Rainbow squirmed carefully around until he was crouched against the slope of the bank. Jim followed suit. Somewhere among the willows horses stamped and whickered. They sounded very close. The top of the bank ended in a fringe of grass against the sky. He could not see what was beyond it.
After a moment he realized that Rainbow was waiting for him to move. My medicine is good, he thought, that is why. He hoped Rainbow was right.
Slowly, very slowly, he inched himself up the bank until his face was thrust among the grasses at the top and he could see.
He could see the rim of the hollow perhaps ten feet away. He could not see down into the hollow because he was a little below the rim, but he could see the willows now as separate trees with spaces between them. Rifle balls went whistling and thunking among them, showering down leaves but not doing any other damage. The Blackfeet were laying low.
Suddenly, for no reason at all, Jim felt easy and confident. My medicine is good, he thought. I know it.
He nodded to Rainbow and went with a smooth rush over the top of the bank and toward the hollow.
The rim ceased to be a sharp line and became the rounded top of a slope that dropped down like the side of a big bowl. Inside the bowl there were men and horses. Some of the men were wounded. Some were tired and sat or lay about. Most of them were ranged around the curve of the bowl that was nearest the enemy, protected by the bank but watchful, waiting for attack. Jim was somewhat behind these and they did not immediately see him. He was almost at the rim when the man closest to him let out a startled “Huh!” and sprang up firing his fusee. The ball went high and Jim shot without shouldering the rifle. The man doubled up and fell forward over the top of the bank. There was much noise now in the hollow. Jim dropped flat, grabbing for the dead man’s outflung arm. He pulled with all his might. Blackfeet came bounding up the side of the hollow toward him. There was a sudden burst of firing from behind him, one gun quite close, two farther back, and a yelling of Snake war cries. The Blackfeet took cover again, startled for the moment into thinking that they had been flanked by a large party. Rainbow came beside Jim and caught the other arm. Together they dragged the dead Blackfoot toward the channel.
Enraged by the sight, the Blackfeet began another charge. The two young Snakes had reloaded. They appeared, yelling, and fired. This time the Blackfeet did not stop. Jim and Rainbow felt the ditch open behind them. They fell into it, still hanging doggedly to the body. Balls and arrows whistled over them too close for comfort. Jim dropped his rifle from his free hand and pulled out his knife, ready for close fighting. But it did not come. The trappers finally had some targets to shoot at. There was a heavy burst of rifle fire and the Blackfeet vanished again into the shelter of the willows.
In what seemed a deafening silence, Jim and Rainbow hauled the body into the ditch.
The young Snakes began stripping the dead Blackfoot. Jim rammed powder and ball into his rifle as fast as he could on the grounds that somebody ought to have a loaded weapon. The Snakes had all dropped theirs. From far away he heard a wild clamor of shouting, Rainbow’s tribesmen yelling triumph and insult at the enemy. Rainbow kneeled between the Blackfoot’s shoulders. The man’s two thick black braids lay spread in the grass. At the back of his head just below the crown there was a third braid, a thin one carefully tied and decorated with beads. This was the scalp lock. Rainbow grasped it and pulled it straight out with his left hand. His right hand held the knife.
Moving away from the body, Rainbow said, “Steps-from-the-water’s women will dance tonight. His mother’s tears will dry quickly.”
They began the long crawl back to where Small Belly waited with the horses. The Blackfeet did not come out again to challenge the long rifles.
With Rainbow and the others Jim rode back to where he had left Rich and Bridger. He did not know whether the trappers were watching him with admiration or not. He was too proud to look. Rainbow saluted him and went on with the others to join the Snakes. They sang victory songs as they rode.
Rich said sourly, “What are you going to do next?”
Jim grinned and shook his head. “Not a damn thing.” Roan Horse had run all the fire out of himself. Jim patted the sweaty neck. “We’re through.”
“I think,” said Bridger, “just about everybody is through.”
