by William Gear
Parmelee stood, pulling on his trousers, threading his belt through the loops. “Can’t say there’d be much money in it, but if you wanted to follow along, maybe lend a hand, I’d be obliged.” He shot a look at Billy. “You ever heard of the Meadowlark?”
Billy had wondered when it was going to come up again. Said, “Well, of course, you fool. We been listening to ’em since before Bozeman.”
His heart was skipping.
“Not the bird. The killer.”
“The one you asked about clear back in Fort Benton?”
“George Nichols. You ever heard of him?”
“Mining speculator. Rich. I hear a lot of people don’t like him, but I don’t hear why?”
Parmelee reseated himself. “That deserter I shot? The one the vigilantes was talking about? That was his whore I took. He was a gambler. Thick as thieves with George Nichols. Now, here’s the interesting part: no sooner was Bret Anderson buried, than I hear that George is bedding his whore. Supposedly he gives her four thousand for the fuck, and she uses it to pay a note I owe on my parlor house in Denver. Then, somehow, she ends up running my parlor house.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Billy realized he was nervously chewing his lips and made himself stop. “What’s it got to do with this Meadowlark?”
“He’s George Nichols’s hired killer. The notion of a killing for hire gave me an idea. You ever seen three hundred dollars before, Billy Hancock?”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“I got that much in the Colorado National Bank in Denver.” Parmelee watched him through pensive eyes. “I haven’t made up my mind yet, but if you’re as good as I think you might be…”
“At what?”
“We’ll see at End-of-the-Tracks. If you’re good, I might pay you that whole three hundred dollars to do some killing.”
“The whore?”
“No, she’s mine. Very personally mine. I’m thinking about you dry-gulching George Nichols. His people won’t have a single notion of who you are or why you’d kill him. The Meadowlark would have no idea who to hunt down for making his boss into dust.”
“All that for three hundred dollars?”
“That’s a year’s wages, my friend.”
Billy broke out in laughter. By damn, the Devil was playing him good. One thing Billy had never been short of was a sense of humor.
114
June 1, 1868
These were halcyon days for the Dukurika. Yet again Butler found himself amazed by the genius of the Sheep Eaters and their resource-filled world. What looked like rough and mountainous country was a virtual breadbasket. From strategically placed camps, hunters had a wealth of different animals to pursue. Within a day’s walk downhill were long-established antelope drive lines and traps. In the foothills, cunning hunters set braided rawhide snares for mule deer along narrow paths between choke points on steep and rocky trails. Up high, mountain sheep could be stalked in the open meadows, and marmots on rocky slopes. Rabbits and grouse were common fare, brought down by throwing sticks. Nets were placed at exits, and pack-rat nests set afire to drive them out. By careful herding, bison were driven into dead-end canyons, and high-country hunters returned with pika and ptarmigan. If it ran, slithered, crawled, swam, or flew, it was fair game for the stew pots. Even coyote—which other Shoshoni considered taboo—was cut up and thrown into the Sheep Eater larder.
In addition the sego lily, bitterroot, shooting star, biscuit root, bladderwort, wild onions, cactus blossoms and tunas, elk cabbage, juniper berries, yucca blossoms, pine nuts, balsam, pond lily and cattail roots, wild licorice, breadroot, tobacco root, mint, and many other plants added variety. To Butler’s delight, not only were the soups and breads delicious, but a tea made from blazing star seeds reminded him of lemonade.
Not all of the harvest was consumed. Even now, portions were placed to one side to dry before being processed for winter storage. Plant material in particular was desiccated and compacted into rawhide parfleches. Wild hemp and milkweed were stripped for fibers, as was juniper bark and yucca leaves, the fibers processed into cordage. If the Sheep Eaters depended on any piece of hunting gear, it was nets—they used them for everything. Small nets were for catching crickets, fish, pack rats, and rabbits. Medium sized for netting grouse, coyotes, and beavers. The large ones for deer and mountain sheep. Second in priority were the braided ropes for snares that ranged from elk-sturdy at the top, to cord capable of suspending a flopping rabbit.
