“You see ’em?” I hissed.
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“Sioux. From south of here,” Ferris said. “You see the way their hair’s inlaid with fur?”
“I failed to admire their coifs as they were shooting at us.”
“I scoped them on the way in. It’s them for sure.” Ferris scanned the far back, then spit his bullets into his hand and said, “There they go.”
Far off on a distant hill four natives galloped in the gray light with our horses driven in front of them. Ferris watched them then turned and looked at me. The blood was already freezing on the front of my deerskin jacket. He tilted his head and looked at the bottoms of my feet and said, “You don’t feel that?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You don’t want to feel that.”
I felt a dull ache in my calf and after a moment Ferris held up some cactus spines. There was bloody gore on the end of the spines.
“You walked on a cactus,” he said.
“Aw hell,” I said.
He pulled some more spines out of the bottom of my feet and seemed to be shoving a few in farther so they wouldn’t stick up. He looked me in the face again and said, “You’re glad you don’t feel that. We better cover those up.”
With Ferris’s help I hobbled back to the buffalo and washed my feet off and then walked along the ice to the place where my gloves and boots had been. The gloves were still there. I did not see my boots.
“Ferris,” I said. “Find my boots.”
“What?”
“I don’t see my boots. Find them.”
They were brogans, light and warm, that I’d bought from Smitts to wear in the settlement. I’d only worn them that day to show Ferris I had them. Ferris kicked around in the snow. He got down on his knees but the ice was windswept. If the boots were there, we would have seen them. We looked in the water and we looked on the bank. We saw footprints other than our own all the way up to the buffalo. I understood one of the natives must have crept up while we were on the embankment.
“They took ’em,” Ferris said.
“They were good boots.”
“At least you can’t feel your feet,” he said.
Ferris scanned the horizon then set his rifle on the ice and stepped behind the buffalo and began working at a section of the pelt. I slid back into the water and clung to the top of the buffalo and my feet made a sucking sound as they sunk into the warm innards. Ferris cut two sections of pelt and cleaned them as best he could and tied the oval sections together with two long strips of deer hide. He wrapped the meat up and made a sort of sling that he could throw over his shoulder. All the while I had my feet pressed inside the beast. It was snowing harder and the gore was covered up now except for a certain grayness on the ice. When Ferris was finished I stepped down and stood on the sections of buffalo hide he had cut out. Ferris wrapped the hide over my feet then tied the hide off with the makeshift thongs that wrapped up around my ankle. Afterward Ferris found his deerskin gloves and put them on and I washed my hands at the edge of the water and got my gun. We were about two miles from the place where we’d been lying out earlier in the day. We’d left provisions there.
The skin that was wrapped around my feet had not been dried or cured. Ferris had bound the skin as tightly as he could, but once it froze on the outside snow worked its way through crevices. It took us an hour to get back to the place where we’d started the hunt. Our provisions were still there. Our extra powder and balls and our robes were there. Ferris got a fire going and I held my feet to the fire and when they started to warm up I groaned and tears came to my eyes. There were cactus spines wedged half an inch into the bottom of my feet and every time I bumped them I wished I was dead.
“I can leave you here and try to make it back,” Ferris said. “If this is a real storm building, which I think it is, it’ll be two or three days. You’ll be all right with the robes and the wood and the provisions. Long as you can keep the fire going.”
“And as long as those Sioux don’t come back,” I said.
He was quiet. He had not thought of that.
“They won’t come back. Not with this storm,” he said.
“The storm could end,” I said.
“We could try to walk out together,” he said. “Can you do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You decide.”
“I’m not staying out here waiting for those Sioux. And you’ll never make it back without me. You don’t know the land like I do.”
“I know it well enough,” he said.
“Better we stick together,” I said.
He was quiet, thinking about it. “We better get going then,” he said.
Ferris made new moccasins from one of the buffalo robes. He wrapped the new buffalo-skin footwear around my feet and tied it off, more easily and tightly now because it was a treated pelt. By the time all of that was finished it was dusk. There was a three-quarter moon showing overhead and it had gotten colder. Tears from the eye froze immediately on the face. Deep breaths could be felt descending into the chest. The moon appeared and vanished many times and the clouds moved fast and low over the vast, snowy prairie. Snowflakes spiraled down among the dim trunks of trees.
We started off, Ferris carrying the provisions, walking ahead, and me walking in the path he plowed. It went on all night and over that time we said about twenty words to each other. It was only, “How are you, Wyeth?”
“Passable. You?”
“Sprightly.”
And more trudging.
It cleared during the night and the hills were faintly blue with new snow. The stars could be seen down to the horizon and spread wide and vast over our heads. It was very quiet and for a long time it was still, but near dawn, the stars to the west vanished and it seemed to get warmer, and I felt sweat beneath my hat and then it was pitch black and began to snow, slowly at first and then more heavily. The wind began to blast in from the north, and we fumbled our way to the lee of two boulders and sat out of the wind in the darkness. We had hoped to beat the storm but we had not and we both thought we would have done better to stay encamped in the lowlands. Ferris’s beard was completely frozen now, just a white mass in the darkness. We began to shiver and then stopped shivering and a while later Ferris stood and said, “Get up.”
