If he had to guess, they were still a half day’s ride away—past the foothills—and then into the mountains themselves.
“Come,” she told him. “Tie off horses. We look.”
After securing their mounts and pack animals, they scrambled up the slope. Tylor’s hard-leather soles slipped and slid on the grass despite the wrappings that held his boots together. He felt the chill in the bitter wind as it drove through the rents in his shirt. At the crest, Singing Lark used a scrubby juniper for cover, beckoning him up beside her. Settling, she turned her gaze to the east.
“What are we looking for?”
“Anyone,” she told him. “See who follows.”
Tylor arranged his butt on the rocks, shaded his eyes, and carefully began his survey of the broken land that led down to the distant Powder River’s timbered bottoms. One by one, he let his eyes trace out each of the drainages. The black spots he recognized as buffalo. In other places, patches of pine or juniper could be discounted.
“There,” she said, gesturing with her chin.
He tried to follow her gaze. “I don’t see.”
She gave him that “you’re impossible” look, then grabbed his finger and used it to point.
Tylor sighted down it, recognizing the creek she’d made them wade on the way up from the Powder. Back where they had crossed the Powder itself, he made out horsemen. The tiny dark dots of men on horses stood out because they moved. Hard to confuse, even over the distance. They were combing their way back and forth, looked like they were searching.
Tylor’s gut sank. “Who?” he asked. “Recognize the horses?”
“Too far.”
“But most likely enemies,” Tylor muttered.
She kept her eyes on the distant riders, what, maybe four, five miles away? “Gwee, snow comes. Tomorrow.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.” A pause. “We watch for now. See what others do. If they find trail.”
“And if they do?”
“We ride hard all night. South. For Sweet Water River. Hope tomorrow snow hides trail. Cold ride.”
“And if they don’t find our trail?”
“We ride hard all night. West. Hope tomorrow snow hides trail. But then stay in warm place. Wood, water, good grass for horses.”
“Either way we’re riding hard all night.”
“Reckon so, coon,” she mimicked Cunningham’s voice.
Tylor laughed, happy to break the tension. “Hope he and Gray Bear and the rest are safe.”
“I think yes. Taikwahni is smart. He got away. Pa’kiani didn’t chase him. Those Sa’idika would have ran right into Pa’kiani. Maybe they killed each other. My bet, Taikwahni got everyone back to Pia’ogwe.”
“Where’s that?”
“Across the mountains. West. You and me go long way. Go here. Go there. Have to hide trail. Keep from getting caught. Taikwahni has scouts to see danger first. Can go fast. We have to go slow.”
Tylor resettled his bottom on the flat stones that covered the ridge top. The wind up his back sent a chill through him. Damn, he wished he had his coat. Hoped that Cunningham had bothered to pack it. One of the buffalo hides would have sufficed, but they were wrapped around their supply of cured meat. He was on the verge of shivering, but Singing Lark seemed immune.
And more snow was coming?
“For out in the middle of the wilderness,” Tylor muttered, “there sure are a lot of people out here.”
“It is fall. Time to hunt. Maybe catch the Newe by surprise. Kill a few men, steal their meat, and capture some women and children. Do it often enough and the Newe will stop coming to the Powder River to hunt. Make it too dangerous and the Crow, or Blackfeet, or Arapaho can call it theirs.”
“Politics, by any other name . . .”
“Hinni?”
“People are all the same, kwee. Europe, America, or the upper Missouri.”
She stiffened. “Look.”
Tylor concentrated. One by one the distant dots were moving. Heading away from their search. Looked like they were going north.
“Think they gave up?”
“Maybe.”
By Tylor’s reckoning, they sat for another half an hour. In the end, she took a deep breath. “I think we’re all right.”
“So, we ride all night? What about the cold?”
“Storm comes. Warm ride tonight. I know a place we can hole up. Stay warm. But, gwee, we need hides. Have to make kutta.” She mimicked putting on a coat.
“All right.”
“So you say now, Taipo.” She shot him a sardonic grin. “Wait ’til the work starts.”
