Read Far as the Eye Can See Online
Authors: Robert Bausch
The owl screeches again. I want to get out of these trees. Then up ahead I see something glowing. I stop, hold Cricket’s head still and watch. Ink sees it too. “That’s a campfire,” I say.
The thing about this country out here is that you never know when you’re going to have to go into battle. I roamed around enough to know anybody might want to kill you. Even folks that ain’t in the fix I’m in got to be wary of strangers. It’s one big, everlasting war—and the range of battles runs from man to man, all the way up to whole armies. The tribes want the wasichus to get out. The wasichus want to stay. The tribes want to ride and hunt wherever they please, and the wasichus want them to stay put. I met a guy at Fort Riley who called it “the War of the Northern Plains.” I thought I was free and done with war, and I end up in the most spacious war of all. And in country like this, you don’t know who your enemy might be. There ain’t no real order except, if you can, you got to survive. And when you’re in my kind of trouble you take no chances: you got to shoot first. It’s that god-damn simple.
So I tie Cricket to a tree and lay Ink down in a little clearing with a soft pine needle floor. I leave her the pistol. Neither of us says a thing.
I cock the carbine so it’s ready to fire, then start through the brush toward the glow in the distance. It seems far off, but as I creep toward it, the movement of the fire starts to make the shadows dance. It’s closer than I thought. I move
real
slow now—I don’t want to spook their animals if they’ve got them. I’m so keenly aware of everything around me, it feels like air is leaking from behind my eyes. If there ain’t too many of them I’m gonna shoot them all. I ain’t taking no chances.
Then I hear the owl again, only it ain’t no owl. It’s a man, and when I get close enough to their campfire, I see why he’s screaming.
It’s three braves. I think they might be Piegans or Flatheads. They got a Crow brave tied to the stump of a small pine tree. He’s sitting down with his legs splayed out in front of him and he’s naked. The three braves move around him like cats stalking a field mouse. They stop and start, crouch down, knives in their hands. In the firelight it looks like they are ghosts, dark shadows rising and falling out of the ground. The rope that binds the Crow brave is wrapped around his elbows and behind his back so that his forearms are free. He breathes really hard, his chest heaving, his abdomen sucking in and out. Then one of his captors moves down at him, lifts his forearm, and I see he’s already missing all but two fingers on his hand. He stares up at the shadow, and waits. His face is contorted but only in the struggle for air, until the shadow slices off another finger. His scream goes through me like some sort of icy blast of fear. I don’t know if I ever heard nothing so horrible, not even during the war. I heard men scream whose bowels was spread out in their laps, who was burning in a field that caught fire from all the shooting, and nobody made a noise like that poor Crow brave tied to that tree. And then I realize that his screaming ain’t only from pain. Hell, it may not be from pain at all. It’s from his warrior soul. A way of honoring his captors and showing his manhood. He stops just as suddenly as he started, then even in all his gasping for air, he closes his mouth, juts out his chin, and seems to say with his eyes,
Go ahead. Do it again.
And I think,
My Lord, these folks are crazy.
The dance continues in the firelight. I wait a while, waiting to see if there’s any more of them to contend with. I watch this fellow lose the last one of his fingers and then one of his toes. Each time he lets out that scream and then stares back in defiance. He is making what the Crow call a “strong passing.” I know I should just leave it, but I seen this kind of thing before, and now I ain’t about to let it go on. When I am sure it’s only them three, I kneel down real slow behind the trunk of a fallen tree and shoot the one closest to me. He drops into the fire, and the others whoop and scatter. I shoot the second one before he can get too far from the firelight, then turn and see that the third one is trying to get to the horses. I wait until I can get a good, clean shot at him. When he jumps up on one of the horses, I see his whole body like something painted on the night sky. He’s only twenty yards or so to my left, and when he starts to turn his horse away from me, I shoot him in the middle and he drops to the ground.
The Crow tied to the tree sets there looking at me, waiting for his. I kick the one I shot first out of the fire. He’s burning and it smells awful, but I leave him there smoldering. I look into the eyes of the Crow brave. “You speak English?”
He just stares at me. A lot of Crows can speak English, but the fact that this one can’t don’t make me think I’m dealing with any other kind of Indian. You can usually tell the difference between Indian tribes by the way they dress, but a Crow is defined for that near-perfect form. And they know they’re perfect. They carry themselves proudly and wear their hair in a high pompadour in front to accent their height.
