The High Divide (15 page)

Ulysses nodded. “Those would be the hills and buttes of the Divide, the high country north of the Yellowstone and south of the Missouri.”

She smiled, apparently satisfied that he understood—though whether she recognized the words he uttered, he couldn't tell. She stood up from the sand, retrieved her willow stick, and aimed it straight at the tobacco pouch hanging from Ulysses's neck, the tip of her stick touching the colored beads. Then she reached out and tapped several times on the hills she'd fashioned in the sand before speaking clearly in her squawky, unpracticed voice.

“Magpie,” she said.

The Cost of Help

F
or days she'd been lying sick on the heavy robe, unable to rest even in sleep, unable to throw off the dead weight that was pushing her down beneath the surface where the dream was always the same one. She was riding in one of the canal boats in her old neighborhood, sitting in the prow as the boatman poled her along. For no good reason, he refused to dock at Holmen's Street, her stop, and despite her pleas kept poling on, all the way around the circular route—past the castle, past the old brewery, past the library and the stock exchange, and then past Holmen's again, refusing to come alongside and let her out. Even worse, each time they floated by the Gammel Street bazaar, she could see Ulysses sitting at a table near the beer stand. He was naked and shameless, his long limbs splayed out in the sun as he drank dark, foamy ale from a glass mug. And though she called to him and waved at him, begged him to help her, he ignored her completely.

On the third afternoon of her fever, she rose through brightening fathoms into the close air of the Two Blood home, Agnes sitting right beside her. Against the old woman's gentle arguments, Gretta dressed herself and went outside into the blinding sun and walked north toward the house she had never visited but only heard stories of—the house she'd questioned her husband about just once.

“Of course I haven't been there,” he said, and laughed at her.

At the time, she thought he might be embarrassed by her lack of faith in him. Now she wondered if he was laughing at her for how incompletely she knew him, for thinking the distance between them had something to do with a girl, when in fact his secrets were so much deeper. In any case, she would be a fool at this point if she hadn't seen a pattern—first, the meeting in church about the burial of the girl, likely an Indian, and then his fight at the depot over the Indian family. It was true that her husband's sense of fairness had been oddly heightened by the experience of baptism, but he might have chosen other battles besides those two. And so she needed to see this woman face-to-face, no matter what people might think—as if it mattered what they thought. For all she knew, they'd think she was going to Mary for a job!

The house stood just past the town line, behind a wall of pine trees interspersed with young aspens, the trees so thick there was no seeing through them, and then beyond the trees a high board fence besides. Gretta unlatched the gate and walked up to the door, which was opened to her by a girl who looked fourteen or fifteen, with red hair and gray eyes.

“Are you here to see Mary?”

Gretta nodded.

She was led into the house and through the parlor to a side porch, where the girl pointed her to a rattan chair. Until today Gretta had seen Mary only from a distance. But now, entering the room, she looked tidy, more like a schoolmarm than a madam, with a tailored dress that was buttoned to the neck and graying hair pulled into a neat pile on top of her head. Her fingernails were clean and manicured, her posture was straight and her chin proud.

“I was surprised when you didn't come by earlier, after the meeting last winter,” Mary said. “But now after so long, I have to say I didn't expect you.” She spoke precisely, enunciating each word, her voice full and melodic.

“So you know who I am.”

“It's a small town.”

Now that she was here, Gretta wasn't sure what to say—or maybe she didn't know how to say it. She hadn't expected to feel shoddy in the woman's presence, nor underdressed and awkward. “I should have come earlier,” she blurted out. “I wanted to.”

“Were you afraid?”

“I think I wanted to believe him, but I wasn't quite sure if I could.”

“You were afraid.”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you when you asked? After the meeting at the church, I mean.”

“He said he'd never been here. He said he did what he did because it was the right thing—what God would have told him to do, he said, if God made a habit of coming down and telling us things to our face. He said it wasn't Christian to deny somebody a proper burial, only on account of their sins.”

Mary looked off at the sky, which today happened to be the same color as her eyes, a dull blue-green. “He said that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it sounds awfully nice.” She took out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her nose with it. “But you didn't believe him when he said he hadn't been here.”

