The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

VI Will

The night had turned cool.

Outside the fort, the open tops of the Indian tipis glowed with fires from within, triangular patches of light on the rolling hillside. Occasionally a dog barked, and was answered by another, and yet another, the final bark sounding before the echo of the first had died.

Will was drunk.

He sat against the outside wall of the fort, the baked clay bricks still warm from the day’s sun. There was a bottle of wine in his hand, the third one tonight, most of it already gone. He lifted the bottle to his mouth, and drank from it, and tried to make sense of what had happened, and could make no sense of it. Hell with it, he thought, and drank again, and shook his head, and said, “Shut up,” when a baby down below began crying. He listened to the baby crying.

Cried like a baby himself when they told him. Didn’t suspicion nothing at first. Him and Gideon riding up this morning, Ma running down from the fort, looking like a girl half her age, didn’t even recognize her. Grabbing Gideon to her, and then stretching out her hand: “Will, Will, darlin!” All of them up at the fort later. Pa looking a bit strange. Bobbo sort of standing off to one side. Bonnie Sue hugging them both. It was Gideon who said, “Where’s Annabel?”

He lifted the bottle to his lips again.

He could remember Annabel asking him how was the fighting in Texas. He had been planing a door out back. Had taken it down cause it was sticking in the August heat. Had it set up between two big rocks and was planing it. Curls of white wood coming up from it.

“Well, it wasn’t much good,” he’d said.

“What’d you do there?”

“Just yelled and hollered and shot at people.”

“That don’t sound fun, Will.”

“It wasn’t,” he said. “Much rather go cat-fishin in the Clinch.”

“Then why don’t we?” Annabel asked.

Big grin.

“Why don’t we just?” he said, and put down the plane.

Shit.

You...

You get here and they tell you your baby sister...

The Indian woman came out of the night silently, startling him. His hand jerked. Wine spilled from the bottle tilted to his mouth, dribbled over his chin, splashed onto his shirt. He brushed at the shirt, and looked up at her. “What do you want?” he said...

She was tall and slender, wearing an elkskin dress, the sleeves open and hanging, no beads or quills or ornamentation of any kind, fringed at the bottom where it came to just below her knees. She wore unbeaded moccasins, soft upper flaps turned back like cuffs. Black cotton stockings showed above them, one pulled to her shin, the other falling to her ankle, bunched there above the moccasin cuff. Her hair was black and plaited on either side of her head, the braids held fast with leather thongs. She had high cheekbones painted with solid circles of vermilion. In the moonlight, her eyes were luminous and black.

Approaching him silently, she stood before him and grinned, head tilted to one side, teeth flashing. She put her hands on her thighs as if to dry the palms on the treated hide, but then bent slightly at the knees and grasped the fringed bottom of the skirt in both hands. Standing erect again, she pulled the skirt up over her waist. She was naked under it; he saw the tangled blackness of her crotch an instant before she lowered the skirt again. She smiled in invitation, her brows rising in silent inquiry. Then she extended her hand to him, the fingers curled into a beggar’s bowl.

“Why the hell not?” he said.

There were dogs barking outside the tipi. He watched them warily. Shouldn’t never show your teeth to a dog. Nor any wild animal. Think you were going to attack. Never smile at them. There’s a nice boy, but no smile. She’d been in there four, five minutes already. He’d give her just till he finished the wine, then he’d leave. Chilly out here; no sense waiting in the cold for a whore. No sense to nothing, you wanted to know.

She was coming out of the tipi now. Fat squaw with her. Squaw looked annoyed, like she didn’t want to be chased out here in the cold while the whore entertained a customer. Too bad about you, Will thought, and almost grinned, and remembered the dogs. The dogs were still yapping. Squaw said something to them, didn’t bother them a jot; they just kept at it. She slapped one across the snout. He began whimpering and then shut up. She said something in Indian to the whore then, and the whore nodded. Fat squaw pulled her robe around her, called to the dogs, and went walking over to another tipi. She said something else in Indian and then went inside. The whore was holding open the flap of the tipi here. Will nodded, finished the wine in the bottle, and then crouched and went on in.

There was a fire in the middle; he went to it and held out his hands to the flames. Smoke going up through the hole there in the ceiling or whatever they called it. Painted shield hanging there from one of the poles. Couple of lances. Buffalo robes all over the dirt floor.

“How much’s this gonna cost me?” Will asked.

The woman held up a finger.

“Shit,” he said. “I can get a white woman for that.”

Wasn’t half bad-looking here in the light, though. Wasn’t half good-looking neither. Brown like any other Indian he’d ever seen, lips parched and cracked, sore in the corner of her mouth. Looked like good tits under the elkskin dress.

“I’ll give you half a dollar,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Hell with it then,” he said, and turned to go, and couldn’t find the flap he’d come in by. “Now where...” he said, and realized he was still holding the empty wine bottle, and tossed it aside angrily. Feeling his way around the tipi hand over hand, touching the warm hide walls, he found the opening at last and was crouching to go out when he felt her hand on his shoulder. He looked up. She nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and let the flap fall again. He staggered to his feet and clutched one of the lodge poles for support. “Half a dollar, right?” he said.

She nodded again.

“You understand English, huh?” he said. “How many white men you fucked in your life, huh? You get that sore from a white man?”

She touched her lip, shook her head.

“What is that sore there?”

She held up her hands, the fingers widespread, and shook them back and forth, shaking her head at the same time.

“I don’t have to worry, right?” he said. “Never met a whore yet I didn’t have to worry. Where’d I put that goddamn...?” He was digging in his pocket for a fifty-cent piece, couldn’t find one by just the feel of it, and pulled out a handful of coins. Opening his palm, he held out the coins to her and said, “Take a half dollar, go ahead.”

She lifted a coin from his palm.

“That’s right,” he said, and put the other coins back in his pocket. “What’s your name?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“If you don’t know it in English, say it in Indian.”

She shook her head again.

He shrugged. First time he’d ever in his life asked a whore her name, and she wouldn’t tell him. He shrugged again. Hell with her, he thought.

“I’m Will Chisholm,” he said. “Hell with you. You happen to see a man ridin through here on an Appaloosa?” He burst out laughing, and fell onto one of the buffalo robes near the fire. “Ahh,” he said, “nice,” and closed his eyes. “Chased him all over creation,” he said. “Carthage alone three times in June. Three times,” he said, and opened his eyes and held up three fingers to her. She was standing by the fire. She had taken off the dress. Her face and throat, her arms where the sleeves ended seemed darker than the rest of her body. Her belly, breasts, and legs looked almost white there in the firelight. “Man who stole my horse,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows, puzzled.

“Looking for him,” he said.

She nodded and came to the robe. There were bruises on her legs, dried scabs. She was a filthy Indian whore; what the hell was he doing in a tent stank of dog shit and Indian grease? Smell of the fat squaw here on the robe, smell of this one too, whore’s smile on her face, fixed, frozen; he’d never known a whore didn’t have that same smile on her face.

“You don’t even know me,” he said.

She looked at him curiously.

“What’re you wearin paint for?” he said. “Jesus!”

