Soul Catcher (21 page)

When he was well enough, the old woman permitted him to come into the hut where a fire burned in a small hearth made of stones. The desert nights were cold, and the three would sit cross- legged on the hard-packed dirt floor before the blazing fire, Cain and the girl opposite each other, the old woman between them, smoking her pipe and watching them watch each other. During the day, as they worked together, feeding the animals or gathering firewood or milking the goat, Cain and the girl would exchange furtive glances or the faintest trace of a smile. If she caught them, the old woman would frown and nudge the girl back to the business at hand. When he'd return from getting water with the donkey, the girl would come running up to him, as if he'd been gone for years, and say something to him in Spanish, the only word of which he recognized was Cain. Once, they were gathering wood along a high ridge, and he tripped and pitched headlong down an incline. He lay there on the dusty earth for a moment with his eyes closed, pretending to be seriously injured. The girl rushed to his side, grabbed his hand, and put it to her mouth.

"Cain!" she cried, worry clouding her features.

He lay there, still for a moment, enjoying the attention.

"Senor Cain!" she said, petting his head.

At last he looked up at her and smiled.

She pretended to pout for a moment, then finally gave in to a smile.

Another time he was helping her pluck a chicken whose neck she'd just wrung. They were so close he could smell her bronze skin warming in the afternoon sun. When they happened to brush arms, Cain felt himself shiver, felt a stirring in his chest and belly, down in his loins. She looked at him and he knew she felt it, too. If the old woman caught them flirting, she might say something to her granddaughter in a tone of obvious reprimand. The girl, strong- willed, would argue with her grandmother, their voices growing heated, though finally she would lower her eyes and appear contrite. At least for a few seconds. As soon as the old woman left, she'd turn to Cain and smile again.

At night he shivered under a thin blanket, trying to keep warm in the chill desert air. He'd hear the donkey farting or a mouse scratching in the hay. Through the open window of the hut he could see a square of night sky, framed like a painting--blue-black and shot through with more stars than he'd ever seen before. The war already seemed a distant thing, something he'd read about in a book as a child. On the few occasions when he'd think of home, of his father and brother, of Alexandra, they, too, seemed to him parts of another life, a life that had died in him out on the battlefield. He would think of the girl's warm arm brushing his and how her skin smelled and the silken way it felt beneath his hand, and the way she looked at him with those dark, serious eyes, gleaming like a cat's before a fire. Then one night he had a dream in which the girl appeared to him as he slept. When he awoke, though, he was startled to realize that it was no dream. She put her hand over his mouth as she crawled beneath the blanket. She shed her clothes, and her body felt warm and liquid in his arms. "Cain," she whispered hotly into his ear. By the way she moved and understood a man's body, what to do and when, he sensed that he was not the first man she'd been with. Still, it didn't matter. She had her own sort of innocence, the unblemished virtue of some wild, untamed thing. He loved her supple body moving against his, loved her dark eyes, loved the way she murmured deep in her throat as he entered her. Cain.

Sometimes when they were together, he felt as if he had died out on the battlefield and gone to heaven. This was his heaven, the only one he'd ever know. And he never wanted to leave it. When they were finished, she pulled on her clothes and kissed him once more and whispered, "Cain," before quietly slipping back to the hut. From then on, she came to him each night. After they were finished, she would dress and slip cautiously back to sleep with her grandmother. In the morning when he woke up, it would seem like a fantastic dream. But then she'd look at him in the daylight as they fed the chickens or hoed the garden, and her expression would tell him it had happened.

He sometimes wondered if his family had heard that he was missing and had presumed him dead. He felt sorry for them. What of Alexandra? How would she take the news of his death? Perhaps she wouldn't even care after his betrayal. Then again, even this pseudodeath brought to him a certain freedom. He would never have to go back to that other life. Sometimes, however, the call of duty would stir in him; he would tell himself he should try to get back to his company. He didn't even know how the battle had turned out or even how the war was going. It was as if he had stepped out of time, and everything had passed him by. Were they looking for him? Or had they assumed he'd died with the others? Each day as he got better, stronger, a part of him thought he should make some sort of attempt at contacting them, maybe ask to borrow the donkey and ride down out of the mountains to see what he could find out. He had, after all, signed up to fight. He wasn't a coward. His own notion of honor was at stake. Of course, going back was not without danger. What if the Mexicans still controlled this territory? Might they not kill him as they had the others? And even if he managed to make it to the American lines, wherever they were, what then? Did he really want to go back to the war? To all that dying and killing and bloodshed.

So, for days which flowed seamlessly into weeks and then into months, he did nothing. He stayed there with the Indian girl and her grandmother, keeping out of sight, helping with the chores, making love at night. Unlike back home, here he couldn't tell the passing of the seasons. The days arrived bright and hot and dry, the nights grew frigid and stark. Occasionally, when he was off gathering firewood or toting water, he'd see a rider in the distance, and, fearing it was a Mexican, he'd duck and hide behind a rock or a tree. One time, a Mexican on a horse actually appeared at the home of the two women. Luckily, Cain was in the shed milking one of the goats at the time, so he wasn't seen. He watched as the man spoke to the old woman. Though Cain couldn't understand what was being said, it was obvious that the man was angry. He waved his arms about and pointed and yelled at the old woman in Spanish. The old woman yelled back at him, and with her hand waved him away. Cain cocked his revolver, ready, if need be, to use it. But soon the man turned and rode off. Cain tried to find out what the matter was from the girl Pecosa, but she merely shook her head, made it seem as if it were nothing to worry about. And once when he had gone for water, he saw in the distance a company of American cavalry crossing the battlefield of Buena Vista. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't his war, that it had never been his war. That he'd been running from a life he felt trapped in and the war was just a way to escape it. Why couldn't he stay here forever? Why couldn't he spend the rest of his life with this girl? He was, for the first time in his life, happy, content, in love.

