Old Heyoka didn’t waste time. She wheeled around, began clopping lickery-split for the open fort gate and for freedom out on the open plains. Hugh’s mouth fell open, watching her go.
There were joshing loiterers at the gate. One of them, a peachfuzz pigeon-toed greenhorn just in from Kentucky diggings, and still as goodhearted and helpful as the day he left ma, jumped up and in two long leaps blocked Old Heyoka’s path. Ears down, the old mule tried to shy past anyway. But she wasn’t quite quick enough. With another tremendous leap, the pigeon-toed peachfuzz caught hold of what was left of her leather hitching strap and hung on. And, heels digging in, dragged her to a stop just outside the gate.
Hugh’s mouth clapped to, and he strode over to repossess his mule.
Hugh was hardly in the mood to thank anyone, let alone a boy greenhorn. He grabbed hold of the mule’s bridle, whirled on the peachfuzz, and like a she-grizzly giving her cub a claw to put it in its place, snarled, “What’s it of your concern if my ol’ skate breaks? Maybe she had a free day comin’.”
The youth’s light green eyes and red mouth opened like morning glories. “Whaaat?”
“Listen, you darned pigeon-toed greenhorn you, when you see a man’s mount runnin’ off, don’t stop it. Let it go to the devil if it wants to. It ain’t your’n, so let it go.”
“But I thought—”
“Never mind what you thought. It’s what I think that counts this time.” Hugh stuck his old white face into the lad’s young peachfuzz face. “And let me tell you somethin’ else. If’n you’re intendin’ to make a go of it out here in the middle of nowhere, stick to your own business. Like when you see a man’s possible sack fall off his saddle on the trail—don’t tell him. He’ll find out soon enough. When you get to camp, if you ever do, still keep your meattrap shut. Why? because you’re a greenhorn. When the cook needs water and wood, help him, but don’t get in his way or say a word. If the horses need hobblin’ or waterin’, do it, but don’t brag about it. Just do it. And shut up. When you set down to the fire, get out your pipe and smoke it and shut up some more. Don’t ask questions. Follow that advice and you’ll pass.”
“But I was only—”
“Shut up!”
A familiar voice broke in then. “Well, well, look who’s orderin’ people around now.” The voice was slow and cracked. It came from a voicebox that hadn’t been used in a long time.
Hugh turned slowly on his heels. Coming toward him off the open green prairie was a haggard black-bearded man with floppy ears and sun-blackened knobby hands. His buckskins were in tatters and his worn-out moccasins flopped around his ankles and his feet were red and cracked and bleeding. His eyes were great round moons of suffering. He carried a rusted gun and an empty shot pouch and a dangling powder horn.
“Don’t you remember me, Hugh, old coon?”
“Dutton, old hoss! Down here?” Hugh exclaimed, glad to change the subject, and for the moment joyfully relieved that at least one of his men had come through. “And I was sure you’d gone under with the rest! Marsh, More, Chapman.”
“Wal, at that this child was mighty nigh losin’ his hair, he was.”
“Still lookin’ at the downside a things, I see.”
Dutton’s shoulders hung sloped down and away as if they’d been folded against his body like bird wings. “I’ll allow to havin’ my green rubbed out a little.” Dutton tried to smile. “A little.”
Still hanging onto the hitching strap of Old Heyoka, who’d fallen asleep again on her feet, Hugh said, “Come along. I’ll take ye in to the gen’ral. I’ll bet you’re half-froze for meat.” Hugh looked the walking scarecrow named Dutton up and down. “Lad, ye must tell me about the whole consarn.”
Dutton hung back. A private thought of some kind lurked far back in his gray-ringed haggard eyes. “Thanks, Hugh, old hoss. I’ve made it alone so far, so I think maybe I can make it alone the rest of the way.”
“Ho-ah! another contrary hoss, I see.”
“No, still half-beat and not yet ready to square off to a chair. I want to get used to bein’ here alive and safe first.”
“How did you come? Down the Platte?”
“Did so.” Dutton’s voice, as it warmed to the task of talking again, slowly lost its cracked edge.
“And the Pawnee didn’t catch ee?”
“Hunkered past ‘em in the night.”
“What was grub?”
“Grass and gopher.”
“‘Twas the same by me. All along the White.”
“The White, was it?”
Hugh nodded. “Yep, and wild salt it was mostly too. Tell me, old hoss, how did you get away when the Rees came swarmin’ across the river?”
