“Jesus!” Bliss was shrill. “There's the dent the bowie made. I made deeper cuts in trees.”
“That regulation wear for lawmen in Montana these days?” Whitelaw asked.
“My own invention. I thought it might keep me warm.” I was gambling on a member of one of the Five Civilized Tribes knowing nothing of Cree medicine. My ribs were still healing from the fight with Brother Babel and I saw nothing good in letting this bunch in on any weaknesses. The smell of blood has the same effect on scavengers everywhere.
Vivian stepped in to my rescue. “You'd better get help for your friend's arm. I heard it break in at least two places.”
Whitelaw said, “Well, now, maybe you'd care to fix up a splint. Seeing as how the only wood on this here rock is what's burning in that fire.”
“You could file the barrel off that rifle, Luther's got them tools off that blacksmith we kilt in Sheridan.” Bliss's voice was getting shallow. The shock was wearing off and the pain was starting.
“I ain't going to saw the barrel off this Henry.”
“Roy! You said you trusted your Colt before that Springfield.”
“Not past fi'ty feet.” The old man spread his moustaches to show six teeth spread out in bunches. He filled his hollow chest as if he were breathing in the other man's pain.
“Laban! Redfoot! You niggers can't hit the obvious side of a buffalo with them long guns.”
The two Negroes, a big one with a scatter of black beard and a small one in a river pilot's cap, shook their heads. They were both grinning broadly.
“You goddamn cunts! Sons of bitches! Cornholers!
Hijos de las putas!”
The rest was Spanish outside my range. It was evidently
a far more versatile language for the purpose he had in mind. He was holding his left arm so tight the knuckles of his right hand stood out like white porcelain drawer knobs.
“I do like to listen to Lolo cuss. Just about everything else about him gets on my nerves.” Whitelaw covered his canines and poked his rifle at Vivian. “You got some talking to do. Climb up on that tall rock and show your men that pretty red uniform.”
“Go to blazes!”
The Cherokee braced the Henry against his hip. Vivian folded his arms across his chest. His expression was the same as the one he had showed me in Moose Jaw when we were discussing the relative merits and deficiencies of the British Empire and the United States of America.
After thirty seconds, Whitelaw breathed in and out quickly, an exasperated sigh, and relaxed his grip on the rifle. Then he swiveled and shot young Barrymore in the chest.
The freckle-faced corporal sat down on the rock and fell over sideways with his legs still spread out in front of him. His white helmet tilted to one side and blood slid out of his mouth into a pool on the rock. It was much darker than his tunic, almost black.
Whitelaw jacked in a fresh shell and pointed the Henry at the sergeant.
“Your party's getting smaller, Inspector. You want to go down with Custer?”
After a moment Vivian uncrossed his arms and started climbing.
The inspector braced himself
in the same cleft in the rock where the warning shot had been fired into the lake earlier. When it was certain that the Mounties stationed along the shore had recognized the uniform, Whitelaw fed Vivian the words and he bawled them out. He repeated them to make sure nothing was lost, then came down. His face was stiff and flushed beneath the sunburn. It was cold up there and the wind shrilled through the cleft.
“Think it took?” Whitelaw asked him.
“They're taught to obey orders.”
You could see the Cherokee thinking. He jerked his chin toward the corporal's corpse. “Strip off that uniform.”
“Do it yourself,” Vivian said.
“Yours'd fit me just as good.” Whitelaw raised the rifle.
Once again the inspector crossed his arms. Whitelaw said shit and motioned with his weapon. “Laban, strip off that uniform.”
The big Negro set his feet. “I ain't touching no dead corpse.”
“You touched plenty that had a poke in their pockets.”
“I didn't take off their damn clo'es.”
Redfoot, the small Negro in the pilot's cap, came forward. “I'll do it. I worked for a undertaker one whole summer in McAlester.”
Whitelaw blocked his path with the Henry's barrel. “I told Laban to do it.”
“I ain't your nigger.”
Whitelaw stepped back and aimed low. “I'll blow off your kneecap and you and Lolo can help each other down the rock. You can watch your leg rot down on the flat.”
Redfoot said, “Come on, Laban. You can give me a hand with his boots.”
Laban stuck it out as long as he could, then moved in to help. Outlaws on the run had a horror of untreated wounds. They'd made their peace with the hangman's rope, but not with gangrene.
I said, “I thought you boys got along better than this. What's kept you glued together?”
“We're O.K. as long as we keep moving. Goddamn it, Lolo, quit your blubbering. You sound worse than the woman.”
