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POTATO CREEK JOHNNY WAS DREAMING OF THE CREEK OF gold—a dream that came to him two or three times a year, if he was lucky. He’d be wading in a creek whose water was so thick with gold dust that the flow itself seemed golden. In the dream, fortunately, he had been lucky enough to equip himself with several buckets. He filled the buckets as fast as he could with the golden water and then carried them to shore—all he would have to do was let the gold settle to the bottom of the buckets and he’d be rich. Soon both banks of the creek were lined with buckets, but the creek ran as golden as ever. When he filled his last bucket he waded back into the creek and walked downstream, in golden water up to his knees. Gradually the ground leveled out, and the creek slowed; the gold thickened until it was almost like mud, so stiff you could have spaded it out. Far away, where the stream meandered into a flat plain, all he could see was gold—a vast desert of gold.
For a man who liked gold—and Johnny was such a man—it was the best of all possible dreams; in this case it ended abruptly when the keening mountain wind shook the branch above his head, sending a shower of snow right in his face. For a second he was confused: a slanting ray of sun made the mist of snow above him look like gold dust too. But it didn’t feel like gold dust—it felt like fine snow. Johnny sat up and shook as much of it as possible out of his hair.
“I guess it can’t snow gold dust,” he said to Jim Ragg, who was squatting by the fire. Jim Ragg ignored the comment, as he did whatever was said to him while he was making coffee.
No Ears considered it an interesting comment—it called up a dim memory of some story about the spirit time. It seemed to him that in the spirit time golden snow would not have been unusual, but he couldn’t remember whether he was thinking of a story or a dream. It was interesting, though, that Johnny had mentioned it just after waking up, which indicated to No Ears that he had just dreamed it, so probably he himself had dreamed it, too. It was well known that men had dreams in common; his own people often shared their dreams, hoping to glean some information about the behavior of the spirits; but white people, in his experience, were less likely to share their dreams.
“Did you have a good dream?” he asked Johnny, just in case he felt like doing a little dream sharing.
“Better than good,” Johnny said. “I dreamed I found the creek of gold.”
“I have heard of that creek,” No Ears said.
Both Johnny and Jim looked startled. Bartle and Calamity were still asleep, humps in the snow; snow had continued to fall for most of the night.
“Have you ever heard of a gold creek, Jim?” Johnny asked hopefully.
Jim Ragg shook his head—the notion was too silly to comment on. No Ears had probably just decided to have a little sport with Johnny.
Bartle Bone sat up suddenly, and as usual he woke up talking.
“If there was a gold creek there’d be a town bigger than San Francisco built on the banks of it,” he said. “They’d build a canal clean across the country and let it all flow east so the Senators and bankers could swim in it.”
“I believe that creek is near the Bosque Redondo,” No Ears said matter-of-factly. “The Apaches know where it is.”
“Wake up, Calamity—let’s go to New Mexico,” Johnny said. He couldn’t decide whether No Ears was joking or not; the old Indian sat by the fire, looking half dead. On the other hand, what if he knew something? The creek wouldn’t have to be as rich as the one in his dream; he could be satisfied with a lot less gold than that.
“If there was any gold in New Mexico, Kit Carson probably stole it,” Bartle remarked. “He stole two dollars from me once.”
“Did he pick your pocket or what?” Calamity asked without stirring.
“No, he just borrowed two dollars and never paid it back,” Bartle said. “That’s theft, in my view.”
“I hate to think how much you’ve stolen from me then,” Calamity said.
She sat up carefully, brushing snow off her buckskin shirt. If snow once got down her neck, she would go around feeling wet all day. She tried to bend her legs and found them reluctant to bend. Her knee joints seemed frozen, and her feet were too cold even to think about. She pivoted on her bottom, swinging her feet around toward Jim’s fire. A little snow fell off one foot, causing the fire to sputter and Jim to look annoyed.
“I ain’t gonna put out your dern fire,” she said. “You don’t need to frown at me over a pinch of snow.”
