by A B Guthrie
"No one on the cutoff?"
"Just one outfit. A wagon, open, and four men."
"Might be our friends. How far behind you?"
"The way they were going, I"d say three or four hours."
The men got back in their saddles and reined north, along the trail proper. They waved as they went, and Summers called, "Good luck."
Higgins left him, and he heard two shots, and Higgins came back with one rabbit and one grouse. They weren't much for two hungry stomachs.
They sat through the blazing afternoon in what shade they could find, their eyes fixed on the cutoff. Little heat waves danced there to the sun's tune. A breeze stirred and died.
At last Summers said, "Someone's comin', Hig."
"Wisht I had your eyes."
They waited.
A wagon came lurching down the hill, held back with ropes that three men pulled while the fourth yanked at the team. Summers said, "Light load, else they couldn't hold 'er. There's Caudill."
Horses, wagon, men picked up their pace with water just ahead. They made a line along the shore. The men got up, wiping their mouths. From twenty feet away Summers called, "How, Boone?"
Caudill came forward, scowling. The years had coarsened him, and time laid on some fat, but muscles played beneath it. The scowl disappeared. "Hang me if it ain't Dick Summers. How?" He held out his hand. Summers let himself shake.
"What goes with you? Where's your stick float?" Caudill asked.
"It's a long story."
"Come with us, along to Californy, you and your ganted-up friend."
"Don't be belittlin' him, Boone."
"All right. Come along."
"Don't reckon so. Let's talk a spell." Summers made for a dead and drifted log and beckoned Caudill. Caudill yelled to his men, "See to the horses. Make camp. Me and an old friend got to jabber."
"How come the wagon?" Summers asked.
"Two of my pardners ain't worth a shit on a horse, and the wagon might come in handy. The men can shovel, by God. They'll shovel when we get to pay dirt."
"Heard you were huntin' hides?"
"A man's got to live. What's with you, I done asked once?"
"I'm a settled man, married and everything."
"You mean really married? By a preacher?"
It was time to let him have it, or some of it. "Yep," he said. "Me and Teal Eye."
Caudill jerked his head to stare at Summers. "Teal Eye? My old squaw?"
"She ain't old. Your boy's growin' up."
"Not my boy, by God. You watch out, she'll cheat on you."
"She never cheated on anybody."
"Like hell you say. Birthed a boy with red hair like Jim Deakins. A blind pup to boot."
"You ever see a white buffalo?"
"One time."
"Could you pick out his pa?"
"You talk crazy talk."
"Trouble with you, Boone, you never knew what real friendship was."
"You speakin' of Jim Deakins, I saved his life onct."
"And took it for nothin' at all, nothin' but what you made up in your mind."
Caudill's face was full-turned to him with such a look of torment in it that Summers felt minded to say, "Now, Boone. Easy. It ain't the first mistake ever made." But the look of torment changed to black rage.
Summers, with his hand on his knife, thought he was prepared. He wasn't, not for the heavy arm flung across his chest. It knocked him backward over the log. Caudill rolled over and straddled him. He locked his strong hands on his throat. Summers had his knife out. He couldn't slash at the arms or hands, not with his upper arm pinned by the great weight of the knee. The forearm was free with the knife in it. He could jab it into a gut. He didn't, not yet. The hands clamped tighter. His lungs churned for air. But even as his sight dimmed and his senses blurred, he kept the knife by his side. It wasn't a killing matter.
He thought he heard the crack of a rifle. He thought he felt the big body lurch and then tremble. Then most of it fell forward at his side. He squirmed out from under. There was a hole in Caudill's head just under the hairline.
Panting, he looked up. Higgins stood a few feet away, a wisp of smoke drifting from the muzzle of his Kentucky. Higgins said, "He didn't mean nothin' to me."
Summers couldn't answer for the clench of fingers still felt on his windpipe.
Higgins turned to the watching men. There he was, seen dimly, a skinny rack of bones unarmed except for the unloaded rifle. "You want to make something of it?" he asked.
One of the men answered, "It ain't no skin off our ass."
