Where the White River turns and runs due nonh, he sat his horse on the eastern shore and scanned the banks in one direction and then the other with his long glass. Upriver, almost a mile off, he spotted a mule wagon on the other side. Even at this distance he could see that it was stuck in the mud. Two men, one in the water and one astride a mule, were heaving and straining, but they were making no headway. Stupid sonsabitches, he thought, and started across. When the tired paint stopped on her own to drink, he got out his glass again and studied the banks a second time. It wasn't 'til then that he noticed the riding horse tied to the back of the mule wagon. He crossed the swollen current and turned the mare upriver once he cleared the deep mud.
I was surprised how well Professor Marsh sat his horse, a tall creature with big, swelled-out jaw muscles. Looked like they'd raised him on walnuts. The schoolmaster was less a dude on his horse than off, that was certain, though he still talked as odd as he done before.
"You have been in pursuit this man how long, Willie?" he ask me after we was up the trail a ways.
"A week, I guess, maybe longer. I sortalost track of the days."
"And what has this fellow done that you and your sheriff are so intent upon apprehending him?"
I told him about the gun our man'd used to shoot Clete and about the fire that killed Nell Larson and Jesse McLeod. He shook his head and said something about how raw the West was. He wanted to know where I was born, and was surprised when I told him. He asked about my schooling and my folks and everthing like that, no more ashamed about doing so than a prairie dog is of settin' up on his hind feet beside his hole. I could see then what he meant about folks doing things different where he come from. He got even more curious when it come out I'd worked for the Pinkertons a few years back.
"Why on earth did you quit Allan Pinkerton's Detective Agency, Willie? You seem to have had a good position there with a considerable future!"
"I guess it could of been, but it wasn't the kind of a future I wanted, not after that business with the James boys' family." I told him.
"You took part in the attack on Castle James, their stronghold?" he ask, looking real serious.
"Shoot, there wasn't no stronghold to it, nor no castle, neither. Just an old country doctor's house was all, and the James boys wasn't even there, as I told Billy Pinkerton at the time."
"I've heard quite a few conflicting stories about that occurrence, and I've read that contradictory evidence was presented on both sides. What really happened?"
"Well, it wasn't like the papers had it, if that's what you mean. And it wasn't no bomb Dave Farley dropped in the window, neither-just an old turpentine flare to make it smoky inside was all it was, so's they'd have to come out. Dave'd never of throwed a bomb at no one, not even the James boys themselves. Still, what Billy Pinkerton did to them James people in Missouri just wasn't right, firing on a house with women and children inside. Never was and never will be."
When Walter Turnbull first saw the man walking his horse up the river, he had a notion to go get his rifle. But when the tall stranger waved, Walt changed his mind and went back to kicking his nigh wheeler in the flanks. But it was no use. They just couldn't budge it.
"Want help?" the scrawny man called from the bank.
"Yeah, if you think you can get these critters pullin' any harder than me and the boy can, "the broadbacked muleskinner replied.
The stranger came down the bank, glanced at the tow-headed boy standing in water up to his knees beside the lead pair, and plodded his paint through the eddy out to Turnbull. "Got another whip?" he asked.
"Shore, always carry a spare. Toss the other out, Ellie."' The blond-haired woman in the wagon threw the coiled fourteen-foot bullwhip to her husband, who handed it to the scarecrow with rotten teeth.
"Are you certain the James brothers weren't at Doctor Samuels' house when the raid took place?" Professor Marsh ask.
"Am I sure? Why, I was the man shadowing Jesse! I had trailed him from his ma's place to Missouri City, and that's where I wired Mr. William Pinkerton from. We was supposed to wire him three times a day–concerning their whereabouts-but damned if I could stay on Jesse James' trail and do that. Even sent a copy to Billy care of the station master in Kearney, in case the train'd left by the time my first telegram got to the Northland Hotel where he was staying. Nosiree, Jesse wasn't even near. Fact is, Mr. Jesse James was havin' his ashes hauled in a cathouse in Missouri City while Billy Pinkerton was leading the noble raid that killed the James boys' kid brother and hurt their ma so that she had to have her arm cut off. And Frank was elsewheres too."
"I see," Marsh said. "Did you ever find out whether or not Mr. Pinkerton received your telegram before he conducted the raid?"
"Indeed he did," I told him. "That was the first thing I checked on afterward. Fact is, he got both of them. A telegraph man in Kansas City delivered the one, put it right in his hand, so he told me. And the other, Billy picked up himself in Kearney. Said so later."
We rode along silent a while after that.
"I been haulin' for ten years," the broadbacked skinner said, standing on the high bank and offering his hand, "an' I never seen nobody whup mules like that. "The boy understood why his father admired the stranger, for under his lash the team had pulled like they never had before. Still, he pitied the beasts as they stood quivering and bleeding and dripping river water on the high bank.
