The Holy Warrior

by Gilbert, Morris

“Come home, Chris!” Knox pleaded. The violence of the scene had sobered him, and his eyes appealed more eloquently than words ever could.

  “No, I’m not going home, and that’s final!”

  Con stared at him intently, then spoke. “Well, that leaves it up to us, I reckon. We’ll load you in the wagon and take you up the Missouri. The Sioux will take care of you—and won’t charge a cent for the buryin’!”

  Chris lifted his head and allowed his thoughts to wash over him. Even this prospect was better than the humiliation awaiting him at his father’s house. “I’m ready,” he murmured softly. “Let the mountains kill me!”

  “Reckon that’s possible,” Con nodded. A hard light glinted in his eyes as he added, “We’re goin’ into country that the Injuns got all staked out. In ten or twenty years, mebbe, there’ll be a line of trappers in there, takin’ out the beaver. Right now, though, you won’t see a white face—and it’s a better’n even chance that you’ll lose your scalp.” He shrugged. “Always that way, I reckon. First come, first served—but in this case, it’s a heap more risky.”

  “If you go—I’m going too!” Knox told Chris, and the stubborn set of his jaw warned the others that he could not be dissuaded. “You leave me, I’ll follow,” he stated flatly.

  “No time for arguin’,” Conrad said abruptly. “Let’s git outta here quick. Frenchie, you git our goods together.”

  Chris turned to Knox. “We’ll have to tell the Greenes.” The two hurried to the house. Dan was a light sleeper and came into the small room when the boys entered; his face tensed as Chris told him the story. Knox went to the loft to gather their things.

  “You don’t have to go. The law’s on your side,” Dan said.

  “From what I hear, these folks don’t wait for law.” Chris lowered his voice so that his brother could not hear him. “I’m afraid for Knox, Dan. They’ll kill him if we don’t get away.”

  “But his folks—”

  “He won’t go up the river. I’ll tell the trappers to take him back home after I’m gone.”

  Conflicting emotions flickered across Greene’s face. “Pretty sure you won’t make it, eh, Christmas?”

  “No—but I want Knox out of this.” He squared his shoulders and said, “I want to see Missy.”

  “Go on in. She’d never forgive me if I didn’t let you say goodbye to her.”

  Chris went into the small room carrying a lamp, and at one touch the girl was wide-awake. “Don’t wake Asa up,” Christmas whispered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I—I can’t come to your birthday party, Missy, like I promised.”

  “Why not, Christmas?”

  “Have to go away on a trip—but I brought your pretty.” He set the lamp down and pulled the small leather pouch from his pocket. Removing one of the pearls, he held it out to her. She took it in her palm, and the yellow lamplight caught the stone, making it gleam like a living thing.

  “Oh, Christmas! It’s so pretty!”

  He watched her face, marveling at the fine structure of her bones and the quick intelligence in her eyes. “Your father will have it made into a ring or a necklace. I hope you think of me sometimes when you wear it.”

  “Do you have to go?” she pleaded. “When will you come back, Christmas? And where are you going—is it a long way?”

  “It’s a very long way—but I’ll be thinking of my nurse as I go, won’t I? Now, go to sleep.”

  “Can I keep my pretty?”

  “Sure.”

  Holding the pearl tightly in one hand, she reached out with the other, beckoning him closer. He knelt beside her and she put an arm around his neck. The touch of her lips was light as a feather on his cheek.

  “It’s the best birthday pretty any girl ever got, Christmas!”

  Feeling a lump rise to his throat, he got up and left quickly and found Knox standing ready with their gear. “The wagon’s here,” he stated.

  “Preacher, I won’t try to thank you,” Chris said. “I sure wish I knew how.”

  “I’ll be praying for you both,” Dan replied simply. “Don’t give up on God, Christmas. He’s not giving up on you.”

  Dan’s promise to pray stuck in his mind as he and his brother left. Knox got on the horse that Frenchie was holding, and Chris climbed into the heavily loaded spring wagon Conrad had driven up to the steps of the cabin. As they pulled out of the yard, the trapper heard Chris say softly, “Now—let the mountains kill me!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SIOUX COUNTRY

  “Guess if you ain’t died yet, we might as well haul you upriver and let the Sioux finish you off.”

