The hard mountain trail, blown clear of the late spring snowfall, rang under the sharp hooves of the sheep. They were a full flock and more, led by Carlo, a big bellwether merino with milky eyes.
Strung out in a long line, they moved slowly up toward the rimrock. At the rear of the long train were six pack- mules and a small donkey. The mules were piled high with tents, bedrolls, food and clothing, cooking utensils, sheep hooks, and salt troughs—and plenty of ammunition for the Spencer repeaters. The donkey carried a special load: two barrels of red Basque wine.
The animals were led by men on foot, and there were other men, twelve in all. Far ahead of the lead sheep, a big man, also afoot, plodded carefully up the trail, muttering, his sharp brown eyes searching the way ahead.
Like all sheepherders, he spoke frequently to himself, for he was much alone; and when not speaking to himself,
' he spoke to his dog, his sheep, or even to the sky or the grass. At this moment, Otio Esteban was speaking to the magnificent snowcapped mountain peak that had suddenly come into his view as he rounded a bend in the trail.
“My God,” he said, and closed his eyes for a moment.
Opening his eyes again, he looked at the gigantic white peak before him, framed in the deep blue sky. “And beyond,” he said, “are there others? And beyond [those, even more?”
Now his eyes dropped to Moro, his oldest dog, and
he said, “Is it not beautiful, Moro?” and tousled the animal’s ears.
Otio was still far ahead of the bellwether. He had reached the summit of the rimrock, and he stood there, his breath sawing in the thin morning air. He was not unused to the mountains; indeed he had been raised in the Pyrenees, and he knew the Sierras. He stood now beneath the great cloudless sky, with the powdery snow swirling about his legs, feeling his breath moving all through his body.
Otio Esteban leaned for a moment on his makhila, though he was surely not a man who needed a walking stick. He kept it because it had been his father’s and because it could serve as a club when the need arose. His Spencer rifle was slung over his shoulder. Turning to survey the entire horizon, Otio appeared enormous in his loose clothing, and yet he moved with the grace and swiftness of a mountain cat. Using whistles and hand signals, he ordered Moro to gather together the whitefaced ewes that were strung out behind them. The animal raced away, barking to the other dogs and to the sheep, who began to respond instantly. Moro, they knew, was as tough as his master.
Ah, it was something! Otio’s dark brown eyes washed across the morning sky, moving down to the layers of white mountains on the horizon, then closer down to the long valley sweeping below, with the river racing through cottonwood and box elder, roaring and swollen with the great melting snows.
“Will the ardiak like it?” asked the short, heavy-shouldered man who now joined him. He was an older man with bushy black eyebrows, a thick graying mustache, and a red face. He had turned his cat-green eyes to the valley.
“That indeed is the question,” Otio said, not moving
his eyes from the scene below them. “It is always what the sheep will like, is it not so?”
The other man nodded. “It is not Nevada,” he said. His name was Ciriaco; he was Otio’s uncle on his mother’s side, a man of sixty, very supple in his movement, and famous among the Basques for his mimicry.
“No, Uncle, it is not Nevada, but assuredly it is beautiful.”
“Nor is it the Pyrenees. It is not green like the Pyrenees,“ insisted Ciriaco.
“Yet it is windy. And it is the wind, so Father Casimiro told, that blows away the snow in winter so the animals can feed. As we can see,” Otio added, stamping his feet and letting the humor come into his eyes as he turned to the older man.
Ciriaco looked at his nephew, now thirty years old; he admired the lines of his sister’s nose, his brother-in- law’s firm jaw, and those big, able hands that could fight like a mountain lion and be tender too.
Looking at those hands, Ciriaco remembered them beating big Baptiste to a pulp last Fourth of July, when Otio had caught him bull whipping a horse to its knees.
Baptiste Ferrano was known all over for his temper, and when, leaving the party on the Fourth, his sorrel had thrown him, he had beaten the animal mercilessly. Seeing it, the children ran screaming into the house to call the grownups. Otio had been the first to reach the scene.
“Baptiste!” Otio’s voice had cut like a knife. But the huge man did not stop. He was beside himself with fury as his arm rose and fell, cutting the blacksnake whip across the sorrel’s head.
