Heaven and Hell (87 page)

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He crossed the main room, guided by a glow behind the blanket.

The Cheyenne girl was uttering deep, loud moans. Bent peeked past the edge of the blanket. A dim lantern showed him the girl's sweating backside; she was astride the whiskey trader, pumping up and down with her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Glyn was rubbing her breasts.

Both hands were in sight, and his shotgun was leaning against the wall, well out of reach. Good. What counted now was speed.

Bent tore the blanket aside and took three strides to the bed. In that interval, Green Grass Woman shrieked and Glyn's eyes popped open. He started to grab for his shotgun but gave up. "What the hell are you doing in here, Dayton?"

"I want this place," he said, smiling.

"Why, you damn fool, it isn't for sale."

Bent reached past the Indian girl's forearm and shot him above the eyes. He dragged the body to the other room, then went back in, unbuttoned his pants and rolled her on her back. She took him in, too frightened to do otherwise.

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So Bent acquired the whiskey ranch. Two days later three other Caddoes appeared. In broken English they asked about Glyn, whom Bent had buried a half-mile away. "Gone. He sold me the place." The Caddoes didn't question that. He made four dollars on whiskey before they left.

Green Grass Woman didn't seem to care who her man was so long as he permitted her to drink gin. The cheapest, sweetest of gin, Bent discovered after one taste, which he spat out. Septimus Glyn must have been a prime seducer to corrupt the young girl so completely. One morning Bent refused her the gin to see what would happen. She begged. He continued to refuse. She wept. He still said no. She fell to her knees and tore at the buttons of his trousers. Astonished, he let her confirm his belief that all women were depraved whores. While she still held his legs, he pushed her head back and poured some gin into her mouth. He

didn't see the boy standing at the door, one hand holding the red blanket aside. His.feet were bare, his gray work shirt stiff with dirt, his eyes huge in his blank face.

At sunset of the seventh day, Bent began to feel at home. He'd
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hung up the frayed, cracked oil painting of Madeline Main's mother, and cleaned up the place. Just before the light went, he stepped outside with his arm around Green Grass Woman. Her big soft breast pushed against his side and her hip moved against his in an arousing way.

Little Gus, left largely to himself, had gotten acquainted with the tame raccoon. He was chasing it along the creek bank in the reddening light. The creek shone like flowing blood, and in the cool evening air Bent heard a sound he hadn't heard in a while. Little Gus's merry laughter.

Well, why not let him laugh? He'd be deprived of the chance soon enough. Bent was now set on his plan. He would wait a few more months; perhaps until the autumn or early winter. By then Charles Main would be trying to accustom himself to the idea that his son was lost.

At that time, just when he could be expected to be learning to deal with his grief, Bent would move to renew it. Send him news that Gus had remained alive most of the year and had only recently been killed. It would be a double-edged death, guilt compounding the pain. All his days, Charles Main would be haunted by the thought that his son might have lived if he hadn't abandoned the search, as Bent was certain he had by now. Of course he'd have to deliver parts of the boy's body to prove he was dead. His razor would be helpful.

Little Gus's laughter rang through the sundown. Green Grass Woman rested her cheek on Bent's right shoulder. He was happy. The world I', was good.

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Charles turned the corner and flattened against the front of the sod house. He held his revolver chest high, cocked. One of the horses whinnied, a faint sound. Gray Owl was holding them about half a mile away in some cottonwoods.

Charles smelled the odor of fireplace ashes. It leaked from the mud chimney, with no trace of smoke. A fire had been banked carelessly, or in haste. Horse droppings in the corral were at least a day old; shod horses had chopped up the ground. No one would farm here, Charles reasoned. They had found the base of some renegade traders.

A muddy boot toe appeared at the far corner of the house. Magic Magee slid around the corner and crept along with his back to the wall.

The afternoon light was dimming fast and changing color, to a strange golden-green. Westward, the clouds of a monster storm came toward the house like a carpet unrolling in the sky. Magee watched Charles for
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a cue. The black man wore his derby with the wild turkey feather, but nothing to identify him as a soldier.

