The Teamster

The boy reconnoitered continuously as he moved through the streets, his pale, gray eyes moving beneath the frayed bill of his greasy woolen cap, scanning the wide, rutted thoroughfares for dropped coins, watches, glass vials – anything that might be jostled from the thousands of pockets crossing this threshold of the Overland Trail.

Toward evening when he had nowhere else to go the boy would climb stacks of discarded crates that choked the spaces between buildings. From there he could observe wagon trains forming for the trip west. Perched like a gargoyle in the waning daylight he would stare at the movement of animals and people and wagons until the images turned soft and grainy in the gathering darkness. Then he would climb down, and searching out a sleeping space, fold himself under his ragged canvas coat, knees bent to his chest, hoping for a dream that would carry him far out onto the prairie.

One morning the sky darkened under a storm that soaked Westport, turning the wide streets into bogs. By noon the hot, mephitic air carried the sucking sounds of boots and hooves and wheels that seemed too clogged and heavy to move at all. The hungry boy attempted to hopscotch his way across the churned quagmire of the main emigrant road, and as he moved he heard sounds of struggle. He looked up to see a clay-splattered teamster wrestle for control of a brace of tall, Missouri-bred mules.
Hold, Goddamn ye, hold now, he cursed.
The animals reared, white-eyed, ears flattened. Their jaws opened and shut as they sidestepped, tossing their heads, trying to turn away.
See here, ye damnable sonsofbitches.

The teamster’s temper fed the animals’ panic. He began hazing them with the muddy ends of their rope leads, shooting heavy globs of mud in every direction until finally a wad struck one of the animals above the eye.
The long, anvil-shaped head jerked upward as the mule simultaneously crouched on its haunches. A single, explosive movement took up the slack of the lead with a loud pop, and the force tore the line from the teamster’s hand. The mule hit full speed within yards, tailing mud fifteen feet in the air as it ran.

The boy’s reaction was pure reflex; he had little experience with livestock. The mule sucked past him and he saw the line whip up out of the mud, so he reached for it. It bounced into his hands, which closed so quickly he didn’t have time to think about consequence.

The force of the runaway jerked him out of his worn brogans, which sat empty in the muck as the boy was pulled headlong into the street. He managed to close his eyes before his face buried in the mud - the impact filled his open mouth with gritty, wet clay, yet he kept his grip even as his head and shoulders plowed a wet furrow past the wagons and spectators that lined the street.

And suddenly it was over; the mule stopped. At first glance it seemed the boy was the reason, but in truth, the animal simply halted at the rise of a small butterfly from the edge of a puddle in the middle of the street.
A crowd gathered. The boy didn’t move. Then he made a coughing sound, spat some muck and let go of the lead. His abraded palms oozed blood. His hair was matted with manure and mud, his face barely recognizable.

The teamster burst through the crowd to kneel beside him. Gently he turned the boy, whose shirt was ripped down the front to his waist, which lay exposed with his trousers and drawers pulled low, everything filled with mud.
By God, said the teamster, ye shoon’t have done it boy. But I’m glad ye did.
The boy reached trembling hands to his face and scraped mud from his eyelids. He spat again and blinked his eyes open, holding his hands in front of his face.
Can you see? Are ye blinded?
No. No, I ain’t blind.

The boy sat up, inspected himself, began scooping mud from inside the waistband of his trousers. He paused, looked around at the gathered crowd and continued cleaning himself. The onlookers murmured and began moving off. The teamster rose, grabbed the mule’s headstall, rubbed the animal’s nose.
They be knotheads, ain’t they?
The boy, still sitting in the street, picked mud from his socks.
Seen my shoes anywheres?
Right where you left ‘em. Over there, next to the walk.
The boy rose slowly, like something primeval emerging from the ooze, avalanches of slop sliding down his body. He moved to his shoes, pulling his sodden socks from his feet. He picked up the brogans and started away.
Hold on, boy.
The boy stopped, still facing away from the teamster.
Ye hungry? I got frijoles and hard biscuit. Come along, if ye choose.
The teamster started down the street, leading the mule. Without a word, the boy turned and followed.

---

Nighthawks chittered and swooped against the evening sky, reddened in the west where clouds shelved in preparation for distant storms that would flash and rumble on the horizon throughout the night.
At one end of the main street freight wagons were parked in long rows, packed and ready, the drivers making camp in the passageways between.

Silhouetted by his cooking fire the teamster lifted a heavy pot from the ashes; he handed the boy a tin plate heaped with beans, which were quickly set upon, the boy’s spoon sounds setting a metallic cadence against the night chorale of human and animal noises.
There’s more if ye need it.

