by Les Weil
PART TWO
8
LAT DUMPED his armload of wood and took off his mitts and rubbed his hands. In this weather even a few minutes outside made them tingle now they'd been frost-bitten once. He wiped the water from his eyes and waited for his sight to sharpen. After the glare of the snow the windowless cabin was dark, though an open fire blazed and a lantern burned on a cottonwood block.
The poker players still sat on the floor, fixed shadows in the flicker of shadows around them. "Raise you five," old man Godwin was saying. His hand came up. One by one he would be dropping the dried beans that did for chips on the dried hide that did for a table.
"Take it, hog." Carmichael lifted his head. "Want back in, Lat?"
"Guess not."
"That Lat can't play for wantin' to freeze his tail off," Tom said. "Leave it to him and we'd be huntin' hair while he iced over. Ain't it so, pard?"
"Yep."
"It's yours," Moo Cow told Godwin, and Godwin clawed the pot in. "The weather ain't no colder'n me."
Indoors a man could keep fairly warm, though he had to turn himself now and then before the mud-and-stick fireplace like a bird on a spit. Or he could stay in bed. Or, like Tom, who sat farthest away, he could make out for a while with a blanket drawn over his coat. Out from the fire the cold showed white with the breath. It came in through sidewall and door and pushed at the half circle of heat.
Even with his clothes on, even with two blankets and a green buffalo hide and the help of the graying coals, Lat slept chill at night, wanting someone to snuggle against, dreaming sometimes she was there and moving closer and waking to the touch of the frost as he left the little heat his own body had made. Moo Cow and Carmichael bunked together, and Tom and old Godwin, leaving him to himself -which was just as well in view of the dreams. By morning the green cow skin was frozen, and he slid it off as he would have slid off a board and, if it was his turn, went shaking to build up the fire while the others waited, drawn tight in their beds like cold dogs.
"Might as well quit frettin', Lat, and take a hand," Carmichael said as he riffled the cards. "The Lord don't want us to work today." He kept talking as he dealt. "We got cards and a fire and a roof overhead. Home, sweet home. What else you want?"
"Women and whiskey for me and just pelts for my pardner," Tom answered.
Home, sweet home was a weather-rotten shack of a place, half dugout, half log, put up and used and deserted by earlier hunters of the upper Musselshell. With an axe and a shovel and bullhides for weatherboards they had tightened it up. It was good enough, though -for them and the field mice and the wild rats that sneaked in at night. It had spring water close by and wood enough down the draw.
"I wish we could move," Lat said.
"Today!" Carmichael grinned as he shook his head. "The way it is out, a polar bear would howl for them warm Ar'tic ranges."
"I know." Lat put more wood on the fire. Today would be, it had to be, another day of no work, no setting baits, no killing buffalo to use as bait, no skinning wolves already poisoned, no storing up a nickel. Another day, today, of cards and gab. And itch.
So long as they stayed here, even a turn in the weather wouldn't mean much. They'd done poorly so far, for from within range of the cabin most of the buffalo had been chased off or killed off or had wandered away. The real buffalo, a trader had told them, pulling up as they rode alongside, were beyond the divide on the Yellowstone. A scad of 'em. The great northern herd. See him when they had cow hides or wolf pelts to sell, though it didn't look as if they'd do good where they were. Wolves followed the buffalo. Whiskey? Best in the business. Bottle for the price of a cow skin. Take it or leave it. Plenty dry bellies where he was bound. Tom took. The trader spat through his frozen whiskers and cursed at his mules and whined away, angled to southward.
"Raise you the limit." It was Godwin again. At his suggestion the limit had been set at two bits so no one could be hurt much. A big loser might be a big pain.
"Call."
Godwin lost the pot and got up and came over to warm his behind. The others held up the game. "Cold snap'll hreak, and we'll get more wolves," he told Lat.
"Not enough around here. That trader was right."
"It'll let up by and by, and we'll skin what we got and get out. But, boys, there ain't no great northern herd." Godwin made the point by pecking his palm with a finger.
Tom said, "Seems we heard you say that before."
"What's left is leavin's," Godwin went on. "From talk and from seein' myself, I say there ain't but a handful of buffalo yon side the Missouri. In Canada nary a head. None west on the Tansy and Medicine rivers. None, you might say, where they once was thick as the grass. And, by God, no wonder! You take just one case like I seen and add a million to it and then, just to be safe, multiply a time or two. I know I ain't told you about that."