“I told myself I should,” Gretta said.

“And you were right to do so. He has never been here—unlike some of those men in your church, I won't say most. When your sexton, Mr. Peach, came by and reported to me about the meeting, gave me the council's decision and told me who said what, I had to think for a minute to figure out who your husband was. But then Mr. Peach told me he was a carpenter, and I remembered when he put up the barn back there, for Smith.” She gestured toward her nearest neighbor to the west, a small farm on the other side of a lilac hedge. “That's years ago now,” she added.

“You're not saying this out of respect for my feelings?” Gretta asked. “To cover things over? Avoid further problems?”

Mary laughed. “I don't cover things over, Mrs. Pope. As for problems, I take them as they come.”

Gretta reached out and laid a hand on the woman's forearm. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

Mary smoothed her dress against her legs and shifted on her seat. “Well, then.” She stood up and without further courtesies led Gretta off the porch, back inside the house—which was neat, quiet, and smelled of soap—and through the parlor to the front door.

Gretta, tired suddenly, was aware of a weight she'd been carrying that was gone now. “Is it true,” she asked before leaving, “that the girl who died was an Indian? The one you wanted to bury at Our Savior's?”

“Oh, I didn't want to bury her there—it's what
she
wanted. And no, she was Swedish. I think in all these years I've had one Indian girl, and she didn't stay on long. Of course, people like to think my girls are different from themselves. Black, Irish—or Indian. It helps explain things, I suppose.”

“My husband told me she was Indian.”

Mary Bond shrugged. “How would he know?” she asked.

Walking back through town Gretta felt lighter on her feet, less constricted in her chest, though in fact she was no wiser in regard to the whereabouts of her men. Not that she'd expected to be, she realized. She was passing by Fogarty's place, staying well to the other side of the street, when the banker's son exited the hotel lobby and made a beeline toward her, half running and half walking.

Gretta didn't slow her pace.

“Mrs. Pope, I have something for you,” he called out.

She glanced back at him. It was a bag he was carrying, and Gretta recognized it—a large canvas bag that she'd sewn herself and always used for shopping at the grocer's—and now he held it up for her to see as he came on. She stopped to wait for him.

Herman Stroud was a tall boy with a face that reminded Gretta of a muskrat, his nose flat against his face and a mouth perennially ajar, as if he lacked the energy to close it. He was grinning widely, but she didn't trust him—not after the way he'd picked on Danny at school. “I work for Mr. Fogarty now,” the boy announced, “and he said for me to give you this. He said it's got some things in it you might be needing.”

She took the bag and looked inside. Her boar-bristle hairbrush was there, a sunbonnet, and several pairs of cotton bloomers. To make up for the blush spreading across her face, she said, “Aren't you supposed to be in school, Herman?”

“It's Saturday, Mrs. Pope.”

“So it is.” She turned with the bag and started walking again.

“Excuse me,” Herman said, following. “Mr. Fogarty wanted me to ask if your boys are back yet. If that sheriff finally got busy and sent them.”

Gretta spun around so fast that Herman almost ran into her. “What do you mean? What sheriff?”

Herman's smile had widened into a foolish grin. “
I
don't know,” he said. “The sheriff that sent the telegram, I suppose. Whoever he is. You'd have to ask Mr. Fogarty.”

“What telegram?” Gretta asked, looking past Herman toward the hotel, where she imagined Fogerty watching her now, enjoying this.
The bastard, the fat bastard!
How many ways could he think of to ruin her life?

“You'll have to ask Mr. Fogarty, like I said. But he's gone right now—he'll be back from Fargo tomorrow.” The boy turned and jumped down from the boardwalk and ran flat-footed across the street, calling back over his shoulder as he went: “He said to tell you he'd be happy for a visit. That he'd love to tell you everything he knows.”

Gretta turned immediately, gathering her skirt in her fist, and headed straight for the depot, aware even in the sudden fog of anger that nobody would have anything to tell her. Not the telegraph operator, not the sheriff, not anyone. That as long she stayed here in Sloan's Crossing, there was only one man, apart from Two Blood, who was willing to help her, and that
his
help wasn't the sort she needed—though for all that, she still had to decide whether she would take advantage of it, whether it was worth the cost to her, whether there was another way forward that didn't involve Mead Fogarty.

