by Win
Smiling, Sam thought to himself that they were really military officers in dress uniforms at a fancy ball.
All the Indian women were splendid. They wore elk hide dresses tanned café au lait. The capes of the dresses were ornamented with the white tails of the ermine, and the bodices showed off beadwork in bright colors and elaborate geometric shapes. From the fringes at the hems of the dresses dangled bells, which made music when they walked. When they danced—soon now—the bells would made a great, jingling rhythm, one song of many feet.
Sam looked at the young Shoshone near him. Her face was rouged brightly with vermilion, and the center part in her hair inked scarlet. Her dress was sheepskin, tanned white. Her hair was rubbed glossy with a blend of oils and herbs she probably made herself, and brushed with many, many strokes by her sisters.
Sam and Flat Dog wandered on and came to a hand game. In the center of the circle of players Tomás was dancing and singing and deftly manipulating the fox bone that was the talisman of the game. Apparently he was on a roll—he had won a pile of beads, a blanket, and several knives. Now he laid down a string of Russian blues, faceted beads that were much prized, in front of a young, beautiful Shoshone woman. The woman’s luck had been running bad, because she sat half naked, covered only by a trapper’s cloth shirt. The men in the circle, Joaquin among them, watched avidly.
The woman slipped out of the shirt and put it next to the Russian blues. Tomás pointed at the beaded belt, the last hint of clothing she wore. She took it off and laid it next to the shirt. She was mesmerized. Sam wondered whether she was transported by alcohol or entirely by the gambling itself.
Now Tomás went back into his mesmerizing act. He sang, he chanted, he danced, he made wild rhythms with this voice—all this to fog the mind of the woman. At the same time he played with the carved bone. He held it out for the woman to see. He hid it in one fist. He brought his hands together, opened them in a clasp, and closed them back into a fist—the bone might have changed hands, or it might not. Over and over he did this, laughing at the Shoshone and looking at her with wild eyes.
Finally, he threw his fists apart. The silence felt like an exclamation. He looked his challenge at the naked woman—make your choice.
She thrust out an arm, indicating that her bet was that the bone was in the dancer’s right hand.
Tomás opened the hand. Empty. Joaquin cheered.
Tomás picked up the beads, shirt, and belt, and set them with his own belongings. Then he lifted the loop of beads with a finger, held them out to the woman, said a few words, and beckoned with a hand.
The woman got up, her bare skin aglow with the light of the nearby camp fire.
Tomás handed the fox bone to another gambler, threw Sam a sardonic glance, and led the woman out into the darkness, one arm around her waist.
Joaquin’s eyes followed the two of them avidly, and Sam knew where this evening would end for him as well. Sam was all mixed up. He wished Tomás didn’t do things like this, and wished he himself felt like doing them.
Half an hour later Sam saw the same Shoshone woman, again sitting in the circle, again gambling, dressed in nothing but the Russian blues around her neck.
As the stars began to gleam, the music rose—fiddling. That meant feet would also rise and fall, and spirits would rise. Good times on the strut. Sam walked to the tent where his outfit’s belongings were pegged down for the night, slipped in, got his tin whistle, and followed his ears to the jig.
It was Fiddlin’ Red—Sam loved the man’s playing. Red had such a patriarchal beard that he used it as a pad for the fiddle, both above and beneath. He knew how to moderate a couple of jigs with a ballad and set feet twinkling again with a reel. When Red played, people danced.
Sam sat on a boulder to listen and watch.
A voice in his ear: “And why, do you suppose, does God leave the likes of us above ground?”
Sam turned his head right into the grinning-fool face of Robert Evans. The old friends grabbed each other by the shoulders.
“I came out with Fontenelle,” said Evans, meaning the caravan captain for American Fur. “I yearned for a taste of mountain water again.”
“Long time,” said Sam.
Both of them knew how long, and didn’t want to talk about it. Sam last saw Evans when the Irishman left the rendezvous of 1830 with Jedediah Smith to go back to the States. Evans and Diah had decided, for different reasons, that the settlements were the place for them. Evans had in mind “a bit of an easier life,” he said, “with no Blackfeet in sight.”
