They ran their carts into a circle and lashed the wheels together. Then, while the older boys grazed the horses and oxen away from the caravan, the women set about making camp. Night seemed to fall swiftly that evening, as if the darkness were a shade drawn over the land. Only a pale band of soft pearl remained in the west when Charles Hallet and Jim Patterson, the last of the flankers, came in. As they threaded their mounts through an opening made in the carts, a number of half-breeds began to gravitate toward them. Pike had been resting beside Isabella’s fire, but, when he saw the looks on the faces of the men as they dismounted, he pulled himself up with the aid of his rifle and hobbled over. He arrived just in time to hear Hallet say: “Very many. More than a hundred, easily.”
“Tae hundred, ’n’ nae a feather less,” Patterson insisted. His eyes looked big in the imperfect light, his face drawn.
“Maybe two hundred,” Hallet conceded.
Pike glanced slowly around the circle of half-breeds, noting their grim acceptance, the lack of surprise. They had been waiting for this news for two days.
“Where exactly?” a Métis asked.
“East of here about three hours.”
“And you are sure they crossed the burn?” Turcotte asked.
“They entered the burn, heading south,” Hallet replied. “I don’t know how far they went. We didn’t follow.”
A voice made edgy with fright said: “They will catch us on the burn and stop us there.”
Eva McKay—a widow less than three days—cried: “This is madness! The Sioux will kill us all if we do not treaty with them!”
There was a muttering of agreement. Breland hushed it with an upraised hand. “Non, we cannot! To show weakness now would only invite disaster. We must remain strong.”
Others—a clear majority, Pike thought—sided with Breland. A little round-faced half-breed with gaping front teeth said: “The Sioux are like dogs when they spot a crippled fawn, Eva. They would fall on us as a pack, and tear out our throats.”
But another shouted: “If they stop us on the burn, our cattle and horses will starve within days.”
Then someone else said: “Overnight, the oxen will crop the grass within a camp into the dirt. If they starve, it would be no more than twelve hours sooner than they would have on grass.”
“That is true,” said Pierre Campbell, the Métis who’d offered Pike breakfast after the first day’s fighting. “I came to hunt buffalo, not run from the Sioux.”
“Oui!” shouted Baptiste LaBarge. “We are hunters, non? We must follow the buffalo.”
Others took up the call, most of them agreeing with Campbell and LaBarge that they should go on. Only a few argued that there would be buffalo farther west, as well, and that it would be smarter to go in that direction.
Pike took it all in absently. It didn’t matter to him where they hunted. From here on, he waited only for his wounds to heal.
* * * * *
There was no fire in the lodge, and the darkness was complete save for a single star visible through a gap in the closed flaps covering the smoke hole. Celine lay on her back, staring at that twinkling bit of light. It reminded her of the ice crystals that used to form on the stone walls of her room at the Convent of Our Lady of Troy. Especially the outer wall, where the hoarfrost during the coldest weeks of winter sometimes grew more than an inch thick.
She focused her attention on the star because it took her mind away from the half-breeds’ recent engagement with the savages. During the battle, while other women had stood behind their men and helped reload, or took part in the actual fighting with their own long guns, Celine had cowered among the hides piled behind Big John’s carts, feigning deafness to Isabella’s commands. She had been too terrified to help, but, of course, the stupid bitches—every one of them smelling of grease and blood and sweat—were too ignorant to understand that. Even though they’d yelled at her as if she were a dog, she hadn’t cared. She was immune to their anger.
After the battle she’d attempted to prove her worth by helping with the wounded, but the jealous whores who had pleaded so selfishly for her assistance earlier now refused her every offer. So she’d retired to Big John’s carts, where she busied herself handing out balls of pemmican to whomever passed. It was that evening that she’d gone to Gabriel to mend the rift the American had created between them.
