Butcher's Crossing (17 page)

Late in the afternoon the trail made a turning so abrupt that Charley Hoge had to back the wagon up several times, angling it more to his right each time, so that finally it could negotiate the angle, its right wheels brushing against the pines, the left coming dangerously close to the brink of a sheer gully that descended three or four hundred feet. Past the turning, the party halted. Miller pointed ahead; the trail went steeply up to a point between two rough peaks, dark and jagged against the bright afternoon sky.

“There it is,” Miller said. “Just beyond them peaks.”

Charley Hoge cracked his whip above the oxen’s ears, and whooped. Startled, the oxen lurched forward and upward; their hooves dug into the earth, and slipped; the men again put their shoulders against the wheels of the wagon.

“Don’t push them too hard,” Miller called to Charley Hoge. “It’s a long pull, all the way to the top.”

Foot by foot, they pulled and pushed the wagon up the last steep ascent. Sweat came out on their faces, and was instantly dried by the high, cool air. Andrews heard the groaning sound of air pulled into lungs, and realized that the sound he heard was his own, so loud that it almost drowned out the breathing of the other men, the creak of the wagon as it strained unnaturally upward, and the heavy sounds of the oxen’s breathing and plodding and slipping on the trail. He gasped for air, as if he were drowning; his arms, hanging loose as his shoulder ground against the spokes, wanted to flail, as if they might raise him to more air. The numbness of his legs intensified, and suddenly they were numb no longer; he felt that hundreds of needles were pricking into his flesh, and that the needles warmed, became white-hot, and burned outward from his bone to his flesh. He felt that the sockets of his bones—ankle, knee, and hip—were being crushed by the weight they impelled forward. Blood pounded in his head, throbbed against his ears, until even the sound of his own breathing was submerged; and a red film came over his eyes. He could not see before him; he pushed blindly, his will supplanting his strength, becoming his body, until his pain submerged them both. Then he pitched forward, away from the wagon; the sharp stones on the path cut into his hands, but he did not move. He stayed for several moments on his hands and knees, and watched with a detached curiosity the blood from his cut palms seeping out and darkening the earth upon which they rested.

After a few moments, he was aware that the wagon had come to a halt just as he had pitched away from it, and that it was standing level now, no longer at an angle from the trail. On his right the sheer side of a rock thrust upward; to his left, above the wagon, no more than thirty feet away, was another very like it. He tried to get to his feet, but he slipped to his knees and remained there for a moment more. Still on his hands and knees, he saw Charley Hoge sitting erect on the wagon seat, looking out before him, not moving; Miller and Schneider were hanging on the wheels they had pushed; they, too, were looking before them, and they were silent. Andrews crawled a few feet forward, and pushed himself upright; he wiped his bloody hands on his shirt.

Miller turned to him. “There it is,” he said quietly. “Take a look.”

Andrews walked up to him, and stood looking where he pointed. For perhaps three hundred yards, the trail cut down between the pines; but at that point, abruptly, the land leveled. A long narrow valley, flat as the top of a table, wound among the mountains. Lush grass grew on the bed of the valley, and waved gently in the breeze as far as the eye could see. A quietness seemed to rise from the valley; it was the quietness, the stillness, the absolute calm of a land where no human foot had touched. Andrews found that despite his exhaustion he was holding his breath; he expelled the air from his lungs as gently as he could, so as not to disturb the silence.

Miller tensed, and touched Andrews’s arm. “Look!” He pointed to the southwest.

A blackness moved on the valley, below the dark pines that grew on the opposite mountain. Andrews strained his eyes; at the edges of the patch, there was a slight ripple; and then the patch itself throbbed like a great body of water moved by obscure currents. The patch, though it appeared small at this distance, was, Andrews guessed, more than a mile in length and nearly a half mile in width.

“Buffalo,” Miller whispered.

“My God!” Andrews said. “How many are there?”

“Two, three thousand maybe. And maybe more. This valley winds in and out of these hills; we can just see a little part of it from here. No telling what you’ll find on farther.”

