by Mike Blakely
Some farmer was using Tess’s land to graze his milk cows. She owned a hundred hardscrabble acres in the Brazos bottoms, a few stunted trees on the highest corner.
“We’ll build your house there,” Caleb said. “That’ll give you some shade.”
She snorted. “Build it with what?”
“We’ll buy some lumber.”
“I ain’t got no money.”
“Well, Lordy, girl, you got three dollars a customer. What did you do with it all?”
“Old Rose got to keep most of it.”
He shook his head. “But she won’t have it said that she don’t look after her gals.”
“She did look after us.”
“Well, now you can look after yourself.”
She snorted again. “With what? I ain’t got no house, no plow, no mule, no seed. I ain’t got nothin’.”
“We’ll buy everything you need.”
“I told you I ain’t got no money.”
“I’ve got enough to buy a wagon and team of mules.”
She could see a woman looking at them from the porch of the nearest farmhouse. “I thought you were gonna make me a farmer. Now you’re gonna make me a mule skinner.”
“We have to earn enough money to buy the stuff you need for this place. With a wagon we can do it.”
She felt her sweaty dress sticking to her. The backs of her hands were going to burn crisp as cracklings working outdoors. Her skin hadn’t seen much sun in the past few years. “What are we gonna haul?”
“Bones.”
EIGHTY
They made fifteen miles the first day in a secondhand Studebaker freight wagon. Their two mules, one brown and one gray, didn’t like each other. The second morning it took thirty minutes of cussing and flogging to get the team in harness. By the time they left camp on the Salt Fork, the mules were already worn out from kicking and biting each other. Tess had stood back and laughed.
For lunch they ate canned beef and stale biscuits on a blanket spread under the wagon. A hot breeze blew in from the south. They were on the divide between the South Wichita and the Salt Fork of the Brazos. They could see a lot of open country. Caleb was trying to cheer Tess up, telling her about the Extravaganza of the Western Wilds.
“… So, anyway, when I left, Captain Singletary talked me into taking a horse as part of my pay. He had this herd of paint ponies for the Indians to ride in the show, and he had taught ’em this trick where, after we killed all the Indians, we’d round up the horses and shoot our guns in the air and they’d sit back on their haunches and paw the sky.”
“What for?” Tess asked.
“I don’t know. I never did figure out the meanin’ of it. The crowd liked it though. Anyway, this one little paint colt never could get it right. He thought every time a gun went off, he was supposed to sit down right there and start pawin’. It didn’t make any difference to him whether the show was goin’ on or not. So Captain Singletary traded him to me to make a cow pony out of.”
“How come you didn’t bring him with you?” she asked. “I like paint horses.”
“Well, I took to ridin’ that colt to spell ol’ Powder River, and I just happened to be on him the day I rode into Dodge City. Some boys there were havin’ some fun, tearin’ down the street, shootin’ their irons, and that dang colt just sat down right there in town and went to pawin’ the air. I slid right off his rump and landed in the mud.”
Tess laughed, throwing her head back, showing the gap in her smile. “What did you do with him? Sell him to some poor ignorant cow waddie?”
“No, I took him down into the Indian Territory and gave him to old Chief Long Fingers. The chief thinks I’m a pretty good white man ever since I got Red Hot Frost to send his squaws all them buffalo hides back in ’74. I’magine he’s probably butchered and ate that little paint by now.”
Tess looked across the desolate ranges, the smile falling from her lips as she remembered where she was. “How do you know we’ll find bones out here?” she asked.
“I hunted buffalo out here on the narrows. I remember where we made our biggest kills. They say you can get eight dollars a ton for buffalo bones if you haul them to the railroad. A hundred buffalo skeletons makes a ton. Hell, we killed a hundred a day. Badger Burton killed a hundred all by himself one day. I figured it out. We can get eight cents for every skeleton. It’ll be like pickin’ up pennies.”
“Which railroad are we gonna haul ’em to?” Tess asked.
“The Fort Worth and Denver is at Wichita Falls now.”
“How far is that?”
