Meanwhile, Tylor lifted the manty from their trade packs, and began laying out some of the items. As he did, one of the women approached with an armful of remarkably white, soft hides the likes of which he’d never seen.
“Buffalo calf?” Cunningham asked.
Tylor took one of the hides, fingering it, feeling the remarkable softness. The Shoshoni were standing in a half circle watching. “Better than anything coming out of the tan yards back in the United States,” Tylor said. “Feel this.”
Cunningham took the hide, rubbing it between his fingers. “Ain’t never known the like of it.”
“We’ll trade,” Tylor told Gray Bear with a grin and pointed to the items he and Cunningham had laid out.
Gray Bear stepped close, made the sign for “trade,” and nodded happily. Then he pointed at Tylor’s rifle where it was propped against the packs. “Aitta,” he said. “Trade.” He made the sign for “many,” then repeated, “Aitta.”
“He wants our guns,” Cunningham observed.
“Will, old coon,” Tylor said dryly. “I think we have a problem.”
CHAPTER 9
Gray Bear watched with amusement as John Tylor made a face and carefully picked a grasshopper from the bowl of stew that he cradled. The brown man lifted it, staring distastefully at the hopper where it was illuminated by the glow of the dung fire.
“Duka.” Gray Bear made the sign “Eat.” Then he demonstrated as he fished into his own bowl, pulled out a grasshopper to plop into his mouth, chewed it gustily, and swallowed. “Tsaan.” And he made the sign for “good.”
Tylor shot him a look—then glanced sideways at Cunningham, who was now staring uneasily down at his stew—and gingerly put the boiled grasshopper in his mouth. He chewed nervously. Swallowed hard.
Taipo, it seemed, didn’t eat grasshoppers. Gray Bear wondered if they felt the same way about crickets, grubs, moths, and some of the other foods the Newe considered common fare.
The rest of his people were crowded around in the dark and watched every move the Taipo made. He had almost had to take a switch to Singing Lark. The girl—no, the young woman—had been dazzled by the Taipo. She’d wanted to stay and study them, but with angry Arapaho somewhere off to the east and maybe less than a day’s ride away, someone had to watch their backtrail. Keep an eye out.
Three Feathers had ignored that responsibility, and he—not to mention so many of his band—had died as a result.
As the feast progressed, Gray Bear was entertained when the Taipo periodically stopped chewing long enough to pull out the little bones, inspect them curiously, and pitch them into the fire. People had rituals when it came to food. Maybe, by burning the bones, Taipo thought they were showing respect to the mice and voles who’d gone into the stew.
Must have been good though; the white men greedily finished off three helpings apiece, grinning as they placed their bowls on the ground before them.
“Trade,” Gray Bear said after offering his prayers of thanks for the meal.
“Trade,” Tylor agreed, leaning forward. “Aitta. Guns.” He signed, “You have many hides. We have aitta at the Great River.”
Then, in the grass, he drew a line, saying “Moreau River.” Drew another line. “Grand River.” And a third line that crossed them. “Great River, what we call Missouri.” He made a dot on the Great River. “Aitta. There.” He pointed to the packs of tanned buffalo calf hides. “Pehe here.” He’d learned the Newe name for hides.
“Bring aitta?” Gray Bear suggested, trying to figure out the ramifications of the swap. Guns were smaller, easier to transport than the heavy bales of tanned leather.
Tylor shook his head. Rattling off a string of Taipo talk, Cunningham nodding his agreement.
Tylor signed, “Take pehe to the river.” He gestured. “You, me, Will. We go make trade.”
Gray Bear took an uneasy breath.
“I don’t like it,” Red Moon Man said from behind. “What kind of fools do they think we are? You ride off with all of our calf hides. Bang. You are dead out in the grass, and we never see the Taipo again.”
“My friend is right,” Kestrel Wing agreed. “Not to mention that we’re in dangerous country here. We know the Dog Eaters are somewhere east, and at any moment a hunting party of Atsina, Mandan, Arikara, Sioux, or Cheyenne could ride over the ridge and murder us all.”
