Friends (12 page)

He took off at a gallop without answering. We loped after him, but in less than half an hour, he was just a speck far out in the grass. And what grass there was was getting thinner all the time. Clay mounds and hills was everywhere before long. Some was sliced into peaks by the wind and rain and others looked like the chopped-off feet of dragons and lizards, complete with toes and claws. A few tables of sod stood between the washed-out gullies, but three miles further on, even these give way. In spots there was nothing green at all, only the bare ground-gray and red and pink and sometimes a little thin yeller layer. Humped up and twisted and hillocky and I don't know what-all. Of course we lost sight of Clete in that crazy country.

If Clete hadn't of went first, I doubt if I would of gone through there after the man we was chasing. He could've been hid
anywhere.
I wondered if Clete knew the chance he was taking. Probly he did, but he'd bull it through anyway.

Mandy rode in closer to me than she'd been doing. "I do not like these badlands, Mr. Goodwin. It is not safe here. I know now what my father meant. Nothing grows here, and I have not seen any animals for miles, not even a prairie dog."

We went through a flat place, a hundred acres or more, where broken up rocks of all sizes lay on top of the clay or were buried in it a little ways and others loose and in small piles. Some stones the size of your head or more, but most big as your fist. Tough going for the horses. But it was easy following Clete, rough as it was, for he'd traveled through here fast enough to move plenty of rock. Going a lot faster than we was, I can tell you. Ahead, peaks of striped clay lifted higher than those we already passed by-some like rows of fangs and others rounded like molars on top. Evil-looking country. I liked it no better than Mandy did, but I tried not to let her see that.

"The devil must have his ranch around here somewheres," I said to her. The words was no more out of my mouth than we heard shots.

In them hard clay ravines and canyons, the blasts rolled like thunder. Two different rifles, it sounded like.

Mandy squirmed around on that horse's back, and what with the shots, she scared the hell out of it, so I grabbed her reins. "Follow me across. Go the way I go. Head toward them two pointy peaks, but don't go no farther! I'm riding on up ahead to help Clete, but I'll come back. Only
stay
there, 'cause that's where I'll come to when this is over." I let go the reins of her horse and handed her the lead rope of the pack animal.

"All right," she said, looking awful scared.

"Don't risk your horse hurrying through these rocks. This trouble may take some time."

"All right," she said again, taking off her broad-brimmed black hat. She looked me square in the eye then. "You will come back for me, won't you Willie?"

"I'll be back," I said. "Just wait somewhere between them peaks. Take some shelter. I won't forget about you, girl."

But I risked
my
horse some through them stones. That long-legged bay was as sure footed as he was easy ridin', and I was glad for it that day. I looked back when I got to the far edge of that rocky place, and Mandy was making her way across it slow like I told her to.

I heard more rifle shots then, but I couldn't tell where they was coming from.

It was a regular sort of trail once you got into the mouth of the bigger canyon, though it rose some. The clay was firm and smooth, so I pushed that bay as hard as he would go.

Where it widened out into a little valley, there lay Clete's black horse with his guts blowed out. Saddle still on him, but he was dead. Clete's hat was there, though his rifle was gone from the scabbard. My bay reared and we danced a few circles 'til I calmed him down. I could find nothing to tie him to but Buckshot's reins, and he didn't like that at all.

A rifle exploded above me, up on the peak in front. I hit the dirt. Nothing happened for a minute, and when I looked, there was Clete up there sighting down his rifle-but not in my direction.

After he lowered it, I hollered, "Clete!" He looked and waved and after a while he started down toward me.

"I saw him," he called.

I set and waited 'til he got down.

He was out of breath, and his clothes was in shreds at the knees and elbows. "Mandy's horse, the one that bastard's riding, it's a paint, isn't it?"

"Yep, a paint. That's what she told me," I said.

"He's a tall man, real lean." It was then that Clete seen Buckshot. He stood and stared for a minute, then picked up his hat and smacked it against his leg. "I knew he was hit bad, but not like that. Look at the damage that damn bullet did."

