Dirk’s buckskin roamed freely, along with the oxen, sometimes drifting worrisome distances from the homestead. But it was finding good browned grass and recovering its strength. Each day, Dirk checked the horse that would take him the long trip down to the Yellowstone.
The day came when there was nothing left to yank out of the earth; the day when frost pierced deeper into the ground. The day when the Sylvestres and Beauchamps were secure enough to weather whatever came.
The summer leaves were gone. The aspen and cottonwood and alders lifted naked limbs to the darkened sky. It was time for Dirk to drift, to tumble along like the tumbleweeds, blown south by winter winds, his back to the cold, the icy fingers at his neck. It was time to be alone again, not part of these people, not part of the white world, not part of his mother’s people, or his Crow mother’s people, or his father’s people.
It was time to ride, before snow blocked the way.
He saddled the buckskin, loaded his bedroll, embraced his friends, and rode away, a dot of flesh crossing a vast and bleak country, where there was no horizon but only endless haze.
twenty-two
Dirk Skye rode the breast of the earth alone. He didn’t mind being alone though it was not what he preferred. He enjoyed company. But now he steered his buckskin across an empty land, little changed from the days before settlement. A soft sun burned off the snow, which was a mercy to his eyes. He had what he needed: a bedroll, his jackknife, a flint and steel, and a burlap bag of squash that could be baked in their shells and cut open and eaten.
As long as the buckskin held out, he would. The world seemed large that November day, but that was because he was riding alone. He headed east, following the very trail his army column had taken months before. Company made the world smaller. Ride with friends, and the world collected around them. Ride alone, and one could see only the vast distances that lay hidden beyond the horizons.
He was at ease among all sorts, but not all people were at ease with him. Among whites, they noted his blue eyes, and then his strong cheekbones and a flesh darker than their own, and there would be mysterious walls rising between him and them. He was more welcome among Indians, but now and then they would see his blue gaze, or hear the sounds of an education gotten in St. Louis, and they would become very quiet, leaving him on his own ground, which was not theirs.
And so the present world was large and he knew no boundaries. He could ride east until he reached farms and towns and railroads and colleges. He could ride south until he was among Mexicans and adobes and flocks of sheep. He could ride most any direction to the ocean, and go most any distance to the ends of time. All that was because he was alone, and not living in a cloistered world of friendships or family or children or neighbors.
He wished life could be different, but it could not. So he rode across the Judith Basin alone, seeing no one and hoping no one saw him.
He was not bored while long-riding. He was constantly processing everything. He saw the roosting owl, the eagle riding the updrafts, the crow perched on a limb. He saw the hoofprints of elk on the road, the gathering of gloomy clouds over the Snowy Mountains, the buffalo berries that somehow escaped the frost. He was also calculating the wind, and calculating his horse. He knew when the buckskin tired, and then he would step off, walk beside it for a while, let it graze the dun grasses, and then ride on.
He passed some stray cattle, dark dots against a snow-patched hillside. They roamed freely. They could travel from here across the plains, from here to Mexico, with nothing to stop them. But they wore brands that said they were owned, and those brands were carefully registered in the territorial capital of Helena. He would not be eating beef, even if the meat tempted him: those cowboys had taken his gun long before, and his sole weapon now was the jackknife, which he treasured as his most valuable possession.
He would find a good copse of cottonwoods or box elders or willows this night, and make himself at home in their midst. He didn’t think it would snow; he thought the good weather might last all the way to Fort Keogh, six or seven rides away. Novembers in Montana were like that. Mostly sunny and quiet, but plenty cold.
Thus did his first ride pass by quickly enough, and as the sun began its early plunge under the lid of the world, he hunted for the small woodlands he wanted. He saw one at last, lying to the right, nestled between two claws of the Snowy Mountains, and headed that way even as the ground congealed under him.
