Jim kicked his pony into a run.
The white men stopped. They had rifles laid across their saddlebows, but they held up their right hands in the gesture of peace. Jim answered it. He spoke to the men in Crow.
“Where are the white men going?”
The younger of the two, who was apparently the leader, shook his head and began to talk in the sign language. He had blue eyes and a gingery beard and a big wide smile showing broken teeth. The older man sat stolidly, but Jim noticed that he watched Muskrat and the others with a sharp, untrustful eye, and his hand was never far from his rifle.
The ginger-bearded man said that he was glad to meet with his Crow brothers. He was coming to trade with them, and now that they had met they could all go on together to the camp, and there would be gifts for his Crow brothers.
Jim made the sign for Follow and the sign for Camp. In Crow he said quietly to Young Bear, “Get behind the old one and see that he doesn’t use that gun.” The white men turned their attention to getting the mules started again and the young one said, “There you are, Joe. Plain sailing from here on.”
The old one grunted and started to whack the mules, cursing them. He stopped as Young Bear’s gun was jammed firmly into his back. At the same moment Jim covered Ginger Beard, who said in a shrill startled voice, “What the hell—?”
In English Jim said, “You’re no brother of mine, and the Crow don’t need your kind of trade.” Muskrat and the others were busy cutting the mules loose. They slashed the pack ropes and let the kegs drop. One of them split and the raw smell of alcohol rose from the sun-hot earth. “What are you doing?” Ginger Beard shouted in a voice of rage and grief. “That’s mine, that’s my property—” Muskrat and Swift Crane were using the kegs for target practice now while the others drove the mules away, and the liquor fumes enveloped them like a cloud. Ginger Beard looked at Jim. “Who are you?” He was almost weeping with anger.
“The Crow call me the Antelope.” To Muskrat he said, “Fire their guns.”
Muskrat did, handing them back empty.
“You’re a damned thief,” Ginger Beard said to Jim.
The old man opened his mouth for the first time. “Ask him what his real name is. Ask him if it’s Beckwourth.”
“Ask me yourself,” Jim said.
“You robbed a friend of mine up on Tongue River last year.”
“If he was trading whisky, I did.”
“This is free country,” Ginger Beard said. “You don’t have any right—”
“You’re lucky I don’t kill you,” Jim said. “You’re not traders, you’re thieves. And you don’t even give a man an honest drunk for his belongings.”
The old man said, quietly, “You take a lot on yourself, Beckwourth. Considering you ain’t even an Indian.”
Jim smiled at him. “You’d be surprised how much of an Indian I am. I haven’t taken any white scalps yet but there’s always a first time.”
He looked hard at the old man, who glanced briefly at Young Bear and the others, and shrugged. “Might’s well get going, Pete,” he said to Ginger Beard. Ginger Beard glared at Jim. His cheeks were redder than his beard and his neck had swelled inside his dirty flannel collar. “I ain’t going to forget this,” he said.
“I hope not,” Jim told him. “And you can spread the word around. Whisky traders won’t make any profit off the Crow.” He motioned with his rifle barrel. “And don’t stop till you’re across the Platte.”
He watched the men ride away. The spilled whisky soaked into the dust. It was full strength in the cask, but by the time it reached the customer it would be diluted with water four or five to one and spiked with gunpowder and red pepper to give it strength again.
“Those were very good horses, too,” said Muskrat wistfully as they disappeared.
“If you see them again, take them,” Jim said. Setting a man afoot in this country was the next best thing to killing him.
They added the mules to their herd and went on.
That night they were close to the village but they did not go there. Instead they camped by a shallow creek, where they killed a buffalo. They bathed themselves and dressed in their war clothes, which they had carried with them on the outtrail, and tied on their medicines. With blood and charcoal they made paint for their faces and for the war shirts of the coup strikers, black paint, the color of victory. When it was morning the scouts put on their wolf skins and ran ahead. The Antelope and his warriors mounted and rode after them, driving the captured herd.
