“I’ve talked to Arapooish,” Sublette said. “Tomorrah, Mister Skye, you’ll be married. The next day, we’re off. Sorry to cut short your honeymoon, but the streams are thawing and there’s beaver to trap.”
“It won’t stop our honeymoon,” Skye said.
“Ye’ll be plumb tuckered out,” volunteered Black Harris. “Tending Victoria and tending camp.”
Men laughed. One by one they stood, stretched, slapped Skye on the back or shook his hand. He had expected a rough and raucous hazing from these ruffians of the mountains, but they had celebrated his happiness tenderly and shyly, with a wistfulness in their manner.
“Well, old child, ye come a long way,” said Bridger.
Skye nodded. Could the man about to take a bride be the same man who had slipped into the icy waters of the Columbia, determined to escape slavery or die?
He wandered the village itchily that afternoon, trying to fathom its mysterious ways, sometimes lonely, sometimes angry that he couldn’t find Victoria, sometimes feeling left out because no one told him anything, or what he should do, or where he should be, and when. Couldn’t these Absarokas even tell him what to expect?
But then, in his restless wanderings, he discovered a small new lodge apart from the village, erected in a park surrounded by cottonwoods. The lodgepoles had been newly hewn and debarked. The lodge, of fine buffalo-hide, bore the track of the bear, brown prints around its lower perimeter. Skye knew, suddenly, that this was a gift, his new home. Tears welled up unbidden, and he was glad no one saw them.
He slept in fits that night, doubts crawling through him like worms. It wasn’t too late to stop this. He could back out. He could finish up his time with the brigade and go east. He could hew to his ancient dream. What business had he with a savage woman and savage people? The dangerous wilderness would only murder him in time—or bore him, or leave him an outcast, forever cut off from his own kind.
But then in the deeps of the night, he knew he would not stop this wedding. The seaman, the deserter, the old Barnaby Skye, never had a life, and he was abandoning nothing important. The new Barnaby Skye would have everything a man could ever want.
That bracing morning, marred only by overcast, he washed in the bitter-cold creek, shuddering while he cleansed himself, and dressed in his new buckskins. He marveled at their golden beauty and warmth. Carefully, he lowered his bearclaw medicine necklace over his head and straightened it on his chest. The cruel claws fanned outward, emblematic of something that Red Turkey Comb, and all these Crows, had discerned in him. That something was what had won Victoria. The necklace seemed a heavy burden to him in a way, binding him to these people even as it required that he live up to the message embedded in those claws.
The men around him watched silently, somehow pleased by the sight of their new comrade Skye decked out in mountain finery and ready for his bride.
The morning ticked by and nothing much happened, although Skye discerned swift furtive activity in the village. He paced through the herd, checking up on his mare, walked the creek, and then returned to his lodge. A wan sun drove off the overcast, and by noon a bright warmth had settled on the village of the Kicked-in-the-Bellies. Then, midafternoon, the village crier, an old man with great bellows, rode among the lodges, bawling his message for all to hear. Skye stood before the council lodge, still uncertain. But even as he waited along with his mountaineering friends, who had all gauded themselves with red bandannas and ribbons for this occasion, Skye beheld a parade. At least it seemed like one. Victoria’s father, Walks Alone, and brother in all their ceremonial regalia slowly rode by. Their groomed horses shone in the winter sun and danced proudly.
Skye’s new father-in-law radiated power from his stocky frame. He wore a buffalo-horn headdress and carried a lance wrapped in red tradecloth. A small medicine bundle hung from his neck. His son, Victoria’s brother, wore two eagle feathers downward, ensigns of war prowess, and passed by proudly. He was older than Victoria but her sisters were younger.
Behind them rode Victoria, looking so beautiful that Skye’s heart lurched. She was regal. Her small, spare frame radiated pride and joy this nuptial day. Her black hair glinted in the coy sunlight, two braids falling over her breast, each braid tied with a bright blue ribbon. A streak of vermilion divided her forehead. For this occasion she wore a loose dress of whited doeskin, so full in the skirt that she could ride astride her glistening dappled horse. Intricate green quillwork decorated the bodice, and the pattern was repeated along the fringed hem that fell over high bead-decorated moccasins. She was fragile, proud, joyous, and commanding all at once, and something tender radiated from her.
