He took the northbound journey in easy stages, letting the foal rest frequently. But the little rascal recovered much faster than Skye anticipated, and soon was dancing along beside his mother. It was a gray, skinny and proud and full of new life. A soft whicker from its mother brought it to her side whenever it pranced too far away. And as for the mare, it seemed docile and at peace as Skye led her northward. The mare was ugly, with a roman nose and crooked legs, but he loved her.
Skye felt rich. Never had he enjoyed life so much. The grasses had turned to tan, and the heavens were mostly clear and bold blue. Every thicket burst with berries, many of them unknown to him. He tried them all, cautiously at first, and then eagerly. He had lost track of the days, but knew this was September, a time when the whole of creation glowed and fruit burdened every limb.
He felt at one with the world around him, having at last arrived at his own accommodation with wilderness. This mountainous world seemed friendly, rife with possibility, alive with birds, small and large animals, fish, clear creeks, stately pines, grand ridges, towering clouds, whispering breezes that sometimes foretold him of the winter that would swiftly descend.
Almost every night the wolves howled from ridge to ridge, and sometimes just beyond his campfire. He feared them. They seemed bloodthirsty and vicious, and endangered his horse colt. One night when they lurked just beyond his camp, he sprang up with a roar and ran at them. A long while later they mourned from a distant ridge. His colt didn’t make wolf-bait that night.
He worried more and more about finding Sublette’s brigade. He had seen no sign of it, although he studied the trails along the river for the prints of shod hooves or white men’s boots. He was deep in Blackfoot country now, and walked cautiously, well away from the trails when he could, even though it meant climbing slopes and fighting through groves of pine and aspen. A man without a weapon was risking his life in this country.
The swift river drove through canyons, crossed broad flats, dominated huge valleys only to plunge into ravines that forced him to detour. And then he grew aware that he had reached a huge basin set in the midst of distant mountains. Grassy hills dominated the basin, but the white-peaked mountain ranges lay thirty, forty, fifty miles distant. It was mountain-girt, actually, with cottonwoods, aspen, and pine along the creeks. He spotted buffalo sign everywhere, and soon saw bunches of them, massed black against the golden fields of grass. He knew what this place was: Sublette had described it and drawn it into the clay as he made his map. This was the Three Forks country, the headwaters of a great river called the Missouri—and a favorite hunting area of the murderous Blackfeet.
The Sublette brigade would be here—if it was still alive. The whole area was overrun with beaver. Skye passed dam after dam along each creek. Whoever had the nerve to trap here could harvest thousands of pelts in short order. But perhaps it was still too early. Skye knew that these trappers didn’t begin their fall hunt until the pelts were prime. Sublette wouldn’t be here—not yet. He would be in some safe place, waiting for the cold.
But where was he? How could Skye find about thirty men in an endless wilderness? His life depended on it.
Chapter 35
Lakota! News of disaster raced through the village, and now the Kicked-in-the-Bellies gathered silently around the returning hunters. Some bore wounds, their bandages bloodred in the autumnal light. Some rode double because they could not sit their ponies without help. Another, Coyote Waits they said, lay in a travois near death. All that was terrible enough, but not so terrible as the four ponies that bore the dead, who hung over the saddles, the bare skulls of their scalped heads dangling toward Mother Earth.
Many Quill Woman watched bitterly, hating the Lakota dogs who had ambushed the Absaroka hunters. Never in her memory had the Kicked-in-the-Bellies suffered such a disaster, and she thirsted for revenge. Soon the howling Absaroka warriors would race out upon the plains to hunt down the Lakota and put an end to their victory dances.
Many Quill Woman knew every one of the dead. They were all of her Otter Clan. That made it all the worse, a terrible dishonor upon her clan, and also on the Lumpwood Society, whose young warriors these were. Their medicine had gone bad, and she ached with the shame of it. Someone among them had violated his sacred power, or betrayed his trust, or had touched what he must not touch and had not told the rest.
