Defending Cody

by Bill Brooks

  “We can’t always have life the way we’d like it, Mr. Blue. The world isn’t perfect.”

  “I won’t argue with you on that account. He seems a decent man, your fiancé.”

  “He is a very decent man. He’s very kind to me, very considerate of my every need.”

  “Then can I ask you why that visit with me yesterday?”

  “You may, but I’m certainly not obliged to answer. Not just yet anyway. Do you think we should catch up with the others?”

  “Is that what you’d like to do?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You’re a mystery to me, Anne.”

  “Am I? I’d think you’d be able to see right through someone like me.”

  “No. I can’t, quite the opposite.”

  The others rounded another bend and were momentarily out of sight. Teddy drew back on the reins and Anne walked her horse a few more steps, then turned its head back around until she sat facing him.

  “I find that I am sometimes a mystery to myself, Mr. Blue. I find that sometimes I’m not at all sure what I want, I’m only sure of what I don’t really want. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes. I can.”

  “Then you will be considerate enough, I hope, not to make me try and explain it to you further why I asked you to kiss me.”

  “Put that way, I’ve no choice. I won’t press you for any explanations.”

  She rode her horse against his until their legs brushed and she reached out and put her hand on his wrist. Her breath came in sharp little clouds of frosty air.

  “It isn’t love between Edgar and I,” she said. “It is on his part, not on mine. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Her fingers tightened and he looked down at the small gloved hand.

  “I want to kiss you again,” he said.

  “I’d like that as well, but…”

  She turned and spurred her horse up the canyon in pursuit of the others.

  He sat there breathing hard, confused. He loved Kathleen, he told himself. At least he thought he had. Anne’s effect on him had been like a knife, quick and sharp and unexpected. It had cut through muscle and bone and reason. What the hell is going on? he asked himself.

  He heard shots up the canyon, heard the echo of shots ringing off the sandstone walls. He spurred on, hoping the hunters had found the bear and not the other way around.

  Chapter 19

  They got off the train in Omaha; it was as far as their tickets would take them.

  “I should have got more money,” Bob said.

  “You did what you could,” Pearl said. “Don’t blame yourself for everything.”

  They stood there for a time.

  “At least it’s not raining,” Bob said.

  “That’s a good sign, don’t you think?”

  They could see the wide brown Missouri River after they wandered around for a time and found themselves down on a street that ran along the river.

  “You hungry?”

  “No,” Pearl said.

  “You’re not being truthful, are you?”

  “Well, what if I was hungry? We don’t have any money.”

  “I got some before, I guess I can get some again.”

  Pearl had seen the pistol in Bob’s waistband on the train when he was asleep and his coat had fallen open.

  “I don’t want you to take anymore risks on my behalf,” she said.

  “I’m hungry too,” he said.

  “Then let me get us something to eat.”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “I’ve got my ways, just like you got your ways.”

  It was late afternoon and the sun was partially blotted out by mother-of-pearl clouds, thin and streaky, and they could smell the dank wetness of the river as they went down along the street with wharves and saloons and warehouses on one side, the river on the other. They could see ships anchored with long thick ropes tying them to the docks.

  “Why we down in here anyway?” Bob said.

  “This looks like the sort of place we might be able to get something to eat without too much trouble,” Pearl replied.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Nothing’s happened yet to like.”

  They came to a sign hanging out over a building that had a blue parrot painted above the words THE RIVERHORSE.

  They went in, much to Bob’s reluctance, and took chairs at a table near the door where the light fell in through the dirty windows flat and dull.

  The place was full of men, sailors and dock workers and other salty types, judging by their dress. Eyes from along the bar noticed them in that dim oily light. Bob’s hand sought the comfort of the pistol underneath his coat.

  Pearl said, “Wait here,” and stood up and walked to the bar and Bob could see that the men watched her like a pack of hounds watching a rabbit.

  Pearl spoke to the bartender. They talked for a few moments and Bob could see the man nod as he wiped out a glass he held in his large fat hands. Then the bartender put two glasses of beer on a tray and handed it to her and she brought it back over to the table.

  “I thought we were going to try and get something to eat?” Bob said.

  “We are. It’s coming.”

  “What’d you say to him?”

  Pearl looked back toward the bartender, who was working on something behind the counter. She smiled.

  “To us,” she said, lifting her glass and waiting for Bob to lift his so she could clink glasses.

  “I want to know what sort of bargain you struck with that man.”

  “I struck the only kind a woman can strike with men like him,” she said.

  “I won’t allow it.”

  She looked intently into his face.

  “Bob, it’s nothing, really. It’s probably a lot less than what you had to do to get us this far.”

  “No,” he said stubbornly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The bartender brought over a platter of sandwiches and set them down.

  “Here,” he said.

  “This your boy?” he said.

  Bob felt a fast hard anger rise in him. He had his fingers around the grips of the pistol. It wouldn’t take very much more for him to pull it and shoot the man in his goddamn face.

