“Berger needs a man,” the factor said. “Would you trade with the Blackfeet?”
“Yes, sir. Fitzpatrick and Sublette have no dealings with the Blackfeet.” But he had misgivings. He would be befriending Victoria’s enemies. But what difference did it make?
“We have an outpost on the Marias. Berger and a man or two are trading with Bug’s Boys. If they succeed, I’ll send Kipp to build a post next fall. They’ve built a cabin—that’s all it is—and it’s vulnerable. But the Blackfeet want to trade, and Berger’s fluent in the tongue, so I think you’ll be safe enough. We opened up trade just this fall. Berger brought forty of them here, and we did a good business. I’ll send you there. He needs help. You’re too valuable to put to work here laying up cottonwood logs or cutting firewood. Three months on the Marias, then bring the returns here by pirogue, and then join the keelboat crew in July. Twenty a month, the funds to be credited to Rocky Mountain Fur through Ashley. Subsistence for you and your horses, and an outfit as needed. What you lose you pay for. You will use your horses on company business. I am sending some resupply to Berger on your packhorse. Tell him we don’t have much left here, but there’s powder, lead, knives, blankets, awls, beads, molasses, and a bolt of flannel. I am entrusting you with supplies. Live up to my confidence in you.”
That faint praise came as a surprise to Skye. “All right, sir.”
“Maybe by July I can persuade you to stay.”
“No offer would do that.”
“I’m going to find out what happened, Skye—ah, Mister Skye.”
“Mr. Beckwourth will tell you.”
McKenzie looked irritable. “Go to the trading room and get what you need. Sign for it. You can read and cipher, I take it?”
“I was preparing to enter Cambridge—Magdalene—when the Royal Navy press gang took me.”
“Likely story.”
McKenzie dismissed him with a wave. “Be off now. It’ll take you a week by land. You’ll be driven far from the Missouri. You’ll ford the Milk and several lesser tributaries. Berger’s post is on a flat close to the confluence of the Marias. Take this letter with you. It will tell him about you.”
Skye took the letter and headed for the cheerful trading room, staffed by cynical black-clad clerks who looked to be more prosperous than their fur company salaries would permit. He selected a pair of four-point blankets, a small brass kettle, half a dozen beaver traps, a ball mold and bar of galena, and some DuPont powder.
The post seemed to anticipate his every move, such was McKenzie’s genius. In the yard his saddled horses waited, the packhorse laden with his robes and the resupply. He added the gear he had drawn from stores and rode into the morning light, once again a man alone. No one saw him off, but he didn’t doubt that many eyes watched.
What had he done? He couldn’t say for sure. He was only trying to survive, far apart and two or three snowy barriers from his former employers. Someday, the ledgers kept in St. Louis would record payment in full by the Briton who left the mountains.
Bug’s Boys. He had met them only in battle, and all too often at that. Now he would trade—take in their beaver and pass through the trading window muskets and powder and arrow points and knives and lance points—with which to slaughter his friends and wage merciless war upon Victoria’s people. Oh, what had he done? Had he just sold his soul to the Devil?
He had learned a little about the Blackfoot Federation—the Piegans, or Pikuni, as they called themselves, the Bloods or Kainah, and the Siksika, or Blackfeet proper, all speaking the same tongue, all proud, warlike, powerful, and brilliant. Every neighboring tribe feared them. But most of all the Yank trappers feared them; any encounter would become a fight to the death, war waged with the most relentless, cunning, gifted soldiers in the mountains.
He traversed an empty land, a solitary figure riding across snow-patched plains. Far distant, the Missouri oxbowed eastward in a broad, low valley, almost featureless. Skye scarcely knew where he was going, but he couldn’t miss if he stayed with the great river. He saw no signs of passage, no hoofprints in the frozen mud, no tracks of deer or antelope, no startled ravens breaking for the skies. He felt dwarfed by the surrounding emptiness, as small as he had felt at sea. Wind bit at him, found every pinhole in his clothing, but he ignored it. He had come to live in nature by enduring it. When you knew you couldn’t stop the wind or warm the air or abolish the rain, you endured. By the end of that March day he wondered whether he had made any progress at all. Nothing had changed. He steered his weary black and packhorse down a long, shallow coulee toward the river bottoms, where he would probably find wood and a place to escape the wind. But he was not lucky that night. The flats were as barren as the country above, and he knew he would roll into his blankets and robes with little more in his belly than some gnawed jerky.