Skye saw her and loved her. She pretended not to see him at first, but then she gazed at him. That glance, so direct and searching, shot a flood of love and eagerness between them. He ached to reach out and help her off her lively mount. A boy followed, leading three horses, each of them laden with buffalo robes. Others of her clan followed, each in dazzling ceremonial dress.
The villagers crowded close, exclaiming at the lavish parade, studying Victoria, eyeing Skye, whispering and smiling. Others walked by, men and women dressed in dazzling finery, one after another. The Crows were a handsome people, he thought. And in their own fashion they were clad in their form of military dress uniforms and ballgowns, artfully fashioned from tradecloth, beads, quills, leather, feathers, and dyes. He loved them; his heart sang out to each of these relatives as the parade wound by.
It did not stop before his lodge but continued toward the great lodge of Arapooish, who waited there along with his many wives and children. The parade didn’t stop there either, but continued to the small lodge of Red Turkey Comb, where the old shaman greeted them with a simple nod, and then around the village, four times in all, for that was the sacred number. Then, at last, Victoria’s father drew up his horse before Skye.
A great crowd had collected. All the village, it seemed. Skye didn’t know what he should do and hoped they would prompt him. But it turned out that he didn’t need to do anything.
They helped Victoria dismount and brought her to him. He had never seen a woman so beautiful or radiant. Her golden flesh glowed. Her bright dark eyes saw only Skye and held him in her vision. He saw love. He beheld her slim figure in the soft, delicate white doeskin, and then he reached out to her, clasping her small hands in his big ones. She smiled. Her hands felt right and good in his. He gazed upon her until the world fell away and he saw only her, and saw her joy, and knew that what he was experiencing was sacred.
Then the youths who had followed her in the procession presented Victoria and Skye with three fat horses, two of them dragging travois laden with wedding gifts: robes and horse tack, a willow flute and drum, moccasins, parfleches, gourd rattles, a reed backrest, the tawny pelt of a mountain lion, half a dozen snowy ermine, elkskin gloves, and several pairs of moccasins. Villagers exclaimed. Victoria smiled. She said nothing, as if for once she was required to hold her sharp tongue in abeyance.
Skye didn’t know what to do or say, but he had been around the tribes enough to know that he could add his own ceremony to theirs, and they would honor him for it, and enjoy his contribution. He raised a hand.
“My friends, my brothers, my sisters, my parents, my children: with this union I have become one of the People and you are in my heart even as Many Quill Woman has entered my heart. To her I pledge my love, my life, and all that I am and will be. She is my love, now and forever. And you are my clan and my family.”
“Sonofabitch!” said Victoria.
The trappers laughed. The crowd smiled.
A few Absarokas began to drift away, and Skye sensed that they were unhappy the pale man from across the sea had taken the belle of the village from them. But others lingered on, especially the old women, wreathed in smiles and filled with blessings. Skye couldn’t understand their words, but he certainly grasped their messages.
His mountaineer friends awkwardly shook hands or clapped him on the back or permitted
themselves a bawdy comment that set Victoria grinning. And then they, too, drifted away in the late afternoon quiet. The wedding festival was over. It had been a parade, a way of making the event public. Stops at the lodges of the chiefs and criers and shamans. A display of a family and a clan’s glory. Some gifts for the couple.
He and Victoria gazed at each other in the gathering silence, and she smiled.
“Well, Mister Skye?”
He could not speak. He drew her to him, and she responded.
“Let’s go to the lodge,” he said.
“We got horses.”
“They can wait.”
She laughed bawdily, but she plucked up the halter lines and tugged the horses along the way to the little lodge in a quiet corner of the woods. “Somebody gotta have sense,” she said to Skye. “We picket the horses, and then you show me what a goddamn grizzly bear you are. Eiieee!”
