Hammond’s jaw was working angrily under a wiry black beard which crawled so high up his cheekbones it stopped just short of his eyes. “I ain’t asking nobody,” he said. “I ain’t begging for what’s mine. I paid once to get my property back to keep the peace, but they turn around and steal it off you again. I ain’t asking any more, I’m telling.”
Hardwick was studying First Shoot. His face betrayed he understood a little of Hammond’s speech.
There was a disturbance at the back of the warriors. The crowd parted to make way for Little Soldier, blind drunk, leaning on his Sits-Beside-Him wife for support. A big American flag was tied in a bib around his neck. Looking like a grey-haired baby taking his first uncertain steps, he stumbled forward to greet Hardwick.
“There’s your chief,” said Farwell, under his breath. “Think you can talk any sense into him?”
Little Soldier began to orate.
“What’s he jawing on?” Hardwick snapped.
Farwell translated. “He’s saying he brought the Star Flag to show you how good a friend Little Soldier is to the Americans. They gave him this Star Flag because he never kills Americans – only Peigans. The Peigans kill Americans all the time. Maybe sometime you’d like to come with him and rub out a few Peigans. Maybe you’d like to make him a present of needle-guns so he could kill the Peigans for you and save you the trouble.”
“You tell him my trouble right now is a horse. That’s my only trouble. You tell him George Hammond’s horse was stole by one of his people. You tell him a couple days back Indians stole nigh on twenty head of my horses. You tell him I’m losing patience with redskin thieving ways and I’m of a mind to do something about it. You tell him that.”
“I ain’t telling him no such thing. You can’t talk to him like that in front of his own people.”
“You tell him what I said – straight out – or I’ll make my point by riding over and ripping the flag off that lying old rogue.”
Farwell, looking uneasy, addressed Little Soldier. Before he was finished, Little Soldier interrupted him, speaking wildly, flailing an arm, teetering back and forth on his heels.
“He says nobody from his band stole Hammond’s horse. Maybe Hammond’s horse wandered. Horses wander. Maybe some bad Peigans took the horse. He knows Hammond’s horse. A sorrel horse. Look for yourself; there are no sorrel horses anywhere in Little Soldier’s camp.”
“No,” said Hardwick, “there ain’t never no stolen horses in an Indian camp. That goes without saying. Shit.”
“He says to show Hammond he speaks the truth, he will give him two horses of his own. They will be hostage horses. When Hammond finds his wandering horse again, then he can give the ponies back to Little Soldier. If he doesn’t find his horse, he can keep them. That’s fair, he says. Two horses for one. Let them shake hands on it and then when Hammond brings him a bottle of whisky they will be friends.”
“I don’t want two goddamn starving, bag-of-bones Indian ponies for my horse,” blurted Hammond. “My horse is grain-fed and fat. He’s got thoroughbred blood in him. I ain’t horse-trading with no son of a bitch of a pilfering Indian. I want my horse back and that’s the end of it.”
Farwell said a few words to the chief. He answered.
“He says he can’t give you what he doesn’t have. You might ask him for the sun, but the sun is not in his power to give. He will give you what he has to give – two horses for one. Be happy with what he has to give – the Assiniboine are poor Indians. They came to the Cypress Hills to escape the hunger in the north. The hunting is good here but they are not fat yet. They need horses to run the buffalo, but he is willing to give George Hammond two horses so there will be no bad blood between them. George Hammond should take his horses and be happy. There are young Assiniboine men with no horses who would bless Little Soldier’s name if he were to make them such a generous present. He says take the horses or you will make the young men angry. He cannot be responsible for young men when they are angry.”
A queer smile flitted across Hardwick’s lips. “I believe I just heard a threat,” he said.
“No, no,” soothed Farwell, “it ain’t no threat – it’s the truth. Take the goddamn horses, Hardwick. This is a mighty poor band. He’s making you a big gift. Big enough it hurts. I don’t think they own more than a dozen horses. He’s trying to smooth things over. Be polite – take them.”
“Tell him I piss on his horses.”
Farwell heeled his mule in front of Hardwick, strategically blocking the old man’s view of the white man’s sneering face. Little Soldier smiled broadly while his wife clutched his elbow, steadying him as he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Tom, I ain’t going to say that. Don’t go hot-headed on me now. Some of these young bucks are full of Solomon’s whisky. Don’t go poking the hive with a stick. Let it rest.”
