Hondo (1953) (22 page)

She was just rising from the stool beside her cow, the milk pail in one hand, the stool in the other. Nothing was needed beyond her expression. She had heard it all.

For a long moment their eyes held, searching, measuring, then she turned to walk away. Lennie seizing his chance, crawled a few feet, then got to his feet and hurried away, a hand to his jaw.

At that instant Lieutenant McKay walked up to them. He looked at Lane. "We are about to leave, Mr. Lane." He faced Angie. "Mrs. Lowe, I hope you will not mind if Hondo accompanies us for half a day. We'd like him to go with us as far as Single Butte. Its rough country, I heard, and none of the other scouts knows that country. He can be back by tonight, so you will not be alone long."

"No, of course not."

McKay bowed, then turned to Hondo. "If you will saddle up, Lane."

"Can't go."

McKay looked at him as if he had not heard aright. A slight frown gathered between his brows. "You said you were not going?"

"That's right."

"But why?" McKay was incredulous.

"Gave my word I wouldn't."

"Your word? To whom?"

"Vittoro."

"Surely," Lieutenant McKay expostulated, "a word given to an Indian desperado can't be--"

"Lieutenant," Angie interrupted, "As an officer and a gentleman, surely you must agree that one's word given to anyone is binding."

"Of course." McKay flushed a little. "Sorry you must remind me, Mrs. Lowe. I forgot myself. Good day."

"Lieutenant," Hondo called after him, and the officer turned, "you won't have any trouble if you keep north of the butte. See it to the southwest about six miles out of here. You keep north. Country south looks flat, but she's broken into canyons and washes."

"Thanks."

They stood together watching the Lieutenant walk away, carrying his back straight and walking as if on a drill field. The men were in the saddle, waiting. The sun was hot and the horses stamped restlessly, eager to be moving.

Lennie Sprout rode by, moving to his place near the head of the column. His jaw was badly swollen, his right eye closed. An ugly cut had opened his other cheekbone. He did not look at them as he passed, and when Buffalo Baker drew up near them he looked curiously at Hondo Lane.

"Lennie must've run into something," Buffalo commented, biting off a corner of his plug tobacco. "Had it comin', I reckon." He gathered his reins. "Wish you was with us, Hondo."

"Sorry."

Buffalo lifted a hand. "See you." He moved off to join Lieutenant McKay at the head of the column.

Then the column was moving, and the dust rose around them, then settled slowly, and the sun shone brightly on the last of the horses, glinted from the carbines. Neither of them moved.

Johnny walked down the trail of the horses and looked after them his world suddenly empty with their going. He had never before seen so many soldiers, so many horses. He stood, scuffing his toe in the dirt, liking the smell of the horses, and remembering the easy, rough-handed friendship of the soldiers.

"Should have told you," Hondo said at last. "Tried to ... didn't. It happened like this, Angie. I--"

She turned sharply away. "I can't talk now. I want to think. I need time. I'll put your war bag outside the cabin."

He watched her go, then walked to the corral. Uncertainly he looked around, trying to recall something he had intended doing, but the thought would not come. There was nothing in him, nothing but a vast impatience and a vast restlessness.

He looked up the trail the way the soldiers had gone, riding into battle. Because that was what it would be. Somewhere out there on some sun-blasted slope the Apaches would be waiting. Somewhere out there men would die.

Buffalo was along ... Luck to him, and to McKay and the others. That McKay, now, he was all right. Young, but he would grow into it. Proud, the way a young man should be, but conscious there was much to learn. He was the kind they needed out here. More officers like Crook, who understood the Indian.

Hearing the door open, he looked around. She was putting his war bag outside the door. There it was, the end of whatever it had been, and all because of a small-caliber coyote who tried to shoot him in the back. He walked to the corral and led out the lineback. Then he went for his saddle.

Chapter
Twenty-one

The doob slammed and Hondo glanced around. It was Johnny. Hands in pockets, the boy walked slowly toward him, looking big-eyed at the saddled horse.

"Goin' away?"

"Yeah."

"Can I come?"

"You better stay with your mother. She'll need you."

Johnny said nothing, kicking his toe into the dirt. He looked at the saddled horse with fear. Hondo Lane was going away, riding off without him.

"Nobody ever stays," he said.

Hondo glanced at him, packing his saddlebags. He checked the ammunition. Enough, but not too much. He refilled the empty loops in his belt, checked his gun and rifle.

"Pa rode off and never come back. Now you're ridin'." Johnny watched him, fighting back tears.

Hondo turned his back. It was a lonely life for a kid. Only his mother here. The boy should have a father. He felt sick and miserable, thinking about that. This boy had no father, and it was his, Hondo's fault. But he had never had a father, actually.

Carrying his saddlebags to the lineback, he strapped them in place.

"You take care of your mother, you hear?"

"Yes," Johnny watched him, slowly drawing back. "You ain't comin' back." He said the words with sudden realization.

Hondo finished strapping the pack, then turned and, taking his time, began to build a smoke. He knew how the boy felt, because he had felt like that himself. When they were the age of this boy it was an awful thing to see a friend ride off. Later you became used to it. Later you learned that nothing was for long. It was a pity you had to learn that.

Hondo struck the match and lighted his cigarette. "Goin' to the fort. Maybe you'll come along someday. We'll have us a hunt together." He squatted on his heels. "You study sign, son. You remember what I taught you, an' try to learn more. Man walking in tall grass, he kicks the grass away from him in the direction he's travelin'. Horse or cow, their hoofs have a circular, swingin' motion, so they knock the grass down an' back. With them it points in the direction they come from."

