The Outlaw Josey Wales (16 page)

It was not quite sunset when they rounded the ridge and were brought up short at the panorama. A valley ran between the mountains, and sparkling in the rays of late sun, a shallow creek, crystal clear, ran winding down the middle and led away into the desert. They turned up the valley, a contrasting oasis in a desert. Gamma grass was knee high to the horses; cottonwoods and live oak lined the creek banks. Spring flowers dappled the grass and carried their colors all the way to the naked buttes of the mountains that loomed on either side.

Antelope grazing on the far side of the creek lifted their heads as they passed, and coveys of quail scattered from ground nests. The valley alternately widened and narrowed between the mountains; sometimes a mile wide, and again narrowing to a width of fifty yards, creating semicircular parks through which they passed.

Longhorn cattle, big and fat, grazed the deep grass, and Josey, after a couple of hours traveling, guessed there were a thousand… and later, more and more of the huge beasts made him give up his estimate. They were wild, dashing at the sight of the wagons into the narrow arroyos that split the mountains on each side

Josey saw rock partridge, ruff and sharp-tail grouse along the willows of the creek, and a short black bear, eating in a green berry patch, grunted at them and trotted away into the creek, scattering a herd of magnificent black-tailed deer.

They moved slowly up the valley, the weary, sun-heated, dusty desert travelers luxuriating in the cool abundance. The sun set, torching the sky behind the mountain an ember red that faded into purple, like paints spilled and mixing colors.

The coolness of the valley washed in their faces; not the sharp, penetrating cold of the desert, but the close, moist coolness of trees and water that refreshed and satisfied a thirst of weariness. The moon poked a near full face over the canyon and chased shadows under the willows along the creek and against the canyon walls. The night birds came out and chatter-fussed and held long, trilling notes that haunted on the night breeze down the valley.

Lone stopped the wagons, and the horses cropped at the tall grass. “Maybe,” he said almost in hushed tones, “we ought to night-camp.”

Grandma Sarah stood up in the wagon seat. She had laid aside the sombrero and her white hair shone silver.

“It’s jest like Tom writ it was,” she said softly, “the house will be up yonder,” and she pointed farther up the valley, “where the mountains come together. Cain’t … cain’t we go on?” Lone and Josey looked at each other and nodded … they moved on.

The moon was two hours higher when they saw the house, low and long, almost invisible from its sameness of adobe color with the buttes rising behind it. It was nestled snugly in a grove of cottonwoods, and as they pulled up beside it, they could see a barn, a low bunk-house, and at the side, an adobe cook shack. Behind the barn there was a rail corral that backgated into what appeared to be a horse pasture circling back, enclosing a clear pool of water into which the creek waterfalled from a narrow arroyo. It was the end of the valley.

They inspected the house; the long, low-ceilinged front room with rawhide chairs and slate rock floor.

The kitchen had no stove, but a huge cooking fireplace with a Dutch oven set into its side. There was a rough comfort about the house; beds were made of timber poles, but stripped with springy rawhide, and long couches of the same material were swung low against the walls.

Unloading the wagons in the yard, in the shadows of the cottonwoods, Laura Lee impulsively squeezed the arm of Josey and whispered, “It’s like a … a dream.”

“It is that,” Josey said solemnly … and he wondered how Tom Turner must have felt, stumbling across this mere slit of verdant growth in the middle of a thousand square miles of semiarid land. He judged the valley to be ten … maybe twelve miles long. With natural grass, water, and the hemming walls of the mountains, two, maybe three riders could handle it all, except for branding and trailing time, when extras could be picked up.

He was jarred from his reverie when he saw Lone and Little Moonlight walking close together toward the little house that set back in a grove of red cedars and cottonwood. The place had got hold of him … hell, fer a minute he was figurin’ like it was home.

Laura Lee and Grandma Sarah were fidgeting about in the house. Nobody would sleep this night. He unhitched the mules and led them with the horses to the corral and pasture. Leaning on the rail of the corral, he watched them circle, kick their heels, and head for the water of the clear pool. The big mules rolled in the high grass. He brought the big roan last, unsaddled him, and lovingly rubbed him down. He turned him loose with the others … but first he fed him grain.

