Lonesome Dove Part 46

In the morning, when Joe opened his eyes, Janey was squatting by the cold campfire. She still wore her sack. Even July had not heard her come. When July woke up she handed him back the six dollars he had given the woman. July just took it, looking surprised. Joe felt annoyed. It was wrong of the girl to come without July's permission. If the Indians carried her off, he for one would not be too sorry-although, when he thought about it, he realized he himself might be an easier catch. The girl had followed them at night, across the plains. It was something he couldn't have done.

All that day the girl ran along on her own, never getting far behind. She was not like any of the girls Joe had known in Fort Smith, none of whom could have kept up for five minutes. Joe didn't know what to make of her, and neither did July, or even Roscoe, who had found her. But soon they were far out on the plains, and it was clear to everyone that Janey was along for the trip.

53.

LONG BEFORE THE WHISKEY BOAT STOPPED, Elmira knew she was going to have trouble with Big Zwey. The man had never approached her, or even spoken to her, but every time she went out of her shed to sit and watch the water, she felt his eyes on her. And when they loaded the whiskey in wagons and started across the plains for Bents' Fort, his eyes followed her in whatever wagon she chose to ride for the day.

It seemed to her it might be the fact that she was so small that made Big Zwey so interested. It was a problem she had had before. Huge men seemed to like her because she was so tiny. Big Zwey was even larger than the buffalo hunter who had caused her to run to July.

Sometimes in the evening, when he brought her her food, Fowler would sit and talk with her a bit. He had a scar which ran over his nose and down across his lips into his beard. He had a rough look, but his eyes were dreamy.

"This whiskey-hauling business has about petered out," he said one evening. "Indians kept the trade going. Now they've about got them all penned up, down in these parts. I may go up north."

"Are there many towns up north?" she asked, remembering that Dee had mentioned going north. Dee liked his comforts-hotels and barbershops and such. Once she had offered to cut his hair and had made a mess of it. Dee had been good-natured about it, but he did remark that it paid to stick to professionals. He was vain about his looks.

"There's Ogallala," Fowler said. "That's on the Platte. There's towns in Montana, but that's a long way."

Big Zwey had a deep voice. She could sometimes hear him talking to the men, even over the creak of the wagon wheels. He wore a long buffalo coat and seldom took it off, even when the days were hot.

One morning there was great excitement. Just as the morning mists began to thin, the man on guard claimed to have seen six Indians on a ridge. He was a young men, very nervous. If there were Indians, they did not reappear. During the day the men surprised three buffalo and killed one of them. That night Fowler brought Elmira samples of the liver and the tongue-the best parts, he said.

The men had talked about the Fort so much that Elmira had supposed it was a real town, but it was just a few scattered buildings, none in good repair. There was only one woman there, the wife of a blacksmith, and she had gone crazy due to the death of all five of her children. She sat in a chair all day, saying nothing to anyone.

Fowler did his best for Elmira. He got the traders to let her have a little room-just a tiny, dirty closet, really. It was next to a warehouse where piles of buffalo skins were stored. The smell of the skins was worse than anything that had happened on the river. Her room was full of fleas that had escaped from the skins. She spent much of her time scratching.

Though the Fort was nothing much to see, it was a busy place, with riders coming and going all the time. Watching them, Elmira wished she was a man so she could just buy a horse and ride away. The men let her alone, but they did look at her whenever she left her room. There were several wild-looking Mexicans who scared her worse than the buffalo hunters.

After a week of scratching, she began to realize she had done a foolish thing, taking the whiskey boat. In Fort Smith, all she had felt was an overwhelming desire to go. The day she left she felt that her life depended on getting out of Fort Smith that day-she had a fear that July would suddenly show up again.

She didn't regret leaving, but neither did she calculate on landing in a place as bad as Bent's Fort. In the cow towns, stages came and went, at least-if you didn't like Dodge you could always go to Abilene. But no stage came to Bent's Fort-just a wagon track that soon disappeared into the emptiness of the plains.

