North Star

by Richard S. Wheeler

  So Skye settled his soaked top hat on his locks and walked along the Yellowstone River, following game trails through brush. Walking felt better than sitting. He cold-footed his way through muck and slush, driven by some compulsion he didn’t understand, to walk or die. He walked awkwardly, wrapped in his bedroll and duck cloth, but he never stopped walking. He had the sensation that walking meant life and stopping meant death, but he dismissed it. He might be old but he wasn’t sick. He didn’t know how far he was from his horse and mule and packs but that didn’t matter either.

  A stirring in the brush gave him pause. There had been only the deep quiet of the wilds, but now something stirred, and it was large, snapping twigs and piercing through brush. A grizzly, perhaps. Skye regretted that he had left his Sharps with the packs, and carried nothing but a belt knife.

  The ox saw Skye at the same instant that Skye limned the ox. The startled animal lowered its giant horns, threw his head to either side, those deadly horns arcing one way and another. Then it snorted and charged. Skye had never been assaulted by a wild ox, and saw no way to escape. Brush hemmed him. The murderous horns cut a wide swath. Then it was too late. The left horn, swinging like an axe handle, caught Skye’s leg and lifted him high into the fog and he felt himself tumbling back to earth, landing hard in slush and muck and brush, while the beast thumped by, its hooves missing Skye’s writhing form by inches. Pain lanced him, white-hot pain shooting up from his leg, pain such as old age never knew. Then Skye drifted in and out of the world.

  seven

  Bright stars glinted above. Firelight wavered and danced. Skye lay on his back, buried deep under blankets that warmed him well. Lightning bolts shot up his left leg and thundered through the rest of him, but the night sky was clear.

  He groaned. Immediately a man loomed above him. Skye focused carefully. This one wore a slouch hat and a heavy coat. Another man joined him.

  “You come back to us?” the man said.

  Skye nodded.

  “Lucky we were close. Heard you howling and come look.”

  “Who?” asked Skye.

  “Jim Broadus, that’s me, and Amos Glendive. We’re teamsters.”

  “Didn’t know anyone was around,” Skye said.

  “You got thrown by one of them ox,” Broadus said.

  “Your oxen?”

  “Wild ox. That’s why we’re here. We haul for the Bar Diamond outfit. They need oxen. Lots of’em gone native around here along the old trail. They got wore out and ditched by folks. We got three span this time.”

  “Including the one got you, we think,” Glendive said.

  The memory was coming back now. That cruel horn hooking under his leg, lifting him, tossing him like a rag doll, and then the crash. He came down in a fury of pain, and howled, and then the fog rolled in.

  A new bolt of pain laced Skye’s leg and he groaned.

  “Your leg’s busted up some. Your knee ain’t never gonna be the same, mister … mister …”

  “Skye. Mister Skye.”

  “We got her splinted up, Skye, but that’s all a man can do around here.”

  “I’d be dead,” Skye said. “You saved me.”

  Broadus smiled slightly. “I reckon so. Leastwise, it’d be a long crawl to wherever you were heading.”

  Skye wrestled with pain a moment and stared about him. This was a good camp. A freight wagon slouched nearby.

  “We’ll take you to Bozeman City. That’s where we’re a-going.”

  “I can ride.”

  Glendive just shook his head, and Skye abandoned that.

  “Your leg, it’s some messed-up,” Broadus said. “We didn’t know how to splint it right, but she’s tied up tight, anyway.”

  Skye knew the Bar Diamond Freight Company. Mostly they hauled goods from Fort Benton, on the Missouri River, down into the mining camps of western Montana. Big outfit. Always needing oxen, more oxen, more mules.

  “Old man Baker sent us over here. He needs stock, and there’s free stuff floating around here.”

  Skye craned his head, peering into the dark.

  “It’s all here, Skye. We moved your camp here. Your nags and all. You were going light.”

  Skye nodded.

  “You hurting more than much?” Broadus said.

  Skye nodded.

  “It’s gonna be a hard wagon ride tomorra. But we can carry you.”

  “I guess it’s in store for me,” Skye said. He was starting to fade again.

