“Times,” Big John began hesitantly when Gabriel didn’t reply. “Well, they’re not the same as they used to be, are they? I suspect maybe ye were right that night in Charlo’s cabin when ye said the mixed-bloods have taken root, and that the valley belongs to them now. Likely it has for a long time, and I’ve been too blind or stubborn to see it.” He smiled sadly. “And I suppose ye’re right to think I’m naught but a patronizin’ old fraud, always thinkin’ I know what’s best for ye and the others, and none who would speak against me simply because I was John McTavish.
“Well, that’s changin’, too. It’s changin’ with ye, though I’m not sure ye see it yet. But I’ll tell ye this, lad, and I tell it true. Ye’ve made me proud near to burstin’ for the way ye’ve grown, and I’m thinkin’ it would have done as much for ye pa, was he still with us.”
Gabriel knew Big John meant for his words to give comfort and reassurance, but they kindled a fear inside him that had been smoldering for a long time. Big John was speaking like a man who thought his time was finished, and the implications chilled Gabriel’s soul.
“Ye’ll be captainin’ a train yeself, soon enough,” Big John went on. “Takin’ ye a wife, too, someone to care for ye and keep ye clothed and fed and on the straight and narrow, and who’ll raise ye bairns up proper-like. ’Twill be a different valley then, and not so far off any more, either. One ye children will consider as normal as blood pudding, but I can’t help but wonder what ye’ll think of it. If it’ll seem as strange to ye then as this one does to me now.”
“The valley will not change,” Gabriel replied.
“The land will not change, ’tis true, save for the scarrin’ put on it by the farmers and the town builders and such. ’Tis the people I’m thinkin’ of, Gabriel. ’Tis them that will change.”
“The bois brûles will not change, either.”
“Lad, the bois brûles are changin’ constantly, and they’ll keep on doin’ so. Listen to Joseph Breland when he speaks. And, aye, to Paget, as well. ’Tis change they’re preachin’ even now, and more to come. Evolution, Gabriel, as natural a progression as young into old or night into day.” He laughed at the confused look on the younger man’s face. “No, I’m no losin’ me mind. Not about that or the buffalo. I’ll be wrong on some of the details, but ’tis comin’ still. Ye can count on that.” Looking out across the burn, Big John’s voice deepened. “Did ye notice, lad, what a beautiful day it’s turned out to be?”
Gabriel shook his head in frustration, yet he couldn’t stop a small smile from coming to his face. “It is cold and windy, and there will be no grass for the horses tonight, or water for us. And the Sioux are still out there, not very far away. You know they are, and that they are watching closely, waiting for the smallest mistake so that they can attack again.”
“Sure, ’tis likely, but all the more reason to be enjoyin’ today, wouldn’t ye say?”
Gabriel reined his horse around. “It is time we went on, Big John. The sun will set before long.”
“Aye, well, there’s one more thing I wanted to discuss with ye.” He let the roan have its head, and they started across the burn at a walk, stirrup-to-stirrup. “’Tis why I was glad ye came with me today, and why I didn’t argue against it.”
“What is it?”
“The girl, laddie. Celine.”
Gabriel stiffened. “What of her?”
“Ye’ve heard what the others are sayin’ about her behind me back, and ye’ve seen some of it yeself… the butcherin’ of the young bull ye shot, and the way she wanders around camp without…” He paused and breathed deeply, as if to gather his emotions. “What I want to say is, she’s not the lass for ye, Gabriel. It pains me to say such of me own kin, but ’tis the truth, and ye need to hear it, and to heed me on this one.”
“How can you say that about your own daughter?”
“Because I see too much of her mother in her. Mutterin’ to herself and the look in her eyes as if she’s… not here, in the present. Ye were too young to remember Celine’s ma, but… well, I don’t want ye goin’ through what I did when… when she…”
“Killed herself?”
