Savage Country

by Robert Olmstead

  “It’s not my fate to give up,” he said, closing the space between them. “We have a common sympathy and a common purpose.”

  “Perhaps we should go back to camp,” Elizabeth said.

  “Don’t go,” he said. “There is something I want to say to you.”

  “You’ve been my good friend,” she said.

  “Wait. Please,” he said, taking her hand.

  “I shall probably never marry again,” she said, taking back her hand, trying to sound apologetic. There, it was done. She’d revealed herself. She’d brought the matter to a close. Whatever the consequence might be, honesty was the best way to go.

  “I have great resources,” he said, and he told her everything in a flood of words and promises. He told her of his pen names and ever-­mounting royalties, his new manuscript of a white woman’s captivity and deliverance. He told her of his recent inheritance of his uncle’s house in Boston, a brick mansion fronted by tall elms, the vast dining room, the dim parlor and the oak furniture upholstered in dark green velvet, the brass and clear-­cut glass lamps he’d read by as a boy, their oval chimneys and globe shades. He told her in his mind he saw her inhabiting the rooms; walking in the gardens; the two of them sitting at dinner surrounded by authors, professors, theologians, financiers, men of politics. He said he felt a driving and unhindered power inside his body. They were at the center of time and America was history’s fulcrum.

  The reverend doctor let down his hands and clasped them together. He shook and caught his breath, his face a lighter shade. His vision of her in the straits of a grand house, the walls made of brick. She waited for him to open his eyes before she spoke.

  “Please know I like you immensely,” she said, “but I have great resources myself.” And she did. She’d kept careful records and now her income was no longer insubstantial. She knew how to turn buffalo into money. She knew there would be more to come. She’d already spoken to Matthew and Mark about returning next year and they were willing.

  The news was more than he could bear.

  “I cannot help but feel betrayed,” he said, and hearing himself say the words, he could only think a bad spirit had taken possession of him. All along he’d been sacrificing himself on her behalf and this was the thanks he received. In no way had he anticipated her ingratitude.

  “We are all betrayed in the end,” she said, her eyes fearless.

  “By whom you say?”

  “By history, by God.”

  There was a mournful sound inside him, dying away. Bewildered, he stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “You are not the woman I thought.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe before I was nothing and now I am something. I trust you will not pine away and die?”

  “Perhaps if we prayed,” he said, trying to mask his anguish.

  “Not now,” she said. God had done all he could for her. “Maybe later.”

  “I am going to pray to God for you tonight,” the reverend doctor said.

  Inside he brimmed with anger. That’s what it comes to in the end, he thought, and was grateful for what vision and revelation God had recently granted him to blunt the news of Elizabeth’s estrangement. Faith was letting go of all dependence and commending oneself into the arms of Jesus. With a freer mind, he’d move to find a faith even more profound.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I would have given so much,” he said, and finally turned and took his leave, grieving the loss of what he never had.

  IN THE MORNING THE reverend doctor would induce the Miller brothers to accompany him back to Kansas and she learned of his decision only when they came to her.

  “It’s our families,” Temple said. “We have been away a long time.”

  “Of course, your girls,” she said, pausing, and then she said, “What will you do?”

  The two men shifted in place. Apparently they’d not decided how to say what more they wanted. The conversation had gone beyond their preparation.

  “We were thinking of returning to Meadowlark,” Story said.

  “Oh,” she said, spreading her hands. “This is Meadowlark.”

  “We were hoping to work on the old Meadowlark,” Temple said.

  “We are quite ready to stay and work for you,” Story said. “If that’s your decision.”

  “How much is he paying you?” she said.

  “A thundering lot of money,” Story said, and he told her the sum, but it wasn’t a thundering lot of money, and she thought to tell them the reverend doctor could have reached much more deeply into his purse to secure his journey back to Kansas and they could have driven a much harder bargain and they’d left a substantial amount of money on the table.

  “I cannot fault you,” she said. “You are go-­ahead men. I understand that and I want go-­ahead men around me. I will loan you horses and you may draw rations for your travel and you may resume your old jobs upon one condition.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Temple said. “Anything.”

