Friends Page 5

  "Some gal, was Nell," I said. "I'll miss her."

  "So will I, and I'm going to pay her back by getting the bastard who did this to her. You smell the coal oil?" he ask me.

  "Yes, I did. Around back."

  "It smelled strong inside where I found her," he said. "You see any tracks?"

  "No, it was too dark to look, but we can look now."

  We walked around the north side and there was the boot tracks coming in and going back out, right up toward that notch in the hills that looks like a rifle sight. About a hundred yards out was a five gallon can on its side.

  After Clete smelled it he nodded his head. "Coal oil. I'm going now."

  "Where?" I ask him.

  He spun around on me so fast I thought he was going to poke me. "Where!? Why, after that sonofabitch, is where, and don't you try and stop me!"

  "You can't do that,"I told him. "Not now."

  "What in hell do you mean, I can't? You heard what that woman asked me to do, almost with her dying breath. You think I'll walk away from that?"

  I took a minute before I answered him, hoping he would cool off some, but it was plain he wasn't going to.

  "Clete, I want the same thing you do. We got to catch that murdering bushwhacker." Then I just waited.

  "No, I'm going alone, and I'm leaving right now." He strided off toward the bam and I followed him.

  "Will you just stop a minute and listen to me?" I asked. He was trying to get Buckshot's reins untied and was having a time with them, it still being pretty dark in the barn.

  "No!" he yelled back over his shoulder.

  "And I suppose you're just going to let her lie out there for the vultures and coyotes?" That was a low thing to say to him, I know.

  He run over to me and I thought for the second time that morning he was going to take me apart. But he didn't. Instead, he calmed way down. "Take Nell's body into town, to Biezmier's. And then get word to her family. After that, take-"

  "You can stop giving orders any time now," I told him, "'cause I just quit working for dumbest goddamn sheriff north of Sweet-water!"

  He was so surprised he didn't know what to say.

  I had plenty more to say. "I was willing to help you with Wilson's bunch because I owed that to you. But I don't owe you this, lettin' you get yourself killed." I got myself settled some before I said any more. "Seems to me, the last thing Nell asked of you was to tell Mary. Have you thought about that?"

  He was still lost for words.

  "You're going at this all wrong," I told him plain. "Just listen to me for a minute." I sat down on the barrel there and after a time Clete leaned against a stall. "Let me start after him," I said. "I'll go slow and easy 'cause there's no way in hell I can shoot him myself. You take Nell into town, and maybe whatever you can find of Jesse, and then go out and tell Mary. You know, you might lose her if you don't."

  He was quiet for a minute before he spoke. "I might at that," he said.

  "Maybe you can see about Nell's being buried. Might be able to get it done by this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest-probly tomorrow would be better anyway. That way you could get yourself some sleep and us some supplies and a pack animal. And I need a better horse. That buckskin of mine's too old for much hard riding. Take the money for it-a good one, now, don't matter how much it costs-take it out of my pack at the Dakota House and bring my trail things. Speak to someone about keeping an eye on the town 'til we get back, too, maybe John Tate. I'll leave a track broad enough for a blind man to follow, and we might have him in a couple days. What do you say?"

  Clete stood up straight. "Maybe we could catch him a couple of miles from here if we left right now," he said.

  "You think he slept around here last night?" I asked him. "Just burned down a ranch with two people inside and then took his rest? Would you have, if you was him?"

  Clete took a deep breath, but he didn't have to think on it very long. "No, I wouldn't. And I'd still be riding now, and probably this time tomorrow, too."

  "Well, come along up the trail with me a few miles so we can both be sure I'm not dead wrong and then come back and do like I said, all right?" I didn't know for sure if he would.

  "I thought the deputy was supposed to stay and take care of the town when the sheriff was out chasing killers?" he asked, and I saw his eyes soften under the brim of his hat.

  "Maybe so," I answered real smart. "But I ain't the deputy of Two Scalp no more, remember?"

  "You are if you're riding after that sonofabitch. Otherwise, you're just a damn vigilante, and I don't ride with vigilantes."

