Friends (6 page)

"Jesse! Jesse McLeod! He was in there with me." She turned her head a little and looked at her home as the fire burst out the window we had just dragged her through. Already it was catching the overhang of the roof in front. "Oh, God, if Jesse's still in there, he's dead." She cried real quiet after she said that, and then she started coughing again.

"Jesse McLeod? Mary's father?" Clete asked. He was as taken back as I was. I figured she was maybe hit on the head or something.

"Yes, Jesse McLeod. We …" That old gal just stopped talking and watched her home bum down.

A big black scorched place on her cheek and neck was oozing clear stuff down onto the checkered tablecloth that Clete'd wrapped her in, probably to smother out the flames that'd been on her. Pain grabbed at her then and she screwed up her face worse than I could stand to watch. When I looked back, I thought for a while she had died, but after a minute her breathing told me that wasn't so.

"We got to get her in a wagon and over to Doc Plummer's fast as we can," I told Clete.

He looked at her while she was sleeping there or whatever a good long minute. Then he shook his head slow and turned them wolfish eyes on me. "She'd never make it, Willie," he said. That was the closest to crying I ever seen him.

"Yes," Nell whispered. "I'd never last the trip."

Well, if Clete Shannon wasn't the sorriest looking man I ever saw then, I don't know what. "I didn't mean-Nell, I-"

"'Tell the truth and shame the Devil,' my Elmer always said." She gripped Clete's hand real tight and said something that was hard to hear. " … figure it. I just … "

"What's that, Nell?" Clete asked after a while.

"What started it?" she said, louder than before. "What started that fire! The stove was banked off good, and it was practically new, no trouble with it at all!" Her eyes looked crazy at him, and I was glad it wasn't me she was looking to for answers.

The roof fell in about that time, and a million sparks flew up into that moonlit sky. I walked over and lay my hand on the side of the bam. It was hot, all right, but it was in no danger of catching fire, so I figured the animals in there was better off than they'd be outside. I went in and looked around and then checked the corral. Sure enough, there stood Jesse McLeod's big old chestnut standing right by the door. I penned him in the bam and then went back out and walked around the burning house, looking to see whatever I could. Well, I didn't see nothing worth talking about, but around back, where the smoke was going, I smelled it. I saw my buckskin out at the edge of the firelight and he let me catch him easy enough, though Clete's horse was still jumpy as hell.

After I tied them both in the bam beside Jesse's, I come around front to where Clete was still bent over Nell. I sat down close to them, for I couldn't see what else to do. I could of used a drink.

Nell stirred some and squeezed Clete's hand. I could hear most of what she was saying if I listened real close. "There's something you can do, if you're able to, son. Find out who did this to Jesse and me. And when you do, string him up from the highest tree you can find. Somebody must have set it, fire around both doors like that. Somebody
must
have set that fire, there's no other way. Poor Jesse … Tell Mary … "Her voice faded and I saw her go limp against Clete. He held her up while the walls fell in and after some time the fire burned lower and lower. Nell's breathing got real coarse and unregular and finally so faint that we wasn't sure exactly when it was she slipped away from us.

It's peculiar how a man can both know something and yet not know that same thing at the same time. I seen it before, of course, but that night it was as clear to me as the moon and just as natural. We sat there with Nell propped up and the fire in the house dying away to embers all night long. We knowed she was dead, both Clete and me, though neither one of us said so. And at the same time, it was like if we didn't say it, she wasn't entirely gone either. And that's how we were 'til first light.

When daylight comes on, Clete stood up and brushed off his pants. "She's dead, Willie."

"I know."

It was pitiful to see the look on his face then. "First time I laid eyes on Nell, she was pointing her old Winchester at my heart," he said, his voice full of catches and burrs from sitting there all night and not saying anything, I guess. "I slept the night in her bam, uninvited. After we talked that morning, she fed me and then threw Wilson's men off my trail. I still owe her for that."

"Some gal, was Nell," I said. "I'll miss her."

"So will I, and I'm going to pay her back by getting the bastard who did this to her. You smell the coal oil?" he ask me.

"Yes, I did. Around back."

"It smelled strong inside where I found her," he said. "You see any tracks?"