She got to her feet instantly, and walked across the tent to a pile of rags near an upended travois. Vigorously, she began rubbing at the paint. Will fell back on the robe, sighed heavily, put the back of his hand over his closed eyes. “Always gone,” he said. “Told his mother we had money to give him, owed him money. She knew we was lying. Gideon’s got a face like an angel, but he couldn’t fool the widder Hackett, nossir. Said, ‘We owe him money, ma’am,’ blue eyes open wide, good ole Gideon, that ole liar,” he said, and burst out laughing. “My brother Gideon. What’re you doin there? You takin off that paint there? What the hell...?”

He raised himself on one elbow and looked across the tent to where she was scrubbing at her face with one of the dry rags. “Takin off the paint,” he said in surprise, and fell back on the robe again. “Canny as a weasel, that old lady. You just missed him, boys. Was here a day or so ago, and’s plumb gone now. Canny. We followed him that first time deep in Iowa territory — you know where that is? Iowa? Hey, you! Hey, beautiful!” he called, and laughed. “You know where Iowa territory is?”

She turned to him, puzzled. The rag in her hand was covered with paint as bright as blood.

“Yeah, sure you do,” he said, and laughed again. “Lost him there, too, went back to Carthage again. There’s old mother Hubbard — Hackett,” he said, and laughed, “old mother Hackett standing on the porch, hands on her hips. Why, boys, I do declare, you just missed him again. He’s been and is gone. Whyn’t you just let me have that cash you owes him, I’ll see he gets it. Sure. Oh, sure. Left again — gettin to be a reglar thing we did, like going to church on Sunday. Leave Carthage, go back to Carthage. Went west this time. You know the Mississippi? River. You know river? Water? Canoe — you know canoe? Shit, you don’t know nothin....”

Weeks of rain there along the Mississippi, insides of cabins thick with mud, others completely washed away, furniture smashed, river clogged with floating tangles of logs. Couldn’t find him on the Illinois side nohow, crossed the river into Iowa again, searched for him there. Spent weeks traveling through towns looked like they was thrown up in ten minutes. Oh, yeah, man on an Appaloosa passed this way, sure enough. Yep, black hair and brown eyes, dressed entire in blue, that’s the fella. Too late. Been and was gone. Gideon wanted to try Carthage again, rode back up there through towns looked all alike; one thing about this here America is you can’t fault it for being different one place from another. This time she’s waitin’ on the porch with a shotgun in her hands. Your son been back, ma’m? I ask her, and she says Git, and shakes the gun at us....

The Indian woman was beside him.

She had scrubbed the paint from her cheeks, and she stretched beside him now, and he took her in his arms. He wouldn’t kiss her, the sore on her mouth; he’d never kissed a whore. He touched her face. Stroked her face. Her eyes were closed. The sore was just at the corner of her mouth on the right side of her face. Said he didn’t have to worry about it Wouldn’t kiss her, though. Touched her nipples, touched her below. Bed of fuckin straw, dry as any whore’s. No feeling, whores. Did it for money, that was all. Touched her jaw again. Ran his hands over her back. Felt—

Touched her back again, puzzled.

Moved her away from him, rolled her on her belly.

Her back was covered with healed welts thick as ropes. The scars were twisted and brown. The skin around them was as white as his own.

In the morning, he looked for Orliac and could find him nowhere in the fort or around it. He talked instead to Orliac’s first clerk, a man named Schwarzenbacher, little blond man with a twitchy blond mustache, blue eyes constantly roaming, alert, watching as if he expected Indians to attack the fort any minute. Will guessed he was about Gideon’s age, twenty-three, maybe a bit older. He was at his desk putting figures in a ledger, and he looked up when Will approached.

“Don’t want to bother you,” Will said.

“No bother,” Schwarzenbacher said, and smiled.

“Just wanted to know if there was somebody here spoke both English and Indian.”

“What kind of Indian did you have in mind?” Schwarzenbacher asked, still smiling.

“Well... what do you mean?”

“There are different languages.”

“Oh,” Will said. The thought had never occurred to him. He’d figured Indian was Indian and all of them understood it. “What are they talking out there?” he asked. “The ones outside the fort.”

“Different tribes out there,” Schwarzenbacher said. “Was there someone in particular you wanted to talk to?”

“Well... yes.”

“I speak some Algonquian and Siouan; perhaps I can help. Is this person...?”

“I don’t know what she is.”

“A woman. Ah.”

“In fact, I think she’s white,” Will said. “She’s dressed like an Indian, and her face and arms are brown, but underneath she’s...”

“Catherine, do you mean?” Schwarzenbacher asked.

“Is that her name?”

“The whore?”

“Well... yes.”

“Catherine’s her name.”

“Is she white?”

“She’s white, yes.”

“I thought so, but...” He gestured vaguely. He’d woke up this morning, nobody in the tipi but the fat squaw poking him off the buffalo robe. Mean old yellow dog growling at him while he put on his boots. Couldn’t remember whether he’d even fucked the whore, but began worrying right off about that sore on her lip. That’s why he was here now talking to this twitchy Schwarzenbacher, mustache going a mile a minute, eyes looking all around, sunlight hitting his head like God was singling him out for a miracle. Thought she was white, but hadn’t even been sure of his own name last night, no less the whore’s color. If she was white, though... if she understood what he was saying...

“Didn’t answer me,” he said, puzzled. “Didn’t say a word.” He looked into Schwarzenbacher’s face. “Why’s that?”

“She has no tongue,” Schwarzenbacher said. “They cut out her tongue.”

“Who did?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps the Ojibwa. She’s supposed to have lived with them for a while. I know she understands Algonquian. Why are you interested?”

“I ain’t,” Will said. “I just wanted to find out about that sore on her lip. She’s got a sore on her lip.”

“Probably the Spanish disease,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“You think so?” Will said.

“She sleeps with Indians, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a common whore.”

“Yeah. You see... I was thinkin if I could talk to her, I could ask her about the sore.”

“Well, she understands hands. I’ve seen her conversing with—”

“Cause I sure would like to find out if she’s got anything.”

“I understand.”

“I have some medicine I bought in Texas...”

“I’d suggest you use it,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Well, it ain’t to be used lightly,” Will said. “Burns like hell, worse’n the disease, you want to know. So I thought if I could talk to her, she’d be able...”

“You’ll find out soon enough anyway, won’t you?” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Well... sure. Sure I will. If... sure.”

“When you begin dripping,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Sure. I just thought...” Will shrugged.

“Of course, if it would set your mind at ease...”

“Yeah?”

“I do understand the gestures that are common linguistic currency among the various tribes on the plains...

“Yeah?”

“And if you’d like me to...”

“I would,” Will said. “Yes. Yes, I would. Thank you. I would.”

They found her squatting cross-legged outside the tipi. The fat squaw was tossing scraps of meat to half a dozen dogs, who leaped into the air each time another morsel was thrown. The squaw spotted Will first. She called something to Catherine, who looked up immediately and smiled. Looked more like an Indian than the goddamn squaw did. Hair shiny and black, eyes almost as black as the hair. Red paint on her cheeks again; was she going out to war someplace? Black stockings hanging down around her knees; probably hadn’t washed them or herself in months. Jesus, had he really stuck his pecker into that?