  “You are to take Mr. Penniman and his grandson with you, otherwise they will not last.” Then she added, “In the meantime, make sure you get your money in writing.”

  Chapter 28

  Day by day, his vitality fading, Michael traveled on. To the west he could see the escarpments of the Llano Estacado where the Comanche lived in winter. In this deepest country the red dog’s wolfish instincts seemed more pronounced and Khyber was jittery and impatient to be moving as they alternately disappeared beneath the earth and rose again to the sight line. How many nights he’d slept out he could not remember. How many days he awakened to the drenching dews and the chilled air? How many days by noon his body was steaming from the hot sun? Who knows what water he’d drunk? They’d lost three men to water alone: gyppy, salty, alkali. His eyeballs ached and the spangles in his vision had returned. He needed to weather it out. He needed to keep going.

  He traveled alongside a creek moving eastward. The creek was here and there, its bed dry for miles except during freshets of rain. When he first found the creek he’d miscalculated and was at its westernmost extreme, a seep, a trickle appearing and disappearing in the earth. The land was broken and furrowed and there were no trees or scrub.

  He’d departed the Métis and the Lord at Corpus Christie after the animals were crated, caged, and penned. Specimens were sown in canvas and nailed down in wooden boxes. Skins and heads were sealed in tin cases carefully soldered and by now they were crossing the Atlantic: the wolves, coyotes, buffalo, lions, bobcats, antelope, deer, bear, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs—enough prairie dogs to feed the snakes on the voyage and still have plenty left over. Birds: turkeys, white owl, mockingbird, kingbird, swallow, quail, meadowlark. They trapped eagles in their high aerie beneath which were strewn the bones of deer, antelope, and buffalo.

  In boxes were tarantulas, black widow spiders, scorpions, horned frogs, turtles, lizards, centipedes, giant wasps, copperheads, and water moccasins. They were fed a gruel of flour and water. They were fed meat the hounds brought down. They were fed chickens and each other and some could go months without.

  The men had been bitten and stung. They were gored, clawed, trampled, lamed, envenomed, and paralyzed. Some died and some recovered. It was their good luck or bad. As far as the Métis and the Lord were concerned, the dead were men who would not need to be paid.

  They had found more burial mounds, the dead warriors’ skin shrunken, wrinkled, and dry. They collected the corpses, the bows and quivers full of steel-­pointed arrows; tomahawks; scalping knives; red clay pipes; and small bags of tobacco, nacre beads, silver rings, and silver bracelets. The deeper they dug, the more they found: parcels of coffee and sugar; revolvers and rifles; saddles, bridles, lariats, and scalps; harquebuses, gorgets, and greaves; and a sword forged in Toledo.

  What the Métis and the Lord would do to fulfill Mr. Salt’s request for an Indian family and an American Negro family Michael did not know. By then he’d left them and struck his way west by nor
thwest. He told them he’d not be sailing with them, told them he did not know when he’d see them next.

  Once more he scanned the distance. Heavy mists hung over the plain.

  He was cold, wet, and weary. A chill seemed to have crept into his very bones. He spoke to Khyber. One of her ears pricked and fell back. He spoke again and the other ear fell back. As night came everything became still. Soon would come the howling of the wolf, the cries of the coyote, the wing beat of the night hunters.

  He caught himself nodding heavily. Some time ago his back had begun to ache and he wanted to lie down but was afraid he would drop asleep and not wake up. He was now in a place where the creek had gathered enough water to take form and make a trickling of brown current. He crossed a trail where generations of buffalo threshed their way to the water. The red dog stopped and assumed a listening attitude. Water holes at night were not a place to rest.

  Since morning he’d had a feeling of illness. He realized that he was experiencing the languor and weariness that presaged the fever. He could taste it in his mouth.

  WHEN THE MALARIA FINALLY came, it came hard with a headache that felt like a hammer blow at the base of his skull. He trembled and shuddered and was sick to his stomach. The nausea passed and he sweated and the sweat covering his body was chilling him. He was faint, light-­headed, and tottering in the saddle. He was having trouble breathing and his vertigo became acute.

