Sudden Country (14 page)

"I near done for you that time, Davy," he said, and–oh, dissembling villain!–his voice shook. "You must never spook old Ben. I kilt a Cheyenne breed on the Rocky Ford that same way in '78."

"Was that–was that the time you sang your Death Song?" I could scarcely hear my own words for the hammering in my breast.

"That was later." His expression was a grotesque parody of Christian concern. "You must promise not to spook me again. A mossback old snapping turtle can take off your finger after you lop off its head."

I made him the promise. He slid his weight off me then. "Keep the crawlers to yourself, now. It's the ones come when your eyes are wide open you got to fear."

The warning was unnecessary. I slept no more.

The Black Hills accepted us the following morning without resistance, rather in the way that a spider knows no unwelcome visitors to its home–or so I interpreted in my combined states of agitation and exhaustion. Up close they were not black at all, but coated with dark ponderosa pines, grown so thickly that there were places where the sun had not been seen since the time of the glaciers. Our path was paved with a spongy layer, centuries in the making, of fallen needles over which hoofs and wheels passed without a sound. Indeed, the entire forest was eerily silent, yet far from uninhabited, and the very sight of those rows of trunks, together with the unnatural stillness of the air, made me imagine that I was standing on the edge of a pool of black water with no bottom, in danger of toppling in and sinking down and down into the icy inky depths where blind things swam about in absolute silence. Not sacred, these hills; damned.

"I didn't catch a wink that night for wondering if that breed was really dead or just foxing," Ben Wedlock said. That he had, without preamble, taken up his recollection of the night before where he had left off, made me jump. The sound of a human voice in that funereal treescape was as of a great bell rung in a deserted cathedral. "I snapped his neck, see, and there was no question but that the thing was done, and proper. But that don't cut water when you're alone with the sun gone and the stink of some squaw's bastard still up your nose. I bet I got up a hundred times to walk over and see was he still stretched out there, square on his back but looking at the ground, way his head was twisted.

"His pards come for me before dawn. I was in tall corn that summer from selling the freight business and I reckon them road agents seen me flashing the roll in town and followed me. Well, I gutted the first with my Green River knife and he was still twisting on the end of it when I shuck loose and throwed him at two more and tipped them over like lawn pins. I taken a ball in the meat of one arm then. It stung, so I laughed."

"You laughed?"

He nodded. "Stood there under the moon with blood shining on that knife and my own blood dripping off my fingers, laughing and bellering out 'I'm a Good Old Rebel,' all the verses I knowed plus a few more I made up and ain't for repeating here."

"What then?" said I, for he had paused, and I was caught up in the tale despite myself. Later I would represent that I was playing the wide-eyed youth in his thrall, as I had been charged. Thus was I my own dupe.

"Them highwaymen are all yellow. They expect folks they meet to be just as yellow as them. When they seen me standing there caterwauling square into Old Boneface like Ned's Crazy Uncle, it fair caught them up. Six on one it was, but here's the one winding himself up to take some down with him–and at night, yet, when scarecrows walk and Scratch brings in the harvest. Bandits is superstitious as niggers. Well, they fell back. I waited a little and then I got Old Deuteronomy out of the ravine where I had him tied and lit out before they changed their minds again. Barber dug the ball out of my arm and patched me up in Colorado Springs."

"You said Deuteronomy was killed at Second Manassas," I said, before I could catch myself.

"So I did, and so he was. I meant Nicodemus. Names and such all run together when you get to be my age."

I was relieved not to have unsettled him, for it was my responsibility not to let on that I knew him for a prevaricating scoundrel. And yet I was depressed by his slip, which had brought home to me the conviction that nothing he said was to be credited. Death Song indeed! He was as great an inventor as Judge Blod, who at least was not a bandit and murderer masquerading as a colorful old frontiersman. It occurred to me then that in the space of a few weeks I had fashioned rather more heroes than fell to the common lot of youth, only to see them crumble. I wished heartily that I had never heard of either Jed Knickerbocker or his half-dime dreadfuls.

"You're a quiet one today, Davy." Wedlock's eye was on Mr. Knox's wagon ahead. "I reckon old Ben spooked the tongue out of you last night."

"No," I said; and before he could fashion another, more dangerous explanation for my silence: "I was thinking about that Sioux policeman, Corporal Panther. Do you think he did what he said he would?"

"I didn't take him for a liar. He's bones by now, or soon will be."

"How do you know?"

"A bird told me." He pointed. High in the east, a great black vulture traced circles in the sky.

"It could be anything," I said. "A dead elk."

"Or a Panther."

I changed the subject. The vision of that splendid horseman lying stiff and cold and blind did not please me. "You said you prospected these hills once. Did you ever find gold?"

"Found some, not enough. Worked for it, too. Custer told the newspapers his horses was kicking up nuggets all over, but it weren't so. There was money to be made, but I was too lazy. Also I liked my scalp on top of my head and not swinging from some lodgepole."

"You don't want to be rich?"

"I got a business, a good horse even if he ain't Old Deuteronomy, and a friend or two amongst that flea-bit crowd back of us. How rich can you get?"

I believed then what Wedlock had told Deacon Hecate about himself and the church. No one who acknowledged the existence of God could say the things he said and not be constantly searching the heavens for signs of lightning.

A mule brayed at the rear of our procession, and for an instant I thought it was lightning. Someone shouted. I was off the wagon before Wedlock could set the brake. Ahead of us, Mr. Knox was reining in his team, and Judge Blod was just struggling down from his own seat behind the chuck wagon when I passed him running. I had an idea what I'd find. There was only one mule in our party.

