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ISBN-13:

9780226412757

Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 10/10/2016
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 6,558
File size: 773 KB

Oakley Hall (1920–2008) was a great novelist of the American West and beloved writing teacher of Michael Chabon and Richard Ford, among many others. He is the author of numerous books, including Warlock, The Coming of the Kid, Apaches, and Separations.

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The Bad Lands

A Novel

By Oakley Hall

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1978 Oakley Hall
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-41275-7

CHAPTER 1

ANDREW SAT STRAIGHT-BACKED ON THE LITTLE mare, watching the sun spreading and sinking behind a cluster of round-topped buttes that glowed chalky white with the blaze behind them. Gold-bottomed clouds spread out from the horizon like a religious glory in a Renaissance painting. A thin spike of smoke rose into the golden space, the campfire of another Bad Lands hunting party, or a vein of lignite, ignited by lightning, burning underground.

The starkness of this country, which had at first appealed to his bitter mood, had, in three weeks' time, changed to a fairy tale landscape of fantastic turrets and cupolas stained with exotic colors, like these back-lit western buttes with their terra-cotta heads.

Below him, by a pool that gleamed like beaten copper, Joe Reuter squatted stacking twigs above a flickering of flame. The guide's father, old Sam, was hunkered down beside him, hands stretched out to the warmth. These two had been engaged for him by the correspondent in Mandan of the Manufacturers and Grain Bank of New York. They had met him in Pyramid Flat when he stepped down from the westbound. At first, he knew, they had thought no more of him than he had of them, but during three weeks of hunting certain accommodations had been established.

He watched the sun spread into a thin line across the horizon, to vanish like bright liquid sucked into the earth. He tethered his mare with the other animals and carried to the campfire his bedroll and rifle, his sketch pads and saddlebags, finally his saddle. The fire was blazing now and he unrolled his bedroll beside its heat.

Supper consisted of three curlews Joe Reuter had shot, dry meat on fragile bones that crumbled to be spat into the fire, and biscuits hard as rocks which the old man grumblingly pushed into the side of his mouth where a few remaining teeth evidently met. The water of the pool was like thin jelly, slimy even when boiled with coffee. They ate in silence, leaning against saddles while the animals stamped and whickered outside the circle of firelight. Frogs racketed around the pool, falling into a tense quiet as, far off, a lynx screamed. Darkness shrank the space around them.

The old man squatted close beside his son, seamed face in shadow beneath his hat brim, and Andrew reached for his sketch pad to limn the grouping, the firelight and the dense shadow, the tense but reposeful postures. Among the pages of the sketchbook were the three elk grazing among the cottonwoods, one with head raised alertly; the wolf at dusk on the ridge three nights ago; a prairie dog haunched up, forearms crossed over his belly, for all the world like some plump and comical fellow lounging before a country store; the mountain sheep with that astonishing heft of horn parted like a bartender's toupee, and the yellow eye with its vertical dark stripe of pupil. The light of life fading visibly from that eye hung indelibly in his memory.

"You've set yourself to shoot one of every kind of game in the Bad Lands, have you, Mr. Livingston?" the old man said in his rasp of a voice.

"Shoot them and then draw them in that book there," Joe Reuter said.

"I would certainly like to shoot a buffalo," he said, and watched Joe shake his head with a negative cluck. There were few of the great beasts left in the Bad Lands, his guides claimed — maybe none; he liked to fancy himself on the trail of the last buffalo.

"Had one Englishman out here with a big rig tryin to make photygraphs of everything," the old man said. "If that wasn't one big damned clutter of a mess to pack around!"

"I understand there are a good many Europeans taking up range hereabouts."

"Thicker'n ticks on a elk! That big Scotchman's got himself a township! Fenced! The Ring-cross. And there's a Frenchie over in the slope country with a big spread. And English. And Easterners. After them big profits they've heered about. Haw! Me'n my sons been runnin cows in this country for a bunch of years, and if there's any profit besides tough beef for dinner I'd like to know it."

"I'd say about half the big outfits out here was foreign-owned or foreign-backed," Joe Reuter said. "I won't say the Scotchman is the biggest, but he is sure the most ambitious."

"Built up Pyramid Flat to a regular city," the old man went on. "Big brick building for offices — offices! — and a slaughterhouse goin up looks like he could provision a army outten it. And a regular castle up on the bluff there. Ruinin the country!" he said, and expectorated copiously into the fire.

