Charley would sit by a camphre and suck at his pipe and roll his pale eyes from face to face; and say, “There that and this here wind comes on him it falls it kills him. When close to it he run and came. When fast he went he was under it fast when this wind it come crashed was he.” That, he said, was word-by-word translation of Crow talk. He would knock his pipe out, refill it, and say, “Now over there ten sleeps some bad ones there are. Sleep they do not. Hate you they do kill you they will skelp you ghosts like these warriors are slinkin no sound to make none there their knifes they take out all aroun your neck off they chop ole woman runnin she comes but save you she cannot her head chopped off it will be.”
“Doan they never stop fer a breath?”
“They never seem to. They talk like children talk. And let me tell you, don’t never call them Crows. They think you call them that because the Crows they steal from bird nests and they say they never steal not ever never.”
“They’re doggone 1iars,” someone said.
“The Apsahrokee, that’s what they are. The Sparrowhawk people.”
From Charley and others Sam had picked up a few words and phrases. Xatsi-sa, which he pronounced Zat-see-saw, meant, “Do not move.” Di-wap-e-wima-tsiky, which he rendered as Di-wappi-wimmi-tesicky, meant, “I will kill you.” Riding along, he recalled that phrase and strove to master it and fix it in mind. But what he needed was words of insult and contumely, that would freeze their marrow and glaze their blood. He now rememered Bi-i-kya-waku, which meant, “I will look out for me”; and Dara-ke-da-raxta?—“Don’t you know your own child?” Then there came from one of Charley’s garrulous evenings K-ari-c, meaning, “Old women.” Charley had called it Ka-ree-cee, or something like that. He would hurl it at them. He would crush the bones in their necks, drive his knife into their livers, and kick them so hard in their spines that their heads would fall backwards and across their rumps. If only he could call them sick cowardly old women crawling in the sagebrush!
The redmen had a child’s fondness for insulting words. Sam had heard the story of Jess Danvers who, with his five or six free trappers, was crossing the plains from one river to the next when suddenly, with no warning at all, his party was surrounded by Sioux warriors crawling toward them sagebrush by sagebrush. The Indians were less than two hundred yards from Jess when a chief stood up and, making a sign of peace, approached Jess and his men. As he drew near he made more signs of peace and told Danvers that he and his men, the long-knives, had been burning the wood off Sioux land and killing their game and eating their grass. The old rascal, stuffed full of guile, said he knew that Jess had come to pay for these things—with his horses, weapons, tobacco—with everything that he and his men had. He was Chief Fierce Bear, whose tongue was short but whose lance was long; he preferred to speak with his weapons rather than jabber like a woman. With hostile gestures he again said that the long-knives had robbed his people blind and would now pay with their horses, weapons, tobacco, everything they had. If they were not paid at once his braves would get blood in their eyes and he’d not be able to control them. In that case they would take not only the horses, weapons, tobacco, and all the clothing but they would take their scalps and possibly their lives.
By this time Danvers was so choked with rage that he could barely speak. He said, in signs and words, and with furious gestures, that his heart was big and the hearts of his men were big, but not toward those who threatened while pretending to be friends. If they were to give their horses and weapons it would be to brave men, and not to a band of cowardly limping bent-over squaws, crawling on their bellies like snakes in the sagebrush. He and his men were not French engagés, or toothless old women eating bugs, or sick dogs and coyotes, but fearless warriors with rifles that never missed fire and knives that were always driven straight through the heart. The creatures yonder in the sagebrush, crawling on their bellies and with sand in their eyes, looked to him like sick old women hunting les bois de vache. Waugh!
Chief Fierce Bear then took his turn at insults. He said that Danvers and his men had killed so much of the game, cropped so much of the forage, and burned so much of the wood on Sioux land that the children were so hungry and feeble they could not stand; the women shook with moans and laments all day; and not five horses in the whole nation could rise to their feet. He and his warriors had loved peace; they had never killed a man; but if he and his braves were to be treated as if they were sick coyotes, and if they were to be robbed, it would be by brave fighters and not by coughing and sneezing palefaces. He and the men with him were the bravest on earth; they had only scorn for long rifles and knives in the hands of womanish creatures who had turned pale the first time they faced a foe and had never got their color back. He would say again, and for the last time, that the blood in his men was hot and their honor was crying for vengeance. The horses, weapons, tobacco, all these were to be delivered at once.