They came out on a crest of land above a wide green river valley. Jim saw the yellow-banded lodges scattered on the plain, with the morning smokes rising blue-gray into the sky. The scouts in their wolf-skin badges ran zigzag toward the camp, turning their heads from side to side and howling. People began to burst out of the lodges and gather in the open spaces. Jim fired off his rifle. Gunshots cracked all around him and the warriors began to yell. The horse herd moved with a lilting thunder. Drums in the village began to beat. Women came singing, carrying scalp sticks. The Antelope rode with the hawk-tail plume blowing from his scalp lock, driving the horses in a circle around the camp.
When this was done there was paint for the face of a warrior’s wife and the bridle of a white mare to put in her hands.
Later still there was the feast and the striking of the pipeman’s lodge and the horse dance. Jim and Young Bear, Muskrat and the other men of the raiding party danced, each one with his blanket around a girl. Nomneditchee was small, too small for her name, which meant The-one-who-strikes-three and had belonged to an uncle who once struck three coups in a single battle. She had beautiful dark eyes and her hands were slender, and she did not look like a coup-striker. Jim called her Cherry, because she had been carrying a skin bag full of the red fruit when he first met her. She was a purchased wife and proud of it. It meant that a man had loved her enough to pay the bride price, and it also meant that her reputation was unblemished. Jim would not have to worry about the wife-stealing raids that the rival warrior societies sometimes made on each other, when they forcibly reclaimed former sweethearts. Cherry was light-footed, lithe, and graceful in the circle of Jim’s robe, smiling, her eyes shining as she looked up at him.
After a while Jim happened to glance over Cherry’s head as they danced, and he saw Dave Richards standing among the spectators watching him.
FOURTEEN
They sat in Jim’s lodge, talking.
On the woman’s side Cherry worked quietly with brilliant-colored porcupine quills, embroidering a dress of white buckskin. Jim held the boy in his lap. He was almost two years old now, a wild sturdy baby full of energy and laughter and occasional roaring rages. “When he’s behaving himself,” Jim said, “he’s mine, Little Jim. When he’s hell-raisin’ he’s the Black Panther, and all hers.” He shook the boy between his hands and Little Jim kicked him, gurgling with pleasure. “He’ll make a warrior.”
“Grass has given me two,” Rich said. “Both girls.”
Jim felt a pleasant superiority.
“Happy here?” Rich asked. “Nothin’ to rile you?”
Jim shook his head. He looked around the lodge, at Cherry and the boy. “Nothing to rile me.”
“Fixing to stay?”
“Till they wrap me in my best blanket and lay me on the four-pole platform.”
“Well, then,” Rich said, with a sigh. “I guess it worked out good after all. I kind of worried about it a time or two. I was awful drunk that day, and the way you were prancing around like a turkey cock—” He spread his hands wide. “The idea just came to me. Afterward I didn’t hardly think they’d believed me.”
“They believed you,” Jim said. “Talks-all-the-time speaks with a straight tongue.”
“Hell of a name, ain’t it?” Rich said. “Never could understand why they called me that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Rich? When those boys grabbed me I didn’t know what was happening.”
Rich scratched his chin, trying to r
emember. “Seems like I didn’t feel so good for a day or two. Then we were all packing our traps to go. And like I said, I didn’t really think they’d believe me.”
“You knew damn well they believed you. Runs-fast and Yellow Shield were there and they’re good friends of mine now. Belong to the same warrior society, the Big Dogs. They told me what they said to you.”
“That’s right,” Rich said. “You speak the language now. Be damned, I didn’t think of that. Well, I tell you, Jim. I was maybe a little sore at you anyway, and on top of that it suddenly come to me that I’d got the boys all fired up now, and if you was to call me a liar and maybe make a fight about it, we might both be in a lot of trouble. I thought it was safer to let it kind of sneak up on you.”
Jim grunted. “But you did worry about it a time or two.”
“Sure did.”
“It’s been five-six years. You could have dropped around to see.”
