Far as the Eye Can See

by Robert Bausch

  Me and Big Tree had just set out for the Musselshell country, and was only about five or six miles from Bozeman, when a column of militia come upon us. We seen the dust they raised long before they come over the rise to our left and stopped for a second looking down on us.

  No one in the militia ever looked very much like what I would call a good man. They was dirty, and had a look of bitter reproof in their eyes. They rode into a camp like they was chased there, jumped off their mounts, and went right for the water, or the whiskey. They was always looking for renegades or Indians that might be a irritation to the army. Like I said, the army didn’t like them much but they always claimed to be a big help keeping the peace and all. They rode in packs, like wolves—twelve or twenty or so in a pack. You didn’t look at them if you could help it because sometimes they’d take that for a throw down on them—a challenge. You had to ignore them unless they said words to you, especially if you was a Indian.

  Now we had my two pack mules, and Big Tree had a mule of his own. I rode Cricket and Big Tree was on the same big horse he rode on the trail coming out here. We kept on heading south and east on the trail and then the militia galloped down the hill until they was right up next to us. They sort of fanned out around us as we moved along until finally we stopped. The man in front was a short, barrel-chested, ugly fellow with white hair and beard. He wore earrings and had trinkets dangling in his long hair, so I figured he was a Frenchman. The rest looked just as ugly. There was about twelve or thirteen of them.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the Frenchman said to Big Tree.

  Big Tree just stared at him. Sitting upright on his horse, his mane of black hair brushed high, he towered over the white-haired Frenchman. In fact, he towered over all of them. I was positioned a little bit behind Big Tree, and the way he looked rising out of the crowd like a statue in the middle of a fountain was almost comical.

  “We’re going to do some trapping,” I said to nobody in particular.

  “I’m talking to this big ape,” the Frenchman said.

  “He don’t say much,” I said. “Maybe it’d be better if you just talked to me.”

  We all sort of stared at each other.

  “It might be wise not to call this fellow ape, neither,” I said.

  A few of the horses made some noise. I looked at the other men, who by now had pretty much surrounded us. One fellow was pulling back some of the covering on my pack mule.

  “Leave that alone,” I said.

  “What you got here?”

  “Traps and such.”

  “You got any pelts?”

  “We’re just going to get some,” I said.

  Big Tree’s horse backed up a bit, bobbed his head up and down and shuddered loudly. Big Tree settled him. Then he said, “We will go now. On our way.”

  But he didn’t move. Then I noticed that kid Treat from Fort Riley. The one that bragged he could shoot a gun and wanted to fight Indians. Next to him was Joe Crane. Treat wore a white hat with black eagle feathers, and he was setting on a white Indian pony. He had a Spencer rifle with a feather attached to the end of the barrel. He wore a light buckskin jacket and high-topped leather moccasins. All I seen on Joe Crane was Preston’s hat.

  “Well, if it ain’t a small world,” I said.

  Treat looked at me.

  Joe Crane said, “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. If it ain’t Bobby Hale.”

  “I seen you somewhere before,” Treat said.

  I didn’t think it wise to ask what happened to Preston. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hat, though. It still had the feather.

  Treat said he remembered me. “You was at Fort Riley. Where’s the rest of your train?”

  “They’re at Bozeman. Ain’t going on until next spring.”

  “What’re you doing with this half-breed.”

  “He ain’t no half-breed,” I said. “He’s Crow.”

  “He’s a renegade,” the Frenchman said.

  Big Tree moved his horse up closer to the Frenchman, then he reached down with his left hand and placed it around the fellow’s throat. “We go now,” he said.

  The Frenchman was not struggling at all. It was clear that Big Tree had his hand wrapped completely around his neck—his fingers may of touched in the back—but he was not squeezing. It looked like if he did squeeze, most of what was in the Frenchman’s head would fly out of his eyes. I was worried Big Tree’s horse would spook and pull him away with that grip still in place. The Frenchman only looked at him. “We go now,” Big Tree said again.

  It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed like eternity. Big Tree still had the grip on the Frenchman’s neck, and the Frenchman just kept glaring at him, even with his chin all bunched up above the meat of Big Tree’s dark brown hand.

  Finally Treat said, “Where’d you get them mules? They look like army.”

  “They are,” I said. “I traded a Conestoga wagon for them. I got the receipt right here.” I took it out of my vest pocket and put it in his outstretched hand. The Frenchman said, “Treat?” He still kept his gaze on Big Tree. Treat held the receipt up so the Frenchman could see it. “I can’t read this,” he said. “Is it a receipt?”

  The Frenchman tried to nod his head. Then he said, “It’s real.”

  Treat waved the receipt for me to take it back. Big Tree finally removed his hand and sat back in his saddle. “We go now,” he said.

  Treat had his Spencer raised, not aiming it, but ready to.

  The Frenchman said, “Shoot the bloody bastard.”

  “No,” Treat said. “You let him grab you like that. I’m of a mind that it was your fault.”

  The Frenchman rubbed his neck. He still didn’t take his eyes away from Big Tree.

  “You go on,” Treat said to me.

