This Calder Range (21 page)

“You don't understand Indians and the way they think,” Benteen stated. “They respect strength. I promised a harsh penalty if he came against me—more severe than he would inflict. That's why he agreed to accept five cows, and that's why his braves won't stampede the herd tonight.”

“Cattle.” Her voice trembled on the word. “That's all you ever think about. You don't care about me or anyone else. Just as long as those damned cows make it to Montana.”

“Those ‘damned' cows represent our future.” He cuttingly emphasized the swear word Lorna had used. “And, yes, that's all I care about! You and everyone
else should be able to look out for yourselves. You aren't a bunch of dumb animals. You can think. You've got a mind.”

Turning on his heel, Benteen strode to his horse and swung into the saddle.

Hot tears were welling in Lorna's eyes. “I don't have to ask where you're going,” she told him angrily. “You're going out to check on the cattle!”

He gave her a cold look and reined his horse in a half-circle. Her shoulders started shaking, but she wouldn't cry. She glanced at Mary, expecting her sympathy.

“That wasn't fair, Lorna,” Mary said. “He does care.”

“No, he doesn't,” she retorted. “Not about us. Only those animals. Those stupid animals.”

More than anything, she wanted to crawl into the back of the wagon and have a good cry, but it would be just exactly what Benteen expected her to do. She walked stiffly back to the pan of dishes.

“Let's get this cleaned up,” she declared. “As my husband would say, we've got to move on.”

Behind her back, Rusty and Mary exchanged glances but said no more on the subject. It was between her and Benteen. It never did any good to interfere between a man and his wife, even with the best of intentions.

Before they had the last of the gear stowed away, Benteen rode back into the noon camp, followed by young Joe Dollarhide with Lorna's buckskin in tow. She wasn't in any mood to be placated by being treated to an afternoon ride, but she wasn't given any choice as Joe tied his horse to the back of her wagon and climbed into the seat to take up the reins and drive the team off. She glared at Benteen, cinching the sidesaddle on her horse while the other wagons pulled out.

“I'm not interested in riding with you,” Lorna stated when he finally looked at her.

“Come on. I'll give you a leg up.” He waited beside her horse until she grudgingly came to him.

With the buckskin standing quietly, Benteen linked his fingers together to make a cup of his hand. She stepped into it and made him take her full weight to lift her up to the saddle, then ground her hard-soled shoe into his hands before drawing her foot away.

Benteen waited until she was settled comfortably in the sidesaddle and had her skirts adjusted, then mounted his horse. “Ready?” His face wore no expression when he looked at her.

At Lorna's stiff nod, he sent his horse forward. They cantered parallel with the herd for a short distance, then passed. Then Benteen veered his horse to the east and Lorna followed. No attempt was made to break the brittle silence between them.

After they had traveled several miles and were well away from the herd, Benteen stopped his horse by a stand of oak trees and dismounted. Lorna didn't know his purpose for stopping here, so she didn't alight until Benteen came over to lift her down. Under the shade of the trees, she loosened the strings to her bonnet and let it fall down her back.

“I suppose there's a reason for us stopping here,” she challenged, looking around. If he intended to apologize and romance her, she wasn't going to make it easy for him.

“Have you ever shot a gun before?” he asked. “A rifle or a pistol?”

Lorna stared at him, a little stunned that her guess had been so wide of the mark. Her eyes widened when Benteen lifted the long-barreled revolver from the holster belted around him. He began removing the bullets; the click-clicking sound seemed ominously loud.

“Have you?” Benteen repeated.

“No.” Her father hadn't even permitted her to touch the weapons in his store, fully aware that her mother would have been horrified if he had.

“I'll show you how it works.”

While he began explaining the functions of the
hammer, the chamber, and the trigger, Lorna had difficulty paying attention. She didn't see why she needed to know this. What was more, she didn't
want
to know anything about guns.

“Here.” He held out the pistol to her. “Get the feel of it.”

