Cherokee

by Giles Tippette

  She got over next to me, next to my bare skin, and I could tell she wasn’t wearing her nightgown. She said, “Yeah, but I bet I know one thing about that trip you’re not going to feel so good about.”

  I turned toward her. I said, “I’m already thinking about it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I wasn’t able to get away without Howard getting one more lick in on me as to how important the trip was to him. I’d had lunch with Nora on Friday and then kissed her and J.D. good-bye. After that I’d saddled the sorrel gelding and ridden up to where Hays was waiting with his own mount and the packhorse. It was already going on for two o’clock and I didn’t have a hell of a lot of time to spare, but Howard was out on the front porch in his rocking chair and he waved me to come up. I rode up to the porch, expecting him just to wish me a safe trip, but nothing would do him but to dismount and come up and sit down.

  “Son,” he said, “I appreciate this. I want you to know it.”

  “Then let me get on with it,” I said.

  “I just want you to be sure and tell Charlie Stevens how sorry I feel and how I hope he can find it in his heart to forgive me.”

  “Hell, twenty-five thousand ought to speak real loud for you. If he can’t hear that he ain’t going to be able to hear anything I’ve got to say.”

  “I’m just a-fear’d that Charlie won’t understand why I done what I did. See, down here by myself things had gotten mighty tight. I mean, I was so hemmed up by troubles that I didn’t have room to cuss a cat.”

  “All right. I’ll tell him that.”

  He reached out and clutched at my upper arm. “Son, you’ve got to make him understand it took a power of temptation to do what I did. To steal from him like that.”

  I frowned. “Howard, has all that whiskey you’ve drunk all these years finally reached your brain? First you stole the money, then it was a loan, now you’re back to stealing it.”

  He cut his eyes away from mine. “I ain’t talkin’ about the money.”

  I stood up. “Aw, hell, Howard, you are one too many for me. You and your mysteries. Only mystery to me is your memory. I’m probably going to get about halfway there and it’s going to come to you there ain’t no Charlie Stevens.”

  “Now, Justa . . .” he said.

  But I was going down the steps. I said, “We got to get kicking. It’s a hell of a long way to Oklahoma.” I waved over my shoulder as I swung my horse and mounted. Hays was waiting about a hundred yards away, and he turned and took the packhorse on lead as I came up even with him and his mount.

  As we rode into town I was feeling a little guilty about the hard time I’d been giving Howard. I knew most of the irritation was caused by the particular way he wanted me to carry out this job, but I was also frustrated by him insisting it be done at a time when I felt I should have been home. But hell, if I matched that off against all that he had done for me through the years, he was way out in front on the giving. Still and all, I thought he was using his age and his time of life as a sort of lever on me. But that was Howard. And after all, I could have refused. I was the boss.

  But I decided there was no point in being mad at him for the whole time the trip was going to take. If I did that I was going to be feeling pretty miserable for a long time. Best thing to do was just to get after it and get home as fast as possible.

  Hays said, “Boss, when you goin’ to tell me where we be goin’? Ben told me to take some warm clothes, so I packed a sheepskin jacket in with my gear, but time of the year being what it is, I could need that in a lot of places.”

  “Hays, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you where we’re going when we get there. How’s that? That way you won’t be wondering every time we make a camp if we’ve arrived at our destination.”

  It took him in for a moment. “Hell, that seems pretty fair. I . . .” Then he caught himself and looked over at me. “Boss, that don’t sound right.”

  “Why not?”

  He studied on it a moment, and then he said, “I dunno, but it don’t. Let’s say we make our third camp. How am I gonna know if that’s the next to last one or if they’s a half a dozen more to go?”

  “You got a point there.”

  “Well?”

  The roofs of the buildings of Blessing were just starting to rise out of the prairie. I said, “Well, what?”

  “Well, when you going to tell me? Where we’re going?”

  “When we get there.”

  “Aw, hell.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes, and then he said, “How come I can’t know? Don’t seem fair to drag a feller off on a trip an’ not tell him where he’s headed.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. It don’t seem fair.”

