Brian Garfield (5 page)

The wagon was a full day behind them, loaded with skins and heads; the meat was hanging from cottonwood trees and, knowing the proclivities of coyotes and wolves and bears and cats and Indians, Joe had his doubts whether there would be much left by the time they returned to claim it—if they emerged from this wretched adventure alive.

Just give me a desk and a chair someplace inside four walls and I'll never again put in jeopardy the life and good health of one of Your poor dumb creatures.

Roosevelt twisted an ankle over a loose rock but he limped on gamely, chattering with a high-pitched cheer that drove Joe nearly mad. “Do you know it reminds me a bit of the ancient desert lands of Egypt. My father took us there when I was a lad. I shot ever so many birds. My sister was furious—she couldn't stand the form-aldehyde smell of the taxidermy chemicals.” He giggled and lurched on, breath sawing. Then: “Across the desert we went on camels…. I half expect a valley of great pyramids just beyond the horizon there.”

“Yes sir. Might be water down there. Let's have a look.”

They descended toward a green clump that proved illusory; whatever waters had fed it were gone, dried by the approach of summer. But the coulee narrowed into a steep bend below. There might be pockets of water at the bottom. In forty minutes it would be dusk; it was no good continuing along the rim at this rate anyhow. So Joe led the exhausted horse downhill into the trap of the canyon. He leaned back and dug his bootheels into the clay, thought a silent prayer and did not bother to look around to see if the dude was following.

One quality a tired man shared with a lathered horse was that either could become the surprisingly quick victim of dehydration in country like this.

We could end up dry bones out here and no one the wiser
.

The mournful knowledge put a taste like brass on Joe's tongue. He said nothing to Roosevelt; no good would be served by alarming the dude—there was no way to tell which way Roosevelt might jump. What if he folded up into a cowering ball and refused to go on? What if he had a fit?

The horses placed their feet with tired splayed abandon, stumbling down the clay slopes, trembling. Joe rolled a pebble around his mouth with his tongue to keep the saliva going. He pitied the big quivering creature whose reins he tugged.

The walls of the high gorge loomed, cutting out most of the sky. It was nearly dark. The horses seemed nervous; they kept tugging fitfully.

Roosevelt said, “Look there, old fellow. That seems promising.”

He followed the line of Roosevelt's pointing finger and saw dimly a wide dish of stone in the shadows under the opposite cliff.

Probably nothing but a trick of the sun; but there was a chance it might indeed prove to be a sink—what the immigrant Texans called a
tanque.

May be the dude's eyesight was improving.

“We'll have a look then.”

They crossed the narrow canyon upon a rubble of shale rocks loosened by the past winter's storms; their passage set up a little avalanche that racketed down into darkness and hurled back ominous echoes.

As they entered the gloom of the cliff's shadow he heard Roosevelt exclaim, “Aha! I
thought
the horses smelled moisture.”

It was muck: a gelatinous slime, the diminished leavings of a big pool that must have been deposited in this bowl of rock by the spring melt-off. The horses nuzzled it: lapped, snorted and drank.

Roosevelt without ado untied his neckerchief, scooped up a wad of muddy gumbo in it, twisted the cloth ends together and held the plump sack over his upturned hat. When he squeezed, brown water dripped from the cloth.

Joe gaped.

This damn dude had saved their lives.

It was downright mortifying.

They made a dry camp. Finally Joe was willing to ask, “Where'd you learn that trick with the bandanna?”

“From a Maine woodsman, a very fine friend of mine named Bill Sewall. Why? Did you think Dakota was the only wild country in all North America?”

The dude presented another hatful of strained mud to his horse, which drank gratefully. Then he tried to blow up the rubber sleeping pillow that he carried in his pack but he wheezed and hacked so badly that Joe was moved to take it away from him, inflate it himself and say, “You ought to see a doctor about those ailments.”

