The Homesman

by Glendon Swarthout

  “You saying the Missouri?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Hell, that’s five weeks from here.”

  “Mr. Briggs, I am as particular of my ears as I am of my chairs. This is my house, and I will not sit still for profanity in it.”

  “Hell.”

  “When I sit at your table, you may turn the air blue if you wish. But not at mine.”

  “I can see why you’re single.”

  Had she been a man, Mary Bee would have thrown him bodily out the door. And his clothing after him. And his gun.

  “To continue,” she said, “I know I can’t do this service by myself. Not and care for the women, too. I must have someone who can guide, and hunt, and spell me at the reins, and help me with the animals. That’s why I set you free. That’s your job. And you have sworn to do it.”

  She waited. She fixed her gaze on his big repeater, and on the walnut grip, which had been so badly singed by the explosion that it must blacken his hand every time he touched it.

  “Five weeks,” he said. “Four crazy women. A lot more’n I bargained for.”

  “But worth your life, surely.”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what comes along.”

  “I see. That’s another thing. I will have to depend on you, and so will the women. If you have any intention of abandoning us somewhere on the trail, I want to hear it now. You are a man of low character, Mr. Briggs. If you’ve lied to me, tell me now, before it’s too late.”

  Briggs regarded her. For a moment she feared she had gone too far. But if she had insulted him, he would deny her any satisfaction from it. She recalled his passing water on the sycamore tree as a sign of contempt. He regarded her now with a look which had in it elements both of that contempt and of indifference. He was a man in control. He feared nothing, even words. And the source of his strength was his ignorance. Finally he got to his feet, slowly, took his weapon from the table, and belted it. “Thanks for the kind words, Sister,” he said. “You are no prize yourself, though. You are plain as an old tin pail and you have got a viper in your mouth.” He slung his scarf and cowcoat over a shoulder. “This is the most tomfool traipse I ever heard of—and a lot more’n you can swing alone.” He placed his slouch hat on his head at a slight, almost comic, angle. “But you sleep easy. I’ll set out with you because I said I would. Might as well—I’d be on the run around here anyhow. And I’ll look out for your cuckoo clocks the best I’m able. However, I will up and leave when, where, and if I please. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, where’s my goddam bed?”

  Mary Bee sprang up, face burning, marched into her bedroom, tore a blanket from the bed, marched back, and pushed it at him.

  “Your bed’s in the stable,” she snapped. “Goodnight and good riddance!”

  He accepted the blanket, turned, eased himself out the door, then kicked it shut with a thud.

  She heated water and did the dishes. Then, hoping he had been to the outhouse, she went to it herself, worrying every step there and back.

  At last she had an opportunity to read the letter from her sister she had picked up in Loup that morning. Dorothy was well, as were Harold, her doctor-husband, and Adam, their six-year-old, and guess what, she was expecting again!

  A hard tap at a window and Mary Bee fairly jumped out of her skin. She took the candle over and it was Briggs, of course, wanting in. The night was cold, he shouted, and he had the catarrh bad. She said no, absolutely not.

  He replied he was coming in anyway. She must have a bed in the loft.

  She took up the rifle and threatened to shoot him if he entered.

  He entered, blanket about him, and climbed the ladder to the loft while she stood, finger on trigger, like a complete ninny.

  Her situation, as she saw it now, was desperate. Not only was he a fearless man, he was a brazen. He had called her bluff, and safely could again. If she shot and killed him, he couldn’t help her; if she didn’t, he could help himself—to whatever he desired. Big and strong she might be, as tall as he, but she would be no match for him in the end. She fled into her bed fully clothed, candle near, rifle at her side and pointed at the doorway. She dared not close her eyes. And sure enough, in the wee hours, she heard the ladder creak. The wolf on the fold. She sat up and aimed the gun.

  “What’re you doing?” she cried out.

  He came to the doorway.

  “Going out to pee!” he hissed.

