Savage Country

by Robert Olmstead

  That night in his sleep Michael was troubled. Several times he stepped from the bed and walked the room, tending the stove, brushing the horses, smoking a cigarette, having a sip of brandy. As the night wore on the sorrow magnified. He feared the onset of his old black days, much like those his brother had had. He wondered if he wore the same mark as David. Maybe it was simply the end of the languor he experienced after his malaria days and he was himself again.

  “Come back to bed,” she said. “Keep me warm.” She sat up tentatively, the room so cold she could see her breath. She wanted him to lie back down. “What is it?”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “Tonight we are as safe as we will ever be.”

  On the third day there was no wind, but it remained bitterly cold. Michael stepped from the tent. It was so cold he could hardly breathe. He collected a bucket of snow and washed his face and ate some. When Khyber stuck her head out after him jets of steam blew from her nostrils and she backed inside.

  Then the morning sun broke through and there was scattered light, and with a sudden burst a flood of light poured onto the land. The tents whitened and glowed as the ice caught the light and sparkled and the creek ice mirrored. The wind had blown away the snow and the creek was a wide and sinuous avenue that disappeared to the east gray and silver. The ice was thick and clear and they could see through to the current running beneath its vitreous surface over the stream bed below. There were swimming fish and turtles under the glassy ice and suspended matter floating east.

  Luke was the first onto the ice. He took two steps when suddenly both feet went out from under him. He fell onto his back and went skimming along. The others cheered him on. Mark ran forward, threw himself down, and was gliding the slick surface and did not stop until he reached the far bank. In this moment, spinning, sliding, skating, and falling, the four brothers were boys again.

  Outside was the blue sky, and the shadows on her walls were red and blue. Elizabeth retrieved a bottle of ink from beside the fire and lit two more candles with a match and opened her ledger book. Her parlor smelled like a stable. She wondered what damage the storm had done. She picked up her pen.

  Then John was at her door, calling her name. He told her they couldn’t find Charlie. He must have gone out in the night and not returned and was he with her?

  “We found him,” someone cried, and John wheeled and was running.

  Elizabeth pulled on an overcoat and stepped into the cold sunlight and made her way in the direction of the calling voices. Others were moving in the same direction, following a slack rope that lay in the snow on its way to the stone bathhouse. Something cold and gloomy floated out from the doorway. A long fringe of icicles depended from the roofline. Charlie had made it to the bathhouse where he tried to start a fire but was unable to. The rope was unknotted at his waist and his clothes were in a frozen pile. There was a stiff crackling coat of ice upon his naked body. He was blue and his eyelashes frosted. He sat against a wall with his legs spread before him, a fist on his chest and the other against his cheek.

  She could not speak for the pain that was in her heart.

  In the cold he died, cold and then warm in his mind, and naked, like being born or going to sleep forever. She touched the frosted stone and when she brought her hand away she was holding the crystals of his last breath, his warmth, his air.

  “He was just impossible to dislike,” someone said.

  “I must wash and dress him,” she said.

  She felt tired and crazy and good for nothing. How many months ago had she told Michael she was prepared to take the risk? And how many deaths had they endured since that night in the garden? She felt shame and self-­reproach. It was her fault Charlie was dead. It was because of her ambition and desire and she could see it in no other way.

  The next morning was also very cold, but the next was less so, and so it went until it became warm again and there was a soft wind from the south and the sun and a warming and by noon the land was running with water. As the days went by, the vanished world reappeared. The blizzard and their escape from it, like so many experiences, was too much to remember and soon was disappearing from their minds.

  Chapter 33

  Spring was advancing and with it the force inside Michael came surging back. Each day his muscles repaired and his body took on mass and he found himself again and he was as if returned from the remotest part of the remotest world.

  The cottonwoods were in bud and soon they would leaf. New shoots of prairie grass were sprung from the earth. During the days and weeks, the buffalo were beginning to shed their winter coats and seek the muddy wallows.

  When Elizabeth found him that night the evening star was in the west and the climbing moon a cataract of light. Khyber was on her back with her feet in the air like a big dog and Michael was sitting on her belly. He wore an indigo blue shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows to reveal the sleeves of his red cotton underjersey. His hair was untied and his beard was down to his chest. Against the keen crispness of the night air she watched as he pulled a blanket over his shoulders and returned his rifle to the hollow of his left arm. Where he sat he could see south, west, and north with the ravine of the creek behind him.

  Michael turned and watched her as she came on in her waistcoat and her last good dress, a pearl-­colored Irish poplin. Her hair was brushed smooth, pulled back, and tied with a ribbon.

  She could not say when it started, but little by little, day by day, she’d walked in this direction. There were signs to be read everywhere if only she’d read them. Was it the time of the malaria when she stilled his shivering body or the blizzard when they slept together for warmth, or was it the first time she saw him, she did not know.

  Why mustn’t this be? she thought, and she was alive and tender and thinking about the future.

