by
Gregory Adams
They ran, but they didn't make it.
Folk never do. I've never seen one come out of there, and that goes for Indians, too, not just regular folk. I stood on the porch, and looked out into the tall grass. From here, I could see the tops of it, swaying as it does, when things are happening down inside of it. I can tell, by now, the difference from how people move, and the other.
It was over soon enough, and I heard the crunch of bones, the satisfied chitter of the Family as they ate. I saw a pronghorn come through the dooryard, in the bold way grass animals have when the Family has eaten, like all is right with the world.
I went back inside my shed. I'd miss them people. They was good to talk to.
#
People were coming faster, it seemed. It wasn't two months that another wagon came through. I was out on the shed porch with the dog the last folks left, looking out over the grass, seeing nothing moving out there, today, but there was usually nothing more than there was something. I watched the grass because there was nothing else to look to. The dog saw the wagon first. He got to his feet, and his tail thumped on my leg. I turned and looked down the road, and here they come, a wagon full of people, the horse pulling through the mud, the father in the seat, driving the animal, but not too hard. There wasn't any kindness to it, the man was just tired, and I could see that. I went around back to get some water drawn. They were coming to me, I could see that already.
#
I had the trough full when the man came up to me. The dog barked some but he's not a mean dog. I think he's lonely of me, and liked it when people stayed. The man had his rifle and I didn't like him right then on the spot.
"This your place?" he asked, the gun not pointed at me but not pointed anywhere else, either.
"No sir." I said, letting go the pump handle and setting the water bucket on the edge of the trough. "The United States Government owns this place. I'm in their employ." I told him my name.
He stood quiet for a time, his eyes going over everything. He didn't like me working for the Government, I could tell that. He was another homesteader, a man from the losing side of the war, I could see that about him. He was having a hard time about it. Getting west, I mean.
"Plenty of water." I said. "Bring your team around and let them drink up, if you'd like."
"What'er you doing out here?" he asked me.
"Telegraph station." I tipped my head up to the wires that ran out from the shack.
"Your wires are down," he told me. "Maybe six miles back."
"Are they?" I asked. I had heard that before, from an Indian. Never bothered to go and look. I saw his boy look around the corner. "Water's clean." I said. "The dog and I drink it every day, and we've no trouble with it." The boy was about ten. His mother joined him, in a moment. Pretty lady. They watched me over the man's shoulder.
The man didn't seem certain about me, yet, but then he seemed to say what the hell, and waved his family on. The boy ran up to the bucket and cupped water in his hands. The dog sort of danced over to him, tail wagging so hard that its backside curled around.
The woman and the boy came forward, towards the pump. They had a little girl, as well, but I hadn't seen her yet so I didn't know, then. The man said, "Where's the road go?"
"Goes here." I told him.
He gave me a sharp look. "Where's it go after here?" I had it coming, I guess. I knew what he meant when he asked.
"It just goes here." I told him. "Nothing more. If you want to keep going, you'll need to go back and find another way."
That took his mind off of me for a minute. You could see he didn't want to go back, didn't want to cross the river again. He walked over to where the grass started. The grass is taller than a man, stiff and sharp. Homesteaders called it 'rip-gut', and it would do a number on you, and your team. The Family never seemed to notice it, but then they're not natural animals.
#
They stayed the night, as I knew they would. I told them not to. "There's danger, here." I said. "Sometimes, things come out of the grass. They might get your horse."
The man looked me over again, his gray eyes going up and down, the rifle over his shoulder. He unhitched and watered his horse with the rifle always by his hand. His woman had taken the girl into my shack, because she had a fever. The man and the boy stayed clear of it. You could see he didn't want my courtesy, didn't want to be in my debt. "Indians?" he asked. I shook my head, and told him what I thought the Family was. "You're crazy," he said, and spit on the ground by my feet. They took the girl out of shack and put her in the wagon. Her name was Rachel, a name I'd not heard before.
They brought the girl out to the wagon and slept out there. I warned them, but not much. I get tired of saying it, same as anyone would. The dog hid himself well in the shack. He knew it, what was coming. After a few months of nothing but pronghorns, buffalo and jackrabbits, the Family gets restless.
