Flintlock under an arm, restless eyes taking in the array of goods hanging from pegs stuck in the log walls, good leg itching to get going, Hugh said, “You say it’s smooth humpin’ all the way up to where the Little Missouri cuts in from the south?”
Bourgeois Tilton lifted amazed button-black eyes. “You fixin’ to leave yet tonight?”
“Tonight.”
The candles flutted, and for a second the log-walled supply room darkened. Bourgeois Tilton’s eyes darkened too, with concern. “Oh, Hugh, you don’t mean it. You’re only joshing me, I know.”
Hugh headed for the log door. “This child does mean it. Sartain.”
“Hugh, you’ve lost your sights! Get in a good night’s sleep first. At least.” Bourgeois Tilton shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His long black hair lashed around. Bourgeois Tilton snorted nervously. “Hugh, you can’t go it alone all that way! If the Blackfeet don’t get you, the wolves will!”
“Booshway, them Rees’ll know afore mornin’ that I’m here at the fort. So I’ve got to leave by then. Otherwise I’ll never get away. They’ll watch this place night and day till they get me.”
“What’s so all-fired—?”
Old eyes half-closed, Hugh looked back over his wide sloped shoulder. “I have to go. I’ve had sign.”
“What sign?”
“That I must a been saved special.”
“‘Saved special’?” Bourgeois Tilton snorted. “You must be teched. For what?”
“To get revenge.” Hugh let the door close behind him, and alone in the black night, he set off up the river. “Saved special I must a been. Otherwise why did He let everybody aboard the Beaver die and me live? To me that’s sign the Lord saved me for special doin’. To get revenge on the lads.”
Hugh walked steadily all night long. He made good time despite his bum leg and the run he’d made earlier in the evening. When dawn came up pink and glorious over the slopes of crisp white snow, he found he’d covered some fifteen miles.
“Chosen,” he said to the sun. “The Lord chose me.”
He built a fire in a deep draw; warmed up the dried meat; had some coffee; had a pipe of tobacco; and, after a last look around, curled up in his capote and woolen blanket on a bed of willow twigs.
“Just so the snows’ll hold off till I get to Henry’s new post,” he said, nuzzling in the woolens. “Somewhere in the Big Horns.”
The sun rose and warmed him. He felt drowsy.
“Chosen,” he said. “And lads, best get your prayers ready and said. Ol’ Hugh’s comin’ with the Lord’s revenge. I’ve been chosen. I’ve had sign. I have.”
For twenty-five days, all the way into early January, Hugh trudged steadily west, crossing the Badlands at the mouth of the Little Missouri, crossing the mouth of Shell Creek coming down from the north, and had good luck with the snow and cold. The weather held fair and, for that time of the year, even warm.
When the provisions he’d bought from the bourgeois at Ft. Tilton gave out on the White Earth River confluence above the Blue Buttes, he shot and killed a ten-point elk and, after he’d had his fill, fire-dried some of the meat to carry with him.
“Chosen,” he said. “To help the Lord get His revenge.”
At the Little Muddy he awoke one morning to find a small herd of wild mustangs pawing the ice along the edge of the Missouri trying to get a drink.
“Ho-ah,” he whispered, “ho-ah, maybe this old hoss can ride the rest of the way.”
It was open country all around, making it tough for him to sneak up and catch even one of the slowest mustangs; so he tried an old stunt he remembered from down in the south country. Taking a bead on the leader, a grey-maned milkblue stallion, he creased it just above the shoulder. The milkblue stallion fell, just as Hugh planned, while the rest of the herd scampered and whinnied shrilly away.
Quickly Hugh made a halter out of his belt and a strap; sat astride the prone pony, fully expecting it to get up after a minute or two, as well-creased ponies always did. But when the mustang stallion didn’t stir after some ten minutes, he examined the wound under the gray mane. And shook his head. Too bad. He’d creased it too close to the spine. He’d killed it.
Hugh stroked the beautiful milkblue coat a few times. A pretty critter if ever there was one. Ae, too bad. Hugh shed a few tears over the noble beast; then, with a sigh, left it to the wolves.
“For the Lord,” he said. “To get His revenge.”