They were camped, this Moon of the Turning Leaves, near the confluence of the Yellowstone River, which her people knew as the Elk, and the Big Horn River, in the heart of the buffalo country. The buffalo brothers and sisters could almost always be found here, and indeed with each sun the hunters killed more and more, keeping the women very busy. This was the season to make pemmican and jerky against the winter, to scrape and clean hides that would become lodgeskins or winter moccasins or leggins, to feast on good humpmeat and tongue and bone marrow, and to store away plenty of salty backfat against the time when the Cold Maker ruled the earth. Later, when it grew cold, and the buffalo had grown their winter hair, there would be another hunt for humpmeat and bone marrow and backfat, livers and hearts, as well as warm buffalo robes to sleep in and for hides to trade to the white men for weapons and pots and knives.
But Many Quill Woman didn’t want to think of that. Among the dead was Barking Coyote, who had eyes for her. She had spent many moments with Barking Coyote, sometimes in the bushes away from the village, liking him even if he was skinny and awkward. He was going to ask for her soon. Any day he would stake two ponies before her father’s lodge, and leave a gift of tobacco and maybe a good pipe, and wait to see whether the gifts were accepted. But he wanted more honor first.
Now he hung lifeless from his pony, his eyes seeing nothing. An arrow driven into his chest had killed him. She stared at his naked skull and shuddered. He would wander the spirit world without a home, looking for his lost hair, the mark of selfhood, never content and never at peace. Barking Coyote’s mother began to wail, and Many Quill Woman turned away. It was hard to bear death and loss without wailing. She had her own way of grieving, just by seething silently, angry because of loss and helplessness.
But many of the women wailed, and soon the widows would cut their hair on one side or chop off a finger at the first joint, making themselves ugly to show the world their true feelings. Two widows this time. The rest of the young men had not taken a woman.
These hunters brought back not a single trophy. No scalp dangled from their lances. They had counted no coup and had no proud stories of bravery to recite before the elders. The Lakota had won a total, brutal victory that would shame her village for years when the story was remembered around the council fires of the Absaroka. She felt mortified as she followed the mob toward the big lodge of Arapooish, Rotten Belly, the greatest of all the Absaroka. But even as they gathered before his lodge, he emerged with his face painted white in mourning. Nothing was said. The whole story lay upon those horses and the empty lances. This hunting band had gone out to kill buffalo, and ended up being surprised and killed by Lakota devils hiding nearby. That was a common enough event, but older warriors and hunters would have been better prepared for it.
The big-bellied, hook-nosed chief stared at the empty lances, devoid of any Lakota scalps, nodded and retreated to his lodge. That was all. They had given him the news. The families of the dead reclaimed the bodies and led away the ponies while all the village watched and the women wailed. Soon they would be building scaffolds and laying the dead upon them, wrapped in a robe, face to the sun, along with their bows and quivers for their spirit journey. The ponies would be slaughtered so that the departed would have a steed to ride on the trail to the stars.
Many Quill Woman watched until there was nothing more to see, and then retreated to her father’s lodge. She beheld her stepmother, Digs the Roots, fleshing a new buffalohide staked to the earth. This one would replace a well-smoked hide high in the lodge cover, which in turn would make fine, soft, brown moccasins capable of turning water because of all the grease embedded in the lea
ther.
“Ah, daughter, the one who was playing the flute for you is gone,” her stepmother said as she scraped. She had carefully avoided naming the dead, for it was improper to say the name or even think it.
Many Quill Woman nodded. “He was brave. His family will be proud,” she replied. “He died a warrior and gave to the People.”
“But he is gone to the ancestors. You will miss him, Many Quill Woman.”
“It would have come to nothing,” she said.
“Ah! I thought so. You have not been the same since the summer. You should not think about the Goddamns. They are a hairy, dirty race.”
“One is different,” she said. “I think about him.”
