The Last Crossing (36 page)

After a two-hour ride, we reach what Custis calls the Bull’s Forehead, a bluff overlooking the spot where the waters of the two rivers mingle. We ease our horses into the shallows so’s they can drink. The matted grass on the slope of the Bull’s Forehead looks like a tangle of buffalo wool, shines tawny when the sun hits it at the right angle. Custis gives it one quick look, then proceeds to run his eyes over the bare, humped hills on the east riverbank. Once he’s satisfied there’s no whisky post nigh, he pulls off his hat, wipes his brow, and slumps over the saddle horn, breathing heavy. All the strength just seems to have run clean out of him. “We ought to have brought along a bottle,” he remarks.

“No,” I says, “we oughtn’t to have toted no whisky. Not on this business.”

Custis is sick and trembly. Whatever the cause, a shortage of laudanum, or some ailment working in him, some marrow ache or blood souring, only pure stubbornness is keeping him going. I just hope to God it ain’t the smallpox.

Straightening up slowly, he settles his hat back to his head. “We best keep down in the brush near the river, Aloysius. It might hide us if the Kelsos are watching above. You take the lead. Dan’s a quiet horse, he’ll follow yours. I want to keep my eyes trained on the hills, watch to make sure we don’t miss that post.”

We go on, weaving through the cottonwood and poplar, skirting thickets of willows. Prairie chicken and grouse flush from the grass, whir away. A doe starts from a shady bed under a clump of choke-cherry bush, flashes us her tail, and bounds into a stand of saplings. For such a delicate thing, she rattles a lot of noise out of the brush. There’s no lack of game about, and where there’s game there’s likely to be Indians. God contrived Aloysius Dooley for a trade where his hands stay clean, one conducted under a ceiling for the pleasure and contentment of mankind. That’s why he chose me for a publican and not a Indian fighter.

Some rotten windfall blocks our way and we got to shift down to the riverbank to bypass it. I spot hoof prints in the mud. They ain’t
cracked and dried, they’re recent. I call Straw’s attention to the tracks and he gives them the once-over. “Indian pony?” I ask.

Wearily, Straw drags himself back into the saddle. “The horse was shod. It’s the Morgan.” I’m confounded. Straw’s guess about Lucy Stoveall was right on the money against all likelihood. “She’s no fool,” he says. “She was listening careful to what Chisholm had to say. I calculate she had a three- or four-hour headstart on us.” He gives me a nod. “Let’s shake some hurry out of these horses, Aloysius.” He gives Dan a kick and we lope off, the two of us barrelling through the trees, Custis swinging his bulk from side to side in the saddle, hanging his nose to the ground like a bird dog, scanning for the Morgan’s marks. After what seems like three or four mile, the valley bottom widens into a stretch of high grass, berry bushes, and big groves of cottonwood growing near the Saskatchewan. The river’s gone broader here, the current lazier; the water’s low and muddy brown, spotted with sandbars and timber snags. One of the snags looks like a black water beetle ready to scoot off on crazy legs. To our right, there’s nothing to see but sky and the dusty river hills piled on one another’s shoulders.

Custis reins in, shades his eyes with his hand, inspects the hills. “It smells close,” he says, turning to peer at the Saskatchewan where a string of sandbars lays a wobbly line across the river. A man could hop from one to the other, cross and never get his feet wet. Custis points, “That might be the Indian ford. Chisholm did say the Kelsos set up shop near a crossing.” Suddenly all his attention fixes on a clump of poplar a couple hundred yards directly ahead of us. “Aloysius,” he says quietly, “dismount. But act like you mean to check your cinch. Turn your horse so he’s between you and those trees.” Already Custis is stepping down from Dan, wheeling him around. I follow suit. Custis draws the big Sharps buffalo gun from its scabbard, eyes the poplars over the saddle seat. I ain’t got no weapon but my cutdown shotgun from behind the bar of the Stubhorn. At this range I might just as well chuck rocks.

When I give my lips a lick, my tongue sticks to them. “What’s spooked you, Custis?” But before he can answer, I see what it is, sudden, quick flashes of light breaking at the edge of the thicket.

“Could be sunlight shining off rifle barrels,” he mutters.

