Spirit Wolf (14 page)

Uriah and Flynn had already eaten. Nash found a tin plate and slapped a couple of steaks, charred on the outside and dry as dust on the inside, next to a heap of beans still steaming from the pot on the fire. He wolfed down his food and looked at Uriah.

“Go ahead, boy,” Uriah said to the unspoken question. “We've had all we want.”

Flynn chuckled. “Only living thing I've ever seen eat like that had four feet and pulled a wagon. If he grows the way he eats, you'll be able to hook him to the plow, Uriah.”

“Could be he'll eat the plow, too,” Uriah retorted, while Nash dumped the remaining beans on his plate and finished them. The two men were waiting for Nash, cleaning their teeth with the chewed ends of willow splinters. Nash rose, gathered the tin plates and scrubbed them in the snow.

“I put a pan of water on,” Uriah said.

Nash nodded. He would run the plates through the hot, soapy water to cut the grease and then dry them by the fire. As Nash busied himself with his chores, Flynn pulled an envelope from under his coat. “I hope you don't mind, Uriah, but I couldn't help saving the best for last. It's a letter from Mary.”

Uriah looked up in surprise. “How did that woman manage to get a letter up here? I swear she could hitch a lightning bolt and ride it to the moon if she had a mind to.”

But the tremble of Uriah's hands belied the lightness of his words. He took the letter from Flynn as though it were something fragile, precious, cradling it in his hands a moment before tearing it open.

“Ulysses sent George Dunn out to check on some stock,” Flynn said. “He was close to your place, so he stopped in to see how things were going. Mary was out on the creek chipping ice with a crowbar and a bunch of sheep gathered around her like kids waiting their turn at a lemonade stand. George pitched in on a few chores, but she was doing fine, just fine.”

“So George just happened to be there?” Uriah said. “If you see Mr. George Dunn before I do, you tell him he's owed. You might mention to Ulysses, too, that he's going to have to build better fence if his stock had taken to wandering that far off his range.”

Flynn's face crumpled into a reluctant grin, and he tried to defend himself, but Uriah wasn't listening. He was holding the letter flat against the light of the campfire, trying to pick words off the page. He read through the letter twice before he held it out for Nash. “Something in here for you, too, Nash,” Uriah said. “She's doing fine, just fine.”

Flynn grinned. Probably wasn't anybody in shouting distance who didn't know that Mary Brue was “doing fine, just fine.”

Nash bent closer to the fire, squinting at the pages in the soft, flickering light.

Dear Uriah and Nash:

I know you are safe. God just wouldn't let anything happen to you, but I'll admit it scared me this morning when I saw that rider coming up the lane. I thought he was bringing bad news, but then I saw it was George. If it had been bad news, Katie or Ulysses would have come.

I know it's silly to worry, but it's hard not to. Next thing I know, you'll be like Jake Chambers, telling the neighbors how your “tetched” wife is carrying on.

George chipped a hole through the ice on the creek for the sheep and hauled up a little hay for me too. It's funny, but I've been thinking that you'd be home by the time the hay was gone. I felt funny having George build up the feed stack, like I was telling you to stay away. Maybe you should talk to Jake after all.

The house seems hollow at night without you, and I bump around the empty corners like a bee in a fruit jar. It's times like that when I would give a year of my life to have the two of you home again.

But I don't want you to quit something you've started. I don't want you always wondering if you might have been the ones to get the wolf, if things might have been different if you had.

Nash, don't let your father do anything foolish. He isn't a spring chicken any more, even though he does strut around and squawk like one.

Please be careful. Know that I am perfectly well and praying for your safety and success.

Love
,

Mary

Nash grinned as he finished reading, but there was a shadow on it. Caught up in the excitement of the hunt, Nash hadn't considered the burden left on his mother's shoulders. He passed the letter back to his father, who folded it and slipped it inside his jacket. Nash could see the guilt on his father's face, too, plainer in the firelight than the words of the letter.

The three sat in silence, watching the flames dance through the air. Uriah was the first to break the stillness. “If we had known George was going past the place, I would have written Mary a letter.”

