A Long and Winding Road

by Win

  And the pillage began. All guns were seized. Everything packed on the horses’ backs, all the wonderful manufactured goods, all the tobacco and whiskey, all the beauty-making items the Crow women loved—everything was claimed. Bugling Elk himself stripped Captain Stewart of his watch.

  Then the horses. The Crows loved horses, and were the master horse thieves of the mountains. Besides, they needed these animals to haul off their booty. Yes, we want the traps too, all of them, and the kegs of powder. Yes, the furs too.

  With a last laugh of derision they were gone. “John Bull,” Bugling Elk called back to Stewart, “he done be John Poor Bull.”

  Late that afternoon Tom Fitzpatrick rode in to find his camp picked clean. Stewart pulled a hangdog face. “Not your fault,” rasped Fitz. “They would have fooled me too, would have fooled any of us.”

  He turned straight around and rode back to the village, marched into the council lodge, and demanded the return of his outfit.

  Plays with His Face shrugged. “Young men will be wild,” he said—“who can control them?”

  Fitz looked at Plays with His Face, and his mind spun furiously. Why was the chief so nonchalant? Where was Sam Morgan, who was a Crow himself and might be able to set things straight?

  Fitz suddenly added it up. “Where’s Jim Beckwourth?” he asked the chief abruptly.

  “Gone hunting.”

  Now it all made nasty sense. American Fur. Big Jim here in Crow country, which was supposed to belong to Fitz this year. No doubt he’d promised them the sky in return for their trade. He had told them they didn’t need to be nice to the other outfit of trappers, not any longer. Probably he’d fought with them against their persistent enemies, the Blackfeet and the Sioux. No doubt they’d admired his warrior swagger. And no doubt, Fitz told himself, Beckwourth was the villain in the case.

  Now, negotiating, he kept a polite face. Anger would backfire. A show of rage would likely get his entire brigade wiped out, for he was vastly outnumbered. He talked quietly. He pointed out that his men could not survive unless they got the horses, rifles, and powder back. He also wanted the traps. Crow men didn’t much care to trap anyway, Fitz added.

  After an hour or two he had a few horses, a few guns, a little powder, and a few traps. He stood up, knowing that was all he would get. He held his fury sufficiently in check to say a half polite goodbye, and hightailed it out of there.

  He also hightailed out of the entire country. The Crows couldn’t be trusted any longer. Fitz rode toward Jim Bridger’s brigade, so that humiliation, even disaster, wouldn’t mean death.

  But Jim Beckwourth had better watch out. In Fitz’s eyes he was a damned traitor.

  36

  Sam, Flat Dog, Bell Rock, and Peanut Head—all outsiders in this village—rode into an exuberant celebration. For the Crows most manufactured goods were the stuff of fantasy. Maybe the power of the sacred pipe, the vision quest, the sun dance, and the sweat lodge were real as rocks and trees, but blankets, iron pots, powder and lead, and especially guns were gaudy prizes barely to be imagined. The Crows wondered, and sometimes asked the beaver men, what medicine brought such miracles, what gods had power to grant such marvels. They had been amazed, from the beginning, that the trappers would trade these glories for something as commonplace as the skin of a dead beaver. They had whispered among themselves that these beaver hunters were really dumb.

  A young man walked by flipping a steel butcher knife into the air and catching it by the handle. He beamed at his new toy.

  “What’s going on here?” Sam asked him.

  “We showed the white man he is not so smart,” said the Crow.

  Sam stiffened at the term. “What white man?”

  “Broken Hand,” said the Crow.

  Sam looked at Flat Dog, Bell Rock, and Peanut Head. So Fitz had come here and gotten robbed—by Crows!

  Coy made a whining yowl.

  As the four men watched, Crow men, women, and children tried out every part of their windfall. It was enormous—they had taken an entire year’s worth of trade goods, an amount that would have been traded perhaps to a dozen villages. Women spread out entire bolts of wool and cotton cloth, then wrapped themselves in it and whirled around, giggling. Men played with locks of rifles they would never have been able to afford. Boys threw steel tomahawks at trees, practicing. Girls ran around tinkling bells with both hands.

