“Weather might not hold long enough.”
“War honors mean a lot to these people, my friend. You’ve the makings of a headman.”
“And if we lose? Men die?”
“It’s unlikely. Are you coming? We need that Hawken.”
“I think I might.”
Various of the Crows were standing about, but they could only surmise the nature of the English-language exchange.
“Good. We’re leaving at once while we have the weather. A couple of eagle feathers in your bonnet wouldn’t hurt, you know. And a few coups. It’s all a game, Skye.”
“War’s no game, mate. I’ve seen more killing and wounding than most men. And I rarely saw a need for it, except against pirates.”
“We’ll catch them in their lodges. They don’t fight in winter.”
Skye had a reply to that but kept his counsel. A raid would improve his lot in this village, especially if he returned with a few ponies and more coups.
Skye felt at odds with himself. He owed it to Bridger and Fitzpatrick and Sublette to go out and make war on the Blackfeet. Of all the tribes of the northern plains, the Blackfeet posed the greatest danger to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. They had been armed and motivated by the British to attack Yank brigades, and now the American Fur Company had started trading with them, along with Hudson’s Bay, supplying even more rifles and knifes and lance points. The Blackfeet were a proud and powerful league, brilliant in war, a terror to all the surrounding tribes. Anything Skye could do to subdue them would earn him praise and thanks at the rendezvous.
“When are you leaving?”
Beckwourth flashed one of those smiles that had made him a reputation. “Get your gear,” he said, and headed over to the lodge of Pretty Weasel to invite the man to the party.
That very hour, the invited warriors, thirty-eight in all, including Pine Leaf, gathered their war ponies, put together their fighting gear, their leather bags of war paint, a little jerky or pemmican, flint and steel, hooded capotes, leggings, spare moccasins, war shields, braided lariats to deal with stolen horses, and a winter robe or a pair of blankets to sleep in. Then they assembled beside the river while the People watched silently. Skye joined them, mounted on his winter-gaunted black horse, with the dun for a spare.
Skye sensed something was amiss when he told his father-in-law what he would be doing. Walks Alone stared stonily at him. Beckwourth had not sought the blessing of the war leaders, or the consent of Rotten Belly, or a reading of the auguries by the shamans. It was rare not to dance, to supplicate the Above People, to make medicine, to consult the spirits, to read what lay beyond the sky and wind and earth.
But the interlude of the warm winds would be short; they must act at once or not at all. It wasn’t that the warriors ignored their medicine. Many paused, arms upraised, to sing a war song, to open medicine bundles and examine what was within, to go off alone to talk with the Ones Above. Indeed, one of the invited men, Barking Wolf, turned away, saying his medicine had warned him of death and cold. He was no less a man among the People for following his medicine.
But the moment arrived that very noon when Beckwourth, Skye, and the proud warriors rode out of the village on their shaggy war ponies, first to supply themselves at the trading house on the Yellowstone, and then to strike north and west, across two hundred miles of rough prairie and intermountain basin, to the heartland of the Piegans.
The old men of the village, the women, the chiefs who stayed behind, the youths who weren’t invited—and who would defend the village in the event of attack—studied the departing band. Beckwourth was leading nearly a fifth into battle on winter-weakened horses, going such a distance that they would surely risk death by freezing, storm, or starvation, when the chinook died. For what? Because a Crow had been injured in the thigh last November?
But there was honor in all this: the old men might disapprove—and yet, in some ambivalent way, the whole village exuded pride at these daring men, and would richly honor their success when they returned. If they did return. Skye wondered.
As the war party rode out, Skye discovered Walks Alone watching, and beside him Victoria, wrapped in her blue blanket, staring at him, her solemn expression ineffable. They had reached some sort of accommodation. She had neither gone to another of Beckwourth’s drinking parties nor given Skye her boundless love, as she had when they were among the fur brigades. He hadn’t lost her, here in this Absaroka village of hers—nor had he recovered her affections. Some fresh war honors might help, and he admitted to himself that that was the real reason he was going.
