by Win Blevins
That night Jim slipped out to walk the nearby hills, sneaking around to fix the lay of the land, he said, every hump and coulee, firm in his mind. The next day they lay in the crevice again and watched, deep in the shadows where the Blackfeet could not see and the sun would not catch the glint of the lens. Past midnight, in a thin rain, they moved out.
“No way,” said Jim. “Get it through your head. You’re staying with the horses.”
Silk was popping with rage. The roots of his hair were afire. He sat back down, gasping for self-control.
Jim was sure enough playing the general. While they munched on pemmican, too cautious for a fire, he’d explained his plan. Himself, Pine Leaf, and Yellow Foot would slip around to the north side of valley—they at least looked like Injuns—and hide. Tomorrow night they would grab a Black-foot squaw from a village well away from Ginny’s, take the clothes for Pine Leaf, then ease around to the crevice. The following evening, during the celebration before the scarifying in honor of the sun, Pine Leaf would move in disguised and sneak Ginny out.
No shooting, Jim emphasized. That’s one reason they didn’t need Silk. Nor did they need Antoine’s hot head. The whole thing cool, sweet, and sly. Otherwise everyone could say goodbye to his hair.
If Silk didn’t like it, Jim would offer him the alternative of being tied up and stuck in a tree again. Bound with something stronger than his sash.
Antoine sat flipping his knife into a log. He made no protest about his role. When Jim threatened Silk with tying up, Antoine grinned crookedly, and snicked the knife deep into the wood.
Silk kept his eyes down, away from Jim. It was midday. He had until maybe midnight to figure out what to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
that one might read the book of fate
—Henry IV, Part 2, III.i
Still tense, Silk leaned over Antoine’s crumpled form. He remembered to breathe out. It was over.
Silk had been lucky—it was easy. With Jim gone, Antoine tippled from his flask a little. Silk waited until the Frenchy was well along and conked him good with the rifle barrel. Had to make sure. Sumbuck needed conking anyway.
Silk didn’t have a plan, but his aim was simple. The others were going to make a try to get Ginny two nights from now. Silk would do something tomorrow night.
James Pierson Beckwourth, mulatto son of an aristocratic Virginia slave-holder, lay back and enjoyed the night. He cast his eye around the dark sky, checked the time by the big dipper and the north star, and let his imagination play among the dark places on the moon a while. He had heard that these vast shadowy areas were great seas, and that big, barren mountains surrounded them. He didn’t know. Men would never know. And Jim did not want to find out. He liked the idea that such a big hunk of territory was nearby, tantalizingly close to the eye, yet utterly inaccessible. Even to explorers like James P. Beckwourth.
He looked to the west, at Orion’s starry sword and belt hanging there. He could remember nothing of what his dad had told him about the constellation except that Orion was some mythic hunter. Jim had felt the call of those stars, beckoning in the west, since he was a kid. And he had accepted their invitation, and was now himself a great hunter in the West. A mythic—by God!—hunter. If there were any Homers around to write big poems any more, Jim Beckwourth would be a whole damn poetic constellation.
He felt like having a pipe, but didn’t want to disturb the woman lying against his chest. Pine Leaf, woman warrior of the Absaroka people, and his intended. They were stretched out on the buffalo robe he used for a saddle pad, and she was wrapped in a wool blanket. She would be sharing his robes and blankets for many a moon yet to come, and she would people his lodge with the bairns (to use one of Silk’s funny words) of two mighty warriors.
She had whispered in his ear tonight that she meant to be in his lodge this winter, because she would bring forth a child in the Moon of Frost in the Tipi.
So he was contented. He’d always expected Pine Leaf to come to his lodge one day, and often thought their child would be the occasion.
How many moons they might share robes he could not say. He did not wonder about such things. He accepted fully the possibility that either of them might die tomorrow—may it be a good day to die! He accepted as easily the possibility that the world might have a new aspect next week, and he would have to follow his star to Californy or even the Sandwich Islands, or Pine Leaf follow hers likewise away from him.
Jim Beckwourth was not a man to live among prospects and speculations. He was pleased with the day.