U.S.P.

H
ornaday took the cigar from his mouth and cleared his throat. “You know what they say about the Badlands, don't you?” Next to him the cowboy Sully was sleeping again, his stubbled chin resting on his chest. The boys, side by side, were sitting across from the two men.

“Nope,” Eli said.

Beyond the window of their car, the earth had fallen away into ancient, cavernous riverbeds, a dream of towers and grotesque castles as far as they could see, a cemetery of fantastic rock in striations of pink and red. Yellow, purple, orange.

“The devil's backyard. Get turned around down there and you never get out. Bottomless gorges and pits of burning lava. I'm just glad we're up here, floating across.”

Cracking an eye, Sully said, “Myself, I had to go after some curly-sided yearlings that wandered down a dry creek. Heard 'em bellering someplace ahead of me. Never found 'em, but I'm telling you, you could smell roast beef coming out of that smoking brimstone.”

Danny glanced at his brother and then across at Hornaday. “You think they have many derailments along this stretch?” he asked.

Sully laughed through his teeth, but Hornaday said, “I asked the conductor that same question, and he reassured me we'll be just fine.”

By late afternoon as they rattled into Miles City—which was laid out south of the Yellowstone—the horizon had regathered itself beneath a pale sky, the reach between here and there an expanse of rolling, gray-brown prairie in all directions. To the west a long, high butte stretched out beneath the sun like a sleeping cougar. The river was blue and wide, its choppy waters dotted with fishing skiffs. There was also a ferry docked at a crooked pier and a big red paddleboat steaming against the current. The dusty town itself was busy with wagons and carts and horses. Down the middle of its rutted central street a herd of a dozen sheep advanced almost formally, neither rushing nor lagging, driven by a mangy dog and a boy carrying an ancient double-barrel shotgun. Eli had never stepped foot on Montana Territory, but there was something here he could feel on his skin, dry and electric, something he could see in the faces, too, with their strong cheekbones and eyes that managed to hold a fair bit of the country's impressive distances—men mostly, all wearing hats and pointed boots, their pants hanging low in the crotch, but women as well, bare legs flashing in their windblown skirts, and hips aroll as if mounted on hidden wheels.

“Here we are,” Hornaday said, drawing up in front of a three-story hotel. “Same place I stayed when I came out here this spring. Best in town.”

The sign above the double door said
DROVER HOUSE
, and on its wide front porch a squat woman in canvas trousers stood talking with a pair of men who leaned forward as if putting each word she uttered to memory. “Say,” she said now, “there's a good-looking boy, ain't you,” and pointed her finger at Danny. Then she turned to Hornaday, mounting the porch steps. “You didn't tell me you had sons.”

“Hello, May. In fact, I don't. These aren't mine.” He went past her to the front door and opened it for her.

She walked straight for the front desk, where she flipped up a hinged section of counter and took her position in front of the mail slots, her short, fat hands splayed out on the countertop. It came nearly to her chin. “Your room is ready,” she said, nodding at Hornaday and Sully, “but what about these boys here?”

“They can stay with us tonight. They've got their own bedrolls.”

“They ain't part of the expedition, I wouldn't think.”

“No.” And without embellishing, Hornaday explained how they were searching for their father, who might have passed through town, or even spent time here.

“When?”

“Last six weeks or so, as I understand it.”

“What's your father's name?” May asked, turning her round face toward Eli.

“Ulysses.”

“That's a mouthful,” May said, “but I've got no recollection of it, and me a person with a knack for names. How would I know if I seen him?”

Eli described their father. Tall, with straight-up-and-down posture and wide shoulders. No extra weight on his bones. Gray hair.

“That sounds like about a quarter of the boys I see in a given span of time.” May lifted a hand to indicate the townful of men just beyond her front door, but then Danny piped up.

“And this here is gone,” he said, reaching up and taking hold of his own right ear.

“What—he's got no ear on that side?”

“The war,” Danny explained. “He's only got a scar there.”