They rode north under a fitful and low sun that somehow belied the eerie warmth of the chinook and reminded him that this was January. Still, by day, at least, the weather remained pleasant, though cold crept back as soon as the sun plummeted in mid-afternoon. This group of Absaroka warriors was uncommonly silent, as if they were all wondering about the wisdom of a sortie fought without the blessing of the People. Maybe death would ride beside them this time.
Beckwourth followed the same route he had taken the last time, taking his Crows through the bleak gateway that divided the Belt Mountains on the west and the Snowies on the east, and into the snow-swept Judith country. The weather held, though some days a high overcast reminded them that Father Sun was powerless against the ferocity of the Cold Maker.
Beckwourth headed straight for the square-shaped butte that served as a landmark. A somber creek there would take them to the Missouri, which would have to be forded, no small matter in the middle of winter. They had no trouble finding game, which was herded up and easy to kill because the deer or antelope were weakened, slow, and faced decaying snowdrifts in every direction. Each dusk they roasted deer or antelope, picketed their horses on thin brown grass, and then lay in the icy dark, not wanting to give their presence away with a night fire.
By the end of the third day, Skye sensed that the chinook was about to end. He could not say why. Everything looked and felt the same. But the air had a different scent, the arctic smell he knew so well. They were traversing a desolate land of great bluffs and valleys, barren, brown, gray, and patched with dirty snow.
At midafternoon, with the light failing, Beckwourth began looking for a place to camp. They weren’t far from the Missouri, and not far from the heartland of their enemies. Skye surmised that their leader would settle for a spot a mile or so ahead, where some cottonwood mottoes offered firewood and a respite from the raw wind. They lay on a creek between steep bluffs.
The Siksika struck without warning. One moment the Crows were riding quietly north lulled by the soft clopping of hooves; the next, swarms of bright-clad Blackfoot warriors were racing their little ponies down the tan bluffs, howling the Devil’s music. Ambush. And a bad place. Beckwourth reacted instantly, motioning his band forward to the woods, where they could find shelter and erect a defense. But no sooner had they whipped their gaunt horses toward the woods than another swarm of Blackfeet burst from that cover, with wild howling punctuated by the dull bark of smoothbore musketry and the rumble of hooves.
Trapped. Attacked on three sides. The Crows started to mill, uncertain of direction. One swift glance told Skye they were facing eighty or ninety Blackfeet, who held the high ground and largely surrounded the Crows. Beckwourth saw the situation, too, and turned his pony east, where the creek flowed between cutbanks that would pose a barrier on one side.
So much for Beckwourth’s optimism, Skye thought. Some Kicked-in-the-Bellies would die this day. Skye spotted a buffalo wallow and raced toward it, while around him swirled the melee of battle. It was time to put his Hawken to use. It reached farther than the Nor’wester rifles the Blackfeet had traded from Hudson’s Bay. But it wasn’t much of a weapon to use from the back of a galloping horse. He reached the wallow, dropped off the black, and sprawled on the half-thawed mud, feeling ice water soak his leggings. He paused a moment to slow his pulse and aim, then fired. A distant warrior was smashed off the back of his spotted pony. Swiftly, Sk
ye loaded, a guessed-at charge of powder, a patch and ball, rammed down the muzzle. A cap over the nipple. He lowered his rifle, his elbows solidly supported by the frozen mud, saw a Blackfoot looming over his Crow friend Running Duck, squeezed a shot—and saw blood blossom in the warrior’s shoulder. Running Duck dodged the war club and escaped.
The nipple was fouled. Skye stabbed at it, scraped away the stinking powder residue, reloaded, and shot again. But time was running out. He would be overrun in a few moments. He loaded, sprang for the black horse, which was trotting rapidly toward the retreating Crows, and saw it might be too late. A Blackfoot was cutting him off from his horse. Skye whirled, aimed the Hawken point-blank, fired, and hit the horse rather than the rider. The pony collapsed instantly, throwing the warrior. Skye barreled in, clubbed the man, and then raced for his horse. He had run out of time. Half a dozen Blackfeet were closing in. He reached the black, clambered slowly, much too slowly, aboard the frightened horse, and urged it south toward the retreating Crows. An arrow pierced Skye’s buckskin tunic, tearing at him but otherwise doing no harm. The howling behind him served better than spurs or whips to drive the black forward, and then suddenly Skye found himself temporarily alone.