And well pleased tonight. Pine Leaf was asleep on his shoulder, their friend Yellow Foot at his feet. Though they had no fire, and not much to eat, it was enough.
The nearness of their enemies the Blackfeet did not matter—the aspens were plenty cover. Tomorrow they would stay hidden during the day, and grab a Blackfoot woman in the place they’d scouted in the evening. A risk, but not a great one. The plan was for the woman to see only Pine Leaf, and her naked, so the woman wouldn’t see the Crow clothes. And send the woman back to camp naked herself, keeping the clothes. A mystery it would seem to her men, but scarcely a threat.
And the next evening or two they would, or wouldn’t, pluck Ginny Tulloch away from the Blackfeet. It was given to Antelope not to see the future but to live gladly in the present.
In an hour he would wake Pine Leaf and make love with her once more. Her body was different from other women, so hard, like a man’s, making him think of fighting instead of fornicating. But she warmed him. He could call from her what he’d seen her give no one else, a certain look. A glisteny softness, and fullness. When he first saw that look as he held her, more than two years ago, he had known she belonged to him.
He thought that look his biggest coup, too private and too precious to be spoken of.
Antelope Jim was contented.
Silk composed the message over and over. He was stuck down in the crevice until dark, and had nothing else to do. He wrote version after version in his head, putting flourishes into some. Finally he got out his notebook and stub of pencil and carefully lettered out the simplest version:
HOSS—GINNY AND I ARE HEADED FOR CAMP.
WILL WAIT ONE DAY
SILK
He laid the paper on the rock Jim was accustomed to sitting on, and weighted it with a fist-sized stone. Even in the dark, in the small hours of tomorrow morning, when they’d probably arrive, Antelope Jim might see the white paper. Surely he would at first light.
Now Silk only had one problem. He had no notion of how to spring Ginny.
And darn it, he couldn’t even see where she was. Jim had the glass, borrowed for the purpose of working his own plan. If Silk had insisted on keeping the glass, Jim might have cottoned.
Silk was about equal parts agitated, excited, and frustrated. He rose up in the crack a little and eyeballed the village again. Maybe he could spot that sparkling white head, her heraldic emblem.
But they all looked like Indians to him.
Well, he’d think of something. He’d not Hamlet it, in Hairy’s phrase. He’d slip in by dark and improvise. He’d use his advantage, surprise. Faint heart never won fair maiden.
Hadn’t Hairy shown him, against those Cheyennes, what one man can do? He squirmed back down into the bottom of the crevice. He ought to try to sleep. It was going to be some night.
Ginny stopped at the edge of the cedars. The sandstone bluffs and the spy crevice were less than a hundred steps ahead. She turned and looked at the muscular young Blackfoot who stood near her. She felt quavery. He looked solemn and steady, his eyes deepset and shadowed beneath the hank of black hair that fell to his eyebrows.
She reached for his hand. He gave it, reluctantly. Holding his fingertips lightly, she looked around at the men of his warrior society, fully painted, fully armed, fully ready.
She knew they felt unsure of her. They trusted weapons more than wiles. She wondered if the man whose fingers she touched felt unsure as well. She hoped no
t.
She thought of the boy down in the crevice, spying. She had never met him, had only heard tell of him, and was taking a chance based on the tales. She wondered if she was doing the right thing.
And then smiled at feeling unsure herself, and stepped forward, her nearly five feet perfectly erect, and walked across the grass and the prickly pear and onto the sandstone bluff without looking back.
Bump.
He flicked at his chest.
Bump.
He brushed at his head.
Bump.
Silk woke up—woke up all of a sudden. Bump. Another pebble bounced off his lap.
He looked up into the wedge of late-afternoon sky above his head and saw the most amazing sight of his short life.
Ginny. Ginny Tulloch. Looking down at him and plinking him with tiny pebbles. And smiling.
Her ginger hair hung down as she leaned over the edge and the waning sun turned its edges into an aureole, a corona of gold tinged wth rose.
Her eyes were smiling.
