by Bill Brooks
He finished up and buttoned his trousers before taking his rifle from its scabbard. This time he was determined not to miss. He already saw himself wearing that big sombrero and sitting in that fancy saddle aboard that high-stepping horse of Bill’s.
He took refuge behind the recently pissed-on tree and used one of its low branches to rest his rifle on for a steady aim. He was still feeling a bit undone by his earlier bout with Dora. She’d about taken all the sap out of him and his arms and legs felt weak still, his aim unsteady.
The rider came on steadily, but as he got closer Dave could see that the rider wasn’t wearing the big sombrero, nor riding aboard the high-stepping horse. And the saddle he was sitting was just a plain old saddle without any silver studded into it. The rider’s hat was a simple-looking affair with the front brim pinned back and the horse was a chesty mustang that looked bluish under the noonday sun. Dave was sure as anything the rider wasn’t Buffalo Bill.
Dave shot him anyway.
The rider flopped back off the hindquarters of his horse as though he’d been swept off by an invisible tree limb. The horse kept on walking toward the smelled water.
Dave put away his rifle and mounted his cayuse and forded a shallow place in the river, then rode out to meet the riderless mustang. He approached it cautiously, speaking to it soothingly in much the same way he had spoke to Dora earlier at certain times during their lovemaking. The mustang nuzzled noses with Dave’s cayuse and Dave leaned and scooped up the reins and said, “You’re mine now, meet your new owner. I think I’ll call you Old Blue.”
Then Dave walked the horses back to where the rider’s body lay sprawled upon the earth. Both the rider’s eyes were open and staring at a perfectly blue sky that the eyes would never actually see. Dave dismounted, careful to hold tight the reins of his new horse and his old one and knelt by the body.
There was a red wet flower of blood near the throat of the man’s shirt. Dave congratulated himself on such a fine shot. Other than the bloody stain, the man simply looked dusty, like he’d ridden a long ways, gotten tired and lay down for a rest, perhaps to look at the sky with all its nicely shaped clouds.
“For nothing,” Dave said. “You’ve come all this ways for nothing.”
The man did not quarrel the fact.
Dave searched through the man’s pockets to see exactly who it was he had shot. He found a wallet and opened it up and several pieces of paper money fell out like dry wings of some long-dead birds and there was a name written on a piece of paper that fell out too. Dave read what was on the paper: If this wallet is found, please return to its rightful owner: Buck Taylor, Ulm, Montana. Thank you.
“I sure will,” Dave said with a grin that caused him to look possumlike.
He tossed away the paper and kept the rest.
Then he took a swell-looking Smith & Wesson pistol from the dead man’s waistband. A forty-four forty, it looked like.
“I guess this didn’t do you as much good as it was meant for,” Dave said.
Still, the dead man did not quarrel.
Dave pulled off the dead man’s boots and tried to put them on his own feet but it proved impossible. The boots where about half as long as Dave’s feet.
“You got the smallest dang feet of any man I ever saw,” Dave said.
The dead man’s feet were small and white as flour when Dave peeled off his socks.
The dead man’s hat was too small for Dave’s head as well, so Dave left it, taking with him the wallet, the pistol, and the socks, which Dave figured could stretch well enough to fit his own feet. He dragged the dead man to the river and dumped him in and stood watching as the body was carried downstream past a stand of bull rushes and around a bend. The last Dave saw of the dead man was his bare feet bobbing in the water. Then Dave mounted his nag and rode away wishing the dead man had been named Buffalo Bill instead of Buck Taylor from Ulm, Montana.
Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill…
Chapter 12
Teddy rose early and walked over to the telegram office and sent a wire to George Bangs.
Have met with Colonel Cody, will be joining him on big hunt. He has explained the details. Expect the assignment to last not more than one to two weeks. There is something I need to tell you but will do so in a letter. You might have already heard by way of city marshal Brown of Las Vegas. Will explain my side of the story soon.
T. Blue.
He had the torn letter he’d written to Kathleen in his pocket, still unsure whether to send it or not.
He started back to the hotel and saw Cody riding down the street.
“Mr. Blue,” Billy said, touching the brim of his sombrero. “Glad to see you’re up and about. The train comes in an hour, and on it will be our hunting guests. I’d like you and John to join me for breakfast and then we’ll all go over together and meet the flier, how will that be?”
“That will be fine, Colonel.”
“Good, good. Now I must go and find our other companions who I will introduce to you and John at breakfast before I send them forth to set up an advance camp. We’ll meet you at the Platte Café. Just up the street yonder.”
Teddy nodded and went back to the hotel and rousted John, who answered the door with his hair askew and his eyes somewhat red.
“Colonel wants us to meet him for breakfast.”
“Let me get my boots on. I had a hell of a dream last night,” John said as Teddy followed him into the room and went and stood by the window, looking down on the street.
“I dreamt I was making love to a woman in a rainstorm and lightning struck us.”
“That’s some dream. I guess good liquor will do that to you.”
