At dusk they saw the string of wagons out on the plain, a black line creeping toward them against the sunlight dying on the horizon.
"Hide buyers, most likely," Leo Cleary said. He sounded disappointed, for it could mean they would not return to Leverette for another month.
The boy said, "Maybe a big hunting outfit."
"Not at this time of day," the old man said. "They"d still have their hides drying." He motioned to the creek back of their camp. "Whoever it is, they want water."
Two riders leading the five Conestogas spurred suddenly as they neared the camp and rode in ahead of the six-team wagons. The boy watched them intently. When they were almost to the camp circle, he recognized them and swore under his breath, though he suddenly felt self-conscious.
The Foss brothers, Clyde and Wylie, swung down stiff legged, not waiting for an invitation, and arched the stiffness from their backs. Without a greeting Clyde Foss"s eyes roamed leisurely over the staked-out hides, estimating the number as he scratched at his beard stubble. He grinned slowly, looking at his brother.
"They must a used rocks . . . ain"t more than forty hides here."
Leo Cleary said, "h.e.l.lo, Clyde ...Wylie," and watched the surprise come over them with recognition.
Clyde said, "d.a.m.n, Leo, I didn"t see you were here. Who"s that with you?"
"Matt Gordon"s boy," Leo Cleary answered. "We"re hunting together this season."
"Just the two of you?" Wylie asked with surprise. He was a few years older than Clyde, calmer, but looked to be his twin. They were both of them lanky, thin through face and body, but heavy boned.
Leo Cleary said, "I thought it was common talk in Leverette about us being out."
"We made up over to Caldwell this year," Clyde said. He looked about the camp again, amused. "Who does the shooting?"
201 201 "I do." The boy took a step toward Clyde Foss. His voice was cold, distant. He was thinking of another time four years before when his dad had introduced him to the Foss brothers, the day Matt Gordon contracted with them to pick up his hides.
"And I do skinning," the boy added. It was like What are you going to do about it! What are you going to do about it! the way he said it. the way he said it.
Clyde laughed again. Wylie just grinned.
"So you"re Matt Gordon"s boy," Wylie Foss said.
"We met once before."
"We did?"
"In Leverette, four years ago." The boy made himself say it naturally. "A month before you met my dad in the field and paid him for his hides with whiskey instead of cash . . . the day before he was trampled into the ground. . . ."
THE FOSS BROTHERS met his stare, and suddenly the amus.e.m.e.nt was gone from their eyes. Clyde no longer laughed, and Wylie"s mouth tightened. Clyde stared at the boy and said, "If you meant anything by that, you better watch your mouth."
Wylie said, "We can"t stop buffalo from stampedin"." Clyde grinned now.
"Maybe he"s drunk . . . maybe he favors his pa."
"Take it any way you want," the boy said. He stood firmly with his fists clenched. "You knew better than to give him whiskey. You took advantage of him."
Wylie looked up at the rumbling sound of the wagon string coming in, the ponderous creaking of wooden frames, iron-rimmed tires grating, and the never-changing off-key leathery rattle of the traces, then the sound of reins flicking horse hide and the indistinguishable growls of the teamsters.
Wylie moved toward the wagons in the dimness and shouted to the first one, "Ed . . . water down!" pointing toward the creek.
"You bedding here?" Leo Cleary asked after him.
"Just water."
"Moving all night?"
"We"re meeting a party on the Salt Fork . . . they ain"t going to stay there forever." Wylie Foss walked after the wagons leading away their horses.
Clyde paid little attention to the wagons, only glancing in that direction as they swung toward the stream. Stoop shouldered, his hand curling the brim of his sweat-stained hat, his eyes roamed lazily over the drying hides. He rolled a cigarette, taking his time, failing to offer tobacco to the boy.
"I guess we got room for your hides," he said finally.
"I"m not selling."
"We"ll load soon as we water . . . even take the fresh ones."
"I said I"m not selling."
"Maybe I"m not asking."
"There"s nothing making me sell if I don"t want to!"
The slow smile formed on Clyde"s mouth. "You"re a mean little fella, aren"t you?"
Clyde Foss dropped the cigarette stub and turned a boot on it. "There"s a bottle in my saddle pouch." He nodded to Leo Cleary, who was standing off from them. "Help yourself, Leo."
The old man hesitated.
"I said help yourself."
Leo Cleary moved off toward the stream.
"Now, Mr. Gordon . . . how many hides you say were still dryin"?"
"None for you."
"Forty . . . forty-five?"
"You heard what I said." He was standing close to Clyde Foss, watching his face. He saw the jaw muscles tighten and sensed Clyde"s shift of weight. He tried to turn, bringing up his shoulder, but it came with pain-stabbing suddenness. Clyde"s fist smashed against his cheek, and he stumbled off balance.
"Forty?"
Clyde"s left hand followed around with weight behind it, sc.r.a.ping his temple, staggering him.
