Not shoe, foot, he said. He reached back and found one of her shoes. He held it up; a black and confining laced thing with a blunt toe and a one-inch heel. The laces were missing. She had used them for something. Shoe, he said. He pointed to her foot. Foot!
Fery well, Cho-henna stomp foot! Cho-henna weff hont! She waved her hand. Kep-dun stend up! He stood up. Kep-dun sit don! He sat down. Kep-dun clepp honts! He wearily clapped his hands. Kep-dun laff!
No, he said.
Ah ah ah, Kep-dun, pliss!
All right. He managed to raise a false and hearty laugh. Ha! Ha! Ha! Now, that’s enough for today.
This made her fall into helpless laughter. Then she cried, Kep-dun heat blek-fass, Cho-henna choot gun (shooting noise), hoas tlot, Kep-dun choot gun (shooting noise again), Wan, doo, tlee, foh, fife, siss, sefen, ate-ah, nine-ah, den.
Very good, my dear, now let’s be quiet. I am elderly and frail and my nerves fray easily. His scalp still had the running galvanized crawl of pain and his right eyebrow probably needed stitches but was not going to get them.
Fery good lain, hoas choot gun ha ha ha! Hoas eat blek-fass! Hoas laff! (Here an imitation whinny) and she klepped her honts and laughed again and so they went on down the Lampasas Road through the trees, toward Durand on the Bosque River, with the Kiowa captive girl inventing new and even more improbable sentences and the Captain’s eyes watering with pain.
Wan foot, doo foots, wan hont, doo honts, doo hoas, big hoas, lidda hoas . . .
Johanna, shut up.
Cho-henna chut up!
As they came within a mile of Durand through the dripping forest of live oaks he saw men riding toward him. He put one hand out to Johanna. She stopped. She became perfectly silent. The men who rode toward them wore ragged clothing and shabby hats but they were well-armed. They had spent all their money on revolvers and the new repeating short-barreled carbines. Spencers, gleaming new.
The sun had come out and the noon light outlined the men as they rode toward the Captain’s wagon. They sparkled with falling drops from the leaves, shake-down showers. The Captain pulled up. He gazed at them with a steady and unperturbed expression. Behind it he wondered if they had somehow got word of the Great Brazos TenCent Shoot-Out.
He wondered what they wanted. Where they were from. There was anarchy in Texas in 1870 and every man did what was right in his own eyes.
One of the men with a trimmed black beard came up alongside the light spring wagon, on the Captain’s side, and his cavalry stirrup with its blunt tapadero made chunking noises against the stopped fore wheel. He looked down at them, at the cut over the Captain’s eye and the spots of blood on his shirt and the muddied wagon spokes. An old man and a girl. The girl had sunk down behind the canted dashboard and only her dirty fingers gripping the wood and her face were visible. The man on horseback was dark-skinned and black-eyed but this did not matter to Johanna, native Americans looked not at the color of skin but at the intentions, the body posture, the language of hands. That was how they stayed alive. Johanna fixed him like a print in her suspicious blue gaze.
Curative Waters, eh? He regarded the gold lettering on the sides.
I bought it from the proprietor, said Captain Kidd, who went bust. He kept his voice within the range of reasonable tones. He had the girl to think about.
Did it have the bullet holes in it already?
Yes, as a matter of fact it did, said the Captain. He tried to straighten out the wavy brim of his old hat. He had two days’ growth of sparkling white beard and knew he looked like a derelict but he sat straight-backed and tall in his canvas coat and fixed in his mind the revolver on his left on the floorboards under the bacon. He said, It came fully supplied with bullet holes.
Very curious. And so, where are you headed? said the black-bearded man. His voice was low and rasping.
Captain Kidd thought about it for a moment and decided to answer him. The scarves of smoke were coming from a campfire, one most likely belonging to these men, nearby, hidden.
Durand, the Captain said.
That your final destination?
No.
So where, then?
Castroville.
Where’s that?
Fifteen miles west of San Antonio.
That’s a long piece of travel.
The temptation was great to say Why is it your concern, you filthy ignorant brigand, but he looked down at the girl and smiled his creased smile and patted her inflexible white fingers seized on the dashboard.
He said, This girl was a captive of the Kiowa, lately rescued, and I am returning her to her relatives there.
The savages, the man said. He regarded the child, her hair stiff with dirt, skinned knuckles, and a dress smeared with dirt and charcoal and bacon grease where she had wiped her hands. He shook his head. Why they go and steal children I will never understand. Do they not have ary of their own?
I am as mystified as you are, said the Captain.
The black-bearded man said, And the Indians know as much about soap as a hog knows about Sunday. Miss? he said. Look here.
He fished in the watch pocket of his jeans and found a lump of saltwater taffy thick with lint. He held it out, bent from his saddle, smiling. Quick as a snake she struck it from his hand and dropped farther down behind the dashboard.
Ah. The man nodded. They come back wild. I have heard about this.
The others had ridden around the wagon. They sat loose and easy in their worn dragoon saddles and did not bother to unlimber either revolver or carbine. Clearly Johanna and the Captain were harmless.
The Captain then understood they had not heard of the Great Brazos TenCent Shoot-Out at Carlyle Springs. It was two days behind but a good bet was that these men did not travel much beyond this area. As yet there was almost no telegraph service in most of Texas.
Who you for? The black-bearded man turned to the Captain. His manner had changed. Who’d you vote for? Davis or Hamilton?
The Captain now knew that disaster awaited any reading of the news in Durand, but they had shot themselves into poverty and had a long way to go. The only other thing he could think of to do was to sell the wagon and proceed on horseback. But his back and his hip joints were not strong anymore and long distances on horseback had become increasingly painful.
He said, I am deeply offended that you would dare to ask who I voted for. We are guaranteed a secret vote. I am a veteran of Horseshoe Bend and Resaca de la Palma and I did not fight to establish a sleazy South American dictatorship. I fought for the rights of freeborn Englishmen.
There. That should confuse them.
I see. The black-bearded man thought about it. Are you English?
No, I am not.
Then this is not making sense, here.
Never mind that, Captain Kidd said. Are you stopping me in some kind of official capacity? I am about to lose my patience.
One of the others in a hat with a very tall crown said, Nobody who voted for Davis is getting into Erath County.
Is this an official decision by the local administration?
The black-bearded man smiled. He said, Sir, there isn’t any local administration. There isn’t any sheriff. Davis’s men turfed him out. There isn’t any JP, there isn’t any mayor, there aren’t any commissioners. Davis and the U.S. Army threw them out. They all had been in the Confederate Army or they were public servants under the Confederacy and so that was it for them. But he won’t send anybody to replace them. So we took on the job. You are accountable to us.
Captain Kidd glanced down at Johanna, who listened intently with her eyes blue and wide. He patted her fingers. For how much?
A long pause.
Ah, just give us a half-dollar.
FOURTEEN