According to the tale told by trappers, Danvers and the chief swapped insults for an hour or more, and then, backing off, each returned to his men. The battle commenced at once. Danvers was shot through the lungs and suffered so from hemmorhage that he could only stagger around, unable to use his weapons or to speak, able only to stand helpless while he exploded torrents of blood from his mouth and nostrils. Only one whiteman escaped to tell the story.
Sam’s mind again wandered to Windy Bill and Bridger and Charley and their tales; and suddenly out of campfire and tobacco smoke and evening odors there came as sharp and clear as his mother’s farewell these words:
Old woman’s man her children their ghosts there in the blackest night they are in the sagebrush they are crying.
Those words, known to every free trapper in the mountains, had surely been sent down by the Almighty, for the woman on the Musselshell. Sam looked north across Crow land. How was she now? After he had taken a few scalps he would go up to see.
12
BY THE TIME he reached the middle fork of Powder River Sam had become as wary as an Indian. Just ahead were the southern foothills of the Bighorns. He was undecided whether to swing west and go down the Bighorn Valley or straight north between the Bighorns and Powder River, and on to Tongue River, which had its source in the Bighorn Mountains. After hiding his beasts in a thicket and making a tireless camp he considered the matter. What he wanted to know was where most of the Crows were at this time of year. Too lazy, or maybe too restless, to cultivate the soil, they were a wandering people, always on the move. While eating stale jerked meat and thinking, Sam heard the warbling aria of a purple finch. Lord, hearing bird song put hot grief all through his blood and bones; how many times on the long journey south had they stood together, his arms to her shoulders, while listening to this singer, or the robin, the vireo, the vesper sparrow, the lark?
Taking his mind off song and putting it on vengeance, he wished his first triumph might be the death of a chief. That would be a coup to raise the hair of the nation. He had heard that one of their boldest younger chiefs was River of Winds, whose medicine bundle was the weasel, the ferocious killer of the gentle prairie dogs. He had an image of the Crow people, the whole tive or six thousand of them, shaking in a national convulsion as they filled the sky with their blood-chilling mourning-howl. It was the women who shrilled the loudest; their infernal noise was so wild and savage that they turned a whiteman’s blood to water. When with their hideous incantations they tried to terrify the evil spirits they silenced even the wolf. Sam had once seen a large village in which was a mortally wounded warrior: instead of allowing the poor devil in his agony to lie on the fur side of a robe and die in such peace as he could find the women had dragged him all over the place, while blood flowed from a dozen wounds and dogs lapped it up; while with beating of drums and pounding of kettles and blowing on reeds, and flinging piercing yells and shrieks at the sky, they made his last hour on earth a perfect nightmare. They were frightening the evil spirits away. Sam had no doubt that they had;. if the squaws were to enter hell all the creatures there wou
ld flee before them.
This evening as on every evening since leaving the Laramie post he examined his weapons. On stone and soft leather he had honed his knives until they could mow the hair on his arms. His revolvers and rifle were oiled, loaded, and in perfect order. His wiping stick, used to force the ball down the rifle barrel, was of tough hickory and the best he had ever seen. He didn’t intend to use his rifle in close lighting, or his handguns either. In a close light you couldn’t shoot fast enough or straight enough. Jim Bowie had taught them all that with a knife you could lay open three assassins before you could shoot one. A man’s heels, knees, lists, and elbows were faster and more deadly than a gun in close quarters. With a blow of his heel driven by powerful leg muscles Sam could break a man’s spine. With his two large hands on a throat he could in an instant so completely shatter the neck that the head would fall over toward the backbone. He felt able to take care of himself in a close fight with as many as four or five redmen, if he had the advantage of surprise; but he thought it might be smart to call on Powder River Charley. He didn’t like Charley the way he liked most of the mountain men; he felt that this tall, sly, awkward-moving trapper had been born with larceny and murder in his heart. Charley seemed always to be boiling for a fight, as though his honor had just been impeached or his mother insulted. Three or four of the trappers had pale-blue eyes that looked half popped out but none had such bulging ferocious eyes as Charley. The moment you met his gaze there was a change in his eyes; they seemed to swell and to move a little out of their caves and to fill to overflowing with the lightnings of challenge. But Charley might know which Crow warriors had gone south to the Little Snake.
