“I thought only niggers liked sweet coffee,” Ratcliff said.
Shillaber poured cold water into his cup and sipped. “Damned if I don’t miss my coffee.”
“Yes,” Ratcliff said.
The next night, they watered at the South Fork near four fresh graves.
They came out of the Tongue River Valley onto a high waterless plateau. Easy travel, but ten thousand indians could be lying in the low places.
Clots of buffalo lifted their heads, antelope bounced soundlessly away.
Nobody slept more than four hours. Though they didn’t talk much, they were unusually courteous. One morning, after he’d caught his own mount, Ben Shillaber helped Ratcliff hitch his mules. One night when the shadows seemed unusually menacing, Nelson Story rode alongside the cookwagon. “My wife is Ellen Story,” he said.
Ratcliff said, “I never had no luck with women.”
THEY PASSED NORTH of the Bighorns and next morning Ratcliff made a cookfire. After a couple hours’ rest and a hot breakfast they resumed their journey, and late that afternoon, with horses roped behind as drags, the wagons skidded down the rocky slope into the Bighorn River Valley.
As the day warmed, Fort C. F. Smith appeared across the river and everybody started cracking jokes.
The ferry was cottonwood logs lashed together and caulked with rags. The lashings were hemp and rawhide—some frayed, some furry, some blackened, some green.
“My wagon was made in Dallas by Bream and Company,” Ratcliff said. “I ain’t trustin’ it to that thing.”
The ferryman said, “God Damn you for a hincty nigger. Nothin’ wrong with my ferry.”
“River’s high and fast,” Ratcliff said. “I’d despise continuin’ to Virginia City without my cookwagon.”
“Pull the ferry ashore,” Ben Shillaber commanded.
“And just who the hell are you?” the ferryman blustered.
Shillaber’s smile was icy as a January morning, “Just another humble pilgrim. Sir, pull your ferry.”
While they relashed and recaulked the ferry, Nelson Story swam his horse across to the fort. Colonel Bradley, Fort Smith’s commanding officer, shook his head and said, “Somebody in your outfit knows how to pray.” He let Story use the bathtub in his quarters.
The herd swam the turbulent river without mishap and Nelson Story rejoined them. “We’re burnin’ daylight,” he said. “Winter’s comin’ on.”
Tommy Thompson sniffed the air. “Jesus Christ, boss. Is that rose petals I smell?”
Nelson Story blushed.
For two days they trailed the herd across the high country and when they descended to the Clarks Fork River, ice glossed the rocks in the shallows.
“I’m a Texan,” George Dow complained. “My hide ain’t thick enough for this weather.”
Headboards on the riverbank read, “Reverend W. K. Thomas, age 36 years, of Belleville, Ill. Chas. K. Thomas, age 8 years, of Belleville, Ill. James Schultz, age 35 years, of Ottawa. C. K. Wright. All killed and scalped by Indians on the 24th day of August, 1865.”
George Dow blew into his cold hands and checked his rifle.
Next day, near the Rock Creek crossing, Shillaber met twenty or thirty indians, coming at a gallop. Shillaber aimed his first shot, snapped the second and third before he raced back for the herd. The indians came on his heels, pell-mell.
Shillaber dashed through the cowboys his shots had alerted. Twenty-three Remingtons made a hullabaloo. Two indians fell and their fellows took them away.
“Who the hell were they?” Story asked. “What tribe?”
Shillaber grinned. “Indian tribe, I reckon.”
Nelson stared at his scout for a long moment before adjusting his hat and clucking to his horse.
To the south, the Absaroka Mountains were white as sugar and the wind spun plumes of snow from the high ridges into clear blue air. Ratcliff burrowed deeper in his buffalo coat and wished he were in Virginia.
The Stillwater was frozen from bank to bank. Ben Shillaber and George Dow waded in to break trail. Their horses broke the ice for the beeves.
On the far bank an earlier pilgrim had carved a message into the bark of a cottonwood tree: “Jenny S.—bound for Virginia City in the Happie Land of Canaan.”
The hills were covered with jack pines. Snow persisted on the north slopes and in shadows.
