The Eye of the Hunter (22 page)

“... authority of the power vested in me ...” she made out, and saw Stockard pointing his revolver at the house.

Through the window she screeched, “Jost a meenute!” in the old accent of her childhood.

When she had the gun in her hands and was warily pulling at the loading lever, Josefina begged her not to go out, but she persisted.

“An officer will never harm a lady.” (Except, of course, his wife: advice from her mother, a Southern lady who lived by a library of Tennessee myths.) But she was certain that, with his whole being steeped in militarism, General Stockard would at least not kill her. Whereas if she tried to hold the fort against his cannon ...

She opened one of the massive double doors and stepped out to stand before it, carbine at port arms, mandolin slung across her back. She was struck by the drama of the scene: Behind the cannon stretched a sky steeped with the black-and gray tones of a coming thunderstorm. The cannon, still leaking smoke, pointed into this threatening sky as if to challenge it.

The general strode forward and confronted her from a few yards away. “Attention!” he said.

With a sober face, Frances held the carbine vertically before her.

“
Sí mi general
,” she said, smiling to placate him.

“Speak English, woman!” roared the general. “By the powers vested in me, I declare this ranch spoils of war. I now ask you to lay your weapon on the ground and take two paces back.”

He is insane! she thought, and hesitated. Dare she go unarmed in the presence of a lunatic? As she tried to decide, he settled the matter by firing his revolver in the air. Frances hastened to lay the gun in the dirt, took one pace back, and bumped into the door.

“Where is the boy I saw?” Stockard demanded.

“Alejandro? He's just a Mexican boy. Do you need him?”

“You don't have to be white to raise a flag, ma'am!”

Alejandro came out and helped hoist a large flag to the top of the pole. It snapped loudly in the wind. Stockard saluted, and Frances swung the mandolin around, tried to raise her hand but could not, and finally got the instrument into present-arms position. Then, inspired, she began to softly play and sing the national anthem. Stockard seemed surprised but stood fast until she finished.

Then he said, “I declare you under arrest. ”

“Why, General?”

“You are charged with the murder of your husband. A Mexican woman swears to this.”

“She is wrong,” Frances said. “But for the time being, I want to ask you a favor. I was planning to leave on tomorrow's train, to move to Hermosillo. If you would permit me to do that, I would not bother you here, of course. I would be completely out of your way.”

“I can't permit that. I don't want you in this town.” Stockard paused to light a cigar. The brimstone smell of the match arrived almost as unnervingly as the cannon fumes.

“But you see,” said Frances, “I often flag the train at the siding. They'll stop for me.”

Stockard's fingernails rasped at his beard. “Very well. How early do you need to leave to catch the train?”

“About seven.”

“I warn you, though, madam—a state of war exists. If you or any of your servants attempts to trick me, you'll be shot. Go to your room and pack.”

He lifted his yellow-and-black guidon from the socket in the caisson and carried it into the house behind her.

But in a half hour the general rapped on the door, and she opened it to see him standing a foot away with a revolver pointed at her. A whimper escaped her. “Can you cook?” he barked.

“Of course!”

“Well—throw something together for lunch.”

Stockard closed all the shutters and drapes, so that when the food was ready, about two o'clock, lamps burned in the parlor and a carbide light hissed above the long harvest table in the dining room. The four of them sat in silence before platters of Mexican food and thin-sliced beefsteak cooked
carne asada
style. The general cleared his throat and said grace, with references to fields of honor, enemies to be smitten, thews to be cloven, fortresses and tents of the wicked to be stormed, and, finally, quitting oneself as a man.

Then he reached up as though to scratch the back of his neck, and pulled a knife from a scabbard between his shoulder blades. He tapped the point on the table and said, “Amen.”

He is absolutely insane, thought Frances.

As they ate, she kept hearing sounds, real or imaginary, outside. Yet she was not wishing Henry back—rather, she was hoping he would not storm the place and be murdered. In any event, she was leaving here, once and for all. She had never felt that she owned it, belonged to it. She belonged to medicine, and that was over, too, in this country.

