off.
Zwey came back well before sundown with a wild turkey he had managed to shoot. But Luke wasn't back. Elmira decided she might as well tell Zwey. She couldn't tolerate any more of Luke. Zwey was mildly puzzled that Luke wasn't there.
'I chased him off with the gun,' Elmira said.
Zwey looked surprised. His mouth opened and the look spread up his big face.
'With the gun?' he asked. 'Why?'
'He tried to interfere with me,' Elmira said. 'He tries it nearly ever day, once you go off.'
Zwey pondered that information for a time. They had made a mess of cooking the turkey, but at least it was something to eat. Zwey gnawed on a big drumstick while he pondered.
'Was it he tried to marry you?' he asked.
'You can call it that, if you like,' she said. 'He tries to do me. I want him to let be.'
Zwey said nothing more until he had finished his drumstick. He cracked the bone with his teeth, sucked at the marrow a minute and then threw the bone into the darkness.
'I guess I better kill him if he's going to act that way,' he said.
'You could take him with you when you hunt, like you used to,' she said. 'He couldn't pester me if he's with you.'
She had hardly spoken when a shot rang out. It passed between the two of them and hit the turkey, knocking it off its stick into the ashes. They both scrambled for the cover of the wagon and waited. An hour later they were still waiting. There were no more shots, and Luke didn't appear.
'I wonder why he shot the turkey,' Zwey said. 'It was done dead.'
'He didn't shoot the turkey, he missed you,' Elmira suggested.
'Well, it tore up the turkey,' he said, when they came out of cover and picked up the cold bird.
That night he slept under the wagon with a cocked pistol but there was no attack. They ate cold turkey for breakfast. Two days later Luke showed up, acting as if he'd never been away.
Elmira was apprehensive, fearing a fight then and there, but Zwey seemed to have forgotten the whole business. About the time Luke rode up they spotted two or three buffalo and immediately rode off to shoot them, leaving Elmira to drive the wagon. They came back after dark with three fresh hides, and seemed in good spirits. Luke scarcely looked at her. He and Zwey sat up late, cooking slices of buffalo liver. They were both as bloody as if they'd been skinned. Elmira hated the smell of blood and kept away from them as best she could.
The next morning, before good light, she woke up gagging at the blood smell and looked up to see Luke sitting astraddle of her. He was rubbing his bloody hands over her bosom. Her stomach heaved from the smell.
Luke was fumbling with her blanket, trying to get her uncovered. When he raised up to loosen his clothes Elmira rolled on her stomach, thinking that might stop him. It did annoy him. He bent over her and she felt his hot breath at her ear.
'You're no better than a bitch dog, we'll have it that way,' he said. She squeezed her legs together as tightly as she could. Luke pinched her but she kept squeezing. Then he tried to wedge a knee between her legs but he wasn't strong enough. The next thing she knew Zwey was dragging Luke over the side of the wagon. Zwey was smiling, as if he were playing with a child. He lifted Luke and began to smash his head into the wagon wheel. He did it two or three times, smashing Luke into the iron rim, and then he dropped him as if he were deadwood. Zwey didn't really seem angry. He stood by the wagon, looking at Elmira. Luke had pulled her clothes half off.
'I wish he wouldn't act that way,' Zwey said. 'I won't have nobody to hunt with if I kill him.'
He looked down at Luke, who was still breathing, though his head and face were a pulp.
'He just keeps wanting to marry you,' Zwey said. 'Looks like he'd quit it.'
Luke did quit, at that point. He lay in the wagon for four days, trying to get his breath through his broken nose. One of his ears had been nearly scraped off on the wheel; his lips were smashed and several of his teeth broken. His face swelled to such a point that they couldn't tell at first if his jaw was broken, but it turned out it wasn't. The first day, he could barely mumble, but he did persuade Elmira to try and sew his ear back on. Zwey was for cutting it off, since it just hung by a bit of skin, but Elmira took pity on Luke and sewed on the ear. She made a bad job of it, mainly because Luke yelped and jerked every time she touched him with the needle. When she finished, the ear wasn't quite in its right place; it set a little lower than the other and she had pulled the threads a little too tight, so that it didn't have quite the right shape. But at least it was on his head.
Zwey laughed about the fight as if he and Luke had just been two boys playing, although Luke's nose was bent sideways. Then Luke developed a fever and got chills. He rolled around in the wagon moaning and sweating. They had no medicine and could do nothing for him. He looked bad, his face swollen and black. It was strange, Elmira thought, that he would bring such punishment on himself just because he wanted to interfere with her.
There was no more danger of that. When Luke's fever broke, he was so weak he could barely turn over. Zwey went off and hunted, as he had been doing, and Elmira drove the wagon. Twice she got the wagon stuck in a creek and had to wait until Zwey found her and pulled it out. He seemed as strong as either of the mules.
They had not seen one soul since leaving the Fort. Once she thought she saw an Indian watching her from a little ridge, but it turned out to be an antelope.
It was two weeks before Luke could get out of the wagon. All that time Elmira brought him his food and coaxed him to eat it. All the passion seemed to have been beaten out of him. But he did say once, watching Zwey, 'I'll kill him someday.'
'You shouldn't have missed that shot you had,' Elmira said, thinking to tease him.
'What shot?' he asked.
She told him about the shot that hit the turkey, and Luke shook his head.
'I never shot no turkey,' he said. 'I was thinking to ride off and leave you but I changed my mind.'
'Who shot it then?' she asked. Luke had no answer.
She reported this to Zwey but he had forgotten the incident-he wasn't very interested.
After that, though, she grew afraid of the nights-whoever had shot the turkey might still be out there. She huddled in the wagon, scared, and spent her days wishing they would come to Ogallala.
67.
ALL THROUGH THE TERRITORY, Newt kept expecting to see Indians-the prospect was all the cowboys talked about. Dish claimed there were all manner of Indians in the Territory, and that some of them were far from whipped. The claim upset Pea Eye, who liked to believe that his Indian-fighting days were over.
'They ain't supposed to fight us no more,' he said. 'Gus claims the government paid 'em to stop.'
'Yes, but whoever heard of an Indian doing what he was supposed to do?' Lippy said. 'Maybe some of them consider that they wasn't paid enough.'
'What would you know?' Jasper inquired. 'When did you ever see an Indian?'
'I seen plenty,' Lippy informed him. 'What do you think made this hole in my stomach? An Apache Indian made that hole.'
'Apache?' Dish said. 'Where did you find an Apache?'
'West of Santa Fe,' Lippy said. 'I traded in them parts, you know. That's where I learned to play the piano.'
'I wouldn't be surprised if you forget how before we come to a place that's got one,' Pea Eye said. He found himself more and more depressed by the prospect of endless plains. Normally, in his traveling days, he had ridden through one kind of country for a while and then come to another kind of country. It had even been true on the trail drive: first there had been brush, then the limestone hills, then some different brush, and then the plains. But after that there had just been more and more plains, and no end in sight that he could see. Once or twice he asked Deets how soon they could expect to come to the end of them, for Deets was the acknowledged expert on distances, but this time Deets had to admit he was stumped. He didn't know how long the plains went on. 'Over a thousand, I guess,' he said.
'A thousand miles?' Pea said. 'We'll all get old and grow beards before we get that far.'
Jasper pointed out to him that at an average of fifteen miles a day it would only take them about two months