"Get shovels, then. We got to dig a grave. I'll help."
The same man said, "Be a pleasure."
Summers just sat, his hand lying on Caudill"s dead shoulder. He sat and watched the men and the hole growing deeper. He tried not to think, tried not to remember how it was long ago. He patted the shoulder and got up and walked to the men.
"Time," he said and tried to clear the squeeze from his voice.
"Time to be goin' home."
PART THREE
27
SUMMERS sat by the shore of the Teton and watched the water flow by. He had a pole in his hand and a baited hook in the water, but the hook had washed into the shallows and he let it ride there. Below him near the tepees, almost out of earshot, were Teal Eye and the boys and Higgins and Little Wing, talking a mixture of Shoshone, Blackfoot and English. They sounded happy.
A log cabin sat by the tepees now, built by him and Higgins because the womenfolk seemed to want one. It was chinked with clay and had a tramped-earth floor, a sod roof and two real-glass windows packed in from Fort Benton. In hot weather it was cooler than the tepees, and in windy weather it was better for cooking because of a mud-and-stick fireplace that didn't smoke. Not so good in cold weather, though. Nothing like a tepee for warmth. It had gone a little against the grain to build it. It seemed too solid, too much there forever, as if it held them to one spot. Still?
The older a man got, he thought, the more he liked just to sit and watch water run. The Teton was a hurrying stream, as if it couldn't wait to join up with the Marias and empty into the Missouri and go on and on just for the fun of running and joining. It was a young buck, full of frolic and fizz, eager for the yonders, its clean flow muddied, and would wind up in big and mixed waters that lazed along to the sea.
A trout rose, but he didn't cast for it. Enough to sit here and look while the soft summer afternoon inched along. A spiky bunch of flowers made patches of yellow on the far shore, and johnny-jump-ups grew in the moist soil near his feet. He picked one and smelled it and chewed at the stem.
The Teton, it was mostly called now, though it had borne and bore different names, given it by explorers, trappers, stray visitors and traveling preachers and priests. Names like the Tansy, the Rose and the Breast, which was just English for Teton, meaning the breast of a woman to Frenchmen. Those Frenchies, good with a boat but not worth a damn fighting Indians, the Frenchies, coming up the Missouri or boating and hauling by way of Canada, and all of them starved for women, so that every nippled butte put them in mind of a tit, and every swell of land might be the swell of she flesh. If he got up and looked back, he could see a butte like that and the swell of land leading to it.
Wherever he was, whatever was in his head, worry about the boys kept sneaking in. Lives lowed just as rivers did. But how? And to where? What would happen to Nocansee without him and Teal Eye around? He had grown big and strong like his blood father, but not like him in anything else. He was a gentle boy, a good, soft-hearted boy, with senses so sharpened that a man wondered. He had a nose keen as a hound's, ears that picked up what other ears couldn't, and such a feeling for touch that he seldom stumbled or fell. But what good were they without eyes to see? No answer to that one.
And no ready answer for Lije. How to shoot, how to hunt, how to trail or lie patient, how to read footprints, how to learn from the wind and the voices of birds — what good in the life he would have to lead as the wo
rld changed? It wasn't enough that he had a brain and was able of body. It wasn't enough that he knew a little of numbers and letters. Somehow he would have to learn more in the coming time of account books and ledgers and buying and selling and the ways and the tricks of business. He must learn how to read and to write.
It was hard to believe, the years flowed so fast, that Nocansee was nineteen or thereabouts, and Lije a coming sixteen. He sighed and put worry in the back of his head. The sun was good on his back. Under it the fields to the east and the far bank of the valley shone soft and green-yellow. A man might almost think they were smiling. To his right, maybe five miles away, two craggy buttes lifted, good enough to the eye to excuse the presence of rattlesnakes. On their slopes antelopes would be feeding, curious as cats, slender-legged, their rumps showing white when they turned.
He had put worry in the back of his head except for one niggle. That was Higgins. He hadn't seemed quite himself lately, pretty quiet these days as if some secret worked in him. A man with wife trouble might act and look like that. Not likely with Little Wing. But who could tell?
