Far as the Eye Can See

by Robert Bausch

  I try not to think of what they plan on doing with their “Injun” captive.

  Chapter 25

  We’re on foot. I got nothing but my carbine and a sheath knife. Little Fox has that Colt pistol and the bow and arrow. I don’t think he knows a thing about how to shoot the pistol, but he seen me fire the Schofield, so maybe he’s a fast learner. He’s got a skin hat on his head, and so do I. I have a canteen of water that I stole from that young fellow I shot. I am hunting in a kind of killing rage.

  I find the track near the river, and it’s headed west, and for some reason it hits me that I’m now going toward Eveline. It comes to my mind even though it’s something I forgot. It feels like something I long ago give up on.

  I think we’re on the right track because I recognize the small place in Cricket’s hoof where Ink scraped out the burr. I know for sure when Little Fox finds Ink’s garments laying alongside the trail by the river. At first I think it’s a dead rabbit or something, but when he picks it up I realize what it is. There’s blood on the shirt up around the collar, and on the pants too. We spend the better part of half a day walking around that spot—all the way down to the river, and up and down it a good ways, too, looking for a body, but find none. I’m in such a panic, I start moving again, fast, almost running. We get to where the Yellowstone turns south from the Missouri and the track goes that way. They are on the eastern side of the river. I don’t even think about Hump or nobody that may be following me. Half the time I don’t even hear the breathless gasping of my little companion trying so desperately to keep up with me.

  I try not to think nothing but how to keep going. I know with such a large party they’ll stop soon, and I won’t. I’ll just keep on. Sometimes I find myself running, carrying my carbine in one hand, leaping over stones and small branches. I’m trying to be quiet, and I stay pretty much to the low side as I run. Then I remember Little Fox and I stop and wait for him, breathing hard, impatient. When I walk, I stay bent low and try to keep the small trees and bushes near the river between me and what might be in front of me or to my left. I keep the river on my right as I move, and I’m always ready to fire my carbine.

  But finally we do stop. We have to. I don’t see how Little Fox can go on. He can’t catch his breath. He stands next to me, waiting, and I realize if I wanted to go on, he would do it. I am amazed that he has kept up with me. Whoever his father was, he prepared him well for this kind of hunt. It’s the middle of the night on the second day, and so cold I see our breath as we gasp for air. I’m exhausted, too, and sweat runs in my eyes; I think I might fall down unconscious if I don’t eat something and drink some water.

  We lay down in a thicket near the river. When I can finally breathe normal again, I roll down to the riverside and begin to drink. Little Fox crawls up next to me and does the same. It is ice-cold sweet water. I cover my face with it, wet my whole head. Then I lay there trying to sleep. Above me the moon seeks the cover of a dark curtain of clouds. I think I can see starlight but then I’m gone somewhere. When I wake up, the sun bakes my face and flies and mosquitoes buzz all around my head. Little Fox is shaking me. I don’t know how long I been laying here, but I know I’ve lost some time. The sun is very high above the horizon, almost overhead. The air is warm again. I gather my things, refill the canteen with the cold water, and we both start running. This time I try to keep track of Little Fox. I pace myself. For a while I lose the trail and I stop and wander around a bit until Little Fox finds it. They’re still on this side of the river.

