The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  Rockchuck took him hunting in the high country of the Tu-nam pai-okai-pin. It was a bad time for the family. Web’s grandfather, Beak, died a week before. No one knew why. He complained a lot going over the last divide from rendezvous, said he had a terrible gut ache, and sometimes rode on a travois, like an infant. Then suddenly rolled onto his knees, shook and jerked violently, and pitched into the dirt, dead.

  Since Web’s mother died in childbirth, he had been raised by his mother’s parents. That was usual enough. Many first children were raised by their maternal grandparents. But Web was being raised with half the family anyone was entitled to, among a people to whom family was every tiling.

  So Beak was the only father Web had ever known, and he was gone. They boy would not miss him much. For several years Beak had been withdrawn, remote from the family. But Web felt for his grandmother, Black Shawl, and he knew he now had no male protector.

  After the mourning, Black Shawl asked Rockchuck to take Web deer-hunting. The boy was fourteen winters old, she pointed out. It was the Shoshone way.

  Actually, Web’s father’s brother, his hai, should have become his teacher, to show him the ways of the earth, the ways of the rooted, the winged, the water-dwellers, and the four-legged. This man should have taught him how the four-leggeds leave their signs on dirt and sand and mud and snow, and how to follow them, how to know what they will do, how to catch them and take some of their power, or their lives and their power. This man should have prepared him to find a dream that would show him his power, his personal, special way to walk the earth.

  So Rockchuck complained—that’s not my job, he said, I’m the kid’s mother’s brother, his tami. Old Black Shawl spat in the dust. She wasted no time pointing out the obvious—she just ordered Rockchuck to take Web hunting.

  So they set out resenting each other. Rockchuck left Web on stands alone for several days, entirely alone, with nothing to eat or drink, and the necessity of absolute stillness. Rockchuck said it was to teach him patience. Web suspected it was to inflict punishment. He thought Rockchuck was not out trying to jump deer, but in camp, napping. And there was nothing Web could do. He refused to be caught off his stand. At night, in camp, Rockchuck acted sullen, and occasionally arrogant. If Web had good medicine, he hinted, they would not be taking so long to find so common a thing as a deer, and kill it.

  When they did find one, it was only a buck so young the antlers hadn’t branched. Still, Web kept the dewclaws as a sign of his first hunt, and gave them to his grandmother. He knew he had learned something, alone there in the beating sun. He could master not only his hunger and his thirst but his anger.

  In front of the people, Rockchuck seemed to shrug the kill off. A small deer, a nothing, his manner said. Web could almost hear them whispering, “Numah-divo.” Halfway of the people, not exactly one of us.

  That night Web learned something else: He learned not to cry when his feelings were hurt. He learned not to care about these people who scorned him.

  He did care about his grandmother. Only she felt truly like family. But a woman could not teach a boy the ways of men. She always held out the hope that Goddamn Hairy, Inqa-moe-zho, would come back and be a father. But Web didn’t want him back. Web would learn carefully the lessons Rockchuck had for him, and despise him every moment. And Goddamn could go to the Ninabee, the devils with tails who eat children. No, to Joahwayo, the big fool with a hairy face and scaly body who ate grown-ups.

  Now, four years later, Web had passed eighteen winters. And he had learned.

  He saw a lizard by his right foot, a tiny one. The innocent creature came out between Web’s feet, stood still, peered about, its head frozen still. Then it scurried up between Web’s calves, stopped, peered.

  The fool. Web would wait until it came within reach and catch it. Even catch it with his awkward hand, the right hand. And fling it away. This lizard would be easy.

  He had learned the patience his uncle forced on him. He had learned quickness with his hands—Web could do anything that required nimble fingers, especially whittling with a knife or drawing or painting. He had learned cunning. And he had learned not to care.

  The little lizard was up between Web’s thighs. This was an affront. For this the lizard must become like a winged one, and fly. Web eased his hand off his upper leg, felt the warm rock with his fingertips. He moved with the gentleness, the stealth, the calculation, and the cruelty of the hunter. The lizard was confused—even Web’s right hand would be plenty quick for this prey.

  Snatch!

