Crossing Purgatory (10 page)

Their dugout, an opening roughly a dozen feet across, extended into the hillside the depth of two men laid hat to boot. The ceiling height would have forced a tall man to hunch, but would prove adequate for the Rench family. Jesse Rench had already walled up a crude stone fireplace at the far end and sunk a stovepipe chimney through the hilltop. They'd extended the front of the dugout four additional feet from the face of the hill with a wall made of sod strips piled one upon another, grass-side down. He'd framed out a single window, one and a half by two feet, and a few men who had wandered over from the camp helped to build up the wall around the frame of the window and the door and across the face of the carved-out hill. Thompson noticed that Joseph and the boy were no longer over by the dog, which had begun to bloat and to go ripe in the heat of the day.

“Had someone better see to that dog?” he asked Jesse Rench.

“I tolt that boy take care of his own. But he done went off with that new chum.”

“Where to?”

Rench pointed to the rise upon which the dugout was carved. Thompson hiked up to the crest and spotted the boys a quarter-mile away standing beside a copse of bushy oak growing around what he suspected was a dried waterhole. He started for them and as he approached to within a hundred yards he saw Joseph take an object in hand and point to the ground. A puff of smoke, followed a fraction of a second later by the crack of the pistol. Again. By the time Thompson reached them, Joseph had emptied the six barrels of the Allen pocket pistol into a rattlesnake that lay writhing in the deadfall of the oak. The snake's head was gone but its body still twitched and contorted, the rattles on its tail sounding a warning. The Rench boy excitedly danced around the snake, kicking dried leaves and dirt over it. “You done him good,” he said to Joseph. “You done him real good.”

Thompson recognized the pistol. “I'd forgotten that piece,” he said to Joseph. “Why not give it to me. Head back to camp. Your mother will worry about you if she heard the shots.”

“She's not my mother,” Joseph said. “And I don't rightly care if she worries or not.”

“Not your mother?” Thompson asked, attempting to mask his surprise.

“Step-mother,” Joseph said. “Step-mother, half-sister.”

That helped explain so much, Thompson thought. His lack of deep mourning for Martha, his indifference toward Hanna and her suffering. Thompson had wondered at Hanna's age, she seemed more youthful both in appearance and demeanor to Obadiah.

“The only one blood-to-blood with me is gone,” Joseph added.

“He was a good man,” Thompson said, extending his hand for the pistol.

Joseph tucked the gun back into his trousers belt. “My father refused to shoot it,” he said to Thompson. “Tried talking reason to them.”

“Hard to go against your convictions, sometimes,” Thompson said. “Your father was a man of firm beliefs.”

“My father was a coward,” Joseph said.

Thompson placed a hand on Joseph's shoulder. “He did his best.”

Joseph shook free of Thompson's hand. “How would you know? You weren't there. Not until too late.” He turned toward the wagons with the boy tagging behind.

Stung, Thompson watched him go. So, there it was. The unwashed truth. Thompson had not been there with the Lights when they needed him. He'd not been with Rachel and Matthew and Daniel when they'd needed him. What atonement possible? How to respond to Joseph's indictment? The accusation in Rachel's anguished stare? Was it redemption Thompson sought, or punishment?

He walked back up the rise and stood looking over the Rench claim. What promise did the squatter see in these few acres? A spring that would provide water for his family, but not for crops; a small garden planted in turnips and potatoes that might or might not yield before winter set in; a few plowed acres that could not be sown until next season; a wretched, dark cave dug into the side of a hill. Obviously, Jesse possessed little aptitude for farming, his tools crude and the plot of land he'd chosen poor even for the buffalo grass. No livestock, little in the way of stores. Yet here they were, clinging to the sliver of possibility. What must have been his life before to uproot his family to this?

10

O
nce past the middle crossing of the Arkansas, traffic on the trail dwindled. Most of the large trade caravans turned from the mountain branch for the dry route cutoff to Santa Fe. Four wagons remained in Upperdine's guide other than his own: the Lights', a merchant, and two miners from Pennsylvania who had heard vague rumors of precious metals to be prospected in the Rocky Mountains.

