The fording of the Milk was a good deal easier than the Marias – no fool and blind white horse to save from drowning. Once across, they shucked their wet clothes and hung them in the willows, built a fire and breakfasted buck naked while their duds dried. Finding themselves north of the Milk seemed to lighten the boys’ mood, they were now beyond reach of the Choteau County sheriff, the United States Marshals, the army, or Indian agents. On the Canadian side of the line there were no meddlesome lawmen of any stripe whatsoever.
And the health of their spirits might have owed something to the fact that all trace of the horse thieves was now well and truly gone. Pure relief, the Englishman’s boy guessed, noting how the knot in his own gut had loosened over the last day when it became clear they had lost them. Biggity talk about what you were aiming to do to Indians was one thing, the prospect of delivering on it was another. There were some hard cases in this crowd, but even hard cases got second thoughts when their mouths fell shut long enough to allow a spell for thinking.
Hardwick let them linger over morning coffee; with the trail dissolved into thin air there was no point in hurry. The thieves might have skedaddled in any direction – maybe they’d even doubled back south. But Hardwick had decided to gamble that they were bound for the Cypress Hills, fifty miles to the north, prime hunting grounds for the tribes. And not just for the Cree, the Saulteaux, the Assiniboine, and the Blackfoot who gathered there to dance, to hunt, to make war, and to chop lodgepole pine, the slim, arrow-straight, nearly branchless trees prized for teepee and travois poles. Because also folded in among the hills were bands of Métis who had given the montagne de cyprès their name, buffalo hunters who supplied the Hudson’s Bay Company with the pemmican to feed its factors and servants in the Northwest. And traders, too. Only the year before, according to Vogle, that Bay bastard, Isaac Cowie, had packed out seven hundred and fifty grizzly pelts and fifteen hundred elk skins despite the Company’s monopoly being broken by independents trading the bad whisky the Company refused to sell. The thought of whisky of any kind, bad or good, and the prospect of a long swallow had helped cheer the boys remarkable, too.
Nigh ten o’clock, Hardwick ordered them into the saddle and they forsook the camp by the Milk, winding up and over and through gaunt, brooding hoodoos the colour of cured hides, riding out onto a rippling plain contoured like a washboard. The heat of the previous day had eased a little, but the wind had struck up fierce, gusty. As far as the eye could see, the short curly grass writhed and shuddered under the invisible lash of the shrilling wind. The Englishman’s boy rode leaning into it, like a man shouldering through swinging doors, his bowler hat battened down tight around his ears. Handfuls of sparse, sombre cloud sped overhead, spinning shadows on the glowing, rolling grass like coins tossed carelessly across the lamplit baize of a saloon table. An occasional faint spit of rain accompanied the dark shadow, then suddenly disappeared, the sun pouncing back on them, quick and hotblooded as a cougar.
To the left of the Englishman’s boy, Scotty rode with a stiff smile pasted on his gob. At first the boy had wondered if the wind wasn’t twisting up the corners of the Scotchman’s lips, curling them like the tips of a waxed moustache; now he figured it had nothing to do with the wind but with the Scotchman’s mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched him talking to himself, a brief mumble of words, a puppet-like bobbing and wagging of the head on the stem of the thin neck signalling agreement with his own propositions. And each time he ceased jabbering, his smile was stretched even wider across his face until the Englishman’s boy feared the mouth might rip at the corners; each time the smile seemed frozen a little harder and more unlikely ever to thaw, a toothy grimace as strange as that fixed, blue, teary shine in the Scotchman’s eyes.
The boy bounced his heels on the horse’s ribs, left the Scotchman making faces and muttering to himself, and jogged ahead to the trio of James Hughes, Charlie Harper, and Ed Grace. Better to get shut of that lame duck while the getting was good. He’d had enough of lame ducks to last a lifetime. First, the Englishman Dawe, who’d sickened and died on him, then sorry-ass Hank, now this crazy-grinning Scotchman. He had enough to look out for, looking out for his own skin.