At the fanning confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri, Hugh came across the abandoned fired remains of Major Henry’s first post. It made Hugh curse softly to think that the major and the lads Fitz and Jim had once been on the spot. Well, just so Fitz and Jim were with the major in the new location in the Big Horns. That’s all he asked. One chance to get his hands on Fitz. And the boy Jim too. For the Lord.
Hugh surveyed the land from a knoll on the north ridge. The major had picked a good spot for the old abandoned post all right. The site was on the first bench on the north side of the river and was clean of trees. The site not only provided a sweeping view of all the country around, it also commanded all traffic up and down both rivers. The Missouri, much tamer at this point, and also much cleaner, drove quietly out of the northwest, while the Yellowstone, rightly named for its flowing sands and clays, doubled on itself out of the southwest. Both rivers drove through wide flat valleys, with falling banks of gray clays and yellow gravels, with shifting gritty beaches and sand bars, with highlands behind them cropped with shortgrass and sage, and with finally a spear-shaped bench of yellow clay rising between them. The cutbanks of both rivers were sharp and fringed with cottonwood and willow and river ash.
All of it was crossroads country for the Indians: the sometimes friendly Assiniboins, the ever devilish surly Blackfeet, the usually shrewd Minnetarees, the mischievous humorous Crows.
Old Hugh wondered why hard-mouth Major Henry had left the site. It could only have been the pesky Blackfeet. That, and a lack of beaver.
Hugh trudged on.
“Chosen,” he said. “Lord’s work.”
Below Blue Mountain to the east he shot and killed two small white-tailed deer. He came up on them behind a grove of dark green cedar, a whole herd of them, all of them watching two young bucks sparring. The sparring fascinated Hugh. The two bucks fought like tavern brawlers. Erect on their rear legs, front feet windmilling a mile a minute, soft bluebrown eyes one moment fierce and startled and the next moment half-closed and blinking, keening a little, they battled around and around in the snow, over sagebrush, into a little draw, beside a pyramid of red-streaked gray rock, against and through red willow brush, going it for a full quarter-hour—until Hugh remembered he was out of meat. With rifle and horse pistol he shot them down before they knew what happened. The rest of the herd bounded away like jack rabbits, gone in a wink, kicking up little puffs of dirt mixed in with snow.
“Lord’s work,” Hugh said.
Opposite the mouth of the Powder River, Hugh ran across a small herd of buffalo. These too he ambushed, from behind a thicket of alder saplings; brought down a fat young cow.
After making sure there was no sign of Indians around—he was still in dreaded Blackfoot country—he set about having himself a feast.
From underneath the thin cover of snow he scratched out a handful of dry forage grass and screwed it into a nest. He lit his punk, made from a pithy bit of pine, and placed it in the nest. He closed the grass over it and waved it in the air until it ignited. Quickly then he placed dry kindling over the little spitting fire. When the fire was going good he added cottonwood branches, pyramid-style. He stood a moment to warm his hands over the merry crackling fire.
He skinned the young buffalo cow in the usual mountaineer fashion. The handling of steaming, bleeding flesh warmed his hands and face more than the fire did. All the while he butchered and nibbled, his roving restless eye kept a wary lookout for sign. It was noon of a clear blue day and, with the plains and low hil
ls an endless expanse of snow, he could see for miles. The cow had fallen in an open glade on the west side of the Yellowstone, and the only cover for enemy was the fringe of alder saplings he himself had used to sneak up on the buffalo. He watched the alders carefully, the rest of the sloping and resloping white horizons carefully. Oddly enough, over toward the Little Sheep Mountains and the higher Big Sheep Mountains were what Hugh often called sheep clouds. It gave him a chuckle to think on it.
After he’d had his fill of freshly roasted hump rib and prime steak, topped off with a dessert of boudins, Hugh packed some of the choice cuts and set out once more for the Yellowstone and Big Horn, where he hoped to find some evidence of Major Henry and Diah Smith and their trapping parties.
“Vengeance,” Hugh said, smacking his lips, still savoring the crisp roasted flesh. “The Lord’s chosen, this child is. Gifted special for it.”
