Elmore Leonard: Hombre

When the coach started to roll I said, “Well, I guess we’ll be together for a while.”

There wasn’t much talking at all until Mrs. Favor started after the McLaren girl. I saw her watching the girl for the longest time and finally she said, “Are those Indian beads?”

The McLaren girl looked up. “It’s a rosary.”

“I don’t know why I thought they were Indian beads,” Mrs. Favor said. Her voice soft and sort of lazy sounding, the kind of voice that most of the time you aren’t sure if the person is kidding or being serious.

“You might say they are Indian beads,” the girl said. “I made them.”

“During your experience?”

Dr. Favor said, “Audra,” very low, meaning for her to keep quiet.

“I hope I didn’t remind you of something unpleasant,” Mrs. Favor said.

Braden, I noticed, was looking at the McLaren girl too. “What happened?” he said.

The McLaren girl did not answer right away, and Mrs. Favor leaned toward the girl. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I can understand.”

“I don’t mind,” the McLaren girl said.

Braden was still looking at her. He said again, “What happened?”

“I thought everybody knew,” the McLaren girl said.

“Well,” Braden said. “I guess I’ve been away.”

“She was taken by Apaches,” Mrs. Favor said. “With them, how long, a month?”

The McLaren girl nodded. “It seemed longer.”

“I can imagine,” Mrs. Favor said. “Did they treat you all right?”

“As well as you could expect, I guess.”

“I suppose they kept you with the women.”

“Well, we were on the move most of the time.”

“I mean when you camped.”

“No, not all the time.”

“Did they-bother you?”

“Well,” the McLaren girl said, “I guess the whole thing was kind of a bother, but I hadn’t thought of it that way. One of the women cut my hair off. I don’t know why. It’s just now starting to grow back.”

“I meant did they bother you?” Mrs. Favor said.

Braden was looking right at her. “You can talk plainer than that,” he said.

Mrs. Favor pretended she didn’t hear him. She kept her eyes on the McLaren girl and you could see what she was trying to get at. Finally she said, “You hear so many stories about what Indians do to white women.”

“They do the same thing to them they do to Indian women,” Braden said, and after that no one spoke for a minute. All the sounds, the rattling and the wind hissing by, were outside. Inside it was quiet.

I kept thinking that somebody ought to say something to change the subject. In the first place I felt uneasy with the talk about Apaches and John Russell sitting there. Second, I thought Braden certainly shouldn’t have said what he did with ladies present, even if Mrs. Favor had started it. I thought Dr. Favor would say something to her again, but he didn’t. He could have been seven hundred miles away, his hand holding the side curtain open a little and staring out at the darkness.

I would like to have said that I thought Mr. Braden should be reminded that there were ladies present, but instead I said, “I don’t know if the ladies enjoy this kind of talk very much.” That was a mistake.

Braden said, “What kind of talk?”

“I mean about Apache Indians and all.”

“That’s not what you meant,” Braden said.

“Mr. Braden.” The McLaren girl, her hands folded in her lap, was looking directly at him. “Why don’t you just be quiet for a while?”

Braden was surprised, as all of us were, I suppose. He said, “You speak right up, don’t you?”

“I don’t see any other way,” she said.

“I was talking to that boy next to you.”

“But it concerned me,” the McLaren girl said. “So if you’d be so kind as to shut up, I’d appreciate it.”

That was something for her to say. The only trouble was, it egged Braden on. “A nice girl talking like that,” he said, watching her. “Maybe you lived with them too long. Maybe that’s it. You live with them a while and you forget how a white person talks.”

I couldn’t see Russell’s face or his reaction to all this. But a minute later I could see what was going to happen, and I began thinking every which way of how to change the subject.

“A white woman,” Mrs. Favor said, “couldn’t live the way they do. The Apache woman rubbing skins and grinding corn, their hair greasy and full of vermin. The men no better. All of them standing around or squatting, picking at themselves and the dogs sniffing them. They even eat the dogs sometimes.”

She was watching the McLaren girl again, leading up to something, but I wasn’t sure what. “I wonder,” she said, “if a woman could fall into their ways and after a while it wouldn’t bother her. Like eating with your fingers. Or do you suppose you could eat a dog and not think anything of it?”

Here’s where you could see it coming.

John Russell said, “What if you didn’t have anything else to eat?” This was the first time he’d spoken since we left Sweetmary. His voice was calm, but still there was an edge to it.

Mrs. Favor looked from the McLaren girl to Russell.

“I don’t care how hungry I got. I know I wouldn’t eat one of those camp dogs.”

“I think,” John Russell said, “you have to know the hunger they feel before you can be sure.”

“The government supplies them with meat,” Mrs. Favor said. “Every week or so I’d see them come in for their beef ration. And they’re allowed to hunt. They can hunt whenever their rations are low.”

“But they are always low,” Russell said. “Or used up, and there’s not game enough to take care of everybody.”

“You hear all kinds of stories of how the Indian is oppressed by the white man,” Dr. Favor said. I was surprised that he had been listening and seemed interested now.

He said, “I suppose you will always hear those stories as long as there is sympathy for the Indian’s plight, and that’s a good thing. But you have to live on a reservation for a time, like San Carlos, to see that caring for Indians is not a simple matter of giving them food and clothing.”