Butcher's Crossing

by John Williams

  Francine nodded, and walked to a table where another girl and a man were sitting. Andrews watched her until she sat down; when he turned, he saw that Schneider’s eyes were still upon her. Schneider blinked slowly once, and turned his eyes to Andrews. Andrews looked away.

  All of the men except Charley Hoge filled their glasses with beer; he took the bottle of whisky before him, uncorked it, and let the pale amber liquor gurgle into his glass nearly to the brim.

  “Where are we going?” Schneider asked again.

  Miller set his glass of beer to his lips and drank in long even swallows. He put the glass on the table and turned it with his heavy fingers.

  “We’re going to the mountain country,” Miller said.

  “The mountain country,” Schneider said. He put his glass on the table as if the taste of the beer had suddenly become unpleasant. “Up in the Colorado Territory.”

  “That’s right,” Miller said. “You know the country.”

  “I know it,” Schneider said. He nodded for several moments without speaking. “Well, I guess I ain’t lost much time. I can get a good night’s sleep and start back for Ellsworth early tomorrow morning.”

  Miller did not speak. He took his glass up and finished his beer, and sighed deeply.

  “Why in the hell do you figure to go clear across the country?” Schneider asked. “You can find plenty of buffalo thirty, forty mile from here.”

  “Summer hides,” Miller said. “Thin as paper, and just about as strong.”

  Schneider snorted. “What the hell do you care? You can get good money for them.”

  “Fred,” Miller said, “we’ve worked together before. I wouldn’t lead you into something that wasn’t good. I got a herd staked out; nobody knows anything about it except me. We can get back a thousand hides easy, maybe more. You heard McDonald; four dollars apiece for prime hides. That’s four thousand dollars, six hundred dollars for your share, maybe more. That’s a damn sight better than you’ll do anywhere else around here.”

  Schneider nodded. “If there’s buffalo where you say there is. How long has it been since you seen this herd?”

  “It’s been some time,” Miller said. “But that don’t worry me.”

  “It worries me,” said Schneider. “I know for a fact you ain’t been in the mountain country for eight, nine years; maybe longer.”

  “Charley’s going,” Miller said. “And Mr. Andrews here is going; he’s even put up the money.”

  “Charley will do anything you tell him to,” Schneider said. “And I don’t know Mr. Andrews.”

  “I won’t argue with you, Fred.” Miller poured himself another glass of beer. “But it seems like you’re letting me down.”

  “You can find another skinner who ain’t got as much sense as I have.”

  “You’re the best there is,” Miller said. “And for this trip, I wanted the best.”

  “Hell,” Schneider said. He reached for the pitcher of beer; it was almost empty. He held it up and called to Francine. Francine got up from the table where she was sitting, took the pitcher, and left without speaking. Schneider took the bottle of whisky from in front of Charley Hoge and poured several fingers of it into his beer glass. He drank it in two gulps, grimacing at the burning.

  “It’s too much of a gamble,” he said. “We’d be gone two months, maybe three; and we might have nothing to show for it. It’s been a long time since you seen them buffalo; a country can change in eight or nine years.”

  “We won’t be gone more than a month and a half, or two months,” Miller said. “I got fresh, young oxen; they should make near thirty miles a day going, and maybe twenty coming back.”

  “They might make fifteen going and ten coming, if you pushed them right hard.”

  “The days are long this time of year,” Miller said. “The country’s nearly level right up to where we’re going, and there’s water all along the way.”

  “Hell,” Schneider said. Miller did not speak. “All right,” Schneider said. “I’ll go. But no shares. I’m taking no chances. I’ll take sixty dollars a month, straight, starting the day we leave here and ending the day we get back.”

  “That’s fifteen dollars more than usual,” Miller said.

  “You said I was the best,” Schneider said, “and you offered shares. Besides, that’s rough country where you intend to go.”

  Miller looked at Andrews; Andrews nodded.

  “Done,” Miller said.

  “Where’s that gal with the beer?” Schneider asked.