He’d limped on but two miles with his burdens and his guns when he spied movement in the cedars on the second bench to the north. Quickly he scurried behind some silvergray sagebrush.
Wild eyes wicking, flicking back and forth like the searching eye of an albino, Hugh studied the clotting and unclotting dots on the far terrain. More buffalo? Could be. Horses? Likely. Blackfoot war party? Also likely. They’d probably seen the dark dot of his body moving across the white snow.
“Chosen,” he said, setting his triggers. “I carry a duty and’ve gotta get through in one piece.” Shrewdly, swiftly, he laid out a plan of defense. No movement until found—and then a centershot into the chief, with the horse pistol in reserve to put himself out of misery if need be. His gray old eyes wicked wild out of his bristly leathern face.
He knelt in the snow and waited, peering out from behind the sagebrush. They would see his tracks in the snow behind him. The ponies would smell out the blood and fresh cuts. Hugh nodded. Ae, he was done for.
When he looked up again he saw it wasn’t Blackfeet at all. It was just a band of wild mustangs, some forty of them, of every color of the rainbow: blood bay, deep chestnut, nutmeg roan, white with black skin underneath and showing through a smoky gray, paint, sorrel with a white star and white stockings and yellow mane. The band was led by a pair of pacers, a stallion and a mare. The pacing stallion was blue, left foot stockinged, with a white blaze streaming down his face so that he seemed to be drinking it. The pacing mare was a dun, or a claybank buckskin, with a primordial streak down its back like a skunk stripe. The mustangs were big, much bigger than the mustangs he’d seen on the Platte and on the Sante Fe trail. These seemed to be almost fifteen hands high—an unusual height for mustangs.
Watching them from his covert of aromatic silvergray sagebrush, Hugh noticed something about the two leaders. The dun mare seemed to be as much queen or bell mare of the band as the whiteleg blue stallion was king. Also the dun queen mare had odd lines. She was more throwback than ordinary mustang. Curiously enough the whiteleg blue stallion resembled her somewhat, mostly in his motions, especially the way he paced. Looking closer, Hugh saw it. The blue whiteleg was a son of the dun throwback mare. Ae, that was it. That accounted for the two being boss together. As queen she was bringing him up to be king.
Though the band came within a hundred yards of where Hugh lay skulking, they never sensed him. The wind was from the south and in his favor. Luckily, too, they crossed ahead of him and not behind him where they would have spotted and scented his trail.
With a flourish of tails, with a directing whinny from both the throwback skunk-stripe mare and the whiteleg crown prince, they whirled over and down the cutbank and onto the sandy beach of the frozen Yellowstone River. Steam rose from the spot and Hugh guessed there was a breathing hole in the ice—probably from a warm spring. In the frosty air the horses blew breaths as big as spade beards.
The whiteleg crown prince ran down the stream a few yards, turned stylishly, and had himself a hearty and private bowel movement. Hugh smiled. It was the finest display of good manners he’d seen since he’d left white diggings.
He watched them take turns drinking at the breathing hole. They drank in an orderly fashion, each in his or her proper place according to an established nipping order, the dun queen mare and the blue crown prince standing guard and acting as police.
“If this child could only catch one of them critters,” Hugh murmured to himself in a low gruff monotone, “what fun he’d have ridin’ in the rest of the way.” Hugh waggled his old head. “Yessiree. Somehow this old hoss’s got to catch him one of them ponies.”
Even as he muttered to himself behind his bush, the dun skunk-stripe mare sensed something, probably his low voice, and with a great shrill yell almost twice human in volume, a great brood-mother call, she turned the entire band away from the bank. Nipping first one rump and then another, she got them thundering down the stream along the beach and then away over the cutbank, with herself and her son in the van, pacing, silver tails streaming and flowing, heads up, sharp nervous ears erect and flicking back and forth.
“Consarn ee, ye old she-devil!” Hugh growled. “Too smart, you are. But I’ll get ye yet, I will. This child’s doin’ Lord’s work and he can’t be balked.”