The merchant, a family man from Ohio, left a prosperous trade for the opportunity at more. Thomas Pauperbaugh owned a two-story brick house in Oberlin, and rumor had it he was active in the Underground Railroad. Pauperbaugh was a hatter and a milliner, and John Upperdine had expressed to Thompson on more than one occasion his reservation about the applicability of such a trade in the wilderness, but Mr. Pauperbaugh explained that he meant at first to trade solely in men's headwear, not just for the gentleman but for the rougher sort as well.

The prospectors, Rice and Perkins, were coarse and hardy but inexperienced in travel. Their wagons seemed always to want repair, and on occasion they lagged behind not from laziness but rather from inexperience with their teams, even after weeks on the trail. They were Welshmen and conversed among themselves in their strange tongue, reverting to accented English with the others.

Midafternoon they came upon Chouteau's Island and Upperdine guided the wagons to sand hills overlooking the river. A larger company set out from Kentucky already had encamped nearby and gave Upperdine's small group a sense of security and companionship. They visited between camps, and Thompson couldn't help but recall memories of his father's estate in Kentucky, and by extension his own ambitions, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Toward sunset, he walked to the bluff and watched the Arkansas wash over the wasted barrens. The water ran brown and sluggish, wide and uninviting. Shallow but sandy, it looked a quagmire for lumbering stock.

Full dark, the companies disbursed to their respective camping areas. The night watch set, Thompson rested cross-legged by Upperdine's fire. His father's lush Kentucky, this stark plain, a journey between two worlds. What was before, what is now, just as sharp a contrast, he thought.

“Those men, that fell upon the Lights,” Thompson said.

Upperdine understood. “Border ruffians, from Missouri.”

“Why?”

“See the abolitionists as a threat. The large farms need labor. Slave labor.”

“Still, a severe judgment to inflict on the innocent.”

“Heard of Reverend Brown?”

“No.”

“Abolitionist, strong in his views as well. Preaches that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Those are hard words. Hard actions on both sides.”

“They are,” Thompson said. “A harsh theology. But still you stood with these people.”

“This country tends to make equals of us all. But my sympathy is with my oath. I agreed to pilot these people and I kept my word.”

“That seems the honorable thing.”

“I don't know about honor. That's something for grander men than me to claim. I just kept my word.”

Night came on, and just as Thompson was about to retire to his bedroll, a sound came out of the darkness. Below, the silent river began to churn, a tumult of gurgling water and low-pitched animal mumblings.

“The river on the rise?” Thompson wondered aloud.

“No,” Upperdine answered. “Buffalo crossing.”

The commotion lasted into the night. Thompson walked to the crest of a sand hill, and peered into the murk but saw nothing except dark shadows the size of small wagons moving through frothing water that sparkled in the refracted moonlight. He returned to his bedroll and drifted off to the discordant melody of splashing hooves and sharp grunting, on and on.

The following morning, Thompson approached the bluff and looked out upon countless thousands of buffalo grazing on the far bank. The herd stretched from the water's edge across the bottomland and up the low hills in the middle distance and over them out of sight. Animals rolled in the wallows, dust hovered above the herd like a talcum mist. Bulls pawed the earth and butted heads. A great caterwaul of lowing and snorting rose from the body and carried across the prairie. A chorus that mesmerized him: the sight and sound, the sheer numbers kept him rooted.

“Join us?” Upperdine approached from camp. “Hunting parties forming up.”

They set forth a straightforward plan. A group of riders from the larger company set out earlier that morning, crossing the ford and turning immediately southeast, away from the herd. They currently were circling back from far side of the hill opposite the ford, intent upon breaking out a small group of animals and stampeding them back across the river to the northern bank where the others waited. Thompson took Joseph with him and together with Upperdine they established position on a steep bank adjacent to the ford. “Beasts won't be able to scale here, should be safe from trample,” Upperdine explained. Presently they noted a general commotion spreading among the near animals, and within minutes the riders crested the far ridge, scores of buffalo ahead of them, making for the river.

