by Win
Sam raised a hand to him, and Jim said, “’Lo, Sam, good to see ye above ground.” In 1823 Jim had been a man in disgrace. Left to bury Hugh Glass, he abandoned the wounded old man and then told everyone Glass died, as he was supposed to. The story fell apart when Glass showed up in a fury. Bridger had Since proven himself over and over. That was why he was a respected brigade leader and one of the owners of Rocky Mountain Fur.
Other men wrestled, which Sam hurried the children past, because it could get rough. Everything but eye-gouging was allowed.
Several men were competing as rifle marksmen. They fixed a playing card to a cottonwood and shot at fifty paces. When they all hit the card, Old Bill Williams proposed that they shoot at the horseshoe nail that pinned the card to the tree. The first shooter hit the nail. Sam, Esperanza, and Azul walked on.
They found other men vying to show who could jump the farthest. When Joe Meek’s turn came, he ran fast toward the starting mark, did a cartwheel, bounded on two feet into the air, and did a complete flip before landing upright. Though he didn’t go the farthest, the competitors gave him the prize by acclamation.
Esperanza said, “I want to do that.”
“Me,” said Azul. “Me.”
Maybe we could go on tour with a family of acrobats and trick riders, Sam thought. But he didn’t mean it.
When the sun angled down and people gravitated back toward their own lodges, Sam, Flat Dog, Tomás, Baptiste, Joaquin, and Peanut Head gathered willow branches and built a ring fourteen paces across in the middle of the Crow circle. Then Sam alerted the people while the riders brought their mounts.
Sam strode to the center of ring. “Everybody watch!” he barked like a circus ringmaster. “Here come the medicine riders!”
He made arm motions, and Baptiste blew some entry music. All three horses entered the ring parallel. Both kids came without saddle or bridle, but Flat Dog had full equipment plus bows and arrows.
Sam waved his arms in a certain pattern, and the horses shifted from a walk to a canter around the ring. Another wave and they reversed direction. A third motion and they ran to the center and loped in a tight circle. Sam’s arms and Baptiste’s tunes worked together.
Crow men were gathering fast, and the women trilled. Joaquin and Peanut Head cheered loudly. Sam could see Esperanza getting excited about her stunt.
Now, responding to Sam’s signals, the ponies raised their forelegs, pivoted for a half turn, and came back to earth. They demivaulted first to the left and then to the right. The Crows, true horsemen, watched in amazement.
Now came Esperanza’s solo turn. With her pony loping around the outside, she stood up on his back. She waved happily to the audience. Then, to a big crescendo from Baptiste, she bounded off, landed on her feet, bumped down to her knees, and leaped back up.
The trills and shouts were loud for the six-year-old. Joaquin and Peanut Head made the most noise. Esperanza bowed to the audience as Sam had taught her, and the Crows laughed.
Tomás clapped his hands, but Sam could see his heart wasn’t in it. In a couple of years Kallie might do tricks, but not now.
Azul’s turn. As his horse walked, the little boy scooted onto its rump and did a backward somersault onto the ground. He hit too far back on his bottom and bumped his head hard. He tuned up to cry, but the cheers of the audience changed his mind, and he grinned.
Now Flat Dog performed the grand finale. He galloped sunwise around the ring, half a circle apart, slid under his mount’s belly, both hands free, and shot arrows fast at the audience—actually well high, but it made the effect.
The kids jumped back onto their ponies. All three mounts came to the center of the ring and, ducking their heads between their hoofs, bowed to the audience.
Esperanza leapt off the pony into Sam’s arms.
29
“What are you going to do about your pipe?” said Flat Dog.
He and Sam were bringing the horses back from the creek. Most animals were turned out with the herd. Especially trained horses, though, buffalo runners, war horses, or show animals like these—such mounts were watered on a lead and then kept staked by the tipis of their owners, under close watch.
Sam let his breath out. “I’m stumped.” The pipe was the other horse pulling on him.
Brother friends don’t have to say much. Sam and Flat Dog staked the horses in silence.
