At last, shrugging, he gave up the search. There probably was nobody watching him after all. He turned to the business at hand.
He panned upstream a ways. Where the stream purled over a natural riffle, he scooped up the loose sand caught behind the riffle along with some water and began swishing it around and around in his flat pan, all the while allowing some of the sand and the water to slosh over the sides. He flicked out the bigger pebbles with a finger. He washed and spilled it all down to a last few grains. Nothing. Not even so much as a flyspeck of a color.
He panned downstream. No colors.
He panned down the stream until well out of sight of his camp. Still nothing.
He surveyed the gulch with measuring eyes, up and down, and on both sides.
“There may not be any gold here, but it sure would make a swell spot for a cabin and a garden. Make even a great place for a little town. Water. Trees. Grand view.”
It was straight-up noon when he trudged back to camp. The sky held clear. The ground was warm with sun. The pines stank sweetly of sticky rosin. His nose worked overtime in the midst of all the fresh forest smells.
He got out his ax and reached down to pick up the little yellow pine.
The little pine wasn’t there. Gone.
He turned warily on his boot heels, a hand to his gun.
Nobody.
His eyes next sought the place in the wall from which the little pine had been torn out.
That spot was gone too.
Quietly he stepped over. “By the Lord, I even worked it with my fingers for gold.” He knelt and examined the wall very carefully.
Ah. The hole had been carefully filled in, first with dirt and then with fresh sod. The sod was exactly like the sod around, except where the edges showed beneath what appeared to be a casual sprinkling of pine needles.
His spine began to tingle. Again he drew as he wheeled.
And again nobody. Nothing.
“I’ll be damned. Now I know for sure there’s somebody watching me. Besides the Almighty.”
He stood slightly crouched at the knees. He sent his ears out all around. Yet all he heard was the steady cropping sound of the grazing horses.
“What the hell kind of spooky place is this?”
He took a long slow sniff, intent on catching any odd smell.
There was only the new aroma of fresh horse dung.
“Sam would say I was being notional again.”
The mystic Hills shimmered in sunshine and silence. The far-off prairies of the Dakotas wimmered a misty blue sea.
He reholstered his gun. Slowly he sat down beside what was left of his morning fire. “The biggest mystery is where that little pine tree went. And why.”
He picked up a stick and poked around in the ashes. He found a few live coals.
“Why wouldn’t they let me burn it? That I don’t get atall.”
He threw on a few leftover twigs. When flames spurted up and took hold, he added more wood. Soon he had a good fire going.
He got out a small iron pot and had himself boiled jerky spiced with fresh wood sorrel. The sour juice of the sorrel always brought out the true taste of venison.
“Meat’s real meat, if you know how to fix it.”
He put everything neatly away. He got to his feet and stretched.
“Dammit, and why should anybody want to hide that hole in the wall? Unless’n there was something to hide?”
He gave it all another run through his mind. Then, swearing “By God,” he grabbed his spade and went to work. He first skimmed off the sod, then dug deep into the friable rock-studded wall.
He’d thrown out a dozen spadefuls, when his eye caught glitter in a curdle of dirt.
He knelt. He picked up the curdle and broke it gently in his hand. So. Well. There it was. At least a half-dozen bright- yellow bits of something the size of flakes of pepper. He got out his jackknife, edged the jackknife on the sole of his boot, wiped it clean on his buckskin trousers, then cut into one of the yellow flakes. Soft. Next he bit into it. It gave. Finally he tasted it. By God. “Gold.”
He stared down at the yellow flakes awhile.
“Not a lot of it. But there it is. And somebody didn’t want me to find it. There’s probably still more and better higher up.”
He spent the rest of the afternoon digging out his prospect hole. There was always a flake or two of gold in each spadeful. But never more.
He forgot about the eyes watching him.
It was midnight, he’d been asleep several hours, when of a sudden he awoke to the vague gray light of a half-moon high overhead. He awoke without stirring. Only his eyelids parted.