Charles listened at the plank door. The rumbling of the storm would muffle any but the loudest voice. He heard nothing. The wind picked up dust suddenly. Branches of some cottonwoods behind Magee began to toss and clack together. There was going to be a ferocious blow.

The wind dried the sweat gathering in Charles's beard. Magee crept closer, to the opposite side of the door. Charles held up three fingers, then silently mouthed the count. On three, he leaped in front of the door and booted it. Some huge heavy thing hurtled from the darkness straight at his face. He fired twice.

The echoes of the shots sank into the storm's rumble. Magee's eye followed the bird that had swooped away above Charles's head, almost knocking his hat off. "Gray Owl's helper."

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The owl vanished into the dark roiling mass of cloud. With one hand over the other on his Colt, Charles jumped inside the sod house.

He smelled the residual odor of tobacco smoke beneath the stronger smell of the ashes. Someone had indeed splashed water on the fire; he saw the bucket. Everything pointed to a quick departure. Who knew the reason?

He put the revolver away. "Tell Gray Owl to bring up the horses.

We might as well shelter here until the storm's over."

Magee nodded and left. There was no need to say anything.

Charles's discouragement was evident.

The rain fell, hammering torrents of it. They broke up an old chair and relit the fire. It provided some light but didn't do much to relieve the pervasive damp. The horses neighed loudly and often. The lightning was bright, the thunder-peals deafening.

Gray Owl squatted in a corner with his blanket drawn around him.

He looked years older. Or perhaps Charles thought so because he felt that way himself. He gnawed on jerky and watched Magee practicing shuffles and cuts with an old deck.

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They'd been searching for two and a half weeks. They'd circled southwest to avoid Camp Supply and had found this house on Wolf Creek. Charles had hoped to question the occupants but whoever they were, they had made an abrupt departure, which made him nervous.

The steady rain deepened his discouragement. It fell hour after hour. Coming down so heavily, it would flood away any sign that might have helped them. Not that they had found much so far, beyond the inevitable tracks of Army detachments on patrol. If there were other human beings round about, perhaps white men trading illegally, this house was the first indication.

Charles lay awake long after the fire went out. His mind kept turning to images of his son, and. imaginary ones in which Bent, pictured as Charles remembered him, murdered George Hazard's wife and stole her earring. That detail more than any other filled him with enormous dread. Years ago, in Texas, Bent was marginally sane. Not even that could be said now.

They discovered in the morning that two of the horses had snapped their tethers and escaped.

The storm lasted until noon, flooding low spots and carving new gullies. As they prepared to leave the sod house Charles noticed Ma gee's face. Saddling his horse, the black man looked gloomy, which wasn't like him.

54 " HEAVEN AND HELL

Gray Owl approached with a certain deference. "How much longer o we search?"

"Until I say otherwise."

"There is no trail to follow. The man and boy could have gone nywhere. Or turned back."

"I know that, but I just can't give up. You go back if you want."

'here was resentment in his voice.

"No. But Magee, it is not easy for him to be away." Puzzled, Charles waited. "He has a squaw now. A good Delaware woman whose msband died."

"Until he tells me he wants to go back, we're going on. All three of us."

Gray Owl felt pain for his friend. The pursuit was futile. Not even

:he cleverest tracker could find a man and a child when the trail was so
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aid and the country so huge and full of hiding places.

One misty morning in a stand of pines -- on the ninth of April, by Charles's careful count of the days -- the three men stood with hands muzzling the fretful horses while, not a hundred feet away, three troops of cavalry trotted by in a shallow creek. They were Kansas state troops, probably some of the Nineteenth Volunteer Cavalry old Crawford had raised and brought in to support Sheridan. Gray Owl's pony tossed his head free and whinnied. Charles cursed under his breath. A yellow haired lieutenant, a pink-faced farmer boy, glanced sharply to the misty pines. He pulled his horse out of the column and sat staring at the trees.

Charles prayed a clumsy wordless prayer. The farmer boy on horseback chewed his lip, doubtful about what he'd heard because the horses and men in the column were quite noisy. He tugged his rein and rode on.

In five minutes the splashing stopped; the water flowed calmly again; the troopers were gone.