"No, it was too dark to look, but we can look now."

We walked around the north side and there was the boot tracks coming in and going back out, right up toward that notch in the hills that looks like a rifle sight. About a hundred yards out was a five gallon can on its side.

After Clete smelled it he nodded his head. "Coal oil. I'm going now."

"Where?" I ask him.

He spun around on me so fast I thought he was going to poke me. "Where!? Why, after that sonofabitch, is where, and don't you try and stop me!"

"You can't do that,"I told him. "Not now."

"What in hell do you mean, I can't? You heard what that woman asked me to do, almost with her dying breath. You think I'll walk away from that?"

I took a minute before I answered him, hoping he would cool off some, but it was plain he wasn't going to.

"Clete, I want the same thing you do. We
got
to catch that murdering bushwhacker." Then I just waited.

"No, I'm going alone, and I'm leaving right now." He strided off toward the bam and I followed him.

"Will you just stop a minute and listen to me?" I asked. He was trying to get Buckshot's reins untied and was having a time with them, it still being pretty dark in the barn.

"No!" he yelled back over his shoulder.

"And I suppose you're just going to let her lie out there for the vultures and coyotes?" That was a low thing to say to him, I know.

He run over to me and I thought for the second time that morning he was going to take me apart. But he didn't. Instead, he calmed way down. "Take Nell's body into town, to Biezmier's. And then get word to her family. After that, take-"

"You can stop giving orders any time now," I told him, "'cause I just quit working for dumbest goddamn sheriff north of Sweet-water!"

He was so surprised he didn't know what to say.

I had plenty more to say. "I was willing to help you with Wilson's bunch because I owed that to you. But I don't owe you this, lettin' you get yourself killed." I got myself settled some before I said any more. "Seems to me, the last thing Nell asked of you was to tell Mary. Have you thought about that?"

He was still lost for words.

"You're going at this all wrong," I told him plain. "Just listen to me for a minute." I sat down on the barrel there and after a time Clete leaned against a stall. "Let me start after him," I said. "I'll go slow and easy 'cause there's no way in hell I can shoot him myself. You take Nell into town, and maybe whatever you can find of Jesse, and then go out and tell Mary. You know, you might lose her if you don't."

He was quiet for a minute before he spoke. "I might at that," he said.

"Maybe you can see about Nell's being buried. Might be able to get it done by this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest-probly tomorrow would be better anyway. That way you could get yourself some sleep and us some supplies and a pack animal. And I need a better horse. That buckskin of mine's too old for much hard riding. Take the money for it-a good one, now, don't matter how much it costs-take it out of my pack at the Dakota House and bring my trail things. Speak to someone about keeping an eye on the town 'til we get back, too, maybe John Tate. I'll leave a track broad enough for a blind man to follow, and we might have him in a couple days. What do you say?"

Clete stood up straight. "Maybe we could catch him a couple of
miles
from here if we left right now," he said.

"You think he slept around here last night?" I asked him. "Just burned down a ranch with two people inside and then took his rest? Would you have, if you was him?"

Clete took a deep breath, but he didn't have to think on it very long. "No, I wouldn't. And I'd still be riding now, and probably this time tomorrow, too."

"Well, come along up the trail with me a few miles so we can both be sure I'm not dead wrong and then come back and do like I said, all right?" I didn't know for sure if he would.

"I thought the deputy was supposed to stay and take care of the town when the sheriff was out chasing killers?" he asked, and I saw his eyes soften under the brim of his hat.

"Maybe so," I answered real smart. "But I ain't the deputy of Two Scalp no more, remember?"

"You are if you're riding after that sonofabitch. Otherwise, you're just a damn vigilante, and I don't ride with vigilantes."

I had to laugh at that one. "Well, all right, have it your own way," I said. "But I'm getting on his trail now and you'll catch up to me in two or three days, right?"

"Willie, damn you," he said, but he wasn't mad no more.

We tied Nell's body in a heavy piece of canvas and put her in the wagon she kept in the bam. Clete give me his jacket and for my bedding I took a big piece of canvas from the same roll we had used for Nell.