A gang of riders made up mostly of Amarillo recruits had gathered behind the Judge's wagon. Mike McPhee had hold of Elder Sampson's big mule by the bit and was maneuvering his horse closer to avoid being torn out of his own saddle by the mule's plungings. The Elder lay on his face in the dirt. Long before I reached him I knew he was lost, for the back of his head had been laid open like an orange. I remember searching for a place to vomit, and finding it. I had never seen a man's brains before.

"What happened?" Deacon Hecate's voice was pure thunder. He towered tall and terrible astride his bony mare. His hat was off and his white hair whipped about in the wind.

"Cinch busted," Blackwater, who had dismounted, approached the Deacon carrying Elder Sampson's saddle. "I seen him fall. Reckon he hit his head on that rock."

The Deacon directed his predatory glare from the frayed end of the dangling cinch to the piece of shale that Blackwater had indicated on the ground near the body. "Indeed. And how came he to end up on his face?" He drew the yellow-handled pistol from under his coat and cocked it.

A very long silence followed. I stood crouched over my own bile in a patch of seedling pines beside the trail–disgraced, unarmed, and unable to come to his aid. Mr. Knox and Judge Blod had reached the scene on foot, hands inside their own coats, but judging by those concealed among the clothing of the others present, the Deacon had been correct in assuming that not everyone in the party had been disarmed at the outset. Even the wind died away, as if the Black Hills themselves were holding their breath.

It was Ben Wedlock, standing apart from the group with his thumbs in his belt, who broke the tension. "Blackwater, didn't your mother ever tell you a man's not to be moved until you know what ails him?"

The tall man with the feather in his hatband took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at the cold end. "Well, you're right, Ben. I turned him over before I knew what I was about."

"Impatient as ever, ain't it? Can't wait to start a thing before its time. What's your head for if not to keep your hat off your shoulders? I'm damned–" He seemed to realized suddenly that we were all watching him. Looking down at the body, he removed his hat. "Well, he's deader'n Prince Albert anyway. I don't reckon you damaged his case."

"Knox, inspect that cinch." Graven as was his expression, the Deacon swayed with the effort to check his fury.

Mr. Knox accepted the saddle from Blackwater and did as directed. "It has worn through and broken," he reported.

"We'd best bury him," said Wedlock, tugging on his hat. "They bloat up quick in this heat."

Hecate swayed. Finally he took his pistol off cock.

"You and you. Shovels." He pointed at Blackwater and McPhee, who had succeeded at last in calming the mule. The Irishman dismounted and the two went forward to Mr. Knox's wagon. "Back away, the rest of you. This is not a wolves' frenzy."

They buried Elder Sampson at the base of a hill, mounding the grave high and covering it with rocks to prevent coyotes from scratching up the remains, and fixed a cross made of pine boughs at its head. Deacon Hecate stood at the foot of the grave, his great white head bare and bowed.

"Seven sons and three daughters had Job," he said, and in his tone there was little of his customary thunder. "Friends and prosperity were his. But God was unsatisfied. To prove Job's loyalty, God permitted Satan to afflict him with boils, to impoverish him utterly, to slay his seven sons and three daughters. Later, as reward for Job's faith, God blessed his end more than his beginning. He gave him fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. And Job had seven new sons and three new daughters."

For a long time he was silent. I thought the service had ended. Then he raised his long arms to the heavens; his head fell back, and on his face was an anguish I had never seen before. Indeed, I have not seen it anywhere since, although forty years have passed. His voice rose.

"But where, O God, are the seven sons and three daughters with whom Job started? What manner of heavenly grace can repay a life? What value loss, that it can be wiped away as with a damp cloth? I have not Job's patience, nor his great wisdom. I am sorely tried. Sorely tried. And I am not equal to the trial.

"Smite the evil that has claimed Thy son Schechaniah Sampson!" he shrieked. Every head came up. "Smite it low, that it shall not rise! Smite it with all Thy great might, or by the chaos that made Thee, Thy servant Philo shall seize that vengeance which is Thine, and though he crackle in Hell until Judgment, shall smite the evil himself if it means a cabal with Satan!"

This blasphemy was not lost upon even the group's most godless, for every man stood as if stricken throughout the Lord's Prayer that incongruously followed, and those who had not yet forgotten the pious lessons of childhood crossed themselves. Long seconds after the Deacon had barked "Amen" and walked away to mount his mare, no one stirred.

"A crisis of faith," pronounced Judge Blod in a loud whisper. "I had not thought the two that close."

Mr. Knox said, "They weren't."

"Did the cinch really wear through?" I asked.

"There are ways to help it along, but the break appeared genuine. I doubt strongly that the rock was placed as conveniently as Blackwater claimed. Likely he saw his opportunity and acted, even if it meant upsetting Wedlock's timetable. Our saloonkeeper friend very nearly spilled the beans in his rage."

"What is our support?" asked the Judge.

"There in the Cheyenne party. I am uncertain of the fourth, and we know young Tom is lost."

"Not good."

"There is a bare possibility that today's incident will force Wedlock to begin early. However, I think he will wait until our quarry is assured. He's waited too many years to gamble upon our destroying all record of the gold's location on the very eve of victory."

"What is our plan?" I inquired, before the Judge could beat me to it.

Mr. Knox was grim. "There is no question but that the enemy has fired the first shot. It falls to us to fire the second. We move tonight."

INDIANS!