A Long and Winding Road

by Win

  He thought of what the injury might be, probably a stone or stone bruise in the frog, and that mattered. He thought of how he could get Alice out. He’d have to leave Vici. No way he could get to rendezvous on a lame horse.

  An hour before first light he was in place. Maybe he had it figured out. At least he was going to give it a shot. His one hope was knowing the country. That was worth something. Just upstream was Flaming Gorge, boated by General Ashley when he explored it in 1825—a huge, deep canyon flanked by steep, red walls. Almost impenetrable.

  Right now Sam’s obstacle was a sentry. The man stood beside a lodgepole pine at the far downstream end of the herd. In the light of the half-moon Sam had watched him with the naked eye and glassed him. Though the fellow never moved, he was clearly awake. A good sentry was dangerous.

  Sam and Coy eased through the trees. Sam didn’t worry about Coy making noise. If the sentry heard the coyote, he’d think nothing of a song dog moving around at night.

  Sam slipped from tree to tree. Maybe the sentry would look back, but the dark trunks and absolute stillness were his protection.

  A good sentry didn’t lean against a tree because he might fall asleep. Unluckily for him, that meant his back showed.

  Sam padded closer and closer. He kept himself calm, which was simple: You accepted in advance that whatever happens, happens. Putting your feet down quietly, avoiding limbs—all that was easy if you were calm.

  Gradually, he crept to within a dozen paces. He stopped. He listened to the night and heard nothing. He watched the still figure and saw nothing unusual.

  He drew his big knife, cocked it, and with the confidence of a decade’s practice, hurled it.

  The sentry’s knees buckled. Only a small sound exploded from his lips—hnnh! He crumpled to the ground.

  Sam ran forward and jerked his knife out of the back. He caught a brief glimpse of the man’s face—I don’t have to like necessity.

  He darted into the herd, not running but moving fast. Not much time to get going. Down in the herd he couldn’t see well and nearly got disoriented. But he had Vici’s spot triangulated, as Jedediah Smith had taught him, and he moved with confidence. The animals stirred, uneasy about a man among them at night.

  Sam saw Vici, put his arms around his neck, and breathed easier. He looped the lead onto him. He knelt and lifted his front left leg. He felt a stone in the frog—that explained the limp. Gingerly, he drew it out. Big stone, bad bruise.

  He put the leg down tentatively. Sam stood up and patted him. “Sorry, boy” he whispered, “I can’t take you along.” Which stung.

  Now came the tricky part. He walked gently toward Alice, touched her muzzle, looped the lead over her neck. In a flash the bridle was on and the bit in her mouth.

  Sam vaulted onto her, raised the Celt into the air, and pulled the trigger. Ka-BOOM!

  Now he wanted a riot. “Hi-iy-iy!” he yelled. He ran Alice at nearby horses, he cut back and forth, he bumped horses. He raised his pistol and fired again—BOOM!

  Alice almost jerked Sam off, not following a cut, but he stayed on her back.

  “Hi-iy-iy!” he shouted. He maneuvered to drive some mounts downstream. Sure enough, a bunch took off. “Hi-iy-iy!”

  He looked all around. Light was raising back into the world. The sentries probably could see him. Certainly they could see two score of their horses, hightailing it.

  “Let’s go,” shouted Sam. “Hell’s a-poppin’!”

  He touched his spurs to Alice, and Coy yipped.

  “Hallelujah!”

  22

  The forty or fifty galloping horses cut a trail like the path left by a tornado. But one rider sliding away from the tornado on a stone surface left no trace at all.

  That would not be enough, Sam knew. Within an hour the herd would stop running, and the Blackfeet would find it. Soon they would figure out that the thief had not gone beyond that point, but had slipped off onto a side route. Sam needed that head start. He could also do something they wouldn’t expect, maybe wouldn’t believe. He could descend into Flaming Gorge.

  From there he would go the only way possible—across the river. Through Flaming Gorge the river was huge rapids. In June, in the spring flood, only a madman would try to swim it. Or a man who was truly desperate.