The first problem was, there could be no hope of getting the pipe back from the Blackfeet, or even of finding the village which had it. The only solution was to get a new pipe. Which Sam could do, if…
There was a right way to go about such things. First, Sam would have to go to the medicine man who gave him his original pipe and report it stolen. A ceremony would then be performed to take away that pipe’s power, so it could not be misused.
Then, if Sam had carried the pipe honorably, he could ask for another. In asking, gifts of tobacco, red cloth, and a blanket were customary, and after the ceremony you gave a feast for the medicine man.
But Sam was cut off from all that. Bell Rock, who made his first pipe, carving the bowl from red stone and the stem from wood, lived in the village of Rides Twice. Sam had killed Rides Twice’s son.
They now sat on the ground near the fire pit, which was dead ashes on a hot July afternoon.
Julia came out of the tipi—the children were evidently napping—and started cutting deer hide with scissors, a sign of her Californio upbringing.
“You and I go to Bell Rock together,” said Flat Dog.
Sam looked up sharply.
Julia stopped in her work. She was making a pair of moccasins for Sam. She’d already made one, and would make several. Crows were famous for their excellent moccasins. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.
“There’s a way if we’re careful,” said Flat Dog.
He laid out his plan.
Sam looked inside himself and decided maybe he could hope. He needed a pipe. He felt stripped naked without it.
“Too dangerous,” repeated Julia. Normally, a Crow wife wouldn’t speak up to her husband and brother-in-law so bluntly. But Julia’s veins flowed with the blood of a powerful family.
“You might get around Rides Twice that way,” she said. “A leader would not go into another chief’s camp and attack a guest. But you cannot get around Owl Woman and Yellow Horn. Yellow Horn will come for you. Or worse, he’ll send a young relative after you.”
Sam wished he didn’t remember Owl Woman, and wished he didn’t respect her. She was a village grandmother who had the ability to see beyond, and that made her influential. What she saw in one vision was that white people were death to the Crow nation.
A decade ago she spoke against Sam to other villagers. Finally, through Bell Rock, he asked her to explain why she didn’t want him in the camp.
Her explanation was eerily powerful. She spoke of a vision, or dream. In it she was alone and lost in the Yellowstone country. Her husband, children, friends, the entire village, all the Crow people, she couldn’t find anyone.
She wandered and came near a place she knew, a lake which emptied at one end into the big-water-everywhere to the east and at the other end into the big-water-everywhere to the west. Sam knew such a lake.
Now she began to hear the people—they were crying and moaning, but she couldn’t find them. She walked on toward the lake.
Riders began to pass her, white people on horses. They didn’t look at her because they had no faces. Their visages were blank, and turned toward a horizon far, far away, beyond where the sun sets. Silent, faceless, they rode past her.
Then Owl Woman came to the lake and saw. “On the pond were lily pads. Except that the lily pads were faces, the faces of the Absaroka people under a film of water. The faces were dead, the people were dead. In rows many, many of them, they lay dead. Their countenances were ghastly white, their eyes frozen open, their lips vermilion.
“I stood by the side of the pond and looked at the faces of all my people, dead. The white pe
ople marched by on their horses, never noticing. Forever they went on, forever and forever. And the people’s death went on forever.”
Sam would never forget her voice as she said these words, and the power of her vision. She told him then that the only way for the people to live was to avoid the white people altogether. Though she knew most Crows welcomed the fur trappers and were friends to them, she thought that was a terrible mistake.
Sam told her that night how mistaken she was. White people, he said, would never come to this country. It was not the kind of place they liked—they wanted flat country they could plow and plant. They wanted big, thick rivers that could turn their mill wheels and make steam for their factories. The Rocky Mountains were too dry, too mountainous, too cold—white people would never want such a place.
He would tell her the same now.
But she was set against him, and had set her husband against him, and he might not get the chance.
That evening Joe Meek sat down with them to supper. It was a mob—the four of the Flat Dog family, Sam and Esperanza, Tomás, Baptiste, Joaquin, and Peanut Head. Julia fed the lot of them.
