The High Divide (24 page)

However she sorted out her feelings, though, and despite anything she did or didn't want, Gretta knew it was too late anyway. She'd managed to prove, over seventeen years, that she was not the woman Ulysses needed. Mrs. Powers, evidently, in just a night or two, had proved that she
was
—by means of her willingness to understand him in ways Gretta could not.

At breakfast an awkward formality disguised the strain. Gretta kept herself in check for Danny's sake while Mrs. Powers bustled about the kitchen. When Gretta and Danny took their leave, the woman stood at her door, wearing again the yellow dress that declared her shape, full and slim in all the places that counted. A curl of rich, auburn hair had fallen into her eyes, and long loops of it reached to her shoulders. Her lips were painted a shade of red intended to send a message:
You can't compete with me.

Gretta had no intention of trying.

They walked to the depot on streets icy from an overnight rain, some of the puddles so wide that mallards and bluebills were landing, breaking the panes of ice. Danny was quiet but lively, his eyes clear. He had eaten two platefuls of food at breakfast and now moved fast along the street, keeping ahead of his mother and describing as he went the dream he had before waking—his father and brother high on a mountain and trying to climb down, the pitch steep and the rocks wet and slick as they descended, both of them slipping at times and having to catch the other, while Danny watched from below, helpless to do them any good.

“What happened?” Gretta asked.

Danny shrugged. “I woke up.”

“Did they make it down?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked, her neck and shoulders already tensing with fear.

“I'm fine,” he answered.

“No pain?”

“No,” he said.

At the depot she watched him for signs, but he wasn't squinting against the light, and his gait wasn't clumsy, and he wasn't clinging to her dress or shifting inside his clothes like he did when a headache was coming on. His jaw was set hard in a way that made him look older, stronger. She went to the ticket window and asked about the next eastbound.

“There's one in half an hour, Ma'am. Where you heading?”

“Minnesota, Sloan's Crossing, third stop inside the state line.”

“For both you and your boy?”

“Yes, please.”

Danny pulled away and looked up at her. He said, “
Home
?
”

She nodded.

“No, we're going to Miles City—that's why we're out here, remember? That's where we have to be.”

“I've changed my mind, Danny. We'll let them come home to us, like your father said we should do. He had his own reasons for leaving, and he'll come home when he's ready.”

“Ma'am?” the ticket agent asked.

A blush rose in Danny's cheeks and bloomed in his ears. “No,” he said, and he backed up a few steps then turned and ran across the gleaming wood floor of the depot and out the side door. Gretta dropped her bag and took after him into the cold brightness of the morning, though she hadn't gone a dozen steps before she tangled in her skirt and fell on the wet cobblestone, regaining her feet in time to see Danny bound over a frozen puddle, cut to his right, and disappear between the hardware and barber shop. Gathering her skirt in her fists, Gretta went after him.

“Danny, you get back here,” she yelled. “Right now!”

In the alley behind the hardware she stopped short, with no idea which way her son had gone. She looked right and then left, not a soul in view.

A sharp rapping sound, like a woodpecker on a healthy tree, drew her eyes up and straight ahead, where a woman gestured from a second-floor window. She pointed west. Gretta waved a thank-you and moved down the alley at a half run, more careful now, knees stinging, hands bleeding, grains of sand wedged into her palms. In the gaps between buildings she stopped and looked both ways, but Danny may as well have flown off into the sky. He was gone. At the next street she had the choice of going right, toward the city's main thoroughfare, or left toward the tracks, but instead continued straight down the alley. She was halfway through the second block when a spot of yellow-gold caught her eye: a sign, or part of one, painted high on the brick wall of a building whose front faced the tracks. It was an advertising sign for flour—a field of ripening wheat with a man in a blue shirt and pants standing in the middle of it. And just beneath this, scuttling up a long ladder, was Danny. As Gretta ran toward him, he climbed faster, then stepped from the ladder onto a wide plank of scaffolding. He rotated himself up there and pressed his back against the brick wall—three stories up—and stared down at her, chin against his chest.

“Don't move,” she told him, trying to keep her voice steady. “Don't move. I'll come and get you.”

Danny shook his head. “I'm staying up here.”