They were silent for that was the way of them, to play cards and talk and tell stories and listen and wear the day through to another day of the same. Tom climbed to his feet and came to the fire and fed it a log and backed up beside Godwin.
"It wasn't such a spell ago, 'sixty-seven or about then," Godwin said. "I had scratched up a little gold and decided to go to the States just to see if city people was as crazy as ever. It was a low-water time, and steamboats was havin' trouble gettin' to Benton, so I went to Cow Island where the old Imperial had had to tie up and was loadin' for the return trip down the Missouri.
"So we paddled down, and there, close to the mouth of the Yellowstone, they was makin' a crossin'-more buffalo than a man could count in all the time since old Adam, more'n there's a name for or a spyglass built strong enough to find the lead and drag of. The pilot he banged right into the middle of 'em and backed up the paddles so as to stay there, and everyone run to the rails and began blazin' away, with rifles and fusees and scatter guns and pistols and peashooters and whatever threw lead. Three hundred dead game sports there was, allow a few one way or the other, all havin' the time of their lives while the buffalo swam crazy and wore themselves out, a big bunch just drowndin' and a bunch gettin' bullet-killed and the wounded and weak hoggin' down in the shore mud and waitin' there helpless while a hell's slew of wolves danced on the bank."
Godwin got out his pipe and filled it. "We left 'em there, all except three cows that we hauled in to eat. Some of that meat spoiled before we got to it." He lighted a branch from the fire and brought it to his pipe. "Big doin's. A whole damn world full of God's best eatin', and we kill it off so's to make room for them sea-lion, swamp-angel, bull-tough, piss-poor cattle from Texas. And seems like that's how the government wants it, the government and the railroads to hoot. Kill 'em off and make tame beggars out of the Injuns."
"And still you're still killin'." Carmichael's words were lialf question.
"Yeah, for grub and for baits, and one gun don't make any difference much." The force had gone out of Godwin's voice. "It's the order of things, the teetotal end of the buffalo is, and where's the man that can change it?"
They had no answer, and it was a minute before anyone spoke. Then Moo Cow said from the floor, "Yon boys goin' to play or palaver? I can't get even on gas." He was ways talking about getting even, always studying his hand, his little eyes squinched, his little mouth drawn at the corners.
"If you want to lose more," Tom answered and moved back to the hide.
"Wait on the cook," Godwin said. He picked up the coffee pot and moved to the water bucket. "Damn water's freezin' already." He broke the skim of ice and poured the pot full and set it against the fire and toed closer to the heat the stew kettle that sat at the side. "Wish some brave boy would go out and shoot some meat. Our mulligan is boiled to ravelin's. Now you can deal."
Lat sat down on his bed. Flour they had, and beans, brown sugar, coffee, salt, no meat but what the kettle held. Twentyfive or so buffalo hides skinned from baits and worth about two dollars each. Maybe a hundred and thirty wolf pelts, some unskinned, just the best of which would bring five dollars. That much for weeks of wo
rk. That much against their outlay for horses and a wagon, for equipment and supplies. That much to be divided. One fifth for him to start a ranch with, one fifth plus five dollars each for breaking twenty broncs or a teetotal of a hundred dollars which Jehu hadn't paid but promised to in time.
They could have worked harder. Earlier they could have pushed on to the Yellowstone and not holed up here to live through the winter on poker and stories. But who cared but himself? Who skinned the buffalo, small though the return was unless, like professional hunters, you killed them by hundreds and had skinners who used teams of horses to yank the hides off? Usually who slashed the carcasses and kneaded strychnine in muscles and guts and posted a flag to keep the wolves off until the meat froze and so couldn't be gobbled, thus making the poison go farther?
Not that it made so much difference here, for the harvest came small. Not fifty wolves at a clip, as there could be in places, but two or five and once fifteen, wolves lying dead and dying and heaving with cramps, gray wolves, white wolves, wolves like rich cream, but not enough of them. Coyotes, too, not worth the skinning. An eagle once, and magpies.
"Straight," Moo Cow said, and Godwin said, "Full house," and Moo Cow said, "By God, four aces wouldn't win for me!"
