Ghost Dance (7 page)

He was running from Lester Grawson, whom he would not kill, who would kill him.

Chance was running because he wanted to stay alive.

The resources of the law though, Chance had told himself a dozen times, a hundred times, could always be tapped by Grawson, with his badge, his credentials, with documents from Charleston, forged or otherwise, to which he would have had access.

Thus the people of the town, supposing him to be fleeing from the law, were not as mistaken as one might have supposed.

For most practical purposes Edward Chance was indeed running from the law, and knew it, that law that might, with a shuffling of papers, benignly surrender him into the hands of Lester Grawson, Charleston detective, for return to the scene of some hypothetical crime, a return that once had stopped short in an alley in New York City, and next time might terminate in some grove of cottonwoods, or perhaps on the open prairie, or perhaps in some homesteader's abandoned shack, wherever Grawson, at his pleasure, would decide to perform the execution.

Chance went to the bar. "Bourbon," he said.

The bartender set a small heavy glass before Chance, turned, took a squarish bottle from in front of the mirror and filled the glass.

The bartender hadn't said anything, nor had anyone else.

Irritated, Chance threw the drink down, not looking the way it tasted. The swallow of amber fire burned its way down his gullet and hit his empty stomach like dropping a torch into a barrel of oil.

Chance put down a silver three-cent piece on the bar, which the bartender retrieved.

Chance became aware of a burly figure in an unfastened blue jacket next to him.

Chance put down another three-cent piece. The bartender picked up the second coin, then refilled the glass.

"Where you from, Stranger?" asked the voice of the man next to him, the man in the blue jacket. Chance noted the two wide, yellow chevrons on the sleeve. The speaker was drunk. The voice was not pleasant.

Chance turned to look at Corporal Jake Totter. He saw the heavy face, its lines loose from alcohol, the unfriendly gray eyes red and prominently veined. Mostly Chance noted that the nose had been broken and had not been set properly, or had never been set.

"East," said Chance.

Chance returned to the drink. He picked up the glass.

"I said where you from, Stranger?" repeated the voice. A wide hand, heavy as a wrench, held down his arm.

Chance turned again to regard the man in the unbuttoned blue jacket. He saw long white underwear under the jacket, black around the collar. The man wore suspenders. On the back of his head was a cavalry hat, with crossed sabers on the turned-up brim. Around the man's neck there was a yellow neckerchief.

"You're out of uniform, Soldier," said Chance.

"You ain't from the East," said the voice. The words had been slow, measured, slurred with drink, hostile.

"I am," said Chance.

"You're a liar," said the man.

"Take your hand off my arm," said Chance.

"I know that South-talk," said the man. "You're from the South."

"Once," said Chance.

"We whipped you," said the man.

He removed his hand from Chance's arm and pulled off his jacket, put it on the bar, and put his hat on top of it. Chance noticed that the men in the bar had gathered around, but leaving an open circle near where they stood. Chance thought that someone might as well come up now and draw a scratch line on the floor. How drunk is he, Chance asked himself. Damn drunk, Chance answered his own question.

"We whipped you once," said Totter, wiping his underwear-clad arm across his face, "and by God we can do it again."

"Forget it, Corporal," said Chance.

Chance had been four years old when the war had ended. He doubted if Totter had been much older. Maybe six or seven.

Chance tried to take the drink calmly, but when he lifted it to his mouth, Totter's arm lashed out and splashed it in his face. The rim of the glass stung his cheek.

It was quiet in the saloon.

Chance put the empty glass down on the bar, with a small click. His face was expressionless. He did not look at Totter directly, though he watched him in the mirror. "You owe me for that drink, Corporal," said Chance.

Totter, in the mirror, spat in his hands and wiped them on the sides of his trousers, across the yellow stripe that ran to his boots. Then he balled up his fists and hunched over.

