He slowed to a trot as he entered the mouth of the valley. The trail of the buffalo was a broad, grayish swath churned through the wet snow, the tracks of a single horse conspicuous among the smaller prints of the bison. Riding alone, Pike’s gaze shifted from hilltop to hilltop, lingered on the ravines, scrutinized every rocky outcropping. He knew Duprée would have the advantage here, if he had the courage to use it.
The hills seemed to lay in a convoluted tangle, without any discernible pattern. Coulées fingered down on either side—some almost as wide as valleys in their own right—but the man he trailed stayed with the buffalo, his tracks easy to follow.
Winding deeper into the hills, wrapped in a crepuscular world that was both sky and earth, Pike was able to keep his sense of direction only by the gentle slant of the snow. In time another buffalo trail came down a sharp incline on his right to merge with the one he was following, obliterating Duprée’s tracks completely. Grimly Pike pushed on after the buffalo.
Pike saw bison in every direction, and knew they’d underestimated the size of the herd. Smaller bunches were strung out across the hills, agitated and on the move as the animals the half-breeds had run on the flats joined them. With the falling snow, Pike almost missed a flash of color moving over the shoulder of a distant ridge. He kicked the seal brown into a short lope. Although he hadn’t been completely confident he was on the right trail when he’d veered off to the south, he was now. He figured he’d recognize that brilliant, emerald tuque of Duprée’s in the middle of spring-green pasture. In a snowstorm, it stood out like a beacon.
At the next coulée leading in the same general direction as the far-off rider, Pike abandoned the buffalo trace altogether. Although the coulée snaked back and forth, it rose quickly. When it finally shallowed out about two-thirds of the way up the hill, he jumped the brown out of the ravine and dismounted, hobbling the horse and climbing the rest of the way on foot.
The wet snow was like ice under his greased, slick-soled moccasins. It took all of his concentration to make any progress without slipping and falling, and by the time he reached the crest, his toes were numb from digging for purchase.
The view from the top was spectacular, though limited. The land lay empty before him, without blemish. Not even the brown smudge of a buffalo marred the whitened countryside, although he could hear the ponderous approach of another herd coming up from the rear, the pop and click of joints, the clatter of horns, the hog-like grunts of the leaders, all accompanying a faint vibration through the ground that told him this bunch was large, but coming on slowly.
Pike glanced over his shoulder in annoyance. The floor of the valley he’d followed up from the plain, little more than a coulée itself now, ran past about eighty yards below him. The seal brown gelding still stood at the edge of the ravine where he’d left it, but had turned to watch their back trail, head high, ears perked forward. The brown whickered as the scent of the herd reached his quivering nostrils, and its rear hoofs shuffled restively. Swearing under his breath, Pike started back down the incline. The brown was a runner, and his instincts would be to go with the herd. Although the hobbles might slow him down, Pike knew they wouldn’t stop him if he took a notion to run with the buffalo.
He’d gone perhaps a dozen paces when a small, mushrooming cloud blossomed from the side of the hill across the valley. He jerked to a stop just as the distant boom of a fusil reached his ears. At almost the same instant, he was struck a sharp blow to his side. His moccasins scooted out from under him and his rifle seemed to leap from his hands. He fell on his back, his head smacking solidly against the hard ground. White flashes strobed briefly in front of his eyes, then the sky overhead darkened.
Although unconsciousness never claimed him completely, his struggles against it occupied the next several minutes. Only slowly did the dull, cloudy light of the buffalo plains return. Groaning, he brought a hand to his face, then slid it around to the back of his head. His fingers came away clean, even though he expected blood.
Sitting up, he twisted around to examine his side. Duprée’s shot had missed his body but shattered his powder horn, scattering black grains of DuPont over the snow like ground pepper. As that knowledge sank in, a feeling of panic gripped him, and he pulled his rifle into his lap. A dab of fine-grained powder remained in his priming horn, but not enough for a second charge. That left only the round still in the barrel, and no way to reload until he got back to camp and found a spare horn.