The dude corked the pillow and suddenly burst into a barking merriment of laughter that quickly became a violent spell of coughing after which he struggled for breath and eventually spoke:

“I've seen many a doctor, old fellow. The most eminent of 'em told me I hadn't long to live unless I elected a sedentary life. He said the strain of the asthma has weakened my heart, and any violent exercise may be immediately fatal. The fine fellow told me I oughtn't even walk up a flight of stairs without stopping several times on the way. Well I didn't think that sounded like much of a life. Not long after that I happened to be in Switzerland and I encountered a group of Englishmen who'd just come down from a two-day scaling of the Matterhorn, which as you probably know was never climbed at all until less than twenty years ago, and these Englishmen boasted so—as if no one else but an Englishman could ever make the top of that mountain—well sir I climbed it myself, just to show what an American could do, and I made it to the top of the Matterhorn in just three hours. And I am here alive to tell you the tale.”

I may owe him my life but does he really expect me to believe these tall tales?

Roosevelt said, “Now do you suppose there may be a moral to this story, concerning doctors and their opinions?”

He broke into another fit of coughing. To Joe it sounded like death.

There was no wood for a fire and nothing by way of trees or even shrubs for tying the horses. It was a cold camp and, Joe thought, a miserable one. They'd had only a couple of dried biscuits to eat. The horses were hungry and didn't seem to like this place: they kept snorting restlessly.

After they rubbed the beasts down it was necessary to groundhitch them for the night by laying saddles on the ground and tying a rawhide lariat from each saddle to each horse's bridle strap.

Roosevelt's horse kept pawing at the rock and looking nervously around and blowing through its nostrils. “There must be some wild predator about.”

“Or two-legged animals,” Joe said between yawns. “There are men around here, white and red alike, may be just as soon as not take our horses and our scalps as well.”

It was mainly bravado to impress the dude; Joe felt immediately foolish but it was too late to retract and so he said, “Keep your eyes and ears peeled, now,” and laid his head on his saddle for a pillow and was immediately asleep.

When it was jerked out from under him he came awake with a start. “What in the hell—?”

He heard hoofbeats clattering away down the canyon; he was clambering to his feet, still clearing his head of sleep when the boom of Roosevelt's rifle nearly made him jump out of his skin.

The muzzle-flame, so near his eyes, left him momentarily blind. “
What is it?
”

There was the metal racket of the dude's rifle—chambering a fresh cartridge, levering the breach shut—and then after a moment Roosevelt said in a calm enough voice, “Wolf, I think. I suspect I missed it. Great Scott, it certainly does seem to have frightened our horses.”

This was, Joe determined as he tugged on his boots, most definitely the worst hunt he had ever endured.

“Come on then,” the dude said cheerfully. “Isn't this bully? We'd best bring the poor steeds back.”

“Or break our fool necks trying,” Joe grumbled, and set out blindly down the canyon, feeling for footholds.

After an hour of tumbles and bruises they captured the beasts.

It was only just in time: thunder gave warning—rolling and crashing overhead with long ricochetting echoes.

“Come
on!
”

Roosevelt seemed to need no explaining. They led the horses swiftly up-cany on, collecting the bits and pieces of their camp, ascending from there at dawn. Then of course it began to rain. Another ten minutes and they'd have been caught in the flash flood that thundered down the canyon. They emerged at the rim with mud sucking at their boots; mounted the poor horses and rode for hours in the soaking downpour.

Along the escarpment it wasn't so bad but at the waning end of day when they began to descend the Bad Lands toward the place where they'd left the wagon they had to squelch and slither down hills on which the clay had turned to gumbo.

By the time they reached the little plateau and tied their horses to the wagon and ducked underneath the buckboard's bed they were so coated with the dreary slime they looked like fresh moist clay sculptures.

Joe wrapped himself in a sodden blanket and brooded at the abysmal torrent.

Roosevelt turned to him and grinned from ear to ear. “By Godfrey, but this is fun!”

In the morning the sun came up hot enough to dry the muddy clothes on their backs and Roosevelt's enthusiasm was larger, if possible, than ever. “Now what do you say, old fellow—buffalo today?”

“Well yes sir, I do believe today's the day.”

In truth Joe had given up all expectation but he willed the buffalo to appear because he did not want any more of this absurdity.

He was even too tired to feel surprise when he saw two buffalo grazing along a grass slope.

