North Star

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Then Skye changed everything. He wanted the boy to be schooled in white men’s mysteries. Her son was taken far away, where the Big River met the Father of Waters. And that’s when the sadness seeped into her life, and she learned to smile at Skye and laugh when he and Victoria laughed, and did her tasks faithfully and with many smiles. But it was not good. Who could say whether she would ever see this flesh of her flesh again? She loved the sturdy boy, and when he was taken away he was torn too, because he was too young to be ripped from his mother, and he looked desperately at her, that one last desperate look, when Colonel Bullock drove away in a buggy carrying her son with him.

  The letters came once in a while, addressed to her in a child’s hand, and Skye read them to her whenever they stopped at Fort Laramie, where the letters collected. And she wrote her boy, or rather had Skye make the marks on paper that signified what she said, and she sent her letters to St. Louis.

  And so the years passed, and all that while Mary smiled at Skye and Victoria while her heart grew heavier and the days grew longer, until she thought she could not bear another hour of another day. But she hid it all. Now she stood on the far bank, seeing Victoria wave to her, and already she was changed. For the first time since she had reached womanhood, Blue Dawn had no master or mistress saying what must be thought or done or hoped for.

  The sense of it was huge, so huge that she could not fathom what was happening inside of her. When Victoria had proposed that she spend time with her people, she had not dreamed that she would become another person, someone new and old at once. She knew at once who this new and old self was: she was North Star’s mother now, and not Skye’s younger wife. She watched Victoria collect her horse and ride slowly west, upriver, and vanish. Blue Dawn sorrowed. She loved Victoria. She loved Skye. But now some inner force was rushing through her, and she knew her first task was to cache the lodge. She didn’t want it. She looked for cliffs hemming the south bank of the river, and saw none. Better to cache something like that high in a cliff, where it would stay dry and undiscovered, than in any low place.

  She traveled east until she found a decayed cliff with some hollows in it, well above the river. It would do. She unloaded the lodgepoles and the lodge cover and pushed them to the rear of a dry shelf where they would escape most weather. And then she hung the rest of her kit on the pack frame of one pony, and retreated. At the base, she studied the place for a landmark, found one—an odd column of striated rock—and knew she would remember how to reclaim the lodge someday.

  Now, riding one pony and leading two others, she headed south through a lonely land on a chill spring day. She knew the way. She would find a home with her brother, The Runner, and renew her life. But not right away. Not for a while. Not for many moons. That insight startled her, just as everything else had startled her the moment she was separated from the iron rule of Victoria. Day after day she rode through a chill spring, alone and unnoticed, quietly following the Yellowstone as it hurried east, marveling at the change within her.

  For the first time in her life, she was free. She marveled at it. She was alone. It was strange, something she felt more in her chest than in her head. Skye had made all the family decisions. Victoria had not been a bossy senior wife but had expected Mary to join her in whatever needed doing, whether it was collecting firewood or sewing moccasins. When it came to raising the boy, Victoria and Mary were both mothers. And now Mary traveled with no one beside her, the hollow land spreading away from her in all directions. It brought an almost unbearable ache to her bosom. She could turn her ponies and go west if she chose, or east, or north, or south. She could stop if she chose, start if she chose, ascend the nearest peak if she chose. It made her giddy at first, but then it made her hurt.

  The vision of North Star, far away in a white man’s school, made her ache inside, ache as she never had ached except for the day when he was taken from her. She wanted just to see him. This hunger arose in her breasts and womb, not her mind. She had a maternal hunger she could not drive out of her, a hunger that rode the crest of her sudden liberty, a hunger that formed visions of the eight-year-old boy in her mind, where the images burned and smoldered and built into a flood of anguish. The sun rose in the east each morning, rose where North Star must be.

