Charbonneau

by Win Blevins

  “What the hail?” Ike yelled.

  Ole snapped to. Goddamn: Injuns riding down on them hard—an old man waving a lance in front and two more right behind, all of them screeching. Ole looked quick at Ike and Frank, who were doing nothing on their skittish horses but looking edgy. That sight struck sheer panic through Ole. He had to do something. He lifted his cap-and-ball rifle off the seat, pointed it toward the old men, and jerked the trigger. The old man’s horse stumbled, and he pitched to the ground.

  Oh shit, Ike thought, now it’s a fight. Two of the Injuns pulled up, but another came around them yelling and waving one hand. Ike leveled on the redskin, and noticed only as he pulled that it was a girl. She jerked backwards. Dee could shoot and hunt with anybody.

  Bazel lifted Mountain Ram to his horse; the old man’s leg was bent funny. Spotted Deer helped Little Bear get Running Stream onto his pony; she was shot in the stomach. Big Belly fired once at the whites to cover the rescues—it was the only rifle the party had. He heard a ball whiz by him, and whooped when he realized it had missed. They turned their backs to ride away, pulling the travois, which slowed them down, but the whites didn’t shoot any more.

  “Goddamn it, you bastard,” Frank yelled at Ole, “that warn’t no war party. You wanna get us all killed?”

  “Ware was he wen he had to shoot?” Ole yelled back, pointing at Rube. With Eliza screaming and clinging to him, Rube hadn’t even managed to get his gun from behind him.

  A few minutes later Ole heard gunfire somewhere off to the north. He was already driving the oxen in a cold fury; he drove them harder.

  Baptiste and Jim made a long cut across where the trail should have been, but they didn’t find it. They had angled north to catch up with the band. Finally, they started backtracking toward where they had last seen the others. The horses were loaded with skins full of fresh meat.

  The sounds of wails came to Baptiste’s ears across the scorched plains, faint and mournful, like the cries of doves. He sucked in his breath deeply as he let himself know what they were, and then gave Pilgrim a kick. Jim was already several strides ahead of him.

  All he got from Little Bear’s babble was Mountain Ram and Running Stream, Mountain Ram and Running Stream. She was stretched out on a deerskin in the shade of one bank of the wash. Her knees were up and her legs spread wide. Blood had been scraped away from the dust between her legs, and scraps of human tissue were here and there. A long shudder started and convulsed his body. He cut it off. The bone-chill stayed.

  He slipped one hand behind her head, and she opened her eyes. They were glazed, and he was not sure whether she recognized him. She looked old, incredibly old and haggard.

  Sacajawea pointed, and he saw the wound. It was on the right side just below the ribs. No digging for it, no cauterizing, nothing to do. He crossed his legs and sat down, her head still cradled in his hand. She looked like she might be asleep.

  “John, let’s go. They got to be the stupidest niggurs in the mountains, and murderin’ bastards asides.”

  Baptiste cut him off with one hand. “Maybe later,” he said. Jim looked at him hard, then strode off toward his horse. Baptiste guessed that later the revenge would be over.

  “You must not,” declared Bazel. “You must not. It was our mistake. A misunderstanding. Stupidity.”

  “That kind of stupidity can get a man killed,” Jim said. “It damn well oughta get a man killed.” Big Belly, who had already promised to get the man who did it, was mounting up.

  “Face-Always-Black,” called Little Bear, “let me go with you.”

  “No,” Bazel said. “You may not go.”

  “He’s old enough to larn,” Jim told Bazel.

  “My son stays here. Mountain Ram would say you all stay here. Washakie would say the same.”

  “Mountain Ram is a fevered old man with a broken leg. Washakie is a fool. So long, Bazel.”

  They walked their horses slowly, since they would wait until dark to do the job.

  Hy-ee-ah!

  Hy-ee-ah!

  I am a made-to-die.

  Today is a good day to die.

  Hy-ee-ah!

  I am a made-to-die.

  Today is a good day to die.

