The Fire Arrow

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Victoria …” he started to say, but couldn’t continue. He just wanted to tell her it had been a good life and she had made it so.

  She found his hand and squeezed it.

  The minutes dragged. An hour passed by his reckoning, but maybe it was only five minutes. The snow diminished. He couldn’t see it but he felt it. The men in the tents had buried themselves in their blankets and Skye heard no talk from that quarter, nor did he see any lamplight.

  He was growing stiff, but at least under that sheet he was dry and not cold.

  “Sonofabitch, look,” she said.

  She turned his face with her hand. There was a slit in the sky. Off to the north eerie moonlight shone on the white peaks of the Snowy Mountains.

  forty-six

  Everything changed. That crack in the sky across the north was his compass, his lantern, his escape. He knew where he was. He could see his way out. The snow glowed eerily.

  Such was fate, where the fortunes of war hung on chance.

  “Get the horses together. I’ll cut my way through a barrel with my knife.”

  “Wait,” she said, touching his arm.

  She crawled out of their canvas shelter, hastened to one of the packhorses that stood dimly visible as a silhouette, and returned with something. She stooped, flexed something, and he realized she had gotten her bow and quiver.

  Maybe it would work. Her reflex bow, made of yew wood wrapped in sinew, was as strong as she could draw. Her arrows, with iron points, were carefully crafted by Crow artisans and had grooves in the shafts to draw away the blood of animals she pierced, thus killing them faster.

  He followed her to the stockpile of whiskey, praying that they would not be silhouetted by that crack of ghostly light to the north.

  She cut around to the side, making sure no arrow, if it careened off a barrel, would pierce the tents. The moonlight from the distant mountains quickened just enough so they could see the barrels, snow-clad on their tops, dark bulks gathered together.

  She nocked an arrow, drew and aimed easily, and loosed it into a cask. It hit with a thump, and Skye turned sharply to see whether it had stirred anything in the tents.

  She slipped close to the barrel to see the effect. There wasn’t enough light to know, but when she slid her hand around the arrow she raised her arm high, to touch sky.

  She beckoned, and drew his hand to the arrow, which projected from the cask. Wetness. The grooves were drawing the spirits out.

  She danced a little jig in the snow. Then he beckoned her close, so he could whisper.

  “We’ll get the horses ready first. At the edge of the woods. They’ll come out shooting.”

  She nodded.

  They led their horses around the cottonwood grove, just out of sight of the tents. Jawbone and the mare followed. The colt butted Skye, who butted back.

  The crack of moonlight to the north widened. The snowdad peaks of the Snowy Mountains shot white light under the massive storm cloud. Light glistened off the thin snow covering the land.

  “How we gonna light it?” she asked.

  “Flaming arrow?”

  “I can do it.”

  They hastened back to the casks. Victoria nocked arrows, sped them into the oaken staves. They checked each one, running their hands around the buried shaft, finding wetness as the spirits slowly drained to the snowy earth.

  The moonlight brightened. Skye kept a sharp eye on those tents. Snow was now the enemy, bouncing pale light everywhere, wiping away the cloak of blackness. It was only a mat ter of time, maybe only minutes or seconds, before one of Skittles’s men crawled out of a tent.

  Still, their luck held. There were seven casks, and Victoria punctured each one. These were slow leaks, and not much of the grain spirits was puddling on the ground, and that worried him. He tried pulling an arrow, but its iron head locked it in. He would just have to trust.

  Skye cut a strip of wool from the bottom of his blanket capote, and cut some fringes from his buckskin shirt, and Victoria wrapped the wool around an arrow and tied it tight with the fringe leather. Then they prepared a second arrow, and soaked both in the spirits.

  Victoria slid her bow over her shoulder, lifted her hands to the black sky, and supplicated the Other Ones, singing softly. It was a pleading, a soft song of empowerment. Jawbone arrived, sniffed the barrels, and tried to butt her.

  Skye grabbed his mane and yanked him away.