  St. Louis was a long way off. It lay in some mysterious place far across prairie country, and then across hilly country, and finally at the throat of the rivers. Once she had heard that it would take two moons to walk there. She could scarcely imagine it. The white men had built a railroad for their steam wagons, but she didn’t know whether it would take her to St. Louis. She did know that the steamboats would take her there, down the Big River, but she had no money for that. And she didn’t know whether they would permit a woman of the People to travel there alone. White men had strange rules, and she had never fathomed them or where they came from or why they existed.

  The farther she rode, the more determined she became. Should she find her people first, and tell her brother where she was going to go? Should she find the Absarokas and tell them? That might be good, but it would not be her way. She had settled on a way, and now she would follow it, no matter where it might lead her.

  Would she even recognize her son? Of course she would. Now he would have fifteen winters. She would know him on sight. And he would know her. She hardly dared imagine what might happen then; whether they could spend time together, renew the ties of kinship, of mothers and sons together. Since she didn’t know, she set that aside. She only knew that she would follow the path to this place called St. Louis, and she would find her son, and then the future would take care of itself.

  She knew how to go there, more or less. She needed to reach the Big Road, the one that went past Fort Laramie, where she and Skye had been many times. The Big Road would not have many travelers on it now that the steam wagons were going on the iron rails. That would be good. Her ponies could graze.

  She wasn’t sure how to reach the Big Road from the Big Horn Valley, though. If she could find the trail she had traveled many times with Skye, she would be all right. But she didn’t need a road. Her pony would take her almost anywhere. White men needed roads, but Shoshones needed only a keen eye.

  She traveled quietly, not thinking about anything. Once she spotted a group of white men on mules on the north side of the Yellowstone. She feared them more than warriors from other tribes. These were probably miners. They had spread across the land, wanting to tear up the earth and rock. There was no telling what was in their minds, or what they would do with a lone Indian woman.

  But they did not see her. That was because she traveled lightly across the breast of the earth, blending in to rock and clay and brush, moving slowly, as a grazing animal might move, so that she didn’t stir up the ravens and magpies, and no crows scolded her. It took many days before she reached the turnoff and headed south, leaving the Yellowstone behind her. But it was all as she remembered it. She was not lost.

  The great basin of the Big Horn ran north and south, and was guarded by snowy peaks to the east, and to the west barren, gloomy hills that slowly rose to high country, and the great backbone of the world, still wrapped in blinding white. It was spring in the basin, but winter above, and sometimes the winds reminded her that Father Cold had not departed and was waiting to bite her cheeks.

  She stayed well away from the Big Horn River, wondering whether she might run into Victoria’s people, the Kicked-in-the-Bellies band, making their summer home on lush pasture along the great stream. Her trip to St. Louis would be a secret from all the people. They were all her friends and would welcome her with smiles and much honor, but they might also ask too many questions and she was not in a mood to answer them. So she ghosted south, clinging to the barren foothills, where there was little game. She did not suffer for food, for she could make a meal of almost anything, and now tender buds filled her cook pot, and little new roots, and fresh-laid eggs stolen from nests. She did spend time at all this, but did not hunger and was content. />
  One night she weathered a sleet storm and bitter winds, but she turned her sleep-canvas into a poncho, and rode her pony while inside of her little tent, and kept Father Cold at bay.

  The next morning frost lay thick upon the land, and every stem of grass was whitened, but that did not stop her ponies from grazing it.

  She thought she knew where the Absaroka People were summering and gave that place a wide berth so that no tribal elders would stay her or ask where she was going. She did not feel that she was doing anything wrong; only that she had chosen a Way, and she intended to walk the Way, and it was not anyone else’s business where she walked, or why.

  But if she avoided contact with the Absaroka, she dreaded even more an accidental meeting with her own band, where she might find herself the guest of her brother The Runner, a great headman among them, and then she might be required to tell them where she was going. Then she would be forced to divulge her secret. In truth, she would be less free with her clan, and they might not honor the Way she had chosen for herself. But they were mostly likely on the Wind River, far south, with the Owl Creek Mountains lying between this valley and that one. That was their true home, except when they went hunting for the shaggies. She would not go that way. There was a creek named after Mister Skye’s friend Jim Bridger that would take her across the eastern mountains to the Big Road.

