Bright stars glinted above. Firelight wavered and danced. Skye lay on his back, buried deep under blankets that warmed him well. Lightning bolts shot up his left leg and thundered through the rest of him, but the night sky was clear.
He groaned. Immediately a man loomed above him. Skye focused carefully. This one wore a slouch hat and a heavy coat. Another man joined him.
“You come back to us?” the man said.
Skye nodded.
“Lucky we were close. Heard you howling and come look.”
“Who?” asked Skye.
“Jim Broadus, that’s me, and Amos Glendive. We’re teamsters.”
“Didn’t know anyone was around,” Skye said.
“You got thrown by one of them ox,” Broadus said.
“Your oxen?”
“Wild ox. That’s why we’re here. We haul for the Bar
Diamond outfit. They need oxen. Lots of’em gone native around here along the old trail. They got wore out and ditched by folks. We got three span this time.”
“Including the one got you, we think,” Glendive said.
The memory was coming back now. That cruel horn hooking under his leg, lifting him, tossing him like a rag doll, and then the crash. He came down in a fury of pain, and howled, and then the fog rolled in.
A new bolt of pain laced Skye’s leg and he groaned.
“Your leg’s busted up some. Your knee ain’t never gonna be the same, mister … mister …”
“Skye. Mister Skye.”
“We got her splinted up, Skye, but that’s all a man can do around here.”
“I’d be dead,” Skye said. “You saved me.”
Broadus smiled slightly. “I reckon so. Leastwise, it’d be a long crawl to wherever you were heading.”
Skye wrestled with pain a moment and stared about him. This was a good camp. A freight wagon slouched nearby.
“We’ll take you to Bozeman City. That’s where we’re a-going.”
“I can ride.”
Glendive just shook his head, and Skye abandoned that.
“Your leg, it’s some messed-up,” Broadus said. “We didn’t know how to splint it right, but she’s tied up tight, anyway.”
Skye knew the Bar Diamond Freight Company. Mostly they hauled goods from Fort Benton, on the Missouri River, down into the mining camps of western Montana. Big outfit. Always needing oxen, more oxen, more mules.
“Old man Baker sent us over here. He needs stock, and there’s free stuff floating around here.”
Skye craned his head, peering into the dark.
“It’s all here, Skye. We moved your camp here. Your nags and all. You were going light.”
Skye nodded.
“You hurting more than much?” Broadus said.
Skye nodded.
“It’s gonna be a hard wagon ride tomorra. But we can carry you.”
“I guess it’s in store for me,” Skye said. He was starting to fade again.
“You up to some broth?” one of them asked.
Skye nodded. Within moments, they were spooning some beefy broth into him, warming his innards. But he couldn’t even swallow without his leg hurting him. He gave up after a few sips, and slid a hand down to the leg, discovered a tight-tied splint holding the leg rigid. He brought his fingers up looking for blood on them and found none.
“I’d say in some ways it could’ve been worse,” Broadus said.
Skye nodded, a sea of brooding pain spreading through him again.
“Take a horse. It’s yours,” Skye whispered.
“No. You’d do it for us if need be.”
“At least I can thank you.”
“That ox, the one got you, he’s under yoke now. Them wild ones remember. Whole trick is to get them into a yoke, and then they quiet right down, remembering old times. We got our ways,” Glendive said. “Old man Baker, he’s got forty, fifty oxen this way off the Bozeman Road. Baker sends us over here now and then to fetch him some more.”
“Wouldn’t mind if you ate him for breakfast,” Skye said.
“You need anything, Skye?”
“You could amputate,” Skye said.
They laughed uneasily. “We’re here if you need us. You rest now.”
Then Skye was alone with the stars and the pain.
He didn’t sleep much. The throbbing in his leg never lessened. But as soon as dawn broke, Broadus and Glendive were stirring, and then bringing him some steaming coffee. Skye downed it gratefully.
“We’re heading out. We got three yoke, and that’s all anyone thought we’d get. We’ll put you in the wagon,” Broadus said. “I imagine it ain’t going to be comfortable, but it’s all we can do.”
They lifted Skye to his feet, and he clung to their shoulders as they helped him into the wagon bed and wrapped blankets around him while he trembled. The teamsters broke camp, added Skye’s few possessions to the heap in the wagon, collected Skye’s horses, and started toward Bozeman City. Every lurch of the wagon shot pain through Skye.
After a while, they stopped and checked on him.
“You all right?” Broadus asked.
Skye wasn’t, but he nodded at the teamster.
Soon they were off again, the teamsters walking beside the oxen as they dragged the wagon upslope. Skye thought they might make Bozeman City by nightfall.
The day went much too slowly. He felt a helplessness he had rarely experienced before. He’d been gravely wounded several times, and managed to heal up and keep on going. Now he had a broken leg. Just what had snapped or shattered he didn’t know, except that pain radiated from his left knee toward his ankle and toward his hip. Victoria and Mary were far away. Someone would have to care for him.
He put such speculation aside. He was alive, miraculously discovered soon after the trouble with the ox, and now
he was safe in good hands. He tried to rest, but pain kept him wide awake.
It was just after sundown when the Bar Diamond teamsters halted.
Broadus loomed over him in the dusk. “We’re at Fort Ellis. There’s no sawbones in Bozeman City, but we thought there might be one at the post here. You want us to find out?”
