swatted the rump with his hat. The mount bolted.
The hide held, stretching, then jerked from the
carcass, coming with a quick sucking, sliding gasp.
They kept at it through most of the afternoon,
sweating over the carcasses, both of them skinning,
and butchering some meat for their own use. It was
still too early in the year, too warm, to butcher
hindquarters for the meat buyers. Later, when the
snows came and the meat would keep, they would
do this.
They took the fresh hides back to their base
camp and staked them out, stretching the skins
tightly, flesh side up. The flat ground around the
wagon and cook fire was covered with staked-out
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hides, taken the previous day. In the morning they
would gather the hides and bind them in packs and
store the packs in the wagon. The boy thought
there would be maybe two more days of hunting
here before they would have to move the camp.
For the second time that day he stood stretching,
rubbing a stiffness in his body, but feeling satisfied.
He smiled, and even Leo Cleary wasn’t watching
him to see it.
At dusk they saw the string of wagons out on the
plain, a black line creeping toward them against the
sunlight dying on the horizon.
“Hide buyers, most likely,” Leo Cleary said. He
sounded disappointed, for it could mean they
would not return to Leverette for another month.
The boy said, “Maybe a big hunting outfit.”
“Not at this time of day,” the old man said.
“They’d still have their hides drying.” He motioned
to the creek back of their camp. “Whoever it is,
they want water.”
Two riders leading the five Conestogas spurred
suddenly as they neared the camp and rode in
ahead of the six-team wagons. The boy watched
them intently. When they were almost to the camp
circle, he recognized them and swore under his
breath, though he suddenly felt self-conscious.
The Foss brothers, Clyde and Wylie, swung
down stiff legged, not waiting for an invitation, and
arched the stiffness from their backs. Without a
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141
greeting Clyde Foss’s eyes roamed leisurely over the
staked-out hides, estimating the number as he
scratched at his beard stubble. He grinned slowly,
looking at his brother.
“They must a used rocks . . . ain’t more than
forty hides here.”
Leo Cleary said, “Hello, Clyde . . . Wylie,” and
watched the surprise come over them with recognition.
Clyde said, “Damn, Leo, I didn’t see you were
here. Who’s that with you?”
“Matt Gordon’s boy,” Leo Cleary answered.
“We’re hunting together this season.”
“Just the two of you?” Wylie asked with surprise. He was a few years older than Clyde, calmer,
but looked to be his twin. They were both of them
lanky, thin through face and body, but heavy
boned.
Leo Cleary said, “I thought it was common talk
in Leverette about us being out.”
“We made up over to Caldwell this year,” Clyde
said. He looked about the camp again, amused.
“Who does the shooting?”
“I do.” The boy took a step toward Clyde Foss.
His voice was cold, distant. He was thinking of another time four years before when his dad had introduced him to the Foss brothers, the day Matt
Gordon contracted with them to pick up his hides.
“And I do skinning,” the boy added. It was like
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What are you going to do about it! the way he
said it.
Clyde laughed again. Wylie just grinned.
“So you’re Matt Gordon’s boy,” Wylie Foss said.
“We met once before.”
“We did?”
“In Leverette, four years ago.” The boy made
himself say it naturally. “A month before you met
my dad in the field and paid him for his hides with
whiskey instead of cash . . . the day before he was
trampled into the ground. . . .”
✯ ✯ ✯
The Foss brothers met his stare, and suddenly
the amusement was gone from their eyes. Clyde no
longer laughed, and Wylie’s mouth tightened.
Clyde stared at the boy and said, “If you meant
anything by that, you better watch your mouth.”
Wylie said, “We can’t stop buffalo from stampedin’.” Clyde grinned now.
“Maybe he’s drunk . . . maybe he favors his pa.”
“Take it any way you want,” the boy said. He
stood firmly with his fists clenched. “You knew better than to give him whiskey. You took advantage
of him.”
Wylie looked up at the rumbling sound of the
wagon string coming in, the ponderous creaking of
wooden frames, iron-rimmed tires grating, and the
never-changing off-key leathery rattle of the traces,
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143
then the sound of reins flicking horse hide and the
indistinguishable growls of the teamsters.
Wylie moved toward the wagons in the dimness
and shouted to the first one, “Ed . . . water down!”
pointing toward the creek.
“You bedding here?” Leo Cleary asked after him.
“Just water.”
“Moving all night?”