All the more reason to leave the mountains. His thoughts turned to Victoria and then shied away from that topic. He wanted to draw a curtain across all of that, but couldn’t. An ancient love persisted. In the weeks since he had found her with Beckwourth, he had slowly recovered a will to live. He still told himself he didn’t care whether he lived or died—without her life wouldn’t be worth living. But it was in him to keep on, no matter how bad things were, just as he had kept on as a seaman.
He did better the next night, warming himself in the reflected heat of a sandstone cliff, boiling Darjeeling tea in his new brass kettle, drinking it while it still scalded. He had plentiful cottonwood beside him, and the horses were staked close at hand on abundant brown grass. But such was the land that he swore he had made no progress at all from sunup to sundown. Nothing had changed. The mute river ran distantly, often out of sight, mysterious in its trench in the plains. No one was abroad.
He forded the Milk, a shallow opaque river dividing stands of naked trees. He kept his gaze sharp and expectant; predators gathered at such places, but he saw none, and knew that he probably would not survive an encounter with a roving band of warriors, no matter that the American Fur Company had opened trade with the Blackfeet. He eyed his back trail nervously. Behind him was a telltale wake of hoofprints pressed in the midday mud and frozen to stone each evening. Anyone could find him, and no doubt would.
The country turned rougher, and he often camped beside a half-iced creek instead of finding his way down to the river. The hills crowded in, the empty flats vanished, and he could no longer see his fate hours before it engulfed him. Now, amid slopes and wooded groves and rock, he faced ambush and surprise.
Then one day he struck a large stream flowing southeast and followed it toward the great river. It was either the Marias or a good imitation of it, according to what he had been told. He found the cabin just north of the Missouri, and beside it a whole village of Blackfeet, their smoke-stained lodges emitting lazy coils of sour cottonwood smoke. Bug’s Boys! He rode uneasily through them, even as they stared silently at him. They were a gorgeous people, proud, tall, honey-fleshed, slender, and attired in blankets and bonnets that featured shades of blue. These people plainly loved blue, or else it had some sort of religious significance to them. He had seen many an Indian in his mountain years, but these were far and away the most handsome he had ever encountered.
An old mountain man lounged in the doorway, watching him. This one had been baked the color of an ancient saddle by the sun and wind, and his face was framed by a mop of snowy hair that hung loose to his shoulders. But he was more or less clean shaven; the man probably scraped himself once a month.
“Mr. Berger?”
“I don’t know the first word, but the second’s me.”
“I’m Barnaby Skye, sir. Mr. McKenzie sent me to help out.”
“Well, ain’t you the politest devil in the hills. You talk like an Englishman. A greenhorn for sure. Don’t know that I need help. Got these Piegans hyar, peaceable and trading plews. But they’d as soon slit my throat, the way they think about us. You bring any trade goods? I’m scraping bottom.”
“Mr. McKenzie sen
t some, all he could spare. He told me to help you this spring and then help bring the returns down the rivet.”
“You know the tongue?”
“No, but I’ll learn it.”
Berger spat. “I need a whole pack train of goods and they send me a greenhorn with one packload of trinkets. Well, git down. That horse’ll come in handy until it’s stolen. What do you do?”
“I have trapped and hunted mostly. Been a camp tender.”
Berger spat again. “You bring any spirits?”
“No, sir.”
The next wad of spit landed closer.
“I guess you can cut firewood.”
“I can do that and make myself useful, if that’s what you want. I cooked plenty as camp tender.”
“Camp tender for who?”
“Jackson, Sublette, Fitzpatrick.”
“You desert them?”
“No, sir. I can’t reach them until the snow melts.”