  “Yes, this is my son,” Pearl said.

  “I’ll be waiting when you’ve finished,” the man said and went back to the bar. He was wide as a barrel from the waist up. Short stubby legs. He was like a stump Bob imagined shooting for target practice.

  “Eat,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  He watched her eat. He saw the red wet mouth of hers devouring the sandwich. Her eyes watched him until he picked up one of the sandwiches and ate. They ate until they were full and they washed the meal down with the beer.

  “Now I have to go,” she said. “Meet me back at the train station in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m not going to leave you and I’m not going to let you do this.”

  “Yes, you are. We’re in this together. All the way. You want me to go with you, then we’re partners. If not, you can leave me here and I’ll fend for myself and you go and do whatever it is you have to do.”

  “What if I just go shoot him? That would take care of things, wouldn’t it?”

  “And you’d be arrested, or some of these men would kill you in turn. Is that what you want? Did we come all this way to have it end here? I thought you said there was something you needed to do, that you wanted to return to your people’s land, to become an Indian again.”

  “Don’t do this, Pearl. Please…”

  “Go on, Bob, I’ll be okay. I’ll meet you at the train station shortly.”

  He felt tears burning his eyes. I should just leave her, he told himself. To hell with her. She’s just another damn white person.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be there or not,” he said, then stood and rushed out the door.

  Bob was sitting in front o
f the train station, the sun all settled down beyond the horizon, the sky the color now of a dying flame. It felt like he had swallowed busted glass, that it was in his guts, cutting them apart.

  “Bob,” she said.

  He looked up. She didn’t look any different than when he’d seen her last, except maybe her eyes were a little different, a little older.

  She handed him a fold of cash.

  “Go buy us some tickets to North Platte,” she said. “There’s twenty dollars there, take it.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Fine,” she said and went into the station and bought them two tickets and put the rest of the money into her reticule, then came out and sat on the bench next to him.

  “The next train for North Platte leaves in the morning,” she said. “Let’s go get us a room for the night.”

  He shook his head.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  He refused.

  “Look at me!”

  He looked and when he did he saw tears spilling from her eyes.

  “I need you to hold me and tell me you love me,” she said. “I need you to lay in a bed and hold me.”

  He felt her tears in his own eyes.

  “Please, Bob.”

  “Everything feels crazy,” he said.

  “I know it.”

  She leaned against him and he put his arm around her and said, “Don’t cry, Pearl.”

  And later in the room they rented she undressed and got into the bed next to him and he held her some more and she cried some more.

  “Make me a promise,” he said.

  “I won’t do it again, Bob. I won’t. It was just this time, just because we needed to. I needed to show you I’d do whatever it takes to keep us going, to keep us together. That’s what love is, helping each other…”

  “I don’t know if I’m a white man or an Indian,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like I’m not either.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me what you are. You could be a Chinaman and I’d still love you.”

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you, Pearl. Something you need to know before you get on that train with me tomorrow.”

  “Tell me later. Just hold me right now. Hold me and kiss me and make love to me.”

  He swallowed hard. He didn’t know if he could do it, make love to her, knowing what she’d done to get the money. He saw in his mind that short stocky man with her, doing with her what he had thought was sacred between them. He saw that man’s fat lips kissing her, pushing his tongue inside her mouth. He didn’t know if he could love her again because of it.

  But she kissed him softly and touched him tenderly and whispered to him how much she loved and needed him and it caused some of those visions to fade, like when darkness comes and hides the ugly things a person sees in the light.

  She kissed him and touched him and urged him to love her and pretty soon he did and it felt like it always felt with her—like beauty itself.

  Afterward she lay in his arms.

  “You make me feel loved, Bob. No woman can ask for more than that. Nothing matters outside of us. We have each other; we’ll always have each other.”

  He could hear the clanging of ship bells off in the night when he’d gotten up later after Pearl had fallen asleep. He got out of bed and went and opened the window and felt the cold damp air on his skin.

  The bells reminded him of the wharves and that street and the saloon and the man in the saloon. He dressed and went out again quietly, as quietly as the Indian he was becoming, and made his way down to that same street again.

  He waited there in the shadows until he saw the stocky man leaving the saloon. He followed the man up the street. The street was deserted at such a late hour. There was just the sound of the man’s boot heels on the cobblestones, the creak of ropes that held ships tied to the docks, water lapping at their hulls.

  The night smelled of dark water and dead fish.

  Bob came up close behind the man, said, “Hey, do you remember me?”

  When the man turned Bob gave him a chance to get a good look at him.

  “What?” the man said, shrugging his shoulders.

  Bob could see the man did not recognize him. Could see he was more than a little drunk, could smell it on his rank breath.

  “Go in there,” Bob said, pointing with his chin to an alley that ran dark between a pair of old brick buildings.

  “What for? You going to rob me?”

  “No.”

