They had fresh pork and the first candied yams Mart had seen since a year ago Thanksgiving. Tobe asked Amos how many Comanch’ he had converted in the Fight at the Cat-tails.
“Don’t know.” Amos was at once stolid and uncomfortable as he answered. “Shot at two-three dozen. But the other varmints carried ’em away. Worse scared than hurt, most like.”
Tobe said, “I bet you got plenty scalps in your saddle bags!”
“Not one!”
“He just stomp’ ’em in the dirt,” Mart explained, and was surprised to see Amos’ eyes widen in a flash of anger.
“Come morning,” Amos said to Mart, wrenching clear of the subject, “I want you borry the buckboard, and run it over to my place. The boys will show you which team. Round up such clothes of mine, or yours, as got overlooked.”
That “my place” didn’t sound just right to Mart. It had always been “Henry’s place” or “my brother’s place” every time Amos had ever spoken of it before.
“Load up any food stores that wasn’t stole or spoilt. Especially any unbust presarves. And any tools you see. Fetch ’em here. And if any my horses have come in, feed grain on the tail gate, so’s they foller you back.” There was that “my” again. “My horses” this time. Amos had owned exactly one horse, and it was dead.
“What about—” Mart had started to ask what he must do about Debbie’s horses. Debbie, not Amos, was heir to the Edwards’ livestock if she lived. “Nothing,” he finished.
When they had eaten, Aaron Mathison and Amos got their heads together again in the far end of the room. Their long conference partly involved tally books, but Mart couldn’t hear what was said. Laurie took her sewing basket to a kind of settle that flanked the wood range, and told Mart by a movement of her eyes that she meant him to sit beside her.
“If you’re going over—over home,” she said in a near whisper, “maybe I ought to tell you about— something. There’s something over there.... I don’t know if you’ll understand.” She floundered and lost her way.
He said flatly, “You talking about that story, the place is haunted?”
She stared at him.
He told her about the rider they had come on one night, packing up toward the Nations on business unknown. This man had spoken of heading into what he called the “old Edwards place,” thinking to bed down for the night in the deserted house. Only, as he came near he saw lights moving around inside. Not like the place was lived in and lighted up. More like a single candle, carried around from room to room. The fellow got the hell out of there, Mart finished, and excuse him, he hadn’t meant to say hell.
“What did Amos say?”
“He went in one of his black fits.”
“Martie,” Laurie said, “you might as well know what he saw. You’ll find the burnt-out candle anyway.”
“What candle?”
“Well... you see... it was coming on Christmas Eve. And I had the strongest feeling you were coming home. You know how hard you can know something that isn’t so?”
“I sure do,” Mart said.
“So... I rode over there, and laid a fire in the stove, and dusted up. And I—you’re going to laugh at me, Martie.”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Well, I—I made a couple of great gawky bush-holly wreaths, and cluttered up the back windows with them. And I left a cake on the table. A kind of cake—it got pretty well crumbed riding over. But I reckoned you could see it was meant for a cake. You might as well fetch home the plate.”
“I’ll remember.”
“And I set a candle in a window. It was a whopper—I bet it burned three-four days. That’s what your owl-hoot friend saw. I see no doubt of it.”
“Oh,” said Mart. It was all he could think of to say.
“Later I felt foolish; tried to get over there, and cover my tracks. But Pa locked up my saddle. He didn’t like me out so long worrying Ma.”
“Well, I should hope!”
“You’d better burn those silly wreaths. Before Amos sees ’em, and goes in a ‘black fit.’ ”
“It wasn’t silly,” Mart said.
“Just you burn ’em. And don’t forget the plate. Ma thinks Tobe busted it and ate the cake.”
“It beats me,” Mart said honestly. “How come anybody ever to take such trouble. I never see such a thing.”
“I guess I was just playing house. Pretty childish. I see that now. But—I just love that old house. I can’t bear to think of it all dark and lonely over there.”
It came to him that she wanted the old house to be their house to make bright and alive again. This was the best day he had ever had in his life, he supposed, what with the promising way it was ending. So now, of course, it had to be spoiled.
