The Englishman's Boy (40 page)

Shorty puts down his mug and begins to roll a cigarette. “I guess that’s what you was banking on – old Shorty out of the way.”

“You didn’t get cheated. Nobody else could have got you as much money as I did. That’s a fact.”

“Fuck the money.”

Wylie’s eyes fly back and forth between us. He raises his mug to sip, changes his mind, glances at Shorty’s mug resting on the tabletop and thumps his own down, face screwed up like he’s sniffed poison in his coffee. “Fuck the money,” Wylie says, seconding the motion.

“Where do you think the money came from for your new hat, Wylie?” I say.

Wylie rips off his big white hat and presses it defensively to his chest: The Carlsbad is a fine one. Best beaver felt.

“You leave him out of this,” says McAdoo.

“Then tell him to mind his own business.”

“Shorty says you sold him down the river. Shorty says them pitcher people going to make him a laughing stock. They going to put some beauty boy in a big white hat and call it him. They going to make him wear his pants stuffed down in a pair of hand-tooled boots. They going to make him set on a silver saddle and ride a horse that’s all mane and tail. That’s what Shorty says. We going to stop that – Shorty and me.”

“Drink your coffee,” Shorty tells him. Wylie does, obedient for the moment. McAdoo turns back to me. “I spent but little of the money. I want to buy my life back. Get me in to see him. I asked to see him but he won’t.”

I shake my head. “I don’t work for him any more. I quit over a month ago. Besides, you can’t stop it now. I hear shooting’s started.”

“Don’t hand me no more fucking lies, Vincent.”

“No more lies,” repeats Wylie.

“Look, if I misled you, it’s because he misled me. As soon as I understood that, I quit.”

“Too bad for me you didn’t understand sooner.”

“Listen to me, Shorty,” I say. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but trust me on this. Stay away from Chance.”

“It’s my life, Vincent.”

“That’s right. And I’m telling you to take the rest of your life north. Take it north and stay away from him.”

“And what about the girl?”

“Christ, the girl’s dead.
Dead
, Shorty.”

“I sold the girl, too,” says Shorty. “I got no right to sell him the girl if he ain’t going to do right by her.”

“It’s a little late for you to be developing a conscience about her, isn’t it?”

Shorty picks up his spoon, studies it, lays it back down carefully. “Well,” he says, looking up at me with those black eyes, “I’m an old man now, Harry. Lots of things I wish hadn’t happened – but everybody looks to keep his own precious hair. You drop the cat in boiling water he’s going to claw his way out or cook. I didn’t never intend to cook. So I clawed. I don’t make no apology for it. You’d have done the same. But what happened with the girl – there weren’t no excuse for it. There weren’t no excuse to scald the girl.”

Wylie leans across the table. In a voice low, husky with emotion, he says, “Shorty taken care of me. He did. I do the same for him. Remember that.” Then he sits back, satisfied, a self-righteous smile on his lips.

“Settle yourself, Wylie,” Shorty says quietly. “The milk’s already spilt. Now I got to see how much I can spoon back into the bottle, dirty or not.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Isn’t that right, Harry?”

“Believe me, there’s none of it you can spoon back in,” I tell him. “Don’t think you can.”

“Oh,” says Shorty, “I ain’t going to rest until I’ve tried. I wouldn’t talked to you but you promised me the truth would be proclaimed.”

“He promised me the same. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Then it seems to me the two of us is obliged to try put the milk back in the bottle,” says Shorty with a flat, terrible authority.

27
 

T
he wolfers remained pinned down in the coulee, forced to trade shots with the Assiniboine. The mathematics of that was not in their favour and they knew it. Although they had taken no casualties as yet, it was clear to everybody that with each passing hour their situation grew more dire. Their hunted, desperate faces announced that knowledge. One or two of them had already had to shamefacedly scurry further down the ravine to relieve themselves, terror proving a powerful purgative. Hardwick called a council of war, his lieutenants Evans and Vogle hunkered to the right and left of him. He began with an attempt to put some heart into his men. “Well, boys, we burned their asses good. I counted at least fifteen or sixteen dead Indians lying out there and not a one of us with a hair harmed on our heads. And we’re safe here for the time being. They can’t shake us out. But, on the other hand, we ain’t going to shake them out neither. If we try to skedaddle for the fort, they’re likely to pick a few of us off while we cover open ground. If we squat here, we cook in our own juice, seeing as we’re low on water, and ammunition ain’t going to last forever and a day. Also I’m thinking, could be there’s more than one band of Assiniboine in these hills. Could be they already sent a runner to round up the relatives and bring them in.”

