The Fire Arrow

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He settled back to wait, letting the intense sun warm him. He had never seen such a clear day. The air was so transparent it drew everything close. The Belt Mountains, on the other side of the gap, seemed so near he could touch them, though they were six or seven miles distant.

  Victoria joined him, sitting cross-legged with her skirts hiked, as she often did. He was glad she was there. The horses grazed contentedly on the slope behind them. The air was warm, and he felt good.

  He remembered how, only a few weeks earlier, he had wandered through a winter’s fog, not knowing where he was going, and thought that was how his life was playing out. But the important thing was that he kept on going through the fog, through the air filled with ice crystals.

  She touched his arm and pointed. Across the southern heaven were sun dogs, bright miniature suns at the exact altitude of the real one, shimmering and sometimes shifting color, a phenomenon he had never before seen.

  “It is a sign,” she said.

  “I know where I am going now,” he said.

  “I wondered if you ever would.”

  “When I lived for myself I walked through fog. When I give myself away, I can see to the farthest horizon.”

  “Damn, you better tell me that in my tongue,” she said.

  “Your people are my home,” he said.

  His response was enough for her. She caught his big hand and held it.

  They waited through the warm, bright day, but Skittles and his wagons never came.

  forty-four

  Skye and Victoria sat on their cliffside rock and watched and waited until the sun plunged toward the western rim of the world. Skittles’s party should have rounded the flank of the mountains and headed through the gap. Skye didn’t know what to make of it.

  “We go look,” Victoria said.

  “Leave the horses,” Skye said.

  Stiffly, they began back-trailing along the rough foothills, pausing at every promontory or spot that afforded a view. Then she pointed at a distant collection of moving dots. They hiked another half mile eastward until they could get a better look from a ridgetop.

  Disaster had struck Skittles’s party. They had started their wagons across a shallow coulee, little knowing that the earth beneath its grassy surface was water-charged gumbo the consistency of jelly. The whiskey wagon had gone first and was mired up to its bed, its wheels mostly lost to view. Worse, the noble draft horses hauling that heavy load had mired, fought their fate, and now were bloodstained bodies lying in the muck. They had obviously been shot when it became plain to the green shirts that those big, gentle, hardworking beasts were doomed.

  The supply wagon, behind it, was mired too, and its giant draft horses also lay dead. No legs were visible from any horse. They had sunk to their bellies, struggled against their fate, and were put out of their misery.

  Skye thought that he had heard no shots, but that was not surprising, given the brisk wind and the distances.

  “Dammit,” Victoria said. “If we were down there we would have been caught too.”

  Skye nodded.

  Off as far as his eye could see even on that bright day, he could make out the green shirts salvaging what they could. They had pulled the walls off the supply wagon, along with its tailgate, and made a sort of ramp back to safe land on the east side of the grass-topped river of mud. They had salvaged the whiskey barrels, which stood like stumps on safe ground. They had rescued a pile of gear, perhaps including Skye’s rifle and his bedroll and packsaddle.

  The outfit′s saddle horses were safe, picketed on the east side. Skittles would probably build packsaddles and load as much whiskey as he could, leaving his men to carry their own kits. But there weren’t enough saddle horses for all that whiskey. He would have to cache most of it.

  Unless Skye could destroy it.

  “Sonsofbitches got what was coming,” she said.

  “They’re not licked yet. They’ll clean the mud out of their revolvers this night. Tomorrow they hunt for more horses. Skittles will send men to look for Jawbone and the mare.”

  They needed to know what Skittles would do. They sat quietly, watching the rescue efforts. In time, a horseman started off, heading southeast.

  “Skittles has two parties out somewhere. One’s delivering the robes he got from your village, and the other party’s returning empty or maybe with some supplies from a trading post. That means he still has four wagons and four teams. He just has to wait.”

