The Last Crossing, page 18
But now the grey horse fades night by night, becoming at worst a fitful phantom compounded out of the dregs of quicksilver still circulating in his system, a small, treacherous whirlpool spinning round memories of Dunvargan: a twisted face here, a hand clenching him there, hollow whispers.
But he is confident this too will pass like the sores, the discolouration of his teeth. Ghosts are banished by daylight corporeality, by clamping his legs to the barrel of a horse, by basking in hot sun, by inhaling fresh air.
This is what he was born to do. Live like a Mongol khan. Eight hours in the saddle, a return to camp with quarry slung across the saddle-bow, a crackling fire, meat, wine, laughter, stories. The business at Sythe Grange, stealing into the night with a longbow, dodging the gamekeeper and his minions, risking mantraps and spring guns, all that had simply been an invalid’s attempt to combat torpor, to stir sluggish blood with a dose of artificial danger. The red deer a sacrifice to propitiate the savage gods of his malady.
How else was an active man to keep on his mettle? The old men had taken his career from him. Colonel Oates berating him after the Irish rioted. After Oates had dressed him down like that, treated him like a schoolboy, thoroughly humiliated him, what choice had he but to resign? Elderly officers pushing down the strong for fear of losing their places and, if you dared to stand up for yourself, they cast you down even further. Reminded you of your place.
So be it. He has found his place, his element. No longer suffocated by the stale breath of old duffers, finally at liberty to fill his lungs freely. At last, in command. See how he’d brought that half-breed neatly to heel.
Of course, Charles is an annoyance. He, too, needs to be taught it is not his place to carp at every decision made, nag him to rush about looking for Simon. Only fools like Charles and Father cling to the ridiculous hope he is alive. There is nothing to be found but a corpse, and small chance of that. Charles ought to enjoy this jaunt, like he is doing.
The hunting is wonderful. Three antelope, a dozen prairie chicken, a mule deer bagged yesterday. A sportsman’s paradise under his very nose and Charles chooses to pick flowers with that woman.
No sign yet of any grizzlies, Ursus arctos horribilis. Let the county toxophilites call Horace Alfred Ford the greatest English archer after they learn the Captain has brought down one of the great bears armed with nothing but a longbow. Face it, overcome it, that’s what defines a man.
Mr. Ayto will write that exploit up very thrillingly and he is certain Charles can be prevailed upon to do him a capital illustration for the book. There it is in his mind’s eye, ravening bear erect on its hind legs, pawing the shaft buried in its throat, and there he is, a mere arm’s-length away from those terrible teeth and claws, cool and collected.
He often mulls over titles for his book in moments such as this. A Gentleman Nomad in the Great American Desert. The Rambles and Adventures of Captain Gaunt. Perhaps Mr. Ayto can do those one better; he is, after all, the man of letters.
With the exception of the impudent guide, Addington is well pleased with the band he has assembled. Grunewald and Barker are steady, plodding oxen. The woman a diligent dogsbody. It is irksome to see her so much in the company of Charles, who tags after her like a fawning spaniel. But no fear of Charles being first into port. His milksop brother would sooner request a wench to sit for a portrait than fall on her back for him.
He sees the bitch, her legs in the air. But he must be careful. A moment of impulse, of unexpected pressure, and the mercury in his brain might squirt into a thousand pieces as it had in Fort Benton. He knows this is the only possible explanation for what had occurred there. He is, after all, a very disciplined fellow, whatever Colonel Oates might have said about his conduct in Ireland. Castigating old bugger.
Certain thoughts are unmanageable, too distressing. Suddenly he feels the need of company. Mr. Ayto is a congenial chap; the two of them shall open a bottle. Addington jerks up the horse’s head, gouges with his spurs, pounds off back to camp.
ALOYSIUS A man might have expected some thanks from Custis, but no, it weren’t forthcoming. I find him half-drunk, squatting in a puddle, and he don’t even have the good manners to say, “Hello, Aloysius, glad to see you.” All he wants from me is my horse, demands I trade it for the Morgan.
I told him straight. “Not in a month of Sundays.”
