North Star

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Off to the south was a steep notch in the slopes, where the Yellowstone had washed through the mountains, and beyond that a broad valley flanked by snowy ranges. The trappers and men of the mountains had often camped here, and that was how he first became acquainted with it. Sometimes they had wintered here, built their miserable huts against the wind, harvested game, cut firewood, and then gambled and storied away the cold days and nights. Skye had been among them. He knew this place and it was just as real to him as the pain lacing his bones.

  The wind here was incessant and cold, and now it slipped through his leathers and chilled him. He would need a good stout house to turn the wind, and a good stove to heat it enough to ease the pain in his joints. He wondered why he would build a home in a place notorious for its bitter winds, and had no answer. There were winter days here when the wind was so cruel that no man would venture out.

  He eyed the sky, finding scattered frying-pan clouds with black bottoms skidding low over the ridges. They might snow on him. The setting sun silvered the edges of these galloping clouds, turning the sky into a kaleidoscope. He put a hand on the withers of his horse and felt it tremble.

  The silent wilderness absorbed his gaze. The brooding mountains caught the last light, and now the river flat settled into obscure shadow. This place was incalculably old. For as long as the stars rose and fell, this place had nurtured life and welcomed death. These mountains rose and fell. This river had scooped away rock and cut a gorge. This was a place of mystery, the sort of place that made Europeans huddle closer to their hearth fires and listen for the unknown and unknowable just beyond the pale light.

  He headed for the thick riverside brush, knowing he could find shelter there, and soon found a good gravelly flat surrounded by willows and cottonwoods, a place hidden from prying eyes, where he could light a fire that would never be seen. Why did he still keep his guard up? It was ancient habit. From silent places came silent arrows.

  He unsaddled, and turned the horse and mule loose on brown and matted grass. They would gnaw a few twigs as well as last summer’s grass and do well enough to sustain life. He chose a gravelly ridge, once a sandbar in the river, that would shed snow or rain. Falling water here would not pool, but would filter into the thick gravel beds beneath him.

  He collected an abundant supply of deadwood and heaped it nearby. The more he moved, the better he felt. Just doing chores drove the pain away. It never left him entirely, but he could drive it back until it lurked beyond the fires, with yellow wolf eyes, waiting to pounce on him again when he pulled his robes over him.

  He checked his Sharps rifle and set it next to his bedroll.

  He heard an animal stirring. At dusk deer came to water, but it might be something else, so he waited. But nothing loomed out of the quietness, so he turned to his supper, a pemmican broth that would warm and comfort him.

  The sole noise was that of his own making. Nearby, a latticework of naked limbs raked the stars, and little air stirred. The limbs looked like jail bars, keeping his spirit pinned to earth and preventing him from knowing all things. Earth was home, but also prison. He used lucifers now; strikers and flints were too much work and too chancy. He shaved a dry stick, built a tiny fire, added twigs, and soon had a hot little blaze, just right for his cook pot. He had learned to feed himself with only a copper cook pot, his knife, and an iron spoon, and that was all he had with him. He dipped the pot into the Yellowstone River, and set the cold water to heating, along with some jerky and pemmican and some rose hips he had harvested along the way. He wouldn’t need much. His appetite had faded over the years, and now he was indifferent to food.

  He lowered himself quietly to the dry gravel, a good place to be during the muddy season when sometimes there was no dry bed ground to be found.

  Was this home? Had he come all the way over here only to find that home is not a place, but a collection of memories and loved ones? He could not answer it. Did anyone on earth possess a real home, a sanctuary that put all the clawing pain in one’s bosom at ease? Was the only true home death itself?

  He lay on his back, watching for meteors in a sky patched with clouds, but he absorbed only the silence. He could not sleep, and even the usual drowsiness that signaled sleep did not approach him. Had he come here for nothing? He had imagined a home right about where the Shields River tumbled into the Yellowstone, and now that he was here and this was real, he couldn’t imagine why he had come. It was naught but a foolish fancy.

