“Oh. Blast. Bad luck.” But then he brightened. “But good story. Shock London, you know. Old boys’ll turn beet-red over their tea. Oh, what it’ll do the prime minister. Ah, what it’ll do in every rectory! Oh, what a stir at the Royal Society! Half the old dogs will run snuff up their nostrils, the other half will be envious of me.”
“Confession is good for the soul,” said Skye.
“How’m I going to write all this down? Have they paper and pencil?”
“Not likely. You can record it on your robe, using the greasepaint Victoria gave you, and a reed.”
“I’d have to smuggle the bloody robe into England.”
“Mister Skye, just choose a few,” Victoria said.
He knew she wouldn’t mind it a bit if he wandered into the night with three ladies on his arm, even if she herself didn’t want to become Chief Bear’s paramour. But the Crow were like that.
“Please, Mister Skye, give me the honor,” said Mary, aglow.
Around them eager Atsina had collected. This was a good show, and word had spread through the whole camp. They would enjoy seeing who Skye selected, and would enjoy Skye’s presentation of his ladies to Chief Bear, and maybe Bear’s sons and sons-in-law.
All in all, it seemed a cheerful prospect.
But something was raking Skye’s soul.
He stepped forward, and immediately the merriment and gossip stopped. What he would say with his fingers would be there for all to see, all to interpret. It would not be easy. The finger-talk lacked nuance and was unclear, sometimes dangerously unclear.
“My medicine,” he signaled, “is to live only with my wives. It is not in me to share them with you. It is not in me to take any of yours. It is the way I am. It is in me to believe this comes from the Great Spirit. You are good to offer these things to me. This is good according to your medicine. I wish you happiness and peace.”
“What’s all that about?” Mercer asked.
“I was turning down Chief Bear. I said it isn’t my medicine.”
“But, Skye, what about my story?”
“I impose my own rules of life on no man but myself,” Skye said.
“But you’re employed by me. You didn’t ask me.”
“Yes, sir, I am. No, I did not ask you. My domestic arrangements are my own.”
The chief thought about Skye’s response for a while, frowned, and nodded. But there was grudge in his nod. Plainly he had been affronted. And plainly Skye’s party was on perilous ground. But it was an ironclad rule of the plains tribes that hosts treated their guests with respect. Nothing would happen within this village. Probably nothing would happen at all. And yet Skye found himself ill at ease.
Mercer seethed all the way back to their campsite. As soon as he was out of earshot of the Atsina, he lashed out.
“I’ve walked across this continent looking for a sensation. I’ve suffered indignities, lost my outfit, lost a man, and lost my journals. Nothing happens over here. It’s not like Africa or the Near East. All I’ve found is a big blank. What will I send to the seven newspapers that employ me? What sort of papers will I present to the Royal Society? Answer me that, eh?”
Skye stood stock-still.
“Now at last something happens. A chief with the morals of a rutting dog wants to trade women. A sensation. I can sell the story ten times over. At long last, after squandering months and a small fortune, we have something worth writing about. And what happens? You scotch the whole thing. I never thought I’d be hiring some missionary. I never imagined you’d wreck this entire trip. What’s left, eh? Bones. I don’t want fossil bones. I want sensation. You’ve taken a year out of my life. That’s what this is about. A year out of my life. Lost. Gone. Dead.”
Skye had hoped for good pay, but now he knew he would get nothing at all.
“If you’re discharging me I think we will head for Victoria’s people, Mister Mercer.”
“What? And leave me here? Without a guide? Without a translator? Without anyone who knows the hand-talk? Without a weapon? You signed on for the whole trip. You’ll take me through.”
“Very well. My advice is that we pack up and leave immediately. There’s trouble here.”
“Don’t be absurd, Skye. They’re fixing to do some drumming, have a party, throw a fandango in our honor, and you want to sneak out.”
“Do you reckon one of those blistered saddlers which ain’t ever gonna be good for much would fetch me a lady?” Winding asked. “I’m plumb lonesome.”
