Far as the Eye Can See (30 page)

I’m going to need something dead around here soon or I’ll just have to cut on her. I really don’t want to do that.

I take the driest wood from the pile and build a small fire so I can boil some beans. She don’t move a bit the whole time. I set right at her feet and watch the fire and every place that I can see around us. I’m concentrating on sounds and movement. I never stop turning my head, even to look behind me. I wish now I had found a high bluff or cliff to camp up against; that way I wouldn’t have to worry about my back. But I’m here now, got her laid out, and made the fire—I don’t want to move. The wood’s dry enough that the fire don’t make a lot of smoke, just thin wisps that are almost clear the moment it leaves the heat of the fire. It’s only wavy lines of heated air by the time it gets higher than a foot or two. If a body was to see that smoke, they’d have to be standing somewhere I can see them.

After a while I go ahead and heat some water and beans for her and then feed it to her.

She has a bit of the hardtack and some more of the sowbelly. I don’t want her to eat too much of the bacon because it will make her thirsty. When she’s done eating, I take up a position right next to her head and watch all the horizon I can get my eyes to scan.

The day wears on, warm and still. She starts to thrash a little. The sun creeps over her and I have to get up and pull her further under the trees. Her fever seems worse. I lay her down and then lift her shirt to look at the bandage. It’s stopped bleeding again. I’m afraid to lift the bandage because blood may have dried on it and if I move it I might pull the wound open again. The black line on her abdomen looks a little thicker.

She opens her eyes and looks at me. “I don’t feel so good.”

“I think you got infection.”

“It hurts.”

“I may have to cut you,” I say.

“I need water.”

I get her one of the canteens and she holds it to her lips with trembling hands and drinks from it as though it’s the last water she’ll ever have. “Go easy,” I say. I’ll need a lot of water if I’m going to cut her and I don’t think I can go looking for a stream.

She still holds the canteen, but now she’s staring at me, listening. “You hear that?”

I pick up the carbine and kneel back down next to her. She scans the horizon around us. I think I can hear her heart beating. We set that way for what seems like a long time, but nothing happens. She finally puts her head back down and closes her eyes.

I check to be sure the carbine is fully loaded, then I get the pistol and lay it down next to her. “The pistol’s right here,” I say.

She opens her eyes again. “Where are you going?”

“I’m just going to scout around a bit. The day’s almost over. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and I want to get back on the trail pretty soon.”

“I am hungry,” she says.

“You can’t be.”

She looks away.

“Want some more of the beans?”

“No.”

“You can’t have the sowbelly.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“I’m real sorry I shot you,” I say.

“I wish you would just quit saying that.” She turns herself a little further away from me, her eyes closed again.

I make a few circles around our little camp, each one further and further away from her. I don’t see a thing moving, and I cover enough ground that I begin to feel like whatever we been hearing or sensing, it ain’t Hump.

Except for a few birds, I don’t even see a rabbit or a groundhog. I ain’t hunting for something to shoot, but I wouldn’t mind it none. I hate this feeling that I’m trapped in a space so big. I circle back to the camp and find Ink sitting up, holding on to herself.

“It burns like fire,” she says.

“I got to cut you there,” I say.

She gets this look of horror on her face and I have this feeling that she is prey and I’m here to finish her, but she don’t say nothing. She can see it’s got to be done.

“There ain’t nothing for it,” I say.

She lays back down and I take her hunting knife and start heating it over the fire. “You can’t scream nor nothing,” I tell her. “You want some whiskey?”

She don’t make a move. Her eyes close again.

“By God, I’m sorry for it,” I say. While the knife heats in the fire, I lift her shirt and then remove the bandage. The wound is as red as the wood in the fire, and it’s oozing pus again. But I’m more interested in the black finger line that’s growing up her belly. When the knife is hot enough, I sit across her hips to hold her down and cut real shallow, along the line of it, making as straight a cut as I can, then I use the knife to pry the skin open a little. She squirms to beat all. She bangs her fists into the ground but she don’t try to stop me. The knife sears the skin all around and inside the wound, and it stinks pretty awful, but I keep at it, moving it around, reheating it some more and then moving it all in the slice I’ve made until the whole thing is a hell of a mess. But it’s red now with blood, and blackened a bit from the hot knife, and I can see the infection is just under the skin. It is not in the muscle. When I’m pretty sure I’ve burned it enough, I cover it with another piece of clean linen. This time I pour whiskey on the bandage so it soaks into the wound. I don’t do no sewing, neither. I tie the bandage tight around her.

“I hope that does it,” I say. “I don’t have no more shirt left.”

The whole time I was cutting on her, she didn’t make a sound. I watched her breathing and seen her heaving with the pain, felt her writhe under me, but in the end she just laid there and let it happen.

“You did that pretty wonderful,” I say when it’s all over. “I don’t think I could take that kind of pain.”

She don’t look at me. She’s still breathing like she just run for miles. Tears stream down the side of her face. If she ain’t a full-blooded Indian, she’s one hell of a half-breed. Dark as pitch, and strong and stubborn as a coyote.

I sure don’t want her to suffer no more. It’s like we’re the last two people on earth, and I’m working like hell to keep it that way. At first all I wanted to do was get her to a place where I could leave her and she’d be okay. I owed that to her. But right now, after watching her while I carved up the better part of half her abdomen and she don’t even whimper a little bit, it seems like we might end up owing each other something more than a happy farewell when it comes right down to it.