“Think I’m not up to it?”
“Once the drying and stretching has to be done, most men find something important to do. Like going hunting for a couple of weeks.”
“I won’t.”
“We’ll see.”
She kept him there for another hour, just to be sure. During that time, nothing moved on their backtrail but a smattering of bison, a few bands of antelope, and a herd of about thirty cow elk followed by a majestic bull.
“Come, gwee. Now we ride all night.”
He considered, looking up at the clear sky. Snow tomorrow? And warm enough to ride all night.
At least they had enough moon to keep them from riding off a cliff. Or so he hoped.
CHAPTER 27
Cunningham came riding up from the rear, his big black horse mud-spattered and blowing. The man was dressed in a composite of Taipo coat and pants with a buffalo-hide cape over his shoulders and a fox-hide hat on his head. His hands were covered with mittens, sewn fur-in. Whistling Wren had made them for him, perhaps a token of apology for spurning his advances.
Their trail had taken them around the southern flank of the Powder River Mountains, then west across the occasional creeks and broken uplands to the head of the Bad Water River, so called for the bitter taste leached from the clays over which it ran.
The way led down a rocky slope from the foothills and onto a flat above what the Newe called the Big River, or Pia’ogwe. The basin stretched south to the distant Sweet Water River Rim, the land marred by the occasional butte, low ridges, and the cottonwood-lined meander of the Pia’ogwe as it flowed north. Upstream, a day’s ride to the south, the river hooked back to the northwest and the Valley of the Warm Winds.
“Some country,” Cunningham said. He’d been dedicated to learning as much of the language as he could, although his pronunciation was oftentimes so abominable as to be incomprehensible.
Gray Bear gestured with his chin, indicating the distant mountain range to the west. The high peaks gleamed whitely in the sunlight, the flanks of the mountain range clad in timbered slopes. “Snow is already deep up on Mountain Ram’s Seat. What we call that highest peak. But the Valley of the Warm Winds will let us hunt some before the deep cold. And, Will, we have rifles to trade for all the food we need.”
Gray Bear glanced back to where the hawk rode on the man-tied trade pack. The bird was so used to traveling by horse, sitting atop the pack, that he wondered if it ever would want to fly again. What was the point? Here, among the people, the hawk was fed, cared for, carried from place to place. All it had to do was sit there, look regal and beautiful, and the people did everything for it.
Cunningham followed his gaze to the bird. Grunted. “Think Tylor’s all right? He set store by that bird.”
“I asked Aspen Branch last night at the Bad Water camp. She said that neither Tylor nor Singing Lark had come when she called them to her dreams.”
“What does that mean?”
“When a person dies, the dream soul, navushieip, is set free. Someone with great puha, like the waipepuhagan, can call the wandering dream soul. Her own navushieip can talk to the dead person’s soul.”
“So, she thinks they’re still alive?”
“Seepa kia. Maybe.”
“Why seepa kia?”
“Just because Aspen Branch called to Tylor or Singing Lark’s navushieip
doesn’t mean either will come. Think about it. When you are asleep, does your dream soul do what you tell it to? Mine doesn’t.”
“Not sure I foller where you’re going, coon.”
Gray Bear had to concentrate as he eased Moon Walker down where the terrace dropped off in a steep descent to the floodplain; rounded river rocks and dirt cascaded from under the horse’s hooves. He glanced back, making sure the pack animals didn’t lose their loads on the scramble down, and that old Aspen Branch kept her seat as the band followed. The hawk, with its superb balance, didn’t even sway.
Satisfied that they had all made it, Gray Bear said, “When I go to sleep, I can tell myself: ‘Tonight, I will dream of a warm lodge, two beautiful wives to snuggle with, and elk steaks dripping fat as they roast over the fire.’ But what does my navushieip do? It takes me to a dream place where I am freezing in a blizzard, naked, hiding in a snowdrift, with terrible hungry grizzly bears hunting me while Pa’kiani warriors are searching for me from every high place. Then, just as I freeze to the point I can’t move, the bears will find me. The Pa’kiani will be charging down, knives ready to cut my scalp off my skull. At the moment when I’m ready to scream, my navushieip will fly back into my body. I snap awake shivering and scared.”
