“Oh ho, this will be a contest.”
Victoria smiled. “You pick a target.”
Mercer studied her, noting the thin arms, the wiry frame, the feminine hand. “I think I will go for some distance,” he said. He selected a willow tree perhaps thirty yards distant and gashed an X in its bark. Ninety or a hundred feet, Skye judged. For a plains Indian bow, an ample distance.
“Three arrows apiece? Closest one wins?” Victoria asked.
“Do we practice first?”
She smiled. “Practice one arrow if you want.”
Winding finished watering and picketing the horses and watched quietly. Mary was digging into parfleches, extracting some jerky for their meal.
Mercer easily flexed the bow with his knee and slid the bowstring into its slot. He pulled back the string, getting some sense of the bow’s power.
“It pulls easily, but I’ll wager it’ll put an arrow some distance,” he said. “Mister Skye, will you join the competition?”
“I couldn’t hit an elephant,” Skye said. He hoped Victoria would win. She was a fine hunter and many a time made meat, especially when rain had ruined his powder.
Mercer slid an arrow from the quiver, eyed it, and frowned. “This shaft isn’t exactly true,” he said.
Victoria smiled.
“I suppose you mastered a bow and arrow as a young woman,” Mercer said. “I shall have to redouble my effort. I learned, actually, in the Near East. No one thinks of that as a place of bowmen, but it is.”
He nocked his arrow, took a long time aiming, and let it fly. It buried itself in the old willow trunk only a foot above the center of the cross scraped in the bark. He smiled and handed her the bow.
“I will shoot four,” she said. “The first for practice. The rest will count.”
She took no time at all. Some ingrained instinct made her draw the string and loose the arrow all in one swift movement. The practice arrow was about as far from center as his; the next three grouped closer, within seven or eight inches. She had hardly squandered thirty seconds at it.
“Oh, my,” said Graves Mercer. “The lady can aim.”
“Let’s mark her arrows,” Skye said. “Pull the practice arrow and tie a bit of something to these.”
They did that. Victoria tied a little doeskin thong cut from her skirt to each of her arrows.
“Ah, here goes your robe, madam,” Mercer said. “It’ll keep me warm.”
He drew and aimed slowly, taking his time, settling his body into steadiness. He loosed the first arrow, and Skye saw at once that it was true. It plunked home only an inch farther out than the best of Victoria’s.
“Two more,” he said. There he was, those even white teeth bared in a cheerful smile.
He aimed the next one carefully, taking all the time in the world, only to see it miss the target willow altogether.
“That means it all rides on this one,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He nocked that arrow after studying it, and took his time once again, lifting and lowering the bow, flexing it, studying that distant crude X clawed out of the gray bark of the tree. Then, when the wind had died and the sun was burning down on them all, he loosed the arrow. It slapped squarely into the center of the X, easily the best shot.
“Oh, ho! You owe me a robe!” he said, unstringing the bow. They all walked to the willow tree where his final arrow had sunk true into the very place where the bars of the X joined. They patiently retrieved the valuable arrows, working the metal points loose, and restored them to the quilled quiver. Then Victoria headed for the packhorses, found her robe, folded it, and carried it to Mercer, who accepted it.
“Time for a little potlatch of my own,” he said. “These both belong to you.” He handed her robe back, and then added the quiver and the yew-wood bow.
“Sonofabitch!” she said, accepting the gifts.
“Well put, madam. You get right to the heart of it with your pithy remarks. The truth of it is that I’m no hunter. By the time I line up a shot the deer would be over the hill.”
That was true, Skye thought. It felt just fine to have Victoria armed and able to help defend them if need be.
They rested through some midday heat and then headed north once again, toiling through an empty, lonely land that seemed never to change. Some landscapes were boring. But Skye knew that the best hunting was often in the dullest country. The coulees ran north now, the dry washes steering their occasional charge of water toward the mighty river that had cut its way deep below the level of the tumbling plains to either side of it
They camped that night at a seep that supported a few cottonwoods. Winding cleared out some debris from a hollow and let the water form a tiny pool scarcely two feet in diameter. It would do. With a little patience, they could water all the stock and themselves. The savvy teamster set to work, deepening the pool even as he brought the horses one by one to the cool water.
