An old man named Gill owned the livery stable. He had rheumatism and walked slowly and with a limp. But he was a kindly old man, with a rusty beard and one milky eye. He came limping in not long after Call woke up.
'I guess you need a coffin,' the old man said. 'Get Joe Veitenheimer, he'll make you a good one.'
'It will have to be sturdy,' Call said.
'I know,' the old man said. 'That's all the talk is in this town today, about the feller who wants to be hauled all the way to Texas to be stuck in the ground.'
'He considered it his home,' Call said, seeing no reason to go into the part about the picnics.
'My attitude is, why not, if he can find someone to tote him,' old man Gill said. 'I'd be buried in Georgia, if I could have my way, but it's a far piece to Georgia and nobody's gonna tote me. So I'll be buried up here in this cold,' he added. 'I don't like this cold. Of course, they say when you're dead the temperature don't concern you, but who knows the truth on that?'
'I don't,' Call said.
'People got opinions, that's all they've got,' the old man grumbled. 'If somebody was to go and come back, now that's an opinion I'd listen to.'
The old man forked the Hell Bitch a little hay. When he stood watching her eat, the mare snaked out her neck and tried to bite him, causing the old man to stumble backward and nearly stumble over his own pitchfork.
'Dern, she ain't very grateful,' he said. 'Struck at me like a snake, and I just fed her. Typical female. My wife done exactly the same a hunnert times. Buried her in Missouri, where it's considerable warmer.'
Call found the carpenter and ordered a coffin. Then he borrowed a wagon and team and a big scoop shovel from a drunken man at the hardware store. It struck him that the citizenry of Miles City seemed to drink liquor day and night. Half the town was drunk at dawn.
'The lick's about six miles north,' the hardware-store man said. 'You can find it by the game trails.'
Sure enough, several antelope were at the salt lick, and he saw the tracks of buffalo and elk. He worked up a sweat scooping the salt into the wagon.
When he got back to town the undertaker had finished with Gus. The undertaker was a tall man, with the shakes-his whole body trembled, even when he was standing still. 'It's a nervous disease,' he said. 'I took it when I was young, and had it ever since. I put extra fluid in your friend, since I understand he'll be aboveground for a while.'
'Yes, until next summer,' Call said.
'I don't know how he'll do,' the undertaker said. 'If he weren't a human you could smoke him, like a ham.'
'I'll try salt and charcoal,' Call said.
When the coffin was ready, Call bought a fine bandana to cover Gus's face with. Dr. Mobley brought in the leg he had removed, wrapped in some burlap and soaked in formaldehyde to cover the smell. A bartender and the blacksmith helped pack the charcoal in. Call felt very awkward, though everyone was relaxed and cheerful. Once Gus was well covered, they filled the coffin to the top with salt and nailed it shut. Call gave the extra salt to the drunk at the hardware store to compensate him a little for the use of his wagon. They carried the coffin around and put it in the doctor's harness shed on top of two empty barrels.
'That'll do fine,' Dr. Mobley said. 'He'll be there, and if you change your mind about the trip, we'll just bury him. He'll have lots of company here. We've got more people in the cemetery already than we've got in the town.'
Call didn't like the implication. He looked at the doctor sternly. 'Why would I change my mind?' he asked.
The doctor had been nipping at a flask of whiskey during the packing, and was fairly drunk. 'Dying people get foolish,' he said. 'They forget they won't be alive to appreciate the things they ask people to do for them. People make any kind of promise, but when they realize it's a dead creature they made the promise to, they usually squirm a little and then forget the whole business. It's human nature.'
'I'm told I don't have a human nature,' Call said. 'How much do I owe you?'
'Nothing,' the doctor said. 'The deceased paid me himself.'
'I'll get him in the spring,' Call said.
When he got back to the livery stable he found old man Gill drinking from a jug. It reminded him of Gus, for the old man would hook one finger through the loop of the jug and throw back his head and drink. He was sitting in the wheelbarrow, his pitchfork across his lap, glaring at the Hell Bitch.
'Next time you come, why don't you just catch a grizzly bear and ride him in?' Gill said. 'I'd rather stable a grizzly than this mare.'
'She bite you or what?'
'No, but she's biding her time,' the old man said. 'Take her away so I can relax. I ain't been drunk this early in several years, and it's Just from having her around.'
'We're leaving,' Call said.
'Now, why would you keep a creature like that?' the old man said, once Call had her saddled.
'Because I like to be horseback when I'm horseback,' Call said.
Old man Gill was not persuaded. 'Hope you like to be dead when you're dead, then,' he said. 'I reckon she's deadlier than a cobra.'
'I reckon you talk too much,' Call said, feeling more and more that he didn't care for Miles City.
He found the old trapper, Hugh Auld, sitting in front of the drygoods store. It was a cloudy day and a cool wind blew. The wind had a wintry feel, though it had been hot the day before. Call knew they didn't have long before winter, and his men were poorly equipped.
'Can you drive a wagon?' he asked old Hugh.
'Yes, I can whip a mule as good as anybody else,' Hugh said.
Call bought supplies-not only coats and overshoes and gloves but building supplies as well. He managed to rent the wagon he had carried the salt in, promising to return it when possible.
'You're restless,' Old Hugh said. 'You go on. I'll creep along in this wagon and catch you north of the Musselshell.'
Call rode back toward the herd, but at a fairly slow pace. In the afternoon he stopped and sat for several hours by a little stream. Ordinarily he would have felt guilty for not heading back to the boys right away, but Gus's death had changed that. Gus was not a person he had expected to outlive; now that he had, much was different. Gus had always been lucky-everybody said so, and he said so himself. Only Gus's luck ran out. Jake's had run out, Deets's had run out; both deaths were unexpected, both sad, terribly sad, but Call believed them. He had seen them both with his own eyes. And, believing in the deaths, he had put them behind him.
He had seen Gus die, too-or seen him dying, at least-but it seemed he hadn't started believing it. Gus had left, and that was final, but Call felt too confused even to feel sad. Gus had been so much himself to the end that he wouldn't let even his death be an occasion-it had just felt like one of their many arguments that normally would be resumed in a few days.
This time it wouldn't be resumed, and Call found he couldn't adjust to the change. He felt so alone that he didn't really want to go back to the outfit. The herd and the men no longer seemed to have anything to do with him. Nothing had anything to do with him, unless it was the mare. For his part he would just as soon have ridden around Montana alone until the Indians jumped him, too. It wasn't that he even missed Gus yet all that much. Only yesterday they had talked, as they had talked for thirty years.
Call felt some resentment, as he almost always had when thinking of his friend. Gus had died and left the world without taking him with him, so that once again he was left to do the work. He had always done the work-only he suddenly no longer believed in the work. Gus had tricked him out of his belief, as easily as if cheating at cards. All his work, and it hadn't saved anyone, or slowed the moment of their going by a minute.
Finally, as night fell, he mounted and rode on, not anxious to get anywhere, but tired of sitting. He rode on, his mind a blank, until the next afternoon, when he spotted the herd.
The cattle were spread for three miles over the great plain, grazing peacefully along. No sooner had the hands spotted him than Dish and Needle Nelson came racing over. Both looked scared.
'Captain, we seen some Indians,' Dish said. 'There was a bunch of them but they didn't attack us yet.'
'What did they do?' Call asked.
'Just sat on a hill and watched us,' Needle Nelson said. 'We were going to give them two of these slow beeves if they'd ask, but they didn't ask.'
'How many in the bunch?'
'We didn't count,' Dish said. 'But it was a bunch.'
