"I want this place," he said, smiling.
"Why, you damn fool, it isn't for sale."
Bent reached past the Indian girl's forearm and shot him above the eyes. He dragged the body to the other room, then went back in, unbuttoned his pants, and rolled her on her back. She took him in, too frightened to do otherwise.
So Bent acquired the whiskey ranch. Two days later three other Caddoes appeared. In broken English they asked about Glyn, whom Bent had buried a half-mile away. "Gone. He sold me the place." The Caddoes didn't question that. He made four dollars on whiskey before they left.
Green Grass Woman didn't seem to care who her man was so long as he permitted her to drink gin. The cheapest, sweetest of gin, Bent discovered after one taste, which he spat out. Septimus Glyn must have been a prime seducer of women to corrupt the young girl so completely. One morning Bent refused her the gin to see what would happen. She begged. He continued to refuse. She wept. He still said no. She fell to her knees and tore at the buttons of his trousers. Astonished, he let her confirm his belief that all women were depraved whores. While she still held his legs, he pushed her head back and poured some gin into her mouth. He didn't see the boy standing at the door, one hand holding the red blanket aside. His feet were bare, his gray work shirt stiff with dirt, his eyes huge in his blank face.
At sunset of the seventh day, Bent began to feel at home. He'd hung up the frayed, cracked oil painting of Madeline Main's mother, and cleaned up the place. Just before the light went, he stepped outside with his arm around Green Grass Woman. Her big soft breast pushed against his side and her lip moved against his in an arousing way.
Little Gus, left largely to himself, had gotten acquainted with the tame raccoon. He was chasing it along the creek bank in the reddening light. The creek shone like flowing blood, and in the cool evening air Bent heard a sound he hadn't heard in a while. Little Gus's merry laughter.
Well, why not let him laugh? He'd be deprived of the chance soon enough. Bent was now set on his plan. He would wait a few more months; perhaps until the autumn or early winter. By then Charles Main would be trying to accustom himself to the idea that his son was lost. At that time, just when he could be expected to be learning to deal with his grief, Bent would move to renew it. Send him news that Gus had remained alive most of the year and had only recently been killed. It would be a double-edged death, guilt compounding the pain. All his days, Charles Main would be haunted by the thought that his son might have lived if he hadn't abandoned the search, as Bent was certain he had by now. Of course he'd have to deliver parts of the boy's body to prove he was dead. His razor would be helpful.
Little Gus's laughter rang through the sundown. Green Grass Woman rested her cheek on Bent's right shoulder. He was happy. The world was good.
58
Charles turned the corner and flattened against the front of the sod house. He held his revolver chest high, cocked. One of the horses whinnied, a faint sound. Gray Owl was holding them about half a mile away in some cottonwoods.
Charles smelled the odor of fireplace ashes. It leaked from the mud chimney, with no trace of smoke. A fire had been banked carelessly, or in haste. Horse droppings in the corral were at least a day old; shod horses had chopped up the ground. No one would farm here, Charles reasoned. They had found the base of some renegade traders.
A muddy boot toe appeared at the far corner of the house. Magic Magee slid around the corner and crept along with his back to the wall. The afternoon light was dimming fast and changing color, to a strange golden-green. Westward, the clouds of a monster storm came toward the house like a carpet unrolling in the sky. Magee watched Charles for a cue. The black man wore his derby with the wild turkey feather, but nothing to identify him as a soldier.
Charles listened at the plank door. The rumbling of the storm would muffle any but the loudest voice. He heard nothing. The wind picked up dust suddenly. Branches of some cottonwoods behind Magee began to toss and clack together. There was going to be a ferocious blow.
The wind dried the sweat gathering in Charles's beard. Magee crept closer, to the opposite side of the door. Charles held up three fingers, then silently mouthed the count. On three, he leaped in front of the door and booted it. Some huge heavy thing hurtled from the darkness straight at his face. He fired twice.
The echoes of the shots sank into the storm's rumble.
Magee's eye followed the bird that had swooped away above Charles's head, almost knocking his hat off. "Gray Owl's helper."
The owl vanished into the dark roiling mass of cloud. With one hand over the other on his Colt, Charles jumped inside the sod house. He smelled the residual odor of tobacco smoke beneath the stronger smell of the ashes. Someone had indeed splashed water on the fire; he saw the bucket. Everything pointed to a quick departure. Who knew the reason?
He put the revolver away. "Tell Gray Owl to bring up the horses. We might as well shelter here until the storm's over;"
Magee nodded and left. There was no need to say anything. Charles's discouragement was evident.
The rain fell, hammering torrents of it. They broke up an old chair and relit the fire. It provided some light but didn't do much to relieve the pervasive damp. The horses neighed loudly and often. The lightning was bright, the thunder-peals deafening.
Gray Owl squatted in a corner with his blanket drawn around him. He looked years older. Or perhaps Charles thought so because he felt that way himself. He gnawed on jerky and watched Magee practicing shuffles and cuts with an old deck.
They'd been searching for two and a half weeks. They'd circled southwest to avoid Camp Supply and had found this house on Wolf Creek. Charles had hoped to question the occupants but whoever they were, they had made an abrupt departure, which made him nervous.
The steady rain deepened his discouragement. It fell hour after hour. Coming down so heavily, it would flood away any sign that might have helped them. Not that they had found much so far, beyond the inevitable tracks of Army detachments on patrol. If there were other human beings round about, perhaps white men trading illegally, this house was the first indication.
Charles lay awake long after the fire went out. His mind kept turning to images of his son, and imaginary ones in which Bent, pictured as Charles remembered him, murdered George Hazard's wife and stole her earring. That detail more than any other filled him with enormous dread. Years ago, in Texas, Bent was marginally sane. Not even that could be said now.
They discovered in the morning that two of the horses had snapped their tethers and escaped.
The storm lasted until noon, flooding low spots and carving new gullies. As they prepared to leave the sod house Charles noticed Magee's face. Saddling his horse, the black man looked gloomy, which wasn't like him.
Gray Owl approached with a certain deference. "How much longer do we search?"
"Until I say otherwise."
"There is no trail to follow. The man and boy could have gone anywhere. Or turned back."
"I know that, but I just can't give up. You go back if you want." There was no resentment in his voice.
"No. But Magee, it is not easy for him to be away." Puzzled, Charles waited. "He has a squaw now. A good Delaware woman whose husband died."
"Until he tells me he wants to go back, we're going on. All three of us."
Gray Owl felt pain for his friend. The pursuit was futile. Not even the cleverest tracker could find a man and a child when the trail was so old and the country so huge and full of hiding places.