“Don’t, Jake!” yelled one of the soldiers.
The service revolver in Jake’s unsteady hand jerked out of the holster.
Edward Chance’s Colt had slipped from its holster and before Jake could bring his gun up Chance fired once into the body of Jake Totter, who yelped and grunted and was spun back against the bar, rolling along the floor, hugging his right shoulder.
Chance put the weapon back into the holster.
“Get a doctor,” yelled somebody.
“No doctor closer than Fort Yates,” said one of the soldiers.
A couple of soldiers had turned Jake over.
They pulled his hands from the wound. There was a large, irregular scarlet stain on the white underwear and a powder burn.
One of the soldiers looked up at Chance. “The army will get you for this, Mister,” he said.
“Jake was gonna plug him,” said a man in overalls, peering in between a couple of ranchers.
“Get a doctor,” said somebody else.
“I ain’t gonna ride to Fort Yates,” said one of the townspeople. “Not these days I ain’t.”
Chance wondered what was wrong about riding to Fort Yates, wherever that was, these days. There were a number of things he didn’t understand about this town, the people. They seemed to be afraid, jumpy. He was out of touch.
“There ain’t no time to go to Fort Yates anyway,” said a rancher.
“Jake’s a goner,” said one of the soldiers.
“No,” said Chance. “It’s a simple wound, no complicating fracture.”
“How do you know?” asked someone.
“Because I planned it that way,” said Chance.
He moved one of the soldiers away and knelt beside Jake, unbuttoning the long underwear and shoving it away from the wound.
He touched Jake expertly, who looked at him vaguely through half-closed eyes, his head lolling to one side.
“Get a doctor,” said somebody.
Chance stood up, wearily. There was a bitter smile on his face, a tired, bitter smile.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “Put him on a table.”
After treating Totter, Edward Chance lost little time in riding from Good Promise, and as he rode he often turned his head, looking for any distant dust that might be rising from behind him, but there was only his own dust, and it settled undisturbed on the prairie in that late October afternoon.
So he was running again.
But where could he go this time?
Corporal Jake Totter, the man he had shot, would live. The wound would be painful, but was not dangerous.
It had been clearly self-defense.
Still Chance had little doubt that the army, if not the sheriff of Good Promise, would wish to apprehend him, perhaps for purposes of an inquiry, and so he rode, not pushing his horse, but steadily.
As he crossed the open prairie, staying away from the occasional roads that rutted its endless sage and buffalo grass, he paid no special attention to where he was going, or the direction. For one thing he didn’t know the country. For another he was motivated to do little more than put miles between himself and Good Promise, and to stay away from towns and farms in doing so.
Suddenly Chance reined in his horse.
Looking down, he saw a small cottonwood wand, not much more than a foot high. Tied to the tip of this wand, moving a little in the prairie wind, was a small, cloth bag.
Chance dismounted.
He jerked the small bag from the stick wand and opened it. It was filled with brown, dry flakes, and when Chance lifted it to his nose and smelled it, his guess was confirmed. Tobacco. Or at least partly tobacco.
He tied the small bag back on the cottonwood wand.
Chance got to his feet and looked out over the prairie. Of course the prairie here looked no different than it did for a hundred miles in any direction. Chance wondered how far he had ridden. How far he had come.
He wondered if the little marker, if that was what it was, had been put up by a drunken cowboy, or perhaps by a child or farmer. But what for? If someone had left extra tobacco for the next traveler, there might well have been a note, or something. At least the tobacco should have been more clearly marked.
Someone might have ridden past and not even noticed.
Vaguely, for no particular reason that he could determine, Chance thought of the mariners of ancient Greece, pouring oil and salt into the sea before a voyage-and of the Romans, giving the first drops from their goblet to the gods, the pouring of the libation.
Chance wondered why he should have thought of these things.
Then, suddenly, Edward Chance felt cold on the prairie.
I am now in another country, he said to himself. I have passed a boundary.
He looked at the little bag of tobacco.
An offering, undoubtedly.
But an offering of whom, to what gods?
Where am I, wondered Edward Chance.
You are in a country, said his own voice to him, whose gods are not your gods, whose gods you do not know, whose gods are not friendly to you.
I’ll camp, said Edward Chance to himself, and move on after dark. There’ll be a moon tonight. In a few hours I’ll be away from this place.
About a hundred yards to his right Chance saw a clump of cottonwoods, fringing a low, sloping valley between the rounded hills of the prairie. Probably a creek, he thought. Water, and a place to camp till dark. Then I’ll move on.