by A B Guthrie
"Go!"
The animal he had aimed at fell without a quiver. Higgins" target jumped once and scrambled and lay still. The two older sheep ran off.
They reloaded their rifles. "Good fare for White Hawk,"
Summers said.
"Won't feed the camp."
"Could be we ain't done."
They walked back and got the horses and rode to the dead sheep. They skinned and gutted them, saving the fleeces, and, with the carcasses wrapped in canvas and hitched to a pack horse, they sat down and smoked.
The sun had begun its slide to the west. One white cloud, round as a bullboat, sailed in the east. The breeze died out. It was then that a single elk walked out of the woods. Summers whispered, "If I don't knock it dead, you fire." Aiming without a rest, it flicked into his mind that he should let Higgins shoot. But the Kentucky was small for an elk. The elk grunted to the smack of the bullet, walked hunched a few feet and lay down.
"Plenty meat now," Summers said. `
It was going on to dusk when they got back to camp, their pack horses loaded. And it was as if the whole damn camp came out to meet them, children forgetting their play, women forgetting their fires and men forgetting to loaf.
They rode to White Hawk's lodge. He had come out and stood in front of it, pleasure showing in his old face.
"He bring you sheep," Summers said, pointing to Higgins.
"Two sheep, one elk we have, for you and your people."
White Hawk moved his right hand and held his extended fingers to his left breast, then fluttered the hand in a plane to his right. It was the sign for good. Maybe it also meant thanks.
The women got busy unloading the meat, their voices raised in pleased chatter. One of them was Little Wing. Higgins said, "For Christ sake," to Summers and moved as if to take the girl's place. Summers grabbed him by the arm. "That won't win you no ribbons. Don't butt in. Let it go." `
Teal Eye came up with the boys in tow. "Big hunter," she said, putting her hand on his sleeve. "I am proud."
"You keep out of the way, little duck. I'll unload."
At his side Higgins said, "That won't win you no ribbons."
Summers glanced at him, then at Teal Eye, and said, "I already won mine."
Teal Eye pulled at his sleeve. "The other women do it. Shame to me."
Summers smiled. "Grab that rope then. Last thing I want is to shame you."
The women began cutting and hacking at the carcasses. There was no quarreling, no grabbing, or not much, for the best cuts. They just divvied the meat even, a share for each fire. Teal Eye took a chunk and walked toward their lodge. She hadn't fussed or grabbed, but still it was sheep meat she carried, knowing that he liked it for a change.
* * *
That night they sat in a rough circle in front of the lodges — men, women and young'ns. The lean dogs limped around, sniffing for scraps. There was a time of waiting. Indians were good at waiting.
Summers took Higgins by the arm. In the other hand Higgins carried his fiddle. "Mosey out to the center, sit down and make music," Summers said.
"Christ, Dick, I ain't no prize at a box social. You rigged this deal, but damn if I like it. I'd druther take off or crawl in a hole."
Under Summers' hand Higgins' arm trembled. "Now, now, Hig. You can do 'er. You know you can do 'er. I know it. Teal Eye knows it. You wouldn't let her down, or Little Wing, either. She's there in front of the chief's lodge. Go it, boy."
"Oh, shit."
Higgins walked out slow but not bent, like a brave man knowing he was about to get shot. He took his time sitting down. He took his time tuning the fiddle. His first tunes were quick and merry, and the hands and feet of the Indians moved to the rhythms. "Sing, damn you," Summers said without speaking. "Fiddle alone ain't enough. Sing."
As Higgins paused, the Indians' voices rose, thanking him, wanting more. Higgins sat still, the bow upheld in his right hand, as if waiting for word from inside himself. Summers reckoned his flutter had died.
Higgins lowered the bow, took a couple of slow licks and sang, low-voiced at first. He sang old songs, dim and far back in Summers' memories, songs of lost love and death, sorrowful as years that had passed. Voice and fiddle, gaining strength, seemed to move around the tepees, seemed to move to the still trees and carry on into distance.
The Indians sat without moving. Smoke wavered up from dying campfires. The tepees rose shadowed under ya slanting half-moon.
