The Unforgiven (17 page)

They finally decided that the only signal Cash could not very well misread would be a sound of fighting. They would have to fire in bursts, to make it sound real, or it would have the failing of any other kind of signal. Two shots, nearly together, then one, at the space of a reload; then wait a while to save ammunition, and run it off backwards. They had not started their clock again, lest its loud tick interfere with listening. But they had a little minute glass they had made, for boiling an egg when they had an egg; its sand was measured to run through in three minutes. Guessing at how far downstream their guns could be heard, they thought they could make do with one burst to every three turns of the glass.

For their first burst they used a Sharp’s Fifty, and a cap-and-ball Walker. Then Rachel watched the sand dribble through the minute glass while Andy made the round of the lookouts, to see if the besiegers had reacted. The Kiowas should be able to see that the shots from the house were going wild, as if nobody knew anything, but you could never be sure.

They went on with this for fourteen turns of the minute glass. The sun would set in an hour more. Out on the cottonwood root by the creek the up-rooted greasebush still lay, its leaves curled now by the heat; but the telescope sight had picked up no other sign that any ememy was near. Rachel was worring about the wasted ammunition.

“It’s terrible, how fast the powder burns away. We’re doing an awful thing, here, if it turns out we’re wrong.”

“Well, we’re not wrong.” Andy answered her. “How can we be wrong?”

“We haven’t a thing to go on, but just that one, lone, single sign.”

“If you find one, lone, single bear track,” Andy said stubbornly, “there has by God been a bear.”

“Yes, but what if—”

“Listen!”
He sprang to a shutter loop, and put his ear to it. In a moment he put his finger in his other ear.

Rachel tried to listen, then went to the bedroom door, and closed it softly. Matthilda’s breathing was quieter, but now they were trying to hear something that perhaps could not be heard. After a moment Rachel knew what it was. From eastward came a faint whispering that had to be far-off riflery. Were war cries sounding with the guns? Rachel thought they were. Perhaps she had not really heard them, but only knew they must be sounding, in as big a fight as was going on, somewhere far away. The distant whisper died away, rose briefly in a distinct rattle, then ceased altogether. They did not hear it again.

“That’s Cash!” Andy whispered. “He’s run into a fight, way off there!”

“No, he hasn’t! It’s something else.” She was voicing no more than a wish. If he did not get back, they need not mourn for Cassius alone, but for them all. Of course, if the firing had come from a brush between Indians and a couple of companies of cavalry happening along—

“Oh, for God’s sake,” was Andy’s only answer when Rachel suggested that. No cavalry had ever been seen on the Dancing Bird yet.

“Seems like you’re cussing a good bit,” Rachel commented.

“I may stop that. Sudden-like, and all at once. Sometime tonight.”

Rachel could think of only one thing she could be sure the day had accomplished for them. She did not mention it to Andy, for no dust anywhere gave hope that it was going to do any good. Yet it meant something to her: Ben surely must be one day nearer home tonight than he had been when this sun came up.

Instead she said, “Cash is all right. He’ll come home. He
must
come home. So he will….”

Cassius lay in the bottom of a dry coulee, resting, and trying to save what strength remained to him. His left leg was broken below the knee, so badly that a spike of bone was sticking out of it. He had bound it as tightly as he could with strips of his shirt, splinting it awkwardly with bits of drift, yet it was all he could do to drag it as he crawled, and he had crawled a long way. The leg had been smashed by his horse as it crumpled in front and over-ended, destroyed by a bullet-broken shoulder.

Before his horse had been shot under him, he had got an arrow in the back, which was an unfairness, for it had been shot from in front of him as he charged, trying to close with his enemies. He had been lying low on the neck, and the arrow’s trajectory had carried it deep along the length of a back muscle. He had got rid of the shaft, finally, by an effort that almost knocked him out. But the sheet-iron head, a slender three-inch cone of metal, had come off the shaft, and stayed. It was still lodged in his back, somewhere down near his belt.

He believed he had killed four savages. One he had got in the first brush, when they had discovered him and circled in on him. A dandy shot, when he finally got it, but he had spent six cartridges before he made it. The second he had got from behind his fallen horse, with the last shot in his carbine. After that he had taken to the coulee, trying to outwit the warriors by an interminable crippled crawling. The wound in his back was bleeding fast, and he could find no way to stanch it. He left a blood trail every yard of the way; and he had been able to make use of it.

