The booshway interrupted. “We were looking for you. It frostbit every man,” he said, tautly. “We searched every drainage, fired shots and got no answer, looked for a message—and finally left, every man among us thinking you’d gone under.”
“I know, I know. But we couldn’t get out of that pool,” Ferguson said.
“And besides,” said Ranne, “we got us some company.”
Skye could see the few Crows who knew some English try to explain all this to the crowd of Kicked-in-the-Bellies solemnly taking in the palaver.
“Company?” asked Beckwourth. “Probably Bug’s Boys.”
“Bug’s Girls,” said Peter Ranne.
That sure got attention.
“Twelve of ’em,” said Daniel Ferguson.
“Beeeuties,” said Ranne. “All about seventeen, eighteen, and fairer specimens of the Wilderness Tribes no coon ever set sight upon.”
Some of the Crows growled.
“Ahhh, got to the meat of the story,” said Beckwourth.
“They didn’t see us old boys at first on account of the steam, so they set up their two lodges, all the time jabbering and carrying on, and pretty soon they doff their blankets and capotes. And then they doff all the rest, and stand there plumb beauteous in the mist, the fairest damsels we ever did see…”
“And then this old coon sneezed,” Ferguson said.
“And they seen us,” Ranne said. “They squeal, and then look us over, and then they decide we ain’t takin’ scalps and come on in. Well … it be some party. I don’t reckon I ever been to a nicer party. Men and wimmin get along better in hot spas.”
“We got to know ’em all. They’s Piegans, they say, off for a lark. They was sociable, and they invited us to share our elk in their lodges after the plunge, and so Daniel, he gets one lodge and six beauties, and me, I get the other lodge and six beauties, and that’s how come we never did get back to camp.”
Skye listened, rapt, and couldn’t quite imagine why the trappers were laughing and hooting and making light of the story. Unless it wasn’t true … was this a mountaineer joke? The part about the hot springs seemed true enough—but what about the Blackfeet women? Had they arrived in a blizzard? Had they invited the trappers into their lodges after a plunge?
Skye watched Beckwourth and Bridger slap the missing trappers on the back and make sly jokes. Those Yank mountaineers had their odd ways. Skye could not say why bawdiness made him uneasy. Maybe it was simply that he had spent so much of his young life in a ship’s brig that he never learned much about women. All he knew was that for him, these things were serious and sacred, and he hoped Victoria would feel the same way. Maybe he alone in the world thought that a man and a woman should form a union of hearts before they formed a union of bodies. Maybe the world would laugh at him. He knew the Crow people would. Maybe Victoria would, too. Wasn’t she born to them?
The Crow, still translating, all broke into broad smiles, for this was a story tailored to delight these bawdy people. Skye realized that it didn’t matter whether the tale was true; there was so much fun in the telling and the imagining.
Only William Sublette didn’t laugh, and then he finally surrendered, too, the torment of the search forgotten in the joy of seeing two boon companions alive and well after several brutal months of winter.
It turned out that the wayward trappers spent those months at the hot springs, minus their fantasy women, feasting on the animals that came there to escape the bitter cold, trapping beaver in nearby flowages, and generally having a grand time until they could make it over the winter-bound pass to the Crow country.
Skye searched the crowd for Victoria, wanting to know what she thought of all this. But he didn’t see her. He wandered back through the village to the lodge of her parents, his thoughts far from the two returned trappers and their alleged bacchanal. The yearling was gone; it had been accepted by her father and mother.
Chapter 48
In one dazzling moment Skye knew his life had forever changed. He peered at the lodge, somnolent in the winter sun, and at the place where his colt had been tied, and wondered. No one came to greet him. Perhaps no one was within.
He thought of Victoria, his promised one. He ached to sweep her into his arms and crush her to him. He ached to talk with her, feel her sharp voice in his ears, rejoice in her wild humor. Now he wanted to hear her whispers in the night.
“Victoria!” he cried, but the lodge did not reply.
“I love you!” he cried, but the busy Crow village ignored him.