She had been of two minds about the one who had died. The dead one was truly a good Absaroka from a prominent family with many honors in battle and two medicine-bundle keepers among them. He had seventeen winters and was just coming into his manhood. He had been a warrior for three years and had won honors. He had counted coup twice, and had won the right to wear a notched eagle feather in his jet hair. She had been honored by his attentions and the soft whisper of his willow love flute outside her lodge.
But ever since the summer rendezvous, she had been restless, and had moments when she wished the one who was dead would abandon her. She kept finding fault with the young man and knew she shouldn’t. The one who interested her, Mister Skye, would be long gone now, off to his own strange world, but he seemed big in her mind, a relentless presence who filled her soul in the night. She didn’t believe any of his story. Big ships with twenty sails on the Great Waters, villages so big it took hours to walk from one end to the other, guns so big they could shoot an iron ball too heavy for one man to lift, homes of fired clay so big many lodges would fit into one, streets paved of stone. She knew he had invented these things to entertain her. Nothing under the sun could be like that and she took it as his whimsy, not as anything real.
But he was different from the other pale men, more serious, more direct and truthful, more tender and honest. He didn’t laugh much; she had barely seen his hairy face break into a smile. It was as if some terrible burden lay upon him that he could never set down. She didn’t really know why she was drawn to him, only that he set her heart afire and she wanted to be his woman. She smiled. Maybe it was his nose. He had the chief of all noses, a nose to be proud of, a nose that made him a giant among all people.
She cut a snippet of black hair from the left side of her face to express her mourning for the one who had gone, but she did not cut half her hair the way a widow would. She walked to the pond where she could see her reflection, and saw how plain she looked. That was good. The cut hair would warn suitors off, and that was what she wanted.
Maybe Mister Skye wouldn’t come. She had seen him walking over mountains after she had cried for a vision one moon earlier, and she placed great stock in that. But she didn’t really know whether he would come back, and she knew all about false visions, the work of Coyote the Trickster. Even if Skye came with the trappers to winter with the Kicked-in-the-Bellies, and even if she met Mister Skye again, her parents would not approve. He would have nothing to give her father; he would also be a man without honors among the Goddamns, and her father would disapprove.
But enough of this! She put such things aside and hiked through the rustling grasslands to a distant hill where she went to be alone with the Spirits and to bring Magpie, her spirit counselor, to her. These days were bursting with glory, and she exulted in the golden warmth, the brown grasses humming in the fresh breezes, and the dome of the cloudless sky. Off to the southwest rose the snowy Big Horn Mountains, but other directions offered prairie and hills dotted with the sacred juniper and stunted jack pine. It was the most beautiful place on earth, a place to think about the First Maker, and his children Sun and Earth.
When she reached the crest she settled into the rustling grass, letting the breeze whip through her hair and eddy into her dress and over her slender body. She needed guidance, and felt something large but as yet undefined just beyond her knowing. She implored Magpie to show her what was there, just beyond. She begged her spirit counselor for the inner eye that would enable her to see past the visible world. Something large, something important and urgent was stirring her, and she desperately sought to know what it was.
She saw the familiar rakish bird fly by, a flash of white and black with iridescent blue tones. Magpie alighted some distance away, danced on one foot and the other, and broke into the sky, raucous and arrogant. Magpie was like Many Quill Woman, harsh and rowdy and not a bit sweet.
“Blessed is my counselor,” she said. “You have come to share your wisdom with your daughter.”
She felt her power, her destiny, too. She would not be like other Absaroka women, for she would teach herself the ways of war. She might be small and light and fragile, but she would be deadly. She thought at first that she would make war for the People like the great warrior woman Pine Leaf, because the People had lost so many young men to the Siksika and Lakota. Yes, she would learn the ways of war for her tribe and village, but she would learn war for other, mistier reasons as yet unclear.
She stayed an afternoon more, trying to sort out what could not be described in words, and then trotted back to her lodge and sought out her father.
“I wish to have a bow and arrows, and I wish to be taught,” she said.
“You?”
“Yes, I have seen it. I must know how to fight.”
