Brutus bugled a shrill, challenging call. He stomped the ground with his iron-shod hooves and bugled again.
Ben snapped awake at the horse's warning. He scooped up the pistol that lay by his side on the blanket and pointed it in the direction the horse faced. He expected to find his Mexican pursuers or Indians ready to attack. But there were neither, and for an instant he missed seeing the wolf standing in the morning dusk.
The gray pelt of the female wolf blended almost perfectly with the half-light. She sat quietly, ignoring the troubled Brutus and the Mexican horses grouped nearby, and looked at Ben. She appeared unafraid, merely curious.
Ben could shoot the wolf for she was in range of his pistol. Instead he lowered the gun and returned the stare of the wolf. He had no way to truly know; still, he believed that this was the same wolf that had howled so mournfully the evening before. Now she was here. Damn strange behavior for a wolf.
Brutus, not liking the presence of the wolf, moved closer to Ben. He nickered down at the man.
"She's no danger," Ben said. "Just looking us over."
He rose to his feet, expecting the wolf to leave at his movement. She remained in place, eyeing him, ears pricked in his direction.
"Hello, Lady Wolf," Ben said in a friendly tone.
The wolf bobbed her head once and then went back to being a statue.
Ben grinned at himself for talking to the wolf, and for even wondering if she could really have acknowledged his greeting.
He locked stares with the wolf for a moment, and then turned away to gather up his blanket. There was more than two hundred miles to go to reach Abilene and he should be riding. Breakfast would have to wait, for he had eaten the last of his food the evening before. That wasn't a problem. On the Llano Estacado, food was but a rifle shot away.
He saddled Brutus and three of the other horses. Tow ropes were fastened. He mounted Brutus and reined him north. The horse broke into a gallop with the other horses following nose-to-tail.
The wolf came to her feet and took a tentative step forward. She stopped and whined. Then she broke into an easy lope after Ben.
* * *
Ben crossed the Pecos River when the sun had climbed a third of the way into the sky. He allowed the horses to drink, and then rode up out of the valley and onto the north bank. He turned in the saddle to look back at the wolf that had trailed behind. Would she cross the river and continue on with him?
The wolf had halted on the far shore and was standing looking in his direction. Her territory, the land where she knew every water hole, the favorite places of all the other animals, lay miles to the south. As Ben watched, she barked twice, then turned to the rear and broke into a ground-devouring lope that quickly took her from his view. He felt a loss at her going.
He looked back to the front and lifted the horses to a trot, a rough gait for the rider, but one the horses could hold for miles.
Near noon, Ben saw a broad swath of land ahead that was unnaturally dark. As he drew nearer, he saw the land seemed to be undulating as if the surface of the earth was moving. He recognized what he saw. A herd of tens of thousands of buffalo were migrating north. Their migration was late this year. Usually by mid-July most of the animals would have been near the Red River in north Texas, or beyond into Oklahoma.
He pulled Brutus down to a walk and rode closer to the big herd. The nearer buffalo looked up and inspected the approaching horses and rider. A young calf, still retaining its tannish-orange color and not dark like the adults, ran in a frolicking, quick-stepping way out to examine Ben. The cow sounded a warning “whoof”. The calf watched Ben a moment longer, and then wheeled and dashed back to the side of the cow.
Ben came to the edge of the herd and the buffalo drew back both left and right from him, parting in a great black surf, to let him ride through. Two large wolves, part of the large pack that followed and fed off the buffalo, watched him from a distance. The horses warily eyed the buffalo and the wolves.
For more than three hours, Ben rode through the countless thousands of buffalo. Both to the left and right of him, the moving herd extended to the horizon. He had never seen the huge beasts allow a man to approach so close, some of them but a few feet away as he passed.
The buffalo gradually closed in behind Ben. The wolves again took station on the perimeter of the herd, their keen eyes searching for an unwary calf, or an animal weakened by injury or disease.
Reaching the border of the herd, Ben pulled the rifle from its scabbard. Hunger growled in the pit of his stomach. The tender meat of the hump of a buffalo's back would quiet it. He chose a yearling bull and raised the rifle. At the crash of the gun, the bull fell.
He brought Brutus up beside the carcass and stepped down from the saddle. With a few strokes of his skinning knife, careful to keep hair off the flesh, he laid back the skin from the ridge of the yearling's back, then sliced five to six pounds of meat from the hump.
