  “No, ma’am. But right now he’s best off here. Boy should know how to hunt. How to get along. He’ll learn better here, and you’re safe, long as Vittoro lives.”

  She looked at him quickly. “You don’t think I would be if he died?”

  “Don’t figure to scare you, but what’d you think about Silva?”

  She remembered the hatred in the Indian’s eyes, the way he started toward them that first day, the way he had killed Sam.

  “He’ll be the big man when Vittoro dies,” Hondo said. “Do to think about.”

  Johnny trudged downstream to Hondo, who shoved his hat back on his head and looked down at the boy. “Where’s the sun?”

  “There.” Johnny pointed.

  “On the back of your neck.” He indicated the shadow the boy threw upon the water. “Shadow. If you can see it, the fish can see it. Always fish with the sun in your face. That’s if you want my opinion. And that bank’s the place.”

  “Can I, Mommy?”

  Angie hesitated. She was afraid of the creek. There were deep pools, and some old snags that had washed down from upstream. “Some of those pools are deep. I worry about him out here.”

  “He can’t swim?”

  “He’s so young.”

  “I’ve seen Indian boys that age swim the Missouri at flood.” He watched the boy lazily as Johnny started across the stream on the stones. At the far bank, Johnny stepped ashore. “Hey, boy!”

  Johnny hesitated, looking back, and Hondo said, his voice carrying easily across the small stream, “Hot this time of day. Was I you, I’d walk on the sunny side of that rock. When it’s hot the snake will be in the shade, when it’s cold he’ll be in the sun.”

  Johnny skirted the rock, then found a good place and seated himself, dropping his hook into the water.

  “Funny thing. An Apache won’t eat fish.”

  “What?” Angie was astonished. “I thought all Indians fished.”

  “What most folks think. Maybe it’s because they live mostly in desert country, but no Apache will eat fish.”

  “I never heard of such a thing!”

  “Fact. Down at Camp Grant the ’Pache kids used to hang around, beggin’ candy or biscuits. When the pony soldiers got tired of havin’ them around, they’d open a can of fish and set it out. They’d all leave.” He threw the stub of his cigarette into the water. “Two reasons for that, though. Partly it was the fish, partly the label on the can.”

  “The label?”

  “You know that red devil they have on some brands of fish? Scares Apaches. They call it ghost meat.” Hondo squatted on his heels, watching her wash. “That Indian’s gone from the rim.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t looked up.”

  “I looked.”

  Angie dried her hands. “Do you think Vittoro really means it when he says he’ll make an Apache out of Johnny?”

  “If I were you I’d believe him. There’s a lot of dead men that didn’t believe what Vittoro said.”

  “He seems to love the baby.”

  “Baby? That kid’s no baby. He must be five or maybe six.”

  “He’s six. But he’s still a baby.”

  “Time there was a man around here. Treat him like a baby and he’ll be one. Spoils a boy to be protected. How’ll he ever learn to care for himself?”

  It was cool beside the stream. Hondo put his back against the trunk of a huge old cottonwood and watched the water. The clothes were drying in the sun, and Angie sat on a stone at the water’s edge, her hair a little disarranged, lovely in the morning sun. Hondo Lane squinted his eyes at her, seeing her clear, poised beauty, yet uneasy at what lay between them.

  The boy sat upstream, watching the line that hung into the water, slow-moving at that point. Before Hondo it rippled over stones, chuckled into hollows, and slid silkily past the weathered trunk of a blown-down cottonwood, long dead.

  He glanced at the lineback, lazily cropping grass in the shade, and then past him at the hills. A man could get used to this. He grinned when he thought of Major Sherry. He was probably throwing a fit by now, thinking him dead, his scalp hanging in some Apache wickiup.

  “Mommy! Mommy! I caught one!”

  Johnny came running across the rocks toward them with a fish flopping at the end of his hook. Hondo was unimpressed. He slashed a thong from his buckskin shirt. “You can gill him on this, if you want to.”

  “Thanks, Emberato.”

  Angie turned on Hondo. “He calls you Emberato all the time.”

  “My Apache name. I told him.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Hondo shrugged, turning his shoulder against the tree. “You can’t put Apache words into English. It means Bad Temper.”

  Angie looked at him again, studying the line of his profile. Bad Temper? How could he get such a name as that? Or had they taken him seriously with his growling? He was as gentle as his ugly brute of a dog had been. All Sam had needed was a chance. And a little petting. The thought made her flush, but it amused her, too, and she looked at him quickly. He was watching the boy with his fish.

