The Englishman's Boy (14 page)

Meanwhile, Hank’s horse had balked in the shallows, swinging its head from side to side in dismay, snuffling the water as the hired man whipped its flanks and drummed its barrel with his heels. Slowly, step by step, the old white horse reluctantly allowed itself to be goaded
into the stream, whinnying to the horses on the far bank as the water lapped its belly and chest. Then, suddenly, the riverbed dropped off, throwing the white horse headlong into the current with a mighty splash. For an instant, only the heads of horse and man could be seen, bobbing in the grip of the current like flood debris; then the arched neck of the horse, the chest of the man broke upward, awash in filthy water and fear.

Scotty, reaching the opposite bank, turned, the blue-white marble gleam of his body sheathed in a coat of silt. The Englishman’s boy stood in his stirrups for a better look. Devereux swore an oath in French.

Each time Hank swung the horse in the direction of the knot of men waiting on the bank, the plug would flounder vainly for a few moments, then surrender to the current and be swept further downstream. Already rider and horse had been carried past the ford to where cutbanks stooped over the river, sheer faces of eroded clay and exposed tree roots clawing the air, precipices too steep for a horse to scramble up them and out of the water.

The Englishman’s boy knew it for bad, deep trouble. Hank knew it too. He kept trying to jerk his horse around and abreast the stream, back to the landing spot. But its head kept swinging downriver like a compass needle north, back to the path of least resistance.

Lifting a white and stricken face to the riverbank Hank called imploringly, “God Almighty, boys! Help me or I’m a goner!”

Devereux, Hale, and the Englishman’s boy booted their horses to the river’s edge but they shied and reared; having swum it once, they would not take it again. The other ponies, spooked by the rearing horses, trampled about in confusion and balked at entering the stream. One last time, Hank tried to turn the white horse, failed, and despairingly flung himself out of the saddle, chopping the water with short frantic strokes. The Englishman’s boy guessed all Hank’s swimming had been done in a rain barrel. He was using himself up fast.

Hale shook out a rope and spun a loop into the river. It didn’t come near reaching the failing swimmer. Ed Grace and Charlie Harper struggled through the confusion of horses and shoved off in
one of the rafts, but in their hurry they upset it and spilled into the shallows, had to watch the clumsy craft spin out of reach.

They all froze in silence. Watched Hank giving out, his arms feebly clawing the river, his tipped face smeared by a glaze of water and sun. Watched the white horse, now under the overhang of the cutbank, squealing and desperately pawing the face of crumbling clay, sliding back down the slippery slope and crashing back into the river. The whole sluggish dream of doom, blind face gasping for breath, sharp burst of birdsong in the willows, heat trembling trapped between cutbanks, the overpowering, sickly-sweet odour of blooming wolf willow, cousin to the musky, cunning, creeping smell of death. The whole slow playing-out of man’s bitter nightmare portion.

Then they heard a splash to their right. Saw Scotty in the water, swimming hard. Saw Hank go completely under, all but for one hand scrabbling and tearing at the air for a hold, then shoot back to the surface, buoyed by the last desperate kick of panic, pale exhausted face disbelieving and bewildered. Saw Scotty grab him from behind as he was sinking for the second time, forearm under the jaw, rolling the dead weight on to its back, heading for the bank, shouting, “Kick, man, kick!” Coming on in jerks, slowly, struggling in the unforgiving grip of whatever clutched their ankles, whatever dragged them down, whatever poured water into their gaping mouths, stopped their nostrils, wrapped their limbs in lead and futility. They were ten yards from touching bottom and it was a coin toss. Four men waded out as far as they could and stood tensely waiting. In the terrible expectant stillness they could hear the hollow panting, the groans racking the swimmers, sounds like a woman labouring to give birth. They beckoned, whispered encouragement under their breath as the small waves slapped against them. “Go it, Scotty,” they whispered. “That’s the lad.” “Just a bit more.” “Come on, sport.”