She laughed until she doubled over, and Skye couldn’t understand why it was all so funny, but he roared.
Chapter 50
Many Quill Woman slid out from the warm robes, wrapped a fine red blanket around her nakedness, and stepped into the cold dawn to welcome the day. She loved the first light, the sacred moment when the Sun Father caressed the breast of the Earth Mother.
She loved the quiet, the mists of night, the grayness that slowly yellowed and rosed into color. She peered sharply at the slumbering camp, her senses seeking anything amiss. She saw and heard nothing. The horses dozed. The trappers slept, all but one. But this was always the most dangerous moment, the time when the Siksika dogs howled down upon the unwitting to murder and steal. William Sublette knew it, too, and habitually arose before first light to watch and wait. He was a good chief.
He stood before his hut, absorbing the rhythms of the new day there at the Three Forks, the beaver-rich wetlands where the streams joined to form the Big River, which the pale men called the Missouri. He nodded. She hurried to the leafless brush, braced for the cold water that would drive the langorous night from her lithe body, and performed her ablutions.
Numbed, she hurried back to her small lodge, dropped her blanket, and dove into the thick robes, nestling against her hairy man. White man had so much more hair all over than her people, and it amused her. She had married a hairy bear. He stirred and drew her to him until her small breasts pressed against him. They would not mate now; they would draw strength and love from each other to nurture them through the day.
His big paws traced the lumps of her spine, his rough hands pleasuring her smooth flesh. She caressed his cheeks, toyed with his growing beard, and played with his shoulders.
“Victoria,” he said, and she was gladdened. She loved her new name. He had said it was the name of an English princess who would someday be queen of his people across the Big Water. She marveled at that. The Absaroka had never had a woman chief.
“No goddamn Siksika this day,” she said.
“Someday they’ll come. It’s still too cold.”
“I’ll kill some.”
He hugged her tight. “You’re good with your bow. We’ll do some more shooting, and soon you’ll be better than I am with a rifle.”
That pleased her. He was teaching her to shoot and she was very good as long as she could rest the heavy barrel on something solid. Someday she would be a warrior woman, like Pine Leaf, and help her man in times of trouble.
She nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder, content. These two moons had not been easy, and she hadn’t anticipated the strange, bewildering world she had entered when she and Skye had become mates. The very morning following their marriage the big chief Sublette had marched his trappers westward into Siksika lands, and she had barely found time to say good-bye to her people. It had torn her heart to leave her Kicked-in-the-Bellies behind and head away with these pale Goddamns into a fate and life she couldn’t even fathom.
That tormented dawn after their wedding, following a sweet and merry night in which she made Skye groan and laugh and cry, they had heard the call of the chief, Sublette, outside the lodge. Muttering darkly, her bear-man had dressed, and she had thrown on an old calico dress, grabbed a blanket, and then had swiftly dismantled the new lodge, storing the seven lodgepoles travois-fashion on one pony, and the lodge cover and their few possessions on another travois. Around her, bearded trappers, breathing frosty plumes in the icy air, wrestled packs onto mules, saddled, damned the First Maker—that was the thing that always amazed her—and departed when the sun was well up and the sleepy Absaroka village could observe their passage.
Ah, those first days were hard! Even now, she hated to remember them. There had been so much she hadn’t thought about. She was the sole woman in a brigade of the pale men. And she found herself responsible for the sole lodge and household among them. The rest of these hardy wild men slept under blankets in the frosty night, or built half-shelters of canvas, or erected crude huts. They were crazy. She and her man would enjoy the comfort of a tiny lodge with a fire in its belly to warm them.
She had no one to talk to except Skye. Maybe a word sometimes with Beckwourth, who mangled her language and privately laughed at her people. But no other woman. She ached to chatter with Absaroka women. That was how the chores vanished and the work was made light. But there was only Skye, and often he was so busy cutting wood, or skinning and stretching beaver pelts, or cooking, that she couldn’t even talk to him. She had wandered disconsolately through the camp each day, waiting for the nights, desolated with her loneliness, an alien among these wild men.