I cast about me, trying to spy some place for us to take cover. There ain’t none. Straw carries two rifles on his saddle, the buffalo gun and a Henry repeater. I’m about to ask for the loan of the repeater when he pulls a telescope from his saddlebags. The one I’ve often seen the English Captain peering through. I know at once that Custis had to have pinched that glass from Addington Gaunt’s own saddlebags before they set out this morning. Custis was hatching this plan the very minute he learned Lucy Stoveall was gone. Going after her weren’t no sudden notion like he said. He lied to me. It ain’t a thing to do to a friend.

Holding the glass on the hot, blinking lights, a smile breaks on his face. “Take a gander, Aloysius.” I put my eye to the telescope he hands me. Nothing but empty whisky bottles strung up in trees, dancing in the breeze.

“The Kelsos did some sign-painting Indians could read. Spelled out their wares,” Custis says. “Just beyond that grove, up in the hills is where we’ll find their dugout.” Already he’s got his boot in the stirrup. “Let’s get into those poplars smartly. With any luck the Kelsos won’t spot us.”

We gallop to the clump of trees, tether the horses out of sight. All about me bottles are twinkling and tinkling. Custis’s turned bone-white, streaming sweat, panting.

“Custis?”

“I’ve got a touch of stomach complaint,” he says. Then he stoops and pukes, mostly air. When he’s done, he leans against a sapling for a time, swabbing his face with his sleeve. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “Let’s go.” Off he leads me through the bottle-prettied saplings to a spot on the east side of the poplars where we gain a good view of the hills. We crouch there, sunlight spattering our faces while the poplar leaves quake in a breeze so small it don’t even dry the sweat on Custis’s face.

I can see the Kelso post, the black mouth of the dugout gaping wide in a sugarloaf hill. Three horses picketed near the entrance, one of them the Morgan.

Custis squats on his hams, shoulders hunched, eyes hooded, mouth a slit, staring at the post. Without a word, he rises and starts back to where we tied the horses, slamming his big body through the undergrowth in a desperate rush. I tear after him, brush slapping and clawing me. When I catch him, he’s already busy with his pocketknife, stripping twine from bottles he’s cut down from the trees, splicing the cords together with reef knots. He holds up about four foot of splicing, snaps it, testing the knots. “Go get your sawed-off,” he says.

I go to my horse and collect the twelve gauge, hand it over to him. Custis works neat and quick. Passing the cord through the trigger guard, he ties it off in a sling, shrugs out of his duster, turns the right-hand pocket inside out, slashes the bottom with the clasp knife, slides his hand to and fro through the hole, wriggling his fingers. He slings the sawed-off over his shoulder. The gun hangs straight down flush to his side, the grip of the stock riding level with his hand, the tip of the barrel hanging midway to his calf. He unbuckles his holster, tosses the revolver at my feet. Puts the duster back on. The cut-down shotgun disappears, hid by the length of the coat.

He lifts his eyes to me. “I aim to pay the Kelsos a visit.” Flicking a finger to the holster and pistol lying at my feet, he says, “I’m leaving the Remington and the Sharps with you. I’ve got no idea what Lucy Stoveall’s doing up there, but I’m not about to rule out that she’s fallen into trouble. Especially if Titus gets it in his head to make some. Give me an hour – if I don’t show after that – scoot as fast as ever you can back to the wagons. Get Potts. I reckon by now he’ll have figured out Lucy Stoveall’s sent them off on a wild goose chase. With any luck, he’ll have persuaded that flighty Captain to return to camp. Rely on Potts and only Potts.”

I clear my throat. “I ain’t about to desert you, Custis.”

“If I don’t bring Lucy Stoveall out of there, it’ll be because I’ve been stopped. No desertion involved then. If some misfortune has befallen her, and befalls me in turn, you’re the only one who’ll know it, and know the Kelsos’ whereabouts.”

There’s a long, deadly-feeling moment of silence as he works on me with his eyes, trying to will me to do as he says. Then some
woodpecker starts clattering, knocking his brains out for a grub. Custis’s doing up his duster careful, patting each button once he gets it into its hole, like it was a baby’s head. When we shake hands, I feel how his fingers tremble so. We don’t say a word. Custis pulls himself aboard Dan, and turns the gelding for the Kelsos’ post. I got nothing to do but watch Custis pick his way up the slope, shoulders sagged, head bobbling loose on his neck.

