She probably entertained only one thought in her head and that was to find Simon MacLees and present her little girl to him, and begin nesting with him again. Well, Bonfils would help her do it! And that was why she would stay with him She could not get to St. Louis unaided.
A few hours elapsed, with the woman alternately staring at him from a blank face, and viewing the shore. When the time to stop and rest and eat had passed and twilight lowered she grew agitated but said nothing. Bonfils found the trave easy: the river took them along without effort or even steer ing. The empty flatboat cleared all snags and bars, and seemed unstoppable.
Then, at twilight, the woman arose, negotiated the passage alongside the cargo box and cabin, and confronted Bonfils.
“You left them behind,” she said.
“We will go to St. Louis faster this way. You will see your man sooner.”
“Why did you leave them?”
“Because Skye and I want the same job as trader. If I ge there ahead of him, I will get it.”
He wasn’t very sure of that but it sounded good. He still had to deal with whatever Marsh told Chouteau about the Sans Arcs.
“Why am I here with you? Why did you not leave me bad there with the others?”
“So that I can take you to your husband.”
She stared at him again, her warm brown eyes unblinking “It is not so,” she said.
“Of course it is so, madame.”
She sighed. “We are hungry. My girl need food.” She pointed. “There is a place. See, many trees. We will have a fire and eat.”
“No, we have to get to St. Louis.”
She stood silently a minute. “I will walk to this place, St. Louis,” she said. “Let me go.”
“Too far to walk.”
“I will walk for many suns. I am not afraid.”
“No one can walk that far.”
She seemed puzzled. “I can walk as far as I want.”
“Well, you just wait. Maybe after dark I will find a place.”
He could use some food himself but there had been no islands.
He took another tack. “If you walk, you won’t be able to carry all the things I got for you.”
“Why did you get those things?”
“So you can look pretty. When we get to St. Louis, you must wear your paint, and put feathers in your hair, and wear the jingle bells on your feet, yes? Then you will look like a queen of the Cheyenne, and all the white men will look upon you with wonder.”
She did not reply for a moment. Then, “Is that what the white women wear?”
“Oh, yes, feathers and beads and warpaint. They are all savages at heart.”
He felt her stare raking him again, and didn’t like it.
“Marriage is sacred among the People,” she said softly, carefully choosing words. “We mate for life. My man MacLees is mine forever, and I am his. I will go to him and give him all that I can. All that I am. He will be sad because we have lost a son. But he will be glad to see our daughter again, and see how she has grown. She walks in beauty. She is a wise child. He will rejoice to see me. See? I know how to say these things in English.”
They sailed into dusk, and then Bonfils did discover a wooded island. A swift survey revealed a thin strand of wooded land, dividing two sweeping branches of the river.
He pulled the tiller and the flatboat headed for a clear area of the shore, where there seemed to be no tangle of submerged limbs.
She watched him, studied the island, studied the shoreline, looking like a caged eagle wanting to fly away. He would have to be careful. Keep his rifle in hand, keep her away from it, keep her away from the boat, compel her to gather wood, build a fire, and start a kettle of cornmeal boiling while he watched over her and the girl. The girl, that was it. The girl was his hostage. He wondered whether she would resist when it came time to travel again. The girl would solve that, but he didn’t want to be so obvious. In the morning he would step aboard with the girl. Lame Deer would come because she had to.
They bumped the shore, and she leapt gracefully to land, carrying her baby in one arm. He followed, tied the flatboat to the thick brush, and unloaded some kitchen goods. She and the child had vanished into a thicket. He swiftly cased the island; it covered perhaps two hectares and neatly divided the river. The banks seemed a vast distance away, low black walls across moon-silvered water.
She took an interminable time, but finally she did emerge from darkness carrying an armload of dry kindling. She carried flint and steel in a small beaded pouch at her waist, and after much effort—a moist breeze discouraged fire-making—she nursed a small flame. An hour later they were eating yet another meal of cornmeal mush; if it were not for some salt he acquired at Sarpy’s store, it would have been almost unbearable.
She ate with her fingers, dipping them into a bowl, and fed MacLees’s brat the same way.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I didn’t see the boy—”
She stared at him.
“I didn’t know your son was there. There were the Sans Arcs, and the fog, and we were being attacked, and I drove them off.”
“The one who died,” she said, “he was my man’s son. I will tell my man about it. Yes, I will tell him that you put powder in the big gun and aimed it, and killed the one who we are talking about, and also the boatman, and wounded Mister Skye very badly. This I will tell my man with a tongue filled with fire. I will speak words of smoke and flame, like the crackling of wood. He will know what to do.”
Bonfils heard the threat in her voice. “You haven’t grieved. You should grieve. Don’t women who lose a son or husband cut half their hair off? Isn’t that the sign of grief among the Cheyenne? A woman’s hair cut on one side?”
She nodded. “It is the way of my People. But not MacLees’s people.”
“You should do that. Ah, yes, it would truly tell MacLees that you grieve.” And make her even wilder looking and more barbaric to St. Louis sensibilities, he thought.
Lame Deer suddenly looked desolate.