What did it all mean? What would happen? He looked about, seeing the ordinary life of a winter-bound village. Smoke drifting from lodges. Curs meandering from lodge to lodge, sniffing cookfires, looking for bits to eat. He saw old men wrapped in blankets shuffling from one place to another. Was this the life he had committed himself to? Had he made a desperate mistake?
A worm of regret crawled through his belly. What had he done? Had he tossed aside a life of achievement just because some hot desire boiled in his loins?
He sighed. The bowl had been broken and no longer held his life within it. Whatever he had been—English youth, seaman, prisoner, merchant’s son—all that was gone. There was only the present and the future. Only Victoria. Only the mountains. Only the trapping, the rendezvous, the life of a wilderness vagabond.
A grandmother shuffled by, paused, grinned toothlessly, and touched his bearclaw necklace. Then she patted him on the arm. The necklace meant something to them all. Or rather, Red Turkey Comb’s perception of his power and destiny meant something to these people. Surely it had meant something to Victoria’s father, who had accepted his single colt. A beautiful maid like Victoria might have won a bride price of many horses and a stack of other gifts from an eager suitor.
He had bear medicine, but what was that? Did it mean only that he was strong? He couldn’t answer that, but maybe in time he would know. The grizzly was king of beasts. Skye knew he was no king of beasts, and no match even for the warriors of this village, or the hard mountaineers in his brigade.
He drifted through the village, looking for Beckwourth, who would know what all this meant. No one among them knew the Crows better. Beckwourth would probably be in the small lodge inhabited by Pine Leaf, the warrior woman of the Absaroka, who had been Beckwourth’s lover for years. According to the legend, Pine Leaf had vowed never to marry and to become a warrior for the Crow nation until she had revenged the tribe for past losses. She wasn’t large but she was nimble, a fine archer and horsewoman and lancer, and had fought brilliantly beside the male warriors, often rallying them when all seemed lost, and becoming a famous woman among all the plains tribes. A maiden she might be, but no virgin, and she had welcomed the rogue Beckwourth into her arms, something that Beckwourth bragged about amidst all his other bragging. Skye wondered if a tenth of what Beckwourth said about himself was true.
Skye found the lodge next to a grove of giant cottonwoods, and scratched gently on the door flap, as was the custom. Beckwourth himself pulled the flap aside.
“Mister Skye,” he said. “Come in.”
Skye entered and waited while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He beheld Pine Leaf sitting crosslegged, wearing a simple doeskin shift. She motioned Skye to sit at her right, the traditional place of honor. Beckwourth, lean, mottled brown, and mocking, settled down on the other side of her.
“Do you know the beauteous Pine Leaf?” Beckwourth asked.
“We have met.”
“Ah, behold a woman known across the Plains. She has counted coup more times than most warriors in the village. She has turned routs into victories. She has bestowed her favors on Beckwourth and no other. Beckwourth treads where no Crow chief or warrior treads.” Beckwourth laughed softly.
“I am honored to be in the presence of such a great one,” Skye replied slyly.
Pine Leaf obviously understood all this, and smiled. Scars laced her lean, hawkish face and bare arms, giving credence to her reputation as a warrior.
They bantered a while more, and then Skye turned to the issue that had brought him. “My colt has been accepted by Victoria’s father. What happens next?” he asked.
“Accepted, eh? Why, you do what comes naturally.” Beckwourth grinned, his even white teeth gleaming in his dusky face.
“I need serious advice, sir.”
“If you don’t know how to do it, you shouldn’t get married.”
Skye stared at the lodge door. Beckwourth wasn’t going to help him. The rogue would make a joke of it, turn something sacred into carnal humor.
But Pine Leaf intervened, and began talking quietly in the Absaroka tongue to Beckwourth. Skye could understand just enough to catch the drift.
“She says it’s time to teach you about the customs of the Absaroka, so I’m delegated. She says Many Quill Woman’s a mighty big catch because she’s so pretty and has good medicine; half the young men in the village’d give every pony in their herds for her, but the other half think she’s got a sharp tongue and don’t want nothing to do with her. She’s plumb mean to ’em. That mouth of hers is some.”