  I had to laugh at that one. "Well, all right, have it your own way," I said. "But I'm getting on his trail now and you'll catch up to me in two or three days, right?"

  "Willie, damn you," he said, but he wasn't mad no more.

  We tied Nell's body in a heavy piece of canvas and put her in the wagon she kept in the bam. Clete give me his jacket and for my bedding I took a big piece of canvas from the same roll we had used for Nell.

  I knowed where the trail would start, up close to where I'd found them shells before. Clete rode more than a couple miles with me, and then he saw how it was. Our man had lit out, and he was traveling light and fast-without even a pack horse.

  We got to the top of a little rise and he reined Buckshot in. We sat and watched the smoke from Nell's place curl up into the blue sky.

  "Willie, are you up to this?" he ask.

  "Wasn't me that got shot a couple weeks ago," I told him.

  "No, I meant following his trail and living rough for a while. Risking your life in this business, I guess I mean to say."

  "Shoot, I'm not new to this game," I said. "Fact is, I earned my daily bread doing this very thing for a time. Not so awful long ago, either."

  He looked at me real curious after I said that. "Is that so? Where'd you do that?"

  "Down in Texas and the Indian Territory. Tracked into Missouri once, too."

  Well, he waited for me to tell the tale, but I didn't feel in no storytelling mood just then, but after a minute I seen he felt he needed to know. I ain't real proud of it, but I worked for Pinkerton's awhile. Don't you fret over me. I know what I'm doin'-well enough, anyway, long as I don't get in a shooting match with this boy."

  He took off his hat and scratched his head. "I never knew you were a Pinkerton," he said.

  "Lots you don't know about me, young son," I told him.

  Clete pulled his Henry from the boot and handed it to me. "Here. You may need this before I see you again."

  "Yeah, maybe I can club him with it, if I get close enough" I said. "Bring me one of them scatterguns from the office when you come back."

  "All right, rn do that," he said, and then turned his black around. "Watch out for yourself, old timer!" he yelled back, ridin' down that hill fast enough to break his neck. For a minute I wished he would.

  Chapter Seven

  By midday I got to know the tracks of that horse real good. He swung wide around Two Scalp and then headed east by north, the way I figured he would. That was the direction he'd headed before, when I'd followed him a ways out of town after he'd bushwacked Clete. In some dried mud, I found the tracks we both'd made then.

  He was still traveling fast, though not as fast as he was when he lit out of Nell's like a demon out of hell. I saw where the right rear shoe of his horse had come off. And not too long after, the hoof split pretty bad, and the animal started to favor that foot. A good ten miles beyond where I'd trailed him earlier he led me to where a prairie stream flowed into a river I guessed to be the Missouri. I cursed myself then for not carrying a map. I hoped that Clete would think to bring one when he come along, which I hoped would be soon.

  I guessed the Big Muddy instead of the Cheyenne, which I knowed was in these parts somewheres, because I'd heard different people speak big of the Missouri breaks. And damned if that river I sat my horse beside didn't fling its banks wilder than any I had saw before. His tracks led across the stream an
d come out in a rock bank on the other side, and it looked like he was going to follow the Missouri upstream for a piece.

  Only his sign didn't come out upstream of the rocks. I searched in the first good river soil I hit, back and forth for three rods or more, but I seen no tracks at all. I went on upstream for the better part of a mile before I convinced myself he didn't go that way.

  When I got back to where he'd crossed the stream, I rode in circles that I kept widening at each loop. I knowed I'd have to cross that damn freezin' river and look over there too, so I did. But seeing no tracks on the east bank either, I swum my horse back to the west side, widened out the circles some more, and rode as fast as I could. Well, it took me two hours, but I found them. Heading due west. He'd swept a good long piece of his backtrail clean with a cottonwood branch, which I found close to where the tracks started sudden.

  I went back to where the hoofprints'd left me in the rocks beside the creek and dug out the pencil and the old Bible I always carry. I hated to keep tearing pages out of the back, the part called Revelations, but it was the only paper I had, and it would save Clete a lot of time if he didn't have to follow me all around searching for that boy's trail like I did.