  When he got to the river, he looked along his back trail and studied the canyon rim and the gullies that led down. He saw no one. It made no difference. To go back up to that rim would be suicide.

  He looked at the river. He rode up the river and looked, he rode down the river and looked. The only route was straight ahead, and it was worse than he’d imagined. The waves were enormous, and the rocks were worse. Boulders the size of freight wagons blocked the current. If you got washed up against one… And the back side of the big boulders might be more dangerous—the water sucking back up against the rock would pin you there.

  The only route was across.

  He hunted for a decent ford until he saw the Blackfeet coming fast down a gully.

  Out of choices. He kicked Alice downstream and looked again at the least awful of the routes. It looked…

  Out of choices.

  He wondered if Alice would plunge into that water.

  He turned and looked back. The Blackfeet had come out of the gully and were galloping on the slanted ground a couple of hundred yards upstream.

  Time.

  “Let’s go, boy,” he told Coy

  He kicked Alice, and she charged into the boiling waters.

  Sam lived a lifetime per minute.

  In the first seconds he was amazed at the raw power of the current. He got woozy from the enormous, ice-cold waves battering them. He jammed his attention on the first of the king-sized boulders. He turned Alice downstream to drift below it, and make sure they didn’t cut too close behind.

  A wave knocked him straight off the horse.

  He held on to the reins, got hold of Alice’s mane, and heaved himself back up.

  By the time he accomplished that, they were thirty or forty paces downstream of where he meant to be. They were rushing up on a huge cottonwood caught on some rocks, with its root ball pointing straight at him.

  Madly, he reined Alice back where they came from, then straight downriver. They had no chance to cross above the stranded cottonwood.

  The river swept them into the dead, downstream branches. Sam hoped he would just scrape through branches and lose some hide. A big branch knocked him off Alice again, this time straight backwards. He lost the reins.

  Sam went down. A hoof clipped his forearm. The river pummeled him, churned him, threw him around. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe.

  He banged a knee hard on a boulder and beached like a fish.

  Alice was to his left, headed back for the side she came from.

  Approaching the bank, the Blackfeet whooped.

  Sam dived for Alice, missed, and grabbed her tail. He muscled himself back onto his filly’s back, seized the reins, and turned her across the river.

  For a couple of minutes they fought obstacles that were merely harrowing. They swam above a boulder the size of a tool shed, drifted below the next one, and swam above several that were only the size of grizzly bears. The waters splashed crazily over them, caught the light, and pitched foam high into the air.

  Across and down went Sam and Alice, across and down, picking their way. Alice was wild with fear and exertion. Her mouth frothed and her eyes rolled.

  Suddenly, she was on her feet. She clambered across fist-sized stones and soon was out of the water to her hocks—standing in the middle of the river.

  Sam turned and looked at the Blackfeet. They launched a bird flight of arrows.

  He whacked Alice on the rear, and she plunged back into the current. You are one plucky horse, thought Sam.

  He saw some arrows streak by. Others plopped into the water nearby. He whaled Alice with his hand.

  Quickly, they came up on a boulder with its peak rising out of the water,
and angling back like a mountain.

  Sam hadn’t seen it in time. Straight into the boulder they went.

  Sam got tossed downriver.

  Alice flipped over the boulder, legs waving in the air.

  Sam was swept downstream. He saw another boulder coming, slanting away from him, and rammed himself onto it hard.

  Where’s Alice?

  His eyes scoured the river. Nothing. Over the tumult of the rapid Sam launched his piercing whistle. Nothing.

  Suddenly he saw her, far downstream, floating on her side. He whistled as loud as he could. As Alice floated away, she tried to lift her head, and then let it fall back into the water.

  A few moments later she floated into a big fir tree that was grounded in the channel. She disappeared under the branches. The tree would pin her to the bottom, and the current would hold her down forever.

  No chance.

  Sam looked toward the bank and made his choice. He dived into the freezing water and kicked like hell.

