The world was utterly silent. The north wind didn’t blow hard enough to scrape the ears, just hard enough to burrow through anything Dirk wore. One good thing, Dirk thought. Bain’s riders would be huddled around their stoves this day.
For two hours they spotted nothing. Then Dirk headed for a copse of naked trees, their bare limbs cobwebbing a bleak overcast. It was the first significant shelter they had come to, and Dirk intended to check any likely place where the desperate might harbor.
They rode in and found it empty, and Dirk steered the dray into the wind, north by northwest, toward another copse of naked trees at the base of a low bluff. The dray fought the lines, wanting to go downwind. This was a fool’s mission. There were hundreds of square miles in the Judith country.
“You could have gotten me a quart of Jameson’s before we started, Skye. You take me for granted, is what.”
Dirk lacked any means of buying anything, least of all Irish whiskey.
They entered a sheltered area, brushy and protected from wind by cutbanks and juniper and slopes. There was something ahead.
“Jaysas,” Reilly said.
There was a mountain of ash, the bare ruins of a Red River cart, and little else except bodies. Barefoot, coatless, shirtless, bold, stiff, blue, naked against the bitterness. Six bodies, all deprived of footwear. Two children, three young adults, and one old man. They had survived a while, even barefoot, collecting anything burnable that could be dragged or carried to the dying embers of the Red River cart. But the time came when they could find no more deadwood, drag no more, walk no more on frozen ground with bare feet, and then they had perished in the cold. And now they were frozen hard, frozen to the ground, frosted into the earth. One had been mauled by a predator.
“A family,” Dirk said.
“Jaysas,” Reilly said.
The hog farmer knelt beside them, where they had huddled close to one another to fend off the icy breath of death. He muttered some sort of prayer, while Dirk stood, hatless, in the wind.
Dirk had never seen such a hopeless situation. No shelter, not enough clothing to fend off cold, no shoes or boots, no means.
“Let’s go on,” he said. “Maybe we will find the living.”
“Who can we tell? Who can we shout at?” Reilly said.
“We will tell what we’ve seen if it’s the last thing I do,” Dirk said.
“Aye, and who’ll listen? Frenchie half-breeds,” Reilly said.
There was nothing they could do here. No way to bury them, no way to revive the dead, no way to identify them.
They clambered into Reilly’s protesting wagon and continued, once again out upon the sweeping flats claimed by Bain. There was a hint of sleet in the air, needles borne on wind. The dray wanted to quit, struggled against the lines, but Dirk quieted him by turning southwest toward a group of low hills, cut sharply by one of the creeks running through the country.
And after a silent hour, they entered the hill country and followed the bed of the creek, which had a faint wagon track beside it.
And smelled smoke.
Dirk couldn’t be sure. Smoke was elusive, a teasing hint on the wind, a faint notion that blossomed in the mind.
“You smelling it?” Reilly asked.
“I am.”
“I’m ready to warm my bones. I’m so cold I’ll join the Frenchies lest I got warmed up quick. Maybe it’s the cowboys. Maybe I’m the hog farmer, but I’m planning on warming up real good, and maybe get me some redeye if it can be had.”
The fickle winds were mostly blowing the smoke out of the creek bottoms, but once in a while Dirk caught wood smoke, heartening and plain, a sign of life ahead.
And when they rounded a bend in the creek, there was a goodly fire, and people lying about it.
“Hello,” Dirk yelled. Only one of those at the fire raised his head. But then another did. And one struggled to sit up.
Dirk steered straight for them, even as others wrestled themselves up.
They were Métis, barefoot, half-naked, hollow-eyed, and alive beside the ruins of a farm wagon, its metal tires about all that remained.
thirty-four
Reilly didn’t like it. “Now I’m stuck with more of them,” he lamented. But he reached for the tin of hardtack, while Dirk grabbed what few flour sacks would have to suffice for warmth for these people.
One young man, dark and Indian, struggled to rise. He lifted a hand in supplication, a hand seeking food, any food.
There were six here, but one didn’t move. She was ancient, thin and worn and blue, and without clothing save for a chemise and ancient skirt. Dirk knew he and Reilly were too late for her.
There were also two boys, a young woman, and a child, all sensate, staring at him.
Reilly was circulating among them, giving each a piece of hardtack.
But it was plain that the child and young woman were too weak to eat it. They could not shatter it with their teeth.
“Why does hardtack have to be hard?” Reilly asked. “Dumbest thing I ever heard of. It’s British nonsense, is what it is.”
The man and two boys nibbled bits of it, tiny pieces they broke away and chewed.
Dirk helped the woman and child. He crushed the biscuit into bits and handed the pieces to them. And then wrapped the two in flour sacks for want of anything else. He could see how this had gone. Night riders had burned them out, left them shoeless. But they were surrounded by deadwood, and the man and boys had managed to drag it in, day after day, keeping the sacred fire alive, the ruins of their wagon that still gave heat and protected life. And thus they had lived a while, starving more each day but alive because they had kept the fire going day and night. All the deadwood, mostly cottonwood, for fifty yards around had already been collected, and each day the survivors had to go farther out. They would not have lasted another day, Dirk thought.
“Merci, merci,” the woman muttered. Even a little hardtack seemed to revive her faster than the others, who chewed slowly on the miserable biscuits that stored well and safely.
The child, a boy, was too far gone for tears, and couldn’t eat. Dirk took hardtack to the spring and soaked it thoroughly, and then brought it back for the boy, who seemed five or six, and now the gummy baked flour was edible. Dirk returned to the spring with several more biscuits and soaked them all until they had softened, and handed them out.
Reilly unwrapped his blue scarf from his neck and hung it over his shoulders once again, and knelt beside the ancient dead woman. And there he prayed, muttering things Dirk couldn’t hear or fathom, and then Reilly drew a cross upon the old woman’s cold forehead, and slowly stood. The others stared and nibbled and clutched another piece of hardtack in their hands. The stuff would save lives no matter how miserable it was.
The fire was failing, and Dirk headed into the afternoon to collect more wood. These people had scavenged far, and he had to travel down the creek a bit before he found something he could drag to the fire. But he did return with several limbs and branches and tossed one into the faltering flame. It caught quickly. The lowering clouds were spitting snow now.
Reilly was wrapping the bare feet of the boys in feed sacks, which wouldn’t help much. But the boys managed a smile or two.
Dirk settled beside the young man who apparently had kept this group alive for days.
“Parlez-vous—?”
“I can say the Anglais, English. Who are you?”
“I am Dirk Skye. My friend is Pap Reilly.”
“Friend or not?”
Dirk was aware again that the Métis stayed together. “We’ve just fed you,” he said. “And we’ll take you to safety.”
The man stared, as if not believing. “We are looking for friends, Sylvestre is their name. They have a place near here. They would shelter us.”
Dirk stared at the fire, and finally said it plain: “The Sylvestres were burned out and are dead.”
The man absorbed that slowly. “I am Gilbert Bonheur, sir. My wife, Lydie, my boys Pier and
Alan, my child Candide. And my mother, lost to us, Patrice. I’m sorry to be a burden upon you.”
“We came looking for those in need. There’s a group of ranchers here, wanting to drive you back to Canada—or let you perish.”
“So we learned, Monsieur Skye. So we learned.”
“What happened?”
“Night riders found us camped here, burned all our possessions, took away our shoes and moccasins and stockings, took away all our clothing save for this little bit. They killed my mother and almost the rest of us.”
“I am sorry,” Dirk said.
“I don’t understand why we are driven into death by the Americans.”
“You and I have two bloods, Mister Bonheur.”
“Why would that change anything? Why is that against us?”
“I ask myself the same question.”
Reilly joined in. “They’re a tribe, same as I’m from another tribe, and it’s all one tribe against other tribes. Say, Bonheur, where’d you learn the tongue?”
“Red River colony. It was governed jointly for a while by British and French-speaking Canadians. I was one of the governing council. I learned swiftly.”
“What did the night riders say?” Dirk asked.
“They said we were Canadians, and it didn’t matter if I spoke English. They were going to send us packing. Back to the border. Or die. Only they had no intention of taking us back to Canada. They took our shoes.”
“They could again, sir. Reilly and I are not armed. Tonight, when we can move safely, we’ll try to get you back to his place. If the snow doesn’t get worse.”
“Our feet—frostbitten, ruined. We can’t.”
“Reilly and I will walk.”
“Who says I’ll walk, eh?” Reilly snapped.
Dirk was calculating what the worn-out dray would be able to haul back. Two in the wagon bed, one on the driver’s bench, another on Dirk’s buckskin, maybe two. It would have to do.
“If you’re strong enough, we’ll leave in an hour. If not, we’ll camp here until you’re able to move. It’s snowing. A blizzard could mean—”
Bonheur stood for the first time. He was stocky, powerful, and worn. “We will go as far as we can before the snow drowns us. And hide by day if we must. And go again.” He turned to the others and spoke in that odd part-French tongue Dirk could barely grasp.
The heavens were opening up now, a barrage of snow falling everywhere. Dirk worried. He had matches, but no match would start a fire in a blizzard. It would be all the way to Reilly’s—or probably perish.
He took a moment to whittle some kindling, curls of wood, splinters, fluff, dry bark, inner bark, anything to start a fire, and this debris he jammed into his pockets. He had the uneasy feeling that this was all for naught. It was run or die, and they would run.
Dirk helped the woman into the wagon bed, and the child beside her, and put the two weak boys on the wagon bench, and Bonheur on the buckskin, and then he and Reilly led the dray and the buckskin east, the driving snow on their backs, prickling his neck, lashing his cheeks.
The snow whipped them along, a giant breath from behind, hurrying the dray and the buckskin, even as the world whitened under leaden skies. Dirk had the impression of speed, not slowness. He walked swiftly, and old Reilly was grumbling right along. Those in the wagon huddled miserably. But even as the wheels cranked around, they all nibbled hardtack, as if it were some life-preserving elixir. They had been days without food, and now there was food in their cold hands.
They reached a sheltered area, thick with brush and out of the wind, and there Dirk and Reilly rested the horses for a while. The snow fell steadily, but the flakes were not heavy, and there wasn’t much moisture in them. That was how snow fell in Montana Territory, light and dry and a cheat to the grass and trees.
They scarcely could find their way, but the northwesterly winds clued them, and there were landmarks, such as the Judith River, which they crossed easily on a gravelly shallows. They had long since lost sight of any trail or road. The afternoon passed, and they faced a decision: keep on or find shelter and build a fire? But then the decision was made for them: the storm passed, the skies opened, and Dirk could see a whitened landscape, including the Judith Mountains ahead. Even a dark night would not obscure those mountains.
They kept on. Luck of the Métis, he thought. Reilly grumbled and kept an eye on the refugees. When Bonheur became chilled, Reilly helped him off the buckskin and they walked side by side, until Bonheur’s blood was running strong again. The temperature was dropping now; the snow had been a precursor of bitter air out of the north, a sort of line demarcating the end of fall and the beginning of winter.
It would not be long until Christmas, Dirk thought.
The whitened world gave them bearings, and the steady wind at their back hastened them along. It was then that Dirk knew they would make it. The human cargo, shivering in the wagon, would not perish. But it took another hour before Reilly led his dray up a long two-rut lane and into the yard of his hog ranch. A lamp burned in the improvised bunkhouse; the Métis had returned from Trouffant’s gathering. Dirk didn’t know whether to call it a wake. But they were here, and even as the Bonheur family struggled out of the wagon, the others came running, and soon Reilly’s cabin was aflame with warmth and the alien tongue of those people.
The chilled were swiftly fed and wrapped in robes or blankets.
“Don’t know how I can afford to feed the whole lot,” Reilly muttered. “I’m running out of hogs.”
Dirk headed out into the sharp night, unhooked the faithful dray and led it and his buckskin into the pens. Snow caked the back of the dray. Dirk scraped away the snow, brushed both animals in the deep quiet, found some oats gotten from Fort Maginnis, and poured some into two mangers. The horses pushed their cold muzzles into the oats and tongued the grain into their mouths, noisy with pleasure. Dirk checked the runnel that watered the pen and found water running unfrozen. His task was completed. He had taken care of the horses that had saved a family of these people. Dirk paused, sensing this night was heading toward bitter cold. He felt lonely. He was glad for these people. He thought of Therese. She would be pleased, no overjoyed, at the news. But maybe saddened, for the grandmother had perished, and God knew how many other families of her people were now only frozen bodies, lying in obscure place in the Judith country.
Was there no justice or mercy?
He headed inside, where a wall of heat smacked him. Too much heat, stifling and odorous heat. But it was the heat of life, the heat of salvation. It was heat generated by the wood these guests had chopped for Reilly. Outside were mounds of firewood, enough for the winter, cut piece by piece by the axes and saws of these people.
“I can’t understand a damned word! I’m going to go to town and bunk there,” Reilly said.
One of the women seemed to understand. She reached over to him, drew him into her arms, and kissed him soundly. Reilly squirmed away, looking like a man fighting an octopus, and wiped away the assault on his lips.
“I’m getting out!” he snapped.
But even as he spoke, the women were herding all the Métis through the door to the bunkhouse, and in an amazing passage, the people-choked cabin was forlornly empty, save for Reilly and Skye.
“What’d they do that for?” Reilly demanded.
“Oh, maybe because they love you,” Dirk said.
“Well I don’t love them,” Reilly said.
“You saved five lives.”
“And lost one, damn me. Now I’ll have to go back there and fetch her and bury her. I can’t leave her to the wolves.”
thirty-five
Dirk headed straight for the churchyard. He would spend this day working on Therese’s church. The air was still, and that’s all that mattered. He could work in deep cold so long as the wind wasn’t lacerating him. The sun dazzled off the snow, making him squint.
Much to his astonishment, he found the walls going up. In just a few days, the Métis had manag
ed to restore the rock foundation and shape one long log after another, until there now was a rectangle of logs, and a dozen burly men, many with elaborate mustaches, sawing and chopping at the logs, or ganging together to hoist them into place. He could scarcely fathom it. Where did all these people come from? And how had they managed to draw so many logs out of the forest, peel them, notch them, and shave the tops and bottoms into a tight fit? Yes, there were a dozen men here, but they seemed like fifty.
He knew a few by sight, and of course the Trouffants were at hand. He found a place to picket his horse and loosen the saddle girth, and then set to work. He lacked the skills of these woodsmen, but there was plenty he could do. He began sawing rounds, which would be split into shakes for the roof, and as fast as he cut a round, a cheerful Métis woodsman made off with the round and began whacking long, thick shakes from it.
The cold was invigorating. The wan sun was not far above the eastern horizon, and yet these men had toiled for an hour or so, and would toil until sundown, and enjoy the long day as well as the rising walls that seemed to grow, log by log, even as Dirk watched.
He saw her coming through the morning, the low sun making a halo around her scarf, which she had tied under her chin. She bore a basket, and he knew it would be something warm to sustain these cheerful toilers.
She gazed at the rising walls, almost as if she couldn’t fathom how this thing had happened, and she saw some gentleness fill her face and make it glow. She set down the basket and pulled off the cover, and offered its contents to her men. They discovered hot cross buns, still warm from her oven, and they paused to snatch them up, one apiece, and talk in their Métis way with the glowing woman.
Dirk held back; he hadn’t earned a bun yet, and in any case they should go to her Métis people, but she spotted him sawing through a thick log, picked up a bun and carried it to him and paused before him, as he stopped his sawing.
The First Dance Page 23
