The Fire Arrow

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He watched them a moment, satisfied that his animals had food and drink, and then hiked across the yard to the one lit room, the light radiating from windows plugged with leather hides scraped so thin they were translucent. They were a thousand miles from glass at this lonely place.

  He hoisted his few belongings and headed for the common room, a kitchen and dining and social place, the only one in the post. He walked into a wall of warmth. They weren’t lacking wood, anyway, and the brightly burning fire in the hearth was throwing heat into every corner.

  He set down his robe and saddle and small travel bag and belaying pin and top hat.

  Chambers watched him intently. “That’s all you’ve got? No rifle?”

  “Two traders named Fitzgerald stole it. And everything else. And I want to talk about that. You got any outfits out in the villages?”

  Chambers squinted at him, spat some tobacco, and shook his head. “That’d be the Opposition. Probably the two working for Carson and McCullough. They’re hitting the winter villages.”

  “Father and son?”

  Chambers nodded.

  “Well, if I find’em I intend to get my piece back, one way or another. And maybe bang a few skulls.”

  Chambers looked impatient. “It ain’t us and don’t you blame us, limey.”

  “You got any rifles to trade? Real rifles, not muskets?”

  “You got any hides or cash?”

  Skye laughed. That was a thing about him: anger washed away as fast as it rose.

  He discovered four others, mostly so young they looked fresh out from the States. One scarcely could raise a beard, by the looks of the boy.

  “I’m Barnaby Skye,” he said. “Call me Mister.”

  They didn’t introduce themselves but he would put names to faces soon enough. The stew pot was hanging on an iron hook over the hearth fire. He hunted for a ladle and a bowl, finally washed out some dirty crockery and spooned the broth into it, savoring the smell.

  A much-hacked haunch of buffalo hung from a beam. Meals around Sarpy were plainly self-accomplished. He lifted the bowl, sipped from it, and finally ate with his fingers for the want of a spoon. But it tasted just fine, good meat and salt and some sort of root vegetable tossed in. The rest watched glumly and he wondered just what had gone wrong with this meeting.

  Skye finished a hearty meal and took a second bowl for good measure. He hadn’t eaten like that for a long time. He wiped his face and turned to his hosts.

  “Blackfeet trouble?”

  “Never stops. Those two hunters vanished a week ago. We don’t know whether they’re alive or dead.”

  “Two of your engaged men?”

  “Yost and Parsons. They went out to make meat and never came back. Now we’re down to what you see here. No way I can defend this place anymore.”

  “Crows been around?”

  “All the time, but that doesn’t mean there ain’t times like this when this post’s naked.”

  “You want another man?”

  “You?”

  “I’m wanting to work to pay for a new outfit. Rifle above all else. But also powder, ball, and all the rest. I don’t have a shilling to my name. I’ve done a lot of trading and trapping for American Fur, the Upper Missouri outfit. You’ll get an experienced man.”

  Chambers eyed him. “I was thinking of quitting here. Just four men and me against the whole redskin world.”

  “Nothing I can’t do.”

  “Skye, that’s fine, but you’d never save up enough for a rifle and a kit. Not with them horses you’ll have to board with me.”

  “If I cut enough cottonwood bark every day to keep my horses without using your hay, then what do I make a month?”

  “Thirty dollars and board.”

  “And what does a new rifle cost?”

  “More’n you’ll ever earn here.”

  Skye laughed. “Then I’ll buy a used one. I’ll just have to make myself profitable. By the time I was a brigade leader during the beaver days, I was earning a thousand a year. Put me on, Chambers.”

  “It’s Mister Chambers, Skye.”

  They laughed uproariously, as if that were the funniest thing all fall.

  “Now, Skye, I have a question for you. That’s the sorriest mare and colt I ever did see. Mare might make a pack animal, but that colt; there’s no help for an ugly little cuss like that. What you should do with them is slit their throats and turn’em into jerky.”

  Skye stopped his merriment cold. “Anyone who harms those animals will be dealt with in kind.”