She hid her hands behind her back. “No.” She refused to touch it and eyed him with a wary frown.

Benteen was patient. “Take it. It isn't loaded.”

“What's happening, Benteen?” A wave of uneasiness washed through her. “Ever since we left Fort Worth, you seem to be changing right in front of my eyes. When you were courting me, you were always kind and attentive. You never raised your voice to me. Lately, you're always snapping at me about something. You just get harder and harder every day. What happened to the man I knew in Fort Worth—the man I married? I'm sure he wouldn't be insisting that I learn how to shoot a gun.”

“There's a big difference between Fort Worth and here. There aren't any sheriffs who will come if there's trouble. There aren't any streets or roads. You can't depend on anyone but yourself,” Benteen stated. “This country weeds out the cowardly and the weak. You have to be hard if you're going to survive. You can't fight this land and make it bend to what you want. You have to adapt to it. I'm not really any different, Lorna. The man you knew in Fort Worth was what the town allowed me to be.”

Once she wouldn't have understood what he was saying, but she had lived on the trail for more than a month. There were so many things she accepted that would have repulsed her before.

“Maybe it isn't just you,” she admitted. “Look at me and how different I am. I've worn the same dress for days without washing it. I haven't bathed since we left Fort Worth. My hands. My face. My hair is practically caked with dust and grime.” She lifted her gaze to him, bewildered by her own changes. “I never used to be
cross. When you're short with me, I just want to hit back.”

“I've noticed.” His voice was dry. “Life's tough enough out here, without there being trouble between you and me.”

For a long second they looked at each other; then, with a little cry, Lorna went into his arms, tilting her head for his kiss. His arms crushed her to his solid male length, the pistol still held in his hand. Their lips moved hungrily together, as if clinging to something they'd almost lost. The sweaty, dusty smell of him was blocked out. There was only the hard vitality of his body and the satisfying pressure of his mouth on hers.

When the kiss ended, Lorna continued to press her cheek against the bristly roughness of his. Her eyes were closed in a holding on to of the moment of closeness.

“Sometimes I'm frightened by what's happening,” she admitted in a whisper.

“Nothing can frighten you unless you allow it,” Benteen replied, and pulled back his head to look at her, bringing his hands up to push on her shoulders and force her feet onto the ground. The butt of the pistol grip dug into her flesh. “It's time you learned how to shoot.”

Reluctantly she withdrew from his embrace and stared at the gun, before finally taking it. It was heavy. Benteen had handled it as if it weighed next to nothing.

“First see if there's any bullets in it,” Benteen instructed.

“But you unloaded it.”

“Check for yourself,” he insisted. “Do you remember how to do it?”

“Yes, I think so.” Lorna turned the cylinder as she had seen him do and confirmed the gun was empty.

“Pull the hammer back a few times and squeeze the trigger so you can get the feel of it,” he told her. She had to use both hands to hold it. “And remember,
never,”
he emphasized, “point it at anyone, even when the gun is empty.”

The hammer and trigger were stiff. Coupled with the weight of the gun, they made her attempts feel very awkward. After she had done it a few times Benteen took the gun back and began returning the .45-caliber bullets to their chambers.

“I'll load it with five bullets.” He stressed the number and suggested, “Why don't you pick out a target?”

Lorna chose something big. “That tree trunk.” She pointed to a large oak not too far away.

He appeared to do no more than swing the gun toward it, holding it with only one hand. The sudden explosion and flash of blue fire from the pistol startled Lorna. She flinched and closed her eyes at the deafening noise.

“That's what it's going to sound like when you fire it,” he said, and smoothly shifted his grip on the revolver to hand it to her butt-first. “It will kick back against your hands, so hold on to it firmly. And don't close your eyes.”

“Did you hit the tree?” she asked, feeling very nervous and not at all eager to go through with these lessons.

