by Win Blevins
Diah considered for a while, running his eyes around the meadows and piney hills while he thought. Finally he said to the others, “What do you think?”
“This is the mountains. There’s no law,” said Sublette.
Everybody chewed on this.
“If he acts up, we’ll take care of it,” said Fitzpatrick. “Until he does, we can’t.”
“Something to be said,” Gideon put in, “for past is past when you come to mountains.”
Sam eyed Gideon unhappily.
“I don’t see what I can do,” said Diah. “He’s their man, not ours. Nor would I take action if I could. Let everyone have a second chance, I say. We judge them by what they do here, not what they were there. It’s the right thing.”
The five of them eyed each other uneasily.
“I believe you, though. Best be careful.”
“Should I tell the other men?”
“Sure,” Gideon said. “Not that they haven’t heard worse, and maybe done as bad.”
“The bottom line is, I think he’s carrying a grudge.”
Diah said, “I wouldn’t go anywhere by myself.”
“Me neither,” said Gideon. Then he roared out a laugh. “When you head for the bushes, take your ass wipe in one hand and your pistol, loaded, in the other.”
Sam did.
He also kept an eye on Micajah all the time—he knew where the man was riding in the line, where he threw his blankets, what fire he sat by and where. Sam didn’t wander off into the woods if he didn’t know where Micajah was. When he and Gideon went off trapping, they made sure they chose a creek well away from the direction Micajah went.
He wondered how long this would go on. Keemle and Gordon said their outfit was going right where Captain Smith’s was. Had got on their trail on purpose. Meant to trade with the same Crows they did and spend the winter in the same Crow village they did. In short, they meant to compete for the Crow trade, and not give Ashley a free hand.
Sam sure couldn’t see spending the whole winter in a village with Micajah.
After about a week Micajah suddenly plopped down next to Sam at the evening fire. Though the sun was long gone behind the Big Horns, in the twilight Sam could see his smile, and it didn’t look mean. Just then Gideon sat down on the other side of Micajah, which pleased Sam.
“I own I’ve been a little tickled by the way you avoid me,” Micajah began, “but you don’t have to. I’m sorry for what we done back in Evansville. It wasn’t right. I wouldn’t do it again.”
Sam just gawked at him. Micajah looked sincere.
“I know it was a trouble to you. It was to me too. I lost my brother. That set me down so hard I’ve quit drinking. Quit flat. You watch, you’ll see.”
He seemed to wait for a response from Sam, but none came.
“Anyhow, altogether, I apologize.” With that Micajah clapped Sam on the knee just like they were friends, stood his great bulk up, and walked away.
“He mean it, you think?” This was to Gideon.
“Looked like it. Let’s watch, see if he’s still boozing.”
The next evening Edward Rose rode into camp with fifteen or sixteen Crow men. They said their greetings and quickly set up their own camp, with rope corrals for their horses. They had good-looking animals, and extras for the Ashley party.
Three outfits were moving together now, noted Sam, all about the same size.
Soon, though, the Crows left some horses to relieve the Ashley men’s broken-down ones and headed home. Held back by tired, overworked horses, the mountain men were too slow for the Indians. Rose guided the Smith and Keemle-Gordon brigades across the Big Horn Mountains, which were turning wintry, across the Little Horns, and up the Wind River to the village.
Downstream from camp several riders met them, the men who’d brought the fresh horseflesh. They traded some words with Rose, and Sam gathered that the guide would put camp across the river.
Eager, Sam was trotting his pony alongside Rose—he had a fair seat on a horse by now, and intended to get good. “How big is this village?” he asked.
They could see several giant circles of buffalo-hide tipis, each representing a family.
The guide drew his sleeve across his mouth. “Don’t know this winter. Most winters maybe several hundred lodges.”
“Look at the size of that horse herd,” Sam exclaimed. “Must be hundreds.” The animals were against the foothills on the southwest side, and Sam could see young men around them, probably guards.
