A Good Man (36 page)

Dunne sees it is true: a man can turn blue from cold. It is an interesting phenomenon. Gobbler’s lips look as if he has been gulping ink. And those lips are moving, his teeth snapping out a harsh, scolding chatter. It takes a moment for Dunne to realize that the old man is actually trying to say something.

“How’s that?” prompts Dunne. “What you want?”

He watches the old man make a great effort of will. “What are you?” he demands. “What are you?” His eyes are shrinking in their sockets. Maybe freezing isn’t a peaceful death, akin to falling into a dreamless sleep. People have got that wrong.

Dunne squats down beside him. Gobbler’s question doesn’t make much sense to him, but he gives it thoughtful consideration before trying to answer it. “What am I?” says Dunne. “Well, I guess I’d say my profession is anticipating. That’s my stock and trade. I look out for those who can’t spot danger ahead. Most people can’t put themselves in another man’s feelings, but I can. So I asked myself, if you was treated like Gobbler Johnson was treated by Lawyer Tarr and Harding, what would you do? No question I know what I’d do. I’d visit doom on them. I’d have their guts for gaiters. If God Himself stepped between us He couldn’t turn me from my purpose. It’s only human nature to brood on a wrong – a wrong festers and fills you up with poison. It don’t let go. It don’t give a man no rest, and sooner or later he’s got to lance it, or die of the poison growing in him. And I give you credit where credit is due, Gobbler. You give them fair warning, sent that letter to Lawyer Tarr and burned down that piddling piece of Harding’s property to remind them they weren’t safe. You give them a chance to make amends. But that sort of people don’t pay no mind to the right and wrong of things.”

Dunne pauses, overcome with a queer feeling. He’s crossed a line. It’s happened to him once or twice before, confusing what really happened with what he was
sure
would happen. It was
you
, he reminds himself. And in a flash, he sees himself looking down at Michael Dunne cutting the words out of the
Fort Benton Record
, out of the books he stole from the school to write a warning to Tarr. It’s difficult work for Michael Dunne’s big hands, setting those tiny words down on the page like a typesetter, manipulating them into place and gumming them down. Such a delicate, finicky job that he can see how the effort of it worriedly hunches up his shoulders.

And then he is high above Harding’s backyard, seeing Michael Dunne tramping through the snow to the gazebo, watching him laying the tinder and newspaper, watching the match bloom in the darkness, the fire swarming to announce to Harding that he isn’t safe either.

11 5225 25113231524255 1243353542. 11 121112 1113.

I am Michael Dunne. I did it
.

“Now you might say,” he whispers to Gobbler, “that you didn’t intend Tarr no harm, that you only wanted to throw a fright into him by shooting into his office. But I don’t believe that’s the truth. You were meaning to kill him dead as Joe Cunt’s dog, but you lost your nerve at the last second. But that don’t mean that was the end of it, because losing your courage only made you brood all the harder. Ain’t that so? Eating away at you until sooner or later you’d have had to come back at Tarr and Harding. Human nature has got to be satisfied. And you see, it was up to me to show those two they was in peril. I
anticipated
sooner or later you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from taking a crack at them. That’s my gift, reading people. Now I ain’t got much gratitude for it, very little thanks. So I settle for second best – I take money for it. Nobody never gave Michael Dunne nothing; I got to look out for myself. Otherwise, what’d I be?”

His legs are cramping. He stands to stretch them and when he does, he realizes the solemn quiet that blankets Johnson, a quiet he was deaf to because he has been listening so hard to himself explaining what kind of man he is. Giving Gobbler a nudge with his foot, he feels the weight that accumulates in a lifeless body.

There is nothing to do but tidy up. Dunne takes the pail and the axe and flings them out on the slough, near the hole in the ice. With the spruce bough, he sweeps away any traces of his own footprints near the body. When he starts back up the trail, a thought comes to him. There must be money, nuggets, or gold dust in Gobbler’s shack. How else did he pay for his supplies? But then Dunne reminds himself to anticipate. Today is Monday. Holstrom will be back sometime this week to collect Johnson’s grocery list. He will find him, assume his friend slipped on the ice, broke his leg, fell into the water, but managed to haul himself this far before he died of exposure. But Holstrom surely knows something about whatever Johnson used to buy his supplies. If it goes missing, Holstrom will wonder who took it. He’ll start speculating. No, this is not the time to be greedy. Leave well enough alone.

