They descended toward a green clump that proved illusory; whatever waters had fed it were gone, dried by the approach of summer. But the coulee narrowed into a steep bend below. There might be pockets of water at the bottom. In forty minutes it would be dusk; it was no good continuing along the rim at this rate anyhow. So Joe led the exhausted horse downhill into the trap of the canyon. He leaned back and dug his bootheels into the clay, thought a silent prayer and did not bother to look around to see if the dude was following.
One quality a tired man shared with a lathered horse was that either could become the surprisingly quick victim of dehydration in country like this.
We could end up dry bones out here and no one the wiser.
The mournful knowledge put a taste like brass on Joe’s tongue. He said nothing to Roosevelt; no good would be served by alarming the dude—there was no way to tell which way Roosevelt might jump. What if he folded up into a cowering ball and refused to go on? What if he had a fit?
The horses placed their feet with tired splayed abandon, stumbling down the clay slopes, trembling. Joe rolled a pebble around his mouth with his tongue to keep the saliva going. He pitied the big quivering creature whose reins he tugged.
The walls of the high gorge loomed, cutting out most of the sky. It was nearly dark. The horses seemed nervous; they kept tugging fitfully.
Roosevelt said, “Look there, old fellow. That seems promising.”
He followed the line of Roosevelt’s pointing finger and saw dimly a wide dish of stone in the shadows under the opposite cliff.
Probably nothing but a trick of the sun; but there was a chance it might indeed prove to be a sink—what the immigrant Texans called a tanque.
May be the dude’s eyesight was improving.
“We’ll have a look then.”
They crossed the narrow canyon upon a rubble of shale rocks loosened by the past winter’s storms; their passage set up a little avalanche that racketed down into darkness and hurled back ominous echoes.
As they entered the gloom of the cliff’s shadow he heard Roosevelt exclaim, “Aha! I thought the horses smelled moisture.”
It was muck: a gelatinous slime, the diminished leavings of a big pool that must have been deposited in this bowl of rock by the spring melt-off. The horses nuzzled it: lapped, snorted and drank.
Roosevelt without ado untied his neckerchief, scooped up a wad of muddy gumbo in it, twisted the cloth ends together and held the plump sack over his upturned hat. When he squeezed, brown water dripped from the cloth.
Joe gaped.
This damn dude had saved their lives.
It was downright mortifying.
They made a dry camp. Finally Joe was willing to ask, “Where’d you learn that trick with the bandanna?”
“From a Maine woodsman, a very fine friend of mine named Bill Sewall. Why? Did you think Dakota was the only wild country in all North America?”
The dude presented another hatful of strained mud to his horse, which drank gratefully. Then he tried to blow up the rubber sleeping pillow that he carried in his pack but he wheezed and hacked so badly that Joe was moved to take it away from him, inflate it himself and say, “You ought to see a doctor about those ailments.”
The dude corked the pillow and suddenly burst into a barking merriment of laughter that quickly became a violent spell of coughing after which he struggled for breath and eventually spoke:
“I’ve seen many a doctor, old fellow. The most eminent of ’em told me I hadn’t long to live unless I elected a sedentary life. He said the strain of the asthma has weakened my heart, and any violent exercise may be immediately fatal. The fine fellow told me I oughtn’t even walk up a flight of stairs without stopping several times on the way. Well I didn’t think that sounded like much of a life. Not long after that I happened to be in Switzerland and I encountered a group of Englishmen who’d just come down from a two-day scaling of the Matterhorn, which as you probably know was never climbed at all until less than twenty years ago, and these Englishmen boasted so—as if no one else but an Englishman could ever make the top of that mountain—well sir I climbed it myself, just to show what an American could do, and I made it to the top of the Matterhorn in just three hours. And I am here alive to tell you the tale.”
I may owe him my life but does he really expect me to believe these tall tales?
Roosevelt said, “Now do you suppose there may be a moral to this story, concerning doctors and their opinions?”
He broke into another fit of coughing. To Joe it sounded like death.
There was no wood for a fire and nothing by way of trees or even shrubs for tying the horses. It was a cold camp and, Joe thought, a miserable one. They’d had only a couple of dried biscuits to eat. The horses were hungry and didn’t seem to like this place: they kept snorting restlessly.
After they rubbed the beasts down it was necessary to groundhitch them for the night by laying saddles on the ground and tying a rawhide lariat from each saddle to each horse’s bridle strap.
Roosevelt’s horse kept pawing at the rock and looking nervously around and blowing through its nostrils. “There must be some wild predator about.”
“Or two-legged animals,” Joe said between yawns. “There are men around here, white and red alike, may be just as soon as not take our horses and our scalps as well.”
It was mainly bravado to impress the dude; Joe felt immediately foolish but it was too late to retract and so he said, “Keep your eyes and ears peeled, now,” and laid his head on his saddle for a pillow and was immediately asleep.
When it was jerked out from under him he came awake with a start. “What in the hell—?”
He heard hoofbeats clattering away down the canyon; he was clambering to his feet, still clearing his head of sleep when the boom of Roosevelt’s rifle nearly made him jump out of his skin.
The muzzle-flame, so near his eyes, left him momentarily blind. “What is it?”
There was the metal racket of the dude’s rifle—chambering a fresh cartridge, levering the breach shut—and then after a moment Roosevelt said in a calm enough voice, “Wolf, I think. I suspect I missed it. Great Scott, it certainly does seem to have frightened our horses.”
This was, Joe determined as he tugged on his boots, most definitely the worst hunt he had ever endured.
“Come on then,” the dude said cheerfully. “Isn’t this bully? We’d best bring the poor steeds back.”
“Or break our fool necks trying,” Joe grumbled, and set out blindly down the canyon, feeling for footholds.
After an hour of tumbles and bruises they captured the beasts.
It was only just in time: thunder gave warning—rolling and crashing overhead with long ricochetting echoes.
“Come on!”
Roosevelt seemed to need no explaining. They led the horses swiftly up-cany on, collecting the bits and pieces of their camp, ascending from there at dawn. Then of course it began to rain. Another ten minutes and they’d have been caught in the flash flood that thundered down the canyon. They emerged at the rim with mud sucking at their boots; mounted the poor horses and rode for hours in the soaking downpour.
Along the escarpment it wasn’t so bad but at the waning end of day when they began to descend the Bad Lands toward the place where they’d left the wagon they had to squelch and slither down hills on which the clay had turned to gumbo.
By the time they reached the little plateau and tied their horses to the wagon and ducked underneath the buckboard’s bed they were so coated with the dreary slime they looked like fresh moist clay sculptures.
Joe wrapped himself in a sodden blanket and brooded at the abysmal torrent.
Roosevelt turned to him and grinned from ear to ear. “By Godfrey, but this is fun!”
In the morning the sun came up hot enough to dry the muddy clothes on their backs and Roosevelt’s enthusiasm was larger, if possible, than ever. “Now what do you say, old fellow—buffalo today?”