by Bill Brooks
“What about the horses?” Yankee said.
“You and White Eye rope ’em together and lead ’em along; don’t bother taking time to saddle ’em, just tie ’em together.” Then John and the women began to gather up blankets and what food they could carry.
The wind blew Yankee’s hat off his head and he started to chase it but saw that he’d be chasing it for eternity and said, “Hell,” and went with White Eye to rope up the horses.
John told the women to hold hands as he took Emma’s, leading them up into the nearby canyon, the wind shrieking down through it, but they had no choice—it was either the canyon or staying out in the open. Yankee and White Eye brought along the horses that were beginning to balk. In minutes the full brunt of the storm was on them all.
“They want to run,” Yankee shouted. “They want to run ahead of the storm, stay out in front of it.”
“Hell, they got more sense then us.”
“We should have blindfolded ’em.”
“It’s too late for that now.”
“We can’t lose ’em.”
“I know it.”
But they did lose them. The horses broke in a mad dash and tore the ropes out of Yankee’s hands and White Eye’s too.
“Hell!” they shouted in unison.
“Let ’em go, let’s stay with the others!” White Eye yelled.
“First my goddamn hat, now my horse,” Yankee said.
They stumbled on, up the canyon in pursuit of John and the women.
The storm stung their faces like sharp teeth as they fought their way along. They finally found a hollow cut under the brow of a sand hill, a cut, no doubt, made by an ancient river and used on and off by animals for shelter. The gathered into it and huddled together while the storm’s fury raged around them.
John didn’t want to say anything, but Emma Banks said what he had been thinking: “I wonder if the storm caught the men?”
White Eye said, “Billy knows this country, he grew up in it. Anyone knows where to get out of a storm, it’s him. You don’t have to worry, ma’am, Billy will bring your feller home safe, and yours too, miss.” He looked at Anne.
Anne thought about Edgar and about Teddy. One she’d promised her hand in marriage to, the other she’d promised nothing, but knew that what they’d shared together was a promise of its own kind. It was ludicrous, she told herself, to expect anything from Teddy, to even consider something like a future with him. She said his name to her secret self: Teddy Blue and wondered what it was about him that had captured her imagination so.
“It’s a good thing you ladies didn’t go with them,” Yankee said, then realized immediately what that sounded like. “I mean, they’ll make it back just fine, but they’ll have their hands full as it is. Least this way they don’t have to worry about you fine ladies.”
Jane liked the way that Yankee made a mistake and then fixed it. The more she considered him as a potential suitor, possible husband, the more she became convinced she’d taken up with the wrong man in the form of one White Eye Anderson.
John was worried about them all, Teddy most especially. This country was full of things that could kill you—snakes, rivers, bad men, bad women, and storms of all kinds. He’d seen lightning kill cowboys, and cyclones that blew away whole houses with women and kids in ’em. He’d seen winters that froze men to death. And this could be just such a storm. They could get blinded and walk their horses into a river or ride off a bluff and break their necks. There was a lot bad that could happen to ’em and little good the way he saw it. But he didn’t say anything, for he didn’t want to bring bad luck down on them.
Instead, he rolled a shuck and passed the makings ’round to Yankee and White Eye and Jane spoke up and said, “I’d like me a shuck too,” hoping Yankee would roll one for her. The other two women thought it was quite something to see a woman smoking a cigarette and admired Jane for her boldness.
And for a little while, at least, they were out of the worst of it and could find within themselves a sense of hope yet.
Chapter 30
Mysterious Dave felt lost in a world that suddenly turned white and wind-whipped. One minute he’d been riding along, simply cold and exceptionally unhappy, and the next he was caught in the bowels of a blizzard.
“Christ Almighty,” he said. He saw little in the way of shelter, half thought about turning back to the cabin where he’d come across the Irish crone, but he wasn’t sure which direction it lay, now that the snow had obliterated everything.