When the Kiowas had come into the coulee after him he managed to be some distance from where they expected him, so that they followed his blood trail along the bottom of the gully. And now he used a trick that wounded bears used. Beyond a twist in the coulee he climbed out onto the bank, and back-trailed a little. Until now he had kept the empty carbine, sometimes using it as a crutch; but it wasn’t much good to him, so he dropped it in the bottom of the gully for bait. Waiting on the lip of the coulee, just over the carbine, he had killed the first savage who bent to pick it up, shooting him through the head with the Dragoon revolver. Four or five others who were trailing them got the hell out of there, and he wounded one as they got away. But he didn’t count the ones that were only wounded.

The last one he got with almost the same trick, but with an extra hitch to it. The Kiowas circled, to come safely at the place where he had lain in ambush; but he wasn’t there when they got to it. As soon as the coulee was clear he had rolled off the edge, half killing himself in the fall, and once more started crawling. At a turn of the gully he climbed out of it again, but this time he did not watch his back-trail. The Kiowas halted, well clear of the place his blood trail disappeared around the corner. They spotted the bit of buckbrush in which he was hiding on the lip and knew he was waiting there. They left the coulee and circled to a safe distance ahead; then back-trailed themselves, to close from behind him.

Only they were wrong about the way he was facing. Once more he had thought one step ahead of them; and he killed another Kiowa who crept upon him from the supposedly safe direction.

He had missed, though, with every shot, as he fired at those who retreated. The Dragoon was empty. He rolled himself into the coulee again, and lay there. He was weak, now, and when he tried to drag himself forward he made only a few inches.

One more…Just one more red nigger…

He concentrated everything he had in an effort of the mind, so great that much of his pain was blanked off. He was trying to project himself into the minds of the savages, into their very bodies. He began to see them, one individual, and then another, wherever each was upon the prairie; and they appeared to him in a detail far more complete than any imagining he had ever experienced before. He seemed to sense not only the intentions but the thoughts of each one; and he took heart as he knew they were not leaving.

Presently he rolled himself to the side of the gully, tight against the mud wall of the coulee, belly down, but face tuned outward. He drew his Bowie knife from its sheath, though even this was a struggle, and gripped it underneath his body. Then he waited, counting his own heartbeats. He had to be alive, and conscious when they got there; but it was going to be a horse race.

They came in time. He knew they were there before he saw them. He waited with slitted eyes, un-winking; and at last they appeared around him. Another arrow in the back, first, then another. He lay limp, but was still breathing. Suddenly he was grabbed by the hair, and a knife sliced his scalp.

He whirled, then, got the scalper by the wrist, and snatched him downward. The Bowie knife struck upward, and went home to the guard in the belly of the Indian. With his last effort Cash twisted, carving with the knife point in a circle. Then he disappeared under a mass of as many as could reach him, hacking and stabbing.

When a quarter of an hour had passed without further sound of riflery, Rachel opened the bedroom door, lest Matthilda regain consciousness and call too faintly to be heard. She seemed asleep, her eyes closed, her breathing again so quiet that she seemed hardly to breathe at all. The heartbreaking cycle they had gone through so many times had come full circle once more, but without room for hope, this time, that it was not already starting over.

A small breeze was beginning to move out of the northwest as the sun lowered, and, though it didn’t amount to much, what there was of it was working against them. That mild and pleasant little stir of air would have been welcome, and enjoyed, on any other summer evening they had ever known. Tonight they blamed it for keeping any further news from coming to them across the prairie miles. Rawnerved, they felt that every act of nature was wickedly opposing them.

In the absence of any further indications, they judged they had better make ready to last out the night without help, regardless of what they might believe, or hope. Each was trying to seem unworried, and each was thinking how scared the other looked. They set about bracing each other by turning their minds to the practical things they could do. Their ammunition had better be tallied, about the first thing, they guessed.

The repeaters, to begin with. The faster of their two magazine carbines was the Spencer, which loaded with a seven-ball tube. Its magazine, with three extra tubes, accounted for twenty-eight rounds, and the Henry was carrying six. But when they had emptied every pocket, and scraped out the corners of the ammunition chest, they found only nineteen loose cartridges more. In all, the repeaters had fifty-three rounds, which might sound like a plenty, if you didn’t know how fast those things poured away lead. Every single round would have to be held back for the desperation moments of close action; and even then, the rim-fires must be hoarded with all care, or the magazine carbines would be out of action in the first three minutes.

Nothing to do about it. They could cast bullets, and make caps, but they didn’t know how to refill the detonation rings of the rim-fires. The closeshooting Sharp & Hankins would have been deadly in sniping action; it might have hurt the enemy more than any other weapon they had. But it was a slow-loading single-shot, and used the same rim-fires as the repeaters, so it had to be put away.

For slow fire, they were left with only two cap-and-ball pieces. They found only seven rounds for the breech-loading Sharp’s Fifty. Its linen cartridges were slow and finicky to make, but maybe they would have to try, if the Zachary marksmanship they were so proud of was to do them any good at all. The .69 buffalo gun was muzzle-loaded with loose powder; but search brought to light only one more of the huge slugs it fired, besides the one with which it was charged.