In one bound, Otio reached him, and with one blow he smashed the giant to the ground. The horse screamed again, jerking back on its halter rope, snapping it to fall over on its rump.
Baptiste charged to his feet and Otio smashed him in the jaw, knocking him down. The big man struggled to his hands and knees. It was then that Otio picked up the whip.
“Get out, you lousy bastard! Never show yourself here again!” And he laid the bullwhip across Baptiste’s back. The big man screamed. But Otio was remorseless. Again the whip smashed him on the buttocks, the shoulders. And he began to run. Another cut of the whip brought him to his knees; and he turned, blood streaming from his face, to beg.
“Please ... please... Otio... please!”
Otio stood with his legs apart, his eyes afire, his chest heaving, not so much from physical exertion as from anger.
“The horse didn’t beg, you lousy son of a goat!” And Otio threw the whip at Baptiste and then turned and walked back into the house.
Ciriaco was pulled back from his thoughts when his nephew spoke. Otio was still studying the land below them, nodding his head in approval at the vast panorama.
“It is not unlike our country, I think,” he declared. “It resembles Euzkadi. Only it is bigger. So much bigger than the country of the Basques. No?”
“Will the ardiak think it beautiful?” Ciriaco asked, for he had pretty much a one-track mind. “Is it sheep country?”
Moro and the other dogs had brought the band of sheep to a stop, and they were bunched tightly on top of the rimrock overlooking the valley and the great mountains beyond.
“Nor are there many sheep here,” Otio went on, ignoring Ciriaco’s remark, and in continuance of his own line of thought. “Maybe there are even none. At any rate, it is what the man with the fringes told us.”
“The army man. The scout.” Ciriaco chuckled, suddenly assuming a lanky, loose posture as he puckered up his face and stuck his tongue deep into his cheek as though carrying a wad of tobacco. Now he spat and said, “Yup. They hain’t no woollies in the whole of this here part of the Wyoming Territory, I’ll allow.” Ciriaco, who spoke good English, was a wonderful mimic, and now the two of them broke into roaring laughter over his imitation of Windy Mandalian—accent, gestures, posture, chewing, and all.
“Ah, it is good to laugh. Uncle.” Otio slapped the older man affectionately on the shoulder. “The army is down there, according to what the scout told us.”
Ciriaco said nothing. He was in agreement with Otio on all of it, but his enthusiasm sometimes ripened slowly, though his sense of humor was swift as an arrow. His nephew, on the other hand, was often impulsive. Where Otio was quick to temper and kindness, and would drive himself and others to the limit, Ciriaco was patient nearly to a fault. Perhaps his great sense of humor gave him a view of the world where he could see both sides of things.
Ciriaco said, “And one must not forget the Indians.”
“No,” Otio agreed. “One must not.”
“But we will meet with the soldiers, will we not? That is what the scout said we must do.”
Otio’s eyes were very dark, and now suddenly they showed a light in them and his wide face opened into a great smile of affection for his uncle. It was characteristic of him to sweep on to his next mood or thought without answering. “Uncle, life is hard, no matter where a man lays his head.” And he pounded his uncle on the back, causing that solid man to take a step forward to maintain his balance. They both burst into a shout of laughter and, throwing themselves into each other’s arms, started to dance around in a circle.
Otio’s sparkling eyes swept across the band of sheep, searching out the other men who were coming up from the rear.
“Julio!” he called out.
“Over there,” someone shouted. “Behind Michel and Little Marc.”
“Bravo!” Otio waved at Julio, who had been leading the gray donkey. “He is carrying the most valuable cargo in our party,” he said laughingly to Ciriaco. “We must watch over him carefully!”
Grinning, Julio, a young man not yet twenty, brought the donkey up toward where the two men were standing.
“Look!” cried Otio, sweeping his hand to the horizon in a wide arc. “Drink in the miracle of the sparkling world!”
The others stopped in their tracks and looked up at the sky and at the great white shoulders of the mountains that ringed them.
“Do you see it now at last?” cried Otio.
“Ah, yes, we see it.”
“Julio, bring the xahakua, for we must celebrate this marvelous thing.”
Julio was already approaching with the goatskin wine bag.
Now the party of twelve sat on the bare, hard ground and broke bread and drank from the xahakua.