He tugged the black’s rein, slowing him down, husbanding what little energy remained in the bony animal. Ahead of him, the Crows were retreating pell-mell toward home, a defense abandoned. He glanced behind him, discovering knots of Blackfeet on the ground, scalping two Absarokas. In spite of their great advantage, they were not pursuing. Maybe the Hawken, a weapon they knew and dreaded, was staying them.
His rifle was empty. He tried desperately to reload while on the run, but his hands were numb, he was shaking, and he could barely sit his horse. Except for his belt knife, he was unarmed. But it didn’t seem to matter just then. For whatever reason, the Blackfeet weren’t giving chase. He peered about, not quite grasping what was happening, and then saw what he had missed in the fading winter light: a bank of ominous black clouds had massed across the western sky, blotting out the residue of sunlight. Within an hour, the warriors would be fighting an enemy far worse than the Siksika.
The retreating Crows were a sorry sight. They had lost horses, and some rode double. One badly wounded warrior, apparently unconscious, was held in the saddle by another less injured one. In the thickening darkness it was hard to see. Beckwourth was all right, and leading the pell-mell flight out of that valley of doom.
They found no shelter in the Judith country when the wind quickened, the air turned sharply cold, and then stinging crystals of snow drove into their necks, numbed their ears and hands and feet, and collected on their robes. There was nothing to do but keep on going, running down the wind, away from the Blackfeet and the howling storm, which began blowing murderous gusts of lacerating snow into them. The ground whitened; they lost all sense of direction, but walked grimly onward, the horses exhausted and sullen, the injured warriors near death.
Beckwourth finally hit a patch of woods on the Judith River and they found some small shelter in it. Building a fire was out of the question in the blizzard and darkness, but at least they could rest the horses, feed them cottonwood bark, and try to gather their strength while rolled in robes that did little to turn the bone-numbing cold. Skye’s whole body ached. He needed fire, fast, instead of a howling wind, penetrating snow, and shocking cold. In utter darkness he wallowed about, trying to make camp with hands that wouldn’t respond to his bidding. His colleagues were doing much the same, but he couldn’t see them. He finally pulled his Hawken from its sheath, released the black to make whatever living it could, and crawled deep into a thicket of junipers, which brushed his face and stabbed at him. There, in a sheltered hollow, he pulled his thin robe over his head and tried to rest, lying on gnarled roots that tormented him, hoping he would survive until dawn.
It was the coldest and longest night in his memory. He wondered if his fingers and ears and toes and nose would survive the frostbite. He and the whole party were at death’s door—and for what?
eighteen
Out of the howling snow late one gloomy day came Skye and the army of the fallen, each man and horse snow-caked, the living hunched in their saddles, the dead frozen over their mounts. They came softly, their passage muffled by the veils of snow, the sight of them curtained by layers of white gauze. No one perceived their arrival; no one was out in the midst of the Cold Maker’s revenge for the stolen days of comfort.
But for a subtle shifting of the silences, no one within the Absaroka lodges knew of their arrival, so their entry went unremarked until the few with keenest senses wondered, poked their heads through the oval lodge doors, and beheld disaster. The news passed among the lodges, but slowly on a day that paralyzed life and held it hostage. A woman sawing buffalo meat from a hanging carcass saw them, wailed, but her soul song died among the sheets of snow. She stared, spellbound, as if she were seeing spirits, not mortals. She began to wail, her mewling sharp in the brittle air.
Bitter cottonwood smoke hung over the village, driven to the ground by the avalanche from the sky. She watched them make their way to the great lodge of Arapooish, for they must report in exact detail all that happened, even in the midst of misery. She beheld Antelope, Beckwourth, in the lead, followed by two snow-caked ponies bearing dead men, and then the rest, some of them humped against the jolting of their horses in a manner that told her they were wounded.