Bliss was sitting on the ground now with his arm cradled in his lap. His face was the color of unbleached muslin and clammy looking. “Go to hell, you cornholing son of a red squaw bitch.” His voice was without tone.
“Yeller, whittle a pair of splints off that lance.”
A thick-built party in a buffalo coat and a sail-brimmed hat with a feather in the band left the group and produced a skinning knife from a soft leather sheath on his belt. His beard was bright yellow against the burned brown of his skin. The Indian woman left off wailing as he approached Wolf Shirt's corpse. She was watching him out the corner of one eye. When he bent down to pick up the lance, she launched herself to her feet and fell
upon him from behind, twining her legs around his waist and clawing his face with both hands.
She was silent now, saving her energy for breathing and tearing skin. Yeller was making all the noise. He howled and cursed and spun around, trying to throw her off, while Whitelaw and the othersâall except Blissâlaughed and shouted encouragement to the woman: “Claw out his eyes!” “Bite his ear!” “Throw him down and squat on his face!” Finally he remembered he was holding a knife. He slashed at her left arm, and he must have cut a tendon because she let go of her grip and she was too weak from loss of blood to hold on with the other. He flung her off and she fell on her back and before she could get up, he bent over her and slashed right and left with long hacking movements of his arm, like a farmer cutting wheat. A lariat of blood unfurled in the air and splattered the toe of my right boot. I stepped forward, but Whitelaw was between us in a stride with the Henry raised and I stopped. My hands hurt. I was making fists so tight my nails cut into my palms.
It was over in three or four seconds. Yeller straightened, breathing heavily and dripping blood from the deep scratches on his face. The woman lay without moving.
“Now cut those splints,” Whitelaw said.
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Ironwood doesn't cut easily. Yeller worked for an hour at the handle of the lance, cursing under his breath and drawing a sleeve across his face from time to time to clear his eyes of sweat and blood, while Bliss moaned and cursed and rocked back and forth over his shattered arm and Whitelaw tried on the uniform that Laban and Redfoot had removed from Corporal Barrymore. The others played cards with a tattered deck on a saddle blanket spread on the ground, betting gold watches, paper money, and
silver forks they'd plundered across the north country. Roy, the old man with the bad eyeâit looked like a gob of yellow spittle quivering between his corrugated lidsâsat out to guard the prisoners with his Springfield carbine across his lap. We prisoners sat on the ground and conversed in low whispers.
“I promoted Barrymore from the ranks,” Vivian said. “I planned to recommend him for officer's training in Ottawa.”
The young man lay on his back in his white long-handles, clean except for the stain around the blue hole in his chest. One of his heavy ribbed woolen socks had come off when his boots were removed. His foot was clean and white, like a woman's hands.
The sergeant ground his teeth on his moustaches. “They're a pack of dogs. Hanging's too kind for their like. We ought to bring back drawing and quartering.”
I said, “I'll sign the petition. Right now I wouldn't give us until midnight to finish drawing it up before they kill us. They'll wait for dark to move out. That's their best chance to confuse your men with that Mountie uniform. After that they'll put us away to make time.”
“Where are their horses?” asked the sergeant.
“This looks like box canyon country,” I said. “They'll have them corraled in one and under guard. They'll head there first thing.”
Vivian was still thinking about Barrymore. “My fault. Stubborn old regular army officer. That's what's costing us India.”
“He's dead,” I said. “We're not. If we can get to our horses on the way down we might be able to make the break.”
“My fault.” Vivian was looking at the ground.
He wasn't going to be any help.
Whitelaw tried tugging on one of the corporal's boots, then gave up and stamped his feet into his old worn stovepipes. The
black cavalry trousers with the white stripe up one side were a good fit and the tunic answered, although it was a little long in the sleeves and snug across the chest, where the buttons strained. The helmet was too small but he adjusted the chinstrap and it looked as if it would stay put if he didn't move too hastily. He could have fooled a good eye at some distance and in the dark. If the Mounties shot anyone it wouldn't be him.
Bliss must have been reading my mind. “I need a red suit too. That muckety inspector's getup looks like it might fit.”
“You'd never get the coat on over that arm,” Whitelaw said. “I ain't just out to save my hide. They sent three of their men up here. If only two come back down they might open fire out of pure orneriness.”
“Horseshit. You're a yellow injun.”
Whitelaw made one of his long strides and kicked his arm. Bliss made a high-pitched shriek, then rolled over, pinning the arm to his side, and vomited. A sharp stench of half-digested whiskey soured the air. Whitelaw made his dry cough of a laugh and went over to join the card game.
“Thieves' honor.” The inspector seemed to have stopped thinking about Barrymore.
“Outlaw fever,” I said. “When wolves run together long enough, they start going at each other.”
