San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion Page 2

God or not, Jethro Lundy was in his element. With one eye on the hired helper fitting shoes to an ox suspended in midair, he was at the same time engrossed with the emigrants who had stopped to trade. A man and boy were at the head of a line leading to the counter.

  “Mein namen ist Hugo Rummelhoff,” the man said. “From Wisconsin we come, by Milwaukee.”

  The curly-haired god merely nodded, expecting to hear the usual complaints about dusty roads and brackish water and high cost of food. But with Hugo Rummelhoff it was different. He had a deeper trouble.

  “Mein boy, Hans,” he said, “he’s got measles.”

  Like spooked horses the nearby customers shied away from the boy. But Jethro Lundy remained fixed, ready for whatever.

  “Hans, he needs goot warm clothes,” Mr. Rummelhoff was saying. “In trade, a steer I give you?” It was more question than statement.

  A shudder gripped the slight boy, followed by a fit of coughing.

  Mr. Lundy waited, his fingers drumming the counter. Mr. Rummelhoff put a protective arm about his son. “I make it two steer,” he said, nodding. “Yah, I make it two.”

  Mr. Lundy didn’t accept or reject the offer. His gaze slid over to the door, to Peter, his eye measuring him against the ailing Hans. “Rummelhoff,” he mused, his fingers working in the curly beard, “we got us a pair of skinny weaklings.” The hand with the missing finger pointed. “That gangling, yellow-haired boy over yonder is Peter Lundy.”

  A dozen heads turned to stare.

  “Mrs. Lundy coddles him; makes him puny.”

  “Yah,” Mr. Rummelhoff agreed, “womans do that.” He bowed his head in pain. “Mein frau we buried yesterday by Bitter Creek; she ketched measles, too.”

  Jethro Lundy appeared not to have heard. “That shirt of crimson wool,” he spoke half to himself, half aloud, “should be done about now.”

  “Yah?” the word went up the scale, kindled with hope.

  “But, Rummelhoff, two steer, all skin and bone and sore-footed, ain’t worth a handwove shirt. By time I fatten ’em up for trade I’ll have too much money in ’em.”

  Hugo Rummelhoff dived into his pocket and offered a rope of tobacco.

  Mr. Lundy waved it aside and let his eye travel on to the next customer.

  “Herr Lundy! Herr Lundy!” The voice was desperate now. “Maybe you like some schnapps? A leetle jug of goot schnapps?”

  “Hmmmm . . . mm . . .” Mr. Lundy warmed. His tone became homey as corn mush. “It strikes me your boy needs that handwove shirt more’n my boy.” And all in the same breath he shouted, “Peter! Whether your ma’s finished or not, fetch the shirt!”

  A quiet stretched across the room. In a leap of imagination Peter saw the boot stamping, crushing the bleeding-heart bush. Now Pa was hurting his mother again. And he, Peter, was the cause of it. He answered nothing, but turned and with his dog walked slowly across the road. He kicked the dirt before him, wishing with each step that he was kicking his father in the shins. He wished he could grab that jug, and with his mother’s pistol shoot it full of holes until the schnapps dribbled all over the dirt in little pellets.

  “Ma!” he cried above the whir of the spinning wheel, “my new shirt’s being traded for a yoke of ox and a . . .” He stopped. All too soon she would know about the schnapps.

  Mrs. Lundy looked out the door left open, and up toward the trading post. “He could have taken your old ones,” she said, “but he had to have the new one I made for you. And it still wants a button!” Two tears started down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, Ma. I don’t mind about the shirt. It’s for a boy my size. He’s sick with measles.”

  Tears still wet on her face, his mother tried to thread a needle, missing three times because of the blurring. “Why, how very nice,” she choked as if she had swallowed a fish bone, “how very nice of your father! You must try to understand, Peter, trading is his only joy. And yet,” she said in a kind of pride, “he thought of something nice and warm for a sick boy. You do see how generous that was? At least try to understand until I give you reason enough.”

  Peter looked full into his mother’s eyes. How could he understand? If she didn’t think him man enough to tell him, how could he?

  The Shooting Match

  THE REST of the day belonged to Peter and Dice. Now no one would bother them. Unless Adam, Pa’s helper, came running for Dice to hypnotize a fractious horse.