  He held the creature up to his eyes and studied it. It jerked its head back and forth, looking about stupidly, understanding nothing. It flailed its legs in the air, then held them utterly still, then flailed them again.

  Web pinched hard with his thumb and forefinger. The lizard squashed all over his hand.

  Guilt and shame lifted him like a great wave. You are angry, he accused himself, so you take it out on a lizard.

  Miserably, he wiped the goo off on his breechcloth.

  Yes, I am angry and upset, goddamn you all.

  Tonight I will show you.

  Wh-r-r-r!

  Rattlesnake!

  Web jumped up. He couldn’t see it. Which way should he run?

  Goddamn!

  He jumped off the rock, fell to the ground, scrambled away.

  Whomp. Someone landed on him from behind. Held his head down. Grabbed his scalp lock.

  Web felt the hot prick of the knife. He shook himself, but the man was too heavy, too strong.

  Hah, hah, hah. Hah, hah, hah. A laugh, slow, elaborate, mocking.

  His captor stood up. Web rolled over and looked up at his big friend Yu-huup. His grin was big, his eyes wild as moons. One open palm held the rattlesnake rattle, a big one. Web remembered when he and Yu-huup killed the snake together.

  “Cousin,” said Web weakly. He reached up for a hand and heaved to his feet. “You could have hit me with the poison.” He was still getting his breath. Web was a slight, wiry youth, Yu-huup a big one, and fat.

  “A Crow would have lifted your curly hair,” said Yu-huup, putting his knife away. Web was always sensitive about his hair, which not only was brown but also curly. His hair and his light skin gave away that he was Numah-divo.

  “So what do you want, cousin? What’s such a secret?”

  Now Web looked at him in the eyes. Here was a real test for Yu-huup. The deed would be daring, and exciting, but tomorrow some people would shun Fatty. He might have to take the full blast of One Bull’s anger, and One Bull was a plenty mean old man.

  Web felt cold in his gut, hurting. Maybe Yu-huup would say no. Maybe Yu-huup would say yes and, just when he was needed, run like a coward. Maybe Yu-huup would tell his mother and father and spoil the plan.

  Web sat down on the lava rock and motioned Yu-huup to join him. He looked at his cousin and best friend nakedly. “Tonight I’m going to steal Paintbrush.” He let it sit. The cousins looked at each other hard. Fear appeared there—and boldness and daring and excitement…and the uncertainty of teenagers.

  Finally Yu-huup said, “One Bull will kill you. Horn’s kinsmen will kill you.”

  Web shook his head and smiled a wicked smile. “I have a plan,” he said.

  Web first saw Paintbrush the summer when they were both twelve, the year before the great rendezvous on the Siskadee. She and her brother came to live with One Bull. Their parents had been killed by the Crows, a terrible thing, and One Bull and his wife were their uncle and aunt. Since Paintbrush and Web had not come to the changes—to young womanhood and manhood—the two played together as children.

  Paintbrush was lonely. Occasionally she cried for her parents and her band, but more often Web would find her sitting alone by the river, her eyes far away and infinitely sad. He felt for her—she, too, was a stranger among these people. He befriended her.

  And Paintbrush brought Web a great gift. With childish pleasure she showed him the implement she was named for. She showed hi
m how to make tools for painting from bones, or from willow sticks, and how to chew the end of the stick to make a wide implement for some strokes.

  Web loved painting. Though women did quillwork and beadwork and decorative, geometric painting, men did paintings showing real objects, men and horses at war, and the like.

  The two kids gathered colored rocks and crunched them into powder, dug out black and yellow minerals, scraped up yellow earth, and mixed it all with clay to make paints. They mixed the colors with grease, fat, or water, or for painting on hide with a glue made from hoofs. And they painted gaily and merrily, all day long, as long as their parents would permit it.

  Paintbrush stuck to the women’s style, geometric, decoration of small things she was learning to sew, and with a nice eye for design and color. Web was different. He painted what he saw by night, in his dreams, and the grand story figures of the Shoshone people whose lives were told during the winter moons, Coyote howling at the full moon or acting foolish or wise, his brother Wolf, Rabbit, Bear, the tiny Chickadee, the Thunderbird, and the like. When he was painting, he felt right with the world. Somehow it was all beautiful—gorgeous—and the people marveled at Web’s art.

