Текст книги "Boone's Lick"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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Larry McMurtry

BOONE'S LICK

BOOK I

Mules

1 UNCLE Seth was firmly convinced that bad things mostly happen on cloudy days.

"A thunderhead or two don't hurt, but too much cloudy weather makes people restless and mean, females particularly," he remarked, as we were walking down to the Missouri River.

"They don't make Ma mean, she's mean anyway," G.T. said–he had acquired the habit of contradiction, as Uncle Seth liked to put it. G.T. could usually be counted on to do the unexpected: only yesterday he jumped up and stabbed Granpa Crackenthorpe in the leg with a pocketknife, probably because he got tired of hearing Granpa complain about the food. The knife didn't go in very far, but even so, Granpa's pallet looked as if a shoat had been butchered on it. G.T. ran away and hid in the thicket, but Ma gave him a good thrashing anyway, when he finally came in. Quick tempered as he was, G.T. was still scared of the dark.

"It's best to walk small around Mary Margaret," Uncle Seth allowed. "You just need to walk a little smaller on cloudy days."

The three of us had strolled down to the river in hopes that we could catch or trap or shoot something Ma could cook–something with a good taste to it, if possible. We had been living on old dry mush for about three weeks, which is why Granpa complained. I had a fishing pole, G.T.

had a wire-mesh crawdad trap, and Uncle Seth had his Sharps rifle, which he kept in an oilcloth sheath, never allowing a drop of rain to touch it.

He had been a Union sharpshooter in the war between the states and could regularly pop a turtle in the head at seventy-five yards, a skill but not a useful skill, because the turtles he popped always sank. If anybody got to eat them, it was only other turtles.

The clouds hung low and heavy over the big muddy river that day; they were as dull colored as felt. It was just the kind of weather most likely to cause Uncle Seth to dwell on calamities he had experienced in the past.

"It was nearly this cloudy that day in Richmond when I tripped over that goddamn wagon tongue and shot off half my kneecap," he reminded us. "If the sun had been shining I would have been alert enough to step over that wagon tongue. It was the day after the war ended. I had no need of a rifle, but that gloomy weather made me fearful. I got it in my head that there might be a Reb or two in the neighborhood–a Reb who hadn't heard the good news."

"If the war had just been over one day, then there might have been," I said. It seemed reasonable to me.

"Son, there wasn't a Reb within thirty-five miles of us that day," Uncle Seth said. "I could have left my rifle in the tent, but I didn't, and the upshot of it is that I'll be gimpy for the rest of my life."

1

G.T. had just eased his crawdad trap into the water, near the muddy shore.

"If you'd shut up I might catch some crawdads," he said.

"Why, crawdads can't hear," Uncle Seth said. "You sass your elders too much, G.T. A boy that starts off sassing his elders is apt to end up on the wrong end of a hang rope–at best you can look forward to a long stretch in the territorial prison."

He was a tall, fidgety man, Uncle Seth. No part of him was ever really still–not unless he was dead drunk, a not unusual condition for him. Pa said there was a time when Seth Cecil could walk faster and keep walking longer than any man on the plains; of course, that was before the accident, when Pa and Uncle Seth were partners in the freighting business, hauling goods from the Missouri River to the forts up in the north. Even now, with half a kneecap, Uncle Seth wasn't what you'd call slow. He could still manage a pretty long stride, if he had some reason to be in a hurry–it irked him that Pa, who was his younger brother, made him a stay-at– home partner, rather than letting him go upnver with the freight. I think it irked him so much that he and Pa might have come to blows, if Ma hadn t made it plain that she would only tolerate so muc when it came to family quarrels.

"I can still drive a wagon, you know, 1 Uncle Seth pointed out, the last time Pa was home. "Hauling freight ain't that complicated.

"I know you can manage a wagon, but could you outrun a Blackfoot Indian, if it came to a footrace?" Pa asked. "I doubt you could even o run a Potawatomi, if it was a long footrace.