  The fire reduced itself to orange coals. The night was cold but he had often endured worse. His kit departed from Indian ways in one respect: he slept inside a blanket that was inside of a good duck-cloth bag that turned water and dew and wind, and captured heat, and opened easily along one side. His wives preferred the old ways, a buffalo robe or a trade blanket.

  Restlessly he arose, impatient with himself, and stretched. A chill penetrated his leathers and reached his soft woolen shirt. There was only a sliver moon, and this night was very black. But he could see even so. He knew this place so well that everything was stamped upon his mind, every skyline and peak. Starlight glinted in the mysterious river purling by twenty yards distant. He was not afraid.

  Moving about spared him pain. He hurt most after deep sleep, when his whole body ached and his muscles refused to obey. It was only by working his muscles in the morning that he drove the pain out of them. It was as if the pain were like some poison that needed constant flushing.

  His horse and mule stared at him, aware of something different in the shifting quiet of the night. He began walking along the river until he found himself on open rolling meadow devoid of river rock. The going was easier, but still he walked deliberately, a pace at a time, because his only lantern was the stars and a sliver of moon behind him. Across the river a snowy pyramid of a peak caught an odd glint out of the heavens. South of the river the meadows quickly gave way to black forests and foothills, and finally the vaulting mountains of the Absaroka Range.

  He was standing on home.

  He saw this place better in the void of night than by day, and the contours of the land were ingrained in his soul. A few miles to the east the view was just as handsome, but there were rattlesnakes. Here they were rare. Here were smooth grassy meadows and the majesty of nature from every prospect.

  The land was very old, but not virgin. Trails came through this very country, followed by barefoot and moccasined people, and those with shoes and boots. There were the prints of shod and unshod horses and mules, the split hooves of the bovines, the ruts of wagons and carts, the furrows of travois, the prints of dogs. From here a road led over the western mountains to the distant mining towns. Trails ran north to the Missouri, and south to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, at a place Victoria’s people called the roof of the world. In this land one could find flint arrowheads, and some made from obsidian collected from cliffs to the south. One could find old arrows, and great stone spear points, knife blades and buttons, horseshoes, bits of worn harness.

  Skye liked that. He was a sociable man who enjoyed people and welcomed them to his hearth. He would not build a home in some remote place never visited by mortals. A night zephyr caught him, and drove cold into his clothing, so he retreated in the depths of night to his camp, flawlessly heading to the right shadow and the right gravel bar where his gear lay undisturbed.

  This time he fell asleep swiftly, and didn’t awake until sunlight pried his eyes open. Someone was staring at him. He quietly surveyed the empty gravel bar and the surrounding meadow, and discovered a bullock there, watching him. It was an ugly beast, splotchy brown and white, all skin and bones except for a huge set of horns that spanned six feet or more and arced forward into murderous weapons.

  But not a bullock. Probably an abandoned ox. Worn-out oxen were scattered all along the old Bozeman Trail, cut loose when they were too weak to drag wagons anymore. Some died, some survived. The Indians left them alone, preferring buffalo to the stringy meat of the oxen. Still, it was odd to see a
domestic animal here. Skye contemplated the animal as he lay in his bedroll. The ox neither approached nor ran, but stood there, guarding the ground.

  Skye wondered whether to shoot and eat the beast, and decided against it. A rested ox in good flesh was worth a lot of money. He rose slowly, fighting back the usual pain, while the ox watched, and then the ox trotted into the brush and hid. There was something tantalizing in all this, and Skye forgot how much he hurt.

  six

  Skye brewed some tea. It was a habit that rose from his very bones, and many mornings he cared for nothing more. He let the leaves steep in his pot, and then let the pot cool so he could drink from it.

