Shortgrass Song (59 page)

“There's a lot of points broke off of these horns,” Buster said, kneeling to inspect the antlers.

“What a buck!” Piggin' String retrieved his loop from the antlers. “I can't reach my hand all the way around the base of these horns. They've grown even bigger than last year's.”

“Look here,” Sam said, scraping ice from the carcass. “This looks like a bullet hole, and it's a lung shot, all right.”

“Pete sure had him figured.” String was in awe of the kill.

“Turn him over,” Ab said. “Let's see if the bullet went through, so we can figure what angle he shot from.”

They used the stiff legs as levers to turn the buck and began brushing away the snow from his other side. They found a larger hole, caked with frozen blood, where the bullet had torn through the deer.

“If you look at the two bullet holes,” Horace said, “it looks like Pete was on the same level as the buck when he shot. That would put him down here in the canyon somewhere.” He swept his hand in an arch to indicate the canyon floor.

“That buck wasn't down here when he got shot,” Buster said. “He was up there.” He pointed to the brink of the north rim, high above.

“Oh, how do you know, Buster?” String said.

“All these broke-off points. He must have busted his horns fallin' down the cliff.”

“He could have busted 'em off fightin',” Sam argued.

“I ain't never seen a buck this big with that many points broke. And they all look like fresh breaks. No dirt or anything in 'em. Anyway, look at how twisted up he is. He fell from up there. It don't make sense that he would jump up into that notch in the rocks if Pete shot him down here somewhere.”

“Maybe Pete put him there,” String said.

Buster shook his head. “Pete would have gutted and hung him.”

“I think you're right,” Ab said, looking up the cliff. “If he fell from up there, Pete must have been up there when he shot. Maybe he's up there yet.”

Buster left the dead buck, climbed up the slope, and started scaling the cliff.

“Buster, where in Hades do you think you're going?” Ab said.

“I'm gonna climb this bluff and see if I can't tell where he fell from.”

“There's ice all over the place up there,” Dan said. “You'll bust your black ass!”

“Shut up,” Ab said, glowering at Dan. He turned to Buster. “Be careful,” he said. “Sam, you and Horace go find a trail where you can get the mules up and meet Buster at the top. The rest of you boys go on searching the bottom of the canyon.”

Ab stayed below and watched Buster inch up the cliff.

“Here's a bush he fell on!” Buster shouted. He continued to climb and shout his findings back down to Ab. An occasional broken branch or a tuft of buck hair on a sharp rock told him he was on the right path.

Sam and Horace found a trail to the top and lowered a rope when Buster was thirty feet from the brink.

“Look!” Buster shouted. “Here's one of them broken points!” He held the antler fragment up between his fingers, then put it in his coat pocket. He used the rope to climb the rest of the way up.

“He must have fell from right here,” Horace said.

Buster made one of the mules stand near the edge of the cliff and tied its reins to a stob. “This mule is standin' about where Ol' Cedar Root was when Pete shot him. Let's go along the rim and look for anyplace where Pete could have got a clean shot at him.”

Horace agreed. “Maybe we'll find some sign of him—an empty rifle shell or something.”

“Not likely in this snow,” Sam said, “but it's worth tryin.'”

They went different ways and searched every place along the north rim that was in clear view and within rifle range of the mule posing as Ol' Cedar Root. Ab watched them from below. The afternoon was getting old. Daylight grew scarce. Finally Horace, Sam, and Buster met on the north rim, nothing among them to report.

“There's one other place he could have shot from,” Buster said.

“Where?”

He pointed across the canyon. “The south rim, straight across.”

“Oh, hell, Buster,” Sam said, growing frustrated.

“That would have been a long shot,” Horace said.

“Pete's a good shot.”

Horace untied the reins of the mule. “Well, let's ride over there and look. Sam, stand here where the old buck was to mark the spot for us.” He mounted one mule as Buster took the reins of the other.

They took half an hour getting around the head of the canyon to the south rim. Looking across, they saw Sam waving his hat. They waved back. The sun had sunk behind the mountain peaks to the west. When they reached a point directly across from Sam, Buster pulled in on the reins and got down from his mule.

