Chapter Thirty-one

Rachel tried to speak, and could not. She was seeing devil-lights come up behind Hagar’s eyes, the same dreadful glow she had seen upon that awful night in this same house when they had heard the story of Hagar’s captivity. She wanted to turn, vault onto her horse, and get away, but not a muscle would move.

“You,” Hagar said. The word was voiceless, a rasping of breath in her throat. She had not seemed to breathe at all, at first, but now she was breathing hard, almost gasping for air. “You,” she repeated. “You dare to come here?”

“I—only—” Rachel could not remember a word that she had ever thought of to say.

“You come here,” Hagar said. “To this house. You come and stand afore me.” She had regained her voice, though it shook, and her words seemed to choke her. “What blasphemy can there be, you would draw back from?”

Looking into the terrible eyes, Rachel was certain Hagar was insane. Yet she still stood there.

“Squaw!” Hagar accused her. “Ki’way squaw! Yet you stand here afore me!” Her voice still shook but rose strongly now. “Red nigger as ever was, yet you dare face up to me? For now we know all. Your own brother put knife to my little girl at No Hope—her dear pretty hair has been seen on his shield! Yes, and he stopped by your place, as he rode to that butchery, didn’t he? Boasted to you of what he would do—and from you rode straight to the massacre! And his knife—your own brother’s knife—it was at work when they cut apart her darling body—past all decent laying out of it—leaving no part with another—”

Overrun by Hagar’s storm of words, Rachel was in bewilderment. Hagar had seemed to accuse Ben, or Andy—perhaps Cash, even, forgetting in her madness that Cash had been far away. But Hagar’s raving still poured on.

“Oh, I know you now! Dear God in heaven, how I know you! For I know the work of red-nigger squaws, when they be nigh a massacre, and get a chance at the bodies. Had you been longside your brother, you would have bloodied your hands like his own. But not again! All Texas knows the truth now, save those too blind to see. You will be struck from the face of this earth. You, and all your kin, and all who give you help or feed you—you’ll be hunted and driven—”

She lost her breath in a hard fit of coughing. Yet through it she managed to force out, “Yet now—you stand afore—me—” Spittle foamed and dribbled at the corners of Hagar’s mouth, and it was flecked with blood. She turned blindly from the door, went to her knees as her crippled feet betrayed her, and clawed herself up again. “Rifle,” she croaked, as if someone were standing there to hand it to her. “M’ rifle—gi’ me m’ rifle—”

The spell broke, and Rachel could leave there. Perhaps she could have moved before, had not some unaccountable inner compulsion held her standing rigid to hear Hagar out. She had a scared moment in which her pony reared and spun away from her, spooked by her billowing skirt as she whirled. The leather burned through her fingers, and she all but lost him. She made cast after cast of the split-rein, while the pony ran backward from her, and she stumbled over her skirt, unable to quiet him. But she got the rein over his neck at last, and a foot in the stirrup; she was no better than lying across the saddle, but with him, as he lit out.

No bullet came. In the Rawlins cabin, Georgia had finally got to her mother, from wherever she had been, and caught Hagar as she stumbled toward the door. Hagar had got down a heavy rifle musket, and was fumbling to seat its coiled Maynard primer.

“Ma! You can’t!” Georgia threw arms around her.

Hagar fought her daughter with an unnatural strength. Georgia’s lip split as an elbow struck her mouth, and a rib cracked as the musket butt drove into her body. Yet she held on; and in a matter of moments Hagar’s cough came back, and the strength went out of her. She lost her grip on the musket, and went to her knees. Georgia picked her up, and carried her to her bed.