Once more they went around the Staked Plains, passing to the south; but this time as they turned north they were headed home. They traveled by listless stages, feeling nothing much ahead to reach for now. Home, for them, was more of a direction than a place. It was like a surveyor’s marker that is on the map but not on the ground: You’re south of it, and you ride toward it, and after a while you’re north of it, but you’re never exactly there, because there isn’t any such thing, except in the mind. They were nothing more than beaten men, straggling back down the long, long way they had traveled to their final defeat.
Fort Concho was deserted as they came to it, except for a token guard. But for once the emptiness had a difference. This was one garrison that had not been withdrawn by the fatheaded wishfulness that had disarmed more American troops than any other enemy. Three regiments under the Colonel were on the march, riding northwest into the heart of the Comanche country. And these were part of a broad campaign, planned with thoroughness, and activated by a total resolution. For General Sheridan was in the saddle again, this time with a latitude of action that would let him put an end to rewarded murder once and for all.
North of Mackenzie’s column, Colonel Buell was advancing; Colonel Nelson A. Miles was marching south from Fort Supply; Major William Price was coming into it from Fort Union beyond the Staked Plains. And at Fort Sill, Colonel Davidson, with perhaps the strongest force of all, to judge by the rumors they heard, hung poised until the other columns should be advantageously advanced. Under Sheridan there would be no more of the old chase, charge, scatter ’em and go home. These troops would dog and follow, fighting if the Indians stood, but always coming on again. Once a column fastened upon a Comanche band, that band would be followed without turnoff, regardless of what more tempting quarry crossed between. And this would go on until no hostile could find a way to stay out and live.
When they had learned the scope of what was happening, Mart knew without need of words what Amos, with all his heart, would want to do now. It was the same thing he himself wanted, more than women, more than love, more than food or drink. They made a close study of their horses—a study about as needful as a close count of the fingers on their hands. Each horse had served as his rider’s very muscles, day in and day out, for months. The two men were trying to persuade themselves that their horses were wiry, and wise in tricks for saving their strength, instead of just gaunted and low of head. But it couldn’t be done, and not a horse was left at Fort Concho worth saddling.
Finally the two rode out and sat looking at the trail, stale and all but effaced, that the cavalry had made as it rode away. Up that trail hundreds of men were riding to what seemed a final kill—yet riding virtually blind for lack of just such scouts as Mart and Amos had become. But the column had so great a start it might as well have been on another world. Amos was first to shrug and turn away. Mart still sat a little while more, staring up that vacant trail; but at last drew a deep breath, let it all out again, and followed Amos.
They plodded north and east through a desolate land, for this year the country looked the worst they had ever seen it. The summer had been wickedly hot and totally dry; and on top of the drought great swarms of grasshoppers had come to chop what feed there was into blowing dust. The few bands of cattle they saw were all bones, and wild as deer. Only the aged cattle showed brands, for no one had worked the border ranges in a long time. Yet, if above all you wanted the cavalry to succeed, you had to look at the drought-ravaged range with a grim satisfaction. The cavalry carried horse corn, something no Indian would ever do, and the drought had given the grain-fed mounts an advantage that not even Comanche horsemanship could overcome this one year.
Toward noon of a colorless November day they raised the Edwards layout—“the old Edwards place,” people called it now, if they knew what it was at all. And now came an experience worth forgetting altogether, except for the way it blew up on them later on. A thread of smoke rose straight up in the dead air from the central chimney of the house. They saw it from a great way off, and Mart looked at Amos, but they did not change the pace of their horses. Riding nearer, they saw a scratched-up half acre in front of the house, where Martha had meant to have a lawn and a garden someday. Here a bony rack of a mule was working on some runty corn stalks. It lifted its head and stood motionless, a rag of fodder hanging from its jaws, as it watched them steadily all the way in.
They saw other things to resent. Most of the corral poles were gone for firewood, along with a good many boards from the floors of the galleries. The whole homestead had the trashy look of a place where nothing is ever taken care of.
“Got a sodbuster in here,” Amos said as they came up.
“Or a Mex,” Mart suggested.
“Sodbuster,” Amos repeated.
“I guess I’ll ride on,” Mart said. “I got no craving to see how the house looks now.”
“If you hear shots,” Amos said, “tell the Mathisons I ain’t coming.”
“Looking for trouble?”
“Fixing to make some.”
That settled that. They tied their ponies to the gallery posts. The latch string whipped out of sight into its little hole in the door as Amos crossed the gallery. He kicked the door twice, once to test it, and once to drive it in. The bar brackets never had been repaired very well since the dreadful night when they were broken.
By the woodbox, as if he wanted to take cover behind the stove, a gaunt turkey-necked man was trying to load a shotgun with rattling hands. Automatically Mart and Amos moved apart, and their six-guns came out. “Put that thing down,” Amos said.
“You got no right bustin’ in on—”
Amos fired, and splinters jumped at the squatter’s feet. The shotgun clattered on the floor, and they had time to take a look at what else was in the room. Five dirty children stood goggle-eyed as far back as they could get, and a malarial woman was frying jack rabbit; the strong grease smelled as if fur had got into it. A dress that had been Martha’s dress hung loose on the woman’s frame, and some of the children’s clothes were Debbie’s. He might have been sorry for all these saucer eyes except for that.
“You’re in my house,” Amos said.
“Wasn’t nobody using it. We ain’t hurting your—”
“Shut up!” Amos said. There was quiet, and Mart noticed the dirt, and some big holes in the chimney, the walls, the window reveals, where adobe bricks had been prized out.
“Been looking for something, I see,” Amos said. “Let’s see if you found it. Hold ’em steady, Mart.” Amos picked up a mattock, and went into a bedroom, where he could be heard chunking a hole in the adobe with heavy strokes. He came back with an adobe-dusted tin box, and let them watch him pour gold pieces from it into a side pocket; Mart guessed there must be about four hundred dollars.
“I’ll be back in a week,” Amos said. “I want this place scrubbed out, and the walls patched and whitewashed. Fix them gallery floors out there, and start hauling poles for them corrals. Make all as it was, and might be I’ll leave you stay till spring.”
“I got no time for—”
“Then you better be long gone when I come!”
They walked out of there and rode on.