Martin Pauley was taken by another fit of shyness as they approached the Mathison ranch. He was a plainsman now, a good hunter, and a first-class Indian scout. But the saddle in which he lived had polished nothing about him but the seat of his leather pants.
“I tried to leave you back,” Amos reminded him. “A couple of burr-matted, sore-backed critters we be. You got a lingo on you like a Caddo whiskey runner. You know that, don’t you?”
Mart said he knew it.
“Our people never did have much shine,” Amps said. “Salt of the earth, mind you; no better anywhere. But no book learning, like is born right into them Mathisons. To us, grammar is nothing but grampaw’s wife.”
Mart remembered the times Laurie had corrected his speech, and knew he didn’t fit with civilized people. Not even as well as before, when he was merely a failure at it. But someway he was finally herded into the Mathison kitchen.
Laurie ran to him and took both his hands. “Where on earth have you been?”
“We been north,” he answered her literally. “Looking around among the Kiowas.”
“Why up there?”
“Well …” he answered lamely, “she might have been up there.”
She said wonderingly, “Martie, do you realize how long you’ve been on this search? This is the third winter you’ve been out.”
He hadn’t thought of the time in terms of years. It had piled up in little pieces—always just one more place to go that would take just a few weeks more. He made a labored calculation, and decided Laurie was twenty-one. That explained why she seemed so lighted up; probably looked the best she ever would in her life. She was at an age when most girls light up, if they’re going to; Mexicans and Indians earlier. A look at their mothers, or their older sisters, reminded you of what you knew for certain. All that bright glow would soon go out again. But you couldn’t ever make yourself believe it.
Laurie made him follow her around, dealing out facts and figures about Kiowas, while she helped her mother get dinner. He didn’t believe she cared a hoot about Kiowas, but he was glad for the chance to have a look at her.
There was this Indian called Scar, he explained to her. Seemed he actually had one on his face. They kept hearing that Scar had taken a little white girl captive. He showed her how the Indians described the scar, tracing a finger in a sweeping curve from hairline to jaw. A well-marked man. Only they couldn’t find him. They couldn’t even find any reliable person—no trader, soldier, or black hat—who had ever seen an Indian with such a scar. Then Mart had happened to think that the sign describing the scar was a whole lot like the Plains-Indian sign for sheep. The Kiowas had a warrior society called the Sheep, and he got to wondering if all those rumors were hitting around the fact that the Kiowa Sheep Society had Debbie. So they went to see….
“A pure waste of time, and nobody to blame but me. It was me thought of it.”
“It was I,” she corrected him.
“You?” he fumbled it; then caught it on the bounce. “No, I meant—the blame was on I.”
“There’s going to be a barn party,” she told him. “Mose Harper built a barn.”
“At his age?”
“The State of Texas paid for it, mainly; they’re going to put a Ranger stopover in part of it, and store their feed there next year—or the year after, when they get around to it. But the party is right away. I bet you knew!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Bet you did. Only reason you came home.”
He thought it over, and guessed he would give her some real comical answer later; soon as he thought of one.
After supper Aaron Mathison and Amos Edwards got out the herd books and ledgers, as upon their visit before. Aaron’s head bent low, eyes close to the pages, so that Mart noticed again the old man’s failing sight, much worse than it had been the last time.
And now Mart made his next mistake, rounding out his tally for the day. He set up camp, all uninvited, on the settle flanking the stove where he had sat with Laurie before; and here, while Laurie finished picking up the supper things, he waited hopefully for her to come and sit beside him. He had a notion that all the time he had been gone would melt away, once they sat there again.
But she didn’t come and sit there. Had to get her beauty sleep, she said. Great long drive tomorrow; probably no sleep at all tomorrow night, what with the long drive home.
“Harper’s is seven miles,” Mart said. “Scarcely a real good spit.”
“Don’t be coarse.” She said good night, respectfully to Amos and briskly to Mart, and went off across the dog-trot into that unknown world in the other section of the house, which he had never entered.
Mart wandered to the other end of the room, intending to join Amos and Aaron Mathison. But “G’night” Amos said to him. And Mathison gravely stood up to shake hands.
“It comes to me,” Mart said, “I’ve been a long time away.”
“And if we stayed for the damn barn burning,” Amos said, “we’d be a long time off the road.” Amos believed he knew where he was going now. All that great jackstraw pile of Indian nonsense was straightening itself in his mind. He could add up the hundreds of lies and half truths they had ridden so far to gather, and make them come out to a certain answer at last.
“You be stubborn men,” Aaron Mathison said, “both of you.”
Mart tried to share Amos’ fire of conviction, but he could not. “Man has to live some place,” he said, and slung on his coat, for they were to sleep in the bunk house this time. The coat was a long-skirted bearskin, slit high for the saddle; it was big enough to keep his horse warm, and smelled like a hog. “The prairie’s all I know any more, I guess.” He went out through the cold dark to his bed.