“If you have seen it, and if you know it is a true vision, we will do it.”
“I have seen it.”
“You will war for the People, because we have lost so many.”
She nodded.
“No woman may touch my bow or arrows or quiver or their war powers will wither. But I will get you a bow. The family of the one who was killed will give you one of his bows and will be pleased with your vision.”
“I must tell you there was more to the vision. Yes, I must learn the warrior skills, but it won’t always be for the People.”
Her father eyed her sharply.
“For another Absaroka village?”
“No.”
“For another People?”
“No, for myself and the one who becomes my man.”
Her father stared a long while and nodded. “It is a good thing,” he said uncertainly.
“Yes. This one will need me,” she said.
Chapter 36
At first Skye saw nothing. He was examining the great mountain-girt basin from the top of a noble hill, looking for the Sublette brigade—and signs of danger. Puffball clouds plowed shadows across the giant land while zephyrs made the whole world vibrate and the late summer light shiver.
He knew he did not have keen eyes, or maybe he simply wasn’t seeing what experienced trappers saw. During his brief sojourn with Sublette’s men, he came to realize they read nature in ways he couldn’t fathom. They saw meaning in the flight of birds or the way antelope fled. Silences meant a lot. The sudden cessation of birdsong could mean trouble. The scents on the wind told stories to them that Skye didn’t grasp.
He lay in the shivering brown grass studying a panorama so vast he knew he could fathom only this small southwestern corner of it. But what he saw seemed a hunter’s and trapper’s paradise. Creeks and rivers laced this land. Broad meadows supported buffalo and elk and deer and antelope. Moose browsed the bogs. Willow brush and chokecherry thickets and copses of aspen or cottonwood gave shelter and food, and were the home of the beaver.
He waited patiently to make sense of all he saw as he squinted north and east. At last he spotted movement, small and dark and uncertain. But as he studied the faint motion, it came to him he was seeing a herd of running buffalo, maybe a hundred or so, and they seemed to be coming his way, although the distances made him uncertain. Yes, buffalo, black beasts over a mile distant, and more. Mounted riders among them, drawing alongside one. Sometimes a giant animal would stumble and fall, and the riders would leave it
and race after another.
Indian hunters. Blackfeet.
The realization shot terror through him. The stampeding buffalo were heading in his direction, along with the hunters. He watched, mesmerized, not knowing what to do. He was in open country, grassy hills, without cover. Just behind him, his mare and foal stood in plain sight. He had been a fool to come here, throwing caution to the winds.
Sublette wouldn’t be here in the heart of the Blackfoot hunting grounds—not yet. Not until the beaver were prime. They had explained it to him. Not until November, when the beaver had grown their winter pelts, were they worth taking. He was alone among hunters and warriors famous for casual butchery of any white man they encountered—sometimes with ritual torture to prolong the agony.
The herd grew closer and larger, and he was amazed by its speed. These big, clumsy beasts could run as fast as the fastest horse. He was trapped. All he could do was slip back below the ridge line along with his horses, and wait events. He retreated until he was out of sight of the herd, and clung tightly to the lead line of his excited mare.
He could hear the thunder of the herd just over the ridge, and once in a while he thought he heard the ululating howls of the hunters. They passed by. The herd had veered up the broad valley rather than boil over his ridge. He felt drained. Sweat soaked his leather tunic. He was not yet out of trouble and could not know whether a horseman would suddenly top the ridge and spot him.
Now Bug’s Boys, as the trappers called them, were ahead and behind him, and his life wasn’t worth a pence. He could think of nothing to do but wait for dark, which was a long time away. He didn’t know which direction to go. He could run into the savages in any direction, at any time. He surveyed his situation, which wasn’t bad, actually. He was simply high up the slope of a long grassy hill. Below, a creek ran somewhere. But he saw no cover other than a little scrub juniper. Well, that would have to do. He cautiously led his horses to a likely dark patch covering an acre and waited there. The mare grazed contently, no longer quivering with the sound of a stampede in her alert ears.
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