Me and Billy (16 page)

Billy was frowning and looking down at the dirt. “Prof, that’s a fine thank you. We took all kinds of chances to save you. How many people would have jumped a fella holding two guns? Without us, you’d be laying in that hole instead of Robinson.” I wished Billy would quit arguing about it. All I wanted to do was get away from that place.

“Oh, I’m mighty appreciative of what you boys did,” Prof said. “I’ll make it up to you someday. But it ain’t safe now.” He reached into his pocket and took out the wad of bills he’d taken off Robinson. Quickly he counted off ten dollars. Then he thought the better of it, shoved four back into the wad, and handed us the rest. “Here. Take it. A present from old Prof. Don’t say I never did nothing for you. Now you two skedaddle out of here right quick. Best go off through the woods for apiece, so nobody coming along spots you near to here.” With that, he turned and walked swiftly through the trees. In a moment we heard him shouting at the mules and the van rumbling back onto the highway.

“Billy, no use worrying it to death. He didn’t want us along with him. Let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, I could see that. Blame him for a no-good skunk. He could of taken us if he wanted.”

“But he didn’t want to.” I handed him the three bills Prof gave me. “Here, I don’t want this stuff. He just gave it to us so’s to make us part of it.”

Billy took the bills. “I don’t care about that,” he said.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said once more. “What I reckon is, we climb down into that creek and walk along it a ways so’s dogs can’t pick up our scent.”

He gave me a curious look. “Where’d you hear that one from?”

“James Fenimore Cooper. Some Indians did it to get away from Natty Bumpo.”

We trotted back to the stream, pulled off our shoes, rolled up our pants, walked into the creek, and started upstream. There were stones underfoot which jabbed at the bottoms of our feet, and the water was cold and tugged at our legs. It took us a good twenty minutes of slogging through the current to cover half a mile. I wished I’d never heard of James Fenimore Cooper. Finally, we came to a bridge going overhead. We climbed out of the creek, dried ourselves off as good as we could with leaves, and went on back into Wasted Gulch.

We decided to keep away from the general store, for the fella there was bound to ask questions. We found another place and stocked up on enough stuff to last us a week—a sack of flour for biscuits, coffee, a tin of molasses, a bag of rice, and a bag of beans. Then we went across the street to the miners’ supply store, where we bought a pan, a skillet, a couple of big tin spoons, a good-sized folding knife, some matches, and a little tin box to keep them dry in. In another
place we bought two pieces of canvas big enough to lie on, some rope, and a couple of used army blankets for fifty cents each. When we heaped it up, I could see that just carrying it all was bound to make us sweat pretty good.

Billy still had a hankering to spend the night in the Majestic Hotel. “We ought to get a good night’s sleep so as to start fresh in the morning.”

Of course that wasn’t it. He was just curious to know what sleeping in a hotel would be like—whether it would make us feel grand or something. All I wanted to do was get out of that blame town. To me, it smelled of death. I was having trouble understanding how I’d been in on killing somebody when we’d gone out there trying to stop a killing. Something to do with Billy, I reckoned. I’d gone along with him too much. Had since we were both little boys. It came from admiring him more than I should. I couldn’t say that to Billy, though. He wouldn’t understand it. So I said, “Billy, have some sense. We’d stick out like a sore thumb in that hotel. The sooner we get out of town, the better.”

He could see that. So we divided up the supplies, bundled them up in the canvas tarpaulins, and slung them over our backs. They were heavy, all right. But we’d manage. And off we went in search of the golden lake at last. It made me feel good that we were finally on the right track.

There was a good-sized trail leading away from the town toward the mountains which went through a piece of brushy flatland. In a half hour we came to the gulch the place was named for. There was a wooden bridge across it, but since half the boards had fallen out of it and the timbers underneath were rotten, we scrambled down the side of the gulch, bringing stones and dirt after us, and then scrambled up the other side. Here the land sloped upward through a pine forest growing amongst rock outcroppings. Sometimes we could skirt around the rocks, but sometimes we had to climb over them. It was mighty hard work, hot and dirty, but I was glad of it, for it took my mind off Robinson stiffening up in that hole we’d dug for him. By the time it grew dark, we were both plenty tired and scratched up. We found a little mountain stream dashing down the rocks. We made a fire and cooked up some rice and biscuits. We didn’t sit around long after supper, but curled up in our blankets. “If I knew exploring was such hard work, I’d of given it a second thought,” Billy said.

