by Chuck Tyrell
“Brother Benson,” Hill called.
Will turned at the sound of his name and met the outstretched hand of George Hill with a strong handclasp of his own.
“Introduce your friend, Brother Will,” Hill said.
“Bishop Hill, this man is Matthew Stryker, as straight and honest a man as I know.”
Hill shoved his big hand at Stryker. “Most pleased to make your acquaintance, Matthew Stryker. I’ll be George Washington Hill, Latter-day Saint bishop to the Shoshone Nation.”
“Folks call me Stryker. Pleased, I’m sure.” Stryker met Hill’s handclasp with his own. A strong clasping of hands, but no challenge of strength intended or given.
“Stryker’s blood brother to Gewagan,” Will said.
Hill’s eyebrows raised. “Is he now?”
“I am.”
“And why would you be in this Shoshone camp, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“This, or any other Shoshone camp is not of my asking, George Hill. As your man Willard Benson can tell you, I’m searching for a woman.”
“Are you now? In Shoshone camps? I’ve heard nothing of outside women among the Shoshone.”
“Last I heard, she was a prisoner of the Cheyenne. In a band headed by a warrior called Lean Bear. You may have heard. Him and his men wiped out a hunting party of rich gentry from Europe, along with a lieutenant and a dozen or so troopers. Far as I know, only three women survived. Two, laundresses for the troopers, were sent south to be sold. The woman I’m hunting went north.”
George Hill pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve not heard of any white woman held by Cheyennes. Swayback John Williams was at Fort Hall not too long ago, stocking up for a trip to Bodie, where that gold strike is. There was a woman with him. Rumor has it that he bought her from the Crow. Black Eagle’s band, I believe.”
“Did that woman have a name, do you know?”
Hill pinched his lip again, which seemed to be his habit when thinking. “No. No. Can’t say as I heard one. She was downright dirty when they come into the fort, they say. More animal than woman, sorry to say. Indians around called her dog woman. But it seems Swayback himself called her Cat.”
Cat!
Chapter Sixteen
The days grew colder, and while there was frost on the grass some mornings, Cat had yet to see any ice at the edge of the stream. She hated to leave the glen for water, but even though Swayback left two big canteens hanging from Mule’s packsaddle, she still had to go to the stream to fill them.
Sam, the she wolf, and the pups kept Cat warm at night, but she knew she must prepare for winter. From the day she arrived, Cat had chopped wood. As humans probably knew little of Cat’s glen, deadfalls peppered the forest around. All she had to do was cut the dry old wood into convenient lengths and carry it to the cavern. Each day she cut about twice as much as she burned, and as of this frosty morning, she had at least two cords of firewood stacked inside.
Early on, she began praising Sam whenever he brought a furry rabbit or a fat squirrel or birds. As the cold season approached, the coats of the animals and the birds’ feathers thickened in preparation for winter. Cat no longer cooked the game Sam brought in its skin. She butchered them with Swayback’s Bowie and carefully skinned them. She’d watched the women of Black Eagle’s camp tan hides, so she knew to scrape the fat and inner skin from the inside of the pelts and to spread them out flat on a big rock for a day or two until they were completely dry. And she knew to take the animal’s brain, chop it into little pieces, and boil it with water to make a thick slurry. When the hide was dry, she rubbed the brain-slurry into the rawhide, careful to get the entire skin wet thoroughly. She then rolled the pelt up and put it away for a day, then repeated the process. After that, she stretched the pelt. Pulled it lengthwise and crosswise, lengthwise and crosswise, lengthwise and crosswise, until the hide would not stretch any more, then softened it by rolling it back and forth over a wooden stick she’d shaved with the Bowie and fixed as a roller between two forked sticks. Twenty-five rabbit and squirrel pelts, softened with their own brains and smoked over a smoldering fire in the cavern, gave her plenty to stitch into a blanket with Swayback’s awl and some leather thongs.
When Sam and the she wolf brought back birds, at first Cat skinned them as that was the easiest way to get rid of the feathers, but later she decided to keep them. She scalded the grouse or mourning dove or pheasant, which loosened the feathers so they could be plucked. Amongst the items Swayback bought in Fort Hall for their planned sortie into gold country, Cat found a bundle of gunny sacks, each capable of holding a hundred pounds of beans.