“I know you would,” Flynn said.

There was another long silence before Uriah spoke again. “That Mary. She's a lot stronger than she looks. She can do most anything a man can do. It might take her a little longer, but she can do it.”

Flynn interrupted the next stretch of silence just before it snapped. “I was talking to Mose Adkins today, just before he pulled up stakes. Funny old goat, Adkins is. Said he didn't feel right, thought something was coming he didn't want to be around to see. Said it has something to do with the old Indian. Told me he knew the old man before.”

Flynn paused for effect, and when he knew he held his listeners as tightly as the letter had a moment ago, he continued, “Adkins got a ranch just off the Cheyenne reserve and he knows some of the Cheyenne pretty good, at least some of the younger ones. He hires them for haying or branding or whatever. Says they make good hands.

“One day he was over at the Two Bellies place to ask Chester to come over the next day, but he could see as soon as he rode up that he had stepped into something.

“Old Two Bellies, Chester's grandfather, had taken real sick that night, and the family thought he was going to die. Chester and his sister—they both had schooling at the mission—wanted to take the old man to the agency. But their grandmother wasn't having any of that. She figured the doctors would cut up Old Two Bellies the way he cut up the troopers in the Custer fight.

“Adkins was watching the whole thing. Oddest argument he ever saw. Chester and his sister were laying it on thick and heavy in Cheyenne, but the old woman wouldn't say anything at all. She just glared at Adkins once in a while.

“All of a sudden, that old man over there in the buffalo robe was standing behind Adkins. The Two Bellies place is right out on a ridgetop. There isn't any cover between there and the Crazy Mountains, but all of a sudden our old man was there, just standing there like he had been there all the time. Adkins said it kind of spooked him.

“It kind of spooked Chester and his sister too. The Cheyenne believe that old man can travel through the air. They really believe that. Seems our old man is some kind of shaman or something.

“Well as soon as the old man showed up, Chester's grandmother starts chattering away at him in Cheyenne, but he just waves her away and talks to Chester.

“Chester is spooked. He's shouting at the old man in Cheyenne, and he jumps on his horse and lights out like the devil is after him.

“The old woman starts keening. Adkins hears that and asks Chester's sister what the hell is going on. She is crying, and she says her brother will die, that the old man said so.

“By this time Chester is at a high lope. He's going down the ridge toward the bottom, but all of a sudden his horse spooks at something and jumps right off the rimrock, eighty feet straight down, with Chester hanging on to the reins like that's what he meant to do.

“Adkins yelled for everybody to get his wagon, and he runs the rig down there, holding back from the edge as best he can. He pulls the wagon to a stop and they all go look over the rim. Chester and the horse are down below, broken up real bad, and neither of them moving. By the time they get down to him, Chester is dead. Adkins said the fall must have killed him right away.

“When they get back, they hear something in the cabin, and they find our old man singing over Two Bellies and blowing sage smoke at him. Whatever it was, it worked. Two Bellies is still alive, and Chester has been dead for some years now.”

Nash said, “How could the old man have known that Chester would die?”

“He didn't,” Uriah said. “He just planted the idea in Chester's head and the boy's imagination did the rest. Just goes to show you how dangerous superstition can be.”

“But Chester had been to school,” Nash objected. “He didn't believe in those old superstitions.”

“Chester had learned to read and write, but he was still Cheyenne.”

“But how did the old man show up without anybody seeing him coming?”

“It's just another one of those stories, Nash. The reservation is full of them. They don't mean anything at all. I think you'd better turn in. Likely we'll have a busy day tomorrow.”

8

Morning came early and cold. Nash lay in his bedroll, shivering, in dread of leaving the warm blankets. He took a deep breath and plunged into the cold, pulling on his trousers and shirt with shaking hands. He bent over, pulled on his boots, tied a double knot, and stepped out into the false dawn.

“Why'd you let me sleep so late?” he asked Uriah, who was already drinking coffee brewed over the campfire.

“Thought maybe we both needed a little extra. Seems like we've been at this a long time.”

