Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  "Wasn't so recent," I said. "About twelve years since, now."

  "Twelve years … It seems only yesterday to me." The way he said that, and how he put his hand to his heart while he said it, I could see how he might fancy poems. Professor Marsh looked relieved we wasn't about to go at one another's throats.

  "Seems like a lifetime to me," I said.

  Crawford sat up straight in that funny saddle he rode. "What was your regiment, Colonel Goodwin?"

  "I am sad to say that I was not in the army," I told him. "Some of us was forced to stay in Texas. Chained to our work, you could say. I'd a thousand times rather been in the war than doing what I was doing, though."

  "I understand that completely," the tall poet said.

  "I appreciate you saying so," I told him.

  The sun come out about then, and soon the clouds begun to scatter more than they had before. Where the path got narrower in a gully, Crawford dropped back some, so just Marsh and me was beside each other for a while. Once when I looked back, Crawford motioned with his head for me to drop back with him. I told Marsh I wanted a word with his guide, for directions, and then eased back.

  "I am sorry, Mr. Goodwin. I didn't want to say so before, for reasons of my own, but just past midmomin', I saw that mule wagon ovuh toward the rivuh. Seemed to be a family, I believe."

  "Not our man," I said. "Fellow we're after's astride a paint. A tall man, like yourself."

  Crawford turned his head so sharp, I thought he might snap it off. "Ridin' a paint?"

  "That's right."

  "What'd he do, this criminal you're chasin' down?" Crawford ask. I figured right then that he had saw our man. "He ambushed someone, the sheriff! work for."

  "A Yankee," Crawford said, like he was correcting me. "A Jankee sheriff."

  "Where was he when you saw him?" I ask, knowing he just might draw that old Colt he wore and shoot me instead of answering. I don't often bluff a hand, but when I do, I give 'er all I got. He looked mad enough to bite my nose off, but I just stared at him.

  "I have given my word of honor, suh, to a gentleman of the South that I would not divulge any information about him," Captain Crawford said, drawing himself up real tall and righteous.

  "No, you give your word to help protect a backshooting sonofabitch who don't have enough honor to fill a percussion cap, let alone to be called a true Southerner. That's what you done." Crawford started to say something, but I put my hand up to stop him. Can't believe I ever tried anything so foolish, for you could tell he was a man who would not abide an offense of any kind and would shoot any man, once he believed he was in the right, and not blink an eye about it. I just kept my hand up to stop him from talking and plowed ahead. "You, sir, are siding with a man who murdered a woman in her sleep by settin' her house afire. A bam-burner, I believe you call them in your part of the South. That's the kind of man you have swore to help-a sniper and a bam-burner."

  Captain Jack kept glaring at me like he was measuring my head for a watch fob, but I turned and looked straight down the trail. After a while, he dropped back so that we were riding single file. I was still trying to figure out how I could get him to tell me what he knowed about our man when we got to Marsh's camp. When we pulled up, Professor Marsh's wrangler come out to take his horse, and the professor dismounted and went toward the big tent. I walked the bay in the direction the wrangler took with Marsh's animal, thinking maybe Crawford would do the same, and after a time he did. We climbed off beside the rope corral and I fussed with my bedroll, hoping Crawford would feel inclined to talk. I could see no way to force it out of him, for I suspected I couldn't beat him in a fight. Maybe I would have to wait for Clete to have a word with him.

  Crawford eased up close, stilllookin' at me like I had stole his last dime. He stood about a head taller than me, and poet or no poet, I didn't look forward to no rolling around in the dirt with him.

  "How do I know you're tellin' the truth about his burning down a woman's house?" he ask, them watery blue eyes of his trying to bore inside my head.

  "Well, I have no piece of paper that says so, but if you were a captain in the Confederate Infantry, I suppose you've had considerable experience judging men's character by what they say and how they strike you. I'm willing to rely on that, Captain."

  Jack Crawford drew himself up to his full height. "I was a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Cavalry, suh. My rank in the Regular Army, before I resigned my commission, was that of captain." He stood studying my face again for such a long time that I begun to feel itchy. "Damn!" he said, and all of a sudden turned and walked off on them long legs of his towards nothing in partielac, and there he just stood.

