The Dark Land Page 6

  “Brad, I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.” She turned to him and touched the tears on her face, wiped them away. She looked so sad, he thought. Wasn’t that punishment enough? Did he even want to punish her for her unfaithfulness? He did not know. He was confused and angry. Yet his heart went out to her, for some reason he could not explain.

  “I know you’re sorry, Mary. I’m sorry, too. I wish you hadn’t done this to us, to me. I wish none of it had ever happened.”

  “So do I.”

  The man had left his pipe and tobacco pouch behind and Brad had found it when he returned from a long trip to San Angelo. And the man’s tobacco smoke still reeked in the house. He had confronted her, and she had lied at first, then broken down and admitted her infidelity.

  “I’m not ever going to say his name again,” she said. “Not to you, not to anyone. It’s something I’ll have to bear, a shame I’ll have to carry in my heart all my days, Brad. Please don’t press me any further. I’m terribly sorry and it will never happen again.”

  “I don’t trust you anymore, Mary.”

  She rushed to him then, the tears welling up in her broken eyes and pouring down her cheeks, and she knelt down in front of him and buried her head in his lap and kept sobbing, her body shaking, her weeping ripping him asunder as if someone were driving knives into his heart, into his soul.

  “Mary, please. Don’t cry. Please, God, don’t cry.”

  She stopped sobbing for a moment and lifted her head. He looked down into her eyes and it seemed to him they swirled with sorrow and pain and he touched her soft hair and then dug his fingers in and began kneading her scalp and she closed her eyes and her lips moved soundlessly.

  “I love you.” Her mouth formed the unspoken words that shot into his heart. And all the hate went out of him in that moment and he lifted her up and took her into his arms and held her fast until she stopped trembling.

  “I love you too, Mary.”

  “Let’s get to those tracks,” Brad said abruptly, shaking himself out of his reverie.

  Gid looked at him with an odd expression on his face.

  “Yes, sir,” Gid said, a tone of mocking respect in his voice.

  “If you salute me, I’ll knock you on your ass, Gid,” Brad said as he climbed back into the saddle. He started riding back to the place where they would start tracking and he did not look back.

  That was the bad thing about hatred, he thought. It was liable to lash out at anyone, at any time. It was not a good thing to carry around for very long. He could already feel his hatred for Abel Thorne beginning to eat away at him like one of those worms that got inside a man’s belly and devoured his innards so slowly that he never even felt it until it was too damned late.

  10

  * * *

  BRAD STUDIED THE tracks heading westward from Paco’s ruined farm. Gid looked on, counting on his fingers.

  “I make out six riders,” Gid said.

  “I’d say five,” Brad said.

  “I counted six sets of tracks. What did you come up with?”

  “There are six shod horses, all right. Or maybe five horses and a mule.”

  “How do you figure that?” Gid asked.

  Paco grinned and pointed to one set of tracks. “This one carries much weight,” he said.

  “Huh?” Gid grunted.

  “I figure they’re pulling a pack horse. Five riders, one pack horse. Or mule.”

  “By damn, I think you’re right,” Gid said. “Unless one horse is packing double.”

  “We’ll know in a while,” Brad said. “If the weight shifts too much, the tracks will show it. So, if one horse is packing double, the tracks will show us that.”

  “You’ve got eyes like an eagle, Brad,” Gid said.

  “I learned tracking from the best,” Brad said. “My first time out as a Ranger, I rode with a crackerjack tracker, Bobby Wakefield. He told me he learned how to track from an old Kickapoo when he was a boy.”

  “Well, I reckon we’ll see soon enough if we’re trailin’ five men or seven,” Gid said.

  “I make it five,” Brad said. “Let’s see where these tracks take us. Looks to me like they’re heading right where I want to go.”

  “You mean to pick up Reeves and Dunn,” Gid said.

  “Yep. I’ll lead out. Paco, you bring up the rear and keep looking over your shoulder. Gid, you watch our flanks.”

  “For what?” Gid asked.

