Hugh waited another half hour before venturing out of his hiding place.
The dog in front of the old tepee took one look at Old Hugh’s grizzly aspect as he emerged from the canebrake and ran howling into the brush behind the tepee. It made Hugh smile. “He ain’t forgot about what this grizzly did to his companyero. No siree.”
Hugh waded on elbows and knee through the river, bum leg in the slape trailing after like a wetted plew of beaver on a sled, and boldly approached the tepee. Still no one in sight, still no wild war-whoop out of the yellow brush and the yellow grove to indicate the tepee was an ambush.
Hugh lifted the flap and peered in past a dangling medicine bundle.
He was right. An old one left to die alone. An old withered crone. She was lying prone on a fur beside the ashes of a fire in the center of the tepee. A striped blackred woolen blanket covered her. Her eyes were closed. But she was still breathing. She was incredibly old and wrinkled.
Somehow she looked familiar, Hugh thought.
Hugh crawled in for a closer look.
A white weaselskin amulet hanging from a stick thrust in the ground behind her head finally helped him identify her. Hugh sucked in a breath. Ho-ah. It was the old mother of Grey Eyes. Hugh’s flinty eyes rolled. When the Rees fled their villages above the Grand on the Missouri, Pilcher’s boys had been instructed to set fire to the villages. Just after they’d fired it, they found the old mother left behind in a mud-covered round lodge. Hugh clucked his tongue. The Rees must have snuck back into the burning village to save her from a fiery and ignoble end. And in their subsequent raveling over the country, they had managed to take her along this far.
His quick old eye fastened greedily on the paunches of food left at her side. A small bag of rich pemmican, soft enough so the toothless withered old lady could mouth it down; a cake of cornbread, also soft and easy on the gums; and a bladder of fresh water—all provisions for the rest of her journey here on earth and for the first of her journey into the new spirit world.
Hugh pounced on the pemmican and cake. Human food for his poor old stomach at last.
There was a quiver in the wrinkled oldpenny eyelids. The old woman’s eyelids parted and old blackcherry eyes tinged with a deadskin-gray looked up at him.
Hugh held still, eyes furtive in bushy face.
Her old wrinkled leathery lips moved. “——face.”
The old word whispered out of an old throat gave Old Hugh a pause. The old word said in Arikaree he readily understood. He knew a little Ree—it was a cousin language to the Pawnee which he knew well. Face. Paleface. She didn’t see him then the way the dog saw him. Paleface. Ae, with the long beard he now had he was a paleface sartain sure. Major Henry was right that it stuck out.
The old black eyes brightened and the dead skin on the eye slid to one side like the winking nictitating third eyelid of an old hen. One of the withered bony arms stirred under the striped blackred blanket. Her old leathery voicebox harsed low again. “Meat.”
The second old word jolted Hugh. He dropped the bag of pemmican and cake of cornbread.
Once more the old throat harsed an old word. “Water.”
Hugh’s eyes filmed with tears. He couldn’t help it. Poor old soul. He knew what it was to be left alone to die. Ae. He knew.
“So it’s water ye want, is it?” Old Hugh’s voice cracked. “Well, Old Mother, water it is ye’ll have. This child can’t begrudge ye that.”
He angulated his body and leg over and sat beside her. He cradled her old head in an arm and, with his other hand, held the mouth of the bladder of water to her lips. Her old black braids fell across his soiled leather sleeve.
She drank slowly. Some of the water pulsed down her throat; some of it spilled and ran down the wrinkles cutting back from her stiff leathery lips. When she finished, he laid her head carefully down on the tanblack buffalo robe again. Hugh had the feeling that if he hadn’t been careful, her head could very easily have parted from the spine despite the old tangle of veins and sinews and leather skin holding them together.
She thanked him with filmy eyes; then her eyes closed. She puffed slowly, with long pauses in between. Sometimes the puffed breaths came so far apart Hugh was afraid she’d breathed her last.
“Poor old soul,” Hugh said, eyes tearing over again. “No, there’s some things this child won’t do, no matter how far his stomach’s made him backslide. I can’t skulp a live red devil, or desert a friend, or take orders from a tyrant, or hurt Indian wimmen. Pa’tic’ly old red-devil grammaws on their last legs.”
