Sam had a lively admiration for the big gray wolf. He thought it the most intelligent of all the wild beasts—in tracking, in dodging enemies, including traps, and in loyalty to his own kind. He knew there were stories of wolves that devoured one another when half dead with hunger, but no mountain man had any proof of it. The human animal would eat his own kind, but not the wolf. On the contrary, a wolf family would fight to the death to protect one another, and that was more than most human families would do. No other beast, and only a few of the birds, would do that. He liked the clean deadly way in which they fought. Around campfires mountain men raised the question, Which of the beasts in the Rocky Mountains was king? Now and then one argued that the grizzly was, and he was, beast for beast; but twice now Sam had seen wolves put a grizzly on the run.
He knew all the wolf calls. Some men said there were five, some, six. Sam could identify only five. There was the high-keyed rasping whine the parents made when warning or commanding their pups; the hunting call, a loud deep-throated howl in two or more keys, followed by sharp barking; the shrill eager yelping when in pursuit of prey; the announcement that the prey had been brought down, a deep growl exploding up the victorious throat; and the mating cry in midwinter, which was the chilling howlin the frozen white nights.
As far as Sam could figure it out, the Almighty had made the world only for the brave and the strong, both male and female; and though Bill Williams said a woman’s breast was a hard rock on which he could find no trail, and though some of the mountain men agreed with him, Sam thought the female of both man and beast had her special virtues. He liked best of all the way some of them would fight to the death for their children—and what female, he wondered, had ever fought more magnificently than the mother on the Musselshell? Not all mothers would fight, or even most of them. The buffalo cow, the big strong lubber, would beller her head off and bug her eyes out, or make short charges at the wolves determined to bring her baby down. She would fall behind with her calf and then have to make the choice of leaving it or going with the herd. She always went with the herd. So did the elk mother, and so, Sam had heard, did the caribou mother. It was only a few of the flesh-eating mothers that really fought for their young.
The bitch wolf would fight till she died. Or the Wolverine, the bobcat, the badger, the weasel, the bear, the cougar, and many more. These were all natural fighters. But the most remarkable courage, for Sam, was shown by some of the feathered mothers, who actually had nothing to fight with. He had seen a grouse mother fly into the face of a wolf and try to strike it down with her wings; and in the next moment he had seen that mother torn into pieces, while her downy little ones scattered to the undergrowth. He had seen the avocet spread her wings, open her absurdly long bill, and rush on her long spindly legs at the enemy, only to die as suddenly as the grouse mother. He had seen a horned lark with a leg and a wing broken rush from her nest at an enemy, half walking and rolling and fluttering on the good leg and the good wing. What the poor crippled creature, little more than a handful of feathers and song, had thought she could do against a coyote Sam could not imagine; or why the Creator had put such courage in creatures that had nothing to fight with. God had built into the osprey hawk knowledge of how to carry a fish in flight, so there would be the least possible wind resistance; into the shrike mother the knowledge of how to spread her wings in hot weather, to protect the babies in her nest; and into the redtailed hawk the sense of how to execute, in mid-air, a deft maneuver when the falcon came down to strike—the redtail suddenly turned over on its back and presented its talons. But he had not built into the meadow lark, one of his superlative musicians, the sense not to build its nest on the ground, where every coyote, bobcat, weasel, and wolverine could easily find it.
