by Win Blevins
Through here the route wound between high mountain ranges. The river had long since become a narrow creek and was invisible between snowbanks. Another creek came hurtling in from the north. They floundered across. The captain gave the hand signal to stop, and every man followed his eyes. He looked at the little creek they were following. They all wondered whether it was flowing east, and was the headwaters of Wind River, or whether it flowed west. Did they tread now for the first time on the waters of the Columbia River? Were they across the Great Divide, on the Pacific side?
Sam decided to find out. He handed Gideon his reins and floundered toward the creek. He would see what way that water went. If necessary, he would stick his hand in it and feel the current. If it rolled west, he would put his lips in and taste Pacific waters.
But he couldn’t get close enough. A high, soft snowbank shouldered the creek. If he went any further, the bank would cave in, and Sam would get a dunking.
He hesitated. Maybe …
“Sam!” came the captain’s voice. “It isn’t worth it.”
He came back.
“So we don’t know,” said Clyman.
“Do we care?” asked Sublette, always ironic.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Fitz, looking hard at the captain.
“You’re probably right,” said the captain.
Diah and Fitz saw it the same way, though Diah hated it. The men were in snow over their knees, and had to lift each leg out and heave it over snow awkwardly. But the horses were worse. They didn’t want to go on. Their feed was buried a couple of feet down. Tomorrow they would be shaking from cold, weakness, and hunger.
“Even if we’re over the top,” Fitz said, “there’ll be a lot of snow. Might be days to feed. Back, it’s only one day.”
“We can’t ruin these horses,” agreed the captain. Diah might have pushed the men on, but he was mindful that the horses were worth about one hundred and twenty dollars each in this remote place, and the company had to have them for the spring hunt.
When they got back to the Crow camp the next evening, every man knew it was the right decision. The horses were done in, and beyond that. They’d need at least a week’s rest on this fair-to-middling winter grass.
Diah gave himself no rest, though. The next morning he was at Sam and Gideon’s lodge before they’d had breakfast, wanting to go see chief Rides Twice, wanting Sam to translate.
Sam told Diah to wait until he’d finished his coffee, and invited the captain to join him. Diah declined. The man wouldn’t rest. Most of the trappers would have gladly relaxed another month among the Crows. Plenty of food, plenty of company, plenty of women, shining times. But Diah was edgy to be getting on.
Soon they gathered up Fitz, Clyman, and Sublette to visit with Rides Twice.
Now Rides Twice’s politeness let him affirm effusively what they’d learned the hard way—the pass to the north was too high and too snowy in this moon.
“Ask him if there’s an easier pass to the Siskadee.”
Sam was wondering if he was to blame for the false start up Union Pass. Maybe if he’d understood all of what Rides Twice and the others were saying … Now he faltered through some Crow sentences and some signs.
Rides Twice gave an answer, but he was hesitant. He didn’t understand, or wasn’t sure he did.
Diah looked at Sam impatiently.
“We better get Blue Medicine Horse,” said Sam.
Sam’s friend was sent for. Word came back that he was out hunting.
Crow men who knew the country well were called for. While they were waiting, Clyman had an idea. He got a buffalo robe, shoveled a lot of sand onto it, and dragged it into Rides Twice’s lodge.
The Crow men who came were big bellies, middle-aged men. Rides Twice was a white hair. The trappers figured they had plenty of expertise at hand.
Clyman shaped the sand with his hands to represent the Wind River Valley, the Absaroka Mountains on one side, and the Wind River Mountains opposite. He drew a line for the river, all the way down to where it made its big turn, carved its way through the Little Horns, and changed its name to the Big Horn River. Sam sounded out every name carefully, and the Crows clearly understood.
Then they got involved, and bit by bit the picture came into focus. The pass was south, beyond where the Wind River made its big turn, and well to the west. First another river, the Popo Agie, came in from the west. You went up that river, passed a spring of some kind Sam couldn’t understand, and then crossed over several more divides to the south to another river, the Sweetwater. This river flowed down from a break in the mountain chain, and beyond that break, several days’ ride beyond, was the Siskadee.