The men had been fighting since daybreak. They were thirsty, tired, hungry, and now the fight had turned into a stalemate, they were rapidly getting bored. An attack on the hollow would cost far more lives than either the trappers or the Snakes were interested in giving. They had won a victory, a big one, and there did not seem to be any more reason to hang around in the dust and sun, wasting powder. The trappers went back to camp, and the Snakes came with them.
Later in the afternoon a party rode back out to Bear Lake and Jim went with them, curious to see what had happened. The Blackfeet were gone. They had taken their wounded with them, and such few of their dead as they had been able to carry. They had a long hard trail ahead of them, north and east over the mountain passes and along the valleys and across the rivers, home. They would bury their dead along the way, Indian-fashion, in the wind-shaken branches of trees, and some of the wounded would inevitably join them. By the time they reached their villages on the Marias it would be time for the fall buffalo hunt and the move to winter quarters, and the passes would soon be blocked with snow. There would not be any more big Blackfoot war parties in the mountains until next summer.
That night the dancing began. It went on for three days, and for three days Jim was drunk, not on liquor but on excitement and a curiously satisfying kind of glory. In the Snake camp the drums pounded and the women danced the scalp dance, danced victory and revenge all night long until they fell out exhausted and slept a while and then rose to dance again. Grass was among them. The trappers joined the celebration wholeheartedly. It was their victory too, and in some ways they were wilder than their red brothers. But Jim sat with the Snakes, among the honor men, the coup-strikers, and not among the lesser ranks of these but among the highest, beside the leaders and the famous men.
Sitting here, he could see the world the way they saw it, painted strong in the colors of earth and sky, with the patterns for living and dying laid out clearly, simple patterns with no barriers in them that a man could not climb over if he wanted to. If a man lacked courage, if he was foolish or lazy or dishonest or if he broke certain tribal laws, he was going to be in trouble. Otherwise, there was nothing to stop him from being a chief, if he could earn the position. Even a captive, a person from another tribe, could do this. It was a cruel, harsh life in many ways and he knew what Francie would think about it, but it called to him as it had called before in the Pawnee town, only now the call was louder. He let the pounding drums hypnotize him. He feasted with the men and pretended he was one of them. But he knew that he was not, and he went back to Rich’s lodge to sleep.
Sometime late on the third day he woke up to find the lodge full of strange Indians. There were six of them, sitting in a solemn semicircle staring at him. Grass had taken time enough off from her dancing to cook some food and she was serving it, looking pretty much the worse for wear. Rich had been in the trader’s barrel and been in it deep. He had the half-merry, half-malicious look that he always got at a certain stage of drunkenness.
“My friends the Crows,” he said. “They wanted to see the mighty warrior Bloody Arm who counted so many coups on the Blackfeet.” He smiled at the Indians, cursing them at the same time in the friendliest tones. “Worse than that, they had to hear the story. Over. And over. Bloody Arm Beckwourth, I have had a bellyful of you.”
Jim sat up and saluted the Crows, who continued to stare at him. “How did they find out about it?”
“Cut the Blackfoot trail on their way here. Found some dead ones they’d left behind. Crow and Blackfoot—” he made a slitting motion across his throat. “Crows are horse-rich, Blackfeet are horse-poor, and Crow range is right next to Blackfoot range, south. Bad combination.
So they were happy. They were real happy when they saw the battlefield. Then they got talking to some of the Snakes that speak Crow, and nothing would do but they had to see you.”
Jim didn’t want to show it but he was secretly pleased.
“Man could do a sensible thing,” Rich grumbled. “Something important, something that really mattered, and these nit-heads wouldn’t pay it any mind at all. But a man does a thing like you crawling down that ditch and hauling a Blackfoot out of the timber, and they think that’s some.” He looked at Jim, his head on one side, mocking and bright-eyed as a fox. “Hell, you’re no better than they are. You think it’s some, too.”
“What if I do?” asked Jim quietly.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Only it sure is a pity.”
“What is?”
“You weren’t born red instead of black-and-white. Well, go ahead, Bloody Arm. They’re waiting.”
