Rendezvous

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Wear this. It will tell the People of your powers,” she said.

  He handed it to her, and she knotted it behind his neck.

  “There is no greater sign,” she said.

  Red Turkey Comb stood, a signal that this interview was over, and Skye and Victoria bundled themselves and pierced into bitter cold. Skye knew, in the dark, that something had changed.

  Chapter 46

  Something portentous had happened to Skye in the lodge of the shaman, Red Turkey Comb, but he couldn’t fathom what it was. He knew little of Indian belief, and distrusted even that. He tried to make light of the prophetic vision about him, but couldn’t. Somewhere, floating just back of his thoughts, was the understanding that his life had changed so his future would, too.

  He wore his bearclaw necklace uneasily, feeling odd emanations from it, powers he ascribed to savage superstition that he would soon put behind him. Living in a Crow village could do that to a man. Sometimes he pulled the necklace over his head to examine it and run his fingers over the dark, lethal grizzly claws. Whoever had fashioned this necklace knew the power of those claws. The root of each had been encased in blue tradecloth, and a small hole had been bored in each to take the thong of the necklace. The lustrous blue beads separating the claws added to the beauty of this insignia of power.

  But more than beauty stirred him as he ran his blunt fingers over the necklace. He felt stirrings of things he couldn’t put a name to. He remembered walking past the towering grizzly on the trail, past claws just like these that could have shredded his vulnerable flesh, and yet the bear had let him pass, a friend and brother. Now these claws were a bond. He and all the bears of the world were brothers. He had somehow taken into himself the powers of the bear, its strength and resourcefulness, its lordship over all the other creatures that walked.

  Was he now a bear? No, he was Barnaby Skye, but a man infused with something new and transforming. He saw it at once in his daily contact with the Absaroka people. Word of his visit to Red Turkey Comb, and the old shaman’s seeing, swiftly spread through the Kicked-in-the-Bellies, the news on the lips of the village crier and the source of gossip everywhere. Skye sensed it. The young men, once indifferent or hostile because Skye had spent so much time with one of the most desirable maidens of the village, now stopped and exchanged greetings, and paused to admire his necklace.

  Somehow the bearclaw necklace invested Skye with power and prestige and made him an important man among these people. Even Victoria’s family was treating him differently, the father less solemn and distant, her brother less imperious. Skye had done nothing to merit this attention, and supposed it was merely pagan superstition at work. In any case, he would be leaving the mountains in a few months. The necklace would be an entertaining curio to show his classmates someday.

  He supposed his trapping friends would swiftly put the new camp tender in his place, but it didn’t happen. Beckwourth, for instance—the one veteran he thought would make light of the necklace with his usual barbed wit—examined the necklace solemnly and told Skye to live up to what was given him. Sublette studied the necklace, smiled, and added his own mysterious prophecy: “Guess you won’t be going east after all, ol’ coon. That’s good. We need you.”

  Skye started to protest but fell silent. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to go east. He had been thinking about what the shaman had told him. The bowl had been broken and it would no longer hold his old life in it. Who was he now? He worried that in his mind as he went about his tasks, cutting firewood each day, cooking, checking the horses. Who was he? Or rather, what did he want now?

  Once, exasperated with himself, he borrowed a small round mirror, a favorite trade item, and studied himself in it, trying to find himself in his own image. He examined his giant nose, long and thick like a hogback ridge, and he found his blue eyes and angular features. But he no longer saw the London boy, and even the sailor was barely a memory. He could no longer conjure up his seaman’s life, his tiny bunk, his sullen obedience—most of the time—to imperious officers, his wild, birdlike joy when he had climbed high in the rigging and could see a world that extended beyond the wooden hull of his ship.

  Gone now.

  In his looking glass he beheld a hardened man with a knowing face, a man ripped from civilization and unlikely to return. An ugly, bearded man in fringed buckskins, who wore his hair loose, or anchored with a red bandanna. A man whose chest bore an ensign that made him a king or a prince in these Absaroka lands. He recognized a new man, and he knew he had been transformed.

