“I’d like to know why, Gus,” Jasper said, annoyed that Gus was always singling him out for criticism.
“I’ll explain it when I get back,” Augustus said. “Come on, Pea, let’s go see if we can find Canada.”
They loped off, watched by the whole camp. The crew had been made melancholy by the approaching clouds. Po Campo had wandered off looking for roots.
Augustus and Pea Eye passed him nearly a mile from camp. “Po, you’re a rambler,” Augustus said. “What do you expect to find on this old plain?”
“Wild onions,” Po Campo said. “I’d like an onion.”
“I’d like a jug of bourbon whiskey, myself,” Augustus said. “I wonder which one of us will get his wish.”
“Adíos,” Po Campo said.
A day and a half later the two scouts rode over a grassy bluff and saw the Yellowstone River, a few miles away. Fifty or sixty buffalo were watering when they rode up. At the sight of the horsemen the buffalo scattered. The cloud bank had blown away and the blue sky was clear for as far as one could see. The river was swift but not deep—Augustus paused in his crossing and leaned down, drinking from his cupped hands. The water was cold.
“Sweet water, but it don’t compare with bourbon whiskey,” he said.
“Jasper won’t need them floats,” Pea Eye remarked.
“He might,” Augustus said. “He might fall off his horse if he gets real nervous. Let’s chase the buffalo for a while.”
“Why?” Pea asked. Po Campo had packed them plenty of meat. He couldn’t imagine why Gus would bother with buffalo. They were cumbersome to skin, and he and Gus had no need for so much meat.
Nonetheless, it was follow or be left, for Augustus had loped off after the buffalo, who had only run about a mile. He soon put them to flight again and raced along beside them, riding close to the herd. Pea Eye, caught by surprise, was left far behind in the race. He kept expecting to hear Gus’s big rifle, but he didn’t, and after a run of about two miles came upon Gus sitting peacefully on a little rise. The buffalo were still running, two or three miles ahead.
“Kill any?” Pea asked.
“No, I wasn’t hunting,” Augustus said.
“Did you just want to run ’em off, or what?” Pea asked. As usual, Gus’s behavior was a complete puzzle.
“Pea, you ain’t got your grip on the point,” Augustus said. “I just wanted to chase a buffalo once more. I won’t have the chance much longer, and nobody else will either, because there won’t be no buffalo to chase. It’s a grand sport too.”
“Them bulls can hook you,” Pea Eye reminded him. “Remember old Barlow? A buffalo bull hooked his horse and the horse fell on Barlow and broke his hip.”
“Barlow was a slow thinker,” Augustus observed. “He just loped along and got hooked.”
“A slow walker, too, once his hip got broke,” Pea Eye said. “I wonder what happened to Barlow.”
“I think he migrated to Seguin, or somewhere over in there,” Augustus said. “Married a fat widow and had a passel of offspring. You ought to have done the same, but here you are in Montana.”
“Well, I’d hate not to be a bachelor,” Pea Eye said.
“Just because it’s all you know don’t mean it’s all you’d enjoy,” Augustus said. “You had a chance at a fine widow right there in Lonesome Dove, as I recall.”
Pea Eye was sorry the subject of widows had come up. He had nearly forgotten the widow Cole and the day he had helped her take the washing off the line. He didn’t know why he hadn’t forgotten it completely—he surely had forgotten more important things. Yet there it was, and from time to time it shoved into his brain. If he had married some widow his brain would probably have been so full of such things that he would have no time to think, or even to keep his knife sharp.
“Ever meet any of the mountain men?” Augustus asked. “They got up in here and took the beavers.”
“Well, I met old Kit,” Pea Eye said. “You ought to remember. You was there.”
“Yes, I remember,” Augustus said. “I never thought much of Kit Carson.”
“Why, what was wrong with Kit Carson?” Pea Eye asked. “They say he could track anything.”
“Kit was vain,” Augustus said. “I won’t tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman. If I had gone north in my youth I might have got to be a mountain man, but I took to riverboating instead. The whores on them riverboats in my day barely wore enough clothes to pad a crutch.”