  Web thought how lucky he was that Paintbrush had showed him her namesake tools. How lucky he was to have a flair for painting. How lucky he was to be able to play at painting with her all day, every day.

  Now, five years later, he knew he had fallen in love with her that summer.

  Black Shawl knew it then, Web saw now. She mentioned to Web, pretending to be casual, that Paintbrush was not betrothed to anyone. She was new to the band, and her betrothed one had died as an infant. Black Shawl did not need to say that no girl child had been offered to the child Web for betrothal, because Web was Numah-divo. Or that here might be a woman for an outcast, a man with no betrothed.

  Felicity. Web saw the working of spirit here, Tsaa nevmu-da-hi. He loved Paintbrush.

  The next summer, at the great rendezvous, Web came by chance on a white man drawing. The boy was taken aback. The white men painted nothing, as far as Web knew. They hardly decorated anything except maybe the handles of their knives and guns. It was as though they didn’t see, didn’t dream.

  What this man was drawing was still more amazing. He made small sketches of plants, exactly as they looked. The man invited the Shoshone boy to watch. It was strange to Web. Yes, rooted things did have power, but few men dreamed of rooted things, or got their life’s medicine from them. Why would anyone draw them? This man sketched one plant after another, and not as in vision, but exactly as they looked to the undreaming eye. Yet they were Tsaa-na, beautiful—he had the gift of pohan-apusa, dreamed power. Scientist, he called himself several times. Other times he said his name was Nutting.

  Later came more events sent by Spirit. Web brought his hide paintings for Scientist to see. Scientist got a Sho-shone-speaking trapper to explain to Web what Scientist was doing. Somehow Scientist would see the plant with great exactness from the drawing, study it, understand it, and extract its power that way. Web didn’t really understand. But he started following Scientist into the fields and learning to draw as Scientist did, from life rather than dream. Scientist even made him a gift of a pad of what the whites called paper, and colored pencils. A treasure to Web.

  That brought trouble. When the people saw these new-style drawings, they shrugged their shoulders. No one saw any point in drawing from observation rather than vision. There goes Web again, they whispered, thinking and acting like a divo.

  Web kept drawing from life—everything he could find to draw, every chance he got—but he kept the sketches hidden.

  Near the end of the rendezvous came the crash. Paintbrush became a woman, bleeding with the moon, and was initiated into the ways of a woman, waippe. She and Web could no longer play together as children.

  Then One Bull let it be known quietly that his daughter Paintbrush, a most beloved daughter, was betrothed. Betrothed to a young man of great promise, from a great family. Horn, the son of the war leader Raven.

  Web was desolate. He could not believe it. Could they not see the hand of spirit drawing the best future for him and Paintbrush?

  So came four years of agony: His grandfather died. His uncle Rockchuck humiliated him. Except for his family, people seemed to shun Web. Until Yu-huup insisted, no one invited him to hold horses on a pony raid. No be-trothed appeared for him. Web was only halfway one of the people.

  Aside from his grandmother, he had one great good in his life: Paintbrush loved him. Or so he thought. She told people that his good medicine showed in his painting. She favored him with glances, looks, even furtive touches. It was risky, but she did it. She let him know.

  So Web decided he must take a risk. Among these people the great crimes were to kill a kinsman, to steal a kinsman’s horses, or to steal his wife. Any could mean blood or banishment.

  But there was one way out.

  “In two moons you will join us among Nakok’s people,” Web told Yu-huup. Nakok was a rebellious Shoshone leader, and his band lived on U Ah Die, the Wind River.

  Yu-huup’s eyes locked on him. Excitement? thought Web. Fear? Both?

  “Then in the moon when water begins to freeze at the edge of the streams, you and I will go against the Crows. Alone.” His eyes gleamed. Just two young men against the Crows, a daring stroke. “We will bring Horn so many horses he will forget a mere woman.” His lips tossed off the words mockingly.