“Well that helps a little. Though now I can tell you I
ain't
seen him. Did he come in on the train?”

The boys nodded. They figured he did, yes.

May tipped her head to one side then the other, as if to shift her memories around, make them retrievable. “Tell you what. Either he came through on the rails and kept on going, or else he needed a horse, maybe a rig, and lit out in that manner. In which case you'd want to go and talk to Church at the livery.”

“We think he might be out here collecting bones,” Eli said.

“All the more reason to see Church.”

The big front door squealed open, and a young man wearing a filthy, ankle-length coat glided in, boot heels echoing on the wood floor. He walked right up to Hornaday and put out his hand. “McNaney,” he said, looking Hornaday up and down. “And I'm guessing you're the fellow that hired me.”

Hornaday introduced McNaney, the hunter who knew his way around the wild country up north, the buffalo expert, but the man wasn't interested in courtesies, barely managing a curt nod to May and Sully. He said, “Fact is, Sir, Lieutenant Smith needs to see you a couple of days ago. He's got a six-mule team and an escort of troops all shined and polished, but he's got to know what else you're wanting. Mounts, wagons, commissary stuffs. I think we best get you over there to the Fort and get things started. With all due respect.”

“I sent word I'd be late,” Hornaday said.

“Yes, and he got that word. But there's other things pressing, and Smith needs to get you situated and off.”

“All right, then.” Hornaday turned to May. “You'll take care of our bags?”

She lifted her hands and chased the men toward the door—“Get going,” she said, “hurry up,” then snapped her fingers at a big stoop-shouldered boy by the window, working at a ledger book. “Stuart, these young men and myself, we'll be gone for a bit. Be sure you tell Dot to finish off the corner rooms upstairs. Hear me?”

“Yes, Ma'am,” the boy drawled.

May led Eli and Danny south past a barbershop that smelled of talc and lye, then past a butcher shop with hams and pullets and ripe-smelling beef rolls, jars of pigs' feet, baskets of brown, white, and speckled eggs. They turned right on Main and headed west. There was a land shop, a dry goods, and a sturdy bank on whose portico sat a man with blond hair, shoulder length, asleep in a rocking chair, rifle on his lap. And then finally the livery, with a big sign that said
CHURCH AND JOHNSON
, an unpainted, slat-sided barn that emitted a rank smell Eli found comforting somehow. Just inside the wide door, a man stood leaning on his pitchfork next to a handcart piled with soiled straw.

“Hello, May. You got helpers?”

“Boys, meet Mr. Church. They're here looking for their old man,” she told him.

He removed his hat, a brimless bowl of grimy leather, and used it to wave the three of them out the door and back into the street. “Let's talk in the air, shall we?” he said. “Now tell me, who's your father?” His eyes were cloudy, and he squinted as if he couldn't quite bring the world into focus.

Eli described his father once more, not forgetting the missing ear this time.

“You'd remember a man like that, wouldn't you?” May asked.

“I would, and I do. Truth is, I'd remember him if he had a pair of ears like a normal fellow. On account of his eyes, the way they looked at me. Burning, kind of. Like he thought I did something to him. Or might.”

“That's him,” Eli said, remembering the times he'd felt that way himself, wondering what it was he'd done wrong.

“Well?” May asked.

“A week, week and a half ago. He came in out of the rain one day, mud to his knees, that storm we had. Lightning took the steeple off that little chapel down south that day. Remember? Said he wanted an ox and a cart. Well, it was mules he actually wanted, but I had none to let. He settled for the ox.”

“For what purpose?” May asked.

“He was after bones. Said he was heading down toward the Tongue River Agency, wanted to know about the trail that goes that way. He didn't seem to know his way around here that much.”

“You sure it wasn't earlier—say, in August?” Eli asked.

“Like I said, the day of that storm.” Church squeezed the leather cap on his head and pushed long strands of greasy hair behind his ears. “Am I right on that, May? About the storm?”

“Yes, middle of the week, not this last but the one before, like you say. A week and a half back.”

Eli said, “And you haven't seen him since.”