“Drawing and quartering,” said the sergeant.
Vivian said, “They'll expect us to go for our horses. They'll send a man ahead to cut them loose.”
I said, “Hold them, maybe. Whitelaw will want them close in case anything goes wrong between here and where they're hiding their own mounts. If it comes down to shooting he'll save himself first. Bliss was right about that business of keeping the count. He's betting on that uniform to save his life.”
Vivian shook his head. “It's a wonder they stayed together this long.”
“They were born to ride partners. No one else but the devil would have them.”
“Ghastly country you have, that turns out beasts such as them.”
This time I didn't rise to the inspector's lure. If I did, we wouldn't be getting on any better than Whitelaw and Bliss.
Yeller finished the splints finally and cut a dozen long fringes from Wolf Shirt's sleeve to tie them in place on Bliss's arm. Before that he placed his foot against the injured man's chest and jerked back on the arm with both hands to set the bone. If the Mounties down on the flat didn't hear the scream, they must have been paying attention to something else. Bliss passed out after that.
Whitelaw measured the height of the sun with his hands and told Yeller to wrap the chief in the buffalo robe before he began to stink. “Throw the woman and that redbird corporal in with him.”
“Tell one of the niggers to do it. Redfoot can paint them pink and stick a lily in their paws.” He was sitting on a rock with his greasy hat balanced on its crown in his lap and the sweatband turned inside out to dry, dabbing at his scratches with a filthy blue bandanna wetted down from his canteen. Wispy blonde strands crawled about his naked scalp in the breeze. It was a pale cap above the line where his sunburn left off, white as a grub.
The Henry's stock swung and collided with Yeller's head. He fell off the rock and came up holding his skinning knife. The blade was clotted with gore. He hadn't bothered to clean it before putting it away.
The Cherokee followed him up with the barrel of the rifle.
His sharp canines slid out. “You want to run this outfit?” he asked.
Yeller looked at the muzzle but didn't let go of the knife. The whites of his eyes swam with blood.
“I'll make it easy.” Whitelaw lowered the rifle from his hip. He sank into a crouch, laid the weapon on the ground, and stood back up. He moved slowly and his eyes never left the other man's. “You want to run this outfit? Tell me what you're fixing to do when you get off this rock.”
A gray tongue slid along Yeller's lips and went back inside like a toad. He bounced the knife in his hand, improving his grip. “Make a run for it.”
“If you run they'll fire up that chattergun and cut you into smaller pieces than you did the woman. You can do better than that. Think with your head, not your feet.”
“After I stick you I'll put on that there uniform. They won't shoot one of their own.”
“That might work. What about the others, Lolo and Roy and Laban and the rest? There ain't uniforms enough to go around. You need a plan to make them follow you down the rock that won't spare you and kill them. Otherwise you'll never make it down alive.”
“You ain't told us
your
plan.”
“I never tell you anything you don't need to know. That's got us this far, all of you know that. You're brand new. You got to show them they can trust you to take them through. Come up with anything yet?”
There they were, Whitelaw smiling, showing his sharp teeth with his hands empty, and Yeller holding the knife he'd killed with once that day, looking as if he were the one under the threat. Remington could have painted the picture down to the last detail, caught the glint in the Cherokee's eye and made
the beads of sweat glitter on the bald man's head, and nobody would have bought it or risk having to explain the picture to everyone who saw it.
“Well, how do I know you even got a plan?” Yeller wanted to know.
“Because God gave me brains, and all He gave you is that little knife. I was you, I'd take better care of it. Your good looks won't get you off this rock.”
The others had lost interest in their game. Only Roy, who kept his good eye on us with his carbine across his thighs, wasn't watching. The men's faces were alive with interest, but none of them seemed eager to take a hand or choose sides. They didn't want to wind up on the wrong one. Bliss was either still out or listening quietly. It was anyone's bet which one he'd root for.
“Any luck?” Whitelaw asked. “I don't want to make you nervous, but there's only an hour of daylight left.”
“Shit.” The bald man with the yellow beard wiped off both sides of the blade on his pants, jammed the knife into its sheath, and turned to look after the corpses.
The air lifted then. The men picked up their cards and resumed making bets. Whitelaw picked up the Henry. He'd stopped smiling.
“Leave off that,” he told Yeller. “Laban, Redfoot, wrap up them carcasses. You was right, Yeller. It ain't work for a white man.”
Yeller turned back and stared at him a long time before he scooped up his hat and slapped the dust off it and jammed it onto his head with both hands. His face was absolutely empty of intelligence. Mine was too, or I was a better poker player than I thought.