“Look at this,” he said. He approached what was left of a small pine standing on the very brink of the canyon rim. It was split and charred, one limb ripped away by an unfathomable force. Looking around the tree, he found chunks of it as big as his arm lying as far as thirty paces away. “Lightning struck it,” he said. “Yesterday, I'd say. Ashes are fresh. Wood's green.” He shook his head. “Look's like somebody blew it up with dynamite.”

He looked around to see Horace getting down from his mule, his eyes trained on the ledge of the canyon rim. As Buster watched, Horace sank to his hands and knees to reach for something on the ice-slick precipice. Then he saw what Horace wanted—a rifle barrel jutting out over the escarpment, a thin layer of snow unable to disguise its machine-straight bore.

Horace pulled it to safe ground and brushed the snow off. “This Pete's?”

Buster nodded.

“The rear sight is up,” Horace said. He blew the snow away. “It's set for five hundred yards.” He worked the lever once, breaking ice away. An empty brass shell flew out. He picked it up and showed it to Buster. “How many shells does this rifle hold? Twelve?”

“Yeah,” Buster said. “Plus one in the chamber. But Pete never carries one in the chamber when he's ridin'. Says it ain't safe.”

Horace put his hat on the ground and worked the lever until all the cartridges were in his hat. “There's eleven live rounds here. He just shot once, and he didn't even kick the empty shell out.” He looked across the canyon at Sam. “Lordy, what a shot that was.” He handed the rifle to Buster. “You better show Ab.”

Buster balked for a few seconds, then stepped carefully to the edge with the gun. He saw Ab standing below, looking up. He raised the rifle over his head. “We found Pete's Winchester,” he shouted. His echo repeated the news.

Ab warmed his hands with his breath but otherwise stood motionless.

Buster waited several seconds. “Tell the boys to look under the cliff,” he shouted, pointing below him. “Down here.”

Ab pulled himself up on old Pard and went to fetch the men, who had worked their way some distance up the canyon. When he mounted, the horse humped his back and coughed, a cloud of vapor blasting from his nostrils.

“What's wrong with that gelding?” Horace asked.

Buster shook his head. “Colonel Ab shouldn't never have rode that old horse this far.”

When Horace and Buster got back into the canyon, they found Ab standing at the bottom of the cliff, watching his men dig through drifts of snow in the recesses above him.

“Have they found anything?” Horace asked.

“No,” Ab said.

“I'll go help 'em look.”

“What was his rifle doing up there, Buster?” Ab asked, as if annoyed at his son for leaving a good weapon in the weather.

Buster swung down from the mule. “He must have dropped it.”

Ab kicked narrow trenches in the snow with his peg leg. “What do you think it means?”

“I don't know,” Buster said.

“What time do you think he got here yesterday?”

“I reckon about noon.”

“That's about the time that blue norther came through.”

“Yes, sir. There's a tree up there that was hit by lightning. Probably yesterday.”

They stood silently together for several minutes until Buster sensed an end to the search. Dan Brooks had been clawing through drifts without a moment's rest, but now he stopped and stood looking down into the snow. “Colonel!” he shouted.

The men came to stand with Dan. Piggin' String McCoy knelt in the snow. Ab and Buster arrived as Dan pulled Pete's body from the snowdrift. Like Ol' Cedar Root, his limbs were locked in bizarre contortions. Frozen blood molded his face.

Sam Dugan trotted up, out of breath, having climbed down from the north rim. When he saw Pete, he took his hat off. He stared for a minute with everyone else, until he got his wind back. He looked up at the south rim, then across to the north. “My Lord,” he said. “That was sure some shot.”

“I reckon he saw that buck about the time the norther hit,” Horace said.

“Ol' Cedar Root was about to hit high ground and scat, so Pete had to shoot from the saddle,” String added.

“That stallion would have been spooky anyhow,” Dan said, “on account of the smell of snow in the air.”

“There was lightning, too. Me and Buster found a tree up there that was struck.”

Dan made as if aiming a rifle. “He had both hands on that Winchester. If his horse pitched … He couldn't hold on.”

Sam was still looking up. “That was one hell of a shot,” he whispered.

Ab hadn't heard them. He stood, staring at the frozen body of his son, wondering why he should outlive so many of his children. He should have joined Ella long ago. He should have spared himself this misery.