  Meanwhile Peter could get to his own work. In some ways it seemed more important than his father’s; maybe even more than Mr. Buchanan’s, the brand-new president of the United States. The president’s paperwork and his father’s trading were one thing; but doctoring lame critters so they could walk again—that was prime important.

  In exchange for as little as a pound of sugar or a skipple of salt, Jethro Lundy grudgingly accepted horses, oxen, and mules that were too sore-footed and starved from the long, rough journey to go on. These were turned over to Peter because, as his father said, “The dumb understand the dumb.”

  On this March morning in the year 1857, Peter’s patients were bunched up in the corral, looking scraggly and sad . . . until they heard Peter’s whistle. Then heads came up, ears pricked, and all at once the whole place came alive with jostlings and brayings, bawlings and neighings. Gimpy legs hurried to reach the boy. Noses bunted him, chiding him: “You’re late, doc!”

  Peter laughed in content. He rubbed ears, stroked necks, slapped rumps, pushed the bold ones back, encouraged the timid, and crooned a little critter-patter before leaping bareback onto Kate, a Narragansett Pacer from Rhode Island. He felt the big, sway-backed gray leap into movement. Out of the corral she led the helter-skelter string of mules and cattle along the wheel-rutted path and down to a mountain-fed spring. Not one animal was tied to the next. Even the newcomers, Mr. Rummelhoff’s steers, limped along with the bunch. Dice, bringing up the rear, was dizzy with importance—running here, there, everywhere; herding a laggard away from prairie dog holes, nipping him into line, keeping them all in proper order head to tail, with no more than an animal’s length between.

  Turning to look at the caravan winding along behind him, Peter felt an all-powerful joy. He whistled to a hawk coasting in the deep sky, and the tune he whistled belonged to his mother’s words:

  Each song has wings;

  It won’t stay long.

  For the moment he had forgotten last night. Who could think about a dead letter buried in a box when grass was greening up, and willows fuzzing yellow, and he was both doctor and nurse to a bunch of brown-eyed creatures who needed him? At the spring their slurpings and squealings tickled him. Gabriel, a wise old mule, kept guzzling like a camel long after the others were through. Suddenly his wary eye caught a herd of buffalo ranging into view. He gave a roaring snort, and with water still dribbling from his muzzle hurried to join his corral mates.

  The humping buffalo browned the landscape. They were drifting toward the spring. In an instant Peter leaped astride Kate, put her to a fast pace, and the entire parade gallumphed for home, leaving the water only a little muddied for the oncoming herd.

  Back at the corral Peter went quickly to work, forking hay in small piles here and there to keep the greedy ones from snatching it all. Even so, it was a game of touch tag—Gabriel bunting his way from one mound to the next, with Kate always one pile ahead and the cattle changing places behind. Peter thought, “Even if Pa’s trading is kind of one-sided, the poor critters are better off here for the good feed and rest before they’re traded again.” He poured corn mixed with barley into the feed trough, and while the animals shifted and bickered over the choicest morsels, he built a fire of buffalo chips.

  Doctoring came next. “Let’s warm up the tar now.” Peter talked to Dice as to an eager assistant. “It’s no wonder their feet are tender; the wheel ruts and sand are worse’n walkin’ barefooted on a road of sharp rocks.”

  He sniffed of the tar melting in a tin can, enjoying the sharp pungency. “Y’see, Dice, we got to swab it o
n as warm as they can stand it.”

  He pulled from his pocket a leather mitt and a piece of wood whittled into a spatula. Holding the hot can with his mitt, he headed for Gabriel. Without being told, Dice reached him first, backed him into a shed and sat down facing the mule, staring at him until the animal stood transfixed.

  Quietly Peter lifted each foot, cleaned and painted the cracks. Not until the tar cooled to form a gummy coating was the patient released. After the treatment patient and doctor both felt good, and Dice yawned and rolled over on his back, yowling in satisfaction.

  Doctoring, Peter concluded, was a splendid business, in spite of knowing that the healed ones would likely be traded off just when he and they became best friends. Daily the faces changed. Where today a Morgan horse grazed, tomorrow there might be a starving mule or a lame ox.