Skye could have used some real meat that night, but they made do with pemmican and some prairie turnips they roasted beside a fire. Not much of a meal, but a thousand times over the years Skye had fared worse. And it only made the promise of some buffalo boss rib all the more delicious.
Jawbone drank heartily in the twilight and began gnawing the short grass, making a meal of almost anything that grew. Then suddenly his head bobbed upward and he snorted softly. That was all Skye needed to grab his rifle and begin a slow, steady search of distant hills, soft in the twilight. He saw nothing. Victoria and Mary saw nothing either. Winding noticed that all the horses were pointed in one direction, their ears forward, and finally it was he who spotted whatever there was to see.
It was a mustang, plainly a wild stallion, standing erect, silhouetted by the fading blue of the day far to the northwest. And flowing below him as grazing dictated was a band of mares and foals and yearlings. The stallion lifted his head and sniffed the wind, a noble animal with an arched neck, a long broom tail, a proud demeanor. Now the mustang mares were alerted. The old lead mare stared squarely at the camp, her ears pricked forward, ready to run. That was how the mustangs lived. The king stallion would fight; the mares, under the old boss lady, would retreat.
Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. No animal moved. The stallion stood there, the setting sun dropping below the horizon behind him. The mares and young stuff stood stock-still, assessing trouble.
Then everything happened at once. Jawbone squealed and broke straight toward the mustang stallion. The mares saw him coming, and bolted to the south, driving their young with them. But the stallion didn’t move.
“No!” yelled Skye, but it was like bawling at the wind.
Jawbone loped straight at the old mustang, and Skye knew that blood would flow.
thirty
Winding raced for the horses, which were tugging on the picket pins. Skye followed the teamster, grabbing a lead line just as a young stallion yanked free. Victoria and Mary each caught a mare before it bolted, and Mercer, last to act because he scarcely grasped what was happening, caught two yearlings. All the horses tugged and fought their lines in wild-eyed excitement.
“Hang on,” Winding yelled. The livestock man had taken charge. That mighty mustang stallion out there was fixing to pirate the whole herd and had sent shocks of terror through the horses in camp. There was something eerie about it; his screech on that distant ridge had galvanized the horses, as if lightning had struck nearby.
The mustang stallion danced on the ridge, its neck arched, its nostrils flared, looking to make all the trouble it could. With each of its bellows, the domestic horses reared and danced and snorted. It was all Victoria and Mary could do to hold on, and Skye feared that those braided lead lines would snap.
The world of wild horses was a cruel one. Stallions fought for mares; a powerful stallion acquired a harem. He killed rivals, kicking and biting them to death. He drove away yearlings and old horses. The lead mare, and every such mustang band had one, was his partner, leading the mares and yo
unger animals to safety, disciplining the other horses with kicks and bites. But it was also nature’s way of preserving the bands. Horses relied on flight, and everything in the behavior of the band was geared to flight.
Now Jawbone danced outward, his very soul reverted to the primitive instincts of a young stallion about to square off with an older one. This was not the Jawbone Skye knew, but some brute of a horse, murder in his eye, ready for deadly combat with the intruder. Skye could no more stop him than he could stop the sun in its tracks.
Skye’s and Mercer’s horses quieted suddenly. The boss mare of the wild band stopped, and nipped the rumps of the mares that didn’t stop. They knew somehow to await the outcome. This was going to be war, horse against horse, to the death. The stallion, lit red by the setting sun, stood stock-still, a statue on a ridge, while Jawbone slowed to a mincing walk like a boxer circling around his opponent. The old stallion bore the scars of battle. Half an ear was missing. Its flesh was puckered. Its broom tail reached the grass. Its burr-choked mane rested in lumps on its neck. There was nothing beautiful about this wild animal, but rather something sinister and proud. Its tail switched back and forth as it waited patiently to slaughter yet another rival.
