Sudden Country (17 page)

"The man in the stable."

"What do you know about a man in the stable?"

The harsh question told me I had made a mistake. However, having learned that the way to get on with her was to tell the truth at all times, I explained. "I went out and spoke with him when you were asleep before. I know him. He is a policeman from the Sioux reservation at Standing Rock. He represents no harm to you."

"You're right on that. I mean to trade him for my husband Charlie and our three boys."

"They're dead"

"Blackfeet took them for ransom last month," she said dreamily. "They'll admire to have a strong young Sioux buck to hoist and skin slow. I'll deliver him and some powder and balls and something else and they'll give me back Charlie and Calvin and George and little Charlie Junior."

It occurred to me that at no time was she entirely lucid. In addition to believing that the occupants of the graves outside were still alive and captives of the long-departed

Blackfeet, she had obliterated more than thirty years from her memory, imagining that the tragedy had taken place only weeks before. She would require cautious handling. Said I, "He is worth nothing to them dead. He has not been fed nor his wound seen to."

"I ain't got time to patch up no redskin, and if I had the time I wouldn't have the victuals to spare. There's no corner markets in the Black Hills."

"I cannot answer for the state of your provisions. As for time, it is one thing I have in plenty." This was the first lie I had told her. I was in a fever to know what had become of Mr. Knox, Judge Blod, and the rest.

She cackled. "You can't see to yourself, leave off anyone else."

"That is my worry, and one less for you if I die in the attempt. But if the Indian dies, so too will your hopes of ever seeing your family again. We can share rations," I added.

She chewed over the proposition; or rather, made the motion of doing so, for I had already determined she had no teeth. The chair creaked as she rocked. Then she stopped and pushed herself to her feet. "I'd best get to stewing."

"I will gather wood." I got out of bed, more carefully than the first time. The pain in my head had subsided to a noisy throbbing. I noticed upon standing that this time she had left me my boots, while relieving me of the revolver and paring knife.

Evidently my actions betrayed this discovery, for she said, "I put them away for you. I don't guess you need them to gather wood." Cackling gently, she began stirring one of her pots, the contents of which–the rat or lizard soup, I assumed–appeared to have gone viscous.

I left the dugout without comment. Plainly, I had not yet found her depth.

The bright sunshine felt good after the chill damp of that man-made cave, but it did little for my spirits. One at least of my party was dead, and possibly all of them, while I lived; a boy who had thought himself a man but who when it came to a reckoning had proved to be something considerably less. I knew not where I was in that wild land, and had I known, possessed no idea of what I could do to correct the situation. Less understandably, I felt low for having used an old woman's delusions to my credit. Certainly it was not my fault that her family was dead, but it seemed poor coin for her having saved my life.

For all that, escape was very much in my thoughts. Uncertainty as to how much Mad Alice had suspected of my motives in securing the knife and pistol did not stay me from heading straight for the stable and making off with the drayhorse. Thought of Corporal Panther did. To leave now would be to sentence him to death by starvation or from the evils of an uncared-for wound.

I wanted to go into the stable immediately, but was aware that the dugout's door flap was ajar and that the old woman was watching me. Instead I went through the open end of a lean-to made from the same kind of poles that supported the stable roof, braced against the entrance to the dugout, and picked up an armload of wood, chopped in lengths of about eighteen inches and well seasoned. This I carried inside and deposited under the smokehole, where I commenced to lay a fire. Mad Alice meanwhile had abandoned her post at the door to carve long strips off a portion of salted meat from the barrel, which she then transferred to the pot along with water from a hide bag of Indian manufacture. That done, she set aside the pot, produced flint and steel, and using dead grass for kindling started a flame burning inside the circle of rocks. With the aid of an ironwood trivet held together with pegs of the same sturdy material, she set the pot's contents cooking. Before long the familiar indescribable aroma filled the dugout.

By the time she tasted and pronounced the stew ready, I was famished, but asked permission to take a bowl to Corporal Panther.

"Suit yourself," she said. "There's one way in and out of the stable and I'll be watching it with my musket."

This was as near as she came to voicing a threat. I said, "I shall need bandaging material and alcohol to cleanse his wound."

"Curtain cloth's in there." She indicated the chest of drawers. "Charlie and me don't hold with spirits."

"Soap and water, then."

She reached inside one of the pockets of her hide jacket and handed me a shapeless white lump made from pure fat with something added to give it a gritty texture. "Fill the bag after. Crick's behind the stable."

I felt her watching me on my way to Panther's berth and so did not tarry by the little graveyard. There was a thing about it that bothered me, but which had nothing to do with the terrible circumstances that had created it.

The Indian was in a bad way. There were flies on his closed lashes and when I opened the stable door I smelled corruption. The flies buzzed around when he opened his eyes.

"I smell food." His voice was so hoarse it was almost nonexistent.

Arranging my articles on the packed earth floor, I knelt and supported the back of his head with one hand while placing the spoon to his lips. He accepted its contents as eagerly as I had earlier. After several more swallows, he said, "I thought I'd been deserted."

"The old woman caught me. I couldn't get the knife."

"She is half tough."

"More than half. I must get to your wound."

