The Canyon of Bones

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “I am dependent on you, and loathing every minute of it. Get me to Fort Benton,” Mercer said. “Then I can be rid of you and your unwashed wives.”

  Victoria stared.

  Skye led his party up the coulee to the trail. The grasses shimmered in the breeze, and as far as he could see was virgin land. But this little party was no longer harmonious. One man had turned bitter. It was like a great cloud bank obscuring the sun.

  forty-three

  Skye led his party upriver on a well-formed trail over high ground. The world was silent. Barely any breeze sifted through his shirt. He watched distant ravens circle and a hawk soar by, looking for dinner.

  Mercer rode sullenly, radiating a heat that kept the rest at a distance. They passed from grassland to hills covered with jack pine, resinous in the midday sun.

  He kept a furtive eye on Mercer, whose swollen arms and shoulders were tormenting him with every bounce in the saddle. The man rode alone. The women hung back, and Skye kept well forward. No one wanted to be near the explorer.

  Mercer stood it for a while, and then kicked his pony forward.

  “How far to Fort Benton?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe fifty miles. Seventy miles.”

  “How many days?”

  “That depends on you, sir.”

  “I want a direct answer, Skye.”

  “How many miles do you plan to go each day?”

  “Damn you, Skye, what kind of guide are you? Have you ever been here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you should know.”

  Skye put heels to Jawbone until his horse pulled ahead a bit. It was better not to respond to a man itching to pick a fight.

  “Find a campsite, Skye,” Mercer yelled at Skye’s back.

  Skye nodded. Mercer was fevered and hurting. This was dry country, with desolate shoals of pine collected on slopes and no sign of a spring or river. They would need water for Mercer. Victoria’s decoctions were all that made it possible for Mercer to be moved. She had that splendid knowledge of nature’s own pharmacopoeia and was making liberal use of it to treat him.

  “I want to rest!”

  Skye halted. Mercer tumbled off his horse, unable to use his hands or arms dismounting, and headed into some brush.

  Skye turned to Victoria. “Any water nearby?”

  “River.”

  When Mercer returned, he glared at the three of them. “Well?”

  “We’ll follow the next coulee to the river,” Skye said.

  “Help me up.”

  Skye and Victoria lifted Mercer. It was not easy. His arms were useless. They handed him the reins, knowing he could barely hold them, and started off once again, Skye leading his company.

  A while later they hit a giant canyon running toward the river and Skye turned into it. This was white-rock country, with crenellated bluffs along the skyline.

  They reached a flat with a fine cold spring bubbling out of a white cliff, and plenty of brush and trees below it. Skye stopped there. This was as close to paradise as a camper could get and there was the promise of game.

  “Go on, go on,” Mercer said.

  Skye reached up. “Time for you to get some rest. I’ll hand you down.”

  “Go on, go on, damn your cowardly hide.”

  Whatever Skye did, Mercer contradicted. Find a campsite. Don’t find a campsite. Stop here. Don’t stop here. Keep going. Don’t keep going. Skye ignored it all.

  This was a good place. Skye rode Jawbone around the meadow, finding thick grass for the domestic and wild horses. He checked the brush, finding no bears or other trouble. He returned to the others just in time to hear Mercer berating Mary.

  “Keep your greasy hands off me,” he snarled.

  Mary, who was helping him down, paused.

  “Get me off this nag, Skye,” Mercer snapped.

  Skye stared.

  “You do it, Skye. Your women are full of vermin. I don’t want them touching me.”

  Victoria and Mary stopped cold.

  “That got your attention, didn’t it, Skye?”

  Mercer decided he could dismount himself and almost managed. But he lost hold and tumbled into the clay.

  “Help me up, Skye.”

  “I think you can stay right there, sir.”

  “East London scum. Deserter. Louse-ridden squaws. Degenerate. I thought you were an Englishman. How did I get tied up with this lot?”

  Skye resisted the rage welling up in him and nodded to the women. They turned away, collected deadwood, and soon had a fire going.

