Good Water

by John D. Nesbitt

  A spot of color caused him to sink back and take off his hat. Rising a quarter of an inch at a time, he moved forward. He expected to see a group of three or four, which was what he had been seeing at this time of year. He would have to place them, take a cautious look, and decide on his best chance. As he worked his way up, however, none came into view. Then he located the one he had seen before, or at least he assumed it was the same one. It was turned so that the sun did not shine so bright on it. The animal’s head was lowered in a grazing posture. Tommy waited. At last the antelope raised its head and showed a small set of dark horns. A young buck.

  Tommy got set, checking for cactus before he settled into a prone position. He guessed the animal to be about a hundred yards away, not a long shot for an antelope but still a small target, turned as it was at a three-quarter angle. Tommy levered in a shell and got situated again. He put the bead of his front sight behind the animal’s shoulder, squirmed to line up the rear sight, and pulled the trigger.

  The rifle stock slapped him on the cheekbone as the antelope lurched. It ran straight ahead about twenty yards, stopped, hunched up, and spilled over.

  Tommy felt a great release of tension, but he waited to make sure the animal did not get up. A hind leg was kicking, and then it went still.

  A flash of color to the lower left of his vision caused him to look in that direction. Two more antelope, a doe and a fawn, were racing up out of the creek bed and straight away from him. Tommy watched them run. They had been right under his nose, out of view because of the contour of the ground.

  Back to his own antelope, he saw that it had not moved. Its white underside and rump stood out against the pale, dry grass where it had fallen. Tommy stood up, walked down the slope, jumped over the water, and crossed the green creek bottom. Up on the other side, he paused to gather his thoughts.

  He had killed his first antelope, and now he had to clean it. He was glad not to have Red or someone else telling him what to do, but he needed to get started and not fuss around. He knew that much. A hunter needed to clean his antelope right away, especially in hot weather. With the kind of hair antelope had, great insulation for cold weather, the meat spoiled fast.

  Tommy laid his rifle on a low growth of sagebrush so that it did not touch the ground, and he took out his pocketknife. He told himself to be careful. Keep the knife pointed away. Don’t hurry. He had gutted and skinned a couple of deer. This should not be all that different, except that he didn’t have a tree to hang it from. He would have to skin it on the ground.

  He cut off all four lower legs and began to cut the hide along the inside of the hind legs. He thought he would do a cleaner job if he skinned it first and then gutted it. At least that was the way it worked with deer when he hung them. As he continued to cut the hide along the belly and up to the chest, though, he began to wonder. The thick, white, hollow lengths of hair flew everywhere and stuck on his bloody hands. Now he began to feel awkward, cutting from one angle and then another as he tried to separate the hide from the carcass. Hair scattered like chicken feathers.

  A voice from behind him made him jump, and the knife jerked in his hand.

  “Got a good one, did you?”

  Tommy swallowed as he raised up and looked around. On the slope behind him to the east, a man in a drover’s coat sat atop a flecked grey horse with dark ears.

  “Bill Lockwood,” said the man. “I think we’ve met.”

  “I believe so,” said Tommy. “You took me by surprise there.”

  “Sorry if I spooked you. I heard a shot, so I came over to see what was goin’ on. I saw two other antelope runnin’ away, so I had an idea.”

  “Well, that’s what it is. I don’t think it should bother anyone,”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. I can even give you a hand if you like.”

  “I can do it myself.”

  “I’m sure you can. But it goes easier if someone holds a leg for you and keeps the animal from floppin’ one way or another.”

  Tommy did not like the idea of someone watching his uncertain moves, but he knew the man was right. “I guess,” he said.

  “Good enough.” Lockwood turned his horse and dismounted. He took off his gloves, put them in his saddlebag, and led the grey horse forward. “Let’s see where you are. Uh-huh. Let me hold this front leg, and I’ll stay out of your way. Oh, and just a suggestion. If you cut from the inside out, you’ll get less hair. The more of it you can keep off the meat, the better it’ll be. You’ll still get some, of course, but you want to pick off as much as you can.”

