Bendigo Shafter

by Louis L'Amour

  Soon we had a small fire going and coffee on. Moving out from camp, I found a nesting place among some fallen trees that offered a good view around and settled down to watch. There’s always a lot to see in such places, but it never pays to get to watching one animal too closely ... a man might lose his hair.

  Yet I saw nothing. Nor did Short Bull, who took my place, nothing but a camp robber jay who hopped about from limb to twig to rock, watching for something he might steal.

  We moved out before daybreak, riding down by the trail Ethan had suggested, then striking out across the basin toward Wind River.

  Light was just showing when we topped out on the last ridge and started down into the valley of the Wind. Off to our right and far off we could see a lake. “Ethan,” Stacy said, “ain’t that Bull Lake?”

  “Uh-huh. The Lake That Roars, so the Indians call it. The Shoshone say that some hunters once chased a white buffalo, a medicine buffalo, out on the ice, trying to kill him for his robe. The bull went through the ice and drowned, and the Shoshone say the wind sometimes gets under the ice, lifts it, and makes a groaning, roaring sound, but they claim it’s the buffalo’s anger that lifts the ice and makes the sound.”

  We lost some time working ourselves out of a tangle of deadfalls, boulders, and brush at the foot of the mountains, so it was coming up to sundown before we watered our horses in the Wind River. We pushed on while it was still light and camped close to Crowheart Butte.

  “Big Injun fight here,” Stacy commented. “Cheyennes, Gros Ventres, and Arapahos fightin’ Shoshone. Story is the Shoshone chief ate the Crow chief’s heart”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “Twelve years ago, the way I figure. Washakie did sure enough have himself a fight here.”

  “Did he eat the heart?” I wanted to know.

  “I wasn’t there. They done such things. Figured it gave them all the bravery of their enemy.”

  “We’ll sleep tonight in the Owl Creeks,” Ethan said, “if we’ve still got our hair. This here is techy country.”

  “The mountains to the north? Aren’t those the Absarokes?”

  “Prime country!” Stacy commented. “I wintered there one time. John Colter come in there long before, him and two of his compadres. Mighty purty ... rough country, too. Ain’t no purtier country nowhere than the Absarokes.”

  We rode through the sagebrush bottoms, our eyes searching the country. Twice we picked up sign, all of it old, of unshod ponies. Several times we saw buffalo, but they were few and scattered. There had always been buffalo here, but not in the great herds of those further east. Yet toward night we saw one herd, afar off, that looked to be several hundred ... maybe a thousand head.

  The mountains hung low on the northern horizon, then seemed suddenly to loom large. The Owl Creeks were not high as mountains went, but there were some impressive spires here and there. Actually, although some referred to where we rode as the basin, the Big Horn Basin as such was north of the Owl Creeks, and where we rode was the Wind River Valley, or a part of it.

  We were heading toward a pass Ethan knew, but suddenly he slowed up. “Stace? What d’you think?”

  “Don’t like it, Ethan. I surely don’t. I never cared much for no pass, nohow. A pass is too easy.”

  “That’s a purty deep canyon, the South Fork is, but I still don’t hold no briefs for the pass.”

  Uruwishi spoke. “West from the pass, in the mountains nearer Owl Creek, there is a way. It is a lonely way, but it is there.”

  “I’ll cast my vote for it,” I said. “I trust the Old One. He didn’t live this long without having a lot of savvy.”

  Uruwishi rode into the lead again and headed toward the mountains. There were a couple of creeks coming down from the slope that I could pick up afar off. Ethan was at my elbow. “That pass comes down about, well, maybe a mite east of the east fork of Bargee Creek. Looks like he’s ridin’ right for it.”

  “If they are up there, could they see us?” I believed they might, for the air was clear and the distance not that great.

  “Sure. An Indian would see you. They’ve eyes that have been searchin’ country like this since they were babies. A mite of dust you or I wouldn’t see, they’ll pick up right quick.”

  Suddenly, we dipped down into a wide hollow that was scattered with sagebrush and cedar. Riding straight ahead, Uruwishi headed into the thickest stand of cedar just like he’d done it a thousand times. A sandy ridge lay ahead of us, and we should turn right to skirt it; instead, he turned abruptly left.

  This was behind the ridge and the cedar where our direction change could not be seen. “Sagwup Draw,” Short Bull muttered, half to himself, half in explanation.

  Now we rode more swiftly, our direction due west and away from the pass. The ridge grew higher, rockier, covered with scattered fragments of sandstone. Ethan pointed ahead and to our left. “That there’s Red Basin, I think. I’ve heard about this country from Ed Rose an’ Colter. I don’t know where the Old One ever heard of it.”

  Suddenly, Uruwishi drew up to let the horses have a moment. He was scanning the ridge on our right, looking up toward the two highest points, two long ovals of rock. When he started again he rode right up the ridge on an angle across the face toward the narrow gap between the high points. If a trail existed we could not see it, but Uruwishi led on, holding to a good pace.

  We made no dust, for the trail was among rocks, and when he turned again it was at right angles and a steep scramble into the gap. He was through the opening like a ghost, and we followed, through the rock-walled space in a matter of minutes and down the slope toward the valley on the other side.

  The pass we had intended to cross was three miles east now, out of sight among the trees and shoulders of rock. Uruwishi led us, trusting to some ancient memory of a tale told by a campfire.

  We found no tracks but those of deer and bighorn sheep. Off to our left now and less than a mile away, glimpsed occasionally through the trees, was Owl Creek Canyon. When we dipped toward the creek we were headed toward a crossing on the floor of the valley.

  Stacy Follett pulled up. “Ethan, would you look at that now.”

  Behind us, to the east and south, several miles away, a thin finger of smoke pointed to the sky.

  “I never did like passes,” Ethan said.

  Chapter 45

  It is my great gift to live with awareness. I do not know to what I owe this gift, nor do I seek an answer. I am content that it be so. Few of us ever live in the present, we are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone, and this I do also. Yet it is my good fortune to feel, to see, to hear, to be aware.

  As much as I have read it has not turned me into one who lives only with the intellect, for most of life is not a life of the mind, nor is that the only good life. As I rode now I was aware, as we all were, of that finger of smoke behind us.

  It was a signal, as we well knew, that we had not appeared where we were expected. It meant that they would be seeking out our trail, and of course, they would find it. Knowing Indians a little, I knew they would find it soon.

  Yet that was the smallest part of my awareness, for my heart beat with the steady throbbing of hoofs beneath us. I was aware of the smell of trampled sage, and crushed cedar, the taste of dust, the glare of the sun, and the coolness of a wind from down a canyon.

  The splendid arch of the blue sky above, the distant purple haze of mountains, the majestic strength in the face of old Uruwishi, the proud way Short Bull carried himself, the way my foot felt in a stirrup, the way a gun butt felt in my hand. Each, in its way, was a thing of beauty.

  To live is not only to exist. It is not to wait for supper of an evening or for bedtime or for a drink at a saloon. It is all of these things and every marvelous moment that comes between. To live is to feel, and the senses have more to teach than the mind. More, at least, for the immethate moment. It is better, sometimes, to simply feel, to simply be.

  We crossed the North F
ork of Owl Creek and headed out across the flat toward Wagonhound Bench and rode toward an ancient shrine, a place of long ago. I suspect each of us rode toward a different shrine, the same only in name. For the destination men name is only the destination of surface: For each there is another, a different destination.

  I rode toward a turning point in my life. I do not know why I knew this, and yet I did know it. Why had the Medicine Wheel such an attraction for me? Was it some ancient atavistic memory? Had some incarnation of me from a for distant time known this place? Or was there some recollection, deep hidden in my very blood and fiber that called me to this place rather than to some other such place in some other land?

  Turning in the saddle, I glanced back. The smoke was gone, the Shoshone were riding.

  A Shoshone was riding, for I had no doubt it was my old enemy seeking me out. The Shoshone were a great tribe, and they lived, for the greater part, at peace with the white man. They were fine horsemen and great warriors, a fine people. It was my misfortune to have one of them for an enemy.

