Sacketts 14 - Galloway

by Galloway

  vertical, and there was no way I could see that I could hang on until I could

  catch hold with the other hand.

  The largest one started a good four feet up the wall, and although I jumped a

  couple of times from the water my fingers wouldn't hold in the slippery crack,

  so I swam back and stretched out on the sand, just about all in.

  Twice more I swam around that pool, trying to find a way out, but my only chance

  was that crack. Each time I went back to the beach I rested a little longer, for

  the days of scant food and struggling to cross the country and stay alive had

  about worn me put. Still, I always told myself, there was nothing a man couldn't

  get out of if he was sober and didn't panic, so I settled down to think.

  The water I'd heard falling wasn't much of a fall, but the rock over which it

  fell was higher than the place from which I'd jumped, and the rocks were worn

  smooth.

  It began to rain.

  First there were scattered big drops, then a steady downpour that freckled the

  water about me. For awhile I just lay still, trying to get up energy to try

  again, and the falling water kind of lulled me to sleep. When I opened my eyes I

  was shaking with a chill and the water in that basin had raised by at least an

  inch.

  Cold and shivering, I studied the walls again, but always I came back to that

  crack.

  The bottom was a good four feet above the water, and the wall below it was

  smooth as silk. That crack was maybe four inches wide at the top, but it tapered

  down to nothing. If a man could have gotten up high enough to get both hands

  into it with his fingers pulling against opposite edges he might have worked

  himself to the top ... he might have.

  Toward the bottom there wasn't room to even get one finger into that crack, and

  I couldn't pull myself up with one finger, anyway.

  There didn't seem to be any way out of this fix I'd gotten myself into, and I

  went back and stretched on the sand again. Seemed to me there was less of it,

  and the rain was falling steadily.

  If I could just find something to wedge into that crevice to give myself a

  handhold ... but there was nothing. Of a sudden, I thought of finding a stick,

  only there were no sticks, and my spear wasn't strong enough to hold my weight

  even if the crack was deep enough to thrust it in, which it wasn't.

  If only there was something.... There was!

  My fist.

  If I could jump high enough out of the water to wedge my doubled-up fist in that

  crack I could hang by it. If I opened my hand I'd slide right back in the water,

  but if I could keep my fist closed I could muscle myself up high enough to wedge

  the other fist crossways in the crack, and then I could grab for the rim.

  Something warned me that I had better try. The water running off the mountain in

  this rain had not yet reached the pool, but it would soon start pouring in from

  branch streams and runoff gullies, and I'd be forced to swim until I could swim

  no longer. My little beach would be covered within minutes.

  Also, my strength was slipping away. I'd had nothing to eat, and much of my

  strength had been used up in running, climbing, struggling for life and for

  food. If this failed there was no other way, so it had to work.

  Swimming across the basin I looked up at the crack, so close above me. Now when

  I was a youngster I'd managed to lunge pretty high out of the water many times

  in batting a gourd around the old swimming hole. This time I not only had to get

  about half my body out of the water but I had to wedge my fist in that narrow

  crack.

  First I carried my spear close to the side and threw it atop the wall. Next I

  threw up my bow and the quiver of arrows. On my first attempt I succeeded in

  hitting the wall and bruising myself. On the second my arm went high and my

  closed fist caught in the crack.

  Slowly, flexing my muscles, I lifted my body. It was like chinning myself with

  one hand, something I'd rarely tried, but my body did come up out of the water

  and I got my other fist into the crack, but crossways as the crack was wider

  there. Another lift and I got my other hand on the edge. Pulling myself up, I

  flopped over on the rocky edge and lay still, the rain pounding on my back.

  After a while, shaking with cold and exhaustion, I got my feet under me,

  recovered my weapons and started into the woods. That night, cowering among the

  pine needles, without even the elk hide to cover me, I shivered alone and cold.

  How much can a man endure? How long could a man continue? These things I asked

  myself, for I am a questioning man, yet even as I asked the answers were there

  before me. If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure.

  Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it is also an end to

  warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of

  gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches ... these things,

  too, are gone.

  In the morning I would have a fire. In the morning I would find food.

  The rain fell steadily, and in my huddle under the bushes the big drops came

  through and rolled coldly down my spine and down my chest. Stiff and cold, I

  crept out in the gray dawn. The rain had stopped but the ground was soggy under

  my feet. Wearing only moccasins and a breech clout I hunted for roots. Starting

  across a clearing I suddenly heard a rush of movement and looked up in time to

  be struck by a horse's shoulder and knocked rolling.

  Desperately, I tried to get up, to call out, but the wind had been knocked out

  from me.

  A voice said, "That's no Indian! Curly, that's a white man!"

  "Aw, what difference does it make? Leave him lay!"

