The Morning River

by W. Michael Gear

  Travis tried to grin, but it hurt too much. And damn it, his own stomach was none too easy.

  They rode for a while longer, angling down into the bottoms with their lush cottonwoods. An eagle cut lazy circles in the hot sky, and puffy white clouds scuttled across the northern horizon far beyond the tree-banded river.

  Richard was mumbling under his breath, saying, "Choose? Choose what? Die like a dog? I heard him . . . talking in my head. How'd he do that?"

  A fly kept buzzing around Travis's sweaty face. Oh, to be able to kill the miserable creature. To crush the life right out of that tiny black buzzing . . .

  "Fort Recovery," Baptiste pointed. "I thought this country looked familiar."

  Richard perked up, staring across the meadow to the abandoned building, little more than ruins. 'That's a fort?"

  "Used ter be," Travis said. "Missouri Fur Company-gave up on her last year. Forts in this country, they come and go. Reckon that'll change one of these days. Once ye get a real fort, most everything just up and dies."

  Baptiste swatted a deerfly that lit on his arm, and said, "We're a day shy of Fort Kiowa."

  "Another fort?" Richard gestured at the fallen timbers "Like that one?"

  "Yep." Travis rubbed his chin. "Pratte and Chouteau, that's the French Fur Company. Rivals of Josh PileherV Let's see, old Joseph Brazeau built it. He's a cuss if ever they was one."

  "Is he a friend of yours?" Richard asked.

  Travis made a face. "Sort of."

  "He went under last year," Baptiste said.

  'The hell ye say! He did, huh?"

  "Yep. Just up and died." Baptiste slouched in the saddle.

  Travis spat off the side of his horse. "I’ll miss that old coon. Just up and died? With his hair on? Reckon that's a wonder fit fer the second coming."

  "Hell of a country," Baptiste said dryly. "People keep dying everywhere."

  "Reckon it's the same all over." Travis glanced at Richard. "Even Boston. I hear tell folks die there, of occasion, too."

  Richard seemed curiously attentive, a gleam fighting to establish itself in his glassy eyes.

  Travis picked the most likely reason. "Figgering on slipping away come Fort Kiowa?"

  Richard scowled and looked away.

  "Maybe we'd best put the Doodle on the cordelle tomorrow," Baptiste offered.

  "How 'bout it, Dick?"

  "I ain't going nowhere." He sounded uncertain.

  Travis patted his horse and squinted against the pain in his head. "Wouldn't do ye no good. The trader at Fort Kiowa ain't gonna give a care if'n ye's indentured or not."

  Richard bit his lip and stared at the collapsed timbers across the meadow. "If that's the only kind of fort they've got up here. ..."

  "Reckon so." Travis made the "It is finished" sign with his hand. "Dick, I figgered after last night, ye'd come ter enjoy our company."

  "Maybe we don't dance nigh enough," Baptiste said. "Tarnal Hell, Dick, I'll dance with yor sorry arse. Reckon you gots to tie a rag on yor arm first, but I'll shake a leg with you."

  "Why a rag?"

  "Well, these coons up heah, when they ain't got no women to dance with, they up and ties a rag on. The ones with rags is the women."

  "Charming," Richard growled.

  "Maybe we should a traded foofawraw fer a woman fer Dick last night?" Baptiste offered. "Yes, sir, we needs to get his pizzle squeezed by some pert young squaw. That'd take some of the rough off him."

  Travis rubbed his sore eyes, then blinked hard before squinting at a mirage to see if it were real. Or had his vision gone blurry again? It wasn't real. "Naw, he's a-saving his-self fer Willow."

  'Travis!" Richard warned, glaring.

  "Got a rise outa the coon, shore 'nuff," Baptiste observed, grinning.

  Richard quickly asked, "Will the Sioux really come steal the horses? I mean, after last night. We shared their hearth, ate their food. Danced with them."

  'Toss a coin," Travis growled. "Like as not they will."

  "But it wouldn't be fair. We're their friends."

  "Yesterday, Dick. Today's a different day. Hell, hosses is hosses, white or red. Them what can take 'em, takes 'em."

  "But you said they wouldn't steal from people that had been in their village."

  "Nope. I told ye they wouldn't steal from ye while ye was in their village."

