The High Divide (25 page)

“You try for smallest one you could find?” Ulysses asked him.

“Go hang yourself. Least I stayed on my damn horse. You, now, I'd say you've become a danger to the government's animals.”

Williams was sent to the main channel of the Porcupine to intercept Gumfield and his wagon for transport of the cow back to camp. Ulysses and Eli gutted and skinned the animal, careful to keep the head on, according to Hornaday's directions. Eli tried to imagine how the creature would look after being stuffed and mounted and put on display in Washington. Not impressive, he thought, not after he'd ridden alongside that running herd. The animal was bony, clumsily shaped, ugly, and Eli saw in his mind the people in their clean, pressed clothes walking right past it, not giving it a second look.

When they'd finished their work, they rode for camp, leaving Bayliss and the other private, Jensen, to wait for Gumfield. Late as the hour was, the decision was made to let McNaney and Hornaday return on their own time, and to send out a wagon for their kill in the morning, if necessary.

That night the men—back in their permanent camp at Calf Creek—ate their fill of roasted backstrap and sampled the tender tongue, which McAnna boiled in salted water. Around the fire they speculated on the whereabouts of Hornaday and McNaney, wondering if they'd chased the herd clear down to the Yellowstone. The air was cooling fast, no wind to signal a change, and it was only after they'd decided the hunters must be spending the night out there, might as well turn in, that a man's voice—or two men, singing—pricked at their ears, one voice low and terribly off key, the other higher and almost sweet-sounding:

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea,

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my Bonnie to me.

A few minutes later two faces appeared at the edge of the firelight, their mouths moving around the words of the song. McNaney, it turned out, was the one who could actually sing. Moffit was dispatched to tend their horses and McAnna loaded up plates for them as everyone waited for the story. Eli had never seen Hornaday so relaxed, his eyes sparkling like quartz. He might have been drunk, except he was steady as a post. McNaney for his part was all smiles as he took his food and burrowed into it, but Hornaday was more interested in talking than eating.

They had stayed with the herd for a good six miles, he explained, shooting a couple of cows on the run, when one of the bulls, the largest, broke off from the rest and headed for a coulee. “This was the one I had my eye on the whole time, a regular monster, and I could hear him breathing like a leaky bellows. But my horse was getting rugged too, and I figured I better get a shot off while I could.”

So he'd reined in, jumped down, thrown his rifle over the top of the saddle to steady himself, and popped off a shot, then popped off one more, the old bull running almost straight away from him. The animal didn't flinch, not right off—but after a dozen or so strides it turned fast like a deer, stumbled, turned back again, then stopped short and stood there. After a minute or two, maybe longer, the old bull went down to his knees, gracefully, then gave up and laid himself out on the ground.

“I stepped it off. A hundred and twenty paces. Shot the old boy on a dead run. Bullet entered the vent, and I figure it took out his lungs or heart, possibly both on the way through. And you should see the horns on him—like scythes. I'm telling you, he'll go two thousand pounds, and five and a half feet at the shoulder. And he's got the longest beard you've ever seen. He's the one I came out here for, boys. After this, everything's gravy.”

The men sat quiet for a moment. The lenses of Hornaday's spectacles flashed and glimmered in the firelight. Then Bayliss rose from across the fire, circled around and extended his hand. Hornaday stood up and took it.

“Congratulations, Professor. I wasn't altogether sure you had it in you.”

Hornaday grinned at that and stayed on his feet to shake hands with the rest of them, Eli included, then retreated to the canvas supply shelter and came back with a small cask, gallon-size, and hoisted it above his head. “Toss out your coffee, men,” he said, provoking a low cheer. Or more like a collective sigh. Some threw their coffee hissing into the fire, while others spilled it on the ground between their feet. Bayliss tossed his over his shoulder. Eli wasn't sure what to do, whether this moment included him at all—he'd never tasted whiskey. But his father nodded at him, and so he emptied his cup in the grass.