"Why would I need to outrun a Potawatomi, or a Blackfoot either?" Uncle Seth asked. " be in trouble if a bunch of them closed m on r but then, so would you."

G T didn't really have the patience to be a goc crawdad fisherman. Ten minutes was all he gave before pulling his trap out. It held one crawdad-not a very large one.

"One crawdad won't go far," he said. I expect there are a million crawdads in the Missouri and here I ain't caught but one."

"They ain't in the river, they're in that slimy mud," Uncle Seth pointed out-it was just then we heard a gunshot from the direction of the house.

"That was a rifle shot," Uncle Seth said pect Mary Margaret finally drew a bead on that big bobcat that's been snatching her chickens.

"You're wrong again," G.T. said, pointing toward the house. "Sis wouldn't be running that if it was just a bobcat."

G.T. didn't exaggerate about Neva's speed. She was fairly flying down the trail. Neva was only fourteen but she had been long legged enough to outrun anybody in the family–even Pa–for the last two or three years.

When our smokehouse caught on fire Neva ran all the way into Boone's Lick before any of us could even find a bucket, and was soon back with a passel of drunks willing to try and put the fire out. Fortunately, it 2

wasn't much of a fire–all we lost was an old churn somebody had left in the smokehouse.

Still, everybody who saw Neva go flying down the road that day talked about her run for years– some even wanted to take her to St. Louis and enter her in a footrace, but that plan fell through.

"Who do they think they're going to find in St. Louis who wants to run a footrace with a little girl from Boone's Lick?" Uncle Seth asked at the time, a question that stumped the town.

This time Neva arrived at the river so out of breath that she had to gulp in air for a while before she could talk.

"She's outrun her own voice," G.T. said. He was slow of foot himself, and very impressed by Neva's speed.

"Easy girl, easy girl," Uncle Seth said, as if he was talking to a nervous filly.

"It's a big bunch of thieves!" Neva gasped, finally. "They're stealing our mules–ever one of our mules."

"Why, the damned ruffians!" Uncle Seth said. A red vein popped out along the top of his nose–that red vein nearly always popped out when he got anxious or mad.

"We heard a shot," he said. "I hope nobody ain't shot your Ma." He said it in a worried voice, too. Despite what he said about women and clouds, we all knew that Uncle Seth was mighty partial to Ma.

"No, it was Ma that shot," Neva said. "She killed a horse."

"Oh–good," he said. "The world can spare a horse, but none of us can spare your mother."

"Gimme your rifle, I'll go kill them all," G.T. said, but when he tried to grab the Sharps, Uncle Seth snatched it back.

He looked downriver for a moment. Boone's Lick was only half a mile away.

He seemed to be trying to decide who to send for help, Neva or me. G.T.

had already started for the house, with his crawdad trap and his one crawdad. G.T. wasn't about to give up his one crawdad.

"Honey, when you catch your breath maybe you ought to run on down to Boone's Lick and bring Sheriff Stone back with you," Uncle Seth said.

"It's the sheriff's job to deal with horse theft, and mule theft too."

"I don't need to bring the sheriff, because he's already there," Neva said. "It was the sheriff's horse Ma shot."

"Uh-oh. Where was Sheriff Stone at the time?" Uncle Seth asked.

"Sitting on his horse," Neva said, in a tone that suggested she considered it a pretty stupid question. "It fell over when Ma shot it and nearly mashed his leg."

3

Uncle Seth absorbed this information calmly. If he was surprised, he didn't show it.

"Oh, I see, honey," he said. "It's Baldy Stone that's stealing our mules.

I guess that's just the kind of law you have to expect in Missouri. Let's go wade into them, Shay."

I was surprised that Ma had shot the sheriff's horse, but my opinion wasn't asked.

"Do you still want me to go to Boone's Lick?" Neva asked, as Uncle Seth and I started for the house.

"Why, no, honey–no reason to run your legs off," Uncle Seth said. "The law's already at the freight yard–who would you get if you were to go to Boone's Lick?"