Tomás seemed to be attaching himself to Peanut Head and avoiding Joaquin, which struck Sam as a good idea. Peanut Head was Tomás’s age, and usually sober.
Meek was an old friend and in good form, boosted by the kettle of whiskey he shared with everyone. Joaquin swigged enthusiastically. Joe had a good time telling grizzly bear stories. Seemed like the Virginian had a good time doing most anything.
In his soft Virginia speech he started with a story about the time he heard—and then saw—two of the silvertips nosing into camp early one morning. Joe jumped right up and climbed the nearest tree to get away from the bears. His partner Clement, though, was too lazy to get out of his bedroll. “Them b’ars,” said Joe, “got real curious about whatever smells were coming from them buffalo robes. They nuzzled the robes and made grunting sounds and nuzzled some more.
‘They’re discussing the most tasty parts of you,’ I shouted down to Clement. The way he pronounced it made the French name sound like ‘Claymore.’
“‘Now boys, that man is plump, just the way a ba’r likes ’em. Otherwise he’d be perched up here with me. Plump is good, a hungry b’ar can’t beat that. No, no, stay away from them feet, them are bony. And don’t bother with the head neither—it’s hard, and he ain’t got no brains, or he wouldn’t be laying there playing possum. I’d go for the ass. He’s got a big ass, plenty of fat, you ain’t never seen nothing like it. No, stay away from them ribs, there’s no meat on ’em, and he ain’t got no heart. If he had heart instead of being a Frenchy coward, he’d be up here safe with me.’
“After a while the bears got bored and wandered off.”
“Joe,” said Esperanza, “you see in your life a lot of grizzly bears?”
“Young lady, I have seen more griz than there’s needles on a pine tree. And I have shot more than you have hairs in your head.”
Esperanza rubbed her hair briskly with both hands and shook her head.
“Listen up. You kids know how to tell a grizzly bear from a black bear?”
They both said no, and their eyes got big.
“So here it is. The bear comes, you scratch up a tree fast as you can go, and now what? Here’s how you tell. If the bear climbs the tree and eats you, it was a black bear. If it BE-A-A-AR HUGS the tree, pulls it out of the ground by its roots, and slams it down and eats you, it was a grizzly.”
Everybody laughed, but the kids looked nervous.
“Let me tell you,” said Joe, “about Daniel and the lion’s den. You know that Bible story?”
They didn’t, so Joe gave them a quick fill-in.
“So here we go. One spring up near the Yallerstone me and Clement and Hawkins and Doughty, we seen a griz and set out to chase it, spring being a hungry season after winter, lotta times. That b’ar, she skedaddles right into a cave.
“Hmm. We thought on the cave and thought on our bellies, and we was more hungry than scared. So three of us decided to go in and roust the b’ar, while Doughty went up above the cave and to shoot her as she came out.
“We creeps inside real easy-like, and by the half-light we sees the b’ar. And the other b’ar. And the other b’ar. The first one is on its feet, the others layin’ down.
“We looks at each other real skeery-like. At a time like this your hind feet, they get to wantin’ to go pitter-patter right on out’n there. But I has a better idea. It’s spring, and I says to myself, and they are just waking up from their long winter’s nap, and maybe…
“I slips forward toward the sow on her feet, and I pokes her with the muzzle of my rifle.
“She acts kinda peeved, but she backs away.
“I goes after and pokes her harder.
“She snarls, but she pads back toward the entrance.
“That Clement and Hawkins, believe me, they is flat-FLAT against the wall, prayin’, ‘Don’t mess with me, don’t mess with me.’
“I gives one more poke and thar she goes outside, lickety-split.
“BOOM! and we knows Doughty has shot her.
“Now everyone gets into the act. We runs at one of the them other b’ars and prods ’im with our rifles, and he stirs a little bit and finally get to his feet, I mean paws, and out he goes.
“BOOM! We’re doing good, and now we’re grinning at each other like mad fools.
“We attacks the last b’ar, a sow, like we was swordsmen and our rifles the sharpest sabers. This b’ar she musta believed we was exactly that, because she hops right up and follers her cave mates out the door.