"I'm in no position to stop you." He flexed his bound hands.

I spread his coat. The blood from the deep laceration in his side had crusted black, making it difficult to tell where the flesh left off and his breechclout began. I tore a piece from the curtain material I had brought, splashed water onto it, and rubbed it with soap until I had a semblance of lather.

"I haven't alcohol or peroxide," I warned him. "It means scrubbing."

"Talk to me."

I knew his meaning. The dried blood was stubborn and he took in his breath. "It smells of infection," I said. "I can clean away the worst and patch you up, but you must see a doctor soon."

"Talk about something else." He was gnawing his lip.

"I have been wondering about something you said, about Mad Alice's family. You said her husband and three sons were killed."

"That's the story I heard."

"She confirmed it. She won't admit they're dead, but the number is the same, four. Why are there five graves?"

"Are there five?"

I nodded. The last of the old blood had come away. The flesh around the wound had a reddish tinge much brighter than its natural pigment, a bad sign. I tore the rest of the material into long strips.

"Maybe she filled one herself," he said. "She is no poor hand with that museum piece."

"I doubt she would have buried a slain enemy next to her family." I wound the first of the strips around his abdomen and fixed a patch against the torn flesh.

"Maybe they're all enemies. Maybe she buried her family somewhere else."

"Why bury an enemy at all?"

"This is Mad Alice we're discussing," he reminded me. "Who is to say what goes on in her head?"

I tied off the bandage. "There seems to be a good deal of sanity in her madness."

"I would not know. All I know of her is what you can see strapped belly-down over the saddle of that monster. That's how she brought me here."

As if understanding that it had been referred to, the ancient drayhorse stamped a hoof and snuffled. Thus far it had kept its distance, possibly because of the stenches of blood and infection still in the air. Horses shy from mortality.

"It is of no consequence," I said. "I shall keep trying for that knife. We must be away from here."

"Don't take too long about it, David."

It was the first time he had addressed me by name. That, and the look in his frank dark eyes there in the striped sunlight, caused me to assure him that I would not.

As I left the stable, carrying the bowl of stew and the water bag and soap, I felt something in my pocket. I balanced the bowl in the crook of my left arm and drew out the leathern pouch. With just the Confederate note inside, it had lain flat against my hip, and so the old woman had overlooked it when she took away my other contraband a second time. I did not move from the spot. Standing facing the Black Hills at that angle, holding the map that Orrin Peckler had made, and for which Jotham Flynn had killed him, I stared from one to the other and then at the five graves clustered between the stable and the dugout.

And then I knew.

FREEDOM, AFTER
A FASHION

T
here was nothing I could do, of course, about my newfound knowledge, even had I wanted to. Mad Alice was watching my movements, and anyway my only wish was to be away from there with Panther and on the trail of what remained of my party.

As I descended the slope behind the stable that led to a rusty creek, my thoughts turned to the practical. I could easily overpower the old woman, but the fact that she was old, and consequently brittle, forced me to consider that course of action a last resort. With my friends' plight weighing upon my conscience I scarcely needed to add the serious injury or death of an elderly widow whose addled condition was her only crime. My own brain was not much better, owing both to the complexity of my situation and to the thudding in my head. My emotions were as numb as my hands where the icy mountain water flowed over them on its way into the hide bag.

They remained so for the better part of that day. I ate, napped, listened to Mad Alice's ravings about nonexistent Indians, fetched wood, napped, delivered straw to the old horse in the stable, fed Panther from my own rations and inspected his bandages, napped some more. I could not get enough sleep. It was as if all the hours I had lost so far in my great adventure had been waiting in ambush, and yet the more I slept the more exhausted I felt. I know now that I was suffering from deep shock. It is no small thing for a boy to face events that make grown men throw up their hands and turn to the wall. Of all the things that happened to me and about me during that unforgettable season, the days and nights I spent with the old woman seem the most like a childhood dream.

Dusk of that day brought opportunity. After freshening the stew with shavings from the salted meat, Mad Alice laid down her knife to return the meat to its barrel and left the knife lying atop the cracked chest of drawers. I tried not to stare at it as she stirred the stew. Had she forgotten to put it away, or was it part of some test? The swiftness with which she had gone from unconscious fixture to armed sentinel the previous night had left me wondering about that episode as well; there was no fathoming the workings of her uncategorizable mind. If I seized the instrument, would she take the action for a threat, snatch up the musket that was never more than an arm's length away, and make a stew of me also? The phrase, occurring to me merely as a colorful play on words, set me thinking wildly. How much, after all, did I know about her nature? I had heard hideous stories about what happened to people alone and starving in the wilderness. Was the meat in the barrel actually venison, or the grisly fate of some innocent wayfarer who like Panther had wandered unwittingly inside range of her weapon? Had she indeed taken me in and begun fattening me for reasons other than Christian? My emotions, thawing, were uncoiling themselves in confusion. I realized suddenly that the old woman was staring at me.

"You fixing to grow sprouts or what? I'll need wood."

I made my decision. The curtain material I had not used in dressing Panther's wound remained on the chest of drawers where I had left it, a fortunate turn. "The Indian's bandages will require changing by now. May I do that first?"