Darkness flowed into the stony valley like a low black fog. Overhead the high tops of the spine-bearded bluffs and the headlands still glowed plantain purple.
“‘Tis a wonder. There’s nothin’ like runnin’ water.”
He held his leg and ticked off the miles he saved crawling. He held his leg and watched the bends swing into view, come toward him, hold under his eye, swing past, slip behind and out of sight. He couldn’t get over how wonderful it was that except for an occasional dip to the right or the left with his pole he could sit on a soft folded grizzly skin and let the river do all his crawling, all his walking, for him.
Ae, the birds were going south for the winter and so was Old Hugh.
Twice during the first night he had close calls.
Once it was a large Sioux village camped beside the river on the north shore. He saw the cluster of cone tepees coming. A fire glowed under trees ahead, lighting up the near shore and the tall cottonwoods and the near tepees, and limning the vague outline of the south shore. The Sioux were celebrating some kind of victory. A quarter-mile away Hugh could spot the braves bending and stomping and kicking as they danced around a set of fresh scalps up on spears off to one side of the roaring orange-titted bonfire. Circling them sat young maidens watching the show. Deeper in the shadows lounged old meditative bucks and collapsed old squaws.
Hugh ducked down flat in the dugout, hiding his long pole alongside his body. He hoped they’d be too busy whooping it up to notice the dugout floating past, hoped that if they did look his way they’d mistake the dugout for a piece of fat driftwood.
But not all the maidens were watching the show. Two were bent on cleanliness. They were wading in the shallows near the village. Light from the fire glowed brown on their naked supple bodies. They were chattering and laughing together, splashing each other, dipping in and out like pennyskinned mermaids, their faces open and gay, their titties as lovely as four full moons.
Then they spotted the dugout floating downstream across from them. They ducked down, only their heads showing. They watched with intent berry-round eyes.
The Cheyenne turned a little in front of the village and the turning saved Hugh. His dugout, without his pole to keep it headed downstream, slowly revolved in the turn, revolved just enough to present the blunt back end of the cottonwood dugout, the end which still looked a little like a round log. The maidens studied it; looked at each other questioningly; let it pass.
Hugh let out a great sigh once he was out of sight of the village. “They might have been friendly Sioux. Maybe even relations of Reed. But they just maybe might not have been either. A white man alone is fair game for even friendly red devil.”
The other close call came when, shooting through a narrow channel, where the just risen milk-silver full moon couldn’t shine, he ran full tilt into a sawyer, a fallen behemoth of a cottonwood, presenting its sunflowerlike mat of roots straight at him like a vast maw. Hugh saw it in the dark as a gathering tangle of trouble. Quickly he volved the boat a quarter-turn around and then punched his pole into the matted roots. Ordinarily he could quite easily have poked or poled his way around it. But his boat was top-heavy and it took all his skill as an old seadog to keep the boat level and moving around the down cottonwood.
He was glad when morning came. Though for once he was far from tired. Just sleepy. He pulled for shore and hid his dugout in a thick canebrake at the mouth of a slow creek.
He fried a channel cat aboard the dugout; washed off the fish smell; drank long and thirstily; curled up on the grizzlyskin; drew the blackred striped woolen blanket over him; and slept the sleep of the justified.
The second morning, coming around a turn, coasting out through an avenue of arching poplar, the wild Missouri opened before him.
After all the barren bluffs and clay gullies and rock outcroppings and stony hogbacks he’d seen, Hugh thought the river a grand ocean. Majestic, sweeping wide, the tan sheet of seething water flowed eternally into the south. Anon and anon and anon. With occasional running whirlpools and sawyer eddies breaking its surface. With whole trees—majestic cottonwoods and umbrella elms and gnarled fierce oaks and slender ash and delicate maple—surfboating along and bobbing up and down in the water like gigantic sea serpents armed like octopuses.
On the nearside, great dead snags with limbs thrust to the skies like praying skeleton hands rolled over and over, slowly, forlornly. In a backwater on the far shore some snags lay piled up two deep, broken, tangled, cracked off, looking for all the world like a dinosaur boneyard.
Squinting, narrowing his eyes, Hugh could just make out a herd of antelope grazing on the far bank. Behind them reared a sloping hogback where it came down into a long turn of the wild Missouri.