John Tylor was watching him with knowing eyes. He chuckled softly. Signed: “I see your worry. How can we make better?”
“The brown Taipo can stay,” Aspen Branch said from behind. “Gray Bear, Red Moon Man, Walks Too Fast, the three of you go with Tall Taipo. Tylor”—she pronounced it in two syllables as Ty Lor—“will stay with us. You have a half moon. If you are not back? We kill Ty Lor, leave his ghosts wailing in the grass, and the rest of us will try to sneak home.”
“I’m satisfied with that.” Red Moon Man shrugged. “The waipepuhagan and you have brought us this far, Gray Bear. I’ll gamble my life that you can get us our aitta.”
“Me, too,” Kestrel Wing agreed.
From where he sat in the back, Five Strikes, still moody and mourning the murder of his wife, son, and the abduction of his two daughters by the Blackfeet, called. “And if you do not return, Taikwahni, I will be the one who kills the Taipo.”
Gray Bear made a gesture with his hand. Young Eagle’s Whistle hurried forward and tossed another couple of buffalo chips onto the fire.
Gray Bear wanted to be sure that he had enough light to read John Tylor’s expression as he explained his counteroffer. He suspected the Taipo wasn’t going to like it.
CHAPTER 10
“Yer sure this is a good idea?” Cunningham asked as he used his knife to cut a chaw from his carrot of tobacco. He was sitting on Cobble, his long Pennsylvania rifle across the saddlebow. He cast a sideways glance as Gray Bear—mounted on a muscle-tough and scrubby-looking horse—led a string of six horses packed with the bales of tanned calf hides.
“A good idea?” Tylor shrugged and grinned. “Hell no! But, Will, it’s the best option we’ve got. Being a spy and a conspirator, I’m no expert when it comes to tanned hides. But you are, and you’ve told me that what’s on those horses is worth a small fortune.”
“Might make the difference for the booshway,” Cunningham granted. “What with the war, the British raising hell, the poor returns on the expedition so far this year.”
“Indeed, it might.”
Singing Lark was listening and nodding as Gray Bear gave her instructions, waving off to the east as he did so.
“Got yer eye on that one?” Cunningham asked, a questioning tilt to his head. “She’s sure been watching you.”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. She’s too young.” He grinned. “I like her. She’s got grit.”
Cunningham gave him a saucy wink in return. “Yeah, well, you know that woman what wears that yeller skirt? Got it outta ol’ Gray Bear. Her husband’s just dead. And I like her. Exactly in the way yer thinking.”
“Her name’s Whistling Wren.”
“Watch yer hair, coon.”
“Watch my hair?”
Cunningham raised a finger to his brow in salute. “Yep. Make sure you keep it on top of yer head, child. Not hanging from some savage’s horse bridle.”
“My hair will be fine. You keep track of your own.”
Tylor watched the riders and horses as they lined out and started out of the bowl. Within moments they were gone, the only sign of their passage being the bruised grass.
Around him, the camp seemed suddenly somber, curiously quiet. The sad warrior, the one called Five Strikes, was watching him through unemotional black eyes, his short hair teased by the wind. The women, too, were giving him uneasy glances.
Singing Lark took notice, glanced knowingly at Tylor, and then called out some sort of chiding remark, flinging her hands at the people as if in remonstration. In response, the rest of the Shoshoni broke out in laughter, the tension broken.
Tylor, himself, ch
uckled.
Kestrel Wing was rubbing some kind of oil on his composite bow, the thing being made of mountain sheep’s horn and layers of some kind of wood. Tylor had seen the power, how one of them had driven the whole length of an arrow at a steep angle through one of the Arapaho warriors. The shaft had been held in the wound only by the fletching.
The young boys, he noticed, had curiosity in their eyes as they shot him sly glances and smiles.
Tylor scuffed the grass with his worn boots. The soles had separated from the uppers and were held together by wrappings of leather. He wondered what the well-shod Shoshoni thought of that. Turning, he walked over to where the old woman was seated cross-legged on the grass.
Singing Lark was watching him with a speculative gaze. Each time he glanced her way, she gave him an amused smile. She nodded with approval and made the sign for “good” as he turned his attention to the old woman.
