Texas Rifles (12 page)

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Authors: Elmer Kelton

BOOK: Texas Rifles
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He turned to his sister. “I'm glad they were wrong.”
Mother Lawton spoke from the porch. “So are all of
us. You've got a wonderful sister there, Mister Rutledge. You'll be proud of her.”
Cloud asked something that had been bothering him all day. “What kind of plans you got for her, Mister Rutledge?”
“No real plans, Cloud.” No
Mister
there. “I'll just carry her home and more or less let nature take its course. I'm sure there are lots of things she'll have to learn after spending all those years among the savages. Between Flora and my wife and I, I'm sure we can teach her. And, after a proper time, we'll begin introducing her around. That country is settled up, and there are lots of eligible men down there now. Who knows?”
Cloud clenched his fist. “You say
after a proper time.
You mean you're aimin' to keep her hidden till you're sure she's civilized enough to meet folks?”
Cloud's impatient tone drew a spark from Rutledge. “I didn't say that. What I said was … well, we want to be sure that she's ready before we take her out into public too much and risk embarrassing her. It's for her own good. Later on, then, she'll have nothing to look back to in shame.”
Fist still clenched, Cloud wished he had voice for some of the angry thoughts that raced through his mind.
Not hard to tell he wouldn't like her associating with the likes of me.
Captain Barcroft had said little this evening. Much of the time he had spent just looking at Kenneth Rutledge, as if trying to gauge the man. At length he cleared his throat and spoke:
“There's one thing about your sister that I doubt anyone has told you yet, and I think you should know it.”
Cloud felt it coming, and he steeled himself.
Why doesn't he keep quiet? Rutledge will find out soon enough anyway.
Rutledge sat up straight, glancing sideways at Easter.
He saw Hanna turn away from the captain, and he was instantly suspicious. “What is it, Captain?”
Barcroft frowned at Hanna and hesitated a moment, evidently wondering how best to say it. “It's a thing you've probably considered already but haven't wanted to ask about. Your sister is a grown woman, an attractive woman, and she's long past marriage age from an Indian viewpoint.”
The captain paused again, and Rutledge cast another wide-eyed glance at the silent Easter. “Captain, are you trying to tell me …”
Barcroft nodded. “She had an Indian husband!”
Cloud pushed himself to a stand. He put in angrily: “It wasn't none of her fault, Rutledge. Woman don't have nothin' to say about it. He bought her like you'd buy a heifer. He swapped a string of horses for her. She couldn't help it!”
Rutledge sank back in his chair, face twisted. He didn't say anything for a while. Then: “I guess I realized somehow that it had probably happened, but I didn't let myself think about it.” He looked at Easter a long moment. “Easter, you
couldn't
help it, could you?”
Easter had her hands clasped tightly, and she was looking straight ahead, into the darkness, frozen motionless. “It was the Indian way.”
Rutledge rubbed his forehead, trying to puzzle his way through. “I don't suppose we have to tell anybody. What they don't know …”
Barcroft said, “There's one more thing. The word will get out sooner or later, so it's best to start with the whole truth. She bore a baby by that husband.”
Rutledge seemed to wilt. “A baby?” He shook his head, trying to reject the thought. “An
Indian
baby?”
The captain said, “That's right.”
Rutledge didn't look at anyone for a while. He just sat
there as if he had been struck by the flat side of an ax. Finally he asked weakly, “Where is it?”
For a moment Cloud feared Easter would break down and cry. But she didn't. She sat stiff and silent, unblinking.
The captain said, “We left it behind.”
Rutledge had his eyes closed. A long breath escaped him, and he said, “Thank God for that!” His hands trembled a little as he swayed forward in the chair. “But people will find out anyway. They always do about something like that. What're we going to tell them? How can we ever explain?”
Cloud moved forward stiffly, stopping beside Easter. “They're frontier folks, ain't they? They'll understand.”
Rutledge shook his head. “The frontier passed us by a long time ago. We live in a settled community. We have churches now, and church people. They live by the Book.”
Cloud gritted, “And don't that Book tell about Christian charity? The Lawtons here, they're Bible-readin' folks, and they understood. They never held nothin' against Easter, not for a single minute.”
Rutledge didn't even seem to hear him. “How will I ever explain this?” he said, almost pleading. “What can I ever tell them? The name of Rutledge means something there. We've
made
it mean something. But what will it mean after this?”
Fists tight, Cloud stepped in front of Rutledge. “What kind of a man are you?” he demanded. “Here you've got a sister who's been through hell, and you're not even thinkin' of
her
—you're only thinkin' about yourself!”
Rutledge sat back in his chair, drawn up within himself, something akin to panic holding him in a tight grip. Finally he said, “You can't blame me. If I'd only known, if I'd even thought … You have to admit, it's an awful
shock to spring on a man all of a sudden, an awful shock.”