He had to point them out several times before the dude spotted them. Roosevelt slipped his rifle from leather. Joe said, “Not yet, sir. Too far.”

They moved forward. But all the same Roosevelt in his excitement fired too soon, from too far away.

Normally buffalo were too stupid to flee from the sound of gunfire—their bovine indifference to noise was one reason it had been so easy to exterminate them; that was one of the things that had altogether sickened Joe—but in this case a ricochet must have stung one or both of the lucky animals, for they were off in an instant at full gallop. Roosevelt fired his magazine empty but it was no good; and by the time the two horsemen found their way across the intervening canyons the hairy beasts had disappeared.

Joe concealed his relief. They tried tracking but lost the spoor in shale. Roosevelt was momentarily dejected but brightened quickly enough. “We'll go on until we find more.”

“May not be any more to find,” Joe said gloomily.

“Nonsense. Why, there are millions of them.”

“Not any more.”

“What's that you say?”

“Mr. Roosevelt, fact is the army and the railroads wiped the herds out.” No good stringing the dude any farther; the truth might hurt him but without it they might be out here all winter long. Joe said, “They killed the last big herd last spring, sir.”

“Why, that has the sound of utter nonsense!”

Joe was ready to take offense then. “It's my word.”

Of course that was the precise moment when a good-sized buffalo bull browsed into sight not a hundred yards below in the tall grass of a butte-protected meadow.

“Aha!” Roosevelt cried in triumph. Quickly he dismounted and lifted his rifle.

“Have a care with the downslope,” Joe said wearily. “And mind the wind off your starboard quarter.”

The dude got down on one knee and sighted with care. Joe put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes tight shut. There followed the great crashing boom of the rifle shot and Roosevelt's exasperated “Drat!” and then another booming rifle shot and Roosevelt's delighted whoop.

Joe opened his eyes. He saw the buffalo stumble and go down. Roosevelt was clambering onto his saddle.

By the time Joe rode to the place the dude had already dismounted and was prodding the buffalo with the rifle muzzle to make sure the poor thing was dead.

Then the strangest thing happened. Roosevelt began to leap about, spinning violently in the air as if he had been possessed by infernal spirits. A violent grunting sound erupted spasmodically from his mouth. His arms and legs jerked; his feet barely seemed to touch the earth: it was as though he were being whipped hither and yon by some invisible giant puppeteer.

His lips peeled back. A high screech issued from between his teeth. And suddenly he whirled and stood with one foot planted on the carcass in the age-old gesturer of the conqueror. Eyes gleaming behind dusty lenses, he pulled out his purse and gestured his guide forward.

Hesitant, not knowing whether to expect another rictus St. Vitus' dance, Joe approached him.

“Jolly fine work, old man!” Roosevelt shook coins into Joe's palm.

Joe looked down. He spread the coins with a finger. Ten-dollar gold eagles and twenty-dollar double eagles. One hundred dollars' worth.

Well may be one buffalo more or less didn't matter that much after all.

Two

T
en months later it was quite a different and darker Theodore Roosevelt who returned to the Bad Lands.

Tuesday, June tenth, 1884: Joe Ferris knew his friend Pack's newspaper would mark it an outstanding day in the brief history of Medora town.

Roosevelt was not the first to alight. Before the train pulled forward to the depot platform, Madame la Marquise's private railroad car had to be detached and shunted onto the abattoir siding where, at some remove from the scene of the usual gunshots and profane antics, she could be spared unseemly excitement. Her attendants, concerned for her sensitivities, were determined that she and her two babies be spared exposure to the ruffians of the depot.

From her sumptuous railroad carriage the young Marquise—pert and delicate with masses of dark auburn-red hair—disembarked into the Dakota Bad Lands with two babies, twenty-one trunks and nine servants.

Nearly knocking Joe down when he trotted past, the Marquis De Morès rode his horse across the tracks with cool disregard for the snapping gunfire and hooting yells that greeted the rest of the train.

Much to Joe's disgust there was a cheer when De Morès stepped down to greet his wife. Evidently most of the town witnessed their impassioned embrace.