"I hesitate to bother you, ma'am," Goodnight said.

"Come in, I can offer you b.u.t.termilk," Lorena said, holding the door open.

Goodnight immediately came in and took a chair in the kitchen.

"I know you've got your duties, I'll be brief, though I would like the b.u.t.termilk," he said. "If I had been born in different circ.u.mstances, I could have made a life of drinking b.u.t.termilk." Lorena poured him a large gla.s.s. He drank half of it and set the gla.s.s down.

Clarie peeked in at the door. She couldn't resist. Everyone talked about Mr. Goodnight, but she had only seen him once before, at a picnic, and he hadn't stayed around long enough for her to get a really good look at him.

"That's a fine-looking young lady there--I understand she helps out with the teaching," Goodnight said.

"Yes, she's a great help," Lorena said.

Clarie blushed, so unexpected was her mother's compliment; she had made it to the great man, too!

"I'm shaky at some of the arithmetic," Lorena admitted. "Clarie grasps fractions better than I do." Goodnight drank the other half of the b.u.t.termilk and set the empty gla.s.s back on the table.

"I expect I could chase a fraction from dawn to sunset and never come near enough to grasp it," he said.

Then he looked firmly at Clarie. The three boys, hearing an unfamiliar voice in the kitchen, were huddled behind her, peeking along with their big sister.

"I'll have to ask you young'uns to excuse us older folks," he said. "I've got a private matter to talk over with your mother." "Oh," Clarie said. She immediately retreated, taking the boys with her. Georgie she had to forcibly drag by the collar. He had developed the ill-mannered habit of staring at guests.

Lorena felt a sudden alarm. Had something happened to Pea?

"No, your husband's fine, as far as I know," Goodnight said, seeing the alarm in the woman's eyes. He felt sympathy for her, and much admiration. It was well known that she had not missed a day of school since taking her job. She arrived every day, in her buggy, in the coldest weather and in the muddiest weather, too. He himself had always been more vexed by mud than by cold, and so was Mary, his wife. Skirts and high-b.u.t.ton shoes were a great nuisance when it was muddy, Mary claimed, and he didn't doubt it a bit.

This young woman had strength, and she didn't neglect her duties; that he admired. He felt uneasy, though, at the nature of the inquiry he had come to make. The uneasiness had kept him at home for two weeks or more, since he had first been told that Mox Mox, the manburner, had appeared again. This woman had a difficult past; he knew that, but he didn't care. Life was an uneven business. He knew himself to be of a judgmental nature--too judgmental, his wife a.s.sured him. But with the schoolmarm, he had no urge to pa.s.s judgment.

She was not the only woman in the Panhandle to have had an uneven life, and her performance with her pupils had been splendid, in his opinion. Her past was between her and her husband. Goodnight was not a preacher, and he had no mission to save the world, either.

"You're sure he's not dead?" Lorena asked. She couldn't help it. She'd had several bad dreams, since Pea Eye left, and in all of them he was either dead or about to be.

"If he is, I haven't heard it," Goodnight said.

"Then what is it, Mr. Goodnight?" Lorena asked. "What is it?" "It's Mox Mox," Goodnight replied.

Lorena knew then why it had taken an old man, known all over the West for his abruptness, so long to come to the point. Her first urge was to run and lock her children in the bedroom, where they couldn't possibly even hear the name Goodnight had just spoken.

At the same time, she felt too weak to stand up. A rush of fear broke in her such as she had not felt for many years.

Goodnight saw it--the woman had come into the kitchen a little fl.u.s.tered, some color in her cheeks. But the color left her, as soon as he spoke Mox Mox's name. It was as if the blood had suddenly been milked from her, with one squeeze.

"But he's dead, ain't he?" Lorena asked.

It was the first time she had slipped and said "ain't" in many months.

"I thought so myself, but now I ain't so sure," Goodnight said. "I've never seen the man myself, and I believe you have seen him. That's why I've bothered you and took the risk of upsetting you." He paused, watching the young woman bring herself under control. It was not a simple struggle, or a brief one. She stared at him, wordless. She was plainly scared, too scared to hide it. Finally, to be doing something, he got up and helped himself to another gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk.

