by Win Blevins
That night Diah sank into a strange mood. The man who was always steady, always positive, fell to brooding. Sam could hardly believe it. They were down into the foothills, beyond the terrible mountain crest. The horses now could rest and recuperate. The four hunters would be able to find deer or antelope to shoot. The captain always kept the spirits of his men up, but not tonight.
Gobel tried to interest the captain in a tomahawk-throwing contest. The blacksmith could split an aspen tree with the blade, but Jedediah might have been the most accurate thrower in the entire outfit. Tonight he shrugged off Gobel’s invitation.
“What you need,” said Evans, “is a good wrestling match.”
Diah twisted an eyebrow at him and said nothing.
“As you say.” Evans shrugged. “Then why don’t I play some songs?”
He seemed to take on Jedediah’s mood, for during this long May evening, in the shadow of the great mountain to the west, he played not dance tunes but old Irish and Scottish ballads, slow and mournful.
Coy, who picked up on every atmosphere of the camp, howled along with Evans, out of tune but in the spirit.
“Sam,” said Evans genially. He reached another whistle toward Sam. “Give it a try. I have two whistles, one in the key of G and another in the key of D.” Sam had no idea what that meant. “We can play along together. I’d be glad to teach you.”
Sam shook his head. “Nah.”
“It’s a long journey,” said Evans, the whistle still extended. “Evenings last forever this time of year—many hours to while away. Give it a try.”
From mere politeness Sam took the whistle. He put the mouthpiece to his lips the way he’d seen Evans do, and blew a little sound. It was a nice sound, cheerful in the wilderness.
Unexpectedly, he felt something poignant inside, and with it came a small discovery. Yes, he did want to make music on this instrument. He had no idea why—it was madness, as hopeless and wretched as he felt—but he wanted to. And that was enough.
“I’ll try it,” he told Evans.
Evans contributed the next hour or so to teaching Sam fingerings. Soon he could tweet out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” with Evans playing harmony. That pleased Sam. He put the whistle in his possible sack feeling as chipper as he had since … since the day he wouldn’t permit himself to remember.
Evans was thinking of something closer to home.
“Diah, what ails you? You look like you’ve been jilted.” Evans tossed a smile at Gobel, for the captain certainly had never had a sweetheart, not in the years those three had known him.
Jedediah just looked at his three friends for long moments. Finally he said, “She was scared of me. Scared nearly to death. Scared enough to attack. Me.”
The squaw, they realized. There had once been a Paiute girl too. When the brigade rode into her village, she looked up at the strangers, who had faces of a color she’d never seen, some of the visages thick with hair, and all the horses huge. The child fainted dead away.
“It is a puzzle,” said Evans.
Jedediah stared at the ground. When he raised his eyes, they boiled with self-doubt.
“Why? We are well disposed toward them.”
Sam smiled. He could never quite get over Diah’s fancy way of talking.
“We come in fact to help them,” the captain went on, “to trade them products our people know how to create, and in that way show them the benefits of civilization, the path to a higher life.”
He stared blankly into the last of the twilight. “But first she attacked me and then she ran from me as from a demon.”
Coy yipped several times.
“Imagine, a decent Christian gentleman like yourself,” said Evans. Sam saw amusement in Evans’s eyes but heard only sympathy in his voice.
Jedediah nodded yes, but his eyes looked far away. They said mutely, “Why? Why?”
He turned his gaze straight into Sam’s. Jedediah’s face spoke unbearable intensity. “What have I become? Here in the wilds, have I turned into a beast?”
Coy gave forth a full-throated howl now. Sam wondered whether the coyote was protesting the insult to beasts.
Then Sam’s mind was transported back to the night he met Coy and the two of them shielded themselves against the prairie fire in the belly of a buffalo. Soon after Sam had a dream in which he went further—he actually became a buffalo, a man buffalo.
Sam whispered his own name. “He Who Joins with Buffalo.”
