by Les Weil
"The ramrod of this frolic, whoever he was, made a little speech then, tellin' the Injuns to look-see across the far water where the white man's terrible medicine iron would blow the dust tall. With that, he turned to his terrible crew. 'Ready?' he said.
"They sighted again and nodded for yes, and he told 'em, 'Fire away, men!'
"One of 'em touched a match to the fuse.
"The fuse fizzed and fizzed, and Mister Mule opened one eye and then both, and he flapped his ears back and let out a snort while the crew hollered whoa and hung hard to his head. Huh-uh! The mule hunched a hump in his back and began buck-jumpin' around in a wheel, the cannon bobbin' its big eye at one and another and all of us innocent bystanders while the fuse et down toward the charge.
"For a shake no one could move, but just for a shake. Me, I found myself lyin' behind a scatter of driftwood, and some feller was tryin' to scratch under me like a mole, prayin', 'No! Don't shoot! No!' to the mule.
"That feller tunneled me up over my fort. The mule was wheelin' and the fuse fusin' and the cannon pickin' up targets, and them innocent targets, I tell you, was wild on the wing or dead flat on the ground or neck-deep in the river, cluckin' like hell-divers when the muzzle swung around. But the Injuns stood still, waitin' for the tall dust to blow.
"Then, like a close clap of thunder, the cannon went off!
"It didn't hurt anything. What with the mule's jumpin', it had slid back, down on the slope of his hump, so's the ball skimmed his tail and went into the ground.
"Men began comin' from cover and trailin' up in the dust and the powder smoke, smilin' pale and damn silly.
"I walked over to Two Plumes, who was standin' with his arms folded like before, with nothin' in his face that showed anything.
"'How?' I said. `How chief like 'im?'
"He answered, 'How?' and let the rest of it wait, but in that Injun eye was a gleam. Then he said, 'Paleface jackass poop.'"
They were laughing. They had been laughing. And it was good, for them and for him and for all. "Now leave us eat, Goddy," he said.
10
SLOWLY the thaw came. One morning the weather turned warmer and the next warmer still. By day the icicles on the edge of the roof glittered wet in the sun. By night Lat slept to the now-and-then drop of melted snow from the eaves. He could forget how he had suffered outside, with feet like dead stumps and the bone ache of cold in the hands and the body drawn in toward the spark of the heart. He could lie grateful in bed and let sleep wash him away, to Oregon and Pa and Ma and, in his drowsy weakness, to a girl named Callie Kash.
They worked these days, digging out wolf after wolf from the snow and the brush they'd heaped over the bodies in colder weather to keep varmints and birds from tearing the pelts. They skinned and pegged skins, making a raw carpet of skins round the shack. All of them worked, making belly cuts, leg cuts, flaying the carcasses, worked from daylight to dark as if glad of something to do or glad of the evarmth and the root-whiff of soil in the air.
Working, they joked one another. "I loved you more, Tom," Carmichael said, holding his nose, "when your perfume was cow instead of corruption." Or they cursed with good nature when new wolves were found at old baits, for no longer were fresh baits being set: the job was to clean up and go. "Never get to the Yallerstone," they said, grinning, "not with that Lat wantin' to skin whatever wears fur."
They were close to the end, though. Just a little more time and they could pack up and trail south where the real buffalo ranged and the wolves followed thick on the drags. Now, at the close of day, with darkness already camped in the hollows, they were nearly done at this bait. Two or three cold-stiff cases to go and one more of these softer ones that lot poisoned today or last night. The world was silent, not a sound sounding but the snicks of their knives as the day went to sleep, not a sound but the small tears of skin off of flesh. The other men, like himself, were too tired and hungry to talk much as they knived and peeled pelts near a souring bull carcass that in time numbed the nose and so didn't stink as at first. Maybe, like him, they got satisfaction out of making spent muscles move surer and faster than ever.
He pulled a skin free and pitched it aside and straightened up, slowly because of the cramp in his back. He felt too tired to feel, to move his eyes from the night-shaded, grayand-pink, film-slick remains at his feet, too tired to be surprised any more at the poor, skinny surprise of a wolf without hair on.
