“Makes sense to me.”
“So Mr. Coster keeps trying. One horse and then he tries another horse and another horse and another horse. But Mr. Coster ain’t satisfied. He wants spectacular! And the stunt fellers keep going down with the horses and rattling off the hard pan like peas on the bottom of the bucket.
“So Mr. Coster gets the horse wrangler to bring out this big old black gelding – they call him Locomotive – and Locomotive he’s never been throwed with pianer wires before so he don’t know it and he’s a terrible big old horse, a croppy Shorty called him. Know what’s a croppy?”
I don’t.
“Because somebody cut his ears to warn everybody he’s a mean horse, a bad horse, fellers do that, Shorty says, crop their ears. And the stunt fellers they don’t want to ride no horse never been throwed – on top of he’s mean. And Mr. Coster takes to cursing them all for cowards, gutless wonders he calls them, and all that he calls them, and so they all quit on Mr. Coster.
“So he says to the rest of us fellers, extras and all, he says, ‘Who’s going to show he’s a man? Who’s going to ride old Locomotive double the wages?’ and I was going to, but Shorty says to me, ‘Don’t you ride that crop-eared cunt, he’s a killer. Stay off him, Wylie.’ And I done it, I stayed off that Locomotive but my brother didn’t. He rode him.”
“Why did he ride him, Wylie?”
“Because Mr. Coster says if he does, next picture he’ll give him a part, Miles. And Shorty, he warned Miles, too. But Miles ain’t too smart, Miles ain’t, and he believed Mr. Coster and disbelieved Shorty. But Shorty knows how Miles is so he helped him anyways, see? Shorty, he thought her all out. He paced off just as far as the pianer wire was going to run out on Locomotive and he marked the spot with a hankerchief, pegged it on the ground and he says to Miles, he says to Miles, he says, ‘Miles, when you see that there white hankerchief coming up on you, you kick your feet out of them stirrups because when that fucking widow-maker runs out of wire he’ll go ass over tea-kettle and when he does you ain’t going to want to get hung up in them stirrups – you going to want to get throwed clear. Throwed clear, understand? Otherwise, you going to smash up bad, like an apple crate. You understand me, Miles? You get your boots out of them stirrups the minute you see that white hankerchief.’ ”
“Let me guess,” I say. “Miles didn’t.”
Wylie drops his voice to a whisper. “No, he didn’t. Miles was a-spurring Locomotive flat out, they was both going full chisel, and Miles was a-watching for that hankerchief and a-watching for that hankerchief and a-watching for that hankerchief, and then Locomotive wrecked, done a somersault and Miles was planted in them stirrups and Locomotive landed on him flush. He hurt him deep down inside, and Miles he been shitting bloody stool ever since and he don’t walk too good.”
“So why did he miss the handkerchief?”
“Mr. Coster sent the cameraman to go pick up that hankerchief when nobody was looking. So’s he’d get spectacular. Wasn’t no hankerchief to see. That’s how it was done. I was going to go at him right then and there. I wanted to, but Shorty said no. Shorty said, ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ That’s what Shorty said.”
“And I hear Shorty did get even. With a shoeing hammer.”
“Croppy,” says Wylie, twisting nervously in his seat. “ ‘Mark a bad horse,’ says Shorty. ‘So’s everybody knows him.’ ” Suddenly, Wylie hits the brakes. I grab the dash and brace myself. The scenery jolts, the sky slants as the car slithers and shimmies on locked wheels through the soft dirt, slides to a stop. A breath of dust sighs into the car, chalks my teeth. A few yards behind and to the right of us a lane runs off the road past a dilapidated mailbox on a drunken post, crosses a skimpy brown pasture scribbled with sage and greasewood, edges up a low knoll and disappears out of sight behind it.
“Almost missed Shorty’s turn-off,” he announces.
I hold Wylie by the arm, follow the lane with my eyes. At the end of it there must be a house.
“Wylie,” I say, “I’ve got something to confess to you.”