  As if to confirm Skye’s judgment, the green shirts threw packsaddles over the remaining two saddle horses and began shuttling the whiskey kegs toward a copse of cottonwood trees perhaps a quarter of a mile from the disastrous crossing. There would be firewood and shelter there. The men would tote their gear to the cottonwood grove and move the whiskey and wait for help to arrive.

  “See that horseman? Skittles is sending for help. He’s got wagons coming and going. Looks like that rider is headed for Fort Sarpy.”

  “He’s headed for hell, that’s where,” she muttered.

  “Well, they’re stuck in that grove. They might be there for weeks,” he said. “They can’t do much until they get some wagons and teams.”

  “And every day they stay in that place, they get stronger,” she said. “They wash away the mud, clean their guns, start hunting for meat, and maybe get that whiskey hidden somewhere.”

  The men were frantically dragging everything to the cottonwood grove. They were obviously tired, yet seemed impelled by something menacing. In the grove, two tents rose. Skye could not fathom what was happening; it was all too far away, but the distant green shirts were obviously in a hurry.

  A darkness was descending too early. Skye whirled, discovered behind him a massive gray overcast rolling out of the northwest from behind the Snowy Mountains, galloping across the heavens.

  “Trouble,” he said. “I should have read the sun dogs. They were telling me something but I wasn’t listening.”

  Victoria’s single glance took in the weather. They needed to get their horses and find shelter, and there wasn’t much of that. Swiftly overtaking this country was a massive spring storm, the type that could dump feet of snow on the high plains. They abandoned the overlook and hurried back to the rocky ledge to the west, found their horses nervously tugging on their pickets, released them, and headed downhill. They needed to get to woods and find shelter from the wind. They needed firewood and a place to keep a fire going. But there was nothing, only the anonymous rolling foothills on the south flank of the Snowies.

  No wonder the green shirts were throwing up tents and heading for the cottonwoods. A cold wind plucked the warmth out of the air, and eddied through the slopes and hollows, brooming away a day’s work by the sun. Not bitter yet; that would come later, maybe after snow.

  The land descended for miles and Skye had only to find a coulee and it would eventually deposit him in the valley of the Musselshell River where there would be shelter. But that was a ten-mile hike through the night.

  They simply could find no place to go to ground.

  The massive dark reef of cloud was wiping away light, turning a lively day into an iron-gray twilight. When dark finally fell, it would be pitch-dark, not even starlight, and they would be stumbling through inky night.

  They had reached the gumbo-bottomed coulee but on the opposite side from the traders.

  He surprised himself: “Let’s get into that camp when this storm hits and burn the booze.”

  She stopped suddenly, laughed, and the gusts whipped her laughter away.

  They turned into the wind, into the iron twilight, until they had gained ground and reached the foothills. Then they turned east, cut past the head of that evil coulee, and started their descent on the same side as Skittles’s men.

  Skye began laughing. They were in peril from a cruel storm, but laughter bloomed through him and she joined him. They laughed as the wind at their backs bullied them south toward the traders′ camp. They laughed when the wind plucked Skye’s old
top hat and sent it sailing. He roared, recovered it, and anchored it to the pack frame perched on one of their ponies.

  “Maybe we can save out a jug, Mister Skye?”

  “Maybe we can!”

  Behind them rose a great commotion. Skye turned to find two equine specters galloping down on them.

  “Ah! You’ve found us at last!” he bellowed.

  Jawbone jammed to a halt, butted Skye in the belly, disturbed the ponies, and began pushing Skye backward, while the mare stopped just short of Victoria and bobbed her head up and down in wild greeting.

  “Oh, ho! You’ve come to join the fiesta!” Skye said.

  The first blast of icy pellets smacked into them. Not snow, just slivers of frozen moisture that stung their faces. Skye ached for his capote, but the green shirts had it. Maybe he could get it back. Maybe he could get his bedroll, his rifle, his kit, his packsaddle back. Maybe he could grab something for back wages. Maybe he could find a shelter-half or some canvas to crawl under until this storm blew past

  But maybe that was all wishful thinking. The only reality was the blackening heaven, the sting of ice in the air, a wind that probed through his shirt and numbed him, and a skiff of snow on the ground that could swiftly heap up into impassible drifts.