“I ain't, no. And now he's in it for seven dollars and fifty cents for the rig. I'd like to be seeing that money. And my property too, for that matter.”

“What did you get for collateral?” May asked him.

“Egad.” Church lifted a fist and knocked on the side of his own head with it. “Hear that? He gave me something, when you see it, you'll think less of me as a man of business.” He led them all back inside and into his corner office. There was a battered desk, a straight chair, and a window looking out on the alley. From a drawer he took the tarnished watch Eli had known his entire life, the watch his mother gave Ulysses as a wedding gift, not gold but steel, and which hadn't kept time since it went over the side of the fishing boat one day on Silver Lake and had to be rescued. The sight of it was like a stab in Eli's belly. It was almost as if his father's face had appeared before him in the flesh.

“That's his all right,” Danny said. “My dad's.”

“Yeah, and it don't work neither. Not so much as a tick. And it won't wind. I didn't make sure to check it when he gave it over to me, dammit.” The liveryman wrapped his big fingers around the watch and held it up in front of his face and scowled at it before putting it back in the drawer.

“It just needs a new spring,” Danny said, repeating what their father had been saying for years, while carrying it around nonetheless. Until now, Eli had never questioned the strangeness of that.

“How long do the bone fellows generally stay out?” May asked.

“A couple of days, a week. Doesn't take long to fill a cart the size of the one I let to him. Though it's hard to say. He might've come back and gone out a couple of times since then, dropping the bones off at Slovin's. Of course the country's full of renegades and highwaymen, so it makes you wonder.” He stretched, arching his back and rotating his head all around on his shoulders. “Sorry I couldn't be of more help.”

“What do you mean, renegades and highwaymen?” Danny said.

Church put a thumb to his mouth and closed an eye, thinking on it. He ignored the warning Eli couldn't help but notice in May's face. “Men that'll put a gun in your nose and take your wallet and your shirt too,” Church said. “Or even just kill you for the sport of it. Men who don't like working. And don't like to be told what's what or where to wipe their dirty feet either.”

“My dad was in the war, and you can be sure he killed people,” Danny said.

“Ah.” The liveryman nodded, then leaned his head toward the battered desk. “I don't figure you boys like candy, do you? Me, I favor the horehounds.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a paper sack and held it out, smiling in a way that wouldn't fool anyone.

“I don't care for 'em, no,” Danny said, and jammed his hands in his pocket.

“How about you?”

Eli couldn't resist. He took one of the translucent little rocks and slipped it in his mouth.

“You best go and visit with Slovin,” Church said. “Though you won't find him at his shop right now. I just seen him on his horse, half an hour back. He likes to take the evening meal at his mother's place, you know, up north.”

“I wish she'd poison him and be done with it,” May said, and ushered the boys out of the barn and into the street.

Behind them, Church laughed. “He ain't that bad,” he said.

A herd of longhorn steers had passed by, and alkaline dust hung in the air. It sent Danny into a sneezing fit. Looking at him, Eli saw that his face looked drawn and gray, and that there was yellow in the whites of his eyes.

“You all right?” Eli asked him.

“Only tired.”

He threw an arm around his brother's shoulders and pulled him forward to catch up with May, who was ten paces ahead and moving fast. “We'll go and talk to that boneman, right?” Eli called to her. “When he gets back from supper?”

May turned around. She shook her head. “I'll have no truck with the man. But Mr. Hornaday will take you over there tonight, I'll see to it. Come on now.”

“What have you got against him?” Eli asked.

“Let's go, boys—I have to get dinner on,” she said, turning and heading off again down the boardwalk. They had to run to keep up with her, Eli half dragging his brother, whose feet didn't want to keep up with his legs.

May fed them that evening in the kitchen, then set them to work clearing off the tables in the dining room and finally washing dishes at a big porcelain sink with a hand pump. By the time she installed them in Hornaday's room, it was past nine o'clock and the sun had been down for an hour.

“Now see here,” she said. “The man has a lot to get ready for, but he'll take you over first thing in the morning, I'll make certain of it. Meantime, you boys stay put. This here is a nice enough town, but come nightfall a good place to stay inside. I'll be at the main desk, in case you need me.”