“About seventy miles, I reckon.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. She had already had enough of riding in the wagon. “How many tons can this wagon carry?”
“About half.”
“Half a ton?” She sat up so quickly that she almost bumped her head on the running gear. “Four dollars a trip?”
He was unconcerned. “I can make a trip a week while you stack the bones. I’ll go in on Saturday so I can earn some fiddlin’ money on top of the bone money. In a month or so, we can buy a bigger wagon. Maybe a train of ’em, and a team of bulls. By wintertime you’ll have enough to build you a little shack on your farm and get you through till spring.”
Tess fell back on the blanket. “You’re gonna leave me alone out here to pick bones while you drive to town every week?”
“A friend of mine named Cole Gibson is workin’ a line camp near here. I’ll have him check on you every now and then. Of course, you could drive the wagon if you want, and I’ll stack the bones.”
She covered her face with her hands.
Caleb finished his lunch and took a drink from a canteen. He nudged her with it. She took the canteen, tilted it over her face, and let some water trickle on her brow.
“You know,” he said, looking out from under the wagon, “when it rains here on the narrows, the water runs off two different ways.”
Tess wasn’t interested.
“On the south side of this divide it goes into the Brazos and runs all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. On the north side it runs into the Wichita, then into the Red, then into the Mississippi, then into the Gulf. So two drops of rain, fallin’ an inch apart, could end up hundreds of miles away from each other.”
“Like you and me done,” she said hoarsely. “‘Cept, somethin’ done washed us together again.” She closed her eyes. “Two drops of rain.”
* * *
They arrived at the South Wichita before dusk. Caleb drove the wagon into a line of trees near the riverbank. They had just enough daylight left to set up a camp. He built a stout tent of the wagon sheet, held erect with straight green oak limbs and staked with willow pickets. He hobbled the jaded mules and turned them loose to graze.
“Caleb!” Tess shouted from a stand of brush. “Look! I found some already!”
“Don’t mess with those,” he said, coming to her side.
They stood over two old buffalo skulls, bleached and crumbling, gnawed by rodents, overgrown with bushes.
“Those are grave markers. That’s where we buried Old Elam Joiner and a kid named George somethin’ or other.”
“What kilt ’em?”
“Indians.”
“There ain’t no more Indians around here now, are there?”
He chuckled. “Nope. Long gone. We cleaned ’em out in ’74. The army and us buffalo hunters.”
She breathed a sigh of relief.
“I better go see if I can shoot a coon or a rabbit or somethin’ to eat. Can you imagine that all these plains used to be covered with game?”
He seemed to recall that she had once bragged on her singing, so Caleb got Tess to sing some songs that night after supper. She preferred hymns—“Amazing Grace” and “Shall We Gather at the River.” The husky quality of her voice carried over into song. She hit every pitch without a hint of any wavering or vibrato in her voice. Caleb harmonized and strummed a mandolin.
The next morning they went in search of bon
es. Caleb drove the wagon among the ridges, scanning the far horizons for landmarks. After a couple of hours he stopped and stood on the wagon seat.
“That’s it,” he said. “Over that next ridge.” He sat down, shook the reins, and growled at the mules.
Tess was riding Powder River. “What is it?”
“That’s where me and Badger Burton killed sixty buffalo in one morning. Two miles down is where he killed sixty-three by himself the same morning. We’ll make our first load there.”
When they topped the ridge, Caleb recognized the clump of bushes where he and Badger Burton had fallen out. He rode the brake down a precarious grade and trundled into the slaughter grounds. Bleached bones cropped up everywhere through the short clumps of grass.
He drove the wagon from pile to pile until he and Tess had filled it up. Then he unhitched and hobbled the mules. They started stacking the skeletons that were left in one central pile so they could be easily loaded on the next trip.
They took their dinner break during the heat of the day, in the shadow of the wagon. Tess napped while Caleb carved a sign on a piece of sideboard that had broken off. He fastened it to a stake with a strip of rawhide from his saddle wallet. He woke Tess and told her to stake her claim on the bone pile with the sign: T. WILEY.