  Charley Hoge took the bottle of whisky from in front of Schneider and replenished his glass. He sipped the liquor delicately, appreciatively; his small gray eyes darted between Miller and Schneider. He grinned sharply, craftily at Schneider, and said:

  “I knowed all along you’d give in. I knowed it from the first.”

  Schneider nodded. “Miller always gets what he’s after.”

  They were silent. Francine came across the room with their pitcher of beer and set it on the table. She smiled briefly at the group, and spoke again to Miller.

  “You about finished with your business?”

  “Almost,” Miller said. “I left your package in the front room, under the bar. Why don’t you run out and see if it’s what you wanted. Maybe you can come back a little later and have a drink with us.”

  Francine said, “All right,” and started to move away. As she moved, Schneider put out a hand and laid it on her arm. Andrews stiffened.

  “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” he asked. He was grinning.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Ach,” he said. “Ich so glaube. Du arbeitest jetzt, nicht wahr?”

  “Nein,” Francine said.

  “Ja,” Schneider said, still grinning. “Du arbeitest mit mir, nicht wahr?”

  “All right,” Miller said. “We’ve got things to talk about. Go on now, Francine.”

  Francine moved away from Schneider’s hand and went quickly across the room.

  “What was that all about?” asked Andrews. His voice was tight.

  “Why, I just asked her if she wanted a little job of work,” Schneider said. “I ain’t seen a better looking whore since I was in St. Louis.”

  Andrews looked at him for a moment; his lips tingled with anger, and his hands, beneath the table, were tightly clasped. He turned to Miller. “When do we figure on leaving?”

  “Three or four days,” Miller said. He looked from Andrews to Schneider with faint amusement. “The wagon needs a little work, and like I said a couple of the oxen need to be shod. Nothing’s going to hold us up.”

  Schneider poured himself a glass of beer. “You said there was water all the way. What route do we take?”

  Miller smiled. “Don’t worry about that. I have that all figured out. I’ve thought it over in my mind for a long time.”

  “All right,” Schneider said. “Do I work alone?”

  “Mr. Andrews will help you.”

  “He ever done any skinning before?” He looked at Andrews, grinning again.

  “No,” Andrews said shortly. His face grew warmer.

  “I’d feel better about it if I worked with somebody I knew better,” Schneider said. “No offense.”

  “I think you’ll find that Mr. Andrews will be a lot of help, Fred.” Miller’s voice was gentle, and he did not look at Schneider.

  “All right,” Schneider said. “You’re the boss. But I ain’t got any extra knives.”

  “All of that’s taken care of,” Miller said. “All we need is to get Will some work clothes; we can do that tomorrow.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” Schneider spoke indifferently; the sleepy look had come back into his pale eyes. Miller nodded.

  Andrews finished the last dregs of his warm beer. “I take it, then, that there’s nothing else we have to talk about tonight.”

  “Nothing that won’t keep,” Miller said.

  “Then I think I’ll go back to the hotel. I have a few letters I ough
t to write.”

  “All right, Will,” Miller said. “But we ought to get those clothes tomorrow. Why don’t you meet me at the dry goods store just after noon.”

  Andrews nodded. He said good night to Charley Hoge, and laid a bill on the table. “I’d be obliged if you’d all have another drink on me.” He walked across the room, through the door into the smoky bar, and quickly onto the street.

  The anger which had risen within him back in the room, listening to Schneider talk to Francine, began to subside. A light breeze came in from the river, and carried with it the odor of manure and the acrid smell of heated impure metal from the blacksmith shop across the street from him. A red glow from the shop filtered through the yellow light of a lantern hung within the doorway; the soft whoosh of bellows working could be heard among the clangs of metal on hot metal. He breathed deeply of the cooling night air, and started off the board sidewalk to cross the street to his hotel.

  But he halted, with one foot in the dust of the street and the other still resting on the edge of a thick plank. He had heard, or thought he had heard, his name whispered behind him, somewhere in the darkness. He turned uncertainly, and heard more distinctly the voice that called to him:

  “Mr. Andrews! Over here.”

