“No,” he said. “You ain’t, Bonnie Sue.”
“Will...”
“You aint, goddamn it!”
They stared at each other in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She knelt before him and he looked down at her, and then turned his face away, refusing to meet her eyes lest he find there the eyes of a woman. “No,” he said again, and in the next instant was sorry. He heard the shouted “Ailez!” from below, and turned to look, and realized he was too late, he could no longer stop it if he tried.
The horse was running off along the riverbank.
Lester’s body hung in the air, his boots some four feet above the ground, his head twisted at a peculiar angle, his tongue protruding grotesquely from his mouth. His hat had fallen from his head when the knot struck him violently from behind, and it lay now in the dirt below his swinging boots. Bertaut looked up at him and nodded in brief satisfaction. Wiping perspiration from his forehead, he went to stand with his Indian wife, who asked him something in French. Bertaut nodded. Beside Will, Bonnie Sue screamed. She got to her feet and, still screaming, ran to where Lester’s body slowly twisted on the end of the rope. And clutched for his knees, and hugged his legs close, wailing, wailing as the Indians watched in wonder.
He went down to the tipi again that night. He was sober this time. Lifted the flap, went right on in. He had food with him, which he gave to Catherine and the squaw. The air had turned chilly outside; they still had the fire going. He asked them whether they’d already had supper, and Catherine nodded that they had and then talked to the squaw with her hands. The squaw sighed and made ready to go, draping the army blanket over her shoulders.
“You can stay, you want to,” Will said. Catherine looked at him. “Tell her she can stay. Makes no difference,” he said, and shrugged again.
The women held a conference, Catherine explaining with her hands, the squaw listening and then turning in surprise to Will. He nodded. She took off the blanket then, and went to the robe near the fire. Kneeling on it, she began unbraiding her hair, preparing for sleep.
“Take off the paint, too,” he said.
The squaw turned to Catherine for translation. Catherine’s hands moved. The squaw nodded and went silently to rub the paint from her face. She undressed without embarrassment, and then came back to the robe naked, and lay down on it, and pulled a second robe over her. In a little while, Catherine and Will got under the robe with her, Will between the two women. The squaw was almost asleep. Her hand found his pecker. She let it rest there lightly, fell asleep that way. Snored gently. Catherine made sounds. Little frightened sounds. All night long. He lay wake between them.
He kept thinking about Lester Hackett.
Kept thinking he could’ve stopped the hanging if he’d moved an instant sooner. Should’ve jumped right up when Bonnie Sue told him she was pregnant. Never mind Lester was a horse thief deserved hanging. This was his sister here telling him the man’s child was inside her, and there he was with a noose around his neck. Should’ve done what Schwarzenbacher’d already done once, run on down there and cut the man loose. Shake his hand. Congratulations, Lester, you stole a horse and got away with it. Now about this other matter, Lester, this matter of having also stole my sister’s honor. I reckon we had best start discussing a wedding, wouldn’t you say, before my pa shoots you dead? Sat there looking at her instead. Didn’t know what to say or do, his little sister telling him all at once she’d behaved like any whore...
Catherine stirred beside him on the robe.
“You awake?” he asked.
She grunted and rolled over, her back to him. The squaw still had her hand on his pecker. Pair of whores, he thought. I’m here with a pair of whores, one looks like a cow and can’t talk English, the other mute as any stone. Was a time... hell, he couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t loved Elizabeth. Four years old when he first spied her in her cradle. Fell in love right that minute. Asked his ma who the young’un was there in the cradle by the fire. Minerva said it was Mrs. Donnely’s new daughter as lived down the ridge. Was minding her while they were in town. “She’s a real sunflower,” Will said. He was four. Loved her to death first time he saw her. He was thirty-one now — no, thirty-two already, layin here between two whores, gettin hard in spite of himself, the squaw’s hand twitching in her sleep.
Thirty-two, he thought.
Don’t know where I am or what I’m about.
Figured if we left Virginia...
Should’ve saved Lester, damn it! Cause when you thought about it... well, he got killed for a horse, wasn’t that the long and the short of it? Man stole a fuckin horse, you strung him up. Them Indians who’d killed Annabel... oh, Lord, he thought, oh, dearest God, and lay motionless, eyes wide open. He could see stars above, through the hole in the top of the tent Smoke rose from the smoldering fire. Way Bobbo described it, they’d come in there ready to kill. Maybe not wanting to, but ready to. Must’ve been following the wagon, saw the womenfolk, saw just Bobbo and Pa all alone, thought to have taken the women and the mules. Kill Bobbo and Pa, take the women and mules. Thirteen years old, saw Annabel as a woman, same as Ma and Bonnie Sue. Came in there ready to kill for what they wanted, ready to kill even the very thing they wanted. Made no fuckin sense. None of it. Not the Indians killing Annabel, and not the white men today killing Lester. Cause that’s what they’d done, they’d killed him, hanged him by law, but killed him dead however you looked at it. Wasn’t what Bonnie Sue wanted, wasn’t even what Will wanted when you got right down to it. What he would’ve rathered was for Lester to still be alive and kicking and marrying his damn dumb sister who’d let a horse thief...
He was losing the thought, he was letting it slip from his grasp.
It had to do with horses.
The horse Lester stole, and the horses Bobbo and Pa took from them Indians, two fine mares and a stallion. If you hanged a white man who’d stolen from you, and if you killed Indians were trying to steal from you...
And...
And if you claimed as your own the horses had belonged to the Indians, then what was to stop the one who’d run off from coming back to claim all the fuckin horses — the ones had belonged to him and his, and the ones rightfully belonging to you and yours, earmarked and branded? What was to stop anybody in this whole fuckin world from taking anything he wanted from anybody else? Take it or try to take it. Kill for it or be killed for it. White man or Indian, what difference did it make? There were only so many horses, only so many buffalo, only so much land...
Trembling in the night, troubled, he moved closer to the squaw for warmth, and finally fell asleep.
By morning, he’d forgotten what he’d almost understood.
VII
Gideon
Will was sitting there with his two women, one on either side of him. Fire in the middle of the tent. Place smelled awful, made Gideon want to retch. Some kind of food cooking there in the pot. Some kind of animal. Lots of Indians ate dog meat. He looked at his brother and wondered if he’d taken to eating dog meat now that he was sleeping with Indians. The squaw looked like the hog Gideon’d carried in the house that time. The other one was supposed to be white. She was wearing an old calico Will had bought from a trapper coming through. Hem had been let out cause she was so tall; you could see plain as day where the faded dress’d been made longer. Wore it with black cotton stockings to her shins. Moccasins, too. Still looked like an Indian; Gideon couldn’t believe she was white.