The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (16 page)

We rolled out of bed at 3
A.M
., caught up the oxen, hitched, and had breakfast, squatting around the fire, still in the deep dark. We always had firewood laid out from the night before, and the women made breakfast in silence, feeling a little poorly and not quite up to snuff, the way women do in the mornings. It was best to leave them alone. Jennie was apt to snap your head off, and even Mrs. Kissel took on a kind of mournful note, which was aimed at the general misery of being a woman, I judged, and not centered on any one person like her husband. So the smartest thing was to let them pitch in and work; it’s my observation that nothing’s as handy for taking the kinks out of a woman as work.

Shivering a little, for these early mornings on the prairie were cold even in June, we had bacon, left-over biscuits, and several cups of black coffee, and I noticed that Brice, the pale, thin-haired young widower, still wasn’t eating much. But Jennie would fill his plate and shove it in his hand whether he wanted it or not. There’s no telling what might have happened otherwise, because Brice couldn’t seem to bounce back from the loss of his wife. Mostly he said little, answered questions pleasantly, and always was willing to help, but it was as if he didn’t have any push of his own. That is, he would half kill himself if somebody told him what to do, but he couldn’t
start
anything. I believe he would have sat over a dead campfire till the buzzards got him. I’d heard him in the night, too, whimpering—dreaming, or lying awake thinking of home.

It was a fresh, clear morning with the stars out in smears and clusters. Off in the distance you could hear animals barking,
coyotes or wolves, and the oxen stamped around, lowing, ready to move. It felt good to be a boy and off adventuring. I remember eating an uncommon lot that morning, and I’m glad I did, for it turned out to be an unusual day, and required strength. As my father finished his one-man conversation—he was always bubbling over at 3
A.M
., in the gabbiest of spirits, but since nobody else cared to talk, he just rattled on alone—Coulter rode by on his Indian pony to see that we squashed our fire. “Get it out—every last ember,” he called from the saddle. “Rain’s been scarce and you’ve never lived till you’ve seen a prairie fire on the roar.”

“Confound that detestable bore,” my father fumed when he was gone. “I don’t know how much longer I can swallow those pompous advices.”

I think Coulter, to my father, represented all the spoil-sports in the world rolled into one. At exactly the wrong times he kept sounding warning notes that pricked my father’s happiest dreams. For instance, on the second day out, we bought a white horse from the mule party that was dropping back, and paid only a few dollars for it. He was so blown up with pride at turning a bargain that he talked it all over camp, referring to the animal, for some reason, as “horseflesh,” a professional word he’d got out of the
Turf Register
, I judged. And then Coulter exploded this bubble, too. As they passed, Coulter riding his mean-looking pinto and my father, as he said, “superbly mounted” on “Cream,” which was the name this white horse went by, Coulter held up a hand to stop him and remarked:

“You’ll probably have to shoot that horse when it gets a little hotter.”

It wouldn’t take much imagination to see the look on my father’s face. “Things must be well in hand if you can take time from your duties to play the clown,” he said.

“No joke. White horses aren’t worth a dried lizard skin on the plains. They attract bugs. Bugs will pester him out of his wits.”

“In that case,” said my father, so angry he was ready to swap insults like a child, “Cream and your mongrel can start off even.”

“Color aside, Indian ponies are the only ones can stand the strain.”

“I’m obliged for your counsel,” my father said stiffly, and rode off.

Well, when we got scraped up after breakfast, with both wagons ready to move, he said I could ride Cream for a while, and we waited for “Gee-whoa-haw!” It came at last, and the wagon at that end wheeled out of formation and took the trail, behind Coulter, and, after him, McBride, who rode a range stud about as savage and low-down as the owner.