“Nobody’ll bother it now,” he said.
“Nobody’s fool enough but us,” she replied, climbing down from the small stack of bones.
They left the loaded wagon, rode double on Powder River to Badger’s old stand, and starting stacking the bones there. They situated the main pile in the middle of the kill. The afternoon was hot and still, and the work was monotonous. Tess remembered Arkansas: the hard labor, the scorching sun in the fields, the good days before her mother died.
As they finished one skeleton, she walked a few steps ahead to the next. “What do they do with all these bones?” she asked.
“Fertilizer,” he said, straggling along behind her, dabbing his face with a bandanna. “You may be spreadin’ some of it on your farm someday. They also use it to refine sugar with, but damned if I know just how.”
She bent to gather a handful of ribs and heard a short dry sizzle down in the bones. She knew the sound, but it was too late. From under the flaking skull of a long-dead buffalo bull, the huge head of a rattlesnake jabbed her in the shin. It hit so hard that she lost her balance and fell onto the skeleton. She rolled, screaming, out of the way.
Caleb was already sending bullets into the bones. The flat ugly head lunged again, and he blasted it before it could find cover in the shade of the skull. The rattling died, but Tess screamed on.
“I’m killed!” she said, holding her leg and rocking on the ground. “Oh, my God, it’s killed me!”
Caleb lifted her hem and checked the wound. “You’re not killed,” he said. “He just got you with one tooth.” He put his mouth on the puncture and sucked but could draw nothing out. The wound was a tiny point of blood on Tess’s shin.
“I can’t feel it!” she screamed. “I can’t feel my leg.”
Caleb spit and took the bandanna from his neck. “Well, I can feel it, and it’s still there.” He tied the bandanna tight under her knee.
“Ouch!” she cried.
“I thought you couldn’t feel it.”
“Go to hell, Caleb Holcomb!” A hateful rattle accompanied her usual coarse tone.
“Now hold still and keep your leg low so the poison won’t come up.”
He sprinted for Powder River and rode back. When he knelt over her again, he was chewing furiously on a large quid of tobacco.
“This is a hell of a time for a chew!” she said.
He grinned as he untied the bandanna. He took the moistened wad from his mouth and slapped it firmly on the snake bite, lashing it in place with the bandanna.
“Is that gonna save me?” she said. “What about my leg? Are they gonna cut it off?”
“Of course not. Have you ever heard of a one-legged … farmer?”
“You were gonna say whore, weren’t you?” Tears were running down her cheeks.
“No, I wasn’t gonna say whore. Let me show you something.” He pulled his skinning knife from his gun belt and used it to spear the rattler behind the head. He lifted the snake, still writhing in torpid convulsions.
Tess grimaced and turned away.
“My stars, if he ain’t a big one!” Caleb declared. “He must go over five and a half feet.”
Powder River held his head high and backed away.
“Well, look at him,” Caleb said. “How am I gonna show you anything, if you won’t look at him?”
She risked a glance.
“See how fat he is right here in his neck?”
“Snakes are all neck, stupid,” she said.
“I mean right here behind his head. He just swallowed somethin’. Probably a big ol’ rat. Them rats come to chew on these bones, and he was layin’ for ’em.”
“I don’t care what a snake eats!” she moaned. “You’re about to make me sick to my stomach!”
“You’d feel a lot better if you’d listen to me. This snake didn’t have hardly no poison in him if he just bit him a big ol’ rat.” He pried the bloody mouth open with his pistol barrel. “And look, he ain’t got but one fang in his head. Must have broke the other one off in that rat.”
Tess looked cautiously at her leg.
“It ain’t stuck in you,” he said. “I already looked.”
“But it hurts!”
“Oh, it’ll hurt. Maybe swell up some. But you and your leg will make it all right.”
He stepped on the head of the snake and cut it off. Then he turned it over and began slitting it up the belly in short strokes. The snake, even headless, tried continuously to right itself.
“Let me skin him right quick, and I’ll take you back to the wagon,” he said.
Tess moaned and fell back on the ground. “I don’t think I can ride.”