Gray haunted eyes burning silverish under tufted gray brows, bush of grizzly hair hanging down to his shoulders like a long gray parted mop, Hugh sat looking at it all until the sun felt warm, even hot, on his burnt black nose and high cheeks. The old seadog awoke in him for fair. There was challenge in the turbulent seething sheet of tan waters, and he liked it. With himself as both captain and crew, he was anxious to test his craft against the wild Missouri, even if he did have a wobbly top for a boat.
“But not for now,” Hugh promised the rolling brown flood, “not for now. Tonight maybe. After Ol’ Hugh’s had his beauty sleep. I’m rich now, I am, and can afford sleep and sailor’s rest.”
Hugh spotted an acre of waving cattails along the lee shore across the Missouri. He poled across easily and with a hard shove sent the dugout rustling into it. The tall cob-topped cattails hid him and the boat completely. He breakfasted on channel cat he’d dried the evening before, and washed up, and lay down to sleep out the day under the striped blackred blanket.
He slept. The wind soughed up from the south and tossed the heavy cattail cobs back and forth.
He slept. The November sun shone gently and revived the green grass in the low sloughs.
He slept. The wind soothed softly and rustled the ocher leaves in the rushes.
He awoke to the sound of squealing squirrels. The tree squirrels were gathering acorns under some oaks behind the cattails, fighting with crows over who was to store what provender where. Everybody was getting ready for the winter ahead.
Hugh washed his eyes in river water, pushed the dugout to the edge of cattails, studied the fleeting coffee waters and the far shore and then the near shore for sign, went about making supper out of the last of his dried channel cat.
Restored, refreshed, body relaxed, body sweet with a long night’s rest, he swung his stubby unstable craft out into the main current of the wild Missouri and began rushing home to Ft. Kiowa.
“Ae, lads, it’s comin’, that queersome time when Ol’ Hugh with a quick snip of the knife parts ee from your scalp. Best get your prayers said now.”
Hugh smiled when he imagined the look on their faces when he’d step up to them and ask for his fixin’s. That look alone, whatever it would be, would be worth almost all the horrible suffering he’d gone through.
“Reed, get the pot ready and fill up with the best buffler cow in the fort. Ae, and don’t forget your medicines. And your fresh leathers. That steel awl I bought ee is gonna be hot for usin’. Your old man needs an overhaulin’ from his crow’s-nest on down.”
The wild Missouri rushed him south. It rushed him past the mouths of Okobojo and Chantie Creeks, past Medicine Butte, which in the full round moon loomed up like a broken shattered Thunder Butte, past the mouth of the stinking Bad, past Antelope and Medicine and Cedar Creeks, and around the looping Grand Detour.
“It’s whisky and pancakes for me again for breakfast. Whisky to wake me up and sharpen the taster. Pancakes to weight me down and cover the ribs.”
Ae, the wild Missouri rushed him south.
It was almost dark when he saw the Stars and Stripes snapping in a cold northwester over Ft. Kiowa. There’d been snowflurries during the day, and the bluffs towering high to either side above the river plains look
ed like sleeping flocks of albino leopards.
Hugh approached the west shore warily. His limbs shivered with trembles. He found it hard to believe he was home at last.
Squinting in the falling pink dusk, the tan waters turning redbrown beneath him, Hugh soon saw there were no sentinels out along the bank. That meant there were no rampaging red devils about. It also meant no war party could cut him off from safety at the last moment.
The dugout hit the mud bank under the loading dock with a giving thud and rode part way up it. Hugh stood up; stretched; sighed. He gathered up his possessions. He slipped the necklace of grizzly forepaws around his neck. Like a chief he folded the blackred blanket around his body. He threw the grizzly skin over an arm.
He picked up his crude ash crutch and, upright, hobbled out of the dugout and up the path and onto the plains before the fort.
He limped past the lone great cottonwood under which General Ashley and his men had met in early August to plan the fall trapping campaigns. Today neither bird nor leaf fluttered from the tree’s ocher twigs. Huge thick branches tubed up into the dogbane skies like white-hot stovepipes.
