North Star

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He wheeled his horse to lead his parade, and then looked back.

  “Mister Skye, don’t confuse Dogwood’s longhorns for wild game. It would cause no end of trouble.”

  “My eyesight’s getting bad, Major. Never know what I’m shooting these days. I can’t even tell if it’s two-footed or four-footed.”

  The major laughed and wheeled his patrol west.

  Victoria looked irritated. “When white men talk, I don’t understand nothing,” she said.

  “He said he won’t report us, and don’t get caught.”

  “Then why didn’t the sonofabitch just say it?”

  “Politeness, I imagine.”

  “I’ll never understand you crazy people,” she muttered.

  Skye turned his party north, where he would intercept the Bridger Road and could follow it into the great valley to the north.

  “Dirk,” he said, “tell our people that all’s well. We can hunt, but not where the Sioux are buzzing.”

  Dirk let the others catch up, and quietly explained that the army didn’t mind, and this hunting party would slip north, past the ranch there, and look for buffalo in the hidden draws near the Place of Meeting.

  If the conversation with Major Graves had fascinated Victoria, it has fascinated Dirk even more. Here was something his schooling by the Jesuits had not touched upon, an entire visit in which the principal concerns of each party were scarcely addressed. Skye wanted to lead his hunters to the plains but didn’t say it. Graves wanted to know why the Shoshones were off the reservation but didn’t say it. Skye wanted the major to know that the food allotments were seriously short, but made no accusations. Graves wanted them to know that this state of affairs justified a hunt, with the army’s blessing, but didn’t say it that way. And the major said he would consider all this a Sunday stroll, and a chance encounter with Skye and his family.

  Why hadn’t the conversation been direct and open? Dirk grasped that there was a world among white men he knew nothing about, and his father was a master of it, using innuendo and guile, even as the major did.

  Skye led them into the Big Horn Basin over the next days, where they cut west, keeping a sharp eye out for Yardley Dogwood’s drovers. But it was a vast basin, and they never sighted the Dogwood company, even as they skirted the western foothills until they arrived in the place his mother called meeteetse, or meeting place, and found buffalo hidden in the nearby ravines.

  thirty-six

  The hunt required only minutes. The butchering took the afternoon. They dined on tender, hot buffalo tongue that night, while the chill wind froze the quarters of three cows and two bulls. Never had meat tasted so fine. Never had they been so happy. They watched sparks fly into the heavens, and sang songs and settled into their robes. The world was good. The next dawn they left for the reservation with as much meat as they could carry or drag, all frozen solid. It would be a bounty for the hungry people on the reservation. People would laugh and smile once again. Two days later, not far from the reservation line, they ran into a patrol from the reservation, led by Captain Orestes Wall.

  “The agent’s some put-out that you left the reservation without permission, Skye.”

  “It’s Mister Skye, Captain Wall.”

  “Well, whatever. Major Perkins requested me to confiscate any meat.”

  “Is it his intent to starve the Shoshones?”

  “No, he wishes to teach you a certain lesson.”

  “There are over four hundred Shoshones on the reservation, sir. They receive twenty-eight culled beeves a month. Most of each month they have no meat. And live on short rations.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Skye. I’ll have to take that meat.”

  Bitterness flared in Skye, but he contained it. “All right then,” he said. “We’ll leave it here for you.”

  “No, bring it along.”

  A sorry parade of Shoshones, their spirits bleak and their hunting triumph ruined, rode wearily toward the Wind River Agency, escorted by soldiers with carbines in their sheaths. The soldiers wore heavy blue overcoats. The People wrapped blankets or old robes about themselves and hunkered deep into them. At some point they crossed the invisible line, a line scarcely understood by these people. The mounted infantry rode to either side, pinning the Shoshones between them, as if they feared that these people, dragging a heavy load of meat and buffalo hides, would escape.

  “Bastards,” hissed Victoria.

  Captain Wall heard her and stared.