  "Then, correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that out here all ethics are situational."

  "What'd he say?" Baptiste wondered.

  "Cuss me if I know." Travis blinked his eyes to clear the bleary image. "But if words could kill, Dick'd be right deadly."

  "My name is Richard."

  "He keeps saying that," Baptiste remarked.

  "Coon's gotta flap his lips about something. I reckon Dick figgers that's as good as anything around us ignoramuses that don't savvy philos'phy."

  "Ignoramuses!" Baptiste asked. "I don't know no word like that."

  Travis pulled at his beard. "Wal, by God, Baptiste, yer hellacious living proof of that. Ain't that so, Dick? Dick?"

  Sounds of retching came from behind.

  They wound down to the river, letting the horses drink. Richard slid off his mare and doused his head in the murky water. Travis noted that the engages had stippled the shore here. The boat was upstream.

  Richard stayed on all fours, his hands in the water, head down. "The one-eyed wechashawakan ... do you think he really knows anything? I mean, do you believe any of this power talk?"

  Travis squinted up at the hot sun. "Reckon so. I seen some things, Dick. Old One-Eye, the Sioux call him Wah-Kinyahdonwonpe Konhe, the Lightning Raven. They say he can see things other folks can't. Chase souls into the Happy Hunting Grounds. It sort of surprised me ter see his lights around a whiskey doings. He don't hold with drinking whiskey."

  "What happened to his eye?" Dick sloshed a little farther out into the water and drank deeply.

  "Story is that he fought a monster once—like a big rattlesnake, and it bit him in the eye. To kill the critter, Lightning Raven plucked out his own eye and fed it ter the monster, and why, sure 'nuff, it died on its own pizen."

  "Damn!" Richard cried suddenly, smacking the water with a fist.

  "What's wrong, coon?" Travis immediately went wary, eyes on the peaceful trees around them.

  "I don't believe it!"

  "Believe what?" Baptiste had also stiffened, thumb going to the cock on his gun.

  "There I was, right in the middle of a Sioux camp! Surrounded by them!"

  Travis shot Baptiste a wary glance. "Yep. So?"

  "I didn't ask a single one about how they perceive the world! About their concept of good and evil, about God, or principle, or the nature of reality!"

  Travis took a deep breath.

  Baptiste slumped in the saddle. "Tarnal Hell, fo' a minute I thought we's dead. And it's 'cause of what? What didn't you do, Dick?"

  "He didn't drive them coons half mad trying ter figger out why the world's the world." Travis yawned.

  "And I ate dog!"

  "And liked it."

  "Don't remind me."

  Travis grinned to himself. And 'd go a mite if ye knew ye done a scalp dance last night.

  "Then they called me a dog!"

  "A what?"

  "Oh. they were drunk, Travis. I just forgot about it until now. Cannibals, dogs, coyotes, wolves— and I could have asked about God, and truth, and reality."

  "Life's like that." Travis glanced suspiciously at Baptiste. "That squaw, she warn't bad-looking."

  "Wal, For being nigh onta sixty years old, and fer as few teeth as she had left, I'd say she's right pert, Travis."

  From the lilt of Baptiste's eyebrow, Travis could tell he might even be saying that kindly.

  Go home. Die empty.

  Richard sat in the thick green grass on a low bluff overlooking the river, in the twilight, the water gleamed silver. Birds filled the trees with their lilting evening songs. Around him, the grass waved beneath the breeze b
lowing in from the west. Grasshoppers hung on gossamer wings. He could hear occasional voices and the periodic clank of metal as the engages set up camp in the trees below.

  What art you? the voice whispered inside.

  Surely, not a monster. When he looked inside me, he saw a frightened white cloud dog looking back.

  Confused, tricked by myself Am I a dog or a wolf? What the hell did that mean?

  No matter what he'd told himself, Lightning Raven’s empty eye socket and his haunting words remained sharp as splintered glass in Richard's memory. That eerie voice whispered in his mind; the terrible chill lingered in his bones

  Richard rubbed his arm. Stiff from where Travis had thrown him in one of their "larning ter fight" sessions The pain jarred in contrast to a mourning dove cooing in the trees.