I didn't sleep much that night. There was lots of noise, lots of goings on. It started with the horses, as it does, and then the rifle went off, two, three times. Then the people were screaming, calling to each other, praying to the Lord. Then came the worst noises, the ones that come after.
#
When the sun rose, they were gone. There was blood on the ground, but not much. The mud of the doorward was trampled something awful. The Family's prints were all through the yard, big chicken toes digging into the dirt. I looked but I didn't see any unfamiliar ones. I hadn't in my ten years here. The big ones just kept on, the small ones didn't seem to grow. The grass was all knocked down in a few places. The stems were black with blood where the horse was dragged in, heavy with flies. I had seen it all before, too many times in my ten years here to take notice of it anymore. I was glad, in a way, because it meant the Family'd let me keep the dog a bit longer.
I walked towards the side of the shack. I spied a few feathers, none as good as the ones I'd already gathered so I left them. The rifle was there, still straight, still loaded. I took it up by the barrel, and threw it far into the grass. One more gun for the prairie, out there with others I've thrown, grass growing up through the trigger guards.
I heard something, then. From the wagon. The girl, coughing. The dog heard it, too. He looked up at me, his eyes bright, tail wagging. Maybe he'd been here long enough to know the rules, and figured he'd just been given some more time.
I looked at the wagon. The canvas top was all torn, the hitch was twisted, the tongues broken clean off. The horse must have been in harness when the Family came. The girl coughed again.
I took her in. I couldn't do nothing else
#
Rachel was a smart girl, but she didn't speak. She was just about twelve, and she heard me just fine, nodded yes or no to my questions, and she looked at me all sad when she wanted me to stop asking. She'd seen them, I figured out that much. By moonlight, and moving fast like they do, but she'd seen them. The Family.
I guess she had the croup or something like it. There was nothing for me to do but give her water, and share what food I had. The Family brought me some of the horse, as they do, and about a week later, some buffalo meat. I had the corn growing in the back, and the Family never bothered with the flour, beans, salt or what have you in the wagons they attacked. Those things had no interest for them, so I took it all. In a few days, I had the wagon broke apart for wood for the stove. I didn't have any other place to get wood, and I wasn't going to need a wagon for anything. I sure as hell wasn't going anywhere.
#
The girl started getting better, and the dog got nervous. But it was only about a week before we got more company. I knew they were coming this time, well before they did. I was hoping for it, you'd say. Praying for it. Much longer, and I might have to choose between the girl and the dog, and I didn't want to make that choice right away. Rachel was a good girl. She cooked, and cleaned, and sewed my things, listened to me talk, and she didn't seem scared on the Family. We never saw them, of course, but other people who had come though the first night, like Curly, they sometimes went batty. If Rachel was batty, I could manage with how she went.
A man came up on a horse, riding in a hurry, rifle across his saddle. The dog and I were on the porch again, out of the heat of the sun. Rachel was off in back of the place, in the corn patch, making a doll or some such. The rider saw the tracks, the hoof and boot prints that the ground had held, and would hold until it rained next, and all this surprised him. His eyes went this way and that, but I don't think he saw the dog and I, under the porch roof. The dog stayed low, watching the man with its head on its paws.
The man was still thinking what to do when three more came up behind him, all with rifles in their hands and mud on their clothes. I could see they'd crossed the river and done it fast.
I think the girl came out then, from around the shed. One of the men called out and all four drew down on the back of the shed, rifles snapping up like they were used to it. I couldn't see her, but I guess the girl ran back around the shed. She didn't scream, that I heard, but no surprise there.
"God Damn you, Gibs!" one of them called, and he spurred his horse. I stood up, and pulled my suspenders over my shoulders. Best look presentable for these fellas, was my thinking. I stepped out into the light, raising my hand to block the bright sun. Three rifles came over at me. The dog stayed on the porch, I saw.
"There was no one here when I come up last spring, I swear!" The one who had come in first called.
"Shut up," another said. I looked over at him. He was the handsomest of the three, the youngest. Also the meanest-looking; you could see that he thought he was bad, a bad man. He had a look around his eyes I see on the Indians that come up here sometimes, the ones who think they're so mean that the Family will take them in. "Anyone else in there?" the young one said, looking at me.
