The Red Hills

'Crow?'

The old man spat in the dust beneath his feet, rocking gently in the creaking chair as he considered the question from the stranger in the smart suit.

'Sure. I knew Crow. Meanest son of a bitch I ever laid eyes on. Just mean right through.'

He spat again, squinting at the sun as it slipped down over the spreading town of Abilene. The old man's nostrils wrinkled as though he were straining to catch the long gone scent of black powder smoke hanging on the evening breeze.

'I ain't heard nobody mention his name for... Hell, for too many years now. Time was you could travel from Montana clear through to the Mexican border and there wouldn't be a bare-assed kid wouldn't have heard of Crow. Times change, I guess.'

There was a rattling and coughing noise as an automobile lurched its way round a corner and rolled on into the distance.

'That's what I mean, stranger. God-damned gas buggies fouling up the air and putting the fear of Hell into the horses. I'm an old man now, and I figure I'm not long for this world. Can't say I'll be sorry to be leavin' it.'

At his side the younger man jogged him with another question.

'First time I heard of Crow?' repeated the old-timer. 'Must have been down on the Brazos. Back in eighty-one. They was bad times. Drivin' the women like they drove the men. Hell, that's thirty years back!' He looked up at the man at his side, once-blue eyes filmed with age, milky and pale. 'Was you ever stung by a dead bee, Mister?' The stranger shook his head at the unexpected question. 'Nope? Can't think what made me ask that. Maybe it was somethin' Crow once said.'

For a moment the two men shared the warm silence, watching a young woman swing down the street carrying a basket of groceries over her arm. The old man broke into a cackling laugh. 'Set's a man's mind to recallin', does that. He always had an eye for ladies. Not that he ever done much lovin'. Nope. Kind of used them. Not a lot of lovin' in Crow. Plenty of hate. Specially after what happened up on the Green River. Yeah, that'd be where I heard of him. Before he went off after Autie Custer and the good old boys of the Seventh. Crow was a Cavalry man. Pony soldier... That's where it all started.'

Again his mind clouded over and the words slipped away from him, riding on down the gutter. The stranger waited patiently for the thread to come back again. Certain that it would. This old man was likely the only person living that could tell him what he wanted to know. About the legendary Crow. No other name.

Just Crow.

'Yeah, stranger. You want to know where the story of old Crow starts, then you go lookin' up round Green River. Must have been round about 'sixty... No, 'seventy five. Late Fall. Damned cold.' He sat in the rocker, musing on the long years past and the dead faces rose up like mist all around him. 'Maybe in the Spring. Time of greening. New life.'

Suddenly the old man smiled, creasing up the furrowed wrinkles in his seamed face. 'Know what Crow used to say about livin' by your guns? Said it made him like a kind of alchemist. Said he was the first man in history to turn lead into gold.' He cackled his laughter. 'Yeah. Meanest son of a bitch ever. Crow.'

The sun was nearly set over Abilene.

January 'seventy-six had been one of the hardest months that anyone could recall in the Dakotas. The wind had come howling in from the north, bringing deep snow from skies that stayed dark grey from sun-up to sun-down. Not that there had been any sun to see. In the morning the clouds broke up a little to the east and in the evening the western skies were a touch lighter.

The temperature never rose above freezing for the entire month and stock, even in the protected barns, died on their feet from the bitter chill. Roads were impassable. Whole families perished in their houses, buried deep beneath drifts that rose to thirty, forty feet. Each day fresh drifts of snow came driving down across the bare, ravaged land, piling deeper and deeper. The only consolation for the settlers was that the weather was so bad it also kept the Indians away. Sioux and Cheyenne were all holed up in their winter camps in sheltered canyons, none of them bothering to move from their fires. The year before had been a bad one for the whites in the whole of the Great Plains. Bands of young braves had swept across the Dakotas and across Montana and Wyoming, killing and burning. Even some of the chain of cavalry forts along the Bozeman Trail existed in a state of almost perpetual siege. It was less than ten years since the appalling Fetterman massacre had taken place to the west, and in all those years the Indians had never truly been defeated.

Crazy Horse still led out roving bands of Sioux against any whites in the Black Hills, the sacred Sa Papa of the Indians. Two years earlier the brave young General Custer had opened the Hills to white miners, painting a tantalizing picture of gold there for the easy picking. Ever since that time the whole region had been the scene of constant fighting and bitterness.

But there were still settlers prepared to take the chance on being scalped. If you lived close enough to the forts then you had a reasonable chance of carrying on living.

Luke Barrell had moved out to Dakota territory in 'seventy-one, lured from the crowded east by the talk of free land and good grazing. Of course, the talk hadn't mentioned the savage Sioux and the bitter winters, but Luke had been lucky. He arrived in the early Spring when the land was still green, and the scorching summer winds hadn't yet begun to swveep the Plains and hills. He'd managed to buy a few head of cattle and built himself a solid little house and a good sturdy barn. By the time the first winter came the Barrells were snug and well set, with enough feed for their small herd and for themselves.

