Lonesome Dove (92 page)

94

THE MEN BEGAN TO TALK of the Yellowstone River as if it were the place where the world ended—or, at least, the place where the drive would end. In their thinking it had taken on a magical quality, partly because no one really knew anything about it. Jasper Fant had somehow picked up the rumor that the Yellowstone was the size of the Mississippi, and as deep. All the way north everyone had been trying to convince Jasper that it didn’t really make any difference how deep a river was, once it got deep enough to swim a horse, but Jasper felt the argument violated common sense. The deeper the river, the more dangerous—that was axiomatic to him. He had heard about something called undercurrents, which could suck you down. The deeper the river, the farther down you could be sucked, and Jasper had a profound fear of being sucked down. Particularly he didn’t want to be sucked down in the Yellowstone, and had made himself a pair of rude floats from some empty lard buckets, just in case the Yellowstone really did turn out to be as deep as the Mississippi.

“I didn’t come all this way just to drown in the last dern river,” Jasper said.

“It ain’t the last,” Augustus said. “Montana don’t stop at the Yellowstone. The Missouri’s up there somewhere, and it’s a whale of a river.”

“Well, I don’t aim to cross it,” Jasper said. It seemed to him he had spent half the trip imagining how it would be to be sucked down into a deep river, and he wanted it understood that he was only willing to take so many chances.

“I guess you’ll cross it if the Captain wants to keep going,” Dish said. Jasper’s river fears grated on everybody’s nerves. Nobody liked crossing rivers, but it didn’t help to talk about the dangers constantly for three thousand miles.

“Well, Jake talked of a Milk River, and one called the Marais,” Augustus said.

“Looks like you’d be satisfied,” Jasper said. “Ain’t we traveled enough? I’d like to step into a saloon in good old Fort Worth, myself. I’d like to see my home again while my folks are still alive.”

“Why, that ain’t the plan,” Augustus said. “We’re up here to start a ranch. Home and hearth don’t interest us. We hired you men for life. You ought to have said goodbye to the old folks before you left.”

“What are we going to do, now that we’re here?” Lippy asked. The question was on everyone’s minds. Usually when a cattle drive ended the men just turned around and went back to Texas, but then most drives stopped in Kansas, which seemed close to home compared to where they were now. Many of them harbored secret doubts about their ability to navigate a successful return to Texas. Of course, they knew the direction, but they would have to make the trip in winter, and the Indians that hadn’t been troublesome on the way north might want to fight as they went south.

“I like a town,” Lippy added. “It don’t have to be St. Louis, just a town. As long as it has a saloon or two I can get by. But I wasn’t meant to live out in the open during the winter.”

Call knew the men were wondering, but he wasn’t ready to stop. Jake had said some of the most beautiful land was far to the north, near Canada. It would be a pity to stop and make a choice before they had looked around thoroughly.

He contemplated leaving the men and going on a long look around himself, north of Yellowstone, but decided against it, mainly because of Indians. Things looked peaceful, but that didn’t mean they would stay peaceful. There could easily be a bad fight, and he didn’t want to be gone if one came.

Finally he decided to send Augustus. “I hate to give you the first look, but somebody’s got to look,” he said. “Would you want to go?”

“Oh, sure,” Augustus said. “I’d be happy to get away from all this tedious conversation. Maybe I’ll trot through this Miles City community and see if anyone stocks champagne.”

“Take the look around first, if you can be bothered,” Call said. “I doubt the main street of Miles City would make a good ranch, and I doubt you’ll get any farther, once you spot a saloon. We need to find a place and get some shelters built before winter hits. Take a man with you, in case you get into trouble,” Call suggested.

“I can get myself out of trouble,” Augustus said. “But if I have to lead some quaking spirit like Jasper Fant it’ll slow me down. None of these cowpokes is exactly wilderness hands. We buried the last reliable man down on the Powder, remember?”

“I remember,” Call said.

“You don’t want to make too many mistakes in this part of the country,” Augustus said. “You’ll end up bearshit.”

“Take Pea,” Call said. “Pea can follow orders.”

“Yes, that’s what he can do,” Augustus said. “I guess I’ll take him, though he won’t provide much conversation.”

