The first day out, Big Tree started drinking from his keg before we stopped for the night. He’d never done that before.
“Why you hitting that so early?” I asked him.
He didn’t even look at me.
We set up camp near the Tongue River in a stand of trees that looked down toward the bank of the river. We still had plenty of meat, and Morning Breeze set about cooking some over a fire. While I waited, I ate what was left of the oily biscuits she’d made that morning. I offered one to Big Tree and he waved it away. He was drunk and a goner for that night, and I could only hope he wouldn’t pull the same thing the next day. He had plenty of whiskey.
Morning Breeze come to me that night again, and this time I did a fair job of it. Having a woman to lay next to at night and the bonuses that come with that was downright pleasing, and I was no longer capable of saying no to it.
I didn’t sleep at all, though. I lay there most of the night listening to Morning Breeze and Big Tree snore. Sounded like a couple of elks going at it in a mud bog. I figured in the morning, before either one of them waked up, I’d try to find Big Tree’s store of whiskey and deplete it a little bit. I’d heard tales of Indians once they started on the juice. I missed his company in the evenings, and I didn’t like it that he’d started sipping the stuff before the sun went down.
Chapter 7
Weeks passed. We kept to the plains mostly, and I never did manage to diminish Big Tree’s whiskey. He did that. Each day, he’d start a little earlier than the next. He never got to where being drunk made him mean, but he sure commenced to talk a little more before he passed out. All during that time, I didn’t sleep the best I ever have. Things between Morning Breeze and me had started to cool somewhat. Gradually I noticed that she didn’t look at me like she used to or as often. I didn’t mind it that much, but I wondered what I had done to shift her eyes away from me.
Finally, one very early morning when I give up sleep, I decided to get outside and start feeding the fire. Morning Breeze was already up, so I rolled out of the tent and set there for a while breathing the cold air, trying to get my eyes to focus. The sky was dark still, and I could see the moon behind a thick bank of clouds in the south. It looked like there wouldn’t be no sun at all on this day.
I don’t know how long I set there before I realized I wasn’t hearing no snoring from Big Tree’s lodge and Morning Breeze was nowhere in sight. I got to my feet and walked over to the horses and they was still where they should be. I found my Evans carbine and put my boots on.
“Hey,” I hollered. “Big Tree.”
He come back down a little rise above our camp, walking stiffly. He wore his buffalo hat and had a odd look on his face. Morning Breeze was behind him. I realized she was almost as tall as he was.
“Where’d you go?” I said.
He signed that I should be quiet. Then he let me know that he was looking for trouble from the Sioux.
“Her band?” I said.
He shook his head.
I whispered, “They was grateful to us. Beech-i-lack.” I looked at Morning Breeze, but she was bending her head in a shy way and did not meet my eye. “What’s wrong with her?” I said.
“I am Crow,” he said. “Sioux pay me beech-i-lack when they do not kill me.” He paused and looked out toward the moon. In the dim light his face looked like the carved figure of a ancient god on the bow of a ship. “Morning Breeze go for water,” he said. “I follow her.”
I didn’t see no water. He looked at me and noticed that the water wasn’t going to back up his story. “She leave water when she see her people coming.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t her people?”
“They are Sioux. All Sioux her people.”
I said nothing. I might of turned a deep shade of red, though. Morning Breeze would not look at me.
Big Tree said, “They come to kill Big Tree.”
“They ain’t,” I said. “Not as long as I got this here.” I held out my carbine.
“They don’t kill you,” he said. “They take our horses and kill me.”
I got pretty irritable thinking about that. “Damnation,” I said. “You feed their folks—their women and children and old men—and keep them alive for more than two months, and now they come after you?”
“These are not her people. They are different band. Still Sioux.” He glared at me for a second. His face did not change, but I think he was embarrassed by what neither one of us was saying—with Morning Breeze standing there, looking kind of sheepish, and me knowing what they’d probably been up to. If I had of taken the time I would of finally come to see that he was a Crow brave; that meant he was like a statue of what God wanted when he dreamed up the creature he would call “man”—and he could speak her language. I was right puny in her eyes before long. But if the Sioux really were coming, it was just the wrong time for either one of us to even begin to mention what was going on between him and Morning Breeze. I didn’t understand, but I’d like to say I did.
He looked at my carbine.
I think I known his thinking. Maybe I did, but anyway I lifted it and slung it over my shoulder. “We just going to wait here for them?”
“No.” He turned from me and started taking down his lodge. I went ahead and started to fold my tent, but Morning Breeze pushed me away. She tried really hard to do it all herself. She could see I known what she’d been up to. She run around like if she got the whole thing wrapped up fast, without no effort at all from me, that would erase what she done with Big Tree. By the time we got everything packed, the sun had begun to leak a bit under the clouds. I still could barely see for the dim light.
Big Tree got up on his horse. In the gray light, he looked like a dark, towering shadow of death, with steam coming out of his mouth and his horse stomping the ground and a-moving his head up and down.
