twenty one
Elijah drove his feet into Baal’s flanks and felt the air leave the animal. Outside of town he nudged the horse to a trot but Baal had never held that middling gait well, and, eventually, Elijah pressed his knees to the horse’s withers and he smoothed into a lope. Ten miles later, he hobbled Baal near birch at the south bay of Owhi Lake. He hiked the basalt cliff above, halting at a serviceberry bush to load a handful into his shirt pockets. In his mouth the heavy skin bent and finally broke, and he tasted the sour juice and meat. He held one on his tongue a moment before swallowing and adding another. At the bluff’s top, he studied the Nespelem’s vague shape in the haze of dust and heat. The weather baked the country like summer still, but the aspen leaves had yellowed ; instead of flashing like coins in the wind and sun, they tore from their branches and gathered in leeward depressions at the foot of the boulders strewn throughout the basin below him. He hunted the sky but saw nothing aside from two circling hawks. He watched them adjust their fanned tails in the quiet sky. A rising breeze elevated them, then broke, and they fell until boosted by another. Their wings barely beat the hot air, just tipped with and against it.
He had no doubt Strawl would follow. The old man knew nothing else. Elijah pitied him and that pity, he realized, had moved him to confess. No, that was not completely so. He knew vanity was the seed of his admission. The one person likely to appreciate his work was his faux father, and, like a son, Elijah had sought his approbation on the matter. And now the man was tracking him as he had so many men before and would likely kill him or surrender him to life in a cell, which was, in fact, the only form of approval he was capable of. But Elijah’s acts could progress from rumor to fact in the world no other way. Blood and bone were simply sermons from the pulpit without a reckoning that included his own flesh in the game.
Elijah sighed and one of the hawks wheeled above, as if it might have heard the sound or felt the wind change with the breath required for the utterance. He was not bloodthirsty by nature. Each killing had turned food to ashes in his mouth for days after. He was relieved to be done with murder and to have confided his acts to Strawl, turning the matter over to him. Though Elijah trusted Strawl with little else, these were the duties for which the almighty had formed him and he could no more shirk them than shed his skin.
The Taker of Sisters, however, remained Elijah’s burden alone. He’d permitted himself no art beyond the actions required for Jacob’s death. Attending an end like Jacob’s, however, was a duty beyond the ordinary. Decency required Jacob set the terms and Elijah permitted him the fullness of experience most don’t earn in a hundred years of living, and, though the man screamed and cursed and spat and bled those savage hours, he was completed by his pain and his knowledge that one word from him would have ended it with a bullet. Yet he never asked for quarter and Elijah, respectfully, offered none. Still, if he’d had the means to stop his ears with wax like Odysseus sailing past the Sirens, he would have done so.
And it was this compunction that troubled him. He should be clear of the banalities of guilt and doubt. He saw them as useless trappings of an infantile existence, and one steered by them as pushed hither and yon on an ocean of tempests without a compass or sextant and with no harbor or port or even rocky reach on the horizon. Their lifetime passed upon a shabby, crowded vessel and no track or windy utterance marked their passing. However, here he was, the wind pressing his own sails away from certainty. And instead of disembarking from his voyage, he found himself with more distance to navigate.
Baal lifted his head. His ears twitched, and a coyote’s tail sliced the high grass a hundred yards away. Elijah descended from the promontory, patted the horse, and fed him some sugared raisins from his saddlebag. He finished the serviceberries, then mounted. The hawks had vanished into their perches to study the grass for field mice or the occasional cottontail small enough to appear feasible.
Horse and rider ascended into the mountains through the Nespelem River’s drainage and, when creeks slowed to a drizzle, made a circling path around a triplet of broad-shouldered mountains, creased where they once joined. He watered again at Nanam-kin’s south creek, then covered more miles on a thin ridge until he made a cold camp next to the north fork. Both drained east into the San Poil. He was astride the spine of the country. Granite striped with copper and gypsum, turpin and limestone lined with clay and loam and pine needles and annual husks in varying stages of decay composed the precipices beneath him. Pine and fir and tamarack and an occasional spruce wrinkled the hills, thinning where the ridges turned too steep to hold seed and water and in the softened creek banks and gulleys, where the hardwoods—oak and cottonwood—had gained some purchase.