“I guess maybe it will,” John said, tugging on his boots. “I guess my system needs to get used to the good liquor over all the years of the bad I put in me.” John strapped on his pistol belt, then shucked on his coat over it and his hat.
“I’m set. I hope the Colonel’s buying.”
They made the Platte Café and Cody was sitting there with two other men.
“Boys, this is Yankee Judd and White Eye Anderson. Boys, this is Teddy Blue and John Sears.”
The boys shook hands all around and commenced eating slabs of ham and fried eggs and flapjacks from various platters and washing it down with lots of hot coffee.
“Where you boys from?” White Eye asked. “Me and Yankee is lately from up in Deadwood.”
“Deadwood?” Teddy said.
“Yes, sir. We was gold panning, but that mountain water gives you arthritis of the joints, lumbago, and worse if you stay in it too long.”
“White Eye here buried Wild Bill up in that country,” Yankee said. “Din’t you, old son?”
“Buried him deep and pretty.”
Teddy felt a twinge of something thinking about the dead Wild Bill compared to the last time he’d seen him so alive and confident, those piercing clear eyes.
Billy didn’t say anything.
“I’m from Texas,” John said.
“Same here,” Teddy said, feeling it was best not to give away too much information to men he didn’t know.
“Me and Teddy were drovers,” John said.
“I did some droving myself once,” White Eye said, “before I took up gold panning and burying folks.” Teddy made note that White Eye was tall and cadaverous with a singed eyebrow and Yankee was short and dark and youthful-looking. White Eye seemed like the sort of man who would not take umbrage at burying people, whereas Yankee seemed more serious.
“I never did no cowboy work or grave digging,” Yankee Judd said. “I don’t consider myself above such work, it just ain’t for me, is all.”
They ate more and soon John rolled himself a shuck and smoked it while Billy gave White Eye and Yankee instructions.
“Go on to Dismal River and set up a camp,” Billy said. “And take Jane with you.”
“We ain’t seen Jane since yesterday,” Yankee said.
“Well, find her and take her wi
th you.”
“Jane?” John said.
“She’s our cook on this foray,” Billy said. “Good one too.”
John liked the sound of her name.
“Then we’ll see you boys, when?” White Eye asked.
“Tomorrow late, I reckon,” Cody said. “The whole lot of ’em is being brought in on the morning flier. We’ll give them time to settle a bit, then start out in the morning and arrive at camp late day tomorrow.”
“Well, we best go round up Jane then and get started,” Yankee said. “You got molasses in your moustaches,” he said to White Eye, who didn’t seem to mind that he did.
“Interesting fellers you got there, Colonel,” John said after Yankee and White Eye left.
“They’re good boys. Now, sir, if you don’t mind, here’s a list of the horseflesh and equipment we’ll need to get the tenderfeet out to the camp and for the hunt after.” He handed John a list that had a total of four horses and two pack mules and included saddles and pack trees.
“I’ll trust your good judgment, but just remember, these tenderfeet probably haven’t ever been on a horse, so we’ll want ones with a gentle nature. Best place to go is over to Ash Upsom’s. He runs a fairly good stable, thinks he’s a writer of some sort and works ofttimes when he’s not selling horses as a stringer for some of the back East newspapers. You might mention that I’m leading a big hunt, he’ll get it mentioned in places like New York and Boston.”
John took the list and folded it and put it in his shirt pocket, then made his leave, saying, “You want me to bring them horses out to the house, or where?”
“The house will be fine,” Billy said.
Teddy and Billy walked over to the train station and waited the arrival of the flier.
“The gentleman we’re waiting on,” Billy was saying as he pulled a silver flask from his pocket, “owns a string of banks in New York. Big money. I don’t know much more about him than that. Ned isn’t always the most reliable when it comes to getting information straight. Odd thing is, the man’s name is Banks, Rudolph Banks.” Billy looked ’round to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then put the flask to his lips.
“It’ll be easy to remember,” Teddy said. “The name, I mean.”
Billy held forth the flask, but Teddy waved it away.
“Best I stay alert,” Teddy said.
“Yes, you’re right, but if you was to look at it the other way, a bullet might not hurt so much if it was to find you with a bit of old tose in you.”
“Might not hurt at all if there was enough in you,” Teddy said.
“I’m hoping if a bullet does finds me, it won’t hurt.”
They stood then in silence and after a few moments they could hear the low long whistle of the train off in the distance.
“I’m counting on you not to let a bullet find me, Mr. Blue. I’d appreciate very much if one didn’t.”
“I’ll do my best, Colonel.”
“You mind if I say something?”
“No, sir.”
“You look troubled, son. What’s bothering you, besides the fact you’ve been hired to wet-nurse me?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Colonel.”
“Has to be a woman, then. Hell, anybody knows about women troubles, it’d be me.”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Teddy said.
“Just wouldn’t want you overly distracted from the task at hand.”
“No, sir, I won’t be.”
They saw the black shape of the train’s engine, the chuff of black smoke from its stack.
“Here they come, old son. We’ll ride ’em out, shoot a few antelope and deer, maybe a bear if we get lucky, and ride ’em back.”