Chance noted that Totter was standing with his left side turned a bit toward him. Judging from Totter's fists this was not a boxing stance, but a natural precaution, protecting himself from a kick. Chance suddenly realized that Totter would not be a particularly pleasant man to fight, particularly not in a saloon. Totter knew what he was up to, and what he guarded against he presumably would not be above doing. If there was a fight it would not be a good one to lose. Therefore, Chance told himself, there must be no risk of losing it.

But Chance did not want to fight.

He had enough trouble.

There would be a sheriff in this town, undoubtedly, and if he were picked up in a brawl, there would be questions, difficulties.

But Totter owed him for a drink.

"I'll forget this," said Chance, still not facing Totter, "if you buy me that drink."

When Totter charged, Chance was not at the bar. He had moved to one side and Totter plunged into the wood. As he did so Chance's hand seemed to brush at his throat and, choking, Totter sank to the floor, his hands at his neck, his face turning black.

No, said Chance to himself, there would not be a risk of losing it.

What Chance had done could have caused death, if done by an amateur hand, with too much force, too clumsily, not properly, but Chance, a skilled physician, had not broken the cartilage that would have closed the windpipe, that might have closed the life of a drunken soldier in the dusty town of Good Promise, South Dakota.

Chance hauled Totter to his feet and half threw him over the bar, taking the man's wallet from his hip pocket, and gouging about in it until he found a liberty nickel which he tossed to the bartender, who filled his bourbon glass for him and shoved it back to him, along with two Indian-head pennies in change. Chance returned the pennies to Totter's wallet and shoved it back in the man's hip pocket; then he sat Totter down on the brass rail at the foot of the bar, and Totter slid from it to the sawdust floor, sitting there, holding his throat.

"He didn't even hit him," said one of the men watching.

"Get up, Jake," said a soldier standing nearby.

"Get him, Jake!" urged another.

But Jake Totter sat in the sawdust, holding his throat, trying to get oxygen into his lungs.

Chance chucked down the drink.

He looked down at Jake, who was breathing better now, but with difficulty. The burly figure sitting on the floor was now, it seemed, sober, sick, enraged. He rolled over on his side and threw up against the bar.

As Chance watched him, Totter struggled to his knees, fumbling at the holster at his side.

"Don't, Jake!" yelled one of the soldiers.

The service revolver in Jake's unsteady hand jerked out of the holster.

Edward Chance's Colt had slipped from its holster and before Jake could bring his gun up Chance fired once into the body of Jake Totter, who yelped and grunted and was spun back against the bar, rolling along the floor, hugging his right shoulder.

Chance put the weapon back into the holster.

"Get a doctor," yelled somebody.

"No doctor closer than Fort Yates," said one of the soldiers.

A couple of soldiers had turned Jake over.

They pulled his hands from the wound. There was a large, irregular scarlet stain on the white underwear and a powder burn.

One of the soldiers looked up at Chance. "The army will get you for this, Mister," he said.

"Jake was gonna plug him," said a man in overalls, peering in between a couple of ranchers.

"Get a doctor," said somebody else.

"I ain't gonna ride to Fort Yates," said one of the townspeople. "Not these days I ain't."

Chance wondered what was wrong about riding to Fort Yates, wherever that was, these days. There were a number of things he didn't understand about this town, the people. They seemed to be afraid, jumpy. He was out of touch.

"There ain't no time to go to Fort Yates anyway," said a rancher.

"Jake's a goner," said one of the soldiers.

"No," said Chance. "It's a simple wound, no complicating fracture."

"How do you know?" asked someone.

"Because I planned it that way," said Chance.

He moved one of the soldiers away and knelt beside Jake, unbuttoning the long underwear and shoving it away from the wound.

He touched Jake expertly, who looked at him vaguely through half-closed eyes, his head lolling to one side.

"Get a doctor," said somebody.

Chance stood up, wearily. There was a bitter smile on his face, a tired, bitter smile.

"I'm a doctor," he said. "Put him on a table."

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

After treating Totter, Edward Chance lost little time in riding from Good Promise, and as he rode he often turned his head, looking for any distant dust that might be rising from behind him, but there was only his own dust, and it settled undisturbed on the prairie in that late October afternoon.

So he was running again.