Winding’s yearnings seemed to settle it for Mercer. “Are those nags good for anything?” he asked.
“Not for saddling, anyway,” Winding said. “Maybe you and me, we’d be getting the real bargain, eh?”
Victoria laughed; it was her rowdy, raucous laugh, the sort of laugh that evoked midsummer saturnalias among the Absaroka people.
“I don’t know as how I’d want the chief’s sits-beside-him woman anyhow,” Winding said.
Skye nodded. His women were already drifting into the village, full of merriment, full of devil-may-care, ready for a howl. And Mercer and Winding were headed for the horses, which were picketed on grass alongside some trees two or three hundred yards away.
Skye found himself alone. The whole world, in all its diverse tribes, enjoyed a happy time. Fiestas, potlatches, parties, balls, dances. He wondered why he felt so ill at ease about all that. Maybe it was because he had ended up a man without a country. His only land was not a place, but lay in the heart.
twenty-eight
Skye wasn’t going to have a night by himself after all. Victoria came for him and told him he was needed.
Reluctantly, for he was not comfortable with these people, he followed her into the village, where a great congregation had collected before the lodge of Chief Bear. The wrath of the earlier hour had melted away and he eyed Skye affably
“Ah, Mister Skye. Help me, please,” Mercer said. “They’ve inquired what I do, who I am, and I thought to tell them I am a storyteller. That’s as close as I can come to a journalist. Victoria did the sign-talk. And now, nothing will do but stories. They’re gathered here, whole bloody village, to hear me tell stories!”
“We will have stories!” Victoria said. “They have a young man who knows English.”
“Then why me?”
“Just a little English. He worked at Fort Benton a few moons.”
“Two sign-talkers and a translator?”
Victoria grinned.
Spread on robes in every direction was a great crowd, some wrapped in blankets against the chill, most of them eager for this delightful event to begin. A small fire cast up gray smoke and shot wavering light into the multitude.
“What’ll you talk about, Mister Mercer?”
“I don’t know a thing about stories but I can tell them where I’ve been, what I’ve seen. Monkeys. Zebras. Giraffes. Lions. Crocodiles. Anteaters.”
Chief Bear, seeing Skye at hand, rose and lifted an arm, gaining attention swiftly. He was going to orate first, and Skye hoped the young translator could convey the gist of it.
Bear began in a monotone that somehow projected outward to the farthest reaches of the crowd.
“He says, storytellers are the greatest of all people. He says storytellers bring us the rest of the world. They give us mighty lessons, and show us good and bad. They fill our minds with wonders. And here is a man who is said to be the greatest storyteller on earth, this man Mercer. So listen well my children, for there is no one else like him.”
The young man was converting the Gros Ventre tongue into English well enough, which relieved Skye. He had no idea how he would convey the idea of a giraffe or a hippopotamus to these Atsina people.
“Ready, Mister Skye?”
“No, but go ahead.”
Graves Duplessis Mercer stood gracefully among the Indians that cool night, lit only by the flames of a fire before him. He spoke in a loud sonorous voice, thanking them for inviting him, and expressing his wish that they would all
profit from his talk.
Skye knew at once that Mercer possessed some sort of magic. It would not matter what he said, but that he was there among the Gros Ventres, making a memorable night out of a fall evening.
“I have sailed across the great waters. I have been to lands we call Asia and Africa and South America. I have been to a vast land called Australia where there are strange animals. I have been far north to an island covered with ice called Greenland. I have been to small islands in the south seas, where the waves crash on white beaches, and everyone is beautiful.”
Skye intuitively followed the dialogue with his hands, even as the youth who knew a little English intoned his translation. No one consulted Mercer about the accuracy of any of it; it didn’t matter. A good story did not need to be true.
“I have seen snakes called anacondas and boa constrictors so big that they are as thick as a tree trunk and five or seven paces long. I have seen animals called anteaters that have a long snout and dig up ants.”