  Skye eyed her. She was worn from the butchering, and so was Mary. Their dresses were smeared with blood and offal. Dirk stared bitterly at the soldiers, saying nothing, but Skye knew things were brewing in the boy’s head. They had worked hard in a cruel wind to gut and skin and quarter the buffalo, wanting it done before the gore froze to their hands. Maybe it was all for nothing.

  They rode under a cast-iron sky, past cottonwoods naked of leaf, past reeds and rushes faintly red or orange. Snow lay in patches on the hilltops. That last dozen miles was hard and cold, and worse, it was angry. The hunters fumed, whispered to one another, eyed the soldiers with frank bitterness, and Skye imagined some of them were thinking of causing trouble. He hoped they wouldn’t.

  At last the whitewashed agency buildings hove into sight. The wind was whipping the chimney fires downward, making the smoke crawl the tawny grasses. The army camp lay a half mile upriver. Major Perkins saw the sorry party coming, and was waiting for Skye on his veranda, dressed in a thick long buffalo coat with a hood.

  The hunting party paused before him, and the soldiers spread out, ready for trouble and expecting it.

  “Sorry about your meat, Skye, but you took my wards off the reservation.”

  “There’s no game on the reservation, Major. Every last deer’s gone. There’s no elk or bear or wolves or coyotes or foxes or marmots or beaver, either.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “There’s no beef either, because two are missing each month and the rest are hardly worth slaughtering.”

  “So?”

  “And not much flour or sugar or beans or rice, because not enough reaches here, or maybe enough does but it doesn’t reach these people.”

  “Enough of this.” Perkins addressed the captain, “Take the meat to the camp. It’s yours.”

  Slowly, wearily, Skye dismounted, favoring his bum leg. He limped to one of the travois horses and settled himself on the heavy load of meat. The travois bent under him.

  “Over my dead body,” he said.

  Dirk jumped off his horse and threw himself over another travois. “And mine,” he shouted.

  “Skye,” Wall shouted. “Get off of there.”

  “You heard me.”

  Victoria staggered off her horse and threw herself over another travois. Mary descended to the ground and swiftly unhaltered a travois horse.

  “Skye, I’m warning you,” Captain Wall roared. “Get off. Get your family off.”

  But then The Runner leaped to the ground and threw himself against a packhorse carrying a quarter of a cow. And the rest of the hunting party leaped to guard the remaining meat and hides.

  “Over our dead bodies,” The Runner said, sonorously, in a voice that oddly carried deep into the afternoon.

  Wall turned to his squad. “Withdraw arms. Load and aim.”

  Reluctantly, the unhappy bluecoats unsheathed their Springfield carbines and leveled them at the hunters, at Skye and Victoria and Mary and Dirk.

  “Now get off,” Wall snapped.

  Skye stared at the black barrels pointing toward him, the dark bores ready to spit flame.

  “I suppose my time’s come,” he said. He did not move.

  The Indian agent slid to the side, getting out of the line of fire.

  A gust of wind caught the flag, flapping it hard, until it snapped and crackled in the gale. Wall glanced at it, at the Skyes, at the hunters, and at the agent, who looked frightened.

  He turned to his men. “Sheath your weapons
,” he said.

  His frightened bluecoats swiftly returned their weapons to their saddle sheaths.

  “Take your meat to your people, Skye,” Wall said.

  “Insubordination!” the agent said.

  “Yes, Mr. Perkins, it is that, all right.”

  Skye waited until every carbine was sheathed, and glared furiously at Dirk who began to stir. Dirk caught the glare and stayed quiet, his body across the buffalo quarter.

  “Now, Captain Wall?” Skye asked gently.

  “Now, Mister Skye.”

  Mary addressed her Shoshones and told them they could go, divide the meat, give to the poorest, and sing a song this evening.

  Skye listened.

  Wall turned again to his men. “We’ll ride to the post now and let these people feed themselves and their kin.”

  The soldiers looked relieved. They knew these Shoshones as friends and neighbors, knew them by name. Slowly, they wheeled their horses about and rode to their encampment.

  Skye lifted his old top hat and settled it, an ancient salute. He hurt again. He never stopped hurting.