  Yu-huup knew Web was right. It was a bold plan, but workable. Horn might feel humiliated, rejected by his woman for another man. But neither Horn nor his family could refuse the payment of the horses. That was the custom. Then Web and Paintbrush would come back to the tribe, in their own lodge, a full-fledged family of the people. Their children would be true Shoshones, duvish-shaw-numah.

  And Web and Yu-huup would be looked on with new eyes. To go alone against the Crows and run off their pony herds! Deeds of valor! Coups!

  “Ha-uh!” Yu-huup exclaimed in excitement.

  Web shook his fist in the air. He wanted to fill the sky with shouting, but that might give something away.

  “Here’s the plan,” he began.

  Chapter Six

  Web was ready. He’d been lying here in the shadow of the lodge for almost enough time to see the Seven Sisters move against the black sky. He had walked quietly through the village, not exciting the dogs, which knew his smell, then letting One Bull’s war horse, staked by the lodge, snuffle him without getting alarmed.

  Web was entirely naked, scales painted all over his body, hair painted on his face, like Joahwayho. Since he had no poha (medicine) of his own, this was as good a choice as any—Joahwayho, he who came in the middle of the night and ate grown-ups.

  He streaked hair all over his face, not just on the upper lip and jaw but also on the nose and forehead. He made crazy patterns of the hairs, angling wildly, many of the streaks bolts of lightning. His eyelids were white, and they made a weird effect when he blinked. Yu-huup greased his rust-colored hair, twisted it into horns, and tied it high and spiky.

  Web was worse than a zo-ahp, a ghost. It anyone saw his face, not only would they not recognize him, he would scare them half to death.

  Since the night was cool, the lodge skirts were down. Now even the last of the fire was out, and everyone asleep, One Bull and his wives at the center rear, their last daughter on the buffalo robes at their feet. Paintbrush.

  He took a deep breath to ease his tension, then another, and another. He wondered how Yu-huup was doing in the ravine with the three horses. Yu-huup was his only friend, his haintseh, but Yu-huup acted dumb sometimes. What if he got scared of the real ghosts and ran off?

  No time for doubts now, time for action. He crawled several steps and sat still in the shadow. He waited. No man or beast had heard. No one raised the alarm.

  Web lifted his knife and began, ever so slowly and ever so softly, to cut the thongs that held the hide cover of the lodge to the stakes in the g
round.

  Black. Black like he had a white-man kettle on his head. Black like the stomach of a grizzly bear. Black like the heart of One Bull. Web couldn’t see anything.

  So he would go by feel. He knew very well where everyone’s buffalo robes were, that Paintbrush was just to his left, her feet near him, her head at the far end. He would ease around and get next to her ear and whisper to her ever so softly.

  He couldn’t be sure she would come with him. A man simply did not ask such a thing. It would get you rejected, then and forever. But once, within her hearing, he’d told the story of Red Forehead, who stole Lance’s wife. He had watched Paintbrush’s face. Everyone knew Red Forehead and the woman had been happy, had stayed together for years and had lots of children. The flicker of eyelashes seemed an answer.

  A flicker of eyelashes. But unmanly to ask more.

  Web lifted himself slightly on his palms and moved to his left. Again. Once more.

  M-m-m-m?

  Goddamn!

  His foot touched flesh. Goddamn you, you stupid…!

  He lay still as the earth itself.

  M-m-m-m.

  Stirrings over there. Were they looking around the lodge, trying to see what moved? He thanked Itsa-ppe, Coyote, the trickster, for the blackness.

  Rustling of robes and blankets. Scrapings. Maybe Old Bull was sitting up, looking around. The first moan had been female, the second male.

  Web wanted to sink into the dirt like spilled water.

  M-m-m-m.

  M-m-m-m.

  More rustlings.

  A couple of more moans.

  Then other sounds, touchings, stirrings, little sounds of pleasure.

  Goddamn.

  And then the ancient, rhythmic slurp of human beings obeying the force of life within them. The sound Web had heard hundreds of times in his life, though he never had touched a woman in that way. The sound Paintbrush had heard hundreds of times and never made herself.