She scooped the last of the mush and slid her laden fingers into Singing Rain’s mouth. Then she walked to the river and washed her hands and Bonfils could barely see her in the blackness. She stayed there a long time, while the moon climbed and then vanished behind clouds. He scanned the night sky and decided it would not rain; not for a while. He was uneasy about sharing the flatboat cabin with her. In fact, he thought he might disarm her; especially that knife she wore and used so deftly.
He heard loons calling on the water and a disturbance on shore. Unseen creatures swept through the air about him, and he wondered what they were, and what they were hunting. And still she did not return.
He kicked the fire to pieces and poured water over the ashes, not wanting to be the cynosure of any eyes.
The moon emerged from a silver-lined cloud, and he beheld her again, a dim figure in the pale light. He intended to travel at once, and motioned her toward the flatboat, which rocked quietly in the river, shedding sickly moonlight from its dull hull, thunking softly against a submerged log.
She followed him, stepping into the boat, helping the little girl, offering no resistance.
It was then that he noticed: she had sawed away the lef half of her jet hair. On the right, it hung loosely braided over her breast; on the left, it dangled in crude strands to ear-level The barbaric sign of morning. She turned to him, letting him see her disfigurement, her head thrown back in faint disdain something proud and savage in her ravaged face. Perfect! He exulted. It would add to the sensation she made in St. Louis.
thirty-six
Violent gusts threatened to tip the crude sailboat and swamp it. Skye had to drop the sails during windy moments for fear of capsizing. A south wind at times checked their progress.
They drove downriver for two days without spotting the flatboat. The plan was to sail night and day, taking turns at the tiller. But the second night a massive cloud cover obscured the shores and plunged them into inky blackness, an
d they could only drift across the currents until they struck land, and wait for better visibility.
The next day they started downstream under cast-iron skies that soon began to drizzle, chilling them all. Victoria kep glancing at Skye, worried that the cold rain would furthen weaken him.
“You all right?” she asked.
Skye nodded from his pallet.
“You ain’t,” she said.
Skye agreed. He was maddeningly weak and the numbing rain was bringing on a fever. She nodded to Gill, and they headed for shore again. Gill dropped the sail and wrapped it around the boom, while Victoria pulled a tarpaulin over the boom and anchored its corners to the gunnels, supplying a shelter of sorts, open at both ends but at least a haven of dryness.
The rain pelted down, spattering the river about them, dripping through a hole in the canvas, gusting inward from the aft end of their tentlike shelter. It chilled all of them. It drizzled into the belly of the sailboat and Skye knew they were going to have to bail soon, or slosh around with inches of water on the planks.
He remembered the crude comfort of the flatboat with its enclosed cabin, and he knew that Bonfils and Lame Deer and her daughter were enjoying some measure of comfort.
Gill, cussing softly, scooped water out of the boat using a cooking kettle and a skillet. Skye wished he could help, and at one point sat up to take over the bailing. But then he fell back upon the stacked supplies.
“Don’t do that,” Victoria said.
“Got to help Red.”
“You get sick.”
Skye was feeling plenty sick. The rain had halted his healing and left him weak and shaky. “I have no fire in me,” he said.
“You’ll get better.”
“I wonder.”
“It take long time; you got three wounds, two very bad.”
Skye sighed. Would he ever get well? What if he sank into sickliness, and became dependent on Victoria to keep him going? Was his life going to change because of his wounds? He’d seen plenty of shot-up men fumbling through hopeless days.
“You stay in there, Skye. I’ll pitch this damned water out,” Gill said.
“You’ll get sick yourself.”
“Been sick before. I don’t have no holes in me.”
Gill scooped another thin load of water with his sheet metal skillet.
They could not manage a fire that day. Skye felt a ravenous thirst for tea. If he could have a few cups of steaming tea his soul and body would be repaired. But there wasn’t a dry stick of wood in sight. So they all starved.
“I’m ready to eat a catfish,” Gill said. “You got to understand that’s the sickliest flesh ever I ate, but I’d eat one now and lick my chops too.”
Skye lost his hunger and lay quietly, a blanket over him that only partly subdued his shivering. Wet gusts bulged the tarpaulin, spraying water within. He wondered if he would ever be warm again. This was worse than trying to get through an arctic night in the mountains rolled in a pair of buffalo robes.
Red sat inside the shelter, only to bolt outside every few minutes, never happy. He dripped water. His coppery hair was plastered to his freckled face. He looked like a trapped animal. Finally he began untying the boat.
“I’m steering out and letting it drift,” he said. “I’ll watch the bends and keep a hand on the tiller sometimes.”
Skye nodded. He would have done the same thing.
The boat slowly drifted into the channel while the shores fell away, veiled by the rain and mist, and they were nowhere, sailing through a private world, going wherever the current took them.
Skye felt a chill settle in his bones. Victoria discovered it; she was always checking on her man. She piled her blankets over his but this did not stop the shivering.
“You ain’t well yet,” she said crossly.
“I’m too cold.”
He shook until he could shake no more and slumped into stupor as the heap of blankets gradually warmed him. He did not know how long he lay like that, but when he returned to this world the rain had stopped; the distant riverbanks were clearly visible, and the cast-iron overcast had given way to light cloud cover.