  After he had done so, outside her front door no doubt, and climbed back into the loft, she was so humiliated that she fell asleep, and when she woke it was light and he was descending the ladder and closing the outside door.

  She made flapjacks for breakfast, or as some called them, “suckeyes.” Occasionally she watched the jumper through the window. After chores he filled from her well the wagon water keg, then moved back and forth bringing various items from the stable and stowing them in the box under the front seat. She called him in, and when he was seated at the table she set a stack before him. He drenched it with molasses. She brought her own stack.

  “The sleeve of your coat’s torn,” she said, declaring a truce. “Would you like it mended?”

  He shook his head.

  “What were you putting in the wagon?”

  “Hammer. Nails. Shovel. Ax. Stakes. So forth.” His mouth was full. She had to reach for the molasses. “This morning?”

  “Yes. We’ll stop in Loup first.”

  That stopped his fork.

  “Why?”

  “I have an idea. You said last night you’d leave us whenever you please. I can’t have that. So I’ve thought of a way to keep you with us to the Missouri. To make the job worth your while.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you in Loup.”

  “Then where?”

  She went to the stove and poured the last of her batter. “I have it mapped in my mind. You should know their names. Mrs. Petzke, Mrs. Sours, Mrs. Svendsen, and Mrs. Belknap. We’ll pick them up in that order, two today, two tomorrow—they live far apart. Can you eat another flapjack?”

  He nodded.

  She brought his plate, served him, filled his cup and her own, and sat down again.

  “I think you should know something about our four passengers,” she said. “I’ll start with Theoline Belknap, my nearest neighbor to the west and a dear friend. Let me tell you what happened.” She sipped coffee. “A couple of weeks ago, during a blizzard, Theoline had a baby girl. She is forty-three. It was her sixth child. Her husband was in town and she gave birth without help. She then took the baby to the outhouse and put it down the hole. Her husband found it later, dead. Now she is completely out of her mind. She can’t speak or feed herself.”

  Mary Bee waited for reaction. Her star boarder finished his flapjack.

  “Then there’s Mrs. Petzke,” she began.

  “You taking your horse?”

  “Of course. You’re not interested in Mrs. Petzke.”

  “No, I’m not.” He drained his cup, rose, and collected his clothing. “Who’ll look after your stock?”

  “Charley Linens. My neighbor to the east.”

  “All right, I’ll harness and hitch. You clean up in here and pack for yourself and make us bedrolls. If we’re going, let’s get to it.”

  He was out the door before she had time to be provoked. She did up the dishes quickly, then thought to pack. She would have liked to use her portmanteau and take a proper outfit in which to meet, eventually and triumphantly, Altha Carter in Iowa, but there simply wouldn’t be room. He might even pitch it away. Instead, she settled for a velvet sewing bag and the few things she had prescribed for the wives, plus her sister’s last letter, ten dollars in greenbacks, and folding in finally, on whim, her precious cloth keyboard. Precious little opportunity she’d have to play! Once
or twice she looked out the window at the cloudy, inauspicious day. Briggs had already tied mare and roan to the frame wagon and stowed their saddles on top, and was now backing the harnessed mules between the shafts. He stopped, coughed, and bent over with coughing, which was followed by much hawking and spitting. He was indeed plagued by catarrh. She made their bedrolls, stripping two blankets from her bed and two from his in the loft, rolling hers around the sewing bag and tying both with cord. She opened the stove and smothered the coals with ashes. She emptied the water bucket out the door. She pocketed several boxes of ammunition for her rifle. Then, too suddenly, she was ready. She looked around her, at her lovely house, and to her dismay her eyes filled with tears. If she didn’t take care, she’d sit down at the table and have a good boo-hoo and join him with her face a swollen fright. As though that mattered when she was plain as an old tin pail. She drew a deep breath. Tears were out of the question. A smatter of self-pity, however, she could allow. This was the day Mary Bee Cuddy set forth to do the greatest kindness of her life. Did she have trumpets? She did not. A cannonade? She did not. All she had to honor her heroism was a cloudy day and four dumb animals waiting and a fifth hawking and spitting. She put on her coat and rabbit hat, picked up bedrolls and rifle, latched the door behind her, strode to the wagon, dumped the bedrolls inside and her gun in the box under the seat. Briggs was examining the mules’ teeth.

