A Good Man (41 page)

One miner with a great mane of salt-and-pepper hair always won the Sunday races. He was known to feed his dogs more meat than he ate himself and he petted and fondled them more than most men did their children. He was the one Dunne turned to first to get the names Harding wanted. But the dog lover refused to give them up, even after he found his favourite bitch dead in her kennel of the strychnine sickness.

It was necessary to look elsewhere. When the miners finished their shifts, Dunne would see them as they walked home swinging their lamps, their voices raised in song. He paid particular attentioto one young cousin Jack who often caused the rest to fall into a reverential silence so they could listen to him and him alone. The boy’s face lit up whenever that happened. He was a runty, scrawny nobody who it was clear had nothing about him that anyone could ever possibly admire except his way with a tune.

Once Dunne had stuffed a kerosene-soaked rag in the lad’s gob and told him if he didn’t start singing the tune he wanted to hear, he’d fry the tongue right out of his head, burn his voice box to cinders, the boy gave him the names of the ringleaders. In a matter of days, Harding had fired them.

The problem was that the troublemakers didn’t pack up their tools and look for work elsewhere; they stayed in Helena and kept agitating among the workers. Further steps needed to be taken. Harding ordered Dunne to do whatever was needed to rid him of these pests. Toughs were hired and Dunne led them on midnight visits to the recalcitrants’ homes. Furniture and bones were broken, threats of worse to come were made. But the leaders of the cousin Jacks were a stubborn lot; they hung on grimly. Then gradually, one by one, they saw the wisdom of departing Helena. Still, it was almost six months after Randolph Tarr’s demise that the last of them cleared out. With his work finished, Dunne decided enough time had passed to render a proposal to Mrs. Tarr seemly.

He had been anticipating this for a long time and had already taken steps to present himself in a fashion that Mrs. Tarr would find pleasing. Back in the days when he was her bodyguard, she had once teased him about his closely cropped hair, saying it looked like “a farmer had put a torch to the stubble.” Dunne knew a hint when he heard one, and had grown his hair. He had also cultivated a moustache, believing it would lend him a dignified, substantial air entirely in keeping with a man soon destined to be head of a household.

He had often wondered what people meant when they said absence makes the heart grow fonder. Now he knew. With every passing week, his heart had grown fonder and fonder until some days he feared it might burst with fondness.

He imagined Mrs. Tarr pining for him as he pined for her.

In late June, Dunne returns to Fort Benton to reclaim his room above the Stubhorn, which he had paid Dink Dooley to hold for him. The quarters are hot as an oven, stuffy, and buzzing with flies. The dust lies thick and undisturbed. All this is evidence that nobody has been snooping.

Dunne had decided not to give Mrs. Tarr any warning of his return. He wants to be a romantic surprise. But it’s she who surprises him. On his first tour of the town, he happens to see her outside the schoolhouse, whipping a handbell up and down, summoning a mob of scampering, squealing young pups into the school. Ducking into a shop, Dunne stands at the window and intently watches the scene. To see her bestowing sweet smiles on the children as they bustle past her into the school awakens a lurch of jealousy in him. He wonders how she could have suffered such a reverse, been condemned to minding the town’s dirty little brats? But what he sees also pleases him. The thought of rescuing Mrs. Tarr from her awful situation causes him to experience a great upsurge of pride and purpose.

Still, there are things to be seen to before he takes the al step. He wants this to be an occasion Mrs. Tarr will never forget. He searches for the right words to tender his offer of marriage, scribbles away in his sweltering room, desperately scratching out phrases and adding others, fine-tuning his sentences until he is satisfied.

Next comes a new suit of clothes, something fashionable and festive, suitable for courting. The clerk presses what he says is “the latest English outfit” on him, a blue coat, white vest, lavender pantaloons, and lavender gloves, a style commended by
Harper’s
to its gentlemen readers in 1868 but which has been languishing on the shelves for nearly a decade. He entices his customer to buy other gentleman’s furnishings, cambric handkerchiefs, a linen shirt, and a ribbon-thin bowtie to complete his ensemble.

