Dusk Along the Niobrara

by John D. Nesbitt

  George landed on the ground sitting up. He held a glove to his jaw and said, “By God, you caught me off guard with that one. I guess you win.”

  Larose said, “Fist-fightin’ is nee-gro stuff where I come from, but you say this is sport, so I go along. But I don’t know anything about it.”

  I didn’t believe him about not knowing anything, but I didn’t think his claim would make Dunbar any less cautious. It might give Larose an excuse for losing, though.

  The first two rounds had gone so fast that we still had light. As Dunbar and Larose squared off, they made an interesting contrast. Dunbar, a little taller and darker-haired, was as husky as a buck deer. Larose, lighter-haired and lean-legged, might have reminded a person of an upright wolf in an illustrated fable.

  Larose did not prance this time. He stalked, planting one foot and then the other, moving to the right and to the left. Dunbar moved with him but did not cross his feet.

  Larose lunged in, swinging like a windmill, and Dunbar stopped him with a punch that shook his hair again. Larose stepped back, then rushed. He ducked under Dunbar’s gloves and wrapped his right arm around Dunbar’s waist. I thought he was going to step behind and trip him, but Dunbar sprawled back, broke free, and clubbed Larose on the ear.

  “Fight fair,” said Dunbar as they separated.

  “We’re not fighting.” Larose now began to hop around, moving forward and backward and shifting in a circle to his left.

  Dunbar met him, and the two men exchanged short punches. They separated, and I could hear both of them breathing. Larose tried another rush, and Dunbar hit him one-two, enough to shake his hair and knock him to the ground.

  “That’s it,” said George, stepping in. He bent to help Larose up. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine.”

  “See? No one got hurt. Just like I said.”

  “Yeah, but I wish I’d thought to take these boots off. They wore me out. And I had to fight longer in the first round than he did.”

  “None of this was a fight.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah. I agree with you. Come on into the bunkhouse, and you can take your boots off.”

  “Nah. Now that I think of it, I should go back this evening after all. I’ve got an important job I should start first thing in the morning.”

  “You’re not sore, are you?”

  “Oh, no. and I’ve got a good moon to travel by. I actually like it that way. Let me find my hat.”

  When Larose was gone and the rest of us had moved indoors, Dunbar washed his face again.

  George said, “You don’t look too bad. How do you feel?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. But I’d like to say one thing. I’d just as soon everyone keep their money.”

  “But you were the winner.”

  “I know. But like you say, it was all for sport.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dunbar walked into the bunkhouse with an easy air after pitching his shaving water at the base of the little elm tree outside. Bob lay on his bunk with a red handkerchief over his face. George was sitting on the edge of his bunk, cleaning and oiling his six-shooter. I sat at the table, feeling my jaw and thinking I would shave, also. The day being Sunday and a day off, the bunkhouse had a calm, unhurried atmosphere.

  Dunbar set the basin on the stand that held the mirror. He said, “Bob, you’re not feeling the effect of that boxing match last night, are you?”

  Bob pulled the handkerchief aside and said, “No. I have a headache, and my sinuses are all stuffed up. It happens this time of year when the sagebrush has all the little beads on it.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m used to it. It’s just something I have to put up with until the weather changes. Frost or snow, or even a cold rain.”

  I poured water from the kettle into the basin and tested it with my hand. It was hot enough, so I dipped my brush into it and began to work up a lather from the soap in my shaving mug.

  Dunbar had taken a seat at the table not far away. As I began to daub the lather onto my face, he said, “I was thinking it would be a good day for my horses to get some exercise.”

  I met his glance in the mirror and nodded.

  He said, “If you’d like to go along, you could ride the buckskin. He’s a good packhorse, but he’s also smooth to ride.”

  “Sounds fine,” I said. “I didn’t have anything else planned.”

  “No hurry,” he said.

  George looked up from oiling his pistol. “Don’t cut yourself.”

  The air was warm and heavy when we rode out at about midmorning. I asked Dunbar where he would like to go, and he said north seemed like a good direction. I let him set the course, and before long I saw that we were headed in the direction of Blue Wolf Spring.

  The sun hung straight overhead when we reached the spring. The clay bluffs looked like baked mud. The chokecherry bushes, dark-leaved and chewed straight across the bottom, did not waver. The old set of cow bones reflected the sunlight in a dull shine, as did the rectangle of stones that marked the old foundation of the horse trader’s cabin.

  Dunbar dragged his cuff across his brow. “Let’s stop and give the horses a drink,” he said.

  I let him go ahead as the horses picked their way up the gentle slope to the mouth of the canyon. As on our previous visit, water was seeping over the edge of the wooden trough, and the ground was pocked with cattle tracks. Yellow jackets buzzed low and crawled in the indentations. Dunbar rode to a higher spot where the ground was dry before he dismounted. I followed and stepped down with the buckskin between us.

  We loosened the cinches and let the horses drink. A couple of long-legged insects skittered across the surface as the horses made small eddies with the intake of water. The air was still and heavy up against the bluffs, and I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. I wondered how cool the water was. I dipped my hand.

