Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  "I wonder which it is?"

  "Beats me, but I guess I'd trust Crawford's recollection more than Mandy's. Her lingo is more French than American, and them damn French get the sex of everthing so turned around, I don't wonder they get confused between brothers and sons, too."

  "Crawford's a good man," Banty offered. "Acts strange, but he don't miss much."

  Clete shook his head and then we just sat quiet. The boy was still awake, though not stirring at all. Banty belched like a cow, stretched himself out on the ground beside the fire, and in a minute he was asleep. I guess he didn't have no bedroll along anyway.

  "Then it was me he was after all along," Clete said of a sudden. "I didn't understand why he burned down Nell's house, but I do now. He must have known I stayed there sometimes, and when he saw Jesse go in that night, he thought it was me. Nell got killed because of me, then." He nodded his head slow and the fire glinted in his eye. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and hard as a spike. "Que cabrón de mierda. Wait'll I catch that sonofabitch."

  Banty rolled over after Clete said that, and the boy looked more awake than ever. We sat and I listened to the night sounds and smoked my pipe while the fire burned lower. After a while Clete checked the man's breathing and then lay down on his sogans without saying anything, and in a while he was snoring.

  I touched the boy's arm and he looked up.

  "Ain't you gettin' sleepy yet?" I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  "Well, I ain't much sleepy myself, but it would be a comfort to hear your voice just once tonight. Want to tell me your name now?"

  He shook his head again.

  I nodded and rubbed his hair, being careful not to get close to his sore spot. "I know how it is for a young fellow out away from home and a terrible thing like this happens to him, with his family and all. Same thing happened to me when I was about your age." I stopped and relit my pipe.

  He looked up again and you could see he was waiting for me to goon.

  "Yes, I was coming out from the East with my Ma and Pa and little sister. Just west of the Mississippi River, we was, when a dozen or so Indians jumped us. My Pa killed four or five and I shot one myself. But my little sister must of got scared from all the shooting and run away, for after them braves cleared out, we couldn't find her nowheres. Ma had thought she was under the wagon with my Pa and me, and Pa thought she was inside with Ma. Only, as it turned out, she wasn't neither place. The Indians had took her, for they will do that. We followed them redskins for weeks, long after we knowed we had no chance of catching them, but we kept on after them 'til we got to Texas, and there we stopped.

  "That was a long time ago, son, for I ain't no young man anymore. Only thing I can remember about my sister is her name and the color of her hair. It was long and black and hung in ringy curls way down her back. Bright and shiny black in the sunlight, it was. It's hard to lose kin, I know. Often I try to remember what she looked like, my little sister, but all I can recollect is the way her hair looked, black as midnight and shiny as stars. Just that and her name."

  The peepers down by the river was raising a ruckus.

  "What was her name?" the boy asked.

  "Why, it was Amanda, son, but we called her Mandy. Say, your tongue ain't broke, is it?"

  "My name's Jimmy," he said, and then laid his head down.

  I pulled his blanket over his shoulder and he was asleep well before the moon come up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Clete shook me awake before dawn, just a little strip of gray showing toward the east.

  "We got work to do before we can get after him, so we better get started," he said. "I made a pot of coffee. Get yourself awake and start digging a grave." He hunkered down beside the fire and poured us each a cup. "The man died during the night. Guess one hole will do for him and the baby. Those mules are gonna founder if I don't water and feed them soon."

  I sat up and drank my coffee still in my bedroll. The boy stirred and opened his eyes before I spoke to him. "Come on, Jimmy. The sheriff needs your help with the team."

  Best to keep him busy, I thought. Banty was up and poking at the fire when I went and washed my face in the river and then found the short-handled shovel.

  Diggin' a grave's odd work. And making a final bed for somebody ain't as simple as it looks, either. First you need to find a good place. I went up the bank a piece, up on the last bench before the prairie started right. Still wasn't very light, but I could see well enough. I watched Clete unhitch the mules down below, and not long after, Jimmy come and took the lead team from Clete down to the river.

