Beneath a Hunter's Moon

by Michael Zimmer

  “He’s a kid,” Pike said bluntly.

  “Yes, I know, but I will not go with you tonight. Big John suspects, as well.”

  His anger flared. “What the hell did you expect…?” He stopped when he recognized her ploy. “You’re a hell-raising bitch, Celine, but you do grow on a man. I might just take you with me when I leave here.”

  Her face brightened. “To Boston?”

  “Uhn-uh. Saint Louis, maybe, but then back to Taos.” Taos and the southern Rockies had been calling to him for a long time now. It had always seemed to Pike that the farther north he and Arch drifted, the worse their luck had become.

  “Taos?” Celine repeated doubtfully. “Where is Taos?”

  “The mountains. Spanish Territory.”

  “The pays sauvage?”

  He nodded. “We could get us a little ’dobe house there for the winter months, trap along the front range and into Bayou Salade, or… hell, on over the divide during the fall and spring. Maybe hunt buffalo in the summer. I hear they’re building a fort on the Arkansas. They’ll need meat, for sure.”

  “Non!” she cried. “I will not. I hate the wilderness. I wish only to leave it, forever.”

  Gabriel moved forward, drawn by the alarm in Celine’s voice. Pike turned to face him, scowling. “Back away, boy. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Near the carts, a couple of hunters had stopped what they were doing to watch.

  “Celine,” Gabriel said. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded dully, then stepped back. When she looked at Pike, her eyes shone with hatred. “He wishes to take me away to the mountains,” she accused, her voice trembling.

  Gabriel glared at Pike. “Is this true?”

  “Shit,” Pike grunted, then his voice turned harsh. “She said it, didn’t she? Are you calling her a liar, you dumb, moon-struck pup?”

  “I will kill you for that,” Gabriel breathed, drawing his knife.

  “Do it, Gabriel,” Celine whispered fiercely. “Kill him for me.”

  “Don’t be a fool, boy,” Pike said, swinging around to face him. The two hunters who had been watching from the carts started forward. Spitting a curse, Pike lifted his rifle in both hands. “I don’t have a quarrel with you, son.”

  “You insulted Celine.”

  “Naw, I didn’t insult her. I just asked her to go to the mountains with me.” The two Métis were close now, and Pike was aware that some of the butchers had also stopped their work and were watching.

  “Gabriel,” one of the Métis said.

  “Stay out of this, Etienne.”

  “Non, I cannot, mon brave,” Etienne Cyr replied. “There must not be a fight.”

  “Yes, there will be a fight,” Gabriel said. But he gripped his knife uncertainly, as if not exactly sure how to set it all into motion.

  “I think you have fought enough today, eh?” Cyr said mildly. “With Michel Quesnelle this morning.”

  Gabriel gave Cyr a disconcerted glance. It was all the opening Pike needed. He stepped quickly forward, bringing the butt of his rifle up and around. There was a solid thunk as it struck Gabriel above his ear, and the boy dropped like a stone, without even a grunt.

  Etienne Cyr and the other half-breed blinked owlishly, and there was a flurry of angry voices from the butchers.

  “It’s best this way,” Pike said, facing Cyr with his rifle brought back up, ready to swing or fire, depending on the reaction of the half-breeds. “I’d have had to gut him if he jumped me with that knife.”

  “Maybe,” Cyr said doubtfully. He was looking at Celine, his expression carefully blank. “Gabriel Gilray is a good man, but lately his mind has become muddled.”

  Celine’s lips thinned, and she stalked away without speaking to anyone.

  “That one,” Cyr murmured, shaking his head. Then he knelt at Gabriel’s side and rolled him onto his back. The boy groaned and raised a hand groggily to his head. Cyr looked at Pike. “Perhaps it was best this way,” he acknowledged. “But now I think maybe you ought to go, eh?”

  Pike nodded. He understood. Cyr was telling him that he was still an outsider here, no matter what Big John thought.

  He headed back to the caravan, ignoring the stares of the men and women standing over their partially butchered carcasses. Tomorrow they would begin the hunt in earnest, and soon his debt to McTavish would be paid and he would be free once more. He was more than ready.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gabriel loped up alongside Charlo’s brindled mare, careful to approach opposite the ugly white buffalo runner the old hunter led on a short rope. He slowed Baldy to a walk but didn’t speak, nor did he feel any need to. Far to the south, speckling the stark tan plain, were the remnants of the herd that had nearly overrun them last night. No more than a couple of hundred head were visible from here, but those animals were grazing slowly toward the crest of a low swell, and Gabriel knew the far side of that ridge would be thick with buffalo, a shaggy brown sea of meat and robes.

  Anticipation for the hunt gorged him, so that he felt as taut as a bowstring. This was what he lived for, what they all lived for. With the chase looming, Gabriel felt keenly alive, focused and in control. Today, nothing else mattered.

  The sod beneath their horses’ hoofs was churned and torn, spotted with dung—a visible scar nearly a mile wide running south over the low hills. From time to time they passed the wolf-torn carcass of a buffalo, a casualty of some hunter’s fusil from the night before, but they made no effort to claim the meat. Soon there would be enough for everyone. Even the wolves.

  Occasionally Gabriel would glance over his shoulder, but the line of carts had vanished behind the curve of the earth. Scanning the horizon, he saw nothing but empty prairie beneath the steel-gray cap of clouds. Not even a tree or tall bush marred the landscape.

  The bois brûles were spread out over several acres, riding singly or in small bunches of two or three or half a dozen. Many of them led their favorite buffalo runners from a slower mount in order to conserve the runners’ strength for the chase. Charlo was riding his brindled mare, and Big John rode old Solomon, long-legged and humorous astride the smaller horse.

  When they drew close to the herd, Turcotte curbed his pony and pulled off his red wool cap to wave the others in. White-knuckled, Gabriel tapped Baldy’s ribs with the heels of his moccasins. At a gallop, he and Charlo approached the hunters congregating around René. Catching a glimpse of Pike loping in from the west, Gabriel flexed his fingers on the Brown Bess. There was a robin’s egg–size lump behind his left ear where the stock of the American’s rifle had struck him, accompanied by a pulsating ache that kept time to the beat of Baldy’s hoofs. Sooner or later, Gabriel knew, he would have to face Pike, but he wanted to avoid a confrontation now. Although he wasn’t particularly afraid of the American, intuition warned him to go slow, that there was more here than he fully understood. He had blundered enough in recent days.

  They came together in a knot of horsemen, Turcotte its nucleus. Some of them hunched their shoulders to the icy wind, or thrust unmittened fingers into the sweaty warmth of their armpits. Others appeared oblivious to the blustery weather and sat their mounts with calm demeanors or high-keyed anticipation. When the last hunter had arrived, Turcotte said loudly: “We form our line here.”

  “Non, René, it is too soon,” a bois brûle protested. “We must get closer.”

  But Turcotte shook his head. “No, Pierre. We will form our line here.”

  Turcotte had changed noticeably since that day at Chain of Lakes when Joseph Breland had publicly challenged his authority. Although still hesitant at times, he remained staunchly behind his decisions once they were made. And he was quicker to take charge of a situation now, too, willing to bull ahead on his own, without glancing at Big John for reassurance. Sometimes Gabriel wondered what Big John thought of René’s new-found independence, but since his return from his fight with One Who Limps, and Celine’s rush to the American’s side as the hunters approached the
carts, Big John had become less vocal, more inclined to withdraw than to step forward.

  Broad grins and scattered, growling laughter had greeted René’s proclamation. Now he lifted his fusil for silence. “I will take the right flank, and”—his gaze swept the hunters—“Charlo will ride at the left.”

  No one objected; a few even cheered. Turcotte waved his hand toward a spot on the prairie and the bois brûles quickly pulled apart, then came back together in a ragged line. Those who had led their runners quickly switched saddles, handing the reins of their slower mounts to boys too young to take part in the chase. At the western end of the column, Turcotte eased his pony half a length ahead of the others. Charlo did the same at the column’s eastern terminus, then lifted an arm from his side to indicate a line between himself and Turcotte that none of the nearly sixty hunters would be allowed to cross.