  I could of tore pages out of the front, of course-that Genesis part-but there was a lot of good stuff there I wanted to think over some more. Like always, when I had to tear a page out of the back, I read it before I wrote on it. I supposed I'd never live long enough to get to the end. Still, I hated to lose a part that I didn't get to yet. But like most of what I'd read this way before, that page made little sense to me. Maybe it suffered some from reading it out of place, I don't know. Something about locusts that looked like horses wearing crowns, and with people's faces and lion's teeth and woman's hair. I guess the horses was a whole lot different back in them days.

  I wrote a note crossways on the Bible page telling Clete which way to go and tied it to a rock and put it in a place he'd be sure to see.

  Back where my man's track started again, it looked like he'd just dropped out of the sky. Close to there was where I saw his boot tracks for the first time since he'd left Nell's. He'd taken himself a good long piss before he mounted his horse again.

  I knelt down looking at that boot track and trying to picture him in my mind, but I couldn't do it clear as I wanted to. He was a tall man, I could see that just by the size of his boots and the length of his stride. But he didn't weigh as much as me, and I'm not too heavy, never was. From the way he dragged his toe, leaving a little furrow in the sign, you could tell he had hurt his back or his left leg some time ago and it pained him still. More than that, he'd been chased a time or two, for his trick almost worked on me. This whole little jog up to where this stream emptied into the Missouri was just a purpose to throw me off the track. Yes, this boy had run before.

  The man in the high-peaked hat slowed his pace to spare his horse. She had thrown a shoe and was getting sore-footed. The bony man knew she had only a few good hours left, and though he had covered his tracks back at Medicine Creek, he felt someone following him. An uncomfortable tickle on the back of his neck like the twiddling legs of an ant. He waited and watched the horizon with his glass for a while, but no rider appeared. About noon, he crested a rise and saw someone chopping wood in front of a soddy. In the corral, beside a stable made of willow poles, stood a fine-looking paint.

  I had been looking for a place to camp by some water for more than an hour. The tracks was getting damn hard to see. Just as the sun was starting to set, I drew up on the top of a slope where the yeller Prairie Mustard was just coming into bud. Below, someone was trying to prove up on a claim. Whoever he was had dug himself into the bank and throwed up side walls of sod. The front was logs, and from where I sat my buckskin, I seen where he had cut them from beside the little stream that edged the valley on the far side. There was a pole shed, but there were no horses or mules. He'd started on another outbuilding, too. Neat little place, with what looked like real glass windows and whitewashed window frames. They'd had their troubles, though. A little patch of crosses was clustered on a low hill close to the stream. Probly some of their babies. Somebody was home, too, for feathers of smoke was lifting from the chimney, though I couldn't see no one out around the place.

  My man had spent some time here watching. I found where he laid in the sandy soil-hadn't bothered with his ground cloth this time, though. I stretched out beside where he did and put my toes even with where his'd been. Where his elbows rested was a good eight inches ahead of mine, so he was about as tall as I figured from his boot tracks-close to six and a half feet. He'd burned enough time to smoke two cigarettes, so he was being careful about riding in. The tracks led right down to the house, though, so whoever lived there'd seen him, maybe even talked to him.

  He could still be there, I told myself, but then I argued against that notion-no horses. I mounted and rode down slow so as not to alarm nobody.

  I had just stopped in front of the place when the door flew open and a rifle barrel poked out at me through the opening.

  "Go away!" a voice warned.

  I tried to spot the face behind the gun, but the shadows was too deep. "I'm just traveling through," I said. "Don't mean no harm." I just sat and waited after that.

  "Ride in closer but don't get down!" It sounded like a boy.

  Well, I did that, and in a minute the person who had the drop on me stepped out. But she certainly wasn't no boy. "You are not with that other man?" she ask.

  "No, ma'm," I answered her right off, shaking my head. "But I'd sure like to catch him. Could you tell me which way he went, please, and how long ago he passed through?"