“Your Ol’ Skunk broke from the Rees and I boarded her and did it.”
“Ho-ah! I knew she had leg. Where’s she now?”
Dutton rubbed his hollow belly. “Et.”
“‘Et’?”
“Yep. Just afore I hit the Pawnee.”
Hugh shook his head sadly. “Too bad. She was a good horse once I tamed her.”
Dutton looked up at Hugh wonderingly, with still a certain private thought lurking far back in his eyes. “Hugh, old coon, ye’ve turned white since the last time I seen ee. What happened?”
Hugh shrugged. “Yep, it’s white I am now all right.” Hugh laughed a half-laugh at himself. “The gen’ral’s even takin’ to callin’ me granpap.”
“‘Granpap’?”
“Yep.” A dark thought flitted across Hugh’s old gray eyes. “Yep, he wants me to forget Fitz’s dirty black treachery.”
“Then Fitz ain’t here?”
Hugh hauled up short. “Hey? What? Oho! So that’s the way the stick floats, does it? You was to warn Fitz afore I got to him.”
Dutton blinked. Still slow of tongue and also slow of thought from the long ordeal of hiking across the barren flats of the Platte River bottom, Dutton barely caught on he’d made a slip. “Now, Hugh, I didn’t mean harm. You know that. I was only askin’.”
Hugh’s old rage returned. “So this is how I’m practiced on, is it? Treachery and snakes all around. If it ain’t Fitz and Jim, it’s downside Dutton honey-fuggling the booshways.”
“Now, Hugh, here now.”
Hugh turned his back on Dutton. He climbed aboard the still sleeping Old Heyoka, and tucked his rifle under an arm, and kicked the old mule in the ribs. “Hep-a! Get! Let’s make some meat.”
“Hugh!” Dutton called after him.
“Hep-a!” Hugh growled again, digging his moccasined heels into Old Heyoka’s underbelly. “Hep-a! Get!”
Old Heyoka was going before she finally opened a great dull purple eye. She switched her ringtail as she stilted slowly and laboriously away.
Some time later in the summer, as he was riding back to the fort across the prairies, Hugh saw another bearded scarecrow come stilting out of the shining shimmering west. Except that this walking scarecrow was more ghost than a pair of crossed sticks and old clothes. Hugh was in a prairie pothole, trying to flush out partridge, when he first saw him.
The gaunt man came on, head down, stumbling, shufflingly. His buckskins were in tatters and were bleached a dry hard leafbrown, and his feet were bare and cracked and bleeding too. The varnish on the stock of his gun had worn off and it was as bare as a weathered board. The gun barrel was rusted.
Hugh held Old Heyoka in. Fitz? At last? Hugh set his triggers.
The bearded gaunt man looked up. He gazed east, longingly, forlornly.
All at once the gaunt man seemed to see something electrifying. He raised a hand and croaked a strangled shout. It wasn’t Hugh he was seeing because Hugh was to the north of him and still hidden in the pothole. And then the gaunt man swooned and fell to the ground.
Hugh glanced to the east to see what there was to see. Beyond the farthest edge of the waving windstroked yellowing grass, against the blue, the Stars and Stripes fluttered above Ft. Atkinson. The flag was all that could be seen of the fort lookout above
the horizon. Hugh understood. He gave Old Heyoka a kick in the underbelly. “Hep-a. Get! Fitz or not, that hant needs help. Hep-a.”
By the time slow Old Heyoka gained the rim of the grassy pothole, the gaunt man had got to his feet again, had faltered ahead a step, had fallen again. Twice more he got up and twice more he fell flat on his chest.
“Poor devil,” Hugh muttered. “C’mon, hurry up you, you ol’ skate. Hep-a!” Hugh hit the old mule with his quirt. “Mule or no, you probably wouldn’t run even if it was your own colt staggerin’ in, would ee?” Hugh let down his triggers.
The gaunt man finally gave up. He sat. He sat looking east toward the fluttering Stars and Stripes. Pus-streaked tears streamed down his weather-blackened terribly hollow face. His long dark brown hair hung to his shoulders. He was bare-headed. His hunger-hollowed face made his already large doming head look like a great skull crowned with a poorly fitted wig. His small dark blue eyes burned.
Hugh reined in the old mule and slid to the ground. Holding the reins in one hand and his rifle in the other, Hugh approached the sitting haunt with high light steps.