Jedediah’s reason was more complicated. One black midnight—talking at Sam on a roll, like he was drunk, which Diah never was—Diah turned the conversation to confession. He acknowledged to Sam that he was a sinner. “If I don’t turn myself over to the care of a Christian church,” he said, “I will lose my soul.”
The darkness in his eyes hinted that he’d already lost it.
“Diah, I can’t help wondering what grievous sin you’ve committed.”
It was said lightly, but Sam could see it struck a nerve. He waited to hear, keeping a smile off his face. Of all the men in the mountains, only Diah never drank, never brawled, never chased women, always sought peace rather than war with the Indians. While the other men caroused, Diah read his Bible, wrote in his journal, and drew his maps of the West. The man was righteous. As far as Sam was concerned, that was one of his shortcomings.
“There are sins of the heart, Sam.” Diah stared into the forest. “Sometimes I fear I’m giving my heart, where Jesus Christ should reign—maybe I’m giving dominion over my soul to other powers.” Diah paused long before he added, “The wilderness, it has a hold on me.” He smiled to himself and made a play on words. Pronouncing the word to rhyme with “child,” he said, “Let’s call it wi-i-i-ldnerness.”
Sam heard the haunt in his voice and said nothing, not a word. Nothing anyone could say.
Captain Smith led the annual caravan back from the wi-i-i-lderness to St. Louis, bought a fine house, welcomed his brothers to join him there, and settled down to the life of a respectable man. Diah’s profits from fur-trading were enough to keep him comfortable for life.
But he got restless. After arriving in St. Louis in October, he was already headed west again in April. Trading, this time, not trapping—bound for Santa Fe. Then, if he felt like it, he told his partners Bill Sublette and David Jackson, he might take a trading caravan on to Chihuahua, or even Mexico City.
It seemed that civilization wasn’t enough for Jedediah. Maybe his soul was safer in church, but he had itchy feet, or a roving mind, or a wayward heart.
Tom Fitzpatrick brought back the word to the fur men in the mountains. Diah’s outfit had tried the Cimarron Cutoff, a dry crossing. When they began to get desperate for water, Diah rode out ahead, alone as always, to find a water hole.
They never saw him again, nor heard from him.
Several weeks later his guns showed up in Santa Fe. Some Mexicans had traded for them from the Comanches. And the Comanches told the story of how their young men chanced on a lone white rider at a water hole, drinking, and surrounded him, and…
No one ever found his body. His bones bleached in the sun, and his flesh dried in the winds. Maybe a lone coyote sang a song for him. Sam hoped so. That’s what a song dog was for.
Now, in the darkness of another rendezvous, stirred by the fiddling, alive with comradeship, Sam and Evans speak not a word of yesterdays. Sam thought, The devil take the past.
“Let’s make some music with Red,” said Evans.
Evans himself had given Sam the tin whistle and taught him to lift his spirits with it.
They sat at Red’s feet and tootled along. When he bowed out a sad song, they played a high, floating obbligato in harmony. When he switched to a quick tempo, Evans played the melody and Sam sang, or vice versa. They had a fine time through many tunes, and Sam was about to turn in when Evans said, “’Tis our duty to play the captain’s song.”
&nb
sp; He stood up. “Mountaineers and friends,” called Evans, “we propose to sing a song to a great leader who has crossed the divide. Here is ‘The Never-Ending Song of Jedediah Smith.’”
The trappers cheered. They knew the song well, and they liked the way it bounced along—nothing maudlin about this one. Some of them even helped write it. The members of Diah’s first California brigade made up the verses as they wandered through the desert toward the western shore, not knowing where the devil they were going or how to stumble their way back. Just writing a song lifted their spirits.
Sam, Evans, and Red launched in vigorously.