  Jim shook his head. Big Belly had already told him that nothing could hurt him today. His magic had turned the ball fired at him by the gray-hatted Frenchman, and today it would turn all that might do harm. But he kept singing the damn song talking about dying. In Jim’s experience, lead had a way of cutting straight through magical words. He’d damn well shut Big Belly up before they got close.

  “You sure you know what ones done the shooting?”

  Big Belly nodded emphatically.

  Hy-ee-ah!

  Today I take many scalps.

  Jim didn’t know what this crap about scalping was. He’d already told the crittur that they’d ease up in the dark, pick out the two who done the shootin’, kill ’em, and clear out before all the son of a bitches got to chasing.

  They sat perfectly still in the sagebrush. They had waited twenty minutes, and Jim was willing to wait however long it took to get the best chance. He wanted them all sitting down around that pitiful little fire they were trying to make out of sagebrush. The men and boys kept wandering into the dark to get something more to burn, but it didn’t look like they would cross the little wash between them and Jim and Big Belly.

  The damned Snake kept mouthing his prayers and fingering his piece of onyx and his antler tip. He wasn’t making any sound, but Jim was sure that his mouthing would somehow carry across the watch and spoil the job.

  Finally they all settled down. One of the two young fellers, the one who was Jim’s, sat where Jim couldn’t get an angle at him. The red-headed niggur, the one that talked funny, leaned against a wagon wheel, an easy shot. Jim had picked the young feller for himself because he and the other carried pistols in their belts—them new Colt guns. The others didn’t bother.

  They crawled around to where Jim could get a clean shot. “Wait till I shoot,” he told Big Belly.

  He laid his pistol on the ground within easy reach and got up on one knee, to be sure of clearing the brush. He held his sights on the man’s chest and squeezed. The bastard flew backwards like a kicked can.

  Bazel jumped up, whooped loudly, and snapped off a careless shot. The red-headed fellow just stood there, untouched. And the idiot was still standing there, like he was frozen. Jim stood up, leveled the pistol with both hands, and shot him center.

  But Big Belly was already halfway into camp. Since he’d missed, he must mean to take the bastard with his knife. And then probably wait around to scalp him. Jim ran for his horse. He heard a pistol shot and Big Belly’s scream. He kept running. After a moment another shot and scream from Big Belly. Jim figured he might as well lead Big Belly’s horse back to camp.

  Near sundown Running Stream seemed to get better. He had been wiping her face with a damp cloth; and the fever seemed to go down, and she stopped tossing and grimacing.

  Her eyes lifted open, slowly, and this time she knew who he was. Her lips started to move. “Don’t talk,” he cut her off. “Rest.” She understood and said nothing, but she kept looking at him. Once in a while her eyes went blank, and he knew that she was unable to see from the pain. Every few minutes he gave her a sip of water.

  He knew the change was coming; he could feel it in her body. “I’m cold,” she murmured. He put a finger on her lips while Sacajawea pulled a buffalo robe over her. She shivered for long minutes, holding his eyes with hers. Then her own eyes glazed. He waited for the pain to pass so that she could see again. After two or three minutes Sacajawea put a hand on his elbow. Running Stream was dead.

  Sacajawea began to croon her mourning song; in the near-darkness others heard, and their voices joined hers. Baptiste lowered Running Stream’s head, stood up, and walked out among the creosote bushes. He put his face in his hands and cried.

  After a few minutes, he walked through the chanting mourn
ers and knelt by her body. He took off his necklace, slipped the thong around her neck, and centered the hoop and stone on her chest. In his mind he said, “For your journey.”

  They had to make camp no more than an hour or two from East Fork Lake. The moon had not risen, and it was too dark to travel. Baptiste was irritated about that. He had moved all day long on a tide of impatience: At rendezvous they could stop dragging Mountain Ram along on the travois, bearing the bumps to his splinted leg in silence. At rendezvous they might get some better medical help for him. At rendezvous they might trade for the Hawkens that Stewart and Campbell had brought to sell or to give away as prizes—the Shoshone needed them. Besides, Baptiste could get some whisky. He couldn’t remember when his dry had so wanted some wet.

