“And even then Rosa’s the sort of woman what just might expect one of us to bring her something special of yer’n, Matthew,” Hatcher explained as he knelt by the coffeepot. “Something what would show her ye was really gone.”
Isaac Simms asked, “What would that be, Kinkead?”
“Yeah,” echoed Solomon Fish, “what would be the one thing we’d have to show your Rosa to prove to her you been rubbed out?”
He scratched his big onion bulb of a nose with a dirty, charcoal-crusted finger, deep in thought. Then he said, “I s’pose it’d be this here kerchief I wear round my neck.” Using a couple of fingers, Kinkead lifted the soiled black cloth, emblazoned with a multitude of painted red roses in full bloom.
“Rosa give you that, didn’t she?” Titus asked.
He nodded, looking down at it a moment. “Winter afore last, when this bunch was all in Taos—afore we come north last two year. She and me, we bought this here kerchief down to a poor woman’s blanket she had spread out in a warm spot there in the sun, over to the Taos square.”
“I remember that ol’ brown Injun gal!” Rowland crowed with excitement. “I see’d that same kerchief my own self that morning and was coming back to buy it.”
Kinkead nodded, grinning. “Yep: that were the first time I met this here skinny son of a bitch.” And he pointed at the rail-thin Rowland.
“We got to talking,” John began.
Then Kinkead continued, “And you said you was done with that bunch you’d been trapping with for more’n a year.”
“Some folks just ain’t meant to run together,” Rowland agreed.
Matthew said, “You told me your outfit was breaking up that winter, picking sides then and there in Taos.”
“Yep, some fellers following Ewing Young, and some others saying they was gonna tag along behind Antoine Robidoux. Only me and McAfferty didn’t take no side when the outfit tore apart.”
“McAfferty?” Hatcher inquired. “That when you two come and hooked up with us?”
With a nod Rowland looked up at their brigade leader and answered, “Damn—but that nigger never was the same since’t he killed that Ree medicine man. He started to get … strange after that. Strange and … downright spooky.”
“Damn if he didn’t after he killed that medicine man,” Fish replied.
“Just the fall afore we run all the way south to Taos—two year ago now.”
“All the way from Ree country. That was a far piece to travel just to winter up,” Graham observed.
“McAfferty, he was a nigger what wasn’t gonna stay in that country where he’d just killed the ol’ rattle shaker,” Rowland recalled. “Hell, he told us it wasn’t healthy for a man’s hide to be caught in country anywhere close to where the Ree stomped around.”
Scratch found that long trek hard to believe. “Just for him killing a Ree medicine man you tramped all the way down to Taos?”
“Don’t you see?” Rowland tried to explain in a quiet voice that hushed the others. “This here McAfferty had him dark hair—shiny like a new-oiled trap and near black as the gut of hell itself—afore the night he had to kill that Ree medicine man.”
Bass asked, “What you mean, had to kill the Ree?”
For a moment Rowland pursed his lips as if he were trying to pull out the particulars of that memory. “Something to do with what feller had the strongest medicine … to do with that medicine man fixing to steal McAfferty’s Bible.”
“He carry a Bible hisself?” Scratch inquired.
“Yup,” John answered. “The man left us with hair black as charred hickory. An’ he come back with it turned.”
“No shit?” Titus asked. “So that’s when his hair become white?”
Turning to Bass, Rowland explained, “McAfferty’s hair is as white as new snow.”
“What turned his hair?” Titus inquired.
John stared into the fire for long moments before answering. “Maybeso the hoo-doos.”
“Hoo-doos!” shrieked Rufus Graham with a gust of sudden laughter.
“That’s right,” John said, nonplussed. “Like I said, McAfferty left our bunch with black hair … and come back with it and his beard turned white.”
Rufus declared, “Like the man see’d a ghost!”
With a shrug Rowland continued, “The man never told any of the rest of us what scared him so. Said he wouldn’t talk about it—claimed that he’d always counted on God to watch his backside agin’ the devil.”
“Not a word of what hoo-doo spooked him, eh?” Caleb asked.
“Nary a peep did we pull outta him,” John explained dolefully. “All the way down to Taos that fall, I don’t recall the nigger sleeping much at all.”
“How’s a man get by ’thout any sleep?” Scratch asked with a yawn.
“All I can tell you is on our trip south that white-headed nigger was awake when I closed my eyes ever’ night, and he was awake when I opened my eyes again come morning.”
Skeptically, Scratch asked, “Awake, doing what?”
“Just looking up at the sky near all the time, moving his lips like he was talking to somebody, keepin’ a tight hold on his Bible.”
“That’s spooky right there,” Hatcher declared.
“He packed that Ol’ Bible along in his possibles ever since I knowed him. Never saw him pull it out much,” Rowland explained. “But after that night when he come back with his head turned white, McAfferty was one to keep that saddle-worn Bible right in his hand or laying by his side … ever since.”
“McAfferty sounds to me like a man what got hisself spooked but good!” Bass observed.
Hatcher agreed, “Right from the very first time I laid eyes on him down to Taos, I knowed in my bones there was something a mite odd about that child.”
“Yep,” echoed Solomon. “Young as he was—to have his hair turn like it did.”
“Don’t matter how young a feller is when hoo-doos reach out an’ grab hold,” Rowland protested, stretching out his arm, making a claw of his fingers. “Hoo-doos gonna leave their mark on you.”
Bass snorted. “Sounds to me like you believe in ghosts your own self, Johnny.”
“How ’bout it, boys? Any of ye see’d any of McAfferty’s hoo-doos yer own selves when ye was with him?” Hatcher added.
Shaking his head, Wood said, “I ain’t never seen none for myself … but I rode many a mile, and many a moon, with Asa McAfferty. I saw what become of a man who did see a hoo-doo. A man what see’d a Ree Injun rattle shaker’s hoo-doo!”
“Damn! If that don’t give me goose bumps the way Johnny’s talking!” exclaimed Isaac Simms, rubbing both of his forearms as if he had just suffered a sudden chill.
“Shit!” roared Elbridge Gray. “Johnny’s got you jumping at shadows now too!”
Hatcher turned to Rowland, asking, “Whatever come of McAfferty that winter we rode back to Taos, John?”
At that moment in the timber above their protected valley, a wolf raised its voice to the clear, starlit autumn sky.
All nine of them turned and listened as the morose howl drifted away slowly, the sound swallowed by the utter, black immensity of that night.
After a bit of reflection Rowland answered, “Like I said, he didn’t figger to join up with Young or with Robidoux’s outfit. Hell, truth was both of ’em made it real plain that they didn’t want him along come spring.”
“So he go north with another outfit?” Scratch inquired.
“No,” Rowland answered. “Near as I know, he never looked for a bunch to trap with after that. Like he knowed others down that way was talking about his hoo-doos that winter, like he knowed there wouldn’t be a man wanted to trap with him.”
Rufus asked, “What happened to him?”