‘Nigger dog!’ Bodenschatz almost spit the words at him, clutching his bleeding arm. ‘You think they’ll let you go free?’
‘Just making sure that if shooting starts, it’ll be coming from in front of me, and not behind.’
The leader of the Crows rode over to them, a thickset, powerful warrior on a black horse painted with white handprints. Striking his chest, he said, ‘Lost.’ Dark eyes moved from January to Manitou, then on to Bodenschatz. ‘Do you ride bound, do you ride free?’
Bodenschatz stabbed at Manitou with a finger. ‘This man murdered my sister and murdered my father. Are the Crow women, to regard so little the right of a man to vengeance?’
As if his enemy had not spoken, Manitou answered, ‘I will ride free.’ He took his rifle from Hannibal – carefully handling it by the barrel – and held it out to the Crow warrior who came up with a horse on a lead rein.
In the end none of them were bound. Lost – the leader of the Crow war party – separated them along the line of warriors, and as the party filed through the darkness into the deeper mountains, January was well aware that the riders on either side of him had their rifles trained on him. Iron Heart – similarly guarded – rode next to Lost, and in the thin moonlight January saw the Omaha speaking in sign to the war chief as they rode, pointing back to Bodenschatz, to Manitou, to the west where the rendezvous lay, and sometimes back to the south, where the bones of his people rotted along the banks of the Platte.
Halfway up a steep coulee another party of Crow joined them, and by the time they reached the Crow village, strung out along a substantial creek between the hills, January guessed there were some two hundred warriors surrounding them. This was, he thought, the unknown band whose identity had caused so much speculation at the rendezvous. He knew there’d been a bet on it at Seaholly’s. It was small comfort to know that he could now win it.
It was relatively early in the night, and little ‘squaw fires’ glowed in front of many of the lodges. In others, the blaze had been built inside, and a low, honey-gold radiance shone through the translucent skins. Camp dogs and camp children boiled out from among the tipis, the dogs noisy, the children pointing excitedly at the black white man.
In front of a lodge in the midst of the camp, Lost signed them to dismount. An older man – heavy-built like Lost, and with the same mouth and chin – emerged, his shirt flecked with row upon row of elk teeth, from which eagle feathers and ermine tails dangled. Lost said, ‘Walks Before Sunrise,’ and Manitou murmured:
‘He’s big medicine.’
A moment later two other men ducked through the low entry, one of them – hands bound behind him and looking considerably the worse for wear – Abishag Shaw. The other – a deeply tanned white man in a trader’s well-cut frock-coat and riding boots – studied the captives appraisingly and said, ‘You’ll be Wildman – January – Bodenschatz – Sefton . . . M’am,’ he added, touching his hat brim to Veinte-y-Cinco. ‘Iron Heart—’ His glance shifted to the Omaha war chief. ‘I’m Asa Goodpastor. And I’ve been hearin’ some very strange things.’
‘I am here on sufferance –’ Goodpastor raised his hand against Bodenschatz’s angry tirade as they entered the lodge – ‘like the rest of you. Walks Before got word that you –’ he nodded to Iron Heart – ‘and your men attacked white men just outside the rendezvous camp two nights ago.’
‘We aided this man,’ said Iron Heart, with a cold glance across at Bodenschatz, ‘in his hunt for the man who killed his father and his sister. We promised to help him fulfill the vow of his vengeance, if he would help me fulfill the vow of mine. This promise he did not fulfill, nor will he, I think. Yet this is not through his own doing. These –’ Iron Heart gestured to Shaw, January and their companions, who had seated themselves beside the small central fire-pit – ‘followed him from the white man’s country because, in the course of his pursuit, he killed the brother of Tall Chief. If he would accomplish his vengeance, they must be stopped in theirs.’
‘Ain’t you forgettin’ one tiny detail,’ put in Shaw, rubbing the weals on his wrists where January had untied the thongs that bound him, ‘havin’ to do with you plannin’ to murder every man jack an’ woman at the rendezvous with the poison this man’s father was bringin’ out for you?’
‘They poison themselves,’ sneered Iron Heart. ‘I do not pour it down their throats.’