"What happened?" I ask.

Clete brushed at his cut-up elbows. "He jumped me. Waiting up there, where you saw me. Only he hit Bucky instead of me. I took a spill, ate some gravel, and came up shooting. He fired back, almost hit me once, but when I started working my way up there, he took off."

"Did you hit him, when you fired that last?"

"No. That was just pissin' in the wind."

"You all right?" I ask. He was bleeding through the busted-out knees of his pants pretty good.

"Yeah, but I'm stove up."

"You're welcome to the bay if you want to go after him," I offered. "Good horse."

"No, the trail goes up from here and he's got too much of a start on me now, goddamnit." I expected him to say that he
could
have chased him if I'd a been there with him, where I ought to of been, but he didn't. His eyes showed it for a minute, though. But maybe that was just in my head, I don't know. Then he hunkered down by his dead horse. "Sorry to lose this old fellow," he said, patting Buckshot's jaw.

We got Clete's McClellan loose after a time and the rest of his gear we piled beside it. Of course we could do nothing about Buckshot, not even put stones over him, since there was no stones there. Only thing in this place was dried clay, formed into knuckles and lumps the size of eyeballs where it was steep and washed smooth where it was a little flat. I asked him if he wanted to ride back with me or stay there 'til I brought the pack horse, which he would have to ride now–that, or the buckskin. He decided on staying.

I gave him my canteen, since his was nearly empty, so's he could wash out his cuts. He was sitting on the ground beside his gear tending to his knees when I left.

The bay loped easy going back for Mandy. I didn't push him, but I didn't poke, either. All in all, I guess it'd been a little more than an hour from when I'd left her 'til I got to them two peaks where I told her to wait.

The pack horse was tied to a stone that looked like a big old turtle, but both Mandy and my old horse was nowheres to be seen. I took the bay up into the clay draws on both sides, up high as I could get him, thinking maybe she had done like I said and took shelter up there with the horse. I called her name loud as I could, several times, but there was no answer, only the echo of my voice calling back tome.

Gullies and ravines led off in all directions. I searched some of the big ones I could get my horse in, but saw no tracks, though sometimes I wasn't sure. I lost myself for a spell in there too, and though I followed the bay's tracks backwards, I went in a circle for some time. Just by luck I stumbled onto where the pack horse was still tied. If I hadn't, I might still be wandering around in there, so cut up and twisted it was. I had followed sign over all kinds of country, but nothing like that. I tried to think of what Stalking Bear would of done and just did that.

I don't know how long I wandered around looking for that girl, but I knowed I would have to go back to Clete before long. I suspected he had camped without fire or food many a time, but I couldn't just leave him there for the night in this country, not without a horse.

I got the pack animal and headed back to him.

"Where the hell have you been?" he yelled before I even got to where he was sitting on his wrapped-up bedroll.

"I couldn't find her," I told him. "Looked all over, but she's not around."

"Now maybe we can catch that sonofabitch!" he said, standing up. You could see how hard moving around was for him. A good bone-rattling fall will make you remember all your old hurts.

I dismounted and unloaded the pack horse. Clete threw his blanket and saddle up on it. After we stuffed our saddle bags and put some things in our bedrolls, we just left the rest of it there on the ground, including the tent. "I can't just leave her there," I said. "Just like I couldn't leave you here. I'm going back."

"Damned if I am," Clete said. "Come along up the trail a piece with me. It climbs a big ridge and it looks like you can see for quite a ways. Maybe you can spot her."

"All right. But if I can't, I'm going back."

Took us a while to get to where he had in mind, following our man's tracks the whole way. Where the trail cut through a notch in a red clay spine, you could see miles and miles of this broken-up, washed away country spread out before you.

"Good God," Clete said. "I never saw anything the equal of this before." I knowed what he meant. The sky was gray and dark, spoiling for rain. Beneath us laid a broad, flat valley, grassy in many spots, but those was all a good ways off. Jumbles of clay mountains stuck up in places. Far across, you could see the tree line of a river and beyond that, another jagged ridge like the one we was standing on. Down to our left, maybe fifteen miles, was a large tableland and up to our right, a farrago of spiky peaks and roof-slanted things that looked more like a big storybook castle than anything else. The wind come through with a cold edge on it.

I got Clete's glass and scanned the ridges to both sides and back the way we come. We sat there a long time and Clete looked too.

"Well, I don't see her," he said. "You'd be smart to come with me, Willie-be dark soon."

"I'm going to find Mandy," I told him.

He didn't give me no argument, just nodded his head. "His tracks lead down to where the trees are and that's where I'm going. If he's there, Til kill him. Or else he'll kill me. If he's not, Til camp and wait for you 'til morning. But I'll wait no longer."

It was easy to see where he meant to go. Looked like a big part of the ridge we were on had broke off and slid halfway to the valley floor, leaving a mostly level place down there a hundred yards deep and maybe a quarter mile wide. Appeared to be water there, too, for it was covered with juniper and a few patches of high grass.

I turned my horse and offered him my hand. "Good luck, Clete."

He took it and shook it good. "Good luck yourself, you dumb sonofabitch."

The light was starting to go by the time I got back to between them two peaks. As leathery as the clay was there, baked almost like gray bricks, her sign were hard as hell to see. She had been nervous waiting there. Tracks going all different ways, back and forth. I went back to the edge of the rocky place, got off and led my horse so I could get down close to the ground every few yards to unravel the trail. I was about to go back toward them two peaks again when it started to pour rain.

Damn
that girl, anyway. There was nothing chased her off. I'd a seen the sign if there was. Indians or wolves or whatever beasts of hell lived in these hills-I knowed I would have. No, she'd just run off scared of the gunfire and of this place, but mostly afraid of being left alone. Showed how much she trusted me. And it couldn't of been our man after her either, for he was well out in front.

Whatever happens to her she deserves,
I told myself. And if I could've just believed that, I could've stopped riding and looking and calling for her in that bone-chilling rain. I kept thinking about my slicker, but it was back hanging on a hook at the Dakota House in Two Scalp, for Clete didn't think to bring it. I kept seeing it in my mind and wishin' I could change places with it. As much good as I was doing riding around and getting wet, it would've done as good out here as me, and I could've just went downstairs and got some supper if I was back there. An hour after the downpour started, it was nearly night. I drew my pistol and fired it quick three times, but there was no answering shots. I knowed it was dangerous to be sending out signal shots into a country where you don't know what Indians might be around, but I could think of nothing else.

I believed for a while that I'd found the bay's weakness at last, that he done poorly at keeping his footing when the way got a mite slippery, but then I stepped down to piss and fell plop on my ass without even thinking about it. Stickiest muck I ever put a boot in, though for some reason it never got very deep. Underneath, two or three inches down, it was as firm as you'd want … strange stuff.

I knowed Mandy had brung this on herself, not keeping a tight rein on her fears, but I also knowed it was my fault she was out there, lost and cold and as wet as I was. It was me, no other, who had let her come along and promised to look out for her. And then I'd failed her just when she needed me most. For a while I blamed her for making me think that about myself, and then myself for a time for thinking
that,
and then both together. And if that's not stupid, I don't know what is.

I walked the bay through those slick gullies and slippery ravines for hours, even after I knowed that it was hopeless. She was not to be found that night-or not likely any other, either. To top it off, I got lost again. I knowed also I should stop where I was and wait for daylight, but I couldn't let myself just quit like that.

It was black as the heart of a cave.

Later, long after midnight, I guessed, I slogged through water and muck and rain 'til my legs felt about ready to give out. Leading the horse, I stumbled and fell over something, and when I put my hand down to get back up, I touched slick wet fur. I had come upon Buckshot. I worked my way up through the gouge in the ridge Clete and me rode up earlier. It was slow work, too, that mean and oily ground fightin' me the whole way, but I got to the top before I played out, though I wasn't sure I would for a while.