The Canyon of Bones

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Oh, pshaw, Mister Skye, I think I’ll just do what I planned; see the geysers, see the bones. The weather will hold. You’re looking at the luckiest Englishman on the planet. If I’d quit in the middle of half my projects, I’d be moldering as a printer’s devil in London. Look at me! I’ve walked through jungles where bushmen waited with poisoned darts. I’ve watched Asian cultists lower a little girl into a pit of cobras. I’ve watched Pacific islanders give a goat to a phallic god. I’ve seen midnight fertility dances that I can’t even write about. I’ve watched prisoners staked out upon a mound of meat-eating ants. I’ve watched African mutilation ceremonies that I would have to describe in Latin. I’ve walked into the bowels of an active volcano. I’ve weathered a Sahara sandstorm. I’ve watched cannibals eat their guests. I’ve swum rivers filled with man-eating fish. I have swum with sharks. I have sailed an outrigger canoe across the Indian Ocean. I have watched a blind man snare and eat giant frogs, and catch poisonous eels barehanded. I have ridden the backs of whales. Was I afraid? Never.”

  That did it. “Mister Mercer, I won’t guide men who are never afraid,” Skye said.

  Mercer didn’t even pause. “Why, I was just exaggerating, old boy. Showing off, you know.” He smiled, revealing that row of dazzling white teeth so perfect Skye thought that maybe they’d been carved from ivory.

  “I think you would find none of those things here, Mister Mercer. You’re on the wrong continent.”

  “I’d give my eyeteeth for just a peek at a lost tribe, one that survives in some canyon somewhere. Or some ruins like those in Peru. Whole cities rotting away down there. They’re common enough in Mexico. Do you suppose you could guide me there?”

  “I would be as lost there as you, sir.”

  “Blast. I have to make a living. What is there to say about this dull place? Someday it will be villages and plowed fields. And the Indians will all wear calico and leather shoes and get married by Methodist clergy.”

  “There’s North American wildlife, Mister Mercer.”

  “No match for Africa. How does this compare with elephants and giraffes? Or Australia. Dingos, kangaroos, and all that. Pitiful. Who wants to read about bears? Mister Skye, what I want is strange people who live in strange ways. That’s what sells penny dreadfuls in Liverpool.”

  “I’m fresh out of strange people, sir.”

  “There are some. Plural marriage. I’ve been thinking of wintering with the Mormons down in Deseret. That should be worth some ink, eh? How do they do it? A few stories from Deseret, and every lusty man in London will set sail. Ho, ho! That’s the only interesting thing about North America. Every man on the continent has a spare wife or two stashed away.”

  Skye laughed. He thought it was time to get the horses and pull out. The Crows were loading their travois. “You’ll do fine, Mister Mercer,” he said, and stood.

  “You win, Mister Skye. I surrender. You take us to the geysers, and then show us the big bones, and I’ll head for Deseret for the winter. We’ll just ride to the high country and take a few hot baths and then turn it over to Old Man Winter.”

  “There’s a hundred miles of forest, canyons, cliffs, rocky creeks, walls of brush to get to the geysers. It would take a while.”

  “I have been all over the world. Whenever guides tell me I can’t do something, I set out to do it.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll draw you a map. You can leave the wagon right here.”

  “That wagon’s my supply depot If I leave it here, I’ll lose everything in it. I can’t leave it here. It has to come with me. I want my men with me too. They’re good men.”

  “If you want to stay with your wagon you’d better choose some other sights to see, Mister Mercer.”

  The explorer had an odd trapped look in his eyes. He wasn’t used to being thwarted. “Where are the giant bones?”

  Skye turned to Victoria.

  “All over hell and back,” she said.

  “Madam, where is hell and back?”

  She pointed southeast. “Some that way, on a ridge near the Medicine Bow Mountains. Near Fort Laramie.” She pointed north. “Some that way, near Fort Benton.” She pointed east. “Some that way in bad country. Lots of Sioux around there.”

  Mercer paced back and forth, weighing things, his lust for adventure frustrated by the impending winter and the terrain.

  “The bones north of here, then. The ones near Fort Benton.” Mercer smiled, that high-energy smile that always seemed to settle things in his mind.