Dunne returns to his task, carefully obliterating the footprints he left in the drifts. On the other side of the thicket where he had hidden, he does the same, working his way back in the direction of his horse. It’s painstaking work, but he takes satisfaction in the care and attention required to erase his presence. Dunne is so intent on his job that when the first flakes of snow flutter down, he looks up in surprise. Above him hovers the dark cloud that Gobbler did his best to clutch. Greenish blue and purple as a bruise, it is leaking snow, faster and faster.

Dunne tosses the branch aside; it is no longer required, the snow will cover all signs he was ever here.

He lumbers through the white downfall, thinking of the future. He will need to remain in Helena for a little longer. It will be hard, but it must be done. For the sake of her reputation, he cannot tempt himself by being near to her. She will understand why he can’t come to her just yet. Mrs. Tarr knows what is proper and what is not. She is the most understanding and knowing woman God ever made.

SEVENTEEN

A DREARY END TO
February and an equally dismal beginning to March, and Case and McMullen find themselves still penned up in the ranch house most evenings, keeping constant company, and getting on each other’s nerves. With every passing day, Case finds Joe’s habits growing more and more irksome: clipping his moustache over the washbasin and leaving his whiskers in it, stubbing cigars on his dinner plate, and striking up conversations just as they are readying to turn in for the night. There’s no escaping him then, the two of them cheek by jowl in the tiny bedroom, no more than a few feet separating their bunks, the small space brilliantly lit by the lantern on the washstand. Case sits on the edge of his bed yanking off his boots; Joe, naked from the waist up, faces him, his shirt balled up in his hands, wearing a look of rumination, always a warning sign.

“You know that beeve you and me butchered yesterday?”

“I am aware of it,” Case says shortly.

“I was thinking, maybe tomorrow evening we might get ourselves spruced up and take a parcel of that meat to Mrs. Tarr.”

“No.”

Joe’s eyebrows arch. “A schoolmarm’s salary don’t go far. She’d be glad of it.”

“I assure you she would not.”

“I think she would. Anyway, read your Bible. It says there we ought to be charitable to widows. Words to that effect.”

“Ada Tarr is the kind of widow who will fling charity back in your face. Depend on it. We’re not taking any meat to her.”

“Well, maybe you ain’t. But I have the intention. And I’ll be a gentleman about it too. Tell her it’s in return for that fine pound cake she give us. Then it don’t smell like charity to her.”

Joe’s self-confident way of speaking causes Case to blaze with fury; he jabs a finger at McMullen, hears himself shouting, “Stay out of it! Nobody is going anywhere near her! Why in hell isn’t it enough for you that I ask you to leave it alone!”

Joe’s face has gone white, set itself in a plaster of Paris mask. “I don’t know what put the burr under your foreskin, but I don’t care to be talked to like that,” he says, voice tight and quiet. Slowly, Case lowers his hand. “And you don’t ask me to do something, you order me. And I ain’t yours to order about. If you don’t want me taking no little gifts to Ada Tarr, give me a reason why.”

With a curt, contrite bob of the head, Case says, “I should not have raised my voice. But I don’t need to explain myself. It’s none of your business, Joe.”

“Then it’s none of your business if I do that poor woman a kindness. I guess what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Case averts his gaze to the lantern burning on the washstand. “All right then, if you must know – she would presume I sent you – that you were my proxy.” He hesitates. “Some weeks ago I offered her assistance. She rebuffed me – most unpleasantly. It was humiliating.” He turns back to Joe. “Now do you understand?”

“What I understand is why you been growling at me like an old blind dog every time you hear my footfalls these past few weeks. She shooed you off and soured your mood.”

Case bridles. “That’s pretty glib reasoning. You have no idea what a galling man you can be. Do I question you about your personal and private matters the way you have insisted on investigating mine tonight?”

“No, you don’t. But that’s because you ain’t got no curiosity about humankind.”

“That is absurd. Of course I’m curious about others. I’m curious about you. I just exercise a little seemly reticence.”

“You’re no more curious about me than you are about Ada Tarr. Now if I’d got chased off by Ada Tarr I wouldn’t have rested until I found out why she went so high-handed. At least high-handed according to your lights. But then your lights is most often directed at yourself, and that has a tendency to blind a man.”

“My god,” says Case, shaking his head, “if you could only hear yourself.”

“Well, I do hear myself. But there ain’t nobody else in this room listening.”