As they rode north they saw more buffalo, mostly small bunches of twenty or thirty. The third day north of the Yellowstone they killed a crippled buffalo calf and dined on its liver. In the morning, when they left, there were a number of buzzards and two or three prairie wolves hanging around, waiting for them to leave the carcass.
It was a beautiful morning, crisp for an hour or two and then sunny and warm. The country rolled on to the north, as it had for thousands of miles, brown in the distance, the prairie grass waving in the breeze.
“Lord, how much land does the Captain want?” Pea Eye asked. “Looks like this country around here would be good enough for anybody.”
“Plenty would settle for it, you’re right,” Augustus said. “Call might himself. But let’s just go on for a day or two more. We ain’t struck the Milk River yet.”
“Does it run milk?” Pea Eye asked.
“Now think a minute, Pea,” Augustus said. “How could it run milk when there ain’t no cows up here yet?”
“Why did they call it the Milk, then? Milk is milk.”
“Crazy is crazy, too,” Augustus said. “That’s what I’ll be before long from listening to you. Crazy.”
“Well, Jasper’s mind might break if he don’t stop worrying about them rivers,” Pea Eye allowed. “I expect the rest of us will keep our wits.”
Augustus laughed heartily at the notion of the Hat Creek outfit keeping its wits. “It’s true they could be kept in a thimble,” he said, “but who brought a thimble?”
There was a little rise to the west, and Augustus loped over to it to see what the land looked like in that direction. Pea trotted along north, as he had been doing, not paying much attention. Gus was always loping off to test the view, as he called it, and Pea didn’t feel obliged to follow him every time.
Then Pea heard the sound of a running horse and looked for Gus, supposing he had jumped another little bunch of buffalo. What he saw froze him instantly in place. Gus was racing down the little slope he had just gone up, with at least twenty mounted Indians hot on his heels. He must have ridden right into them. The Indians were shooting both guns and arrows. A bullet cut the grass ahead of Pea and he yanked out his rifle and popped a shot back at the Indians before whirling his horse and fleeing. Gus and he had crossed a good-sized creek less than an hour back, with some trees along it and some weeds and shrubbery in the creekbed. He assumed Gus must be racing for that, since it was the only shelter on the wide prairie. Even as he started, Pea saw five or six Indians veer toward him. He swerved over to join Gus, who had two arrows in his leg. Gus was flailing his horse with his rifle barrel and the horse was running full out.
Fortunately the Indians were poorly mounted—their horses were no match for the Hat Creek horses, and the two men soon widened the gap between them and their pursuers. They were out of range of arrows, and of bullets too, Pea hoped, but he had hardly hoped it when a bullet stung him just above the shoulder blade. But the creek was only three or four miles ahead. If they could make it there would be time enough to worry about wounds.
Gus was trying to pull the arrows out of his leg as he rode, but he was having no luck.
They saw the curve of the little creek from two miles away and angled for the nearest juncture. The Indians had fallen nearly a quarter of a mile back, but were still coming. When they struck the creek Augustus raced along the bank until he found a spot where the weeds and brush were thickest. Then he jumped his horse off the bank and grabbed his saddlebags.
“Get all the ammun
ition you can,” he said. “We’re in for a shooting match. And tie the horses in the best cover you can find, or they’ll shoot ’em. This is long country to be afoot in.”
Then he hobbled to the bank, wishing he had time to cut the two arrows out of his leg. But if they were poisoned it was already too late, and if he didn’t do some fine shooting it wouldn’t matter anyway because the Indians would overrun them.
Pea heard the big Henry rifle begin to roar as he dragged the sweating horses into the thickest part of the underbrush. It was thick but low, and he didn’t think there was much chance for the horses. He yanked the saddlebags and bedrolls off both horses and was hiding them under the bank when Gus stopped firing for a moment.
“Get my saddle,” he said. “I’ll show you a trick.”
Then he began to fire again. Evidently he had turned the Indians, or they would already have been in the creekbed. Pea dutifully got the saddle.
When he got back, Gus was reloading. Pea peeped over the bank and saw the Indians, stopped some distance away. Many of them had dismounted and were standing behind their horses, using them as shields.