“Ah!” said someone. People laughed politely. This man’s stories were becoming more and more strange, and that made them all the better.
“There is a tribe in Africa that pierces the flesh below the lower lip of young women and puts a wooden plug in the hole. And then every little while they put a larger plug in, until the lower lip protrudes outward like a small platter. They think this is beautiful.”
Women clacked and giggled at that.
“I have been among people who tattoo their whole bodies. Do you know what a tattoo is? It is body art, pricked under the skin, and some people have covered all of themselves with body art. It cannot be washed off. It is their medicine forever,” Mercer said. Clearly, he was reaching for anything exotic, and was getting exactly the result he hoped for.
“Zebras! Horses with black and white stripes! Can you imagine it?”
No one could.
“And pygmies! Little people, only this high.” He gestured in the direction of his waist. “Little people, great warriors.”
“Some people in Africa have blowguns. I suppose I’ll have to tell you what a blowgun is. It’s a big reed. The little people put a poison dart into it and blow it toward their enemies and kill them with poison.”
Ah! That evoked a stir. Skye’s fingers were incapable of telling these stories but he kept up manfully. The Gros Ventres were getting most of it from their translator. Whenever the fire flickered low, a young woman fed its flames, so all could see Skye’s sign language and watch Mercer talk.
The man had a genius for it. He paused dramatically to let his interpreters translate. He gestured. He didn’t try to tell stories, the kind with beginnings and endings, but simply described the wonders he had seen, and that was more than enough.
People edged closer, so they could study the sign language and hear the translator, who stumbled along, as taxed as Skye was. But somehow they got it, or something close to what Mercer was saying.
The explorer catalogued all the wonders of the world. Giant lizards, parrots as bright as sunsets, scorpions, camels with great humps on them that could walk across deserts and go for a while without water. He talked of fierce tribes of marauders in North Africa, blond people in Scandinavia, striped tigers that prowled the jungles. He talked of naval battles between big wooden ships with cannon on them. His talk roamed everywhere, the seas, the deserts, the woods, the mountaintops, the jungles, the rivers a mile wide.
Then, finally, as the chill turned to sharp cold, he stopped. By now, the whole village had edged close, jammed together for warmth.
The hour was late but one could not know that from watching Mercer, who had an odd glow about him. He was a storyteller, and he had recounted many of the wonders of the world.
Chief Bear stood. He seemed oddly animated, as if Mercer’s great catalogue of wonders had triggered some excitement in the seamed old man. He spoke quietly in the Gros Ventre tongue to some youths who slipped away, and there was an air of expectation.
After a while, the boys returned leading two horses. These were handsome ponies, each equipped with a saddle and hackamore.
Chief Bear made the sign for a gift.
“These are gifts to you,” Skye said.
“A gift? I thought they were moochers. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“A gift,” Skye said. “Accept them.”
Mercer stepped forward, accepted the reins, and nodded to the chief.
But more followed. Now others in the village brought three horses to Mercer and Skye and his women, two of them saddled. Others brought lodgepoles. Then a group of Gros Ventre women dragged a whole smoke-darkened lodge into the circle of light, and presented it to Skye’s party. Others brought parfleches filled with pemmican or jerky. Young men brought bows and quivers and left them at Mercer’s feet.
Mercer accepted them all gratefully, making his delight known to these people. Skye signaled his own great pleasure and offered the friendship sign to them all.
“What’s the protocol, Mister Skye? How do I thank them? My Lord, what have I done?”
“All the world loves a storyteller, mate. They’re honoring you. This night they heard of wonders they’d never imagined. Creatures beyond anything they’d heard of. People different from any they’d seen. Customs they never knew. Foods they never tasted. Weapons they sent shivers through them. But yes, you can return a gift or two. Good idea. It’s called a potlatch, and it’s very big among some of the tribes. Maybe the nags blistered by the fire. These people could use them after they’re healed.”
“Done!” Mercer said.