Silk sat up and twisted to his feet. He started to climb up the side of the crevice and—and what?—touch her hand, embrace her, laugh and dance with Ginny Tulloch.
But she held him in place with a raised hand. Quickly and nimbly, tiny Ginny climbed down to Silk. She pressed both his hands in her small ones, truly beamed at him, and uttered her first words to him, “All this way for me.” And squeezed his hands.
Her voice, he thought, was surprisingly low, an amber music, like the low register of a clarinet. Her face was a long oval, gorgeous, a miniature madonna’s. Her eyes, Dresden blue and infinitely soft, held his.
She put a finger to her lips and folded herself onto a rock in front of him. Their knees were touching. “We must stay here till dark,” she whispered, “or they’ll see us.”
“How’d you f-find me?” Silk stammered.
“Pure luck,” Ginny said, and smiled mischievously. She just looked at him for a moment. “True luck,” she added softly.
Silk’s head swam. He understood Destiny.
“You’re not alone?” she asked.
So Silk spoke of mundane matters, and not of the song in his heart—for that music he had no words. He told her about his scout with Jim, and the mission of Jim, Pine Leaf, and Yellow Foot to the far side of the great encampment. He recounted his lone bid to rescue her, not mentioning the shameful tricking of Antoine.
“Good friends,” Ginny murmured. “They’re coming here, tonight?”
Yes, to this very hiding place, Silk said. They could wait for their friends here, if Ginny would rather.
He told about the uproar at the fort, and the long trip across the plains to aid her. When that simple story was done, he told her about possessing the love flute she made. He could see in her eyes that she knew its music had enchanted the musician, Silk Jones.
When he asked about her kidnapping and her imprisonment by the Blackfeet, Ginny only shook her head and declined to speak of it. It must be agony, Silk supposed—she doesn’t want to dwell on it.
Soon afternoon had turned to the long northern evening, and evening to a lucent, aquamarine twilight. They sat in sweet, tranquil silence. Ginny took Silk’s hand and put her head on his shoulder and rested. Perhaps she even slept lightly. Silk sat still as ever he could. He watched the stars pinprick the amethyst sky and then grow bright, and let his mind meander among the flamingo-colored flowers of fantasy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
what charms,
What conjuration, and what mighty magic
—Othello, I.iii.
The water was warm. It flowed soothingly down his body and eddied back and around and over him, gentling and lulling. His long hair was watercress—he rubbed it against his cheek and neck. A porcelain face looked out at him from a circle of milk-white hair, and the irises in its large eyes were tiny goldfish.
Ginny grabbed his hand hard. She pushed against him with one arm and sat up, clutching his hand. Shadows. Dark blotches moving against the dark sky.
“Jim?” he whispered.
“Silk?” The voice was hesitant.
“It’s me. And I’ve got Ginny with me.”
The black man climbed lithely down, stepped onto a boulder and balanced there. He looked hard and direct at one, then the other. Pine Leaf and Yellow Foot came down deliberately.
Ginny separated herself from Silk. He could feel the difference in her across the space between them, as though her inner music had changed.
“Ginny,” said Jim softly and firmly.
“Yes, Jim.” There was a metallic edge in her whisper.
“Are we gone under?”
“I hope not.”
“Surrounded?”
“Yes.”
Silence. Silk could see the mulatto’s face turned into his, and feel the dark eyes.
“Silk, I oughta scalp you myself,” Beckwourth said hard. He clenched and unclenched his huge fist.
“Save Siksikas the trouble,” rasped Pine Leaf.
“No. They promised.” Ginny separated the words, like tapping them out. Amazing how hard she sounded now.
Pine Leaf snorted.
Yellow Foot was squatting shoulder to shoulder with Silk, and getting materials out of the pouch he kept around his neck.
“Hell, we’re not even armed,” Jim moaned. He clubbed his fist on his knee. They’d all left their rifles in camp as nuisances, and maybe dangerous temptations. The crevice was indefensible, a trap.
“We’ll go at daylight,” Jim said.
“Better now,” said Ginny. “They wait, they’ll get nervous.”
