The Fire Arrow

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Three more times he heated water and downed it, and felt his strength tentatively return to him. But the river crossing had exhausted him and he could not travel until tomorrow. He judged that he was one full day’s walk from the Absaroka village. He hoped so, anyway. He found cattails in a backwater, roasted as many of the knobby roots as he could manage to push down his unwilling throat, and called himself fed, though it wasn’t much of a meal.

  He knew he shouldn’t stay there in plain sight beside the river. Blackfeet prowled. He studied the country. Heavily forested bottoms, steep lightly forested bluffs, maybe some good cover from predators and weather.

  He trudged slowly into the bare-limbed forest and then found himself walking onto a lush meadow. A log structure loomed ahead. It was roofless but had a sandstone hearth at one end and thick cottonwood walls. Some history came to him. This confluence with the Big Horn was where several trading posts had risen and fallen, including the earliest of all. Soon after the Lewis and Clark Expedition Manuel Lisa of St. Louis had come upriver to this point, and did a lively trade.

  Skye entered, found the enclosure empty except for a scatter of animal offal. Others had long since burned the fallen roof in the hearth. He examined the hearth and chimney, well aware that such, a structure could hold fire and throw heat at him all night. He decided to stay. It took his remaining strength to drag deadwood and driftwood to the hearth, build up a fire there, carry his few possessions, cut some boughs for a bed, and start more hot water heating, for he was still bone cold. But at last, as the afternoon light waned, he was settled there, out of the wind, the entire heat of the fire thrown his way by the hearth.

  He was grateful and felt a kinship with those who long ago had felled these logs, raised these walls, built a mud-mortar and sandstone hearth, and did a business here. He realized he did not feel alone at all, though he was a solitary man in an empty place. He felt a kinship with so many people. He remembered his parents and his sister in London. His testy father who was always lecturing him. His ironic mother, love and mock in her face as she dished the porridge. How could memories so simple give him so much delight? Who was alive and who had died he did not know and might never know. But he remembered their hopes for him, their patience with his youthful foolishness, their belief that in him something of themselves would be passed along to the future. And he remembered their furrowed brows and sly humor. They were present here. They were beside him when he crossed the river, as was his beloved Victoria.

  He felt his own goodwill being returned to hun. Those men at Fort Sarpy, Chambers and the rest, they were the true loners, for they had nothing to share with others and were divided between themselves and apart from all the world by their own sourness. They might have a wage and live in a safe place, but he would not trade his life for theirs. For he had friends. For he loved. And they could not. And finally, as he sat there absorbing warmth in the twilight, he felt that he had never been alone, that some great Being was his friend and companion, beside him even in his most harrowing moments.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. It was a prayer.

  Night settled, the stars emerged, and the sandstone hearth threw heat his way. He liked it there. A good buffalo hump steak might have helped, but he was alive. He had Victoria. He had an outfit. He could make his way, care for her now with that old Hawken lying beside him.

  He picked up the weapon, rubbed the soot off the barrel, sighted down it. If he could find a file among the Kicked-in-the-Bellies, he would file down the bead and alter the notch a bit, and then it would shoot true.

  He was rich. What more did a man need than friends, a good rifle, two blankets, a robe, and a hearth with a good fire throwing joy at him?

  He slept well and undisturbed, though once when he replenished the fire he saw a pair of eyes glowing in the dark, outside of the open door. A wolf maybe; coyotes were too shy, and no deer or antelope or buffalo or elk would come close. By the time the slow dawn of a winter’s day quickened the world, he was rested and his worn body had recovered from the crossing. With luck, he might reach the camp up the Big Horn River and find succor among Victoria’s kin.

  He was ravenous, but thought to make time during the short cruel winter’s day rather than wait upon his belly. He loaded the heavy burdens over his shoulders: bedroll, belaying pin, powder horn, and hung other things from his waist, including his fire-making pouch, hatchet, and Green River knife. He felt like a beast of burden.