  Perkins retreated to his lair, slamming the door behind him. Skye watched the windows, fearful that something bad might yet befall them, but he saw no sudden menace crowding any window frame.

  Victoria, old and gray and worn, walked to Skye and pressed her gnarled hand in his.

  “You are a brave man,” she said.

  “You and Mary and Dirk give me courage,” he replied.

  She turned to Dirk. “Goddamn, you’re a man,” she said.

  Dirk seemed to straighten and stand taller. He, too, had put his life on the line for his mother’s people. Skye eyed his son, who eyed him back, and something fine passed between them.

  Mary caught the shoulders of her son and gazed deep into his eyes, and then released the youth. Skye and his wives all knew that at this moment, the youth had passed into manhood. Maybe Dirk understood that too.

  They found the cabin numbingly cold, and there was no wood for a fire. Victoria, too weary to go hunt for some, sank to the robes and pulled one over her. Wordlessly, Mary collected a hatchet and started for the door, but Dirk stayed her.

  “I’ll find some,” he said.

  Mary gratefully gave him the hatchet. Deadwood was now more than an hour distant, and it would be a long time before Dirk returned with enough for a fire. They had a buffalo tongue to boil, if only they could start up the stove.

  Skye peered around the dreary cabin, wishing he had a lodge, where a small flame in the middle of the cone soon spread its delight. He sat down beside Mary, as worn as she, and drew a blanket around him, but it didn’t offer much comfort.

  At great peril he had won a small victory this afternoon, but it was no victory at all. A darkness hung over the Wind River Reservation, a homeland that was really a prison, where they were starting to starve. Maybe, if he could summon the strength, he could take his family back to the Crows, who still roamed freely in buffalo country. Not that the Crows’ freedom would last long, either.

  There was no escape from the encircling darkness. He slumped wearily, favoring his bad leg, and waited for Dirk. Even Mary, much younger, gave up her toil and climbed under a robe, trying to ward off the damp, rank cold of the cabin, a cold that reached right to the bones.

  What had life come to? For the first time in all his years, giving up life seemed seductive to Skye. He stared at Victoria, and found her staring at him in the gloom, their unspoken thoughts plain to each other.

  They were startled by a sharp knock. Mary rose swiftly, while Skye was still struggling, and opened to Captain Wall, who stood there with an orderly behind him.

  More trouble, apparently.

  “May I have a word?” the captain asked.

  This was the man who only a while before had ordered carbines drawn and aimed at all of them. Skye nodded curtly.

  Wall stepped in, noted the coldness, and the dead stove.

  “No wood?”

  “My son is getting some.”

  Wall turned to his orderly. “Bring these people an armload of firewood, and don’t forget some kindling.”

  “Yes, sir,” the private said, and hastened into the gloom.

  “We have no chairs, sir,” Skye said.

  Victoria sat on the ground, her robes around her. She looked gray.

  “A lodge would be more comfortable than this, Mister Skye.”

  “Yes, sir.” Skye wondered what this was about. Maybe an apology, though the army never apologized for anything, including massacres of red men.

  Captain Wall stood awkwardly, and then slowly settled himself on the cold clay. “You’ll have some warmth soon, Mister Skye.”

  Skye waited, not much caring what might be transpiring.

  Wall was an older man, trapped by the army’s glacial promotions, and not far from retirement. He had been breveted a colonel during the recent war. Now he was filling time at a lonely post. Skye knew that much about him, and had no wish to know more.

  “This isn’t right, Mister Skye. Not right at all, and the army is caught in the middle of it.”

  That faintly surprised Skye.

  “Have the Shoshones been getting their full allotments?”

  “No, Captain. Not even close.”

  “Let’s start with the meat. The reservation is supposed to receive thirty cattle a month in good flesh.”

  “That’s never happened, sir.”

  “Right you are, Mister Skye. Twenty-eight, and most of them so poor you’d get more meat off a deer. What about the grains?”

  “The people here don’t have scales, and many don’t know what a pound or a gallon is. They take what’s given them by Perkins and his two assistants.”

  “Badly short?”