“How many’d you kill?” he asked.
“Not but three,” Augustus said. “This is a smart bunch we’re up against. They seen right off a rush would cost them dear.”
Pea Eye watched the Indians for a while. They weren’t yelling, and they didn’t seem excited.
“I don’t see what’s so smart about them,” he said. “They’re just standing there.”
“Yes, but they’re out of range,” Augustus said. “They’re hoping to tempt me to waste ammunition.”
Augustus propped the saddle on the bank in such a way that he could shoot under it and be that much safer if the Indians shot back. He then proceeded to shoot six times, rapidly. Five of the Indians’ horses dropped, and a sixth ran squealing over the prairie—it fell several hundred yards away. The Indians fired several shots in reply, their bullets slicing harmlessly into the underbrush.
The party of Indians then split. Several Indians went north of them, several south, and eight or ten stayed where they were.
“Well, we’re practically surrounded,” Augustus said. “I don’t expect we’ll hear any more from them till dark.”
“I’d hate to wait around here till dark,” Pea Eye said.
“Did you know you’re shot?” Augustus asked.
Pea had forgotten it. Sure enough, the front of his shirt was soaked with blood. He took it off and Augustus examined the wound, which was clean. The bullet had gone right through.
They turned their attention to the arrows in Augustus’s left leg. Augustus twisted at them whenever he got a moment. One arrow he soon got out, but the other wouldn’t budge.
“This one’s in deep,” he said. “That brave wasn’t more than twenty yards away when he let fly. I think it’s worked under the bone, but it ain’t poisoned. If it was I’d be feeling it by now.”
Pea had a try at removing the arrow, while Gus gritted his teeth and held his leg steady with both hands. The arrow wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t even turn, though Pea Eye twisted hard enough to cause a stream of blood to flow down Gus’s leg.
As they were working with the arrow there was a sudden terrified squeal from the horses. Augustus hobbled over, drawing his pistol, and saw that both horses were down, their throats cut, their blood very bright on the green weeds and bushes.
“Stay back, Pea,” he said, crouching. The Indian that had killed the horses was there somewhere, in the underbrush, but he couldn’t see him.
“Watch to the north, Pea,” he said. “I don’t think these boys want to stay around here till dark, either.”
He quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead. Keeping a bush directly in front of him he edged very slowly to the bank, just high enough that he could see the tops of the weeds and underbrush. Then he waited. Once the dying horses finally stopped thrashing, it was very still. Augustus regretted that his preoccupation with the arrows had made him so lax that he had failed to protect the horses. It put them in a ticklish spot. It was over a hundred miles back to the Yellowstone and in all likelihood the herd hadn’t even got there yet.
He kept his eyes focused on the tops of the underbrush. It was perfectly windless in the creek bottom, and if the underbrush moved it would be because someone moved it. His big pistol was cocked. He didn’t move, and time stretched out. Minutes passed. Augustus carefully kept the sweat wiped out of his eyes, concentrating on keeping his focus. The silence seemed to ring, it was so absolute. There were no flies buzzing yet, no birds flying, nothing. He would have bet the Indian was not twenty yards away from him, and yet he had no inkling of precisely where he was.
“Ain’t you coming back, Gus?” Pea Eye asked, after several minutes.
Augustus didn’t answer. He watched the tops of the weeds, patiently. It was no time for hurry, much less for conversation. Patience was an Indian virtue. He, himself, didn’t have it in day-to-day life, but he could summon it when it seemed essential. Then he heard a movement behind him, and glanced around quickly, to see if Pea had suddenly decided to take a stroll. When he did he saw the edge of a rifle extending an inch or two from the weeds, pointed not at himself but at Pea. He immediately fired twice into the weeds and an Indian flopped over as a fish might flop.
A second later, as the echo of the gun died, he heard a click a few yards to his right. He whirled and fired at it. A moment later the underbrush began to shake as if a huge snake were wiggling through it. Augustus ran into the weeds and saw the wounded Indian trying to crawl away. He at once shot him in the back of the head, and didn’t stop to turn him over. Backing out of the weeds, he stepped on the pistol that had misfired, an old cap-and-ball gun. He stuck it in his belt and hurried back to Pea, who looked white. He had sense enough to realize he had just almost been shot. Augustus glanced at the other dead Indian, a fat boy of maybe seventeen. His rifle was an old Sharps carbine, which Augustus threw to Pea.