The teamster pulled up an empty nail keg and sat. From his waistcoat he produced a small clay pipe, which he filled and lit as he watched the boy eat. In the orange firelight the boy resembled an ancient totem, cracked and fissured where the dried muck still clung to his skin and clothing. His hair was a headdress of splayed rows of dark, beaded strings of mud.

The teamster sucked his pipe and pulled his red beard. Long years on the trail had pressed his eyes to a squint, gullied deep furrows down his cheeks and across his forehead. When the boy sat down to a second helping he spoke.
Must be awhile since ye et.
The boy looked up.
Never seen none so eager for my board. That’s a fact. Go ahead, boy, eat up. Throw ‘er out otherways.
He waited another minute.
Your people camped hereabouts?
The boy shook his head, wiped his mouth on his crusty sleeve.
No? Where then?
Got none.
Well now.
I’m goin’ west anyways.
That so? And how will ye go?
The boy shrugged.
No outfit, then.
The boy looked at the teamster, shook his head.
Need possibles, boy. And transport. Ye plan to walk your way across the wilderness?
Could if I decide to, I reckon.
What will ye eat?
Ain’t got to that yet.
No. No, well…
The teamster tapped the ash from his pipe, stood.
Ye saved me a mule today. Let’s see what can be done here.
He climbed into the back of the nearest wagon.
Come up here, boy.
He lit a small lantern as the boy climbed under the heavy canvas cover. He tossed a flannel shirt at the boy’s feet.
See if that’s a fit.
The boy looked at him.
Go ahead. Your own h’ain’t much wear left to it.
The boy stripped off his muddy, torn shirt, dropped it with a clunk on the wagon deck. In the soft light his neck and hands were the color of leather gloves; between patches of mud the skin of his torso and shoulders shone like alabaster. The teamster’s eyes narrowed.
Strong lad, ain’t ye?

It took a moment for the words to register. When they did, the air around the boy seemed to hum. He paused, as if to sort out the source of a strange sound, and turned his head toward the teamster just as the man’s large hands closed upon his shoulders, forcing him down on his stomach to the wagon floor.

They struggled in silence. The teamster pinned the boy to the wagon’s rough floor, scraping his elbows and cheek as he tried to scuttle from under the man's heavy weight. The teamster’s face pressed close to the boy’s ear and the boy heard the wheezy breath, smelled the stale tobacco and coffee, felt the scratch of the beard. The boy flailed, clawing the air. It all happened in seconds. The teamster yanked hard at the boy’s worn trousers, grunting with each pull. There were ripping sounds. In desperation the boy flung his arms forward, seeking any handhold. Then he felt a metallic surface and closed his hand on it -- a heavy, cast iron pot lid.
Another pull and his trousers gave way; the boy felt the night air on his buttocks. The teamster sat back on his knees and raised himself slightly as the boy flipped over, swinging the lid with both hands. There was a solid, metallic sound, and the teamster pitched sideways on his right shoulder, his left hand going flat against the side of his head. Blood trickled between his closed fingers and his eyes blinked with surprise.

The boy pushed himself away, his breath coming in short, hard gasps. He was about to rise when the teamster caught him by the ankle. Kicking with his free foot, the boy caught the teamster on the forehead, cutting him again, and the man sagged against the wagon floor.

What came next was a surprise. The boy wanted to get away, so he swung the heavy lid again. He swung it back and forth, hardly feeling the strikes. He didn’t see the scarlet splatters on the wagon cover until he was done. Not until he felt the lid become sticky with the teamster’s blood.

He looked down. The man was no more. In his place was a corpse; blood-stained shirt, arms, hands, legs and trousers spread-eagled against the floor of the wagon, crotch darkened with urine; face, beard and skull battered into a shapeless, crimson pulp. Life was gone, and what remained hardly seemed the stuff of life, except for the sound of the man’s voice, which the boy recalled now, suddenly, blushing at the thought.
For a long moment he stood over the body, staring. There was no remorse; the teamster had betrayed him. No, he had survived. That was the only judgment he could apply.

The bloody lid slipped from his hands and he pulled up his trousers and picked up the shirt. He turned to go, and in turning his eye noticed a fold in the dead man’s pocket. Gently he lifted up the man’s leather coin purse and inspected the contents.