But where could he go this time?

Corporal Jake Totter, the man he had shot, would live. The wound would be painful, but was not dangerous.

It had been clearly self-defense.

Still Chance had little doubt that the army, if not the sheriff of Good Promise, would wish to apprehend him, perhaps for purposes of an inquiry, and so he rode, not pushing his horse, but steadily.

As he crossed the open prairie, staying away from the occasional roads that rutted its endless sage and buffalo grass, he paid no special attention to where he was going, or the direction. For one thing he didn't know the country. For another he was motivated to do little more than put miles between himself and Good Promise, and to stay away from towns and farms in doing so.

Suddenly Chance reined in his horse.

Looking down, he saw a small cottonwood wand, not much more than a foot high. Tied to the tip of this wand, moving a little in the prairie wind, was a small, cloth bag.

Chance dismounted.

He jerked the small bag from the stick wand and opened it. It was filled with brown, dry flakes, and when Chance lifted it to his nose and smelled it, his guess was confirmed. Tobacco. Or at least partly tobacco.

He tied the small bag back on the cottonwood wand.

Chance got to his feet and looked out over the prairie. Of course the prairie here looked no different than it did for a hundred miles in any direction. Chance wondered how far he had ridden. How far he had come.

He wondered if the little marker, if that was what it was, had been put up by a drunken cowboy, or perhaps by a child or farmer. But what for? If someone had left extra tobacco for the next traveler, there might well have been a note, or something. At least the tobacco should have been more clearly marked.

Someone might have ridden past and not even noticed.

Vaguely, for no particular reason that he could determine, Chance thought of the mariners of ancient Greece, pouring oil and salt into the sea before a voyage–and of the Romans, giving the first drops from their goblet to the gods, the pouring of the libation.

Chance wondered why he should have thought of these things.

Then, suddenly, Edward Chance felt cold on the prairie.

I am now in another country, he said to himself. I have passed a boundary.

He looked at the little bag of tobacco.

An offering, undoubtedly.

But an offering of whom, to what gods?

Where am I, wondered Edward Chance.

You are in a country, said his own voice to him, whose gods are not your gods, whose gods you do not know, whose gods are not friendly to you.

I'll camp, said Edward Chance to himself, and move on after dark. There'll be a moon tonight. In a few hours I'll be away from this place.

About a hundred yards to his right Chance saw a clump of cottonwoods, fringing a low, sloping valley between the rounded hills of the prairie. Probably a creek, he thought. Water, and a place to camp till dark. Then I'll move on.

Chance led his sorrel toward the trees, and in them found a small leg of a creek, not more than a yard or so wide. He let the horse drink, but not too much. He wanted to move on, and soon, as soon as it was dark.

Among the trees, grateful for the cover, and suddenly feeling weary, as well as hungry, Edward Chance unsaddled his horse and tethered him to a tree. He then put some rocks together and built a small fire between them and opened and heated a can of pork and beans, using the same can later for coffee.

After finishing, Chance lit a small briar pipe which he had purchased in Saint Louis, the fourth day after he had fled from Lester Grawson.

Chance had not smoked much in the East but now, somehow in the solitude and loneliness of his westward journey, the small wooden pipe, giving him something to fumble with, something warm, something with slow, unhurried smoke, had seemed to be welcome to him, and so he had smoked.

Chance, pipe between his teeth, spread a blanket under a tree, not far from where his horse was tethered. Then, using his saddle for a pillow, he pulled off his boots, and lay down, looking up at the sky.

The sky was peaceful, blue, untroubled.

Chance watched the smoke from the little briar curl upward, slowly, softly.

Going nowhere, thought Chance, and not minding.

Suddenly Chance sat upright.

The noise.

Where had it come from? A noise, a human noise; something like a soft cry, an ugly almost inaudible cry, from somewhere through the trees.

Chance rolled on his belly and drew the Colt.

It was quiet, and he waited for some minutes, not hearing the noise again.

The leaves of the cottonwoods above him rustled. He heard the soft splashing of the creek as it moved over and around rocks.