A forgotten evil, p.23
A Forgotten Evil, page 23
“When a man looks across that span, he doesn’t see what’s under his nose. Canyons and ravines and streams abound, and there’s trees, too, plenty of them, wherever there’s water. You have to look, that’s all.”
“Oh, really,” she said, holding her hand over her eyes, “then why can’t I see them?”
“ ’Cause it takes practice and a good eye. I’ve seen Cheyenne travel fifty mile in one of those ravines and never pop up a single time. Once I watched a hunting party sneak within a hundred yards of a cavalry detachment. Why, they thumbed their noses and danced around with their bums out like they didn’t have a worry in the world. All the while those soldiers didn’t even know anyone was about.”
“Oh, Caleb, I never know when you’re telling the truth.”
“It’s a true fact,” he said, “and common knowledge amongst those of us with such experiences.”
She wrapped her arms about herself and looked into the thin, blue distance. “This time I hope you’re telling the truth and not just showing off, Caleb Justin.”
“Course I’m telling the truth. There’s water and wood out there just waiting.” He picked up the pinto’s reins and winked at her. “You ready now?”
By noon they’d made good headway, and Caleb found a clearing under a run of skunk brush. Even with the noon sun, the wind was sharp, and they huddled with their backs against its cut like buffalo in a blizzard. They ate from their store and lay back for a rest. Dried grass clung to Joan’s braid, and he picked it away.
“Caleb,” she said, looking up at him, “did you mean what you said?”
“About them Indians’ bums? Course I did.”
“No, silly, about the other, about how you feel? You know, how you feel about me?”
“I never spoke truer words in my life.”
“I’m so mixed up,” she said, dropping her chin onto her knees. “It’s like I no longer know who I am.”
Taking her hand, he held it in his own. “You take your time about how you feel, because a lot has happened since you and me been tramping across these plains, a lot of hard things.”
“Thanks, Caleb,” she said. “I do wish my papa knew I was all right. He’ll be so worried.”
“I wish that for you, too,” he said, “and for your pa most especially. It’s an aching heart he must have.”
She brushed away the sand from her hands. “Come on, Caleb. Let’s see if we can find one of those Edens before I freeze to death.”
For the next few hours they walked in silence, and when the sun drooped and wobbled in the distance, its light cold and remote like the distant flicker of a lantern, a bitter gale swept in at their backs. There was despair lying in wait, in the gray and monotonous miles. Each time a hill was topped, yet another presented itself with a predictable and exhausting summons. Even the pinto lagged, pulling the reins taut again and again to nibble at some morsel or sniff some foreign scent.
The sunlight waned to twilight, and clouds raced in on the winds, their bellies laden and full as they sped through the sky. Ahead, the sand hills gave way, and mesas rose like pyramids against the setting sun. He handed the reins to Joan and studied the changing terrain.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Looks like we’re out of these hills at last.”
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought they were to go on forever.”
“It looks like rough country ahead,” he said, “but it’s open, and the walking should be easier. Look over there. See where the brush darkens and grows thick?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Well, that’s our Eden,” he said. “Come on.”
As they entered the brush, the prairie dropped away into a great chasm, a rift twisting into the soft belly of the land. A buffalo trail wound its way into the weathered rock below, and cedar trees sprouted from the cliffs, daubs of green in the white, weathered rocks.
“Trees,” Joan said, patting him on the back, “just as you said. We’ll have a warm camp tonight.”
“I’m mighty glad to see it,” Caleb said. “I’d about decided I was a no-good liar.”
They made their way down the trail as the winds diminished, and the evening grew still and peaceful. The going was slow, at times so steep that the pinto balked, his eyes white with fear at the descent. Ledges of gypsum protruded from the canyon walls, eroded into odd and unpredictable shapes, some with dark and ominous openings that led away into the heart of the earth.
“Listen,” Caleb said, drawing up. “Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Water.”
She hooked her arm through his and turned her head to listen. “I hear something, I think.”
Parting the brush that grew rank under the ledge, he knelt down. “Over here.”
A stream of water the size of a man’s arm surged from the canyon wall and into a pool that gathered and swirled in a worn rock basin.
“Spring water,” Joan said, tightening her grip on Caleb’s arm, “and watercress. Look, Caleb, it’s everywhere.”
They dropped down on all fours and cupped their hands into the pool, drinking until their faces ached from the icy water. Even the pinto joined them with ill-mannered slurps at the pool’s edge.
“Look,” Caleb said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, “there’s turkey tracks and coon, too. I reckon they’ve been coming in for water. We best camp down the canyon a ways.”
After a last drink, they found a clearing on the south slope where the morning sun would warm their camp. Caleb gathered wood while Joan went back to the spring for watercress. Wood was plentiful, and he built a roaring fire, spreading out the cedar boughs to soften their bed. He cut green cottonwood saplings down-canyon, spared from the frost by the sun-warmed walls, and delivered them to the pinto, who munched at them with contentment.
When Joan returned, Caleb roasted the meat, nestling it in the peppery watercress when it was finished. The night darkened about them as they ate their fare and washed it down with quantities of spring water.