John Sears purchased a string of riding stock that were gentle in the eyes and gait. He tested them by stepping inside the corral and waving a blanket around their heads. Those that didn’t shy he cut out from the others and paid the man for four horses and two pack mules, including saddles for the horses and pack trees for the mules. Then he rode them out to Billy’s house.
Louisa was out in the yard beating hell out of a throw rug. The girls were off running ’round the chicken coop, running and squealing like girls their age do. John rode up and Louisa stopped her rug beating and looked at him, then at the string of horses and mules.
“You can put them into the barn,” she said.
John took them into the barn and put them up in some empty stalls and then grained and watered them before stepping outside again, sidling over to where the sun fell against the barn door, enjoying its warmth. He rolled himself a shuck and watched the woman beat the rug.
He warned himself against having some of the thoughts he was starting to have about her after he’d stood there ten minutes smoking and watching her.
She’s a married woman, old son. And you best remember what happened up in Las Vegas, even if she wasn’t a married woman.
He smoked the cigarette down, then rolled himself another. The girls had run off up a hedgerow chasing after a wild hare.
Louisa finished her rug beating and carried it back inside the house and came out again a few moments later and stood there on the porch, looking John’s direction.
Hell, she’s a dry one, he thought.
Then she came down the steps and over to the well and lowered a bucket down into it and then worked at lifting it out again full of water. John went over and said, “I can do that for you if you’ll let me.” She handed him the winch and he pulled up the bucket, water sloshing over its sides.
“You want me to carry it somewheres for you?” he said.
“I need to fill some wash tubs out back,” she said.
He carried it out back and poured it into a galvanized tub resting on bricks that had wood for a fire built under it.
“Looks like you’ll need a few more buckets of water,” John said.
“Looks like,” she said.
He went and hauled maybe ten buckets of water for the big tub and several more for a smaller one sitting off to the side. Louisa started a fire under the big tub, then put bed linens into it and soap shavings she cut from a bar with a knife.
“Thank you, Mr. Sears,” she said.
“You can call me John,” he said. “I prefer being called John.”
“John,” she said.
He liked the way she said it.
She took a large wood paddle once the water began to boil and stirred the bed linens with it. He said, “That looks like gruesome work.”
“It can be.”
He watched her stirring for a few minutes, then said, “You mind I try my hand at it?”
She looked at him cautiously, then handed over the paddle. He took hold of it and felt the pleasure a man can get from doing work for a woman.
He stirred for a time and then she said, “That should do,” and took the paddle and lifted the sheets out of the water and dropped them into the second tub to be rinsed. Then she showed him how to take one end of the linen and her the other and twist out the water. Afterward she strung them across rope clotheslines.
The bed linens fluttered in the wind.
“I like the smell of the wind in them,” she said when she’d finished.
“I do too,” he said.
“Do you like tea, Mr. Sears?”
“Yes’m,” he lied. “But you can call me John,” he reminded her again.
They went around front again and up on the porch. She told him he could have a seat in one of the ladder-back rockers while she prepared the tea. He did and rolled himself another cigarette and smoked it and looked out on the land, the buildings, the trees off in the distance. He could hear the girls calling to one another way up the hedgerow and he could hear a dog barking somewhere too.
He reasoned to himself that a man could get used to sitting on his own front porch and overseeing his holdings. Then he thought about the woman inside.
I guess she ain’t nearly so dry, after all.
It wouldn’t be all that
bad a thing having such holdings, he reasoned. It wouldn’t be bad having a wife and children who laughed and chased wild rabbits up a hedgerow and sleeping in beds with sheets that had the smell of the wind in ’em.
Louisa came out with the tea. Had a small porcelain pot and two little cups, a bowl with cream in it and another with sugar and everything resting on a nice little silver tray that she set on a small table between the rockers.
She asked John if he liked cream or sugar in his tea. He didn’t know since he’d not drank any tea for years and years, so he told her he liked both and she put some of each in a cup, then poured the tea and handed him the cup. He felt special, her doing that for him.
She poured herself some tea and sat in the rocker next to his and sipped the tea without saying anything. He looked over at her and he could see her eyes were looking out over the same thing his eyes had been looking over.
“This is good tea,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Sears,” she said.
“I sure wish you’d call me John.”
“It wouldn’t pay to get too familiar, would it, John?”
“No, ma’am, I reckon it wouldn’t.”
They sat and drank tea like that and listened to the sounds in the distance.
John closed his eyes and felt the pleasantness of it.
Chapter 13
Bob figured the night storm was an omen. He awoke to the sound of thunder and climbed out of bed and went to the window to watch the sky. Shattering bolts of lightning snaked across the black cloth of night. The light flashed into the room, as well. Pearl slept soundly. Bob wondered how a woman could sleep through all that noise.
Bob hadn’t seen such a storm since he was a boy. Out in the country where his father’s people lived there were wondrous storms that charged the imagination. There were great fires that swept over the prairies in tall walls of flame. There were floods, and all manner of natural events that could be as dangerous as an enemy.
But Bob had not seen a truly good storm since his mother stole him and took him east.