“That would be good, Mister Broadus.”
“Or we can take you into town somewheres. Livery barn, maybe. Those haylofts make good beds.”
“I’d like a doctor, sir.”
“I’ll send Amos in to talk to someone.”
Skye watched the teamster vanish among the stained log buildings of the post, and eventually he returned with an officer, who looked Skye over.
“Colonel Blossom here. You’re the man, eh?” he said. “Know you. You’re the old squaw man living with the Crows.”
Skye nodded.
“Trouble is, our surgeon’s cashiered. Clyde Coffin was a damned drunk and I sent him packing last week. We’re waiting for a new man. Point is, there’s no one here can set your bones.”
“Anyone in Bozeman City?”
Blossom shook his head. “Not as I know of. Virginia City, maybe.”
“I seem to be out of luck,” Skye said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Blossom pondered it. “There’s a thing or two I can do. I’ve got a lot of crutches around, and I can give you some. How tall are you?”
“Five feet some. I’ve shrunk.”
Blossom nodded to his orderly, who trotted into the post.
“Well, Skye, if I can help further, call on me,” Blossom said. “Have to go now.”
Skye nodded. “I’ll get along,” he said. “You’ve helped me, and I’m indebted.”
“No, old fella, from what I’ve heard, the army owes you a thing or two.”
The colonel hastened back to the post. In time, the orderly appeared with some wooden crutches.
“Try these, Skye.”
Skye slipped the crutches under his shoulders and stood. They would do. He could cradle his arms in them, take weight off the broken leg. That was a start.
Broadus and Glendive looked eager to get into town, so Skye clambered back into the wagon for the final half mile. The wagon yard was east of town on the edge of the military reservation.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Skye,” Broadus said.
“Could you take me to a livery barn?” Skye asked. “I don’t know where else to go.”
They could. At the freight yard the teamsters corralled a deliveryman named Glad Muggins, who harnessed a spring wagon and helped Skye into it. He added Skye’s gear and tied Skye’s ponies on, and drove into town.
Muggins climbed to the seat and slapped the lines over the dray horse, and the wagon creaked westward. The horse fell into a quiet walk and Skye watched the April clouds hurry past. April was a rainy month. Luckily it wasn’t raining now. Beyond the freight yard the Bridger Mountains rose high, still choked with snow.
“Now where do you want to go?” Muggins asked.
“Is there a livery barn?”
“Kangaroo. North of Main Street some.”
“Take me there.”
Skye didn’t have a dime to his name but livery barns were the usual refuge of the desperate. There might be a bunk in a hay pile, and he had a packhorse to trade for a few weeks of chow and horse feed. He thought it would be a month before he could put weight on that leg.
Somehow he had survived. They would not find his bleached bones out on the trail. Maybe he could find someone who would reach the Crows, and let Victoria and Mary know where he was. A livery barn was the right place to find travelers.
Bozeman City was strung along a miry street that nearly coagulated traffic. A few boardwalks over the wetter spots provided the only passage for pedestrians. Rills from the surrounding mountains laced the ramshackle town. False-front frame stores, some whitewashed, lined the street, and a few grimy residences south of the grubby road completed this outpost of civilization. Skye pushed himself up on his elbows to see what might be seen. He scarcely spotted a woman. The place had functioned as a farming and ranching town supplying gold camps to the west with grains and meat. It was also becoming a crossroads, the market town of the vast green valley it dominated.
Muggins turned up a side street, at least it might have been a street, and headed for a weathered board-and-batten structure several hundred yards north. A white-lettered front proclaimed it to be the Clyde Kangaroo Livery, Stock Sold & Bought.
Muggins swung the wagon around and stopped. A chin-whiskered gent in bib overalls, armed with a pitchfork, burst out of the barn alley, and boiled down on the wagon.
“What’s the company unloading on me this time, eh?”
“Mister Kangaroo, this here’s a man with a busted leg, looking for a place to stay.”
Kangaroo reached the wagon and peered at Skye. “I get stuck with every vagrant comes through here, and none earns me a dime,” he said.
Skye found himself staring upward at a skinny gent almost devoid of chin, with bulgy eyes. A venerable slouch hat capped some dark hair.
“I’m Barnaby Skye, sir. I broke a leg. I’ll trade a horse for some accommodations.”
“Trade a horse, will you? You call those items horses? They look like injun ponies to me.”
“You have it right, sir,” Skye said. “I’ll trade one for a month in your hayloft, plus feed for myself and the other horse. Take your pick.”
“A month of chow and feed, you say? You suffer delusions, like most owners of nags. You want to sit in my outhouse and shit away three squares for a month, and pay me with that? That thing?” He waggled a gnarly finger at the packhorse.
Skye saw no reason to respond. He lay quietly while Kangaroo circled the packhorse, lifted feet, examined hooves, pried open the mouth, studied teeth, ran a hand over withers looking for fistulas.
“You a talker?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t stand talkers boring me half to death. I got work to do. If you’re a listener, we’ll handshake it. Me, I always need listeners. I’m here alone. I’m a born talker. You come here, you gotta listen and don’t talk back, and I’ll put you up. Maybe I’ll take that lousy packhorse, maybe I won’t.”
“It’s a deal,” Skye said.