When his feet touched the ground outside a concertina nearby began to wheeze a jig as the silhouettes of small brown bats swooped down from the darkened sky to gather the insects that hovered in clouds above the camp. Voices strange and ominous filtered through the alleyway behind him, and the boy ducked down. The sounds seemed to close in around him. Bunching the waist of his bloody, torn trousers in his fist the boy took flight, bare-chested, shirt and teamster’s purse flapping in his free hand as he moved. Without direction or destination, without plan. Away. Just get away.

At that moment Deputy John Bayford Weaver was headed back to the city’s jail after making his rounds among the main street shops and warehouses. At age thirty-eight he lived a life of lock and window sash inspections, twelve hours each day, seven days a week, for twelve and a half dollars a month. As he strolled past the rows of freight wagons the deputy thought about the meal that awaited him at the jail: cold biscuits and red-eye gravy puddled with grease, black coffee, molasses, and perhaps a dollop of corn pudding, all from the kitchen of the Mays Hotel. He wondered if the meal had been brought over by Dora, the hotel’s kitchen girl. Dora, nineteen, hair the color of corn silk. Light blue eyes. Large-hipped, full-breasted, promiscuous. And as he walked the deputy recalled their encounter in the alleyway behind the hotel a week ago. It was a hurried fumbling, with skirts swept aside and trousers unbuttoned - a shivering, sweat-soaked coupling, barely one minute in duration, accompanied by no sound, nor smile nor kiss.

He gave her a dollar. She gave him the clap, which he would not discover for another three days.

As he crossed behind the last freight wagon at the end of the street, murder was the last thing on the deputy’s mind. But the panicked boy had reached that same place at the same time, barely slowing to dodge around the wagon; he ran into the deputy so hard that the teamster’s coin purse burst from his hand and struck the deputy full in the face.

Fortunately for Weaver he was a big man. The physical shock of the collision barely moved him -- although the surprise of it nearly emptied his bowels.
Good God Almighty.
Before him the blood-splattered, bare-chested boy lay stunned. It took a few long moments for Weaver to realize that the shiny objects scattered around his feet were gold coins.

Laramie

It was morning when Eli Jumper, Cutter and Cole arrived at Fort Laramie on the horses they purchased with the massacred pilgrims’ money. By noon they were drunk, and by midafternoon Cutter and Cole were incarcerated in the old fur trader's adobe guardhouse next to the Laramie River, accused by a drunken soldier of using holdout cards in a poker game at the post sutler’s store. They were saved from a severe flogging by the cirrhotic lifestyle of their accuser; the soldier collapsed and died the following day from complications of heatstroke.

The fur trader’s bastion was crumbling in disrepair; the adobe walls of the original stockade had been allowed to decay since the army purchased the fort in 1849, and the recently transferred garrison, consisting of one company of mounted infantry and one company of regular infantry, was charged with the responsibility of constructing a new post around a large parade ground.

Following their release Cutter and Cole contracted with the fort adjutant to haul timber from the Laramie Mountains 30 miles west. Cutter used the contract to negotiate the purchase of a team and freight wagon, and for the next month the two outlaws spent their days cutting and hauling and watching for Indians along the trail. At night they caroused with trail scouts and freighters in the trader’s small store, playing cards and exchanging gossip around cooking fires, and occasionally cheating drunken soldiers with slight-of-hand card tricks.

Eli Jumper used his hunting skills to supply meat for the fort’s cooking pots; game was scarce in the vicinity and the emigrants, freighters, traders and soldiers were willing to pay exorbitant prices to avoid the work and risk of ranging too far from the cannon muzzles to secure a taste of steak or tongue. Watching the Osage depart the fort one morning, Cole shook his head. Injun on horseback's got more lives than a cat, he muttered.

The discovery of the massacred train had sent shock waves up and down the trail; road ranches and trading posts from the Wind River country to Nebraska City hummed with rumors of mass attacks, scalping and torture. Casualty numbers swelled to the hundreds, and stolen livestock totals were inflated to the point that one trail-hardened scout proclaimed Sioux ownership of cattle, mules and horses greater than all the estancias in Texas.
Wonder what brand they’ll use, he mused.

At Laramie trail traffic slowed as summer wore on and the stories piled high. Only the experienced frontiersmen knew that the hostiles had long since departed the region for the buffalo-darkened country of the Powder River, and the relative safety of the Paha Sapa, as the Lakota called the Black Hills. Bearded, long-haired wilderness veterans sat alone in the corners of the fort’s drinking rooms and at the edges of the night fires, staring into their whiskey, listening to the greenhorn panic, confirming with silence the disesteem that drove them from civilization – too much talking, not enough knowing.