  “You up to some broth?” one of them asked.

  Skye nodded. Within moments, they were spooning some beefy broth into him, warming his innards. But he couldn’t even swallow without his leg hurting him. He gave up after a few sips, and slid a hand down to the leg, discovered a tight-tied splint holding the leg rigid. He brought his fingers up looking for blood on them and found none.

  “I’d say in some ways it could’ve been worse,” Broadus said.

  Skye nodded, a sea of brooding pain spreading through him again.

  “Take a horse. It’s yours,” Skye whispered.

  “No. You’d do it for us if need be.”

  “At least I can thank you.”

  “That ox, the one got you, he’s under yoke now. Them wild ones remember. Whole trick is to get them into a yoke, and then they quiet right down, remembering old times. We got our ways,” Glendive said. “Old man Baker, he’s got forty, fifty oxen this way off the Bozeman Road. Baker sends us over here now and then to fetch him some more.”

  “Wouldn’t mind if you ate him for breakfast,” Skye said.

  “You need anything, Skye?”

  “You could amputate,” Skye said.

  They laughed uneasily. “We’re here if you need us. You rest now.”

  Then Skye was alone with the stars and the pain.

  He didn’t sleep much. The throbbing in his leg never lessened. But as soon as dawn broke, Broadus and Glendive were stirring, and then bringing him some steaming coffee. Skye downed it gratefully.

  “We’re heading out. We got three yoke, and that’s all anyone thought we’d get. We’ll put you in the wagon,” Broadus said. “I imagine it ain’t going to be comfortable, but it’s all we can do.”

  They lifted Skye to his feet, and he clung to their shoulders as they helped him into the wagon bed and wrapped blankets around him while he trembled. The teamsters broke camp, added Skye’s few possessions to the heap in the wagon, collected Skye’s horses, and started toward Bozeman City. Every lurch of the wagon shot pain through Skye.

  After a while, they stopped and checked on him.

  “You all right?” Broadus asked.

  Skye wasn’t, but he nodded at the teamster.

  Soon they were off again, the teamsters walking beside the oxen as they dragged the wagon upslope. Skye thought they might make Bozeman City by nightfall.

  The day went much too slowly. He felt a helplessness he had rarely experienced before. He’d been gravely wounded several times, and managed to heal up and keep on going. Now he had a broken leg. Just what had snapped or shattered he didn’t know, except that pain radiated from his left knee toward his ankle and toward his hip. Victoria and Mary were far away. Someone would have to care for him.

  He put such speculation aside. He was alive, miraculously discovered soon after the trouble with the ox, and now he was safe in good hands. He tried to rest, but pain kept him wide awake.

  It was just after sundown when the Bar Diamond teamsters halted.

  Broadus loomed over him in the dusk. “We’re at Fort Ellis. There’s no sawbones in Bozeman City, but we thought there might be one at the post here. You want us to find out?”

  “That would be good, Mister Broadus.”

  “Or we can take you into town somewheres. Livery barn, maybe. Those haylofts make good beds.”

  “I’d like a doctor, sir.”

  “I’ll send Amos in to talk to someone.”

  Skye watched the teamster vanish among the stained log buildings of the post, an
d eventually he returned with an officer, who looked Skye over.

  “Colonel Blossom here. You’re the man, eh?” he said. “Know you. You’re the old squaw man living with the Crows.”

  Skye nodded.

  “Trouble is, our surgeon’s cashiered. Clyde Coffin was a damned drunk and I sent him packing last week. We’re waiting for a new man. Point is, there’s no one here can set your bones.”

  “Anyone in Bozeman City?”

  Blossom shook his head. “Not as I know of. Virginia City, maybe.”

  “I seem to be out of luck,” Skye said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Blossom pondered it. “There’s a thing or two I can do. I’ve got a lot of crutches around, and I can give you some. How tall are you?”

  “Five feet some. I’ve shrunk.”

  Blossom nodded to his orderly, who trotted into the post.

  “Well, Skye, if I can help further, call on me,” Blossom said. “Have to go now.”

  Skye nodded. “I’ll get along,” he said. “You’ve helped me, and I’m indebted.”

