North Star

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Skye ran a weathered hand through his graying locks, and settled his old hat, and began.

  “The colonel’s retiring,” he said. “He’ll no longer be my agent. He’s sold his inventory to a new post sutler named Harry Badger. The new man won’t extend credit. I owe over two hundred seventy dollars, and we’ll be unable to buy anything until that’s paid.” He stared glumly at Victoria. “We’ll do without.”

  That was bad enough, but then it got worse.

  “I don’t want my boy to grow up without a chance at life,” he said. “He needs schooling, and a trade, so he can make his way. He’ll need to support a wife and family someday. He’ll need to read and write and pay bills and earn his way. I just can’t give him that here, with a few old books and newspapers.”

  Skye looked so uncomfortable that Mary took alarm.

  “Colonel Bullock’s leaving for the East tomorrow. He’s retiring in St. Louis, and he’ll be taking Dirk with him.”

  A sudden desolation broke through her.

  “It’s all arranged. The blackrobes have a school for Indian boys in St. Louis. This is Father de Smet’s dream, helping native boys get an education and passing that along to their people. They’ll take Dirk and give him an education. They’re good people. They’ll teach the boy whatever he needs, and start him on his way.”

  Skye had been talking about Dirk almost as if the boy weren’t there, listening to every word.

  “But, Papa,” he said.

  “How long will this be?” Mary asked. One winter, maybe. That would be forever. One winter, and then her son would come back.

  “Until he’s sixteen,” Skye said.

  It was as if she had fallen off a cliff and were tumbling down, down, down to the cruel rocks far below. Eight winters.

  “But he will have no mother!” she said.

  “The blackrobes will care for him. And Colonel Bullock will look in on him. There is a dormitory, a place where he’ll be with other boys, safe and warm.”

  “Eight winters.”

  She felt dizzy as grief overtook her.

  “Sonofabitch, Skye!” Victoria snapped.

  He started to reply, and subsided into silence. He tried to draw them to him, but she went stiff and wouldn’t let him touch her, and Victoria stalked off the porch. He tried to catch his son, and soothe him, but Dirk had gone pale and was sliding deep into himself. In that moment Skye’s family had shattered, and it didn’t seem possible that it would ever be put together again.

  “I can’t even pay my debts anymore,” Skye said.

  That made no sense at all to Mary, but sometimes white people made no sense to her. She glanced furtively at her son, as if she shouldn’t be looking at him because he wasn’t hers anymore, and felt something shatter inside of her.

  Skye knelt before his son, and clasped the boy’s shoulders in his gnarled old hands.

  “It’s for you, Dirk, not for me. It’s to give you the chance to make something of yourself. You’ll be grateful someday. You’ll be lonely and homesick for a while. But then you’ll be too busy to worry about that. And the blackrobes will help you grow up to be whatever you want to be.”

  But Dirk’s face had crumpled into fear, and Mary ached at the sight.

  “They took me off the streets of London and put me on a ship,” Skye said. “I never saw my family again. I had to learn how to live, how to survive. It won’t be so hard for you. You’ll see us in a few years, and we’ll all be glad. You’ll be better off than we are.”

  But it was as if Skye were talking to the wind. There was only the terrible reality that Skye’s son Dirk, and Mary’s son North Star, was being torn from the lodge.

  “Now, son, it’s time to say good-bye to your father and your mothers.”

  But the boy could not manage that. He simply stared, a tear welling in each eye. Skye took him by the hand and led him to his mothers. “Son, you’ll see them in a few years, and we will all be proud of you. Colonel Bullock and the Jesuit fathers are giving you something precious, something that will help you to have a good life.”

  But Dirk simply stood mute and miserable.

  “We’ll say good-bye now,” Skye said, but no one did.