  She studied on that and then lowered the rifle to her hip, but she still kept it on me. I was wishing I could see her face, so's I could figure out what was going through her head, but she had on a broad-brimmed black hat and I couldn't see nothing of her features. "What did he do to you?" she ask.

  "He kin of yours?" I asked her back.

  "No!" she yelled. "He stole our last horse!"

  "Well, he shot my friend, the sheriff of Two Scalp, whose deputy I am, ma'm." I held out my badge for her to see, and I was glad then Clete'd made me keep it." Also, he killed two people while they laid asleep in their bed, a man and a woman. Burned them up, set fire to the house."

  "I'm not surprised, the way he acted." I could tell she had eased off some.

  "Would you mind not pointing that rifle at me no more?" I ask her. "I'll be happy to drop this here Henry if it'd make you feel any safer."

  "There is no need of that," she said, lowering the lever-action. "And you can step down if you please."

  Well, I felt a whole lot better then. She come forward and took off her hat, and I dismounted.

  I had no time to be prepared for the face that I saw then, and it made me feel more uneasy than having her rifle pointed at my chest. To tell the truth, she was the prettiest damn woman I ever seen. A gal I knowed once in Texas would come close, but not real close. Now, I must stop and explain myself here, for when men speak of a beautiful woman, it brings up a picture of blue eyes and fair hair and skin, maybe dainty little hands and whatnot, at least to me it does. But she was not like that at all. To begin with, she wasn't even a white woman.

  Not entirely, anyway, though you could tell some of her was. She was dark, not like Spanish women, but dark like some slave women who had their owner for a daddy. Her cheekbones was set high in her face. We stood in her dooryard, looking at each other. Her eyes was on a level with mine, maybe even a shade higher, so she was a tall woman, not one of those little things. Once you got over the slant of her eyes and how clear they was, they made you think of that half-wild look you see in the eyes of an Indian. Like varnished walnut they was. The white in her come out mostly in her nose, I guess you could say, for it was straight and thin and a little pointy.

  A breeze'd been blowing all day and it moved a lot of her hair across her face. That big gal's hair hung in ropes and rings around her shoulder
s and down her back a long ways. Not wooly like a slave's or straight as an arrer like an Indian woman's, but shinier and blacker than both, like new-mined coal.

  It wasn't 'til then that I noticed how young she was, not more than a year or two older than Corrie Sue's sister Jenny. I guess she saw how taken back I was, for she blushed a little, making her face glow even more than it was before, there in that orangy sunset light. But it didn't bother her long, for she stuck out her hand and without thinking I took it.

  "I'm Amanda Boudoin," she said. "My folks called me Mandy." Her smile was so pretty I felt uncomfortable.

  "Well, I'm Willie Goodwin, the deputy sheriff of Two Scalp, as I said before, I guess. And I'm pleased to make your acquaintance." I must have held on to her hand a little too long because she started to blush again. Of course, I let go soon as I noticed.

  "I was just about to have dinner when you rode up," she said. "Will you join me, Mr. Goodwin? It's the least I can do after welcoming you that way." She laughed such a musical laugh then that I thought of a New Orleans cathouse, though I was secretly ashamed of myself for thinking it.

  Of course, I needed some food, no question, and I had already thought of stopping for the day, since I could no more follow tracks in that light than I could dance. "I would be pleased to take dinner with your family, Miss Amanda, ma'm. If you could just show me where to clean up?"

  She pointed out a bucket of water and a basin by the door. "You can wash there, but I have no family, Mr. Goodwin," she said, and then went into her house. I used the little piece of soap she had there and thought things over while I washed myself.

  Then I stepped into the doorway to talk to her. "I'm going to ride across the valley a piece to make sure my man isn't still around here," I told her. "I'll find a place to camp over by your stream while I'm at it-if you don't mind, of course. Then I'll come back and eat."

  "As you please," she said, bent over a pot that hung just out of the fireplace from a chimney crane. "But I don't think he is still close to here."