Leaning back against his saddle with his sketchbook in his lap, Andrew said, "But they must be finding it a good business proposition." The two looked at him, Joe sideways, the old man with the brim of his hat tipped down over his eyes as though against the starlight. "Raising cattle," he added.

"Mebbe if you run more'n thirty head," the old man said. "These big outfits do pretty good from the look of them, but they're runnin three-four-five thousand."

"Bad Lands catching a hold on you, are they, Mr. Livingston?" Joe drawled. "Well, they'll do that to a fellow."

There was a silence, sudden and total. Then distant wolves began their weird chorus, complex as part singing. At first that music had kept him awake, sweating and reaching for his rifle. Now nothing kept him awake. At first his guides had tried to haze the tenderfoot with what were no doubt traditional tales of the dangers of the Bad Lands: the wolves, rattlers, and grizzlers, the quicksands, the horse thieves who would run off your stock to leave you stranded and starving, Cree braves prowling off the reservation with bloody mischief on their minds.

He felt the hairs prickle at the back of his neck as he recognized a kind of tune in the wolf howls. Then the sound separated, came louder — a mouth organ. As the music swelled, he stared into the black bowl of night pierced with stars. The melody seemed so beautiful and so sad that tears burned in his eyes. Tears overwhelmed him easily these days.

With a pad of hoofs and a clink of harness a horseman appeared, tall against the sky. The music ceased. "Howdy, gents."

"Evening," Joe said, lounging back against his saddle, while the newcomer slid from his horse and, spurs jingling, approached the fire. He was a round-faced youngster with a fuzz of pale mustache.

"Evening," he said to the guides. "Evening," he said, nodding to Andrew, breath smoking in the cooling air. He squatted and spread his hands to the fire. "Comin on chilly," he said.

"That was a pleasant sound you were making."

With a grin the boy whipped his mouth organ from his pocket and, with flourishes, began to play. Andrew recognized "Little Mohee." Finished, the musician knocked the spit from his instrument, beating it against the heel of his hand.

"Nighthawk, I expect," Joe said casually.

The boy nodded with exaggerated motion. "Playin a harp sure do keep them dogies quiet!" His smile, as he glanced from face to face, was sly but beguiling, with a raffish gap between his front teeth. When Andrew rose to warm his hands at the fire, he said, "Say, you got your chaps on backwards, mister!"

The guides laughed and Andrew grinned down at his corduroy riding trousers with their leather seat. The old man said, "Can't offer you any grub, young feller; we're cleaned out. Plenty of coffee, though."

"Anything that'll slide down. My stomach thinks my mouth's fell off."

The coffee was put on the boil again while the young cowboy played another selection, the old man keeping time beating a fork against the coffeepot. From time to time the boy would fondle a gold, heart-shaped locket, like a girl's, that hung around his neck, as though seeking musical inspiration there. Andrew was aware of happiness as a palpable thing; it seemed marvelous to him that life could be so simple that this young man with his mouth organ playing by firelight produced such pleasure.

The cowboy shuddered and pulled a face as he sipped coffee from the cup the old man handed him. "I ain't eat for so long I feel like about two pounds lighter'n a straw hat." He rubbed his locket between his fingers, glancing from face to face with a raised eyebrow. "Hunters, huh?"

"Bound for buffalo," Joe said.

"Seen tracks," the boy said, flipping a hand to indicate the direction from which he had come.

"Fresh ones?" Andrew asked, leaning forward.

"Believe so."

"Who'd you say you worked for?" Joe inquired.

"Worked for the Eight-bar awhile, but me'n that high-pockets foreman of Lamey's couldn't get on. Thought I'd look in on the roundup. Who's runnin the show, anybody know?"

"Johnny Goforth," Joe said. "That's the Scotchman's super."

The boy's grin reappeared like a sleight-of-hand trick. "Say, that big fellow is one trump card, ain't he?"

"Ruinin the country!" the old man said. "Fencin! Runnin wire everywheres!"

"Well, he don't want any scrub bulls gettin to his fancy cows," Joe Reuter said. "I don't blame him, but my how he makes some folks mad."

"I remember the old days drivin up," the old man rasped. "It was Bozeman Trail or Bridger. Bozeman was good grass and water all the way, and fight Red Cloud. Bridger was poor grass and bad water and Shoshones that wouldn't fight. So we come Bozeman. Now these damned foreigners come in here on the railroad like a picnic outin, bringin a bunch of fancy cows and wire till you can't see the end of it."

The boy played another song. Beating his palm with his mouth organ, he asked where Andrew was from.