Despite the cold, there was a sheen of sweat across his brow as he struggled to his feet. On the hill across the valley, Duprée stood behind his pony, his fusil resting across his saddle, the muzzle pointed directly at Pike.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was snowing heavily by the time Big John reached the last buffalo he’d shot in yesterday’s run. The plain surrounding the marbled carcass was white and featureless, the air jittery with falling flakes. Dismounting, he looped his reins around one of the cow’s horns, then stood a moment to survey what he could of the country.
With no real horizon to lay his eyes on, there wasn’t much of an impression of place. Only the tracks of his horse and the snow-covered lump of the dead bison provided even a modicum of perspective. Little enough, he supposed, leaning his double-barreled rifle against the cow’s woolly skull, although it seemed more than adequate when he recalled his first few winters in the pays sauvage. During those callow days of his youth, such scenes as this had often tyrannized his soul, breathing morbid life into visions of freezing to death alone and unloved, or succumbing to the wretched agony of starvation.
Nowadays, of course, and as long as the temperature remained above zero or so, he was more apt to welcome the solitude of a winter’s storm.
Stooping above the carcass, Big John muscled his knife into the half-frozen flesh. Deftly he pared down the side of the spine, taking the dépouilles first. There had been some damage from wolves and coyotes to the first three buffalo he’d shot yesterday, one of the animals ravaged so completely its entire yield had been ruined, but none of the later carcasses had been molested, and the meat had remained fresh in the cold air.
Guiding his heavy-bladed butcher knife skillfully through the lean meat, Big John removed only the choicest pieces and laid them out in the snow. He had just finished the first side and was rolling the carcass over with the aid of the roan and a length of rope when he heard the muffled squeal of Isabella’s cart. A few minutes later he spied her trudging through the curtain of snow, following the roan’s tracks. She was wearing her heaviest shawl, and had thrust her hands into the sleeves of her capote for warmth. Visible beneath the blanket coat’s hem were heavy wool leggings that extended down over the tops of her thick souliers de boeuf, the calf-high buffalo-hide moccasins she wore in winter, constructed with the hair turned inward.
The cart pony followed without lead, halting obediently when she flashed a hand in front of its face. Eyeing the partially butchered carcass, she nodded her approval. “It was a good run,” she pronounced. “There is much meat for pemmican, and the robes are as good as last season’s.”
“Aye. Nary a silky in the lot, but naught that’s truly bad, either, save for the one with the scar across her ribs.”
“It has been a good hunt, McTavish. We will fill a cart with what we have taken today, and maybe fill a taureau to put in the second cart.”
Drawing her knife, she bent over the carcass while Big John carried the meat he’d already removed to the cart. Working together, it didn’t take long to finish up. Afterward, they cleaned their blades with handfuls of snow, dried them on their coat sleeves, then touched up the edges with a whetstone. When they were done, Isabella climbed into the cart and Big John mounted the roan and took the pony’s lead rope.
They traveled without speaking through a white world no more than a few hundred yards from one end to the other. With the snow falling as thick as it was and the light fading, Big John began to fret a little about finding his way back. There weren’t any
landmarks to latch onto, just his own intuition and the vanishing back trail of the horses and cart. But if Isabella was worried, she didn’t show it. Perched atop the pile of meat with a spare robe pulled over her shoulders for warmth, she quietly smoked a long-stemmed clay pipe. Now and again Big John would glance back at her and she would return his gaze expectantly, but she never breached the silence. Nor did he, for all that his thoughts kept leading him in that direction.
For some obscure reason, Father Denning’s admonition that they marry, and in that way cease the impropriety of their relationship together, had come to him again that morning, as it had intermittently throughout their long journey to the buffalo ranges. Something had changed of late, subtle yet large. He had become aware of it only recently, but he knew Gabriel had sensed it much earlier, and maybe Charlo, too. Surely others had as well.