  The day quickened, and the low sun prized the flanks of the dark mountains south and west, sometimes burnishing the ridges until they shone like new pennies. But the sunlight was a cheat and the day didn’t warm. Skye felt heavy air rolling out of Canada. He pulled his blanket about him to allay pain, and knew all over again why he needed a sheltering home.

  The tea stirred his pulse, and he was ready to introduce himself to his land. He hiked slowly east until he came again to the ground that spoke to him in the night, and stood upon it. He felt some ancient stirring that could have no name, as if the earth beneath his moccasins were speaking. Maybe gravity was heavier here, making him feel heavier, connecting him to the soil below him. He saw a great meadow sloping toward the river bottoms. Behind him the land convulsed upward into grassy hills.

  He ached for Victoria. She had medicine powers, and once in a while she warned him away from a campsite or some other place. He wanted her to stand beside him, and tell him what the spirits were whispering to her, and whether this would be a place of joy or danger or heartache. But she had begged off. Building a house was white man’s stuff, and she wanted no part of it.

  So Barnaby Skye would settle for his own wisdom this time. He noticed a shallow draw and walked to it, finding chokecherries and willow brush, and in the bottom, a thin trickle, not a foot wide. He hiked upslope and discovered a spring rising from an outcrop. He cupped his hands and lifted the water to his lips, and found it cold and sweet. The spring flowed from a vertical fault in gray rock, a good sign that it was not seasonal and perfidious. Its water could be diverted into a home, and it could cool a springhouse as well, and water livestock in a pasture, and water gardens and apple trees.

  Ample wood was at hand. The meadows here were more in the nature of parks, surrounded by mixed stands of aspen, cottonwood, fir, and pine. Wood for hearth and stove; wood for timbers and planks and window frames and lintels. Copses sprang up from the meadows, especially where there was a bit more moisture in the soil. And just beyond the valley, fir and pine blackened the slopes.

  It was a good and bountiful land, maybe not for a plowman but for a man who needed pasture and garden. Still … it was a long way from this open and virgin world to a functioning home. He had with him one small camp axe. He could no longer count on the toil of his body, his own sweat and blood and muscle, to build a house. He drifted across the parks, wrapped tightly in his blanket against the metallic air, wondering where houses came from and how he could conjure a good solid one here.

  A bit closer to the river, he knew, would be good rounded cobbles just below the thin topsoil, cobbles to lift out of their ancient beds, placed on sledges and dragged to the building site. Cobbles to be mortared into foundations and walls. He studied the woodlands, looking for stands of lodgepole pine, the preferred tree for log buildings because the logs were arrow-true and easy to work. But there were no lodgepole pines anywhere near. Only a little crooked jackpine, good enough for firewood but an anguish to builders.

  The nearest sawmill was in Bozeman City, over Jim Bridger’s pass, in the Gallatin Valley. He could buy sawn timbers and planks there if he had some money. He could have them hauled here, if he had some money. He could buy kegs of nails and window glass or even pre-made framed windows there, if he had some money.

  He eyed the sod. He could build a sod house here. He still could dig each piece of sod with a spade without help, and set it into his walls without help. He could cut poles for a roof and put thick sod on the poles for a roof. That much he could do, even at his age and with his bounty of pain. Then he could live inside his dirt house, avoid the leaks when it rained, and chase away bugs and snakes and rodents and worms. He sighed, unhappily.

  He saw flatiron clouds sliding along the northern horizon, and knew where the cold wind was coming from. Before the day was done there would be a spring storm here, and he ought to look to shelter. He turned his back to the heavy air and walked to his campsite, deep in the bottoms, where the trees subdued the wind a little and a man could find small comforts.

  The temperature was plummeting even though it was midday. Rain slapped him. He peered upward and saw nothing but clear sky, and yet rain drove into him like ten-penny nails. The dark outliers still rode far north, deepening the mystery. There was no time to marvel at nature’s perversities, so he hurried for shelter. He had lived in nature half a century, and knew what to look for.

