The Fire Arrow

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Now she hovered between life and death, her very soul afloat over her, ready to wing away into the awful void. She breathed, if raggedly. The old women sat stoically, watching Victoria wrestle with death, even as the rest of the night slipped away. Skye heard occasional voices. Several times a Crow man or woman had spoken to Makes Rain, talking so swiftly he could not catch their words. But he knew she was giving them reports on Victoria and in turn receiving word about the condition, and defenses, of the Crow hunting camp.

  And so the night passed. He lay down beside her and placed a hand again on her forehead, hoping somehow to convey to her that he was watching over her and that if she had the will to live, she would live, and there would be many more sweet days and sweeter nights.

  He had taken her east once, and she had seen the cities and habitats of the Americans, and that had given her understandings that eluded others of her people. She didn’t like it there even though she had marveled at the wonders of the Europeans who had settled the United States. And she wasn’t herself until she was back in the home country of her people, mistakenly called the Crows by English-speaking explorers and mountain men and traders.

  He slipped the cooled knife back into its sheath at his belt, and sat quietly through the quickening dawn. When light poured through the smoke hole, the old women stirred, for they too had kept a vigil all through that night. Makes Rain said something softly that Skye didn’t understand, but then she took one of his hands and clasped it between hers, and rubbed her cheek with it, and Skye understood.

  The fire dwindled. Sun caught the lodgepoles. Outside, the hunting party was salvaging what it could of the disaster, which wasn’t very much. They would not have horses to haul away the tons of pemmican, hides, and jerky as well as the households of the Crow people.

  Skye continued to sit cross-legged beside Victoria, never abandoning her. But soon after dawn, her breathing changed, grew less labored, more steady, less desperate, and he sensed she had weathered the ordeal. If somehow he could keep her quiet for a while she would heal.

  But how could he do that? He and she would be alone in their lodge, on the edge of Blackfeet country, while the Crow people journeyed back to their own ground, most of them without horses. And Skye had none, not even one for a travois that might haul her away to safety. The trouble had barely begun.

  three

  Victoria had not spoken since the Piegan arrow had pierced her side, but some ineffable change had come with daylight, some slight progress. Skye quietly jammed his stovepipe hat on his long locks and stepped into the morning, which came late this time of year, and surveyed the camp on Louse Creek.

  He counted seven horses, all that had escaped the Blackfeet herders. Nine lodges, including his own. His horses, two buffalo runners and Victoria’s mare, were gone. Several young warriors stood vigil on the surrounding hilltops but this Crow camp could offer only a pathetic defense against the Blackfeet if they should return.

  Skye had the only good rifle in the camp, though its headman had an old trade musket and another warrior had an ancient Northwest smoothbore. They were defenseless and the Crows knew it. Perhaps the lurking Blackfeet knew it too.

  Around him, the Crows were preparing to abandon this place of bad medicine. They would walk. All seven remaining horses were being fitted with travois. These would carry the precious lodge covers, but not the poles, and what few possessions each family had brought along, including some of the abundant buffalo meat from the successful hunt.

  But much would be left behind, including vast stores of fresh pemmican, some jerked meat, and scores of fleshed buffalo hides. These would be cached but no one knew whether there would be anything left when the Crows returned. Animals were skilled at breaking into caches, as were other peoples. In hours after the Crows left, this place of slaughter would be overrun by wolves that would devour gut piles, discarded bone and meat. Anything left by the wolves would be dinner for coyotes, or eagles and hawks, or a dozen other raptors and predators. All night, every night, the mournful howl of wolves had circumscribed the camp on Louse Creek.

  Skye would stay. He would keep his vigil, he would sit beside the woman he loved, and if it was their fate to be overwhelmed alone, far from help, then he would die beside her. Not that he wished that result, but it was the measure of his iron-hard commitment to her. He and Victoria would walk through fortune and misfortune together.

