by Chuck Tyrell
Walks went off on a long spiel in Shoshone.
“She’s telling him what happened,” Will Benson said.
Gewagan grunted and started to turn away.
Stryker cleared his throat. He’d caught the man’s name from Walks’ talk. “Gewagan, I know of you. Few among the Shoshone have matched your deeds.”
“You? How you know Gewagan?”
“I saw a picture. I think Bill Jackson took it over at Fort Laramie. Those who know you say you do not hate white men like me.”
“White men.” Gewagan spat on the ground. “A white man’s word is like spit. Good for nothing.” He reversed the lance so its flint point aimed at Stryker’s neck.
Walks pushed the lance aside.
Gewagan spoke sharply to her, but she stood her ground.
“He says you’re the enemy. She says the boy shot you with no ... what’s the word ... provocation. Honor says she must care for you, she says.”
“White man!”
“Stryker. Matt Stryker.”
Gewagan leaned over to look into Stryker’s face. “I heard the name. Stryker. At Hayfield. You Army?”
Stryker shook his head. “Not now. Before Wagon Box. Before Powder River. I was. Now I search. That is all.”
“I hear Stryker. Yeah. Stryker never beat in the circle.”
“What’s he talking about?” Stryker said to Will Benson.
“The circle where warriors go to fight ‘til one’s dead, usually.”
“Yes,” Gewagan said, nodding. “Circle. You and me. What say?”
Stryker had no answer. No indication of how long the poison would keep him from moving.
“Five days,” Gewagan said.
“Five days?”
“I say. You. Me. Fight in the circle. Five more days.” The smile on Gewagan’s face did not indicate mirth. He turned away and said something to Walks.
Walks raised her voice to the other women.
“She tells them to set up the teepees,” Will said.
For an instant, Stryker wondered why Will Benson, a white man, was standing around in a Shoshone camp. “Hey, Will. They seem all upset about me being here, but it’s like you’re a ghost or a spirit or something. It’s like you’re dust or a ray of sunshine or a bit of mist over a lake somewhere. Wonder why that is?”
“I been in these woods a long time, Matt Stryker. Even Injuns I don’t know, know of me.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I reckon they figure I’m harmless upside of Matt Stryker.”
Stryker snorted. “That’ll be the day.”
“Let it lie, Matt. Just be glad they don’t bowl me over and take my scalp. Not that Shoshone are prone to take scalps.”
“We got five days. By then, I’ve gotta be on my feet and in some kind of fighting trim.”
“We could ride out. Gewagan’d be glad to see us go, I reckon.”
“We ain’t gonna ride out. That’s final. Now help me up.”
Will helped Stryker to his feet and Stryker took a few steps, anchored to Will’s shoulder.
“Back,” Stryker said, breathless from even that slight exertion. It seemed that he wasn’t able to draw a lot of air into his lungs. “’M’legs don’t do what I want ’em to.”
Will Benson got Stryker situated on the bear hide again.
“Let me sit here for a minute, Stryker said.
“Long as you want. But Gewagan’ll be coming out here with blood in his eye five days hence.”
Stryker held out his hand. “Let’s do it again.”
Will pulled him up, and they walked, Stryker’s arm over Will’s shoulder. They walked a dozen times, each a few steps farther than before. By sundown, Stryker could walk nearly a hundred yards and back.
Around them, Gewagan’s camp went on as if the two white men didn’t exist. Even the children ignored them. Once Gewagan left on his black-and-white paint. When he returned, he sat the paint for a long time, watching Stryker. When Stryker once more sat on the bear skin, Gewagan threw a leg over his horse’s withers and slid to the ground. He strode to Walks’ teepee, paying no attention to Stryker and Will.
“He’s almighty curious,” Will said.
Walks came out of her teepee with an iron kettle in her hand. The scent of stewed meat preceded her as she walked across to where Stryker sat. “You must eat. Meat. Medicine. All in here.” She nodded at the kettle. “Eat all.”
She set the kettle down, dug a big pewter spoon from her ditty bag, and handed it to Stryker.