Caleb stacked on more wood and stirred the fire, the fragrant cedar filling the camp. As the sky darkened, stars exploded overhead, dazzling and unfathomable in the pristine night. From somewhere up-canyon, an owl hooted, its voice singular and irrevocable in the silence.
Joan lay back on the boughs and watched the flames sputter and flare in the darkness.
“It’s a wondrous place,” she said, “this Eden of yours, and I’m warm for the first time in days.”
Caleb took the arrows from his quiver and checked their points before aligning one to the north star. In the morning, he would try for a turkey when they came in to the spring for water.
“I figure a day or two stay,” he said, “before we move on.”
“Couldn’t we make it a little longer? There’s game and fresh water.” Pausing, she looked up into the yawning branches of the trees, “And no wind.”
“Wouldn’t do to get caught by winter.”
She drew her knees into her arms and watched him. The first light of the moon shimmered in the treetops, and shadows bolted across the jagged rocks of the canyon. “Come sit by me,” she said, “to talk while the fire burns down.”
His heart lurched. “All right,” he said, taking a place next to her. The heat from her body slid keen and delicious into his own.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Me, too, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said those things. Just mean and selfish and ought be forgiven.”
“Now you’re the one who started this, Caleb Justin, so just keep quiet and listen.”
“But I’m just a ignorant woodcutter what don’t know when to keep his mouth shut, and then all what’s happened, I mean with the lieutenant and all. Well, I just had no right saying those things.”
She spiked her hands on her waist and said, “You don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
“I’m afraid to hear, because I know what I’d say if I was stuck with some ignorant woodcutter what didn’t own anything in the world but his pa’s bit axe and a stole Indian pony.”
Taking his face between her hands, she turned his head toward her, her eyes like liquid jade in the moonlight. “I’ve thought about this all day, Caleb, and it needs to be said. I’m in love with you, too. I think I’ve been in love with you since that day you brought wood to the railcar. Maybe it was because I was engaged, or I just didn’t want to admit it, or maybe I thought I was too good. Whatever it was, I can’t deny how I feel any longer.”
A lump formed in his throat at her words. “Maybe it’s ’cause you’re lonely and scared and heartsick,” he said. “Maybe it’s ’cause the lieutenant is dead, your very own fiancé, and there’s no one to fill the emptiness inside you. Maybe it’s ’cause there’s no one left standing in your life but a gimp woodcutter, that your world has just shriveled up to that. Maybe the day we walk into Fort Dodge, you’ll see what a terrible mistake you made.”
“You think me frivolous, or confused, I suppose, but I know my own heart. Once considered, I follow it to the end. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You and I might not make it back, Caleb. It’s a dangerous land, and we’re lost. I’ve known that all along. Maybe we won’t make it back.”
“I was hoping you hadn’t thought on it,” he said, “but I guess neither one of us would be telling the truth to say otherwise.”
She took the fleur-de-lis from about her neck and held it in her hand. “Do you love me like you said, Caleb?”
“Yes.”
“Then put your hand on this.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“All right,” he said, laying his hand on the fleur-de-lis, still warm from the hollow of her neck.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“And would you marry me if you could?”
“Yes.”
“Then swear it on my mother’s necklace.”
“I swear it.”
“And I swear it, too,” she said, laying her hand on top of his, “and now we are married.”
“Married?”
“Yes, and you can kiss me.”
“I never kissed a girl before, Joan,” he said.
Slipping the fleur-de-lis back on, she put her arms about his neck and brushed her lips against his. “It isn’t all that difficult,” she said.
Lightning struck, molten and unsettling, and pooled in the depths of Caleb’s soul. Mystified, he traced the arch and fulsomeness of her mouth, the cedar fire snapping in the night, embers quivering into the blackness.
“It’s a fearsome thing,” he said.
“Take down my braid, Caleb,” she said, her voice full and certain.
And so he did, untying the strip of hide, separating the strands with trembling fingers. Rising, she turned away, slipping off her buckskin coat, and then her blouse, letting it fall away unheeded at her feet. Caleb swallowed and stared into the fire. But as she unlaced her skirt, he was taken to look, as one looks at a glorious sunset, or at a beautiful and quivering horse, with mesmerizing and unwitting fascination. Shadows danced across her marbled shoulders, the exquisite curve of her hips, the breathtaking arch and grace of her back.
She turned to him, and Caleb’s heart stalled, her hair fallen and dark about her shoulders, her lush breasts, her fleur-de-lis with its immutable promise.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice strange and hollow in his ears.
“And now you,” she said.
“But I’m not beautiful,” he said, turning his hands in the firelight.
“This is our place and our time, Caleb,” she said.
And so he did, and they lay on the buffalo robe, unclad in the way and order of Edens. About them the night smelled of cedar boughs, and the fleece embraced them with its warmth, and against their trembling and innocent nakedness.
With her promise, Joan came to him then, this woodcutter, and with her fervor took him into her, and the night fell away about them as their bodies joined and their voices rose against the loneliness and extent of the prairie.