"Wild Bill Hickok," Neva said–it was clear she had already thought the matter out.

"He's usually in the saloon," she added. I saw right then, from the look on her face, that she intended to go see Wild Bill, whatever Uncle Seth advised. Neva might be young, but she had Ma's determination, and there were not many people, young or old, male or female, with more determination than Ma.

"I'm impressed by your steady thinking, honey," Uncle Seth said. "Bill could be a big help, if he was in the mood to be, but this cloudy weather might have put him off."

"You're the only one that minds clouds," Neva said. She had got her wind back and looked ready for a tussle.

"If there weren't no clouds it would never rain, and if it didn't rain nothing would grow, and if nothing grew, then the animals would all starve, and then we'd starve," Neva said, giving Uncle Seth one of her cool looks.

Uncle Seth didn't say anything. He saw that Neva had backed him into a pretty tight corner, where cloudy weather was concerned. G.T. was already halfway to the house, too.

"A pistolero like Bill Hickok is likely to have his moods, whatever the weather," he said. "I try not to interfere with Bill and he tries not to interfere with me. I think we better just go home and see why Baldy Stone thinks he has the right to requisition our mules."

Neva immediately started trotting down the riverbank toward Boone's Lick.

I wasn't surprised, and neither was Uncle Seth.

"There's no shortage of hardheaded women in the Cecil family," he said, mildly. "If you hit one of them in the head with a rock it would break the rock."

Our cabin wasn't far from the river. Pa and Uncle Seth had been raised on the Mississippi River, in the loway country; both of them lived by rivers until their hauling business forced them out onto the plains from time to time. Despite his gimpy knee Uncle Seth was only a step behind me when we 4

came around the chicken yard. There was no sign of Ma, and no sign of our mules, either, but there was plenty of sign of Sheriff Baldy Stone, a short man who had grown very round in the course of his life. Sheriff Baldy was trying to unsaddle his dead horse, a large roan animal who had fallen about twenty steps from our cabin door. It was a big horse. The sheriff had the girth unbuckled but when he tried to pull the cinch out from under the horse it wouldn't budge.

G.T., who had beat us home by a good margin, was standing nearby, but he didn't offer to help. After tugging at the cinch several times without having any effect, Sheriff Baldy abruptly gave up and sat down on the corpse of his horse to take a breather. He was almost as out of breath as Neva had been when she showed up down by the river.

After resting for a minute, the sheriff looked up at Uncle Seth and gave a little wave–or it may have been a salute. The sheriff had only been a corporal in the war, whereas Uncle Seth had been a captain.

"Well, Seth, she shot my horse and here I sit," Sheriff Baldy said. "Do you realize I courted Mary Margaret once, when things were different?"

"I've heard that rumor–I expect she still has a sweet spot for you, Baldy," Uncle Seth said.

"A sweet spot? I don't think so," the sheriff said.

"It would explain why she shot the horse and not you," Uncle Seth pointed out.

The remark struck G.T. as funny. He began to cackle, which drew a frown from the sheriff. Just then Ma came out the door, with the baby in her arms. The baby, a girl named Marcy, was cooing and blowing little spit bubbles. Ma handed her right over to Uncle Seth, at which point Marcy began to coo even louder. Pa was so busy upriver that he hadn't even been home to see the baby yet–for all little Marcy knew, Uncle Seth was her pa, if she even knew what a pa was, at that age.

"Now, Mary Margaret," Uncle Seth said, "you oughtn't to have handed me this child. There might be gunplay to come, depending on how mad Baldy is and what he's done with our mules."

"No gunplay, no gunplay," Sheriff Baldy said. "Getting my horse shot out from under me is violence enough for one afternoon. You can hold ten babies if you want to, Seth."

Ma walked around the dead horse, looking down at it thoughtfully. She didn't say a word, either kind or unkind, to Sheriff Baldy. When she got round to the rump of the horse she leaned over and tested it with her fingers, to see if it might have a little fat on it, rather than just being all muscular and stringy. "Why, it is a horse. That's a surprise,"

Ma said lightly.