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

The squaw put down the empty bucket. Hands on her hips, she watched. All around them, the dogs were eating, growling when another came too close. Flies buzzed about the bucket. Catherine was still smiling the fixed smile. The squaw nodded encouragement to her. Will suddenly wondered how much of that fifty cents Catherine had got to keep last night.

“I want to know about the sore on your lip,” he said. “Is it...?”

She shook her head.

“This man here knows how to read hands. I’d appreciate it if you told him just where you got it and how long it’s been there.”

Catherine nodded. The squaw was still watching, hands on her hips. Catherine’s hands began moving.

“That’s the sign for fire,” Schwarzenbacher said. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “Ah. She says it’s a burn.”

Uninvited, the squaw began explaining to Schwarzenbacher in a language he presumably understood. Catherine’s hands were still moving. Schwarzenbacher kept watching her hands and listening to the squaw at the same time.

“Yes, it seems to be true,” he said. “Hot grease from a kettle. That’s a burn on her lip.”

“Well, that’s good,” Will said. “I’m sure glad to—”

“Of course, the squaw may be lying,” Schwarzenbacher said at once.

“Yeah, but—”

“They lie a great deal.”

“Yeah.”

“But perhaps she’s telling the truth.”

“Yeah,” Will said, and sighed heavily.

“I suppose she’s telling the truth,” Schwarzenbacher said.

Catherine nodded. She nodded at Will, she nodded at Schwarzenbacher. The squaw nodded, too. They were both nodding now. Catherine smiled her whore’s smile. The squaw looked to Will for his approval.

“Ask her what’s her last name,” Will said.

“She can hear perfectly well, you know,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“What’s your last name?”

There was no word for it in her hands. She raised them, and then realized this, and looked at Schwarzenbacher helplessly.

“Where are you from?” Will asked.

Her hands began moving. Fingertips together to form a triangle...

“Tipi,” Schwarzenbacher said.

A circle of her arms...

“No, camp. Ah, village. Yes, village.”

Watching her hands. A village in the north. The squaw said something. Schwarzenbacher turned his head momentarily. “An Ojibwa village in the north,” he said to Will, and nodded, and looked back to Catherine’s hands again. She was making the sign for springtime now, literally “little grass,” hands out with the palms up, right hand moving in front of her body, fingers closing slowly till only the index finger was slightly higher than the others.

“She’s saying she left there in the spring, which I suppose is true enough,” Schwarzenbacher said. “She arrived here sometime in May.” He looked at her hands again. She crossed her arms over her breasts, the sign for love. She clasped her hands in front of her body, the sign for peace. She made the combination of gestures meaning sunshine in the heart.

“She was very happy there,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Why’d you leave then?” Will asked.

Her hands moved.

“Her husband died,” Schwarzenbacher said.

It was close to midnight when he went down to the camp again. Tiptoed through it like he was in a cemetery. Damn tipis all looked alike in the dark, finally found the one he guessed was Catherine’s. No door to knock on, how in hell did you let anybody know you were standing out here in the cold? He’d had a lot to drink again. Not Orliac’s wine this time, but his father’s good corn liquor. Had to be drunk even to consider fuckin a pig like this one.

“Hey, anybody home?” he yelled.

A dog began barking.

Will pulled his Mexican knife from the sheath at his belt.

Damn dog came out here, he’d slit its throat. Down the line, somebody started yelling in Indian. “Shut up,” Will muttered. The fat squaw poked her head outside, frowning. She saw it was Will then, saw the knife, too. “Come on out here,” he said, and she nodded and came out at once, smiling. She was half naked, wearing only a pair of leather breeches resembled bloomers, had to have once belonged to some fat old Indian brave. That’s all she had on. The breeches and a beaded band around her forehead. Tits hanging clear down to her waist, a true beauty, a prize.

“Where’s Catherine?” he asked.

She nodded and went back inside. He could hear her saying something inside there, could hear her voice getting louder and then a bit irritated. Catherine came out yawning, wrapped in what looked like an army blanket.

“Hey, how you doin?” Will said, and grinned.

She grinned back. Whore’s frozen smile. Paint still on her cheeks. Even slept with the fuckin paint on her cheeks. She held out her hand.

“No more money,” he said. “Uh-uh.”

The squaw came through the flap again. She’d thrown on a robe over the breeches, all dressed up to go next door.

“Tell your friend here,” Will said. “No more money. I’ve got food for you.”

Catherine turned to the squaw, talked to her with her hands. The squaw turned to look at Will. She was frowning again.

“That’s right, Fatty,” Will said. “Here, look.” He reached into a pocket of his coat. “Dried buffalo meat. Very good.” He reached into another pocket. “Turnips. Raw turnips.”

They were waiting.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all there is.”

The squaw was still frowning. She took Catherine aside and began whispering to her. Catherine nodded. The squaw nodded. “Big business deal goin on there,” Will said. The squaw came to him then and took the meat and turnips from his hands. Catherine pulled back the flap of the tent and Will went inside. The fire was still burning, but just barely. He took a log from a stacked pile, dropped it on the dying embers, fanned the fire to brighter flame with his hat.

“Come on over here,” he said.

She came to the fire.

“Let me see that sore again,” he said.

She knelt by the fire. He cupped her chin in his hand and studied her lip.

“Yeah, I reckon,” he said dubiously. He let go of her chin, went to the buffalo robe, dropped down on it, and began taking off his boots. She was still standing by the fire, the army banket around her. He wondered how many soldiers she’d had to fuck for that blanket. “Who’s the squaw?” he asked. “Your business manager?”

Her hands came from under the blanket. The blanket hung from her shoulders, open over her naked breasts. Her hands moved in the firelight, shadows danced. He couldn’t understand a fuckin word she was saying.

“You know how to write?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll fetch you what to write with,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

The cottonwood was huge. It had probably been here on the riverbank for a century or more. They sat beneath it side by side, shaded from the hot July sun. The river was dry; it had not rained since the beginning of the month. Will had borrowed a carving board from the kitchen, and this was propped on her knees. Her left hand kept a dozen sheets of foolscap in place on top of it. In her right hand she held a mechanical pencil he’d borrowed from Schwarzenbacher.

“You just write down the answers, okay?” he said.

She nodded.

“Okay, what’s your full name?”

She wrote Catherine Parrish.

Under that she wrote Kewedinok.

And under that, Wumin of the Wind.

“Woman of the Wind?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Is that what this... Kewe... Ke... however you say it? Is that Woman of the Wind?”

She nodded again.

“Well...” he said, and looked again at what she’d written. “Where were you born, Catherine?”

Boston, she wrote.

“How’d you get out here?”

I came west with my father and brother.

“When?”

1837.

“How old were you?”

14.

“That makes you... you’re twenty-one, is that it?”

In Octowber, she wrote.

