The cookwagon kept to the long ridges above where the ravines formed. Twice, when wagon ruts petered out over rock, Ratcliff mistook the trail and lurched down and up gullies and wobbled across sharp-banked dry creekbeds until he regained it.
Sometime around three o’clock Benjamin Shillaber, the scout, rode in to confab with Story. After the two chose that night’s bedground, Shillaber saddled a fresh horse and Ratcliff followed with his wagon. The scout circled the bedground once and rode out. Shillaber never came in to eat until the nighthawks were on duty and he always ate his dinner silently, back to the fire.
After Ratcliff unhitched and watered his mules, he hauled water, started his fire, and mixed biscuit dough. Sometimes, while he waited for his coffee water to boil, he thought about the places he had been and the women he’d been with.
So many trains had traveled the Oregon Trail that year, the graze was poor and sometimes Shillaber found a waterless bedground with better grass.
By now the beeves were accustomed to the drive and marched north without prodding. They splashed nonchalantly across summer-shallow rivers.
Six weeks and three hundred miles north of Fort Worth, Nelson Story rode off to Fort Leavenworth for supplies.
Bill Petty had been a good segundo but was fretful in Story’s absence. Bill fretted about the remuda, the pace they were traveling, even, one evening, the cocinero.
“Ratcliff,” he remarked, “I believe my mother made better biscuits.”
Ratcliff smiled. “Good thing your mama’s ridin’ with us, then,” he said. “’Cause any biscuits you get tomorrow, she’ll bake.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’,” Petty said.
“Day without biscuits improve your manners,” Ratcliff replied.
A delegation from the Mormon train came to buy beeves. Bill Petty would sell them for thirty dollars.
The Mormon negotiator had a skimpy beard. “Cattle were eight dollars in St. Louis.”
“They’ll fetch a hundred at Virginia City.”
“First you got to get them there,” the Mormon said.
Nelson Story rejoined them at the South Platte crossing and pried open a narrow wooden case. “Brand-new Remingtons, boys. One for every man.”
When Ratcliff took a rifle, George Dow said, “Oh, my. Darkie with a rifle. What has this sorry world come to?”
“I might need to do some fool-killin’,” Ratcliff said, sighting along the barrel.
“How the hell you work this thing?” Petty asked.
Story cocked the hammer, thumbed open the breechblock, inserted a brass cartridge, and closed the breech. He lowered the adjustable rear sights. “If they’re comin’ at you, fixed sights will do.” He handed the Remington to Shillaber.
The muzzle loaders they’d carried during the War could be loaded and fired three times a minute.
George Dow set out a buffalo skull, a fibula (ox? buffalo?), a broken cinch buckle, two medicine bottles, and a green biscuit box.
Shillaber fired and the cinch buckle jumped in the air, a second shot set it spinning, the third shot disintegrated it.
Impatient men snatched up their new rifles. Flames spat from their muzzles—twelve, fifteen, seventeen times a minute—the targets disappearing in dirt spouts until the herdsman galloped up. “Quit your damn foolishness, less’n you want to chase a stampede!”
Next morning when they mounted, empty brass cartridges glistened under their horses’ hooves like gold nuggets.
Although it was late in the season, Story couldn’t push his herd through the Mormon train, so they loafed along, taking three days to cover two days’ ground.
The trail kept to the west bank of the North Platte and every bedground was well watered. Some earlier pilgrims hadn’t bothered to dig cat holes and on moonless nights a cowboy might step into a mess and blister the air cursing immigrants: unbelievers and Brigham Young’s followers alike.
Five miles south of Fort Laramie they quit the trail for a dry camp on the bluffs above the river and the cattle disappeared in big bluestem grass that had previously known only antelope, mule deer, and buffalo.
Since they were in indian country now, Story left a strong crew with the herd.
Luckier men passed through the makeshift village outside the fort: log cabins, robe traders’ sheds, two dozen scruffy indian lodges.
“They ain’t no stockade ’round this fort,” George Dow remarked.
“’Spose they don’t figure to need one.”
Frame and stone buildings faced Fort Laramie’s parade ground.
The boardwalks were thronged with traders, soldiers, immigrants, dark-clad Mormons, and indians whose traditional buckskins were augmented by white man’s discards.