Nash nodded and ate and began his chores. Uriah waited by the fire, sipping coffee while Nash scrubbed the plates clean and put the cooking gear away.

“Flynn was by this morning. Says his hands are hurting bad. He thinks it's going to storm, but then he's been saying that for the last two days. Thought we'd give him the benefit of the doubt, though, and not go out so far.”

Uriah climbed to his feet, pitching the dregs of his coffee on the fire, and Nash followed his father to the makeshift corral. The horses were bunched together, their breath hanging over them in a cloud. Flynn was there, leaning against a tree, watching something or someone hidden from the Brues on the other side of the horses.

As Uriah and Nash approached, Flynn looked up and grinned. “King of the West is getting ready to do some hard riding,” Flynn whispered, nodding his head.

Bullsnake was there, gathering his gear. Nash hadn't realized that anyone could look awkward getting bridle, saddle, and blanket in some reasonable juxtaposition, but Bullsnake was doing just that. And while the horses were clouding the air with their breath, Bullsnake was turning it blue with his words.

When his gear was arranged to his satisfaction, Bullsnake stepped into the corral, slipped a lariat over his horse's neck, led the gelding to a tree, and tied him up. Then Bullsnake ducked through the rope that edged the corral, picked up his saddle blanket, and ducked back under the rope to return to his horse. Once the blanket was in place, he returned for the saddle, grunting a little as he ducked under the rope again and once more as he lifted the saddle to the back of his horse. Saddle in place and cinch tight, Bullsnake untied the horse and started to lead him to the section that served as a gate.

“Bridle!” Flynn yelled at him. “You forgot the bridle.”

Bullsnake looked up, startled that he was being watched. “I didn't forget any son-of-a-bitching bridle,” he said. “I was just bringing the horse over closer to it.”

“Some people put the bridle on first,” Flynn retorted, his wide grin obvious to Bullsnake even across the corral.

“Some people get their noses all busted up because they can't help poking them into other people's business,” Bullsnake retorted. “And if I wasn't so busy, I might come over and explain that to you.”

Nash made the mistake of snickering, and Bullsnake turned ugly. He stalked across the corral and pulled up short in front of Flynn.

“If I want any shit out of any of you sons of bitches, I'll squeeze your heads,” he growled, daring any of them to say anything.

The gauntlet had been thrown, and Nash thought Bullsnake needed it thrown back in his face. But Uriah and Flynn were silent, and Bullsnake sneered.

“If you ladies will excuse me, I'll be going,” he said and walked back across the corral to his waiting horse. He slipped the bridle on, again a little awkwardly, and led the animal out of the corral.

He climbed on, and with a great sense of drama, raked the animal with his big, ugly Spanish spurs. The horse had a sense of drama too. The gelding stood up on his hind legs, as though he was meant to walk that way, and for one sickening moment, Nash thought the animal would fall backward on his rider. Bullsnake had very little to recommend him as far as Nash could see; still, Nash wouldn't want a horse to fall on anybody. But Nash had overestimated Bullsnake's riding ability: he slid off the back of the horse like rain off a tin roof. The horse crow-hopped over the packed snow, and Bullsnake, all wild-eyed, ran for his life.

It started as a chuckle, and burst into a guffaw, Flynn, Uriah, and Nash laughing head-back, belly-deep laughs. Bullsnake started cussing in earnest, unwrapping a whole lexicon of expletives that Nash had never heard before and wouldn't likely hear again. The gelding had stopped bucking, and Bullsnake grabbed the dragging reins and jerked the horse's head around cruelly. Then he mounted, and holding his heels well off the horse's flanks, yelled, “Giddyup!”

Flynn actually had tears in his eyes, and Uriah was holding his stomach. Nash looked at the two of them and began laughing all over again.

“Ah, it was worth getting up late,” Uriah said wheezing. “I needed that more than I need any scrawny old wolf, five hundred dollars or not.”

Flynn couldn't talk. He was still chortling, and Nash with him. When the laughter finally died down, Nash and Uriah began readying their horses. After Uriah and Nash mounted, Flynn called them over.