‘If one of ’em tackles you in the woods, use your knife instead of your gun if you can. I’ll head down to the stream and try to get to the horses ’fore they do. I’ll circle back for you. If I don’t come, don’t you move from where you’re layin’ until night comes again. They’ll stop everything ’til they gets us or we gets back to the camp. Understand?’
‘All right.’ His mouth was so dry he could barely speak.
‘And don’t you shoot. You won’t be able to hit him, you can’t reload in time and you may need that shot later.’
‘All right.’ But January knew he’d try, if he could get close enough.
Men’s voices raised in feral howling as Frye and January edged downslope.
Across the creek he could see horses grazing, bulky shadow and the round glint of eyes. Through the trees, the dim white triangles of the lodges, strung out along the creek bed just above where the waterside bushes got thick. Forty lodges, Morning Star had said. Well over two hundred warriors. Small fires laid gauzy drifts of smoke over the water. They followed the creek for another three-quarters of a mile before coming to where the big fire was. The men were gathered around it, naked shoulders jostling pale skin hunting-shirts, all gilded with the firelight: beating drums, or with the butts of their rifles on the ground. Where the warriors clustered thickest, between the tipis and over their heads January could just see the ends of the lodgepole frame to which they’d lashed their victim, and a single bleeding hand.
He brought up his rifle. Shaw, he thought, I did my best . . .
The men moved, and January saw what they were doing – driving splinters of wood under the bound man’s skin, among a bleeding horror of gashes and burns. An impossible shot at the distance, with the men moving back and forth, the firelight wavering—
And the bound man wasn’t Abishag Shaw.
It was Manitou Wildman.
There had been no mistaking the heavy power of the frame, the cropped-off black hair hanging down where his head lolled back, the harsh strong bones of the face under that bestial beard. The first rush of relief made January feel almost faint, and then, in the next moment, the horrible choice: I would shoot, and take the consequences, for Shaw who saved my life . . .
Will I take those same consequences for a man I barely know?
No man’s gonna say Bo Frye left a feller to be gutted an’ minced by Blackfeet . . .
Even a relative stranger, as Shaw was to Frye. Boaz Frye, January thought, would know that some day he might easily be the one bound by firelight in a Blackfoot camp, in hell already and looking at worse . . .
Are you really going to get yourself killed – and possibly, killed THAT WAY – to shorten Manitou Wildman’s agony?
January didn’t hear the camp guard’s approach, but Frye touched his shoulder, and the two men drew back further into the trees. Willing himself to be willing, January followed him, moccasins sliding in the pine straw, seeking another vantage point for a shot. Like his companion, he’d double-shotted his gun – crammed in as much powder as it could take without, he hoped, having the lock blow up in his face – to speed the bullet over an impossible distance. But at that distance it was anybody’s guess if he could aim. Moonlight touched the sleek dark hair of a warrior passing between the trees on the hill slope below, made a ghostly ravel of the down on an eagle feather. Frye led him up on to an outcrop of rocks, but still could get no clear view of the camp, and all the while the screaming went on like a soul in hell. ‘Them splinters is fatwood,’ Frye whispered. ‘Resin pine. Burns like lucifer matches. They lights ’em . . .’
Dear God—
January remembered the smack of the man’s fist on his jaw, the animal glint of those brown eyes and the trained, clean, careful way Wildman had moved.
Remembered how the big man had pulled that Omaha girl from the men who’d held her, not knowing then that he wouldn’t have to fight January for her immediately thereafter and maybe others as well, but half-throwing her to her own people, with a let the girl go . . .
A second scout came into the moonlight below, much too near the rocks. Frye and January drew further upslope. The firelight leaped up among the tipis; Wildman’s screams passed beyond human, beyond animal even.
The moon’s angle changed above the draw. January saw the pale pattern of elk teeth on smoky buckskin, moving on this side of the creek now. When Frye touched January’s arm again to signal a further retreat, January could feel the young man’s hand shaking, as were his own. Hating himself, he followed, keeping to the border zone of darkness among the trees, as high up the side of the little canyon as they could until they were well clear of the vicinity of the Blackfoot camp. Only then did the mountaineer whisper, ‘I’m sorry, hoss. We couldn’t—’
‘It’s all right.’
