Far as the Eye Can See (17 page)

It made me cough near about every time I took a sip of it. “What is this stuff?”

“In Tennessee we called it ‘rotgut.’ It’s homemade. I bought it from one of the troops over to Fort Ellis.”

“Tastes like something you’d get out of the roots of a rotted tree.”

“It will do,” he said.

It tasted awful, but the harder it snowed, the more of it I figured I could tolerate.

Cooney had the idea that we should team up and work for the army. Every year the Indians was getting to be a bigger problem. More and more white folks had come to the big West, and the Indians was just in the way. The army did not want them hunting on land owned by whites. They could not roam free no more because too much of the land was off-limits. Still, a lot of Indians stayed out to hunt because the army didn’t never have enough food for the whole bunch of them. Some among the Sioux and Cheyenne was especial trouble, because they had not agreed to come into the reservation at all. Cooney thought we could get a good set of boots and winter in a good place if we offered to scout for the army.

“It’s a General Gibbon in charge at Fort Ellis,” Cooney said. “He’s got to round up the renegade Sioux that ain’t come in to the reservation between here and the Black Hills.”

“What’s a renegade Sioux?”

“Any Injun that ain’t at the reservation near Fort Ellis.”

“That’s a lot of Indians.”

“Yes, it is.”

“A lot of warriors.”

“This is something big a-coming up,” he said. “The army ain’t gonna be patient with them no more.”

“Ain’t gonna be easy work,” I said.

“They’ll pay us a dollar a week. And we’ll spend at least half the winter in a warm place if we offer to be guide and scout.”

“We’ll be out with them,” I said. “A-riding under the cold sky.”

“Not the whole time, you see,” he said. “I worked for them over at Fort Buford last winter, and I spent most of the time in the fort, sleeping in a warm barracks.”

“You don’t say.”

“We chased some Pend d’Orielles all the way to the Snake River. That took about most of January.” He took another swig of the rotgut. “That was about it. When we got back, they put us up in the fort and we never went out again until April.”

“I’ve had about enough of them winters out on the plains, under them mountains, but I don’t know if I’d like sleeping in a dry, smelly room all winter, neither.”

“Didn’t you start out in the Musselshell to trap beaver?”

“We did a little sum of it,” I said. “Fat beaver ended up in our traps now and then. But folks don’t want beaver skins no more, and we carried around a lot of pelts but hardly sold nary a one. We traded with the Indians for certain. But a Indian don’t have much.”

“You still got all your traps?”

“I left them with Big Tree.”

“So you spent five winters out there in them mountains.”

“I guess. We did all right.”

“What happened that you ended up here?”

“It was a woman,” I said. “I got married.” I told him all about Morning Breeze and Big Tree. I said it didn’t bother me all that much, but it was damn uncomfortable traveling with them after everything was settled. I realized while I was talking that it was how I really felt. It was a discovery.

“I expect they was glad I decided to go out on my own,” I said. It seemed like all those seasons with Big Tree was a long, swift dream. You know what I mean? Like it went on for my whole life, and happened too quick to register. Only time it went slow was when I was miserable cold or hot. That’s how it was anyway until Morning Breeze come along. After that, I remember some long, slow nights with her, when it was cold and we had a fire outside, right in front of the flap on my tent, and she’d take a stick and burn the end of it and then make drawings for me on the inside walls. It was the only way she could talk to me, besides having Big Tree translate. She could draw with the best of them, and even for the small canvas, before she finally went over to Big Tree. I had a right smart group of hunters and animals a-staring at me of a morning when the sun broke out and lighted up everything.

I got kind of misty remembering it but I didn’t say nothing to Cooney about it. He took a big swig from the canteen. The snow had piled so high in the brim of his hat, when he threw his head back to sip the rotgut, some snow slid off down on his neck. He shuddered and shook himself like a wet dog. “Damnation,” he said. “I wish we had a fire behind us too.”

I wore a beaver skin hat and I had to take it off once in a while and shake the snow out of the fur, then put it back on. He held the canteen against his chest and leaned toward the fire. Then he looked at me. “You want to spend the winter out in the open? Like this?”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t know how free I’d feel with four walls a-creeping up on me.”

He scrunched down and hunched his collar up over his neck. “Hell, being free ain’t nothing but a attitude.”

“It’s more than that. It’s for every day, no matter what you’ve a mind to do. It’s being your own general and army too.”

“You can be free in a barracks same as anywhere else.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“It’s better than this.” He scrunched up under his thick robes.

We drunk most of the rotgut that night, and when I found my way back to my little room at Miss Pound’s place, the sun was already starting to find its way behind the white clouds that continued to empty down white and soft all over everything. I had to walk in deep snow to get back, and my boots was pretty wet and full of ice when I peeled them off. I put on a dry pair of wool socks and then I stretched out on that small cot and fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until it was dark again. The place was too warm, and wearing all my clothes I felt wet in my skin and I didn’t like my smell, neither. My head was full of rocks, and heavy. It was a little bit of work just to sit up.

I got my boots back on and my heavy buffalo robe, and strolled up the street toward the stables, intending to see if Cooney and his harem was eating something. I didn’t see no fire as I got closer to it, but the wagon looked to be buried in the snow. The air was clear and cold, with no breeze, and the stars glittered all over above me. My boots crunched in the snow, and enough traffic had passed down this street that it wasn’t too deep, neither. It was crushed down and squeaky and hard.

When I got to the wagon I said, “General, you in there?”

Christine pushed the flap back and set there staring at me. “Eveline was right. You clean up rather smartly.”