"From New York State."

"What do you do there, mister?"

"He does pitchers," Joe Reuter said with his candid gaze of mock innocence. "Shoots himself one of every game we have got out here and draws pitchers of it. Mr. Livingston is a artiste."

"Make your living doing pitchers?" the boy said, gaping at him.

He said he was a banker. Art was his hobby.

"Young for a banker," the old man said, squatting with his sharp face thrust out like an ax blade.

"Married, are you, Mr. Livingston?" the boy inquired.

"A widower," he said. The wolves seemed to have moved farther away but their long wails were still audible like a tingling of the skin.

"Young for a widower," the old man said. "Who's that Alice you was yelling after the other night? That your wife?"

"No, my little girl," he said, his face feeling taut as a skull.

"Say, you gents hear the story about the granger and the punkin vine?" the young cowboy said after a time.

"Grangers!" the old man said. "Crowdin in! Ruinin the country!"

The cowboy told his story: "This here nester gets hold of a punkin seed and plants it, see? He's goin to have punkin pies for his wife and kids for Christmas, just like back home. Well, he nurses the little squib that comes up, and waters it, and it grows just like a punkin vine's sposed to, big and green, buds all over it, all proper. But no punkins. So his neighbor comes over and tells him why. Seems a cow punkin vine has to have a bull one along by, for a crop of punkins. Punkin vines're that way. And that granger gets mad! 'Why, goldurnit!' he yells. 'I will be goldurned if I will pimp for a goldurn punkin vine!'"

The boy shouted with laughter, Andrew and the guides laughing as much at his delight as at his story. Then he began to play again, and Andrew brought out his flask and parceled out his precious supply of whiskey, a half inch in each of the four coffee cups.

Presently the boy rose, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, thanked them for their hospitality, and said he would be on his way.

"Welcome to bunk down here," the old man said.

"Believe I'll head on over toward Hardy's, thank you kindly."

"Roundup's the other way," Joe said.

"That Johnny Goforth's stricter'n a schoolmaster," the boy said, fingering the gold locket. "Other folks I'd rather see," he added with a wink.

When he had departed they sat listening to the sound of the mouth organ fading into the vast dark. The throaty music, which had been merry by the campfire, now seemed infinitely sad. The frogs recommenced their converse.

"Folks he'd rather see'd be Hardy's daughter, I expect," Joe Reuter said. "Couldn't keep his fingers off that locket he had, I noticed."

"Pleasant young fellow," Andrew said, grunting as he pried off a boot.

"Known for it," Joe said.

"Matty," the old man said. "Matty Gruby — couldn't recollect his name while he was here."

Joe rose and disappeared, to return leading his horse, whose halter he made fast to his saddle horn. The other horses were also brought in close, as they were each night, a precaution against horse thieves.

Andrew slipped under his quilts and, drawing the tarp over, lay staring up at the stars. He listened to the guides preparing for the night, the restless movements of the stock, the frogs, the wolves' faint wailing parley. He felt himself falling asleep like gliding down a long slide, like slipping from a float into deep water. It had been many nights since he had wakened himself crying out the child's name, but this night he surged in familiar horror out of the deep pool of his sleep, shouting a warning. Awake, however, he discovered that he had not uttered her name aloud.

He was in the Bad Lands because of Rudolph Duarte. Duarte had been professor of geology at Harvard, a part-Portuguese, part-Italian New England blueblood, red-bearded, an elegant miniature in his person, but not in his spirit or experience. Duarte's lectures and his books of reminiscences were filled with zest for everything in nature, for science and the "adventure of observation," as well as for poetry, music, and painting. He referred to the "exaltation of the pursuit," and loved to regale his admirers, Andrew among them, with tales of the wildest sorts of experiences among the Indians, in explorations of the Rockies, hardships on "the old Yuma trail," and hunting in the Dakota Bad Lands.

Harvard had not held Professor Duarte long. He had become a geological consultant to the great capitalists and had made and lost fortunes making fortunes for others in the copper mines of Arizona, the coalfields of China, and the silver mountains of Mexico. But he had scoffed at money to audiences of New England young men, who, after the Civil War, had come to look upon the Far West as financial opportunity incarnate. "Money is of no importance!" he had said. "Adventure is all, and enthusiasm is the vehicle of adventure!"