We set out from Salt Lake, not knowing the track
Whites, Spanyards and Injuns, and even a black
Our captain was Diah, a man of great vision
Our dream Californy, and beaver our mission
(chorus)
Captain Smith was a rollickin’ man
A wanderin’ man was he
He led us ’cross the desert sands
And on to the sweet blue sea
The song told of their first trip to Californy, when they wandered, starved, and thirsted until “we got to drink mud,” and even ate fleas.
It spoke of California, a life of pure ease. Only one problem—they couldn’t get home.
It recounted the journey of just three men over the snow-bound Sierra and the parched desert. One of them collapsed. They covered him with sand, and that evening Diah carried water back to him, “good as his word. Die? That’s absurd.”
It told the story of their triumphant return to rendezvous, and the huzzahs for Captain Smith, who brought them through.
Then came the stanzas Sam and Evans penned later, when Diah’s never-ending song found an end.
On the Santa Fe Trail, it was four years after
The outfit came to trouble, it couldn’t find water
Jed Smith rode ahead to find the Cimarron
He found the Comanch, their eyes hard like stone
Not a living man knows where his bones are a-bleaching
His flesh, it is dust that drifts in the haze
The life that he lived is all that needs preaching
The coyotes on the night wind are singing his praise
Sam let his throat close. He put down his whistle. They sang the entire song once at the rendezvous of ’32 and now at this one—he supposed they would sing it as long as there were rendezvous. It felt good that something would last, for a while.
But now he felt a yearning. He put down his whistle, stood up, caught all his breath, and exploded forth a volcano of coyote yawps. Completely mad they were, these bestial yowls. He entered into a coyote, felt its heart, let its blood become his blood. He looked out at the world through coyote eyes and HO-O-O-O-WLED.
Evans joined him, sounding just as wild.
As one the trappers jumped in. They crooned, they roared, they bayed, they bawled.
From inside the coyote mind, with coyote voice, Sam cried louder and louder.
Other voices fell away, but he didn’t notice.
People murmured. They tapped each other on the shoulder and pointed, and one by one they all stopped.
Robert Evans halted and gazed intently at Sam.
When Sam didn’t notice, but just howled louder and stronger, Evans grasped Sam’s arm. Softly, he said, “Look before you.”
Sam shook his head, trying to come back from another realm, to return to being ordinary Sam Morgan, here in this place, now in this time.
“Be quiet and look before you,” repeated Evans.
It was listening that told the story. When Sam fell silent, one voice still cried out. In that voice, as in the voices of song dogs everywhere, was all the longing in the world, and all the knowing of loneliness.
Sitting on his haunches, his face lifted to the night sky, crooning for everything that is soul-felt, crouched Coy.
Stunned, Sam walked forward, fell onto his knees, and hugged his friend.
Coy licked his face.
28
Coy had a broken leg, the right front.
Sam roused Esperanza the next morning, thinking she’d like to help take care of it. Mountain medicine, hook by crook. Azul followed her out of the tipi.
Coy hopped around behind Sam three-legged. “Look,” Sam told the kids, “he’s skinny, way skinny. When your mom gets meat out, you can feed him by hand. A lot. Not just today but tomorrow and every day.”
Sam squatted and patted the ground. Coy came to him and sat. Sam held the coyote with one hand and felt the bone with the other.
Someone said, “Let me do that.”
Sam started. The speaker was with Joaquin. Both of them looked like they’d boozed all night and forgotten to sleep
“This is my friend Peanut Head,” said Joaquin. Peanut Head was a burly youth with a head the shape and color of a peanut. His scalp was slick as a shelled nut, and discolored, as though disease had made it barren. His face was equally hairless. His chin and forehead seemed to jut out, leaving his face receded.
“You look like the man in the moon,” said Esperanza.
“Shush,” Sam told his daughter.
Peanut Head smiled and made a silly face at her.
“I’ve been around farmyard animals all my life,” he said. He stooped and felt the leg in a tender way. “Leave it be. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
He set off, and Joaquin sprawled on the ground. The kids petted Coy and said cooing words to him.
