The Jump-Off Creek (23 page)

She saw what he meant by it, that he was offering it to her in a comforting way, perhaps as an ease for guilt. She looked down at her needlework and let the smile go, without an answer.

The dog's wheezing had quieted somewhat but he could not swallow past his swollen throat. When Mr. Odell trickled a little tea down the back of the dog's throat, he retched weakly and the thin green water ran back out the edges of his mouth. Lydia carried on deliberately with the sewing, only watching the dog and the man from an edge of her eye.

The man's face kept its steady look. But in a moment, without looking at Lydia, he said, “I wonder if I shouldn't put him out of the way. I hate to see him suffer this way, and if you say there is nothing you can do for him . . .” He let the words trail off.

“I believe he is bound to die soon,” she said. The man's steadiness kept her from too much pity. She felt sober, reasonable, talking with him about the dog's end.

He nodded. “Well,” he said. He sat with the dog's head in his lap, one hand resting lightly on the dog's shoulders. Almost as he said the word, the yellow jaws moved, the dog made a long, rattling sound letting out his breath.

They sat and waited, watching the dog. “Well,” Mr. Odell said again, when he was sure the dog was dead. Then he said, “If you don't mind, I guess I'll dig a hole for him and just get him buried right here.”

“Yes.”

He folded the blanket up around the dog's body and carried him out. Lydia stood slowly and put away the needlework and got on her coat and hat. She took the spade and followed the man through the garden, where the kale was all that was left growing among the frost-killed weeds. He had set the dog down on the wet grass at the edge of the worked ground.

“All right?” He looked at her.

“Yes.” She handed over the spade.

He dug the hole slowly, keeping the sides straight and piling up the rocky red earth in a neat pyramid. She stood with her
hands pushed down in her coat pockets, watching him. The rain had quit for the time being but the air felt wet, and under the trees there was an unsteady showering off the high branches of the evergreens. The bell she had hung on Rose rang an infrequent, timid-sounding note. Otherwise the only sound was the man's huffing breath and the scrape of the spade against the gravelly ground.

Mr. Whiteaker rode his horse up from the end of the clearing while the hole was still being dug. He got down off the horse at a distance and walked up the rest of the way, leaving the horse to stand reins-trailing among the dark stumps. He took up a place on the other side of the hole, opposite to Lydia, without saying a word to either of them. Mr. Odell had looked up once when the horse had first come out of the trees and then he had gone on with digging the hole. Now he said, low, without looking up from what he was doing, “Did you find him?”

Tim Whiteaker shook his head once. “Rain,” he said vaguely, and made an irritable gesture with one hand. His face was stiff, his mouth pulled out into the long creases in his cheeks. His eyes were fixed narrowly on the spade, following it back and forth from the hole to the piled-up dirt.

After a while Mr. Odell set the spade aside and knelt on the muddy ground beside the dog's body. He picked up the dog and laid him down in the hole, with the blanket left around him. The shape the dog made under the blanket was indefinite, inanimate. Mr. Odell leaned back and looked at it a moment and then pushed to come standing with a grunt. He began to fill in the hole rapidly, raking in the loose dirt and rocks with the spade. The dirt made a mound when he was done and he tamped it down with the flat of the spade until it looked smooth and hard.

“It was bound to get to this,” Tim Whiteaker said after a moment. He spoke in a sort of grumble, bearish and resentful. “It was just luck it didn't happen before now.”

She looked at him. He stood with his chin down and his shoul
ders pulled up so his collar rubbed his hat. The stance had a child's look—as if he stood ready to take a scolding. But there was no boyishness just now in his face, only the bleak look he had worn since walking up to them there at the edge of the garden. A sort of dread came up in her slowly.

“If the poor dogs were poisoned, Mr. Whiteaker, no one would have set out deliberately to do it. It was carelessness. Or mishap.” She spoke to him reasonably, watching his face.

It was Blue Odell who looked toward her. Mr. Whiteaker stooped deeper inside his damp coat, not lifting his eyes from the dog's grave. No one spoke. Then Tim said bitterly, “Carelessness is something that will get people killed.”

She held still, only lifting her chin slightly, drawing up her mouth, against his hardness.