‘And this is not your affair, Medicine Lynx,’ spoke up Walks Before Sunrise, with a sharp look at Goodpastor. ‘Many tribes hate the white men. If they choose to kill them without honor, either for themselves or for their enemies, this is nothing to me.’
‘My people died without honor,’ retorted the Omaha chief, stung by the imputation of cowardice. ‘Why do I need any? Had this man –’ he jerked his head toward Wildman, who had sat through the whole of the discussion beside the fire in silence, his head in his hands – ‘not killed the old white father, I would have had my vengeance.’
‘Did you kill them?’ Goodpastor turned to Wildman. ‘This man’s father, an’ his sister?’
‘I killed his sister.’ Manitou raised his face from his palms, looked across the fire with ravaged eyes. ‘I got no memory of doing so, because of my madness—’
‘Your madness that conveniently convinced your judges not to hang you!’
‘So you were tried?’
‘Judges heard my case, yes. And put me in a madhouse. I didn’t kill his father.’
Bodenschatz opened his mouth to shout a refutation of this, but January cut him off quietly: ‘No. You did that yourself, didn’t you, Bodenschatz?’
Iron Heart’s eyes widened in shocked rage. ‘What?’
‘It’s a lie,’ shouted Bodenschatz. ‘Can’t you see he’ll say anything? I never killed the Shaw boy. The Blackfeet did that—’
‘The Blackfeet woulda kept his scalp, not thrown it away in the hollow of a tree,’ retorted Shaw softly. ‘You killed him ’cause he woulda kept you from your revenge—’
‘The same way that you killed your own father,’ pointed out January quietly, ‘because with a broken leg, he would have kept you from pursuing the man you sought. The man for whom you left your wife, and your children—’
‘He is a monster!’
‘You are a monster,’ replied January. ‘Manitou Wildman was born as he is. You made yourself – yourself.’
‘That –’ Bodenschatz’s face worked with the effort to remain normal – ‘is a damned lie.’ His glance cut to Iron Heart. ‘It is a lie.’
Iron Heart said softly, ‘Prove it.’ And there was something in the tilt of his head, the sudden flex of his nearly-hairless brows, that made January wonder if he had not suspected this before. ‘Words are cheap, Winter Moon. White men’s words most of all.’
January sighed. ‘I wish everyone would stop calling me a white man. Send the woman back to the rendezvous camp.’
Veinte-y-Cinco looked up, dark eyes wide with shock and hope.
‘Keep a guard on her, if you will,’ he added as both Iron Heart and Walks Before Sunrise began to protest. ‘Will you do this?’
He saw her hand close hard on Hannibal’s, the two of them sitting side-by-side near Manitou on the other side of the fire, without speaking. She started to stammer something and stopped, the whole of her heart in her face, as if the marrow of her bones cried her daughter’s name.
And though he spoke to Walks Before Sunrise, January’s eyes held hers. ‘Great Chief, have one of your men go into the camp and bring out to her Moccasin Woman, the old mother of the Delawares. She knows Veinte-y-Cinco well, and Veinte-y-Cinco will speak for us. Promise Moccasin Woman safe passage here to this camp and safe passage back. Veinte-y-Cinco,’ he added softly, ‘we trust you with all of our lives. For if you cry out, or escape, or rouse the camp, or bring any attack against the Crow here, you know we will all of us be killed before we can be freed.’
The woman took a sip of breath, let it out, her eyes going to Hannibal, and then to Shaw, who had favored
her, January knew, above the other girls at Seaholly’s, despite the fact that at thirty-six she had half a decade over him in age, and despite her skinniness and two missing teeth. She looked at the doorway – the two Crow guards sitting outside in the firelight of the camp – and then at Bodenschatz.
‘Did he really kill that poor old man?’ she asked softly. ‘His own papa?’
‘Schlampn bitch, you’d believe any man who paid you—’
Her mouth twisted. Her gaze returned to January. ‘I’ll go,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’ll return with Moccasin Woman, without rousing the camp.’
‘Thank you. Tell Moccasin Woman that we know that she found the old man in the woods and took the last of his clothing, not only the shirt that he wore, but also the shirt that had been torn up to bind his ribs. Tell her to bring those things back here, if she would. Tell her that our lives hang on her doing this. Tell her also – or the warrior who goes with you,’ he added, with a glance at Walks Before Sunrise, ‘to bring the camp chest from Bodenschatz’s tent – Charro Morales’s tent – unopened.’