  The riders walked their horses a little further and saw several men pass jugs filled with whiskey. Fitz had carried several kegs of pure alcohol. “Bad news,” said Sam.

  Immediately, he dismounted and went to them. “I’ll show you how to make it good,” he said.

  Coy trotted up to a man who was already half-drunk, the liquid from the jug running down his forearm. The coyote licked a little of it off. Instantly he gave Sam a sour look and wiped his tongue on his furry foreleg.

  The drinkers were sitting in a circle in front of a lodge, queer expressions on their faces. Pure alcohol will do that. Sam looked over his shoulder at his friends, still mounted. “You best find out what’s happened,” he said.

  They rode off, Flat Dog leading Paladin.

  Sam turned to the drinking companions. “There’s a trick to making firewater,” he said with a big smile. He sent one of them for a keg of creek water and got another to bring a twist of tobacco—the camp had a windfall of tobacco now.

  The drinkers stared at him foolishly, their minds already woozy.

  What is a booze-out this big going to do to these people?

  In a few minutes he had one keg of whiskey mixed half and half with water and seasoned with tobacco. “We should put in some black pepper and a couple of red chiles,” he said, “but we don’t have any.”

  His companions passed the new jug and slurred out words of approval. Sam suggested in his fluent Crow that the whole camp share this keg and put the rest away for later.

  “No,” said one.

  “Too much fun,” said another.

  “Too much of it will kill you,” Sam said flatly.

  “Shut up, white man,” said a drinker, his cup heading for his lips.

  “This man is my brother-friend,” said Flat Dog, coming up behind. “He is a Kit Fox, a carrier of the pipe, and a sun dancer.” He looked hard at the drinkers. Probably some of them were also members of the Kit Fox society. “Listen to him,” Flat Dog said. “Too much whiskey will kill you.”

  Most of the drinkers shrugged. Two filled their tin cups and walked away.

  Sam slipped off with Flat Dog. “How the hell did this happen?”

  “You better hear it from Beckwourth,” said Flat Dog.

  Sam put an edge into it. “Beckwourth?”

  “You son of a bitch,” said Sam.

  “Now ain’t that a way to talk to a comrade,” said Beckwourth. His story had been quick in the telling. He’d encouraged the Crows to trade with the trust instead of Rocky Mountain Fur. “Ain’t no dishonor in that. I am loyal to the man that pays me.”

  “So they robbed Fitz.”

  “They pushed things a little farther than I said. You know they is the best horse thieves in the mountains.”

  “You put them up to it.”

  Beckwourth hesitated. “Sam, this child is gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. Considering.”

  Considering, Beckwourth was saying, that the two of them had spent a winter together in Rides Twice’s village. Considering that they’d shared a lot of campfires and a lot of meat, that they’d fought their way together through hard times and laughed their way through shining times.

  “You son of a bitch,” repeated Sam.

  Coy uttered a low ruff.

  “Your emotions always did ride faster than your brain,” said Jim.

  “I thought we were on the same side.”

  “The white side?” asked the black man.

  “You know better than to talk like that.”

  “Like I said, I’m for the man that pays me.” He put on a clever little smile. “
Did you know they paid me to build a fort down at the mouth of the Big Horn?”

  Sam flashed hot. “The Big Horn? Just now at rendezvous they divided the hunting grounds fair and square for this year. Fitz got Crow country.”

  Jim spread his big hands. “I just do what I’m told. Me and Tulloch built that fort last coupla months. It’s doing fine. Now I’m ambling around among my Crow friends”—he made a sinuous movement with one hand—“reminding them where they can go to trade. Earning my wages.”

  Sam forced himself to calm down. “Did Fitz leave here stripped?”

  “He was here talking with the chief, like usual. Then he come back all righteous indignation. After he calmed down, Plays with His Face give him back horses, guns, powder, lead, traps—some of each one.”

  Sam looked at Flat Dog and took thought. “I guess,” he said, “we don’t have to go after him and rescue his ass.”

  “Mister Fitzpatrick is as good as mountain men get, good as you and me, Sam. He be fine.”