  In this case it was an ancient cottonwood lording over a large grove. He collected his bedroll, dragged his packs to the top of the gravel bar where water would not pool under them, and then he hurried into the grove, while bullets of cold rain smacked his leather shirt and trickled down his neck. The mammoth tree spread naked branches over a wide patch of earth, but that wasn’t the shelter he wanted. He studied the massive roots and found a hollow between them on the lee side, just wide enough for him to sit in. He wrapped his blankets about him, and then the duck-cloth bag, and lowered himself into the hollow. The roots rose beside him like stout walls, scraping his duck cloth, and then he pulled the cloth over his head and the ice picks falling out of the sky stopped pricking him. He settled in, noting the sweep of white rain across the parks and brown meadows. The mountains across the river vanished in fog, which soon white-blinded him to the rest of the world.

  He had endured all this many times, and he would endure it again. A thin heat collected in his blankets. Water sprayed off his canvas, and rarely caught his face. He could no longer see sky; fog obscured it. He could not read the weather, and he knew this could last ten minutes or ten hours or ten days. He discovered sleet mixed in the rain, and knew the temperature had dropped. There would come a time when he was so stiff he had to stand, a time when he might need to drain himself, and when that time came, his haven would be violated, and he would return to water pooled where he sat.

  The horse and mule stood with heads lowered, rumps to the wind. Their backs slick and black. A bit of slush frosted the packs on the gravel, and more was collecting here and there on dried grass.

  In spite of his wraps, Skye felt cold. And worse, he was hurting again. He was breathing misty cold air, and his chest hurt too. He had weathered a thousand storms over half a century, but this was different because he hurt. As the minutes progressed to hours, his limbs ached, his back hurt, and his neck radiated so much pain that he found himself rotating his head this way and that, trying to ease the outrage of his body. A man of his years needed shelter, and he could never return to the outdoor life he had weathered for decades.

  He thought he might build the foundation of river cobbles and mortar, and then add logs and a thick floor, and raise a hearth and fireplace and chimney of cobbles and mortar, and pile the logs up into walls, thick and airtight and sealed, and then raise a roof over all of that, a roof with shakes to drain the rain away and support the heavy loads of snow that would settle on them. He would add some store-bought windows, and a stout door, and a good iron stove to cook on and supplement the hearth fire. He would give Victoria and Mary rooms of their own, and partition off his own, but the rest of the house would be a great commons for them.

  He would put a roofed porch along the front where a man might sit quietly and watch the future. He would build a massive outhouse in the back, where a man could sit without feeling the cold wind, and below the spring he would build a spring
house to cool vegetables and preserve meat. In the bedrooms he would fashion sturdy beds wrought from poles and leather, and add stuffed cotton mattresses that could blot up a man’s hurts and keep him warm and off the cold ground. Getting off the ground was the main thing. Even in a warm house, the cold of the ground in these northern places rose upward and numbed feet and made calves ache and stole warmth from each room. That was the trouble with lodges. The Crows had comfortable lodges that drew the smoke away and caught the fire-warmth, but the cold from the frozen earth stole upward, through layer upon layer of buffalo robes, and one never slept on warm ground in winter. Only on ground that made bones ache and old people draw deep into themselves.

  After Skye had sat immobilized until he hurt all over, he stood, drew his covering about him, and walked through sleet and fog down to the river, where the silver waters flashed by. Slush worked through his moccasins and numbed his feet. He walked, feeling the cold muscle of his body begin to work, to drive away the pain that seemed to build up when his muscles weren’t working.

  So Skye walked. It was better than sitting tight. It was an old person’s remedy. Old people drove away stiffness by walking. He could not see the heavens well enough to know when this storm might abate, but he would walk it out, walk until the cloud and fog lifted. He was not a good walker, his body compact and stout rather than lanky and lean, but walking would be his salvation now, and there was always this: walking took a person somewhere, and opened new prospects.