Elmira also watched the distant banks, which were green with the grass of spring. As the river gradually narrowed, she saw many animals: deer, coyote, cattle — but no Indians. She remembered stories heard over the years about women being carried off by Indians; in Kansas she had had such a woman pointed out to her, one who had been rescued and brought back to live with whites again. To her the woman seemed no different from other women, though it was true that she seemed cowed; but then, many women were cowed by events more ordinary. It was hard to see how the Indians could be much worse than the buffalo hunters, two of whom were on board. The sight of them brought back painful memories. They were big men with buffalo-skin coats and long shaggy hair — they looked like the animals they hunted. At night, in her cubbyhole, she would sometimes hear them relieving themselves over the side of the boat; they would stand just beyond the whiskey casks and pour their water into the Arkansas.
For some reason the sound reminded her of July, perhaps because she had never heard him make it. July was reticent about such things and would walk far into the woods when he had to go, to spare her any embarrassment. She found his reticence and shyness strangely irritating — it sometimes made her want to tell him what she had really done before they married. But she held back that truth, and every other truth she knew; she ceased talking to July Johnson at all.
In the long days and nights, with no one to talk to but Fowler, and him only occasionally, Elmira found herself thinking more and more about Dee. Joe she didn't think about, had never thought about much. He had never seemed hers, exactly, though she had certainly borne him. But from the first she had looked at him with detachment and only mild interest, and the twelve years since his birth had been a waiting period — waiting for the time for when she could send him away and belong only to herself again. It occurred to her that the one good thing about marrying July Johnson was that he would do to leave Joe with.
With Dee, she could belong to herself, for if ever a man belonged to himself, it was Dee. You never knew where Dee would be from one day to the next; when he was there he was always eager to share the fun, but then, before you could look around he had vanished, off to another town or another girl.
Soon the skies above the river got wider and wider as the river wound out of the trees and cut through the plains. The nights were cool, the mornings warming quickly, so that when Elmira woke the river behind her would be covered with a frosting of mist, and the boat would be lost in the mist completely, until the sun could break through. Several times ducks and geese, taking off in the mist, almost flew into her as she stood at the rear of the boat wrapped in the buffalo robe. When the mist was heavy the splash of birds or the jumping of fish startled her; once she was frightened by the heavy beat of wings as one of the huge gray cranes flew low over the boat. As the mist thinned she would see the cranes standing solemnly in the shallows, ignoring the strings of ducks that swam nearby. Pockets of mist would linger on the water for an hour or more after the sun had risen and the sky turned a clear blue.
At night many sounds came from the banks, the most frequent being the thin howling of coyotes. From time to time during the day they would see a coyote or a gray wolf on the bank, and the hunters would sharpen their aim by shooting at the animals. They seldom killed one, for the river was still too wide; sometimes Elmira would see the bullets kick mud.
When there was no rain she liked the nights and would often slip to the rear of the boat and listen to the gurgle and suck of the water. There were stars by the millions; one night the full moon seemed to rise out of the smoky river. The moon was so large that at first it seemed to touch both banks. Its light turned the evening mist to a color like pearl. But then the moon rose higher and grew yellow as a melon.
It was the morning after the full moon that a fight broke out between one of the whiskey traders and a buffalo hunter. Elmira, waking, heard loud argument, which was nothing new — almost every night there was loud argument, once the men got drunk. Once or twice they fought with fists, bumping against the casks that formed the walls of her room, but those fights ran their course. She had seen many men fight and was not much disturbed.
But the morning fight was different — she was awakened by a high scream. It ended in a kind of moan and she heard a body fall to the deck of the boat. Then she heard heavy breathing, as the winner of the fight caught his breath. The man soon walked away and a heavy silence fell — so heavy that Elmira wondered if everyone had left the boat. She began to feel frightened. Maybe Indians had got on the boat and killed all the whiskey traders. She huddled in her quilts, wondering what to do, but then she heard Fowler's gruff voice. It had just been a fight of some kind.