Rose smiled wryly. “That will be just one herd. There’s more horses than people. These are Crows. As horsemen, they are some.”
The circles of lodges were all on the west side of the river, between the cottonwoods along the water and the foothills. Rose led the brigades splashing through the shallow stream to the other side. A creek rolled in from the north.
As they rode by the first circle, children ran out to see the strangers. Several teenagers rode their horses up fast and fell in alongside, grinning madly. Dogs barked wildly and dashed beneath the horses’ feet.
Sam filled his eyes. “I can’t believe it,” he said.
“You ain’t gonna believe it,” said Rose. “These ain’t no tame Indians creeping around the edges of your towns. These is real Indians, and we’re in their home.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was a new world. It felt to Sam almost like he was living in a land of Bible stories, or tales of romantic style in far country and a remote time.
The circles of tipis stretched on a flat along the river for about a mile. Every one of these circles, it seemed, was a big group of relatives, each with an older man who was by common consent the leader. Each tipi was a family, parents, children, sometimes a grandparent. How many lodges altogether Sam never counted. The young, single men lived in brush shelters out of the circle, to themselves.
Immediately behind the camp rose gorgeous red cliffs, and beyond those foothills and then high mountains with eternal snows; opposite loomed barren hills that looked like mud turned to stone in hoodoo shapes. Snow didn’t seem to stick long in this high mountain valley, so the feed for the horses was good all winter long, and the game was plenty.
Soon another trapping brigade rode in, led by Captain Weber and sent by Major Henry to join the Smith outfit. That made three camps of mountain men, about fifty altogether.
It seemed like the fur trade was counting big-time on the Crows. There were lots of good reasons. The Crows were friendly, and various other Indians had proven themselves distinctly unfriendly. Crow beaver also had a reputation. Since the Crows lived in mountain country, not on the plains, the fur grew longer and thicker against the alpine cold. Also, the Crow women prepared the hides better, scraping and rubbing them until they were more pliable. Last, beyond Crow country was reported to lie the greatest beaver country of all, on a river the Crows called the Siskadee.
Sam spent the first day perched on top of a big boulder, just watching the Crows. The men were tall and handsome. Sam could see they liked to tease each other and play pranks—they were a people of laughter. The men seemed to have no tasks but to protect the village against enemies and hunt, or get ready to do those things. All the domestic work was done by women.
Sam saw infants tied onto horses in their cradleboards. Maybe they were getting used to the motion of the animal. Children who looked no more than four or five years old were riding, mounted alone.
Everything was beautifully done. Climbing up on the boulder next to Sam, Gideon said, “Those are the biggest, best-looking lodges I’ve ever seen. And look at the clothes. Other tribes trade high for Crow robes, shirts, and breechclouts—the women really put a lot of work into them.”
Sam just watched. He was feeling that pang again, what came from feeling left out because he didn’t know a language. He longed to know just what these people were saying to each other, and what they would say to him if they could do more than smile when he passed. He wanted to know several Indian languages, like Rose
did. He also wanted to learn to read. He hated being shut out of words, which were how people told you about themselves.
“You hear about the women?”
Sam raised both eyebrows at him.
“You know the Crows fight all other Indians—Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Snake, all the tribes around them. But formidable, they like white men. Best part is, bien sur, Crow women like white men very much. They are not like Sioux, they love the coupling, they talk naughty, they are maybe kind of wild.”
Sam pretended not to be interested.
“Here, this is what Rose told me. Rose, he knows. He say the Crows have ceremonies, they use single woman known sure as virtuous. Guess what? Have trouble sometimes do ceremonies. No young woman known for that.” Gideon haw-hawed.
Right then Rose walked up. “Be ready in the morning,” he said. “Buffalo hunt. Big buffalo hunt. It’s gonna shine.”