She heard him. Her old filmy eyes opened and cleared for another slowly brightening live look. “Meat.”
“Ae, an’ meat ye shall have too, Old Mother.” He held up the pemmican. “This suit yer taste?”
She tried to shake her head; roved her eyes back and forth instead. “Meat.”
“Ae, so it’s live meat ye want. Well, in that case, this child’ll have to go back to the canebrake for that dog he killed.”
Saying it, it occurred to him. It was one of her dogs he’d killed. Unbeknownst he’d taken meat, and favorite meat at that, from a dying critter. All Indians thought dog meat a great delicacy. Unbeknownst. But yet done. “Ae, Old Mother, meat, live meat, ye’ll have.”
He heard a noise outside the tepee. He jerked erect, tense, eyes fixed on the doorflap. Rees come back?
It was a sliding noise, a noise of something being dragged, slaped, over the sand. With a quick surging roll of a grizzly he lunged for the doorflap. He peered out.
It was the still-live dog dragging the dead carcass of his companyero dog. The live dog apparently had been trained to retrieve. Good. The live dog had saved him the trouble of getting the carcass himself.
Hugh was careful not to scare the live dog this time. The live dog might come in handy later on. But careful as he was, the live dog again bolted at the sight of him.
Hugh shagged the partly eaten dog into the tepee.
“Now, Old Mother, did your companyeros leave ye any fire-fixin’s maybe?”
He searched and found flint and steel in a leather bag near her head under the fur she lay on. He also found an old knife, worn back almost to the haft.
Hugh rubbed his gnarled hands in joy. “Hurrah! Old Mother, good meat it’ll be. I hope ye’ll allow the cook a taste.” Old Hugh winked at her.
The wink wasn’t lost on her. Her old leathery lips tried to form a smile; made what looked like a grimace of terrible pain instead. Hugh thought it one of the finest smiles he’d laid eyes on. “Ae, Old Mother, I’ll bet ye was a merry lass in your day, wasn’t ee? Ae. The pennyskin Rees was always said to be the best on the Old Missouri.”
Old Hugh found dry twigs; hustled up firewood; with flint and steel soon had a blazing fire going Indian-style. With the old woman’s knife he skinned the dead dog. He impaled it on a slender green willow rod; placed it in the forked ends of two stakes set at either end of the fire; began barbecuing.
When it was finally done, the dog meat tasted wonderful. Hugh fed her first, fed her like he might feed a baby, mashing the flesh with a stone and giving it to her in thin strips. Between feedings he couldn’t resist licking his fingers now and then.
Presently she indicated she’d had enough. She thanked him with another flowering of brightness in her old filmy black eyes.
“Don’t mention it, Old Mother. I’d do the same for me own mother, God bless her, departed as she is from this valley of trials and tribulations.” Again tears popped in Hugh’s eyes. He blinked them back, inwardly a little ashamed of his gullishness.
Sure that she had enough, Hugh pitched in himself. The meat had been turned to a fine brown faretheewell. It was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
The live dog outside couldn’t resist the wonderful smell of singed browned flesh either. It poked its twitching cold black nose in through the doorflap, warily, irresistibly drawn.
Hugh smiled until his whiskers moved up his cheeks. He tore off a pi
ece of meat and tossed it to the cold black nose.
The half-wild yellowgray dog slipped into the tepee and with a single vulsing swallow snapped it down. Its eyes begged for more.
“A friend it is I want ye to be, pooch. Me and the old lady here may have need for ee in time to come. One way or another.” Hugh tossed it another strip of well-done flesh. “Dip in, pooch.” Hugh winked at the dog.
Again the dog downed the browned meat in a single pulsing swallow.
When Hugh turned to see if the Old Mother was enjoying the humor of it with him, he found her dead. She’d been so far gone that the first stir of her stomach became a stumbling stone for her old heart.
“What? So soon, Old Mother?”
Hugh stared at her for a minute; then burst into tears.
“What? an’ we just friends?”
Gently he closed her eyes, first one, then the other.