Cutter’s mind was busy too, not with thoughts of Indians, but money. As far back as he could remember he had been able to sense the easiest access to whatever wealth was around him. Skin games, robbery, bunko, forgery; he knew how to move the boodle. He called this talent his sugar nose, and from the moment he and Cole and Eli arrived at Laramie he had been sniffing out the possibilities, weighing the prospects, figuring ways to avoid punishment. He knew the risks: no penitentiaries meant hanging for almost any crime, or murder on the prairie by Indians, or even death from starvation or exposure if escape was not carefully planned. But Henry Cutter was not a man to fret consequence. He believed he was smarter than his marks, whatever the color of their skin. Superior intelligence would help him formulate the strategy he needed to succeed.

Unfortunately, neither Cutter nor Cole was well-acquainted with day-to-day requirements of life on the frontier. The dugout in Kansas had been merely a hideout; most of their time was spent prowling Missouri River towns, stealing whatever they found unguarded among the largely peaceable farmers and merchants. In contrast, the frontier along the Platte River emigrant trails was in a state of perpetual alarm due to deteriorating relations with the Indians. Everyone was armed.

But Henry’s sugar nose smelled a situation ripe with opportunity. Scarcity of goods was common. By the time emigrant trains reached Laramie the pilgrims were in need of almost everything – draft animals, wagon parts, whiskey, flour, sugar, coffee, clothing. The threat of Indian raids had reduced the flow of supplies: the post trader’s stores were nearly depleted and the army, too, had its supply problems. The soldiers, mostly poor, illiterate emigrants themselves, would spend every cent they had on food that wasn’t wormy or molding, warm socks, cheap whiskey, and dollar whores. Most appealing to Cutter was the fact that competition was all but nonexistent; prices could be set according to the dictates of conscience.

The first week in August brought a small supply train consisting of twenty ox-drawn wagons carrying goods consigned to the sutler at Fort Bridger - blankets, medicine, lanterns, hard goods, lead, and powder. The odd crate of bibles. And whiskey, barrels of whiskey. All cargo to be sold or bartered over the winter.
With the train came twenty-three men.

One of them was named Edwin Tabonneau, a Lakota half-breed known for his skill with bow and rifle. The son of a French trapper and a woman from the Oglala Bad Face clan, he occasionally hired on with trains as a scout and translator. But in the company of whites he could be surly, silent for days at a time, and few teamsters trusted his behavior, which became openly insolent as tensions mounted between his mother’s people and the whites.

On the night they arrived at Laramie Tabonneau and a bullwhacker got into a fight in the trader’s store, the cause of which no witnesses could later recall.
The whacker was stout and thick-necked, with hairy, club-shaped forearms he spread wide in an attempt to grapple with the half-breed. His intent was to break bones, but every time he closed with his opponent Tabonneau’s knife snickered through the air, biting the whacker’s arms, face, and torso. By the time the fight was over the teamster’s blood dotted the faces and shirts of the onlookers.

In the end the loser sat heavily in a chair, bright crimson rivulets streaming down his face and arms, soaking his shirt and trousers, dripping steadily into pools on the dusty plank floor. He refused all aid, wiping himself with a bar rag until the cloth was wet and dripping. Finally he sighed deeply, let the rag drop to the floor and spoke his last words:
Shut the window. I’ve taken a chill.

Cutter had a wagon and team; what he needed was a means to forecast the ebb and flow of weather, Indians and emigrant passage. He watched the teamster bleed to death and recognized the solution.

The next morning Cutter came upon the half-breed seated on a keg in the shade of the eves outside the trader’s store, eyes bloodshot, fingers trembling in the onslaught of a hangover as he attempted to light a short clay pipe. The teamster’s blood still streaked his shirtfront in dark brown waterfall shapes, crusty and stinking. Flies, chilled with dew, buzzed lazily around him, landing to crawl up and down the greasy locks of dark hair that spilled across his back and shoulders.
Hullo there, Cutter said.
Tabonneau turned his face toward Cutter, then away from him.
Helluva ruckus ye had last night.
Tabonneau spit.
Ye be a handy fellow.
Cutter moved closer to stand in front of the half breed.
I might could offer ye a job.
Tabonneau fixed Henry with a red-eyed stare.
Ain’t lookin’.
Well, sir, it’s more of a partnership really. Equal shares.
You didn’t hear me.
Tabonneau dropped the pipe and stood up, kicked the keg behind him. Cutter took a step back.
Now, now friend. No harm intended.
Go away from me. Or suffer.
The half-breed advanced a step. Cutter held up his index finger.
Fair warning. I am the wrong man. Come at me and ye won’t walk away.
Tabonneau stopped. He recognized a metallic sound, and looked down at the muzzle of the cocked pistol Cutter held at his hip.

