Beauty for Ashes

by Win Blevins

  At dawn they rested for a couple of hours. Then they loped the horses for hours more, walked them, and loped them a last time. With the head start they got, Sam figured no Head Cutter would catch them.

  They turned west along the Owl Creek Mountains and made tracks for the river. In summer water might have been scarce, but not in late autumn. On the way Sam discovered that the pinto was a good riding horse, with plenty of bottom. He’d call her Pinto and make her his traveling mount. Now he had one for traveling and Paladin for running buffalo. For a man who’d been practically naked in August, he was getting outfitted.

  Sam could hardly believe the way they were welcomed into camp. First Flat Dog went near the camp, leaving Sam behind, and found the sentries. “Tell the women to get charcoal ready.” That was all he had to say.

  Soon Bell Rock came to Sam and Flat Dog with charcoal. They blackened their faces with it. This was what everyone longed to see, the sign that they had killed an enemy.

  At the end of the day they rode into camp. Sam felt like The Celt gleamed, Paladin gleamed, and he gleamed with what he had done.

  All the people formed a circle. In the center Bell Rock told Sam what was to happen. First he and Flat Dog were to perform the long dance.

  They did. The people were perfectly attentive, poised to hear great things.

  Then, at Bell Rock’s instruction, first Flat Dog and then Sam told the story of the war party. When Flat Dog told how he shot the arrow and it sank far into the enemy’s belly, the women trilled. When he described making the first touch, the trilling rose to the clamor of a thousand ecstatic birds.

  Sam thought it was the most exciting sound he had ever heard, and felt a pang of envy.

  Flat Dog pointed out over and over, though, how Sam’s medicine and wisdom had led them. By Sam, they were led directly to the right village. By his plan, they captured the Head Cutter’s women and drew him out to search for them. By his plan and the medicine of his wonderful horse, they brought the Head Cutter within range of Flat Dog’s bow. He spoke of Sam making the second touch, and again the women trilled.

  Then Sam told his story. His account of the same event was different, as all tellings must be, and Sam thought the women sounded just as enthusiastic. When he finished with his version of making the second touch on the fallen enemy, his voice betrayed a sense of anticlimax. The women sang out with their tongues, but there was a sense of waiting, waiting for…

  Bell Rock, as the “father” of the expedition, cried out. “Flat Dog has made the first touch of an enemy with his hand.”

  Enthusiastic clamoring.

  “Joins with Buffalo has made the second touch, and has led a successful war party.”

  Exultant clamoring. Sam felt like it lifted him off the ground.

  “Two young men have achieved some of the highest of the four great coups.”

  Now Sam realized. Four coups to become a war leader—to touch an enemy with your hand, to wrest a weapon away from him, to steal a horse picketed in the camp, and to lead a successful party.

  Not quite twenty-one years old, Sam had performed two of them.

  He felt giddy.

  Now a clansman of Bell Rock came forward and sang praises of Sam and Flat Dog. The songs were beautiful and extravagant.

  Bell Rock said quietly to Sam, “Normally, your clansmen would make him gifts for his singing. Since you have no clan, my clansmen will do that.”

  Though the songs ended the festivities for the night, they jumped to a new start the next morning. The herald circled the camp, crying out news of the start of the dance. All that day and the next were filled with drumming, singing, and dancing. Only killing an enemy was enough to make the women dance, Bell Rock told Sam—stealing horses was not enough.

  At the end of two days even Sam felt glutted with glory.

  THE NEXT MORNING, when Sam and Flat Dog were still sitting in their blankets and breaking their fast with some jerked meat, Bell Rock appeared. He said, “Come smoke with me and Gray Hawk tonight.”

  After months, that’s how it ended, the shunning by the Gray Hawk family. Meadowlark’s face, and memories of touching her, exploded in Sam’s mind.

  When Flat Dog walked off with Bell Rock, Sam asked Coy, “Now Gray Hawk will talk to me?” Coy offered, as comment, only warm eyes. Sam had seen Meadowlark dancing exuberantly during the last three days. His repute among the Crows, he hardly dared form the words in his mind…“I guess I’m too big to ignore,” he told Coy. He allowed himself hope. His heart danced.

