Lost Trails

by Louis L'Amour

  “I’ll do no such.” He braced himself for the whipping sure to come.

  “You’ll do what I say, or I’ll leave welts on your back and arse. I’ll make you bleed, boy, bleed and hurt.”

  When he looked for help, finding no friendly eyes, the skinner—he had long forgotten the villain’s name—knocked him off his seat on the ox yoke, stood, and kicked at him. Will scrambled to the fire ring, found a cup of coffee, flung the hot liquid into the man’s face.

  The teamster screamed, but only briefly. Wiping his eyes, he charged, a maddened bear. Will figured he’d be killed certain-sure, when towering Jim Hickok stepped in and slammed the attacker to the ground. “Lay a hand on that boy again, and I’ll put a pounding on you that’ll take a month of Sundays to get over.”

  He eyes the brandy, runs his tongue over his lips, and glares back at Lulu. “I won’t apologize for havin’ Jim Hickok for a pard. Not ever.”

  “Pard? He quit on you when he was trying to be an actor in your Combination. And how many times did you have to go his bail, or give him spending money because he was broke? Money you were supposed to send to us. Your family.”

  “I ain’t gonna apologize for havin’ Jim Hickok for a pard,” he says. “He saved my bacon, more times than once. Freightin’. Ridin’ for the Pony.”

  “Pony! You never rode for the Express, Will, unless you count being a messenger boy for Majors. And neither did that assassin. All he did was muck stalls before he murdered those men at Rock Creek.”

  “Freightin’. Ridin’ for the Pony,” he repeats, ignoring her slander. “And fightin’ redskins.”

  Laughing, she falls back on the divan. “Indians? My Lord, Will, you killed more Indians on your Wild West than on the Plains. How many did you bury in Europe?” Her cackle slices him to the quick. “There didn’t have to be a Wounded Knee, Will. General Miles should have just sent all the Sioux off with you. They’d all be good Indians, then. Dead of rot and consumption and infection. Probably embarrassment.”

  He moves to the bottle. “There wouldn’t have been no need for that fracas at Wounded Knee had they allowed me to arrest Sittin’ Bull,” he says. His hands stop short of the bottle. Her words stop him.

  “You were too drunk. Remember? A good thing too, or you both would have died, you and that heathen, and what fun the newspapers would have had with that.”

  “I could have saved him.” His eyes shut, and he sees the old Sioux again, sees him babying Annie Oakley as if she were one of his grandchildren. He sees the trained horse he had given Sitting Bull when he left the Wild West, pictures the fine stallion rearing while the gunshots fired by Metal Shirts kill the great holy man. “Could have stopped all that bloodshed. At Sittin’ Bull’s camp at least. He was a friend.”

  “The problem with you, Will, is that you believe all your managers tell you. First Buntline, then John Burke. Salisbury. Cooper. Ingraham. Biggest liars ever, next to you.”

  “Maybe if you had ever believed in me, woman.”

  That silences her.

  She had believed in him once, hadn’t she?

  Here was this dashing young soldier, quite handsome, with dark eyes that shone so bright. They met in St. Louis, shortly after the end of the Rebellion. Their courtship began as a joke. A cousin brought Trooper Will Cody to her house, and they began talking. Uncouth, but charming—quite a horseman, they said—and then he had suggested a joke. A suitor was calling on her that evening, and Louisa really did not want to accompany that cad to the symphony, so when he knocked on the door, she had introduced William F. Cody as her betrothed.

  She never saw the suitor again, but Will Cody became a fixture on her doorstep, and when he asked her father for her hand, she felt excited. They married on March 6, 1866. He was twenty; she almost two years older, and had never been outside of St. Louis and all its splendor.

  Immediately afterward, she stepped into hell.

  Two days out of St. Louis on the Missouri River steamer, she fainted in his arms when some rough men threatened to kill her husband for being a Jayhawker. When they reached Salt Creek, Kansas, he showed her the hotel he planned on running, as decrepit a building as she could ever imagine, not fit for a wharf rat. He proved a mighty poor businessman, always would, so he left to scout for the Army. He wasn’t there when Arta was born that December. He wasn’t there when any of the babies came, and barely around before or after. Long enough to plant his seed and say good-bye. She spent more time in St. Louis with her parents than in Kansas or Nebraska with her husband. Soon, she preferred it that way.

