Butcher's Crossing

by John Williams

  “It’s all right,” Francine said, her breath warm against his ear. “Don’t think of anything.” She laughed softly. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said shakily.

  She pulled away from him a little and looked at his face; it seemed to him that her lips had grown thicker, and that her eyes had darkened. She moved her body against him. “I wanted you the first time I saw you,” she said. “Without you even touching me, or talking to me.” She moved away, her eyes still dark upon him; she reached her arms up behind her neck and began unsnapping her dress. He watched her numbly, his arms held awkwardly at his sides. Suddenly, she shook her body and the dress fell in a gray heap at her feet. She was nude; her body gleamed in the lamplight. Delicately she stepped out of the dress, and her flesh quivered with the movement; her heavy breasts swung slowly as she walked toward him.

  “Now,” she said, and lifted her lips up to him. He kissed her with dry lips, tasting wetness; she whispered against his lips, and her hands fumbled with his shirt front; he felt her hands go inside his shirt, go lightly over the tensed muscles of his chest. “Now,” she said again; it was a bruised sound, and it seemed to echo in his head.

  He pulled away from her a little to look at her soft heavy body that clung to him like velvet, held there of its own nature; there was a serenity on her face, almost as if it were asleep; and he felt that she was beautiful. But suddenly there came into his mind the words that Schneider had used, back in the saloon—he had said he hadn’t seen a better looking whore since he had left St. Louis; and the look of her face changed, though he could not tell in what respect. He was assailed by the knowledge that others had seen this face as he was seeing it now; that others had kissed her on her wet lips, had heard the voice he was hearing, had felt the same breath he was feeling upon his own face, now. They had quickly paid their money, and had gone, and others had come, and others. He had a quick and irrational image of hundreds of men, steadily streaming in and out of a room. He turned, pulled away from her, suddenly dead inside himself.

  “What is it?” Francine said sleepily. “Come back.”

  “No!” he said hoarsely, and flung himself across the room, stumbling on the edge of the rug. “My God!...No. I’m—I’m sorry.” He looked up. Francine stood dumbly in the center of the room; her arms were held out as if to describe a shape to him; there was a look of bewilderment in her eyes. “I can’t,” he said to her, as if he were explaining something. “I can’t.”

  He looked at her once more; she did not move, and the look of bewilderment did not leave her face. He pulled open the door and let the knob fly violently from his hand; he ran into the dark hall and stumbled down its length, opened the door to the landing, and stood for a moment on the landing, breathing air in deep, famished gulps. When his legs regained some of their strength, he went down the stairs, feeling his way by the rough bannister.

  He stood for a moment on the rough sidewalk, and looked up and down the street. He could not see much of Butcher’s Crossing in the darkness. He looked across the street at his hotel; a dim light came from the doorway. He went across the dusty street toward it. He did not think of Francine, or of what had happened in the room above Jackson’s Saloon. He thought of the three or four days that he would have to wait in this place before Miller and the others were ready. He thought of how he might spend them, and he wondered how he might press them into one crumpled bit of time that he could toss away.

  PART TWO

  I

  In the early dawn, on the twenty-fifth day of August, the four men met behind the livery stable where their wagon, loaded with six weeks’ provisions, waited for them. A sleepy stable man, scratching his matted hair and cursing mechanically under his breath, yoked their oxen to the wagon; the oxen snorted and moved uneasily in the faint light cast by a lantern set on the ground. His task completed, the stable man grunted and turned away from the four men; he shambled back toward the livery stable, swinging the lantern carelessly beside him, and dropped upon a pile of filthy blankets that lay on the open ground outside. Lying on his side, he raised the globe of the lantern and blew out the flame. In the darkness, three of the men mounted their horses; the fourth clambered into the wagon. For a few moments none of them spoke or moved. In the silence and darkness the heavy breathing of the stable man came regular and deep, and the thin squeak of leather upon wood sounded as the oxen moved against their yokes.