  Another arctic blast drove them all into their lodges, but now he found himself a frequent guest at the lodgefires of these people, sometimes with Victoria, often not. The Crows came to him as he cut wood, invited him with gestures or a few words of fractured English or a few Crow words, and then he would spend an evening with one or another clan, often accompanied by veteran trappers. There, in the intimacy of the lodges, he would devour buffalo rib roast with a dozen others and then listen to stories. How these people loved to spin stories! He swiftly gathered there was more to it than entertainment. These tales conveyed tribal history, taught lessons, explained spiritual mysteries, reaffirmed the power of First Maker and all their other Above Ones, and told of the beginning of the world and the creation of the People.

  Then, sometime late in the evening, it befell the grandmothers to tell their own stories, and Skye at first could barely believe what he was hearing, and thought his limited knowledge of the Crow tongue was deceiving him. The old women, some toothless but always grinning, eagerly began wildly bawdy stories, swiftly convulsing their audiences with their humor. How could this be? Skye listened uneasily, glancing at the assorted wives and daughters who were enjoying these unabashed tales about mating, the size of genitals, getting caught with someone, sexual prowess, boastfulness about things that Skye had never heard discussed in mixed company.

  And there was Victoria at some of these parties, laughing wickedly at these tales spun by grandmothers. She wasn’t like a British girl, either innocent of such things or feigning ignorance. She had always stirred him, and ever since he had first gazed upon her at the rendezvous he had wanted her. But in those summer days, when he knew he would be leaving the mountains, he had set aside those feelings because she was different from the Shoshone girls he had dallied with. He couldn’t explain it. Now, in the confines of the lodges, and with a new future being born in him, those feelings flooded back. But of course it was not love, he told himself. How could he love a savage?

  But he could. The more he and Victoria learned how to talk to each other, often in a patois of Crow and English words enriched with gestures, the more entranced he was with her sharp-etched humor, her swift tenderness, her many ways of nurturing him, and the promise of delights unimaginable that brimmed from her eyes. He had been a lone man too long. He thought of sharing a lodge with her in the winter’s cold and in the high days of summer. He thought of her smooth brown body beside him, her yearnings and his joining in the night, a life together, a family—

  How startling it was to think of children. His and Victoria’s children! All his days, he had thought of himself as a son, not a father. The realization that he was a grown man, free, no longer just a son, no longer tied to England, astounded him. In all the years in the Royal Navy he had perceived of himself as a youth, but now that frozen image was melting away in the rush of events. At age twenty-one, he was capable of siring his own family, sons and daughters, slim and dark like their mother, blue-eyed like himself. He was a man.

  The cold spell dissolved one February day in a rush of warm west winds, and he ventured out again, along with the rest of the Absaroka people. The sun was returning, bit by bit, and the high plains glowed in the afternoons, the brown grasses absorbing the warmth. The air remained chill but was sweet and dry. Soon now William Sublette would tell his brigade that the spring hunt would begin; the ice was melting in the creeks and the beaver would be swimming out of their log homes. The realization m
ade Skye restless. He didn’t want to leave this paradise where winter had been tamed and the Absaroka told and retold their stories and he had made many friends.

  He did not want to leave Victoria. With the milder weather, they spent more time away from the village, and the sight of her in her gray blanket always melted his heart. They had touched a little—some innate delicacy had made this bonding different from the ones he had experienced with the Shoshone women—but now he ached for her and he was flooded with visions of her with him in the thick, warm buffalo robes. He wanted to hug her and never let go, and he knew she felt the same hungers.

  But of course the Absarokas were never alone. Each lodge housed grandparents, a man and his women, children, brothers, sisters. The act of love was done in company, and that was how those things were well known to all. A lodge was black at night, without windows, but the soft noises of love told their own tales to all. How could he endure that? Would he find it intimidating to love her only a few feet from her parents—even if they were married Absaroka fashion? He could not say, but he desperately wanted a lodge of his own, and a sweet privacy with her.