  “Is it you or your ghost?” he said, standing to greet her.

  “Are you going or coming?” she said, her eyes fixed on his face in the moonlight.

  “We just came in. What are you doing up so late?”

  She wanted to say, I was sleeping and I dreamed about you, but instead she said, “I just feel like visiting, Mr. Coughlin, and to say I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather.”

  Her legs weary, she stood there, experiencing a sudden need to sit or lie down. She experienced a strangeness passing through her, a lonely spasm, as if she’d not waken from the dream. She felt like she was going to cry and was afraid to say anything more because the dream’s wondering and yearning and ache had not disappeared.

  Khyber was rolling in the grass, and when she looked up, her expression was as if she did not know why and then she rolled some more.

  “She is truly quite a horse,” Elizabeth said.

  He thought he saw sadness in Elizabeth’s eyes. She stood as if she’d hiked the wagon road for the sole reason of hearing a voice.

  “The boys should be back home by Easter,” he said. They now had a decent bank account in Fort Worth and Elizabeth asked that they consider property in the vicinity of Meadowlark to make a new start.

  Matthew and Mark wanted to go to Africa with Michael and he liked the idea of it. He’d leave this damned country for good. Elephants were still plentiful and the shooting would be profitable. Maybe they’d head for the diamond fields or take the big nets and cages into the land and capture animals. There had yet to be a successful breeding program anywhere and the zoos of Europe and America would pay dearly.

  “I’m going to walk out for a distance. Will you walk?” she said.

  “When the next man on night watch arrives.”

  She wondered if he understood her feelings, the tenderness of her intentions.

  When the next man arrived they walked along the bluff. He felt her touch at the small of his back as if to let him know where she was and then she took his arm and together they slipped away into the darkling silence. They walked out beneath the starlit vault and birds took flight before them. The night that lay before them was so quiet the
y could hear the sound of their own footsteps swishing through the grass.

  “What if I keep going forward?” she said.

  “You will be me.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “You could lose what you love the most,” he said.

  “My life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me,” she said. “I have made up my mind today. Our work is ended. I told the freighters when next they came we’d be gone. I told them we were done and in a few days we’d be going north. They will come collect whatever hides we leave.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “We have enough.”

  “Whatever your reason, I am pleased to hear you say it.”

  “Now I worry we have stayed too long and it’s too late for us.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not too late.”

  “In the morning we will tell the rest of the men and tell Bonaire.”

  “Bonaire already left,” he said, and he told her how he’d ridden into Bonaire’s camp that afternoon and it was bare. There was no sign of them except the overwhelming smell of wolf carcasses, their flesh rotting in a ravine and a dozen wolves hanging in the trees.

  “When did he do that?”

  “I calculate three or four days ago.”

  “Oh,” she said, and then she did worry they’d overstayed and were doomed and she went to speak, but instead she said, “He was a tough old spirit.”

  “You should sleep, then,” he said. “We have a lot to do in the morning.”

  “You don’t think we’re too late, do you?”

  “No,” he said. “In the morning will be fine.”

  “There is more I have to say.” She let go of his shirtsleeve, sighed. When she looked at him, a mist seemed to blur her sight.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and she did and lifted her face to him.

  When he kissed her a tremble ran through her. She reached up to take his face in her hands and when she did he reached his strong arms around her and gathered her into him. He felt her body respond more heavily. Her head dropped and her chest began to rise and fall.

  “Is it too late?” she said. “Am I too old?”

  He touched her cheeks and her forehead. She tried to slow her breathing. He pulled the ribbon and her hair fell over her face.

  He kissed her again and she felt to be carried from all pain and suffering, from sadness and grief and she was sure he could hear her heart. He laid her down and she lifted her face to receive more of his kisses.

  “Hold me,” she said. “Wrap your arms around me.”

  When he did he kissed her lips and her forehead and her tired eyes. Her shiny eyes were liquid and for the moment there was nothing but the flutter of pulse, the beating of their hearts as they lay side by side. She blew a strand of hair out of her face and he kissed her again.

  Afterward, she slowly came back to herself and it was strange and wonderful. The sighs and the murmurings and the moment broke something loose inside him and inside her like a burning angel. She reached inside his shirt and felt his warm skin. He took her in his arms and held her tight to his chest. That night they lay awake on the plain talking before sleep and it was a few hours after midnight when her hand upon his shoulder aroused him.

  “You were having a dream,” she said.

  He sat up and tucked his legs beneath him. He dropped his face in his hands and was silent for some minutes, her hand still on his shoulder and then he lay back down beside her.

  When he stirred awake again it was with some vague premonition. Slowly he opened his eyes, to see nothing but the grasses close to his face. He looked at her for a few moments without moving. He held his hand to her mouth and she placed a hand over his.

  “Stay down,” he whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There were sounds in the night. It was too dark to see anything. Birds were being disturbed. They were calling out in patterned distress. They were calling to each other and making their replies. A coldness was stealing its way into his spine.