When Shillaber and Dow struck the Yellowstone ford, Shillaber went back to advise Story. It was a dangerous ford, its current so strong they angled the swimming beeves upstream. Roped to four riders, Ratcliff’s cookwagon almost rolled over. They found George Dow on a gravel bar below the ford. He’d been scalped and had thirty-eight arrows in his body.
“George didn’t want to make this trip,” Shillaber said.
“He guessed right,” Ratcliff said.
ONE DAY’S JOURNEY LATER, the wagon ruts they’d followed for so many miles deepened, proliferated, and became a real road. Children ducked back inside a homesteader’s soddy. Soddies soon lost their novelty. When the cattle got into the crested wheatgrass, the cowboys needed rope ends to keep them moving. They stowed their Remingtons in the cookwagon.
Nelson Story tied his horse to Ratcliff’s wagon and took a seat.
“Good country,” Ratcliff said.
“Oh, hell, man. It’s great country. Good soil, good water, good grass.” Story stretched his arms from horizon to horizon. “Think how many cows I can run in this valley. I’ll buy some Oregon herd bulls and make some real calves. The mining camps are crying for beef. Ratcliff, I swear to God. The Gallatin Valley is the land of milk and honey. Every man dreams there’s a place, somewhere, where the mistakes he made don’t matter anymore, where he can start over. John Smith don’t need to be John Smith no more, he can be Bill Brown. Don’t got to be Nigger Ratcliff, he can be Aloysius J. Parkman if that’s who he wants to be.”
NELSON STORY HAD five thousand acres between the Yellowstone and Shields Rivers. He left Tommy Thompson and five men with most of the herd and instructions to throw up a bunkhouse before the snow flew.
It was bitter cold when the rest of Story’s crew and a hundred fat steers trailed into Bozeman City, Montana Territory. The metropolis of the Gallatin Valley had a main street of frozen mud, a flour mill, Fitz & Son’s General Store, a score of one-story log buildings, twice that many tents, and the two-story City Hotel. In the Tivoli Garden Saloon, Story paid his crew and offered them their Remingtons for half price. He wished them good luck and opined that good luck generally sought the man who worked for it. Shillaber, Ratcliff, and the teamsters would continue with Story to Virginia City.
After a night of convivial leave-taking, no man was in a good humor when Story cursed them out of their bedrolls at dawn. Only Story was one hundred percent sober.
This road was graded for the coaches that sped between Virginia City and Bozeman City; but the graze was poor and that night a hundred cows spread out over five acres. Ratcliff made biscuits, bacon, and coffee.
When they woke it was snowing soft fat flakes and the sun glowed pink inside the low clouds. At midday they crossed the Madison River and the snow intensified. Ratcliff unhitched his cookwagon and saddled a mule.
Snow pelted Ratcliff’s eyes. The cows turned their backs to the blizzard and started drifting.
When Ratcliff rode at the cows’ faces and popped his rope end, they broke around him. Since the cows couldn’t be turned, Ratcliff followed them, holding his reins inside the sleeves of his buffalo coat and retracting his head into the collar like a turtle. It snowed every minute of that long night and Ratcliff didn’t know whether he was following the main herd or a few stragglers and he didn’t see another rider until an hour before daybreak when the snow stopped and the cows quit drifting.
“Mornin’, Ben,” Ratcliff said.
“Mornin’, Top. Sure wish’t I was in Charleston,” Shillaber said.
“Wonder where we got to.”
Shillaber stood in his stirrups to inspect the soft white mounded hills. “T’ain
’t Charleston,” he said.
Ratcliff stepped down to take a piss and while he was dismounted his mule took a piss too. The sun struck the new snow incandescent and hurt his eyes.
It took most of the day to push the herd back upstream to the cookwagon. Shillaber built a fire and Ratcliff made coffee and biscuits, bacon and beans. That night they didn’t post a nighthawk. The cows were too tired to stray.
Next morning they made slow progress through the snow, but by three o’clock they’d descended into a wide valley where the wind kept the slopes clean and the cows could get to the bunchgrass.
They crossed a sulfurous, steaming creek.
Nelson Story said, “There’s a hot springs up that draw. Supposed to be good for what ails you.”
One teamster brightened. “Think it can cure the joint evil?”
Which was how it happened that five white men and one black man lounged in a steaming pool surrounded by untracked snow that stretched to the distant, sharp-toothed mountains.
