Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (64 page)

 
          
 
Baptiste spoke up, "Reckon tomorrow I'll
scout northwest, see if I cut buffler sign."

 
          
 
"Ought to. We're close." Trawis
stared at the end of his pipe stem. "This child's froze fer buffler."

 
          
 
Willow
kept her head down as Trudeau walked past,
then beyond into the darkness. She could hear him urinating just beyond the
halo of firelight.

 
          
 
When he returned, he stopped long enough to
nod at Trawis and give her that toothy leer she'd come to dislike.

 
          
 
After he'd left, Trawis said quietly, "
Willow
, you stay close ter me, hear? Reckon ye'd
best not be walking off by yerself."

 
          
 
Baptiste nodded as he reached for his belt
knife and began fingering the shining blade. ''Reckon that's a heap of sense.
Old Trudeau, he's on the prod.''

 
          
 
"I avoid him,"
Willow
replied. A small ache touched her soul at
Ritshard's expression—strained, shamefaced.

 
          
 
''Yep, well, that's good," Trawis added.
"He's some at moving a boat. Be a shame ter have to send him under."

 
          
 
''Always the boat," Richard muttered
wearily.

 
          
 
''Boat's all we got," Trawis answered in
that lazy voice he used sometime

 
          
 
Ritshard slapped a mosquito, but remained
silent, his eyes on the fire. What did he see that was so far away? What did he
long for with such yearning in his eyes?

 
          
 
"Ritshard? You have woman in
Boston
?"
Willow
asked

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"Family?"

           
 
He laughed sharply. "Yes, but none who
would miss me.

 
          
 
"What is in
Boston
?"

 
          
 
He closed his eyes and whispered softly,
"Everything."

 
          
 
Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of
reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of
truth and falsehood: the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity,
vice and virtue. The one discovers objects as they really stand in nature,
without addition or diminution: the other has a productive faculty, and gilding
or staining all the natural objects with colours, borrowed from internal
sentiment, raises in a manner, new creation. Reason being cool and disengaged,
is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from an appetite
or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding
misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness
or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire
and volition.

 
          
 
—David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals

 
          
 
Easy, coon," Travis whispered as they
crept along a brush-choked drainage. Richard paid careful attention to his
feet, making sure that each step was placed so as to avoid rustling the green
grass. His heart was pounding with excitement. This was the hunt!

 
          
 
The drainage cut like a twisting wound through
the flats. Buffaloberry, currants, and spears of cedar lined the slopes, while
a trickle of water fed rushes and cattails in the bottom. Sunflowers and
daisies sprinkled color through the grass.

 
          
 
Overhead, the sun's white intensity flushed
water from every pore in Richard's body.

 
          
 
"Close,"
Willow
whispered behind him. "Wind is right.
Waugh!"

 
          
 
Travis throttled a chuckle.

 
          
 
"Waugh is not proper English,"
Richard reminded
Willow
, but he grinned and winked at her. To his delight, she winked back and
gave him a smile that melted his heart.

 
          
 
"Shhh!" Travis raised a finger to
his lips. The hunter dropped to his belly and snaked into a dry gulch that
branched off from the cut. Richard dropped to follow, the green smell of
crushed vegetation filling his nostrils. His blood began to quicken.

 
          
 
Digging in with his elbows, he followed
Travis's moccasined feet. A hole had worn into the grass-polished right heel.

 
          
 
Travis slipped sideways past a patch of
grass-bound prickly pear.

 
          
 
In a matter of moments, Richard's muscles
started to protest from the awkward position. This mode of travel was ordained
for snakes and salamanders—not human beings. He bit his lip and squirmed along
in Travis's wake, aware of skittering insects, blades of grass, and the sunheat
boring into his back.

 
          
 
How far were they going? He tried to lift his
head to see, but
Willow
slapped his foot. When he shot a glance over his shoulder, she shook
her head emphatically.

 
          
 
He grumbled under his breath and dragged
himself onward.

 
          
 
Travis had wriggled up to a patch of
thorn-bristling rosebushes that clung to the side of the now shallow
depression. Heedless of the vicious stems, the hunter eased up to the edge of
the draw, parting the plants carefully to slide the long Hawken through the lea

 
          
 
Richard winced as he scratched himself and
eased into place beside the hunter.

 
          
 
"Careful, coon," Travis whispered.
"Buffler don't see worth a damn, but it shore ain't no sin to be extra
careful."

 
          
 
Richard peered through the screen of small
serrated K and thorns. Blooms had already opened in putts of pink that
delighted the nose. But where had . . . ? Yes, there!

 
          
 
The shaggy hump of the animal was no more than
fifty paces away.
Willow
appeared as immune to thorns as Travis as she crawled up beside
Richard.

 
          
 
The metallic click of the hammer might have
sundered the world, but the buffalo remained oblivious. Time passed
interminably.