  He thought of Jawbone and the mare, and knew his life was not complete. Somewhere not far away were his medicine horse and the mare, and he sensed they were eager to return to him if only they could. He did not know why he needed them so much. Horses were horses. And yet, something that reached into his very heart told him he must find the pair, that he and they were destined to face the world together, that Jawbone was more than a horse; he was, in the terminology of his wife’s people who had condemned him, a medicine animal.

  He hiked slowly south along the Big Horn River, itself a formidable stream oxbowing northward toward its marriage with the Yellowstone. There were easy trails to follow, showing signs of passage by horse and man and wild game. He had to rest every little while. A man who had come so close to perishing the day before was a man whose heart and limbs and lungs had not yet restored themselves. But he soldiered on, resting at midday beside a giant slab of sandstone that had caught the sun’s heat and was warm to the touch.

  Later that afternoon he began to find signs of traffic, and walked warily, his old Hawken at the ready. Then he passed some women who were gathering firewood in the cottonwood timber. They stared. He raised his hand, palm forward, the Friend sign. Soon some boys swarmed up to him, several armed with bows and arrows that were not toys.

  “I greet you,” he said in Crow.

  They swarmed beside him, sometimes tugging on his bedroll, mocking him with drawn bows. It was not comfortable nor was it intended to be. But then he rounded a river bend and beheld the village, spread comfortably against deep woods and under protecting northern and western slopes. The blackened peaks of the lodges leaked gray smoke. But around the bright tawny bottoms of the lodges life teemed. Women scraped hides or sewed with their awls. Oldsters wrapped in blankets or robes sat idly, taking the sun and smoking. An arrow maker patiently anchored metal points to the shafts with slippery wet sinew.

  Young men greeted him. He was known at once, and the youthful warriors greeted Many Quill Woman’s man with delight. Ahead, a town crier, already informed, proclaimed the visitor. People swarmed about him now, delighted at this novelty, a white man and friend who had come to the Kicked-in-the-Bellies. One of their own.

  Their gaze noted that he carried his burdens, that his step was unsure, and that fatigue lined his face and furrowed the brow under that famed black top hat. They waited silently, for he first must seek Long Hair’s permission to stay among them. He saw his brother-in-law Arrow Giver, and then spotted one of Victoria’s sisters, Makes-the-Lodge, and they greeted him with a slight nod. Soon he found himself before the great lodge of Chief Long Hair, whose locks had never been cut, so it was said, and extended many feet when unbound.

  The chief was waiting; he, too, had been apprised by the crier, and now greeted Skye, observed Skye’s desperation, and invited his guest to have a smoke, which was a way of preparing to receive Skye’s news. Skye lowered his heavy burdens, nodded, and followed Long Hair into the great lodge. There would be much to talk about.

  twenty-five

  Chief Long Hair was obviously a vain man. He bestowed glimpses of his legendary hair, folded into hanks and tucked into a quilled pouch he carried around with him, all the while grilling Skye. His vanity extended not only to his odd affectation, but to knowing more than anyone else in the band knew, so that he might be the fount of all knowledge.

  Thus did he detain Skye through the rest of the afternoon, oblivious of Skye’s hunger and weariness. Nor did it matter to Long Hair that Skye might want to see his in-laws and discover if the
y had news of Victoria.

  “It is said, pale man among us, that you worked for the traders at Fort Sarpy. Tell me what you think of them. Are they just and good, and do they treat us well?”

  Skye, whose stomach churned just from the scent of boiling meat wafting through the village, thought over a judicious reply. He had been thinking up judicious replies for what seemed like hours, but wasn’t that long a time. The ritual smoke, the slow deliberation of Indian social commerce, seemed lengthy to any white man.

  Skye decided on candor and summoned up his limited Crow words, which he supplemented occasionally with fingertalk. “I left them after a fight. It was about my failure to bring back meat. But it was about much more.”

  “Ah, a fight! And you won this fight?”

  “No one ever wins a fight for little is settled by one. But yes, it was necessary for me to tame them in order to receive what was owed me and leave. That very day I lost my horses, a mare and yearling colt. So I walked away.”