Everyone waited until the last man had been served, until Hornaday raised his own cup in a toast: “To all of you,” he said. “And to the American bison, may it live forever.”

At first it was just the buzzing heat that burned all the way down to Eli's stomach, seeping into his chest and arms, and tingling into his fingers. But after a few more swallows there was something different about the men around him—they were quieter, duller somehow—and about his own place among them, as if he'd been removed from the fire and hovered nearby, just outside the circle of light. By the time Hornaday came around with his cask a second time, Eli was watching and listening from a place so far outside himself he wondered whether any of the others could even see him any longer. Ulysses waved Hornaday on by. “Enough,” he said, and took the cup from Eli's hand and filled it with the dark mash from the bottom of the coffee pot.

“Drink that down, you'll feel better.”

Eli sat for the rest of the evening amused but removed from the talk around him, and later remembered only a general low noise and the image of Hornaday loping around on all fours, disappearing into the darkness then galloping back into sight, spectacles askew on his face, rear-end higher than his shoulders, cavorting like some creature from the jungle. And next thing he knew it was morning, and he was being shaken awake by his father.

“Wake up, come on. We've got to go after Hornaday's bull.”

It required Eli's focused concentration to throw off the blanket, get to his feet, and marshall the energy to put on his clothes and boots and coat. By the time he'd saddled the mare, though, the dense matter was lifting and clearing from his brain.

“How you feeling there?” his father asked.

“Good, I think.”

“Glad to hear it. I feel like the devil got inside my head and kicked his way out. Last time I drink any of that man's whiskey.”

With Gumfield following in his wagon, they rode south across the high, frost-covered plateau, not following the course of the Porcupine this time but going as the crow flies, over the rolling tableland, through the prairie dog town, and then past a few high buttes on their right, Hornaday riding up front with Ulysses, Eli following after, Bayliss and Williams at the rear. By midmorning Eli rode asleep, one hand planted behind him on the mare's wide back. Then, before he realized what was happening, Hornaday was off his horse and running on foot toward a blackened mound ahead of them. The man took off his hat and dropped it next to his feet. He folded his hands on top of his balding head.

Eli and the others swung off their mounts.

“Damnation. Sons of bitches.” Tears stood out in Hornaday's eyes. The bull he'd killed had been skinned and its carcass ransacked at the hump and back for the best cuts of meat. The head was intact, but the horns were broken off, and heavy stripes of red and yellow paint were smeared across the nose and forehead. Tied to the base of one of the broken horns was a piece of red flannel. Hornaday pointed at it.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“A message,” Ulysses said: “‘Leave us alone.'”

“Savages,” Hornaday said. “They don't know what they're doing.”

“Oh, they know what they're doing. You can be sure they've been following the same herd.”

Hornaday raised a fist. “I'd hunt them down if I could,” he said.

“They've been hunted down for less.”

His face crooked, Hornaday stared up at Ulysses. “Whose side are you on?” he asked.

“They want us to leave, that's all. Can you blame them?”

“By God I'll blame them if I want to, it's my right.” He picked up his hat and slapped it back on his head. “And look what they got for it. A couple day's worth of meat.”

“They got your attention, Professor.”

Hornaday drew himself to full height, which brought him up to the tip of Ulysses's nose. Eli saw the man's chin ticking, his lips tightening against his teeth, his eyes hardening behind the heavy lenses. “You can stop calling me that,” he said.

“Professor?”

“If you don't respect me, that's your business,” Hornaday said, voice shaking. “But remember, you are still working for me.”

“My apologies.”

Hornaday breathed in and out, blowing hard, as if trying to bring something up from his lungs. Then he turned and walked back to his horse. Mounted, he pointed at Gumfield still sitting on his buckboard. “Quarter it out and haul it back,” he said. “I'll have Williams stay and help. Make sure you don't damage any of the bones.”

“Mr. Hornaday,” Ulysses said. “Can I have your permission to leave and try to parley with the Indians?”

“What for?”

