JOSHUA
You are familiar with this Seth Turner? Your paths have crossed?
KADY
Nope.
JOSHUA
But you recognize the name?
KADY
Seth Turner’s nothin’ better than a bugbear, a spook.
JOSHUA
Like the headless horseman of sleepy hollow!
KADY
No. No Joshua. No! He’s got a head. He ain’t headless.
JOSHUA
I only mean to say-
KADY
What kind of fiddleheaded talk is that?
JOSHUA
-that he occupies a place of notoriety in the folklore of the frontier. A legend. A legend, though a fearsome one.
KADY
A legend. Seth Turner ain’t nothin’ but a old wives tale. Buck Brewster is a legend.
JOSHUA
Certainly.
KADY
He’s a dozen legends, and I’s there to see half of ‘em.
JOSHUA
Yes.
KADY
You hear’d the one about Buck and the bear.
JOSHUA
(begins leafing through the book)
The bear.
KADY
Well, I’s the one that dared ‘im to lay hands on that bear.
JOSHUA
Indeed.
KADY
Bear musta been nine foot tall.
JOSHUA
(seeing something in the book)
Oh!
KADY
Grizzly bear.
JOSHUA
Balloonists!
KADY
Oregon Country.
JOSHUA
(showing an ad in the book to KADY)
In the issue to be published next month, a tale of balloonists!
KADY
What now?
JOSHUA
How intrepid!
KADY
What in tarnation is a balloonist?
JOSHUA
Mr. Clay! I could be ashamed of your criminal ignorance. Have you not heard of traveling by balloon?
KADY
I s’pose not.
JOSHUA
Transport of the coming age! Conjure in your mind’s eye the image of a basket, Mr. Clay, of a size to contain several passengers.
KADY
A basket full o’ people.
JOSHUA
The basket secured at the corners with sturdy ropes. The ropes suspended from a massive globe of cloth. The globe of cloth filled with scientific vapors, which lift the entire apparatus high above the earth-
KADY
Vapors?
JOSHUA
-where it is propelled at tremendous speeds by vast rivers of air in the sky! A new form of locomotion! Lighter than air travel!
KADY
Lighter than air.
JOSHUA
Your grandchildren will cross the mighty Atlantic in scarcely a week, lounging in a carriage suspended from a balloon. Imagine Mr. Clay, correspondence delivered from the sky, houses that never touch the ground. Raining dynamite onto the battlefield from above the clouds! Balloonists! Your horse and coach will soon be a thing of antiquity. Stagecoaches in the sky, Mr. Clay!
KADY
Ya know, I been told by a fair number of folks that my stories of Buck’n me is sometimes far-fetched. But people carried through the sky by sheets full of mysterious vapors?
JOSHUA
As I live and breathe, Mr. Clay.
KADY
That’s about the biggest load of buffalo chips I ever hear’d tell of.
JOSHUA
This land is pregnant with the coming age.
KADY
The land. Infested is what it is.
JOSHUA
The land must be peopled.
KADY
Is that right? Doughbelly half-wits gonna be scattered over the land from hell to breakfast? They gonna be dropping ‘em outa balloons, like they’s saltin’ the earth.
JOSHUA
You mock balloonists, but already they serve admirably in the field of military reconnaissance.
KADY
(laughing)
Military balloons! Damn but you’s stupid Joshua!
JOSHUA
My father served in the Union Balloon Corps at the battle of seven pines under Brigadier General Sumner!
KADY
Then he’s soft in the head. You’d of never got me up in one of them fool things.
JOSHUA
You would never have been in one of “them fool things”, because you never volunteered!
KADY
You damn right. I ain’t ever volunteered for nothin’ never, especially not to dodge hot slugs o’ lead for thirteen dollar a month and a ration o’ hardtack.
JOSHUA
Mr. Clay, I should stop my ears to hear you slander the heroic deeds of this nation’s brave cavalry.
KADY
Jabber.
JOSHUA
I could remind you who it is that roams these hills and prairies, this very Dakota: the warlike tribes of the northern plains. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapahoe.
KADY
Jabber, jabber.
JOSHUA
Who, one might ask, must drive those savage warriors onto their allotted lands so that Dakota may be peopled?
KADY
Johnny Appleseed?
JOSHUA
No. The courageous fighting men of the United States mounted cavalry.
KADY
Aww yeah, that’s right. These lands is gonna be free for settlin’ one day, ain’t they? But who in they right mind gonna settle it though?
JOSHUA
The war is over, Mr. Clay, and depression prevails on every hand. But give the rancher grassland to graze and the farmer good Earth to plow, give them good land, and the bone and sinew of the country will find employment.
KADY
Good land? Anybody spend more’n ten dollars on this spot got bamboozled.
JOSHUA
Well, I was not referring to this precise location.
KADY
Course, I reckon you know some big wigs can make gravy off of just about any land don’t ya?
JOSHUA
Wigs and gravy?
KADY
I just wonderin’ what fat cats you know that’s got the deep pockets to pay a couple of yahoos like us to ride way the hell out here to Kingdom Come?
JOSHUA
Mr. Clay, I fear that once again I lack the necessary vernacular to follow your line of thought.
KADY
Is that right?
JOSHUA
But perhaps we are overdue in preparing our supper.
KADY
Joshua, sometimes I think you’s plum simple, but right now I reckon you’s just playin’ at it. I’m askin’ who the head honcho is?
JOSHUA
I need to prepare the beans.
KADY
I say who we workin’ for?
JOSHUA
And I need to gather firewood.
KADY
(knocking a pot from JOSHUA’s hand)
To hell with the damn beans!
JOSHUA
(disappointed)
Mr. Clay.
KADY
(pleading)
We done rid four hundred mile together. I still ain’t learned thing one since we left Kansas City.
JOSHUA
Must we resurrect this quarrel yet again?
KADY
We doin’ the durn thing the day after tomorrow.
JOSHUA
The terms of employment were perfectly clear.
KADY
Aww, that’s just lawyer talk.
JOSHUA
The benefactor of this expedition stipulated: discretion in regards to his identity.
KADY
Just so the shysters can get they cut.
JOSHUA
As per the contract that you signed your name to.
KADY
Now, I got to educate you. Out here in the empty spaces, you don’t keep your trailmates in the dark.
JOSHUA
I should gather the firewood.
KADY
We the ones doin’ the job. So fill me in.
JOSHUA
When I located you in Kansas City, upon Mr. Brewster’s recommendation, I provided you with the exact terms.
KADY
I just need to be filled in with the particklars!
JOSHUA
The particulars are that you agreed to act as guide and armed escort for me throughout our journey together, and until such time as I have completed the mission.
KADY
I know that! That’s all I do know!
JOSHUA
And our benefactor prefers that his name not be bandied about. And those are the terms.
KADY
Terms. Terms! Always comin’ at me with terms!
JOSHUA
I really should prepare our supper.
KADY
It ain’t manly to keep your trailmate in the dark!
JOSHUA
I’ll gather the firewood.
KADY
(seething as JOSHUA exits)
Ain’t manly.
(KADY sits, stewing, pulls a bottle of whisky from his bag, uncorks it and takes a swig, then, with a sudden resolve, stands, looks after where JOSHUA exitted, and rushes to JOSHUA’s pack, which he begins to dig through. He takes a compass from the pack and pockets it.)