The Unforgiven Read Online Free Page B

his own medicine would turn on him if he killed a crazy person, or even seriously harmed one.
    As for answering to his name—the young savage answered to Set, for Set-Tayhahnna-tay, which means Texan bear. And Kelsey’s boy happened to be named Seth.
    Time was going to prove that all this common sense could but barely hold its ground, in public opinion, against the farther’s total conviction; years later people would still be arguing over it. For a door of doubt had been left open, forever.
    Not in Zack’s mind. He was convinced that Abe was absolutely wrong, beyond any shadow of doubt, and he told him so, in no uncertain terms. Abe was thrown into an uncontrollable rage, in which he tried to kill Zack, and Zack had to take his carbine away from him. Unfortunately, Zack lost his own patience in this flurry, and smashed the lock of the carbine on a rock. Kelsey carried the broken breechlock with him a long time, and it gave his own version of the story substance for unimaginative listeners.
    But a far more unlucky thing happened before Zack got back to Texas. Instead of turning back across the Red, Zack pointed his pony toward Fort Cobb. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy had been able to spare troops for a real campaign in the Indian country, though each side was accused of efforts to turn the Indians against the other. The Federals had, however, intermittently garrisoned Fort Cobb, up in Indian Territory. Old Zack carried a list of brands worn by some hundreds of horses known to be in the hands of Indians under Federal protection. Zack’s bold demand upon the Fort Cobb commandant was for a release of the horses—or a strapping indemnity. He had a case, and later it was going to rage in the courts for a quarter of a century. Zack almost, but not quite, got something on account.
    What he did not know was that the Fort Cobb cavalry was out on one of its recurrent patrols along the Red. Abe’s belated posse, charging out of Texas to rescue little Seth, ran smack into a squadron of yellowlegs on Cache Creek. The handful of Texans were told to get the hell back where they came from, and fast—before they were set upon for taking military action, and out of uniform at that. Whatever opportunity for rescue there had been was destroyed in five minutes, and never recurred again.
    Abe Kelsey forever believed, and persuaded whom he could, that Old Zack had betrayed the rescue party to the damyankees; thereby purchasing the friendship of the Kiowas, and perpetual immunity to their raids, at the price of Abe’s son. A stigma of Indian-loving, involving a betrayal totally unforgivable under any code on earth, was thus prooflessly affixed to one of the greatest Indian-fighters, perhaps, that Texas ever knew.
    Delusion and frustration seemed to unhinge Kelsey’s mind, after that. He became hipped on at least winning the confidence of the supposed son who denied him. Endless failure only narrowed and hardened his obsession, until he was willing to be-come an Indian himself, if that would do it. He tagged the Kiowas around, living on what scraps they threw him. He ran whisky to them when he could get whisky, guns when he could get guns. He even scouted out easy kills for them among his own people, which would have made him deadly dangerous if the Indians had trusted a word he said.
    And still the Kiowas would have none of him. Fearing to kill or maim a crazy man, they abused him in every other way they could think of, in hopes of driving him away. They robbed him of everything he got hold of, they dumped him in rivers, they played games in which they threw him about. And the boy he thought was his son would do nothing but spit on him.
    For all this, Abe blamed William Zachary.
    After Kelsey became a squaw man, the Zacharys were able to face down his libel, to some extent. They must have faced it down, or they wouldn’t be here. For there was no such thing as a lone cattleman, and never could be, on open range. No practical fence