"Of course it's a horse, thoroughly dead!" the sheriff said. "You shot it out from under me before I could even open my mouth to ask for the loan of your mules. What did you think it was, if not a horse?"

"An elk," Ma said, with a kind of faraway look in her eye. "I thought it was a big fat elk, walking right up to my door."

5

She paused. She had lost flesh in the years of the war–everybody had.

"I thought, no more mush, we're going to be eating elk," she said.

"Granpa can stop complaining and I can be making a little richer milk for this baby–she's not as chubby as my other babies have been."

Sheriff Baldy sat there on the dead horse with his mouth open–a bug could have flown right into his mouth, if one had been nearby.

"You mean you didn't shoot it because we were borrowing the mules?" he asked. "I was going to explain why we needed the mules, but you didn't give me time. You stepped out the door and the next thing I knew this horse was dead."

Ma made no reply–she just tested the rump in another place with her fingers. Baby Marcy was still bubbling and cooing.

"Well, I swear, Mary Margaret," Sheriff Baldy said. "This was a big roan horse. How could you get it in your head that it was an elk?"

Ma still had the faraway look in her eye. It worried me when she got that look, though I couldn't really have said what it was I was worried about.

I think it must have worried the sheriff too.

"I guess I was just too hungry to see straight, Eddie," she said, calling Sheriff Baldy by his first name. At least I guess it was his first name.

I had never heard anyone use it before.

"I'm hungry and my family's hungry," Ma went on. "Horse meat's not as tasty as elk, but it will do. Whatever I owe you we can put toward the rent of the mules."

She started for the house, but the look on the sheriff's face must have made her feel a little sorry for him, because she turned at the cabin door and looked back at him for a moment.

"We've got a little buttermilk to spare, Eddie, if you'd like some," she said, as she opened the door.

"I'll take the buttermilk," Sheriff Baldy said.

He got off the dead horse and we all followed Ma through the door.

2 GRANPA Crackenthorpe got up from his pallet when we all trooped in. I think he was hoping for a dipper of buttermilk, but he didn't get one.

There was only one dipperful left in the crock–while the sheriff was enjoying it Granpa began to get annoyed.

"I'm the oldest–that was my buttermilk," Granpa said. "I was planning to have it later, with my mush."

"Hubert don't like me–I've arrested him too often," Sheriff Baldy remarked, wiping a little line of buttermilk off his upper lip.

Granpa, who didn't have much of a bladder left, had formed the awkward habit of pissing in public, if he happened to be in public when the need arose. Sometimes he made it into the saloon and peed in the spittoons, 6

but sometimes he didn't make it that far, and those were the times when Sheriff Baldy had felt it best to arrest him.

"Hubert, we've got enough troubles in Boone's Lick without having to tolerate public pissing," the sheriff said. "If you've got a minute, Seth, I'll explain why I took the mules."

"Fine, but if it's not too much to ask, we need to borrow one of them back for a few minutes," Uncle Seth said. "Otherwise we'll have to butcher that roan horse practically in Mary Margaret's front room, which is sure to bring flies. If we could borrow a mule back for half an hour we could drag the carcass over to the butchering tree."

"That's fair–the boys just took them down to the livery stable," the sheriff said. "If one of these young fellows can go fetch one, then when you're done with your dragging I can ride the mule back to town."

"G.T., go," Ma said, and G.T. went. Ma already had the whetstone out and was getting ready to sharpen a couple of butcher knives.

"I'm the oldest but nobody's listening to me," Granpa Crackenthorpe said-

–a true statement. No one paid him the slightest mind.

"It's that gang over at Stumptown–the Millers," Sheriff Baldy said. "The war's been over nearly fourteen months but you couldn't tell it if you happen to wander over to Stumptown. The Millers are robbing every traveler they can catch, and killing quite a few of them."

