The Last Crossing (22 page)

I hazard a smile. “A point of similarity, Mrs. Stoveall. We were both encumbered by virtuous siblings.”

“Madge was no encumbrance. Not to me. They could have stopped my own breath and I’d have missed it less.”

We sit in silence, each thinking our own thoughts, as the sluggard river creeps by us. A great noise intrudes. Back in camp the men are shouting, “Buff! Buff!” Huzzahs for Addington. Apparently, our mighty Nimrod has slain his first bison.

Success in the field has helped Addington to recover his sang-froid. Over buffalo steaks and claret, he recounts the exploit for us. “There were ten or twelve grazing. I charged at them, loosed my horse pell. The beasts broke headlong with me hot on their tails. I picked out the
biggest of the brutes, hump like a boulder, head like a bank safe, pulled abreast, leaned down, put one shot behind his shoulder, and turned him head over heels!” he exults, snapping his fingers in summation.

Mr. Ayto, my brother, and I, after disposing of three bottles of the ruby, are well into the port. No celebratory wine was offered to the others which, from their faces, looks to have been a mistake. But Addington’s stance is that the cellar is restricted to the gentlemen, so let him bear the brunt of their displeasure.

Mr. Ayto, complacently tipsy, holds the floor. He and Addington have been flattering each other for the past half-hour. The question now under discussion is who exerts the greatest influence on the affairs of the world, the thinker or the man of action.

“I disagree most strenuously, Captain,” declares insufferable Ayto. “The pen is
not
mightier than the sword. The pen
relies
on the sword. Look at Rome, sir. When the legions failed, civilization failed. No more scribblers then, sir. No more poems and plays then. No, indeed. And it is for this reason, Captain, that I have always admired, celebrated – in my humble fashion
sung –
the praises of men of action such as yourself.” Mr. Ayto strikes his hightop boots with the flat of his hand for emphasis. “I am a man, sir. And I admire men. A good many of these romancers and poets are women in trousers. On the other hand, a journalist – why he’s a practical fellow – he has a knowledge of the world. He bends his elbow with men of business, professional men, soldiers like yourself. Active fellows. He gets his hands dirty with the work of the world, throws himself into the broil, the questions of the day.” Mr. Ayto leans forward to share a confidence. “Some years ago I wrote a small but influential pamphlet. The title was ‘AWolf in Sheep’s Clothing.’ ” He allows us a moment to express our awe, as if he had said, “I once wrote a small poem, the title of which was
Paradise Lost.”

“The allusion is lost on me, Mr. Ayto. Please do elucidate,” I say, wishing to prick the gasbag.

“Well,” Mr. Ayto hooks thumbs in his garish waistcoat, “my script was a call to resist President Grant’s Indian policy. You see, Charles,
the president appointed an Indian, an Iroquois no less, as commissioner of Indian Affairs, a fellow just one remove from barbarism by name of Ely Parker, formerly known as Donehogawa. We Westerners wouldn’t have it, sir. An Indian Bureau filled with pacifist Quakers and directed by a redman. We raised a proper hue and cry. Wolf in sheep’s clothing? You catch the meaning of my title?”

Addington confesses comprehension. “Most certainly.”

“We drove old Donehogawa out. Sent him packing. Gone like that,” Mr. Ayto declares, waving goodbye. “I maintained then, have done so until this very day, that the army must deal with the Indians, not civilians. No nonsense from our red friends then. Let the logic of lead persuade them to mend their ways.” Mr. Ayto lifts his glass high above his head where it flashes in the firelight. “Here’s to the sword! Charles, here’s to men such as your brother! The cream of Anglo-Saxon civilization!”

“Come now,” Addington murmurs modestly, flushed with pleasure.

I raise my glass, propose my own toast. “To the power of the press. To influence bought for a penny a line. To the milk of Anglo-Saxon civilization which floats the cream.”

For a moment, Mr. Ayto and Addington are left drunkenly blinking. Then Addington recovers and, like a good elder brother, steps in to correct me. “You are inebriated, sir. Mind your manners.”

He is correct, but my intoxication does not invalidate my point. “Let me remind you, Addington, that your good self and Mr. Ayto have matched me glass for glass.”

“Some can hold their wine.”

“Ah, well,” I grin foolishly at them. “Put my bad behaviour down to envy. A painter feels his superfluousness when confronted with two monumental pillars of civilization such as yourselves.”

Both the milk and cream have turned very sour. “I thought my story might instruct you upon the necessity of using a firm hand with the redman,” Mr. Ayto says. “We had an example of their failings today. Potts’s disregard for duty. The phrenology of his skull displays a very limited capacity for responsibility. The cranium is tiny.”

“Hold your tongue, he can hear you,” I say sharply.

Both Addington and Mr. Ayto turn to Jerry Potts, who is sitting at the edge of the illumination cast by the fire.

“I daresay he can hear. But can he understand?” To prove his point, Mr. Ayto blares at him, “Potts, do you know what the word ‘phrenology’ means?”

Mr. Potts shrugs noncommittally.

“The Latin
cranium
, from the Greek
kranion?”

“For God’s sake,” I say to Mr. Ayto. “Leave him in peace. He’s done nothing to you.”

Mr. Potts gets to his feet. “I take a piss,” he proclaims.