The bare brown-haired skull turned slowly. The dark blue eyes burned at Hugh; looked through him; focused behind Hugh’s head.
“Jim!” Hugh suddenly exclaimed. “Jim Clyman! Here, lad, let me help you up.”
“It’s Hugh,” Jim Clyman hoarsed. His voice, like Dutton’s, was so unused to speech it hardly more than croaked.
“Yes, lad, Hugh it is. And he’ll help ye get to the fort and meat.”
Clyman’s eyes continued to run slow painful pus-stained tears. Clyman shook his head to say he didn’t want help. “I—just—stopped—to blow a—little.”
“You is grit, you is. And them’s the sort as kin have anythin’ I got. On the prairie. Come, let me help you up on my old mule.”
“Just—stopped—to—blow—a—little.”
“Poor devil,” Hugh said, as he caught Clyman under the arms from the rear and boosted him up on Old Heyoka. “A bag a wind couldn’t weigh more.”
“Just—stopped—to—blow—a—little.” Gradually Clyman’s voice began to lose its cracked catchy edge as it warmed to the task again. “I’ll—be—all—right.”
“Sure, old hoss. That’s it. I know just how you feel.” Hugh hit Old Heyoka on her dusty tail to set her into motion. “Hep-a! ol’ skate. ‘Tis a mercy run this time.”
Clyman slowly turned his head and looked down at Hugh holding him up. “I—ain’t—dreamin’?—Them—is—the—Stars—and—Stripes?”
“They are, lad. Fort Atkinson.”
“Thank—God—for—that.”
“Yes, thank God for that, lad.”
Hugh continued to hold Clyman in the saddle as he walked beside the mule.
Clyman couldn’t help talking, slow as it was. “You’re—white—Hugh.”
“That I am.”
“And—you’re—alive.”
Hugh laughed shortly. “‘Tis so. Though there be some who’ve wished I’d stayed dead there on the Grand.”
“Who?”
“Fitz and Jim.”
Clyman glanced down at Hugh. Slowly he shook his head. “Not Fitz—and—Jim—Hugh.—Not—them.”
Hugh said nothing. Instead he gave slow-stilting Old Heyoka another clap on her dusty ringtail rump.
When Hugh finally got Clyman into the fort, and up on a leather bed in his quarters, he wondered a little if he’d come along in time after all. Because Clyman looked like an old man, a huge hairy skull sitting in the midst of seemingly crumbling bones with only his small dark blue haunted eyes still alive.
But Clyman surprised him. Soup and whisky, and bread and buffalo hump, and a shave, soon revived him. Within a week’s time he was able to walk from his leather bed to the mess room and back again three times each day. And within another week he could talk normally again. And he seemed to shed the aged look too, the first week regaining middle age and the second week his youth.
“Tell about the whole consarn,” Hugh said one day as they sat smoking their pipes on the halved-log steps in front of their quarters. A saffron-bright September sun slanted warm upon them. Hugh was in his old leathers while Clyman leaned back in a fresh set of yellow fringed buckskins. The fort yard swarmed with busy carpenters and draymen and trappers. A mule brayed at a hitching post near the gate.
“‘Twasn’t much,” Clyman said slowly, sucking deep on his corncob pipe.
“‘Twas fair enough to kill ye,” Hugh said, blowing out a little fog of smoke.
“‘Twas my own fault,” Clyman said, looking beyond Hugh.
The mule honked again.
The sun warmed the backs of their hands as they held pipe to mouth.
Hugh said, “Who said it wasn’t?”
Clyman blinked.
“Don’t tell me that Fitz deserted you too?”
“No, not Fitz. He wasn’t in it. No, ‘twas Tom Fitzpatrick who was with me. Though ‘twas myself that was foolish.”
“Tell about the whole consarn,” Hugh urged again, old gray eyes drawn up shrewd and wondering.