While nets and snares provided most of the catch, a man’s most prized possession was a sinew-backed horn bow. Each one painstakingly crafted from the heavy boss of a fully mature mountain ram. Such bows might take a year to manufacture, and Butler had seen one drive an obsidian-tipped arrow past its fletching into a bison’s chest. Despite never having been stronger, it was all he could do to pull Cracked Bone Thrower’s, let alone hold and aim with it.
That day Mountain Flicker led the way as they walked down an elk trail that skirted the bottom of a thick patch of subalpine fir and lodgepole pine where they had been working.
They had spent nearly an hour collecting pitch from old cuts in the fir trees. The balls of hardened sap would be moistened and mixed with crushed larkspur and gumweed. Then the concoction was boiled into an insect repellent that, when mixed with fat, could be rubbed on to keep off ticks and mosquitoes.
Like most things in the Sheep Eater world, this patch of trees was cultivated. As they left each tree, Butler had been instructed to slice additional gouges into the bark so that whoever came back later would find a new and plentiful source of the sap.
Sheep Eaters didn’t just live in the world, they changed it, guided it, and shaped it to produce for their needs. One of the first things he’d helped Cracked Bone Thrower and Puhagan do after his journey to the Spirit World was set fire to a large meadow over on the Wind River.
“Too much sagebrush,” Cracked Bone Thrower had told him. “We burn it now. When we come back next fall, this will all be filled with goosefoot to harvest. That slope up there. It used to be full of rice grass. If the sagebrush continues to grow, there will be none. But if we burn it now, in two years, it will be full of rice grass again.”
Life among the Dukurika was all about long-term planning.
Butler let his gaze travel across the narrow mountain valley with its rock outcrops, grassy meadows, and mixed patches of timber. When he thought about it, it was a lot like managing a farm to keep it productive.
Farther up the valley and above, elk grazed a lush meadow, their pale tan catching the bright sunlight. He could still see the skeletons of burned trees dotting the slope. Flicker had told him that it had been purposely set afire four years ago in hopes it would become elk pasture.
How odd; he would have thought this entire country a wilderness, untouched by human hand. Instead, most every inch of it was being manipulated with the same careful forethought that a Mississippi planter gave to his plantation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his happy forest savage was no more true than the Eastern notion of the ignorant and unwashed Indian. The Dukurika were as clever and calculating as Yankee bankers when it came to future investments. How many of the illiterate trappers and traders who journeyed among them understood that?
“What are you thinking, nadainape?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I have never been happier.” He glanced back, realizing he hadn’t seen the men as much today. Reassured, he found them following, Phil Vail out front.
He’d barely noticed it in the beginning—just an awareness that they’d been gone. But when he checked, they were always where he expected them to be. None of them ever seemed concerned. Therefore, neither was he.
Maybe they’d had their own interests in the timber? Maybe this was just a phase of his madness?
He turned his attention back to his wife. She’d braided her hair for the day, and it swayed provocatively in time with her stride. She wore a doeskin dress that hung down from her shoulders in a fringed yoke, conforming t
o her hips before dropping to a knee-length hem. As she preceded him on the narrow trail, he enjoyed the sway each step imparted to her lovely hips. Thought of how it felt when he placed his reverent hands on their full swell, of the magic they contained: the enchanting essence of womanhood. The ultimate cradle of new life.
Just the thought excited him.
And she was his. Her smile, her teasing, the sparkle in her eyes. He could watch her by the hour, marveling as her quick fingers worked hides or did quillwork. He loved the way she gripped the mano as she ran it back and forth, grinding seeds and dried roots into flour for baking. Everything about her was fresh, young, and powered by an essential vitality.
“There should be new people by the time we get back,” she told him. “My father’s naatea is supposed to be coming along with Antelope Fire’s people.”
The Dukurika did that in summer. The families and small bands all congregated at predetermined locations to socialize, trade, and catch up on old friendships.
“So I finally meet your mother and father? What if Hard Hand and Fall don’t like me?”
She shrugged. “Why would they not like you? You are a good hunter, a responsible man. You do your share. You are not stingy.”
“I’m a crazy taipo.”