Jawbone slowed, and then walked up the ridge until the setting sun limned his gray body. The wild stallion watched almost quietly, except for the arch of its neck and an occasional shuffle of its feet. He was magnificent, far more handsome in his raw fashion than Jawbone. The low sun glinted off the dun coat of the wild one, setting it afire or so it seemed to Skye’s eye.
The two horses stood a few feet apart on the ridge, just out of kicking range, studying each other. Time stopped. Jawbone lifted his neck, bared his teeth, and sawed the air, his head bobbing up and down in some act of challenge known only to horses. The wild stallion did much the same, its lips forming a rictus, its head sawing the air, issuing his own challenge. And then things quieted. The two stallions stared at each other. Skye wondered if there would be a fight at all; whether Jawbone might turn tail and walk back to camp.
The wild mares and young ones stood two hundred yards distant, ready to bolt. High in the evening sky a large hawk of some sort rode the breeze. Skye found it easy now to hold on to the lead lines of the three horses under his control. They stood as quietly as the two rivals on the ridge.
Then the wild stallion slowly turned around until its rump was to Jawbone, and seemed to gaze into the deepening twilight, ignoring his rival. But Skye knew better.
Jawbone sawed the air again and stepped closer. The wild dun whirled, squealed, and planted rear hooves squarely into Jawbone’s chest, with such shock that Jawbone staggered, seemed paralyzed a moment, and then righted himself just as the wild one’s lethal teeth bit into Jawbone’s neck. Now the mares stirred.
But Jawbone did not flee. That was the thing about Jawbone. He ran straight toward trouble. Instead of stumbling away, chastened and defeated, he sprang straight for the wild one, slamming the wild one with his chest, staggering the wild one. Now it was Jawbone’s turn, in close, too tight to receive a lethal kick, slowly crowding the stallion off the ridge, pushing forward steadily, impervious to the wild one’s bites. Once the wild one reared upward, intending to crush Jawbone under falling forehooves, but instead, Jawbone plowed into the belly of the rearing wild horse and unbalanced him so he tumbled to earth, rolled, sprang to his feet even as Jawbone’s own hooves crashed down on the wild one’s rump.
The wild stallion staggered up and retreated. Jawbone followed relentlessly, crowding inside those brutal hooves, always chest to rump, chest to belly, chest to neck. And then the stallion fled. Jawbone followed, crowding the wild one with every bound, not letting him escape. The wild one would not walk away from this fight. Jawbone ran him hard, over the ridge and out of sight, and suddenly Skye and his party hadn’t the faintest idea what was occurring out there in the twilight.
They stared at each other, still mesmerized by the drama they had witnessed. The sun vanished, leaving rosy light in its wake, and a cloud the color of blood. Silence crept over the land. Jawbone had disappeared. Minutes passed and they seemed longer to Skye; as if each were an hour. The mystery deepened. Wherever the stallions were, far to the south, their combat was veiled to Skye’s party.
Then, as the day turned dusky, Jawbone reappeared alone, nipping at the wild mares, disciplining the boss mare with teeth planted in her neck, driving the wild one’s entire harem straight toward Skye’s party. They clearly didn’t want to approach the human beings there but Jawbone was making them, doing it brutally, knowing he was king of the herd and intending to let every animal know it. The lead mare veered away from Skye’s party, but Jawbone cut her off, his teeth snapping, until her fear of him was larger than her fear of the people watching this amazing spectacle.
Then, as swiftly as it had started, the run ceased. The wild ones milled before the group, terrified of both the human beings and of Jawbone. The domesticated horses jerked on their tethers, excited by all of this.
Jawbone quietly circled them, a living corral that prevented escape. Proudly, calmly, he proclaimed his lordship over them, even while his sides still heaved from a long run.
“Mister Skye, I do believe that you are suddenly a rich man, if wealth is measured in horses,” Mercer said.
“It appears that way, if Mister Winding can gentle them.”
“I think I can,” said Winding. “Most, anyway.”
“You will be rewarded for it,” Skye said.
“Wasn’t that something! Damn, Mister Skye, you should have ten wives, like Jawbone,” Victoria said.