There they were. The eyes. And not a dream either.
It was a young girl. The pupils of the young girl’s eyes were as glossy black as freshly hardened tar. They glittered. Her hair also was black, and was plaited Indian-fashion, a fat braid behind each ear. A doeskin dress glinting with green beadwork hung to her knees. She wore leather leggings and moccasins. Her breasts had just begun to form.
He stared at the girl without moving a muscle.
The thought flashed through his mind that for all her buckskin garb and long black braids she wasn’t Indian. Her cheeks were dusky, yes, but not dusky enough.
He had heard of white children being stolen by Indians to replace lost children. She was probably one of those.
Then the dusky girl did a strange thing. She slowly leaned down until her face came to within a few inches of his. Her breath wisped on his beard. She seemed to be examining him minutely, beard and mustache, nose and lips, cheeks and forehead.
Her breath on his beard tickled him a little. The smell of her was the smell of wild ferns and sage.
Of a sudden she wept large tears. One of them, glistening in the weak moonlight, fell big and wet on his upper lip. Salty.
Of a sudden he made a grab for her; and caught her by the elbow.
The low shrill scream of a caught fawn broke from her.
“Got you.”
She jerked to break free. She almost made it.
He rose sitting to hold her the better. “Not so fast, my little wildcat.”
She squirmed, rolled, twisted. Abrupt undulations like that of an inchworm in agony rippled through her.
“Snaky. Like she ain’t got any bones.”
He wrestled her, trying to get a solid hold on her. He couldn’t quite manage it. He became aware of her wonderfully supple waist, her firmly muscled seat, her slim resilient neck. “She’s as slippery as a greased mink, by God.” He caught her around the neck from the rear with his left hand. He squeezed, powerfully. “I don’t mean to hurt you, little one, but by the Lord I do aim to tame you.” Finally his fingertips found the right spot and, suddenly, she was quiet.
“Let’s have a look at you.”
Picking up a stick with his free hand, he reached over and stirred up the embers of the fire and then threw on a piece of fat. In an instant both he and the girl were bathed in a warm crackling glow.
“Just what’s the idea, coming into my camp like this sneaky-like, hey?”
He kept a tight pinch around her neck to keep her in control. She was as helpless in his grip as a pullet in the mouth of a fox.
“Speak up.”
Her body hung slack, and the fall of it was abject.
“I’m not going to hurt you, child. But I do mean to find out what this is all about.”
Something in the way her eyes drifted off told him she couldn’t understand him. She had been raised Indian all right.
Firelight played on her face. The forlorn look of the caught animal gentled her eyes. Her eyes were not as dark as he’d first thought. The dot was black enough but it was ringed by a light gray. He pulled her forward a little and with some little delicacy looked down her neckline.
“Yep, skin’s white inside.”
She was full of sudden squirmings again. And once more she almost broke free. A large neck tendon slipped out from under his thumb.
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He regrabbed her, hard, and then had her firmly in hand again. “Still full of fight, eh? With still nothing to say.” He cocked his head, considering her. “Sure wish the hell I could get you to talk.”
She whimpered in his pinching grip.
He leaned into her face, eyes hard. “Talk? American?”
She tried to duck away in his hand; couldn’t. The smell of her was still wonderful: crushed ferns and brushed silver sage. Like a female wolf puppy.
“Pretty little wild thing.” He smiled at her. “Well, I guess there ain’t no use’n holding onto you any longer.” He paused. “Though I suppose you’ll go running off to your Sioux ma now and tell her all about it, won’t you? Because I know all about you pigheaded Sioux not wanting the white man on your holy ground.”
She spoke. “Paha Sapa.” She managed to squeeze it out through his pinching fingers.
“By the Lord. She may not know American but she does know when I’m talking holy talk.”
“Paha Sapa!”
He studied her.
“Paha Sapa!”
“You sure you don’t know any white talk?”
“Paha Sapa!”
