Shortly past midafternoon, the sun broke through the slatelike clouds, and the wind died. Steam rose from the mud through which their horses stumbled, and the wet heat stifled the men who sat lethargically on their saddles. On their right were still visible the low-lying trees and bushes that lined the banks of the Smoky Hill River. For several miles they had been off the trail, cutting across the flat country toward Butcher’s Crossing.
“Just a few more miles,” Miller said. “We’ll be there before dark.”
Charley Hoge, sitting behind Miller, eased his buttocks on the bony rump of the horse; his good hand was hooked into Miller’s belt, and the stump of his right wrist hung loosely at his side. He looked across at Andrews, who rode abreast of Miller; but there was no recognition in his eyes. His lips moved silently, and every now and then his head bobbed quickly, nervously, as if he responded to something that the others did not hear.
A little more than an hour later they were in sight of the humped bank of the narrow stream that cut across the road to Butcher’s Crossing. Miller dug his heels into his horse’s sides; the horse jumped forward, trotted for a few moments, and then settled into its usual slow gait. Andrews raised himself in his saddle, but he could not see the town above the high banks of the stream. Where they rode now, the rain had not fallen; and the dust of the road, stirred by the slow shuffle of their horses’ hooves, rose about them and clung to their damp clothing, and streaked their faces where the sweat ran.
They came up the road over the hump of river bank, and Andrews got a quick glimpse of Butcher’s Crossing before they descended into the narrow gulley where the shallow stream ran. It was little fuller than it had been last fall; the water that trickled along its bed was a thick, muddy brown. The men let their horses halt in the middle and drink of the muddy water before they urged them on.
They passed on their left the clump of cottonwoods, scrawny and bare in new leafage; again, Andrews strained his eyes eastward toward Butcher’s Crossing. In the late afternoon sun the buildings were ruddy where they were not sharply cast in shadow. A lone horse grazed between themselves and the town; though several hundred yards distant, it raised its head at their approach and trotted away in a short burst of speed.
“Let’s turn in here for a minute,” Miller said, and jerked his head in the direction of the wagon-track road to their right. “We got things to talk over with McDonald.”
“What?” Andrews said. “What do we need to talk to him about?”
“The hides, boy, the hides,” Miller said impatiently. “We still got better’n three thousand hides waiting for us where we left them.”
“Of course,” Andrews said. “For a minute I forgot.”
He turned his horse and rode beside Miller upon the twin tracks of earth worn bare by passing wagons. Here and there in the wagon tracks, small tufts of new grass sprouted and spread to the level stretch of grass that covered the prairie.
“Looks like McDonald had a good winter,” Miller said. “Look at them hides.”
Andrews looked up. Bales of buffalo hides were piled about the tiny shack that served McDonald as an office, so that as the men rode up they could see only a small section of the warped roof. The bales spread out from the immediate area of the shack and lay irregularly about the edges of the fenced brining pits. Scattered among the bales were a dozen or more wagons; some, upright, blistered and warped in the heat; their wheels were sunk in the earth and grass grew green and strong above their rims. Others were overturned, the metal bands about the spoked wheels showing brilliant spots of rust in the afternoon sun.
Andrews turned to Miller and started to speak, but the expression on Miller’s face stayed him. Beneath the black curly beard, Miller’s mouth was loose with puzzlement; his large eyes narrowed as they surveyed the scene.
“Something’s wrong here,” he said, and dismounted from his horse, leaving Charley Hoge seated slackly behind the saddle.
Andrews got off his horse and followed Miller as he threaded his way among the bales of hides toward McDonald’s shack.
The door of the shack was loose on its rusted hinges. Miller pushed it open and the two men went inside. Papers lay scattered on the floor, opened ledgers had spilled from untidy piles, and the chair behind McDonald’s desk was overturned. Andrews stooped and picked up a sheet of paper from the floor; the writing had been washed away, but the print of a heel mark still showed upon it. He picked up another, and another; all showed the ravages of neglect and weather.