  “Paump,” Sacajawea said quietly. She sat down next to him in the dark, ten yards from the fire, and waited for his attention. “Spotted Deer is your squaw now.”

  He looked at her like she was crazy. “She’s what?”

  “You know this, Paump. Spotted Deer is your squaw. Not because Running Stream is dead. Because she is Running Stream’s sister and her brave is dead.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he swore in English.

  “She did not come to you last night because you were deep in your grief. But she will come tonight. She belongs to you.”

  “I don’t want her.” He was a little surprised that he didn’t feel as adamant as he sounded.

  “It is your duty. Mountain Ram will expect it. Everyone will expect it.”

  “No.”

  “If you do not want her, you may trade her to someone else, which would humiliate her. In the meantime she is yours.” Sacajawea stepped back to the fire.

  “Tell her not to come tonight.” He had halfway noticed that she had been doing things attentively for him since yesterday, but he’d forgotten the custom for the moment. He put down his blankets far out in the dark, and she did not come that night.

  Rendezvous was petering out by the time they got there. Baptiste did hallo some old friends—Gabe, Joe Meek, Doc Newell, Black Harris, and Mark Head had come in. But Carson and Fitzpatrick were off playing nursemaid to Lt. Fremont, Bill Williams and Long Hatcher were gone to Bayou Salade, and others were scattered across the landscape, gone to Oregon, or gone under.

  Campbell traded him three new Hawkens and some DuPont and G’lena, but warned him against stirring up the Snakes, which would only shed more blood. He managed to pick up two more used rifles.

  Captain Stewart cultivated him. He was intrigued with the paradox of Baptiste. The second evening he made an offer: “Bob and I are going to do some hunting up in the mountains,” nodding toward the Wind Rivers. “Why don’t you guide us?”

  “Naw,” said Baptiste, “Bob knows ’em.”

  “He hasn’t been there for ten years. He says you know them better.”

  “Mebbe.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for the month. Your people can stay here at camp.”

  “Don’t that shine? Why didn’t you say so right off?”

  He told Jim to come along and split the hundred. At least this was a way to keep the situation from getting sticky with Spotted Deer. And he had something in mind other than guiding.

  He stopped Pilgrim, when they rode into the bottom of the high basin surrounded by the Cirque of the Towers, just to drink it in for a moment. The basin undulated gently toward its upper end. The floor was a mossy, spongy, tundra-like grass; they had left trees behind a thousand feet below. Tiny streams hatchworked the floor, some no wider than a man’s hand, some several feet across, all running with the coldest, clearest water a man would ever expect to drink.

  At the head of the basin the grass, so green it hurt the eyes, gave way to a glacier; the glacier angled up toward the peaks, a band of white dividing the region where plants and animals can live from the region where they cannot; the peaks jutted up from the glacier into an immense circle of nine high towers, huge slashes against the sky. The towers were slabs on slabs of perfect, unbroken, gray granite, laid behind each other as neatly as playing cards. They rose in an assault on the blue, as though the rocks had been blasted from the earth by some huge energy, and had been frozen at the top of their flight.

  The Indians had named the highest and most jagged tower Lightning Peak. Probably it got its name because it attracted lightning; Baptiste thought it looked itself like lightning stilled and fixed.

  In fact only a few Indians had ever been there, and Baptiste had come only once before. He had camped, looked, played songs, and done nothing that first time. This time Stewart’s desire for a bighorn sheep, found only in remote places, would provide a good excuse to do it again.

  “What’s this—Orpheus?” Captain Stewart cried. Baptiste put down his harmonika as the horses and mules clattered up to camp. He guessed everyone would be in high spirits: Two bighorn sheep were draped over pack mules, a considerable day’s work. “A little minstrelsy?” Stewart repeated.

  “A little music to soothe the savage breast,” replied Baptiste.

  Stewart swung off. “But not savage enough to enjoy a little hunt. A fine trick splitting the work and the fee with Jim here. Did you see?” He grabbed one of the sheep by its horns and stared it down. The huge, curling horns dwarfed the head—it was a splendid specimen.