I begin by telling him how proud I am of him, how proud Shorty is of him. I say that I hadn’t been able to believe anybody in his circumstances would be so incorruptible. I tell him I had argued with Shorty that he would never see his saddle again, that Wylie would sell or pawn it before you could say Mother Mabel. But Shorty had believed in him. Shorty had said that Wylie was a true-blue man to ride the river with. And Wylie had proved it was true. He had kept good care of Shorty’s property, hadn’t hesitated for a second when asked to return it, no matter how badly he needed it for his work.
“Let me shake your hand.” I shake it. Then I take twenty dollars out of the expense-money envelope. “For your time, Wylie. I was going to prove a point to Shorty, but the point got proved to me. I got to eat humble pie.”
“Shorty don’t want his saddle?”
“No,” I say, “not just at present.” I pause. “Your luck seems to be changing, Wylie. You keep rubbing luck off of McAdoo’s rig, you may end up the next William S. Hart. Now let me drive. Let me chauffeur one fine man wherever he wants to go.”
“We ain’t going to see Shorty?”
“Not today. He’s busy.”
“Shorty don’t borrow his saddle to just anybody!” Wylie crows triumphantly, as I turn the car around in the middle of the road. “Not everybody gets to ride Shorty’s saddle!”
I offer to take him home but he prefers to be dropped off outside of Universal. It doesn’t make any sense because most of the day’s shooting will be well under way and none starting. But perhaps he believes me, believes his luck has turned. I drop him off outside the pen, deserted at this hour, a wind scrubbing dust into the air off the beaten earth, scurrying bits of candy wrapper along and sticking them to the wire fence. I watch as he stumps toward it, Shorty’s magic humped clumsily on his shoulder, stirrup leathers flapping, stirrups bouncing, his stupid faith that the old man’s luck has the power to work a miracle in his own life intact.
7
All thirteen assembled in Front Street, sitting their horses in the early morning grey and quiet, mist curling off the coffee-and-cream Missouri, rising into the still air to hang a muslin curtain between the men and the wind-sculptured bluffs across the river.
It was a force mounted and armed and accoutred without consistency, piebald and paint buffalo runners, blooded bays and chestnuts, Henrys and Sharps and Winchesters and Colts and double-barrelled scatterguns, a Derringer in a coat pocket, skinning knives and Bowie knives, hatchets, a Confederate cavalry sabre hung scabbarded on a saddlehorn, smoke-stained buckskins and bar-stained broadcloth, broken plug hats and glossy fur caps, loud checked shirts and patched linen, canvas dusters and wool capotes, parfleche-soled moccasins and high-heeled riding boots. Every face bearing a different mark of vice or virtue, motive or resolve.
Silence was near complete. The Englishman’s boy could hear birds carolling in the thickets down by the river and the horses shifting in the roadway, saddles creaking like the timbers of a ship rocking at anchor, the faint chiming of restless spurs and bridle chains. Someone coughed, but no one spoke. They were waiting on Hardwick.
Hardwick was lighting a cigar. He scratched a match with a thumbnail and his face sprang out at them, bright in the dim surround, like a golden countenance in an old painting. His bay pricked its ears at the crack of the match, sidestepped uneasily when the sulphur burst stinging in its nostrils. Hardwick remained seated, careless and comfortable, reins looped on the horn, hands cupped to the flame. He spoke softly to the horse, checking its restive dance.
For a moment, he drew on the cigar and studied the shadowy cavalry. Then he nodded and, without raising his voice, said: “I got one thing to say to you boys before we commence this enterprise. I don’t tolerate a slacker. If one of you thinks he can slack on Tom Hardwick, take another think and fall out now.” There came a pause in which he seemed to be taking thought himself. “And I hope there’s no cowards among us,�
� he added. “I won’t break bread with a coward.” He smiled briefly and that was confusing, as if the smile was taking back or amending what he had just said. The Englishman’s boy was sure that was not the case. “Well,” said Hardwick, turning his horse, “let’s move out.”
They went up the street at a walk, the slow, sombre pace of a funeral procession, past the shuttered house Fort Benton’s merchant prince, I.G. Baker, had built so his wife would not have to give birth to their first baby in the fort, past the ox wagons and trailers parked by the warehouses, past the sporting and gaming houses at this hour black as the heart of sin, past the old adobe fort which had stood godfather to the town, its four massive blockhouses featureless and blank but for the rifle slits in the walls.
