Friends (20 page)

Banty swallowed hard, and his smile fell away. But he didn't complain. "That's only two, ain't it?" he asked.

"That's right," Clete said. "The third one is to take the boy and the woman back to Marsh's camp in that mule wagon, after we get done with the bury in'."

You could see right then that Banty knowed he'd been dealt off the bottom of the deck. There was nothing to do but play the hand he held. "You men are gonna ride out after him before I get back, ain't you?" he asked, his voice real squeaky.

"Yes, we are," Clete said, going back toward the mules with Jimmy following him.

"Then how the hell will I find you?" Banty yelled after him.

"Just track us," Clete called back. "That's what we're doing. If you can't do that, then you're not worth taking."

"All right, Mr. Sheriff," Banty said to himself. "All right, but you ain't seen the last of me!"

By the time I'd finished my digging chores, Banty had made a neat parcel of the man and the child, wrapped up together in the man's blankets and tied with a heavy rope he found someplace. Clete and Jimmy fed the mules and hitched them back up while Banty and me carried the father and his child up to where I had the grave dug. We laid them in gentle. Clete and Jimmy joined us and Clete handed me my old Bible.

"Read us a word, Pardner," he said, taking off his hat. I remembered something about where a man was killed and left his wife a hard lot, in a part called Ruth, and so I read that. It didn't fit, exactly, but it was close enough.

Jimmy stood close to Clete and stared into the hole.

I'd had about as much funeral as I wanted and was just starting to go back down the bank when Banty cleared his throat and started talking quiet, his hands clenched together and him lookin' at the sky. "Lord, I didn't know these folks at all, but they was no doubt good as most. Too late now to do much for the man and this little baby. But you could look out for the momma and this boy standin' here. If you've a mind to. Amen."

Clete appeared a little confused at Banty saying a prayer like that. When he recovered himself, he put his arm around Jimmy's shoulders, turned the boy away, and walked down toward the wagon with him.

Banty picked up the shovel. "I'll finish this," he said. "Diggin's been my trade of late."

DuShane was having a hell of a time with his new horse. He had already figured out that it was a walker, a gentleman's Sunday afternoon mount. It had refused the bit at first and didn't know what to do when DuShane yanked on the old snaffle. It would learn, the bony man vowed, or the sonofabitch would bleed to death from its mouth.

He thought about saddling the paint again, but he didn't want to stop. His trick back at the White
must
have fooled the man after him, but then again, maybe not.

When he struck the Deadwood road, he turned southeast and slowed his pace. At a stream crossing, where hoofprints clustered as thick as ants around an anthill, he turned and went back the way he'd just come, toward the northwest. Nobody'd ever be able to trail him with all these wagon ruts and tracks.

But when he got back to where the sign from his walker and the paint cut in from the right, he stopped and looked that way for several minutes. The lawman who had killed Whitey was still after him. He could feel it, almost smell it.

DuShane dismounted and hobbled the walker close, then hopped up on the paint bareback and, leaving the walking horse to follow with its eyes, he retraced his tracks away from the road. At a rocky place two hundred yards from where he'd stopped and looked, he turned the paint several times and then trotted her toward the south. After another hundred yards, beside a dense growth of sage, he dismounted, removed the lead rope and slapped the paint hard with his revolver. She took off like a mountain lion was after her.

The scrawny man cut a sagebrush branch with his clasp knife and wiped out his bootprints, walking backwards, and then swept away both horses' tracks from the rocky place to the road. When he had finished, he remounted the walker, stood in the stirrups and looked back toward where he'd set the sheriff off his trail, though he couldn't see the spot from the road. "Let him foller that awhile," he said, and spurred the walker hard.

Banty Foote sat astride the nearwheel mule and held the reins high. His pony was tied behind the wagon and Jimmy stood waiting by the lead pair.

Clete was giving Banty some more orders, and I sat my horse beside the boy. "You'll have to take care of your ma now, Jimmy. She ain't got no one else."

"I know," he said, his eyes in the dirt.

"I expect you'll spend a day or two at a camp not far from here, run by some fellows from back East. They're good men, though, friends of Banty's back there. They'll look out for you and your ma. You got any relations in these parts?"