Pea Eye was not enthusiastic about going on a scout with Gus, but since the Captain told him to, he tied his bedroll on his saddle and got ready. Other than securing his bedroll, his preparations consisted mainly of sharpening his knife. One thing Pea Eye firmly believed was that it was foolish to start on a trip without a sharp knife. Inevitably on a trip there were things that needed cutting or skinning or trimming. Once his knife was sharp, Pea Eye was ready, more or less. He knew he wouldn’t get much relaxation on the trip because he was traveling with Gus, and Gus talked all the time. It was hard to relax when he had to be constantly listening. Besides, Gus was always asking questions which were hard to understand, much less answer.

It was a breezy morning when they started out—a dark cloud bank had formed in the northwest, and the men were talking of snow.

“I said way back in Lonesome Dove we’d be crossing the dern Yellowstone on the ice if we didn’t get started,” Jasper reminded them. “Now all this time has passed, and I may be right.”

“Even if you was right, you’d be wrong, Jasper,” Augustus said, as he stuffed an extra box or two of ammunition into his saddlebags.

“I’d like to know why, Gus,” Jasper said, annoyed that Gus was always singling him out for criticism.

“I’ll explain it when I get back,” Augustus said. “Come on, Pea, let’s go see if we can find Canada.”

They loped off, watched by the whole camp. The crew had been made melancholy by the approaching clouds. Po Campo had wandered off looking for roots.

Augustus and Pea Eye passed him nearly a mile from camp. “Po, you’re a rambler,” Augustus said. “What do you expect to find on this old plain?”

“Wild onions,” Po Campo said. “I’d like an onion.”

“I’d like a jug of bourbon whiskey, myself,” Augustus said. “I wonder which one of us will get his wish.”

“
Adios
,” Po Campo said.

A day and a half later the two scouts rode over a grassy bluff and saw the Yellowstone River, a few miles away. Fifty or sixty buffalo were watering when they rode up. At the sight of the horsemen the buffalo scattered. The cloud bank had blown away and the blue sky was clear for as far as one could see. The river was swift but not deep—Augustus paused in his crossing and leaned down, drinking from his cupped hands. The water was cold.

“Sweet water, but it don’t compare with bourbon whiskey,” he said.

“Jasper won’t need them floats,” Pea Eye remarked.

“He might,” Augustus said. “He might fall off his horse if he gets real nervous. Let’s chase the buffalo for a while.”

“Why?” Pea asked. Po Campo had packed them plenty of meat. He couldn’t imagine why Gus would bother with buffalo. They were cumbersome to skin, and he and Gus had no need for so much meat.

Nonetheless, it was follow or be left, for Augustus had loped off after the buffalo, who had only run about a mile. He soon put them to flight again and raced along beside them, riding close to the herd. Pea Eye, caught by surprise, was left far behind in the race. He kept expecting to hear Gus’s big rifle, but he didn’t, and after a run of about two miles came upon Gus sitting peacefully on a little rise. The buffalo were still running, two or three miles ahead.

“Kill any?” Pea asked.

“No, I wasn’t hunting,” Augustus said.

“Did you just want to run ’em off, or what?” Pea asked. As usual, Gus’s behavior was a complete puzzle.

“Pea, you ain’t got your grip on the point,” Augustus said. “I just wanted to chase a buffalo once more. I won’t have the chance much longer, and nobody else will either, because there won’t be no buffalo to chase. It’s a grand sport too.”

“Them bulls can hook you,” Pea Eye reminded him. “Remember old Barlow? A buffalo bull hooked his horse and the horse fell on Barlow and broke his hip.”

“Barlow was a slow thinker,” Augustus observed. “He just loped along and got hooked.”

“A slow walker, too, once his hip got broke,” Pea Eye said. “I wonder what happened to Barlow.”

“I think he migrated to Seguin, or somewhere over in there,” Augustus said. “Married a fat widow and had a passel of offspring. You ought to have done the same, but here you are in Montana.”

“Well, I’d hate not to be a bachelor,” Pea Eye said.

“Just because it’s all you know don’t mean it’s all you’d enjoy,” Augustus said. “You had a chance at a fine widow right there in Lonesome Dove, as I recall.”

Pea Eye was sorry the subject of widows had come up. He had nearly forgotten the Widow Cole and the day he had helped her take the washing off the line. He didn’t know why he hadn’t forgotten it completely—he surely had forgotten more important things. Yet there it was, and from time to time it shoved into his brain. If he had married some widow his brain would probably have been so full of such things that he would have no time to think, or even to keep his knife sharp.