Hughes, Harper, and Grace rode hunched in their wildly flapping coats, Hughes shouting over the roar of the wind. “Hardwick’ll land us at Farwell’s post. If he starts flying his kite there, he’ll soon forget about them horse-snatchers. We’ll do a few days’ drinking, turn around and head for home. That’s all she wrote.”
“The hell he’ll forget,” said Harper. “Those Arapaho took him captive in Wyoming put a burr under old Tom’s foreskin when it comes to Indians. I don’t know what they done to him, but he’s got one bad hate on for our red brothers. You heard what happened in the Sweet Grass Hills last April. He scattered lead on a bunch of Assiniboine riding in under a trade flag. That’s bad business, shooting the customers.”
The Englishman’s boy gave close attention to Ed Grace. Grace was a quiet man who didn’t bandy opinions, but now he seemed to be studying some thought, slowly shifting a wad of tobacco from cheek to cheek. A tall, raw-boned man with a strong hooked nose, hooded eyes, and a balding head, Ed Grace was nicknamed the Eagle. He shifted in the saddle, crooked his neck, and squirted a stream of tobacco juice over his shoulder, downwind. “Beating up on Assiniboines is one thing,” he offered in a hoarse voice. “Assiniboines are a scrubby, poor sort of Indian. Short on horses and nothing but sawed-off Hudson’s Bay flintlocks for guns. But I figure there’ll be Blackfoot camped in Cypress. There were last year. Caught sixty Cree braves collecting spruce gum and rubbed them all out, didn’t spare a one. The Blackfoot got no shortage of horseflesh – even the squaws and brats ride fine ponies – and they own plenty of rifles, good rifles, Henrys and needle-guns. The Spitzee Cavalry didn’t do anything to keep repeaters out of their hands and they aren’t the least bit shy about turning them on whites. The dose of the smallpox they caught lately didn’t do anything for their sweet temper or our popularity. I don’t care how much that burr under Hardwick’s foreskin is bothering him – he better not go taking any potshots at Blackfoot or some of our hair will be dangling from their belts.”
The Englishman’s boy could see what Grace had said didn’t go down well – with Hughes in particular. He wasn’t about to swallow it. “Ain’t no goddamn Indians ever going to get the drop on old Tom,” said Hughes. “He’s a foxy one. No Indian’s going to outfox the fox.”
“Anyway, we got Eagle here to protect us from the Blackfoot,” said Harper, giggling through his bad teeth, the fool. “This side of the line Queen Victoria owns the Indians. Eagle being a Canadian, it’s up to him to be hospitable, see that we Yankee boys have a good time and don’t have our hair troubled by no British Indians. Eagle’s the Queen’s rep’sentative. Ain’t you, Eagle?”
“God only knows what I am,” said Grace, “but I assure you I’m not happy. Not with this situation. I ask myself why in hell I’m here. There’s no percentage in it and that’s the truth.”
“Why, you’re here for friendship’s sake, ain’t you?” Hughes hollered into the wind. “We all of us seen the winter out together, didn’t we? We all been good partners, thick and thin. Friends is duty-bound to stand by friends, ain’t they?”
“Who was Farmer Hank’s friend?” asked Grace. “Who stood by him?”
Hughes and Harper threw one another troubled glances.
“Not me,” the Eagle answered, “and not you either.” He pointed to the Englishman’s boy. “Ask him if he’s riding with us for friendship’s sake.”
Hughes and Harper swivelled in their saddles and squinted hard at the Englishman’s boy as if they were seeing him for the first time, as if they were striving to plumb his heart, his mind, his soul for some dark motive. Grace had to smile, seeing the way the Englishman’s boy stared back at them, like a stray alley cat outfacing a pair of mangy, slat-ribbed dogs.
Harper said, “The kid’s riding with us because he had to pull foot from Benton after he stabbed that hotel man. He don’t want to face the music. He scared off out of there.”
