“Thank you, Stands Tall in Timber. I know you were against this. I am grateful for your help.”
The holy man blinked his eyes slowly, accepting George’s thanks. “The world, I think, is changing. We all must try to change with it.” He walked over to his whistler, mounted, and bid it rise. “One Who Flies,” he said. “Use well the gifts given here today.”
“I will do my best,” George said.
Stands Tall in Timber set his whistler in motion and headed north. George watched him ride away, part of him wishing he could ride along, back to join up with the People who were gathering up along the Milk River.
Vincent slapped George on the back, jolting him out of his reverie. “Ready, then? Done with all the mumbo-jumbo?”
George bit back a sharp response. “Yes,” he said. “Done.”
“Good. Let’s get busy, then.”
The trench had already been prepared and the holes for the charges dug. George directed everyone back to the campsite, a quarter mile away. Only Vincent, Gets up Early, Standing Motionless, and George himself remained within the blast zone.
The four men worked slowly, deliberately. Four charges were capped and given fuses. George and Vincent set charges in the holes, each one twenty feet from its neighbor. The fuses were trimmed so that the explosions would start at one end of the line and proceed down to the end. Lit simultaneously, they would have six minutes to clear the area.
Vincent handed out the matches, three to a man, and they all went to their designated hole. Vincent went to the near end while George took the farthest hole. He looked back toward the camp and saw the entire crew standing patiently, expectantly at the boundary Vincent had marked. They stood silently, waiting for the release of what George had only been able to describe as “the spirit of thunder.”
“Let’s go,” Vincent yelled from the end of the line. George returned his attention to his tasks.
“Ready?” he called out in Cheyenne.
“Ready,” Gets up Early said.
“I am ready,” said Standing Motionless.
“Vincent? Are you ready?” George shouted in French.
“Yes, yes, ready,” Vincent replied.
“Fire the fuses!”
He struck his matches, three at once, and held the flame to the fuse. A second passed, a heartbeat, a breath, and the fuse sparked into fiery life. The hole filled with the acrid smell of gunsmoke and burning jute. George scrambled up out of the trench. The others were doing likewise.
“Go!”
They all ran. Vincent was slowest and George and Stands Motionless caught up to him quickly. They took the old trader by the arms and sped him along toward the camp. George was breathless when they reached the rest of the crew, but not from exertion. They all stopped and turned to watch.
The ridge was a finger of land that jutted southward out from the foothills. At its end, the lone tamarack tree stood above the exposed stone that they now knew was the tip of a long seam of granite and quartz. The eastern side of the ridge was scarred by their digging. Long trenches wandered the slopes of it, delineating the limits of the ridge’s stony skeleton. It was quiet, peaceful, and completely at odds with the hammering of George’s heart and the violence about to be unleashed.
Time ticked past.
“What’s wrong?” George asked.
“Nothing,” Vincent said.
“Did they fail? Did we do something wrong?”
“With all of them? Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll go.” He took out the pocket watch he had brought back from Winnipeg. “Any moment now.”
George felt it before he heard it, felt it in his feet. The earth rumbled. The front of the line up on the ridge seemed to sink down and then it leapt up into the air with a roar that sent every man to his knees in reflex. The second explosion punched up out of the earth, a titan awakened. Then the third. Men were shouting, crying out in surprise. The sound engulfed them. The fourth charge exploded. The air was filled with dust. Bits of gravel pattered down upon them with the sound of a fresh spring rain. The earth trembled, then quieted. The dust began to settle and drift on the wind.
As the air cleared they saw what they had done.
The upper flank of the ridge had been ripped open, lifted up, and dumped down onto the lower slope. Slowly, George and the others began to walk toward the site. As they came close, George could see exposed stone, tons of shattered rock, and everywhere, it seemed, the glint of gold.
“Good God,” he said, reverting to English. He looked back at Vincent. The old trader was beaming with pride.
“Not bad, eh?”
George grinned. “Not bad at all,” he said. “This will keep us busy till summer.”
Vincent laughed. “Let’s get to work, then, eh?”
Chapter 9
Summer, A.D. 1888
Washington
District of Columbia
“Grover Cleveland?”
“Autie. Keep your voice down.” Jacob closed the door to the smoking room where the men had gathered after dinner for brandy and cigars. Custer, as was his habit, eschewed both, but right now he felt a strong desire for a drink.
“Hellfire,” he said as he sat down in an overstuffed chair. “There goes our hold on New York.” Jacob eased himself down at one end of the leather davenport while Custer’s other guest, his brother Nevin, took the other end.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Jacob said. “There’s also Fisk from the Prohibition Party and Streeter from Union & Labor. They’re sure to take some votes away from Cleveland.”
“And from me as well,” Custer said.
“Yes, but they’ll take more away from a Democratic governor than from a Republican president. Especially Streeter.”
“Damnation,” Custer muttered. “When did he announce his candidacy?”
Nevin reached forward and chose a cigar from the humidor. He was Custer’s junior by only a few years, and had the same familial good looks as his presidential brother: wavy blond hair, a piercing blue gaze, and a strong aquiline nose. When he lit the cigar, the matchlight reflected in his deep-set eyes.
“The governor announced within hours of your vice president breaking his own bit of news,” Nevin said. “I heard it at the station.”