  “That’s mighty peculiar, Skye.”

  “You heard me,” Skye said. “In kind. A life for a life, a wound for a wound.”

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “They came to me out of heaven,” Skye said.

  The factor and his four men stared at the newcomer, hardly knowing what to make of such a man.

  nineteen

  Skye woke up that mid-November day to find himself an employed man. The American Fur Company owned him now. He had risen high in the ranks of that company, becoming a brigade leader back in the beaver trapping days.

  Now the beaver days were gone. The beaver had been trapped out, but fashion had changed also, and the beaver felt top hat had given way to silk. The company had drifted into the buffalo robe trade and continued to dominate the unsettled American West.

  Skye felt at home. He knew his value: he could speak Crow, was married into the tribe, and was a veteran of the fur trade, knowing the whole business. He didn’t doubt that he could be of service, especially when the rest of this crew seemed to be green youths fresh out of the border towns of Missouri.

  Chambers probably thought more of Skye than he thought of Chambers. Through those November days Skye listened to the factor’s unending litany of contempt for the Absaroka people. Thieving rascals he called them; immoral, gross, childish. He had a way of condemning everyone and everything about the people who traded at Fort Sarpy. Skye simply shut up and did his work and waited until he could trade his labor for the new outfit he needed.

  The morning after Skye arrived, Chambers took him into the trading room to familiarize Skye with the stock. There were the usual striped trade blankets, kettles, awls, knives, arrow points, powder, pre-cast bullets, lead and bullet molds, calico, flannel, beads, thread, needles, flints and steels, and rifles. It was those rifles that absorbed Skye. His old Hawken was gone, though he intended to get it back if he ever saw it again. He knew that rifle better than he knew his own face. But here was a battered Hawken and assorted muskets and Indian trade rifles perched on a rack.

  One new rifle caught his eye instantly: it had an octagon barrel and was made of blued steel, and was unfamiliar.

  “A Model 1852 Sharps,” Chambers said. “Fifty-two caliber. Anything hit with a ball that size stays down.” He lifted the rifle off its rack and handed it to Skye. Everything was unfamiliar. It had a sliding breech action and used linen or paper cartridges. When the breech closed it tore the paper, exposing the powder to the cap. But even the caps were different; they came ten to a small rotating disk.

  “A man can fire this rifle ten shots to a minute,” Chambers said.

  “Ten shots? One minute?” Skye had never heard of such a thing.

  “The capper rotates. You slide in a cartridge, close the breech, aim and fire.”

  “A shot every six seconds? That’s faster than an Indian can nock an arrow and shoot it.”

  Chambers nodded. “Evens the odds, don’t it?”

  It certainly did. Skye thought through the long roll call of dead trappers he had known, men who died because it took so long to pour powder down a muzzle-loader, jam the patch and ball home, pour powder in the pan or slip a cap over the nipple, aim and fire.

  Skye hefted the rifle, felt the sliding breech snap shut, dry-fired, and suddenly wanted it worse than he had ever wanted anything in a trader’s store. “How much?”

  Chambers laughed. “More’n you’ll ever earn, Skye. Ove
r a hundred dollars for the bare rifle, and the rest, the caps and cartridges, cost a pretty penny.”

  “We’ll see about that. Now, Mr. Chambers, what’s a carbine like this doing here? Not an Indian on the plains can afford it.”

  “Wrong, Skye. The fur company knows better. Some chief walks in here, finds a rifle he can shoot like that, every six seconds, and he wants it so bad he’ll bring in a thousand dollars of hides and pelts, kill half a buffalo herd, and throw in all his wives in the bargain. Company figures one of these will fetch a thousand percent profit.”

  Skye didn’t like that. Chambers probably wouldn’t sell him the rifle even if Skye came up with the cash.

  “If I bring in enough hides, you’d sell it to me?”

  Chambers just laughed. “Skye, those shelves need cleaning. Pesky thieves made off with half our sugar and coffee last time.”

  “I’ll hunt, Chambers. You need a hunter?”