At the base of the ladder, scattered on the ground, was an assortment of paint cans and brushes. She looked around for the painter—or anybody, for that matter—but she and Danny were alone, the only person in sight three blocks away, next to the tracks, a porter pushing a luggage cart across the boardwalk there.

“I'm not coming down till you say we're going to Miles City.” Danny lifted one foot and aimed a toe at the top of the ladder to his left. “I'll kick it over,” he said.

“Stop that!” She grabbed hold of a ladder rung at eye level and began to climb.

Above her, though, Danny braced the sole of his shoe against the top rung. “I mean it,” he yelled. “Don't!”

She was already four rungs up, but now retreated. As her feet hit the ground, Danny gave the ladder a hard sideways shove with his foot, and it slid along the scaffold plank and fell, hitting the dirt with a
whomp.
She ran over and tried to lift it back up, but it was too heavy.

Blood pulsed in a hot line above Gretta's brow. “What's gotten into you?” she asked.

“I'm not going back.”

“Oh yes you are. And you're getting a good spanking to boot.”

“No, I'm not—he's my father,” Danny said, and the strength of his voice took her by surprise, made her notice the shrillness in her own. He'd always been such a mild boy, dependent and pliable, but now as he stood up there, flattened against the brick wall, his head a foot or so beneath the head of the painted farmer in his yellow field, Gretta couldn't help the surge of respect for him that coursed through her, causing her throat to thicken. She had to swallow it down. For the first time ever, she could see what kind of man he was going to be.

“Isn't that paint wet?” she asked.

He wiggled his shoulders against the wall. He nodded.

“How are we going to get you down?” she asked.

“We're not going home,” Danny said.

“All right.”

“You mean it?”

“We'll sit down and talk. We'll figure out what to do, you and I together,” she said, proud of his strength and his will, even if she had no intention of letting him blackmail her.

“I don't think so,” he said.

“How're you doing up there? How does your head feel?”

From below, his face looked pale to her, and his fists were clenched at his sides.

“I said, how's your head, Danny?”

“I'm good,” he said. “We're going to Miles City.”

Something gave way inside Gretta, dissolved, as if her body were telling her she'd eaten something bad. She had to get him down. She said, “Danny, I'm going for help. Please don't move. I'll be right back. Now just stay put.”

She ran out into the street and down to the first corner, where she tried to hail a man passing in a horse and buggy. He was going at a good clip and didn't turn his head. Another man, on a big bay, nodded and waved as he cantered by. Gretta went after him, but then stopped short when a voice addressed her from behind.

“That your boy?”

She turned. The man was smaller than she and wore a paint-splotched tunic that covered him up, neck to shins. The skin of his face was smooth and tight, like linen stretched over a round of cheese. His mouth was turned up in a big smile. She couldn't tell how old he was.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well he doesn't appear much enamored with his place in the world,” the man said. “Let's go and get him down.”

Gretta rushed past him toward her son, but the man overtook her easily and, reaching the ladder, hoisted it up with seemingly no effort. He planted one end on the ground, walked it up to ninety degrees, then turned it toward the building and allowed the ladder's top to fall lightly against the scaffold plank, not a yard from Danny's feet. “Up we go,” he said, and started to climb, chattering as he went, moving as fast as a boy on a stairs. Danny made no effort to resist him, allowing himself to be taken by the arm and eased onto the top rung. Then they began their descent, Danny above, the little man below, steadying him with one hand. They were two stories in the air, Gretta holding her breath, when Danny slipped—leg jutting out, body twisting. And then he was hanging there at the painter's side, clutched like a bag of feed as the small man came down on the run, nearly in freefall, boots rattling against the rungs. He leaped the last few feet for a perfect landing, Danny flopping like an overgrown fish in his arms.

Gretta came forward, but Danny—on his feet now—put out a hand to keep her away.

“What are you doing?” the painter asked him, standing with his hands on his waist, his face perplexed.

Danny's lips flirted with a smile but then flipped over in a frown. “Looking for my father,” he said.

The little man glanced over at Gretta, who could only shake her head, embarrassed. Then he looked at Danny again. “Did you
see
him from up there?” he asked.

“I think I saw him, yes.”

Gretta took her son by the shoulder and started to lead him back toward the depot, but then turned, realizing she hadn't even thanked the man. He was standing there watching them, scratching his skull and chuckling. She started to speak, but he shook his head.