  “So I am just supposed to shut up and not worry about it?”

  “Ray,” I said, “now you are getting the idea.”

  As we jogged along I looked over at the packhorse. Under my directions Ray and a couple other of the hired hands had taken a wagon sheet, doubled it, and sewn it together and then made big pockets on both sides. I wanted each one of those pockets to hold a nail keg so too much weight wouldn’t be on one side of the horse or the other. And the pockets were big enough to also hold our own gear—our grub, bedrolls, ground sheet, cooking utensils, and other paraphernalia. It was a much better arrangement than it would have been using a packsaddle that would have thrown all that weight right on the horse’s back. The pack was girthed forward and back, so that the two pockets wouldn’t swing and slam into the horse. I figured the horse wasn’t carrying any more than 160 pounds. But of course, dead weight like that is heavier than, say, a 190-pound man who, if he’s a fair hand at riding, works with the horse and ain’t too big of a strain on the animal. Ben had about the lightest seat of any man I knew. You could take two similar horses, and put Ben on one and another man of Ben’s weight on the other, and send them off across the prairie, and Ben would get ten, fifteen miles more out of his mount. It was a gift. You couldn’t learn it and you couldn’t teach it. You were either born with it or you weren’t.

  We finally got into town. I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes after three. The bank would have closed at three o’clock, but I slowed us down and we made our way through the streets at a slow pace. I wanted to make sure any lingering customers would have gotten through with their business and out the door before I went in. We got to the bank, and the shades were drawn over the two big front windows. I got down off my horse, telling Ray to just wait right there on the street. Coming into town I had caught sight of Lew Vara sauntering along the boardwalk, and now I looked and saw him heading casually in our direction. I figured he’d take him a position so as not to be noticeable and hang around while we got the gold loaded.

  I went up to the door of the bank. The shade over the half window was pulled down. I knocked and, in a moment, the shade was pulled back and Bill Simms peered out at me. As soon as he recognized who it was, he unlocked the door and pulled it back and I stepped in. There were still a few clerks and tellers tending to their business, but they never paid me no mind. A lot of folks don’t know that the business of a bank goes on a long time after they hang up the CLOSED sign. They got to count the money and balance their books and, in general, get their accounts straight.

  I said to Simms, “You get it?”

  He nodded. “It’s in the vault. But Mister Williams, it was a close squeak. I had to send to the Columbus bank for the last five thousand.”

  “You did good,” I said. “Help me carry it up to Norris’s office.”

  We went into the vault, which was really just a big old six-foot-high safe where they kept the money. The gold was in four cloth bags. I picked up two and Bill Simms got the other two. Climbing the stairs to Norris’s office, I figured each sack weighed somewhere between fifteen and twenty pounds. They were a little heavier than I’d expected.

  Norris was at his desk when we entered his office. He looked up, but didn’t seem interested or surprised. The two kegs of nails we
re in the corner. I thanked Bill Simms and then let him excuse himself, and closed the door and locked it after he’d gone. Norris leaned back in his swivel chair. He said, “So, that’s the gold.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Need any help?”

  “Not right now. Will in a minute.”

  The wooden lids of the nail kegs were loose just like I’d asked Lonnie to have them. I took one and dumped out better than half the nails on Norris’s floor. He said, “Here, what are you doing?”

  “Making room for the gold.”

  I picked up two sacks of the gold and stuffed them down in the keg, and then picked up a double handful of the nails and spread them on top of the sacks. They covered the gold nicely. Anybody opening one of the kegs would just think it was nails. I put the lid back on the keg and hammered it down hard with my hand. It was a friction lid and the harder you hammered, the tighter it got.

  After that I took the second keg and did the same to it as I had the first. I straightened up. “There. That’s that. Now you can help, Norris. I don’t want to make two trips out of this, so if you’ll shoulder one of those kegs we’ll take them downstairs and load them on a packhorse I got out front of the bank.”