"Oh, you jest got to know where to tech em, and how, "the skinny man said, giving the man back his whip instead of shaking with him. A bashful smile slid over his narrow face. "I enjoy a good bout with mules now and again, jest to let em know how it is."
"Will you stay and eat with us?" Ellie called from the wagon. "Seems the least we can do."
"Why, surely, main. I'd be pleased to."
We come to the steep place I'd saw on the map and we had to go single file, but after we got up on top and took a good look across the valley, the professor wanted to talk some more. "What I can't understand, Mr. Goodwin, was why you felt obligated to resign your position simply because William Pinkerton had done something you considered to be morally reprehensible."
Took me a minute to understand him, and even then I had to ask. "Do you mean to say that you don't agree with what I done or do you really not understand why I done it?"
"Why, the latter, of course! I do not mean to set myself up as a paragon of pragmatic expediency, but I would not have done what you did, under similar circumstances, and I simply wondered what your motives were."
By that, I took it to mean he was just wondering about why I quit, not wanting to tell me I was wrong for doing it, though I wasn't completely sure. Any one of the man's words could make you see double, and strung together like that they'd crack your skull wide open.
I just looked at him, not knowing what to say.
"Let me put it this way," he said. "At Yale, the dean refuses to fund my expeditions to the extent he should, even though my uncle underwrites the entire Scientific School-through which my funds come-as well as the money for the library and the Peabody Museum, named for my dear uncle, of course. Now, my question is this: do you feel I should resign my position, as well as my Chair in Natural History, simply because the dean acts improperly in witholding money that my uncle donates? Is science well served if I resign, letting the knowledge of prehistoric life lie buried in this clay?"
I took off my hat and rubbed my head good. I like a good soft chair myself, and his throwing one into the middle of this thing made it a lot stickier. "See if I got this straight," I told him. "Your uncle gives somebody money and furniture that should go to you, for scratchin' around out here, but the man he gives it to don't tum it all over, the part he should, right?"
"That is essentially correct," he said, nodding his head slow and smiling.
"Why, of course you should quit," I told him. "Just take your uncle's money yourself and dig for bones all you want. He trusts you with it, don't he, your uncle, I mean?"
He got a good laugh at that. "Of course."
"Take the money direct and tell that fellow back at Yale College to kiss your ass," I said.
Well, if I thought he'd laughed his hardest before, I was wrong.
Ellie Turnbull spread a tablecloth on the ground beneath a single cottonwood tree growing along the White River, and the scrawny man watched her walk back to the wagon. The second trip, she brought biscuits she had baked that morning beside their breakfast fire, cold sliced venison, and gooseberry jam all the way from Indiana. Walter stood talking of mules and weather and the way to Fort Laramie, but he had to carry most of the weight of the conversation on his own broad shoulders. Before very long, Tum-bull noticed that their guest was more interested in his wife's figure than his talk, and it made him fume. Still, the skinny man had helped them through a hard place, and if it got no worse, he would let it slide.
Ellie called the boy up from the river and they all sat down crosslegged to eat.
"And what would happen to a fine institution like Yale, to any civilized institution, for that matter, if the men who were a part of it put their individual principles above the good of the whole? If they all resigned whenever one of their superiors violated a moral precept?"
He gave me no time to answer.
"Another example: the Christian religion has committed heinous crimes in the course of its advancement. Take the Spanish Inquisition, for instance. Does the fact of that atrocity mean we must abandon the Church because it temporarily abrogated one or two of its tenets? Would Western culture be the better for it?"
I turned my horse. "I guess I didn't understand you square a while ago,"I told Professor Marsh. "You really did want to tell me that I done wrong by quittin' the Pinks, only I wasn't quick enough to see it. I don't know enough about religion to say nothing about what a lot of Spaniards done a long time since. But if Yale College can't get along with just the folks who think it's doing the right thing, then it should either lock its doors or find some new hands. Maybe your uncle could help sign some on, since he seems responsible for nearly everything else around the place. Probably be willing, too, if they'd name some more furniture after him." I spurred my mount and we went down the other side.
Marsh come up after a few yards. "You must excuse me, Mr. Goodwin," he said. "The scholiast and casuist in me want to win a debate at any cost, sometimes. But you can see my point, can't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I can. And I guess I must excuse you, if you say I must, for this is your territory, not mine. All I did was to quit the Pinks because they got things turned around to my way of thinking, important things. They valued a good name in the papers and their pride above folks' lives. And that just ain't right. I'm not saying somebody should step in and shut the Pinks down, that's for others to decide. But if I'd a killed a young boy, I'd a swung for it. All I'm saying is that I don't have to be a part of no outfit that acts like the Pinkerton boys do, future or no future, big payday or no payday. That's what a free country's all about, ain't it? Hell, they can get along just fine without me, and I sure as the devil get along better without them, 'specially when it comes to sleeping good at night."