Such worries aside, it was a good life he was leading, good in spite of hard winters and winds that beat a man backward, good though travelers, Indian and white, rode up and down and across the valley as they hadn't before. The Indians were no problem. They shied off from the camp or came to visit polite, remembering tales of Bear Friend and Bear Maker. The whites scouted the land and went on, to where gold might be found or to the eastern plains where the great herds of buffalo roamed. Gold-hunter and hide-hunter, and nothing much for either one of them here, nothing much for anybody except those who felt kin to mountains and flats and liked to see distance too far to figure.
The past spring had seen a big party of whites, though — men, wagons, teams and tackle — and some men sighted through instruments and others held poles, and once in a while they planted a stake, and Summers knew them for surveyors. It was Blackfoot country, this country was, made so by treaty, but here was the advance party of whites getting ready to parcel it out.
They had gone on, leaving no signs of their passage except for a here-and-there marker, which Summers and Higgins tore from the ground when they came on them.
Moon after moon, Summers thought, watching the ripples and small sprays of water. Moon after moon since their return to the old camping grounds — springs, summers, falls, winters, each in its own manner and none quite the same as before, so that a man could speak of the season and year of the big flood, of the long drought, of the grandfather of winds. On a day like today he would laugh at the winters that kept all hands inside, except for bringing in more firewood or axing a chunk of meat off a carcass stowed outside just as the real cold set in. A lazy time then, but not lazy when a man could get out and had to hunt hard for meat, not lazy when furs were prime and he waded in water that withered the skin and made his legs blue.
He heard the soft crunch of grass and looked up, and Higgins asked, "Just settin', lazy bones?"
"Settin' and thinkin'."
"Don't fag your mind. Thinkin' on what?"
Summers motioned toward the ground. "Have a seat. My mind's on my boys."
"Bein' a pa puts a weight on a man, on a man like you least-wise. All the same, I wisht Little Wing and me could come up with a baby."
Summers let his gaze follow the river, down to the curve that it made. "Growed up, what would he do, Hig? Not live like us, that"s for sure. You think this valley's goin' to stay like it is? Some galoot with a plow will come along, or some bastard will think, Jesus what a country for beef cattle now that the buffalo's gone. You know there's cattle already down on the Medicine and over on the Gallatin, too."
"Seems a shame, though, that a man with a good wife has no young'n to show for it. If it was different, I bet me and her would have a world-beater or somethin' close to it."
So there was no trouble between Higgins and Little Wing. It had been foolish to wonder. Summers went on, still thinking of the baby Higgins wished for. "You seen them surveyors, Hig. It's notice of where at we're headed. We've both been to Fort Benton, recent enough to know what it is. It's not just a fort anymore. It's a stinkin' town. Boats on the river, freight comin' in, freight goin' out, mine tackle and such for the west, buffalo hides for the east. Beggin' Indians, drunk Indians, made that way by the whites who hate 'em. But, hell, you know."
"No harm in wishin'," Higgins said. "You talk true enough, but a man goes crazy if he tries to figure all the ins and outs and whatever will come after he's dead. Besides, Little Wing she wants a baby."
Summers gave him a smile and said, "Thanks from your crazy friend."
No trouble between Higgins and Little Wing, and a man couldn't call it husband-and-wife trouble between him and Teal Eye. It was the difference between facing facts and balking at doing it. They were lying together at night, and he had asked,
"What you reckon is ahead for Lije?"
"He will take a wife, not so long now."
"I don't want him to be a fort loafer or to hang around at some Indian agency. I don't want him to turn out a drunk like so many."
"You have taught him better."
"It's a white man's world comin' up. Where does he fit?"
"He will live with us like always, his wife with him."
"I'm afraid that ain't likely."
"You mean he leaves us?"
‘When the time comes. It has to be."
His arm across her felt the sudden spasm of grief. She began to cry without sound.
