Slater's Way

by Charles G. West

  “Welcome,” Red Basket said to Slater, speaking in English now. Looking at her husband again, she said, “Come. You and your guest must be hungry. Maybe I should cook some of this elk you brought back,” she said, still teasing Teddy. “Surely it must be the medicine elk you went looking for.”

  Teddy grinned sheepishly. “Nah, it’s just regular ol’ elk. I didn’t have no luck finding the medicine elk.”

  It occurred to Slater that Red Basket was not as gullible as Teddy thought.

  After the horses were unsaddled and turned out to graze with the Indian ponies in the meadow, Teddy took Slater to Red Basket’s tipi, where he made room for him to spread his bedroll. While her guest was being settled, Red Basket and the other women prepared supper for them. Seeming more like a large family, the village was small enough for everyone to participate in the meal. The women baked bread made with wild turnips that had been dried and pounded into flour. As an extra treat, blue saskatoon berries were mixed in with the flour. This was served with fresh-roasted venison and hot coffee. It was a meal thoroughly enjoyed by young Slater, and the celebration of Teddy’s return gave evidence of the village’s regard for the burly white man.

  “Where are all the young men?” Slater asked as he and Teddy sat by the fire after the celebration. “Off huntin’ somewhere?”

  “There ain’t no young men in this village,” Teddy said. “They’re long gone—to the north, most of ’em. A good many are scoutin’ for the army. You see, this used to be Crow territory, from here all the way to the Black Hills, till the Sioux and the Cheyenne crowded ’em out. There was just too many of ’em. These folks here in this little camp remember how it used to be, and ten lodges of us came back three years ago to finish out our time where the spirits of the Crow people still live. This is a special place for these folks. This mountain with the waterfall is Medicine Mountain. At least, that’s what they call it, and they say that waterfall comes out of the mountain with water purified by the spirits. We’re down to seven lodges now, and I reckon we’ll be here till there ain’t none of us left.”

  Slater didn’t know how to respond to what he had just heard. His first impression was that he had landed in a camp of the living dead, all having given up the fight for life. He said as much to Teddy, but Teddy was quick to disagree.

  “No such a thing,” he replied. “The reservation’s for the folks that give up the fight. We’re determined to live free where we belong, and these mountains are our home. Every man here will fight for that right.”

  Slater began to understand, even though he still had questions. “But you don’t look as old as most of these folks I saw tonight.”

  “I ain’t,” Teddy was quick to reply. “I followed Red Basket here. The old man settin’ beside her tonight, Crooked Foot, that’s her daddy.” Slater remembered then that Red Basket had seemed to give special attention to the gray-haired old man. Teddy went on. “Crooked Foot is what the Crow people call a maxpé man, what white folks call a medicine man.”

  “Which one was her mother?” Slater asked, trying to remember the women that had been preparing the meal.

  “Her mama’s dead,” Teddy replied. “Died last winter. The fever took her.” He nodded toward the old man, who was just then returning from a visit to the aspen trees downstream. “Crooked Foot’s been goin’ downhill ever since she died. I think he’s gettin’ ready to join her pretty soon.”

  * * *

  When it was time to turn in for the night, Slater remembered his manners and thanked Red Basket for her hospitality. “You are welcome,” she said. “You must stay and visit with us.”

  “Oh no, ma’am,” Slater said. “I reckon I’ll be movin’ on. I wouldn’t wanna cause you folks any more trouble.” He still had it in his mind that someone might be searching for him.

  “What’s your hurry?” Teddy asked. “Where are you thinkin’ about headin’?”

  “I don’t know—just away from this part of the country, I reckon.”

  “What for?” Teddy pressed. “If you’re worryin’ about some lawman from Virginia City lookin’ for you, he ain’t likely to come into these mountains. And there ain’t many Injuns know where this valley is—and no white man, except me—and now you. You’d be welcome, and I’d be obliged, if you stay a while and do some huntin’ with me. In case you ain’t figured it out yet, I’m the one who supplies most of the meat for these folks.”