Yet he couldn't stop feeling that he was a deserter, that he had dishonored himself. Here there were men, good and brave men, fighting and dying, and what was he doing? Hiding with a girl and an old woman. Doing the sort of farmwork that he'd always thought tedious. He kept remembering that day at Buena Vista where the Mexicans had killed his comrades. He felt guilty. He believed he should have died with them, instead of hiding like a cowardly cur. Yes, he needed to go back. He needed to do his duty. The girl and what he felt for her, though immediate and palpable, were not, he had managed to convince himself, as strong as the pull of obligation, of duty and honor.

"I have to go back," he told her finally.

She sensed what his words meant and she clutched him, wrapping her arms around his neck, as if she could keep him from returning to the madness of war. He tried to make her understand that he would be back, that as soon as the war was over, he'd return to her, that he was only going away for a while. But she cried and held him harder, so that finally he had to pry her away from him. "I love you," he said. "I'll be back." He kissed her, and as the old woman held her, Cain turned and walked down from the mountains.

After journeying for several days, with his leg howling in pain, he ran into a company of Texas Rangers. The war, he learned, was in fact just about over. The American forces under Winfield Scott had captured Mexico City, and it was only a matter of time before Mexico surrendered. For several months he was placed, with other deserters, in the brig of a man-o'-war off the coast of Veracruz. There was even talk about court-martialing him for desertion. The pain in his leg continued, was at times so unbearable that the prison doctor finally gave him opium, as he did all the wounded soldiers. That's where his craving for the substance began. Cain would lie on his bunk, chewing opium until the pain's edge was blunted if not obliterated, and think about the Indian girl. All the months he remained in his cell, he thought of her. He came to realize two things: that he loved her more than anything in the world, and that his leaving had been a foolish mistake. His one thought now was to make his way back to her.

As soon as the war ended, his commanding officers spoke of his good service, his bravery, his wounds, and in one of the many ironies of war, they not only didn't press charges against him but they also awarded him a medal for his bravery at Buena Vista. Once released, with what little money he had, he bought a swaybacked nag, a frayed saddle, and enough food and water and ammo to last him until he reached Buena Vista. As he rode north, he found himself thinking about the girl, about the life they'd have together. He knew what he was doing was crazy, crazier even than the time he'd fallen in love with Eileen McDuffy. But he also knew it was the most sane thing he'd ever done.

He rode high up into the desert mountains. As he got closer, he could feel his heart beating faster in anticipation of seeing his beloved. Yet as he approached, hanging in the air was the distinctive foulness of postbattle, the stench of fire and ash, of burned and rotting flesh. At last, he reached the meager parcel of ground where the girl and her grandmother lived. What he saw choked the breath from his lungs. All that remained of the hut and shed was charred rubble. The old woman's pots were broken and scattered, and the putrifying carcasses of the animals lay covered under bluebottle flies and maggots. No! he cried. No! He frantically searched through the ashes, looking for their bodies, but didn't find them. He kept thinking, What happened? Who did this? He made out the hoofprints of a dozen riders. Saw in the forehead of the donkey a hole made by a musket ball. Then he recalled the Mexican who had argued with the old woman. Cain fell to his knees and began to cry.

Though he already knew in his heart that they were dead, he searched the mountains for them for several days, trying to convince himself that somehow they'd managed to flee before the riders came, that they were still there hiding out, waiting. But he saw no sign of them, no tracks, nothing. Finally, he rode north into the village of Saltillo, searching for answers. There he asked about the Indian girl and the old woman. Few spoke English, and those who did said they knew nothing about the two. Yet the more he asked around, the more he felt something wasn't right. Other women, he learned, were missing, too, sisters, daughters, mothers. Finally, Cain was in the livery having his horse reshod. The man who ran it spoke some English.

"Senor, you are the one looking for the Indian girl, si ?" the man said to him as he worked on the horse.

"Yes. She was called Pecosa. Do you know her?" Cain asked.

"A little."

"What happened to her?"

Looking cautiously out into the street, he said to Cain in an undertone, " Vaya al sacerdote. He knows."

"He knows what?" Cain asked.

"What they did to them."

The old man went on to tell him how, after the war, the priest had wanted revenge for what the Americans had done, the slaughter of those in the chapel near Agua Nueva. He'd incited the men of the village to round up women who'd befriended Americans, like those of the brothel who'd slept with the soldiers, others who'd simply sold them a drink or danced with them in the cantina. They called them "gringo whores." The priest, a certain Padre Juan, the old man told Cain, had worked the men of the village into a frenzy of vengeance.

"What did they do to them?" Cain asked once more, fear and anger boiling in him.

"Ellos los mataron," he said. "Kill them."

Cain's heart turned to a piece of jagged iron in his chest. "How?"

"La colgaron,
^{n
he explained, pretending a rope pulled his neck at a sharp angle. Then the man made the sign of the cross.}

^{Cain felt two emotions at once. He felt a burning guilt for having involved her, and for having left her. He told himself that if he had stayed she would still be alive. That somehow he could've prevented it, protected her, or, at least, died trying. The other emotion he felt was a terrible thirst for vengeance; he wanted to kill whoever was responsible for her death.}