Chapter 20

Ink’s been asleep about a hour or so now. I watch the sun fall out of the sky and think about how to get her up on a horse. It will be dark soon and we have to keep moving. After I cut on her I give her a little bit to eat and plenty of water. I think her fever is better, but I’m worried about how I’m going to get her up on Cricket. I want to ride all night. I can pretty much go right at the North Star. If Hump really is trailing her, we’d be walking right at him if we headed west even a little bit, but I have to do that to get back to the trail. I figure we’ll cross the trail just about the time the moon rises on the horizon, and then I’ll just follow it across the sky, staying out of the way of folks I might see. I’ll keep my eyes wide open and walk in front of Cricket so I can see both ways.

I really can see in the dark. Everything looks bright to me—black and white—but bright anyway. Starlight is as good as moonlight to me. Even on a moonless, cloudy night, I can see better than most.

When the sun’s final gleam sinks below the horizon, I feel the air getting colder. The rain brought clear, windless, cool air, and at night we’re going to need to keep warm, so it’s a good thing we’ll be moving. I gently wake Ink. “We got to get going,” I say. I help her up on her feet, then stand there looking into her eyes. “I think your fever’s gone.”

“I am thirsty again.”

I give her the canteen. “We’re going west, back to the trail,” I say. “Do you remember what I told you about where we’re going?”

She nods, but I can see she don’t really know what I’m talking about. “When we get back to the trail, we’re heading north, through the valley to the Missouri.”

“It is not too dangerous?”

“It’s the safest way to go.”

“What happens when we get to the river?”

“I told you: we’ll stay alongside of it, heading east until we get to Fort Buford.”

I go over and get Cricket all packed up and then I hoist Ink up on her. It takes some doing. I lift her under her arms and she throws her legs up as best she can. I know the pain almost crushes the air out of her, but we get her situated.

“Where will you go then?” she says.

“I got to get back to Bozeman before June,” I say. “So we have to move pretty steady and get where we’re going.”

She wants to know why it’s so important for me to get back before June, so I tell her about Eveline.

“You are betrothed,” she says. “And your woman will not wait for you?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” I say. “I just know I promised I’d be back there in June, and I don’t want to lose her just because of all this business here.”

She lets her head slump down a bit.

“I guess if that’s what betrothment is, then I’m betrothed. So you’re running away from your husband, and I’m trying to get back to a future wife.”

“I am sorry to be a burden.”

“You ain’t no burden,” I say. “To tell the truth, after what I seen you can take, I admire you. It ain’t nothing to take you to Buford. I owe you that much. It ain’t far once we get to the Missouri. Then I’ll be on my way.”

“I don’t know about Buford now,” she says. “When I was alone I wanted that. I know my father is not there.”

“Well, that’s where we’re going. And then you’ll be safe.”

She studies the blood that’s dried on her moccasins. I hand her the pistol again in its holster and attach it to the saddle horn in front of her so she can reach it. I don’t know why, but her silent expectations make me kind of sad.

We move along pretty fast, traveling only at night. Within a week I know we are getting closer to the Missouri River. I think I can smell the grassland that drops down into the river valley. I’m still on foot, going as fast as I can walk. It ain’t much of a trail going north, but we find our way in the dark. Cricket’s still limping a bit, but she can clop along now without trying not to use her one foot. This part of the country is full of wide meadows and broad green pine forests. It rises and falls as we go along. We can see for miles in the starlight.

One night early in our second week, I see the sloping hills that lead to the long descent to the river valley. “We’re getting close,” I say. “Maybe a day or two more and we should be there—at the river anyway.”

Ink says nothing.

About halfway through the night we come upon a herd of elk. I want so bad to shoot one of them.

“Are you sure Hump is after you?” I say.

Ink jumps awake. “What did you say?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know you was sleeping.”

“I was not sleeping.”

“Well, maybe if you tried to look more awake, I’d believe that.”

She don’t say nothing. We start climbing a gentle slope. To our left is a great expanse of pine trees, and I worry about what might be in there watching us.

“We’ll have plenty to eat tomorrow if I shoot one a them elk,” I say.

“What if Hump is in those trees over there?”

“How’d he know we was a coming this way? How’d he get ahead of us? It ain’t Hump I’m worried about in them trees.”

We pass the elk. They stand there, gathered in the darkness like one beast, eating and watching us as we go by. Just looking at them makes me think of cooked meat and beer sloshing in a pail. I say, “What if he
is
in them trees. Why don’t he just come out and kill me? Take you back?”

“You do not know him. You won’t see him until he is ready.”

“Well, what the hell, then. I ought to go on back and shoot me one of them elks.” But I keep walking along in front of her, holding Cricket’s reins. “What is he? A ghost?”

“He will want to kill you slow,” she says.

“What would he do if I set you down right here and let him come take you back?”

“You are a wasichu,” she says. “He’ll want to kill you.”

“Damn,” I say. “What a place.”

We go up the slope without saying no more. I listen to Cricket’s hooves trampling dry grass and clip-clopping on the hard ground like it was cobblestone. It’s the only sound in the still air. When the moon rises above the black trees to our left, I realize I can see my breath. We start down a long winding trail through dense trees into the valley. In the forest, on deep layers of pine needles, we don’t make a sound. We go slow now so I can be sure what’s around us. The moon is fractured and dances behind pine boughs. I don’t know if I ever been in a forest so empty of noise. Then a owl lets out a screech that like to empty my bowels. Ink starts laughing, fighting against the noise.

“What?” I say.

“You jumped high.”

I don’t like her laughing. I think she shoulda kept that to herself, but I don’t say nothing. She’s tough, and she can speak English better than me, and even so, I think now maybe when we get to Fort Buford I’ll be kind of sad to leave her there. But then I tell myself I don’t need no judgment going with me everywhere I go.