Before long Peanut Head was back with a strip of green deer hide and what looked like a broken wiping stick from a pistol. Sam held Coy, Esperanza stroked his head and scratched his ears, and Azul smoothed his tail. Peanut Head cut thongs off his own leggings, laid the rod along the lower leg, fitted the deer hide tight around leg and rod, and wrapped the thongs tight and tied them. It was done quickly and well. Coy squealed, but he didn’t try to get away.
“When the hide dries,” Peanut Head said, “it will hold.”
“Hold,” said Joaquin blearily.
“Does that hurt?” asked Esperanza.
“Yes,” said Sam, “it probably hurts a lot.”
Sam let Coy up, and he hopped around on three legs, just as he’d done before.
“If the bone knits,” Peanut Head said, “he’ll eventually put weight on it.”
“Weight on it,” echoed Joaquin.
Sam picked up the coyote and held him in his lap. Coy snuggled in.
Flat Dog and Julia came out of the tipi, Julia carrying Rojo on his cradleboard. She hung the baby from a limb. Sam introduced Peanut Head to them. He spoke politely, and bore himself with a gravity beyond his years.
“Imagine,” Sam said to Esperanza, “what this little fellow has been through. Paladin and I nearly got washed away by that river. Coy must have hit something hard with that leg, probably a boulder. Somehow he swam through the rapids and got to shore.”
Azul made a roar like rapids and mimicked big waves with his hands. The kids had crossed swift rivers with their entire village when traveling.
Flat Dog joined in. “Coy must have laid on that shore for a long time—he was worn out by the river, for sure.”
“I was exhausted,” said Sam. “Coy, he must have been out cold on that bank. Otherwise he would have heard me calling. I walked up and down looking for him twice.”
“You went off and left him?” asked Esperanza.
“Yes,” said Sam. “I thought he was dead. That hurt a lot.”
Esperanza looked at Sam with widened eyes. She reached for Flat Dog’s hand and said, “Papá.”
That bothered Sam a little.
Julia poured a round of morning coffee, including Joaquin and Peanut Head. Then she cut up Jerusalem artichokes, wild onions, diced elk meat, put those in the kettle with water, and hung the kettle from the tripod over the fire. Breakfast.
“Sooner or later,” Sam went on, “Coy began to walk. Three-legged. ”
Joaquin hopped around the fire on hand and knees,
one hand in the air. He looked comical, and the kids laughed.
“How did he find us?” asked Azul. He was practical-minded.
“He probably found the place I slept by smell. Then he followed my odor all the way here.”
Joaquin mimicked sniffing the ground and following a trail. The kids pointed and giggled.
“It was ten sleeps from there to here,” Flat Dog said, “a lo-o-ong way, and it took Coy more sleeps.”
Esperanza’s eyes rounded and got big.
“Following my scent all the way. Coyotes have really good noses,” he told his daughter. “You and I couldn’t do that.”
“Milagro,” said Esperanza.
“Yes,” said Sam, “In English milagro means miracle.”
She looked at him strangely.
He went on in English, knowing it was good for her. “Now you want to work with the horses?”
They’d started when Esperanza was four. She showed good balance on her pony, and Sam thought learning some tricks would be fun. Now they spent half a day running through the routines, Flat Dog practicing on his specialty and Sam drilling Esperanza and Azul on their ponies. Esperanza’s was named Vermilion. Tomás watched sullenly. The mount he’d trained was gone for good.
Baptiste brought his harmonica, because Esperanza’s pony was used to working to music.
Joaquin and Peanut Head hung around and applauded the kids a lot.
“Sam,” Esperanza said when they were finished, “can we do it? Can we parade?” As an afterthought she added, “¿Papá?” She remembered to call him that when she really wanted something.
Sam thought. “All right,” he said, “let’s try it.” Things might go awry, but only the few Crow families would see.
First Sam took the two kids and walked through the Rocky Mountain Fur camp so they could see some of the fun. Some men were running foot races, two-on-two competitions, challenge the winner. They watched Jim Bridger win two straight races.