  The invitation surprised Slater, but it made him think about the men sitting around the fire that night, and he could readily understand the problem. He hesitated for a few moments before accepting. Teddy was probably right about the difficulty anyone would have tracking him in these mountains. “I reckon I could help you do a little huntin’,” he said. “But I don’t have a whole lot of cartridges, and that’s a fact.”

  “Then I reckon you’d best be a good shot,” Teddy said with a laugh. “I’ll take you down to Martin Greeley’s place. He runs a tradin’ post on the Yellowstone, and he’ll trade with you for deer hides and most any kind of pelt—fox, raccoon, whatever you’ve got, long as they’re prime.”

  “Fair enough,” Slater said. “We’ll hunt for a while, then.”

  Once the decision was made, he felt relaxed for the first time since he had left his mother and Henry Weed.

  * * *

  The days that followed turned into weeks as Slater and Teddy hunted the mountain slopes and valleys to supply the village with food. The mountains never failed to provide game in abundance, so there was plenty of deer, elk, and occasional moose prepared for the coming winter.

  It was on these hunts that Teddy came to appreciate Slater’s expertise with a Henry rifle. It seemed the boy never missed, and usually placed the kill shot behind the animal’s front leg where it would puncture the lung. Teddy teased him, accusing him of being stingy with his cartridges, to which Slater would typically reply with a stoic grunt.

  Before long, it occurred to Teddy that the young man never seemed to smile, and the stoic grunt was about as close to a laugh as he ever came. Word of his marksmanship soon spread among the others in the village, and they began to greet him with a Crow phrase each time he returned to the camp with fresh meat. Finally his curiosity got the better of him and he asked Teddy what the phrase meant.

  “They’re just callin’ you by your name. That’s your Crow name,” Teddy said.

  “What’s it mean in American?” Slater asked.

  “Shoots One Time,” Teddy said with a grin. “How you like it?”

  “Shoots One Time,” Slater repeated, not particularly impressed. “What kinda name is that?”

  “It’s an Injun name,” Teddy said, “and a good’un at that. It’s better’n mine.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Hisshe Bishée,” he said. “Red Buffalo.”

  “Why’d they call you that?” Slater asked.

  “My size, I reckon.”

  “Yeah, but red?” Slater wondered.

  “When I first met Red Basket, my hair and whiskers were a little more reddish.”

  Slater considered that for a moment before commenting in his typical humorless fashion, “I reckon they could call you Gray Buffalo now.”

  “I reckon,” Teddy said, shaking his head impatiently in response to Slater’s total lack of humor. “You ever laugh?” he suddenly asked.

  Puzzled by the question, Slater hesitated, then answered, “I reckon—if somethin’s funny.”

  “Well, I’m mighty glad to know that,” Teddy said. “’Cause I was beginnin’ to think your sense of humor was broke. I reckon you just ain’t run across anythin’ that’s funny.”

  At a loss as to why Teddy was going on with an obviously meaningless discussion, Slater paused to think about the comment. “I reckon not,” he finally answered when he realized there was no incident he could recall.

  Chapter 3

 
As the summer ran its course, Slater and Teddy provided plenty of meat for the women to prepare for the winter, as well as a good quantity of hides to trade for ammunition and supplies. Already it was past the season when the blue-and-purple flowers of the wild turnips dried up and broke off, making it difficult to find and dig up the plants.

  On this late-summer morning, Slater paused to watch Red Basket as she prepared the last of the turnips the women had gathered. She could feel his intense gaze as she peeled the hard dark skin from the turnip and sliced the root so it could be dried and stored.

  By now, she was accustomed to the strangely sorrowful young man’s interest in everything that was necessary for survival in the high mountain country. She knew that he planned to leave them before the severe weather arrived. He had delayed his departure at Teddy’s urging to accompany him on a hunt for mountain goats, the horns of which would be ground up for medicine that Crooked Foot used to treat certain ailments.