  “They’d kill you too.”

  “Not if I use the Sharps.”

  “I’m not letting the Sharps out of here unless it’s paid up. A Sharps in the hands of some Piegan or Blood could just about knock the props from under the fur company. Bad times, Skye. No one’s making much.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Skye said.

  Skye found himself doing whatever needed doing. There were hides to be graded and protected with bug powder. Firewood to be felled and chopped and hauled. Stores to be inventoried. And once in a while a Crow party showed up, wanting sugar or coffee or candy or firewater. The spirits were illegal, but Chambers no doubt had a private supply hidden somewhere. Skye guessed it was kept in a cellar under the factor’s own room. Skye wished he could trade a few hides for some of that stuff himself. But he knew if he just waited around that post, there would be a fandango sooner or later. Meanwhile, he went dry.

  Chambers soon gave Skye the tasks that required some experience. Skye sometimes did the trading, but Chambers didn’t like it: Skye always gave an honest weight of gunpowder or coffee or sugar, and failed to stick his thumb into the measuring cup.

  “Skye, you’ll never earn anyone a profit,” Chambers said.

  “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  So Chambers pulled Skye from the trading counter and sent him out to make meat while the greenhorns around the post did the menial work such as loading in the firewood and bug-powdering the hides in the storeroom and feeding the horses.

  Skye borrowed one of the Leman muskets to hunt with; it was made for the Indian trade, and shot true enough. There weren’t any buffalo close to the post this winter, but he found plenty of elk and a herd of antelope.

  Whenever he headed out, he took the mare and Jawbone with him. They always enjoyed themselves, nipping at dry grass and twigs, enjoying the liberty of the open country. Skye kept a sharp eye for trouble but the November days paraded peaceably by, absorbing him in the routine of the trading post. It took an awful long time and a lot of labor to fetch thirty dollars.

  The darkest days of the year arrived, and Skye heard nothing of Victoria. Was she healed? Did that wound and scrape with death change her? Did she still hurt? There were some wounds that never ceased to torment. A deep December cold settled over the north country, temperatures far below zero on Fahrenheit’s scale, and Skye hoped she was warm in her brother’s lodge, or her people were caring for her in her own lodge. This winter the Blackfeet were especially aggressive, and reports filtered in from all over, Piegans, Bloods, killing a Crow here and there, stealing horses, causing trouble.

  Evenings, Skye listened quietly in the small kitchen room but said little. Chambers mostly railed against the Crows. For most of a week he complained about Crow mating habits, calling the whole tribe debauched, corrupt, scandalous. Skye listened irritably. The man was applying his white man’s morals to a people who lived and believed other things. The Crows were a bawdy tribe, and none more so than the old grandmothers, who could tell yarns that made him blush. But Skye had rarely seen the sort of open and public mating Chambers claimed was commonplace.

  “Them Crows, they got nothing else to do all winter, so that’s why they get a mess of babies along about October, November, December,” Chambers said.

  Skye kept his silence. It wasn’t so different among European people. The greenhorns, Rufus and Jasper and Billy and Ezekiel, mostly listened and blotted up the lore of the fur trade. They were all good enough youngsters. But they had little commerce with a squaw-man, and Skye let it stay that way.

  Each day, Skye headed into the trading room, hefted the blue-steel Sharps, slid a cartridge into the chamber and slid it out again, lined up the sights, learned how the rotary capper worked, and ached to own the rifle that would make him king of his world once again.

  “Forget it, Skye,” Chambers said, just as Skye dry-fired at a raven outside.

  “I will own this rifle,” Skye replied.

  Jawbone began filling out as he headed into his yearling stage. The colt put on weight and began to bully the other horses in the pen, especially his mother, who wouldn’t take it and nipped Jawbone hard. Also, he began to grow in his adult hair, and began to show the color of a blue roan. If anything, he turned even more ugly. That underslung jaw projected outward from his muzzle. His narrow-set eyes seemed to bore into the surrounding world and intimidate it. He learned to bare his teeth and squeal, and that was all it took to stir up the post’s horses.

