“I pointed that herd the whole way up here,” Dish said stubbornly. “I guess I can find my way back. Besides, I got a coat.” Call had little money on him, but he had arranged for credit in the little bank in Miles City and he wrote Dish out an order for his wages, using the bottom of a frying pan to rest his tablet on. It was just after breakfast and a number of the hands were watching. There had been a light snowfall the night before and the plains were white for miles around.
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A few days later they finally came to the Milk River. It was a crisp fall day, and most of the men were wearing their new coats. The slopes of the mountains to the west were covered with snow.
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OLD HIGH AULD soon replaced Augustus as the main talker in the Hat Creek outfit. He caught up with the herd, with his wagonload of coats and supplies, near the Missouri, which they crossed near Fort Benton. The soldiers at the tiny outpost were as surprised to see the cowboys as if they were men from another planet. The commander, a lanky major named Court, could scarcely believe his eyes when he looked up and saw the herd spread out over the plain. When told that most of the cattle had been gathered below the Mexican border he was astonished, but not too astonished to buy two hundred head. Buffalo were scarce, and the fort not well provisioned.
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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.
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When the redness receded and he opened his eyes again, he heard a piano playing in the distance. He was in bed in a small hot room. Through the open window he could see the great Montana prairie. Looking around, he noticed a small fat man dozing in a chair nearby. The man wore a black frock coat sprinkled with dandruff. A bottle of whiskey and an old bowler hat nearly as disreputable as Lippy’s sat on a small bureau. The fat man was snoring peacefully.
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When they crossed the Powder they could see the Bighorn Mountains looming to the west—not really close, but close enough that anyone could see the snow on top of them. The nights began to be cold, and many of the hands began to regret the fact that they had not bought better coats in Ogallala when they had the opportunity.
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To his surprise, he didn’t enjoy the visit to Ogallala very much. He hit the dry-goods store just as the owner was closing and persuaded him to reopen long enough for him to buy Lorie a mass of clothes. He bought everything from petticoats to dresses, a hat, and also a warm coat, for they were sure to strike cool weather in Montana. He even bought himself a black frock coat worthy of a preacher, and a silk string tie. The merchant soon was in no mood to close; he offered Augustus muffs and gloves and felt-lined boots and other oddities. In the end he had such a purchase that he couldn’t even consider carrying it—they would have to come in tomorrow and pick it up in the wagon, though he did wrap up a few things in case Lorie wanted to wear them to Clara’s. He bought her combs and brushes and a mirror—women liked to see themselves, he knew, and Lorena hadn’t had the opportunity since Fort Worth.
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But she put it off, and in time got well enough to walk. She didn’t go far, just to the door, to get a chamber pot or put one out of the room—the heat made the smells worse. Even Zwey had finally taken off his buffalo coat—he stood at the window in an old shirt, with holes worn in it so that the thick hairs of his chest poked through.
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WHEN ELMIRA’S FEVER finally broke she was so weak she could barely turn her head on the pillow. The first thing she saw was Zwey, looking in the window of the doctor’s little house. It was raining, but Zwey stood there in his buffalo coat, looking in at her.
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Soon all the mares in the corral were pricking their ears and watching the approaching wagon. A big man in a coat heavierthan Cholo’s rode beside it on a little brown horse that looked as if it would drop if it had to carry him much farther. A man with a badly scarred face rode on the wagon seat, beside a woman who was heavy with child. The woman drove the team. All three looked so blank with exhaustion that even the sight of people, after what must have been a long journey, didn’t excite them much. A few buffalo hides were piled in the wagon. Cholo watched the travelers carefully, but they didn’t seem to pose a threat. The woman drew rein and looked down at them as if dazed.
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“Bad men would have a better team,” Clara said. “Find any colts?” Cholo shook his head. His hair was white—Clara had never been able to get his age out of him, but she imagined he was seventy-five at least, perhaps eighty. At night by the fire, with the work done, Cholo wove horsehair lariats. Clara loved to watch the way his fingers worked. When a horse died or had to be killed, Cholo always saved its mane and tail for his ropes. He could weave them of rawhide too, and once had made one for her of buckskin, although she didn’t rope. Bob had been puzzled by the gift—“Clara couldn’t rope a post,” he said—but Clara was not puzzled at all. She had been very pleased. It was a beautiful gift; Cholo had the finest manners. She knew he appreciated her as she appreciated him. That was the year she bought him the coat. Sometimes, reading her magazines, she would look up and see Cholo weaving a rope and imagine that if she ever did try to write a story she would write it about him. It would be very different from any of the stories she read in the English magazines.
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The winter before she had bought Cholo a buffalo coat, an action which shocked Bob. He had never heard of a married woman buying a Mexican cowboy an expensive coat. Then there was the piano. She had ordered that too, although it cost two hundred dollars and another forty to transport. And yet he had to admit he loved to see his girls sitting at the piano, trying to learn their fingering. And the buffalo coat had saved Cholo’s life when he was trapped in an April blizzard up on the Dismal River, Clara got her way, and her way often turned out to make sense—and yet Bob more and more felt that her way skipped him, somehow. She didn’t neglect him in any way that he could put his finger on, and the girls loved him, but there were many times when he felt left out of the life of his own family. He would never have said that to Clara—he was not good with words, and seldom spoke unless he was spoken to, unless it was about business. Watching his wife, he often felt lonely. Clara seemed to sense it and would usually come and try to be especially nice to him, or to get him laughing at something the girls had done—and yet he still felt lonely, even in their bed.