“So... uh... you had an Indian husband, huh? How’d that happen? I mean, where’d you meet a... an Indian to marry? You know what I’m saying?”

After, she wrote.

“After what?” he asked.

Trapers.

“Trappers?” he said. “I don’t follow. Was your father and brother trappers?”

She shook her head.

Alown, she wrote. Leff me alown. Trapers came.

They had gone off hunting, expecting to find game in the woods nearby. But instead the afternoon shadows lengthened, and she was still alone in the wagon, becoming frightened. She heard the sound of horses’ hoofs, thought at first it was her father and brother returning. Voices. Men riding out of the woods. Six of them. The one riding the lead horse had a patch over his right eye. Black leather patch. Took them only a minute to realize she was alone in the wilderness. The one with the patch dragged her from the wagon. She pleaded with him to stop, begged him, but he just kept hugging her and kissing her, talking to her in French, saying over and again, “Je t’adore.” She would remember those words always though she understood no French. He forced her open, she screamed in pain. The others laughed. They took her then in turn, the other five, and then the one with the patch again. She lay on the ground bleeding. She could hear them talking to each other in French. Their voices sounded worried. The one with the patch came to her, and squeezed her chin hard in his hand and said something to her. She knew it was a warning. She nodded. Yes. Please. Yes. Go. Leave. Please. He took a knife from his belt. He forced her mouth open.

An cut out my tung.

Her hand did not waver when she wrote this. Her eyes were dry. She sat stiffly beneath the cottonwood tree, and the pencil scratched into the stillness. In the river, a fish splashed.

The warriors who found her wandering later in the woods, half-crazed and starved, were a party of eight Ojibwa braves, far from home in search of horses and scalps. They’d apparently got both, though not of the “lesser enemy” variety they were seeking; these were no Dakota horses they trailed, six of them with leather saddles. She recognized them at once as having belonged to the trappers who’d raped her. Dangling from the warriors’ belts were fresh bloody scalps. She almost fainted at sight of them, though she herself was still bleeding — from her mouth where the tongue had been taken from it, and from below where the trappers had brutally torn her. The leader of the war party threw her over his saddle and carried her north with him to his village, where she became the second wife in his tipi. She was happy there until he was later killed in battle. Then his brother took for his own not only Catherine but the other wife as well.

“Is that the squaw you’re living with now?” Will asked.

She nodded.

“Who put those scars on your back? Who beat you, Catherine?”

Brother, she wrote.

“Your brother? I thought—”

She shook her head.

Husbin brother.

“Your brother-in-law, you mean? The one who...”

She nodded.

“And you left in the spring, is that it? You and the squaw both. The son of a bitch let you go?”

Killed. Big batil, she wrote. Dakotah.

“And so you came here.”

She nodded.

On the paper she wrote: It is a bern, you need not wurry.

“I wish I could do like you,” Gideon said. “Get myself drunk, push it out of my head that way.”

“It don’t help none,” Will said.

They were sitting high above the fort, the river at their backs, the Indian village below. This was the first of August. They had been at the fort for three days and three nights, but had not yet talked together about what had been waiting here when they arrived. There was a surprising chill on the early morning air now, and Will sat hunched inside his coat, his arms folded across his chest, his back against the rock ledge behind him.

“Just don’t seem like us no more,” Gideon said.

“I know.”

“Without her, I mean. It don’t seem like the family, Will.”

“Won’t never be the family no more, Gid,” he said. “Not the same family anyway.”

“I wish we could get them to move on,” Gideon said. “I have the feelin it ain’t good for them here. Too many damn Indians here. Remind them all the time of what happened. Don’t you think, Will?”

“I don’t know,” Will said.

“We could make it to Fort Hall before winter, couldn’t we?”

“I reckon. Be hard to get them goin, though. Pa’s already wrote to the government about buy-in a quarter section on the river. He’s plannin to squat there till he hears. Be a cabin goin up before you know it, Gid.”

“Will...” Gideon said, and hesitated. “I wouldn’t even mention this if I didn’t think they’d be safe here. But they’ve moved into that empty apartment now, and they’ll be comfortable there till a cabin gets built. Will, I don’t see no earthly purpose you and me could serve here, do you?”

“Pa’ll need help raisin the cabin.”

“Bobbo’s a man now.”

“Still and all...”

“Will, I don’t rightly know how to put this. But I think you and me has come to this late, and are apt to grieve longer. I know that ain’t the right way to say it. I cry all the time at night, Will. I lay on that buffalo robe and just cry into it. Cause I loved her a lot.”

“Yes,” Will said, and nodded.

“And I think we’re going to be hind’rin the others. I think they’ve made some kind of peace toward livin with it, Will. I ain’t done that yet, and I don’t think you have either.”

“I haven’t, no.”

“What I’m suggestin is that we ride on out ahead of them. Meet them next year in California, if they’re of a mind to come on after us.”

“I think once that cabin’s up, they’ll be staying here.”

“All the more reason for us to move on now. Do you want to stay here?”

“No, not particularly,” Will said, and thought immediately of Catherine and wondered why he was worrying about a whore. Seemed to him when you started doing that, why then it really was time to move on. He had to keep telling himself it was true she was a whore. He knew it was true, damn it, but he had to keep reminding himself anyway. Catherine Parrish — Woman of the Wind — whoever the hell — was a whore who’d lay down with anybody had the price. Sailor, soldier, Indian chief, throw her a few scraps of meat, she’d roll right over on her back for you. She was a whore, there were no two ways of looking at it. It was time to get out of here, move on west like Gideon was saying.

“Seems to me the Indians out there’ve got enough trouble finding what to eat, never mind botherin anybody on the way to Fort Hall.”

“Well, according to Orliac—”

“You been talking to him, too, huh?” Gideon said.

“I been asking him some questions.”

“What’d he say?”

“About what?”

“About whether—”

“Whether the Indians’tween here and Fort Hail’d be bad? He said yeah, they would.”

“He told me the same thing. You believe that?”

“Well, the ones here at Laramie seem all right, and lots of them are Sioux, ain’t they?”

“I don’t understand this whole damn Indian shit anyway,” Gideon said. “Do you understand it?”

“No, I don’t understand it,” Will said.

Didn’t understand the Indian shit, nor the white man shit either. Sons of bitches, served them right to get theirselves scalped afterward. Would’ve scalped them himself, he’d come across them. Bad enough they raped her, but then to cut out her tongue — Jesus! Fourteen years old, you’d think her father and brother’d have known better’n to leave her alone, think at least one of them would’ve stayed behind. Hadn’t been the trappers got her, would’ve been the Indians. Got her anyway, an Indian did, threw her on his horse, took her home to where he already had another wife. Shit, a goddamn squaw was what she’d been, never mind that Woman of the Wind shit.

From a distance he saw the rider approaching. Came out of the east, the sun behind him, rode out of it in a shimmer of haze. He was wearing a coonskin hat like Davy Crockett in pictures of him getting killed at the Alamo, buckskins like Dan’l Boone. He had long black hair and a black beard. Will wouldn’t have recognized him but for the Appaloosa he was riding, an altogether distinctive raindrop gelding, sixteen hands high, black leopard spots on...