  To tell the truth, I didn't know just what to do next. And when he turned and walked back to me, slower than he'd walked away, I didn't know what was going to happen. But his face was different, more relaxed, I guess. "The woman whose house he burned … she … died in the fire?"

  "Yes, she did," I told him. "The sheriff pulled her clear, but her life give out that night while we sat with her and her home burned. And she was a fine woman. Her name was Nell Larson and she-"

  "I don't want to heah it!" he yelled, and turned away.

  I didn't know what to make of that, but I guessed he was reminded of something or somebody else. That was the best I could see. I'd planned to say that Nell was a Virginia woman, much as she would have hated that, but I never got the chance to tell that lie.

  When he turned back, tears streamed down his face and his eyes looked wild, but he didn't appear to be crying otherwise. "I knew there was something wrong about that man. I didn't give my word to him, as I said before, Mr. Goodwin, for if I had, I would have to honor it whether I wanted to now or not."

  "I understand," I said.

  He nodded his head. "Thank you, suh." And then he put his hands up to his face and just bawled out loud, standing there by ourselves, beside that rope corral. Right there in front of me!

  I walked a step or two off to give him what space I could, and he went on for some time. Damned if I didn't feel sorry for that man, though I couldn't see what the matter was, for he could not have knowed Nell Larson. The best I could figure was that he was thinking on something that my saying about Nell made him remember, something that pained him deep as a West Texas well.

  After a minute he walked over to his horse and cut loose the birds that was tied there. He brought them over and handed them to me. "Will you give these to the professor and tell him I won't be in camp tonight?"

  "Yes, I will," I said, not knowing what else to say.

  He went over and climbed into that funny saddle of his. I wanted to ask him about our man before he left, but I felt sure he would talk on his own, if I didn't rush him.

  He walked his horse over close to where I stood with the string of grouse. "Your man is from Kentucky," Crawford said. "I think it was Kentucky I heard in his voice, though it may have been Tennessee. I shared my supper with him last night. He rode up in the rain shortly before dahk and I invited him in-the big flat rock overhang. You know where that is?"

  "No," I told him.

  "About six miles west of here." He looked across the valley then. "Professor Marsh can show you on his map. Good camping place."

  "I'll ask him," I said.

  "We ate the hare I roasted and some cheese I had. Then he rode on. Wouldn't stay the night, though I invited him to. I don't think he trusted me. He headed west after he left my camp. At first he went toward the north, but once, when the lightning flashed, I saw that he had turned and was headed west by south. He said he had tried to avenge the death of his younger brother, but that he had made a mess of the job and would have to try it again some other time."

  "His brother?" I ask.

  Captain Jack nodded his head. "That's what he said. Was it you or the sheriff who killed his kin?"

  "I guess it would have to be the sheriff," I told him.

  "That's all I know, except that he fought at Chickamauga." Crawford had stopp
ed crying by that time, but when he said that last, more tears come down his face. "I must go now," he said. "I would be very thankful if you would give those birds to Mr. Marsh and tell him I won't be back tonight."

  "I will be happy to, Captain. I'm sorry if my-"

  "No matteh, suh," he said, and turned his horse to go. "'Til we meet in a bettah world, Mr. Goodwin." He nudged his horse.

  "Just one more thing, Captain Crawford," I called after him.

  Captain Jack clucked to his horse and stopped.

  I walked over to where he was, carrying them damn birds. "I hate to trouble you farther, but I was traveling with a young gal and lost track of her. I mean, we got separated when that sonofabitch we're trailing jumped us. She might be wanderin' around in these cut-up badlands somewheres. She may be dead by now, or maybe she just rode out of here, I don't know. I'd rest a whole lot easier if I knowed a scout and hunter such as yourself, one who knows these parts like you do, was keepin' an eye out for her."

  He looked down at me. Every time since then, whenever I hear the word mournful, I think of the way his face looked then. "Of course, Mr. Goodwin."

  I was going to tell him what she looked like, but then thought better of it when I saw no way around saying that she was partly a Negro lady. "Her name's Mandy. Mandy Bowden, only she says it Frenchy."