Each gunnysack could hold all the feathers from dozens of grouse and doves, but Cat never threw anything away. The feathers went into a gunnysack. Eventually the sack filled, and she would get another. Eventually, she had enough sacks full of feathers to insulated herself from the cold sand and solid rock of the cavern floor.
The days slipped away. Cat began to feel that these were the best days of her life. No scheming women or fawning men like those she’d left behind in Europe. So far away. No more carriage and coachman Georges, who introduced her to Savate. No more mother to worry about her wayward daughter gaining a groom who matched her social status. Hmph. Social status. My eye. Cat ruffled the top of Sam’s head. “Mon ami,” she said. “Why are you not out hunting?” The big dog slowly rose to his feet. She supposed she should be hunting herself, aiming with Swayback’s rifle at a deer that could be dried and saved for winter. But she left the hunting up to Sam and his she wolf, which already had the belly of an expectant mother.
As the fall days deepened, Cat scavenged the glen for fallen leaves, carrying them by the armload into her cavern. She ventured out of the glen long enough to cut box elder saplings and long branches for a lean-to. When she got it finished, it looked like a pile of old leaves, but inside, it was quite cozy. She’d covered the floor with a thick carpet of leaves and spread saddle blankets over them to make a carpeted floor of sorts. The lean-to was really only big enough for Cat, but Sam and the she wolf insisted on crowding in beside Cat when she slept.
Long days in the Absaroka camp of Black Eagle taught Cat much about what could and could not be eaten from among the wild plants. The glen harbored three gooseberry bushes that were laden with sweet golden berries when Cat first arrived. Now she had a large pouch full of gooseberry raisins, as she had plucked and dried the golden gooseberries from the day after her arrival.
She noticed stands of camas almost as soon as she got to the glen. No one told her which plants were good, but she had eyes, and she could see which plants Absaroka women gathered. Camas was one of them. Big camas, as Cat came to think of the plant, but not its smaller cousin, Death Camas. After settling into the cavern, Cat used Swayback’s Bowie to fashion a digging stick from a hard old oak branch. Camas bulbs were often deep, four or five inches down, so harvesting the bulbs was not a chore for anyone who eschewed manual labor. Cat giggled to think of what her mother would say if she saw her daughter now.
“Catherine de Merode. Into the house this minute. Women of status do not dig. You were not born a de Merode in order to dig for your supper. That is what servants are for. Come now. Come.” Maman could be quite set in her aristocratic ways.
But Cat dug. What was the rule the Absaroka used? Maybe not a rule, but she never saw the women harvest all the camas from any stand they dug at. Usually not even half. Cat was always able to dig one or two bulbs after the women left. Camas bulbs and the small game brought by Maman the bitch dog and Sam and the other Indian mutts kept Cat alive.
Slowly, her stock of camas bulbs on a rocky shelf in the cavern grew. When she judged they’d dried enough, she filled a gunny sack with the efforts of her digging.
There was room in the cavern for the horses and mule if they chose. Cat did not encourage or discourage their entry. She had no scythe or sickle with which to cut grass to provide the animals with winter feed, so she left them to fend for
themselves. Nevertheless, she always had a treat so they would come when called with a whistle.
One evening, when clouds lowered over the glen like a lid on a pot, Little Red, John’s Gray, and Mule came into the cavern. Of their own accord, they moved to the back of the cave and stood, hipshot, facing the entrance.
That night it snowed.
~*~
As ever, wagon trains flowed to Fort Hall like the Big Muddy flowed to the Mississippi. Most of the trains used oxen, which seemed better able to stand the strain of pulling covered wagons from Independence, Missouri, to destinations in Oregon or California. But Matt Stryker wasn’t looking for news from back east. He searched for the woman called Cat.
He’d stayed in Gewagan’s camp to see the Mormon Bishop George Hill marry Will Benson to Margaret Walks. He ate roast pork and mashed potatoes with the Shoshone people who’d gathered for the celebration.
Then he rode out.