  “Any one of those riders could double back on us. You keep a sharp lookout, hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gid said, in that same mocking tone he had used before.

  Brad concealed his annoyance by turning his head and ticking his horse in the flanks. The three men rode alongside the tracks as Brad followed them, putting together a picture in his mind about the men who had raided Paco’s place and the mounts they rode.

  The little boy was still shaking two days after it happened. His clothes were dirty and his face was still smeared where he had wiped away his tears. He was very thin and his hair was uncombed. His eyes, though, dark and darting, burned like two black coals when he told them what had happened.

  “They come up on my pa,” the boy said, “over yonder where he was pullin’ up a stump with our old mule. They snuck up on him and I seen one of ’em cut his head nigh clean off with a long knife. I was in the barn yonder, playin’, and I seen it plain. Then, they all come up to the house and next thing I know, they was a-draggin’ my ma outside and they tore off all her clothes and . . .”

  “Son, you don’t have to tell all of it,” Bobby Wakefield said. “We know they killed your ma, too. What’s your name?”

  “Jimmy Don Clark. Junior.”

  “What all did they take, Jimmy Don?” Bobby asked the boy.

  “They took two milk cows and my pet goat, and our horse. They rode off yonder.” The boy pointed to the northwest.

  “I’m real sorry about your ma and pa,” Bobby said. “I’ll say a prayer for them.”

  “My aunt says they went to heaven.”

  Bobby looked at the boy’s aunt, who was standing with her husband several yards away. Their son was sitting on the porch of Jimmy Don’s empty house. He was the one who had told the Rangers about the Apache raid, riding half a day to get to Fort Worth, and then back again without sleeping.

  “You go with your aunt and uncle now, Jimmy Don,” Wakefield said. “Me’n Brad here are going to hunt down those Apaches.”

  “Are you going to kill them?” the boy asked.

  “We’ll give ’em a chance to surrender peaceably.”

  “I hope you kill them.”

  “We’ll see to it that they are brought to justice, son. One way or another.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, and they left him with his kin and rode off, but he could not forget that haunted look in the boy’s eyes and that last request of his before they took up the trail of the marauding Apaches.

  “We’ll never find them, Bobby. They’ve got a two-day head start on us and the wind’s blown away their tracks, more’n likely.”

  “Brad,” Bobby said, “when a man goes somewhere, no matter where, he leaves some kind of track. And it don’t matter none if the wind blows or the rain washes ’em away, there’s always a trace, some sign of where he passed.”

  “I don’t see how, Bobby.”

  “Two days isn’t much of a start if you know what to look for. I’ll teach you how to follow a track as we go, and you’ll know as much as I do. I’ll teach you, just like an old Kickapoo taught me.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “He told me to study the ground carefully and then tell him what I saw.”

  “And what did you tell him you saw?”

  “I saw two ants carrying a seed across that little piece of ground. They would stop to rest and pick it up again. What’s more, I saw their tracks, ever so faint, and the impression of the seed when they put it down. I saw a doodlebug make its tracks on its way to a patch of sand. I saw a young liza
rd cross and leave its tracks. I saw steam rising from the ground as the sun came up and I watched the soil dry out and saw what that did to the little bitty tracks. Oh, I saw a lot of things, but he said I did not see enough and said I did not see everything.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “He made me go back the next day and look at that same patch of ground. In fact, I looked at it for a whole week and I saw what this old Kickapoo meant.”

  “What was that?”

  “I saw life beneath the soil, saw sand fleas and mites and what they did, how they burrowed and what marks they left there.”

  “Sounds dumb to me.”

  “No, Brad, it wasn’t dumb. I learned a lot in that week. I learned how to observe, to really see a track and into it and beyond it. And, when we, the Kickapoo and I, rode somewheres I always looked at the ground and he would make me tell him the story of the tracks whenever we saw any.”

  “And, can you tell me the story of these Apache tracks, Bobby?”

  “I can and I will, as we go along.”

