by Gary Paulsen
All five, Francis thought. He killed all five in not one full minute. Two shot long, one closer in, one with his tomahawk and the knife at the end.
“You're … you're something,” Francis said, sliding off his horse. “You're just something. All five of them—”
Grimes raised his head and Francis saw it: Grimes had been hit. Hit once across his left shoulder, and again through the left side of his chest. When he raised his head Francis could also see the other man's knife in Grimes's side, up under the left ribs into the lung.
“I'm shot and cut to pieces, Mr. Tucket. It appears I got my wish.” He pushed the other man away and tried to stand but instead he fell onto his side.
Francis was next to him. “Where … what can I do?”
Grimes seemed not to hear. He struggled to rise and at last, with Francis helping, he made it to a sitting position. Francis could see blood coming; out of the corner of his mouth now and he knew the mountain man's lungs were gone, knew it was over.
“You lie back.” Francis moved to help him. “We'll make camp here and feed you and make some bandages. You'll be good in a week, maybe two. I'll get some hump meat for you….”
Grimes shook his head. “Let me be. Just let mc be.” He was quiet again, pulling air hard, leaning against Francis, who was crying openly. Gnnies's breathing stopped and Francis thought he was gone, but it started again and Grimes said, “Don't you bury me. Leave me for the ‘wolves and coyotes.”
“But it isn't—”
“Don't. I ‘want them to have me and take me on with them. Leave me out of the ground.”
He was silent for another long time, his breath coming ragged, and then he looked at Francis, into his eyes, and he said, “I wish I could see one more sunrise,” and he died then, with Francis holding him in the green light and with the bodies he had conquered all around him, died without closing his eyes, and Francis stared down at him and thought he could not stand it. Something, some part of what made him alive, had been cut out of him with Grimes's death and he could not hear and he could not see and he thought of his love for Grimes and his hatred for the men who had killed him, and of the green light and of Grimes fighting “Braid and trapping beaver and saving Francis from the Pawnees and again from the Comancheros and from these five men, and he cried and cried, heaving with it, until Lottie and Billy came back to find him and put a blanket over him while he sat for the day and all the night, holding the dead mountain man, crying for what he had lost.
Francis sat his horse on a ridge between two clear-white peaks that shot up into a blue sky and thought of an Indian prayer he had heard.
There is beauty above me,
There is beauty below me,
Ail around me there is beauty.
The peaks went out ahead of him as if they were marching to the west. Huge, craggy mountains were still iully coated in snow. And he knew that probably no man from the east had seen them except for Grimes and perhaps other wandering mountain men. Grimes had told him once that Kit Carson bad said he'd been out bere, but that might have been something Kit made up. The word was he made many things up.
“Why arc wc stopping?” Lottie came up beside Francis. “There's no wood here for a fire and no water for the horses either. Shouldn't we go on down into the valley a little?”
Francis shrugged. It had been four days since Grimes had died and Francis was still, as Billy said quietly to Lottie the first night, “… not right in the head.”
It was not just the death of Grimes, although that had triggered it. They had done as Grimes had asked and sat him at the base of a tree with his rifle across his lap and his ax and knife close to hand by his side, leaning back against the tree so he could see out across the prairie to the horizon.
The other five bodies Francis had roped and dragged, one at a time, to a gully. He dumped them in and left them.
He'd searched them first. Even in grief he could not bring himself to waste anything. They had the rifles they had stolen from the Englishman and sonic gold coins and the odd striker and flint to make sparks and start a fire but little else. He did not know what to do with the rifles. He was used to his own and did not like the foreign look of them. They were huge long-barreled affairs impossible to handle ‘well on a horse and he offered one to Billy, who picked it up and found that it was much longer than he was tall and put it down.
“I'll stay with my bow,” he said. He had hunted with the bow ever since they'd stayed at the Pueblo village and his arrows kept them in camp meat—turkey, rabbits, squirrels and even one deer.
In the end, they left the rifles near Grimes. The packhorse was already encumbered with food and gold and the rifles were just extra weight they could not carry.
And so they had ridden away from Grimes, but Francis could not shake the feeling of an end to some part of his life he could not understand, as if he had somehow died with the mountain man. They had followed the trail Grimes had told them of but had made slow time because Francis stopped frequently to stare at the peaks and remember his life with Grimes, sometimes dismounting and sitting for half a day, holding the reins to his horse, gazing at nothing.
He left everything to Billy and Lottie. Setting up camp, killing and cooking meat, finding the trail—which was not well marked—and even scouting for possible danger. He would stop in the evenings when and where Lottie said to stop, sit while they gathered wood and struck a flint to make fire, eat what Lottie handed him to eat, drink when he was thirsty, or not, if water wasn't at hand.
On this fourth night he did not sleep, as he had not slept the previous three nights, and on this fourth night Grimes came to him.
Francis was sitting, looking into the fire. It had died down to a bed of red coals. Lottie and Billy were wrapped in their blankets, sleeping deeply, turned away from the flames, and Francis wasn't thinking of anything in particular except to wonder if he would ever sleep again, and Grimes came walking in and sat down by the fire pit.
