Skye marveled at this strange tale of a world so plastic that mountains rose out of seas and ice and rain wore them down again. The Sarsi were marveling too.
“The world is so old that people are newcomers. We have been here only a little while,” Mercer continued, while Skye turned that into the universal language of the plains. Good. If Mercer stuck with simple words and ideas, Skye knew he would have no trouble conveying them.
Mercer spoke quietly, yet his voice carried easily to the farthest Sarsi, a boy sitting well behind the others.
“Long before there were people, there were creatures, large and small, creatures of the skies, the oceans, the land. They are all unknown to us. Many disappeared. Some became other things.”
Skye suddenly realized that Mercer was flying a long way from the biblical beliefs of the English, the creation story found in Genesis.
“There were giants among them such as the giants whose bones you see here. They are gone forever. They lived before our type came. We do not know what they were or why they went away.”
This was certainly not Genesis. This world was not made in six days. Skye meant to inquire about it, when he could catch Mercer afterward.
“These bones we have here, the bones you have come to honor, are the bones of that which has no name. But maybe these bones are the grandfather bones of creatures we know. Maybe these bones are the first bird or the first lizard.”
How could that be? How could any species change? What God wrought was what God wrought. Was Mercer some sort of heretic?
Mercer talked of these things another little while, of creatures forming and dying and changing into other creatures, of land rising and falling, of ice and rivers changing everything, of those bones and shells found in rock all over the world, the bones of creatures unknown to anyone.
The Sarsi were rapt. Mercer, whatever his other gifts, had the magic of the storyteller in him, and the stranger the story, the more attention he won from his auditors.
If the Sarsi were rapt, Skye was even more so. For this man was not talking about eternities, a world forever the same from beginning to end, but a world in endless flux, as if God could not make up his mind, and was forever erasing continents and species, and creating new ones. Was the world made of India rubber? Were creatures, including mankind, here today and gone tomorrow? Skye had never heard of such a thing, though his own observations had hinted at them sometimes. Who was Mercer? How could he know these things? Or even theorize about them?
By full dark, Mercer was done.
The Sarsi expressed their thanksgiving at this great revelation, and made camp down beside the river.
Skye was done with the sign language and it had become too dark for the Indians to follow his fingers and gestures anyway. He glanced at his bemused women, who were absorbing Mercer’s strange talk of a world in flux, where nothing was permanent, and monsters of old became something else.
“I say, Skye, thank you. I was in a bit of a bind, you know, not being able to talk with those chaps.”
“Yes, Mister Mercer, you were in a bind, all right. You are still alive.”
“Right you are, old boy. You saved my bacon. That’s an expression I got from the Yanks. What do you suppose it means, saved my bacon, eh? The thing I want to talk to you about, sir, is my mistake. I shouldn’t have let you go. I need you. That was a scrape, all right. I simply must have someone with me who’ll translate.”
“I will take you to Fort Benton and you can hire a translator there, sir.”
“Ah, you still object to my taking a few specimens.”
“Exactly.”
“Then we can’t resolve it. I am going to take some specimens and thanks to these Sarsi chaps I have some tools to do it.”
“Then I cannot be associated with you, Mister Mercer.”
The explorer smiled. “I’ll go it alone, eh?”
“This place is still a church to these people and I will not desecrate a church. But speaking of that, sir, would you tell me where all this came from? I’ve heard things this night that I never thought I’d hear from an Englishman or a Christian.”
Mercer nodded and settled on the ground near the dying fire. “There’s a ferment in England, sir. Seems most everyone looking at the natural world is objecting to the Genesis account of how it came to be. Blasphemy, my friend, and subject to action by the crown, you know, but that has hardly slowed anyone down.”
“Tell me of it.”
“You’ve been out here, far away from England, so I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it. There’s a fellow named Charles Lyell who’s done a bang-up book about geology. I pretty closely followed his ideas when I talked to these Sarsi chaps tonight. He thinks the world is truly ancient, and there have been enormous changes wrought in it by natural forces. Land masses rising and falling, oceans now where they weren’t before, and land now where it wasn’t before. Mountains coming up out of the bed of the sea and that’s why you find fossil seashells on mountaintops. A world of constant geological change, Mister Skye, but over aeons of time.”
“How much time?”
Mercer shook his head. “No one can even fathom the time. But there’s more. Chap named Darwin, Charles Darwin, one of that bright Wedgwood tribe, been on a long sea journey to South America. He’s a keen observer and he’s shared a few of his ideas with me, but cautiously. He doesn’t want the crown on his neck. He’s admitted to the Royal Society, 1839 that was, and also the Athenaeum, 1838 that was. That’s a little club for the leading minds in the arts and sciences. And of course the Royal Geological Society. He’s a man of parts, sir, and he’s working on something that’ll rock the world. It was 1842 that he did a little sketch about what he’s up to, and he tells me he’s about ready to publish his outline of a whole new hypothesis, drawn from observation of all forms of life, about species and where they came from. He thinks that they evolved from other forms of life. Too long to go into here but let me put it the other way. He doesn’t think God thought up a bug or an elephant and plopped the creature down on earth full-made and ready for life.”