  The Apaches took pains to cover up their trail, but Bobby was smart enough to figure it out. The Indians rode over hard, flat ground at every opportunity and they used mesquite branches they tore off to brush away their tracks.

  “They tied leafy branches to their horses’ tails,” Bobby said, “dragging them over their tracks. But those are tracks, too.”

  “Hard to see, though.”

  “Once you figure out what they’re doing, it’s not so hard.”

  “The tracks don’t look very fresh, Bobby.”

  “Every once in a while, I’m seeing part of a hoof mark and I’ve seen enough now to know that one of their ponies has an injured hoof, there’s a big chunk tore out of it, and another one’s right forefoot needs trimming. It’s starting to splay out and that leaves a distinctive mark on the ground. See. There.”

  “It almost looks like that was brushed over by the mesquite leaves.”

  “Similar, but not the same. That’s slowing the horse some, and the loose hoof material is making an arcing swath inward. See?”

  “I can see it now.”

  “It’s the same every time I see it. That pony’s trying to wear its hoof down.”

  “Kind of like trimming it itself.”

  “Yeah, just trying to rub off that little flap of hoof.”

  Wakefield seemed in no hurry, but he kept on the trail. “We’re gaining on them,” he said, “because they’re trying to hide their tracks.”

  “Do they know we’re tracking them?”

  “I reckon they do,” Bobby said.

  They found the place where the Apaches had killed and butchered one of the milk cows. Bobby went over the ground carefully and, when he was finished, he said he knew how much they had eaten and how much beef they’d packed with them. Just by looking at the bones they left behind.

  “They’re packing what they can in the hide,” Bobby said. “And now they’re on the run. We’ll catch up to ’em late tomorrow.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re no longer hiding their tracks, and pretty soon they’ll start leaving behind some of the stock they took. I reckon they want to make it to the Pecos or the Rio Grande pretty quick now.”

  The next morning, they found the other milk cow and the goat, their dry tongues lolling from their mouths, dead from the heat and the lack of water. Bobby kept on going at a pretty good pace and by late afternoon, the Apaches were waiting for them in a little draw, miles from water.

  “Our canteens are full, Brad. We can wait ’em out.”

  “How long do you think that’ll take?”

  “In this dry, not long.”

  “Maybe they have full canteens, too.”

  “I reckon not. None of ’em stopped to piss for the last fifteen, twenty mile and that means they’re dryin’ up like seed gourds.”

  The sun had scorched the earth for two days and what moisture it didn’t suck out of the ground, the West Texas wind did and the Apaches hadn’t gotten to any water in four or five days by Bobby’s figuring. Late in the afternoon, the Indians began chanting their death songs.

  “They know we’re here, don’t they, Bobby?”

  “They do.”

  “Will they give up?”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  By late afternoon the sun was fairly boiling the blood in a man’s veins and one of the Apaches walked out from the draw on wobbly legs.

  When the others saw that they weren’t going to be shot, they walked out, too. Their horses were dead. They had been drinking blood from their mounts and that only made them thirstier.

  “They look pretty pathetic, Bobby.”

  “We’ll get ’em to water tomorrow. By then, they ought to be right tame.”

  The wind came up late in the afternoon and blew sand and grit into their eyes and stung their faces raw. It was hell on the horses and hell on them and Brad called a halt well before the sun went down.

  “No use going on until this wind dies down,” he said.

  “We’ll lose Thorne’s tracks,” Gid said.

  “Can’t be helped. He’ll have to get out of this, too. We may pick ’em up again tomorrow.”

  “I think they will get away,” Paco said.

  “They might,” Brad said. “But wherever they go, they’ll leave tracks and we’ll find them.”

  “Do you think they’ll go to Lou’s or Randy’s?”

  “No. I don’t think Thorne would pick on them. From what I’ve seen, he goes to places where he’s unlikely to run into trouble.”

  “Like a coward,” Gid said.

  “Or somebody pretty smart.”

  “How long will we stay here?” Paco asked. “We will soon be buried in sand.”