Walking and riding west, Sam had gotten damn little experience of buffalo. True, they saw bands here and there, once a huge band with bulls and cows thick as trees in a forest. But they didn’t have the horseflesh for the job—none but packhorses at first, and then mounts half-gaunted by hard travel and poor grass. Also, the brigade had no way to transport fresh meat, and not enough time to stop for several days and dry the flesh. Thus cramped, they hunted on foot for single animals and took only what they could eat in that camp. Sam didn’t get to do even that, because his leg ached and he made a point of resting it.
So today, fully healed, Sam was raring to go. An entire tribe hunting a big herd of the beasts. Gideon said it was the best fun in the world.
Most of the red hunters and all the white men rode down the valley to a place where it narrowed. The young Crows with the swiftest horses rode upstream and gathered out of sight of the far side of a big herd. Sam had no idea how many animals were in the herd—thousands, it looked like—how could any man, by looking, know the number of such a multitude?
Sam and Gideon sat their horses next to a score of Indian hunters, rifles ready. Sublette and Fitzpatrick were ready in front of them, Diah a little off by himself.
“Cows only,” Gideon said quietly. “The bulls are tough and stringy.”
The swift-mounted young men rode toward the buffalo, then spread out across the valley until the beasts saw them and bolted.
Pell-mell they came, and now they seemed immense to Sam, the bulls blonde on the front and top, brown on the tail and underbelly, as tall as a man at the hump and nearly twice that long. In the early morning, after a light dusting of snow, the entire running herd kicked up a powdery, white halo.
“Place your ball just above the brisket,” said Gideon. “That’s the only place. They’re hard to kill. It’s like shooting trees.”
Sam breathed the cold air into his lungs, and it felt intoxicating.
Closer the herd roared.
“Best stay on the edge of the herd,” said Gideon. “If your mare goes down and you’re in the middle, you’ll get trampled.”
Caution was the furthest thing from Sam’s mind. He was headlong for the kill.
Up the valley Indian riders began to fall in with the herd from both sides, young men and old, stripped to breechclouts even in the late-autumn air. They rode without reins, both hands on bows and arrows, guiding the horses with their knees alone. Sometimes a bull would charge a horse and try to gore it, but the horses dodged nimbly. The riders were superb horsemen, keeping their balance and their seats no matter what jump or cut the horse made. Eventually, the rider would nudge the horse close alongside a galloping cow, plunge a couple of arrows into her chest, or even through the chest, and ride on for the next shot.
The mountain men and the Crows around Sam sprinted forward, and Sam spurred into the midst of the buffalo.
He could not believe the chaos. Dirt flew into his face, even big clods. The cloud of snow nearly blinded him. The stampede made an incredible noise, like putting your head inside the biggest steam engine in the world. His mare ran, she skittered sideways, she jumped over gullies. A bull hipped her hard, and she nearly lost her footing but got it back.
Sam tried to get The Celt into shooting position and then saw he’d lost his priming. At full speed he poured priming powder into the pan and was amazed that he got it in. He reined the mare toward a cow that didn’t seem too fast. Just as he brought the gun level, a bull charged from behind the cow, the mare crow-hopped twenty feet sideways, and Sam was on the ground.
By miracle he wasn’t stomped and gored immediately. Since he was nearly outside the herd, he hot-footed it for the nearest rocks and scrambled up.
His mare was gone, and he didn’t know when he’d find her.
Surprisingly, he still had The Celt in his hand.
The captain came riding hard along the herd edge and shot into a side of a running cow. Sam watched astonished as Diah dumped powder into his muzzle at full gallop, spit a lead ball out of his mouth into the barrel, whacked the rifle butt on his saddle, ignored ramming the ball home, maneuvered alongside another cow, and shot again.
That horsemanship would have defied belief, except that Crow riders were doing more amazing things all around.
The first cow Diah shot rumbled to a stop. Blood streamed from her mouth, and her tongue stuck out. Her eyes rolled, bloodshot and glazed with death. Yet she refused to go down. She widened her legs and braced herself, swaying from side to side. She stomped. She lifted her head to an indifferent sky and bellowed for help. Suddenly she lurched and teetered. Purple blood gouted from her mouth and nose. She rolled from side to side like a ship in big seas. Gradually, she stiffened, convulsed, and crumpled onto her knees.
