The Homesman (18 page)

They edged into the eastern half of the Territory. The lay of the land was the same, flat as a tabletop for the most part, with now and again a ridge or a draw or wooded river bottom. Sod houses were more frequent, even a few log cabins, and fields that had been cultivated, and Briggs complained of the effort required to avoid them. Hunting was spotty, there was less game, and having used up the pork and potatoes, Mary Bee relied increasingly on the sacked provisions, the cornmeal and beans, which made for a monotonous diet. Then, for three days in a row, they headed into a careening wind of such force that the wagon swayed and Mary Bee believed she might be blown from the seat. It scoured the skin. It dried eyes. It blocked nostrils with dust. It made ears ache. It howled under the wagon at night and robbed sleep of rest. After three days the whole party was exhausted—save the mules. They set an example. Briggs said he was getting fifteen to twenty miles a day out of them, wind or no wind. They were troopers.

There were signs of travel, too, along their route now, boxes and farm implements and pieces of prized furniture left behind by emigrants to lighten their loads, and signs of tragedy as well. They passed several graves one day, weather-worn mounds of earth with handmade headboards or crosses. In the late afternoon they rolled within ten feet of another, but here the mound had been torn open. Mary Bee, who had the reins, stopped the wagon and asked Briggs why.

“Indians. For the clothes.”

She handed him the reins and climbed down and went to see more closely. Bones were scattered about the grave, small bones. She asked Briggs why.

“Wolves.”

She shuddered, and spied a headboard facedown in the grass. She turned it over and read the chiseled inscription:

CISSY HAHN 11 YRS 2 MOS 9 DAYS

GOD LOVED HER AND TOOK HER UNTO HIM

Mary Bee felt her eyes fill. Eleven years old. A fifth-grader? She picked up the headboard, took it to the wagon, showed the inscription to Briggs, and then, remembering, read it aloud. “Give me the shovel, please.”

“Why?”

“I want to tidy up this grave.”

He sat like a bump on a log.

“The shovel, please.”

“Getting late.”

“I don't care.”

“Suit yourself. I'm going on. You'll have to ride the gelding.”

He would not lift a finger. He let her haul down her saddle from the wagon top and cinch it on and tie the freighter's horse to a bush before he rose and got the shovel from the seat compartment and handed it to her. No sooner done than he clucked to the mules and away they went, leaving her just as he had the afternoon she visited the emigrant train.

To tidy up the grave turned out to be a much longer and more arduous job than she had expected. She toiled in twilight, digging down into it until she struck something and what seemed an unholy stench sickened her. She collected the scattered bones and placed them in the earth and dug extra shovelsful of thawed ground from around the grave with which to rebuild the mound, higher and wider, invulnerable to animals. After smoothing it she set the headboard and hammered it into an end of the mound with the flat of the shovel, then stood for a minute in silence, sweating and saying a prayer for the soul of Cissy Hahn. When she opened her eyes it was dark.

The calico was snuffy. When she untied him, he backed off and stamped a two-step, describing a circle, tossing his head and tugging her around with him by the reins. She dropped the shovel and held on with both hands. Finally, after a last whuff and a sashay left, he stood, eyeing her with suspicion, and she came close and talked into his ear, softly, saying she would call him “Shaver” and they'd be friends because they both needed a friend. He attended her, but when she eased into the saddle he dashed off in a fast trot in what she was sure was the wrong direction, and not until she had almost bent the bit in his mouth did he have the courtesy to stop. She stood in the stirrups. The moonlight was meager. She couldn't find a fire anywhere. He should have started a fire for her. As it sank in how alone she was, even her horse a stranger, and how lost, truly lost, she began to go void. Darkness was in her, a darkness deeper than the night, and she felt ice forming. She shivered, then with a shake of the reins wheeled the horse and set him trotting in the opposite direction. She gave him his head a mile one way, then a mile another, she wore out her eyes for a pinpoint of light somewhere, anywhere, on the prairie. Her self was solid fear, it blocked her breathing, her mind trotted this way and that in panic, and finally she threw away the reins and set the animal under her free to wander the world west of the Missouri. Whether she saw the groundstar first or Shaver did was immaterial. All at once they were speeding to light and into light and she was tumbling off the horse aware only of a man and women seated by a fire as she stumbled, sobbing for breath, up a step into the wagon box and closed the doors behind her. There, sealed, safe, she struggled for breath with sounds that were like wails. The ice in her melted, streaming down her cheeks in the form of tears. After listening to her cry long enough, Briggs got up and approached a wagon window.