The trader’s face turned ghastly in the low firelight, brows standing out suddenly dark. ‘Of all the impudent—’
‘Veritas odium parit,’ said Hannibal and added, to January, still in Latin, ‘You’re sure it’s Moccasin Woman?’
‘She’s the one who gave Pia the old man’s cravat. And who else in the camp,’ he added, ‘would have carried him back into his shelter and carved the sign of the cross above his head, to bless him as he lay? Of all the people in the camp,’ he went on in English, ‘I don’t really think it could be anyone else.’
‘Well, Maestro,’ said Shaw, after Iron Heart and Bodenschatz had left the tent under guard, and Walks Before had likewise bid them good night, ‘I purely hope you’re right.’ He got to his feet and limped heavily – a makeshift, bloodied bandage showed where an arrow had gone through his thigh – to lower the skin across the lodge entrance, against the growing chill of the night. ‘’Cause it seems to come down to: who is Walks Before gonna trust? An’ if it ain’t us, I do not see a good outcome for anyone in this tent.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Omaha Dark Antlers and two Crow warriors came into the tipi a few minutes later, to fetch Veinte-y-Cinco. The woman rose, kissed Hannibal and Shaw (‘Don’t I get one for luck?’ inquired Goodpastor, and with a quick flicker of a grin she gave him one that would have been grounds for divorce in most states of the Union), and slipped out into the night.
quoted January softly. ‘Now it lies upon the knees of the gods.’
Hannibal sighed. ‘And we all know how trustworthy they are.’
Shortly after that, a couple of Crow women came in with food – chunks of roasted mountain-sheep, and a tin kettle of stew – and with them, Goodpastor’s engagés, two young border-ruffians named Laurent and Tonio. They brought the news that the remaining Omaha warriors were setting up lodges of dead wood and sagebrush for the night, as if in a war camp, just beyond the tipis of the Crow, and that the Crow were keeping guard on them. ‘That Mexican trader was with them,’ added Tonio, the younger of the two – brothers, January guessed, by their looks, and by the way Tonio kept close to the elder as if for protection.
‘As a guest, would you say?’ Goodpastor poured out water from the skin hanging from one of the tent poles, into the pewter cup that the young men shared. ‘Or a prisoner?’
‘A guest, looked like. He sits with Iron Heart at his fire.’
‘Well,’ sighed Goodpastor, ‘consarn.’
‘And are you a guest here, sir?’ inquired January as the two boys settled down with bowls of wild mutton and stew. ‘Or a prisoner?’
‘And did you drop out of the sky?’ added Hannibal.
‘Wish I had,’ retorted the Indian Agent. ‘I am entirely too old for that ride up the Platte in a wagon-train. No, I set out from Fort Laramie like a respectable representative of the United States Congress, with ten engagés, a secretary and a half-breed guide who couldn’t find his way back from the outhouse. When we got to the Popo Agie we heard from a couple of Shoshone hunters that there was a band of Crow – eighty lodges – skulking around the mountains near the rendezvous without comin’ into it, which sounded downright fishy to me. I had the boys make camp, took those two scoundrels with me, did some scouting on my own and here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ agreed January. ‘But could you leave if you wanted to?’
‘I could, yes. Or at least I think I’ll be able to, once Walks Before has figured out what he wants to do with you and with Iron Heart. I’m on his territory. I’m no more than an envoy from the Congress to the Crow. And I wouldn’t care to bet on it that he’d let me leave the camp tonight – or that Iron Heart’s boys wouldn’t find a way of making sure I didn’t get to the rendezvous if I did leave, sort of quiet like in the woods. We’re a long ways from anywhere, here, and if they plan on killin’ any white men they’re not going to leave an Indian Agent to go tellin’ the tale.’
‘Ah,’ said January. ‘Then all we’ve done is make your position here worse.’
‘Hell, I been in worse places. Though things could get damn sticky if that woman tries to make a break when she gets near the rendezvous, and there’s an attack made on this camp. I ain’t sayin’ Titus wouldn’t keep a lid on it if he could—’
‘Titus?’