He turned the buckskin toward the black mass of trees and reined up at once. There, catching the dying light, was a thin rise of smoke. Maybe his imagination. But no, he was staring at smoke, even though the flames were invisible behind that screen of woods. It was time for caution. He dismounted, making his profile lower, and started up the westward one of the two claws of the mountains, staying below the skyline. He heard or saw nothing, and thought maybe he was imagining things, but he persisted. The buckskin’s ears cupped forward, and Dirk feared the horse would whinny. But that was a risk he would take. For after all, the odds were great that this would be a friendly encounter. The ranchers were at odds with anyone wandering through but the fire could signal a party of woodcutters or trappers or hunters or even prospectors.
Still, mindful that he was unarmed, he chose utmost care. He actually worked past much of the woods lying in the valley between the arms of the mountains before he glimpsed flame, and spotted a dozen or so people near it. A wagon was burning. An ox that had been yoked to it was being led away by one of the horsemen. Several people were on foot, slumped on the earth, while several others sat their horses. And one more thing: there was the black victoria, Harley Bain’s carriage, with the matched trotters in harness.
Dirk watched. Nothing much was happening other than that an entire wagonload of possessions was swiftly being reduced to ash. He saw no violence. He saw no ropes dangling from limbs. He saw no drawn revolvers. He heard no shots. But what was happening was plain enough. A family of Métis was being murdered. Not by bullet or knife or noose or beating, but by being left without a thing on the eve of a Montana winter. It saved rope. It saved bullets. It did the job in ways that would elude the law. Who could prove anything? The family’s wagon burned, and they were breeds anyway.
Dirk quieted his buckskin and waited. It was a temptation to ride down upon them all and find some way to overcome this cowboy posse. But he knew better. So he waited, and after it was clear nothing in the wagon would survive, the man in the carriage stirred his trotters, and the ranch posse rode out of the forest and then out of sight.
Dirk urged the buckskin down a long grade toward the bereft family. He could see them better now, mostly silhouetted in the wavering light. There were two males, a woman and a girl, and the woman was kneeling in front of the inferno. He dismounted, not wanting to seem like a returning cowboy. He could not know how they might respond. So he walked, leading his horse, and paused at the edge of the clearing. In time, they saw him.
But there was music, or at least one clear sweet voice. The kneeling woman was singing. He walked hesitantly toward them, and they observed his progress, but did not welcome him. He tried to catch the music, to learn what absorbed them, and then he did. It was Latin.
“Ave Maria, Gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Benedicta tu in mulieribus, Et benedictus fructus ventris, Tui, Jesus, Sancta Maria. Mater Dei, Ora pro nobis peccatoribus. Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”
Dirk removed his hat. He well knew this sacred plea. The men blessed themselves. The woman did also, and then arose to face Dirk. She was pregnant. There were no tears in her eyes. The men eyed him and his horse. They saw his leather coat, cut in a style well known among the Métis. They saw Dirk’s strong cheekbones and warm flesh.
“Is it that I can help?” he asked in French.
They stared. A man responded in a tongue Dirk couldn’t translate but he heard some French in it. Michif, then.
He would try to get them to Lewistown. They could not survive in this place. He saw that they had intended to stay h
ere, perhaps live Indian-style in a lodge, survive by hunting. Now they didn’t even have rifles to hunt with.
He pointed to himself. “I am Dirk Skye.”
A man pointed at the woman. “Marie.” At the girl. “Josephine.” At the other adult male. “Pierre.” At himself. “Antony.”
“We probably should go to Lewistown,” he said, wondering whether they grasped any English.
One of the men, Antony, nodded. Dirk had the sense that everything was being left to himself. He undid his bedroll and motioned to the woman to mount the horse. She did, hesitantly, her gaze shy. He gestured to Antony to pick up the girl and place her ahead of her mother. Antony understood at once and lifted the child. Dirk wrapped the ancient buffalo robe around them and drew the horse along with the rein. It was barely dusk. They might make Lewistown in two hours, maybe three. Before the town fell asleep, anyway.
The night swiftly turned dark and cold, with ice-chip stars. There was only his namesake, the North Star, to steer him. Somewhere ahead his path would cross the road to Lewistown, and he feared he might miss it.