He shoved himself off the rock ledge and began running down the slope of the hill, sliding, digging in his heels, arms flapping like he was a big bird. Gideon was right behind him. His hat fell off, but he didn’t stop to pick it up, kept racing along behind Will, helter-skelter through the Indian camp, dogs chasing them, nipping at their heels. On the Appaloosa, unaware, Lester Hackett rode leisurely toward the main gate of the fort.

They came puffing up behind the gelding, and he heard the yapping dogs an instant too late. Will was coming around one side of the horse, Gideon around the other. He tried to whip the horse forward, but Will grabbed him from the saddle and pulled him to the ground. The horse reared, wheeled in fright toward the wall of the fort. Crouched in the dust, Lester pulled a dagger from a legging sheath. He was coming out of his crouch to thrust it at Will when Gideon kicked him in the head from behind.

He sprawled flat in to the dirt.

Gideon stepped on his hand, grinding his heel into the back of it. Lester screamed and let go of the knife. Will was coming at him. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the horse. He almost had the rifle when Will grabbed him from behind, hand in the collar of the buckskin shirt. He fell over on his back in the dirt, and Gideon kicked him again, in the rib cage this time. He felt another kick; son of a bitch knew nothing but to fight with his feet. Will twisted a hand into the front of the buckskin shirt, pulled him off the ground. They both had him now, one on either side, and were running him toward the wall of the fort. Jesus, they were going to — Jesus — bang his head against the clay bricks like a battering ram. “Hey, listen,” he said, and suddenly they turned him, and stood him against the wall, and began punching him in the face and in the chest.

He was unconscious when they dragged him inside and told Orliac he was a horse thief.

They locked him in a storeroom on the gallery. It was there she went to talk to him the next day. There were kegs and barrels in the room, stacked wooden crates, bulging hempen sacks, buffalo robes. A single window opened onto the courtyard, and a man with a rifle stood outside that window all the while they talked. Bonnie Sue expected he heard every word they said.

Lester said, “Ah, it’s good to see you, Bonnie Sue,” and opened his arms to receive her, but she stood where she was, just inside the door locked from the outside, looking at him and trying to see through the beard to the face she knew and loved. He seemed older than she remembered. She herself had turned sixteen since last she saw him, her birthday having fallen on the twelfth day of July, with Annabel close to dying and no one dreaming of celebration. She thought to tell him she was sixteen now, tell him too the secret that was surely his to share. She told him neither.

“You left of a sudden,” she said.

“I did,” he answered.

“And took Will’s horse with you.”

“Aye,” he said.

“They’ll hang you for that, you know.”

“I didn’t steal that horse, you know,” he said.

“Ah, didn’t you? They seem to think you did.”

“I was off after highwaymen.”

“And did you find them?” she asked.

“I’ve missed you, Bonnie Sue,” he said, and again opened his arms to her. She did not go into them. “I’ve thought of you often these past two months. I knew your brothers were behind me; my mother told me of their visits. And I knew they were thinking I’d stolen the Appaloosa, but there was no way of telling them—”

“You stole it, Lester,” she said flatly.

Their eyes met

“I stole it for sure,” he said.

“Why?”

“Cause I was bound for Carthage and needed a horse to get there.”

“You said you had friends in St Louis who’d—”

“I have friends nowhere,” he said. “Not even here, though I hoped someone here might love me.”

“Not me,” she said.

“I guess not,” he answered.

“They’ll hang you,” she said. “The horse Is branded and earmarked both. You were a fool to come this way.”

“I thought you’d be long since gone. I knew I’d lost your brothers...”

“Where are you bound then?”

“California,” he said, and grinned. “To make my fortune there.”

“Your fortune, aye,” she said. “They’ll hang you here for sure.”

“Then they’ll hang me,” he said, and she almost went to him in that moment, but still she delayed. “Would you care, Bonnie Sue? Would it matter to you?”

“Why’d you run from me?” she asked.

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of loving you,” he said. “I’m twice your age or more.”

“I’m sixteen now,” she told him. And almost told him the other as well. But did not. Could not. Could not bring herself to do it.

“Sixteen,” he said. “Ahh.”

“Lester,” she said, “did you plan to steal Will’s horse all along?”

“It was sounds I heard in the night. I jumped on the horse’s back and rode off to investigate, taking with me a rifle as well, in case the noise I’d heard—”

“You told me a minute ago you’d stole the horse for sure.”

“Yes,” he said. “But that’s a lovers’ secret, and not for the ears of those who’d hang me.”

“We’re not lovers now,” she said. “We’re man and woman standing here with nothin between us except what happened a long time ago.”

“Are you sure of that, Bonnie Sue?”

“As sure as I am of my own name.”

“Then there’s little to say but goodbye. Will you kiss me farewell, love? Will you let me hold you in my arms just once again before—”

“Stop it,” she said. “I’m no longer the fool I was.”

“I’ll no longer be the man I was, come sundown. You’ll find me hanging by the river, swinging in the wind. The Indians’ll wonder at it all. They’ll ask what crime I’ve committed, and when told I stole a horse, they’ll marvel at the ways of the white man. The Indians, you see, believe that capturing horses from the enemy is an honor. Yet hanging from a tree will be a man who—”

“My brother wasn’t your enemy. You needn’t have took his horse. You wanted it so bad, he might even have given it to you.”

“Ah, sure.”

“You don’t know Will.”

“I know his sister, and she’s refusing me now the last chance I have to live beyond this day.”

“I’m refusing you nothing.”

“You’re refusing to tell them what you saw and heard the night I fled — or seemed to flee.”

“You fled indeed.”

“I was chasing voices I’d heard.”

“There were no voices...”

“Unless you swear there were.”

“No voices but yours and mine.”

“You heard that I heard, Bonnie Sue. Voices that could’ve been highway robbers. You heard them.”

“I heard only a liar telling me he loved me.”

“That was true.”

“Aye. Loved me so dearly he left by morning. True love indeed.”

“Let me kiss you, Bonnie Sue.”

“I’d sooner kiss a snake.”

“Let me touch you.”

“No,” she said, but she allowed him to take her in his arms. He drew her close and kissed her face, and she remembered that night in June and fell suddenly limp against him. His lips brushed hers lightly, his hands moved immediately to her waist, the fingers spread to frame her belly. She drew her mouth away from his, and whispered, “Lester...” as he lowered her to one of the buffalo robes, and then turned her head sharply toward the window of the room, fearful the sentry outside might be watching. But the buffalo robe was in a quarter of the room beyond his field of vision; he could not have seen them unless he thrust his head full inside the narrow opening. Lester had already raised her skirt above her waist and was unfastening her underdrawers, lowering them familiarly over her rounded belly. She wondered if he would place them on the floor here as delicately as he had on the floor of the forest that night.

“Lie for me,” he whispered.