A ball sizzled overhead; everyone flinched. Hardwick glanced up at Trevanian Hale, the lookout. “How’s she hanging, boy?” he said. “Got them eyes peeled?”

“That one near peeled my scalp. Them bastards got our range.”

“Well, look sharp. And take your goddamn hat off.”

Hardwick turned back to the sombre circle. Vogle said, “I elect we make for the fort. Take our chances.”

It sounded like drawing straws on death. The men looked at one another.

“I don’t know,” said Evans. “They’re organized now. Organized as an Indian gets. If we raise up out of here, they’ll put thirty, thirty-five ball at us. If we all get clear of that, dandy. But I don’t figure we’ll all get clear of it. Somebody’s going to get winged.”

“Then what the hell we supposed to do?” said John Duval. His red little eyes were angry. The way he spat was angry.

“The war taught me one thing,” said Hardwick. “Take high ground wherever you can. Then hold it. There’s a promising little rise to the right of us. If we get a good covering fire on them from here so as to keep their heads down, we can get some men up top that knoll. Couple of men with repeaters blazing down in that coulee can do a heap of damage.”

No one dared speak. Finally, Duval put the question no one else would. “Who?”

“I told you boys I hate a slacker,” said Hardwick. “I ain’t going to shirk. I’ll go.” He shifted on his heels. “What about you, Chief?” he asked Evans. “You game?”

Evans didn’t lift his eyes from the ground. “All right.”

“She’s settled then. Leave us a minute to collect our hosses. When I give the word, you boys let fly at them. Don’t skimp on the lead. Keep the red bastards ducking.”

The men dispersed to the lip of the gully. Evans and Hardwick led their mounts to the end of the coulee where it rose in a gentle, gradual slope to merge with the prairie. At a signal from Hardwick they sprang up on the horses, spurred them out of the ravine with the cry, “Give ’em hell, boys!”, a cry which triggered a fusillade to flash and crash the length of the coulee.

They galloped breakneck for the rise, dismounted on the run, and scrambled up the hillock. In minutes they had gained the top,
fell prone, and began to pour deadly repeater-fire into the enemy below while their compatriots raked the top of the coulee with an enfilade. A gauze of blue gun-smoke hovered in the still air, a lethal miasma.

Suddenly Grace shook the shoulder of the Englishman’s boy and pointed to five figures emerging from the timber the women and children had escaped into, figures which flitted so swiftly across open ground and vanished into the spotty brush at the base of the hill that the Englishman’s boy wasn’t sure if he’d seen them at all.

“They’ve flanked Hardwick and Evans,” said Grace. “They’re going to run off their horses. Cut them off.”

Oblivious to the danger at their backs, Evans and Hardwick continued to pepper the Assiniboine position. Grace shouted a warning down the cutbank. “They’ve got behind Hardwick and Evans!”

Several men rushed to Grace, peered to where he pointed. There was nothing to be seen, not a leaf of the brush moved.

“I don’t see nothing,” said Duval.

“I seen them,” the Englishman’s boy said.

“Well, how in Christ’s name are we supposed to get out of this mess?” said Duval. “Can’t shoot what you can’t see.”

“Flush them,” said Grace. “They’ll be in that brush laying plans to steal up on Hardwick and Evans. If we charge, they’ll scatter in surprise. Either we run them off or we run them down.”

“Fuck you,” said Duval. “Hardwick got us in this infernal spot. Let him look after his own hide.”

With their leaders gone, the men were indecisive, lost. “That’s true. Hardwick did get us in this spot,” Grace said quietly. “But I don’t remember anybody raising objections to coming along.” He paused. “And I don’t remember anybody except Hardwick and Evans offering to risk his skin to get us out of it.”

