Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (32 page)

The late June sun struck straight down into the fort. There were no shadows along the north sides of the whitewashed brick buildings. Grass had long ago dried to wisps. A faint haze of dust hung in the heat-simmering air. A company of blue-clad riflemen drilled on the center parade ground, the silver shako plates on their high bell-crowned leather caps glittering in the sun. Near the cookhouse, carters were busy hollering and hawing at stubborn ringtail mules. Near the stables, fox-eyed traders were swopping for both the joy of it and for a living. Between the soldiers' barracks and the cookhouse on the southwest corner, hunters came in through the open gate carrying limp carcasses of elk and deer and wild fowl. Trappers in greasy leathers and pulldown hats argued over traps and pelts. Solemn Indians watched everything that moved, with sun-narrowed glittering dark eyes. The fort was a perfumery of various hide smells, beaver and elk and deer and buffalo and bear; and a color fair of buckskin browns and yellows and warpaint greens and vermilions and soldier blues and silvers and flannel reds and jean blues and boot browns; and a soundfest of men bragging and swearing and mules braying and hinnying and horses blowing and stamping and dogs barking and roaring.

Outside the fort, below the southeast corner of the drop-off, like ants busily scratching in and out of mounds, men scurried back and forth from lime kiln to brickyard to lime kiln again. Still others hurried like ants in and out of sawmills and rock quarries and grist mills, intent on doing yesterday's and tomorrow's work today.

It was into this lively hurlyburly that Hugh stepped when he left General Ashley in the officers' quarters. The sight and the smell of it made him feel both savage and weary.

He stopped on the bottom step, a halved log, and inwardly growled at it. What was the good of it, the bustle and the doings, as long as he hadn't gotten his rights? The general had given him some back pay, had outfitted him with a second-hand rifle and an old mule, and had fixed him up with a job hunting for the fort; but such things were trifles as long as he hadn't squared accounts with Fitz, and the lad Jim who still had his life on loan to him.

It made Hugh burn all the more to learn that Fitz had taken over his friend and favorite, Old Bullthrower his rifle, and his companyero of the trails, Old Blue. The nerve of the skunk almost made Hugh jump for rage. Ae, Fitz would get his all right, all right, come time he showed his face in the fort.

Hugh let out a great blast of breath. “If that snake Fitz was standing here in front of me right now, I'd centershoot him on the spot, and then go to my bunk and have myself a long restful sleep. I would.”

Hugh let out another breath, and then headed for his old mule. He walked past a group of keelboatmen just in from St. Louis playing euchre and seven-up, around a quintet of bareskinned Omaha bucks playing a game of hand on the bare parade ground, and at last came to the hitching posts near the southwest gate beside the soldiers' barracks where his old mousegray mule, Heyoka, drooped sleeping on her feet.

“Hep-a! Heyoka, ol' girl!” Hugh said, slapping the contrary old bag of bones on the rump, “hep-a! We'd best mosey on, ol' skate, and get us some more meat, or the gen'ral'll pasture us both out to the wolves.” At the clap on her rump, the old mule woke up and automatically lashed out with a flicking, surprisingly swift rear hoof. The hoof missed Hugh because, like always, he allowed for it. “Still up to your old tricks, eh?” Hugh gave the old skeleton another clap, hit her mangy mousegray fur so hard he raised skin dust and dandruff. Old Heyoka's deer head came up, her huge jack-rabbit ears lay back as if set to run, and her roached mane shivered and rippled nervously. This time, instead of lashing out with a hoof again, she suddenly reared up, snapped her hitching strap, and was free.

Old Heyoka didn't waste time. She wheeled around, began clopping lickery-split for the open fort gate and for freedom out on the open plains. Hugh's mouth fell open, watching her go.

There were joshing loiterers at the gate. One of them, a peachfuzz pigeon-toed greenhorn just in from Kentucky diggings, and still as goodhearted and helpful as the day he left ma, jumped up and in two long leaps blocked Old Heyoka's path. Ears down, the old mule tried to shy past anyway. But she wasn't quite quick enough. With another tremendous leap, the pigeon-toed peachfuzz caught hold of what was left of her leather hitching strap and hung on. And, heels digging in, dragged her to a stop just outside the gate.

Hugh's mouth clapped to, and he strode over to repossess his mule.