“English,” I say. I know he’s got a voice.
I sign to him, pointing to my mouth. “Speak?” I say.
He says, “Hin nay xaw eematchaw chik.” His black hair is soaked from sweat, and his deep-set eyes glare at me as though I just come up out of the fire. “Hin nay.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“Xaw eem atchaw chik,” he says. “Ischee lak, ihchee lak bakaalah.”
I can’t figure out what he wants. I sign that to him.
I walk over to the second one I shot. He’s a Piegan Blackfoot. I got him in the side of the head, almost right through his ear. He’s still got the knife in his hand. I pry it from his fingers, then walk over to the one by the horses. He’s laying on his back, still alive, breathing fast, so I put the knife into him, just under the breastbone, and wait until the breathing stops.
The Crow brave sits there staring at his fingerless hands, then he looks up at me and I think I can tell what he wants. He ain’t said no more. All I’ve heard from him is words I don’t know and those screams, but now his eyes gleaming in the dying firelight tell me his whole future. I motion for him to put his head down. “I don’t want you to see it coming,” I say. But he don’t understand me. He is so fiercely a man. He will face whatever might come, but I can’t act under the light of them eyes. He says again, “Ischee lak, ihchee lak huhkaalah.” He points to the dead one still smoldering by the fire. I think “huhkaalah” means “give me.”
“I don’t understand you.” I say. I can’t remember one single Crow sentence I ever learned. He gestures with those fingerless hands, holds them up for me to see, then points as best he can to the first fellow I shot. The look on his face implores me. He holds his hands up again, lets them hang limply, then gestures toward the body. “Ischee lak, ihchee lak huhkaalah.” I wish I spoke his language. He is magnificent and I hate it that I can’t do what he’s asking me. I go to the body and lift one of its arms, and the Crow brave nods vigorously. He thinks I know what he’s saying. He looks down at the ropes tying him, struggles to break free. I take the hunting knife and cut the ropes, and he moves on the ground, scooting on his haunches, bracing himself with bleeding hands, over to the body. He slides his lower arm under one of the arms and lifts it until it is out away from the body. Then he puts his palm on the fingers of the dead Indian and looks up at me. “Hinne beewiawaak,” he says. He makes a cutting motion across the dead fingers with his hand. I kneel down and look into his eyes. I pick up the dead hand and point to the fingers. “This?” I say. He nods, relieved. I know what he wants. He crawls back to the tree and sits back against it. I kneel down and cut the fingers off the dead body. I do this to both hands. It’s ghastly. The worst thing I ever done. When I place them in his lap, the Crow raises his foot and looks at me. “I ain’t cutting off nobody’s toes,” I say. He will not look away from me and he don’t know what I said. He’s just waiting there for me to do what he wants. “All right,” I say. “God damn it. All right.” I go back to the body and cut off the toes. It takes me a few minutes to get through the joints. Twice I lean out of the light and puke into the bushes. When it’s finally done, I put the toes on the ground next to the Crow brave.
“Beech-i-lack,” he says.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Hilaake kammaashbimmaachik.”
“I know ‘Beech-i-lack,’ ” I say. “You’re welcome.”
“Hilaake kammaashbimmaachik.”
“I don’t know what else you want,” I say.
He looks directly into my eyes and then I do know what he wants. I remember that ‘bimmaachik’ means to die. “I can’t do it with you looking at me like that,” I say. His face is blank. He is not afraid, not sad. I don’t even think he’s in pain no more. I take some beads off a necklace on the body and place them in the Crow brave’s lap. He looks down at them, and I shoot him through the top of his skull. The shot lights his hair on fire and he twitches and writhes for a bit, then stops moving. Even with all the blood, his hair keeps burning. I take a scarf off the dead fellow that fell in the fire and swat at the flames in the Crow brave’s hair and it finally goes out. White smoke curls up from his dangling head and I can’t stand nothing no more. I’m sick knowing I will remember this forever.
When I get back to Ink, with four horses, another pistol, three hunting knives, and a bow with a quiver full of arrows, she looks at me with a kind of wonder.
“That wasn’t no owl,” I say. “It wasn’t Hump, neither.”
She just stares at me.
“I got you a pony you can ride that ain’t limping.”