Diah Smith gave his hosts plenty of tobacco in thanks for the information. Before leaving, he said, “Tell your young men not to steal our horses after we leave.”
Sam stumbled through this in spoken word and sign.
Rides Twice laughed genially. “I will tell them, but it will do no good. Stealing your horses, that’s their fun.”
“We don’t expect our friends to rob us.”
“Oh, we won’t rob you. If the young men get your horses, come back and trade us something for them. We wouldn’t really rob you, or harm you. If we did, you wouldn’t come back, and then we couldn’t steal your horses.”
Rides Twice and all the big bellies got a good laugh out of that one.
Every night that week Sam courted Meadowlark. They stood through the late winter evening in the blue blanket he’d bought because it matched her leggings, her moccasins, and something about her spirit. They talked and talked, of his dreams and hers. They didn’t kiss, they didn’t hold hands. Sam told her that no matter what happened, whatever grizzly bear or high mountains got in his way, he would be back in this village next summer. And he would bring many horses.
He saw in her eyes that she knew what he meant. Her eyes said something eloquent back, but she gave him no words.
The next morning, as the brigade rode south out of camp, she did give him the send-off he yearned for. She ran out from her circles, sky-blue legs flashing, and held something up to him. The line of riders stopped.
He reached down and took … a gage d’amour.
Its heart shape was outlined in beads of Crow blue, with a thin black line, also heart-shaped, inside that. The enter was Cheyenne pink.
Solemnly, he put it around his neck. “It’s beautiful,” he said in the Crow language. “Thank you.” With one hand he touched his heart.
Someone said softly behind, “She done carved her initials and the boy’s in a tree.”
Someone else shushed him.
Sam reached down and brushed her cheek with soft fingers. It was the most intimate touch that had ever passed between them.
The other men were moving on, circling around him.
He touched his heels to his pony and was off.
This time the men of the brigade felt like they knew where they were going. Down the Wind for three and a half days, to where a decent-sized river did roll in from the west. Up that river to a big spring of black oil—now Sam knew what the Crow big bellies were trying to tell him. With confidence now they set out over a divide to the south, and on south. Eventually, they would come to the Sweetwater.
Didn’t look like it was going to be easy, though. They were up high in alpine country in the first week of March. The buffalo were back down where, some of the men thought, any critter with sense would be. So they hadn’t had fresh meat since leaving Wind River for higher country. They better get over this pass before it came to starving times.
Sam, Clyman, and Sublette are pushing ahead, looking for meat in this frozen wasteland around the southern end of the Wind River Mountains. Sam casts evil glances at his two friends. The damn snow is deep enough, he curses to himself, and drifted enough, even its shapes fool you. Hollows are full, rises thinly crusted, and you can’t tell the difference. You can in deep drifts. You fall into little creeks running under the snow. You see only one color,
a white that stretches to the sky on either side. It is a kind of blindness.
Sam draws his hooded blanket coat, which the men call a capote, tighter and yet again tighter. He turns his head away from the wind that skips and plays down from regions where only wind can go, but somehow it finds his nooks and crannies, dries his lips, makes his eyes tear. When he gets the edges of his hood too close, his eyelashes freeze to it. His hands and feet, as far as he can tell, are absent without leave.
Sam rides up alongside Clyman, scanning the frozen flats and slopes for the black dots that might mean buffalo, or elk, or anything a man can eat.
The sun drops behind the peaks to the west, casting the landscape into cold, lavender shadow.
Just then they spot three buffalo standing in the open about a mile away. The frozen men look at each other. They look at the horses, who stand heads down, eyes glazed. The hunters will have to get close to their quarry—there will be no chase.
Dismounting, they slip toward the buffalo. Buffler are funny. Sometimes when you shoot, the others stand there, dumb. But sometimes if they smell you half a mile away, or see you and you look like a wolf, they stampede away scared. You can never tell about buffler.
The wind is swirling, but it’s headed down this wide canyon. Can we get close enough?