Ben cut off a big bite of the dark meat and shoved it into his mouth. He chewed contentedly as he peeled a section of the thinner hide from the buffalo's belly and wrapped the meat in it. He climbed upon Brutus. In the evening, he would make jerky.
* * *
The Comanche warrior was standing on the plain and crying. Damn strange, thought Ben.
Several minutes before, Ben had spotted the strongly built Indian. After hiding his own animals, he had taken his rifle and crawled forward. Through the spyglass, he saw the man was wearing buckskin pants and naked above. He held a musket in his hand. Close by were two horses. Ben had examined them, found them fine-looking animals, and had decided to take them from the Comanche.
The man had all his attention focused upon something on the ground and had not once looked around him. Ben had tried to see what attracted the Comanche, but the object lay in tall grass and out of his sight.
Ben drew within two hundred yards and raised the spyglass to his eye. In the magnified field of the spyglass, he saw the man's bare brown shoulders were shaking. The man lifted a hand to wipe at his face, and in the action turned his face partially in Ben's direction.
Ben saw tears, and something even more astonishing, and his pulse jumped. The Comanche's features were gruesomely ugly. The full side of the face that Ben could see was heavily scarred, as if it had been cut and ripped by a saw blade.
Ben was seeing the second ugliest man in Texas.
Was the Indian crying because of his mutilated face? Or was the unseen object on the ground the cause?
The thoughts of stealing the Indian's horses left Ben. He sensed the uniqueness of this convergence of the paths of two men inflicted with such unhuman features. An irresistible need to talk with the man came over Ben. He lowered the spyglass and shoved it under his belt out of the way.
Ben wanted to talk, but the Comanche could have different ideas. Ben cocked the rifle and held it in his right hand. He had but to tip the barrel up and fire if the Indian wanted to fight.
Ben went forward, walking upright and in plain view. He drew within a score of steps.
The Comanche stiffened. He raised his head and smelled the wind flowing over the plain, and his tongue ran out as if tasting it.
Ben coiled for action. He raised his left hand with palm out toward the man, and with his right aimed the rifle to point at the man's chest.
The Comanche spun around and at the same time lifted his musket.
Ben kept his left hand raised. He would give the man a fraction of a second more to see his open palm. If the peace sign didn't stop the man from trying to shoot Ben, then the rifle would.
The Comanche halted the movement of his gun. His scarred face showed surprise, and the realization that Ben could have easily killed him before now. The man lowered the musket. His eyes became hooded, and he began to chuckle, the harsh guttural sounds coming from a long gaping tear in his left cheek.
Ben's gash of a mouth opened and he laughed a devilish laugh of his own.
The two ugliest men in Texas greeted each other.
Ben looked past the Comanche and saw the reason the man had cried An Indian boy of nine or ten lay dead on the ground. He had a very handsome face and a lean, long-legged body. He had been a lad of whom a father would be very proud. Now the jagged ends of splintered bones protruded from the boy's chest, and fresh, red blood pooled beneath him.
"Your son?" Ben asked in Spanish and nodded at the boy.
"Yes. Son Of Moon." He pointed at the horse standing close by. "That worthless mustang fell and rolled on him."
The Comanche jerked up his musket and fired. The top of the mustang's head exploded, showering skull and brains upon the ground. The animal fell with a thud, kicked a few times, and lay still.
Ben started to say something about the uselessness of killing the horse, but stopped himself. The man had felt the need to destroy the horse and it wasn't Ben's right to find fault.
"I'm sorry for the boy's death," Ben said.
"It will be a lonely life without him. But he now goes to live with the Great One."
If there is such a being, Ben thought. "I have no son," he said. He slid his hand down across his mutilated face. "I can't get close enough to a woman to make one."
"Neither can I, not anymore."
"We've both had bad luck."
"My name is Black Moon."
"I'm Ben Hawkins. May I help you with your son? I would be honored to do so." He felt a growing kinship with the ugly Comanche.
"I accept your help. We will bury him here where he died. And very deeply so the coyotes can't reach him." He laid his musket on the ground and pulled a knife from his belt. He began to dig at the sod of the plain.
Ben knelt beside Black Moon and began to dig with his skinning knife.
When the grave was deep, Black Moon wrapped his son in a blanket and gently placed him in the earth. Then the two men silently filled the grave with soil. From a source nearby, they carried flat slabs of rock and piled them on top of the grave.