  From the wagon Charley Hoge cleared his throat and said: “Ready?”

  Miller sighed deeply, and answered, his voice muffled and quiet: “Ready.”

  Upon the silence came the sudden pop of braided leather as Charley Hoge let his bull-whip out above the oxen, and his voice, shrill and explosive, cracked: “Harrup!”

  The oxen strained against the weight of the wagon, their hooves pawing and thudding dully in the earth; the wheels groaned against the hickory axles; for a moment there was a jumble of sound—wood strained against its grain, rawhide and leather slapped together and pulled in high thin screeches, and metal jangled against metal; then the sound gave way to an easy rumble as the wheels turned and the wagon slowly began to move behind the oxen.

  The three men preceded the wagon around the livery stable and into the wide dirt street of Butcher’s Crossing. Miller rode first, slouched in his saddle; behind him, forming a broad-based triangle, rode Schneider and Andrews. Still, no one spoke. Miller looked ahead into the darkness that was gradually beginning to lift; Schneider kept his head down, as if he were asleep in his saddle; and Andrews looked on either side of him at the little town that he was leaving. The town was ghostly and dim in the morning darkness; the fronts of the buildings were gray shapes that rose out of the earth like huge eroded stones, and the half-dugouts appeared to be piles of rubble thrown carelessly about open holes. The procession passed Jackson’s Saloon, and soon it was past the town. In the flat country beyond the town, it seemed to be darker; the clopping of the horses’ hooves became dull and regular in the ears of the men, and the thin clogging odor of dust clung about their nostrils, and was not blown away in the slowness of their passage.

  Beyond the town the procession passed on its left McDonald’s small shack and the pole-fenced brining pits; Miller turned his head, grunted something inaudible to himself, and chuckled. A little past the clump of cottonwood trees, where the road began to go upward over the mounded banks of the stream, the three men on horseback came to a pause and the wagon behind them creaked to a halt. They turned and looked back, widening their eyes against the darkness. As they looked at the vague sprawling shape of Butcher’s Crossing, a dim yellow light, disembodied and hanging casually in the darkness, came on; from somewhere a horse neighed and snorted. With one accord, they turned again on their horses and began to descend the road that led across the river.

  Where they crossed, the river was shallow; its trickling around the flat rocks that had been laid in the soft mud as a bed for crossing had a murmurous sound that was intensified by the darkness; the dim light from the filling moon caught irregularly upon the water as it flowed, and there was visible upon the stream a constant glitter that made it appear wider and deeper than it was. The water barely came above their horses’ hooves, and flowed unevenly over the turning rims of the wagon wheels.

  A few moments after they crossed the stream, Miller again pulled his horse to a halt. In the dimness, the other men could see him raise himself in the saddle and lean toward the lifting darkness in the west. As if it were heavy, he lifted his arm and pointed in that direction.

  “We’ll cut across country here,” he said, “and hit the Smoky Hill trail about noon.”

  The first pink streaks of light were beginning to show in the east. The group turned off the road and set across the flat land; in a few minutes, the narrow road was no longer visible to them. Will Andrews turned in his saddle and looked back; he could not be sure of the point where they had left the road, and he could see no mark to guide them in their journey westward. The wagon wheels
went easily and smoothly through the thick yellow-green grass; the wagon left narrow parallel lines behind it, which were quickly swallowed up in the level distance.

  The sun rose behind them, and they went more quickly forward, as if pushed by the increasing heat. The air was clear, and the sky was without clouds; the sun beat against their backs and brought sweat through their rough clothing.

  Once the group passed a small hut with a sod roof. The hut was set on the open plain; behind it a small plot of ground had been cleared once, but now it was going back to the yellow-green grass that covered the land. A broken wagon wheel lay near the front entrance, and a heavy wooden plow was rotting beside it. Through the wide door, at the side of which hung a scrap of weathered canvas, they could see an overturned table and the floor covered with dust and rubble. Miller turned in his saddle and spoke to Andrews:

  “Gave it up.” His voice had a thin edge of satisfaction. “Lots of them have tried it, but don’t many make it. They pull out when it gets a little bad.”

