The Morning River

by W. Michael Gear

  The camp Travis had located proved perfect. Four trees stood in a small clearing beside the slow stream. The river lay no more than a hundred yards away.

  "Throw yer picket around them trees." Travis pointed out the four. "We'll pen the hosses thar. Reckon we can pitch the camps round the outside." He raised a grizzled eyebrow. "Get my drift, thar, Dick?"

  "I do." Surrounded, the horses would be much harder to steal.

  As Maria pulled up, the Sioux rushed down to watch, babbling in excitement as the wary engages lowered the plank and tied off the painter. Even as he watched, more Indians appeared out of the trees, clustering around the boat.

  "Green'll be needing help," Travis said softly. "I got ter go down and keep them red coons from swarming the boat. See ter yer hosses, Dick. Then come give me a hand. Baptiste?"

  Together the two stalked off toward the growing crowd of Sioux. Richard hurried to stretch his pickets and crowd the horses into the enclosure. As he pulled hobbles and halters from the packs, Sioux women were picking their way toward the boat, backs bent under doubled hides. Squealing children and yapping dogs followed in their wake.

  Richard checked and double-checked the picket, making sure each horse was secure.

  Toussaint and Louis de Clerk trotted up, packing blankets and a rifle. To Richard, Toussaint said, "We take care of the horses. The booshway wants you at the boat."

  Richard grabbed up his rifle and headed for the knot of Sioux crowded around the Maria.

  He shouldered through the throng, surprised by the smoky smell of the Indians. The women watched him with wary black eyes while suddenly-quiet children clung to their leather skirts.

  At the plank, Green had set up his table and taken a chair. A pile of buffalo hides was already laid out for inspection while Wah-Menitu stood with arms crossed, talking in mixed Sioux and English with Green. Travis and Baptiste stood to either side, guarding the plank that led to the boat.

  Richard sidled up next to Travis. "What's happening?"

  "Trade. Reckon it'll go on till about midnight. After that, we'll mosey up ter the village fer a feast."

  Richard scanned the growing crowd of Sioux. "They'll clean us out."

  "Yep, if'n they could." A gleam came to Travis's eye. "That's the art of trade, Dick: Give as little as ye can fer as much as ye can get—but don't rile the Sioux in the process. That's whar Davey shines. He's got the savvy fer it. This child don't."

  Baptiste added, "That's why he's Booshway and I ain't."

  At the same time, Henri was carrying out blankets, hanks of beads, gun flints, mirrors, knives, lead, and other items. He spread several blankets on the ground and laid out the articles atop them.

  "Injuns want ter see it all, make up their minds about what they want ter trade fer," Travis explained. Even as he spoke the Sioux crowded around, fingering needles, kettles, and iron arrowpoints. Bolts of colored cloth passed from hand to hand amidst muttering and some little shoving.

  "Is that wise?" Richard asked, indicating a warrior who picked up an ax and walked away.

  "He ain't a gonna steal it. See that mean-looking rascal yonder with the black strip painted across his eyes? He's a soldier, like camp police. He's a-watching. Wah-Menitu don't want no trouble over this."

  "But they'd take the horses."

  "That ain't trade, that's stealing."

  Richard scratched the back of his neck. "So, why steal a horse, but not the ax?"

  " 'Cause it's the rules, Dick. And if n that coon did walk off with the ax, that soldier yonder would make him bring it back."

  "Honor among thieves?"

  "Listen up, Dick. Ye camps in a Sioux village, ye can leave yer possibles whar ye will. Nobody'll touch 'em. Or, if'n they do, they'll bring 'em right back after they done used 'em fer whatever. Ree and Crow, now, that's a sight different. They'll steal ye plumb blind given half a chance. Most folks, they don't steal from their own kind. It'd be . .. wal, it just don't happen."

  "And if someone does?"

  "They cast his arse out in the snow and let him freeze. Sort of like that Omaha. That, or the thief's relatives whack him in the back of the head some night rather than have the culprit bring down shame on the family."

  "Some sense of justice."

  "Yep. Wal, I reckon it works a sight better'n ours." Travis studied Richard from the corner of his eye. "Now, when we get up ter the village, ye be on yer uppers. Anything I asks ye ter do, ye do. And Tarnation, lad, do 'er with a smile. Ye don't know the rules, and they can kill ye dead. Savvy?"