“I’ll hold you on. The saddle’s the best place for you. It’ll keep your leg low, keep the poison from comin’ up.”
She listened to the knife hack away at the belly of the rattler. “Damn you for bringin’ me out here,” she said.
He didn’t take it personally. “You better learn to poke around in those skeletons before you go pickin’ ’em apart.” He finished slitting the snake’s belly and separated the skin from the body around the bloody stub where the head had been. Then he took the body in one hand and the scaly skin in the other and pulled them cleanly apart with a steady motion.
The sound made Tess grimace. The pungent smell of butchered snake almost turned her stomach.
“Yep, it was a big old rat,” Caleb said.
She rolled onto her knees and thought she was going to throw up, but she merely gagged a couple of times.
Powder River remained calm, though he quivered about the nostrils and rolled his white-ringed eyes to follow the folded skin as Caleb put it into his saddle wallet.
He helped Tess into the saddle and rode behind her to the wagon. He made her sit in the saddle until he had taken the snakeskin from his sack, unfolded it, and pressed its sticky inside surface to the seat of the wagon.
“It’ll stick there like it was glued,” he said.
“What did you put it there for?”
Caleb shrugged. “To show it off, I guess.”
He helped Tess from the horse to the wagon seat and gave her a canteen. He went to harness the hobbled mules as she stretched out on the fresh skin of the beast that had so recently poisoned her. The load of bones in the wagon bed loomed above her.
The mules smelled snake and showed fight. They went to kicking and biting. The gray busted his rawhide hobbles loose and dragged Caleb about fifty yards.
Her leg hurt bad, but Tess smiled.
EIGHTY-ONE
“Strategy, Shorty.” Angus Mackland struck a match on the checkered stock of the Marlin carbine sticking out of the saddle boot under his left leg. He lit his cigar. “How many times do
I have to tell you?”
Shorty looked at him, half cross-eyed, strands of oily hair sticking to his temples. “I guess about a thousand times, ‘cause your strategies don’t never make no sense to me. I would have lived to be an old man in Monterrey, and died there happy. Had me a good fat woman and all sorts of stepchildren workin’ for me.”
“You might have died, Shorty, but you wouldn’t have lived to be an old man. After all these years, I’d think you would learn to trust my higher intellect. As I recall, you didn’t want to leave your squaw when I pulled you out of the Territory nine years ago. If I hadn’t took you to Mexico then, them marshals would have hung you.”
“So why the hell are we goin’ back there now? Headin’ north with winter comin’ on. It don’t make no sense!”
He shifted the cigar in his black beard. “They’ve forgot who we are in the Territory. It’s safe for us there now. Damn sight safer than Mexico. Those federates would have splattered our guts against the wall by now if I hadn’t gotten us out.”
“If you wouldn’t have shot that one in Matamoros, we wouldn’t have had to get out.”
“If I hadn’t have shot him, he would have sold us to the Texas Rangers.”
Shorty wrinkled his ugly bulbous nose, set like a crooked walnut on his pockmarked face. “Now then, here’s where your strategy keeps slippin’ by me. If you didn’t want the Texas Rangers to get us, why in the hell did we cross over into Texas right after you shot that federale? What the hell kind of strategy is that? Your kind of strategy has had the U.S. marshals, the Mexican federates, and the Texas Rangers takin’ turns doggin’ our asses for nine years.”
“Nope,” Angus said. “My kind of strategy has kept ’em from catchin’ us.”
“We ain’t out of Texas yet,” Shorty said. “The rangers could catch us before we get to the Territory.”
“We’ve only got the Wichita and the Red left to cross, then we’re back in our old stampin’ grounds. Trust me, Shorty. Once you bone up on your Injun, we’ll round us up a gang of renegade Cheyenne and Comanche and Kiowa and such and go to playin’ hell with the damn Texas Rangers.”
Shorty spit. “There ain’t no more renegade Indians in the Territory from what I hear. Uncle Sam gave ’em all farms and reservations. I’ve a good mind to head west right now and hide out in New Mexico.”