Jim Ragg liked a small, economical fire, one you could crouch by without cooking yourself. Bartle’s preference was for a fire that roared and spit and crackled. He piled on three or four logs and soon all were watching the fire warily from a safe distance. Now and then it spat a spark into Potato Creek Johnny’s beard.
“Now I can’t get close enough to thaw my feet out without setting myself on fire,” Calamity said, annoyed. Jim underdid the fire, Bartle overdid it; the same went for everything else the two men attempted.
“This is a free country,” Bartle said, well aware that his fire met with disapproval in some quarters. “Every one of you is free to build his own fire.”
“You didn’t build your own fire, you took mine,” Jim pointed out.
“I wish I was still asleep,” Johnny said. “I get nervous when people argue this early in the morning. Usually when I wake up there’s nobody within thirty miles and I avoid the nervousness.”
“Who’s arguing? We ain’t pulled our knives,” Bartle said. “If you’re so delicate, what are you doing out here with grizzlies like us:
“I didn’t know you was here till yesterday,” Johnny explained. On the whole he was rather regretting his visits to the Owl Creek Mountains. Prospecting was better pursued alone.
Taken as individuals, he liked everyone in the group—but that was taking them individually: taken as a group, the matter was less simple. Jim and Bartle were known to be of uncertain temper; as for Calamity, few tempers in the west were as notoriously uncertain as hers. In a time of need there was no stauncher friend—it was in more relaxed times, when nothing particular was needed, that Calamity was apt to flare—and when she flared, the safety of the far horizon seemed a long way away.
Of the group around the fire, only No Ears was really easy to get along with. He said little, expected less, was a brilliant tracker, and a very decent weather prophet. Johnny fervently hoped that his prophecy of fair weather would come true, and that he could escape from the mountains before another blizzard struck. A winter with Jim, Bartle, and Calamity would put quite a weight on his nerves.
Calamity had felt sad in her sleep—every three or four nights, it seemed, she would awake to find herself crying. Some nights she had hardly wanted to doze off for fear of feeling sad in her sleep. Deep sleep wouldn’t come, or a good dream either. Sometimes she felt so heavy inside that it was difficult even to roll over and seek a more comfortable position.
After such a night, the day was seldom any better: she woke without enthusiasm, or vigor, or purpose, unable to think of a thing to do that she hadn’t done a hundred times, or might really enjoy doing.
“The dumps,” she said aloud. “I guess I’ve just got the dumps.”
No Ears didn’t change expression—he seldom did—but the three white men all looked at her warily.
“Nobody’s gonna appreciate it if you throw a fit, Calamity,” Bartle said. “The snow’s too deep—you’d catch us without a chase.”
“Why would I want to catch you?” Calamity asked. “You can go stick your damn head in a hole for all I care.”
There was a long, uneasy silence; then Cody came bounding into camp, a grouse in his mouth. He came to Calamity and, after she had petted him and talked to him a bit, gave her the grouse.
“This dog’s a harder worker than any of us,” Calamity said. “He’s already brought in meat, and what have the rest of us done?”
She looked at Bartle, Jim, and Johnny, all three of whom still wore wary expressions; they looked melancholy and tired. No Ears, by f
ar the oldest man there, was the only one of the group who looked cheerful—and he was an old Indian who had outlived his time and almost all of his people. Nevertheless he didn’t look as though he slept sad at night. Even Bartle, who had more natural cheerfulness than the rest of them put together, didn’t look as cheerful as he once had. Bartle looked gaunt and low.
It was the first time Calamity was brought up against the fact that Jim and Bartle were sad; she had always thought of them as happy out in the mountains, living the free life. But they didn’t look happy this morning, and neither did Johnny, although on the whole she considered Johnny a lighter character—a few specks of gold dust in the bottom of a creek would keep him excited for weeks.
“It’s like the snow soaking in,” Calamity said, half to herself—she was thinking of her sad sleep. Young, she hadn’t slept much; she let it rip most of the night with the cowpokes or the mountain men, the mule skinners and the soldiers; sad thoughts hadn’t had much time to penetrate in the few hours she slept.
