Beneath a Hunter's Moon

by Michael Zimmer

  “Make love to me, Pike.” Celine took her hands away from her breasts and put them on top of his shoulders. “I want you. You will be the first, and the last.”

  He lifted his arms between her elbows to push them away, but didn’t. He wanted to say no, but with her naked body so close, the warmth of her flesh almost palpable against his own bare chest, his determination wavered. Lowering his hands to the curve of her hips, he drew her roughly against him. Like fire and ice, they sank into the grass.

  * * * * *

  Jacques Leveille’s fiddle drew them, set their feet to moving, their bodies to swaying. Beneath the stars, wrapped in the light of a dozen leaping, crackling fires, the bois brûles danced and laughed and drank high wine from kegs provided by Charlo and Nicolas Quesnelle. They celebrated the meat that had been brought in that day—seventeen fat deer, enough to feed the entire caravan—and Charles Hallet’s buffalo, an old, solitary bachelor, his scarred hide too heavy to tan, his meat too tough and stringy to chew. But buffalo, nonetheless, and they reveled in its harvest as they would have a dozen tender-fleshed cows.

  Deer still roasted over the flames, skewered on peeled hickory limbs slanted up from the ground, the white inner wood slick with running grease, but only a few continued to feast. Charlo brought out his fiddle to join Leveille, and Nicolas Quesnelle produced his squeeze box. Flutes and the tambourine-like wanbangos added to the cacophony, filling the cool night air with the sounds of their happiness.

  In the midst of the stomping dancers, Gabriel twirled Susanne Leveille. They moved together with a lithe grace, while others stepped back and smiled their approval. Gabriel smiled too, but it was a hollow gesture, and, as they danced, his eyes searched constantly among the dancers and those who stood on the sidelines, and the emptiness inside of him grew large.

  Seeing the broad grins and knowing smirks on the faces of the older ones, those already married and settled, he wondered why it was they were always trying to mold things into their own image of what was right and proper. He had only asked Susanne Leveille to dance, nothing he hadn’t done dozens of times in the past, but to look at them now, a man would think it was all settled except for the asking. Gabriel resented their assumptions that he would always do what was expected of him, as they themselves, as bois brûles, had done. Was he no more than that? No greater than one of the cogs in Big John’s windmill, identical and unimportant except for his contribution to the whole?

  Gabriel’s discontent grew as the evening wore on. Once he had loved to dance to the reedy scrape of fiddles and flutes, to spin and dip and laugh as if without a care in the world. But tonight the music grated on his nerves. His steps became gradually clumsier, and his grip on Susanne’s fingers tightened unconsciously until at last she pulled them away with a little cry of exasperation, stepping back and stomping her foot.

  “What is it, Gabriel?” she demanded.

  Taken by surprise, he could only shake his head. The musicians continued to play, but several of the dancers slowed, watching them curiously. He lifted his arms and stepped toward her, but she backed away, hands clenched firmly at her sides.

  “Is it her?” Susanne asked callously. “Is that who you’ve been pining for all evening?”

  “There are others watching,” Gabriel said evenly. “We should dance.” He advanced, she retreated.

  “Go to her, Gabriel, if that is who you wish to be with.”

  “Sacre,” he breathed. “You are stubborn. Do not be foolish where so many can see you.”

  Susanne sneered at that. “I am not the foolish one. Go to her, if you can find her.”

  She whirled and fled, leaving Gabriel standing in the middle of the crowd, arms still lifted. Someone laughed, and Gabriel’s face reddened. He lowered his hands and for a moment just stood there, until someone else said—“Go after her, young one.”—as if he were an idiot without sense enough to come in out of the rain. Woodenly he followed her through the crowd, the good-natured laughter of the dancers pelting his shoulders.

  He paused outside the circled carts to take a deep, calming breath. The breeze coming off the lake cooled the hot flush of his cheeks but did nothing to soothe his humiliation. Against the lighter surface of the water, he caught a glimpse of a skirted figure moving away from the camp at a run, and knew it was Susanne. He stood a moment in indecision, knowing he should go after her, that this was Sioux country, after all, and that a woman of the bois brûle would make a fine prize for some skulking Yankton or Santee warrior. But in that moment of hesitation, opportunity was lost.