For several moments more, Andrews stood beside Miller and watched the herd. He could, at the distance from which he viewed, make out no shape, distinguish no animal from another. From the north a cool wind began to rise; it came through the pass; Andrews shivered. The sun had fallen far below the mountain opposite them, and its shadow darkened the place where they stood.

“Let’s get down and set up camp,” Miller said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

Slowly, as if a procession, the group made its way down the incline to the valley. They were at the level ground before dark rolled from the mountain.

They set up camp near a small spring. The spring water flashed in the last light as it poured thinly over smooth rock into a pool at the base of the mountain, and thence overflowed into a narrow stream half hidden by the thick grass of the valley.

“There’s a little lake a few miles to the south,” Miller said. “That’s where the buff’ll go to water.”

Charley Hoge unyoked the oxen and set them to graze on the valley grass. With the help of Andrews, he dragged the large sheet of canvas from the wagon; then he cut several slender boughs from a young pine, and the two men constructed a box frame, over which they stretched the canvas, securing it carefully and tucking it so that the edges made a floor upon the grass. Then, from the wagon, they lugged the boxes of gunpowder and placed them within the small square tent.

“If I got this powder wet,” Charley Hoge chuckled, “Miller would kill me.”

After he had finished helping Charley Hoge, Andrews got an ax and went with Schneider a little way up the side of the mountain and began cutting a supply of wood for the camp. They let the logs remain where they were felled, hacking off the smaller branches and piling them beside the trees. “We’ll get the horses and drag them down later,” Schneider said. By dark, they had felled half a dozen fair-sized trees. Each returned to the camp with an armload of branches; and they dragged between them the trunk of a small tree.

Charley Hoge had built a fire against a huge boulder, which was twice the height of any of the men and so deeply creviced at one point that it formed a natural draft for the smoke. Though the fire was blazing high, he already had the coffeepot resting at one edge of the fire, and on another he had set the familiar pot of soaked beans. “Last night we’ll have to eat beans,” Charley Hoge said. “Tomorrow we’ll have buffalo meat; maybe I’ll even get a little small game, and we’ll have a stew.”

Across the trunks of two close-set pines, he had nailed a heavy straight bough; upon this bough, neatly hung, were his utensils—a large skillet, two pans, a ladle, several knives whose handles were discolored and scarred but whose blades gleamed in the leaping flame, a small hatchet, and an ax. Resting on the ground was a large iron kettle, the outside black but the inside gleaming a dull grayish-silver. Beside this, against the trunk of one of the trees, was the large box that contained the other provisions.

After the men finished eating, they hollowed long oval depressions in the loose pine needles; in these depressions they laid crisscross small branches, and upon the branches leveled the pine needles they had scooped out, so that they could put their bedrolls upon a springy mattress that held their bodies lightly and comfortably. They placed their bedrolls close to the fire, near the boulder; thus, they were partially protected from weather coming from the north or west across the valley; the forest would hold off the weather from the east.

By the time their beds were made, the fire had died to gray-coated embers. Miller watched the coals intently, his face a dark red in their glow. Charley Hoge lighted the lantern that hung on the bough beside his cooking utensils; the feeble light was lost in the darkness. He carried the lantern to the fire where the men sat. Miller rose and got the heavy iron kettle from the ground and set it squarely in the bed of coals. Then he took the lantern and handed it to Charley Hoge, who followed him to the large box of provisions beside the tree. From the box Miller removed two large bars of lead and carried them to the fire; he stuck them into the kettle, crossing them so that their weight did not upset it. Then he went to the little square tent that Charley Hoge and Will Andrews had constructed, and took from it a box of powder and a smaller box of caps; he carefully tucked the canvas back around the remaining powder before he left.

At the campfire he knelt beside his saddle, which rested near his bedroll, and took from his saddlebag a large loose sack which was secured at the mouth by a leather thong. He untied the thong, and spread the cloth on the ground; hundreds of dully gleaming brass shell cases descended in a loose mound. Andrews edged closer to the two men.