It was not lodge etiquette to start a fight in the presence of guests, so Jim only said, “Go ahead with what?”
“Sing your victory song. Trot out all your honors. Tell how you got ’em. They’ve heard the story twenty times from me but they want to hear it from you. Go ahead.”
“You know I don’t talk Crow.”
“I do, so talk anything you want. Only make it good. Do it like an Indian. They won’t think you’re boasting.”
Jim gave Rich a black hard look, irritated by his needling. But the Crows were waiting, watching respectfully. Jim stiffened his back. In English, augmented by what he knew of the sign language which was not much, he began his story.
It did sound boastful. It sounded in fact a little ridiculous. English was the wrong language. Jim got madder and madder at Rich, who was translating, keeping his face as grave as though he was an official interpreter at a treaty council. He’s laughing at me, Jim thought. He switched to Shoshoni, which apparently the Crows understood no better than they did English, and which Jim did not speak nearly as well, but the words fitted the deeds much better. He began to enjoy himself. All right, he thought, looking at Rich. Go ahead and laugh. I like to boast. I like to feel big. And anyway I did these things.
He made the story good, Indian-style, but he was careful not to add anything that had not really happened. Lying about a coup was something no Indian ever did unless he wanted to die on his next warpath. It brought the worst kind of bad luck, and anyway, everybody knew it was a lie. He finished.
Rich repeated Jim’s closing words. He sat silent for a moment, looking at the Crows with his bright foxy look as though he was thinking about something. Then he smiled and talked some more. The Crows clapped their hands over their mouths and their eyes widened in astonishment. They stared at Jim harder than ever, while one of them talked excitedly with Rich.
Jim asked, “What are you telling them?”
Rich turned to him a look curiously blended of malice and affection. “You’re not happy friend. I’m making you a present.” He laughed. He was a very drunken man. “Come on, let’s get back to the dancing.” He rose and went toward the entrance. The drums were going again. Grass had already slipped away. Jim went with Rich and the Crows back to the Snake camp. After a while he lost track of Rich, but for a long time the Crows stood watching him.
That was the end of the rendezvous. The trading was done. It was time for the parties to move out again on their way to the fall trapping grounds, time for the pack train to head homeward along the Platte with its rich lading of furs.
Ashley made a speech. He said good-bye to the mountains, and to the men who had helped him conquer them. Now that he was leaving them to return to his real life, free of debt and with money in the bank, he felt a warm sense of love, even of gratitude, toward both the mountains and the men. And he was touched almost to tears by the response he got. Whatever his faults and whatever his failings, he had managed to earn the respect of this hard-nosed, hard-handed bunch of individualists. He did not understand them entirely. They had a wildness in them that he did not have, and did not want, but in a way he envied them. To have led them was an honor.
Even Beckwourth, he thought, the bastard. I can’t forgive him. But I have to admit he has all the courage he needs to back up his gall. If I were in his shoes, I wonder—
But I’m not, he thought, thank God.
He shook Jim’s hand along with the rest of them and wished him well, and rode out of Cache Valley for the last time.
The trappers’ brigades formed up. Grass took down the lodge and packed it. She would stay with her own people and wait for Rich to join her when the fall hunt was over. For the first time Jim and Rich were going with different parties, in different directions.
“See you at rendezvous,” Rich said, and Jim nodded. He said, “Keep your head down and your powder dry.” Rich had the gray horse pretty well trained now. Jim watched him ride off, and then went over to his own group. It included Bridger, and Jim was surprised when Bridger motioned to him to fall in beside him. He did so, and the party passed out of the valley and headed east, toward the Green.
It was perhaps ten days later that Jim and Bridger went out to hunt some fresh meat for the pot. They separated to work both sides of a ridge. Jim rode for an hour or two, seeing no sign of game, and had about concluded to cross the ridge when he saw Indians coming toward him. There were six of them. They all had their weapons slung and the leader’s hand was raised in the sign of peace. Jim recognized the six Crows who had been in Rich’s lodge.