The wagons at night were driven into an oval, like this:

It made a good barricade against Indians, Coulter said, and could be defended against a large force. The cooking was done outside the enclosure, and the cattle turned out to graze until dark, then brought back inside. Later on, in the bad Indian country, the cattle had to be staked to feed outside, but we weren’t there yet. So far, all we’d seen were Shawnees and Pottawattomies, with a few Otoes and Kaws, a poverty-struck bunch that wanted to come up and beg, but Coulter wouldn’t let them. “Never let an Indian in camp,” he said. “Never under any conditions.” Even at that, he was easier about them than his “protégé,” who was itching to kill a few and notch up his guns.

“A man orta put the smelly devils in their place, once he gets the chance,” McBride told us.

Twice Coulter had to haul him off when he tried to ride down little traveling groups within a few yards of us. Coulter also made
a speech in which he cautioned about straying off from camp. He told Jennie she was playing “ring-toss” with her life by going out to hunt. “Indians along here are mainly harmless but they’ll swallow up a straggler and leave nothing but his bones. And in your case,” he went on, looking her impudently in the eye, “they’ll breed you to half of the tribe. If that’s what you’re after, go ahead.”

She shook her head in disgust, but I noticed she stayed within shouting distance of the train for several days.

While my father walked along beside Kissel, I rode Cream on up ahead, past the train, almost to Coulter, who had taken what he called the “point,” a word he’d got in Texas—say two hundred yards in front. McBride was nowhere to be seen. It was about four-thirty now, and a few pale streaks, the false dawn, showed in the East where the real dawn was about to break. Looking back, I could see one or two wagons with lanterns out, where people were sick, maybe; but mostly it was dark.

We’d left the Vermilion (our crossing had been made Saturday afternoon) and were headed for the Big Blue, a jump of twenty-four miles without water or wood. To save Cream, I slid off and walked for half an hour or so, until it really began to get dawn. Suddenly, out of the mist up ahead, far beyond Coulter, a number of shots rang out, noisy and jarring in all that silence. Two nearly together and then, a moment later, a third.

“Whoa-haw!” Coulter yelled back, waving. “Hold up the train!”

I leaped up on Cream, not wanting to miss anything, and streaked forward at a gallop, and behind me I could hear others coming a-horseback. Through the mist that hung in the hollows over the prairie I saw Coulter fanning his horse with his heels, his body not rising an inch from the saddle; he could ride and no mistake.

We whipped over a rise, down an incline, and out onto a barish spot, where I could see something on the ground. Coulter was off and running before his horse stopped. Then I saw the trouble; it was McBride, standing with a revolver in each hand, and before him, on the patchy grass, a terrible sight. An Indian woman sprawled
there, both hands clutching her breast, which was rising and falling in gasps, and worse, at her feet lay a little boy of about seven, black-haired and handsome, holding a toy deer made out of deerskin-shot dead through the neck—and a girl one or two years younger with her head blown apart so bad I couldn’t to say honestly look at it.

As we stood there a second, maybe too stunned to move, the woman arched up with her back, quivered a little at the top, and sank slowly down; she had died. Then I heard rather than saw Coulter’s heavy fist meet McBride’s face with a thwack, and his cry of, “You crazy damned murdering fool!”

Not much damaged, McBride scuttled around on the ground like a crawfish, to a crouching position, and made a motion to draw one of his guns.

“Go ahead,” said Coulter. “Pull it out. Get it two inches out of the holster and you’ll eat it, bullets and all.”

“You’re not my father,” the boy screamed. “What business you got telling me what to do?”

Coulter reached down with both hands on McBride’s coat and jerked him up so far he had to let him back down to stand. “You loud-mouthed tinhorn, are you trying to get this train masacreed?”

“Nobody hits me and gets away with it.”

Sick as I was, I enjoyed seeing Coulter yank away his guns, then kick him about ten feet in the direction of his horse, saying, “Ride back to the wagon—get inside and stay there.” Picking up his hat, which had fallen off, he added, “Move off that wagon seat, I’ll stake you out and rawhide you in front of the whole camp.”

