The First Dance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Instead he was dodging the freezing rain in the middle of nowhere. He was crazy. He was an idiot. It was because of the suffering Métis. The decision to try to find them had been made not with rational self-interest, but with his heart—and with a rage to correct an injustice. For now the enemies of the Métis, these white ranchers and their drovers, had become Dirk’s enemies too, and what sent his blood pumping through him was a passion. It wasn’t until this moment, harried by icy rain, driven here by a firing, and then by the casual cruelty of cowboys, that he understood. The Métis were his brothers and sisters.

  It was a moment of recognition. Here in the protective shoulders of a cottonwood, he had come face-to-face with himself. He would expend his energies, and maybe his life, helping these unwanted, homeless, landless, persecuted people.

  An occasional gust of wind laced his face with rain. He hunkered lower, stared at the miserable buckskin, black now with icy water. The horse stared back. This rain would not soon go away. Dirk decided to take a chance. He stood, pulled the bridle off, and turned the horse loose. The buckskin stood for a moment, then wheeled, rump into the cold, and began stripping brush with his big yellow teeth. Then he freed the bay. Neither horse would go anywhere very far.

  Dirk retrieved his sack of squash, and began cutting tiny slices of one, and masticating the miserable food. It would help sustain him: what else mattered?

  The pelting rain surrendered to drizzle, which surrendered to mist and occasional gusts of wetness. Dirk scraped what water he could from the buckskin, saddled up, collected the bay, and started north again. He was only an hour from the breaks, where the Missouri had cut deep into the endless plains, creating a mysterious hinterland of cliffs and gullies, hidden oases and promontories. It could hide a nation, and if Dirk was guessing right, that is exactly what it was doing.

  The horses splashed through puddles that reflected the bitter ice of the heavens, and the land rose up around him until the prairie was hundreds of feet above. There were mysterious trails along the river, but tortuous ones with wide detours where the river churned tight against rocky cliffs. He would pursue these until he was discovered. A hiding people would make that decision; he would be found, rather than find these people. They were no great distance from the Judith Basin, from which they had been driven, and poised to return if they could.

  He spotted several mule deer but could not make meat. He discovered mountain sheep staring at him from a bluff, and watched a black bear berrying in brush. He scared up marmots and foxes and coyotes. He watched trout leap in backwaters, and red-winged blackbirds flock. But he saw no mortal, though he supposed mortals saw him.

  An hour later, with the air crisp and the heavens blue again, he did discover a mortal, an armed Métis man, with a trimmed black beard and a leather jerkin, sitting on a rock beside the trail.

  “Bonsoir,” the man said.

  Dirk slowed his mount and nodded.

  “You are the one with the soldiers,” the man said.

  “I am here on my own. I work for no one,” Dirk said.

  “That does not disarm my mind,” he replied.

  “You are right to be wary,” Dirk said. “As you can see, I need help.”

  The man eyed the two burlap sacks Dirk was wearing, the horses, and finally settled on the rain-blackened sack.

  “Squash from a Métis garden,” Dirk said.

  He undid the sack and slowly lowered it. “All there is to eat.”

  “Then your visit is good for something,” the man said.

  “Monsieur, I am Dirk Skye, two bloods like yourself, Shoshone and English. May I tell you my story?”

  The Métis nodded. “I might listen,” he said. “I have nothing better to do.”

  Dirk did, in halting French. He knew the words, but had to translate from English. The discharge by Captain Brewer. The loss of everything to the cowboy gang. Tracking the cowboys to a Métis farm; fleeing with his horses and a bag from the gardens. And his decision to come here, where he was sure some of the people would be hiding, hoping for the moment they could return.

  “The cattle herders occupy our farms?” the man asked.

  “The one I visited, anyway. And I think others too.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have two bloods.”

  The Métis smiled. “And nothing to wear or eat. So you come to get these from us—even though we haven’t enough to warm or feed our own.”

  “Well, I’ll trade that bag of squash for your jerkin.”

  The Métis laughed suddenly. “Come,” he said. “That squash, mon ami, is from my garden. I am Lorenz Sylvestre.”