“I don't think Herman's got any pups right now,” Mr. Odell said, standing back and then leaning forward slightly on the handle of the spade. “I guess we'll be without dogs for a while.” He sounded mild, indifferent, but Lydia saw the look that went between the two men, as if there had been something else said, or some private feeling declared. Left out, or disregarded, she looked away toward the bell goat and the little ribbon of the Jump-Off Creek.

Then Mr. Odell said gently, unexpectedly, “I appreciate what you did to ease the dog, ma'am.”

With her mouth still pursed, she answered, “I couldn't do anything to save him.”

He shrugged. “I expect there was nothing that could have been done.”

After a moment she said, “Perhaps not.”

He shifted his weight and then reached the spade toward her. “Thanks.”

She nodded. Where she now held the handle of the spade, the heat of the man's hand was still on the wood.

Blue looked over at Tim and then he started out toward his
horse. Tim stood where he was, with his head down looking at the dirt. After a while he made a loose gesture, lifting one hand and turning it, and he shot her a look full of misery. Then he went down after the gray horse. She stayed there at the edge of the garden watching the two of them, with her hands sunk in her pockets. Blue Odell rode his horse back over to where she was. He smiled slowly.

“He's in a testy mood, is all. You shouldn't credit it, ma'am.”

She said solemnly, “No. I don't. Thank you, Mr. Odell.” Then, bluntly, tipping her head a little to peer at him, she said, “What will you do?”

He looked off toward Mr. Whiteaker who had already started his gray horse down the trail beside the Jump-Off.

“I don't know,” he said. “There are two or three wolfers who've been living in a shack kind of above us there, on Loeb's Mountain. We might go up there and talk to them. I expect if we do, we'll ask them to keep their traps and their baits up on the mountain and not come down onto our property anymore. But you shouldn't worry about it, ma'am. One of them we've known a long time, we worked with him up on the Spokane River.”

She nodded slowly, seriously. “All right then. I won't worry. Good-by, Mr. Odell.”

“So long, ma'am.” He touched his hat and started his horse trotting after Tim Whiteaker.

Lydia took the spade and walked across the muddy little garden to the house. She didn't look after the two men until she had come all the way back and stood in the open door. By then, they were at the edge of the clearing, and in the brief moment while she stood watching they went out of sight in the vague shadows under the trees.

It started to rain in earnest, falling straight down in lines thick and dark as pencil strokes. They had come away without any raingear. Tim's coat gradually let the wet through, and the shirt under it grew clammy. He kept his hat pulled down on his ears.

He didn't say anything to Blue, riding up there. But when they got to where they could see Loeb's shack, he stopped his horse. “I haven't seen that kid,” Tim said. “I let it drop, the business between him and me.” He ducked his head so rain ran off the front of the hat brim in a thin brief sheet. “I didn't want you thinking the dogs were any part of that.”

Blue looked over at him. “No,” he said. “I figured you would have said, if it was that.” He took out his cigarette papers. They were damp, and he fiddled with them a while until he finally got one to come away from the others. “Those fellows don't appear to be at home,” he said.

Tim looked up the hill. The shack squatted up there, dark and cold and solitary. There wasn't any smoke drifting up under the overcast. The grass was trampled down, muddy, but no horses stood where he could see.

“I guess I'll go on and look,” he said. He started the gray mare on up the hill toward the house. He had his Miller stuck under the fender of the saddle but he didn't pull it out. He could see from here, there wasn't anybody in the shack. When he got up to the yard, he stood off the mare and pulled back the hide that hung in the doorway. Those wolfers were still living in the shack, or somebody was. There were three or four thin blankets on a bed of piled-up dry leaves, and grease had set in a fry pan left
on top of the stove. A moldy carcass of a cow with pieces hacked out of it was hung up from a rafter. The place stank of the spoiled meat.

Tim let the door hide fall again and looked back after Blue. The little dun was bringing him up slowly while he smoked his cigarette.

“They left their gear, so I guess they're coming back,” he said. He stood close to the house under the narrow eave, out of the rain. “There's a piece of a cow hung up in there,” he said after a moment.