"Next," he said under his breath and stepped on, closer to Tom, seeing the three others still working a little piece farther on and the horses standing patient and safe, and all of them hazed and misshapen by the incoming dark. "The fresh-dead ones sure are easier to skin out."
"Yep," Tom answered while he plied his knife, "and they don't gag your guts like these froze-up, part-thawed, bloatbelly articles, neither."
"Still warm, the one I just finished."
Tom glanced up. "You ain't goin' to tackle another!"
"Sure."
"Can't hardly tell front from back now. Christ!" Tom pulled in a deep breath. The whites of his eyes glimmered as he looked around. "A day like today, and a man ain't sure who he is. Might be somebody else killin' himself. Call me by name, and I'd wonder wherever I heerd it. Say I was skinnin' wolves, and I'd ask you where. And still you ain't had enough!"
"We're about through."
"And it ain't really dark, but light as a cave!"
"I know, Tom, but let's finish."
Tom set his mouth and returned to his work, and Lat turned a wolf over and went about skinning it, and the night settled thicker. Later the stars would come out and the world get some outline, but now, as he took an instant to look, the sky showed only one blink and the snow round about ran off into darkness and the shapes that seemed to rise there and hover were the outlines of nothing. He could imagine them real, far off or close, while knowing they weren't, but still have to pinch himself. As with the shape close at hand, here almost at his side, the shape misting out from the night like a wild dream dreamed again. He blinked to clear it away.
"Christ sake, Lat!" The words hissed the dream off.
It stood white in the night. It had eyes, it had teeth, and both grinned. It shuddered. It moved, stick of a body, fingerbone tail, trembling on peeled stalks of legs. Its tongue licked its teeth. A whining cry came out of it.
"Shoot! '
A gun roared behind him. His own was in his hand. The flare of it flashed in the grinning eyes. The sick-white form jerked and went down, and the eyes faded out while the teeth kept on grinning.
"You ain't goin' to get him any deader." It was Godwin, speaking from behind. "Poison just stunned that feller, and the undressin' brung him to life."
"It's the wolf I just skinned!" The weight of the revolver bore down Lat's hand.
"Don't blame you for spookin'."
Tom looked away, out in the darkness where, Lat saw, the night shapes of nothing loomed thicker. His words came out on a small, breathy laugh. "Talk about hants!"
11
SOONER THAN expected, they found what they wanted. A short day's travel east and south from the breaks of the Musselshell brought them to buffalo. Buffalo in bunches and herds. Buffalo banding hillsides and swales of high rolling prairie. Buffalo churning the wind-shriveled snow and the soil underneath, leaving dirt scars and dung scars and steam from their slop. Buffalo nosing for feed while lone bulls stood guard on the ridges around; or buffalo running, the galloping heave of them dark against the white of the land. Watching, Carmichael said, "The country's haired out." And here were wolves to make a wolfer feel rich, white buffalo wolves and big timber wolves with yellowish sides shading off into gray, and both kinds dressed in pelts that would bring top offers from traders. They traveled in packs, ten or more to the pack. One lot, by Lat's count, totaled thirty, plus an old dog of a leader.
Buffalo. Wolves. Deer. Elk. Sometimes mountain sheep. Everywhere antelope, like extra sentinels for their buffalo friends.
There were hunte
rs around, unseen or seen from afar. Godwin usually first spotted the signs of them -the two-dayold trail left by Indians, the far-off buffalo running from something or someone, the latticed skeletons and puffed carcasses of hide-hunters' kills strewn along coulee and slope. Now and then they heard, beyond sight, the repeated echoes of rifles.
Godwin would pull up to listen, his eyes thoughtful and sad above the mask of his beard, and, respecting his feelings, they would rein in and hear what he thought.
"Hemmed in. Plumb hemmed in," he said once. "Last stand of the buffalo, or close to it. Sure to be Rock Injun hunters and Sioux on the east and, to the right of them, Blackfeet and Crees and Red River breeds, and Crows and an almighty army of whites on the south."
