The only worries I have about my new companion is she might slow me down. I still got lots of ground to cover between here and Fort Ellis. And I got to cover this ground when both Indians and white men probably want to find me and kill me. I don’t tell Ink none of this, but I expect I’ll have to take her with me. It won’t matter what she wants—I got to get her to a safe place and leave her there. It’s the only thing I can do to make up for putting a bullet through her.
So I decide we got to go straight north to get away from whoever is chasing her. I know we’re at least four or five days south of the Missouri River, and if we keep heading north we’ll run into it. I hate to be going sideways from where I want to go, but I don’t see no other way. If I head further south, I run into many of rivers, big and small, and the Black Hills. There’s lots of tribes down that way I’d like to avoid, not to mention the damned U.S. Army. If I go straight west, the way I was going when I run into Ink, we’ll have her husband in our path. The only way we can go is north. Once we find the Missouri, I figure we can follow it along as it winds east. Fort Buford can’t be too far from where we’ll be when we get to the river. The fort is at the point where the Missouri turns directly south. I might lose a day or two, but not much more than that. I figure I can leave her there and make better time getting back to Bozeman. But right now she can’t walk, and I think I might open her wounds again if I try and lift her into the saddle.
When the rain is completely stopped and we can see the sun, I leave her sleeping and carry my gear and everything a ways off the trail and set up camp near a small stream that runs down out of the hills on our left. The water is clear and moves fast over white stones. Where it falls down a little over the rocks it makes a trickling sound that relaxes me.
When I get back to her she’s still sleeping, so I nudge her on the shoulder to wake her. She is groggy and can’t fully open her eyes to the light.
“Come on,” I say. “You done enough sleeping for a while.”
“I thought you left me.”
“I set up camp over that way,” I say. I help her walk over there—it’s only about a mile off the trail—but it’s down a slight embankment, below the line of rocks, and there are plenty of pine trees and bushes to shelter us and keep folks from stumbling in where they ain’t wanted. She’s such a little bitty thing, when she’s walking next to me I have to lean down pretty far just to keep my arm under hers so I can keep her up. She don’t say nothing, but I figure she knows by now I ain’t gonna hurt her. When she sees the water in that stream she is happy to drop to her knees and settle herself again up against my saddle. I get her a cup of the water right away and she gulps it down. Like she ain’t had no water in days. I think she’s pretty happy to see the tent too.
“I was afraid you ran off,” she says.
“I left Cricket tied right there so you could see her. You should of known I wasn’t going nowhere.”
“I didn’t see the horse.”
“Yeah, well. I ain’t going nowhere now but to fetch her. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I walk back to the trail and untie Cricket and we start toward the camp, working our way around as much of the underbrush as we can. I want to keep her on grass too. There’s thick mud in places. Even the places where we have grass to walk on the ground is slippery, and she keeps favoring that right front leg. I’m afraid she’ll slip and make it worse, so I take it real slow. She is wet and tired and damn hungry. There’s plenty of grass at the camp, so when we get back I don’t bother to tether her. I let her roam and eat what she needs. With no saddle or bridle, she looks as wild as any bronco you might see on the plains, except she’s sleek and well-groomed. I wish she didn’t come up lame, though.
I get a pot from my pack and fill it with water from the stream. Then I take the sack full of beans and pour some into it. Ink looks at me, wondering.
“I’m gonna make us some supper,” I say.
“And build a fire?”
“When the time comes. These got to soak for a while.”
She don’t look too happy, but I know she’s hungry. She’s been tearing at more of that sowbelly—chewing like a wolf.
“I’ll kill us something,” I say. “We’ll eat fresh meat. If I don’t get nothing, I got the hardtack. Or we can cook the sowbelly if we have to.”
“But if you build a fire . . .”
“I’ll use buffalo chips if I can find some. If not, then dry wood, and we’ll have it out before dark. Don’t worry.”
She starts to say something else and I raise my hand to stop her. “I been where most folks never go. I seen what most folks never seen. I fought in battles and, God help me, I hope I never see another one. I foraged and roamed the countryside like a wild animal with other wild animals. I know what I’m doing.”
She says nothing. But them dark eyes freeze me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say.
“I lived with the Sioux for many years,” she says. “I know how to make a smokeless fire. So I am not worried.”
“Well, don’t be.” But she’s still glaring at me like I got both hands wrapped around her throat and I’m squeezing as hard as I can. “Stop staring at me, all right?”
She turns toward the stream.
“You’re safe here,” I say. “Nobody will find you.” I hand her the pistol. “I know it’s heavy, but you hold on to this in case you need it.”
She tries to lift it with both hands and it bends her wrists, but finally she gets the barrel end of it up so it’s level. She’s got it pointed at the tent.
“There ain’t no safety on that thing,” I say. “You pull that hammer back until it clicks, then you squeeze that trigger there.” I point it out for her, help her see how she has to have her hands and where to put her finger when she wants to pull the trigger. “It’s got a kick,” I tell her. “So lean back against something before you shoot it.”
