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They aint?
No.
What are they?
Injins.
The hell they are.
Elrod you done been told.
How come them to be so black as that if they aint niggers.
They turned that way. They got blacker till they couldnt black no more.
Where'd you get em at?
Killed them sons of bitches. Didnt ye mister?
You been a scout on the prairies, aint ye?
I bought them ears in California off a soldier in a saloon didnt have no money to drink on.
He reached and took the scapular from them.
Shoot. I bet he's been a scout on the prairie killed ever one of them sons of bitches.
The one called Elrod followed the trophies with his chin and sniffed the air. I dont see what you want with them things, he said. I wouldnt have em.
The others looked at him uneasily.
You dont know where them ears come from. That old boy you bought em off of might of said they was injins but that dont make it so.
The man didnt answer.
Them ears could of come off of ca
Hush Elrod.
The man sat holding the necklace in his hands. They wasnt ca
Elrod looked at the others and gri
The man looked up wearily. You aint callin me a liar are ye son?
I aint ye son.
How old are you?
That's some more of your business.
How old are you?
He's fifteen.
You hush your damn mouth.
He turned to the man. He dont speak for me, he said.
He's done spoke. I was fifteen year old when I was first shot.
I ain't never been shot.
You aint sixteen yet neither.
You aim to shoot me?
I aim to try to keep from it.
Come on Elrod.
You aint goin to shoot nobody. Maybe in the back or them asleep.
Elrod we're gone.
I knowed you for what you was when I seen ye.
You better go on.
Set there and talk about shootin somebody. They aint nobody done it yet.
The other four stood at the limits of the firelight. The youngest of them was casting glances out at the dark sanctuary of the prairie night.
Go on, the man said. They're waitin on ye.
He spat into the man's fire and wiped his mouth. Out on the prairie to the north a train of yoked wagons was passing and the oxen were pale and silent in the starlight and the wagons creaked faintly in the distance and a lantern with a red glass followed them out like an alien eye. This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war. His companions had started back to fetch him and perhaps this emboldened him the more and perhaps he said other things to the man for when they got to the fire the man had risen to his feet. You keep him away from me, he said. I see him back here I'll kill him.
When they had gone he built up the fire and caught the horse and took the hobbles off and tied it and saddled it and then he moved off apart and spread his blanket and lay down in the dark.
When he woke there was still no light in the east. The boy was standing by the ashes of the fire with the rifle in his hand. The horse had snuffed and now it snuffed again.
I knowed you'd be hid out, the boy called.
He pushed back the blanket and rolled onto his stomach and cocked the pistol and leveled it at the sky where the clustered stars were burning for eternity. He centered the foresight in the milled groove of the framestrap and holding the piece so he swung it through the dark of the trees with both hands to the darker shape of the visitor.
I'm right here, he said.
The boy swung with the rifle and fired.
You wouldnt of lived anyway, the man said.
It was gray dawn when the others came up. They had no horses. They led the halfgrown boy to where the dead youth was lying on his back with his hands composed upon his chest.
We dont want no trouble mister. We just want to take him with us.
Take him.
I knowed we'd bury him on this prairie.
They come out here from Kentucky mister. This tyke and his brother. His momma and daddy both dead. His grandaddy was killed by a lunatic and buried in the woods like a dog. He's never knowed good fortune in his life and now he aint got a soul in this world.
Randall you take a good look at the man that has made you a orphan.
The orphan in his large clothes holding the old musket with the mended stock stared at him woodenly. He was maybe twelve years old and he looked not so much dullwitted as insane. Two of the others were going through the dead boy's pockets.
Where's his rifle at mister?
The man stood with his hand on his belt. He nodded to where the rifle stood against a tree.
They brought it over and presented it to the brother. It was a Sharp's fifty calibre and holding it and the musket he stood inanely armed, his eyes skittering.
One of the older boys handed him the dead boy's hat and then he turned to the man. He give forty dollars for that rifle in Little Rock. You can buy em in Griffin for ten. They aint worth nothin. Randall, are you ready to go?
He did not assist as a bearer for he was too small. When they set out across the prairie with his brother's body carried up on their shoulders he followed behind carrying the musket and the dead boy's rifle and the dead boy's hat. The man watched them go. Out there was nothing. They were simply bearing the body off over the bonestrewn waste toward a naked horizon. The orphan turned once to look back at him and then he hurried to catch up.
In the afternoon he rode through the McKenzie crossing of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River and he and the horse walked side by side down the twilight toward the town where in the long red dusk and in the darkness the random aggregate of the lamps formed slowly a false shore of hospice cradled on the low plain before them. They passed enormous ricks of bones, colossal dikes composed of horned skulls and the crescent ribs like old ivory bows heaped in the aftermath of some legendary battle, great levees of them curving away over the plain into the night.
They entered the town in a light rain falling. The horse nickered and snuffed shyly at the hocks of the other animals standing at stall before the lamplit bagnios they passed. Fiddle-music issued into the solitary mud street and lean dogs crossed before them from shadow to shadow. At the end of the town he led the horse to a rail and tied it among others and stepped up the low wooden stairs into the dim light that fell from the doorway there. He looked back a last time at the street and at the random windowlights let into the darkness and at the last pale light in the west and the low dark hills around. Then he pushed open the door and entered.
A dimly seething rabble had coagulated within. As if the raw board structure erected for their containment occupied some ultimate sink into which they had gravitated from off the surrounding flatlands. An old man in a tyrolean costume was shuffling among the rough tables with his hat outheld while a little girl in a smock cranked a barrel organ and a bear in a crinoline twirled strangely upon a board stage defined by a row of tallow candles that dripped and sputtered in their pools of grease.
He made his way through the crowd to the bar where several men in gaitered shirts were drawing beer or pouring whiskey. Young boys worked behind them fetching crates of bottles and racks of glasses steaming from the scullery to the rear. The bar was covered with zinc and he placed his elbows upon it and spun a silver coin before him and slapped it flat.