The next day Tabonneau quit the supply train. A month later he, Cutter, Cole and Eli Jumper opened a road ranch at a site he selected near the Horse Creek Treaty grounds thirty-five miles from Laramie. East of the fort, the half-breed explained, provided first pickings of the emigrant trains and a thirsty ride for the soldiers. The sod and log building was a 12 by 20 foot trading room flanked by two small lean-to supply rooms. A dug-out stable and corral completed the structure, which opened for business in mid-October, low on trail supplies but well-stocked with kegs of whiskey and two fat whores fetched from Dobytown near Fort Kearny. Cutter fashioned two hide-covered hay pallets and a blanket partition in one of the lean-tos, and the Laramie soldiers sustained a lively trade on two-dollar pokes through the end of November, when a heavy snow blanketed the fort road.

Just before snowfall a young soldier rode to the ranch, claiming the Grand Bounce from the drudgery of military life at Laramie. He sat on a crate in the trading room all afternoon, drinking cup after cup of whiskey. I come here from Ohio to dust savages, he said, not muck stalls nor dig shitholes for goddamn officers. I’m a fightin’ man. He spit tobacco from between rotting brown teeth and dug a wad of cash from his trousers. Now fetch me another portion. I believe I’ll have anothern before I ride them gals.
For three hours Cutter, Cole and Tabonneau listened to him. When he passed out they dragged him by the ankles behind the building and cut his throat.

They rifled his pockets and saddlebags and buried him and his saddle in a washout three miles north of the ranch. His horse was turned out in the corral - a stray they intended to return to the fort, if anyone asked.
Then they burned his clothes. Cole kept his boots.

That evening after supper a smiling Cutter held up the soldier’s sparkling silver watch and chain in the firelight as he read the inscription on the case:
The time of life is short. Will Shakespeare.
He closed the case and pocketed the watch.
Winter’s comin boys, he said. Better stock up.

Desertions among Laramie’s enlisted troops ran close to 30 percent that winter. Few were caught and punished; none whose path crossed the Horse Creek road ranch.

The Juzgado

They let him put on his shirt before they locked him in the jail’s single cell, which measured 9 by 12 feet, at the rear of a box-shaped fieldstone building with a small ventilation gap high in the back wall.

It was a dark, reeking space, and the boy kept his back to the flat iron bars as he slid down to the cold, straw-covered stone floor. For a short while his eyes darted about, searching in vain for shapes in the inky blackness.

From across the room came the sound of slow rhythmic breathing, and the boy knew that a man he could not see, a sleeping man, already occupied the cell. The boy stared into the darkness, trying to collect himself, but in the still, foul air an aching exhaustion overcame him and slowly he sank to his side. Within a minute he was asleep.

He awakened to the sound of urination. Through the gap at the top of the back wall the first dim rays of daylight outlined a figure pissing in a bucket in the corner. As the boy rubbed sleep from his eyes the figure looked over his shoulder and shuffled back to the other side of the cell, yawning. He wore leg irons, which jingled and squeaked as he moved to the wall, stopped, stretched his arms, and loosed a loud, quaking fart before settling down upon a small blanket spread upon the floor.

His name was Henry Cutter. He was thirty years old, although in his dirty, loose-fitting workingman’s clothes he looked much older. He had a slender build, with long, thin arms and legs that culminated in large hands and feet. He sported a fashionably long mustache and goatee. At first acquaintance most who met him would describe Henry as an affable, intelligent man. He was that and more: At twelve years of age he killed a man for throwing a rock at his dog. By the time he turned twenty he had murdered twice again, a free black man and a Cherokee Indian. Since then his life catalogued violence and crime on a grander scale: war and gunfights, stabbings, assaults and robberies.
He had large gray eyes that focused on the boy, who began scratching his waist and neck where bedbugs had pitched into him as he slept.

Ticky in here, ain’t it?

The boy didn’t respond. His attention was drawn to the building’s front door, where a key rattled in the lock. The door swung open and Marshal Albert Toomes entered the room. A big man, well over two hundred pounds, he stepped to the front of the cell, folding his meaty fists around the bars.