“Some way to get a job,” he said to her. He was sick of travel, sick of weakness and pain.
“You get better.”
He didn’t feel better. Gill was at the tiller again but not employing sail because the tent shelter still stretched over the boom.
He heard Skye and came forward, ducking under the canvas. “You mind if I raise the sail?”
Skye shrugged.
Gill undid the canvas at the gunnels, pulled away the tarp, untied the sail and raised it. The unstable craft heeled and then settled. They were plowing downstream again, driven by a steady northwest wind.
Skye watched the world roll by. His life seemed to be out of his hands.
“I’d like to see the mountains again,” he said.
“I don’t like this country neither,” Victoria said.
“Hope to get shut of it soon.”
“We’ll dry out,” Gill said. “Clouds getting lighter all the time.”
Skye felt a little better, and not so fevered. But he was not fooled. Injuries left their mark.
He felt Victoria’s small hand on his forehead, and then felt it run through the stubble of his beard.
“You gonna be strong soon,” she said.
She knew what he had been thinking even though he had spoken not a word of it.
The trading position meant everything to him. He would have a living and a future. She would be comfortable. He would be able to help her people. The Crows would have a friend in the trading room. With the beaver trade fading, the position was his bright, sweet tomorrow.
That is, if he ever recovered his strength. He had been so gravely wounded that he might not recover the strength of his youth; this might be the great divide, separating the strong young man from the weakened older one. This terrible assault on his body might force him into a different and sedentary life, or one filled with chills and sickness, such as he had experienced here in this rainy prairie land, where the vegetation grew thicker, and moist breezes dampened everything.
He rose shakily. “I’ll take the tiller,” he said.
Red grinned. “Long enough for me to stretch,” he said.
Skye liked Red Gill. The man was simultaneously secretive about his livelihood and open, brash, straightforward about everything else, including his passion for flowers. Let there be a bloom along any shoreline and Gill was steering toward it to have a closer look. Sometimes the man collected asters or daisies and decorated the prow of the little boat, with all the pride of a Venetian gondolier.
“You regret going to St. Louis, given as how you got shot and robbed and all?” Gill asked.
“Nothing is without risks,” Skye said. “And the more something is worth, the worse the risks.”
“You gonna get that job?”
“I hope I do.”
“Me, I’m going to put in a word for you, and a word against Bonfils.”
They sailed through the rest of the day under a cloud cover, and then headed for an island.
“Maybe we can get a fire going,” Gill said, eyeing the long, thin strand of woods.
When they bumped into the shore, Victoria made the boat fast, and they strolled along the narrow place, scaring up ducks. There were plenty of campsites visible, some of them recent, and even some gathered wood. But only with great difficulty was Victoria able to nurse a glowing ember bedded in the underside of some bark she peeled from a cottonwood into a tiny flame.
They ate hot food that night, and Skye drank what he thought was a gallon of tea. They set off as the light was fading, and a half hour later Victoria spotted a small orange glow on another island.
“Bonfils,” Gill said.
“You want to stop and take him?” asked Victoria.
Gill said, “It’s a temptation. Get our stuff back from that sonofabitch.”
“You sure that’s him?” Skye
asked.
“I can make out the flatboat.”
Skye pondered it. “What I’d like most, mates, is to pull over, wait for dark, take down our sail so we’re less visible, and slide by. We’ll get to St. Louis days ahead of him. I think there’s advantage in it. We’ve got the sail and we’ve got three people to navigate all day and night. We’ll get our outfits back when he gets there.”
“You think he’s expecting us to follow?”
“You, maybe. You live in St. Louis. Not me. He probably thinks we quit and headed back to the mountains,” Skye said.
“I’d like to take the bastard.”
“Then what?”
“Get my stuff back. And the boat.”
“Are you ready to keep him prisoner? I can’t help much. You’d have to steer, ward off Bonfils.”
“Me, I’d just put him off, like he put us off, go on without him.”
“You figure you can take him?”
The boatman reflected. Bonfils was larger, harder, and had just spent several years in the mountains. “I don’t know,” he said.
Gill was plainly tempted to surprise Bonfils, but in the end, acquiesced. They all wanted to talk with Pierre Chouteau before Bonfils did. They swiftly dropped the light-colored sail and headed for the shadowed right bank where they waited until the night was inky, and then steered out into the current. In an hour they had passed the wavering orange flame and left it far behind.
thirty-seven
One day they passed a settler’s cabin. Smoke issued from a rock chimney. Tilled fields planted to corn and wheat surrounded it. A pole fence held some cows in a paddock.
“Is this a white man’s village?” Victoria asked.
“Nope,” said Gill, “just a farmer.”
“What is a farmer?”
“One who grows food for a living.”
“But there is food everywhere—”
“Farmers, they plow and plant, and work a heap for nothing much except feeding the grasshoppers. You ain’t ever catching me behind a plow, looking at the south end of some mules.”
Victoria absorbed that, without grasping much of it. “Is there a woman in that house?”
“Most likely.”
Downriver Page 21
