“He’ll be back, don’t worry.”
Two hours passed.
There was no point going out to look for him in the middle of the night. Nor was there any question of leaving Aileen alone. Bowman stood guard near the fire, keeping it stoked all night.
One hour before dawn, he saddled Trigger. Aileen was up. She hadn’t slept a wink either and Bowman did not know what to do to soothe her fears.
“You should go and lie down. You can’t do anything in your condition. I’m going to look for help and we’ll find him. I’ll be back soon.”
He climbed into the saddle and left at a gallop, following the shore of the lake to the last camp they had seen the night before. It was still dark when he knocked at the door of the cabin. A man’s voice answered from the other side:
“Who the hell is that?”
“We passed by yesterday with a cart. The family with the pregnant woman. Her husband went out hunting and he didn’t come back last night.”
“I’m going to open the door. But if there’s any trouble, I’ve got a rifle in my hand. You’d better not be armed!”
“I don’t have a gun. I’m stepping back. You can open it now.”
The doorframe creaked. Bowman made out the outline of a man in long johns and saw the gleam of a rifle barrel.
“What is all this?”
“It’s the young lad you saw go past yesterday. He went out hunting last night and he hasn’t come back. His wife is at the camp, a bit further on. She can’t move because she’s pregnant. I need some help. Someone who knows the mountain.”
A woman appeared behind the man, holding a lamp. She lit a match and the light illuminated the cabin’s interior. She shoved her husband out of the way and moved in front of him.
“And you left her all alone?”
“I didn’t have any choice. I need a guide to go into the forest. I have money.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
She turned to her husband.
“Joseph Ervin, saddle your horse and get a move on. I’m going to look after the girl and you’ll go with this gentleman. Put your rifle down now!”
Ervin leaned his rifle against the wall.
“Where did you set up camp?”
“Three miles from here. There’s a stream and a little cove.”
The man spat on the ground.
“It’s full of crevasses around here. We should go and get old MacBain – he knows it best.”
“MacBain?”
“He’s the oldest man here, and his damn dog will be useful.”
The old man they had met when they arrived, who had told them to settle wherever they wanted.
“Can you go to the camp? I’ll fetch the old man.”
The woman told him not to worry, and Bowman climbed back in the saddle.
By the time they left the camp – Bowman, Ervin and old MacBain with his dog – it had been daylight for several minutes.
The day was over and the sun had vanished behind the mountains when they returned, with Jonathan Fitzpatrick’s body lying across Trigger’s saddle. Aileen did not stop screaming until the middle of the night, when she collapsed with exhaustion. The next morning, Mrs Ervin found her motionless on her bed and lifted up the blood-soaked sheet. They harnessed the cart as quickly as possible, but when Bowman arrived six hours later in Carson City, there was no point looking for the doctor. Woman and child were both dead.
Ervin helped Bowman dig a grave for the two bodies, by the side of the clearing, facing the same way as the gunshot Aileen had fired over Lake Tahoe. Joseph Ervin had forgotten his prayers a long time ago, but he said a few words, throwing in the word “Lord” whenever his mind went blank. His wife threw a bouquet of mountain flowers on the pile of earth, and soon Bowman was the only one left by the side of the lake, with the cart, two cattle, his mare and a stained mattress with hundreds of flies swarming over it. He relit the fire and threw the mattress on top. Then he sat next to it, put his papers, pen and ink on his legs, and contemplated the flames and the column of black smoke rising from the burning wool. The smell was unbearable, but he stayed there, unmoving, holding all his letters, the corners of the pages lifting up in the heat.
Then Bowman abandoned the camp, went back to Carson City, entered the office of the Express Mail Company, and headed back east to Salt Lake City, armed with an old percussion-cap Springfield rifle. He slept the first night by the side of the road and, when he woke up, saw the Express Mail stagecoach speed past, drawn by ten horses. Inside it was his little saddlebag and about fifty pages: everything he had written, from his little hut in London until his last letter to Alexandra Desmond:
Alexandra,
Rather than burning everything I’ve written, I’m sending it to Reunion. I don’t know who will find these letters one day, now you’re no longer there. Maybe there’s one last citizen there and he’ll send them on to you or read them before burning them, like I should have done. But I didn’t want to know where the ashes were.
I arrived on the shore of Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada. If you had continued travelling across this country and you had seen this place, I feel sure this is where you would have stopped.
I just buried another dream. That of a young woman, her husband and their unborn child.
My road ends here. I won’t leave again. The killer has disappeared. I won’t disappear by going after him. You are somewhere in France and all I have to offer you is an image, before I send these pages along the road, so that they can make the exact opposite journey to the one I’ve made since I first met you.
We are two dreams who each retain a memory of the other.
I borrowed the name of the man I was looking for, while I came to understand that I was still alive. That miracle is of a sadness I cannot yet measure. I owe it to a young man who liked to gallop with wild horses, and to his young wife who didn’t care what I was called. The only ones left who know my real name are you and the preacher.
I have loved you since I first saw you.
Your old soldier
When he reached the plains where he had gone hunting with Jonathan Fitzpatrick, Bowman left the track and went in search of the pack of wild horses.