“No,” she answered, but was hardly sure the word found voice in the raggedness of her own sharp breathing. She tried to close herself against him, squeezing her thighs together so he could not take off her drawers completely. He tore them instead, ripped them raggedly up the middle so that now she wore a part of them around each thigh and across each buttock, but nothing at all between. He said what he’d said that night outside St. Louis, “Open,” and she replied, “No, damn it!” for if she opened she was lost. He seized her where the fabric of her underdrawers still encased each thigh, and spread them forcibly apart. She felt his hand upon her nakedness between, his fingers gently spreading her lips below. He said again, “Lie for me,” and she shook her head, and he said, “Lie for me, Bonnie Sue,” and she felt the rounded hugeness of him urging entrance, and spread herself wide to receive him and said “Yes,” and thought she heard the sentry cough, or laugh, but didn’t care by then.

It was Orliac’s idea to hold the trial in the courtyard of the fort, where everyone — Indians included — could see and hear the proceedings. “A court in a courtyard,” he said, and winked at Will, who found nothing at all amusing about the matter. Lester Hackett was an accused horse thief. Seventy years ago perhaps, before independence, a man convicted of such a crime might have been treated as leniently as though he were still living in the mother country. His ears would have been nailed to a board, the letter H branded on one cheek, the letter T on another. There was no such gentle consideration for horse thieves now.

The judges in the courtyard trial were three — Orliac himself, Schwarzenbacher the clerk, and a trapper named Sebilleau, who could neither read nor write. A long table had been brought out from one of the lower apartments, and the three presiding officials sat behind it now, the prisoner and his accuser sitting side by side on a puncheon bench before them. The courtyard and the balcony running around the upper level of the fort were thronged with company men, eager for whatever mild diversion the trial might provide, and Indians curious to witness the white man’s method of dispensing justice.

The trial started with Orliac explaining to everyone present that the man Hackett was accused of stealing a horse, and these judges were assembled to determine his guilt or innocence. The punishment for stealing a horse, he further explained, was to be hanged by the neck till dead. The Indians wondered about this. Suicides by hanging were common in their tribes, but they did not know of hanging as a punishment for theft. Or was this to be a ceremony of sorts? In the Sun Watching Dance, warriors fulfilling vows suspended themselves voluntarily from a sacred pole, by means of cords fastened to painted sticks and passed through the flesh on their chests. But the white man’s hanging was a hanging to the death. The Indians had never seen a ceremony of this sort. Would the white man first pierce the neck through with a blue stick and then attach a cord to it?

“Mr. Chisholm,” Orliac said, “would you tell this court why you believe the Appaloosa now in the company corral was stolen by the accused?”

Embarrassed, Will got to his feet, cleared his throat, and looked out at the Indians and white men standing in the courtyard and on the gallery above.

“Well,” he said, “Hackett here was guiding us to St. Louis, been with us since we met in Louisville. Just outside St. Louis he disappeared, and so did the gelding. So I rightly believe he was the one went off with it, since there was only the horse’s tracks leading north, and the land was all so flat there you could see for miles if a man was out there on foot, which Hackett wasn’t. Anyway, he’s the one came riding up on the horse yesterday, so he’s the one had to have rode off with it in the first place.”

“How do you know the horse is yours?” Orliac asked.

“The animal’s earmarked and branded,” Will said.

“How?”

“There’s a pothook brand on the left thigh, about eight inches above the stifle joint. And the right ear is marked with two cuts downward on either side of the point. The earmark, and the brand both, are registered with the county clerk back home,” Will said.

“Emile,” Orliac said to a man standing just alongside the table, “would you bring the horse for us to see, please?”

The horse was led from the corral. Nervous and skittish, it kept trying to pull away as the judges made their examination. There was a pothook brand on the left thigh, just as Will had claimed. The right ear was marked with a pair of downward slits, one on each side of the point.

“It would seem to be your horse,” Orliac said, and went back to sit behind the long table again.

“It’s my horse, all right,” Will said.

“Mr. Hackett?” Orliac said, and Lester rose. “Mr. Hackett, is this the horse you were riding yesterday morning when you approached the fort?”

“It is,” Hackett said. “But let me tell you this minute I know the horse is Will Chisholm’s, and yes, I did ride off with it just outside St. Louis, as Will claims I did. But I didn’t steal that horse.”

“You rode off with the horse,” Orliac said.

“That’s right, sir.”

“But you didn’t steal it.”

“No, sir.”

“What then do you call riding off with another man’s horse, eh?”

“I was guiding the Chisholms to St. Louis, as I’d promised, and I think I took the job seriously and did it well; I don’t think anyone in the family’ll dispute that. The night I rode off with Will’s horse, I heard voices and I didn’t know who was out there in the darkness, so I rode off to investigate, as was my duty. I didn’t have a horse of my own. I had to mount whatever was available, and it was Will’s Appaloosa that was closest to hand. There were five men out there, it turned out, and they ambushed me and forced me to go along with them. I finally got away from them in Illinois, and’ve been searching for the Chisholms since. That’s the truth of the matter.”

“Mr. Orliac,” Will said, “me and my brother went to Illinois looking for this man; we talked to his mother—”

“She told me about that,” Lester said. “That’s why I kept going back to Carthage, trying to locate you. But each time I got there, you’d be gone a day or so, and I’d traveled in a circle for no reason. You’ve got your horse back, Will. Would you hang me besides for riding off after men I thought were threatening the family?”

“There were no damn men, and you know it,” Will said. “You’re a horse thief, plain and simple.”

“No, he’s tellin the truth,” a voice said, and all in the courtyard turned to locate the source of the voice, and could not find it till Bonnie Sue rose from where she was sitting with Minerva on a buffalo robe against the wall. The Indians watched her as she approached the long table at which sat Orliac and the other judges. Even Sebilleau, the illiterate Orliac had elected to the tribunal, seemed to have come at least half awake upon hearing her declaration. She stood before the table now, and looked directly into Orliac’s face as though challenging him to challenge what she had just said. Instead, he asked for repetition, which was unnecessary since everyone had heard her clearly.

“What did you say?” he said.

“I said Lester Hackett’s tellin the truth. There were voices that night.”

“Bonnie Sue...”

“It’s the truth, Will!” she said, whirling on him. “It’s the truth,” she said more softly, and turned again to face Orliac and the others. In the same low voice, she said, “I was awake. Lester and me were both awake. We heard the voices together. He said he’d find out what it was, and he climbed on Will’s horse and rode off.”

Will got off the bench, walked to where his sister was standing, looked her straight in the eye, and asked, “Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

“I was afraid you’d ask me what I was doing awake,” Bonnie Sue said.

“What were you doing awake?” Orliac asked.

“I was kissin Lester. Me and Lester were sittin by the fire, kissin,” she said.

Schwarzenbacher looked at Hackett where he sat attentively on the puncheon bench, and tried to visualize Bonnie Sue kissing this man who was easily twice her age. He found the thought disturbing, found it even more disturbing that she’d admitted it before this assembly. Everywhere around, he could hear murmurs in French, “Elle faisait l’amour,” could see Indians making the plains gesture for fornication, the extended middle finger of the right hand plunging into a circle formed by the thumb and curled fingers of the opposite hand. He knew that everyone here, save perhaps the Chisholms themselves, believed as he did — that the “kissing” to which Bonnie Sue had just admitted was a pleasant euphemism for what she and Lester Hackett had actually been doing. Why else hadn’t she revealed this crucial information to her family the next morning?