“Heresy, then?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But you might find most of the men in the natural sciences thinking that Genesis is a poetical account of creation, and not a literal one.”
“This is what you call science, Mister Mercer?”
“Yes, exactly. Observation, analysis, deduction. Rational examination of a phenomenon.”
“And that’s what you brought to the Sarsi?”
“You have it just right, Mister Skye. You’ve called me a storyteller, and that’s a good way to letting those fellows know what I do. So what does a storyteller do? In London, I’ll tell them about the creation story of your wife’s people and their belief that these are the ancestral bones, and let them marvel at the banquet table when I’m done. But here, among the Sarsi chaps, I’ll tell them about Lyell and Darwin, and let them marvel. That’s what a storyteller does, you know. I bring them new things, meat they never tasted before.”
That was an insight into Mercer. Skye, who knew he had no storytelling gifts at all, felt a faint surprise at Mercer’s ways of dealing with radically distinct audiences. Tell the creation legends of the plains tribes to Londoners; tell the latest ideas raking scientists to the tribes. Skye laughed. It took all types to make a world.
“Who’s this Darwin, sir?”
“He’s got a fine brain, if you ask me. He found the fossils of seashells at twelve thousand feet in the Andes and began asking the right questions. He found species on the islands off South America unlike others, and well adapted to their environment, and began asking questions. I tell you, sir, I can barely wait for his outline to come out. Last I know, and I talked to him just before coming to North America, he was ready for the printer. I hope it’s out when I return. I tell you, Mister Skye, this man Darwin’s going to rattle every cage.”
“Rattle the idea of God?”
Mercer smiled. “It might Some will argue that it might e
ven overthrow God.”
“That is not something I want to hear.”
“Of course not, Mister Skye. I don’t want to hear it. I’m a good Church of England man myself. Everything we are in England, it all flows from our beliefs and our faith. That’s why I dread this a little, even while applauding it. There’s Darwin and another chap named Wallace who thinks the same way, and many others asking questions. We’re on the brink of an earthquake, I’d say.”
It was odd, sitting there beside the embers of a campfire in one of the most remote corners on earth, listening to all the latest ferment in London. For a moment or two Skye wished he could be there, in his old home, following all of it. But he saw Victoria and Mary, sitting pensively, blotting all this up, and knew his home was here and always would be here.
“Well, Skye, are you going to help me pry up some bones tomorrow?” Mercer asked.
“No, sir, I won’t,” Skye said. “And we’ll be far away.”
thirty-eight
Skye awoke to a sharp pain in his chest. He stared upward, found a Sarsi warrior over him, the man’s lance stabbing into Skye’s breast. He was one quick thrust from eternity.
He lay very quiet but stared up at the warrior. He could see that the women were similarly impaled. It was light; well past dawn. They had not erected the lodge but had made their beds in a private corner of the flat, well away from Mercer and Winding.
Now he stared in terror at the young man whose lance pinioned him to the earth. The Sarsi was not painted this morning. He and the others had scrubbed away the hideous designs and colors that had marked yesterday’s ceremonial visit to the bones. He was simply an alert young man, dressed only in a breechclout, his hair loose around his head and neck, a red headband holding it in place. Suspended about his neck was a small medicine bundle shaped of leather.
All Skye could do was wait and pray. Even to open his mouth, to yell, to explode in anger, could be fatal. The warrior seemed to be waiting for something, and as the seconds ticked by, and Skye wondered whether this was his last day, he began to fathom what this was about.
He was not wrong. In a while more armed Sarsi warriors appeared, pushing Mercer and Winding before them with their lances. Other Sarsi men had arrows nocked into their strung bows, ready for anything.
Mercer was putting a brave face on it, smiling, standing erect, ignoring the half-dozen lance points that were hovering inches from his body; points that could turn him into a pincushion in no time at all. He carried a piece of rock in his hands.
“They don’t take kindly to my digging, do they?” he asked.
Skye did not respond but his stare caught Mercer and somehow subdued the explorer.
“I went for a tooth, just one old tooth,” Mercer said. “I tried the war hatchet and the axe, but all I did was shatter the blasted tooth. A man needs stone mason’s chisels to cut out a bone or two.”
“Westminster Abbey,” Skye said.
Mercer managed a smile. An acknowledgment.
Skye felt the iron point dig into his chest and swiftly returned to silence. He waited, his pulse climbing, waited for death.
The older Sarsi, the only one with graying hair, appeared before Skye, and nodded to his young warriors. They withdrew the lances. Skye didn’t dare sit up but a nod from the warrior told him he should. Slowly, he sat up. Slowly, the women were sitting up. Mary was very still. Victoria glared at Mercer with such heat in her face that Mercer could not escape the scathing rake of her gaze.
The chief began to say something in sign language, and Skye followed carefully. The two men had taken the tooth of the ancient one. They had desecrated a holy place. They had offended the spirits. They had offended the Ancestors. They were worse than an enemy of the Sarsi; they were worse than a witch. They were the Evil Ones. The Sarsi would put them to death. Then they would decide what to do about Skye.
