The Homesman

by Glendon Swarthout

  Jessup had just come home from delivering a baby ten miles west and was down on his uppers, he said, but when Garn told him what was wrong with Connie he put on his boots again, and a greatcoat and a hat of badger skin with earflaps. In the stable he saddled up a fresh horse and tied his bag on. Then he had a long swig from a whiskey bottle, slipped it into a coat pocket, climbed aboard with a grunt, and they were off, north. After a mile he gave Garn his reins and told him to lead and went sound asleep in the saddle.

  Doc Jessup was a blessing. He answered every call. He had no formal medical training, he said so himself, and might be behind the books on contagious diseases, he said so himself when in his cups, but he had a natural gift for fractures, gangrenous infections, gunshot and arrow wounds, and childbirth. He had brought Clinton into the world. Denton and Constance were too fast for him. And he was a crackerjack surgeon. One dark night, after the roof of a sod house caved in, he had successfully removed a ruptured appendix on a wagon bed outdoors by the light of matches struck near the abdomen. Finally, he was reasonable. A dollar a visit plus ten cents a mile, and if you had no cash money and ran up a bill, he would settle for a calf or a pair of shoats. If he tippled on the job, everyone agreed, better a drunk doctor than a dead patient.

  Garn shook him awake when they got there and tied both animals in the stable and followed him into the dugout. Jessup was examining Connie, who now lay still on the bed, eyes closed. Belle looked a fright she was so pale and worn.

  “Is she dead?” Garn had to ask.

  “Coma,” Jessup said.

  He examined Clinton and Denton, who were both crying and fidgeting now in the wooden box where they slept. Belle seemed unable to say anything.

  “What is it, Doc?” Garn asked for her.

  “Diphtheria,” Jessup said. He opened his bag, rustled around, and handed Belle a small white envelope. “Powders. If you can, Miz Sours, get a pinch down the three of them in water every two hours.” He looked directly at her, as he might have another child. “And try to sleep some yourself.” He closed the bag and put on his badger hat. “Garn, come along with me.”

  They left the house and went to the dugout stable a few yards down the ravine. The wind blew harder now, and sharp cold cut the cheeks. The thaw was over. Inside, Doc Jessup tied on his bag, had a long pull on his bottle, and insisted Garn have one, too. A newcomer to whiskey, Garn coughed and spluttered. The physician leaned against his horse as though his legs might give weary way.

  “Christ,” he said. “I’ve had seven kids die on me the last month. Diphtheria. Could I, I’d get so drunk I wouldn’t come to till summer.”

  Garn waited.

  “No charge for this call, son. Forget it. Because those powders are not worth a tinker’s damn. We’re going to lose the baby. And prob’ly both boys. In short order. All three. You hear what I’m saying to you?”

  Garn heard, but couldn’t comprehend.

  “All right now, listen. Don’t you go back in that house or you’ll likely get it and you better not because she’ll need you.”

  Garn just stood there.

  “That girl of yours, she’s the one worries me. You can have more kids. But in the next day or two your wife’s going to get old. All of a sudden. So you be a husband and take care of her. Be a man.”

  Jessup waited now, and in a minute heard Garn crying. In the dark he moved to him and put his arms around him like a father and groaned into his neck.

  “Son, son, you’re going to have a bad time. I wish I could bear it for you, but I can’t.”

  He let loose of the boy, shook his head, and said out loud, to himself, “God, God, this is a hell of a place for a girl to grow up.”

  Then he untied his horse, backed the animal out of the dugout, mounted, and without another word rode off into the night.

  After he got hold of himself Garn went to the house and rapped on the door and told Belle he couldn’t come in, Doc Jessup said so, and he needed a couple of blankets. She brought them, but when he asked how Connie was, she just closed the door. Back in the stable he wound himself into the blankets, burrowed into the haypile, and tried to sleep.

  Though pitch-dark it must have been morning when he heard Belle calling. He ran to the dugout door, and when she handed him Connie, wrapped in her mother’s best dress, he burst into tears. Belle wasn’t even crying. She just closed the door. He carried the tiny body back to the stable and buried it in the haypile near him. Come another thaw and he could maybe dig a grave, and they would have a proper funeral.

  Garn and Arabella Sours, just married, he at eighteen, she at sixteen, had wagoned west from Ohio three springs before with his family, his father, his mother, and two younger brothers. Everyone complained they were too young to marry, but Garn’s father was in a fever to start, so the youngsters, who were woefully in love and might pine away if parted, had a hurry-up wedding and spent their wedding night in the bed of the wagon camped out. Arabella left a large, warm family and was homesick for a month. Garn’s folks outfitted the newlyweds with wagon, stock, implements, and some furnishings at Glenwood, crossed the Big Muddy there, followed the Platte along with most everyone else, then struck off north into the Territory to look for land. Garn’s youngest brother, Bert, age thirteen, drowned in a swollen river they tried to ford, and they never did find his body. They couldn’t locate adjacent claims either, Garn and his father, which was what they’d planned, so they had to stake out and register acreages almost thirty miles apart. Garn and Belle built a dugout house and stable because that was the easiest. Picking out a ravine that would have an east outlook, they went to work with shovels on the west bank and in a week had an excavation fourteen feet wide and sixteen deep into the hillside. Garn framed a wood door and a small window beside it, and set them up and filled in and around with dirt, then bored a small hole down from topside and ran the stovepipe up through it above grass level. It was a snug dwelling, warm in winter and cool in summer, and Belle placed her new bed, table, and two chairs where she pleased. She was too young to own a trunk, hiding her trinkets and pink cameo under the bed. Then they dug out a stable some yards down the draw, Garn glassed the window and put up an outhouse, hired a man with oxen and a breaking plow, bought seed, and inside of a month Mr. and Mrs. Sours were homeowners and farmers and happy as mice in a grain mill. Inside of four months she was four months along and showing and he was round-shouldered with responsibility, and they fell into bed every night worn to the nub.