When the sun came up she went to her place at the rear of the boat. It was very still. The men were up, sitting in a group at the far end. When she looked, she saw a man lying face down near the place where the fight had taken place. He wasn't moving. She recognized him as one of the whiskey traders by his red hair.
A few minutes later Fowler and a couple of the men came and stood looking at the body. Then, as Elmira watched, they took off his belt and boots, rolled him over and cleaned out his pockets. The front of his body was stiff with blood. When the men had everything valuable off his body they simply picked the man up and threw him overboard. He floated in the water face down, and as the boat went on, Elmira looked and saw the body bump the boat. That's the end of you, she thought. She didn't know the man's name. She wished he would sink so she wouldn't have to see him. It was still misty, though, and soon the body was lost in the mist.
A little later Fowler brought her a plate of breakfast.
"What was the fight about?" she asked.
"'Bout you," Fowler said, his eyelid drooping.
That was a surprise. The men seemed to have almost no interest in her. Also, if the fight was over her, it was unusual that the victim had not tried to claim her.
"About me how?" she asked.
Fowler looked at her with his eye and a half.
"Well, you're the only woman we got," he said. "There's some would take advantage of you. Only the one talking it the most is kilt now."
"I guess he is," she said. "Which one killed him?"
"Big Zwey," Fowler said.
Big Zwey was the worst-looking of the buffalo hunters. He had an oily beard and fingernails as black as tar. It was peculiar to think that a buffalo hunter had been her protector after what she had been through with them.
"Why'd he do it?" she asked. "What difference does it make to him what happens to me?"
"He fancies you," Fowler said. "Wants to marry you, he says."
"Marry me?" Elmira said. "He can't marry me."
Fowler chuckled. "He don't know that," he said. "Big Zwey ain't quite normal."
None of you are quite normal, Elmira thought, and I must not be either, or I wouldn't be here.
"You took a chance, gettin' on a boat with men like us," Fowler said.
Elmira didn't respond. Often, from then on, she felt Big Zwey's eyes on her, though he never spoke to her or even came near her. None of the other men did either — probably afraid they would be killed and dumped overboard if they approached her. Sometimes Zwey would sit watching her for hours, from far down the boat. It made her feel bitter. Already he thought she belonged to him, and the other men thought so too. It kept them away from her, but in their eyes she didn't belong to herself. She belonged to a buffalo hunter who had never even spoken to her.
Their fright made her contemptuous of them, and whenever she caught one of them looking at her she met the look with a cold stare. From then on she said nothing to anyone and spent her days in silence, watching the brown river as it flowed behind.
37
TRAVELING WAS EVEN WORSE than Roscoe had supposed it would be, and he had supposed it would be pure hell.
Before he had been gone from Fort Smith much more than three hours, he had the bad luck to run into a bunch of wild pigs. For some reason Memphis, his mount, had an un
reasoning fear of pigs, and this particular bunch of pigs had a strong dislike of white horses, or perhaps of deputy sheriffs. Before Roscoe had much more than noticed the pigs he was in a runaway. Fortunately the pines were not too thick, or Roscoe felt he would not have survived. The pigs were led by a big brown boar that was swifter than most pigs; the boar was nearly on them before Memphis got his speed up. Roscoe yanked out his pistol and shot at the boar till the pistol was empty, but he missed every time, and when he tried to reload, racing through the trees with a lot of pigs after him, he just dropped his bullets. He had a rifle but was afraid to get it out for fear he'd drop that too.
Fortunately the pigs weren't very determined. They soon stopped, but Memphis couldn't be slowed until he had run himself out. After that he was worthless for the rest of the day. In the afternoon, stopping to drink at a little creek, he bogged to his knees. Roscoe had to get off and whip him on the butt five or six times with a lariat rope before he managed to lunge out of the mud, by which time Roscoe himself was covered with it. He also lost one boot, sucked so far down in the mud he could barely reach it. He hadn't brought an extra pair of boots, mainly because he didn't own one, and was forced to waste most of the afternoon trying to clean the mud off the ones he had.