Mornin’ Henry.
Hullo, Albert.
Son.
The boy remained silent.
Albert, said Cutter, I see yer boardin’ schoolboys these days. What’d he do? Turpentine your dog?
Same as you, Henry. Murder, robbery. Bashed the skull of a teamster, then run smack into one a’ my deputies. Had the man’s purse.
Well. What do you aim to do with him?
Hold him for trial.
Missouri hangs children?
Missouri hangs murderers, Henry, as you’ll soon find out. Hell, the two of you, mebbe you’ll get stretched together.
I ain’t hung yet, Albert.
As good as. Boy’ll go to trial, and soon as that’s over, his honor’ll write out your order of execution. Then it’s off to Springfield, mebbe both of you. Good riddance, too.
You got a mean streak, Albert. You know that?

The marshal looked at the boy.
Care to tell me yer name this mornin’ boy?
No response.
Ain’t gonna help you any, keepin’ quiet. If you’ve kin, they should know. You’re in deep, son.
He paused a moment, turned to leave, looked back at Cutter.
Breakfast’ll be up shortly. Then you two can swamp out the cell.

Toomes slammed the door behind him. Cutter stared at the boy, who sat slumped against the bars.

Ain’t got a pistol on you?
The boy turned to face the bars.
A knife then?
Cutter held up his chains.
Well, how’s about a key?

Captured

It was after they crossed the Republican River that the boy thought of her. As he herded the stolen stock he wondered which animals belonged to her family – was it the speckled ox or the mule with the dark mane? Would she reach Oregon now?
He pondered these questions without guilt. Cutter was right: The pilgrims encouraged their own bad luck by not being prepared.

But the boy felt reckless. He now had a weapon and a decent horse. Perhaps when they sold the stock he’d strike out on his own, maybe search her out, take her with him. If her father said anything, the boy would do for him just like he had for the slavers at Wilson’s.

They trailed the south bank of the Republican until mid afternoon, when the country ahead rose and broke into steep, cedar-filled ravines. They recrossed the river and moved the stock north, past the flood plain to rolling, buffalo grass tableland dotted with clumps of soapweed, keeping the river’s tree-lined course in sight. They made camp in a full red sunset, with buffalo sign all around them.

The next morning Jumper was gone. He took with him two mules, a long gun and a flask of rye whiskey. Buff’ler roast for supper, I think, said Cutter. Goddamn Injuns go stale on beans and salt pork over time.
I just hope he don’t get too drunk, said Wilson. Won’t butcher or pack it back worth a damn. Meat’ll be flyblown and look like dogs chewed it.
After a cold breakfast Cutter sent the boy down to the river to fill canteens while he, Wilson and Cole broke camp and got the stock moving.

The day had dawned clear, hot and humid; mosquitoes and gnats rose in clouds from the willow thickets as the boy threaded his way to the river’s edge. He buttoned his shirt collar and hunched his shoulders, fanning the worn straw hat he’d taken from one of the emigrant wagons. He dismounted and searched the steep bank for a place to wade; perhaps the insects would be less annoying if he stood in the river.

He discovered a sloping access to the water and removed his worn brogans and socks and rolled his trousers up to his knees. He stepped into the slow green current carefully, moving out into the river until the high-pitched hum of the mosquitoes disappeared. He filled a canteen and had a second half full when he looked up and scanned the river in both directions.

There was an Indian standing on the bank fifty paces downstream. He had a gray wool army blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His face was blackened around his mouth and eyes, and the vermilion he wore in the part in his hair made him look as though someone had attempted to saw his skull in two. At first the boy thought it was Jumper, but he quickly realized that this man was too tall and thin, his hair too long.
The Indian was motionless, watching, which delayed the boy’s notice of the weapon he held in his right hand - a flat, three-foot long piece of wood with a tapered grip and two six-inch iron blades protruding from the broad, killing end. The boy dropped the canteen he was filling, feeling a sharp chill as he realized his pepperbox pistol was still in the warbag that hung from his saddle.

He sucked a deep breath and without taking his eyes from the Indian began moving slowly toward the bank. An experienced frontiersman would have chosen the river; a man diving and swimming underwater presented a smaller target, and the water’s surface might deflect a ball or arrow fired from such a shallow angle.

But the boy was not experienced; he focused on the Indian as he moved up on the bank. The Indian did not move, and when the boy turned to run he understood why: Before him was a second Indian; in his upraised hand he held a stone-headed club. He stepped quickly toward the boy, bringing the club down as he came, and in the split second before he was swallowed in blackness, the boy thought about the face of the young prison guard whose pistol had misfired.