It was Duarte's small, bright, excited face, with its burning bush of beard that hung in Andrew's mind through that long afternoon after he had buried his wife and his daughter and, his son given into the care of his sister and the empty house unbearable to him, sat alone in a hotel room watching a summer rainstorm battering against the window. His wife's death had at the same time freed him to search for some meaning in a life out of which all enthusiasm had vanished, and burdened him with the absolute necessity for that search.

So he had come out to a tamed and settled Bad Lands eleven years after his mentor's expedition, as though by retracing Rudolph Duarte's steps he could repeat his adventures. He had his sketch pad and his journal to record observations and his rifle to shoot game, whose trophy, taken, would become proof of the adventure. Although he realized that his careful banker's premeditation had probably doomed his pursuit to defeat, still he must maintain that he was pursuing life, not fleeing death, as he trod the flamboyant footsteps of the only man he knew who lived life not merely in dread of its exigencies, but in the joy of its possibilities.

CHAPTER 2

WITH THE RISING SUN WARMING HIS LEFT cheek, he held himself in the saddle as though too much motion might shatter his chilled body. Beside him Joe rode with his collar turned up around his face. Behind, the old man grumbled at the pack animals, two of the packs jagged with trophy antlers. Andrew breathed the burning cold air deep and exhaled a milky vapor as the sun climbed and shrank.

Joe halted them with a raised hand and pointed down to the chalky gray clay, a chain of cleft hoofprints there, some clearly cut. The track was easy to follow, crossing and recrossing a dry creek bottom, then climbing the side of a coulee where it faded to infrequent scuffings. For an hour they rode up the ravine, Joe Reuter in the lead with Andrew close behind, Winchester gripped in his left hand, butt resting on his thigh.

At first he thought the buffalo only an oddly shaped butte. But it was the almost legendary animal itself, shabby-looking, with thick curly hair covering head and shoulders, and short-haired, skinny hindquarters, as though two animals of different species had been joined together, like a cameleopard or a griffin. As soon as he had realized what it was, it was in motion, as though it had been awaiting recognition, scrambling at speed over a bank and across a patch of broken ground. He sat frozen and gaping on his mare, panting with emotion. The old bison had looked like something out of a nightmare, of ridiculous construction but awesome also.

"Little buffler fever, there, Mr. Livingston?" the old man called, cackling. Joe had also halted. A quarter of a mile away the animal turned to gaze back at them, something leonine and regal now in its posture. Then it galloped off. They followed its track for miles without catching another glimpse of it.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Bad Lands by Oakley Hall. Copyright © 1978 Oakley Hall. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Preface

1. Classical Archaeology: The “Handmaid of History”?
The Rediscovery of the Past
The Opening Up of Greece
Philological Archaeology
The Birth of Prehistory
Theory Wars

2. Delphic Vapours
The Triumph of Science?
The Delphic Oracle
The Geology of the Site
Inspired Mantic or Fraudulent Puppet?
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 2

3. The Persian Destruction of Eretria
A Tale of Two Temples
Yet Another Temple?
Unmooring “Fixed Points”
Science to the Rescue?
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 3

4. Eleusis, the Oath of Plataia, and the Peace of Kallias
The Archaios Neos at Eleusis
The Oath of Plataia
The Peace of Kallias
Restoring the Sanctuaries of Attica
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 4

5. Sokrates in the Athenian Agora
The House of Simon
The State Prison
Sokrates on Death Row
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 5

6. The Tombs at Vergina
The Discovery of the Tombs
The Political Dimension
Aigeai and Vergina
The Occupants of Tomb II
The Tomb and Its Contents
A Third Possibility
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 6

7. The City of Romulus
Untangling the Foundation Myths of Rome
Romulus and Remus
The Early Kings Materialized?
State Formation and Urbanization
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 7

8. The Birth of the Roman Republic
The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus
The Fall of a Tyrant
The Nature of the Kingship
The Origins of the Consulship
“Etruscan” Rome
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 8

9. Imperial Austerity: The House of Augustus
The House Unearthed
From Dux to Princeps
Reconciling the Evidence
Conclusion
Documents for Chapter 9

10. The Bones of St. Peter
The Discovery of the Tomb
Beneath St. Peter’s
Peter in Rome
Peter on the Appian Way
Peter in Jerusalem
Conclusion
Postscript: The Tomb of St. Philip
Documents for Chapter 10

11. Conclusion: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian
Navigating between Textual and Material Evidence
Words and Things
Bridging the “Great Divide”?

List of Ancient Authors
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

The Bad Lands: A Novel

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A Novel

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The Bad Lands: A Novel

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