  They retreated twenty yards in the direction of their horses. Once that flame bloomed, they would be easy targets. It was a risk they had to take.

  Skye checked one last time to see whether the barrels were still leaking spirits. They were. Their staves were wet. But he could find no pooling on the soft ground.

  No matter. It was now or never.

  He retreated to where Victoria stood, her bow ready.

  She held the fire arrow.

  He slid the curved steel into his hand, and held the flint in his other, and struck, his practiced scrape shooting a constellation of sparks outward, where dozens landed on the soaked wool. It flared instantly.

  Swiftly she nocked the arrow, aimed for the mass of casks, and let loose. It dropped short and burned lazily five yards from the casks.

  They lit the second and she drew harder, running the flaming tip almost to her bow hand, and let loose. This one struck between two barrels, and for a moment it looked as though nothing would ignite. But then curls of blue flame crawled in two directions, and suddenly scaled two casks.

  They watched, transfixed, as the flames captured two barrels and then a third.

  Then she pulled the bow over her shoulder and they began the long retreat to the woods, even as the mounting flame began to throw light.

  The naked limbs of the cottonwoods hid them. Skye turned, and saw men boil out of the tents, stare at the flame, and study the darkness. He heard Skittles shouting orders. The men returned to their tents for arms, bloomed into the firelight, and deployed to either side, away from the blinding light.

  Skye and Victoria reached the horses, grabbed lead lines, and tugged them hard. The ponies, laden with packs, snorted and clopped through a couple inches of snow, gaining speed, putting distance between them and the great blaze.

  But then revolvers cracked. A bullet sang through limbs, clipping wood. The traders had seen something through the trees and were firing, perhaps blindly, but with a soldier’s discipline. A ball raked past Skye.

  Victoria tugged the ponies, hastening them, pulling them until she was running beside them.

  The fire retreated as more and more trees blocked its light from Skye and Victoria. But now the moonlight from the Snowies caught them, and Skye felt naked.

  The throaty crack of the Sharps rifles spoke, and he knew some of those murderous bullets were probing clear through the woods.

  He glanced at his party: Victoria first, tugging the lines of two ponies. He was second, tugging two more ponies. Jawbone was somewhere near Victoria. The mare was somewhere behind. He could see them all, vaguely, ghostly shapes racing toward safety.

  A Sharps cracked, and Skye heard something he dreaded, the thump of a slug smacking horseflesh. But nothing changed. They continued to escape. Rifles cracked. No one followed. But one of his horses was wheezing, its breath labored. The sound was loud and agonizing in the night.

  “Victoria, slow,” he said.

  She slowed. They were out of effective range, and the traders had their hands full with the fire.

  Now they would just keep on walking, never stop, walk and walk toward the Musselshell.

  Then the laboring horse stumbled, and walked another twenty yards, and slowly capsized. Skye raced to it, and knew at once it was the old mare, the very horse that had carried Victoria, sick and wounded, to safety. The horse that had borne Jawbone.

  They halted. Skye ran back, found the mare lying in the light snow, her old head on the ground, her neck stretched backward. There was a hole in her chest, seeping blackness into the pale snow.


  Skye fell to his knees, drew his thick hand over her neck, under her mane, even as she died, one last cough and a shudder convulsing her.

  Jawbone squealed. He danced around her, nudged her, smelled her nostrils, from which no moist breath emerged.

  Skye studied the back trail sharply but saw no one. For the moment the traders had enough to keep them busy. But this light snow left a perfect trace of Skye’s passage, and it would not be long before experienced soldiers were after them.

  They could not wait.

  Skye nodded to Victoria, and they moved ahead, leaving the old mare sprawled in the snow. Jawbone wailed. He stood solidly over the mare, unbudging, loyal, his fierce soul guarding his mother.

