Friends (2 page)

The preacher give a short blessing before we all started in. After the soup we had some fish and some vegetables Nell had put up. I had never drunk wine before, and it was curious stuff. Probly had a kick to it if you drank enough. Mashed potatoes and filling too, and plenty of gravy to smother everthing.

Later, Clete asked me, louder than he needed to, if the chicken in Dakota Territory was as tasty as it was in Texas, and I had to make up some windy about it being better up here. Everbody laughed, I guess they saw clear through me.

Clete and Mary looked like they was having a good time. She's a mighty pretty girl, is Mary McLeod. Dark hair, and skin like one of them little china ladies setting on Nell's parlor organ. I wondered how much younger she was than Clete. A good bit, it looked like that day.

Everbody was all talking at the same time, and after we ate our cake, Nell stood up like she was going to give a speech. "Come up here with me, Jesse," she said. "We have some work to do." So he did. "Seeing as how Mary's momma ain't here with us this day, God rest her soul, Mary asked me if I'd stand in her stead," Nell Larson declared.

"That's a fact," Jesse McLeod said. He didn't look no more comfortable than I felt.

"Clete Shannon, don't you have something to say?" Nell ask, looking down the table at him.

"I do," Clete answered getting to his feet. "Though I may be saying those words just a little too early." Right then I knowed what this party was all about. He smiled at Mary, took her hand, and she stood up beside him, all perky and bright-eyed. There was almost as many people standing at that fancy dinner table as there was left sitting. "About a week ago," Clete said, "I asked Mary to marry me, and she was fool enough to say she would, come June."

"I'm sure Mary's momma would have been real proud," Nell said. "And Jesse is too, ain't that so, Jesse?"

"That's a fact," Jesse said. Well, everbody clapped their hands, so I did too. But after I had clapped myself dry, I got to thinking the situation over more careful.

Not more than two weeks ago the plans was that him and me were going to start south as soon as the weather cleared. Now here he had went and done this. Still, Clete looked happier than a well laid out corpse.

Well, I wasn't going to wait 'til next morning to see what I could see out in them hills up behind Nell's house. And I wasn't goittg to tell Clete, either. I determined right then to help out with this business at Nell's and then head south whether Clete was going or no. But I'd swing west first and take another look at them Rocky Mountains. Maybe go down through the Grand River country. Wasn't as warm as I'd have liked it to be, but it'd be warm enough soon.

Just before midnight I got a whiff of Nell's damned old pigpen, so I knowed I was about where I wanted to be. Now, it would make a better tale, I know, to say right here that I seen someone that night, but the truth is I didn't. Fact is, I rode around out there and almost froze to death. Was darker than a cypress swamp, and I didn't see a thing except a thin slice of the moon for a while and about a million stars. I sat there on my horse, getting what heat from him I could, and waited for more than an hour for the sun to climb up out of his nice warm bed.

That section of Dakota Territory always reminds me a lot of my part of Texas when the weather's right. Big, billowy swells of land far as you can see, which is pretty far. Once the snow quits the land, as it mostly had last week, the air gets nice and dry. Soon the grass greens out and springs up to the top of your boots. Then stays just that tall, 'til it withers from the drought or dies in the frost, either one. Course, it hadn't sprung to life yet this year much, but it would. Least it had every year since God'd planted it.

West of here are the Black Hills, where miners were tearing up the streams to get the color out. I seen the Hills once, and it didn't surprise me to hear that the Sioux were killing whites to keep it for themselves. West of that come the Bighorns and wester still, the Rockies. I wouldn't say this to just anyone, but there are no sights in Texas to compare to them peaks and river valleys over in the Rockies.

The land tilts up from here all the way to the mountains. You couldn't see it, but if you walked west all day your legs'd let you know you had been going uphill when you laid down to sleep that night. Not that I can see any reason for walking all day–since horses have been invented for some time now. Pretty country, damn pretty country, even here. I watched the sun stick his nose over the hill to the east and wondered what I was going to do now that Clete was getting married.