The one-eared horse was skittish and Dave took off his bandanna and tied it around the animal’s eyes to calm it. It was a trick an old cowboy taught him when Dave was a deputy town marshal either in Abilene, Hays, or Creede, Colorado. He and the cowboy had become chums until they got in a fight over a woman, a whore most likely to Dave’s flawed recollection. That tying a bandanna over the eyes of a horse trick was about the only good thing to come out of the friendship. Dave might have even shot the cowboy, he couldn’t be a hundred percent certain, now that he thought about it.
“Now we’re both blind,” Dave said to the horse. “But at least you ain’t gon’ buck me off.”
Dave tried to keep a close watch through slit eyes for the river. He wanted no further adventures of falling into rivers. He knew the river lay mostly off to his right. He jammed his hat down hard over his head so it wouldn’t blow away.
“This must be a nightmare I’m having,” he said as the storm grew worse by the minute.
Dave wasn’t sure how far he rode but suddenly racing out of the storm were several horses, some of which nearly crashed into him.
“Now I know it’s a damn nightmare. Ain’t none of this happening. I’m going to wake up and find it is all a dream.” The thought that it was a dream and that he’d wake up from it made Dave feel somewhat better. Maybe the whole deal with Dora throwing him over for a dead rich man’s money was just a dream too. Why, any minute he could just wake up and find himself in Dora’s bed again, warm and happy.
But after another half hour of riding into the belly of the storm made Mysterious Dave realize it wasn’t a dream, not even a bad dream. His subtle joy turned to anger. He pulled his pistol and shot the storm, but it didn’t seem to even slow the storm down or make one bit of difference.
“Goddamn, it don’t seem like I can kill anything but human beings,” he said.
“I don’t even know how I got to this country,” he said.
He wished the horse could talk so he’d have somebody to gripe to.
“Look at me, riding a one-eared horse in a blizzard!”
He momentarily saw the mouth of a canyon off to his left and rightly figured if he rode up into it, the sand hills might afford him some small measure of protection from the driving wind.
It did some, but then the canyon eventually opened up into broad flat stretch and the wind and snow attacked him again and stung his face and hands and bit at his ears something terrible, which caused him to curse and grow angrier by the minute.
“I’m going to find that Buffalo Bill and kill him dead, dead, dead!”
The snow increased and the wind increased making it colder. Dave’s toes grew numb and his hair filled with ice.
“I know you’re trying to rub me out,” he shouted. “But it’s me who’s going to do the rubbing out.” He shook his fist and dared God to send ten more storms down on him.
“I ain’t afraid. I ain’t afraid.”
The wind snatched Dave’s crazy words from his mouth and flung them away.
Chapter 31
The storm raged throughout the night, but by morning it was over.
“Listen,” Billy said, lifting his head from his knees.
“What is it?” Rudolph Banks said.
“The wind, it’s not there anymore.”
Teddy pushed open the door and the weight of snow that had drifted against it. The horses stood as if asleep, tied securely all three. The land looked scrubbed clean with the fresh snow on it.
“
It’s over,” Teddy said as the others emerged. The world had fallen as silent as death.
Their boots crunched in the snow when they went to get their horses.
“We’ll take turns riding double with Mr. Rivers,” Billy said. “Come on, old son, you can ride up behind me for a spell.” Billy helped Edgar Rivers up onto the back of his horse and the riders headed out through deep drifts and in the direction of the camp.
Teddy had had a fitful dream during the night, one in which he dreamt that he had attended Kathleen Bonney’s funeral. In the dream he stood beside her casket and gazed upon her thin beautiful face and touched her silken hair. He awakened in that cold dark night, the snores of the other men around him, the howl of the wind steady as wolves outside the cabin. And in his wakefulness he thought about her and he thought about Anne, then looked over to see the shadow of Edgar Rivers huddled and shivering.
He was grateful it was only a dream.