"I don't want him to leave, neither, little duck." He tried patting her shoulder. "It's just that what's what is what. What is bound to be will be."
She didn't answer.
"If I see straight, the old life's about over. No matter if I don't like it, new times are comin'. I want him ready."
"You talk like a white man." Her shoulder pulled away from his hand.
"I've growed to be more Indian than white," he told her. "The country's done it, you and the country and all. A man gets shaped to what is around him. If I talk like a white man, it's because I was one onct, and I know 'em."
She didn't speak again, but he knew it was grief, not dislike, that had silenced her. Nothing like a hard fact to jar up a couple.
Now Higgins said, "You do a heap of thinkin', if that's what you're doin'."
Before Summers could answer, they heard the bray of a mule.
"I be damned," Higgins said, getting up fast.
Summers came to his feet, too. "Round the bend. Beyond them trees. Come on."
"With nothin' in hand except a fish pole."
"I'll take it. We're fishin'."
They rounded the bend, stepping soft, and saw two men, two horses and a pack mule. One of the men was out from shore, washing gravel in a pan. The other, on the bank, was white-whiskered and wore a pistol on his hip. Seeing them, he madeout to draw it until Summers asked, "Any luck?"
"If we had any, you think we"d tell you?"
"Likely not, but without luck maybe so you would. Me and my pardner gave it up and turned to fishin'. My name's Summers. This here is Higgins."
"Ralston," the man said and offered his hand. "Him haulin' ass out of the creek is named Tevis. You say you done panned this water?"
"Sure did. Both forks. From headwaters clean to the Marias and never found a show."
Tevis came up, pants dripping, a shovel and a pan in his hand. He shook his head. "No good. No fuckin' good."
"What with diggin' and washin' and watchin' for Indians, we got a bellyful," Ralston said.
Higgins said, "With that hee-haw horse singin' a come-on, I"d watch sharp for redskins."
"Any around here, close, I mean?" Ralston asked.
"Some. They come and they go," Summers answered.
"They on the peck?"
"It depends. They get some upset when the whites mine their gold or kill off their buffalo."
Tevis dropped bucket and pan and stepped ahead. "You sayin' it's theirs?"
"Now, now," Ralston said. "No offense anywhere. The point is, Indians and troubles. You had any?"
"Not to speak of. We both of us got Indian wives."
"Sweet Jesus," Tevis said and spit on the ground. "Get the mule, Ralston."
As they rode away, Tevis said, just loud enough for them to hear, "Squawmen."
"A man could wish they get their scalps lifted," Summers told Higgins. "Gold. By-God gold."
Higgins scuffed at the ground with the toe of one moccasin.
"Somethin' I been meanin' to bring up, Dick." He sat down, saying, "Set a minute."
Summers sat, holding the fish pole upright, the hook set in the butt. "I knowed you had some burr under your tail."
"All right. It's money. It's gold. We got to get some."
"What for?"
"You damn well know. To pay debts. They bear hard on a man."
"I'm mindful."
"There ain't enough fine furs, you can't catch enough, me helpin', to pay what we owe at Fort Benton. It's a right smart of money, what with new horses and all."
"So?"
"You got the three new ones on jawbone, sayin' you'd pay later, but, knowin' you, I know you was embarrassed down to the bone."
Summers flicked the end of the fish pole at a leaf overhead.
"You don't need to tell me we"re owin'. I got the figure in my head. And I can trap enough furs, come the time that they're prime. Don't forget, the money ain't due yet. You ever know me to back out on a debt?"
"There's another thing it's in me to tell you."
"Spit it out."
"It's what I owe you, and only one way I can see to pay it."
"You don't owe me n0thin'."
"Like hell. I ain't mentioned it till now, but it's been ridin' in my mind ever since we met up. Long as you had some money and we added a mite with our traps, I just floated along, all the time feelin' obliged but not pushed. Now you're broke, flat broke, and I ain't floatin' no more. Been too goddamn long as it is. High time to pay up."
Summers put the pole down and looked into Higgins' eyes. They were stubborn. "You're my pardner, Hig."