Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  It was what they would want others to do for them if tragedy had struck their family instead of the Burwells’.

  But in the end, only the Burwells stood beside that hole with the two trapper families. The others had moved off, busy with breakfast, bringing in the stock, hitching up the oxen and mules, saddling the horses, rolling up the bedding, and dousing the fires once the trumpet sounded—high and brassy on the motionless air. It was still so cool, Titus thought. But soon the earth would begin to heat up and the breeze would stir. Restless wind. It would be restless all day long and into the evening as the earth cooled once more. Wind every bit as restless as was he.

  “You take your family back to the wagon now,” Titus said as he and Shad moved up after the last of the emigrants were gone. “Time to get your stock hitched up for moving out.”

  Roman gazed down at his wife, then nodded and turned without a word. The children started back with him, joined by Waits and Toote.

  Scratch moved up and laid his arm across his daughter’s shoulder. “Sure you wanna watch us finish this?”

  She nodded once. And Sweete reached out to grab the handle.

  “I can do this,” Titus said.

  “Let me,” Shad offered quietly, his big sad eyes imploring. “You stay with your daughter.”

  They watched the big man scrape and scrape and scrape the soil back in on that tiny box at the bottom of such a deep hole, deep enough, Titus thought, that no wolf would do anything but give up, even if it was able to smell something on this tiny patch of ground. When he had the hole completely filled in, Shad began stamping around on the new soil, compressing it, before he tossed on some more of the dirt and compressed again with his big feet.

  “I’ll carry the rest away from here,” Sweete explained as he took the first shovelful of the excess dirt and started toward a copse of trees fifteen yards away.

  “Gonna stay behind awhile, Amanda,” he said softly to her while Shad was coming and going. “Build me a fire over the spot. Make sure no critter can smell a thing and try digging it up. Too far down, made sure of that. But I don’t even wanna think ’bout some wolf tryin’—”

  He saw she was crying again.

  “I can’t go, Pa.”

  “Can’t go?”

  She wagged her head. “I gotta stay here. Not ready to go on. Not … just yet.”

  “Awright, Amanda. You want to, you can stay here with me. You can take your time for grievin’, all you need.”

  Minutes later as Roman pulled the four-hitch team of oxen around in a circle nearby and halted, Titus announced to Burwell, “Come see her afore you go, son.” Then he explained that she would be staying there with him to see to the grave.

  “You gonna be all right, Amanda?” Roman asked, lines of concern deep in his brow. “You … you’ll be coming, right?”

  “Yes, Roman. I’ll come along soon. I just need a little more time here,” she confessed. “Not ready to let him go just yet.”

  The big farmer embraced her a long while, then kissed the top of her head and wiped the tears off her cheeks before he clambered back up the front wheel, squeaked onto the seat, and slapped the reins down on the backs of those oxen. Lemuel came up beside the lead ox and snapped it with a long whip, hollering at the animal to giddap as he turned to look back at his mother in farewell, wet streaks running down the young man’s cheeks.

  When the wagon came around, the two girls were at the rear gate, there above the swinging buckets, waving back at their mother from the rear pucker hole, sobbing once more.

  Toote and Waits stood with the children, those two shaggy dogs, and the extra stock until the wagon caught up; then they all fell in on the road to Oregon, the last in line for the day’s march. Shad swung into the saddle and waved his long .62 flintlock in the air before he wheeled around and heeled into the march, eventually disappearing with the rest.

  “You wanna sit over there in the shade, Amanda?”

  Scratch walked with her over to that copse of trees near some large boulders. “Stay here in the shade an’ don’t you go too near them rocks where the sn—”

  He bit off the word too late.

  So she looked up at him as she settled to the ground in the shade of that sunny new day. “Gonna always look out for snakes, here on out, Pa.”

  “You sit yourself, daughter, and you do your grieving. It’s what a body’s s’posed to do when a big chunk been tored outta their heart.”

  After a minute, while she sat staring at that patch of disturbed ground several yards away, he knelt before her and said, “I’m goin’ off now—fetch some firewood from what’s been left round the camp. Build me a fire on the grave.”

