by Peter Bowen
She wore me down, the damned wench, all perfume and sweet flesh. I never been able to resist women, it has caused most of my troubles.
Buffalo Bill caught up with us right after dawn. He’d been raving the first couple of days and then sick. Now here he was again.
I looked at the folks I was with.
They were my kind of people and that made me feel sad, and after a while I laughed.
There’s always folks smarter than you, Kelly, I says to myself, embarrassing as that is.
48
THAT EVENING WE COME to the place of big bones, the two monsters in the stone, and Digby and Masoud and Alys looked and she explained and waved her hands. They was all excited and I left them to it, but that night after supper I pulled the three of them aside.
“I come to find,” I says, “that I am not well thought of, enough so I at least know what you all are up to, I will quit and be gone and you can die here all I care. You understand?”
They all agreed, even Masoud, who I didn’t suspect at all. He could hardly give a damn if some professors thought highly of his paleontology, what with having everything in the world at birth and he’d just come because it amused him.
He come on to me later when I was out listening to the night sounds and marking the places Washakie’s warriors was hid, to spend the night listening and looking for Blue Fox.
“I did not know,” he said.
“Fine,” I says. “Apologies if I insulted you.”
“In my country,” he said, “we have many of these fossils, but our scholars are uninterested. One day soon others will wish to come. I do not care to have our fossils plundered, as they have so many other things. I am rich, but my people are very poor.”
Alys come into my robes late, she had been excited by just the getting here, and stayed up jabbering with Washakie. Between looking at Alys, which was a pleasant task, and Masoud’s chessboard the old man was right satisfied.
Alys made no more pleas to have me forgive her, since I already had, and now she knew how far she could go, which is a very dangerous spot for a feller to be in. They always find out eventually and that’s that from then on, trust me.
The next day Alys fell to sketching the bones in place and putting little daubs of white paint on the rocks and a number, so she’d know exactly where what fitted when this was all uprooted and shipped and there she would be with a puzzle.
A few million years or so and now you poor bastards are just an inventory, I said to the bones.
I had my way the West would have been forever untouched, other than my carting off enough gold and jade to live comfortable.
“Feller’s got to think of his declining years,” I says to Alys. “Whiskey and whores will go up in price, like bribing congressmen and common groceries. Man’s got to look ahead.”
My shin paid for that one.
“I’ve never paid you false, Luther,” says Alys, “and that’s the God’s truth. I thought you knew those drawings had been stolen, too.”
She had me there. I should have.
Buffalo Bill rode on back to check the skinners and get some whiskey. Bill was in his own way an honest man, and I liked him, maddening as he could be.
Bill, just nicely lit, come in late the next day and the lead skinners not long after, and about half of them arrived and the other half camped three or so miles away when the dark come on. I had them build a corral for the stock to hold them at night—an Indian will cut a rope quiet, they have more trouble with a stout pole fence. I had thought to bring nails, and since very few Indians got pullers, I figured we’d have most of the stock when we needed it later.
Whinny and the boys went to putting up a cabin, just big enough to live in and not so big it would be hard to heat. They’d go off and cut cottonwood—oh, the wood would rot out soon but it would last the winter, all they needed, and it began to take some shape quick.
The skinners had brought little miner’s picks and shovels and they was put to work digging up the bones. The rock was pretty well busted and the stack of specimens grew quick.
When they’d got most all out of the ground they could set black powder charges careful and cracked the larger pieces down to a size would fit in a Democrat freightwagon. A ton of rock is about the size of two sacks of spuds. It looked like it would take eighty wagons to haul what we’d dug away.
It went on like that for a couple of weeks, and I thanked the fates that had busted the rock up so nice. If we’d have had more to blast and shape down, it would have taken a good deal longer.
I ranged out each day, looking for Blue Fox’s sign, and didn’t see a damn thing, and neither did Mulligan or any of Washakie’s young men. If he was around, he was keeping damned quiet.
I thought maybe there was just too many of us in camp, and it was likely Blue Fox would wait till we was headed back.
White man’s business, says Washakie.
Finally, the day come when I knew that we had to leave. I could smell the weather changing and though I had smelled snow when the wind was from the mountains, this wind had a smell of storm to it, too, and it would be here in a day.
Alys looked at me like I was mad, and so did Digby, for the day was hot and bright and the sky washed blue without a cloud in it. But Washakie backed me up and so after just enough argument to keep her hand in Alys began to pack.
It was a week earlier than I had hoped, actually, but there had been a great deal of work done and what wasn’t finished now would be easy enough to do in the spring.
The muleskinners was delighted. They weren’t much pleased with the mining trade, and I ticked off the grub and such we’d need for the trip back and we piled everything else in a little shed Whinny and Jake and the boys had made, up on stilts of pine so they could get in when the snow was deep.
Some of the skinners wanted to leave right then, and make ten or so miles before sundown, but I held firm—we’d all go in a group and that meant they had to wait until the rest was ready.
“We’d best travel all night,” I says, “and swing some east, maybe far enough to come to Cheyenne. The lower we are the less we got to fight the snow.”