Big John released a large sigh. “Aye, when she hung herself. ’Tis that I’m speakin’ of, and the hurt that came with it, the guilt of always thinkin’ I must’ve done something wrong but never knowin’ what it was.” His expression had turned as grim as cold death, but he pushed on doggedly. “Ye be Angus Gilray’s son, but I’ve raised ye as me own, and ’tis how I see ye now. So I’m tellin’ ye, lad, with a father’s love, to stay away from her.”
Staring straight ahead, Gabriel said: “I think you are mixed up, Big John. I do not think it is me you should be giving a father’s love to.” He was going to say more until he saw the look of anguish that came over the older man’s face, realizing then that he’d said too much.
“Aye,” Big John agreed, his voice shaky. “Ye’re right, of course. I’m not one to be speakin’ of a father’s love.”
“I did not mean it that way.”
“No, don’t deny ye own instincts. Ye see more than most, and what ye said was the truth, plain as life itself. ’Tis something I should be facin’ squarer than I do, most days.”
A single tear slipped free from the corner of Big John’s eye and began a winding journey down his cheek. He swiped at it clumsily with the back of a mittened hand, then quickly turned his face away. After a moment, shoulders heaving silently, he kicked the roan into a lope.
Gabriel tightened his legs around Baldy’s ribs to catch up, then let them relax. He thought that maybe it would be a good idea if they both rode alone for a while.
* * * * *
They made their slow way across the burn without conversation. Gray-black grass rolled away in every direction, and fine clouds of wind-blown ash swirled around them like dark-skinned dancers. There was eeriness to the landscape that prickled the flesh across the back of Gabriel’s neck.
The temperature began to drop noticeably as the sun started its slide into the horizon. Freeing his heavy coat from the front of his saddle, Gabriel slipped into it without removing his fringed buckskin jacket. He snugged his cap down over his forehead and pulled mittens on over his gloves. He wished he’d thought to bring along some wool socks to put on under his moccasins, even though he knew Alec would have made fun of him for it. It wasn’t much of a man, in Alec’s opinion, who had to wear socks when the temperature was above freezing, no matter how sharp the wind might blow.
As the sun slipped from view, the western sky lost its pale, robin’s egg tint and began to segue into deeper shades of blue and violet. Flat-bellied clouds floating above the horizon were trimmed suddenly in rust and gold. Arriving at the lip of a shallow coulée just as the last of the light bled off the land, the two Tongue River scouts dismounted to stretch their limbs and chew on some pemmican. But when the moon came up a couple of hours later, they were back in their saddles, pushing on into the night.
They continued their silence, comfortable together in the depthless quiet of the burn. Although the moon was nearly full, its light seemed anemic and peculiar, as if its strength was being absorbed by the charred, blackened grass, and there was an acidic taste on the wind that irritated Gabriel’s throat and sinuses. From time to time he sniffed the breeze for water or grass, but scented nothing, and by dawn they were still surrounded by a Stygian plain. It wasn’t until a couple of hours after sunup that he spotted the southern edge of the burn several miles ahead. In the lead, he reined up to wait for Big John, laughing when he saw the gray-black hue of the older man’s face, knowing his own must look just as ridiculous.
They found a rush-lined slough less than a mile out of the burn and rode their horses into it to let them drink. Gabriel dug the kettle from his sleeping robe and leaned down to dip up a pailful. He drank greedily, then offered the kettle to Big John, who drained it, refilled it, drank some more, then passed it back.
After slaking their thirst, the two men rode to the cre
st of the next hill, where they stopped to stare south and west over the rolling plains. As exhausted as Gabriel felt, he couldn’t deny a deeper satisfaction that numbed the edges of his weariness. As far as he could see, the land was brown with buffalo. Not in one huge, compacted herd, but scattered into a thousand herds of anywhere from twenty to two hundred head, with smaller bunches in between. Cabbri moved delicately among the massive beasts, and cowbirds flitted from hump to hump. Wolves and coyotes prowled cautiously among the bison, ever on the look-out for weakened, crippled, or unwary animals. Gabriel and Big John gazed silently at the buffalo for several minutes, then turned and made their way back to the slough.