"West?" Lat asked to prompt him.
"There's the mountains for a fence there, but closer up, though, you can bet, is them hungry slope tribes from over the divide."
A long way off a herd crested a hill and began to pour down it, and Godwin pointed that way. "Take a good look, boys, at them and the others. Take a good look so's you can tell your children."
Wood was scarce in these parts and grass short, and they spent a day looking for a place to make camp and then, toward the end of it, came to a sag where a frozen wash wandered, edged by a straggle of brush. There was some graze here, under the snow, and, what was better, a stoneand-pole cone like a tepee, slanted and torn by the wind, which Godwin said was an old Indian war house, put up as a shelter and fort by some roving party of hunters. He didn't guess there was much chance they'd return, not with the war-house so old, and, besides, it could have been built by Sitting Bull's Sioux, who knew better than to come back from Canada after wiping out Custer.
They shoveled the snow out and righted the poles and fixed hides on the outside to cover the cracks, making a den of a sort, and agreed it was anyhow as good as a tent, even if too low to stand straight in, and maybe less likely to catch others' notice. "Not that Injuns is so tough any more," Godwin told them. "Won't scalp you unless they can do it secret and safe, though they fudge some with wolfers, hatin' 'em extry because strychnine poisons their dogs. But they sure-God will steal. Government and missionaries and all the angels in heaven can't cure 'em. That's something for them would-be ranchers to think on."
Into the thin screen of brush they rolled their wagon, which was still lightly loaded because they had cached the skins taken before, planning to pick them up on the way back. By day they looked sharp to the horses. At night they kept them short-tied and close by, and one night they took turns at guard, having cut the fresh trail of Indians that day.
It wasn't like riding watch on the trail over from Oregon. No herd. No songs for the herd. No friend to meet as they countercircled the bed ground. No smell of summer. Not a star even tonight. Just the black sky and the long shimmer of snow and the taste of more snow in the air and, near and far, all around, like the night itself howling, the howling of wolves.
Ma and Pa would be asleep or, if awake, thinking about him, maybe asking the Lord to lift His face on him, to lead him not into temptation. In his dreams Grandpa would be giving the British what-for. Nice to be Grandpa, to have outlived all appetites except for food and a pipe. Ram, down in Texas, was scratching his jaw, his eyes full of doubt, while he heard how a skinned wolf came to life.
Now and night and wolf howls and the hoof stamp of a horse and space like a long, dazing drain on the blood and no one alive at all except in the space of the mind; but beyond here, beyond this time and this place, over the bar of now, a ranch house and a helpmate and life sanctified. A virtuous woman -Pa read from Proverbs, his face stern as stone- is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.
He had two horses toward that ranch, and one of them was fun to work with and a joy to own and fast as any he had ever seen and just maybe faster. Only two, though, and, in addition, a few skins, an interest in a team and wagon, a few dollars, no cows. But the land was here, the good land, the rich buffalo and bunch grass, the bluejoint, owned by nobody, free to all. Godwin was too gloomy. There would be ranches, Indian thieves or not. There were ranches already, and not a million miles from right here, like the one a big man named Granville Stuart was said to be setting up in the Flat Willow country. There'd be more, including his own. So much of prairie, of miles endless and vacant, allowed chances and choices beyond all reasonable hope. It did now, at this minute, as Oregon must have before crowds wore the trail to it deep. All that was needed was cattle or money for cattle. That was all.
A star lighted up through a crack in the clouds and went out again, and the breeze fingered around, keen as cold metal, trying to find a hole in the clothes, making a man move to keep warm, to tramp back and forth while he kept eyes and ears open.
They had strychnine enough to poison wolves enough to form a dozen ranches. For the biggest of carcasses, just three eighths of an ounce, and death then in each bite; and after working it into the flesh a man went around afraid of his hands. But most of the wolves were scared, too, or too wise, or they preferred their own kills, or they gorged themselves on the tons of good meat that hide-hunters had left to rot on the prairie, as in that one spot, not as big as a catch pasture, where sixty-one peeled buffalo lay. Wolfer to rancher! Plowboy to president.