Swatches of fresh snow made the going underfoot slippery. Hugh hobbled along on all three cautiously. He was going to make sure that no last-minute accident would ruin the homecoming.
Before the fort gates was the usual Sioux village on a trading visit. Skin pennants dangled in the wind from the highest pole sticking out of the tepee smoke hole. A few children raced and played with half-wild dogs. Before the doorflap of one tepee, the tallest and the best, stood a solitary chief wrapped in a grayred blanket, his nose-sharp face as expressionless as a redstone hatchet.
The sentinel in the gate hailed Hugh. “Where you from, stranger?”
“The Grand,” Hugh said, his voice a strange deep bass. Hugh recognized the sentinel. It was Old Childress, Old Childress once a mighty hunter but now too full of aches and pains to pursue antelope and buffalo. “The Grand, that’s where.”
Childress viewed Old Hugh severely through the little wicket in the main gate, his flintlock aimed true into Hugh’s right eye. Overhead other sentinels on the rifle walk and in the corner blockhouses watched Hugh narrowly too. “Where’s your companyeros?”
“I’m alone.”
“From the Grand? And what mout your name be?”
Hugh laughed at Childress. “Why, Childress, old hoss, what kind of a come-on is this?”
“What! Hugh, old coon! I thought ye were gone under!”
Hugh snorted. “Well, this child was mighty nigh losin’ his hair at that, he was.”
“Ol’ Hugh! That beats, that does.” Old Childress slowly lowered his gun.
“Open up, Childress. I’m half-froze for hair.”
“That beats, that does,” Old Childress repeated, gray eyes dawing wide.
“Open up that dummed gate afore I think you’re a snake-eyed nightmare.”
“Will so.”
The gate opened and Hugh hobbled through and into safety.
Hugh said, “Got any ‘bacca?”
“Have so. Fresh.”
“Give us a chaw.”
Childress handed Hugh a leather pouch, eyes still wide with awe.
Hugh took a good wad, lifted it, straggly ends and all, into his hairy maw, chewed solemnly a moment, spat to one side. “Got any whisky? I’ve got a bad dry too.”
“Have so. English and the best. Also some Taos lightning.”
“I’ll take a horn of English.”
Childress said, “Come with me. There’s plenty in the men’s quarters tonight.” Childress hollered up at one of the watching sentinels on the rifle walk. “Melette? Get down here and mind the gate till I fix up this travelin’ bag a bones with a snootful.”
“You don’t need to come,” Hugh said. “I know my way around.”
“No, I’ll take ye. I’m glad for the break.” Old Childress looked up at Hugh with awe still in his eyes. “So ye’re alive, Hugh. Fitz said you was dead.”
Hugh jumped. “Fitz? Fitzgerald?”
“Yes, old hoss. Major Henry sent him down to tell Ashley he and the boys’d made it safe to the post on the Yellowstone and Missouri. All except you, that is.”
Hugh chewed slowly. He spat to one side. “Is Fitz here?” Hugh’s fists worked like buzzard claws.
“No, Fitz’s gone. Left with Jed Smith a month ago. For the Black Hills and beyond like was planned. He’ll join up with the major in the winter somewhere near the Big Horns.”
Hugh slowly relaxed. The great time hadn’t quite come yet.
Old Childress led the way across hard-packed ground. Hugh limped after steadily on all three.
A sound of shouting and singing and fiddles and drums came from the loghouse men’s quarters. The door was open and Hugh could see a leaping fire. Some twenty souls, leathered mountain men and bearded river roughnecks, were gathered around the flames. The walls shone ruddy behind them.
“What’s going on in there?” Hugh asked.
“An old-fashioned breakdown. A keelboat’s just in from St. Lou.”
“Keelboat? I didn’t see one out on the river.”
“It’s floated down ten mile to pick up some fresh buffler meat.”
Hugh looked at the festivity and stopped. “No,” he said.
“What’s the matter, old hoss?”
“No.” Hugh leaned on his crutch. Something in him balked at the idea of sitting down all of a sudden in the midst of old friends and their raillery. They were good men, ae, lean hard men, meat eaters who didn’t run to settlement fat, and friendlier than a tail-wagging puppy too, but—“No.”
“We’ve just finished chuck, Hugh. But there’s java on the fire.”