  In 1867, Goddard Brothers Company hired Will to provide twelve buffalo a day for the Kansas Pacific crews. It paid $500 a month, if he lived, and she saw him even less. He mailed some money home, spent more on whiskey, gave plenty to his lowly friends, and invested whatever he had left. Those investments never paid off. Will had better luck betting on horses than on land, and he had little luck with horses, and none at cards or dice, certainly none at choosing business partners. He did have success with the Army, scouting, especially after killing the Cheyenne leader Tall Bull at Summit Springs. That’s how he had met up with Buntline, and the writer had made Buffalo Bill Cody a man of legend, even if those early stories had their roots in Hickok’s depravity rather than her husband’s.

  “And I killed Indians.” He sounds childish, but that’s what he really is. A child. “Killed me aplenty. But I made a bunch of friends with the red man too.”

  “Yeah,” she says, mocking him. “You killed plenty, Will. You shot Tall Bull from ambush.”

  “Got a damn fine horse too.”

  “And then . . .” Well, she can’t speak of that other one.

  “Then what?” he demands, not understanding. “What? I was out riskin’ my hair, woman, riskin’ it for you and our country. And afterward, after I became Colonel William F. Cody . . . Good Lord, woman. I’ve met heads of state. You see this diamond stickpin?” He points, but it’s missing. Probably lost it, or gave it to some saloon beggar. Or he’s so drunk he has forgotten he’s clad in buckskins and not a fancy broadcloth suit. “I had Queen Victoria ride in the Deadwood stage. All these years with my Wild West, you could have come with me. You could have seen the world. You—”

  “Maybe by then I was just used to being left alone!”

  “I done it all for you. You and the little ones.”

  “You did it for yourself, and your own vainglory!”

  His hands grasp the decanter. She thinks he might hurl it at her, but he releases it and whirls, ripping off his hat, tossing it to the floor. His horsehair wig falls with it.

  She almost laughs.

  He looks like the old fool he truly is, his once-flowing locks reduced to sweaty remnants resembling something on a mangy cur—though mustache and goatee remain thick and white—dressed in absurd boots up to his thighs and buckskins with so much beadwork the outfit must weigh more than a knight’s suit of armor. It’s an improvement, she thinks, mayhap over that hideous velvet suit of the vaquero. She closes her eyes to dam the tears, wishing she had never thought of that costume.

  “I never wanted to be away!” he’s telling her. “I done it all for you and the little ones. It broke my heart, you know, broke my heart when Kit died. Soon as I got word, I left the show, took the train home, only to have my son die in my arms.”

  There. It’s finally out.

  “Our son, damn you! He was our son. And he died in my arms, not yours!”

  “Mine . . . I got home—”

  “You weren’t there, Will! Till after Kitty died!”

  He grips the mantel for support, glances at his hat and hairpiece, and staggers to the divan. Suddenly she’s afraid, but she sees the tears welling in his eyes, and he collapses beside her, trying to remember, to sort it out.

  It was spring, April 1876. The Combination had opened in Springfield, Massachusetts, performing Life on the Border with Jack Crawford when the telegram arrived. Joe Arlington, an actor with the Combination for years, han
ded him the telegram during the first act.

  KITTY HAS SCARLET FEVER STOP

  DESPERATE STOP COME HOME QUICK

  STOP LOUISA

  That image remains engraved in his brain forever. Over thirty-four years, not one day has gone by that he hasn’t seen it.

  She tells him, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You just listened to Burke and those others until you finally convinced yourself you were there.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. No. But . . .

  “Go on, Will,” Major Burke said, but Will stubbornly shook his head. “After the first act.” Somehow, Will made it through, then raced out of the opera house, still in his vaquero suit, ran to the depot. Old Moses met him at the Rochester station, driving him home without a word. Kit died on April 20, five years old, apple of his eye, his only son. Kit Carson Cody.

