The Unforgiven (12 page)

Cash had made his drive in thirty-one days, and it had leaned him to the bone. By all accounts, he had no more than dozed against a wagon wheel once in a while, and the rest of the time had slept in the saddle, or not at all. Once his deals were made, the rest of his time was spent in retrieving his cook and the best seven men that he had from Delano, Wichita’s whisky-and-women suburb, across the Arkansas River.

The same collection of saloons and dance halls had been called Nauchville, when it stood outside Ellsworth, and Hide Park at Newton. Each time the railhead advanced, these shaky buildings were pulled down and flat-carred, to be set up again at the new shipping point, with the same cadre of bartenders, faro dealers, and girls—plus the new faces of additions and replacements. It was a cowhand’s paradise, such as no man could rightly appreciate until he had behind him the brutal hardships of the trail. But Cash finally combed the men he wanted, heavily hungover, out of the sawdust floors of Delano. He believed he knew them, now; and he was paying them the highest wages offered on any trail.

He could afford it, for he was riding the high wave of success. After the heartbreaking drives from which the Zacharys had turned their cattle back to trail them home again, after years in which they had dumped whole herds at the price of hides in order to pay off their men, Cassius had sold high at last.

Until Cassius got home, Ben had not touched the huge strongbox carried in the cook wagon. It was built of heavy steel plates, and it took four men to carry it into the house. Instead of padlocks, it had blacksmith-welded iron straps, and they were the better part of an hour getting it open at all.

Inside, sewed up in a great number of small deer-skin pouches, Cassius was carrying a little more than $104,000 in gold.

Ben was chilled as it got through to him what Cash had left in the hands of the tough renegades Ben himself had hired in Fort Griffin. Cash claimed he knew his men. Ben didn’t believe anybody knew these men, or any men, well enough to justify trusting them with a fortune like that. Well—they had got there with it; that was the final answer to that.

They moved the carved secretary Papa had made—it weighed about a ton—out into the middle of the room, to get at what they called the Glory Hole. This was a trap door, fitted of random-length planks so as not to show, with a keg set into the earth underneath, to keep their money in. It had been empty, or nearly so, most of the time for quite a while. But tonight they filled it up again; and tried to realize that they were rich.

After Rawlins had been paid some thirty thousand dollars for his lesser share of the herd, and they had paid off seventy-five or eighty other brands for nearly a thousand strays they had driven and sold, and when they had paid off twenty-two thousand in debts, they would still have thirty thousand dollars left—a fortune, clear and unencumbered; plus a couple of thousand head of breeders and young stock, not counting calves and yearlings, standing on the range.

They could send Matthilda and Rachel to safety far away, to the east coast, or abroad; they could do anything they wanted to now—if only they could find out what it was. For now Matthilda balked. She feared even to cross Texas with Rachel while Kelsey’s hanging still had the whole doomful dispute over her birth still fresh in everybody’s mind. They were certainly safe here, with a corrida, now with a strength of twelve men plus the Zacharys themselves, right here on the place. She wanted her sons with her, at least as far as the Mississippi, and they certainly could not leave the work now. Wait till the work was done this fall; it all would be easy, then.

She made it sound natural and sensible to delay their departure, for the sake of safety alone. But Ben felt a deep foreboding. Rachel probably came first, in his mother’s heart; he was fairly sure of that. Yet he began to doubt that she would ever leave her sons, of her own will.

After Matthilda went to bed Ben and Cassius still sat up, talking all through most of Cash’s first night home. Andy slept, unbothered, but Rachel lay wakeful in her bed, listening to that ominous-seeming, indistinguishable mumbling, on and on. And though she knew what times they poured themselves fresh coffee, not one word they said came through the heavy door. Bird songs were starting up along the Dancing Bird before they quit. Yet they were up, red-eyed but un-friendly to sleep, in the early dawn.

First thing they did was to send a rider down the Dancing Bird with a note to Zeb Rawlins, naming the halfway point at which he must meet them, late that day.

