Savage Country Page 4

  Michael was suddenly tired of talking.

  “Yes, you have surely come from another world,” the reverend doctor said, looking off.

  “I have my experience.”

  “Do you think you will be staying long?”

  “Only another day,” Michael said, and satisfied with that answer the reverend doctor drew his watch by its chain, looked down at it, and declared it was time for him to go.

  “Young man,” he said, “I have enjoyed our conversation. Feel free anytime to unburden yourself.”

  Michael turned his gaze on the man, the stub end of his cigarette smoldering between his fingers. He despised such as the reverend doctor, their worlds of righteousness and reward, punishment and damnation.

  The reverend doctor stood and stretched his limbs. His eyes were clear and untroubled. His face was smooth and peaceful. Michael opened the book he was reading and found his place. The reverend doctor drew a breath and took his leave.

  Chapter 7

  All afternoon she’d listened to the stories of her husband’s many kindnesses. Apparently, there was livestock throughout the countryside maintained on his behalf, animals these farmers and stockmen could not afford to own. They grazed his beeves in return for the calves. They pastured his milk cows for their butter, milk, and cheese. Because of him, one old woman had the finest flock of Barred Rocks that gave her so many eggs. For these, the old woman squeezed into Elizabeth’s hand a few dozen coins wrapped in a knotted cloth, and yet every condolence was a reminder of the tragedy. She wondered what weight of agony the human heart could bear. There was a sob in her throat and another and she was instantly sickened by the illness of her sorrow. She knew she had to be patient, she had to collect herself, she had to will it away.

  David must have thought about it constantly, but not once did he intimate the precariousness of their situation and not once did he take her into his confidence. He’d taken such chances with their future and she thought angrily how improvident he’d been. Then she turned her anger upon herself. She too was responsible. He was the provider and a promiser and she took everything he gave her. Whatever he did he always said he was doing it for her and how wonderful it had been to hear such expressions of love. To receive his kindness and solicitation was always a glory. His pride was in her delight, but his failings were his secrets alone. That is until now. Her dependence upon him had been complete and because of that, she would now lose the very ground in which he was interred.

  And what of these good men and women who built and maintained Meadowlark? Where would they go? What would they do? They’d finish their lives in the poorhouse living on charity. It was all a shambles. She’d end up a widow living in the old home, a madwoman spending her days rocking and sewing in someone’s attic. She steadied herself as if come from a hospital bed after a long illness. She brushed out her hair and braided it, then changed from her mourning dress into a linen shift and wool stockings and one of David’s old chambray shirts with long tails, and over this she threw on a shawl.

  When she found Michael he was sitting in her garden asleep in the shadows, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled to his elbows. The windows of the house cast bright squares of light that fell at his feet. She approached noiselessly in the gray and cold twilight and draped a blanket over him and when she sat beside him he stirred awake.

  “Did I startle you?” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. She let Sabi into her lap and took her muzzle in her hands.

  “Everyone has gone back to their homes?” he said.

  “May I get you anything?” she asked. “There’s enough food left over to feed an army.”

  He told her he was fine and then apologized for his afternoon’s absence and she said she understood. They were all strangers to him and she knew how awkward that could be.

  “This came for you,” she said, handing him the package from the druggist and another letter from Mr. Salt. He marked his place with the letter and closed the book. He thanked her and set the book and the package at his feet.

  “My busy day,” she said, her hands resting on the long-­coated dog and her eyes staring out into the dim formless evening.

  “Maybe sleep will be part of your future,” he said.

  “Nothing wakes me up more than lying down to go to sleep,” she said. “Once I close my eyes I wake out of some devil’s nightmare and live it again.” There were tears in her eyes and she began to weep quietly. “When I close my eyes he keeps coming to me.” She told him she anticipated sadness, but today she confessed there were moments when she was angry and hated David for dying and leaving her.

  He had nothing to say to this.

  “Forget my anger,” she said. There was still a lump in her throat.

  “I do not want to wear a widow’s cap and die an old lady alone in some single room. It’s a great thing to be a man. Men are born free and equal. A man’s security is in his being.”

  She turned her face toward him, the rushing thoughts filling her mind. A rising moon in the east drenched the night with its light. The yard smelled of cool smoke and animal dung. The evening was eerily still. She looked off intently before speaking again.

  “David hadn’t been well. He’d been possessed by a sadness he could not explain, but as the planned expedition south neared, his spirits began to return. He threw himself into it. Whatever may have ailed him work was his cure. His vision was to go south and hunt the buffalo and make a great fortune. He was so happy at the prospect of the hunt.”

  Her eyes were cast down and in shadow where they could not be read. There was something she wanted to ask him. He was afraid he knew what it was.

  “I was there,” he said, interrupting her. “Before the war. When a boy I rode with the regulators.”

  “What kind of country is it?”

  “Violent.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Will you take us there? I would like to go.”

  “What do you plan to do down there?”

  “I would like to employ you to carry out the hunt.”

  “How long do you plan on being out?” he said, the idea so incredible.

  “We will stay until we have enough.”

