Pilgrims Read online

  “Crosby knows girls,” I said. “He lived in towns.”

  “What towns? Casper? Cheyenne?”

  “Denver. Crosby lived in Denver.”

  “Okay, Denver.”

  “Well, there’s a girl or two in Denver.”

  “Sure.” She yawned.

  “So he could have learned his way around girls in Denver.”

  “I see that, Buck.”

  “Girls love Crosby.”

  “I bet.”

  “They do. Me and Crosby are going down to Florida one of

  these winters and wreck every marriage we can. There’s a lot of

  rich women down there. A lot of rich, bored women.”

  “They’d have to be pretty bored,” Martha Knox said, and

  laughed. “They’d have to be bored to goddamn tears.”

  “You don’t like my brother Crosby?”

  “I love your brother Crosby. Why wouldn’t I like Crosby? I

  think Crosby’s the greatest.”

  “Good for you.”

  “But he thinks he knows his way around a girl, and that’s a

  pain in the ass.”

  “Girls love Crosby.”

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  “I showed him a picture of my sister one time. He told me

  she looked like she’d been on the wrong side of a lot of bad dick.

  What kind of a thing to say is that?”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Agnes. She works in Missoula.”

  “On a ranch?”

  “Not on a ranch, no. She’s a stripper, actually. She hates it

  because it’s a college town. She says college boys don’t tip, no

  matter what you stick in their faces.”

  “Did you ever fool around with my brother Crosby?” I asked.

  “Hey, Buck,” she said. “Don’t be shy. Ask whatever’s on your

  mind.”

  “Oh, shit. Never mind.”

  “You know what they called me in high school? Fort Knox.

  You know why? Because I wouldn’t let anyone in my pants.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Martha Knox poked at the fire with a twig, then

  threw the twig in. She moved the coffee pot away from the

  flames and tapped the side of it with a spoon to settle the

  grounds that were boiling. “Why not? Because I didn’t think it

  was a very good idea.”

  “That’s a hell of a nickname.”

  “Buck’s a better one.”

  “Taken,” I said.

  Martha Knox got up and went into the tent, and when she

  came out she had an armful of wood. I asked, “What are you

  doing?”

  “The fire is almost dead.”

  “So let it die. It’s late.”

  She didn’t answer me.

  “I have to get up at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “So good night.”

  “And so do you have to get up.”

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  Martha Knox put a stick on the fire and sat down. “Buck,”

  she said, “don’t be a baby.” She took a long drink and she sang,

  “Mama, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies . . .”

  “That’s a Crosby line,” I said.

  “Let me ask you something, Buck. When we’re done up here,

  let me go hunting with you and Crosby.”

  “I don’t think my old man would be crazy about that.”

  “I didn’t ask to go hunting with your old man.”

  “He won’t like it.”

  “Why?”

  “You ever even shoot a gun?”

  “Sure. When I was a little kid my parents sent me out to

  Montana to stay with my dad’s uncle for the summer. I called

  my folks after a few weeks and said, ‘Uncle Earl set up a coffee

  can on a log and let me shoot at it and I hit the goddamn thing

  six times.’ They made me come home early. Didn’t like the

  sound of that.”

  “Doesn’t sound like your old man’s going to be too crazy

  about it either, then.”

  “We do not not have to worry about my father,” she said.

  “Not anymore.”

  “That so?”

  She took her hat off and set it on her leg. It was an old hat.

  It belonged once to my cousin Rich. My old man gave it to Martha Knox. He steamed a new shape into it over a coffee pot

  one morning, put a neat crease in the top. The hat fit her. It

  suited her.

  “Now listen, Buck,” she said. “This is a good story, and

  you’ll like it. My dad grew Christmas trees. Not a lot of them.

  He grew exactly fifty Christmas trees and he grew them for

  ten years. In our front yard. Trimmed them all the time with

  kitchen scissors, so they were pretty, but only about this tall.”

  Martha Knox held her hand about three feet off the ground.

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  “Problem is we lived in the country,” she went on. “Every-

  body had woods in their back yards. Nobody ever bought a

  Christmas tree in that place. So this wasn’t a good business idea,

  fifty perfect trees. No big money there. But that’s what he did,

  and my mom worked.” She took her hat off her leg and put it

  back on. “Anyway. He opened up for business last December

  and nobody showed up and he thought that was pretty damn

  weird, because they were such nice trees. He went out drinking.

  Me and my sister, we cut down maybe twenty of the fuckers.

  Threw them in the station wagon. Drove an hour to the high-

  way, started flagging down cars and giving trees away. Anyone

  who stops gets a free tree. It was like . . . Well, hell. It was like Christmas.”

