Far as the Eye Can See

by Robert Bausch

  The next day I was sipping coffee with Preston, Joe Crane, and Treat when Roman Turley come by looking for Treat. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll swear you in with some others I recruited this morning.”

  Joe Crane and Preston went along just to watch, but when they come back they was both swore in too. We was sitting at the back of Theo’s wagon, watching his children play in the dirt, when they come prancing back. Preston wore a wide-brimmed hat with a long eagle feather in the band. The militia didn’t have uniforms or even guns or horses half the time. What they had was the freedom to go anywhere they wanted to. They didn’t have families, nor land, nor nothing to keep them.

  “Looks like we’re in the militia,” Preston said. He was kind of sheepish.

  “Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “I thought you was headed for California.”

  “I was,” he said. “I changed my mind.”

  “You know how Indians fight,” Theo said. “You’re telling Treat he don’t want no part of them, and then you go and join yourself. You know what you’re getting into.”

  “I been among them,” Preston said. “I know they ain’t going to be easy.”

  “We’ll see,” Joe Crane said. “Maybe when we get there we won’t have to fight nobody.”

  “The militia give you that hat?” Theo asked.

  “Nah,” Joe Crane said. “He bought it in the post store. I seen it first but he had to flip a gold piece over it.”

  “And you lost.”

  “Inkpaduta will sure like taking those feathers for himself,” said Theo.

  “Inkpaduta? Who’s Inkpaduta?” Joe Crane said.

  “Red Top.”

  “And that’s why we joined the militia,” Preston said. “There’s gold in the Black Hills. If I’m going there, I want to do it with a lot of fellows with guns.”

  “So it’s the gold,” Theo said. “You think you’ll have time to look for it?”

  “I ain’t no Indian fighter,” Preston said. “I just want to see if it’s like they say. Gold everywhere as far as the eye can see.”

  The Black Hills was sacred ground for the Sioux. It’s where they buried their dead. That’s what Theo said. “Those people won’t like a lot of white folks poking around up there, digging holes and such.”

  “We’ll take care of them,” Joe Crane said.

  The Indians around the fort was mostly just as fine as they could be. They was near all of them of the Crow tribe, but there was a few Arikaras, and even some Sioux. They was polite to folks and seemed to enjoy their children as much as anybody. I didn’t like their chanting much, but at least they was quiet of a Sunday morning. Them folks in the wagon and at the fort got to singing early, and a mite loud.

  “You going to keep that wagon and them horses?” Theo asked.

  “I’ll take it with me,” Preston said. “Horses too. We’re lighting out in a few days.”

  The night before they left I was feeling kind of rootless and solitary. I might of gone with them, but I didn’t want to fight nobody. Still, they seemed kind of happy to be headed for some kind of adventure. What if there really was gold up that way?

  We was sitting around a campfire behind Preston’s wagon. It was me, Theo, Preston, and Joe Crane. I’d sipped a little bit of more whiskey. I shared some too. I got to be kind of curious and talkative. I wanted to know how Preston and Joe Crane come to be traveling together.

  “Started out from East Tennessee,” Joe Crane said. “We was both with Colonel Broward there.”

  “You was Confederate?”

  He nodded.

  Preston said, “One or two skirmishes can make brothers out of some folks.”

  “We fought together,” Joe Crane said. “And after the war decided to pool our money and come on out this way.”

  “We was fur trappers for a while,” Preston said. “Up and down the Missouri River. All the way north to where it bends to the west and heads out here. Never had such fun. We was just playing is all, trapping otter and beaver and selling the skins. Did that for half a decade, then decided to sell everything, buy the wagon and go on further west. Get some gold, maybe.”

  “I was all the way in California when I was a boy,” Joe Crane said. He sat right across from me, his legs crossed in front of him. His round belly almost covered his boots. The fire seemed to glisten off his bald head. “My daddy went and took us out there in ’49. He was looking for gold too. But he never found none. He went to work for the railroad and got hisself killed in a train wreck. I was fifteen and holding my momma up for a while before the war.”

  “What happened to her?” I said.

  “We come back to Kansas, and then I went and joined the Confederate army and I ain’t seen her since.”

  “You never went back?”

  “Oh, I looked for her and all. One day her letters stopped coming, and then she was just gone.”

  “Died probably,” Preston said.

  “I like to think she married some rich fellow and moved to a bright, big house in Chicago, or St. Louis.”

  “And she wouldn’t want to write you nor nothing after doing that?” I said.

  “How would she know where to write me? It’s what I like to think,” he said. “It’s better than a picture in my mind of her face rotting in the dirt someplace.” He cleared his throat and looked away. Preston put his hand on his shoulder just briefly, but Joe Crane didn’t say nothing. He stared at the fire for a spell, took a sip of my whiskey. He looked almost misty-eyed, but then he suddenly reached up and tried to grab the hat off Preston’s head, but Preston was ready for him and jumped to his feet. “Nice try at it,” he said.

  “I ought to have that hat. It looks better on me, and it don’t fit you worth nothing at all.”