“I got a sougan we can wrap him in,” Buster said. He wanted to cover Pete. He didn't want to remember him that way.

Ab sat on the old spotted gelding as the boys lashed the frozen body to the back of Buster's spare mule. The cargo under the tarpaulin hardly looked human. Ab twirled a strand of Pard's mane around his finger, his eyes staring blankly down at the snow. The gelding was trembling worse now, but Ab hardly noticed.

When they were ready to leave, Sam said, “Let's get the hell out of this damned canyon.”

They hadn't gotten far when twilight came. As they rode speechlessly up a mountain trail, old Pard suddenly balked. Ab spurred him, but he refused to move. “Come on, you lazy old cob!” He gouged the gelding fiercely with his spurs. Pard grunted and shuffled sideways a few steps but wouldn't move another inch uphill. His head dropped. Ab pulled it back up with the reins. “String, give me your quirt.” With the rawhide in his hand, he belabored Pard's spotted rump mercilessly and jerked forward repeatedly in the saddle, as if momentum would start the horse up the mountain. Pard coughed, craned his neck strangely, and dropped to his knees.

Ab caught the horn as he swung clumsily down from the saddle. “What in Hades is wrong with you?” he shouted at the horse.

“He's jaded, Colonel,” Buster said. “He can't go no fu'ther.”

“He'll go a sight farther! He'll carry me home to bury my son!” Ab put his shoulder under Pard's neck and tried to make him stand up. Pard heaved and got one forefoot under him, but the hoof slipped and he went down again, this time all the way over onto his side. Ab yanked his head up with the bridle reins, but the Nez Perce horse was spent.

Buster got down from his mule and took the reins away from Ab. He knew the old man was addled with grief, but he had no cause to treat a dying horse that way. “Let him go. He can't climb no more mountains. He's older than your wooden leg.”

The words hit Ab like an avalanche of years. Pard came before Ella went, before General Palmer brought the railroad, before Cheyenne Dutch killed Matthew. He had failed to take account of the toll of decades. To Ab, Pard would always be fleet of foot and bulletproof—the way he was at Apache Canyon. Only now did he realize what the suns, the moons, and the Indian winters had taken out of the old warhorse.

For the first time, he thought of himself as a one-legged old man. His life seemed suddenly near its end. How much longer could a man endure this agony? How many more mountains could he climb? How many sons did he have to bury?

Buster loosened the saddle to let Pard breathe easier.

Ab took the bridle off. He knelt over the head of the dying horse. “He's hurting. We can't leave him here to freeze.” He stood, paused. He sighed. “Give me your rifle, Sam.”

Sam reluctantly drew his Winchester from the scabbard and handed it to his boss. Ab opened the breech to make sure he had a live round in the chamber. He stood between his horse and his men and cocked the hammer. He put the weapon to his shoulder and aimed down at Pard's head. He stood motionless for a long moment as the men looked away and gritted their teeth.

Then Ab began to shudder with the gun at his shoulder. A single sob escaped his throat almost like a cough. “Damn those white eyes!” he blubbered. “You'll have to do it for me, Buster,” he said, handing over the gun. He wanted to turn it on himself.

Ab stumbled down the trail, brushed the snow from a boulder, and sat down. The rifle cracked. He didn't move. Twilight had passed and the mountainside grew dark.

Buster came to Ab's side. “We better get goin'.” he said. “You can ride behind me on the mule.”

Ab sniffed and rubbed his sleeve under his nose.

“Colonel?”

He looked up with a world of terrors in his eyes. “Who's going to tell him, Buster?”

“Tell who?”

“Who's going to tell Caleb?”

“About Pete? You're gonna tell him. You're his family.”

Ab shook his head. “I can't tell him. I can't talk to that boy anymore.”

“He's a grown man now,” Buster said. “And you
can
tell him.”

Ab looked up, his eyes begging for pity. “You could tell him for me.”

Buster wanted to pick the old fool up by the collar and shake him. “Colonel,” he said, growling under his breath, “I'll be
damned
if I have to tell your own son his brother has died. I'll put your poor old horse out of misery for you, but I won't ease your conscience about the way you've treated your son.”