“We’re meeting a party on the Salt Fork . . . they
ain’t going to stay there forever.” Wylie Foss
walked after the wagons leading away their horses.
Clyde paid little attention to the wagons, only
glancing in that direction as they swung toward the
stream. Stoop shouldered, his hand curling the
brim of his sweat-stained hat, his eyes roamed
lazily over the drying hides. He rolled a cigarette,
taking his time, failing to offer tobacco to the boy.
“I guess we got room for your hides,” he said finally.
“I’m not selling.”
“We’ll load soon as we water . . . even take the
fresh ones.”
“I said I’m not selling.”
“Maybe I’m not asking.”
“There’s nothing making me sell if I don’t want
to!”
The slow smile formed on Clyde’s mouth.
“You’re a mean little fella, aren’t you?”
Clyde Foss dropped the cigarette stub and turned
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a boot on it. “There’s a bottle in my saddle pouch.”
He nodded to Leo Cleary, who was standing off
from them. “Help yourself, Leo.”
The old man hesitated.
“I said help yourself.”
Leo Cleary moved off toward the stream.
“Now, Mr. Gordon . . . how many hides you say
were still dryin’?”
“None for you.”
“Forty . . . forty-five?”
“You heard what I said.” He was standing close
to Clyde Foss, watching his face. He saw the jaw
muscles tighten and sensed Clyde’s shift of weight.
He tried to
turn, bringing up his shoulder, but it
came with pain-stabbing suddenness. Clyde’s fist
smashed against his cheek, and he stumbled off
balance.
“Forty?”
Clyde’s left hand followed around with weight
behind it, scraping his temple, staggering him.
“Forty-five?”
He waded after the boy then, clubbing at his face
and body, knocking his guard aside to land his fists,
until the boy was backed against his wagon. Then
Clyde stopped as the boy fell into the wheel spokes,
gasping, and slumped to the ground.
Clyde stood over the boy and nudged him with
his boot. “Did I hear forty or forty-five?” he said
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145
dryly. And when the boy made no answer—“Well,
it don’t matter.”
He heard the wagons coming up from the creek.
Wylie was leading the horses. “Boy went to sleep
on us, Wylie.” He grinned. “He said don’t disturb
him, just take the skins and leave the payment with
Leo.” He laughed then. And later, when the wagons pulled out, he was laughing again.
Once he heard voices, a man swearing, a neverending soft thudding against the ground, noises
above him in the wagon. But these passed, and
there was nothing.
He woke again, briefly, a piercing ringing in his
ears, and his face throbbed violently though the
pain seemed to be out from him and not within, as
if his face were bloated and would soon burst. He
tried to open his mouth, but a weight held his jaws
tight. Then wagons moving
. . . the sound of
traces . . . laughter.
It was still dark when he opened his eyes. The
noises had stopped. Something cool was on his
face. He felt it with his hand—a damp cloth. He sat
up, taking it from his face, working his jaw slowly.
The man was a blur at first . . . something reflecting in his hand. Then it was Leo Cleary, and the
something in his hand was a half-empty whiskey
bottle.
“There wasn’t anything I could do, Will.”
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“How long they been gone?”
“Near an hour. They took all of them, even the
ones staked out.” He said, “Will, there wasn’t anything I could do. . . .”
“I know,” the boy said.
“They paid for the hides with whiskey.” The boy
looked at him, surprised. He had not expected
them to pay anything. But now he saw how this
would appeal to Clyde’s sense of humor, using the
same way the hide buyer had paid his dad four
years before.
“That part of it, Leo?” The boy nodded to the
whiskey bottle in the old man’s hand.
“No, they put three five-gallon barrels in the
wagon. Remember . . . Clyde give me this.”
The boy was silent. Finally he said, “Don’t touch
those barrels, Leo.”
He sat up the remainder of the night, listening to
his thoughts. He had been afraid when Clyde Foss
was bullying him, and he was still afraid. But now
the fear was mixed with anger, because his body
ached and he could feel the loose teeth on one side
of his mouth when he tightened his jaw, and taste
the blood dry on his lips and most of all because
Clyde Foss had taken a month’s work, four hundred and eighty hides, and left three barrels of
whiskey.
Sometimes the fear was stronger than the anger.
The plain was silent and in its darkness there was
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147
nothing to hold to. He did not bother Leo Cleary.