  Sam had work to do. Two Horns had used up most of The Celt’s powder and lead, maybe on the fall buffalo hunt, or maybe just trying the rifle out. Aside from horses and coyote, Sam was a pauper. He lacked flint and steel for making fire, and nothing could be more basic. A pot to cook in. Plenty of moccasins. A capote. A couple more buffalo hides to sleep on and under. A tipi. A saddle, and a calf hide for a saddle pad. Ropes to hold packs on the horses, and to picket them. A tomahawk to make firewood with. A pistol, the best complement to The Celt. Coffee and sugar. Tobacco. Most of all, maybe, goods to trade to the Indians. He was tired of living in poverty.

  So he needed to spend his winter days setting his two traps and getting a few beaver. Very few, for beaver were inactive in the winter. Then he needed to have a spring hunt, even if he did it alone. Since he’d missed the fall hunt, he didn’t know where his outfit was. When he thought of it, he supposed that Diah, Fitz, and the boys had given him up, thinking he’d gone under.

  He spent this day making arrows, a necessity that seemed never to end. He listened for gossip about Gray Hawk and his family. He learned absolutely nothing before he, Flat Dog, and Coy arrived at Bell Rock’s lodge that evening. At the door flap Sam told Coy to sit and stay.

  Bell Rock sat in the center behind the fire, Gray Hawk on his left, as was proper. Sam and Flat Dog sat to the left of Gray Hawk.

  In silence Bell Rock used a coal to light his pipe. He offered the smoke to the four directions, Father Sky, Mother Earth. Turning the pipe once in a full circle, he handed it to Gray Hawk, bowl in the left hand, stem in the right. Gray Hawk took it just that way and smoked. Sam and Flat Dog followed suit.

  When the pipe was empty, Gray Hawk spoke without preamble. “My daughter’s brothers told you to bring eight horses and ask for her. I ask you not to do that.”

  Slammed down. Defeated. Crushed.

  Sam made his mind focus on what counted: Meadowlark was lost.

  He got out one word. “Why?”

  “You may think it is because of Blue Medicine Horse.”

  It was permitted, for reasons Sam didn’t understand, to speak the name of a dead person when you were smoking the pipe. He felt the name like a stab. He knew that Gray Hawk felt it more deeply, and always would.

  “That’s not it,” Gray Hawk went on. “You have made it possible for us to end our mourning for our son. Thank you.”

  Now the older man waited for a long time.

  “A wise person,” he finally said, “tells us Crows to have nothing to do with white men. White men will bring death to the people, it is said.”

  Sam gawked. Of all the tribes in the mountains and on the plains, the Crows were the friendliest to whites. This was a bad turn.

  “Who?”

  “A wise person,” Gray Hawk repeated.

  Bell Rock lit the pipe, and they smoked in silence. After a while Meadowlark’s father started to stand up. On one knee, he glanced sideways at Sam, put his gaze back in the fire, and said quietly, “You are a good young man.”

  Then he left.

  The moment Gray Hawk replaced the door flap, Bell Rock said, “Owl Woman.”

  Sam searched his mind. He associated the name vaguely with a heavy-set, middle-aged woman full of dark looks…Now he remembered that two people had started the talk against his sun dance. Owl Woman and her husband, Yellow Horn.

  “A woman who sees things,” Bell Rock said.

  Sam translated this in his mind, making allowa
nce for the Crow customs of indirection and understatement. A woman who had strong dreams, or visions, ones people paid attention to.

  “I will invite her and her husband to smoke with you and me soon.”

  Flat Dog wanted to talk more, but Sam wanted to be alone.

  Outside he clucked at Coy, and they walked across the lodge circle. At the brush hut he pulled the head end of his blankets outside. He rolled in and looked up at the stars. Coy settled himself on the blankets at Sam’s feet. So many stars, so far apart, such emptiness in between.

  “Boy,” he said, “the stars are working against us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WHEN THE LONG train of pony drags wound into the winter camping place, all eyes—those of the Fox policemen, the old men, the women and children—were on one spot. There where the outfit led by Diah had camped two winters ago, a solitary line of smoke rose to the sky.