She thought she understood, now, what was going on in the general's mind.

He was simply taking the ranch by force. His fieldpiece stood in the yard, his bumblebee-hued pennant over the barrel. He would hold the ranch, anticipating her going to prison, and then dare anyone to bother him, while he set up some kind of deed to the place. And in a country where force and intimidation meant nearly everything, he might succeed.

But she managed to smile. “How is your wife, General?”

Stockard suddenly swiveled toward a window and went into an attitude of listening. Then he shrugged. “Emily? Loony,” he said. “Losing her home is what unhinged her mind.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” Frances said. “Will you be bringing her back?”

“Of course. It's her home. I think you should know, dear lady, that I am not here on a show-the-flag mission. My partner will be filing suit against Spider Ranch in a few days for nonpayment of debts.”

“That would be Mr. Ambrose?”

The general bared his teeth and made a slashing gesture with his knife. “Pah! That nincompoop. I lost all respect for him when he let that Kansas City gunsmith bluff him out. In the matter of the ranch, I've signed a partnership with Beckwith, the banker.”

“How can you have a partnership on something you don't own?” Frances asked. “As soon as Richard is declared dead, I'll have enough money to pay off my debts. Then you won't have any hold at all on the ranch—real or ... illusionary.”

“Will you have three thousand dollars to payoff debts?”

Frances felt a tingle, enjoying seeing that man storm into the trap Richard had set three years ago. “No, but I owe only a few hundred. Why three thousand?”

The grin that opened in the general's tough, short beard, a growth like overcropped curly grama grass, looked more like a grimace of pain. “That's the approximate amount of the gambling debts of your late husband's that Beckwith has bought up.”

“Gracious! Where?”

“From here to San Francisco. Rip's old haunts. Everywhere he went, he left gambling debts, IOUs, and then got out of town. Beck-with thought he could swing the matter by himself, but I convinced him he needed a partner. He put in the money. I agreed to do the groundwork.”

Frances smirked. “I was worried for a moment. It's a shame about those debts, but they're no problem of the ranch corporation. Did you know Spider Ranch is a corporation? Rip's Uncle Hum set it up to protect himself against his own gambling losses—or any other
personal
debts, as opposed to those incurred by an officer of the corporation. I'm the vice president.”

Stockard raised a piece of beef on the point of his knife, frowned at it a moment before shrugging. “Makes no damned difference. We'll make it work. It'll work....”

“With cannons, maybe. Not in court.” Then Frances gasped and raised her hands defensively. The general was on his feet, Colt in his hand. But he wasn't after her; he had heard something. He went to the window and crouched below it, raising his head just enough to peer out. Frances heard horses whickering.

Stockard strode back and turned off the hissing carbide ceiling lamp. The incandescent mantle began to expire slowly, cooling from white to yellow to red, and suddenly the room was dark. “Stay where you are!” he hissed.

He resumed his watch, until a man shouted out in the night, “General Stockard! It's me, Gorman!”

Now
, Frances thought,
the roster of lunatics is complete. Now unless the general's code forbids letting women prisoners be molested, I may have to die fighting him off. And this time there is no escaping
.

She could smell the stableman before she saw him, standing with the general at a long table in the dim parlor. He brought with him a powerful odor of iodoform, which caused her to search until she found a dirty bandage around his right hand. She and Josefina had washed the dishes, and now she was heading back to her room when Gorman saw her and shouted, “There's the bitch who's responsible for the while kit and boiling!”

Frances kept moving toward her bedroom door, but Gorman blocked her way. “You don't know when you're well off, do you? You've poisoned the whole town against me! And now you're after the gen'r'l!”

“I have no idea what you mean. Let me pass, please.”

“Don't you move!”
Gorman strode to the table and picked up a long sheet of paper, evidently a proof of a headline for the newspaper. He came back with the proof stretched between his upraised arms, like a banner across a street, and thrust it close to her face. She could smell damp paper and printer's ink.