“Looks like Mr. McDonald hasn’t been here for some time,” Andrews said.
For several moments Miller looked somberly about the room. “Come on,” he said abruptly, and turned and clumped across the floor, his feet grinding into the scattered papers. Andrews followed him outside. The men mounted their horses and rode away from the shack toward Butcher’s Crossing.
The single street that bisected the group of shacks and buildings that made up the town was nearly deserted. From the blacksmith shop on their right came the slow light clank of metal striking metal; in the light shadows of the open shelter there was the vague slow movement of a man’s body. On the left, set back from the road, was the large sleeping house that lodged many of the hunters during their brief stays in town; the muslin covering of one of the high windows was torn, and it sagged outward and moved sluggishly in the light hot breeze. Andrews turned his head. In the dimness of the livery stable two horses drowsed, standing upright over empty feed troughs. As they passed Jackson’s Saloon, two men, who had been sitting on the long bench beside the doorway of the saloon, got slowly up and walked to the edge of the board walk and watched the three men on their two horses. Miller looked closely at the men and then shook his head at Andrews.
“Looks like everybody’s asleep or dead,” he said. “I don’t even recognize them two.”
They stopped their horses in front of Butcher’s Hotel, and wrapped their reins loosely around the hitching post set several yards away from the walk in front of the building. Before they went inside, they loosened the cinches under the bellies of their horses and untied their bedrolls from behind their saddles. During all this Charley Hoge sat motionless on the rump of Miller’s horse. Miller tapped him on the knee and Charley Hoge turned dully.
“Get down, Charley,” Miller said. “We’re here.”
Charley Hoge did not move; Miller grasped his arm and, gently, half pulled him down to the ground. With Charley Hoge walking unsteadily between them, Andrews and Miller went into the hotel.
The wide lobby was almost completely bare; two straight chairs, one of them with a splintered back, stood together against a far wall; a fine patina of dust covered the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. As they walked across to the counter of the desk clerk, their steps left distinct prints on the wood floor.
In the dimness of the enclosing counter an aging man dressed in rough work clothing dozed in a straight chair tilted back against a bare desk. Miller slapped his palm hard on the surface of the counter. The man’s rasping breath caught sharply, his mouth closed, and the chair came forward; for an instant he glowered sightlessly; then he blinked. He got up and came unsteadily to the counter, yawning and scratching at the gray stubble around his chin.
“What can I do for you?” he mumbled, and yawned again.
“We want two rooms,” Miller said evenly, and threw his bedroll across the counter; dust exploded silently upward, and hung in the dim air.
“Two rooms?” the old man said, his eyes focusing upon them. “You want two rooms?”
“How much?” Miller asked. Andrews threw his bedroll down beside Miller’s.
“How much?” The man scratched his chin again; a faint rasping came to Andrews’s ears. The old man, still looking at them, fumbled beneath the counter and brought up a closed ledger. “I dunno. Dollar apiece sound all right?”
Miller nodded and shoved the ledger, which the old man had opened in front of him, to Andrews. Miller said: “We’ll want some tubs and some hot water, a
nd some soap and razors. How much will that be?”
The old man scratched his chin. “Well, now. What’re you fellows used to paying for such a chore?”
“I paid two bits last year,” Andrews said.
“That sounds reasonable,” the old man said. “Two bits apiece. I think I’ll be able to heat up some water for you.”
“What’s the matter with this damn town?” Miller said loudly, and again slapped his palm upon the counter. “Did everybody die?”
The old man shrugged nervously. “I don’t know, mister. I only been here a few days, myself. On my way to Denver, and ran out of money. Man said, you take care of this place good, and you keep what you make. That’s all I know.”
“Then I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a man named McDonald. J. D. McDonald.”
“Nope. Like I said, I only been here—”
“All right,” Miller said. “Where are our rooms?”