We’d gathered all the other animals and the two pack mules. We would be a slow train, but Big Tree wanted to get out of the open country. He had a feather attached to the end of his rifle. He raised the rifle a little and nodded at me, then he turned his horse and started out heading east, the pack animals following slowly behind. I got up on Cricket and begun to follow, dragging a line with my own animals, including the one Morning Breeze was riding on. Her legs dangled down both sides of that mule and practically touched the ground. The country was hilly and covered in saw grass, dandelions, and wildflowers. We moved at a trot sometimes, but mostly a slow walk up and down small hills and shallow ravines while the sun lit up the world on the other side of the dark clouds. When I could see the round white outline of the sun, it commenced to rain. A cold, steady rain that come on like a thing dumped from a bucket. I only had my leather breeches and a cotton shirt on, so it wasn’t long before I was soaked and shaking pretty bad. I stopped Cricket and got down in a stand of thick grass and pulled a buffalo robe out of my pack. Up in front of me, I could see Big Tree a-setting there, his head down, letting the water run off of him.
“Don’t you want something to keep warm?” I said, and then I seen him tilt his head back. He was drinking some of that whiskey.
“Well, I guess that will do the trick,” I said.
He did not turn back to me, he just waited there. The water beaded up and dripped in the thick buffalo hair of the hat he wore, and it made the horns glisten like black knives. I took another heavy buffalo robe out of one of the packs and give it to Morning Breeze. She still did not look at me. I said, “You may as well keep dry.”
I couldn’t stand the look of sad guilt on her face, the way she cast her eyes down. I wanted to tell her I figured it out. I known what probably happened. They run into each other in the cold morning. It was talk, maybe, at first between them. She understood him, and he was a god to her and he spoke her language. They was human. It wasn’t nobody’s fault and I would not blame no one. It was not okay with me. I did not want to accept it. But I understood it and it seemed like I should find a way to make her see that. So she wouldn’t feel so
bad and mortified around me.
She covered herself with the buffalo robe and, without looking at me, she said, “Beech-i-lack.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t fret about it.”
I don’t know if she known what I was talking about.
In a little while we was off again. I could see the land rising in front of us and off to the left, toward the northeast. It was a path up there and it led to a thick stand of black trees. Big Tree kicked his horse into a trot again, and I did the same. I didn’t look back and I had no idea if the Sioux was following us or not.
What I seen in front of us was a kind of mirage, because the land dipped way down into a bare ravine that stood between us and the trees. We wound around in the shadow of high walls on either side of us until we come to a place where things leveled out a little and heavy tree branches covered the whole sky above us. It was like a deep cave and the rain only dripped through the leaves. The path got too thin to keep riding on it, so we gathered all the horses and mules into a good-sized gulch that bent off the ravine. We strung the leather up in the low-hanging branches to tie the animals in place. They was all breathing so loud, I couldn’t hear nothing behind us. Big Tree scurried up out of the gulch and lay down at the base of one of the trees that leaned over the edge of the ravine. I followed him, not even thinking about Morning Breeze. When I got up next to him, he was wiping the barrel of his Sharps carbine with a piece of linen. When he was done, he handed it to me and I wiped mine down. I figured with his seven rounds and my thirty-four, we’d be fairly redoubtable. I could keep shooting while he reloaded, and when mine was spent he could time his load so he’d be able to keep firing while I done the same.
I couldn’t see nothing for the sheets of rain. Water dripped out of the tree above us onto our backs. It dripped pretty steadily off the brim of my hat. Big Tree was as silent as ever, just watching in front of us. When I thought of Morning Breeze, I looked over there in the gulch and seen her crouching down next to one of the mules, holding on to the tether for dear life. It was hard to find her at first because she was covered in that buffalo robe and hunched down so close to the animals, she just looked like one of them.
Big Tree noticed me looking over there at her. I said, “She ain’t my wife. Not among my people.”
He didn’t say nothing, but I heard a sound come from deep in his throat.
“It ain’t nothing to me,” I said.
Well, we laid there half a day or so and never seen no Indians. The rain begun to settle into something that felt permanent, like it would just drip like that steady, all the rest of time. There wasn’t no wind nor nothing, just the rain.
“Are you sure you seen her people a-coming?” I said.
Big Tree didn’t look at me. He got to his feet and crouching under the branches, started back down to where we’d left the animals. I followed him, but I wondered what the hell he was thinking; it even occurred to me that he made the whole thing up about the Sioux because he was embarrassed about me waking up too soon and finding him with Morning Breeze.
But I was wrong about that. We rode on, wet and miserable, for most of the rest of that day. We had to ride back out of the ravine the way we gone into it, then skirt around it to the east for a hour or so before we could make for the trees. The rain finally quit, but it was still no sun, soggy, and cold. We rode in silence except for the constant breathing and coughing of the animals. Their breath and ours sent vapors in front of us as we moved along. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so cold, even with one of them buffalo robes over my head and shoulders. Big Tree never put nothing on himself. He was half naked, with just his warrior’s vest, his leather breeches, and that huge buffalo hat with the two black horns curling over his head. I couldn’t wait to stop somewhere under them trees and build a fire.