  “I’ll talk to my men. You get ready to go.”

  Skye wasn’t sure. “We need to address some things. A hundred pounds when? What are my duties? For how long? How will I be paid? Where will my services end? What exactly do you expect of me?”

  Mercer seemed to be expecting the questions: “You will be paid at the conclusion of satisfactory service. I can give you a letter of credit good at any fur company post or Hudson’s Bay. You will guide us and hunt for us, your women will provide meals and amenities, you’ll show us natural wonders known to yourself or your women, you’ll translate or use sign language; you’ll keep us out of danger and warn me if any sort of trouble looms. You will work until winter prohibits further exploration, and then take us to Fort Benton and get us a flatboat.”

  Skye nodded. “I have some requirements of my own, sir. In times of danger I will expect you to do exactly what I require, and without delay. If we should encounter some Blackfeet, there may be no time at all to debate. Is that suitable to you?”

  “Oh, Mister Skye, those occasions are so rare they’re hardly worth worrying ourselves.”

  “I must have that assurance.”

  “Oh, have it your way, Mister Skye. Let’s be off, eh?”

  Victoria was listening and frowning. Mary sat quietly on a robe. Victoria’s eyes were filled with messages, which Skye swiftly understood.

  “Something else, Mister Mercer. You will see things and places that are sacred to the people who live here. You respect what you see in any church; you will, I trust, respect what you see here. The bones we will take you to are the bones of the gods and must be treated as such.”

  “I enjoy writing about the local cults, old boy. The better the myths, the more I like them.”

  What was it about Mercer that worried Skye? No matter. He would deal with it

  “All right. We’ll go to the big bones, and then Fort Benton.”

  Mercer nodded and headed for his wagon and men. Skye watched him as he addressed his teamsters. They sprang to life at once, collecting the draft horses, packing a mound of gear.

  Skye turned to his ladies. “We’ve been engaged by Mister Mercer. It will earn us a lot of money; there will be good things for all of us at the trading posts.” He turned to Mary. “We’ll be going to see the giant bones in the rocks. If you wish to say good-bye to your brother and your people, now is the time.”

  “We will leave my people?”

  “Yes. We’ll go north with Victoria’s people. The man is a storyteller, and is gathering stories to tell people where he comes from.”

  “Will you give me to him?”

  There it was. “Why do you ask?”

  “It is the way he looks at me.”

  “If he tries something like that, I will stop it. You are my wife.”

  She lit up. “Then it will be a trip to remember!”

  “If he doesn’t get us in trouble,” Victoria said.

  fifteen

  The Absarokas reached the glinting Yellowstone four days later. Mercer and his teamsters tagged along without difficulty as they traversed level and semiarid ground with few creeks to ford. Skye rode Jawbone, keeping an eye on Mercer and his teamsters and the wagon as well as Mary and Victoria, who guided the travois-burdened horses. The wives fell smoothly into companionship. Skye was pleased. Victoria was less crabby than she had ever been, finding that her life had improved.

  Mary had offered a tender good-bye to The Runner and her people, and had joined Skye’s small hou
sehold with no visible emotion. Somehow, it all was working and Skye’s uneasiness had gradually dissolved. He was also more at ease with Mercer, who proved to be a good travel companion, undemanding and competent to deal with life far from anything resembling civilization as he knew it.

  They traversed a grove of cottonwoods and reached the Yellowstone River at a place where it ran through a broad meadow, hemmed by distant bluffs. Even as the Absarokas pulled up on the south bank to water and rest their ponies, they were hailed by a lone traveler heading west, a white man in a gray slouch hat, leading two pack mules.

  The Absarokas greeted him with curiosity and asked Skye to translate. Graves Mercer and his teamsters headed toward the stranger even as the Crows flocked around him. The meeting was all smiles and the stranger doffed his slouch hat time and again, his salute to these people.

  The man actually was middle-aged with a trimmed gray beard, spectacles, watery blue eyes, brown canvas clothing, and laced boots.

  “This is a surprise,” he said. “Nutmeg here. Samuel Storrs Nutmeg at your service.”