Cunningham laughed, glanced off across the flats toward the river and the line of cottonwoods along its bank. “Hell, and to think I got enough trouble just having one soul.”
“You have told me this before. I have thought about it a lot. Discussed it with the waipepuhagan. When you are alone, who do you talk to?”
“Huh?”
Gray Bear pointed at his head. “In here. If there is only one, you can’t talk to yourself. Like the sound of one hand clapping.”
“I talk to myself all the time. We call it thinking.”
“Then who listens?”
“Why, I do, coon. I ask myself: ‘What do I think about doing so and so?’ And another part of me answers: ‘Well, that’d be ’tarnal stupid. How about doing this instead?’ And I figger it out.”
Gray Bear lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Does that not indicate that there are at least two souls inside you? One asks. The other answers. And if you dream of other places, of distant people, and other times, that dream soul must exist as well.”
Cunningham frowned, chewed at his lips, which made his beard bunch and pucker. Finally, he said, “Coon, when the first preachers come here, they’re gonna raise hell. They’re sure they got it from on high that ye’ve only got one soul.”
“What is this word, ‘preacher’?”
“Hard to explain. Like a sort of puhagan, I reckon. But without the visions and puha.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Given that preachers don’t take to drinkin’, whorin’, gamblin’, and a little knuckle-and-skull every now and then, I guess you an’ I see eye to eye on preachers, Chief.”
As Gray Bear had listened, too many Taipo words in Cunningham’s answer were unfamiliar. Tylor spoke one dialect of English, Cunningham another. At times they sounded like different languages.
Not that the dialects of Newe weren’t as varied. In the far west, out in the Great Basin, “Sheep eater” was pronounced Tukudika. Here, in the east, it was Dukurika. Muqua in the far west was pronounced as Mugwa in the east. Unlike the Taipo— who the Salmon Eaters called Taiboo—the Newe had a fluent sign language to fill in the differences.
“What?” Gray Bear asked as they rode across the sagebrush-thick flat. “You still look worried.”
Cunningham shrugged. “You don’t know it yet, but this is the last free place, Chief. Here, in the high plains and mountains. No forts, posts, or preachers. But they’re coming.”
“What does this mean?”
“Sort of how it is.” Cunningham stared out at the distant Wind River Range, voice soft. “My great-grandpap was one of the first long hunters. Crossed the Appalachians from North Carolina to hunt in Tennessee and Kentucky. My grandpap moved the family into Tennessee after the Revolution. Then my pap settled west of the Cumberland. Raised his family. And here I be. Plumb inta the middle of the wilderness. ’Bout as far as a coon can go.”
“I don’t know these words.”
“You will, Chief. I’m sorry, but the day will come when you will.”
At that moment, Turns His Back, who had been scouting ahead, broke from the cottonwoods. He came charging back, riding flat out on his buckskin gelding, his rifle held low and to the side. His hair was flying, and he whooped.
“Trouble?” Cunningham asked, shifting his rifle.
“That is not the way he rides when he has discovered trouble. Not a single look back. And see, he is smiling.”
“I have just talked to Flat Finger!” Turns His Back cried as he slowed his horse. “Tukanih Punku’s band is camped on the Pia’ogwe, a day’s ride south! We have found the people!”
Night Horse’s band! Of course his old friend would be camped here on the Pia’ogwe. Gray Bear’s heart skipped, and as it did, he experienced a warm and filling glow inside. We have done it. Made our way to the great river in the east, traded a wealth of calf hides for a greater wealth of guns. Guns that would at least give his small band a chance against the Pa’kiani. The few remaining guns would be an incentive for others to do as he had done.
He glanced back.
The hawk was watching him with evaluative eyes.
What do you know that I do not, Grandfather?
And where was Singing Lark? Part of this was her success. She had been the chickadee, the far-seeing eyes, the scout who picked the path. The one person more responsible than any other for his success as taikwahni. Since he had taken the leadership, he hadn’t lost a single person.
