The Canyon of Bones

by Richard S. Wheeler

  The flames dimmed to orange coals. There would be little comfort this night with no robes or blankets to warm their bodies against a night breeze that would drop close to freezing. There would be no spare clothing, no sheeted wagon overhead to stop the wind.

  “Let’s keep this fire going,” Mercer said.

  “That’s good. It’ll throw heat and maybe keep animals at bay. Did you bring in enough wood?” Skye asked.

  Mercer hadn’t. “Maybe when the moon comes up I can find some.”

  “Maybe you can,” Skye said. “You’ll be in charge of keeping us warm.”

  Mercer laughed again. He was, it seemed, a pretty good sport.

  The night passed quietly. Perhaps there was too much of the acrid odor of fire in the air. Perhaps predators were having a banquet upon all the fire-wounded creatures elsewhere. Mercer managed to keep a flame going all night, and asked no relief from anyone. Skye slept soundly; he was far too exhausted not to sleep, even if his backside was freezing while his front side roasted. He was awake at first light, as always. He studied the ridges for danger, as always. Around him lay the rest, each in a place hollowed in the turf. The great carcasses of the buffalo lay untouched, at least by large predators, thirty or forty yards distant. He arose stiffly, wishing he had some tea. But there wasn’t even a kettle, much less a tin cup. He saw that Mercer had finally fallen into sleep, the explorer’s face somehow soft and innocent.

  Victoria was staring at Skye. She arose softly, padded to him, and he drew her tight. It was something they always did. They greeted each other with a fierce hug as each day began. She vanished into the bush while he washed his face in the flowing creek, which offered up the music of soft laughter. Then he washed his Green River knife and settled beside the buffalo cow. This fine morning they would all enjoy the most succulent and tender part of a buffalo, the hump meat. The women had pulled as much hide free as they could, but now the cow needed to be turned over so they could tear the rest of the hide free. It was a task beyond his strength, but when Mercer suddenly appeared, they tugged on the legs and finally flipped the cow over, so Victoria and Mary could continue.

  Slowly and carefully, Skye sliced a rib roast out of the cow while Mercer gathered sticks and built up the fire from its coals. Skye hurt; yesterday’s ordeal had left his body aching in every muscle. His lungs ached. The smoke had done something terrible to them. But he was used to it. No man lived close to the wilds without pain.

  He cut two roasts out of the hump and set them to cooking while suspended on green willow sticks. As the meat sizzled, he continued butchering, gradually building a great heap of meat that would nourish them all this day. The women would find time to start jerking some of it for future emergencies. A lazy smoke lifted off the wavering fire while the meat sizzled. The scent woke up the teamsters, and then Mary. A feast at dawn. An odd breakfast, but just fine this big, hot day in paradise.

  Skye watched them all. People were different at dawn, shaking sleep out of their bodies, and sometimes shaking the pain away too. But one by one they settled near the fire while the flame blackened the outside of the roasts and the fat dripped steadily from the meat.

  They had a boss rib breakfast, and it was as fine a meal as any Skye had ever enjoyed, though he might have savored a pinch of salt on the tender meat.

  Mercer ate heartily and seemed as ready as the rest for a day of toil. And strangely, he no longer talked about the certitude of perishing in the wilds of North America.

  twenty-four

  Factory indeed. The want of everything was so urgent that Skye scarcely knew what required the most attention. But these things sorted themselves out their own way. The women swiftly pulled hides off the remaining buffalo and staked them to the ground, hair-side down. Then, using the hatchet blade, Victoria began fleshing the hides while Mary brain-tanned them, using a rounded river cobble to grind the fatty brain into the hides.

  Graves Mercer turned to joking, but at least he stayed busy butchering meat, which he did so poorly that Skye feared the man would sever a finger. Still, the amount of salvaged meat that could be turned into jerky or pemmican began to grow.

  Silas Winding turned to what he knew best, and began slicing strips of rawhide from one of the hides and braiding it into rope. Some of this new rope would soon hang haunches above the reach of bears, while the rest of it would become lead lines, halters, bridles, reins, and other tack. Floyd Corporal, the weakest among them, was still able to whittle a new handle of willow and fit it to the axe head, gather firewood, tend camp, cook meat, and keep an eye out for danger. But he looked bad, haggard, and Skye wondered about him.