  Andrews nodded, but he did not speak. As they went past the hut, his head turned; he watched the place until his view of it was cut off by the wagon that came behind them.

  By noon the horses’ hides were shining with sweat, and white flecks of foam covered their mouths and were sent flying into the air as they shook their heads against the bits. The heat throbbed against Andrews’s body, and his head pounded painfully with the beat of his pulse; already the flesh on his upper thighs was tender from rubbing against the saddle flaps, and his buttocks were numb on the hard leather of the seat. Never before had he ridden for more than a few hours at a time; he winced at the thought of the pain he would feel at the end of the day.

  Schneider’s voice broke upon him: “We ought to be getting to the river about this time. I don’t see no sign of it yet.”

  His voice was directed to no one in particular, but Miller turned and answered him shortly. “It ain’t far. The animals can hold out till we get there.”

  Hardly had he finished speaking when Charley Hoge, behind them in the wagon, perched higher on his wagon seat than they in their saddles, called in his high voice: “Look ahead! You can see the trees from here.”

  Andrews squinted and strained his eyes against the noon brightness. After a few moments he was able to make out a thin dark line that slashed up through the yellow field.

  Miller turned to Schneider. “Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes from here,” he said, and smiled a little. “Think you can hold out?”

  Schneider shrugged. “I ain’t in no hurry. I was just wondering if we was going to find it as easy as you thought.”

  Miller rapped his horse gently across the rump with one hand, and the horse went forward a bit more rapidly. Behind him Andrews heard the sharp crack of Charley Hoge’s whip, and heard his wordless cry to the oxen. He turned. The oxen lumbered forward more swiftly, as if they had been awakened from a reverie. A light breeze came toward them, ruffling the grass in a soft sweep. The horses’ ears pitched forward; beneath him Andrews felt a sudden stiffening and a surge of movement as his horse went ahead.

  Miller pulled back on his reins and called to Andrews: “Hold him hard. They smell water. If you ain’t careful, he’ll run away with you.”

  Andrews grasped the reins tightly and pulled hard against the forward movement of the horse; the horse’s head came back, the black eyes wide and the coarse black mane flying. He heard behind him the thin squeak of leather straining as Charley Hoge braked against the oxen, and heard the oxen lowing as if in agony at their restraint.

  By the time they got to the Smoky Hill, the animals were quieter, but tense and impatient. Andrews’s hands were sore from pulling against the reins. He dismounted; hardly had he got his feet on the ground when his horse sprang away from him and tore through the low underbrush that lined the river.

  His legs were weak. He took a few steps forward and sat shakily in the shade of a scrub oak; the branches scratched against his back, but he did not have the will to move. He watched dully as Charley Hoge set the brake on the wagon and unyoked the first team of oxen from the heavy singletree. With his one hand pulling hard against the yoke, his body slanted between the oxen, Charley Hoge let himself be pulled toward the stream. He returned in a few moments and led another pair to the stream, while the remaining oxen set up a deep and mindless lowing. Miller dropped upon the ground beside Andrews; Schneider sat across from them, his back to another tree, and looked about indifferently.

  “Charley has to lead them down two at a time, yoked together,” Miller said. “If he let them all go down together, they might trample each other. They ain’t got much more sense than buffalo.”

  By the time the last oxen were released from the wagon, the horses began to amble back from the river. The men removed the bits from their horses’ mouths and let them graze. Charley got some dried fruit and biscuits from the wagon, and the men munched on them.

  “Might as well take it easy for a while,” Miller said. “The stock will have to graze; we can take it easy for a couple of hours.”

  Small black flies buzzed about their damp faces, and their hands were busy slapping them away; the slow gurgle of the river, hidden by the dense brush, came to their ears. Schneider lay on his back and placed a dirty red handkerchief over his face and folded his bare hands under his armpits; soon he was asleep, and the center of the red handkerchief rose and fell gently with his breathing. Charley Hoge wandered along the grassy outer bank of the river toward the grazing animals.