Hardwick stood in his stirrups and shouted over Farwell’s head. “I piss on you and your horses! Understand? I want Hammond’s horse! Give us Hammond’s horse or take the consequences!” Uncomprehending, Little Soldier grinned foolishly back at him, but First Shoot understood enough English to grasp Hardwick’s meaning. He began to angrily shout and a discomfiting murmur arose and spread through the ranks of the warriors. Stepping forward, he flung his buffalo robe to the ground in a passionate gesture. Others followed suit, Stripping off their clothes. Farwell trotted his mule back and forth between the two white men and the Indians, holding up his arms in supplication, doing his best to cajole them in the Assiniboine tongue.
“They’re getting ready to fight,” said Hammond anxiously. “Throwing off their clothes so if they take a bullet it’ll be a clean wound. We better pull stakes.”
The Assiniboine were nearly naked now, taunting the whites, brandishing muskets, making the air whine as they whirled poggamoggans threateningly above their heads, shaking bows and lances as Farwell desperately pleaded with them.
“Farwell, clear out!” shouted Hardwick. “Clear out or, damn your hide, I’ll fire anyway!”
“Don’t you do it!” screamed Farwell. “Not with a white man between you!”
Hardwick and Hammond, carbines levelled, were backing their horses away from the shrieking Assiniboine. Suddenly, Hardwick’s horse reared. Hammond had fired.
A frantic scramble to suck leather, clawing to keep his seat. The horse slammed back down on its forelegs, hard, popping him up, skidding his boot out of the stirrup. He heard the dull pop of a musket discharging, caught the dazzle of the haunch of Hammond’s horse, spinning in a tight turn. Farwell flew by him, wide-eyed and screaming, clinging to his mule, slashing it into a clumsy, slew-footed gallop with his reins. Fumbling with his boot to retrieve the lost stirrup, fumbling with the Henry, without aiming Hardwick squeezed a shot off over the flank of his horse. Then he was pounding after Hammond and Farwell, flattening himself low in the saddle, brutally slapping his pony’s rump with his rifle barrel. A spasm of muzzle-loader fire erupted at his back. He shrank down further, pinching himself as small as he could. His neck tingled with the expectation of a bullet.
With the white men between them and the Assiniboine, the wolfers sat their pawing, stamping horses, holding fire. The Indians pursued on foot, little patches of black musket-smoke puffing into the air as they ran and fired, ran and fired. They were reloading fast, shaking powder into the barrels of their guns and spitting bullets into the muzzles, in their haste omitting to use wadding, so their shot did not carry far or accurately.
Hammond reached the wolfers and bellowed, “Run for cover, boys! The coulee! The coulee!” as he galloped by, heading for the narrow gulch which lay like a wound in the breast of the prairie. But the nervous wolfers held their ground on whinnying, panicked horses.
A row of tense white faces shimmered sidelong in the eye of the Englishman’s boy. He heard harsh, whispered curses directed at no one; shouts of encouragement to Hardwick that Hardwick could not hear. Distance and time were mirages, bending and shimmering like the hot air. Closer yet farthe
r. Sooner yet later.
And then Hardwick and Farwell were upon them. Hardwick waving them back to the coulee. The line swung as one, as prettily orchestrated by terror as a practised cavalry manoeuvre on a parade-ground square. They whipped their mounts into a headlong gallop which in moments brought them churning down into the cutbank where Hammond cowered, a cataract of heaving horses, clouds of dust, men jolting in saddles.
By the time the Englishman’s boy dismounted, the narrow confine of the crevice was ringing with rifle-fire. He picked out Grace’s blue-handkerchiefed head and ran to him doubled over, jerking his horse down the shallow coulee bottom after him. He could hear someone screaming, “They’re coming! Lord Jesus, they’re coming!” He flung himself down beside Grace. Here the coulee was only four feet deep, forming a natural rifle pit.