  It was a temptation to leave the man and his horse to fend for himself, but Skye knew he would not. There are obligations and duties and one of them is to get a feverish man to safety, and another is to fulfill a contract. He had promised to deliver this man to Fort Benton and so he would.

  They rolled the cursing Mercer onto his robe and dragged him into the shade of a giant willow tree.

  Stonily, Victoria began preparing her medicinal tea for the explorer. She had one bark to calm him and a root to mitigate his pain. Skye wished she had one that would heal his distemper.

  Mary heated stones she had collected and placed next to the crackling fire. These would be lowered in a small well-greased leather sack containing Victoria’s herbs and water. The stones would bring the water to boil and Victoria would have her tea. They had lost their metal pots in the great fire, and the women were resorting to ancient methods.

  It was a splendid day but for the sourness emanating from Mercer. Skye studied the horizons, where puffball clouds rose and marched across the heavens and slid out of sight. The weather would change soon. There were mare’s tails high in the sky, a forerunner of change. It would turn cold and cloudy, and maybe rain some. Maybe they would have to put up the lodge if the weather turned. Skye checked the site to make sure it was well above any flash flood watercourse. It was well placed, ten feet above the gully that might carry water in a deluge. He had chosen a good place. That was his business. His skill. His way of life. His communion with the whole natural world had meant survival and safety for all the while he had been in North America.

  Mercer’s distemper spread like a miasma and Skye and his women steered clear of him, keeping out of shouting range. But in time Victoria had her tea, so she filled a horn with it and carried it to the shade of the willow, where Mercer glared up at her. He sat up, and she held it to his lips because he couldn’t use his arms.

  “This is an abomination!” Mercer yelled.

  Skye heard Victoria responding quietly. She was telling him her tea would comfort him and reduce his pain and swelling.

  “Filthy squaw!”

  He heard disorder over there and hastened to the willow tree. Mercer’s robe was soaked. The horn lay on the earth, empty. Victoria’s leather skirt was splattered.

  “Get this wahine slut away from me!”

  Victoria bolted. Skye stood, staring at the explorer, whose face reflected triumph. The man was enjoying every moment of this.

  “Afraid of me, aren’t you, Skye. You won’t even defend the virtue of your women. I insult them and you don’t even respond. I insult you, and you just let it pass. That’s because you’re a degenerate.”

  The bright light of day filtered through the willow leaves, giving the shade a dappled, friendly light. But it was not a friendly place.

  Skye patiently considered this fevered man’s transgressions. “If I respond softly or say nothing, and take whatever guff you dish out, you’ll enjoy it. That would mean I’m your servant. If I say anything at all about your conduct, you’ll take it as proof that you’re a well-born Englishman dealing with an insolent underling. If I don’t seem to mind the offenses to my wives, that means I’m a degenerate, as you put it.” Then he offered his own mysterious response. “Address me as Mister Skye, sir.”

  “Mister! Mister! What fun you are, Skye.”

  “Victoria will try again to give you some tea. It helps. I’ve sipped it time after time when I need
ed help. It’s an anodyne for pain. It quiets your distemper. You can knock the horn away again or drink up and feel better.”

  “Don’t let that pile of filth in here, Skye.”

  Skye plucked up his hat and retreated into the clean sun and sweet air. It was as if he had the Black Plague in his own camp, lurking there, impossible, cruel, rude, and full of white men’s conceits.

  “Don’t go over there, Victoria.”

  She laughed, suddenly and unexpectedly. “White men are such savages,” she said.

  “I will try to help him,” Mary said.

  “You’ll be abused.”

  She shrugged.

  Mary dipped the hollow horn into the steaming tea and then carried Victoria’s potion to the tree sheltering Mercer, and knelt beside him. There was some muffled talk at first.

  Skye waited, ready to do whatever was required. It didn’t take long. He heard hard male laughter, a surprised feminine response, and she stormed away. The stain of the tea was spreading across her skirts. She was straightening them as she fled.

  She stood in the sunlight, tears welling in her eyes, her small fists clenched.

  Skye hurried to her and took her in his arms. “You did what you could,” he said.

  “That ain’t it,” Victoria said, obviously annoyed at Skye.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t be so blind,” Victoria retorted. “He insulted her.”