I had first throwed my lot in with Clete over that Wilson mess. About the time we agreed to take the sheriff and deputy jobs, we also agreed to take off come spring. It would do all right to hole up here for the winter, we decided, but come reasonable weather, we'd ride downward on the map 'til we found us some strong drink and willing senoritas and prop our feet up in some place where the sun shines strong enough to blister your scalp right through your hat, so you stay in the shade. We didn't work out all the details, but that's what we had spoke about.

Now, Mr. Cletus Shannon had went and proposed marriage to Miss Mary McLeod. Which looked like it was going to go and change everthing we decided on. I believe I have lost more friends to marriage than to snakes and Indians combined. Course, he had a right to do what suited him, and I had as good a right to hold it against him, going back on his word like he did.

Soon as I said that to myself, I saw something white in the grass. I dismounted and picked it up. It was some kind of cartridge, but it was nothing like none I ever seen before. Not more than a foot from it, there was its twin. They were shells of some kind, all right. The slugs were real soft and they were about the thickness of minie balls, shaped like them too. But instead of brass they had little white cloth sacks fastened where the brass ought to go.

I stuck the pair of them in my vest pocket and got down on my hands and knees and just looked. Sometimes it takes a while to see what you're seeing. I learned a long time ago that most folks'll see what they're looking for, not what they're looking at, and it takes more than a minute or two to take in what's there instead of what you expected you'd find. I crawled around some and finally noticed how the grass was sort of laid down in one spot. Oh, it'd almost all sprung back up, even half dead like it was, but enough of it was still bent over to see where somebody'd laid out a piece of canvas, or a rubber sheet, or something like that. After I had it square in my mind where the corners was, I crawled around the outside and found some little black holes burnt into the matted-down grass.

Whoever'd laid out here had faced Nell's place from this little rise and spent a good piece of time looking at her house or something around where she lives. Reason I knowed that was from the little burn holes. There was a lot of them along the edge of the blanketsized square that faced toward the buildings, and they was made from grinding out cigarette butts–lots of them, no question. Little rise like this, the snow would leave here first, though the ground would be froze hard, wet and cold as hell turned inside out.

Clete was right, too. One man by himself, I would bet, because the holes made by the burning cigarette butts was in the center of the side toward Nell's house. Two men laying on a tarp looking down there would be more toward each side, even if one didn't smoke. Course there might of been three men, with one in the middle, but I doubted that. Fellow might talk one fool into laying out here in freezing weather spying on an old woman with him, but I doubted if he could find a second. Craziness to do a thing like that stays bottled up in one man by himself, mostly. And he was careful not to be discovered, too, because he'd gathered up his butts and taken them with him.

It surprised me, then, that he'd been so careless with his shells. But maybe he was in a hurry to get out of here. Maybe he fired and run, or maybe somebody run him off, I don't know. I crawled around some more and out in front of where he laid, on the side toward Nell's place, I found a little scrap of cloth that looked a lot like the stuff holding the powder to the whole shells I found, only burned some. Well, he had fired at something-or someone. I checked all over for heel holes or boot tracks and fresh horse droppings, but there was none I could see.

About the time I was thinking of riding down to Nell's and then to town, here she comes riding up toward me with Clete beside her, both of them going slow and looking for sign. Soon they saw me and waved and I mounted and headed down that way.

"How do, Willie," Nell called. "You're about pretty early." She didn't seem to be jabbing me about sleeping late so I didn't take no offense. Clete smiled some, but he didn't say nothing.

"Yeah, I saw the sun come up but not a lot more," I told her. "Been out here all night and I'm stiffer than a badger's tail. Got any coffee down there?"

Clete raised his eyebrows. "How come you did that? I didn't ask you to do that."

"Thought I might catch someone if he was out prowlin' with the coyotes," I answered. "Mighty hungry up here now, though."

"You asking me to fix you something?" Nell ask me.

"Would you mind, Nell?"

"No, not a bit. Come down in a while and I'll have something ready," she said, and kicked her old mare around. She stopped a little distance away and looked back at us over her shoulder, suspicious. "You men have your private talk, if you must, but don't you keep me in the dark about nothing. I mean it!" Then she dug her heels into that mare's ribs and cantered on home. Wasn't an entirely bad rider either, for a woman.