  One day William Sublette told his brigade they would leave for the Three Forks country early in March, and trap until the beaver were no longer prime. That was only days away, and the news tore through Skye’s soul, wrenching him.

  Skye thought about Victoria, and how they had come to each other from such different worlds, but also how they had weathered into each other, spending golden moments, experimenting with words, sometimes saying nothing at all in contented silence. He had to act now or he would lose her. Victoria’s parents could give her to any Absaroka warrior at any time. There were many who would gladly leave ponies before the lodge and had eyed Skye as a rival. It was now or never. He wasn’t sure it would be a good match—the differences were real. But he loved her. He had never loved anyone before, but he knew he wanted her, would always want her, and would be desolated if he lost her.

  He walked out to the herd, which was up the creek a mile or so, and found his mare and yearling colt among them, shaggy, thin, but not in bad shape, all things considered. She shied away from him, but he persisted in walking her down, and eventually he caught and haltered her. The colt came along.

  He looked the yearling colt over, finding it big, well-developed, dark and cocky. It had scarcely been handled. But after a while it let Skye touch him, rub its ears, run a hand along its neck under the mane, scratch its jaw. Then Skye slipped a loop over its neck and held tight when it yanked back. The colt stopped resisting sooner than Skye had thought, and let itself be haltered, as it had been the previous summer. He led the colt, tugging firmly when it resisted the pull of the lead rope, breaking it to halter.

  He lacked a comb to curry the colt, but perhaps it didn’t matter. He had a fine, strong yearling with a friendly eye and a good way of moving. He hoped it would be enough. He led the colt away from its whickering mother, led it back toward the village, led it through the village lanes, now teeming with people who were scraping hides, smoking, fletching arrows or enjoying the mild weather—to the lodge of Victoria’s family. And there he tied the pony to a picket, his heart riding on the work of his fingers.

  Chapter 47

  One memorable afternoon Daniel Ferguson and Peter Ranne walked into the village leading their burdened packhorses. Word raced through the lodges, drawing trappers and the Crows.

  Skye heard the news and ran toward the newcomers, not believing it. But there they were, in good flesh, showing no sign of unusual hardship. Even their horses looked pretty decent, though their thick hair could be deceptive.

  The trappers whooped and hollered and carried on in a way that Skye, with his British reserve, would never quite get used to. A crowd of Crows gathered, just as curious as the brigade. They had heard the story of Ferguson and Ranne’s disappearance and probable death during the bitterest days of December.

  “Knew we’d find ye hyar,” Daniel Ferguson said. “Only the pass kept us from coming over. Fifty-foot drifts or ye can call me a liar.”

  “Maybe ten-foot drifts, ol’ coon,” said Sublette quietly, cheer radiating from him.

  “No, fifty footers. No child could get through, so me and Peter, we made snowshoes.”

  “How’d ye get the horses over?”

  “I made snowshoes for mine. Peter made skis for his hosses, and they were some, except his nags couldn’t stop on a downslope.”

  Beckwourth guffawed. Bridger grinned. Skye could see that Bridger was thinking up something equally outlandish, but for the moment Ferguson had him buffaloed.

  “What happened, Daniel?” Sublette asked, an edge sharpening his voice. “We went looking. It went hard. We near froze before we gave up.”

  Daniel Ferguson peered innocently about him, enjoying the crowd. He lifted his beaver cap and took his time, knowing he was the cynosure of their attention.

  “You got some tobacco? I could use a smoke,” he said.

  “Not until rendezvous.”

  Ferguson looked disappointed. “That was all this child lacked, was a good smoke. We plum had everything else any ol’ coon would ever want. We was having fat times, excepting that we lacked a pipeful. That sure was a sore point.”

  Skye listened skeptically, amused and impatient. This old trapper was going to drag out his story for an hour.

  “I had every trapper out looking for you,” Sublette said, pointedly. The booshway wasn’t going to stand for this much longer.