  “What about the rest of these nails?”

  There were about twenty pounds of tenpenny nails that the gold had replaced that were left on the floor. I said, “Oh, you don’t mind a few nails on your floor, Norris.”

  “A few! Hell, you could build a fair-sized house with that many nails.”

  “Then don’t let them go to waste. Get a sack somewheres and pick them up and carry them out to the ranch when you go home this evening.”

  I reached down and shouldered a keg and unlocked and opened the office door. Norris did the same, but he was still grumbling about the nails I’d left on his floor. I said, “Tell you what, Norris. I’ll clean up the nails and you take this two-week cross-country trip for me.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, just followed me down the stairs. When we got into the bank Bill Simms saw what we were up to, and jumped up from his desk and ran and opened the door for us. I thanked him and we passed out into the street. Hays was still there, sitting his horse. I said, “Get down, Hays, and give us a hand.”

  He jumped off his horse and came around to the pack animal. As soon as he saw what I wanted, he held open one of the big pockets and I eased my keg in it. Hays said, “Nails? Tenpenny nails?”

  I took the keg from Norris, and Hays and I went around the packhorse and did the same on the other side. It took a moment longer because that was the side where our grub was stored and Hays had to move it out of the way before I could load the keg in.

  When we were finished I stepped back and eyed the rig critically. It looked fine to me. I could tell from the way the big dun packhorse was standing that it wasn’t much of a load for him. Hays had picked out a well-worked seven-year-old that was even-natured and not likely to spook. He couldn’t be as fast as our two horses, carrying the kind of load he was, but he wouldn’t be slow like a mule would be. I said, “That looks fine.”

  Hays said, “Why in hell are we packing nails?”

  I said, “Ever done any carpentry, Ray?”

  He got that overwhelmed look on his face and said slowly, “Well, not in some time. In fact not any that I recall right off.”

  I shook hands with Norris and reminded him that I was counting on him and Ben to handle matters while I was gone. He reminded me to get off a telegram now and then to let them know my progress, and I mounted my horse and Hays and I turned and started north out of town on the road to El Campo, which was kind of on the road to Austin. I was still resolved to sleep in as many hotels as we could on the trip and do as little camping out as was possible. But El Campo was thirty miles away and, if we were going to make it in time to get a night’s sleep, we were going to have to push.

  Just before we got to the edge of town I looked back. I could see Lew standing at a corner near the bank. He raised his hand as I looked. I nodded back. He’d be mounting up in ten or fifteen minutes and backing our trail, making sure we didn’t have any company trailing us.

  A couple of miles out of town, while we were walking the horses to let them rest from the pretty good pace I’d set leaving town, the curiosity bug bit Hays again. He said, “Boss, I don’t understand this. Are we going someplace they ain’t even got nails? I mean, hell, what kind of uncivilized place would it be you had to haul yore own nails to? Have they got whiskey? Hell, I only packed three bottles.”

  “Three? Two for you and one for me?”

  “Naw. I jest throwed in what come to hand. Hell, if I’d knowed we was goin’ to someplace you had to pack in yore own nails, I’d of added another horse just to pack the whiskey. My gawd, Boss, we ain’t got near enough grub. How long is it gonna take to build whatever it is we’re a-buildin’?”

  “At least two weeks,” I said.

  He shook his head mournfully. “I know we is headed for some gawdforsaken prairie in west Texas where they ain’t nuthin’ between us and the North Pole but a bob-wire fence.” He shuddered. “Makes me cold jest thinkin’ on it. Burnin’ cow chips to make a fire. Say, where we going to get the lumber? It already there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well what about tools? Hammers and saws and such?”

  “We’ll make do,” I said. “Come on, let’s kick these horses up a little. I want to make some miles.”

  “We are gonna pick up some more grub, ain’t we? Boss, I swear we ain’t got enough for more than a half a dozen meals.”