  “Not what was guaranteed in the treaty.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I spent much of my life in the fur trade, Captain. I’m familiar with every trading post trick in the books. The thumb on the scale, the finger in the measuring cup, the miscount or misweighing.”

  The orderly returned, bearing wood, was admitted, and swiftly built a fire and lit it. There would still be a long wait before any heat permeated this chill room.

  “Thank you, Corporal, you may return to the post,” Wall said.

  The mustachioed corporal nodded and retreated into the twilight.

  “Now again, Mister Skye, if you’d oblige me with a few more answers. Do you know whether these shipments are short when they get here, or something is held back?”

  “They’re short when they arrive, Captain. There never are thirty cattle.”

  “Mr. Perkins’s books acknowledge receiving thirty.”

  “I never see anything shipped out, and I’ve never seen anything held back in the warehouses, Captain.”

  “Yes, it’s all accomplished elsewhere. The army’s looking into a few things, including large increases in his accounts in Washington. Have you or your people anything to add?”

  “Yes, goddammit,” Victoria said. “There’s not a deer or elk or other game left. It’s all been hunted away inside the invisible lines.”

  “We don’t even have firewood,” Mary said. “Before, we could move our lodges to firewood and game.”

  That seemed to end the discussion. The captain stood, hat in hand. “I deeply regret what happened today. The army is supposed to heed the directions of the agent in a time of crisis. I came to my senses much too late.” He paused, in the midst of the deep silence. “We’re looking into Major Perkins.”

  Skye nodded.

  “You’ve answered the questions we had in mind. Perhaps we can help matters.”

  “Thanks for the firewood, Captain. Nothing could be more welcome than that wood.”

  The captain nodded curtly.

  The beginnings of warmth began to fill the cabin as the stove popped and the fire within it began to crackle.

  Skye was slow to his feet, but Mary showed the captain to the door.

/>   Skye slid back into his robes, grateful for the tender heat.

  thirty-seven

  Early snow blanketed the valley and brightened the distant peaks. It grew harder and harder to heat the cabin. Dirk collected the half-starved ponies and threw packsaddles over them, and added an axe. He was forced to travel two miles to wood now; others were competing for the deadwood. His days were filled with little but hiking up slopes to find deadwood, hacking it to pieces, loading it onto his pack frames and tying it down, and returning to the cabin, where the stove ate his wood at a terrifying pace.

  This cabin, erected by The Runner, had been located near the agency buildings but far from forest. Mary’s brother was better off, living in a lodge the traditional way, able to move his household to fresh woodlots. And it was easy to stay comfortable in a lodge, with only a small fire. Dirk wondered what sort of nightmarish life he had returned to; nothing here resembled what he remembered from his earliest years.

  Victoria looked gray, and spent her time in the buffalo robes, lost in deep silence. And Skye seemed old, or at least worn down, and unable to help much. So it befell Dirk and his mother to care for the older ones. Skye talked now and then of going back to the Crow people, and living out on the plains with them. There still were buffalo there, and the army left them alone even if the Sioux didn’t. Skye knew now that his lodge had been cached on the Yellowstone, and it would probably still be there. The thought of going north tantalized them, but the weather was not cooperating, and they had too little food. Dirk knew little about hunting, and Skye’s eyesight was weakening, and Victoria’s strength with her bow was declining. So the whole idea of abandoning this miserable place seemed never to take wing, and they endured from day to day.

  For a few days after the hunt they feasted on buffalo tongue, their share of the meat, but it was long gone and they hadn’t seen meat since. It was said that the supplier, Yardley Dogwood, had not bothered to show up with animals when they were due December the first, and there would be no meat at all in December.

  There were muted things happening at the agency; couriers coming and going, bluecoated military men in and out. But these events did not bear upon the Shoshones, who were struggling to get through a hard winter. Dirk thought that if things didn’t improve, they would all soon be eating horses. But there was no fodder for the horses, and they were slowly starving their way toward spring, sometimes gnawing on green cottonwood bark to make a living. What sort of life was this? A life imposed by white men bent on making all this land their own, no matter who had first claimed it.