  Gabriel found a spot near Charlo. From his shooting bag he dug out half a dozen thumb-size lead balls that he popped into his mouth, tucking them in his cheeks until they bulged. Next he hitched his powder horn around so that it rode high on his chest, where it would be easier to reach. He’d pulled the old charge from the musket that morning, then cleaned it thoroughly with water-saturated hanks of buffalo wool twisted around the ramrod’s steel worm. There was a patched round ball seated now, but, after that was fired, he would reload without patches.

  Big John had left his double rifle with the carts and was toting a brace of large-bored flintlock pistols thrust into his sash. A lot of the others had also left their regular guns with their families and were carrying pony guns for the chase—standard fusils cut down until the squared stock ended just behind the long rear tang of the trigger guard, the barrel maybe twelve to fourteen inches long. They had also enlarged the touch hole—that aperture connecting the flash pan with the main charge in the barrel—in an effort to eliminate the need for priming. After firing their first patched ball, they would close the frizzen before the second charge was poured down the barrel, and enough powder would trickle through the larger touch hole into the pan so that it could then be fired. All that would remain after that was to spit a ball down the barrel, pull back the cock, lower the muzzle on a bison, and pull the trigger. It was dangerous as hell, but quick—practical only when running buffalo. None of them would dream of altering their regular hunting guns that way.

  With all the charged tension flowing through the line, Baldy soon became rambunctious and hard to hold. He was bumping into the horses on either side of him, pawing at the dirt, baring his teeth, and snapping when other horses did the same. Gabriel’s mouth watered around the lead balls pocketed in his cheeks. He carried his musket butted to his thigh, his right hand gripping the faded walnut forestock just below the rear thimble.

  After what seemed an eternity, Turcotte leaned forward to look down the long column. He brought his hand up, then slowly swung it down in a stiff chopping motion.

  “Ho!” he called, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and, as one, the bois brûles surged forward. Almost immediately the column became a broken, sinuous line, rolling across the dry plain like a badlands sidewinder. In a fit of eagerness, Baldy lunged ahead of the invisible line that still stretched between Turcotte and Charlo. Hurriedly Gabriel pulled him back before Charlo could chide him for his lack of control. Others were having similar problems, though. Even Charlo’s runner was half-rearing against its reins, fighting the old hunter’s curb.

  Advancing at a walk, the hunters managed to get within four hundred yards of the nearest buffalo before the shaggy-haired bulls—Gabriel could tell their sex by size and shape—took notice. Several of the beasts lifted their massive heads to stare near-sightedly at the approaching horsemen, unable yet to perceive any impending danger, but wary nonetheless. A few spun nervously to face them, lowering their heads and hooking up clods of dirt and dust with their horns that they tossed high over their shoulders. Others bellowed warnings or pawed the earth. But most of them just looked on until the hunters had closed to within three hundred yards. It was only then that several of the nearest bulls turned and began to walk swiftly away. Others soon followed.

  “Ho!” Turcotte’s command drifted down the line of horsemen. The bois brûles lifted their runners to a jog. The buffalo were trotting now, arching their short, tufted tails above their sloping hips, shaking their heads angrily at this unwelcome intrusion. But Turcotte wisely held back until the last bull had disappeared over the crest of the low ridge. Only then did he shout—“Ho! Ho!”—at the top of his lungs.

  At this long-awaited signal the bois brûles gave their mounts their heads, the invisible line between Charlo and Turcotte disappearing under flashing hoofs. From here on, it was every man for himself.

  Those with the swiftest horses—Big John on his roan, Breland on his black, Charlo riding his glass-eyed white, LaBarge astride a broad-chested chestnut, and perhaps a dozen others—quickly took the lead and began to pull rapidly ahead. The bulk of the hunters, mounted on good stock that wasn’t quite the equal of the best, formed a tight pack not far behind them. It was here that Baldy ran, near the front of the second bunch, his neck stretched low, hoofs flying. Already falling behind were the dozen or so hunters whose mounts were too old or broken-down to keep up, but who hadn’t been able to obtain better for the chase. They were the poorest of the bois brûles, those whose luck ran consistently bad. They wouldn’t make much pemmican or take many robes this season because they didn’t have horses fast enough to keep up with the fleet-footed bison, and for that reason they wouldn’t be able to afford better mounts next year.