  They almost ran into the traders’ camp. Off ahead they caught a glimpse of things that didn’t fit in nature. They halted. Jawbone had the good sense not to squeal. Skye strained to see, and finally made out a mesh of black limbs. They were on the west edge of those trees. Nearby were heaps on the ground. Off somewhere just beyond the wall of night were the two tents.

  Mister Skittles, Mister Grosvenor, and the other misters were huddled within. There would be no fire on a night like this unless they had found some protected hollow out of the claws of snowy air. But there was no sign of light. The gents were rolled up in their bedrolls, safe under canvas, and glad to be halfway warm.

  Skye began howling. Victoria joined him. They laughed and the wind whipped their every sound away. He lumbered from one heap to another. The whiskey casks were collected in one place. The company’s supplies were stored under a canvas tarpaulin. Somewhere in the woods were the company’s saddle horses. And the seven remaining men were locked into their tents.

  Snow was beginning to build around every barrier, along the sides of the tents, around the casks, around the supplies anchored under the tarpaulin.

  It was time to get to work.

  forty-five

  Nature helps and nature hinders. Anyone living in the wilds knows that. Skye worked frantically to strap his own packsaddle on his pony before the light failed entirely, while Victoria probed under the tarpaulin to see what was there. By the time he finished buckling the packsaddle, he could no longer see anything. He worried about losing Victoria.

  The wind helped. It rattled the cottonwood branches, whispered and yowled across the earth, and flapped the canvas of the traders’ tents. There was no silence to expose Skye’s activities.

  “I found the rifle,” she said. “Lotsa stuff.”

  “You’ll have to load in the dark.”

  “I can do it. I got a bedroll too, maybe yours.”

  “Good. It has my powder horn and a hatchet in it.”

  She began loading now, working in full blackness because all light had fled the world. Snow stung Skye’s face.

  Skye tried to remember where the casks stood. He hardly dared venture that way. He could move twenty feet from Victoria and lose her entirely.

  The barrels were a few yards out from the supplies, about where they had been rescued from the gumbo.

  “Talk quietly, Victoria. Just talk,” he said.

  She took him up on it, cussing steadily, trapper cussing, the oaths rolling out of her like a waterfall. He laughed softly.

  He stumbled and fell upon the casks, felt them with his big hands, brushed snow away, and tried lifting one. Oaken staves, iron hoops. It was all he could manage, maybe seventy or eighty pounds. He lifted all he could find, hoping to find a light one. After lifting five, he did lift a light one and he rejoiced. Now he began probing and patting it, and found a bung faucet in it. More good luck.

  Victoria was cheerfully cussing away, the oaths peppering the air. He carried the light cask over to her.

  “This one’s been opened. We’ll use it to burn the rest. Unless you can find an axe.”

  “Dammit, Skye, how am I supposed to find anything?”

  “Is there an old blanket I can soak?”

  “How am I supposed to know, eh?”

  They were fighting nature now. He hardly knew what to do. He didn’t even know whether he could start a fire in all this wet wind. He wanted an axe. Maybe a swift blow to each cask would open it. He thought that maybe he could start a fire if he could strike some sparks into a rag soaked with pure spirits. But a fire would bring them all boiling out of their tents, and they would shoot at anything that moved.

  This was proving harder than he had wanted. And now he was getting numb. His hands would quit him pretty soon.

  He felt his way to the packhorses and found that Victoria had anchored his Hawken on one. He could tell it by its feel. He found his bedroll, opened it, and pulled out his powder horn. He found his capote in his saddle kit, and gratefully put it on, feeling its welcome warmth at once. He had everything: his rifle, his kit, his horses.

  There was only one task left, but it was the reason he came, the reason he was here on a black night in a storm. The only thing was, he didn’t know how to destroy those casks.