  Sam and Flat Dog looked at each other. The scouts knew who was there, or they would have warned the people. But who? White men?

  Sam touched his heels to Paladin, and the mare flashed that way with her wonderful speed. He could hear Flat Dog coming hard behind him.

  Three horses picketed—Sam recognized none of them.

  A lean-to backed against a boulder. White men, for sure.

  Sam reined up in front of it. Buffalo robes and blankets within, a fire in front.

  Click! The dry click of a rifle hammer?

  Sam looked up. Twenty feet above him a figure rose, silhouetted against the sun and hard to make out.

  “Sam Morgan, you done lost your top knot.”

  He knew the soft, kindly voice of the Virginian—it was James Clyman.

  Sam laughed out loud.

  Next to him another figure, familiar but against the sun…

  “This child is glad to see Joins with Buffalo hasn’t joined with the buffalo grass.”

  Gideon!

  WINTER CAMP. A good fire, old friends, plenty of meat, the first sugar and coffee Sam had tasted in months, and a good story. Mountain man heaven.

  Sam and Flat Dog would hear of nothing except for Gideon to tell the story of his escape and survival at full length. “Last time I saw you,” Sam said with a rush of feeling, “you were hightailing it south with arrows in you and your horse and Head Cutters flying thick as mosquitoes around your head.”

  “One arrow in me,” corrected Gideon. “Here.” He tapped his right hip. From the look of the way he walked, that wound was still bothering him. Maybe it always would.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get hit but once,” said Sam.

  Gideon made a snaky motion with his right hand. “We Frenchmen, we fly between dangers, whether they be arrows or bullets or angry husbands.”

  “You think you could tell this story”—Flat Dog searched for words—“in a true way?”

  Sam was proud of his friend for learning to josh American-style.

  Gideon sucked on his lower lip. “I get hit by two other arrows. One rakes across my back, leaves long scar, you will see. The other, it digs at my scalp, knocks my hat off, makes more blood than trouble.”

  He gave them all a wily look.

  “What really happened?” Sam reminded him.

  “Most ze Indians, they go toward you, Blue Horse, ze pack horses. Four devils, they comed after me…”

  GIDEON POOR BOY whipped his horse like hell. He knew damn well he had no chance, so he meant to go under in high style.

  When he cleared the cottonwood grove stuck bad in only one place, he roared. He wheeled his horse and raised his pistol. Four Head Cutters were on his ass. He aimed and dropped the front one clean. That would slow the buggers down. They knew he still had a loaded rifle. He kicked his drag-ass horse and worked at reloading the pistol.

  A gravelly hill came up on his right. He rounded a curve and spurred the horse up it. He was possessed by an idea.

  He turned hard to the right again—this horse wasn’t going to be able to go for long. He galloped twenty yards back and hurled his mount and himself off the lip of the hill.

  They careened straight into the three men after them. Gideon spurred the horse into the flank of the lead horse, and it knocked it ass over teacups. He ducked under the war club of the second rider, sped at the third man, knocked his lance aside, and buried his knife in the man’s chest.

  Without looking back, he spurred sideways and the second rider clipped his mount’s hindquarters. Horse and rider went down. Gideon rolled and came up with his rifle raised. He fired almost point blank into the rider’s gut, and the Indian flew toward heaven backwards.

  Gideon lunged for the man’s bridle. His hip stabbed him, and he screamed, but he got the rope. Unable to mount normally, he threw himself belly down across the pony’s back, turned its head up the creek, and whacked its hind end hard.

  When Gideon got into a sitting position, he looked back. Five or six more Indians coming, including the one he unhorsed, but well back.

  His mind whirred. He laughed. A chance! This was even bigger fun!

  GIDEON ONLY LISTENED. He dared not watch.

  Knowing he couldn’t outrun a half dozen Head Cutters, not hurt as he was, he veered off into the first coulee he came to. After a quarter mile it turned, and sandstone crags pushed in from both sides. That gave him an idea.