How would they be, these partners of his, when a thaw came and the skins that wouldn't come off when frozen flint-hard to flesh had either to come off or spoil?
He shook himself. He was being unreasonable. His fret made him unreasonable. Tom was all right, and Godwin and Moo Cow and Carmichael. As Tom said, except with one different word, he himself had a wild hair in his rear. Or you could call it ambition.
"My deal," Moo Cow was saying, "and I try to treat myself right." He always said that when the cards came to him.
Ambition, this fret peculiar to him? Or the wish to make up for money spent wrongly, a reaching from shame? Not one shame alone. Shame repeated. What was a head and a face and a body, no matter how good, as long as all were for sale? She lay sleeping in the early light, sleeping sweet as a child, her hair golden against the white of the pillow, golden above the smooth plane of her brow, soft under the clean lines of her face. Her eyelids fluttered and came open, and there was the caught blue of the sky, and for that caught moment he was fool enough to think he saw deep, to the bed of her being, and she wasn't embarrassed, drawn warm flesh to flesh. She put her hand to his head and stroked his hair back. "Lat," she said. "Lat." Like a fool, too, he had the feeling of having burst free.
He wrenched to his feet and went to the door and swung it half open, and the white cold bellowed in.
"Close it!" Tom shouted.
Outside, it was the same as before, but a north wind was blowing. The snow was knee-deep, knee-deep and powdery and glitter-white on days that were fair. It cried under heel like a crunched gopher crying. Hunting, a man saw it take shape and bound away, white moving on white, white with dark eyes and a dark tuft of tail, white that was jackrabbits dressed for the winter. The sky was an ache, and the snow was an ache, and the bounce of the light stabbed the eyes.
"Close it!"
Lat pushed the door to. Behind him Godwin said, "Limit."
9
WHEN THEY fell silent, as now in the shack, Carmichael could hear the long cry of the wind and the sift-scratch of blown snow and the tick-tack of a tatter of hide on a sidewall outside. Wherever they were, the buffalo would be humped and grizzled with frost and the wolves chilled to silence and even the jackrabbits huddled and numb. He'd seen a day once so cold that a couple of buffalo bulls wouldn't move, choosing instead to be shot or to freeze on their feet.
But here, snug from weather, denned off from the whistling reaches of land, here was a fire and a skin full of food and the good smells of tobacco and coffee. In how many bunkhouses had he sat such storms through? Kansas. Colorado. Wyoming. Dakota. Good times, looking back, as this time would be, as it was now if you just let it be. A man learned to rest easy, to take things as they came and make the best of them, to swap yarns and think of still others to tell, knowing that soon enough he'd be out rawhiding again.
That Lat was at the door, bundled thick against the cold. "Them horses are all right," Carmichael told him, but Lat went out without answering, and the crunch of his feet on the snow got lost in the wind.
Carmichael rolled up a smoke. He sat on a block by the fire. Godwin was messing with water and flour, making what passed for fair bread. Moo Cow and Tom, taking time off from cards, lay stomach-down on the bunks with the covers drawn up. "Blow! Damn you, blow!" Tom growled to the wind.
"Lat sure nurses them horses," Carmichael said. Nobody answered. "Wish I owned that Sugar, now he's got him dog-tame. Ain't a jackrabbit, hardly, can foot it with that horse."
"Yeah." Godwin let out the one word.
"Don't be so damn talkative, boys."
Tom spoke from the bed. "Wish I was in Fort Benton, instead of lettin' Lat toll me out here."
They had all been tolled in a way, even old Godwin, though his explanation was that he might as well wolf as loll around until spring. Tolled by the youngest of them. Tolled by a kid. And it was all right if kind of comical. Who gave a damn?
"Pard or not," Tom said, "why in hell did I do it, not speakin' of you others?"
Carmichael had the answer. Fool around with reasons and you came to the right one and found the words for it and felt satisfied, as with a story that had to be shaped and, sure enough, at last was. "A man with a purpose don't lack for a party," he said and would have gone on, but Lat opened the door and came in, looking wind-blown and cold.
Moo Cow stirred to ask, "Well, how's it out?"
"Same."
"Always the goddam same." Sighing, Moo Cow put his head back down.
"This was your idea much as Lat's," Tom said. "Quit your cryin'!"