And then the two were almost within reach, half-under, sunk like water-logged timbers, rolling in the wash. Devereux leaned out, Ed Grace clutching his belt, and snatched a sleeve.

Half-carried, swooning with exhaustion, the swimmers sloshed through knee-deep water. Scotty set foot to solid ground, took three
shaky steps and sank to his haunches, sat with head hanging between knees, arms hugging shins. Hank staggered on a little further, arms slung over Devereux’s and Grace’s shoulders, then dropped to his hands and knees, retched, crawled away from his puke, retched again, and fell on his face, hugging the earth, knotting his fingers in the short grass.

Vogle came riding to the ford along the top of the cutbank, towing the white horse back upstream with a lariat dallied to his saddlehorn. While it had battered itself against the steep bank like a fly against a windowpane, he had managed to toss a noose around its neck. He pulled ashore the stumbling, spent, mud-smeared horse. Hardwick ran his eyes over it quickly, shouldered himself through the gang clustered around Hank, halted over the sprawled figure. He nudged him with his boot, but the farm hand squirmed against the soil, mewling like a baby somebody was trying to pluck from its mother’s breast. Hooking a toe under him, Hardwick turned him turtle and Hank lay blinking up into the sun, teeth chattering between blue lips.

“Three blind mice, three blind mice,” Hardwick began to croon, bending over Hank like a mother bends over a cradle. “See how they run, see how they run, / They all run after the farmer’s wife, / Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.” The men threw uneasy, surprised glances to one another as Hardwick sang in a mocking falsetto to the man spread-eagled on the ground. His voice kept rising higher and higher. “Did you ever see such a sight in your life / As three blind mice?” Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he broke off, peered hard into the face of the man whimpering with fear and rubbing the back of his hand back and forth across his blue lips.

“Ever see such a sight in your life as this blind mouse?” Hardwick inquired coldly.

Evans cleared his throat. “You can see he ain’t well, Tom. Give the man a chance.”

Hardwick lowered himself on one knee beside Hank. “He ain’t a goddamn man,” he said fiercely. “If the best part of him hadn’t run down his momma’s leg he’d have been a rat, but instead she had to squeeze out a little blind cheese-eater mouse.”

“I feel bad,” said Hank. “Real bad. I near drownded.”

“You near drownded,” said Hardwick. He pointed to where Scotty still sat in a daze, chin on his chest. “You near drownded that man there, who saved your skin. That’s who you near drownded, you worthless, no-account, half-a-penny mouse pelt.”

“It ain’t all his fault,” said Evans. “He was riding a unlucky horse.”

Hardwick got to his feet and spat. “Unlucky horse? Blind horse is more like it. Dumb son of a bitch’s been riding a blind horse since yesterday and didn’t know it. Blind mouse on a blind horse.”

“Blind horse?” said Evans.

Hardwick strode to the white horse daubed with yellow mud. “Why you think he missed the ford? Why you think he tried to climb that cutbank?” He poked his cigar inches from the nag’s eye. It didn’t startle. “Stone blind,” he repeated.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” said Evans.

“Don’t flinch from a lit stogie.” Hardwick drew his revolver. “No more than a pistol between the eyes,” he said matter-of-factly, raising his arm and firing in one movement.

The white horse crashed to earth like a wall razed in an earthquake. It lay in the rubble of its flesh, legs lashing about in the last gallop, impressing its mark in the mud like a child makes an angel in snow.

“Mind the hoofs, boys,” said Hardwick mildly, stepping around the flailing body.

The legs stiffened, the horse shuddered, died.

Already Hardwick was shoving his way through the stunned men. “We lost us time here,” he said. “Get the gear on the pack horses. Get Scotty dressed and ready to ride.”

“What about him?” asked Evans of Hank. “He needs a horse.”

“That’s his horse there,” said Hardwick, pointing. “If it can keep up, he’s welcome.”

They rode out an hour later. Hank sat with Mr. Robinson’s gun and the gunny sack of bacon which Hardwick had thrown him clutched to his breast. To the rider of each horse which passed, only feet from
where he sat with his legs stuck out before him, he repeated the same words in a lifeless voice. “You best not leave me. Mr. Robinson’ll have the Choteau County law on you boys. Consider it.”