  Short of sundown we stopped near a creek and among cottonwoods. While Ethan put together some food and made coffee, Stacy kept watch from a high point near the camp, and Short Bull, using his bow to avoid sound, hunted for fresh meat.

  After I had eaten I took a cup of coffee with me and took Follett’s place on watch. When the others had eaten we packed up the few items we had taken out and moved on for several miles, making a dry, fireless camp. Now if they had seen our fire they could go to it and find nothing.

  Mine was the last watch of the night. Ethan awakened me about two in the morning, judging by the Big Dipper, and I moved out from the camp, the better to listen.

  The night was starlit with only a few wisps of very high cloud, and all was very still. For a few minutes my ears sorted the sounds of the night, which were few. Once the special sounds of a place are known, the ears are quick to discern any other, and each place does have sounds particular to it alone.

  In this case there was a broken limb high in a cottonwood that had dead leaves. They whispered and scratched when slightly stirred by wind. The wind over the sage flats had a particular sound also, and I listened.

  I had always loved these last hours before the dawn when the stars are unbelievably bright and the night is very still. I enjoyed what many men did not, rising long before daybreak to get the feel of the night and the land.

  Ghosts of the old ones walked this land, ghosts of warriors long vanished, and the blood from ancient battles had sunk into the soil along with crumbled leaves, decaying roots, and the drift sand blown by the wind.

  The hours went by swiftly. I heard the dead leaves stir, caught the faint scent of sage, and saw the light fade the darkness from the eastern sky and our campnre grow brighter as some early riser prepared a fire for our coffee. My eyes searched the dawn-light distance and found no smoke.

  We drank our coffee and ate fresh venison killed by Short Bull, and then we straddled our horses and led off to the north.

  “Yonder’s Black Butte” — Stacy pointed southeast — “and north of it lies Spanish Point, and there’s a trail crosses the Big Horns yonder to the head of Soldier Crick. It’s a fair way ... there’s game an’ water.”

  How many times had I heard that? So it was that men learned of the western lands, even as the Indians such as Uruwishi learned of a country where he had never ridden. Such things were filed away, remembered in times of need, passed on to others. There were few maps, no guidebooks, but there was information passed in saloons, over campfires, or by men exchanging comments on the trail somewhere.

  When I closed my eyes I could hear the voices of long ago, when I was a boy, the dry, drawling voices speaking unconscious poetry, singing the magical names of the far-off mountains and canyons. Ten Sleep, Meeteetse, Sun-dance, and Dry Fork Ridge, Wagon-Box and the Little Big Horn, which headed not far from Medicine Mountain. And now I heard them speak of Lodge Grass and Bucking Mule Creeks, Powder River and Bobcat Draw, and I’d ridden through Six-Shooter Gap and in the Sweet Alice Hills.

  That was music, the music of a land whose only music yet was the chant of Indian voices, the wind in the pines, and the flutter of cottonwood or aspen along with the sound of snow water trickling and the bugle of an elk or the call of a wotf. Yet it was music of a very special kind.

  We avoided the easy way through Granite Pass and rode on to the Dry Fork of Horse Pass. Skirting a canyon that dropped off a thousand feet or more, we topped out on the mesa and crossed to Cottonwood Creek and followed it to the head of Hidden Tepee and on northwest to Little Baldy Pass. We could see Bald Mountain ahead, and we were nearing the Wheel, which lay on Medicine Mountain, a sort of shoulder of Bald.

  We traveled a far piece, and we camped here and yonder, always with a watchful eye for the Shoshone who rode our trail. By now they’d be hungering for our scalps, although a scalp was secondary to counting coup, and some Indians set no store by scalps, as Stacy would say, or Ethan.

  We were nine thousand feet up now, and it was cold and clear. We stopped often to rest our horses although they were mountain bred and accustomed to the wild, rough land. We found much snow here, and only at midday did it edge with dampness from melting. Icy winds made us duck our heads.

