Eyes fell as they always did when talk took a religious turn.
“No, we haven’t advanced much on the ‘red devils’ as you lads call them. Fact is, one could almost claim we’ve slipped a little, fallen behind the red devils. The red devils sacrificed animals to live; we sacrificed humans.”
This was a little too much for Old Hugh. “Major, maybe we pale-faces can’t shine with the red devil, like you say. Just the same this old hoss has feelin’s here”—Old Hugh slapped his chest—“has feelin’s here for poor human nature in any fix, while the red nigger don’t care a cuss for it. They torture. They skulp a man while alive. They cut him while alive. Make a cattail out of him and set fire to him. I know. I seed it once on the Platte. They stuck my friend Clint full a pine slivers and burnt him to a crisp. That was horrible onhuman.” Old Hugh shuddered. Others near him shuddered too. “This coon has made Indians go under, some, yes. But he’s never skulped ‘em alive. Even though he knows that scalps comes off easier warm.” Hugh pointed to some hair lint, black and stringy, which Bending Reed had proudly sown into the seams of his leggings. “Every one of these scalps here came off the knob after I made sure the brains inside was dead. This old hoss says again its onhuman and agin nature what they do, and they ought to shake.”
Major Henry’s lips thinned and his teeth gleamed in the red firelight. He scratched his dark hair some more, vigorously. “Perhaps you’re right, Hugh, perhaps you’re right.”
Hugh couldn’t let it drop. “I say it’s with the red niggers like with kids. Or like with water. If you let ‘em know you’re lower than they are, they’ll run all over you.”
There were grunts of assent around the falling fire.
Still scratching his hair, Major Henry said, “I don’t know what makes it. Every night just as I get ready to turn in, my head itches like all get-out. Nerves, I guess.” Major Henry’s sharp eye fell on Hugh’s grizzly beard. He looked at it awhile as his face hardened. Finally he said, “Hugh, I see you still haven’t shaved clean yet. Like I ordered. You know that around Indians you’re a marked man with that beard. They take it as an insult. And we’ve got enough hard doings around ‘em as it is.”
Another silence. All eyes flicked from Hugh to the major and back to Hugh again.
“Hugh?”
“I heered ye, Major.”
“Well?”
“Don’t crowd me and I’ll think on it some.”
“Mind that you do now. You hear? Before we move out in the morning.”
Proud Yount had a question. “Major, what I still don’t get is why them Rees blocked our way up the Missouri. They let us through last year.”
Major Henry thought a moment. He clapped out his pipe on his kneecap a second time and put it away in his possible sack. “They said because they lost a pair of braves at Fort Kiowa. But that was just an excuse. The real reason was to keep us from trading guns and powder higher up the river to the Mandans and the Minnetarees. And the murderous Blackfeet. They want to keep the trade to themselves. That way they can keep the best rifles and powder for themselves and give the poorer stuff to their enemies. Besides making the tribe rich with the stuff they trade the ammunition for.” Major Henry took off his moccasins slowly, one at a time. He wriggled his bare toes. There were streaks of black sweat between the toes. “And you really can’t blame them. If they don’t take care of themselves, nobody else will. Surely not the Sioux. Nor the Mandans.” Major Henry speared Yount with a grayblue look. “Besides, what do you suppose we’re up here for, the sights?”
Hugh said, “Feed the grizzly afore they crucify him or no, I still say some are onhuman varmints and need to be taught a lesson. Red devils.”
Major Henry stood up. He stretched to his full height; yawned. “Time to turn in, boys. Pierre, put out the fire. Fitz, you and Jim Bridger lead the horses into the trees and snub them up close. Hugh, you and Yount start the watch for the night. The rest of you men take your blankets back in the trees and sleep there. Or you’ll be centershots for our friends. In Indian country, supper in one place and sleep in another has always been my rule.”
Without a word more, the men turned in. Each nuzzled into his favorite slumbering pose.
Gradually the fire died out. Gradually the men dropped off to sleep.
The ponies flailed whistling tails at mosquitoes; stomped in the giving sand.
Every so often Major Henry called out in a sleepy voice from where he lay, “All’s well?” Sometimes he called out automatically in his sleep.
“All’s well,” Hugh or Yount would call back.
