He reached into the little cove and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her whole body, light and rigid. She weighed nothing. She was just a dried shell and she had been dead in that place for years.
XXIII
On the north Texas plains - An old buffalo hunter - The millennial herds - The bonepickers - Night on the prairie - The callers - Apache ears - Elrod takes a stand - A killing - Bearing off the dead - Fort Griffin - The Beehive - A stageshow - The judge - Killing a bear - The judge speaks of old times - In preparation for the dance - The judge on war, destiny, the supremacy of man - The dancehall - The whore - The jakes and what was encountered there - Sie mussen schlafen aberIch muss tanzen.
In the late winter of eighteen seventy-eight he was on the plains of north Texas. He crossed the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River on a morning when skim ice lay along the sandy shore and he rode through a dark dwarf forest of black and twisted mesquite trees. He made his camp that night on a piece of high ground where there was a windbreak formed of a tree felled by lightning. He'd no sooner got his fire to burn than he saw across the prairie in the darkness another fire. Like his it twisted in the wind, like his it warmed one man alone.
It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground and the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the ton and hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half crazed and wallowing in the carrion.
I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not haulin a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there was eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two year ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all.
The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.
When he came upon the bonepickers he'd been riding three days in a country he'd never seen. The plains were sere and burntlooking and the small trees black and misshapen and haunted by ravens and everywhere the ragged packs of jackal wolves and the crazed and sunchalked bones of the vanished herds. He dismounted and led the horse. Here and there within the arc of ribs a few flat discs of darkened lead like old medallions of some order of the hunt. In the distance teams of oxen bore along slowly and the heavy wagons creaked dryly. Into these barrows the pickers tossed the bones, kicking down the calcined architecture, breaking apart the great frames with axes. The bones clattered in the wagons, they plowed on in a pale dust. He watched them pass, ragged, filthy, the oxen galled and mad-looking.
None spoke to him. In the distance he could see a train of wagons moving off to the northeast with great tottering loads of bones and further to the north other teams of pickers at their work.
He mounted and rode on. The bones had been gathered into windrows ten feet high and hundreds long or into great conical hills topped with the signs or brands of their owners. He overtook one of the lumbering carts, a boy riding the near wheel ox and driving with a jerkline and a jockeystick. Two youths squatting atop a mound of skulls and pelvic bones leered down at him.
Their fires dotted the plain that night and he sat with his back to the wind and drank from an army canteen and ate a handful of parched corn for his supper. All across those reaches the yammer and yap of the starving wolves relayed and to the north the silent lightning rigged a broken lyre upon the world's dark rim. The air smelled of rain but no rain fell and the creaking bone-carts passed in the night like darkened ships and he could smell the oxen and hear their breath. The sour smell of the bones was everywhere. Toward midnight a party hailed him as he squatted at his coals.
Come up, he said.
They came up out of the dark, sullen wretches dressed in skins. They carried old military guns save for one who had a buffalo rifle and they had no coats and one of them wore green hide boots peeled whole from the hocks of some animal and the toes gathered shut with leader.
Evenin stranger, called out the eldest child among them.
He looked at them. They were four and a halfgrown boy and they halted at the edge of the light and arranged themselves there.
Come up, he said.
They shuffled forward. Three of them squatted and two stood.
Where's ye outfit? said one.
He aint out for bones.
You aint got nary chew of tobacca about your clothes halve ye?
He shook his head.
Nary drink of whiskey neither I dont reckon.
He aint got no whiskey.
Where ye headed mister?
Are you headed twards Griffin?
He looked them over. I am, he said.
Goin for the whores I'll bet ye.
He aint goin for the whores.
It's full of whores, Griffin is.
Hell, he's probably been there more'n you.
You been to Griffin mister?
Not yet.
Full of whores. Full plumb up.
They say you can get clapped a day's ride out when the wind is right.
They set in a tree in front of this here place and you can look up and see their bloomers. I've counted high as eight in that tree early of a evenin. Set up there like coons and smoke cigarettes and holler down at ye.
It's set up to be the biggest town for sin in all Texas.
It's as lively a place for murders as you'd care to visit.
Scrapes with knives. About any kind of meanness you can name.
He looked at them from one to the other. He reached and took up a stick and roused the fire with it and put the stick in the flames. You all like meanness? he said.
We dont hold with it.
Like to drink whiskey?
He's just talkin. He aint no whiskey drinker.
Hell, you just now seen him drink it not a hour ago.
I seen him puke it back up too. What's them things around your neck there mister?
He pulled the aged scapular from his shirtfront and looked at it. It's ears, he said.
It's what?
Ears.
What kind of ears?
He tugged at the thong and looked down at them. They were perfectly black and hard and dry and of no shape at all.
Humans, he said. Human ears.