I told him no.
"Who're you, then?" Like so many, he didn't like that I might be in the army. My clothes were dirty, and I wasn't wearing a shirt, but my trousers were still Union blue.
"Telegraph operator." I said. One of the others told me the lines were down and I said I knew it.
"There's water out back." I said.
"That your girl?" the mean one asked.
"Nossir." I said. I figured out by now he'd been an officer on the reb army, and he might like the sir. He did, the rifle dipped a bit. "Family of homesteaders came though. She's all that's left."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the one they'd call Gib said. He was the one who most looked like he wanted to shoot me. His hand was shaking, but that might be fatigue. It's tiresome, holding a rifle up with one hand, like it's a pistol.
"Just what I said." I told him. "Come now, let's get those horses watered. No one's gonna find you here, and you can't go on anyways."
I went around back, thinking they might shoot me in the back but also figuring they wouldn't. The mean one was also the smart one; I could see that by then. He knew you could make a live person into a dead one anytime, if you needed to, but it didn't work the other way.
I walked around to the pump. I say that the first rider had gone through the corn, into the grass.
That's the end of him, then.
#
The girl showed up after maybe an hour. They was all in and around the shack by then. I knew their names, what they had done, who they was running from. The girl didn't talk and I didn't ask, but I knew she'd just run into the grass a little and then come right back out.
"This here's Rachel." I said. "She don't talk, as I said, but she's just fine. Rachel, this is Gibs, Sam, and Mister Mickey Sawyer." Sawyer tipped is broad black hat at her. "He's a rebel outlaw." Sawyer looked halfway between giving an aw-shucks and puffing his chest out. "You might of heard of him."
"Pleased to meet, you, missy." Sawyer said. He smiled to her, the ends of his mouth traveling up towards the low sideburns he wore. Rachel didn't smile back. I'd not seen her smile. The others just nodded, and kept eating my beans up. They did look her up and down, her being a girl. The simple one, Gibs, might be a danger to her, I thought, but I also saw that Sawyer didn't see just a girl when he looked to her. He saw something else-another southerner, the people he had promised to liberate and to protect. I knew he'd shoot Gibs, if Gibs touched her.
"Where's Frenchy?" the one called Sam asked. I haven't said much about Sam. Sawyer was in charge of it all, and wanted to be bad and mean and probably was, but Sam, Sam was the real killer, here. You could hear it in his silences, you could see it in the way he didn't look away from something one his eyes fell on it. To Sam, the only difference between a live thing and a dead one is he ain't shot it yet.
Rachel didn't answer Sam's question, of course. Sawyer spoke up for her. "He's probably lost out there in the ripgut." He said. "He'll turn up soon enough. Too soon, if I know Frenchy."
Sam didn't like that answer, you could see. He'd like what I had to say still less.
"He won't be coming back." I said. The three of them switched some looks back and forth and Sam squinted at me.
Sawyer leaned in his chair and put his boot up on the table. "You want to let us in on where Frenchy's gone?" he asked me. He was as calm, comfortable and deadly as a snake.
I had given this story to maybe a score of people in my time here. Some folks listened, and some folks stopped me talking. "There's these things, out there, in the grass." I said. "I don't know what, exactly they are. They look like birds, mostly, because they have feathers and beaks. But they're bigger than birds. They stand tall as a man, and they have long tails, like an alligator or a lizard. I think they have scales, too."
Sam scoffed, his own lip curling up on one side. You could see he'd already written me off for crazy. Sawyer was having a hard time not laughing, like how a bully will hold his cruelty until a smaller boy has finished with his tale. Gibs was still listening, his face like a boy's.
"They was already here when the telegraph station was put in." I said. " The Indians say they've been here forever. Their medicine men used to come out here and sit. If the Family-that's what I call them, 'acause there's four of them, two parents and two young-let the man live, he was a shaman forever after. The hill's sacred because the grass won't grow up here. There's also water, and the family will bring the medicine man meat from what they kill. I guess there was an old Indian here when the army ran the cables through."