  Near dusk the third day, we come upon them. We’re moving at a steady pace, Little Fox silent and right there with me, his bow in hand. I see the horses first. Then I see two heads way in front of me, on the other side of a line of brush. They got their backs to me. I hear the horses nickering some. I know Ink has heard me coming up, but the others don’t know a thing. I motion to Little Fox to get down and he sinks to the ground with the bow ready. I flatten my palms on the ground and pat it twice to let him know I want him to stay put. He is not afraid. He takes a arrow out and nocks it in the bow. I crawl on my belly along a small ravine that runs next to the river and to the right of where they are camped out. It ain’t dark yet, but they already got a fire. I see a thin wisp of smoke in front of me and I crawl slow up the embankment, at the base of the place where the brush ends. I feel the damp mud of the riverbed seeping through my shirt. In the waning light of day, the campfire starts to reflect on faces and limbs and I see Ink sitting exactly across from me, on the other side of the fire. She is staring right at me. She is naked, her dark hair covering her breasts. Her eyes are dark and fierce. The way she sits, I realize her hands are tied behind her back. They’ve put a stake in the ground behind her and tied her to it. The young one, Treat, holds his hunting knife up to the light, looking at the edge of it. He’s got two others with him. One, I notice, is Joe Crane. He’s crouched by the fire, poking it with a stick. He’s still got Preston’s hat.

  I holler, “Joe Crane,” and he gets up fast.

  Treat puts the knife in the sheath on his belt and takes out his pistol.

  “You better put that pistol down,” I say.

  “Who’s there?” Joe says. He squints over the fire.

  “It’s me,” I say. “Bobby Hale.”

  I hear him say something under his breath to Treat, and then Treat puts his gun away.

  The other fellow, whose been standing there motionless, moves a little closer to the fire. I get up and walk toward them, holding my carbine at the end of my arm, but level and pointed in their direction. It ain’t no walking stick, and they can see that I got it where it needs to be to do business.

  “Jesus Christ,” Joe Crane says. “If it ain’t so. Bobby Hale.” He seems glad to see me. The others are wary. I don’t look at Ink, but I feel her eyes on me.

  When I get up to him, Treat says, “Well, shit. I remember you from Fort Riley.”

  I nod.

  “That was a long time ago,” Joe Crane says. “I thought you was headed west with that train.”

  “I was.”

  “What happened?”

  I now look directly at Ink. “What do you have here?”

  “It ain’t nothing,” Treat says. “It belongs to me.”

  “It ain’t just yours,” Joe Crane says. “She belongs to all of us.”

  “That is what the Sioux call a warrior,” the other fellow says, and they all laugh.

  Joe Crane says, “We been having a bit of fun with her. She don’t speak English nor Crow.”

  “We thought she was a brave,” Treat says. “She sure knew how to fire that pistol she was holding.”

  “Killed two of ours before we got the gun from her,” Joe Crane says.

  “We been paying back,” Treat says. The others laugh. “But she don’t speak a damn word. Quiet as a skunk.”

  They all laugh at this too.

  “Hell, she don’t even moan,” the other fellow says.

  I notice blood dripping out of Ink’s right nostril. She does not look at me now. “There ain’t enough of her left for nobody but me,” Treat says.

  “Well, you’re all done with her now,” I say.

  Joe Crane looks in my eyes, but he don’t see it coming. I fire my carbine from the waist and hit him in the center, between the shoulders, then raise the gun, take aim, and shoot Treat in the throat before he can figure out what’s going on. He drops to the ground still holding his pistol in the ready position. The other fellow just stands there looking at me. Joe Crane is sitting down, looking at the wound in his chest. His feet are crossed in front of him. “What’d you do that for?” he says.

  “I done it for Preston, hanged in a tree,” I say. “And for her. For what you done to her.”

  The other fellow starts to back away, but I point the gun at him. “You want to take one in the back, you go right ahead,” I say. “For myself, I’d rather see it coming.”

  “Please, Christ, don’t shoot me,” he says. “I never touched her nor n
obody else, I swear it.”

  “Was he with you when you hanged Preston?” I ask Joe Crane.

  “I’m finished,” he says. “You’ve killed me, you bastard. And I never seen no gold.”

  “I think I’m going to have to finish you too,” I say to the other fellow. “What’s your name?”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you want to be remembered?”