“Eee!” she cried, and this time other heads poked through lodge doors, and a somber, blanketed handful of people followed the fallen army to the lodge of their chief. Now at last the wailing of the women crescendoed beyond the censorship of snow, and the village came alive, erupting from the lodges as swiftly as they all could gather robes and capotes and blankets about them to stave off the Cold Maker’s deadly attack. By the time Antelope’s war party had gathered at the great lodge, half the village had gathered around.
But Arapooish took his time. He already knew, and the waiting was his statement of anger and sorrow. Even as the fallen army waited, the tallykeeping women somehow discovered the names of the dead, and the widows wailed.
Skye hunched deep in his saddle, wanting only to reach the warmth of a lodge. His hands were useless, his ears blackened with frost, and his toes little more than a memory. Beckwourth sat his fancy pony, the hood of his blanket capote off, his head bare to the snow, waiting for the stragglers. Some, maybe most, were suffering frostbite or fevers. None among them bore scalps on a lance, or wore the ensigns of victory, or had painted up. None drove captured ponies before him. Some rode double.
At last Arapooish emerged, gaunt and rawboned, wrapped in a thick black robe, his obsidian eyes alive with some emotion Skye couldn’t fathom. His wives and children, swaddled in bright blankets, arrayed themselves around him. It was up to Beckwourth to talk, not an easy task for a defeated war leader. But Beckwourth, formidable in all ways, was up to it.
“My chief and friends, we found the Siksika as we had intended, on a fine day, near Square Butte near the Big River, on our way to the ford where we might cross to the land of the Piegans. There, actually, the Piegans found us, traveling through the valley where we had ambushed them not long ago. The good weather had enticed them from their lodges, just as it had drawn us out of ours, with dreams of victory.”
“They came down upon us from both bluffs, howling their curses, catching us without cover. When we ran forward we met with yet another bunch blocking our passage. But we fought bravely, for these are the best men among us, and retreated, taking a toll of the enemy. But there were many of them, a hundred to our thirty-eight, all well armed by Hudson’s Bay, and deadly. The husband of Head-and-Tails Robe and the husband of Little Horns received their mortal wounds at that time, and the two sons of Sings at Dawn died later and are here.”
Now the women wailed, sorrow for the widows of the fallen, grief for the warriors, gouting from them.
“Plenty Wood, Light Robe, and Old Skull were wounded, but they are here with us, alive
in spite of the efforts of the Cold Maker. Behold them. We lost five horses. Mister Skye, Man Not Afraid of the Pawnees, killed one Piegan, or so we believe, and fought bravely, slowing the attack. And so he has a coup.”
“We retreated while a storm gathered and the enemy headed for shelter. We were caught in the storm, without any place to hide from it, and most of us have been frostbitten.”
No one spoke. Snow whirled down.
Arapooish nodded. “So it is,” he said, and returned to the warmth of his lodge. The abbreviated report was done. Skye observed the wives and parents of the fallen, all grief-stricken, some weeping. Most of the fallen had large families, brothers, sisters, children.
Skye wished he had resisted the temptation to enhance his status in the village. It was foolhardy. He had counted coup—the sole warrior to do so—but at what price? He wondered whether his frozen body would ever recover. He looked for Victoria but didn’t see her. It was hard to know who was who, so wrapped in robes and blankets were the spectators.
Somberly, the village boys led the ponies away from the encampment. There, in the cottonwood groves, the youths would chop green limbs and let the ponies gnaw on them. The softer bark was good fodder. The families of the dead lifted their men off the ponies, finding that they had frozen into an elbow and could not be properly laid on a death scaffold without thawing. The cottonwood groves would soon hold upon their limbs the bodies of two warriors.
Beckwourth walked proudly back to his lodge, ignoring his frostbitten feet and the stares of the shamans, ignoring especially the calm assessing gaze of Red Turkey Head. Pine Leaf and Stillwater helped him.
The snowflakes drove needles of pain into Skye’s face, and he retreated swiftly to Walks Alone’s lodge, where he discovered gloom. Digs the Roots, Victoria, Rosebud, and Makes the Robe wept. Walks Alone had sunk into his backrest and stared numbly into the cold, wavering fire. Walks Alone’s old father had burrowed into his buffalo robe and was staring at nothing, probably dreaming of warmth and sun.
Dark Passage Page 11