Chapter 22
The sun fell warm against the canyon wall, stirring Caleb from his sleep. Rolling over, he pulled Joan against him, snuggling his face into the warmth of her throat. She smelled of cedar and of earth, and her breasts were abundant against his arm.
“I’m going to see if I can bag us a turkey,” he said, his groin stirring against his will.
“Be careful, Caleb,” she said, turning back into the glow of her sleep.
Dancing against the morning chill, Caleb slipped on his clothes, hooking the bow and quiver over his shoulder. From the high branches of an elm, a mockingbird sang out its repertoire, random and stolen choruses long since claimed as its own.
The morning was still, and bits of fog clung in the crevices and crannies of the canyon. As he neared the spring, he cut high up the cliff wall and onto a ledge that gave him full view of the approach. Steam rose from the spring as it gurgled into the morning cold.
He squatted behind a fallen walnut and nocked an arrow. Patience was the soul of the hunter. This he’d learned from Little River. With patience, the world will come to your door. As he waited, he thought of Joan, the pleasure of her, the smell and taste of her, and of the oath they’d sworn, of love and marriage, and how in his heart it was a true and right thing and would be so forever. It was their time, as she’d said, and no man or god could ever take that from them now.
A line of turkeys pranced from out of the bramble as he thought these things, led by a splendid tom, his tail flared, his step high and proud, his great wattle red as blood in the morning sunlight. Bringing about his bow, Caleb waited as they drank from the spring, dipping and preening and stretching their necks.
He took a deep breath and drew his bow, melding hand and eye and target. In that silence between heartbeats, he loosed his arrow, and the tom dropped, his feet kicking out the remaining seconds of his life. In a great flutter of feathers and squawks, the flock disappeared into the bramble once more.
The tom was heavy and warm against Caleb’s back as he walked to camp, and he was happy, not so much for the kill, or for the food that would sustain them for a few more days, but for the look on Joan’s face when he presented her with the tom. It was the hunter’s pride, that pride he’d seen on the warriors’ faces when they rode in laden with bounty.
Holding the tom at the end of his arm, Caleb grinned as Joan clapped her hands with glee.
“You’re wonderful,” she said, beaming.
He plucked the tom and cleaned him, setting aside the entrails for bait at the spring. Afterward, he searched out a downed pecan tree that had been uprooted by floodwaters, dried and perfect for smoking the meat. By midmorning, the aroma of roasting turkey filled the canyon.
“Here,” Caleb said, handing a tail feather from the tom to Joan, “a gift. I wish it was gold instead of an ole turkey feather.”
She kissed him and tied it into her braid. “It’s a grand gift, and I’ll keep it always,” she said.
That day, they explored the canyon, wandering hand in hand through the labyrinth of rock, laughing as they leaped like children from stone to stone. Near the end of the canyon, Joan discovered an apple tree, its fruit darkened with cold and bruised with bird pecks. But they tasted of glory and sweet as they munched them with their backs against the tree trunk. With pockets full, they strolled campward, and when the noon sun flooded the canyon, they made love in the warmth of the rocks. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms and dozed.
That night, they ate smoked turkey and watercress, and apples roasted over the coals. Joan fed the cores to the pinto, laughing as his great tongue slithered into the palm of her hand for the last of the delicacies. The evening fell still and glorious, and they made love once more on the buffalo robe, the future’s uncertainty far from their minds.
For three days they lived such, exploring, laughing, making love in the freedom of the moment, and each day Caleb took something at the spring, a coon, a jack, a squirrel from the high reaches of a tree. But with each day, the weather grew colder and the inevitability of their leaving more certain.
One morning they awoke to find their robe dusted with snow, no more than a powdering that skittered and faded before the wind. Caleb walked the perimeter of the camp while Joan fixed their breakfast. Afterward, he led the pinto out to where the canyon broke onto the mesas.
“I’m going to see if I can find a little grazing for the pinto,” he said, but when he returned, Joan had packed their things. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?” she said, rolling up the buffalo hide.
“Yes.”
“I hate leaving,” she said.
“I know.”
“Things will change.”
“But these days we’ve had won’t change,” he said, taking up the pinto’s reins.
At the mouth of the canyon they both looked back, but neither spoke as they moved on to the trail ahead.
Soon the soil turned the color of blood, a lifeless clay, blistered and ruined from summer heat. An occasional boulder shot from its depths, shoved from the earth’s bowels by evils below, a bleak and unforgiving land. But the walking was unhampered, and the miles passed with uncommon speed.
By day’s end, they had yet to reach the mesas, their distance and size far greater than either realized. The sun slid below the hills, and they camped in the open, without comfort of fire or protection from the wind. When the blackness dropped over them, a wet gale swept in and set them to shivering.
They huddled under their buffalo robe and ate the last of the smoked turkey, drawing into each other’s arms against the chilling night. Caleb rubbed at the soreness in his ankle, the old wound having worsened with the dropping temperatures. Outside, the pinto stamped his hooves against the cold and the ever-present howl of coyotes.