Reading nature, for Sam, was like reading the Bible; in both, the will of the Creator was plain. Or so anyway it had seemed to him since coming west; his experiences had run the gamut from the tenderest to the most savage emotions. One day he had looked down from a ledge on three baby redtails in a nest with a dead squirrel: one baby hawk, no larger than his brothers but more aggressive, was so determined to have all the squirrel that when the other two strove for a part of it he struck them fiercely with talons and beak, and then, seizing one by the tail, upended him and pushed him over the rim of the nest and down. One morning he had lain in daylight dusk in a kind of tent he had made and watched the marvelous flight of two swallows flashing back and forth just above him, as they looked over his interior to see if it was suitable for a nest; and another time he had observed the amazing mating dance of the sage cock. The birds had returned to their strutting grounds, to which they came year after year; and while the plainly dressed hens looked for insects and seemed not to care at all for wooing, the handsome males showed themselves off in dance steps. A cock would take six or eight quick steps and half turn, his wings drooping, his spiked tail spread to its fullest width, his proud head high and back, his chest pulled full of arrogance. He looked as if he were showing off the pure snowy whiteness of the feathers around his neck. As he danced, repeating his steps and half turn, feathers parted and small bare areas of his body became visible, looking like gray leather; and his air sacs, for all the world like two eggs nesting in white down, alternately filled and collapsed. As the air sacs collapsed he uttered a kind of gobbling or plopping sound and raised his wings, holding them high an instant and letting them fall. This part of his act he usually repeated three times, and then danced again. His gutturals were in a series of three and at the end of the third the cock voiced a high flutelike sound that carried to the farthest hen in the area. When thirty or forty cocks were dancing and strutting the mountain men thought it one of the doggonedest spectacles they had ever seen. But whether it was the loon treading with both feet and wing tips at high speed across the waters and uttering his insane yell, or the hummingbird poised on wings that moved too fast for the human eye, while with her long bill she thrust deep into the throat of her baby and pumped food into its stomach, or meadow lark or purple finch or bluebird or wood thrush pouring upon the golden air their liquid notes, or the water ouzel diving twenty feet to stroll along the bottom of a pool, or the snipe’s tail feathers making fantastic music at dusk, or the harsh symphony from the music boxes of a hundred frogs and toads, it was all for Sam a part of a divine plan and he loved it all. What made him most unhappy were the hours he had to give to sleep, in a life that was short at best. He thought that possibly the Creator had given sleep to His creatures so that they would awaken with the eyes of morning and a fresh discovery of the world.
Sam was thinking these thoughts as he rode down the Musselshell and came close to Kate’s shack. He was in a more sentimental mood than was usual for him—deep gone in mush and molasses, Bill might have said if he could have looked into Sam’s soul; for Sam was thinking of the bones in the cairn and his arms were filled with flowers. His first sight of the woman was halfway up the hill with a pail of water; he sat and watched her around her plants and flowers, and his thoughts went out to all the wild mothers he knew.
“Hello, Kate,” he said after riding up to her yard. He had hoped that her name would make her look at him but she gave no heed at all. She looked thinner, she looked older. There was a lot of white in her hair now and deep seams all over her face. He thought she was not yet forty but she looked eighty. Instead of moccasins—he and other men had brought her a dozen pairs—she still wore her tattered old shoes, bound to her feet with leather strings. Her garments were cotton rags covered with patches. But her sage looked nice and her flowers looked eager and strong.
He wondered if she would ride his packhorse and go with him down the river to meet a steamboat, but he knew she would not. When her pail was empty she went back down the hill and the moment she was out of sight Sam looked into the cabin. Nothing had changed. The bed was still just inside the door, and over by the north wall were a few things including a pile of skins. He saw no rifle or axe or knife. She seemed not to know that there were
enemies in the world, perhaps because she had sunk so deep into loneliness and sorrow, or had entered so fully into heaven. The time would come, he supposed, when she would forget to eat, or to wrap herself against the cold.
By the river he ate a dry lunch and washed it down with river water. On his way in he had seen a few buffalo and now kallated that he ought to get one and jerk a pile of beef. He guessed he ought to gather a bushel of berries and dry them for her, for the time was again late August and the serviceberries were ripe. Before coming here he had picked up his pelts at Bill’s spot and had gone to Bridger’s to buy some things, chiefly on credit. It took a lot of pelts, with sugar a dollar a pound, coffee a dollar and a quarter, blue cloth four dollars a yard, and rum twelve dollars a gallon. He had found a five-gallon keg of rum by the Trail, cached by Mormons or other immigrants; he hoped that Mormons had left it, for they were not supposed to drink rum, or coffee, or tea. Though washing soap was a dollar and a half a pound he had brought a pound to Kate. For his father-in-law he had a copper kettle, and for his sister-in-law he had blue cloth and vermilion and assorted beads.
