“Good shot,” G.T. said.
“Uh-oh, Jake’s kilt!” Lester Miller said. “That’s going to make Ronnie and Tommy awful mad.”
But Jake Miller wasn’t kilt. His eyes were wide open and he was still mad. He even started to try and pull one of Sheriff Baldy’s pistols out of its holster, but the sheriff came back to consciousness just in time to roll away from him.
“Help me, boys—drag me off, I’m faint,” the sheriff said. G.T. and I caught his arms and tried to drag him well out of the way of Jake Miller, who was crawling after us, still hoping to grab a pistol, the fire of hatred in his eyes.
“Get back! How come you ain’t kilt?” G.T. asked.
I would have liked an answer to that question too, since I had shot Jake point-blank, right in the chest. If that wasn’t enough to kill a man, what did it take?
“You pups—I aim to cut your throats, and yours too, Baldy,” Jake Miller said, and then he began to curse; but his cursing wasn’t quite as vigorous as it had been when the sheriff was handcuffing him, so at least my bullet had taken a little bit of the ginger out of him.
Just then Uncle Seth loped up—he had finally caught the skittish horse.
“My goodness, can’t nobody but me do anything right?” he asked.
He jumped down, grabbed Jake Miller by the hair, and slammed his head into the ground a time or two, real hard—it was enough to take the fight out of Jake, at least for a while.
“The sheriff fainted and while he was out Jake grabbed my rifle barrel and I shot him,” I said, in a rush. “I don’t know why he won’t die.”
“Because he don’t want to, son,” Uncle Seth said. “Folks are tougher than they look, and quite a few are unwilling to die unless they just can’t get around it.”
“But I shot him point-blank,” I said. I was shocked that the man wasn’t dead.
“So I see,” Uncle Seth said, opening Jake Miller’s shirt. There was a hole in his chest but not a very big one. Uncle Seth rolled him over and pulled up his shirt—there was a bigger hole in his back, where the bullet came out, but it still wasn’t the size hole I was expecting to see.
“The bullet went right through—it didn’t hit nothing vital,” Uncle Seth said. “If you’re going to make a habit of shooting at these surly outlaws, then you need to learn where their vitals are.”
“What’s a vital?” G.T. asked.
“Heart, lungs, stomach, gut,” Uncle Seth said. “If I had a tablet I could draw you a picture.” Since he didn’t have a tablet he rolled Jake Miller over on his back and proceeded to give us a quick lesson, pointing with his finger at the places we ought to aim for.
“Now, the heart’s here, and the lungs here, and the stomach down here, and the liver and the kidneys kind of tucked around in this area,” he said.
I felt pretty embarrassed by my failure to kill Jake.
“He had hold of my gun barrel,” I pointed out. “I had no chance to aim.”
“That’s all right, you’ll know better next time,” Uncle Seth said.
Sheriff Baldy was sitting up, but he looked dazed and his face had no color.
“I picked a bad time to faint, I guess,” he said.
“You’ve lost some blood,” Uncle Seth said, politely. “You boys help me hoist Jake up on this horse—we need to take him home to the hangman.”
Jake’s eyes were wide open. He was staring at the sky; but he was breathing. Loading him onto the horse was like loading a big sack of oats. Once we had him tied on we helped Lester Miller climb up behind him.
I thought Sheriff Baldy was going to faint again, but he made a great effort and managed to claw his way up into the saddle.
Uncle Seth seemed to be in a high good humor—of course, it was a fine sunny day.
“Now there’s a lesson in this, Jake,” he said.
Jake Miller did not reply, but Uncle Seth didn’t let that fact discourage him.
“The lesson is simple,” Uncle Seth went on. “If you’re planning an ambush you need to clear the bears out of the way first. A horse will shy at a bear nearly every time, especially if they come upon them sudden.”
“I will sit astride you, as soon as I’m able, and cut your damn old Yankee throat,” Jake Miller said.
“I’m feared he’ll get loose—he said he’d cut our throats too,” G.T. whispered.