He had his own private hideaway back in the Bighorns, with a sheltered foothills meadow that gave forage to his beasts; there were excellent trapping streams all around him. He was in Crow country—he was right in the middle of it—but he was their friend; he had had two or three Crow wives, though still a youngish man. Charley had known such white Crow chiefs as Rose and Beckwourth, and he was a friend of John Smith, one of the most eccentric of the mountain men. It was said that Charley and John used to forgather on a Sunday to sing pious songs and make reverent gestures toward the Father, though Windy Bill said they were the most sanctimonious pair of hypocrites and the meanest varmints and the most inexplicable mixture of caution and foolhardiness, of good will and venomous hostility, to be found in the mountains. It was said that Smith had lived for a while with the Blackfeet, then with the Sioux, then with the Cheyennes, taking wives in all three tribes. It was also said that he could turn the air to a sulphur blue cursing in English, Spanish, and four Indian languages. Sam had never seen the man.
While thinking about Charley there came to Sam the one tale of the many told about him that he liked best. Riding into camp one evening leading a packmule, Charley had wanted to unpack the beast close to the fire; but when he pulled on the leather rope to bring the mule forward, the mule, most stubborn of all critters, laid his ears back and sank toward the earth at his rear end. Charley had then wrapped his end of the rope twice around his waist, and like a horse in harness he had tried to surge forward and take the mule with him; but the mule, if he moved at all, moved backwards, with his rump drawing closer to the earth. Charley by this time was getting up the insane fury for which he was famous. Dashing back to the sulking mule, whose eyes by this time had turned yellow with hate and whose ears had been laid out flat, Charley seized an ear and sank his teethin it; and then with wild howls of rage in both English and Crow he grabbed the nostrils with thumb and fingers and tried to tear the nose off. With a moccasined foot he delivered a blow at the beast’s ribs, and so wrenched his big toe that he screamed with pain and fury; and then smote the mule’s ribs with both fists. By this time the beast had sunk to his hind end and was sitting like a creature determined to sit forever. Charley ran back ten paces, swung, rushed at the mule, and with all his might heaved himself against it, trying to knock it over. By this time several men were shouting encouragement to Charley, who, with a badly sprained toe, bruised hands, a slobbering mouth, and bulging eyes wild with bloodshot, was looking desperately but blindly round him, as though for a crane or derrick. He next worked at right angles to the beast, both right and left; surging forward with the rope, he would yank the mule’s head around and try to topple him over; and then run in the other direction and try to spill him that way. But the mule by this time had his rump flat on the ground and his front feetspread. If Charley had left him alone he probably would have sat there for hours.
After all his furious and futile effort Charley was so possessed by insane rage that he turned his eyes, bloodshot and filled with l sweat, on his rifle. Seizing it, he ran cursing to the beast, thrust the muzzle against the skull, and pulled the trigger. The forelegs collapsed; the mule then rested on its belly, with its big bony head laid out on the earth.
About noon Sam slipped into Charley’s hideout. Charley, like all mountain men who spent a part of their time hiding and watching for the enemy, had heard Sam coming and was waiting for him, concealed, left elbow on left knee, rifle cocked and aimed at the sound. Sam was only fifty feet from him when Charley stepped forth. Then in his awkward loose-limbed shuffling gait he came forward, his eyes bugged out with suspicion and welcome, his tongue saying, “Wall now, if it ain’t you. I thought mebbe you was one of them Whigs and danged if I can stand a Whig. I heerd you got rubbed out down on Santy Fe.”
