The Homesman (14 page)

Among the women Mrs. Belknap, dear Theoline, was the most obviously demented. Her rest at night was fitful, and while awake she often babbled softly in a language intelligible only to herself. She threw her eyes about at random. She ate like a bird. She understood nothing said to her, and Mary Bee gradually developed a theory: Theoline must remain demented, because if her mind cleared, and guilt entered, she would kill herself. There must have been at least one rational moment, then, a moment when her murder of her baby had been revealed to her in all its horror, or she would not have bitten through the radial artery in her forearm. Mary Bee took care to change the bandaging on that wrist every several days, and to keep the other bound in case Theoline's mind cleared again.

These were observations she could make when they were out of the wagon. When they were inside, after she had closed and bolted the rear doors, they were hidden to her, and she had no idea how they reacted to the confinement and to each other. There was one curious thing: when she opened the doors at each stop, none of the women had moved en route. Each sat in exactly the same place on the bench and on the same side that she had taken all along. And each was separated from the woman beside her and across from her by several inches, so that there would be no physical contact no matter how rough the ride. It was as though each of the four was determined to stake out her own space, her own inches, to isolate herself in her own individual Hell.

It was late March, but there had been no shift of season. Winter would not go. Spring would not come. Instead, ten like days shuffled from one end of the plains to the other. They were divided only by darkness. Every day of the ten the sky was gray, the air still and swollen. Every day a gray wagon crawled under a gray sky from one part of the plains to another. Every day the land lengthened before it.

Then late one afternoon there was a breeze, from the north, and welcome to it. But soon it became a wind, and Briggs sniffed it. They were going to have a blow, he said, he didn't know what kind, but a hell of a big blow. He stopped and stood on the seat but could find no river bottom or sheltering timber or even a deep draw. He continued until he could drive the wagon down into a buffalo wallow, which would give them close to three feet of advantage. He ordered Mary Bee to hurry, to get the women out of the wagon and under it, together with their bedrolls and his and hers. While she hurried, he unlashed the tarpaulin and cleared the top of the wagon, and when the women were out, he hauled out the grub box, shoved it under the wagon, and loaded the interior with everything from the top, blocking one north window with a sack of cornmeal stood on a saddle, the other with a sack of beans. By now the day was blackening to night, suddenly, and the wind was growing to a gale. He got hammer and nails and, with Mary Bee holding it, nailed the tarp to the north side of the wagon to cut off whatever was coming, rain or hail. Finally, he unhitched and unharnessed the span and the roan and mare, and rather than picketing them, tied the four animals to wheel spokes on the south side of the wagon. Here they'd be close, and in the lee, and though they might suffer they wouldn't scare off and go gallivanting. He and Mary Bee went under the box then, and got themselves and the women into blankets just as the storm smote the wagon with a blast that hoisted both north wheels entirely off the ground.