  Tommy bent over and went to work. The white hair continued to fly. It stuck on his knife and on his hands. He felt so inept in front of Lockwood that he began to wish he hadn’t shot the antelope. A white hair stuck on the tip of his nose, and he blew it away in exasperation.

  “You’re doin’ fine,” said Lockwood. “Once you get him opened up, just keep the hide rolled back, and you’ll get a lot less of this.”

  Tommy worked on with his knife, trimming the skin from the carcass. The antelope had very little fat, and the hide was easy to nick, but before long he had one side skinned. Lockwood, still holding his reins, moved around to the other side and held the hind leg. Tommy rested his back for a minute and resumed his work.

  When he had the whole body skinned, he cut through the neck muscle and found a joint between two vertebrae.

  “This part is hard,” said Lockwood, “But it can be done. Just don’t break your knife. When you get partway through, we can try to twist it.”

  When they had that much done, Tommy stood up to catch his breath. The sun had moved overhead. He figured he had been at this work for an hour already.

  Lockwood said, “I think it would be a good idea to pick off all the hair you can before you spill out the guts and blood.”

  Tommy took another deep breath and nodded. The outside of the animal was starting to dry, and the abdomen was swelling. He worked as fast as he could.

  Then came the time to open the cavity and empty it. Tommy rolled up his sleeves and plunged in. His arms were stained red almost to the elbows when he was finished, and a strong, gamy smell rose to his nostrils.

  “Well, that’s got it,” said Lockwood. “You’re lucky about one thing. It’s not very often you kill an antelope near water. I’ll wait here if you want to go clean up.”

  Tommy washed up as well as he could and splashed his face while he was at it, but he was still tired and sweaty when he returned to the site of the kill. Lockwood, meanwhile, did not have a speck of blood on him, and even though he had been wearing the duster all this time, he had not broken a sweat.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We can put this carcass on my horse, and he’ll carry it to your camp.”

  “Well, thanks. I’m camped back this way.”

  “I think I saw it. That is, I assume it’s your horse that’s standing with his nose in the bush and his tail swishin’ flies.”

  Tommy paused. The man didn’t miss much, but if he was up to any trouble, he would have done something by now. “All right,” he said. “How shall we go about it?”

  “Let’s try this. Cut a slit between these two ribs, and we can slip that over the saddle horn. You can walk alongside and hold him in place. This short a distance, I think we can get by without tyin’ him to the D-rings.”

  Red showed up in camp in the late afternoon. He had a cut across his cheek, and his blue eyes were glazed and bloodshot. Tommy did not catch a whiff of whiskey, but he guessed Red had been drinking.

  “How did you cut your cheek?”

  Red spoke as he dismounted with his back turned. “Low branch on a tree.”

  Tommy wondered where he would have found a tree tall enough to have a low branch that high. “What’s new in town?”

  “Didn’t spend much time there. You killed an antelope, huh?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I saw Bill Lockwood. Too bad you didn’t get a deer. The meat’s better. This thin
g’ll spoil before we eat very much of it.”

  “We’ll eat good while it lasts.”

  “I imagine. Let me water my horse.” Red pulled his reins through his hand and made the ends flick.

  “I’ll start a fire. I gathered some dead sagebrush.”

  Tommy had a blaze going, with puffs and wisps of pungent smoke drifting up, when Red came back to the campsite.

  “What all did you get in town?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Tommy took a breath to keep from saying anything.

  “Talked to Fred.”

  “Oh. What did he have to say?”

  “Vinch hired two men to take our place. Look more like gun-hands than cowpunchers.”

  “Is that what Fred told you?”

  “I seen ’em.”

  “In town?”

  “No. Out on the job. They’re watchin’ over the project.”

  “Where were you?”

  “On the line. Me on one side, Fred on the other. Two men with scrapers makin’ a reservoir to hold the water when they get ready to dam the creek. And these two hired hands lookin’ like a couple of bulldogs.”

