Brian Garfield (41 page)

That always provoked Uncle Bill to a fit of caterwauling about how he had never wanted to see the filthy Wild West and hoped never to see it again.

On the far bank the horses were fresh and frisky in the morning. They had to be gentled and retrained for use before spring round-up could begin.

Wil picked out a roan and, with Uncle Bill holding its head down, climbed into the saddle and settled his boots in the stirrups. “All right. Turn him loose.”

Uncle Bill let go of the bit and backed away. Wil waited. The roan stood bolt still. Wil pulled his hat down tight and experimentally gigged his small blunt spurs into the roan's flanks.

The horse burst forward. Ears down, it unwrapped like a loosed steel spring. A thin tight spasm of pain shot through Wil's spine and he saw Uncle Bill's lips turn white. He felt his backbone try to break up through his head. The roan swapped ends and started pile-driving on four stiff legs; it wheeled and reared, humped and uncoiled, headed for a tree to scrape him off, changed its mind at the last minute and went to more hammer-bucking. It slammed down on all fours with an impact that snapped Wil's head forward on his neck. The sun whipped up and around; clots and damp wisps of clay roiled, choking Wil's nostrils. He grinned, and stayed glued to the reeling saddle while his vision dimmed and filmed over with a red haze and he tasted blood. His grip started to loosen; he knew he was going over—and then the roan quit fighting. It subsided into a few perfunctory pitches, did one more music-hall turn, trotted spitefully back and forth and finally stood still, head down. Its ears moved forward, cocked up, a gesture of surrender.

Uncle Bill said in a very dry voice, “Ride him, cowboy.”

He accompanied his uncle Bill on a swath through a rough section of ravines, past rainbow-colored shale strata, heading up toward the short grass country. Everything that grew in the Bad Lands seemed dwarfed, with the exception of some ashes and cottonwoods that grew to a fair height in sheltered clusters against high cutbanks near the river. Above on the steep rough slopes clung red cedar and juniper and all manner of scrub brush.

Sometimes it was necessary to throw a riata noose around bogged cattle and pull them out before they sank into the gumbo and died. Sometimes horses needed rescuing as well. Sometimes you didn't get to them until it was too late.

They prowled the forty-mile width of the Bad Lands. The strata were so clearly defined, so sharply contrasting in colors that they looked like painted ribbons. There was a chalky blue Bentonitic clay in a few of the parallel lines. The rain had made it run like inkstains.

By happenstance on an afternoon that might have been a Wednesday or a Friday they crossed paths with Mr. Roosevelt himself. Riding his favorite horse Manitou he came out of a coulee with a pleased look and reined in beside them. The wind drove bursts of rain in under his hatbrim so that he had to keep removing his spectacles and wiping them. “I love the wild desolate grandeur of the solitude. Sometimes you feel certain to the rock-bottom of your soul that no one's ever been there before you, no human eye ever seen what you're seeing.”

Sewall said, “You'd generally be wrong. Every time I make up my mind I'm where no human man ever traveled I run on a tobacco tag or a beer bottle.”

Wil Dow thought:
William Wingate Sewall, philosopher on horseback
.

At first glance, despite Uncle Bill's dour predictions, the herd looked pretty good. The Elkhorn seemed to be prospering. “Long as we can keep from getting lynched,” Uncle Bill grumbled.

In intervals between downpours the occasional rider passed by from upstream, bringing news from the world beyond the Elkhorn. After the first flurry of lynchings, mostly the word was unexciting: the Marquis's lawyers continued to win delays in court, and most folks believed he never would stand trial for the Luffsey murder.

Roosevelt asked every rider for news of Dutch Reuter—who would be one of the key witnesses against the Marquis if it ever came to trial—but no one knew a thing. Wil Dow told the boss, “At least we can take heart from not hearing he got hanged.”

After a few weeks' respite the news from upriver turned downright bad again—the Stranglers were riding in force and purportedly had strung up more than a dozen “outlaws” and, as a result, a good many men had taken flight from their small outfits in the Bad Lands.

“Good riddance,” said Uncle Bill. “They must have guilty consciences.”

Wil Dow retorted, “Maybe they're just scared of getting lynched by mistake.”