  The whispered voice seemed to come from one corner of the long saloon building. He went toward it, his way lighted by the irregular glow that came from the half-door and the small high windows of Jackson’s Saloon.

  It was Francine. Though he had not expected to see her, he looked at her without surprise; she stood on the first step of the long steep stairway that led up the side of the building. Her face was made pale and vague by the darkness, and her body was a dark shadow in the darkness around her. She reached out her hand and laid it on his shoulder; on the step, she stood above him, and looked down at him when she spoke:

  “I thought that was you. I’ve been waiting here for you to come out.”

  Andrews’s voice came with difficulty. “I—I got tired of talking to them. I needed some fresh air.”

  She smiled and drew back a little, her hand still light on his shoulder; her face fell into shadow, and he could see only her eyes and her teeth revealed by her smiling in the reflection of dim light.

  “Come upstairs with me,” she said softly. “Come up for a while.”

  He swallowed, and tried to speak. “I—”

  “Come on,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

  She exerted a gentle pressure on his shoulder, and turned away from him; he heard the rustle of her clothes as she started up the stairs. He followed, groping for the rough handrail on his left, his eyes desperately trying to make out the shape that went softly and slowly above him, pulling him with her invisibly.

  They paused at the small square landing at the top of the stairs. She stood in the dark shade of the doorway, fumbling with the latch; for an instant, Andrews looked out over Butcher’s Crossing; what he could see of the town was a dark, irregular shadow like a blotch upon the glimmer of the plain. The thin edge of a new moon hung in the west. The door creaked open, Francine whispered something, and he followed her into the darkness of the doorway.

  A small dim light burned in the distance; its illumination was thin and local, but he could make out that they were in a narrow hall. The muffled sounds of men’s voices and the clump of boots on wood came from below; he realized that they were just above the large hall beside Jackson’s Saloon, out of which he had walked a few moments before. He groped forward, and his hands touched the smooth stiff material of Francine’s dress.

  “Here,” she whispered. She found his hand, and took it; her hand felt cool and moist to his own. “Down this way.”

  He went blindly after her, his feet sliding and catching on the rough boards of the floor. They stopped; dimly he made out a doorway. Francine opened the door, saying, “This is my room,” and went in. Andrews followed, blinking against the light that came when the door was opened.

  Inside the room, he closed the door and leaned against it, his eyes following Francine, who moved across the small room to a table upon which a lamp, its base milk-white and decorated with brightly painted roses, burned dimly. She turned the lamp up so that the room was more brightly illumined; the light revealed the smallness of the room, the neatly made iron bedstead, a small, curving sofa whose wooden frame was carved with twined flowers and upon which were cushions covered with dark red velvet. The walls of the room were newly papered; upon them hung several framed engravings of woodland scenes. Here and there on the walls the brightly flowered wallpaper curled and peeled, revealing naked wood. Though he did not know what he had expected, Andrews was taken aback and made slightly uncomfortable by the familiarity of the room. For a moment he did not move.

  Francine, her back to the light, was smiling; again, he was aware of the light glinting from her eyes and teeth. She motioned to the couch. Andrews nodded and went across the floor; when he sat down, he looked at his feet; there was a thin carpet, worn and stained, over the floor. Francine came across the room from the table beside the bed and sat on the couch beside him; she sat a little sideways, so that she was facing him; her back was straight, and she looked almost prim, there in the lamplight, with her hands folded in her lap.

  “You—you have a nice place here,” Andrews said.

  She nodded, pleased. “I have the only carpet in town,” she said. “I had it sent in from St. Louis. Pretty soon I’m going to get a glass window. The dust blows in and it’s hard to keep a place clean.”

  Andrews nodded, and smiled. He drummed his fingers on his knees. “Have—you been here long? In Butcher’s Crossing?”