Marriage? He mulled the possibilities, wondering why he’d avoided it for so long. Although a Church union would always remain out of the question for him, there were alternatives. Hudson’s Bay still offered a contract of marriage—insisted on it for its employees, in fact, although it was a difficult policy to enforce in the far-flung expanses of Rupert’s Land—and there were the American settlements of St. Peter and Green Bay to the south. He wondered if a civil ceremony would be sufficient for Isabella, if it would lighten her guilt. Imagining that it would brought him a certain amount of pleasure. She asked for so little for herself outside of her religion, the one thing Big John was forever unable to give her.
Although he toyed with the idea of bringing up the subject now, an unfamiliar shyness came over him and he kept the roan pointed toward camp, his feelings to himself. He would think about it some more, he decided, and, if it still seemed like a good idea in a few days, maybe he’d ask her then. But not right now. There was something else nagging at him, and, looking back, he saw that Isabella felt it, too. Giving the cart pony’s lead rope a sharp tug, he picked up the pace.
Half an hour later an ox dodged past them in the storm, wall-eyed with fright, bleeding from the nose, then vanished into the storm. Big John halted the roan long enough to put fresh caps on both nipples of his rifle, while Isabella slid to the ground and unhitched the cart pony. She was carrying her own shortened fusil now, and had slipped her bag and powder horn over her shoulder where they would be easy to reach. Pulling the cart pony alongside the vehicle’s shafts, she jumped from them onto the animal’s bare back. Big John signed—“Ready?”—and she replied that she was, and, side-by-side, they moved out.
It was a woman’s keening they heard first, faint and low-keyed, as if she had been at it a while and was nearly cried out. They reined their horses toward the sound and gradually the caravan took shape out of the swirling maw. From beneath one of the carts came a flash, followed by a muted boom. Hearing the whuffing passage of the ball as it sailed overhead, Big John drew up.
“Hold ye fire!” he bellowed. “’Tis Big John McTavish and Isabella Gilray.”
A distant voice told them to advance slowly and keep their hands away from their weapons.
As they neared the caravan, Big John spotted an arrow jutting from an oaken hub. After that, his gaze was drawn to other arrows, embedded in cart beds or pricking the stacks of meat and untanned hides that had been dumped hastily between the vehicles. The woman’s wailing grew sharper as they approached, accompanied by the softer cries of others.
Big John’s muscles were taut as bowstrings when Joseph Breland stepped out to meet them. Joseph’s face was riven from the corner of his eyebrow to his chin by a long, ugly gash, the clotted blood already starting to freeze in his beard. He was hatless, and his long black hair, wet with snow, was plastered to his skull.
“It was the Sioux, Big John,” he explained. “They caught us by surprise.”
A cart was rolled back, and Big John and Isabella guided their horses inside. Breland came along beside them, his hand on the roan’s hip. Jacques Leveille waited for them by a small fire, his fusil cradled across his chest.
“We were breaking camp to move closer to the herds,” he said, his voice strained with emotion. “They appeared out of the storm before we even knew they were there.”
“Were there no guards?” Big John asked.
Breland nodded morosely. “Saint Germain and Rocheblave. Both were killed.”
Isabella pulled her horse around and kicked it into a trot. She was heading for her own lodge, and the medical supplies she kept stored there in a parfleche box.
“The news is worse,” Breland added reluctantly. “They broke through the carts. Nicolas Quesnelle’s son Michel was also killed, as was Gavin McGillis, and… Big John, three women were taken. Lizette Hallet, Emmaline Pouliot, and…”
Big John groaned softly.
“… Celine. I am sorry, my friend.”
* * * * *
Pike raised his rifle, sighting on the distant figure just visible at the far end of his wavering field of vision. He judged the distance at a little under one hundred yards, but knew the snow could be misleading.
Below him, the brown gelding whinnied as the first of the buffalo appeared around a bend to the east. Pike noted the herd briefly, then dismissed it from his thoughts. He focused on his aim, on holding his sights high on Duprée’s chest. Then he gently stroked the trigger. The rifle bucked in his hands. Swearing at the powder smoke that hung like a billowing sheet in front of him, he half skidded down the steep slope until he had a view clear of the choking cloud. What he saw was Duprée’s horse rearing against the gray sky, its front hoofs flashing. But the footing was too treacherous, and the animal’s rear legs abruptly slid out from under it. Horse and man fell in an explosion of white.