  Skye could not bear to watch. If Jawbone stayed, that was his right. He and Victoria tugged their ponies into action again and raced southward, wishing for the cloud cover that would shroud them once again. He stared at dark shadows, at anything that moved or seemed to move. Once they got their ponies moving, he found his old Hawken, untied it from the packsaddle, pulled his powder horn over his shoulder, hunted for the small vault of caps and wads, slipped a cap over the nipple of the Hawken, but still didn’t know if the weapon was charged. It had lain in the traders’ wagon for many days and kept from him.

  It was all he had to answer those Sharps rifles carried by the traders.

  They worked over naked slopes, hour after hour, open country, buffalo country, its dried grasses good fodder even in winter.

  He could not stop. Skittles would follow, on horse, on foot, whatever it took, so long as there was a trail to follow, and there was. Skye could do nothing at all about those prints in the snow, his prints, Victoria’s moccasin prints.

  At least the cloud cover thickened again, and the Snowy Mountains slipped from view. A blackness lowered over them that matched the blackness of his heart.

  And then he heard a squeal, the patter of hooves, and jawbone was walking beside him.

  forty-seven

  With the dawn came spring. As the golden light quickened, so did the warmth. By the time the sun was a finger’s width above the horizon, a tender joy was spreading over the northern lands, wiping away snow as if it hadn’t existed.

  The whole world seemed ready for the warmth, and the chastened snow retreated into small heaps where there were shadows to protect it, and then sank into the pungent earth.

  Skye and Victoria plunged southward, tired but dogged after a sleepless night. Something about this day was touching them both. Skye paused, shed his blanket capote, and tied it to one of the packs. He lifted his top hat and let the tendrils of warm air eddy through his hair.

  No one followed, and with each passing minute it would be harder to follow, the trail less visible, especially to traders, former army men not well versed in the lore of the wild.

  Below stretched the sleepy valley of the Musselshell, basking in the morning. The whole world was quiet. The lightest zephyrs curled over the dried grasses. Skye glanced back again, not wanting surprises, and saw only the peace of a morning on the high plains. Not even a crow soared, not even a hawk hunted.

  He led his entourage down a long grade to the river, where ice jams lined the banks but green grasses were poking up next to the rippling water. Jawbone nipped the grasses, then caught up in little rushes.

  A little way east there would be sandstone bluffs, and he welcomed a chance to curl up in one of the innumerable caves wrought in them by wind and rain and frost and sunlight. Victoria was worn, though her step had quickened with the golden light, and he saw joy in her face. Their eyes caught and he knew she was thinking about a rest. It had been a long and perilous night.

  They hiked east along the river bottoms until they struck the sandstone bluffs, and Skye pushed them onward a little way more. He saw a good hollow in the south-facing cliff, with green grass below it and a good view in most directions.

  He pointed, she nodded, and they struck toward the bluff, climbing slowly, crossing over some talus. The little hollow was like a throne, perched above a wild kingdom. Skye swiftly unloaded the packhorses, turned them loose on grass, picketed one for swift use if needed, and then plucked up his bedroll and stretched it in the warm hollow. He stood there a moment, Victoria beside him, feeling as if he were the lord of all he could see; that this was his dominion and hers, and his kingdom was the most beautiful kingdom ever known.

  He was ready for a nap. And when he awoke, he wanted to come to decisions. Victoria lay down on her old robe beside him, curled up, and fell asleep. He sat motionless, feeling the sun heat his buckskins, feeling the warmth caught in the stubble on his cheeks, feeling the sunlight ride his chafed flesh and cleanse it of hurt

  He had his outfit back now: a rifle, a bedroll, some horses, the various tools he needed to survive. It was a poor man’s outfit but he believed he was rich. What began in the fall with a surprise Blackfoot raid on a Crow hunting camp had come clear around to this.

  He eased back until he was supported by the rear wall of the shallow cave, and he could sit and wait. That struck him as an odd thing, sitting and waiting. Waiting for what? For Mister Skittles and a vengeful pack of traders?

  It was quite possible Mister Skittles didn’t even know who or what struck him. He and his traders would have seen arrows poking from the whiskey casks, and might well have supposed they had been raided by Indians.

