“Pa,” Bobbo said, “I got to tell you what’s troublin me.”
“Same thing that’s troublin me,” Hadley said.
“We’ll be reachin the Platte sometime tomorrow,” Bobbo said.
“Aye.”
“Timothy’ll be leavin us.”
“I know that.”
“We’ll be alone, Pa.”
“We’re just as near alone now,” Hadley said.
“Pa, how we gonna stand guard just the two of us the livelong night?”
“Son,” Hadley said, “what do you want me to say? You think I don’t know we’re out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere? You think I don’t know that?”
“It’s... Pa, I’m scared.”
Hadley put his arm around him. “Bobbo,” he said, “maybe Timothy’s right — maybe they’re too busy fightin each other to pay us any mind. What we’ll do anyway, we’ll start movin a little faster each day, how’s that? Try to pick up a few miles each day, close the distance ’tween us and the party ahead. They’re just ahead, son,” he said. “We’ll catch em, don’t you worry.”
Timothy’s wife came up from the river. She was singing. It was the first time any of them had heard her sing. Her voice was small, the Pawnee tune scarcely melodic. She had picked milk plant below. She boiled the pods now and offered them to the rest of the party, moving from one to the other, smiling and saying over and again in English, “Taste, please.”
Her face was radiant.
She was almost home.
Ahead was the Coast of Nebraska.
“It’s from the French,” Timothy said. “Trappers named it la cote de la Nebraska. The Nebraska’s the river, also known as the Platte. Those bluffs mark the bank on this side — the French were saying ‘the hills of the Nebraska.’ ”
There was cactus growing on the bluffs, a pale bristling green against the royal purple of the amorpha. The hills were perhaps fifty feet high, the grass upon them thick and luxuriant. An early morning rain had washed the skies clean. They moved through the wide level valley and came at last to the shore of the river, got out of the wagons.
“Well... “ Timothy said.
“Well then,” Hadley said, “you got us here. We thank you, Timothy.”
“I’ve got something for you,” Timothy said, and went to the wagon. His wife watched as he rummaged through his things. “I hope you like these,” he said. “They’re not worth much, I know.”
Along the way, he had made drawings of them all.
He presented these almost formally, seemingly embarrassed, shaking hands with each immediately afterward. His wife followed him, clumsily imitating the white man’s custom, nodding and smiling as she gripped each hand in turn. She hurried Timothy back into the wagon then, eager to move on.
From the wagon seat, Timothy waved. “Goodbye!” he shouted. “Good luck!”
“And to you!” Hadley called.
“Didn’t even know her name,” Minerva said, almost to herself.
“Hope she finds them,” Annabel said.
“She’ll find them,” Bobbo said. “This is Pawnee country both sides of the river here.” He looked at his father.
“Better get moving,” Hadley said.
They watched a moment longer. Then Hadley got up on the seat of the wagon, with Minerva beside him, and the girls and Bobbo in back. Minerva had a rifle across her lap, and Bobbo had the muzzle of one resting on the tailgate.
He was wishing Gideon and Will were there.
V
Annabel
The buffalo were on one of the islands in the middle of the river. When she saw them, she thought at first they were just some bushes clumped out there on the island, brown and standing six feet tall. Then one of them moved, and she recognized them from drawings she’d seen, and said to Bonnie Sue, “Hey, there’s some buffalo.”
Bonnie Sue just looked at them and said nothing.
Annabel didn’t know what on earth was wrong with her. Maybe she missed home same as did all the others, or maybe just Sean Cassada, who used to kiss her in the cornfield fore the feud started. The buffalo weren’t scary at all. They just stood there, five of them in all, chewing grass. Looked like big hairy cows, was all. One glanced up across the river, probably smelled humans or heard them, but went right on back to eating. All five of them paid no mind to the wagon as it went rumbling by.
“Like to shoot me one of those for supper,” Bobbo said.
“How’d you get over to the island without spookin era?” his father asked.
“Don’t know,” Bobbo said. “Water’s shallow here, no more’n two or three feet deep.”
“I’ll bet any splashin’d set em runnin,” Hadley said.
“Yeah,” Bobbo said, and kept watching the buffalo.
They stopped later to look at the chart again. Ever since leaving Timothy and his wife, they looked at that chart like it was the Bible. They were getting close to the South Fork, Annabel guessed, which was where Pa said they’d have to cross over. Be there in a day or so, he said, meanwhile we just keep following this old river. The chart was marked with the word PAWNEE on either side the river, but Annabel hadn’t seen a one of them and didn’t want to either. Further west, where the river branched, there was CHEYENNE on the South fork, and ARAPAHO on the north fork, and to the northeast there was DAKOTA. However you looked at it, seemed like a big mess of Indians out there. Every time they came across some buffalo bones, Bobbo and her father studied them real close, trying to figure from whatever meat the wolves had left just how fresh the kill was. Where there were buffalo, there were Indians hunting them. But aside from those five grazing midriver, they didn’t see hide nor hair of either till the Fourth of July.
They all got near to drunk that Independence Day.
“You’re too young to be partaking of hard liquor,” her father said.
“She’s a woman now, Hadley,” Minerva said.
“Eh?”
“Give the child a sip.”
“Woman or child, which is it, eh?” Hadley asked, and handed Annabel the jug. She drank from it, and then passed it on to Bonnie Sue, who sat there looking... Annabel didn’t know what. Angry or something. Minerva began giggling.
“Way we’re swillin the stuff,” she said, “the Pawnees’ll descend on us for sure. Find a drunken band of no-goods.”
“We’ll ask them in to share a nip,” Hadley said, and winked.
“Ask them in where?” Minerva said.
“Why, here in the family circle,” Hadley said, and slapped Bobbo on the back suddenly and hugely, almost knocking him into the fire.
“Thought we were just stoppin to noon,” Minerva said, and again giggled. “Instead, here we are havin a party.”
“That’s right,” Hadley said. “This is Independence Day, the birthday of this great nation of ours...”
“Okay, Pa,” Bobbo said, grinning.
“Be ashamed to call myself American, we didn’t celebrate one way or another.”
“Right, Pa.”
“Where’s my rifle?”
“What you want with your rifle?”
“Need to shoot it off in the air, make some noise around here.”
“Hadley, don’t you go shootin—”
“You know what I hate about bein out here? It’s so damn quiet all the time.”
“You go shootin your gun, you’ll draw Indians,” Bobbo said.
“Hell with it then.”
“No reason to cuss, Had.”
“Let’s have another drink. Hell with it.”