He ripped and snorted, threatened and begged, but I didn’t budge. Straw needs a cool head around to try to put a check on him, even if he don’t know it. His state of mind is unpredictable of late. He seems set on making a nuisance of himself, courting trouble. When I finally got through to him I weren’t about to yield the horse, and I weren’t about to turn around and go home, he turned nasty.
“I don’t know what you think you’re up to,” Straw said. “Imposing yourself on a body who doesn’t want you. I advise you to go home and look after your precious business. I suspect the riff-raff are breaking into the Stubhorn this very minute. Helping themselves to your store of spirits. Glug glug. Aloysius Dooley comes home and finds himself bankrupt. ‘Woe is me!’ he cries.”
Sometimes being a friend to Custis Straw is like hammering spikes into your forehead. You don’t do it because it feels good. “Nobody ain’t going to break into my place.”
“Oh, I see. Every layabout, ruffian, and rascal in Fort Benton has such a high regard for the great Aloysius Dooley they wouldn’t think of despoiling his property. Whatever was I thinking?”
“It’s taken care of. I rented me a fighting dog,” I told him. “Alphonse Miller’s fighting dog. That big black one that’s all nuts and teeth. We locked him in the Stubhorn. Any burglar pokes himself into my saloon’ll get a piece chewed off. Miller promised he’d only feed him every second day. Just to keep his mood dark.”
“You’re disgusting,” said Straw. “Starving a dumb animal. Think of him locked up. The loneliness of it.”
“He’s bred to fight. They don’t like company. Loneliness is cheerful to them.”
After that, Straw wouldn’t talk no more, just sat and brooded. It was getting dark, so I made a fire. Custis sat reading his Bible while I fried us a pan of bacon. I served him his share. “I want you to hear this, Aloysius,” he says. “ ‘Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ ” He claps the book shut. “And all I’m asking from you is a horse.”
Well, I shut down my business for him. I wouldn’t do that for any other man. I can’t say how Custis worked himself under my skin like he done, except there’s never a dull day in his company. It keeps you on the jump just trying to figure out how his mind works and where it’s going to veer off to next. And most times he’s good-hearted. The truest thing I ever heard anybody say about Custis Straw came from Dr. Bengough, who remarked, “Straw is the only man I know who does his best to harm no one but himself.” I aim to see, he don’t do too much damage to his contrary person.
The morning after I caught up with him, Custis’s mood improved immediately once he judged the Morgan fit to travel. Going in easy stages, we reached the Whitemud River in two days, rode the bank until we struck where the Gaunts camped. They’d left, nothing there but cold ashes and wagon tracks leading west. Custis kicked the charred sticks and fire ring to pieces, muttering and cursing to himself.
For two days we trailed after them, Custis as impatient as a bridegroom on his wedding night. Even heavy-laden wagons ain’t easy to track on the prairie. Soon as they pass over the wiry grass it springs up, and we had to do a good deal of casting about to pick up the smallest trace of their passage.
Now this morning, Custis’s sure we’re closing on them. We find horseshit with rind on it, but the turds are green and moist inside. After he’s done pinching and smelling the road apples, Custis scrambles back up on Dan, full of determination to overtake them.
Just before noon, we come over a hog’s back and, five hundred yards off, there they are. Custis halts us atop the ridge with a thoughtful look on his face. I suspicion he’s running through his mind how he’s going to get his way with Lucy Stoveall.
The Gaunts’ horses are grazing peaceful in their hobbles. The wagons are parked tongue overlapping tongue in what I take to be the English Captain’s idea of defence against marauding Indians. In the open ground between the Conestogas I spot three men, little in the distance. Two are watching the third, who’s going round and round in a tight circle, waving his arms above his head, legs jerking like he’s dancing a hornpipe.
Custis and me start down the slope. Our approach ain’t noticed. Everybody’s too busy gawking at the dance. It ain’t until we’re almost on them that Grunewald and Barker hear our hoof beats and swing about to face us. The other one keeps hopping.
I see what the jigging’s about. Jerry Potts’s buckskins make him hard to spot laying in the tan grass. He’s sprawled face to the ground and some bastard is putting the boots to his ribs. Suddenly the fellow realizes company has come to call, and he looks up shocked, appears ready to take flight, probably thinking we’re road agents bearing down with pillage on our minds. But Grunewald hails us by name and that’s reassurance enough to stop Jerry Potts’s attacker from scampering.
