Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  "No, we can handle this," Clete said.

  "Well, good luck. Remember what I told you, Goodwin," Bullock called as we went down the street, headed toward the livery stable.

  As it turned out, I did read sign by lantern light, since it was still too dark to see good from up on my horse. But I walked little more than a mile 'til it was light enough to read and ride. DuShane'd climbed the ridge right above town and then followed the spine up the opposite way, eventually coming back to the big gulch Deadwood was in, but further up. We surely would of got lost in the dark trailing him, even with a light. His track went on up that vee and then turned left, up the ravine of another gulch, higher than the one Deadwood sat in, mining camps spread out wherever there was water. That gulch petered out close to the top of what you could almost call a mountain and at the peak his tracks turned south, heading downhill, following ridge and valley through some pretty rough country, all of it covered with pine and smelling as fresh and sweet as the second week after creation.

  We rode all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon without stopping, eating jerky and bread, drinking from our canteens as we went, and gaining on him a little with every hour. We come onto a couple places where his horse had just stopped and stood a piece, and I couldn't figger it out for a while.

  "I think he fell asleep riding and let his horse pick the way," I told Clete. "This here's one of the places his horse must of just stopped 'til DuShane woke up and nudged him on again." Wasn't far beyond that we come to where he'd built a fire and slept on the ground. Where his head had laid was quite a few spots where he'd bled into the dirt.

  Clete stirred the ashes with a stick and found a few little red coals. "Three, maybe four hours."

  "Maybe less, since he was burning pine," I said.

  We started right off again, but gained no more on him than we did before, though we pushed pretty hard. By sundown I was tired and raw in the seat, and I seen Clete nod off a time or two. He give me no argument when I said I couldn't see the sign clear no more. We camped in a grassy little clearing up from the stream a ways, so the mosquitoes wouldn't get at us. Clete boiled coffee and we ate some more jerky and bread after we spread out our bedrolls.

  When we finished our meal, I took the last of the coffee, lit my pipe and sat watching the fire, just as Clete was doing. The wind stirred the pines some and you could hear the creek from down below, but that was all.

  "Shit!" Clete yelled.

  I looked around quick, but nothing had moved and Clete sat just where he was before, still looking into the flames. "What is it?" I ask him.

  He looked up. "I just figured out where that money is, the gold and cash Wilson stole from the Two Scalp Bank, and I'm a fool for not thinking of it sooner. His horse came back, so he had to have froze out there. Since he rode out toward the south, that's the direction I looked. But he didn't go south. If you were shot and freezing and discovered you were riding in a circle, what would you do?"

  "Why, I'd take some cover if I could," I said. "And try to build a fire."

  "Sure," Clete said. "Only I didn't think of him riding in a circle. First place I'm going to look when we get back is those rocks east of Nell's ranch."

  "I think you're onto something there," I told him. "Too damn often we look for what we expect to find and forget to just look."

  "That's it, Willie," he said, his eyes deep into the flames. "And I figured something else out too-Mary. I'm going to marry her like I planned."

  "Good woman is Mary McLeod, smart too. Yes, marry a woman with brains enough for two and you'll come out about even. Though what she sees in you is still a puzzlement." Of course I didn't say nothing about our plans for Texas.

  It was like Clete'd heard my thoughts. "Any complaints about the three of us heading out together?"

  I looked at him then, but he was still staring into the fire. "You think that'd be all right with her? Last thing most married women want is their husband's old friends hanging around, reminding him he ain't entirely free to do what he pleases no more."

  Clete laughed at me. "Damn, Willie, for someone who's never been married, you sure have a lot of ideas about it. No, Mary's not like that. Fact is, I talked to her about the three of us going together after her daddy's funeral. And I don't see what she sees in you, either."

  Well, there it was. What I'd worried about'd all been in my head. I'd figgered if Clete married Mary, him and me and Texas was quits. And all along he had it straightened out with her about the three of us going together. Why, that damn Clete!

  More I thought of it, the better I liked it, for Mary would help keep a lid on Clete's temper, bring out the best in him, as a good woman often does. And I liked her, too, even if she was a little stiff and proper sometimes. Funny how getting something like that off your mind makes you feel better right off.

  He offered his hand and I took it. He shook it once. After a time he laid down and covered up. The peepers started in down by the creek. "I hope we get him tomorrow," my pardner said. "I had about enough of this."

  I stretched out too and was nearly asleep when I heard him sit up sudden. "I wonder whether … " Clete said.

  I waited a minute for him to finish before I ask him, "What's that?"

  "Never mind, Willie. Never mind." He laid back down and soon was snoring. I never thought no more about it 'til later.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We got a good start in the morning and covered a bunch of miles before the sun come up above the ridge. By noon we passed where he'd camped again and not long after we come to where the road forked, one branch following the bigger stream down out of the hills and the other heading up along a creek into a valley slim as six o'clock.

  His tracks led up into that skinny hollow. I didn't see blood anymore, but they were his sign, all right, pressed deep into the rich black soil and the few patches of gravelly sand along the creek-no more than two hours old, either, if that. Me and Clete headed on up into that piney trough, into some of the nicest-looking country you could ever hope to find-especially if you was looking for a good place for an ambush. Them tall, straight pines come all the way down to the stream on both sides. Which meant you couldn't see very far. I felt more exposed than if I was caught stark naked by a whole flock of Sunday school picnickers smack-dab in the middle of the prairie.

  Less than a stone's throw from the creek the land angled up on both sides, steeper than you'd want to ride a horse up. No paths led off up these slopes, either, except a few game trails. Maybe a deer could get up them, but I knowed I couldn't. DuShane had to be somewhere in this almost-closed bear trap, straight ahead of us.

  About a mile into that V-shaped little valley we come to a flatter place where the trees on one side of the stream was cleared out, maybe a hundred yards long and thirty wide, where it looked like someone, probly a gold prospector, decided to build a cabin and then changed his mind. He finished a rough little dam, though, and below it he panned some gravel by the look of things. Done enough felling of trees so that you could see the rocky places that formed peaks up on those side ridges in spots. High up there, the rock looked like it was cut into twisted church steeples and darning needles for giants, or the legs of the giants themselves. The trail had a good slope to it already, and you could see it was going to get a lot steeper from here, heading up into no more than a ravine, and that going right toward the tallest of those rocks that wind and water had been whittling on since Moses was a pup. Right here, though, it was all brushy and cut-over.

  "Feels pretty naked, don't you think?" I ask Clete.

  "Yeah, I had about the same idea myself," he answered. "How about walking this stretch."

  We was both just stepping out of our saddles when something exploded right between us and a rifle boomed in the distance. Like two thunder claps almost on top of one another.

  I knowed before I smacked the ground that it was one of those musket-shell things.

  "You hit?" I yelled over at Clete, who had rolled onto his belly agains
t a felled tree trunk, his hat knocked off and his forearm covering up his neck and jaw, where he'd been hit before with one of them things. Both horses run off, of course, but I could see the bay a little ways downstream, back in the trees.

  Clete didn't move for a minute, and I was just starting to crawl toward him when he stuck his eyes up above the log, his Remington cocked and ready. "You see where it came from?" Clete asked, cool as creek water.

  "Right up where we was headed, I think. Up at the end of this cleared space." About that time I heard a horse moving out over some rocks at a pretty good clip from up that way. "Stay low," I yelled at Clete when he lit out of there. "Might be a trick, sending his horse off to make us think–"

  Clete waved me back toward our horses and then, running bent over, he got into the trees and headed on up. Clete's horse was close to the bay I seen when I got back there, both chomping grass at the edge of the stream like nothing at all'd happened. But they both got nervous when I took their reins and walked them to the edge of the clearing. I couldn't see nor hear Clete, so I waited. I hated doing it, but I knowed waiting was the right thing for there. They also serve who only just stand around waiting, my pa always said, and hard as that was to do sometimes, it was true. Up high on the ridge to the left, a white-breasted sparrow give his mournful tune a couple or three times and then all was quiet. I thought of Mandy then, that night she had come to my hotel room, mostly.