  Dirk dismounted, intending to lead the horses, but the Métis took the reins of the buckskin. They worked swiftly into a hinterland of gloomy cliffs and hidden valleys, deep below the surface of the plains. Then they rounded a bend into a bright meadow, barely beginning to yellow, where several Métis families had fashioned a refuge.

  His captor, if that’s what he was, swiftly collected the Métis around him, talking a dialect of French and Cree so fast that Dirk couldn’t keep up, though he got the gist. These people were dressed in Métis fashion, the women in the drabbest imaginable skirts and blouses, the men gaudy and colorful and very hairy. Children clung to their mothers’ skirts, eyeing him distrustfully. But it was plain to all that this man, with burlap for a coat and bare horses and a sack of squash, posed no great danger to them, and soon their caution became curiosity.

  “Is it that you are the one who married the Trouville girl?” one man asked.

  Dirk nodded. He didn’t want to go into that.

  “Ah! She ran out! Good thinking on her part!” the gent said.

  The Métis laughed. More than laughed. They rollicked. He had not expected to see this desperate people enjoying a rowdy moment, but then again, the Métis had two bloods and anything could happen.

  The women took the bag of squash and soon had some split open and baking in a tin oven. They intended to feed him from his own stores, which suited him fine. The men turned the horses out among their own stock. There was no place to go, except up barren cliffs, and no reason for animals to run off, given the good pasture and water in this obscure place.

  As the day waned, a few other Métis, from surrounding gulches, materialized. Apparently word had gone out. Dirk sat, warmed by small hot fires. No one had introduced him to all these people; not yet. But he sensed that this evening there would be a real powwow and a lot of questions. He sat quietly, trying to anticipate what might be asked and form some answer.

  “Yes, monsieur, the army is still rooting out your people. No, monsieur, there is not enough of them to do much except send you on your way. They’ll get tired of it and return to their posts. But you now face a worse problem: the ranchers have put their men on your homesteads and farms. Now that’s the worst trouble.”

  But instead, these people busied themselves with their daily life. Two couriers returned from a hunt, dragging the carcass of a doe. They strung her up and swiftly gutted and skinned and quartered her, and soon venison was boiling in the great black kettles that blended the meats and staples of these people.

  Now and then one or another Métis elder did sit beside Dirk, mostly to share small talk. It was as if there was nothing Dirk could tell them, and nothing they could say to Dirk, and so they mostly sat and watched the women hurry a feast together. These people had built sturdy shelters, mostly walled with sod and covered with canvas roofs. He marveled that they could create some semblance of a home, even while they awaited whatever the future would bring. He saw no Red River carts here, though.

  Now at last Dirk was introduced: LaFontaine, LeSage, Langois, Cartier, LeBoeuf, family upon family. These men wore moccasins now; their cobbled boots had no doubt worn out in the exodus. And some of their corduroy britches had been replaced by deerskin pants and fringed elk-skin jackets.

  They served him a steaming bowl of stew, which he was expected to sip and eat by tilting the wooden bo
wl. He ate gratefully, noting squash was among the roots and vegetables in the stew. He wasn’t the only hungry person. The crowd drained off the stew with joy and lust.

  After a cheerful dinner, while the bonfires blazed, the men lifted their precious fiddles out of their nests, tuned the catgut, and began a musicale, a gentle and plaintive melody at first, which gave way to heated bursts of song, French ballads mixed with drum sounds that must be Cree, which gave way to a firelit step dance, sweeping around in circles, in the remotest corner of the United States. And even the drabbest of the Métis women were transformed into beauties.

  fifteen

  Métis men put their fiddles away, and the people drifted to their separate camps deep in the Missouri Breaks. A hard white moon shone above. Dirk thought there would be frost before the sun struggled upward in the morning.

  “Voyons!” Sylvestre said. Dirk wrapped his saddle blanket about his person and followed. Sylvestre simply led him to a rock ledge and settled there, legs dangling.

  “You have come here, mon ami, for something,” the Métis said.

  “A free feed,” Dirk replied.

  Sylvestre didn’t smile. Food was the most critical problem. He stared into the mysterious cold, a big, dark, troubled man.

