The Big Sky (10 page)

He went back in the tavern. The sheriff was still slouched in his chair, looking sleepy and kind of loose. There was the key on the table, caught in its circle of thong. Bedwell was at the bar, talking with three men. Curly Locks came over and smelled of Jim when he came in and followed along to a chair, holding his head up to be scratched. The circle would go over the big head all right, and nice and snug, too. It would be a little thing to slip it on.

The sheriff belched and stirred and filled his glass, spilling a little down his chin when he drank. His eyes held Jim. "Don't recollect seein' you around before."

"First time."

"I recollect," the sheriff said. "You're buyin' mules." He slumped back. There was the key and here the dog, and the sheriff's eyes half-closed and maybe unseeing.

Jim's hand was easing out when he heard running footsteps outside. The door of the tavern burst open. "Sheriff!" The man who had entered looked around, spotted the sheriff, and strode over to him. "Matt Elliott's comin' in. He searched out his cow. The one that was stole."

The sheriff's eyes lifted and came to focus. The men at the bar had turned, looking and listening.

The man blurted, "He's got the feller what stole her, too. In his wagon, with his tail full of lead. I ran ahead, soon's I learned."

The sheriff got up, pulled himself together, and made for the door. The men at the bar trooped out after him. Shorty was at the door, looking out. Jim's eyes ran around the room. There wasn't anybody, except Curly Locks, and there was the key, lying on the table. His hand went out and took it in and tucked it in his pocket. He got up, feeling his heart thumping in his throat. "Reckon I'll put my horse up," he said as he edged past the tavern keeper.

This must be the jail all right. With the key Jim poked for the keyhole. The lock screeched as he turned. He loosened the hasp from the staple and gave the door a little push and whispered, "Boone! Boone!" It was a time before he got an answer. "It's me, Jim Deakins."

He heard a voice then, just a blurt of sound like a man surprised, and heard Boone's feet, moving slow and uneven. "Jim!"

"Don't ask no questions. Git on the horse. Quick! We'll ride double."

Even in the dark Jim could see that Boone moved like an old man, an old man just getting out of a chair and waiting for his joints to ease. "Hurry, up, Boone!"

Jim wouldn't have known Boone's voice. "Goddam 'eml Goddam 'em! I'll kill 'em." Boone wasn't even fixing to get on the horse.

"You'll get kilt. Come on, Boone! They'll be on to us in a shake."

"He whopped me! He whopped me till I was near dead." Boone's voice broke. "I'll kill him, I tell you." He jerked his arm loose from Jim's grasp and faced toward the town. "Stoled my gun, too!"

"You want to go to St. Louis, don't you, Boone? That's what counts. Not this here. You want to trap beaver and fight Injuns and live like a natural man."

"Not yit, I don't."

"Shhh. You want to get 'em down on us! Come on, now. We got to hurry. Bedwell's horse's at the rack, and the sheriff's, too. Won't take 'em long to ketch us if we don't get goin'."

"You see my gun?"

"You ain't got a chanct to git it, Boone. Not a chanct. Climb on, now."

"It's mine, all the same."

"Sure it's yours. Sure it is. I'11 help you get it, some time, come a chanct. I promise. Git on!"

"I'm bound to get even," Boone said, letting himself be urged toward the horse. "You can't talk me out'n it."

"Sure. But not now. Some time."

Boone's hand felt for the neck of the horse, and his foot lifted and fell back. "It ain't no use. I can't git on, Jim, I'm that stove up."

"Here. I'll help. Easy now. I'll ride behind. Rein him around, Boone. Hear? You're bound smack back into town. Turn him! Godamighty, Boone! The other way! Are you crazy?"

Boone sat stiff as a pole. There was no give-in to his voice. "I told you I was bound to get even. I'll keep to the shadders. If it's so's it can be, Goddam 'em, me and you's both going to have a horse."

It seemed to Jim that the little whinings of the saddle and the creak of the horse's joints and the soft thump of its hoofs could be heard as plain as any shout. The dark wasn't so thick but that an eye could see them, looming big and sneaky. From down the road came the sound of voices and of turning wheels.

Boone pulled up across the road from the tavern and handed the reins back to Jim. Not speaking, he tried to get off. Jim moved back on the horse to give Boone's stiff leg room to come over.