  Con gave a final jerk on a rawhide thong, grunting with satisfaction at the heavily loaded canoe. Stepping back to the small fire, he looked down at Chris, who was frying venison in a blackened skillet. “The good Lord must love sinners, Chris; thought you was a gone coon more’n once comin’ from Kaintuck.”

  Chris glanced across the fire at the wiry trapper and grinned. “Guess you and Frenchie had more to do with that than the Lord, Con. I’d be underground by now if you two hadn’t piddled around and nursed me along.”

  The trek from Kentucky to St. Louis could be made in a week of hard travel by most mountain men. But as soon as the party was out of the shadow of the Canby brothers, Con had said, “I ain’t feelin’ too pert, Frenchie. My constitution’s hurtin’ a little. Let’s slow down and hope it ain’t nothin’ fatal.”

  “Where are you hurtin’, Con?” Knox had asked.

  “Wal, now, I sorta feel bad all over more than I do in any partic’lar place—but if we jest take it easy, I reckon my juices will git all balanced agin. Time we git to the river I’ll be ready for trouble.”

  His talk had not fooled anyone, Chris least of all. He realized that Con was deliberately slowing the pace so that Chris would survive. His plan had been successful. The warmth of spring had fallen across the land, and the fresh breezes breathed new life into the sick man’s lungs. For the first few days, he sat in the wagon, but soon he was able to walk alongside or ride the fine horse that Frenchie had brought along. Game was plentiful, and Con had picked up a few tricks of cooking that stirred Chris’s appetite.

  The trapper had brought down two mallards one evening, gutted the birds with a single slash of his knife, and plastered the carcasses with mud from the river’s edge. Scooping a hole in the sand beside the fire, he’d pushed the burning embers into the bottom of the hole, laid the clay-covered birds in, and finished filling the hole with sand and the remainder of the campfire.

  Chris had dropped off to sleep; he’d been sleeping like a baby since he’d been on the trail. The fresh air and the warm sun put him out like a dead man, healing his body and resting his mind. Later Con woke him and offered him what looked like a melon; Chris was startled when he felt how hot it was, until he remembered. It was one of the birds. Gingerly rolling the clay ball about in his lap, he began cracking it with the hilt of the Green River knife he’d begun wearing. The clay broke off readily, the feathers adhering to each piece, so that presently there was exposed the smooth browned body of the roasted duck.

  When he’d bitten into it, the abundant juices tasted so delicious that Chris had torn at the steaming carcass, working from one end of it to the other as if attacking corn on the cob. Con had grinned and said, “Reckon you’re gittin’ well, Chris. Yore natural selfish instincts are comin’ around. You didn’t even once ask if anybody else wanted a bite of that bird!”

  That had been three weeks ago, Chris realized as he handed Con a rich steak of venison dripping with juice. He looked down the bank to where Frenchie and Knox were loading the last of the canoes with trading goods, bit off a chunk of steak, and added, “I thought I’d be dead by now and you could send Knox home from here.”

  Knox and Frenchie came back, leaving the four Indians they’d hired to paddle upriver, and the two finished off the meal. Fog was rolling off the river, and Chris peered through it, trying to see upstream as
the two mountain men talked about the trip. Tribes, such as the Omahas, Poncas, Loups, Pawnees and Sauks, were named and discussed—which would be friendly or unfriendly, trustworthy or thieving, kind or murderous. Outlandish yet wonderful names of places fell from the trappers’ lips, inspiring the young men’s imaginations—Cheyenne River, Bad River, Grand Detour, Knife River. Knox drank in every word, interrupting once to ask, “How long before we get to Indian country, Con?”

  “Oh, mebbe two-three weeks we might see a few Pawnees. Look, here’s the way our stick floats.” He picked up a piece of bark and traced the river in the sand, noting various posts and other rivers that flowed into the Missouri.

  “First, we paddle up past the Cannonball to Fort Mandan; then, if we ain’t been drowned or taken a Pawnee arrow in our livers, we go past where the Knife River drops in. If we ain’t kilt by the time we git to where the Yellowstone heads in, we got to decide if we want to follow it or go on up the Missouri to the Milk—or mebbe even on to the Great Falls.” He dropped the bark and stood up. “But we got the first mile to go ’fore we git anywhere. Chris, you go with Frenchie. Knox, you do your best to keep from fallin’ outta that Crow’s canoe—name’s Bull Man. Let’s go to the mountains!”