  We started moving and the others got out of the way. I nodded to Treat as we went by. He looked like a kind of viper to me. His dark brown, seedlike eyes followed us as we moved and his head didn’t turn even a little bit. I wondered what had happened to him out here in less than a year to make him so cross looking and wore-out. I also wondered what he could of done to get folks like Joe Crane, folks twice his age, to follow him and take his orders. He didn’t look so young no more even though he wasn’t even eighteen, unless he had a birthday since I seen him last. I was sure he’d already killed his share of folks. Women and children too. I was also sure he let us go because Joe Crane known me; in a odd kind of way I felt grateful to him and I was for sure thinking Big Tree ought to of taken note. In my mind it was already a good thing he let me come along with him. I guess it was a few hours later when it hit me that I should of had the courage to ask Joe Crane what happened to Preston. I was kicking myself good for not having the spittle for it.

  It wasn’t nothing to militia or soldiers to shoot Indian women or children. For one thing, it was the women who mutilated bodies after a skirmish, and sometimes the children—at least the older female ones—would help. Theo said it was religion. A simple ritual to keep a enemy from populating the life after. Many of times he’d seen the women crying and wailing while they was doing it. He said he supposed they was mourning their own dead, but sometimes he felt like it was a mother’s sadness at having to dismember a young soldier or brave. “You know, like one of their own is a certain age and this here fellow they was a cuttin’ on the same age and all. But it’s just their practice and their duty. They do it to any enemy, Indian or not.”

  “It’d be bad enough to die out here,” I said. “But to be cut to pieces and scattered too . . .”

  “When you’re gone, you don’t know it,” Theo said. “And anyway, it ain’t no good to die nowhere, ain’t that right?”

  I owned it was probably true, although I said as how I wouldn’t mind it so much in a warm bed of a snowy night in my sleep. He agreed that was so.

  Big Tree and me rode away from the militia without looking back again. Even though they moved their horses out of the way to let us pass. I didn’t hear no mo
vement at all behind us. They was just a setting there, watching us as we rode down the trail. I think I could feel their eyes on us. That Frenchman wouldn’t forget Big Tree. I feared what might happen someday if we ever run into him again and Treat’s gone off somewhere else.

  Later that night, I had my first real conversation with Big Tree.

  We’d left the trail after the run-in with Treat’s militia. We was still headed for the Musselshell country, but now we went along a small stream, then cut up into higher ground and better cover from trees and rocks. They wasn’t following us, Big Tree made sure of that.

  We camped out just as the sun started to scuttle along the horizon. It sent yellow beams into the sky and lit the underside of great, blooming clouds. It didn’t look like rain—in fact, it looked clear and clean like after a rain—but the crisp breeze that rose up every now and then smelled like ice, and green earth.

  When we had a fire going, Big Tree settled himself in front of it, his legs crossed in front of him, his hands resting on his knees. In the smokeless firelight his hair hung down by his face like some sort of cape. I couldn’t see his eyes right away. I known better than to chatter like I used to around him, trying to get him to say something. We done most everything without words, or much sound at all, except for our breathing and chuffing when we carried wood to the fire or tethered the horses and mules in some tall grass so they could feed.

  I cooked some ham in a frying pan over the fire. We had set up a few yards away from the shade of a big cottonwood tree. Along with the ham I heated some water for coffee. Big Tree set there watching the water as it commenced to boil. Just when I thought I’d chew on some ham, drink some coffee, and then puff on a pipe for a while before going to sleep, he reached behind him and come out with a small leather pouch. Inside was a few small stones, four small white bones, a few planks of tobacco, a hank of hair, and a short, stubby pipe. He was careful with the pouch, holding it in both hands, his eyes so focused he probably didn’t remember I was there.

  “You gonna have a smoke?” I asked. “I was going to wait until after we eat something.”

  The corners of his mouth moved a bit. Then he said, “This good medicine.”

  Dumbly, I said, “Oh.”

  Now he looked at me. “Say your name.”

  “Bobby.”

  “Bubby.”

  “Bahbby,” I said. “Bobby Hale.”

  “Bubby Hairle” was how he pronounced it.

  “Yeah.”

  “It mean nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  He frowned.

  “No, really. It don’t have no meaning.”

  “I am Big Tree That Blocks the Sun.”

  “That means something,” I said. “You folks give names that describe a activity, or a thing. We don’t do that.”

  “When I am young boy,” he said, “I was different name.”

  I waited. He sat there stuffing his pipe with tobacco and a few seeds from his pouch. It didn’t look like he was gonna say another word, so I said, “You had another name?”

  He nodded, looking directly at me, maybe for the first time. His eyes was dark black and the firelight sparkled in them.

  “What was you called when you was a little one?” I said.

  “My first father and mother name me Talking Boy.”

  I didn’t want to but I laughed. His face changed and his eyes went even darker.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not laughing at the name. It’s just that . . .”

  “I am Talking Boy when I am young man,” he said. He was indignant, but I think my laughing may of loosened him up a bit. He didn’t take it unkindly. It may of been some kind of opening for him to see me as a fellow, a human being, instead of just a wasichu.