Story told the men to have a drink at the post sutler’s. “Ratcliff, keep ’em out of trouble while I have a word with the boss soldier.”
Inside the two-story white clapboard bachelor officers’ quarters and post headquarters, Colonel Palmer, Fort Laramie’s commandant, was writing reports. At a pigeonhole desk beside a silent telegraph apparatus, Palmer’s orderly transcribed the letter book.
Story said he planned to take a herd up the Montana Road; what about indians?
The Colonel rubbed his eyes. “The Crows will steal cattle if they can, though they’d rather steal your horses. ”
“I hear the Lakota are on the warpath.”
The Colonel’s face tightened. “In June, at this fort, Blue Horse and Big Mouth and Swift Bear signed Commissioner Taylor’s treaty. Even Spotted Tail of the Brulé signed it.”
“I take it some didn’t.”
The Colonel shrugged. “Malcontents, troublemakers. A few hundred of Red Cloud’s Bad Faces. Have you ever known a dozen indians to agree about anything?”
“So me and my beeves got no worries?”
“Sixty miles to the north, Fort Reno is garrisoned by two companies, Colonel Carrington makes good progress building Fort Phil Kearny on the Little Piney, and Fort C. F. Smith protects the Bighorn crossing. The Montana Road is not without hazards but is negotiable.”
“That telegraph work?”
“Indians get bored or drunk and pull down the wires.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sir, last year the Pony Express was our fastest communication.” The Colonel eyed the silent telegraph proudly. “The Union Pacific has reached Omaha. Had you postponed your journey twelve months, you might have come by railroad.”
“That’s a comfort.”
“Last week, my wife’s garden frosted. Winter snows are a worse hazard to travelers than the Lakota. We don’t want another Donner affair.”
“I sure as hell hope not. I’d hate to cut a steak off my boys. They’re tough as whang leather.”
“Sir, I do not appreciate your humor.”
“I don’t expect you’d appreciate sending some soldiers with us either?”
AT THE SUTLER’S Ratcliff bought flour and lard, onions, sugar, and apples while Story’s riders lined the wide wooden counter where the sutler filled their glasses with brandy which was the worst Ratcliff’d ever tasted.
It was a week shy of army payday, and only traders were drinking tonight. One gap-toothed trader introduced them to Lakota customs. “First they cut off your hair, then they cut off your pecker, and afterwards, if they’re feelin’ kindly, they’ll kill you.”
In response to the brandy Ratcliff bought him, the trader described the failed treaty conference. “That Red Cloud jumped up like he’d set on a bobcat. I never seen no indian so damned mad. He came here to sign a peace treaty which—Red Cloud thought—was gonna close the Montana Road, and whilst he’s jawin’ with the peace commissioners, Colonel Carrington comes marchin’ in with seven hundred men. Never seen nothin’ like it. Red Cloud’s a Shirt Wearer—there’s four Wicasas amongst the Lakota and they are the big men. That stiff-necked Carrington’s got orders to march up the Montana Road through Red Cloud’s prime hunting ground, and he’s supposed to build forts there. Red Cloud was so mad
I thought he was gonna cut Carrington’s throat. When Red Cloud stalked out, all the big chiefs went with him.”
After another brandy, the trader opined, “Safe? Safe? Jesus H. God-almighty Christ, no, it ain’t safe. Ain’t been one wagon train go north all summer didn’t get hit, and some of the smaller ones got kilt altogether: man, woman, and child.”
At the trader’s elbow, Ben Shillaber downed brandy like a thirsty man.
“Mormons headin’ for Salt Lake, indians don’t trouble them ’cept they’ll steal a milk cow or a mule, and they don’t pester folks much on the Oregon Trail ’cept for beggin’ and petty thievery. But them who goes to Montana through Red Cloud’s country might die tryin’.”
The trader leaned to Shillaber confidentially. “Can’t say I blame ’em. White men ain’t no different than redskins. Bobby Lee pestered General Grant and pestered General Grant until General Grant got fed up and laid him low.”
Shillaber pushed his hat on the back of his head. Though eight empty glasses lined the plank bar before him, Shillaber’s speech was precise. “Sir, I had the honor of serving under Pettigrew. Are you insulting General Robert Lee?”
“My name’s Meredeth, Bill Meredeth. I was talkin’ about indians. Didn’t mean to get in no discussion of the War. That’s over. We got to put that behind us.”