  Richard nodded. The warrior returned with the ax and muttered something to a woman who followed him with a bundle of furs on her back. Then he took the ax to Green, and commenced haggling.

  Richard began practicing his smile.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  All men in the state of nature have a desire and will to hurt, but not proceeding from the same cause, neither equally tobe condemned. For one man, according to that natural equality which is among us, permits as much to others as he assumes to himself; which is an argument of the temperate man, and one that rightly values his power. Another, supposing himself above others, will have a license to do what he lists, and challenges respect and honor, as due him before others; which is an argument of a fiery spirit.

  —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

  As Richard followed the dark trail over the rim of the bench, Wah-Menitu's village greeted his eyes. It was a sight that he would never forget. The village covered the flat—a series of conical skin lodges, each three times the height of a man. Bonfires cast wavering light over the tipis. The rows of illuminated lodges against the star-filled night sky took his breath away.

  Men and women stood around talking and laughing, some highlighted by the fires, others mere silhouettes. Camp dogs barked and growled while the trilling shrieks of happy children created a benign chaos.

  "Let's do her up!" Travis chortled, a salt-glazed jug of whiskey riding on his shoulder.

  Richard steeled himself, nodding resolutely, and strode forward across the trampled grass. He'd expected nothing like this, figuring the Sioux would be dour and stoic as Scotsmen. As he walked past the fires, looking into the faces, he couldn't shake the notion that they looked a great deal like ordinary people but for their barbaric dress. No one failed to call a greeting, and flash them a smile.

  "Wah-Menitu's lodge is up hyar." Travis bulled his way forward, heedless of whether Green, Baptiste, or Richard followed.

  A roaring fire in the open space before the chief's lodge crackled and sent sparks wheeling up into the starry night. Around it were seated several rows of Sioux men, all older, all dignified. Wah-Menitu himself rose from where he sat in front of his large tipi. The hide walls had been painted with rude images of buffalo and horses, and with round dots. Several hand shadows decorated the doorway. For ventilation, the lodge skirts had been rolled up and tied on the poles. Richard caught glimpses of buffalo robes, blankets, and hard leather cases on the inside, as well as what appeared to be a backrest. A painted war shield stood on a tripod behind Wah-Menitu, along with a bow, quiver, and rifle.

  "Greetings, coons!" Wah-Menitu cried, raising his hands. "Come, sit. We will smoke and say the blessings. Then ye can share the hospitality of Wah-Menitu!"

  "Where'd he learn to talk like that?" Richard asked.

  "Traders, Dick," Baptiste answered. "Ain't nobody else out heah."

  Richard followed Travis and Green to a blanket spread beside Wah-Menitu. With great ceremony, the pipe was brought forth by a young warrior. In the meantime, Richard studied the faces of the Indians, who in turn studied him. Each man wore an elaborate headdress, finely worked buckskins with dangling fringe, and bead-covered moccasins. Some held fans in their hands, many made from the entire wing of an eagle. Others carried painted sticks, and still others sat before long poles from which feathers and bits of hair dangled in the wind.

  They did indeed look noble, all except for one who'd lost an eye and left the gaping socket uncovere
d. That one fierce eye fixed on Richard with an unwavering intensity and filled his soul with ice and horror.

  Richard jerked his gaze away, heart hammering. But why? I've never seen him before. Who is he?

  Wah-Menitu was holding a beautiful pipe up to the sky and had begun a singing chant. The others nodded then-heads, as if in approbation.'

  "What's he saying?" Richard asked.

  Travis leaned over to whisper, "Telling the story of White Buffalo Cow Woman, and how she gave the sacred pipe to old Standing Hollow Horn back in the beginning of time."

  At last the pipe was offered to the east, south, west, and north, then to earth and sky. After Wah-Menitu puffed and exhaled, he passed the pipe to Green, who repeated the ritual.

  Richard took his turn, surprised by the pipe's weight. As long as his arm, the bowl had been carved from some red stone and fitted to a wooden stem. Feathers hung from the carved and painted wood. Warily, Richard puffed, and exhaled. He could taste tobacco, but the other odors defied him.