Though she had not been bothered, the men at the Fort looked very rough. "They don't think you're worth robbing," Fowler said, but she wasn't sure he was right. Some of the Mexicans looked like they might do worse than rob her if the mood struck them. Once, sitting under the little shed outside her room, she saw a fight between two Mexicans. She heard a yell and saw each man pull a knife. They went at one another like butchers. Their clothes were soon b.l.o.o.d.y, but evidently the cuts were not serious, for after a while they stopped fighting and went back to gambling together.

Fowler said there might be a party of hunters going north, and that perhaps they would take her, but a week pa.s.sed and the party didn't materialize. Then one day Fowler brought her a little plate of food, under her shed. He looked at her sheepishly, as if he had something to say but didn't want to say it.

"Big Zwey wants to marry you," he said finally, in an apologetic tone.

"Well, I'm already married," she said.

"What if he just wants to marry you temporary?" Fowler asked.

"It's always temporary," Elmira said. "Why don't he ask himself?"

"Zwey ain't much of a talker," Fowler said.

"I've heard him talk," she said. "He talks to the men."

Fowler laughed and said no more. Elmira felt angry. She was in a spot if some man was wanting to marry her. Someone had thrown a fresh buffalo skin into the warehouse and she could hear the flies buzzing on it from where she sat.

"He'll take you to Ogallala, if you'll do it," Fowler said. "You might think about it. He ain't as bad as some."

"How would you know?" she asked. "You ain't been married to him."

Fowler shrugged. "He might be your best bet," he said. "I'm going back downriver next week. A couple of hide haulers are taking a load to Kansas, and they might take you, but it'd be a hard trip. You'd have to smell them stinkin' hides all the way. Anyway, the hide haulers are rough," he said. "I think Zwey would treat you all right."

"I don't want to go to Kansas," she said. "I been to Kansas."

What ruined that was that she was pregnant, and showing. Some of the saloons weren't particular, but it was always harder to get work if you were pregnant. Besides, she didn't want to work, she wanted Dee, who wouldn't mind that she was pregnant.

Big Zwey began to spend hours just watching her. He didn't pretend to gamble or do anything else, he just watched her. She sat under her shed in one patch of shade, and he sat in another about thirty yards away, just watching. He didn't pretend to gamble or do anything else.

Once when he was watching, some riders spotted a little herd of buffalo. The other hunters were wild to go after them, but Zwey wouldn't go. They yelled at him and argued with him, but he just sat. Finally they went off without him. One hunter tried to borrow his gun, but Zwey wouldn't give it up. He sat there with his big rifle across his lap, looking at Elmira.

It became amusing to her, her power over the man. He had never spoken to her, not one word, and yet he would sit for hours, thirty yards away. It was something, what must go through men's minds where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.

One morning she came out of her closet earlier than usual-she had a touch of morning sickness and wanted some fresh air. When she opened the door, she almost b.u.mped into Big Zwey, who had just been standing outside her door. Her sudden appearance embarra.s.sed him so that he gave her one appalled look and turned and went off, practically at a trot, putting a safe distance between them. He was a very heavy man, and the sight of him trying to run made her laugh out loud, something she hadn't done in a while. He didn't turn to look back at her again until he was safely back in his spot, and then he turned fearfully, as if he expected to be shot for having stood by her door.

"Tell him I'll go," she said to Fowler that evening. "I guess he ain't so bad."

"You tell him," Fowler said.

The next morning she walked over to where Big Zwey sat. When he saw her coming, it seemed for a second like he might bolt, but she was too close. Instead, he sat as if paralyzed, fear in his eyes.

"I'll go if you think you can get me to Ogallala," she said. "I'll pay you what it's worth to you."

Zwey didn't say anything.

"How'll we travel?" she asked. "I ain't much good at riding horses."

Big Zwey didn't respond for about a minute. Elmira was about to lose patience when he brushed his mouth with the back of his hand, as if to clean it.

"Could get that there hide wagon," he said, pointing to a rundown piece of equipment a few yards away. To Elmira the wagon didn't look like it could travel ten yards, much less all the way to Nebraska.

