"Why is this happening to me?" Packrat wondered.
"Were I you," Blue Bull Robe called, "I would take her to him at the La-chi-kuts' fort. Who knows, maybe it will be better that way. It will give you time to be cleaned before he brings her to the village. Then, if anything bad does happen, it will fall on Half Man's shoulders instead of yours."
Screams At His Enemies nodded, smiling. "And think on this, friend. You might be able to steal something from the Sioux, or maybe even the La-chi-kuts, to help pay for your cleansing. These Doctors, they charge a great deal for their help."
Packrat mulled the idea. The White man's fort drew a great number of horses, wagons, and goods. He could rid himself of the woman, and who knew what kind of wealth he might stumble across?
That, or I'll be killed by the first war party to pass my way. But then, he'd grown used to the idea of being dead. Why did he care that both Pawnee hunters were staring so raptly at Willow? A man about to die had more serious things to worry about.
"I shall go straight to the La-chi-kuts' fort. There, I shall give this weasel woman to Half Man. After that, I will search for something to pay for my cleansing. Tell my mother . . . tell her that her son will do this thing. If she sees him again in this life, he will have succeeded. If not, he has failed, and neither she, her family, nor any other Pawnee must weep for Packrat."
"I will tell them," Screams At His Enemies promised. "In the meantime, Packrat, I'd keep my penis out of the woman." The words didn't match the hungry look in the hunter's eyes.
You have no idea, Packrat thought as he turned his horse away, driving Willow's beast before him.
Throughout the conversation, she'd sat rock-still, a knowing look on her beautiful face.
"Ride with care, Packrat!" Blue Bull Robe called.
The last Packrat heard was Screams At His Enemies saying, "By the Evening Star, when did you ever see such a magnificent woman!"
Packrat never looked back.
The storm broke in the middle of the night, cold air blowing out of the west. Gaudy blue-white lightning bolts illuminated tormented clouds. The wind howled through the spring-budded trees then brutalized the camp, ripping at blankets and flapping Green's tent. Tin cups, pots, and kettles rolled clanking across the ground, chased by groggy, cursing engages who tripped on their blankets.
The rain followed, pelting them from the black sky. One furious assault after another hammered them until morning, when cold breakfast was served, and the cordelle was lined out.
The misery Richard had endured to date paled in comparison to this. Rain beat on his unprotected head, trickled down his numb skin, and disappeared into his already soaked clothing. With each sodden step, Richard's breath misted in the chill. As Toussaint passed, wet branches slapped him. His boots slipped from under him and he fell into the churned mud.
"Why?" he asked. "Trudeau, why work on a day like this?"
"We are going to the mouth of the Big Horn. We will be lucky, enfant, to make it there before first snow. Each day, she is ten miles, no?"
"This is madness."
"Work, pig. Your muscles will warm you."
Work he did, through that interminable gray day. Step after step, in the churned slop left by those ahead of him. His worn boots squished and sucked, water gurgling around his swollen toes.
Only the cordelle and the backbreaking exertion remained constant. Sometimes he looked up, as if in supplication, to the leaden sky and the interwoven branches of newly budded ash and elm.
To his right, just spitting distance away, the river coiled and flexed, water brown and scummy with bits of foam and flotsam. Rain stippled the muddy surface, tracing patterns on the rippling muscles of current. How broad it was, more than a rifle shot across. All that water, fighting them, fighting him.
Lightning flashed, followed by the crash-boom of angry thunder.
Richard tightened his grip on the thick rope, leaning into it. His legs trembled: half from exertion, half from the shivers. Work! Turn off your mind. Don't listen to the land.
Earth and river, each as much a presence as the indefinable essence of God. How silly of Green to think that he could pull a boat through a country like this. How silly of all of them.
"We're doomed,'' Richard mumbled as water dripped from his brow and nose. "No one can do what we are attempting."
"What do you say?" Trudeau asked.
"I say we're going to die up here. The land, the river, maybe together they will kill us. Like swatting a fly, Trudeau. And in the end, for all of your bullying, you'll be just as dead as I am."
"Oui, if God wills."
"God?" Richard's wet clothing chafed as he clung to the cordelle. "What does God care?"
