“Look,” said Jim. “If I was to throw every Indian out of the valley including Serafina, would that make them feel different about me? Would they take me to their bosom? Would they invite me to their houses and let me dance with their daughters? Would they even just let me alone? The hell they would. You said it yourself. You and me, we’re not the kind of men they want at the head of their community.”
Rich sighed. “I guess there ain’t any use denying that, Jim. And it don’t seem fair, considering if it hadn’t been for men like us they wouldn’t be here.”
“They may find some way to take my valley,” Jim said, “but I’m damned if I’ll give it to them.”
In the end he was never sure just how it did happen.
Rich came pounding on the door one summer midnight. He had ridden all the way from Marysville at a pace that left his horse in a white lather, and he was barely able to stand with the stiffness in his joints.
“Vigilance Committee,” he said. “I’m ahead of ’em but I don’t know how far.”
Serafina stood with her eyes wide and stricken, watching Jim dress.
“Why?” asked Jim, bitterly, furiously, not pausing in his dressing.
“They say you’re working with horse thieves, or at least helping them. They say somebody ran a bunch of stolen stock out through Beckwourth Pass a week ago. They got some of ’em back, and they’re all primed for you. Now maybe they’re lying. I don’t know. I don’t think it matters.”
“If there were thieves,” Serafina said, “Bartolomeo was not among them.”
“I know that,” Jim said. He didn’t. He didn’t know anything at this moment. “Go and warn him.” He put his arm around her once and let her go, and she ran away out of the room.
Rich said, “Jim—”
Jim stood facing him. Rich looked at him briefly and then turned toward the table, reaching for the bottle that was there. “I’d ride with you, but I can’t. Not this time.” He changed the bottle from one hand to the other and put it down again unopened.
Jim said, “I owe you for this one.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Rich furiously. “That again. Go on, get the hell out of here.”
Jim hesitated. Then in a low voice he said, “Thanks, Rich.” He went out.
Rich did not turn around.
There was half a moon, enough to show Jim the road. The snow fields glimmered high against the night. The meadows were a faint silver, with the dark pine slopes above. He rode fast. He did not feel afraid. He was astonished that he was not even angry. He felt alone. He felt old. And he did not know where he was going.
He went out of Beckwourth Valley into the pass, heading east. Now the white man’s world was all around him. He could not think of any place where he might escape it.
SNOW FALLING
TWENTY-FOUR
There was a cold, fine, drifting rain. It hid the mountains and moved in clouds of soft gray across the high plains. It made the clothing sodden and chilled the flesh, and it lay on the faces of the men like an icy sweat. They had been riding into it ever since they left Fort C. F. Smith at dawn and they were getting tired of it. Jim turned in the saddle, wincing at the stiffness the rain had wakened in his bones. He looked back at Lieutenant Mays and the two troopers. No more than boys, these three, and Jim smiled. Pushing hard against seventy and creaking with rheumatism, he could still outride them.
“Step along,” he called cheerfully. “Step along!”
Lieutenant Mays said, “We can’t push these horses, Beckwourth. We’ve got a long way to go.” He was a clean-cut youngster, fair-haired and sunburned, fresh out of West Point, knowing nothing of the strange wild land he had been sent to tame. Lamb to the slaughter, Jim thought, and was sorry for him. If he lived long enough he might make an officer, but so many of them didn’t. So many of them mistook wisdom for cowardice and experience for partiality, and they went prancing off to destruction with the smart-ass cockiness of babies who, knowing nothing, are sure of everything. Dispatches were full of their names and the graveyards were full of their bodies.
“That’s the trouble with the Army, Lieutenant,” Jim said. “That’s why you’re always two jumps behind.”
“I’ve heard that,” Mays said, “till I’m sick of it.”
“It’s true. Big long-legged horses, all size and no bottom, and all that equipment loaded on. You ought to get Indian ponies and ride light.”
He kicked his own pony into a lope, setting his teeth hard against the pain. Mays, exasperated, looked at his retreating back and then snapped an order at the troopers. They all quickened their pace. Jim didn’t care whether they kept up with him or not. He didn’t need them and he had not wanted them. For once he did not have to take their orders. This was his mission. His alone. For once, at this long, long last, the white man needed him.
Jim was going back to the Crow.
All day long he rode across the cold gray plain. He forgot the young lieutenant and the troopers lagging tired at his heels. He was in a hurry. It was not a conscious thing and he was only half aware of it himself. When the rain stopped and the clouds broke in the west he saw that it was sunset and he was angry, because it meant he had to stop.
In the evening light the country revealed itself to him with the loveliness of familiarity. He checked his horse on the crest of a swelling ridge and looked around. “Over there,” he said, pointing. “A good place there is to camp.”
He saw Mays and the troopers staring at him. It was a moment before he realized that he had spoken in Crow.
When they came to the camping place he was hardly able to dismount. He stood beside his horse for some time, clinging to the saddle, before he could trust himself to walk. Mays asked him if he needed help. Jim thanked him and said no. He felt better when the troopers got a fire going and he could sit and get warm. He noticed that Mays was studying him intently and he asked why.