  During that day, when Garn was doing chores, he puzzled, and when he wasn’t, walked up and down before his house, helpless, or put his nose to the glass of the window and stared inside. He couldn’t understand Belle. She had pulled the wooden box over near the bed and sat on the bed staring into it at her little boys. She didn’t walk them in her arms or try to get the powders down them. She didn’t even cry. It was as though she’d given up, as though she knew they were dying and had locked all her grief and mothering inside her and couldn’t or wouldn’t let it out. Garn’s heart ached for her. And the sight of her shamed him. He had married her too young and brought her to a land too wild and given her a hole in the ground to live in. What a hell of a place, Jessup had said, for a girl to grow up. Oh, he, Garn, was to blame all right. But how could he have known how awful hard she’d have to work? How could he have known she’d have three babies in three years? How could he have known that Arabella Sours, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, would come to look sometimes as old as his own mother?

  Around noontime he knocked at the door and said he was hungry. She brought him some cold dodgers.

  Later he took his nose from the window and knocked again. She opened the door.

  “How are they, honey?”

  She looked at him as though she had never seen him before.

  “Belle, I’ve got to know!” he cried. “I’m their father! How are they?”

  She just stood there
.

  “Belle, what’s wrong with you!”

  When she closed the door, Garn burst into tears again and walked round and round in a circle, crying.

  Night came down colder than ever, and it began to snow. He was in the stable when he heard her call him. He ran to the house and she handed him another baby, wrapped this time in a feed sack, and closed the door right away. He carried his son to the stable, unwrapped the sack to see which one, and struck a match. It was Denton, the middle child. He had naturally curly hair, fair hair, like his mother. Garn got the dry sobs so bad they seemed to pitchfork his chest. He buried the boy in the haypile beside the girl, Connie.

  That night he couldn’t sleep, not lying under hay that near to his own flesh and blood, to his own little son and daughter. Belle was quite religious, at least she read the Bible a lot, or had lately, but Garn was not. He believed, he had faith, but he didn’t put his mind to religion much. Nevertheless he prayed now. “Oh, Lord,” he asked, “why did You kill these children? Why did You cut off my dear wife’s tongue? We’re good people. We’ve been true to Your teachings. We’ve made crops here, where nobody ever did before. We’ve multiplied ourselves, me and Belle. We helped build a church for You. But now we are bent down and don’t know why. Please spare Clinton. He is all we got left. And please save my wife. I love her something terrible. I pray you, Lord, leave us one child and give my dear wife back to me. Thank you. Amen.”

  He couldn’t sleep. He lay shuddering with cold until, maybe around midnight, something made him get up, throw off his blankets, and clump through falling snow to the dugout. There was faint light in the window and frost on the glass, but he put his nose and bare hands to it until enough melted so that he could see. The light came from a candle on the table. Belle sat in a chair. Something small was on the bed, and he knew in his guts it was Clinton. Garn could bear the wait no longer. He opened the door and went inside, damn the diphtheria.

  It was Clinton, dead. But it was his wife, Arabella Sours, who crippled him. She sat stiff in the chair, as though she couldn’t move her arms or legs either, like an old woman made of wood or stone. In the crook of one arm she held a doll. It was the doll Arabella had brought with her from Ohio. She kept it under the bed, and he thought she had forgotten it. That made him remember the early morning they left home three springs ago, his mother and father up front in the wagon, him and his brothers and Belle in the bed behind, and back down the road, watching them go for good, Belle’s big family waving and calling goodbye, and Belle, sixteen years old, a new bride, waving and calling goodbye to them until they were out of sight and sound. The recollection of it caused Garn to cry again, even though he was cried out. He went to his wife, knelt before her, and laid his head in her lap in hopes she would comfort him. But she did not, and suddenly he looked up. She was holding her doll and waving one arm.

  “Goodbye!” she called. “Goodbye!”

  • • •

  One morning the Worker refused the harness.

  They had breakfasted, the fire was out, bedrolls on top, women in the wagon, they were ready to go, but the Thinker would not stand for the harness. He’d been off his feed, too, Briggs had noticed, and wasn’t pulling his share of the load lately. Now he walked around grinding his teeth, long strings of saliva dripping from his mouth, and exhibited every sign of pain. Also he extended his front legs and stretched himself like a cat, shaking his head.