“I guess we’ll get used to it,” I said. “I hope we spot that lake pretty quick, though.”

We woke up at daybreak, kicked up the fire, made some coffee, and ate some cold biscuits and molasses. “We best follow alongside this stream,” I said. “That lake’s bound to have a stream coming out of it.”

“How do we know if this is the right stream?”

“We don’t,” I said. “In fact, it probably isn’t. I reckon a stream coming out of a lake would be bigger than this one. But it’s the only one we got so far. Besides, if we stick with it, we’ll have water.”

We set off. We hadn’t gone more than an hour when low clouds appeared in the east and the sky began to darken. Gradually they got thicker, and around noon, as close as we could figure time without the sun, it began to rain. We stopped, rigged up a tent with the ropes and the canvas, and huddled down inside it. “I didn’t figure on rain,” Billy said. “The way I pictured it, the sun was always shining and a nice breeze was blowing to keep us cool.”

“Me, too,” I said. “But it can’t rain forever.”

“It won’t have to to discourage me. Two weeks’ll be long enough.”

The wind was strong, and the rain kept blowing in under the canvas. In an hour we were both soaked through and shivering. “There isn’t any sense in this,” Billy said. “We’re drenched through, anyway; we might as well keep moving. That way at least we’ll warm up.”

We stayed warm all right, for the ground underfoot was soaked and slick as ice and we kept slipping and stumbling. The rain stopped around the middle of the afternoon, and by and by the sun came out, pale yellow and feeble. It wasn’t going to dry off our clothes much. We stopped, found some dry firewood under a ledge, and got a fire going. Once the dry wood was
burned we had to use wet wood, which steamed and flickered. We managed to boil up some rice and went to sleep naked, shivering, dozing, and waking. Finally, around three in the morning, Billy said, “Possum, I can’t stand this; I’m coming in with you.” We huddled together with both blankets and Billy’s tarp on top of us. I was mighty glad to be warm for a change and went to sleep.

In the morning the sun came up bright and hot, which cheered us up a good deal. We got a good blaze going, cooked up a ton of biscuits, and sat there swabbing the molasses on them with the folding knife and washing them down with coffee. We strung a line from trees close to the fire and hung our clothes over it. While they were drying, I decided to ask Billy about some things.

“Billy, doesn’t it bother you about killing Robinson?” I wasn’t trying to change him or trying to argue him into seeing it my way. I was just trying to understand him better. We’d always taken each other for granted, the way you never give any thought to the air you breathe or the rain that falls on you from the sky. It was just there, and so was Billy.

He gave me a look. “Why? Does it bother you?”

“Yes.” I looked at him and then away again. “Some.”

“Not me,” he said. “If he hadn’t gone gunning for the Prof, it wouldn’t have happened to him.”

“Yes, but Prof started it when he got Robinson’s little granddaughter killed.”

“Oh, you can’t blame that on Prof,” Billy said. “He said himself he meant to warn them to take her to a doc.”

“But don’t you see, Billy,” I said, looking at him, “it was all wrong from the start. If Prof hadn’t been out there skinning people, both of them would be alive right now.”

Billy shrugged. “How far back do you want to take it? If there weren’t any such things as people, it wouldn’t of happened, either.”

“Aren’t you even a little sorry?”

He lay down on his back where he could get the best use of the fire. “I don’t reckon I’m the sort of type who gets sorry over things. It isn’t my nature.”

That was it, really: it was just his nature, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. So I changed the subject to what we ought to do next.

For one thing, we’d lost our little stream. We were a good ways up. The woods had thinned out—mostly scrub oak and scrub pine, scraggly and no more than twenty feet high. Big pieces of rock stuck up everywhere among the trees, and because the trees were thin, the sun shone through pretty good. The mountain rose up above us like a wall. Directly ahead of us was a ravine full of boulders, sloping upward at a sharp angle. “Let’s try the ravine,” Billy said. “I reckon if we
get up on some point where we could get a view of things, we might spot that lake.”