  He turns and starts running. I raise the rifle and aim at him, then lower it and watch him for a spell. He disappears on the other side of the line of brush, then I see him get up on a spotted horse and take off away from the river. I don’t feel like killing him. It’s bad enough what I done to Joe Crane and Treat. They was white men, and except for whatever I done accidental in all the smoke and damnation of the war, and shooting that fellow the other day who was already dead, I ain’t killed none of them before. At least not on purpose. I am killing my own people now and it don’t feel right. But then I look over at Ink and see her sitting there in her own blood and with no clothes on, scratched and bloody as a skinned doe, and it really sets me off again.

  Joe Crane tries to say something. I hear him gasping for air through blood-filled lungs. I must of missed his heart or he’d be dead by now, but air sucks into the wound and I know he ain’t got long. I guess I feel sorry for him.

  “You shouldn’t of done what you done to her,” I say. “Nor Preston, neither.”

  “Preston had it coming. I didn’t like it much. But it was his trouble and his . . .” He coughs. Then he looks up at me.

  “It don’t matter,” I say. “I shot you for what you done to her.”

  “It was bad about Preston,” he whispers. “I did not like it one bit. But hell. It ain’t nothing but what happens out here.”

  “Well, now it’s happened to you,” I say.

  He makes a sound, almost like a stifled cough or sneeze. “Damned if it ain’t,” he says, and then I realize he is trying not to laugh. Blood spatters out of his mouth and nose when this happens. “Damned if it ain’t. And killed by a old friend.”

  “I guess,” I say.

  He tries to hold his head up, but then it just drops down toward his feet. He dies a-setting there with his head between his knees, like he’s looking for something in his limp hands.

  “It’s a damned shame,” I say to nobody.

  Treat was a small fellow, so I take off his vest and shirt, and when I cut Ink loose I hand them to her. “Go on and get dressed,” I say.

  She still don’t look at me, but she takes the clothing. When she turns to get up, I see that she has messed herself. Her ass is cut and bleeding and it won’t do to let her go like that. I help her up. “Come on,” I say. “We’ll go down to the river and you can take a bath.”

  She moves like something only half alive, like a sick dog being held up on its hind legs. Her head droops, and she slobbers. She smells of whiskey and urine, and shit. Sweat and blood, too, I guess. I don’t want Little Fox to see her like this.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish this didn’t happen to you.”

  “They were your friends?” she whispers.

  “I known two of them. They wasn’t no friends.”

  I leave her at the edge of the river with Treat’s shirt and vest, and then I go back up and get his trousers too. I walk back to where I left Little Fox and point to all the horses. I motion for him to go there. I take the trousers back to Ink and notice she ain’t moved from where I left her. “You got to clean up,” I say. I help her move a little into the water. It’s shallow where she stands, but as she moves further in, holding herself from the cold, it gets deep enough. “Just stay there,” I say. “Wash yourself off. I’ll turn the other way.”

  It’s getting dark now, and I turn my back from her a little. In the fading light she cannot see what I’m up to. I watch her squat down and begin to wash. She splashes the water over herself, slowly at first—like it might burn her with the cold—but then she really gets into it. She sits down and scrubs and scrubs. She buries her face and hair in it, then throws it all back over her head. Some of the water splashes on me and I know it is ice-cold. Her hands tremble as she runs them over her face, the water dripping down under her eyes and off the tip of her nose. Her lips are swollen and torn. She pats them with the cold water, then sniffs back and looks at me. Without saying a thing, she starts crying silently. Even back when I put that bullet in her—back when I sewed the wound and then had to cut it again and burn it—she never cried like that.

  When she comes up out of the water, I put my hands on either side of her face. We both stand there, and then I slowly kneel down with her. We face each other like that for a while, like we’re praying or something, and then she puts her head on my shoulder and I sit back and she sort of rests on my legs and I hold her against me while she weeps. She’s quiet with it. I hear nothing but her quick breathing and feel the motion of her shoulders. She’s naked and wet against me and I just hold her in my lap like a small child. It’s a long cry. The moon rises fairly high over the rippling river before she finally begins to get hold of herself. It don’t matter to her that she’s naked. I feel her dark wet hair against me and keep my arm wrapped around her neck and head and just hold her. She trembles so much it feels like she might break apart in my arms. I can’t get her warm. But the crying stops. Now she just breathes deeply, in and out, and shudders in my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  But she still don’t speak.

