The Unforgiven

Cassius. So long as he lived, Ben would never forget that soaring leap with its ringing rebel yell, the spraddling horse against the sky above him, the incredibly tall sheet of water that went up as horse and rider hit, turning the cattle. He remem-bered it all, as if it had been last night. He had never been able to get used to the idea that a man so much alive as Zack could just suddenly be out of the world, completely and forever.

“Now the horses he rode are old,” Ben said slowly, wonderingly, “and his bones are sand in the sea.

They were silent. The fireflies that had failed Rachel were thick and bright, stirrup-deep, all along the Dancing Bird. Rachel reached for Ben’s hand, and held it hard between both her own.

“I miss him still,” Ben said. “He was all I ever knew to turn to, when I didn’t know what to do. I need him, so many times…. Rachel, Rachel honey, I never needed him any more than I do this year.”

Now? Shall I tell him now? Maybe I could become what he needs, instead. But still she didn’t know how to speak.

“He would have known what to do here,” Ben said. “Papa knew how to face anything down.”

“No,” Rachel said. “If you’ll think back, you’ll remember things he turned his back on, trying to pretend they weren’t there. You’ll even remember things he never faced, but gave ground to, and drew away.”

Now how does she know that? He was almost frightened, for a moment. How much does she know, and understand, that we think she’s never suspected? He decided to ignore it.

“He was a good man,” Ben said, without change of mood. “The best man ever forked a horse, I guess. There’ll never be another like him.”

Her whisper was intense, rebellious. “That isn’t true!”

“What?”

“You’re a better man than Papa ever thought of being,” she told him.

“Rachel! Me?”

“You’re steadier, and you hold on harder. You stick to your knittin’, where Papa was always getting switched off. Papa could no more stay with what he was doing when the guns and saddles came out than a yearling hound. You’re the one people can tie to, Ben! And count on always.”

“I—but—why, Rachel—” he was dumbfounded. “But, you loved Papa—I know you did. Because—”

“I worshiped him. I would never have known he wasn’t the best man in the world, if I hadn’t known you. But you’re the best man.”

He was silenced; and she didn’t know whether he was touched, or only astonished, and shocked by her heresy.

Presently he leaned over, and gently kissed her hair. He said softly, “I’m right glad you think that, anyway.”

Now? Is this the time?

But he stood up, and with an easy pull of one hand lifted her to her feet. He said, “Now, you take care of everybody, while I’m gone.”

And it was time to get some sleep.

Chapter Thirty

After Ben was gone, the summer ran on; and it was turning into one of the driest they had known since they had been on the Dancing Bird. The grass cured on the stem before it was halfway up, and the range, heavily overstocked the year before, was overgrazed and haunted by dust devils, wherever the livestock used. Trail men who drive late would bust, as most had busted, the last three years in a row.

This year the things that had made Rachel’s childhood happy didn’t seem to interest her any more.

Other years she had trapped pets, often collecting a regular zoo of them. Once she had raised an elf owl, no bigger than a sparrow when it was full-grown. Another time she had spoon-fed a nest of ravens until they flew. For several years one or another of them had come back, from time to time, to squawk for handouts around the stoop, but fewer appeared each year, until no more came home. She had tamed any number of deer mice, and jumping mice. These were magical little creatures, with delicate oversized ears that the sun shone through. If one of them tried to hide in the grass, with no dark place to crawl into, all you could see of it was those sun-shot ears, like two glowing pink flower petals, all alone. Once there had been a kangaroo rat that Ben had caught for her somewhere in the dry, a bouncy, tassel-tailed bit of fluff with no fear of people whatever.

Most exciting, and at the same time most disappointing, had been a coyote pup. Cash had dug it out for her before its eyes were open, and until it was nearly grown it had seemed to be turning into a dog. But it had ended by snapping at her whenever she touched it, and had finally run away. A few times afterward she had seen it sitting on a hummock to watch her from a long way off, but it had never come home again, or answered her call.

But this year what she remembered best was how much work pets make. Only children had much fun, she guessed, and she wasn’t a child any more. Hadn’t been for a long time. She dug up extra tasks for herself, which in other years she had delayed as long as she could. She boiled down antelope blood to a stickum, and made a couple of quarts of percussion caps. She set up the big outside kettles, to begin the annual soap boiling and candle making.

She was trying to forget another task that she knew she must someday undertake. No one had assigned it to her; indeed, she would be prevented if she were found out. Her restless industry was an attempt at escape, for she dreaded this thing, and even saw reason for physical fear. But she could not drive it from the back of her mind. The five hands who were always loafing at home, a different combination every day, were a help in putting off the job she feared. They played poker endlessly, on a blanket laid in the dust by the creek, shifting position with the shade; some of them followed her with their eyes whenever she was in sight. These, with either Cash or Andy always around, gave her an excuse for believing she could not slip away. But her time was running out. July passed, and they were into August; she knew Ben might already be on his way home.

Then the grasshoppers came.

When the first great cloud of them appeared in the north, Rachel didn’t know what they were. They had heard of northern Texas being devastated by them in ’68, but they had not amounted to anything on the San Saba. At first she mistook the strange low darkness on the horizon for a dust storm, and she watched for twisters. The billions of grasshoppers rolled swiftly across the grassland, and only shreds and fibers were left where they touched. The cotton-woods along the Dancing Bird turned to skeletons, with only chewed tags and remnants of leaves left on the branches. The day they were thickest they made it impossible to walk outside. They covered you, and got down your neck, and tangled their spiny legs in your hair. You could not set foot to the ground without crushing them, or lay a hand upon anything without snatching it back from a bristly, kicking handful of them.

It was the grasshoppers that gave Rachel a chance to get away. When they had passed, the cicadas, which everybody called locusts, resumed their metallic shrilling in the bare cottonwoods—what on earth did they find to eat? But the cattle were left standing in helpless bunches upon the stripped land; and the prairie moaned night and day with their bawling. Cash worked as though possessed.

He sent riders in seven directions, hunting for belts and pockets of grass the grasshoppers might have missed. When these were found, the cows had to be moved to them, with Jake Rountree on hand to see that the Rawlins cattle got an even break.

Zeb Rawlins himself was in Fort Worth, seeking a deal with somebody to put together a corrida, with which he wanted Jude to drive a herd of stockers to Wichita with the first cool weather. Jude was the drawback, there; Zeb was not having an easy time finding the men he had to have. But if word went down to him that he was coming out on the short end at home, he might be able to flood the Dancing Bird with gun-toting riders, and take over the whole range.

Cash still came in at night, or sent Andy, with three or four of their crack shots, but only a couple of hands were left home to sleep away the days. They had almost, but perhaps not quite, come into the first days of their next Kiowa Moon.

“One day’s work more,” Cash kept saying, “and we’ll have done what we could.” But at night there would