  Captain Jack arched his back and swung his hand out in front and to the side, tilting his head back. That rangy scout appeared to be frowning at the clouds, only his eyes was glassy, like he didn't rightly see what he was looking at. Looked more like a politician about to give a speech than anything else. And then he spoke like he was in some kind of a dream:

  "A lost damosel with a French surname

  Met a desperado named DuShane,

  She on a steed with a snow white mane,

  He on a paint that was going lame."

  I knowed then what he was doing. "Won't be much of a poem," I told him. "Not with a big whopping lie like that right up front. Clete shot Whitey DuShane some time ago."

  He looked at me sharp then, like I had just woke him up from a sound sleep.

  "How'd you know about Whitey DuShane, anyway?" Soon as I said that, even before he said anything, it hit me.

  "I was speakin' of the man you're chasing. He told me his name's DuShane," Crawford said. "Was his younger brother named Whitey?"

  Chapter Sixteen

  I stood beside the rope corral and watched Captain Jack Crawford lope his horse up the valley. Probly heading back to that camping place he favored under a flat rock, I figured. I couldn't get over a grown man bawling like that in front of me. Naturally, I had shed a tear or two myself, over one damn heartache or another, but never right in front of nobody else, like he done. And then went right on to make up a poem, on the spot, about people he didn't even know!

  Professor Marsh was tinkering with his bone pile when I got over to where the tarps was stretched up on poles.

  "Captain Crawford wanted me to be sure you got these grouse," I told him. "He also wanted me to say he wouldn't be in camp tonight, though I can't say why. I mean, I would say why if I knowed why, he didn't intend to keep it no secret, I believe, only I don't."

  Marsh took the birds and looked them over. "Thank you, Willie. You seemed to be getting along quite well with our scout. After your initial discord, that is."

  "Yes, well, he was only trying to do what he thought was right, and after he seen what the right thing was, he told me what he knowed." I went over and looked at that big map he had spread out on a table.

  Professor Marsh couldn't of been more surprised if I had all of a sudden turned into one his big dead lizards. "He saw the man you're after?"

  "He did," I told him, looking the territory over good on the map, out where Clete'd went. That flat rock place wasn't more'n two miles from where Clete'd strike the river. "But I have no time to talk about it. If you want the story, you can ask Crawford, I suppose. What I want is to tell Clete, soon as I can, what I found out. Could you sell me a horse, Professor? The sheriff is mounted on our pack horse, and it's a poor animal to be chasing anyone on. Hell, it's a sorry excuse for a horse under any circumstances. Only thing worse would be one of those little critters like you're digging up."

  "Of course, Mr. Goodwin! But you don't have to pay for it. Three horses wandered in the other day, and my wrangler has been complaining about feeding them ever since. Take whichever one you want. In fact, take all three if you like. Come along, I'll speak to Mr. Sims."

  Marsh walked to the rope corral with me, but I didn't listen much to what he was saying, for I kept thinking one of the horses that come in to the professor's remuda might be my old buckskin, and that would mean Mandy was either afoot or dead. I didn't see how my old horse could be there and me not seen it, but then I didn't look his horseflesh over any before. If the buckskin was among 'em, I decided, I was going looking for her, and Clete would just have to wait or go on alone. Only it wasn't.

  Marsh spoke to Sims and I picked the best of the three, a dappled gray stallion in nice shape-though I didn't want to take the time to see if he had any speed to him. The wrangler brought a saddle and throwed it up without a blanket.

  "I don't need that," I told the man.

  "Horse came in with the saddle, it goes out with the saddle. Take the whole shebang or leave it," Sims said.

  I looked at Marsh, but he just shrugged. I took the gray and the saddle, of course, though the wrangler's thinking made no sense to me. While I saddled the bay, I got to thinking on the men who worked for the professor-Banty Foote, Captain Jack Crawford, and now this man Sims. I couldn't figure out whether fellows from Yale College had a preference for hiring men who acted crazy or if it was just the luck of the draw.

  I mounted up and said goodbye to the professor, thanking him for his help and for the stallion.