  Stewart’s best came out that night, Scotch whisky and Drambuie. Stewart tried the meat of the sheep, but it was stringy and they ended up having hump ribs instead.

  “Baptiste,” asked Stewart, “what were you playing this afternoon? Can you give us some music? The party needs some livening.”

  Baptiste had not played from the night of Running Stream’s death until that day. Entirely alone, he played his own songs, and even toyed with an idea for a new one, a kind of rondo with a principal theme suggesting the Cirque of the Towers and nine themes for the individual towers. But he felt too private about his own songs right then. “You have a choice of Mozart, Beethoven, backwoods American, French-Canadian, and Indian.”

  “Leave out the weighty ones and let’s have the rest.”

  It was a cold night, there at more than ten thousand feet; clouds had spit a little snow that afternoon; the men were crowded close around the fire, front sides scorching and back sides freezing—Stewart, Campbell, Baptiste, Jim, and the three muleteers. Baptiste tossed off a boatman’s ditty, which Stewart applauded heartily, and then a new song, “Across the Wide Missouri,” which, without lyrics, seemed to miss. “Mes Voyageurs” went over because Antonine, one of the muleteers, knew the words.

  So Baptiste decided to take a risk. “This is a Navajo song, an invocation of the most sacred powers, an appeal for their blessings.” Throwing his head back, looking at the glacier and the granite walls and the reaching towers and the remote sky, he chanted with all his force:

  Tsehigi.

  House made of dawn.

  House made of evening light.

  House made of dark cloud.

  House made of male rain.

  House made of dark mist.

  House made of female rain.

  House made of pollen.

  House made of grasshoppers.

  Dark cloud is at the door.

  The trail out of it is dark cloud.

  The zigzag lightning stands high upon it.

  Male deity!

  Your offering I make.

  I have prepared a smoke for you.

  Restore my feet for me.

  Restore my legs for me.

  Restore my body for me.

  Restore my mind for me.

  This very day take out your spell for me.

  Your spell remove for me.

  You have taken it away for me.

  Far off it has gone.

  Happily I recover.

  Happily my interior becomes cool.

  Happily I go forth.

  My interior feeling cool, may I walk.

  No longer sore, may I walk.

  Impervious to pain, may I walk.

/>   With lively feelings, may I walk.

  As it used to be long ago, may I walk.

  Happily may I walk.

  Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk.

  Happily, with abundant plants, may I walk.

  Happily, on a trail of pollen, may I walk.

  Happily may I walk.

  Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.

  May it be beautiful before me.

  May it be beautiful behind me.

  May it be beautiful below me.

  May it be beautiful above me.

  May it be beautiful all around me.

  In beauty it is finished.

  A hush lingered among the men as the echoes of the chant died away.

  Finally Stewart, as though taking responsibility as leader, spoke up: “By God, the Indians do love the earth, don’t they?”

  “Would you play one of those ‘weighty ones,'” Campbell said, “just to satisfy my curiosity?” So he gave them a lovely adagio assai of Mozart, which may have bored everyone but Campbell. “Baptiste,” he said seriously, “you’re a virtuoso on that thing. With the mouth organ and the Indian music, I believe you could have had a concert career. Don’t you think so?” he asked Stewart.

  “The public in Britain and Europe would flock to hear that music.”

  “I might have liked that,” Baptiste said. “I also compose my own songs.”

  “Play us one,” Campbell asked.

  Baptiste considered. “Not tonight,” he said. “An Indian must keep his magic to himself, lest others borrow it.”

  Stewart called Baptiste into his tent while the others were breaking camp. It was snowing lightly for the second straight day, and a nasty wind was up. He handed Baptiste a cup of hot coffee and poured some Scotch in.

  “I have a proposition for you, and I want you to take me seriously. I hear that when you first came to the mountains, you were planning to write a book.” Baptiste nodded. “About the Indians?”

  “About my own life as an Indian and a white man.”

  “I don’t know whether you’re still interested in it, but if you are, I’d like to help you.”