  “D’you know much about mules?” she asked.

  “Some.”

  She climbed to the seat. He was still studying teeth. “Will they get us there?”

  “They’re old. Old mules, their teeth wear down from chomping their bits.”

  She nodded at the off animal. “This one twitches his ears a lot. He’s the thinker.” She nodded at the right. “This one does more than his share. He’s the worker.”

  “She,” corrected Briggs. “She’s a mare mule, other’s a horse mule, male.”

  “Oh,” was all Mary Bee could say.

  He came back and would have climbed aboard but something turned him. “Hold on,” he said, and walked off to the stable. She heard thumping, like the sound of a hammer. When he returned he had four strips of leather cut from the traces of another harness, strips thirty inches long or thereabouts with two nail holes at each end. So that he could put them under the seat, she had to rise.

  “What’re those for?”

  “To strap ’em in.”

  He dropped the seat onto the box.

  “Strap them in? Why?”

  “They’re crazy, that’s why. They might need to be tied down.”

  “I’m sure they won’t.”

  “They might get to clawing and biting. Or run off altogether.”

  “They’ll do no such thing.”

  Briggs hauled up beside her on the seat. “Just how in hell do you know?”

  • • •

  He was right, of course. How would they behave? Might they quarrel? Might they try to flee? She recalled Mr. Svendsen warning her not to turn her back to his Gro—“She will kill you!” Or might they be as dear and easy to manage as retarded children? She hadn’t an inkling. Her knowledge of madwomen was as extensive as her knowledge of mules. She penalized him for being right by not saying a single word to him almost the whole ten miles into town. A mile from it he reached, took away the reins, pulled up the span, and jumped down from the seat.

  “You’re going into Loup.”

  “I have business.”

  “Then get down and lock me in the wagon.”

  “Why?”

  “I just cheated one rope. I don’t care to bet on another.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Think about it.”

  He made her feel an ignoramus again.

  “Oh. You might be recognized.”

  He walked to the rear of the wagon. She came down, saw him inside, and easing between the trailing horses, hers and his, locked the doors with the slide-bolt. As she headed for the front, he spoke through one of the windows on that side. “You’ve got money.”

  “Some.”

  “I don’t have. Here’s what you buy me. Three boxes of paper cartridges for a Navy Colt’s .36, and caps. Star tobacco. And a jug of whiskey.”

  “Whiskey?”

  “Snakebite.”

  Mary Bee put hands on hips. “Oh, no. Bullets and tobacco, maybe, but no whiskey, not a drop.”

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it.”

  He was actually annoyed. He stuck his head through the window and knocked off his hat. “Why not?”

  “I can’t have you getting drunk around four defenseless women.”

  “If I don’t get drunk around those women, I’ll lose my own mind.”

  She picked up his hat. He withdrew his head and she handed the hat through the window. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

  Inside, he sighed. “Then be dry and be damned. I won’t go east with you,” said he. “Goodbye, Cuddy.”

  She was much more than annoyed. “You have to, Briggs. I saved your life.”

  “Thank you.”

  She stomped a boot. “You swore to God!”

  “I’m a man of low character.”

  The last mile into Loup she plotted a perfect revenge. He was locked in the wagon, he hadn’t realized he was her prisoner. What she’d do was drive to the center of town, stand on the seat, and announce, at the top of her voice, that inside her wagon she had the varmint who tried to jump Andy Giffen’s claim—a crime at least as low as rustling cattle or thieving horses. That would attract a crowd. The jumper, his name was Briggs, had slipped the noose once, she would go on to the crowd, larger and more murderous by now, but she had him this time, and she was sure there were men enough and trees and rope in Loup to make certain of him. Then she would descend, slide the bolt, sashay off, and let the local vigilantes hang him while she idled away an hour in the general store imagining death by strangulation and admiring millinery.