“Ever meet any of the mountain men?” Augustus asked. “They got up in here and took the beavers.”

“Well, I met old Kit,” Pea Eye said. “You ought to remember. You was there.”

“Yes, I remember,” Augustus said. “I never thought much of Kit Carson.”

“Why, what was wrong with Kit Carson?” Pea Eye asked. “They say he could track anything.”

“Kit was vain,” Augustus said. “I won’t tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman. If I had gone north in my youth I might have got to be a mountain man, but I took to riverboating instead. The whores on them riverboats in my day barely wore enough clothes to pad a crutch.”

As they rode north they saw more buffalo, mostly small bunches of twenty or thirty. The third day north of the Yellowstone they killed a crippled buffalo calf and dined on its liver. In the morning, when they left, there were a number of buzzards and two or three prairie wolves hanging around, waiting for them to leave the carcass.

It was a beautiful morning, crisp for an hour or two and then sunny and warm. The country rolled on to the north, as it had for thousands of miles, brown in the distance, the prairie grass waving in the breeze.

“Lord, how much land does the Captain want?” Pea Eye asked. “Looks like this country around here would be good enough for anybody.”

“Plenty would settle for it, you’re right,” Augustus said. “Call might himself. But let’s just go on for a day or two more. We ain’t struck the Milk River yet.”

“Does it run milk?” Pea Eye asked.

“Now think a minute, Pea,” Augustus said. “How could it run milk when there ain’t no cows up here yet?”

“Why did they call it the Milk, then? Milk is milk.”

“Crazy is crazy, too,” Augustus said. “That’s what I’ll be before long from listening to you. Crazy.”

“Well, Jasper’s mind might break if he don’t stop worrying about them rivers,” Pea Eye allowed. “I expect the rest of us will keep our wits.”

Augustus laughed heartily at the notion of the Hat Creek outfit keeping its wits. “It’s true they could be kept in a thimble,” he said, “but who brought a thimble?”

There was a little rise to the west, and Augustus loped over to it to see what the land looked like in that direction. Pea trotted along north, as he had been doing, not paying much attention. Gus was always loping off to test the view, as he called it, and Pea didn’t feel obliged to follow him every time.

Then Pea heard the sound of a running horse and looked for Gus, supposing he had jumped another little bunch of buffalo. What he saw froze him instantly in place. Gus was racing down the little slope he had just gone up, with at least twenty mounted Indians hot on his heels. He must have ridden right into them. The Indians were shooting both guns and arrows. A bullet cut the grass ahead of Pea and he yanked out his rifle and popped a shot back at the Indians before whirling his horse and fleeing. Gus and he had crossed a good-sized creek less than an hour back, with some trees along it and some weeds and shrubbery in the creek bed. He assumed Gus must be racing for that, since it was the only shelter on the wide prairie. Even as he started, Pea saw five or six Indians veer toward him. He swerved over to. join Gus, who had two arrows in his leg. Gus was flailing his horse with his rifle barrel and the horse was running full out.

Fortunately the Indians were poorly mounted—their horses were no match for the Hat Creek horses, and the two men soon widened the gap between them and their pursuers. They were out of range of arrows, and of bullets too, Pea hoped, but he had hardly hoped it when a bullet stung him just above the shoulder blade. But the creek was only three or four miles ahead. If they could make it there would be time enough to worry about wounds.

Gus was trying to pull the arrows out of his leg as he rode, but he was having no luck.

They saw the curve of the little creek from two miles away and angled for the nearest juncture. The Indians had fallen nearly a quarter of a mile back, but were still coming. When they struck the creek Augustus raced along the bank until he found a spot where the weeds and brush were thickest. Then he jumped his horse off the bank and grabbed his saddlebags.

“Get all the ammunition you can,” he said. “We’re in for a shooting match. And tie the horses in the best cover you can find, or they’ll shoot ’em. This is long country to be afoot in.”

Then he hobbled to the bank, wishing he had time to cut the two arrows out of his leg. But if they were poisoned it was already too late, and if he didn’t do some fine shooting it wouldn’t matter anyway because the Indians would overrun them.

Pea heard the big Henry rifle begin to roar as he dragged the sweating horses into the thickest part of the underbrush. It was thick but low, and he didn’t think there was much chance for the horses. He yanked the saddlebags and bedrolls off both horses and was hiding them under the bank when Gus stopped firing for a moment.