A Good Man (37 page)

“I meant to put as many leagues between me and them Indians as I could before the sun come up. I could hear them hoopty-doing in the distance and reckoned they had come across Hardwick’s store of trade whiskey. That give me a chance. So off I turtled, dripping blood, beset by dizzy spells. I calculated to try and get myself to Fort Whoop-Up, a hike of a good many days, and I didn’t think I had no more chance than at in hell without claws. But I had to give it a whirl. Come dawn, one of them spells got the better of me, and I fainted dead away. Didn’t rouse until late afternoon. Laying there in the hot sun, I’d burned in locations a civilized man don’t display to the light of day.” All at once Joe says, “Mind if I ask you to turn that lantern down a tad? It’s shining bright in my eyes.”

“Not at all.” Case goes to the washstand and lowers the lamp flame. In the diminished light, with the blanket hung on his shoulders, Joe is a grey moth fading into the shadows. Case resumes his place. “Go on,” he urges.

“I got to my feet, stumbled on, stumbled on all night,” Joe says. “That become my custom. By day, I laid up wheresoever’s I could hide myself. When the sun went down, I moved on, Fort Whoop-Up filling up my mind. Cactus and sharp stones tore my feet to tatters. Sometimes I went delirious, but when my head turned sensible I kept telling myself,
All costs you got to keep moving. You don’t, you die
.

“Food was mighty scanty. Mostly whatever dried, shrivelled-up berries the bears hadn’t ate or the Indians picked. I couldn’t find no berries, I dug roots with a stick. Sometimes I stuffed my belly with grass. When I couldn’t walk no more, I crept like a baby. When I couldn’t creep no more, I laid on my back and watched the hawks drifting about in the sky, dreamed I was a bird flying home to its nest.”

Joe’s face is a sobering sight. Case asks, “And you never thought to give up?”

“I did give up,” Joe answers. “I come on a abandoned wolfer’s cabin. When I seen that shelter, every particle of effort I still had left me. I says to myself, ‘You got you a roof to keep the buzzards from lighting on your corpse.’ I cried for the gladness of it. I went in, shut the door, and dropped down on a bunk.” Joe wags his head quickly from side to side, as if he were trying to dislodge a fly from his ear. “I laid there a day and a night, waiting to give up the ghost, not a lick of hope left in me. Then a unexpected visitor arrived on the property and come upon me. A Blackfoot gentleman who saw some profit in hauling me to Fort Whoop-Up, believed the white folks there would reward him with whiskey and flour if he handed one of their own over to them. So he rigged up a travois and off we went. The whiskey-trading boys took me in, nursed me until they reckoned I was strong enough to survive the trip back to Fort Benton. Down I went with the next shipment of buffalo hides.”

“Joe,” says Case, “you astound me. That is a remarkable story.”

McMullen suddenly assumes his customary jaunty air, but the bitterness in his eyes betrays it. “Hell, there ain’t no interest in that tale. Matters didn’t turn interesting until I got to Benton.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Why, I arrived a hero, an example of the white man’s grit. I’d took the worst them rascally savages could hand out and pulled through. Strange how taking a whipping from Indians can exalt a man. If them Indians had killed me, my name might have shone bright as Custer’s. Citizens took up a collection, raised five hundred dollars, an made me a presentation. Doctor wouldn’t take no fee for pincering the bullets out of me.” A foolish smile hovers briefly on Joe’s lips. “Took my money and set myself up in the Overland Hotel. I was still in a pretty bad way, but the town was dandling me in the lap of luxury. Had my meals delivered to my room. Entertained well-wishers in bed like I was King of England. Everything bright as a new penny. Then my visitors put a smudge on it. Said Hardwick was back in town telling anybody would listen that he was certain sure I was lifeless as a coffin nail when he and his friends made their escape. But a corpse don’t holler for help like I done. Don’t beg not to be left behind.”

Case glances down at the floor. “Yes, to abandon a comrade –”

“Don’t mistake me, I ain’t looking for sympathy. Hell, a man panics, loses his head, I can see how it happens. If Hardwick had come by the Overland to check on how I was faring, if he’d said to me, ‘Sorry we scooted on you, Joe. I feel bad for it,’ I’d have shook his hand and said don’t mention it. But he was lying to save face. Now I been known to brighten up a story to give somebody a laugh. I ain’t talking about that. What Hardwick was doing was different. And worst, he was parading around town bragging he was going to take revenge on them Assiniboines for me. As if he knew my mind on that score. He didn’t.

“All that went to work on me. I festered with it. It was pus no bread poultice could draw. So I decided to take the swagger and strut out of the bastard.” Joe clamps his hands to his knees. “Next time the doctor come to see me, he warned me I better keep to my room on account of Hardwick was claiming I was playing invalid to avoid him, hiding under my blankets because I didn’t have the guts to make no such scurvy accusation like I had spread about town to his face. Said he meant to finish the job them Indians botched, make me a corpse if I dared walk out among honest men.”

Joe picks up the bottle and splashes a little more whiskey in their glasses. “Now I’m a easygoing fellow. Men like Tom Hardwick is liable to mistake that, take it for a invitation to walk all over you. But a amiable fellow when he turns, he’s apt to grow dark and stormy. Hardwick put thunder in me. I was still mighty feeble, but I hobbled out and laid in the necessary. I asked a few questions in the right places and learned there was a bride of the multitude Hardwick favoured by name of Curly Josephine. He always visited her late afternoon because he wanted to be first ship in port, before anybody else discharged their cargo. Curly worked in a crib behind one of Baker’s warehouses. I waited for Hardwick there. When he come round the corner the sun was low on the horizon. I threw a beam into his eyes with a little piece of mirror glass I held in my palm. It fair blinded him. I cut his legs out from under him with a pick handle I was carrying, then set to beating him like a dusty rug, worked him over from shoulders to ankles. I’d have turned him over and done the front just like I done the back, but I was too winded.