I got a worse one I'd like to spring on you!
thought Cloud.
But it'd hurt her as much as it would you … .
Rutledge stood up shakily and got a grip on himself. Without a glance at Easter, he said to the others, “I'm going back to the camp. I'm tired, and I have a lot to think about.”
Mother Lawton asked anxiously, “We'll see you tomorrow?” Rutledge only nodded without looking back as he walked out the gate.
Mother Lawton quietly arose from her chair on the porch. She walked out and stood by Easter, her hand on the girl's shoulder. “It's all right, Easter,” she said quietly, “it's all right.”
Hanna Lawton leaned against the cabin wall, face buried in her arms. She turned to Barcroft and demanded tearfully, “Aaron, how could you do it?”
The captain replied, “It wasn't easy, but it had to be done.”
Hanna cried “It didn't! It didn't!” She whirled away from him and ran into the cabin. Barcroft took a step after her, his face unreadable in the darkness. Cloud heard him call, “Hanna!” Then he turned around without speaking to anyone else. He walked out the gate, following Kenneth Rutledge.
 
Next morning, while Cloud sat cross-legged on the ground cleaning his rifle, the captain walked up to him. Cloud gave the captain a quick glance but no greeting. He kept working with the rifle.
“Cloud,” said Barcroft, “I'm afraid I have to give you an unpleasant duty this morning.”
Ain't the first one,
Cloud thought darkly, still angry about last night.
“Go down to the Lawtons' house and tell Easter Rutledge that her brother has gone!”
Cloud almost dropped the rifle. He set it down on a blanket he had spread out before him. He stood up stiffly and said, “Gone?”
“Got up before daylight, caught his team and left.”
Cloud's lips were suddenly dry. “You sure he didn't take Easter?”
“Guard watched him leave. He didn't stop anywhere. He headed straight south.”
“That dirty …” Cloud bit his lip and looked off toward the Lawton house, which was well out of sight. “And what about Easter? What happens to her now?”
The captain had no answer.
Cloud turned on him angrily. “It was your fault! You didn't have to tell him!”
Barcroft shook his head. “I had to tell him. Before I had talked with him twenty minutes, I knew what kind of man he was—a narrow-minded, egotistical fool.”
Cloud thought,
Now look who's callin' somebody narrow-minded!
Barcroft said, “I knew right then what he was likely to do when he found out. Better to have it happen here than on down the road somewhere, or back in her own town. At least here she has some friends.”
Angrily Cloud charged, “You did it to spite her! You're as bad as Rutledge. You've had a contempt for her right from the first! You've hated her all along!”
“Hated
her?” The captain seemed surprised at the thought. “Cloud, I never hated that girl. What gave you the idea I did?”
“The way you've treated her, the way you've avoided her. The times you've been over to the Lawton house, you haven't even looked at her. You've turned your head away. From the day we found her, you've wanted to be
rid of her. If that's not hatred—if that's not contempt—I'd like to know what is!”
Barcroft sank to his heels and looked off into the distance. “It wasn't hatred, Cloud, or contempt. I've felt nothing but pity for her.”
“Then why have you made it such a point to avoid her?”
Pain came into the captain's face. “Because of the things I saw in her every time I looked at her, Cloud. Things I wanted to put out of my mind but couldn't when she was around. I looked at her and I saw my own daughter. I thought to myself, my daughter—if she's still alive—will live the same life this girl has lived. She'll grow up a savage, as much a Comanche as if she had been born one, and she'll know no better, just as this girl knew no better. When her time comes, she'll take a Comanche husband, just as this girl did. And she'll bear his children, Cloud—my own daughter—bearing his children just like any red-skinned squaw!”
Cloud saw the bleakness of prairie winter in the captain's dark eyes. After a long while he spoke. “Captain, I'm sorry for anything I said to you.”
The captain said, “You'd better go tell Easter.”
E
ASTER SAT IN HER ROCKING CHAIR, DRY-EYED BUT stunned as Cloud told her. Cloud shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, knowing her torment, knowing how she struggled to beat back the tears. He wanted to touch her, wanted to reach out and take her in his arms and shield her from hurt. But he couldn't shield her from this. He couldn't even help.
“Easter,” he said quietly, “I know you've come to depend on findin' your family, to make up for what you'd already lost. But it don't mean the world's come to an end.”
Face stricken, Hanna Lawton had walked out of the room when Cloud started to tell Easter what had happened. Mother Lawton stayed. Now she moved to Easter's side and spoke gently, “The young man's right, Easter. You've got friends here, and a home just as long as you want it.”
Easter gave no response. Cloud put his hand over hers and said, “Easter, remember what we were talkin' about the other day?
I'll
give you a home, and I'll give you a family too. I want you to marry me, Easter!”