Sam exhaled like a whale spouting.
Suddenly he had to get in on it. He rushed forward, The Celt in hand. He was mad to shoot a buffalo, and right now. He was only a dozen steps from the outside of the herd, which seemed to run faster and faster, blindly plummeting to its unknown fate. Maybe if he followed one with its sights as it came toward him….
That was a nice cow there, on the outside, nothing between him and her … He squeezed the trigger.
The Celt exploded and Sam got knocked tail over teacups. He sailed one direction, The Celt another. A dark creature blotted out the sky for an instant and was gone. His left shoulder screamed in pain.
Someone rode between him and the herd. Micajah of all people, protecting him, maybe saving his life.
Gideon trotted up leading the mare. “Damn, we almost lose you.”
“Thanks!” Sam shouted at Micajah. The giant waved and rode off into the hunt.
Sam grabbed The Celt with his right hand and the reins with his left. The left protested violently. He swung onto the mare with his right alone.
“What happened to me?”
“As you fired, a bull jumped right over you.”
Sam rubbed his shoulder, which hurt like hell. “Kicked me too, I think.”
“You’re damn lucky he decided to jump.”
Sam looked back toward the cow. She was just then staggering around in a daze. “I got her!” he yelled.
“She’ll need more killing than that.”
Sam tried to shoot her again, but his shoulder hurt so much he couldn’t hold up The Celt’s barrel.
Gideon rode up close and finished her with a head shot. She knelt unwillingly, and her head sagged onto her forefeet.
Sam got out his knife to start butchering, and realized he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do.
“I want to get one more,” Gideon yelled, and rode off.
Three Crow women, maybe a mother and two teenage daughters, ran up and made shooing motions. With pantomime the mother indicated that they would butcher out the cow.
Sam motioned that he wanted to help.
The mother spoke to the daughters and they ran along to the next downed animal. One girl, Sam noticed, was about fifteen years old, and very beautiful. She wore moccasins with blue beads and light blue leggings from the tops of her moccasins up under her ski
rt, and looked like she was running on a piece of sky.
The mother had a wide face with a vertical, straight-line cut on the outside edge of her left eye, cheekbone to forehead. She looked at Sam like she didn’t know what to do with him. Sam realized this must be women’s work, but he didn’t care—he wanted to learn.
Motioning for him to hold the mouth open, she cut out the tongue first. Then she made a cut the entire length of the spine and peeled back the hide on both sides, like a tablecloth laid on the ground. Slowly, sometimes signaling for help, she took off the boss, a sort of hump on the back of the neck; then the hump and hump ribs, the meat on the big extensions of the vertebrae; then the fleece, the long double strip of flesh on either side on the spine, and the thick layer of fat on top of it; then the belly fat.
That done, Cut-Eye and Sam rolled the beast onto one side. She opened the belly and took the liver and kidneys. She slithered the shiny guts out. Then she cut out a thigh bone and used it to break some smaller bones for marrow.
Cut-Eye looked up with a broad grin. She looked like she’d been in a whirlwind of blood. Hell, Sam thought, maybe I look the same. She ran off to join her daughters at the other animal. He looked for the girl who ran on sky, but she was bending out of sight behind the beast.
Sam stood there. So this was his first buffalo. He had a suspicion the meat wasn’t his, or not all of it. What was he supposed to do now? What was he supposed to feel?
He knelt and looked into the cow’s eyes. Nothing there. Not life, not a hint of life, not even the memory of life. Sam breathed in and out slowly. Life was made the way it was.
The herd was gone down the valley. He caught his mare, mounted, and rode slowly behind. The morning was quiet. Arms with knives raised and fell all over the valley floor. Everything felt empty.
Gideon rode back the other way.
“What do we do now?”
Gideon grinned fiercely. “Rub your belly and dream of gorging yourself. You like the hunt?”