It was an ice storm, a phenomenon of the plains. Clouds of ice particles almost as fine as flour were hurled across the level land by a roaring gale. Neither man nor beast could confront them. In the open a person's face was covered with ice instantly, his eyes frozen shut, his breath taken away, his clothing so penetrated by ice that his whole body was encased. Only the protection afforded by the wagon and the tarpaulin saved these travelers. As it was, the tarp began to flap and whipped them violently until they got hold of it and pulled it inward and weighted it with their bodies. Even with lee shelter the animals suffered terribly. In an hour their bodies were sheeted in ice; in two hours their heads were the size of bushel baskets, made into masses of ice by their congealed breathing. Soon after, neither mules nor horses could support the heavy cumbers and lowered their heads to the ground. For hours the storm assailed the wagon and those beneath it. The six humans clung together in a kind of clump, blankets and a buffalo hide around and over them. Mary Bee could have no knowledge of what went on in the women's heads, whether or not they were frightened. She was. There were moments when it seemed the wind would muscle the entire wagon into the air, the animals tied to it, and hurl it Heaven knew where. She tried to imagine her fright away by imagining herself away, not under a wagon on the prairie with four madwomen and a cull of a man but with a trusty captain on a stout bark on some romantic sea, tempest-tossed. Only once did she ask herself what would have happened in this emergency had she started out alone with the women, had Briggs not been there—and dared not answer the question. Toward morning the wind ceased to blow as abruptly as it had begun, and the only sound on earth was the breathing of animals through holes at their noses. It was black night yet, but presently the black washed to gray and then a great golden sun was lifted over the horizon, the first sun they had seen in eleven days, and in minutes its rays turned the world of ice into one made of diamonds. It blazed with a brilliance almost divine. The ground, for instance, was three inches deep in white fire. The six squinted. A cranky Briggs was first out from under the wagon, and after a bout of catarrh, hawking and spitting and cursing, then turning his back and passing water in plain sight, he said he wanted them moving, no food, nothing, so get to it. Using the flat of the ax like a club, he knocked the ice off the mules and horses, off the harness and the tarp. Mary Bee unloaded the wagon and got the women into it. She climbed up on top, and he heaved saddles and supplies up to her. She lashed down the tarp while he tied the mare and roan and hitched the span, and in fairly short order they were out of the wallow and crunching east again through light so bright it hurt the eyes. But within three miles they were past the ice and the ground was its old patch snow and brown grass again, as though the storm had never been. The sky was blue, not gray. The air had a remembered warmth. Mary Bee thought she saw a robin and a mockingbird. It had been the deadliest winter the Territory had known, taking an awful toll of its people, as witness the women behind her; but this storm, His storm, though limited in area, had at last blown down winter's walls and let spring in, real spring. She was grateful to her God.

Near noon she made Briggs stop, opened the grub box, and gave everyone a cold corn dodger. She had just regained her seat and bitten hungrily into hers when screaming inside the wagon brought her down again. She ran to the doors, unbolted, and flung them open.

At first she couldn't see clearly. Mrs. Sours and Line Belknap, nearest the doors, were cowering in fear, heads covered by their arms. She pulled them outside, then realized that Mrs. Svendsen was attacking Mrs. Petzke, had thrown her down on the bench and was beating her with her fists.

“Help!” she cried to Briggs, and jumped inside to stop Gro Svendsen. She struggled with her, but Gro was a wild woman and strong, and before Briggs could reach them Mary Bee was shoved out of the wagon and borne to the ground and being beaten viciously.

Suddenly the woman was hauled upward. Gro Svendsen's felt cap had fallen off, and Briggs had her by the hair of her head.

He swung her about and with his free hand gave her a sharp slap on the cheek.

The fight went out of her. The hatred in her blue eyes faded. She sagged.

Briggs bound her with his arms and lifted her over the step and into the wagon and dumped her on a bench like a sack of beans.

He went to the front of the wagon, under the seat, and brought back hammer, nails, and the four leather strips he had cut from harness traces at Mary Bee's place just before leaving. In the box again, he hammered eight nails through the hardwood planking, four on each side, and fitting a strip across Mrs. Svendsen's body and arms just above the elbows, pushed the hole in each end of the strip over a nailhead. She was strapped to the wall tightly. She could move neither of her arms and had to sit upright.

“No, no,” choked Mary Bee. Tears rolled down her cheeks, which were bruised. Her ribs ached from blows.

Briggs stepped down and, taking Mrs. Sours inside, strapped her against the opposite wall.

“You will not!” sobbed Mary Bee.

He proceeded to do likewise with Mrs. Petzke and with Line Belknap, then exiting the wagon, hammer in one hand, an extra nail protruding from his mouth, closed and bolted the doors.

“I won't have it!” cried Mary Bee. “They're not prisoners, they're precious human beings! The Lord's creatures! Let them go!”

“They're crazy as bedbugs,” said Briggs around the nail. “And I intend to get 'em to Ioway before they kill each other.”

“You must never touch them again!”

“I'll do what needs doing,” he replied, and heading for the front end of the wagon, put away hammer and nail and took the seat and reins.

“You'll do as I tell you!” Mary Bee cried at him. “I am in charge! I saved your life!”

“Suit yourself,” said Briggs, starting the mules and moving the wagon away.

She stood her ground. He wouldn't dare.

“Stop!” she shrieked.

It was inconceivable that he would leave her here alone, without food, water, mount, or friend, but minutes passed and he did exactly that. She must run after the wagon, she had no choice, but pride rooted her, and fury. Then the vehicle disappeared, driven down into a draw evidently, and she was in fact abandoned.

