Her eyes dropped and her hand withdrew. “I said a door was open.
Elizabeth rubbed the place on her knee where the rhythm had been. Her eyes were wet and shining. “I’m so tired,” she said. “We drove through the heat, and the grass was brown. I wonder if they took the live chickens and the little lamb and the nanny goat out of the wagon. They should be turned loose, else their legs might swell.” She took a handkerchief out of her bosom and blew her nose and wiped it harshly and made it red. She would not look at Rama. “You love my husband,” she said in a small, accusing voice. “You love him and you are afraid.”
Rama looked slowly up and her eyes moved over Elizabeth’s face and then dropped again. “I do not love him. There is no chance of a return. I worship him, and there’s no need of a return in that. And you will worship him, too, with no return. Now you know, and you needn’t be afraid.”
For a moment more she stared at her lap, and then her head jerked up and she brushed down the hair on each side of the part. “It’s closed now,” she said. “It’s all over. Only remember it for a time of need. And when that time comes, I’ll be here to help you. I’ll make some new tea now, and maybe you’ll tell me about Monterey.”
13
JOSEPH went into the dark barn and walked down the long gallery behind the stalls, toward the lantern hanging on its wire. As he passed behind the horses, they stopped their rhythmic chewing and looked over their shoulders at him, and one or two of the more lively ones stamped their feet to draw his attention. Thomas was in the stall opposite the lantern, saddling a mare. He paused in cinching and looked over the saddle at Joseph. “I thought I’d take Ronny,” he said. “She’s soft. A good fast go will harden her up. She’s surest footed in the dark, too.”
“Make up a story,” Joseph said. “Say he slipped and fell on a knife. Try to go through with it without having a coroner out. We’ll bury Benjy tomorrow if we can.” He smiled wearily. “The first grave. Now we’re getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that’s home, Tom. Those are the things to hold a man down. What’s in the box-stall, Tom?”
“Only Patch,” Thomas said. “I turned the other saddle-horses out yesterday to get some grass and to stretch their legs. They weren’t being worked enough. Why, are you riding out tonight?”
“Yes, I’m riding out.”
“You’re riding after Juanito? You’ll never catch him in these hills. He knows the roots of every blade of grass and every hole even a snake might hide in.”
Joseph threw back cinch and stirrup over a saddle on the rack, and lifted it down by horn and cantle. “Juanito is waiting for me in the pines,” he said.
“But Joe, don’t go tonight. Wait until tomorrow when it’s light. And take a gun with you.”
“Why a gun?”
“Because you don’t know what he’ll do. These Indians are strange people. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“He won’t shoot me,” Joseph reassured him. “It would be too easy, and I wouldn’t care enough. That’s better than a gun.”
Thomas untied his halter rope and backed the sleepy mare out of the stall. “Anyway, wait until tomorrow. Juanito will keep.”
“No, he’s waiting for me now. I won’t keep him waiting.”
Thomas moved on out of the barn, leading his horse. “I still think you’d better take a gun,” he said over his shoulder.
Joseph heard him mount and trot his horse away, and immediately there was a panting rush. Two young coyotes and a hound dashed out to follow him.
Joseph saddled big Patch and led him out into the night and mounted. When his eyes cleared from the lantern light he saw that the night was sharper. The mountain flanks, rounded and flesh-like, stood out softly in shallow perspective and a deep purple essence hung on their outlines. All of the night, the hills, the black hummocks of the trees were as soft and friendly as an embrace. But straight ahead, the black arrow-headed pines cut into the sky.
The night was aging toward dawn, and all the leaves and grasses whispered and sighed under the fresh morning wind. Whistle of ducks wings sounded overhead, where an invisible squadron started over-early for the south. And the great owls swung restlessly through the air at the last of the night’s hunting. The wind brought a pine smell down from the hills, and the penetrating odor of tarweed and the pleasant bouquet of a skunk’s anger, smelling, since it was far away, like azaleas. Joseph nearly forgot his mission, for the hills reached out tender arms to him and the mountains were as gentle and insistent as a loving woman who is half asleep. He could feel the ground’s warmth as he rode up the slope. Patch flung up his big head and snorted out of stretched nostrils and shook his mane, lifted his tail and danced, kicked a few times and threw his feet high like a racehorse.
Because the mountains were womanly, Joseph thought of Elizabeth and wondered what she was doing. He had not thought of her since he saw Thomas standing by the lantern, waiting for him, “But Rama will take care of her,” he thought.
The long slope was past now, and a harder, steeper climb began. Patch ceased his foolishness and bent his head over his climbing legs. And as they moved on, the sharp pines lengthened and pierced higher and higher into the sky. Beside the track there was a hissing of a little water, rushing downward toward the valley, and then the pine grove blocked the way. The black bulk of it walled up the path. Joseph turned right and tried to remember how far it was to the broad trail that led to the grove’s center. Now Patch nickered shrilly and stamped and shook his head. When Joseph tried to head into the grove path, the horse refused to take it and spurs only made him rear and thresh his front feet, and the quirt sent him whirling down the hill. When Joseph dismounted and tried to lead him into the path, he set his hoofs and refused to stir. Joseph walked to his head and felt the quivering muscles of the neck.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tie you out here. I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but Thomas fears it too, and Thomas knows you better than I could.” He took the tie rope from the horn and threw two half-hitches around a sapling.
The pathway through the pines was black. Even the sky was lost behind the interlacing boughs, and Joseph, as he walked along, took careful, feeling steps and stretched his arms ahead to keep from striking a tree trunk. There was no sound except the muttering of a tiny stream somewhere beside the track. Then ahead, a little patch of grey appeared. Joseph dropped his arms and walked quickly toward it. The pine limbs whirred under a wind that could not penetrate down into the forest, but with the wind a restlessness came into the grove—not sound exactly, and not vibration, but a curious half-way between these two. Joseph moved more cautiously, for there was a breath of fear in the slumbering grove. His feet made no sound on the needles, and he came at last to the open circle in the forest. It was a grey place, filled with particles of light and roofed with the dull slaty mirror of the sky. Above, the winds had freshened so that the tall pine-tops moved sedately, and their needles hissed. The great rock in the center of the glade was black, blacker even than the tree trunks, and on its side a glow-worm shed its pale blue luminance.
When Joseph tried to approach the rock he was filled with foreboding and suspicion, as a little boy is who enters an empty church and cuts a wide path around the altar and keeps his eyes upon it for fear some saint may move his hand or the bloody Christ groan on the cross. So Joseph circled widely, keeping his head turned toward the rock. The glow-worm disappeared behind a corner and was lost.
The rustling increased. The whole round space became surcharged with life, saturated with furtive movement. Joseph’s hair bristled on his head. “There’s evil here tonight,” he thought. “I know now what the horse feared.” He moved back into the shadow of the trees and seated himself and leaned back against a pine trunk. And as he sat, he could feel a dull vibration on the ground. Then a soft voice spoke beside him. “I am here, señor.”
Joseph half leaped to his feet. “You startled me, Juanito.”