“It's all right to listen to the boss, Wil, but you don't need to swallow every word he says as Gospel truth. There's all too many stock-thieves hidden out in these Bad Lands and they're by no means the innocent band of independent ranchers Mr. Roosevelt makes them out to be. He's inclined to take too much on faith.”

“They're innocent,” Wil Dow said, “until proven guilty. So say I.”

“Aagh,” Uncle Bill growled in disgust.

In any event each of them traveled well-armed wherever he went, even if was only from the house to the barn.

Stranglers or no, the commerce of the prairie must go on. Spring round-up, with its attendant sorting out and branding of the season's calf crop, could not await the whim of night-riding vigilantes.

Roosevelt left a hired man to look after things at the Elkhorn while the boss took his two New Englanders south with their cavvy to join round-up headquarters. The temporary caretaker they left behind was a cowboy recommended by Eaton's foreman; he had injured his Achilles tendon and Eaton wanted to spare the man the rigors of round-up.

By general consent Johnny Goodall once again was elected round-up manager. Wil found the first two days in the headquarters camp near Custer Trail given up mostly to re-educating remuda ponies that were grass-fed, unshod and frisky. That first campfire evening was a delight to Wil Dow even though his bones ached so from bucking that no matter how he lay down he could not find a tolerable position. But bruises and aches could be forgotten in the swapping of good-natured lies. The Stranglers were not forgotten; but here in the heavily populated camp they could be set to one side while the ranch hands played cards and checkers, braided rawhide riatas and spun tall tales.

Even Roosevelt had learned to yarn. He said, “I chased that horse so far this afternoon I ran right into a Sioux Indian camp and got into conversation with an old red gentleman whose name I didn't catch, but we had quite a spirited discourse. When I scolded the old chief for his polygamous marriages and told him he must give up all but one wife if he hoped to be a Christian, the chief directed my attention at the several women and replied, ‘Very good, sir. You tell
them
which one!'” Roosevelt laughed loudly at his own joke.

Sewall squirmed against the hard earth, trying to make depressions for hip and shoulder, and said, “Strikes me the man who first called it ‘Bad Lands' hit it about right.”

Howard Eaton said, “I understand that was a Frenchman, Boneval, one of Astor's old fur men.”

This was at least the dozenth explanation Wil had heard; nonetheless he attended with interest.

Eaton went on: “They'd done some trading, filled three or four wagonloads of pelts. They were trying to get away from some Indians and they came on the Little Missouri. Couldn't find game of any kind, and the weather so dry and hot the wagons came to pieces. Provisions ran short and they had a hard time getting through. So Boneval named the country Malpais, which is Bad Lands in French.”

Johnny Goodall said, “I heard that story and sixteen others. Lakota Indi'ns say they been calling this country Bad Lands for a thousand years.”

Sewall said, “You ever meet an Indian didn't like to spin a lie? A thousand years ago there weren't any Lakota around here. This whole place was the bottom of an ocean, as a man can plainly tell on account of you pull up dead brush to make your fire on top of any high bluff around here, you find clamshells in the dirt.”

Wil Dow said, “Maybe the Indians had gills in those days.”

“Well you could be right about that. Maybe they had steamboats too.”

Huidekoper rode in and unsaddled. He dampened down the evening: “Jerry Paddock and his boys are riding the district. I recommend you gentlemen watch out they don't gulch you.”

Bill Sewall said, “Jerry Paddock is a creature I can stand to be near only if the wind happens to be right.”

Wil Dow said, “For sure he's tied up with the Stranglers.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” agreed Huidekoper. “Wherever there are underhanded doings, I always expect to find Jerry Paddock up to his chin. I don't believe he rides with the vigilantes but I certainly would not put it past him to be passing information to them.”

The subject put a chill on things. Everyone turned in quickly; there was no more conversation.

In the morning Wil thought he was first awake and first to the coffee but he found Roosevelt wrapped in a blanket by the fire reading his book—Washington Irving. The boss lowered the book and put his grave glance upon Wil Dow. “You know these months have been my first experience in living among what I suppose my family would call the common folk. Working and riding among these ordinary men of the West—I find it a privilege. They're bully men.”

