Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch Page B

ropes over the lodgepoles and pulled down the tepees, dragging the skins away. I seen folks getting up and looking for weapons and running around, gathering children and helping old men and women. I don’t think the Indians got off very many shots, but the troops laid down a pretty withering fire as they rode back and forth through the village. Major Carr said he didn’t want to kill a lot of folks, he wanted to gather everybody up and herd them back to the fort without a lot of killing. Even so, Tall Bull was shot and killed. So was his son and wife. Two children was maimed by lunging horses. In all, more than fifty Cheyenne was killed, and maybe another hundred or so wounded. There was five hundred of them in all. Only one of Carr’s troops could be counted as a casualty. One of the officers sustained a pretty bad gash on his cheekbone—probably from a Indian lance, or maybe from his own sword. All four of the officers in the regiment rode into the village with their swords held high in front of them.
    Theo and I never even moved from the top of the rise. We watched the whole thing without saying nothing. When it was over and the Indians was all lined up, and the women busy taking down the lodges and packing up their belongings and their dead and wounded, Theo said, “Back east they’ll call this ‘the Battle of Summit Springs.’ ”
    “Some battle,” I said. The whole thing lasted maybe fifteen minutes, but it took several hours to get the whole village rounded up. I could hear women wailing the whole time. It almost sounded like singing.
     
    A week after Summit Springs, we headed west with the wagons. I rode Cricket out in front of the first wagon with Big Tree. I had plenty of chance to study the landscape and learn about the country from what I could see, because Big Tree didn’t say much. For a hundred miles he scanned the horizon in front of us and scarcely let out a sound. He sneezed once, and it seemed to shock him. He looked at me and I smiled, but he said nothing. I said, “Bless you.”
    He frowned.
    “That means God should protect you from whatever spirits you just got shed of,” I said.
    He understood that, or seemed to. He nodded his head slightly. I think he believed it was a spirit he expelled, too, but I wouldn’t testify to it.
    Theo gradually depended more and more on me. We’d sit up at night and study where we was headed, what we’d face in the way of rivers, forests, mountains, and valleys. He taught me the country I couldn’t yet see. All that time, I never once understood that was happening: that he was teaching me. It just seemed like talk even when he unfolded maps and pointed things out.
    We led our train all the way to Bozeman. There was a little settlement there, and Fort Ellis and lots of people. Indians, Canadians, even some Mexicans. It was where everybody took off from on the trip to Oregon or northern California. I thought Theo would take the train the rest of the way, but once we got to Bozeman, he didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
    We camped outside the settlement for two days, and finally on the morning of the third day I walked over to his wagon. He was setting in front of a fire that his wife tended, smoking a stumpy pipe, watching his brood play in the dirt with a few of the Indian children. They was chasing after a jackrabbit leg that still had the fur on it. They each had a small lariat and the game seemed to be trying to catch the leg with the lariat and keep it from the others. They kicked the leg, and threw their ropes at it, but they couldn’t touch it with their hands. Theo’s wife looked up when she seen me and give a sort of half wave of her hand. “It’s Bobby,” she said.
    Theo didn’t even look my way. He patted the ground next to him as a way of telling me to sit down.
    I set there watching the children too. Theo’s wife offered me a cup of coffee and I took it. “Thank you kindly,” I said.
    She smiled at me and went back to tending the