Dragging himself up on his elbows, he surveyed the ground he’d just covered in precipitous retreat, an open expanse dotted with clumps of wolf willow and sage. Over this the Assiniboine were advancing from patch of cover to patch of cover, firing their muzzle-loaders, reloading, then skittering and zigzagging their way forward to discharge another shot. Behind them the camp was emptying, women rushing children and infants into thick timber which, once it closed on them, resumed its placid front.
Already the Englishman’s boy could count three of the attacking Indians lying broken on the landscape like dolls hurled to a nursery floor. Ten yards from the lip of the coulee Farwell’s wounded mule lay on its side, its head rising and falling as the strength bled out of it with every pump of its heart.
“Your mouth’s hanging open,” Grace said. “Close it and fire.”
In that instant, the Assiniboine let loose a volley and swept up out of the willow and grass with sharp, piercing cries. Fox-fast and fleet, they shredded the screen of gun-smoke issuing from their muskets with their charge.
The Henrys began to bark up and down the coulee like a pack of hounds on the scent. The Englishman’s boy was firing fast, the sweat pouring into his eyes in a blinding, stinging rain. For a terrible second, he believed the Assiniboine were going to pass unscathed through the hail of bullets, pour into the coulee stabbing and clubbing. But the attack ripped apart, like rotten cloth. The abrupt sprawl of men into the sage stunned the Englishman’s boy. They dropped like all the deer he had ever shot cleanly and fatally. The attack stuttered, hesitated, the Indians withdrew in confusion. A cheer went up in the cutbank.
The Englishman’s boy slid down the face of the slope, pulled off his derby, mopped his brow with his sleeve. His mouth was bone-dry. He’d tried to draw a bead on those twisty, slippery figures but they’d leapt and dodged so as to freeze his finger on the trigger. In the end, he’d only pointed and fired, pointed and fired. He didn’t think he’d got himself one.
Hardwick was walking up and down the trench, asking each man, “How many rounds you got left? How many rounds?”
Grace answered tersely, “Enough.”
Hardwick took one glance at the bandoliers looped over the shoulders of the Englishman’s boy and passed on.
John Duval was calling for water. Hardwick shouted, “Nobody drinks yet! We don’t know how long we’re going to be pinned down here! Water’s rationed!”
The Englishman’s boy dug a pebble out of the side of the cutbank, put it in his mouth to suck. The blistering heat roiled in the coulee.
The wolfers pricked their ears. Out there, someone was chanting. It ran toward them like a wave, washed over them, receded, swept forward once more.
“Death song,” said Grace to the boy.
The men crouched in the coulee, gripping their guns, listening to a man preparing to die. The chant rose and fell, rose and fell. Suddenly it stopped. In the distance, a man stood up out of the scrub, straight as a lodgepole pine. It was First Shoot in his wolf-skin cap. The wolfers began to fiddle with their sights, adjusting them for the range. First Shoot didn’t give them time enough to sight him. He pumped his musket to the sky three times, sprinted forward. The Soldier’s Society soared up out of the grass like a covey of birds. A second force of hostiles gushed up behind them, older men not so fleet, not so agile as the first, all of them whooping.
This time, the Assiniboines did not skirmish forward, discharging their weapons. It was a pell-mell assault, a dash of supple swiftness, a foot race to the coulee. The speed, the audacity of it stunned the men huddled there. The Assiniboine came pelting forward, leaping sagebrush, veering and twisting like a hunting wolf pack, quick, terrible.
A sheet of flame scorched the air. The death-song singer did not break stride; it was as if the muzzle flashes were a curtain of beads, insignificant, to be brushed aside. He drove on, hot, direct as fire burning down a fuse to a powder keg. Fifty yards, forty.
Then the powder keg exploded. The curtain refused to part. His heels skidded out from under him, kicked up, flesh fountaining in a spray of blood. The white men worked the levers of their rifles madly, shot swinging through the warriors like a heavy scythe mowing hay, everywhere the human grass shivered when it met the sharp blade, wavered, fell in a windrow of bodies.
The Indians broke and fled.
A shout went up in the coulee, punctuated by rebel yells. Random shots spat on fleeing backs. An Assiniboine fell, staggered to his feet, was scythed again.