“We’ll rest here for a spell and let the ponies fill their bellies,” Big John said, his voice roughened from the ash he’d ingested last night. “Noon’ll be soon enough to head back.”
Gabriel nodded, but, as he worked at Baldy’s cinch with stiffened fingers, he realized he was disappointed that they were returning so soon. Despite their blow-up the day before, he’d enjoyed this otherwise quiet sojourn with Big John. Often in the past when the two of them had turned back from similar rides, Gabriel had found himself feeling as he did now—a reluctance to end the adventure, a desire to keep going, to see what lay beyond the horizon. It wasn’t all that long ago, as a boy, that he’d fantasized about all of them traveling with the buffalo forever, patterning their lives around the migratory habits of the shaggy bison in much the same fashion as the plains tribes did.
He dumped his saddle in the grass, then picketed Baldy close to the rushes along the slough. When he returned, Big John was sitting on top of his sleeping robe with his double-barreled rifle across his lap. He looked tired but not particularly sleepy. Unfurling his own robe, Gabriel flopped down cross-legged. “We must keep watch.”
“Aye.”
“Two hours for each?”
“I thought perhaps three.”
Gabriel nodded solemnly, as if considering three, but in truth he was staring listlessly at the rushes behind Baldy, entranced by their slight swaying in the wind, his thoughts already skittering wildly in exhaustion.
Noticing the droop of his eyelids, Big John said: “Ye be dead on ye feet, lad. Go ahead and lay back. I was thinkin’ of havin’ a pipe, anyway.”
“You will wake me?”
“Aye, when the time comes.”
Gabriel rolled into his buffalo robe without removing his moccasins or coat. Twisting around on his side, he curled his left arm under his cheek as a pillow and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep. As tired as he was, his thoughts continued to race and dart, his limbs to twitch from weariness. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, he sat up to find Big John dead to the world.
Gabriel stared in disbelief, hardly able to credit the slow rise and fall of the older man’s chest, the slack expression on his face. Big John was still sitting upright, half propped against his saddle and some of the robe that he’d wrapped around his waist. His stubbled chin rested on his chest.
The sight so astonished Gabriel that, for a moment, he didn’t know what to do. To sleep while on guard in a hostile land was almost incomprehensible, a crime among the bois brûles punishable by flogging. Yet Gabriel knew he could never again judge Big John by those old, inflexible standards. He wasn’t sure what had changed within himself in the past twenty-four hours, but, toward Big John at least, he felt a sense of peace he’d never known before.
Quietly he lay back down. He could still see Baldy cropping hungrily at the short prairie grass, and knew that by watching the piebald’s ears he would be forewarned if anyone approached. And it was best that Big John not know he had been caught napping. He had been through enough recently. He didn’t need this added embarrassment.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pulling out early, the cart train crept southward, following the general route McTavish and the boy had taken the day before. They made no effort to hide the dark swath of their trail across the frosty grass. It was too late for that, and would have been impossible anyway. Instead, Turcotte sent out twice the usual number of flankers, scattering them in every direction with instructions to range out as far as they felt necessary. But as the hours passed without any further sign of Black Fish or his warriors, the mood of the half-breeds became one of confusion. They had fought the Sioux too many years to believe they could get off this easily.
As one—man, woman, child—they eyed every distant ridge with suspicion, passed every coulée with dread. It was as if they expected the Sioux to sprout magically from the plain to fall upon them like the plagues of old. And yet in spite of the fear Pike saw on every face, no one suggested retreat. If there was fright, he began to realize, there was also an uncompromising stubbornness in their lives, a simplicity of purpose that somehow equaled courage. They were buffalo hunters, by damn, nothing would stand in the way of that. Not even the Sioux.
With this understanding of the Métis mentality, Pike finally began to grasp some of the mixed emotions McTavish felt for the half-breeds, the pride that ofttimes vied with exasperation.