"What happened to him?" Gibs asked.
"Army shot him, I suppose. He was just an Indian." I really didn't know. I suppose the Army could have. "It was supposed to be a place where the telegraph and the pony express could meet up, but the Army had a hard time keeping this place manned. The riders always went missing, the ponies were always killed, and you can't keep the grass down. Everyone thought it was Indians, so we drove the Indians off. I was sent out here in 58' with another man. He run off, after a while. I've been here alone ever since." There were some lies in there. I had come here after the war, having served two years in the battle to restore the Union, but I didn't want them thinking I'd shot any of their fellows or burned any of their cities. Curley didn't exactly run off, either. "The telegraph stopped working a while back, but it hardly ever did work right. I've been waiting for a man to come out and fix it."
"What'er these birds look like?" Gibs asked.
I shrugged. "Tall, like I said. Big beaks. Big feet, with big claws, and a real big claw on one toe. They got arms instead of wings, but the arms have feathers on them, like wings. They have hands."
Gibs looked doubtful. "That don't sound like what I was thinking of."
"These birds," Sam said, drawing the word out so it was plain what he thought of me and my story, "Why do they let you stay up here?"
I shrugged. "They just do. The Indians always had one man living on this hill. I'm here now. I guess I'll do for the Family."
"But they got Frenchy." Sawyer said.
"Oh yeah." I said. "There's no doubt of that. Up on the hill is bad enough but going into the grass, they won't tolerate that. A horse makes it worse. They love to eat a horse." Sawyer smiled and he kicked the table with his boot. His laugh was loud in the small shack.
Sam stood up and drew his pistol. He rocked it on his finger and put the muzzle near my face, hammer back and finger on the trigger. "I think this old man's a deserter," he said, talking to the others but looking me in the eye. "I think he hid out the war out here. Maybe he's got some Indian friends in the grass, and they got Frenchy. Maybe he don't know what happened to Frenchy at all, maybe nothing happened to Frenchy, maybe he's just lost. But I heard all I'm going to about birds that eat horses."
No one had pointed a gun at me for a good while. I wasn't certain what might happen. "Rachel," I said, talking slow so Sam wouldn't get excited. "Bring those feather we collected here." Sometimes, even a blessed man has to help himself.
She went across the shack and opened a long narrow box. Sam was still scowling, still holding the gun on me. She dipped her hand in and come up with some long feathers.
"Now see, that's not what I thought they'd be at all." Gibs said. Sawyer waved his fingers at the girl, and she crossed with the feather in her small hand.
They were long, as I said. The biggest was about three feet, wide as your palm at the end and blue, like jay feather. The quill was thick and black, not white, like on a natural bird. There were black and white stripes to it, and the whole thing kind of shone in that way feathers will. Some of the other feathers were red or pale yellow, but the all had those black quills and they all were bigger than any bird feather should be.
"I thought he was talking about ostriches." Gibs said. "That dancer in Amarillo had these feathers that was as big as a horse's head. She said they came from a bird called an ostrich. Those look like pheasant feathers."
"Mighty big pheasant." Sawyer said.
"There're tracks in the dooryard." I said.
Sawyer looked at Rachel. "Do you know where those tracks are?" he asked, in that voice grown-ups use with simple children. She nodded her head and walked through the open front door. Gibs and Sawyer ran after her, Sam stood with the gun at my head. From outside we heard Gibs calling out, 'Damn! Lookit the size of them,' and 'Here's another.' Sam rolled the gun back on his finger, and eased the hammer back down over the cylinder. Then he spit on the floor and went out the door with the others.
#
They looked for a while, then Sawyer and Rachel come back in. There was a wonder in his eyes, a wonder and a thrill. He was one of these people that wanted to throw cartwheels when all hell gets loose. "Have you seen them?" he asked.
"I see them." I said.
"And they're birds?" he asked.
"Like birds.' I said. "Bigger than any bird I've heard of."
"But they'll kill a horse," he said. "Kill and eat an entire horse?"
"They'll kill your horses, and you, too, you stay here too long."
"Guess they will." Sawyer said. His eyes looked down, for a minute, like he was figuring something.