  Person by person, the pipe was passed around. When at last it had been returned to Wah-Menitu, he placed the pipe on its beaded bag before him, and smiled at Green. "We have missed our White brothers. Waugh, it is good to see you again. The trading was good, no?"

  "Good, yes," Green replied, fingers dancing in signs as he spoke. "I am pleased to have made such good trades."

  Wah-Menitu politely translated to the others as Green spoke. At the same time, women appeared bearing horns of stew, steaming joints of meat, and platters of roasted vegetables of a sort Richard had never seen. He smiled up at the young woman who laid a bark platter in front of him.

  "What is this?" Richard poked at the small animal on the platter. The pink flesh had been cooked until it slipped from the bone, but what sort of...

  "Just eat it," Travis growled.

  "But what...?"

  "Eat!"

  Richard twitched his nose and pulled a piece of the hot meat loose, blowing on his fingers to cool them. The tender meat melted in his mouth, curiously sweet and satisfying. "I've never had anything like it."

  "Reckon not. Sioux delicacy, cooked just fer us. Eat 'er all, Dick. Then suck the bones clean. Make like it's real doings."

  Following such instructions wasn't hard. His stomach had been growling for hours. When he sucked the last of the juice from the little bones, he sighed. "Excellent."

  "Good, coon. Ye done ate yer first dog."

  "I... what?"

  "Dog. Puppy. Just special fer us. Good, ain't it?"

  Richard's gut cramped and he started to stand, only to have Travis fasten a hand like an iron shackle to his arm.

  "Now, try this hyar," Travis insisted, handing Richard a horn of stew. "She's buffler tongue chopped ter bits and biled with onions and mint."

  "Travis, I don't think I'd better eat any—" The grip on his arm tightened.

  "Eat 'er, Dick. They done this special fer us."

  Under Travis's hard eye, Richard sipped at the stew, pronounced it tasty, and gulped down a swallow. The ugly one-eyed man watched, his good eye half-slitted. Richard did his best to avoid that vulture's gaze. Even the other Sioux seemed to shy from the old buzzard.

  Green uncorked the whiskey jug, pouring the clear contents into another of the buffalo-horn bowls and passing it around. "For my friends, the Dakota!" Green cried.

  Shouts of "Wash-te" raised from all sides. The horn bowl was passed around as yet another was filled.

  "Time ter shine!" Travis whooped, and took a swig of the horn that passed his way. Richard sipped, made a face, and passed it on. Bad whiskey on top of dogmeat was too much to contemplate.

  "Good friends!" Wah-Menitu cried, leaping to his feet. "Times is shining! The traders have come back!"

  "Death ter the Rees!" Travis bellowed, jumping to his feet and hopping from foot to foot.

  Raised whoops and screams erupted from all sides, men leaping up to cavort and whirl about.

  "Get up!" Travis gestured to Richard, who was finishing his stew.

  Richard clambered up and Travis shoved him, half stumbling, into the space before the fire. "Hyar's a coon what raised a Pawnee warrior! Hyar's ter Dick!"

  A nervous hand at his stomach, Richard stared at the faces surrounding him. Wolfish eyes gleamed back at him in the firelight.

  "Ter Dick!" Wah-Menitu cried, shaking a fist and ululating the most horrible of war cries. Then he barked out words in Sioux, and the others whooped and screamed ecstatically.

  "Dance!" Travis hissed in Richard's ear. "And hold up that fetish."

  Richard fumbled at his belt, only to find Travis's quick fingers had beaten him to it. The skunk hair was thrust into his hand as Travis shoved him forward. "Dance, coon. Dance smart, now!"

  Richard started roughly, jumping and twirling as Travis began chanting, "Hey-a hey-a-hey-hey. '' The Sioux joined him.

  "Hold 'er up!" Travis prompted. "So's everybody can see!"

  Richard raised the fetish and skipped in the milling circle of warriors. A song rose on the lips of the Sioux, and a drum began a rhythmic beat. The excitement of it built in

  Richard's breast, a kind of exhilaration he'd never experienced before. His feet found the rhythm of the music, and he mimicked those around him: step-shuffle, step-shuffle, leap.

  He leapt and ducked, pirouetted and jerked in time to the warriors around him. Electric energy seemed to pulse within him, flowing up from the ground, down from die sky, and through him so that his feet grew light. Time vanished in the exertion and wheeling bodies.