Jim could make out the horses tied at the rack. Down the road the sounds were getting louder. Nothing was in sight, though. Night hid the sheriff and the men and Matt Elliott and the thief with the lead in his tail. Boone limped across the road as if he didn't give a damn who saw him. Light from the tavern made a shadow out him, a shadow moving by the big shadows that were the horses. After what seemed like a year, the little shadow moved away from the rack and a big one followed it. They came straight across to Jim, seeming to make loud noises as they moved, seeming to make an easy sight of themselves.

"There, by God!" Boone said, and got his foot up and pulled himself into the saddle.

"Best walk soft for a ways," Jim said under his breath.

The sounds down the road were so close now he expected any time to hear a voice cry out, telling that a horse had been stolen. "Easy, Boone, I tell you."

The voices faded as they walked the horses along. After a while they were no more than far echoes. Dim ahead of them, like a swath through the trees, the road opened, leading to Vincennes, leading to St. Louis.

"Now we can git," Jim said, and kicked his horse into a run. Already Boone was galloping ahead.
 
 

The camp was silent, except now and then for the mutter of one man to another and the clink of spoons against metal plates. The fire around which they were circled glowed and died and glowed again as the breeze played with it. Against the river the keelboat
Mandan
was a black shape, raising a slim finger into the sky.

Boone sopped up the bean juice with a piece of corn bread and swallowed the last of his bitter coffee. The food tasted better than city fare, for all that it was plain. The three weeks he had passed in St. Louis waiting for a chance to go west would do him for a time. It didn't suit him to be where people were so thick, though he had got himself a good-enough job working in a livery stable, where he fed and brushed down horses and cleaned carriages and tidied up the stalls. Jim, having more learning and more liking for folks, had found work in a store, where he got to parcel out beans and meal and copperas.

Summers, the hunter, got up and looked at the men about the fire. His eye fixed on the patron. As if to break a spell he said, "I be dogged, Jourdonnais, keep feedin' us them bastardly white beans and I do believe well blow your boat to the Roche Jaune." The men looked at him unsmiling, their eyes catching glints from the fire.

"It is the gran' idea," Jourdonnais answered. He brought his feet up in a cross-legged squat and spread his hands. "If only the res' could make the wind like you."

The cook arose and stirred the pot that hung over the fire. The rushes that the men had tramped down to make a camping place squeaked under his step. "We maybe need that wind," he said while he screwed his face against the heat. "Ten days from St. Louis, and already two men down."

"We will eat the meat," the patron continued, "when Monsieur Summers shoots it."

The hunter's lean face grinned at Boone. In the firelight his buckskins looked ghostly. "Jourdonnais would like a milk cow. He would now." To Jourdonnais he said, "You'll have meat aplenty when we hit meat country." He moved off toward the bank where the boat lay. Boone rolled over on his side and watched him, saw him walk up the plank angled against her side, and disappear in the bow.

Jim Deakins was lying on his belly. He reached out and put a hand on Boone's arm. "Which you rather do, tow or pole or row?"

"I'd rather set and let the wind work."

"If it just would." Jim brought his hand before his face and spread the fingers wide. "That towline like to wore me to the bone. I pret' near hope we have to pole tomorrow. Or get stuck."

"It don't seem to bother the French."

"God, no! And it don't gall a woodchuck to dig a hole or a hound to run. They don't know no better. They don't know nothin' but workin' a boat up this river."

Summers was a white shadow against the black of the cargo box. He came back without a sound and stood while the eyes of the men questioned him. Jourdonnais looked up. Summers' face made a little sidewise move as if the news was bad.

"It is the bellyache, no more," said Jourdonnais, and gave his gaze back to the fire. "Tomorrow, all right. Better, at the least."

The men around the fire looked at one another and at the hunter again. "Zephyr got down a dose of honey and whisky."

"Good. With the calomel he be all right."

The bosseman got up, moving with a sort of heavy care, as if he still held in his hands the pole he plied from the bow of the
Mandan
. To Boone, his chest looked as deep as a horse's. "Holy Jesus," he said, "how they die sometimes!"

With one hand the patron pushed his black mustaches up from his mouth, as if to clear the way for his words. His voice was sharp. "Must you see death always, Romaine? It is the bellyache, for women to worry of."

