A forgotten evil, p.25
A Forgotten Evil, page 25
“Why, I’d be proud too, Miss. What did you have in mind?”
“Maybe you would give us a map, or some landmarks, something to help us in finding our way to Fort Dodge?”
“I sure would like that, Miss, but me and Scratch ain’t figured our way back to Larned yet, much less Dodge. You still lost, ain’t you, Scratch?”
“Ever’ day,” Scratch said, digging under his arm.
“Best I can say, Miss, is that the Cimarron cuts south between Fort Dodge and Indian Territory. That much I know. You come to the Cimarron, you come too far.”
“The Cimarron?”
“A river, Miss, with a foot of water and a mile of quicksand, they say. There ain’t nothing but rattlesnakes and Indians in the Territory, not until you get down to Fort Cobb. It ain’t no place to be, Miss, not with Cheyenne on the run and ole Autie in charge of the winter campaign. It’s a son of a bitch what strangles his own dogs, a man likely to stop at nothing, ain’t he. Then there’s ole Black Kettle with his back to the wall and nowheres to go and with winter setting in. Hell, Miss, the whole caboodle could blow like a wagonload of black powder, as I see it. Why, I’d as soon be chasing kangaroo rats and having dinner conversation with ole Scratch here.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” she said.
As they made their way into the darkness, Joan hooked her arm through Caleb’s. “I don’t trust them,” she said.
“I’d bet my pa’s axe that them boys are deserters,” Caleb said. “Can’t say I blame them much for wanting out of Custer’s outfit, though.”
“It was strange talking to people again, Caleb. I’d grown accustomed to just the two of us, I guess.”
“I’m going down to check on the pinto,” he said. “Better stoke the fire high, Joan. I got a feeling it’s going to get cold tonight.”
As a precaution, Caleb moved the pinto higher up the embankment, tying him out of the wind as best he could. Deep in the canyon, coyotes picked up a trail, their voices pitched and frenzied in chase. The pinto danced with anxiety.
“It’s okay, boy,” Caleb said, rubbing his nose.
Even from afar, Joan’s fire licked into the blackness. She was waiting for him under the robe when he got back. Shivering against the cold, he joined her there, their lovemaking desperate and fierce with the uncertainty of their future. Afterward, they held each other, naked and warm under the robe, their breaths rising into the cold, black night.
Morning arrived with an icy gale that drove ash and sand into their eyes as they struggled to dress in the cold dawn.
“Couldn’t we have a fire?" Joan asked, slipping on her shoes. “I’m freezing.”
“It’s gone out,” Caleb said, digging into the ash with a stick, “and there’s nothing to cook in any case. We best just move on out, Joan.”
By the time they’d packed, the sun had edged over the canyon wall, but its warmth was distant and meager against the frigid wind. With arms loaded, they worked their way down the trail, the watering hole now shimmering with a thin layer of ice. They made their way to the bend where the pinto was tied; Caleb’s heart sank, and he threw his axe onto the ground.
“What’s the matter?” Joan asked, alarm in her voice.
“The pinto’s gone,” he said.
“The coyotes must have spooked him,” she said. “He can’t be far. We’ll find him, that’s all.”
He pointed to the boot tracks that led away into the mesas and shook his head. “Them deserters must have been watching when I moved him last night. They’ve stolen him, Joan, and killed us in the doing.”
Chapter 24
Without the pinto to carry their supplies, they culled them to the minimum, fashioning packs, loading what they could on their backs, but from here on they’d have to take food as they found it and pray for a quick delivery to the gates of Fort Dodge.
They followed the tracks into the mesas with spirits broken. The gale blew from the north, a bitter wind, a wind that wormed into the marrow of their bones and eroded their strength and their will. The boot tracks of the deserters soon enough faded and with them the last of their hope for finding the pinto.