The men walked silently beside him and the horse. Dirk wondered whether they were brothers. They seemed about the same age, young and just starting out. The steady hiking was pleasant enough, except for the cold wind. After some while, one of the men muttered something and stayed Dirk. It was Antony again. He knelt and wanted Dirk to do so also. He had found the rutted road wending its way east toward the village. Dirk’s hands traced the ruts.
“Thank you,” Dirk said. They turned toward the town, the North Star riding Dirk’s left shoulder now. Nothing else could help them. They were working across a long plain, tunneling through an unknown and unseen world. Then, about the time Dirk thought he was hopelessly off in his estimate of where they were, they began to descend a gentle grade, toward a single glimmering lamp in a distant window. He wondered what they would find. It was quite possible that Lewistown would be colder than the natural world.
Marie sat quietly on the buckskin, shrouding herself and Josephine with the old robe, her calm as ancient as the world. Another half hour or so took them into the bottom of a valley, and then into a street with darkened buildings, mostly false-front log structures that snaked back from the artery. One saloon was still open. He knew all about saloons and Indians and breeds, and decided simply to ignore all that. He helped Marie and her daughter off the horse. The men looked uneasy.
Dirk peered through the single grimy window at a row of ten or twelve men, still sipping at the bar, lit by two overhead lamps. Some wood smoke swirled down on him. They were ranching men, which didn’t help any.
He nodded to his friends, but they held back.
“I want them to see you,” he said.
They still held back. There could be big trouble in there. They stood outside, in the wind, unwilling to step indoors.
“All right,” he said.
He pushed open the door, against the night wind, and let the lamplight spill out. He entered and found himself facing curious men. Cowboys, apparently. Young men, devil-may-care types whiling away a night during the slack season, when open-range ranches simply waited out the winter. They were dressed in coarse woolen shirts and wore their hats indoors. The thin warmth of the saloon barely kept the Montana night at bay.
The bald barkeep wore a white apron and black sleeve garters. The man squinted at Dirk, his gaze studying cheekbones and flesh, but Dirk trumped the gaze.
“There’s a family outside in trouble. I’ve come to get help,” he said.
“Who are you?” the keep asked.
“Dirk Skye.”
The rest of the crowd said nothing. These were late-evening drinkers, and they had run out of conversation hours earlier. They were simply sucking redeye because that beat going to sleep somewhere.
“Hey, Dirk, you a breed?” one of them asked.
Dirk didn’t respond. “I need to get a desperate family sheltered and fed. The woman’s expecting. There’s a daughter. Two men.”
“Dey speaka da English?” asked one cowboy.
“No, not a word.”
“Canadian breeds?”
“Someone burned their wagon. Everything they possessed. Their shelter, their food, their clothing, their weapons. They need help.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they do. Maybe we should burn a few more wagons,” said another cowboy.
“I’d like to pass the hat,” Dirk said. He pulled his off and handed it to a young one holding down the end of the plank bar.
The cowboy handled it gingerly, grinned, and passed it to the next, who whipped it to the next, who turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out. They laughed. Dirk’s hat traversed the row and halted at the last, where an older man who looked none too sober eyed it seriously.
That man rose, returned the hat to Dirk, and nodded.
“These bloomin’ Métis are in trouble?” he asked.
“They have nothing.”
The man eyed the rest. “I guess I can give a hand. They up to walking two, three miles? I got a place north of town, foothill of the Judiths.”
“They can manage it, sir. And you would be saving their lives.”
“Hey, don’t do nothing like that!” yelled a younger blond cowboy.
“I’m Pap Reilly,” the man said to Dirk. “I raise a few sheep and other stuff. My buckboard’s out there, if the nag ain’t fallen asleep on me.”
“You’ve spared their lives, sir.”
“I know how that is, lad. I know all about that.”
They left the staring cowboys and plunged into blackness. The Métis huddled in the wind, fearful. Dirk beckoned.
“This is Pap Reilly,” he said. “These are Marie, Josephine, Pierre, and Antony. I haven’t got their last name.”
The buckboard held the women and Reilly. Dirk offered the buckskin to the men, but they refused. And so the parade started, due north from Lewistown, bucking the wind.
twenty-three
Reilly set the horse at a brisk pace, and Dirk soon lost all sense of where he was going. The stars told him northeast; that’s all he knew. He couldn’t see the ears of his own horse.
“Do you think maybe we’re going too fast for the men walking?”
“Ah, lad, it’s good for them. Keep ’em warm. If they lose us, they freeze to death.”
The women huddled in the robe, rocking with the wagon.
“These here people, they may as well be Swahili. It’s a pity I can’t talk to ’em. I like to talk. So you’re it, Skye. You can get every bloody word I say, so I’m going to talk.”
“That’ll make the trip go faster,” Dirk said.
Reilly laughed. “You’re an optimist. You’ll want me shutting up pretty quick now, but I’ve got ye caught, and you’ll listen unless you fill your ears full of fingers.”
Dirk heeled his horse forward. He actually wanted to hear Reilly.
“No man alive’s lacking a story, Skye,” Reilly said. “We all work on our stories, and perfect ’em, and use ’em. I got a story or two. Now let’s take this story and get on with it. There I was, a poor boy in Waterford, and my poor pa, worn down by all the care he was givin’ his brood, my sainted pa, he says, Pap, me boy, I can’t afford to keep ye a day longer. I can’t keep the children in food. I can’t feed your ma. I can’t earn enough sweepin’ chimneys to keep ye. So, boy, I’m saying good-bye now. You’re on your own, lad. I’ve scrimped up a little change, and it’ll buy passage in steerage on one of them sailing ships down in the harbor, and it’ll take you to wherever you’re going. So, lad, your ma and me, we sez be off and quick, so we can get along.”
“That’s a sad story, Mr. Reilly.”
“Oh, it gets sadder, Skye. I got me steerage, and ended up in Boston, and began doing most anything needed doing, just for a bit of food, and pretty quick I came west, got a few sheep, and here I am.”
“That’s inspiring, Mr. Reilly. You started at a tender age and survived. I hope you’ve made contact with you
r parents, just to let them know.”
Reilly laughed. “You’re a gullible feller, Skye. I made up the whole bloody yarn, and there’s not a thread of truth in any of it.”
“Then why tell it?”
“A man lives by stories, lad. And anyway, I just wanted to see how much a fool ye be.”
This was an unexpected turn, but Dirk figured it would all work out. If these Métis got sheltered and fed, it didn’t matter what sort of nonsense Reilly was full of.
They rode awhile more through a close night, with the blackness coming at them, bearing down on them like the ceiling of a low cave.
“All right, Skye, I’ll tell ye the true story. Me folks, they weren’t sainted at all. My pa was a mean bugger, especially when he’d downed a few pints. That’s when he’d pinch my ear until I was yowling. That’s when he’d send me out to steal anything I could get away, so’s he could trade if for another pint of ale. And my ma, she was worse. She kept a hickory stick she used to beat on me, just for the pleasure of it, boy. She’d send me out to steal, just like Pa, and beat me black and blue if I didn’t come back with something real quick, and outrun the coppers too.”
Dirk thought that the real story was a lot sadder.
“So there I was, boy, getting beat on, and all. My parents, they weren’t fit to bring a child into the world. They ruint me and a sister and buried two brothers from the milk sickness. They thought children, getting lots of children, that would keep them in feed and ale. They called me unholy things, and I was getting to where I called them unholy things, but then one day I just took off. Why go back? I had rotters for a ma and pa, and things couldn’t get worse, and if I did their bidding I’d be tossed into some gaol soon enough. So I get my skinny arse out, and headed to the water, and stowed away on a clipper, and got my skinny arse to Boston. How’s that for a story, eh?”
The First Dance Page 15
