from it. One by one the cowboys mounted and went off to the herd, many of them taking a quick last look at the muddy grave under the tree.
Augustus waited for Allen O’Brien, who was the last to mount. He was so weak from shock, it seemed he might not be able to, but he finally got on his horse and rode off, looking back until the grave was hidden by the tall gray grass. “It seems too quick,” he said. “It seems very quick, just to ride off and leave the boy. He was the babe of our family,” he added.
“If we was in town we’d have a fine funeral,” Augustus said. “But as you can see, we ain’t in town. There’s nothing you can do but kick your horse.”
“I wish I could have finished the song,” Allen said.
36
THE WHISKEY BOAT STANK, and the men on it stank, but Elmira was not sorry she had taken passage. She had a tiny little cubbyhole among the whiskey casks, with a few planks and some buffalo skins thrown over it to keep the rain out, but she spent most of her time sitting at the rear of the boat, watching the endless flow of brown water. Some days were so hot that the air above the water shimmered and the shore became indistinct; other days a chill rain blew and she wrapped herself in one of the buffalo robes and kept fairly dry. The rain was welcome, for it discouraged the fleas. They made her sleep uneasy, but it was a small price to pay for escaping from Port Smith. She had lived where there were fleas before, and worse things than fleas.
As the boat inched its way up the Arkansas, the brown river gradually narrowed, and as it narrowed the boatmen and whiskey traders grew more restless. They drank so much whiskey themselves that Elmira felt they would be lucky to have any left to sell. Though she often felt them watching her as she sat at the end of the boat, they let her alone. Only Bowler, the chief trader, ever spoke more than a word or two to her. Fowler was a burly man with a dirty yellow beard and one eyelid that wouldn’t behave. It twitched and jerked up and down erratically, so that looking at him was disconcerting: one minute he would be looking at you out of both eyes, and then the eyelid would droop and he would only be looking with an eye and a half.
Fowler drank continuously—all day and all night, so far as Elmira could tell. When she woke, from the fleas or the rocking of the boat, she would always hear his hoarse voice, talking to anyone who would listen. He kept a heavy rifle in the crook of his arm, and his eyes were always scanning the banks.
Mainly Fowler talked of Indians, for whom he had a pure hatred. He had been a buffalo hunter and had had many run-ins with them. When the buffalo ran out he began to traffic in whiskey. So far neither he nor any of his men had offered Elmira the slightest offense. It surprised her. They were a rough-looking bunch, and she had taken a big gamble in getting on the boat. No one in Fort Smith had seen her leave, as far as she knew, and the boatmen could have killed her and thrown her to the turtles without anyone’s being the wiser. The first few nights in her cubbyhole she had been wakeful and a little frightened, expecting one of the men to stumble in and fall on her. She waited, thinking it would happen—if it did, she would only have her old life back, which had been part of the point of leaving. She would stop being July Johnson’s wife, at least. It might be rough for a while, but eventually she would find Dee and life would improve.
But the men avoided her, day or night—all except Fowler, who wandered the boat constantly. Once, standing beside her, he knelt suddenly and cocked his rifle, but what he thought was an Indian turned out to be a bush. “The heat’s got my eye jumping,” he said, spitting a brown stream of tobacco into the water.
Elmira also watched the distant banks, which were green with the grass of spring. As the river gradually narrowed, she saw many animals: deer, coyote, cattle—but no Indians. She remembered stories heard over the years about women being