  Wearily Gabriel sank into the tall grass and put his back against the wheel of a hunter’s cart. The music continued uninterrupted behind him, the stamp of the dancers’ feet on the hard sod becoming a steady, insistent vibration thrumming along his spine.

  Leaning back into the rough, unshaven spokes of the rawhide-bound wheel, he didn’t move at all when Celine and Pike materialized out of the darkness, pausing like thieves on the rim of firelight spilling over the carts. Celine put a hand on Pike’s chest and spoke too softly for Gabriel to hear. Then she hurried away, skirting the circled carts while Pike watched her hungrily. After a couple of minutes he started toward the camp, leading the bay Big John had given him by its reins. He stopped when he spotted Gabriel. Their gazes locked but neither man spoke, and after a few seconds Pike moved on, disappearing around the curve of carts toward Big John’s fire.

  Chapter Twelve

  Indian Summer, the Métis’ Little Summer of St. Luke, was fading rapidly. Big John could smell it on the breeze that rolled in from the dry, treeless plains to the west. He could see it in the fading blue of the sky, and in the browning of the leaves still clinging stubbornly to the otherwise naked trees that grew in the glens and parks along Chain of Lakes.

  He could feel it in his own body, as well, in the pop and creak of his joints whenever he knelt or stood, and in the effort it took for him to climb aboard his long-legged roan every morning. From time to time as the days progressed he would glance to the northwest, where the seasonal changes would originate in their own good time, but so far the skies there remained clear, the winds comfortable, if no longer quite as warm as they had been only a few days before.

  Big John had ranged well north of the lake today, and was slowly making his way back through the rolling hills. Hunting had been good, and he had a doe draped across the roan’s flanks, already gutted.

  The roan stopped suddenly, arching its neck and blowing loudly. About twenty feet in front of them a rattlesnake slithered onto the trail. It paused when the roan stomped a hoof in fright, then quickly moved on. Big John waited patiently, following the snake’s progress by the slight sway of the tall grass. When it was clear of the trail, he urged the roan forward. The stallion balked at first, then moved out fast, skipping wide around the spot where the snake had disappeared.

  Chain of Lakes had turned out to be snaky this year. Not as bad as Devil’s Lake, which some said was named after the whirring-tailed serpents, but bad enough. Two years ago a Métis child had been bitten by a rattler at Devil’s Lake and died, and a few years before that a woman had been bitten on the hand while gathering wood and lost four of her fingers. More often than not, it was one of the stock that was bitten. The oxen seemed especially susceptible, maybe one being bitten badly enough to die every couple of years. The ponies were either quicker or more attuned to the big rattlers, and able to shy away from them before being struck.

  Big John stayed with the trail until it neared the lake, then put the roan up a steep incline on his left. Halting on top, he stared down at the sprawling Métis camp, noting its strengths as well as its weaknesses. It bothered him that they were holed up in such a bowl. It made them vulnerable to long-range rifle fire and arrows that could be lobbed inside the perimeter of carts from nearby hilltops. Yet it wasn’t a bad location, either. There was plenty of water and good sun-cured grass for the stock. And they desperately needed the meat the hunters were bringing in daily. Hallet’s b
ull was the only buffalo they’d found so far, and they all knew it would be a long push from Chain of Lakes to where they’d likely find the herds. It would take a couple more days to dry the deer meat already brought in, but Big John was hoping that they would be able to pull out on the morning of the third day. He thought they would all breathe a little easier when they finally abandoned the rugged country surrounding the lakes.

  Putting the roan over the crest of the hill, Big John started down the slope toward camp. He waved to Little John McKay, standing watch on a neighboring hill, but noted with annoyance that the other hills were empty, and that only a handful of men were visible at the camp. Guiding his mount through a gap in the carts, he dismounted at his own fire.