At first, killing had been little trouble for Elijah. He’d offered his plan to Marvin, who, in turn, had consulted Raymond Bird. They saw the philosophy in it and the religion, too, and admitted only a dire measure would do. Possessing no inspiration that rivaled his own, they yielded. He collected the tools and thinking necessary to begin. To the initial victims, he offered simply irony. He had read some time ago of the Sand Creek Massacre. The indignities those militia visited upon Black Kettle’s women and children would seem absurd if race were subtracted. He was pleased when reports of horrified women discovering their new hats were banded with skin and pubic hair reached him, but disappointed the news stopped there. None had heard of Sand Creek.
The Cloud boys proved more difficult. The early victims were practically strangers, either relative newcomers or so far lost that they seemed barely visible, even when sitting across from him at the Ketch Pen Tavern. If Elijah hadn’t made a production of their deaths, they would hardly be missed. The Clouds, though, were pleasant enough acquaintances, and he genuinely admired their parents. These murders required less metaphor and more art; he wanted them to be questions asked by generations after but never answered. Elijah considered their deaths the best thoughts he’d ever conjured.
Then the Taker of Sisters became necessary. The word, necessary, gave him some comfort. He enjoyed repeating its sound, the e’s and s’s, wind in a tree, then the last syllables, waning like an animal’s call. He appreciated its meaning, as well, and he bathed his doubt in its sound until, as night arrived, he finally felt a hard-earned calm approaching, one which he had expected earlier, one which he was disappointed not to have enjoyed already. He breathed and closed his eyes. He felt like he was floating in an endless lake of pine needles and leaves and soft earth, and the forest’s clean, acidic fragrance encompassed him. In the sky were more stars than he could recall ever seeing, more light than darkness, like God himself was on the verge of returning the Lamb and ending night for good.
Half an hour after Elijah’s flight, Strawl collected himself enough to give chase. His back ached so badly he had to find a stump to boost himself onto Stick. His knee swelled to half again its size and he felt the blood and pain pump through his pant leg. His head had cleared of romance and philosophy and meaning as all had somersaulted in separate directions.
He dozed riding and refused any thought’s passage into his head. If Elijah’s path had been less direct, Strawl would not have been capable of following. He camped ten miles beyond Owhi Lake and ten miles behind Elijah the first night, though he did not make the effort to determine the latter. He slept fitfully, the hard ground pressing him to change position to accommodate his injuries, past and recent, and the arthritis accompanying them.
The next morning, Strawl followed Elijah and Baal through higher country. The light spilled color over the green pine and yellowing oaks and grasses and warmed his back. He poked along the creek banks, allowing Stick to feed and drink. He stumbled on occasional signs of Elijah—horse droppings, his firepit, a feather pile from a grouse he’d snared. All along well-defined game trails, trod regularly by deer herds and horses and riders.
A magpie cussed Stick, and the gathered crows scattered through a birch’s branches watched them pass. Stick dropped a nugget of shit and they cawed and swo
oped to it. Farther, a line of quail bent and quickened before him and farther yet, in the rock, a sage hen and handful of chukar drummed. As the afternoon progressed, sparrows and chickadees flitted from one tree to another hunting flying insects. Stick spooked a badger that hissed then dove for its den. Deer pellets and tracks dotted the path, but game of any size were bedded down in the heat.
Strawl halted finally on the lee side of a basalt chimney. His entire body seemed to ache, though the pains initiated in four or five distinct places. He rolled a smoke with shaky hands and another hour passed. He reclined against the stone and chewed on a piece of the jerked beef.