Eyes streaming, he stared down at her. “Ae, at least ye had the luck to ha’ a human around to close your eyes. But who’ll close the eyes of this old hoss when he goes? He ain’t got nobody back in the States to remember him. My lads’ll have long forgot their old man. Ae. The old she-rip’ll ha’ seen to that.”
That night, after the filling moon had come out, with all the land in silver shine, Hugh with his bare hands dug out a grave for her in the sand bar and held a brief but decent paleface burial service. He mumbled a few words from Job over her. “‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.’” As an afterthought Hugh also spoke over her as a good Ree husband might. “Now go, my child, go to the land of souls, go to where many of your friends and relatives are already waiting for you. Do not turn back, but look ahead, and soon you shall find them who love you and who are waiting for you. Go, do not turn back, look ahead, and you shall be happy.” Sadly he lowered her into a deep hole he’d dug for her. Waggling his old head at the sad turns of life, he covered her over with sand. Then, also Ree style, he took a handful of sage and rubbed it up and down his arms for purification against what had killed her.
A last look at the mound, and then at the tepee, and he was off, bladder of pemmican, corn cake, what was left of the barbecued dog, blackred striped woolen blanket, knife, flint and steel, and his own grizzly skin over his shoulder. He left the tanblack buffalo robe for the wolves to tear up and devour.
He whistled up the half-wild dog and started across the Moreau. The dog followed him warily, some dozen yards behind, yet always there.
He crawled hard all that night. He took the big creek straight south, away from the Moreau, holding his noddle steady on Rattlesnake Butte towering above the Fox Ridge divide, with Thunder Butte directly behind. The dog followed.
At dawn the next morning he came to where the big creek turned west. Ahead were the hills of the next divide. He ate heartily of the pemmican and corn cake and roast dog. He shared some of the roast dog with live dog. He went to sleep in a thicket of whistling willows.
He awoke late in the afternoon scratching like fury.
He sat up, still scratching. What in tarnation—? Had the live dog given him a batch of fleas?
He examined the seams of his leather clothes. And swore. “As I live, graybacks! Lice.” Ae, lice from the Old Woman. A giveaway present. Rats desertin’ a sinkin’ ship. Who’d clumb aboard one that was not going to sink yet awhile.
“Well, there’s nothin’ for it I guess but to find me an anthill.”
He found a tub-sized hill of lively ants. He carefully stripped down to the skin except for his bum leg. He laid his buckskins near the anthill. “Friend ant will carry off all the seam squirrels and the nits. Ae, afore I finish the rest of the pemmican and corn cake, I bet.”
He smiled. He remembered Clint his old companyero had once asked him how he could tell when the ants were finished with the job. He remembered too his reply. “When the ants start bitin’ ee, that’s when.”
The half-wild dog sat nearby. It whined as he worked on a piece of cold roast dog.
“Here, pooch, have a bone. Eat while ye may. Tomorrow it may be your turn.”
Presently the red ants began crawling over him, and he knew they were done with the cleaning job.
7
HUGH CLIMBED steadily toward Fox Ridge.
The country changed. It became smooth and rolling with league-long slopes, some rising, some falling, with a sky so high under sheep-white cirrus it made the breath short, and all of it cut in the far valleys with deep eroding ocher gullies.
It was shortgrass country: good soil, little or no cactus, very few stones; a minimum of wild salt. It lacked only rain, and rain at the right time, to become the Garden of Eden at last, the wild lily of the valley of men’s dreams.
Between crawls, while resting in slanting evening sunlight, Hugh sometimes brooded on the lonesome country. While it might be a mite too wild for him at the moment, the condition he was in, the plains country was surely coming to a time when all of it would someday become settled too, just as the wild coasts of the Atlantic had at last become the States, just as the wild valleys of the Ohio had at last become settlements, just as the Indian village on the banks of the Mississippi where the Missouri came in had at last become St. Lou. It was bound to come.
It made Hugh sad to think on it, all the she-rips and their cubs coming in and destroying a hunter’s paradise. The white queen bees would come in with their tame worker bees and build honeycomb towns and cities just as the real queen bees already were taking over the wilds just ahead of the oncoming settlements. Ae, the enslavement of both land and man was coming here too. Ae.