Hugh was hardly in the mood to thank anyone, let alone a boy greenhorn. He grabbed hold of the mule's bridle, whirled on the peachfuzz, and like a she-grizzly giving her cub a claw to put it in its place, snarled, “What's it of your concern if my ol' skate breaks? Maybe she had a free day comin'.”

The youth's light green eyes and red mouth opened like morning glories. “Whaaat?”

“Listen, you darned pigeon-toed greenhorn you, when you see a man's mount runnin' off, don't stop it. Let it go to the devil if it wants to. It ain't your'n, so let it go.”

“But I thought—”

“Never mind what you thought. It's what I think that counts this time.” Hugh stuck his old white face into the lad's young peachfuzz face. “And let me tell you somethin' else. If'n you're intendin' to make a go of it out here in the middle of nowhere, stick to your own business. Like when you see a man's possible sack fall off his saddle on the trail—don't tell him. He'll find out soon enough. When you get to camp, if you ever do, still keep your meattrap shut. Why? because you're a greenhorn. When the cook needs water and wood, help him, but don't get in his way or say a word. If the horses need hobblin' or waterin', do it, but don't brag about it. Just do it. And shut up. When you set down to the fire, get out your pipe and smoke it and shut up some more. Don't ask questions. Follow that advice and you'll pass.”

“But I was only—”

“Shut up!”

A familiar voice broke in then. “Well, well, look who's orderin' people around now.” The voice was slow and cracked. It came from a voicebox that hadn't been used in a long time.

Hugh turned slowly on his heels. Coming toward him off the open green prairie was a haggard black-bearded man with floppy ears and sun-blackened knobby hands. His buckskins were in tatters and his worn-out moccasins flopped around his ankles and his feet were red and cracked and bleeding. His eyes were great round moons of suffering. He carried a rusted gun and an empty shot pouch and a dangling powder horn.

“Don't you remember me, Hugh, old coon?”

“Dutton, old hoss! Down here?” Hugh exclaimed, glad to change the subject, and for the moment joyfully relieved that at least one of his men had come through. “And I was sure you'd gone under with the rest! Marsh, More, Chapman.”

“Wal, at that this child was mighty nigh losin' his hair, he was.”

“Still lookin' at the downside a things, I see.”

Dutton's shoulders hung sloped down and away as if they'd been folded against his body like bird wings. “I'll allow to havin' my green rubbed out a little.” Dutton tried to smile. “A little.”

Still hanging onto the hitching strap of Old Heyoka, who'd fallen asleep again on her feet, Hugh said, “Come along. I'll take ye in to the gen'ral. I'll bet you're half-froze for meat.” Hugh looked the walking scarecrow named Dutton up and down. “Lad, ye must tell me about the whole consarn.”

Dutton hung back. A private thought of some kind lurked far back in his gray-ringed haggard eyes. “Thanks, Hugh, old hoss. I've made it alone so far, so I think maybe I can make it alone the rest of the way.”

“Ho-ah! another contrary hoss, I see.”

“No, still half-beat and not yet ready to square off to a chair. I want to get used to bein' here alive and safe first.”

“How did you come? Down the Platte?”

“Did so.” Dutton's voice, as it warmed to the task of talking again, slowly lost its cracked edge.

“And the Pawnee didn't catch ee?”

“Hunkered past ‘em in the night.”

“What was grub?”

“Grass and gopher.”

“‘Twas the same by me. All along the White.”

“The White, was it?”

Hugh nodded. “Yep, and wild salt it was mostly too. Tell me, old hoss, how did you get away when the Rees came swarmin' across the river?”

“Your Ol' Skunk broke from the Rees and I boarded her and did it.”

“Ho-ah! I knew she had leg. Where's she now?”

Dutton rubbed his hollow belly. “Et.”

“‘Et'?”

“Yep. Just afore I hit the Pawnee.”

Hugh shook his head sadly. “Too bad. She was a good horse once I tamed her.”

Dutton looked up at Hugh wonderingly, with still a certain private thought lurking far back in his eyes. “Hugh, old coon, ye've turned white since the last time I seen ee. What happened?”

Hugh shrugged. “Yep, it's white I am now all right.” Hugh laughed a half-laugh at himself. “The gen'ral's even takin' to callin' me granpap.”

“‘Granpap'?”

“Yep.” A dark thought flitted across Hugh's old gray eyes. “Yep, he wants me to forget Fitz's dirty black treachery.”

“Then Fitz ain't here?”

Hugh hauled up short. “Hey? What? Oho! So that's the way the stick floats, does it? You was to warn Fitz afore I got to him.”