“Doesn't make much sense, does it, everybody chasing after the same animals? I could try to explain what we're doing.”

“They wouldn't understand. They're not capable.”

“I might be able to strike a bargain.”

Hornaday seemed unsure, lifting a hand and crooking an index finger under his nose. He shook his head.

“I've had dealings with the Cheyenne. Give me a chance.”

“Do you speak their language?”

“Enough to get by.”

“Fine, then.” He hauled around on the reins and headed back toward camp, his big black horse picking its way over loose ground.

Ulysses swung up on his saddle and turned the gelding in the other direction toward a high butte that widened at the top, like an anvil. Eli headed after him on the buckskin mare. When they were out of earshot of Gumfield and Williams, he asked, “How are we going to track them over this ground?”

His father pulled up and pointed ahead. “See that?”

“The butte?”

“No, closer. That scrub line. See how it runs down into the coulee?”

A hundred and fifty or two hundred yards off, a faint line of green darkened as it fell away into a cut.

“We get down into that ravine, down along the stream, and I think we'll find their tracks. If we surprised them this morning, and I'll bet that's what happened, they had to find the closest place to disappear.”

The grass was longer in the coulee, the ground softer, and they crisscrossed the width of it three times, angling downstream on foot, leading their horses as they searched for signs. Eli had been praying for this chance ever since the night of the storm. Not that he was looking forward to the confrontation, or the meeting, or whatever it was going to be—if, in fact, they found their man at all. In truth he was afraid, but he wanted to have it over with. He wanted to see what would happen. He wanted his father to be satisfied. As a little boy, when he ate too many of the rich cookies his mother made with butter, or stuffed himself with the ice cream his father made in the wintertime, he always suffered for his pleasure, his stomach doing a slow, terrible turn. His practice, in those moments, had been to get up at the first trace of discomfort, go outside in the backyard, and stick a finger down his throat. He was never one to wait it out, in the hope he might be spared—because he knew better. Just like he knew now from the look in his father's eyes that Ulysses was getting no rest from the need that drove him.

From down beneath a stunted cottonwood, Ulysses called out, “Here,” and motioned for Eli to join him. “What do you think?” he asked.

Eli saw hoofprints in the gray-brown soil, several of them, not as large as the prints of their own animals. Indian ponies. Moving ahead they found more, and by the time they reached damp ground nearer the stream, the tracks were plentiful and clear. Three ponies, as best they could tell, moving farther into the draw, northwest, at a fast walk or easy trot. The cut narrowed and deepened as they went, filling with scrub cedar and greasewood, the stream flowing faster now, more than just a trickle.

“This is a tributary of Taylor Creek, or I think it is. We're angling more to the west now, and Taylor dumps into the Missouri.”

“What if this gets us killed?” Eli said.

Ulysses reined in the gelding. He said, “We don't even know it's him.”

“Then what are we doing?”

His father looked over, showing a flash of tooth. “You're right.”

Eli said, “You don't care if you die, do you?”

His father looked at him for a long moment. “Eli, it's time you ride on back. You have nothing more to prove.”

“You think I'm trying to prove something? It's not about proving. We're not enough for you—Mom, Danny, me.” And hearing it come off his own tongue like that, it sounded like the truth.

Ulysses urged the gelding ahead but then reconsidered and reined in, letting Eli ride up alongside him again. “That's what I kept telling myself—what you just said. I kept thinking, ‘Look at what you've got—a wife you love, and two sons. Nothing else matters.' But you know what? I was wrong. Because no matter what he has, there are things a man can't leave behind, things beyond him. There's right and wrong, Eli, and I think what I'm doing is right—I don't know how else to say it. God help me.”

“What about me?”

“God help you, too.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“Look, son, that first night down by the Yellowstone I did my best to explain it all. I didn't mislead you. I told you what I was doing, and you know how it stands. You're a man now, or you had better be, and I'm not going to tell you what to do anymore. You'll have to make a choice. Just you.”