“Go on,” he said, shooing them off with his fingers. “Go find him now. Just go and find him.”

Real Meat

E
li woke fully alert, certain he'd heard gunshots, something, anyway—but there was nothing. The night was still. Easing open the flap of the tent, he stuck his head outside and looked around. Nothing was moving in the camp. There was no one about. Even the horses, picketed along Calf Creek, were silent. He listened for as long as he could, until sleep took him again, and when he woke at first light McAnna was frying the greasy side-pork from the fort's commissary and flipping pancakes. The men were up and moving, most of them, Sergeant Bayliss down on one knee by the creek, shaving, McNaney sitting off at the edge of camp on a little tumble of limestone, having his morning smoke. Two of the troopers were hunched at the fire with McAnna, drinking coffee. Gumfield, who kept mostly to himself, hadn't emerged yet from the tent he shared with Bayliss and the soldiers. So far the weather had been good, with hard frosts at night and warming afternoons. They'd been in permanent camp on Calf Creek for a couple of days now, up on a good plateau that was flanked on the north by the Big Dry and on the south by the Little Dry—the highest country there was between the watersheds of the Yellowstone and Missouri. Promising hunting grounds, according to McNaney and his rancher friends, with ready access to rugged canyons and badlands, dry coulees, deep ravines, hiding places of all kinds.

So far, though, no sightings at all.

Ulysses sat cross-legged on an empty keg in front of the tent, Bible on his lap, while Hornaday crouched next to him, going through his plan for the day. Eli wasn't sure why his father was the man Hornaday had chosen to trust and confide in, though it could be that he enjoyed the stimulation of a contrary opinion, which Ulysses could be counted on to offer.

“McNaney spoke last night with a couple of hands from the Cross Bar, who told him they came across a fresh trail south of here six, seven miles, at the head of the Calf. As many as eight animals, they said.”

“They're sure it was buff?”

“I don't know what they know, only what McNaney said they claim to know. Guess they were headed southwest, toward that rocky tit down there. Remember? We scouted that country. A lot of nice grassy land once you get past the butte. Smooth and rolling.”

“Did you say ‘rocky tit,' Professor?”

“McNaney's word for it.” Hornaday blushed. “Anyway, I got this story late—you heard him ride in. Ten-thirty, eleven. I say we head down there, all of us, and try to cover that whole area at the head of the Calf. Must be seven or eight miles up and down, maybe four across. What do you think?”

“I don't think so.” Ulysses clasped his hands behind his head and made a big fan of his elbows. He stared up at the sky, a dull blue color now, more gray than blue, the last few stars blinking in the west, little pinholes there.

“Why not?” Hornaday tugged on his mustache. “We haven't seen a thing, and now we have a spotting—well, a possible spotting.”

Ulysses reached out and broke off the top of a few strands of grass, rubbed them between his palms and tossed the seeds in the air. They drifted down in a westerly direction, pushed by a breeze from the east. “That's why,” he said. “And look over there.” He pointed south and west, where a band of darkening clouds showed behind the buttes. “Rain by ten, I believe. Or sleet. They'll be staying down in the draws. Probably down along the Porcupine. They were headed that way if the man was reading his signs right. Let's do a couple of parties, one coming into the Porcupine from the top, from the north, the other from down along the east side, going in from the Cross Bar, or thereabouts, and heading upstream. We cover that whole creekbed, ride up the little washes and gullies and coulees that feed it, and meet someplace in the middle.”

Hornaday frowned. “Can't say it smells much like rain to me.”

Ulysses stood from the keg and gestured toward the fire, where the men were plating up and filling their cups with McAnna's coffee. He said, “If I'm going to hunt today, I need some of that mud.” As Eli followed his father to the fire for breakfast, Hornaday ambled down to join McNaney on his rock, in search of another opinion.

Twenty minutes later eight men, all but McAnna and Gumfield, were mounted and ready to ride, their horses blowing steam and cropping the frosted grass.

“We're splitting up,” Hornaday announced. “East wind, and rain's coming. Make sure you've got your ponchos.”

