Wolves of Eden - Kevin McCarthy Page 0,108

them to Ridgeway.

“Why of course,” says Ridgeway. “Of course I will. I am sorry I never thought to ask before.”

Across the clearing came some boys from the camp breathless & drawn to the meadow by the sound of Tom’s shot. I waved down at them. “All OK,” says my wave.

“Tom shot a wolf,” I shouted across the meadow to them forgetting my fear of Indians for the moment. Or maybe I reckoned that if the shot did not bring them to us then my shouting would not.

The boys relaxed & strolled up to us. It was Metzger Napoli Jackson Henrik the Swede & Corp. Phillips who plugged two Sioux on a passage from Laramie a few weeks after ours. My brother gave a smile to this mob & held up his wolf under the forelegs.

“I shot this big f_____  of a wolf boys. Ridgeway is going to make a picture of it. Will you be in my picture will you boys?”

Says Jackson to me, “What did he say Mick?”

“He says Ridgeway will make his photograph with the wolf & would ye care to be in it?”

All the boys perked up at the prospect. It was common enough in the War to have a tin type picture made but by chance none of us there took the time or paid the money or had the sweetheart or mother at home for to get one made. I tell you it made the boys happy now the notion of a photograph taken here in the wilds of the West in a meadow with flowers & lifting mist & a dead elk & a dead wolf & a fellow’s mates around him.

Well Napoli brung out a comb from his tunic & all of us made use of it wiping down the tunics of our mates each man making like a mirror for another all of us getting shipshape & arguing should we sport kepis or bare heads & tipping canteen water into kerchiefs to wipe dirt from each other’s faces like mothers with their children before Mass.

“You should comb your wolf Tom,” says Jackson.

“He has a finer head of hair than you have,” says Tom back & when I repeated it the boys did laugh.

“And a prettier face than yours by a long piece,” says Jackson & he could say it because Tom was very fond of him for Jackson was not afraid of my brother with his Rebel ball scoured mouth & his terrible rages. He did not fear Tom like some of the boys in the Company & so Tom took his rags in good sport.

“Gentlemen,” says Ridgeway. “If you please.”

He arranged us about Tom & his wolf making sure to get the morning light behind him as did be best. He told me things like this later for I did yearn back then to become perhaps a maker of pictures myself though I am ashamed to say it because there is not much in this world I am good at besides killing & all such dreams for the likes of me are folly in the end. But they were different days so there was no harm in it maybe.

“Now boys you will need to hold yourselves still as statues while the picture forms.”

“Shame it aint a dead Injin instead of an old wolf,” says Jackson & we all laughed though you could say the Indians had the last laugh at Jackson in the end.

“No smiling gentlemen please,” says Ridgeway.

So we held the pose still & silent & unsmiling for our friend the picture maker Ridgeway Glover & in our stillness it came to me how queer it was the 7 of us boys from all the ends of the Earth standing there together holding stony faces like statues of marble you might see in a church but instead in a meadow of grass & yellow & purple flowers where maybe no white man ever stood before. How queer it is I reckoned that day as the morning sun burnt off the mist & warmed our bones no sound but that of birds singing & fizzing flies at the carcass & buzzing bees at the wild flowers & a strange kind of Quaker boy hiding his head beneath a drape with his hand held out on the camera’s eye to let the light inside the camera box to catch it there.

And as soon as I felt this well my heart did shift & things of a sudden turned queer & dreadful &

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