“Take a cow or a yearling,” Upperdine said. “Nearing the rut. A bull this time of year is strong-tasting and tough. Fighting and mating sheds all their fat.”

Joseph removed the Allen pistol from his belt. “I need rounds,” he said, holding the pistol toward Thompson. Thompson shook his head. “That will never do.” He passed his rifle to Joseph and showed him how to load and to ready. “Tight against your shoulder socket, cheek to stock. Too loose, you dislocate an arm, break a jaw.”

The first of the buffalo approached the near bank.

“Just sight down the barrel,” Thompson instructed. “We're on high ground so aim a touch below where you want the ball to strike.”

“Below the hump, mid-shoulder,” Upperdine directed.

Thompson pointed out a young cow climbing from the shore onto the loose sand of the bank. “There.”

Joseph took aim and fired, staggering back a half-step with the kick of the discharge. Thompson saw the thump of impact in the animal's midsection, a bit off the mark. It stumbled, and then walked on, but slowly. Thompson took the rifle and reloaded and handed it back to Joseph. “Once again, should do it.”

Joseph took the rifle and raised it, but rather than dispatch the wounded animal, he swung to a large bull lumbering up the bank and fired on it. The ball struck the bull's foreleg, and it buckled but righted itself and turned back toward the river in a grotesque, three-legged hobble. Thompson grabbed the rifle from Joseph, again reloaded, and killed the young cow. His blood pumped in his temples, and then slowed. Joseph reached for the rifle but Thompson refused. “Meat enough,” he said.

Now he noticed the others firing as well. Dozens of men, scores of buffalo. All about, the sharp cracking of gunfire, the explosive plumes from the muskets, the acrid scent of powder, men shooting indiscriminately as quickly as they could reload. Many wounded animals moved haltingly back across the river to rejoin the larger herd. From Upperdine's company, the prospectors and the merchant were not accomplished marksmen. The merchant fired his small-caliber belt revolver, a woefully inadequate weapon for killing buffalo, and he seemed intent on hitting as many of the creatures as he could, with little concern whether any of them actually fell. He shot at one and then turned his revolver on another. Downed animals were strewn across the ford, a low moaning, water running red, blood soaking into sand, more animals than an army could consume.

Thompson regarded Upperdine with bewilderment. Upperdine set the butt of his rifle onto the ground and gripped the barrel with two hands, rested against it. “I've seen it before, many times” he said. “Something about the animals brings out the blood lust in even the meekest of men.”

Thompson and Upperdine took the tongue and the hump ribs from the yearling and divided it between themselves and the Lights while the others continued sporadically shooting at the cripples. Thompson noted Joseph walking amidst the carnage, bending low to a downed buffalo, looking into its eye, poking, moving on.

That evening Thompson and Upperdine roasted the tongue and ate while listening to the wolves at the carcasses out beyond the reach of the campfire. With only five wagons, they could not form a proper corral, so they had arranged them in a semi-circle and picketed the livestock up tight to the wagons and closed the circle with scrub brush from the riverbank. It would not do to have the wolves harassing the oxen and mules. And Upperdine feared the downed bison might attract a plains grizzly in due time.

“Seems a waste, leaving all that meat,” Thompson said.

“Spoil long before we could finish it,” Upperdine said, cutting a slice from the tongue. “No time to jerk.” They sat by the fire and let it die down. Upperdine stood, stretched, and left for his wagon.

The next day, early, Upperdine led his party from the bluffs overlooking the ford of the Arkansas and rejoined the mountain route. The larger emigrant company was laying over for an additional day to graze the stock and to skin out a few of the buffalo for their hides, but Upperdine wished to push on. The season was growing late and they remained two weeks out from Bent's Fort.

“Robes is no good this time of year, anyhows,” he'd explained when Joseph expressed disappointment at not taking a hide. “Need their full winter coats.”

Fortified by meat and by rest, they made decent time over firm trail. But the oxen began to show the wear of travel. Having lost weight, they tired sooner than during earlier stages of their journey. Two days past Chouteau's Landing, they had to camp dry because the seasonal spring that Upperdine counted on for water had suffered from heat and drought and proved too alkaline for consumption.