The whole time she studies it, then looks at me with a kind of wonder in her expression; the fierceness is gone now. It’s just like she’s a child discovering something mysterious and grand in the world. I like the way it feels to teach her about it. “Like this,” I say as gently as I can. “Straighten your arms when you want to fire it.”
When she’s ready I tell her to let it rest in her lap, or somewhere that she can reach it. “I don’t expect you’ll need it,” I say. “But just in case.”
“If my husband is looking for me, I will need it.”
“We went a long way on wet grass,” I say. “He won’t be able to follow it once the sun dries it out a little and straightens it. Don’t worry.”
“That will not stop him.”
I pick up the carbine and sling the strap over my shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“Hunting,” I say.
“You going after him?”
“Who?”
She gets that furious look in her eyes again.
“Your husband?”
She nods.
“Hell no. I want to stay as far away from him as I can. I’m gonna find something to eat that’s a lot more tender than that ’ere hardtack or sowbelly.”
I start to leave, but then I stop and turn back to her. “I won’t be gone long. You’ll see me well before dark. Don’t shoot at me.”
“I will not shoot you.”
“It’d serve me right,” I say. “But I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I said I will not.”
I leave her there and move on up the stream a ways, then deeper into the trees and underbrush, still keeping the stream to my right. I know I can find my way back to her that way, but also I figure if I’m going to find something to shoot, it will be near water.
Chapter 19
A fellow shouldn’t hunt when he’s hungry. It’s hard to sit still, and as long as you’re moving, not much in the way of animal life is going to present itself to you. Eventually I sit down by a fallen tree near a bend in the stream. Water runs down under the far end o
f the tree and a thicket on the other bank looks promising. There’s a worn place in there—almost a path—where the underbrush is trampled, so I expect it’s been well used and will be used again. Whatever stomped on that brush was pretty big. I know I can’t wait long, but I sit as still as I can and watch that worn place in the thicket. Listening to the water trickle under the end of the dead tree makes me sleepy. I drift off for a while.
Then I ain’t nowhere. I try to lift my head, to open my eyes and move again, get up and walk on my two feet and move, but I can’t. Then I see Eveline a-standing over me. She looks surprised to see me. “I told you I’d come back,” I say. But she don’t speak. I’m dreaming and I know it. It seems like hours, days, I struggle against this feeling of being trapped behind my eyes, but then I open them and realize the sun ain’t moved very far. I see a bird rise up in the distance and again hear the water rushing under the tree. There ain’t nothing to shoot at yet. It’s just me and a few birds and the newly bright sky. If it wasn’t for the speed of the water in the stream, you’d have to dig down through the matted grass and leaf meal into the dirt to figure out that it had rained.
I wonder a little. Think about things. I don’t like dreams. It’s the way the war always comes back to me. I seen so many men die right before my eyes. I heard a bullet thwack into the breast of a fellow only inches away from me. He was saying that when you pick corn, the third ear on any stalk gets a little crazy looking.
“The first ear is tender and just beautiful,” he said. We was standing in a copse of trees in the wilderness near Spotsylvania Courthouse, waiting for orders to move. It was a battalion—about a hundred and twenty of us and this fellow was right up against my shoulder and he was telling me about the corn he’d pick on his daddy’s farm in Illinois. “The second ear is pretty good too. Still very tender, but maybe a little smaller. Maybe a little less milky. The third ear—that’s when you know the corn knows what is happening to its seed; it’s trying to survive. The kernels get fat and irregular. It looks almost inedible, like it might be poison, or—” and then the bullet hit him. I don’t think I heard the report of the gun until that thwacking noise the bullet made in his breastbone. He just fell down next to me and it was like the world exploded, like hell come up out of the ground and scattered in all directions. The line closed up and we all started firing as fast as we could. All the air around us popped and sizzled with bullets. The whole line wavered, men falling all around me; then we started backing up pretty fast, still firing. By that time we had Henry repeaters, but they only fired seven bullets before you had to reload. In the noise and the confusion and the smoke, a lot of men just dropped their weapons and started running, which was almost impossible in all that underbrush. It was like we was trapped in a eight-foot-high hedge. I knelt down by a thick, moss-coated tree and fired until my gun was hot to touch. I shot into smoke and noise. Reloaded as quick as I could. I don’t have no idea if I hit nobody, but eventually the firing stopped and we pretty much held our position. The thickets burned from the firing of the guns and wounded men caught fire where they lay. The screams was terrible. I remember I kept chewing on a small twig I picked out of one of the bushes. Just chewing as hard as I could, my stomach about to collapse from sickness and nausea.
Even now the screams keep echoing in my skull, like something plastered on the inside of it, like my skull’s got the sound in a kind of fabric that peels off the bone and covers my brain sometimes. I wondered how anybody could scream so long without taking in air. After a while you try to figure out what they’re saying. They call for their mothers, for somebody to shoot them, for mercy. And God. They shriek for God. And then I remember some never made a sound.
Now I’m hoping a deer or a elk wanders close by soon. The day wears on. I feel the empty hole in my stomach. Ain’t nothing but birds in this place, and I start to figure how much longer I can stay before I have to race the sun to get back. I don’t want it to get dark: Ink’ll shoot me if I startle her.