After that, Dunne pays a visit to Foster’s Tonsorial Palace, has a thorough soak in a copper tub, a shave, and has the crop of unruly hair he has grown for Mrs. Tarr cut and styled. The black barber, Foster, carefully draws a part down the middle of his skull, creates two lavish wings of hair above his ears, and freezes them in place with pomade. Sprinkled with bay rum, newly trimmed and newly suited, his moustache oiled, Dunne pays a visit to Wetzel’s mercantile and buys a tin of fancy biscuits with yellow roses painted on its lid. Tucking that under his arm, he sets off just before three o’clock for Mrs. Tarr’s house; he wants to be waiting there for her when she arrives home from school.

As he trudges along, he addresses the sage and dusty tussocks of grass that border the trail, reciting the proposal he has committed to memory. “My dear Mrs. Tarr, I figure that you know the high regard in which I hold you, and I live in the dear hope you return my heartfelt sentiments, although I know I do not deserve such a blessing, you stand so high and I so low that I ain’t worthy to touch the hem of your skirt. But let me say this, Mrs. Tarr, it may surprise you to hear it, but I am a man of property. Pardon for bragging on myself, but I have savings of seventy-five hundred dollars, and if you doubt it, I can show you the hard cash. Also, my health is sound. I vow there are plenty more good years in me, and I promise to use them years to work like a Trojan so as to keep you in comfort and style and see you don’t want for nothing. So here it is, I have come today to ask you to do me the honour of becoming my wife. Please be so good as to smile on my request, won’t you, dear lady?”

Dunne enters Mrs. Tarr’s yard. He pauses under the searing sun and sweeps the property with an avid look. The chair he sat on for so many happy hours is on the porch waiting for him, near the window through which he so often peeked to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Tarr doing dainty, feminine things: reading books, drinking tea, looking pensive. He remembers the blissful sound of Mrs. Tarr’s skirts rustling as she brings a tray out to him. He can taste it already, the glasses of lemonade, the cake he will eat in the days to come, all proffered with the most doting of smiles. Climbing the steps of the porch, claiming the familiar chair, he takes from his pocket the cambric handkerchief the clerk had prevailed upon him to buy and carefully wipes the dust from his shoes. He already feels as if he’s the proprietor of all he surveys; it’s a very pleasant, settled, domestic feeling.

He looks down at the tin on his lap. Are fancy biscuits a mistake? Or should he have brought flowers? There are lovely flowers painted on the lid of the biscuit box, but can mere paint convey warm thoughts and feelings? Dunne begins to pace the porch, swinging round and mechanically retracing his steps, until, beginning to sweat, he comes to a halt at the corner of the house where a bit of breeze can be felt. Standing there, leaning on the railing, his eyes wander out over the prairie. He spots Case coming down the path that passes Mrs. Tarr’s house, headed for town.

The last thing in the world Dunne wants is for Case to see him on Mrs. Tarr’s doorstep, looking so dapper, bearing a tin of fancy biscuits. He can think of only one hiding place, the privy. But it is around the back of the house, the side from which Case is approaching. It’s a question of timing. When Case disappears behind a swell of rolling prairie, he must secrete himself in the outhouse.

Dunne waits; the moment comes when Case sinks from sight, and he breaks for the privy, scoots inside. A blade of sunlight streams through a knothole. Dunne screws his eye to the knothole as if it were a telescope. Case is drawing nearer, ambling along, hands stuffed in his pockets, another bastard born with a silver spoon stuck in his mouth. Look at him; so very pleased with himself, a man who had the good luck to pop out of the right cunt, otherwise he’d already be dead of hunger. He thinks he’s a
gentleman
. But Dunne knows there’s more gentleman in the arse of a pig than there is in Wesley Case. He knows things that should make the fellow weep with shame. He has the goods on him.

Then, unexpectedly, Case veers off the path and heads towards the privy. Has he been caught short by a call of nature? Case is almost there, so close that he could spit on him through the knothole, but then he passes by the outhouse, goes to the back door, doesn’t knock, actually lets himself in with a key.

