The Unforgiven

again. The whole thing had an odd ventriloquism, so that sometimes the drumming seemed to be coming from down the creek, then from behind a ridge, then from somewhere on the prairie beyond the Dancing Bird.

Andy glanced up at Rachel, but they didn’t say anything about the drums. He skimmed the molten lead in his ladle. “Better take a look at Mama.”

The red rays of sunset were striking through the high air-slits in the bedroom, filling the narrow space with a strange ruddy light. Matthilda’s face quivered, and her eyes opened, as Rachel stood looking down at her. For a moment she stared unseeing; then she knew Rachel, and her face twisted weakly as she burst into tears.

“Darling girl,” she said, as if the words were wrung out of her, “darling, precious girl…. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They never knew just what it was Matthilda so regretted as she died. Maybe the last thought in her mind, as the light left it, was the simplest kind of an apology for being unable to care for them, or even herself, anymore.

The snoring gasps called the death rattle began at once. Rachel tried to call Andy, but before she could get control of her voice he was at her side. He looked at Rachel, questioning, with the wideeyed look that sometimes made him seem a little boy. She nodded, dry-eyed. The rattle stopped, and Andy moved closer; his competent hands gently pressed Matthilda’s ribs, and the effort to breathe began again. But the second time it stopped, Rachel took Andy’s hand, and wouldn’t let him start it any more.

Almost ten seconds after breath ended, Matthilda’s eyes opened, and turned right and left, as if searching the upper corners of her room. Rachel had heard of a final flare-up of consciousness in the last moment before death, and she wanted to cry out some word of good-by, but she was unable. Later she blamed herself, for she believed a smile would have come to Matthilda’s lips as she died, if Rachel had been able to speak.

Rachel drew the sheet over Matthilda’s face. Andy still stood looking down at the lifeless form, his face twisting and his breath coming hard, as he tried not to cry.

“The ladle,” Rachel reminded him. “I’ll do what’s left to be done, here.”

He nodded, and went back to his work. He was sniffling as he went, and wiping his nose on his bare arm; but his hands were still sure as he squatted upon the hearth.

The sun went down, and the ruddiness went out of the last daylight, but the drums kept on, building again and again from a softly pulsing beginning to a thunderous climax. Sometimes the off-key, “Hiyah, hiyah,” of medicine songs could be heard. Rachel brought water and clean clothes to the bedroom, and closed the door.

Alone, she put a bandage over the eyes, so that they would rest closed, and another to hold shut the jaw. As she bathed the body she marveled a little, as she sometimes had before, at how smooth and white Matthilda’s shoulders were, in contrast to her work-stringy forearms and gnarled hands. They’ll never touch you, she promised silently. They’ll never take away your pretty hair.

The body seemed an impersonal thing, as Matthilda had wanted it to seem. Something lay here, but too much else was gone. Like Matthilda’s dream of how she wanted them to live, someday, after the one great cattle year that had only just now come. She had held in mind a pleasant town—a country sort of town, as you saw it when she described it, yet with shiny touches of elegance about it, too. The houses, all painted white with green shutters, stood along mudless streets, where carriages wheeled handsomely in the shade of old trees. Each house lived in a picket-fenced garden, with sweet williams and cornflowers, and hollyhocks for a tall backing, and candytuft along the walks; and, of course, plenty of pansies. On quiet Sunday mornings the church bells tolled slowly, a peaceful sound, sweetly solemn. And in this town the time of the year seemed always to be early summer.

Rachel tried to think of Matthilda as having gone to such a place, but she could not. She had no feeling that Matthilda was anywhere at all.

She brushed the white hair, which still seemed to have more cool light in it than there was in the room, and dressed the body in Matthilda’s best clothes. The materials were pitifully cheap and worn, but well sewed, by Matthilda’s own hands. She stripped the bed, freshening it with one of their two best sheets, and covering Matthilda with the other one.

It happened to her the minute I was born. She could be alive and well, and taking care of her boys. She could have enjoyed them a long time. Except for me.

Unlike the others, she had a clear conviction as to what had caused this death. She believed that Matthilda had quite literally died of a broken heart. Yet…she had been sure of this for too long to feel it greatly, now that the inevitable was past. What she felt was a great weight of tiredness, held up by a single thin wire of resolution containing all her strength.

Chapter Forty

An hour had passed, but the slow twilight was still clear, and the drums were going as before, as she came out of the bedroom and closed the door.

“Well, anyhow,” Andy said, “these here will be the first toy soldiers ever did really fight, I guess. I stretched ’em into twenty more thirty-six caliber. For your Whitney.”

“That was rattle-headed.” Her tone was inert, and sounded cold, even to herself. “What will you do when the Walker’s empty?”

“I always got my knife,” he said—and immediately saw that he didn’t. “Hey—you seen my skin-out knife?”

She went back into the bedroom and got Andy’s narrow-bladed sheath knife, and his belt, from under her mattress.

“I figure you better wear this,” he said. “I’ll punch more holes in the belt, so’s you can—Oh. Somebody already….” He buckled the belt around her, and used the knife to cut off the long tag of strap left over. For himself he got the Bowie they used for a carver, and stuck it in his waistband, punching the blade through the cloth.

They laid out their weapons, and the few loads. Once it was dark, anything that became mislaid would be lost forever. Rachel put six rim-fires in the pocket of her dress, for refilling the Henry’s magazine, and fetched the loading kit for the Whitney revolver. Each cylinder had to be charged with loose powder, then a ball and patch rammed home with the lever under the barrel, and a cap must be stuck on each nipple. She laid the things needed beside the powder horn on a corner of the table, where her hands could find them in the dark. Andy got the ax, and stood it by the door.

Now the drums built up to one more climax, and did not start again. They left a silence that rang in the ears. Andy said wonderingly, “Why, it’s just as if Mama has gone out there, and stopped them some way.”

Rachel said, “Stopped? They’re starting now, more like.”

Again the back wall brought them the sound of hoofs trampling about, somewhere nearby. But the horse movement formed no pattern, other than an unreadable shuffling about, and in a little while was quiet.

“Oh, say—by the way—” Andy had his eye glued to a loop-hole, and he kept it there. He was trying to sound about four times more casual than he knew how to do. “Remember to save your last shot. You will, won’t you? Count careful—just awful careful—every time you let off the six-gun. Because you’ll need one more, if they ever get in. You know?”

She didn’t answer him. She threw a bucket of water on the fire, and stepped away from the answering explosion of steam.

“Rachel? Did you hear?”

“I heard you, Andy.” No use arguing. But she had no intention of wasting even one lead soldier on herself, no matter what.

“The main thing is—” He broke off, and jumped for the buffalo gun. He had to replace its lost-off cap, and his hands shook as he tried to be quick about it.

Rachel got to a door loop. The twilight had lessened, but it was still clear. She saw at once what had roused him up. Two Kiowas sat their horses on the far slope of the Dancing Bird, above the holding corrals. Even at two hundred yards, and in failing light, she could not mistake the black and red snakes painted all over Wolf Saddle’s