  What a pity, he thought, recovering his senses. He’d run out of quinine days ago. He knew at this particular moment things could quickly go very bad. He plotted out his possible futures. He hoped and believed this wasn’t the end. Khyber moved under him. He’d not realized she’d stopped. He dismounted and dragged his blanket, his oilskin coat, and saddlebag after him. Something rustled in the curly grass. The red dog hackled and whatever it was it ran away. He managed to off-­saddle and release the bit.

  On this return to Wolf Creek the horse had shown her mettle. All other horses would have dropped from fatigue, but she’d not fallen off one iota and this after he’d given her the freedom of her head. She’d already held up fifteen, twenty, miles a day coursing with the hounds, crisscrossing the broken land, and now she was taking him home.

  “Khyber,” he said to her, the bold heart he trusted so much. His wrists and ankles were as if chilblained. He yawned and thought he fell, but he was still standing. He needed to find a resting place. He blew gently into her nostrils. He waited for her to nose him and she did.

  He remembered Charlie and John playing hide-­and-­go-­seek. One of them was behind a big log beside the road. It was Charlie. He was sucking his white thumb and he would not be found. He now seemed strangely present. He was sitting on his coat. His saddlebag was in the grass next to him.

  He opened his saddlebag and found his matches. They’d gotten wet and were no more than a paste that rubbed off on his fingers. He rummaged for his whiskey bottle and his brother’s journal. He read: It seems I love you more and more every hour and at night when I sleep I meet you in every dream and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again.

  He closed the leather cover and placed it back in his saddlebag. He hunkered down and drew his saddle blanket over his shoulders, allowing it to droop behind. A cold, biting wind blew across the open land. Cold and chill followed great heat. He knew what was coming. After the chills would come a fever and he felt the fever rising up inside him.

  Khyber stretched her neck. She cropped the short grass, looked about, and cropped some more. He took a drink unsteadily, the last of his whiskey. His face felt tight and full of steam. He was breathing through his mouth, almost panting. A slanting rain had begun to fall. A bright arc of electricity lit up the sky. He waited for the thunder, but it did not come. His spine ached and his loins and around his ribs ached also. The ache went into his shoulders.

  “We are indeed alone,” he said to the red dog. The red dog lifted an eyebrow and then looked away.

  Then his temples throbbed and his eyes began to swim. He gathered what strength he could, raised his revolver, and pulled the trigger three times. He lay down on the blanket and curled up in a ball, waiting in distant consciousness. Mercifully the weather cleared and out of habit he looked up to the stars.

  “David,” he said. He knew David was watching him.

  The moon was close and there was good-­enough light and it blued the creek and the land, and in time, he did not know when, the world dimmed and he did not know if he was dreaming or his mind was awake and wandering. He lay on the wet ground beneath the horse blanket soaked to the skin. He began to shiver, his teeth, arms and legs jerking in a confusion of fever. Khyber whinnied softly and the red dog came in, turned in circles, and curled down against him.

  He was surfacing again. He was breathing hard and beads of moisture had gathered on his upper lip and forehead and soon bathed his face. He rubbed his eyes and he saw her. She was coming to him, walking rapidly against the wind. He felt the warm caress of his wife. She was stroking his hand. His fingers tightened on hers. She was slipping her arm around his waist and she was an angel lifting him up.

  Chapter 29

  That morning, at her bookkeeping, Elizabeth began to grow uneasy. She buttoned her coat about her and over that her rain slicker. From the saddle hung a holster of stiff leather with the top flap open. She held the reins in her left hand and with the right she slid free the revolver once and twice. She circled the yard at a hand-­canter. Her right hand held a whip she carried on her thigh cavalry fashion. The sky was overcast and pitchy darkness still shadowed the eastern shore of the creek water below.

  With one hand Charlie held up his string and with the other hand his thumb and forefinger made a zero.