"I don't doubt it–Jake Miller's as mean as a pig, but what's it got to do with our mules?" Uncle Seth inquired.

"I'm going over there and clean out the Millers," the sheriff said. "You know how poorly all the horseflesh is around here. The farmers all quit, because of the war. Mary Margaret just killed the only good horse in Boone's Lick."

"I thought it was an elk," Ma said firmly, as if that subject had been disposed of forever. The sheriff just sighed.

"If the Millers see somebody passing through on a decent horse they kill the rider and take the horse," the sheriff said.

Right there I saw the sheriff's point–he was right about the poor horseflesh around Boone's Lick. But Pa and Uncle Seth were in the hauling business–they couldn't afford sickly mules. Uncle Seth went up to loway himself and brought back fodder for our mules. There hadn't been much fighting in loway; the farmers there were happy to sell what they had to Uncle Seth, the result being that our mules were the best-conditioned animals anywhere around Boone's Lick. No wonder the sheriff wanted to borrow them, if he had a hard job to do.

Ma was whetting her knives, which made such a racket that the rest of us went outside.

"I guess I can't blame you for wanting your posse to have decent mounts,"

Uncle Seth said to Sheriff Baldy. "That's correct thinking, as far as it goes, but it don't go far enough."

7

Sheriff Baldy just looked at him. It might be that the shock of having his horse shot out from under him by a woman he had once courted had just hit him. His mouth hung open again, inviting flies and bugs.

"Of course, I have no objection to you borrowing our mules for a patriotic expedition, provided the expedition is well planned," Uncle Seth said. "How many posse men have you signed up so far?"

"One, so far," the sheriff admitted.

"Uh-oh, there's the incorrect part of your thinking," Uncle Seth said.

"There's a passel of Millers, and Jake ain't the only one that's mean. If you go wandering over there with an inadequate force our mules will be at risk. Jake Miller can spot a valuable mule as quick as the next man."

"I know that," Sheriff Baldy said. He looked a little discouraged.

"I expect you were counting on our fine mules to attract a posse," Uncle Seth said. "It might work, too. At least, it might if you're offering cash payment too."

"I can offer five dollars a man, and fifty dollars to Wild Bill Hickok, if he'll come," the sheriff said.

Something about that remark irked Uncle Seth, because the red vein popped out again on his nose. I don't think the sheriff noticed.

"You mean if I was to join your posse you'd offer me forty-five dollars less than you're offering Bill Hickok to do the same job, even though the two of us were commanded by General Phil Sheridan and I was the sharpshooter and Bill just a common spy?" Uncle Seth inquired.

It didn't take the sheriff but a second to figure out what he had done wrong.

"Why, Seth, I never supposed you'd want to join a posse," he said.

"For fifty dollars I'll join it and enlist Shay and G.T. too," Uncle Seth said. "The boys will work for nothing, of course."

That remark startled me so that if I had been sitting on a fence I expect I would have fallen off. Ma wouldn't hear of our fighting in the war, though plenty of fourteen– and fifteen-year-olds did fight in it; and now Uncle Seth, with no discussion, was offering to trot us off to Stumptown to take on the notorious Miller gang, an outfit filled with celebrated killers: Cut-Nose Jones, Little Billy Perkins, and the four violent Millers themselves.

The sheriff didn't immediately respond to Uncle Seth's offer, but he didn't immediately reject it, either.

"If I had you and Hickok and the two boys and myself, I don't suppose I'd need much more of a posse," he finally said.

"That's right, you wouldn't," Uncle Seth said. "Here comes G.T., leading Old Sam. Old Sam could pull a house up a hill, if somebody hitched him to it."

8

Sheriff Baldy still looked worried. "There's two problems, Seth," he said. Before Uncle Seth could ask what they were Ma came outside and stuck little Marcy in his arms again.

"You keep running off and leaving this baby," she said. "I can't have a baby around when I'm sharpening knives."

Little Marcy was still in a perfectly good humor.