Aint done it, said the one with the rifle.
Dont call him a liar Elrod, he's liable to shoot ye. Let's see them things mister if you dont care.
He slipped the scapular over his head and handed it across to the boy who'd spoken. They pressed about and felt the strange dried pendants.
Niggers, aint it? they said.
Docked them niggers' ears so they'd know em when they run off.
How many is there mister?
I dont know. Used to be near a hundred.
They held the thing up and turned it in the firelight.
Nigger ears, by god.
They aint niggers.
They aint?
No.
What are they?
Injins.
&nbs
p; The hell they are.
Elrod you done been told.
How come them to be so black as that if they aint niggers.
They turned that way. They got blacker till they couldnt black no more.
Where'd you get em at?
Killed them sons of bitches. Didnt ye mister?
You been a scout on the prairies, aint ye?
I bought them ears in California off a soldier in a saloon didnt have no money to drink on.
He reached and took the scapular from them.
Shoot. I bet he's been a scout on the prairie killed ever one of them sons of bitches.
The one called Elrod followed the trophies with his chin and sniffed the air. I dont see what you want with them things, he said. I wouldnt have em.
The others looked at him uneasily.
You dont know where them ears come from. That old boy you bought em off of might of said they was injins but that dont make it so.
The man didnt answer.
Them ears could of come off of cannibals or any other kind of foreign nigger. They tell me you can buy the whole heads in New Orleans. Sailors brings em in and you can buy em for five dollars all day long them heads.
Hush Elrod.
The man sat holding the necklace in his hands. They wasnt cannibals, he said. They was Apaches. I knowed the man that docked em. Knowed him and rode with him and seen him hung.
Elrod looked at the others and grinned. Apaches, he said. I bet them old Apaches would give a watermelon a pure fit, what about you all?
The man looked up wearily. You aint callin me a liar are ye son?
I aint ye son.
How old are you?
That's some more of your business.
How old are you?
He's fifteen.
You hush your damn mouth.
He turned to the man. He dont speak for me, he said.
He's done spoke. I was fifteen year old when I was first shot.
I ain't never been shot.
You aint sixteen yet neither.
You aim to shoot me?
I aim to try to keep from it.
Come on Elrod.
You aint goin to shoot nobody. Maybe in the back or them asleep.
Elrod we're gone.
I knowed you for what you was when I seen ye.
You better go on.
Set there and talk about shootin somebody. They aint nobody done it yet.
The other four stood at the limits of the firelight. The youngest of them was casting glances out at the dark sanctuary of the prairie night.
Go on, the man said. They're waitin on ye.
He spat into the man's fire and wiped his mouth. Out on the prairie to the north a train of yoked wagons was passing and the oxen were pale and silent in the starlight and the wagons creaked faintly in the distance and a lantern with a red glass followed them out like an alien eye. This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war. His companions had started back to fetch him and perhaps this emboldened him the more and perhaps he said other things to the man for when they got to the fire the man had risen to his feet. You keep him away from me, he said. I see him back here I'll kill him.
When they had gone he built up the fire and caught the horse and took the hobbles off and tied it and saddled it and then he moved off apart and spread his blanket and lay down in the dark.
When he woke there was still no light in the east. The boy was standing by the ashes of the fire with the rifle in his hand. The horse had snuffed and now it snuffed again.
I knowed you'd be hid out, the boy called.
He pushed back the blanket and rolled onto his stomach and cocked the pistol and leveled it at the sky where the clustered stars were burning for eternity. He centered the foresight in the milled groove of the framestrap and holding the piece so he swung it through the dark of the trees with both hands to the darker shape of the visitor.
I'm right here, he said.
The boy swung with the rifle and fired.
You wouldnt of lived anyway, the man said.
It was gray dawn when the others came up. They had no horses. They led the halfgrown boy to where the dead youth was lying on his back with his hands composed upon his chest.
We dont want no trouble mister. We just want to take him with us.
Take him.
I knowed we'd bury him on this prairie.
They come out here from Kentucky mister. This tyke and his brother. His momma and daddy both dead. His grandaddy was killed by a lunatic and buried in the woods like a dog. He's never knowed good fortune in his life and now he aint got a soul in this world.
Randall you take a good look at the man that has made you a orphan.
The orphan in his large clothes holding the old musket with the mended stock stared at him woodenly. He was maybe twelve years old and he looked not so much dullwitted as insane. Two of the others were going through the dead boy's pockets.
Where's his rifle at mister?
The man stood with his hand on his belt. He nodded to where the rifle stood against a tree.
They brought it over and presented it to the brother. It was a Sharp's fifty calibre and holding it and the musket he stood inanely armed, his eyes skittering.