CUSTIS
They must’ve noticed me by now. Two visitors in the space of half a day – it’s got to make them wonder. I only hope Titus doesn’t decide to shoot me off this saddle the way he shot Abner Stoveall off his wagon seat before I make it up there.

Dan is intolerant of hurry on hills. He doesn’t like climbing them, or going down them. His nature is slow and deliberate and there’s a lesson to learn from it. He looks before he places his feet. Yards from their door, I hail the Kelso boys just as any innocent wayfarer might, give honest warning. “Hello there! Titus Kelso! You open for business!” My shout pricks Dan’s ears, halts him. We both wait. “Anybody to home!”

“What you want, Straw?” It’s Titus, but he doesn’t show himself, keeps to the gloom of his cave.

“I see Lucy Stoveall’s horse standing by your door. I want a word with her.”

Titus steps out of the mouth of the dugout, a carbine levelled at me. “She don’t want to be bothered by no visitors. So take yourself off my prope’ty.”

“Steady on now, Titus. All I ask is for you to send her out, so I can hear how it stands with her from her own lips.”

“I’ll send you a bullet through the brain, that’s what I’ll send you, Straw.”

I smile quiet and talk quiet to try to make him easy. “You’d only lose money by acting so hasty, Titus. I have a paying proposition for you. Let’s discuss it.”

The boy has grown himself a beard since he shot my pig and absconded on me. The beard hides his features, but I can read the calculation in his grey eyes. Titus doesn’t lower his gun barrel. He is distrustful, but he’s also a right greedy bastard, so I keep at him. “Let’s go inside and be sociable. Have a drink. Chasing a woman is thirsty work.”

He orders me off Dan and wants to see my weapons. I tell him my only firearm is the Henry in the sheath on the saddle. Next, I have to empty my pockets for him. There’s nothing in them but my Bible. Last of all, I must open my coat and fan it for him. I move careful as I can, hoping the rig I patched together will work as I hoped. I pinch the twine sling in the cloth of the duster and ease back the coat. The sawed-off shifts with the cloth as I slowly draw it open, settles behind my right leg while I stand there displaying myself so Titus knows I’m not wearing a gun belt.

“All right, come on in,” he says grudgingly.

Soon as I step across the threshold, I smell cool, dank earth, a whiff of the grave. I survey the place. Empty whisky boxes for chairs. A wall of crates stacked at the back of the dugout. Directly before the crates, in a pool of light cast by a coal oil lamp, Lucy Stoveall kneels in the dirt, hands tied behind her back, a stick lashed in her mouth. Joel Kelso stands guard beside her, a carbine in his hands. When I take a step towards her, Lucy drops her head to the dirt, as if to hold me off. Joel waves me off with the rifle. His eyes are scared and his mouth is worried. “Hello, Joel,” I say. For a moment, he looks about to make reply, but then he tightens his lips and does his best to make his weak mouth and watery eyes look scornful. It doesn’t come natural to him as it does his brother. That boy was born to be nothing but a follower.

“There’s the parcel you come to pick up,” says Titus. “All tied up with sealing wax and string.” At the sound of his voice, Lucy lifts her eyes from the dirt floor and glares at him. I’ve never seen such hate. Two threads of blood run from the corners of her mouth down her chin. There’s a lump on her forehead and a bruise on her cheek.

I clench down my anger because I know Titus is goading me, wants to see me flare. “Loose her, Titus,” I say, as level as I can.

“No, sir, I won’t. That woman has got to learn some manners. Why she just rode up here this morning bold as brass and when I come out to make welcome, she put a big old horse pistol on me and started firing. But thank you, Jesus, the caps was bad and they just popped like an old woman’s farts. I dragged the bitch down off her horse, and I handed her a proper good hiding, but she kept on screeching. Nothing for it, but we had to truss her up just to get some quiet. Ever since, Joel and me been turning over in our minds a proper punishment for her. What do you think it ought to be, Straw?”

“Take the stick out of her mouth. She’s bleeding.”