Stars gyrated by overhead. The soft west wind fell off. Occasionally a coyote yowled out an ancient lonesome cry.
5
IT WAS pitchblack dark out. A low overcast sky blotted out all the stars. Dawn was near but there wasn’t a sign of it on any horizon. Mosquitoes were getting in their last bites before daylight, and the ponies flailed and stamped at them.
Major Henry and his men lay sleeping under the trees, each under a robe and each with a saddle for a pillow. Even the guards, the boy Jim Bridger and quiet Fitz, slept. Jim had slipped to his side and lay curled up against the cold, fetuslike, pigeon-toed feet crossed at the arches like flippers. Fitz also lay hunkered up against the cold, toes hooked out a little. Nearby, Old Hugh slept like a man, all stretched out, flat on his back, snoring out of a varying orifice in his gray beard. Deeper under the trees, Augie Neill and Jim Anderson, also Yount and Allen and the others, lay snoring peacefully, all well-covered by blankets.
Old Hugh came up out of inner darkness gently. Dreaming in darkness shaded off into seeing in darkness. It took him a full minute to make sure he really did have his eyes open.
He lay waking slowly. He could feel the soft giving of the fur under his back, could feel the weight of the woolen blanket on him. He wondered where the stars had gone. He heard the tussing hooves of the ponies deep under the trees, the occasional crack of a twig underfoot, the swift swishing tails. He heard the trickling of the creek water over stones.
An aftertaste of buffalo flesh under his tongue recalled him to where they were—on Big Meadow Creek, according to Major Henry’s map, a spot overlooking the Grand River valley to the north. Old Hugh remembered the fallen buffaloes on the ground, lying around like bees after a beeing, as the boy Jim had said. Hugh next remembered Maggie, Jim’s horse, unraveling her guts, then his own raring ride shooting down buffalo cow on every side. He remembered Jim’s wild ride toward four buffaloes who turned out to be a party of Rees on the warpath.
And thinking of the Rees, Old Hugh lifted his head off his saddle, lifted it in part instinctively and in part because he was sure he had heard something sliding past him on the ground. Who could be sneaking around through camp at this hour of the night except a red devil? Where was the guard? Knifed?
Hugh felt for his flintlock Old Bullthrower; found it; carefully drew back the flint. He turned his head slowly in the direction of the slithering sound. He tried to find a silhouette against a horizon. Where in God’s name were the boy Jim and downer Fitz? He and Yount had turned the watch over to them at midnight.
Maybe the boys had fallen asleep at their posts. If they had, it was going to be tough titty for them the rest of the day. Major Henry had an inflexible rule for those who slept on guard—walk all day, cactus or ants or rattlesnakes or no. And carry their own packs too.
He heard the slithering sound again, this time nearer the ponies.
Hugh rolled over slowly. His game leg ached. Other mornings he always had to warm it up awhile before he dared trust his weight on it. This time he’d have to skip it. Suppressing a groan at a twinge of pain that shot through it, carrying his rifle, he slid to where Jim and Fitz lay. He found them asleep.
Hugh shook Jim, then Fitz. He whuskered close in Jim’s ear. “Lad, I hope ye’re pretendin’ sleep.”
“Wha?” Jim said, sitting up.
“Shhh. Down, lad. Red devils around. I hope ye was pretendin’ sleep. And
Fitz, up, lad. Easy does it. Shhh.”
Both Jim and Fitz caught up their rifles and rolled over on their bellies ready for action.
In the deep dark Hugh whispered softly again. “Ye were pretendin’ sleep, weren’t ye, lads?”
Neither Jim nor Fitz said anything. It was too dark for Hugh to see their faces, but from the way they moved in the dark he could tell they felt sheepish.
Hugh whispered. “I think I heard a couple of red devils crawl past, goin’ for the ponies. So we’ll probably have a yellin’ party along in a minute to stampede the horses. Wake up the major and the men while I go back and see about the ponies.”
Fitz and Jim slid from man to man; put a hand on the mouth to keep the man from crying out until he was fully awake; got the whole camp on the alert.
