Hondo. Part 17

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.

"n.o.body 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 gra.s.s, he kicks the gra.s.s away from him in the direction he's travelin'. Horse or cow, their hoofs have a circular, swingin' motion, so they knock the gra.s.s 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 G.o.d 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. n.o.body 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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--"

When she had gone, McKay lay back on the bunk, breathing heavily. His eyes rolled toward Hondo. "You were right. Vittoro was just luring us on. Will you see that my troops get out."

He fainted then, and Hondo opened his shirt and went to work. He had that rough skill men acquired on a frontier where doctors were rare, and medicines even rarer.

"He didn't know much," Buffalo said. "He led us into an ambush. But I ain't ashamed of him, nohow. All his bullet holes is in the front part of him."

Hondo had taken warm water from the stove and was gently sponging away the blood from the wounds. "All them youngsters from West Point is like that."

"They got to learn."

"Partly they learn, partly they die. I got to float my stick same as you. I never saw one of them I had to be ashamed of."

He worked on, sponging off the wounds, then binding them with Indian remedies. They were methods he had used on himself, and they worked.

Finally he straightened up. "Better get them started out there. Take the wagon here, harness the horses, and load the wounded. There's a good deal of bedding. We won't have much time."

"You think Silva will come here?"

"Yes." Hondo Lane turned and glanced out the door to Angie, coming toward the house. "It'll be first on his list."

Chapter Twenty-two.

Westward the land was light. The moving column wound like a gray-blue snake across the beige-gray hills. Sweat streaked the faces of the troopers and dust settled on the blue of their uniforms. Many were stained with the blood of their enemies, and not a few with the blood of their own veins. The wagons rolled and rumbled, jolting over the stones, and in one of the wagons a man cursed in a high, hard, monotonous voice.