Skye choked back his sorrows and nodded. It felt strange, surrendering the fate of his wife to others. All of his days, he had acted on his own, done whatever needed doing, no matter what the risk or the hardship. But now younger men would fan out along Mary’s path. He would be grateful to them. Old Washakie had said it gently: they would search with young eyes, sharp eyes, eyes that saw the moving dot on the hillside.
One of Washakie’s many women, this one in blue gingham, appeared with a tea tray and poured tea for Skye and Victoria. Skye took it gratefully. He missed tea, which he received only rarely, and which not only tasted fine to him but wrought nostalgia for his ancestral home. And here was a great chief of the Indians serving it to him.
Skye eyed the steaming cup. “This is home, home for me. Please thank the young lady.”
“She is my daughter, Wantabbe.”
“You are teaching her new ways.”
“It is good,” he said. “I am following the new road given us by the fathers in Washington. It is not easy. Many of my people resist and say the old ways are good. But the old ways meant we starved when game was scarce, and we had no berries and roots if there was drought, and our lodges didn’t protect us from bitter cold. We need to scratch the earth and plant our food, and herd cattle for our meat. I have seen it is good. And we will have houses too, houses like this. And we will be safe from our enemies, and have a great land given us forever, and we cannot be driven off of it. The other Peoples will have their own lands, and they will be protected too, and that is good. The new ways are better than the old. I say it and believe it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Skye said.
The chief stared. “I hope I am too,” he said. “It is a hard road.”
The chief was nobody’s fool, Skye thought. The Yank government made treaties with the tribes, only to break them whenever the Yanks felt like it.
This tea was bitter and harsh, and it suited Skye just fine. He let it cleanse his mouth before swallowing it.
“But my friend Mister Skye, you must tell me about the boy, Blue Dawn’s boy, of our blood. How does he do?”
“I believe he is well. I haven’t heard otherwise.”
“Ah, I remember his name. The Star That Never Moves, what you call North Star, and at the time of eight winters, you sent him to the blackrobes.”
“I did, Chief. You remember Father de Smet? He came west many times and visited your people. He offered to school the boy. He wanted to teach Indian boys so they could return to their people and teach them.”
“I remember de Smet. He is a great and good man, who brought us the Book.”
“But it took Colonel Bullock, at Fort Laramie, to make it possible, Chief. He offered to take my son east and look after him. So I sent the boy to St. Louis, and he’s there now. He’ll have a chance at life, a chance that was taken from me.”
Washakie stared. “A chance? There was no chance for your son among the People? You chose not to bring him to our elders for schooling. You chose not to show him our Ways, or teach him how we govern ourselves, and how we live.” Washakie nodded. “This I understand. To give your boy a chance, you sent him to the white men.”
Skye found himself deeply discomforted, and scarcely knew how to respond. But Washakie rescued him, with a smile.
“You did the right thing, Mister Skye. Our ways will fade. The ways of the white man will settle upon the breast of the Mother, at least for now. Before white men came, we did not know about wheels, or guns, or metals. We made our tools of stone and bone. We did not know the secrets in the holy book, and the one God of all the world, and all the other worlds, and all the skies and all that is under the world. Maybe someday the white men’s ways will be overcome by the ways of someone else. But you saw that the ways of the Snake people are not good ways for your son, and so you did what a good father would do, you gave your son something better.”
“I never thought—your Shoshone ways are greatly to be honored, Chief Washakie.”
“Have more tea, Mister Skye.”
“If Dirk returns, we’ll make sure he learns your ways, sir. That’s his inheritance.”
“If he returns?”
“I don’t hear from him, sir. The letters stopped coming to Fort Laramie.”
Through the window, Skye saw Shoshone youths preparing to leave. They were saddling their horses, collecting gear, and waiting for the laggards to join them. In a moment, they would ride away, looking for Skye’s missing wife.
twenty-nine
Her son stood at the gate. She turned toward him, her legs going weak under her. He looked agitated and she feared he might be in trouble.
“Shoshone woman. I am glad you are still there. Stay for a little while. I’m going with you,” he said.
“To the mountains?”
“To the People, and my family.”
“Dirk …”
“I am North Star.” He stood uncertainly, and then came to some decision. “I’ll get my things and tell them.”
He vanished into the schoolyard, and she stood beside her fly-plagued horses on the quiet street. She felt tense. He was gone a long time, and she wondered whether she had imagined what had happened, or whether Coyote had played a cruel trick.
But at last he appeared at the grilled gate, carrying a canvas sack. A young bearded blackrobe followed him.
“Are you sure this is the thing to do, Master Skye?”
“I am needed.”
“So close to finishing? One more term. Just one.”
“You have taught me well, Father.”
The Jesuit turned to her. “Is this the wish of his parents?”
“I am his mother.”
The blackrobe surrendered. “We hope you’ll take what you’ve learned to your people,” he said to the youth. “Remember the Lord who watches over you in all things.”