"God is God, m'sieur."
"Care to engage in theological epistemology?"
"Eh?"
"Nothing. I was just about to tell you..." A crack opened several feet to Richard's left, the ground moving outward, slanting toward the rushing water. Toussaint, in position ahead of him, reeled, arms windmilling. The crack gaped blackly.
"Jump!" the cry came in French. "Swim outwards! Away from . . ."
Richard lost the rest. He fell, pummeling the air as the loosened earth pitched into the rain-torn river, and smacked face-first into the crashing spray. The tons of falling dirt propelled a huge wave into the current that rolled over the struggling engages.
Richard slashed and kicked in the muck, surrounded by screaming men. The cordelle slithered past him like some tortured reptile. Most of the engages had recovered from their shock and were striking out, swimming downstream, cursing and bellowing.
Powered by panic, Richard battled his way toward the shore, feet kicking off clods of mud that melted underfoot. The current surged, sucking him along the clifflike bank. Mindless with terror, screaming, he clawed futilefy at the sheer wall.
A strong arm clamped around him from behind, jerking him back, away from the bank.
"Fool!" a voice roared in his ear. "Stop fighting me! You'll only kill us both!"
Richard panted his terror, a catch in his throat making a sobbing sound.
"Merdel Easy. Like a baby in Mama's arms, nonl You be safe, you see."
"Help... help me!"
"I was taught to swim like the otter! What you do, eh? Only a fool swims against the bank that way. The current, she drags you down .. . that, or more bank falls on you."
Limp in defeat, Richard watched the shore growing farther and farther away, bobbing in the strong grip of his savior. Toussaint. That's whose voice it was.
Toussaint, who worked like a stubborn ox, said little, and smiled rarely. Whose hard black eyes watched Richard as if he were some sort of insect.
"You no swim?" Toussaint asked.
"N-Never learned."
"You learn now, eh? Kick with your feet. Legs straight. It will help me."
"Kick?"
"Like mermaid, eh? Legs straight. That's it. Good, mon ami. Oui, you do good, non! Do not bend knees. That was me you just kicked."
"Where . . . where are we going?"
"To the Maria. I see her. Just there. A little way, no further. Stay calm, Reeshaw, we are almost there."
Richard kicked, clinging to the brawny arm that circled his neck. Raindrops continued to pelt his face and waves slapped him. The taste of mud filled his mouth.
Then he was alongside the Maria, and hands reached down to pluck him from the water.
"Of all things," Trudeau asked as he bent down to give Toussaint a hand, "why did you save him?"
Toussaint came over the side, jerked from the muddy water like an ungainly fish to flop wetly on the deck. "Practice, Trudeau. Just in case I 'ave to save you next time, eh?"
Richard coughed and sat up, gasping for breath. Beyond the gunwale, the river had taken on a silver sheen, roughened by the slanting sheets of rain. He glanced at Toussaint. "Merci beaucoup. I can't thank you enough."
Toussaint waved it away. The hard glint returned to his eyes. "Such things, they are
done on the river. Speak of it no more." The engage stood and made his way forward to help the others pull in the wet cordelle.
"Come on." Trudeau reached down and pulled Richard to his feet. "Back to work, mon ami. Now we 'ave to make up what the boat lost when the bank collapsed."
Richard managed to lock his wobbling legs, and wipe the muck from his wet face. "I... we almost died back there!"
"Then come, enfant. The sooner you are back to work, the sooner you will 'ave the chance to die again, no? But next time when the bank collapse, swim out, eh? No sense to rush to death. It find you quick enough."
Richard swallowed hard and followed the engage down the passe avant. Until he died, he'd relive that moment of the ground tilting, falling out from under him. What kind of insanity was this?
Order has gone from the world. I live only in chaos, and await the approach of death.
Men braced themselves on poles, holding the keelboat against the current as the plank was dropped to the bank. One by one, the engages trotted across, passing the dripping cordelle from hand to hand. It unspooled from the coil on the deck with uncanny grace, a thing alive.
Trudeau beckoned and Richard nerved himself to step onto the plank. By some lucky streak, he didn't tumble into the ugly brown current again, but found his place. Rain stippled the water pooled in their pocked tracks. His fingers wrapped around the cordelle. He placed each foot in the marks left by Toussaint's big feet, taking the weight of the rope and boat.