All at once the dark familiar deep was in her. She was going void. But when she shivered, and felt the first crystal of fear form in the void, she commenced to run, headlong, in panic. Her heavy boots and coat burdened her, and she could not run far. Soon she was exhausted and slowed to a walk, and in a while came to the edge of the draw. There, below, was the wagon. He had stopped it out of sight to wait for her, cocksure she would, she must, follow. She descended to it in long strides, reached the front end, and climbed to the seat beside the driver. Without a look or word he clucked to the mules.

Mary Bee was utterly winded. She sat upright, as though she were strapped to the seat, gasping for air. She heard, high above, the plaintive cry of a killdeer.

•   •   •

That night, camped, the women fed, dishes done, the stock watered and picketed, Mary Bee sat for a time by the fire, a blanket round her shoulders. Briggs, too, sat by it, easing himself. Immediately after supper he had got out the whiskey he had forced her to buy for him in Loup, and now he sat cross-legged on blankets and buffalo hide taking pulls from the jug. He was in fine fettle. It had been a jimdandy day for him. He had saved the party from an ice storm, slapped Mrs. Svendsen into submission, had his way about strapping the four into the wagon, and made a grown woman run after him like a child being punished. He had even been helpful at supper, washing faces and hands and spoon-feeding Mrs. Petzke and Mrs. Sours, humming to himself as he unlashed the tarp and threw down bedrolls.

“I was in the Dragoons,” he said.

She couldn't believe her ears. It could only be the whiskey.

“Comp'ny C, First U.S. Dragoons.”

“Oh?” She was cautious. She wanted to know more but did not want him drunk.

“Fort Kearney.”

“I see.” She glanced at the women behind her under the wagon. They were asleep, each one tied to a wheel.

“Yep. Had us a real fracas one time down in Kansas. Kiowas.”

She knew little about the United States Dragoons, although she gathered they were trained and equipped to fight both mounted and on foot.

“Hell of a time,” he said.

“Tell me.”

The warmer night had let him take off his cowcoat and hat. She recalled the black, rusty suitcoat with its ripped sleeve. He slipped the big revolver from his belt, laid it close by, tilted the jug again, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Went out to Fort Leavenworth, C Troop, from Kearney. They put t'gether a supply train of six-mule wagons, fifty of 'em, an' a herd three hundred horses. T'take 'em down t'Fort Union, New Mexico. C Troop escort. Y'know how they trail a horse herd?”

“No.”

“Strings of forty horses led by herders.”

“I see.”

“Well, we had Kiowas like fleas. Trailin' us. War paint. Sassy. Big as life an' twice as natural. Wanted those horses.”

“I see.”

He rubbed his chin. “So one night camped on the Arkansas River, the Cimarron Crossing. Teamsters picketed three hunderd mules an' herders picketed three hunderd horses. In sand. Sand. An' did a damn poor job. Drove the pins halfway in, two or three lariats t'one pin. Hell, they wouldn't hold a prairie dog! An' sure enough, that night Kiowas stampeded the whole bunch. Away they go. Whooeee! Trampled the wagons t'pieces an' got the stock tangled in lariats an' crippled up with flyin' pins an' the Kiowas chasin' 'em whoopin' an' hollerin'.” He paused, staring grimly into the fire. “Oh, my, but weren't we riled. Blew the bugle Boots'n Saddles an' away we went after 'em. Sun's comin' up now, gettin' light. We caught Kiowas here an' Kiowas there, in bunches, tryin' t'drive our horses, an' killed 'em. They had bows'n arrows'n we had muskets'n pistols. Rounded up our animals an' drove 'em right through the goddam Kiowas' camp. Come night we had most of our horses an' mules an' killed more'n thirty Kiowas an' busted their camp t'hell.” He grinned at her in triumph. “Pretty fair job of work, huh? Comp'ny C, First U.S. Dragoons!”

He waited, grinning, as though for applause, like a youngster after a recitation.

“How interesting,” said Mary Bee, and went off to her bedroll by the wagon. She made her bed and slept, how long she had no idea, but a shout waked her.