But it wasn’t.
They hid among the boulders Frye had told him about, far up the draw. Shared pemmican, which January was almost too sick with shock to want until he’d tasted some and realized he was famished and his head was pounding. When the wind backed a little they could still hear the screaming. It didn’t stop until past moonset.
Not long after first light January heard the harsh scuffle of movement in the trees below them. He put his head over the rocks and saw the Blackfeet moving out. Warriors rode ahead, long dark hair hanging down their backs; women walked with bundles among the horses that drew the lodgepole travois. Dogs and children, silent alike, ghosts between the trees. Medicine bundles – feathers and bones twirling – on the end of travois poles and spears. Rifles held upright and ready.
When the last of the village was well out of sight, January and his companion slipped from cover, almost ran downstream—
—and swung around, rifles at ready, at movement in the green dawn shadows on the other side of the creek.
‘You tolerable, Maestro?’
January let out his breath in a sigh. ‘Just.’
Shaw came to the creek’s edge as Frye and January waded across. ‘Glad to see that warn’t you they was settin’ fire to.’ Together the three climbed the few yards up to where Goshen ‘Beauty’ Clarke waited with his horse and his laden mules, nearly hidden among the trees. ‘An’ twice as glad to see you had the good sense not to try an’ put that poor bastard out’n his pain.’ Clarke had on his wolfskin hood, beneath which his long golden braids flowed down almost to his waist. On his feet he wore a pair of well-cut, and much-scuffed, black boots.
‘You were bug-struck loco to even think about tryin’, Shaw,’ snapped the Beauty. ‘Waugh! You near as dammit got us killed.’
‘But I didn’t,’ pointed out Shaw mildly.
‘I told you it couldn’t have been Clem or any of the boys,’ Clarke added grouchily. ‘They’s all camped in the next draw over. You didn’t see them riskin’ their tripes checkin’ to see if that was me.’
‘Well, don’t mean they didn’t,’ replied Shaw. ‘I ’spects they’ll meet us at the campsite, if’fn the Dutchman wants to see if they left your new boots behind.’
‘Naw.’ The Beauty shrugged. ‘They didn’t fit him. The coat doesn’t fit him, neither, but he wanted somethin’ out of it, an’ he wouldn’t listen to reason.’
‘You tell my partner how you come by those boots, Clarke,’ said Shaw. ‘I found it right interestin’.’
As did January, when the trapper related in an undervoice – because Shaw and Frye were still listening for the slightest signs of trouble back down the trail that the Blackfeet had taken – the events of three nights ago. ‘We thought at first that little speck of a fire mighta been somebody who’d been hurt,’ explained Clarke. ‘Or somebody who’d camped up, not realizin’ how close he was to the rendezvous, like Robbie Prideaux, that time he made his confession to one of his camp-setters an’ they both laid down in a blizzard, thinkin’ they was dyin’ fifteen feet from the gate of Fort Laramie one night. But there’s this old man, layin’ in a shelter under a deadfall, with his hands folded on his breast an’ his throat cut from e
ar to ear. Stabbed in the back, too, though that didn’t keep Clem from takin’ his coat. We figured he was that Indian agent Titus was workin’ himself up to a stroke over – no lookout of ours even if we hadn’t been tryin’ to ease on out of the camp, quiet like. There’s one thing I got no patience with, it’s Indian agents, pokin’ around causin’ trouble . . .’
‘What time was this?’
‘First light.’
‘Any sign of a horse nearby?’
‘We didn’t see any, but we didn’t look. The rain had slowed us down, an’ we knew we still had a couple of those sneaky bastards on our tails, that’s too dumb to find their own beaver.’ He glared pointedly at Boaz Frye.
‘His clothes wet or dry?’
‘Damp,’ said Clarke. ‘Like he’d got under shelter pretty quick after gettin’ wet.’
‘You have trouble getting his boots off? Was that why you hauled him out of the shelter?’
‘The left boot, yeah. His leg was splinted up, and his foot was swole – Clem had to hold on to his shoulders while I pulled at it. The old guy was dead,’ he added defensively. ‘It’s not like it hurt him or nuthin’.’
January reflected that Jed Blankenship would have just cut off the swollen leg and removed the foot the easy way.