“Yes sir.”

All that morning Wil Dow saw Roosevelt try to prove he belonged among the common folk by continuing to ride horses too rugged for him; they kept bruising his bones. Hadn't he broken enough bones already? The boss was pushing himself, asking too much of his mortal skeleton; he must have known that but he kept pushing.

In noontime dinner camp Wil Dow said, “Uncle Bill, we have to find a way to persuade him he doesn't need to prove he's man enough to get killed by some outlaw horse.”

Bill Sewall gave it thought. After a moment he carried his tin dish across to where the boss was cooking up a brace of quail he had shot. Wil trailed after him.

Roosevelt was using his engraved hunting knife to push the meat around the black frying pan that sat directly on the fire. Quail made good round-up eating, for they did not need to be plucked; it was a quick matter to pull off the skin, cut off head and feet, take out the insides, salt, roll in flour and fry hot and fast.

Uncle Bill said to Mr. Roosevelt, “Cowboying isn't a religion.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?”

“It takes more than faith—more than devotion. It's no reflection on a man if he doesn't happen to be the best bronco-buster in the country.”

“Why, Bill, I'm a second-rate horseman and I've never laid claim to better. You know that.”

“You admit it cheerful enough. What you won't admit is that you're as scared of horses as I am. That's not unreasonable. But it's not smart to be too proud to give in to it.”

Had it come from anyone else it might have provoked fiery argument. Bill Sewall was one of the few men alive from whom Roosevelt would tolerate that sort of comment without retort.

When Wil looked up he saw Johnny Goodall gazing at them. He was sure Johnny had overheard; but Johnny said nothing. He walked away. Apparently Roosevelt had not seen him; the boss was occupied trying to remove his pan from the fire without burning his hands too badly.

They helped themselves. The first bite burned the roof of Wil's mouth but he found it delicious. Roosevelt was saying to Uncle Bill, “Any man would be a fool not to own a healthy respect for the power of a half-ton beast with sharp hoofs and sharper teeth, Bill, but I don't intend to back away from any horse, and that's all I care to say on the subject, except that I'd certainly feel better all around if I were free to ride no other horse than good old Manitou. He's a steam engine—I trust
that
beast never to let me down. Truly a horse without compare.”

“Well you do cook up an eatable dinner, for a New Yorker,” said Uncle Bill.

At dark an unexpected traveler dropped in: Jerry Paddock, looking decidedly out of place in his black suit. He helped himself to a cup of coffee. “Just out doing a little spot-checking for the Marquis De Morès so we can work up a rough preliminary tally.”

Roosevelt's jaw crept forward to lie in a pugnacious line. “I should have thought that would be Mr. Goodall's province.”

Bill Sewall said, “I had the idea you'd prefer the nighttime for your kind of business.”

Jerry Paddock gave him a dangerous look. “Say what you mean, Sewall.”

“Mean what I say. No more, no less. I wouldn't be surprised, that's all, if one night the boys find you messing with a branded steer. Now that you've run out of sheep to slaughter.”

“You could get hurt real bad talking that way,” Jerry Paddock said.

“I might. But I doubt you're man enough to be the one to do it. Not face to face anyways.”

Wil Dow was getting used to the rough threats these Westerners flung at one another. He'd heard the rumors about Paddock—that he'd killed several men, most recently young Riley Luffsey from ambush and that fellow Calamity in town. The man was an evil-tempered killer. When he'd ridden away Wil said to his uncle, “I wouldn't ignore his bluster.”

“I would,” Sewall replied, and granted Wil one of his rare and precious smiles.

Johnny Goodall came from another fire and squatted down between Wil Dow and Roosevelt. Johnny said, “Seems the cattle winter-drifted quite a ways. Our brands have been seen as far away as the Yellowstone and down along the Indian Reservation. We're sending representatives to our other round-ups.”

“Capital idea.”

“Huidekoper's got a gentle way with animals and Indians and all, so I've asked him to take a man with him and ride down along the Reservation for us. He's consented. Now I want to ask if you'd be willing to represent the Little Missouri brands over on the Yellowstone round-up.”

“I'm honored you'd trust me with so considerable a responsibility.”