Mesas rose about them and into the sky, the impenetrable red clay beneath their feet, the stunted and knurled mesquite, starved and desperate with lack of rain. An occasional yucca struggled from the rocks, or a shriveled cactus purple with cold, or a sage, battered and ragged from the ceaseless winds. What animals might have lived there were long since gone, driven to warmer fields, or burrowed under the rocks, or curled in caves to await the spring.
At midday, Caleb pulled up, sliding his pack from his shoulder.
“What is it?” Joan asked. “Why are we stopping?”
He rubbed at his ankle and looked upward, as if the answer lay in the blue of the sky. “I’m thinking the army was right about taking on gimps,” he said.
“It’s your foot, isn’t it? Let me see, Caleb.”
“It’s nothing what a little rest won’t cure.”
“Let me see, please.”
He rolled up his cuff, hiked his trouser leg up to his knee, and pulled down his sock. Under the strain of the walk, the old wound had given way, blood gathering under the skin, dark and ominous, the ankle swollen and pathetic.
“Oh, Caleb,” she said, “it looks awful.”
“Looks worse than it is, I figure,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking that you packed my load a little on the light side, Caleb.”
“Packed ’em even up, didn’t I. Not much walking time left today at best. There’s mesquite to be rounded up before dark, or it will be a cold night for certain.”
She opened his pack and transferred some of the heavier items into her own. “There, now,” she said, “that will do, and like you said, there’s not much walking left today in any case.”
Taking her by the hand, he lifted her up and rolled her into his arms.
“You’re my heart’s dream,” he said, “and the bravest person I know.”
“I’m not brave at all,” she said, dropping her head against his shoulder. “Each day I think I will crumble with fear from what might lie ahead. I would perish before sundown without you.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “We can make a few miles yet.”
That night they camped in the rocks once again. Joan prepared their bed, while Caleb gathered wood. As the sun settled in the west, the day’s meager warmth faded, and a bitter cold descended over them. The pain in Caleb’s ankle crawled up his leg and settled in the emptiness of his stomach. Unlike most nights, the wind did not abate, or relent, or lament the misery it cast upon the prairie. Instead, it rode in hard, cresting with dust, turning the sunset to blood and ice.
Each time Caleb worked an ember to life with the fuzz stick, the wind snuffed it away. He placed Joan on the upside with the buffalo robe outstretched to ward off the wind. When at last the tinder burst into flames, they both sighed with relief. They huddled before the fire and pulled the buffalo robe about them, their stomachs knotted with hunger and despair.
“Aren’t you going to set the arrow?” she asked, curling against him.
“There ain’t a man alive don’t know north from south tonight,” he said.
“But we’ve got each other,” she said, snuggling into him, “cold or no cold.”
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather freeze to,” he said.
“I’m exhausted, Caleb. Maybe I’ll try to sleep.”
Laying the robe over her, he brushed his lips against her ear. “You sleep. I’ll stoke the fire and stand watch a while.”
Joan slept before the wood had burned high, her breathing steady beneath the robe. Drawing in close to the fire, Caleb listened to the wind as it swept through the mesas, and he thought of home, of the trees that grew green and lush along the banks of the Ohio, and of his pa, the way he’d died in the backwash that day, and he thought of Joshua Hart, and of their journey to Leavenworth, and of how they’d been separated in the end. He thought of Jim Ferric, and of Baud, and of ole Sophie and Ben lost now forever.
The wind moaned through the valley once more with its dirge, its tale of misfortune and ruin, and he despaired in his heart at what might happen to them, at what might happen to her.
The next morning, the cold light of a new day drove them from their bed. Grateful that the wind had subsided, they struck out once more across the mesas, their breaths rising into the icy dawn. Caleb struggled to keep pace, his foot swollen and painful, his toes strutted and blue. Joan insisted on carrying the heavy share of the load once again, but without food, without shelter from the plummeting temperatures, they would both weaken soon enough—of this Caleb had little doubt.
The noon sun brought relief, and as they climbed onto a plateau, Caleb spotted a rattler basking in the warmth of the rocks. Too cold to move or to strike, he was an easy target for Caleb’s axe. “Lunch,” he said, holding the snake high for Joan to see.