We rode a long way, and just when we was leaving a long stretch of flat ground crowded with small black bushes and a few rocks, I seen the Sioux to our left, coming down from the far hills. They rode along in the same direction we was going for a while, then disappeared behind the rise. There was maybe twenty of them. If they started riding hard behind that hill, we’d have no time to do much of anything but take them on from horseback. Big Tree turned his horse and at a gallop rode back toward me. I pulled up on Cricket and turned her to the side a bit, and Big Tree come up on my right and grabbed my carbine right out of my hands.
“Go into the trees,” he said.
I hollered for him to stop, but he never even looked back at me. He turned his horse and galloped off toward where we last seen them Indians. His pack animals stayed put, so I went and got the rope that held them and started for the trees as fast as I could. It was a shocker to see them Sioux coming along like that—like they was a-stalking us. I guess I was wrong not to believe Big Tree from the beginning. My suspicion got the better of me. Morning Breeze and me made it to the trees and rode up into the thickest part of them until we could see down below to where Big Tree was. It took a while but then I seen him, sitting up high on his horse and moving at a walk up along the side of the hill the Sioux was coming down. By that time he was behind them and down the hill a ways. They didn’t see him. They worked to hold their animals back, as the horses now scuffled down the hill, curling their front legs and turning their bodies to the side a bit as they pranced down. The hill was slick and it was real work for them folks to keep from slipping and falling. Some of them Indian horses did fall, but they rolled right back up with their rider still in place, both of them covered in mud. Big Tree was about thirty feet from them when he started running at them, this time firing my carbine. I seen two braves fall from their horses after the first two shots. They never seen him or known he was back there even when his horse begun thumping after them. I seen the other braves twisting their horses around. Then all hell broke loose.
“God save us,” I said to nobody in particular, even though Morning Breeze looked at me as if she understood. I thought I was going to see Big Tree get slaughtered. I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that he had my gun and I’d lose that too.
It was hard to see in the misty damp air, but he rode right into them fellows, firing my carbine the whole time, and it seemed like every time he fired it one of them Indians dropped off his horse. There was six or seven of them on the ground when Big Tree got through the whole bunch, wheeled his horse around, and started back in. He come at them from the side, so they was just getting their horses swung around when he wheeled his and started back in amongst them. He held the gun up against his shoulder and fired it with one hand. It was strange to see the smoke and fire come from the end of the gun, and hear nothing at all for a few seconds, and then the sound it made. I could barely hear the Indians a screaming their war whoops. Big Tree got four more of them, then swung down the hill away from them. He got to the bottom of the hill, turned his horse around, and started back up, but now the others was a-running from him. They had all they wanted of him. I don’t think one of them even fired a shot from a gun. They may not of had guns. But it wasn’t enough firepower in wood arrows or knives to face that Evans repeater in the hands of a crazy man the size of Big Tree, a-riding and shooting like a one-man army. He didn’t chase them long up that hill. Their horses dug in deep in mud and started sliding back down toward him, but he’d already turned and started over the barren ground to where we waited for him. The Indians that was fleeing up the side a that hill stopped finally and watched Big Tree as he rode over to the edge of the trees and disappeared in the forest. They was waving lances with spears high in the air and singing as loud as they could. One of them, a tall fellow with a red sash around his neck and a long feathered lance, started after Big Tree, hollering “Yip, yip, yip.” Big Tree didn’t even look back at him. The brave stopped short and his horse reared up into the air. He raised the lance high, still hollering. The others seemed to be singing with him.
“They praise him,” I said to Morning Breeze. “Right?”
She didn’t understand. I trie
d to sign to her that Big Tree was some kind of big deal now among her people. “Like king,” I said. “Like God among the Sioux.”
I looked back to the battleground and seen the Sioux coming back down to their dead and wounded. Big Tree was deep in the trees to our left, and I sent Morning Breeze to go get him. I tied all the pack animals up and started to set up a camp.
Big Tree come in riding that big horse, towering over me. He had Morning Breeze on the back of the animal. I pointed to the clear sight I had through the trees. “We watched you,” I said. “You had good medicine.” The hot, heavy breathing and huffing of that horse steamed the air.
He handed me the carbine. “This good medicine.”
“You’re giving it back to me?”
He nodded.
I slung it over my shoulder. It was still warm from firing. I was glad to have it against my side as we set up camp.
That night, under a clear sky and a bright moon that scuttled high over the black trees and scattered a frozen kind of light over our camp, I sat right close to a hot fire and reloaded the Evans repeater. There was eighteen rounds left in the magazine.
“How many left?” he wanted to know.
“You fired sixteen shots,” I said.
It was quiet for a spell. I was finally warm and dry—at least in the front—and the crackling fire made me a little sleepy. Morning Breeze had worked hard setting up my tent, but now she sat in front of Big Tree’s lodge. It took her a long time to settle there, and I watched her the whole time. It looked like she was getting down into ice-cold water, but she only wanted me to know what I already guessed.
“You can sit closer to the fire if you want,” I said. I signed for her to join us, but she only bowed her head and stayed put.
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