  The man halted his pack mules and acknowledged the collecting crowd. The man’s way of clipped and precise speaking awakened curiosity in Skye. Was he a Yank?

  “I’m Mister Skye,” he said. “My wives Mary and Victoria. This is Graves Duplessis Mercer and his assistants, Floyd Corporal and Silas Winding. And I shall introduce you to our headmen directly.”

  “Mister Skye, are you? I’ve been advised that you’re the man to hire if one needs a guide. I made some inquiries.”

  “I seem to have acquired a reputation, deserved or not,” Skye said. “And you, sir?”

  “A Connecticut Yankee. New Haven, actually. I’m a professor,” said Nutmeg. He turned to the explorer. “And you, Mister Mercer. I know your work.”

  “And I know yours, Professor. Yale College is it?”

  “Indeed it is. What a stroke! A pair of wanderers out in the American desert.”

  Skye peered about, looking for evidence of a desert and finding none. The meadow was mostly sun-cured tan grasses waving in the breezes.

  “What brings you to this remote place?” Mercer asked the stranger.

  “Science,” the man replied. “I am doing a bit of exploration. Maybe you’ve read a paper or two of mine. Mostly academic journals, my own little sallies against orthodoxy. Took two years off, and spending my last dollar too. I’m heading for the geyser country. You know what’s up there? Obsidian. The stuff has been traded all over the continent. There are regular work yards there, where it was flaked into arrowheads and spear points. It seems to be a prized item among the tribes. I’ve traced it to the Ohio River valley.”

  “Natural science! Why, that’s why I’m here.”

  “I don’t care to pigeonhole myself,” Nutmeg said. “I’m the proverbial square peg. A bit of anthropology, a bit of paleontology, a bit of geology, a bit of zoology, and a dose of botany.”

  “You have no guide?”

  Nutmeg smiled. “Maps and a compass. Two good mules. A field glass. Some interviews a few weeks ago with the mountain men in St. Louis. Some notes and sketches of landmarks. I can’t afford a guide, Mister Mercer, not on my salary. So I ramble along quite on my own.”

  “Quite so. A brave man, sir. I congratulate you.”

  Skye intervened. “I’d like you to meet our headmen, Mister Nutmeg. They’re waiting here, wishing to greet you.”

  “Very good,” Nutmeg said.

  Skye, translating, introduced the traveler to Chief Robber and the headmen as well as dozens of Absarokas, who welcomed him. Some of them wanted to know what this lone traveler did and Skye responded that he was a collector of plants and animals and stones. Very like the other one, Mercer.

  And in turn, he translated for Nutmeg. “The Absarokas are heading east, downriver, into buffalo country. It’ll soon be time for the fall hunt and the buffalo usually are thickest east of here. You are welcome to join them.”

  “Ah, a pity. I was hoping they might join me for a trip to the geysers but we seem to be heading in opposite directions.”

  “You’re going to the headwaters of the Yellowstone? Where that geyser is that you can set a clock by?” Mercer asked, an edge to his questions.

  “Why yes, it’s now or never before the snow flies.”

  “My man here tells me it’s not passable. Rushing rivers and all that.”

  “For a man with pack mules it is. I understand I’ll have no problem if I do it on foot.”

  “My guide wouldn’t take me there,” Mercer said.

  Skye kept silent. Mercer’s statement was not complete or true, but Mercer neither finished nor corrected it.

  “All I have to do is follow this splendid river right into the bosom of the geysers, and catch fat trout all the way,” Nutmeg said. “Simple enough, eh? Easy way in and out. Why, I’m told once I’m up there I’ll see steam rising from geysers everywhere I look. Imagine it. Steam hissing and spitting out of a hole in the rocks. The earth belching a column of hot water and thundering like a volcano. I’m going to take some temperatures, and test the waters for minerals. A little sulphur, I suppose. Who knows what else? I’ve a kit, you know, a regular laboratory. It’s time someone did some work on the geysers.”

  “All alone. Don’t you prefer company?”

  Nutmeg paused, eyed Mercer, and slowly shook his head. “I’m a bit of a loner, Mister Mercer. I take my time, go where my curiosity leads me.”

  “Well, those geysers aren’t the only things in the whole area worth writing about.”

