Shortgrass Song (27 page)

Matthew nodded.

“Why the hell didn't you say so, damn you? Do you like a fight the way he does?”

“I'll fight that circle saw and give it two rounds head start,” he boasted.

Dutch laughed hoarsely. “How much have you swapped me for this old Towse?”

“A few dollars, I guess.”

Dutch pulled a leather pouch from the pocket of his fringed shirt and tossed it at Matthew. “Color of the Tarryall Diggin's. It'll fetch fifteen dollars an ounce. I'll not take pay from a son of Ab Holcomb.”

“Thanks, Dutch,” Matthew said, contemplating the weight of the gold dust in his hand.

Dutch rolled one of the kegs on the stack of lumber, sloshing the liquor inside. “Take my kegs, too. I'll stake you to the whiskey trade. I'm bound to swap my earnin's to that yaller-haired whore.”

“I wouldn't do that,” Matthew said. “I happen to know she's busy right now.”

Dutch scratched his dirty fingernails through his beard. “Maybe you wouldn't, boy, but I will if I please. Take my quirt to him she's busy with and have her to myself. Palousey goes horselike a thousand miles over these mountains and studs where he pleases.”

Matthew had heard of Dutch's addled jabber, and knew it put him in a mood for trouble. “Well, wait a minute before you go, and drink a toast to Ab Holcomb with me,” he suggested.

Dutch paused, then filled his cup. “We rid abreast on bullet-proof horses down Apache Canyon,” he said. “Here's to him.”

*   *   *

Caleb was half asleep in the dark when Caroline rolled away from him to light the lantern. “You better put your britches on,” she said. “I'll have another one in here before the dance is over.”

The wick took the flame of her match, and Caleb saw her naked as the light grew. She didn't seem to care in the least that he stared at her. Matthew was right. Soaking his rope had made it stiff, and he wanted more of her. But she stepped into her dress and told him to hurry up and get out.

He put his pants and boots on and stood at the door. She hadn't asked him for any money. He didn't know whether or not he should offer her a few dollars before he left. The moment he had waited for and wondered about for so long had come and gone too quickly. Now her dress was back on, and he had hardly had the chance to look at her without it. He had scarcely taken the time to think about what she felt like under him. He wanted more. He stared at her as she tied her hair back. She was humming a tune he had sung only minutes before.

“What?” she said, impatiently, noticing his stare.

“Should I … Do you need any money for anything?”

She ridiculed him with her laughter again. “No, Matthew already paid for you,” she said.

“Matthew?”

“Yes, your brother paid me. You don't think I'd have let you in without seeing some money first, do you? Tell 'em you're through with me when you get back in there.”

Caleb didn't know how to feel as he heard Caroline bolt the door behind him. In one way it was the only decent thing Matthew had ever done for him, besides calling him the hardest-working man in the outfit. But he knew what was going to happen. Matthew was going to take credit for everything. He was going to tell everybody on the ranch he had to do it for Caleb, because Caleb didn't have the spine to do it on his own. Caleb wasn't going to let him get away with it. He was going to march back to the sawmill and give Matthew a lesson or two on what he was man enough to do.

*   *   *

“To Colonel Chivington!” Matthew said, tossing back another cup of Taos lightning.

Dutch raised his cup in return. “Chivington! Damn the Congress and all its investigations! If God tells a son of a bitch to kill Indians, I guess he's gonna kill 'em!”

Buster and Javier were latching the lids of their instrument cases. “What's he doin' drinkin' with that crazy old man?” Buster said. “And where has Caleb gone off to?”

“We better get out of here,” Javier said. “That Dutch gets crazy when he drinks that much Taos lightning.” He casually untied the thong that held his pistol in the holster.

Buster nodded. “Pete, go find Caleb,” he said.

Pete added up the circumstances quickly and left the sawmill to find his brother.

“To Sand Creek!”

“The battle of Sand Creek! I'll gut the bastard calls it a massacre!” Dutch drained his cup. “Now, here goes Palousey for that filly with the yaller mane.”

“One more,” Matthew said. “To good old Governor Evans!”

“To hell with governors. If I drink another, my rooster won't peck.” He slammed his tin cup on the lumber and took a step toward the door.