“Maybe I’m not listening because you turn all the talk to me – a subject of which you are ignorant. So talk about yourself, talk about those,” says Case impulsively, gesturing towards the scars on Joe’s torso. “You say I have no curiosity – well, I’ve been curious about them for a long time. Only discretion prevented me from inquiring. But since you have given me leave, I pose the question.”

“Do you want to know or are you talking like a book just to remind me I’m ignorant?” says Joe, brushing his hand gingerly over his scars as if mention of his wounds has set them throbbing with pain.

The simple question takes Case aback; the sight of Joe’s hand moving over his body stirs remorse. “All right,” he says carefully, “it’s true. I do want to know.”

Joe gets to his feet and, to Case’s surprise, leaves the bedroom. When he returns, he is carrying a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. He pours them both a tot, lifts his glass, and squints at Case through the amber liquid. “Well,” he says, “whiskey improves your complexion. You don’t look near as white and angry.” He lowers the glass, sits for a moment, thinking. “If I was to start with the name Tom Hardwick, I figure you’d recognize it?”

“Yes. There was a standing order for his arrest when I was with the Police.”

“For killing all them Assiniboines in the Cypress Hills.”

“Massacring them,” corrects Case. “Men, women, and children.”

Joe takes a quick, bird-like sip of his whiskey. “Once I left off my woodhawking days with Fancy Charles, I washed up in Benton. Prices was high here and I was short on scratch. Met Hardwick in a saloon. He was looking for men to go up north with him wolfing. He offered me a place in his outfit and I took it. At the time I agreed I was a little drunk,” he confesses. “Set off in a pretty big party, nine in all. Five men, a half-breed boy of twelve, three Blackfoot gals Hardwick had collected as blanket warmers and cooks. Things went along fine until we reached the Little Bow River where we had a collision with some Assiniboines. Don’t know whether they recognized Hardwick as theman tore through their people in the Cypress Hills or not. Any rate, there was a short, sharp fight. No casualties on our side, but we killed a buck.” McMullen drapes a blanket over his shoulders; suddenly he looks older, smaller. “Hardwick went to damaging up the corpse, chopped all the fingers off its hands so the spirit couldn’t pull a bowstring or trigger in the Mystery World. He said it would put a spook into them Indians. Teach them not to mess with us. I reckon it did the opposite.”

“I take it they came at you again.”

“You take it right, but that come later in September – when we was building a winter camp on the lower Belly River. The weather was hot that month, hot as summer. We was sleeping under canvas until we finished our cabin. Then one night – I’d just about peeled out of all my clothes but for my shirt – guns commenced to cracking all about us, a ball whipped through my tent, missed my pate by so much.” Joe draws the tip of his thumb by his ear, looking as if he is hearing the hiss of the ball again. “I scampered out. A ridge to our left was all alight with muzzle flashes. The Blackfoot women was screaming and scattering and I could hear Tom Hardwick roaring like the Bull of Bashan. I run barefoot to the wagon where I’d stowed my carbine. But there was a campfire nearby that lit me up pretty plain.” McMullen’s expression changes, as if he is reliving the moment. “First bullet hit me here.” His hand touches his thigh. “It took me down. Got hit seven more times, two bullets this arm, two in the shoulder, two this side, and one below the shoulder blade.” His hand flits restlessly about his body, touching each wound. “Lay there on the ground howling for help. Only reply I got was the sound of hoofbeats. The whole lot of Hardwick’s crew was doing a skedaddle. They was leaving me as entertainment for the Assiniboines.

“But the sound of them galloping horses directed every musket Hardwick’s way. Indians didn’t get no result from it. Hard-riding men ain’t no piece of cake to hit in the dark. But the distraction give me a little space of time to drag myself into a thicket and hide. Presently, them Indians came whooping and hollering into our camp. I knew if them Assiniboines found me they wouldn’t spare me no miseries because I was riding with their old foe Hardwick. I didn’t count on drawing too many more breaths. When they went to ransacking the wagons I crawled through the brush to the river. Being it was fall, the water was low in the Belly. After a few tries I got my feet under me and crossed the stream, wading and sandbar hopping.” McMullen studies the floor for a few moments. Then, as if he suddenly recalls where he is, his shoulders give a jerk. He rubs his face like a waking man and says, “Once I reached t’other side, I took stock of my condition. The musket ball to my leg had went clear through without striking bone. It could bear weight. My arm was in a similar state – two flesh wounds. The rest I couldn’t judge. I tore my shirt up and bandaged myself as best I could. The rags left over, I wrapped my feet up in them. That left me jaybird naked.