“What about supper?”

“Why didn't—you light a fire for—me?”

“I did.”

He waited till she cried another quart. “Where's the shovel?”

That brought her up short.

“You're trying to—drive me—crazy, too!”

She was having one of her spells. Nothing he could do except not let her rile him. “Cuddy, the hell I am,” he said. “I'm trying to move a load to the river. As quick as I can. And draw that three hundred. That's all there is, there ain't no more.”

He walked back to the fire. He'd skin out in the early morning and get the damn shovel. He'd never come across such a flighty damn female as this one. Of course, she was an old maid, which accounted for the majority of it, and what she probably needed, to settle her down, was a good man and a good bedding and some brats. Still, he couldn't shake what she'd said: that he was trying to drive her crazy, too. No such a thing. He didn't have to. She was driving herself, and doing a first-rate job of it. Fits and tears and wheezes, snapping at him one time, the women another, till you wanted to take a stick to her. Briggs was hungry. Supper was going to be late if ever. He climbed up on the wagon, opened his bedroll, got out his jug, and had a snort. He could hear her boo-hooing in the box under him. As far as he was concerned, she could cry till the cows came home.

•   •   •

Hedda Petzke was taken sick just before a sunrise, shaking with cold and calling out. Mary Bee covered her with her own blankets and sat up with her till light and time to start the fire. When she could return to her, the poor woman was burning up with fever. It must be the ague, Mary Bee decided, because these were the symptoms, intermittent chills and fever, and she had along none of the proper specifics—Dr. Easterly's Ague Killer or Dr. Christie's Ague Balsam, both widely used and praised. Nor had she quinine or mustard for poultices or Jamaica Ginger for tea, the standard home remedies. She asked Briggs if they might stay the day there, or until Mrs. Petzke turned for the better, but he said no, they weren't lollygagging around over somebody sick, she'd get well or she wouldn't, so beds were rolled, wagon loaded, trailing horses tied, mules hitched, and off they rattled, Hedda Petzke on blankets on the floor of the wagon between the benches, Mary Bee in with her and the other women, using a wet rag in a bucket for cold compresses on her patient's forehead.

But she was mistaken. It was not the ague, because Hedda Petzke stayed feverish all the long, miserable day in the wagon, and that night after supper, after Briggs and the other women were bedded down, Mary Bee sat up with her by the fire wetting the rag, wringing it out, replacing it on her forehead, herself as miserable as the day had been. The night was starry and still except for the sounds of the sick woman, prostrate by the fire under blankets, and the snuff and click of the animals out in the dark, picketed and grazing. In the middle of it, Briggs came to the fire from his bed by the wagon.

“Can't you quiet her down?”

“No, I can't.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“I don't know. It can't be the ague. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'd never forgive myself if I lost her.”

Briggs went back to his bed, rustled about, and returned with his buffalo robe, a blanket, and his precious jug. He laid the robe over Mrs. Petzke, pulled the blanket around his shoulders, sat down, and treated himself.

“She needs to sweat,” he said.

“She's already on fire.”

“Never mind.”

Mary Bee took off her rabbit hat. “How long now to the river?”

“Two weeks. Less. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much more time you fritter away.”

He was cross. He was losing sleep.

“I can't wait,” she said. “I want to see a real town, with streets, and trees.”

“A real saloon,” he said.

“And houses made of wood.”

“With lamps.”

“And people.”

“And a fiddler.”

“A hot bath.”

“Corn for the mules.”

“In a big tub.” She sighed. “Hebron. Hebron, Iowa. I dream of it.”

The fire was low. Mary Bee got up, poked at it, added wood, sat down again. “Where do you plan to cross?”