The surviving Indians retreated to an opposing coulee from where they began to lay down fire. Now in a defensive position they had time to prime and load with calculation. The use of wadding gave them greater range and accuracy. Despite smooth-bore, single-shot weapons, their numbers made for a steady, debilitating sniper fire which penned the wolfers in the coulee. Whining, whistling shot kept them ducking. A ball struck a stone near the Englishman’s boy and he felt a sting of splintering lead on his cheek. It began to drip blood.
They knew they were trapped. The sun glared and burned, roasted them. Fear sank its claws in their tender, smitten skins.
26
“I’ve got to get out of this picture,” I say.
Rachel Gold and I are sitting on a blanket gazing at the Pacific Ocean and a stretch of beach which once doubled for the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. It isn’t really a day for the beach – overcast, the water riding under the horizon line grey and mud-coloured, but today I want her undivided attention and an empty beach offers few distractions.
“Jesus, Harry,” she says, “you scheme your ass off to get this job and then you want out? What’s this about?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Write what he wants.” I can’t get into explanations. I can’t confess how scared I am. I can’t tell her that if I write what Chance wants, there’s every likelihood I’ll have a hand in attaching Shorty McAdoo’s name to a lie. After Chance’s bizarre performance at the party, I can guess at the savage, distorted, paranoid lens through which this picture is going to be shot, guess at what crazy, politically “visionary” message he thinks the movie will deliver. As he’s said all along, this picture isn’t supposed to be just another Western. To do what he requires wouldn’t just be a betrayal of Shorty, but of Rachel, too.
And myself.
Rachel is being her usual hard-headed, practical self. “You’re not Leo Tolstoy, Harry. You’re a scenarist. Somebody hands you the measurements and you cut the cloth. This shouldn’t come as news to you. Write what he wants, for Christ’s sake, and have done with it.”
The shore is deserted, not another soul in sight. The breaker-washed sand gleams like hot asphalt packed by a steamroller, flat, smooth, oily-looking. Waves monotonously assault the glistening beach, rolled banners unfurling liquid flags to a steady, muffled drumbeat. Sitting on the blanket with her feet tucked up under her, Rachel is tiny, porcelain-white and serious, a Victorian doll.
“Chance is nuts,” I say.
“This is news? Everybody who runs a studio is nuts. You’ve got to be. Mack Sennett has a bathtub in his office. Carl Laemmle’s son follows him around with
a lard pail in case his old man needs a piss. Lasky and Thalberg hire a scenarist who thinks the filming of BenHur is the fulfilment of a prediction by Nostradamus. Need I go on?”
“This is different.”
“Different how?”
I shrug and announce, “Politics.” Immediately I wish I hadn’t.
“What, politics? You vote Democrat and he votes Republican? These are not irreconcilable differences, my friend. I don’t hide I’m a socialist and he hasn’t fired me yet.”
I don’t mention the Jew-hate. I don’t know how to tell her about that.
“I’ve been thinking of quitting,” I announce.
“What can I say? If your artistic sensibility – which I’ve yet to see any evidence of – is getting seriously bruised, quit.”
“What if he won’t let me quit?”
“Let you? What’s let you? We had an Emancipation Proclamation in this country. He can’t stop you from quitting.”
“I have this feeling he’s not going to let me out of this. He’s always been very secretive about this project. Only three of us really know what it’s about. Chance has been getting more and more paranoid about this picture.”
“You’re scared of him.”
“Goddamn right I’m scared of him.”
“You leave him so he puts it out you’re unprofessional, a bad writer. Who will listen? Everybody in the business has him pegged as a joke. He gives you a bad report card – it’s likely to come off as a glowing recommendation.”
“You forgot Fitz,” I say. “That son of a bitch is capable of anything. Fitz might get something into his head. He’s like the crazy, loyal servant in Murnau’s Nosferatu. Devoted to the master.” I look out to sea. The waves are rolling forward in relentless reiteration, repeating themselves over and over, like my worries of the past few days. The sky is turning denser, greyer, like cheap blotting paper, fibrous with skeins of cloud. Around me I can feel the air growing heavier, moister, closing in. “Chance sent me away to rework the scenario. But now I’ve seen the picture he wants to make through his eyes – I can’t do it. It’s a hallucination, not a movie. A Western Nosferatu. It won’t work. And when it doesn’t, he’s going to want somebody to blame. I’ll be the candidate.”
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