  Skye felt Mary collapse into him, cling to him, and felt her tears soak his shirt. Skye held her for a long while but she seemed taut.

  Finally, when Mary had calmed, Skye slipped over to Mercer and found him flat on his back on his buffalo robe, his eyes fevered and merry.

  “If you touch my women or insult them, I’ll kill you,” Skye said.

  “But why, Skye?” Mercer asked, his eyes bright. “What don’t the three of you do each night?”

  forty-four

  As that day waned, so did summer. Skye watched a gray mass rise on the northwestern horizon, and knew the seasons were changing. This land often received an equinox storm and this would be it. Whippets of cold air snaked through the coulee.

  The women wordlessly undid the lodgepoles and erected them on the flat, well above the dry watercourse, but they stayed as far from Mercer as they could go. Gusts of air made it hard to raise the lodge cover. Skye wanted to help, but they had always chased him off. They soon tugged the heavy cover upward and pinned it together with willow sticks. Victoria, squinting into the rising wind, began collecting the heaviest rock she could carry and pinned down the lodge. Mary collected armloads of deadwood and stored most of it within the small lodge.

  Skye looked to the horses, checked their pickets, released Jawbone to discipline his wild bunch, and headed for Mercer. The explorer had wrapped his robe tightly about him under the willow, and stared malevolently up at Skye.

  “Maybe you’ll have to drag me into the lodge if it rains, Skye. Then I’d ruin your sport,” Mercer said.

  Skye wheeled away. He had no intention of sharing his lodge with Mercer if he could help it. But an icy rain would change matters. He would do what he had to do. He would shelter the fevered man even if that man was as loathsome as any Skye had ever met. Not many days past, Skye mused, he had liked the man.

  He walked away from the willow to the sound of Mercer’s cruel laughter resonating behind him.

  There wasn’t much to eat. They were down to a little pemmican. Skye knew that the eve of a storm was a very good time to hunt so he pulled his old Hawken from its sheath, checked it, and headed down the coulee hoping to scare up some meat. Jawbone trotted behind, an uninvited guest, but Skye let him come. The horse might be handy to drag a carcass to camp.

  The farther he got from Mercer, the better he felt. He worried not so much about Victoria, who was tough, but Mary, who was open and vulnerable to Mercer’s cruel taunts. Tonight in the darkness of the lodge he would gather his younger wife to him and simply hold her, and let his embrace tell her all that there was in him to say to her.

  He saw the yearling buck frozen across the dry watercourse, its two spikes all the antler it could manage at that age. He lifted his Hawken, aimed at the heart, and squeezed the trigger. The old Hawken barked, its voice lost in the whirling wind, and the young mule deer crumpled where it stood.

  “I am sorry,” Skye said. “You will give us meat and life.”

  It was the Indian way to apologize to an animal just killed, and Skye had gotten into the habit of it. It was good, and was a reminder to spare life, take only what was necessary for food.

  Jawbone trotted beside Skye across the rocky dry wash and up the grassy slope beyond, where the deer lay. It was dead. Skye’s shot had gone two or three inches below where he had sighted, a fault of that particular weapon, but it had killed cleanly.

  The young buck was too heavy to lift or drag but Skye was not three hundred yards from camp, so he returned, saddled Jawbone, collected some woven elk-skin rope, and returned to his meat.

  It took Jawbone no time to drag the deer, by its hind legs, back to the camp. Skye looked for a place to hang the carcass, wanting any spot other than the willow tree where Mercer lay. He finally settled on a cottonwood near the cold spring. With the help of the women he raised the buck and began work. There was little time before full dark and maybe rain. He gutted the deer, scraped out the cavity, and then butchered a rib roast. It was cold and bloody work and the deepening dark made it dangerous too. But both of the women were with him, peeling away hide, sawing into tender meat, and soon, just before utter blackness overwhelmed them, they collected some venison steaks and ribs, and carried them to the lodge.