  Ferguson leaned upon his mountain rifle, surveyed his audience again, and apparently judged that it wasn’t going to get any larger. “Well, sir, it be like this. Me and Peter, we seen that old storm a-brewing and black-bellied clouds a-comin’, so Peter, he says to me, ‘Let’s git.’ So we lit out because that was a mean storm and we were a piece from camp. We didn’t git far before it was snowing and blowing, but we pushed along, slipping and sliding, leading our nags and hauling beaver. We got down out of the drainage all right, and got out to the flat country all right, but the snow was coming and I was feeling testy. So I said to Peter, I says, ‘I know a place to go. I saw her once when I come through hyar a few winters ago by my lonesome, dodging Bug’s Boys.’”

  He paused, letting it be understood that he knew the Three Forks country better than the rest of them.

  “Instead of comin’ back to camp, we just hightailed on down the Gallatin until I see what I’m lookin’ for, a big billow of steam right in the middle of all that falling snow, snow coming down in buckets so we can hardly see a trail.

  “So I says to Peter, ‘Ol’ coon, we’ve arrived in the middle of summer.’ He looks at me like I’ve gone beaver, but he leads his nags, following me, and pretty soon the steam gets so thick a man can’t hardly see, and I says, ‘Peter, we’re at the gates of July.’”

  All this took translating. Skye had never quite fathomed the argot of the trappers, but as near as he could tell, Daniel Ferguson was saying the pair had not only abandoned the area they were trapping, but had hiked far down the Gallatin River instead of heading for camp.

  “Hot springs!” bellowed Ranne. “He taken me to hot springs, biling up outa the ground, letting off steam so thick a man couldn’t see his own hand. This child stood on the banks of a pool with green grass growing around it, and the horses soon took to it. Snow falling all over, steam rising, snow vanishing into the steam, and heat coming at me.

  “Well, old Daniel and me, we unloaded them hoss, unloaded our gear, unloaded our plews, stripped buck naked, and tippytoed into that thar pool until we was plumb up to our noses in hot water. That water, she felt so good it was better’n rendezvous. Pretty soon I’m so warm I’ve gotta go down to the cooler end of this hyar pool. It’s snowing, and a few flakes land on my hair, but no matter. It’s like walking through the pearly gates. I had me a soak, and old Daniel had him a soak, and pretty soon we got to thinkin’ we should head back to camp—but we can’t. We can’t get out. It’s too cold out. The snow, she quits, and a
breeze comes up so sharp and cold that I’da freezed up solid if I stepped out.

  “I look around, and it’s plain this place is known to somebody; there’s a few shelters around, an old lodge standing, some buffler hides over frames—things like that. A Blackfeet resort, that’s what I’m thinking, and I’m glad it’s January and all them Bug’s Boys are hiding in their lodges. So I says to old Daniel, ‘Old boy, it’s getting too late and too dark and too cold. I guess we’d just better suffer all this misery and go back to camp in the morning. Them horses is fine—they got all the green grass they can swaller, growing along the banks where it stays warm.’”

  Ferguson nodded. “I reckoned we’d fetch pneumonia if we climbed out and tried to go through all that snow back to camp. So we stayed the night. Next morning, it was clear and so cold a man’d freeze just trying to put his duds on, so we just hunkered in that hot water. I was getting a little wrinkled, like a raisin, but it didn’t matter. I was getting so hongry my belly was a-howling, but we couldn’t get out. I thought, old boy, this hyar’s how ye’ll go under, starvin’ to death in a hot pool ye can’t get outa.”

  Ranne broke in. “Them elk is what kept us a-going. They come for the heat. They see us and don’t care. They come just to stand in that pool up to their bellies, and stay warm on the coldest day of the year. Steam’s billowing up, but we see elk all over, keeping their toes warm. So, Daniel, he swims over to the bank to get old Jezebel, his rifle, and he kills us a cow elk. We got eats—if only we can get out and gut it and carve on it and build us a fire—but we’re plumb stuck in the water. It’s so cold we can’t even think about cooking elk over a fire, and we’re thinking maybe we could bile some elk in our pool, but it’s not that hot. So we just stay up to our noses, and feel our skin wrinkle and cook, and starve.”