  “I ain’t going in there.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Bob punched the pistol barrel in the man’s belly and pulled the trigger. The man staggered backward, stumbled, fell, struggled to get up again. Bob stepped up to him and shot him again. The man fell half into the street; his right hand dangled in the gutter that ran with putrid water.

  Bob stood looking at him for a moment. He didn’t feel any better. He thought he would, but he didn’t.

  When he slipped back into the bed Pearl was still asleep. She turned toward him, put her arm across his chest. Her breath was warm against his skin. He closed his eyes.

  I am the son of Yellow Hand. I am Indian. I am coming for you, Cody.

  Beware! Beware! Beware!

  Chapter 20

  Teddy came up the canyon in a hurry. Ahead, he saw the party gathered around in a circle, something big and brown in the center. Banks’s bear. Teddy dismounted and walked over.

  John said, “You boys ruined that bear for a rug. It’s shot so full through with holes you’d be lucky to get half a rug out of it.”

  Teddy could see the Colonel was not amused, and neither was Rudolph Banks. Yankee Judd said, “You want it skinned?”

  “No, not if the hide is ruined,” Banks said. “Do you reckon there will be more bears up this way, Colonel?”

  “There likely could be,” Billy said. “Generally where you find one, you’ll find others. Especially when it’s a sow like this one.”

  Billy pulled a pocket watch from his coat.

  “It’s just a little before noon. I suggest we locate a spot for lunch, perhaps on ahead a bit, and give the horses a blow.”

  Everyone seemed in agreement.

  Teddy noticed how Anne stared at the dead bear, the ribbons of blood flowing from it, the way the wind ruffled its fur.

  “What about the bear, Colonel?” Yankee said.

  “Take the claws, then drag the carcass down to the river and leave it. It’ll make a feast for the other critters.”

  “You want to help me with this?” Yankee said to John.

  “Sure, I reckon,” John said.

  “We’ll be up ahead a ways,” Billy said. “We’ll wait for you boys.”

  The clouds lay low in the sky. Dark and low like the swollen bellies of beasts. The sand hills protected the party from the brunt of the cold wind. Edgar had ridden his horse close to that of Anne’s, saying, “Darling, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It just seems so senseless to shoot something that magnificent for no reason.”

  “Rudy wanted a nice rug,” Edgar said.

  “As though that justifies anything.”

  “Please, darling, he is after all your brother-in-law and my boss.”

  “Oh, Edgar,” she said, frustrated.

  Teddy watched John and Yankee Judd remove the long claws from the bear, cutting them out, John saying, “This ain’t the same bear we was after earlier. This bear’s got four good feet.”

  “She stood her ground,” Yankee said. “She was ready to take us all on, wasn’t she. Hell, I thought my nag was going to toss me in the rocks when we came up on her.”

  “Mine too,” John said. “Nags is just naturally fearful of bears, can smell ’em as good as they can water.”

  “Hell, I know it,” Yankee said, cutting out the last of the claws and wrapping them in a bandanna he took from around his neck, then tying it into a nice little bundle that he put in his pocket.

  “She may have had cu
bs around somewheres. Maybe that’s why she was willing to take us on.”

  They looped ropes around the bear’s hind paws and dragged it off toward the river, up through some sand hills, and the wind stung their eyes with loose sand when they came out the other side and dragged the bear’s carcass down to the water’s edge.

  “Fucking wind,” said Yankee.

  “Fucking wind is right,” John said. “I ain’t seen nothing like it, except in Kansas. Me and Teddy once’t found a woman wandering the plains who had gone mad from the wind.”

  “How do you know it was cause of the wind she’d gone mad?” Yankee said, untying his rope from the bear’s paw.

  “I don’t know, that’s all any of us could figure. We took her to a madhouse in Lawrence.”

  “That was a kindly act.”

  “I don’t know if it was kindly or not.”

  “I don’t guess it made no difference to her.”

  The party found a spot to lunch near a little creek by some sandstone bluffs that protected them from the wind and as though Cody himself had ordered it, the clouds parted and the sun broke through and, with no wind to trouble them, their respite became pleasant enough.

  Billy broke out the lunch Jane had prepared: sandwiches of beef, sliced apples, and a jar of tea. He shook a couple of blankets over the ground and everyone sat Indian-style while they ate.

  Banks retold everyone how he had put the kill shot in the bear.

  “Oh, of course we all had a hand in bringing it to bay,” Banks conceded, “but it was this that did the trick.” Banks patted the checkered stock of his thirty-forty Krag. “It was given to me by my old friend President Grant.”

  “Mighty impressive,” Billy said.

  “The gun or the presenter?”

  “Both. I know the General, as well.”

  “Yes, he spoke highly of you when I mentioned I’d engaged you to lead me on a hunt.”

  “Well, that’s mighty pleasing to hear.”

  “What do you think, any chance at all we’ll get another shot at a bear? I’d really like it as well if we could come upon some buffalo.”

  Billy knew they’d have to go much farther out onto the prairies than he’d planned if they were to stand any chance of spotting even one buffalo.