Duprée’s horse came up in an instant and fled over the brow of the hill, bucking as it went, but Duprée was slower to regain his feet. He stood and shook his head, then looked around empty-handed. Moving carefully down the slope, he plucked his fusil from the snow, shook it to dislodge any slush from around the lock, then lifted it to his shoulder. Pike’s heart sank like a stone in water. He stood motionlessly, his breathing shallow, rifle hanging useless in his hands.
At first he didn’t know what to think when Duprée lowered his weapon, then raised it again. When he lowered it a second time, a weak grin took possession of his features. Something had happened to Duprée’s fusil. Perhaps it had been damaged in the fall, maybe kicked by his horse. Or snow had wormed through the touch hole to saturate the powder charge inside. Whatever the cause, Duprée couldn’t get his smoothbore to fire, and Pike felt a momentary reprieve.
Lifting his voice above the rumble of the herd just then coming between them, Pike shouted: “Duprée!”
The man’s head jerked up. Pike extended his arm away from his body, his rifle dangling from his fist. Then he let it drop, making sure it tipped outward into the snow so that Duprée didn’t think it was a ruse. Drawing his knife, he held it above his head where the half-breed could see it. It was a hollow challenge, and it made him feel hollow inside to issue it, but perhaps if Duprée didn’t know he was unable to reload, if his own fusil was inoperable…
Leaving his rifle behind, Pike started down the slope. He kept his hands spread wide not just for balance, but to reassure Duprée that he was unarmed save for the knife. Duprée held back suspiciously until Pike was well clear of his rifle, then he angrily flung his own long gun aside and started forward.
The herd leaders were just disappearing over the top of the rise to the west when Pike reached the bottom of the hill. Behind them trailed a sinuous thread of buffalo, flowing between the two hunters like a cinnamon-hued river. Here, near the top where the valley had narrowed down almost to the size of a ravine, the bison were funneled in tightly, about a dozen abreast and packed shoulder to shoulder between the steep banks. A few of the beasts shook their heads threateningly as Pike approached, but the majority of them were so crammed in they didn’t even notice him.
Pike halted at the very lip of the ravine, his toes about
even with the surging brown humps of the bison. Duprée stopped opposite him, maybe thirty feet away. He lifted his knife provokingly. It was a Hudson’s Bay dagger with a hole drilled through the bone handle that enclosed a slim, braided leather thong looped around the half-breed’s wrist.
“You and me, eh, American?” Duprée shouted. “We see now who is the better man.”
Pike’s anger soared when he saw the pitted, whetstone-worn blade of the dag. Was this the knife the cocky little bastard had used on Arch? His voice taut with rage, he called: “How did man meat taste, Duprée? Was it tender, or tough?”
But Duprée was already denying it. “It is not me that is weendigo. It was François.”
“You’re a liar!” Pike shouted. “A god damned man-eating liar!”
At Pike’s feet, a cow brushed the steep bank, loosening a small avalanche of dirt and tiny stones. Pike felt the scuff of her shoulder through the sod, the jolt of her massive frame beneath his moccasins. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to step out onto her wet back. No different than exiting his family’s cabin door back home after the evening meal.
Duprée’s eyes widened in astonishment. Then he laughed and hurried down the slope, leaping astride a buffalo that bucked once and shook its head, then settled back into the shuffling trot that marked the pace of the rest of the herd. Pushing to his feet, Duprée cackled gleefully as he crouched easily with one hand hanging onto the buffalo’s long shoulder hair. “You and me, American! Sacre, I look forward to slitting your throat.”
But Pike’s zeal had waned. Balanced awkwardly atop the cow’s sloping hips, he felt suddenly sick with dread. Duprée’s quick response didn’t surprise him. He’d seen Indians and half-breeds perform similar feats of recklessness in the past. But his own daring had left a brassy taste of fear in his throat. He’d never attempted anything so audacious in his life, and, even though he knew it could be done, he was almost certain it couldn’t be done by him.
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