“To spotted horses!” Matthew said.

Dutch waved him off.

Matthew drew his Colt.

The old trader stopped when he heard the lock catch. He turned slowly to find Matthew's irons leveled on him.

“Matthew!” Buster shouted across the sawmill.

The few railroad workers and whores remaining in the mill ran for the doors, or dove behind stacks of boards when they saw the gun pointing at Dutch.

“Have you shot every soul that won't drink with you?” Dutch said calmly.

“You don't have to drink,” Matthew said. “Just stand still until I tell you to go.”

“Palousey goes when he pleases. Goes horselike, spotted rumped, and bulletproof.”

“Buster, go get Caleb,” Matthew ordered. “He's in the third cabin down the row. Get him in the buggy and get him the hell out of here.”

Just as Buster started to move, Pete and Caleb came in, freezing as they saw Matthew aiming at the mountain man.

“Caleb, you and Pete git!” Matthew said.

“Who's this Caleb?” Dutch asked.

“My little brother.”

Dutch began to laugh. “Would you shoot me for beddin' your brother's whore?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Matthew said. “I just didn't want you to find him there. You said you'd take a quirt to whoever you found with her.”

Dutch waved his hand. “Talk,” he said. “I'd quirt no boy for whorin'.”

Matthew gnawed his lips and dropped his sights to the floor in front of Dutch. “I reckon I made a mistake then. As long as you won't hurt my brother.”

“No, I'll not touch a hair of him.”

Matthew eased the hammer forward and watched Dutch for a second. He put the pistol in the holster. “No hard feelin's.”

Dutch laughed. “No, I'll quirt no boy for whorin'. But old Palousey, he'll scalp any son of a bitch points a gun at him.”

The old man yanked a revolver out from under his deerskin shirt as Matthew reached for his holster again. Pete pushed Caleb behind a stack of lumber.

The first shot hit Matthew between the eyes and pitched him dead onto his back in the sawdust.

Javier drew his pistol and put a hole in the whiskey keg five feet from Dutch. The mountain man merely turned his head toward the vaquero. Javier's second bullet caromed off the steel saw blade. His third and fourth shots ripped splinters from the lumber. The fifth bullet clipped the tip from the eagle feather on the top hat.

Dutch faced the vaquero, not even bothering to raise his weapon. “Shoot your last!” he said. “Bullets go round Palousey!”

Javier took deliberate aim down his barrel and squeezed the trigger. The slug hit Dutch in the chest and slammed him against the lumber. His moccasins slipped, and he sat hard on the floor, sawdust settling around him. He dropped his pistol and cupped his hands to catch the blood that ran from his chest. “Goddamn Indian magic,” he said. His voice gurgled in his own blood. He looked up at the spectators through the blue gun smoke in the sawmill. “There's a new face in hell tonight, boys.” His head fell forward, and the top hat dropped into his lap.

*   *   *

A barber in Colorado City served also as the settlement's undertaker, and to this man's shop the Holcomb Ranch cowboys carried the body of Matthew. A gang of drunks followed with the corpse of Cheyenne Dutch. Pete and Caleb sat with their dead brother, staring blankly at him, while Buster and Javier went to the ranch to wake Ab.

The barber decided to wait for Ab to tell him what to do with Matthew, but he and his wife went right to work on Dutch. They chose to dress the corpse in a suit and keep the buckskins as souvenirs. As they stripped the body, they attempted to match the scars they found with legends of Dutch's exploits.

“This must be where that crazy Indian woman chopped him with the ax up at Holcomb's Ranch,” the barber said.

“Oh, my Lord,” the wife said, “I thought that was just a story.”

“Old chief Long Fingers got him here in the side with a knife at Sand Creek.”

“That's the one that almost killed him, wasn't it?”

“I heard he laid up at Bent's Fort for three months after the massacre.”

They pulled off the pants and the wife said, “Oh, goodness, what got him there?”

“Confederate lancers down at Val Verde, New Mexico. They say it went clean through his leg.”

“Let's turn him over and see.”