He made his first camp barely ten miles from town. What mostly worried him wasn't that he was too close to the town but that he was too close to the pigs. For all he knew, the pigs were still tracking him; the thought that they might arrive just after he went to sleep kept him from getting to sleep until almost morning. Roscoe was a town man and had spent little time sleeping in the woods. He slept blissfully on the old settee in the jail, because there you didn't have to worry about snakes, wild pigs, Indians, bandits, bears or other threats — just the occasional rowdy prisoner, who could be ignored.
Once the night got late, the woods were as noisy as a saloon, only Roscoe didn't know what most of the noises meant. To him they meant threats. He sat with his back to a tree all night, his pistol in his hand and his rifle across his lap. Finally, about the time it grew light, he got too tired to care if bears or pigs ate him, and he stretched out for a little while.
The next day he felt so tired he could barely stay in the saddle, and Memphis was almost as tired. The excitement of the first day had left them both worn out. Neither had much interest in their surroundings, and Roscoe had no sense at all that he was getting any closer to catching up with July. Fortunately there was a well-marked Army trail between Fort Smith and Texas, and he and Memphis plodded along it all day, stopping frequently to rest.
Then, as the sun was falling, he had what seemed like a stroke of luck. He heard someone yelling, and he rode into a little clearing near the trail only to discover that the reason there was a clearing was that a farmer had cut down the trees. Now the man was trying to get the clearing even clearer by pulling up the stumps, using a team of mules for the purpose. The mules were tugging and pulling at a big stump, with the farmer yelling at them to pull harder.
Roscoe had little interest in the work, but he did have an interest in the presence of the farmer, which must mean that a cabin was somewhere near. Maybe he could sleep with a roof over his head for one more night. He rode over and stopped a respectful distance away, so as not to frighten the mule team. The stump was only partly out — quite a few of its thick roots were still running into the ground.
At that point the farmer, who was wearing a floppy hat, happened to notice Roscoe. Immediately the action stopped, as the farmer looked him over. Roscoe rode a little closer, meaning to introduce himself, when to his great surprise the farmer took off his hat and turned out not to be a he. Instead the fanner was a good-sized woman wearing man's clothes. She had brown hair and had sweated through her shirt.
"Well, are you gonna get off and help or are you just going to set there looking dumb?" she asked, wiping her forehead.
"I'm a deputy sheriff," Roscoe replied, thinking that would be all the explanation that was needed.
"Then take off your star, if it's that heavy," the woman said. "Help me cut these roots. I'd like to get this stump out before dark. Otherwise we'll have to work at night, and I hate to waste the coal oil."
Roscoe hardly knew what to think. He had never tried to pull up a stump in his life, and didn't want to start. On the other hand he didn't want to sleep in the woods another night if he could help it.
The woman was looking Memphis over while she caught her breath. "We might could hitch that horse to the team," she said. "My mules ain't particular."
"Why, this horse wouldn't know what to do if it was hitched," Roscoe said. "It's a riding horse."
"Oh, I see," the woman said. "You mean it's dumb or too lazy to work."
It seemed the world was full of outspoken women. The woman farmer reminded Roscoe a little of Peach.
Somewhat reluctantly he got down and tied Memphis to a bush at the edge of the field. The woman was waiting impatiently. She handed Roscoe an ax and he began to cut the thick, tough roots while the woman encouraged the team. The stump edged out of the ground a little farther, but it didn't come loose. Roscoe hadn't handled an ax much in the last few years and was awkward with it. Cutting roots was not like cutting firewood. The roots were so tough the ax tended to bounce unless the hit was perfect. Once he hit a root too close to the stump and the ax bounced out of his hand and nearly hit the woman on the foot.
"Dern, I never meant to let it get loose from me," Roscoe said.
The woman looked disgusted. "If I had a piece of rawhide I'd tie it to your hand," she said. "Then the two of you could flop around all you wanted to. What town hired you to be deputy sheriff anyway?"