  "Glad to be of service to the law officers of the Territory," he said, giving me a kind of bow. "If you have a son, Mr. Goodwin, I would be happy to help him gain admission to Yale. I may be able to arrange a scholarship of some sort, too."

  "That's awful nice of you, Professor Marsh, and I hope you mean it, 'cause I just might take you up on that some time."

  Marsh handed me up the stallion's reins. "Of course I mean it, Willie. Just write to me at the college."

  "What if he wasn't entirely white, this boy I don't have yet?" I ask him. "Maybe rn be the daddy of a child who ain't entirely white, a mixed-breed."

  "I believe that our institution has liberality enough to admit a person of … mixed racial heritage," Marsh said, a big smile on his face.

  "Well, that's good news," I told him. "What about if it's a mixed-breed girl?"

  "A young woman?" he said, looking like I'd hit him over the head with a board. "At Yale?"

  "Yeah, how would that go?"

  O. C. Marsh shook his head. "I doubt we'll live long enough to see the day when women students will matriculate at Yale," he said, starting to shake his head even faster. "I doubt, in fact, that that day will ever come."

  "Well, it was just an idea," I told him.

  He scratched his chin underneath his beard. "If you ever consider changing professions, Willie, let me know. I'm always looking for collectors in this part of the country."

  I thanked him for the offer, but I hoped I would never get my brains scrambled enough to see that day roll around.

  Clete's trail of that morning was easy to follow, for the ground was still muddy from the damn rain that had soaked my clothes. They was still wet and muddy-and rolled up in my bags, I remembered while I rode out toward the river. Ground had dried a lot from the afternoon sun and the breeze that'd picked up.

  It struck me how close I come to lighting out after Mandy, instead of doing what I was doing then. Maybe Clete and me could get this DuShane business over with in a short while, and then I could go looking for her. At least to find out what become of that girl, for I knowed right then I would have little peace 'til I learned how Mandy was-scalped or st
ill curly-headed, dead or alive.

  At the river the Professor had called the White, Clete's tracks swung downriver, and looking close I could see that he'd followed another set of tracks, faint and mostly washed away, for they was made while that damn rain was still spittin' some. And they was made by Mandy's paint, too. I sat and looked up and down the banks, for I was sure our man would of went west by south, upriver, the way he'd been traveling before coming into this rough country-and the way toward that flat rock of Crawford's. Instead, Clete's trail turned northeast, downriver. Back toward the higher parts of them badlands again. Sure enough, Clete'd followed him. No way for me to go but after them, but I felt sure we'd be coming back this way before long.

  Wasn't more than a mile downstream, here come Clete on that wore-out roan. He was waving his rifle at me, so I sat and waited. Took him a while, for though he spurred hard, the best he could get was a trot.

  "This damn horse!" Clete yelled when he neared me, wet up to his shirt and the roan about as muddy as a horse can get.

  "Here, try this one on for size," I told him, tugging on the gray's rope.

  "Fine-looking animal," he said. "What'd you have to give for him?"

  "Nothing. A gift from the Professor," I told him.

  "Wish to hell I could give him back his other present," Clete said. I had no idea at all what he was talking about. "That little bastard I had to punch this morning, Banty something-or-other."

  "Banty Foote," I reminded him. "I forgot he come out looking for you."

  "Yeah, well, he found me, and the little fucker's been on my assend all day. I took a shot at him but he doesn't discourage easy." We got down and he looked the stallion's teeth over good. "This horse have a name?" he ask.

  "Not that I know of. Marsh's man didn't say. I guess you can call him whatever you please."

  "Whatever You Please? Pretty long name for a horse, don't you think? Put you at a real disadvantage in a race. The other fellow would get too good a start while you was still telling your horse to c'mon. 'Giddap, Whatever You Please!'" Clete had meant it for a joke, pretending he was in a horse race. But it was clear the stallion didn't get it, because he started forward a few steps. Clete and me had a good laugh. "Well, I guess that'll be his name, then, since he already answered to it." Clete patted the gray's neck and you could tell he took to that animal. "Thanks again for the horse, but why did you bring that saddle? The one I got's fine."