  He pulled the horse up, slid off, and smacked its hindquarters as hard as he could. The pony started and then fled up the coulee.

  Now the bad part. Gideon had to get into the rocks. The damned hip would fight him all the way.

  Later he told himself, bragging, that it was like climbing out from the ninth circle of hell. But pain, what does pain matter to a man?

  Half-dragging that leg, he hoisted himself up the sandstone, step by agonizing step, and around it into a little cleft.

  He listened to the beat of the hooves. Probably they would gallop by, looking for the pony and rider. When they found the pony, they would hunt for the rider. Hunt up at the top of the coulee, if he was lucky. Eventually, very eventually, they would look hard at all the tracks in the coulee and trace him to these rocks. Then, well, a game of cat and mouse until dark, and another game of cat and mouse the next day…

  Or one of them might have a superb eye. He would see the grass broken in a clump, and tracks more than a straight-running pony would leave. Then Gideon would be a mouse in a sandstone trap.

  The hooves thundered by.

  When they were halfway out of hearing, he grabbed the arrow with both hands, bellowed, and wrenched it out of his hip. His outcry would never be heard above the hooves.

  He gazed morosely at the hip. “Heal, damn you.” His uncle had dragged around a bad leg, and that always gave Gideon the willies. Nothing, to him, could be worse than being a cripple.

  Up, up, he had get out onto the ridge. Damn, why had he chosen the one thing he couldn’t do, walk? He forced himself to chuckle through the pain. Because they think I can’t do it.

  Across the ridge into the next crinkle in the landscape, which turned out to have a tiny tributary to the creek. He slid down the hill on his bottom, his left bottom, the one that wasn’t killing him. When he got to the creek, he lay flat in the shallow water and drank. Drink, drink. Maybe no other drink for hours, for a day…

  He walked up the creek, his feet carefully in the water.

  He hoped it was the opposite of what they would expect. He was going up into a sweep of grassy, treeless hills, where a man might be seen for miles around. He was going away from water, for this rivulet would soon be…

  A marsh. In a quarter mile it was a little marsh where a spring rose. He looked at the muddy ground. He studied the sparse growth of cattails. No cover, not a bit. No cover on the hillsides either. What had he gotten himself into?

  Hellfire. He started up the hill, practically clomping on his bad leg. Hurt, you bastard, hurt as bad as you can. Up he chuffed, and up and…

  Time to crawl over the ridge top. He needed to be exquisitely tiny. Acro
ss the top, he inched and looked down the other side.

  Hope.

  Not much, but hope. An outcropping of sandstone, with a split. Maybe not big enough for a man of his girth. No, maybe not. But the only hope.

  He scooted down the hill on his left butt. He crawled out onto the sandstone, dropped his legs into the crack, and lowered himself.

  It wouldn’t work. Damn every pound of buffalo meat he’d eaten in the last year. Damn his father for having the build of a bear. Damn all his ancestors.

  He heaved himself up.

  Out of luck. He was stuck. And, due to gravity, getting more stuck every minute he stayed there.

  He heaved mightily with both his immense arms.

  Stuck.

  He got an idea.

  He rotated himself. He walked his feet up the crack, tilting his upper body down toward it. He braced himself with his elbows. He pushed with his left foot. That hip slipped upward a little. He repeated the motion, and slipped back a little, sideways into the crack.

  Have to lift both sides out at once, the way I’m widest.

  He used the right foot, gaining one excruciating inch. He braced the foot and knee on opposite sides, twisted his body level, and pushed up with both elbows.

  Out he popped.

  He crawled off the sandstone and down the hill. Below the sandstone he looked back to curse his personal Golgotha. And saw it. The cave of his resurrection. He crawled up.

  It was just a bigger split, no cave. He could actually crawl into it maybe three steps before it narrowed.

  When it did narrow, it squeezed together only at the middle and top. On the bottom was still a decent hole. He got down on his belly and slithered forward.

  Behind the squeeze, a cozy little room crook-necked to the right. He sat down, back against the far wall, legs on the sand. Straight up the split slithered down to a hand span, and it curved. He could stand, but he couldn’t see sky above. And no one above could see him.