  Martha Knox found a cigarette in her coat pocket and lit it.

  “Now,” she said. “We drive home. There’s my dad. He pushes

  Agnes down and hauls off and punches me in the face.”

  “He ever hit you before?” I asked, and she shook her head.

  “And he never will again, either.”

  She looked at me, cool and even. I looked at her smoking her

  cigarette two thousand miles from home, and I thought about

  her shooting the goddamn coffee can six times, and we were

  quiet for a long time before I said, “You didn’t kill him, did

  you?”

  She didn’t look away and she didn’t answer fast, but she said,

  “Yeah. I killed him.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said finally. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.”

  Martha Knox handed the bottle to me, but I didn’t take it.

  She came over beside me and sat down. She put her hand on

  my leg.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said again. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.”

  She sighed. “Buck,” she said. “Honey.” She patted my leg and

  then she nudged me. “You are the most gullible man I know on

  this planet.”

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  “Fuck you.”

  “I shot my dad and buried him in the compost pile. Don’t tell

  anyone, okay?”

  “Fuck you, Martha Knox.”

  She got up and sat down on the other side of the fire again.

  “It was a great night, though. Lying in the driveway on my back

  with a bloody nose. I knew I was out of there.”

  She handed me the bottle again, and this time I drank. We

  did not talk for a long time, but we finished off the bottle, and

  when the fire
got low, Martha Knox put more wood on it. I had

  my feet so close to the flames that the soles of my boots started

  to smoke, so I moved back, but not much. In October up there

  it isn’t easy to be warm and I would not pull away from that kind

  of heat too fast.

  There were bells from the meadow of horses moving but not

  leaving, grazing bells ringing, good bells. I could have named

  every horse out there and guessed who every horse was stand-

  ing next to because of the way they liked to pair, and I could

  have told how each horse rode and how its mother and father

  rode, too. There were elk out there, still, but they were moving

  lower, like the horses wanted to move, for better food. Bighorn

  sheep and bear and moose were out there, too, all of them

  moving down, and I was listening for all of them. This night

  was clear. No clouds, except the fast clouds of our own breath,

  gone by the next breath, and it was bright from an almost

  finished moon.

  “Listen,” I said, “I was thinking of going for a ride.”

  “Now?” Martha Knox asked, and I nodded, but she had

  already known that I meant now, yes, now. Before she’d even

  asked, she was already looking at me and weighing things,

  mostly the big rule of my old man, which was this: no joy-

  riding during work, not ever. No play-riding, no night-riding,

  no dare-riding, no dumb-riding, no risk-riding, not ever, not,

  most of all, during hunting camp. Before she’d even asked,

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  “Now?” she’d thought of that, and she’d thought also that we

  were tired and drunk. There were hunters asleep in the tent

  behind her, and she thought of that, too. And I had also thought

  of all that.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said, and I leaned in closer to the fire which was

  between us. “I was thinking of going up Washakee Pass to-

  night.”

  I watched her. I knew she’d never been out that far, but she

  knew what it was, because Washakee was the only way for miles

  in any direction to get over the Continental Divide and into the

  middle of the Rockies. My brother Crosby called it the Spine.

  It was narrow and iced, and it pushed thirteen thousand feet,

  but it went over and in, and Martha Knox had not ever gone

  that far.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  “Well, listen. I was thinking of not stopping there.”

  She didn’t stop looking at me, and she didn’t change her

  expression, which was the expression of a good hunter watching

  for a good shot coming. Then I told her.

  “We take a pack horse each and whatever food and gear fits

  on them. I ride Stetson, you ride Jake, and we don’t come back.”

  “I’ll ride Handy.”

  “Not that spotted-ass cocksucker.”

  “I’ll ride Handy,” she said again, and I had forgotten that she

  had talked my old man into selling her that crazy horse.

  “Okay. But he’s all wrong for this.”

  “What about the hunters?”

  “They’ll be fine, if they don’t freak out.”

  “They’ll freak out.”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “Talk about a bunch of pilgrims, Buck,” she said. “These guys

  have never even been in a back yard.”

  “If they’re smart, they’ll hike out tomorrow as soon as they

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  figure we’re gone. The trail’s marked like a goddamn freeway.

  They’ll be fine. The soonest they’ll get to the ranch is tomorrow

  night, late. The soonest the forest service could come after us is

  the next day. If we ride straight, we could be ninety miles south

  by then.”

  “Tell me you’re dead serious,” Martha Knox said. “Because

  I’ll do this.”

  “I figure four or five days until we get to the Uinta range, and

  if they don’t catch us before then, they’ll never catch us.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  “Then we head south. And we’ll have to, because of winter.