“Spoon? Where’d you get a spoon?”
Walks shrugged.
Stryker took the spoon. He scooped it full of the concoction in the kettle and ate it. Meaty. Well boiled. Some kind of tuber. Greens. “Good,” he said. He ate everything in the kettle, not noticing that his hands worked much better than before.
Walks stood there until Stryker finished the food. Her face held the hint of a smile. “Good,” she said again.
“Let’s take another walk,” Stryker said. “No arm over the shoulder this time.”
He accepted Will’s help to stand, but insisted on doing his own walking without Will’s support. “Wonder if you could find me a good staff,” Stryker said. “Make it about shoulder height and this big around.” He held up his hand, middle finger and thumb forming a circle.
“You need a cane?”
“A staff. It’d be a big help.”
Will’s face said he didn’t understand why Stryker wanted a staff. It wasn’t as if he was some kind of shepherd. He huffed out a breath. “OK, Stryker. I’ll see what I can find.”
Walks went by, carrying the washed stew kettle.
“Hey,” Will said. He let out a stream of Shoshone.
Walks gave him a look. She shook her head as if what Will said was out of the question.
He said something else in a whiney voice and waved a hand in Stryker’s direction.
Walks turned her back on him and went on into her teepee.
“What was that all about?” Stryker asked.
“Just wondering why it is that you’re the only white man around here what gets fed.”
“She didn’t look happy about it.”
Will shrugged. “Don’t hurt to ask.”
Stryker stuck his chin out at the teepee Walks had gone into. “Lookee there.”
Walks came from the teepee with the stew kettle. She spoke loud and sharp. “White man. Some stew. Indian stew. Maybe you die.”
“Thankee one-who-walks-far,” Will said.
“No thanks. Eat. Hunt.” She handed the stew kettle to Will.
He took the kettle and stood there looking at Walks with a message in his eyes.
“No,” Walks said. “Eat.”
Will ate.
Walks waited to take the kettle so she could wash it out again in the creek.
Will gulped the food, finishing in a fourth the time Stryker took. He held out the kettle. “Here.”
Walks took hold of the pail. Will did not let go. “Thank you,” he said. “I promise. Before I leave your fire, I will bring meat.”
“Be good if you’d get me a staff,” Stryker said.
Walks took the kettle to the creek. Will stood like a lump and watched her.
“Don’t go getting ideas,” Stryker said. “She belongs to Gewagan.”
“Injun women don’t ‘belong’ to nobody. And that one’s mighty fine.”
“Staff,” Stryker said.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Staff ... . Say. Maybe there’s something down by the creek. I’ll get on down there and see.” With a huge smile on his face, Will Benson walked over to the creek bank, ostensibly to look for a stave to serve as Stryker’s staff.
Stryker shook his head in disbelief. He watched Will for a moment, then lay back on the bear hide. When he cracked his eyes from the little nap he’d taken, Will was nowhere in sight, but a staff of peeled box elder about an inch and a half in diameter lay by his side. Stryker sat up.
No Will Benson. He’d been i
nterested in Walks. Had it gone further? Stryker scratched his head. Who knew?
With the help of the staff, Stryker got to his feet. The little pole felt good in his hand. He trekked his hundred yards. Returned. Trekked again. Much easier with the staff.
It didn’t matter that Will Benson was gone, Stryker had a staff, and it might make the difference when Stryker faced Gewagan in the circle.
Chapter Twelve
When the sun peeked over the Ruby Hills and spread across Black Eagle’s camp, Cat stood amidst the pack, dressed in a pair of buckskin pants, a buckskin tunic that reached to mid-thigh, and plain leather moccasins that would not provide much protection on the trail. Cat was not worried about the moccasins. Her feet were as hard as hooves from the runs she’d made with the pack, and her knees and palms were layered with calluses that bespoke the time she’d spent on all fours at Black Eagle’s command.
Swayback John had not arrived.
The pack dogs sat on their haunches as if they knew it was Cat’s time to leave. Instead of sitting so they faced all directions to guard Cat, they formed a line ... not facing Black Eagle’s teepee. Instead, they faced another direction, one that had no meaning until Swayback John came riding in on his dappled gray, with a black-point bay gelding in tow.