  Mister Skittles was a mystery that Skye could not fathom. He and his colleagues had expended enormous energies upon their whiskey trading trip. They had organized and trained a company of men to pillage the plains villages. They had invested heavily in wagons and draft horses, in a uniform of sorts, in weapons, tents, and all the rest. They had welded a deal with the licensed fur and robe companies, the ones more or less abiding by the flat Yank prohibition against the whiskey trade.

  Why? So much effort and capital could have won Skittles rewards in any legitimate business. Why this? Skye almost wished the man would show up and submit to questions. Why, sir, have you come a thousand miles from your borders to do this? Why, sir, do you treat the tribes worse than you would treat a mad dog? Why, sir, do you clothe it all in the cloak of civility, courtesy, and your Yank republican virtues, even as you engage in a patently illegal and cruel enterprise?

  Skye thought he would never know. That whiskey that burned last night probably cost the company twenty thousand dollars of profit, and meant that their entire enterprise was a failure. They would straggle east, not even covering expenses from the few loads of robes and pelts they had acquired.

  Yes, he would like to talk to the Honorable Mister Skittles, for this man had risen out of a young new nation that Skye didn’t entirely grasp, and which in some ways repelled him as much as it attracted him. And that reminded him that even now, as his hair was turning gray, he remained a man without a country. More, a man without a people. He felt that old stab of separateness that had tormented him ever since he escaped his virtual imprisonment in the Royal Navy. For he was a man alone and had been alone ever since he set foot in North America.

  His mind floated and drifted as he dozed through the middle of the day, his sleep-starved body making what it could of a brief respite halfway up a sandstone bluff.

  Then he was awakened. His name was floating upward from below, down in the bottoms of the Musselshell River. Victoria had come alert also, her gaze outward. And yet nothing very threatening loomed. The horses grazed, or stood yawning.

  “Mister Skye, sir. May I have a word?”

  Skye dared not lift his head for fear that a ball from a rifle trained on him would tear into his skull. But it was clear someone knew he was there, and that someone sounded very like Skittles.

  He turned to Victoria. “What can you see?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “We’re trapped.”

  “Maybe I can sneak out and get a better look.”

  Skye shook his head. He found his top hat, stuck it over the barrel of his Hawken, and slowly lifted it until the sun sho
ne plainly on it. He wiggled it a bit. Nothing happened. The halfdozen shots he had anticipated and feared, knowing what a ricochet could do in that cavity, didn’t happen.

  “Who is it?” Skye asked, making his rifle ready.

  “It is Joshua Skittles, sir.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I wish to talk to you.”

  “Alone?”

  “Entirely alone, Mister Skye. I came alone.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “The horses, sir. They left prints in the mud.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m not sure I know, Mister Skye.”

  Skye could hardly imagine a conversation with Skittles along these lines, but it was happening.

  Skittles picked up where he had left off. “At first we thought Indians had set the whiskey on fire, sir. Arrows. I thought it was Indians until we started out in the melting snow and found your dead mare. So it wasn’t Indians, it was Skye. Now this’ll surprise you, sir. I sent the men back to camp to wait for help and salvage what they could, and see about getting at least one wagon free. They went back reluctantly and I took our remaining saddle horse and followed you here.”

  Skye could not imagine it.

  “May I come up there and talk? Will you grant me safe passage?”

  “While your men do what, Mister Skittles?”

  “I am alone, and you have my word and pledge.”

  Oddly, Skye believed him, and cursed himself for playing the fool.

  “Come up with your hands above your head. Leave your horse below.”

  Victoria found her bow. It was not an easy task to arm a powerful bow while lying down, but soon she achieved her goal, found an arrow, nocked it, and waited.

  If ever there was a mystery, Skittles’s appearance alone and in a pacific mood was one.

  The distance was only fifty yards or so. Skye, lying on his belly, watched Skittles move slowly over talus, his hands held above his head, then up a grassy slope past the horses, and finally large and close.