“This is what I mean!”

The headline type was enormous. Below it were some additional headlines in smaller type.

STOCKARD ACCUSED OF MURDERS

KILLING OF RIP PARRISH. 40 APACHES CHARGED!

Sheriff Issues Warrant!

Mystery Letter Starts Investigation!

The general took it quietly, almost as though he failed to comprehend Gorman's excitement. He read the headline, wadded and discarded it, and said stiffly to Frances: “Kindly wait on the settee until I need you.”

So she sat tensely on the black leather sofa, hearing Josefina rattling things in the kitchen, listening to Budge Gorman's threats and boasts.

“Next time I see that tinhorn gunman, General, I'll just take and tell him, 'Kiss my behind!' And if he don't do it, I'll lay him out cold this time!”

Stockard had looked at him and said, “What happened to your hand?”

It was wrapped in a dirty strip of linen—the source, apparently, of the powerful fragrance of iodoform in the room. Budge looked at it.

“Oh, uh—horse bit me,” he muttered.

When he started on another threat, the general said, “Have you ever been in the army, Gorman?”

“For a while....'At's where I learned about horses—Fort Bowie, Fourth Cavalry.” Nodding eagerly.

“Would you like to join the headquarters detachment I'm planning to commission?”

“Yes, sir! What, uh—when's this going to be?”

“Right now. Be quiet while I iron out some problems. Why don't you sit down by the window and watch our flank?”

On the long table, the general unrolled a map he had brought from town. It was a topographical map and he studied it under a magnifying glass, from three different angles, before he straightened, raised his knife, and brought it down to stand quivering in the table at an intersection on the map.

“There!” he said.

Then he sat at the table and wrote, using a field desk such as Dr. Wingard had always traveled with. Considering the import of the news from town, he was remarkably cool, thought Frances. Was the story true?

The general asked: “Do you have any spirits in the place?”

“Yes. My husband kept a few bottles. What would you like?” She got up and went toward the kitchen.

“I'll find it. Stay where you are.”

He came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Gorman chortled when he saw that they were going to have a drink. Stockard poured a couple of fingers in each glass, and they toasted the nation's commander in chief. Then he pulled his long-barreled Colt and said, “Let's see if liquor affects my shooting eye.”

He snatched off the eye patch and threw it at Frances's feet. He took aim on an antelope's head on the wall to the left of the stone fireplace. Without appearing to aim, he drilled out its right eye. Frances screamed, and budge covered his ears, then laughed.

“Bull's-eye!” he yelled.

Stockard smirked. “All right. That's settled. Henry Logan had better be as good as he says he is. Because he's going to meet me on the field of honor.”

Frances rose from the settee. “Henry has nothing to do with all this, General! He was just trying to find Richard, and I don't believe he ever did.”

“
He
thinks so, ma'am. Don't worry, he'll have an equal chance with me. We're both sharpshooters, and we understand field tactics.”

Rip's carbine stood against the wall just inside the door, where the general had placed it after disarming Frances. He now checked it out, made sure it was fully loaded, and carried it to the table.

“What're you going to do?” asked Gorman, awed.

“The question is—what are
you
going to do for your commanding general?”

“Anything, sir!” Gorman leveled off his Grand Army hat and came to attention.

“First we'll swear you in.”

The general took a hair bracelet of some kind from his left wrist. “Wear this wristlet from now on. It's woven of Apache hair, by my own wife. Though she thought it was horsehair.” He chuckled. “Jesus, she'd have been shocked!”

Out of his depth, Budge rubbed at the bracelet on his hairy wrist and muttered, scratching. “Sumbitch itches.”

“Of course it itches! That's the whole idea. I've worn it ever since I saw my first white man scalped by Indians. When I took my first Apache, I scalped him and brought the nasty thing home. The itching reminds you that they're still out there, Gorman—they haven't changed one damn bit! Wear it with pride!”