  He stood up in that silence, her sigh the only sound, along with the slight tremble among the leaves brought by a first breeze stirring through the branches overhead.

  A good place for a body to rest in peace, he thought as he started away to scratch up a heap of firewood. This silence made for a mighty fine place for a mortal body to rest for all time to come.

  It had taken the better part of the morning to drag in what wood was left behind by the others, logs and limbs scattered across the camping ground. Then he built his fire, fed it with new timbers, and let it burn down to embers before he began working at the fire’s edges to turn the hot ashes and glowing embers over, mixing them with the dry, flaky soil, one shovelful at a time.

  Hot work, what with the way the sun had come up mean and resentful in that cloudless sky, baking him from overhead while the rising heat from those embers scorched him from below. Both moccasins were permanently blackened now, along with the bottoms of his buckskin leggings and that fringe that trailed at his heels too. But fire was a good thing. Flames had a way of cleansing what they touched. Just the way he had rubbed that powder into Lucas’s snakebites and set them afire, now this ground had been cleansed of the smell of man, the stench of death.

  A harsh purging for this unmarked grave, cleansed with the ancient, renewing power of fire. Just like a lightning storm started a whisper of smoke, burnt down a whole mountainside of timber, then from the fallow and black ground rose new life the following spring.

  As he slowed his digging, straightened, and wiped the huge drops of sweat from his face with a sleeve, for the first time since the others had gone Titus began to sense the unalterable numbness of that hole eaten away inside him again, a hole he had filled with all the nonstop work of digging and hammering and filling and burning. But now the fire was out and the embers lay scattered, turned over and over and over with the soil that had grown as hot as the sun’s own scorchy breath. He stood there, leaning on the handle of that shovel, helpless to stop its pain from rising within him like the black, bubbling tar in those pits over on the Wind River, north from the mouth of the Popo Agie. Hot, thick, rising bubbles of pain that threatened to gag him with the bitter taste of clabbered gall.

  Below him lay a child fresh and dewy at life, innocent of pain and evil, ignorant of betrayal … a child Titus was just coming to know. A grandson with a soul so beautiful—remembering how the boy held out his hand to shake with a grizzled stranger who wore beaded earbobs, or looked his grandfather squarely in the eye to ask a why to almost everything, or bounded upon the old man’s knee for a story of grizzly bears and Indian warriors and rendezvous glories too … it nearly chewed away a hole inside the old man there beside the child’s unmarked grave. A gaping void he didn’t know how he’d fill … or where … or with who.

  Amanda had her head buried in her forearms looped across her knees, where they were tucked against her breast as he returned to the shade. She looked up as he approached.

  “Oh … Pa,” she whimpered, her eyes still full as he dropped the shovel and collapsed in exhaustion beside her. “How am I ever going to remember where Lucas is buried?”

  Enfolding her in his arms, he cradled her and said, “You will. You’ll remember the Soda Springs, and remember how we done ever’thing we could to keep him safe.”

 
; Shaking her head, Amanda pushed back from him. “I shouldn’t have let them bury him. Roman and me—we should take him on with us. And bury him there—”

  “No,” he interrupted her, again pulling his daughter against him gently, reassuringly. “Allays best to leave a body where he’s been took from the living. It’s the most fitting thing.”

  “I can’t bear to leave without him,” she confessed. “Don’t know how Roman was able to go from this place.”

  “You can too,” he vowed. “Because you’re gonna take Lucas with you when you leave this place behind.”

  Her red eyes studied his a moment. “How?”

  “You’ll take the memory of him from this place, Amanda. Allays remember his smile. Remember the way that shock of his yellow hair fell in his eyes an’ he had to keep pushin’ at it? Take that with you to Oregon now. Keep the memory of your boy Lucas with you.”

  She pressed her face against his chest and murmured, “When I come back here I won’t be able to remember where we laid him, Pa.”