They’d buried Little John McKay inside the circle of carts yesterday, with Catholic prayers in lieu of a priest and a proper ceremony, the beating of a wanbango and spirit songs chanted in Assiniboine for those gods not covered by the Roman faith. Afterward, Turcotte had ordered the livestock driven over the grave until no trace of it remained—a precaution against the Sioux who might have come back to open the grave and scalp and mutilate the corpse, or wolves and coyotes that would have dug up the body for food. There would be no cairn to return to, no landmark by which they would ever again find its location. Save for what remained in the hearts of family and friends, Little John McKay was gone forever.
Three of the wounded men rode in carts when the train pulled out, cushioned on robes against the harsh jolting of unsprung axles. Pike, his knee still too swollen to accommodate comfortably the curve of a horse’s barrel, started the day in one of McTavish’s meat carts, but by noon he had endured all he could of the vehicle’s slow, tooth-rattling pace and caterwauling shrieks. Dropping painfully to the ground, he saddled the seal brown gelding Michel Quesnelle had brought him that morning, then heaved himself astride the leggy animal. Leaning awkwardly to one side to allow his injured leg to dangle free, he’d kept pace with the carts.
Quesnelle had come to the McTavish camp in the murky light just before dawn while Pike, Alec, and Isabella were finishing their breakfast. He’d tied the seal brown to a cart wheel, then came over to stand in front of Pike.
“The pony is yours,” he’d announced without preamble. “It is a fine runner and is not afraid of buffalo. It will serve you well.”
Pike didn’t reply or even acknowledge the boy until after he’d left. Then he’d grunted softly, in wonder, and resumed his eating. He didn’t know what had prompted the youth’s generosity, nor did he care. It was enough that he had a horse again—seemingly free of any debt that might bind him tighter to the hunt—and that soon his time among the half-breeds would be over. Only McTavish held him back now. Not so much for the debt he still owed him, but because of his new-found respect for the iron-willed old Scotsman. Pike had already made his decision. He would wait for his wounds to heal, then run buffalo at least once more, adding as much meat and as many hides as he could to McTavish’s larder. After that, he would consider his obligation paid, kill Duprée, then flee to the mountains. Quesnelle’s gift would only make his leaving that much easier.
The frost was a long time burning off that morning. The days were continuing cold, with the scent of distant moisture. Soon now, Pike knew, the weather would change for good.
The caravan arrived at the northern edge of a huge burn late in the afternoon, the lead oxen halting as if they’d come to a solid wall of stone. Riding ahead, the men gathered around Antoine Toussaint, who had piloted that day, and the two forward point riders who had waited there for the train to catch up.
Toussaint was watching Turcotte questioningly. The lat
ter stared across the blackened plain in the direction of the horse tracks leading into it.
“Big John and Gabriel,” Toussaint said needlessly, pointing out the trail with his chin.
“We cannot wait,” Breland said, as if to head off any discussion on the matter. “Already the season grows short.”
“But we must wait,” Noel Pouliot quickly countered. He, too, was watching Turcotte. When he saw the indecision on the captain’s face, he added: “What if there is no grass, René? What if the burn stretches all the way to the Missouri River?”
“There was grass to the east when I returned from Paget’s camp,” Breland said. “The fire could not have been too big, else it would have burned there, as well.”
Hesitantly Turcotte said: “I think maybe I agree with Joseph, Noel. He came north from Paget’s camp only a day or so east of here. A big fire would have burned that far. But I think also that we should remain here tonight and let the stock eat their fill. Maybe by morning Big John will have returned, and we will know more about what lies ahead.”
“There is daylight left now,” Breland argued. “And I smell snow.”
Turcotte nodded carefully. “I also smell snow, Joseph, but I do not want to let such a thing goad us into an unwise decision. I do not want for us to be stranded without grass for the stock. It is a gamble to tarry, true, for there is no water here, but, if it snows, there will be water enough, and, if it doesn’t, then tomorrow we will cross the burn and find a lake or river on the other side.”
No one spoke for a moment. Then Breland looked at Turcotte, his expression restrained. “You speak wisely, René. I agree. We should remain here overnight to allow the oxen and horses time to graze. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”
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