  “Two years,” she said indifferently. “I was in St. Louis before that, but there were too many girls there. I didn’t like it.” Her eyes were upon him as if she had no interest in what she was saying. “I like it here. I can rest in the summer, and there aren’t so many people.”

  He spoke to her, but he hardly knew what he said; for as he spoke, his heart went out to her in an excess of pity. He saw her as a poor, ignorant victim of her time and place, betrayed by certain artificialities of conduct, thrust from a great mechanical world upon this bare plateau of existence that fronted the wilderness. He thought of Schneider, who had caught her arm and spoken coarsely to her; and he imagined vaguely the humiliations she had schooled herself to endure. A revulsion against the world rose up within him, and he could taste it in his throat. Impulsively he reached across the sofa and took her hand.

  “It—must be a terrible life for you,” he said suddenly.

  “Terrible?” She frowned thoughtfully. “No. It’s better than St. Louis. The men are better, and there aren’t so many girls.”

  “You have no family, no one you can go to?”

  She laughed. “What would I do with a family?” She squeezed his hand, and raised it, and turned it palm upward. “So soft,” she said. She caressed his palm with her thumb, which moved slowly and rhythmically in small circles. “That’s the only thing I don’t like about the men here. Their hands are so rough.”

  He was trembling. With his free hand he grasped the armrest of the sofa and held it tightly.

  “What do they call you?” Francine asked softly. “Is it William?”

  “Will,” Andrews said.

  “I’ll call you William,” she said. “It’s more like you, I think.” She smiled slowly at him. “You’re very young, I think.”

  He removed his hand from the smooth caress of her fingers. “I am twenty-three.”

  She came closer to him, sliding across the sofa; the rustle of her stiff smooth dress sounded like soft cloth tearing. Her shoulder lightly pressed against his shoulder, and she breathed gently, evenly.

  “Don’t be angry,” she said. “I’m glad you’re young. I want you to be young. All of the men here are old and hard. I want you to be soft, while you can be....When will you go with Miller and the others?”

  “Three or four days,” Andrews said. “But we will be b
ack within the month. And then—”

  Francine shook her head, though she continued smiling. “Yes, you’ll be back; but you won’t be the same. You’ll not be so young; you will become like the others.”

  Andrews looked at her confusedly, and in his confusion cried: “I will only become myself!”

  She continued as if he had not interrupted. “The wind and sun will harden your face; your hands will no longer be soft.”

  Andrews opened his mouth to reply; he had become vaguely angry at her words. But he did not speak his anger; and as he looked at her in the lamplight, his anger died. There was a simplicity and earnestness, a sweet but not profound sorrow in her expression, which disarmed him, and which raised a tenderness with the pity he had felt a moment earlier. At that instant it seemed to him incredible that she could be what her profession termed her. He extended the hand that he had withdrawn, and covered her hand.

  “You are—” he began, and hesitated, and began again. “You are—” But he could not finish; he did not know what he wanted to say.

  “But for a little while,” Francine said, “you will be here; for three or four days you will be young and soft.”

  “Yes,” Andrews said.

  “You will stay here for those days?” Francine said softly. She ran her fingertips lightly over the back of his hand. “You will make love to me?”

  He did not speak; he was aware of her fingers moving upon his hand, and he concentrated upon that sensation.

  “I’m not working now,” Francine said quickly. “It’s for love; it’s because I want you.”

  He shook his head numbly, not in refusal but in despair. “Francine, I—”

  “I know,” she said softly, smiling again. “You have not had a woman before, have you?” He did not speak. “Have you?”

  He remembered several abortive experiments with a younger cousin of his, a small, petulant girl, some years before; he remembered his urgency, his embarrassment, and his eventual boredom; and he remembered his father’s averted face and vague words after the visiting parents of the girl left their home. “No,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” Francine said. “I’ll show you. Here.” She stood up, and extended her hands down to him. He grasped them and stood up before her. She came close to him, almost touching him; he felt her soft stomach come against him; his muscles contracted, and he flinched slightly away.