He talked to himself and listened to the throb in his
temples and left Leo alone with the little whiskey
he still had. He wanted to cry, but he could not because he had given up the privilege by becoming a
man, even though he was still a boy. He was acutely
aware of this, and when the urge to cry welled in
him he would tighten his nerves and call himself
names until the urge passed.
Sometimes the anger was stronger than the fear,
and he would think of killing Clyde Foss. Toward
morning both the fear and the anger lessened, and
many of the things he had thought of during the
night he did not now remember. He was sure of
only one thing: He was going to get his hides back.
A way to do it would come to him. He still had his
Sharps.
He shook Leo Cleary awake and told him to
hitch the wagon.
“Where we going?” The old man was still dazed,
from sleep and whiskey.
“Hunting, Leo. Down on the Salt Fork.”
✯ ✯ ✯
Hunting was good in the Nations. The herds
would come down from Canada and the Dakotas
and winter along the Cimarron and the Salt and
even down to the Canadian. Here the herds were
big, two and three hundred grazing together, and
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sometimes you could look over the flat plains and
see thousands. A big outfit with a good hunter could
average over eighty hides a day. But, because there
were so many hunters, the herds kept on the move.
In the evening they saw the first of the buffalo
and cook fires as they drew closer in a dusk turning
to night, and the sounds of men drifted out to them
on the silent plain.
The hunters and skinners were crouched around
a poker game on a blanket, a lantern above them
on a crate. They paid little heed to the old man and
the boy, letting them prepare their supper on the
low-burning cook fire and after, when the boy
stood over them and asked questions, they answered him shortly. The game was for high stakes,
and there was a pot building. No, they hadn’t seen
the Foss brothers, and if they had, they wouldn’t
trade with them anyway. They were taking their
skins to Caldwell for top dollar.
They moved on, keeping well off from the flickering line of lights. Will Gordon would go in alone
as they neared the camps, and, if there were five
wagons in the camp, he’d approach cautiously until
he could make out the men at the fire.
From camp to camp it was the same story. Most
of the hunters had not seen the Fosses; a few had,
earlier in the day, but they could be anywhere now.
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Until finally, very late, they talked to a man who
had sold to the Foss brothers that morning.
“They even took some fresh hides,” he told them.
“Still heading west?” The boy kept his voice
even, though he felt the excitement inside of him.
“Part of them,” the hunter said. “Wylie went
back to Caldwell with three wagons, but Clyde
shoved on to meet another party up the Salt. See,
Wylie’ll come back with empty wagons, and by
that time the hunters’ll have caught up with
Clyde. You ought to find him up a ways. We’ll all
be up there soon . . . that’s where the big herds are
heading.”
They moved on all night, spelling each other on
the wagon box. Leo grumbled and said they were
crazy. The boy said little because he was thinking
of the big herds. And he was thinking of Clyde Foss
with all those hides he had to dry . . . and the plan
was forming in his mind.
Leo Cleary watched from the pines, seeing nothing, thinking of the boy who was out somewhere
in the darkness, though most of the time he
thought of whiskey, barrels of it that they had
been hauling for two days and now into the second night.
The boy was a fool. The camp they had seen at
sundown was probably just another hunter. They
all staked hides at one time or another. Seeing him
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sneaking up in the dark they could take him for a
Kiowa and cut him in two with a buffalo gun. And
even if it did turn out to be Clyde Foss, then what?
Later, the boy walked in out of the darkness and
pushed the pine branches aside and was standing
next to the old man.
“It’s Clyde, Leo.”
The old man said nothing.
“He’s got two men with him.”
“So . . . what are you going to do now?” the old
man said.
“Hunt,” the boy said. He went to his saddlebag
and drew a cap-and-ball revolver and loaded it before bedding for the night.
In the morning he took his rifles and led his horse
along the base of the ridge, through the pines that
were dense here, but scattered higher up the slope.
He would look out over the flat plain to the south
and see the small squares of canvas, very white in
the brilliant sunlight. Ahead, to the west, the ridge
dropped off into a narrow valley with timbered
hills on the other side.
The boy’s eyes searched the plain, roaming to the
white squares, Clyde’s wagons, but he went on
without hesitating until he reached the sloping finish of the ridge. Then he moved up the valley until
the plain widened again, and then he stopped to
wait. He was prepared to wait for days if necessary,
until the right time.
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From high up on the slope above, Leo Cleary
watched him. Through the morning the old man’s
eyes would drift from the boy and then off to the left,