“Oh, Caleb,” she said, “I can’t.”
“Think of it as legless chicken,” he said, “one what’s been plucked and ready to cook.”
They stopped in a wash and built a small fire. Caleb skinned the snake, threading it onto a stick to roast over the coals. When it was finished, he handed her a piece. Wrinkling her nose, she closed her eyes and sampled it.
“Well?” he asked.
“It’s not so bad, actually,” she said.
Caleb, too, found it not so bad, but neither spoke of its oily smell or of the way it writhed on the roasting stick long after it was blackened from the coals.
With renewed energy they bore on, Caleb searching the crevices and crannies for snakes as he walked, but with waning light and falling temperatures, there were none to be found.
That night, they slept under a clear and star-filled sky, and when they awoke, their buffalo robe shimmered under a layer of frost, their ears stinging with the burning cold. By noon the next day, water blisters had formed on the tops of Caleb’s ears where they had frozen in the night.
“I told you to keep them covered,” Joan said. “Now they’re frostbitten. If they fall off, you will look like that snake we had for lunch.”
Two more days they walked the mesas, sleeping in the open with naught but the robe for protection. Without food, or hope of food, their spirits and their strength waned. Again and again they pulled up to rest, their bodies aching with weakness and hunger.
They found water on the third day, a puddle gathered in a wallow with its smell of dung and slime and creatures unknown.
“No,” Caleb said, pulling Joan back.
“But, Caleb, we have to have water.”
“It’s too tainted,” he said, “even for the likes of starved-out pilgrims. There will be water ahead.”
“It’s called the ocean, I think,” she said, “and I hear that it’s salty.”
“Wait,” Caleb said, pointing. “Will you look at that?”
“What?”
“If I ain’t mistaken, those are boot tracks, deserters’ tracks, I’d say. Looks like ole Roscoe and Scratch ain’t particular about their watering hole.”
“And there’re horse tracks,” Joan said, “leading off that way.”
“The pinto,” Caleb said.
“What are we going to do?”
He strung his bow, took an arrow from the quiver, and nocked it. “Going to get our pinto back, ain’t we.”
Within a hundred yards, the tracks took a sudden turn to the right and disappeared into a gulch. The sandstone was smooth, scoured and worn by turbulent floods, the horse tracks fading and then reappearing in the sandy bottom of the gulch. Caleb crouched down and scanned the rocks overhead.
“They might be waiting for us,” he said, whispering.
“Caleb,” Joan said, taking hold of his arm, “over there.”
Near the bend of the gulch, the pinto lay on its side, its legs strutted, its belly bloated, its head pitched and tortured in death.
Caleb said, “The sons of bitches have kilt the pinto, kilt our way home for a bellyful of meat.”
They approached with wariness, drawing into the mesquite that grew from the bank of the gulch. Next to the pinto’s crushed skull was a rock, its jagged point bloodied and telling of violence. The pinto’s end had been a slow one, the sand swept and churned beneath its thrashing legs. A slab of meat was hacked from its rump, and its tongue was cut away. Nearby were the remains of a campfire, as cold and dead as the pinto itself.
“Reckon they’re still making use of our coals,” Caleb said, holding his hand over the ashes. “Probably this morning’s fire. We just as well camp here for the night.”
“But Caleb—”
“The pinto’s dead, ain’t he, and no reason for us not to have a cut of the meat. It will spoil soon enough anyway. Them deserters’ tracks lead out just there, so guess we’ll be safe enough.”
“All right,” she said, “but let’s camp somewhere else if you don’t mind. I’d rather not have to sit by my old friend while I’m having him for dinner.”