Summers knew he was breathing short and slow, as if even the sound of breathing was out of place. Little Wing sat' like a statue. Even the two boys at his feet didn't fidget. A dog let out a mournful howl and was cuffed into silence.
Voice and fiddle. They sang all the lonesomeness of time, the sad lonesomeness of the years, the sad, sweet lonesomeness. Teal Eye's hand reached out and took his.
Higgins got up to the cry of voices and walked to his tepee, not paying heed. The Indians, silent now, watched, unmoving, as if it was right to leave the singer alone.
Summers put his arm around Teal Eye and pressed her against him. "Some doin's," he said and knew how poor the words were.
24
SHE SAY YES," Teal Eye said.
That didn't mean that Little Wing was all for marrying him, Higgins thought. Maybe she was just paying mind to the chief who, thinking of horses, had given his orders. Maybe she was just being biddable. That was one hell of a way to pick out a mate.
It was dark and late and a trifle chill, and he sat around the fire with Summers and Teal Eye. The boys had gone to bed.
"Could be she's just bowin' to White Hawk," Higgins said. "Like as if she had to."
"No, she like you. It is not the chief, not the horses."
So she liked him, huh? Liked him with age coming on him. Liked him with his haggle of mouth. It didn't stand to reason.
He said, "Dick buys me a bride out of his own pocket."
"Shut up," Summers told him, smiling.
If he had teeth like Summers, it might be different. If he looked like Summers, face and body, it might be.
"I ain't goin' to, Dick," he said. "This is plenty important. Why is she willin' to marry me? On account of the chief? On account of I'm white?"
Teal Eye put in, "Because you are you."
"Just bein' white don't mean anything. Underneath any color, there's just blood and meat."
"And brains and hearts," Summers said.
"I seen enough black-hearted white men."
"We're off the track, seems to me."
"I reckon I know what I know."
"It's only you knows things," Summers said. He grinned as if to take the raw off his words. "But if it ain't a go with you, then it's no go."
"I didn't say that."
"It's about how I got it."
"Oh, hell, Dick. She's pretty and she seems all right, but I don't know."
"Foolish man, you," Teal Eye said. "She make good wife."
They sat silent then, as if more words were no use. They stared into the fire. A thing about fire, Higgins thought. In the flicker of it, in the small leaps of flame, men might think they'd find answers. In it they dreamed dreams, dreams of happiness, dreams of peace, the ends of hankerings. Was it the same way with Indians? Not now for sure since the other fires were dead and their people asleep. But still, what did fire mean to them, other than warmth and heat to cook by? Were their dreams of warpath and scalps? Or did they, like him, just want their frets gone?
He looked up at the sky, seeing nothing but black overcast. The Shoshone tepees blended into the dark. A horse whickered from the hillside, and a coyote sang to the night, bark and quaver and trill.
He felt a small burrowing at his side and flinched and reached out, and his hand closed on a small hand, and he looked quick, and there was Little Wing, her eyes catching the glow of the fire. He kept hold of the hand. The fire, and a hand in his, and Summers and Teal Eye watching, silent, knowing as he did that she had come on her own, slipping out to them while the camp slept.<
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The fire, and a hand in his, and he said, his voice rough in his ears, "Wl¤en can we do it, Dick?"
"Camp's awake before sunup. How about sunup?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow. I'll talk to the chief."
"TelI her- no, ask her if it's all right."
Summers spoke to her in Shoshone, and she answered, and then the hand drew away from his, and she was lost in the dark.
"They got a ceremony, Dick. A rigmarole?"
"Search me. Maybe they get out their rattles. Maybe march with their coup sticks. Maybe so a dance or more."
"Rattles ratt1in'. Drums thumpin'. Hi-yi and hi-yi. You got to save me from that, Dick."
"No help for it, fur as I can see."
"I got an idee."
"So?"
"You marry us. You be the preacher."
Summers' mouth opened, and then he laughed, keeping the laugh low so as not to be heard in the tepees. "That's the damndest thing these ears ever heard. Me playin' preacher!"
"You got your marriage license?"
"Sure thing."