  “No, old fella, from what I’ve heard, the army owes you a thing or two.”

  The colonel hastened back to the post. In time, the orderly appeared with some wooden crutches.

  “Try these, Skye.”

  Skye slipped the crutches under his shoulders and stood. They would do. He could cradle his arms in them, take weight off the broken leg. That was a start.

  Broadus and Glendive looked eager to get into town, so Skye clambered back into the wagon for the final half mile. The wagon yard was east of town on the edge of the military reservation.

  “I don’t know what to do with you, Skye,” Broadus said.

  “Could you take me to a livery barn?” Skye asked. “I don’t know where else to go.”

  They could. At the freight yard the teamsters corralled a deliveryman named Glad Muggins, who harnessed a spring wagon and helped Skye into it. He added Skye’s gear and tied Skye’s ponies on, and drove into town.

  Muggins climbed to the seat and slapped the lines over the dray horse, and the wagon creaked westward. The horse fell into a quiet walk and Skye watched the April clouds hurry past. April was a rainy month. Luckily it wasn’t raining now. Beyond the freight yard the Bridger Mountains rose high, still choked with snow.

  “Now where do you want to go?” Muggins asked.

  “Is there a livery barn?”

  “Kangaroo. North of Main Street some.”

  “Take me there.”

  Skye didn’t have a dime to his name but livery barns were the usual refuge of the desperate. There might be a bunk in a hay pile, and he had a packhorse to trade for a few weeks of chow and horse feed. He thought it would be a month before he could put weight on that leg.

  Somehow he had survived. They would not find his bleached bones out on the trail. Maybe he could find someone who would reach the Crows, and let Victoria and Mary know where he was. A livery barn was the right place to find travelers.

  Bozeman City was strung along a miry street that nearly coagulated traffic. A few boardwalks over the wetter spots provided the only passage for pedestrians. Rills from the surrounding mountains laced the ramshackle town. False-front frame stores, some whitewashed, lined the street, and a few grimy residences south of the grubby road completed this outpost of civilization. Skye pushed himself up on his elbows to see what might be seen. He scarcely spotted a woman. The place had functioned as a farming and ranching town supplying gold camps to the west with grains and meat. It was also becoming a crossroads, the market town of the vast green valley it dominated.

  Muggins turned up a side street, at least it might have been a street, and headed for a weathered board-and-batten structure several hundred yards north. A white-lettered front proclaimed it to be the Clyde Kangaroo Livery, Stock Sold & Bought.

  Muggins swung the wagon around and stopped. A chin-whiskered gent in bib overalls, armed with a pitchfork, burst out of the barn alley, and boiled down on the wagon.

  “What’s the company unloading on me this time, eh?”

  “Mister Kangaroo, this here’s a man with a busted leg, looking for a place to stay.”

  Kangaroo reached the wagon and peered at Skye. “I get stuck with every vagrant comes through here, and none earns me a dime,” he said.

  Skye found himself staring upward at a skinny gent almost devoid of chin, with bulgy eyes. A venerable slouch hat capped some dark hair.

  “I’m Barnaby Skye, sir. I broke a leg. I’ll trade a horse for some accommodations.”

  “Trade a horse, will you? You call those items horses? They look like injun ponies to me.”

  “You have it right, sir,” Skye said. “I’ll trade one for a month in your hayloft, plus feed for myself and the other horse. Take your pick.”

  “A month of chow and feed, you say? You suffer delusions, like most owners of nags. You want to sit in my outhouse and shit away three squares for a month, and pay me with that? That thing?” He waggled a gnarly finger at the packhorse.

  Skye saw no reason to respond. He lay quietly while Kangaroo circled the packhorse, lifted feet, examined hooves, pried open the mouth, studied teeth, ran a hand over withers looking for fistulas.

  “You a talker?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t stand talkers boring me half to death. I got work to do. If you’re a listener, we’ll handshake it. Me, I always need listeners. I’m here alone. I’m a born talker. You come here, you gotta listen and don’t talk back, and I’ll put you up. Maybe I’ll take that lousy packhorse, maybe I won’t.”