Half an hour later, a man on foot halted at the skyline and bent to catch his breath. Recovering his wind, the figure scanned the Okanogan Valley. Two rifles were slung upon his back along with an ancient military pack. Strawl recognized his frame but not until he began to descend in a lanky, stumbling gait did he make him for Rutherford Hayes. Two of his dogs followed, panting and staring at Hayes like he might part a sea if he were so inclined. Strawl whistled and Hayes halted until Strawl whistled a second time. Hayes and the dogs covered the distance between them. Strawl offered him a cigarette, which Hayes lit this time with trembling hands. His clean-shaven face and stunned eyes made him appear simpler than he probably was.
“You are a long way from home, my friend,” Strawl said. Hayes didn’t reply. Strawl watched him pull from the cigarette and drag the smoke into his lungs. Strawl fed the dogs a bit of sausage left from his breakfast.
“Where’s the others?”
“Amos and Ahab are killed. Esther lit out and I couldn’t wait without losing my hair.”
“Indian cops?”
“And a couple white.”
“I’m sorry they came upon you, Rutherford,” Strawl said. “They’re looking for me.”
“You’re one of them, ain’t you?”
Strawl nodded. “Guess us skunks can’t stand our own company.”
“You running or just hunting good ground for a fight?”
“I’m not certain, Root.”
“That don’t seem anything like you,” Hayes said.
They were quiet awhile. Strawl scratched one of the dogs’ ears and felt its head loll against his hand, pressing him to continue.
“Excuse me being presumptuous,” Hayes said. “I guess I have no manners.”
Strawl chuckled. “I got a scad of people who want my scalp, some kin. I have no quarrel with you making an observation that is as true as the North is cold. To answer you, I guess running and fighting don’t seem that far apart anymore. You run then fight, then fight then run.”
“You can add hiding to that hoop,” Hayes said. “Fighting nor hiding nor running, they don’t do no good. I’m bound for Canada. Nobody pays much attention there.”
“Sounds like a straight line to me.”
Hayes spat. “It’s quiet, I heard once. I ain’t much with company, but I might learn. You could join me.”
Strawl had never considered a simple exit, transplanted, and in another country to boot. It would require effort and paperwork and time if the authorities intended to uproot him, and he’d make it clear enough that if the law insisted on pursuit, his absence would be less trouble than his return.
“How’d you get to be the genius of us all?” Strawl asked.
Hayes stared at the horizon and didn’t answer.
“Where you going over?”
“Chesaw.”
“The Chink Road?”
“Bootleggers using it now. Got the Mounties spooked and the State Guard bought.”
“Damned if you haven’t thought it out.”
He had considered calling an end to this ordeal and heading home. An angry collection of police would likely harass him, but on the ranch the BIA would have no jurisdiction, and as for Dice, angry as he may be, butting heads with Strawl had proven impractical and Dice was a practical man. The silverspoon would be bent but without recourse. It would baffle his pursuers. There was Elijah to consider, but if he had sense enough to keep Strawl in the dark, no doubt he could outwit his poor substitutes, and his crimes were his own business.
Hayes said, “You got family keeping you here, I suppose.”
He wondered what he would return to: poverty and a dotage supervised by a child who saw fit to conspire with his wife to counterfeit her death and make him worse than a widower. And not without reason—he now knew she recalled her own mother’s end. Arlen and his grandchildren would have no use for him.
Canada would be a blank piece of paper, and he could write what he wanted on it and leave out what he wanted, too. Still, Elijah would haunt him, he knew. He had no intention of turning him over for trial, and he doubted he had the stomach to shoot him. The boy was the only person he’d found entertaining enough to tolerate steady. Perhaps Strawl wanted nothing more than a conversation. Still it was a scratch that would need his attention, and sooner seemed more likely than later, considering the number of lawmen tracking them.
“ I’m in, Root,” Strawl said. “I have to close the books on a matter. Leave your name at every post office you hear of on that road or any tavern worth stopping,” he said. “I’ll come soon enough after you. We’ll do it goddamnit.”
Strawl loosed the rawhide straps on his saddlebags and withdrew the expense money he hadn’t squandered and wadded it into Hayes’s shirt pocket.
“Here’s our road stake,” Strawl told him. “You get us a start.”
Hayes took a breath.
“I’ll shoot you if you argue,” Strawl told him.