Zeb Rawlins and his two sons met the three Zachary brothers on a stripped and barren flat ten miles down the Dancing Bird. The wheels of Zeb’s buggy crackled as they cut through the baked and curling crust, for here an endless network of earth cracks made cruelly visible the damage this year had done the range. Jude and Charlie carried their carbines in their hands as they rode on either side of their father; and Zeb himself carried a long rifle in his lap as he drove. Saddle horses and buggy team were freshly groomed and tail-plucked, and every inch of rigging had been rubbed to a shine, under the film of the fast-gathering dust. This spit and polish, as much as the weapons in their hands, bespoke a predetermination that this showdown should be official, final, and complete.

Each of the Zachary boys saw at a glance that only the two carbines were repeaters. Jude’s weapon was a Triplett & Scott, and Charlie’s a Henry; but Zeb’s rifle, with its uncommonly long 30-inch barrel, was an old cap-and-ball Snyder—the weapon of a man who means to shoot once, and make the one shot do. The Zacharys left their carbines in their boots, but they were wearing their revolvers. Cassius had his father’s Dragoon; Ben, his big Walker Colt, with a 9-inch barrel; and Andy, a Confederate copy of the Whitney, with which he had proved to his brothers he could “wipe their noses for them,” if ever he got anybody to hold still for it. All three wore their guns butt first on the left, for cross-drawing, when in the saddle.

The two parties pulled up with the noses of their animals a horse-length apart.

Zeb Rawlins sat motionless, looking so solid and immovable that the buggy was made to look frail. Ben noticed how his great weight bore down its springs. Probably these two had never had any chance of understanding each other, from the first. Zeb had been born of corn-country pioneers, up on the Ohio River; every time he had ever mentioned such a thing as a “gant-lot,” Ben had had to stop and figure out all over again what he meant. If either of the two had actually fought in the War, they would never have tried to work together at all. Yet Ben no longer wondered how a man unable to ride could undertake to whip the open range. Zeb had a motto: “When Bull takes holt, heaven and ’arth can’t make him let go!” It was neither a slogan nor a preachment; it was a description of the man.

“My brother sold your cows,” Ben said shortly.

Zeb’s eyes went to Cassius, who spoke briskly. “Twelve hundred and nineteen head, as loaded at Wichita. Average for the herd, twenty-six dollars and eight cents a head. Your prorate of cost, one thousand and four. Leaves you thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifty-two cents.”

Watching Zeb’s face, Ben could see no change in his neighbor’s dark and heavy mood. Cash had described a great golden flood, all but unbelievable, after the lean years that had gone before. Ben supposed Zeb must already have had news of the market from another source. There was a short silence.

“You’ll be paid off in gold coinage,” Ben said. “Say when and where.”

“I’ll send for what’s due me,” Zeb said.

They waited, until Zeb Rawlins was ready to go on.

“The charges made against you have not been fully proved,” Zeb said. “Not yet.”

“Watch your Goddamned mouth,” Ben said; and he saw Zeb’s jowls begin to purple and shake.

“My daughter has been murdered,” Zeb said, still speaking with slow weight. “Her mistreated remains are under the ground. It’s enough for me that any part of the blame could be charged to you at all, by anybody whatsoever. Yet I’ll do this one thing more. I’ll buy out any rights you think you have here, together with whatever cattle of yours you don’t want to drive off. Figure up your price, and send me word what it is. But I want to know soon!”

Ben answered so reasonably that Cash shot him a glance of angry disbelief. “I might buy, or I might sell,” he said. “Either way, I mean to cross-brand, first. There’s too many cows on this range owned by marks on paper, and not enough owned by the right marks on cows. If you want me to work yours, too, send a rep. It’ll cost you the standard fifty cents a head.”

“I’ll send a rep,” Rawlins conceded. “See that you keep your damned iron off the odd-brand cattle until he comes!”

Ben’s voice rose in anger for the first time. “I’ll brand any damned critter I see fit!”

“All I want,” Zeb roared back at him, “is to get you red-nigger lovers to hell off my range!”

“You’ve got no range,” Ben said dropping back into his drawl again. “This is Texican land. It’ll take a sight more than a fat-gutted damyankee son of a bitch to put me off it.”

In the quiet that followed, Andy shortened his reins, and flipped the ends out of the way of his draw.

“I’m sick of looking at them,” Ben told his brothers. He turned his horse; and the moment for gunfire went past.