  “And how many of them were there?”

  “Some fought. Some didn’t. I fought two or three.”

  “And then you walked for days. And how did you ford the river?”

  “I almost didn’t.”

  “It has been said in this village that your mare and colt rescued you and your wife, Many Quill Woman.”

  “They appeared in our camp when I needed a horse to carry my wife. A Blackfoot arrow almost killed her.”

  “So it is said.”

  The conversation droned on. The chief never let Skye go. The chief’s appetite for news exceeded even his appetite for food, wives, honor, and notoriety.

  By the time evening settled in, the chief had acquired an exact knowledge of the Blackfoot raid, Victoria’s wound, surviving alone through the blizzard, the miraculous appearance of two nondescript horses somehow steered there by her spirit helper the Magpie, the trip south, and the encounter with white traders who stole Skye’s outfit. There, at least, Skye learned something.

  “They passed here, heading for Fort Laramie,” Long Hair said. “We did not encourage them to stay. They tried to trade the rifle for robes, but it was recognized as yours.”

  “I am not finished with them,” Skye said wearily.

  The chief questioned him about the horses, their color and looks, and turned oddly silent. Then he elicited from Skye the whole story of his hunt for buffalo, the discovery of other hunters, and the theft of his horses, taken by two Indians who crossed the river at a place where Skye could not follow. And then the chief kept returning to the fight, the unhappiness at the post, and what might have caused it.

  Some intuition told Skye not to tell Chief Long Hair about Chambers’s contempt for the very people he traded with, but the chief relentlessly ferreted it out, mostly by saying it himself.

  “This headman Chambers has the bad eye for us,” he said. “This man tries to steal robes and pelts from us by cheating on weights. His thumb is always on the balance. My people trade for one cup of sugar and get less. One cup of the bean that makes us crazy, you call coffee, and get less. He is a thief.”

  Skye couldn’t agree more.

  This consumed yet another strand of time, while the evening deepened. Skye had received not a drink of water, not a dish of stew, not a slice of meat. Long Hair’s wives sat patiently, eyeing their guest with blank faces.

  Skye decided it was time to escape, knowing he might well insult the chief. But he could no longer endure the grilling, or sit still, and he was dizzy with hunger and need.

  “It is time to see my kinfolk,” he said.

  The chief stared sharply. “Is the company of Long Hair not enough?”

  Skye was afraid of just such a response, and met it headon. “It is always enough. But I wish to see my kin.”

  Long Hair nodded curtly, a dismissal that boded ill for Skye in the future. Skye had arrived with no gift for the chief and that didn’t help either.

  Gratefully, Skye nodded, retreated through the lodge door and into the night. Arrow Giver beckoned. Skye followed, and his brother-in-law steered him into a commodious lodge where two wives and a younger woman and two small boys crowded around the fire. He barked some commands and the younger of the wives ladled some steaming venison stew into a wooden bowl and handed it to Skye. He lifted it, sipped, felt hot nectar slide down his throat, and rejoiced. It didn’t take long for him to demolish what lay in that bowl.

  He would have liked a few more bowls but no more was offered.

  “Long Hair talks,” Arrow Giver said. It was a way of saying more than the words implied.

  Skye smiled.

  “Now you will have to talk all over again,” he added.

  “Have you word of Many Quill Woman?” Skye asked, relying more on his sign-talk than on his limited Crow tongue.

  “She lives alone in the new lodge and puzzles the people,” Arrow Giver said.

  “Is she well?”

  “It is said her mind is changed. The wounding and the visitor from the other side changed it.”

  “How changed?”

  “She is very cross, and uses trapper words, bad words, upon all the people there.”

  Skye started to laugh and then contained himself. “That is a sign she is getting her strength back.”

  Arrow Giver tamped tobacco from a pouch into a longstemmed pipe and lit it with a coal he plucked from the fire, and then handed it to Skye, who drew the tobacco into his lungs and felt its calming.