The next day he gathered berries and spread them on a robe in the sun to dry. He shot a young buffalo and brought it to the river bottom. He then went up the hill and over to the cairn; he had removed a stone and thrust his armful of flowers back over the bones, and now, reaching in, he clasped the skull of his wife and looked at Kate. She was watering her tlowers. “My mother raises flowers,” he said, wishing he could make her talk. “Yours are just as nice.” He meant the Indian paintbrush, pentstemon, and aster. Patting the skull and pushing flowers down on it, he drew his arm out and walked over to Kate. Would she come down to the river and have supper with him’? Did she want to learn how to jerk flesh? Had she written a letter to her people that he could send out for her?
She took her pail and turned down the path and Sam followed her. He watched her at the river dip the pail full and turn back, and he followed her halfway up the hill. Then he turned to the task of drying the meat. From the loin he put aside steaks for his supper and breakfast, and sliced the flesh of hams and shoulders. The slices he laid in piles and cut down through the piles; jerky should be not more than two or three inches wide, and from four to six inches long. Green saplings above a fire he covered with slices of flesh, and set up a second rack, and a third. In a smaller fire he laid a part of his steaks and basted them with hot fat. Pore ole critter, she was nothing much but hide and bones, Could he get her to eat a steak and a hot biscuit? He would have given a year of his life to bring a smile to her face; he would have trembled with joy if he could have made her talk. His mouth watered, his eyes smarted in the smoke of four fires, his body clothed in leather itched in the heat. But there was a feast to look forward to, and lo, what heaven it would be if Lotus were here!
The afternoon waned, the sun sank, and it was dusk, and down the hill came a dreadful sound. Sam thought at first that he heard a wolf scream; then, that it was the cry of a buffalo or elk calf under wolf teeth. But no, God no, it was the woman!
He couldn’t see her but he could hear her unearthly blood-chilling lament, and he had a picture of her, there by the graves, bowed, snarls of gray hair falling over her face. Knocking the fires down so that the meat would not burn, Sam took his rifle and ran up the hill. Yes, there she was, as he had imagined her, bowing low and rising—sinking in what seemed to be a long shudder, and rising with gasping sobs. In all his life he had never heard sounds of such utter sadness and loss. They made him feel weak and furious and helpless. After running back down the hill to take care of the meat he stood among the fires and looked back and forth at drying racks and listened. He could not put away the thought that it was his presence that had touched her off to this bitter lament out of grief and fear. My God, did she think he was an Indian? He thought of that quiet and delightful evening when he had played for her and they had sung together, but now her voice was wild and piercing and full of such horrors as only a heart-stricken mother could feel. He looked west, where the Blackfeet lurked, and south, where the Crows waited for him.
Removing the layers of meat and covering the racks with raw flesh, he laid a choice steak on a large cottonwood chip and went up the hill. The woman was still bowing and rising. Kneeling before her, Sam said he had brought her a fine hot steak, knowing that it would do no good to say anything; he held the hot meat so that its aroma would rise to her nostrils. Would she look at it, please? Would she take at least one bite? He felt an impulse to shake the hell out of her but it passed in an instant. He stood up, looking round him and trying to think of something to do. There seemed to be only the presence of death here; the silent cairn was full of it, the shack, and this woman. He bent over and said in her ear, quietly, “I also have sorrow, Mrs. Bowden. My wife and child, the Indians killed them too; and they are there, their bones, in that pile of rocks. But no matter what our grief we have to go on living.” He straightened and looked at the sky, wondering what the Father thought of a woman like Kate. Sam then faced her, laid the chip and steak down, took her arms away from her face, set the steak on her lap, and returned her arms. It was like moving the arms of a dead person who had not yet turned rigid.
He went back to the fires and tried to eat but his appetite was no good. Up the hill he could hear the woman crying. The odor of hot steak was rising to her nostrils and she was crying, for she did not know what hot steak was and she was afraid of what she did not know. A man had to listen to a lament like that, as he had to listen if his mother spoke, or the Almighty. It was one of the deep and eternal things. Sam filled his pipe and sat, rifle across his lap, listening and thinking. He had aroused some terrible fear in her; she knew he was with her, yet did not know, and her lament was a prayer to God to send him away. The poor lonely thing! he thought, puhing and thinking.