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The Frenchman’s name was Jules. He was really a French-Canadian who had been a trader on the Red River of the North and had gone broke when smallpox hit the tribes. He had wandered down through the Dakotas to Ogallala and turned to music for a living. He loved to come out and teach the girls—he said they reminded him of the cousins he had once played with in his grandmother’s house in Montreal. He wore a black coat, when he came, and waxed his mustache. Both girls thought he was the most refined man they had ever seen, and he was.
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“She’s hunting Dee, I’d say,” Jennie said. “Did you know Dee?” “Why, no,” July said. “I was told he died of smallpox.” Jennie chuckled. “Dee ain’t dead,” she said. “He’s in Ogallala. There’s a gambler sitting right over there who seen him not two months ago.” “Where?” July asked, and Jennie pointed to a pudgy man in a white shirt and black coat who sat alone at a table, shuffling cards.
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“There was a woman here during that fight, I recollect,” he said. “I guess she took off so fast she left her button box.” There were all sizes of buttons—it gave Augustus an idea. He had a pack of cards in his saddlebags, which he quickly produced. “Let’s play a few hands,” he said. “The buttons can be our money.” He spread a blanket near the fireplace and sorted the buttons into piles according to size. There were some large horn buttons that must have been meant for coats.
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He wore a long buffalo coat and seldom took it off, even when the days were hot.
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“I’ll tell you, Jim,” he said, “you just keep sitting there drawing her fire. I’ll load up with some buckshot. Maybe if she don’t brain you before the moon rises, I can catch the angle and shoot her. Or at least chase her out of chunkin’ range.” He reached into the pocket of his buckskin coat for some shells, and as he did, a miracle happened—for in Roscoe’s mind a miracle it was. He stood there, naked and wet, sure to be murdered within a few minutes unless a slip of a girl, armed only with rocks, could defeat two grown men armed with guns. He himself was so sure of being killed that he felt rather detached from what was happening, and invested only faint hope in Janey’s chances of saving him.
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The young man in the black coat went over behind the bar and looked at the fallen bartender.
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“Why’d you do that?” the man in the black coat asked. He was angry, but, even more, he seemed surprised. Call glanced at him and judged him no threat—he sipped his whiskey and left the theatrics to Augustus.
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“Well, the Texas Rangers is back in town,” he said. “Hello, Gus. Next time I see a circus I’ll ask them if they need a trick shot.” “Why, Ned, is that you?” Augustus said. “My old eyes are failing. If I’d recognized you I’d have shot your hat off and saved a glass. Where do you keep your extra aces these days?” Before Ned Tym could answer, a man in a black coat came running down the stairs at the back of the saloon. He wasn’t much older than the bartender.
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“Why, this place’ll catch New Orleans if it don’t stop growing,” he said. “If we’d put in a barbershop ten years ago we’d be rich now.” There was a big saloon on the main street that they’d frequented a lot in their rangering days. It was called the Buckhorn, because of the owner’s penchant for using deer horns for coat and hat racks. His name was Willie Montgomery, and he had been a big crony of Augustus’s at one time. Call suspected him of being a card sharp, but if so he was a careful card sharp.
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“He’s a mudhead, ain’t he,” Pea said, carefully wiping his knife on his pants leg. “Now I guess he’ll be mad at me for ten years because I ruined his coat.” Lippy was limp as a rag and hadn’t moved a muscle. Newt felt sick to his stomach. Once more, on a perfectly nice day with everything going well, death had struck and taken another of his friends. Lippy had been part of his life since he could remember. When he was a child, Lippy had occasionally taken him into the saloon and let him bang on the piano. Now they would have to bury him as they had buried Sean.
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When the wagon tilted, Newt saw Lippy’s legs. He and the Raineys waded in and tried to get him loose, but the coat was still pinched in the seat. All they could do was get his head above water, though his head was so covered with mud that it was difficult at first to know if he was dead or alive. Fortunately Pea soon rode up and cut the coat loose with his bowie knife.
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As they were going off, Newt saw that the tail of Lippy’s old brown coat had gotten pinched in the wagon seat—which explained his not having jumped. The wagon tipped straight down, bounced once, and turned completely over just as it hit the water. The mules, still hitched to it, fell backwards on top of the mess. All four wagon wheels were spinning in the air when Newt and the Raineys jumped off their horses. The trouble was, they had no idea what to do next.
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“This boy looks a little peaked,” Mr. Sedgwick said. “You can leave him with me, if you like. I’ll bring him along slow, fatten him up and teach him about the insect kingdom as we travel. I doubt he’s had much chance to get an education.” July was half tempted. The stranger seemed kindly. On the other hand he wore a sidearm under his coat, so perhaps he wasn’t as kindly as he looked.
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