“Likely story. I’ll hear the rest of it later. I guess I’m stuck with you. You just keep your mouth shut, don’t rub them Piegans wrong, and mind your manners with their women. They ain’t loose like the Crows.”
twenty—five
Victoria boldly moved into the lodge of Jim Beckwourth, determined to have a happy time. She relished her new life as Antelope’s woman. Stillwater was big with child, so Antelope devoted all his amorous attentions to Skye’s former wife, giving her little gifts almost daily. A yellow ribbon one day, a string of beads the next, a jingle bell another day; needles and thread, a new awl, a sharp knife. Stillwater delighted in having a younger wife with her to share the work, especially now that she was so heavy and everything was harder to do. And Stillwater cherished being Antelope’s sits-beside-him wife, with seniority over the new one.
Of course, Antelope did not abandon his long-standing romance with Pine Leaf, the woman warrior, and sometimes he left both of his women in the lodge and went visiting for a night. Those were the only times Victoria was unhappy. Lithe, beautiful Pine Leaf, the sister warrior who fought beside Beckwourth and had saved his life, was a rival that Victoria couldn’t hope to equal in his heart.
He continued to call her Victoria—Skye’s name for her—and she knew why. Every time he pronounced that name, it was with a sense of victory. He had not only vanquished his rival in the trading business but had taken Skye’s wife from him as well. The thought made Antelope very happy and it amused Victoria, too. Sometimes he joked about it and they both laughed. Odd how it had all worked out. Skye had stolen her heart long ago, but when she brought him here to her people, he proved to be nothing, and wouldn’t even go out and steal horses or make war. She put him out of mind. Antelope filled her thoughts.
She was very rich. Antelope had more of everything than anyone else in the village. She had everything an Absaroka woman could ever dream of: her new man was a war leader with many coups to his credit, and he could wear the notched feathers of an eagle. He sat in the old men’s councils and his voice was heard. He had many women, which proved his greatness. He was the best host and party-giver among the Kicked-in-the-Bellies, and people rejoiced when word came to them to come to his lodge for a merry evening. He always had spirits, and quietly took in robes and pelts as he filled the cups.
Mostly the village nodded and winked and laughed at what happened to Skye. Everyone but the Old Bulls, the society of grandfathers who devoted themselves to the religion and traditions of the People and disapproved of change. But there weren’t many of those because they were always making life so painful for everyone else. The Old Bulls would stare at her when she passed, but that was nothing. She loved being young and Antelope’s lover and full of life and the woman of a great leader.
She had eyes for Antelope, but she had eyes for others—Young Horse, for instance. They had been eyeing each other at the parties, and maybe someday she would see what he had to offer. She had lost her virtue, but what Absaroka woman hadn’t? That was the big joke. And what had the loss cost her? Nothing but Skye, who was gone now. Antelope was a true Absaroka even if he had been raised as a yellow eyes, but Skye never was anything but a yellow eyes. She should have known better than to marry him, but she was just a girl back at that rendezvous, and full of romantic ideas. Now she was a knowing woman; she knew all there was to know about a man, and yet she was only twenty winters.
There was one other who stared at her, and he wasn’t an Old Bull. The shaman, Red Turkey Head, kept his counsel, but she knew he disapproved—and that the old man influenced her father. But she did not need her father or the shaman anymore now that she had Antelope. She remembered the long months with Skye in her parents’ lodge and how frustrating it had been. He did not fit. She wondered what she had ever seen in him. She was glad she was in Antelope’s lodge now. She avoided her father and brothers and sisters and grandparents, and especially avoided the old shaman, often walking in a different direction when she saw him. It made her angry, all this silent disapproval. She would live her time on earth as she chose.
At least she hadn’t lost her mother. Often, Digs the Roots and Many Quill Woman slipped away together to chop firewood, and then they talked.
“You are better off. The one you were married to,” she said, properly avoiding Skye’s name, “had no understanding. Now you have a good one, this one who has another wife. The one who is your present man, he will give you all you could ever want. He is good with a woman, which is why he has many. Half the girls in the village would like to be that one’s woman.”
