The High Divide by Lin Enger

Author:Lin Enger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-07-24T15:53:39+00:00

16

U.S.P.

Hornaday took the cigar from his mouth and cleared his throat. “You know what they say about the Badlands, don’t you?” Next to him the cowboy Sully was sleeping again, his stubbled chin resting on his chest. The boys, side by side, were sitting across from the two men.

“Nope,” Eli said.

Beyond the window of their car, the earth had fallen away into ancient, cavernous riverbeds, a dream of towers and grotesque castles as far as they could see, a cemetery of fantastic rock in striations of pink and red. Yellow, purple, orange.

“The devil’s backyard. Get turned around down there and you never get out. Bottomless gorges and pits of burning lava. I’m just glad we’re up here, floating across.”

Cracking an eye, Sully said, “Myself, I had to go after some curly-sided yearlings that wandered down a dry creek. Heard ’em bellering someplace ahead of me. Never found ’em, but I’m telling you, you could smell roast beef coming out of that smoking brimstone.”

Danny glanced at his brother and then across at Hornaday. “You think they have many derailments along this stretch?” he asked.

Sully laughed through his teeth, but Hornaday said, “I asked the conductor that same question, and he reassured me we’ll be just fine.”

By late afternoon as they rattled into Miles City—which was laid out south of the Yellowstone—the horizon had regathered itself beneath a pale sky, the reach between here and there an expanse of rolling, gray-brown prairie in all directions. To the west a long, high butte stretched out beneath the sun like a sleeping cougar. The river was blue and wide, its choppy waters dotted with fishing skiffs. There was also a ferry docked at a crooked pier and a big red paddleboat steaming against the current. The dusty town itself was busy with wagons and carts and horses. Down the middle of its rutted central street a herd of a dozen sheep advanced almost formally, neither rushing nor lagging, driven by a mangy dog and a boy carrying an ancient double-barrel shotgun. Eli had never stepped foot on Montana Territory, but there was something here he could feel on his skin, dry and electric, something he could see in the faces, too, with their strong cheekbones and eyes that managed to hold a fair bit of the country’s impressive distances—men mostly, all wearing hats and pointed boots, their pants hanging low in the crotch, but women as well, bare legs flashing in their windblown skirts, and hips aroll as if mounted on hidden wheels.

“Here we are,” Hornaday said, drawing up in front of a three-story hotel. “Same place I stayed when I came out here this spring. Best in town.”

The sign above the double door said DROVER HOUSE, and on its wide front porch a squat woman in canvas trousers stood talking with a pair of men who leaned forward as if putting each word she uttered to memory. “Say,” she said now, “there’s a good-looking boy, ain’t you,” and pointed her finger at Danny. Then she turned to Hornaday, mounting the porch steps.

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