Custis rides us right up to where Potts is laying. The man standing over him says, “Gentlemen, welcome. The leader of our party is absent at the moment, but I am, as it were, in loco parentis. Caleb Ayto is the name.” He sticks up his hand for Custis to shake, but Custis gives it a flick with the rein. Ayto jumps back, startled, rubbing his wrist as if he’d been touched by a hot poker.
“Don’t you offer your hand to me. I don’t want it. Why are you abusing Jerry Potts so?”
Caleb Ayto’s face goes white and pasty, but he summons up enough yeast to give the dough a rise. “The man’s a thief! Pinched two bottles of the Captain’s port and drank himself insensible! He needed to be taught a lesson!”
Custis dismounts. “This lesson is over,” he says. “Next time, if you’ve got the courage, you can try and give him a lesson when he’s sober.”
Caleb Ayto ain’t about to be lectured. He pivots on his heel and fires the toe of his boot into Potts’s flank so hard he shifts him along the ground.
One quick step and Custis’s laid into Ayto’s face with a backhander that staggers him. Ayto trips over a wagon tongue, and lands on his arse, dazed, blood creeping down his upper lip. Tight-lipped with fury, Custis rounds on Grunewald and Barker. “You get Potts out of the sun! Put him under yonder wagon! Now!” The teamsters gather up the half-breed with a guilty air and start stowing him away careful like he was a case of china, fussing, tucking, and patting at him to show Custis how interested they are in Jerry Potts’s welfare. Custis has other concerns though. “Where’s Mrs. Stoveall?” he demands.
Meek and mild, Grunewald answers, “Off picking flowers with Charles Gaunt, I reckon.”
You can see this ain’t pleasing news to Custis, but before he can follow up his question, the Captain gallops into camp. Reinforcements encourage Caleb Ayto to get himself back up on his hind legs. He starts to bawl, “This man assaulted me, sir! Attacked me without provocation! Hit me before I could get my guard up!”
The Captain trots his horse right up to Custis; the gelding near butts him with his head. “Mr. Straw, I never expected our paths to cross so soon. And in such circumstances. Tell me, did you strike this gentleman?” says Gaunt, very severe.
“I struck somebody – but I did not strike a gentleman.”
At that, the Captain comes down off the horse. He ripples like a cat. “Won’t do,” he says. “Apologize to Mr. Ayto immediately.”
Custis has spotted Charles Gaunt and Lucy Stoveall headed our way. She’s carrying a harvest of flowers in the lap of her skirt, and her calves is showing. Gaunt and Mrs. Stoveall together, laughing and happy, has pinned all of Custis’s attention.
“Do you hear me?” says the Captain and prods Custis with his forefinger. Custis slaps his hand aside.
Things are running away like a overloaded wagon down a steep hill. Somebody needs to hang on the brake. “Goddamn it,” I say to Custis, “give him his apology.”
Charles Gaunt finally spots Custis and calls out, “Mr. Straw, what a pleasant surprise!” Lucy is startled to see us and bobs her head in greeting.
The Captain is peeling off his jacket and shirt, readying to do battle. Amazed by this, Charles Gaunt asks, “Addington, whatever are you doing?” In a flash, the Captain is stripped, all lean and bumpy with muscle. But Custis don’t give him a glance, he’s staring directly at Lucy Stoveall with a fixed, weird, off-kilter shine to his eyes, a look that makes Mrs. Stoveall sidle up closer to Charles Gaunt, as if to shield herself from the steady glare Custis has turned on her.
“Put your clothes back on,” I tell the Captain. “Nobody’s about to fight you.”
“Not if they know what’s good for them!” cries Caleb Ayto. “Captain Gaunt is a master of the pugilistic arts!”
Charles Gaunt has noticed Jerry Potts stretched out under the wagon. Baffled, he asks his brother, “What is the matter with our guide? Has he fallen ill?”
“Yes – ill on stolen wine.”
“That’s a filthy lie,” says Custis. He ain’t got no justification for saying it, but his temper’s run riot on him. The words are sneering and hot and seem directed as much at Charles Gaunt as the Captain. They are scarcely out of his mouth when the Captain hands Custis a cuff to the ear for the insult. It knocks him a step to the side. Charles throws his arms around the Captain, and I latch on to Custis, but the Captain flings off his brother like a dog shakes water from his coat. I hang to Custis’s arm, but he ain’t struggling to get at the Captain. He’s just waiting on what happens next.