  “We got to get moving,” I say. “You think you can ride a horse?”

  I think I feel her nod her head a bit.

  “We’re a long way back south and west. They was taking you to the Black Hills.”

  Now she does nod.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” I say again. She raises her head and looks into my eyes. I can still see her tears, and in the moonlight I think she is the most handsome and sad creature I ever seen in the world. I lean down and kiss her gently on the forehead. She don’t move or say a thing.

  “Can you put them clothes on?” I say.

  She keeps looking in my eyes for a while, but then she turns and gets up, trying to cover herself with her arms. I go back up to where the fire is beginning to die out and retrieve Joe Crane’s Colt pistol, some canteens, and one bedroll. The horses are hobbled on the other side of the brush. When I get to them, I see Little Fox holding on to the tether, keeping them in place. “Good job,” I say. Cricket is glad to see me, I think. Now we got eight horses, including Cricket and Ink’s mount. They’ll come in handy at Fort Ellis back in Bozeman and I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just keep on west and head for there. In spite of the continued chill in the air, I know it’s already near the end of May. Even making thirty or forty miles a day, we won’t make it back to Bozeman by June. I know I’ve lost Eveline for sure. The idea of leaving Ink at Buford or anywhere else don’t seem possible now. It don’t seem like something I can even do. It’s something I’m going to have to decide right away, and there ain’t nobody to consult about it. I don’t think I’ll get Ink to even speak to me. She’s been robbed of speech and ain’t going to be much of help from now on.

  I get up on Cricket and start back for the camp with the rest of the horses. Little Fox has taken one of the smaller horses—probably Treat’s—for his own. I’m beginning to be glad what I done to Joe Crane. When we get back to the firelight, Ink is kneeling next to Joe Crane and she’s pulling the rest of his scalp off. She’s already mutilated Treat.

  “Come on, now,” I say. “There’s no use in that.”

  But she finishes the job. Then sheathes the knife and climbs up on her horse. She struggles to do it, but when I reach out to help her, she brushes my hand away. I know it hurts her to be on that horse. She sits there for a spell looking at the fire, holding the scalps in her hand. Then she ties them to the side of her saddle.

  “You’ll just attract mosquitoes and flies,” I say.

  She turns and starts south and I follow along
. I don’t know where she thinks she’s going nor why, but I don’t have nothing to say now. Little Fox rides between us. She has not spoken to him, and he ain’t said nothing, neither.

  Chapter 26

  I follow her most of the night, then at dawn she turns up toward a long hillside. We’re well south and west of where we first come to the Yellowstone, and now we’ve just crossed the Powder River. We’re in dangerous country again—back where we might run into folks who will want to kill me. Ink still has not said a word. She won’t look at me, neither.

  I tried talking all along the trail, but in the dark I couldn’t even tell if she was listening. Every now and then Little Fox would turn around and nod; I think he felt sorry for me. I made up my mind I’d leave her alone and let her work out when she might want to say something. For the last two or three hours of our night ride, I rode in silence, listening to the darkness and the rush of the river.

  Now we ride up a long, sloping rise. We are headed for some trees again. The sky is almost full blue now, and white clouds crowd the horizon, like they might rise up and overtake the sun when the time comes. The sun ain’t far from beneath the horizon. The land is powerful dark green. There’s purple flowers everywhere on top of the green meadows. They seem to scurry from one end of the plains to the other. Cricket has developed the skill of dropping her head down and picking some of the greenery to eat while we walk along. We are making good time, but we’ll have to stop soon, and it ain’t looking like good country for a camp. I don’t want to be in the open with all these horses.