Sam filled the door. He was a complete difference from Sawyer, you could see that at once. He didn't see any fun in this, nor any adventure in getting caught up in some old Indian magic, which is how I had come to think of the Family. The dog went and hid under a chair.
"I say we shoot them and pull out," Sam said.
The girl went to Sawyer, and he put his arm around her. Gibs stuck his head in the door, trying to look in around Sam.
"Pull out where to?" Sawyer asked. "Do you think that McGullis won't figure out that we crossed the river?" he took his arm from around the girl and stood in the center of the shack, looking Sam dead in the eye. "They're animals, Sam." He put that in a tone that said any other idea was a fool's notion. "Are we going to run back to where a posse of men, with rifles, are looking for us, because of some animals?"
Sam's teeth began to work against each other, and his fingers went white around the stock of his rifle. Sawyer saw he had the lead and he kept at it. "Gibs!" he called, putting his voice loud so it'd get past Sam in the doorway. Gib's head, stuck in the door up near Sam's shoulder, nodded. "Tie the horses up in back and get up on the roof." Gibs nodded again and was gone in a flash. "Now when they come, IF they come, we'll be ready for them," Sawyer told Sam.
Sam looked at me, his eyes low under his hat. He didn't want to ask, what he was about to ask. "Anyone ever shoot one of these things before."
"All the time." I said.
"Ever do any good?"
I shook my head.
Sawyer just grinned at both of us, his eyes bright, his arm around Rachel again. She kept her small head on his shoulder, and watched Sam, her eyes as hard as stones from the river.
#
They didn't have any meat, so they butchered the dog, had the girl cook it, and ate it. All afternoon, they took turns on the roof, watching the grass and the road back to the river. After their meal, Sam stretched out on the small porch and napped. There were a few hours before sunset, and you could see he wanted to be awake all night.
The Family never let people stay long, but we were already getting on too long with these three.
I say three, because Frenchy never came back out of the grass.
#
The prairie night can be almost as bright as day; with a moon full and close shining down like a pale white sun. I had sometimes thought how I could sit on the porch and read, on nights like that, if I ever had a thing to read.
This night wasn't like that. There was no moon that I could see, but no clouds, either, and no stars. The sky was dark and clean, and what light there was, seemed to come from the grass itself. The blades shone in the dark, like fresh snow will, even on the darkest night.
I was out on the porch with Gibs. His turn on the roof was done but he wouldn't go into the shack. They wouldn't let me go in, either. Sawyer and the girl were on the roof, and Sam was walking the around the hill. He was a quiet man, even in boots. Waste of time, being quiet.
"Get dark like this all the time?" Gibs asked.
"Some." I said.
"I've rode with cattle," he said. "I've been out in the prairie many a night, and I've never seen it like this."
"They do it." I told him. "They make a magic with the night sky, when they're hunting. They're not natural animals."
Gibs gave a small, choking laugh. I didn't know Sam was so close as to hear me, but he came over the porch rail, and grabbed my shoulder. I've been out here too long, without the proper food for a man, so I'm light. Sam threw me over the railing into the dooryard with one hand. I managed to catch myself up, but my nose was still bloodied, I could taste it. Sam threw himself over the rail again, his bootheels hitting the dust together, and I heard a knife come free of a leather sheath. I could see Rachel and Sawyer's heads against the empty sky, looking down over the edge of the roof at me.
No one had tried to kill me in a time. It's not supposed to be able to happen.
Sam grabbed my shirt and pulled me up from the hard mud. The bare steel of the knife looked green in the spooky light from the grass. From behind the shack, a horse screamed.
About damn time.
Sam dropped me. Gibs gave a yell of his own, startled, scared. I heard Sawyer's boots on the roof.
The horse gave another, and the other horses began to whinny and wail in fear. That's a sound you'll carry with you. I'd heard them scream before, in the war, but then there's all sorts of other noises mixed up with it: cannon, rifles, men screaming, praying. But out here, in the prairie, where it's all quiet, and a horse is giving its last yell because one of the Family has their claws into it? That's another noise altogether.