It was such a bright and beautiful afternoon.
Alys had saddled her own horse and she swung up on it to check and see the girth was tight enough, and I was standing beside her.
There was a sound like a slap on wet flesh and Alys threw her arms up and fell boneless down into my arms, dead.
I screamed.
I set her down and when I did so Digby rode up and he looked off and pointed at something and he shrieked, a sound of such grief and rage I hear it still. He kicked his horse forward and I swung up on mine and followed after, but I had to stop and adjust the bellyband. So he was ahead, and I thought I saw a faint white cloud of powder smoke a good half mile off.
Digby was a good four hundred yards ahead when the gun fired again, and the slug took him in the belly and shattered his spine and he fell off his horse every which way and time I got there he was gone, too. He tried to speak, but his eyes just clouded.
I screamed again and I fired a few shots at the place I had seen the smoke, a long range for my saddle Sharps, I had to aim ten feet above the place.
Then there was another boom, a different sound than the one killed Alys and Digby.
I rode as fast as I could toward the spot, some rocks all piled up by God knew what, and I was givvering the whole time and damned if I can recall what it was I was saying.
I rode in a dream, things moved so very slowly, a bird flew past in front of me and seemed to be swimming in clear syrup.
In time I come to the rocks and I went on up.
Mulligan was there already, and the little man was crying.
We walked together on up and there was Blue Fox, finally dead, Mulligan had hit him low in the back as Blue Fox was lying down and the bullet had gone out his left shoulder.
I rolled the bastard over, but he really was dead this time, and though his face was some scarred it was nothing l
ike the man I thought he was killed by Masoud’s guards.
Mulligan was bawling, and in between sobs he said he’d been two days tracking Blue Fox and had come up on him from behind as he was taking aim, and Mulligan sighted and was about to squeeze the trigger when a breeze moved a limb in his line of sight, just for a second, no time at all, and then Mulligan heard the shot and then nothing.
He’d rushed to the side to get clear and laid down and was ready to fire when Blue Fox shot again and Mulligan’s slug hit him seconds after, he’d not even had time to start wriggling back away to run.
Mulligan sat on a rock holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
I looked at the rifle Blue Fox had used. It once had been Sir Henry’s, the Creedmore with the ivory stock and the brass telescopic sight on it, that Sir Henry had blacked with some acid so it wouldn’t glint.
I went through the little that Blue Fox was carryin’, and found nothing but some tobacco and a knife and a pencil but no paper. His horse didn’t even have saddlebags. He must have camped near; I would find it.
There was men coming up every way that they could now, but I just looked straight ahead.
I come to the camp. Buffalo Bill had put a blanket over Alys.
He could be a good friend.
49
AS ANNOYING AS BUFFALO Bill could be, you knew him for a good man if you happened to be a friend of his and got in trouble.
I was sitting on a rock stunned and felt my blood had drained away. My arms were too heavy to lift and my legs were quivering.
Bill came and he tipped my head back and poured whiskey down my throat. Then he threw a blanket around me and he just sat there and waited, and every once in a while he’d give me another dose.
“I will never know,” I finally croaked, “just what this was all about.”
“White man’s business,” says Washakie. I hadn’t heard him come.
I nodded. Yes.
White man’s business.
I may have sat there an hour or two days, I can’t say, but finally Bill said we ought to bury Alys and Digby. We were too far from the railroad to take them and if they was planted deep and well covered, then their bones could be got later if anyone cared to.
We found a good place in a little knoll and the skinners dug deep graves and we buried them wrapped in blankets and then piled rocks four feet high on top of the cut earth.
Weren’t any of us prayerful sorts except Washakie, and he said gently he could see to it later. I was grateful.
The weather was turning cold, and so we left, riding ahead of the mule train, and Washakie cut off to head back to his camp. I would see him in the spring, I said.
“No,” he says, “it will be three years from now.”
I nodded. Washakie could see beyond time, and if he said so that was how it would be.
Masoud and his guards, Bill, me, and Jake headed overland, with just jerky and hardtack and some coffee. We would ride day and night, and we drove remounts with us, I wanted only to go somewhere I could be drunk and safe at the same time for a year or two.
Not having anything to hold us back we come into Laramie in five days and change, the last day through some light snow. It was blacker to the north, and I hoped the muleskinners was able to keep going. This time of year if they stopped we might not find them till spring.
I was in a state of funk so deep that Bill wouldn’t let me out of his sight, for fear I’d get a twitch and shoot myself.
Masoud asked me to come with him as he was planning to go East and then home, but I said hell no, and I did have to wait until the mule train got in. If they was more than two days late, I’d have to round up some fellers and go after them.
Masoud nodded. We was at Rosie’s, at her table in the back, the girls left us alone, neither one of us was much in the mood. I drank and Masoud sipped thick black coffee. Bill stayed just sober enough to keep an eye on me.
The mule train got in about the time I expected and no one lost, so that was that and I didn’t care a goddamn who ended up with the blasted fossils—they cost too much.