Only one of the horses has a saddle on him, and it’s a Indian saddle, but it don’t matter. Ink’s been a Indian for a long time, so she knows what to do. I take my gear and the pack off Cricket and load it on one of the other horses. I put my saddle on the biggest one—I wouldn’t be surprised if this one isn’t the one that belonged to the Crow brave. Crows need big horses. This one has had a white man’s saddle on it before, which I might of guessed. The gullet don’t fit like it should and I know I’m going to rub this nag’s spine raw before long, but it’s the best I can do for him.
When we’re all set, the moon has commenced to sink to the horizon. “We’re gonna stay clear of them woods,” I say. So we turn a little to the left and head for a open meadow that rises steadily above the tree line. We’re still headed north, but we’re tilting to the east a little too. With both of us riding now, we make a little better time. Cricket brings up the rear, carrying nothing. She don’t limp now hardly at all, since she ain’t carrying no weight. A few times I pick it up a bit and get all of us galloping some, but then Ink points to the dust we’re raising. Even in the dark it looms in the falling moonlight, so I slow down to a walk again. We go like that until the moon is gone and it’s only starlight. We cross several streams, where the horses drink, and I fill the canteens; then we start out again, climbing and twisting through ravines and gullies, back up steep slopes to another meadow. It ain’t no valley we’re a-riding in, but I still think the river is near. Ink says nothing but she’s awake. Every now and then, I catch her looking behind us.
All night I’m watching the trail ahead and behind us. That Crow brave’s screams keep echoing in my head. I left all the bodies there for the birds and coyotes. I remember when I first come out here, and how it felt after I killed my first Indian. I remember the dreams, and then wonder at what I’ve got used to. There’s a good reason the Indians call their warriors “braves,” I can tell you. A couple of times during the night, I think I might get sick. It didn’t bother me none to kill them other three. It was my survival.
Some Indians believe that if you dream about a dead person, he ain’t dead. He’s out there, wandering wherever your dreams put him, and you got to do something to make him die. A dance, or a shaman ritual, or maybe another killing. I’ve seen some fellows fairly crazy with it and that’s how I’m getting. I realize once and finally for sure that I want to get out of this beautiful, dangerous, miserable killing ground. I want to find my way back to Eveline and go as far west as I can go. I want to get a hotel room and sleep with four walls and a ceiling around me. It might be damn nice to work in a print shop, or a candle factory, or a foundry. I don’t care. It’ll be civilization, and won’t nobody be lurking behind a tree thinking to kill me.
We now have five horses, counting Cricket, and three rifles, a bow, and some arrows. Just when the sun starts to glow beyond the horizon, we stop near a great stone that hangs out a little over the trail. Across the way is a small stand of trees. I get down and help Ink off her horse and settle her in the darkest place under the rock. I take a long rope and tie it to one of the trees, then tether each horse to it at about ten-foot intervals.
When I get back to Ink, she is sitting up on one elbow, watching me. “We’ll camp here today,” I say.
“I am hungry.”
“I’ll scout around a bit.” I set the pistol down next to her. “See if you can sleep.”
“I am hungry. I won’t sleep.”
“I don’t like where I got the horses,” I say. “They’re too much in the open and ain’t a lot of grass under them trees.” I sit with Ink for a spell, but I don’t say nothing more. The horses are a problem now. We got so many of them.
In a little while Ink nods off. She don’t have much pain no more, but it still exhausts her. I get up as quietly as I can and start walking toward the rising sun.
Not far from where I left her sleeping in the shadow of the rock, I find a open meadow that runs down into a small valley and then bends back up again on the other side. In the morning light it’s a sweet, green bowl in the landscape and it’s behind the trees where I first tied the horses. So I go back to them, then walk them down into the meadow. They will have a wide range to eat and the meadow is far enough below the tree line a body would have to be in front of us and halfway up the mountain on the other side to see them. I walk back to the trees and then follow a small path down to my left where there is a blue and black stream scuttling over rocks and tree branches. I kneel down and drink the cold water. I don’t know if I should go back and check on Ink or go in search of game. Then I remember the bow and arrow. Whatever I shoot, maybe I should do it silently. So I creep back up to the stone and this time I try as hard as I can not to make a sound. But halfway up the hill it occurs to me that she might not expect me back so soon, so she’d shoot whatever she heard coming her way. “I’m coming back,” I say. “It’s me.” When she can see me she puts the pistol down.