Etienne Cyr was still missing. LaBarge had recovered his torn, leather-visored cap and a hoof-scarred fusil from the prairie less than a mile from where he’d come upon Cyr’s lame horse, but the little bowlegged hunter hadn’t been found. His wife Marie had taken the news stoically, gathering her four young daughters around her and retreating to their lodge. Friends, mostly women, had gone to call, although, according to Isabella, they’d been sparing in their sympathy. No one was willing to admit defeat just yet, or to initiate anything that might be misconstrued as mourning. And everyone had stories to bring, like pies to a picnic—narratives of their own men stranded overnight and surrounded by Sioux or blizzard or flood, then showing up the next day, fit as a fiddle.
There was a stirring against the inner wall of the lodge. Big John’s gaze was drawn to the bundle of robes where Alec slept. It occurred to him that he was on the brink of losing that one. Alec’s mood had darkened steadily since Chain of Lakes and the loss of the spotted pony. He had become sullen and insolent, his manner around the stock, Big John’s in particular, almost brutal. With an oddly detached curiosity, Big John wondered how the final break would come, never doubting that it would. Drink, perhaps—it was the bane of many of them—or a full-blood’s lot, abandoning the Métis altogether to live among his mother’s people.
It pained Big John to think of him that way, turning his back on civilization. Yet it wasn’t an unheard-of event among the mixed-bloods, and he could see the appeal of it to a lad of Alec’s temperament. A Cree, he would become, if he joined Isabella’s tribe.
Envisioning the possibilities left Big John feeling empty and at a loss, for he didn’t know how to deal with Alec’s willfulness, or if it could even be dealt with at all. Defensively his mind shied away from that problem only to land smack in the middle of another, as it had a dozen times already that evening—Celine.
When Lizette Hallet brought her to him that afternoon, he’d thought at first she’d been gored by a wounded buffalo, some animal lying unconscious until the sting of a butcher’s knife broke its paralysis. But as she came closer, he’d recognized the stumbling gait, the loose, vacant expression. She’d looked so much like her mother during those final weeks before her death that Big John had trembled.
Celine lay against the far wall now, buried in buffalo robes, although Big John knew she wasn’t asleep. He wondered where her thoughts were, and where they had been. Could they be brought back? He had tried to help her mother and failed. Was that what thwarted him now? Had fear of a second failure so warped his nerve that he could only stand back and watch?
The pattern of the rain changed abruptly, popping louder and sharper against the sagging lodge covers.
I’m losing them all, he thought with a sudden, sickening clarity. Celine and Alec, even Gabriel in his own way, like cottonwood spores in a dry summer twister. Only Isabella remains constant.
As if awakened by his thoughts, Isabella shifted under her robes. Her voice coming softly from the rear of the lodge. “It sleets.”
“Aye, it does,” he replied quietly. “’Twill be ice over everything by mornin’ if it keeps this up.”
“You should sleep, McTavish.”
He nodded agreeably but made no effort to comply. After a couple of minutes, Isabella settled back in her robes. His thoughts drifted to Pike, bedded down beneath one of the meat carts. Although he told himself Pike couldn’t be held accountable for any of the events that had occurred since the beginning of the hunt, he couldn’t suppress a niggling sense of unease. He would watch Pike, he decided. The American’s strange influence over Celine and his altercation with Gabriel the night the buffalo nearly overran the camp warranted that much. For the first time, he began to grasp some of the apprehension he knew Gabriel had always felt toward the wiry mountaineer.
The last tongue of flame retreated into the coals, plunging the lodge into darkness. Big John lifted his face to the cool draft that, at the same moment, slipped down through the lodge’s shuttered smoke hole, stirring the smudgy air the storm had trapped above his head. But if there were any answers in the darkness up there, he couldn’t see them.
* * * * *
The storm was gone by morning. The sun rose into a fragile-looking blue sky, strewn in the east with a few small, tardy gray clouds. The land beneath glistened in a husk of ice, all things coated equally—the ground, the carts, the piles of meat, even the horns on the oxen. The hide lodges sagged under the added weight, although the ice was already starting to melt away from the blackened leather at the smoke flaps as the Métis began their breakfast fires.
