The big range, p.11
The Big Range, page 11
“A man’s legs ain’t made for running,” said the young man. “Just to fork a horse. That last drink was near too long.”
“The Army’d put some starch in those legs,” said Sergeant Houck.
“Maybe. Maybe that’s why I ain’t in the Army.” The young man sat quietly, relaxed to the jolting of the coach. “Is there some other topic of genteel conversation you folks’d want to worry some?”
“No,” said Sergeant Houck.
“Then maybe you’ll pardon me,” said the young man. “I hoofed it a lot of miles today.” He worked hard at his boots and at last got them off and tucked them out of the way on the floor. He hitched himself up and over on the seat until he was resting on one hip. He put an arm on the window sill and cradled his head on it. His eyes closed. They opened and his head rose a few inches. “If I start sliding, just raise a foot and give me a shove.” His head dropped down and the dust whirls outside melted into the dusk and he was asleep.
Sergeant Houck felt a small bump on his left side. The boy had toppled against him and was struggling back to sitting position, fighting silently to defeat the drowsiness overcoming him. Sergeant Houck scooped him up and set the small body across his lap with the head nestled into the crook of his right arm. He leaned his head down and heard the soft little last sigh as the drowsiness won. The coach rolled on, and he looked out into the dropping darkness and saw the deeper black of hills far off on the horizon. He looked sidewise at the woman and dimly made out the outline of her head falling forward and jerking back up, and he reached his left arm along the top of the seat until the hand touched her far shoulder. Faintly he saw her eyes staring at him and felt her shoulder stiffen and then relax as she moved closer and leaned towards him. He slipped down lower in the seat so that her head could reach his shoulder and he felt the gentle touch of the topmost strands of the braided coil of brown hair on his neck above his shirt collar. He waited patiently, and at last he could tell by her steady deep breathing that all fright had left her and all her thoughts were stilled.
The coach rolled on and reached a rutted stretch and began to sway and the young man stirred and began to slide on the smooth leather of his seat. Sergeant Houck put up a foot and braced it against the seat edge and the young man’s body came to rest against it and was still. Sergeant Houck leaned his head back on the top of the seat and against the wall of the coach. The stars emerged in the clear sky and the coach rolled on, and the running beat of the hooves had the rhythm of a cavalry squad at a steady trot and gradually the great granite slab of Sergeant Houck softened slightly into sleep.
Sergeant Houck awoke as always all at once and aware. The coach had stopped. From the sounds outside fresh horses were being buckled into the traces. The first light of dawn was creeping into the coach. He raised his head and the bones of his neck cracked and he realized that he was stiff in various places, not only his neck but his right arm where the sleeping boy still nestled and his leg stretched out with the foot braced against the opposite seat.
The young man there was awake. He was still sprawled along the hard leather cushion, but he was pulled back from the braced foot and his eyes were open. He was inspecting the vast leather sole of Sergeant Houck’s boot. His eyes flicked up and met Sergeant Houck’s eyes, and he grinned.
“That’s impressive footwear,” he whispered. “You’d need starch in the legs with hooves like that.” He sat up and stretched, long and reaching, like a lazy young animal. “Hell,” he whispered again, “you must be stiff as a branding iron.”
He took hold of Sergeant Houck’s leg at the knee and hoisted it slightly so that Sergeant Houck could bend it and ease the foot down to the floor without disturbing the sleeping woman leaning against him. He stretched out both hands and gently lifted the sleeping boy from Sergeant Houck’s lap and sat back with the boy in his arms.
Sergeant Houck began closing and unclosing his right hand to stimulate the blood circulation in the arm. The coach rolled forward and the first copper streak of sunlight found it and followed it.
The young man studied the boy’s face. “Can’t be yours,” he whispered.
“No,” whispered Sergeant Houck.
“Must have some Indian strain.”
“Yes.”
The young man whispered down at the sleeping boy. “You can’t help that, can you, bub?”
“No,” said Sergeant Houck suddenly, full voice, “he can’t.”
The woman jerked upright and pulled over to the window on her side, rubbing at her eyes. The boy awoke, wide awake on the instant, and saw the unfamiliar face above him and began to squirm violently.