Skye laughed. Victoria’s sharp tongue was one of the things he loved about her. She could gut a braggart faster than she could gut a deer, and one of her targets had been Gentleman Jim Beckwourth himself.
“Now, here’s the way the stick floats. Many Quill Woman’s gonna disappear until the big day. You won’t lay eyes on her until then. Her daddy’ll send word to you to fetch her at an appointed time—likely, sundown, day after tomorrah. And there she’ll be, all dolled up in finery.”
“What do I do then?”
“Skye, is your brain solid wood?”
“It’s Mister Skye, sir.”
Beckwourth grinned malevolently. “You haul her off to your lodge and honeymoon.”
“But what of the marriage ceremony?”
Beckwourth chortled. “It isn’t like that. You get Many Quill Woman, you take up with her.”
“No ceremony?”
Beckwourth shook his head. “Oh, her pap’ll have the town crier announce it and they’ll have them a parade. And when you wander over to the lodge, he’ll give you a few things—the family’s gifts to the new couple.”
“Such as?”
“Well, it’s traditional to give a small lodge, and some ponies to haul it, and the furnishings, along with the bride.”
“A lodge? Ponies? I just gave them my colt.”
“A bride’s family don’t stint to set her up, Skye.”
“Will there be a feast? Any formalities?”
“Mebbe so. They’ll show her off to the whole village. Mebbe ride her through the village, her brothers leading her horse. Let all the village see her in her finery. And they’ll show the whole village what they’re gonna give you—the lodge, the ponies, and stuff. Mebbe stop at Arapooish’s lodge for a little showing off.”
“I haven’t anything but the clothing on my back. I’d hate to come to my own wedding looking like this.”
“Mebbe you should talk to Sublette. You should be looking your best.”
“Do I bring her parents a gift?”
“You already have. That little stud colt told ’em you want their daughter. Now, Skye, there’s a custom you should know about. From now on, never speak to your mother-in-law, Digs the Roots, and she’ll never speak to you. If you see her, look away. If you need to talk to her, send the message through someone else. Mothers-in-law got nothing to do with sons-in-law. Not ever. Except me, of course. I talk to Pine Leaf’s maw all the time. These Absaroka let me do whatever I want because I’m a chief. Me and Pine Leaf, we run the wars around heah.”
“But you’re not married.”
Beckwourth laughed gently. “You’re bright sometimes, Mister Skye. When it comes to mothers-in-law, these Absaroka are a lot smarter than you white plantation owners.”
Skye shrugged. He knew nothing of that. In England he had been too young to consider such things, but he remembered his grandparents, and all the love they had bestowed upon his parents and himself and his sisters until his grandmother had died in her early fifties.
Skye visited a while more with the rogue, and then retreated into the cold twilight, enjoying its peace and the quiet of another winter’s night. The earliest stars had punctured the veil of the heavens and glittered above. This aching, mysterious wilderness had become his world, and he was more familiar with the barking of a wolf than he was with the rumble of a passing hansom cab. The starkness of the land appealed to something wolfish in him, something lonely and uncivilized, something that could not be broken to harness. He hadn’t known, when he slid into the Columbia long before, that he was saying good-bye not just to the Royal Navy, but to civilization. He grew aware of the necklace on his breast, a device imbued with mysterious power that made him a man among the Crow people. He touched the claws, feeling their sharp length, the violence in them, the sheer animal force they conveyed to him.
He thought of Victoria, as fierce as the land and as wild, the ferocity of her love and loyalty so bright and bold that it had blistered his pallid British ideals. She was a savage woman to match the savageness of his heart. Now she would be his mate. Once he would have chosen some oatmealy English girl, now he would be bored by any woman who hadn’t lived close to death and starvation and war and the wild beasts of the fields and forests.