  To find the goats, they planned to ride up into the Beartooth Mountains east of the Absarokas. With higher mountains, vast treeless plateaus that fell off steeply into the canyons that surrounded them, the rugged Beartooth Range lay in sharp contrast to the forested slopes of the Absarokas. Teddy wanted to go before the first heavy winter snows closed the high passes, making access to the peaks impossible. “Are you still planning to leave as soon as you get back from the Beartooths?” Red Basket suddenly asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I reckon so,” Slater answered.

  “It was good that you have stayed with us. Everyone in the village is happy that you came to help us.” She stopped slicing the turnips for a moment to look directly at him. “It is a bad time of the year for you to start out on your own. It would be better to wait for the spring. That is what I think.”

  He couldn’t argue with her reasoning. It would be a lot easier to wait the winter out there with the Crow people, but he had been threatening to leave for over a month by this time with something always causing him to postpone it. Unlike Teddy, he was not content to wither on the vine with the older members of the camp, even though he had come to be fond of them, especially Crooked Foot and Red Basket.

  “What you say is true,” he said, “but it is time I made my own home.”

  “You can make your home here at Medicine Mountain with us,” she insisted. “In the spring, we will make your tipi. Teddy and I will help you make it.”

  “I’ve put you folks to an awful lot of trouble,” he said. “You’re already makin’ me some clothes. I don’t know how I’m gonna pay you for that.”

  She smiled. “You grow so fast, they might not fit when I’m through with them. I think you should stay with us till spring.” He made no response to her suggestion, so she continued to stare at him. Finally she blurted, “Where is your family, boy?”

  Her question took him by surprise. He shrugged, not wishing to go there. “No family,” he said.

  “Teddy say your father dead.”

  “That’s a fact,” he said.

  “Where is your mother? Is she dead?”

  “Same as,” he replied.

  She thought about that for a moment before repeating, “I think you should stay here till spring.” Then she turned her attention fully back to her turnips, in effect dismissing him to contemplate it.

  “Well, me and Teddy better get started if we’re gonna find Crooked Foot a goat,” Slater said. “I reckon we can talk about it when we get back.”

  * * *

  The two hunters followed an old game trail down into the Boulder River Valley, crossed the river, and followed it upstream for a few miles before climbing up into the mountains on the other side. The farther they rode and the higher they climbed, the more the terrain changed as they left the heavily vegetated slopes of the Absarokas behind them.

  To Slater, there was a feeling that no man had set foot on these treeless, glaciered peaks before. This was not the case, however, since Teddy had ridden the broad barren plateaus in search of goats and sheep before. By his admission, it was not often, simply because there was more game in the Absarokas that was far more easily hunted. That and the fact that he was not as young as he once was.

  “I reckon this is about as far as we can take the horses,” Teddy said after they had scaled a steep slope to gain a flat grassy plateau with a small lake, bordered by pines, at the narrow end. “We’ll have to leave them here and go the rest of the way on foot.” Slater looked at the twin peaks high above the plateau and decided it was going to be a hell of a climb.

  They made their camp by the lake, hobbled the horses, and began the climb up toward the Alpine-like meadows, already wearing shrouds of snow. It was close to dark when they were forced to abandon the hunt after no sighting of a suitable male goat, although several females had been spotted.

  “Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow,” Teddy said as they descended to the lake below. “With all them nannies, there’s gotta be a billy around somewhere.”

  It was not until two days later that the opportunity to complete their hunt presented itself when a handsome billy was spotted on a granite ledge on the far side of the mountain. Not eager to make the difficult climb, Teddy remained near the foot of a fissure in the granite wall while Slater continued to climb up to get within the Henry’s effective range. As Teddy had hoped, Shoots One Time did just that and dropped the goat with one shot. The hard work was not finished, though, for Slater was obliged to make his way down into a narrow gorge to retrieve the body from the rocks where it had fallen. It was after dark when he made it back to the camp where Teddy was waiting.