  Skye patrolled the hillsides periodically, looking for trouble, but then he helped butcher for a while and found along the creek abundant chokecherries and sarvis berries to make pemmican. The horses grazed peacefully in the valley, content to stay near water. It would be many days before they might be healed enough to drag a travois.

  After Corporal had fashioned a workable axe, with wedges pinning the head on the haft, Skye felled young lodgepole pines and turned them into usable travois and lodgepoles. It felt good to draw upon the world around them and make shelter and transportation from whatever nature provided.

  When the women finished fleshing and brain-tanning one hide, they headed for a nearby tree and whipsawed the stiff hide back and forth around the trunk, softening the leather. There would not be time to turn it into velvety soft leather, but this hide, severed in two, would provide warm robes for two of the party.

  Because one of the hides would be devoted to horse tack and parfleches and clothing, they were still short of leather. Skye hoped to remedy that the next evening, when he would slip out at twilight, heading up the creek in search of an elk or at least a mule deer. He wouldn’t mind finding a moose or a black bear, either.

  Floyd Corporal took over the cooking, and kept meat broiling all day. So hard was the labor, and so ravenous were the toiling people, that they simply stopped now and then for another slab of buffalo roast that rested on a flat rock, ready for all comers.

  By the end of that first day there were crudely tanned robes for two, plus the remaining hides to shelter the rest of them against the sharp cold of late-summer nights.

  “Let’s rest and have a bite, mates,” Skye said.

  They collected around a table rock where Corporal had piled the cooked meat, and helped themselves. It was a messy business, gnawing at large slabs of dripping hot meat held in bare hands. But a satisfying repast.

  “Well, Mister Skye, we’ve survived another day,” Mercer said. “I’ll be the first to say you’ve opened my eyes.”

  “The Indians opened the eyes of many a trapper who came here,” Skye said. “Here was everything they needed and they knew what to do with it.”

  “But the work! All I’ve done is slave all day,” Winding said.

  “And we’ll slave for another week,” Skye said. “Then maybe one or two of the horses can pull a travois.”

  “We’ll head straight for Fort Benton,” Mercer said.

  “Why?” Skye asked.

  “Because we lost everything. This is all make-do. We need to outfit.”

  Skye shrugged. “If that’s what you want, I’ll take you there. But there’s no need. You came to see what you could see, and there’s still two months of good weather.”

  “But, Skye. There’s only one rifle among us. A few belt knives. Makeshift tools. No paper for a journal. I lack even a pencil.”

  “Then I guess we’ll just have to live like Indians,” Skye said.

  “I shall want a dozen wives,” said the explorer, and then laughed at his witticism. Skye did too. There was that quality about the man that made him good company.

  “Ain’t no damned Absaroka that would marry him,” Victoria said.

  “No Shoshone,” Mary said.

  “No Nez Perce. No Hidatsa. No Lakota,” said Victoria.

  “No Piegan. No Assiniboine. No Gros Ventre,” said Mary.

/>   “Maybe a damn ugly Arapaho with warts,” Victoria said. “Someone with her nose cut off.”

  The women laughed merrily. A cut-off nose was the punishment some tribesmen imposed on adulterous wives.

  “I don’t know what’s so funny,” Mercer said.

  “They’re having a very good time with your ambitions,” Skye replied. “In some tribes, a woman with a severed nose is a woman punished for unfaithfulness.”

  “Ah! Then I shall look for half a dozen of the bobbed nose beauties!”

  Floyd Corporal thought that was capital, and wheezed cheerfully.

  Skye found his ancient Hawken, checked the load, and slipped into the twilight. Behind him, the party sat around the fire, enjoying the evening even as chill air slid down from the mountains. He felt the soft rush of air as something silent flapped by and realized it was a large owl. He would not tell Victoria. An owl was an omen of big trouble.