After he had jerked all the beef and put the meat in buckskin bags, and put out the fires and looked after his horses, he sat again and smoked. Then he took his rifle and harp and went up the hill, and came in behind the hummock where he had lain and played. He began softly, with the Ave Maria; and then played back and forth, from one tender thing to another, trying to make the music sound as if it were in heaven or came from there; and he was overjoyed when suddenly he heard her singing. How beautiful it was! For his own sake and for the bones in the cairn he played a few things that he had played for Lotus, and sung for her; and he played old hymns and Corelli and Schubert, softly, so that the music reached her and faded, and reached her again, as though the Creator were closing windows and putting some of the musicians to bed. After two hours he figured that if the music faded away gradually she would feel all right about it.
At midnight she fell silent. At daylight Sam was awake and the first sound he heard was her footfalls on the path. He watched her go to the river and return. The heavy pail bent her over, and she looked very frail and thin and old. Carrying water to flowers that bloomed above graves was, he supposed, what people called ritual. It seemed to be symbolic. It seemed to be deeper than the conscious mind. When she came again Sam rolled out, and with his rifle, and a hundred pounds of jerked flesh over his shoulder, he went up the hill while she was at the river; and the first thing he looked for was the steak. It was there, with the appearance of something that had spilled from her lap when she stood up. He turned and watched her come up the hill, bent forward, her shoulders looking pulled out of joint. Her face seemed bloodless and drawn, as from famine, fatigue, and want to sleep.
He had set the meat inside her cabin by the bed, where she could not fail to find it. He remained in this area until October, when the first snow fell. He put fresh stakes under the white skulls with their fringe of hair; gathered more wild fruit; and brought deer from the hills. With deer flesh and berries he made pemmican for her. With her old shovel he put three inches of earth on the cabin’s roof, and banked earth all the way around it, to the top of the first log. He brought river mud and used it for mortar to fill the cracks. When he could think
of nothing more to do he packed his horse and saddled the bay, but even then stood, undecided, looking up the hill. There she was, a bent old mother in ragged shoes and tatters, carrying water to flowers withered by frosts and needing no water now. Not sure that he would ever see her again, who had become a precious part of his life, he went up the hill, leading his beasts, for a goodbye look at these familiar things. Framing her sad face with his two big hands, he kissed her forehead and her gray hair.
“Goodbye,” he said. “I’ll see you before long.”
He was to see her again a lot sooner than he expected to.
22
AT THE BIG bend of the Musselshell he took from a cache the keg of rum, the kettle, and a few other things, and then sat on the bay and looked west and south, wondering if he should take the safer way over the Teton Pass or the more dangerous way by Three Forks. Storm determined it. It was snowing this morning, and all the signs said it would be an early and a long hard winter. If he went by the pass it would take twice as long and he might find himself snowbound up against the Tetons or the southern Bitterroots. By far the easier route was by Three Forks, where John Colter had made his incredible run to freedom; where the Indian girl who went west with Lewis and Clark had been captured as a child; and where beaver were thickest in all the Western land. It was there also that more than one trapper had fallen under the arrows or bullets of the Blackfeet.
It was a foolhardy decision but mountain men were foolhardy men.
For a hundred and fifty miles, with snow falling on him most of the way, he went up the river, and then followed a creek through a mountain pass. He was leaving a trail that a blind Indian could follow. Straight ahead now was the Missouri; on coming to it he went up it to the Three Forks, the junction of the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson rivers. He knew this area fairly well. Lewis and Clark had gone up the Jefferson River, which came down from the west, but Sam planned to go southwest and cut across to a group of hot springs in dense forest. The snow was almost a foot deep now and still falling, but he had seen no tracks of redmen, only of wild beasts, and he had no sense of danger. Just the same he hastened out of the Three Forks area, eager to lose his path in forested mountains. He might have made it if pity had not overthrown prudence. He had gone up the Beaverhead, past a mountainous mass on his left, and hot springs that would be known as the Potosi, and had then ridden straight west to a group of hot springs deep in magnificent forest, when suddenly he came in view of a
Mountain Man - Vardis Fisher Page 23