Badlands Read Online Free Page B

Pré, “them horses have to go somewhere.”
    “Why shoot them?” said Bart.
    “Maybe they want to,” said Du Pré.
    Buffalo. There were buffalo here once, and buffalo wolves, and big white grizzlies along the river bottoms.
    That William Clark, he say he rather fight two Indians than fight one grizzly.
    But they are all gone now.
    Benetsee, he will know how long they been there.
    Long time gone.
    Wonder if them Red Ochre People, them boat people, they were here.
    Not in the badlands.
    Badlands, they don’t even got lizards. Too cold, too dry.
    Got horses though.
    Grullas. Tough little bastards.
    The plane dipped sharply as the pilot approached the dirt strip behind the Toussaint Saloon. He made one low pass. The sheep grazing on the runway fled to a corner of the fenced field.
    The pilot made one more turn and then set the plane down, very smoothly, and he cut the props and braked. Du Pré was pushed against his shoulder straps.
    The pilot turned the plane around and Bart and Du Pré clambered out. The pilot gunned the engines and was airborne again in thirty seconds.
    “There has to be something I can do,” said Bart. He slammed his fist into his palm repeatedly.
    Du Pré rolled a smoke and lit it and he sucked in a thick stream.
    He blew it out.
    “Maybe not,” said Du Pré. “I don’t think them horses, protected.”
    “I don’t like this,” said Bart
    “Nobody like it,” said Du Pré. “So far they done nothing.”
    Bart screwed up his big red face.
    “They will,” he said.
    Du Pré nodded.
    He began to walk toward the saloon and Bart fell in behind.
    Madelaine was behind the bar, stringing beads on her threaded needle. Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth.
    Du Pré slid up on a barstool.
    “Don’t do this you are older’n Saint Jean’s shit,” said Madelaine. She half-closed one eye.
    “They are going, shoot the wild horses,” said Du Pré.
    Madelaine got the bead on the needle and she put it on to the little purse she was making beautiful.
    She put down the purse and she got a drink for Du Pré.
    “Go, see Benetsee,” she said.

CHAPTER 6
    D U P RÉ DROVE THE old cruiser up the rutted track that led to Benetsee’s cabin. The house stood dark and empty, dead. The old man’s old dogs had died years before.
    Du Pré parked the cruiser and he opened the trunk and took out a jug of screwtop wine and a sack of food, cooked meat and potatoes and bread and jars of preserves, that Madelaine had sent along.
    Du Pré walked back past the cabin and down the little dip that led to the meadow where Benetsee’s sweat lodge stood. The flap was up and the sweat lodge empty.
    Du Pré saw a movement at the corner of his eye. A skunk, bold black and white, secure in its stinks. The little animal wandered past the sweat lodge, nose to the ground. It flipped up a cowpie and snapped at something, and then it went on toward the creek and was lost in the willows. The faint smell of its perfume wafted to Du Pré.
    A kingfisher shot past, skraaaking loudly. The bird flew down the creek and then it turned and flew back and dived and landed on a branch. The iridescent blue of its back and head flashed in the sun.
    Then a cloud blocked the light and the earth went gray. Mosquitoes held in the shade by the sunlight rose up from their hiding places. They would be pretty bad this spring, and it wouldn’t get better till the soil dried out.
    Du Pré set the wine and the food down on a stump and he sat on a polished cottonwood log. He rolled a smoke and lit it and he had a drink of whiskey from his flask.
    The kingfisher flew past again and went out of sight down the stream.
    Du Pré sighed.
    “Old man, I got, talk you,” he shouted.
    Something rustled in the bushes and Du Pré saw the yellow-gray fur of a coyote flash past.
    Then silence.
    Du Pré put his head in his hands. It had ached all morning.
    Something hit him in the back, like a June beetle.
    Du Pré smelled woodsmoke. He started. He turned