With a crisp rattle, Big John flipped the stiff cabbri hide back, then paused in the doorway. The slant of the teepee allowed him to stand upright with the lower portion of the entrance tight against his shins, the upper part pressing into the small of his back. He stood quietly looking around, humbled by Nature’s display.
There wasn’t much activity about except for the little ones, already scampering forth to play, skating over the ice in their heavy, greased winter mocs, laughing and falling and laughing again. Even the dogs stayed close to the lodges, and the stock looked pathetic in the brittle light, miserable and cold, their wet hides steaming. Little balls of dirty ice clung to the long hairs of the animals’ bellies, and every now and then, when bumped against another horn or the side of a cart, the ice covering the oxens’ horns would shatter and fall with a sound like breaking glass.
On his picket rope behind the lodge, the roan nickered pitifully. In concern, Big John stepped carefully onto the treacherous ground, yet managed only a couple of steps before he was forced to stop with his arms spread wide for balance.
“Easy there, McTavish!” Pike called with a grin. He was sitting cross-legged beneath a cart, his buffalo robe drawn around his waist. His hat was on the ground beside him. He’d pulled the hood of his capote up and tied it snugly closed under his chin to keep his ears warm.
“Ah, Mister Pike, I see ye fared the night well enough.”
“Fair to middling.” He chuckled. “This is a hell of a note, McTavish, the hardest damn’ frost I’ve seen in a ’coon’s age.”
Big John laughed, blowing a puffy cloud of breath into the air. “Tell me, Mister Pike, can ye see me runner from where ye sit? He called, but I fear I may not be able to reach him just yet.”
“He’s fine. So is the bay and the piebald. Just spoiled and uncomfortable, although I don’t blame ’em much.”
“Well, I wouldn’t argue with that. If ye feel up to the adventure, ye’re welcome to come to the lodge for a bite of breakfast. We’ll be eatin’ good after yesterday’s harvest.”
“I’d be obliged if you’ll give me a minute to belly over that way.”
“Aye, a minute at least.” He grinned, but then the grin faded and for a while they stared silently across the icy gap separating them, each measuring the other in a new, veiled light. A scream from the center of camp severed the moment.
Jerking awkwardly around, Big John spotted a small child on its back, legs cocked skyward. The other children had stopped their play at the panicky cry, and were staring, wide-eyed and frightened. At the same time, a huge sled dog rushed, snarling, from beneath a cart, drawn by the helplessness of the scream, the diminutive size of its prey. Big John’s heart slammed into his throat. He felt frozen in place, unable even to call out a warning. Then in the next instant a lodge door flashed open and a Métis woman leaped out. She slipped immediately on the ice and fell heavily but didn’t let that stop her. She crabbed forward on her hands and feet, and Big John breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the child’s side. The dog halted about thirty away, wagging its tail congenially.
The child’s wailing dropped off to whimpering sobs as the woman lifted the youngster in her arms. He recognized Monique Pouliot and knew the child was hers. Even from here, he could see the odd bent of the youth’s arm.
Isabella poked her head out of the lodge’s entrance.
“Ye’d best be riggin
’ up some sort of splint,” Big John said.
Isabella ducked from sight. Pike sat where he had before, but his rifle was drawn across his lap, ready to fire had the dog gotten much closer.
Big John nodded gratefully to know someone would have done something. Taking his time, he started across the field of ice. Noel Pouliot came out of his lodge, shrugging into a bulky buffalo-robe coat. He slipped as soon as he stepped away from the lodge door, striking the bed of ice with a loud whoof. His face paled and blood spurted over his mustache from his nose, but, like Monique, he stayed down and started crawling toward his wife and child.
Big John kept on doggedly, sliding one foot after the other without lifting either. Several children were already gathered around Monique, but none of them were helping. With the child on her lap and clutched in one arm, she began scooting backward on her buttocks toward the lodge. She stopped when Noel reached her side. That was where Big John reached them, helpless on the ground with the child between them.