Celine knew the American wanted her badly. Once she had considered the possibility of becoming his woman, but it had become obvious he wasn’t the man for her. He didn’t understand a woman, or those things that made a woman special. He had become too accustomed to the red-skinned harlots of the unholy pays sauvage, and seemed content to wallow in that life the way a hog wallowed in mud. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Gabriel was much the same in many ways, but she also knew that Gabriel was still young and could be shown the errors of his thinking.
Besides, she was certain Gabriel was as dissatisfied with his life in the valley as she was. He just hadn’t yet figured out how to correct his situation. Celine could help him. If Pike was too stupid to want to see Boston or New York or Montreal, Gabriel wouldn’t be. He would take her to those places, and they would live in a splendor of warm homes and fine clothes, with succulent meals butchered and gardened by others. That was the life she craved.
There was a shout from one of the guards, an answering hail from somewhere outside the cordon. Celine sat up with a little, shivery cry, convinced the Sioux had returned for her. She stared at the dark wall of the lodge until the blackness there seemed to swim.
Isabella stirred, muttering something in Cree. Alec pushed his robes back and said he would go see. Voices outside rumbled low and cautiously, without meaning. The antelope hide door made a stiff, scraping sound as Alec exited the teepee, allowing a rush of cool air inside. Pike’s voice came to her through the thin hide walls, explaining to Alec that someone was approaching the camp, and Alec replied that it might be Big John and Gabriel. At mention of his name, Celine quickly fumbled into her coat and moccasins.
She paused outside for bearings. It was brighter than she’d expected. Although the moon had long since gone down, the stars seemed bigger and more numerous than ever before. She joined the flow of half-breeds hurrying toward the far side of the caravan. Perhaps thirty or forty Métis were already gathered at Nicolas Quesnelle’s carts, with more appearing every minute. Someone asked who it was, and Quesnelle replied: “Big John and Gabriel.”
Breland forced his way through the throng to climb onto the hub of an upturned cart. “Big John!” he called. “Is that you?”
“Aye, Joseph, me and Gabriel. We’re alone, and no sign of hostiles the day long.”
Celine’s heart leaped for joy. For two long days she had feared Gabriel would run off and leave her to Pike. Instead, he had returned. What further proof did she need of his love?
Chapter Twenty-Two
The buffalo had drifted south and a little west from where Big John and Gabriel had last seen them, but they were easy enough to find. The bois brûles came at them from the east, with the wind in their faces, the musky tinge of the herd working on the high-strung runners like a stimulant. After laying over at the slough for a day to rest their livestock and scout for the Sioux, who had once again disappeared, the Métis were eager to renew the hunt.
Big John’s roan was as fractious as the worst of them, tossing his head and baring his huge teeth at any horse that came near. Although Big John had left the caravan riding old Solomon and leading the roan on a short lead to keep the runner as fresh as possible, he had been forced to switch mounts long before they reached the herd. Even from this more dominant position, it was a handful to keep the fiery stallion in check.
The sun was still hidden behind the distant curve of the prairie when the hunters came in sight of the herd, but its light was already gilding the higher crags of Dogden Butte, sliding the morning shadows slowly down its long flanks the same way a seductive woman lowered a skirt off her hips.
With n
o low ridge to take advantage of this time, Turcotte kept the hunters close until they were within eight hundred yards of the nearest bull, then ordered a line formed between himself and Charlo. With everyone in place, he wasted no time raising his hand above his head, then dropping it forward with a lusty: “Ho!”
As one, the Métis began their advance. At six hundred yards, they went into a trot. It was here the line began to break apart, the roan and a few others pulling eagerly ahead.
The buffalo were scattered over the broad plain as far as the eye could see. From horseback, the country looked like a solid mass of curly brown and black and buff, although Big John knew that, while grazing, the shaggy animals would actually be spread fairly far apart.
It was a mixed herd of bulls and cows they were approaching, somewhat of an oddity this late in the season. Normally by now the larger herds would be split into smaller bunches of the same sex, excluding the youngest bulls, which would remain with the cows until they were two-year-olds. Big John couldn’t help but wonder if having been run at least twice so far this season hadn’t delayed the herd’s natural winter division. Certainly it had made the bison more agitated. The Métis were still five hundred yards away when a huge bull at the edge of the herd spotted them, shook its massive head as if in annoyance, then trotted off.
