Chapter Thirteen
After the herd was gone, the work went on; and for a while it seemed pretty lonely around the little soddy.
The Rawlinses came visiting no more; but the present coolness was easily explained, entirely aside from any part that Abe Kelsey might have played. Effie had been delayed, and Jude had stayed home to wait for her. None of the Rawlinses, except Georgia, thought Cassius could handle any part of the drive without Jude along, and Hagar had actually wanted the drive held up, until after the wedding. Even Zeb saw that this was ridiculous; the market would not wait for Effie, or anybody else. But Zeb himself could not forgive Ben’s failure to consult him before making Cassius trail boss, for Zeb had hoped to put Jude in charge. Rachel could understand why the two families had better stay away from each other, for awhile.
And Ben was gone all the time. Cash had left Ben with six men and Andy, as well as both Rawlins boys—theoretically; though Jude was supposed to ride and overtake the drive after his sister’s wedding. There was no Indian danger yet. The moon had been full as the herd rolled, but now it was on the wane; the Kiowas would let their ponies strengthen on the spring feed until the moon waxed again. Ben left two men at the house—though even this seemed hardly needful—and worked a single wagon far out. He was trying to catch up with the calfbranding in the far corners of the range, so that he could work closer home when the danger time came.
Meanwhile, Rachel was having a harder and harder time getting away from the house. The inside work had piled up some, during the green-up; but aside from that, Matthilda seemed to feel lonelier, and less secure, as Cassius got farther away. No sense to it, of course. But Rachel was finding out that the less sense there is to a thing like that, the harder it is to talk away. This quirk of the mind went back to the year they lost Papa up there, in the crossing of the Witch River, Rachel supposed. What few times Rachel did get out to the brandings, Georgia was always there; that was what made her mad.
Andy rode home every day or so, but Ben got home only once during that wane, and he might much better have stayed away. He came in very late, and drank his coffee without sitting down. “You all right, here? I’m fine. Work’s going fair, I guess. No, they haven’t heard from Effie, far’s I know. You folks need anything?” He filled his pockets with cold vittles, and was actually at the door, when he turned back to cut Rachel’s girth for her, once and for all. “Oh, by the way—Sis—you’ll have to quit all this ramboodling around the country. You’ve got to stay home.”
“Now wait a minute!”
“For a lot of reasons,” Ben explained. He had found Indian sign almost every day he had been out. No big war parties, looking for fight—ponies not ready, yet, to shake off a pursuit. Mainly horse thieves, playing hide-and-sneak. But the whole Indian situation looked bad. Fort Sill troops had been fired into—not just once, but three times that he knew about. Ben predicted a full-out uprising, come summer. “Just wait till their ponies are ready. Then you’ll see!”
“Well, they’re not ready yet! Never heard such a far-fetched excuse in my life,” Rachel argued. “What are you up to out there you don’t want me to know about?”
“Who, me?”
“What about Georgia? I notice she rides on the wild loose every day of the world! Everyplace you do!”
“Who’s Georgia? Oh, Georgia. I’m not running Georgia. It’s you I’m responsible for,” Ben answered her, making out it was all a matter of sweet concern for his sister’s welfare.
Rachel was left low in her mind, and haunted by suspicions. Georgia pretended to be helping with the tallies, but Rachel thought it was mighty funny that she was always to be found tallying for Ben. Never felt called on to help her own brothers, who got on fine without any put-in from Georgia, seemingly. Not much to go on. Rachel couldn’t really convince herself that anything was wrong. All she knew for sure was that a spring of seeming promise was turning into something pretty tiresome, with fly season not even begun.
But now Abe Kelsey was in the Dancing Bird country again.
Chapter Fourteen
Kelsey did not come to the house this time, though he might have been on his way there. Neither Rachel nor Matthilda saw him. If Rachel’s understanding of her younger brother had been less acute, she would not have known about the ugly thing that happened then, in those days before the Kiowa moon.
One afternoon Andy rode in two hours before he could rightly be expected, in a dusky rain; and Rachel ran down to the corral, a carbine under her slicker, to unsaddle for him, in case he was of a mind to catch up with a few chores. One look at Andy’s face brought her up short. He had a greenish pallor, for one thing, like something under water.
“Andy! You’re fetching down with something!”
“No—oh, no—I’m fine—” He tried to keep his face turned away from her as he stepped down.
“Then you’re hurt. Either a colt stacked you, or—” Another possibility struck her. “Is Ben all right?”
He nodded, and pushed his rein into her hands; and he ran around behind the trough shelter. She could hear him being sick back there, as soon as he was out of sight. She tied the pony, and got a gourd of water from the well by the Dancing Bird.
Andy gulped at it. “Tell me one thing. Was he here? Did you see him?”
Confused, she almost said, “Who, Ben?” Then she understood. “No,” she answered him. “I haven’t seen him. But I think you have. Today.”
“I didn’t say…” He let it die out, and made a vague move toward his pony.
She said, “You weren’t going to tell me that, were you? And there’s more you haven’t told me. Which of you killed him?”
“Nobody,” Andy said, and looked as if he wanted to be sick again. He drank the rest of the water. “We had a chance at him. But somehow—something went wrong.”
She got the rest out of him, then. Andy had been with Ben, a long way out from the wagon, when Kelsey showed himself. He came toward them, first, as if he wanted to talk—maybe had been watching for a time when they were apart from the others. But when they pointed their horses at him he lost his nerve, and ran for it. Andy thought he must be trying to lead them into an ambush; he pulled up, yelling at Ben. But Ben went on, so Andy drew carbine and followed. Kelsey rode a pretty fair horse this time, but with no grain to it, of course. Ben closed on him fast, and pulled his pistol. Kelsey took one look back, and the next thing he did was unbelievable. He pitched away his rifle—and went tearing on with his hands up, kicking his horse full stretch. Ben seemed flabbergasted; plainly he didn’t know what to do. He could have gone ahead and shot Kelsey, but he didn’t seem to think of that. He hesitated a few seconds, then stuck away the pistol and shook out his reata. And the rest was a night-mare.
Kelsey was jerked off his horse, but the loop had got an arm and a shoulder, as well as the neck, and he hit the ground alive. Ben didn’t seem to know what to do about that, either. He just spurred on….
“When finally he stopped, and I come up, there wasn’t nothing on that reata but…”
Rachel let him skip that part of it.
“Ben threw away his reata, rather than step down and loose it,” Andy ended.
“You don’t call that killing him?”
He shook his head. “We went back to the wagon, for tools to dig a grave. And it started to rain. Took us two hours, before we got back where we left him. And when we did…he was gone from there.”