  She waited. She looked to the horizon and then to her watch. The horse pawed once and whinnied softly and then stood quite motionless.

  “Where are the brothers?” she said.

  “They stayed out last night,” Charlie said. “Me and John took ’em food and cartridges.”

  “Which way?” she said.

  “Follow the creek,” Charlie said, pointing west and then south.

  “Are you warm enough?” she said sternly.

  “Sure am,” he said, propping the collar of his coat.

  She referenced her compass and then spurred the horse and he plunged forward at a headlong gallop in the direction Charlie pointed. She felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath her and she let the long-­limbed horse race and he built at terrific speed. He stretched out across the open space with such a stride she held tight to keep her seat and urged him on the dead-­level plain.

  A rain began to fall. Gentle at first, it was soon falling in sheets and she had to close her mouth to keep from breathing in water. It was bitterly cold and then it warmed. She tried to blink away the water in her eyes and pulled low the brim of her hat. She kept riding and after an hour she entered the fields of the last day’s killing, the carcasses torn and blown up, and she was riding through and by then it was too late to go back.

  She bent south where the grass was high and the creek was skirted with willows and cottonwood trees. She crossed a lateral creek and moved up the bank. She could hear her heart. She could feel her pulse. Her skin was wet and cold inside her clothes. She urged the horse onward. She could not ride fast enough.

  She rode the upslope of another fold and when she reached the top rode over the low crest where a wind up-­rose. Beyond was a field of carcasses rotting in the air and infested with flies. Her stomach lurched at the smell and her eyes watered. Innumerable skeletons of buffalo lay in all directions. She lifted her hand over her nose and mouth and struggled not to vomit. She tried to ride the edge, but there was no edge. They were everywhere. There were smaller carcasses to be seen on the surrounding earth. These were wolves and, smaller yet, the coyotes poisoned and slaughtered for their pelts and, smaller yet, raptors, badgers, and birds of carrion: vultures, hawks, and eagles as if struck down from the sky.

  She suddenly came upon a p
ack of gabbling and blood-­sotted wolves tearing at the hundred carcasses. The carcasses heaved and their stiff legs rocked in the air as the wolves tore at them from the inside. One by one they emerged from the bellies and turned their eyes to her. She had ridden on them so quickly there was no time to stop or to veer off. She squeezed with her legs and clutched at the horse’s mane and he understood to jump. He strutted his forelegs, gathered his hind legs under him, pushed, and rose up into the air. She lifted out of the saddle, letting her weight down into her heels and they were floating for what seemed the longest time.

  She did not look down but looked straight ahead. She heard a knock, a hoof on bone, one of the wolves struck in the skull. The horse landed with his trailing foreleg and then lead leg, his hind legs following suit. She took up the bit and rode on. There were streaks of them, ground shadows running alongside her. They were all around and there were as if dozens of them. With a swift flash of ancient memory her heart was water inside her; she knew she was being hunted. In her agony and fear she could not draw enough air into her lungs. She pulled her revolver and fired it to her right as she rode. The explosions threw her wrist about and her hand ached terribly, her wrist and arm, but she held her grip and fired again and again.

  There rose upon the air a lone wailing cry. It came from her back trail. It died and rose again. It was mournful and despairing. Another joined in and there were two voices as if in concert. Then a third and this one was closer and the first two found it and the three called back and forth, wild and swelling. All around her was the telling of her passage. She kicked with her spurs. She urged the horse on. He straightened his neck and gave his whole heart to the work. They galloped steadily through the downpour, the big horse stretching itself flat and forward. Her heart beat fast and the blood ran hot in her veins.

  When she finally found them it was a strange tableau she encountered. With a strong pull upon the rein, she brought the horse round short. She reined up and swung from the saddle. Matthew and Mark stood off, their rifles ready at their shoulders, deciding what they must do. Khyber stood by with the boys’ horses and the red dog stood over Michael, wrapped in his blankets. The red dog, his teeth were bared, his spine was low in his shoulders and an unearthly sound emanated from his throat. He would not let the boys get near. He would kill them if they came any closer.