Read Online Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch - Free Book Online Page B

Tail may know what happened.” He leaned down and picked his buckets up again and so did I. With the rifle across my back, it was easier. When we got back to camp and handed the water over to the women, Theo invited me to set a spell by his wagon. Nobody else was there except me and him. He said he’d take the two mules over to the chief in the morning and then he’d find out what happened.
    “Maybe he knows what happened to Joe Crane too,” I said.
    Theo had a pipe of his own and he filled it with tobacco and lit it. He offered me some of it but I didn’t want it. He puffed awhile, watching the sun get swallowed by a great white mountain of a cloud.
    “I think we’ll start out again in the next day or so,” he said.
    “What did the old chief mean, the dead brave had many fathers and mothers?”
    He shrugged. “The Indians don’t keep their children like we do. They adopt.”
    “Adopt?”
    “Young’uns are the business of the whole tribe,” he said. “A young boy or girl can be taken on by grandparents or interested neighbors. Hell, among them folks almost every adoption is welcomed. The children live where it is most convenient for the tribe. And for the young folks. A couple only married for a year or two needs their privacy. So the children are adopted and taken care of. Later in life, that same couple will adopt and take care of a young’un. It might be their grandson or their closest neighbor’s boy or girl. Things get took care of and it ain’t done with no lawyers nor clergy, neither.”
    “That’s sort of how it worked in my family,” I said. “I was raised by my aunt.”
    He nodded.
    “She was pretty indifferent to me.”
    “It ain’t that way with Indians. Each one of them feels and acts like a child’s parent. A kid is pretty lucky to be born among them folks.”
    “I guess so.”
    “And when one of them dies, he is grieved by all of his parents. The women will mutilate themselves. Cut off digits and such.”
    “Jesus Christ,” I said.
    “Maybe physical pain helps them forget the other kind.”
    “All through the war,” I said, “the one thing I known for sure was that if I died, nobody would grieve a lick.”
    “Well. That may be a lucky way to go through this here business.”
    “As you say.”
    He smiled. “In the end, ain’t none of us nothing but alone. And nobody gets out of here alive, neither.”
    “I know,” I said. “I know that.”
     
    The next day Theo found out what happened to Preston. He’d gone as far as Fort Sully in the Dakota Territory, near the Cheyenne River Agency. He was so close he could almost see the Black Hills. Then he got in a fight with one of the Sioux scouts over a horse. Roman Turley ordered him to give one of his horses to this Indian named Small Knife. Preston said he wouldn’t do it. Twines His Horse’s Tail did not know why Preston owed the Sioux brave a horse, but whatever it was, Preston took the horse and his wagon and lit out for the southern trail, back toward where he come. He may of wanted to join up with our train again. “He almost made it,” Theo said.
    “Small Knife caught up with him?”
    “No. Turley sent three of his new recruits after him.”
    “Why?”
    “Probably to keep the peace,” Theo said. “Folks don’t like it when a Indian kills a white man, it don’t matter what for. So Turley would’ve made sure white men took care of it. We may never know why Preston owed that fellow a horse. But it was the three who went after him that hung him up for a horse thief and then set fire to him.”
    “Big Tree was right. He said it was white men.”
    “The chief said one of them was just a kid.”
    “How’s he know that?”
    “They traded him the wagon for two horses, some buffalo meat, and a few skins.”
    I shook my head.
    “Chief said the small young one wore a white hat with dark eagle feathers in the brim and had a white pony. He did all the talking and the others followed him around. He said he must have