The Unforgiven

expected to take council now. Ten minutes passed without event.

“This might be a good chance to eat,” Cash said. “They’re not liable to give us too many good ones, from here on in. Not for a while.” He looked for the Kiowas to try a jump at them in about the last of the dusk. He believed they’d want to make use of poor light, on account of he’d bothered them a little bit, he thought. They had had him all figured out, just how he would act, only he hadn’t acted that way. Still…all he could say for certain was that no Kiowa was going to leave here yet, unless to bring more. They would never leave the body of Lost Bird lying out there in front, where it was.

Rachel accepted that the body out there was that of her brother, or perhaps a half brother—incredibly of her own flesh and blood. Yet she felt nothing toward him, or toward any of the Kiowas, other than the bitter enmity you feel for halfhumans who have come to destroy everything you love.

Georgia helped her push furniture around, and make a tent of blankets in front of the fireplace, so that no gleam would show outside the ports. They heated nothing but coffee. The boys had to stay on watch, and wanted only cold meat and bread, such as could be eaten with one hand. When each had coffee and a sandwich, Rachel remembered grace. Once, long ago, when Andy was too little to be still when Papa bowed his head, she had said a stupid thing in trying to quiet him, for she was little, too. Her words came back to her now.

“Wait, Andy—Papa has to read his plate.”

“What?”

“I’m going to say grace.” The locusts were going again, out in the limpid twilight, but her low words came clearly through the quiet of the room. “Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for these vittles, the—the gifts of—” She faltered. Remembering the long ago had made her remember Ben, too, and what this prayer had made her think when she was halfgrown. She had almost said, these vittles, the gifts of Ben’s hard work…. She recovered herself. “The gifts of Thy love,” she finished steadily. “Now guide us, and guard us, and keep us from evil…”

Cassius’ horse began to paw again, making a thunderous noise on the wooden floor, so that the rest was lost. The horse was trying to fudge around toward the smell of water, in the barrel by the door. Rachel got him a bucket, unbridled, and fed him a loaf of bread; then put the bridle back on. The animal drowsed after that, well- practiced in going un-satisfied.

After that, Rachel chewed her bread and meat methodically. It seemed dry, and sticky in the throat, all but impossible to wash down. But—No feed, no distance, she was remembering; she made herself get through it all. The motions of feeding people brought a hard ache into her, sometimes in her middle and sometimes in her throat; too many memories went with these people, and this room. The uneasy quiet left time to think, which was the last thing she wanted to do; and she became more miserable the longer the silence held. If she had not worked in a daze, as if hit in the head, she might never have got through it at all.

They damped out the coffee fire, and folded the blankets, so that the chimney could help keep the place aired. Cash and Andy opened more loopholes, including two near the floor, at the ends of the front wall. These were intended to surprise hostiles who crawled along the foot of the wall, under the other gun ports. Cassius talked over with them how they must fight. He and Andy would defend the battle shutters because, though he did not say so, these were an incomplete protection. No one must fire from the same loop twice in a row. They must put backs to the wall to load. When they moved about, they must duck under or step over the lines of fire radiating inward from every port. Each must pocket the cartridges he would need. A lot of their ammunition was out on the range with the wagon, but Cash judged their supply would last the night.

When they were as ready as they were going to be, Rachel and Georgia looked at Matthilda again. She slept so quietly now that they had to bend low to hear her breath. They both felt her pulse. At first Rachel could not find it at all.

“It’s so weak,” she whispered. “Just a cobweb.”

Georgia didn’t say anything. Something about Matthilda’s pulse bothered her more than its lack of strength. Seemed more of a quiver, than a beat. But she was unsure what this meant.

After that there was nothing to do but wait. The last of the twilight was falling very fast. Andy said, “Maybe they’ll wait for the moon.” Nobody answered.

Suddenly Georgia moved. She was sitting against the dug-in back wall, and now she put her ear to it. She tried to say something, but the words only caught and whispered in her throat. On her next try the words came louder than she meant, so that she startled herself, and them all. “They’re comin’!”

