'I thought so myself, but now I ain't so sure,' Goodnight said. 'I've never seen the man myself, and I believe you have seen him. That's why I've bothered you and took the risk of upsetting you.' He paused, watching the young woman bring herself under control. It was not a simple struggle, or a brief one. She stared at him, wordless. She was plainly scared, too scared to hide it. Finally, to be doing something, he got up and helped himself to another glass of buttermilk.
Seeing Mr. Goodnight pouring himself the buttermilk brought Lorena back to herself, and just in time. For a second, she had felt a scream starting in her head, or had heard, inside herself, the piercing echo of many screams from the past. She felt cold and clammy, so heavy with fear that, for a second, she didn't know if she could move. During the hours when she had been a captive of Mox Mox and his boss, Blue Duck, she hadn't been able to move, and the terror that she felt during those hours was a thing that would never leave her. The name alone had brought it all back. Mr. Goodnight must have known it might, or he would not have hesitated.
But the man was in her kitchen, he was her guest, and there was such a thing as manners. Even though her deepest urge was to gather her children and run--run to Nebraska, or farther--she knew that she had to control herself and try to help Charles Goodnight, for the very sake of her children.
'I'm sorry, I'm bad scared, it caused me to forget my manners,' she said. She gripped the edge of the table and squeezed it with the fingers of both hands. She needed something that would steady her, something to grip. But the spasm of fear was stronger than her grip. Despite herself, she kept trembling.
'It don't take much muscle to pour buttermilk,' Goodnight said. 'I regret having to put you through this.' 'Why are you? Mox Mox is dead,' Lorena said. 'Pea Eye heard it years ago. He was killed in Utah, or somewhere.
'He's dead. ... ain't he?' she asked.
'He's dead. Everybody said it.' 'I chased him to Utah myself,' Goodnight said. 'He burnt four of my cowboys, in Colorado, on the Purgatory River.
Three of them were boys of sixteen, and the fourth was my foreman. He'd been with me twenty years.
I chased Mox Mox, but I lost him. It's a failure I've regretted ever since. Two or three years later, I heard he was dead, killed by a Ute Indian.' 'Yes, it was a Ute that killed him,' Lorena said. 'That's what Pea Eye told me.' Goodnight watched her shaking. He wished he could comfort her, but he had never been much of a hand at comforting women. It wasn't one of his skills.
He drank the second glass of buttermilk, looked at the pitcher, and decided not to have a third.
'I think Mox Mox is alive,' he said.
'Somebody's been burning people in New Mexico.' 'Burning what kinds of people?' Lorena asked, still gripping the table. It was all she could do to keep from jumping up and gathering her children and running before Mox Mox could come and get them all.
'Whatever kind he catches,' Goodnight said. 'He stopped a train and took three people off and burned them. That was three weeks ago.
'There ain't that many manburners,' Goodnight added, after a pause. 'The Suggs brothers burned two farmers, but Captain Call caught the Suggs brothers and hung them. That was years ago.' He paused again. 'Mox Mox is the only killer I've heard of who makes a habit of burning people,' he said, finally.
Lorena was silent. But in her head, she heard the screams.
'If I've got the history right, when Blue Duck took you from the Hat Creek outfit, Mox Mox was still running with him,' Goodnight said. He spoke with caution. He had known several women who had been captives, several women and a few children. Some of them babbled about it; others never spoke of it; but all were damaged.
Though used to plain speech, he knew that there were times when it wasn't the best way to talk. This woman, who worked so hard for the ignorant, raw children of the settlers, in a schoolhouse he had built, had been a captive, not of the Comanche, but of Blue Duck, one of the cruelest renegades ever to appear in the Panhandle country.
And Mox Mox, at various times, had run with Blue Duck. He himself had never seen either man. This woman had seen one of them for sure; perhaps she had seen both. He wanted to know what she knew, or as much of it as she could bear to tell him.
Rarely, in his long life, had Goodnight felt so awkward about asking for the information he needed. Lorena was not one to babble. What she felt, she mainly kept inside. Her fingers were white from gripping the edge of the table, and her arms shook a little; but she was not behaving wildly, she was not screaming or crying, and she was also not talking.
'Mox Mox is a white man and he's short,' Lorena said. 'One of his eyes ain't right, it points to the side. But the other eye looks at you, and one's enough.' Goodnight waited, standing by the stove.
Lorena took a deep breath. She felt as if she might strangle, if she didn't get more air into her lungs. She remembered that was how she had been then, too, the day Blue Duck led her horse across the Red River and handed her over to Ermoke and Monkey John and all the rest.
But not Mox Mox. He hadn't been there then.
He had arrived later; how many days later, Lorena wasn't sure. She wasn't counting days, then. She hadn't expected to live, and didn't want to, or didn't think she wanted to.
Then Mox Mox arrived. He had three Mexicans with him, and a stolen white boy. The little boy was about six. He whimpered all night.
When Gus McCrae rescued her, she hadn't been able to speak, and she had never since spoken of that time to anyone--not much, anyway.
Particularly, she had never spoken about the little boy.
'Mox Mox wanted to burn me,' Lorena said. 'I'll tell you, Mr. Goodnight.
I'll tell it today. But don't ever ask me about it again. Is that a bargain?' Goodnight nodded.
'He's small,' Lorena said. 'He wasn't big, like Blue Duck, and he's got that eye that looks off. He wanted to burn me.
He piled brush all around me and he poured whiskey on me. He said that would make me burn longer. He said