But their two cap-and-ball revolvers worried Andy the most. The big Walker Colt was loaded in its six chambers—they carried its hammer on a capless nipple—but had a reserve of only four more .44 balls. They had used it in firing for noise, and hadn’t found any way to get a good bang from it, blank, without wasting lead. And Andy’s treasured near-Whitney had the six loads in its cylinders, and that was all. They rummaged past hope without finding one .36 ball more. The revolvers were their final recourse if the Kiowas swarmed in, and Andy meant the Whitney for Rachel, because it was lighter, and bucked less, than the heavy Walker.

“We’ve got to make some—quick! Build up a fire—” He rummaged frantically for the lead strips they melted down to fill the bullet molds.

There were no lead strips.

“The saddle shed—there’s lashings of ’em down there in a—”

He grabbed for the door bar; but Rachel had got there, and threw her weight on it. “Andy—no, no, no—don’t you dare leave me here!”

“It’s our only chance to—”

“There’s nothing down there! The door’s stove in! Lead would be the first thing they took!”

He knew it was true. The saddle-shed door, nothing but rawhide on a frame, was hanging antigodlin by one strap, visible from the house.

Andy scratched up one idea more. He pulled a battered two-foot chest out from behind all the other plunder under his bunk. From this old toy box, as Andy pawed everything out of it, came such a history of Andy’s childhood that Rachel could not bear to look. She glimpsed the remains of a rag doll; Matthilda had seen no harm in giving a baby boy something to love as he went to sleep. Andy had decided dolls were unmanly before he was five years old, and Rachel had not known, until this moment, that he had never been able to bring himself to throw this one away.

In the very bottom of the chest, where they had sifted by their weight, lay tumbled some dozens of lead soldiers. There had been whole regiments of them once, brightly painted and tall as your finger—Andy’s share of the loot Papa had brought home one time, after selling a big herd.

“Here—here!” He shoved a clutch of them into Rachel’s hands, and clawed for more. “Get the fire going! Where’s the melt-ladle at?”

She packed all of their lightwood splinters into a solid heap, threw on gunpowder, and set it burning with the snaphaunce. She had already blown the flame white with the bellows when Andy stacked the rest of his soldiers on the hearth.

“Get some bigger wood onto—no, I’ll do it! Gimme that!” He took the bellows from her. “Get the thirty-six mold out! It’s the one makes eight at a whack….”

Only traces of paint remained on the little soldiers, but a picture flashed into Rachel’s mind of how bright they had been, and how pretty, long ago. She kicked one under the table, and crawled after it. Before she came out the other side she had managed to wipe her nose, without blowing it, on the inside of her skirt. If the little cracks were beginning to spread, she didn’t want Andy to know it. Not yet. Not while it could still be helped. As she brought the long-jawed bullet mold to the hearth, the first drums started.

A rattling noise began it, like the sound of two ax helves pounding on a log. Then a pair of medicine drums took it up, and finally, a flat loud clamor, made by beating on sheets of hardened rawhide. All of these noisemakers were struck in a unison as accurate as if a single giant drumstick were hitting them all at once with every stroke. The sound built and built, now and then ending with a final wallop like a cannon shot, to start over softly, and build again. The whole thing had an odd ventriloquism, so that sometimes the drumming seemed to be coming from down the creek, then from behind a ridge, then from somewhere on the prairie beyond the Dancing Bird.

Andy glanced up at Rachel, but they didn’t say anything about the drums. He skimmed the molten lead in his ladle. “Better take a look at Mama.”

The red rays of sunset were striking through the high air-slits in the bedroom, filling the narrow space with a strange ruddy light. Matthilda’s face quivered, and her eyes opened, as Rachel stood looking down at her. For a moment she stared unseeing; then she knew Rachel, and her face twisted weakly as she burst into tears.

“Darling girl,” she said, as if the words were wrung out of her, “darling, precious girl…. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They never knew just what it was Matthilda so regretted as she died. Maybe the last thought in her mind, as the light left it, was the simplest kind of an apology for being unable to care for them, or even herself, anymore.

The snoring gasps called the death rattle began at once. Rachel tried to call Andy, but before she could get control of her voice he was at her side. He looked at Rachel, questioning, with the wideeyed look that sometimes made him seem a little boy. She nodded, dry-eyed. The rattle stopped, and Andy moved closer; his competent hands gently pressed Matthilda’s ribs, and the effort to breathe began again. But the second time it stopped, Rachel took Andy’s hand, and wouldn’t let him start it any more.

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.