  How peaceful this was, the sun setting behind him, its light burning yellow on the bluffs across the river. Just to the north, he could see what they called the Grand Detour. A loop of the river twenty-five miles around that would leave Maria within a half mile of her starting place.

  Richard caught movement to his right, and watched as a pair of buffalo wolves—disturbed by the arrival of the humans—headed up out of the trees and trotted westward toward the setting sun and a night's hunt.

  So, why didn't I slip away to Fort Kiowa? He could have just sneaked off and ridden hell-for-leather back to the log post. A French Fur Company boat would have been along in a couple of weeks. Any boat would take a strong back in this country.

  And to think, I now have a trade with which I can sell myself. He smiled, remembering the twinkle in Will Templeton's eyes. He'd find the joke a grand one, indeed.

  Boston, and Laura, seemed farther away than ever—and each step took him ever more distant from the lodestone of his dreams. Already they were well into June, the days long and hot.

  Were it not for Francis, he'd be home now. Back in Boston, safely investigating the intricacies of Hegel and Kant. I'd be spending my evenings with you, Laura, instead of learning how to break an assailant's hold and cut his throat in the process.

  But fate and perfidy had brought him here, to this low bluff above a silver ribbon of winding river and beneath an eternal dome of gold-lashed sky. To a place where all he could do was remember Boston, and ask himself why he hadn't escaped when every opportunity in the world had presented itself.

  The wechashawakan said that I'd be empty, like a buffalo-gut bag with all the water poured out.

  It's because you don't have any of the answers anymore. Nothing works the way you thought it did.

  Maybe it didn't, not here in the wilderness. But in Boston, that was a different story. There, he could stroll into Samuel Armstrong's bookshop on Bullfinch Street to search for the latest volumes from Europe. Armstrong kept all the new titles as well as the translations of older works. From there, he could cross to John Putney's fine clothes emporium at 51 Newbury, or the even finer clothes at Henry Lienow's over at 3 Roebuck Passage. A far cry from the worn and stained moccasins and the already tattered leather coat he now wore.

  And afterward, decked in new finery, what a delight it would be to step into John Atkins's tobacco shop on Cross Street for a tin of his latest find and a bit of polite conversation while he smoked a good bowl.

  You could leave any time you wanted. Just take a horse and ride south.

  But here he sat, staring out at the smoothly deceptive river. He took a deep breath, allowing tranquillity to soak into his churning soul. To the river, he said, "Perhaps I'm afraid."

  Was that it? Fear of the look in his father's eyes when he reported the theft of more than a year's profit? Thirty thousand dollars: more money than most people saw in a lifetime. Lost.

  Until the river, he hadn't understood the real value of that incredible sum. Money had simply been an abstract. Engages, solid men like Toussaint, would labor for two years, their lives in peril, for a total of two or three hundred dollars. To them, thirty thousand dollars was a fantasy.

  And I lost it through stupidity. He winced, rubbing his bruised knees. How could I ever have been that naive?

  On one thing Lightning Raven had been correct. The time had come to choose. Richard smacked a mosquito and asked himself: "So, what are you going to do, Richard? Head upriver to freeze to death, or slip away and ride off to Fort Kiowa and wait for a boat?"

  At that moment, Travis and Willow stepped out of the trees and began climbing the steep slope. From Travis's posture, something was wrong.

  Willow had a hard look on her face, too. But, now that he thought about it, she'd been looking a bit grim ever since the night they'd camped with Wah-Menitu's Sioux.

  "Seen any Injun sign, coon?" Travis called up. "Ain't no ambush atop the hill?"

  "Just ten thousand cussed Blackfeet waiting to lift yer hair, pilgrim.''

  Travis and Willow continued their climb.

  When they crested the bluff and walked over, Richard asked, "What's the trouble?"

  Travis settled on his haunches. "That night we were with the Sioux? Wal, Green hid Willow in the cargo box. I'd sort of figgered she's been a mite tight-jawed the last couple of days, and I finally got it out of her. Some coon snuck in in the middle of the night."

  "What?" Richard shot an uneasy look at Willow.

  "An engage," she said, face expressionless. "I heard him coming. I hid between the .. . how you say?"

  "Barrels," Travis supplied

  "Barrels. I hid there, in a small place. Very dark. He couldn't see me—or the knife and war club that would have killed him when he found me."