  We were strung out along the ridge, five men and four packhorses, riding barren, rocky country with the ridge falling away into a stand of spruce. Timberline through this country edges up to ten thousand feet, and we rode over bare rock or rock covered with snow and ice, yet only a few yards away was the edge of the timber, a low-growing spruce, and some wild flowers already showing through the snow.

  Ethan pulled up and waited until we had bunched around him. The wind was cold and raw and getting rapidly colder. “We’re not going to make it tonight, so why don’t we go down off the rim into the trees and lay up?”

  “Good thinkin’ ” Stacy agreed. “What d’you say, Ben?” Bald Mountain bulked ahead, and Medicine Mountain was a spur ... it could not be more than five or six miles further, but the weather was growing worse. “Lead the way, Ethan,” I told him. “We’ll hole up.”

  An hour later we were in a sheltered place among the boulders and fallen logs. Long ago some other seekers for shelter had chosen this place, using a corner of boulders and some fallen timbers. A sort of half corral had been made at the head of a canyon. The logs were very old, and there were evidences of ancient fires here as well as some more recent.

  We grazed our horses on the wild flowers that grew in profusion nearby, and while Stacy put together a meal, watching the horses meanwhile, Ethan and I lifted dead logs into place to build a better corral and barricade for ourselves.

  “No tracks,” Ethan said when we gathered around the fire to eat. “Nobody’s been up here since last fall, by the look of things.”

  “Do you think we lost the Shoshone?” I asked.

  “No,” Ethan said.

  “They’ll be some wrought up,” Stacy commented. “This is Crow country, and north and east of there you’ll find Sioux aplenty. Them Shoshone are feelin’ mighty skittish about now.”

  “They ain’t alone,” Ethan commented dryly. “My scalp’s been itchin’.”

  The night was bitter cold. There was no wind, not at first, but the branches creaked stiffly in the freezing air. We slept feet to the fire, and from time to time one of us arose to add fuel.

  Of wood there was no shortage. The tumbled old gray bodies of the trees lay broken by the snows of many seasons, and there were broken branches for the fires of an army. Streams were born here, and when we broke the ice the water was clear, cold, and sweet. Those small streams seemed to flow from some ancient and hidden wells here at the crest of the world.

  The tons of snow that lay all winter upon these high ridges melted into secret hiding under the slide rock, and now all summer it would be running in streams down the mountain to a thirsty bottomland. Here began the Little Big Horn, which ran down through the forest and out into the shallow
valleys of Montana.

  It was bitter cold when Short Bull awakened me. He squatted close while I tugged on my boots and shouldered into my heavy coat.

  He looked at me, nursing his cup in his hands. “It is not a good night,” he said, “I do not like it.”

  “Hear anything?”

  “Nothing.” He filled my cup with coffee and handed it to me. “We must get off the mountain.”

  “You think it will storm?”

  “We must leave. The Old One is weak. It has been a ride.”

  “A long ride.” I sipped my coffee, chewing on a strip of jerky. “He is a great man, the Old One.”

  “There is death on the wind. I do not like it.” A branch creaked in the cold, a faint wind stirred frozen particles of snow. I looked through the spruce at the icy dome of Bald Mountain.

  “Short Bull? If the Old One goes, will you stay with us?” He was silent for a long time. “I go back to my people. There are few left. I am needed.”

  I added sticks to the fire, listening to the night. “He is a great man,” I repeated. “He has a home always among us.”

  Wind guttered the fire. The wind was rising, and it would be cold upon the mountain.

  “We will start early. In an hour we should be there, two hours at most. An hour or so there and we can be off the mountain by midday.”

  Rummaging about I found a couple of spruce knots and added them to the fire. I finished my coffee and edged the pot a little closer to the coals.

  Standing up then, I took my Henry and turned abruptly into the night, moving away from the fire. The stars were less clear than they had been. A sort of haze, scarcely to be seen, lay between us. I moved out, melded my body with the dark body of a spruce, and listened.

  The wind was rising, the sound was a faint moaning in the thickness of the spruce. The skeleton arms of a dead one drooped a shaggy web of dead-brown needles, and the wind there made a different sound. I shifted my hands on the Henry, then tucked my right hand under my armpit, then my left.