The young man clamped his arms tighter. “Morning, ma’am,” he said. “Looks like I ain’t such a good nursemaid.”
Sergeant Houck reached one hand and plucked up the boy by a grip on the small overalls and deposited him in sitting position on the seat beside the young man. The boy stared at Sergeant Houck and sat still, very still.
The sun climbed into plain view and the coach rolled on. It was stirring the dust of a well-worn road now. It stopped where another crossed and the driver jumped down to deposit a little packet of mail in a box on a short post
The young man inside pulled on his boots. He bobbed his head in the direction of a group of low buildings up the side road. “Think I’ll try it there. They’ll be peeling broncs about now and the foreman knows I can sit a saddle.” He opened a door and jumped to the ground and whirled to poke his head in. “Hope you make it right,” he said, “wherever you’re heading.”
The door closed and he could be heard scrambling up the back of the coach to get his saddle. There was a thump as he and the saddle hit the ground and then voices began outside, rising in tone.
Sergeant Houck pushed his head through the window beside him. The young man and the driver were facing each other over the saddle. The young man was pulling the pockets of his levis inside out.
“Lookahere, Will,” he said, “you can see they’re empty. You know I’ll kick in soon as I have some cash. Hell, I’ve hooked rides with you before.”
“Not now no more,” said the driver. “The company’s sore. They hear of this they’d have my job. I’ll have to hold the saddle.”
The young man’s voice had a sudden bite. “You touch that saddle and they’ll pick you up in pieces from here to breakfast.”
Sergeant Houck fumbled for his inside jacket pocket. This was difficult with his head through the window, but he succeeded in finding it. He whistled sharply. The two men swung to see him. His eyes drilled at the young man. “There’s something on the seat in here. Must have slipped out of your pocket.” He saw the young man stare, puzzled, and start towards the door. He pulled his head back and was sitting quietly in place when the door opened.
The young man leaned in and saw the two silver dollars on the hard seat and swivelled his head to look up at Sergeant Houck. Anger blazed in his eyes and he looked at the impassive rock of Sergeant Houck’s face and the anger faded.
“You’ve been in spots yourself,” he said.
“Yes,” said Sergeant Houck.
“And maybe were helped out of them.”
“When I was a young squirt with more energy than brains,” said Sergeant Houck. “Yes.”
The young man grinned. He picked up the two coins in one hand and swung the other to slap Sergeant Houck’s leg, sharp and stinging and grateful. “Age ain’t hurting you any, General,” he said, and closed the door.
The coach rolled on, and the woman looked at Sergeant Houck and the minutes passed and still she looked at him. He stirred on the seat.
“If I’d had brains enough to get married,” he said, “might be I’d have had a son. Might have been one like that.”
The woman looked away, out her window. She reached up to pat at her hair and the firm line of her lips softened in the tiny imperceptible beginnings of a smile. The dust drifted and the minutes passed and Sergeant Houck stirred again.
“It’s the upbringing that counts,” he said, and settled into silent immobility, watching the miles go by.
Fifteen minutes for breakfast at a change stop and the coach rolled on. It was near noon when they stopped in Laramie and Sergeant Houck handed the woman out and tucked the boy under one arm and led the way to the waiting room. He stationed the woman and the boy in two chairs and strode away. He was back in five minutes with sandwiches and a pitcher of milk and two cups. He strode away again and was gone longer and returned driving a light buckboard wagon drawn by a pair of deep-barrelled bays. The front part of the wagon bed was well padded with layers of empty burlap bags. He went into the waiting room and scooped up the boy and beckoned to the woman to follow. He deposited the boy on the burlap bags and helped the woman up on the driving seat.
“Straight out the road, they tell me,” he said. “About fifteen miles. Then right along the creek. Can’t miss it.”
He stood by the wagon, staring along the length of the street and the road leading on beyond. The woman leaned from the seat and clutched at his shoulder. Her voice broke and climbed. “You’re going with me?” Her fingers clung to the cloth of his service jacket. “Please! You’ve got to!”