  Finally, helplessly, Mary watched as Skye led her son to the clapboard house where Colonel Bullock resided. She watched a woman welcome the boy, and then the door closed, and so did her own life.

  twenty-three

  Skye awoke with the sense that something was wrong. It was an ancient feeling, honed from a long life lived in a way unknown to most white men. It was not yet dawn, but a band of light cracked the eastern horizon. He peered quietly at the slumbering cow camp. The cook was already up and building his morning fire near a wagon with bowed canvas over it. The cattle were grazing quietly. He saw a night herder sitting his horse, unmoving.

  There had been a light shower in the night, pattering down on Skye’s canvas-covered bedroll and annoying his face and hair. The air this June dawn was moist and fresh and sweet. He peered into the darkness, unable to banish his malaise, but he saw nothing amiss.

  The evening had been enjoyable, though not for Victoria, who had sat bitterly among those who were occupying her homeland, a valley the Absaroka People had considered their refuge. But the trail crew had sawed off some thick beefsteaks for Skye and Victoria, and after beef and beans they had peppered them with questions about this country. Victoria had subsided into silence, staring flintily at these bearded Texans, but Skye had relaxed some. These were working hands, without large ambition, unlike their employer and the men two days’ travel downriver, the ones who had nearly killed him. Skye didn’t hold that against this trail crew, but he knew Victoria did.

  They had mostly wanted to know about the valley they would be settling; what tribes visited, what creeks ran through. This was home to the Snakes and the Crows, he had told them, employing white men’s names. It was arid, caught in the rain-shadow of the great chain of mountains lying to the west. It wasn’t prime buffalo country, but the river bottoms would support plenty of longhorns. He never did tell any yarns from the old days. These drovers wanted only to know about the present.

  Now he peered about the slumbering camp, taking inventory, but he saw nothing amiss. Victoria still slept. He threw his bedroll off and lumbered to his feet, wrestling with his stiff and pained leg. The river brush wasn’t far, and he headed there in the deep silence. Dew caught at his moccasins. Even as he relieved himself, his gaze roved because his sense of malaise wouldn’t leave.

  When he returned, limping painfully, he saw Victoria sitting up in her blankets.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  She nodded curtly. She hadn’t liked being here last night, and still didn’t. She rose easily, her age affecting her less, and studied the camp. The cook busied himself, and ignored them. Their ponies were picketed on good grass.

  “Go?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  She would fetch the ponies. He couldn’t get around much anymore. So he shook out his bedroll and tied it tight. Then he shook hers and tied it. Then he took his over to his saddle to tie it behind the cantle, and that’s when he discovered what was wrong.

  His Sharps rifle was not in its sheath. Had he pulled it out, as he often did, to keep it beside him as he slept? He didn’t remember that, but checked the ground where he had slumbered. No rifle lay there. He limped in widening circles. Had he left it at the campfire? He hadn’t. Was it lying with Victoria’s stuff? It wasn’t. Her quiver and bow rested beside her Crow-made saddle. Was the light tricking him? No, the widening dawn skies were concealing nothing.

  He had owned the Sharps for decades. It used an old technology now, but that didn’t matter. It had been a great lifesaving weapon, a weapon that had kept him fed and safe, for as long as he could remember. Its throaty boom had aided his wife’s people in their battles with the Sioux and Blackfeet. Its big bullet had dropped buffalo for her people and kept her Kicked-in-the-Bellies band fed and sheltered.
With the Sharps, he had earned enough in buffalo hides and tongues to support his wives and son. The robes and hides he had brought to the traders had kept him in powder and caps and paper or cloth cartridges, had purchased pots and knives and thread and awls and calico. Long after the guiding business had faded, his Sharps had brought precious Yank dollars to keep his wives and himself alive.

  Now it was missing, and he felt deprived and, in a way, naked. The Sharps was still his meal ticket and his safety. He stared at the empty sheath, willing his rifle to be there, willing it to be on the ground under his saddle, or close by. But it was gone, and without miracles, he could not replace it.

  “We’ll look,” he said, not yet ready to make accusations.

