Far as the Eye Can See (4 page)

“Where’s he going?” I asked.

“He’ll let us know what’s up ahead a long way.”

I got back up on Cricket and Theo went to his wagon and spoke to the folks there. Theo come back on one of his horses. “There’s probably only ten or twenty braves,” he said. He talked real slow because we was in danger and he wanted to be absolutely clear about what we had to do. I thought I was done with war, but this was just like it. We was at war and moving in enemy country. And that ain’t no first impression, neither. It’s how it was the whole time I was in the big West except you never really known who the enemy was: it could be white men or any number of different kinds of Indian.

Theo rode by me, studying the ground. I said, “Mind if I tag along?”

He didn’t say yes or no. I turned Cricket and followed him. We didn’t get far. A few yards up the path by the river on our right, he stopped. He seemed to be smelling the air with that little button nose, but then he got down off his horse and walked a little further.

“No,” he said. “They didn’t come this way.” This seemed to make him happy. He swung back up on his horse and started back to the wagons. I stayed right where I was and waited for them. Before long the wagons groaned and creaked down the hill toward me. Theo was up on his wagon again and one of his oldest boys was riding on the horse.

I realized Theo wanted to follow that arm of the river as quietly as we could, but eight wagons and all them horses and mules can make a hell of a lot of noise. The path was rocky in places and those wagons sounded like some great animal was pushing a house along the ground. Even so, I moved closer and closer to the wagons. I didn’t want to be too far out there alone, and yet I found it hard to be in amongst all that noise too. It was getting dark. We’d have to stop soon.

Theo’s wife spoke low to him. He nodded, staring straight ahead. Far ahead of us was nothing I could see. The path leveled out and moved along the gash of the river that wound its way a little to the northwest. We’d have to cross it eventually. Far to our left was the other arm of the river, which run in front of what looked like a great, dark forest. We was in the middle of what folks called “breaks,” which is flat prairie marred every few hundred yards by twisted rivers and rolling hills and ravines.

When we finally stopped, on high ground about a half mile from the river, we circled the wagons and built a couple of campfires. Theo left the horses tied to the wagons, ready to roll if we had to. I tethered Cricket to one of the wagons and got my pack roll off and settled in by one of the fires.

Joe Crane and Preston, the two fellows who was traveling without a family, come along carrying their rifles and sat down next to me. Preston had a cup in his hand: I known both of them wanted some of my whiskey. I didn’t mind sharing it. They was sure a odd pair. Joe Crane was bald and round, not more than five feet tall. His face looked like it was etched in wire—thin lips, thin brows, a long skinny nose. His friend Preston was a foot taller. He had hair only on the top of his head because he shaved all around his ears and on his face so he looked like he had a black bowl on top of his head. When he wore his hat, he looked as bald as Joe Crane. Preston was broad from shoulder to hip, with runt-like bowlegs. He chewed tobacco all the time, so I would not let him put them brown stained lips on my whiskey bottle. He had to bring that little cup with him.

We sat a good distance from the fire but I could still see their faces pretty good. Preston stared at the glare of the fire. Joe Crane said, “Where’d you get that repeater?” He pointed at my rifle.

“Richmond, Virginia.”

“You a Yank?”

“I was.”

“You get that in the army?” Preston said.

“No army ever give nobody a gun like this,” I said.

They both had single-shot carbines.

“It ain’t no Spencer, is it?” Joe Crane said.

“No. This holds a lot more bullets than a Spencer.” I told him what it was.

“Evans,” he said. “I ain’t never heard of a gun like that. It just looks like a Spencer.”

Theo strolled over to us. “A gun like what?” I handed it to him and he hefted it, then aimed down the barrel. “Kind of heavy, ain’t it?”

“It’s fully loaded,” I said. “Thirty-four rounds.”

He took his time examining every part of it. I explained how it worked. He held it up before his eyes and shook his head. “If we’d of had these at Vicksburg, the Yanks would still be trying to take it.”

“And we’d still be at war,” I said. “Who could want such a thing?”