  They broke camp, and the four canoes, heavily laden with trade goods, drifted away from shore. Chris insisted on taking a paddle, but after an hour he was exhausted. “I feel like dead weight, Frenchie,” he groaned, looking at his blistered hands and gasping for breath. “You can’t paddle me all the way to the Yellowstone!”

  “Ah, you be much bettair soon, you bet!” Frenchie was sitting in the rear of the canoe, effortlessly steering the craft upstream with powerful strokes of his paddle. He paddled all day, and when they stopped for camp late that afternoon, Frenchie looked as fresh as he’d been at dawn.

  After a quick supper of fish that had been caught by one of the Indians, Knox and Chris rolled into their blankets beside the fire. “Chris—I’m a goner!” Knox groaned. “Thought I was fairly used to work, but I ain’t worth a pin at this paddlin’.”

  “You did better than me, Knox,” Chris said gloomily.

  “Both you lads will do good,” Con encouraged them, speaking with an optimism that was unusual for him. He tempered it with his usual prophecy of gloom. “ ’Course, we’re probably gonna have bad weather tomorrow—but the good thing about that is that when the storms come, the pesky Indians won’t be out so much.”

  Knox groaned and rolled over, hoping to find a position that would ease all his aching muscles at once. “I don’t know about that, Con—but I’m gonna keep up with that fool Indian tomorrow, or die trying!”

  “You deed good for first time, Leetle Chicken,” Frenchie chuckled. “You, too, Chris. Every day you do a leetle more. By ze time we get to Cabanne’s Post—that ees on ze Platte—you be in good shape.”

  Neither Knox nor Chris believed Frenchie, but the next morning they rolled out, ignoring muscles that screamed with pain and hands that blistered, broke, bled, then blistered again. Each day was a red-haze of pain for both of them, and the incredible boredom of twelve hours of sitting in a cramped position nearly drove them crazy. Day after day passed, and they made more progress than they knew.

  By the end of the second week, Chris could sit upright, though he could not paddle a full day. His hands were no longer like raw meat, but had hardened with the beginnings of callouses. He was filling out, too, with stringy muscles on his arms and shoulders. Even the cough that had plagued him for so long was gone. Con noticed that the young man’s face was filling out. “You’re on your way back, Chris. Don’t reckon I’m gonna have the pleasure of makin’ your funeral speech,” he teased, adding, “at least, not till we get to Sioux country.”

  Day after day passed, each day making Chris and Knox a little tougher, a little wiser. He was going to enjoy this, Chris knew. The past few weeks had rekindled a spark inside of him. He could feel his instincts sharpening—and his love for the woods returning—even as his body regained its strength. Some days the group made as much as fifteen miles; other days, when the winds and currents were contrary, not more than three or four. But that did not matter; apart from the sun passing overhead, signaling them to make and break camp, there was no sense of the passage of time. Once they stopped at a little tributary just a few miles south of the Platte. Con knew of a little beaver stream that was thick with beaver, and he took Knox with him, hoping to get the best of him. Chris, already a fair woodsman, was left behind.

  “There’s beaver here—see them cuttings and that li’l dam?” They were standing beside a small pond, and Knox spotted a wedge of ripples starting close to the bank. The point of the wedge came toward him and formed a whirling head, then turned and went the other way, sending more tiny ripples running out and whispering along the banks.

  Knox followed as Con slipped along the shore, walking softly on the spring mud, keeping back from the water. Finally he found a spot that pleased him and laid his traps down. He leaned his rifle against a bush, cut and sharpened a long dry stick and cocked a trap, and then stepped into the water.

  “That’s cold,” he commented. “Snow fed.” Stooping, he put the cocked trap in the water so that the surface came a hand above the trigger. Next he led the chain out into deeper water until he came to the end of it. Then he slipped the stick through the ring in the chain and pushed the stick into the mud, putting all his weight to it. He tapped it with his ax to make sure the stick was secure enough, and waded back to the bank. Cutting a willow twig, he peeled it, and from his belt took the point of an antelope horn.