"Show it. Make as if you were reading from it. The camp won't know any different. And maybe, between us, we can piece out the Lord's Prayer."
"I'm thinkin' you're out of your mind."
"No, Dick. What you might say would be as bindin' on me as a double-tied rope, tight as any preacher could make it."
"Who says the camp would go along?"
"White Hawk listens to you. I'm bettin' the Indians would be — what is it? — impressed. They would be plumb pleased. Do it, Dick, please."
Teal Eye put in, "I think right. My man will do it. Yes?"
Summers put a hand on her head and gave it a small shake. "Even you vote against me. I'm elected, huh? I never thought to ride so close to God."
"You mean you will?"
"Looks like I got to, no matter what. Means I have to talk to the chief and set it up, if I can, before sunshine."
In his bed that night Higgins stayed awake for a while, going over his lingering doubts. He couldn't even talk the girl's talk, barring a few words. She couldn't talk his. How could one know what the other was thinking, what the other one wanted? Coupling was one thing, but where was the real glue? It lay deeper than talk, he thought. It lay in the feelings. It lay in wishing only good for the other. A man could call it love if he wanted to.
* * *
Higgins got up before light. He went to the stream and cleaned himself and put on fresh clothes, and, back in his lodge, shaved by feel in the dark, using his old straight edge, cold water and the scrap of soap he had saved from his bath.
Teal Eye called to him and came in when he said to, leaving open the flap of the tepee. There was just enough light to see close-up things by. She had him sit down, and she kneeled behind him and braided his moist hair, tying red ribbons at the ends.
She was almost done when Summers came in. He looked almost white in his best buckskins.
"I got it jixed," he said.
"Chief's agreeable, but he wants to stand by me, which is all right. He wised up the camp. The Lord's Prayer is pretty well set in my head."
"What else you aimin' to say?"
"What comes to mind. Now rest easy. It's me actin' beyond my own self. It ain't easy, puttin' myself in the pulpit."
"You seen Little Wing?"
"She'll be ready."
When Higgins looked out of the tepee, he saw that dawn had sneaked up on the dark. The bowl of the sky had turned silver except for a kindle of fire in the east. He sat cross-legged and waited. A man couldn't hurry up time. The women were getting up but not building fires.
Summers passed by him, saying he would come back when the time came. Higgins kept waiting, feeling empty of stomach and raw in his nerves. The sun, not yet up, had laid a red banner before it. People had begun ranking themselves, men first, then women, then children.
Teal Eye appeared, bringing Little Wing, who smiled a kind of scared smile. Her hand took his. They walked out. The Indians stood, their eyes alive, their bodies still. Teal Eye led them to where Summers stood. White Hawk was beside him, wearing his eagle-feather headdress. Teal Eye faded back.
"Step ahead, please," Summers said. "Turn a little. Let light be on your faces." He looked around at the crowd and spoke for a while in Shoshone. When he couldn't find a word, he made the sign for it.
The sun, half up now, caught the silver in Summers' hair. The white of the marriage license Summers held in his hand seemed to make White Hawk's dark skin even darker. Higgins felt the girl's hand tremble in his.
Summers switched into English. "I have explained the white man's way. One wife and her forever."
Uh-huh, Higgins thought. That's what the book says. So what? He would go by the book.
"I have said that was your way, Mr. Higgins, that you were a good man and would make a good husband. Now let's get on with it."
He looked at the license, then raised both hands. "Let the sun see, and the moon and stars at night. Let the winds, big and little, take notice."
By God, Higgins thought, there were more sides to Dick Summers than to broken ice. And he was serious, not sly or playful as Higgins had feared. He was sober enough himself, but Summers' words made him more so. He pressed the girl's hand.
"With the blessing of the great spirit, this man and this woman are about to be wed."
He explained in Shoshone.
"Let your blessings be on them."
Again the Shoshone.
Using both languages together with gestures, Summers went on, "If anybody's got any reason against this marriage, speak up now or shut up forever."
He looked over the crowd, then turned to Higgins and said as if reading from the marriage license, "Do you, Hezekiah Higgins, take this woman to be your wife, your wife all the time, your only wife?"