  Isabella was embroidering on the jacket she had made for Gabriel. She laid it aside and came over as he started loosening the bindings on the deer. “A doe,” she said, smiling approvingly. “Its meat will be tender and good to eat.”

  She would have been just as admiring of a tough, old mossy-horned buck, Big John knew, praising its size, or the rack that she would use for some tool or buttons, or the hide that would make fine leather. He pulled the doe from the roan’s back and dropped it on the ground next to Isabella’s drying rack.

  Glancing around the camp, he said: “Where’s Alec?”

  Busying herself with the doe, Isabella shook her head.

  “Is he with the herd?”

  Again, she shook her head.

  His eyes narrowing suspiciously, Big John said: “And where would the lad be, if he’s not about or with the herd? Answer me, woman.”

  “He hunts.”

  “On foot?”

  “He took the spotted pony.” She looked up pleadingly. “He is thirteen, McTavish. It hurts him to be treated as a boy.”

  “Aye, and would ye have me treat him as a thief? Ye know the penalty for that.”

  “Non, McTavish, but I gave him permission to ride the pinto. He would not have done so otherwise.”

  “I cannot believe ye’d do such a thing, Isabella, knowin’ me feelin’s on the matter. I’ve no wish to punish the lad, or make him feel small in the eyes of his friends, but I cannot allow him to ignore my word. By the Lord, I won’t.”

  Isabella lowered her eyes, then bent silently over the deer.

  Big John turned a full circle. “Where’s the lass?”

  Once more, Isabella shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “She should be helpin’ ye.”

  When Isabella didn’t reply, Big John sighed. “Well, I’ve been needin’ to speak with her for a while. I guess now’s my chance.” He moved alongside the roan, then paused with his hands resting on the pad saddle. “I’ll send her back here when I’m finished. ’Tis time she learned the ways of skinnin’ and butcherin’ and such, if she’s to be any help with the buffalo.”

  “Celine refuses to learn anything, and only mocks those who try to teach her.” Isabella’s knife slowed, then quickened. “She talks to herself, as her mother did.”

  Big John flinched, but didn’t turn around. “And where would ye be gettin’ such a notion as that?”

  “I have walked in front of her all the way from the Tongue River, and not ridden off with my friends every morning on a fancy runner.”

  Her abruptness startled him. Hesitantly he said: “Ye’ve heard her do this?”

  Isabella nodded.

  “Damn me, then, for bein’ a fool,” he said softly.

  She cast him a worried look. “Too much she reminds me of Angelique. I fear for her.”

  “Aye, ’tis a burden I wouldn’t wish on any woman, or man, for that matter.” He took a moment to collect himself, then wearily swung a leg over his saddle. He was aware of Isabella watching him, and wanted to say something to reassure her, but no words came to mind and he finally reined away in silence.

  He found Celine among the trees on the north shore of the lake, and pulled up within the shelter of a towering oak to watch. At first he thought there was someone with her, perhaps reclining in the tall grass, but after a couple of minutes he realized she was alone, and the feelings that produced were like hands reaching inside him to squeeze every organ in his body. She appeared to be in argument with someone, but it was the long pauses in between, as if she were listening intently to an opposing point of view, that brought a chill to his spine.

  Had it been this way with Angelique? he wondered sickly. Had others seen her as he now saw Celine? Isabella thought so, but, if that were true, then why hadn’t he noticed it himself? How was it possible for a sighted man to be so blind?

  She had been French, Angelique, the daughter of old Pierre Menard of Montreal, a partner in the North West Company who had privately financed Big John’s first solo expedition into the pays sauvage. It was during the winter Big John had spent in Montreal, putting together his outfit, that he first met her. She was a bonny within a family of beautiful women, seventeen years old and fashionably rebellious, given to pouts and melancholy huffs and long, sad faces. But it was only with Big John that she had ever truly defied her family. After her death, he sometimes wondered if part of her attraction to him had been her father’s stern admonition against involvement with a trader, a Scotsman, and an unenthusiastic Protestant, at that. On even rarer occasions, he wondered if he would have been as determined to have her if not for the same obstacles.