It would be a long ride still back to camp, he only prayed that the others were safe and unharmed by the storm. He had every confidence in John’s ability to keep them that way. He recalled what Rudolph Banks said to Billy the evening before about cutting the hunt short. It would mean that they would return East and that would be the end of it between he and Anne—that she would go with them and he would never see her again.
They crossed one broad plain and headed up the slope at the other end of it, topped the ridge and down the other side before heading into the first of two canyons. They traded off riding double every half hour, and when they stopped to rest in the second canyon they thought they were only an hour or two from camp and it felt good to them that they were near the end of this unpleasant journey.
Billy and Teddy unloosed the cinches to give the horses a blow while Banks and Edgar Rivers stood by.
“I need to go off into the bushes,” Edgar said.
“Don’t wander off too far,” Billy said.
They watched him go off.
Teddy rolled a shuck, said to Cody, “It’s about over. We’ll get back, you’ll get paid, and that will be it.”
“I’m glad you were along on this ride,” Billy said. “We’d most likely have lost him in the storm.”
Banks came over and said, “I was beginning to believe we’d never make it back.”
“This country can be tricky,” Billy said.
They heard a scream from off in the same direction Rivers had gone. Billy jerked his rifle from its scabbard, but Teddy was already running in that direction.
They saw a flurry of brown fur almost at the same moment they heard the bear’s roar. It had Edgar beneath it, raking him with its claws and trying to bite down on his skull.
“It’s a damn griz!” Billy shouted.
Teddy jerked the Colt from its holster, knowing he’d have to get up close in order not to hit Rivers when he fired. Billy could see the same thing and held his rifle while trying to take careful aim.
“Careful, he’ll turn on you,” Billy warned.
Teddy shouted, trying to distract the bear. He could see that Edgar Rivers’s face was bleeding badly; the blood was flecked out over the snow, turning it a bright crimson.
The bear paused momentarily, then renewed its attack, all fury and muscle.
Teddy saw no choice. He stepped in close enough to plant the barrel of the pistol into the bear’s thick fur and was set to empty his pistol when a shot rang out, causing the bear to roar and lurch up on its hind legs.
Teddy saw Rudolph Banks holding the Krag a dozen yards away, smoke curling out of its barrel. It was a dangerous and unnecessary risk. The bear turned suddenly toward Teddy, its small eyes fixed on him, its head twisting this way and that as it roared and came forward.
Teddy felt the calm come over him, the rattlesnake in him coil, as he jammed the pistol’s barrel into the bear’s mouth, even as one large paw came sweeping down. He pulled the trigger and kept pulling it until the blow from the paw knocked him aside.
Both went down together.
He heard Cody say, “Jesus Christ!”
The weight of the bear was atop Teddy but unmoving. It took a few moments for the pain to set in and when they pulled the dead bear from him, he could see a good portion of its skull had been shot away.
He tried to sit up and that’s when the pain in his left shoulder ripped through him like a hot brand.
“You okay?” Billy said.
“I think my shoulder’s broke.”
Cody looked at it.
“Could be for sure, he tore you up some.”
“What about him?” Teddy said, looking at the unmoving Edgar.
Cody looked over, said, “I think he’s gone.”
When they looked closer they could see where the bear had torn open Edgar Rivers’s throat.
Rudolph Banks kept saying over and over again, “No, no, no…”
Billy got between Banks and the dead man, said, “I’m sorry about this, but there’s nothing we can do for him except get him back.”
“Oh, this goddamn terrible place,” Banks moaned.
“I’ll go get the horses,” Billy said and went and got them and brought them back, but before he brought them back he cut loose the bundle of buffalo hide and took out the skull and tossed it into a snowdrift.
He got Banks to help him wrap Edgar’s body in the buffalo hide. Then they found a pair of small saplings and cut them down with their knives and made a crude travois and lashed the body to it.
“It’s the only way,” Billy said to Banks. “The ground’s too hard to bury him, even if we had shovels.”