  This was a place of death. The families of the two dead youths were preparing them for their spirit journeys in deep silence. The women would wail their grief later, but now they were wrapping the poor young men, Sees Dawn and Knot-on-Top, in blankets and tying the bundles in thong. Two others were injured, sitting mutely, wrapped in bloody trade cloth, their faces maps of pain. The surviving men were lashing lodgepoles to the limbs of nearby cottonwoods, preparing a place where these young men would be given to the sun.

  Grief lay heavy upon this Crow camp, but so perilous was their condition that it was boxed into the souls of the people as they struggled with death, loss, abandonment of wealth and food, hides, tallow, lodges, and horses. Bad medicine here. Something felt in their bones. The headman, Otter, lived under a cloud; he who organized this hunt had offended the powers that animated the world.

  Skye said nothing. He had not fully mastered the difficult Crow tongue, though he could communicate well enough and was fluent in sign language, filling in with his hands when his tongue failed him.

  He found Otter, the headman who had told them all that his medicine was good; there would be a fine hunt, much meat, many hides, from the buffalo brothers. There had been all of that and more. Otter stared dourly as Skye approached, a small curt nod acknowledging the presence of the alien Englishman in this Crow camp.

  “You are leaving?” Skye asked.

  Otter stared and finally nodded.

  “We must stay.”

  “You will be alone. I cannot spare anyone to stay with you.”

  “I know that.”

  “After she dies, cache what you can. We will return for it.”

  “She will not die.”

  “I am told she will.”

  Skye sensed the thing that always puzzled him about the Crows, a fatalism. Once the future was mysteriously foreseen, all one could do was surrender to it.

  “I will bring her when I can.”

  “You stopped the blood with fire, so I am told. This is a strange thing.”

  Skye wanted to tell this headman of ship’s surgeons and what few things he had learned in the Royal Navy, but he knew that would tax his ability to convey thoughts in the Crow tongue so he let it pass. Let the Crows think he possessed medicine.

  “I have seen it done,” was all Skye said.

  “We will leave soon. But first there is the thing that must be done,” Otter said. He was alluding to the rites of passage for the dead, the surrendering of the fallen to the spirit land, the long trail to the stars. They had died in battle, bravely, with great honor, and their path would be strewn with petals.

  Skye studied the anonymous ridges of the Judith country, half expecting a howling war party to crest one and bring death to the wounded Crows. But this cloudless and windless day was as silent as nature ever got. The Blackfeet were content with their victory, a great one. Upward of fifty horses, many coups, and who knows what else? The Blackfeet were a proud and dangerous people, noble in bearing, and Skye admired them. But he was a Crow by adoption and marriage and now his heart was given to these who had taken him in and welcomed him in their lodges. The Crow were a proud people too.

  The men had finished making the palls for the dead. These were lodgepoles tied across the limbs of the cottonwoods along Louse Creek. A silence befell the camp. There was no medicine man among them, so Otter led the way down to the creek, through a quick silence, as the people collected behind him. Then, Pretty Weasel, the father of Knot-on-Top, lifted the blanketed form of his son to the scaffold and gently settled it there. Within the blanket was his boy, and also his son
’s amulets, his medicine things, and offerings from his kinfolk.

  None of Sees Dawn’s kin were present this hunting trip, so Otter and Pretty Weasel lifted his heavy form upward until it rested beside his friend and clan-brother Knot-on-Top. Now the women wept while the rest stood gravely around.

  These two would be mourned in the Crow winter camp on the Musselshell River. But now there was no time; the buffalo hunters must walk away from the lost, whose names would never again be spoken. Walk away, three days and then some, walk away to their lodges and then mourn.

  Hastily the small congregation loaded lodge covers onto the travois and hoisted parfleches to their backs, and hid what they could under a caved-in cutbank. The cache wouldn’t fool any animal, and probably not any foe either, but there wasn’t any choice.

  Otter approached Skye, who watched them load, cradling his Hawken in his arms.

  “If you are not back before the moon is full, we will know, and grieve,” he said.

  “We’ll be back.”

  “We’ll send help.”

  “We need horses. A travois for Many Quill Woman,” he said, alluding to Victoria’s Crow name.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Make this camp disappear. Hang the meat as far away as I can drag it. Scatter ashes.”

