Fair Land Fair Land - A B Guthrie

by A B Guthrie

  The village was silent, deserted, it seemed like, except for a few skinny and shivering dogs, except for the smoke rising from tepees. A dog could stand a heap of cold. So, far as that went, could an Indian. So could an old mountain man.

  He pulled up in front of his lodge, and Teal Eye came out.

  "Go back in," he told her. "Too damn cold."

  "You cold, too," she said. "You colder."

  He carried the carcass inside the tepee. "Back in a shake," he said. His smile felt numb. "Don't let the fire go out."

  He led the horses away, freed one, and put the other on picket, close at hand. When the snow was deep, he would feed it chopped up cottonwood bark, They would keep it alive, barely.

  The warmth of the tepee seeped into him. He took off his heavy capote, his old coonskin cap and clumsy mitts. "From here I can feel the cold of you," Nocansee told him. Nocansee had a fine face and a gentle smile. A body learned to forget his eyes. "I am making up a song," he went on. "I am calling it "Coyotes on a Snowy Night". "

  "Sounds good, son."

  Nocansee plucked at a string on his fiddle. He could play it real good already, almost as good as Higgins. On warmer days Indians asked him to play. They were kind to him. Indians always were kinder than white men to people with miseries.

  "I am hunting for words, my father. What do coyotes cry for?"

  "For full bellies, I reckon."

  "Those are not good words for song."

  "For mates, then." Summers was sorry he had spoken. Blind men didn't find mates. He added quickly, "Or just for the joy of singin', for bein' alive."

  "It could be. Sometime I think lonesomeness."

  "They ain't too often alone."

  "Maybe they sing for the sun, for the light."

  Yeah, for the light! For the light. For eyes to see with. But maybe Nocansee didn't make the connection. He wasn't sorry for himself, not by any signs. Summers said, "I'm thinkin' you're wrong. They got keen ears and fine noses, and you never hear 'em singin' to the sun."

  Summers stepped over to help Teal Eye with the deer. "We will give it to the sick," she said.

  "Savin' just a bit for ourselves."

  He felt gentleness for her. That was Teal Eye, to give to the sick, to visit lodges where sickness was, unafraid for herself. It was lice she couldn't stand. It seemed like she was forever examining seams, combing hair and boiling clothes in the old boiler he had picked up once at Fort Benton.

  "It went away from my head," she said. "Heavy Runner, he came. He wants to talk."

  "What about?"

  She shrugged.

  "I feel trouble," Nocansee said, raising his head. "Bad trouble."

  "No trouble, son," Summers answered, but there was a shade of doubt in his mind. Sometimes Nocansee, without eyes, saw farther than others. "We will eat first. No hurry."

  "No," Teal Eye said. "First we warm your leg. It hurts. I can tell."

  "Later, little duck. Later."

  Heavy Runner and his two wives were inside his lodge when Summers showed up. After greetings, one of them said, "We go visit your woman. It is all right?"

  "She will be happy."

  He and Heavy Runner sat by the fire and smoked, not speaking until Heavy Runner said, "I think sometimes to take a new squaw, a young one for the hard work. My women grow old."

  Summers puffed smoke.

  "I do not know," Heavy Runner went on. "Two sons I have, good boys, good hunters one time, and much meat was in camp. They are gone."

  "It is the way of the young."

  "Gone for firewater, so I am thinking. Gone to the camp of the traders. They not here anymore. They go always."

  "It is too cold."

  Heavy Runner spit into the fire. "Cold. What is cold? Never cold with hot fire in the guts."

  "They will come back. They are not wild."

  "Wild with drink in them, wild for more of it, so they will steal and make mad the white chiefs. That I think I see."

  Summers hitched nearer the fire, easing his leg. By and by Heavy Runner would come to what was first in his mind. At last he spoke. "My friend, it is said a man by name Malcolm Clarke has been killed."

  "It is in the wind. Him that worked at Fort Benton. By Blackfoot name White Lodge Pole or Four Bears. This much I know."

  "It was not my people and not my sons who made him dead. It was young men from Mountain Chiefs band."