Hugh meantime bellied up quickly toward the ponies; got to within a half-dozen yards of them when he bumped his nose into a moccasin. The moccasin jerked away as if its owner didn’t appreciate being tickled in the foot. The sole of the moccasin didn’t smell white, so Hugh cautiously laid aside his rifle and drew his skinning knife. He coiled up; struck. The knife hit bone; slid off into giving flesh; sank in up to the haft. There was a cry, and a soft gush of blood as Hugh withdrew his knife.
At the cry, another form jerked up near Hugh. Hugh could just make it out against an awakening east. Hugh coiled; struck again. This time he missed. In the twink of an eye the two were wrestling on the ground like bullsnake entangled with rattler. The other stunk of acrid sweat; was naked save for breechcloth; was slippery and hard to hold. Indian all right. Quick, too. Hugh felt the point of the other’s knife prick him in the back. Hugh bent away like a spring; lashed around; got his own knife arm free; struck; sank the knife home again, this time in the back, into the kidney. The Indian gave a loud cry. “Ahhh!”
At the cry every man in camp got himself behind a tree. A single rifle popped.
The delayed dawn came up fast. The cloud deck kept it gray and lowering.
Before Hugh could cry out that the horses were safe, warwhoops sounded from all sides, howgh-owgh-owgh-owgh-h! Some redskins on foot popped out of the willows across the stream; let fly a sleet of arrows, a hail of balls; quickly slipped behind trees again. Other horses suddenly thundered across the open prairie. In the rising light Hugh could make out some forty mounted Indians, faces painted red, honorable wounds on arms and legs and body painted with stripes of white and vermilion. The mounted Indians came yowling toward the mountain men’s tethered ponies, cupped hand flopping over open howling mouth, ohohohohoh! Balls whizzed and plunked into trees. Arrows sailed and whacked into the grass. The mountain men, well hidden behind trees, returned fire methodically and carefully, taking good aim. They poured powder calmly, patched the ball as if at target practice, rammed the ball home as if they had all the time in the world. In through the trees the Indians rode toward them, with bodies cleverly hidden behind the horses, a heel caught on the spine and an arm hooked in a loop of hair braided into the mane. They shot from under the horses’ necks.
A few of the more daring pennyskinned braves dashed pellmell into the grove, into the midst of the mountain men’s tethered ponies. They fluttered colored blankets; howled horribly; waved spears; shot off rifles in the air. But with Hugh in their midst to calm them, the mountain men’s horses held. Some jerked tight against close-snubbed halters; some reared and whinnied; some rolled wild eyeballs. But all held.
Balked, the mounted braves abruptly veered and disappeared down the valley toward the Grand River.
The redskins on foot vanished too, disappearing mysteriously like overnight mushrooms.
Gray dawn came up fast.
One by one the mountain men came out from behind hiding places in the willow and cottonwood brush.
“Ye all right, Hugh?” Jim called.
“Right as can be,” Hugh said.
Hugh stood looking down at one of the dead Indians he’d knifed in the dark. He rolled the brave over with his foot.
Major Henry came up.
“Mandan,” Hugh said, prodding the brave with his moccasined toe. “I’d know them mudhook leathers anywhere.”
“Mandan?” Major Henry exclaimed. “If the Mandans’ve finally taken to the warpath against us then we’re in for real trouble. They’ve never jumped the whites before.”
“And all because of that dummed cowardly Leavenworth and his love-the-redskin sermons,” Hugh growled. “Letting them Rees off easy last June. The whole Missouri’s been a butcher shop ever since. Darn his sanctimonious hide.”
Someone called behind them. “Major, come here a minute.” It was Fitz. He and the rest of the party stood crowded around two forms on the ground, right where the men had slept that night.
Hugh and Major Henry stepped over.
“What is it?” Major Henry asked.
Fitz said matter-of-factly, “It’s Augie Neill and Jim Anderson. Dead.”
Hugh saw it the same time the major did. Each lad had a bloody rent in the buckskin shirt, just over the heart. They’d been stabbed in the night.
For a second Old Hugh wondered. And shivered. Had he done it? He’d stabbed two in the dark. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure there were two dead Mandans still on the ground near the ponies under the trees.