He looked at me. “Make sure you’re standing up front with me tonight if we have visitors.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You expecting trouble?” Joe Crane said.

Theo had no answer. He studied the rifle a bit more, then handed it back to me. “Handsome,” he said. He poked at the fire with a small stick he took from it, then he said, “I thought I smelled whiskey.” He was too proud to ask, so I handed him the bottle and he took a big gulp of it. He held the bottle for a while, watching the fire. “Good whiskey,” he said, and took another swig.

“Help yourself.”

“I want you to ride in front with me tomorrow,” he said.

“I’ll do that.”

“Bring that ’ere gun.” He handed the bottle back to me. “Good whiskey,” he said again. Then he stood up and walked back to his own fire.

“You think he’s expecting Indians?” Joe Crane said.

“Maybe he’s always expecting them,” I said.

Preston spit some tobacco juice. “This is the country. This is where Red Top got his start.”

“Who’s that?” I said.

“Red Top’s Sioux. The Wahpekute variety. He’s a real killer.”

I never heard of Red Top and I said so.

“He had two sets of twins,” Preston said. “Nine wives. He lived in this country and hunted every foot of it. He got along with most folks too. Some have said he was a good neighbor. Got along with white folks.” He went on and told how the cavalry attacked another tribe of Sioux and his wife was among them. They killed her.

“I heard they killed his whole family,” Joe Crane said.

“I don’t know about that,” said Preston. “But he’s been on the warpath ever since.”

“I hope it ain’t Red Top in command of that band we come on today,” Joe said.

“No, Theo thinks they was Blackfeet,” I said.

“Them Wahpekutes follow Red Top and do what he says. He’s like a general to them,” Preston said.

“Ain’t all the chiefs like generals?” I said.

“Indians don’t have no generals or commanders or nothing like that,” Preston said. “Not like you might think. They fight amongst themselves, and they follow any brave who has what they call ‘good medicine.’ Nobody’s really in charge. It’s the most democratic society you ever seen.”

Joe Crane laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Savages every one and they’re deemo-cratic. I bet Red Top’s got so many wives, those folks following him might all be his family.”

“They
are
democratic,” Preston said. He spit more juice. “I been among them. I’ve traded with them and lived with them as neighbors.”

It got quiet for a spell. I could hear the other fire crackling and folks talking low. The children was all asleep.

“Anyway,” Preston said, “they killed his wife, and Red Top went on the warpath. He started killing white folks, and when he did, he never left the mutilation to the women. He and his braves did it themselves. They killed forty or fifty whites at Fort Buford, then rode on north to Canada. He’s been raiding from there ever since. Killed hundreds in Minnesota, I heard.”

“The army will get him,” Joe Crane said.

“Red Top’s a old man now,” Preston said. “Probably in his seventies, and I heard tell that he’s blind. But nobody ever caught him.”

I picked up a small twig and stirred the fire with it. “Theo didn’t say nothing about Red Top, nor Wahpekutes.”

“I don’t want nothing to do with Blackfeet, neither,” Preston said. “They’re like the Pawnee. They don’t like nobody.”

We talked like that for a while, and gradually the moon sank behind the distant trees. Joe Crane and Preston went back to their wagon, and I lay down with my head resting on my pack roll, and let the fire die. I fell asleep for a while.

It must have been near dawn when the Indians come. They was not interested in battle. Seemed like they only wanted to show how brave they was. I thought at the time maybe they was just trying to scare us away. They rode around us, yipping and cawing like hawks. Theo told all of us to hold our fire. “I’ll clobber the first man who fires his gun,” he said, and he meant it. He stood by his wagon, watching us, while the Indians danced and circled around screeching to beat all. I could hear children crying in one of the wagons. The Indians wasn’t shooting, neither. Whenever one of them felt like it, he would ride right up to where we waited for him, guns at the ready, and touch one of us on the head or shoulder with his lance. Theo still would not let us fire a shot. His woman fed sticks into the campfire at the center of camp, and all of us watched the Indians riding around us in the orange morning sun and yellow firelight. Their horses was small and lean and very quick. It looked like each pony was a part of the Indian on his back, like one brain moved both of them.