  "You know them, my friend? You know who?"

  "If I know, I do not say."

  "Not your business, you say then?"

  Heavy Runner added wood to the fire. A louse crawled at the end of a hair, and he saw it with sideways eyes, picked it off, cracked it with his teeth and spit it out.

  "They came today. Two. Word-bringers. What you call — "

  "Messengers?"

  "Messengers from the white chiefs."

  "To say it is your business?"

  "All Blackfoot chiefs called to meet at the new agency."

  "Who were the messengers?"

  "Two men, I have said. They know Indian talk. They carry papers."

  "You know the men?"

  "Maybe so, maybe not. It does not matter."

  "My mouth is tired with questions. Tell what you want to tell."

  "Messengers do not say what for to meet, only to be at the new agency on the Teton. They tell me so and go quick to tell other chiefs."

  "You have not said the time."

  "Soon. What you call the first day of the new year."

  "Jesus Christ, that's soon enough. Meet in the dead of winter!"

  "So it was said. Cold trip, my friend."

  "And not short. three sleeps, I figure."

  "That many. Maybe little more. Maybe not."

  Heavy Runner sighed and looked up. His voice sounded humble. "So now I am needing you. So now we are needing you."

  Summers waited.

  "Now you will speak for us. Yes, my friend?"

  Summers stretched out one leg and tried to rub the ache from his knee. three sleeps in the cold and a bum leg to boot, all for a parley that wouldn't get anywhere.

  "I do not know for what good," Summers said, "but yes, I will speak."

  37

  BREATHING and snorting white, they and their horses paused at the rim of the Teton valley. They had reached it from the north and east, and on this clear and biting morning Summers could tell just about where his old camp was.

  Beyond it the great range of the mountains reared sharp and white against the blue of the sky. Closer, a mile or so downhill, lay the few buildings of the new agency. They looked rough and raw, as if they had not come to peace with the land, if ever they could. A flag flew there. And farther, downstream, he saw a building or two, the beginnings maybe of a new town. At his side Heavy Runner pointed to the boldest of the mountains, the one Summers felt almost kin to, and spoke in Blackfoot. "It was there, on top, that I learned and I saw. There, long ago. I was almost a man, and I looked for my medicine. I climbed to the top. I went without water or food, and I waited and waited, and my strength left me, and I fell to the ground. Then came the great white bear and helped me down."

  Heavy Runner patted his side where, under his wraps, Summers knew, his medicine pouch hung. A man didn't ask what was in one.

  The trees stood bare, winter-dead, in the valley. It would take the big medicine of spring to lift them and drape them with life. The ground was dead and bare, too, except for a here-and-there snowdrift. No game moved. No tracks showed. The only animals were some horses hitched close to the agency. And here, once, was the purest valley of all.

  They rode down to the agency, four chiefs with two head men each and Summers himself. Troopers waited for them, troopers so bundled up that only the light blue stripes on their breeches showed what they were. All of them carried carbines. "Tie your horses up here," one of them said and pointed to a hitch rack. "Leave any weapons at the door."

  Summers translated for the chiefs. When he handed in his old Hawken, the soldier looked
at it and said, "By Cod, if that ain't a relic. Shoot true?"

  "I been known to hit a few things."

  "What you doin' with these redskins?"

  "Me heap medicine man."

  The trooper looked at him. "All right, I guess."

  The weapons weren't much — a couple of muskets, one spear, and bows and arrows tipped with metal. A poor lot, but right for a peace party.

  At another season the chiefs, at least, would have worn feathered headdresses. Now they had blankets and pieces of fur as coverings. They looked at one another before entering the building, perhaps wishing they'd brought their war bonnets along, hard to pack right though they were. They were led into a large room with a desk and chairs in it.

  A cast-iron fireplace tried to fight off the cold. Two men sat behind the desk, and right behind them stood Lije.

  "By God, Lije!" Summers said, ignoring the two men. Lije stood stiff as if trained to it until one of the men said,

  "At ease."

  They shook hands. Lije hurried to ask, "My mother, my brother, how are they, my father?"

  "All fine. Fine and dandy."

