Return of the Tall Man

by Clay Fisher

  “I promised to follow you to the end of the trail, Brother Ben,” said the dark-faced youth. “This is the last turning then. Do you agree?”

  “I agree, John,” said Ben, and their hands held hard and long before they let them fall away.

  Big Bat and Frank Go-deen had decided to travel together as far as Cow Island in the Missouri River. There Big Bat would turn west, taking the first army packet upstream to Fort Benton and his long overdue appointment to explain how he had used nine months for a thirty-day scout. The breed would go on over the Mini Sosi, the Mud Water, following its Cow Creek tributary up through the Bear Paws into the Milk River buffalo range and, he hoped fervently, the welcoming arms of his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound squaw. They, too, shook hands with Ben and said some little speeches which he took along, like the memory of Lame John’s shining eyes, to warm himself with on cold days in far and friendless camps.

  In the end, all were asleep, and there were only Ben and Chilkoot and Malachi to share the slowing pop and crackle of the coals. Finally, the old man, too, got up and stood awkwardly. He looked at Ben a long time, and Ben saw the glitter of the tears running down his seamed cheeks. He pawed at them, embarrassed, and coughed and cursed to make out that it was the smoke of the venison fat burning in the fire which bothered him. Then he quieted down and said huskily, and just before going into the candlelit dimness of the cabin:

  “You done it, boy—God cain’t possibly bless you no more nor you deserve, nor than you’ve rightly earnt.”

  Ben said softly, “Sleep easy, Chilkoot; she’s all downhill from here on.”

  He waited only for the candle to go out and for the old man to quit moving around. Then he got up and went soundlessly to the picket line where their ponies drowsed hipshot. Selecting the Comanche bay which Big Bat had ridden from Quanah’s camp, he saddled him and led him down to the creek trail. Malachi, grazing free in the streamside pasture, raised his head, snorted, wigwagged his ragged ears. Ben went up to him. He ran his hand down the welted, rough-furred neck; patted the thin, high-boned withers.

  “Hoh, shuh,” he said softly. “Don’t say no more.”

  The old mule looked after him as he swung up on the Indian pony. He was still looking after him when man and mount had turned the bend in the trail and were gone. Then he blew out through his graying nostrils and went back to the rich feed of Chilkoot Johnston’s clearing on Nameless Creek, Montana. In this quiet way began the legend of Ben Allison—the Tall Man who returned from death to ride out his life in the service of his brothers, red and white, whosoever and wheresoever they might be, who had not his strength to serve themselves.