Their clothing soaked too and sometimes a man’s drawers would drift away into the steam.
“Tomorrow we’ll be in Virginia City,” Nelson Story said. “Lord, I’ll be glad to see my wife.”
“Sometimes I wish I had a wife,” Shillaber said. “You married, Top?”
“Not so I noticed,” Ratcliff said.
Their heads were sleek as beavers above the steaming water. Vapors curtained them and sometimes they couldn’t see the fellow directly across.
“What’s that medal hanging from your neck?” Shillaber asked Ratcliff.
“My mojo.”
“I don’t believe I ever seen so many bullwhip scars on one nigger’s back. You must have been one hincty nigger.”
The setting sun poised over the Tobacco Root Mountains like it might hang forever. Each man was encased in steam, suspended within the warm flesh of his own body.
Ratcliff said softly, “I’d run. They’d catch me, but I’d run again. I never knew where I was runnin’ to.” He added, “Might be I was runnin’ here.”
Next morning was sunny. The snow got sticky and rivulets filled the wagon ruts. When Nelson Story’s Texas cattle drive arrived in Virginia City, the cookwagon was festooned with men’s shirts and socks and drying underwear.
CHAPTER 15
AN OPIUM EATER
I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burdens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labors. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave . . .
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
“. . . THESE UNREPENTANT REBELS,” MR. CHEPSTOW CONTINUED, “don’t believe in the legality of the Congress of the United States to make laws for them. ‘So help us God,’ they say, ‘we won’t be governed by Congress’s laws.’ It would be lunacy to let these rebels vote.”
“Yes, sir,” Duncan Gatewood said. Duncan’s mouth was dry, and though Chepstow wouldn’t offer brandy, he might have offered water.
Four Chandler and Price presses occupied the New Nation’s cramped premises in Shockhoe Bottom, which was “cheek by jowl” (as Mr. Chepstow liked to remark) with the “infamous” Libby Prison, where Union prisoners had been jailed during the War.
The only chair in the editor’s tiny office held a tottering stack of unsold newspapers.
“Mr. Gatewood, you were a secessionist?”
“I’ve come to offer the A.M.&O.’s custom,” Duncan said. “General Mahone needs timetables, freight rates, tickets, our annual report to the Public Service Commission, and so forth. Our custom will amount to three thousand dollars annually.”
It was raining a soft spring rain and when he was concluded with Chepstow, Duncan would walk to the Capitol, half a mile. Perhaps the stroll would loosen his bowels.
“Yes, yes,” Chepstow said impatiently. “And the quid pro quo?”
“Sir?”
“Is General Mahone a friend to the Republican Party? Hasn’t General Mahone forbidden his employees from Republican activities on pain of dismissal?”
Duncan imagined he was assailed by a feist. The little dog barked, circled, and threatened his trouser legs, but he dare not kick at it because the feist would redouble its efforts. Duncan smiled.
“You find Mahone’s denial of political rights amusing, sir?” Chepstow snapped. “I don’t find it amusing. Nor does the governor.”
Duncan’s mind conjured a skirmish line firing plugs of tobacco instead of minié balls, but the image drifted away.
The floor thumped when Chepstow’s pressman closed his press. Out-side, the trolley bell dinged. Instead of walking, perhaps Duncan would ride the trolley.
Chepstow shook his head. “Confederate General Mahone seeking to curry favor with a Republican leader. Shameless!”
Duncan had fought under Mahone at the Battle of the Crater and sometimes dreamed of that day. When colored soldiers were being slaughtered like beasts in a shambles, General Mahone’s red-hot curses had stopped the massacre. There’d been gore in Duncan’s hair; his eyebrows had been pasted to his forehead by gore, the hair on the back of his hands had been glossy with stiffening gore. “Excuse me, Mr. Chepstow; my mind wanders.”
“I love liberty. All our colored friends should have it. Every loyal man must have the right to vote.”
“And the man who was a Confederate officer?” ex-Major Gatewood inquired.
Chepstow went to the door and called, “Jesse, come in my office. Please.”
The pressman wiped his hands on an inky rag before offering his hand.
“Hullo, Jesse. So this is where you’re working.”