  A pistol shot cracked in the thick of all that silence and echoed on down the valley below. I was pretty sure it was Clete's Remington, but even if it wasn't, it didn't matter because I couldn't stand there minding the horses no longer. I led them up along the edge of the trees with my .36 drawed. Toward the middle, here come Clete at a half-run down through the clearing. I stepped out and he headed my way.

  "You were right," Clete said, a little out of breath. "He went off far enough to give us the sound of his horse and then came back, sitting it and waiting for us to charge on up there. I got a shot off, but I don't think I hit him, goddamnit. Jesus, I want that bastard!" Clete mounted so I did too. "His shirt looked bloody as hell, Pardner. Looked like you got him good."

  We rode further up into the ravine part of the valley, me following behind and feeling like we was going into the mouth of hell, big boulders like broken-off teeth tumbled all through the pines and they not near as thick as before. I saw a picture once, in a book, of a place near Gettysburg, where Clete was wounded. Some reb sharpshooters got themselves killed in a pile of outhouse-sized rocks that looked a lot like these.

  Within a quarter mile it got steep as the devil, and the horses blowing so hard we got off to walk them. It was almost like climbing a mountain straight on for a while-more than I wanted, I'll admit. Just when it started getting a little easier, we turned a bend and there lay DuShane's horse dead as a board. The saddle still on it, the rifle boot empty and the bags gone, supposing he had some, which I guessed he would.

  "That was real smart," Clete said, looking further up the path. "Ran his horse up that grade 'til it died on him." He took off his hat and rubbed his sleeve across his forehead.

  I was plenty hot, too, even with the breeze that was blowing up there, so I took me a little squat-sit facing downhill, and I was surprised at how much country was spread out below us. Hills and ridges and gullies all growed full of pine, wherever it wasn't too stony. Across the way, on another rocky peak like the one we was coming to, only lower, there lay a big wooly mountain goat, white as a patch of snow, which I thought it was at first. He had made hisself comfortable in a hollow place close to the top and was just stretched out, watching me. A good half mile off he was, but I knowed I was what he was looking at, maybe Clete too. Maybe keeping an eye on DuShane as well, and wondering what the hell we men was up to, hunting each other instead of his kind.

  My knees let me know it when I stood back up, I remember. I showed that mountain billy to Clete, but the only thing that interested him much was straight ahead. We walked the horses right up to a wall of rock, the face of it rising straight above us, the first edge topping off in a row of stomach teeth fifty feet up and other jaws rising behind them. After I found DuShane's bootprints leading into a little washed-out crevice, Clete and me both looked up at where we had to go. We both stepped back under the pines together, too, when we figured out how good a targets we'd be from up there. But that's where we was going to if we was going to take him. Only, he could be looking down on us from a hundred different places, hid good 'til we showed ourselves.

  Clete got his Henry and I took out my coat and that old scattergun he had brought me. He checked our canteens and put some other stuff in the jerky bag while I tended the horses, which I ended up tying in a little level spot down from the rocks and into the pines a few rods.

  Clete handed me an extra bag of shotgun shells and then spun the cylinder of his Remington. "Don't be stupid up there, Willie. If you see him, shoot him. He's not going to surrender, and I'm not very interested in taking him back to Two Scalp even if he would."

  That didn't set well with me at all, but I said nothing for I figured it was just anger talking, that and him wanting our man so bad. We was as armed as we could be and still walk upright, so we started climbing in the same spot where DuShane did.

  It was scrabble and stretch, hands and feet, for the most part, and I hoped it wouldn't get no worse up above. That rock was awful rough, too, and it scraped up my fingers pretty good, but there was no help for it. Clete reached down and yanked me up into a little pocket where we could both almost stand up straight without showing ourselves, though I sat as soon as I caught my breath about half.

  "How high–" I started to ask, but a gun exploded somewhere up above us and chips of rock from where his slug hit stung my face like birdshot, though only one or two brought blood. And right away, DuShane up above give a scream that might of come out of the Devil's own mouth.