“Oh God, we can’t just drag him along like an animal,” Banks protested.
“We’ve got no choice,” Billy said. “We’ve got three riders and three horses.”
Billy turned to Teddy and, cutting another length of rope, he bound Teddy’s shoulder as best he could, trying to immobilize it for the journey.
“That arm will be useless to you, but at least you’ll be able to ride, even if it hurts like somebody throwing rocks at you every step of the way. You ready?”
“Let’s go,” Teddy said.
Neither he nor Billy said anything about the risky shot Banks had taken that could just as easily have killed Edgar Rivers or Teddy. There was no point in furthering the man’s misery, or their own either.
“Let’s get back to camp and get out of this goddamn country,” Banks said. “I hate it!”
Billy rigged the travois poles to his saddle, then looked at Teddy. They nodded to each other, then spurred their horses forward, the body of Edgar Rivers trailing behind. It was a sight that told Teddy he’d been right not to let Edgar die in the storm, that to see him now, as he was thus, was not something he could have lived with if it had been he who had been responsible for the man’s death.
He turned his eyes away and wished the man’s fate had been otherwise.
Chapter 32
Louisa stoked the fire. Wind rattled the windows. Outside the snow became lost in darkness. She wished Bill were home with her. She’d always been afraid of storms ever since she was a child. But now, with children of her own, she couldn’t show any fear, not with her husband gone, their father gone, and just all of them there alone.
One of the girls, Arta, said, “Mama, I hear wolves howling.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish,” Louisa said. “There’s no wolves around these parts; your father has shot and killed them all.”
“I hear the crazy woman, Mama,” Orra said.
“Mama, I hear ghouls,” Irma said.
“Oh, ghouls and crazy women, tsk, tsk, you girls better get on to your beds.”
She’d tucked them in and stayed with them until they finished their prayers to God to bring home safe their papa and to let the storm pass quickly. And afterward Louisa went and stood before the fire and thought that if she went to the windows and looked out into the black and snowy night she might well see wolves and ghouls and maybe even a crazy woman lurking about, waiting to get in to carr
y them all away.
Oh, how she wished Bill was there with them.
She poured herself a rare glass of brandy and sipped it and felt how nicely it warmed her blood. And when her nerves became calm again she thought of that afternoon there on the porch sitting with Mr. John Sears, the two of them drinking tea and how lovely the weather had been and how nice the conversation.
Oh, she told herself, she shouldn’t dwell on such things, for such thoughts were not for a woman married, and especially not a woman married to Buffalo Bill. She thought about the young actresses who practically flung themselves at him and how he seemed not at all inclined to discourage their behavior.
She loved him, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand his roguish ways, his wanderlust. He was forever searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She prayed that he would either stay forever with her or go forever from her.
Odd, she thought, how it is that the very things that attract us to someone are the very things that in the long run repel us?
She poured herself a second brandy, hoping that it would dull her senses and make her sleepy as an old cat and not care about the storm or her always-gone husband.
As soon as the weather turned better, she told herself that she would take the girls and return to St. Louis for a visit with her mother. Perhaps the time away would give her a chance to think through everything: whether to remain Bill’s wife or to divorce him. He dallied when he was away, of that she was sure. What robust man of such natural attraction could resist adoring young women?
Oh, she hated him.
The windows rattled.
Oh, she wished he were here with her.
She had gone about the house earlier, lighting every lamp until the house was filled with warm light that put her more at ease. She did not like the darkness, and when Bill was gone and she’d go up to her room at night to bed, she’d leave several of the downstairs lamps burning and also the one by her bed and would fall asleep watching the flame dancing in its sooty glass chimney.
She thought of the last time Bill had come to her bed, had insisted she give herself to him. She had not denied him; it was her duty to meet his needs. But she had not enjoyed it either—at least not to the extent she made him believe that she did. Were all men like her Buffalo Bill?