“Coffee?”
“Sure. C’mon, Hugh, you must be starved for men and meat.”
Hugh continued to lean on his crutch. In the falling smutdark dusk he surveyed the interior of the walled fort. He looked particularly into the black shadowy corners.
Old Hugh said, “Where’s Reed?”
Old Childress hauled up short. “Don’t tell me ye want squaw afore meat!”
“Where’s Reed?” Hugh said sternly.
“Yonder. Ahindt the clerk’s shop.”
Hugh jumped for the second time. “That oily Bonner ain’t taken her as his squaw?”
Old Childress laughed, showing toothless gums, and slapped his bony knee. “Old hoss, you do want squaw afore meat then! You wild old goat you! Hee hee.”
“Has he?” Hugh asked fiercely in a hoarse bass voice.
“No, no. No, it’s just Reed in one of her sour fits again. She’s in mourning.”
“What?”
“Sure. For ye, old hoss.”
Hugh stood still. His eyes softened.
“Old Hugh, for an old hoss you surprise me, hankerin’ after squaw so.” Old Childress shook his gray head. “Take me, now. I hain’t had squaw for seven year now. Though I admit I never thought squaw prime company taken alone.” Old Childress shook his head some more. “Squaw? For many a year I packed one along. Bad was the best, and after she was gone I tried no more.” Old Childress thumped the ground with the stock of his flintlock. “I never did understand why to some men the squaws look whiter and smell sweeter with every passing week away from white diggin’s.”
Hugh looked in at the door of the loghouse again. With every passing second the roar of the shindig increased in tempo and volume. Whisky flowed; spirits rose; talk became shrill. A few Sioux squaw, the wives of mountaineers, strutted about through the melee proud of their display of beads and fofurraw, their deerskin dresses jingling with bells and bangles and their faces bedaubed with St. Lou paint. Against the walls stood lonely Sioux warriors, lean, wrapped in tanblack buffalo robes, too proud to sit down at the fire and fun without invitation, also sulky and uneasy to be so close to white scalps without being able to do anything about it.
“No,” Old Hugh said, “no, it’s me for Reed first, in mourning or no. See you, Childress.�
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Hugh found Reed’s tepee behind Clerk Bonner’s shed. With a flickering fire inside, the tepee glowed like a pumpkin with a candle in it. At the flapdoor Hugh let his crutch fall to the ground, held a moment on his own two legs, then dropped to his knees and crawled in. Reed had put fresh sweetgrass in the bedding, and the tepee smelled very sweet with it.
Bending Reed was sitting before the fire, legs folded to one side. Hugh saw right away that she was in mourning like Childress had said. She’d cut off her hair again. She’d blackened her face, diagonal lines running from the bottom of her eyes to her neck, the lines representing the paths of her tears. She’d also daubed her deerskin dress with various mourning paints.
“Reed,” Hugh said.
She heard him and looked up. Her shiny cherry eyes glittered at him over the ruddy fire. Then her mouth opened in surprise. And also in surprise her hand snapped up and covered her mouth.
“Reed, it’s your old man. Back from the wars. Have ye cow meat handy?”
Reed stared. Slowly she took her hand away from her mouth. Slowly she crossed her hands over her heart and hugged them close.
Hugh smiled under his beard. He recognized the Indian sign for love.
He tossed her the dried grizzly claws. “Here, Reed, here’s for you. Special. Ye can dance for joy now, Reed. I’m a brave at last.”
She picked them up; looked at him wonderingly.
“Don’t ye believe me, lass? Here, look.” Hugh showed her the scars in his beard and scalp, tossed off his striped blackred blanket and showed her the terrible corrugations across his bare back, drew back the torn leather around his bum leg and showed her beartooth marks. “It’s grizzly all right.”
She stared at the scars, at the dried paws, at his grizzly face.
“So Heyoka’s still got your tongue, eh?” Hugh’s voice continued rough and harsh, though he intended nothing but tenderness. The hoarseness, he decided, came from lack of use during all the lonesome days crawling. “Still balky and contrary, I see. Well, Reed, lass, sit then. Old Hugh’ll make for himself, he will. He’s been doin’ it for nigh on three months now. Three months of plain hell.”
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 22