The lead in the blackened kettle shifted above the heat. Miller inspected the kettle, and moved it so that the heat came through more evenly. Then, with a hatchet, he opened the box of gunpowder and tore open the heavy paper that protected the black grains. Between his thumb and forefinger, he took a pinch and threw it on the fire where it blazed for an instant with a blue-white flame. Satisfied, Miller nodded, and dug again into his saddlebag; he withdrew a bulky flat object, hinged on one side, that opened to disclose a number of shallow depressions evenly spaced and connected to each other by tiny grooves. He carefully cleaned this mold with a greased rag; when Miller closed it, Andrews could see a tiny cuplike mouth at its top.

Again Miller reached into his bag and took out a large ladle. He inserted it in the now-bubbling kettle of lead, and delicately spooned the molten lead into the mouth of the bullet mold. The hot lead crackled on the cool mold; a drop spattered on Miller’s hand, which held the mold, but he did not flinch. After the mold was filled, Miller thrust it into a bucket of cold water that Charley Hoge had brought up to him; the mold hissed in the water, which bubbled in white froth. Then Miller withdrew the mold, and spilled the bullets on the cloth beside the cartridge cases.

When the pile of lead bullets was about equal in size to the pile of brass cartridges, Miller put the mold aside to cool. Quickly but carefully he examined the molded bullets; occasionally he smoothed the base of one with a small file; more rarely he tossed a defective one back into the iron kettle, which he had set back from the fire. Before he put the bullets into a new pile beside the empty brass shells, he rubbed the base of each pellet in a square of beeswax. From the square container beside the powder box, he took the tiny caps and thrust them easily into the empty shells, tamping them carefully with a small black tool.

Again from his saddlebag he drew out a narrow spoon and a crumpled wad of newspaper. With the spoon he measured a quantity of gunpowder; over the opened box of gunpowder, he held a shell casing and filled it three-quarters full of the black gunpowder. He tapped the casing sharply on the edge of the box to level the powder, and with his free hand tore a bit from the crumpled newspaper and wadded that into the shell. Finally he picked up one of the lead bullets and jammed it into the loaded shell case with the heel of his palm. Then with his strong white teeth, he crimped the edge of the brass casing where it held the butt of the bullet, and threw the bullet carelessly into yet a third pile.

For several minutes the three men watched Miller reload the shell casings. Charley Hoge watched delightedly, grinning and nodding his head at Miller’s skill; Schneider watched sleepily, indifferently, yawning now and then; Andrews watched with intent interest, trying to impress in his memory the precise nature of each of Miller’s movements.

After a while Schneider roused himself and spoke to Andrews:

“Mr. Andrews, we got work to do. Get your knives, and let’s sharpen them up.”

Andrews looked at Miller, who jerked his head in the direction of the large provisions box. In the dim light of the lantern Andrews pawed through the box; at last he found the flat leather case that Miller had got for him back in Butcher’s Crossing. He took the case back to the fire, which was now leaping in the flame of a fresh log that Charley Hoge had thrown on. He opened the case. The knives gleamed brightly in the firelight; the bone handles were clean and unscarred.

Schneider had got his knives from his saddlebag; he removed one from its case and tested its edge against his calloused thumb. He shook his head, and spat heartily on a long grayish-brown whetstone, whose center was worn away so that the surface of the stone described a long curve; with the flat of his knife he distributed the spittle evenly on the surface. Then he worked the blade on the stone in a long oval, holding the blade at a careful angle, and managing the oval movement so that the stone bit equally into each part of the blade. Andrews watched him for a few moments; then he selected a knife and tested his own blade on his thumb. The edge pressed into the soft hump of flesh, but it did not bite.

“You’ll have to sharpen them all,” Schneider said, glancing up at him; “a new knife’s got no cutting edge.”

Andrews nodded and took from his case a new whetstone; he spat on it, as he had seen Schneider do, and spread the spittle upon the surface.

“You ought to soak your stone in oil for a day or two before you use it,” Schneider said. “But I guess it don’t make no difference this time.”

Andrews began rotating the blade upon the stone; his movements were awkward, and he could not find the rhythm which would allow every part of the blade to be equally whetted.

“Here,” Schneider said, dropping his own knife and stone. “You got the blade pitched too high. You might get a sharp edge like that, but it wouldn’t last more than one or two skins. Give it to me.”