Hugh came out from behind his brush and walked down to the cutbank to have a look at and maybe even have a drink from the breathing hole in the ice. He found tracks everywhere, old as well as new, especially many old, which told him the band made a daily call on the winter watering place. He glanced over to where the blue crown prince had comported himself in such stylish fashion. Aha. That wasn’t the first time the young fellow had been polite. The still-steaming fresh droppings were only a small part of a huge frozen pyramidlike pile. Hugh laughed. The blue crown prince already fancied himself a king. Only king stallions allowed themselves private privies. The frozen pile was another proof that the band made regular calls on the breathing hole, that like all animals they had certain hours for watering.
Directly above the hole, leaning out at an angle from the cutbank, hung a single huge ocher-barked cottonwood.
The big tree gave Hugh an idea. He set to work immediately to execute it. He went back to the cow-buffalo carcass, rolled it over, finished skinning it. He spent the rest of the day and part of the next morning carving out a lasso, a halter, and reins from the hide, each a braid of four leather strips.
The next afternoon when it came time for the band to return for their watering again, after hiding gun and possible sack and reserve meat, Hugh tied one end of the braided lasso to a fat limb on the land side of the cottonwood and, with the other end in hand, he shinnied up the slanting tree until he was directly over the breathing hole. He got behind the thick trunk and sat back on a limb, waiting, loop open and ready. The spot he’d chosen was a good one. He had a good clear space between the branches to swing out and cast. Hugh knew that he’d have but one chance, but one throw, at the wild ponies, and he had to make that one cast good. He couldn’t miss or he was done with that particular band of mustangs. The skunk-stripe queen and her blue crown prince would never forget.
Soon the band came on in a long orderly string, kicking up light puffs of snow, the dun skunk-stripe queen and the blue crown prince in the lead, pacing, silver tails streaming. They came on without sensing him behind the tree trunk, without seeing him skulking above the watering place. The wind was again in Hugh’s favor.
He set himself. He made up his mind to catch the dun skunk-stripe mare. Something about her drew him. She’d probably be the toughest to catch, but he had to have her. It was the mare or nothing.
She prinked in under him, whinnying at her band in reassuring fashion.
She had most of the band lined up for the water hole—when she suddenly sensed him. She lifted her head to smell the better. That moment Hugh swung out the loop and made his cast. It fell whirling, and it fell exactly and completely around her head and neck. She ran on it, up the cutbank, and threw herself on the hard frozen ground.
That same instant the blue crown prince became king. His gre
at male roar, loud and deep-chested, something between a raging buffalo bull’s bellow and a ferocious wounded mountain lion’s roar, broke out over the shrilling throats and thundering hooves and snapping tails. The whole band reacted to it like iron filings to a magnet. They arranged themselves in an orderly stream, head to tail, and all shot out of the hole and up over the cutbank and bounded away across the white plains toward the Little Sheep Mountains.
Hugh meanwhile had his hands full. He scrambled down the cottonwood trunk. Quickly he slipped the braided hide halter over her head. He saw that skunk-stripe had knocked herself out momentarily and he swiftly went over to cut the braid lasso near the cottonwood and secured it to the halter. He loosened the loop around her neck to let her get her breath, used the loop to tie her feet in pairs, and stood back to await developments.
Developments were not long in coming. When skunk-stripe, or Skunk, as Hugh now named her, came to, she bounded straight up into the air above his head, once, twice, thrice, each time higher than before.
“Dag me if she don’t mean to make an ascension!” Hugh ejaculated.
She shrilled; she cried; she screamed. She danced; she bounced. She curvetted; she caracoled; she pirouetted. She put her head into the folds of her behind; she put the folds of her behind around her face.
“Dag me if she don’t mean to reverse her innerds!” Hugh marveled.
She did it all with her feet tied in pairs, and with Hugh hanging on for all he was worth and occasionally getting a free hoist into the bargain.
Even with her feet hobbled, the dun throwback mare might have gotten away if Hugh hadn’t retreated to the cottonwood and snubbed her up close. He drew her up until he had her kneeling.
He let her rest. He let himself rest. Both stood panting on the wide white plains and under the high blue heavens.
After a while he approached her, foot by slow foot, hand by slow hand.
Skunk didn’t like his smell. She showed him her teeth.
Hugh persisted.
She resisted, turning up her nose at him again.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 24