He rode right up to Cat. The dogs moved out of the way, and Cat stepped out in front of them to keep a quarrel from starting.
“Got any possibles, girl?”
“Possibles?”
“Things you wanna take along. Things that might come in handy.”
“I have nothing other than what you so generously gave me.”
“Yeah. Looks good on you, too.”
“Thus, I am ready, Mr. John Williams. As ready as I possibly could be, but I must say goodbye.”
“Who to?”
“My pack.” She waved her hand at the dogs.
“Be quick about it.”
“Venez,” she said to the dogs. They gathered around her. She knelt and put her hands on either side of their faces in turn, and spoke softly. “Adieu mon ami. Grace a vous, je vis. Je ne oublierai jamais.”
When it was Maman’s turn, Cat buried her face in the old dog’s ruff and sobbed.
“We ain’t got time for crying jags,” Swayback John said. “Git’chur cracker-ass on that bay pony’n let’s ride.”
“Oui,” Cat said. Still, she took the time to pat each dog on the head on her way to the horse. “Adieu, mes amis,” she said, but when she got to the bay horse, she found he had an Indian saddle. She could not just put a foot in the stirrup and pull herself up as she would do with a McClellan or a Texas cowboy rig. She spotted a deadfall close by and used its trunk as a mounting stool.
“Let’s go,” Swayback said. “Time’s a-wasting.” He reined his gray around.
“May I ask, Mr. John? Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Come along.”
Cat kept the black-point bay’s head at the flank of Swayback’s dapple gray, and she could tell by the sun that they were moving southwest, away from Fort Laramie and the American army of the west.
When night fell, Swayback gave Cat a blanket to wrap up in. She missed her dogs. No fire. Not good country for fire, Swayback said.
In the night, Cat felt a furry warmth against her back. She smiled to herself and slept. When she awoke, only a few stray hairs said she had not been dreaming.
Swayback did not set a particularly fast pace, but it was steady, covering forty to fifty miles a day.
“Dog’s following us,” Swayback said.
“I saw him.”
“Yours?”
“One of the pack at Raven Wing’s camp. He is son of Maman, the old leader. I called him Sam.”
“I ain’t gonna feed him.”
“He gets his own food, never mind.”
Somehow Sam knew he had been tacitly accepted. He became the scout, ranging ahead of Swayback and Cat as they traveled south, then climbed through an unnamed pass in the Rockies that only Swayback knew. On the other side, the Snake River Basin beckoned, and the way toward Fort Hall spread broad and level across the land.
Cat gradually relaxed. Swayback made no demands of her, except that she keep up. In a way, he became her mentor, teaching her mountain skills as they traveled. How to gut a buck. Which parts of a deer made the best eating. How to sharpen a knife. How to clean a gun. Which wood gave off smoke and which didn’t.
“We’ll hit Fort Hall tomorrow or the next day,” Swayback said. “Maybe we can get a good mackinaw for you there. Weather’s getting cold and you don’t want to ride with a blanket wrapped around you.”
“I have no money.”
“I got some laid by.”
“You’d use your money on me?”
“Why not? Can’t have ya freezing up on me, can I?”
Cat had no answer. Swayback never tried to take her. He was always pleasant and never barked at her, even when she made a stupid mistake. Like when the wood she put on the fire was too green and gave off a lot of smoke. Swayback kicked the offending sticks away. “Can’t make a lot of smoke, Cat Lady. That’d just tell every Ute and Blackfoot in the area that we’re here and we don’t know what we’re doing.”
He made his criticism with a smile on his face that took some of the sting from his words.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Cat ducked her head, embarrassed at committing such a careless error.
“Live’n learn,” Swayback said.
That night Sam brought a fat woodchuck into camp and laid it at Cat’s feet. She patted the big dog’s head. “Merci beaucoup.”
“What’s that for?” Swayback asked.