North Star smiled. “Please thank the fathers. I’ve been given many things.”
The Jesuit nodded, a small tight smile, and he turned into his school. The grilled gate creaked shut, and Mary beheld her son, freed from this blackrobe world, and somehow a man, even if sallow from the lack of sunlight.
“Star That Never Moves,” she said. “I must tell you this. I came without the blessing of your father. I came because I wanted to and the need came into me.”
“Then we are together in this, Shoshone mother. I am leaving the school without his blessing or knowledge. Aiee! He shall not like this. He shall ask why I threw away the gift he gave me. He shall send me back here. But I shall go to the mountains. I have made my choice. I shall make my own life. Maybe he shall not welcome me but I shall welcome him. I was a boy and now I am myself.”
“Yourself, Star That Never Moves?”
“I have two bloods, Mama. I am not the same as you. I am not the same as my father. I am not the same as the Jesuits. Not the same as the full-blood boys in that school. I’ve learned the ways of the white men and I am glad I did and proud of it. But I am not of that blood. Now I wish to learn your ways too. I’m coming with you, Mama.”
“My own son. I need to tell you I have no food. I have no saddle for you. Only that packsaddle, and nothing much good in the packs.”
“Then we shall go to the mountains on faith. They were always talking about faith, about trust in the unseen God. Well, I learned my lesson. We shall go where we are led.”
“I don’t even know how to go to the road from here.”
He smiled. “Then we’ll find out.”
He lifted his duffel onto the packsaddle and anchored it. “There’s not much. A few spare clothes. A few small things. A blanket.”
He led her confidently through the great city, and she marveled that he knew where to go. Plainly he had not been confined to that quiet schoolyard. The giant city vaguely alarmed her; yet they had no trouble, and people were not even curious about a youth and an Indian woman leading horses. There were so many of these white people, more than the stars above.
But eventually the
city folded away, and they walked along a dirt lane between plowed fields and farmsteads and woods. The river was nowhere in sight and she kept craning her head to find it. She had followed it closely en route to the great city, making her own road but never straying far because the flowing water would take her to her son. But now her son was following the white man’s road.
“This is the pike,” he said. “It will take us to Independence.”
She smiled at him, marveling that he knew so much. This was heavily forested country, and these farms had been cut out of the woodlands and planted with wheat and barley and maize and squash and things she didn’t recognize. But her son seemed to know all these things.
She didn’t mind walking, even if the afternoon was hot and moist, for she had her son beside her to lead the way, and she had her horse too if she grew weary. They stopped now and then, especially at berry patches, where thick bushes crowded the road, lush with blackberries. She found a place where asparagus grew, and harvested many stalks for their supper. And everywhere they looked, thick timothy grass grew, fodder for the horses.
They talked little. That would come later. For now, this son was a mystery and she was content to let him remain one. When he chose to tell her things, she would listen. But she watched him, letting him walk ahead so she could see her son. They continued into the evening, and finally she chose a place to alight for the night, a woods where they might make a fire and boil the asparagus for their supper. But the mosquitoes were bad so they hiked to a hilltop and found a hollow there that would hide them from owls and night spirits.
North Star knew all there was to know about caring for the horses, and soon had them watered and picketed on good grass. He eyed the skies, noting that clouds were building and it might rain, as it often did here. He dug into his duffel and pulled out a piece of duck cloth and began fashioning a lean-to.
“The fathers have these for their travels,” he said. “We were taught many things, and not just from books.”
He soon had a decent three-sided shelter erected from the limbs of Osage orange trees with an open side facing the cook fire she was building. She had never seen such a thing.
The storm held off until the middle of the night, and then it rained hard, but her son had chosen good ground, and the water drained away and did not soak her blanket. But the wind rattled her shelter, blew bitter rain into her seamed face, so she sat and endured, listening to the distant rumble of thunder.
This was a good thing. Her son would be a good warrior, at home in a strange world. This day she had learned much about him. He was a stubborn man, as stubborn as any she had known, more stubborn than his father. There would be sparks flying when he returned to the mountains. Sparks and thunder and anger, and then she would see how much of a man was this youth.
The next days passed peaceably. She had no trouble finding food. As they progressed along the pike, she collected wild blackberries, wild strawberries, blueberries, wild onion, and the tuberous roots of arrowleaf plants, which might be boiled into something very like potatoes. Whenever they discovered water lilies, she joyously harvested the large tubers that could be as fine a meal as a sweet potato, while the young leaves of the lily made a good spinach. She continued to collect the knobby white roots of ordinary cattails, which could be pounded and boiled into a white paste that sustained life. There were various types of wild tomato, and berries she didn’t know, and sampled gingerly until she was sure they were edible. She and her son yearned for meat, but didn’t lack for things to fill their stomachs and keep them going. That was fine for the moment, but in a little while, when summer waned, things would be very different. Soon there would be acorns and nuts in abundance to sustain them, and once they reached the plains, there would be prairie turnips. But as they passed through this moist land, they did not want.