Laura Lee whipped up biscuits for their breakfast and fried the jerky beef with beans in the tallow of the oxen. The women busied themselves flying dust and dirt out the windows and doors and bustling with all the mysterious doin’s women do in new houses. Little Moonlight had clearly laid claim to the adobe in the cedars and appropriated blankets, pots, and pans, which she industriously trotted from the pile of belongings in the backyard. Lone and Josey carried water from the waterfall and filled the cedar water bins in the house. They patched the corral fences and cleaned the guns, stacking and hanging them in the rooms, in easy reach. Lone set traps on the creek bank, and they suppered on golden bass.

After supper Josey and Lone squatted in the shadows of the trees and watched the moon rise over the canyon rim. The murmur of talk drifted to them from the kitchen where Laura Lee and Grandma Sarah washed up the supper plates, and through the window the flicker of firelight took the edge off a light spring chill. Little Moonlight sat before the door of the ’dobe in the cedars and faintly hummed in an alto voice the haunting, wandering melody of the Cheyenne.

“It is her lodge,” Lone said. “She’s told me it’s the first time she has a lodge of her own.”

“Reckin it’s her’n and yore’n,” Josey said quietly.

Lone shifted uncomfortably, “The woman … I never thought, old as I am … this place is like when I was a boy … a young man … back there….” His voice trailed off in a helpless apology.

“I know,” Josey said. He knew what the Indian could not say. Back there, back beyond the Trail of Tears … back there in the mountains there had been such a place; the home … the woman. And now it was given to him again; but he fretted against what he felt was somehow … disloyalty to the outlaw. Josey spoke, and his voice was matter-of-fact and held no emotion, “Ye ain’t knowed … by name. We’ll git the riders, but I couldn’t leave Laura Lee … the womenfolks, without I knowed they was somebody to be trusted … to boss and look after. Ye must stay here … ye and Little Moonlight . she’s near good as a man … better’n most. Ain’t no other way. Besides, I’ll be trailin’ back this way and more’n likely need a place to hole up.”

Lone touched the shoulder of Josey, “Maybe,” he said, “maybe they’ll fergit about ye, and …”

Josey cut a chew of tobacco and studied the valley below them. There was no use saying it … they both knew there would be no forgetting.

Chapter 18

Ten Bears trailed north from wintering in the land of the Mexicano, below the mysterious river that the pony soldiers refused to cross. Behind him rode five subchiefs, 250 battle-hardened warriors and over 400 squaws and children. Glutted with loot and scalps from raids on the villages and ranchos to the south, they had come back over the Rio Grande two days ago. They came back, as they had always done in the spring … as they always would do. The ways of the Comanche would not be shackled by the pony soldier, for the Comanche was the greatest horseman of the Plains and each of his warriors was equal to 100 of the bluecoats.

Ten Bears was the greatest of the war chiefs of the mighty Comanche. Even the great Red Cloud of the

Oglala Sioux, far to the north, called him a Brother Chief. There was no rivalry in all his subchiefs, for his place, his fame, was legend. He had led his warriors in hundreds of raids and battles and had tested his wisdom and courage a thousand times without blemish. He was eloquent in the speech of the white man, and last fall, as the buffalo grass turned brown, he had met General Sherman on the Llano Estacado and had told him the ways of the Comanche would not change. Ten Bears always kept his word.

When he had received the message that the blue-coat General wished to meet with him, he had at first refused. There had been four meetings in five years, and each time the white man offered his hand in friendship, while with the other hand he held the snake. At each meeting there was a new face of the bluecoat, but the words were always the same.

Finally he had agreed and selected the Llano Estacado as the meeting site … for this was the Staked Plain that the white man feared to cross; where the Comanche rode with impunity. It was a fit setting in the eyes of Ten Bears.

He had refused to sit, and while the bluecoat leader talked, he had stood, arms folded in stony silence. It was as he had suspected; much talk of friendship and goodwill for the Comanche … and orders for the Comanche to move farther toward the rim of the plain, where the sun died each day.

When the bluecoat had finished, Ten Bears had spoken in a voice choked with anger, “We have met many times before, and each time I have taken your hand, but when your shadow grew short upon the ground, the promises were broken like dried sticks beneath your heel. Your words change with the wind and die without meaning in the desert of your breast

If we had not given up the lands you now hold, then we would have something to give for more of your crooked words. I know every water hole, every bush and antelope, from the land of the Mexicano to the land of the Sioux. I ride, free like the wind, and now I shall ride even until the breath that blows across this land breathes my dust into it. I shall meet you again only in battle, for there is iron in my heart.”