Wraiths, they stole out into the country, accompanied by the singing of meadowlarks, the horses steadily warming to their work in the chill morning air. The file lengthened under the blush of sun rising behind them, Hardwick and Evans assuming an air of generalship at the head, the company sorting into a natural order of march, friend falling in with friend, acquaintance falling in with acquaintance, the pack animals and remounts occupying the protected centre of the column, riders at the rear acting as loose herders.
Because they were unfamiliar with the other riders, the Englishman’s boy and a hired hand named Hank from a farm between the Teton and Marias which had lost stock too, fell into step with one another. His employer had equipped Hank with a dubious horse and a dubious rifle, enrolled him in the posse to assist in the recovery of his stolen property. Hank looked as if he wished he were in any other line of work than chasing Indians. He talked a good deal, as if talking kept the Indians from peeking around some corner of his mind. The boy wished he would talk less and look to the management of his horse more, a fat white plug with a dirty coat which kept blundering and stumbling about in a slew-footed fashion.
When they arrived at the wolfers’ old camp the sun was standing blood-red on the horizon. The camp was marked by a dead fire, a few pieces of charcoal, some fine ash blowing along the ground in a gathering wind. The track of nineteen iron-shod horses was plain as print on a sheet of clean paper. However, Philander Vogle, who had been nominated scout, also espied a faint, partially obliterated moccasin print blended in among the hoof prints.
“They didn’t drive them off,” he said to Hardwick. “Slippery devils come in and walked them out quiet. That’s why we didn’t hear nothing.”
Touching the brim of his hat, Hardwick saluted the moccasin impression and whoever had left it as a signature on the earth. They rode on.
On the other side of the hills, vistas opened up. It was flat, open country, a barbed-wire fence running parallel to their advance, posts marching off to the horizon like infantry, staking out the Robinson property where Hank worked and horses had also been stolen. The stirring sight of all the posts he had pounded caused Hank to cluck his nag down the line to Hardwick, to point westward and excitedly pass on his information. “There. Over there. That’s where they broke the fence. Broke it down and run off Mr. Robinson’s horses, by God.”
Hardwick said, “Farmer, what’s this news in aid of?”
“Why, it’s just news, I guess,” he said uncertainly.
“It’s old news,” said Hardwick. “I don’t want no news from you except news of where them horses went to. You got any such news?”
“No, no. I don’t, I suppose,” Hank admitted, crestfallen.
“Then you leave the Indians to us, Farmer. And we’ll leave minding the raising of peas and beans and taties to you.”
Hank dropped back, deeply chagrined. “He had no business coming down on me so hard. I ought to have thrown it back at him,” he said to the Englishman’s boy.
“I wouldn’t,” said the boy.
“Why not?”
“Because I ain’t a fool,” said the boy.
Late in the morning, a halt was called. Vogle, who had been scouting in advance, returned with a report that a hundred yards ahead he had discovered a dead colt. Recently gelded, it appeared to have bled to death with the effort of trying to keep pace with the fugitive herd.
“That’s one of Mr. Robinson’s,” Hank confided to the Englishman’s boy. “He cut him two days ago.”
The real news was that where the colt had fallen, the trail forked. The Indians had split the herd and one lot of horses had been driven northwest, the other northeast. Everyone dismounted while Evans, Hardwick, and Vogle convened a council, squatting on the ground.
Hardwick asked Vogle if he could estimate how many Indians were in the raiding party. Vogle said he wasn’t sure, but he could find no unshod-pony tracks, which suggested not many.
“How many?” demanded Hardwick.
Vogle shrugged. “Two, maybe three. Can’t swear to it.”
Hardwick considered a moment. “If there’s only two or three, they’re from the same band. They haven’t shaved off to take their share of the loot home to different camps. They’re going to swing back and join up again further north. They’re just aiming to lead us on a wild-goose chase.”
“So what do we do?” asked Evans. “Split up? Me lead one party of men west, you one party east?”
