The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 12

Finally, the boy settled the barge on the bank and we walked our clomping animals onto the wooden deck. The boy was older in face than his small body and he looked at me like he knew the trouble I was. Bonin paid for him and his horse. You are the cause of this, I said. So he dug out six bits for me, too.

As the boy pushed us off the shore and began poling to the other side, I saw something strange on that far bank, a glittering white mound in a clearing above the river. The boy followed my eye. Horse bones, he said.

Then Bonin straightened and pointed behind us. Dust was rising on that southern road, not a quarter mile back. Riders coming our way. We weren’t half crossed the river when four men rode into view on the south bank.

Gimme the pole! Bonin yelled. But the boy would not and they tussled for it. Bonin grabbed the boy by his shirt and breeches and hurled him over the side. He hit the water with barely a ripple. Then Bonin pulled his knife from its scabbard and began cutting the guide ropes.

I saw what he meant to do. And I will give Bonin credit. It was likely our only hope. Those riders could ford faster than we could pole. But the current was strong enough that the river would float us downstream at a good pace, and since the trail departed the riverbank, we ought to make a bend or two and find a spot for a proper escape in the grassy fields on the north shore.

Even in that cold current, the boy swam to shore with easy strokes. I envied him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but there was much I was sorry for since Bonin and I first rode out of Kansas.

Bonin had finished cutting the guide ropes and for a moment we spun in the current, then swung free off the pulley and our barge started downstream. I laughed. Well I’ll be damned, I said. That’s how it was with Bonin. Scared and thrilled minute to minute. Horse bones and cantle pelts and suddenly you’re running a river. My own pony stirred but I gripped her bridle and bid her quiet.

Looking back, I could see both shores: On the south, the men’s horses were settling in dust, on the north bank, the swimming boy was wading out of the river. He pulled his hands to his mouth and yelled for the ferryman.

Something I ought have told you, Kid, said Bonin.

I looked over at him.

The Scots trapper and I quarreled with knives.

Those words were barely free of his mouth when I was yanked by the shoulder and heard the thudding report of a rifle.

My horse was shot through her neck. She pulled the cheekpiece from my hand and leaped from the barge, breaking the railing and causing the boat to dip and rise and Bonin’s little saddler to stagger and fall off the other side, the other railing going with her, both animals now in the river and swimming to shore, mine with a wound in her neck, Bonin’s with our prize pelts dragging waterlogged behind. My shoulder burned where a piece of the ball that hit my pony had burrowed into my meat and socket.

I’m shot, I said to Bonin. We were both on our stomachs, clinging to the barge. We rounded another bend and I could see the man who shot me tracking us on a trail above the south bank of the river. He’d fired from the saddle, a fancy piece of aim, and now he bore down again. A report cracked and echoed in the rocks. But this one missed and the river raced us past a cluster of boulders that rose between him and us, and the expert shot could not get off another round.

The river was in full churn and we bumped along, rising and falling over rapids and unseen rocks, our raft turning this way and that. The barge pole had gone over with the horses and we had nothing to brake or steer. We held flat to the thrashing vessel. The pain raking my shoulder with each bump.

Next eddy we’ll pull out, Bonin said, though the speed of that current did not bode well for it. And still the dust of those riders trailed us from the south shore.

I called to Bonin, Was the Scots alive after your quarrel?

He didn’t answer. But I knew. I knew the minute he rode into camp with the pelts. Maybe I knew the minute we rode out of Kansas fleeing conscription. I wondered if those men would treat my shoulder before hanging me.

Still the river bucked, like a new colt. Ridges and stands of trees falling away.

I cannot give account of this river except that it was wide and fast, a torrent out of the mountain lake from which it drained, a blast of angry water over hard rock bed, eager to ocean. And even when we emerged in a slower stretch or our boat snagged a tree limb, we could not disembark, for the banks were bouldered or hung with brush and no snag could hold us. The trappers on the south shore had fallen back as the trail departed, and their dust grew faint. Perhaps the speed and harshness of that river might be our salvation after all.

Bonin crawled across the boards and looked at my shoulder.

Is it bad? I asked.

I don’t think so, he said. But then he crawled back to his side of the barge.

That’s when I saw the dust of men on horseback on the north side of the river as well.

So now we were being pursued on both shores. Sure enough, two riders emerged at a full gallop on the north river trail, on a rise above us. One was older and bearded and I guessed him to be the French ferryman. The ferry boy was leading him