Badlands (19 page)

“Easy,” said Du Pré.

The buffalo’s trail whirled. It stopped, sticking up and out. The buffalo lifted its right front leg and it pawed the ground. It bellowed once and it spun on its front legs and it charged the rock wall.

The horse reared and Du Pré dropped his cigarette and he grabbed the reins.

“Whoa, you son of a bitch,” yelled Du Pré.

Du Pré clamped his legs tight. The horse turned and bolted for the trail they had come up on. Du Pré pulled back on the reins.

The horse ignored him. They sailed off the lip of the butte and landed on the pan. The horse took the shock and then it bounded ahead. The trail was fairly open and Du Pré stood in the stirrups, trying to turn the horse.

He heard the buffalo bull below and behind him.

Du Pré turned, eyes wide.

The bull sailed off the lip of the butte. Du Pré turned and put his head near the horse’s neck and dug his heels into the bay’s flanks.

“You,” said Du Pré to the horse, “run all you want to.”

The horse was going flat out, galloping across the water-carved pan and then leaping a low bank to shortgrass prairie.

Du Pré looked back.

The huge bull was thundering along behind them, and it was closer.

Jesus, Du Pré thought, that bastard wants to kill us.

He could not come up that rock wall.

Son of a bitch did, though.

The ground rolled away and the bay stretched out. They ran a good mile, and when Du Pré glanced back the bull buffalo was well behind, and had lost a hundred yards on the horse.

Du Pré looked ahead.

This horse it will be blown here another couple miles.

OK.

He looked back again. The huge bull was closer. They came over a rise and Du Pré looked ahead in horror.

Hundreds of buffalo were scattered over the ground, some grazing, some lying down. Reddish calves capered.

The horse plunged on. The buffalo stirred and the lying ones stood up. Du Pré and his bay got to them and the bay shot between two groups. Then the buffalo ran. One instant they were still and the next they were running full speed.

Hail Mary and God damn it, Du Pré thought.

The horse dropped down into a hidden cleft in the land. Buffalo stood thick in it. They threw up their tails and they ran.

Du Pré and the bay were galloping in the middle of the herd. The huge animals pounded the ground, which drummed.

Du Pré looked ahead.

The heavy fence the Host had spent millions of dollars on was a half mile away. The buffalo pounded on.

Du Pré tried to rein in his horse. The big bay stumbled and Du Pré fell and he rolled twenty feet.

He looked up. The buffalo were coming at him. They passed by him, going to the sides. He closed his eyes.

He heard the wires break, a sound like one of the strings on his violin failing, but deeper and louder.

The dust was thick. The buffalo were gone.

Du Pré stood up. The helicopter thwacked overhead. Du Pré looked at the TV camera poking out the side door.

He gave it the finger.

“W
ELL,” SAID
M
ADELAINE, “YOU
got them buffalo all organized.”

They were watching the evening news. The footage of the buffalo stampede with Du Pré bouncing along in the middle of it had run for a good minute. Then there was the shot of the buffalo running into the fence. One animal hit the wires, which all parted, and that bull did not flinch or break stride.

Du Pré felt his ribs. He had landed on a rock with some of them and they hurt. His elbow was raw. He had cactus spines in his right thigh.

He took a good swallow of bourbon.

“A sight few today may see,” said the announcer.

More footage of the buffalo racing through the badlands. They broke into streams when the land cut close and they became a brown river when it opened up.

“The Old West still lives,” said the announcer.

“God dang,” said Booger Tom, “musta been downright excitin’. Now you are tellin’ me this bull just bounded up a twenty-foot cliff and took off after you?”

Du Pré nodded.

“Whaddya do to piss him off?” said Booger Tom.

“Tell him one of your jokes,” said Du Pré.

“Which one?” said the old cowboy.

Du Pré nodded.

The door to the saloon opened and Bart came in. He was grinning evilly.

“HOME, HOME ON THE RAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE …” he bellowed.

Du Pré held his glass out to Madelaine. She put whiskey in it. She patted his hand.

“They wear out soon,” she said.

Du Pré nodded.

“Pretty good fall you did there,” said Booger Tom. “When I was in the moving picture business I recall a fall like that’d get ya a ten-dollar bonus … Course, we made a point of knowin’ where the
cactus
was.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Well,” said Bart, “thank God you’re all right.”