  Gently raising her chin, he wanted to convince her she never would return to this place … but instead he wiped some of the tears from her dust-streaked face and said, “Yes, you will remember, daughter. Look there, at them hills. See that cone where the water bubbles up. Then lookit the cut in that ridge yonder.” He turned her slightly. “See that saddle there, and the sharp rise of that butte. Look here now where the creek makes that horseshoe … an’ you’ll remember where we made camp here. You’ll remember where we put ’im to rest.”

  She nodded confidently. “Yes, I will remember when I come back to see him again, real soon I’ll come back—”

  “No, Amanda,” he finally admitted it as he held her tightly. “Once you get to that Oregon country with the memory of your li’l boy, there won’t ever be no need of comin’ back here again. Just keep the memory of Lucas in your heart … an’ let his body, this place, an’ this long, hard road to your new home be nothing but a distant memory. Once we turn our backs on this place, it’s gonna be up to you to keep him alive in your heart, an’ forget this place. There’s nothin’ here for you to ever come back for—”

  The profane smack of a lead ball against the tree trunk reached him an instant before the low grumble of the gunshot from a distant rifle.

  Immediately throwing himself across Amanda, Titus quickly searched to find where he had propped his rifles, laying both pistols across the shooting pouch he left at the base of the same bush before he had picked up the shovel and—

  A second ball sliced through the branches right above them, and the weapon’s roar floated overhead on the hot breeze.

  Two shots, too close together for it to be one shooter. There were at least a pair of them.

  “C’mon!” he cried as he rose to a crouch, counting off the seconds they had before that first attacker could reload, aim, and fire again.

  Grabbing Amanda at the back of her collar, Titus dragged his daughter in a crouch toward the low boulders to their left, snatching up the pouch and one of the pistols on the way past the brush—

  A third shot rang out … kicking up a spurt of dust near his hand—coming too quickly for that first shooter to have reloaded.

  Shit. There’s least three of ’em.

  “Get in!” he ordered as he shoved her through a cut in the scattered rocks that stood about knee-high.

  As Scratch was turning around he pushed Amanda down against the ground, slinging the pouch and powder horn against her shoulder. “You know how to load a rifle?”

  She looked up at him dumbly, but nodded her head.

  “Good,” he said, and patted her on the shoulder. “All I gotta do now is go out there to them guns of mine and get back in here ’thout getting shot.”

  “I-I can help, Pa.”

  “I ain’t lettin’ you go out there—”

  “Will you listen to me?” she said, scooting up on her hip. “Man like you, seems you’re always attracting trouble like flies to syrup.”

  He snorted, flicked a glance at the open ground between them and the sound of those guns, then looked at her. “Awright, what you got in mind?”

  “I can shoot, Pa.”

  “Pistol?”

  “I can hold it.”

  He squinted a moment at her. “Maybeso you give me a break to get them guns, Amanda. Here,” and he pressed the big horse pistol into her hand. “When I bust outta these rocks, they’re gonna aim at me real quick. So when I start movin’, I want you to count to three while you’re aiming off there at them trees—”

  “That where they are?”

  “I think so, but I ain’t for sure,” he admitted. “You count to three, then you shoot that pistol at the trees. That oughtta make ’em flinch a wee bit. Mayhaps gimme time to grab them rifles an’ get ’em back in here.”

  “If you don’t get back here with them?”

  “Then you reload that pistol from my pouch,” he said, staring her hard in the eyes, “an’ you keep it cocked till they come real … real close—so you can stop one of ’em.”

  “You think they’re comin’ for me?”

  He shook his head. “I hope it’s me they’re comin’ for. Now, cock that hammer an’ tell me when you’re ready to start countin’.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Quickly touching her cheek with his fingertips, Titus crouched in the gap between rocks, then rasped, “Start countin’!”

  He was counting himself as he exploded from cover. While his mind roared with the number one, a gun thundered from that copse of trees off to the south. Too quick a shot, indicating he had caught them by surprise. The ball went wild as he reached the rifle’s on the count of two. And turned, scooping up the pistol and stuffing it in his belt as he kept moving in a half circle. Three—

  Her pistol barked. Immediately answered by a rifleman she must have scared a shot out of, for that man’s ball went wild too.

