The Big Sky (4 page)

The man looked as if he had his doubts, but he motioned them on.
 

"It wasn't so short at that," Deakins told Boone when they were under way again. "Not more'n two-three cents. I had to cut 'er with a chisel, which ain't as close as shears."

The afternoon dragged on and the winter sky came down. Darkness lay like a fog on the ridges.

"I'd love to get shet of this here body." Deakins' voice sounded uneasy. "Maybe we could get there afore mornin' if we kep' goin' and the mules held out."

"Got to git him there tonight?"

"No. Tomorrow'll do, long as it's cold like this. I got feed for the mules and a bedroll and some beans and side meat cooked up and a piece of corn bread. But I'd just as leave not spend the night with a corpse." Deakins' eyes of a sudden were hopeful. "It's best to stop, though. Would you keer to stay with me?"

"I was fixin' to say I would." Just the name of food made Boone's stomach hurt. He was dizzy and weak for want of it, and windy with the apples he had eaten.

Deakins pulled the team over and, while Boone gathered wood, unhooked and fed the mules, tying them to the wagon wheels. When they had eaten the pan of corn bread and warmedup beans and fat meat, Deakins lifted out the bedroll and spread it on the ground. Taking off their boots, they lay down, drawing the thin cover over them. Boone stowed his rifle under the blanket at his side.

Deakins lay on his back, his eyes open and blinking at the sky. "Here we are," he said, "a-lookin' up at the stars and feelin' good with food in our belly and talkin'. Makes a body wonder where the old gentleman's went to. Makes a body wonder what he's seein' and feelin' and doin'. Reckon he's up there listenin' to us, knowin' all that goes on? Reckon his dead women is there, or did God give him a new one? Or you reckon he's still in the box, waitin' his turn to go up, or maybe down?"

He was silent for a breath or so, and then he asked, "Zeb, don't it make you feel kind of techy?"

Boone was so tired he could barely keep track of the talk. His muscles had flattened out. When he closed his eyes, his mind went drifting off.

Deakins' voice came again. "Don't it?"

"He's dead, ain't he?"

"That's what they say."

"Let's git on to sleep, then. A dead dog never bit nobody."

Even then, though, Deakins didn't sleep right away. Through a dream Boone heard him ask, "I reckon there ain't much that skeers you, be there, Zeb?"
 
 

Louisville was busy as an anthill and bigger than all the places, put together, that Boone had ever seen. Even on the fringe of the town, where a man could still look off and mark where the river ran, the houses squatted pretty near elbow to elbow, and farther on the buildings looked to be pushing for room, trying to keep from being pinched. It put him in mind of the time he and Dan and Pap and Ma all slept in one bed after Pap had come in drunk and set fire to the other bed with his pipe. In and out of the buildings men and women, whites and niggers, kept popping. They made a stream along both sides of the street. Wagons loaded with lumber and ropes and hides, and carriages drawn by high-stepping horses with heads strapped back rolled east and west and crosswise. A canvas-topped wagon rattled across the street in front of them, showing the faces of three children who stared from its tail with solemn, wondering eyes. There were chimneys everywhere, all breathing out a slow, black smoke that came down in a regular fog, except that it bit at a man's lungs and set his nose to running.

"Godamighty!" said Boone.

"She's big," agreed Deakins, and spit over the wheel. "Twenty thousand, last count." He thought for a moment, then added, "I can't figger why folks'll do it, less'n they don't know no better."

Boone shook his head. "I don't hanker to live in no anthill."

"Me neither."

"I aim to go west into Injun country and trap me some beaver."

"Sure enough?" asked Deakins, his face lighting. "Now, that there is what I call man's talk. Leave the piss ants swarm!" He sobered and fell silent, studying the rumps of his mules while the wagon creaked ahead.

Boone stole a long look at him. There was nothing to shy away from in the mild and open face, he decided, but a talker like Deakins could get a man into trouble.

"All I got's these here mules," Deakins observed, as if to himself. "Them and maybe a couple dollars' worth of meal and salt meat." His glance came to Boone. "I reckon they'd look pretty piddlin' once a man got hisself out there."

"I reckon."

"There ain't nobody to keer. Not even a dog. 0l' Rip got tore up in a fight and bled hisself to death."

Boone asked, "You thinkin' about going your own self?"