“Don’t never want anything too much,” I says suddenly, looking up from my glass.
“Yer gettin’ better,” says Bill. “For a few days there you didn’t say anything near that stupid.”
I come up off the chair and tried to smash his face in, but he just held out his hands and pushed my fists this way and that and I run down as fast as I had blazed up.
“I’m sorry,” I says.
Bill shrugged.
My hotel rooms still smelt faintly of Alys’s perfume and there were some of her things there, and of course the damned parlor car sat looking back at me every time I went out.
I might have sat there in a black fog the whole damn winter but for one of them things always happens to me when I am about out of patience with the earth and all that’s on it.
I was sitting at Rosie’s about drunk enough to go and take a nap when this boy come in, in a blue monkey suit with a lot of brass buttons, and he hands me a telegram. Yellow envelope. One of them. I have never opened one without wishing I had just put the damned thing in the fire. I got up to do just that, and the boy cleared his throat.
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Kelly,” he says, “but there was another telegram said to tell you if you burned that without opening it there was no use as you’d get another and if that didn’t get opened there’d be consequences.”
“That son of a bitch,” I says.
“Son of bitch?” says Masoud. He was playing chess with Bill.
I opened the goddamned thing.
KELLY ORDERED WHITE HOUSE BY 1 DECEMBER GRANT
“He has to find me first,” I snarls, throwing the telegram on the floor.
The kid fished out another telegram. He handed it to me.
PICK THAT UP GRANT
I had to laugh. No fool, our president.
Masoud pointed to the telegram and raised an eyebrow. He had such good manners he wouldn’t demand to know. I handed it over.
“Oh, jolly good,” he says. “We can go together. I am to see the president before I depart.”
“Anything about me?” says Bill.
I shook my head, and Bill slumped a little. He’d never met Grant and wanted to.
“What day is it?” I says.
“November 19,” says Masoud, “in your calendar.”
Eleven days. Barely enough time to get there, allowing for a day or so holdup some place, which usually happened.
“Fine,” I says. “Let’s go.”
The ease with which I found myself installed in one of Masoud’s three coaches should have set my ears to quivering, but I was still in a funk and not thinking well. If I had been, I could easily have slipped off into the winter and made myself good and scarce. Washakie kept a good lodge. I could have made it in time.
Masoud had summoned up his very own locomotive, so we didn’t have to endure the delays common rich parlor-car owners got. We had our own train.
I sat in the saloon glumly looking out at the brown land going past, and the damned farmers seemed to have moved a bit farther west since I last come this way. Wouldn’t be long till my West was all pissants and preachers.
When we got to Omaha and crossed the Missouri on the ferry that carried the locomotives—there wasn’t a bridge yet—I began to perk up a little and thought once again I couldn’t be held accountable for desertion if I didn’t know what my orders was yet, and so whilst our train was being off-loaded on the far shore I took a quiet sneak toward useful obscurity.
I looked back at the train and saw no one looking and ducked down and scurried quick toward a handy alley.
I stopped dead. There was a couple of them giant A-rabs from Masoud’s retinue in it, and they neither moved nor spoke, just kept their hands on the hilts of them swords, and so I put my hands palm up and shrugged and I trudged back to the train.
This finally started me in to thinking, and now I wasn’t going to run.
Oh, no. I was going to take them two lovely little belly guns and I was going to change my appearance some and I was going to kill both Cope and Marsh, the bastards, and even if they didn’t really know where their damned money had led they was responsible. The connection to Blue Fox was there, mad though he was, and there was someone must have known that, must have at least suspected what the end could become.
One of them really strange snowstorms that’s half a blizzard and half a thunderstorm blew up just like that, and the air got wet and stank of St. Elmo’s fire. I’d been in them in mountains and seen my horse’s ears and head dancing with electric blue light, seen it crawl over my gloved hands like a live thing. It was a harmless thing, but weird.
I got in the coach and sat with some whiskey looking out as the black clouds rumbled and the snow fell and the sleet lashed the windows and slipped down like fiery tears.
I had to kill the pair of them the same time, for if I got one it would sure warn the other. So I needed to get to a debate, one thing I could count on was those pompous bastards and their silly quarrels that cost so much blood and death. They needed them, it was all their life.
Now I had something to do and I would do it and if I hanged, and I damned well might, well, fine.
Alys had got inside me and once again my heart was torn and like before I had gone all cold and calm and needed death I dealt to make me whole and warm again. That was what Jim Bridger and Washakie had seen in me.
The storm got furious and the winds pushed the car on its springs and the lamp chimneys rattled in their brass holders. The flames went up and down as the car did. I couldn’t see more’n five feet out the window.
I had some more whiskey and I pecked at some cheese and meat and chewed real slow.
Blue Fox had slipped through disguised as a wounded soldier, and I could do the same thing if I was uniformed, bemedaled, and my face touched up with collodion, fake honorable scars. Getting the uniform and medals and such was nothing, old soldiers sold what they had, the government was slow to pay them for their blood. And the thanks of a grateful nation.
I’d do it alone. I’d speak to no one.