  “That little farm, ah, mon ami, I poured my heart into it. We arrived seven years ago. After the Red River troubles, when our holdings were ripped from us by the English Earl Selkirk, we drifted. Then we learned the Sioux and Cheyenne were no longer a menace, and we came. We found a well-watered place, next to timber. I made a farm. I hewed down the pines, plowed the soil, put in the seed, built a cabin, little by little. My wife, Maude, my girls, the boy, all helped. We worked, monsieur. We worked from before dawn until we could stand no more. There were no days off. We did not ride around like lazy cowboys yodeling at the moon, but we cut wood, we planted, we harvested, we built a root cellar, we made the good earth yield to us. We bothered no one. We traded for a few things in Lewistown. I bought bolts of gingham and velvet for the women, needles and thread, and thus we lived, eh?”

  “You and many others, I take it,” Dirk said.

  “Some. We weren’t many. Five, six families. Not until these last months, when all the Métis fleeing Canada flooded in here. And les Americains, they took notice, oui? They saw my people cross the line and try to take up land.”

  “And they got the army to drive you back.”

  Sylvestre shrugged. “There is no back. The border is watched. If Métis try to return to Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police chase us. So here we are.” He waved at the rugged moonlit cliffs. “Here we are. Trapped. No place to go. We live on game. But the game is being shot out. This winter we will eat the last deer, the last antelope, the last elk. We will eat the last fish, and then we will eat our last ox and last mule, eh?”

  “How many Métis are trapped?”

  “Who knows, eh? A few hundred maybe. We are scattered up and down the Missouri River, hidden away, trying to survive, waiting to die. We hope the army quits. We think it will. This thing, it was the ranchers that wanted us out. They want every scrap of land for themselves. The army?” He shrugged. “This did not come from Washington. The ranchers talked the generals and colonels and majors into doing their dirty work. So maybe the army will quit soon, eh?”

  “You’re mostly right, sir. Most of the officers and men would like to pack up. But there are a few—I was commanded by one—who think this country should be for English-speakers, and they are very serious about driving you away. They don’t want anyone here who is not Northern European.”

  Sylvestre shrugged. “I am half, more or less, eh? So what do I get? Half citizenship? Half a homestead? Half a vote? Half a tax? Maybe half the justice, eh?”

  “Half a brandy,” Dirk said.

  Sylvestre chuckled. “Half a wife, maybe.”

  “Less than that. Look at me. I’ve got two bloods and a runaway wife.”

  Sylvestre leaned over. “That was bad. That girl, forget her. How could you want her, eh?”

  Dirk didn’t feel like responding.

  “The farm of mine. How do I get it back, eh?”

  “It won’t be easy, Lorenz. There’s two or three cowboys living there, and they’re armed.”

  “Ah! Cowboys are lazy. They sit on horses all day. They hate to walk. They can’t even walk to the outhouse without whining. They can’t hunt; whoever heard of a cowboy making meat, eh? They got six-guns, but that’s so they can pound staples into fence posts. When the time comes, I’ll chase them away.”

  “How do you know when that’ll be?”

  “We got runners. They’re true wilderness men. Couriers du bois. They keep an eye on everything, and the ranchers never see. We know what’s what. They come back here every few days and tell us what they see, and then go out again. Like, right now, the army’s over near Square Butte. The runners tell me.”

  “What if you can’t chase off the cowboys?”

  “Hey, bonehead. You don’t know how dumb cowboys are. They’re from Texas and that makes them all the dumber. The cows are smarter than they are. I respect a cow. I respect a bull. I even respect a steer even if he’s lost his eggs.”

  “They may be dumb, but they’ve got revolvers.”

  “Revolvers! That’s so they can swagger. Hey! What smart man wants to be a cowboy, eh? What’s there to do but talk to cows, eh? Once the army quits, and there’s nothing but cowboys around, we’ll show dem what’s what.”

  “They can be quick with their six-guns, Lorenz.”

  “What good is that, eh? We make babies faster than cowboys. By the time a cowboy finds a woman he’s forty years old and can’t make babies. You know how many babies I’ve made?”