Shillaber’s dark eyes were hot. “Sir, were you a gentleman, I’d seek satisfaction.”
Meredeth outweighed Shillaber and had the reach, but when he said, “You can have any damn satisfaction you damn well want,” Shillaber smiled gratefully.
A minute later, the two men were circling like fighting cocks. Shillaber’s scarf was wrapped around his leading left arm. He held an Arkansas toothpick in his right. The trader jabbed the air with a bonehandled buffalo skinner.
Shillaber’s faint otherworldly smile meant murder.
When Ratcliff fired into the plank ceiling, dust and dirt fell onto men’s hair and into their eyes. Their ears rang. “That’s enough,” Ratcliff said. “Put away your pigsticker, Mr. Shillaber. Mr. Story thinks you are one hell of a scout and I ’spose you are. Sutler, give this trader a brandy.” With his left hand, Ratcliff slid a two-bit piece down the bar.
Next morning when Shillaber returned his cup to Ratcliff’s washboard, he murmured, “Day after this drive is finished, we’ll have a little chat.”
For four days they trailed along the North Platte until they forded for the last time at Sage Creek. The Oregon Trail’s broad thoroughfare marched west toward South Pass; the shallow ruts forking north were the Montana Road.
Five miles along, Sage Creek petered out and the soil became granular with alkali patches. Grama grass gave way to bristly, purple sagebrush. The sky seemed the eye of a remote God and the western mountains the rim of the world. Fresh snow adorned the peaks.
Nelson Story assigned extra riders to the remuda and told Shillaber to pick another man to scout with him. Shillaber said, “The darkie.”
“Nope. Ratcliff’s the cocinero.”
Shillaber shrugged and picked George Dow.
Story rode alongside the cookwagon. “Ratcliff, I don’t want you gettin’ ahead of the herd anymore. ”
“How can I set up supper if I don’t get to the bedground first?”
“You’ll manage.”
“I hope you’re particular fond of Rainy Day Stew,” Ratcliff said.
The beeves’ plodding hooves stirred alkali into dust and the riders tied handkerchiefs over their faces like road agents.
There were four graves, simple, low mounds, at Dry Fork Creek. Those who’d survived that attack—or perhaps found the slaughtered party—hadn’t fashioned markers.
The streambed just produced enough seepage for the horses. The men drank from Ratcliff’s barrels and ate Rainy Day Stew. Shillaber shot an antelope and Ratcliff hung the gutted animal from his wagon bows.
Five nighthawks circled the herd, three more the remuda. Distant wolves howled and near wolves called back to them. The nighthawks sang to the cattle. They sang “Old Brown Rosie” and “Liquor in the Jar” and “Lorena.” No telling what the wolves were singing.
AT NOON THE NEXT DAY, Shillaber came in from his scout and dismounted for a plate of cold beans. “We’re alone on the road,” he said. “If there are other trains ahead, they are far ahead. I found water. More graves.”
“How’s the graze? ”
“Fine along the stream banks.”
Springs dribbled into a dry streambed that disappeared among brush-covered hillocks. The herd spread out and as the sun dropped behind the Bighorns, Story’s crew rode among the beeves two by two, rifles over their saddlebows. At midnight when the first watch came in, Ratcliff had coffee and dried apple pie waiting.
Tom Thompson said, “Three fresh graves on yonder hogback.”
“Four more by the spring.”
A wolf lifted its howl and others took it up.
George Dow warmed his hands with his tin cup of coffee. “I hate that damn sound. Damned if I won’t kill ary wolf I see.”
“Tom, who was in the graves?”
“Dearborn, Campbell, Will Bothwell, another I disremember.”
“I found three graves beside the creek,” Bill Petty said. “They wasn’t buried deep enough, so wolves dug ’em up. I think one was a kid, but couldn’t tell for certain. Wolves ate everything but his head.”
“You bury him again?” Ratcliff asked.
“I got to thinking, if I was a Lakota lurkin’ out in the sagebrush, how happy I’d be if Bill Petty dismounted and started to digging. Why, I could slip up right close and might be I’d shoot an arrow clean through old Bill. That kid’s already been buried onct. First buryin’s what counts.”
