The Ordways by William Humphrey Page B

brighter-colored articles of her clothing. One anxiety of hers she was able to lay aside. With the Indians her obvious secret was safe. They saw nothing remarkable, much less reprehensible, in the fact that the pregnant squaw should walk with the team while her man rode; nor would they, had he been in full possession of his faculties. Neither were the few white men here the kind to challenge a husband’s mistreatment of his wife. As the temperature now hovered in the 90’s, it was a relief to shed that overcoat.
    The Ordways were asked if the war was over. They replied, not so far as they knew. Why? Well, they were the first folks to be seen coming through headed for Texas since shortly after the war began.
    They turned south. Down into the red bottomlands, where out of stagnant sloughs cane-legged blue cranes rose creaking into the air and alligators sank from sight and mud turtles and fat water moccasins dropped off logs at their approach. Where in small stump-dotted patches Indian farmers snatched a crop of cotton between risings of the river which backed water inland for as deep as five miles, leaving in the forks of trees higher than a man’s head tufts of matted trash like squirrels’ nests. Then into the dark, cool, and fragrant pine forests: trees as thick as hair, with occasional clearings hacked out of them where loggers had operated, and in the clearing a mound of sawdust blackened at the base, growing yellow as cornmeal at the top. On into the brooding stillness, and then their first glimpse of the river. Impossibly red, silent, sluggish, it was as unlike water as anything could be. It looked simply like a crossroad to the one they were on. Thick, motionless, semi-solid, it might have been a fresh-poured concrete highway; you felt that just by waiting overnight you would find that it had set, and you could walk across to Texas.
    And you found that you might have to do just that. The ferry had shut down. Had not run for nearly a year, the owner having gone off, beaching his boat over on the other side. This was told the Ordways by the half-breed farmer, market hunter, trapper, who lived in the last cabin. Where the next nearest ferry was he had no notion. He did not ask if the war was over; it was doubtful that he knew there was one going on.
    Though hope of crossing there was gone, they were drawn irresistibly down to the ferry landing. There for the first time the Ordways beheld Texas. Dividing them from it were only a few hundred yards. After coming a thousand miles, to be balked by so little seemed intolerable.
    Ella unhitched the oxen and led them, yoked, down to the water to drink. Dexter took her hand and padded along beside her in the deep red dust. Helen remained with her father, who leaned against the wagon looking towards the river. The oxen shied at the strange water, sniffed it, blew in it trying to clear it. While they drank Ella stood resting her hands on her stomach, gazing across to the opposite shore. A wall of black-green pines rose there with pointed tops as regular as the palings of a fence. At the base of this wall, between it and the red water, which lay as flat as though it had been smoothed with a trowel, stretched the thin gold stripe of a sandbar. The woods were parted by a fine line where the ferry road ran, until lost in the shadowy depths. Ella’s eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. After this tantalizing glimpse to have to turn back, retrace their route to Broken Bow, and push on westward—who knew how far—through poor, inhospitable country until they learned of another ferry, that too perhaps shut down—the disappointment was too cruel. Frightened by his mother’s tears, the boy commenced to whimper.
    A crash in the woods at their back made the oxen toss their yoked heads. Out of the trees a deer broke, streaked across the bar, and plunged into the river. Instantly it sank from view, leaving only its head above water. Straight out it swam, cutting a