They rode up to him and stood around him in a ring. The leader spoke to him, but Jim shook his head and signaled that he did not understand. He felt deeply uneasy. The Crow nation was friendly. Beyond the inevitable lifting of horses by the young men, the trappers had no trouble with them and Jim did not expect any now, nor did he intend to start any. But he thought it was strange that the same six should turn up like this, almost as though they had followed him. With a twinge of panic, he wondered suddenly what crazy thing Rich had said to them that day.
The leader spoke again. Jim shook his head some more, smiling. He turned Roan Horse around, gesturing for the Crows to come with him back to camp. But all of a sudden there were two fusees stuck in his flanks and another man was holding his bridle. They all seemed very respectful. He wondered if they really would pull those triggers. But when they put out their hands to take his weapons he decided not to find out. He surrendered.
Five minutes later he was riding away from the camp, away from Bridger, away from the white man’s world. His six captors rode tight around him. The leader swept an arm northeast and said one word, a word that Jim recognized.
“Absaroka!”
TWELVE
It was still the golden time between summer and the first snow when Jim Beckwourth came to Absaroka.
His captors had traveled fast, bringing him by ways he did not know and that he thought probably no white man knew, through the passes of the Wind River range and down into the great basin where the Big Horn headed, and on until a tremendous peak hung over the land like a shining cloud and Jim knew he was looking at the southeastern buttresses of the Big Horn mountains. Rich had trapped this country, roaming over a good part of it with his Crow wife and her people, and Jim had got a grasp on the geography from listening to his stories. They crossed a bitter, muddy river that Jim knew must be the Powder and turned north, with the snow peaks of the mountain rampart on their left hands and the sage desert on their right. They crossed a second muddy stream, and after a while one of the six Crows left them and rode ahead.
At a certain place the men stopped and gave him back his weapons, the rifle unloaded but otherwise all intact. They rode on again, a little faster now.
Rich had told him how it was in this place, but even so Jim was caught by surprise. The change was so abrupt, almost as though God had drawn a line with a stick and said, “Here shall be the end of the desert and the beginning of Eden.” Sage and sand vanished, the bitter yellow streams were gone. Bright water rushed down cold and pure from the snow
fields. There was grass, and timber, berries and wild fruits, and every kind of game. It was in this rich green land under the splendid wall of mountains that Jim first saw the lodges of the Crows.
At a solemn pace now, singing, the five braves brought him into the village.
The man who had ridden ahead had brought important news, that was obvious. Heralds were going among the lodges, crying out some message to the farthest reaches of the camp and already there were throngs of people waiting, with more coming every minute. The people seemed intensely excited and many of the women wept. Jim sat erect and proud, but inside he was shaking. He remembered Rich’s face, the sly mischievous drunken way he looked when he talked to the Crows. “You’re not happy,” he had said. “I’m making you a present.” For the ten-thousandth time Jim wished that he had got Rich down and beaten out of him what he said to the Crows, instead of tamely forgetting about it. If, that is, Rich could have remembered what he said after he sobered up.
They made him get down off his horse and enter one of the lodges, a large one that he guessed must belong to the chief. The crowd, especially the women, would have followed him but they were held back. Inside the lodge there were forty men seated, all the principal men of the village, Jim thought. He was conducted to an empty place on the left hand of a tall and handsome man of middle years who wore his hair rolled up into an elaborately decorated rawhide cylinder, which he carried in the fold of his robe. The other men wore their hair unbraided and falling loose over their shoulders, after the Crow fashion, and Jim knew that he was in the presence of Long Hair, chief of the Main Band, whose hair was ten miraculous feet long, and his personal medicine.
Long Hair motioned him to sit, and Jim sat. The forty eagle faces watched him with forty pairs of piercing eyes. He felt the sweat coming out on his forehead and was horrified lest someone should notice it and think it was a sign of fear. It was.
Long Hair said something, and a young man repeated the words in Shoshoni.
Follow the Free Wind Page 10