  Once again Skye told his stories, while Arrow Giver listened. When it came to the story of the mare and the colt, Victoria’s brother had Skye repeat it again, though Skye was so weary he thought he would tumble to the robe he was sitting on and fall instantly asleep.

  “This colt, is it the very colt that the Tobacco Planter, Walks to the Top, said would bring great trouble to the Otter Clan people?”

  “It is.”

  “And this is the very colt he said must be killed for the sake of the People?”

  “It is. But I would not permit that. I left instead. It is my medicine colt. He is unlike any other horse. Other horses run from trouble. This horse heads right into it. I knew at once that this horse was destined for me. If a white man can also have medicine, then this horse is my medicine, for it will bless me all of its days.”

  Arrow Giver stared sharply at Skye. “But now the horse is stolen?”

  “I will find that colt and that mare. The mare brought my wife to safety, dragging her by travois and carrying her. It was our salvation. My wife had no strength. The Blackfeet had taken the horses. We were alone and surviving on our last meat and wood during a blizzard. But then just when she was well enough to be carried, and the weather warmed enough so it was possible, there came the mare, and the colt I have called Jawbone in honor of his great jaw, which protrudes from his head and makes him look misshapen. I would not let our medicine horses perish. So there was no choice. I left the Otter Clan people, and brought my horses this way, intending to come here. But my rifle and most everything else was stolen by white traders. I headed for Fort Sarpy, where I hoped to earn enough as a trader to outfit myself again.”

  He wasn’t sure whether his words and signs were fully understood. How could he explain about Jawbone, a horse unlike any other, a horse that was meant for him, and only him.

  Arrow Giver stared into the dying flames. The night had thickened. Some of his wives and children and nephews had slipped into their robes.

  “The mare and the colt are here, in the herd,” he said at last.

  “Here?” Skye’s spirit soared.

  “Here. But it is not possible that the horses will ever be returned to you.”

  Skye stared, unhappily, wondering what was happening here.

  “It was taken from you by the son of Little Horse, Badger Tail, and his friend Wolf, son of The Hawk Watcher. They are both boys entering manhood. They have gone to the hills to seek their spirit guardian, which is also part of becoming an Absaroka man. They will cry for a vision h
igh in the high place that is known only to the People. They have done all else to enter into manhood and into the warrior society. Taking horses from others was the act of war and bravery both needed to enter manhood. It is the most important thing they have ever done, and celebrated by all the People.”

  “But I am one of your people by marriage. And adoption.”

  Arrow Giver ignored that. “What is done is done and cannot be changed. If they took your horses, those horses are theirs. There is nothing you can do. The young men will be honored. If you shame them upon their passage to manhood, the People would not forget. You will have bitter enemies. Do not shame them. Let the horses go. They no longer belong to you. If the issue is pressed, Mister Skye, there would be no welcome here or in any Absaroka village for you … or for my sister.”

  twenty-six

  Soft light in the smoke hole awakened Skye. He had slept badly in spite of his exhaustion. A lodge filled with people always left him restless. There were usually noises in the night he could only guess at, people moving, slipping in and out.

  Now they all lay motionless, the fire down to a few coals, a dawn coldness heavy upon the air. He threw back his robe and blanket, slid on his moccasins and tied them, found his capote and threw it over his shoulders, and slipped into the gray morning light. Smoke lay heavy over the village, drifting lazily from dozens of lodges. He saw no one about, but there were always a few, the warrior clan acting as village police and guardians, watchful even in the dead of winter.

  A deep peace reigned here. He stretched and headed south along the purling river, seeking the horse herd. The Crows were rich in horses, which is one reason other tribes were constantly raiding them. He realized he was not alone. An old woman bathed at the river. Several young men stared. He found the herd grazing semitimbered meadows half a mile south, dining on leaves and bark as well as grass and sedges along the river. There were all sorts, lineback duns and grays, paints and spotted horses, a few blacks and some chestnuts. They weren’t pretty horses, and yet they seemed vital and capable. Some had potbellies or oversized heads or broom tails. They served their purpose, which was not only to provide war and hunting mounts to the men, but travois and pack transportation to the whole village.