Though the cold doesn’t seem to matter as much, the ache of hunger is worse in Sam’s belly. A quarter mile away they drop to hands and knees and start crawling forward. The animals are bulls. Nothing has ever felt so important.
The wind picks up, getting ready to howl. It spits the snow up in their eyes. Their lips are parched with thirst, puckered with cold. They crawl, and crawl, and crawl.
Suddenly one of the bulls fidgets, paws the earth, and stomps nervously. He’s seen them.
It’s too far away for a sure kill.
All three men spring up, throw down on the bulls, and let fly.
The bulls thunder off.
“That one’s running queer,” says Sublette.
“Maybe a broken shoulder,” answers Clyman.
Sam’s lips are too cold to move.
In the twilight they can’t be sure about the buffalo. Time is running out.
While Sublette goes back for the horses, Sam and Clyman follow the bulls up the valley. Maybe they can pin the wounded one against that ridge about a mile away. Clyman breaks into a trot, and Sam forces himself to keep up.
The snow is crusty in most places and holds their weight. Sometimes Sam breaks through to midcalf and stumbles forward. Sometimes he pitches headlong into the snow. The wind is whistling down the canyon now. Desperate, they keep running.
The bulls have gone up along a patch of timber and veered off left, toward the ridge. The men take a chance and cut through the deep shadows of the timber. When they come out into the last of the graying light, there stands the wounded bull, in easy range.
While Sam is still gasping for breath, Clyman fires without aiming.
Mountain luck. The bull tumbles into a small gully.
When Sublette catches up, Sam and Clyman have the hide open and are cutting off meat and stuffing it down raw. The flesh tastes wonderful, the juices taste wonderful, and the warm body is kind to their frozen hands.
In the three-quarters dark they gather a little sagebrush and try to start a small fire. It’s hard to get sparks from flint and steel to light the tinder. When it does light, the wind scatters the fire immediately. Over and over they try and fail. All three want some buffalo meat roasted. Instead they cut off last hunks, wrap themselves in their blankets to gnaw, and pretend they don’t notice the wind and cold.
After only about an hour of the long night Sam decides the cold coming through the blankets from the snow may be even worse than the wind. He sees no choices. He huddles, painfully awake, shivering. He wiggles his fingers and toes, thinking that in the morning he may have none to wiggle. In fact, in the morning his body may be hard as an ice-covered boulder.
He watches Sublette and Clyman carefully for signs that his partners are awake. Conversation might make this wait hurt less. Nothing could make it hurt worse.
After half an eternity of watching, he calls Sublette’s name, then Clyman’s. The wind rips the words away, so he tries again. Nothing. He speaks again and again. Nothing. He ponders giving one of them a punch or a kick, but he can’t bring himself to do that. Because he has realized that his partners have frozen to death. He’s not a bit surprised. He feels superstitious about touching the bodies, though, like he might catch something, maybe that old enemy mortality.
Sam starts pumping his arms in the air, swaying his trunk, kicking his legs up and down on the snow. When he’s out of breath, he rests. And rests some more, intending to go back into motion soon. Sam doesn’t intend to freeze to death, not one bit of that, not a bit …
Damn! He almost went off to sleep. He’s sure that would be fatal now—that’s how his partners froze to death.
He looks up at the Big Dipper, checks its angle to the North Star, and makes up his mind to keep track of the time by the movement of the Dipper.
He pumps, sways, and kicks to a fare-thee-well. He wiggles each of his ten fingers and each of his ten toes twenty times. He grabs his nose and then his ears and wiggles them. He looks up at the Big Dipper. It hasn’t moved an iota.
He goes back to wiggling, now doing each finger and toe fifty times. It’s going to be a long, l-o-n-g night …
Sam considers carefully whether the sky to the east is really a tad paler. It’s probably his imagination. Or his hope is painting the horizon a hint lighter.
Hope is a small flame within his breast, but now it flickers. Light is never coming to this part of the world again. As it will never come back for Jim Clyman and Bill Sublette. Gone beavers. Sam is damned sorry about that. He let his partners down.