“We can’t see anything.”
“We’ll freeze if we don’t.”
“I don’t care.”
Ferris leaned in, put his mouth close to my head, and screamed directly in my ear, “Get up, you stupid beast!”
It startled me. I looked at him, wide-eyed, then did what he said. I got up. But unsteadily, realizing that I wouldn’t have been able to get up at all if I’d waited much longer.
We started off again. At some point the black night eased into a featureless gray dawn. We kept walking. Ferris pulled me along through snowdrifts and up and down the banks of frozen waterways. Around midmorning the snow let up and the wind seemed to die on the ground, though the clouds still moved quickly overhead. Through a part in the clouds a bar of sunlight slanted and flamed the vast gray landscape and, turning to see it, I noticed a rock pillar we called Chimney Butte to the north. I understood that we’d veered far from the settlement.
“How far?” Ferris asked.
“Four, five hours maybe.”
He didn’t say anything. We just turned back north, almost in the opposite direction that we’d been going.
The snow started again late in the afternoon. It stopped. We tried to keep on heading northeast. We’d get to a rise and see the chimney and adjust our course. We gnawed on frozen meat and ate snow. Ferris adjusted the weight so he had all the food except a tiny portion that I could eat as I walked. He was constantly checking on me, though it was me who guided us through the snow-covered land.
Just after dark we’d climbed a high ridge and were starting down the back end when Ferris said, “Wait,” and stepped back up t
o the crest of the ridge that we’d just passed. He brushed his foot in the snow. He got down and was pawing at the snow.
“This is a road,” he said.
“What road?”
“I don’t know. A road.”
There was only one road for hundreds of miles. It was four miles long. It went between the infirmary and the north end of the bluff. I told him this.
“Which way to the settlement?” he asked.
We’d come from the south so it was hard to tell if we’d walked up the east or west side of the bluff. I looked one way and saw snowy wilderness. I looked the other way. Snowy wilderness. We could see about fifteen feet.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Guess.”
I was pretty sure if I guessed wrong we’d die. We’d been walking for twenty-four hours. Our beards were frozen solid. It had started to snow again. We could not survive another night.
“I think we came up the back end,” I said. “So this way. To the right.”
Ferris turned right. I followed. I tried to keep up and could not. He waited. We started up. Again, I fell behind. I stopped. He came back and I said, “Go on.”
“No.”
“We’re close. Bring help. Don’t leave the ridgetop.”
Ferris stood silently, judging if I could walk farther. After a moment he said, “Rest here. I’ll be back.”
I slumped in the snow and watched him walk off in that winter twilight. I closed my eyes. I was settling in the snow when I heard a far-off clink of metal. Maybe it was Smitts using an old horseshoe to knock ice off the iron railing at the entrance to the lodging house. Maybe it was a stirrup on a metal runner of the doorstep. I only heard it once and it was very faint, but I heard metal on metal and it was in the direction Ferris had gone. I sat up. I crawled several feet then stood and staggered off in that direction. Five minutes later there was a pale glow in the snowy darkness that coalesced into an oil lamp. Then another lamp held aloft and the sound of doors opening. The distant call of voices. I saw the peaked shape of Smitts’s lodging house.
“Here!” I called weakly. “I’m right here.”
There was the sound of voices. Then Plochman took one of my arms and Smitts took the other. I was dragged toward the lodging house. Alene ran out with her hair uncovered and a knit shawl falling into the snow. Smitts stepped on the shawl with his snowy boots but Alene didn’t notice. I knew how I must look—face frozen and buffalo gore up and down my front. I tried to say the blood wasn’t mine, but my tongue wouldn’t work, so I just raised a hand in mute greeting and was led into the warmth of the lodging house. They lay me roughly on the floorboards alongside the fire. Alene hovered over me, rubbing my face, opening my jacket. She cut the leather strips at my ankles and pried my makeshift boots off and I heard her gasp when she saw my feet. I reached over and she held my hands in her warm hands and blew on them, and I said, “If this is what I have to do to get to hold your hand, then, damn, it’s worth it.”
“Quiet, William,” was all she said.
Sprawled next to me, Ferris, who’d saved my life, lay in front of the fire like a piece of wood, the ice frozen to his face just beginning to glisten.
In the morning Meeks gave me laudanum and cut into my feet and pulled the spines out. Afterward, I slept and that evening when I woke I heard someone outside on the street yelling, “The damned crupper’s going up my ass, you corncracker.” That was Pegleg. I recognized his voice. I lay there, groggy, understanding that Smith, Branch, and Pegleg had arrived in the settlement. They had been trailing Ferris by several days. I lay back smiling and slept again and was woken by many footsteps on the cross planks.
A moment later the door swung wide and Ferris hobbled in followed by Pegleg, Branch, Bridger, Glass, and Captain Smith. Ferris had gray patches on his cheeks and fingers, but besides that, seemed to have recovered completely after only a day. I had not been inured to hardship by a full year on the march and I’d had my feet operated on. It would be weeks before I could really walk again. I sat up in bed and shook all of their hands.