The Captain taunts him. “Let us see what you’re made of, Mr. Straw.”
“Walk away,” I whisper to Custis. I give a tug to his arm, but he don’t move a step. Custis has settled down on his foundation, and he’s purely stubborn at bedrock. “Here now, let’s shake hands, boys, and forget this foolishness. Captain, your friend Ayto took a smack and now Straw’s had one too. Ain’t you all even?”
Everybody’s crowding in close, waiting on a soft word from either of them. Excepting Ayto, who has a bloodthirsty look to him. “In a matter of honour,” Mr. High and Mighty Englishman announces, “I cannot be satisfied until Mr. Straw begs my pardon for calling me a liar.”
Custis bows low. It’s a mockery.
The Captain strikes a pose, arms crooked, one fist under the chin, the other ready to fence and parry. “Then you intend to fight,” he says. Custis don’t move a muscle, don’t lift his arms. Grunewald, Barker, and Ayto draw back, clear a space. Lucy Stoveall and Charles stay rooted to the spot. “Stand aside,” the Captain says to them.
Lucy Stoveall don’t move. “Mr. Straw’s no match for you, Captain. Let him be.”
“We are in this man’s debt, Addington,” says Charles. “Don’t forget that.”
“I intend to fight,” Custis says. He don’t wish to be in Charles Gaunt’s debt, don’t want sheltering from him. Seeing Lucy leaning into him was more than he could swallow.
For the Captain, hearing that Custis is ready to fight is the best of news. “Grunewald,” he cries, “get my boxing gloves from the wagon!”
One look at Custis and I see he ain’t going to be turned from this. I got to take charge as best I can and give him a chance. “No mufflers,” I say. “If Straw fights, he fights London Prize Rules. Any man knocked down or thrown – end of round. Thirty seconds breather. Eight more seconds to come to scratch.”
The Captain grins. “Old rules. I see you are a student of the Noble Art.”
“My old Da, Ignatius Dooley, was a pug. A miller of the old school, a bareknuckler, a claret spiller.”
“Ah,” says the Captain, “you are a son of the Wild Goose Nation. I know the Irish well.” It’s a jeer. I let it pass. The Captain goes up and down on his toes, bouncing on the spot. “A warning to Mr. Straw and you. I was trained by an old pugilist who once sat at the feet of the great Daniel Mendoza.”
I don’t let him have the satisfaction of seeing me surprised. All I say is, “I know the Jousting Jew’s reputation.”
“You will act as Mr. Straw’s corner?”
I nod.
“Mr. Ayto will second me. I propose my brother Charles as timekeeper. Are you agreeable?”
“No objections.”
Charles says, “I want no part of this ridiculous farce.”
Custis looks him straight in the eye. “Keep the time, Mr. Gaunt.” Charles hesitates, then nods, giving way to Custis’s forceful stare.
“Strip your man.” The Captain turns on his heel and walks to his place with Ayto.
I grab Custis by the arm and lead him out of their earshot, talking fast. “The Captain’s been schooled in the game. It’s why I asked for London Prize Rules. Next thing to a barroom brawl. Everything allowed but kicking, biting, and head-butting. He looks to be fast on his feet, so catch hold of him anywheres you can, clamp to him, pick him up and throw him to the ground. Make sure you land on top of him. Land heavy. You might stove in a couple of ribs.” I start unbuttoning Custis’s shirt, jerk it off him. He peers down at himself and folds his arms over his chest, covering up. He don’t want Lucy Stoveall to see him naked, paunch and baby titties, white and wobbly. Old. I smack his arms to bring him back to business, to make him listen. “Hit with the back of your hand so as not to break a knuckle. Don’t chase him, not with them gimpy legs of yours. If you’re catching it bad, drop to your knee. Man goes down, round is over, and you got thirty seconds to recover.” Custis gives me a look that says he won’t take a knee. I grab the hairs on the nape of his neck and pull hard so he remembers. “Not a one of the best of the old pugs didn’t go to his knee to save himself. No shame, Custis. Remember. Go down.”