“In Raven Wing’s camp, the dogs brought me food like this. So I could stay strong.” She picked the woodchuck up by a hind leg and took it to the fire. “Our fire is not as big as the Absaroka one,” she said. She used a stick to scrape a hole in the coals for the woodchuck. Once it was nestled snugly in its bed of coals, Cat buried the woodchuck with the coals she’d scraped away. “There.” She dusted her hands.
“There?”
“Wait until morning.”
“Woodchuck’s tolerable good eating,” Swayback said. “But pure-dee-hell to catch.”
“Sam catches. Then all three can eat.”
Morning saw the ‘chuck cooked well, the hair burned off the skin so it came off in strips that Sam wolfed down. Swayback and Cat ate chunks of meat they pulled off the carcass with their fingers.
“Right fine,” Swayback said. “Right fine. So this is how you et at Raven Wing’s place, then?”
The pack brought me small animals like the woodchuck,” she said. “The pack kept me alive.”
“Hmmm.”
“Mr. John. May I ask for one faveur?”
“What kind?”
“I must practice. Might I be allowed to practice for half an hour before we move on each day?”
Swayback gave her a searching look. “Practice?”
“Yes. Matt Stryker always says ‘Use it, or lose it.’ Together we practiced fighting and we practiced shooting. Here I have no rifle or pistol, but I have my body. I must practice fighting.”
“You fight?”
“Of course. How else might I defend myself?”
“Show me.”
“I do not wish to injure you.”
Swayback barked a laugh. “Ha! It’ll take more than one skinny little girl to hurt Swayback John Williams. Show me.”
Cat squared herself with Swayback. “You must realize I have not practiced lately.”
“Come. I’m ready.”
Cat took a step closer to Swayback, spun, and delivered a sweeping kick to his midsection. She’d stepped a little to her left, so when Swayback compensated for her move, the kick seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Oof.”
Cat shifted her weight and sent a jabbing kick to his left thigh, turned and shipped a fist to his left cheek. She stepped back. “I do not wish to strike you as hard as I can.”
“
Come.” Swayback said. “I’m ready. More than ready.” His voice carried an edge that said friendliness had disappeared from the fight. He’d not yet touched Cat, and that wasn’t fair.
“You come,” Cat said. “I will defend myself from your attack.”
Swayback tried. He let go of all notions that a man shouldn’t strike a woman, and did his damnedest to hit her. But he couldn’t. She wouldn’t let him. She turned his blows aside, used his own body weight against him, danced away from roundhouse blows, evaded his grasping hands. For the first time, Swayback saw Cat smile. Her teeth flashed. Something she’d not done since sparring with Matt Stryker at Fort Laramie.
Her face went serious again. Fort Laramie. Half a lifetime ago? Back when she was Catherine de Merode, daughter of royalty. A class above. Not an animal. Not something used by Absaroka men as a dog, always on all fours, always submissive, always there with tail wagging, as it were. At Fort Laramie, she’d known a strong man. Stronger than any young prince of Europe. Stronger than Ulrich von Waldburg. And she’d matched him step for step, blow for blow. Back at Fort Laramie. Never again would she be the pampered European. Never again would lowly peasants make way for her charging coach. Never again. Now she was no more than Cat. Well, slightly more. She had the love of Maman, and through her, of Sam.
Swayback’s fist came unexpectedly, knocking her to the ground. “Cat woman. If you’re going to fight, pay attention.”
“As you say, Mr. John. My mind wandered elsewhere. It will not happen again.” She bowed to Swayback. “Thank you for the valuable lesson, Mr. John. It is one I shall never forget.”
“Hmph.”
“May I practice, then? Just half an hour?”
“Suit yourself.” Swayback turned his back. “I’ll get us ready to go. You practice.”
“Thank you, Mr. John.”
“Call me Swayback.”
“No.”
“What’d I ever do to you?”
“Nothing. You are not like Absaroka men. To me, you are Mr. John. A man of character. One who respects others. Such a man should not be called Swayback.”
Swayback shrugged. “Don’t matter none.” He turned away and began packing their meager belongs for the ride to Fort Hall.
Cat practiced.
~*~