“We gotta move,” he said. “This cover’s working against us. But for luck we’d both be dead now already. What we need is a stretch with a steep bank and no cover.”
They worked their way upstream, carrying the saddle, saddlebags and guns, for nearly a mile, hugging the bank. Augustus was limping badly but didn’t stop to worry about it. Finally they came to a bend in the creek, where the bank was sheer and about ten feet high. The creek bottom was nearly bare of foliage.
“Let’s dig,” Augustus said, and began to work with his knife to create a shallow cave under the bank. They worked furiously for half an hour until both were drenched with sweat and covered with dirt. Augustus used the stock of the Indian boy’s carbine as a rude shovel and tried to shape the dirt they raked out into low breastworks on either side of the cave. They watched as best they could, but saw no Indians.
“Maybe they gave up,” Pea Eye said. “You kilt five so far.”
“Five reasons why they won’t give up,” Augustus said. “They’ll fight for their dead, since they expect to meet them again. Ain’t you learned that by now?”
Pea Eye could not be sure that he had learned anything about Indians except that he was scared of them, and he had learned that long before he ever saw one. The digging was hard work, but they didn’t dare stop. The Indians might show up at any time.
“Which Indians is these we’re fighting?” he asked.
“They didn’t introduce themselves, Pea,” Augustus said. “It might be written on these arrows. I’m going to be one-legged if we don’t get this other arrow out pretty soon.”
No sooner had he said it than it began to rain arrows, all arching over the south bank of the creek. “Crawl in,” Augustus said. He and Pea scrunched back into the cave and stacked the saddlebags in front of them. Many of the arrows went over the creekbed entirely and into the prairie on the other side. A few stuck in the earthworks they had thrown up, and one or two fell in the water.
“They’re just hoping to get lucky,” Augustus said.
“If my dern leg was better I’d sneak over to the other side of the creek and whittle down the odds a little more.”
The shower of arrows soon stopped, but the two men stayed in the cave, taking no chances.
“I’ve got to push this arrow on through,” Augustus said. “I may pass out, and if I do, I better do it now. When it gets dark we’ll both need to be watching.”
He stopped talking and listened. He put his finger to his lips so Pea Eye would be quiet. Someone was on the bank above them—at least one Indian, maybe more. He motioned to Pea to have his pistol ready, in case the Indians tried to rush them. Augustus was hoping for a rush, confident that with the two of them shooting they could decimate the Indians to such an extent that the survivors might leave. If the Indians couldn’t be discouraged and driven off, then the situation was serious. They had no horses, the herd was more than a hundred miles away, and he was crippled. They could follow the creek down to the Yellowstone and perhaps strike Miles City, but it would be a slow trip for him to make crippled. Given his choice of gambles, he would prefer a fight. They might even be able to catch one of the Indian horses.
But the rush never came. Whoever was above them left. The creek bank on their side was already in shadow. Augustus uncocked his pistol and stretched his leg out again. He knew better than to put off anything to do with wounds, so he grasped the arrow and began to push it on through his leg. The pain was severe and caused a cold sweat to break out but at least the arrow moved.
“My lord, Gus, you’re shot too,” Pea Eye said. When Augustus bent over to twist the arrow, Pea noticed that the back of his shirt, down low near his belt, was caked with blood. The dirt from their diggings had covered it, but there was no doubt that it was blood.
“One wound at a time,” Augustus said. It took both hands to move the arrow. The skin on his leg began to bulge.
“Cut,” he said to Pea. “Pretend I’m snakebit.”
Pea went white. He hated even looking at wounds. The thought of cutting Gus made him want to be sick, but the fact that he had a sharp knife helped. He barely touched the skin and the cut was made. The bloody tip of the arrow poked through. Gus shoved the tip on out and then fainted. Pea Eye had to pull the arrow on through. It was as hard as pulling a bolt out of a board, but he got it out.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 220