She began to wave her arms and kick her feet.

"What were the two problems, Baldy?" Uncle Seth said. He looked a little put upon.

"A hundred dollars is a lot to pay for a posse," the sheriff said. "We could build a new city hall for a hundred dollars."

"Yes, but once you got it built you'd still have the Millers to worry with," Uncle Seth pointed out. "What's problem number two?"

"I haven't asked Hickok yet," the sheriff admitted. "That's problem number two."

"Then go ask him," Uncle Seth advised. He strolled over my way, meaning to stick me with Marcy, but I sidestepped him. Marcy didn't like me near as much as she liked Uncle Seth. If I took her she would be bawling within a minute, which would make it hard to listen to the conversation.

"I'm scared to ask him, Seth," the sheriff said. "I ain't a bit scared of Jake Miller but the mere sight of Billy Hickok makes me quake in my boots."

G.T. arrived with Old Sam and I helped him tie on to the dead horse, after which Old Sam dragged the big roan gelding over to the butchering tree, freeing the sheriff's saddle in the process.

"Would you mind asking him for me, Seth, since the two of you are old friends?" the sheriff said.

"'Old friends' might be putting it a little too strongly, but I don't mind asking him to help out," Uncle Seth said. "I'll do it as soon as I can get shut of this baby girl, which might not be until tomorrow, the way things are looking."

"Tomorrow would be fine," Sheriff Baldy said.

3 ONcE we got the carcass of the big roan hitched up to a good stout limb of the butchering tree, Sheriff Baldy threw his saddle on Old Sam and rode back down to Boone's Lick.

"Please don't forget about Bill Hickok, Seth," he said, before he left.

"The Millers ain't getting nicer, they're getting meaner."

Uncle Seth just waved. I don't think he was too pleased about his commission, but I had no time to dwell on the matter. The horse had just seemed to be a horse when Old Sam was dragging his carcass off, but by the time we had been butchering for thirty minutes it felt like we had a dead elephant on our hands. Ma worked neat, but G.T. had never known neat 9

from dirty. By the time he got the horse's leg unjointed he was so bloody that Ma tried to get him to take his clothes off and work naked, a suggestion that shocked him.

The sight of G.T. shocked Granpa Cracken-thorpe too, when he tottered out to give us a few instructions. Granpa Crackenthorpe liked to comment that he had long since forgotten more useful things than most people would ever know. He claimed to be expert at butchering horseflesh, but the sight of G.T, bloody from head to foot, shocked him so that he completely lost track of whatever instructions he had meant to give us.

"I was in the battle of the Bad Axe River," he remarked. "That was when we killed off most of the Sauk Indians and quite a few of the Fox Indians too. The Mississippi River was red as a ribbon that day, from all the Indian blood in it, but it wasn't no redder than G.T. here."

"That's right," Ma said. "He's ruined a perfectly good shirt. I tried to get him to undress before he started hacking, but I guess he's too modest to think about saving his clothes."

"Ma!" G.T. said–he could not accept the thought of nakedness.

I was put in charge of the gut tubs. It was plain that Ma didn't intend to waste an ounce of that horse–she even cracked the bones and scraped out the marrow. Of course, it had been a hungry month–Ma hadn't even allowed us to kill a chicken.

"A chicken is just an egg-laying machine," she pointed out. "We can live on eggs if we have to, although I'd rather not."

Uncle Seth didn't help us with the butchering, not one bit. He rarely turned his hand to mundane labor–this irritated G.T. but didn't seem to bother Ma.

"Somebody's got to watch Marcy, and Neva ain't here to do it," Ma said, when G.T. complained about Uncle Seth not helping.

I will say that Uncle Seth was good with babies. Marcy never so much as whimpered, the whole afternoon. Once Ma had the meat cut into strips for smoking she stopped long enough to nurse Marcy. Uncle Seth seemed to be lost in thought–he often got his lost-in-thought look when he was afraid somebody was going to ask him to do something he didn't want to do. When Ma finished nursing she handed the baby back to him and took up her butcher knife again. She didn't say a word.