  One of the men had swung around. "Father?"

  "Most people have one, livin' or dead," Summers answered. "This here's my son."

  The man swung back. The Indians were seating themselves on the floor against the walls. Summers joined them. A soldier was clearing the chairs away. Scattered in the room were half a dozen others. Though told to be at ease, they stood pretty stiff.

  One of the men behind the desk came to his feet. "The meeting will come to order," he said. "I am General Sully, superintendent of Indian affairs for the territory of Montana, and at my side is United States Marshal William F. Wheeler."

  Lije was translating what he said.

  "As I call out names will you please indicate your presence? Our interpreter is Many Tongues, who knows English, Blackfoot, Shoshone and, I understand, some Salish."

  Sully was in a blue uniform with brass buttons and gold braid on it and other trappings that meant something or other. Wheeler had a star on his chest.

  "Now. Heavy Runner?"

  Heavy Runner raised his hand.

  "Little Wolf?"

  Little Wolf signaled here.

  "Mountain Chief?"

  The chiefs were silent, their eyes fixed straight ahead.

  "Where is Mountain Chief?"

  "Sir," Lije said, "they do not know."

  "They haven't said anything."

  "Because they do not know, sir."

  Sully said to Wheeler, "The man we wanted most. Humph."

  "He and his killers."

  Sully turned back. "All right. Big Leg?"

  Big Leg was on hand.

  "You are all Piegans. Right?" He pointed. "Then you. Gray Eyes, is it?"

  The man answered in Blackfoot, and Lije translated, "Gray Eyes of the Bloods."

  "My red brothers," Sully said, "we come to talk to you. We come in peace, we come hoping peace, but, peace or not, it is yours to say."

  Lije was keeping up with him.

  "Last year, the year just closed, white men have lost one hundred horses a month to Indian thieves. Fifty-six white men have been killed. The latest was one you all know. Malcolm Clarke. We tell you now, in friendship: no more stealing, no more killing."

  Wheeler interrupted to say, "And that's not all."

  The chiefs and their head men sat silent and motionless, only their eyes moving, to the speaker, to the standing soldiers, to one who put wood on the fire.

  "We know who killed Clarke," Sully went on. "Mountain Chief's men, by name Pete Owl Child, Eagle Rib, Bear Chief, Black Weasel and Black Bear. They must be turned over to us. Do you understand?"

  Now Heavy Runner said in his halting English, "My friend. Indian name Bear Maker. He talk? Yes?"

  "We didn't come to hear arguments," Wheeler said.

  "Where's the harm? All right, Bear Maker."

  Summers got to his feet and walked, trying not to limp, to face the two men. He must watch his words, speak as good English as he could. He had had a mighty short time to review what he knew, to sum up time and change, to talk to old men who knew some things he didn't, to be sure of right.

  "For the record, your name?" Sully said. For the first time Summers noticed a man in the corner was taking notes.

  "Dick Summers." It took some doing but he added, "sir."

  "Richard Summers?"

  "If you want it that way?"

  Sully smiled. "You are something of a legend, Mr. Summers."

  "Comes from living so long."

  "You have spent all your years in the west?"

  "Most of 'em." Again he added, "sir."

  "Would you care to tell us how old you are?"

  Now Summers let himself smile. "As they say, too old to suck, too tough to die. Make it seventy-odd. I'm not too sure."

  "All the time with the red men?"

  "No, sir. Sometimes. Sometimes friend, sometimes not."

  "I know all this, Dick," the general said, letting his manner loosen. "The record doesn't."

  "It's all right."

  "So now we'll be glad to hear what you have to say."

  Summers took a breath. "It's all so one-sided."

  "One-sided?"

  "You know how many horses have been stolen, how many white men have been killed and who killed Malcolm Clarke. I don't deny any of that. Neither do the chiefs."

  Lije was keeping right up with him.

  "But you don't know how many red men have been killed. I doubt you know who killed Mountain Chief's brother right in Fort Benton."

  "We think we're about to find the answer on the last point," Wheeler put in.

  "It's like as if red lives don't count," Summers continued.

  Sully nodded his head, not as if he much wanted to.