"Well," Deakins answered, talking slow now that the question had been put, "I do' know. All I got's these here mules, and a man don't learn no love for a mule."

Boone broke a long silence. "I wouldn't raise no holler at company, I reckon, if it was company a body could trust."

"Meanin'?"

"He would have to stand by a man, come whatever."

Deakins' inquiring blue gaze went again to the rumps of his mules. "I ain't no half-horse, half-alligator. I been whopped, plenty of times, and I reckon I will be ag'in. But I never laid down yit on a friend, regardless."

"He would have to know to keep his tongue."

There was a stiffness in Deakins' manner when he answered. "I ain't askin' to go with you, anyways." He clucked to the team.

"Would you, Jim?"

"Are you askin'?"

"I'm askin'."

Deakins' sorrel beard riffled to his grin. "Wrap 'er up and charge 'er down, then," he said. "Zeb, I'm your parcel. I been lookin' for someone p'inted west myself, and you suit me, longways and sidewise."

"My name ain't Zeb Calloway."

"The handle don't matter."

"It's Boone. Boone Caudill."

"Pleased to meetcha."

"I'm runnin' away from Pap. That's why I said a man would have to keep his tongue."

Deakins nodded. "A pry pole couldn't git it out." He added abruptly, "Here we are." He reined the mules to the side. "I'll pull over and find someone to help old gentleman in. You watch the mules. They ain't used to city life." He jumped from the wagon and headed for the undertaker's door.

Boone waited, holding the reins while his thoughts ran ahead. He would be safe before night, safe across the state line, beyond the river. The Ohio would lie yonder, and across it was country a man could get his breath in. They figured wrong if they thought they'd lock him up for the lick he had given Mose Napier, even if it killed him. He would go over the river and laugh at them, him and Jim Deakins would, taking their time, then, to St. Louis. It was a right smart of a river, though, wide and deep. They would have to find a way to cross it.

While his mind ran on, he studied the people that thumped up and down the board walk, the city men walking duckfooted with their bellies out, the women snugged up at the waist like a sack with a rope around it. There was a man had got himself a knock, with the towel wrapped around his head. A fat man walked with him, a man as fat as Mr. Harrison Combs, the high sheriff. The bandaged head tilted back. The eyes under the bandage looked at Boone, and a flash came into the dark face.

Boone's hand grabbed for his rifle and bag. His legs shot him over the off wheel. The bag caught on the wheel and pulled out of his hand, the bag with his clothing in it and the Indian-skin strop and the scalp that he had aimed to prove himself by. "Stop! You're under arrest!" He landed running, bowling over a fat woman in a checkered bonnet as he rounded the corner and made in the direction of the river. Behind him he heard the mules snort, heard the wagon clatter and the coffin scrape on the floor boards as the team leaped. He heard voices crying "Whoa! Whoa! Halt!" Above all came Pap's hoarse "Stop him!" and then the sound of running feet, few at first, just a patter of them, but growing with each stride of his own, as if he shook them from the buildings and doorways and walks, out of the quiet tap of business into the pound of the chase.

He slanted from the sidewalk into the street, hearing the footfalls change behind him, clattering on the boards and fading off into a dull thumping against earth as they slanted after him. Up a cross street he caught sight of the mules swinging into a turn, coming toward him now, the old work wagon flying behind them. A little more and they would have cut him off. A carriage came toward him and rolled on by, moving smartly while the man on the seat leaned out and peered at him and the horses arched their heads and snorted.

It must be a far piece to the river, farther than he had thought. The rifle jolted in his hand; the pouch and horn flapped against him. The air burned his throat as he sucked it in. Pap kept shouting, "Ketch 'im! Ketch 'im!" He looked back and saw them, a half a hundred men on his trail, and he knew how an old coon felt with the hounds singing after him. They would catch him yet, without he dropped Old Sure Shot. They were at the cross street now, along with the carriage that had passed him. While he looked the mules charged out of the cross street.

He caught one glimpse of them, running hard and wild at the crowd, and heard the crowd's first shrill cries. He brought his eyes around to get his bearings and saw a heavy man in a red shirt jump from a doorway ahead of him and run into the street and stand ready for him, his hands up for the catch. Boone kicked him in the groin, and found his stride again and went on.