North Star observed her closely, until he, too, was skilled at gathering a meal as they walked along the pike.
“They didn’t teach me this at St. Ignatius,” he said after she had collected a heavy load of water lily tubers that would sustain them for days. “I learned other things.”
The pike took them to a large town that North Star called Jefferson City, a handsome place with broad streets, shade trees, and noble buildings, as well as great edifices that were plainly important, though they puzzled her.
“This is the state capital. It’s where the chief of Missouri lives, and those who govern the people.”
“Is this the place of the great father in Washington?”
“No, that’s the United States government there, far to the east. This is where Missouri is governed.”
The division of the lands by invisible lines mystified her. How could anyone know where the lines ran? They had put invisible lines around her Wind River homeland, and no one knew when they were on the allotted land or off of it.
“These lines, I don’t understand them,” she said.
“They have a way of measuring the surface of the earth,” he said. “They have instruments that tell them where they are, and they measure all things. The boundaries of the nation are measured. So are the states, and in the states, the counties, and in the counties, the cities and towns.”
“Aiee! It is beyond me,” she said.
They trod unmolested through the gracious capital, while North Star quietly educated her. He told her what each building contained, and what the signs said. She marveled at this world she had scarcely imagined. No wonder her man, Mister Skye, had sent North Star here to learn these things. These were beyond her, but her son knew them all, and was at ease, while she felt taut and worried that trouble might come.
At long last they passed through the city and struck open country again, relentlessly undulating and still largely forested in spite of the many farmsteads dotting the hills. They found safe places to camp, choosing places away from the pike, where they might build a fire and boil the day’s harvest of tubers. Rain came so frequently that she found herself glad to live in the mountains, where the air was dry and sweet and she didn’t feel soggy clothing on her flesh.
The horses fattened on the summer grass, and grew sleek and handsome. Mostly Mary walked, but sometimes when her legs wearied, she boarded a horse and rode, while North Star walked beside her, leading the packhorse. It was good. Her moccasins were wearing out, but somehow she would get along.
As they approached the town her son called Sedalia, they grew aware that railroads were nearby. On the hazy horizons, they spotted plumes of smoke and heard the wail of whistles, and sometimes even the clatter of cars rattling along some distant track. And when they did at last penetrate the outskirts, they found a railroad yard, with tracks side by side and various empty cars idled there. She had never imagined there could be so many cars in the whole world. Some were flat, nothing but a floor on wheels, while others had low sides and were open on top, and some were boxcars of the sort she had ridden, while many others had slats in the sides and were obviously used to transport animals. Now and then little engines, stubby and fierce, pushed or pulled the cars around.
This, too, was a white man’s wonder.
“M, K and T,” her son said. “The Katy. Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad.”
She nodded, not quite knowing what that was all about.
“They bring cattle up from Texas,” he said.
Sedalia proved to be a bustling town, with buggies on the streets, and many pedestrians, and delivery wagons pulled by giant drays. The pike took them near a great edifice in the center of the town.
“County courthouse,” North Star said. “This is a county seat.”
“What is that?” she asked.
“A smaller government. The cities have governments too.”
“Aiee!” she said.
A lean man in a black suit stepped into the cobbled street and stopped them with a wave of the arm. She saw he had some sort of shining device on his coat, and was armed.
He walked across the paving stones, past horse manure, and looked the
m over, his gaze resting at last on the horses.
“Those sure ain’t Indian ponies,” he said. “Where you from?”
North Star responded. “I’m Dirk Skye. We’re going to the mountains. This is my mother, Blue Dawn of the Shoshone People.”
The names didn’t interest this man in black. Mary thought he might be a man of authority because of the way he behaved, and that shining device on his coat.
“Indian ponies, they’re broomtails, with ewe necks and flop-ears and two, three colors. These here horses, they’re showing good blood, nice build, clean sorrel and buckskin. They sure ain’t horses two redskins should own. Where’d they come from?”
“Constable, my father is Barnaby Skye, an Englishman, living in the Northwest, sir. He has been a trapper and guide. I’m returning from St. Louis, where I was schooled by the Jesuits at St. Ignatius.”
“Sonnyboy, I didn’t ask you who you are, I asked you how come you got two shiny well-bred horses that no Indian can afford.”
“They are mine,” Mary said proudly. “I have the papers.”
She walked to the pannier on the packhorse and pulled out the papers that had been given her. She handed them to her son, who eyed them, and handed them to the thin, mean-looking man in black.
“Worthless bunch of scribbling,” the man said. “Don’t prove a thing. Who you take them from, eh?”
Mary’s anger built. “I took them from no man.”
“I’m thinking maybe this runt of a boy, all dressed like a white man, he took them, eh?”
North Star Page 19