News of the World(39)

They passed only two farm wagons and another company of cavalry in all that way. The cavalrymen were being moved from San Antonio to Fort Sill and the major reminded the Captain to be careful. There were raiders, he said, in the hill country.

Then why don’t you do something about them? the Captain said.

I am under orders, sir. We don’t just go wandering about and do whatever we like. The major pressed his heels to his horse and rode on. Johanna sat quietly in the back and watched after them as they went on north.

They camped near the town of Langford Cove and he felt entirely recovered.

At Lampasas was a great good spring of water. He had passed by there several times. It would be a good place to shake out their blankets and take their ease. They were now in a high, flat country, where trees were scarce and the brush all spiky with thorns and new leaves.

Four years ago he had come up this road to North Texas. It was a year after Maria Luisa died. He had moved out of that graceful Spanish town of San Antonio with its two-story stone buildings and the ornate cast-iron balconies, their cottage roofs shingled with slate. The old Spanish houses all had their backs to the river. The owners of those homes carefully kept record of their descent from the original settlers from the Canary Islands who had come in 1733, the Betancorts, the Reales, they had retreated behind polished wooden window bars. They retreated into the cool of tiled floors. Into the gestures of fans and mantillas and morning mass at San Fernando, increasingly hemmed in by German Catholics and Irish Catholics in the pews, people with incomprehensible languages. Spain, Daughter of Light, Defender of the Faith, Hammer of the Moors, sadly faded.

He recalled excursions on the river, the girls so like their mother with gray eyes and dark curling hair and boats passing by offering melons. The immense cypresses. The one that was a hundred feet tall knee deep in the San Antonio River. Joyous memories.

When he met her he had been setting up his own print shop on Plaza de Armas, slinging ink and type, deeply engaged in the process of making words appear on paper. He could pick up a stick of type and read it backward, he knew from the sound of the paten if it would be a good print or not. He knew his inks and his papers. He delighted in these perfectly printed messages to the world even if he were not carrying them personally.

What good was a beautiful town like that when she was not there? He turned his face to the sky in an effort to clear his head. They went away and never said another word to you again. In some strange way it made him mad. Not a word, not a sign. No messages from the Other World, or perhaps there were signs and he did not see them. He watched two caracara eagles sailing on their black pirate wings, their red hoods and white vests, and heard Johanna singing “Hard Times”: Iss the song and the sigh of the willy . . .

Weary, he corrected her, smiling.

Yes Kep-dun, is willy, sigh of a willy.

They were only a few miles from Lampasas now; around them the creosote bushes were stiff as bones. Their rounded leaves vibrated in the wind. To the north streams of cirrus were like a frosted sandstorm, veils of high-borne mist poured out of the Polar regions. Perhaps more storms to come.

Soon they would come to the hill country. It was scored by deep canyons and high bluffs. Clear streams cut through layers of limestone. There would be more cover there for raiding parties of Kiowa and Comanche but they would deal with that when they came to it. They pressed on. The wheels of the excursion wagon lifted a spume of dust in yellow and pink. For a long time he could see no other wagons but themselves.

But after a while they came upon an elderly lady in a gig. He could see it from a long way off as a jiggling dark roundish thing like a beetle that resolved itself into a vehicle with the quavering legs of a long bony horse pulling it. An accordion top rose over the two wheels.

Well, here is somebody, she said. She pulled up beside them. She was trim and small and wore a new-fashioned pancake hat in straw tipped rakishly to one side. Her white hair was done up in a roll all around the bottom of her head and she wore tight brown driving gloves.

Yes ma’am, and where are you going?

I am going all the way to Durand. I believe I can make it in three days. People have tried to discourage me from this journey but I ignore them. I have a lawsuit to pursue.

I see, said the Captain. From . . . ?

Lampasas.

Then you will do me a favor, please. He reached down for his canvas bag of coins. I would be obliged if you would take these two fifty-cent pieces to the fellow at the stave mill there in Durand. The one that makes the brooms.

That animal, she said. Whatever you are paying him for he doesn’t deserve it. I have half a mind to refuse.

I wish you wouldn’t. We inadvertently came away with two of his hens and I would not be known as a chicken thief. It has been bothering me.

There is no chicken in Texas worth half a dollar in silver, sir.

I consider it an apology, of a sort.

You have a tender conscience.

Chicken thieves are not highly regarded.

True. Give it here, then.

He stepped down and brought the coins over to her. Many thanks, he said. He lifted his sweat-stained old field hat.

And where are you going?

To Castroville, the Captain said. I’m a seed buyer.

Very well. That girl has a peculiar stare. Is she disturbed in her mind in some way?

The Captain got back into the wagon and picked up the reins from the driver’s post. No, he said. I wish you a safe journey.