  No trees there where I decided on, of course. That woulda been nice, and I could of buried him right where we'd slept, under the one big cottonwood that was close by the edge of the river. But it was mucky down there, and I figured he wouldn't like lying in mud 'til kingdom come any better than I'd like digging in it for the next hour. Maybe he'd rest better, too, a little distance off from where he was murdered.

  After you have a spot picked out, you've got to keep the size of the person you're putting to rest in mind. Sure, you could dig a hole seven feet long and three feet wide, a grave that would fit anyone. But that's a lot of extra diggin' for nothing, the way I figure it.

  The strangest part of digging a grave, I guess, is the way it makes you think about your own dyin'. It's funny how, most of the time, you can keep from considering it. But not when you're digging a hole to put a man in, you can't. At least I can't. Always makes me think on how little I done, so far, with this life I got. Always makes me sweat, too, no matter how chilly it is, and it was, that morning. Even after the sun come up bright and clear.

  The diggin' was going real easy, but I was only down about two feet when I heard Banty screeching and hollering. "Come and git it now, you men, or I'll throw it to the pigs!"

  When I saw Clete and the boy start toward the river to wash up, I dropped the shovel in the hole and went down, too.

  "What's this?" Clete ask after we come up and wiped our hands on our pants and was sitting down to the plates Banty'd filled.

  "Why, it's pancakes and bacon. Can't you tell pancakes when you see 'em?" the little man said, his face all scrunched up. "If you don't want 'em, give 'em here. I'll eat 'em …

  "No, they look all right,,. Clete said, taking up his fork. "Smell all right, too. Just surprised me, that's all."

  "Well, you had flour and you had sody and salt. That's all you need, sody and salt. And flour, a course. You need flour."

  "What's this on top, molasses?" I ask.

  "He'll, no. You ain't got no molasses in that pack. We'd have molasses right now if I'd a packed it, only I didn't. No, I scorched some sugar in the bacon fat. That's what my ma always done. She died some time ago. Snake bit her." He was smacking his food so loud, eatin' and talking together, you could hardly think of nothing else.

  "I expect rn feel snake-bit after I finish these," Clete said. "But they taste all right, rn admit that …

  "I'm a good cook. I don't mind cookin'," Banty said, and right away I saw what he was after. "'can handle a gun, too. Shot a man once, but he got away anyhow."

  You could tell Clete was thinking something, for just a hint of a smile turned the edges of his mouth up. He didn't say nothing, though. The boy was quiet too, and he was eatin' his pancakes like what he had in mind was to fill up a big hollow space inside, quick a she could.

  "I can handle a rifle too," Banty said. "And I can ride fast if I have a good horse." He looked at me and then Clete and then back at me. "Betcha I can ride faster than either of you two," the little man bragged.

  "Got no time for a horse race this momin'," Clete said, finishing his bacon. "But you ride fast enough."

  "Then why don'tcha let me go along with you men after this man you're chasin?" he ask.

  I lit my pipe and drank my coffee, watching Clete close to see what he was up to.

  He just shook his head.

  "Why not?" Banty asked, looking almost tearful
.

  Clete shook his head again. "No, you ride all right, and I believe you about shooting straight. But I only take on men who know how to follow orders. To the letter and real quick, without any backtalk or argument. I don't think you could handle that."

  "What!" Banty yelled, jumping up. "Why, I can take orders better and faster than any man alive. You ask the Perfesser if I can't! Just you gimme an order an I'll show ya right now."

  Clete looked like he was considering the matter real careful. "I don't know," he said after a spell, and took a sip of his coffee.

  "Try me out is all I'm askin'. Go ahead, gimme an order!"

  "And if you don't do it, you 'II clear out and leave us alone, right?" Clete ask.

  "Right!" Banty said, sticking his chin up in the air and folding his arms.

  "Well, all right, Clete said, slow and deliberate. "I'll give you three, but if you don't do 'em, or can't-or make a fuss about it you get the hell out of here."

  "Yessir, three at a time. Just the way I like 'em."

  When Clete stood up he towered over Banty. "Try these on, then. First, wash these dishes and get our gear stowed away good. Then go get that dead child away from that woman in the wagon and wrap it up in a tarp along with that fellow over there. He's the baby's daddy and we're going to bury them together."