So Clyman told about it. How he and Tom Fitzpatrick scouted ahead of Captain Diah Smith’s party packing beaver plew bound for the States; how they went down the Sweetwater looking for a place to cross; how, when they found a shallow place in the river, Clyman elected to stay with their plunder while Tom went back to guide Smith and company to the spot. Clyman built a bower in some willows and holed in. A few days later he heard voices and, looking out, spotted a war party of Indians. He didn’t feel safe, so he left horse and plunder and walked backward from the place across open sands and hid in some rocks some distance from the stream. He hid out some eleven days waiting for the Indians to move away and for Tom and Diah Smith to come along. When he finally climbed out of his hideout, he found his horse and plunder gone. When Tom and Diah still didn’t show up, he decided to follow the Sweetwater to where it flowed into the Platte, and then take the Platte across the long prairies to Ft. Atkinson on the Missouri. All he had to do was follow the river and he was sure to get in safely. It was summer, there was plenty of buffalo and game around, and he was well armed. And all would have gone well if he hadn’t run into a Pawnee war party, who robbed him of everything except his gun and a little powder and a few balls. From then on Clyman gradually weakened into the stumbling cross Hugh had seen out of his prairie pothole. Clyman said he saw numerous bands of wild horses, and even creased one, but, like Hugh, had shot too low and had killed it. Clyman saw buffalo and managed to kill one. But the nearer he came to the fort the more barren and desolate and game-forsaken the country became.
“What was grub?” Hugh asked, between puffs on his pipe.
“Mostly grass and gopher.”
“‘Twas the same with me. All the way to Fort Kiowa. And then along the White.”
The mule brayed again.
Clyman looked at Hugh. “Drinkin’ the White give you granpap hair, Hugh?”
Hugh’s lips twisted and his white whiskers moved over his cheek. “Might have. Except a spook played with me all of forty mile.”
Clyman nodded. “I’ve seen them too.”
Hugh laughed. “If that grizzly got a good look at me he saw one too.”
Clyman nodded some more.
Hugh said, “So it wasn’t Fitz who deserted ye then?”
“Like I said, Hugh, ‘twasn’t Fitz but Tom who was with me.” Clyman scowled. “And I wasn’t deserted. Tom done his best and done right.”
“Ye’re sure?”
“As sure as I’m sittin’ here.” Again Clyman scowled. “Hugh, ye’ve sure got desertin’ on the brain, ain’t ye?”
Hugh fell silent.
Clyman clapped out his corncob in the palm of his skinny bony hand. “Hugh, you’ve forgot you was young once.”
“Meanin’ what?”
“Meanin’ we all left the States for a reason.”
Hugh thought on it awhile. “What was your reason, Jim, if I may
be askin’?”
Clyman also thought on it awhile. He sighed. “A woman. And a hankerin’ to see the West.”
“And why see the West?”
“Because it was out there. Because it drawed me. Because I wanted to be where I’d never been.”
Hugh fell silent.
Clyman said, “And yours, Hugh?”
Hugh bit on his lips within his bush of a white beard. The white fur over his cheeks moved.
Clyman said, “Course ‘tain’t really none of my business, Hugh. I was just wonderin’.”
Hugh saw them all right—Mabel and the two sons he’d deserted back in Lancaster. And seeing them clearly again in his mind’s eye, he shivered.
Clyman seemed to read his mind. Or else he’d been talking with General Ashley. Clyman said, “It’s too bad you never had kids of your own, Hugh. Then maybe you might have been able to take their side a little.”
Hugh jumped to his feet. His voice was suddenly in a rage of agony, “But goddam it, Jim, I just can’t seem to forget what them two miserable cowards done, stealin’ my gun and knife and leavin’ me to die alone! And lyin’ to the major!”
Clyman put his pipe in his possible sack. He looked up at Hugh, looked through and around behind him. “Hugh, it’s like I say. You’ve sure got desertin’ on the brain, ain’t ye?”
Keeping the fort supplied with meat kept Hugh and two other hunters humping every day of the week.
After they beat out the brush near the outpost, they gradually extended their forays up and down the Missouri breaks.
Some days Hugh had to ride out more than twenty miles before he saw game at all. A couple of times he was gone for three days, riding out to a chosen spot one day, hunting the spot the second day, and coming in with the meat the third.
One of these chosen spots, and known only to him, was in a ravine some thirty miles up the river. The ravine ran back from the Missouri about a mile. It was some hundred yards wide, with steep sides some two hundred feet up, and heavily brushed over with prickly ash and wild gooseberry and mean blackberry and tall ash and slender elm. Like a park, the bottom of the ravine was comparatively treeless, with each tree grown out to its full umbrella potential. All of it was grassed over like an Eden. Through it meandered a flashing trout stream, running as clear and as pure as new glass over yellow black-speckled sands.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 32