Again she shrugged. “Unlike most taipo you are not lazy and arrogant. You don’t see others as being less than you. You are a blooded warrior. A war chief. You have made a Puha journey, survived yokoh with Pa’waip.” She grinned. “You are even kind to dogs!”
“All those things don’t make me likable, Flicker.”
She shot a look over her shoulder. “Butler, you worry about the silliest things.”
He grinned, reslinging the sack of pungent sap on his shoulder. Dear God, he loved this woman.
The encampment filled the head of the valley and consisted of small family groups and their extended kin and close friends. Most had settled on the same small plot their families had occupied for generations, though this particular valley hadn’t been the gathering location for several years. Here, as well, the Sheep Eaters had given it time to grow new plants, attract game animals, and for the areas they’d burned to recover.
Butler remembered how Puhagan’s wife, Flowering Sage, had cried out with delight as she turned over a sandstone grinding slab, its concave surface having been left facedown after her last visit to protect it from the elements. Old lodge poles—carefully propped back in the trees—had been recovered from where they’d been stashed, and within a day, Puhagan’s small band had reestablished themselves.
For Butler, going native had its limitations. Especially when it came to his father. Somehow he just couldn’t invite the man into his lodge. Couldn’t stomach the idea of his father being aware of what he and Mountain Flicker were doing under the robes at night. Therefore, they’d built him a shelter several paces away under the aspens.
For his part, Paw Hancock continued to recover. He could manage on his own now, pulling himself up and hobbling along on his crutch, though he said the leg still pained him.
Upon their return to camp, Butler, first thing, looked in on his father. Paw had settled himself on a bench Butler had made of poles laid across two small boulders. It seated Paw high enough that he could get his good leg under him to get up. Paw’s parfleche bag was on the ground beside him. It contained all of his remaining possessions: a knife, a Starr revolver with its flask, balls, and caps. His strike-a-light, and other possibles.
“Had a good hunt?” Paw asked, the breeze teasing long strands of white hair across his fresh, pink scars. He didn’t bother to look up as Mountain Flicker walked past and checked the stew steaming by the fire. From a brass bucket she added water and moved it closer over the flames.
Butler slung the sack of pitch down before walking over to the bladder water sack and drinking. “Red Rain and the kids went after larkspur. The way Flicker tells it, they’ll dig a hole, line it with a hide, and use hot rocks to boil the sap and larkspur. All them mosquitoes and deerflies will be a thing of the past.”
“Stuff works,” Paw growled, still refusing to look up. “Used it in the past.”
Butler gave his father a questioning glance. “So, with all the world to escape to, you came here. You said it was the only place you weren’t a lie.”
Paw fixed his eyes on the creek where it ran through the willows a hundred yards to the north. With his remaining hand he batted at a fly. “Come out here with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Bridger and his boys. Seems some woman back in the settlements had led me astray, and her male kinfolk wanted to place the blame on me. Mountains was a heap safer.”
He gestured around. “Lot of us ended up as free trappers. Took up the life with the Snakes, Crow, and Flathead.”
“Like Richard Hamilton and his kind?”
“Hamilton? You heard of him? He never thought much of me. ’Course it looks like I ended up more of a mess than that bastard Travis Hartman he used to travel with.” Paw indicated his stump.
For a moment, Paw’s smile was filled with irony. “Fool that I was, I thought if I came back to the mountains, I’d be a big man. Last time I was little more than a kid. This time I could be a booshway, a boss. Respected like William Drummond Stewart was. Spent the first year after Shiloh out here with the Crow.”
He made a face. “One of them bastards finally remembered who I was. Rather than lose my scalp, I hurried on over to the Fort Hall country, but the Shoshones over there was going to war with the whites. Then, after that shit, Patrick Conner, killed all them women and children at Bear Creek, I thought the country around Fort Bridger might be a bit more healthy. Somehow I ended up with Bazil’s band of Shoshoni. They’re mostly half-breeds. Horse Shoshoni, buffalo hunters. Wintered with them, helped with the trading down at the fort. With whites moving into the Green River country, I followed Chief Norkok here to the basin and wintered with Dirty Face in Red Canyon.”