‘That sourpuss Controller the AFC’s got with their factory there this year. He’s the one paid Walks Before thirty rifles and three barrels of gunpowder to come down here and not let a soul see ’em. There’s talk all over this camp of them attackin’ the smaller trains as they leave the rendezvous – an’ of stagin’ an attack on the AFC train, for show, so word can be took back to Congress that it was the Hudson’s Bay Flatheads, an’ that the military’s needed to keep them pesky British an’ their Indian allies in line, just like back in 1812. I been workin’ on convincin’ Walks Before that it ain’t such a good plan.’
He pitched a clean-picked sheep-rib into the fire, wiped his fingers on his bandanna. ‘Another reason I’m not tryin’ to leave this camp just yet. So I would appreciate it,’ he went on, ‘if you boys would give me some idea of what’s been happenin’ at the rendezvous.’
The white-haired Indian Agent listened with interest to January’s account of the trade in liquor with the Indians (‘Lord, Bill Grey made it sound like Sodom and Gomorrah,’) and the attempted scalping on the way back from the banquet (‘That sounds like Titus, all right . . .’). He grinned at the effort to convince Congress that the dead man was himself, but his eyes narrowed sharply when January spoke of Bodenschatz’s plan to give away poisoned liquor.
‘That’s no Indian plan,’ he rumbled, and he stroked the milk-white stubble of his trail beard. ‘Mission Indians, maybe – that have learned how civilized folks go about their business.’
‘My brother stumbled on a half-wrote letter from Bodenschatz to Iron Heart.’ Shaw spoke up from his side of the fire. ‘I thought, myself, it mighta had somethin’ to do with the AFC tryin’ to push Congress into sendin’ troops to take Oregon . . . an’ like the young fool he was, I think Johnny just up an’ asked Bodenschatz about it, an’ he was found dead not long later. Only when the Beauty up an’ died, after drinkin’ the last of the liquor they’d found in the old man’s coat, did we start to put together that there was different game afoot. Worse game.’
‘You still have those letters from Boden to his father?’
‘They were in my hand when the Omahas attacked us on the quarantine island,’ said Hannibal. ‘Even had I had the chance to get my hand to my coat before running for our lives, they wouldn’t have survived the river. And if they had survived, I’d have eaten them the following day.’
‘An’ you had no idea Frank Boden – or Franz Bodenschatz – would be posin’ as a Mexican trader here?’
‘We knew he’d be here,’ said January. ‘The only man who could have recognized him for sure – er – died the first day we were in camp . .
.’
‘And I’m not entirely certain,’ added Hannibal, ‘that I’d recognize Jim Bridger or Robbie Prideaux, if you scrubbed and clipped them. For that matter, Mr Goodpastor – and I hope you’ll forgive my making the inevitable inferences – it sounds as if there are men at the rendezvous who should have known the body we found wasn’t you.’
‘Make all the inevitable inferences you please.’ Goodpastor plucked another rib from the fire, tore the meat from it with strong white teeth. ‘They’d have known quick enough the old man you found wasn’t Medicine Lynx – which was the name I went by when I was living with the Mandans in ’09. When I was trapping down around Taos later on, I still went by El Lince. Carson and Bridger and a dozen of those boys would have known me, if they’d seen me face to face. I only started using my right name again when I went back to Missouri and met Mrs Goodpastor – Miss Milliken that was – and got into politics. But Grey sure as hell knows me. How bad was the old man tore up when he was found?’
‘Bad enough,’ said January, and Manitou – silent on the other side of the fire – looked away.
‘But obviously Bodenschatz knew you.’ Hannibal turned to the trapper.
‘I’m hard to miss.’
Particularly, reflected January, surveying that bear-like hulk, if a man of such massive size had a reputation for ungovernable, murderous rage. Once Franz Bodenschatz had reached the frontier, rumor of his quarry would not have been hard to find.
Manitou frowned into the fire. ‘And he’d seen me in the court. I musta seen him when he spoke to the judges against me, but them weeks gets confused in my mind. An’ he was bearded at Fort Ivy. Nobody ever called him nuthin’ but Frank in my hearin’ – an’ now I think on it, I’m not sure I ever saw him in full daylight.’
The Shirt On His Back Page 25