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

Preston and Joe Crane,” I said.
    He pointed his rifle at me. I realized he didn’t know I was standing so close to the back of his wagon and I scared him considerable.
    “I almost put a bullet in your brain,” he said.
    Joe Crane come running back our way. Preston finally grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down. They wrastled to beat all, still laughing. Preston got the hat and held it up, trying to roll away.
    “Is this my hat or not?” he said.
    Joe Crane couldn’t talk, he was so out of breath from running and laughing. He lay there on his back, in the moonlight, his belly rising and falling. Preston stood up and brushed his trousers off with the hat. “Dad-burned fool,” he said.
     
    They rode out early in the morning heading north—Preston and Joe Crane and Treat, with about twenty others that Turley recruited. Two of his recruits was Crow Indians who promised to lead the way and scout in advance of the column. They tried to get Big Tree to go with them, but he wouldn’t have none of it. I watched them cross the Smoky Hill River and disappear over the horizon.
    A few weeks later, Theo announced that he had joined our train with the one that Treat’s family come in. That made twenty wagons. “They’re going to Oregon, so they can travel that far with us, then we’ll continue south to California,” he said. “We’ll be safer if we all travel together.” So they spent most of that day loading provisions and getting ready to set off. I helped Theo shoe a couple of horses, then went to the post store and bought more coffee, sugar, ham, and hardtack. I bought beans, too, and a slab of sowbelly.
    Theo still wanted me riding out front with Big Tree. I had to look up at him as we rode along because his horse was at least two hands taller than Cricket and he was so tall hisself. It was like riding next to a great moving statue. He wore yellow leggings and low-cut boots and a yellow leather jacket with fringe down each arm and across the back of it. His hair was black and long, tied back with a length of twine tangled around a single long, white feather with a black tip. He wore one of them fur hats with bull horns on it.
    For the first day he didn’t say a word. We crossed to the south side of the Smoky Hill and stayed alongside of it most of the day. We made about thirty miles and quit at dusk, setting up camp near the river. We was still close enough to the fort that it didn’t feel like there could be much danger, but Theo had us circle the wagons when we stopped. He was still in charge. The other wagons joined us, in other words, and plighted their selves to our fate rather than the other way around.
    We made about ten to fifteen miles a day. Each morning we set out just as the sun come leaking over the ground behind us. Eventually Theo turned us away from the river and we followed the trail further and further north and west. Then a few days after we turned directly west again, Big Tree said his first word to me. He suddenly pulled his horse up and said, “Death.”
    “What?”
    He pointed off to the right a little. In the distance was a clump of trees with dark trunks and hanging branches, low and slightly moving in the breeze.
    “Over there?” I said. Then I smelled it. The breeze was moving in our direction and the smell it carried was unmistakable. “Oh,” I said. “Death.”
    Big Tree nodded, then he turned his horse in that direction and trotted off. I signaled to Theo what we was up to and then followed Big Tree.
    It was a body hanging in a tree. The head was almost pure black from burning, but the hair piled only on top of it told the story. It was Preston. His hands was tied behind his back, and he wasn’t wearing no boots. Big Tree got down off his horse and untied the rope at the base of the tree and then lowered the body down until it laid on the ground. He was almost gentle with it. Preston looked like he blew up to three hundred pounds, his body was so swollen, and the