  "Why didn't you scream?" Richard asked.

  "Why scream? He'd find me sure." She continued to watch him with those probing dark eyes.

  "Well, because it's ..." He shrugged. "Someone would have done something about it."

  "And give myself away to Sioux?"

  Richard frowned and turned to Travis. "Who'd sneak after Willow?"

  "Reckon any of 'em. Willow's a pretty woman." Travis shook his head. "I didn't hire no saints fer this trip, Dick. I took men, no questions asked. Hell, I'd a taken Francois and August given half the chance. Even if'n I had ter kill 'em afore Fort Osage, that would a been that much farther they pulled the boat."

  "The boat, the boat. . . yes, I know." Richard sighed. "So, what now?"

  "We keep Willow close."

  "I take care of myself," she said firmly, and patted the war club. "I come close that night."

  "But ye shouldn't have ter," Travis said softly. "Not on our boat, as our guest."

  A faint smile curled her lip. "Trawis, the time has come. I should go back to my people. I have been hyar too long."

  "Don't." Richard laid a hand on her arm. "We haven't even had the time to talk. I—I don't..." He lowered his head, surprised at his sudden panic.

  "You don't? Don't what?"

  "Want you to go," he finished lamely. In his mind's eye he could see Laura's eyes narrowing, her lips hardening.

  Travis pulled a grass stem from its sheath. "Wal, I reckon that's some fer elocution. Couldn't a done better meself, and me without a lick of philos'phy."

  Richard felt himself redden and growled, "I’ll bet it was Trudeau. Was it him, Willow?"

  "Don't know. Couldn't see. Very dark." She shrugged.

  Richard fingered the wood on his rifle, glancing down at the camp hidden in the trees. "If this happens again, I'll beat the hell out of whoever's doing it."

  She gave him that enigmatic smile, dimples forming in her sleek bronzed skin. "So, Ritshard is a warrior now? And a seeker as well?"

  He shrugged. And to think he'd just been drowning in memories of Boston, and gentler days when men didn't sneak around in the dark after women.

  From the very beginning, Trudeau had tormented him, right up to the moment he drove that fist into Richard's gut. A lot of payback was owed to Trudeau. But, if it comes down to it, can I take him? Or will he just kill me like swatting a fly?

  TWENTY-NINE

  Man's in
itial feeling was of his very existence, his first care

  that of preserving it. The earth's produce yielded him all he necessities he required, instinct prompted him to make use of them. Hunger, and other appetites, made him at different times experience different manners of existence; one of these excited him to perpetuate his species; and this blind propensity, quite void of anything like pure love or affection, produced an act that was nothing but animalistic. Once they had gratified their needs, the sexes took no further notice of each other. . . .

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

  Heals Like A Willow planted her moccasined feet carefully on the trail, alert to the sights and sounds of the hot afternoon. A woman couldn't be too careful in uncertain country like this. Cuts-Off-A-Head warriors might be lurking, ready to take an unwary captive. Ritshard's tracks had already imprinted the soft deer trail she followed down from the flat ridge that made the narrow neck of the Grand Detour. The way led through the green plum, hazel, and raspberry bushes to the sandy shore below. Lazy cottonwoods stood just up from the sand, the leaves waxy in the heat.

  The day was stifling, cloudless, and perfect for a bath. The Maria was far away, struggling around the far bend of the Grand Detour. On the narrow neck of land above, Travis and Baptiste were processing buffalo meat. She had left them telling stories, waving lazily at flies, and feeding wood to drying fires as the smoke and sun cured long bloody strips of buffalo. They'd shot a young cow that morning.

  Birds sang in the cottonwoods, and she caught the gentle musk of the river on the breeze.

  Willow stepped out of the rushes and onto the packed sand, seeing the pile of Ritshard's clothes. His rifle, bullet pouch, and powder horn lay propped on a piece of driftwood He floated in a riffle of current, no more than twenty paces out, lost in his thoughts, looking downstream.

  A crystal brook emptied into the river here. The whims of current had left a sand spit separating the Missouri's muddy water from the clear mouth of the creek. The pure water looked so inviting. For the first time in days, she could really feel clean.