"Just my uncle at Fort Laramie. That's where we was going."

"Well, that's not so awful far. Tell Mr. Foote's friends about your uncle. Tell them Mr. Shannon, the Sheriff of Two Scalp, said for them to take you there. Think you can remember that?"

Jimmy nodded his head. "Yeah, Mr. Shannon says we're to go to Fort Laramie. To my Uncle Caleb's house. Mr. Shannon, he's a real sheriff, ain't he?"

"That's right, son, a real hell-raising
Western
sheriff. Just you don't take no for an answer, the way he don't, and you'll be okay. That, and doing what you think's right."

Clete rode up to me about then and Banty yelled to us. "Don't catch him 'til I git there!"

"Jesus," Clete said. "Let's get the hell outta here!"

"Goodbye, Mr. Shannon," the boy said. "Thanks for rescuing my mom and me."

"Rescue?" Clete glanced at me, but I didn't know what to say so I just shrugged.

"Goodbye, Jimmy," I told the young man.

"Goodbye … sir."

Clete spurred that good-looking gray, and the bay and me took after, leading the roan. I often wondered about that boy after that, whether he got to Laramie or not. What happened to his ma, did she ever come back to her senses? I never knowed, but I often got pleasure from thinking about how it might of turned out. How Jimmy's ma began feeling herself again after a while, maybe, and started working for her brother in a dry goods store like John Tate's. How she met a nice businessman, or maybe a deputy or a lawyer, and got Jimmy a daddy, and may be a baby sister, too. How the youngster grew up strong and straight. Sometimes I see him being a lawman or going off to Yale College, but I never learned exactly what happened to him or his ma.

One thing for sure, though. Jimmy or Banty must of told quite a story about Clete, back at Marsh's camp or somewheres, about how he and his ma was rescued by a sheriff named Shannon. The people Jimmy told must of turned it into a windy the size of a sandstorm, because years afterward, when they got around to making counties in the state of South Dakota, the place where that muleskinner and his baby child was murdered-down there in the southwest corner-they called that Shannon County. Still is today, far as I know. People will have their heroes, no doubt about it. And if they can't find ones that suit, why, they'll just cut them outta whatever cloth they've got. Now, I ain't saying Clete didn't do as much as Bill Hickok. He did, maybe more. But there's another side, too, and I'll get to it fast as I can.

The sign showed clear that our man'd headed upriver on the west bank of the White. But we was no more than half a dozen rods from where I'd buried Jimmy's daddy and his baby child when I noticed another set of hoofprints beside those of Mandy's paint. From the look of it, our man could of been following someone else, for the paint's tracks covered those of the other horse in spots.

"Did the boy say anything about there be in' two men who jumped his family?" I ask Clete.

"No, he didn't. But I see why you asked."

I got down and looked close at the hoofprints. I guessed our man was riding another horse and trailin' Mandy's when he lit outta there, for the paint's tracks looked different than they did yesterday. I don't know how, but they did. Another half mile up the river, where a stream come in, our man cut due west, cross country, no trail at all. Looked like he knowed where he was going, all right.

Easy sign to follow, for it was skimpy new grass, growin' in white sandy soil. We picked up the pace pretty good and stayed at it 'til nearly noon, when we found his campfire ashes from the night before. In another hour we come to a rocky spot where the paint's track took a sharp bend south, and the sign of the other horse just quit. After a quarter mile, I reined in the bay and stepped down. I got low to see the hoofprints good. "We've got to go back," I told Clete.

"Why?" he ask.

"'Cause he tried getting foxy on us, tried to give us the slip again. No one was riding this horse when it come through here. He's off in the other direction on the other horse is my guess. Let's see that map again."

We was almost to the Deadwood road, according to the map, so we backtracked to where the paint'd turned, and then we cut over and hit the road. No tracks at all to follow.

"North's the way to go here," I told Clete. "Seems like it ought to be the other way, I know, but he went north."

"How can you tell?" Clete ask, sliding out of his saddle and inspecting the sign.

"Nothin' there that will tell you, but I'm sure he went up the road toward Deadwood."