“How are you, Wyeth?” Pegleg bellowed.
“Dandy,” I said.
“Well, you’re a hivernant now for sure. Shot up and half froze. We get you a squaw wife and you’ll have gone whole hog.”
“He’s working on it,” Ferris said.
“That so?” Pegleg said, and took a bottle from Branch and held it out to me. “Give her a horse and get on with it. You need any more romantic advice, feel free to ask.”
I’d just managed to pry the cork off the bottle when Branch said, “You take as long to shoot as you do to drink I’m surprised you’re alive, Wyeth. Let’s hear of the battle. And give me that bottle.” He snatched the bottle from my hand and tossed the cork aside, saying, “The battle and then the bottle.”
“Wasn’t much of anything,” I said. “We shot a bull on the ice west of the bend. Shot it and it cracked the ice and sunk—”
“Should’ve waited till it got off,” Pegleg said matter-of-factly.
“I would’ve but Ferris was hasty.”
“He’s been known to be so,” Branch said, and that set them cackling, as Ferris was the most laconic in the brigade. The flask was handed to me again. This time I tilted it immediately.
“You call that drinking?” Branch said. He took the bottle from me. “Go on, Wyeth.”
“I’d taken my boots off and stepped into the water and was gutting the bull when the natives stole our horses.”
“And your brogans,” Ferris pointed out.
“Yes. They stole my boots.”
“Let’s see those hooves,” Pegleg said, and pulled the blanket back. My feet were huge with cloth bandages. Pegleg prodded at the bandages with the tip of his knife. Ferris stood in the corner, an arm behind the back of his neck, inhaling deeply as the tip of the knife touched the bandages. Pegleg turned and looked at him.
“You got something to say?”
“If I did I’d say it,” Ferris said. Then, to me, “I’d have another drink, Wyeth. I think Peggy’s set to go to work.”
“I ain’t set to do anything ’cept see how the doc’s maimed him,” Pegleg said. “Shame old Peggy wasn’t here to help you out.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Ferris said. “Still a chance to hobble him.”
“Quiet,” Pegleg said.
Pegleg knelt at my feet and I felt him snip the tied end of the bandage with his knife. Very carefully he unwound the dressings, which came away white and then yellowed and red and stiff. I winced at the tearing sound as the last strands pulled away.
“Go on, Branch. Offer him a drink,” Pegleg said without looking up.
“No danger of him not taking it,” Branch said, and the bottle was held out to me again. This time I took a full swallow. The bottle was taken away.
Pegleg peered at my bluish, bruised, swollen feet.
“Fine stitching,” Pegleg said. “You sure old Meeks did this? I’d think he’d be talking too much to manage it. I believe you’ll walk again.”
“Don’t know how you walked at all,” Ferris said.
“I was thinking of the alehouse with its bottles.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Branch said.
Pegleg wound the bandages back around my feet. When he was finished Branch produced another bottle from the folds in his jacket.
“Go on. Have a swaller, Wyeth. You deserve it.”
They stayed for an hour and by the time they were ready to go I was reeling. After they walked out Ferris lingered.
“I saw you groping the widow’s paws when we were dragged in,” he said. “Damn fine maneuvering, given the circumstance. I’d keep it up.”
I put the back of my hand to my forehead. “I see the darkness closing in.”
“I believe that’ll do,” he said. “My apologies for annoying you about her before we hunted. I could see it rankled.”
It seemed like three weeks had passed since that conversation. I’d forgotten it.
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“You were right, Ferris. I waste time on hesitation and trivialities and mewling about my position in society. I need to make my intentions clear and be done with it.”
“Continue the assault. And whether you succeed or fail, recover quickly. I look forward to our hunt this spring.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
Ferris wished me luck, then departed, and I tried to get up and see them on the road but a stabbing pain shot through my feet and went all the way to my head. I held very still until the pain subsided to a dull ache. The whiskey glowed inside, fatigue crept up on me bit by bit, and I slept, dreaming of those long hours when we trudged through the icy darkness, my mind replaying the memory of that march, not, I think, puzzling over the event so much as educating myself. I had pushed myself to the edge of what was possible for me and my mind was teaching itself the limits of my body’s endurance.
When I woke again it was dusk and there was a wicker basket on a chair near my head. I heard a rustle somewhere in the room and sat up.
“Hello,” I said.
There was no answer. A figure rose from the gloom.
“It’s me,” I heard someone say.
I realized it was Alene. She was at the door. She was leaving.
“Where are you going?” I said. “I’ve slept all day. Stay.”
She lingered in the doorway. I was struggling to sit up.
“Please, stay,” I said.
She hesitated, then came over to the bed and placed the basket on the bedcover and helped me sit. There was a blue-and-white checkered covering on the basket. I pulled the corner aside and saw the end of a loaf of bread. I raised my hand to touch it. It was still warm.
“Smitts gave me the flour,” she said.
“That was generous,” I said.
She sat in a bedside chair and arranged the checkered cloth, and as she did, I placed my hand on top of hers.
“Thank you for coming. And thank you for the sustenance.”
Into the Savage Country Page 9