  It taken me a minute to get up and I called after him. "Help me. Get me to a

  ranch or somewhere. I'll—"

  The rider called Curly spun his horse and came back at a run. He had a coil of

  rope in his hand and he was swinging it for a blow. Trying to step aside my feet

  skidded on the wet leaves and the horse hit me again, knocking me into the

  brush. Curly rode away laughing.

  After a long while I got my knees under me and crawled to where my arrows were.

  The bowstring was wet and useless, but the spear might get me something. First I

  needed a fire. In a hollow near the river, I broke the dried-out twigs that were

  lowest on the tree trunks, gathered some inner bark from a deadfall and rigged a

  small shelter to keep the raindrops from my fire.

  With my stone knife I cut out a little hollow in a slab of wood broken loose

  when a tree fell, then a notch from the hollow to the edge. Powdering bark in my

  hands I fed the dust into the hollow, then used my bow and a blunt arrow-shaft

  to start the fire. It took several minutes of hard work to get a smoke and then

  a spark, but I worked on a bit, then managed to blow the spark into life. At

  last I had a fire.

  It is times such as this that show a man how much the simple things like food

  and warmth can mean. Slowly my fire blazed up, and the first warmth in a long

  time began to work its way into my stiff, cold muscles.

  Everything was damp. I'd nothing to cover my nakedness, but the fi
re brought a

  little warmth to me, and just having it made me feel better. My feet were in bad

  shape again, although not so bad as at first, and the bruises from the beating

  I'd taken showed up in great blotches over my hide. I huddled there by the fire,

  shivering, wishing for food, for warmth, for a blanket.

  It was unlikely any wild game would stir during the rain, so I must wait it out

  or try to find what roots there might be, but looking from where I sat I saw

  nothing I could eat. Yet I had lived long enough to know that nothing lasts

  forever, and men torture themselves who believe that it will. The one law that

  does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today

  was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those

  pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was

  enduring.

  It was not in me to complain of what had happened. A man shares his days with

  hunger, thirst and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of

  being a man is to understand that. Leastways, I had two hands, two feet and two

  eyes, and there were some that lacked these things. The trouble was that I

  wasn't feeling quite right ... I'd a sense of things being unreal, and of

  sickness coming on, and that scared me something awful. To be sick, alone, and

  in the woods, with the weather damp and cold ... it was not a thing to favor the

  mind.

  Of a sudden I was sweating, out there in the cold and rain, I was sweating where

  a short time before I'd been chilled and shaking. I burrowed down into the pine

  needles and leaves, and fortunate it was that here where I'd stopped the carpet

  was thick.

  I'd stick out a hand from time to time to put something on the fire, scared of

  the time when it would be used up around me and I'd have to get out and go to

  hunting. There were willows near, and I peeled back the bark to get at the inner

  bark, which was good for fevers, and chewed some.

  Along in there somewhere I sort of passed out. There was a time when I put a

  stick or two on the fire, added some leaves for lack of anything else.

  Once I thought I heard a horse coming, and it was in my mind that somebody

  called out to me, but I don't know if I answered. My head felt light and my

  mouth was dry, and I was cold ... cold.

  I've heard folks say that if you're down in a dark hole and you look up you can

  see the stars, even by day. Well, I looked up and saw a face looking into mine

  with wide eyes and lips parted, and it was like looking up out of that hole and

  seeing a star. Anyway, it was the last I saw for some time.

  We never had much in the mountains. The fixings around the house were such as Ma

  contrived, or Pa when he was not too tired from work. Nothing fancy, just a few

  little things like curtains at the window, and flowers on the table, and Ma when

  she swept the floor and could keep us boys off it for awhile, she traced

  patterns in the dirt floor like you'd find on the finest carpets. Ma was good at

  that, and she liked things nice.

  About the best we could manage was to keep them clean. You don't make much on a

  sidehill farm in Tennessee. The country is right beautiful, and that is where

  you have to find what beauty there is, there, and in the singing. Most mountain

  folks sing. They sing songs learned from their grandfathers or other elders, and

  sometimes they change the tunes to fit the day, and change the words even more.

  You get a hankering for nice things if there's much to you. It seems to me that

  first a man tries to get shelter and food to eat, but as soon as he has that he

  tries to find beauty, something to warm the heart and the mind, something to

  ease the thoughts and make pleasurable the sitting in the evening. About all we

  had was the open fire. It was the thing we set store by. Ma, she was too busy

  knitting and sewing just to keep us covered to have much time for fixing.

  Opening my eyes like I done, in that bedroom with lacy curtains to the windows

  and a handsome patchwork quilt over me, I thought I'd sure come to in the house

  of some rich folks, or in heaven mostly, although I never did rightly know

  whether they'd have patchwork quilts. She set store by them, and she was always

  a saving of odds and ends she might use toward one. She never did get to make

  it. Pneumonia came too soon, and pneumonia to mountain folk far from doctors is

  nothing to feel good about.