Francis jumped back, thinking: A ghost! But Grimes did not show any wounds. He sat quietly for some time looking at the glowing coals, as Francis had been doing, and then he looked up and said softly, as if worrying that he might wake the other two:
“It's all right.”
“What?” Francis leaned toward him. “What did you say?”
But Grimes stood, hefted his rifle so that it lay cradled in his one good arm, nodded at Francis and walked into the darkness without looking back.
Francis watched him until he was out of sight. Then he sighed and smiled and lay down on his side and was instantly, profoundly and deeply asleep.
HE AWAKENED to find himself covered with a blanket, his rifle at his side. It was still dark and Lottie had a fire going and was cooking a whole rear leg of venison on a spit over the flames.
Francis raised himself on one elbow. “That's quite a bit of meat for breakfast.”
His voice startled her and she jumped and scowled at him. “You nearly scared me to death. And for your information it's not breakfast. This is supper. You slept the clock around—all night and all day until dark again.”
Francis lay back and, looked at the fire silently for a time. He did not feel lost as he had before, did not feel ended. He could hear and smell the meat cooking and could hear the night sounds around them. Nearby the horses were standing, picketed, and he could hear them breathing. Off to the west a coyote yipped. “Grimes came to me,” he said.
“Came to you?” Lottie stopped turning the meat. “You mean in a dream?”
“He means a ha'nt.” Billy was sitting across the fire wiping grease into his bowstring. It was made from twisted deer-leg tendon and it dried out if not kept greased. “Grimes came as a ha'nt … a ghost.”
“No.” Francis sat up. “He came and sat next to me and told me it was all right. Then he got up and left and then I went to sleep.”
“It was a ha'nt,” Billy repeated. “He was worried about you and was coming back to tell you it was all right. Ha'nts ain't all bad
. Some of them are sjood.”
“What do you know about ghosts?” Lottie said. “It's all stuff and nonsense. If Francis said Grimes came back to him, then Mr. Grimes came back to him, and if he said it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. You go check The horses, make sure they're still picketed right, while Francis and me think on what to do next.”
Billy hesitated, but something in her eye made him think better of speaking and he went to do as she said. She turned to Francis as soon as the boy was gone.
“Are you really all right, Francis? Because you haven't been yourself for days and days.”
He held up his hand. “I'm fine.”
She turned the deer leg slowly. The fat dripping from it into the open flame sputtered and flashed as it ignited. “I was worried about you.”
He lay back and closed his eyes. “I'm all right. Don't worry. I'm fine now. We'll cat and sleep another night and then tomorrow we'll strike north as best we can and see if we can find the wagon trail that Grinies said was there.” His stomach rumbled. “But for now, how much more are we going to cook that meat? I could eat dirt.”
Lottie smiled. He was back.
Francis held his horse back below the crest of a small rise, dismounted and went to her nose and pinched it so she wouldn't whinny. Two miles back Lottie and Billy were following. Ahead of him, over the rise and a mile away, there appeared to be a man on horseback with a herd of twenty or tweuty-five horses that he was pushing ahead of him. The man had a saddle and was not an Indian, but Francis was wary, especially of someone alone out here with horses in a herd.
He walked and led his horse until his eyes came just over the ridge, where he could see without being seen. He watched for a good fifteen minutes. The man wasn't pushing his little herd but seemed to be letting them graze along at their own speed.
Francis heard a sound and turned to see Lottie and Billy approach. He motioned them to stop well back but it was too late. Billy's pony smcllcd the herd and cut loose with a shrill whinny— almost a scream.
The effect on the man a mile away was immediate and strange.
He galloped his mount around the herd, got them moving straight away from Francis and then he took out a bugle and blew a series of high notes, one rapidly after another, and in what seemed seconds a group of five men on horses came boiling over yet another ridge to surround the horse herd in a protective circle.
It was all done very efficiently and looked so controlled and disciplined that something about it reassured Francis—he even thought they might be Army—and he remounted and showed himself above the ridge. When Lottie and Billy caught up they rode toward the herd.
As they grew closer Francis waved, and one man waved back and came riding out to meet them.
He was not Army but he rode a good mount, well taken care of, bad a good rifle, also well cared for—a large, beefy man with rounded shoulders and huge hands—and he smiled when he saw them. “Why, you are but sprites. Are you alone in the wilderness at such an early age?”
Francis said, “We came from south a ways. Did you come from back east this year?”
The man nodded. “I am Orson, and these men are Caleb, Lyle, John, James and Isaiah. We arc heading west for the promised land in the golden valley by the Columbia River. Arc you children of God?”
Francis wasn't sure how to answer but Lottie came forward and said, “We arc all children of God, that's what my mother said before we were attacked and all killed but my brother and me, saved by Francis here.”
Francis looked at her sharply. Her mother had died of croup. Her father had taken the children westward two years later and died of cholera; she and Billy had been cast out by the wagon train. He thought she shouldn't lie but she gave him a look right back as if to say, “Do you want me to tell them our father had cholera?” and went on. “Which was over a year ago and since then we've been captured by the army, then the evil Coman-cheros, escaped at great peril, been attacked by wild men and bitten by snakes….”