  Chapter 34

  He peered intently into the darkness. To the northeast, something in the night loomed up. There was a dark form on the sky, the dark shadow of a man. The muscles in Michael’s legs twitched. A shiver of death passed through him.

  In the next instant two more shadow figures loomed up to the north and east and something dark was noiselessly descending on the camp. They were the shapes of running men breaking the line of the horizon.

  “What is it?” she whispered, terrified.

  “Lie still. They cannot see us here. We do not know yet.”

  “When will we know?”

  “When we do.”

  A common thought held them: they’d stayed out too long.

  Between them and the wagon road four figures moved over the low bushes. In the moonlight they moved on, slowly and furtively, and at the bluff they dropped from sight.

  Then there was another and another. Dark shapes of running men and it was as if the night was walking.

  He felt in his veins his quickened blood.

  “We must do something,” she said.

  “There is nothing we can do,” he said, pressing her down on the ground. He knelt beside her below the sight line.

  “Now,” he said. “Stay close to me,” and bent low, she ran behind him to Khyber.

  “Look there,” he said, and pointed to a star on the horizon and told her to fix on it. He told her to ride west and away for a mile or two and then turn to the star and ride into it.

  “When the dawn comes keep the light on this hand,” he said and he took her right hand by the wrist and held it up. “This hand,” he said.

  “No, I’m not going,” she said.

  “You will,” he said, and it was clear there would be no argument she could make.

  “Promise you will be careful,” she said.

  A cloud crossed over the moon and he made a kiss sound and Khyber stood up. He threw on the saddle, cinching it tight and set the bridle. Elizabeth stepped into the stirrup and lifted herself to the saddle. The horse stiffened, raised her head and arched her tail. Michael roped Elizabeth to the saddle that she might ride long after her endurance could last. Her shoulders were already heavy with exhausting fear. She clung with both hands to the pommel. He told her there was a revolver in the saddlebag and passed up the reins.

  “Go before me and don’t look back,” he said, and he turned her facing west of north. “Ride for your safety. Ride steadily and do not stop. Khyber will get you through. She will go until she drops dead under you.”

  “How will you find me?”

  “I will find you. Are you ready?”

  “You will be careful of yourself?” she said.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  She leaned forward in the saddle, touched her heels into the horse’s sides and curving her neck, Khyber started on a full run along the bluff, penetrating the wall of pitchy darkness. The grass flew up behind her into the air. Elizabeth fixed on the star out the corner of her eye. She knew she could go west and then make a straight path in its direction for days. The mare flattened out and she pulled hard at the bit, showing she was capable of more speed and more speed as they buoyantly traveled beneath the starlit sky. The moon made her shadow long and black across the plain.

  MICHAEL DROPPED DOWN ON hands and knees and crawled toward a side ravine. He’d heard no commotion, no gunshots in the camp, and knew by experience that was not good. He looked at the ground in front of him and saw where something had stepped. It was a place where horses had stood. He knew they’d stood there looking over the bluff. He slid into the ravine and then ran through the thickets with the rifle slung and his revolver at half-­arm. At the end of the ravine he waited and listened. There came to him the soft sound of men moving through the camp. There was a long, raw cry he heard and he knew what it was. He ran again, crouching behind every chance cover. He ran along th
e creek with all speed and reached the high curved bank. He worked along the bank of the creek and then without stopping he slipped quietly into the water and waded against the inky flow until he reached the camp shore.

  There was a sound in front of him and then silence. The moon went under clouds and the night went very dark. He strained his eyes into the darkness where he could see black and uncertain shadows.

  His only intentions were to secure a horse and a Sharps and the belts of ammunition.

  On the pathway he found Aubuchon and a spilled basket of sugar doughnuts. His throat had been cut and with one hand he clutched it in his grip. His eyes were still open and the blood seeped from between his fingers. His other hand, the outstretched fingers worked convulsively. He clasped and unclasped his hand. Michael took his hand and looked down into his face. He moved the hand, trying to point to Elizabeth’s tent. His eyes spoke and then his eyes glassed and he was dead.

  The walls of Elizabeth’s tent were dimly illuminated by a lantern from within.

  Inside was one of the hard boys from so many months ago. The boy was built compact and quick-­motioned. He wore broadcloth trousers and a collarless flannel shirt. His hair was close-­cropped. He wore two holsters on his belt and carried a revolver in each. He was holding Sabi by the scruff as she twisted and snapped at the air. He readied a knife to draw across her throat.

  Michael wondered what spurs the boy wore and were his boots lace-­up and did he wear the leather gaiters as he stepped up and slid his knife deep in the boy’s side and into his kidney. He let the boy to the floor, the knife inside him. There was a look of horror in his eyes when he saw Michael’s face.

  “Let go the dog,” Michael said, and when he did, Sabi ran away, disappearing in the blackness.

  “You killed me,” the boy said, his lips rimed with sugar from the doughnut in his mouth.