Now Spring was coming again.

After the stone-hard January and bitter February, the long freeze had finally eased away and water flowed once more in the narrow stream to the east of the house. Green vegetation appeared and Luke was able to let out his cattle, blinking from the darkness of the barn, to go and forage for themselves on the prairie.

Apart from one tragedy it had been a good winter with a promise of new life.

But for Luke the new year had brought a great sadness.

His wife, Eliza, had caught a chill feeding the cows and the cold had gotten to her chest, lying there like a malignant spirit. He had sat by her side, holding the stick-thin fingers. Feeling the fiery heat of her temples and the dry skin on her face. The fever had burned her up and shaken her body, racking her with a cough that made her fight for every breath. It had not been an easy passing.

The earth had been like iron and it had taken Luke three days to hack out a grave from the land, lowering the body of his beloved wife into the pit, the children all gathered round, weeping, as they sang a verse of
We Will Gather At The River,
Eliza's favorite hymn. The wind had tugged at their clothes and snow had driven at their faces, freezing the tears.

But now it was Spring again.

Becky was the oldest of the children.

A pretty child, bright as a button, with blue eyes and long hair, yellow as summer corn, tied back in two plaits. Her brother Amos and sisters Sarah and Ruth were all playing inside the cabin. Her father was chopping cords of kindling out by the stable. All she had to keep her company was her rag-doll, Jemima, and the family's dog, a brindled hound named Bart.

It was a beautiful day.

The sun was blazing down from a sky of deep blue, cloudless from one side of the Great Plains to the other. A light breeze that kept away the midges and cooled the air. A line of washing flapped on the far Side of the cabin, the only sound in the whole day apart from the piping voices of the younger children and the steady clunk of Luke's axe.

Although their nearest neighbor was eighteen miles away with only the small cavalry post closer, Becky was never lonely. There was the cooking and washing to do, and the three little ones to care for, as well as being nice to her Pa now he was on his own.

Becky was ten years old.

It had been close to noon when the stranger rode in, heeling a black stallion forwards, past the gate to the corral.

Becky knew what she had to do when someone came along she didn't recognize. She called her father round from his wood-splitting.

'Hi there, Mister!' said Luke Barrell, still hefting the axe at his shoulder. 'Do anythin' for you?'

The stranger nodded. 'Water for me and for my horse if you please.',

'Sure. Help yourself. Becky, give the gentleman a hand with what he needs.'

'No call for that. I can manage.'

So Becky had gone back to her doll, watching the tall newcomer out of the corner of one eye. Thinking that he didn't look like one of the usual men that rode by. Most of them were what her father called 'saddle-bums' and he shooed them along off their land, taking care his old carbine was handy. This man looked different.

Becky wasn't very good at guessing heights or ages, but she knew her Pa was five and a half feet tall and was coming up to his thirtieth birthday. The stranger topped him by half a foot and seemed to be a year or so younger.

But he was so thin!

Seemed when he swvung down from the saddle with a cat-like grace, standing and stretching himself that the stranger didn't leave more than a streak of darkness across the grass for a shadow.

He wore all black. Hat to toe. With the only splash of color a dusty yellow bandana at his throat. Like the soldiers wore. His hair was also black and very long. He took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his face and Becky couldn't hold back a gasp, even though she knew it was bad manners to do so. But his hair was so long! Like a waterfall spun from midnight dreams, cascading to his shoulders. Very fine and thin. The longest hair she'd ever seen on any man. Not counting the Indians, of course and they didn't count. Some of the tame Sioux that hung around the cavalry forts, the 'Laramie loafers' as they were called, they mostly had long hair as well. But that was matted and greasy. Not like this man's.

The other thing her short life on the frontier had taught Becky was to look and see what sort of a gun a man carried and whether he wore it low on the hip like a gun-fighter or high up like cowboys. Most men they saw used their pistols as working tools, often knocking in a nail with the butt, rather than going for any fancy Mexican rigs and fast draws. And most wore either old Army or Navy Colts from the War, or some had the new Colt forty-five. Luke was saving up for one, hoping to buy it through the store before the Fall.

The stranger didn't have a pistol.

There was a strange holster, tied to his right thigh. Too big and deep for a hand-gun, with what looked like the stock of a scatter-gun tucked into it. It was a puzzle. The other side there was another sheath with the metal hilt of what looked like a very long knife protruding from it, the bright sun glinting on the handle.

'Goin' far, Mister?' asked Luke Barrell, also puzzled by the look of the stranger, wishing that his own gun was nearer to hand instead of being propped up on the porch by the front door of the cabin. There was something to this man that he couldn't figure. Something that made him feel damned uneasy. Something mean about the stranger, even though he spoke real soft and friendly.