  Another thought occurred to her. “You cut that thong from your jacket. Aren’t you afraid you’ll have no ornamentation left if you cut off all that fringe?”

  “Isn’t for ornament. Not only. The fringe helps the buckskin to shed water. That’s why it’s there.”

  Johnny tied his fish to a stick and let it hang in the water, then he came back to Hondo and Angie.

  “You say he can’t swim?” Hondo sat up. “You do what you want to, but if it was me, I’d see the kid could swim.” He reached out suddenly and picked Johnny up by the seat of the pants and threw him into the deepest part of the pool.

  Angie sprang to her feet, crying out. She started to the pool and Hondo came to his feet quickly and put a hand on her shoulder.

  Johnny surfaced, spluttering and floundering. Angie was furious. She struggled to pull away, but he held her, while Johnny, floundering but clumsily swimming, made his way to a rock. Clutching the rock, he turned to Hondo. “Emberato! I did it!”

  “Just reach out your hand and grab a handful of water and pull it toward you, not too fast. Keep your fingers together so it won’t get away. That’s how I learned, if you want to know.”

  He released Angie, and she looked up at him, her anger dying. “Sometimes you’re cruel.”

  “Am I? The kid can swim, can’t he?”

  He gathered the reins of his horse and picked the fish from the water. “I’ll go clean the fish for him. Right he should eat it tonight, eat his own game himself.”

  “But how will he get back?”

  “Swim.”

  “He may drown!” she protested, staring anxiously at Johnny, cheerfully kicking at the cool water.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He turned and walked off, leading the horse. Johnny yelled after him, then slid into the water and paddled awkwardly to the bank and climbed out. He was swelling with childish pride. “I swam, Mommy!” he said.

  Hondo Lane had vanished toward the stable, and Angie took Johnny’s hand and started toward the house. She was still not over her anger at his sudden and to her unbelievably brutal action. She mentally told herself he was cruel. He was rough. He was no fit man to be around a child. But the fact remained that now Johnny could swim.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE WIND TALKED among the junipers and brushed cheeks with the skeleton face of the cactus and along the hills walked two horses and two riders. Hondo Lane, the killer from the Brazos, and a boy of six, riding Old Gray.

  They rode in silence through the morning, but Hondo’s eyes were careful on the desert. It was a gamble, taking the child out this way, for there were other Apaches than those of Vittoro, yet the boy must learn, and there was n
o better time than now.

  A bird flew up, sailed away a few yards, then vanished into the brush. “See that bird? We’ll ride his way. Want you to get a good look at him.”

  The bird flew up again several minutes later. “It’s a Gambel’s quail, Johnny. Drinks a lot, so you never find him too far from water. Thing to remember.”

  They rode on. The sun was up and hot. They had brought no lunch, deliberately.

  As they rode on, Hondo pointed out plants used by the Indians for food, for medicine, or for making fire. He had the boy stop to examine the leaves, to learn how each one grew, and whether on low ground or high mountain slopes. There were other plants that the Indians gathered for making dyes or soap, or for their strong fibers.

  “See the other fellow first,” Hondo said. “Then you can let him see you or not, as you like. Never make a fire with smoke, even in good times.”

  He turned his horse wide around a boulder. “Best thing is a small fire, maybe under a tree. If there’s any smoke at all, the branches and leaves will spread it out. There won’t be no column.

  “Use dry wood. Curl-leaf is good, never makes smoke. Look out for that rubber brush I showed you. Makes heavy, black smoke.”

  He drew up. “That there,” he pointed at a broomlike shrub about four feet tall, “is yerba del pasmo. ’Paches chew the twigs for toothache.”

  They drew up a moment later at another plant. “Arrowweed. ’Paches make arrows from the straight stems. Use ’em for makin’ cages an’ baskets, too. Stuff smells good. Night, sometimes you can smell it quite a ways.” They rode on, and after a bit he said, “Pimas use that arrowweed for makin’ a tea for an eyewash.”

  On a hillside they saw some bones and part of an old hide. Hondo Lane drew up and rolled a smoke. “Deer,” he said, nodding. “Dead a long time. See those tracks near it?”

  “Yes.” Johnny straightened in his saddle and peered at the tracks. “What are they?”

  “Wolf. Bigger than a coyote.”

  “Maybe it was a dog.”