“I been pretty busy. I was out to California with Diah Smith. Never thought I’d live to see you or anybody else again. If it wasn’t them Diggers skulking like a pack of dirty coyotes, looking to kill us all for our blankets, it was the desert trying to fry us like so many chunks of bacon. Dry! Jim, I ain’t never been so dry in my whole born life. When that desert got through with me I looked like a piece of an old lodge cover that’s been smoked and seasoned till it cracks. And then the Spaniards threw us all in jail. But it’s rich country, Jim. Rich and pretty. And they got horses. They got so many horses you wouldn’t believe it. A man’s going somewhere, he’ll ride till his horse gets tuckered and then he’ll just pick another one like you’d pick an apple in an orchard and go on, and it don’t matter who the horse belongs to. They got so many they don’t care. A Crow would just plain go crazy at the sight.” Rich shook his head. “Pity we couldn’t bring some back with us. We sure didn’t bring nothin’ else. Not even most of us, after the desert and the Indians was finished. Poor Diah. He figured to trap, but all he did was open up a new trail. But that was enough for him.”
Little Jim became restive and ran to Cheny. Jim accepted the offer of Rich’s tobacco pouch and filled his pipe. “Diah’s medicine is bad,” he said. “He made a spring hunt through the Big Horn country some time back. I didn’t see him, but I heard he lost thirty horses and some hundreds of traps, washed down a flooded creek. Fine man, though, in spite of it. Maybe his luck’ll change.”
“No,” said Rich. “Diah’s gone under, down on the Cimarron. Comanche.”
“Too bad,” said Jim, and meant it. They were silent for a while.
“Rich—”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad to see you.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re always welcome in my lodge.”
“Thanks.”
“Now you know that, I’ll ask you why you came.”
“To see how things stood. I been hearing stories about you, Jim.”
Jim settled lazily against the willow backrest. He smiled. “What kind of stories?”
“ ’Bout you turning renegade. Robbing white men, running off their stock.”
“Depends on the white men,” Jim said, “and depends on what you call robbing. Last winter we picked up a little bunch of free trappers, four of ’em, three-quarters starved and more than that froze. We fed ’em, gave ’em fresh horses and supplies, and sent ’em on their way happy. It didn’t cost ’em so much as a muskrat skin.”
“What about the two I met on the way here?”
“Ginger-bearded fellow and an old man with a mean eye?”
“That’s right. It’s a wonder you ain’t lightning-struck, the way they were cussing you. Said you’d stolen their mules and their trade goods.”
“Did they tell you what their trade goods were?”
Rich said, “No.”
“Whisky. And nothing but whisky. You know what happens. They clean out a whole village for a few dollars’ worth of rotgut, and all the Indians get out of it is sick. Then they’ve got nothing left to trade for the things they need, and it’s a damned hard winter ahead.”
“Agreed,” Rich said. “But did you have to take their belongings? You could just have run ’em off.”
“And they could just have found themselves another village. No. I’ve seen what’s happened to some of the nations that live closer to the white man. I won’t have it happen to my Crow as long as I can help it.”
“Whisky’s in the trade,” Rich said sadly. “You can’t keep it out. All the government and all the laws can’t keep it out. Indians’ll go where it is, and if one man sells it the others have got to.”
“When it comes to that I’ll sell it myself. Then at least I can see they ain’t robbed.”
Rich smoked a while. Cherry put Little Jim to bed. Jim thought briefly how beautiful she was bending over the child, with the firelight touching the clean lines of her cheek and temple, shining on her hair. Poor Francie, he thought, how angry you would be! And how thankful I am that I didn’t marry you and sell my life for a picket fence.
“That old man with the mean eye,” Rich said. “He said you threatened to scalp him.”
“I guess I did,” Jim said, and grinned. “I only half meant it.”
“Don’t take it so light,” Rich snapped. “These men go back to the settlements. They talk. You’re laying up trouble for yourself, Jim, when you go back.”
“Told you. I’m not going back.”
Rich said quietly, “You’ll go back. Someday. You can only be an Indian so long, unless you’re born to it.”
Jim spoke so angrily that Cherry looked over at him, startled. “Can’t you let anything alone, Rich? Do you have to be always poking and tearing and trying to break things up?”
“It’s my curse,” Rich said, and added reflectively, “maybe that’s why I don’t seem to be able to hang onto my friends for any very long stretch of time. Seems like there’s something in the sound of truth that’s painful to the ear.”