"Forty-five?"
He waded after the boy then, clubbing at his face and body, knocking his guard aside to land his fists, until the boy was backed against his 203 203 wagon. Then Clyde stopped as the boy fell into the wheel spokes, gasping, and slumped to the ground.
Clyde stood over the boy and nudged him with his boot. "Did I hear forty or forty-five?" he said dryly. And when the boy made no answer- "Well, it don"t matter."
He heard the wagons coming up from the creek. Wylie was leading the horses. "Boy went to sleep on us, Wylie." He grinned. "He said don"t disturb him, just take the skins and leave the payment with Leo." He laughed then. And later, when the wagons pulled out, he was laughing again.
Once he heard voices, a man swearing, a never-ending soft thudding against the ground, noises above him in the wagon. But these pa.s.sed, and there was nothing.
He woke again, briefly, a piercing ringing in his ears, and his face throbbed violently though the pain seemed to be out from him and not within, as if his face were bloated and would soon burst. He tried to open his mouth, but a weight held his jaws tight. Then wagons moving . . . the sound of traces . . . laughter.
It was still dark when he opened his eyes. The noises had stopped. Something cool was on his face. He felt it with his hand- a damp cloth. He sat up, taking it from his face, working his jaw slowly.
The man was a blur at first . . . something reflecting in his hand. Then it was Leo Cleary, and the something in his hand was a half-empty whiskey bottle.
"There wasn"t anything I could do, Will."
"How long they been gone?"
"Near an hour. They took all of them, even the ones staked out." He said, "Will, there wasn"t anything I could do. . . ."
"I know," the boy said.
"They paid for the hides with whiskey." The boy looked at him, surprised. He had not expected them to pay anything. But now he saw how this would appeal to Clyde"s sense of humor, using the same way the hide buyer had paid his dad four years before.
"That part of it, Leo?" The boy nodded to the whiskey bottle in the old man"s hand.
"No, they put three five-gallon barrels in the wagon. Remember . . . Clyde give me this."
The boy was silent. Finally he said, "Don"t touch those barrels, Leo."
He sat up the remainder of the night, listening to his thoughts. He had been afraid when Clyde Foss was bullying him, and he was still afraid. But now the fear was mixed with anger, because his body ached and he could feel the loose teeth on one side of his mouth when he tightened his jaw, and taste the blood dry on his lips and most of all because Clyde Foss had taken a month"s work, four hundred and eighty hides, and left three barrels of whiskey.
Sometimes the fear was stronger than the anger. The plain was silent and in its darkness there was nothing to hold to. He did not bother Leo Cleary. He talked to himself and listened to the throb in his temples and left Leo alone with the little whiskey he still had. He wanted to cry, but he could not because he had given up the privilege by becoming a man, even though he was still a boy. He was acutely aware of this, and when the urge to cry welled in him he would tighten his nerves and call himself names until the urge pa.s.sed.
Sometimes the anger was stronger than the fear, and he would think of killing Clyde Foss. Toward morning both the fear and the anger lessened, and many of the things he had thought of during the night he did not now remember. He was sure of only one thing: He was going to get his hides back. A way to do it would come to him. He still had his Sharps.
He shook Leo Cleary awake and told him to hitch the wagon. "Where we going?" The old man was still dazed, from sleep and whiskey. "Hunting, Leo. Down on the Salt Fork."
HUNTING WAS GOOD in the Nations. The herds would come down from Canada and the Dakotas and winter along the Cimarron and the Salt and even down to the Canadian. Here the herds were big, two and three hundred grazing together, and sometimes you could look over the flat plains and see thousands. A big outfit with a good hunter could average over eighty hides a day. But, because there were so many hunters, the herds kept on the move.
205 205 In the evening they saw the first of the buffalo camps. Distant lights in the dimness, then lanterns and cook fires as they drew closer in a dusk turning to night, and the sounds of men drifted out to them on the silent plain.
The hunters and skinners were crouched around a poker game on a blanket, a lantern above them on a crate. They paid little heed to the old man and the boy, letting them prepare their supper on the low-burning cook fire and after, when the boy stood over them and asked questions, they answered him shortly. The game was for high stakes, and there was a pot building. No, they hadn"t seen the Foss brothers, and if they had, they wouldn"t trade with them anyway. They were taking their skins to Caldwell for top dollar.
They moved on, keeping well off from the flickering line of lights. Will Gordon would go in alone as they neared the camps, and, if there were five wagons in the camp, he"d approach cautiously until he could make out the men at the fire.
From camp to camp it was the same story. Most of the hunters had not seen the Fosses; a few had, earlier in the day, but they could be anywhere now. Until finally, very late, they talked to a man who had sold to the Foss brothers that morning.
"They even took some fresh hides," he told them.
"Still heading west?" The boy kept his voice even, though he felt the excitement inside of him.