“Yes, Jerry,” says Mr. Ayto. “Do urinate.”

Mr. Potts slinks off into the shadows.

Potts halts on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Whitemud, peers down into the valley where the campfire is a small orange flower, a prairie lily blowing in the night. A coyote yaps feverishly. Potts hunkers, pulls a bottle out from under his jacket, works away at the cork. Four days and not once have the English offered him a drink. Tonight, he has helped himself to a bottle from the supply wagon.

The cork releases with a surprising pop, liquor foams and he clamps his lips to the neck to capture it. The drink froths up his nose, making him gulp, sneeze. It tastes like yeasty bread, or maybe the stomach salts old Dr. Bengough gave him once for the bellyache.

Finally the bottle is quiet. No more fizz. The Captain and Ayto are like this bubbly liquor. It gives a man a heavy feeling to have to listen to the chatter of silly children all day long. One day, maybe he will have to push a cork into Ayto, stuff it right down his neck to stop his blather.

The Captain froths over also, but he is a different bottle. A cork would not go down his neck so easy. Potts has been watching him. The man can ride and he can shoot. He is strong, quick, nimble.

The Captain’s weak spot is that he has no eye for the lie of the land. He trusts his compass too much. But it is not wise to put such stake in whatever can be lost or broken.

It made the Captain very angry that he had found the grave of the English preacher so easily. What the Captain does not know is that two years ago, he and his Kanai cousin Red Horse had hunted here on the Whitemud, killed themselves a big elk on the turtle-shaped bar across from where the wagons sit now. The elk was fat; all afternoon they had grilled steaks and roasted the bull’s rack in a slow fire, feasting until dusk on its rich marrow.

When night fell they had slipped into that ravine to hide themselves from the eyes of enemies. There they found an old war lodge built years ago by a party of raiders. Deadfall and river driftwood crossed like teepee poles, stacked tight, timber to timber, and covered with cottonwood bark so no glint of fire from within could shine through a chink.

The prospector in Benton said he had piled timber on the preacher’s grave to protect the body. Potts had guessed where he had got it. Logs from the war lodge.

Keeping these fools safe weighs on him heavily. They would never find their way home unless he took their hands and led them. Except maybe the woman. He has been watching that one. For three days she has walked behind the wagons without complaint like a Kanai woman behind the travois. When the day’s work is done, she sits quietly by herself. She sleeps little, rises early in darkness to boil their coffee, to fry their meat, to bake bread. When it comes time to move on, she is always ready to start, waiting with her gunny sack hung over her shoulder.

There is something else he has seen. The woman is stealing food, storing it in that bag. Food that will not spoil. Biscuits, dried meat. He does not know what she is up to.

He takes another drink. This liquor is not as cheering as whisky; it does not wipe away Ayto’s insult. He may not understand the meaning of Ayto’s words, but there was no mistaking the ridicule in his voice.

Tomorrow the sun will come up, but the land will still be dark to the English, a mystery, even in the light of day. Just as their words are dark, a mystery to him.

LUCY
After two days scouring for sign of Simon Gaunt, the men have given up the search. They tramped the banks of the river for miles, rifled through the thickets, rode the prairie up top every which way. They did all that could be done, Mr. Charles in particular. He was in a passion. Somebody had to drag him back to camp every night, else he would have kept roaming about in the dark. I kept his supper warm for him as best I could.

Despite Mr. Addington’s almighty airs, Mr. Charles is the true Nature’s gentleman. He’s the only one of them who shaves every day – even Mr. Addington has slackened off there – and he is a stickler for neatness and cleanliness, the way he brushes his coat every morning, wipes his boots clean. Everything from him is please and thank you, Mrs. Stoveall. Grunewald and Barker call me woman, like I didn’t have a name. One of these days I might have an accident, spill a little hot grease on them. Ayto thinks I’m at his beck and call. Mr. Addington mostly ignores me.

Mr. Charles is a scholar. By the fire, he scribbles away in a book on a writing desk you can hold in your lap. While he does that, his brother and Mr. Ayto get drunk. Mr. Addington is full of scampish tricks, turning his somersaults, doing cartwheels, walking about on his hands. I can see Mr. Charles doesn’t approve of his brother cutting up such capers like a dog in a medicine show.

When Mr. Charles saw the state of Abner’s boots, split and gaping, he pressed on me a pair of his own shoes and two pair of soft, thick stockings to wear to help make them fit. Tomorrow, when we strike out again, I’ll step a good deal lighter for his gift.

CUSTIS
Splashing across the Milk River last night I was mighty puffed up with myself for crossing into British territory after one day’s long, tough ride. Not that the Medicine Line means anything. No difference to remark between here and there, dirt isn’t patriotic, doesn’t wave the flag. The war taught me that much.

But this morning when I crawled out of my kit I soon learned the penalty for pushing beyond my limits. I’m so damned chafed and stiff I can scarcely walk. Worse, the Morgan’s come up lame. So here I am, gulping a pot of hot coffee, legs held to the fire, roasting the cramp out of them, the sun peeping at me with a drunkard’s bloodshot eye. Prospects aren’t near so cheerful as yesterday’s when Lucy Stoveall beckoned on a fine day. Bright and breezy, grass mottled with cloud shadows, sun and shade snapping on and off as I went along.