The Savage Trail (6 page)

“I wonder if they knew,” John said softly.

“Who knew?”

“The folks. I wonder if they knew it was Hobart who killed them.”

Ben loosed a sighing breath that was almost like a whisperedscream a man might hear in a nightmare. John looked over at Ben, wondering if he had any answer to such an unanswerablequestion.

“I reckon they knew. Your pa, leastwise.”

“He recognized Hobart after such a long time, you mean.”

“I don't know if he even saw him, but your pa told me once, after he and Clare come up to Missouri and worked my land, that he figured Hobart wouldn't give up on Clare.”

“What did Pa say?”

“He said somethin' like, ‘Ollie ain't one to give up on what he wants real bad. He's like a snake you think you drove away and then it comes sneakin' back when you ain't lookin'.' ”

“Pa said that?”

“He figured him and Ollie would meet up again some day. Said somethin' about it being Fate, like Fate was writ down in a man's book and warn't nothin' he could do about it.”

John said nothing for several moments as the two rode side by side up the well-traveled but deserted road.

“I reckon, Ben, that Fate had me in its book, too.”

“What do you mean, Johnny?”

“Well, if Fate is written down in a man's book, Ollie's name is in there, and mine, too.”

“You could look at it that way, I reckon.”

“That's the way I look at it, Ben.”

Ben sucked that spent sigh back in, like it was something he couldn't get rid of and he held it like a man holds his breath when he knows something bad is going to happen, but he just doesn't know exactly when.

8

The two riders were shadows, drifting through the Wyoming twilight like weary vagabonds on some forgotten desert with an unpronounceable Arabic name. The lights of Cheyenne glimmered in orange flames behind them like flickeringoil lamps in Bedouin tents. They had ridden into the town and ridden right out, picking up the supplies they needed, separated,their hat brims pulled low, their movements furtive but deliberate.

Army Mandrake had not expected a posse to catch up to them so soon, but he wasn't taking any chances. Dick Tanner, haggard from the long, hard ride up from Denver, was suspiciousof everyone. He kept a hand in front of his face the entiretime he was in the store buying supplies.

“You look like a damned owlhoot,” Mandrake had said when they met up at the edge of town, each with enough grub to last them until they reached Fort Laramie.

“Well, what the hell, Army, that's what I am. You, too.”

“You don't have to look like one. 'Specially in town.”

“Hell, that ain't no town. Stinks of cowshit and stale whiskey.”

“Did you get whiskey?”

“I got enough to carry us to the fort,” Tanner said.

“You better.”

“Fuck you, Army,” Tanner said. “When my cousin gets there, I'm going to tell him what a stupid thing you did back in Denver.”

“Hell, he probably knows already,” Mandrake said.

He thought of the knife in its sheath, hanging from his belt. It still had blood on it, and he liked that. He had taken it out several times, whenever they stopped to rest their horses, just to look at the dried blood and remember slitting a man's throat, seeing his life drain out of him pretty as you please. Blood held a fascination for Mandrake. Ever since he had killed his first chicken, his first rabbit, he enjoyed watching the blood drain out of a creature, rendering it permanently lifeless.

He had killed his own father, stabbing him to death during an argument at home. His mother had seen it. She had screamed and Army had just stood over his father watching him bleed to death on the kitchen table. That was the first man he had killed, and after that, all killings of animals had paled by comparison. That was his kinship with Ollie, he knew. Olliehad a different reason for killing, though. Ollie killed to get even with someone. Mandrake had no such restrictions on his blood habit. He killed because he liked the power it gave him to see a man's lifeblood flow from his body. It made him a littlecrazy when it happened. Crazy and happy all at once. And he liked to use a knife because when the blood spurted onto his hand he knew that he was in command. Life was his to take. Death was his to give.

“What kind of whiskey did you get, Dick?” Mandrake asked.

“Old Taylor. Ollie's favorite. And mine.”

“You boys got good taste.”