“It appears that Jawbone is going to leave his progeny all over the northern plains, Mister Skye,” said Mercer.
Jawbone knew they were talking about him. He abandoned his guardianship of the harem for a moment, walked straight toward Skye, and gently butted Skye in the chest It was his way of giving Skye the gift of mares and foals and yearlings.
“Avast!”
“Ah, Mister Skye, he has more ladies than you do,” Mary said.
Mary was teasing him! He was used to it from Victoria, but now Mary was doing it too.
“I prefer quality to quantity,” he retorted.
“What do them damn words mean?” Victoria asked.
“They were compliments.” Skye was feeling testy.
All that evening the mares looked ready to bolt but Jawbone disciplined them. The slightest infraction won a nip or a kick. By deep dark, the wild bunch was grazing quietly. Everything depended on Jawbone. It would be a long time before any human could touch that bunch or turn them into saddle horses. Skye’s and Mercer’s own horses were allowed to drift among the wild ones. The sooner they became acquainted, the better. As long as Jawbone remained the king of this herd, there would be little trouble.
They built an evening fire and roasted some antelope. The meat tasted just fine.
Every now and then the wild horses stirred in the darkness, and sometimes Jawbone’s policing squeal drifted through the darkness.
“Jawbone has his work cut out for him,” Mercer said. “But I think he’s equal to it.”
“He’s a lucky stallion,” Winding said.
“Luckier than you, Mister Skye.” That was Mary, of all people, but Skye ignored the insult. The women were giggling. He lifted his top hat and settled it, contemplating whether to rebuke them. But their laughter dissolved his displeasure.
They put up the lodge by firelight and moved the robes and parfleches inside.
“I say, old boy, it’s a fine night for sleeping out. I think Winding and I’ll just catch our robes and hightail away for the evening,” Mercer said.
There it was, right out in public, but Skye didn’t mind. “Get yourselves a good rest, mates,” he said.
The Briton and his teamster drifted into the night, laden with warm robes.
From out of the darkness, Jawbone squealed. Skye knew that squeal. So did his women.
Mary and Victoria were grinning a
t him and he thought that was just fine.
thirty-one
No one slept well that night, least of all Skye. The quiet was punctuated with squeals, the clatter of hooves, snorts, nickering, and the sounds of passage.
Jawbone spent the whole night patrolling his new harem, disciplining rebel mares, sinking teeth into rumps and necks, kicking the unruly, and above all circling the whole herd to keep it from bolting. The wild mares and yearlings and foals weren’t used to the presence of human beings. Neither were they used to the domestic horses in their midst and spent the night taxing Jawbone’s energies.
Skye and his two wives spent the night side by side in their buffalo robes, Victoria on his left, Mary on his right, his own arms catching them both. But the night did not turn out in the way of Mercer’s imaginings. Skye and his women rested peacefully, protected from weather and cold by the Gros Ventre lodge, happy to share a quiet moment. It was, in that respect, a sweet night, except for the hubbub outside of the lodge as Jawbone established his command over his new family.
As always, Skye awakened at dawn when the first light shone in the smoke vent at the top of the lodge, silhouetting the poles where they collected together. His women breathed quietly. Skye slipped out of his robe and into the chill predawn, sucked cold air into his lungs, and studied the country. Off a few dozen yards, Mercer and Winding lay in their robes beside the ashes of a small fire they had built. Dew lay on the grass. Patches of fog blanketed the hollows. The air was cold indeed to have condensed moisture out of the air.
Jawbone stood guard over his herd but he was plainly exhausted. His head hung low. His alert and fierce gaze had vanished under the obligations he now faced. The wild mares shifted nervously as Skye drifted toward them, and Jawbone’s head popped up. The mares didn’t run but edged away from this alien thing in their lives, and Jawbone minced along beside them, each step taken as if on springs, his way of telling the mares that he would catch and punish any runaways.
All but one. A yearling stood awkwardly, and staggered when it tried to follow the drifting mares. Even in that soft gray light, Skye knew at once that its foreleg was broken. As he edged closer he could see that the shinbone had splintered and pierced flesh.
The Canyon of Bones Page 16