  “It’s not that warm,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind splashing my face.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait.” Dunbar took the reins and drew both horses away a few feet.

  I set my hat on my saddle horn, pulled up my sleeves, and bent forward. I rinsed my face, rubbed my eyes, and stood back.

  Dunbar handed me the reins. In addition to hanging his hat on the saddle horn, he laid his riding gloves on the seat. He turned up his sleeves, lowered his face, and dipped in. He came up looking something like a walrus, at least as I knew walruses from pictures. He rubbed his mustaches and blew away a spray of water. He stood back and waved his hands to let them dry.

  As he did so, I caught a glimpse of something I had not noticed before. A dark spot, perhaps made darker by the water, showed in the palm of his right hand. I had the impression that he had been burned there at some time. It did not resemble a scar as much as an old callus, the kind that I could remember acquiring when I pushed the tip of a shovel handle with the palm of my hand for an hour or more, cleaning corrals. Scars, as I knew them, were pink and sometimes white, but I also knew that dark substances, like pencil lead or gunpowder, could lie beneath the surface of the skin for a long time. I do not know why I thought he had been burned there, and I cannot remember if by that time in my life I had read of criminals and slaves being branded in earlier times, for identification.

  The moment passed. I did not stare at the spot, and he did not make any apparent attempt to hide it. We led our horses away from the low bluffs and made ready to mount up. I put on my hat and tightened my cinch. When I swung aboard, I saw Dunbar already mounted, with his gloves on.

  “Where next?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t object to a visit at the Bancroft place, would you?”

  “No,” I said in a tone that I kept from being too enthusiastic.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing the stagecoach again.”

  As we set out, Dunbar said, “Water is a mystery, isn’t it? So much of it is underground, and we can only guess at what it looks like down there in its
pools and currents. And why it comes up where it does—or disappears, as some streams do. There’s a scientific explanation, but it still seems, at times at least, to be something that the water or some other force decides.”

  “It would be an interesting subject to study.”

  “Yes, it would. That, and the cycle of evaporation and rainfall, and the cycles of plenty and drought. A common puncher like you and me, we know that a thunderstorm can build up on a hot afternoon, or masses of snow can come down from the north, but it takes a great deal of study to know why those things happen.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “You take this part of the country here, where the wagon trains and the railroads have gone across. Pilgrims who come out here in a good year, they see grass growing up to their stirrups. So they decide to stay. They raise cattle and crops, and they take the good years with the bad. To all the optimistic ones, this is the Garden of the Lord. A benevolent place.”

  “I hadn’t heard that term before.”

  “I didn’t make it up. It’s a common way of seeing the West, with its free land and opportunity. Some people emphasize the garden part more than the Lord, but others hold it like a creed, as if they’re following the call. Some of them believe the rain follows the plough, and I think that takes some zeal. Then they follow through with the idea of work, work, work.”

  Thinking of people of religious zeal, I said, “I have known of some people who don’t even cook food on Sunday, but they do tend to their livestock and chickens.”

  “Even Presbyterians have to be practical. Not to single them out, but I think they’re the ones who don’t cook on Sunday. At least the ones I’ve known. But I break bread with them, and the Baptists, too, though if there’s any truth to the old jokes, you’re more likely to be offered a glass of whiskey with the Methodists or a glass of wine with the Catholics. Just jokes, of course. All these religions are good, or at least their teachings are. By the way, I hope I didn’t step on any of your ground.”

  “My mother’s family was Lutheran.”

  “Well, they’re good, too. Like I say, they all have good principles, even if some of the followers stray on the primrose path.” He rode onward for a minute as if in thought, and he said, “Actually, I think I got off track myself.”

  “In what way?”

  “About the garden. I meant to mention the other half. The people who don’t see it as the Garden of the Lord think of it as the Great American Desert. The ones who see these drying grasslands, not to mention the deserts themselves, as something to travel across and put behind, or something to struggle against. Even a place to die. Travelers wander off into lost canyons or unending mazes, and the elements get to them.”

  “Like people in glaciers or drifts of snow,” I offered.

  “Yes. That’s another aspect of it, seeing it as a wasteland or desert. The land is an adversary. Not benevolent at all.”

  “Which way do you look at it?” I asked.

  “Hah. You can’t have one without the other. It’s like the Old Testament and the New Testament, sin and salvation. Though the land is neutral. It doesn’t decide. It just is. But sometimes it’s a garden, like we see it today, and at other times it’s, well, you’ve seen the bones.”

  “Not human bones, that I know of.”

  “Well, they’re out there, too. Some of them right where they fell, and some of them where they’ve been hidden. But even those are like the man in the glacier. Always there.”

  “Like old Alex Garrison. He’s buried somewhere on his place, you know.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I frowned. “Do you mean that you know it or that you agree?”

  “Well, if he’s buried there, in a sense, he’s like the man in the glacier, but he’s not like all the hidden ones.”

  “What’s hidden here is who did it.”

  “The knowledge of it, yes. But I’m beginning to fear that I’m not being a good influence on you. Too morbid. We should be singing songs about Swiss milkmaids.”

