His old black top hat flew off his head even before he heard the distant crack. From ancient habit, Skye dove off his horse, feeling pain shoot through his bum leg as he landed. He snatched his old Sharps from its sheath as he went.
Victoria had done the same, and now they stood behind their ponies. The shot had come from some vast distance far ahead and to the left, probably in the bottoms of the Big Horn River. She strung her bow and nocked an arrow. The ponies sidestepped nervously. Skye peered over the neck of his, wondering what lay ahead. He saw nothing. But someone had just tried to kill him. He wished his eyes were as good as they once were but now age blurred the horizons. He checked his Sharps. It was ready.
He retrieved the top hat, which had fallen ten feet away, and found a fresh hole through it, just above his hairline. He had been an inch from death. This was his fifth hat. The first two had been beaver felt; the last three silk.
A rage built in him.
There was only silence. No crows flew, no wind whispered. They were proceeding south along the arid Big Horn River valley, on a trail laid out by Jim Bridger, the old mountain man. They had thought they were alone.
“Goddamn white men,” Victoria said.
Indians wouldn’t snipe at them from several hundred yards.
His leg hurt. He had landed squarely on it, and while his knee didn’t capsize or break again, everything ached anew. He squinted at the silent bottoms of the distant river, ready to shoot back.
After a while they moved slowly southward, walking between their horses, and thus walking within a living fortress as they had often done in the past. Occasionally Skye studied the river bottoms, ready for anything. But they proceeded peaceably south without hindrance.
That lasted only a minute or two. A gaggle of horsemen boiled out of the brushy bottoms, heading straight for Skye and Victoria. Skye continued quietly, his bum leg paining his every step. There were six in all, skinny horsemen in slouch hats, all except one. A fat man, bulging at the belly and thighs, mounted on a thicker horse, followed along just behind. They were spread in a half circle, ready for whatever trouble they faced.
They swiftly surrounded Skye and Victoria.
“Hold up there,” the fat one bawled.
Skye waited quietly. This was a tough outfit, with mean thin men sporting an unusual amount of facial hair along with revolvers and saddle carbines.
“Gents?” Skye asked.
“This here’s claimed land, and we don’t allow no goddamn redskins on it,” the fat one said.
“I’m Barnaby Skye. And who am I addressing?”
“It don’t matter none. This is my range, and you’re on it, and you’re going to get yoah ass off it.”
“That’s interesting. I didn’t know there was a government land office anywhere around here,” Skye said.
“It don’t mattah whether they is or ain’t. Yoah getting yoah red ass off. Ah’m claiming this heah Big Horn Valley, top to bottom, mountain to mountain, and that’s that.”
“I didn’t catch your name, sir.”
“It’s Yardley Dogwood, but never no mind; I could be God and it won’t make a bit of difference to you.”
Skye had lived among the Yanks long enough to detect region in a man’s voice. These were Texans, he thought. Bitter men, defeated in war, swarming out of a ruined South, reckless of life and law.
“Texans?”
“We sure as hell ain’t Indians. Now you turn around and git. We don’t allow any trespassing here. You git or face what you get.”
“Just passing through. Visiting my wife’s people.”
“Did you heah me? Git out!”
“Did you bring a shovel?” Skye asked. “Dig a grave for two people passing through?”
Dogwood glared. “We don’t give a damn who you are, what you are, or whether you git buried or just rot until the coyotes eat what’s left of you.”
“Got a few longhorns? I don’t see them.”
“There a-comin’ and you’re a-going.”
“Who are you going to shoot first? My wife or me?”
“You’re both going to buy the ticket, mister.”
“Mister Skye, yes. That’s how I prefer to be addressed. Do you prefer to be called Mister Dogwood?”
“Enough talk.” He motioned to his men, who withdrew revolvers. Skye found himself staring into half a dozen muzzles. “That’s how I talk, redskin.”
“Born in London, sir. This is my wife Victoria, born among the Absaroka People. And who are these gentlemen?”
For an answer, Dogwood lifted his hog leg and drilled another hole through Skye’s silk hat. It flew off again. Skye winced.
“You fat sonofabitch,” Victoria yelled. “You miserable bastard. I own this land. You get your ass off. This land’s mine. I’ve owned it since before you were born, fatso. My people owned it before Texas was. This is my home, and you can damned well take your fat ass out of here.”
The whole lot stared at Victoria, whose drawn bow was aimed square at fatso’s chest.
“Kill me, go ahead, you pile of grease. Only you get an arrow before you do.”
Skye marveled. Dogwood sat, breaking the back of his nag, utterly paralyzed. One of the cowboys began easing sideways, out of Victoria’s vision.
“One more step by that bastard and you croak,” she said.
The cowboy stopped.
“Looks like there’s a standoff, Mister Dogwood,” Skye said. “Now, are you going to let us through, or do we die? We’re old; we don’t mind dying. You’re what? Thirty?”
“Tell that squaw to put the bow down.”
“Tell your cowboys to holster their guns.”
Dogwood plainly didn’t wish to do it.