Du Pré looked at him.

“Me, I am not all right.”

“What?” said Bart.

“His friends,” said Madelaine. “Du Pré survives a buffalo stampede, that is the easy part, then he has got to live past his friends.”

“HOME, HOME ON THE RAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGE,” bellowed Bart and Booger Tom.

“Old man,” said Madelaine, “your voice it sounds like goat farts in a tin shed.”

“Give me a beer,” said Booger Tom, “without the music criticism.”

Du Pré dug at a mess of cactus spines in his elbow with the point of his knife.

“They’ll fester out,” said Booger Tom.

“So will his friends,” said Madelaine.

Booger Tom sipped his beer.

Bart sipped his soda.

The front door banged open. Du Pré turned to look.

It was Jacqueline. She was angry, flamingly furious.

She looked around the room.

“You see that Pallas?” said Jacqueline.

Everybody shook their head.

Jacqueline went back out, slamming the door.

“Uh-oh,” said Bart.

Du Pré shrugged.

You have them kids, they drive you nuts, Du Pré thought, thing that they got to do, like eat.

“Me,” said Madelaine, “I never see that Jacqueline so mad. Maybe you better go and see about it.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Need help?” said Booger Tom, eyes wide and innocent.

Du Pré looked at him for a long moment, then shook his head.

Du Pré went back out.

Jacqueline was stomping up the street, peering in yards. She went up to a house and banged on the door. It opened and she said something to Mrs. La Barge and then Jacqueline left and headed on.

The van was parked there. Some kids were sitting in it. Du Pré went to the van. He slid open the door.

The children were sitting very quietly, looking at the hands in their laps.

“OK,” said Du Pré, “me, I never see your mother so angry. What is it? She is mad at Pallas.”

Looks.

“We don’t know,” said Berne.

“Yeah,” said Marisa. “We are at the grocery store there, Mama is at the checkout, she blows up, drags us out, the groceries they are still there.”

“Cooper?” said Du Pré.

Nods.

“She don’t get a phone call, nothing?” he said.

Shakes of little heads.

“You don’t know nothin’?”

Looks of wide-eyed innocence.

“Somebody pissin’ on my boots telling me it is rainin’,” said Du Pré.

Looks of wide-eyed injured virtue.

“Pallas kill you, you tell,” said Du Pré.

“It’s a pret’ bad spot be in,” said Berne. “That Pallas she is in ver’ big trouble.”

“She is usually,” said Du Pré. “She is that sort of kid.”

“Not like this,” said Marisa.

“You ain’t going, tell me anything?” said Du Pré.

Little palms turned up.

Du Pré looked up the street. Jacqueline was crossing it, striding straight, her arms stiff and swinging.

“OK,” said Du Pré, “me, I cannot beat it out of you.”

Jacqueline stopped and she glared at Du Pré.

“OK,” said Du Pré, “maybe one of you talk I don’t tell on you.”

“Yeah,” said Berne, “but all these guys squeal, soon as Pallas she start in on them. Sorry, Grandpère, it is not worth it.”

Du Pré looked up the street again.

Jacqueline was stalking back across the dirt road, on her way to another house.

“She is pissed,” said Du Pré.

“We maybe stay at Madelaine’s?” said Berne.

“Till this blows over,” said Marisa.

Chorus of hopeful yesses!

Du Pré nodded.

“Go ask her,” he said.

The kids shot out of the van and raced into the saloon.

I go run with the buffalo, polish the rocks up, my ribs, come home there is something mysterious it is going on, Du Pré thought, I never see my Jacqueline this pissed off.

Du Pré heard a car coming, fast. He turned around. It was one of the tan government sedans. The car raced up and the driver slammed on the brakes.

Ripper.

He jumped out. His eyes were wild.

“Where is that little
shit?”
he screamed.

Du Pré looked at him.

“Pallas?” he said.

Ripper saw Jacqueline up the street. He ran off, yelling.

Harvey was sitting in the passenger seat. He had his face in his hands and he was laughing so hard he was choking.

Du Pré walked round and he stood looking in the open window.

Harvey leaned back, choking.

“What she do?” said Du Pré.

