The Unforgiven

Cassius was trying to listen. “Georgia, for God’s sake, stop that damned clock!”

They had not heard the familiar ticking at all until Georgia stopped the pendulum, and the little painted ship on its painted sea rocked no more. When the ticking had stopped it left an emptiness that fairly rang in their ears.

“See there!” Andy spoke from the west loophole. “One’s riding in the creek bed. I can bead right on his head!”

“I see him,” Cash said.

“You want I should—”

“Let him come on.”

Up over the cutbank of the Dancing Bird, squarely in front of the house, came a single Indian rider. “Lost Bird,” Cash said, so that they all could hear it.

He came as he had come before, except that he rode bareback, and with a war bridle, a single cord tied on the lower jaw. He was without war paint, and his shirt was on; a four-inch silver concho shone in his hair. And this time they could see he carried no weapon at all. It was a strange thing for a Kiowa to present himself like that, entirely unarmed. But that was the worst thing about Kiowas; they were always doing something original, unpredictable, so you could never figure what kind of way they were fixing to come at you.

“That gray he’s riding is a famous racer,” Cash said with a peculiar detachment.

Lost Bird’s right hand was raised in the peace sign. He did not lower it as he pulled up five yards out, directly in front of the door, and made his pony stand like a rock.

Cash said something in Kiowa, and Lost Bird began to speak. Andy had returned to his station. Nobody was unglued from his loop to see Rachel creep through the shadows to one of the front shutter loopholes.

She remembered the smooth, beautifully molded face, the small, pleasant-appearing smile, the dark-reddish glow in the thick braids. But his eyes were only dark slits now. Rachel felt the peculiar revulsion that she had felt before. Lost Bird was speaking slowly in Kiowa, a phrase at a time; and he matched his words with the conventional sign language of the prairies that they all knew. So this time she knew what he said.

“We many times take your people,” he said, and though the sign language does not translate well in its literal meanings, the thought came through clearly; “You come, you want them, you buy. You pay us. We let you take them back. Many times. All friendly. All good.”

Cash said something through the door in Kiowa, and Lost Bird acknowledged it with a brief grin. But he went on with the speech he had doubtless carefully prepared. “Long ago,” Lost Bird’s signs said, “you take a child of ours. You take my sister. We look for her very long. Now we find. Now we come. We want her back now. She is ours. We pay. You pay us, now we pay you. All friendly, all good. I give ten horses for my sister. You give me. I take home.”

Cash spat out an angry Kiowa phrase.

“Tell what you want more. Price is good. But I give more,” Lost Bird’s hands said. “I do not leave this place without my sister. I have twenty-two men. You have two men, three women—one very old. No good.”

Cassius raised his carbine to the loophole, aimed steadily, and put a bullet close past Lost Bird’s ear. The blackpowder smell was plain in the room as he reloaded. Outside, the gray war pony quivered, but did not move its feet. Lost Bird was smiling, and the smile expressed more contempt than he could have shown in any other way. He believed he knew whom he was dealing with, and how their minds worked, and what Cassius, particularly, would do and would not do.

“You shoot well,” his hands said. “You do not shoot to hit. You hit me, nobody in your house will see the sun again. You know that. Now listen. I tell you all this again.” He started over with the same prepared speech as before. “Few times, we take your people….”

Rachel startled Cash by speaking almost in his ear. He didn’t know how she got there, standing at his elbow. “This is no good,” she said.

“You get back where I put you!” he ordered her, through his teeth. He was abruptly, bitterly angered, for her intrusion threatened a betrayal of all their long efforts to shield her.

“There isn’t going to be any fight,” she said. “Let me by. I understood what he said, this time.”

“Never mind them damned Indian lies! You’re going to—”

“He’s telling the truth. I’ve known all about it for a long time. I’m going to end all this trouble now!”

“You’ll not go out there, because I’ll stop you,” he said; but he was less sure of himself, thrown off by her revelation.

“Maybe you can stop me. But they’ll be in here, while you have your hands full with me. Now let me go.

He stared at her, bewildered by the flat, dead-sounding tone in which she threatened outlandish, unbelievable things. “Is everybody crazy but me?” he demanded. “By God, I know how to settle this!”

Out in the clear twilight, Lost Bird was patiently, slowly, going through his smooth, clear signs. His gruff Kiowa phrases came steadily to them, through the door. Cash raised his carbine again, and instantly fired. Lost Bird’s head jerked violently with the impact of the bullet; he was dead as he fell. The whole back of his skull seemed to be gone as he lay face down in the dirt. The gray war pony shied, found itself free, and stampeded.

Cash had fired to kill, from cover and without warning, at a range from which failure was impossible to him; while Lost Bird had sat horse before him, unarmed, fully exposed under the peace sign. Any justification would have to be found in the necessity Cash had believed governed his decision. He never thereafter spoke one word in his own defense, or gave any sign of regret.

“Oh, Cash, Cash!” Rachel cried out. “They’ll never draw back now! They’ll fight till we’re dead!”

“You can bet on it,” Cassius said.

“They’ll never let up, so long as—”

He cut in harshly. “Then there’s no use you going out, is there? Now get back to your loop!”

Chapter Thirty-five

For a few moments stillness held outside. The zinging of the locusts in the cottonwoods by the creek had been silenced by the gunshots; and this made the quiet unnatural, as if the whole prairie lay stunned.

Before the locusts could begin again, the “Wa-wa-wa-wah!” of a war cry sounded from the creek, immediately followed by an uncountable chorus. The creek bed seemed to be full of Kiowas, while yet no Indian but the dead Lost Bird could be seen. Two rifles slammed, down there; then a ragged volley. The windowpanes burst outside the battle shutters, and fell tinkling.

“Close your slide,” Cash called to Georgia, who stood at the back of the room, at the north lookout. “Get down on the floor!”

Andy, at the end, complained, “I can’t line up on nothing from here!”

“Stay there anyway.” Cash turned away from his door loop, and leaned against the plastered sod wall, at rest. A buffalo slug broke through a shutter, and rattled, spent, across the floor. A little after that a bullet nicked a splinter out of the side of the door loop where Cash had stood, and lodged above the fireplace.

“They’ll quit this, in a minute,” Cash said.

He was right. The Kiowas were firing at the house in an expression of anger; they had no plan to fit what had happened. The guns in the creek bed fell silent, and Cash looked out again.

“Two-three of ’em have gone to popping up and down,” Cash said, puzzling everybody. “Guess they want to see what we’ll do.”

“What will we do?” Andy asked him.

“Nothing,” Cash said, but kept his carbine ready. He watched an Indian leap straight up to expose half of his painted body, then drop from sight again. Another tried it in a different place. Then a single white-streaked warrior sprang out of the creek bed, and stood in the open upon the bank. Cash fired, and the Kiowa came down in a heap. The lip of the bank crumbled, and the body began to slide over the edge. Cash fired again, and hit, he thought, before the body disappeared from view.

That was the end of that experiment. The Kiowas could not be heard withdrawing, but they could be