Gewagan watched. Matt Stryker turned as he rode away, and he could see the lone figure of his blood brother standing at the edge of the Shoshone camp. One day I will return. He waved farewell, but the lone figure stood without motion. Perhaps he wondered how much power his blood brother bond had.
Stryker let the Tennessee Walker pick his own trail while the mule followed behind, docile as ever. But they stopped at the tree line, watching the hordes of people and livestock that gathered at Fort Hall. The meadows were covered with a light coat of snow and breath from the mouths of man and animal looked like fog in the cold morning air.
Even though the army abandoned the fort to go fight the rebs in ’63, they’d come back in ’70 and put up a stockade over on Lincoln Creek, twelve miles east of the old fort on the Snake. From their new position, the army regularly patrolled the Emigrant Trail from Missouri and the trails—the Oregon and the California—going west.
Stryker snicked at Walker and moved toward the jumble of cabins and businesses that nestled against the walls of the old fort’s stockade. A blacksmith worked at one corner of the stockade, and a livery stood at the other. A patchwork of corrals full of horses, mules, oxen, and a few milk cows, spread out from the livery barn. Stryker guided Walker straight to the barn door and climbed out of the saddle.
“Howdy, stranger. Oregon or California?”
“You the livery man?”
“Am ‘til Hank Gibbons gets back. I’m kinda keepin’ an eye on the place.”
“Room for a tall horse and a taller mule? Horse inside, mule in the corral?
“I reckon.” The hired man moved out of the entranceway. “Help yourself. Any open stall.”
“Damage?”
“Whaddaya mean, damage?”
“How much?”
“You’ll have ta talk ta Hank. He’s the boss.”
“Oats? Hay?”
“When Hank gets back.”
“So what? You’re going to hold my horse and mule for ransom or something like that?”
“Don’t get riled, mister. I’m just keeping an eye on things. Want the stall or not?”
“Want. But if that there Hank charges me an arm and a leg, I’ll take it out of your hide.” Stryker led Walker and the mule into the livery barn and took the open stall at the far end. He turned Walker into the stall and unsaddled him, putting the tack over the petition. The mule waited.
“Hey, mister.”
“Yeah?”
“Hank’s a-comin’”
“I’m not going nowhere.”
A tall heavyset man strode into the barn. “I’m Hank Gibbons,” he said, not quite hollering.
“Preciate a stall for my mount and a sturdy corral for the mule. I reckon I can stack my supplies in the corner of the stall. That be all right?”
“Four bits a day for the horse. Two for the mule. Includes hay. Grain extra.”
“Need grain for the horse. Hay’s fine for the mule. Price seems right.”
“I’ll be wanting to know your name, if you don’t mind.”
“Matthew Stryker. Most people just call me Stryker.”
“Good enough. I’ve heard of you, Stryker.”
“Ain’t done enough to be heard of.”
“Know of you from New Market. That and Sailor’s Creek.”
Stryker nodded, but said nothing. The war was long over and he’d been a cadet major at the battle of New Market. All of sixteen years old. At seventeen, he was a new lieutenant assigned to a guard unit at Richmond, the CSA capital city. He ended up fighting with Crutchfield. Confederates surrendered in mobs, and when Stryker saw there was no use in fighting, he slipped away. He knew the war was over and the South had lost. Still, the Yankees found him and dumped him into the prison at Alton. When the chance came, he enlisted in the 5th U.S. Volunteer Infantry.
“You had that troop of misfits over to Fort Kearney. I heard that.”
“I did.”
“But you quit.”
“I did. Yankee brass didn’t like my Southren ways.” Stryker paid for two days for the horse and mule, plus extra for grain.
“Thankee. Like people who pays cash out front.”
“Did Swayback John pay cash?”
“Swayback?”
“Yes. I heard he came through here not so long ago.”
“Whatchu want Swayback for? You a lawman?”
“No. But I’d like to catch up with Swayback. Did he stay here?”
“Not a chance. Swayback John’s tighter with a dollar than ol’ Smack hisself. Did sell him a mule, though.”
“Oh? Why’d he need a mule?”
“Loaded that critter up with what looked like gold-hunting stuff to me.”