  Jimmy looked over toward his pa real quick. He must have knowed before then that his daddy'd died, for Clete had covered up his face. Probly knew about his baby brother or sister, too. But maybe it just hadn't sunk in on him yet.

  Banty swallowed hard, and his smile fell away. But he didn't complain. "That's only two, ain't it?" he asked.

  "That's right," Clete said. "The third one is to take the boy and the woman back to Marsh's camp in that mule wagon, after we get done with the bury in'."

  You could see right then that Banty knowed he'd been dealt off the bottom of the deck. There was nothing to do but play the hand he held. "You men are gonna ride out after him before I get back, ain't you?" he asked, his voice real squeaky.

  "Yes, we are," Clete said, going back toward the mules with Jimmy following him.

  "Then how the hell will I find you?" Banty yelled after him.

  "Just track us," Clete called back. "That's what we're doing. If you can't do that, then you're not worth taking."

  "All right, Mr. Sheriff," Banty said to himself. "All right, but you ain't seen the last of me!"

  By the time I'd finished my digging chores, Banty had made a neat parcel of the man and the child, wrapped up together in the man's blankets and tied with a heavy rope he found someplace. Clete and Jimmy fed the mules and hitched them back up while Banty and me carried the father and his child up to where I had the grave dug. We laid them in gentle. Clete and Jimmy joined us and Clete handed me my old Bible.

  "Read us a word, Pardner," he said, taking off his hat. I remembered something about where a man was killed and left his wife a hard lot, in a part called Ruth, and so I read that. It didn't fit, exactly, but it was close enough.

  Jimmy stood close to Clete and stared into the hole.

  I'd had about as much funeral as I wanted and was just starting to go back down the bank when Banty cleared his throat and started talking quiet, his hands clenched together and him lookin' at the sky. "Lord, I didn't know these folks at all, but they was no doubt good as most. Too late now to do much for the man and this little baby. But you could look out for the momma and this boy standin' here. If you've a mind to. Amen."

  Clete appeared a little confused at Banty saying a prayer like that. When he recovered himself, he put his arm around Jimmy's shoulders, turned the boy away, and walked down toward the wagon with him.

  Banty picked up the shovel. "I'll finish this," he said. "Diggin's been my trade of late."

  DuShane was having a hell of a time with his new horse. He had already figured out that it was a walker, a gentleman's Sunday afternoon mount. It had refused the bit at first and didn't know what to do when DuShane yanked on the old snaffle. It would learn, the bony man vowed, or the sonofabitch would bleed to death from its mouth.

  He thought about saddling the paint again, but he didn't want to stop. His trick back at the White must have fooled the man after him, but then again, maybe not.

  When he struck the Deadwood road, he turned southeast and slowed his pace. At a stream crossing, where hoofprints clustered as thick as ants around an anthill, he turned and went back the way he'd just come, toward the northwest. Nobody'd ever be able to trail him with all these wagon ruts and tracks.

  But when he got back to where the sign from his walker and the paint cut in from the right, he stopped and looked that way for several minutes. The lawman who had killed Whitey was still after him. He could feel it, almost smell it.

  DuShane dismounted and hobbled the walker close, then hopped up on the paint bareback and, leaving the walking horse to follow with its eyes, he retraced his tracks away from the road. At a rocky place two hundred yards from where he'd stopped and looked, he turned the paint several times and then trotted her toward the south. After another hundred yards, beside a dense growth of sage, he dismounted, removed the lead rope and slapped the paint hard with his revolver. She took off like a mountain lion was after her.

  The scrawny man cut a sagebrush branch with his clasp knife and wiped out his bootprints, walking backwards, and then swept away both horses' tracks from the rocky place to the road. When he had finished, he remounted the walker, stood in the stirrups and looked back toward where he'd set the sheriff off his trail, though he couldn't see the spot from the road. "Let him foller that awhile," he said, and spurred the walker hard.

  Banty Foote sat astride the nearwheel mule and held the reins high. His pony was tied behind the wagon and Jimmy stood waiting by the lead pair.