  “How much is enough?”

  “Enough.”

  She could not possibly know what she was proposing to do. His brother was one man. He rode in and he rode out and with some luck that could be done, but she was talking about staying for months south of the dead line and west of the Indian meridian and that was foolhardy.

  “Am I so funny?” she said, angry for what must be passing in his mind.

  “Perhaps less ambition and more judgment,” he said.

  “I am prepared to take the risk.”

  “Elizabeth, it’s not possible.”

  “Everything is possible.”

  “Please think what you are saying.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Do you think there will be torches to light the way?” he said. He had the idea his brother had been her moderation and not the other way around.

  “I am afraid,” she said, “and I am not ashamed of saying it. This hunt was to pay off our debts.”

  “You still have your life.”

  “Life is small property,” she said, and she looked to the stars as her fears for the future flared inside her.

  “I have been to Whitechurch,” he said.

  “Whitechurch?” she said. “You have no idea what a thief he is.” She filled with the memory of the hard boys Whitechurch brought with him and how while David lay dying they cut out the beeves, opened the gates, and started them down the road.

  “He is paid.”

  “Paid?”

  “I have purchased the paper he held.”

  “You would ride in here and take everything?”

  “It is yours. I am giving it to you.”

  “You are giving me what I own? By what right do you assume? Now I owe you when I wou
ld owe no man.”

  “Jesus, God. You do not owe me anything.”

  “You say that, but I am now in your debt. You have done me a kindness and I am grateful, but you have not done me a favor. And what of the next hard times? You will ride in from nowhere at the last second? I won’t take it,” she said. “The money is not mine. It’s yours and I will not ever be in this position again.”

  “There is no use talking. These men of yours are hearty enough, but the work requires killers and butchers. It’s dirty work and monotonous and every day it turns the land into an abattoir.”

  “Do you think the troubles are over?” she asked.

  “Troubles?”

  “With Whitechurch.”

  “Yes,” he said, but he knew that was not the case and knew that she knew it as well. Sabi lifted her head. Michael looked off in the direction she indicated. He waited to see what she saw and as if on command the red dog appeared.

  “I intend trying,” she said, “even if it costs me my life.”

  “It just might.”

  “That means what? That you do not care to consider it further?”

  “No,” he said.

  “People change their minds,” she said, her face blued by starlight. She quietly stood up and crossed her hands behind her back. “I have his maps and his journals if you are interested.”

  “If I try harder, can I change yours?” he said.

  “There are things,” she said, “I do not worry about anymore. If you change your mind, the rifles are in your brother’s gun cabinet in the room where you sleep,” and she led him to the room.

  Inside, he turned the key in the lock to the gun cabinet. The first two pieces were identical big-­bore, single-­shot rifles made by Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut. Their oil-­finished stocks and forearms were made of walnut with steel butt plates. They carried side hammers and double-­set triggers. Each was equipped with a 20× German-­made telescopic sight. They were brand new and as yet unfired.

  He selected one and half-­cocked the hammer. The lever operated down and forward opening the breech where it would receive the cartridge. He brought the lever back and up and the breechblock closed. He lifted it to his shoulder. It must’ve weighed sixteen pounds.

  As he lay in bed that night he knew she would go whether he went or not. He read again the most recent letter from Mr. Salt. There’d been a delay of several months in mounting the expedition he was to lead. Michael would have ample time, but it was more than that. His brother wanted this place to go on. She was now his only family. She’d have her excursion south. She’d get a taste of the bloody business. The journey would be its own hardship. She’d come to her senses eventually and return to Meadowlark.

  Chapter 8

  In the following days Michael and Elizabeth made their final preparations. The blue wagons David had bought for the expedition were immense vehicles with beds of steel plate and steel wheels with nine-­inch rims. Each required eight yoke of the long-­horned oxen and were capable of hauling four tons, and each towed behind it a lighter trailer. The camp wagons, half as large, also had nine-­inch steel wheels and steel boxes, and each needed four yoke of oxen. Under the rough work and dry air, the steel would hold up better than wood.

  Another large wagon was outfitted for Elizabeth, an ambulance with a half tent at the hinder part for dressing and sleeping. Inside was a light, thin mattress on a bedstead consisting of four boards that lay lengthwise on two strong trestles twenty inches high, and over the whole was stretched a large canvas sheet.

  Into the cumbrous wagons went all manner of supplies. They loaded flour, coffee, salt, and beans. There was sugar to cure buffalo hams and canvas to sew them up. There were large cheeses, pickles, sauerkraut, peaches, canned tomatoes, cucumber pickles, yeast powder, molasses, crackers, tea, and lard. There were tents; stoves; camp stools; skillets; coffeepots; cooking utensils; a wrought-­iron camp kettle large enough for boiling meat and making soup; tin cups and plates; frying and bake pans of wrought iron, the latter for baking bread and roasting coffee beans; wax candles; lanterns and kerosene; bottles of matches corked tight.