Johnny had moved closer, but he did not look at Hondo. He stared at the ground, listening.

"No two animals and no two men leave the same track. Like signin' your name. Every one is different. You study at it, son. Readin' sign comes mighty handy."

He squeezed the boy's shoulder and got to his feet. His throat felt tight and choked up and he walked to his horse and gathered the reins. Then he put a hand on the pommel, and when he looked across the saddle, Angie was standing there, her face showing nothing. A tendril of hair hung down by one ear, stirring a little in the wind.

How white her shoulder was, where the dress pushed back from the tan! He felt himself tighten up inside, and then he said, "Didn't have any choice. He cut loose at me."

"I knew you were lying ... to make me think well of him. Poor Ed. He wasn't the type of man to die well. I'm sorry now that I hated him so much ... after I got to know how tawdry and weak he was. I guess he couldn't help being that way. He never saw the beauty of this country. Not the way my father and I saw it. He called it the country God forgot."

Hondo held the pommel, afraid to let go, afraid this little sign of hope would turn the fates against him. It was like keeping his fingers crossed.

"I didn't have a choice."

"I know."

He hesitated, waiting a long minute. "You going to feel different about me?"

"No one has any control about how they feel. I'm not going to change the way I feel about you."

Johnny had walked away, toward the stream. He did not want the man to go, but maybe his mother could do something about that. She always seemed able to do things about things.

"What about him?" Angie asked.

"What about him?" Hondo repeated the words thoughtfully. "Well, he'll make a man. Got a good spread to his shoulders. Head works, too. Tell him something, he remembers. Moves good--light on his feet. Other night while you were asleep he climbed on my bunk an' kissed me. Gave me a kind of funny feeling. First time I was ever kissed by a kid." Suddenly he dropped the reins to groundhitch the lineback. "There's things I'd rather do than this."

Johnny was squatting near the river looking at some tracks, and Hondo walked slowly toward him.

Angie stared after him, feeling sudden panic as she realized what Hondo meant to do.

Johnny looked up from the tiny writing of tracks he had found. "Hondo, what track is that?"

Hondo squatted. "Squirrel there. This one with only four toes is the front foot. Back foot has five toes." He indicated another, larger track. "Badger. Follow him and you'll find holes where he dug out field mice or pad rates. He eats 'em. See the claw marks? Those are his front feet. Never see the claws on his back feet. Always toes in a mite, too."

Hondo rubbed his cigarette into the sand. "Want to tell you. While back a man came at me with a gun. Killed him."

"Good! Indian?"

"No. He was a white man. I didn't have any choice. This man I killed--"

"No!" Angie put her hand across his mouth. "Your ranch in California ... California's far. Too far for gossip to travel."

Hondo got up slowly, relieved. Johnny wandered off, trailing the badger.

"California's far. He needs a father. He likes you, Hondo."

"Easy to say California's far, that he'll not hear. Could happen." He looked at her. "What then?"

"We'll face it then. Nobody lives their life without having to face things from time to time. It will work out, I know."

The cottonwood rustled its leaves and Hondo looked at the hills. She was right, of course. Face that issue when it came. By that time he would have been a father to the boy, and they would understand each other.

"The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?"

"Tell me."

"Varlehena. It means forever. That's all they say."

Angie put her hand on his sleeve. "Forever," she said quietly.

"Forever."

They stood together in silence, his arm about her waist. The lineback looked around impatiently, stomping a hoof at a fly. Johnny came trudging back from upstream. He looked at Hondo and his mother. "You going to stay?"

"Yes."

"Saw a hole that ol' badger dug."

He wandered off toward the corrals, and Angie looked up suddenly. "I'd hate to leave this place. Can the Lieutenant make us?"

"Guess so." They turned toward the house. "Better, anyway," he said. "No trouble around my place. Vittoro can't live forever."

"I planned to leave once, before you came back."

"Might have to. Anyway," he glanced around, "more grass and trees on my place. When I left they talked some of building a school not far off. We got to think of that."

"All right."

She looked up at him. "Hondo, I ... It's Father. He's buried back there in the trees. He--he liked the cottonwoods so much. I hate to leave him."

"You won't."

She looked up, and he said, "He left you. He lives in you and Johnny. I reckon no man ever dies who leaves a son or a daughter."

"We'll go, then?"

"We'll wait."

They heard the rush of hoofs and the rattle of wheels over stones before anything came into view, and then Johnny came running, and over the rim of the basin came a racing wagon. The horses lunged down the trail and drew up in a cloud of dust that overtook and settled around and over the wagon. Buffalo Baker was driving, and he sprang down and lifted the unconscious Lieutenant McKay from the wagon. The movement seemed to bring him out of it.

"We caught Vittoro," Buffalo said.

"Can't understand," McKay muttered, only half aware. "They had us surrounded. Could have cut us to pieces. Then they withdrew."

Hondo picked up a headband that had fallen from the wagon when the Lieutenant was lifted clear.

"Vittoro's."

"Killed him," Buffalo said, "on the last charge."

"Then that's it. That's why they pulled out. Any time the leader is killed, that means the medicine is bad."

He turned to Angie. "We'll go out with the squadron. Vittoro's dead."

Buffalo walked past them, carrying the Lieutenant through the door Angie held open.

"Now Silva's the leader. Get your things together."

"Wait. I've some medicines. Maybe I can do something for Lieutenant McKay."

"Thank you, Mrs. Lowe. I'd be grateful if you'd pass among the men and see what you can do for them."

"But you're bleeding, and--"

"Yes, ma'am, and many of the men are bleeding. I dislike to ask a lady to perform such a disagreeable task, but--"