Sam went around the right side of the shack, grabbing his rifle from where he'd leaned it near the porch. Gibe went the other way, around to the left where the pump stood. I stood and brushed myself off. I heard one of them get Gibs, just come out of the grass and took him. He hit the shack wall hard enough to knock the pronghorn antlers I keep up there to the floor. Towards the back of the shed, guns blazed, and people were yelling. Sawyer was still up the roof, telling Sam what to do, where they were, while he worked his own rifle. I heard him shout out, and his rifle fell silent.
I went into the cabin. Should be back to normal, tomorrow. Maybe I'd even get some horse out of this. It's not my favorite thing, horse, but I hadn't any meat in a few weeks. Couldn't bring myself to eat the dog they offered.
But I was counting my chickens too soon.
#
Murdering Sam was the only one left.
Rachel came in the shack almost right away after me. I was a little surprised, but I guess the Family was busy enough with the others. Her silent presence comforted me, even if she kept her distance. That was more normal - all this hugging and fear was for Sawyer's benefit, I knew. She was wise, this one, and feared the Family no more than you fear a flood or a tornado. If it was your time, you went, and there was nothing to be done. Being afraid made no sense.
There was more shooting, more horses being killed, the shack wall took another hard, drumming hit. It sounded like when a wave hits the side of a ship when you're down bellow.
I lay on my cot, eyes open, waiting it all out, like I always did. There was quiet for a time, maybe a minute. The eating sounds began.
I heard boots on the porch; one, two quick, hard, steps, and then the door was pulled open, and Sam just flung himself in, no rifle, no pistol, no knife, just himself barehanded and covered in horse's blood, eyebrows to boots.
Sam coughed and shook and watched the door, the whites of his wide-open eyes bright as a jackrabbit's tail in the red that covered him. Through the door, there was nothing but sky and just the very tops of the tall grass at the bottom of the hill, the tips of the blades rippling like water, and seeming to glow a bit, as I had said before. Catching light that came from nowhere.
He kept watching, even after Rachel shut the door.
#
By daylight, Murdering Sam was nearer to his old self. To his credit, he didn't hold it against us, seeing him scared like he was. Many men I've known would have taken it as an insult, our seeing him scared.
He stood in the shack, gunless and not liking that, but he'd cleaned himself up as he could, and he was standing straight. "They come out in the daytime?" he asked.
"Some." I said. "Not usually, after a feed like that, though."
He looked to me. He might have killed me just then, if he had a simple way to do it, but he didn't look up to throttling, and besides, he needed all of his strength for what he was to do next. Sam went outside.
Many men wouldn't have. Gone outside, I mean. Curly didn't want to, after that first night, when the Family took our horses and that Pony Express rider. But Sam did. He was still shook, you could see that. What man wouldn't be? He walked slow, but his steps were steady, and his boot sounded out on the wood of the porch. He wasn't sneaking out, he was walking, scared, shook and all.
The dooryard wasn't bad, but the sides of the shack were painted red. The left, where Gibs had gone, was less so, and Gib's Winchester was still there, pressed down into the fouled mud by one big three-toed foot. Sam lifted it up, popped the lever and looked to see if it was still loaded. The gun would have to be cleaned, but it was a gun, and Sam wanted all the guns he could carry.
Rachel was in the back, working the pump. Sam had used all our inside water cleaning himself up. She was surrounded by something out of the war, all blood and bodies and gore.
I hadn't seen any of the big battles, but what I saw at Cooper's Mill or Bethesda was enough for me to know I didn't want to make a life at this, the way some folks seemed to. The Family didn't have cannon, or scatter guns, or bayonets, but they could work a number on a horse, or a man. One horse was still here, mostly in bits, all the guts - what we'd call the 'sweet-meats' on a chicken - were gone, and the throat had been pulled out, but they left the rest of it for me, as they will. The blood from the torn neck had hit the side of the shack, and we'd heard it. There were more flies than there ever could be, out here in the middle of nothing. Where did they all go, when the Family wasn't killing?