I was a little worried on that score myself. Jake Miller seemed like the kind of man who might find a way to get loose, but as it turned out, we didn’t need to worry. The circuit judge happened to be in Boone’s Lick and he got Jake Miller right on the docket. A week later Jake was hung—some thought his brothers would mount a rescue mission, but they didn’t. Ma wouldn’t allow any of us to go to Boone’s Lick on hanging day—not me, not G.T., not Neva.
“Bad elements are apt to show up on hanging day,” she said.
We spent the time making lye soap. I think Cut-Nose Jones is still in jail.
11
UNCLE Seth had coached us carefully about what to say to Ma about the gunfight, and also what not to say, but the coaching didn’t work. Ma was not about to let one of her boys have a secret—I don’t think she even allowed Uncle Seth very many secrets. She soon wormed the whole story out of G.T.—she knew the wild bandit Jake Miller had actually had his hand on my rifle barrel, a moment I’ll never forget, Jake with his wild, mean eyes looking at me.
“The fact is you almost got killed, and your brother too,” Ma said. “And by a handcuffed man with a broken leg.”
“Almost,” I said. We were at what Ma called her “laundry,” a little creek that spurted into the Missouri about a hundred yards from our cabin. We also got our water from the little creek. Ma had been after Pa and Uncle Seth to dig a well, sometime when Pa was home, but he rarely was home, and showed no interest in well digging when he did show up.
G.T. always skipped out on laundry days. He and Uncle Seth had taken our best wagon into Boone’s Lick to the blacksmith, in order to have a few things fixed before our big trip.
“I made this lye soap too strong,” Ma said. “It’s itching me.”
Something was itching me too: the need to talk about the Stumptown raid. We had been given firm instructions not to get killed and then had almost got killed.
“I stood too close to Jake,” I said. “If I’d stood farther away he could never have grabbed my gun.”
Ma was standing in the creek, the brown water washing around her legs.
“Life’s full of ‘almost’s,’ Shay,” she said. “Lots of things ‘almost’ happen—some good, some bad. You almost got killed, but you didn’t. Don’t be studying it too close. It’s over—they hung the man. Just be smarter next time.”
I wasn’t so sure I would be smarter next time. Mostly my life happened slow, but what had occurred on the ridge above Stumptown that day hadn’t happened slow. I was just now remembering certain things about it, though the fight had occurred nearly two weeks back. The night before last I remembered that Jake Miller wore a gold ring on one finger of the hand he grabbed my gun with—the fact that he wore a ring just popped into my mind as I lay on my pallet, trying to get to sleep. Maybe Jake had taken the gold ring off some of the travelers he had robbed; or maybe it was his wedding band. I saw the ring when he had his hand on my rifle barrel, but it didn’t register on me for two weeks, which was a peculiar thing.
“I’ve had plenty of ‘almost’s’ in my life,” Ma said. “So has my sister Patty and so has Rosie McGee.”
“Tell me about them,” I said. I didn’t know much about Ma’s family, just that they came from Kentucky.
Ma stopped rubbing soap into one of Uncle Seth’s old shirts and looked at me, with her head tilted to one side a little.
“I oughtn’t to be yarning with you,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because you couldn’t keep a secret if you tried,” she said. “Neva or Seth or Bill Hickok could worm all you know out of you in nothing flat.”
That wa
s true, I guess. I usually just come out with whatever I knew, hoping somebody would tell me some interesting secrets in return.
I guess Ma decided she didn’t much care if I told her secrets, because she smiled a little and told me a whopper of a secret.
“One ‘almost’ was that I almost married your uncle Seth and not your pa,” she said. “And while that was happening, your pa was courting your aunt Patty, who turned him down and married your uncle Joe, who got killed in a train wreck when you were just a baby.”
Ma looked at me solemnly for a moment, to see what I made of all that—then she laughed her good deep laugh and went back to soaping the shirt.
I was flabbergasted, of course. What Ma told me that morning gave me enough to think about for the next several years. Just hearing it was not the same as understanding it, either—but Ma wasn’t through. I guess she decided I was old enough to know all the family history that I had been too young to handle, before.