One of the older boys handed him the dead boy's hat and then he turned to the man. He give forty dollars for that rifle in Little Rock. You can buy em in Griffin for ten. They aint worth nothin. Randall, are you ready to go?
He did not assist as a bearer for he was too small. When they set out across the prairie with his brother's body carried up on their shoulders he followed behind carrying the musket and the dead boy's rifle and the dead boy's hat. The man watched them go. Out there was nothing. They were simply bearing the body off over the bonestrewn waste toward a naked horizon. The orphan turned once to look back at him and then he hurried to catch up.
In the afternoon he rode through the McKenzie crossing of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River and he and the horse walked side by side down the twilight toward the town where in the long red dusk and in the darkness the random aggregate of the lamps formed slowly a false shore of hospice cradled on the low plain before them. They passed enormous ricks of bones, colossal dikes composed of horned skulls and the crescent ribs like old ivory bows heaped in the aftermath of some legendary battle, great levees of them curving away over the plain into the night.
They entered the town in a light rain falling. The horse nickered and snuffed shyly at the hocks of the other animals standing at stall before the lamplit bagnios they passed. Fiddle-music issued into the solitary mud street and lean dogs crossed before them from shadow to shadow. At the end of the town he led the horse to a rail and tied it among others and stepped up the low wooden stairs into the dim light that fell from the doorway there. He looked back a last time at the street and at the random windowlights let into the darkness and at the last pale light in the west and the low dark hills around. Then he pushed open the door and entered.
A dimly seething rabble had coagulated within. As if the raw board structure erected for their containment occupied some ultimate sink into which they had gravitated from off the surrounding flatlands. An old man in a tyrolean costume was shuffling among the rough tables with his hat outheld while a little girl in a smock cranked a barrel organ and a bear in a crinoline twirled strangely upon a board stage defined by a row of tallow candles that dripped and sputtered in their pools of grease.
He made his way through the crowd to the bar where several men in gaitered shirts were drawing beer or pouring whiskey. Young boys worked behind them fetching crates of bottles and racks of glasses steaming from the scullery to the rear. The bar was covered with zinc and he placed his elbows upon it and spun a silver coin before him and slapped it flat.
Speak or forever, said the barman.
A whiskey.
Whiskey it is. He set up a glass and uncorked a bottle and poured perhaps half a gill and took the coin.
He stood looking at the whiskey. T
hen he took his hat off and placed it on the bar and took up the glass and drank it very deliberately and set the empty glass down again. He wiped his mouth and turned around and placed his elbows on the bar behind him.
Watching him across the layered smoke in the yellow light was the judge.
He was sitting at one of the tables. He wore a round hat with a narrow brim and he was among every kind of man, herder and bullwhacker and drover and freighter and miner and hunter and soldier and pedlar and gambler and drifter and drunkard and thief and he was among the dregs of the earth in beggary a thousand years and he was among the scapegrace scions of eastern dynasties and in all that motley assemblage he sat by them and yet alone as if he were some other sort of man entire and he seemed little changed or none in all these years.
He turned away from those eyes and stood looking down at the empty tumbler between his fists. When he looked up the barman was watching him. He raised his forefinger and the barman brought the whiskey.
He paid, he lifted the glass and drank. There was a mirror along the backbar but it held only smoke and phantoms. The barrel organ was groaning and creaking and the bear with tongue aloll was revolving heavily on the boards.
When he turned the judge had risen and was speaking with other men. The showman made his way through the throng shaking the coins in his hat. Garishly clad whores were going out through a door at the rear of the premises and he watched them and he watched the bear and when he looked back across the room the judge was not there. The showman seemed to be in altercation with the men standing at the table. Another man rose. The showman gestured with his hat. One of them pointed toward the bar. He shook his head. Their voices were incoherent in the din. On the boards the bear was dancing for all that his heart was worth and the girl cranked the organ handle and the shadow of the act which the candlelight constructed upon the wall might have gone begging for referents in any daylight world. When he looked back the showman had donned the hat and he stood with his hands on his hips. One of the men had drawn a longbarreled cavalry pistol from his belt. He turned and leveled the pistol toward the stage.
Some dove for the floor, some reached for their own arms. The owner of the bear stood like a pitchman at a shooting galery. The shot was thunderous and in the afterclap all sound in that room ceased. The bear had been shot through the midsection. He let out a low moan and he began to dance faster, dancing in silence save for the slap of his great footpads on the planks. Blood was running down his groin. The little girl strapped into the barrel organ stood frozen, the crank at rest on the upswing. The man with the pistol fired again and the pistol bucked and roared and the black smoke rolled and the bear groaned and began to reel drunkenly. He was holding his chest and a thin foam of blood swung from his jaw and he began to totter and to cry like a child and he took a few last steps, dancing, and crashed to the boards.