  She tied the mules to a tree across the way from the general store, waded through mud, went inside, emerged after a few minutes, waded through mud back to the wagon, and via a window delivered to her prisoner three boxes of cartridges and three plugs of Star.

  “And now,” she said, “a jug of whiskey.” And she added, “The saloon’s best—Old Tabby.”

  She smiled as he took the jug through the window. Half a revenge was better than none. He must have heard the story, which was told about practically every saloon in the Territory and its proprietor. In Loup, as elsewhere, whiskey dispensed by the general store was judged to be of higher quality than the saloon’s, which had come to be called “Old Tabby.” The proprietor got whiskey by the barrel from Wamego, and according to the story doubled its volume with water but maintained its potency by adding dead rats caught by his cat. Then the cat disappeared, having run out of rats perhaps, and the saloon-keeper, desperate to keep some teeth in his elixir, was suspected of using the unfortunate feline instead.

  She spoke to the window. “What’s your first name?”

  He stayed out of sight. “That’s my business.”

  “I have to know.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you—I have an idea how to keep you with us, all the way to the Missouri. I’m going to the bank, and I have to have your name.”

  The bank sank in. “Let’s say George.”

  “George. George Briggs. All right, I’ll be back soon.”

  The Bank of Loup boasted a counter, a desk, a safe, and Mr. Clemmons, President and Cashier. The story told about it and him, as apocryphal probably as the one about the saloon proprietor and his cat, had also been told at one time or another about every wildcat bank and banker in the Territory. Footloose, and looking for a professional living, Clemmons had wandered into town, rented a clapboard front, installed a safe, painted BANK on the wi
ndow, and opened for business. The first day a man came in and deposited a hundred dollars. The second day a second individual deposited two hundred. By the third day, Clemmons had acquired enough confidence in his bank to deposit a hundred himself. It was a good story, but Clemmons had the last laugh. He turned out to be a crackerjack banker and a man of total probity. He had survived for two years now. He held mortgages on much of the best farmland in the area, at interest rates averaging five percent a month. Like all wildcatters he issued his own paper money, notes on the Bank of Loup elaborately printed with a promise of redemption in greenbacks or in gold or silver specie, and his currency was acceptable everywhere. Finally, his customer service was high-grade. Miss Cuddy asked to withdraw three hundred dollars from her account, was immediately obliged with six fifty-dollar banknotes and informed that this reduced her balance to two hundred four dollars. Saying she wished to mail the money, she was offered the desk, a pen, ink, and an envelope. This she addressed as follows: “Mr. George Briggs, c/o Mrs. Altha Carter, Ladies Aid Society, Methodist Church, Hebron, Iowa.” Miss Cuddy rose then, was shown to the door by the President of the Bank of Loup, and wished a good day.

  Her step on return to the wagon was slow. The envelope seemed heavy in her hand. With two of the three hundred dollars she had planned to buy a beautiful cherrywood melodeon and bench. She held the envelope up to the wagon window.

  “Read this.”

  His face appeared. He frowned at the rectangle almost fiercely. It was an expression she had seen many times. He couldn’t read, so surely couldn’t write. Names or words written or printed he could recognize only by repetition or association.

  She turned the envelope front to her and read aloud from it: “ ‘Mr. George Briggs, care of Mrs. Altha Carter, Ladies Aid Society, Methodist Church, Hebron, Iowa.’ ” She looked at him. “I’ve put three hundred dollars in this envelope. I’ll mail it at the store now. When we reach Hebron safe and sound, Mrs. Carter will have it for you. Don’t you think it a fair sum?”