  Ten paces short of the bank, he swam into an eddy and bobbed gently upstream in the current. Sam reveled in the calm.

  He remembered how to breathe. He inspected his knee and his forearm—nothing worse then scrapes and bruises. He turned and looked across the river and upstream at the Blackfeet. He grinned. He climbed up onto a boulder, turned his back to them, dropped his breechcloth, and mooned them.

  When he looked at them again, they seemed to be shouting and shaking their fists.

  From among them a cloud of white smoke arose, and Sam knew one of them had fired a musket. He knew it wouldn’t be accurate at this distance, over a hundred paces.

  He waved.

  He thought of firing back—amazingly, the Celt was still locked in his hand—but the gunpowder was certainly soaked.

  He started checking to see what he might have lost in the river, aside from Alice. The inventory seemed all right. He felt astonished that he’d survived. No body parts were torn off, no essential survival gear missing. Even his field glass was safe inside his shirt.

  Then he realized what was gone.

  Coy.

  Gone.

  23

  Sam walked up and down the bank, from bush to bush, calling out, “Coy! Coy! C’mon, pup! Coy.”

  Occasionally he launched an ear-splitting whistle, but he didn’t have any hope for Alice.

  He walked for more than a mile downstream, then walked upstream to the point opposite where he’d jumped in. Then he walked a little further, turned around, and walked the entire mile downstream again. He called to Coy. He whistled again.

  By this time night was full on.

  He lay down and slept. Coy would probably come back during the night. If Coy was alive, he would find Sam, that was for sure.

  That night he dreamed, over and over, of how he met Coy. He’d been walking down the Platte River toward Fort Atkinson, though he didn’t know it was the Platte, or where the fort was. He was alone, on foot, and almost out of balls to use for hunting. He was half starving. And he still had five hundred miles to go.

  Just to bring things to a fine head, a prairie fire got started. Sleeping in a grove, Sam smelled the smoke, got up, and spied the fire to the northwest—moving straight at him.

  He took measure of things. He was too far from the river to run to it, though he could hear animals trying exactly that. Their shapes flitted through the darkness, black ghosts.

  The creek. He stepped to the creek and laid down in it. Not deep enough—it left half his body exposed. He tramped around in the dark water, but none of it was more than a few inches deep.

  He was about to decide to die bravely when he heard a mewling. He looked toward the carcass of the buffalo cow he’d shot that day. He’d gutted her out, and would butcher her in the morning.

  Just then the fire hit the creek a hundred yards up, and the crowns of the cottonwoods lit like torches.

  The mewling again. A coyote pup was sniffing and scratching at the slit in the cow’s belly.

  Sam got the idea. He ran to the cow, picked up the pup, lay down, and wormed his way backwards into the buffalo.

  Dark. Quiet. Safe? Or would he roast alive?

  The trees around him exploded in flames—he could hear the roar, and the popping of branches.

  Suddenly his knees burned like the devil.

  He rolled over.

  In an instant his ass was getting cooked. The pup pissed on him.

  He rolled back over and screamed—his knees were frying.

  Soon it was over.

  He stayed inside the buffalo until morning. Then he and the pup squirmed out and looked at an ashen world.

  Among the dead, Sam was sure, was the pup’s mother.

  He’d gained a companion.

  Later, when he told the story, Sam also gained a name, Joins with Buffalo.

  But the companion felt more important.

  When he woke up this morning, no Coy.

  He walked the bank again. By mid-morning he decided to put an end to this self-torture. Under a cover of thin, cobblestone clouds he started out of the gorge. No Coy, no Alice, no pipe, no hope.

  24

  He walked north and thought about Coy. Drowned? Head bashed in? Leg broken? Why didn’t he hear the pup complaining? Funny to think of him as a pup, since they’d been together ten years, but he was a small coyote.

  Sam tramped along. Rendezvous was eleven or twelve sleeps to the north for a full party with pack animals, maybe half that many for a well-mounted man alone and in a hurry. He didn’t know how many sleeps for a man afoot.