All afternoon, while Ma and G.T. and I worked, skinning that horse, stripping the guts, cutting up what Ma meant to cook right away, and salting down the rest, I kept having the feeling that I was putting off thinking about something. If I hadn't had such a bunch of work to do I would have been lost in thought myself, like Uncle Seth.

What I was putting off thinking about was Ma's plain statement that she thought the horse was an elk. Up to that point in life I had thought my mother was a truthful woman. So far as I knew she was the most truthful person on earth, and the most perfect. Pa didn't really even try to be truthful, and though Uncle Seth may have tried to be truthful from time to time, we all knew he couldn't really manage it. He favored a good story over a dull truth anytime, and everybody knew it.

10

Ma, though, was different. She always told the truth, whether it was pleasant or unpleasant–and it was pretty unpleasant a lot of the time.

An example of the unpleasant side was the day when she told Granpa that if he didn't stop walking around with his pants down in front of Neva she was going to take him to Boone's Lick and leave him to beg for a living: and Granpa was her own father!

"You can cover yourself or you can leave," she told him–and after that Granpa took care to cover himself.

But now I had, with my own ears, just heard Ma say that she had thought a horse was an elk. How could a person with two good eyes think a horse was an elk? Did Ma consider that we were so desperate for vittles that she had to lie–or, when she looked out the door, did her eyes really turn a horse into an elk, in her sight? Was my Ma a liar, or was she crazy? And if she had gone crazy, where did that leave me and G.T. and baby Marcy and Granpa and Uncle Seth? All of us depended on Ma. If she was crazy, what would we do?

As the afternoon went on and the butchering slowly got done, I began to wonder if the reason Uncle Seth seemed so lost in thought was because he was asking himself the same question. If Ma was crazy, what would we all do?

Not that Ma seemed crazy–not a bit of it. Once the butchering was finished for the day–there was still sausage making to think about–Ma cooked up a bunch of horse meat cutlets and we had all the meat we wanted for the first time since the war ended; meat just seemed to get real scarce in Missouri, about the time the war ended.

"Have you ever eaten a mule, Seth?" Ma asked, while we were all tying into the cutlets.

"No–never been quite that desperate," Uncle Seth said. "I suppose a fat mule would probably be about as tasty as a skinny horse, though."

"Maybe," Ma said, and then she suddenly looked around the table and realized Neva was missing.

"Where's Neva?" she asked. "I've been so busy cutting up Eddie's horse that I forget about my own daughter. I sent her to fetch you, Seth.

Where'd she go?"

Then her eyes began to rake back and forth, from G.T. to me and back.

"I thought I trained you boys to look after your little sister better than this," Ma said.

"Oh, she went trotting off to Boone's Lick," Uncle Seth said. "I got so busy tending to this baby that I forgot about her."

There was a silence–not a nice silence, though.

"She probably found a little girlfriend and is skipping rope or rolling a hoop or something," Uncle Seth suggested.

11

Ma looked at me and snapped her fingers. "Shay, go," she said.

I got up immediately and G.T. did too, but Ma snapped her fingers again and G.T. sat back down–not that he was happy about it.

"Why can't I go?" he asked, a question that Ma iamnrp.d.

"I'll stroll along with the boy," Uncle Seth said, getting up from the table. "I need to see Bill Hickok about something anyway."

Ma didn't look happy to hear that.

"I thought he left," she said.

"Not as of today, according to the sheriff," Uncle Seth said.

"Then that explains where Neva is, doesn't it?" Ma said.

Her tone of voice upset Granpa Crackenthorpe so much that he got his big cap-and-ball pistol and wandered off out the door.

"I believe there's a panther around–I better take care of it," he said.

That was always Granpa's excuse, when things got tense at the table. I had never seen a panther in my whole life and neither had G.T. But the notion that a panther was about to get the mules was the method Granpa used when he wanted to stand clear of trouble.