  Yet he can’t see himself holding the boy in his arms. He looks at Lulu for help, but her face is blank, unblinking eyes boring holes into the wall. He thinks back to that horrible night, hearing the clock’s chimes, remembers writing the letter to Julia after Kit was called to Glory, remembers checking on Lulu and the other little ones, all sick, all heartbroken.

  Why Kit? he wrote his sister, wiping tears as he sat alone in the library. He tried to make himself believe Kit had crossed the Jordan, was waiting for them on that better shore, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Wasn’t sure what he believed anymore.

  “You weren’t there,” Lulu snaps beside him. “You weren’t here when Orra died either. Or with Arta when she . . . Well, at least you were decent enough to see your son planted. Then you went back to your actresses. And you left me, and your daughters, to grieve alone. You couldn’t help us, just yourself, your career. So you went back to tread the boards, and then avenge Custer!”

  It had been a bad year. First Kit. Then Custer. Later Hickok. All dead. He had left too, after the season ended in June, but not to avenge Custer. Will wouldn’t learn of the Little Bighorn until he was scouting in Nebraska. When Wesley Merritt read him the report, he passed the news on to the troops. “Custer and five companies of the Seventh wiped out of existence.”

  But why had he taken the train West to join the Indian fight in the first place, to put down the Sioux and Cheyenne? Why had he not changed out of that vaquero suit of black velvet with silver buttons he had worn on stage in Wilmington, Delaware, and elsewhere during the season?

  “This is what I do,” he told a newspaper editor, “when not actin’. I’m a scout. And the Fifth Cavalry needs their chief of scouts.”

  Duty? Or was he running, running from Lulu and poor Kit Carson Cody? Running from his breaking heart? Somehow discovering who he really was?

  The fight came up quickly but, by thunder, he didn’t kill Yellow Hair from ambush, not the way he had shot Tall Bull back in ’69. He wasn’t the first to see the Army couriers, but he did detect the Dog Soldiers pursuing them. “God have mercy,” General Merritt said. “Those poor bastards don’t know the savages are after them.”

  So Merritt ordered him and eight troopers to rescue the white men. Spurring his rangy gelding, whipping the Winchester from its scabbard, he soon outdistanced the soldiers.

  He spotted the Dog Soldier—Yellow Hair he would learn—raised his own rifle as soldiers and Cheyenne, now yipping like coyotes, charged. Reins in his teeth, he lifted his Winchester, found his target. Their weapons spoke at once, and his horse stumbled, pitching him into the sand.

  He rolled, levering the rifle, seeing that his shot had killed the Cheyenne’s horse. Yellow Hair had already recovered, but his second shot flew wild. He took his time, let out a breath—the way Jim Hickok had taught him—and shot the Indian in the head. Then he was running, screaming curses, unsheathing his knife. He slid beside the dead Dog Soldier, gripping the greasy black hair. He didn’t know why he said it, didn’t plan it, but he worked the knife and raised the gory trophy, yelling triumphantly as troopers galloped past in vain pursuit of the fleeing Cheyenne.

  “The first scalp for Custer!”

  “You just had to leave me,” Lulu says softly.

  “I reckon.” His words come out more as a sigh.

  She buries her face in her hands and wails. When her head lifts, she turns to him. “And then you had to mail your . . .” She shudders. “Mailed it home, Will? For the love of God.”

  “I wrote you a letter.”

  “The box showed up first. I opened it and saw the scalp. The flies, crusted blood. I fainted, Will.”

  Yet she’s laughing now, and he sniggers a bit too.

  “Reckon it was dumb of me.”

  Their laughter fades.

  “I miss our children,” she blurts out, and the dam bursts once more. “Kitty . . . Orra . . . Arta. Irma’s all we have left.”

  “I miss ’em too.” He starts to reach for her hand, but pulls away.

  The ache is leaving him. Perhaps he’s just sobering up.

  “It’s the leavin’?” he says, his voice suddenly sympathetic. “Is that what hurt you so?”

  “And your drinking.”