  She nodded. They separated, each drifting toward a group of slumbering drovers. She in particular had a way of gliding through unseen. No one paid attention to an old Indian woman. He watched her pause at each bedroll, pause at a pile of gear near the horses, and even stoop at one point to examine something closely. He drifted toward the cook and his fire and wagon. The cook was a cranky old gent, as disapproving of the Skyes as he disapproved of everyone else in his company.

  “Looking for something of mine got misplaced,” Skye said.

  “Nothing gets misplaced in my kitchen,” the gent said.

  “I lean on it a lot,” Skye said.

  “No sticks around here I haven’t burnt up to make coffee,” the cook said, dismissing him. Skye peered in the covered wagon.

  “Ain’t nothing in there for you. Iffen you’re hungry, you can wait like the others.”

  Skye had seen nothing resembling a rifle anyway.

  Some of the hands were stirring now, rolling up their blankets, stretching, washing down at the river. Two night herders were riding in slowly, and Skye waited to see what was hanging from their saddles. But, in fact, neither had a saddle scabbard or a rifle on board. If they had lifted Skye’s rifle, they had hidden it somewhere in this brushy river-bottom country.

  Someone had it. He hadn’t lost it. He didn’t know how to deal with it.

  Victoria slid close.

  “Some sonofabitch stole it,” she said. “Good at it too.”

  Her grudging admiration was drawn from her own culture. The Crows were some of the best camp robbers on the plains, and were masters at lifting valuables from any white party wandering through their country. Only this time the game was reversed.

  Skye debated the proper course. There was no good way to deal with it. Accuse them? Threaten them? Systematically tear into their gear while they bellowed at him? No. The Sharps would not be in this camp, and would not be picked up by its new owner until the Skyes were long gone, and then it would be a source of great good humor among these drovers. But at least he’d put them on notice, one way or another. Some trail bosses ruled with an iron hand and wouldn’t let a guest at their campfire be harmed.

  Victoria brought the ponies in and saddled them. Skye watched her lift his saddle over the blanketed pony and draw up the cinch. The scabbard hung uselessly from the right side.

  Higgins approached. “You ain’t staying for a little coffee and cakes?”

  Skye seized the moment. “Mister Higgins, I’m missing my Sharps rifle. It wasn’t in the sheath this morning.”

  The foreman absorbed that for a moment. “Must be lying around here somewheres, then.”

  “We’ve looked.”

  Higgins studied the Skyes’ campsite, as if expecting the rifle to materialize.

  “You used it some as a crutch. You reckon it got left in the bushes?”

  “We’ve looked.”

  “I don’t recollect seeing it when you-all rode in yestiddy.”

  “I had it.”

  Higgins paused a long time, and came to some sort of conclusion. “I imagine it’s around heah somewheres. I’ll ask. Let me do the asking, friend.”

  Skye watched the foreman approach knots of men and converse with them, and watched them shake their heads. Higgins headed out to the horse herd, where other of the drovers were saddling up for the day, and once again the same questions wrought the same shake of the head in them all. Higgins must have directed them to start a search, because half a dozen yawning drovers began a broad sweep of the camp, the herd, the brush along the river, the riverbank, and the surrounding meadow.

  They turned up nothing, which was what Skye expected.

  Higgins ducked his head into the cook wagon and poked in there, and finally withdrew with nothing in hand. He returned to Skye and Victoria.

  “It sure ain’t showing up nowheres. Maybe some thieving redskin come in the night and took her off.”

  “In other words, it wasn’t your outfit.”

  Higgins absorbed that a moment, and then agreed. “It sure as hell wasn’t any of my boys, and if I see one toting a Sharps, I’ll fix to get it to you. You going to the Shoshones on the Wind River, right?”

  “Yes. They have an agent.”

  “Well, Mister Skye, I’m plumb sorry. It makes the Republic of Texas look bad, and that makes me feel bad.”

  “You tell Yardley Dogwood he owes me a new hat and a Sharps.”

  “I don’t suppose I’ll tell him that. What happened to your hat?”

  “Those bullets holes are what happened to my hat.”

  Higgins had nothing to say after that.