The old man handed them two keys. “Right up the stairs,” he said. “The numbers are on the keys.”
“Lead the horses over to the livery stable,” Miller said. “They need taking care of bad.”
“The horses over to the livery stable,” the old man repeated. “Yes, sir.”
Miller and Andrews picked up their bedrolls and went to the stairs. The dust lay smooth and unbroken on the steps.
“Looks like we’re the first customers in a long time,” Andrews said.
“Something’s wrong,” Miller said. With Charley Hoge between them, the three men bumped together going up the stairs. “I don’t like the way things feel.”
Their rooms were side by side, just off the stairs; the number on Andrews’s key was seventeen. As Miller and Charley Hoge started into their room, Andrews said: “If I get through before you do, I’ll be outside. I want to look around a little.”
Miller nodded, and pushed Charley Hoge before him.
When Will Andrews turned his key in the lock and pushed the door inward, a billow of musty air came from the unused room. He left the door half open and went to the muslin-covered window; the cloth in its wooden frame was clogged with dust. He detached the frame from the window, and set it on the floor beside a wooden rain shutter which showed no sign of having been used against the weather. A warm breeze moved sluggishly through the room.
Andrews unrolled the mattress on the narrow rope bed, and sat on the bare ticking. He removed his shoes, fumbling with the strips of buffalo hide that months before had replaced the original thongs; the soles were worn thin, and the leather of the uppers had cracked through. He held one shoe in his hands and gazed at it for several moments; curiously, he pulled against the leather; it ripped like heavy paper. Quickly, he removed the rest of his clothing, and heaped it in a pile beside the bed; he unstrapped his stained and crumpled money belt and dropped it on the mattress. Naked, he rose from the bed and stood in the center of the room in the amber light that came through the window. He looked down at his bare flesh; it was a dirty, grayish white, like the underbelly of a fish. He pushed his forefinger along the hairless skin of his belly; dirt came off in long thin rolls and revealed more dirt beneath. He shuddered, and went to the washstand near the window. He took a dusty towel from the rack, shook it out, and wrapped it around his loins; he went back to the bed and sat, and waited for the old man to come up with his tub and water.
The old man, breathing heavily, came up shortly with two tubs, depositing one in Miller’s and Charley Hoge’s room and the other in Andrews’s room.
Shoving the tub to the center of the floor, the old man looked curiously at Andrews, who remained sitting on the bed.
“By God,” he said. “You men sure got a powerful stink to you. How long since you had a bath?”
Andrews thought for a moment. “Not since last August.”
“Where you been?”
“Colorado Territory.”
“Oh. Prospecting?”
“Hunting.”
“For what?”
Andrews looked at him in tired surprise. “Buffalo.”
“Buffalo,” the old man said, and nodded vaguely. “I think I heared once they used to be buffalo up there.”
Andrews did not speak. After a moment the old man sighed and backed toward the door. “Water’ll be hot in a few minutes. Anything else you need, just let me know.”
Andrews pointed to the heap of clothing on the floor beside the bed. “You might take these out with you, and get me some new ones.”
The old man picked up the clothing, holding it in one hand, away from him. Andrews got a bill from his money belt and put it in the man’s other hand.
“What’ll I do with these?” the old man asked, moving the clothing slightly.
“Burn them,” Andrews said.
“Burn them,” the man repeated. “Any special kind of clothes you want from the dry goods store?”
“Clean ones,” Andrews said.
The old man cackled, and went out of the room; Andrews did not move from the bed until he returned with two buckets of water. He watched as the old man poured them into the tub. From his pockets the old man withdrew a razor, a pair of scissors, and a large bar of yellow soap.
“I had to buy the razor,” he said, “but the scissors is mine. I’ll bring your clothes up directly.”
“Thanks,” Andrews said. “And you might as well be heating up some more water.”