He shook his head. “One instant I was on the trail hunting sheep, the next I’m face-to-face with that sow.”
“So, did you find what you were looking for?”
Paw shook his head. “All I found is ruination.”
“People coming,” Mountain Flicker noted, standing and shading her eyes. “It’s my father, Hard Hand! And look. Beside him is Antelope Fire.”
Butler stood, suddenly feeling panicked.
“Easy, Cap’n,” Kershaw said. “Reckon we’re behind you. C’est bon?”
“My wife’s father,” Butler said, as if in explanation.
Hard Hand was a medium-sized man, dressed in a finely tailored hunting shirt that hung open to expose his muscular chest. Long black hair had been combed up in a high wave in the front and pinned to fall down behind his left shoulder. Travel-stained moccasins shod his feet. A thick sinew-backed horn bow hung from his left hand.
Hard Hand smiled, ran forward, and wrapped his youngest daughter in his arms, a smile breaking his wide lips, his angular-planed face alight with joy.
The second man, Antelope Fire, was older, his pomped hair mostly gray. A heavy-barreled, half-stock Plains rifle hung from his hand. The man’s face reminded Butler of a storm: tortured, lined, and threatening with its leathery and wrinkled skin. A deep scar ran from the corner of the man’s nose just under the cheekbone and back to the ear. His eyes, like black stones, fixed on Butler—the impact almost physical.
The moment he turned them on Paw, it was as if psychic lightning had struck. For an instant, the air literally tingled between the two, and then a slow, deadly smile curled Antelope Fire’s hard lips.
“Butler!” Mountain Flicker took his hand, distracting him from the interplay between his father and Antelope Fire. She led him forward, face beaming. “Here is my apo. His name is Getande’mo. Hard Hand.” To her father she said in Dukurika, “Apo, this man is my husband. His white name is Butler Hancock, but he is known among us as Man-Who-Talks-to-No-One. We are naatea.”
Hard Hand’s face had gone from beaming love to implacable
stone, betraying no expression. The man’s dark eyes, however, seemed to burn into Butler’s, as though demanding to know the worth of his soul. Or souls, as the Dukurika figured it.
Butler offered his hand. “I have heard a great deal about you, sir. I am honored.”
Hard Hand glanced down at the hand, then back into Butler’s eyes. In Shoshoni he asked, “Is he a good man?”
Mountain Flicker replied, “He is a very good man, Father. Everything a man should be, more so since he’s a taipo. One who has puha and does not abuse it.”
“Why are you keeping the one who calls himself Silver Eagle? Why is he in Puhagan’s camp?”
Butler was having trouble following the rapid Shoshoni as Mountain Flicker responded, “Silver Eagle is Butler’s father.”
“Dog shit!” Antelope Fire said through gritted teeth. “That’s what he is!”
Butler stepped back at the violence in the man’s voice, seeing Mountain Flicker’s surprise and disbelief. For a stunned moment, she could only gape, then weakly asked, “You know him?”
Antelope Fire hissed through his teeth, a distasteful gesture among his people. He kept his angry gaze locked on Paw’s, who stared back uneasily, his blue eyes wavering, face a mask of guilt.
His muscles trembling, Antelope Fire asked in broken English, “Why you return?”
Paw chuckled dryly to himself. “Thought you were dead.”
“Dead.” Antelope Fire seemed to swell with hate. “You walking shit, bastard fucker.”
“Wait!” Butler cried, stepping forward, arms raised. “What is this?” He stepped in front of Antelope Fire, crossing his arms. Meeting the man’s fiery stare, he asked, “What did Paw do to you? Gwee, help me with the words I don’t understand.”
Antelope Fire struggled, as if to keep from spitting. “That man came as a youth. Wild, full of himself. And where he went, he left suffering. He was a taipo, and rich. With his smile and his trade, he lured my sister into his lodge. She worked for him, and he decorated her with beads and bells, and when the winter was over, he went to trade at Fort William. He went with Ainka Pakan, Red Arrow and his two wives. And at the fort he drank whiskey and went insane. He gambled my sister off to a taipo whiskey trader. He sold her to men for money. Within a moon, she had cut her own throat because she couldn’t stand it.