  He padded softly up the creek valley, looking for those shapes of large animals that would offer him more meat and hide. Elk hide made especially fine moccasins as well as good waistcoats or pantalones. A man could live just fine in a cotton shirt, elk-hide vest, elk leggins, and moccasins.

  He was a fine hunter who glided softly through the cottony dark, pausing to listen, instinctively understanding where animals might water or graze or simply stand quietly. Jawbone had not followed, so Skye slipped along as silently as that owl.

  Then he froze. Ahead was a cow elk and a late-born baby, scarcely two months old. The little one butted her bag and suckled. He lowered his Hawken intuitively, but stopped. It was not in him to kill her and orphan that baby. He might if he were desperately hungry but that was not the case. He watched quietly as the calf suckled and then meandered away from his mother. She sensed his presence. Her head jerked upward, she stared at him, sniffed the air, and then hightailed away, dancing ahead like a proud trotter. The calf froze, ancient instinct telling it not to move. Then a soft whistle, or was it just an odd breath, and the calf tripped away into the gloom.

  “Hope you grow into a big fellow,” Skye muttered.

  He worked his way into deep night, following the melodic creek, and then turned back toward camp, empty-handed. Jawbone whickered softly, trotted up and bumped his massive head into Skye’s chest.

  “Avast,” he said softly. He scarcely dared touch the animal. The horse’s mane had burnt away in places, and there were painful blisters on Jawbone’s rump. Big black horseflies were tormenting all the horses now, crawling over the blisters, and Skye wondered what to do about it. Maybe river mud plastered over the blisters would help. He would try in the morning and hope he didn’t get kicked to death.

  He found the camp still busy. Mercer and Winding had hung two haunches of buffalo from a stout willow tree. The women toiled on the next hide, now staked down where the previous hide had been worked. Corporal, whose wheeze had worsened, was fitting together a little rack next to the fire where he intended to smoke-cure some buffalo meat. With indefatigable people like this, Skye thought, they would soon be outfitted and on their way.

  That night Skye and Victoria shared one hide, spread out under them. The hair warmed them and offered protection from the hard earth. And they warmed each other. Floyd Corporal gladly took a robe. His wheeze had shifted to a rattling cough and Skye worried about the man. Too much searing hot air, too much smoke, too much chill and hard living and walking through corrosive ash, had taken their toll. Skye didn’t like the black flesh around the man’s eyes, the rasping of his breath, the desperate look in the man’s face.

  Mary gratefully took the other new robe, while Graves Mercer and Silas Winding settled on the remaining uncured hide, finding some comfort in it. This night was even colder than the previous one. It was that time of year when days remained hot but the nights turned icy. Several times, Skye awakened and added wood to the flickering fire, but its faint heat did little to drive away the chill, and Skye got more comfort out of stirring about than he got from the miserable flame.

  He eyed the night heavens anxiously. The worst thing that could happen now, when they were so ill prepared, would be a cold rain or worse, an early winter storm. But for the moment, their luck held.

  No predators showed up that night, either. The fire probably kept them at bay. But when Skye pried open his eyes at dawn, he swore he was staring at a wolf not far distant. Whatever the case, by the time he was fully awake, the wraith had vanished.

  The camp was slow to awaken. A cold blue dawn slowly expanded into daylight. Victoria sat up suddenly, alarm in her features.

  “He is dead,” she said.

  “He was all right a while ago. I checked.”

  “Dead.”

  She arose, padded softly across dewy ground, and knelt beside the still form of Floyd Corporal. Slowly she lowered her head to listen. Then she slipped the robe open and touched the man’s face. Then she shook him.

  There was no response.

  Skye knew that they hadn’t escaped the prairie fire after all.

  twenty-five

  Death in their midst. They gathered around Floyd Corporal, absorbing the great silence of him. It had happened suddenly and mysteriously. Yesterday, he had been well enough to whittle an axe handle and gather firewood. Late in the day he was wheezing. This morning he was gone. Of just what cause no one could say, but surely that fire and its lethal smoke had much to do with it.

