The Unforgiven

The wedding was to be in four days, giving Effie three days with her family, during which the family could get acquainted with their new in-law. Matthilda was mildly shocked by what seemed to her an un-seemly haste about these arrangements. She was not at all sure it was decent.

“So long as that’s all you see to worry about,” Ben grumbled.

“Jude and Charlie turned right around and high-tailed for home, soon as they give—gave us the word,” Andy complained. “Let theirselves right out of a full day’s work.” Ben had been setting a furious pace, and Andy had been trying to outdo him. Trying to get their pay raised, it looked like to more easy-going men, who saw no call to get in a frenzy. “Not that Jude and Charlie are any good around cattle. But they could anyway try, couldn’t they? Effie wasn’t even looked for, until way late. They could just as easy have put in a short ten-hour day—”

“They had to ride to meet their sister, of course,” Mama told him. “It’s the least they could do.”

“Trust them to do the least,” Andy commented.

“Ben!” Mama rebuked them. “He’s picking up all this unneighborliness from you!”

Ben denied this. He didn’t hold with all this galumphing around the country in raiding season—with the moon right smack on the full, at that. He understood this Whickaty, or Whittaker, or whatever his numpish name was, had some side riders with him—didn’t know how many. But the fact that he had sent his rider, this Gus, riding far into the night all alone, proved he didn’t know what he was doing. “Her brothers should have met her in Fort Worth, if you ask me,” Ben gave his opinion. “And then kept her where she was!”

But he hadn’t found out who the preacher was to be, though Harry Whittaker surely must be bringing one. Didn’t even know who-all was coming. The Rountrees, doubtless—about six of them—but how many more? How were his womenfolk to know what-all to bake, if he didn’t even get the main facts? Ben had made a failure of it, they made plain to him.

Ben grumped and complained. He supposed they would make him responsible for getting them over there somehow, if they had to fight every foot of the way. Needn’t blame him if it cost every scalp in the dang family. He saw himself called on to whup the whole Kiowa nation, like as not, with only five carbines including Rachel’s—Mama would have to take the driving lines, soon as they were jumped. She’d better get some practice with the four-horse team, for she’d have to flog full stretch, when they made their run for it. If anybody got through alive they’d be lucky. “But of course all that means nothing to you folks. Not if some jug-haid female is shot-gunning herself a man. Damn those people anyway!”

They were paying no attention to him. The Zacharys, by previous arrangement, would go over the day before—which left them only two days to get ready. They were in a panic over all the baking they must do. And when it came to what they should take to wear! Weeks of forewarning apparently had not readied them at all.

Rachel was excited for a little while, or thought she was, because she had expected to be, once. But presently she became aware that the events between had given the long-anticipated occasion too much chance to go stale. Effie’s wedding was only something that had happened to most of the people in the world, up to now, and would go on happening forever probably, to generations unborn. Too little had been said about whether the Rawlinses really did want them, after all the coolness there had been. And they were overriding Ben, again, on the subject of precautions, which was exactly how people who should know better lost their hair.

Matthilda, though, had a theory that if you worried enough about something it didn’t happen, and this often seemed to work. This time, as they came in sight of the Rawlinses’, it seemed to have worked again, up to here, for they had met with no alarms on the way.

In dry seasons the Dancing Bird was no more than a few hundred yards of stagnating slough, where the Rawlinses had built. They called it “The Branch.” The trees that had once fringed the water had gone into the cabin, a considerable barn, and a line of stock shelters, and the brush had been burned off to help the grass; so the whole place could be seen in virtually naked detail, from a long way off. The peeled-log house with its shake roof made the Rawlinses feel better-fixed than the Zacharys, who lived in a hole in the ground. At the same time, the Zacharys felt above the Rawlinses, who had no wooden floor, but lived on dirt, like pigs.

Both families had hauled their few window sashes, hinges, and such like, from the ruins of a hamlet twenty- five miles to the east. Its name had been New Hope, before its abandonment under the Indian threat, during the war; everybody called it No Hope, now. No one ever expected its people to come back. But Zeb Rawlins had a rigid puritanical streak in his honesty. He searched out people who claimed to be property holders in No Hope—including some who had never heard of it before—and paid them off. While doing so he learned that the Zacharys had never taken this trouble; and he had distrusted them, as on the shifty side, ever since. The Zacharys, who took pride in the belief that their word was hard money anywhere in Texas, would have been dumb-founded had they known.

Andy rode to the wheel of the democrat wagon, as they came in view, and offered to pick up some mullein leaves for Rachel. Girls rubbed their cheeks with these leaves, to bring out a glow. It worked better for other girls than it did for Rachel. Her skin was the even, biscuity tint of a Plymouth Rock egg; a flush came slowly to it, and was soon gone. But she was going to accept, when Andy added, “Charlie’s home, you know.”

“What’s that to me?”

He pretended surprise. “Why, I’ve kind of been looking for you two to run off, ’most any time.”

Matthilda made it worse by saying, “Now, don’t tease her, Andy.”

“What’s wrong with Jude?” Rachel demanded. “You all holding him in reserve?”

“It’s only,” Matthilda fumbled, “Charlie seems more your age. There aren’t so very many boys, out here on the—”

Rachel was furious. “I’ve got no more choice in the matter than a heifer pent up with two bulls!!”

“Rachel!”

“Well—two, he-cows, then. What one won’t rise to—”

“Rachel, that’s enough! Shockin’!”

Still beyond sound of a hail, they saw Georgia come out of the house. She gave them a sketchy wave, as if uncertain it could be seen, and trotted for the corrals. Rachel knew Georgia would be entirely game to straddle a bareback horse, skirts and all, and come walloping out to meet them. But another figure appeared in the doorway of the cabin, and Georgia stopped.

Rachel restored herself by filling in the inaudible exchange. “ ‘Georgyaw!’ ” she imitated Hagar. “ ‘You git back yar!’ ‘Naow, Maw—’ ” she switched tones, as Georgia was seen to answer back—“ ‘I got a call to the—’ ‘georgyer!’ ” They saw Georgia turn back. “ ‘Aw, dern it, Maw, heck,’ ” Rachel finished for her as she disappeared into the house.

Ben and the hands were riding the ridges far out on either side, and Rachel’s show went kind of flat. Andy seemed not to have heard, and Mama just looked pleasantly good-natured and vague. Matthilda was often smiling, often gay, but when you tried to remember when she had laughed out loud, you couldn’t think of any time. Oh, well—Ben would have laughed. It was the last, nearest thing to a light or trifling moment that they had.

Effie had not come home. Her brothers had expected to meet her only a few hours out, but no one had come in that night. When there was no sign of them next day, Gus and the two cowhands assigned to the Rawlinses had been sent to search the road. But three days had now gone by, and no word had come.

Chapter Twenty

A hot sun had come out—and to stay, though they didn’t know that yet; it had quickly dried the prairie. But Ben recalled that it had rained pretty much all day and all night, while Gus was riding from Fort Richardson, and most of the next day, too. Effie’s party must have laid over where they were. Even if they had started from Richardson, the hub-deep mud might have turned them back. Some of that red clay took time to dry. And if they lamed a horse…

Hagar said, “Yes, we thunk of that.” Her deep-set eyes had receded into her head, and she looked hollowed everywhere, as if she had not eaten or slept.

“I’m sure they’re all right,” Matthilda said. “They’re bound to get here. I know they will.”