No one contradicted the Eagle, but no one was volunteering to take part in the rescue either. The Englishman’s boy thought that when Grace turned and walked away from them, that was the end of it. But Grace unhooked a cavalry scabbard from Trevanian Hale’s saddle, slung the sabre on his own saddlehorn, sheathed his Henry
rifle, broke his revolver, checked the chambers, slapped it shut. “I reckon this is a pistol-and-sabre charge,” he said to no one in particular. No one moved. Grace shrugged, put his foot in the stirrup, swung up. “I can’t swear to it, but they looked to be youngsters. A little determination should break them.” The men stepped aside to let him pass when he kicked his horse into motion. “Cover me,” he said.

They did. As rifle-fire crashed about him the Englishman’s boy ran to collect his horse and vaulted onto it. Already the Eagle was crossing ground at an easy lope, his handkerchief a dab of blue, his back erect. The Englishman’s boy tore after him, his horse’s pricked ears bouncing like crazy rifle-sights striving to take aim at Grace’s back. Fifty yards off, Grace whipped his horse into a cavalry charge, closing fast on the scrub at the bottom of the hill. When he was thirty yards short of the brush, the Englishman’s boy heard a muffled clap which buckled the legs of the Eagle’s horse, sledgehammering it in full stride. The gelding somersaulted and Grace bucked over its head, pitching into a dreadful, awkward tumble which smashed him to the ground. He staggered to his feet, left arm dangling broken, pistol gripped in his right hand as two boys burst out of the brush, one brandishing a hatchet, the other a bow. Grace knocked aside the first with a pistol-shot just as the second dropped to his knee and let fly an arrow.

Grace reeled, the pistol fell to his feet, one hand lifted in bewilderment to paw feebly at his throat. At full gallop, the Englishman’s boy snapped off two shots, missed with both. The Assiniboine gave a triumphant whoop, darted forward, struck the swaying Eagle twice with his coup stick, and turned to bolt back to cover just as the Englishman’s boy slammed his horse into him full tilt, trampling him to the ground. He scrambled up and the Englishman’s boy leaned down from his saddle, thrust the revolver into his face and fired.

Throwing himself off the horse he ran to Grace. The Eagle’s right hand clenched the shaft of the arrow buried in his throat, a bloody cravat spread down his shirt front. He gave a convulsive twist of the
wrist, breaking the shaft off in his hand, stared uncomprehendingly at the markings and feathers, and fell. Grabbing his shoulders the boy dragged him to shelter behind the dead horse. There they both lay, breathing quick and hard. The Eagle mumbled something the Englishman’s boy didn’t catch. He laid his ear to the panting mouth. “Pull it,” Grace begged. “Pull it.” Rolling him on his side exposed six inches of arrow protruding from the nape of his neck, revealed the cruel barbs of an arrowhead filed out of an old frying-pan bottom. The Englishman’s boy clasped it and drew it in one long, sticky sigh of grasping flesh; when the arrow jerked free blood shot in spasms on his shirt sleeve. He ripped off Grace’s bandanna and stuffed it in the wound, the Eagle groaning under his ministrations. Grace made a vague gesture with his hand, his eyes glazing blue like the eyes of a butchered animal, murmured something faintly. The boy lifted his head, nestling it in the crook of his arm. The Eagle gave a long, bloody snore, the blood gurgling in his throat, stretched his legs luxuriously like a man making himself comfortable in his bed. “That’s better,” he whispered, and died.

The Englishman’s boy heard a musket-shot, the woody thud of a ball embedding itself in the body of the dead horse. He flopped across its belly and raised the Colt in both hands; both were shaking fearsome. The leaves of the stunted willow, the buffalo berry, the choke-cherry, hung dead and lifeless. He wiped the palm of his left hand on his pant leg, then his right, so as to get a better grip on the ivory handle of the Colt. He could see his horse forty yards off, cropping grass, reins trailing on the ground. Another thirty yards lay between him and the Indians in the scrub.

Five. Grace had said five Indians. He and Grace had done for two. That left three in the bush.