Dunne’s breath locks in his chest. What’s Case doing sashaying into the Tarr house, acting like he’s the bloody lord of the manor? Dunne slumps down on the outhouse seat. He prides himself on solving puzzles. He examines this one from every angle, but every angle points him in the same direction, to the same conclusion. His eyes flit desperately about the dim interior of the privy and he sees, high above him, draped in a corner, a cloudy spider’s web, a papery moth entangled in its strands.

Dunne bolts. He makes a stiff-legged dash through the yard and out onto the prairie. He has no destination in mind – all he wants is to get away from what he has just witnessed. Churning up a rise, shoulders heaving, then a sudden awkward plunge down the slope, gathering speed, a rolling boulder. The biscuit tin pressed to his chest in both hands, like a shield for his heart. Buckbrush, the thorns of buffalo berry bushes claw at his pant legs and snatch at his coat sleeves; the face of the sky twitches in his eyes. He runs on, weaving erratically.

A juniper root catches his toe and pitches him headlong to the ground, the biscuit tin punching his sternum. Dunne lies there, face down, panting, glaring at the dirt. When he finally sits up, he notices a rip in the knee of his trousers, a raw scrape slowly oozing blood, grains of soil embedded in his skin, peppering his flesh. Slowly Dunne pulls his knee up to his face and, like a cat, begins to lick the wound. A dry sob racks him. His beautiful new trousers are ruined. Everything is ruined. He is ruined.

NINETEEN

July 14, 1877

Fort Benton

My dear Maj. Walsh,

I am sure that rumours of the present troubles with the Nez Perce have reached you. What appeared to be a situation of little consequence suddenly took an ominous turn. Yesterday I conferred with Maj. Ilges, who told me that the latest reports suggest that the tribe will soon arrive in Montana and that their ultimate destination is Canada. Maj. Ilges has kept in contact with all forts and military posts that have access to telegraph service so as to keep abreast of the Indians’ progress eastwards, but reliable information is sketchy – although every indication is that they are moving quickly.

Ilges is extremely worried because the number of soldiers here at Fort Benton was recently reduced and he fears that he will not be able to offer protection to civilians outside the town if the Nez Perce appear in the vicinity. He vehemently denounces Gen. Howard for provoking a peaceable people into war. The Major calls the Nez Perce the palest Indians God ever fashioned out of red clay and lauds them for having taken up the raising of cattle and horses with great success, for accepting missionaries in their midst, and converting to Christianity in considerable numbers. Before now, they have always had excellent relations with whites. Ilges credits them with showing exemplary restraint when ordered to surrender their beloved Wallowa Valley to settlers and accept land on the Lapwai Reservation. The outbreak was precipitated, in his view, solely because Howard refused to permit the tribe enough time to round up their vast herds of cattle and horses so they could make a safe crossing of the Snake River, which was running very high as the deadline approached to evacuate their homeland. It appears that they reached their breaking point when settlers began to rustle the cattle the Indians had rounded up. Apparently even “praying Indians” are not immune to suffering depredation at the hands of their white Christian neighbours. The outraged young men retaliated for these thefts by killing several white men. After that, there was no stopping this whole sorry business. Panic swept Oregon and the Nez Perce fled under the leadership of Chief Joseph.

They are now believed to be on what they call the “buffalo road” that leads to their traditional summer hunting grounds in Montana. Chief Joseph has already fought several engagements with U.S. troops. Ilges has learned by wire that on or about June 17, the Indians drew Howard’s forces into an ambush at White Bird Canyon, turned their flank, killed a third of his soldiers, and drove the rest into retreat. On the 27th, Howard, heavily reinforced, attempted to attack them again, but Chief Joseph and his people slipped through his fingers and made for Clearwater, where they hooked up with Chief Looking Glass’s band. No one can be sure, but estimates suggest their combined force is something near 250 warriors, 450 women and children. It is said they have 2,000 of their renowned Appaloosa horses with them, which allows them to spell their mounts when they tire and keep distance from Howard’s troops. All indications are that they are presently on the Lolo Trail, passing over the Bitterroot Mountains.