  Skye raised the carcass several feet higher, and hoped that would discourage uninvited guests. But he doubted that he could lift the carcass out of bear range. It had grown so dark he could scarcely make out the lodge, and he hastened that way, aware that the temperature had dropped in minutes. Just before, it had been a mild summer’s eve. Now it was wintry, not much above freezing.

  Maybe it would cool off Mercer’s fever.

  The rising wind made it impossible to start a fire outside the lodge, though that would have been preferable for cooking meat. The sparks from their flint and steel flared and died without igniting any tinder. Victoria, muttering, gave up and headed into the deep dark of the lodge, heaped some tinder under the smoke hole of the shuddering lodge, and nursed the tinder into flame.

  The women fed tiny sticks into the fire while Skye marveled at the bright warmth. One moment the world was dark and alien; now a tentative blaze was blooming in the lodge, casting friendly bouncing light everywhere.

  They would need to cook the meat by suspending it over the flame on green sticks. Victoria sliced the bloody meat into thin strips, jabbed sticks into them, and set them beside the small fire. It would take a long time.

  Looming out there in the night was the presence of the explorer, the ghost under the willow tree. Skye hoped the rain would hold off. He hoped this night not to suffer Mercer in close quarters. But he knew, somehow, it was a futile hope. There was rain-smell in the breeze and before long the rattle of rain would be heard on the lodge cover. He hoped the old lodge given them by the Atsina would turn the water and had been kept well greased.

  It was odd. There in the sweet warm intimacy of their lodge, the world was good. Just outside, not eighty yards distant, lay a man who exuded evil: whose eyes and tongue were evil, whose sweat and spit and urine were evil, whose foul breath was evil. Mercer had not always been that way, but now he was a man unloosed from all restraint.

  The rain hit as suddenly as a thunderclap. One moment the wind was eddying; the next, a roar thundered down on the lodge, spitting water through the smoke hole, each drop hissing in the fire.

  Skye arose, wrapped a robe around him, and plunged into the night. He could scarcely get his bearings. He headed toward the willow tree, found it, found Mercer sitting against the trunk, wrapped tightly in the robe.

 
“Come,” Skye yelled over the roar.

  “Ah, the degenerate Skye is going to let me live!”

  Skye whirled at him. “You will keep your silence. If you offend my women, I will put you out. Your fate is yours. Live or die.”

  Mercer laughed. Even in that darkness, Skye could see those even white teeth all in a row.

  Skye helped the man up and then plunged into the driving cold rain. Mercer followed.

  “Bloody cold,” he yelled.

  Skye didn’t answer. He was done talking to Mercer. The next words he would say to the man would be, Get out. They made the lodge and stumbled into its warmth. The rain was driving at enough of a slant so that little was entering the smoke hole. Victoria had adjusted the wind flaps well, as always.

  It had been eighty yards, but Skye’s and Mercer’s robes were drenched. Mercer stumbled in and Skye pointed to a place at the door, on the right, the place of least honor. This guest in Skye’s lodge would not be given the place of honor next to him, at the rear.

  “Bloody wet evening,” Mercer said. He slid to the ground and cast aside his robe, its pictographs suddenly visible in the wavering light. Then he had the sense to stay quiet.

  Victoria fed deadwood into the fire. It flared, and the meat roasting on sticks next to it bled juices. Skye settled back in his damp robe. He was thinking of a fine chill fall, with air crisp and clean, the sun warm on his back, heading toward Victoria’s people after depositing this man in Fort Benton. He was thinking of his newfound wealth, a hundred pounds, money to buy a new rifle, some blankets for his women, maybe some spectacles if one of the posts had some ready-mades. His eyesight was changing. It was harder to read and harder to see things at great distances. A hundred pounds would buy him a fine pair of cheaters.

  The women busied themselves in deep silence. Neither they nor Skye could escape the presence of that man lying there next to the door of the lodge. Now and then the lodge shuddered under the impact of a gale wind, and always the staccato roar of rain drowned out everything but the thoughts in one’s head. The lodge began to drip in a few places, single beads of water slowly collecting, trembling, and then falling to earth. Skye rose, cut some white fat off the meat, let it soften in the heat, and then began rubbing the leaking spots. It did no good. This rain would drive through a pinhole.