They took what meat they could use, and Caleb wrapped it in a hide, tucking it away in the parfleche. Searching out a campsite near the mouth of the gulch, they built a hot fire and roasted the meat, the aroma spurring their hunger until they could no longer resist. They tore away chunks of half-cooked roast and ate with abandon, blood dripping from their chins. They ate past their uncertainty, and their reluctance, and their shame. They ate until their stomachs ached and they could eat no more. Like lions at a kill they preened, sucking grease from their fingers, wiping their mouths on the sleeves of their shirts.
Afterward, they lay in the soft sands of the gulch, their stomachs full for the first time in days, their bodies curled under the warmth of the robe. Sleep came soon, an abiding and healing sleep that sustained them through the deepening cold of the night.
The next morning, they left at dawn, as had become their way, but with renewed energy, their pace steady and unbroken. Caleb’s foot, while yet tender, was less swollen, his gait stronger and more certain.
“Why are we following these tracks?” Joan asked. “What’s the point now, Caleb? We can’t retrieve our horse, you know. We ate him last night.”
He adjusted his bow on his shoulder and shrugged. “It’s as good a direction as any, I guess. Maybe they’ll take us to Dodge, or Larned, maybe.”
“Maybe they’ll take us into an ambush,” she said. “Strikes me that Roscoe and Scratch make for unlikely pathfinders.”
“Who’s to know?” he said.
“Maybe you’re wanting revenge, Caleb Justin, like those Cheyenne you’ve been living with. Maybe that’s what you’re after.”
He turned, looking into the green of her eyes. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know anymore. It’s them Cheyenne’s world we live in, you and me. It’s their world we might die in, and I’m beginning to see that the things they do are for a reason.”
They hadn’t gone a mile when Caleb drew up. Taking an arrow from the quiver, he scanned the horizon. Ahead, rocks heaved from the earth, their edges worn and rounded from the enduring winds. Crows lifted into the sky, their frantic jeers breaking the silence.
“What is it, Caleb?” Joan asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Stay here while I have a look around.”
“Caleb, be careful.”
Slipping from rock to rock, he listened for the prairie sounds, listened from within for the subtle and telling changes, the unexpected call of distress, the shifting rhythms of the order. But there was no sound, no breathless sigh or call, no sinister telling. There was but the stillness of death, and in that what Caleb most knew.
“Joan,” he said, “I think I’ve found them.”
Joan gasped and covered her mouth at what she saw, the hapless deserters lying dead in the rocks, their bodies distended and smelling of decay. “Oh, Caleb,” she said, “what’s happened to them?”
Caleb took the hat from Scratch’s face, and Scratch stared back, his eyes sunken and blank and swarming with ants. In death, as in life, Scratch had little to say. He rolled Roscoe onto his back and kneeled at his side, studying him for the longest time.
“There’s mud collected in his teeth,” he said, “and in the corners of his mouth. I’m thinking they had a fill from that buffalo wallow after they finished up with our pinto.”
“Shouldn’t we bury them or something?” she asked.
His jaw rippling, Caleb stood, drawing his bow and aiming it at Roscoe’s distorted corpse. “No,” he said.
“Caleb,” Joan said, laying her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t.”
Several moments passed, his eyes locked, his face fierce, his arm trembling from the bow’s draw. Lowering it at last, he walked away. “There’s a few hours’ daylight left,” he said over his shoulder. “We best be on our way.”
They walked in silence for the next several hours as the sun rode down in the western sky. Already the temperature fell, and another bitter night was in the making. But there was meat in their parfleche and mesquite for fuel, and for these things they were grateful.
They climbed onto high ground, and a valley opened before them. A small stream meandered down its length, the sunset casting orange in its shallow waters. Sand skirted the stream as far as the eye could see. Like a desert it stretched into the distance, void of life and of hope.
Caleb scanned the valley, hand over his eyes against the final light of day. Joan slipped off her pack. “Wonder how far to Fort Dodge now?” she asked.
Taking her hand, he looked away. “It’s a far piece,” he said, “back there somewhere.”
Her hand tightened on his as she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“ ’Cause down there’s the Cimarron,” he said, his voice falling, “and out there, the Territory, and the end of the line.”