  “How far have we come this morning?” Andrews asked Miller, who sat erect beside him.

  “Pretty near eight miles,” Miller answered. “We’ll do better when the team is broke in. They ain’t working together like they ought to.” There was a silence. Miller continued: “A mile or so ahead, we run into the Smoky Hill trail; it follows the river pretty close all the way into the Colorado Territory. It’s easy traveling; should take us less than a week.”

  “And when we get into the Colorado?” Andrews asked.

  Miller grinned briefly and shook his head. “No trail there. We’ll just travel on the country.”

  Andrews nodded. The weakness in his body had given way to a lassitude. He stretched his limbs and lay on his stomach, his chin resting on his folded hands. The short grass, green under the trees and moist from the seepage of the river, tickled his nostrils; he smelled the damp earth and the sweet sharp freshness of the grass. He did not sleep, but his eyes drooped and his breath came evenly and deeply. He thought of the short distance they had come, and he tensed muscles that were growing sore. It was only the beginning of the journey; what he had seen this morning—the flatness, the emptiness, the yellow sea of undisturbed grass—was only the presentiment of the wilderness. Another strangeness was waiting for him when they left the trail and went into the Colorado Territory. His half-closed eyes nearly recaptured the sharp engravings he had seen in books, in magazines, when he was at home in Boston; but the thin black lines wavered upon the real grass before him, took on color, then faded. He could not recapture the strange sensations he had had, long ago, when he first saw those depictions of the land he now was seeking. Among the three men who waited beside the river, the silence was not broken until Charley Hoge began leading the oxen back to the wagon to yoke them for the resumption of the afternoon trip.

  The trail upon which they went was a narrow strip of earth that had been worn bare by wagon wheels and hooves. Occasionally deep ruts forced the wagon off into the tall grass, where the land was often more level than on the trail. Andrews asked Miller why they stuck to the trail, and Miller explained that the sharp grass, whipping all day against the hooves and fetlocks of an ox, could make him footsore. For the horses, which lifted their hooves higher even in a slow walk, there was less danger.

  Once, along the trail, they came upon a wide strip of bare earth that intersected their path. In this strip the earth was packed tightly down, though its surface was curiously pocked with regular inde
ntations. It extended away from the river almost as far as the eye could see, and gradually merged into the prairie grass; on the other side of the men, it led toward the river, gradually increasing in width to the very edge of the river, which at this point was bare of brush and tree.

  “Buffalo,” Miller said. “This is their watering place. They come across here—” he pointed to the plain, “in a straight line, and spread out at the river. No reason for it. I’ve seen a thousand buffalo lined up in ruts like this, one behind another, waiting for water.”

  Along the trail they saw no other signs of the buffalo that day, though Miller remarked that they were getting into buffalo country. The sun whitened the western sky and threw its heat against their movement. Their horses bowed their heads and stumbled on the flat land, their sleek coats shining with sweat; the oxen plodded before the wagon, their breathing heavy and labored. Andrews pulled his hat down to shade his face, and bent his head so that he saw only the horse’s curved black mane, the dark brown pommel of his saddle, and the yellow land moving jerkily beneath him. He was soaked with sweat, and the flesh of his thighs and buttocks was raw from its chafing against the saddle. He shifted his position until the shifting offered him no relief, and then he tethered his horse on the tailgate of the wagon and clambered upon the spring seat beside Charley Hoge. But the hard wood of the seat pained him more than the saddle, and the dust from the oxen’s hooves choked him and made his eyes burn; he had to sit rigid and tense upon the narrow board to hold himself erect against the slow swaying of the wagon. Soon, with a few words to Charley Hoge, who had not spoken to him, he got off the wagon and once again resumed his shifting position in his saddle. For the rest of the afternoon he rode in a kind of pain that approached numbness but never achieved it.