“Gold, eh? Where’d he go for gold?”
“Deadwood. Alder Gulch. Oro Fino. Gold Creek. Florence. Who knows? Does it matter?”
“If I’m to catch up with him, I’ll need to know which way he’s headed.”
“He ain’t headed nowhere. He’s dead.”
“Who killed him?”
“Can’t say. Them what found him said he was up in an oak tree, sitting on a limb with a lap full of honey. Dead as a three-day-old cigar butt. Plumb dead.”
“What about the woman? Wasn’t there a woman with him?”
“Was when he left here, weren’t when them fellers found Swayback. No horses. No mule. No knife. No guns, long or short. No woman. No dog.”
“Where at?”
“Off to the side of the California Trail down about five miles this side of the fork where the Goose Creek runs into the Snake.”
“Woman disappeared, eh? Anyone try to track her?”
“What for? Swayback didn’t have a mark on his body, they said. One of the men what found him took a lick of the honey and it made his tongue swell up somethin’ fierce. Honey by bees what’s been feeding on mountain hemlock’ll poison a man sure. Not often ya see such a thing, but it happens. It surely does.”
“Hank, I’m sure obliged for all the news. One more thing. Any Shoshone people around?”
“There’s a gaggle of ’em over near the tree line.” Hank waved a hand in a northwesterly direction. “As I recollect, the man that talks for them’s name is Hawk Nose. And he’s got a real beak on him, too. Har har har.”
Stryker unpacked the mule and stacked the load in the front corner of the stall, right under Walker’s nose. “None of this stuff is going to sprout legs and wander off, is it Hank?”
“Safe and sound right there, Stryker. I’ll vouch for it.”
“I’ll go over to Hawk Nose’s camp after I’ve been to the sutler’s.” Stryker picked his way among the wagons and livestock, his face hard-planed and grim enough that people looked away whenever their eyes met his. He entered the old stockade where the gates had once been. Now no one challenged anyone, and the stream of humanity reminded him of Chicago or Richmond. The buildings, however, had no sense of permanence to them. The older ones seemed to be on their last legs and the newer ones were slapped together of rough-cut boards and tarpaper.
No sign marked the su
tler, but people loading wagons and packsaddles showed Stryker just where to go. He lengthened his stride, crossing to the sutler’s store at near double time. He noticed the woman coming out just in time to step out of her way.
“Pardon, ma’am.”
“Humph.”
Inside, a dozen people or so searched the shelves for the supplies they needed, those with all their decisions made stood in line to pay. Stryker made his way to the counter, suddenly conscious of the Remington at his hip.
“What’ll it be?” The man behind the counter had a circle of nearly white hair around the bald dome of his head. A green eyeshade turned his ice blue eyes a warmer shade of green.
“Looking for a haunch of deer or elk. Haven’t got it, cow’ll do.”
“This place look like a butcher to you? The Chinee meatchopper’s got a shop against the back wall.”
“Thankee. I’ll be back,” Stryker said.
A line of naked birds twisted over a slow fire at the Chinese meat shop. A short Oriental with a long pigtail, pajamas for clothes, and black leather shoes paced back and forth in front of the shop. “Yes, suh. Plenny meats, suh.”
“Need a haunch a deer or elk, or maybe cow.”
“Whadda means, haunch, suh?”
“Back leg.”
“Ah. Haunch. Sankee for new word. Wang Chow is me. I think one haunch cost plenny money.”
“How much?”
“Ten dallah.”
“Show me the haunch.”
Wang Chow beckoned. “Falla me.”
Stryker followed, and the haunch was a good one off a recent mule deer kill. He paid Wang Chow and shouldered the haunch.
“Need haunch ever, come see Wang Chow, nevermind.”
“Thanks be to you, Mr. Wang Chow.” With the haunch on his shoulder, Stryker struck out for Hawk Nose’s camp.
The Shoshone camp he found was worn—he could think of no other word that fit the tattered teepees and the generally rundown condition of Hawk Nose’s people. Half a dozen near-naked children watched Stryker approach. Their eyes were fastened on the haunch, not Stryker’s face.