  Scratch was thinking he was going to make it back to the rocks with his weapons, scuffing through the sage on that sandy ground when he slipped and spilled onto a knee. A ball cut a furrow across his hip, pitching him into the brush with a grunt.

  “Reload, Amanda!” he cried as much in anger at himself as in pain.

  “Pa—”

  He started to gather the rifles against him again, painfully, when he interrupted her, “Reload!”

  “Old man!”

  Jerking his good leg under him, Titus froze at the call from the trees, trying his damnedest to place that voice.

  “We come only for you!”

  A second voice shouted, “Like to get my hands on that friend of yours too, but he can wait.”

  The lead ball plowed into the ground right near his cheek as he lay gasping with the pain of the hip wound, wondering how bad it was, if it had broken a bone, if he’d walk again, if it was the sort of deep injury that would eventually mean a slow and terrible death.

  “You ready, Amanda?” he whispered with a grunt as he cocked the good leg under him.

  “Ready.”

  “Shoot!”

  Her pistol roared as he rocked forward, lunging a few yards before he landed again in the sage—almost to the rocks. “Take the guns from me!” he ordered.

  Her hand came out, grabbing the muzzle of the first rifle, yanking it back inside her fortress. She was pulling at the second when another ball smacked the rock near her arm. She flinched, withdrew her arm, then quickly reached out again and snatched the rifle out of sight. Dirt exploded near his shoulder, and another ball slapped against the boulder—sending slivers of rock spraying over him, cutting his cheeks and eyelids as he tried to turn away too late.

  “Pa!”

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Amanda’s arm sticking from the cleft again, farther this time. She was holding it out for him. As he brought his good leg under him again he stretched out for her hand, grabbed it. Together they pulled and got Titus between the rocks as another ball stabbed against the boulder overhead, showering them with tiny
chips of lead and rock.

  “How bad you hurt?”

  Rolling onto his rump, Titus pulled up the bloodstained hem of his long calico shirt and saw how the ball had gone through the tie that knotted his legging to the belt, into the hip muscle, and must have come back out through his buttock.

  “Damn,” he muttered as he interlaced his fingers around that right knee and pulled the leg up. It hurt, but not the way it would have made him pass out with pain if the ball had hit bone. “I ain’t gonna die,” he told her, sweat dripping in his eyes. “Not just yet, I ain’t.”

  “C’mon out, old man! Just get this over quick and we’ll be on our way.”

  Titus dragged one of the rifles over and passed it to Amanda. “Here, you hold on to this while I shoot this’un. Then we’ll swap an’ you reload.” He shoved the loaded pistol across the dirt toward her feet. “Keep that’un right by you. Don’t use it less’n they get me an’ you can take one last shot when they get close to the rocks. Keep it … keep it for yourself till the very end.”

  “Who are they?” she asked as she got to her knees and looked at him.

  With a shrug, he said, “White fellers. Out here, shootin’ at me—I got a purty good idee, Amanda.”

  “Who?”

  That’s when Scratch flung his voice toward the copse of trees: “Hargrove with you stupid niggers?”

  “No!” the voice cried. “He’s back with the train.”

  “Like I figgered,” Titus yelled. “Just like afore, he sent you boys to do a man’s work, again.”

  A ball smacked the rock, but this shot came from much closer. He was immediately worried, but didn’t want her to know as he grinned and said, “’Pears we made ’em mad.”

  “That was close, Pa.” Amanda was shaking.

  Likely she figured that out for herself from the sound. So he said, “Just gonna make it interesting—”

  Bass heard the scrape of feet somewhere behind them. He dragged the hammer on the rifle back to full cock and prepared to rise on the good leg. Popping up with the rifle already into his shoulder, he spotted the man just darting away from a clump of brush, making for the rocks. The rifle slammed against him as it roared, the ball catching the attacker in the side of the chest. Spinning him back into the brush where his legs thrashed as Titus sank back into their fortress, two balls hissing overhead where he had been standing for but an instant.