  They had eloped in the spring, married in a civil ceremony by a local magistrate, then joined the annual brigade of freight canoes—the huge canots des maîtres, each shipping as much as six tons of cargo and passengers—for the first leg of their journey to the Red River.

  Almost from the beginning, Big John had recognized the magnitude of their mistake. Angelique hated the pays sauvage. She saw no beauty in the vast forests and crystalline waters of the north country, and the mosquito-ridden sloughs and flat bleakness of the Red River Valley itself had impressed her even less. Big John’s tiny cabin at the forks of the Tongue and Pembina Rivers had reminded her of the living quarters her father provided for the stablemen at their summer home, and she had been appalled by the abandonment of the mixed-bloods at their celebrations—the shouting, drinking, dancing, fighting, gambling, and romance that sometimes went on for days.

  Angelique never made any effort to adapt to the valley or its life-embracing mode of work and play. She shunned every offer of friendship, never hosted a gathering, and attended as few as possible. She lived only to return to Montreal the following summer, but that dream had been shattered with the winter express. With the mail had come a letter from her father that she’d never shared. It was only over the course of years that Big John was able to extract bits and pieces of its content.

  The exact wording had gone into the fireplace, with Angelique standing pale and shaken before it, but the essence had revolved around religion—her lack of a proper marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and the spiritual illegitimacy of their unborn child, conceived even before they’d reached Fort William. Under such circumstances an annulment was impossible.

  Apparently so was forgiveness, by either the Church or her family, although in time Big John came to realize it was the Church’s repudiation that affected her most. Angelique had become convinced her soul was lost forever, and, after that, nothing else seemed to matter.

  Not even their daughter.

  Yet Big John had loved her, and he thought she might have loved him in her own way. And there had been some good times, at least a few. Angus Gilray had been with them then, his own small cabin and the hide lodge where he and his family normally slept standing where St. Joseph now stood, and there had been music and laughter and, for him, hope for the future in spite of his wife’s discontent. A false hope, he’d ultimately come to realize. In the end, the Church had destroyed that as it had destroyed Angelique.

  With a heavy heart, Big John heeled his roan into the sunlight. Celine ceased her conversation as soon as she saw him, watching his approach with suspicion. He halted while still some dista
nce away and dismounted. “Good afternoon to ye, lass,” he said, affecting a cheery tone. “Fancy meetin’ ye here.”

  She nodded cautiously. “Hello.”

  Letting the stallion’s reins fall, he approached with care. “Are ye alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, no harm in that as far as I’m concerned, though ye need to be mindful of the whirly-tails, for they’re plentiful hereabouts. And the Sioux. ’Tis best ye not wander too much farther from the caravan than ye are right here, I’m thinkin’.”

  Celine greeted that with silence, her eyes unblinking as she stared at him.

  Stopping a few feet away, Big John butted his rifle to the ground. “I heard ye speakin’, lass,” he said gently, “but I don’t see anyone about.” He paused expectantly, but she didn’t respond. “Well, ’tis a fine day to be alone, I suppose, and no harm in talkin’ to yeself, either.” He cast her a sidelong glance but could tell nothing from her expression. “I… I came to speak with ye, Celine. ’Pears like ’tis a thing we’ve neglected, ye and me, what with the hunt and all, and I was wantin’ to… just to…”—he made a vague gesture with his hand—“talk.”

  Celine said: “Can I ride your horse?”

  “The roan?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, now, I’m not so sure about that. He’s a stallion, ye see, and can be wicked with his hoofs and teeth if ye’re not watchful-like around ’im. He requires an experienced hand, and I don’t think ye’re up to that just yet.”

  “Then can I ride one of the cart ponies?”

  “I don’t see any harm in that, and ’tis a good time for it with the weather bein’ mild like it is. Aye, lass, ye can, and with me blessin’, though I’d feel better if ye were to take Gabriel or one of the others with ye, in case of trouble.”

  “Gabriel?” She made a face.

  “He’s a capable lad, and handy to have around when trouble pops up.”