The effect on the buffalo around it was instantaneous. Within seconds, the animals at the periphery of the herd were loping away from the hunters, spreading outward from the point where the bull had entered the main herd like a ripple launched from a muddy bank. In less than half a minute, the entire plain was on the run, stampeding into the wind. With a ragged yell the hunters dashed after them. So quick were they to react that Turcotte’s final—“Ho! Ho!”—was all but lost in the rush.
Big John’s roan quickly pulled ahead of the main bunch. Only a handful—Charlo, Breland, Hallet, LaBarge, and three or four others on better horses—were able to keep up. Big John’s eyes immediately began to tear in the freezing wind, and the pounding of the roan’s hoofs beat a dull cadence he could feel inside the scabbed-over wound from One Who Limps’s knife. The odor of the running herd seemed to sharpen as he closed with it, as pungent as fresh-made cider. Buffalo gnats, shaken loose and left hovering in the air, began to pepper his face, and cowbirds, startled from the backs of their hosts, squawked raucously overhead.
Fortunately for the hunters, the herd was too cumbersome to manage much speed. Within half a mile, Big John felt the first bruising slap of a heart-shaped clod of dirt, kicked up by a fleeing bison. Minutes later, he began the perilous endeavor of threading a path through the rear wall of slower beasts. He was mildly surprised that the buffalo seemed more aggressive than usual. Many of them grunted angrily as the big stallion ranged alongside. A few even attempted to hook the roan with their short, curving horns, as if they’d finally grown weary of the Métis’ harassment and intended to retaliate.
The roan was an old hand at this type of work, though, and it didn’t take him long to worm through the older bulls and get in among the younger animals. With a slight pressure of his knee, Big John guided the straining runner alongside a three-year-old cow—a Small-Built One, in the vernacular of the plains tribes. Palming one of his brace of pistols from his sash, he thumbed the cock back to full, then leaned almost casually from the saddle and pulled the trigger. The Small-Built One seemed to shudder in mid-stride, then veered sharply away before tumbling to the ground. Quickly Big John plucked a length of green wool from his sash and tossed it after the cow. Then he reloaded while the roan picked out another animal.
They approached the next cow from the left, but just as Big John pulled the trigger, the buffalo dodged to the side. The pistol bucked in his hand but the ball missed its mark. The cow bellowed in pain and rage, lurching away with her foreleg swinging uselessly, the shoulder broken.
Big John cursed as he guided the roan after her with his knees. He didn’t try to reload. Instead he returned the empty pistol to his sash and slid its companion free. The second pistol was already primed. As the roan came against the cow, he cocked it, thrust it down, and pulled the trigger in one motion.
The cow fell as if pole-axed, flipping head over heels into the roan. The stallion squealed and stumbled sideways. Big John grabbed the reins desperately, struggling to bring the runner’s head up, to keep the horse on its feet. They might have made it if not for an older cow coming up from behind and bumping hard against the horse’s hip, flinging him in the opposite direction. The roan squealed again as its legs tangled, and went down like a stone.
Big John spilled over the horse’s head with a strangled cry. He landed on his shoulder, from there rolling smoothly to his feet. He heard the roan’s harsh, deep-throated roar as it lunged upright, but the horse was lost from sight, hidden behind a surging brown wall of stampeding bison. Big John turned toward a bull hurtling toward him. He could see the small, raging eyes below the burr-matted mop of the animal’s forelock, the sharp black horns lowering. The bull wasn’t running blindly. It had swerved deliberately toward him.
For a moment Big John stood as if frozen, the bull lumbering at him in what seemed an almost tortoise-like speed. His mind told him he could dodge this animal easily if he wanted to, that all he had to do was step aside at the last instant and the buffalo would simply race on past. But his muscles refused to respond at the same speed as his brain. He felt as sluggish as a bear coming out of hibernation.