I think maybe the professor was a little ashamed of himself for corning at me about quitting the Pinkertons like he did, for he nodded his head and just kept his mouth shut riding the rest of the way down that little clay mountain, but you could tell it pained him to do it.
Close to the bottom you could see across to where the young fellows was working, though it was still more than a mile off from us, over in some country that was broken up pretty bad. By the time we got to where they was, they'd put their shovels down and lined up for their noontime eats. They was pleased to see Marsh, you could tell by the way they spoke to him. Maybe if I'd a went to a school where I could've rode around in some wild country on a horse, slept in a tent, and camped with a dozen or so of my friends, I would of liked my schoolman pretty good too, a lot better than I did, at any rate.
The man doing the cooking got plates for Marsh and me and we ate too, the young fellows telling their teacher what skeletons they found that morning and what they hadn't-only the names they used for the animals was all strange to me. The stew we ate was good, and it had either buffalo or beef in it, I couldn't tell which. Wasn't as good as Mandy's, though. I got a second plate of it after I seen some others getting theirs.
"Anyone find any horse bones?" I asked, sitting back down. They all stopped pushing food into their faces and looked at me like I had just farted.
"That's what the students were talking about, Willie," the professor explained. "The scientific name for the kind of horse found here is Mesohippus, very different from the Equus species that we ride." The boys snickered a little at him saying that.
I didn't mind their having some fun at my expense, but it was hard for me to see how horses could a been much different than they are now, and I wanted to know more about it, even if it did make me the jackass of the herd. Sure, I'd seen horses of all sizes and colors, even heard of some with black and white stripes running wild over in England. But this had to be something more than that, I figured, or they'd of found live ones for their remuda. It'd be silly to have just a few old horse bones when you could have breathing ones that could carry you somewheres. "How was they different?" I ask.
"Let us have a short recitation for Mr. Goodwin's edification, shall we, gentlemen?" You could tell from the way they grumbled that wasn't the kind of fun they had in mind.
All through the meal, the scrawny man's eyes crawled over Ellie Turnbull's body, especially her full breasts. What disturbed Halter even more was that the stranger didn't even try to hide what he was staring at, which was only proper.
"I don't believe I heard your name, sir," Mrs. Turnbull said. Perhaps if she engaged the man in conversation, she reasoned, he would stop looking at her so hungrily. And maybe Walt wouldn't lose his temper this time.
"It's Smith, Mam."
"Smith what?" Walter asked, chewing a mouthful of biscuit.
"Just Smith, "the thin man said flatly. 'This here's your boy, ain't it?" he asked Ellie.
"yes, he is," she said uncomfortably. "Walt's and mine. Do you have children, Mr. Smith?"
The scrawny man spit a piece of gristle into his hand, examined it, and then flung it toward the river. "Had one, once. A boy."
Jimmy Turnbull knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what. "Did something happen to him?" he asked.
"Jimmy!" Ellie cried. "I declare!"
"I'm sorry, "the boy mumbled, though he wasn't sure what sin he had committed this time.
The scrawny man seemed to pay no attention to the boy and his mother. For several minutes he simply chewed his food and looked into the distance. "Sheriff east of here killed him. "He turned quickly to Walter, as though the broad-shouldered man had asked the question that forced him to return to something he did not want to remember. "Shot him down in the street like a goddamned dog."
"We don't curse in front of the boy," Ellie Turnbull said, her cheeks reddening.
But the stranger appeared not to have heard her. He stood up quickly, though there was still food on his plate, Jimmy noticed. "I'm goin'now."
Walter Turnbull stood too. "I thank you for your help, Smith," he said.
The thin man smiled and extended his hand. When the muleskinner took it, DuShane squeezed hard, drew the gun that was strapped to his left hip, and shot Walter Turnbull low in the belly.
The echo of the shot died along the river before the boy realized what had happened. He lunged at the thin man. "You shot my pal You—"
DuShane smacked him above the ear with the barrel of his revolver and watched the boy slump to the grass like a sack of old shoes.
Ellie Turnbull sat frozen. A dollop of gooseberry jam still clung to her knife blade, and the biscuit-half she had been going to spread it on still lay in her loose hand.
Her eyes glazed over and her jaw dropped. The scrawny man looked at her pretty white teeth and the soft pink tongue that looked to him like a pink frog in a pink pond. And then he thought about how it would feel to shove his cock in there.
"Now, then, gentlemen," Professor Marsh said, clearing his throat. "A short recitation, please. Contrast Mesohippus with the contemporary species Equus. Would you begin, Mr. Sargeant? And remember, just contrasts. No comparisons, please."
"Shall I stand, sir?" a young fellow wearing a white cap ask.
"Please do," Marsh said. "And clear away your plates, gentlemen."