Eli rode with his father and Hornaday and one of the troopers from Fort Keogh, a young private with bushy side-whiskers and a habit of blinking in a flutter whenever he spoke. His name was Moffit. The other group was made up of McNaney, Sergeant Bayliss, and the other two privates. Eli's party rode straight down across the high plateau and into the broken ground, the badlands, where the horses had to step with care and at times be led by the reins, their riders on foot in front of them. By the time the sun was a hand's width above the horizon, they'd dropped into the valley of the Porcupine, moving toward a rendezvous with the others. They saw antelope, hares the size of small coyotes, and a longhorn steer badly lost, with the Cross Bar branded on its rump. But no buffalo—and Hornaday voiced his fear that reports he'd gotten had been trumped up.

“Could have moved on west,” Ulysses said. “More likely, taken by the cowboys. It's hard to resist a chance at the old king, now that he's all but gone.”

By noon they'd ridden some seven miles, according to Hornaday's calculations, two to reach the Porcupine and another five along its channel, sometimes following a dry ravine or coulee for half a mile or so, up to higher ground, for a chance to glass the distance. No signs of anything worth shooting at. It had been raining ice for an hour, and the horses were slick and blowing, the riders wet clear through, despite their ponchos.

After a cold lunch of beans and biscuits in an old growth of wild chokecherry trees, they headed south again and finally at three o'clock met up with the party of Bayliss and McNaney, the lot of them in a state of high excitement. The sleet had tailed off and the skies were starting to clear.

“Nine, we saw nine, and drove them this way.” It was McNaney talking. “Ain't you seen anything at all?”

Hornaday urged his big mare up the bank of the ravine and across a short flatland to a high, broad hill topped with rock, with McNaney, Ulysses, and Eli following after and then the rest of them, all dismounting finally and climbing the last stretch to a tumble of limestone piled up like an ancient cabin fallen in on itself. Hornaday glassed the entire country, 360 degrees, moving clockwise and humming a tune Eli had heard before, a march that brought to mind the traveling circus with its brass band that came to Sloan's Crossing when he was small. Hornaday swiveled the other way now, counterclockwise, a methodical sweep, stopping every few seconds and backing up, before moving again, humming all the while.

From below, McNaney called out, “What do you see, damn it.”

Hornaday had stopped moving, stopped humming. He'd found something off to the north and watched hard, his face like stone. Eli heard him suck in his breath, as though he'd been hit by a smell and was trying to place it.

“What?” Ulysses said.

Hornaday lowered the glasses and looked around, a smile broadening his face before he caught himself and put the mask back on—the scientist and curator, the man of purpose. “The cowboys were right,” he said, and he held up an open hand, all five fingers, clenched them into a fist and then showed four. Nine animals. He handed the glasses to McNaney, who stepped up onto the rock table in Hornaday's place, for a look. Then Ulysses. When it was Eli's turn, he found with his father's help the gentle swale at the head of a small ravine—and the nine animals lying there regal and shaggy in the dusty green sage.

“We must've been riding too close to the valley floor, and missed them,” Ulysses said. “There's no high perch to make a stand, not that I can see. But I believe we can get up on them through the ravine.” He turned to McNaney. “What do you think?”

McNaney nodded.

They climbed down off the rocks and made their plan, which wasn't complicated: Retrace the main channel of the Porcupine to the mouth of the ravine, follow it southwest, single file, to its head, then make a full-on charge, with any luck surprising the beasts.

Eli rode toward the rear of the file, with two of the troopers from Fort Keogh behind him—privates Moffit and Williams—and everybody else ahead. The Spencer he left in its scabbard, a round in its chamber. He wondered how this would go, trying to shoot from the saddle. He'd fired the gun only three times, twice at the fort when it was issued to him, and then again on the first day, when he shot the antelope. He knew the recoil was strong enough to throw him off balance, but trying to hold the barrel steady while mounted on a galloping horse besides—it didn't seem possible.

They'd gone a mile or so when the crack of a gunshot caused Eli to rein up and spin around in his saddle. One of the privates, Moffit, was lowering his gun, smoke trailing from its barrel. He shrugged,
Oh well,
and managed a weak smile as he shoved the rifle back in its boot. The other trooper, Williams, was urging his horse to the top of the ravine, in the direction of Moffit's shot. Ahead, Hornaday and Bayliss had wheeled around and were heading back at a full gallop, flying past Eli and reining up on either side of Moffit, whose smile had fled. The trooper's eyes were all aflutter.