  Sam looked around the camp. “I don’t know how fine things are here. There’s a blow-out…”

  An awful, strangled cry shut them both up.

  Sam, Flat Dog, and Beckwourth ran toward the sound. It was gone before they got there.

  Coy whined.

  One middle-aged Crow stood over another. He held a knife out at a fierce horizontal, hand and sleeve dripping with blood. The other man’s chest was a puddle of red.

  Sam looked the attacker in the face. He seemed struck dumb by what he had done. Sam chopped his uplifted wrist hard with the edge of one hand, and the man dropped the knife. He fell to a knee, holding his wrist and moaning.

  Flat Dog said, “He smells like a whiskey barrel.”

  A young woman ran up screaming. She threw herself on the bloody man and wailed.

  The attacker rose and stumbled off.

  An elderly woman scurried up. Silent tears streaming down her cheeks, she knelt in the dust

  “Who is this man?” Sam asked her.

  “Yellow Horse. My brother, her husband.” She held the bloody man’s hand, stroked his hair back off his forehead, looked into his eyes.

  Yellow Horse tried to say something to her, but it drowned in his throat. Sam knew he wouldn’t speak again.

  The young woman sent up a shriek that frightened black birds out of the trees.

  “Why?” said Sam. Crow people didn’t kill each other, just didn’t.

  “This young woman,” said the elderly woman, “she was married to the man who did this. Half a moon ago she left him and went to my brother’s lodge.”

  “So this is jealousy?” said Sam. That seemed odd, because Crow marriages seemed to shift at will.

  “No,” said the woman, “it is your whiskey.”

  Flat Dog and Sam found Plays with His Face right quick. He was half drunk.

  “Kit Foxes!” cried Flat Dog. “Kit Foxes!”

  Bell Rock stepped up alongside and sang: “Iaxuxkekatū’e, bacbi’awak, cē’wak.” Bell Rock’s voice was passion, and Sam joined him part way through. The words meant, “You dear Foxes, I declare, I want to die.”

  Three men made their way to the crowd to them.

  “We are Kit Foxes, the three of us, the three of you,” Flat Dog told the newcomers. “One of the duties of Kit Foxes is to make sure people are safe.”

  Coy gave a single bark, as though he wanted to pitch in.

  The three men nodded hesitantly. Maybe they didn’t like being told their responsibility by an outsider.

  “Too many people are drunk,” Flat Dog said.

  Sam thought at least one of these Kit Foxes was boozy, and another seemed feeble with age.

  “Two drunks have already gotten into a fight,” Sam said, “and one is dead, Yellow Horse. I call upon the Kit Fox Society to enforce order here, so that no one else gets hurt.”

  Now the men nodded in agreement.

  Beckwourth stepped up and said, “I’ll help out.”

  After a hesitation, Sam said, “Good.”

  Peanut Head came out of the shadows and said in English. “Me too.”

  The feeble man said in Crow, “Is he a Kit Fox?”

  “No,” said Sam in the Crow language. Then in English, “Peanut Head, go with the old fellow and help him.”

  It was a long night.

  Sam marched around the camp as a guard. He broke up three fights. No one died, but one man was bloody, and one broke an arm.

  For a while Sam watched people play the gambling game with the fox bones in the hand. They sang the songs wildly, but nothing worse.

  He kept an eye on Peanut Head and the old man. He checked regularly with Flat Dog, Bell Rock, and Beckwourth.

  About midnight Plays with His Face staggered up to Sam. “Thank you,” he said, “you are a true guardian of the people.” The chief was still drunk. He walked off, threw both arms out, and loudly snorted like a buffalo. “I am a bull,” he shouted. “I want a cow.”

  People nearby laughed.

  Sam saw lots of couples go into the bushes hand in hand. Crow marital tolerance was being tested tonight.

  Once he saw a teenage girl leave the hand game and make her way into the bushes. An older man slipped out of the crowd watching and padded quietly behind her.

  Sam eased along behind both of them. The girl squatted, probably to pee. The man seized her by the hair and threw her on her back. She screamed.

  Sam clubbed the man with the flat of his tomahawk. When the rapist crumpled, Sam pushed him with a foot onto some prickly pear. He howled.