The young man in the white cap also wore a funny-looking pair of pants that flared out at the thighs and was laced tight to his shins, which I noticed after he got to his feet. "The most obvious difference is in the foot, of course. Mesohippus walked on three toes, while Equus walks on only one, the other two toes, those of his predecessor, remaining in vestigial form. If one accepts the monophyletic theory, that is."
He sat down, and all the boys laughed, though I didn't know why. "Mr. Sargeant and I have an intellectual dispute, Willie, and he took this opportunity to poke fun at what he considers to be a folly of mine. Any questions for Mr. Sargeant?"
I looked from the young man to Marsh and back and forth again, not knowing exactly who to talk to. "A horse with three toes? Are you sure it's a horse?" I ask.
"Oh, yes," the young man said. "Most early paleolithic horses have three toes, except Eohippus, which has four. I'll show you a whole skeleton when we're done here, and you'll see it's a horse all right."
"Very good, Mr. Sargeant, very good. You next, Mr. Ballard. Any inaccuracies in Mr. Sargeant's recitation?" It was clear the professor was enjoying himself.
The next young fellow, who was big in the belly and wore specs, stood up. "Basically, what he said was correct, I think, though I'm not so sure that the foot would be the most obvious difference we would notice if a specimen of Mesohippus had walked up to us while we were eating Billy's delicious stew."
The boys all clapped their hands and whistled, but the cook looked more embarrassed than pleased.
"No," the chubby fellow said, drawing out the sound of it, "I think we'd notice the difference in size first, and that's the contrast I wanted to talk about. Mesohippus stood about sixteen or eighteen inches at the shoulder, about as tall as the coyotes that keep us awake at night. A little higher at the rear, probably." After that he sat down.
"Finish the contrast, Mr. Ballard," the professor said.
The fellow wearing specs looked puzzled for a minute before he spoke. "Oh yes, and Equus is, well, as big as a horse!"
We all laughed at that one, even the professor. "Questions, Willie?"
"You mean to say this horse was no bigger than a good-size dog?"
The chubby young man nodded his head.
"Then how could anyone ride him?" I ask.
Everbody chuckled at that, too.
The professor answered that one himself. "That was not a problem, Mr. Goodwin, for there were no men around at that time!"
I never saw folks enjoy themselves any more than those fellows did that afternoon, talking and arguing and joking about a critter that'd been dead for thousands of years-so they said-though I couldn't see how the bones would last that long in the ground. I had dug up a few dead things too in my day. They went around 'til everyone had his tum to say what he knowed, and they knowed a lot. I admit I didn't understand very much of what was said toward the end. Besides not knowing some of the words they used, I kept picturing that little horse with three toes on each foot scampering around and around with no cowboys to rope it, and that kept me from listening to some of it.
He stuck his head out the front of the covered mule wagon and looked both ways before jumping down. Buttoning up his pants, he walked to where the boy lay and poked at him several times with the toe of his boot. Then he rolled Walter Turnbull over on his back.
He mounted the paint, spurred her hard, and noticed how tired she was. The tall man reined her in and turned her around. There stood the muleskinners horse at the back of the wagon, and he laughed at how forgetful he was getting as he rode back for it.
"Very good, gentlemen, very good," the professor told them. "I'm quite pleased at the progress you're making, and we have about eight tons of fossils to send back to the Museum, which is excellent. But now we have another matter to attend to before you return to you shovels and trowels for the remainder to the day's dig. Mr. Goodwin is an officer of the law in this Territory, and he has come here in search of information concerning a murderer who may be in the vicinity. Just another reminder, gentlemen, that you are no longer in Connecticut. I'll let Mr. Goodwin tell you the rest."
I stood up, like they done before, and told them about the man Clete and me was after, told them what he did, what he looked like and what kind of horse he was mounted on. They thought on it a while, but none of them'd seen him. The fellow with the specs'd seen a muleskinner's wagon to the south a little after dawn, before the rain stopped, he guessed, but none of the rest seen no one else. I thought to ask them about Mandy then, and I told them what she looked like and the horse she was on, but none of them'd seen her either. From the looks on their faces, though, it was plain they'd of rather run into her than him.
"I want to thank you young men," I said. "I enjoyed your speeches here about them tiny horses you're digging up. And I appreciate you trying to help me find those people I spoke about. Let me give you some advice, now. If you see the man I told you of, stay the hell away from him. Don't try to capture him or nothing like that, 'cause he'll kill you–he's had practice at it. One last piece of advice and then I'll stop. When you're diggin' up the bones of them little horses, be on the lookout for golden crowns. You just might find one or two. Might be worth some money."
They looked at me so queer for a minute, and then they talked quiet among themselves, and finally started to laugh some. I guess they believed I was telling them some kind of a Western joke, but I wasn't.