Cloud sensed Mother Lawton's approval, but he didn't glance at the woman. He looked down tensely at Easter, wondering if she had even understood. “Easter,” he said again, “I want to marry you.”
Presently Easter said in a hollow voice, “Because you feel sorry for me?” She shook her head. “I don't want it to be that way.”
“It's
not
that way. I
want
to marry you. I love you, Easter!”
“A few days ago I asked
you,
and you said no. Nothing's changed since then, except that now you feel sorry for me.” Again she shook her head. “Thanks, Cloud, for asking. But now
I'll
say no.”
“Easter …” He realized then that it wouldn't help to argue with her now. Maybe later, when time had eased the hurt.
Easter said, “Cloud, would you please leave me alone now? I have a lot of thinking to do.”
He squeezed her hand. “Sure, I understand. I'll come back tonight. Maybe by then you'll see your way through. And Easter”—he lifted her chin and looked into her desolate eyes—“Easter, please think about what I said. I
do
love you.”
Outside, Hanna Lawton stood on the porch, a handkerchief gripped in her hand. Tightly she asked, “What now, Cloud? What now?”
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and stood with his bleak gaze to the ground. “I don't know, Miss Hanna, I swear I don't.”
“Aaron caused this,” she spoke bitterly. “He's caused all her misery. Why couldn't he just have left her where
he found her? She'd have been better off!”
“The captain never has done anything he didn't believe was right.”
Odd, he thought, that he should ever find himself having to defend the captain to Hanna Lawton.
She demanded, “What ever gave him the idea he had the right to decide for others, a man who hasn't even been able to find his
own
way?” She choked and brought the handkerchief to her face again. “I wish I'd never seen him!”
Cloud said, “No you don't, not really. Maybe one day he'll see
you!
”
She looked up quickly, but Cloud walked away.
 
He went back that night. Hanna Lawton met him at the door, her face grave. He found all the Lawtons strangely quiet. “What's the matter?” he asked, alarm rising in him. “Where's Easter?”
“She's down by the creek,” Hanna Lawton spoke, almost in a whisper. “She wants you to go down there.”
Henry Lawton arose from his chair and drew on his pipe, his brow furrowed with worry. “Cloud, we've had a long talk with her. We don't like what she wants to do, but we can't talk her out of it. Maybe you can.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and stared at it. “But if you can't, then for God's sake help her. She can't do it alone.”
“Do what?” Cloud felt the blood draining from his face.
“Just go talk with her, Cloud.”
He hurried down the creekbank, running into a cottonwood limb and knocking his hat off. He went down on one knee, then pushed to his feet again. “Easter,” he called. “Easter, where are you?”
He heard her voice to his right, a calm voice. “I'm over here.”
He found her sitting in the willow chair, staring out across the creek. “Easter,” he said, the excitement riding high in him, “what're they tryin' to tell me? What is it you want to do?”
She turned to him, and he saw that her face was calm, the calmest it had been in a long time. “I've done a lot of thinking today. I've made up my mind. Cloud, I'm going home!”
“Home?” He sucked in a short breath, and he knew what the Lawtons had been trying to say.
“I've been trying to fool myself. I've thought if I could find myself a family, I could forget all I left behind. I found that family, and it wouldn't have me. It
wasn't
my family, I can see that now. They weren't really my people, not anymore. My real family is that baby, Cloud, and it's far up on the plains somewhere. My people are there, too, the only real people I have. So I'm going back to them. I'm going home.”
He took her hands and held them tightly. “You're tired, Easter, and you're all upset. You're not thinkin' straight.”
“I'm thinking straighter than I have in a long time. It's the only answer, Cloud, the only way.”
“Easter, listen to me—”
“I
have
listened, and I've thought over all you said. But now I'm listening to my heart. And it says, go find that baby.”
She leaned toward him. “I think I love you, Cloud. If things were different, maybe …” She shook her head. “But they're not, and there's no use talking about it now. I'm going home.”
He lowered his chin. “Easter, have you thought what a terrible long way it is?”
“I have. It won't be easy.”
“Alone out there, a woman, in that big country? You'd never find your way.”
“Once I get onto the plains, I think I know the watering places. I've traveled with the tribe. I'll find them.”
“Some stray Indian see you, he'll shoot you for a white woman without ever knowin' the difference.”
“No,” said Easter, “up there I won't be a white woman. I'll be Comanche. I didn't throw my Indian clothes away.”
“You've lived long enough here to get to feeling the white man's way. Do you think you can live again like an Indian?”
“To find my baby, I'll live any way I have to.”
“Would you take another Indian husband?”
“Not by choice.”
“What if you had no choice?”
She shook her head in determination. “I want my baby.”
“I won't let you do it, Easter!”
“How will you stop me? Chain me to a post? You may stop me once; you might stop me twice. But sooner or later I'll find a horse, and I'll get away. Don't try to stop me, Cloud. One way or another, I'll go!”