He didn’t think Jedediah was right, believing the beasts were below him.
Eighteen
Journey into Night
The four men and the coyote now set off into a country they dreaded more than the mountain. They didn’t know the Indians, who were elusive as ghosts. Jedediah noticed that they went about naked, or the same as naked, and got only the most meager living by hunting, fishing, gathering seeds, and digging roots. Jedediah commented in his journal, “They are more akin to one of the higher orders of beasts than any other Indians we’ve met.”
Still, the dread of the travelers was not of the Indians but the desert. After they passed a big, handsome lake not far from the mountains, the country was arid. It wasn’t the red-rock desert, nor the Mojave, but a new kind of parched landscape. There were still dry lake beds, but no ghostly yucca trees or greasy brush. Instead uniform plains of shad scale reaching off to infinity in every direction. The spines of hills bristled with sagebrush and some cedars, trees with bare, dry trunks that seemed to twist in pain.
“Parch not only the skin and the tongue,” said Evans, “but even the soul.”
As they made camp, Sam looked out into those vast regions, hazy lavender in the twilight, and thought they might stretch forever. He wondered whether he might want to start walking into one of them and never come back.
The captain spotted a high hill with snow on top. Here in early summer, snowpack would mean snowmelt, which would mean drinkable water. So on the morning of June 3 they set out in that direction and rode twenty-eight miles. Along the way a horse collapsed, exhausted. The next morning Jedediah sent the strong Gobel back with water for the horse. After Gobel came in with the horse, they traveled only three more miles, to a range of high hills stretching north-south, and made camp.
So it went. Fifteen miles over the range of hills the next day. Then twelve miles and camp on a creek running east, the way they wanted to go. Twenty-five miles the following day, spotting one Indian along the way, to a camp with good water and grass. Then a day of rest.
On June 10, the horses could no longer carry the men. From now on all would walk, man and beast alike.
Sam’s existence shortened itself to trudge, trudge, trudge. Only on the rest days did life offer something more. He doodled on his tin whistle, or played duets with Evans. The music felt good.
After dark one night they steered toward a distant fire and came on a squaw and two children. Once the Indians overcame their fright, the children played with Coy, fascinated by a tame coyote. Sam got Coy to sit, lie down, shake hands, roll over, and fetch for them. The adults shared their water with the white men, and cooked scorpions for their own supper.
The captain camped three miles away from the Indians, and that night a rain refreshed the horses.
Nothing, not even his new hobby of music, could refresh Sam’s spirit. As he made a physical journey with three friends, he made an emotional journey alone, through a darkness whose depth he could not plumb. He talked little and smiled less. He was indifferent to his own physical suffering. The fatigue of the numberless miles, the blast of the noonday sun, the scorch of thirst, and the pangs of hunger—he barely noticed any of them.
Neither did he take pleasure in the travel. The delightful cool of the dawns, the amethyst air in the evenings, the dark, jagged lines of the mountains against the salmon-colored horizons, the immeasurable depth of skies as perfect a blue as the planet had ever made—all were lost on Sam.
Few other pleasure, either. Except for tootling with Evans.
He took no solace from the thought of his infant daughter, who in the care of his closest family was probably now learning to crawl. He did not look forward to rendezvous, to the taste of coffee or whiskey, to the fun of card games or the exhilaration of wrestling matches or shooting competitions. He didn’t look forward to the sight of old friends, to trading tales of a year’s doings with his friends. His life now was only one tale, a tragedy his tongue would never tell.
He kept some connection with his animals, playing with Coy, taking care of Paladin.
His only tie to his human companions, really, was that tin whistle. He found energy to learn the tricky ways of the little instrument from Evans, and even to get a few tunes under his fingers. He passed over the cheerful dance tunes and learned the mournful ballads. Even the fun of playing, though, was mostly solitary. Each night in camp he would meander away from camp, sit in the shade of a rock, and then wander through melodies. Some were the ones Evans had taught him, and some he remembered from his childhood, the Welsh songs his father Lew sang.