I knowed where the trail would start, up close to where I'd found them shells before. Clete rode more than a couple miles with me, and then he saw how it was. Our man had lit out, and he was traveling light and fast-without even a pack horse.

We got to the top of a little rise and he reined Buckshot in. We sat and watched the smoke from Nell's place curl up into the blue sky.

"Willie, are you up to this?" he ask.

"Wasn't me that got shot a couple weeks ago," I told him.

"No, I meant following his trail and living rough for a while. Risking your life in this business, I guess I mean to say."

"Shoot, I'm not new to this game," I said. "Fact is, I earned my daily bread doing this very thing for a time. Not so awful long ago, either."

He looked at me real curious after I said that. "Is that so? Where'd you do that?"

"Down in Texas and the Indian Territory. Tracked into Missouri once, too."

Well, he waited for me to tell the tale, but I didn't feel in no storytelling mood just then, but after a minute I seen he felt he needed to know. I ain't real proud of it, but I worked for Pinkerton's awhile. Don't you fret over me. I know what I'm doin'-well enough, anyway, long as I don't get in a shooting match with this boy."

He took off his hat and scratched his head. "I never knew you were a Pinkerton," he said.

"Lots you don't know about me, young son," I told him.

Clete pulled his Henry from the boot and handed it to me. "Here. You may need this before I see you again."

"Yeah, maybe I can club him with it, if I get close enough" I said. "Bring me one of them scatterguns from the office when you come back."

"All right, rn do that," he said, and then turned his black around. "Watch out for yourself, old timer!" he yelled back, ridin' down that hill fast enough to break his neck. For a minute I wished he would.

By midday I got to know the tracks of that horse real good. He swung wide around Two Scalp and then headed east by north, the way I figured he would. That was the direction he'd headed before, when I'd followed him a ways out of town after he'd bushwacked Clete. In some dried mud, I found the tracks we both'd made then.

He was still traveling fast, though not as fast as he was when he lit out of Nell's like a demon out of hell. I saw where the right rear shoe of his horse had come off. And not too long after, the hoof split pretty bad, and the animal started to favor that foot. A good ten miles beyond where I'd trailed him earlier he led me to where a prairie stream flowed into a river I guessed to be the Missouri. I cursed myself then for not carrying a map. I hoped that Clete would think to bring one when he come along, which I hoped would be soon.

I guessed the Big Muddy instead of the Cheyenne, which I knowed was in these parts somewheres, because I'd heard different people speak big of the Missouri breaks. And damned if that river I sat my horse beside didn't fling its banks wilder than any I had saw before. His tracks led across the stream and come out in a rock bank on the other side, and it looked like he was going to follow the Missouri upstream for a piece.

Only his sign didn't come
out
upstream of the rocks. I searched in the first good river soil I hit, back and forth for three rods or more, but I seen no tracks at all. I went on upstream for the better part of a mile before I convinced myself he didn't go that way.

When I got back to where he'd crossed the stream, I rode in circles that I kept widening at each loop. I knowed I'd have to cross that damn freezin' river and look over there too, so I did. But seeing no tracks on the east bank either, I swum my horse back to the west side, widened out the circles some more, and rode as fast as I could. Well, it took me two hours, but I found them. Heading due west. He'd swept a good long piece of his backtrail clean with a cottonwood branch, which I found close to where the tracks started sudden.

I went back to where the hoofprints'd left me in the rocks beside the creek and dug out the pencil and the old Bible I always carry. I hated to keep tearing pages out of the back, the part called Revelations, but it was the only paper I had, and it would save Clete a lot of time if he didn't have to follow me all around searching for that boy's trail like I did.

I could of tore pages out of the front, of course-that Genesis part-but there was a lot of good stuff there I wanted to think over some more. Like always, when I had to tear a page out of the back, I read it before I wrote on it. I supposed I'd never live long enough to get to the end. Still, I hated to lose a part that I didn't get to yet. But like most of what I'd read this way before, that page made little sense to me. Maybe it suffered some from reading it out of place, I don't know. Something about locusts that looked like horses wearing crowns, and with people's faces and lion's teeth and woman's hair. I guess the horses was a whole lot different back in them days.