  There I lay, a long tall mountain boy in such a bed as I'd never seen, looking

  up at a painted plank ceiling ... well, maybe it was whitewashed.

  I turned my head and saw a dresser set against the wall with a mirror over it,

  and there was a small table with a pitcher and a washbasin. In a dish alongside

  the basin was a bar of soap. These here were surely well-to-do folks.

  When I tried to set up I felt giddy, but the first thing I saw was that I was

  wearing a flannel nightshirt. I'd had a nightshirt one time, quite a while back,

  but they were scarce. I was seventeen years old before I owned a pair of socks.

  We boys just shoved our feet down into boots.

  We never had much, Galloway and me. First big money we made was on the buffalo

  range. We were shooters, me and him, and mostly we hit what we shot at. Back in

  the high-up hills a body didn't have enough ammunition to go a-wasting of it.

  When you shot at something you'd better hit it. Which led to our being good at

  stalking and tracking because we had to get close up before we chanced a shot.

  And if the animal was wounded and ran off, we had to track it down, for the

  needing of the meat and not wishing to leave any crittur to suffer in the woods.

  That money we made on the buffalo range, that went to squaring Pa's debts, of

  which he'd left a few with men who trusted him. We never taken a trust lightly.

  It was a matter of deep honor, and a debt owed was a debt to be paid.

  I lay there in that big bed, just a-staring up at the white ceiling and

  wondering how come I was here in this place.

  There was a door opening to a sort of closet and in it I could see women's

  fixings and some man's shirts and pants. I could also see a holster with a gun

  in it. Gave me a comfort to have it near.

  Footsteps were coming down the hall and then the door opened and a man came in.

  He was a square-shouldered man with a mustache and wearing a white shut. He

  looked down at me.

  "Awake are you? You've had a bad time of it, man."

  "I reckon. How long have I been here?"

  "Six ... seven days. My daughter found you. How she got you on her horse I will

  never know."

  I was tired. I closed my eyes a minute, thinking how lucky I was.

  "You had pneumonia," he said. "We didn't think we could pull you through. At

  least, I didn't. Maighdlin, she never did give up."

  "Where is this place?"

  "It's on Cherry Creek, about six or seven miles from where you were picked up."

  He sat down in the chair he pulled up. "I am John Rossiter. What happened to

  you?"

  It took me a couple of minutes to think that over, and then I explained about us

  hunting land, the Jicarillas, and my escape. I also told the part about the

  rider who wouldn't lend me
a hand. "They called him Curly."

  Just as I said that a mighty pretty girl stepped into the room, her face flushed

  and angry. "I don't believe that!" she said sharply. "You must have been out of

  your head."

  "Could be, ma'am," I said politely, not being one to argue with a lady. "Only

  that horse surely hit me a wallop to be part of something imaginary. And they

  sure enough called him Curly."

  "Did you see any tracks, Meg?"

  She hesitated, her eyes bright and angry. Reluctantly, she said, "Yes, I did.

  There were some tracks. Two horses, I think. Possibly three. But it wasn't Curly

  Dunn! It couldn't have been!"

  "Maybe I was wrong," I said. "I didn't intend to hurt your feelings, ma'am."

  "If I were you, Meg," Rossiter said, "I'd give that a good deal of thought.

  There's a lot of talk about Curly, and not much of it is good."

  "They're jealous!" she said pertly. "Jealous of him because he's so handsome,

  and of the Dunns because they've taken so much land. I don't believe any of it."

  "Mr. Rossiter," I said, "if you could lend me some clothes, a horse and a gun,

  I'll be on my way. I don't like to saddle myself on you folks."

  "Don't be silly!" Meg said sharply. "You're not well enough to travel. Why, you

  look half-starved!"

  "I can make out, ma'am. I don't want to stay where I'm not wanted."

  "You be still," she said. "I'll get you some soup."

  When she had gone, Rossiter hesitated a moment and then asked, "This man called

  Curly? Can you describe him?"

  "Big, strong young feller, rosy color to his cheeks, brown wavy hair and he

  favors them big Mexican spurs. He was riding a handsome gray horse ... no

  cowhand's horse."

  "Yes, that's Curly." Rossiter got up suddenly. "Damn it, man, don't ever try to

  raise a daughter in a country where men are scarce! I've heard talk about Curly

  Dunn. He's hard on his horses, and he's a quarrelsome man who's forever picking

  fights. Most people are afraid of him because of Rocker."

  "Rocker Dunn?" I knew that name, as a good many did. Rocker Dunn was said to

  have ridden with Quantrill, and for a time he'd been a known man down in the

  Cherokee Nation and in East Texas. He was tough and strong and had the name of

  being a dead shot who would sooner be shooting than talking.

  "That's the one. You know of him?"