“You were pretty sick down at Phil Kearny, Beckwourth. I was just wondering—”
“That was almost a month ago,” Jim said irritably.
“But—”
“It’s only the rheumatism. Old trappers get it, Lieutenant. I had a friend—” He paused. The flames curled and whispered, blowing in the October wind. “He’s gone under now,” Jim said. “Back in ’63. He suffered from it something terrible, but I never thought I’d get it. It took me after I went back to trapping again, and I was well past sixty. Those beaver streams are cold, boy.”
He had a bottle in his pocket. He poured some of the whisky into the steaming coffee one of the troopers handed him, and drank it slowly. It tasted good. He did not want any food, only the hot liquid.
“Better than towns, though. I had enough of towns. I practically founded Auraria when they made the gold strike there. Kept a store for old Louis Vasquez, managed a farm for him, even bought property of my own. Pretty soon it was a big town and they were calling it Denver, and I had to move on where there was more room.” He laughed. “I got my aches and pains for nothing. Trapping hadn’t got any better since the last time I tried it.”
“You’ve scouted for the Army a long time now,” Mays said. “You don’t think much of it, do you?”
“There’s good men in the Army,” Jim said. “Carrington’s a good man, I wish there were more like him. He’ll fight Indians but he doesn’t hate ’em. He tries to be fair. When you get men like Harney and Chivington—” Jim spat. “I’d rather work with Blackfeet. They’re more decent.”
Bristling just a little, Mays said, “I understood you were Colonel Chivington’s guide to Black Kettle’s village.”
“They said they’d hang me for a renegade if I didn’t. The Cheyennes were my friends and they knew that. They knew they were always camped around the farm in Denver.” Jim smiled, a vicious smile. “It was terrible cold on the way, though, and I got so stiff I couldn’t ride. Somebody else had to do the guiding after all. And I saved who I could when the killing started. I saved young Charlie Bent, Owl Woman’s son. I wish I
could have saved more. That day I was ashamed of my white blood.”
He turned suddenly on Mays, so fiercely that the young man was startled. “You learn one thing, boy, before you go leading men to wipe out Indian villages. You learn to tell hostiles from the peaceable ones, and if they ain’t hostiles you let ’em alone. That’s one of the main reasons you’ve got this war on your hands. Old Black Kettle was a good man. He did everything he could to make peace, and what happened to him and his people? The Indians figure it’s no use to talk peace with the white man.”
“The Indians,” said Mays, “have been known to break treaties themselves.”
Jim shook his head with the weariness of long frustration. “We’ve been shouting ourselves hoarse for years, me and Fitz and Old Gabe and the others that know, and nobody listens. Sure they break treaties. Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, you can’t trust most of ’em out of sight of your lodge, though I’ve had some friends among them. The Sioux and the Cheyennes, they’re different, only you don’t understand. First place, they don’t hold property like the white man and they don’t even know what you’re talking about. Second place, there isn’t any one chief that speaks even for all his own band, let alone the whole nation. I am a Crow chief. I could sign a treaty, and keep it, but that wouldn’t bind anybody else. If some of White Bull’s young men took the war road I wouldn’t be responsible, but your soldiers would come and kill me anyway.”
“It seems a pretty silly way to run things,” Mays said. “They ought to have better organization.”
“You better be thankful they don’t. If they’d formed this Confederacy twenty years ago and hung to it, you wouldn’t be building forts in Absaroka.”
“We’ll beat them,” said Mays, “Confederacy or not.”
Jim smiled. He said sadly, “No you won’t. Hunger will beat them. I said that years ago in my book. When the buffalo goes the Indian is finished. He has to make peace. He has to come begging for the white man’s beef.”
Mays knocked out his pipe with an angry gesture. “Beckwourth, I’m beginning to wonder just what you’re going to say to your Crow.”
“Makes you uncomfortable, don’t it?” Jim said. “Here I am, with all your lives riding on my shoulders.” He laughed. “You don’t like it at all, do you?” He was happy. He wished that Rich was here, to see what a real sense of power looked like. “Don’t worry, boy. I’m going to tell them the truth, just like I always did.”
He rolled up in his blanket with his feet to the fire. Even so the cold crept back into him. He was very tired. He drifted into a state that was half sleep, half stupor, and he dreamed of old things. They were good dreams, and the happiness and pride stayed with him. After all these years his people still wanted him. They stood on the edge of a precipice, and he was the only one they trusted to tell them what to do.
The next afternoon under a great blue blaze of sky, a horseman came toward them from the direction of Clark’s Fork, where they were going. Jim recognized him a long way off and rode to meet him.
It was Bridger, and Bridger was glad to see him. “I didn’t know if Carrington would have sense enough to send you.” He nodded toward the north. “They’re waiting for you. The head chiefs of the whole nation are there, and Young Bear, and your son. They say the Antelope will speak to them with a straight tongue.” He held out his hand. “Good luck.”
Jim said, “You’ve always been a good friend to me.” He had worked out of Fort Bridger a good deal these past years, since he left his valley. It was because of Bridger’s message that he was here now. “You never cared what I was, outside of a man.” He shook Bridger’s hand. “I will speak to them,” he said, “with a straight tongue.”