“Is General Cooney available?”

“He is down again. I fear the worst for him.”

Eveline stuck her head out next to her sister’s. “He’s got a fever again. This time he talks to himself and will not lay still.”

“We have applied ice,” said Christine. “We have got plenty of ice.”

“Can I see him?”

She set back and let the small ladder down from the back of the wagon. I climbed up. It was close and smelled awful in there, but there was a small woodstove on the side, near the fifth bow, right behind the driver’s bench. It warmed the air more than a little bit. It was the damnedest thing I ever seen. It had a pipe stuck up out of the back of it that bent at a right angle, and where it went through the canvas they had put a thick, flat metal plate with holes on its edges and rings that run through them and attached to other rings they’d sewed into the canvas.

“Is that what I think it is?” I said.

“It was Christine’s idea,” Eveline said. “She sewed the canvas to the rings and all. It works.”

“Where’d you ever get a stove that small?” I said.

“We brought it along,” Eveline said. “My husband bought it from the railroad. It used to sit in a caboose on a train. Christine just did the sewing.”

“It looks a mite heavy for hauling across the country.”

“That is what Mr. Cooney said.” Eveline looked at Christine. “My husband said this wagon would hold eight tons. And we made it this far.”

“It is bolted to the floor,” Christine said. “And it gives off all the heat we need.”

I put my hand on the side of Cooney’s cheek and felt it. “Well,” I said, “he’s heating it up in here some hisself.”

“Whatever it might be,” Eveline said, “I hope it’s not contagious.”

“He seemed to be better last night,” said Christine.

Cooney stirred a mite, then said, “It’s misty down here, sir. Right misty.”

“He’s been talking to some officer,” Christine said. “Giving situation reports and commenting on terrain. He was an artilleryman, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “He said he was in the infantry.” I heard his stomach growl. “You might try to feed him.”

Christine looked away. Eveline said, “He does not keep any food down.”

“What about water?”

They both said “No” at the same time.

“Well, it’s kind of you two taking care of him like this.”

“I fear the worst,” Eveline said.

Cooney died a few days later. Even as sick as he was, I didn’t see it coming. Christine and her sister was sad for a while, but when they took him to the army for burial, they was told the ground was frozen solid and they’d have to wait until spring. In the meantime, the army gone through his belongings and the pockets of his trousers and they found a piece of paper he wrote on sometime before he died. He might of written the damn thing right after that night in front of the wagon when we was drinking his liquor and planning our future while the snow slowly buried us. It said:

This must serve as my last will and testament. If the present ailment should kill me, I am of sound mind although I think it is safe to say my body gave out on me. I leave, twenty two yards of calico to Christine Howard and Eveline Barkley because they did the best they could to take care of me when I got sick. It is my intention and personal wish that Bobby Hale inherit my spencer rifle, all the cartridges for it—which last amounted to seven boxes, twenty five cartridges a box. Also, my horse, and saddle and bridle and blankets and my fifty foot rope. I leave my hunting knife to Bobby Hale and whatever else he may want of my personal effects including my watch and chain and my straight razor with a good strop only if he wants it. I leave my portion of the wagon that I won fair and square from Miss Eveline Barkley to Bobby Hale. It is my hope that these articles may be of some use to Mr. Hale, who has, of late, been my only real friend in this world.

I am respectfully,

General Ernest J. Cooney

CSA, Retired.

I didn’t want none of his things except the horse and the watch and chain. Maybe the rifle—that was good to trade with the Indians. I didn’t know what I’d do with half a wagon. I wanted to know what killed him and if’n it might get me. Neither Christine or Eveline seemed no worse for having been taking care of him. I wondered how a man his age could die like that. He wasn’t no more than forty-five or so, if that. He didn’t have very thick hair at the end, and he was sure sickly. I thought it might be consumption, but Eveline said it wasn’t that nor nothing he ate, neither. She said, “He just dried up. Could not get the sickness out of his stomach.”

“So he starved to death?”

“No. He died of thirst.”

“Me and him drunk a whole canteen of moonshine the night we got here.”

She shrugged. “I am just telling you what the doctor said.”

“He seen a doctor?”

She pointed at the fort, kind of impatiently. “An army surgeon. General Cooney got a sickness in his stomach that made it impossible for him to take in water or food. It killed him.”

“Well, shit,” I said.

“The doctor said it was probably infection from a cancer.”

“He sure was unlucky,” I said.

What General Cooney also left me was the idea of working for the army. I didn’t want to be hunting on the prairies all winter long by myself, and I had to eat. I figured if Cooney was right about having a warm barracks to sleep in most of the winter, it would be a good move. I give the Spencer rifle and the cartridges to Eveline and Christine, just because I thought they might need it if they was to continue their journey west. I didn’t say nothing about the wagon but I reckoned they’d need it too. I figured it was too early to try and make arrangements about it, but I guess fair to say I hoped they might find a way to get me to part with it.

General Cooney’s body was wrapped in muslin and laying in a box on the ground next to it. I was getting ready to put the lid on and nail it down so they could keep him stored until spring.

“The army will help you out when you’re ready to move on,” I said. “They got horses to spare, I wager. And they might not like the idea of two women traveling with that old ox on the Bloody Bozeman.”

“What is that?” Eveline wanted to know.

“What’s what?”

“The Bloody Bozeman.”

“That’s what they call the trail you’re going to have to take to go any further west.”

Eveline said, “My husband called it the Gold Trail.”

“It’s been called that. Lots of folks still pan for gold all along the trail.”