  Briggs opined he had botts.

  Mary Bee asked what “botts” was.

  He said she ought to know. Didn’t she doctor her stock?

  No, she didn’t. A neighbor, Charley Linens, did for her. So what was botts?

  Stomach worms.

  Oh, she said. What could be done?

  Drench, he said.

  He took out his plug of Star tobacco, broke it in half, gave her half, and told her to start a new fire, put the tobacco in a half-gallon of water, stir it well, bring the drench to a boil, then let it cool to warm.

  She did as bid, and brought the mixture, which stank to high heaven, back to Briggs, who was in the process of casting the animal.

  He tied its hind legs together and ran the rope to the left foreleg, which he tied and cinched tight to the hind legs. He told Mary Bee to put down the pan and be ready, when he got the animal down, to fall on her knees on its neck, fast.

  Standing in front of the mule, he yanked on the rope. The hind legs were pulled forward, the animal sank on its hind end, and with one jump, Briggs slapped a hand on its right shoulder and gave it a shove, causing it to crash to the ground on its left side.

  “Now!” shouted Briggs.

  Mary Bee tried to kneel on its neck, a difficult exercise because the mule was rearing its head and thrashing its legs in vain attempts to regain its feet. Briggs soon had all four legs tied, though, and she could plant her knees in place.

  “Get off!” shouted Briggs.

  She sprang up, and Briggs replaced her instantly, then raised the animal’s head and opened its mouth by seizing its upper jaw.

  “Pour!” he shouted.

  She tried to pour from the pan. The outraged beast lashed its tongue and gagged and let out a roar not unlike that of the King of the Jungle.

  “Pour, goddammit!” shouted Briggs.

  She poured as best she could. He was deluged with drench, she was deluged, the mule got perhaps half of it down, whereupon Briggs leaped up from its neck, almost bowling Mary Bee over, and untied legs and sprang free as the animal lurched to its feet and began to buck about, coughing and braying.

  They watched the Thinker.

  “He’ll harness now,” said Briggs, filling his cheek with a wad of Star.

  Mary Bee was ready to retch. “How awful,” said she, “to put that vile stuff in your stomach.”

  Briggs responded with a first, satisfied spit. “Guarantee you one thing, Cuddy,” said he. “I’ll never have the botts.”

  • • •

  Then, that afternoon, while he had the reins, he stopped the wagon suddenly and stared. She followed his gaze and went cold all over. On a ridge, a quarter-mile to the north, a strange band of horsemen had stopped. She stared till her eyes watered. She counted eight men, Indians. Some were mounted on spotted ponies, some saddled, some bareback on blankets.

  “What are they?” she asked under her breath, as though they could hear.

  “Pawnee, prob’ly. Maybe some Otoe.”

  They were a ragtag bunch. She could spot several blue coats and caps and rifles.

  “Somewhere along the line,” said Briggs, “they’ve killed them some U.S. Cavalry.”

  He clucked to the mules and the wagon moved on east. Up on the ridgeline the riders walked their horses east. Man and woman behind the span of mules heard a blat sound.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Bugle.”

  Briggs pulled up the mules again. The horsemen reined up and waited.

  “What do they want?” whispered Mary Bee.

  “Whatever we’ve got. Trouble is, they don’t know what that is. They’ve never seen a wagon like this. Could be goods inside, soldiers, anything.” He was thinking. “Stand up.”

  She stood, he with her. From the compartment under their seat he took out her rifle and some shells and gave them to her. They sat down again. He started the wagon. The Indians started with them along the ridge, keeping distance but keeping pace. Briggs reined up. The Indians did likewise.

  “They won’t turn us loose,” said Briggs. “I count four rifles. If they think we’re worth it and come on down here, we’re dead.”

  Again the bugle blatted. Mary Bee got gooseflesh. Indians were what she had most feared.

  Briggs decided. “All right, I’ll try to buy ’em off.” He jumped down, fished inside his cowcoat, and handed up to her his heavy Colt’s repeater. “If they come, don’t fool with the rifl
e. Get inside the wagon as fast as you can and shoot the women. In the head. Then shoot yourself.”

  And before she could protest, he was off behind the wagon, and before she could stop him, he had untied Dorothy, led her out facing the Indians, let go of her bridle, and given her a whack, and she, good, obedient mare, was on the run to the Indians.

  One hand over her mouth to keep from crying out, the other gripping the pistol, Mary Bee watched her go, and watched as one of the horsemen rode out, caught dear Dorothy by the bridle, and galloped her back up the ridge. When she was surrounded by milling animals and riders, two or three rifles were fired in the air as acknowledgment and the whole band went to the trot off the ridge and disappeared.

  Briggs climbed up to the seat, put away rifle and revolver, took up the reins, and got the wagon moving. It was at least a mile before Mary Bee could trust herself to speak.

  “I loved that mare,” she said.

  Briggs was silent.

  After another mile, she spoke again. “Oh, if I’d only done that to your horse. When you sat on him with a rope around your neck.”

  Eventually she brought herself to ask, “What will they do with her?”

  He shrugged. “Fine, fat mare like that? My guess is, eat ’er.”