It was Joseph Breland who stopped what, for a moment, seemed inevitable. He appeared as if from nowhere, charging his black runner straight at the bull. As he came near, his pony gun belched a rosy lance of flame and smoke that mushroomed against the bull’s shoulder. The buffalo grunted and seemed to draw in around the point of the ball’s impact. Then its front legs buckled and its nose dug into the prairie sod like a blunted plowshare.
The great weight of the animal propelled it forward, but by then Big John’s paralysis had broken and he was able to skip nimbly out of its path. As the bull slid past, Big John jumped onto its back, balanced precariously there for a scant second, then tipped forward across the back of Breland’s saddle—a move so gracefully perfect, so completely improbable, that it would have been impossible to duplicate. Then Breland’s hand grabbed his sash, holding him firm until he could swing a leg over the black’s croup.
Breland’s grin was strained as he glanced over his shoulder, although neither man spoke. Big John’s roan was clinging to the side of another cow about forty yards ahead, and Breland guided his black horse after it. The roan’s ears were laid back, his neck stretched parallel to the ground, as if determined to continue the chase alone.
With its double load it took the black a while to catch up. When they came alongside, Big John drew himself up on one knee, then slid his other leg across the roan’s back. He launched himself toward the runner with a twinge of the same gut-wrenching anxiety he’d felt when he first spied the bull bearing down on him, but landed squarely in the saddle and found his stirrups without difficulty. With a wave and a yell, Breland swerved away and was soon lost from sight. Calmly Big John reloaded his remaining pistol, then shot the cow at his side.
He killed four more buffalo before the roan became too winded to keep up. The herd had scattered considerably by then, and, when he looked around, he discovered that he was alone on a vast, hill-rimmed plain. Straightening in the saddle, he pulled the roan down to a canter. The stallion’s neck and shoulders were dark with sweat, and a grimy lather had collected along the saddle’s single, buffalo-hair cinch.
The herd continued to stream around him, rolling on west like a billowing brown carpet. There was no place to go for him to escape the running mass of bison, and there were still too many animals behind him to stop completely. He had no choice but to continue on at a lope until the bulk of the herd had passed.
Once the herd began to thin out, Big John slowed to a trot, although he kept a wary eye over his shoulder. Most of the buffalo avoided him by swinging wide to on
e side or the other, but occasionally he would have to bend the roan out of the path of a larger, more densely packed bunch. It was another ten minutes before he felt comfortable enough to turn back. Coming to his last kill, he pulled up to study the country around him for any sign of hostiles. When he was satisfied he was alone, he dismounted and drew his butcher knife.
The cow’s hide was a good one. Not quite a silk, but with a definite bluish tint that was rare, and that would increase its value. He took extra care with the skinning, then folded it carefully afterward and tied it behind his saddle.
The second cow he came to was as thickly wooled as the first, but its hair was coarser and of a more common hue, and there was a thick, ugly scar across the ribs from some past goring. He spent less time on this one, and dumped the hide beside the carcass when he was finished. As rough as it was, he doubted if Isabella would bother tanning it for a robe, although she might want it for whatever leather she could cut from around the lengthy, poorly-healed wound.
He was cleaning his knife with a handful of grass when he spotted a rider hauling up atop a distant hill. It was Pouliot, and in broad sign he was asking for Big John to come, explaining that the lost hunter had been found. For a moment, Big John didn’t know what he meant. Then he realized what Pouliot was trying to say and his head snapped back as if he’d been slapped. Swinging his leg awkwardly over the bulky blue hide behind his saddle, he reined toward the hill.
Pouliot waited for him, but, as Big John made his way up the steep incline, he could tell from the expression on the mixed-blood’s face that the news would not be good. Drawing up, he said: “Ye’re tellin’ me ye found a missin’ hunter?”
Pouliot nodded glumly. “We think so. Etienne Cyr, maybe. You come, eh?”
“Etienne Cyr was lost days from here,” Big John said. “He couldn’t have walked this far.”
Beneath a Hunter's Moon Page 31
