hunch that his father, hearing of the surrender, had just wheeled around and took the long way back to Missouri, his weapons with him, and the devil with surrender terms.
His dad coughed and asked, “How’d you get that Navy Colt, son?”
“Bunch of Jayhawkers came ridin’ through one night, headin’ back to Kansas like the devil was chasin’ them. Turned out that was just about right. ’bout a half hour later, Bloody Bill Anderson and his boys came ridin’ up. They stopped to rest and water their horses. There was this young feller with them. Couldn’t have been no more than a year or so older than me. He seen me and Ma there alone, and all I had was this old rifle.” He patted the worn stock of an old flint and percussion Plains’ rifle in a saddle boot. “So he give me this Navy gun and an extra cylinder. Seemed like a right nice thing for him to do. He
“It was a nice thing to do. You seen him since?”
“No, sir.”
“You thank him proper?”
“Yes, sir. Gave him a bit of food in a sack.”
“Neighborly. He tell you his name?”
“Yes, sir. James. Jesse James. His brother Frank was with the bunch, too. Some older than Jesse.”
“Don’t recall hearin’ that name before.”
“Jesse blinked his eyes a lot.”
“Is that right? Well, you ’member the name, son; might run into him again some day. Good man like that’s hard to find.”
As the days rolled past, the way ever westward, father and son learned more of the wild country into which they rode, ever alert for trouble, and they learned more of each other, becoming reacquainted.
They saw herds of buffalo that held them spellbound, the size and number and royal bearing of the magnificent animals awe-inspiring. Even though the animals themselves were stupid. And many times, as they rode, father and son came upon the bones of what appeared to be thousands of the animals, callously slaughtered for their hide, hump, and tongue, the rest left to rot and stink under the summer sun.
“Them is the Indians’ main food supply,” Emmett told his son. “And another reason why the savages is mad at the whites. I got to side with the savages ’bout this.”
As they skirted the rotten bone yard, coyotes and a few wolves feasted on the tons of meat left behind. Kirby said, “This don’t seem right to me.”
“Ain’t!” Emmett said, his jaw tight with anger. “Man shouldn’t never take no more than he hisself can use. This is just pure ol’ waste. Stupid.”
“And the Indians had nothing to do with this?”
“Hell, no! Look at them shod pony tracks. Indians don’t shoe their ponies and drive wagons that left them tracks over there. The white man did this.”
They passed the slaughter, both silent for a time. Finally the boy said, “Maybe the Indians have a point about the white man comin’ here.”
His father spat a brown stream of tobacco juice from the ever present chew tucked in his cheek. “Reckon they do, boy. Not much is ever just black and white … always a middle ground that needs lookin’ at.”
“Like the War between the States, Pa?”
“Yeah. Right and wrong on both sides there, too.”
“Was you a hero. Pa?”
“We all was. Ever’ man that fought on either side. It was a hell of a war.”
“Was you an officer?”
“Sergeant.”
“Why was everybody a hero, Pa?”
“’cause they’ll never be — I pray God — another war like that one, boy. Don’t know the final count of dead, but it was terrible, I can tell you that.”
They plodded on for another mile before the father again spoke. “I seen men layin’ side by side, some on stretchers, some on blankets, some just layin’ on the cold ground — all of them wounded, lot of them dyin’. The line was five or six deep and it stretched for more’n three miles along the railroad track. You just can’t imagine that, boy … not until you see it with your own eyes. Maybe one doctor for ever’ five hundred men. No medicine, no food, no nothing. Men cryin’ out for just the touch of a woman’s hand before they died. Toward the end of the war there wasn’t even no hope. We knew we was beat, but still we fought on like crazy men.”
“Why, Pa?”
“Ask a hundred men, boy, and they’d give you a hundred different answers. They was some men that fought ’cause they really hated the nigras. Some fought ’cause they was losin’ a way of life that was all they’d ever known. Some didn’t fight at all till they seen the Yankees come through burnin’ and lootin’ and robbin’ and rapin’. And some of them did that, too, boy, don’t never let nobody ever tell you no different.”
Kirby got a funny feeling in the area just below his belly at the thought of rapin’. He shifted in the saddle.
“I ain’t sayin’ the Gray didn’t have its share of scallywags and white trash, ’cause we did. But nothing to compare with the Yankees.”
“Maybe that had something to do with the fact that the Blues had more men, Pa.”
Emmett looked at his boy, thinking:
