Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“Put that cleaver down,” Hadley said. “Do it now.”

Across the room came another one, broader and taller but unmistakably kin, with the same blue eyes and fierce look could cut a man down like a scythe through wheat. The bartender decided to drop the cleaver after all. He let it fall from his hand to the floor behind him, and immediately wondered who was going to clean up the mess on his goddamn bar.

“You all right, Pa?” Bobbo asked.

“Aye,” Hadley said. “Join me, son. This man here was about to set out whiskey for us.” He looked into the bartender’s face, and then released his shirt front. A round of applause went up from the gathered customers, initiated by a man sitting at a table against the wall. There was a framed portrait of President Tyler over the table. Two small United States flags were crossed over it.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “I met some men while I was getting my hair cut, they told me...”

His father wasn’t listening. He was staring instead at the man who sat under the portrait of President Tyler. The man was still applauding though everyone else in the bar had already stopped. He wore a flat black hat and wire-rimmed spectacles. His beard was the color of rust on a rain barrel’s rim, big red bushy thing that sprang from his cheeks and his chin and seemed to grow wild into his eyebrows. Sitting at the table with him was an Indian woman. Still clapping, the man got up and walked to where Hadley was waiting for the whiskey to be set out. Applauding him face to face, grinning in his beard, he said. “Bravo, sir, well done,” and extended his hand. “Timothy Oates,” he said.

“Hadley Chisholm,” Hadley said, and took the offered hand.

“Bobbo Chisholm,” Bobbo said and also shook hands with the man.

“Have a drink with us, won’t you?” Hadley said, and poured whiskey from the bottle the bartender had set on the bartop. The bartender was scowling. “I was fixin to turn the critter loose,” Hadley told him. “You had no cause to cut him up that way.”

“You did turn him loose,” the bartender said.

“He got out the sack, that wasn’t no fault of mine.”

“Carryin a damn poison snake in a bar,” the bartender said.

“Have a drink with us,” Hadley said, and grinned.

“Who’s paying for this?” the bartender asked, pouring himself a whiskey glass full.

“You ruined a perfectly good snake, didn’t you?” Hadley said.

“What’s that mean?” the bartender asked. “Ain’t a snake on earth worth a pile of rabbit shit.”

“This one was a pet,” Hadley said, and winked at his son.

“Well, you can find yourself another pet just beyond town. Hundreds of them out there. Sometimes they come wiggling right up the street.”

“Better not come in here,” Hadley said. “There’s a man in here’ll chop em up like green beans.”

The bartender smiled through his scowl.

“Drink hearty,” Hadley said, and raised his glass.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “these men I talked to are fixin—”

“You live hereabouts?” Hadley asked the bearded man, and Bobbo sighed. There were times he wanted to yell his father down, same way he would anybody else was irritating him. Wouldn’t, of course; had too much respect for him. But here he was busting to tell what he’d learned, and he had to keep quiet instead till the head of the family ran out of steam. Times like this, when his father treated him like he was still in rompers, he felt like a big awkward dummy. Everybody always thought of him as dumb anyway. Was being seventeen did it Having pimples.

His father and Timothy Oates had told each other where they were from, and now they were telling each other where they were bound. Bobbo waited patiently for a break in the conversation, but it didn’t look like one’d be coming before Christmas.

“... have already left, you know,” Timothy said. “Most of them anyway. There’re some strays like yourself still coming in, though, and I’m hoping to join up with whatever kind of train can be put together.”

“Then you’re bound for California, too.”

“Not so far as that,” Timothy said. “I’m going only to the Coast of Nebraska, to take my wife home before her heart breaks.” He gestured with his head toward where the Indian woman sat under the portrait of President Tyler. “She’s Pawnee,” he said, “and far from home.”

Bobbo looked across the room.

The woman’s face was large and massive, thick black hair pulled tightly to the back of her head and braided there on either side. She was wearing a worn and greasy two-piece garment, skirt and cape of elkskin hide ornamented with porcupine quills, many of which had fallen loose. Hadley was looking at her, too, over the top of his glass. Bobbo leaped into the momentary silence.

“I’ve found some others as well,” he said in a rush. “Two families headin west, Pa. A carpenter from Baltimore with his wife and three children, and a man from—”

“We don’t need young’uns underfoot, thank you,” Hadley said.

“The sons are thirteen and fourteen; they can pull their own weight.”

“Which means the third one’s a daughter, eh?”

“Well...”

“Ain’t she?”

“She’s an infant in her mother’s arms,” Bobbo admitted. “But, Pa—”

“Just what we need’s an infant.”

“The sons can handle guns as good as you or me,” Bobbo said. “The wagon’s ox-drawn, and they’re traveling with four good horses besides. Mr. Comyns said he’d allow one of us to ride that extra horse, was we of a mind to. That’s his name, Pa, the carpenter. Jonah Comyns.”

“Has an extra horse, eh?”

“Yes, Pa.”

“Mm,” Hadley said. “And the other family?”

“Does it sound interesting, Pa?”

“You said there were two families.”

“Aye. The other’s a man named Willoughby and his two daughters. He’s a widower, Pa, decided to move from Pennsylvania when his wife passed on.”

“How old are the daughters?”

“One’s just Annabel’s age. Be somebody for her to play with, Pa. She’s been hurtin for company.”

“And the other one?”

“A toddler two or three years old.”

“With no mother to take care of her.”

“Most well-behaved little child I ever did see,” Bobbo said. “Sat on a bench along the wall all the time her pa was gettin shaved, never made so much as a peep.”

“Mm,” Hadley said.

“There’s that extra horse to think about Pa. Mean less of a load in the wagon; mules’d have an easier time of it.”

“Mules made it all the way here from Virginia, I reckon they can make it beyond as well. ’Sides, your brothers ain’t here yet.”

So that was it.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “we told them—”

“I don’t want to leave without em,” Hadley said.

“We said we’d wait only till we found some wagons going out. Either that or—”

“They’ll be here any day now,” Hadley said.

“Pa, we don’t know when they’ll be here — that’s the plain truth of it. I found us two wagons we can join up with—”

“Three, if you’ll include me and mine,” Timothy said. “I’ve got but a small one drawn by a pair of mules, and no horse to contribute. But I’m a good shot, and I own a Hall percussion carbine. I know Indians well, sir, the good ones and the bad. I’ve been to the Rockies and back as many times as I’ve got fingers and thumbs. I know the terrain, and I know what—”

“We met a fellow in Louisville, had no horse neither,” Hadley said. “He’s got one now.”

“Eh?” Timothy said.

“How far’d you say you were going?” Bobbo asked.

“The Coast of Nebraska.”

“Where’s that?”