  A light bloomed behind him. He whirled, and found vague yellow light emanating from one of the tents while shadows bobbed on its canvas walls. Someone in there had lit a lamp. He saw Victoria, who was holding the reins of two horses, whirl them around so their eyes would not pick up lamplight. And just in time too. A figure parted canvas and emerged into the night, bearing the lantern in one hand and a revolver in the other. Skye was sure he and Victoria had made too much noise, or disturbed the rhythms of nature too much. A veil of snow, blowing horizontally, obscured the man. Skye knew that the trader was seeing little but the white wall of snow. The man stood before the tent, uncertainly, and then jammed the revolver into its holster and relieved himself.

  Skye took the opportunity to orient himself in the lamplight. The casks stood in a cluster, mostly snow-covered now. The supplies remained under the tarp, which was a salvaged wagon sheet. Skye wanted that tarp; it would give them shelter. It wasn’t particularly cold, but it would be plenty cold when this storm blew over. A wagon sheet was twice the canvas he wanted, and three times heavier than he wanted. Maybe he could slice it in two.

  The trader finished. From the dark tent, two others emerged and relieved themselves. They were talking but Skye could not make out any of it. Then they retreated to their respective tents, and Skye had one last chance to study the layout before they blew out the lantern. He and Victoria were plunged into utter darkness once again.

  “You there?” he asked softly.

  “Damn right.”

  “I don’t know how to burn this booze.”

  “I don’t either. It’s snowing too hard.”

  “I don’t think I can bust these barrels with a hatchet.”

  “Shoot them, Skye?”

  “In the dark?”

  “One, maybe?”

  “Shoot one and hope it leaks enough spirits to burn the rest?”

  “We ain’t gonna hang around and let them shoot us, are we?”

  “They won’t see; they’ll be blinded.”

  He found Victoria holding the ponies. Somewhere out in the dark Jawbone and the old mare were standing.

  “The only thing I can think of is to start a fire beside a barrel, get away, and then shoot one barrel and hope for the best.”

  “So what’s gonna happen.”

  “They’ll see fire, come busting out of their tents, maybe shoot into the dark, try to put out the fire. I shoot a barrel. More spirits out, more fire.”

&nb
sp; “Damned waste of good booze, Skye.”

  He could feel the snow caking on his capote. It would be caking his horses, caking Victoria’s robe. It was a wet warm snow, plastering whatever it touched, including those barrels. That was good, white on white.

  He fumbled his way to the casks, began lifting and rocking them to find the light one, and located it. He lifted it easily and was immediately worried. Was there anything in it? He found the brass bung faucet, turned the cock, held his hand under the spout, and felt nothing. Empty.

  There went his only plan. Worse, he had been counting on some firelight for a getaway. He knew he was next to a cottonwood grove, and next to a coulee that could mire him. He needed light enough to get away, get out of rifle range, escape those deadly Sharps.

  “Nothing in here,” he said.

  “Sonofabitch!”

  “We’re in trouble.”

  He felt her draw close, something intuitive because he could see nothing. They could not even see the white canvas tents a short distance from them.

  “We got to wait for the first light and hope we can escape,” she said.

  He felt the warmth of the horses she was leading, or was it their moist breath? Who could know?

  “We got that wagon canvas to keep us warm,” she said.

  That was a good idea. He didn’t know where the heap of supplies was, but she seemed to, and eventually she stumbled, cussed softly, and drew him toward her. They clambered under the canvas. She held the lines of their horses and hoped the others would linger close. In truth, he had no idea what direction he was facing. He couldn’t remember a night so black, or being so lost.

  The wagon sheet served well to shield them from the pelting snow, though he insisted on keeping his head in the open, relying on the hood of his capote for warmth. If the traders lit a lamp again, he wanted to know it.

  It would be a long, long wait. It wasn’t far past dusk. And first light wouldn’t come until six-thirty or seven. And then they’d run the risk of being seen, and they would leave a plain trail in the snow. Well, that was war, won or lost by weather, or an unshod hoof, or bad luck.