When they rolled Dutch over on the table, the wife gasped and the barber just stood and stared for a minute. “Well, I'll be damned,” he finally said. “Honey, go get those two Holcomb boys. They might want to see this.”

When Pete and Caleb came into the room, they found Dutch's naked body lying facedown on the table. Each buttock had five solid spots tattooed to resemble the rump of a Nez Perce horse.

“I thought you'd like to see,” the barber said. “He was a crazy old bastard. I guess some Indian tattooed 'em for him.”

Pete walked around the body. “Papa said he bragged about his spotted rump a lot when they were down at Glorietta Pass.”

“I never heard Papa tell that,” Caleb said, staring at the dark spots on the pale rump of the corpse and feeling ill.

“You were fiddlin' around over at Buster's when he told us.”

The bizarre scene swam before Caleb's eyes. It had happened again. Matthew had taken his place under the ridge log. People were always protecting him, rescuing him, risking their lives, giving their lives. He was more trouble than he was worth. Pete would die next, or Buster. He had never even learned to be friends with Matthew. Now it was too late.

It was his fault. He was whoring, for God's sake. Pete had told him it wasn't right. His father was going to hate him. He hated himself. He wanted to leave before he got someone else killed. The dormant guilt surfaced again, marking him indelibly. He tried to cover his shame, but it showed through, like the tattooed spots on Dutch's pale rump.

THIRTY-ONE

Caleb considered breaking virgin prairie through buffalo grass the worst form of livelihood man had ever invented. He thought it bad enough that he had to farm his father's land and help on Buster's, but Buster often hired out to work other homesteads as well, and Caleb frequently joined him. Many of the destitute settlers downstream didn't have the money to buy teams and plows, so they called on Buster, who had the best collection of draft animals and equipment in the valley. He charged two dollars an acre for plowing or traded for whatever the homesteaders could afford, and he split the earnings with Caleb when the boy came along to help.

Caleb managed to get out of some plowing by going to school. He was taking his last year of lessons at the schoolhouse in Colorado City. He didn't like school, but he hated it less than farming.

Today the schoolmarm had let classes out early, and the students had gone screaming with joy into the afternoon, except for Caleb. It only meant that he had to spend an hour longer than he had planned letting the plow handles jerk him across a homesteader's field. He didn't consider a dollar an acre fair wage for the worst work on earth.

At length the sun bedded down in the Rockies, and Buster told Caleb to load the implements in the wagon. While they were heading back to the ranch, Sam Dugan joined them on horseback. He trotted alongside, honing his roping skills on everything that stuck up out of the ground as he pestered Buster for stories.

He made the black man recount his escape from slavery, his rescue of Caleb in the Indian Territory, and his adventure with the wolf-getter gun in Monument Park.

“I sure wish it was you that shot ol' Cheyenne Dutch last fall and not Javier,” Sam said. “That would have made a whole chapter by itself.”

“Why don't you write a story about a Mexican hero and put Javier in it?” Buster asked.

Sam scoffed. “Because there ain't enough Mexicans can read. There ain't no market for it. Besides, it took him six shots to finally git him. What kind of a hero do you call that?” He looped the coil of rope over his saddle horn and got out the makings of a smoke, shaking the last slivers of tobacco from a drawstring pouch.

“Can I have that empty pouch?” Buster asked.

“Hell, I guess. What do you want with it?”

“I use 'em to put flower seeds in.”

Sam stared at Buster so long that the cigarette paper dried and he had to lick it again. “That ain't gonna sound very good for a hero to be a posy sniffer.”

“You don't have to write down everything he ever did,” Caleb snapped. Sam Dugan irritated him something fierce. The man was forever complaining about having to live the life of a cowboy, when Caleb could imagine no finer existence.

When they reached Buster's farm about dusk, Pete loped over on a bay filly, all excited about something. “You'll never guess what happened,” he said.

“I'm too tired to guess,” Caleb replied. He wasn't really all that tired, but he had made a practicing of complaining to Pete in hopes that his brother would convince Ab to let him take up cowboying.

“Javier's uncle died down in New Mexico.”

Caleb slid the wagon tongue out of the ring in the breast yoke and began stripping the big draft horses of rigging. “I don't see why that should make you so happy,” he said.