Harvey started to laugh again and he could not speak. Every time he would look at Du Pré he would dissolve again.

Du Pré waited.

Harvey gasped and he mopped his face with his handkerchief. He picked up a folded newspaper that sat on the seat beside him. He handed it to Du Pré.

It was one of those rags you see in supermarkets, with headlines like “Six Hundred Pound Baby Born to Chinese Giants.”

This one did not say that. It said, “FBI Agent to Wed Ten-Year-Old.”

Du Pré went round and he got in the driver’s seat.

“There is a bar in Cooper,” Du Pré said. “We go there now a while.”

T
HE
M
INT
S
ALOON IN
Cooper was a dark and quiet place. The backbar was ornate, the walls covered in mouldering elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and deer heads and racks.

Harvey came back from the bathroom where he had soaked his face in cold water.

“The director loves headlines like those,” said Harvey.

“He fire Ripper maybe,” said Du Pré.

Harvey shook his head.

“Only if Ripper
did
marry Pallas,” said Harvey.

Du Pré shook his head.

“Maybe he better, get it over with,” he said.

“That kid,” said Harvey, “how the hell she managed that I do not know.”

Du Pré sighed. He had a stiff gulp of his ditchwater highball.

“OK,” he said, “so what is with the people out there?”

“Nothing,” said Harvey. “We’re both waiting. No threats, no shots, no attempts by anyone to escape. We will have to sit there until they come out.”

“What if they shoot?” said Du Pré.

Harvey shook his head.

“Even then,” he said, “we’ve had enough trouble. Short of them all charging us, we don’t do anything but wait.”

Du Pré sighed.

The door opened and a couple of burly ranchers came in. They were dusty and smeared. They were still wearing their roping gloves.

The woman behind the bar looked up and she drew a couple beers.

“How’s the buffalo business?” she said.

“We got them sons of bitches stuck off in a box canyon,” said one rancher. “I think we’ll just shoot ’em.”

“Lost four miles of fence my place,” said the other. “I’d about sue them kooks over there to the Eide place. Hard to do when they’re all surrounded by the feds.”

“I’d like to find the peckerhead who started ’em runnin’,” said one.

“No shit,” said the other.

“String him up by his goddamned nuts,” said the one.

The ranchers drank their beer and held out their glasses.

“Oughta just go on in that damn cult’s antpile,” said the one.

“Lot of children in there,” said the woman.

“Them feds’ll screw it up,” said the one rancher.

“They screw up anything they touch,” said the other.

“Amen,” said Harvey.

The ranchers gulped their beers and they went back out.

Du Pré sighed.

“Good thing they didn’t recognize you, Gabriel,” said the woman behind the bar. “Been too busy chasing them buffalo, watch TV that much.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, Helen, I did not start that.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“No, it was not me,” said Du Pré. “I was chased, this bull buffalo.”

“Well,” said the woman, “they’re raisin’ hell with the fences and all and folks around here were pretty fed up with them crazy assholes early on. Come around, they did, tried to buy up some of the ranches here.”

“Anybody sell?” said Harvey.

“Not that I know of,” said the woman. “Course, nobody’d known that the Eides had either.”

Harvey looked at the pressed-tin ceiling. About a thousand fly-specked dollar bills hung from it.

He looked at Du Pré.

Du Pré got up and went over to the bar.

“You know somethin’,” he said. “It may be it is dangerous they got another place, no one knows.”

Helen looked at him.

“Just rumors,” she said, “the Lucas place. They’d been havin’ a lot of trouble, making the land payments. I dunno for sure, but … well, Lucases used to come in pretty regular and they ain’t been. It’s that way somebody sells out, you know, they get ashamed.”

Du Pré nodded.

Lucas place, couple ranches over from Hulmes, got the water right on Coffee Pot Creek.

Du Pré went back to the table.

“Well,” said Harvey, “I guess that we had better go on back. I got this siege to run.”

They went out and got in the government sedan. They turned around and headed back toward Toussaint.

“Wonder if they found the little monster yet?” said Harvey.

Du Pré shook his head.

“She won’t come out, it is dark,” he said. “Pallas is smart and she knows she is in big shit, this.”

“I love that kid,” said Harvey, “and I thank all the gods she is somebody else’s.”