“Let's change the subject, Army. I smelt so much whiskey back in town, my throat and belly's got a hankerin' for a swaller.”

“We got to make tracks is all I know.”

“Who we meetin' up with in Fort Laramie? Forget his name.”

“Cresswell. George Cresswell. He's one of 'em.”

“Yeah, and the other'n's somebody named Bosey, or somethin' like that.”

“Bodie. Tucker Bodie.”

“You know 'em, Army?”

"I know Tuck. Don't play cards with him and don't turn your back on him.”

The twilight faded, taking with it the glow that had defined the snowcapped peaks of the Medicine Bows, plungingthe earth into a darkness that removed all definition of rocks, plants, landmarks, the road itself. A chill crept over the land as the first stars brightened, winked, and glimmered like the lights of distant villages on a vast plain. Nighthawks that had scoured the dusk sky seemed to vanish all of a sudden, leaving behind only a hush that triggered the scratchy jabber of crickets, now seemingly safe from preying birds.

“What about Cresswell? Who's he?”

“Supposed to meet him at a saloon in town. Ollie said he'll tell us what to do.”

“Steal rifles is what I heard.”

“I think they done been stole, Dick, was what Ollie told me.”

“Army rifles?”

“Yep.”

“Military?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got a bad feelin' about that, Army.”

“Why?”

“There's a fort there. We'll have soldiers down on us like chicken feathers stuck to hot tar.”

“Don't you fret about that, Dick.”

“How come?”

“Cresswell.”

“Cresswell? I guess I don't get it. He got a bigger pecker than me or you?”

“You'll find out, I reckon.”

“Damn it, Army. You're bein' mighty mysterious. I got to drag this all out of you like pullin' possums out of the sorghum jar. Who in hell is Cresswell?”

“Well, you're gonna find out, so might as well tell you.”

“Go on then, damn it.”

“He's Major Cresswell. And he's in charge of the armory at Fort Laramie.”

Tanner let out a long whistle. It died in the evening air, in the silence.

They rode on as the moon rose, casting a pale light over the country. Eerie shapes appeared, changed form, then disappearedas if they were wandering through a desolate dream-scapewhere nothing was as it seemed and none of it made sense.

“Where are these rifles going to?” Tanner asked after a while.

“If I knew, Dick, I wouldn't tell you.”

“You don't know?”

“Nope.”

“Doesn't seem like a big money deal to me. But Ollie wouldn't be in it unless there was.”

“You're smarter than you look, Dick.”

“Hell, I don't give a damn. But army rifles ain't gold.”

“Don't be too sure about that,” Mandrake said.

“Now you're bein' mysterious again.”

“Somewhere in all this, you can bet your ass there's gold, Dick. Or Ollie wouldn't be ridin' to meet us in Fort Laramie.”

Tanner's horse dropped a few steps behind Mandrake's. He whipped his mount's shoulders with the rein tips and touched spurs to his flanks until the horse caught up.

“Well, that perks me up some,” Tanner said. “Gold. But I sure as hell don't know who'd pay gold for some Spencer carbines.”

“Me, neither,” Mandrake said.

And so they rode on toward Fort Laramie, the mystery hovering between them, the speculation roiling in their minds like a floating stick caught in a whirlpool, submerging and emerging, going around and around and never getting anywhere.

The air turned chill and the moon painted the land with soft pewter as shadows and brush danced in and out of moonlight, silent as the wraiths that floated in their puzzled minds.

9

Ben and john made camp that night on the prairie, far enough from the road that their fire could not be seen. And, as Ben remarked, there was so much open space, they could see or hear anyone coming for some distance.

“I got hard bones in my butt I never knew were there before,” Ben said as he unsaddled Dynamite. “I'm plumb stove up, Johnny.”

“Well, you'll work those kinks out of your rope when you finish gathering us some firewood.”