The words revealed to Sam a part of what he wanted to know. He had never been down on the Santa Fe and Charley had no reason to believe that he had. According to Sam’s reasoning, the words said that Charley knew that Sam had been far south and that this past winter he had possibly been killed. Who could have told him that, except the Crows?
“Who said I was on the Santy Fe?”
“I don’t rightly recollect,” Charley said. “Wa1l, doggone your buckskin, git down, git down, and smoke a peace pipe.”
A woman had come forward from her hiding place in the trees, a Crow, with narrow forehead, high cheekbones, eyes too close together, heavy lips and chin. She looked young but overfat, unclean, and stupid.
“Where ya off to?” asked Charley, looking up at Sam, who still sat on his horse. “And cuss my forked tongue, ain’t this Mick Boone’s bay?”
“You might be right,” Sam said.
“I heerd Mick loves this horse moren himself.”
“Just borrowed it,” Sam said. He thought it best to force Charley to do most of the talking. Dismounting, he put his rifle in its buckskin harness, led the bay and packhorses over to trees and hitched them, and turned, his pipe and tobacco in his hands. “All right, let’s have the pipe of peace.”
Charley was no fool. His intuitions were quick and sharp; Sensing the double meaning in Sam’s words, he must have decided to lay his cards on the table, for he now said: “Heerd ya had a woman. Where is she?”
Sam was tamping his pipe. He now met Charley’s pale-blue gaze and the two men looked into the eyes of one another a long moment. “Who told you?” Sam said.
“Don’t recollect that neither. Mighta been Bill, mighta been Hank.”
Sam looked up at the squaw, who was ready with a live ember. Both men sucked flame into their pipes and smoke into their lungs; blew streams of smoke out through nostrils and between lips; looked again into one another’s eyes; and pressed the burning tobacco down in the bowls. Deciding that it was useless to fence with this sly treacherous man and not much caring whether he learned a lot or a little, Sam said: “Dead. The Crows killed her. ” In that moment Sam looked at Charley’s eyes but Charley was suddenly busy with his pipe.
Then for an instant he met Sam’s gaze and said, “Crows? Ya mean the Sparrowhawks? I find that onreasonable, Sam.” After half a minute while both men smoked, Charley said: “Who tole you?”
“Moccasins.”
During the five minutes they had been sitting by the fire, smoking and sparring, Sam had observed the position of Charley’s weapo
ns and of his squaw. At his waist Charley had a revolver and a knife; his rifle was about eight feet behind him, leaning against camp trappings; and a wood hatchet lay within reach of his right hand. On sitting, Sam had not loosened his knife in its sheath: if he had to fight he did not intend to use a knife. He had been aware from the first that he might have to fight, for it was well-known over the whole Crow country that Charley was a friend of the Crows and an unpredictable man. He could blow hot and turn murderous in an instant.
The squaw stood at Charley’s right and a little back. Her right foot was only eighteen inches from the hatchet.
“It wasn’t only my wife,” Sam said. “My unborn son too.”
Charley again tinkered with his pipe. It was all his sense of the proper could bear to hear a whiteman call a red Injun his wife. But the son! Half-breed children were, for him, a species of animal only slightly above the greaser. With a thin smile in his beard that was close to a smirk Charley said, “Jist how on earth could ya tell it was a son?”
“The pelvic bones,” Sam said. He had been keeping his eye on the squaw. He knew that she had never taken her black gaze off him, and he wondered if she had a knife hidden in her leather clothing. Charley was pulling at his pipe and looking at Sam. Sam decided that he might as well say what he had come to say.
“I figgered you might know who it was,” he said.
“Wall now,” said Charley, taking the pipe from his yellow teeth. “Doggone it, Sam, how would I know? It was the Rapahoes, if ya ask me.”
Mountain Man - Vardis Fisher Page 15