  As we rode onward, I began to feel a nervousness. Emma would not expect me back so soon. I hoped she would be happy to see me, and I thought she would be, but I feared that she might have some other visitor. After all, it was Sunday, and I had no idea how many other young blades had an interest in her.

  I wished I had thought of or found something to bring her, but the time had been short, and I had not gone anywhere new. Except the BC, I recalled. Perhaps if I had been more sociable, like George, I might have struck up a trade for some doodad. But that wasn’t like me. I would have been happy for the moment with a pretty stone, the likes of which a person might find in a streambed. I had kept an eye out at Blue Wolf Spring, but all I had seen was mud. I did not think that the Niobrara River would offer much better. I imagined a mountain stream, clear and splashing over smooth boulders, stones, and pebbles. The scent of pine trees and campfire smoke . . .

  “There’s a nice one,” said Dunbar. He drew rein on the blue roan, and the buckskin stopped with it.

  A hundred and fifty yards to our right, a lone antelope buck stood against the background of paling buffalo grass. His dark, curling horns and his tan and white markings caught the full wash of sunlight. He stared at us for a long moment, then made a whuff! sound that carried across the distance. He turned, bending his knees and ducking his head, and raced away. He reached the crest of a low rise another hundred yards away, turned, and began walking.

  “They know what kind of a distance to keep,” said Dunbar.

  “I’ve heard you can lure ’em in by waving a white flag.”

  “I’ve heard that, too, but I’ve never tried it. I’ve also heard you can lie on your back, lift your legs in the air, and wave ’em. I think you’d want to be by yourself if you tried it. You’d feel pretty silly when it didn’t work. Even at that, you never know when you’re alone out here in the big wide open.”

  “That’s for sure,” I said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone come up out of nowhere.” I recalled the day I met him, just a few days earlier.

  “There, he’s gone again.” The antelope had taken off on a run. “I wonder if he saw something.” Dunbar shook his reins, and the blue roan moved ahead.

  We rode on, and I fell back into my earlier thoughts about what kind of a gift I could find for Emma. I pictured the Niobrara, well behind us now, a treeless, bankless stream winding through the grasslands with very little water in it. In most places a traveler would not know where it was if it was very far away, and once he was there, he would see reeds and rushes and mud, with very few stones. Again, I had images of a cool mountain stream, with water so clear that I could see bluestone or redstone pebbles against grains of sand in the bottom.

  A thudding of horse hooves brought my attention up and around to the right. Both of our horses stopped. Two riders were loping down a shallow draw toward us. As they drew closer, I recognized the long, dark boots and yellow bandana of Boots Larose. Half a length back on his right bobbed the narrow-brimmed black hat of Dick Ainsworth. The two men were riding sorrels that could have been matched for a parade.

  They turned on a wide curve in front of us, and I thought they were going to ride past us. Larose raised a yellow-gloved hand in a wave. Then the two of them stopped short, their horses jolting and bunching up in a gathering cloud of dust. Both men were wearing six-guns.

  Larose’s stirrup was a foot away from mine, and he had a saucy expression on his face. “Where ya headed?”

  “That way,” said Dunbar.

  “We can see that. We was wonderin’ what you’re up to. Looks like you’re both dolled up for Sunday.”

  I could feel Ainsworth’s eyes on me.

  “I work every day,” said Dunbar.

  “So do I. Just like I told you last night. Got work to do.” Larose nodded to Ainsworth, and they took off.

  I thought Larose’s stirrup would clear mine, but he must have moved the toe of his boot, for he caught the edge of my stirrup an
d twisted it. A pain shot up along the inside of my leg, and my horse turned with the force of the jolt.

  I glared at the retreating riders. “I think he kicked me on purpose,” I said.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Just for the moment, I think.”

  As we moved ahead, Dunbar said, “Antelope have good eyes. They’ve got their sockets out front the way they do so they can see around at long distances. An antelope stands on a high point like that one we saw a while back, and he can see better than a man with field glasses.”

  I wondered if he was making a roundabout comment. “Do you think Ainsworth and Larose saw us?”

  “Could be. But if they really wanted to know where we were going, they could have hung back and watched. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were moving right along, and our friend the antelope saw ’em. But you never know.”

  We rode on without further incident and made the last slow climb in early afternoon. As before, a light breeze met us as we leveled out on top. We waited for a moment for the horses to relieve themselves before we rode the last two hundred yards into the ranch. Gazing afar, I saw a few pine trees in the southern reaches of the Hat Creek Breaks. In the other direction, I saw the Rawhide Buttes, with dark Rawhide Mountain rising in the haze. Those formations had springs and trickles, but for a true mountain stream, I would have to go much further.

  Ahead of us lay the Bancroft place, with the red and white buildings bright in the sunlight. One new detail was that a wagon stood in the yard, hitched to two dark horses that were switching their tails.

  “Looks like company,” said Dunbar.

  That was my fear, until I saw that the wagon had a dark, square object sitting in it. What looked like two men, or a man and a boy, were untying ropes that had held the object in place.