Now she slept longer, if worse; she didn’t do much ripping, and the sorrows had time to seep through and settle on her heart and in her bones, soaking them finally, as the snow soaks through a shirt.
What was surprising was the way a little change in the drift of her thought made everything look different. She had known Bartle and Jim and Johnny when they were young, and in her thoughts they had never changed; years had passed, and then decades, and she still thought of them as young. Perhaps they thought the same about her, still saw her as the young wood-chopper who wanted to go west, a girl who could walk all day beside the wagons and sit listening to their stories half the night.
What was obvious, though, looking at the three of them in a cold camp in the Owl Creek Mountains, was that none of them was young; without any of them thinking about it, or even noticing, they had grown old—not so old perhaps, in terms of calendar years, but then, what were calendar years to people who had never settled, or wished to settle? The calendar meant nothing; what meant something, in the reaches of the west, were energy, muscle, will—three qualities they had all once had in abundance, otherwise they would not have survived. The prairie ground covered thousands who hadn’t survived: fresh boys, brave warriors, skilled men, hopeful and forthright women. Either they hadn’t been tough or they hadn’t been lucky—or were neither.
“This is silly,” Calamity said. “I don’t know why it took me so long to admit it. This is just plain silly.”
“Are you criticizing my fire?” Bartle asked, puzzled by her tone.
“No, I’m criticizing your damn life,” Calamity said. “And Jim’s. And Johnny’s. And mine. What the hell are we doing here?”
There was a long silence. Calamity rarely asked questions in the morning; she tended to sulk over her coffee; she seldom became talkative much before the end of the day.
“Just trying to get breakfast, I guess,” Bartle said—he had been about to cut himself off a piece of yesterday’s elk haunch.
“What’s got you so itchy?” he asked, wondering if maybe Calamity might be sick.
“Looking at you sourpusses, that’s what,” Calamity said. “All three of you look like you belong in a hospital, one that keeps an undertaker handy. Jim looks like he could die any day, and you’re mainly skeleton yourself, Bartle. I know I’m no better. I expect I look as rough as sandpaper.”
Jim Ragg was a little startled. He knew he hadn’t been feeling too brisk lately, but he was a long way from death, in his view.
“That smart little Billy Cody figured all this out years ago,” Calamity said. “He changed his direction and made more gold than Johnny’s gonna find if he wades in creeks for the next twenty years. All this is silly. There ain’t no gold, and there ain’t no beaver. There’s just four fools and an Indian, and the Indian’s just in it for the company. I could be sleeping on a feather mattress in Miles City and not wake up every morning with my knees too froze to bend.”
“There could be a vein of gold ten foot thick right here in these mountains,” Johnny remarked.
“If there is you won’t find it,” Calamity retorted. “It’s underground, and you ain’t a mole.”
“I admit Johnny ain’t a mole, but what’s the point?” Bartle said.
“Billy Cody made the point when he started his Wild West show,” Calamity said. “The big adventure’s over. It’s over, and that’s that. He’s smart to make a show of it and sell it to the dudes. I think I’ll go hire on with him, if he’ll have me. It would be more enterprising than sitting around here watching us all get old and die.
“More comfortable, too,” she added, holding out her cup.
No Ears poured her some coffee.
Darling Jane—
This bitter cold is something. I put the ink in the coffeepot to thaw it, it was froze solid. I am glad that No Ears decided to come with me, there have been times when I have trouble making a fire, and without a fire tonight your mother would freeze for sure.
It’s because I have no patience that I’m a bad fire-maker. If it don’t start I get mad, then I decide I’ll just freeze, I think, What’s left anyway?
One reason I struggle to write these letters even in this cold is so you’ll know a little bit about me, for I could someday get ate by a bear, or get my head knocked in by some tough—these things can happen out in the west Janey. I gave the boys a big lecture on how the west ain’t wild anymore, it upset their stomachs I guess. It ain’t wild like it once was when just the Indians and the animals had it, but it’s still wild enough that someone who runs loose like I do can get killed pretty quick.