The street crossing behind him was a whirl of animals and men. He saw the mules, lunging away from the hands that reached for their heads. The carriage lay on its side with one wheel off. The men were shouting, darting in to hold the teams. Nearer, the man Boone had kicked was jackknifed, his hands clutching his crotch. Pap appeared out of the crowd, his toweled head shining white. His arms made motions, and his hoarse voice rose. He was running again, and part of the crowd fell in with him, taking up the chase. Boone made himself look away from them, made himself look ahead, made his legs work, striding long and hard while his breath whistled in his throat. He might make it yet, thanks to the mules.

And then before him lay the Ohio, wide as an ocean. God, what a river! Under his feet the ground went wet and sticky, though the river was still a rifle shot away. Wreckage streamed past him, shaken by his stride, a storehouse tilting crazily, a flatboat overturned and gaping at the seams, drift lodged against the fronts of buildings, in and out of which men moved carrying buckets of mud. A load of new lumber came toward him and ran on by, shining in the sun, glimmering at the pound of his feet, and then the gleaming skeleton of a building going up, from which came the busy beat of hammers, until the workmen heard the crowd's cries and saw him going by with mud flying from his feet.

He looked at the river again. Not a craft rode it. Out on the bosom of the stream the drift swept along. It was a flood, a flood going down but still too much for a boat. 'No one would put out in that current, unless to save his hide. Over on the other side, upstream, he saw the ferry, moored high and idle by the rank of buildings that was now the shore line.

He cut left, around the corner of a house that barely cleared the flood, and a stone's throw farther on saw a round man sitting on a broken porch eying the sweep of water. On the edge of the box on which he sat a long piece of punk smoked. Below him, tied to the porch's slanting upright, a rowboat rocked to the lap of the water.

The round man raised his eyes, on his face an asking look, as Boone came running through the mud. He put his hand to his side and got his stick of punk and held it to his pipe while his mouth worked at the stem.

"Acrost!" Boone said.

The man's glance lifted from the bowl of his pipe, to come to sudden point as Boone brought the rifle up. He took the pipe from his mouth and laid down his piece of punk. "Son," he said, "if I'm bound to die one way or t'other I'll take 'er right here, warm and nice and sudden."

Boone was working at the rope on the upright, his rifle in the crook of his arm. The man sat quiet, puffing. His head turned as the crowd rounded the corner and the voices came into full cry as if a door had opened.

Boone had the knot untied at last. He jumped into the boat. The front of the pack charged up like a wave above him and threatened to break over. Pap grabbed the upright and leaned out, circling it with one arm while he shook the fist on the other. As if from a distance, while he bent to his oars, Boone heard Pap's "Come back, you tarnal fool!" It rose above the cries of the others, strained and sharp, and after it came another voice like a war whoop. "See you in St. Louis. Wait thar for me!" On the edge of the porch, waving his arms like a rooster, stood Jim Deakins, bareheaded, his sorrel hair whipping in the breeze.

The boat pulled like a mule, trying to get her head around and to run with the current. He fought her with all his strength, straining at the right-hand oar to keep her nosed up. He saw the shore backing away and realized the crowd had fallen silent and stood watchful and expecting. Deakins' voice floated out, "Take 'er easy! Watch you don't git rammed!"

The watchers lost outline, fading to a jerky shimmer of color as the stream caught him and bore him down. A half mile up the river they were now, though he was still within easy holler of the shore. The bank streamed past him and edged away by inches. He felt the scrape of it on her side before it hit. The nose of the boat rose, slow at first, and then the whole craft pitched over. From the tail of his eye, as he snatched for his rifle, he glimpsed the log that had run him down. He came up gasping and kicked out, still headed for the farther shore. The boat was below him, turning bottom side up as it ran with the stream.

The water pulled at him. He felt the power of it from ankle to neck as he flattened and began to stroke, felt the pressure of it, the heavy, brute force of it all about him. The rifle was like a great sinker in his hand, but he hung to it, fighting with his other hand to keep up and going. The quick waves lapped at his face and head. The bigger ones washed over him. His pouch and horn trailed like an anchor under his belly. He strangled and went under and came up coughing water, thrashing out with his free arm. The hand struck something, struck and held while his nails bit for a hold. He pulled up and rested, riding a soggy timber that floated low in the water. He brought his rifle to it and managed to lift it and work it onto the timber. Keeping the butt under one hand while the other clutched the far side of his raft, he started kicking again for the shore.