  She makes her tears stop. She has always been strong, well, stronger than he would expect for a spoiled rich girl from St. Louis who had married some wild, fatherless boy who came of age in the wilds of Kansas.

  He offers her a handkerchief. To his surprise, she takes it.

  “I can stop the drinkin’,” he says.

  “You cannot,” she barks sharply.

  “Hell I can’t,” he retorts. “I’m Buffalo Bill.”

  Besides, them old pill-rollers have been hammering at me for years now that the John Barleycorn would kill me. Maybe I should cork the jug. God knows, I’ve spilt more whiskey than most men ever seen.

  “I guess I ain’t been much of a husband, Lulu. Probably was never cut out to be one, way I grew up. Guess I just liked the notion of bein’ hitched.”

  “You said as much during our . . . our divorce proceedings.” The bitterness has returned, but he’ll parry it.

  “Yeah, and I’m sorry for that, and all the torment I put you through. But I can’t stop the leavin’. Owe it. I owe too many folks.”

  “I know that. The Wild West. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. I never understood the fascination.”

  “Me neither.”

  Although he had, and he had learned. By the winter of 1876, he was performing on stage again, Red Right Hand, or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer, wearing that vaquero costume again and displaying Yellow Hair’s scalp and other spoils of war in opera halls across the East. He had become the showman. Westerner at heart. Showman by nature. He discovered that about himself along Warbonnet Creek.

  So he had returned East, and later ventured across the world. He envisioned, not a play, but an outdoor spectacle of the West. Since ’83, when he lost little Orra, his traveling exhibition—now Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East—had made Buffalo Bill Cody’s name recognized across the globe. Ironically, Lulu had fled West, back to the frontier she had loathed, to the North Platte to bring up their family, later to hold Orra’s hand as she died at age eleven, to become the recluse, hating him whenever he stopped in for a visit at the Welcome Wigwam—his stupid name—or Scout’s Rest Ranch.

  “I got my faults.”

  “You’re generous, Will Cody, kindhearted to strangers, children, dogs, horses, old people, even those red savages. Maybe I shouldn’t see that as a fault, but I do. Maybe I’m selfish.”

  “You brought our kids up right. Orra, Arta, Kit . . .”

  When his voice breaks, she reaches toward him only to pull back her hand, whispering, “Don’t, Will. I can’t . . .”

  “We got family, Lulu.” He has recovered. “Still . . . But . . . Well, when I was here in March, when you wasn’t talkin’ to me or havin’ nothin’ to do with me, well, I wanted to ask you to come with me. Tour with me. I’m askin’ you again, Lulu. I promise you I won’t put you on the spot like I done that time on stage.”

  “Why? Why now?
”

  “For that family, Lulu. They want it. That’s why Irma had us meet like this. Fight it out. Well, I’m plumb wore out from fightin’ you. I surrender. Let’s bury the tomahawk, sign the treaty.”

  “You can’t change, Will.”

  “You can’t neither.”

  Silence. She rises and moves to the window, pulls back the curtain, closes it, steps back. “I guess we do owe it to them.”

  He shoots off the divan like the twenty-year-old given permission to marry the girl he adores, not the sixty-four-year-old buffoon, making a beeline for the brandy.

  “Let’s have a drink, Lulu. It’ll be the peace pipe. War’s over.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Will Cody.”

  “Damn right. Buffalo Bill’s a man of his word.” He fills two glasses.

  She approaches him, tentatively takes the glass. His clinks against hers.

  “And it’s my last drink, Louisa.”

  January 10, 1917

  Denver, Colorado

  He lived up to his word too, she remembers, alone in the room with her husband. Lived up to it despite the hardships, losing Scout’s Rest Ranch, losing just about everything, even his name, his show, perhaps his soul to that bastard Tammen.

  Now it’s over.

  She feels it then, shocked by it, reaching up with a tentative finger, curiously tracing the trail the tear leaves as it rolls down her cheek. She squeezes the cold hand, hoping it will respond in kind, but when it doesn’t, she chokes out a sob, maybe a groan, and she wonders:

  Did she really love that old reprobate, or does she merely hate him for leaving her alone one last time?