  After feet, Peter considered backs next in importance. He examined the few young backs and all the old ones that sagged like hammocks and were rubbed sore by ill-fitting harness or broken saddletrees. He mixed gunpowder with goose grease to make a soothing salve, and he swabbed the tender places. But for Mr. Rummelhoff’s oxen he prepared a poultice of flaxseed for the sores where the yoke had rubbed.

  And so the day went. A strawed bed to lay for the sow who was ready to farrow. Two hens to set. The chicken house to clean. The long shed to muck out. The manure to trundle to Ma’s vegetable patch. He seemed always to be running, carrying his father’s lunch bucket from soddy to trading post, running out on the prairie to gather more buffalo chips to build more fires, running even with the yoke laden with two buckets of water over his shoulders, running to crank the grindstone to sharpen Adam’s tools.

  Emigrant children shyly watched Peter while their fathers were busy at the trading post. Yet no sooner did the shyness wear off than their names were yelled out from rumbling wagon trains and they were sucked into the distance, never to be seen again.

  But at sundown this day, seven wagonloads of families with several children apiece pitched camp near the post. Mr. Lundy made an exception and opened the trading post doors after supper. With the help of Adam and Peter he did a brisk business by lantern light. Feeling smug and pleased with the cash in the till, he invited the men to join him in an hour of target practice. He pointed to the moon throwing a path of light across the floor.

  “A good night for seeing,” he said. “What will it be, gentlemen?” He spoke to the group, but directed his gaze to Whippleby, the wagon boss. “Speak your druthers, gentlemen. Will it be tomahawk throwing? Bow and arrow? Rifle shooting?”

  Whippleby, a spare-built man with a crag of a nose, called for rifle shooting. The decision was almost unanimous—except for Sop-tater Jones, who had apparently been sopping something other than gravied potatoes. “I wanna throw a tommyhawk,” he giggled. “I wanna throw a tommyhawk.”

  “Drug him to his wagon!” the boss said.

  The man’s sons led him away, still giggling, “I wanna throw a tommy . . .”

  His Winchester lever-action rifle clinched confidently under his arm, Mr. Lundy led the way out across the road and past the soddy to a spot well behind. The place was worn bald of grass. “Here’s our standing mark, gentlemen. It’s been trod bare by me and a hull passel of skilled marksmen.”

  Two dozen or so yards away, under a wild plum tree, an old bench held an assortment of targets—a bleached buffalo skull, a saucer-shaped piece of tin, an antelope horn, and discs of wood of varying sizes.

  A tin mug, cut through lengthwise, was anchored to a cottonwood post. What was left of the mug held a candle end.

  “Now,” said Lundy, “the idea is to kill the flame in the mug without shatterin’ the candle.”

  “Them that has dipped candles themselves,” a Scotsman said, “will be careful no to break them, eh, Whippleby?”

  “No doot aboot it,” Mr. Whippleby mimicked him.

  “Well, Peter?” Mr. Lundy barked. “Do I have to hightail it for a new candle? Or will you fetch a half dozen from yer ma?”

  The boys gathering about laughed into their hands at the thought of the big, burly trader hightailing anywhere.

  Peter ran to the house and returned with the candles and a red-hot ember in an iron pot. With his pocketknife Mr. Lundy scraped out the old, guttered candle in the mug. He now blew on the ember to light the fresh one. Then dripping tallow into the bottom of the mug, he fixed the candle in place. As he waited for the tallow to set, his own face hardened. “Out here, in this wilderness that ain’t even a state,” he said, “a man has got to take the law into his own hands. Perfecting one’s firing skill ain’t a thing for fun.”

  “Ye’re damn right, it ain’t,” the wagon boss agreed. “What with Injuns skulkin’ about and road agents thievin’. As to the wager, sir, what’s it to be?”

  “How about a silver dollar that no man can snuff out the candle with his first shot? Peter! Pass yer hat around.” Expertly the father tossed the first dollar over people’s heads and into Peter’s hat.

  Voices clamored.

  “I’ll throw in.”

  “And I!”

  “Count me in.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I winna boast aboot mesel’, but I hae three notches a’ready.”

  The silver dollars piled up as man after man took aim, fired, and missed. Then it was Whippleby’s turn. He had insisted on letting his men shoot first. “Probably,” Peter thought, “to study how the wind blows.”