"Could get the blacksmith to fix it," Big Zwey said. Now that he had spoken to her and not been struck by lightning, he felt a little easier.

"Did you mean just us two to go?" Elmira asked.

The question gave him so much pause that she almost wished she hadn't asked it. He fell silent again, his eyes troubled.

"Might take Luke," he said.

Luke was a weaselly little buffalo hunter with only a thumb and one finger on his left hand. He carried dice and gambled when he could get anyone to gamble with him. Once on the boat she had asked Fowler about him, and Fowler said a butcher had cut his fingers off with a cleaver, for some reason.

"When can we go?" she asked. It turned out to be a decision Big Zwey wasn't immediately up to making. He pondered the matter for some time but reached no conclusion.

"I want to get out of here," she said. "I'm tired of smelling buffalo hides."

"Get that blacksmith to fix that wagon," Zwey responded. He stood up, picking up the tongue of the wagon and began to drag it toward the blacksmith's shop, a hundred yards away. The next morning, the wagon, more or less patched, was sitting outside her closet. When she walked over to inspect it she saw that Luke was in it, sleeping off a drunk. He slept with his mouth open, showing black teeth, and not many of them at that.

Luke had ignored her on the trip upriver, but when he woke up he hopped out of the wagon and came right over, a grin on his weaselly face.

"Big Zwey and I have partnered up," he said. "Can you drive a wagon?"

"I guess I could if we go slow," she said.

Luke had spiky red hair that stuck out in all directions. A skinning knife a foot long was slung in a scabbard under one shoulder. He grinned constantly, exposing his black teeth and, unlike Zwey, was not a bit afraid to look her in the eye. He had an insolent manner and spat tobacco juice constantly while he talked.

"Zwey went to buy some mules," he said. "We got two horses but they won't do for the wagon. Anyway, we might get some hides while you're driving the wagon."

"I don't like the smell of hides," she said pointedly, but not pointedly enough for Luke to get the message.

"You get where you don't smell 'em after a while," he said. "I don't hardly even notice it, I've smelled 'em so much."

Luke had a little quirt and was always nervously popping himself on the leg with it. "You skeert of Indians?" he asked.

"I don't know," Elmira said. "I guess I don't like 'em much."

"I've already killed five of them," Luke said.

Big Zwey finally arrived leading two scrawny mules and carrying a harness he had traded for. The harness was in bad repair but there was plenty of rawhide around, and they soon had it tied together fairly well. Luke was quite dexterous with his thumb and little finger. He did better than Zwey, whose hands were too big for harness making.

She soon got the hang of driving the mules. There was not much to it, for the mules were content to follow the two men on horseback. It was only when the men loped off to hunt that the mules were likely to balk. On the second day out, with the men gone, she crossed a creek whose banks were so steep and rough that she felt sure the wagon would turn over. She was ready to jump and take her chances, but by a miracle it stayed upright.

That day the men killed twenty buffalo. Elmira had to wait in the sun all day while they skinned them out. Finally she got down and sat under the wagon, which provided a little shade. The men piled the b.l.o.o.d.y, smelly hides into the wagon, which didn't suit the mules. They hated the smell of hides as much as she did.

Big Zwey had lapsed back into silence, leaving all the talking to Luke, who chattered away whether anybody listened to him or not.

Often Elmira had a nervous stomach. The jostling of the wagon took getting used to. The plains looked smooth in the distance, but they were surprisingly rough to pa.s.s over. Big Zwey had given her a blanket to put over the rough seat-it kept her from getting splinters but didn't cushion the b.u.mps.

Alone with the two men, in the middle of the great, empty prairie, she felt apprehensive. In the cow towns there had been lots of girls around-if a man got mean, she could yell. On the boat it hadn't seemed as dangerous, because the men were always fighting and gambling among themselves. But at night on the prairie there were only the three of them, and nothing much to keep anyone busy. Big Zwey sat and looked at her through the campfire, and Luke looked, too, while he talked. She didn't know if Big Zwey considered that in some way he had married her already. She worried that he might suddenly come over and want the marriage to begin, though so far he had been too shy even to speak to her much. For all she knew he might expect her to be married to Luke, too, and she didn't want that. The thought made her so nervous that she couldn't eat the buffalo meat they offered her-anyway, it was tougher than any meat she had ever tried to chew. She chewed on one bite until her jaws got tired and then spat it out.