The man named Orson held up his hand. “That's enough. You must come and visit with us for a time and tell us the stories.”
There was something about the man, something so open and honest that Francis said, “It would be nice if we could team up with you. To get west. T have folks out there somewhere I need to find. I'm a fair hunter and Billy is as good a scout as you'll ever meet and Lottie can help the womenfolk.” He got a definite scowl here. “Why, she can run your whole camp.”
Orson nodded. “We'd be glad of the company but we have no womenfolk. We left them all back home while we came out ahead to settle the land. They'll come in a year or so by ship, down around Cape Horn and back up, to meet us where the river runs into the Pacific Ocean. And if you can hunt you'll be more than welcome. We can shoot game when it's plentiful but it seems to have pulled back from the trail and we can't get close enough for a shot.”
They had been riding while they spoke, and they came up over a small rise now. Francis could see a small group of wagons—he counted six of them—arranged in a circle with oxen herded into the middle. So they were using oxen to pull the wagons and had just brotight the horses for … what?
“Why so many horses if you aren't pulling the wagons with them?”
Orson smiled. “We were told there's a shortage of good horses out west and we pooled what money we had and brought these mares and some stallions for brood stock. We hope to sell horses as well as to farm.”
Francis nodded but thought it perhaps a little bit silly. The West was covered with horses, small mustangs, wild Indian ponies, that were as tough and good as any he'd ever seen, but even as he had the thought he found himself looking at some of Orson's stock with envy. They were large, well muscled and strong-looking, not just for riding but for all-around work, pulling a wagon or cultivator or even a single-bottom plow.
Look at me, he thought, thinking like a farmer. Grimes would roll over in his grave. If he bad a grave—the thought jumped into his mind. The way Grimes had looked sitting against the trees, his eyes glazed and staring out across the prairie … He shook his bead. That was how the mountain man had wanted it and it was right for him, right for the wolves to carry him off.
“We have some hump meat,” Francis said. They had taken a buffalo the day before, a young cow with new spring fat on her, and had twenty pounds of fresh meat wrapped in green hide. “We'll cook that for food tonight and Billy and I will start scouting and hunting in the morning.”
Orson nodded. “Roast buffalo hump sounds as good as Christmas dinner. We still have potatoes to boil….”
“You have potatoes?” This from Lottie. “Oh my, I haven't had boiled potatoes with gravy for, oh my, I can't remember when….”
And so that night for the first time in what seemed years, Francis prayed before eating (or at least listened to the others pray) and ate meat cut in slices from a pan with a fork, and ate boiled potatoes covered in buffalo-fat brown gravy that Lottie made in a cast-iron pot by burning some flour in grease and adding water to thicken it, ate until he could cat no more and listened to the men talking of the farms they would make when they came to the golden valley, their voices mixing with each other in a kind of low music, until he curled up in the dirt by the fire to sleep.
He supposed that Grimes would have called these men pilgrims, with a cutting edge to his voice. But Francis's last thought was that all of it, the talk and the dreams of farms and the civilized food, all of it set well with him and he didn't mind.
He had never seen people work so hard. Tn truth, everybody who came west on the trains had to work a great deal just to cover the ground, but these men, all big, all happy, ready to laugh or pray, whichever mood took them, worked until he thought they would drop. If something broke they fixed it, and fixed it better than it had been when it was new. Or if something looked like it was going to break, they would fix it. If a horse came to the edge of limping, even hesitated in its step, they were on it and working at the hooves, checking it, rubbin
g liniment into its skin, slowing its pace, talking to it in low, reassuring sounds that seemed almost like music.
“They … they love things,” Lottie said to Francis one day when they'd been traveling with the men about a week.
“What do you mean?” Francis was cleaning his rifle and looked up.
“The men. Watch them. They love everything. They love horses and oxen and wagons and when they talk about their families at night they love them and the mountains even when it's hard going … they just seem to love things.”
And when he thought of it Francis agreed. He never heard a bad word from the men. One morning they were greasing wagon axles, taking each wooden wheel off with the axle propped up on a fork and wiping the wooden axle with buffalo grease, and one of the wagons fell on Orson's foot. It caught the edge of his foot and caused a nasty cut and a huge bruise. Francis thought it must have hurt like blue blazes but Orson merely stood there until they pulled the wagon off him and then he laughed. “It's lucky I have two feet.”
And, Francis found, they ate like wolves. He hunted to feed them and it took three full deer or one small btiffalo a day, eating three times a day. He'd never seen such appetites and he could remember Grimes sitting down and eating ten pounds of meat in one sitting at one meal.
Lottie changed her mind about doing women's work and cooked for them—though the men washed and cleaned up after she was done—and ten days into their journey together she sighed, looking at the empty pots. “I cook more each time and they eat it all. I don't think I could cook enough to fill them.”
It would have been easy to consider them friends. Francis and Lottie and Billy traveled with the men and laughed with them and were close to them, but Francis and Lottie and Billy had the problem of the gold they'd earned. Billy hunted with Francis, using his bow to take turkeys, rabbits and squirrels for what the men called “bites now and again,” and that left Lottie alone with the Spanish gold.