Soon Sam began to play his own melodies. He couldn’t have said what they were or where they came from. His fingers made them up, not his head. They were mostly in a minor key, slow and desolate. Playing them was not a pleasure, just something he needed to do, an imperative of the heart.
Coy always kept him company while he played.
Slowly, the four trappers forged a way onward across the great desert. Three of them hoped one day to come in sight of the Rocky Mountains, and one trapper didn’t hope for anything. From June 10 forward they were on an allowance of four ounces of dried meat per man per day. Though the Indians might have known how to take plant food in this barren country, the trappers didn’t. Four ounces for miles and miles of trudging—that didn’t add up.
They walked anyway, twenty miles on the eleventh, twenty-five on the twelfth, thirty on the thirteenth. Twice they saw antelopes but couldn’t get close enough for a shot, not nearly close enough.
On June 14 they came upon ground made wet by trickles from low hills ahead. Since the horses were exhausted, they stopped after a day’s travel of only eight miles and rested. The next day they walked up to the head of the waters in those hills, ten miles, and again the next day they rested at the springs.
If Jedediah suffered from doubts, he didn’t express them. Gobel seemed too downhearted to speak. Evans played his whistle in his usual sprightly way, if only for his own ears. The captain left to walk to a high point and scout for the next water, beyond these hills.
Sam sought solitude at a distance from the camp. Tonight he just stared out over the desert. Mount Joseph was far behind them now, beyond the horizon. He might have used the thought of it—all that water, all those deer, even the cold—for comfort. But he sought no comfort. He had heard starving to death was a peaceful way to go. You just got weaker and weaker. After a while you turned fey in the mind, and drifted away.
Very different from thirsting to death, where men went out raving.
Coy barked sharply, his threatening bark. The pup was off somewhere, probably hunting mice or rats or the like. Again and again. Coy was plenty damn mad at something.
Then Sam saw. He levered himself to his feet and ran.
Gobel dived at Coy and missed. Coy snarled and skittered away.
The huge Gobel sprinted with amazing speed. For an instant Coy froze. Gobel flopped that enormous body toward the pup. As Coy dodged, Gobel caught a hind leg. With the other hand he swung his knife.
Coy bit the knife hand, but squealed in pain. Gobel let go and bellowed.
Coy dashed off a few steps and launched a torrent of barks at the blacksmith.
Gobel got to his feet and ran at Coy again.
At that instant Sam blind-sided Gobel with a body block.
Both men rolled and skidded over cactuses and stones.
“You son of a bitch!” Sam jabbed the heel of his hand hard at Gobel’s nose.
The blacksmith swatted it away.
Sam rolled away and crouched. Careful, he told himself. Sam didn’t care about the hundred pounds the smith outweighed him. He was worried about the knife.
Gobel lunged with the blade.
Sam dodged and kicked him in the head.
Evans gave a war cry and bowled into Gobel. They went a-tumble, and Sam could hardly tell which leg and arm belonged to which man. They rolled a dozen steps downhill.
Coy ran toward them, barking.
They fell apart and faced each other.
“Throw down the knife,” rasped Evans. “A fair fight. This will be a good sport. Just sport.”
Coy circled behind them, barking at Gobel.
Suddenly Gobel dived at the coyote and slashed with his blade.
Coy yipped and ran off. Sam spotted blood on his fur.
Sam charged Gobel.
Evans tripped Sam.
Sam’s head hit a rock that knocked him silly.
“‘A fair fight,’ I said. Put down the knife.”
“I don’t give a damn about any pub brawl,” said Gobel, snarling, “and I don’t give a damn about you. I’m gonna kill that damned coyote and eat it.”
“Ah, so that’s it. Well, the coyote steak awaits you, but it’s right beyond me.” Evans could get charm and menace into his voice at once.
“And me,” said Sam.
The three of them formed a triangle, all watching the others.