Two rooms opened off the end of the kitchen opposite the dog-trot, the larger being a big wintry storeroom. The other, in the corner nearest the stove, was a cubbyhole with an arrow-slit window and a buffalo rug. This was called the grandmother room, because it was meant for somebody old, or sick, who needed to be kept warm. Nowadays it had a couple of rawhide-strung bunks for putting up visitors without heating the bunk house where the seasonal hands were housed.
When the family had retired across the dog-trot, Amos and Mart dragged out a wooden tub for a couple of long-postponed baths. They washed what meager change of clothes they had, and hung the stuff on a line back of the stove to dry overnight. Their baggy long-handled underwear and footless socks seemed indecent, hung out in a room where Laurie lived, but they couldn’t help it.
“What kind of letter you get?” Mart asked. The average saddle tramp never got a letter in his life.
Amos shook out a pair of wet drawers, with big holes worn on the insides of the thigh, and hung them where they dripped into the woodbin. “Personal kind,” he grunted, finally.
“Serves me right, too. Don’t know why I never learn.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“I been fixing to tell you,” Amos began.
“That ain’t needful.”
“What ain’t?”
“I know that letter ain’t none of my business. Because nothing is. I just set on other people’s horses. To see they foller along.”
“I wasn’t studying on no letter. Will you leave a man speak? I say I made a deal with old Mathison.”
Mart was silent and waited.
“I got to be pushing on,” Amos said, picking his words. Passing out information seemed to hurt Amos worse every day he lived. “I won’t be around. So Mathison is going to run my cattle with his own. Being’s I can’t see to it myself.”
“What’s he get, the increase?”
“Why?”
“No reason. Seemed the natural thing to ask, that’s all. I don’t give a God damn what you do with your stock.”
“Mathison come out all right,” Amos said.
“When do we start?”
“You ain’t coming.”
Mart thought that over. “It seems to me,” he began. His voice sounded thin and distant to himself. He started over too loudly. “It seems to me—”
“What you hollering for?”
“—we started out to look for Debbie,” Mart finished.
“I’m still looking for her.”
“That’s good. Because so am I.”
“I just told you—by God, will you listen?” It was Amos’ voice raised this time. “I’m leaving you here!”
“No, you ain’t.”
“What?” Amos stared in disbelief.
“You ain’t telling me where I stay!”
“You got to live, ain’t you? Mathison’s going to leave you stay on. Help out with the work what you can, and you’ll know where your grub’s coming from.”
“I been shooting our grub,” Mart said stubbornly. “If I can shoot for two, I can shoot for one.”
“That still takes ca-tridges. And a horse.”
Mart felt his guts drop from under his heart. All his life he had been virtually surrounded by horses; to ride one, you only had to catch it. Only times he had ever thought whether he owned one or not was when some fine fast animal, like one of Brad’s, had made him wish it was his. But Amos was right. Nothing in the world is so helpless as a prairie man afoot.
“I set out looking for Debbie,” he said. “I aim to keep on.”
“Why?”
Mart was bewildered. “Because she’s my—she’s— ” He had started to say that Debbie was his own little sister. But in the moment he hesitated, Amos cut him down.
“Debbie’s my brother’s young’n,” Amos said. “She’s my flesh and blood—not yours. Better you leave these things to the people concerned with ’em, boy. Debbie’s no kin to you at all.”
“I—I always felt like she was my kin.”
“Well, she ain’t.”
“Our—I mean, her—her folks took me in off the ground. I’d be dead but for them. They even—”
“That don’t make ’em any kin.”
“All right. I ain’t got no kin. Never said I had. I’m going to keep on looking, that’s all.”
“How?”
Mart didn’t answer that. He couldn’t answer it. He had his saddle and his gun, because Henry had given him those; but the loads in the gun were Amos’, he supposed. Mart realized now that a man can be free as a wolf, yet unable to do what he wants at all.
They went on to bed in silence. Amos spoke out of the dark. “You don’t give a man a chance to tell you nothing,” he complained. “I want you to know something, Mart—”
“Yeah—you want me to know I got no kin. You told me already. Now shut your God damned head!”
One thing about being in the saddle all day, and every day, you don’t get a chance to worry as much as other men do once you lie down at night. You fret, and you fret, and you try to think your way through—for about a minute and a half. Then you go to sleep.