“Kanesville maybe. I dunno yet.”

“How far is that from Hebron?”

“Mile or so.”

The blanketed woman groaned, a series of groans that carried far from the fire. Mary Bee came to her knees, rewet the rag, and bathed her face with it, then lowered her covers and bathed her throat and hands.

“Oh, I feel so helpless. I pray God for her. When her husband came home, and her boys, they found four dead wolves—I told you. She'd killed four wolves. She's been through so much already, and now this. To come this far and lose her would be sinful. It would break my heart.”

Briggs commented with his jug. “You mailed that money?”

“You saw me, in Loup. I'm sure Mrs. Carter has it by now. As soon as we meet her you'll have it and be free to go.” Mary Bee covered her patient again and sat for a time staring into the fire. At length she said, “I wish you'd treat me decently the rest of the way.”

He was silent.

“I have said some things that I regret. I apologize. I've been under a great strain.”

The new wood blazed, and she looked into his face and found nothing.

“If it will make you more kindly to me, Mr. Briggs, I'll confess something. I'll confess I couldn't have done this without you.”

“Well, well,” he said.

“Saving you from hanging—you've repaid that ten times over. I wouldn't have made it a week from Loup by myself. You've been right more often than wrong. Mrs. Svendsen, for example. I had no idea how dangerous she could be. You were wise to strap them in. And then the Indians.”

“I hadn't swapped 'em your horse, we'd be dead, the lot of us.”

“I know. You were right about the wagon train, too. I couldn't imagine they would turn us away.”

“The wagon,” he said. In case she forgot, he was glad to remind her.

“I could never have repaired it.”

“The botts.”

“I simply don't know how to doctor stock. Charley Linens has always done it for me. I could never have tracked Arabella Sours either.”

“She saved my bacon. Freighter had her. She hadn't shot him, he'd have killed me.”

“Mercy. And when the mules wouldn't go, and you tricked them into it. Well, it's a very long list, and I'm truly grateful.”

Briggs hawked and spat into the fire. The cool night air affected his catarrh. Then she said something she shouldn't have but couldn't resist.

“And you dance very well.”

He scowled. She bit her tongue. But she was spared his response, whatever it might have been, because Hedda Petzke twisted and turned and groaned again, loudly.

“Hell,” said Briggs. “Get me a cup.”

She did as bade, searching in the grub box nearby until she found a cup. He poured whiskey into it from his jug, sloshed the jug, listened, poured a bit more, and set the cup in the coals of the fire. The higher fire and the lack of his hat let Mary Bee have a sharp look at him. His cheeks and chin were stubbled. He shaved only now and then. His hair had considerable gray in it. If eyes were the windows of the soul, he was short a soul, for in them there was nothing she could discern or guess, nothing. His was an ordinary face. He was an ordinary man. Neither the ripped sleeve of his coat nor the ragged red scarf always about his neck set him apart. Except for the charred grip of the revolver under his belt, and the special bowie knife, he was nondescript. In a crowd you could lose him and never care. For that matter his name was probably not “Briggs,” he had intimated as much himself. Summed up, he was a cipher, and just as it made no sense to witch for water in a place where none was ever found, so it was absurd to plumb for depths in him there couldn't possibly be. His age stumped her. He had to be on the shady side of forty, that was certain, but a difference of ten years between them made no difference. The balding widower Clara Marsh had married was at least fifteen years her senior, but so far as Mary Bee knew, she was content as a cow in clover.

Briggs poked the cup out of the coals to let the liquor cool a trifle. He tilted his jug again and discovered it empty.

“Goddammit,” he said.

He stood up in a temper, held the jug at arm's length with a finger through the handle, and taking two steps whirled and hurled it into the darkness. Next he picked up the cup, knelt beside Mrs. Petzke, put an arm under her shoulders, raised her, and forcing the rim between her lips, poured the warm whiskey into her with the same solicitude he had shown the off mule while getting tobacco tea down its gullet. She spluttered, choked. When she had somehow got it down, he laid her back, pitched the cup, and seated himself in his blanket.