“Hello, Grandmother,” Tylor told her. “Mind if I sit and share the sun with you?”
She gave him that gape-toothed smile that seemed to beam light, and though she couldn’t have had a clue about what he’d asked, patted the hide beside her.
“Taipo Ty Lor,” she said.
He pointed at her. “You?”
“Sennapin muka.”
“Thought they called you Wipehegand or something?”
“Waipepuhagan.” She made a sign with her hands that Tylor couldn’t fathom and added a “yes” gesture to it.
Singing Lark had sidled closer so that she could listen.
Tylor stared up at the sun, bright in the sky as it shone down in the east. “Well, Sennapin Muka, it’s going to take Will and the rest more than a week at best. I have nothing to do, so while we wait, why don’t you start to teach me the language?”
He pointed at the hawk, sitting in its shaded perch, head tilting this way and that as it watched everything that happened in the camp. “Hawk,” he told her.
Catching on immediately, she told him, “Kinii.”
He repeated the word, committing it to memory.
And, if nothing else, perhaps I can retire to some learned institution back in the white world and become a professor of languages.
Assuming that Cunningham made it back with the rifles and that Kestrel Wing didn’t use that marvelous bow of his to drive an arrow through John Tylor’s lights.
CHAPTER 11
The ride to St. Louis had been hard, the roads passable, and Eli Danford and Silas Simms—while skeptical of Toby’s promotion—had been game. Especially Danford, who, though older and more experienced, realized that Corporal Johnson didn’t care that he took a nip off his flask every so often. Not that Danford was a drunk, he just liked his corn spirits.
Toby knew exactly what his Bible-quoting blood-and-thunder father would have said about it, but figured that if Danford kept it to the occasional taste, it wasn’t worth making a scene over.
Traveling under military orders, and with a discretionary purse, was a revelation. Toby had been told to keep track of all his spending. Unable to read or figure, he’d been lucky to have Danford along to keep track of it all. Then, to Toby’s dismay, a sudden shower had soaked the piece of paper he kept for the purpose, and when he’d tried to extract it from his pocket, it had fallen apart.
Nevertheless, he led the way on his tired horse as he and his small command climbed the bank from the Mississippi River ferry.
Clopping through the muddy streets of St. Louis, Toby found his way to General Clark’s official address and stepped down.
“We sure we can’t stay here awhile?” Simms asked hopefully, his eyes straying to the surrounding buildings. “This place sure is the beat of Nashville. Me, I reckon I’d like to take a stroll down through some of them fancy houses by the river.”
Toby, still a virgin, made a face. He definitely knew what his father would say to that. “Silas, how much money you got?”
“Nigh onto two dollars.”
“And how much would one of them women charge?” Danford asked. “Ten cents? Up to two bits? That’d buy you a nice room with a bed an’ a real roof over yer head.”
“Reckon it would,” Simms agreed. He carefully stepped down from his horse, stretched, and made a face. “How much they charge for a room with a roof and bed up the Missouri whar we’re headed, Corporal?”
“Ain’t no roofs or beds that I know of once we’s past a couple of them forts.”
Simms shot Danford an arched look. “So, Eli? What in hell’s we saving even two bits for?”
Toby chuckled to himself. Father was a long way away. Green as he was, Toby knew a commanding officer had to keep his men on his side. “For the time being, you all keep an eye on the horses. Me, I got to palaver with the general. Soon’s I get straight with him on my mission, we’ll figure what we’re gonna do. You done good in the getting here. Reckon that oughtta buy ye a bit of a reward.”
Simms grinned at Danford.
Toby climbed the steps, feeling every muscle in his back and thighs. Too dang long on the back of a horse. Took him to the top of the steps to recover any hint of a normal stride.
His papers presented, he had to wait for close to a half hour before he was ushered into General William Clark’s office. He took in the furnishings, having been there not so long ago. Nothing much was changed.
“Ah, you’re back!” Clark said, rising. “And a corporal now, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” Toby handed the man the correspondence Jackson had given him.