3
Joseph Ervin, who was washing himself in the lake, looked up when he heard the sound of horses. He walked up to the path and greeted the Englishman who had disappeared two weeks before. Bowman was as dirty as his mare, tired and covered in dust. Behind him, in a line, were two horses, a male and a female. Bowman nodded to him.
“We took care of the cattle. Where did you go?”
Bowman raised his hand without turning around and continued on his way to the camp. Ervin’s wife came out of the cabin and watched Bowman ride into the distance.
“He came back?”
“He won’t leave again.”
“How would you know?”
“You can tell.”
“Go and finish cleaning up, Mr Know-It-All.”
*
Nothing had moved. The cattle were in the clearing by the waterside, kept there by the thick grass more than by the ropes tied to trees. The empty cart, the sagging tent, the cold hearth and the two graves. The flowers had been blown away by the wind or eaten by animals. The little hills of earth were starting to level off.
Bowman tied the two mustangs to a juniper and set to work. First he fashioned two cross-beams from some branches, then cut down two young trees. It took him three days to build an enclosure big enough for his three horses. That evening, by the fire, he started repairing Fitzpatrick’s old saddle. Near the enclosure, he chose a spot for his hut, leaning against a rock that would form the first wall.
Joseph Ervin gave him advice – and a helping hand when he had the time. He and his wife were tanners, and they had been here for seven years. First, they had tried to sell furs, but the big companies like the Bent and St Vrain and the Western Fur Trade Company had monopolised the market. So Ervin had specialised in the fabrication of leather, which he ta
nned with white oak bark, not as strong a tannin as black oak, but one which made the leather more supple. Their cabin was rudimentary, but the quality of their leather improved and they started selling their products at a good price to a trader in Carson City. Third-generation Americans, Ervin and his wife had met and married in Pennsylvania before trying their luck in the West. Joseph had no interest in farming, and he did not share his contemporaries’ dreams of making a fortune from gold. He looked out at Lake Tahoe and said: “Hell, if this isn’t the only wealth that matters, they can hang me.”
Seeing the Fitzpatricks’ graves, he scratched his head.
“Better to die here than at the bottom of a mine, digging gold. At least they saw it before they passed away.”
In exchange for their help, the Ervins were allowed to use the cattle whenever they needed. In the end, Bowman offered to sell them the animals. As the tanners could not pay him, Bowman made a deal with them: they would help him build a bigger corral and, before the end of the summer, Joseph would go with him to capture more horses.
“What are you planning to do with all these horses?”
“A stud farm.”
“Here?”
The hut resembled a small fort, a dozen feet wide, with thick walls made from trunks with the bark stripped off that gave the impression that there must be no space left inside. There were two windows: one looked out on the horses’ enclosure, the other on the lake. The roof was also made of logs, covered with bark strips and earth. Soon, grass began to grow on it. Bowman built another little shelter against his house – four posts and a bark roof – under which he put the cart and the tools. In his hut, he kept all the Fitzpatricks’ more useful belongings, most of them for the kitchen, with a few other objects that he had decided to keep arranged on a shelf. A framed photograph of the couple, posing proudly in front of their new cart, taken in St Louis before their departure. Aileen’s sewing things, an old razor that smooth-faced Jonathan could not have used very often, a medallion, an embroidery, their wedding rings which he had not wanted to bury with them, a trousseau of clothes and cloth nappies for a newborn. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw that out either.
He gave the clothes to his neighbours. A shirt of Jonathan’s to Joseph, a skirt of Aileen’s shortened for Mrs Ervin, a pair of shoes for Vernon, their eldest son, who was twelve. The tanners had three children – two boys and a girl – little savages who didn’t speak much and who hung around Bowman’s camp, worked with their parents and spent the rest of their time in the woods. Vernon was already a good hunter and set traps all over the mountain, bringing in a bit of money with his mink and sable furs.
Once he was settled, Bowman began to take care of the horses. For several days he observed them. Their behaviour, their reactions to Trigger, the way they had accepted captivity. He had chosen the stallion and the mare by trying to remember Jonathan’s advice. Although his main intention for the animals was reproduction, he still wanted to train them.
The male was not the dominant stallion in the pack – he was still too young – but he seemed destined for this role when Bowman spotted him among the other horses. His physical constitution seemed to push him naturally towards that status, and Bowman felt he had the ambition too.
The mare was as calm and indifferent as Trigger. When Bowman had captured her, she had not put up much resistance once she had been separated from the pack, but she had faced him in order to understand his intentions. It was not that the horse was resigned to its fate, but it had gauged Bowman’s determination.
The stallion had to be tamed, albeit gently. With the mare, he had to make a deal.
Penders’ horse let them eat beside it. Trigger had become used to the comfort of not having to find her own food, and she no longer sought to defend her territory. And the stallion liked Trigger.
In mid-June, Bowman began working with the stallion on a lead rein. He had been living next to Lake Tahoe for almost two months and he had got into the habit of washing in the lake every morning. He had set up a wooden block next to the cove and he hung his clothes on it and threw himself naked into the water. On this piece of tree trunk, he had put a mirror he’d found among the Fitzpatricks’ belongings, and he used Penders’ razor to shave himself.
