by Lou Cameron
“It happens,” he said. “But it ain’t considered at all refined among my people. What’s the story on you and that nice-looking Wounded Hawk, Miss Judith Ann?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “We are members of the same matrilinial clan. It would be worse than rutting with our yard dog.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t think you could be related to that mutt, no offense. How come you’ve gone to all this trouble on my Saltu account, honey? I hope you didn’t follow me all this way afoot.”
“I thought it best to tether my roan to a lone pine down the trail and see how close I could get to you without getting shot. I am not exactly doing this for you. Crow Killer may be old and wise, as my people count such things, but I have been to school. I can read and write. I understand the way the world is now better than some of my people. You might not have been killed. You might have gotten away. We both know what bad things you would have told the B.I.A. about my uncle and my people if that had happened.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I might have felt sort of vexed had I followed Shoshoni travel directions into a death trap. So I thank you for your warning, and you have my word I won’t report your band’s wandering ways to any Indian agent. It’s my considered opinion the B.I.A. is run by half-wits in any case.”
He holstered his gun, regathered the makings he’d dropped on the blanket, and commenced to roll that smoke after all as he muttered, half to himself, “Now all I have to do is find a new route north through country I never knew that well in the first place.”
“I know how to get you around that valley full of outlaws and back on the right trail,” she said. “What would you say if I offered to guide you?”
He licked the gummed edge of his cigarette paper to seal it. “I’d have to say thanks, for openers. What kind of money are we talking about, honey?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. Why do you call me honey? Do you want to make love to me?”
He chuckled. “Let’s stick to what’s possible. A top hand makes a dollar and a quarter a day, and while you seem a mite short and softly built for a top hand, I’d say getting me around the outlaw-haunted valley no more than a day out of my way would be worth top-hand wages. Can you do it, and won’t you get yourself in trouble for breaking Shoshoni labor laws?”
“I can do it,” she said. “I can do anything want. I am a free woman. I can read and write. One of my grandfather’s was a Saltu of the German clan, and I never wanted to leave the reserve in the first place. I think I would like to live Saltu, if I could. It is not fair to call me honey if you don’t want to treat me like a Saltu woman.”
He struck a light for his smoke. As he did, he could see there were tears in her eyes. He lit his smoke, shook out the match, and told her, “I wasn’t trying to offend you, Judith Ann. I’m not talking to you any different than I talk to most other ladies who can speak English. I can see why a pretty little thing like you might feel wistful about civilization. I’ve met lots of your kind who’ve taken to living like everyone else instead of on the Great White Father’s blanket. No offense, but it’s getting tough to live anywhere but on a reserve or assimilated. That’s what they call you folks when you give up your old ways and act like us—assimilated.”
She moved closer on her knees. “You mean off the B.I.A. rolls, as if they’d been born Saltu? Is that possible?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not? As long as folk act natural. There’s no law saying flat out that Indians or part Indians have to live on any reserve as public wards. The pesky B.I.A. just feels, with some justice, that if they have to feed you and look after you like children, it gives them the right to boss you about some.”
“I wish that was true!” she replied. “Our band is hiding, hiding, lest the B.I.A. send the Army after us to round us up and march us back to the agency we escaped from. May I have a puff of that tobacco, please?”
He handed her his smoke and started to build another. “That’s why the Indian agents feel they have to boss you folk around,” he told her. “Some of you still talk sort of ignorant. These days they don’t send the Army out after anyone who’s behaving themselves.”
She took a luxurious drag of Bull Durham and let it out. “What about Wounded Knee?” she asked.
“That was a good ten years or more ago, and those Sioux were acting silly. Some say the Army paid more attention to a bossy Indian agent than they should have too. Your uncle is already living a lot more white than poor old Big Foot and his Ghost Dancers. I’m not sure the law could go along with his notions of horse dealing. But why should the taxpayers of these United States care if he’d as soon live self-supporting?”
She didn’t answer for a time. Then she said, “Tell me more about people like me living off the blanket. What’s it like?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I wasn’t born Indian. The ones I know who live white seem to come in all shapes and sizes. Some, like some of us, seem to wind up poor useless drunks or worse. But I met a Cherokee-breed cowhand a spell back who seems to like it just fine. He’s a trick roper and lately he’s been touring with a road show, acting white as anyone else. I think his name’s Will Rogers. He sure is a comical kid.”
“I think I would like to wear my hair and dress like one of those Gibson Girls,” she said. “I would like to ride around on a bicycle with a bell, or play tennis in white dresses the way they do. Do you think a girl like me could ever do that?”
“Well, first you’d have to get a job in some town. You could get in trouble helping yourself to a bike the way your kin are used to getting ponies. I hope you don’t mean to run off to Omaha before you show me the way around that valley.”
She laughed. “I won’t. I want to learn more about this assimilation business before we part company. I think I’d better go get my roan and tether her closer for the night. Then I think we should bed down, don’t you?”
He agreed that made sense. She sprang to her feet and ran up out of the hollow as if she were sort of anxious to catch some shut-eye. He hoped she didn’t snore. He wasn’t tired at all, and he knew she’d want to spread her own roll in the grass closer than say a hundred yards.
He shoved his camp gear off to one side and smoothed his own blankets as he recalled what she’d said about the outlaws ahead, searching for hidden snags. He still didn’t know for certain that Opal, back in Granger, had been more than a mighty friendly barmaid who hadn’t wanted to use her real name in bed with a stranger. It seemed even less likely some anarchist plotter could have gotten out ahead of him to induce a half-wild Indian girl to set him up. That left a trap she meant to lead him into for half-wild Shoshoni, of course. But it seemed mighty subtle for Indian warfare. If old Crow Killer really had others he could call on to attack anyone in particular, it made no sense to risk one of their gals on such foolishness. Like Judith Ann herself, old Crow Killer had known which way he was headed, and no doubt knew all the best ambush sites on the trail ahead as well. Stringer decided he might as well take the pretty little thing at face value for now.
When she came back with her own pony, he said, “That was quick. Where’s your saddle and roll? You surely didn’t leave your mount saddled to graze in this cool night air, did you?”
“I rode out bareback,” she replied. “What’s the matter with this bedding of yours? Don’t you want to share it with me?”
He gulped, and snubbed out his smoke. “Uh, I reckon we can both fit, tight. I ain’t offended by your company, but it don’t figure to be comfortable, sleeping with my boots and spurs on. I generally strip down entire when I bed down like this.”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s disgusting to crawl between the blankets fully dressed and wake up all sweaty and wrinkled.”
She slipped her blouse off over her head and got to work on the waistband of her striped skirts. He couldn’t see much of her dark naked flesh by starlight, but he was certainly aware of it as she tossed everything aside and moved closer. “Hurry,” she said. “I want to get under the
blankets, damn it.”
He didn’t argue. He just took somewhat longer, cursing the tightness of his boots and wondering why he’d ever wanted to wear cotton long johns under his jeans to begin with. He considered leaving said long johns on, but she hadn’t asked him to. So he didn’t. As he joined her under the top blanket, the bedroll warmed up amazingly.
It would have been a close fit around their naked bodies even if they’d tried to keep a cozy but proper sleeping position. He didn’t see why any man would feel called upon to try a dumb thing like that when Judith Ann took him in her warm bare arms and sobbed, “Oh, yes, assimilate me.”
For the next few minutes it was not too clear who was teaching whom what about racial relations, although he seemed to be on top most of the time. Aside from the fact she moved better than most women, red or white, with the firm springy sod under her rollicking rump, the only notable difference between a Shosoni gal and someone who wore more toilet water in the dark, was that she smelled sort of odd. Not bad. Just different. There was something about her musky autumn-leaves body odor that made Stringer think of what things must have been like back in those ice-age caves, before anyone had come up with sissy notions about silken nightgowns and fancy perfumes. It felt sort of wild to know for sure he was in a real old-fashioned woman instead of a rose garden.
She must have enjoyed unusual stinks too, for when she ran her tongue around in his ear, hugging him tight with her strong tawny thighs, she laughed and said, “You taste like soap and smell like lavender. Why do you rub yourself with lavender?”
“I don’t,” he said. “I can’t keep a certain Chinese laundry gal from sticking the stuff in my linens. It’s hard enough to keep her from starching my long johns.”
She tasted his ear again. “It’s not bad, once you get over the surprise. Have you ever done this with a Chinese?”
He laughed. “Sure. Wouldn’t you, if you got the chance?”
She laughed too. “I’m not sure I haven’t just been insulted. I hope you don’t think I’m the sort of girl who goes to bed with just any man.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I’ve never once made love to the particular Oriental gal that does my laundry back in Frisco.”
“She sure must be ugly, then,” the Indian girl replied. “For I can tell you sure like to do this.”
He kissed her throat and growled, “Sure I do. Are you trying to say you don’t? For if you are, you sure might have said so sooner.”
She gasped. “Harder, faster, you know I just love it, and I’ll bet you could tell when first you laid eyes on me that I was just dying to have you like this, darling!”
He didn’t answer as he pounded her to glory. It wouldn’t have been polite to tell her he’d first taken her for a pouty mean-eyed little bitch and what the hell, it seemed obvious he’d misjudged her by a considerable margin, bless her hot red hide.
CHAPTER
FIVE
*
Stringer never got to see any sign of the gang camped across his planned route north. So there was just no way to say whether they were the Wild Bunch, some other band of owl-hoot riders, or assassins out to bar his way to Teddy Roosevelt, although the last idea seemed sort of farfetched when he studied on it.
He had plenty of time to study the next day, as Judith Ann led him over hill and dale in a way that might have made him suspect her of trying to lose him in the mountains if she hadn’t acted so friendly during trail breaks. The one time they did it in an aspen grove, she assured him ticks never bothered her. Sure enough, he spotted one of the blood-sucking little brutes on one of her dapple-shaded brown breasts, at a time he just didn’t feel like stopping to deal with it, and the little sucker just kept walking with its nose in the air, as if he couldn’t abide the smell of her smoke-perfumed bare hide.
Later she spotted a tick on his bare ass, going about the business of being a tick more seriously. She seemed to think it was unusual as she backed it out of his Saltu hide with a lit cigarette end. He’d already known Indians bathed in smoke, as they called standing bare-assed over smoldering sweet sage and such, partly to scare evil spirits away but mostly to keep from picking up nits. Some said you could tell a reservation school kid from one running wild because only the ones trying to live by the rules of white hygiene ever seemed to wind up buggy.
When he told her this, as they were dressing, she said she didn’t care if she wound up combing lice from her hair if it meant she could fix it Gibson Girl style and wear real French perfume. He thought of that some as they rode on. They were crossing a wide green valley spangled with wild flowers that smelled better than anything anyone was ever going to be able to buy in a bottle. Up ahead the pretty Shoshoni looked as fine and proud as if old Charles Dana Gibson was about to sketch her riding astride her pretty roan mare. He felt sure that she’d be required to sit her mount sidesaddle before any fashion magazine or even the Police Gazette would run her portrait. They’d probably want her to wear her skirts a mite longer, and he wondered if she knew how to walk in high-button shoes. He didn’t have to wonder how a pretty as well as free and easy little gal who couldn’t quite pass for white, figured to get passed around by the sporting bloods of any big city she chose to move into. But every time he tried to caution her about that, she asked him what was wrong with screwing white gents, seeing he did it so fine, and he had to admit he’d be a hypocrite if he forbade others such joys as she seemed all too willing to offer. And what the hell, he knew trying to teach her to act less wild would be about as easy as taming a wild bird to sing hymns, even if he’d had the time.
By nightfall he was lower on rations than he’d planned to be this early. She’d led him back, she said, to the trail to the Yellowstone country. He had to take her word for it. The wooded slopes around them were higher now. When they made camp by a cool clear spring he might not have found without her, he had to agree a fire made sense, even though he’d brought no cooking utensils along. He left her hunkered by the pool with his canteens, and moved upslope to build a small fire against a rock overhang. As he’d hoped, the sloping granite carried the thin smoke up, but not enough to be seen amidst the surrounding tree tops, while the rock backing served to reflect all the heat his way as he spread the bedding again, with some anticipation.
He could see that Judith Ann hadn’t gotten all she wanted, either, as she strode up the slope to join him, naked from the waist up. Then he saw she was holding something in the folds of her damp blouse.
“Trout,” she told him. “Only two. But I found some wild onion to stuff them with.”
He smiled wistfully. “It’s too bad you didn’t find a frying pan while you were at it. But I reckon we can plank ’em.”
She dropped to her knees, spreading the captured trout and tiny mountain onions between them near his canteens. “That’s too much trouble,” she said, “and they dry out that way. Let me have your knife.”
“Where were those fish hiding all this time?” he asked her, handing her his pocket knife. “I didn’t see any trout in that little pond down there, and it’s not as if it was the Great Salt Lake, you know.”
“You weren’t supposed to see them,” she replied, beginning to gut her find. “That was why they were hiding under the ledge. I saw there was only one good place for them to be, so I trapped them with my blouse. It was easy. You just have to know where to look for food in these hills.”
He didn’t answer as he watched her skilled brown hands quickly mince the wild onion stalks and stuff both gutted trout. Then he asked her what the hell she thought she was doing as she made a mud puddle near her knees with canteen water and proceeded to treat both fish disgusting.
“I’m rolling them in mud, of course,” she said. “What does it look as if I’m doing?”
“I could have sworn you were rolling them in mud. I was sort of looking forward to eating them fish too.”
She placed both mud balls in the fire and wiped her hands on the grass. “There. They ought to be ready in just a l
ittle while. Do you want to assimilate me some more while we wait?”
He laughed. “The night is young. So are you, in more ways than one. We have to talk, Judith Ann. I’ve been thinking about your plans to become a Gibson Girl overnight. I think you ought to take it one step at a time. What grade were you in school when your band left the reserve?”
“Fourth grade, I think. I didn’t get to finish the term, but I guess I’m smart enough. I know most of my times table. Ten times ten is one hundred. Doing it by elevens and twelves is a little harder. But I don’t want to be a teacher anyhow.”
He sighed. “I was hoping you knew twelve times twelve is a gross. This is the twentieth century gathering steam under us, Judith Ann. It’s already tough to get a good job with a sixth-grade education. I know you can read and write. You told me you’ve read romantic novels. But the Saltu world isn’t that simple, honey.”
She pouted as ferociously as she had when they’d first met. “You told me you liked me. Are you saying, now, I’m not good enough to live off the blanket?”
“If I didn’t like you,” he replied, “I’d tell you I thought you had a natural future as an opera singer, and enjoy the results of my dishonest endeavors. I want you to be happy later, and I want you to make it. That’s why I want you to try and make it my way.”
“That’s silly. I don’t want to write for a newspaper.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was in the fourth grade, and already living white, honey. Do you really want to be a Gibson Girl, or at least a respectable gal making her way in the world those romance novels only hint at? Or would you rather wind up batting your eyes for drinks in some Taos cantina, or worse.”
“I want to have my own safety bike,” she said, “a sunshade, and maybe learn to play the typewriter. So tell me how to get them. I’m not interested in firewater, whether I have to bat my eyes for it or not.”
He nodded. “The first thing you should do is go back to the Shoshoni reserve and — Wait, don’t throw that fool pine cone at me. I didn’t say you had or ought to stay on the blanket. But you ought to finish school, at least grammar school, and read some newspapers instead of pipe dreams before you try to be more Saltu, gather up that sunshade, and move into a good-sized town. Small towns out west aren’t such good places for Indians, or come to think of it, anyone else to make a go of it. Salt Lake would be a good bet. The Book of Mormon holds your folk as a lost tribe of Israel, and the Latter Day Saints don’t snub Indians any more than they snub the rest of us.”