  “You should have got more,” I said. He said something back, but I couldn’t hear him because we already had the horses in a canter. The packhorse was leading along with us nicely, staying right up on the off side of Hays’s horse. I watched the way the kegs acted in the pack rig he was wearing, and they seemed to be traveling just fine. Ahead the prairie stretched out far and wide and coloring toward ripe wheat. Only here and there did a scrub oak or a mesquite or cedar break the level sweep of grass. There were clumps of cattle, but they were not Half-Moon cattle. Most of them were still old mossy-backed Longhorns or shallow-bred range cattle. They didn’t look a thing like the prime beef we were raising on the Half-Moon.

  I looked back, but never saw anyone behind us. Of course I didn’t expect to see Lew Vara. The only time I would have been aware of him would have been if he’d signaled with a shot or two that he’d caught someone suspicious on our trail. We rode on, and a few hours passed and it commenced to get dark. It was going to be a good, moonlit night, and the road to El Campo was plain to see and smooth riding, so I was content to just travel along as we were.

  We rode on into the night. The moon commenced to get up, just barely showing in the western sky. About seven o’clock Ray Hays said, “Boss, course I don’t know what our timetable is, or when we got to be where-at, at what time, but my stummick is startin’ to dispute me.”

  He was right. We’d gotten a late start out of Blessing, and we’d be lucky to get to El Campo much before nine-thirty. I’d been determined to sleep in a hotel bed the whole trip, but it appeared that plan was going to go awry the first night out. By the time we got to El Campo the only thing that would be open would be saloons and whorehouses, and we’d likely not find even the worst cafe open. I said, “Yeah, well, we’ll pull up pretty quick. Let’s try and make Pecan Creek. Least that way we can water the horses and find some downed wood for a fire.”

  About an hour later I could see the straggly line of trees that bordered the little creek come rising out of the prairie. In ten minutes we were there, pulling up the horses and turning left to get away from the road and to find a good place to camp. Pecan Creek wasn’t much of a creek. In some seasons, like late summer or winter, it nearly went dry. But now it was bubbling along, about four or five feet across and maybe a foot deep at its worst. We rode along the tree line about a quarter of a mile or so, and then pulled the horses up and got down right by the tree line. The
trees were mostly willow and mesquite, with a big cottonwood or sycamore scattered here or there. We unloaded the packhorse first because it took the both of us to do it. Not that one of us couldn’t handle the weight; it was just the unwieldiness of the thing. The wagon sheet that Hays and his helpers had made the pack out of was good heavy canvas. They’d sewn it with heavy twine using a punch and an awl. So far it was working good. I felt the packhorse’s back and he didn’t seem at all tender, which was a good sign that the pack wasn’t working back and forth and rubbing him raw. That meant that the two girths had been placed correctly and were holding the pack in place.

  Once we got the pack off and on the ground we unsaddled the other horses, took their bridles off, and then tied picket ropes to their halters. After that we led them down to the creek and let them take their time watering while Hays and I gathered up downed wood for a fire. I left the building of the fire to Hays, and took the horses a little way from our camp and tied their picket ropes together. I didn’t want to tether them to the trees along the creek because, given that kind of opportunity, a horse will just insist on winding in and out of the trees until he’s got himself as tangled up as it’s near possible to get.

  By the time I come back to the campsite Hays had the fire going good so I could see what I was doing. I unrolled a slab of bacon from its oilskin, trimmed off some of the rind with a butcher knife Hays had packed, and then cut off a bunch of thick slices. The fire was starting to make coals, and I got out the big cast-iron skillet and slid it in among the coals, setting it on top of some, and banking others up around the sides. After that I opened up two cans of beans with my pocketknife and waited for the skillet to get hot. When I judged it had heated properly—and a cast-iron skillet heats slower than a steel one—I laid in the slices of bacon. They commenced to sizzle as soon as they hit the bottom of the skillet. Hays had filled up the coffeepot out of one of the canteens and thrown in a handful of ground coffee. He smelled the bacon as it began to cook and said, “Oh, my, don’t that smell good! Boss, reckon they is anything smells as good as bacon frying?”