"Part of them," the hunter said. "Wylie went back to Caldwell with three wagons, but Clyde shoved on to meet another party up the Salt. See, Wylie"ll come back with empty wagons, and by that time the hunters"ll have caught up with Clyde. You ought to find him up a ways. We"ll all be up there soon . . . that"s where the big herds are heading."
They moved on all night, spelling each other on the wagon box. Leo grumbled and said they were crazy. The boy said little because he was thinking of the big herds. And he was thinking of Clyde Foss with all those hides he had to dry . . . and the plan was forming in his mind.
Leo Cleary watched from the pines, seeing nothing, thinking of the boy who was out somewhere in the darkness, though most of the time he thought of whiskey, barrels of it that they had been hauling for two days and now into the second night.
The boy was a fool. The camp they had seen at sundown was probably just another hunter. They all staked hides at one time or another. Seeing him sneaking up in the dark they could take him for a Kiowa and cut him in two with a buffalo gun. And even if it did turn out to be Clyde Foss, then what?
Later, the boy walked in out of the darkness and pushed the pine branches aside and was standing next to the old man.
"It"s Clyde, Leo."
The old man said nothing.
"He"s got two men with him."
"So . . . what are you going to do now?" the old man said.
"Hunt," the boy said. He went to his saddlebag and drew a cap-andball revolver and loaded it before bedding for the night.
In the morning he took his rifles and led his horse along the base of the ridge, through the pines that were dense here, but scattered higher up the slope. He would look out over the flat plain to the south and see the small squares of canvas, very white in the brilliant sunlight. Ahead, to the west, the ridge dropped off into a narrow valley with timbered hills on the other side.
The boy"s eyes searched the plain, roaming to the white squares, Clyde"s wagons, but he went on without hesitating until he reached the sloping finish of the ridge. Then he moved up the valley until the plain widened again, and then he stopped to wait. He was prepared to wait for days if necessary, until the right time.
From high up on the slope above, Leo Cleary watched him. Through the morning the old man"s eyes would drift from the boy and then off to the left, far out on the plain to the two wagons and the ribbon of river behind them. He tried to relate the boy and the wagons in some way, but he could not.
After a while he saw buffalo. A few straggling off toward the wagons, but even more on the other side of the valley where the plain widened again and the gra.s.s was higher, green-brown in the sun.
Toward noon the buffalo increased, and he remembered the hunters saying how the herds were moving west. By that time there were hundreds, perhaps a thousand, scattered over the gra.s.s, out a mile or so from the boy who seemed to be concentrating on them.
207 207 Maybe he really is going hunting, Leo Cleary thought. Maybe he"s starting all over again. But I wish I had me a drink. The boy"s downwind now, he thought, lifting his head to feel the breeze on his face. He could edge up and take a hundred of them if he did it right. What"s he waiting for! h.e.l.l, if he wants to start all over, it"s all right with me. I"ll stay out with him. At that moment he was thinking of the three barrels of whiskey.
"Go out and get "em, Will," he urged the boy aloud, though he would not be heard. "The wind won"t keep forever!"
Surprised, then, he saw the boy move out from the brush clumps leading his horse, mount, and lope off in a direction out and away from the herd.
"You can"t hunt buffalo from a saddle . . . they"ll run as soon as they smell horse! What the h.e.l.l"s the matter with him!"
HE WATCHED the boy, growing smaller with distance, move out past the herd. Then suddenly the horse wheeled, and it was going at a dead run toward the herd. A yell drifted up to the ridge and then a heavy rifle shot followed by two reports that were weaker. Horse and rider cut into the herd, and the buffalo broke in confusion.
They ran crazily, bellowing, bunching in panic to escape the horse and man smell and the screaming that suddenly hit them with the wind. A herd of buffalo will run for hours if the panic stabs them sharp enough, and they will stay together, bunching their thunder, tons of bulk, ma.s.sive bellowing heads, horns, and thrashing hooves. Nothing will stop them. Some go down, and the herd pa.s.ses over, beating them into the ground.
They ran directly away from the smell and the noises that were now far behind, downwind they came and in less than a minute were thundering through the short valley. Dust rose after them, billowing up to the old man, who covered his mouth, coughing, watching the rumbling dark ma.s.s erupt from the valley out onto the plain. They moved in an unwavering line toward the Salt Fork, rolling over everything, before swerving at the river-even the two canvas squares that had been brilliant white in the morning sun. And soon they were only a deep hum in the distance.
Will Gordon was out on the flats, approaching the place where the wagons had stood, riding slowly now in the settling dust.
But the dust was still in the air, heavy enough to make Leo Cleary sneeze as he brought the wagon out from the pines toward the river.
He saw the hide buyers" wagons smashed to sc.r.a.p wood and shredded canvas dragged among the strewn buffalo hides. Many of the bales were still intact, spilling from the wagon wrecks; some were buried under the debris.