  Whippleby, legs spread apart, raised his rifle. Carefully he took aim, his crag nose making a vast moon shadow across one cheek. The flame wavered ever so lightly. He took aim a second time. His rifle cracked. He doused the candle on his first try.

  His two sons started to dance, knees high, hands outstretched for the money. There was much backslapping and noisy laughter and calls to Peter:

  “Give Whippleby the money, boy.”

  “Yeh, give it him. Yer pa can’t beat our pa.”

  “Ain’t nobody can beat that.”

  Whippleby shouted them down. He swaggered over to the candle, twisted what was left of the wick, put a glove on one hand, and lifted the faintly glowing ember out of the pot. Blowing on it until his cheeks belled out like a pumpkin, he relit the candle. “Yer turn, sir,” he said, bowing to Peter’s father with the faintest edge of a smile.

  Everyone stepped back to make way for Mr. Lundy, who deliberately faced around, studying the eyes of his audience, his back to the flame. All at once, as if his life had been threatened, he spun around, pointed, fired. The flame died without sputtering, leaving only the moonshine to show the awe in the men’s faces.

  In the shoot-out between the two winners, Whippleby’s hand trembled visibly. His bullet went wide, struck an owl in a wild plum tree. With a whish and a scattering of ghostly feathers, it fell to earth. It was a pale barn owl, with a white, heart-shaped face. Peter remembered his mother’s words after someone had shot his pet rabbit. “You must get used to seeing death,” she had said. “We each have to take our turn at life, and then make room for others to follow.” Peter wondered if somewhere in the unfathomable night there were a lot of fledgling owls awaiting their feathers. He lighted the candle and bent down to make certain the owl was dead.

  Whippleby laughed nervously. “I’ll toss it as a target for Trader Lundy,” he announced.

  Mr. Lundy spoke through tight lips. “When I count ten, toss,” he said. “One-two-three-four . . .” The howl of a coyote cut off the next words. The flame wavered as if it had a life of its own. Men and boys stood rooted. Dice scurried to Peter’s side. “. . . eight-nine-ten.”

  The owl went flying into the air, and simultaneously a flash of fire! Then a second flash, like split lightning. The bird burst into fragments of feathers, and the candle flame snuffed out. The smell of gunpowder and melted tallow burned in Peter’s nostrils. He felt a son’s pride rising in him, but it was a pride mixed with revulsion.

  “Have some of my red-eye, Lundy.”

  “Try my corn j
uice, Lundy.”

  “Try my rot-gut, Lundy.”

  “I’ll try ’em all,” his father laughed as Peter emptied the silver dollars into his outstretched hands. Then he and Dice left, each trudging slowly to his own shelter.

  With a sense of relief Peter reminded himself, “Pa’s going away tomorrow. No need to see him in the morning. Or ever again. And next day I’ll be going away. Only my leaving’ll be forever.”

  The Halt and the Lame

  THE NEXT morning Peter lay dreaming he was an ox hoisted up in a sling, waiting to be shod. And ox-big as he was, he felt himself swaying pleasantly as if by the gentlest breeze, and the breeze had words to it. When he woke, his mother was shaking him, singing for all the world to hear:

  “Here a star, there a star,

  Some lose their way.

  Here a mist, and there a mist,

  Afterwards—day!”

  Even Grandma Lundy was up early; bright-eyed and happy. She sat at the table, eating like a chipmunk, bending down close to the food, then sitting up straight and nibbling away, her downy whiskers in lively motion. Every now and again she froze in the middle of a chew to listen. “Has he gone?” she whispered.

  Peter caught his mother’s eye. “Yes,” he answered.

  With a chippy squeak, Grandma returned to her eating.

  Peter’s mother was saying, “It seems almost sinful. Here we are enjoying hot biscuits with wild honey and potatoes fried with bacon rind, while Mr. Lundy refused everything but one slice of antelope steak.”

  “Who’s Mr. Lundy?” Grandma asked, her eyes vague.

  “Why, he’s your son.”

  “Oh, no, he ain’t. Not that big bearded man!” She put down her biscuit and curved her birdlike fingers around Peter’s wrist. “This here is my boy.”

  “Sure, I’m your boy,” Peter said. He loved his childlike Grandma painfully well. And not because she had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of peppermints, but because she somehow reminded him of a little wild animal with frightened eyes.