  He lit his pipe, then settled back to enjoy it, with the little pouch in his lap. He held the pipe with his left hand and let his other hand rest over the pouch like he was going to protect it from me. I asked him if I could have some of his tobacco and he took my pipe from me and put some of the tobacco in it. He tamped it down with his thumb, then handed it back. “Good medicine.”

  “Thank you kindly,” I said. I didn’t believe in none of that hocus-pocus, but I didn’t see the point in telling him that. I wanted to know about his life. About how he come to know Theo, and work with him. But I’d have to ask questions to get those answers, and to tell the truth I was damn sick and tired of carrying the conversation.

  But then he started drinking from a canteen that I soon learned was full of whiskey. After a while he offered me a sip and I thought it was water. I’d already eaten the ham and drunk my coffee and I was a mite thirsty, so I took a big gulp and it damn near choked me to death, and this made him laugh louder and harder than I ever seen a body laugh. His laugh was like a elk barking in a canyon. After that, he kept snickering off and on for a long time, remembering the look on my face when I commenced to choke. I didn’t see as how it was so damn funny, but I liked it that he was laughing. It loosened him up a little more.

  He drunk a fair bit of the whiskey, then held it out toward me to see if I wanted some, but I shook my head and he laughed again. I lit my pipe and commenced to smoke, so I had nothing to say. But then he started talking. He told me about his parents, the first pair, then the second. How all four of them raised him. “My parents gave me life at a young time,” he said. “Their parents adopted me.” He told me they always kept their lodges close together. His voice was smooth while he remembered. Like affection run deep in him and it somehow smoothed his spirit and shrunk a bit of his natural hostility.

  At one point he said, “Where is your father?”

  I shook my head. “He could be dead.”

  “He die?”

  “I don’t know where he is. I was raised by my aunt.”

  “Theo’s father,” he said, gesturing with his pipe, “live in big city. New Jersey.”

  “I don’t think New Jersey is a city,” I said. “But they got a few big cities there.”

  “Theo’s father live there. In New Jersey.”

  I owned as it was probably so.

  “All white men leave their fathers,” he said. He looked at me with a kind of pity that could pretty fairly of been scorn. “You leave your father, or he leave you.”

  “I guess.”

  “It is different with my people. We never leave our fathers.”

  “Never?”

  “We all live in same village. Where my fathers go, I go with them.”

  “And you have more than one.”

  “All my people have more than one. It is Indian way to adopt the young men and women as they grow.”

  “I’ve heard it was such,” I said. “It’s a good idea.”

  “Why do wasichus go away from their fathers and mothers?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s the way the world is.”

  “No,” he said. “It is wasichus. Not the world.”

  “Well, you ain’t with your father now.”

  “No. I live on land of my fathers.”

  I could see I had better not argue the point. I wanted to know how it was any different from white folks; most can locate their daddy if they’ve a mind to, but they just don’t necessarily hang around after a certain time of life. All I said was “Our villages don’t ordinarily move nor nothing. So most can find their daddy if they need to.” It was quiet for a while, except for the cicadas and tree frogs.

  Big Tree said, “What is daddy?”

  “It means father,” I said.

  He nodded. “I know where my people hunt. When I go with Theo, I leave my father like wasichu leave father.”

  That was a pretty revealing thing to say and it set me back a little. He didn’t express it with regret nor nothing, but I sensed it anyway. I said. “I would like to of known my mother.”

  “You have not known your mother?” He tamped the tobacco down in his pipe.

  “My mother died when I was very young,” I said.

 
His eyes softened. He told me how he was adopted a third time by a medicine man with medicine so powerful he kept it in a pack and let it hang from a stand of three branches tied together at the top. He always did this so his medicine wouldn’t never touch the ground. Touching the ground would rob his medicine of its power. “He was called Stone Hands,” Big Tree said. “He fought the Sioux, the Southern Cheyenne. He counted many coups on the Sioux and they shoot at him. All try to kill him. He ride right in front of their eyes and then come back and no arrows touch him.”

  “I am a orphan,” I said. “I was raised by my aunt.”

  He nodded, his eyes gleaming. Then he said, “I tell you about Stone Hands.”

  I said nothing.

  “One day he put his medicine on his stand and a young brave, racing his horse through the village, knock down the stand and Stone Hands’ medicine fall to earth.” He looked at me with the most serious expression, like I should understand something a lot more than I did. I almost said, “So?” But then he said, “Very bad thing when medicine fall to earth. All its power gone. Now it is nothing but bones and thread, and feathers and tobacco ash.” I remembered he’d told me that, and I felt bad for making him repeat it.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Stone Hands hold his head high, he look in the face of white moon with the same strength and fire, but he know then he no longer have good medicine. He tell the women and children, ‘I will die before new moon.’ But none of the people believe him. One of his fathers tell him to take his pack to the top of the hill on the other side of the Yellowstone. To set it out again on the stand, high among the mists and clouds. ‘You will get your medicine back,’ his father say. ‘You go on another vision quest with that medicine and it will be good again.’ And the next day, when we hunt for buffalo, he ride out toward the top of the ridge. He leave his lodge and all of his wives and horses. He just ride out on one horse carrying a lance and the medicine pack.”