  "That sonofabitch!" Clete said through his teeth, looking upward through a notch in the rocks like a wolf eyeing his prey. He snapped off a shot toward where the smoke was rising, but it was mostly anger shooting.

  I was just glad none of them pieces of rock'd hit me in the eye.

  "You all right?" he asked after a while, talking quiet.

  I wiped at my face. "Yeah, just scratches," I said, keeping my voice down like him.

  "Was that a pistol he fired?" Clete ask.

  "Yes, I think it was. Wonder why he didn't use that cannon of his?" Soon as I ask it, I knowed the answer.

  And so did Clete. "Yeah," he said, an ugly smile smeared all over his face. "The sonofabitch is out of ammunition for it, or nearly so. Probably has to make it himself, and it's been a long old ride."

  "Why do you suppose he hollered like that?" I ask him.

  He come over beside where I was watching through a crack in the rocks, cocked his head and looked at me crooked. "That was a Rebel yell, Willie. Shit, didn't you ever hear a goddamn Rebel yell before? I thought you said you were from Texas."

  "I am, damnit! Lived there most of my life, anyways, but I never heard nothing the like of that before."

  "Well, that was your honest-to-God, genuine, nickel-plated Rebel yell, Pardner," Clete said, then slid down and sat, leaning back against the shady side of a rock. He was quiet a minute, getting his breath and looking at his boots stretched out in front of him. "I heard it plenty during the War."' He took off his hat and put his head back against that hard stone. "All up and down the Shenandoah Valley and everywhere else we fought 'em. But I never thought I'd hear it again, not out here." He shook his head and then put his hat back on. "Lot of my friends died with that goddamn screaming in their ears, the last thing they heard." He stood up as straight as he could there, snapped off another shot, and then looked me square in the eye. "Let's get on that sonofabitch."

  "All right," I said. "What do you want me to do?"

  "You stay here at this crack and keep a sharp look out for him. I'm going to try and get around over there to the right and see
if there's a good way up or another way down. Til be damned if I want him crawling down off of here while we're waiting for a shot. I want this goddamn thing ended right here and as soon as possible-and him dead."

  It surprised me he talked that way, for I'd knowed him some time and never had I heard him say a thing like that before.

  Clete set his hat on tighter. "If you see him or if he shoots at either you or me, fire once and then wait a couple seconds and fire again. You won't do much damage with the shotgun at this range, but it might give me a crack at him."

  I nodded and he slapped me on the shoulder and then started down the way we come up, but he inched toward our right, over the point of one of them stomach teeth we seen from down below and no hand holds at all. The drop behind him was a good seventy feet, too high to fall off of and live to tell about it. I hate to admit it, but I was glad it wasn't me making that climb. I saw then he was taking on the hard jobs himself, like he always done. But he made it across all right and soon was out of sight.

  The sun was high and pretty warm by then; the sky blue as a Texas girl's eyes and no clouds nowhere. Everthing was quiet except a warm wind that whistled through the pines down below. I looked for that white mountain billy over on the other rocks, but he must of found something better to do than watch us. Maybe had his nannies somewheres nearby.

  A shot cracked up above. I knowed right away it wasn't aimed at me but I fired one barrel of that scattergun from my looking notch, waited a second, stood, and let go with the other. Almost on top of my second blast I heard Clete's Henry speaking out. I couldn't see him over to the right or DuShane up above through the notch, so I didn't know what was going on, just doing like Clete'd told me.

  After a while I begun to think over that ungodly hollering of DuShane's. The idea of a man riding fast and straight towards the hay doors to hell never give me much pleasure before. But I have to admit that picturing that murdering bastard in them straits, tied onto a big black stallion and galloping headlong toward the Devil, who was holding open wide a red hot iron gate, that tasted sweet as horehound candy in my mouth. But it was sickly sweet after I sucked on it for a minute … no matter what he done, to Clete or Nell or them folks back by the White River-Jimmy's family-he was a still a man. A man's a man no matter what, even if he's more snake than human. And DuShane was on this old Earth for a purpose, one that I couldn't see, of course, and neither would he, the murdering bastard.