The Canyon of Bones

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “It’s gin, the favorite spirits of Englishmen,” he said.

  “I’m going to get drunk,” she said. “I’m going to drink this stuff until I roll on the grass. This heals the sick. This makes the lame walk. This cures fevers. It wakes up the dead.”

  “Ah, Missus Skye, you are true to form. Now I want you to tell us about your people. I try to learn everything there is to know about a place and the people in it.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Mercer thought and sipped and thought. “Are there any other tribes here, people hidden away somewhere? People the world doesn’t know about?”

  “Hell yes, there’s the Little People.”

  “You don’t say! Who are they?”

  “Only the Absaroka see them. Sometimes they help us, sometimes they play tricks on us like the coyotes.”

  “Ah, yes, but where are they?”

  “Everywhere,” she said grandly with a sweep of the arm. She sipped more of that awful stuff, coughed, and smiled. “They could be right here and you’d never see them.”

  “What do they look like, Missus Skye?”

  “About so tall,” she said, pointing to her knee.

  “Truly they must be taller than that.”

  “Hell no. They’re always hiding.”

  “This is a joke, isn’t it?”

  “Ask any Absaroka! Ask The Big Robber, he’s the chief. Ask Red Turkey Wattle, he’s the man who sees the Other People.”

  “A good story, Missus Skye. I’ll make note of it. What do the Little People do to help you?”

  “Hell, anything. Chase bears away, bring water, warn us about trouble, lead us to berries.”

  “Do they look like Indians?”

  “They look like people from under the earth.”

  “Devils?”

  “How should I know. I never saw one.”

  “Maybe I’ll meet someone who’s seen one. Now, are there any other strange things here?”

  “Damn right. The One With Big Feet Who Walks in Snow.”

  Mercer stared. “More, please. This is valuable.”

  “Ain’t nobody seen him. But he’s a big person, with bare feet twice the size of any of us. Big long steps, up on the snow, any winter.”

  “Big Foot! Now we’re getting somewhere. He is well known and I’ve been looking for Big Foot for years. He’s been seen in Russia, Canada, Siberia, and now here.”

  “What the hell is Russia?”

  “A great northern nation across the waters. This Big Foot has a name. Yeti. Do you suppose there’s a tribe of Big Foot?”

  “Damn right. Thousands, all over the mountains.”

  “What does the Big Foot look like?”

  “Lots of hair, twice the size of us, big feet, carries a club. Very dangerous, very shy.”

  “Could you lead me to his footprints?”

  “Naw, you just find them when you’re not looking.”

  “Where?”

  She sipped. “This stuff, it ain’t gonna kill me, will it?”

  “It’s good. We drink it to ward off the intermittent fever.”

  “Who knows where? When you’re not looking, that’s when you’ll see the footprints. It’ll lift the hair on the back of your neck. You see this footprint, and it’s a person, and you peer around, and look into the pines and there’s no one there, and something passes through you and you know you shouldn’t see this.”

  “Could you draw the footprints for me with my pencil?”

  “I can hardly put quills down straight. Skye’s shirts, they look like I got ten thumbs. How about more of this stuff, eh?”

  She polished off the dregs and handed the glass to Mister Corporal. This was fun. She would get some booze out of it.

  “Are there caves here?”

  “That’s where the Little People live.”

  “Big people who make tracks in the snow, and little people in caves. Very interesting. These are Crow, ah, Absaroka stories?”

  Victoria was feeling a little resentful. He had to be told everything three times.

  “Lots of caves. That’s where the Old Ones lived. They made pictures on the walls. These were First People. We don’t go in there. Don’t disturb the spirits. That is their place, not ours.”

  “I’d like to see them. Are there any around here?”

  “Naw, not here. Long ways away. But there’s something not far from here you’d like to see. Big bones in the rocks. Big animals got turned into stone. Some bones south of here, some more up on the big river. The one you call the Missouri. Biggest sonsofbitches you ever saw.”