“My mother was married twice,” Ma said. “Her first husband was a drunk who fell off a barn and broke his neck. His name was McGee, and they had one child, a girl named Rosie.”
At first what Ma said didn’t mean anything. I knew it was possible for a woman to marry twice, if one husband died or got killed in the war. Sometimes when Pa was up in the Indian country I wondered what Ma would do for a husband if he got killed. I even had the secret hope that if Pa did get killed Ma would marry Uncle Seth. Since Uncle Seth already lived with us he would know how to take care of us in case something happened to Pa.
The point about the baby girl that Granma had had with Mr. McGee, the drunk, didn’t register at first. But Ma was still looking at me funny, as if she were waiting for me to solve a riddle or a puzzle or something.
“McGee. Rosie. Does that ring any bells?” she asked, with mischief in her look. Then the truth came to me like a clap of thunder: Ma was talking about the Rosie McGee who lived over the saloon and smoked cheroots at night. Ma was trying to tell me that Rosie was kin to us.
“That’s right, Rosie’s my half sister—she’s your aunt,” Ma said.
I don’t remember much more about laundry day—my thoughts were in too much confusion. I helped Ma drape the clothes on the clothesline, not even noticing when they flapped against me and got me wet. Uncle Seth had almost married Ma. Pa had tried to marry my aunt Patty; and Rosie McGee was my aunt. The more I turned these matters over and over in my mind, the more I realized that the main puzzle had to do with Ma and Pa and Uncle Seth. If Aunt Patty, the older sister, had turned Pa down, why did Ma pick him? After all, she already had Uncle Seth, who was probably just as partial to her then as he was now.
Ma could see that I was wrestling with a lot of complicated thoughts: it just seemed to amuse her. I tried to work up a set of questions I could ask her, but Ma put me off with a look. I had the feeling that she had said what she wanted to say about these matters and had no intention of saying another word—or at least not a word that made sense to a person my age, who didn’t know much.
Next day when she and Neva and I were in the garden, digging spuds and putting them in a sack, several crows came flapping over the barn—they soon flew on toward the river, cawing as they went.
Ma pitched a potato into the sack and gave me a little smile.
“I pity the fate of the carrion crow,” she said. “Those black birds mate for life.”
“Who cares what a crow does?” Neva said. A little later she took herself off to Boone’s Lick. The news was that Wild Bill Hickok was back in town.
12
WOMEN will even sniff bread,” Uncle Seth informed me. We were out hunting Little Nicky, the biting mule. He had had a wild, biting fit during the night; in order to get clear of him Old Sam and the other mules had kicked down the pen and went running loose. We had got back six of them, but Little Nicky and a mule named Henry Clay were still missing. They had gone in the general direction of Stumptown, which led Uncle Seth to speculate that Little Nicky might have gone back to try and bite the bear.
“Why do women sniff bread?” I asked. It was something I often noticed Ma doing, when she made bread.
“To see if it’s fresh, I expect,” Uncle Seth said. “I have never sniffed bread in my life, which is the difference between me and a woman.
“And when a woman comes to decide who to marry it comes down to the same test,” he added.
“You mean they sniff men?” I asked. I could not imagine what it would feel like to have a woman sniff me.
“Yes, to determine if the fellow’s fresh,” Uncle Seth said. “I guess I don’t smell fresh, which is why I’m a bachelor still.”
“That’s pretty peculiar,” I said.
“Oh no, I expect it’s a fine method,” Uncle Seth said, trying to make out Little Nicky’s tracks on the trail.
“Women don’t know why they choose who they choose,” he went on. “If they say otherwise it’s a lie. A good fresh scent’s probably the best thing they got to go on.”
I was wanting to tell him—since we were on the subject—that I knew he had once courted Ma, but seeing how partial he was to her still, I wasn’t sure how he’d take it.
“Damn a mule that will wander,” he said. “I could be in Boone’s Lick, playing cards and winning money, if I wasn’t halfway to Stumptown, looking for a goddamn ungrateful biting mule.”
