Joseph had picked up the pieces of ear. He looked at the little brown fragments for a moment and then thrust them into his pocket.
Thomas watched the act. “Joseph,” he said suddenly, “Why do you hang the hawks you kill in the oak tree beside your house?”
“To warn off other hawks from the chickens, of course. Everybody does that.”
“But you know God-damned well it doesn’t work, Joe. No hawk in the world will let the chance of a pullet go by just because his dead cousin is hanging up by the foot. Why, he’ll eat his cousin if he can.” He paused for a moment and then continued quietly, “You nail the ear notchings to the tree, too, Joseph.”
His brother turned angrily in his saddle. “I nail up the notchings so I’ll know how many calves there are.”
Thomas looked puzzled. He lifted the coon to his shoulder again, where it sat and carefully licked the inside of his ear. “I almost know what you’re doing, Joe. Sometimes it almost comes to me what you’re getting at. Is it about the dry years, Joseph? Are you working already against them?”
“If it isn’t for the reason I told you, it’s none of your damn business, is it?” Joseph said doggedly. His eyes were worried and his voice grew soft with perplexity. “Besides, I don’t understand it myself. If I tell you about it, you won’t tell Burton, will you? Burton worries about all of us.”
Thomas laughed. “Nobody tells Burton anything. He has always known everything.”
“Well,” Joseph said, “I’ll tell you about it. Our father gave me a blessing before I came out here, an old blessing, the kind it tells about in the Bible, I think. But in spite of that I don’t think Burton would have liked it. I’ve always had a curious feeling about father. He was so completely calm. He wasn’t much like other fathers, but he was a kind of a last resort, a thing you could tie to, that would never change. Did you feel like that?”
Thomas nodded slowly, “Yes, I know.”
“Well, then I came out here and I still felt safe. Then I got a letter from Burton and for a second I was thrown out of the world, falling, with nothing to land on, ever. Then I read on, where father said he was coming out to see me after he was dead. The house wasn’t built then, I was sitting on a lumber pile. I looked up—and I saw that tree—” Joseph fell silent and stared down at his horse’s mane. After a moment he looked over at his brother, but Thomas avoided his eyes. “Well, that’s all. Maybe you can figure it out. I just do the things I do, I don’t know why except that it makes me happy to do them. After all,” he said lamely, “a man has to have something to tie to, something he can trust to be there in the morning.”
Thomas caressed the coon with more gentleness than he usually bestowed on his animals, but still he did not look at Joseph. He said, “You remember once when I was a kid I broke my arm. I had it in a splint doubled up on my chest, and it hurt like Hell. Father came up to me and opened my hand, and he kissed the palm. That was all he did. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d expect of father, but it was all right because it was more like medicine than a kiss. I felt it run up my broken arm like cool water. It’s funny how I remember that so well.”
Far ahead of them a cowbell clanged. Juanito trotted up. “In the pines, señor. I don’t know why they’d be in the pines where there’s no feed.”
They turned their horses up the ridge, which was crowned with the dark pines. The first trees stood deployed like outposts. Their trunks were as straight as masts, and the bark was purple in the shade. The ground under them, deep and spongy with brown needles, supported no grass. The grove was quiet except for a little whispering of the wind. Birds took no pleasure in the pines, and the brown carpet muffled the sound of walking creatures. The horsemen rode in among the trees, out of the yellow sunlight and into the purple gloom of the shade. As they went, the trees grew closer together, leaned for support and joined their tops to make one complete unbroken ceiling of needles. Among the trunks the undergrowth sprang up, brambles and blackberries, and the pale, light-hungry leaves of Guatras. The tangle grew thicker at every step until at last the horses stopped and refused to force their way farther into the thorn-armed barrier.
Then Juanito turned his horse sharply to the left. “This way, señores. I remember a path this way.”
He led them to an old track, deep buried in needles but free of growth and wide enough for two to ride together. For a hundred yards they followed the path, and then suddenly Joseph and Thomas drew up and stared at the thing in front of them.
They had come to an open glade, nearly circular, and as flat as a pool. The dark trees grew about it, straight as pillars and jealously close together. In the center of the clearing stood a rock as big as a house, mysterious and huge. It seemed to be shaped, cunningly and wisely, and yet there was no shape in the memory to match it. A short, heavy green moss covered the rock with soft pile. The edifice was something like an altar that had melted and run down over itself. In one side of the rock there was a small black cave fringed with five-fingered ferns, and from the cave a little stream flowed silently and crossed the glade and disappeared into the tangled brush that edged the clearing. Beside the stream a great black bull was lying, his front legs folded under him; a hornless bull with shining black ringlets on his forehead. When the three men entered the glade the bull had been chewing his cud and staring at the green rock. He turned his head and looked at the men with red-rimmed eyes. He snorted, scrambled to his feet, lowered his head at them, and then, turning, plunged into the undergrowth and broke a passage free. The men saw the lashing tail for a moment, and the long, black swinging scrotum, which hung nearly to the knees; and then he disappeared and they heard him crashing in the brush.
It had all happened in a moment.
Thomas cried, “That’s not our bull. I never saw it before.” And then he looked uneasily at Joseph. “I never saw this place before. I don’t think I like it, I can’t tell.” His voice was babbling. He held the coon tightly under his arm while it struggled and bit and tried to escape.
Joseph’s eyes were wide, looking at the glade as a whole. He saw no single thing in it. His chin was thrust out. He filled his chest to a painful tightness and strained the muscles of his arms and shoulders. He had dropped the bridle and crossed his hands on the saddle-horn.
“Be still a moment, Tom,” he said languidly. “There’s something here. You are afraid of it, but I know it. Somewhere, perhaps in an old dream, I have seen this place, or perhaps felt the feeling of this place.” He dropped his bands to his sides and whispered, trying the words, “This is holy—and this is old. This is ancient—and holy.” The glade was silent. A buzzard swept across the circular sky, low over the treetops.
Joseph turned slowly. “Juanito, you knew this place. You have been here.”
The light blue eyes of Juanito were wet with tears. “My mother brought me here, señor. My mother was Indian. I was a little boy, and my mother was going to have a baby. She came here and sat beside the rock. For a long time she sat, and then we went away again. She was Indian, señor. Sometimes I think the old ones come here still.”
“The old ones?” Joseph asked quickly, “what old ones?”
“The old Indians, señor. I am sorry I brought you here. But when I was so close the Indian in me made me come, señor.”
Thomas cried nervously, “Let’s get the Hell out of here! We’ve got to find the cows.” And Joseph obediently turned his horse. But as they rode out of the silent glade and down the path he spoke soothingly to his brother.
“Don’t be afraid, Tom. There’s something strong and sweet and good in there. There’s something like food in there, and like cool water. We’ll forget it now, Tom. Only maybe sometime when we have need, we’ll go back again—and be fed.”
And the three men fell silent and listened for the cowbells.