“A feast!” laughed Otio, lowering the xahakua and wiping his beard, on which several wine drops had been glistening in the light of the sun. “A feast for—what?” He looked around at his companions. “For whom?” His eyes danced.
“For love,” Michel said.
“For the ardiak!”
“A feast for our homeland.”
Otio raised the wineskin. For a moment he was motionless, and then he said very quietly, “For our Father. For God.” And he drank and passed the xahakua to the others.
They drank and they ate mutton jerky and cheese and garlic. And presently some of the older men began to tell stories. And the sun grew warmer as it reached the top of the sky and began to descend.
Otio did not let them remain too long. “We will go to the soldiers,” he said, “and they will tell us where there is a good place—and where the Indians are, so we will not go there.”
He stood up, signaling the dogs. In a few moments they had crossed over to where the trail led down into the valley.
As they descended from the rimrock toward the valley, they did not see the two Brule warriors watching them from a small stand of pine.
Suddenly it had grown warm. Suddenly it was spring with the promise of summer in the softening land, in the changing colors, in the touch of the wind. The little town, lying three hours’ ride due east of Outpost Number Nine, lay indolent under the white noon sun.
It wasn’t much past noon when the four men from Easy Company—Malone, Stretch Dobbs, Reb McBride, and the new recruit, Billy Golightly, reached town and tied their horses to the hitch rail in front of the Silver Tip saloon.
The Silver Tip was most of the town, though there were two other drinking establishments, a sort of hotel, a couple of eateries, a general merchandise store, and a barbershop with bathing facilities; and that was about it. The Silver Tip drew the trade, though now, with the
expected Texas cattle and the hope that more herds would follow, the First Chance and the Star hoped to turn a profit.
“It ain’t Denver and it ain’t K.C. and it sure as hell is not Frisco,” Reb McBride announced for the benefit of young Billy Golightly. “But it also ain’t Tipi Town, neither. There’s whiskey and, uh, women—of a sort,” he added. And his companions laughed.
Stretch Dobbs, who towered easily over all the other men of Easy, exaggerated a stoop as he entered the swinging doors of the Silver Tip, saying as he did so, “It beats soldiering.”
The others had followed him across the wooden boardwalk and into the dark, gloomy saloon, which smelled of beer, whiskey, tobacco, and the stale sweat of men.
In the low-ceilinged room. Stretch almost had to duck his head to avoid striking the thick crossbeams. “Place is made for midgets,” he muttered.
The customers were not numerous: a couple of sourdough types at a corner table, three or four old-timers tilting back in their chairs along the far wall, three men who looked to be cowhands at the far end of the bar, and some nondescript locals and maybe a transient or two around the potbellied stove in the center of the room.
The floor slanted; the floorboards themselves were uneven, bringing to mind again some old-timer’s remark that the town had been nailed together in about a week. And the floor was well marked with spittle, and scarred from matches, lighted cigar butts, and general scuffing. Along the customer’s side of the bar stood three reeking spittoons. Some others were spotted about the premises, though none at the stove, the sport being to spit onto the red-hot metal.
The visitors from Easy Company stood at the bar while the proprietor, on the sober side of the bar—ac-
tually a pair of boards supported by trestles—placed glasses and a bottle of whiskey before them. From the wall behind the proprietor’s round shoulders, the battered head of a bull elk blindly surveyed the clientele, both its glass eyes having been shot out.
Malone loosened his shirt and belt, and McBride followed suit, and now both of them turned around and leaned back with their elbows on the bar to look at the room.
Although the jumbo stove was not lighted, the group of locals stood close to it, still wearing coats and, of course, hats, for while it was spring and a warm day, they were still in their winter ways.
“By God, it’s as dark as a man’s pocket in here,” Stretch Dobbs observed, peering into his glass of whiskey.
“Shit, a man can’t rightly see what he’s drinkin’,” Billy Golightly said.
“Be damn glad you can’t,” the bartender-proprietor declared. He was a round man with round shoulders and a very round face; like a ball. He wore a belt as well as suspenders, and had a sorrowful expression on his face. He was totally bald, the dome of his large white head sweating a bit. His name was Roy Skinner.
Billy Golightly chuckled at that. He was pleased that the men had asked him to come along. He knew the others thought him shy, for he never talked about himself or his family or where he’d come from. He looked so young that the word had gotten around that probably he had lied about his age in order to enlist.