  “It fits just fine.”

  “You look like a squaw with that thing on.”

  “It ain’t so. Anyway, I don’t care how I look.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Gimme the feather, then.”

  “What for?”

  “Just let me have it. If you don’t care how you look, what do you need the blasted feather for?”

  “It’s just part of the hat.”

  “Because you like how it looks, am I right?”

  “You two ought to get married,” Theo said.

  Preston come around the fire and sat next to me. It got quiet for a spell, then I said, “You know, my ma died and my daddy couldn’t abide it. He took off.”

  “And just left you?” Preston said.

  “I must of reminded him of her.”

  “She have red hair like yours?” Joe Crane said.

  “I stayed with my aunt,” I said. “But she never liked me much, neither.”

  “Well, me and Joe was going to get rich after the war, but all we got is them two horses and that ’ere wagon.”

  “You got that hat too,” Joe Crane said.

  “A lot of folks wish they had a wagon like that,” I said. “I seen them on this trip.”

  Theo said, “It ain’t that good.”

  “Look,” Preston said. “Theo had to set a axe handle in the thing for one of its spokes. The wheels creek and wobble. The damn thing’s falling apart.”

  “It’s a good wagon,” said, Joe Crane. “It sure keeps us dry of a cold winter night.”

  We talked a long time. I begun to realize I’d miss laughing at them two fellows when they was gone. It amazed me how easy it was to talk to some folks and get to feeling like you known them all along. I was thinking I made a couple of good friends that I might see again someday and I drifted off to sleep a-hoping for just that.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, a little while after I’d fell asleep, I heard what I thought was Indians circling around the camp and hollering to beat all. I jumped up quick and grabbed my carbine. The fire had banked pretty much, and I couldn’t find nobody in the dark that resembled Theo, nor nobody else, neither. I think I could hear my heart a-beating li
ke hell. Dark shadows run by me, and one of them nearly knocked me down.

  I raised my carbine and got ready to shoot one of the shadows, when I heard Preston’s voice coming from it. “Damn it all.”

  Joe Crane wasn’t as much whooping as he was laughing. I seen him crouching forward when he run by the embers of the fire, and he was holding Preston’s hat on his head. Preston was right behind him trying to get his hands on it. Leaning forward as he was, Joe Crane made it near impossible for Preston to get even a grab at the feather that stuck out of the band on the side.

  They disappeared around behind Theo’s wagon, then come out the other side, still howling and hollering. I think they both was laughing.

  Theo poked his head out the back of his wagon. “What in hellfire is going on?” he said. He had his own rifle in his hands, and it looked like he was about to shoot the first shadow he seen and he didn’t care none what he might hit, neither.

  “It’s Preston and Joe Crane,” I said.

  He pointed his rifle at me. I realized he didn’t know I was standing so close to the back of his wagon and I scared him considerable.

  “I almost put a bullet in your brain,” he said.

  Joe Crane come running back our way. Preston finally grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down. They wrastled to beat all, still laughing. Preston got the hat and held it up, trying to roll away.

  “Is this my hat or not?” he said.

  Joe Crane couldn’t talk, he was so out of breath from running and laughing. He lay there on his back, in the moonlight, his belly rising and falling. Preston stood up and brushed his trousers off with the hat. “Dad-burned fool,” he said.

  They rode out early in the morning heading north—Preston and Joe Crane and Treat, with about twenty others that Turley recruited. Two of his recruits was Crow Indians who promised to lead the way and scout in advance of the column. They tried to get Big Tree to go with them, but he wouldn’t have none of it. I watched them cross the Smoky Hill River and disappear over the horizon.

  A few weeks later, Theo announced that he had joined our train with the one that Treat’s family come in. That made twenty wagons. “They’re going to Oregon, so they can travel that far with us, then we’ll continue south to California,” he said. “We’ll be safer if we all travel together.” So they spent most of that day loading provisions and getting ready to set off. I helped Theo shoe a couple of horses, then went to the post store and bought more coffee, sugar, ham, and hardtack. I bought beans, too, and a slab of sowbelly.

  Theo still wanted me riding out front with Big Tree. I had to look up at him as we rode along because his horse was at least two hands taller than Cricket and he was so tall hisself. It was like riding next to a great moving statue. He wore yellow leggings and low-cut boots and a yellow leather jacket with fringe down each arm and across the back of it. His hair was black and long, tied back with a length of twine tangled around a single long, white feather with a black tip. He wore one of them fur hats with bull horns on it.

  For the first day he didn’t say a word. We crossed to the south side of the Smoky Hill and stayed alongside of it most of the day. We made about thirty miles and quit at dusk, setting up camp near the river. We was still close enough to the fort that it didn’t feel like there could be much danger, but Theo had us circle the wagons when we stopped. He was still in charge. The other wagons joined us, in other words, and plighted their selves to our fate rather than the other way around.