Finally, just before I make up my mind to give up, I see something moving across the stream in the thicket. It scurries under the brush, along its roots, but it’s spotted and furry. I aim for the head, but then it turns to face me. I don’t want to send a bullet straight down its windpipe; it’ll ruin the meat. Eventually it turns a little to the side and I aim for the head and fire. It whirls around with the impact and then lies still. Before I get to my feet, I smell it and know what it is. A damned skunk.
I crawl a ways toward the stream, then get up and walk around to where I can step across it without getting my boots wet. The skunk is flat still under the low branches of a bush, so I take the butt of the rifle and scoot it toward the stream. If I get it good and wet, wash off the musk, it won’t smell so bad. I’ve eaten them before, and they’re just as tender and tasty as a rabbit or a squirrel, except they can have a lot more meat on them. It will be enough for both Ink and me. I figure if she’s been with the Sioux she’s eaten worse. Still, I won’t tell her what it is. I gut it and strip the skin off it.
She must of heard the shot I fired, and I guess she’ll be expecting me to come back fairly soon, so I cinch the skunk to my belt and scoot pretty quick along the stream. Then I hear another shot. It’s from up where she should be waiting for me, so I start running. I try to keep low, and the branches of small trees and bushes lash across my face and in my eyes. The ground is covered with leaf meal and pine needles and damp grass, so I don’t make as much noise as you might think, but I slow down and begin to creep as quietly as I can when I think I’m near the camp. I stop for a few seconds, trying to listen for what might be ahead. Ink ain’t making a sound. I think I hear Cricket nicker a little, or it’s another horse. It’s getting on toward dusk, but the sun still clings to a few dark clouds on the horizon, like it don’t want to drop down completely. I can’t hear nothing. I move again, real quiet now, with my rifle in front of me, ready. When I finally get to where I can see the tent, I don’t see Ink. I ain’t going to just come blundering in now. I figure it might be easier to see what’s going on if I circle around and come at it from higher ground. So I cross the stream and move around the camp a ways, then cross again and climb up the embankment to where I can look down on everything. I get on my belly, feel the skunk there, so I move it around my belt so it’s behind me. I put the carbine against my shoulder and move as slow and quiet as I can to the edge. I look down and there’s Ink, skinning a jackrabbit.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I say.
She don’t even look up. She says, “You finished fooling around up there?”
“I thought somebody got you.”
“You made so much noise coming back, if somebody did, they would get you too.”
I slide my way down the embankment and right into the camp. When I give her the carcass she says, “Skunk.”
“It’s good eating,” I say.
“Some have said so.”
“You ever had one?”
“No. And I will keep it that way.”
“You’ll eat it if you get hungry enough.”
She’s finished skinning and cleaning the rabbit. A jackrabbit has long legs and good thighs, but there ain’t enough meat on that thing to feed even one person. You pick between thin bones for everything else you get off one of them things.
When she sees the breast meat and the good leg and thigh meat on the skunk, she looks at me. “You eat this and I will eat the rabbit.”
“There’s enough meat anyway,” I say.
I make a fire out of dry dead wood laying around. It don’t smoke too much. To be safe, I round up Cricket and tie her to a tree nearby. She’ll make a sound if she hears any new sound or smells something she don’t recognize. We eat pretty much without saying nothing. I eat the skunk meat and she eats what she can off the rabbit. The stewed beans taste hot and fine. We watch the sun finally drop out of sight and I let the fire die down to nothing. It’s colder than I thought it would be, but then I figure the fire warmed us so much, we ai
n’t ready for cold night air.
I make sure Ink has a blanket, then I say, “We’ll stay here tonight and tomorrow so you can rest. Then we’ll start out again.” I lay down next to her in the tent. A little later she says, “You sure came running when you heard me shoot.”
I don’t say nothing to that.
“I guess you did,” she says.
“You still hurtin’?”
“A little. Mostly it burns.”
“That means it’s infected,” I say. “That’s my main worry now.”
I feel her move a little, then take in air deeply and let it out.
“I better pour some more whiskey on it,” I say. She says nothing, so I crawl out of the tent and get the whiskey and a candle out of my pack. When I crawl back in, she has raised her leather blouse, lifted the linen wrap, and is looking down at the wound.
In the faint moonlight it looks like somebody wrote on her stomach with black ink. “Just a minute,” I say. I light the candle and tell her to hold it so I can see. Then I open the whiskey and take a sip of it. I feel its fire all the way down to my belly. “You want a sip?”
She shakes her head without looking at me.
The wound where the bullet went in is doing fine. It’s tightly puckered and got enough dried blood caked there, it will make a nice scab. The other wound, I see, is fiery red around where I sewed it and beginning to ooze pus. “That’s a good sign,” I say. “You got a fight going on there.” When I pour some of the whiskey on it, she grabs my shoulder with the other hand and squeezes pretty hard. You’d think a little bitty thing like her wouldn’t be able to snap a match with those fingers, but it feels like she might of could broke my shoulder if she squeezed just a little bit harder.
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