Skye turned to Mercer and Winding. “You’ve desecrated the ancient one, the holy place. You are more evil than enemies. You are more evil than a witch. You will die. They will decide what to do about the rest of us.”
Mercer absorbed that bleakly.
No one spoke. The Sarsi were all watching Mercer, watching to see whether he was a god-man, a prophet of the bones. Mercer wilted as the reality gradually pervaded him.
“Tell them I’ll give back the tooth! I don’t want it!”
He thrust the tooth fragment toward the headman, No Name, only to see it fall to the day. The broken fossil lay there, an accusation, the proof of evil. No one picked it up. Skye wondered whether these people were even allowed to touch the sacred bones.
He surveyed the scene. The light was quickening though this deep canyon of the Missouri still lay under shadow. Several lancers guarded the prisoners. Several more bowmen backed them. Two of the Sarsi had caught up the lines of Skye’s horses and the one holding Jawbone was likely to get his head kicked in. But Jawbone, whose ears lay flat back, was behaving for the moment.
There was no escape.
Mercer must have been working from the earliest gray light, maybe hoping to chip out a tooth of the monster before anyone noticed. And now he was standing before the Sarsi, a condemned man.
“Tell them I will make it up. Tell them I am a priest of the bones.”
Skye shook his head slowly, but the headman caught the gesture and wanted a translation.
“He says he is a priest of the bones and will make everything right,” Skye translated, employing gestures.
The one with no name stared bleakly at Mercer.
He barked some sort of command to his group and they withdrew except for half a dozen who were guarding the prisoners. Skye watched them retreat out of earshot, toward the place of the bones, where they all paused to examine the ruptured rock, the damaged skull where the giant tooth had been torn out, taking some of the lower jaw with it judging from the rock still clinging to the tooth.
“What are they going to do, Mister Skye?” Mercer asked. He was now truly alarmed. It had taken him this while to grasp the trouble he was in; to understand that his luck, which had been with him across several continents and in all sorts of strange circumstances, had suddenly run out.
“They are going to decide our fate.”
“But I’ve offered to make it up.” It was a plaintive whisper from a man who had never grasped how different peoples are and how sharply they vary, and how goodness to one people is evil to another.
“Sonofabitch,” grumbled Victoria. This time the expression was directed toward Mercer.
Skye didn’t know what to do or whether he could do anything. Powerful warriors stood ready to slaughter them if they showed any signs of trouble.
Over at the bones below the sandstone overhang the Sarsi sat in a circle and began a discussion, sometimes animated, sometimes so quiet it was hard to know whether anyone was saying anything. But Skye gathered that an intense debate was in progress there, and he guessed the debate had much to do with Mercer’s fate. The Sarsi did not want to anger the spirit whose bones lay just a few feet from them.
The sun rose, bathing the tops of the bluffs north of the river with gold. Mercer, weary of standing, slowly sat down. Winding joined him. Skye thought that Mercer’s fate would probably be Winding’s fate if both of them had been caught ripping the fossil tooth out of the sacred site.
The guards watched warily. Their lances had flat iron points made by Hudson’s Bay Company, points that could pierce flesh as well as slice sideways. One point was caked in black dried blood. The guards were veterans, not a youth among them. They eyed Victoria and Mary, identifying the tribes by what the women wore.
The women would live. Skye was sure of it. He also suspected that they would become prisoners, maybe virtual slaves of the wives of these warriors. They might never see their own people again and might die far north in British possessions.
Skye drove such thoughts from his mind. If he focused on a way out of this, perhaps he could do something. But he didn’t have the slightest idea
of an escape.
As was often the case among plains Indians, the Sarsi took their time. But eventually the headman, who declined to reveal his name, rose, walked to the prisoners, and addressed Skye, his hands and arms forming quick, sure gestures.
“Not long ago a blackrobe came to us and told us about the religion of the white men,” he said.
Skye nodded. That probably was Father De Smet, or one of his assistant priests, who had done so much missionary work among the Blackfeet and other tribes.
“He told us about the god-man, the high priest of the people. Is this man here, who destroyed the bones, the god-man of your people?”
The question startled Skye. Where was this chief’s thought running?
“No,” Skye signaled. “This man is a storyteller. He goes into strange lands and learns about them and goes back to his people across the big water and he tells his people what he has seen.”
“But he called himself a priest of the ancient bones. He is a grandfather, is it not so?”
A grandfather could be a revered elder. Reluctantly, Skye acknowledged that it was so.
“The white men hung their god-man from a cross, is it not so?” the headman asked.
“It is so.”
“Then we will do this. He must die. He angered the spirit whose bones these are.”
“But it is not the same.”
The headman stopped Skye’s protest with a savage wave of the hand. “We will put him on a tree like the god-man of the whites.”
Skye stared at the headman.
“What’s he saying? Tell me!” Mercer said.
“I don’t think you want to know,” Skye said.
thirty-nine
Mercer whitened. “Am I to die?”
Skye nodded.
“But why?”
“You already know.”
“You must stop this! I didn’t offend anything.”
“I will try.” Skye caught the eye of the headman and began the language of the signs. Let this man go. Do not hurt him. The spirit of the bones does not want him.
The Canyon of Bones Page 20