The endless agony resumed. He only recognized where the bank had collapsed by the reduced number of footprints in that place. Half the morning lost. Five miles that day instead of ten.
FIFTEEN
Pure insight, therefore, is the simple ultimate being undifferentiated within itself, and at the same time the universal achievement and result, and a universal possession of all. In this simple spiritual substance self-consciousness gives itself and maintains for itself in every object the sense of this, its own individual being, or of action, just as conversely the individuality of the self-consciousness is there identical with itself and the universal.
This pure insight is, then, the spirit that calls to every consciousness: be for yourselves what you are all essentially in yourselves— rational.
—Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind
Travis Hartman wound through the cottonwoods and green ash, a heavy whitetail buck slung over his shoulders. The first taint of woodsmoke came to his nostrils. Camp was right where he'd expected it to be—in the flats, just north of the mouth of the Kansas River.
Hartman had run his rifle through the buck's tied legs and used it as an aid to carry the deer. Now he adjusted his hold, his hand protectively over the pan to keep it dry. Rain continued to fall in wind-whipped fits and starts.
"Reckon a frog would drown in this," he muttered to the heedless deer.
Looking back, he could see where his heavy steps had broken the wet grass. Water trickled from the fringes on his pants and soaked moccasins. Fortunately, the prickly pear didn't grow in the taller floodplain grasses. Out in the prairie, however, the thorns would find their way through his water-logged moccasins and make travel hell.
As he passed through the last of the trees, he could see the Maria looking somber in the gray twilight, her deck and cargo box water-slick. On shore the engages huddled about smoky fires, blankets propped overhead to keep them merely miserable instead of rain-sopped. Green's tent had a hunched look, the dark canvas sagging.
''Hello the camp!" Hartman bellowed. At his words, heads popped out to stare. "Whar in Hob's Hell are the sentries?"
Trudeau called back, "In this rain?"
"Hell, pilgrim! Yer in Kansas country. Never know what them weasels is up ter. Git two men out, and not lessen a hunert paces from camp. Them Kansa braves would have yer topknot before ye'd even have time ter whistle!"
Trudeau turned, barking orders.
Green poked his head out of the tent flap. "Trudeau! Devil take you, I told you to put out guards."
"Oui, booshway. I make the order. No one listen."
Hartman dropped his deer beside a fire, slid his rifle out, and strode up to the gathering engages. He stopped before Trudeau, staring at the man through slitted eyes. "Reckon yer not up ter the job?"
Trudeau's eyes lowered. "It will not happen again."
Travis remained motionless, water dripping. "I reckon not, coon. If'n it do, I'll have yer ears."
Trudeau nodded and backed away.
"What's the news?" Green called, refusing to step out into the rain.
Hartman stuck a thumb toward the deer. "Thar's dinner.
Cut 'er up." Then he walked to Green's tent. "How do, Davey?"
The booshway grinned. "Crossed the Kansas. According to the calendar, tomorrow's May first. We're just about on schedule. Sometime this year, the government wants to build an agency right here at the Kawsmouth. I'm thankfully glad we beat them."
Hartman ducked into the tent, owl-eyed in the darkness. Henri, hunched on a whiskey keg, nodded. A small fold-up table stood in the back, on it a ledger book, quill, and ink.
"See anything?" Green asked anxiously. "Any chance of a Kansa raiding party? Osages?"
Hartman wrung out his beard and long hair, water trickling onto the trampled grass. "Nary a sign older than a month. I reckon so long's the storm holds, we're going ter sail right on past without a lick of trouble."
Green rubbed a hand over his blocky face and indicated a second keg. Travis settled himself gratefully, noting the drawn look in Dave's eyes. The endless worry was eating at him, tightening the corners of his lips, lining his forehead.
"I've heard the Kansa are keeping themselves up country. Letting the traders take the risk of traveling. Iowa, Oto, Sauk, and Fox are too powerful. The Sioux and Pawnee have taken to raiding them pretty hard."