No Ears felt he would like to come with me to Miles City, I didn’t insist but I am plenty glad he came, otherwise I’d worry all day about being able to make the fire. I have made hundreds, you’d think I’d learn the skill, I haven’t. It even takes No Ears a while, and he is an expert—finding dry wood is the first problem. Plenty of men are no better at it than me, one reason Wild Bill stuck to the saloons is because he couldn’t have made a fire in a week—he liked to stay around where there were bartenders to pamper him, not to mention girls, there was a thicket of them, too. As I say, he was handsome.
Well, Janey, my speech to the boys was a shocker, they didn’t like hearing me say Billy Cody was smarter than them, they didn’t want to be told that the fun is over, either. I guess nobody does, but anyway it is. I think Bartle is tired of the woods and the prairies, he would not mind a little city life. He will have a time persuading Jim though, Jim is stubborn—I have never seen a man with less give in him than Jim Ragg.
It is deep cold tonight Janey. No Ears told me a story—he says once on the plains he was about to freeze, there was no wood and he had no shelter, all that saved him was a crippled buffalo cow he found. The cow was down but not dead, he opened her up and got in her belly. The cow lived till morning, it kept No Ears from freezing. Maybe that’s too strong a story for your delicate ears Janey—it is just a story about what people will do to save themselves. I would not like to crawl into a cow buffalo’s belly, but then I’ve got a good fire. Without it a buffalo’s belly might look good.
I hope Billy Cody is still there when I get to Miles City, I expect he is unless Dora has chased him off, she will if he ain’t careful. The man has always been perfectly nice to me. I should try to reform and not make fun of him like the rest do, after all it is no crime to start a Wild West show. I think Bartle wishes he had thought of it first. He got to the west a long time before Billy did, that don’t make it his, though.
It’s a wonder this tablet don’t catch fire, I am sitting almost in the flames to keep the ink from freezing. Pardon the short letter, it’s the fault of the conditions—brisk conditions, Jim calls them.
Your mother,
Martha Jane
7
I SUPPOSE LIFE’S HARDER FOR WOMEN,” BARTLE REFLECTED. “It’s hard enough for me when it gets this cold,” Jim Ragg said. It had only been in the last winter or so that he had begun to have
difficulty staying warm. His feet pained him a good deal, and his ears got so cold that he occasionally found himself envying old No Ears. In windy weather he shivered most of the day and sometimes shivered at night, even with a good fire.
The difficulty with his feet bothered him most. Beaver meant wading—they didn’t just walk out of the water and hand themselves over. In earlier days wading had never bothered him significantly; working in ice water wasn’t pleasant, but the excitement of taking beaver made it easy to overlook the inconvenience.
What worried Jim was that his feet now troubled him all winter, and he had done no wading. If they did come upon beaver he wasn’t sure he would be up to the work of getting them out.
The thought of standing up to his waist for three or four hours a day in water that was just one degree from ice was a worrying thought. What if he couldn’t do it? He’d be the laughingstock of the west.
“It’s rare for Calamity to complain,” Bartle mentioned. “She’s usually of a sunny disposition. I guess we should have left her in Ten Sleep.”
As he talked, Jim Ragg glared at him from the other side of the fire. Of course, Jim Ragg rarely sat around smiling, but he often managed to look neutral, at least. This morning he looked hostile.
“Are you planning to murder me for my valuables?” Bartle asked. “You’ve got a murdering look in your eye.”
“I ain’t planning to go be in no Wild West show,” Jim said. “I wasn’t meant for the circus. But if you want to make a fool of yourself, head out. You ain’t a woman and don’t have Calamity’s excuse, though.”
“I’ve never been able to decide whether Calamity is a woman,” Bartle said, mainly to change the subject. He was not in the mood for an argument about the future, not with Jim sitting there ready to charge. In that respect Jim was like Custer: get him in a tight and all he knew to do was charge. And if he didn’t happen to be in a tight, Jim Ragg—like Custer—would charge just for the hell of it.
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