Over east, day began knocking on the skyline, but north and west and south the dark lay thick and deep as if unwilling to clear out. Nobody would be up yet in Fort Benton, but here it was time to stir, to boil the pot and ride bait and skin skins and put out more poison and hope for a turn in the luck. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, thou good and faithful servant.
He put his head inside the war house. Moo Cow was snoring signals to Comanches. "Feel like getting up, you boys?"
12
TOM PING reined in, puffing a little from riding hard after Sugar and Lat, who had stopped to let him catch up. "Just because you can fly, you don't have to leave me the hell out of sight," he told Lat.
Lat gave a grin that showed he was pleased. "I wasn't pushing him, even." He bent over the saddle and patted Sugar on the neck. He sure did love that horse. Hadn't ever suggested that another man try him, which was all right. Too many cooks spoiled the broth, or the other way round, maybe, with Sugar for broth. "Got plenty wind, too." Lat sat back in the saddle. "Let's get on."
Tom fell in alongside. "Git on. Git on. Git on." He let the words out on a sigh. "Live long enough and you won't be rich, Lat, but just wore to a frazzle. Remember them badgers."
"How else do you do it?"
"All I've ever knowed is work, seems like, and where's it got me? Work for the nabobs. Work for the brass-ball gentlemen, and don't dast to slap your brandin' iron on anything because the nabobs done it first and called King's X. What's fair for one ain't fair for all no more."
Lat didn't answer right away. He looked over the long snow fields as if he was thinking and squinted toward the sun, which shed light. God knew! but no heat. "There ought to be a way, a rightful way," he said and paused. "And maybe our luck turns at the next bait. If we could only get enough pelts!"
"Sure, if we could, and didn't bust our backs bendin'."
"My father always preached that nothing good came easy."
"Huh! I don't allow that it's so, but my old man wouldn't know the right or the wrong of it, never havin' anything worth a damn unless you count his knack as a stud." He took a minute to get his thoughts lined up while he studied Lat. "You aim high, pard. Bein' better educated is part of it, I guess. You want things nice. Nice outfit somewheres. Nice range. Plenty money. A house with carpets on the floor and a lace cover on the table. Nice hired hands to do the work. Nice, pursy friends. Ain't it so?"
"Part of it." Lat wasn't ruffled, though his smile was small.
"Me, I don't ask much. Money for grub and a roof of my own, instead of ram-jammin' around just for beans, and I'd like to be necked to a woman that suited me. That's about all, but where in hell is it? You can have all your damn high society."
Lat answered soft. "You're just ringy today, partner."
"I s'pose so, Lat, but I hate this badger work, and I don't go for swelled-up men and high-toned, dear-me ladies and stuck-up manners and houses built to mortify a common man."
Lat said, "No," and they rode on.
The bait lay in a hollow and looked from above like a dab of meat in a saucer, dark against the cupped china of snow, a dab with four crumbs of wolves by it that would have to be skinned.
"Four's all," Tom said to Lat after they had halted and counted from the edge of the rim, "and that's plenty for me." Underneath, without reasons enough, he felt a little beat of uneasiness that he wouldn't mention to Lat. They'd be like ducks in a pothole down in that dip, blind to what went on up above.
He took a slow look around, on the open benches and the long flats, and saw the game quiet and nothing else moving. Yesterday, though, they had seen fresh signs of Indians, and Indians might be ornery here at the end of nowhere with just the pair of them to face. It had been Lat's idea that their party split up and ride bait in two directions and so get more work done. He himself had held his tongue. What the hell? He was as game as the next man.
Why feel spooky? Today was as safe as the days gone before. Who, any more, was afraid of Indians, of the guteating beggars that even the proud tribes had become? He wouldn't suggest to Lat that one of them watch on the rim while the other one worked.
"Those wolves won't skin themselves," Lat said.
"I wouldn't care if they're froze too hard already."
They rode down the slope, and Tom unforked his horse and tied it to the horns of what was left of the bait, wishing his knot-headed pony would stand ground-tied like Sugar. He tilted his rifle on the buffalo head beside Lat's.