Strawl rolled a cigarette and then another and they smoked in silence. Hayes nodded at one of the mastiffs. “That one’s got a mean streak,” he said. “She isn’t the biggest, but she don’t bark ever, just goes for the throat.” He patted her head. “She’s yours if you’re inclined.”
“When we meet up north I’ll collect her.”
Hayes said nothing more. Strawl watched him as he hiked toward the foot of the ridge. He filled his canteens in Harrison Creek and let the dogs drink, then threaded a path through the thickets and low brush beneath until he was out of view.
Strawl traveled two more days, remaining clear of the meadows and bald ridgelines, crossing country quickly and closing on Elijah, now only a mile or two in front of him. From the granite cliffs and basalt knobs he heard automobile tires hum over the paved San Poil highway and, later, axles rattle and gears whine while they fought the rutted logging grades that were their only other option.
The third evening a hound bayed. Strawl guessed the animal resided in Wauconda or Republic, twenty miles from him as the crow flies. The next morning over breakfast, he heard them once more, this time a chorus, on a scent. Dice and his minions were clumsy as three-legged mules, but that would likely make them all the more troublesome, so Strawl saddled and wound through the draws until he had moved within a mile of their soundings. He undid a handkerchief and looped it over a low branch and under piled a pound of Truax’s peppered beef. He backtracked Stick to a shaded ridge, where he watched the hounds break brush and come upon the tree and the beef, which they ate greedily until their sneezes and hacks made it impossible for them to swallow. Horses followed, but he’d painted a tree trunk a hundred feet farther with wolf scent a trapper had once traded him for a walk on a trespassing charge, and the horses raised and threw their riders as if they had been driven into a fence.
Strawl recognized one of Dice’s deputies, then Dice himself and the silverspoon, in bandaged feet, who whipped his horse like it had shit on his breakfast. Strawl was tempted to put a bullet between his eyebrows then and there and undo the tension pulling at his own shoulders, but permitted the man another day of light to cuss and night of darkness to suffer through.
Dawn woke Elijah and he rode on, letting Baal pick his way slowly to keep from riding him to pieces. He diverted around Republic, the Ferry County seat, then began the labor of serpentining the broken mountains draining the Kettle River into the Colum
bia. They watered at a series of clear cirque pools that headed nearly every valley where, thousands of years before, snow had massed into glacial crags that rivaled the stony heights. Their ice and weight had extinguished the vegetation for millenniums and welled the stone floors beneath. The water that remained from the great thaws was a thousand years old and colored green or aqua or nearly purple or jet-black, depending upon the rock and minerals beneath. One pool, over gypsum, appeared the consistency of milk.
Wrinkled granite tables, each several hundred feet square, littered one rise like children’s scattered blocks, and he wound through and over them with great care as the pitched rock was sheer and the trails sandy and prone to collapse. Above, a long ridge shadowed his path. At its crest, a mile of meadow spread before Elijah, dotted with delicate white flowers for which he had no name. Yellowing grasses, matted low shrubs, and squat fir punctuated the clearing and lined its edges. The red cedar and stately lodgepole pine were too demanding to endure this high, and the lack of tall trees left the country looking scalped, and even more so the bald mountain above it.
Even midday was cool this far up and the air thin enough to require more respites for Baal. The pristine sky seemed to turn ten-mile distances to a stone’s throw. In other pockets of these mountains, miners had uncovered enough gypsum or iron or gold or copper to make a meager go of their trade, but between the Columbia and the San Poil no one had taken an interest, and, as Elijah hiked the shale, leading Baal when he couldn’t sort out a path, he encountered game one rarely did below, elk and a young bull moose standing in Timber Creek trailing water and tulle threads from his ruminating jaws and later a pair of bighorn sheep. Farther, he spied a scattering of caribou resting in a field below a hanging ledge, and, through his rifle’s scope, a lynx trailing them—animals he’d only seen in books. Later, when he’d again moved lower, he stopped to study trees scarred with enormous grizzly nails and a sapling splintered by one of its blows.
Lonesome Animals Page 21