  “I suppose if a Sharps turns up in your outfit, Texas will be disgraced,” Skye said.

  “I’m afraid that would be true.”

  “And so would Texas and Yardley Dogwood, and each of you.”

  The foreman stared.

  There was no point in dragging it out. Skye painfully clambered onto the buckskin pony, and Victoria lithely settled in her squaw saddle, and they rode away, feeling the stares of a dozen men on their backs.

  He and Victoria rode silently for an hour, wanting to escape that place and those men, and finally a certain tension lifted and they relaxed a little.

  “I am watching the death of my people,” Victoria said.

  “I’ll get a new one somehow,” he said. “Muzzleloaders are cheap.”

  But the thing he had shoved to the back of his mind, the bottom of his heart, and the farthest reaches of conversation welled up in him, and he could not banish it. His vision was going bad. More and more, distant things were blurred, and words on pages were blurred, and he had been hunting now for two or three years in dread of not seeing clearly what he was going to kill, and that dread had so suffused him that more often than not he had let blurred moving objects pass by, for fear that he was shooting at a friend’s horse, and not the wild animal he wanted for meat. And he was more and more afflicted in his near vision too, often asking some white man to read something to him because he couldn’t make out the letters and words and sentences. Nor was that all. He had acquired a slight tremor, one he hoped was not visible to Victoria and Mary, but one that weakened his aim and required him to use a bench rest as much as he could.

  The terrible reality was that he was not far from having to set aside his fine old Sharps because age had caught up with him. He had intended to give it to Dirk when Dirk returned, or rather if Dirk ever returned. There was one more year of school with the Jesuits, and then Dirk would be sixteen and free to choose his life: Indian like his parents, or white. It was odd. He had driven Dirk from his mind, refused to think about the boy, loathed his decision to send his son east for schooling. But now he found himself aching for his son.

  twenty-four

  Victoria watched Skye ride a little ahead, unbalanced in the saddle, his stiff bad leg twisting him. He was riding with his spine straight and rigid, his shoulders thrown back, not with his usual slouch. He was riding as someone new to horses would ride, ill at ease in the saddle. She stayed a little behind him, aware that she was seeing something fraught with pain. Skye didn’t ride like that.

  She elected to stay back, knowing his silence meant something also. Sometimes in the past they had walked their ponies side by side, communing
with each other out of ancient love.

  His rifle sheath bobbed uselessly on his saddle. He ignored it. An empty flaccid sheath, a lost rifle, an old man. Wearily, for she no longer rode easily for long, she followed, letting his silence command the hours. They were two days from the Wind River Reservation of Mary’s people, two days from Mary herself. Mary would pitch Skye’s lodge near her brother, and her brother would be looking after her, and they would all welcome Skye and Victoria.

  Ahead the treacherous Wind River canyon blocked any direct route to the land given to the Shoshones by the white fathers. Skye steered west, up a red rock canyon that would lead to a divide and down an ancient route much favored by the Shoshones themselves. And in a while they would all be together again in Skye’s lodge, and Mary would look after them. More and more, Victoria was glad that Skye’s small family encompassed the younger Shoshone woman. Victoria wearied easily now.

  They nooned in an enchanted park encased in tumbled red rock. A clear creek ran through. The red walls were decorated with ancient stick figures, the language of people long gone. But the stories told by the figures were sometimes clear enough for anyone to read. This small avenue over the arid mountains was a sacred route, filled with mystery and holiness.

  Skye eased off his pony but landed badly, gasping when his bad leg shot fire through him. Victoria watched helplessly. She led their ponies to the creek, where they nosed and swirled the water before lapping it.

  Skye, afraid to settle into the verdant meadow without a crutch, chose to sit on an old cottonwood log.

  Victoria washed her face in the icy water, enjoying the shock of cold that stung her skin. Then she settled in the grass near him, planning on a brief nap in the breezy shade.

  “I was going to give it to Dirk,” he said.

  It had come out of the blue, and she puzzled a moment to connect these words to anything. But he was talking of the Sharps.