Hugh could just see it, the henpecked men coming in, still thinking they were men, and free men at that, and saying to each other as they looked over the virgin stretches for the first time, picking up a cloud of dirt and crunching it, and fluffing it in the palm of their hands and letting it sift out between the fingers: “Smart chance for corn here all right.” “Corn? Naw, not corn. I expect we hadn’t ought to raise nothin’ but wheat and rye here.” “Corn or no, it’s still the biggest clearin’ I ever did see.” “And no sour soil.” “Yep, I can’t wait till we all start eatin’ our own hominy and johnnycake raised right here.”
Between crawls, in the rusty dusk, Hugh also thought of the lads, cautious Fitz and the boy Jim. Where were they now? Probably snug and safe at Henry’s Post on the Yellowstone and Missouri. He hoped they’d made the post safe. It would be a dirty trick if fate dealt out the cards so that Rees counted coup over them before he did. If the red devils got to them first, the lads’d die thinking they’d pulled one over on him.
Remembering how he’d been taken in by the lad Jim, Hugh shook his grizzled old head. “Crazy as a mule over a colt, I was. Yessiree. Jest sick for a colt of my own. I swear. Well, howsomever, I larned, I did. And it’s never again for this old hoss. No siree. From now on, after I’ve had my revenge, it’s me noddle in me own business and nobody else’s. Strict. Hugh for Hugh.”
Between puffs, in moonlight as silver as a little boy’s milk-blond hair, Hugh worried a little that Thunder Butte behind him didn’t get any smaller. In almost two days of crawling south away from it the dull redstone butte still seemed to loom over him as lofty as ever. It just wouldn’t recede and sink away into the horizon. Part of it he knew was due to his crawling up out of the Moreau River depression. The higher he climbed up Fox Ridge the more both Thunder Butte and the ground he crawled on was apt to stick out above the surroundings. But at the same time Thunder Butte should have got smaller in size. Distance should have shrunk it some.
The butte began to haunt him. Old Hugh was hardheaded and he knew it was puckerstopple to think of the butte as an altar of sacrifice, an altar such as Old Testament sages might have used for their offertories. Yet he couldn’t help wonder why it hung so stubborn and high in the north.
Maybe it was the fever. Fever could have ruined his sense of distance. H
e’d known cases where sickbrain hope had completely addled a man’s judgment. Maybe he wasn’t crawling across the country as fast as he thought. Could be.
The possibility of an early blizzard worried him too. He’d seen a foot of snow in early October in the Dakotas many a time. A blizzard catching him before he got to the Cheyenne would put a bad crimp in his plans. Crawling across snow would be well-nigh impossible. His arms’d freeze. Let alone freeze his stilled leg in the splints. Ae, an early fall blizzard could wreck it all.
“Hugh, lad, best face it. Ye’re in a fix if it snows. No two ways about it.”
He studied stubborn Thunder Butte; sniffed the slow wind drifting in from the northeast.
“But, Hugh, lad, ye’ve just got to last it. Got to. And ye’ve not only got to last, ye’ve got to get your work done.”
Ae, last. Get the work done. That was the end-all and the be-all of a man’s whole life. His purpose here on earth. The driver that sat behind a man’s stomach. And his driver had a whip. Hate.
“Lads, I’ll get ye yet,” Hugh muttered, looking over his shoulder at looming omnipresent Thunder Butte. “Old Hugh will serve right and make ye pay for your wrong.”
Child Hugh crawled hard all that night. Always the wild dog followed him a safe distance behind. Using the North Star as his lodestar, Hugh bore hard on, going east by south, headed straight for coiled-up Rattlesnake Butte.
A great round moon followed both him and the ghost-yellow dog. It watched his wormings across drygrass country, first from its rising in the east and then from its setting in the west. The turning moon cast a thin fine fog of silver light over the sleeping sloping land. In it the rusty tips of the dead bunch grass resembled yellow day lilies. In it the dull red rock of Thunder Butte resembled a sunflower. The great round moon filled the silver valleys with rivers of milk.
He made up his mind not to look back at Thunder Butte for a while. Maybe the next time it would look smaller.
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