Higgins turned to Little Wing and saw her mouth and lips moving soundlessly as he spoke. "I do that."
"And you, Little Wing, do you take this man to be your husband, through sickness and health and whatever comes?"
She answered, plain as day, "I do that."
"Then I say — and let everyone hear me — I say you are man and wife." He bent his head and said the Lord's Prayer without a mistake.
"Now, Chief White Hawk?"
White Hawk held out his hands and said something Higgins couldn't understand.
Summers' voice followed. "Hug her, Hig. Kiss her, you fool."
Higgins had to put up with a day of feasting, a day of talk, a day of smoking. Morning and afternoon wore on, and dusk came and then dark. He wasn't sure whether he led Little Wing to his lodge or she led him. Teal Eye or Summers or both had repitched the tepee, far enough away from others for privacy. They entered and closed the flap.
25
WE MOVE," White Hawk had said. "Camp stink."
Higgins couldn't say no to that. They had passed last summer in the same spot and then winter, and now another summer was coming along. Too long, he thought, for people who squatted and did their business on the outskirts of camp. In the summer they kept themselves clean by dowsing in the stream. In the winter they made do with cold water or snow. That didn't remove the smell of their leavings, not with warm weather at hand.
"It is time," Summers had answered. He wouldn't say it was past time, though it was. He wouldn't mention that the women had to go farther and farther for firewood, knowing the chief knew it, too. Summers' thumb moved to his words. "Downstream or up?"
They were speaking mostly in Shoshone, which Higgins had got some of the hang of.
"Down. Old camp dry and sweet now."
"To the Bear?"
"No. White-man road too close."
He meant the shortcut and the Oregon Trail, Higgins knew. Pretty soon the prairie schooners would begin rolling. For all he knew, they were rolling already.
Let them roll. Let farmers and clerks and businessmen and preachers and sharpers hit the trail. Just leave the Shoshones alone. It was a good l
ife he was leading with them, good with Little Wing as his wife and Summers and his family as close friends. Who the hell wanted more, unless it might be to see the high plains again and eat buffalo meat? They had fallen into a pattern, he and Summers. For the most part they supplied meat for the camp, going out almost day by day and bringing back elk, deer or sheep and once in a while, for variety, a black bear. Sometimes they took an Indian or two with them and let them try their luck with the Hawken or the Kentucky and so made friends in the camp.
It seemed that some of Summers' old twitch had left him. For months he had appeared easy in mind, pleased enough just to hunt or loaf around camp or spend time with his boys. Once, last summer, he had ridden down to the Bear, just to see, he said, how many were the wagon trains, how many took the shortcut, how many went by way of Fort Bridger. That's what he had said, but Teal Eye had doubt in her eyes.
So they had struck their lodges and moved downstream, the women doing the work of taking down tepees, fixing the lodge poles for travois, packing the horses that the men brought in. Little Wing had come to the point where she let him help some. The horse herd, moved by five or six riders, would bring up the rear.
They made quite a procession, Higgins thought, riding just ahead of the herd — loose horses, saddle horses, pack animals, men, women, children, dogs, all dusting the way to new grounds.
Once they were settled, Higgins said to Summers, "Thought I'd ride down to where the cutoff meets the Bear."
"Take a couple of days."
"I reckon Little Wing will bear up. She's tannin' hides. Me, I'd like to see what's doin' with the palefaces. Care to come along?"
Summers shook his head. " 'Nother time, maybe. Right now me and the boys have some plans."
Higgins rode off alone at the first flush of light. The night's chill faded as the day woke up. The season was coming full — full of leaf and bloom, squirrels busy, birds, too, singing hello to a new day. An eagle let out a scream. He could just see it, a dot in the far sky. He rode through a growth of quaking asps, in full leaf now, the leaves trembling to the breath of no wind.
It was shady beneath them, cool and shady, and nothing could ever kill them but thirst. He could tie up here and smoke a pipe and say to hell with the world's doings while his eye rested on green leaves and white bark. But he hankered to know. It would be a change just to talk to white strangers, to hear about their trip, to get outside news.