Hugh blinked his eyes, once, twice. Gone now was goodhearted Augie Neill who’d held out a punting pole to him in the roaring Missouri and so saved his life. Gone now was slim slow-moving Jim Anderson who’d helped him fight the Rees from behind a cottonwood log. The two lads would never again have themselves a night of loving musky Ree maidens. Let alone jollying the pretty white picture squaws back in the settlements. Nor breathe the air of the free mountains ahead.
Major Henry’s brow drew tight together. “These men were stabbed in their sleep.” Major Henry looked around at his men. “Who had the dawn watch?”
Jim Bridger paled. Fitz began to scowl.
Jim said, “We did. Fitz and me.”
“Well?”
From under heavy beetled gray brows Hugh looked from Jim to Fitz and back to Jim again. “The boys were onto ‘em all right, major. They woke me to look after the ponies and then stirred up the rest of ye. But by that time them quick devils was already through camp.”
Fitz and Jim gave Hugh a look; then glanced at Major Henry.
Major Henry glared at Hugh; then at Jim and Fitz.
Hugh went on. “I couldn’t see a thing either, Major. And they was crawlin’ right by me. It was so blame dark.”
Major Henry flashed white teeth.
Hugh looked down at slack-mouthed dead Augie and Jim. “Two more companyeros gone under.” Hugh waggled his grizzled head slowly. “I suppose our turn will soon come next. Whaugh! A hard life it is.”
Major Henry gave Jim Bridger and Fitz Fitzgerald a long, slow, burning look; then Hugh; then the two again; at last he shrugged and let off.
Hugh turned on his heel and went over and deftly scalped the two Mandans lying on the ground under the trees. Their scalps lifted easily. Flies and some red ants were already busy on the laggard bronze forms. One brave had a huge arched chest. He lay as if pretending death, as if he were still holding his breath, eyes rolled under from the effort.
“Pierre,” Major Henry said, “Pierre, get up breakfast.”
Gray dawn gave Pierre’s pale face a clayish hue. He tried to smile. He said, “What’ll you have, men?”
“Whisky and pancakes,” Hugh said, coming back from his scalping and fastening the dripping Mandan scalps to his belt, “whisky and pancakes. Whisky to wake me up and pancakes to weight me down.”
After a detail had buried Augie Neill and Jim Anderson, and after Hugh and Fitz and Jim had watered the horses and staked them out to fresh grass, the company had pancakes, coffee, and boiled hump meat. The men ate silently, soberly, every now and then looking over to where Augie and Jim Anderson lay buried, or looking over to where the redskin Mandans lay stretched out under the cottonwoods. Every ma
n knew that within an hour of their leaving the white wolves and the gray coyotes would be wrangling over the dead warriors, would dig up the bodies of the dead mountain men, scattering the bones and skin and hair all over the creek draw.
A mourning dove hoo-hooed behind the cottonwoods. Every man shivered.
With a sad face Major Henry made some entries in his gray ledger. Young gathered up Augie Neill’s and Jim Anderson’s personal possessions in a sack and put a tag on it. Later it would be sent back to St. Louis, and from there to the next of kin.
Old Hugh ate heartily. He had seen many and many a friend die. And while his eyes and lips might lament their going, his stomach didn’t. His stomach had become hardened to mountain-man life. It took a power of sorrow to make his breakfast, or any meal, come back the way it went in. Once Old Hugh got his meat trap shut down it wasn’t too easy opened again.
Breakfast finished, Hugh had a look at his equipment. He tested the priming of his guns, rifle, and horse pistol. He checked the powder in his horn. He made sure he had enough balls stored in the chamber of his gunstock.
Old Hugh noted that the soles of his moccasins were wearing through. He took them off and dug out a new pair Bending Reed had made for him.
Jim and Fitz looked over their footwear too. Both had bought moccasins from Bending Reed. But since Fitz was light and Jim walked Indian-style (the pigeon-toed walk was easy on both foot and footwear), their moccasins were still in fairly good shape. Old Hugh was always glad to see how well his squaw’s makings outlasted most other footwear. Bending Reed knew her leathers. She always used the smoked top of an old tepee. Smoked leather was not as apt to get stiff after a soaking. Raw buckskin had a devilish way of becoming clammy and soppy in a rain and, afterward, shrinking up into stiff hard plaks. Ae, Reed was handy with the awl, she was, and her backlash Heyoka stitch could never be mistaken for another’s.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 11