“Brandy?” Clark asked as he seated himself behind his desk and frowned down at the sheath of papers. These Toby had kept in the waterproof dispatch case. They’d fared so much better than his receipts.
Toby turned toward the cut-glass decanter. Stopped short. He’d never so much as . . .
“Pour one for me, too, if you please.”
Sounded like an order. Toby winced, made himself reach for the bottle, wondered how much to pour, and filled both glasses to just a hair shy of the rim. Carrying them over, careful not to spill, he placed one on the desk at the general’s elbow. That left him with nothing to do but stare anxiously at the amber liquid in his own glass.
“The devil’s curse is the demon of spirits! A Satan-possessed liquid that damns men’s souls to the black pit!” Father’s words echoed in his ears.
I’m an officer now.
Officers drank.
And what would General Clark say? It would be downright rude to set the glass down. For the briefest of instants, he considered hiding it, maybe stuffing it behind the decanter, but Clark would find it the next time he . . .
“So,” Clark said softly, “Andrew Jackson still wants Tylor. I’d rather hoped the whole John Tylor excitement had blown over.”
Toby turned his attention from the brandy problem to the general who now frowned off into some distance in his mind.
William Clark seemed much too genial and personable to be a real general. But then, this was the hero of the Corps of Discovery who had traveled all the way to the Pacific. The red hair was turning white and thinning on top. The long nose was swelling with age—the occasional broken blood vessel turning it a brighter red than the rest of his face. Those once-brilliant blue eyes had faded under the drudgery of desk work and administration.
“Uh, sir? Reckon the general give me an order. I’m t’ fetch the traitor back alive or dead, sir.”
“I see, Corporal.” A pause. “It’s a fool’s errand. We’re in the end of August. The last thing you need right now is to try and chase your way up the river at this time of year.”
Clark paused, tapping his lips with his fingers as he thought. “How about I reassign you to St. Louis? I could find you some task more suitable, and God knows we are in need of soldiers. Especially given the machinations of the British. I curse that Robert Dickson. He’s played hell up at Michilimackinac. The defense of St. Louis is a great deal more important than running down a man who is only seeking to flee his past.”
“Reckon I
thank ye, sir. But I been given an order.” Toby grinned in what he hoped was an inoffensive way. “An’ if’n I didn’t set this Tylor’s carcass at the general’s feet, wouldn’t be no surprise if’n Jackson didn’t skin me alive.”
“Allow me to handle Andrew. You sure you wouldn’t like a reassignment here?”
“My complemates, sir, but I cain’t.” He knew that was wrong. Hadn’t paid attention when the officers were talking before, and now really wished he had.
“That’s ‘my compliments,’ ” Clark corrected with a smile. “I begin to see why Andrew chose you. Dedicated to a job once you’ve been given it?”
“Some say I’m too dumb to know when to quit. But that’s Paw’s teaching. Reckon it’s part ’cause I was a hunter, too, sir. Best in the county. Kept the family fed while Pap made sure we was right with God.”
“Very well.” Clark reached for his glass, noticed it was brimming. His brow arched as he noted how full the glass in Toby’s hand was. The smile, more amused than ever, widened. “To your health, Corporal.”
Toby lifted the glass, gulping the drink as if it were water. Got a couple of swallows down before his throat locked up. He inhaled in surprise, only to have fire burn down his windpipe.
In the coughing fit that followed, he did his best to keep from spilling the general’s brandy on the carpet.
As the tears streaked down Toby’s face, General Clark threw his head back and laughed like a man possessed.
CHAPTER 12
John C. Luttig sat behind the crude table where it was jammed in the back of the rough-hewn warehouse and sorted through his journal papers. The last thing he expected that night was for Will Cunningham to walk through his door in the company of three Indian men.
Luttig’s path to the Upper Missouri had been circuitous. He had begun his professional life as a successful businessman in Baltimore. His dealings there had led him to realize that St. Louis, on the frontier, was ripe with possibilities. Subsequent to relocating to the city in 1809, he found work as a clerk and auctioneer, speculator, and agent for August Chouteau.
Flight of the Hawk: The Plains Page 5