The old man nodded. “I reckoned this wouldn’t get you clean. I’ve already got some started.”
Andrews waited for a few moments after the old man had left the room. Then, holding the soap, he stepped into the lukewarm water and lowered himself. He sloshed water over his upper body and soaped himself vigorously, watching with a kind of ecstasy the dirt fall away in long strips beneath the gritty soap. His body, covered with tiny unhealed insect bites, stung from the strong soap; nevertheless he raked his fingernails roughly across his flesh, working the soap in, and leaving long red welts in crisscrosses on his body. He soaped his hair and beard and watched the black streams of water run back into the tub. His own stench, released by the cleansing he gave himself, rose from the water, and made him hold his breath.
When the old man came back in his room with fresh water, Andrews, naked and dripping grayish water on the bare floor, helped him lug the tub to the open window. They emptied it on the sidewalk below. The water splashed into the street and was immediately absorbed into the dust.
“Whew,” the old man said. “That’s mighty powerful water.” He had brought Andrews’s new clothes with him and had tossed them upon the bed before they emptied the water; now he pointed to them. “Hope they fit; it was the nearest I could get to what you throwed away.”
“They’ll be all right,” Andrews said.
He bathed more leisurely, building suds over his body and watching them float on the surface of the water. At last he stepped from the tub and toweled himself dry, marveling at the whiteness of his skin, and slapping it to see the rosy welts appear there. Then he went to the washbasin, where the old man had left the razor and scissors. He raised his eyes to the mirror that was hung crookedly above the basin.
Though he had seen his face dimly and darkly in the pools and streams where they had watered, from the mountains across the great plain, and though he had grown used to the feel upon his face and beneath his fingers of the long tangled beard and hair, he was not prepared for what he saw in the mirror. His beard, still damp from the bath, lay twisted in light brown cords on the lower half of his face, so that it seemed he peered at himself in a mask that made his face like that of anyone he might imagine. The upper half of his face was a bloodless brown, darker than his beard or hair; it had hardened in the weather, so that he could see no expression and no identity where he looked. His hair grew over his ears, and hung nearly to his shoulders. For a long time he stared at himself, turning his head from side to side; then he slowly took up the scissors from the table and started cutting away at his beard.
The scissors were dull, and t
he strands of hair that he caught and lifted in one hand slipped between the blades so that he had to angle the scissor blades to his face, half cutting and half hacking at the tough, fine hair. When he had reduced the beard to a long stubble, he soaped his face with the yellow soap he had bathed in and drew the razor in short careful strokes over his skin. When he finished, he rinsed the soap from his face and looked at himself again in the mirror. Where the beard had been his flesh was a dead white, startling against the brown of his forehead and cheeks. He flexed the muscles of his face, retracting the mouth in a mirthless grin, and took the skin along his jaw between a thumb and forefinger; it felt numb and lifeless. His whole face was diminished, and it stared palely at him from its tangle of hair. He took the scissors up again, and began hacking away at the hair that lay in thick ropes about his face.
After several minutes, he stood back from the mirror and surveyed his work. His hair was awkwardly and unevenly cut, but it no longer made his face appear that of a child. He brushed together the tufts of hair that had settled on the table, crushed them in his hands, and dropped them out of his window, where they dispersed in the air and floated slowly to the ground, catching the late sunlight in flashing glints and then disappearing as they settled on the sidewalk and the earth below him.
The clothes that the old man had got for him were rough and ill-fitting, but the coarse clean feel of them gave his body a vitality and a sensation of delicacy that it had not had in many months. He turned the bottoms of the sharply creased black broadcloth trousers up over the tops of his stiff new shoes, and opened the top button of the heavy blue shirt. He went out of his room, and in the hall paused before Miller’s and Charley Hoge’s door. He heard from within the sounds of splashing water. He went down the stairs, through the lobby, and stood on the board sidewalk outside the hotel in the heat and stillness of the late afternoon.