“That’s right,” said Grace. “Fear landed him here. Same as us. Only we’re along because it’s Hardwick’s got us shitting yellow.”
“Hell,” said Hughes peevishly, “I don’t appreciate that remark. Why you go putting such a complexion on things?”
“I’m not putting on a complexion. Complexion’s there. I know it for a fact and you know it for a fact,” said Grace. “We’re all of us afraid to cross the Green River Renegade.”
“He don’t like that name,” warned Hughes.
“Why?” said Grace. “He worked hard to earn it.”
Harper had been working on his righteous indignation until he’d puffed up like a tom turkey. “I ain’t afraid of Tom Hardwick. Any man says I am is a liar.”
“That’s right, he ain’t,” confirmed Hughes. “And I’m a gent cut from the same rough cloth. Jimmy Hughes ain’t afraid of any two-legged creature walks God’s green earth. I got myself out of tight corners Tom Hardwick couldn’t have spit out of.”
“That being the case, you brave boys sure as hell don’t belong in the company of two cowards like us,” said Grace. He paused. “So why don’t you heroes piss off out of here and go pin a medal on each other.” Grace leant back in the saddle and spat over his shoulder in summation. The gesture, the tone of voice, were two slaps in the face, bald contempt on bald contempt. Hughes swore, savagely jerked the reins of his horse, the bite of the bit hooking open its mouth, flinging back its head, popping its eyes.
Grace and the Englishman’s boy kept on, didn’t bother to look back. Hughes and Harper were cursing them, the wind wiping away whole words and phrases, like a cloth smearing chalk on a slate. The Englishman’s boy strained to catch their threats. “Bastard… don’t ride away from me… you’ll answer… Jimmy Hughes… don’t forget… we’ll settle for you…”
The Eagle gave no sign he was listening, only passed a clumsy hand back and forth over his face like he was brushing off flies. “Maybe I ought to have held my peace just a little longer,” he said. “But I might have bust. Passed the worst winter of my life, shacked up with that bunch of whoreson rascals. I thought once we reached Fort Benton I’d get shut of them, and then five mile out of town those plaguy Indians scampered off with our horses. I always was a fellow scanty on luck. I got a ten-per-cent share in twenty-five-thousand-dollars’ worth of wolf pelts and you can bet how much of that I’d see if I’d told Hardwick I didn’t intend to help get the horses back.” He fell silent, absent-mindedly rummaging about in his jacket pocket as he contemplated hard luck and mischances. A piece of soiled candy came up in his fingers. “I got no use for this,” he said, turning it over and over. “Bad teeth. But a youngster likes his candy.”
He passed the sweet. The Englishman’s boy popped the smudgy peppermint in his mouth. “I ain’t no kid,” he said, sucking hard.
By early afternoon, Evans suggested they call a halt, but some time between breakfast and then Hardwick had undergone a change of plan. He had ditched the notion of leisurely travel and demanded they press forward. Evans did not argue and no one else asked for an explanation; they knew Hardwick better than to question the man’s decision. For the next five hours they pushed on, then paused to water the horses while the men ate a little biscuit and jerked meat. After twenty minutes, Hardwick signalled them to mount again, there were miles to be made before dusk fell.
As they advanced on twilight the wind died down, but heavy, grape-coloured clouds were louring in the north, gloomily dragging toward them. They and the wolfers met on the spine of a ridge in the last vestiges of tinted light, the world displayed behind smoked glass. A slow, steady rain began and with it night descended, a swift black sword. The men dismounted and the few with waterproofs wrestled into them, the rest crouched miserably under tented coats and blankets, passing a glum hour watching water puddle around their boots.
