Читать книгу The Searchers - Alan Le May - Страница 5

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Henry Edwards stood watching the black prairie through a loophole in a batten shutter. The quartering moon would rise late; he wanted to see it coming, for he believed now that all the trouble they could handle would be on them with the moon’s first light. The dark kitchen in which the family waited was closed tight except for the loopholes. The powder smoke was going to get pretty thick in here if they had to fight. Yet the house was becoming cold. Any gleam of light would so hurt their chances that they had even drawn the coals from the firebox of the stove and drowned them in a tub.

The house itself was about as secure as a house could be made. The loopholed shutters, strap-hinged on the inside, were heavy enough to stop a 30-30, if not a buffalo slug, and the doors were even better. Nine or ten rifles could hold the place forever against anything but artillery. As few as seven would have their hands full against a strong war party, but should hold.

There lay the trouble and the fear. Henry did not have seven. He had himself, and his two sons, and Martha. Hunter was a deadly shot, and Ben, though only fourteen, would put in a pretty fair job. But Martha couldn’t shoot any too well. Most likely she would hold fire until the last scratch, in hopes the enemy would go away. And Lucy ... Lucy might do for a lookout someplace, but her dread of guns was so great she would be useless even to load. Henry had made her strap on a pistol, but he doubted if she could ever fire it, even to take her own life in event of capture.

And then there was Deborah. The boys had been good shots at eight; but Debbie, though pushing ten, seemed so little to Henry that he hadn’t let her touch a weapon yet. You don’t see your own children grow unless there’s a new one to remind you how tiny they come. In Henry’s eyes, Debbie hadn’t changed in size since she was brand new, with feet no bigger than a fingertip with toes.

Four rifles, then, or call it three and a half, to hold two doors and eight shuttered windows, all of which could be busted in.

Out in the work-team corral a brood mare gave a long whinny, then another after a moment’s pause. Everyone in the kitchen held his breath, waiting for the mare’s call to be answered. No answer came, and after a while, when she whinnied again, Henry drew a slow breath. The mare had told him a whole basket of things he didn’t want to know. Strange ponies were out there, probably with stud horses among them; the mare’s nose had told her, and the insistence of her reaction left no room for doubt. They were Indian ridden, because loose ponies would have answered, and horses ridden by friends would have been let to answer. The Indians were Comanches, for the Comanches were skillful at keeping their ponies quiet. They wove egg-size knots into their rawhide hackamores, so placed that the pony’s nostrils could be pinched if he so much as pricked an ear. This was best done from the ground, so Henry judged that the Comanches had dismounted, leaving their ponies with horse holders. They were fixing to close on foot—the most dangerous way there was.

One thing more. They were coming from more than one side, because none would have approached downwind, where the mare could catch their scent, unless they were all around. A big party, then, or it would not have split up. No more hope, either, that the Comanches meant only to break fence on the far side of the corrals to run the stock off. This was a full-scale thing, with all the chips down, tonight.

Lucy’s voice came softly out of the dark. “Debbie?” Then more loudly, with a note of panic, “Debbie! Where are you?” Everyone’s voice sounded eery coming out of the unseen.

“Here I am.” They heard the cover put back on the cookie crock at the far end of the room.

“You get back on your pallet, here! And stay put now, will you?”

Long ago, hide-hunting at the age of eighteen, Henry and two others had fought off more than twenty Kiowas from the shelter of nothing more than a buffalo wallow. They had fought with desperation enough, believing they were done for; but he couldn’t remember any such sinking of the heart as he felt now behind these fort-strong walls. Little girls in the house—that’s what cut a man’s strings, and made a coward of him, every bit as bad as if the Comanches held them hostage already. His words were steady, though, even casual, as he made his irrevocable decision.

“Martha. Put on Debbie’s coat.”

A moment of silence; then Martha’s single word, breathy and uncertain: “Now?”

“Right now. Moon’s fixing to light us up directly.” Henry went into a front bedroom, and quietly opened a shutter. The sash was already up to cut down the hazard of splintering glass. He studied the night, then went and found Martha and Debbie in the dark. The child was wearing moccasins, and hugged a piece of buffalo robe.

“We’re going to play the sleep-out game,” he told Debbie. “The one where you hide out with Grandma. Like you know? Very quiet, like a mouse?” He was sending the little girl to her grandmother’s grave.

“I know.” Debbie was a shy child, but curiously unafraid of the open prairie or the dark. She had never known her grandmother, or seen death, but she had been raised to think the grave on the hill a friendly thing. Sometimes she left little picnic offerings up there for Grandma.

“You keep down low,” Henry said, “and you go quietly, quietly along the ditch. Then up the hill to Grandma, and roll up in your robe, all snug and cozy.”

“I remember how.” They had practiced this before, and even used it once, under a threat that blew over.

Henry couldn’t tell from the child’s whisper whether she was frightened or not. He supposed she must be, what with the tension that was on all of them. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the window he had opened. Though he couldn’t see her, it was the same as if he could. She had a little triangular kitty-cat face, with very big green eyes, which you could see would be slanting someday, if her face ever caught up to them. As he kissed her, he found tears on her cheek, and she hugged him around the neck so hard he feared he would have to pull her arms away. But she let go, and he lifted her through the window.

“Quiet, now—stoop low—” he whispered in her ear. And he set her on the ground outside.