We had just heard the news that Sheriff Baldy Stone had quit his job. That bullet that bounced off his saddle and hit him in the stomach had done more damage than it seemed at the time. Sheriff Baldy had so much trouble just holding down his food that he lacked the energy to go out and arrest bandits. I thought it was a pity. I liked Sheriff Baldy, although his untimely faint had nearly got me killed.
G.T. was on the mule hunt too, only he was lagging so far behind he couldn’t take part in the conversation.
“Maybe they’ll make Mr. Hickok sheriff,” I said.
“Oh no, Bill couldn’t be bothered to keep a jail,” Uncle Seth said. “Anyway, he’s a half criminal himself, which is what you find in a good many of these sheriffs.
“I expect they’d offer the job to me, if I wasn’t leaving,” he went on. “It’s bad luck for the town that Mary Margaret’s got her mind set on this expedition. She’s determined to find Dick if it kills us—which it might.”
“I expect Pa will be glad to see us,” I said. I didn’t want to think about us all getting killed—in my thinking it would just be a nice fall trip, with lots of buffalo for us to chase.
Uncle Seth gave me a strange look, when I suggested that Pa would be glad to see us.
“Shay, you have not been around your father enough to figure out the first thing about him,” Uncle Seth said. “The truth is he won’t be glad to see us—it’s more likely to make him boiling mad.”
“Why?” I asked. “We’re his family.”
“That’s why!” Uncle Seth said. “One reason Dick’s a wagoner is because he’s got no tolerance for family life. Your pa ain’t sociable—at least not with white people. He didn’t leave me behind because I’m a little gimpy—that was just his excuse. He never wanted me hauling with him anyway. Too much company.”
“If he don’t like white people, who does he like?” I asked.
“Cheyenne Indians, maybe a few Sioux,” Uncle Seth said. “I have no doubt he’s got a plump little squaw to cook him dog stew and keep him warm when it’s chilly.”
It seemed I was learning something new about my family almost every day now. I always thought we were just an ordinary family—and maybe we were; but then, maybe we weren’t.
“If Pa doesn’t want us to come, then why are we going?” I asked.
Uncle Seth never answered that question. We weren’t far from where we’d seen the bear, a fact which made G.T. nervous. He came thundering up to join us about that time, but what really distracted Uncle Seth was something he noticed on the ground.
“Somebody’s found our mules,” he said. He dismounted and walked around on the
trail for a few minutes, studying the tracks. There were a lot of tracks, but they were just a blur to me and even more of a blur to G.T.
“Well, Little Nicky ain’t traveling alone anymore, and neither is Henry Clay,” Uncle Seth said, after a thorough examination of the trail. “That damn Newt Tebbit must have come upon them and decided he’d help himself to two fine mules—the damn scoundrel.
“I should have whacked him harder, when I whacked him,” he went on, swinging back on his horse.
“What makes you think it’s him—it could be anybody,” G.T. said.
“I was not born a fool, like you, G.T.,” Uncle Seth said. “I noticed when we were following the Tebbits that Newt’s horse was shod. Few people around here can afford to keep their horses shod, though it was common until the war. Bill Hickok keeps his shod, but then he’s in a profession that might require rapid flight and a surefooted horse. But Bill ain’t a mule thief. Newt Tebbit’s our mule thief.”
“I guess we’ll have to get up another posse,” G.T. said.
“Having to educate you is a heavy burden, G.T.,” Uncle Seth said. “We are the posse, this time. Be sure there’s a cartridge in your gun.”
Then he went loping off. Soon we were past Stumptown and were in the wooded country where the Millers were said to live. Uncle Seth didn’t study the tracks much—he just kept going.
“I wish I’d brought a biscuit,” G.T. said.
We were well into the wooded country before Uncle Seth slowed down.
“I believe some of the Tebbits are married to some of the Millers, and vice versa,” Uncle Seth said. “I expect we’ll find the bunch of them in camp together. I feel confident we can lick a barnful of Tebbits, but I’m a little worried about Ronnie Miller, who’s said to be a good shot. He’s the one whose horse flipped, remember?”