He studies the eastern sky. Probably it’s just his fancy playing tricks on him.
The wind has eased off at last.
Resolutely, he faces to the west and starts pumping, swaying, and kicking once more. When he’s finished with one round of that, he does his complete finger and toe-wiggling routine. Then, fixedly, he stares to the west, into the high range of snow-shrouded peaks, for as long as he can stand it. Then he turns around.
Lighter. Yes, he’s sure. It’s sure.
And Sam knows he’s going to live.
Live, by God—LIVE!
After another eternity, this one maybe a little shorter, he stirs. He doesn’t know how his muscles and bones will work this morning. Maybe they won’t.
He looks over at Clyman and Sublette. He can’t bury his friends. He’ll take what buffalo flesh he can, bring back compañeros this afternoon to get the rest of it, and take care of them then.
He looks at the pathetic remains of the fire they tried to build last night, a few broken, charred twigs of sagebrush. In a moment he’s going to have to try again. There’s only the barest breeze now, he ought to be able to get one going.
“That’s what did it, fellows. That damned fire, we couldn’t get it. I’m sorry, damn sorry.”
“What?” says a voice.
“Bill?”
“What?” A different tone this time, irritated at being waked up. Clyman.
Sam has never felt so glad to have someone irritated at him.
“I …” He doesn’t know what to say. “Damnation, help me build a fire.” He will never understand how Clyman and Sublette slept through that terrible cold and lived.
Jim grumps, “I’ll gather some wood. You two get your hands warm enough to strike a spark.”
But Sam can’t do it, Sublette can’t do it. The steel bites into their flesh and freezes. Their fingers are too numb to hold flint tight.
Clyman can’t either. Over and over the three take turns trying. No luck.
Desperate, they shoot their rifles into the tinder, thinking maybe a spark …
No luck.
Bill rolls up in his blankets and turns his back to Sam and Clyman. “L
eave me alone.”
They look at Sublette’s back. Bill will be dead for sure before they can ride to the brigade and get back.
Sam looks around at the bleak, alien, frozen landscape.
No, by God, I’m not ready to die. We can’t stay here—we have to move. Sam stands up, takes a last look at Bill, and walks to his horse.
Clyman nods his understanding. They take the reins and swing into the saddles.
Then Clyman gets one last idea. He dismounts and kneels by the remains of last night’s attempt at fire. He sorts twigs and ashes through his fingers, groping for what he cannot see.
And finds it. Warmth.
He brushes ash away. A small, red coal, no bigger than a kernel of corn.
“Goddamn hoorah!” he mutters toward Sam.
He makes the best sagebrush tinder he can. Then, glad to burn his fingers, he drops the coal into it. Sam drops to his knees and helps blow.
In moments they have a nice little blaze going.
“Bill! We got fire!” grunts Clyman.
Slowly, lethargically, Sublette rolls over and sees.
A moment later their hands and even faces are in the flames. All three breathe the smoke gladly.
In a few minutes they are riding for timber. Clyman and Sublette hunch in their saddles. For warmth, Sam walks. In two hours they reach good timber. While Sublette sleeps again, Clyman and Sam roast buffalo. Sam smiles to himself. We did it. We did it. And our meat will save the brigade.
Starving times were not past.
In a few days they crossed the last divide and came onto the Sweetwater, a narrow, meandering river that wandered east, but where they didn’t know. Captain Smith looked at his map and said it might be one of the tributaries of the Platte River, or the Arkansas River, no telling which.
They were looking for enough water to float their furs down when summer came. Furs had to go to market. Platte or Arkansas made a devil of a difference. Several hundred miles above St. Louis where you could float them down easily, or several hundred below, so you’d have to haul them against the current.
The upper Sweetwater was still in the clutches of a high mountain winter. True, there was one sign of seasonal change to come. The south-facing slopes were sometimes bare of snow. But the game was still in the valleys far down the mountain. That told some of the men they didn’t belong up here, not yet. Captain Smith was driving them to start before the time had arrived. They would never quite understand their captain. But he was some man, and they would damn well follow him.