  She drifted south, and her ponies fattened as they walked, nipping at the tender spring grasses that now were pushing exuberantly toward the heavens. She chose a path that took her across the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains, a path that was not easy because it was up and down, but a path that let her follow her Way. Her resolve hardened in her. She had wavered for many suns, wondering what her man, Mister Skye, might think. He might not like her new Way, but she couldn’t help that.

  Several times, while she sat quietly on her pony on a pine-dotted slope, she saw horsemen far below, small dots moving in a hurried way. She could not tell who they were. She could not even say whether they were one of the People or white men.

  One day, in the middle of what white men called May, she found the road up Bridger’s creek and took it. This was a wagon road, but not much used anymore, and now the ancient ruts were filled with grass, and places where the white men had carved into slopes or built little bridges were washing away. She had been on it several times with Skye and Victoria; it would take her to the Big Road and Fort Laramie.

  It was also a twisty, hilly road and that was what bought her trouble. She rounded a shoulder one moment, and there before her was a cavalry patrol, ten bluecoats, all mounted, with several packmules behind.

  Within moments they swarmed around her, eyeing her from under their duck-billed hats. Their leader, a one-bar-on-the-shoulder, motioned her to halt.

  “You speekee white?” he asked.

  She thought better of replying, and slowly shook her head. It was safer to say and do nothing. One never knew about blue-belly soldiers.

  He tried a few hand signs he had picked up somewhere, signs that read, Who are you? What tribe? Where are you going? She smiled and shook her head.

  They were eyeing her ponies and the little that she was carrying, mostly her bedroll and a small kit of personal things.

  “I guess we’d better take you with us,” the officer said after a few moments of impasse. “Can’t rightly say what a lone squaw’s doing around here.”

  eleven

  Mary wondered whether it had been a mistake, hiding her English from them. Now they wanted to take her somewhere, make a prisoner of her.

  She chose to speak in Shoshone, telling them that she was Blue Dawn, of the Eastern Shoshone people of Washakie, and she was going to Fort Laramie now.

  “I think that’s Shoshone,” said a three-stripe sergeant tanned to the color of cedar bark.

  He eyed her, and made the wavy line in sign language that signified her people.

  She nodded slightly.

  “Squaw’s a Shoshone, all right, but that ain’t what they usually wear,” the sergeant said.

  “Can you talk it?” the one-bar-on-the-shoulder asked.

  “Not enough to say anything to her. I can listen it a little.”

  “Try telling her she can’t leave the reservation. Washakie’s got himself a home over on the Wind River, and now they got to stay there.”

  Mary bridled at that. What was this? Making her people stay on the river?

  The seamed old sergeant tried a little sign language, a few Shoshone words, and a few English just to salt the talk a little.

  “See here, little lady,” he said, his hands making signs. “You got to go back now. You got a nice place, and you got to get a paper from the agent to leave.”

  She refused to acknowledge what she was hearing and seeing, but sat sternly on her pony. How could this be? Were the People prisoners now?

  She didn’t want to know any more. She would ask Skye about it.

  “I don’t see she’s doing any harm here,” the sergeant said.

  “Search the panniers,” the one-bar said.

  Mary slumped deep into her saddle, pushing back an anger that boiled through her.

  A one-stripe got off his pony and opened the pannier, poking around at her kettle and flint and steel and bag of pemmican. Then he lifted up the packet of letters, the ones from North Star that came to Fort Laramie, the ones Skye patiently read to her, over and over.

  “She’s got some letters, looks like,” the one-stripe said, and handed them to the one-bar-on-the-shoulder.

  “Sent to a Barnaby Skye, care of the post sutler, Fort Laramie. Never heard of him.”