  Clete was giving Banty some more orders, and I sat my horse beside the boy. "You'll have to take care of your ma now, Jimmy. She ain't got no one else."

  "I know," he said, his eyes in the dirt.

  "I expect you'll spend a day or two at a camp not far from here, run by some fellows from back East. They're good men, though, friends of Banty's back there. They'll look out for you and your ma. You got any relations in these parts?"

  "Just my uncle at Fort Laramie. That's where we was going."

  "Well, that's not so awful far. Tell Mr. Foote's friends about your uncle. Tell them Mr. Shannon, the Sheriff of Two Scalp, said for them to take you there. Think you can remember that?"

  Jimmy nodded his head. "Yeah, Mr. Shannon says we're to go to Fort Laramie. To my Uncle Caleb's house. Mr. Shannon, he's a real sheriff, ain't he?"

  "That's right, son, a real hell-raising Western sheriff. Just you don't take no for an answer, the way he don't, and you'll be okay. That, and doing what you think's right."

  Clete rode up to me about then and Banty yelled to us. "Don't catch him 'til I git there!"

  "Jesus," Clete said. "Let's get the hell outta here!"

  "Goodbye, Mr. Shannon," the boy said. "Thanks for rescuing my mom and me."

  "Rescue?" Clete glanced at me, but I didn't know what to say so I just shrugged.

  "Goodbye, Jimmy," I told the young man.

  "Goodbye … sir."

  Clete spurred that good-looking gray, and the bay and me took after, leading the roan. I often wondered about that boy after that, whether he got to Laramie or not. What happened to his ma, did she ever come back to her senses? I never knowed, but I often got pleasure from thinking about how it might of turned out. How Jimmy's ma began feeling herself again after a while, maybe, and started working for her brother in a dry goods store like John Tate's. How she met a nice businessman, or maybe a deputy or a lawyer, and got Jimmy a daddy, and may be a baby sister, too. How the youngster grew up strong and straight. Sometimes I see him being a lawman or going off to Yale College, but I never learned exactly what happened to him or his ma.

  One thing for sure, though. Jimmy or Banty must of told quite a story about Clete, back at Marsh's c
amp or somewheres, about how he and his ma was rescued by a sheriff named Shannon. The people Jimmy told must of turned it into a windy the size of a sandstorm, because years afterward, when they got around to making counties in the state of South Dakota, the place where that muleskinner and his baby child was murdered-down there in the southwest corner-they called that Shannon County. Still is today, far as I know. People will have their heroes, no doubt about it. And if they can't find ones that suit, why, they'll just cut them outta whatever cloth they've got. Now, I ain't saying Clete didn't do as much as Bill Hickok. He did, maybe more. But there's another side, too, and I'll get to it fast as I can.

  The sign showed clear that our man'd headed upriver on the west bank of the White. But we was no more than half a dozen rods from where I'd buried Jimmy's daddy and his baby child when I noticed another set of hoofprints beside those of Mandy's paint. From the look of it, our man could of been following someone else, for the paint's tracks covered those of the other horse in spots.

  "Did the boy say anything about there be in' two men who jumped his family?" I ask Clete.

  "No, he didn't. But I see why you asked."

  I got down and looked close at the hoofprints. I guessed our man was riding another horse and trailin' Mandy's when he lit outta there, for the paint's tracks looked different than they did yesterday. I don't know how, but they did. Another half mile up the river, where a stream come in, our man cut due west, cross country, no trail at all. Looked like he knowed where he was going, all right.

  Easy sign to follow, for it was skimpy new grass, growin' in white sandy soil. We picked up the pace pretty good and stayed at it 'til nearly noon, when we found his campfire ashes from the night before. In another hour we come to a rocky spot where the paint's track took a sharp bend south, and the sign of the other horse just quit. After a quarter mile, I reined in the bay and stepped down. I got low to see the hoofprints good. "We've got to go back," I told Clete.

  "Why?" he ask.

  "'Cause he tried getting foxy on us, tried to give us the slip again. No one was riding this horse when it come through here. He's off in the other direction on the other horse is my guess. Let's see that map again."