  “Let’s go on,” Brad said. “It can’t be much worse and maybe we’ll ride on through it. The wind’s blowing from the west.”

  “I’d rather ride than sit here and eat sand,” Gid said.

  The three men mounted up and rode into the brunt of the sandstorm like blind men plodding toward some uncharted oasis in the middle of a desert made almost invisible by the shrouding sand that filled the air and dimmed the light of the sun.

  They rode on, bent to the wind, into the fading sunset, and Brad knew he had to find his way by dead reckoning. There was no sky, no landmark, no sign of life. There was only the ground beneath him, and it seemed to be moving as sheets of fine sand blew across the earth, blotting out all tracks, all that was known in the world, until finally, there was no longer any light as the sun set, and he could no longer see even the blowing, razoring sand that blistered his face, parched his lips and cracked them until they bled briefly before the sand cauterized them. Sand filled his nostrils and his mouth and throat and ears until he thought he would smother to death as the bleak, black night came on.

  11

  * * *

  THE THREE RIDERS stumbled up to the door of the ranch house, leading their horses for protection against the wind and the blowing sand. Brad had no idea what time it was, but he figured it was after midnight. The house was dark and he could barely recognize it.

  “Hold my reins, Gid,” he said, as he staggered up to the door.

  “This where Reeves lives?” Gid asked.

  Brad didn’t answer. His throat was raw and he was trying hard to breathe. He pounded weakly on the door and pressed his ear against it to listen for any sounds from inside.

  He heard nothing above the howling of the wind and his heart sank like a stone. He tried lifting the latch, but it was barred tight. Someone must be inside. He was too weak to call out, so he used both fists and pounded on the door again until the pain drove him to stop.

  Again, Brad put his ear to the oaken door and tried to shut out the keening of the wind by clamping a hand over his other ear. He heard something then, or thought he did. A clumping sound. He slapped at the door with the open palm of his right hand. Another clump.

  “Come on,” he husked. �
��Come to the damned door, Lou.”

  He made a fist with his right hand and hammered a tattoo on the wall next to the door. Something rattled and then it was quiet. He pressed his ear tighter to the door. He jumped when he heard a voice on the other side.

  “Who in hell are you, and what do you want?”

  Brad recognized the voice. It was Reeves. He breathed a gasp of relief.

  “Lou, it’s Chambers. Open up.”

  “Brad?”

  “Yes, damn it. Lift the latch, will you?”

  “Just a damned minute.”

  Brad heard the bar lift and the latch rattle. The door opened and he barely made out the dim figure of Lou Reeves, looking like a ghost in his bleached long johns. He held a pistol in his hand and it was cocked.

  “Are you going to let me in, Lou, or shoot me?”

  “Christ, Brad. Come on in. Who’s that with you?”

  Brad lurched inside, out of the blistering wind. “Gid’s with me and an old pard, Paco.”

  “I better help them put the horses up, then bring those boys in out of the wind. Christ, Brad, you look like you dug your way here underground. Want me to take the broom to you?”

  “If you can get our horses put up, I’d be most obligated, Lou, and if you’ve a pail of water handy, point me to it.”

  “You going to drink it or pour it over you and make mud pies?”

  “Very funny,” Brad said. “Bring in my bedroll, saddlebags, and rifle, will you, Lou?”

  “Water’s in the kitchen, Major,” Lou said. “Go easy on it, will you? I have to haul it in from the well.”

  Before Brad could lash Lou with a choice curse word, Lou was gone and the door slammed shut. He strode into the kitchen, glad to be out of the gale. He noticed that all the windows were covered with wet blankets and towels, soaked with water to absorb the sand that blew through every opening. There was only one lamp lit, in the front room, but light enough for him to see the buckets all over the kitchen. He found a pitcher and poured water into his mouth without bothering to look for a glass. The liquid soothed his parched throat. He swished the last mouthful around and spat into an empty basin. When he clamped his teeth together, he could still feel the sand and rinsed his mouth once more before going into the front room and falling into a leather chair, exhausted.