Apparently they had. No one spoke or looked at him. The trim legs of the horses paced by, as elegantly precise and monotonous as a metronome. Then he sat waiting for more legs to pass to which he could speak and there were none. “You don’t want to fool with the law,” he said. “No sirree.” He got to his feet and shouted after them, “You don’t want to fool with the law!”

No one looked back, the horses plodded on. There was nothing but the sound of the wind and his own sobbing. He ran after them the best he could, clutching his rifle and bacon to his chest, but it was cumbersome so he let the bacon fall. The figures got smaller and the sky more immense. It was the river all over again, a wider river, horizon to horizon, waves of grass. It was drowning, the wind stuffing itself in his throat when he opened his mouth to shout, the burning lungs.

The last the Englishman’s boy saw of Hank he was running and falling, getting up to run and fall again, running and falling. It was a shameful sight and he turned away from it. A little later, they heard three faint rifle-shots behind them, like firecrackers in the wind.

“What’s that?” Evans asked, harkening.

“That fool popping his popgun,” said Hardwick.

Evans thought for a moment. “He ain’t shot himself,” he said. “Not three times.”

“Don’t bet on it. Stupid bastard rode a horse for a day and didn’t figure out it was blind. That nester could shoot himself in the head three times. Nothing there to harm.”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Evans diplomatically. “It don’t feel right to have left him afoot.”

“If we’d left him a horse we’d never have got shut of him. He’d have dogged us like Mary’s little lamb.”

“Well, he was green.”

“Green? So green he don’t shit, he drips sap.”

“If you say, Tom.”

“He was a Jonah. Bad luck. Now we’re rid of him, we’re down to twelve. No more misfortunate number thirteen. Ain’t that so, Vogle?”

Vogle nodded sagely. “I don’t enjoy no thirteen,” he said.

“Jonah or Judas or some kind of witchery J,” muttered Hardwick. “Gone now anyways.”

As the Englishman’s boy rode, he speculated on the old white horse. Trade one pitch-black darkness for another endless night. Where’s the percentage? Except he got the rider off his back, now he didn’t have to bear around no heaviness in the level black where he lay, or stood, old white horse.

Last thing that horse ever did hear, the crack of the goddamn round that done him down. Never-ending darkness plus never-ending silence. There’s a cheat. But minus the misery. Just maybe, minus the misery. It was hard to say, a hard calculation.

Except for this. Better the white horse than him.

And then it came into the Englishman’s boy’s mind. The old white horse standing in the darkness of the other side and a rider setting on his back, a rider the Englishman’s boy could not make out, nor read his face or the meaning of his gestures, but knew only that he was a sign that nothing was different on the other side, only darker and dimmer, and that the rider on the pale horse was again one of their party, the unlucky, the cursed thirteenth.

10
 

W
ithin an hour of leaving Shorty McAdoo, I pass on to Fitzsimmons news of my success at finding him. Fitz tells me that he’ll let Chance know. Then he says, “Don’t ever take the phone off the hook on me again like you did last night, Vincent,” and hangs up. I sit down to wait for Chance to call. An hour later, the phone rings.

“Hello, My Little Truth Seeker. Long time no see.”

“Rachel,” I say warily. I’ve known sooner or later she would call, but I’m still not ready to fend off the questions I know are coming.

“Why don’t we see you at the office any more? Your absence is sorely felt.”

“I thought Fitz explained that.”

“Fitz said you wouldn’t be coming in for a while. I thought that meant a couple of days. It’s been over two weeks. What’s up? You aren’t sick, are you?”

“I’m working.”

“Working on what?”

“A picture.”

“Don’t give me any of that guff. If you are, the story editor hasn’t heard about it. And he’s the next best thing to God around here, all-seeing, all-knowing.”

“There are higher authorities,” I say.

“Fitz?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“What’re you doing for that black-hearted Irish bandit?”