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“Where are you going?” She frowned at his abruptness.
But Benteen didn’t answer as his long-legged strides carried him from her. She lost sight of him when he walked behind the shed-barn to the corral where the horses were kept. A few minutes later, she saw him riding out.
Over by the area they called the Broken Buttes, Benteen found Zeke Taylor dousing a cow with a bad case of screwworms. Kerosene fumes made the air pungent. Benteen reined his horse to a halt and stayed on the sidelines as Zeke untied the cow’s feet and made a run for his horse. It was a zigzagging race, with Zeke dodging to avoid the hooking horns of the ungrateful cow when it charged him. After its initial rush missed him, the cow took off into the broken country, its tail sticking straight up in the air.
Zeke walked his horse over to Benteen. “Hot day,” he said, and removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.
“Find Woolie and Bob Vernon,” Benteen ordered. “Pass the word that I want the three of you to meet me first thing in the morning. You might want to shave. We’re riding into town.”
“It can’t be payday already.” Zeke frowned in an attempt to recall the number of days since the last one.
“It isn’t.” Benteen wheeled his horse to the side and spurred it into a lope.
Zeke sat there for a minute, wondering what was in Benteen’s craw. He wasn’t concerned by the failure to explain what he wanted with him and the others, but he usually offered a man some cigarette makin’s.
Lorna had supper ready a little before dark. When Benteen didn’t return, she went ahead and fed the boys and tucked them into bed. She kept the food warm another hour, then fixed herself a plate. She lost count of the number of times she went to the door and looked out into the night. Finally she took the food off the stove and changed into her nightdress.
With Benteen gone, she couldn’t sleep. She sat in bed with her knees hunched up and her arms clasped around them, rocking a little in an attempt at self-comfort. Filtering through the chinked walls of the cabin were the muted cries of nightbirds. The loneliness of the place seemed to shiver over her.
The slowly building echo of horse’s hooves began to separate from the thudding beat of her heart. It had to be Benteen. Lorna sprang from the bed and pushed aside the curtained wall to run barefoot to the door. She had a glimpse of a rider’s silhouette against an indigo-dark sky before it was gobbled up by the shadow of the barn-shed.
Shutting the door, Lorna hurried to the stove and stoked its fire, then set the food back on it to warm. She heard the faint jingle of spurs as Benteen approached the cabin. The anxiety she had felt, not knowing where he was, changed to a kind of irritated relief when he walked in the door.
“I waited supper as long as I could,” she said. “It’ll take me a few minutes to warm it up for you.”
He stopped inside the door to remove his gunbelt and hang his hat on the wooden peg. Without looking at her, Benteen raked a hand through his hair and crossed the room to the crude shelves that served as cupboards.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, and reached to the back of the top shelf, taking down the bottle of whiskey and a glass.
It was the flatness of his voice coupled with the whiskey bottle that made Lorna stare. He walked to the table and dragged out a chair. With his feet propped on the table, Benteen uncorked the bottle and filled the glass half-full of whiskey. While Lorna watched, he downed most of it and stared at the map hanging on the cabin wall. She had never seen him like this before.
“Benteen, what’s wrong?” she murmured.
His flicking glance barely met her eyes. “Nothing. It’s late. You’d better go to bed.” As he spoke, he refilled the glass with whiskey.
“But—”
“Just leave me alone,” he demanded tiredly.
After a long moment’s hesitation, Lorna didn’t attempt to probe for an explanation of his behavior. She took the food off the stove and put the dishes away. Benteen didn’t answer when she told him good night. She had the feeling he hadn’t heard her.
It was a long time before she fell asleep. The lamp continued to burn, shedding light on the canvas partition. When she woke up the next morning, the pillow next to hers was smooth. She found Benteen slumped over the table, the whiskey bottle more than halfempty.
24
The four riders rode into Miles City at a shuffling trot. Benteen split away from Woolie, Zeke, and Bob Vernon as they turned their horses into the hitchrack in front of the land office. There were two ways of acquiring title to land under the Homestead Act. One required a five-year residence and improvements, while the second, called commuting, gave title after six months and payment of $1.25 an acre. Woolie, Zeke, and Bob were about to “commute” their claims. It had taken a chunk out of Benteen’s ready cash, but it was a quick, sure way of stopping Judd Boston’s plans.
Benteen dismounted at the newspaper office and tied his horse to the rack. A couple of soldiers from the fort walked by, but the dusty street was relatively quiet on the August day. He looked across the street to the row of angular buildings. The sign on one read “The First Texas Bank of Montana,” the one owned by Judd Boston.
His spurs clinked as he walked into the newspaper office, breathing in the strong smell of ink. A mustached man seated at a desk looked up with an absent frown, then stood with a certain briskness.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I want to put an advertisement in your newspaper,” Benteen replied.
The man reached for a paper and pen. His hands appeared to be permanently stained with ink. “Just tell me how you want it to read and I’ll write it down for you.”
“‘I, Benteen Calder, do hereby notify the public that I claim all the land …’“He described boundaries that encompassed more than a half a million acres.
