Marsh and me started back toward his camp not long after I ask the students about our man and Mandy. The professor give me a lecture all the way along about something he called geology, but it wasn't 'til we'd went a ways that I figured he was talking about why the clay hills and the gullies washed into them was the way they was. Something about an ocean being here once, he said, but I didn't see how that could be. I guessed he could make mistakes like anyone else, Yale College or no. Then he ask me what I was getting to about them golden crowns I had told his students to look out for, but I just winked and said he'd have to wait 'til he got to the end of the Book to figger it out.
We were on top of that high place when I told him that, and when we got near the bottom, his face looked like he still had some chewing left to do on it. In a brushy draw between two buttes, I saw a rider making his way toward us slow. I thought for a minute it was the man Clete and me was chasing-only he wasn't on a paint. But he was tall and thin, and I warned the professor to be on his guard. After he looked good, Marsh said he knowed the man and gave him a big wave and a haloo.
We sat and waited for him, and he was in no hurry at all to get to where we was. He was dressed all in buckskin, only it was fringed down the legs and all along the sleeves and at the bottom of his open coat. And everywhere there wasn't fringes there was strips of fur sewed on, over the shoulders, mostly. His light gray hat had a wide floppy brim and eagle feathers hanging off the back of it, tied with rawhide strips to a hatband of mttlesnake skin, so I thought for a minute he might be a halfbreed. But when he got up close, you could see he wasn't, for his skin was pale as a woman's and his eyes blue as a lake.
Though he wore no shirt, he had a red silk scarf, or something fancy like that, tied around his neck. A sash of the same color stuff was wrapped around his middle, and stuck underneath it was a big old Colt. Looked like an uncomfortable way to carry a revolver, pokin' into your side the least little bit you turned around. His hair, which was dark and wavy with just a few streaks of gray, hung down below his shoulders. He had a narrow little chin beard, long as your thumb, and his mustachios was full and waxed and they stuck way out, straight as anything, to beyond the sides of his face. More than anything else, he resembled a drawing of Bill Cody on a handbill I seen once, only younger and more rakish.
"Good day, Mr. Crawford!" Marsh called. "What have you found for us?"
The tall man reached around behind himself and held up a string of nearly a dozen grouse, prairie chickens and some other kind I didn't know, tied together at the foot. His saddle, if that was what you could call it, was a strange affair, unlike any I ever saw before. A buffalo robe formed the base of it, and the hide, decorated with wolf tails and porkypine quills where the fur was scraped off, hung over the horse's rump and draped halfway to the ground. It was double cinched, I saw, but I couldn't tell just what was underneath him, or under the hide. Firm enough, I guessed, for he had a piece of the buffalo skin folded over and sewn to form a sheath for his rifle. "Should feed you and the young gentlemen, sub," he said real soft. He was a Son of Dixie, you could tell by his talk. He let the birds dangle back to where they hung behind him and then looked at me square.
Marsh noticed and glanced at me and then back to the man. "This is Mr. Goodwin, Jack. He's an officer of the law."
Jack Crawford stuck his nose a little up in the air. "Is he, indeed? How do you do, suh?" he said, nodding his head low then, but keeping his eyes on me the whole time.
"How do," I said.
"Meet Captain Jack Crawford, Willie," Marsh boomed in that big friendly voice of his. "Jack is our guide, and when he's not leading us, he fills our larder with game. And when he's doing neither, he writes poetry." Marsh turned back to the tall fellow. "Is it three volumes you've published so far, Jack?"
The mention of his poem books seemed to smooth Crawford's hackles some. He smiled real bashful and patted the neck of his horse, which hadn't calmed yet. "Only two thus far, Professor Marsh. As you well know."
"Well, I'm sure the third will be coming off the presses any day now." He waited for Crawford to speak his mind, but the hunter seemed to have nothing to say-to that or to anything else. "If you are going back to camp, we would be happy to have you escort us, Jack."
Crawford gave another dip of his head and we started off, three abreast, the professor in the middle.
"Mr. Goodwin is searching for a man who killed some people in his jurisdiction," Marsh said after we'd went some distance. "Have you seen anyone?"
"Why, I don't believe I have, Professor Marsh," Crawford drawled, looking at the clouds.
"One of the students saw some folks in a mule wagon. Surprised you didn't see 'em," I said. "That's where we was, up talking to Professor Marsh's gang. Not a bad bunch of fellows–for Yankees."
Crawford leaned forward and looked me over good. "Are you from the South, sub, or do you jest with me?"
The look on 0. C. Marsh's face was pretty dark, like he wisht I hadn't stirred up this particlar hornets' nest.