Dutton blinked. Still slow of tongue and also slow of thought from the long ordeal of hiking across the barren flats of the Platte River bottom, Dutton barely caught on he'd made a slip. “Now, Hugh, I didn't mean harm. You know that. I was only askin'.”

Hugh's old rage returned. “So this is how I'm practiced on, is it? Treachery and snakes all around. If it ain't Fitz and Jim, it's downside Dutton honey-fuggling the booshways.”

“Now, Hugh, here now.”

Hugh turned his back on Dutton. He climbed aboard the still sleeping Old Heyoka, and tucked his rifle under an arm, and kicked the old mule in the ribs. “Hep-a! Get! Let's make some meat.”

“Hugh!” Dutton called after him.

“Hep-a!” Hugh growled again, digging his moccasined heels into Old Heyoka's underbelly. “Hep-a! Get!”

Old Heyoka was going before she finally opened a great dull purple eye. She switched her ringtail as she stilted slowly and laboriously away.

Some time later in the summer, as he was riding back to the fort across the prairies, Hugh saw another bearded scarecrow come stilting out of the shining shimmering west. Except that this walking scarecrow was more ghost than a pair of crossed sticks and old clothes. Hugh was in a prairie pothole, trying to flush out partridge, when he first saw him.

The gaunt man came on, head down, stumbling, shufflingly. His buckskins were in tatters and were bleached a dry hard leafbrown, and his feet were bare and cracked and bleeding too. The varnish on the stock of his gun had worn off and it was as bare as a weathered board. The gun barrel was rusted.

Hugh held Old Heyoka in. Fitz? At last? Hugh set his triggers.

The bearded gaunt man looked up. He gazed east, longingly, forlornly.

All at once the gaunt man seemed to see something electrifying. He raised a hand and croaked a strangled shout. It wasn't Hugh he was seeing because Hugh was to the north of him and still hidden in the pothole. And then the gaunt man swooned and fell to the ground.

Hugh glanced to the east to see what there was to see. Beyond the farthest edge of the waving windstroked yellowing grass, against the blue, the Stars and Stripes fluttered above Ft. Atkinson. The flag was all that could be seen of the fort lookout above the horizon. Hugh understood. He gave Old Heyoka a kick in the underbelly. “Hep-a. Get! Fitz or not, that hant needs help. Hep-a.”

By the time slow Old Heyoka gained the rim of the grassy pothole, the gaunt man had got to his feet again, had faltered ahead a step, had fallen again. Twice more he got up and twice more he fell flat on his chest.

“Poor devil,” Hugh muttered. “C'mon, hurry up you, you ol' skate. Hep-a!” Hugh hit the old mule with his quirt. “Mule or no, you probably wouldn't run even if it was your own colt staggerin' in, would ee?” Hugh let down his triggers.

The gaunt man finally gave up. He sat. He sat looking east toward the fluttering Stars and Stripes. Pus-streaked tears streamed down his weather-blackened terribly hollow face. His long dark brown hair hung to his shoulders. He was bare-headed. His hunger-hollowed face made his already large doming head look like a great skull crowned with a poorly fitted wig. His small dark blue eyes burned.

Hugh reined in the old mule and slid to the ground. Holding the reins in one hand and his rifle in the other, Hugh approached the sitting haunt with high light steps.

The bare brown-haired skull turned slowly. The dark blue eyes burned at Hugh; looked through him; focused behind Hugh's head.

“Jim!” Hugh suddenly exclaimed. “Jim Clyman! Here, lad, let me help you up.”

“It's Hugh,” Jim Clyman hoarsed. His voice, like Dutton's, was so unused to speech it hardly more than croaked.

“Yes, lad, Hugh it is. And he'll help ye get to the fort and meat.”

Clyman's eyes continued to run slow painful pus-stained tears. Clyman shook his head to say he didn't want help. “I—just—stopped—to blow a—little.”

“You is grit, you is. And them's the sort as kin have anythin' I got. On the prairie. Come, let me help you up on my old mule.”

“Just—stopped—to—blow—a—little.”

“Poor devil,” Hugh said, as he caught Clyman under the arms from the rear and boosted him up on Old Heyoka. “A bag a wind couldn't weigh more.”

“Just—stopped—to—blow—a—little.” Gradually Clyman's voice began to lose its cracked catchy edge as it warmed to the task again. “I'll—be—all—right.”