Noel looked up when Big John’s shadow fell over them. “It is broken, Big John,” he said, leaning back to reveal a seven-year-old with gentle brown eyes. The sleeve of the girl’s leather coat had been pulled up to reveal a protruding knob of flesh just above her left wrist.
Noel’s eyes fixed steadily on Big John, and Big John nodded without making him ask. “Aye, old friend, I’ll set it as best I can, if ye wish.”
“I will give you a fine robe for your help,” Noel promised.
“A silk,” Monique added, and Noel quickly nodded.
“Ye can pay if such pleases ye, but I’ll not be askin’ for it, and naught would be enough.” He squatted cautiously beside the trio, smiling at the small face that watched his so solemnly. “Aye, and have ye a name, child? Something I can call ye, face up?”
“Her name is Emmaline,” Monique said, smiling reassuringly when Emmaline turned to her.
“Emmaline, eh? Well, ’tis a fine name, and pretty as a spring flower. What happened to ye, lass? Did ye fall while playin’ on the ice?”
The child nodded gravely, and Big John, who had suffered a broken bone or two in his own life, knew the real pain hadn’t yet set in. It would, though, with a feverish heat and a terrible swelling. Glancing at Noel, he said: “Best we be gettin’ to it.”
Noel nodded, and, between them and others who had come to their aid, they dragged Monique back to her lodge like a lumpy sleigh, Emmaline cradled firmly in her arms. At the door, Noel took the child from his wife and stepped inside. Monique quickly followed.
“We will be here if our help is needed,” Lizette Hallet assured the Pouliots, and Big John nodded and ducked inside, pulling the flap closed against the frigid air.
Monique instructed one of the older children to build up the fire while she and Noel stripped off Emmaline’s outer garments. Big John knelt at the girl’s side and gently lifted her arm. It seemed so soft and delicate, dwarfed by his own huge, leathery paw. He had set broken bones before, but never one so small.
Holding the arm gently in one hand, he lightly stroked her fingers with the other. Looking at Noel, he said: “Ye’ll not be ridin’ with them now, I suppose. Breland and them that go out to look again for Etienne?”
Noel shook his head. “Non, not now. I will stay and help with the fires and the meat.”
“’Tis just as well. Nine will serve as tolerable as ten, and ye help will be needed here.” He smiled disarmingly at Noel’s puzzled expression and his grip tightened ever so slightly around Emmaline’s hand. Without looking down, he gave it a firm, steady pull. There was a quick grating sound as the broken bones snapped back in place, but that was all. Emmaline, who had been listening almost drowsily to Big John’s voice, gave a start, then gawked at her straightened arm.
Big John smiled at her and winked. “Isabella Gilray will be here soon to splint that arm for ye, but I’m thinkin’ the worst will be over for a while. Was it so bad?”
Emmaline shook her head.
Smiling, Noel gave Emmaline’s shoulder a quick squeeze, then went to their packs at the rear of the lodge. From a painted rawhide parfleche he retrieved a bottle of high wine. “For you, Big John. To keep you warm until I find that silk.”
“Aye, Noel, and I’ll be takin’ it, too, but only if ye help me with the drinkin’ later.”
Noel laughed. “You are a good friend. Yes. Tonight your family will come to my lodge, and we will eat fresh buffalo and drink until we fall down.”
“Until tonight, then.” Big John nodded his good-bye to Monique and left the lodge just as Isabella appeared with a splint carved from a willow limb. She smiled warmly as she passed, and Big John returned the expression, knowing that, if he wasn’t too drunk tonight, she would come to his robes for an hour or so and they would make love. The prospect pleased him, and the smile clung to his face as he made his way back to his own lodge.
* * * * *
It was afternoon before the ice melted off enough for the adults to get safely around. When it did, the women began unloading the saplings they had brought with them from the Salt River, and with strips of rawhide and excited chatter they erected their drying stages. Over these they draped the thin sheets of buffalo meat harvested the day before, most of them averaging eight to ten inches across and as much as two feet long. Under the stages they built small fires to accelerate the drying process, although had the temperature been warmer or the meat not so soaked in yesterday’s rain, they would have let it dry naturally in the sun and wind.