Skye looked into the darkening skies and saw Victoria. He peered into the shadowed cottonwoods and found her there. He studied the ridges where the wolves and coyotes and painters prowled, and saw her spirit striding beside them. He saw her in the icy haze, in the glowing lodges emitting sour cottonwood smoke from their nestled poles. He saw her in the sweetness of the village, in the umber faces around the lodgefires at night, in the exquisite quillwork on a bodice, in the rabbit-fur calf-high moccasins these people wore through their winters. He saw her in the ancients shuffling through their night errands, and in the children scurrying to their homes at the end of a day.
He did not know what would happen next, or when he might be permitted to carry her away with him, off to some private place, where he could hold her in ways sweet and sacred. But he would know soon.
Chapter 49
Skye found himself in a whirl of activity he little understood. Victoria simply vanished, and he wondered which of the many lodges hid her and why he could not see her. February petered out and March rushed in on cold winds and bold blue skies.
The old women of the village smiled at him now, and the children gawked as he passed by. Beckwourth told him that Victoria’s family was prominent; her father was an important subchief who had counted many coups and was a leader of the Lumpwood Warrior Society.
Skye learned that Victoria’s own mother, Kills the Deer, had died two winters earlier, that Victoria had a brother and two sisters, that Victoria belonged to the Otter Clan, and that her family was the caretaker of one of the village’s most sacred medicine bundles, which was opened each spring at the first thunder.
He wondered why the family had accepted his single pony and not the lavish offerings of so many of the village’s young men eager to win a beautiful maiden from an important family. He couldn’t entirely ascribe it to the word of the shaman, Red Turkey Comb. There had to be more to it than that. Skye did not know and supposed he never would know. There would always be a gulf between the Absarokas and himself.
One afternoon he found William Sublette and sought the brigade leader’s counsel.
“She’ll be the only woman with the brigade, sir. Does that bother you?”
“Bother me? She’ll make the work lighter, Mister Skye. And keep you in the mountains where you belong. She’ll do what I couldn’t do: give you a reason to be a mountaineer. Davey Jackson’s brigade has a dozen Metis women in it. We put the Creole trappers with wives in his brigade because it would face less trouble over there among the Shoshone and Nez Perce. We’re in dangerous country here, Skye. You and your bride know that.”
Skye grinned. “What we’r
e getting is another warrior, sir. She’s a good hand with a bow, and I aim to teach her how to shoot—after I learn.”
Sublette smiled. “I’m counting on it. Now, Skye, there’s something all the old boys want to give you. Come along.”
Dutifully, Skye followed the brigade leaders to the council lodge that housed so many of the engagés. There they had all assembled, grinning mischievously as they lounged around the lodgefire, and Skye feared he’d get a hazing of the sort reserved for bridegrooms.
But they sat about awkwardly, even shyly, tongue-tied for once. Even the veterans, like Tom Fitzpatrick, suddenly looked awkward.
Finally Peter Ranne cleared his throat, looking like he was being led to the gallows.
“The coons reckoned a man should have himself some fancy duds for his wedding,” he began. “So, the outfit, we got you some skins sewn up by the women hyar. Weddin’ skins, that’s how we call ’em.”
They unfolded a fringed elkskin shirt, tanned to a soft gold, with quillwork across the chest. The shirt was wondrously crafted, and decorated with bear paw insignia.
“Put her on,” yelled someone.
Skye did, marveling at the fit and the gentleness of the leather. They gave him fringed leggins, too, matching the golden shirt, and then a pair of high moccasins with bull-hide soles.
Suddenly Barnaby Skye was overwhelmed. These were friends. They had dug deep to offer him a treasure like this. These were the best friends he had ever known.
“I—thank you,” he said, hoarsely. He could not say more.
“You’re a straight shooter, plumb center,” said Bridger. “You got a maiden a man’d die for. Hyar now, wear these skins—at least until ye get to your little honeymoon bower and take ’em off.”
Men laughed, and Skye sensed a yearning among them. Certain Crow women they could have for a bit of foofaraw. Love, marriage, ties to the tribe were something else, something large and tender and misty in their hearts. These mountaineers had opened their purses and wrought a miracle. He marveled that the village women could have sewn and quilled the shirt and leggins so swiftly.
Rendezvous Page 29