  “You’re the one needs to get pricked,” said Sam.

  Then he led the girl back to the game. She glanced toward the creek, walked on to a lodge, and ducked in.

  When the rapist came back picking needles out of his skin, he wore a huge scowl. He walked right past Sam without recognition. Apparently, he didn’t even know who pushed him onto the cactus.

  “I seen an adventure at the crick myself,” said Beckwourth.

  Sam looked at him questioningly.

  “A pair, them over there, was doing the deed on the bank. They picked an undercut place, I guess. The bank caved in, and they went for a swim.”

  “Cooled them off, I guess,” Sam said.

  “And shriveled him up,” said Beckwourth.

  Coy howled at the moon, a shivery sound.

  By three or four o’clock, according to the Big Dipper, most people were in their lodges. A dozen or fifteen men were passed out on the ground, and a handful of women.

  Sam and Flat Dog checked again on the sentries watching the ponies. One of them was drunk, another drunk and unconscious.

  Sam took their names and sent them to their tipis. The camp police could deal with discipline later. He and Flat Dog took guard duty.

  Coy slept. Sam waited irritably for the sun to come up. When it did, it looked like the broken yolk of a rotten egg oozing across the hills to the east.

  Sam stewed.

  The next watch arrived.

  As he and Flat Dog walked back, Sam grumbled, “I want to sleep long enough that I don’t have to see the damage in the morning.”

  37

  “I come to thank you,” said Plays with His Face. “You acted as men for the people last night.”

  He was a different man today, clear of eye, firm of step. Sam saw a wily fellow, and a force to be reckoned with.

  “We are Kit Foxes,” said Sam, indicating Flat Dog too. “We did what Kit Foxes are pledged to do.”

  Julia handed cups of steaming coffee to each of the three men, and another cup filled with sugar. They were seated around the cold ashes of the center fire in her tipi.

  “Our friends helped too,” said Sam. Bell Rock, Beckwourth, and Peanut Head weren’t there.

  “I will thank them personally,” said Plays with His Face. He hesitated, then gave Sam a glance that pretended to be rueful. “Last night I did what a leader must not do. I set down my vigilance. I thought only of my own momentary pleasure.
You save me from a great embarrassment, perhaps from humiliation.”

  “We did what is our duty,” said Flat Dog.

  Plays with His Face nodded.

  This entire exchange was ceremonial, political, but for all that something might come of it.

  Someone scratched at the tipi door flap. Julia let Bell Rock in. He sat, accepted coffee, and heard Plays with His Face repeat his words of thanks.

  The chief addressed Bell Rock, “You are our relative, and a medicine man from the village of Rides Twice. Flat Dog is from the same village. I know his father and mother, Gray Hawk and Needle.” He turned his eyes to Sam and hesitated, searching for the right words. At last he settled on direct ones. “I don’t remember you.”

  The chief would not have said it, except that Sam’s skin and hair were white.

  Flat Dog answered for Sam. “He is the husband of my sister, and the father of this girl.”

  They all looked at Esperanza, who was making a cat’s cradle with her yarn.

  This much of an introduction would have been given to any Crow.

  Bell Rock spoke up. “He is Joins with Buffalo.” Plays with His Face took in the fact that this fellow of warrior age had gone on the mountain for a vision and earned a name. “He has given a sun dance.” Bell Rock let a moment pass. “I vouch for him.”

  Plays with His Face appraised Sam. A sun dance was a major ceremony. This trapper, then, was no ordinary man, no ordinary Crow. But not everything was explained here.

  Flat Dog understood. “My brother and I, we have come because Joins with Buffalo cannot return to our camp.” He paused to think of words. “Five summers ago the son of Rides Twice” (Flat Dog could not speak the name of the dead) “fought with Joins with Buffalo. Because of my sister, Joins with Buffalo’s wife.”

  Plays with His Face sipped at his sweet coffee as he brought back the incident. “I heard the story,” he said.

  Everyone waited for his next words.

  “You are welcome in my village,” said Plays with His Face directly to Sam. Then his gaze widened to all these guests. “At any time you are welcome.”