Godwin stirred the fire and added wood and put his dough in the Dutch oven.
Outside it would be growing dark. Almost as if he really saw, Carmichael could see the streaming, shortened shadow of the snow, the world shrunk close and shrinking closer, the fierce worry of the wind. Against the cabin the wind moaned and whined and whistled, and a piece of it squeezed in and blew the fire.
Tom and Moo Cow silent in the soogans. Lat pacing one step, then another. Godwin wordless as he fooled with grub. All glum. All ready to bust out at nothing.
"It just come to me," Carmichael said, hitching his seat on the block. "Two Plumes was that Injun's name. Two Plumes, a Piegan."
For all the heed they paid him he might as well have kept still. "It was real educational."
Tom raised his head and propped it in his hands.
"Ain't seen him since, and that was seven, eight, maybe ten years ago, but if he's alive he ain't wastin' words." He fished tobacco out and started on a cigarette. "When we eatin', Godwin? I'm ga'nted up."
"You mean bloated, but let's hear it."
Moo Cow had his face up now, his eyes waiting in their slits, and Lat moved over and sat down. Carmichael lit the cigarette and took his time. Hurry spoiled a story. "It was at Fort Benton," he said then. "I showed up there from over in the Deer Lodge country, not expectin' such a jamboree. The place was lively as a hot carcass, for the nabobs from the fur companies had come up from St. Louis, like they did every year, to see how much they'd been cheated out of their legal and honorable earnin's. Steamboats on the levee. Other visitors aplenty in town bullwhackers, muleskinners, prospectors like Godwin, traders, tinhorn gamblers, crews from the boats, new crop of girls, all bein' merry.
"And to boot, there was a big bunch of Injuns, mostly Piegans but Bloods, too, and other kinds I didn't savvy. A passel, I tell you. Their tepees was pitched out a ways, God knows why, for mornin', noon and night they hung around town.
"People was a little ticklish, seein' them Injuns was so many. Give them savages some little excuse, they said between hiccups and rumpuses, and they might forget their manners, which wasn't high-toned at the best.
"Then, from some tradin' post, a pack
train showed up. Tied on one of the mules, with the muzzle pointin' the same way as the mule's, was a little brass cannon, or what they call a mountain howitzer.
"It took a little time to see that here was the big IT. The trouble with opportunity is that its name's wrote on its butt. But this time somebody seen it before it went over the hill. Fire that cannon, the smart somebody said. Make boom. Make goddam big hole in far bluff of river. Show Injuns real medicine. Scare devil out of red devils.
"There wasn't no argument on that motion. It had just to be put to get a unanimous vote. So the boys went out to round up the Injuns, tellin' 'em by tongue and by sign to come see the big show. Meantime some others said they'd cut the mule from the string and plant him close to the river. Them with no special duties kept circulatin', makin' sure that all hands was informed.
"Everyone was, Injun and white. The Injuns came in a herd, in blankets and buckskins and bare skins, and so did the whites, all of 'em, includin' some ladies not so damn lady-like they couldn't enjoy theirselves. You never see such a crowd.
"Like now, of course, Front Street was half-faced, buildin's on one side, river on t'other. The mule men had led the mule to the shore. On yon side was a cut bank they figured would make a good target. The rest of us pushed around close, makin' a kind of a half circle, the heathens composin' one horn of it and us redeemers the other, though there was some mixin' up, it bein' hard to remember it was them that needed to see and get educated.
"Now in the front row of the Injuns I spotted this old chief, Two Plumes, that I had smoked with a time or two. He had his arms folded and the look on his face that a redskin can wear which says nothin' will ever surprise him, in particular white men and their doin's. The other bucks was wearin' it, too. You can't beat an Injun for lookin' like he wouldn't let on that you stink.
"The men with the mule got the cannon loaded, one standin' on a box so's to get at the muzzle and feed it a whole hatful of powder and then poke the ball home.
"So then all was ready save for the sightin'. Aimin' the piece meant aimin' the mule first and then seein' to therefinements. Wasn't no trouble. That sleepy old mule was agreeable. He led around and whoaed with his tail dead on the target and went back to sleep. With one man at his head, another climbed up and squinted over the barrel and fiddled with doodads and got down, claimin' the piece was trained finer than frog hair.