The other two horses had been dragged off. The grass was pressed flat where they had been pulled, maybe still kicking. Sam walked past Rachel to look at the trail the Family had left. The blades still standing on either side of the crushed ones were red with blood, black with flies. Going in there, with the tips of the grass closing overhead, would be like going into a mine, but a man could do it, he could follow the trail of flat grass, back to where they lived, or at least where they ate. I'd seen some Indians do it. Sam didn't look like he wanted to do that.
He spent some time picking through the backyard, coming up with a knife, a pistol, a coil of rope, a good bridle. The saddles had been off the horses and up on the post. They'd been fouled by the blood, but a man leaving on foot couldn't carry all that. Sam meant to leave on foot, I knew.
#
It wasn't two hours before Sam was ready. He cleaned his rifle and revolvers, filled his water bottles, he even helped the girl and me cut up the horse and hang some of it out. I had salt from the wagon the girl came on, so we salted some of it down. No one talked much. Sam was near as quiet as Rachel, speaking only when he wanted to know something or wanted me to know something about the work we were busy with.
About an hour before noon, he went around back for something, and the horse carcass was gone. We had just been in the front, cleaning some of the blood off of the bedrolls and other gear that had been left out back in the night. We hadn't left it alone for very long, and Sam looked pale, knowing that the Family had come up and pulled that horse away, with no noise that we could hear. I was used to that by now. He didn't say anything about it, or anything else, until he was ready to go. Then he spoke. That was about half-past noon.
Sam stood in the door that the grass made where the dooryard met the road. He stood and looked back at us, rope and bridle over his shoulder, rifle in his hand. He wore two guns now, instead of the one that he had rode in with. He wore one belt backwards because both belts were right-handed draws.
Sam looked at Rachel and me for a while, us up on the porch, me sitting in my chair, her standing and looking out at him, and he staring right back. When he had his words chose, he spoke.
"I've done some things," he started, "that a man can't be proud of. Some of them might have needed doing, others, I might have just done for anger, or to get something back." He raised the rifle to me, but just to point. "But what you are doing out here, living with those things..." he was close to tears, I could see that. "You bring people here, with your shack." He looked around, afraid to say what he was thinking, but maybe then he remember that Mickey Sawyer wasn't here to laugh at him anymore. "That Family keeps you alive so more people will come," he said, teeth held together tight, "and you know it. People come, and you know they will come, and then you take their things and eat their horses."
I watched him and didn't say a word. I thought how he looked younger, when he was angry. You could see through all the killing he'd done and the robbing and the war, and see he was just a boy.
"They chose me." I hadn't meant for it to show, but I could hear the pride in my voice. "I didn't choose them."
Sam let the rifle come down, and he spit on the ground. He reminded me of a deserter I had seen executed once. That man had tried to run off to save his farm from something or other, I never learned what. When they brought him back, he was scared, but not repentant. He stood up and let them shoot him.
Sam had that look when he walked off. Scared of dying, but not of death.
#
They never let someone go. It's maybe three miles, on foot, from where the grass first starts to come up to the plain where the river runs. That's a long walk, in that narrow track, with the grass growing up tall on both sides, and only your thoughts for company.
They hit him less than a mile out. I climbed to the roof and watched it. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted him to make it; maybe I wanted to see him to die for what he had said to me. I couldn't see Sam, most of the time, the road is too narrow and the grass too high to see the road itself, but you can see where the road is, like a crease running up the prairie. In any case, I watched the grass on wither side of the road, knowing that was how they would come.
There was a breeze, so the grass was lively, but I could still see the Family, all four of them, out there like fish in dark water, told not by the sight of them, but the waves that they make.
When all the four ripples came together, I knew that was it for Sam.
He never got a shot off.
#
I let the afternoon pass, up on the roof, cross-legged like an Indian. Something was eating at me. The Family wanted only one living thing on this hill. It wasn't about eating, or food, for the Family. It was about rules, it was about the way these creatures wanted things. They had left the dog for a piece, but he wasn't the first dog. They always took the others, and they would have taken that one, before too long. They would certainly come for the girl.
I let Rachel do what she chose, but I knew she wouldn't be staying. They wouldn't have more than me.
#
I saw it as soon as I came down.
She'd changed the whole place around, making it the way she wanted. There wasn't much to work with, but what there was, she'd moved. A bunch of my things were on the porch; what clothes I had, and my boots, which I hardly ever wore.