  “I swear,” Teddy said, “I was startin’ to think I was gonna have to go lookin’ for you.”

  Slater dumped the carcass on the ground by the fire Teddy had built. “It was a long climb outta that canyon,” he said in simple explanation.

  “Well, I’m glad you found your way back,” Teddy said, “’cause I was plannin’ to have goat for supper.”

  “I thought we were gettin’ this goat for Crooked Foot.”

  “He don’t need nothin’ but the head,” Teddy said. “I plan to have me some fresh goat meat roasted over the fire. I like goat, and I don’t get any very often, so let’s get to skinnin’.” He uttered a little groan when he got to his feet and complained. “I swear, I’m gettin’ too old to climb all over these mountains. My legs is plumb wore out. I’m damn glad we found this billy today. You mighta had to go huntin’ by yourself tomorrow.”

  In a short time, there were strips of goat meat sizzling over the flames while Teddy wrapped the goat’s head in the hide to be delivered to Crooked Foot. “Maybe that won’t get to stinkin’ before we get back to the village,” he said.

  It was Slater’s first experience eating goat meat. He decided it was not bad, but he preferred venison. After he had eaten his fill, he sat back against a huge boulder that seemed to be perched precariously at the edge of the lake, as if about to roll forward into the water. It had probably looked that way for a hundred years, he imagined, as he drank his coffee. He could feel the spirit of the stark granite peaks, standing even taller than the neighboring peaks of the Absarokas, and he knew that this was a good place, a safe place for him.

  Lost in his thoughts for a long moment, he suddenly glanced up to find Teddy watching him intensely. He realized that Teddy had not spoken for several minutes, which was not a normal thing for his talkative friend.

  “You thinkin’ ’bout leavin’?” Teddy asked.

  “No,” Slater said, after a long pause. “I’m thinkin’ ’bout stayin’.”

  “Good,” Teddy said. “I’m damn glad to hear it. You’re damn sure welcome, and that’s a fact.”

  The news came as a great relief to Teddy. He and Red Basket had talked about how much easier things had been on him since Slater came. And he had promised her that he would do his best to convince Slater that this would be a good plac
e for him. It had been a most worrisome matter as to how he could persuade the young stallion to stay. And now he found that he had worried for naught, because the mountains had done the job with no help required from him.

  Although Slater’s decision to stay with the tiny band of Crows had been made with the intent to merely wait out the winter, and possibly hunt with Teddy in the spring, four more years would pass to find him still vacillating between staying and leaving.

  * * *

  This was the fifth summer since Teddy Lightfoot had brought the serious young boy to the base of Medicine Mountain for what was planned to be a short visit. In that time, the boy had grown to be a powerful young man. A skillful hunter and tracker, he had become expert with either rifle or bow, and was held in highest regard in the tiny Crow camp. He was even more somber as a man than he had been as a boy, a fact that puzzled Teddy, causing him to remark to Red Basket, “I swear, in the time since I brought him here, I ain’t knowed him to laugh out loud a single, solitary time, and that’s a fact.”

  “It is Slater’s way,” Red Basket said. “That’s all. What does it matter?”

  “It just ain’t natural for a man to go through life without findin’ something to smile at,” Teddy insisted. “He’s likely to wind up bitter as bile before he’s my age.” He shook his head and frowned. “And he’s got to ridin’ off up in the mountains by hisself for two or three days at a time.”

  Red Basket smiled patiently. “I’m sure he would ask you to go with him if you were able to ride.” Owing to a stiffness in his hips, it became extremely painful for him after a long time in the saddle, and Teddy no longer accompanied Slater on his extended hunting trips. The past couple of years seemed to have taken a toll on her husband, and she knew how much the effects of his advancing age bothered him. She was not immune to the effects of aging herself, although she was not nearly as old as Teddy. She was convinced that had it not been for Slater, however, the whole camp might already have crossed the river of life. “Besides,” she said to Teddy, “he always brings plenty of meat back from his hunts.”