“Daylight,” repeated Jim. “They’ll be less jumpy if they can see us.”
Silk flinched, then shivered. Yellow Foot, having painted himself a little, was sending up a keening sound, a thin wail, all the more eerie for starting in Silk’s ear.
Pine Leaf murmured in Crow to Jim and started painting herself as well.
“No need for death songs. Truly,” Ginny said in a flat voice. Jim shrugged. Pine Leaf and Yellow Foot ignored her.
So Jim asked how the Blackfeet had caught on, and Silk was relieved to know that they hadn’t just spotted him today—they knew Jim and Silk were here the whole time, and wanted to follow them back to their camp, but failed.
Pine Leaf joined Yellow Foot, singing her death song, an incantation that echoed hauntingly in the narrow, high crevice.
Jim talked it over with Ginny as if they weren’t singing. The report of a black man and a white youth, she said, made it easy to figure. Her father had sent Beckwourth and his friend she’d never met. Just like her father, she said bitterly—boss you around, but let someone else do the work.
She appreciated, though, their crossing hundreds of miles of enemy country to help her. That was friendship, she said—misguided friendship. And she was sorry for her deceit this afternoon, she told Silk. She took advantage of his youth.
That hurt. Silk was fighting back tears. And Ginny probably was barely older than he was. He’d been so stupid.
The warriors had decided to watch the invaders and do nothing and follow them back to their companions—get the whole lot. But when Jim and Silk left in the small hours, the trackers lost them in the dark and the rain.
Ginny was surprised that only four had come. Brave people. Silk looked at Jim’s face, but saw no flicker when the mulatto realized Ginny didn’t know about Antoine.
“What are you not telling us, Ginny?” Jim asked sharply.
“You know what you need to know.”
Silk thought she glanced sideways at him as she spoke.
Eventually the ululations died away, and the five sat a while in silence. As though the songs had kept him warm, Silk began to shiver.
At first light Jim stood up. “Let’s do it,” he said neutrally. He didn’t whisper now, and his voice seemed to clang.
Ginny led the way, then Pine Leaf, Yellow Foot, Silk, and Jim—each one clambered up the wall of the crevice and stepped into the
chill dawn.
In each of the four directions stood Blackfoot warriors silhouetted against the gray sky, tall, dark, and still.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I have no other but a woman’s reason
—The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.ii
So far so good.
Silk kept looking at Jim’s face, struck by its impassivity. While the warriors circled them with bristling lances, marched them to camp roughly, and herded them into the council tipi, Jim’s expression had been still as deep water. An enemy could read nothing there, certainly not fear.
Pine Leaf was so blank she looked bored. Yellow Foot kept his head down and still, as though in silent prayer.
Silk kept his mind on emulating them, and trying to figure what power let them hide their turmoil.
The lodge was huge, and Silk thought maybe even Black-feet wouldn’t kill you in the council tipi.
As Silk sat down, a wave of dizziness swept over him. He wobbled, and caught himself with a hand.
He knew he showed sickly, and didn’t care. He was going to die.
Silk forced his attention back to the head man, the one behind the fire pit. He was getting the ceremonial smoking started, lighting the pipe to make the circle of the men around the fire pit. Maybe that was good. But the crowd of young bucks behind, and women, scared Silk plenty. The young bucks looked to be steaming with bloodlust. And among the Blackfeet, Silk had heard, the women did the torturing.
Silk, he barked at himself—Shame! You’re a goshdarn—no, a goddam—Judas goat. You’ve killed your friends! Enough self-pity!
Whether from fear or shame, he could feel the sweat run cold down his spine and down his crack and wet his buckskin pants.
When the pipe came to him, he puffed briefly, trying to look reverent, and passed it on. He knew he’d rushed it, but it felt like it would make him nauseous.
At last the talk started, in the Blackfoot language. Yellow Foot, next to Silk, whispered that the head man was asking why people of the Absaroka had come so far into Blackfoot lands. Then Jim told him (in words and signs) the simple truth, that they came to rescue Ginny, their friend.