Winding needed no instruction, but plunged off toward Skye’s camp to collect the animals. They now had six new ones, all sound and saddled, and could surrender the blistered ones. And now they had a lodge and lodgepoles. They had gone in one evening from fire-chastened poor to rich.
Soon Winding returned with the nags, and Mercer gave them to Chief Bear, who was pleased to have them.
The evening was over. Skye’s party lugged all their newfound wealth toward their own camp. Mary and Victoria swiftly spread the lodgepole pyramid, and laid lodgepoles into it, and then raised the soft, worn buffalo-hide cover. They would have shelter that chill night. It wasn’t large, but it would house the five of them.
“What have I done? I still don’t quite grasp all this,” Mercer said.
“You gave them wonders. You do just the same in England. Why do all those papers and journals pay you well? You give them, in your words, sensations. You even hunt for sensations to write about. This is no different. The person who can tell stories is the most valued of all among many peoples.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a twist, eh? I thought I was a talebearer to the English, but now I’m a tale-teller to the Indians. The only trouble is, there’s hardly a blessed thing to write about in North America.”
Skye kept his thoughts about that to himself.
“I say, Skye, will we be intruding? There in the lodge with two women?” Mercer asked. “A little bit too close for comfort, eh?”
“You are gentlemen,” Skye responded.
“Not exactly, Mister Skye. When I’m pressed, or desperate, I can be a gentleman. But don’t push your luck.”
twenty-nine
Suddenly they were affluent. Each had a saddle horse. The remaining draft horse pulled one travois bearing the buffalo-hide lodge; another horse pulled the lodgepoles. Spare horses carted the rest of the gear, the robes, the parfleches, on packsaddles.
They pulled out at dawn while the Gros Ventre camp slept. Those people were late risers and their village would not come to life until nearly noon. A few horse herders silently watched them leave. In the quiet chill, Skye led his party north through broken country, largely open range land, a paradise of deer, antelope, and elk.
“How far is it to Fort Benton, Mister Skye?” asked Mercer.
“I thought we were heading for the bones,” Skye said.
“But I am unequipped to write about them. I lack even a blank pag
e and a pencil for my journal. Those pictographs won’t do, you know.”
“The bones are not far now.”
“Oh, well, I’ll have a glance.”
“I’ve seen them only once but I won’t ever forget them. You can’t imagine how big. Victoria tells me they’re the bones of giant birds, three times taller than a man.”
Mercer laughed. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I believe that’s your motto?”
“We’ll see,” said Skye. He didn’t blame Mercer for doubting.
They were crossing an empty land where a man could watch cloud shadows scrape across the breeze-bent grasses, cured tan now by a hot summer’s heat. The clouds sometimes took the form of animals, bizarre heads, homed creatures floating through the blue. There were shapes to heat the imagination, clouds to trigger campfire stories.
Victoria’s people swore that some clouds reflected the world they were passing over, and one could see buffalo or a migration of some other tribe mirrored in the bottoms of the clouds. But Skye had never seen any such thing.
They nooned at a willow grove beside a slow spring that fed water into an algae-topped pool. The horses nuzzled the water but drank little.
Victoria approached Mercer with a request: “You let me shoot that bow a little?”
“You know how to shoot it?”
“Hell yes.”
“You’re a warrior woman?”
“You want to bet? Make a match?”
“I should warn you. I’m very good with a bow and arrow,” Mercer said.
“Whoever wins gets the bow and quiver, eh?”
Skye watched all this with joy. Victoria coveted that bow and quiver that the Gros Ventres had given Mercer. It was a handsome reflex bow of yew wood, strung with buffalo sinew. The quilled quiver contained a dozen arrows wrought from reed and tipped with Hudson’s Bay sheet-iron points. That bow and its arrows could down an elk or deer; maybe a buffalo if the shooter was close enough to the heart-lung spot.
“And what’ll you give me if you lose?”
“My robe.”
The Canyon of Bones Page 15