‘Swelled a little or swelled a lot?’
The mountaineer thought about it for a moment, his hand stroking the stock of his rifle, which had been decorated with an elaborate design of brass nail-heads. ‘A little, I’d say. I mean, we got his boot off him—’
Shaw raised a hand. All stopped, and on the morning air, above the animal smells of the empty campsite before them, January smelled fresh smoke. Instinctively, the four men spread out, moving in silence from tree to tree among the cut-down brush, the dung and detritus that littered the edges of the creek where the tipis had been set last night. Further ahead among the cottonwoods, January saw a flash of movement and raised his gun. Beside a small fire two gourd bowls lay, and a tin cup of water. Shaw stepped out of the trees, flanking the clearing. After a moment, from the rocks nearer the creek, a man’s hat was raised up on a rifle – a reasonable precaution against trigger-happy intruders.
And the next minute, Manitou Wildman – dressed, unruffled and quite clearly in perfectly good health – stood up from among the rocks.
SIXTEEN
The words, ‘Are you all right?’ came out of January’s mouth even as he thought: that’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard.
Wildman blinked at him, like a man thrust suddenly into light from darkness. ‘I’m well.’
Shaw lowered his rifle. ‘You didn’t look so peart last night.’
The trapper shook his head. His short-cropped hair, January noticed, was clean, new-washed, still wet, and under his tan he was ghastly pale. His slow, mumbling voice had a hoarse note to it, as if indeed his throat had been lacerated by screams. ‘Nothing happened last night.’
‘Here? This very spot? The Blackfeet?’
‘The Blackfeet are my friends,’ said Wildman. ‘Silent Wolf is my brother.’
‘Now, there’s been times I wanted to stick splinters under my brother’s hide an’ light ’em,’ said Shaw, ‘but I don’t recall as I ever actually done it—’
‘Nothing happened last night,’ repeated Wildman.
Shaw, January and young Mr Frye exchanged looks – are we crazy?
The big trapper seated himself cross-legged by the fire again, picked up one of the gourds and sipped at the broth within. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, in a voice that sounded more normal. ‘It’s miles from camp.’
‘What are you doin’ here?’ returned Shaw.
‘Came to see my brothers.’ Manitou nodded in the direction of the stream, where two horses and a mule were hobbled – Manitou’s horses, January saw at a glance. Like himself, the mountaineer was a big man and paid extra for the biggest horses in the strings brought up from Missouri and New Mexico. ‘Silent Wolf knows it’d be madness to attack his enemies where the white men are in strength,’ Manitou went on. ‘But it’s madness not to know what’s going on. Sit.’ He motioned to the ground by the fire. ‘There’s more stew here than I can eat.’
After a moment’s hesitation – and another glance traded – the four trackers complied. In the mountains, you didn’t turn down stew, and after tracking from sunrise to darkness yesterday January would have eaten raw buffalo with the hair on. Shaw said, ‘There was a man killed outside the camp three nights ago, a stranger—’
‘I didn’t do it,’ said Wildman quickly. ‘I never saw the old man.’ And then, ‘Three nights?’
‘How’d you know he was old?’
Hesitation. Then, ‘One of the camp-setters told me.’
January opened his mouth to ask: when? You haven’t been in camp since then— and Shaw elbowed him very gently in the back.
‘He tell you the body was nekkid when we found him? We been trackin’ down bits an’ pieces of his plunder, tryin’ to find out who he was an’ what he was doin’ out there. McLeod an’ that preacher Grey been claiming he was this Indian Agent Goodpastor, that seems to have got hisself lost.’
Manitou’s heavy brow sank even lower over his eyes. ‘No,’ he said in his slow voice. ‘No, I didn’t know ghouls had looted his body.’ His glance swept over Frye’s waistcoat, and Clarke’s boots, and spots of angry color began to spread like wounds over the dark, taut skin of his cheekbones.
‘Now, just a goddam minute—’ Clarke began, and Shaw held up his hand.
‘That’s by the way,’ he said. ‘An’ the old man was buried decent at the camp. Grey prayed over him, for what good that’s like to do – an’ for a fact, he sure don’t care now who’s wearin’ his boots. This camp-setter you talked to wouldn’ta had some idea who the old boy mighta been, would he?’