While the women cared for the meat, the older boys drove the oxen and cart ponies to a long, rain-freshened slough a couple of miles away to drink, then turned them loose to graze. The caravan itself was camped just west of the low ridge where the run had started the day before, in the middle of a flat, treeless plain. Although there was no wood and only the tainted water of the distant slough for their stock—the Métis had set their kettles and pots out overnight to catch as much rain water as they could—no one was willing to leave until news of Etienne Cyr was received.
In an election the night before, Joseph Breland had been chosen to lead the search. He would take eight men with him, now that Pouliot was staying behind, and scour the plains from the ridge southward. They would pack enough food with them to last several days, remembering the time Charlo’s buffalo runner had stumbled in the middle of a chase. Charlo had kicked free of the saddle just as the pony fell, and managed to grab a handful of curly hair behind a cow’s surging hump before he was trampled. He’d run alongside the galloping bison until he was able to swing astride, but it was late in the day before the spooked herd slowed and scattered enough that the old hunter felt safe in dropping to the ground and making his escape. The trouble was, by that time, the stampede had carried him nearly forty miles from where the caravan was camped.
Charlo’s misadventure was what they were all hoping had happened to Cyr. By this time, it seemed like the only real hope they had left.
Breland was lashing his sleeping robe behind his pad saddle when Big John walked up. “You have come to wish me luck, Big John?” the lanky mixed-blood asked, his blue eyes crinkling in a rare smile.
“Ye’ll be makin’ ye own luck, Joseph, and doin’ a fine job of it, too. No, the truth is I came to ask ye how far ye planned to go.”
Breland gave him a measured look. “That would depend, Big John. You know that.”
Big John waited patiently, without reply.
“All right,” Breland said quietly. “I do not think Etienne lives, although I would give my runner and all that I own if that were false. If we find him, we will return immediately, either to celebrate his survival or to bury him where his family can say good-bye. If we do not find him, I have a desire to know how far the buffalo ran yesterday, and in which direction they are traveling. It could save us many days’ effort to have that information when the caravan is ready to pull out.”
Big John nodded. It seemed like a wise decision. He stepped back, and Breland mounted. “Be safe, J
oseph, and watch yeself.”
“We will be back in no more than four days, one way or the other,” he said, reining his horse around.
After the search party left, Big John returned to his lodge. He passed Alec and Isidore Turcotte on the way. The two young men were sitting on a cart shaft, smoking their pipes and watching some of the girls and younger women scrape hides. Neither spoke as he passed, and Alec turned his face away in a deliberate snub.
Big John found Isabella working on the meat he’d harvested yesterday. She had already set the best pieces—the tenderloin, the two humps, the tongues, and the belly meat—aside to be eaten fresh. The rest she would dry, then flay into tiny splinters to which she would add tart buffalo berries and plums, picked and crushed and dried last summer. Later she would shovel the flayed meat and berries into a kettle of melted fat, mixing the whole to a uniform consistency. The liquid pemmican would then be poured into a bull-hide taureau and sewn shut. As the green hide dried it would shrink considerably, compacting the pemmican into a hard mass. A single taureau weighed about ninety pounds, fifty of meat to forty of fat, but, because Isabella used only the choicest cuts, it would require the yield of nearly two young cows to fill one sack. Big John had only killed two on his first run, enough for a single bag. It would take another four or five taureaux, along with the hides and baled meat, to complete the load of a single cart.
Isabella’s pemmican was some of the best in the valley, and she was always able to command a high price for it. Normally the post factor at Fort Douglas kept her pemmican for his own consumption, and sent a lesser quality on to feed the voyageurs as they made their way into the deeper recesses of the Bay Company’s empire. There was no secret to Isabella’s success with pemmican. Berries and fruit when the season provided it, and the use of both hard and soft fats, gave it a better flavor.
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