within her, as their hearts had.
Maria couldn't risk that. Her children needed her.
Even now, she worried that Billy Williams wouldn't take care of them well enough. Rafael might be growing thin, for sometimes he forgot to eat.
Teresa was careless sometimes, and burned herself on the stove. What if she had burned herself badly?
Who would hold her in the night and help her with the pain?
'I will take you to the railroad, if you will try to keep up,' Maria said. 'That's the best I can do. I have to leave you at the railroad and go home to my children.' When the time came to leave, Marieta and Gabriela wept. They had no warm clothes; they didn't want to go.
'My feet freeze, even when I'm in the house,' Marieta said. 'I don't want to walk in the snow.' 'I want to wait for Joey,' Gabriela said. 'He don't have no one else to help him.' 'Joey thinks she's pretty,' Marieta said. She was bitter that her sister had been favored. She didn't like Joey anymore. But her feet got very cold, just sitting in the house.
Someone had told her that if your feet froze, they had to be cut off. She was afraid that if she went with the woman, her feet would freeze. The person who told her what happened to frozen feet was Red Foot, who sometimes visited her.
He would only pay her a dime, but it was a dime at least. Red Foot liked to be behind her; she could hear him panting in her ear, like a dog.
He said frozen feet had to be sawed off with a saw.
'Me and Gabriela, we better stay,' Marieta said.
'Don't be weak,' Maria said. The two girls were just girls, not too much older than her own girl. She didn't want to leave them to the rough men. If she had to take the women, she would take the girls, too.
'These men will use you till you're sick,' Maria said. 'I will wrap your feet so they won't freeze.' While the girls sat, looking scared, she cut up sacks and wrapped their feet in many layers. She found an old pair of chaps that had worn thin and used the leather to make tight wrappings around the sacks. She didn't think the girls would freeze, for the worst cold didn't come with snow.
When Maria was ready, all the women looked scared. It was dark and the snow was still blowing. Some of the women wanted to wait until morning, but Maria wouldn't hear of it.
'Do you want a parade?' she asked, angrily. She had enough responsibilities, without these women balking.
'You know what we are to these men,' she said.
'Look between your legs--that's what we are. That's why they even let us be alive. Do you think they will let us all walk off, and not do something about it?' Then she thought of old Naiche. She was Indian, Comanche. Probably, the women had not asked her to go. When Maria inquired, several of the women claimed not to know where old Naiche lived.
Finally, Beulah told her.
Maria went through the snow to the little hovel of dirt and branches where Naiche lived. The shelter was made of thin mesquite branches, bent together at the top. There were many spaces between the mesquite limbs, but old Naiche had covered them with some of the rotten buffalo hides. It was a flimsy dwelling, so low that Maria had to go almost to her hands and knees to get through the opening. The wind sang through the small, smoky room, but Naiche didn't seem to mind. She sat with her bucketful of strippings and her armful of guts.
Now and then, she would dip into the bucket and nibble from the squeezings of the dead pig.
'I don't see well, no more,' Naiche said, when Maria stooped low and came in. 'Too much smoke.' 'We're leaving. You should come with us,' Maria said. 'I will take you to the railroad. It's not a long walk. This is not a good place for a woman.' Old Naiche shook her head.
'The train don't have no place to take me to,' she said. 'All my people are dead.' 'They are not all dead,' Maria replied.
'Billy Williams says there are many of your people, in the Territory. The train could take you to them, if you will get up and come with me.' 'No, there are only whites in the world now,' old Naiche said. 'I have all this food. You got it for me. I want to stay here and eat this food.' 'Bring it, I'll help you carry it,' Maria said. She knew it was no use, trying to save a woman as old as Naiche, but she wanted to try.
The women of Crow Town were too sad. Even with her eyes half gone from smoke, the old Comanche woman had more life left in her than any of them. She didn't seem discouraged, to be living in a small hovel made of mesquite sticks, with rotten buffalo hides to cover it and protect her from the cold breath of the norther.
'Come, try,' Maria said. 'I don't know what will become of you if I leave you here with these men.' 'I don't worry about these men,' Naiche said. 'Look. I'll show you what I have.' She bent, and began to dig with her hands by the little fire.
'This fire don't go out,' she said, as she was digging. 'I only let it go out in the summer, when it is hot. When the norther comes, I let the fire burn so my scorpions won't freeze.' Naiche uncovered a pit, so near the fire that the glow of the coals lit it. Maria looked in and saw that the pit was full of scorpions. She didn't like scorpions; she didn't count, but there were many scorpions in Naiche's little pit, and also a few of the long centipedes with the red legs.
Old Naiche had made a roof over the pit, with little sticks and a badger skin to cover it and keep the scorpions in.
'When they sting me, it don't hurt,' Naiche said. 'If men are bad, I will go around and put scorpions in their clothes. I did it to old Tommy, because he stole my tobacco. When he was drunk, I put three scorpions in his pants, and they stung him where he is a man.' Old Naiche grinned. She had few teeth.
Maria, too, was amused, at the old woman's vengeance and her cleverness in keeping a pit of scorpions near her fire. Billy had once told her that the Apaches sometimes kept scorpions because they needed their poison.
'Are you Apache?' Maria asked, thinking she had made a mistake about Naiche's tribe.