  He looked smaller in death than in life. Alive, he had been a quiet, able teamster who was well versed in wilderness ways, kept his livestock in good shape, knew what could be gotten from a horse or mule or ox, and said very little. There he was now, dark-haired, hollow-faced. His eyes were closed.

  “This is bloody awful,” Mercer said.

  “Floyd Corporal was a good man,” Skye responded. “He got you here.”

  “What’ll we do? We haven’t a shovel.”

  “We’re living by Indian ways,” Skye said. “We will give him to the sun rather than the earth.”

  “A tree burial! But that’s for Indians, not white men. I wish I had a journal to record it.”

  Skye was put off by the remark. “We will bury him with respect,” he said.

  Corporal was some mother’s son, perhaps someone’s brother, maybe someone’s father. He would be missed by someone, somewhere.

  “Do you know his family?” Skye asked Winding.

  “I can’t say as I do. Missouri folks.”

  “I would like you to make it your mission to get word to them, whoever they may be.”

  Winding nodded. “I have that in my mind.”

  “Let’s be about it,” Skye said. He took the axe and headed for a grove of saplings, where he began to harvest poles. Mary slashed branches from the poles with the hatchet. Victoria cut rawhide strips. Mercer and Winding, not knowing what else to do, watched.

  When Skye had cut eight poles, he and his women built a scaffold in a willow tree whose limbs overarched the meadow. The rawhide strips anchored the scaffold to two horizontal limbs, and in a while a bed of poles rested aboveground, under a leafy canopy. It would be a good place for a mortal to meet eternity.

  Without hesitation, Mary and Victoria wrapped Corporal in the brand-new buffalo robe, the very robe that had cost them a day of hard labor, and tied the robe tight with the thong, making a snug leather coffin for Corporal.

  Mercer looked like he was about to protest; to say that the robe was needed and valuable. Skye could almost read the man’s mind. But Mercer held his peace. The dead deserved whatever honor could be accorded them, including the precious robe.

  Skye nodded, and he and Winding and Mercer lifted the body and carried it slowly to the willow tree, and then hoisted it as high as they could reach, until they settled it evenly on the poles.

  Skye pulled his battered top hat from his graying locks and addressed Mercer. “Do you wish to say anything?”

  Mercer looked about, at Victoria and Mary and Winding and Skye, all of them suffering from fire bli
sters, scorched-away hair, soot-blackened clothing.

  “Floyd Corporal was a fine man. May he rest in peace,” Mercer said. “I know little enough of the man. He kept to himself. But a man reveals himself in his work and his conduct. He left no task undone, angered no man, wounded no man, and gave his best at all times. I should be proud to call him a noble Yankee.”

  Skye liked that. He found himself gazing into the eyes of that other teamster, Winding, and found tears there in that sun-blasted chestnut flesh under his eyes.

  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” Mercer said, and recited the psalm.

  Then it was finished. And still a mystery. Corporal’s life had played out almost before anyone grasped how close he was to death.

  The sun had not yet transcended the surrounding ridges.

  “We have a few more days of work here,” Skye said.

  The next days were devoted to hard toil. The women fleshed the remaining hides, brain-tanned them, softened them, and sliced them into robes. Mercer gathered buffalo berries and sarvis berries, shredded the cooked meat, collected bone marrow grease, pounded the berries with river cobbles, and made pemmican. Winding looked after the horses and made horse tack from the remaining rawhide. Skye hunted, at last bagging a mighty elk. It took a combined effort to drag it into camp, with Jawbone providing most of the motive power.

  “Moccasins!” Victoria exclaimed.

  And more. Before the women were done, there were moccasins for two men, a parfleche to store the pemmican, and enough left over to make a vest.

  Mercer was growing restless, but Skye and the women were far from done. Mary harvested pieces of buffalo small intestine, washed it, turned it inside out, and stuffed it with shredded meat, which she then roasted. Victoria sliced the lean meat into strips and set them to drying in the hot sun on racks of her devising.

  Bits of rawhide became belts or hobbles. A piece of green rawhide wrapped over the head and haft of the axe, soaked and left to dry, anchored the axe head to Corporal’s improvised haft.