  “And our clan-sister?”

  “I will be with her night and day, and when I can move her a little, I will.”

  Otter nodded. Skye liked the man, who now bore a heavy burden, for nothing worse than bad medicine could life’s fortunes inflict on a Crow headman.

  He watched them flee, an unseemly haste in them as they staggered away, carrying too much, the horses straining under the loads of the travois. The poles bent under the overload and plowed furrows even in the thawed ground. Skye wondered how long it would be before travois poles snapped or horses broke down.

  Then they disappeared over the ridge to the south and he stood alone in a ruined camp. Tonight the wolves would come.

  He had heavy work ahead, but he would see to Victoria first He studied the horizons for movement, saw only a circling of ravens, and then ducked into his small dark lodge. The fire had died and it was cold.

  She lay on her back, awake, staring up at him, her body twisted slightly as if to shelter the wound in her side.

  “Dammit, Skye, you hurt me,” she said softly.

  “I was afraid you would never speak again.”

  “I hurt.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Sonofabitch!” she said. She used white men’s expletives promiscuously, usually to vent anger.

  He settled on his knees beside her. “I had to stop the blood.”

  “I couldn’t breathe.”

  He lifted the wicked arrow with its red-stained iron tip, and showed it to her.

  “This far in,” he said, showing how far the blood had soaked it. “We will keep this arrow.”

  She stared, and he saw a wetness gather at the corner of her eyes.

  “Now that you saved my life, Skye, I am your slave. That is how such a debt must be paid.”

  “You’re my slave forever,” he said. “And I am yours. How many times have you saved mine?”

  “I am tired,” she said, closing her eyes.

  four

  Skye checked her wound, fearing most of all fresh bleeding. He pulled the robe back, baring her tawny flesh. It was a small wound, barely an inch across, but blistered and angry all around where the heat of his knife had scorched her. The ugly wound itself suppurated, and the flesh in all directions was red and dark. But she didn’t bleed; her lifeblood was not leaking into the brown buffalo robes.

  He could do no more. She lay with closed eyes enduring unimaginable pain. He slipped outside into a quiet November afternoon. There was much to do. The ribs of the abandoned lodges poked the sky, and he intended to dismantle them. His safety depended on concealment. The creek-side encampment had a haunted quality, with the cones of lodgepoles mute testimony to flight and trouble.

  Louse Creek was a good place to hide because it was notched in the floor of the basin, but a bad place to be caught in an ambush for there was no way to escape the valley of death. Hide and be safe; be discovered and die. It was that simple.

  Both the Blackfeet and Crows used four-pole lodge frames; that is, four poles were tied together and spread into a pyramid, and other poles laid in afterward. But there were subtle differences even in the small hunting lodges, and Skye knew that any Blackfoot warrior would see in a glance that this was a Crow camp. Skye would remedy that swiftly by dismantling the ghost village and piling brush around his own lodge. The lodgepoles would make firewood.

  There was household debris abandoned in flight, and he marveled at the number of good robes left behind, simply lying in the grass. He salvaged several and took them into his own small lodge. In all the years of living in the wilderness as a mountain man and as a squaw man, he had never slept comfortably on hard ground, especially cold ground. He thought of it as a failing. The Yank mountain men seemed to adapt to such hardship, but the hammocks on the ships of the Royal Navy were far more comfortable. Now he and Victoria would sleep on several thick warm robes and have even more to pull over them when he could not build a fire.

  The Judith country was rife with buffalo this year, and other parties would be hunting here. Blackfeet most of all, but also Gros Ventres and Flatheads, perhaps Kootenai, or even Shoshones or Bannocks. This time of year the buffalo broke into smaller bands so they could forage better; in the summer they collected into giant herds. Hunters from all the tribes relished this time of year when they could surround and slaughter the smaller bands. The Crows had thought to make meat, collect hides, produce pemmican and jerky, and fill leather pouches with valuable tallow. They knew the risks of coming this far north but knew the risks were worth the reward. This time they were wrong.