  We made about ten to fifteen miles a day. Each morning we set out just as the sun come leaking over the ground behind us. Eventually Theo turned us away from the river and we followed the trail further and further north and west. Then a few days after we turned directly west again, Big Tree said his first word to me. He suddenly pulled his horse up and said, “Death.”

  “What?”

  He pointed off to the right a little. In the distance was a clump of trees with dark trunks and hanging branches, low and slightly moving in the breeze.

  “Over there?” I said. Then I smelled it. The breeze was moving in our direction and the smell it carried was unmistakable. “Oh,” I said. “Death.”

  Big Tree nodded, then he turned his horse in that direction and trotted off. I signaled to Theo what we was up to and then followed Big Tree.

  It was a body hanging in a tree. The head was almost pure black from burning, but the hair piled only on top of it told the story. It was Preston. His hands was tied behind his back, and he wasn’t wearing no boots. Big Tree got down off his horse and untied the rope at the base of the tree and then lowered the body down until it laid on the ground. He was almost gentle with it. Preston looked like he blew up to three hundred pounds, his body was so swollen, and the smell was so strong it cut into my nostrils.

  When Theo got there, he said, “Indians don’t hang folks.”

  “What’s that mean?” I was kind of sick. I felt awful for Preston. I liked him and it didn’t bode well for this trip that he ended up like that only a few weeks or so after he started out.

  “Wasichus,” Big Tree said.

  “He must’ve done something to piss off those fellows he was traveling with,” Theo said.

  “What happened to Joe Crane? He wouldn’t stand for this peaceably.”

  “You don’t know,” Theo said.

  “Wasichus,” Big Tree said again.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I said.

  Theo said, “White men.”

  I walked over and got back on my horse. “It’s a hell of a thing,” I said. Then I started circling around that place, looking for Joe Crane.

  Maybe I should of seen Preston’s death as one of them portents of things to come.

  Chapter 3

  Me and Big Tree buried Preston right next to that tree where we found him. We worked fast. The wagon train moseyed on by while we worked, and when we was done, it was almost ahead of us. I didn’t find Joe Crane anywhere around there, but I did find one of Preston’s boots. It had the sole ripped out of it, so it was useless. There wasn’t no blood on it but it was sure his boot. Preston was a big man, and he wore them high-heeled pointy-toed things Texans wear.

  When I got back to the train, I went right out front again, next to Big Tree. I talked as we rode along, trying to see if I could get him to say whatever thing. He didn’t say a word the whole time we was a-digging that grave. Riding next to him, I hated looking up so high to see his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was listening to me or not. We rode most of the day, and Big Tree held that nose of his high in the air, looking for more “death,” I guess. At one point I said, “Do you speak American?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  He didn’t look at me, just kept staring at the horizon. The sun begun to gleam off his eyeballs as the day wore on.

  “You know,” I said, “I sure hated to see Preston hung up there like that.”

  Nothing.

  “I wonder how that happened.”

  “Wasichu,” Big Tree said.

  “But what could have caused it? I mean, you think he committed some sort of crime?”

  He looked down at me and I felt like a small child.

  “He must of committed a crime,” I said.

  Big Tree made that harrumphing sound. Then he said, “Wasichus kill for gladness.” I couldn’t tell from my position below him, but I thought he might of smiled a little.

  Theo ordered a halt near dusk at a place on the Smoky Hill River in Kansas called Fort Hays. We had to get permission from a Colonel Harding to set up outside the fort for the night. Theo put the wagons in a big curving U around the front gate. We formed a good perimeter with the fort in the open end of our encampment. The colonel seemed to like that arrangement. He was a short, dark-haired, muscular fellow with great black whiskers that curled all the way down the side of his face and up over his nose. His eyes was dark as a cow’s eyes and almost as big. His uniform was a little too tight, and with all them gold buttons and yellow stripin
g down his legs and medals on his chest, he looked like he ought to be the emperor of something. He suggested a pig roast, and that was something everybody in the train was happy to take part in. Two of the Indians that lived around there butchered a hog in no time and then we got several fires going. Some Swedish fellows from one of the new wagons built these Y-shaped structures, then hung a spit in the middle of them and turned the meat as it cooked over the fire. You could tell the Indians never eat a whole pig, but they liked it enough.

  When darkness come, with all the fires, and the children running wildly—with the smoking meat and pots of stew, and lots of whiskey and beer—we really had a high old time. But watching that pig meat turn black and crispy, I couldn’t get the look on Preston’s face out of my mind. That rope made his jowls stick out, but his eyes looked out in sightless wonder, and his mouth a little round hole—like he was getting ready to whistle a tune. He was just talking to me not more than a month ago. I seen guys drop next to me in the war, but you expect that because you’re in battle and ain’t nobody trying to do nothing but kill you, and you’re trying to kill them. If I’d of seen Preston on the ground with a bunch of arrows sticking out of him, I’d of thought, Well, he went looking for that. But to see him hung up there in that tree, and not knowing what could of put him there . . . It was a mystery that made me sick.

  Sometime near the end of the night, Theo come over to where I was getting ready to bed down.