But something else had happened that might build up to a bigger and longer fight than any six men could have had, on the flats by the Dancing Bird.

Up to here Ben’s trouble had been that he loved the Dancing Bird country for itself. Even the Kiowas had been a boon, in a way, holding this grassland in trust for them, until some good year would enable them to buy land scrip, and take it up. Ben had a hundred long-range plans. He had picked a dozen places where he wanted dams, to establish permanent water in far, dry grasslands where now only brief flash floods ran. He had located clay he could haul from a long way off to line the tanks behind the dams, so that the waters would not seep away. He was experimenting with a hedge of wild-rose bramble to stop winter drift, and the everlasting shuffle-up with half the brands in Texas. With fences up he could grade up his stock, bringing in bulls that otherwise wasted themselves on anybody’s cows but your own. He meant to bring in fruit trees, and Mexican labor to raise garden truck; he planned to build such a house as would be a showpiece forever.

Now he had his good year; he could think in miles of land, instead of pounds of powder. But if he was going to scrip this land, he had no time to lose. Once the Rangers came back to make this border safe, the country would flood with people, and all this beautiful grass would begin to go under the plow, never to be recovered again. Confederate Texas had sold land scrip by the wagonload, to finance the War. Much of it was still knocking around, and could be cheaply had. But a lot of it had been used to tie up land by map landmarks, as a speculation. Ben saw reason to think that some of the country he now used was already the private property of absentee owners who had never seen it yet. These would have to be bought out at a stiff advance in price.

Because of this he could not expect to buy all of the range he used at once. But he could get title to both sides of the Dancing Bird, though he paid a thousand dollars a section, where once four dollars in scrip would have been enough; he might be able to take up a part of the Little Beaver, and a strip along the Red. With his water secure, he could count on scooping up the rest in other good years, later on.

Or else—the returns from this one good year could be used to run away once more. It had to be one thing or the other, and right away. History would not stand back and wait much longer.

Once Ben would have been willing to give up the Dancing Bird, drive a stocker herd to some new land, and start again, rather than drag his family into a war he might not be able to win. But it seemed to him now that if he gave ground this time, he would never make any stand again.

He no longer believed that he would ever be able to give up this land.

A week passed. Ben and Cash alternated days on the range, one staying in with two or three hands, picked for their interest in gun-fighting. The range crew quickly whipped through the last of the calf branding, and began to sort the cattle and shove them around. They started cross-branding, adding the Dancing Bird brand to cattle otherwise branded, but their own on paper. Whichever one was home spent many hours a day at Papa’s carved secretary, sorting and rebooking the hopelessly complicated accounts and tallies.

The Rawlinses did send a rep, at last, and the Zacharys were glad to see that Jake Rountree was the man who had let himself be talked into the job. Jake was nearing fifty, a stooped, gaunt man with wild eyes and a look of perpetual fatigue. The tired look may have been the result of chronic malaria; some days he complained of a general ache. The years of bad markets and irregular weather had all but squeezed him out of the cattle business, so that his own outfit was hardly more than a token and a hope of building again. Zeb Rawlins was paying him a strapping hundred a month—had had to pay it, in order to get him, hard up as he was. Ben promptly put a hundred a month of his own on top.

Jake knew cattle. Neither Cash nor Ben ever had any trouble with him. “Trying to give everything away,” was his only objection to the way they were handling the bust-up. The Rawlinses, for the time being, stayed off the range.

But afterward, when the parting of the herds was complete? Doubtless Rawlins could comb up a corrida. He could even scrape up a corrida of Yankee outlaws, if that was what he wanted; he could throw fifty killers onto this range. Maybe both outfits would be cool and careful, at the first. Then bickerings would begin, and presently somebody’s temper would break. Once the guns began to smoke, how could they ever be quieted again? They didn’t know. They did the work in hand, judging that they would know how to handle what came next, some way, when they saw what it was.

Meantime their debts had to be paid, a big job in itself; for all those thousands were owed in dribbles, to hundreds of cowmen, spread out over most of Texas. It was a job Ben felt he had to do himself; wanted to find out what kind of friends he still had in Texas, for one thing. He would be in the saddle many weeks, and he was eager to get at it. As soon as he got Cash and Jake Rountree well started with the cross-branding he would be on his way.

