Johanna watched as well. She did not play with her cat’s cradles or make up sentences in English. She wore the confining shoes and laid the shotgun longways at her feet. He did not smoke his pipe. The distinctive odor carried for long distances. And also he took in the air for the scent of others’ tobacco smoke. Nothing. The wind had dropped. From the rises he inspected the tops of the trees below, both before and behind the rise, the live oak and the bur oak, the occasional hickories in ravines, for movement that was not made by the wind. Nothing. So they went on.
He kept the packhorse’s lead in his hand. They started in the early morning when the stars told their way from east to west. They passed abandoned farms, little cabins with stone fencing here and there. Some had been burned down.
They came through the red granite country north of Llano. Mountains of red and pink granite. The valleys were starred with Mexican hat and gayfeather waving in tall magenta rods, bluebonnets by the acre. It was flowering time in the hill country. New grass for their horses, tender growth for the whitetail deer, and at night a ringtail cat with it sixteen-stripe tail and bat ears and eyes big as buckeyes carefully raised a kernel of corn from the horse’s spillage, lifted the kernel to its cat mouth while they silently watched. It sat curious and fearless at the farthest edge of the firelight while Johanna whispered to it in Kiowa, inflections of delight.
They came to a destroyed cabin and he pulled up and then went inside. Broken cups and pieces of dress material torn on a nail. A doll’s body without a head. He dug a .50-caliber bullet out of the wall with his knife and then carefully placed it on the windowsill as if for a memento. Here were memories, loves, deep heartstring notes like the place where he had been raised in Georgia. Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening. The shade of the Devil’s trumpet vine over a window, scattered shadows gently hypnotic. The smell of a new calf, a long bar of sun falling into the back door over worn planks and every knot outlined. The familiar path to the barn walked for years by one’s father, grandfather, uncles, the way they called out, Horses, horses. How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart as the horses called out to you, how you knew each by the sound of its voice in the long cool evening after a day of hard work. Your heart melted sweetly, it slowed, lost its edges. Horses, horses. All gone in the burning.
Once at evening they came downhill to a stream crossing where the clear water made its way between great curving bluffs. Level strata of limestone in stripe after stripe carved back into a deep hollow with the big trees hanging down from overhead. It was like being in a tunnel. Maidenhair fern in bright lime-colored bouquets grew out of the limestone where water seeped through and it smelled of water and wet stone and the green fern. There was a small springhouse made of logs backed into the hollow. He looked into it; little troughs carved in the stone for milk jugs, a square pool for cheeses and perhaps for meat in metal containers. The water was cold.
There were deep holes of water here, quite clear. A big one just downstream of the crossing. From a distance they heard somebody shouting, over the hilltops or from a hilltop. In what language he could not tell. He stood still for a long time and listened. Then the shouting stopped. He and the girl sat in silence for a long time but it did not begin again.
Nevertheless, she needed a swim and a bath with the soap and so he backed the Curative Waters wagon into a very small valley that led into the larger stream. He unhitched Fancy and filled the horse’s morales with hard corn. He led them far up the narrowing little valley and its thick foliage and tied them and waited until they had eaten and then left them there, hidden. That would keep them safe for the night although they would be hard to handle in the morning after being tied up all night. But he could not take a chance on losing them by letting them free to graze.
He came back to the running stream and sat with his back turned while Johanna jumped into the deep pool and swam in her Bad Water Lady of Durand drawers and shift, silently, carefully. No splashing. Soap bubbles drifted noiselessly down the stream. He washed his face in a basin and shaved and at supper, cooked over a small fire quickly doused, they sat eating and listening. Raiding parties of young men had their own laws and their own universe in which the niceties of civilized warfare did not count and an old man and a young girl were fair game to them, for in the Indian Wars there were no civilians. After a while the Captain and Johanna went to sit in the springhouse and listen to the soft clatter of running water. In the shadows they could keep watch and perhaps sleep a little. The running water was soothing and sweet.
Two great live oaks overhung the stream from above. They dropped their leaves one at a time into the water. The new leaves were coming in and pushing off the old ones slowly, slowly. They were small and hard. They fell like pennies.
And looking out of the springhouse window he saw one of the great drooping limbs overhead begin to shake. Its farthing leaves came down in a light shower.
He drew in his breath in a small sound. He thought at first the enormous live oak was at last coming loose from its tenuous hold on the bank overhead and would fall. He had seen it happen once before. The girl woke up and came to stand beside him in the shadow and look through the minute window.
Out of the broad limbs a figure dropped. It was so startling that it seemed to take forever. A slim young man with long blond hair fell and fell. He held his bow and quiver overhead with one hand. The moon shone on him as he fell. His hair flowed up over his head like spun flax, a cloud of gold. It was cut short on one side—Kiowa. He struck the water and thin fans like crystal erupted around him.
He then surfaced and skimmed through the water to the bank. He held his weapons over his head.
Captain Kidd turned his hand with the revolver in it so that the barrel pointed out. The water reflections made deep blue planes under his eyes. He wondered if she would betray him. If she would call out to the young captive and his fellows who hid above on the bluff somewhere. If this was his last night on earth. This was what she had wanted so much, to return to the Kiowa and the life she had known. The people whom she considered her people, and their gods her gods.
But when he turned and looked into her eyes she put her hand on his arm. She shook her head once. Then they saw three others drop out of the live oak, one after the other, flinging great screens of water around themselves as they broke the surface and swam to the bank. Soft noises of Kiowa. Quiet murmurs. And then they slipped away.
Perhaps they both had narrowly escaped death—death by arrow, death by beauty, death by night.
AND SO THEY went on south to Castroville.
They came through Fredericksburg, a small town in the hill country, beleaguered, nervous, inept at defense. The population was almost entirely German. He had heard it called Fritztown. The main street going through town was wide enough for three or four vehicles to pass abreast and was an open invitation for warriors to gallop straight down the middle and fire in both directions if they wished.
Slowly and soundlessly the evening sun poured its red light down the main street. The lights of the hotel came on, dust bloomed up at Fancy’s heels. The Captain took two rooms as usual and paid for baths and a washerwoman. The people came around the green excursion wagon to stare when they heard the Captain and Johanna’s names from the hotel owner. The girl was Johanna Leonberger, a captive who had been redeemed for German coin silver. They had heard about the silver from the grandfather of Bianca Babb who had brought his granddaughter back from Indian Territory.