"I was wrong back there close to Marsh's camp when I went north," Clete said, trying to figure out the different tracks. "How come you're so damned sure."

"Well, part of it's the difference between northeast, the way you went, and northwest, the way this road goes. I doubt he'd double back on himself and risk running into us. He must guess we're still after him, or else he wouldn't have turned the paint loose over there to try and throw us off. Not as much as
he
values a spare horse, he wouldn't. And another part of it is having somewhere to go-meaning Deadwood. A fellow who enjoys killing folks, or makes a trade of it, could do a lot worse than Deadwood if its reputation is only half true. And the last part of it, well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Clete stood and put his hands on his hips. "Why don't you let me decide that?"

"All right," I told him after a minute. "Stalking Bear taught me to spirit track. To put yourself in the place of what you're trackin', see with
his
eyes, listen with
his
ears. After you're been chasing an animal or a man for some time, you can get inside the thinking. 'Get in front of the sign' is what that Apache was always saying to me. Our man went north here. I feel it, like Stalking Bear taught me. Sounds farfetched, I know."

"Yeah, it does," Clete said, getting back on the gray. "But you've been right so far and there's no arguing with that. Let's go."

So go we did. All afternoon and into the evening. I knowed Clete didn't like it, traveling up that road without no sign to follow. He'd look at me from time to time, but he didn't say nothing. Near dark we hit a town the map said was Hay Camp, just a few houses and a saloon.

Clete checked the horses there, and then stood a ways off and looked through the window a spell. We looked everyone over good when we went in, but none of the men at the bar or those playing poker at the tables in back was our man. Clete bought us whiskeys and questioned the barman, but he didn't see nobody new all day-except the folks on a stage that'd passed through.

"What do you think, Willie?" Clete asked after we got our second whiskey. "Still think he's headed for Deadwood?"

"Yes, I do," I said.

"How come he didn't stop here?" Clete ask, taking a sip.

"Cause he knew we would. Likely rode all the way around instead of coming through, too. Probly no one even saw him."

"You're still sure, though, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. I could be wrong, now, you understand, but I feel he's up the road toward Deadwood."

"You up to riding all night, just on the strength of your hunch?" Clete asked. "We could get to Deadwood by late morning."

"It's not just a hunch," I said. "It's a lot more than that. And, yeah, I'll ride at night with you. Might be we'll even stumble onto him this time. But if we're gonna ride long, let's get a little sleep now and get back on him in a couple hours. Moon'll be up shortly past midnight … a good-sized slice of it. What my daddy called a horsethiefs moon. I say we sleep a while and then start."

"Sounds all right to me," Clete said. "Be better for the horses, too."

We finished our drinks and walked out of there with everone watching. I could have stood a few more. Two would have to do for that night, though. But Deadwood, I decided right then, that would be a different story. We made a cold camp a few miles out of town and slept 'til the moon rose, clear and sharp, like the points on a bull's horns.

I chewed jerky while we rode along in the dim moonlight. Stars were bright, and while we trotted on up the trail that old star goose flew slow across the night sky, east to nearly overhead and then winging her way toward the west.

The air smelled sweet. A warm, dry wind straight up the flat-lands from Texas made you think of summer, though it was only May. Course, it could go back to being March again tomorrow, but I hoped it wouldn't.

To the west, come sunup, we saw the Black Hills, the first real rise on the plains in a thousand miles. From far off they looked like low-hanging storm clouds, but as you got up closer you saw the peaks and ridges. Wasn't hard to see why the first white men in these parts called them black, either. Darkest green you ever saw, though from far off they was smoky-looking too. True, they wasn't nearly so grand as the ranges between here and the Rockies, all of them higher and wilder, but these looked mighty pretty to me. Don't know why I fancy mountains so, I wasn't born near any.

The road bent west and cut up into a valley. A wooden sign pointed us up the trail toward Deadwood and we followed its stiff finger. Every so often I'd look for those hoofprints we first saw over where Jimmy and his folks'd had their troubles, but I didn't see them even once more. Did I go and climb the wrong tree? I asked myself if I was still doing things the way Stalking Bear taught me to do. I figgered I was, so I said nothing to Clete. There was no other way now than to just go on.