Both brothers had things they wanted to talk about, but not in front of Andy, or with the overemphasis of haste. So, “Come have a look,” Ben said.
They rode back, now, along the straggle of newly hired cowhands, who numbered twenty-eight, plus a cook who drove a six-horse team in the drag. In the performance of these men could lie the difference between calamity and a great year. From the Dancing Bird to Wichita was a drive of only two hundred and sixty or seventy miles—no drive at all, compared to some Old Zack had made to Abilene from below the Neuces River; and they could expect wohaw—a tribute paid in gifts of beef—to satisfy the roving bands of Indians, who had no stomach for a fight with an armed crew anyway. Nevertheless, several thousand head of wolfwild stock must not be moved, but in some degree coddled, through uneasy country every mile of the way. The herd could get into big trouble any time, any place, if its trail hands were not up to snuff.
Seen from this standpoint, the new hands Ben had to show his brother looked none too encouraging. As usual, the greater number were youngsters; born misfits, mostly, hangdog and unsure of them-selves, but with wretched hats cocked jauntily, as if they hoped they were dangerous. One thing was pretty plain about them all. These were wanted men, or thought they were, or they would not have been here. The Dancing Bird was too far from town and too close to the Kiowas to be easy to hire for, no matter where you looked for men. At Fort Griffin you took what you could get. Yet Ben believed he saw a certain toughness, or the makings of it, in these downwind drifters; and he was hoping his brother would see it too.
Cash looked them over with a show of indifference. He had bossed a trail herd when he was nineteen, and believed he had proved himself a cowman. But Zeb Rawlins, with whom they pooled their drives, had been disappointed in the returns, and had never okayed Cash to drive again. Ben might blame himself, but actually most of the ill-nature with which Cash had greeted Ben’s return grew out of Cash’s resentment over having been unfairly shelved.
“Looks like you did all right,” he finally brought himself to say.
So much for that. Ben now sent Andy back to the remuda to cut out any five of the new horses he wanted, for his own string. And the two older brothers drifted off to the flank, where they could talk alone.
Cassius waited until they were beyond earshot of the corrida, before he fired his cannon. “Abe Kelsey was here.”
Ben’s startled glance acknowledged that he had heard, but he didn’t say anything right away. “Close to the house?” he asked at last.
“Rode up to a window. Leaned down to look in.”
Another pause; then two questions more. “What kind of a horse was he on?”
“A mighty sorry horse, the way they tell it. I didn’t see him. Mama and Rachel saw him.”
Ben nodded, gravely. If Kelsey rode a bad horse, it meant the Kiowas still took away his horses as fast as he could steal them; so he had gained no influence with them, or favor. Well, that was something.
And his other question: “Does Rachel—?”
Cassius shook his head. “She hasn’t found out anything. Only—this floored me, Ben—she did call off his name. Whether Mama let something slip, or she guessed it from—well, that ain’t what signifies.”
“No,” Ben said slowly. “That ain’t what signifies. You want to know something?”
He pulled his horse to a walk, and Cassius waited. Looking at his brother sidelong, Cassius saw he looked a whole lot tireder than a man should, coming off so easy a trip—virtually a vacation.
“Cash,” Ben said, “I had to kill a man.”
He was looking straight ahead, so that Cassius was able to cover up his first startled, even excited reaction. When Cash spoke his tone was quiet. “The same thing?”
“It’s always the same thing. But this time I had no warning. The guns let off, and a stranger-boy I hired that day was down in the dirt. Seems he pulled first, but he was baited into it. The bastard who done it accused him of going to work for…a red-nigger lover.”
“But when did you—”
“Oh. Me. I stepped out in the middle, and the killer swung round on me. I heard his hammer cock, so I fired.”
They were silent awhile. Cash finally smiled a little. “Well, that makes us even.” He held out his hand, and Ben gripped it. “I run into pretty near the same thing last year,” Cash said. “I kind of figured you knew about it.”
Ben nodded. “Wasn’t going to say anything, till you wanted to.”
“Thanks, Ben.” For a moment, there, they were probably closer than they had ever been in their lives; and they weren’t even thinking about it. “We’ve got to catch this Kelsey and hang him,” Cassius said. “We should have tracked him down long ago. I’m thinking of the Rawlinses. No scale-horn on earth ever come stubborner than old Zeb. And nobody hates Indians worse. If Kelsey ever stirs him up we’ll have a finish fight on our hands. Else he’ll gore us off the range.”
“Damn the range,” Ben said.
“What?”
Ben held his voice low, but a shake came into it, beyond his control. “Cash, I know, I know in my heart, I’ll go after them, and I’ll kill them, every man…the day they turn on her.”
A shade of emphasis fell on the last word, “her,” and that was where it belonged. It was Rachel whom Kelsey had been able to turn into a hostage, and a way to get at the Zacharys. In a dozen pioneer crises, the Zacharys had been held defenseless by the special vulnerability of this girl. And their great fear, keeping them forever on their guard through these years, was that she herself would find it out. Their perpetual vigilance in itself had made her far more precious to them than another child could ever have been.
Rachel, called Rachel Zachary, had been raised in the belief that she was their own. But she was not a Zachary, nor of any kin. Nobody knew who she was, or could ever know. It was not even known of what blood she might have come.
Abe Kelsey claimed he knew. He, and he alone, had been present when Old Zack found a naked baby on the prairie, seventeen years ago; and this gave him the color of authority, for some. After Kelsey turned on Old Zack, these listened when Abe pointed to what he claimed was the Zacharys’ strange immunity to raids.
“Kiowa won’t touch ’em. Never have, and never will! Bought themselves scot-free when they sold out my boy. Even took in a red-nigger whelp on swap, to bind the deal. Go see for yourself! A squaw young’n as ever was—growing up in the Zachary name!”
No worse nonsense was possible. If the Kiowas had believed for a moment that the Zacharys were holding a Kiowa child, however fractional of blood, they would have attacked without let-up. Yet it was the kind of theory that easily took root in this blood-soaked ground. In the past twenty years Kiowa and Comanche raiding parties had killed more than eight hundred Texas settlers. Among them had been a great number of women killed by incessant rape; and a lot of stolen children who died most pitifully in captivity. The victims were not only scalped but often gruesomely dismembered.
Ben thought that Texans should at least have learned by this time that the Horse Indians used fast travel as a weapon, and great space as a shield. Old Zack himself had helped teach the Kiowas that a blood-angry posse might soon be charging in among their own lodges if they left too short a trail. Kiowas raided from the top of Kansas to Santa Fe; they could cross Texas at eighty miles a night to raid deep in Mexico, and be back above the Red while the same moon held. Not how far away, but how watchful, was the measure of safety on this frontier.
Yet people in the worst-hurt counties still built houses with bullet-leaky walls and tinder roofs, without lookouts, rifle loops, or battle shutters. They let their children wander unwatched, and left their women alone for days while they fogged off on senseless errands. They couldn’t learn and wouldn’t be told, and no amount of bloody murder ever changed that.