"Why, Fort Smith," Roscoe said. "July Johnson's the sheriff."
"I wish he'd been the one that showed up," the woman said. "Maybe he'd know how to chop a root."
Then she began to pop the mules again and Roscoe continued to whack at the roots, squeezing the ax tightly so it wouldn't slip loose again. In no time he was sweating worse than the woman, sweat dripping into his eyes and off his nose. It had been years since he had sweated much, and he didn't enjoy the sensation.
While he was half blinded by the sweat, the mules gave a big pull and one of the roots that he'd been about to cut suddenly slipped out of the ground, uncurled and lashed at him like a snake. The root hit him just above the knees and knocked him backward, causing him to drop the ax again. He tried to regain his balance but lost it and fell flat on his back. The root was still twitching and curling as if it had a life of its own.
The woman didn't even look around. The mules had the stump moving, and she kept at them, popping them with the reins and yelling at them as if they were deaf, while Roscoe lay there and watched the big stump slowly come out of the hole where it had been for so many years. A couple of small roots still held, but the mules kept going and the stump was soon free.
Roscoe got slowly to his feet, only to realize that he could barely walk.
The woman seemed to derive a certain amusement from the way he hobbled around trying to gain control of his limbs.
"Who did they send you off to catch?" she asked. "Or did they just decide you wasn't worth your salary and run you out of town?"
Roscoe felt aggrieved. Even strangers didn't seem to think he was worth his salary, and yet in his view he did a fine job of keeping the jail.
"I'm after July Johnson," he said. "His wife run off."
"I wish she'd run this way," the woman said. "I'd put her to work helping me clear this field. It's slow work, doing it alone."
And yet the woman had made progress. At the south edge of the field, where Memphis was tied, forty or fifty stumps were lined up.
"Where's your menfolks?" Roscoe asked.
"Dead or gone," the woman said. "I can't find no husband that knows how to stay alive. My boys didn't care for the work, so they left about the time of the war and didn't come back. What's your name, Deputy?"
"Roscoe Brown," Roscoe said.
"I'm L
ouisa," the woman said. "Louisa Brooks. I was born in Alabama and I wish I'd stayed. Got two husbands buried there and there's another buried on this property here. Right back of the house, he's buried, that was Jim," she added. "He was fat and I couldn't get him in the wagon so I dug the hole and there he lies."
"Well, that's a shame," Roscoe said.
"No, we didn't get on," Louisa said. "He drank whiskey and talked the Bible too, and I like a man that does one thing or the other. I told him once he could fall dead for all I care, and it wasn't three weeks before the fool just did it."
Though Roscoe had been hopeful of staying the night, he was beginning to lose his inclination. Louisa Brooks was almost as scary as wild pigs, in his view. The mules drug the stump over to where the others were and Roscoe walked over and helped Louisa untie it.
"Roscoe, you're invited to supper," she said, before he could make up his mind to go. "I bet you can eat better than you chop."
"Oh, I ought to get on after July," Roscoe said, halfheartedly. "His wife run off."
"I meant to run off, before Jim went and died," Louisa said. "If I had, I wouldn't have had to bury him. Jim was fat. I had to hitch a mule to him to drag him out of the house. Spent all day pulling up stumps and then had to work half the night planting a husband. How old are you getting to be?"
"Why, forty-eight, I guess," Roscoe said, surprised to be asked.
Louisa took off her hat and fanned herself with it as they followed the mules down one edge of the field. Roscoe led his horse.
"The skinny ones last longer than the fat ones," Louisa said. "You'll probably last till you're about sixty."
"Or longer, I hope," Roscoe said.
"Can you cook?" Louisa asked. She was a fair-looking woman, though large.
"No," Roscoe admitted. "I generally eat at the saloon or else go home with July."
"I can't neither," Louisa said. "Never interested me. What I like is farming. I'd farm day and night if it didn't take so much coal oil."