Right now he was leaning on the bar, listening to Private Malone, who was garrulous as always, even when not under the influence. The big Irishman was telling one of his endless stories. At length, finishing his tortuous account of some mishap, he belched abruptly and
23
stepped back from the bar, raising his glass as he did so. At the same time his other hand touched the butt of the Schofield model Smith & Wesson at his waist. Putting down his glass, he let his drinking hand fall to his second gun, a Deane & Adams, and he hoisted the belt and both holsters, bent his knees slightly, and, reaching down, scratched deep into his crotch.
“Been meaning to ask how come you and some of the others pack two sets of hardware,” Billy said, nodding toward the armament at Malone’s waist. “I only got issued the one.”
“Bought it,” Malone said. “Noticed Lieutenant Kincaid, have you? He’s carrying a Scoff and a Colt to boot.”
“Pretty fancy-looking,” Billy said with a smile. “And he looks like he can really handle those irons.”
“That he can,” Reb McBride said, “what say we try nosing our way to the bottom of another glass of this here wicked juice?”
“Soldier, that is a dumb question. My aim in visiting this bustling city is to partake of all the alcohol I can hold.” Stretch raised his eyes toward the top of his own head, and lowered them down his long front, while his companions broke into guffaws of laughter.
“That’ll surely take a peck of drinking,” said Reb.
“Well, by God, looky here now!” A big voice broke from the gloom at the end of the bar where the three cowboys were drinking. “Looky here—if it ain’t the little soldier boys livin’ it up!”
Malone, in the act of raising his glass, didn’t skip a beat, the glass continuing to his lips. Beside him, Billy Golightly was aware of a slight change in the big Irishman’s vibration. And now all at once the room was really quiet.
Now a new voice came from the group at the end of
24
the bar. “What you kids doin’, drinkin’ in a man’s parlor huh?”
Malone set his glass down firmly on the wood planking. He spoke without turning his head, keeping his eyes right on the row of bottles behind the bar. “Why, we just thought we might be findin’ ourselves a good place to take a piss, he said softly, though all could clearly hear him. “We didn’t figger there’d be all this baby shit to be steppin’ into.”
“You know who you’re talkin’ to, Yank?”
“Sounds like Texas to me, boys,” Reb said, speaking suddenly and fast. “Shit, fellers, let’s take it slow. Me, I’m from Sweetwater, down in God’s country.”
“Then what in hell for did you sell your ass to a passel of Union shitheads!” said the third man, who had not previously spoken.
Stretch Dobbs stepped back from the bar. “Mister, what’s the problem? We’re just in here for some of the tasty water. Whyn’t you join us?”
By now, two men had drifted over to the cowboys from the stove, and another had come in the door, making six.
“Circle Box men, soldier boy, is fussy who they drink with. What we would like to know is why you soldier boys ain’t out protectin’ Circle Box cattle, which is what you are getting paid to do.”
“You got it wrong, sir,” Malone said. “We are gettin’ paid with government money—just to come in here and drink and lay the girls and raise us some hell.”
The Texan was big. He had hands like saddles, and he stepped away from the bar and faced Malone and the other men of Easy Company.
“Listen, you son of a bitch, do you know who you’re talkin’ to?”
The Irishman, two hundred pounds soaking wet, de-
tached himself from his companions and stood facing the Texan. “I don't know who fm talkin' to, but I know what; and you better turn around so I can talk to your face and not your asshole."
“Now, boys, men... let’s ease it. I’m buying a round." It was Roy Skinner, the baldheaded proprietor of the Silver Tip, placing a full bottle on the bar.
The Texans had now drifted deeper into the room, while the local customers faded into the background. Six Texans to four soldiers, Malone was thinking, and decided Easy Company had the advantage.
Nobody had responded to the barkeep’s offer of free booze, and the proprietor eyed his row of bottles in back of the bar nervously. He was glad he had not replaced the big mirror after the time a shotgun blast from a cut- down Greener .12-gauge had wiped it off the wall.
The big Texan was real close to the soldiers now, and suddenly his head whipped around to young Billy Go- lightly.
“What the hell you starin’ at, little boy?" he barked.