"Yes, I am from the South, though I didn't grow up in the same parts you did, judging from the way you say your words, Captain Crawford. But I guess you will recall that one of the stars in the Stars and Bars was for Texas." I let him look me good in the eye after I said that, for I wanted him to know that I told the truth.
After a time he decided I had. "I apologize, sub, and pray you will accept it. Indeed, the Texans fought bravely in the recent conflict. Were you in their ranks?"
"Wasn't so recent," I said. "About twelve years since, now."
"Twelve years … It seems only yesterday to me." The way he said that, and how he put his hand to his heart while he said it, I could see how he might fancy poems. Professor Marsh looked relieved we wasn't about to go at one another's throats.
"Seems like a lifetime to me," I said.
Crawford sat up straight in that funny saddle he rode. "What was your regiment, Colonel Goodwin?"
"I am sad to say that I was not in the army," I told him. "Some of us was forced to stay in Texas. Chained to our work, you could say. I'd a thousand times rather been in the war than doing what I was doing, though."
"I understand that completely," the tall poet said.
"I appreciate you saying so," I told him.
The sun come out about then, and soon the clouds begun to scatter more than they had before. Where the path got narrower in a gully, Crawford dropped back some, so just Marsh and me was beside each other for a while. Once when I looked back, Crawford motioned with his head for me to drop back with him. I told Marsh I wanted a word with his guide, for directions, and then eased back.
"I am sorry, Mr. Goodwin. I didn't want to say so before, for reasons of my own, but just past midmomin', I saw that mule wagon ovuh toward the rivuh. Seemed to be a family, I believe."
"Not our man," I said. "Fellow we're after's astride a paint. A tall man, like yourself."
Crawford turned his head so sharp, I thought he might snap it off. "Ridin' a paint?"
"That's right."
"What'd he do, this criminal you're chasin' down?" Crawford ask. I figured right then that he had saw our man. "He ambushed someone, the sheriff! work for."
"A Yankee," Crawford said, like he was correcting me. "A Jankee sheriff."
"Where was he when you saw him?" I ask, knowing he just might draw that old Colt he wore and shoot me instead of answering. I don't often bluff a hand, but when I do, I give 'er all I got. He looked mad enough to bite my nose off, but I just stared at him.
"I have given my word of honor, suh, to a gentleman of the South that I would not divulge any information about him," Captain Crawford said, drawing himself up real tall and righteous.
"No, you give your word to help protect a backshooting sonofabitch who don't have enough honor to fill a percussion cap, let alone to be called a true Southerner. That's what you done." Crawford started to say something, but I put my hand up to stop him. Can't believe I ever tried anything so foolish, for you could tell he was a man who would not abide an offense of any kind and would shoot any man, once he believed he was in the right, and not blink an eye about it. I just kept my hand up to stop him from talking and plowed ahead. "You, sir, are siding with a man who murdered a woman in her sleep by settin' her house afire. A bam-burner, I believe you call them in your part of the South. That's the kind of man you have swore to help-a sniper and a bam-burner."
Captain Jack kept glaring at me like he was measuring my head for a watch fob, but I turned and looked straight down the trail. After a while, he dropped back so that we were riding single file. I was still trying to figure out how I could get him to tell me what he knowed about our man when we got to Marsh's camp. When we pulled up, Professor Marsh's wrangler come out to take his horse, and the professor dismounted and went toward the big tent. I walked the bay in the direction the wrangler took with Marsh's animal, thinking maybe Crawford would do the same, and after a time he did. We climbed off beside the rope corral and I fussed with my bedroll, hoping Crawford would feel inclined to talk. I could see no way to force it out of him, for I suspected I couldn't beat him in a fight. Maybe I would have to wait for Clete to have a word with him.
Crawford eased up close, stilllookin' at me like I had stole his last dime. He stood about a head taller than me, and poet or no poet, I didn't look forward to no rolling around in the dirt with him.
"How do I know you're tellin' the truth about his burning down a woman's house?" he ask, them watery blue eyes of his trying to bore inside my head.
"Well, I have no piece of paper that says so, but if you were a captain in the Confederate Infantry, I suppose you've had considerable experience judging men's character by what they say and how they strike you. I'm willing to rely on that, Captain."
Jack Crawford drew himself up to his full height. "I was a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Cavalry, suh. My rank in the Regular Army, before I resigned my commission, was that of captain." He stood studying my face again for such a long time that I begun to feel itchy. "Damn!" he said, and all of a sudden turned and walked off on them long legs of his towards nothing in partielac, and there he just stood.
To tell the truth, I didn't know just what to do next. And when he turned and walked back to me, slower than he'd walked away, I didn't know what was going to happen. But his face was different, more relaxed, I guess. "The woman whose house he burned … she … died in the fire?"