But when she went to the wagon and made the one blanket into a kind of bed, neither man followed. She lay awake for a long time, apprehensive, but the men sat by the fire, occasionally looking her way but making no move to disturb her. Luke got his dice out and soon they were playing. Elmira was able to sleep, but awoke to the roll of thunder a few hours later. The men were asleep by the dying fire. Across the prairie she began to see lightning darting down the sky, and within a few minutes big drops of water hit her. In a minute she was wet. She jumped down and crawled under the wagon. It wasn't much protection but it was some. Soon lightning was crashing all around and the thunder came in big, flat cracks, as if a building had fallen down. It frightened her so that she hugged her knees and trembled. When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.

The rainstorm soon pa.s.sed, but she lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to water drip off the wagon. It grew very dark. She didn't know what might have happened to the men.

But in the morning they were right where they had gone to sleep, wet as muskrats but ready to drink a pot of coffee. Neither even commented on the storm. Elmira decided they were used to hard traveling and that she had better get used to it too.

Soon she began to talk to the mules as they plodded along. She didn't say much, and the mules didn't answer, but it made the long hot days pa.s.s a little faster.

54.

AUGUSTUS SPENT HALF THE FIRST DAY finding the tracks, for Blue Duck had been cool enough to lead Lorena through the stampeding cattle, so that their tracks would be blotted out by the thousands of cattle tracks. It was a fine trick, and one not many men would dare to try.

Years had pa.s.sed since Augustus had done any serious tracking. He rode around all morning, trying to remember the last man he had tracked, just to give himself perspective. It seemed to him that the last man had been an incompetent horsethief named Webster Witter, who had rustled horses in the Blanco country at one time. He and Call had gone after him one day by themselves and caught him and hung him before sundown. But the tracking had been elemental, due to the fact that the man had been driving forty stolen horses.

The thing he remembered best about Webster Witter was that he had been a tall man and they caught him out in the scrub and had to hang him to a short tree. It was that or take him back, and Call was against taking him back. Call believed summary justice was often the only justice, and in those days he was right, since they had to depend on circuit judges who often as not didn't show up.

"If we take him back he'll bribe the jailer, or dig out or something, and we'll have to catch him at it again," Call said. It never occurred to Call just to shoot someone he could hang, and in this instance Augustus didn't suggest it, for they had rushed out without much ammunition and were traveling in rough country.

Fortunately, Webster's neck broke when they whipped the horse out from under him, otherwise he could have stood there and laughed at them, for the limb of the mesquite sagged badly and both his feet drug the ground.

That had been at least twelve years ago, and Augustus soon concluded that his tracking skills had rusted to the point of being unusable. The only horse tracks he found for the first three hours belonged to Hat Creek horses. He almost decided to go back and get Deets, though he knew Call would be reluctant to surrender him.

Finally, by circling wide to the northwest, Augustus crossed the three horses' tracks. Blue Duck had tried the one trick-crossing the stampede-but that was all. After that the tracks bore straight for the northwest, so unerringly that Augustus soon found he didn't need to pay much attention to them. If he lost them he could usually pick them up within half a mile.

He rode as hard as he dared, but he had only one horse and couldn't afford to ruin him. At each watering he let him have a few minutes of rest. He rode all night, and the next day the tracks were still bearing northwest. He felt unhappy with himself for he wasn't catching up. Lorena was getting a taste of hard travel the like of which she had never imagined. Probably she would have worse to deal with than hard travel unless she was very lucky, and Augustus knew it was his fault. He should have packed her into camp the minute he discovered who Blue Duck was; in retrospect he couldn't imagine why he hadn't. It was the kind of lapse he had been subject to all his life: things that were clearly dangerous didn't worry him enough.

