Read The Searchers for Free Online Page B

hour and a half.
     No reason we can’t jump them long before daylight, with any kind of start.”
    Ed Newby said, “You right sure you want to jump all them?”
    Charlie MacCorry turned to look Ed over. “Just what in hell you think we come here for?”
    “They’ll be took unawares,” Amos said. “They’re always took unawares. Ain’t an Indian in the world knows how to keep sentries
     out once the night goes cold.”
    “It ain’t that,” Ed answered. “We can whup them all right. I guess. Only thing …Comanches are mighty likely to
     kill any prisoners they’ve got, if they’re jumped hard enough. They’ve done it again and again.”
    Mart Pauley chewed a grass blade and watched Amos. Finally Mart said, “There’s another way....”
    Amos nodded. “Like Mart says. There’s another way.” Mart Pauley was bewildered to see that Amos looked happy. “I’m talking
     about their horses. Might be we could set the Comanch’ afoot.”
    Silence again. Nobody wanted to say much now without considering a long while before he spoke.
    “Might be we can stampede them ponies, and run off all the whole bunch,” Amos went on. “I don’t believe it would make ’em
     murder anybody—that’s still alive.”
    “This thing ain’t going to be top easy,” Ed Newby said.
    “No,” Amos agreed. “It ain’t easy. And it ain’t safe. If we did get it done, the Comanch’ should be ready to deal. But I don’t
     say they’ll deal. In all my life, I ain’t learned but one thing about an Indian: What ever you know you’d do in his place—he
     ain’t going to do that. Maybe we’d still have to hunt them Comanches down, by bunches, by twos, by ones.”
    Something like a bitter relish in Amos’ tone turned Mart cold. Amos no longer believed they would recover Lucy alive—and
     wasn’t thinking of Debbie at all.
    “Of course,” Charlie MacCorry said, his eyes on a grass blade he was picking to shreds, “you know, could be every last one
     of them bucks has his best pony on short lead. Right beside him where he lies.”
    “That’s right,” Amos said. “That might very well be. And you know what happens then?”
    “We lose our hair. And no good done to nobody.”
    “That’s right.”
    Brad Mathison said, “In God’s name, will you try it, Mr. Edwards?”
    “All right.”
    Immediately Brad pulled back to feed his horses, and the others followed more slowly. Mart Pauley still lay on the edge of
     the rimrock after the others had pulled back. He was thinking of the change in Amos. No deadlock now, no hesitation in facing
     the worst answer there could be. No hope, either, visible in Amos’ mind that they would ever find their beloved people
     alive. Only that creepy relish he had heard when Amos spoke of killing Comanches.
    And thinking of Amos’ face as it was tonight, he remembered it as it was that worst night of the world, when Amos came out
     of the dark, into the shambles of the Edwards’ kitchen, carrying Martha’s arm clutched against his chest. The mutilation
     could not be seen when Martha lay in the box they had made for her. Her face looked young, and serene, and her crossed hands
     were at rest, one only slightly paler than the other. They were worn hands, betraying Martha’s age as her face did not, with
     little random scars on them. Martha was always hurting her hands. Mart thought, “She wore them out, she hurt them,
     working for us.”
    As he thought that, the key to Amos’ life suddenly became plain. All his uncertainties, his deadlocks with himself, his labors
     without pay, his perpetual gravitation back to his brother’s ranch—they all fell into line. As he saw what had shaped and
     twisted Amos’ life, Mart felt shaken up; he had lived with Amos most of his life without ever suspecting the truth. But
     neither had Henry suspected it—and Martha least of all.
    Amos was—had always been—in love with his brother’s wife.

Chapter Eight
    Amos held them where they were