  “When do you think they’ll cut off the water?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day. They’re pilin’ the dirt, and then they have to push it in just right. It won’t take that much to close it. They just need a place for the water to back up, and a neck they can plug.”

  “It makes you wonder why someone wants to go to that much trouble to make things hard on other people.”

  Red poked at the dirt with his bootheel. “I’ll tell you what it makes me want to do. Makes me want to blow it up.”

  Tommy had an image of an earthen mound exploding into a spray of dirt and water. It seemed like a flamboyant idea on Red’s part, but Tommy kept his comments to himself as he laid a twisted branch of sagebrush on the fire.

  “Don’t think I don’t know how.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “At first I thought it would do to just go up there at night and cut a hole in the bank and let the water flow through. But now I’ve got a mind to blow it up.”

  Tommy wondered if the whiskey was talking. “What changed your mind?”

  “Lew Greer.”

  “Oh. Did you see him, too?”

  “I guess I did. He came up to where I was talkin’ to Fred. He told Fred to leave, and then he told me to go on my way. I told him he’d have to make me go, and he spurred his horse right over the section line and slapped me with his quirt. I’ll tell you, he’s not goin’ to do anything like that again.”

  Tommy recalled having heard something similar before. He said, “I’d like to get started cooking some of that meat. We can cut out a chunk of backstrap, lay it on these rocks, and push the coals up next to it. Cook one side at a time.”

  “You don’t think I mean it.”

  “I didn’t say that at all. I just want to cook this meat while we’ve got the fire.”

  “Well, I know where to get what I need. Blow their dirt pile sky high.”

  “I’ve got the antelope on the other side of these bushes here. I put it in what shade there was. If you hold it, I’ll cut out a good piece.”

  Closer now, as Red knelt to hold the carcass, Tommy caught the smell of whiskey. He leaned over the animal, cut across the grain of the meat, and began to trim it lengthwise away from the backbone.

  Red went on. “These same fell as we sold the heifer to. They’ve got everything from dynamite to morphine.”

  Tommy recalled the scene that came to him every so often as a memory he wished he could forget. Six or eight men hung around, some standing and some leaning, one sitting on a stack of railroad ties. Pick-and-shovel workers, grimy section hands, a couple of loafers who looked as if they didn’t get dirty very often—they had all given a casual glance at the reddish-brown, unbranded heifer and the two boys who had brought it. Everyone knew what kind of a transaction it was, and no one seemed to care. A burly man in a round hat and railroader’s overalls said something as he gave Red the money. Red threw back his head and laughed as he slipped the coins into his pocket. The incident had seemed like a normal moment at a railroad camp—as normal as a whiskey peddler or a whoremaster tying open the flap on his tent.

  Tommy pulled the meat away from the backbone and cut deeper. “Are you thinking of going there?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’d like to go tonight.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s dark. You don’t know the country that well, once you get out a few miles. Anything could happen. It’s a good fifteen miles or more.”

  “Nothin’ to it. I’ll take my bedroll and sleep out if I have to.”

  “Red, you ought to take a little time and think this over.”

  “You mean sober up. Well, I am sober. And someone’s gonna be in for a surprise.”

  “You’d better get some food in you, anyway.” Tommy lifted the strip of meat from the carcass. “Let’s have a can of tomatoes each while we let this cook.”

  “You can go along, too, you know.”

  “I’d rather not. I’ll hold down camp. I don’t think it’s a good idea, anyway.” Tommy laid the antelope loin on the rocks he had put in place. The meat was about two inches thick and a foot long.

  “I doubted that you’d want to go.”

  “What I mean is, I don’t think you should go. Too many things could go wrong.” Tommy took a stick and began scooting the coals toward the meat.

