McAdoo’s rig, you may end up the next William S. Hart. Now let me drive. Let me chauffeur one fine man wherever he wants to go.”
“We ain’t going to see Shorty?”
“Not today. He’s busy.”
“Shorty don’t borrow his saddle to just anybody!” Wylie crows triumphantly, as I turn the car around in the middle of the road. “Not everybody gets to ride Shorty’s saddle!”
I offer to take him home but he prefers to be dropped off outside of Universal. It doesn’t make any sense because most of the day’s shooting will be well under way and none starting. But perhaps he believes me, believes his luck has turned. I drop him off outside the pen, deserted at this hour, a wind scrubbing dust into the air off the beaten earth, scurrying bits of candy wrapper along and sticking them to the wire fence. I watch as he stumps toward it, Shorty’s magic humped clumsily on his shoulder, stirrup leathers flapping, stirrups bouncing, his stupid faith that the old man’s luck has the power to work a miracle in his own life intact.
7
All thirteen assembled in Front Street, sitting their horses in the early morning grey and quiet, mist curling off the coffee-and-cream Missouri, rising into the still air to hang a muslin curtain between the men and the wind- sculptured bluffs across the river.
It was a force mounted and armed and accoutred without consistency, piebald and paint buffalo runners, blooded bays and chestnuts, Henrys and Sharps and Winchesters and Colts and double-barrelled scatterguns, a Derringer in a coat pocket, skinning knives and Bowie knives, hatchets, a Confederate cavalry sabre hung scabbarded on a saddlehorn, smoke-stained buckskins and bar-stained broadcloth, broken plug hats and glossy fur caps, loud checked shirts and patched linen, canvas dusters and wool capotes, parfleche-soled moccasins and high-heeled riding boots. Every face bearing a different mark of vice or virtue, motive or resolve.
Silence was near complete. The Englishman’s boy could hear birds carolling in the thickets down by the river and the horses shifting in the roadway, saddles creaking like the timbers of a ship rocking at anchor, the faint chiming of restless spurs and bridle chains. Someone coughed, but no one spoke. They were waiting on Hardwick.
Hardwick was lighting a cigar. He scratched a match with a thumbnail and his face sprang out at them, bright in the dim surround, like a golden countenance in an old painting. His bay pricked its ears at the crack of the match, sidestepped uneasily when the sulphur burst stinging in its nostrils. Hardwick remained seated, careless and comfortable, reins looped on the horn, hands cupped to the flame. He spoke softly to the horse, checking its restive dance.
For a moment, he drew on the cigar and studied the shadowy cavalry. Then he nodded and, without raising his voice, said: “I got one thing to say to you boys before we commence this enterprise. I don’t tolerate a slacker. If one of you thinks he can slack on Tom Hardwick, take another think and fall out now.” There came a pause in which he seemed to be taking thought himself. “And I hope there’s no cowards among us,” he added. “I won’t break bread with a coward.” He smiled briefly and that was confusing, as if the smile was taking back or amending what he had just said. The Englishman’s boy was sure that was not the case. “Well,” said Hardwick, turning his horse, “let’s move out.”
They went up the street at a walk, the slow, sombre pace of a funeral procession, past the shuttered house Fort Benton’s merchant prince, I.G. Baker, had built so his wife would not have to give birth to their first baby in the fort, past the ox wagons and trailers parked by the warehouses, past the sporting and gaming houses at this hour black as the heart of sin, past the old adobe fort which had stood godfather to the town, its four massive blockhouses featureless and blank but for the rifle slits in the walls.
Wraiths, they stole out into the country, accompanied by the singing of meadowlarks, the horses steadily warming to their work in the chill morning air. The file lengthened under the blush of sun rising behind them, Hardwick and Evans assuming an air of generalship at the head, the company sorting into a natural order of march, friend falling in with friend, acquaintance falling in with acquaintance, the pack animals and remounts occupying the protected centre of the column, riders at the rear acting as loose herders.
Because they were unfamiliar with the other riders, the Englishman’s boy and a hired hand named Hank from a farm between the Teton and Marias which had lost stock too, fell into step with one another. His employer had equipped Hank with a dubious horse and a dubious rifle, enrolled him in the posse to assist in the recovery of his stolen property. Hank looked as if he wished he were in any other line of work than chasing Indians. He talked a good deal, as if talking kept the Indians from peeking around some corner of his mind. The boy wished he would talk less and look to the management of his horse more, a fat white plug with a dirty coat which kept blundering and stumbling about in a slew-footed fashion.
When they arrived at the wolfers’ old camp the sun was standing blood-red on the horizon. The camp was marked by a dead fire, a few pieces of charcoal, some fine ash blowing along the ground in a gathering wind. The track of nineteen iron-shod horses was plain as print on a sheet of clean paper. However, Philander Vogle, who had been nominated scout, also espied a faint, partially obliterated moccasin print blended in among the hoof prints.
“They didn’t drive them off,” he said to Hardwick. “Slippery devils come in and walked them out quiet. That’s why we didn’t hear nothing.”
Touching the brim of his hat, Hardwick saluted the moccasin impression and whoever had left it as a signature on the earth. They rode on.
On the other side of the hills, vistas opened up. It was flat, open country, a barbed-wire fence running parallel to their advance, posts marching off to the horizon like infantry, staking out the Robinson property where Hank worked and horses had also been stolen. The stirring sight of all the posts he had pounded caused Hank to cluck his nag down the line to Hardwick, to point westward and excitedly pass on his information. “There. Over there. That’s where they broke the fence. Broke it down and run off Mr. Robinson’s horses, by God.”
Hardwick said, “Farmer, what’s this news in aid of?”
“Why, it’s just news, I guess,” he said uncertainly.
“It’s old news,” said Hardwick. “I don’t want no news from you except news of where them horses went to. You got any such news?”
“No, no. I don’t, I suppose,” Hank admitted, crestfallen.
“Then you leave the Indians to us, Farmer. And we’ll leave minding the raising of peas and beans and taties to you.”
Hank dropped back, deeply chagrined. “He had no business coming down on me so hard. I ought to have thrown it back at him,” he said to the Englishman’s boy.
“I wouldn’t,” said the boy.
“Why not?”
“Because I ain’t a fool,” said the boy.
Late in the morning, a halt was called. Vogle, who had been scouting in advance, returned with a report that a hundred yards ahead he had discovered a dead colt. Recently gelded, it appeared to have bled to death with the effort of trying to keep pace with the fugitive herd.
“That’s one of Mr. Robinson’s,” Hank confided to the Englishman’s boy. “He cut him two days ago.”
The real news was that where the colt had fallen, the trail forked. The Indians had split the herd and one lot of horses had been driven northwest, the other northeast. Everyone dismounted while Evans, Hardwick, and Vogle convened a council, squatting on the ground.
Hardwick asked Vogle if he could estimate how many Indians were in the raiding party. Vogle said he wasn’t sure, but he could find no unshod-pony tracks, which suggested not many.
“How many?” demanded Hardwick.
Vogle shrugged. “Two, maybe three. Can’t swear to it.”
Hardwick considered a moment. “If there’s only two or three, they’re from the same band. They haven’t shaved off to take their share of the loot home to different camps. They’re going to swing back and join up again further