"You found something, huh?" Clete asked after we watched Nell for a minute.

"I guess so," I said, and showed him the square spot where the grass was laid over a little and the burnt holes. Then I took the cartridges out of my pocket and handed them to him. "She say anything about hearing a shot?"

That set him back on his boot heels pretty good. He turned them over in his hands and ended up smelling them, just like I did earlier. "Nice piece of looking, Willie," he said, kind of like he was congratulating me and kind of surprised that I done it, too. "What do you make of this?"

"Well, I don't know. Ain't nothing I'm familiar with, but I sure as hell know I wouldn't want to be hit with a piece of lead that size."

"Me, either," he said. "You know, I've seen something like this before, but damned if can remember where. Seems like I ought to, though."

"I'm surprised she didn't say nothing to you about hearing a shot. Something that big would sound like a cannon between these hills."

"How do you know he fired?" Clete ask.

I fished out the little scrap of cloth and handed him that, too. Buckshot scared up and Clete took a minute to settle him. "Well, she didn't hear it, but Jesse McLeod did. He was around her place day before yesterday-Saturday that'd make it-and someone took a shot at him. Nell was in town buying things for the shindig, I understand." He took off his hat and wiped his brow, though it wasn't warm enough to work up a sweat. "Jesse didn't want to worry her about it. Sorry I didn't mention that to you, Partner. Just forgot to." He looked kind of hang-dogged after he said it.

"Well, I didn't get no bullet hole in me over it so it don't matter … Pard. Though it don't look like I'll be calling you that much longer, does it?"

He knowed what I was about. "Meant to tell you that, too, but it just came on before I had a chance."

"Sure," I told him. "I'll bet you didn't even ask her yet that day in Clooney's when you invited me to them high old times at Nell's, huh?" I guess I could have been a little easier on him about it, but, damn, a man desertin' his friends like that!

He waved me off and shook his head. "Shit, we didn't sign any contract about going south, just talked about it, as I recall. Things change, you know that."

He was right, of course. I'd seen it plenty of times, had even talked about doing something myself with a fellow or two and then went and done the opposite. After a minute or so it was pretty clear neither of us had nothing more to say on the subject.

"C'mon," Clete said, mounting Buckshot and heading toward Nell's. "I could use some more coffee while you're filling your gut."

We rode quiet for a while. I guessed if I'd ever caught a bad case of the calico fever I might act the same way. "What'd McLeod tell you about gettin shot at?" I ask him.

"Not much," he said. "Jesse was off his horse and walking toward the door and saw the dirt fly in front of him, like a big geyser, so he said. At first he thought somebody'd thrown something at him for a joke. But then he heard it and ducked for cover. Didn't figure out what direction it came from for a while, and by then it was too late to go after whoever fired at him. Probably a good thing he didn't anyway.

"Mind if I hang on to these?" he asked, still fingering one of the cartridges. "I'd like John Tate to have a look at 'em."

"Well, I wasn't plannin' on startin' a collection of unusual shells," I told him.

"Wouldn't surprise me if you did do that. 'Willie Goodwin's Mementos of the Wild and Wooly West,' you might call it. Travel with one of those rough-riding shows and get rich telling lies to greenhorns. Ready for a belt-stretchin' breakfast?"

Clete put away his share of flapjacks and eggs, too, but there was no shortage, I can guarantee. After we ate, Clete looked around the dooryard to see if he could spot where the bullet had hit, but he couldn't and neither could I. Been too many people tramping around after the big engagement dinner was my guess. He didn't say no more about me going out to look around again. Guess maybe he was afraid I would get myself killed, but I woulda bet that the old boy who laid out there watching was long gone by then.

I'd a lost that bet, surely.

Clooney's was still pretty empty when I sat sipping my first beer the next day. Truth is, I was hoping one of the girls might be trying to pick up a little extra money, but none of'em was. Clete come in and looked around and saw me.