He smiled at Bridger and rode on, gaunt and old, with indomitable eyes. Bridger went on his way toward the fort, and he too was gaunt and old and made of iron. Mays and the troopers watched them, feeling a little scornful in their neat uniforms and polished gear and their round-cheeked youth, but they were a little awed too, as though they might be sensing that these two old men were the relics of giants.
That night Jim had to be lifted from his horse. Mays was worried. He wanted to turn back, but Jim sat cheerful and straight by the fire, drinking his coffee well laced. “I’ll get there all right,” he said. “Never you fear.”
The days were bright and crisp. The wind was piercing clean, and the mountains towered. The plains stretched wide. Jim pushed his tough little pony, dropping the long miles behind. The big cavalry horses wore down, and Mays said finally, “We’ve got to rest.”
Jim nodded. “You stay in camp tomorrow. I’ll go on alone.”
“Oh, no,” said Mays. “We—”
“You stay,” Jim said. “The village is less than half a day’s ride and I’m going in alone. Do what I tell you, boy, or this whole trip will be for nothing. I’ll send a messenger, and for God’s sake don’t shoot him.”
Mays did not like it, but he stayed. He had had his orders, which were that he was to be guided by what Beckwourth said.
Jim was on his way before daylight.
The distance was a little greater than he had said, and it was midafternoon before he saw the yellow-banded lodges of his people, scattered out on a grassy plain beside the river. He would have liked to stand a while, seeing, remembering, but one of the young boys tending the horse herd saw him and went galloping hell-bent into the village. The people began to gather in the open places. Jim lifted his head and straightened his shoulders. He rode into the village, making his tired pony prance.
The chiefs stood together. There were none that he recognized, though he might have known them as young warriors. He had seen Arepoesh die. Long Hair and Has-red-plume-on-the-side-of-his-head were laid on the four-poled platform long ago. A tall old man stepped forward and held out his hands. “Already I am well again,” he said. It was a moment before Jim realized that this was Young Bear. “Always,” he said, “when you go away, may you return with your face blackened.” They held each other’s arms.
There were many people gathered close around, staring at Jim in wonder, whispering. He had been gone for thirty years, but they had not forgotten him. Memory ran long with them, like their rivers, and the little children barely free of the cradle boards knew the Antelope, the Bloody Arm, the Enemy of Horses.
Jim greeted the chiefs.
When he was through a warrior approached him. He was a man of forty or so, dressed handsomely, and Jim knew him because his own face and Cherry’s were mirrored there together. “You are Black Panther,” he said, and the warrior nodded. “That is so. For many years I was without a father. Now my father has returned.”
“Every year,” said Young Bear, “I have built a sweat lodge.”
“I have gone where my medicine told me,” Jim said. “Sometimes it has been well. Sometimes it has not been well.” He looked from one to the other. “Now it is well.”
He turned to the people. “Crow!” he said to them in a strong voice. “For many years I have been away from you. I have been with the white men in their camps. Very much I have seen, very much I have learned. Now I have returned to you. Now I will go in and speak with your chiefs.”
“Year after year,” they said, “may you continue to see the long rains. Wherever you go, may you find fat buffalo.” They were a troubled people, seeing the break and fall of things.
Jim entered the lodge of White Bull. He sat in the place of honor, and the fire was warm and bright.
“The Blanket Chief has spoken to us,” White Bull said. “He talks peace. He is a good man. But we are tired and confused. We no longer see clearly as we used to. The Dakota and the Cheyennes already have taken much of our land. Now the blue-coat soldiers come and build their forts in Absaroka. Always we have been at peace with the white man. The Antelope knows this, it was so in his time, and when the young men took horses from white trappers the Antelope was angry and punished them. Now we do not know. Why do the soldiers build forts in Absaroka?”
“Because
,” said Jim, “white men have found gold in a certain place. The forts are to protect the road to it. The blue-coats have made a talk with the chiefs at Laramie.”
White Bull said bitterly, “We have heard of that.”
“The forts we do not like,” Young Bear said. “The soldiers we do not like. Now, elder brother, things are very different. Those who formerly were our friends have become our enemies, and those who formerly were our enemies wish to become our friends. The chiefs of the Dakota send us the pipe. They have made peace between themselves, they share their lodges, and also among them now are other old enemies, Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Apache. They wish us to join them, taking the war road against the whites. They say that we can drive them forever from our lands.”
“They are fools,” said Jim. “They are brave men. They will kill many soldiers, but in the end they will die. They do not know what they are fighting.”
One of the war chiefs said, “I see only a few soldiers, hiding afraid behind their walls.”
Jim held up his hand, showing the tip of his little finger. “What do you see there? A little thing, if you cut it off you will surely destroy it. But as for me, I will not know that it is gone.”
He looked around the lodge at the grave brown faces of the chiefs.
“You wished me to return to your council. You said that the Antelope had spoken always with a straight tongue. You said that the Antelope was a Crow and that he would know best what his people should do, because of the many years he has spent with the white men. Now I will tell you what is best for the Crow.
Follow the Free Wind Page 21