She was sitting up on a barrel, her feet just above the floor of the shack. She was sewing on some cotton fabric she had over her lap. I could see it was some of her mother's dresses. She was making curtains.
I gave a sigh and sat on the cot.
"Rachel," I started, thinking I needed to tell her about it. I don't why, I never told any of the others. "There's a thing you should know." She looked at me, mute, with no tell to her face. Then I knew how to say what I needed to say. "When I first come here, back just after the war, there were three of us. A Pony Express rider, and Curly, who was the groom for the ponies we were to keep here. I was the telegraph operator. I forget the rider's name. Anyway, it wasn't two days when an Indian come up and told us the story, how the Family wouldn't have us here. He said the Family would let only one person stay, a man who had done a special thing. They would keep that man, they would bring him food, and he would grow wise in his years, as he lived here, naked under the sun and sky. The Family would even protect him, and kill any who came to harm the Medicine Man of the hill, but there could be only one man, and the Family chose him.
"We all laughed, of course, even if it scared us a little. That grass is tall, it could hide lots of things, but we didn't think there was anything like he was talking about out there. The Indian didn't care what we thought, of course. He went out into the grass to meet them, thinking that he had done that thing the Family wants from a man.
"He never came out of the grass, but that night, the Family did. They took all the ponies, and rider ran off along the track. We never heard from him again, but I don't think he got very far.
"The next day, Curly wanted to run. See, the Indian had told us what the Family wants, Rachel, and what it wants is a man to have killed another man, and even though Curly and I had been in the army, and the war, we had never done such a thing. We'd both been clerks.
"Now, just killing a man is no proof against them. They've killed many killers. It's how it's done, and the mind of the man who did it. The man must be like them; he must kill without fear or remorse. He must do it coldly and with purpose, just as God himself does. Not many men can do this, Rachel, and before I killed Curley, I wouldn't have suspected it of myself. "
That wasn't what I meant to say. I sat quiet for a minute, looking at my hands on my knees. They were an old man's hands, the skin was growing thin, and the tendons and veins rose up high over the bones.
"I killed him as quiet and cold as winter." I didn't know why I was still talking. I may have been cold in my killing, but Curly hadn't been cold in dying. Killing him had been a chore I'd rather forget. "Then I threw all the guns into the grass, for they Family won't have guns, here. And everyone who has come since, I watched them die. I seen them get killed, as uncaring and far away as Jesus must have been when he was watching the war." There was something going inside of me, some muscle that had been clenched was opening, or some nerve that had been dead was coming back to life. In a minute I was crying, with Rachel watching, her sewing on her lap.
"I know all this," Rachel said. Her voice startled me. I had forgotten how much Arkansas there would be in her words. I didn't like how it sounded. "I dreamed it, the first night, in the wagon. That's why I killed Mr. Sawyer up on the roof last night." I listened to her, and that near forgotten muscle began to clench again. "I pushed him off the roof. The youngest one got him." Her eyes were on me, but they were seeing that moment, seeing the littlest one -I called him Squab, having given all of them names-coming out of the grass, low and beautiful, his beak a sort of yellow ivory, the head striking out on that long neck like a feathered snake.
"They told me I can stay," she said. "They said all I need to do is get rid of the other." She pulled the sewing off of her lap, and I saw she had one of Sawyer's pistols underneath. The silver Walker Colt looked huge in her small fists, but she held it steady.
I realized then that I had told her the wrong thing: I had told her how to keep living, but not how terrible living could be, how each death lingered, no matter how many there were, and how much we tried to pay them no mind.
In those first troublesome days, when I was not used to the idea of living and dying here, I had prayed for salvation, but after I had been living on the hill for years; a white man surrounded by Indian magic, sheltered by things made by their gods, not ours, I gave it up on prayer. I threw Curly's bible away into the grass with the guns. I would have thought that by now, I would have lost all faith in the puritan God of my own people.
But I had not. When she started shooting, my words and thoughts were to the God I had prayed to as a boy.
I though he might know what this felt like.
THE END
Send your comments on this story to the author:
