Dark Passage

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “I have come to hear stories,” she said. “This evening you promised more stories. You said you would tell about the fire-boats that come up the river. I have never seen one.”

  “You don’t want stories.”

  “Of course I do! And I would like some of your whiskey, too. If you are going to take me to your robes, I want stories and whiskey.”

  “No, whiskey will make you stupid. It is much better when you have all your senses. Then you will have such a good time you will tell the village that Antelope is a great man.”

  “How you boast! All you want is conquest. For you it is like war honors. Like counting coup. Like wearing another eagle feather in your hair.”

  “Ah, Victoria, it is so. But my hair is down and there is no feather in it.”

  He fed some small sticks to the blaze and pulled her to him. She pulled free and drew her red blanket around her.

  “Maybe sometime,” she said.

  “So, Skye wins this night. But not for long. You will come to Antelope soon.”

  twelve

  In the morning, just when Skye was debating whether to try hunting in a hunted-out land, the town crier, old

  Pretty Louse, made his decision for him.

  “Now listen, Kicked-in-the-Belly people. With the next sun we will move to winter camp. The camp chief has decided. The council of old men has decided. The weather prophet has told us this is the time. We will winter on the Rotten Sundance River! Pay attention now, all of you. Buffalo have been seen there.”

  Pretty Louse wandered off to cry his news elsewhere. Skye knew that river by another name, Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone. He and Victoria had briefly followed it and crossed it en route to this camp. In some places, where the bluffs defanged the wind and the cottonwoods and willows grew thick along its banks, the river would make a fine wintering ground, especially if some buffalo were around.

  The move was fine with Skye. He had grown weary of the big bend of the Yellowstone, weary of feckless hunts. That day he combed and groomed his horses and checked their hooves. Then he tried to help the women, but they shooed him away. What was women’s work should not be done by men. He didn’t know quite what the line between men’s and women’s occupations was, and counted it as another blunder they would hold against him. There had been many of those lately. The whole village lived by a web of traditions and laws he barely fathomed. He wandered over to the small lodge of Red Turkey Head, but the shaman politely declined Skye’s assistance and said he owned nothing anyway.

  Early the following morning the village formed into a caravan, somehow creating order out of bedlam. Skye brought his dun packhorse to Victoria, who squinted silently at him and then loaded it with their few possessions. Even its packsaddle was borrowed. He hoped he might travel with her this day, and perhaps the companionship would bridge the deepening gulf between them. But she busied herself, avoided him, helped drop the lodgecover and load it onto a travois, loaded the family parfleches upon packhorses, gathered lodgepoles into bundles and hung some from each side of two ponies—and ignored his efforts at conversation.

  Walks Alone and Arrow had ridden forward, where a vanguard was forming. Skye saw at once that the great men of the village—the seers, Rotten Belly, war chiefs, subchiefs, war leaders like Beckwourth, were gathering. The procession would be led by Father of All Buffalo, the camp chief, with Rotten Belly close behind. Skye thought to ride picket duty out on a flank but was sharply turned away by a leader of the Kit Fox warrior society, whose duty and honor it was to protect the flanks as the caravan proceeded. That left the rear, so he rode back to where the horse herd milled—there weren’t many because most animals were employed as transportation—and there he discovered youths, barely men, guarding the animals. They eyed him coldly. Behind them, forming a rear guard, were more of the Kit Fox warriors, who had the honor of guarding the village this day—or maybe this trip.

  Within the forming column Skye saw all the rest: wives and daughters, children, old men and women, infants in cradle boards, little ones in baskets tied to travois, older ones sitting behind their mothers. There was no place for him, a man without status among these people. He scarcely knew where to turn. To ride beside Victoria, and her mother, and her feeble grandfather, and her sisters, would shame her and him. To ride among those who didn’t want him among them because he possessed few war honors would be to suffer rebuke.

  Mysteriously, without any command, the village began its long journey amidst cries, the lashing of whips, the bellowing of horses, and the barking of a hundred curs. The great procession wound its way eastward along the Yellowstone River. Horsemen sat their ponies on almost every ridge and promontory within sight, guarding the People. Skye had seen villages in transit, but still he marveled. This was a festive occasion, and these people had gauded themselves in fine style, with bright tradecloth sashes, red headbands, jingle bells, beribboned manes, eagle feather bonnets. But all this didn’t lift his spirits; he felt utterly out of place, not even welcome among his own lodgemates. He scarcely knew where to ride. He had a valuable weapon, a Hawken that could reach farther toward an enemy—or game—than anything else in the village, and yet the closed ranks of the Absarokas nullified its power.

  So he rode his fine black horse in a sort of no-man’s-land, well to the left of the column—the river flowed on the right—but far from the mounted vedettes who protected the vulnerable side of the column. And no one paid him the slightest attention, least of all the woman he called his wife.

  They camped that night on a cottonwood flat beside the Yellowstone. In the morning they would begin a long detour around a gorge that boxed the river for several miles. The women broke out trail food—pemmican—because the vedettes, who doubled as hunters out on the flank, had made no meat that long dusty day. Everyone was in a festive spirit—they loved to travel, and every bend of the river brought its own excitement, even though they had seen all that country many times. Many of the women built wickiups of brush and covered them with robes for a shelter, electing not to raise a lodge.

  Not until the early dusk was he certain he could even stay among Victoria’s people. Some robes had been laid out for him, and he rolled himself up in one upon hard, cold ground. At least Victoria was beside him. Maybe there were other things to be thankful for, too. She had not whiled away time with Beckwourth all day.

  “Victoria—”

  “I am tired.”

  “You have a fine village. I have never seen such a great people.”

  She stared at him quietly, her eyes not cold this one moment, smiled, and then pulled her robes tight about her.

  It was a long, chill night, but the weather prophet had been correct: no storm passed over them to make life on the trail miserable.

  Skye awakened at the first hint of dawn, relieved himself in the river, splashed icy water over his face and beard, and stood quietly, watching the light thicken beyond the steep hills in the east. These dawn moments, when the whole world lay hushed, were holy to him, the time he saw into himself the best, and the time he understood and loved others the most.

  He sensed the presence of another even before he turned to discover the seer, his friend, Red Turkey Head, beside him. The man reached to Skye’s chest and touched the bear claw necklace.

  “You have bear medicine,” he said.

  Skye nodded, unable to think of a thing to say.

  “Today you will ride with me.”

  “I would enjoy your company, Grandfather.”

  The seer nodded. “Ride with me and they see.”

  Skye wasn’t certain what the shaman meant. But it didn’t matter. This day he would ride with the one in the village who accepted him wholly.

  “I am the least of the prophets,” the older man said. “So I ride where there is least honor.”

  “You are the greatest of the seers, Grandfather.”

  “I will not say it about myself. This sun we will ride behind the rest, and just ahead of the horse herd. That is t
he place I choose.”

  “Then I will join you there, Grandfather.”

  The seer nodded. “I will tell you the ways of the Absaroka, the people of the fork-tailed bird. It is good for you to learn the ways and beliefs of the People.”

  An hour later, after a breakfast of jerky, Skye found Red Turkey Head riding one horse while leading two packhorses that dragged his entire possessions, including his small lodge, perhaps fifty yards ahead of the boys herding the horses. They rode companionably through the morning, speaking little. Once in a while one of the Kit Fox Society warriors rode close, staring at the shaman and at Skye, and then returned to picket duty.

  “They see you with me,” Red Turkey Head said. “It is good. You are a blessing and a gift to the Absaroka people, Man Not Afraid of the Pawnees.”

  “I feel as if I’m not helping your people much.”

  “You follow your path, and the People do not understand it.”

  “Not just the People. My wife doesn’t understand it.”

  “She is young, and her head is turned by others.”

  “I am losing her.”

  The seer remained silent a moment, and then spoke. “You will lose her if you let her go. You will not lose her if you don’t let her go.”

  “Would you explain that, Grandfather?”

  “If you want to keep Many Quill Woman, you will do what you have to do, and what your medicine tells you to do.”

  All that was a mystery to Skye. But the old man closed the subject by turning to another. “I will tell you the ways of the People, so that you may become one of us. You should know that many things are sacred to the People, gifts of the First Maker, the mystery of all Creation. This land is sacred to us. It is the center of the world. To the north it is too cold; to the south too hot and dry. But here, on the edge of the mountains there is water and wood and the sacred buffalo, our meat and warmth and lodges. Let me tell you, husband of Many Quill Woman, that he who walks with reverence upon the breast of the earth shall be rewarded. He who respects all that is, the four-foots, the winged creatures, the spirits of the rivers and hills, the grasses given us to feed our ponies and feed the buffalo—such a person will be welcomed on this earth by all the spirits and will have friends everywhere. The Absaroka people have friends in the sky and on the earth, in the forests and on the waters.”

  Skye listened for hours to the poetry of the old man, absorbing the wisdom of a people who did not feel that the world was a hostile wilderness but a warm, providing, friendly place where they were welcome. Skye marveled. For him, the wilds had been a place of struggle, desperation, bare survival, and vulnerability to the elements, animals, enemies …

  Thus they rode, toiling over steep slopes until they came to a hot spring where the villagers paused to refresh and wash. The purling hot water, rising out of the base of a cliff, astonished Skye. Women crowded the banks, but long before everyone had washed or refreshed, the camp chief was urging the village on again, and the police society was prodding the procession forward.

  That night they camped at a place where majestic cottonwoods lined the river and a tributary stream rushed out of the south and emptied itself into the Yellowstone. The Crows called it the Diving Water River, an appropriate name. Skye helped the shaman off his horse, and together they raised the lodgepoles and wrapped the lodgecover around them. Skye chopped an armload of firewood for the seer before heading to the lodge of Victoria’s people. A cold wind followed by gray overcast had chilled the village. There would be no wikiups sheltering the village this harsh night.

  “Thank you for your company, Grandfather,” Skye said. “You have taught me much about the ways of the People.”

  He picketed his horses on good grass close to Walks Alone’s lodge. There seemed no point in running the horses out to the common herd with so much grass underfoot.

  “Tell the man who is Victoria’s husband that we have a stew and he should eat,” said Digs the Roots. That was as close as a mother-in-law could come to addressing her son-in-law, but even that represented a major change.

  Victoria quietly repeated her mother’s request, though there was no need for it.

  After their meal, Walks Alone shared a pipe of red willow kinnikinnick and tobacco with Skye and Arrow.

  Skye sensed that something had changed. A revered seer had taken the Englishman for a friend, and now his in-laws, as well as others, were treating him with courtesy.

  He wondered how long it would last. A shaman’s example had restored Skye to the Kicked-in-the-Bellies, but it had not won the Englishman any more honors or made him a man of parts in the village. Compared to the illustrious Beckwourth, he possessed nothing—except a treasured wife.

  thirteen

  The column halted. Beckwourth did not at first know why, but he pushed forward among the headmen and saw the rider. Far ahead, accompanied by two of the Kit Fox Society warriors in the vanguard, rode a stranger, a white man.

  The camp chief, Father of All Buffalo, awaited him, along with the war chiefs, headmen, and Rotten Belly himself. They had made good time for several days, driven east by a sharp west wind that harried the horses and drove spikes of icy air down their backs. Beckwourth wished the seers and weather prophets had moved them to winter grounds much earlier.

  The stranger wore a thick blanket coat and a hat made of glossy beaver fur, and protected his hands in crude gauntlets. Beckwourth couldn’t quite place him. But as the man drew closer, Beckwourth guessed he was Creole, one of the Canadian or St. Louis French in the fur trade. The man reined up at last before Rotten Belly and presented the chief with a plug of tobacco.

  “Beckwourth,” the man said.

  Rotten Belly turned, summoned Beckwourth to his side.

  “Ah, there you are, mon ami. I am Bissette, American Fur. We haven’t met. Would you translate for me?”

  Beckwourth turned to the chief of the Kicked-in-the-Bellies. “This man is Bissette, from American Fur Company, and he wants me to translate. I will tell you what he wants and tell him what you say.”

  Bissette plunged in. “We have start a post at the wedding of the Yellowstone and Big Horn, Monsieur Beckwourth. Kenneth McKenzie makes the trade with River Crows and he desire to serve the Mountain Crows, including your people. So he occupy old post of Manuel Lisa. Maybe he build good post someday. He say, plenty of blankets, powder, lead, rifles, knives, awls, good things. Buffalo are thick on the Big Horn, plenty of wood and grass a little to the south. Your people can winter there, one day’s ride from ze post, make buffalo robes, trade for good things, have fat hiver, winter, ze Absaroka get rich, many guns, much meat, and happy times, oui?”

  That suited Beckwourth just fine. He translated all of that, making sure that the camp chief, Father of All Buffalo, whose decision it would be, heard every word. Many of the village people were crowding in now, wondering about the halt and the visitor. He made sure that all of them heard the good news, too. He was employed by American Fur to steer these people to them and now he would do it—leaving poor old Skye helpless, to boot.

  The camp chief listened sourly, his medicine and wisdom challenged by this proposition. “We will go where the spirits have told me to go,” he said.

  “Grandfather, your word binds us all,” Beckwourth said. “But it would be good to send a few of our warriors back with this man Bissette, to see for themselves if the buffalo are thick on the Big Horn River.” Bissette looked puzzled, so Beckwourth translated the exchange.

  “Ah, monsieur, tell them zat McKenzie’s trader, he make a gift to the headmen, one pair four-point blanket to each headman, more to Rotten Belly and Father of All Buffalo, much tobacco, oui? If they no like place, if no buffalo there, zen they go to Clark’s Fork like you say.”

  Beckwourth explained all that. “Think on it,” he added. All this would result in deliberation. These people would not make a momentous decision without pondering it. “Many buffalo, a warm camp, plenty of wood and grass.”

  And so the column hal
ted while the headmen debated. In either case, the camp on the Big Horn or the camp on Clark’s Fork, they had a long way to go. They were passing through rough country now, where the claws of the mountains stretched down to the Yellowstone, forming steep pine-dotted canyons. They were close to the Buffalo-Jumps-Over-the-Bank River—or the Stillwater, as white trappers called it.

  Beckwourth knew better than to intervene while the seers and headmen, whose office it was to decide such matters, discussed the issue, so he dismounted, stretched his legs, and turned his back to the vicious wind out of the west. Bissette’s proposal was a good one. The village would winter fifteen or twenty miles from the new outpost, an easy ride, and bring in good peltries—beaver, robes, ermine, wolf, all winter.

  Beckwourth spotted Skye out on the fringe of the crowd of spectators and strolled over to him.

  “What’s this about, mate?” Skye asked.

  Beckwourth flashed his wry smile. “About trading. American Fur’s set up shop on the Big Horn in an old cabin put up by Manuel Lisa, got it manned and provisioned. Bissette says there’s plenty of buffalo and good wintering grounds south of there on the Big Horn, so he’s inviting the village to winter there, get fat, arm themselves, and bring in pelts to American Fur Company … . Don’t feel bad. Rocky Mountain Fur paid you to do your best. You did your best.”

  “It’s not over.”

  That struck Beckwourth as pure blindness, but he simply smiled. Poor Skye would not persuade a single villager to hang on to his pelts and trade them at rendezvous next summer.

  The villagers stood stoically as the headmen sat in a circle on the frozen ground, quietly debating. Beckwourth could only wait. He knew better than to push the issue.

  Younger men looked over their horses or grazed them. Women settled on the ground, wrapped in robes and blankets, and hugged their children. Beckwourth found a boulder that deflected the wind, and settled against it. He spotted Victoria, and she smiled at him. In a way, he hated to take her from Skye, but in another way he loved every moment of it. Victoria was the prize. Not only was she the prettiest of the Absaroka girls, she was the wisest, the most traveled and schooled. And she spoke English, more or less, after the years in the fur brigades with Skye.