April brought the crows and the redbirds. Any shower brought a profusion of hoptoads afterward. The sweet blooming fecundity of the spring embittered Charles unreasonably. He slept deeply at night, and had many dreams. He had never felt so tired or hopeless. Conversation among the three men had long ago diminished to the minimum necessary to convey a question or the day's plan.

One morning, early, they spied the distant mass of the southern buffalo herd, returning north with the warm weather. They rode hard and reached the herd in two hours. They killed one cow, gorged themselves on fresh roasted meat and packed all they would be able to eat before spoilage. Buzzards kept them company, awaiting their departure.

The ride to the buffalo reminded Charles again of the vastness of The Hanging Road 555

the Territory. A whole army corps could be maneuvering and they might miss it. He'd convinced himself that he could search the Territory as you'd search a room. He was desperate; he had to think that way. Now he saw the foolishness of it. He was thinking more realistically. That befitted a man who'd partnered with the Jackson Trading Company, but it whittled away his hope.

The mood of his companions didn't help. Magee was morose because of the Delaware woman, and Gray Owl because he couldn't guide them with any success. He was failing in his life's purpose.

They rode for hours without speaking, each man sunk into himself.

The Wichitas rose in the south like monuments in a flat field.

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Wending across the lower slopes on the western side, they found abundant sign. A large number of Indians had pitched their tipis about a week ago. So many Indians -- several hundred by Charles's estimate -- that time and weather had not yet been able to erase all the traces.

After they camped that night, Charles went searching on foot in the sparkling dewy morning. He discovered a rusted trade kettle which he picked up and pressed with his thumb, immediately making a hole in the thin rust. It was an impoverished village that had camped here.

Gray Owl trudged up. "Come see this," he said.

Charles followed him down to the base of the peak to a set of travois pole tracks that had survived. He knelt to study them. Between the pole tracks he saw the prints of wide moccasined feet. He brushed his fingers lightly over one print, half obliterating it. The print belonged to a woman, and a heavy one; no man would pull a travois.

Charles pushed his black hat back and said what Gray Owl already knew. "There are no more dogs. They've eaten them. They're starving.

They didn't move because they wanted to; they're in flight. From here they could logically go south. Or west, to Texas. Maybe all the way into the llano."

Gray Owl knew the llano -- the staked plains; a scrubby, inhospitable wilderness. "West," he said, nodding.

They rode with a little more energy. Here at last was a large group of people, one or more of whom might have seen a white man and a boy. Charles knew the odds against it but at least it was a crumb. Until now, they'd been starving.

The sign of so large a migration was easy to follow. They tracked the village to the North Fork of the Red, then northwestward along it for a day and a half. Suddenly there was confusing sign. The remains of another encampment and, across the river, trampled hoof-marked earth, which showed that a second large body of Indians had joined the first.

Gray Owl left for a day, scouting north and east. He returned at a 556 ' HEAVEN AND HELL

gallop. "All moved east from here," he said. His skin was free of sweat despite his blanket and the hot spring day.

Magee used his nail to scratch bird droppings from his derby. "Don't make sense. The forts are east."

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"Nevertheless, that is the way."

Charles had a hunch. "Let's go on up the river a while. Let's see if all of them rode east."

Next morning they found a campsite where perhaps thirty lodges had stood. The day after that, they found the grandfather.

He was resting in cottonwoods with a few possessions from his medicine bundle -- feathers, a claw, a pipe -- spread around him. The malevolent odor of a chancred leg seeped from under his buffalo robe.

He was old, his skin like wrinkled brown wrapping paper. He knew his death was imminent and showed no fear of the oddly assorted trio. Gray Owl questioned him.

His name was Strong Bird. He told them the reason for the great migration eastward. Some six hundred Cheyennes under chiefs Red Bear, Gray Eyes and Little Robe had decided to surrender to the soldiers at Camp Wichita rather than die of starvation or face the bullets of the soldiers of General Creeping Panther, who was roaming the Territory sweeping up bands of resisters. The grandfather was part of a group that had bolted with Red Bear after he changed his mind about surrendering.