Sergeant Houck put a hand over hers on his shoulder and released her fingers. “Yes, I’m going.”
He walked around the wagon and stepped to the seat and took the reins and clucked to the team. The wagon moved forward and curious people along the street stopped to watch, and neither Sergeant Houck nor the woman was aware of them. The wheels rolled silently in the thick dust, and on the open road there was no sound except the small creakings of the wagon body and the muffled rhythm of the horses’ hooves. A road-runner appeared from nowhere and raced ahead of them, its feet spatting little spurts of dust, and Sergeant Houck watched it running, effortlessly, always the same distance ahead.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
The wheels rolled silently in the thick dust and the roadrunner swung contemptuously aside in a big arc and disappeared in the low bushes.
“They haven’t told him,” she said, “about the boy.”
Sergeant Houck’s hands tightened on the reins and the horses slowed to a walk. He clucked sharply to them and slapped the reins on their backs and they quickened again into a trot, and the wheels unwound their thin tracks endlessly into the dust and the high bright sun overhead crept over and down the sky on the left. The wagon topped a slight rise and the road ahead sloped downwards for a long stretch to where the green of trees and tall bushes showed in the distance. A jack-rabbit started from the scrub growth by the roadside and leaped high in a spy-hop and levelled out, a gray-brown streak. The horses shied and broke rhythm and quieted to a walk under the firm pressure of the reins. Sergeant Houck kept them at a walk, easing the heat out of their muscles down the long slope to the trees. He let them step into the creek up to their knees and dip muzzles in the clear running water. The front wheels of the wagon were into the current and he reached behind him to find a tin dipper tucked among the burlap bags and leaned far out and down to dip up water for the woman and the boy and himself. He backed the team out of the creek and swung them into the wagon cuts leading along the bank to the right.
The creek was on their left and the sun was behind them, warm on their backs, and the shadows of the horses pushed ahead, grotesque moving patterns always ahead, and Sergeant Houck watched them and looked beside him once and saw that the woman was watching them too. The shadows were longer, stretching farther ahead, when they rounded a bend along the creek and the buildings came in sight, the two-room cabin and the several lean-to sheds and the rickety pole corral.
A man was standing by one of the sheds, and when Sergeant Houck stopped the team, he came towards them and halted about twenty feet away. He was not young, perhaps in his middle thirties, but with the young look of a man on whom the years have made no mark except that of the simple passing of time. He was tall, soft, and loose-jointed in build, and indecisive in manner and movement. His eyes wavered and would not steady as he looked at the woman and the fingers of his hands hanging limp at his sides twitched as he waited for her to speak.
She climbed down her side of the wagon and faced him. She stood straight and the sun behind her shone on and through the escaping wisps of the coiled braid of her hair.
“Well, Fred,” she said, “I’m here.”
“Cora,” he said. “It’s been a long time, Cora. I didn’t know you’d come so soon.”
“Why didn’t you come get me? Why didn’t you, Fred?”
“I didn’t rightly know what to do, Cora. It was all so mixed up. Thinking you were dead. Then hearing about you. And what happened. I had to think about things. And I couldn’t get away easy. I was going to try maybe next week.”
“I hoped you’d come. Right away when you heard.”
His body twisted uneasily, a strange movement that stirred his whole length while his feet remained flat and motionless on the ground. “Your hair’s still pretty,” he said. “The way it used to be.”
Something like a sob caught in her throat and she started towards him. Sergeant Houck stepped down on the other side of the wagon and strode off to the creek and kneeled to bend and wash the dust from his face. He stood, shaking the drops from his hands and drying his face with a handkerchief and watching the little eddies of the current around several stones in the creek. He heard the voices behind him and by the wagon.
“Wait, Fred. There’s something you have to know—”
“That kid? What’s it doing here with you?”
“It’s mine, Fred.”
“Yours? Where’d you get it?”
“It’s my child. Mine.”
Silence, and then the man’s voice, bewildered, hurt. “So it’s really true what they said. About that Indian.”
“Yes. He bought me. By their rules I belonged to him.”
Silence, and then the woman’s voice again. “I wouldn’t be alive and here now, any other way. I didn’t have any say about it.”