His letters had reached Texas long ago. If Alexandra Desmond were still in Reunion, with the money he had left her, she would already have had time to take a stagecoach and come here. Perhaps she needed more time to make her decision and settle her affairs before leaving. As when he had waited for Peavish on the Salt Lake road, he kept giving her more time until he no longer believed she would come, postponing his departure for the plains. He began to cut down trees for the second enclosure. Once he had all the wood, stripped of bark and neatly stored, he hammered in the stakes and put up the first crosspieces. Joseph had told him that, with the heat, it would soon become impossible to capture mustangs.
They prepared to leave, Joseph with his workhorse – a half-breed, still young enough to gallop, heavy but robust – and Vernon on Trigger, who was less difficult to handle than the newly broken mare, which Bowman rode. They were armed with the Springfield and the Ervins’ Colt rifle. The Winchester had been lost in the crevasse where they found Jonathan’s body. They left Mrs Ervin in charge of looking after the animals and keeping an eye on Bowman’s property.
With his remaining five dollars, Bowman bought all the food he could in Carson City, some extra flasks and some rope. They left the town in early July and, on the road, Bowman offered to pay Joseph half of what he received for the animals during the first two seasons. Ervin was taking a risk. The capture of horses was dangerous and even if Bowman seemed to have a good eye, he still knew nothing about stud-farming. Ervin did not think about it for long, but held out his hand.
“A few weeks away from my wife . . . that’s the best contract I’ve signed since our wedding day.”
When they met a stagecoach speeding towards Carson City, Bowman stopped and watched it go past, glancing inside. Three days later, they reached the land where the wild horses roamed. Their objective was to bring back one more male and at least five mares. For two horsemen – plus Vernon to look after the animals they captured – the task was possible but ambitious. They thought it would take them about three weeks. They were not only going to capture horses; they had to closely track the pack in order to spot the best animals. Because it was not just a question of taking whichever ones they could get. They had to select them according to Fitzpatrick’s methods.
“Some men shoot them. They injure their necks and wait until they’re tired before capturing them. If you’re a good shot, it saves time, and if you kill them . . . well, there are always other horses.”
Bowman refused point blank and Joseph never mentioned it again.
The pack’s territory extended over many hundreds of acres. First they had to find where the horses were, going back westward towards the mountains, where the mustangs found their food. While the heat and dryness made this task more difficult, the horses could not stay away for very long from grassy areas and watering holes. Once they were on the horses’ tracks, they found a place to set up a base camp. They needed water and enough land to build a makeshift enclosure, which Vernon would take charge of looking after. They had been away from the lake for a week when Bowman and Joseph got up one morning to capture the first animals. Vernon remained behind at the camp with the new mare, who was not yet tame enough to pursue mustangs.
Bowman did not find the pack he had followed that first time, but he came across other, larger groups that came together and separated as and when they happened to meet or when they fought over a grassy area. The rolling hills made their task more arduous, but as they had hoped, when a pack ran away from them, all they had to do was wait until it returned in search of food. Ervin, while he didn’t know much about horses either, was a good hunter. He knew how to use the wind, follow tracks, read passages and choose the right spot to ambush an animal.
Four
days later, they returned to the base camp with three mustangs, all of them mares. After one day of training them with a lead rope, the horses, which had struggled furiously during their capture, followed docilely. They had also killed an antelope, stayed with Vernon long enough to get their strength back, then left the boy alone again. They had to move quickly now. In a few days, the captured animals would have recovered from their fear and their fatigue, and once they became really hungry, Vernon and a few ropes would not be enough to prevent them escaping. If they became too nervous, he would have to lead them out one by one, tie them carefully to the saddle of the new mare, and take them to find some grazing land.
On the fifteenth day, they captured two more mares.
“Let’s take them back to the camp. We’ll come here again to get the male. We can’t stay here too long.”
The heat was becoming overpowering, food and water too rare; their exhausted mounts risked injuring themselves. And despite the confidence he felt in his son, Joseph was starting to worry about Vernon. On nights when he heard wolves, Ervin didn’t sleep, even though they had left the Springfield at the camp and though Vernon was capable of shooting a sparrow at a hundred feet.
When they got back to camp, they had captured only two more mares and still had no stallion. The boy was waiting for them. He had a big bump on his head, a black eye and his shirt was in tatters. Sitting by the campfire, he explained to them how he had gone out with a mare, which had tried to escape. It had dragged him over the stones for twenty yards, but he had not let go of the rope.
“She hadn’t eaten yet, so I reckon she was tired, and she just gave up.”
Joseph hammered on his son’s back with his fist, laughing loudly and proud as could be. The next day, they decided that Bowman would leave on his own. If the mares escaped, they would have done all that work for nothing, and Bowman did not have a single dollar left to stock up for a new expedition. The mustangs were everywhere on the plains, but it ’cost money to hunt them. It would take him a whole year to save up the money, and he’d have to find work in Carson City.
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