  “I have,” the sergeant said. “Old squaw man. Thought he was dead long ago. He was a mountain man before he settled in with the Crows.”

  “Still alive, looks like,” the one-bar said. “Postmarked this March.”

  “She’s just checking the fort for Skye’s mail,” the three-stripe sergeant said. “Probably some slut of Skye’s, sent down to get the news.”

  Mary reddened.

  The one-bar turned to her. “Fort Laramie?” he asked, slowly enunciating La-ra-me.

  She nodded.

  “Well, no harm in it. Now if you were a buck, we’d march you back to your reservation.”

  He returned the packet to the one-stripe, who put it back in her pannier and closed it.

  “Free to go,” he said to her. “I imagine you understood some of this, if you’re tied up with the squaw man.”

  Mary didn’t acknowledge it.

  The patrol formed into twos and headed toward the Big Horn Basin. She suppressed a tremor and urged her ponies south. She needed to think about this insult. And about this penning of the People.

  The whole world looked different now, as if the sun had decided to travel from west to east, or as if Father Winter decided to be warm and Brother Summer decided to freeze the toes of the People. How could this be? The Absarokas had talked of it, but she hadn’t paid much attention. Skye didn’t talk of it at all, which told her much.

  Whose land did she now walk upon? She walked over the breast of the earth, and it was the privilege of all to walk upon all the earth. What were the soldiers doing? Looking for hunters or war parties, to send them back to their new prisons? And how was all this arranged? Who agreed to it?

  She remembered that two summers earlier there had been a great gathering at Fort Laramie, in which the white fathers had proposed homes for the several tribes. And her chief, Washakie, had agreed to it. He was their friend. But did this now mean that the People were prisoners, unlike white people, who could go anywhere they chose?

  Was this what her son, North Star, was learning in this school in St. Louis? What of him, half of one blood and half of another? If they looked at him as Mister Skye’s son, he could go anywhere and live anywhere. If they looked at him as her boy, they would make him stay on the Wind River Reservation, and not leave without permission. He would have to stay inside of some invisible lines, best known by the white men
who drew them. Was this right? Was that why Skye had sent him to the school, so that he would be free?

  The encounter with the bluecoats had changed everything, but she didn’t quite know how. She would sort it out as she traveled. She hurried along the road—the white man’s road—that would take her over the mountains. Whose mountains now? Did these white men own the sun and stars and moon too? Did they claim the rivers and lakes? Was all the fish and game theirs now? Were the blessed buffalo and elk and deer and coyotes theirs now, except when they crossed a homeland of a tribe?

  The land looked just the same as she had remembered it. The rushing creek, just beginning to swell with snowmelt, raced beside her. The cliffs that hemmed the creek and its valley were ancient beyond measure, gray rock that no man could ever own. The pines that scattered themselves in the watercourses of this dry land belonged to no one. As she gained altitude the cold grew intense, and soon she was in rotting snow, which wearied the ponies. She wrapped the bright cream blanket with red stripes—a white man’s blanket—tight about her as her pony slopped through slush.

  Did the slush belong to white men? Did the grass her ponies ate belong to white men? Did white men have the right to graze their ponies on the homelands of the tribes? Did the white men own all things in the earth and water and high above?

  Late that day she reached the summit, and walked her ponies through soggy snow, dirtied by dust and the passage of animals. Now she could see the prints of the shod hooves of the soldiers, caught in cold shadow where they would remain until Father Sun caught them.

  Dusk caught her well down the southerly flanks, on a grassy flat that had warmed all day in the tender spring sun. She scouted for a place to make a camp; the whole world was wet and there was nowhere to lie down without an icy soaking. She turned toward distant cliffs, knowing those would be her sole comfort. She easily found a hollow under an overhang, and knew it would do as well as anything. She was well off the trail, but that was good. She had no protection at all except for a few knives, one sheathed at her waist, the others in her kitchen gear.