  But these men were not Gabriel’s concern today, and he dismissed them after a single, backward glance. He fixed his gaze upon the low ridge before him, and, when he finally streaked over the top and saw the prairie for ten miles ahead darkened by buffalo, he wanted to whoop for the sheer exhilaration of it.

  The buffalo were already on the move, a mottled undulation fanning outward from where the straggling bulls had entered the main herd. Within seconds, the whole prairie was rolling and pitching. Gabriel raced Baldy headlong down the slope into a wall of dust. He kept his mouth clamped shut and squinted his eyes to slits. At the bottom of the ridge the hunters began to pull apart. Those mounted on the best horses were already threading their way through the slower bulls at the rear of the herd, huge lumbering beasts whose meat would be tough and stringy and next to impossible to chew. In a mixed herd such as this, the older, heavier bulls always had to be breached first, in order to catch up with the swifter cows whose meat made the finest pemmican, their hides the best robes.

  The dust was suffocating. Clods of hoof-shaped sod smacked Gabriel’s chest and shoulders like stones, and he knew that, by evening, his flesh would be dappled with bruises, every crevice packed with grit. A huge bull emerged from the roiling, earthy haze on his left, its short, curved horns blunted by a lifetime of scooping up dirt and fighting boulders. Gabriel could hear the popping of its aged, weight-strained joints even above the roar of the stampede. The bull snorted as Gabriel drew abreast, then suddenly angled closer to hook at Baldy with a stubby horn. But Baldy was an old hand at running buffalo, and dodged nimbly out of the way without even breaking stride. Other bulls appeared, monarchical beasts with angry, red-rimmed eyes and pulsing nostrils. Giving Baldy his head, Gabriel allowed the piebald gelding to find his own path through this bobbing rear wall of giants. Muted by the din of the rushing herd, he heard the first scattered reports of gunfire from those who had already reached the cows.

  Gabriel rode alone. The anticipation that had earlier stretched his nerves almost to their limits had since given way to a peculiar kind of serenity. He had become part of the whole, mystically joined with his pony and the flowing stream of bison that carried him forward.

  Slowly Baldy began to pull ahead of the older bulls. He had also settled into the chase, his gait smooth and rocking. A young spike—a bull—appeared in front of them and Gabriel tipped his musket toward it. Obediently Bald
y veered in that direction. It wasn’t a cow, but it was young and its meat would be nearly as good. And Gabriel knew Baldy wouldn’t be able to match the rapid pace of the herd for long. Only the swiftest runners, those with the best wind, could rival a buffalo over any distance. Only the bulk of a large herd slowed it enough for the others to dash in for a few minutes’ shooting—seldom more than half an hour—before the average horse began to lose ground.

  The spike grunted as they drew alongside but made no effort either to pull away or to charge. Slanting the musket’s barrel toward the young bull’s rib cage, just behind its pumping shoulder, Gabriel squeezed the trigger. The Brown Bess slammed back against his shoulder, belching a cloud of gray powder smoke that blossomed against the buffalo’s heavy wool. The spike bellowed and swerved sharply away, ramming a larger bull and bouncing back, tumbling off its feet.

  Gabriel raced on. He spotted a cow just ahead, and Baldy tacked toward her without guidance. Gabriel let the musket’s scarred butt slide down the inside of his calf until it was cradled in the notch of his foot and the stirrup strap. Thumbing the wooden plug from his powder horn, he poured a charge into the antler-tip powder measure he kept fastened to the horn’s strap. Letting the charger drop and dangle, he lifted the muzzle to his mouth, cushioning it with his lips while he spat a lead ball into the bore. Then, leaning almost casually from the saddle, he rapped the musket’s butt once against the hard ground to seat the ball, allowing the momentum of the blow to vault the weapon back up the curve of his hand. Sloping the musket across his left arm, he hitched the large powder horn around to fill the pan, then quickly flipped the frizzen down before the wind could blow away the priming.

  Reloading had taken less than a minute, and by then Baldy had come alongside the cow. Gabriel cocked the musket and leaned forward, firing swiftly. The cow grunted and shook her head, lunging aggressively at them, but Baldy had already taken them out of reach and was racing after the next animal even as the cow stumbled and fell.