They don’t need to make a deal. He thinks everything is on his side. What he wants is to kill me and take the girl and the horses. They’ll burn the wagon. It’s too recognizable. Curative Waters. He wants to get close enough to kill me without hitting the girl. He’s not sure of his aim. He’s shooting uphill. Always difficult.
He worked the bolt and the old hull jumped out smoking and she grabbed it. Now he slipped one of her dime shells into the breech. The weight of it should give him a good hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty yards if not more. He laid the barrel into the notch.
What’s your deal? he called.
Reasonable! I can be reasonable.
Come up, we’ll talk.
The blond man held his hat out from the edge of the buttress. There was a hole in it. Captain, he said. You was trying to hit me in the head, here. That’s serious malicious intent. We have some serious talking to do.
So?
Listen to me, said Almay.
You already said that. Stop repeating yourself.
Now, let’s make some kind of deal here.
Why was he delaying? The Captain knew the only reason was to keep him talking while the Caddos crept up. Far to his left a small trickle of sand and rocks spilled down the ravine.
Well speak up, then, said the Captain. Stop your goddamn dithering. I hate dithering.
By now Almay knew the range of the shotgun and its dove shot. He walked confidently out from behind his buttress of stone. He also thought the Captain was out of revolver ammunition. Clearly he was not shooting it and had reverted, in his desperation, to the shotgun and its pepper-light loads. Almay advanced up the ravine. Here and there the water of Carlyle Springs had worn the red sandstone layers down to the strata below, hard and marblelike. White and pure and level. They were like irregular steps going down the ravine, carved through the eons. Since Noah, perhaps. Almay carried his hat in one hand and took long steps to reach from one plate to the next in his knee-high boots. His hair was dark with sweat. They had ridden hard to catch up.
I tell you what, Almay called. You put down that shotgun and I’ll make sure my men empty their magazines and we can have a conversation.
Two hundred yards, then a little closer. Come on, come on.
Certainly. I’m putting it down as we speak.
The Captain aimed very carefully. He was not sure what the coins would do, or the extra-heavy powder charge. So he aimed for the V of Almay’s open shirt collar and pulled the trigger.
The dimes roared out of the muzzle at six hundred feet per second with a muzzle blast two feet long. The gunsmoke expanded in a great thick cloud and the stock slammed back into the Captain’s shoulder almost hard enough to dislocate it. He struck Almay in the forehead with a load of U.S. mint ten-cent pieces. As the coins flew out of the paper tube they turned on edge so that when they hit Almay’s forehead it looked as if his head had been suddenly printed with hyphens. The hyphens all began to spout blood. Almay fell backward, his head downhill. All the Captain could see was his boot soles.
He jerked off his hat and shoved it between the butt of the stock and his shoulder. Then without turning his head he held out his hand and a dime-loaded shotgun shell was slapped into it, he shoved it in, shot the bolt home, brought the sights to bear on the scrambling Caddos. Another great bellow like a cannon and silver coins hissed through the air faster than sight and they sparkled and ricocheted all down the ravine. The roar of the overloaded twenty-gauge sounded like a grenade had gone off. Ten-cent pieces slammed edge-on into a wounded Caddo’s backside. A shower of bright flying money tore through the trees lower down and clipped branches and leaves of the live oak, spanged off stone, chipped the skull crown of the Caddo in the rear so that he instinctively turned around to fight and the Captain unloaded on him again. Silver like tearing sequins sliced sideways through their blousy shirtsleeves and turned their hats into colanders.
By God, I believe that was a good two hundred and fifty yards, the Captain said.
Finally he leaned back against his red stone barbican. His nerves were glowing like fuses and he was not tired anymore. I got them. I did it. We did it.
She held up another shell, laughing and smiling.
No, my dear. He was sucking air. His eyebrow still hurt. We need the money to buy supplies.
He lay back against the rock breathing slowly. Johanna jumped to her feet, standing straight as a willow wand. She lifted her face to the sun and began to chant in a high, tight voice. Her taffy hair flew in thick strands, powdered with flour, and she took up the butcher knife and held the blade above her head and began to sing. Hey hey Chal an aun! Their enemies had run before them. They had fled in terror, they were faint of heart, their hands were without strength, Hey hey hey! My enemies have been sent to the otherworld, they have been sent to the place that is dark blue, where there is no water, hey hey hey! Coi-guu Khoe-duuey!
We are hard and strong, the Kiowa!
Far below the Caddos heard the Kiowa triumph chant, the scalping chant, and when they struck the bottom of the ravine where it bled out into the Brazos they did not even stop to fill their canteens.
Then she climbed over the lip of rock with her skirts and petticoats wadded into Turkish pantaloons and the butcher knife held high. She was halfway down before the Captain came after her and got hold of her skirt.
She had been on her way to scalp Almay.
No, my dear, we don’t . . . it’s not done, he said.
Haain-a?
No. Absolutely not. No. No scalping. He lifted her up and swung her up over the ledges of stone and then followed. He said, It is considered very impolite.
THIRTEEN
HE REHARNESSED AND took up all his small possessions from the tailgate, slammed it shut. He had to find a place to cross the Brazos soon. Going back downhill the Captain rode the brake. The shafts lunged up around Fancy’s shoulders on the steep grade and the brake chocks screamed on the axles. All the stuff in the wagon bed ended up in a heap against the back of the driver’s seat with Johanna tossed among the tools and food and blankets, holding the revolver. He had unloaded it but she seemed happier with it in her hands. They were frayed and dirty. They both looked like they had been dragged through a knothole. As the wagon plunged downhill among the red rock and stiff brush he prayed they would not break a tie-rod and that the cracked iron tire would hold.
They made it to the bottom and the road in one piece with all possessions and horses still in hand.
The Captain’s nerves were humming like telegraph wires in a wind and he knew in a little while he would be close to collapse. He searched every copse of live oaks and when they reached the Brazos, every shadow in the pecan flats. The road ran along the north side of the river, a shy and obsequious road that dodged every bank and lift and wound through the pecan trees and never insisted on its own way. He searched out every road bank ahead of him as they went. He was ready to shoot somebody else if need be. He must slow down. For Johanna, he needed to quiet himself; he must appear calm and assured. The Caddos would bury Almay under a pile of rocks and quietly slip back into Oklahoma. Someday somebody would find the bones and wonder whose they were. Almay would run his child prostitution ring no more, his brains blown out by the coin of the realm, hey hey hey. The Captain’s heart finally calmed.