  Free! I feel free! An ecstasy bright as the Sioux fires burned in his breast. His feet skipped and leapt with the airy buoyancy of the sparks that flickered upward.

  He wrapped himself in the singing of the Sioux, weaving himself within it. He let the music carry him, like moss in a gentle current. Men, women, and children had come to watch, all swaying with the chant. They were stepping and clapping in time with the lilting song.

  As if we were all one, together, relatives instead of strangers from different worlds, Richard threw his head back, whirling in time with the dance. His spirit soared, buoyed by the dance until his body had become remote, a leaf on the wind.

  In the end, all that remained was a pure, shining bliss the likes of which he'd never experienced. Power rose within him, stretching, opening itself to the night and the rising harmony of Sioux voices.

  How long did he dance? Winded, sweating, he slipped from the circle, in time for Travis to hand him a hornful of alcohol. This time he choked a burning draught down his throat.

  "Shining times," Travis cried, then crowed like a rooster.

  "Shining times," Richard agreed, wiping his sweat-shiny face. "What next? God, for a drink of water!"

  "That gut bag hanging yonder. That's water, coon. Haw! Lookit old Baptiste! He's a-prancing like a buck antelope come fall! And thar be Green. Lookee there! Reckon he'd outjump a buck mule deer in high sage!"

  Richard grinned, watching the others cavort with the Sioux.

  "Hell, Doodle, ye ain't done, are ye? Night's young! Fetch yer water and go gallivanting! I'd be a-dancing with 'em . . . specially afore they notice yer not out thar!"

  Richard drank his fill from the musty-tasting gut, then charged back into the gyrating bodies.

  When he staggered back to Wah-Menitu's lodge, sweating and grinning, the ugly old man still sat in his place, single eye gleaming in that ruined face. Richard hesitated; the old man raised an age-callused finger, beckoning.

  Willow lay in the darkness, aware of the rustling rodents scurrying behind the cargo. She'd lived most of her life with mice sneaking into the lodges. Mice were a necessary evil, the little creatures doing as Tarn Apo willed, seeking to fill their bellies and raise their pups. Rats, too, had their place. The kind she knew best were the bushy-tailed packrats of the mountains: the ones who'd leave a rock in place of a shiny bead. Packrats chewed anything leather, or even the sweaty wooden handle of a hammer or the middle of a good bow. They ra
ided food caches, and generally made life miserable for humans.

  The old conflict favored neither side, for when times got hard and starvation rubbed a person's belly raw, the Duku-rika set fire to packrat nests, ambushed the fleeing rodents, and roasted their little carcasses for their soft pink meat.

  These dark gray rats, however, were different, with glinting eyes and naked scaly tails that gave her the shivers.

  She resettled herself in the bedding Green and Henri had laid on the packs of blankets. Over the furtive scuttling of the rats, and the water slapping the hull, the faint beat of a pot drum, and the yip-yaping snatches of song carried down from the Sioux village. The edges of her souls frayed with each distant scream.

  Here I am, hidden away in a White man's boat, while he trades with the Cuts-Off-A-Head People, And what if the cut-throat Sioux turned on their guests? Murdered them all?

  She could imagine Ritshard's headless body, white and naked in the sunlight, flies thick in the blood pooled beneath and severed neck. Those soft brown eyes would never sparkle again. He would never have the chance to seek the answers that lay just beyond the fingertips of his soul.

  Trawis wouldn't go down without a fight. He'd shared his soul and blood with the white bear—the greater the honor for the Sioux who finally killed him.

  This is ridiculous. I'm only doing this to torture myself. Trawis and Green know what they are doing. Or did they? She tightened her grip on the war club that lay between her breasts. I should leave as soon as I can. Sneak away into the night and find my way home.

  It couldn't be that hard. Follow the rivers west. Eventually they'd rise to the mountains, and as a girl she'd walked most of them, or heard the stories about which rivers ran where.

  So why don't I go? The lie she had told herself, about learning more about White men, had worn as thin as last year's moccasins. She'd learned enough about the Whites.

  She blinked at the dark roof over her head, images of Ritshard growing in her soul. What was it about him that drew her so? Had he cast some spell on her that day she'd looked into the eye of his soul?