  Skye studied the horizons, seeing nothing. But he kept his percussion-lock Hawken close, and did not neglect his powder horn. He was a stocky man, usually clean-shaven, whose hair hung loose about his head, and whose blue eyes had a way of squinting at distant things and making out shapes and forms not visible to others.

  Quickly he dismantled the ghost lodges, pulling the poles away, and then dropping and untying the four-pole pyramids that formed the core of the structures. These had been erected by Absaroka women who were very good at setting up a lodge and making it comfortable.

  It took only a half hour to drop the skeletons. He dragged the scattered lodgepoles into nearby brush, hidden from casual sight. He hid debris, kicked dirt over the ash of cookfires, buried wastes, filled two canteens with the water of Louse Creek, and saw to his meat. The Crows had abandoned two forequarters of buffalo, now hanging from a cottonwood tree, well above the reach of any animal except a bear. They were heavy, and bent the limb and threatened to break the braided elkskin ropes suspending them. He and Victoria would have ample food if these were not disturbed. But even smaller creatures, including ravens and magpies and eagles, could demolish the meat, as could a sustained chinook, or warm period. Except for some pemmican that was what would have to sustain him, for he could not risk a rifle shot.

  This campsite didn’t feel right. He swore a dozen eyes were studying him from the hills guarding the valley. He ached to move his own lodge deep into brush, but not yet, not until he could be sure that Victoria could be carried without breaking open that arrow wound. For the moment, he would stay where he was, keep vigil, and hope no hunting party found him during this time of healing.

  His gaze lifted constantly to the ridges, knowing how many hunters were flocking through the Judith country this time of year when hides were prime and buffalo were fat. But all he saw was anonymous blue sky, an occasional crow or hawk, and all he heard was the occasional whisper of wind eddying down the shallow valley of Louse Creek, wind with snow on its breath, wind that had only recently flowed over the white-covered Moccasin Mountains as the trappers called them, or the Big Belts, or th
e Highwoods, not far from the great falls of the Missouri.

  A flock of noisy magpies, iridescent black and white, settled on the abandoned camp, making dinner out of scraps of meat, bits of flesh scraped from fresh hides, and a thousand bugs shaken from the fresh hides as the women worked them. One magpie stood apart on a low branch, and then flew to a perch close to Skye’s lodge and sat quietly. Skye understood and rejoiced.

  He slipped into his lodge and found Victoria staring at him from pain-filled eyes.

  “The magpies are here, and one waits outside,” he said.

  She nodded, and her response disappointed him. The magpie was her spirit helper, her counselor and guardian.

  “The magpies, dozens of them,” he said, but she simply stared in the dusk of the lodge.

  He felt a certain foreboding and placed a hand on her forehead. She was burning up. Fever, not unexpected after such a wounding.

  Now the magpie outside seemed more ominous; as if this one were beginning a vigil. Skye felt a desolation crawl through him. He found a small cook pot, headed for the creek, filled it with icy water, and returned. The magpie was gone. He slipped inside, soaked an old shirt in the cold, and laid it across her forehead. She moaned, not liking the cruel chill, but he persisted. Runaway fever could kill.

  Rhythmically, he soaked the rag, applied it, and soaked it again as daylight waned, early at this time of year, and settled into utter blackness. But he did not pause. She was restless, burning up, and had fallen into that profound silence once again.

  “Live,” he whispered.

  As the northern evening fell, he thought of the lithe woman who had become his mate. How he had met her. How they had loved, in spite of all the barriers of language and culture. How she had plunged bravely into his life as a brigade leader for the American Fur Company. How he had struggled to find a home among her Crow people. How she had picked up trapper language and had become fluently profane, occasionally startling the Yanks who ventured into these wilds, the missionary, the Indian agent, the fur company owner. He smiled then. And smiled as he thought of the thousand times she had drawn him into her golden arms and held him in the sweetness of the night, or in a sunny bower on a breathtaking spring day, the two of them alone. He remembered the moments of terror and war and separation, the times white men were their enemies, the times she had cleansed and dressed his wounds, not only of the body but also of the heart, for he was a man without a country and his only home was at her hearth.