“Let’s try it once.” He leaned gently close to her and spoke winningly. “Ma-ma? Pa-pa?”
She stared at where his lips moved in his beard.
“Ma-ma? Pa-pa?”
At last, very slowly, a vague recognition of something stirred in her eyes.
“Mum-mum? Milk?” He watched her. “Papa spank? Hanh?”
More vague recognition appeared in her eyes.
“Kind of silly of me to be talking baby talk to an almost grown girl. But, by the Lord, I’ve got to know.” His leg had begun to fall asleep under her weight. “No, no, no. Papa spank?”
At last a wondering, a marvelous distant look opened the dark pupils of her eyes.
He pointed first at himself, then across at the prospect hole he’d dug into the wall. “No, no, no?”
She caught on. She tried to nod in his grip.
“She does know a little white. It’s weak in her, yes, but it’s there.” He pointed at himself. “Bad, bad?”
Again she tried to nod.
“Aha. That explains it. She knows there’s gold around here. And was only trying to keep me away from it.” He played pinches into her neck. He began to like the feel of her. “It ties in with what I heard at Fort Laramie. That every once in a while the Sioux will come in with a handful of gold nuggets to do some trading. But won’t tell where they found them.”
She observed him intently, trying to understand what he was saying.
The fat he’d thrown into the fire was almost out.
“Well, like I say, there’s no use’n holding onto you any longer.” He let her go. “Nothing I hate more than to see a wild bird caught in a cage.”
She sprang up and away. She gave him a wild glittering look. Then she bounded across into the glittering green shrubs he’d noticed earlier; and was gone.
“So she was looking out at me from them.”
An instant later, the fat-fed flame fell down. He was back in the vague gray light of the half-moon.
It took him a while to find the same warm spot in his suggans. He let his tongue run over his lip. There was still a little left of her salty tear. Also, it seemed to him, strangely, that the very questions he’d asked her, “Ma-ma? Pa-pa?” and “Mum-mum? Milk?” had awakened, almost, some memories of his own childhood, going back to a time before Sam Slaymaker had picked him up wandering alone on the prairies. Almost.
Stars multiplied in his eyelashes. “That’s one cinch that’s pulled up tight and painful.”
The next morning he had a lonely breakfast of venison and coffee.
He moved about soberly thoughtful. “I’d give a pretty penny to know where my wild girl holes up at night.”
He cleaned up around camp. “And I’ll bet a horse she lives alone too. She’s the kind that don’t need to live with anybody. Indian or white.”
He curried the two horses, watered them, and staked them out to new grazing ground.
“Well, I’m not going to look for her nest. Like a grouse she’ll have it too well hid.” A smile crinkled through his black beard. “No, I’ll just keep looking for gold and that’ll fetch her out. Sooner or later.” He shouldered pickax and shovel and picked up his pan and started upstream. “Pretty little thing. Smelled just like a pretty little wolf puppy.”
He walked slowly upstream, panning as he went. The weather was a miracle. Cool at that height. Clear. The air was scented with the smell of sun-warmed pine needles and cracking rock.
He found a few colors. It was still nothing to get excited about.
He went about his work as if no one were watching him. Yet he knew that somewhere, following him, those gray-ring eyes of hers were peering at him from secret places. She would move through the shadows of the pine forest like some bird of the night.
“Wait’ll I tell Katherine about this. A wild girl living alone in the Black Hills. She won’t believe it.”
Near the top of the gulch the colors came a little thicker. Also the flakes were coarser.
“Katell probably be a mite jealous.”
He climbed onto a small plateau. He stopped for a look.
He could see for miles in all directions. He was standing on top of the sun almost and could look down at it all. He’d felt this way once before. Something about squatting very high up and getting ready to jump. Like that first time with Katherine.
“You know, Wild Girl kept saying ‘Paha Sapa.’ That couldn’t be her name. Indians usually don’t like to give their names. More’n likely she was trying to tell me something about this gulch. Or the Black Hills.”