He tried to swallow his regrets and concentrate on finding her: after all, it had happened, and why he had let it no longer particularly mattered. Blue Duck was a name from their past. Having him show up in their midst fifteen years later had thrown his reasoning off.

The second day he stopped tracking altogether, since it was plain Blue Duck was heading for the Staked Plains. That took in a lot of territory, of course, but Augustus thought he knew where Blue Duck would go: to an area north and west of the Palo Duro Canyon-it was there he had always retreated to when pursued.

Once Call and he had sat on the western edge of the great canyon, looking across the brown waterless distances to the west. They had finally decided to end their pursuit there while they had a fair chance of getting back alive. It wasn't Indians they feared so much as lack of water. It had been midsummer and the plains looked seared, what gra.s.s there was, brown and brittle. Call was frustrated; he hated to turn back before he caught his man.

"There's got to be water out there," Call said. "They cross it, and they can't drink dirt."

"Yes, but they know where it is and we don't," Augustus pointed out. "They can kill their horses getting to it-they got more horses. But if we kill ours it's a dern long walk back to San Antonio."

That afternoon he crossed the Clear Fork of the Brazos and pa.s.sed a half-built cabin, abandoned and empty. It was a vivid enough reminder of the power of the Comanches-their ma.s.sacres caused plenty of settlers to retreat while they still had legs to retreat on. Call and he had watched through the Fifties as the line of the frontier advanced only to collapse soon after. The men and women who came up the Trinity and the Brazos were no strangers to hardship-but hardship was one thing, terror another. The land was s.p.a.cious and theirs for the taking, but land couldn't cancel out fear-a fact that Call never understood. It annoyed him that the whites gave up and retreated.

"I wish they'd stick," he said many times. "If they would, there'd soon be enough of them to beat back the Indians."

"You ain't never laid in bed all night with a scared woman," Augustus said. "You can't start a farm if you've got to live in a fort. Them that starts the farms have got to settle off by themselves, which means they're easy to cut off and carve up."

"Well, they could leave the women for a while," Call said. "Send for them when it's safe."

"Yes, but a man that goes to the trouble to take a wife don't generally want to go off and leave her," Augustus pointed out. "It means doing the ch.o.r.es all by yourself. Besides, without a wife handy you won't be getting no kids, and kids are a wonderful source of free labor. They're cheaper than slaves by a d.a.m.n sight."

They had argued the point for years, but fruitlessly, for Call had no sympathy for human weakness. Augustus put it down to a lack of imagination. Call could never imagine what it was like to be scared. They had been in tight spots, but usually that meant action, and in battles things happened too fast for fear to paralyze the mind of a man like Call. He couldn't imagine what it was like to go to bed every night scared that you and your family would feel the knives of the Comanches before sunrise.

That night Augustus stopped to rest his horse, making a cold camp on a little bluff and eating some jerky he had brought along. He was in the scrubby post-oak country near the Brazos and from his bluff could see far across the moonlit valleys.

It struck him that he had forgotten emptiness such as existed in the country that stretched around him. After all, for years he had lived within the sound of the piano from the Dry Bean, the sound of the church bell in the little Lonesome Dove church, the sound of Bol whacking the dinner bell. He even slept within the sound of Pea Eye's snoring, which was as regular as the ticking of a clock.

But here there was no sound, not any. The coyotes were silent, the crickets, the locusts, the owls. There was only the sound of his own horse grazing. From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness. Not the talk of men over their cards, nothing. Though he had ridden hard he felt strangely rested, just from the silence.

The next day he found the carca.s.s of Lorie's mare. By the end of the day he was out of the scrub. When he crossed the Wichita he angled west. He had not seen Blue Duck's tracks in two days but he didn't care. He had always had confidence in his instincts and felt he knew where the man would stop. Possibly he was bound for Adobe Walls, one of the Bents' old forts. This one, on the Canadian, had never been much of a success. The Bents had abandoned it, and it became a well-known gathering place for buffalo hunters, as well as for anyone crossing the plains.