  The odor of the oil inside, strong and gamy, assaulted their noses as the trapper removed the stopper. He dipped the willow twig into the medicine, replaced the stopper, and put the container back before he stooped again and thrust the dry end of the twig into the mud between the jaws of the trap. The baited end stuck about four inches above the surface of the water. Backing up, Con toed out the footprints his moccasins had left. With his hands he splashed water on the bank, drowning out his scent.

  “Wal, that’s all there is to it,” he grinned at the boy who was carefully watching the trapper’s every move. “You take that fork, Knox, and I’ll take ’tother one. Let’s git the rest of them traps set ’fore dark.”

  The cold of the stream took Knox’s breath, but he set all the traps assigned to him, and the next day Con took him to run the line. The pond was still, but the stick from the trap Con had set was gone. “Ain’t never had a beaver pull my stick loose—though I s’pose they’s always a first time.” His keen eyes ran over the pond until he found what he was looking for. “There we be.” He led the boy to a clump of willows and Knox saw the end of the chain. Con stooped and seized it, pulling the beaver from the bushes. “It’s a she beaver—in her prime,” Con announced with satisfaction.

  The animal crouched down where the trapper had yanked it into the clearing. It did not try to run, but just cowered there, trembling and shivering pitifully. Knox, who had never seen anything like this before, felt a little sick, and was thankful when the trapper killed the beaver.

  “Been at work on her leg,” Con commented. Knox saw that a little more and the beaver would have chewed itself free. He recalled how his father had once told him that animals will sometimes save themselves by sacrificing a limb in this fashion.

  Con showed him how to skin her, cutting off the tail and slashing the castor glands to remove the oil inside (to replenish his “medicine”) before they went on to the rest of the traps. They got two more, and only when they got back to the camp did Con say, “Took you a little bad, killin’ the critter?”

  Knox had a sober look in his eye. “She was so... so... alive! Then we came out of nowhere, and now she’s just a pelt.”

  Con nodded and said thoughtfully, “Don’t do to think about it too much, Knox. Man’s got jest a few days here to pleasure himself. Don’t do no good to think about the end of the line.”

  Chris looked up from the broken tr
ap he was fixing. “That’s what I’ve been saying for the last few years,” he observed. “But it’s a sorry way to live.”

  “Wal, you can always go the way your pa went—and that Greene feller. Them Christians all say the best is yet to come—and sometimes I can believe it. Judgin’ by what I’ve seen so far, it won’t be hard for the good Lord to improve on’t!”

  The trapping had depressed Knox; he noticed that his brother was also very thoughtful when they all pulled out three days later, burying the hides to be retrieved on the trip downriver.

  They sighted Indians on rare occasions—shadowy figures in the distance—as they passed the mouth of the Platte, which Frenchie swore was ten miles wide and two inches deep. After that, progress was slower. The summer heat hit, bringing buffalo gnats, mosquitoes and sandflies. They passed through the Vermillion River country, and two weeks later came to the White River and then to what Frenchie called the Grand Detour—a weird corkscrew gorge in which two of their canoes nearly capsized. Only the weight of their gear stabilized the crafts.

  When they were out of it, the party made camp. “Now,” sighed Frenchie, “she get a leetle bit dangerous.”

  “Why’s that?” Chris asked.

  “Thees ees Sioux country. Bad!”

  “Lots of beaver,” Con commented, “but nobody’s had the guts to go get ’em.”

  Chris lifted his head and stared at Con, but said nothing. Later he left the camp and walked along the bank, staring at the stars in the summer sky.

  “Something’s bothering Chris,” Knox whispered.

  “I’d say you’re right,” he replied. Lifting his voice enough so Chris would hear, he called, “Chris, you better not be wanderin’ around like you was back in Boston. Them Sioux is downright hostile.”

  Chris acknowledged the man’s warning with a nod, then came and stood beside the fire, his face sober in the flickering firelight. He was silent, but the other men knew that he was struggling to say something.

  He looks good, Knox thought, watching his brother. He’s filled out and seems strong and well. But there was a strange look in Chris’s eyes that worried his younger brother.