Hartman grunted, straightening his legs. "Osages are pounding them, too. Heard tell that most of the tribes are heading inland as soon as they get the corn planted. The buffalo are gonna be running good—lessen, of course, this rain moves them out west."
"The demand for hides is increasing." Green smiled happily, pointing at his ledger. "When we get to the Big Horn, we can obtain winter hides. They're worth a sight more."
Hartman slipped his pipe from his possibles, emptied a bit of tobacco into it, and stared at it thoughtfully.
"I will light it for you," Henri said, rising. "You 'ave come far enough today, yes?"
"Hit her plumb center. Many thanks, Henri."
The patroon took the pipe and stepped out.
Hartman glanced up as Green sat on the other keg. "Anything happen?"
Green spread his hands. "Bank caved in yesterday. Damn near drowned the Doodle. Toussaint pulled him out. We lost a couple of hours. This morning a big drift of embarras came corkscrewing down the channel. Had a couple of raw moments, but Henri steered us right through it, slicker than eggs through a hen."
"He's a good man."
The patroon reentered, Hartman's pipe smoking.
Travis took it and puffed contentedly. "So Hamilton come close to being fish bait?"
Green arched an eyebrow as Henri crouched on his heels.
"That kid might make it after all," Green admitted. "Each day he gets better at the job. He's still got that look of surefire disaster, but he hasn't collapsed yet."
"It'd help if'n he had an outfit." Travis inspected the glowing bowl of his pipe. "How'n hell do ye expect him to get fit if'n he's out freezing his arse off?"
"I suppose." Green rubbed his hands together. "I've got an old leather coat in the cargo box. It's lying on the flour kegs."
"I'll give it to him." Travis took another puff. "What about Fort Atkinson? Ye given any thought to that little problem?"
Green nodded. "Think you could go in? Maybe barter for a string of horses? Let's say we drop you two days downriver from the fort; you could cut wide around the fort, rendezvous with us two days upriver?"
"
I could skin that cat." Travis paused. "Hamilton might cause trouble. Might see that fort as the answer to all his prayers. Reckon it wouldn't do fer him ter jump ship. Whatever officer's in charge might listen to his story."
Green took a deep breath. "He could put a stop to us right quick. It's a wonder he hasn't made a break yet."
"Yep, wal, he's a bit a-feared of the country. Yankee's sure some bear's gonna eat his lights. 'Course, it might do the pilgrim good ter see a sight of country. Maybe so I'll take him with me. If'n he's packing whiskey, he sure ain't a gonna be telling no tales to soldiers."
Green frowned, then met Travis's gaze. "If you get in a scrape, he'd be more hinder than help. Another thing you'd have to keep your eye on."
Travis shrugged.
"Oh, hell," Green relented. 'Take him. Good riddance. I won't have to worry about Trudeau breaking his neck."
"Trudeau riding him?"
"No more than you'd expect. The engages don't like him much. Think he's a weakling puke. Not worth the wad in a shotgun."
"But old Toussaint pulled him out'n the river?"
"Toussaint's a curious sort."
"That he be. If n he warn't so moody, I'd set him in charge of the engages. Catch him in the wrong mood, and he might try me. Trudeau, now, he knows he ain't up ter my kind of trouble."
"Not many men are, Travis." Green sighed. "Lord knows, just having you aboard has saved us a heap of trouble as it is."
Travis puffed his pipe cold, knocking the dottle onto the wet floor, and stood. "All right, I'll go find Dick a coat. How's them boots of his?"
"About to fall apart."
"Reckon FH fetch him a pair of moccasins at Fort Atkinson. Won't hurt him to get used ter good footwear. 'Sides, an engage's like a hoss. Can't pull fer shit when they's lame."
"You're too kind to that skinny kid. You just wait, Travis, he'll pay you back with an empty bedroll some morning."
Travis nodded, dropped his pipe in his possibles, and stepped out into the rain. He squished through the wet grass to the plank and stepped aboard the Maria. Overhead, thunder rolled across the prairie.
The cargo box was darker than Satan's pit, but feeling around, Travis found the coat where Green had said it would be. He stepped out into the night and trotted down the plank in search of the Doodle. Hamilton huddled under the shelter of a sagging blanket that he'd rigged between two cotton-wood saplings.
The Morning River Page 23