Silence, and then the man’s voice with the faint beginning of self-pity creeping into the tone. “I didn’t count on anything like this.”
Sergeant Houck turned and strode back by the wagon. The woman seemed relieved at the interruption.
“This is Sergeant Houck,” she said. “He brought me all the way.”
The man nodded his head and raised a hand to shove back the sandy hair that kept falling forward on his forehead. “I suppose I ought to thank you, soldier. All that trouble.”
“No trouble,” said Sergeant Houck. “Unusual duty. But no trouble.”
The man pushed at the ground in front of him with one shoe, poking the toe into the dirt and studying it. “It’s silly, just standing around here. I suppose we ought to go inside. It’s near suppertime. I guess you’ll be taking a meal here, soldier. Before you start back to town.”
“Right,” said Sergeant Houck. “And I’m tired. I’ll stay the night too. Start in the morning. Sleep in one of those sheds.”
The man pushed at the ground more vigorously. The little dirt pile in front of his shoe seemed to interest him greatly. “All right, soldier. Sorry there’re no quarters inside.” He swung quickly and started for the cabin. The woman took the boy from the wagon and followed him. Sergeant Houck unharnessed the horses and led them to the creek for a drink and to the corral and let them through the gate. He walked quietly to the cabin doorway and stopped just outside. He could see the man sitting on a straight-backed chair by the table, turned away from him. The woman and the boy were out of sight to one side.
“For God’s sake, Cora,” the man was saying, “I don’t see why you had to bring that kid with you. You could have told me about it. I didn’t have to see him.”
Her voice was sharp, startled. “What do you mean?”
“Why, now we’ve got the problem of how to get rid of him. Have to find a mission or someplace that’ll take him. Why didn’t you leave him where he came from?”
“No! He’s mine!”
“Good God, Cora! Are you crazy? Think you can foist off a thing like that on me?”
Sergeant Houck stepped through the doorway. “It’s been a time since last eating,” he said. “Thought I heard something about supper.” He looked around the small room and brought his gaze to bear upon the man. “I see the makings on those shelves. Come along, Mr. Sutliff. She can do without our help. A woman doesn’t want men cluttering about when getting a meal. Show me your place before it gets dark.”
He stood, waiting, and the man scraped at the floor with one foot and slowly rose and went with him.
They were well beyond earshot of the cabin when Sergeant Houck spoke again. “How long were you married? Before it happened?”
“Six years,” said the man. “No, seven. It was seven when we lost the last place and headed this way with the train.”
“Seven years,” said Sergeant Houck. “And no child.”
“It just didn’t happen. I don’t know why.” The man stopped and looked sharply at Sergeant Houck. “Oh! So, that’s the way you’re looking at it.”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Houck. “Now you’ve got one. A son.”
“Not mine,” said the man. “You can talk. It’s not your wife. It’s bad enough thinking of taking an Indian’s leavings.” He wiped his lips on his sleeve and spat in disgust. “I’ll be damned if I’ll take his kid.”
“Not his anymore. He’s dead.”
“Look, man. Look how it’d be. A damned little half-breed. Around all the time to make me remember what she did.”
“Could be a reminder that she had some mighty hard going. And maybe came through the better for it.”
“She had hard going! What about me? Thinking she was dead. Getting used to that. Maybe thinking of another woman. Then she comes back—and an Indian kid with her. What does that make me?”
“Could make you a man,” said Sergeant Houck. “Think it over.”
He swung away and went to the corral and leaned on the rail, watching the horses roll the sweat-itches out on the dry sod. The man went slowly down by the creek and stood on the bank, pushing at the dirt with one shoe and kicking small pebbles into the water. The sun, holding to the horizon rim, dropped suddenly out of sight and dusk swept swiftly to blur the outlines of the buildings. A lamp was lit in the cabin, and the rectangle of light through the doorway made the dusk become darkness. The woman appeared in the doorway and called and the men came their ways and converged there and went in. There was simple food on the table and the woman stood beside it. “I’ve already fed him,” she said, and moved her head towards the door to the inner room. She sat down and they did and the three of them were intent on the plates.