Seeing Mr. Goodnight pouring himself the b.u.t.termilk brought Lorena back to herself, and just in time. For a second, she had felt a scream starting in her head, or had heard, inside herself, the piercing echo of many screams from the past. She felt cold and clammy, so heavy with fear that, for a second, she didn't know if she could move. During the hours when she had been a captive of Mox Mox and his boss, Blue Duck, she hadn't been able to move, and the terror that she felt during those hours was a thing that would never leave her. The name alone had brought it all back. Mr. Goodnight must have known it might, or he would not have hesitated.

But the man was in her kitchen, he was her guest, and there was such a thing as manners. Even though her deepest urge was to gather her children and run--run to Nebraska, or farther--she knew that she had to control herself and try to help Charles Goodnight, for the very sake of her children.

"I'm sorry, I'm bad scared, it caused me to forget my manners," she said. She gripped the edge of the table and squeezed it with the fingers of both hands. She needed something that would steady her, something to grip. But the spasm of fear was stronger than her grip. Despite herself, she kept trembling.

"It don't take much muscle to pour b.u.t.termilk," Goodnight said. "I regret having to put you through this." "Why are you? Mox Mox is dead," Lorena said. "Pea Eye heard it years ago. He was killed in Utah, or somewhere.

"He's dead. ... ain't he?" she asked.

"He's dead. Everybody said it." "I chased him to Utah myself," Goodnight said. "He burnt four of my cowboys, in Colorado, on the Purgatory River.

Three of them were boys of sixteen, and the fourth was my foreman. He'd been with me twenty years.

I chased Mox Mox, but I lost him. It's a failure I've regretted ever since. Two or three years later, I heard he was dead, killed by a Ute Indian." "Yes, it was a Ute that killed him," Lorena said. "That's what Pea Eye told me." Goodnight watched her shaking. He wished he could comfort her, but he had never been much of a hand at comforting women. It wasn't one of his skills.

He drank the second gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk, looked at the pitcher, and decided not to have a third.

"I think Mox Mox is alive," he said.

"Somebody's been burning people in New Mexico." "Burning what kinds of people?" Lorena asked, still gripping the table. It was all she could do to keep from jumping up and gathering her children and running before Mox Mox could come and get them all.

"Whatever kind he catches," Goodnight said. "He stopped a train and took three people off and burned them. That was three weeks ago.

"There ain't that many manburners," Goodnight added, after a pause. "The Suggs brothers burned two farmers, but Captain Call caught the Suggs brothers and hung them. That was years ago." He paused again. "Mox Mox is the only killer I've heard of who makes a habit of burning people," he said, finally.

Lorena was silent. But in her head, she heard the screams.

"If I've got the history right, when Blue Duck took you from the Hat Creek outfit, Mox Mox was still running with him," Goodnight said. He spoke with caution. He had known several women who had been captives, several women and a few children. Some of them babbled about it; others never spoke of it; but all were damaged.

Though used to plain speech, he knew that there were times when it wasn't the best way to talk. This woman, who worked so hard for the ignorant, raw children of the settlers, in a schoolhouse he had built, had been a captive, not of the Comanche, but of Blue Duck, one of the cruelest renegades ever to appear in the Panhandle country.

And Mox Mox, at various times, had run with Blue Duck. He himself had never seen either man. This woman had seen one of them for sure; perhaps she had seen both. He wanted to know what she knew, or as much of it as she could bear to tell him.

Rarely, in his long life, had Goodnight felt so awkward about asking for the information he needed. Lorena was not one to babble. What she felt, she mainly kept inside. Her fingers were white from gripping the edge of the table, and her arms shook a little; but she was not behaving wildly, she was not screaming or crying, and she was also not talking.

"Mox Mox is a white man and he's short," Lorena said. "One of his eyes ain't right, it points to the side. But the other eye looks at you, and one's enough." Goodnight waited, standing by the stove.

Lorena took a deep breath. She felt as if she might strangle, if she didn't get more air into her lungs. She remembered that was how she had been then, too, the day Blue Duck led her horse across the Red River and handed her over to Ermoke and Monkey John and all the rest.

But not Mox Mox. He hadn't been there then.

He had arrived later; how many days later, Lorena wasn't sure. She wasn't counting days, then. She hadn't expected to live, and didn't want to, or didn't think she wanted to.

Then Mox Mox arrived. He had three Mexicans with him, and a stolen white boy. The little boy was about six. He whimpered all night.

When Gus McCrae rescued her, she hadn't been able to speak, and she had never since spoken of that time to anyone--not much, anyway.

Particularly, she had never spoken about the little boy.