“I’ll shoot the first man who strikes another,” said the captain.
He stood on a boulder just uphill from them, his rifle leveled.
“We’re starving!” yelled Gobel. “Let’s eat the damned coyote.”
“Drop the knife, or I’ll shoot you,” said the captain.
Gobel reached the knife high and slammed it point first into the ground. The handle quivered. “We’re starving!” he yelled.
Everyone relaxed.
“You’re right,” said Jedediah, voice steady, firm. “Pick up your knife now and use it. Kill the weakest horse, the bay.”
The men felt uneasy eating horse meat in the middle of the night. The meat was stringy and tough. They watched each other.
Sam had found a long gash along Coy’s hind leg. The pup wouldn’t hold still long enough to get it salved.
They butchered the horse out and cut the meat into strips to dry. The best parts they were broiling on sticks over an open fire.
If Sam was distrustful of Gobel now, Coy was even more wary. The men had to throw pieces of horse meat, what they wouldn’t eat themselves, well out into the darkness for Coy.
“Mr. Gobel,” said Evans, “I still want to meet you in a wrestling match.”
“I’ll beat hell out of you.” Gobel was twice the poundage of Evans, and at least twice the muscle.
“Probably. But it will be good fun, and I might surprise you with a trick or two.”
“Enough of this,” said Jedediah.
They ate in silence a long while.
“I don’t like having the coyote along,” said Gobel. “He scares game away.”
“We haven’t seen any sign of game in days,” said Jedediah.
Sam added unnecessarily, “There’s none to scare away.”
“Well, there might be,” Gobel said sullenly.
“However hungry we get,” said Diah, “we will not kill the coyote.”
“Or Paladin,” said Sam.
“Or Paladin,” Diah agreed. “We’re men. We have to be better than the beasts.”
There it was again. Sam didn’t think much of that idea.
“Before I’d starve,” said Gobel, his eyes hard at Sam, “I’d even eat you.”
The next morning, though, Gobel apologized to them all.
“It’s forgotten,” said Sam. He meant it. The blacksmith wasn’t basically mean. He just got to simmering sometimes.
That day, June 17, was horrific. Over two ranges of hills they staggered, finding not a drop of water. They camped in the third range, which was bone dry.
In the mid
dle of the next day, contouring along a side hill, Silas Gobel sank to the ground like a deflated balloon.
They hovered over him.
“I’m done,” he said. “No farther. I ain’t going no farther. Unless God himself picks me up and carries me, I’m done.”
Sam, Evans, and Diah looked at each other.
“You have to get up,” said the captain.
Gobel gave them a look Sam would never forget. It said, How dumb can you get? No farther means no farther. He didn’t even bother to shake his head no. He just stared. A look Sam had never seen was on his face—Gobel had given up.
“Let’s get him over there,” Jedediah said, nodding toward the shade of a cedar.
The three took Gobel’s arms and legs and dragged the great body twenty feet into the shade. When they got there, Sam sagged onto the ground. Then, although exhausted, he sat back up. He didn’t want the captain to think he was going like Gobel.
They sat beside their friend for a few minutes, not speaking. They all looked at each other, over and over, almost as lovers commune with their eyes.
All acknowledged silently the same reality. Their horns had been dry now for a full day, so they had no water to leave with their friend. Jedediah found some dried meat and set it beside him. Gobel handed it back. Jedediah set it next to him again.
“If we find water,” he said quietly, “we’ll send a kettle back to you.”
They left him his weapons and all his belongings, what mountain men called their possibles. Sam wanted to say, “We’ll do whatever …” But words were senseless. The three turned away, put their hands on the leads of the remaining horses, and walked off.
Coy growled and snapped once more in Gobel’s direction and followed.
In less than an hour all three felt their first flicker of hope. Fourteen Indian men walked along the base of the hills. They didn’t run away from the calls of the trappers, but waited to talk. Yes, they were headed toward a spring. Yes, the Americans were welcome to come along.