“Did you bring a shovel, Mister Dogwood? Three graves, one for you, two for us.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, you fat bastard,
you’re going to turn around and ride away, and when you’re out of range, we’re going to go ahead and cross my people’s land. And then you’re going to take your cowboys and your cows and get out of here.”
Dogwood was hefting his revolver, twitchy, daring himself to shoot her.
Skye deliberately reached to the grass and plucked up his hat, which lay between his and Victoria’s horses. When he was down, he swung his Sharps around. He put his hat back on, and his Sharps was at his waist, pointing at fatso.
“Looks like you put another hole in my topper, Mister Dogwood,” he said.
But Yardley Dogwood was staring at the huge bore of the Sharps, which now pointed blackly at his chest.
“I don’t mind dying, but I guess you do,” Skye said. “You back off now. Turn your men around and get out of here.”
Dogwood slowly, carefully, holstered his own Navy revolver and wheeled his stout gray horse. He nodded to his men, who followed suit, and soon the horsemen were retreating toward the bottoms. No tricks. Skye didn’t trust them, and rested his Sharps across his saddle, ready for a long-distance shot.
The horsemen were soon beyond the effective range of their own carbines, but Skye didn’t move. Not yet. He waited until they were deep into the river bottoms, where they probably were camped in the middle of the mosquitoes awaiting Dogwood’s trail herd.
Skye was in no hurry, and stood on an aching leg for a while more.
Victoria eased her bowstring, returned the arrow to her quiver, but did not free the bowstring. Not yet.
“Can they do that? Take land?” she asked.
“No Yank government’s here yet,” Skye said. “They just claim it, and drive others off it, and call it their own.”
“The goddamn government’s worse than the cowboys,” she said. “One of these days they’ll tell my people to go to some damned place with four invisible lines around it and stay in there.”
All that day they rode hard, wanting distance between themselves and fatso. The Big Horn Valley was flanked by the Big Horn Mountains on the east, and rolling arid hills on the west, and was easy to travel. Skye’s leg hurt from the new insult, but he concluded nothing was damaged. They scared up some mule deer, but Skye was slow to draw his Sharps, and the deer vanished. Old age wasn’t helping him keep meat in the cook pot, which was still another reason why he was feeling the need to settle somewhere and raise his own beef.
Midday heat suffocated them but Skye felt compelled to keep going, and as the day waned he knew they had traversed a long stretch of the arid valley. This arid land was going to fool fatso. Only the green bottoms along the river offered much feed for the longhorns, and most of that was brush-choked.
Along toward dusk, Victoria grew restless.
“Something ahead,” she said.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“You’re deaf as a stone, Skye.”
It turned out she was right. Just about when Skye was about to call it quits for a day, they rounded a river bend and discovered a sea of cattle ahead, longhorns of all shapes and colors, brown, brindle, bluish, spotted, black, gray, bawling and milling, many of them along the riverbank. And herding
them were a dozen or so men on horseback, some barely visible in the distance.
“More goddamn cowboys,” Victoria said.
“Fatso’s herd coming up the river.”
This time they rode straight toward the camp, where a fire was blooming. They were noticed, but no one was pulling weapons or showing any signs of trouble.
But the foreman did pause and await company.
“Evening,” he said, looking Skye and Victoria over.
“Evening. I’m Mister Skye, and my wife Victoria Skye. We’re angling through here and thought to say hello.”
“I reckon you’re welcome,” the lean man said. “Light and set.”
Skye and Victoria gratefully slid from their ponies, picketed them, and joined the busy trail crew. The lowing of the cattle wrought a constant sound, almost a wail, as the animals watered and spread out on thin grass. Here were a dozen more of these wire-thin men, trail-worn and tired.
“Name’s Higgins,” the man said. “Seems to me I’ve heard tell of you.”
“I used to guide once, and before that I led a fur brigade.”
“You a friend of Bridger’s?”
“Sure am, Mister Higgins. You’re on his road. Old Gabe worked this out, mostly for wagons, but you’ve taken a herd over.”
“You pass my outfit north of here?”
Skye nodded. “Maybe twenty-five miles. That’s Yardley Dogwood, right?”
“They let you through?”
“It took some persuading, Mister Higgins. That fellow, he’s a big target.”
Skye laughed. Higgins laughed.
The foreman turned to several of his men. “Gents, this heah is a fine old man of the mountains, Mistah Skye, and his woman, Victoria. They been here before we were born. He’s rassled grizzly, put bullets into Blackfeet, taken people where white men never been, and he’s too tough to eat so we ain’t going to roast him for dinner. They’s passing through, and we’re going to welcome them. We got us a quarter of a beeve to eat this heah evening, before it turns rank on us, and pretty soon now we’ll be roasting the meat, soon as that fire gets hot. And you, Mistah Skye, you’re going to tell us some stories.”
“Some good beef for a few yarns? I imagine that’s a bargain, Mister Higgins.”
“Goddammit, Skye, you call me Mister one more time and you can just starve.”
“Higgins, you call me Skye one more time, and I won’t tell stories.”
“You got any booze?” asked Victoria. “He don’t tell stories good until he gets himself sauced up.”
Higgins sighed. “I’d give a dozen steers for a bottle,” he said. “But we’re out of luck.”