In another moment they heard the hoof-murmur coming into the room through the earth of the hill into which they were dug; and soon after they could hear the horses outside, all around them.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a buck,” Cassius said, nonplused.

Rachel ran toward Matthilda’s room; Georgia went to the north lookout slide.

“Leave that shut!” Cash said suddenly. “Rachel—plug the loops in there, and come here! Andy—block the ports at that end! I see this now!”

They obeyed him, closing the ports by knocking home wooden plugs, fitted long ago. Outside, the hoof- rumble rose and rose—an approach so unquiet that it must certainly have been meant to be heard.

“Damn fool that I am!” Cash blamed himself. Ought to have guessed the hostiles would try to come in here the quickest way. Only the door and the two windows overlooking the Dancing Bird offered openings big enough to admit a man. Except for gunports, the bedroom where Matthilda lay had only some slits near the roof, to give air. Neither these nor the north lookout were big enough to get in through. What Cash had imagined was a crawling, swarming attack—Indians along the walls where the guns could not reach, Indians digging under, Indians all over the roof, like ants trying to get into an egg. The Kiowas could dig through the thick turf with hatchet and ironwood lance, making their own gun ports, until the place bristled with guns pointed inward. They could breach the walls and come pouring in; they could level the house to the ground, if they had to.

First defense against this kind of an attack was to pick off the Kiowas as they rushed, before they got tight to the walls. If Cassius’ cowhands had been here, instead of bumbling around somewhere with a bunch of wet cows, they might have fought off the whole Kiowa nation. Even loopholes made by an enemy work two ways—until they become too many. As it was, with only one gun to the side, their chief hope was to hurt enough Kiowas to destroy faith in their medicine, so that maybe they would quit.

But Cash now saw that he had wrongly imagined the whole thing. Mounted warriors could do nothing against walls; they could only create diversion and confusion, while delivering a badly aimed covering fire for a dismounted attack. They would not bother with that against so few, if they were coming from all sides. The attack would be frontal, against the shutters, and perhaps the door.

He now posted Georgia and Rachel belly-down with cocked carbines at the low ports in the front walls, near the ends. If their ports darkened, they must fire, for Kiowas crawling along the base of the wall must pass these ports to get to the shutters. Beyond this, they would play no other part, until knifemen got into the room.

They were barely in position when the war cries broke the night wide open, very near and all at once, an incredibly loud and inhuman yammering. A file of mounted warriors streamed across the front of the house, firing raggedly but continuously. Except for an occasional slug that splintered through a shutter, little was to be feared from this kind of fire. Andy and Cash several times raised their carbines, but lowered without firing. The Kiowas were riding close, too close. Some hung on the far sides of their saddle-less ponies, but even those who sat straight up, firing coolly, whipped past the ports too fast for a decent shot. What Cash did not want was to bring down a horse. A dead horse would make a redoubt at too close a range.

The riders were circling the house now, reloading as they passed behind, and the war cries never ceased. A warrior wearing a buffalo-horn headdress pulled out of the circle and stopped his pony in the open, signaling to the racing circle with his shield. Cash and Andy fired together, and a scalp flew off the Kiowa’s shield. The rider seemed to fall on the far side of his bolting pony, but he never hit the ground.

“No good,” Cash said. “He took cover, that’s all. He was sitting up again, going around the corner.”

“Those black and yellow bands,” Andy said. “In his warpaint, and on his shield—”

“That was Seth,” Cash confirmed. “Wolf Saddle is the one painted up with black and red snakes. Seems like he dropped out of this last round. That one I put a crimp in, down by the creek, was Fast Otter, I think…. Look sharp, now, Rachel, Georgia!”

The circle of racing ponies went on unbroken, and the war cries screamed continuously all round the house. Bullets still slammed into door timbers, and the gunfire out there made the ears ring. But nothing was hitting the shutters now. Cash went to stand by one window, and Andy by the other. And now Rachel’s carbine crashed.