Please, be safe. He sent the prayer her direction.
CHAPTER 28
Most men find something important to do. Like going hunting. The memory of Singing Lark’s words that day up on the ridge echoed in John Tylor’s mind. His hands hurt: fingernails feeling like they’d been bent double and backwards; his knuckles worn raw and bleeding. In his forearms, the muscles burned, as did his shoulders and back. The slanting sun shone down, casting long shadows on the slope to the west; he puffed a breath in the cold air, watching it rise in the weak light.
Immediately to the east, the uplifted red wall of sandstone had taken on a gaudy, almost crimson hue. The stark light accented every detail of the blocky layers of rock that gave way to steep cascades of red dirt and tumbled stone. Tawny with fall grasses, the slopes below the wall were dotted with sage as they fanned out into the valley bottom.
To the west, a tan-sandstone hogback rose flat and steep. Like a giant’s table canted at a forty-five-degree angle, the uplifted sheet of bedrock inclined toward the sky. Juniper and scrubby-looking pines at the foot of the slope were scattered in an irregular blanket, giving way to thicker stands of ponderosa and fir in the distant heights.
The camp, or “hole” as Singing Lark called it, was everything she’d said it would be. Here part of the red slope extended out into the valley; in its side a stone overhang—like an arched brow—had eroded out of bedrock. Beneath the arch, a shallow cavern extended back into the sandstone. A deep cleft in the slanted bedrock behind the camp provided security for the horses: a box canyon from which the animals couldn’t wander. Perfect to pen them in at night.
A stone’s throw to the west, a small, willow-and-cottonwoodchoked creek ran down the valley, joining the middle fork of the Powder some two miles to the south. There the river ran east through the red wall and wound its way out into the basin. Cottonwoods, narrow-leaf cottonwoods, willows, and chokecherry lined the river’s banks along with stands of rosebushes. Currents, wild plumb, and raspberries flourished in cracks and crevices.
They’d been able to bathe. What a relief that had been. Tylor might have had reservations the first time. But the way Singing Lark divested herself of her dress and splashed into the water deadened any of his inhibitions. After he’d shucked himself free of his rag
s, she’d studied his body thoughtfully, totally unconcerned, as if nudity had no more consequence than the sun rising in the east.
He remembered how they had no more than arrived at the camp before the storm had come blowing down from the mountains. As Singing Lark had predicted, snow had fallen for two days. In their south-facing rock shelter, a crackling fire in its narrow entry, Tylor and Singing Lark had kept mostly warm. Right up until those occasions when they had to venture forth and break branches for firewood from the juniper and pine on the slope across the way.
That had been a week ago. Since then, they’d been constantly at work. Driven by the knowledge that winter was coming, and they weren’t prepared.
Tylor winced, and worked his poor fingers. Wished he could make the excuse that he had to go hunting. Wouldn’t be in this fix if he’d had his coat and blanket. But he didn’t. And, besides, the hunting was over. He and Singing Lark had attended to that the third day they’d been here. Had killed six mountain sheep on the slope above. Had packed them down, and under Singing Lark’s tutelage, had begun tanning the hides.
Hard damned work that. First came the skinning. And as soon as the meat was put to smoking, they began to flesh the hides. Not a quick job like they’d done with the buffalo cows. No, this was a complete fleshing. Then came the job of removing the brains from the mountain sheep skulls. A job made easy with the ax. Singing Lark had cooed in appreciation as she fingered the keen steel edge with a careful finger.
Once the brains were obtained, Singing Lark had dug a hole, lined it with one of the green hides, and put the brains and some water in. They had taken turns, reaching in and mushing it all between their fingers until it reached a thick soup-like consistency.
Singing Lark had used sticks to drop hot stones from the fire into the mess to bring it to a boil.
Then, one by one, the fleshed hides had been staked hair-side down, and the concoction was smeared on, scraped off, re-smeared, re-scraped, over and over.
Flight of the Hawk: The Plains Page 13