  There’s no reason in the world we shouldn’t be in Mexico in a

  few months.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Jesus Christ. I’ve got it all figured out. Jesus son-of-a-

  bitching Christ. We’ll steal cattle and sheep and sell them at all

  those puny mountain outfits where nobody ever asks any ques-

  tions.”

  “Buck,” she said.

  “And we’ll ride into all those puny foothill towns in Utah and

  Wyoming and we’ll hold up their banks. On horseback.”

  “Buck,” she said again.

  “It must be a hundred years since anyone held up a bank on

  goddamn horseback. They won’t know how to deal with us.

  They’ll be chasing us in cars, and there we go, over the guard-

  rails, back up the mountains with all that cash. Gone.”

  “Buck,” she said, and I still didn’t answer, but this time I

  stopped talking.

  “Buck,” she said. “You’re just full of shit, aren’t you?”

  “I figure we can last four or five months before we finally get

  gunned down.”

  “You’re just full of shit. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You think I wouldn’t do something like that?”

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  “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “You think I wouldn’t do that?”

  “You want to take off with some horses and see if we get

  made dead out there? Fine, I’m all for that. But don’t waste my

  time with this outlaw bullshit.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Come on, Martha Knox.”

  “You’re just limited. Limited.”

  “You wouldn’t just take off like that anyway.”

  She looked at me like she was going to say something mean

  and mad, but instead she got up and poured the coffee over

  what was left of the fire to put it out.

  “Come on, Martha Knox,” I said.

  She sat down again, but I couldn’t see her well in the new

  dark, over the wet ash.

  “Don’t waste my time like that again,” she said.

  “Come on. You can’t just take off like that.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “You would’ve just stolen my old man’s horses?”

  “Handy is my goddamn horse.”

  “Come on, Martha Knox,” I said, but she stood up and went

  into the tent behind me. Then the tent was lit from inside, the

  way it was on mornings before the sun was up, when she would

  make day packs for the hunt, and from the meadow where I was

  starting to saddle I would see the tent glowing, but barely,

  because it was just one lantern she used.

  I waited, and she came out of the tent with that lantern. She

  also had a bridle, taken from the hook by the cook stoves where

  we hung all the bridles, so that the bits would not be frozen

  with dew, so the bits would not be ice in the horses’ mouths in

  the mornings. She walked past me toward the meadow. She

  walked fast like always, and, like always, she walked like a boy.

  I went after her. I stumbled on a loose rock, and I caught her
r />   arm. “You’re not taking off by yourself,” I said.

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  “Yes, I am. I’m going to Mexico. In the middle of the night.

  Just me and this bridle.”

  Then she said, “I’m kidding, Buck,” even though I hadn’t

  answered her.

  I held her arm and we walked. The ground was rough, wet in

  some parts and in other parts covered with thin snow. We

  tripped ourselves up on rocks and fell into each other but didn’t

  fall over, and the lantern helped some. We followed bells until

  we were with the horses. Martha Knox set the lantern on a

  stump. We looked at the horses and they looked at us. Some of

  them moved away, moved sideways or back from us. But Stet-

  son came over to me. I put my hand out and he sniffed at it and

  set his chin on it. He moved off and bent to graze again, and the

  bell around his neck rang like that move had been important,

  but the bells rang always, and it was nothing.

  Martha Knox was in the horses, saying the things we always

  say to horses, saying, “Hey, there, steady now, easy buddy,” like

  the words get understood, when really it’s only the voice that

  matters, and the words could be any words.

  She found Handy and I watched her bridle him. I watched

  him let her bridle him, and the spots over his back and rump in

  the almost dark were ugly, like accidental spots, like mistakes. I

  went over and she was talking to Handy and buckling the bridle

  by his ear.

  I said, “You know my old man got this horse from its owner

  for a hundred dollars, the guy hated it so bad.”

  “Handy’s the best. Look at those pretty legs.”

  “My old man says they should’ve named him Handful.”

  “Should’ve named him Handsome,” she said, and I laughed,

  but I laughed too loud, and Handy jerked his head back.

  “Easy there,” she told him. “Steady now; easy boy.”

  “You know why Indians rode appaloosas into battle?” I asked.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “So they’d be good and pissed off when they got there.”

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  Martha Knox said, “You want to take a guess how many

  times I’ve heard that joke this summer?”

  “I hate an appaloosa. I hate them all.”

  She stood next to Handy and ran her palm down his spine.

  She took the reins and a bunch of mane and pushed herself

  up on him, fast, just like I’d taught her in June. He danced back

  a few steps, but she reined him, she touched his neck, she