"Yes, she did," I told him. "The sheriff pulled her clear, but her life give out that night while we sat with her and her home burned. And she was a fine woman. Her name was Nell Larson and she-"
"I don't want to heah it!" he yelled, and turned away.
I didn't know what to make of that, but I guessed he was reminded of something or somebody else. That was the best I could see. I'd planned to say that Nell was a Virginia woman, much as she would have hated that, but I never got the chance to tell that lie.
When he turned back, tears streamed down his face and his eyes looked wild, but he didn't appear to be crying otherwise. "I knew there was something wrong about that man. I didn't give my word to him, as I said before, Mr. Goodwin, for if I had, I would have to honor it whether I wanted to now or not."
"I understand," I said.
He nodded his head. "Thank you, suh." And then he put his hands up to his face and just bawled out loud, standing there by ourselves, beside that rope corral. Right there in front of me!
I walked a step or two off to give him what space I could, and he went on for some time. Damned if I didn't feel sorry for that man, though I couldn't see what the matter was, for he could not have knowed Nell Larson. The best I could figure was that he was thinking on something that my saying about Nell made him remember, something that pained him deep as a West Texas well.
After a minute he walked over to his horse and cut loose the birds that was tied there. He brought them over and handed them to me. "Will you give these to the professor and tell him I won't be in camp tonight?"
"Yes, I will," I said, not knowing what else to say.
He went over and climbed into that funny saddle of his. I wanted to ask him about our man before he left, but I felt sure he would talk on his own, if I didn't rush him.
He walked his horse over close to where I stood with the string of grouse. "Your man is from Kentucky," Crawford said. "I think it was Kentucky I heard in his voice, though it may have been Tennessee. I shared my supper with him last night. He rode up in the rain shortly before dahk and I invited him in-the big flat rock overhang. You know where that is?"
"No," I told him.
"About six miles west of here." He looked across the valley then. "Professor Marsh can show you on his map. Good camping place."
"I'll ask him," I said.
"We ate the hare I roasted and some cheese I had. Then he rode on. Wouldn't stay the night, though I invited him to. I don't think he trusted me. He headed west after he left my camp. At first he went toward the north, but once, when the lightning flashed, I saw that he had turned and was headed west by south. He said he had tried to avenge the death of his younger brother, but that he had made a mess of the job and would have to try it again some other time."
"His brother?" I ask.
Captain Jack nodded his head. "That's what he said. Was it you or the sheriff who killed his kin?"
"I guess it would have to be the sheriff," I told him.
"That's all I know, except that he fought at Chickamauga." Crawford had stopped crying by that time, but when he said that last, more tears come down his face. "I must go now," he said. "I would be very thankful if you would give those birds to Mr. Marsh and tell him I won't be back tonight."
"I will be happy to, Captain. I'm sorry if my-"
"No matteh, suh," he said, and turned his horse to go. "'Til we meet in a bettah world, Mr. Goodwin." He nudged his horse.
"Just one more thing, Captain Crawford," I called after him.
Captain Jack clucked to his horse and stopped.
I walked over to where he was, carrying them damn birds. "I hate to trouble you farther, but I was traveling with a young gal and lost track of her. I mean, we got separated when that sonofabitch we're trailing jumped us. She might be wanderin' around in these cut-up badlands somewheres. She may be dead by now, or maybe she just rode out of here, I don't know. I'd rest a whole lot easier if I knowed a scout and hunter such as yourself, one who knows these parts like you do, was keepin' an eye out for her."
He looked down at me. Every time since then, whenever I hear the word mournful, I think of the way his face looked then. "Of course, Mr. Goodwin."
I was going to tell him what she looked like, but then thought better of it when I saw no way around saying that she was partly a Negro lady. "Her name's Mandy. Mandy Bowden, only she says it Frenchy."
Captain Jack arched his back and swung his hand out in front and to the side, tilting his head back. That rangy scout appeared to be frowning at the clouds, only his eyes was glassy, like he didn't rightly see what he was looking at. Looked more like a politician about to give a speech than anything else. And then he spoke like he was in some kind of a dream:
"A lost damosel with a French surname
Met a desperado named DuShane,
She on a steed with a snow white mane,
He on a paint that was going lame."
I knowed then what he was doing. "Won't be much of a poem," I told him. "Not with a big whopping lie like that right up front. Clete shot Whitey DuShane some time ago."
He looked at me sharp then, like I had just woke him up from a sound sleep.
"How'd you know about Whitey DuShane, anyway?" Soon as I said that, even before he said anything, it hit me.
"I was speakin' of the man you're chasing. He told me his name's DuShane," Crawford said. "Was his younger brother named Whitey?"