As Ben bored into the range work, setting a brutal pace for the corrida, Rachel was watching the calendar in a little horse race of her own. Ben’s birthday was coming up; she wanted him to be home for it. She had thought of something she could make for him, something that would have no practical use at all, but which she hoped would look pretty to him, and surprising.

The calendar had no chance in a race with Ben. Three days on the range, three nights in a deluge of papers at the secretary, and that was it.

They were at breakfast when he told them that he would ride south in the morning, leading the old bullion mule. No, he wasn’t taking any men with him…. Because he didn’t need any, that was why…. Robbers? What about robbers? Robbers had to take their chances same as anybody else. Come fooling around him, they probably deserved it. Shanghai Pierce had ridden all over Texas with a mule of money, time and again. So had Papa. Ben judged he could handle it.

He was leaving Cassius with twelve men, including the cook, and Andy. Four or five men, and either Cash or Andy, were going to be at the house all the time. The place would never be unguarded, regard-less of the moon.

He shouted from the door for somebody to catch the mule up.

Mama exclaimed, “But I thought you said tomorrow!”

“Oh, sure; only thing, if I happen to be twelve, fifteen miles in the right direction comes sundown, hardly any sense in riding it two ways. Pretty near amounts to a day. Though it’s hardly likely; I expect to be home, all right, if you want to set a plate—”

“Now, Ben, you can come home for dinner just this one last night,” Matthilda pleaded. “Please, now, won’t you?”

“I’ll sure try,” he promised. He was always shy, and embarrassed when it came time for any big build-up of goodbys. They knew he had maybe seized upon this way to get out of saying any at all. But Rachel could only take a chance on it, and bake him a birthday cake ahead of its time, in hopes he would come home, this last night he could.

When the cake was frosted, she made for Ben the creation she had invented. Summer had turned hot early this year, and as they neared the end of June the swampy sedge pockets along the Dancing Bird were green-scummed and still. This was the kind of summer that made a good firefly year. Some years they saw hardly any, but this time they were all along the creek, all through the trees, by the middle of June. And the ground cherries—the other thing she needed—were ready early, too. These were tiny plants that hid under the deep grass; they bore papery little lanterns the size of a strawberry, each with two small yellow berries inside. Experimenting, Rachel found she could get the twin berries out of the little lanterns and put a firefly in each, instead.

So she made a firefly tree—and if there had ever been one in the world before, she hadn’t heard of it. She cut a dried-out smoke bush, a skeleton of silvery twigs, about two and a half feet tall, and tied the ground-cherry lanterns all over it, dozens of them—though they looked like hundreds before she was through. After that she had to wait for dusk, when the fireflies came out. Half the time she worried for fear Ben wouldn’t come home, and the rest of the time for fear he would come early, before she was ready. If he came too soon she would have to wake him up to show his cake to him; he always went sound to sleep, as soon as he had eaten.

As soon as the first fireflies rose into the twilight she began lighting the firefly tree. On and off went the little lanterns, more and more of them lighting as she got fireflies into them, until by full dark the whole firefly tree was alive, working all the time. It showed up well; for, though they were about at the end of the current Kiowa Moon, they lighted no candles, preferring to leave the shutters open for air. Rachel stuck the contraption in the middle of the birthday cake, and waited for Ben to come and see.

She sat up for a long time, in the dark beside the firefly tree; until finally she put her head on her arms and went to sleep.

It was close to midnight when Ben got home. The ringing of his spurs waked her. She raised her head as he came clumping in, and heard his fingers slap his holster before he knew who was there, in the dark.

“I made you a cake,” she said stupidly. “It’s right here.”

“Seems like some kind of a tumble weed, or something, has grown up out of it,” he said, fumbling in the dark. “My God, am I as late as that?”

She started to say, “It’s supposed to—” Then she realized that the firefly tree was dark.

“There’s a lightning bug climbing on it,” Ben said. One little lantern had gleamed weakly, once, and then quit. She shook the tree, but nothing happened; the fireflies wouldn’t light any more. Maybe they were dead.