  Red moved his bedroll near the fire and sat on it. “Well, look here, little buddy. Lots of things can go wrong. For one thing, Lew Greer runs us off of our job. Then that windbag runs us out of the Mexican camp, just when we’re startin’ to get somewhere with those girls. The way I see it, you can let people shove you around all your life, or you can do something about it. Just one little trick and Fat Man Greer and Big Buzzard Cushman will be eatin’ crow. And when the Mexicans get their water back, that monkey-face won’t have a thing to say.”

  Tommy figured Red must have killed the bottle just before he got to camp. The whiskey was flowing in his veins pretty well. “What do you think of Bill Lockwood?” Tommy asked.

  “Oh, he’s all right. Bought me a drink.”

  “Was that after your run-in with Lew?” Dusk was falling, and the cut on Red’s cheek lay in shadow.

  “Oh, yeah. But you know Lockwood. Acts like he doesn’t notice a thing.”

  Tommy woke up at the first grey of morning. Pete had been snuffling and moving around. Tommy smelled dust on the cool air. He huddled into his blankets, thinking of the sequence he would go through as soon as he got up. Boots, jacket, hat. Take Pete to the water. Get a fire going and cook some of the meat.

  He tried to imagine where Red was at the moment. He wondered if Red had made it to the railroad camp or had slept out somewhere along the way. The whole plan came back to him as a bad idea. But Red had a streak in him that didn’t go along with good judgment—or, really, with doing things right. Tommy hoped Red had slept off some of his notions. Failing that, maybe the railroaders would laugh at him, ask him what the hell made him think he could buy dynamite.

  Back to the moment, Tommy realized that the creek might run dry at some time today, so he had better water his horse while he could. He turned over, flipped the blankets aside, and started his day.

  The sun had climbed to midmorning, and the day was warming up. What little moisture had hung in the air at sunrise was gone now. Shade was scarce. Tommy’s stomach made churning sounds as it worked on the pound or so of meat he had eaten for breakfast. He had a can of peaches left, and he was going to save that delicacy for as long as he could.

  He took Pete to water again. The creek was still flowing. He thought he should take Pete out to graze, but Red had said he would be back by midmorning at the latest, and Tommy did not want to go out wandering until his friend arrived.

  Time passed. The shadows grew shorter at midday, and Red sti
ll did not show. The worry in Tommy’s stomach began to grow. If Red slept out, he might be at the railroad camp right now. Or he could be anywhere in between.

  The shadows had begun to creep out on the east side of the chokecherry bushes. Tommy sat with his eyes closed, wondering how long he would wait until he decided to do something else. Until this evening? Until the water went dry? At some point something should happen, but he didn’t know what or when.

  His head dipped forward, and he woke up. Pete was shifting his hooves and finishing a low nicker. Tommy stood up and walked around the bush, into the sunlight.

  A rider was approaching. It was not Red. The man wore a dark hat and was riding a grey horse. Bill Lockwood.

  As the man drew closer, he looked smaller than before. He was not wearing the brown dustcoat. He drew rein a few yards out from camp.

  “Come on in,” said Tommy.

  Lockwood rode forward and dismounted. He was lean, not very tall but solid-looking. His black hat was dusty as before, and grey showed at his temples. His bushy mustache was set firm, and his coffee-colored eyes held steady.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Good afternoon.”

  “You might wonder what brings me out this way again.”

  Tommy’s eyes took in the man’s gloved hands, then his gun-belt. He thought again that Lockwood might be a range detective, but he said, “I have no idea.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to say it, but I’m the bearer of bad news.”

  Tommy’s pulse jumped. “What kind?”

  Lockwood’s eyes did not waver. “I’m afraid your friend Red Armstrong cashed in his chips.”

  A jolt hit Tommy in the pit of his stomach. His head went dizzy, and he heard himself say, “When did that happen?”

  “Last night. Seems he was prowlin’ around that ditch project of Vinch Cushman’s. I guess Cushman expected trouble, because he had a night guard posted.”

  “And Red got shot?”

  “That’s right.”

  Tommy’s mouth was dry, and his breath was gone. “He told me he was going up north a ways and would be back today.”

  “Well, he must have stopped there on his way. I’m sorry.”