  “Fossils. Yes, indeed. In England we have many. Seashells, things like that. Little creatures caught in stone from long ago. No, I don’t need to see anything like that.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t want to see a big bone, eh?”

  He smiled. “Actually, no. Or let me put it this way: it’s low on my list of things to look at. Now, tell me about what the Absaroka do at night. Are there secret meetings out in the woods? What do you do on the night of the full moon?”

  “You sure are keeping your eyes shut, ain’t ya. This here bone, it’s sticking out of rock. It’s bigger around than I am and taller than I am. Lots of others around there too.”

  “I’m sure there’s no bones like that. Not even an elephant has bones like that It’s just the way the rock weathered.”

  “Well, dammit, tha’s that. I tell you about something around here and you say it ain’t so.”

  He smiled, revealing all those even white teeth. “Forgive me. Tell me about the big bone.”

  “There’s a mess of other bones. This is from a giant bird. Everyone says it’s the bones of the big bird.”

  “How big?”

  She stared, finally pointed at a tall pine. “Big as that.”

  His eyes twinkled. “You love to tell stories, I can tell.”

  She stood up angrily and dashed the drink in the ground. “I don’t want your gin. I don’t want nothing to do with you.”

  He absorbed that. “My most earnest apologies, Missus Skye. Maybe there are such bones. Maybe you’d show them to me.”

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I don’t want you messing with them anyway. Big spirits in there.”

  “Let me refresh your drink, Missus Skye. In truth, I greatly desire your company because you can translate for me.”

  “Fill her up, damn good spirits,” she said, and sat down again.

  seven

  Good stuff. The more Victoria sipped the gin and bitters, the better she liked it. Clean, tart taste, cool drink, just right. These British knew how to live. Wooee!

  She sipped and eyed her host. This was good, sitting in a canvas chair with this Englishman. A drink for a story or two. The more stories, the more drinks. Hey hey, things couldn’t be better.

  Where the hell was Skye? He was hiding. She had never seen him hide before. Not in all the winters they had been together had she seen him hide from anyone. But now he was in the lodge with the robes pulled over his head hiding from this man. That was strange. She would tease him tonight. Make him ashamed of himself.

  It worried her. He never missed out on a drink. Something was wrong.

  Mercer was enjoying himself too. Sometimes his gaze drifted to the encampment. He seemed not to want to miss a thing. If some boys knotted into a gang somewhere, his gaze followed them. He sipped, totally relaxed, plainly happy to be there.

  “Missus Skye,” he said. “I consider this a most fortunate meeting. I want to learn all about your people. This is fortunate for me because you speak English. So I hope you won’t mind if I ply you with all sorts of questions.”

  “Then you write it all down?”

  “I do. I write it down and publish it.”

  “I’ve seen books,” she said. “Damn, I wish I could get the meaning out of them.”

  “Well, I want to record everything about your people.”

  “Such as?”

  “Your rituals, your
religion, your demons. When someone dies where does his spirit go? Up to the stars? Down into the ground? Up to the sun?”

  “They start their spirit journey by greeting the elders, and then they head east until they get to St. Louis, and then they turn into mosquitoes and bite white men.”

  He laughed. “Very good, Missus Skye. Now we’re getting somewhere. Are there secret meetings in the night? All boys, all girls? All women? All warriors? All virgins? Do you sacrifice prisoners to the gods? Do you sacrifice animals? Do you drive a stake through the heart? Do you drive demons out of your village? Do you bury the old and the sick alive? What do you do with the sick? Do you have herbs and potions? Does a medicine man drive out the evil? What do you do with crazy people? How do you torture enemies?”

  “Sonofabitch, you sure ask questions!” She eyed him. “Best damn questions anyone ever asked.”

  “Is one animal favored over another? Do you eat the flesh of other people? You know, to give you power over them? What do you do with criminals? Banish them? Kill them? Do you have fertility rites? Do men trade wives?”

  Victoria sipped her drink. He noticed and smiled. “Have another,” he said.