Manitou looked aside. ‘No.’ He stood, his sudden movement reminding January of the grizzly he’d seen on the other side of the creek last night, huge and far too close in the moonlight, and went to pick up his saddle from the rocks where it lay. ‘Maybe it was old Goodpastor.’
‘If’fn it was, he parked his camp an’ his horses under a rock someplace. Care to come with us, whilst we takes tea with the Dutchman an’ sees if old Mr Incognito was carryin’ callin’ cards in his coat pocket?’ Shaw collected bridle and apishamore, and followed.
‘No,’ Manitou said. ‘I been from my camp too long. Three days, you said?’ He shook his head, his heavy brow creasing, like a drunkard trying to reckon the days of a binge. ‘Winter Moon,’ he added, ‘you need one of these girls –’ he slapped the shoulder of the taller of his two horses, a heavy-boned buckskin – ‘’til you get back to the camp? If Beauty’ll lend you a bridle off one of the mules . . .’
‘I appreciate the offer,’ said January. ‘Thank you. We owe you some pemmican, by the way—’
‘Surprised a bear hadn’t got it. You’re welcome to it.’
‘You stayin’ at the camp awhile?’ asked Shaw more softly – perhaps to exclude, January thought, Beauty Clarke and Boaz Frye, who had gone to check loads and cinches on Clarke’s mules. ‘For a fact I been wantin’ to speak with you ’bout what happened down at Fort Ivy this winter, when Johnny Shaw was killed.’
Manitou paused in the act of laying down the apishamore on his other horse, a cinder-gray mare, and regarded Shaw with those deep-shadowed brown eyes. ‘That’d be your brother.’
‘It would.’
‘You look like him.’
‘I been told.’
‘I wasn’t in the fort when it happened.’ When Wildman swung the saddle into place January noticed the catch in his movements, and the way he favored his left arm. Where the worn elk-hide hunting-shirt fell away from Wildman’s throat, he saw clotted wounds. In places blood leaked through to stain the pale-gold hide. ‘I was camped about a mile off, in the woods.’
‘Why?’ asked Shaw. ‘From all Tom an’ Beauty both say, it was snowin’ billy-bejeezus an’ cold as brass unde
rwear.’
‘Too many people. People—’ Manitou readjusted the apishamore under the saddle, cinched the whole arrangement tight. ‘I ain’t fit to be around people. Never have been. Guess you know that,’ he added, with a sudden shy grin that made his face look suddenly human again. ‘I get mad . . . Better I keep my distance. You think it was Frank that did it? Tom’s clerk?’
‘It’s who I’m up here lookin’ for.’ Shaw folded his long arms. ‘Though I’d appreciate you kept that one silent as the grave. Why’d you think it might be him?’
‘Man don’t leave a fort in the middle of winter like that, ’less he’s flushed out. One mornin’ – before first light, durin’ a break between storms, but more bad weather comin’ in, you could smell it – I saw him pass ’bout a half-mile from my camp. I only knew him by that townsman’s coat he wore: old, black wool with a fur collar. Heard later he’d said he got spooked, the boy bein’ killed by Blackfeet like that. But I never saw no sign of Blackfeet. So I figured it was probably him. Hard luck on Tom. I know he was crazy ’bout that boy. Yourself too, I guess.’
Shaw nodded, without speaking.
‘Why’d you think he’s comin’ here?’
‘Johnny found letters of his, that sounded like there was gonna be some kind of trouble here at the rendezvous. Bad trouble, he said. Killin’ trouble. Then this old buffer shows up dead, that seems to just fallen outta the sky. The name Hepplewhite mean anythin’ to you?’
‘Just the feller who made the furniture.’ Manitou took the empty stew-gourd Shaw held out to him, knotted it in one of the saddle latigos, then swung himself up as lightly as a schoolgirl. ‘If Frank’s come into this country,’ he went on, looking down at Shaw, ‘likely your vengeance’ll look after itself. Frank’s a clerk. Got a clerk’s hands. Can’t see him lastin’. You come here, you lay yourself in the hand of God. He don’t have far to look if he’s after you.’
The Shirt On His Back Page 15