I stood next to Cricket behind Theo’s wagon, and I got hit twice on the top of the head with a Indian lance. I didn’t even see who hit me until I felt it and then I’d hear the “Yip, yip” and feel the breath of the damn horse as the brave whirled around and rode away. One kept riding up into the firelight—just a few feet from Joe Crane’s wagon—and he’d wave a long spear with a red bandana on the tip of it.

“That’s Sioux,” Theo said. “Red Top’s bunch.”

I heard him say that, and something broke down inside myself. I mean, I felt something give way in my gut. I only heard “Sioux” and “Red Top.” As that fellow with the red bandana on his lance rode up the hill toward me, I aimed my rifle and shot him in the forehead. The Indian fell off his horse like a sack of meal. The rest of them broke and run down the hill.

Theo turned to me and stared with them small black eyes.

“I got him,” I said.

“You got him, all right. You son of a bitch. Now we’re in for it.”

“You said it was Red Top. I thought the rules had changed.”

“That wasn’t Red Top, you damn fool.”

“I heard you say it.”

“Did I tell you to fire?”

“No. But you said Red Top and I figured . . .” The way he was looking at me made me stop.

He shook his head with disgust. “Well, now we’re riding into trouble.” He left me there and walked over to the fire. He threw a bearskin over the main campfire and herded all the women into the wagons. He got them to lay down as close to the floor as they could. Then he come back and got everybody in position to fight off the attack. He told me to stand in front—but not because he was mad at me. I had the Evans carbine and could lay down a pretty withering fire.

A little while later, a band of them Indians come charging up the hill, letting out that “Yip, yip” sort of war cry, but we started shooting and it looked like the noise alone driven them off. Somehow, during the confusion and all the shooting, they dragged the dead one away.

We waited a long time for them to come back, but they didn’t. I thought when the sun come up full they’d over run us, but they was gone. There wasn’t nothing there but a few pieces of feather, and a pretty big blood spore from the one I shot.

Theo got up on his wagon and started slapping the reins on the horses, and everybody followed him. He didn’t look at me. I rode Cricket up next to him like he asked me the night before, but he said nothing to me and I wasn’t gonna say I was sorry again nor nothing.

After a while Theo looked down at me sternly. “I know folks out east think what happened today was just a commonplace,” he said. “We run into a spot of trouble and handled it. A few of us, situated well on high ground, drove off some marauders and killed one of them. But the truth is, we went into Indian country and murdered a brave. That’s what we done. There ain’t no other way to look at it.”

“It’s what I done,” I said.

He didn’t bother to notice I’d spoken at all.

Chapter 2

After I killed my first Indian, Theo bade me ride in front of the lead wagon with Big Tree every day, so I guess you could say I become a part of the wagon train because I killed a man and proved I could be useful.

Theo thought it best to track north toward the Platte River and Wyoming Territory. We stopped at Fort Riley on the Smoky Hill River in Kansas, and he decided we’d wait for a few more wagons to join us. “I want to be a larger party,” he said. “We’re going up Nebraska way first, then to Wyoming. Lots of warriors between here and there.”

“I didn’t come out here to fight Indians,” I said.

“You want to go to California or Oregon, you got to fight Indians at some point along the way. You already killed one. I hate to think what you might do with that gun of yours if you was
looking
for trouble.”

We camped outside the fort, but we got to go in and buy things at the store any time we wanted. Those of us who was white anyway. Big Tree couldn’t go in there, but he had his own thing going. He never stayed in a wagon. One of the packhorses carried his lodgepoles and the skin he used to build a Indian teepee just east of where we was camped. The whole time we was there, I hardly ever seen him. I seen some of the soldiers, though. Sometimes a few of them come out and set with us around the campfires. They talked about the war and fighting Indians. “Indians ain’t like Rebs,” one of them said.