“You ain't sore?” Ben wore a look of exasperation on his face, evident by the way his lips peeled back from his teeth and his forehead wrinkled up with four deep furrows.

“Some,” John said. “Neither of us is used to the saddle, I reckon.”

“Oh, I'm used to the saddle,” Ben said. “It's Dynamite's blamed stiff legs I can't abide. I swear, it felt like I was getting hit with a pile driver every step that blamed horse took.”

“Sleep on your belly tonight, Ben.”

Ben stopped grumbling after John had a fire going. He sat on two folded-up horse blankets and kept shifting his weight from one buttock to the other as sparks rose skyward like golden fireflies and the skillet sizzled with bacon and the biscuitdough rose and browned, releasing heady aromas into the air.

They ate in silence. John never looked into the fire, but up at the stars or out onto the dark plain. The coffeepot burbled as the water boiled and Ben sniffed that scent, too, a contented smile on his face. He leaned close to the steam and caught the aroma in his nostrils. John listened to the horses chewing on the grain in their feedbags and watched a distant patch of winking stars.

He tried not to think about the dead woman, her husband, and her son, but he felt their presence as if their spirits were among the stars, sailing in a barque along the grand river of the Milky Way.

The fire began to burn down. Neither Ben nor John added any more fuel, so the burning wood would eventually die out and become embers.

“Ben, you said something back there at that wagon when I was looking at the—the dead woman.”

“Yeah? I might have.”

“You said I was looking at eternity.”

“Yeah, I reckon. Kind of.”

“What did you mean, exactly?”

“I dunno, Johnny. I reckon we feel most mortal when we see the body of someone who's been livin', breathin', talkin' and all the life and breath gone out of 'em.”

“But it's more than that, isn't it? I mean, we are mortal. We're all going to die. Sooner or later.”

“Yep. Way I figger it, we go from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little rest stop on the wayside.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Well, I didn't mean it so serious back there. But yeah, I been thinkin' on it for some time. Maybe more since Ollie and his bunch killed all of our friends and kinfolk right in front of our eyes. I figure we come from somewhere, maybe someplaceeternal, and when we die, we just go back there.”

“How? Why?”

Ben snatched a clump of sage, pulled it from the ground, shook off the dirt, and tossed it on the smoldering fire. A fragrantaroma rose with the smoke.

“I don't know how ner why, and nobody on this earth does, Johnny. It's nothin' to fret about, the way I see it. When I was a boy, down in Arkansas, my pa knowed an old Osage Injun. I used to go down by the creek and talk to this feller, name of Green Bow. He said his people believed that they come here from the Spirit World and when they die, they go back to that world.”

“You believe that, Ben?”

“I don't know what I believe. I know when we went to the arbor church I kept listenin' to see if any of the preachers agreed with old Green Bow.”

“And?”

“I reckon they didn't, leastwise in them same words.”

John was silent for several moments. Ben kept adding sage to the fire. The heady scent was strong in their nostrils and the smoke was thick and gray.

“I've puzzled over it some, too,” John said after a time. “Ever since . . . since, you know . . .”

“Yep, I know. I think a man puzzles over death all his life, one way or t'other.”

“Doesn't do any good, does it, Ben? We never find out. Never learn the answers.”

“Nope. Not until we come to that last door.”

“Last door?”

“The one we come in, I reckon. The one that leads us back to eternity.”

“Does that give you comfort, Ben?”

John stretched his legs and wriggled his toes inside his boots. He watched the smoke rise like a fakir's rope and then disappear in the blackness of the sky.

“Way I figger it, John, it don't make no difference what you believe. They's some who says when we're dead, we're plumb dead and there ain't no afterlife. If that's so, then we don't have no memory of this life and don't go nowhere. We just was and that was that. But if there is somethin' beyond that door, well, then the preachers was right all along and we'll know the answer.Either way, it don't matter much right here and now.”

John drew a deep breath and let out a sigh.

“I'm sleepy as hell, Ben. You want to take the first watch?”