  “Skye, if that colt causes me any trouble, or I end up with injured stock, I’m holding you responsible,” Chambers said one day as they watched Jawbone herd the rest of the animals round and round the small corral.

  “That’s fine. He’s my responsibility,” Skye replied.

  “I should charge you for feed.”

  “Every day I bring more cottonwood bark into this pen than both of my horses eat. Look at your stock. They’re fat, and it’s the leanest time of year for horses.”

  Chambers wasn’t done with ragging Skye. “I’ll tell you, Skye. That colt is nothing but trouble. You’ll wish you took my advice and knocked its head in. The first time you climb onto that outlaw, that’s gonna be the last day of your life.”

  “Good,” said Skye. “Then no one else will ride him. And call me Mister or I’ll quit.”

  Chambers backed off. Skye was obviously his most valuable and experienced man. But Skye had his fill of Fort Sarpy and Chambers, and thought maybe it was time to move on, rifle or not.

  twenty

  Skye preferred to hunt alone. It had fallen to him to keep Fort Sarpy in meat, especially on days when no Indians drifted to the trading window. Chambers saw the value of it. More often than not the former mountain man returned with a deer or an antelope, and sometimes even an elk. The others were mostly hooligans recruited from the waterfront dives of St. Louis, and likely to scare game off.

  But there was one of those young ones who wanted to hunt, and resented it when Chambers sent Skye out. His name, Skye gathered, was Rufus. He particularly didn’t want Rufus along. The young man had killer eyes. Dead eyes. What was there about some males that gave them that look? Skye couldn’t imagine. He only knew that some men liked to kill, and he usually could see it in their faces, in their cold dead gaze, in their view of animals, and sometimes in their view of people as well. He did not want this dead-eyed Rufus with him or around his mare or Jawbone.

  He did not want Rufus killing more meat than he and Skye could haul back to the post. He did not want Rufus orphaning a fawn. He did not want Rufus standing around and gazing at the birds while Skye butchered and loaded meat.

  When it came to killing animals, Skye preferred to be alone. Long ago, he had adopted the Indian ritual of asking forgiveness of the creature whose life he was about to take. He wasn’t sentimental; a quick death from a bullet was easier than the torment of wolves. But Skye had come so close to perishing so many times that he respected the living, and honored the living, and took no comfort in destroying any creature’s life.

  He set out most days with
the mare and Jawbone, often under low gray December skies, and usually headed downstream into country less traveled by the Crows or others. It was always a relief to escape Fort Sarpy and the endless scornful comments about Victoria’s people. Skye endured it, kept his mouth shut, and saw his back-wage build. He was getting close now, close to abandoning this melancholy place, this lonely life, and rejoining Victoria.

  From time to time he did receive word of her. The Absaroka bands did not neglect each other during the long winters. She was well. She was even more crabby than usual. She was living with her older brother and making her sisters-in-law unhappy. Those snippets of news heartened him. He had come to the realization he was more at home with his wife’s people than he was with these white men, no matter that they spoke his tongue. His beliefs had changed and he would never be wholly a European again.

  On this overcast morning just ahead of the New Year he set off once again. Chambers usually required him to stay close at hand when there was trading to be done. But on this morning what little snow remained on the flat was glazed, dimpled, and devoid of life.

  He set out with Jawbone, who carried an empty packsaddle, and the bony old mare, who dragged an empty travois. By these means he brought meat home and sometimes that saved him a return trip.

  “I’m tired of antelope, Skye,” Rufus said just before Skye let himself out of the gates.

  Skye lifted his top hat and settled it. “It’s Mister Skye, mate.”

  “Putting on airs, that’s what.”

  “No, it’s my way of saying I’m worth something in this world. In the Royal Navy no man was mister except an officer.”

  “So you deserted, and now you can call yourself whatever you want, and bring us rabbits for dinner. If you was a Yank, we’d be eating buffler hump every night.”