“These men on horseback,” Orliac said. “How many did you say there were?”

“Are you talking to me, sir?” Lester said.

“Yes, I am looking at you, eh?” Orliac said, and smiled and said, “Thank you,” and dismissed Bonnie Sue with a wave of his hand. It seemed to Schwarzenbacher that the gesture was entirely French and probably decadent, the equivalent of a sophisticated Gallic shrug. Orliac was effectively indicating that they were here not to determine what had transpired between a man and a woman by a fire, but only to decide whether or not a horse had been stolen. Either Lester hod stolen the horse or else he had taken it to give chase to men who themselves were intending mischief.

“There were five of them, sir,” Lester said, rising from the bench. There was a puzzled look on his face. He watched Bonnie Sue as she walked back to where her mother was sitting, and then he looked at Orliac again.

“What did these men want?” Orliac asked.

“Sir?”

“What were they doing out there in the dark?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” Lester said. “They never took me into their confidence. I assume they were there to steal horses. Or... well, I really don’t know.”

“Were they riding away from the camp when you gave chase?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why did you give chase?”

“Well, we heard their voices—”

“Yes, yes,” Orliac said. “You were kissing by the fire and you heard voices, so you got on Mr. Chisholm’s horse—”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“And gave chase.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Lester asked.

“That is my question.”

“Well, because... because I wanted to see what they were doing.”

“They were riding away. Isn’t that what you said they were doing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you think they were armed?”

“Possibly.”

“Yet you gave chase. You went after five armed men who were already departing.”

“Well, at first I didn’t know there were five of them.”

“You only discovered that later on.”

“Yes.”

“But even in the beginning, you knew there were at least two, isn’t that so?”

“Sir?”

“Because you heard voices. You heard more than one voice.”

“Yes, sir. Right,” Lester said.

“So you knew there were at least two men out there.”

“Yes.”

“Or possibly more.”

“Well, I...”

“And possibly armed.”

“Well, I took a rifle with me, sir, just in case.”

“Mm,” Orliac said. “Are you following all this, Henri?” he asked Sebilleau, who seemed to be dozing again now that Bonnie Sue had gone back to sit against the wall.

“I am listening,” Sebilleau said, and nodded gravely.

“You say these men later captured you, eh?” Orliac asked.

“Yes, they were waiting up ahead. They ambushed me.”

“And took you with them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To Illinois?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where later they released you.”

“No, I escaped.”

“Mr. Hackett, why did these men take you with them?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose—”

“Mr. Hackett, why didn’t they simply shoot you?”

“Well, as I said before, I never really learned much about them. I don’t know why they—”

“I think they should have shot you,” Orliac said.

“Sir?”

“It would have saved us the trouble of hanging you. Mr. Hackett,” he said, “I think you stole the horse, eh? I would like to recommend now—”

“Now wait just a minute,” Lester said.

“—that you be hanged by the neck till dead. Mr. Schwarzenbacher—”

“The goddamn girl just told you—”

“What is your opinion?”

“I think he’s guilty and should be hanged,” Schwarzenbacher said.

“Mr. Sebilleau?”

“Oui,” Sebilleau said. “Pendez-lui.”

There was stout timber by the river above the fort, but Sebilleau suggested justice might best be served by hanging Hackett in the courtyard. The other judges agreed this might be a good idea, and together they marched about trying to find a beam suitable to the purpose. They were followed by a dozen or more Indians who murmured among themselves, more curious as to how the hanging would take place than where. In the end, it was decided that a tree would do better than any of the beams supporting the gallery around the court. Besides, if a man could not be hanged in the center of the court for all to see, what purpose would it serve to hang him inside the fort at all? Convinced, Sebilleau and the others withdrew for their noonday meal, ordering Hackett to be bound and locked in the factor’s empty apartment till 2 p. m., at which time he would be taken to the river and hanged. At ten minutes to two, the judges, a half-dozen other company men, and a large contingent of Indians dragged Hackett out of the apartment to lead him to his execution.

Sebilleau, who could neither read nor write, seemed possessed nonetheless of a fine sense of poetic justice, and suggested that Hackett be set astride the horse he’d been convicted of stealing. Will refused them the use of the raindrop gelding. His attitude about the hanging was pretty much akin to what all the family save Bonnie Sue felt. Lester Hacket had stolen a horse, and had to be punished for the crime as prescribed by law. They went down to the river to witness the hanging not because they were curious — they’d seen hangings aplenty in Virginia — and not because they felt vengeful or angry or indeed anything but dutiful; it was a Chisholm horse had been stolen, and a man was now to be hanged for the theft, and they felt it was their responsibility to be there.

A company man named Bertaut knew how to fashion a hangman’s noose, having learned the intricacies of it as a boy, when someone taught him how to do it as a sort of game. The Indians lining the river and surrounding the huge cottonwood that had been selected as the hanging tree watched as Bertaut coiled the heavy rope around itself. He explained that the purpose of the noose was not to choke off the man’s breath and therefore kill him by strangulation. Instead, when the condemned was jerked off the horse upon which he was sitting — a gray stallion belonging to the company cook — the huge knot behind his head would snap upward and break his neck, killing him instantly. Or so Bertaut hoped. He had never made a hangman’s noose for use in a real hanging. An Indian who’d been listening to this explanation in French now turned to several other Indians and began explaining it in the Siouan tongue. The others nodded gravely. They understood completely the solemnity of this occasion by the river, and they watched now in awed silence.

The stallion would not stand still, foiling their efforts to loop the noose over Lester’s head. Each time another horse came alongside, the stallion tried to rear away from the man holding its bridle. They finally put Lester on a more docile horse, and got the noose around his neck. Somebody asked him would he like to say a prayer, and he said, “Go to hell, man,” not knowing to whom he was addressing the words because they’d blindfolded him as an act of mercy. Sebilleau somewhat gleefully brought the whip down on the horse’s left buttock, shouting “Allez!” at the moment of contact. The horse leaped forward and Lester was jerked from the saddle — only to begin choking.

The Indians, who’d understood Lester would be killed instantly, now thought they’d heard incorrectly and turned for explanation to the one among them who spoke French. Schwarzenbacher recognized the trouble at once; Bertaut’s damn knot hadn’t worked and Hackett was choking to death. “The man’s choking!” he shouted, more to himself in realization than to anyone else present. Leaping upon the back of the gray stallion that had earlier balked, he drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt and rode to where Lester was kicking and coughing and twisting at the end of the rope. Standing in the stirrups, he hacked at the thick hemp, virtually fiber by fiber, till at last it began to unravel and finally tore asunder, dropping Lester to the ground.

Orliac asked Schwarzenbacher why he had interrupted the hanging, and Schwarzenbacher replied somewhat testily, “The man stole a horse, he didn’t murder a sleeping babe!” Orliac then ordered Bertaut to fashion another noose, a better one this time, a noose that would break the condemned man’s neck as it was supposed to. Bertaut suggested that he was not equal to such an awesome responsibility, but then changed his mind at once, perhaps sensing the impatience and the mounting anger of his superior. He ran up to the fort to fetch a new hanging rope, and soon they were ready to try it another time.