Blue sat on the dun in the yard, finishing his cigarette. He was hunched up inside his coat, with his hat pulled down low. He sat stiffly, as if his collarbone was hurting him, but he was maybe just trying to keep his hat level so the rain wouldn't sluice down his back or into his lap.

“There's no telling when they'll be back,” he said.

Tim shook his head. “No.”

There was a short silence. Blue looked at Tim from under the level hat. “I guess we'll wait for them.”

“It's a long ride up here,” Tim said, intending it as an answer. Then he said, “I don't know about waiting inside.” He wasn't sure why it bothered him to think of waiting in the house.

Blue turned his head carefully, looking off across the bench and down on that fine view. “I don't know,” he said vaguely.

They fell silent. There wasn't any other place to get out of the rain up here. Finally Blue bent over and got hold of the gray mare's headstall. He looked at Tim. “I suppose I'd better put the horses down under the trees where they've got some cover.” He rode off slowly, leading the gray long-necked behind him.

Tim went inside the shack. He looked at the stove but didn't make a fire. He squatted down on his hips and leaned against a wall, with his forearms resting across his knees. His clothes felt colder, wetter, now that he was inside and out of the rain. He looked at his hands without seeing them.

Blue came in carrying the two rifles. He slid a look at Tim and leaned the Miller gingerly against the wall next to him. He looked around once quickly at the stinking room and then crouched down across from Tim, opposite the door. He stood his own rifle by him and put his hands down between his knees.

Neither of them said anything. Tim chafed his hands together and blew into them and shrugged his shoulders under the wet, clammy coat. The rain quit after a while, but they didn't talk about going outside to wait. Both of them stayed in the house, crouched down silently in the foul-smelling dimness. Tim tried to think about what they were doing, what they would do, but he couldn't stay with it. Everything about it felt slick and gray. It occurred to him that he should have started something in the Dutch pot before they'd left home, so it would be cooked and waiting for them when they got back. He kept thinking of that, and wishing that he'd remembered to do it.

He had taken for granted they'd have a little warning, but they didn't hear anything from outside until a horse snuffled suddenly from close up to the door. A gust of sharp bristling air filled up his chest. He looked at Blue, seeing maybe his own short, startled glance given back in Blue's face. He stood up carefully. His legs were stiff, prickling. He didn't know if he wanted to be holding the rifle when they came in, or not holding it. Finally, without looking at Blue, he picked up the Miller by its breech. He thought about squatting down again. He thought about saying something out loud, letting them know. But he stood dumbly where he was. He knew without looking, that Blue had stood up and not taken hold of his rifle. The kid, Osgood, pushed aside the hide and took a step in. “What!” he said, and his face jerked, going pale and then quickly red when he saw Blue standing there. Then he caught Tim at the edge of his eye and yelled “Shit!” very high and wild, and stumbled backward out the doorway, thrashing his hands against the scabby hide. Tim lurched after him. In his hand a piece of the kid's coat sleeve tore rottenly. He pushed his shoulder past the door hide and fell out in the mud on top of the kid.
The pinto horse skittered sideways away from them and trotted off, his coarse mane whipping out like a flag. The kid hit Tim in the face. There was a rush of red noise and the sky sliding down all at once in front of him. He had a skidding, sideways glimpse of Blue holding the kid by the shirt, and then a gun popped and Blue yelled, “Hey!” and jumped for the shack. Osgood scrambled off the other way. Tim got onto his knees. He hadn't ever let go the rifle. He brought it up and shot at Osgood once, jerkily, as the kid ran away from him down the hill. A little geyser of mud squirted up where the shot hit the ground, way left of Osgood. Farther down the slope a man in a curly sheep's coat rode a buckskin horse down off the bench. He held a carbine out in one hand, sort of brandishing it foolishly, as if he weren't bolting away into the trees. When Tim's shot went off, he jerked around once, but the horse took him on downhill without stopping. When he went out of sight in the trees, he was still holding his rifle out, stiff-armed, and sticking the horse with his spurs. The kid kept running down across the trampled grass alone, his boots slapping clumsily in the mud. Tim heard, all at once, the kid's high, scared, toneless keening. He stared after him. He knelt in the mud, holding the rifle shakily, watching him go.