He took several whacks at various crumbling outcrops of rocks with his pickax. The granite broke up easily.
He’d taken a half-dozen cracks at one of the larger mica-flaked outcroppings, when someone suddenly grabbed hold of one of the points of his pickax, just at the top of his swing. The someone had grabbed so hard and jerked so sharply that he almost fell down. His hat flipped off onto the grass.
He let go of the pickax; recovered; whirled; drew.
It was Wild Girl. Pointing at the ground. Outraged. “Paha Sapa!”
He put his gun away. “By God, I knew you’d show up again.”
Wild Girl held the pickax behind her as if she meant to keep it. She shook her head, stamped her foot. “Wakan-tanka!”
A smile opened his beard. “What you mean is, Pa-pa spank.”
She paused; drew back. A frown, at first only puzzled, then deepening, ringed the dusky smooth skin between her brows. And again, vaguely, a wondering, a marvelous distant look of recognition opened her gray eyes.
He waited. He thought her even more comely in the sun. She still had on her beaded doeskin dress, and her hair was still done up in two braids. There was a beauty spot of red on each cheek and a line of vermilion ran down the part in her black hair. She was of that age where her cheeks were just beginning to fill out.
She let the pickax fall to earth.
To help her remember, he rolled up his sleeve to show her the white skin of his arm.
“Sanyan?”
He lifted his leather shirt to show her his white lean belly.
The expression in her eyes changed, from one of wondering to one of hate. The black dot of her eyes enlarged, her dogteeth showed. The next moment a knife glittered in her small hand.
Again he made a sudden grab for her; and caught her by the elbow of the knife hand. “Oh no you don’t.” He twisted her arm around behind her, up, hard, until she let go of the knife with a yelp of pain.
Even in her awkward bind she kept jerking and wriggling. Every time she moved she hurt herself, like a she-wolf caught in an ever-tightening bear trap.
He slipped his other arm around her waist and drew her body tight against his. He lost his footing and they both fell down in the grass. The turf beneath was as resilient as the fleshy rump of
a horse. The sweet wild smell of her and of the lush grass was keen in his nostrils. Even more quickening was the feel of her supple body, just nubile, where her breast flattened against his arm and where her firm buttocks rippled against his belly. He was instantly aroused, hardened to the game. Sudden desire, delicious, snaked through his belly. It raced through him like brandy in the blood. The thought ran through him, a regret, that it wouldn’t be the first time for him, while it would be for her. Innocence should be for the innocent. A wandering Adam for a wilderness Eve. With gold as their Devil in Eden.
“Sanyan!” Of a sudden her arm was free. She undulated so swiftly and with such a powerful humpneck motion, he almost lost her. She slithered ahead under him. She clawed in the grass for the fallen knife.
He lunged. He caught her by the back of the neck just in time and pinched for all he was worth. A snarl opened his black beard. He thought of biting her.
She became limp under him.
He lay on her. Again desire swelled in him. It lifted up like a wild lily, fully open, the petals turned back as far as they would go. He pressed down on her until he thought he’d either break or burst. She lay under him like an imprisoned grouse.
He let go of her neck. She didn’t move. He caught a hint, the vaguest suggestion, of the coy woman in the way she lay supine.
He turned her over gently. He looked at her through a quivering gauntlet of tumescent anthers.
She lay looking up at him wonderingly.
“Fly, little girl, fly. Before I hurt you.”
She looked past him at the blue skies above.
He trembled to ravish her.
Once more large tears appeared in her eyes.
He blinked. He couldn’t understand the large tears. At the same time he was pleased to see them. They were more than just tears of weakness or compassion. They were tears one sometimes saw at a benediction.
“Fly!”
Her free hand came up and wondering touched his beard.
Impulsively his trembling hand slid under her buckskin dress. She was naked under it. Her flesh had the resilient fullness of tongues. He stroked her once over the belly. He watched his brown hand move over her very white skin.
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