“Just looking at that big hogleg you got there in that holster, mister. No offense." Billy’s voice was as innocent as that of a small child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I didn’t know they took kids for soldiers in the Union army." And the cowboy threw back his head and laughed. “Give the little feller a drink," the Texan said suddenly to Skinner, without looking at him. “Fill the glass. I mean, fill ’er!"
The proprietor poured, and the cowboy pushed the glass toward Billy Golightly. It was full to the brim with whiskey. “Drink it," he said.
The room was without a sound as Billy Golightly reached for the glass.
“It’ll kill him sure," one of the cowboys said.
“Hey, what’s that?” said Malone, pointing down at the floor right by the big Texan’s boots.
The cowboy’s eyes dropped, and the big Irishman nailed him squarely on the jaw. The Texan staggered, his knees folded, and he went down grabbing Malone around the legs. At the same moment the man standing next to him picked up a chair and smashed the Irishman over the head with it, to no effect.
Stretch Dobbs hit Malone’s assailant with a rabbit punch right behind his ear, but the cowboy, tall and thin just like Stretch, didn’t drop as he should have, but turned, and now the pair whaled away at each other, looking like a couple of huge, lethal spiders. Finally, Stretch connected and his opponent dropped, but promptly rose and, grabbing the same chair that had struck Malone, smashed it into Stretch’s crotch. Dobbs fell to his knees, cursing and in agony.
Meanwhile, McBride was battling a thickset man with arms as big as the bugler’s legs, and Billy Golightly was brought down by a flying bottle.
Malone, having knocked two men flat, was suddenly confronted by a brace of cowboys, one diving at his knees and bringing him to the floor, the other immediately jumping on his head.
But the Irishman’s head was as hard as his temper, and in a moment he had twisted to his knees, risen, and elbowed one of his assailants in the crotch and kicked the other in the kidney.
Billy Golightly had staggered to his feet only to be driven to the floor and into oblivion with a barrage of lefts and rights from one of the cowboys. His conqueror did not taste victory for more than an instant, however, for Malone smashed him at the base of his spine with a hamlike fist, and then chopped him beautifully on the back of the neck; he fell as though poleaxed.
Suddenly two shots rang out, and a hard voice broke through the din of battle. “That will be all, you sons of bitches!”
It was Ching Domino, standing in the doorway with a sixgun in each hand. The room was instantly silent.
Malone was the only combatant on his feet. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“If you didn’t have that uniform on. I’d show you,
mister!”
“Good to find you in such a sociable mood,” Billy Golightly gasped as he pulled himself painfully to his feet.
“Put them guns away and I’ll teach you to respect the United States Mounted Infantry,” Malone said. One eye, already a very dark purple, was closing rapidly. Blood laced the side of his jaw.
Ching Domino chuckled without mirth, holstering his weapons. “Another time, mister. Not now. I ain’t drawing on the army. I’m only here to get my men back to work. And why don’t you and your buddies there get your asses into your saddles and protect our cattle, like your blue-assed captain said you would.”
Malone was about to take a step forward and settle it right there, but Dobbs grabbed his leg, pulling himself to his feet. “Let the fuckers go. We beat ’em, Malone.”
“You men, get on your horses and haul ass. I mean right now!” And Ching Domino spat hard on the floor. He stood still now, staring at Billy Golightly. “Ain’t I seen you somewheres?”
“Right here,” Billy said.
“Who’s gonna pay the damages?” cried Roy Skinner, rubbing his hands across the top of his bald head as he came from behind the bar. “Look at this place. It’s a wreck!”
“Our sergeant will talk to you,” Malone said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“He better, by God,” said Skinner. “He damn well better!“
“I said don’t worry about it.”
They were all on their feet now, the Circle Box men staggering out after Ching Domino, and the men from Easy Company following Malone.
Stretch Dobbs felt his jaw to see if it was still in place. “The sarge is gonna be real pleased to see us, Malone,” he said.
Malone didn’t answer, but turned to Billy Golightly. “Say, kid, what were you gonna do with that full glass of whiskey, when that big son of a bitch told you to drink it. That could’ve killed you!”
“Why, I was going to drink it,” Billy said innocently.
“Drink it! Jesus!”
“I like whiskey,” Billy said. “Besides, it was free.”
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