  Nutmeg smiled. “I should think there would be wonders everywhere. But who am I to say? This gentleman, Skye here, is the best man to steer you. That’s what I learned in St. Louis.”

  Mercer responded with one of those toothy smiles.

  The Absarokas were restless, impatient to move, unable to understand all of this palaver. After much consultation they headed downriver. Victoria watched her people go, her face a mask. The Indians forded the Yellowstone at a broad gravelly shallows, the horses splashing through hock-deep water, and continued down the north bank until at last they rounded a bend and vanished. Now there was only silence, bright sun, crows and magpies, and a sparkling river.

  “Mister Skye, I’ve changed my mind,” said Mercer. “I think I’ll just tag along with Professor Nutmeg. He can teach me lots of things. We’ll wagon most of the way. Look at this flat. The river’s running through a wide valley, no trouble at all to take a wagon upstream.”

  Skye stared sharply. Professor Nutmeg had offered no such invitation. “I thought you wanted a look at the fossil bones, Mister Mercer.”

  “Bones? What bones? What are you talking about, man?” Mercer seemed much put out.

  “Fossil bones, Mister Skye?” asked Nutmeg.

  “My wife’s people know of some, north of here in the Missouri breaks and a few other places. Mister Mercer wished to be taken there.”

  Mercer dismissed it all. “Oh, I expect they’ll be just a few trilobites, ammonites, little stuff caught in a limestone bluff.”

  “Damn big bones,” said Victoria. “Giants from the old days. My people are afraid of them. Their spirits live there, don’t like no trouble.”

  “Madam, I don’t believe it is possible to find large bones in fossil form. The geologic pressures are too great,” Mercer said.

  Nutmeg was absorbing all of this with acute interest. “That would be interesting, looking at fossil bones, Mister Skye. I daresay, some recent discoveries have excited the whole world of natural science. Bones of ancient creatures twenty feet high, giant lizards, so they seem. Obviously extinct.”

  “Nothing around here, Professor. Wrong strata. Too recent,” Mercer said. “A look at the fossils is just a side trip. We’re really having a hard look at some of the tribes. Customs, dances, all that That’s what I do, you know, write about people they’ve never heard of in London.”

  “Yes, and your pieces are widely read, Mister Mercer. They make their
way across the Atlantic.”

  Skye registered all of this with some surprise. Rivalry. But most of all, secrecy. Nutmeg didn’t want Mercer tagging along to the geyser country; Mercer didn’t want Nutmeg to know about the bone fields Victoria was going to show to him. Mercer was being deceptive, but not Nutmeg. The professor was straightforward. It was Mercer who had scented a rival.

  “Mister Mercer, I think you’ll be happy to proceed to the fossil bones,” Skye said. “I think you will be delighted by your discoveries. That’s where you hired us to take you.”

  For a moment there was thunder in Mercer’s face and then the dazzling smile and the pearly teeth.

  “Why, Mister Skye, old fellow, we’ll continue on our way. I really wouldn’t want to risk a wagon up in the headwaters of the Yellowstone. The geysers interest me not in the slightest.”

  Skye had a whole new perspective on the man who had employed him. First Mercer wanted to tag along with the professor, a sudden change in plans. Then Mercer tried to conceal what he was up to, lying to Nutmeg about the size of the bones. Clearly, there were sides to Mercer that would inspire caution. Skye wondered if he would last for the agreed-on period, or get paid.

  sixteen

  Navigation was in Victoria’s hands. She knew where the giant bones were; Skye had seen them once but couldn’t recollect just where. All she told him was that they were not tar trom the confluence of the Musselshell and the Missouri Rivers.

  She led them north across high plains laced with giant coulees, sandstone ridges, and gulches filled with cottonwood trees. To the north and west, distant mountain ranges poked through autumnal haze. It was not a welcoming land. It was a place that made a man feel lonely. Sometimes when the wind quit, Skye could hear utterly nothing. The silence ran so deep that it made a man itchy. It was a land to hurry through.

  The party proceeded peaceably enough. The two teamsters knew intuitively where to steer the giant draft horses as they worked up and down long grades and across a roadless sea of grass. The horses stayed fat, devouring the rich fodder.