“Are you dimwitted, man?” Hornaday asked. “You think we're on some kind of a turkey shoot here? What's wrong with you?”

“A redskin, I think I saw one. On the ridge.” He pointed to the right, due west, toward the red willow at the top of the ravine. Williams was up there now, off his horse and holding the front brim of his hat with both hands, scanning the distance.

“You
think
?” Bayliss said.

“I think so, yes. Sitting his horse up there.”

“And so you fired on him,” Hornaday said.

“I couldn't tell what he might do, sir.”

Ulysses rode up, his brow knotted, and listened as Hornaday filled him in. “I thought the wars were over,” he said.

Hornaday aimed a finger at Bayliss. “Tell your man to ride on back. I don't want him along today.”

“He's just watching out for us. And he's only a kid.” Bayliss rubbed his belly and turned to Private Williams, who was back down off the ridge and reining in his big white horse. “What've you got?” he asked him.

“Saw a bunch of antelopes skedaddling.” He glanced at his friend Moffitt with a pained, flat smile. “That's it.”

“All right then.” Sergeant Bayliss turned to Moffit and waved a hand to the north. “You're done for the day. Go on, get.”

“Yes, sir.” Moffitt kicked his horse, which turned its head and swiped at the soldier's knee before starting off at a trot in the direction of camp.

The ravine widened, rising into grass and sage, and by the time all seven riders emerged from the cut, the small herd was on the move, drifting in a southwesterly direction across the rolling tableland. McNaney, Ulysses, and Hornaday unbooted their rifles and galloped after them, Eli and the rest following behind. When the gap had closed to forty or fifty yards, the buffaloes started running in earnest, no longer nine of them but only eight, their bodies surprisingly narrow as viewed from behind, slicing this way and that, moving as one being, their heads tucked low, shoulders thrusting.

The roar of hooves against the earth and the motion of their surging bodies, and also the smell of them—a mix of rank cow and dead grass—was nearly enough to unhorse a man. Eli couldn't bring himself to unboot his rifle, let alone free both hands to take a shot. Up ahead, though, a gun boomed, and a small yellow cow broke from the herd in a stuttering, stumbling run, one of the riders pulling up and swerving to stay with it. Below him, Eli's mare hesitated. There was a break in its cadence, a tremor, and he snapped the reins like a whip, afraid of losing ground. “Come on!” he yelled. And then in front of him a horse went down, its rider tossed in the air, the animal tumbling and rolling, and Eli's mare pivoted and leaped sideways, nearly going down itself. He hauled back on the reins and managed to turn the mare, the world quieting as the chase moved on without him. Eli saw for the first time the pocked ground they were on, holes everywhere, and there was his father, lying on his back, the lathered gelding on its knees beside him.

Ulysses rolled over and sat up. He examined himself, rocked his head to one side then the other. “Will you look at this,” he said. “Damn prairie dogs.”

“Didn't seem to slow the buff down much.” Eli was off his mare now and he gave his father a hand up. “You still in one piece?”

“I'm not the one that put my foot in a hole.” Ulysses bent to run his hands over the legs of the big gelding, which jerked to its feet, snorting and blowing. “I think he came through it,” Ulysses said.

Off to the south the hunt had disappeared over the rise, only Hornaday and McNaney having stayed with it. But here, scattered over two hundred yards, Eli saw two riders off their mounts and walking, picking their steps through the prairie dog town. A quarter-mile west and north, yet another man, still mounted—it looked like Bayliss—lifted his rifle and drew down on a yellow cow that stood facing him. The barrel jumped. Then a brief silence before the report reached them.

“Is that the sergeant?” Ulysses asked. “We better go and see what he's got.”

They all converged on Bayliss and the little cow, which was bleeding out in the grass. Bayliss was having trouble with his horse—it reared and shrieked, eyeballs rolling in its head.

“Some don't like the blood smell.” This from the young private, Williams.

“Or the smell of buff,” Ulysses said.

Bayliss got the skittish roan back on all four legs and walked it off twenty paces to picket it. Then he came back and joined the circle that had formed around the little cow, a yearling from the look of it, maybe three hundred pounds, wet.