“When I finished, he was whimpering like a new-weaned pup. I says to him, ‘Think twice next time you threaten me, Tom Hardwick, because if it happens again I might come with a pistol instead of a pick handle.’ And Hardwick, he lifts his face out of the dust and says, ‘There won’t be no warning next time, you cocksucker. You’ll be six feet in the ground before you know it.’ So I suats down beside him, gets my face close to his, and I says, ‘You ever wonder how I took eight bullets and didn’t die, Hardwick? When I was birthed, my granny read the bathwater in the basin they washed me in. She had the second sight and saw my life to come, and she says, “This boy ain’t never going to die by no man’s hand. God Himself means to take him of natural means, of a time and place of His ordering. Nobody else better try to meddle in the Almighty’s plans.” ’ ”

McMullen looks up at Case as if he expects this statement to be disputed. He clears his throat. “I never believed my granny’s prophecy until I come through what I did in the wilderness. And there in Hardwick’s eyes, I seen he believed it too, and that he was dreadful afraid. He knew if he made to do me harm again I would kill him dead. Being under God’s hand, I had the power. And from that day onwards, Hardwick give me a wide berth and never spread no more calumnies about Joe McMullen.”

“I don’t understand why the man threatened your life. You were hardly the guilty party.”

McMullen’s grimness evaporates. “Why,” he says, “because I took some of my hero’s money, went to the Fort Benton paper, had them print me up a bunch of posters. Them handbills give a warning to the citizens of Fort Benton not to make any sudden noises around Tom Hardwick after nightfall. Said the dark turned him cowardly, and he was likely to spook and stampede if startled. Said I didn’t want no women, children, or small dogs trampled to death when he was affrighted and tried to make his escape. I put my name, Joe McMullen, Esq., at the bottom of my declaration, and tacked them posters up all over town.”

“Well,” says Case, “I guess that would do it.”

“Yes sir,” says Joe. “I needed to beat the bush to see which way the quail would fly. Would he shut his mouth or keep running it? Well, Hardwick kept on running it. I figure go public if you want to force somebody’s hand.”

In mid-March, calving begins. Each afternoon, Joe rides out and hazes into the corral any cows that show signs they are ready to deliver. The two men keep watch on them throughout the night, take turns every two hours to make sure none of the cattle are undergoing a difficult labour. Often they are greeted with wet snow or a chill rain that patters hat brims and shoulders. Case had expected these wretched vigils to increase the strain between him and his partner but all that is gone. Once again circumstances are forcing them to pull together.

With so much time to think as he tends to the cows, Case decides he had been wrong to approach Ada Tarr in the way he had. Sometimes only a hair separates timid earnestness and insincerity, they are so easily confused. Joe chooses to speak the truth insouciantly and with flair. Not everyone appreciates his style, but what he says cannot be ignored.

So in the first week of April, with the calving finished, Case pays a visit to the newspaper office. Three days later a notice appears in the
Fort Benton Record
among the advertisements tendered by harness makers, grocers, and gunsmiths.

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GENTLEMAN DESIRES TO KEEP
company with an accomplished lady of fine character. The gentleman in question will present himself on the boardwalk outside McGibbon’s Emporium directly across from Fort Benton School, Thursdays between the hours of three and four o’clock p.m., to make himself known to interested parties. He may be identified in this wise: will have hat humbly in hand and a red handkerchief in his breast coat pocket.

The gentleman seeks a lady well conversant in the works of George Eliot, able to bake a fine pound cake, and proficient in the piano. A fine singing voice would be much appreciated but is not required. No triflers, please!

This announcement does not pass unremarked. The next Thursday, a number of inquisitive citizens make a point of shopping or hanging about in the vicinity of McGibbon’s Emporium. Shortly before three o’clock, Wesley Case appears, red handkerchief in breast pocket, hat in hand, and takes up a spot on the boardwalk directly across the street from the school. Soon the pupils, dismissed for the day, come rushing out into a bright spring afternoon, shrieking with high spirits. The sun is melting the snow, wheeled traffic has churned the roadway into a morass, and pools of water are glinting on the icy crust of the Missouri. A stiff breeze blows, licking up tufts of hair on Case’s head. Standing erect as a guardsman, he keeps his eyes fastened on the bluffs across the river, paying no mind to the amused glances thrown his way, to the whispers of the onlookers, to the rude comments and guffaws of the rougher elements. He waits patiently. A quarter of an hour goes by, and then another; the crowd begins to slowly disperse, to drift off shaking their heads in bemusement.

The door to the school remains shut fast. Case twirls his hat in his hand and blinks his eyes. At last, he draws out his pocket watch and consults the time. It is exactly one minute past four o’clock. Setting his hat squarely on his head, he removes the red handkerchief from his jacket, tucks it away, and retreats from his storefront post.

Ada Tarr is watching from the schoolhouse window. This is the second Thursday Wesley Case has trapped her indoors, kept her counting off the minutes until his appointed time of departure. A hard rain is pounding down, pocking the puddles in the road, making little silver spurs on the shingles of McGibbon’s Emporium.