“Truth!” said Jim. “Spite is more what it is. You just naturally can’t let anything or anybody rest quiet.”
“This ain’t no country for resting quiet. If that’s what you wanted you should have stayed in St. Louis.” Rich had a maddening way of sliding by the point as fast and slick as a diving otter. “You heard about the Rocky Mountain Fur Company?”
“I heard.” Smith, Jackson, and Sublette had sold out to a new group of partners that included Fitzpatrick and Bridger and Sublette’s brother Milton.
“Ain’t no better men on the mountain,” Rich said, “but they’re powerful deep in debt.” He paused. “You’re working for McKenzie, holding all the Crow trade for Fort Union.”
“That’s right.”
“Then you don’t need to go to the settlements for trouble. You got it right here.”
Jim sat, hanging on hard to his patience. His years among the Crow had trained him to the decorum of the council and the self-control that was expected of a man. He was angry that he had lost it, even for a moment. It seemed to be a concession to Rich’s statement that the truth hurt. For some reason he became acutely conscious of himself as he sat there, cross-legged, wearing breechclout and leggins and bare above the waist except for a scarlet blanket draped over his shoulders. For the first time since he came to Absaroka he felt foolish to be dressed like an Indian, as though he were a grown man caught playing a child’s game. There was a terrible moment when Cherry and the boy, the lodge, and the life that went with them seemed to slip away from him, becoming insubstantial as a dream.
At that moment, quite literally, he could have killed Rich.
But Rich was talking. “—knock-down, drag-out fight. We got the British pushing us from Oregon, we got the Blackfeet that won’t have us in the north and the Spaniards that won’t have us in the south, and I don’t know which is worse to tangle with. And most of all we got the company. There’s McKenzie squatting on the Missouri, and Chouteau in St. Louis, and they ain’t just squatting. Every time you turn around no
w you trip over one of their brigades—the mountain’s crawling with ’em. And I hear McKenzie sent Jake Berger up the Marias to talk peace with the Blackfeet. They want this whole country to themselves, Jim, and they ain’t going to get it. Not without a big lot of trouble.” He looked at Jim. “Most of that trouble’s going to come right here in Absaroka.”
“If you wanted the Crow trade, you should have stayed with it,” Jim said, “instead of going over the mountains. When Henry left the Yellowstone, that was the end of it.”
“Fitz don’t think so.”
“Fitz be damned,” said Jim. “I’d hate to have trouble with Bridger, and you’re welcome to trap anywhere on Crow range, any time. But the RMF ain’t welcome here and they might as well know it.”
Rich sighed. “That’s what I thought you’d say. I don’t know what it is about you, Jim. Maybe you was born under the wrong star, or maybe it’s natural cussedness, maybe it’s both. But somehow or another you always seem to stand right where you’re bound to make an enemy out of any man that walks by.”
“Out of you, too?”
“It might be.”
Again they were silent for a while.
“You’re a free trapper,” Jim said at length. “You can sell your furs where you want to. Why don’t you sell ’em to McKenzie?”
“Can’t. I already made my bargain.”
Jim nodded. “I already made mine, too. And when I made it I wasn’t going against old friends. If it comes to that now, I’m sorry. But I ain’t going to change. See, Rich, there’s something over and above who makes the money on this year’s catch of buffalo robes. There’s the Crow. They were in a bad way after Henry pulled out. The Blackfeet practically wiped out a whole village because the Crow had no powder and lead for their guns. They been trading with McKenzie for years now. He’s here to stay. About the RMF—who knows?” Jim got up and pulled the scarlet blanket around him. “Make yourself comfortable, Rich.” He went outside.
After the smoky warmth of the tipi the wind felt almost cold, and sharply clean. Roan Horse whickered and stamped at his picket. He was getting a little old now and Jim didn’t run him quite so hard. He went over and rubbed his nose, and then went on to check the others, four of them, all prime buffalo runners, and Rich’s Blackfoot horse, all tied close to the lodge for safety. The stars burned in the sky like the campfires of a vast army. It was very late and the camp was still.
Follow the Free Wind Page 12