Tommy Thompson said, “Sergeant back at Fort Laramie said indian can shoot four arrows before his first one hits you. You suppose he was yarnin’?”
“How many graves that make?” George Dow asked.
Nelson Story looked up from his coffee. “Add the three I found, makes thirteen. Jesus Christ. Boys, there might be unfriendly indians in these parts. That make anybody want to piss his pants? No? Good. Think I’ll roll up in my bedroll. I’d hate to lose shut-eye on what might be my last night on earth.”
Noon the next day, they forded Stinking Water Creek. Behind them, Pumpkin Butte reared above the alkali flats, floating on its shimmering base like it might skitter away.
Powder River was a shallow muddy-white stream, shaded by alders and cottonwoods. Ratcliff knelt and dunked his head underwater. “Pfffahhh!”
Bill Petty pulled the boots off soft, shockingly white feet and waded in.
Nelson Story swiveled in his saddle. “Company’s comin’.”
A rickety wagon rolled down the rise, hesitated, and came on. When his skinny horses smelled water, the teamster, who wore a buffalo coat and black stovepipe, braced against his dashboard to hold them to a walk. A small head poked out of the wagon but withdrew.
“How-do,” Story said.
With his horses’ heads immersed in the river, the wagon wasn’t going any farther. “Bonjour. You have so many cows.”
“You’re a Frenchy.”
“I am Pommerlau. Pommerlau and my son, Joseph,” he indicated the closed canopy. “We progress to Fort Kearny.”
“Join up with us. No sense traveling alone.”
“Pommerlau know the Lakota many years. Pommerlau treat them fair. They not harm him, I think.”
“We’ve twenty-five riders and twenty-five new Remingtons. You’d be welcome . . .”
“Oh, I think we go by ourselves, sir. I wish you bon chance, yes?”
He lashed his team to bring them out of the river and the rickety contraption was soon lost to sight.
“Might be he had a daughter in there ’stead of a son,” Bill Petty had overheard the tail end of the conversation. “Might have thought she wasn’t safe with us hardcases.”
“Likely his wagon was full of indian whiskey,” Story said.
Ratc
liff fried antelope steaks with the onions he’d bought at Fort Laramie.
The night was brilliant cold and the full moon white and bland, and the brilliance made the cattle restless. The nighthawks’ songs promised there wasn’t a thing for a cow to worry about.
The nighthawks kept one eye on the cattle, one on the sagebrush hills. Sometimes the brush seemed to move and sometimes a silhouette might have been a man crouched low, and when a rider saw something that spooked him, he’d bring a pal for a look-see, but it always was just a shadow or a patch of sagebrush.
A half hour before sunup, Tommy Thompson could smell Ratcliff’s biscuits baking. Bill Petty gestured and the pair rode out in wide arcs coming at a suspicious shadow from east and west, slow, as if they just happened to be coming that way. Each had his Remington across his saddle and each had his thumb on his hammer and when the warrior rose up and his bow twanged and the arrow whupped into Bill Petty’s shoulder, Bill jerked off a shot that startled the warrior, so his second arrow went wide and Tommy Thompson fired and the warrior fell and the cattle were clambering to their feet bawling and a dozen indians rode over the ridgetop in full cry, which was more than enough for the beeves, who stampeded, and Ratcliff screamed, “God Damn it to hell!” when the frantic animals overran his campfire and trampled his biscuits into the coals and if Ratcliff hadn’t dived under the cookwagon might have flattened him too.
The indians made plenty of racket and the nighthawks’ Remingtons sparked, but the indians were hunkered down on their horses’ necks among running longhorns, so a man was as likely to shoot a cow as a man. Nelson Story yelled to guard the remuda and men surrounded the horses as dust settled where their cows had been.
Ratcliff’s coffeepot was trampled into tinplate and his Dutch oven was in two pieces. The antelope ham had been breaded in cowshit and his stewpot was lost. “Sons of bitches!” he howled. “Oh, you sons of bitches!”
Story’s men regathered what cattle they could. Bill Petty drank a cup of whiskey before Ratcliff cut the arrowhead off and pulled the shaft back through the segundo’s shoulder. Jack Blascomb had an arrow in his upper thigh, but the point was lodged in bone and Ratcliff didn’t want to dig for it. He cut the shaft off and bandaged the wound.