Black Moon pivoted slowly around as he surveyed the land. Completing the full rotation, he spoke to Ben. "I will always remember this place and the wonderful son that is buried here."
"I shall also remember it," Ben said.
Ben heard tears in the Comanche's voice. But then he saw the man change, his body straightening and head lifting, as he struggled to pull back from his loss.
"Which way do you go?" Black Moon asked.
"That way," Ben said, and pointed north. "To Abilene."
"I will go partway with you and we can talk of our bad luck."
"Good."
* * *
In the dusk of the evening, the two men made camp on the bank of a steam, a tributary to the Pecos River coming in from the north. While Ben built a fire and began to cook buffalo meat, Black Moon caught grasshoppers for bait, and with a hook and line snagged two fair-sized bass. In the flickering light of the campfire, they ate hugely of the buffalo meat and topped it off with a fish for each. The remainder of the buffalo meat was cut into slices and hung over the fire to make jerky.
"Why do you go to Abilene?" Black Moon asked.
"To sell my horses."
"They are Mexican horses. Valdes horses."
"You know the Valdes brand?"
"Yes, I know it. Once I went there and took two horses." He touched the scar of a bullet on the side of his ribs. "They gave me this. Still, I kept the horses."
Black Moon fastened his eyes on Ben, and smiled, his scarred face twisting with humor. "You are a thief. I am a thief."
"Sounds like it."
Black Moon nodded at Ben's face and asked, "What bad luck caused that?"
"A cannonball fired from an enemy's big gun hit me." Ben wasn't certain there was such a thing as luck. More likely things happen by the cold lottery of chance. "Do you think there is such a thing as luck?"
"Yes," Black Moon said with conviction. "You had bad luck. But the cannonball missed other men so they had good luck."
Ben shrugged. "How it came to hit me and not somebody else isn't important, not now."
Black Moon regarded Ben for a moment in the light of the campfire. "Luck is important. Mine was very good for a long time. I had a pretty woman and she gave me a strong, handsome son. Then a friend, knowing I am a good hunter, asked me to go far off to the mountains and kill one of the great grizzly bears that live there. We found the bear and fought it. Before we can kill it, my friend is slain, and the bear's long claws did this to my face. That was very bad luck." Black Moon ceased talking, turning inward, remembering the fight.
He spoke again. "When I returned to my village, my woman is frightened by my ugliness and will not come to my blanket and lie with me. Soon she sees a handsome man and goes to him. He should have sent her back to me. When he did not, I killed both of them.
That made me an outcast among my people. I take Son Of Moon and go away. Now Son Of Moon has been taken from me and I have nothing. Except this face that I don't want. So you must believe there is bad luck."
"I can understand why you believe it."
"Would you like to have good luck with a woman?"
"How? By hiding my face?"
"I know a village that has many pretty women. We can go there and take two of them."
"Whether they want to go with us or not."
"What they want wouldn't be important."
"Kidnap and rape, that's what you're talking about."
Black Moon looked puzzled. "My mother was a Kiowa. My father rode into their land and killed two of their warriors and carried her off. I never heard her complain of what he did."
Black Moon studied Ben for a moment to see how he was reacting to the proposal. "Perhaps it isn't the white man's way to steal a woman. Only another man's horse."
Black Moon's eyes bore into Ben's with fierce intensity. "Do you want a woman? Want one badly enough to take her by force? To kill anyone who would try to stop you?"
Ben knew he should be telling Black Moon that he wanted nothing to do with his proposal. Instead, a hot craving for a woman was rushing through him and he was actually considering the possibility of joining the man. A god-awful long year had passed since he had touched the soft, smooth skin of a woman, had enjoyed the full depth and pleasure of her body. He recalled the night spent with the last girl he had known, the beautiful redheaded Charlotte in Cincinnati, whom he had met when passing through that town on his way to join the Confederate Army. There would be no other women, not with a face that even men could not look at. The Llano Estacado was far from Cincinnati, far beyond the edge of civilization and the white man's laws. The laws that he had once enforced did not exist here. Do as Black Moon suggested, his body urged him. The tribes had been stealing each others' women for thousands of years. What did it matter that this time a white man joined in the theft?
"I'll go with you," Ben said. "How far away is this place?"
"Two days if we ride from sunup to sundown."
"We have nothing else to do but ride."