  She thrust her half-emptied glass at Winding, who promptly refilled it and handed it to her. That gin was good stuff, oh ho ho! It was making her feel better and better. Damn, how could she answer all those questions?

  Then she knew. She sipped, smiled, and sipped again.

  “At the beginning of time there was a big raven. Its wings filled the whole sky. It had been born on a mountaintop and pretty soon it was bigger than the mountain. Then it flew here, casting a shadow so big that the world was dark under it, and it decided this was the place for the raven people to be. It settled on another mountaintop and opened its beak and began spilling out raven people …”

  Now Mercer was scribbling busily, catching everything she said. Good. This should be worth a few more drinks.

  “Out they came, many raven people, and they named themselves the People of the Raven, or Absaroka.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “They all had black hair, but then one had white hair, and the people knew they had to kill the white-haired one so they cast him into the sun.”

  “Good, good, Missus Skye. The origins myth.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The creation story. All groups have one.”

  “Well, all right. But the white one didn’t die. It became the moon, so at night we see the white one, and know it was cast out of our midst.”

  “Is the moon evil? Do you gather at night to look at it?”

  “Oh, you bet. That’s when we do the forbidden things. The nights of the big moon.”

  He perked right up at that, staring at her with a devouring look. Good. This was fun.

  He waited, pencil poised, but she simply sipped. Let him wait Besides, she didn’t know where to go next

  “That’s when we sacrifice a baby,” she said. “Each full moon, the people give a baby to the pale god, deep in the night when the moon is big and fat.”

  “Sacrifice! You don’t say! How is the victim selected?”

  “Not a victim, dammit, an honor. The holiest, most sacred honor. The shamans select the one, and make a bundle and place the bundle before that lodge.”

  “And then the parents know their baby will be honored?”

  “Hell yes.”

  She had him running now. She finished her drink and edged the empty glass forward. Promptly, Winding filled it with more gin and bitters.

  “This is done by the Wolf Society,” she said. “That’s a secret society of young warriors. It’s their task. If a young man really wants honors he will go steal a Siksika baby.”

  “Siksika?”

  “Blackfoot. The Piegans, the Kainah, the Bloods. They are the enemies of our people. A Wolf warrior must go all alone to the land of the Siksika, carry his wolf skin with him so he can wear it, and then wait to capture a baby. He lurks close to the Siksika camp, singing his song to the Wolf so he might succeed, and then when a mother is not looking, he creeps out, snatches the baby, and runs away with it into the forest. This is very difficult. Many of the Wolf Society die; the Blackfeet catch him and take their baby back and kill the Absaroka boy.”

  “This is remarkable. How often does this happen?” Mercer asked.

  “Not often. An Absaroka boy must have a vision, then pledge that he will take a Blackfoot baby, and then do it. After that, there’s a ceremony on a big moon night. All the men in the society count coups. Then the baby is left for the wolves to eat. But if a coyote eats it, that’s bad luck. Watch out for coyotes. They’re bad luck.”

  Mercer stared, slightly at a loss, and then wrote. The sun had set. A sweet cool evening breeze, scented with pine, drifted down from the slopes.

  She was in fine fettle, and hurried on. The next one might be worth two or three drinks. “Now I’ll answer another question. The Absaroka have the Wife-Trading Night.”

  “You do? Then it’s true. I heard about this in St. Louis.”

  “It’s true. It’s the longest day of the year, when Sun doesn’t go to bed but lingers on, and rises early. That’s the night when everyone is happy. Wives are honored. It is the Night of the Wives. That’s another Absaroka name for it.”

  “Tell me, what happens?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t talk about it. It is sacred, very sacred.”

  “Please tell me. I’ll not mention it or say where I heard it.”

  “You sure? We don’t talk much. It’s great honor. Every wife, she wants to try it.”

  He scribbled furiously, and then the lead snapped. He dug in his pockets, extracted a tiny folding knife, and whittled a new point on his pencil.

