“By this means they could even out the highs and lows of their savage economy and live according to the same standard the year around, lean times and fat, paying back in periods of good hunting what they put on credit in bad.”
Well, he had a lot more to say about the theory of business, and how him and Ramirez preferred to reinvest their shares in the store rather than walk about spending dollar by dollar. They had charge accounts at the barber shop and the saloon, etc., and as to most of their other needs, they took them from our own merchandise and entered a charge against themselves in the books, as opposed to my own practice of buying Olga some yardgoods, say, and putting the actual money for it in the cashbox, though I would of course take an owner’s discount.
But now as to that other thing he would mention so often: that our partnership was founded on no more than a handshake. He was right proud of this, whereas to me it was a cause of some worry. I guess why he spoke of it so often was that I suggested with about the same frequency that we get legal papers drawed up.
However, by this tactic they succeeded only in raising my suspicions to the point where I had to put my foot down as I did with that sign, and we hired a lawyer and he made up the papers by which my third was certified. Or at least that’s what I thought, for I studied them documents very carefully, being able to read as you know. But I reckon legality has a language all its own.
Olga was a great comfort to me, and one of the main reasons why she was is that she had never learned too much English, and I of course couldn’t speak a word of Swede. Not being able to talk much to each other, we got along wonderful, and never exchanged a cross word.
That kid of ours, little Gus, he was a right cunning infant, and I took pleasure in rocking his cradle with my foot, while he burbled and goo-gooed and suchlike as tiny things do, and across the small room Olga set with her mending and would grin in that pink Swedish fashion if I looked towards her and ask if I wanted to eat, for she was like an Indian in that she expected everybody to be hungry at all times.
Then one day in the late fall of ’64, Bolt and Ramirez suddenly blowed town, leaving me with all that credit of theirs to make good. For that is what our agreement done, I then discovered: give me sole legal responsibility for the business and all debts in its name, and I have already suggested to you that them fellows even put their haircuts and shaves on the company account.
Well, I had got myself into a tight spot owing to my “acumen,” to use the Reverend Pendrake’s term. Despite outward appearances to the contrary, the store had been failing for some time. What happened was that Bolt and Ramirez had cut prices to where the more we sold, the more we lost. I mean, the more we lost in idea, on account of they never actually paid out any money as I have said.
I did not hang around. Me and Olga, who I don’t think ever quite understood the reason for it, and little Gus, we packed a carpet bag and caught the early stage next day, leaving house, business, and my ambitions towards respectability behind. I wasn’t yet twenty-three years of age, and already I was financially ruined.
All the same, I felt a certain relief. I sure like to succeed, but you can’t get away from the fact that failure gives you a great liberty. So as we bounced along the road south to Colorado City and Pueblo I was right calm of mind if not real merry like Olga. I think she believed we was on a holiday trip, for the time was about the middle of December of 1864, and the coach route turned east at the Arkansas River and if you stayed to the end of the line you’d find yourself at Fort Leavenworth in time for Christmas. I had bought tickets for the whole distance, which left me with only about enough money to buy meals and lodging at the station stops, though we was able to save a little on food at the first few because Olga brought with her a big basket full of grub.
I might have had some kind of idea to cross the Missouri at Leavenworth and go to that town where the Reverend Pendrake lived and hit him up for a loan. I say I might have. I might also have looked up that commanding officer at Leavenworth who promised to help me when a kid, and get into the Army. I didn’t have no fixed scheme, that’s for sure. I figured I had learned my lesson to take what come without trying to force it, and Olga and little Gus was a great comfort to me in that state of mind.
Gus was about two and we never cut his curly blond hair on account of it was so pretty, and his little eyes, blue as turquoise, took in everything there was to be noted. This was the first trip he had ever experienced and the bumpier the terrain, the better he liked it, just laughed and laughed when we was thrown around inside like beans in a gourd, for a stage ride in them days would loosen up all your teeth. He took after his Ma in every way, which was O.K. by me, for I wouldn’t wish my own looks on anybody, or my personality for that matter.
What I haven’t mentioned is that the Sand Creek massacre had took place two weeks earlier, when Colonel Chivington struck the Cheyenne and Arapaho camp at dawn and wiped it out, two-thirds of the kill being women and children.
Well, I wasn’t at Sand Creek so don’t feel I have a right to discuss it further even though what occurred there had a bearing on my future. For what happened was that in succeeding days the Cheyenne went to war along the whole frontier. But Colonel Chivington, we met him and his troops along the Arkansas downstream from Fort Lyon while he was still following up the remnants of the Sand Creek Indians.
The column drew up and a young lieutenant rode over, touched his hat to Olga who was looking from the coach window, and said to the driver up top: “The colonel’s compliments to all on board. We have scoured the river downstream and can assure you it is secure to the limits of our jurisdiction.”
The driver expressed relief at the news, which in turn pleased me, for at the last station all he could talk about was the possibility of running into hostiles, and while Olga wouldn’t understand much of any other subject, let somebody mention Indians and she suddenly become fluent.
“You hear that?” I says, patting her hand, which might not have been as smooth as Mrs. Pendrake’s, but it belonged to me.
She held little Gus to the window, telling him: “Luke, byootiful horze.”
She didn’t mean the lieutenant’s animal, but rather a gigantic stallion at the head of the cavalry column fifty yards off. On top of this beast sat Chivington himself, who I had seen in Denver. In fact I had shook hands with him once, and mine was numb the remainder of the afternoon. God he was big, most of it going to chest though his head alone was as big as little Gus’s whole body.
He seen us studying him, and sat his mount like a statue, and then he saluted with a big cleaver hand and shouted in his thundering preacher’s voice: “Oh how we have punished the devils!”
So the troops went on west and we continued east, and I reckon it wasn’t later than an hour from where we had met him that, just after fording a shallow creek and hauling up the slope beyond, me holding Gus partway through the window so he could watch the water drops still spinning off the rear wheels, I heard Olga make a whimper and turned and seen her pink face chalk up and her sky-blue eyes benighted.
Then I looked ahead, where some fifty riders had come into view on the northward bluffs: Indians, and nobody had to tell me they was Cheyenne. Little Gus saw them the next minute and begun to burble happily, clapping his small hands, and as I was giving him back to his Ma, they rode down upon us.