  He hoofed it. Black’s Fork came in too full to cross safely. He walked up it for a full day, found a ford, crossed a divide, and got back to the Siskadee.

  For two more days he walked under a blazing sun, the next day under half-hearted rain clouds—they dropped sleek lines of dark moisture, but the rain dried up halfway to earth.

  He was hungry, but he didn’t care. The noise of shooting would be dangerous, and besides, Coy was dead. Sam ate roots, not bothering with a fire. He consumed rose hips until he was weary of them. When he found cattails, he pulled them and ate the soft bottom parts.

  Coy, Coy, Coy. Occasionally, he thought of Paladin—he would get his horse back at rendezvous.

  He would have to tell Tomás that Vici was gone, and Alice was dead. Both of Tomás’s horses.

  Every step, almost, Sam thought of his pup. Then, gradually, his mind turned from what was behind to what was ahead. Esperanza. Flat Dog. Julia. Esperanza.

  After a week he stumbled onto the carcass of a buffalo. The wolves or coyotes or ravens had been at it, or all three, and there were only tidbits left. He scraped off the tidbits, built a squaw fire, and broiled them. Muttering a hope that they wouldn’t make him sick, he ate the pieces half-burned.

  He stayed at the carcass the rest of the day, trying to fill his belly with snippets. That afternoon he also sliced up his hat and snipped some thongs off his leggings. He studied his tattered moccasins with a frown and laboriously tied the strips of felt around them. A poor improvisation, but better than walking barefoot.

  He looked at the remnants of the soles of his moccasins. He’d heard men tell of eating their mocs, but what did they eat? Those thin, hard, dry, wretched fragments? No point—nothing there. Maybe they meant they ate the tops. Sam needed the tops.

  He put one foot in front of the other and trod north. Every day, ahead and to the right, the Wind River Mountains got closer. Esperanza’s village wintered in a warm valley near the head of Wind River. I am walking to you.

  He saw the Big Sandy come down from South Pass, high on the south end of the Wind River range. He pushed north.

  New Fork flowed in across the river. Most times he could have hoofed it to rendezvous in a single day from here, but he was near the end of his string—limping, half barefoot, half naked, scratched, bruised, and gaunt from not eating.

  He staggered forward all that day. He would cache tonight, get another chill slee
p, and stride into rendezvous tomorrow, erect and proud.

  He limped to within a mile of Horse Creek—the camps would be around the mouth—and found a bed of grasses for the night. He was hungry as hell, but he’d eat tomorrow. He was beat up, but he’d feel good tomorrow. Tonight he’d wash in the river, especially to get the blood off the places where he was scratched, and in the morning he would walk in.

  He heard hoof clops.

  He reached for the Celt and crawled toward a cottonwood trunk.

  A pony’s head appeared over the bushes, and above its head, the face of a child.

  She looked at the scrawny, bedraggled white man. She made a face.

  “¿Papà?” said Esperanza.

  25

  Sam’s daughter slid down from her pony. “¿Papá?” She stepped gingerly toward him.

  Sam held out his arms to her.

  She didn’t come into them. She was always a little standoffish. The six-year-old wasn’t sure of Sam’s place in her life. She solved part of the problem by calling Flat Dog “father” in the Crow language and Sam “father” in Spanish.

  “Bang, you’re dead,” said Flat Dog in English.

  Sam grinned at his brother-friend.

  “People said you…,” said Esperanza in Spanish. Her English was iffy, and her voice now quavered.

  Sam felt good to hear the quaver. He stepped forward and swept his daughter off her feet. He held her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, just like a father.

  She wiped it off.

  Flat Dog dismounted and offered Sam his hand—the Crow liked that white-man custom.

  Sam shook it warmly. “Dead?”

  “Tomás came in two days ago, said you should have been here already.”

  “Something came up,” said Sam.

  “Not your hair, I see,” said Flat Dog.

  “Damn near.” Sam set Esperanza on her pony.