They had treated her well enough but they didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand them. And Sublette eyed her, or the lodge, as if waiting for the chance to condemn, or to tell Skye he was delaying the brigade, or that Skye and his woman were burdening the whole outfit. She knew that, and it chilled her, so she wrestled ferociously with her chores, the horses, the erecting and dismantling of their little lodge. She would not bring shame upon her man.
Nor was that the end of the trouble. They had eyed her hungrily, and studied Skye enviously, their thoughts filling their bearded faces. The all wanted a warm lodge and a woman, but there was Skye, the least among them, with both and it made them bitter. She saw it, even though they spoke another tongue. Some of them made Skye suffer. He was camp tender, and they made him work all the harder and found fault with all he did. She knew enough of the Goddamn tongue to know they were shooting word-arrows into him. But he smiled and said little. Only when they crossed a certain line, saying things about her, or how Skye and Victoria spent their nights, did her bearman rear up and make them back away.
She liked that. Skye had been slow to anger and endured all sorts of demeaning things—if they were made in jest. But he was brother of the grizzly, and sometimes he became a bear, and the trappers learned that Skye had his limits and could roar if they pressed him too hard.
They brought in many beaver—this untrapped country was thick with them—and Skye worked until he dropped, fleshing and stretching, cooking beaver tail, cutting wood, cleaning camp. She assuaged her loneliness by helping him, taking over much of the cooking, making moccasins for the trappers, chopping cottonwood limbs, and sometimes hunting in her free moments, using her bow and arrows expertly to bring down an occasional doe or buck.
After a while she had been rewarded with a different sort of look from the chief, Sublette, and then smiles, and then affectionate greetings. The men changed, too. Now Bridger or Fitzpatrick would pause at her fire and exchange insults with her. She discovered they loved insults, and she had hoarded up an armory of bad words to cuss them with. The Absaroka didn’t have any bad words, but the Goddamns did, and it tickled her to loose them like thunderbolts whenever they came around her.
As the old moon passed, and the new one came, she knew she had won them. She was still lonely. Her heart cried for her people. She ached to hear her own tongue instead of this awful English she despised. But things were better, and the trappers were happy because they were making b
eaver and hoarding up some money to squander at rendezvous on spirits and women and shirts and blankets and shining new traps and rifles. She ached for the rendezvous herself—because then she could be with her own people. All she wanted was friends.
She drew tight against Skye, and he responded.
“You know, Victoria, marrying you was the best thing I ever did,” he said. “You’ve given me a new life—and it’s better than the one that filled my dreams so long.”
And then she wasn’t lonely, at least for the moment. And because he was happy, she was, too.
“Mister Skye,” she said. “There’s you and me, you and me. You got bear medicine. I got the magpie. Sonofabitch!”
Author’s Notes
This novel inaugurates a new Skye’s West series in which Barnaby Skye is a young mountain man in the Rockies. The new series will cover the period from 1826, when he arrived in North America, to the time he became a guide in the late 1840s. The first eight Skye’s West novels were set in the 1850s and 1860s, when Skye was a guide and a western legend.
Jedediah Smith, who appears in this story, was not only a giant of the fur trade, but one of the preeminent explorers of the unknown American West. After the 1826 rendezvous he embarked on a long, perilous journey in which he sought a route to Mexican California. He found one, but at great cost. By the time he returned to the 1828 rendezvous, he had lost nearly all his men, first to Indians in the Mohave desert, and then to Indians in what is now Oregon. While his men were more or less under arrest in California, he made a perilous trip to the 1827 rendezvous to report to his partners, nearly losing his life and those of his two companions en route. He himself died a few years later on the Santa Fe Trail, the probable victim of Comanches.
I have depicted legendary mountain men such as Tom Fitzpatrick and Jim Bridger fictionally here, but have attempted to portray their well-known traits accurately.
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