“Yes.” Crow tracks of amusement fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Using both hands, she lifted the gun straight out from her and closed one eye to squint down the barrel. Her heart was beating madly in her throat. “Don't try to aim it.” Benteen lowered her arms and adjusted the grip of her right hand to lay a forefinger along the barrel. “Pretend you're pointing your finger at the tree and squeeze the trigger.”

The instructions sounded very simple. She even thought she had done what he told her. When she squeezed the trigger, the gun exploded and seemed to almost jump right out of her hands. Instinctively she closed her eyes.

“You shot off a leaf on the top of the tree,” Benteen informed her. “Try it again, but this time look at the trunk and point your finger at the spot you're looking at.”

“I don't know why we're doing this,” Lorna protested, wanting to end the lessons now. “I'm never going to shoot at anything.”

“I hope you never have to,” Benteen stated. “Try again.”

Lorna tried again—and yet again—with the same degree of failure. “How many bullets are left in the gun?” he asked.

She had to stop and count how many times she and Benteen had fired it. “One.”

“Always leave one bullet in the gun. Never fire that last one at anything.” His expression was so serious that it simply made Lorna more uneasy about this whole experience. “Save it for yourself.”

“So I won't be taken alive by Indians.” Every female in the frontier had heard stories about women killing themselves rather than being captured by Indians. Lorna was no exception. She shuddered at the thought. With today's meeting fresh in her mind, she tried to reason away her fear with the unlikelihood of it ever being necessary. “You don't really believe that Spotted Elk or his band would attack us, do you?”

“I wasn't thinking of these reservation Indians so much as I was the Sioux up in the Montana Territory.” Benteen slipped more bullets out of his cartridge belt. “Load it and try again.”

“Why don't I practice another time?” Lorna felt shaky inside.

“No. We're gonna stay here until you either hit the tree trunk or I run out of bullets.”

It was typically quiet around camp that evening. Most of the drovers lay exhausted, slumped against their saddles, rolled cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Yates was reshoeing one of the cow ponies
over by the chuck wagon, the tap of his hammer out of rhythm with the song Woolie was playing on the harmonica. Joe Dollarhide was sitting next to two drovers, all ears as they traded tall tales.

Lorna was sitting with Mary. Ely had drawn first watch on night herd and Benteen was out making one last turn around the bedground to see that all was quiet. In the dimming light, the sewing needle made quick flashes of silver as it darted in and out to secure a button to one of Benteen's shirts. Lorna had already related to Mary an account of her first shooting lesson that afternoon, and Benteen's warning about saving a last bullet. That seemed to amuse Mary.

“Why are you smiling about something like that?” Lorna frowned.

“I was just remembering a sad story I heard one time.” Mary paused in her mending. “A young wife had just come out from the East to join her husband, who had homesteaded a farm in Kansas. I imagine she'd been filled with horror tales about the Indians before coming. Anyway”—she shrugged and began stitching again—“she'd only been out here a couple of weeks. Her husband was out in the fields, and she was alone in their sod house. She heard someone ride up, evidently looked out the window and saw two Indians. She was probably certain that she was about to be kidnapped and raped, so she ran to the trunk and dug out her husband's service pistol and killed herself.”

“And the Indians?” Lorna prompted.

“There's the irony of it. They were friends of her husband. One had been educated in a school back East and had come to visit,” Mary said to explain her wry smile.

Day after day, the prairie undulated in front of the trail riders and wagons. The sun seared the grass to a shade of gold-brown while ten thousand hooves stirred up choking clouds of dust. The only sounds that made themselves heard were the rattle and rumble of the wagons, the cracking of horses' ankle joints, and the steady thud of walking hooves and the muffled clatter of horns banging into each other. It dulled the senses and the mind.

It was a season ripe to breed violent storms, boiling up suddenly and erupting in a fierce display of thunder, lightning, and rain. On those stormy nights—six different occasions during the drive through the Indian nation—it was every man in the saddle, trying to hold the herd. Twice the cattle stampeded, but they never ran in the right direction, which was north. In total, three days were lost rounding up strays, and the tally still came up short twenty-seven head, but no lives were lost.