a lot better and felt sorry for him.
Nothing changed my mind about that narrow-between-the-ears blonde, though. That
roan horse never had been any account, and miserable, contrary and ornery it
was, too.
We could see the lights of the Fort up ahead and behind me the rumble of those
wagon wheels as the train moved out, the rattle of trace chains, and the
Mexicans calling to each other.
“Tom,” I said, “I got to learn to write. I really got to learn.”
“You should learn,” he told me seriously, “I’ll be glad to teach you.”
“And to read writing?”
“All right.”
We rode in silence for a little while and then Tom Sunday said, “Tye, this is a
big country out here and it takes big men to live in it, but it gives every man
an equal opportunity. You’re just as big or small as your vision is, and if
you’ve a mind to work and make something of yourself, you can do it.”
He was telling me that I could be important enough for even a don’s daughter, I
knew that. He was telling me that and suddenly I did not need to be told. He was
right, of course, and all the time I’d known it. This was a country to grow up
in, a land where a man had a chance.
The stars were bright. The camp lay far behind. Somebody in the settlement ahead
laughed and somebody else dropped a bucket and it rolled down some steps. A
faint breeze stirred, cool and pleasant. We were making the first step. We were
going after wild cows.
We were bound for the Purgatoire.
Chapter V
Cap Rountree had trapped beaver all over the country we were riding toward. He
had been there with Kit Carson, Uncle Dick Woolton, Jim Bridger, and the Bents.
He knew the country like an Indian would know it.
Tom Sunday … I often wondered about Tom. He was a Texan, he said, and that was
good enough. He knew more about cattle than any of us.
Orrin and me, well, most of what we’d had all our lives came from our own
planting or hunting, and we grew up with a knowledge of the herbs a man can eat
and how to get along in the forest.
The country we were riding toward was Indian country. It was a place where the
Comanches, Utes, Arapahos, and Kiowas raided and fought, and there were
Cheyennes about, too. And sometimes the Apaches raiding north. In this country
the price for a few lazy minutes might be the death of every man in the party.
It was no place for a loafer or one lacking responsibility.
Always and forever we were conscious of the sky. City folks almost never look at
the sky to the stars but with us there was no choice. They were always with us.
Tom Sunday was a man who knew a sight of poetry, and riding across the country
thataway, he’d recite it for us. It was a lonely life, you know, and I expect
what Sunday missed most was the reading. Books were rare and treasured things,
hard to come by and often fought over. Newspapers the same.
A man couldn’t walk down to the corner and buy a paper. Nor did he have a
postman to deliver it to him. I’ve known cowhands to memorize the labels off
canned fruit and vegetables for lack of reading.
Cap knew that country, knew every creek and every fork. There were no maps
except what a man had in his skull, and nobody of whom to ask directions, so a
body remembered what he saw. Cap knew a thousand miles of country like a man
might know his kitchen at home.
These mornings the air was fresher. There was a faint chill in the air, a sign
we were getting higher. We were riding along in the early hours when we saw the
wagons.
Seven wagons, burned and charred. We moved in carefully, rifles up and ready;
edged over to them, holding to a shallow dip in the prairie until we were close
up.
Folks back east have a sight to say about the poor Indian but they never fought
him. He was a fighter by trade, and because he naturally loved it, mercy never
entered his head. Mercy is a taught thing. Nobody comes by it natural. Indians
grew up thinking the tribe was all there was and anybody else was an enemy.
It wasn’t a fault, simply that nobody had ever suggested such a thing to him. An
enemy was to be killed, and then cut up so if you met him in the afterlife he
wouldn’t have the use of his limbs to attack you again. Some Indians believed a
mutilated man would never get into the hereafter.
Two of the men in this outfit had been spread-eagled on wagon wheels, shot full
of arrows, and scalped. The women lay scattered about, their clothing ripped
off, blood all over. One man had got into a buffalo wallow with his woman and
had made a stand there.
“No marks on them,” I said, “they must have died after the Indians left.”
“No,” Cap indicated the tracks of moccasins near the bodies. “They killed
themselves when their ammunition gave out.” He showed us powder burns on the
woman’s dress and the man’s temple. “Killed her and then himself.”
The man who made the stand there in the wallow had accounted for some Indians.
We found spots of blood on the grass that gave reason to believe he’d killed
four or five, but Indians always carry their dead away.
“They aren’t mutilated because the man fought well. Indians respect a fighter
and they respect almost nobody else. But sometimes they cut them up, too.”
We buried the two where they lay in the wallow, and the others we buried in a
common grave nearby, using a shovel found near one of the wagons. Cap found
several letters that hadn’t burned and put them in his pocket. “Least we can
do,” he said, “the folks back home will want to know.”
Sunday was standing off sizing up those wagons and looking puzzled. “Cap,” he
said, “come over here a minute.”
The wagons had been set afire but some had burned hardly at all before the fire
went out. They were charred all over, and the canvas tops were burned, of
course.
“See what you mean,” Orrin said, “seems to be a mighty thick bottom on that
wagon.”
‘Too thick,” Sunday said, “I think there’s a false bottom.”
Using the shovel he pried a board until we could get enough grip to pull it
loose. There was a compartment there, and in it a flat iron box, which we broke
open.
Inside were several sacks of gold money and a little silver, coming to more than
a thousand dollars. There were also a few letters in that box.
“This is better than hunting cows,” Sunday said. “We’ve got us a nice piece of
money here.”
“Maybe somebody needs that money,” Orrin suggested. “We’d better read those
letters and see if we can find the owner.”
Tom Sunday looked at him, smiling but something in his smile made a body think
he didn’t feel like smiling. “You aren’t serious? The owner’s dead.”
“Ma would need that money mighty bad if it had been sent to her by Tyrel and
me,” Orrin said, “and it could be somebody needs this money right bad.”
First off, I’d thought he was joking, but he was dead serious, and the way he
looked at it made me back up and take another look myself. The thing to do was
to find who the money rightfully belonged to and send it to them … if we found
nobody then it would be all right to keep it.
Cap Rountree just stood there stoking that old pipe and studying Orrin with
care, like he seen something mighty interesting.
There wasn’t five dollars amongst us now. We’d had to buy pack animals and our
outfit, and we had broke ourselves, what with Orrin and me sending a little
money to Ma from Abilene. Now we were about to start four or five months of hard
work, and risk our hair into the bargain, for no more money than this.
“These people are dead, Orrin,” Tom Sunday said irritably, “and if we hadn’t
found it years might pass before anybody else did, and by that time any letter
would have fallen to pieces.”
Standing there watching the two of them I’d no idea what was happening to us,
and that the feelings from that dispute would affect all our lives, and for many
years. At the time it seemed such a little thing.
“Not in this life will any of us ever find a thousand dollars in gold. Not
again. And you suggest we try to find the owner.”
“Whatever we do we’d better decide somewheres else,” I commented. “There might