It seemed like as good an idea as any. Our clothes were still damp, but we put them on, anyway, figuring they’d dry quick enough in the sun. We struggled up that ravine all morning. We came out onto a flat piece of ledge too stony for trees, but with enough dirt on it to grow a little grass. There was a pretty good view from up there across a saddle in the mountain, but no sign of a lake. We flung ourselves down on the grass to rest, and then Billy collected some firewood and got a fire going.

“Billy,” I said, “we got to start going easy on the food. I figure we ought to skip lunch.”

“Skip lunch, Possum? I’d rather be dead than skip lunch.”

“Still, I reckon we better. The way I calculate, we haven’t got enough for more than three days at most.”

Billy frowned. “I’d of never come if I figured it meant skipping lunch. How long do you reckon it’ll take to find that lake?”

“How do I know?” I said. “But the longer we can stretch out the food, the better chance we got of finding it.” Then to encourage him I said, “Most likely we’ll come across some blackberries or blueberries. There’s bound to be fish in that lake, once we find it.”

He gave me a look. “If you want to know what I think, Possum, I think we’re a pair of fools off on a
wild-goose chase. If we were with Prof right now, we’d be eating fried-egg sandwiches.”

“Billy, Prof didn’t want us to come with him.”

“He’d of changed his mind after a while,” Billy said.

“We got to give it a few more days.”

“They’re going to be mighty long days if we got to skip lunch.”

We set off again, across the ledge and then on up the mountain face, looking for a good-sized stream that might be coming out of a lake. And we hadn’t gone more than ten minutes when I realized I wouldn’t have been able to trace my way back to the little ledge we’d rested on. “Billy, where
was
that ledge—that way, or over that way?”

He scratched his head. “Blamed if I know, now that you bring it up.” It was just the way everybody said—those mountains twisted and turned so much you could get yourself lost in five minutes.

In the middle of the afternoon we found a stream. It was about five or six feet across, shallow, and running fast over the rocks. There were little fish in it, too. “That’s a good sign, Billy. They must have come out of a lake, for they can’t breed in a stream this fast.” I had no idea if that was true, but I figured it’d encourage Billy.

For the next two days we followed that stream. My, it went every which way—around corners, cascading down cliffs, sliding through ravines, even wandering
through small meadows tucked down in little mountain valleys. Every time we came around a corner I held my breath, praying that I’d see that lake. I wished I could have enjoyed the scenery more, for it was mighty pretty—the sun slanting through the trees at sunrise and sunset, the rocky cliffs, red, blue, and yellow birds flashing through the trees, little meadows dotted with wildflowers; hawks floating high overhead, never moving their wings, but tipping this way and that to catch the wind. Oh, I could see it was pretty, but the way we were struggling over boulders, through briar patches and up cliffs, the prettiness of it didn’t manage to come through.

We were parceling out the food pretty careful now, just a couple of biscuits and molasses for breakfast, water for lunch, and beans and rice for supper. Even so, on the third day, when we opened up our packs, we saw that we were down near to the end. “If we cut it in half, maybe we can hold out for another day,” I said.

“If we cut it in half, Possum, it won’t hardly be worth troubling with at all. You might as well stick to air and water.”

“Maybe we’ll come around a corner tomorrow and there that lake’ll be. We’ll need a meal to have the strength to haul all that gold off the bottom.”

“We been at it six days, Possum. Tomorrow’ll make a week. And on top of it, we don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get down out of here, with nothing
but water and berries to keep us going. I reckon we better eat up what we got and call it quits.”

“Just one more day, Billy.” I knew there wasn’t much hope in it anymore, but I knew I’d be sorry the rest of my life if I didn’t push it as far as I could. “Please.”

“All right, Possum. One more day. Only we eat the rest of the grub tonight. That way we’ll get one satisfied night out of it, instead of two unsatisfied ones.”

So we cooked up what was left and burned up the rice and bean sacks in the fire. In the morning we finished off the last of the molasses, buried the jar, packed up, and set off. The stream had narrowed down a little. It was headed up a long, gentle slope through a pine forest. It was an easy climb, or at least it seemed so after some of the places we’d climbed around and through and over. I guess we’d toughened up a little. You can get used to anything, they say, and we’d got used to banging our way around the mountains. Getting used to being hungry was going to be harder, I reckoned, but right then our stomachs were full.