“BOOM!
“The three of us go runnin’ out, and I’ll be damned if Doughty hasn’t shot all three of them. And he is standing above the cave laughin’ like a hyena, slapping his knees and staggerin’ around.
“‘Daniel?!’ says I. ‘Daniel?! We know now—why, he war a humbug. It was spring and them lions was half asleep. Half asleep!’
“‘Daniel?! We done out-Danieled him. We counted coup on ’em, damned if we didn’t—we counted coup on ’em!’”
And Joe cut loose a war whoop to end all war whoops.
“Sam,” said Esperanza, “you made the tree leaves shake.”
30
“Walkara,” said Sam, “where are they?”
“Join me,” said the chief, sitting by his fire and enjoying his morning cup.
“No thanks.” Sam, Tomás, and Baptiste stayed on their feet. “Where are they? The truth.”
Walkara watched the steam rise off his brew. Finally, he said, “Truth? Very well. I don’t know. All I know is, they headed east.”
“You told us rendezvous.”
Walkara shrugged. “I made that up.” Then he gave them a big grin.
“What does east mean?” snapped Tomás, throwing the words at Walkara’s happy face.
“I told you before. Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches. For trading slaves. Especially Comanches, good slave trade. Your sisters, they are probably Comanches now.”
They stomped back toward Flat Dog and Julia’s lodge. Now the horses were pulling Sam east and west hard.
“Let’s start for Comanche country,” said Tomás. “Now.”
Fortunately for Sam, Baptiste spoke up. “That was more than a month ago. They’re finished and gone on by now.”
“Probably back at Walkara’s camp,” said Sam.
“Seems to me like Joaquin has given up on his wife,” said Baptiste.
“I don’t give a damn,” said Tomás. “I no give up. Let’s go somewhere.”
They came up to the lodge, and there sat Joaquin and Peanut Head in front of the fire.
“You’ve said hardly a word about Lupe since we got to rendezvous,” Tomás said to Joaquin.
The man was always drunk, always hail-fellow-well-met, always chasing women, always ready for coffee and breakfast from someone else’s pot.
“Lupe, she is mi esposa, she lives in the center of my heart,” said J
oaquin.
“You don’t act like it,” said Tomás.
Joaquin shrugged. “I am a man. I have the urges of every man. You are the same. But Lupe, she is queen of mi corazon.”
“So you want to find her,” said Sam.
“Claro.” Sure.
“I’m going after them,” said Tomás. “Both me sisters. Wherever they are.”
“I say the same,” said Joaquin. He started to add something, but lowered his head. Then he looked at them with damp eyes and said, “Lupe, she is carrying my child. My son.”
Sam and Tomás looked at each other across the fire.
Sam said, “We’ve got an obstacle. Actually, two obstacles.”
Tomás rolled his eyes. “You, not we.”
“In the first place, we don’t know where Pegleg is.”
“So we look for him,” said Tomás.
“It would be like looking for a piece of dust in a whirlwind.”
“Mi corazon,” said Joaquin.
Now it was Sam who wanted to roll his eyes. Instead he said, “Pegleg will go to Taos for the winter.”
“My sisters,” Tomás said, “are being sold from man to man.”
Sam had nothing to say to that.
“I don’t see how you fortheget that,” said Tomás, “even for one second.”
“I don’t,” said Sam. “The first lead I have is in Taos.”
“Taos in the winter,” said Joaquin.
“Second problem. I need a pipe,” said Sam.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Tomás. He said that even in front of Flat Dog. Tomás was one who thought civilization had passed Indian ways by. He’d told Sam the pipe was a ridiculous superstition, and didn’t give a damn about Sam’s actual experiences with it.
Sam, however, didn’t say anything when Tomás went to mass with Paloma in Santa Fe, or about the rosary he wore around his neck, with a small representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe dangling from the bottom.
“So what’s your idea?” Tomás asked Sam. It sounded like he wanted to add, ‘Oh, great leader.’