  Sylvestre held up seven fingers. “And I’m not done yet, either. You marry a Métis woman, you make babies. Maybe that’s why that one quit you. She didn’t think you could make babies good enough. She’s gonna find a Métis man and make lots of babies.”

  “How many babies are you going to make, Lorenz?”

  “Two, three women’s worth of babies. Pretty soon, there’s Métis everywhere. Now you go look at one of them big ranches, like Harley Bain’s got. There’s no babies being made anywhere. You go look at the bunkhouse, no babies around there. You go look at the big house where the boss lives, no babies around there. Or maybe the wife is back East, so no babies get made. There’s no babies in all the Judith country. No babies on ranches, no babies in Lewistown, no babies at Fort Maginnis. So what’s gonna happen? Métis everywhere, pretty quick. The cowboys, all they got is lead bullets. So they don’t make nothing.”

  “They make a lot of baby cows.”

  “Yah, they help mama cows. They got six-guns and help make calves. Some life! Now you take a Métis, he’s gonna make babies. And then we’ll get our land back.”

  It was getting late, and Dirk was cold. “You got a place for me to stay?” he asked.

  “Not in my house. I got six girls in there and a wife. You can sleep out here somewhere.”

  “You got a bedroll for me?”

  “Maybe you need a woman to stay warm. The Beauchamps, over there, they got a few your age, keep you warm. I’ll go ask.”

  “Ah, I just want a couple of blankets.”

  “We ain’t got blankets enough. And the buffalo robes, they’re all gone. Buffalo gone. Let me find a couple of Métis girls. You’re no cowboy. You like women. You get two, three hugging you and you stay real warm, eh?”

  Sylvestre rose swiftly and padded toward a distant log and canvas hut. Dirk followed reluctantly through the hard-edged moonlight.

  “Hey, Claude! I’m giving this here half-breed to you,” he yelled.

  A moment later a skinny Métis emerged into the white light. “Oh, that one. Oui, oui, he can come in. I got women all over the floor. Take your pick. You get to marry her, whichever one you choose. We get a priest sooner or later for you.”

  “Ah…”

  “You only got to marry her for one
night. You say, I gonna marry you this one night, okay? She says, well, dat’s good. Just this one night. I don’t wanna marry no stranger for more than one night.”

  “But I’m already married.”

  “Yeah, we heard about her. Smart woman, she change her mind and kick you out before you’re in. You no more married than a steer is married.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Beauchamps, with Claude in front.”

  “Well, Monsieur Beauchamps, I’m thinking maybe I’ll just borrow a bedroll and sleep out here somewhere.”

  “No you don’t; in the cold you get sick. I got daughters fill up the whole floor. You can’t walk in there without stumbling on daughters, eh?”

  It was going to be sleep out in the frosty night without a bedroll, or accept the offer. He chose comfort.

  Claude Beauchamps led him into the pitch-dark hut, which badly needed ventilation.

  “Who is it, Papa?” asked a female.

  “This here’s Dirk Skye. Maybe he’ll marry you for one night and divorce you in the morning. He’s got to say the word. I marry you tonight. Dat’s what he’s got to say.”

  “I just want to sleep,” Dirk said.

  “Tough luck for you,” Beauchamps said, “You can’t. You got too many women.”

  Dirk stepped gingerly into the black hut. Boughs had been laid thickly over the dirt, and ancient buffalo robes on top of those, keeping the dampness and cold at bay.

  “You fight over him,” Beauchamps said, and vanished into a corner.

  Dirk thought of a plan. “I marry all of you for this night,” he said.

  There were a few squeals and several sighs.

  “I’m Clothilde, me first,” a voice said.

  “Non, non, I am oldest, so me first,” said someone with a sweet voice.

  “Non, you will wear him out,” said another.

  Dirk needed to lie down. He was worn-out. He edged farther into the cabin, feeling his way along, bumping into flesh, until he found a bare spot, with soft robes under it. He settled down, amid much rustling and shifting and sighs. He edged his moccasins outward, bumping into something, and directed them to the left, which yielded space. He eased himself down, and laid back, brushing someone or other, but eventually he got himself stretched out, and began to relax. A shelter at last. Warmth, softness under him, canvas overhead, a chance to sleep, which he badly needed.