 
          
 
"So, why don't you shoot?" Richard
barely mouthed the words.

 
          
 
"Poor bull," Travis hissed.
"We'll wait. Fat cow'll step up in a minute."

 
          
 
The minute turned into an hour under the
relentless sun. The first fly was almost bearable as it buzzed around Richard's
head. The rest who came—no doubt at some inaudible fly call from the
first—drove him to distraction. The best he could do was flip his head to
discourage the beasts, but all that earned him was a disgusted look from
Travis, whom the flies seemed to ignore.

 
          
 
The bull had moved away, but a second animal,
smaller, almost tan in color, was grazing closer with an agonizing slowness.

 
          
 
"Fat cow," Travis said under his
breath, slowly lifting the heavy rifle.

 
          
 
The long wait continued.

 
          
 
Step by step, the buffalo moved into range.
Rosebushes and grass screened most of the animal. All Richard could see was the
humped back nearly seventy paces away. The stubby tail flipped and swished with
a manic passion.

 
          
 
"We'll die of starvation," he
muttered as he twitched to unseat the flies.

 
          
 
"Hold still, coon," Travis warned.
"Ye'll have every critter from hyar ter the Yellerstone a-running."

 
          
 
Richard barely noticed when the cow turned
sideways.

 
          
 
Pffft-boom! At the report, blue smoke obscured
everything ahead.

 
          
 
"Hit her in the lights,'' Travis
chortled.

 
          
 
Richard started to rise, only to have a strong
hand pull him down.

 
          
 
"Yer a damned Yankee pilgrim, Dick. Hold
tarnal still and listen."

 
          
 
Richard glared in hot reply, but cocked his
head. ''I don't hear anything."

 
          
 
"Uh-huh." Travis slipped the rifle
down beside him and rolled onto his back as he fiddled for his powder horn. The
sunlight accented the white lines of scar tissue crisscrossing his face. As he
poured powder into his measure horn, he gave Richard a sideways glance.
"And if'n they's a-running, ye'd hear 'em, eh?"

 
          
 
Richard grabbed fruitlessly at the fly. ''You
mean you shot one . . . and the rest are just standing there?"

 
          
 
"What's a buffler ter be a-feared of?
Maybe a griz, but no bear's a gonna take a full-grown buff on fer the fun of
it. Nope, men's about the onliest thing they's a-feared of. We don't stand up,
they'll figger it's just thunder or some such. Buffler don't savvy gun
shots."

 
          
 
Richard swiped at the flies and ran his dry
tongue around his mouth. "They'll just stand there and let us shoot
them?"

 
          
 
"Reckon so." Travis extracted a ball
from his bullet pouch and placed it on a patch. He short-seated the bullet and
used the keen blade of his patch knife to trim the cloth. With careful motions,
he pulled the ramrod and sent the load home before priming the pan and snapping
the frisson shut.

 
          
 
"Hyar now, coon," he handed the
heavy rifle to Richard. "Crawl up aside me. Slowly, now. Oh, don't mind
the damn hushes, them little scratches will heal. Hell, look at my face and
tell me about scratches.''

 
          
 
Nevertheless, Richard winced as the tiny
thorns scored his skin. He inched forward until he could see more humped backs.
The buffalo remained unconcerned.

 
          
 
Travis continued to whisper in his ear,
"Slow, pilgrim. Now, pull yer rifle up. That's it. Get a good brace and
set the stock in yer shoulder. Thar ye be. Now, put yer hand under the
forestock; that's it. Ye want solid bone under the gun. Don't wobble that way."

 
          
 
Richard settled in and nestled his cheek
against the stock so he could squint down the lights.

 
          
 
"Hold up, now. We'll wait her out."

 
          
 
Richard waited, his left arm slowly going numb
under the weigh! of the rifle. He blinked to clear his right eye.

 
          
 
"Don't sight all the time, coon. Keep
both yer eyes open till yer ready to shoot. What damn fool larned ye to close
yer eye?"

 
          
 
"You did."

 
          
 
"Eh? Oh well, guess we never got this
far."

 
          
 
"Shoot good,"
Willow
whispered from behind.

 
          
 
Shoot good? Richard took a deep breath. What
if he missed? This was his first buffalo, his first hunt. Don't bungle it,
Richard. He could imagine the disgusted look in Travis's eye. Worse,
Willow
would think he was a complete doof.
Anything but that.

 
          
 
"Cow's coming up," Travis hissed.
"On yer right. Now, don't shift. She'll come ter ye."

 
          
 
Richard swiveled his head, seeing the animal
through the masking grass. Close ... so close. What? Forty paces?

 
          
 
If I miss from forty paces. ... He'd never
survive
Willow
's disdain. Please, God Just this once, let
me do it right!

 
          
 
And then his heart began to pound with a
terrible vengeance; excited blood boiled bright in his veins. Never in his life
had he experienced this heady rush. Each nerve tingled, breaths coming in quick
succession.