Defeat lay heavy in Cloud. “If I can't stop you, I guess I won't try. And talkin' won't do any good either, will it?”
“No.”
“Then I'll go with you!”
She stiffened. “Cloud—”
“No, don't try to talk me out of it. If you're goin', I'll go with you as far as I can.”
Fear colored her voice. “The Indians will kill you!”
“I won't go all the way. But I'll stay with you till I know you can make it in alone.”
“Cloud, please—”
“Hush, Easter. If you go, then I go too.”
Resigned, she asked, “When?”
“Tonight, if you're ready. If we wait, the captain may send me out on a patrol.” He knew that in such an event Easter would try to ride off and leave him.
“What about the captain? What'll he do when he finds you gone?”
Probably order me shot on sight,
he thought. But he said, “I don't know. I guess I'll find out. Now you go get ready, throw together the things you need. I'll be back directly with a couple of horses.”
As he started to turn away, she rose from the chair and caught his hand. “Cloud.” He stopped and faced her. She said, “You're a foolish man.” She turned her face up, stepped to him and kissed him. “But I
do
love you.”
 
After Cloud came with the horses, Henry Lawton regretfully helped him put together a sackful of supplies from the store. Tying a string around the top of the sack, he stared gravely at it and said, “Too bad we got no dried beef to let you take. You're goin' to need it.”
Cloud said, “There'll be game enough, I reckon. We won't be hungry.”
Lawton drew on his pipe and cast a worried glance at Easter. Dressed in her buckskin clothes, her brown hair in braids again, she stood silently by the closed door, barely touched by the weak glow of the lamp. “You couldn't talk her out of it?” he asked.
Cloud shook his head. “Tried.”
“How'd you get the horses?”
“Told the guard the captain had given me orders to go out on scout. No trouble there.”
“Be trouble when you get back. Aaron'll want your hide.”
Cloud reached for the sack, gripping it so tightly that the cords stood out on the back of his hand. “I know, but
I'll just have to face that storm when I get to it. I got another worry right now.”
“I'll tell Aaron I advised you to take her back. Maybe that'll help some.”
Cloud shook his head. “Not likely. The captain's got a strong mind. Whatever he sets it to, that's the way things've got to be.”
Henry Lawton bit down hard on the stem of the pipe and leveled his gaze at Cloud. “There's one way out, Cloud. You don't have to come back.”
Cloud straightened. “You mean run?”
Lawton turned up his hands. “Not run, exactly, just not come back. Head west to New Mexico or Arizona—even California. This war keeps on, it's goin' to be more and more unhealthy for a man with Union sympathies anyhow. You watch, before this thing's over there'll be burnin' and lynchin' and the like. The smart man would git!”
Cloud swung the sack over his shoulder. “Texas is my home.”
“Just advice, Cloud. It don't cost you nothin', and you don't have to take it.”
Easter said a tearful good-bye to Mother Lawton and Hanna while Cloud put her Comanche saddle on her horse. Then she and Cloud rode out across the creek and headed northwestward.
They rode steadily through the night and all the next day, slowing down only occasionally to let the horses rest. Cloud turned periodically in the saddle to look over the back trail.
“You never know about the captain,” he told Easter. “We got to keep ridin' and put a lot of miles behind us. If he decided to come after us, he'd let Miguel do the trackin'. That Mexican could trail the shadow of an eagle clear across a mountain.”
Before them stretched the great brown vista of the
lower plains, swelling and falling gently beneath the late-summer sun, a dry land begging for rain, the smell of fire clinging to the scorched carpet of brittle grass. In vain they searched for a waterhole that hadn't long since dried up in the summer drought. The horses had slowed. Cloud's mouth was so dry that his lips were cracking. But he was saving the short canteen of water he had, saving it for Easter.
“Somewhere way up yonder,” said Easter, “is a spring that flows all the time; good, clear water. If we could find it, I'd have no trouble getting home. I've been there several times, and I know the trail. But down here, this land all looks the same to me.”
“To me, too,” Cloud admitted glumly. Here he had only his frontiersman's instinct to depend on, and he hated to trust it with his life. True, it hadn't often been wrong. But it only took once … .
So weary they could hardly climb down from their saddles, they stopped to make camp a while before dark. Cloud found a spot where a buffalo bull had pawed out a hole, and he built a small fire there so it would not spread out into the dry grass. He had picked up dead limbs of a mesquite at a dried-out natural lake a couple of hours earlier and had tied them behind the saddle. Firewood was scarce in this country.
At a prairie-dog town he had managed to bring down one animal and recover it. Actually, he had shot a couple more, but they had rolled back down their holes so he couldn't get their bodies.
He had gutted the animal at the time. Now he finished skinning it and spitted the tiny carcass on a stick, holding it out over the fire.

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