  “Now I’m ready, Missus Skye. You were saying?”

  “Ah, yes, the longest day, the light lingers, and husbands make big deals with friends, and give them their wives for the night, and because it’s light everyone knows, everyone knows who goes to which lodge, eh? Sometimes when a wife is plain, the husband, he gives his friend a gift too? An elk skin, maybe. Then the plain wife gets to enjoy the honors too.”

  “Ah … I see.”

  Mercer looked like he was about to choke.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Fine, fine. Tell me more. Does this happen just once each year, on what we call Midsummer’s Eve?”

  “Hell no,” she said. “It happens all the time.”

  Mercer was turning an odd red color. “Remarkable. I shall want every detail.”

  But then the drumming began. She glanced at the meadow, and sure enough, a crowd was collecting at a bonfire, even as old men gathered into a drumming circle and began their plaintive songs to the demanding beat of the drums.

  “I must go look,” he said. “We’ll continue this little talk tomorrow, Missus Skye.”

  She smiled. She was in a smiling mood. If there was anything the People loved, it was a good joke.

  She drifted to her lodge, ready to confess what she had done and celebrate with him, but Skye was gone.

  eight

  Skye drifted from the lodge after darkness cloaked the valley. The drummers had begun, their heartbeat drumming throbbed through the camp. A crowd had collected around them to listen to songs of triumph, great events, war, and power.

  He was in no mood for that and wished the tribes had some other and quieter way to spend a summer’s eve. He had no relish for the company of the explorer, Mercer, either. In fact, he was using the darkness to dodge the man. He had nothing against the energetic Briton who had welcomed him cordially, and yet he did not want further commerce with the man. Somehow, Mercer was an intruder, and few of the Absaroka or Shoshone people grasped that he was noting everything there was to know about them.

  It was one of those moments he often experienced, when he felt caught between the European world of his youth and the world of his adopted nation, the Crows; a moment when he was not really comfortable in either.

>   He did not dislike Mercer, yet he found himself avoiding the explorer and knew he would continue to do so, no matter that they shared a tongue and a world across the sea and the prospect of a few gin and bitters was enticing. He used the thickening dark to drift from camp, reaching darkness and quietness after he reached the Shoshone River. He treasured the quietness of the woods. A three-quarter moon, fat and yellow, was rising in the east and paving the path with glistening light. That was good. It bid fair to be a sweet summer’s eve.

  Soon the drumming was only a distant throb and then the sound vanished altogether and he was alone. He found a game trail leading upward through forested foothills, and took it, letting the white moonlight filtering through the pines be his lamp. Juniper-laden air eddied down the hill, perfuming the world. The pungence of the juniper, or cedar, evoked the biblical in him and made this place the Holy Land. The malaise he felt in camp left him and he was at peace. He climbed a sharp rise and found an open ridge, its rocky spine lit by moonlight, a place of peace.

  And there was a woman. Yes, no mistake, a jet-haired woman sitting on the rock, her back pressed into a shoulder of rock, her gaze rapt. She saw him at once, a swift startled gesture, and he paused. He did not want to frighten her.

  “I am Mister Skye. I will go. This is your place,” he said in Absaroka, but she did not respond.

  He thought she might be Shoshone, but who could say? He made the friend sign, palm forward, the peace sign. She did not move. He felt himself to be the intruder, and turned to leave.

  She said something he could not translate but her voice was soft and warm, and she patted the rocky table next to her. He accepted the invitation and discovered a young woman, slim and beautiful, perhaps half his age. She had the strong cheekbones of her people, and almond eyes, and even in the white and glistening moonlight he caught her interest in him. Her survey was as complete as his own and lingered at his gray beard and the beaver top hat. She smiled and spoke again and he could grasp nothing except her meaning: come sit with me and enjoy this sacred place, lit by Mother Moon.

  He did, easing himself to the sun-warmed rock beside her. They sat well above the valley of the summer camp, but could not see it here in this quiet basin, and were alone.