Far Bright Star Read Online Free PDF

to live. He had to teach them how not to get killed by their own irresponsible behavior.
    “If you’re pissin’ dark you need water,” he told them, and still they would get into trouble, not even smart enough to read their own piss.
    He took off his boots and soaked his feet in the same water he washed his socks and then wrung them out. Their work done, there was now time. He let down his pants and rubbed his aching knees with an embrocation that smelled like turpentine. His knees went hot and then cold. He let the air take away the fumes before pulling his pants onto his hips. He put on another pair of socks and his boots and the wet socks he lashed to his saddle.
    In his ditty bag he had a fat red apple, some dried beef and biscuit.
    He lay back, folded his hands under his armpits and closed his eyes. When next he looked, they were gathered around Stableforth, peering at the something he held in his hand. It was a scorpion flexing its long tail. Stableforth tipped his hand and let it walk onto a stone where, crablike, it scuttled from sight.
    “Stableforth says this were all a inland sea at one time.” It was Bandy talking from the midstream of his thoughts, the boy’s mind escaping his mouth.
    On the high ground was Extra Billy, scanning the rocks and then looking his way. Napoleon gestured with an open palm—do you see anything? Extra Billy shook his head.
    “He says you can tell from the kind of dirt and what’s underneath the dirt,” Bandy was saying.
    “How’s he know what’s underneath the dirt?” Napoelon said. “Has he ever been there?”
    He could see the peak of Extra Billy’s Stetson bob once and a second time and then disappear.
    “I don’t know,” the boy said. “I didn’t think to ask.”
    “Well, maybe next time you ought to before you go and tell everyone.”
    “Wheeler says Preston’s got a map to a lost Spanish silver mine.”
    “I told you to stay clear of Wheeler?”
    “He don’t like you much either,” the boy said.
    If it wasn’t gold it was silver. If it wasn’t silver it was copper. What man in this army didn’t claim to be in possession of a map, or know of a map, or have faith in the existence of such a map?
    “What’s the matter now?” he asked the boy.
    “I am still a boy to them.”
    “You are a boy,” he said.
    “Wal’ then you can go to hell too.”
    “Do you know the way?”
    “If there is better directions than you already have then I will let you know.”
    He offered the boy a thin slice of apple from his knife blade. The boy took it and with his eyes closed he eased it into his mouth. His nose was bleeding from the heat and he took in his own blood with the apple slice.
    He told the boy his nose was bleeding and to rub Vaseline inside his nostrils. The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve, smearing blood across face.
    “Go wash your face,” Napoleon said.
    Extra Billy was returning from the bush, buttoning his trousers. He liked Extra Billy. He was hard headed and as he drank enough liquor for three men he probably drank too much. It was his habit to drink himself sober and then get drunk all over again and the drunker he became the more sober and improved he appeared.
    “That boy would eat a pig’s ass if he had to,” Extra Billy said.
    “You got bottle fever without your bottle?”
    Extra Billy hooked one thumb in his armpit and rocking on his heels, he looked away to the distance in front of him.
    “I point-blank asked you a question,” Napoleon said, but still there was no reply. “Feeling the bottom?” he said more gently.
    “Yessir, the bottom.”
    “The bottom bottom?”
    “Still the top bottom.”
    “Do me a favor?”
    “What?”
    “Watch the boy.”
    “Mister in-one-ear-and-out-the-other?”
    “He’s a trier.”
    Rising up and down on the balls of his feet, Extra Billy shrugged—whatever.
    “You drunk right now?”
    “Nossir.”
    “You ain’t lying?”
    “Nossir. Swear to God,” Extra Billy said, and crossed his