Romaine muttered, "Brain fever, black tongue, lung fever, bellyache, it is sickness."

Like a hand on him, Boone felt the silence. Against it there was only the busy lipping of the water and the whisper of the wind in the walnuts. A half-moon, clear and bold, mounted the eastern sky. A raw chill was in the air that crept through the clothes and drew up the skin.

The cook fed the fire, fixing food against tomorrow. It crackled and sent a flame at the black underbulge of the pot. The cook said, "In sickness whisky is good. Much whisky."

Jourdonnais didn't answer. Summers lighted his pipe with a brand. His voice was light and joking. "You'll get plenty of whisky, all the Injuns can't drink."

"If there are any to swallow it."

"Tres bien," conceded Jourdonnais. "Morning and night, whisky for all, until the bellyache is gone."

The hunter sat down at Boone's side. He and Deakins and Boone made a little group by themselves. "How long since you seed Uncle Zeb?" Boone asked.

"Well, now, it's a spell. Five or six year, I'm thinking. Me and him been on many a spree, like I told you. Could be we'll run into him. That hoss is somewhere's around, if he ain't gone under."

Boone studied the hunter's face. It was a face that a body took to, a lined, lean, humorous face with a long chin. Boone felt good, deep down in him, that Summers acted so friendly to Jim and him. Like as not, that was because of Uncle Zeb.

Summers was looking around at the men. "When the French don't sing they ain't right."

"Sure enough?"

"They're skeered of the boat now, and the sick. Time we get up river where the Injuns are bad they'll be wantin' to sleep on board, I'm thinking, and to anchor out from shore to boot."

Boone hitched himself closer. "It's fair country up there, I reckon."

Summers looked at him, and his mouth made a small smile. "Wild. Wild and purty, like a virgin woman. Whatever a man does he feels like he's the first one done it." He halted and was silent for a long time, his gaze on the fire.

Boone wondered whether he was thinking of the upcountry or of a woman. It wouldn't be a woman like the one he had bedded with on the night before they put out, a smelly woman in a crib who demanded a dollar first and answered to it like a man setting out to do a job of work.

He could feel her squirm under him. Her breath blew against his ear. "Not so damn rough, honey. Christ, you kids are just like mountaineers the first night back!" It was a tired and whiny voice, and his ears told him, better than his eyes could, that she was old. Her perfume made a sick fog around him. Beneath it he smelled the animal of her. He rolled from the bunk when he had done and put on his boots. Her voice followed him into the street. "Don't forget me, honey." Forget? He'd remember a sight too well to come back. Jim had stood outside, licking his mouth like a dog after a feed. "God, you're poky!" he said. "Yours good, too?"

The hunter's voice picked up the thread of his thought. "I seen most of it. Colter's Hell and the Seeds-kee-dee and the Tetons standin' higher'n clouds, and north and south from Nez Perce to Comanche, but God Almighty, there's nothin' richer'n the upper Missouri. Or purtier. I seen the Great Falls and traveled Maria's River, dodgin' the Blackfeet, makin' cold camps and sometimes thinkin' my time was up, and all the time livin' wonderful, loose and free's ary animal. That's some, that is."

"Lord God!"

"A man gets a taste for it."

The hunter filled his pipe. His eye went around the camp site. Most of the men were down, but not yet asleep. An uneasy murmur came from them. "Git the French away from water and they ain't worth a damn, but they shine with a boat."

Jourdonnais came over to them and sat down sighing, as if he had a weight of trouble on him.
"Sacre crapaud!"
he said softly.

"Sickness, and so soon."

"No cause to worry about these two," answered Summers between puffs on his pipe. "They'll stick, I'm bettin'."

Jourdonnais looked at Jim and then at Boone.

"We aim to go where the boat goes," Jim said, "long as you're payin' us."

"And you, Caudill?"

"I come a right smart piece a'ready. I ain't turnin' back."

"You are signed," said Jourdonnais, as if to clinch the matter. "The deserter 'ave hard time."

He got out a cigar and lit it from Summers' pipe. When he drew on it the small red glow spread to his face. "She's a long night."
The hunter knocked the heel from his pipe. "How's Romaine?"

"Ah! All right. He complain, but he stick. He is with me a long time, and always faithful."