He had stalked away from the meeting, and he and his warriors had burned and looted the ranches as they rode south through Texas into Mexico. Now he was returning, and hatred smoldered in his eyes … and in the eyes of the proud warriors who rode with him.

It was late on a Sunday afternoon when Ten Bears rounded the ridge of the mountains to make medicine in the cool valley … and saw the tracks of the wagons.

That same Sunday morning, the gathering for services took place in the shade of the cottonwoods that surrounded the ranch house. Grandma Sarah had announced it firmly at breakfast, “It’s a Sunday, and we’all will observe the Lord’s day.”

Josey and Lone stood, awkwardly bareheaded; Little Moonlight between them. Laura Lee, still mocca-sined, but wearing a snow-white dress that accentuated the fullness of her figure, opened the Bible and read. It was a slow process. She moved her finger from word to word and bent her sun-browned face studiously over the pages: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me…”

It took a long time, and Little Moonlight watched a house wren building a nest in a crack of the ’dobe.

With a great sigh of triumph, Laura Lee finished the Psalm, and Grandma Sarah looked sternly at her little congregation, expending a particularly lingering look at Little Moonlight. “Now we’ll pray,” she said, “and ever’body’s got to hold hands.”

Lone grasped the hand of Grandma Sarah and Little Moonlight; Josey took the right hand of Little Moonlight and extended his right to hold the hand of Laura Lee. He felt her tremble … and he thought he felt a squeeze. Little Moonlight perked up … there was more to the white man’s ceremony.

“Bow yore heads,” Grandma Sarah said, and Lone pushed Little Moonlight’s head down.

“Lord,” Grandma Sarah began in stentorian tones, “we’re right sorry we ain’t had time to observe and sich, but Ye’ve seen like it is. We ast Ye to look after Pa and Dan’l, they was … ’ceptin’ a little liquorin’ up, occasional … good men, better’n most, and they fit best they could agin that low-down, murderin’ trash out o’ hell that done ’em in. They died tol’able well, considerin’, and,” her voice broke, and she paused for a moment, “… and we thankee Ye seen fit to send one to bury ’em proper. We thankee fer this here place and ast Ye bless Tom’s bones at Shiloh. We don’t ast much, Lord … like them horned toads back East, wallerin’ around in fine fittin’s and the sin of Sodom. We be Texans now, fit’n to stand on our feet and fight fer what’s our’n … with occasional help from Ye … Ye be willin’. We thankee fer these men … fer the Indian woman …” here, Grandma Sarah opened one eye and looked cannily at the bowed head of Josey Wales, “… and we thankee fer a good, strong, maidenly girl sich as Laura Lee … fit to raise strappin’ sons and daughters to people this here land … iff’n she’s give half a chancet. We thankee fer Josey Wales deliverin’ us from the Philistines. Amen.”

Grandma Sarah raised her head and sternly scanned

the circle. “Now,” she said, “well end the service, renderin’ the song ‘Sweet Bye and Bye.’ ” Lone and Josey knew the song, and hesitantly at first, then joining their voices with Laura Lee and Grandma Sarah, they sang:

“In the sweet bye and bye, we shall meet on that beautiful shore,

In the sweet bye and bye,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

They sang the chorus … and stumbled a bit over the verses. Little Moonlight enjoyed this part of the white man’s ceremony most. She began a slow shuffle of her feet that picked up tempo as she danced around the circle; and though she didn’t know the words, she brought a peculiarly appealing harmony to it with an alto moan. The red-bone flopped on his haunches and began a gathering howl that added to the scene, growing in noise if not melody. Josey reached back a booted toe to delicately, but viciously, kick him in the ribs. The hound snarled.

It was … all in all … a satisfying morning, as Grandma Sarah opined over a bounteous Sunday dinner; something they could all look forward to, each and ev’ry Sunday morning.

Chapter 19

The scouts told him that only two of the horses were ridden, and Ten Bears knew the meaning of the wagons … white squaws. He ordered the camp set boldly in the open at the foot of the valley. Ten Bears took pride in the order of the tight, tidy circles of tepees that marked the strict, disciplined ways of the Comanche. They were not slovenly as had been the Tonk-aways, and the Tonkaways lived no more; the Comanche had killed them all.