Will didn’t know what she was saying at first.

Sounded like she was babbling. Came rushing out of the woods to where he was sitting apart from the others on the knoll above the river. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her nose was red and running, she said something about hiding, watching, couldn’t bear to see it, prayers answered, God answered her prayers. “You’ve got to save him for good now, Will, please.” She was on her knees, squeezing both his hands between her own. He shook one gently loose, and brushed wet hair back from her cheeks.

“It’s your horse, Will,” she said. “You could stop em if you wanted. They’ve put the rope on him again, Will. You got to go down there and stop em.”

“Bonnie Sue...”

“Will, I love him. Please do what I ask. I beg you.”

“I can’t,” he said, and shook his head. “The man stole—”

“I’m carryin his child,” Bonnie Sue said.

“No,” Will said.

“Will, I’m pregnant by him. I’m two months—”

“No,” he said. “You ain’t, Bonnie Sue.”

“Will...”

“You aint, goddamn it!”

They stared at each other in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She knelt before him and he looked down at her, and then turned his face away, refusing to meet her eyes lest he find there the eyes of a woman. “No,” he said again, and in the next instant was sorry. He heard the shouted “Ailez!” from below, and turned to look, and realized he was too late, he could no longer stop it if he tried.

The horse was running off along the riverbank.

Lester’s body hung in the air, his boots some four feet above the ground, his head twisted at a peculiar angle, his tongue protruding grotesquely from his mouth. His hat had fallen from his head when the knot struck him violently from behind, and it lay now in the dirt below his swinging boots. Bertaut looked up at him and nodded in brief satisfaction. Wiping perspiration from his forehead, he went to stand with his Indian wife, who asked him something in French. Bertaut nodded. Beside Will, Bonnie Sue screamed. She got to her feet and, still screaming, ran to where Lester’s body slowly twisted on the end of the rope. And clutched for his knees, and hugged his legs close, wailing, wailing as the Indians watched in wonder.

He went down to the tipi again that night. He was sober this time. Lifted the flap, went right on in. He had food with him, which he gave to Catherine and the squaw. The air had turned chilly outside; they still had the fire going. He asked them whether they’d already had supper, and Catherine nodded that they had and then talked to the squaw with her hands. The squaw sighed and made ready to go, draping the army blanket over her shoulders.

“You can stay, you want to,” Will said. Catherine looked at him. “Tell her she can stay. Makes no difference,” he said, and shrugged again.

The women held a conference, Catherine explaining with her hands, the squaw listening and then turning in surprise to Will. He nodded. She took off the blanket then, and went to the robe near the fire. Kneeling on it, she began unbraiding her hair, preparing for sleep.

“Take off the paint, too,” he said.

The squaw turned to Catherine for translation. Catherine’s hands moved. The squaw nodded and went silently to rub the paint from her face. She undressed without embarrassment, and then came back to the robe naked, and lay down on it, and pulled a second robe over her. In a little while, Catherine and Will got under the robe with her, Will between the two women. The squaw was almost asleep. Her hand found his pecker. She let it rest there lightly, fell asleep that way. Snored gently. Catherine made sounds. Little frightened sounds. All night long. He lay wake between them.

He kept thinking about Lester Hackett.

Kept thinking he could’ve stopped the hanging if he’d moved an instant sooner. Should’ve jumped right up when Bonnie Sue told him she was pregnant. Never mind Lester was a horse thief deserved hanging. This was his sister here telling him the man’s child was inside her, and there he was with a noose around his neck. Should’ve done what Schwarzenbacher’d already done once, run on down there and cut the man loose. Shake his hand. Congratulations, Lester, you stole a horse and got away with it. Now about this other matter, Lester, this matter of having also stole my sister’s honor. I reckon we had best start discussing a wedding, wouldn’t you say, before my pa shoots you dead? Sat there looking at her instead. Didn’t know what to say or do, his little sister telling him all at once she’d behaved like any whore...

Catherine stirred beside him on the robe.

“You awake?” he asked.

She grunted and rolled over, her back to him. The squaw still had her hand on his pecker. Pair of whores, he thought. I’m here with a pair of whores, one looks like a cow and can’t talk English, the other mute as any stone. Was a time... hell, he couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t loved Elizabeth. Four years old when he first spied her in her cradle. Fell in love right that minute. Asked his ma who the young’un was there in the cradle by the fire. Minerva said it was Mrs. Donnely’s new daughter as lived down the ridge. Was minding her while they were in town. “She’s a real sunflower,” Will said. He was four. Loved her to death first time he saw her. He was thirty-one now — no, thirty-two already, layin here between two whores, gettin hard in spite of himself, the squaw’s hand twitching in her sleep.

Thirty-two, he thought.

Don’t know where I am or what I’m about.

Figured if we left Virginia...

Should’ve saved Lester, damn it! Cause when you thought about it... well, he got killed for a horse, wasn’t that the long and the short of it? Man stole a fuckin horse, you strung him up. Them Indians who’d killed Annabel... oh, Lord, he thought, oh, dearest God, and lay motionless, eyes wide open. He could see stars above, through the hole in the top of the tent Smoke rose from the smoldering fire. Way Bobbo described it, they’d come in there ready to kill. Maybe not wanting to, but ready to. Must’ve been following the wagon, saw the womenfolk, saw just Bobbo and Pa all alone, thought to have taken the women and the mules. Kill Bobbo and Pa, take the women and mules. Thirteen years old, saw Annabel as a woman, same as Ma and Bonnie Sue. Came in there ready to kill for what they wanted, ready to kill even the very thing they wanted. Made no fuckin sense. None of it. Not the Indians killing Annabel, and not the white men today killing Lester. Cause that’s what they’d done, they’d killed him, hanged him by law, but killed him dead however you looked at it. Wasn’t what Bonnie Sue wanted, wasn’t even what Will wanted when you got right down to it. What he would’ve rathered was for Lester to still be alive and kicking and marrying his damn dumb sister who’d let a horse thief...

He was losing the thought, he was letting it slip from his grasp.

It had to do with horses.

The horse Lester stole, and the horses Bobbo and Pa took from them Indians, two fine mares and a stallion. If you hanged a white man who’d stolen from you, and if you killed Indians were trying to steal from you...

And...

And if you claimed as your own the horses had belonged to the Indians, then what was to stop the one who’d run off from coming back to claim all the fuckin horses — the ones had belonged to him and his, and the ones rightfully belonging to you and yours, earmarked and branded? What was to stop anybody in this whole fuckin world from taking anything he wanted from anybody else? Take it or try to take it. Kill for it or be killed for it. White man or Indian, what difference did it make? There were only so many horses, only so many buffalo, only so much land...

Trembling in the night, troubled, he moved closer to the squaw for warmth, and finally fell asleep.

By morning, he’d forgotten what he’d almost understood.