Victoria giggled. “Skye’s feet smelled like skunks.”
“The yellow eyes are dirty,” her mother said as she hacked at a dry limb a long way from the village. Firewood was growing scarce in this last decaying gasp of coldness.
With the budding of leaves came the budding of war dreams among the men of the village. There were scores to settle, especially with the Siksika. Antelope sensed the time had come, even though many days were still chill and horses mired themselves in the muck.
“I’m going to go looking for Piegans,” he announced to her one day in the Moon of Budding Leaves. “I’m taking Pine Leaf with me, and a few others I trust.”
“Why Pine Leaf? You should fight with men.”
“Because Pine Leaf is a great warrior woman, and because we are happy together on the warpath.”
A stab of jealousy cut her. “Then take me. Skye taught me how to make war.”
“You’re ninety pounds soaking wet.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re too small.”
“I can hold the horses. Skye taught me to shoot.”
“War isn’t for women. What chance would you have against a big, tough Siksika twice your size and weight?”
She fell into silence. She hated it when Pine Leaf intruded on her new life. She had taken a dislike to Pine Leaf, even though Stillwater liked the warrior woman.
“I’ll bring you back a scalp,” he said. “Count coup just for you.”
“Ha! The only coup you count is on Pine Leaf.”
Antelope laughed. “That’s a good way to put it,” he said.
“I’m going, even if I have to follow along behind the rest of you.”
He turned serious. “No, I will make sure you don’t.”
But when the dawn came she threw her blankets over a pinto that Beckwourth had given her, gathered her bow and quiver, strapped her knife to her belt beside her flint and steel, found some jerked buffalo, and defiantly joined the rest, some thirty hard, watchful warriors who eyed her coldly. But she didn’t care. Antelope sighed, relented, and let her come. She would give a good account of herself, and as long as she was along, Beckwourth would be forced to divide his time between her and Pine Leaf.
The warrior woman immediately joined her as they rode north in a brisk wind. “What does Magpie tell you?” she asked.
“Magpie does not tell me anything.”
“You have come to war without knowing?”
“Yes!”
She had not sought medicine wisdom, nor had her spirit-helper come to her. She had cast aside the powers that had been given to her. “Don’t criticize me,” she snapped.
“You may die. Or they may capture you and use you and then torture you to death slowly.”
“I will show you who’s the better warrior woman,” Victoria said.
“I go to war against the Siksika because of a sacred vow. I will avenge the death of my brother, and many Siksika will die at my hand. It is not for myself. It is for the People. A sacred calling. I will never marry. My life is not given to any one man. It does not matter to me who I am, only that the People be safe and strong. I do not live for me. This came to me in a medicine vision when I was not yet a woman. What is yours?”
“I will not tell you.”
“Let me be a sister to you, then. You can help. Sometimes women come along not to fight but to tend the wounded, find food, hold horses. I will show you how it is on the warpath. You are young and need a grandmother—a teacher.”
“I am going to fight. I will show Antelope who is the best between us.”
Pine Leaf gazed at the rebellious girl and rode away silently. There would be no friendship on the warpath between these two. Victoria was delighted. She didn’t want to live in Pine Leaf’s shadow.
That evening, deep in the Yellowstone country north and west of the winter village, they camped in a ravine where they could strike a spark into tinder without suffering the wind to extinguish the tiny glow before they could breathe it into flame. Brown grass, flattened by snow, matted the slopes, enough fodder for the ponies. Victoria had neglected to bring a picket line and knew she was in trouble.
“I need a picket line,” she said to Antelope.
“Lots in the village,” he said.
She didn’t dare ask the other warriors and certainly not Pine Leaf. She ended up turning her pinto loose. It wouldn’t drift away from the rest but would be hard to catch at dawn. That evening she would begin to braid a line out of something—maybe the antelope skin she used as a saddle pad, or the edge of one of her robes. But she had gotten off to a bad start, and raged silently. She didn’t like this, but the worse things got, the more stubborn she became.
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