I take it ye lost your way, said the hermit.
No, I went right to it.
He waved quickly with his hand, the old man. No, no, he said. I mean ye was lost to of come here. Was they a sandstorm? Did ye drift off the road in the night? Did thieves beset ye?
The kid pondered this. Yes, he said We got off the road someways or another.
Knowed ye did.
How long you been out here?
Out where?
The kid was sitting on his blanketroll across the fire from the old man. Here, he said. In this place.
The old man didnt answer. He turned his head suddenly aside and seized his nose between his thumb and forefinger and blew twin strings of snot onto the floor and wiped his fingers on the seam of his jeans. I come from Mississippi. I was a slaver, dont care to tell it. Made good money. I never did get caught. Just got sick of it. Sick of niggers. Wait till I show ye somethin.
He turned and rummaged among the hides and handed through the flames a small dark thing. The kid turned it in his hand. Some man’s heart, dried and blackened. He passed it back and the old man cradled it in his palm as if he’d weigh it.
They is four things that can destroy the earth, he said. Women, whiskey, money, and niggers.
They sat in silence. The wind moaned in the section of stovepipe that was run through the roof above them to quit the place of smoke. After a while the old man put the heart away.
That thing costed me two hundred dollars, he said.
You give two hundred dollars for it?
I did, for that was the price they put on the black son of a bitch it hung inside of.
He stirred about in the corner and came up with an old dark brass kettle, lifted the cover and poked inside with one finger. The remains of one of the lank prairie hares interred in cold grease and furred with a light blue mold. He clamped the lid back on the kettle and set it in the flames. Aint much but we’ll go shares, he said.
I thank ye.
Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes.
The kid didnt answer.
The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he?
I dont believe he much had me in mind.
Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world’s he seen that he liked better?
I can think of better places and better ways.
Can ye make it be?
No.
No. It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?
I dont know.
Believe that.
When the old man’s mess was warmed he doled it out and they ate in silence. Thunder was moving north and before long it was booming overhead and starting bits of rust in a thin trickle down the stovepipe. They hunkered over their plates and wiped the grease up with their fingers and drank from the gourd.
The kid went out and scoured his cup and plate in the sand and came back banging the tins together as if to fend away some drygulch phantom out there in the dark. Distant thunderheads reared quivering against the electric sky and were sucked away in the blackness again. The old man sat with one ear cocked to the howling waste without. The kid shut the door.
Dont have no bacca with ye do ye?
No I aint, said the kid.
Didnt allow ye did.
You reckon it’ll rain?
It’s got ever opportunity. Likely it wont.
The kid watched the fire. Already he was nodding. Finally he raised up and shook his head. The hermit watched him over the dying flames. Just go on and fix ye bed, he said.
He did. Spreading his blankets on the packed mud and pulling off his stinking boots. The fluepipe moaned and he heard the mule stamp and snuffle outside and in his sleep he struggled and muttered like a dreaming dog.
He woke sometime in the night with the hut in almost total darkness and the hermit bent over him and all but in his bed.
What do you want? he said. But the hermit crawled away and in the morning when he woke the hut was empty and he got his things and left.
All that day he watched to the north a thin line of dust. It seemed not to move at all and it was late evening before he could see that it was headed his way. He passed through a forest of live oak and he watered at a stream and moved on in the dusk and made a fireless camp. Birds woke him where he lay in a dry and dusty wood.
By noon he was on the prairie again and the dust to the north was stretched out along the edge of the earth. By evening the first of a drove of cattle came into view. Rangy vicious beasts with enormous hornspreads. That night he sat in the herders’ camp and ate beans and pilotbread and heard of life on the trail.
They were coming down from Abilene, forty days out, headed for the markets in Louisiana. Followed by packs of wolves, coyotes, indians. Cattle groaned about them for miles in the dark.
They asked him no questions, a ragged lot themselves. Crossbreeds some, free niggers, an indian or two.
I had my outfit stole, he said.
They nodded in the firelight.
They got everthing I had. I aint even got a knife.
You might could sign on with us. We lost two men. Turned back to go to Californy.
I’m headed yon way.
I guess you might be goin to Californy ye own self.
I might. I aint decided.
Them boys was with us fell in with a bunch from Arkansas. They was headed down for Bexar. Goin to pull for Mexico and the west.
I’ll bet them old boys is in Bexar drinkin they brains out.
I’ll bet old Lonnie’s done topped ever whore in town.
How far is it to Bexar?
It’s about two days.
It’s furthern that. More like four I’d say.
How would a man go if he’d a mind to?
You cut straight south you ought to hit the road about half a day.
You going to Bexar?
I might do.
You see old Lonnie down there you tell him get a piece for me. Tell him old Oren. He’ll buy ye a drink if he aint blowed all his money in.
In the morning they ate flapjacks with molasses and the herders saddled up and moved on. When he found his mule there was a small fibre bag tied to the animal’s rope and inside the bag there was a cupful of dried beans and some peppers and an old greenriver knife with a handle made of string. He saddled up the mule, the mule’s back galled and balding, the hooves cracked. The ribs like fishbones. They hobbled on across the endless plain.
He came upon Bexar in the evening of the fourth day and he sat the tattered mule on a low rise and looked