By this time, more of the men had got up, including Mr. Kennedy and some others I knew, and they dismounted, looking grave.

“This is a fine business, Mr. Coulter.”

Coulter was down on his knees beside the woman and made no direct answer. “Traveling Pawnees,” he said finally, “and pretty far south.” He stood up. “What’s done’s done, but we may see trouble before we’re through. Pawnees aren’t Pottawattomies of Shawnees. They’ve been chewed up some by the Sioux to the north
and the Comanches south, but they can still raise a fight. They ain’t apt to swallow this lightly.”

“What do you recommend?” asked Mr. Kennedy.

“Get a burial detail started and keep the train moving. Maybe we won’t be blamed, but I’ve got an idee we’re under watch right this minute.”

They dug one long grave and laid out that poor woman and the young ones in blankets, side by side, and left the toy deer in the boy’s hand. Then Coulter made them smooth over the grass with leaves and twigs, as if nothing had happened, and carry the extra dirt off and throw it away. Some of the men protested, saying it was downright un-Christian to give them unmarked graves, but Coulter shut them up sharp.

When the train caught up, I got off Cream and told my father and the others what happened, and Mrs. Kissel and Jennie snuffled a little; they said what a pity, and how they’d like to get their hands on McBride.

Well, not long after that, somebody noticed he was missing. Coulter searched in his wagon and had others look around, too, but the boy wasn’t to be found. His horse was gone, also, but his hat was still inside the wagon. There was nothing to be done except go on, so we plodded ahead slowly, over the faint ruts visible through the weeds. The sun sailed up high—it was hot today—and making it worse we spent an hour climbing one of those swells, like young mountains almost. From the summit was spread out a sight I’m not ever apt to forget. Indians were massed across a valley as far as the eye could see, waiting. They were mostly braves, but I could spot women and children, too. Coulter waved down the train, and we stopped.

Our menfolk made their way forward to get instructions. “I don’t think it’s an attack,” said Coulter, standing by his pony, watching.

As he got the words out, there came a scream from the other hill that brought goose-pimples out on my arms. It was followed by one after another, rising and falling. Then I saw that the
Indians in front had washed away, sort of, to show what went on in the center. To a long pole stuck in the ground, McBride, stark-naked, stood trussed by thongs that passed under his chin then around his wrists and ankles. We could just make it out from that distance. But he wasn’t quite all there. Two braves with knives that flashed sun glints were busy beside him, and I could see large raw patches that were red where he should have been white.

“They’re skinning him alive,” said Coulter.

I stopped my ears to shut out the screams; I couldn’t stand any more. Two or three men in our group uncovered their heads, and I could see one’s lips moving. Another went back to make the women stay in the wagons. And after that, we just waited, standing in the sun, with the prairie and its flowers all around, beautiful and wild, and no movement anywhere except the work going forward across the hill. They said McBride’s screaming died down to crying and begging before they finished, and for a while almost to nothing—long silences and between them short cries that rose up into wails and sent the birds flying.

When it was over, and the Pawnees had retreated from the dripping body that was still alive on the stake, Coulter and a few of our group with strong stomachs, including my father, who hadn’t one, followed up the hill as the tribe vanished into the waving grass.

It seemed impossible, but McBride recognized Coulter out of what face he had left and began crying, “Kill me, kill me!”

“Anything to be done, doc?” asked Coulter.

“Not a thing,” said my father. “Thirty or forty minutes at the most.”

Coulter unholstered his long-barreled .45 and shot McBride through the head with no more expression than if he’d been finishing off a deer. Except to say, “We’ll double the herd guard every night till we’re over the Platte,” he never mentioned this Indian meeting again. But I judged he felt sore and miserable for falling down so bad on his old friend’s child. Even so, it was concern
wasted, as I saw it. Nobody short of a saint could have reformed that snarling pest, and I heard several of the men say the same. He was born for trouble, as a good many are. If we could only see it in advance, the kindest thing would be to kill them in the cradle.