As abruptly as the rain had begun, it ended. Men, soaked and chilled to the bone, threw off soggy blankets, groaning as they shook and stamped free joints which had locked while they hunkered under cover. They hobbled about in the darkness, doing what needed to be done, unsaddling and picketing the horses, spreading bedrolls, breaking out biscuits and dried meat, dim wraiths, shadows of routine. Soft, impersonal curses, the clink of metal buckles and the creak of leather, someone’s dry, hacking cough were the only sounds. A few damp buffalo-chip fires began to fume and stink. Tonight Hardwick had relented and said they might smoke and build fires – if they could find anything dry enough to burn. A long, cold night threatened. Grace and the Englishman’s boy were muffled up in saddle blankets still warm with the body heat of horses. They sat before a small fire started from a bundle of kindling the Eagle packed for just such emergencies. The boy was toasting a stack of damp buffalo chips on a stick, drying them so they would burn. That was Grace’s idea. He had a handle on things, a practical turn of mind. Some of the pissers and moaners would rather stay wet and complain than do something to make themselves as comfortable as they could. The two of them were getting on though, doing just fine.
Or perhaps he should say the three of them because the Scotchman had crept up to the cheer of their fire like a woebegone dog. There he sat hugging his knees, three or four feet off where the flames licked at the night, his face wavering in and out of the black in tune with the beating heart of the fire. He wasn’t talking any more, to himself or anybody else for that matter, but he was still smiling, although the corners of the smile appeared to have wilted and run a mite in the rain.
“I don’t know what the point was – hurrying us all along,” said the Englishman’s boy. “It didn’t get us nowhere in particular, except under a cloudburst.”
Grace sat wrapped in his horse blanket, the firelight applying a yellow varnish to his face. His bald head was tied up in a big blue-and-white spotted bandanna. Earlier that day the wind had snatched off his hat, blown it to Kingdom Come like a tumbleweed, no point in even giving chase. Simply gone. The Englishman’s boy had taken steps to prevent a similar misfortune; his derby was lashed down to his head with a rawhide thong passed through the hat brim and knotted under his chin. He looked a bit like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“I figure this is Hardwick’s reasoning,” said Grace as he rolled a cigarette. “He wanted to pull within ten mile of Cypress before making camp. That gives us a short morning’s ride to the hills. In full light, nobody can take us by surprise, ambush us. We can put out scouts in the timber so we don’t stir up a hive of Blackfoot on our way to Farwell’s post. We went fast today so we can feel our way tomorrow. Not a bad plan.” He lit his cigarette on a brand from the fire and passed the makings to the boy. “Hardwick’s a funny case. He can think things through good enough – to a point. He’s a cool customer – to a point. But he’s like the man who woke up in a house-fire and started to climb into his pants. When they were halfway up he began to feel the heat and decided to hell with the pants, it’s time to run. In the heat of the moment, Hardwick sometimes trips, pants around his ankles.”
“You think that’ll happen?” the Englishman’s boy asked.
“Anybody’s guess. But I’ll tell you one thing, son. If it gets hot, nobody in this bunch is going to pull my fat out of the fire.”
For the first time, the Englishman’s boy thought the wary tilt of the Scotchman’s head might mean he was listening. The kid shook a buffalo flop off the stick into the fire. “So what you going to do about it?”
“Do?” said Grace. “Nothing to do.”
The boy was staring into the fire, the fitful convulsing of flames. “You stand by me – I’ll stand by you.”
Grace stretched his wet boots out to the fire, a faint steam rose from the leather. “I don’t know you but a little,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Fine,” said the kid. “I ain’t begging.”
“You’re right,” said Grace. “I was raised better than that. Who am I to cold-shoulder a courtesy?”
Nothing more was said. Their two faces danced in the glare of the fire. The Scotchman’s mouth grinned maniacally out of the blackness, receded, grinned again. The boy felt a sense of occasion, his father had been a ceremonious man, gravely polite in a backwoods fashion. The kid laid aside his stick, and with his blanket hanging off his shoulders like a cape, shyly held out his hand. Grace shook it three times, emphatically. The boy returned to his place and began to vigorously thrust more buffalo chips into the blaze.