“I don’t like it,” said Hardwick. “Not with the head start they’ve got.” He laid a pebble on the ground. “That’s us,” he said. He traced two lines in the dust with his knife, radiating northeast and northwest from the pebble. “That’s them. If they do figure to powwow up north, say here,” he mused, laying down another pebble to mark the imagined meeting place, “they’ve got to hack back from the line they’re riding now.” He curved the lines to converge on the upper pebble. “The longest way between where we are and where they’re going is riding the loop. And if either one of us loses the trail of the scallywags we’re chasing, you and me’ll be like the fat couple with the big bellies. We ain’t never going to get it together.”
“Speak your mind,” said Evans.
“But if we split the difference and strike due north,” said Hardwick, drawing a straight line with the tip of his knife between the pebbles, “we’ll make time on them. And sooner or later, no matter where the pebble sets, as long as we keep bearing north, one of their trails is going to cut ours. When it does, we pick it up and go hard after them red rogues.”
“If that’s their plan.”
“There’s the kicker. But I’ll bet on it.”
“All right,” said Evans, standing. “We’ll ride north.”
Hardwick allowed the horses an hour to graze the short, tough grass while the men gnawed hard biscuit and scooped pemmican out of rawhide bags with their fingers. Berries and lard and buffalo meat all scrambled together and poured hot into a leather bag to harden didn’t sit well with Hank, who had been raised in civilization, in the East. He said it was like stirring apple pie into your gravy and pork chops. No different. The Englishman’s boy held his tongue. Hardwick was listening, watching them.
The man the wolfers called Scotty, a Canadian who had ridden down the Whoop-Up Trail with them from north of the line, pulled a bottle of whisky out of his saddlebags, and passed it around to each man for a swig. He said it was Scotch whisky. The Englishman’s boy had never tasted Scotch whisky before, but he drank his swallow and thanked him.
Scotty said, “You’re most welcome.”
To the Englishman’s boy, there was something odd about the Scotchman, a peculiar, unsteady gleam in his eye. He didn’t seem to belong with this bunch, seemed not aware of the company he was keeping. He had the Englishman’s way of talking. Gentleman’s airs. Didn’t care to blaspheme. Kept himself spruce and neat. He’d seen him writing in a little book after he finished eating, just how the Englishman did. Journal, the Englishman called his book. The boy could read a little but had never got the hang of writing.
They remounted at noon and rode to the spot where they had seen carrion birds fluttering down for the past hour. Magpies skimmed away and floated back to earth a short way off to wait out the interrupti
on of their feeding. The horses, catching the heavy, sweetish stench of death mingled with the smell of horse, arched their necks, cocked their heads, drummed their hooves, and shied sidelong past the corpse, snorting and nickering. The colt lay stark on its deathbed of wiry grass, stiff back legs streaked with long stockings of rusty blood, eye sockets empty, guts torn and scattered, body encased in a tattered mail of blue flies.
Clear of the corpse they walked their horses on under an impassive sky dappled with handfuls of torn white cloud flying before the wind like cottonwood fluff. Men and horses blinking in and out of the eye of the sun, cloud shadows overtaking and encompassing them and racing on, patches of darkness sailing over the billowing grass like blue boats running before a storm. Antelope and mule-tail, prairie chickens and jack-rabbits, coyotes and fox and grouse started out of the sage, flashed across the emptiness at their approach.
About mid-afternoon, Hardwick took his bearings, consulted his pocket watch, and booted his horse into a brisk trot. Within a mile or two, it became evident that Hank’s white nag lacked the staying power to hold the pace. Little by little, the Englishman’s boy and the farm hand lost ground until they found themselves lagging in the rear. A gap gradually opened between them and the body of riders. Ten yards, twenty, thirty. When it lengthened to forty, the boy put his heels to his horse and loped back to the column. Hank too closed ranks, but not so effortlessly, and the ground he won back he immediately began to lose again. Three more times the string ran out and had to be wound back tight, and each tightening took a little more out of the white horse. Sweat darkened its belly and patched its chest, lashings of foam flew from its bit, spattering its neck.
The Englishman’s Boy Page 8