  “It’s a deal,” Skye said.

  eight

  The town crier, Blue Tail Feather, announced that the People would begin their spring exodus to summer grounds on the Big Horn River. Many Quill Woman, Victoria, was a little deaf, and required that Mary repeat the word from the council of elders.

  “We go to the Big Horn Valley now. Summer is here,” Mary said in English. “The omens are good. The elders have spoken.”

  The Big Horn Valley was a good place to be during the warm seasons. There were deer and elk and antelope, and bear up in the Big Horn Mountains, although not many buffalo. It was a protected valley, not easy to reach, and mostly the enemies of the People just left them alone there. Out on the plains, to the other side of the sacred mountains, things were different. The Lakota were still stirred up after driving the Americans away, and now they patrolled that country and lorded over it and pounced on anyone entering it. There were many more Lakota than there were of Victoria’s people, the Absaroka.

  Victoria stood stiffly. The winter had taken a toll on her, and her body ached. More and more she depended on Mary to do the chores, gather wood for the small lodge fire, gather roots, butcher meat kindly brought to them by the camp’s hunters. Sometimes all Victoria wanted to do was sit in a white man’s rocking chair and rock and see all things. She wouldn’t admit it though.

  Mary returned to her toil. She was scraping the underside of an elk hide that had been given to her, cleaning off bits of fat and decaying flesh. And that was only the beginning of what must be done to turn it into soft, fine leather.

  Victoria eyed Skye’s younger wife, and saw no change. Mary was caught in sadness, but Skye scarcely knew it because Mary always flashed her brightest smiles at him and hid what was slowly eroding her life away.

  It had begun years earlier when the boy was just past seven winters, and growing into a good stout son. That was when Skye arranged with Colonel Bullock, his agent and friend at Fort Laramie, to take the boy, Dirk, or North Star, to a place called Missouri, for an education offered by the black-robes. Victoria wondered about educations. Why must the boy be taken away? Couldn’t Skye teach Dirk all the things that white men called an education? But Skye had only said he wanted his son to have every chance to make something of himself, and he needed to learn to read and write and do his arithmetic.

  One fall, when Colonel Bullock was qu
itting his post, he took Dirk away with him, and that was when Mary changed, and hid the change from Skye. After that, Mary had no child to care for, and Victoria didn’t either, and a great sadness hung over Skye’s lodge. But it was the way of women to hide all that, and there were good moments because Skye was a man who brought happiness and good humor to his wives, and sometimes they laughed and had good times and met all sorts of people. Except that Skye never saw Mary shivering in the dark some nights outside of the lodge, all alone. There had been no more children. Who could say why? More children would have gladdened Mary’s heart and Victoria’s too. The barrenness was a mystery beyond knowing.

  Victoria watched Mary scrape, noting the quiet resignation, the long lines on her still-young face, and the refuge Mary took in ceaseless toil. Mary worked compulsively now, never taking any time to gossip or sit with other women or play the stick game or tell stories. It was always work, work, work, for Mary, and Skye only saw Mary’s big smiles.

  It was Victoria’s privilege, as Skye’s senior wife, to make the decisions, and now she did. She settled beside the younger wife and joined in the scraping, feeling the familiar tug of the flint-edged scraper as it fleshed the hide.

  “We will go find our man,” she said. “Maybe he needs us.”

  Mary nodded.

  Victoria scraped the elk hide some more, until her back hurt, and then she stood.

  “I will tell them,” she said.

  She straightened her winter skirt, this one of softest doeskin, and headed for the lodge of the village headman, greeting many wives along the path. The Absaroka headman now was Gout Belly, and so boyish that Victoria marveled. The headmen were all scarcely weaned in these times, she thought.

  She didn’t need to scratch at the lodge door, because Gout Belly was enjoying his morning nap on a light-skinned buffalo robe, letting Father Sun caress his caramel flesh.

  “Why, Grandmother,” he said, rising, because Victoria held a position of great honor in the village, and was known for her medicine as well as her advanced years. And it was no dishonor to be married to Mister Skye, either, though she thought it might be sometimes.