  "You want Clarke's killers turned over to you, and, I would guess, all the stolen stock returned."

  "That's right."

  "That's right, sir, but it's wrong. It can't be done. Think on it, General. Like you know, there's three divisions to the Blackfoot nation — Piegan, Blood and Blackfoot proper. Each division is divided into villages or bands under chiefs like you see here. You ask one division or one band to take men or horses from another, and you got civil war."

  "I doubt it will be that bad."

  "It won't be because they won't and can't do it."

  "I honor your feelings, Dick, but we act under orders."

  "Whose orders?"

  "Orders come from ranking officers under the direction of Washington? ‘

  There was an edge in Sully's tones now, and Summers knew he had overstepped. "General, sir, would you listen to me just a little while longer?"

  The edge wore off fast. "Sure, Dick."

  "The government set aside lands for the Blackfeet. I got it in mind that was the treaty of eighteen fifty-five. The land stretched from the mountains, the continental divide, clean to the Missouri and from the Canadian line to the Teton or Sun River, I ain't sure which."

  "Go on."

  "If the land belongs to the Blackfeet, wouldn't you think they would own what's underground, too, like the gold they've minin' at Last Chance Gulch? Wouldn't you think the grass belonged to the Indians and the soil and the things that grow on both, like the buffalo the hide-hunters are killing off?"

  "Dick, those are such vexed questions, questions of policy, of politics, of ownership, of human rights, red and white. I'm a military man. I can't answer you."

  "No, sir. Neither can I, but I can sure understand how the Indian feels. Wouldn't you, in his fix?"

  "Probably." Sully's smile seemed small and sad. "Let's grant all you say is true. It is true, too, that stock is stolen and men killed. Do you have a way out of that?"

  "I do, sir."

  Wheeler said, "Oh, for Christ's sake!"

  "We might as well hear it."

  "Put an end to the whiskey trade, that's what. I'm not speaking of honest whiskey. I'm speaking
of the poison the traders sell, all the way from Fort Benton to Fort McLeod. That's what drives young Indians crazy. That's what makes them steal and kill. And that's what's killing off twenty-five per cent of the Blackfeet, men and some women, every year. Close that goddamn trail, General. Close it and see."

  Sully said "Hmm" through closed lips.

  "I reckon you never tasted it, and for sure you better not. It's straight alcohol watered down some, colored and flavored with black molasses and plugs of tobacco and fired up with red pepper and capsicum. Jesus, that stuff, one teaspoon, would rot out a wash boiler. Close the trail. Arrest the traders. Thank you, General Sully. Thank you, Wheeler."

  General Sully sighed and rose. "I have listened and thank you. There is much to be said for your position, much right in your words, but I do not make policy. I execute it."

  He looked around at the chiefs. "The men who murdered Malcolm Clarke must be surrendered to us. The stolen stock must be returned. All that within the next two weeks. If it is not done, we have no recourse but to declare a state of war with the Blackfoot nation."

  As they filed out, Summers halted and said to Lije, "Don't be discouraged, son. You're on the right path."

  "I am sad."

  "You'll get over it, boy, and we might have done some good today."

  Once in a while a man had to lie.

  38

  LIJE SUMMERS stood back of a table at which seven officers sat. He wasn't there to translate. He was there to see that glasses were filled and to fetch a bottle when ordered. Squaw's work, his mother would have called it. It wasn't his privilege to refuse, though he could wonder why he was chosen rather than a striker or two, those men who polished officers' boots, tended to their uniforms and acted as personal servants. Perhaps the chore was too trifling. Perhaps the major in charge wished to belittle him for his mixed blood. These men weren't heavy drinkers, not when making plans, not when they would ride on the warpath tomorrow, out from Fort Shaw.

  A secret mission, a stealing out to kill Blackfeet, a surprise attack aimed, so they said, at Mountain Chief s band, meaning that circumstances were circumstances, and who could tell? Who could tell about his mother and father and Nocansee and old Heavy Runner?

  A secret mission, just planned, and the fact leaked out slowly while the men were held within the fort grounds and threatened with court-martial if they revealed it.