“I’m setting type. All the government notices and Mr. Chepstow’s editorials.”
“I hear you’ll be a delegate to the Republican convention. You’ve come far.”
“This is your old master,” Chepstow said wonderingly. “Master Gatewood.”
“ ‘Young Master Gatewood,’ ” Jesse corrected his employer. “Duncan’s father was ‘Master Gatewood.’ ”
“But he had absolute authority over you. He could do whatever he pleased.”
“Not entirely,” Duncan replied pleasantly. “If I had murdered Jesse without provocation, I might have been held to account. Certainly Preacher Todd would have remarked it. But since servants like Jesse were so valuable, we only murdered them on festive occasions.”
“I don’t get your meaning, sir,” Chepstow said.
“No, sir, I believe you don’t.”
Jesse half turned to exclude Chepstow from the conversation. “Maggie’s in Richmond. I saw her goin’ into a bank on Broad Street. She was in black and wearin’ a veil, but I knew her like it was yesterday. I didn’t say nothin’. Didn’t know what to say.”
“Yes,” Duncan said, nodding to the puzzled Chepstow. “A mutual acquaintance. Her husband was killed in the war. He was a Confederate hero.”
As interest faded from Chepstow’s eyes, Duncan said, “I’m glad to see Maggie has prospered. I do not believe she wishes to be reminded of unhappier times.”
Jesse brightened. “I married my Sudie in January. It gave me a start, though, seein’ Maggie that way.”
Duncan had a sudden vivid memory of how Maggie had looked nude, on a particular winter day in the milk barn. “Sometimes,” Duncan said, “it is best to forget.” He took a breath and added, “My Sallie is well and we have been blessed with an infant: Baby Catesby.”
Jesse nodded. “We got rooms off East Fourth Street. Down from the gasworks. My Sudie is a little bit of a thing. She’s got a son.”
Chepstow sighed dramatically. “ ‘What is to be done? What is to be done? The negroes forgive those who enslaved them. Virginia negroes would forgive Satan himself!’ ”
“Mr. Chepstow, he’s for negro rights. Congressman Stevens hates Rebels and Senator Sumner hates Rebels and Secretary Seward hates Rebels and Mr. Chepstow believes tha
t when those men die, others who hate Rebels as much as they do will take their place. Mr. Chepstow is an educated man and maybe he’s right.” Jesse shrugged. “There’s near as many Virginia negroes as Virginia Rebels and in the south side there’s more of us. If we get the vote and Rebels get the vote, I b’lieve we can sort things out.”
Duncan went to the window. “Ah, the rain is stopping.” He touched his stump gently. “Aches like hell when it’s damp.”
Chepstow stared at Jesse as if betrayed. “You’d undo our great work?” he asked. “You’d give these traitors the vote?”
“I’ve the late edition to print, Mr. Chepstow.” Jesse’s eyes were blank as a slave’s.
Chepstow’s wave sent Jesse back to work and soon the press was thumping again. Chepstow shut the door, which was scuffed at the bottom as if it had been kicked a time or two.
Outside, pedestrians strolled through the mist and trolley horses clattered on the cobblestones. Duncan picked up his green-and-black carpetbag. “Sir, you are a busy man. I shan’t trouble you again.”
Chepstow lifted his eyes to the pressed tin ceiling and intoned, “We’ve more business than we can handle.”
Duncan had heard every circumlocution with which men cloak their greed. He set the carpetbag down. The street sounds, the regular thud of the press, the bright smell of ink: why did this print shop remind him of a child’s playroom?
“Mahone astonishes me,” Chepstow said. “Employing you as agent—a man apparently indifferent to his interests.”
“And what are General Mahone’s interests, sir?”
“Passage of his railroad bill. The Baltimore & Ohio’s agents are offering two thousand dollars for . . . due consideration.”
Duncan raised innocent eyebrows. “As much as that, sir?”
“Elections cost money,” Chepstow said. “Republicans mustn’t be outspent by their enemies.” He wouldn’t meet Duncan’s eyes.
Duncan placed his carpetbag atop the unsold newspapers and unbuttoned it.
Chepstow shook his head wonderingly. “General Mahone must be daft; sending a man like you to persuade men of conscience.”