  For Aubuchon’s kitchen a wagon was fitted up with side chests, water casks, a sheet-­iron cooking stove, and a sufficient variety of cooking utensils and an assortment of canned fruit and vegetables. Bacon was packed in strong sacks a hundred pounds each and placed in the bottom of the wagons to keep it cool. The sugar was secured in gutta-­percha sacks to keep from getting wet. There were dried and compressed vegetables. They freighted enough shelled corn in sacks to feed the horses and oxen until they could become accustomed to the hard work and a grass diet.

  In another wagon, flying a red pennant, there were ten thousand primers, 440 pounds of Du Pont powder in 25-­pound cans, and 1,600 pounds of St. Louis shot-­tower lead in bars done up in 25-­pound sacks, enough for twenty-­five thousand rounds. There were two thousand shell casings and a thousand loaded cartridges. There was strychnine and arsenic.

  And still another wagon carried chicken coops with a dozen hens that laid an egg daily. There were hogs and a drove of six milk cows.

  Elizabeth told the men there’d be no gambling or whiskey, but they could have their tobacco. She told them they’d wash themselves every day and their clothes every week, and for this purpose there was an ample supply of brown soap.

  “You will make use of the washboard,” she said, “and you will work hard and there will always be plenty of food to eat whenever you are hungry.”

  She paused and then she said, with all depth of conviction, “Mark my words. The work will be productive. You will make money. For that to happen we will need to work together.” She paused. “I’ll need your prayers.”

  New men had been hired when many of David Coughlin’s chosen men decided against going without him, but still there would be Darby, the Miller brothers, Daragh, and Aubuchon, whose wages would be paid monthly, as well as the skinners who’d be paid twenty-­five cents per hide for skinning. They were still in need of haulers, a reloader, peggers, and butchers and these men they’d pick up on the trail.

  Michael looked hard at the men. In these times of crop failure there were so many encumbered with mortgages they could not pay and yet they would not agree to venture south and cross the dead line into the Comanche territory. In their stead, these were the men she hired and each of them had a story, and not a very good one. These men were landless and homeless and blown by the wind of circumstance. When they could find work they chored for twelve dollars a month and room and board. They were men of no home, no house, no place, no romance, no longing for something that never was. They would never again die for land.

  They had no idea of what lay ahead. They’d keep their rifles within reach and they were determined to never be off their guard, but they didn’t know. Whether the fault of the times or the fault of their own, he had the painful feeling he could place no reliance on them and assumed them to be no better than murderers, liars, drunks, horse thieves, robbers, failures.

  The old man who wore blue jays in his hat was hired and with him came his woman without a nose. He rode a mule and she drove a team pulling a small cart with all that they would need. It would be his job to poison every carcass and let the wolves and coyotes eat their fill and die and then he’d collect the pelts. For this purpose he carried knives and would use the bottles of strychnine crystals and Elizabeth would pay him so much per pelt. The arsenic would be used to kill the bugs that infested the hides.

  Attached to the old man’s wagon were his collection of skulls and three brass crucifixes and between two of them there hung a black scalp a full yard in length.

  Among the skinners there was a boy Willy and his life-­bitten grandfather William Penniman. The old man was showing the boy how to pack the bowl and light the pipe. The grandfather’s teeth were badly abscessed and he treated them with cotton soaked in brandy to which Elizabeth consented. The boy’s voice was high and rather shrill. He wore si
lver-­rimmed spectacles and he was nervous.

  “I know you,” Michael wanted to say, but he did not. This was the same grandfather and grandson he remembered from Whitechurch’s office who’d drawn up the debt agreement. He seemed a gentle man, with a purple nose, black hair, and blue eyes, humble, intelligent, and a bit devilish.

  The man told Michael their home was in Wisconsin and they came to Kansas to teach penmanship, but they’d fallen on hard times.

  “You have beautiful penmanship,” Michael said. “I have some of it.”

  “Yes. Yes, you,” the grandfather said, then turning to his grandson he said, “He has some of our penmanship he does, doesn’t he.”

  Two of the men were Meadows and Cochran, both in their forties and come off the railroad where they claimed to have been employed as track walkers and fired for drinking too much at the wrong time. When younger they were with the British at Lucknow during the great Indian Mutiny. Meadows had lost an eye to a powder explosion and wore a black patch over his eyehole. Cochran carried three coins that grape shot had driven deep into his external thigh. They showed him their campaign medals as proof of experience.

  Trusting they knew something about discipline, hardship, and danger, he assigned them to the butcher wagon to turn the horses and oxen that couldn’t keep up into fresh meat, to collect the game he shot for the cook pot.

  Two others were the Gough brothers, Ike and Abel. They were young men of seemingly vicious dispositions. Their faces were unwashed and unshaven and they reeked with smoke and dirt and sweat. They originated from Georgia and were bachelors and seemed to be good honest haters of most everything.

  “Who are these men?” Michael asked Elizabeth, thinking what little dependence could be placed upon them. There were so many it would be necessary to get rid of.

  “Men I have hired,” she said, and she told him she would rather trust in these men and be deceived than to wound anyone by doubting too much.

  “We will be going into the country with a band of strangers.”