Lorena stuck close to the riverbank. If she wandered off and lost the river, it would probably be the end. Toward evening, as the weak sun began to sink, she thought she saw a movement near the river. There was a little rapid, and just above it she thought she saw a brown rock move. She had been nodding in her fatigue, perhaps even dreaming.
Brown rocks didn't move.
When Lorena rode a little closer, she saw that an old Mexican woman sat by the river, just above the little rapid. She was wrapped in a brown serape and looked from a distance like a rock, but she was a woman. Call was slumped over his horse's neck, unconscious.
'I have seen that man before,' the old woman said.
'He was in our village. Who cut off his leg?' 'I did,' Lorena said. 'I had to.' 'He is the famous Texas Ranger. He killed Maria's father,' the old woman said.
'He killed her brother, too. That was a long time ago, when my children lived with me.' 'He was a lawman,' Lorena said. 'I need food and I need a doctor. He has a bullet in him. I need to find a doctor who will take it out.' 'There is no doctor in our village,' the old woman told her. 'The butcher might take the bullet out--his name is Gordo. But he is lazy, I don't know if he would want to help a gringo. Maria can do many things. She might take the bullet out. But this lawman killed her father and killed her brother. Maria may not be willing to help him.' 'I'll have to take the chance,' Lorena said.
'I'm out of food. Where is your village?' 'Go on the way you are going, it isn't far,' the old woman replied.
Lorena wondered why the old woman had chosen to sit by the river. The dark was coming, but she was making no move to go home. Lorena thought she might be sick, and she felt she should offer to help her.
'If you're tired, you can ride my horse,' Lorena said to her. 'I can walk, if the village isn't too far.' 'No, I want to stay here tonight,' the old woman said. 'My children live here. If you listen, you will hear their voices.' Lorena did listen, but all she heard was the splashing of the water in the little rapid. She decided the old woman must be crazy.
She rode on another mile, and soon saw the village. The setting sun shone on it. There were only some eight or ten small buildings, but after days of seeing nothing but the gray land, the sight of even one building would have been welcome.
It was welcome to the horses, too; they were hungry. Both of them tried to speed up, but Lorena held them back. She was afraid that a faster pace might jar the Captain and cause worse bleeding.
As she rode into the village, a few goats walked out to meet her, bleating. She saw a large boy and a small, slight girl standing with the goats. Both children were barefooted, despite the cold. The little girl was very pretty, but she moved oddly, holding her head to the side like a bird.
Lorena was only a few feet away from them, when she realized that the little girl was listening, not looking. She was blind.
Behind the children, in the doorway of a small house, Lorena saw a woman with a butcher knife in one hand--probably she had been cutting meat for supper. A tall, older man with a slight limp came out and stood beside the woman. He looked American. Perhaps he was the scout Call had mentioned, the one who might take her to find her husband. She stopped, and the woman and the tall man came out to greet her.
'I have a wounded man,' Lorena said to them.
'I need help. If there's a doctor here, I'd appreciate it if someone would find him.
This man has a bullet in him that needs to come out.' Billy Williams took the reins of Call's horse. He was shocked at how the man looked. He had seen many wounded men, but could not recall seeing anyone still breathing who was in worse shape than Call was in.
'It's Woodrow Call,' Billy said, to Maria. 'Somebody's about finished him.' Maria had the knife in her hand. She walked up to the horse and looked at Call. For years, when she was younger and the sting of her father's and her brother's deaths had been sharper, Maria had promised herself that she would kill Captain Call if she ever got the opportunity.
Now the opportunity was an arm's length away. They were planning to kill a goat, and Billy Williams had just sharpened the butcher knife. Maria hadn't spoken--Billy always grew nervous when Maria didn't speak. Her angers matured in silence. Then they came boiling up.
But Maria didn't raise the knife and she didn't strike. She looked at the blond woman on the other horse. It was easy to see that the woman had come a long way, for she looked cold and she looked tired. She looked as exhausted as Maria had felt when she got back from Crow Town.
'Get down,' she said, to the woman. 'Come into my house and eat.' Maria looked only briefly at the man tied to the black horse. He was an old man, and so wounded that he was only just barely alive.
Though he bore the name of the man who had killed her father and her brother, Maria knew he was no longer that man, the one she had wanted to kill.
She had wanted to kill him in his power because he had used his power wrongly. She wanted him to know that he could not simply kill people, good people, and be excused.
But the man who had wielded the power and done the killing was not the old, sick man on the black horse. To stab him now would be pointless--for she would not be stabbing the Captain Call she had hated for so long, but only the clothes and the fleshy wrappings of that man. She began to untie the knots that held him to the horse. The knots were slick with his blood.
'Take him in,' she said to Billy. 'Put a blanket down by the fire and put him on it.
I want to look at his wounds.' Billy cut the bloody knots and lifted Call off the horse. Call moaned when his wounded arm bumped against the saddle horn. Teresa came over and stood beside Billy as he lifted Call.
'Is that the man who was here before?' Teresa asked. 'I hear him breathe--is he sick?' 'Yes, he's sick,' Maria said. She was unsaddling Call's horse. 'Tell Rafael to drive the goats to the pen. We don't want the wolves getting them.' Lorena was stiff. She hadn't yet dismounted.
She was trying to adjust to the fact that she had actually found the village. She had stopped believing that
