“Didn’t you cut for sign?”
“It was raining hard by then. We couldn’t find out anything.” They never did find out how Kelsey left there. “I never knew Ben to foozle so. I suppose I should have shot Kelsey, somewhere in there. I guess,” Andy finished uncertainly.
“Why should you?”
Andy stood opening and closing his mouth. “Ben told us we had to,” he said finally.
They stood out there talking a long time, though Matthilda twice came to the door of the house and banged on the triangle. Andy didn’t know anything more. But talking had got some of the kinks out of him, and he returned to his normal color. They didn’t have to explain anything to Matthilda, which was just as well. The truth was that they didn’t know then just what had happened—whether Kelsey was alive, or dead, or what.
That night Rachel wept a little, silently, into her pillow, thinking sentimentally about her brothers. She was sorry for Andy; in this mood she thought of him as still the little innocent-eyed boy of whom he sometimes reminded them. And she was sorriest for Ben, the one who had always been so steady, so gentle, and so kind, yet had somehow been driven to saddle not only himself but his brothers with a commitment to murder. Perhaps he still did not know whether he had killed the old man or not. But if he had, he had done it in the clumsiest way it could be done, and she could believe he might be haunted all his life by that.
She hoped for a while that Kelsey was indeed dead, so that the whole nightmare was over with. Then she thought how awful it was if the corpse was stiffening somewhere out there under the brush tonight; and she was horrified at herself, and filled with a sense of guilt.
Why does he haunt us so? He has a reason. He had it before, and all along. Or Ben would not have called his death. What evil thing was it we did—or Papa did—long ago, that makes this happen now?
She believed she would be able to make Ben tell her, now.
It did not work out that way. Before she ever spoke to Ben again, another thing happened. This time it happened to Rachel herself, and to nobody other, except as everyone in the family was affected by a disaster to one. And the world as Rachel knew it turned from beneath her, past all possible recovery.
Chapter Fifteen
During the night the rain stopped; the skies were clear, the day after Kelsey was dragged. Rachel plotted to get a horse saddled and out of there. She meant to find Ben at once. She knew about where his crew was at work.
Only a year or so back, it had been hard to get Matthilda to go and lie down, or to take any daytime rest at all. But her afternoon had hardly begun when the bedroom door closed upon her. Rachel was out of the house in the same minute. She walked past the corrals, and along the Dancing Bird, pretending to size up the driftwood brought them by the spring rise, in case Matthilda happened to be watching her out of sight.
In another minute, as soon as she had given her mother a chance to doze, she would have turned back to rope a pony.
She never got it done, for Ben appeared unexpectedly, and Georgia was with him, stirrup to stirrup. They came surging up out of an arroyo some distance downstream and Georgia was laughing, having a great time. Then Rachel saw her do an odd thing. Georgia’s laughter stopped abruptly; she checked, and whirled her horse in what looked very much like an attempt to get out of sight. Too late, of course. Georgia recovered herself at once, and stopped where she was. Her horse shied, she explained afterward. It was not important. What mattered was the way Rachel took it. For her resentment of this girl suddenly popped sparks like a sap log.
You weren’t coming to the house at all. You tried to get back, without I saw you. Rode here to be with him—but didn’t want us to know! I knew it was you made Ben hang my saddle up.
Georgia exchanged a word or two with Ben. Then both waved at Rachel, and came on at a walk. Rachel saw she wasn’t going to have any chance to talk to her brother at all, not even here in their own house, what with this interloper butting in.
Sure. Come right on in. May as well, now. Make yourself right at home, just as cool as a hung hog. I’ve had about enough of you! It never occurred to her that Ben could be blamed.
She was getting ready to fix Ben something to eat, and wondering if she could bring herself to set a plate for Georgia, when Georgia dismounted at the stoop, letting Ben take her pony to the corral.
“Ben lost his reata,” Georgia said as she walked in. “That’s a man for you. Doesn’t even know where or how, seemingly. Had to come in to get a rope.”
Rachel must have known that it was jealousy had hold of her, a very different jealousy than she had ever felt when Georgia was fooling around with Cassius. For just a moment she wondered whether she had better start a war she could not finish, or risk an open bust-up with any member of that other family with whom they were already having difficulty enough.
“Been seeing a good deal of Ben lately, haven’t you?”
“I help keep the tallies. It frees a man for the work. Anyway, we have to keep a cross-tally. For Pa.”
“Who’s cross-tallying for Cash? Oh, I forgot. Cash is way far up the Wichita Trail. Out of sight, out of mind. I guess that’s plenty easy, for some.”
Georgia answered shortly, but reasonably. She had not come looking for this fight, and felt no need of it. “Get this through your head. I’m not bespoke. Not to Cash or anybody else. When I am, I’ll tell you.”
She moved away, toward the wash bench; and Rachel, turning to the table, picked up the long Bowie knife with which they carved, and cut a paper-thin slice from the pot roast. The run of the honed blade through the meat felt good to her in her present mood. She knew she had said enough. She had a chance to drop it now—the last chance she would have in her life; but she couldn’t let it alone.
With her back to Georgia she said, “Ben isn’t fixing to settle down. He likes to ride free on the trails.”
Georgia stood looking at her sideways. She hadn’t angered yet. Her riding had taken the winter softness off of her, and now she was thoughtfully rubbing the palm of one hand on a hip bone. “Neither am I fixing to settle down,” she said. “Not for a while, anyway.”
“Then why do you keep tolling them on—each behind the other’s back? We have a name for that, where I come from!”
Georgia’s eyes seemed to go higher in her head, signaling that if Rachel wanted fight she could have it. “Oh, hell, Rachel! Why don’t you quit acting like a brat?”
“I won’t have you coming between Cash and Ben—you hear me?”
“I hear you very well,” Georgia said slowly. “You sound like a spying little sneak, to me.”
Rachel’s head came up. “I am Rachel Zachary,” she said. “Everywhere in—”
“You’re what?” Georgia got in.
“Everywhere in Texas, they know who the Zacharys are. And do you know how many people there are in Texas can give a Zachary slack? Not one!”
“That’s right,” Georgia answered. “It’s a big pity you ain’t one.”
Rachel stared, no more than puzzled then.
“You’re no Zachary,” Georgia made it plain for her. “You’re no tittle of relation to a Zachary.”
“You out of your mind?”
“Why, I knowed it first time I seen you. Look at yourself! Where’s the Zachary bone? You got bones like a snuff stick. Look at your hide! The sun ain’t hardly touched you, and already you’re the color of a red hog in a mudhole. You couldn’t pass for a Zachary in a thousand years!”
With shock, with bewilderment, Rachel saw that Georgia believed what she was saying. She stammered out, “How do you think I got here—if—”