“Hell and Damnation,” Custer swore. “They figure that without Hayes’ fatherly strength on the ticket I’ll be an easy mark in November. Damn Hayes, anyway.”
“Autie,” Jacob said in a tone meant to placate. “He always said he only wanted to serve for one term.”
“You say that like people believed him. I certainly didn’t. Did you?”
“Well, not really.”
“Nevin?”
“No one believed the old coot,” Nevin said.
Custer slapped the arm of the chair. “Aw, Hell. Let the old man go. Let him go back to lawyering in Nowhere, Indiana—”
“That’s Nowhere, Ohio,” Nevin corrected.
“Fine. Ohio. It doesn’t matter. He’s off the ticket. But what are my other choices?”
Jacob spoke around his snifter of brandy. “The leadership is fairly well-set on Harrison. I have another preference, though.”
“Why not Harrison?” Custer asked. “He may be ineffectual, but who could be better than the grandson of a former president?”
“Morton,” Jacob said with a sly smile.
“L.P. Morton?” Nevin said. “The banker?”
“The New York banker,” Jacob said. “He’ll help deliver against Grover C.”
“But he’s ancient,” Nevin laughed. “He’s older than Harrison.”
“But he has money. And power,” Jacob insisted.
Custer sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “These are my choices?” he asked the universe. “Thank God I didn’t announce my own candidacy yet.”
“Why?” Jacob asked, his eyes wide with shock. “You’re not thinking...Autie, you are going to run for a second term, aren’t you?”
Custer sneered.
Nevin put down
his cigar and went to his brother’s side. He squatted down and put his hand on Custer’s shoulder.
“Don’t tell me that you’re not going to run,” he said. “Not just because you’re not sure of a win.”
Custer shrugged off his brother’s well-intentioned hand. “Do you know what this job costs? Do you have any idea?” He stood and paced the length of the square room. “It’s not all parades and ribbon-cutting, you know.”
Jacob tried to appease him. “We know, Autie.”
“Do you, Jacob? Do you? Everything I want to do is a battle. Even when my own party was in control of the House and the Senate, it was a battle. And the press!” He threw his hands into the air. “Every item of our lives is grist for their mill. Libbie...Libbie.” His breath caught with an anguish too-long held within.
“Autie,” his brother said.
“Libbie. The bastards won’t even let her grieve.” The pain broke through in a single, harsh-edged sob. He put the back of his hand to his mouth and leaned on the back of the chair. “Our son,” he managed to say. “We can’t even grieve.”
Nevin walked up to him. The brothers embraced. Custer got his emotions under control and pushed Nevin gently away. He nodded, saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Silence ruled the room as the three men—two brothers in blood, two brothers in service—let the moment of Custer’s outburst fade.
Nevin sat and re-lit his cigar. Jacob freshened his brandy.
Custer returned to his chair; he sat, hooking a leg over one of the arms. He frowned, contemplating his future.
Beyond the presidency, what was there for him? He was not a lawyer like Lincoln or Hayes. He wasn’t a political boss like Arthur. He was a soldier; like Grant and Sherman, he was a soldier.
And where were they, now? Dead. Sherman, assassinated, killed by the political machine he hated and vowed to change; and Grant, who loved that same machine, had been forgotten by it and left to die, alone and afraid, though a soldier to the end.
And me? Custer wondered. What choices lie before me?
At only forty-nine, he couldn’t count on Grant’s cancerous deliverance. He chuckled.
Maybe, he thought, if I stay on, I’ll be given Sherman’s release.
“So,” he said, having decided. “Whom shall we ask to replace Hayes?”
The noonday sun hammered the color from the sky, leaving a pale mirror to reflect its light. The ground, still damp from days of rain, simmered in the summer heat, making the air thick and wet. Spring, having long overstayed its usual time, had been evicted during the night and Summer had immediately set about cleaning up after the previous tenant.
George felt like he was asphyxiating in the open air. It was like breathing in a steam bath: heat, vapor, and the heavy, windless air. He lifted a patch of prairie sod and carried it back toward the mining site. A hundred men were doing likewise, bringing seeds and sod to the slope that they had blown open two months ago, covering it over and returning it as best they could to its original state. A dozen other men were taking down lodges and packing travoises, striking camp and preparing for the trip home.
There was a joy in the otherwise oppressive air, an excitement, and a definite sense of anticipation. There was singing and laughter, teasing and friendly banter. Men threw clods of dirt and chased each other like boys. Certain words that had been set aside during the long weeks of their labors were now picked up again like treasured objects: Home, Family, Hunt, Dance.
George carried his patch of deer grass and little bluestem up the slope and, digging out a depression in the soft, fragrant earth with his hands, set it into its new home.
“Grow,” he asked of it simply. “Thrive.”
He wiped the dirt from his hands and stood. He saw Vincent down at the campsite, a lone figure, immobile amid the motion of the others. Behind him, eight whistlers, laden with supplies and the heavy product of the camp’s labors, munched on the grass. Vincent waved. George waved back. Vincent waved again and beckoned. With hands to his mouth he bellowed, “Let’s go!” Others looked over to see who was being so ill-mannered but saw that it was only the old trader. George knew what they were saying; they used to say it about him: Crazy vé’ho’e.
“Perhaps they still do,” he said. Refusing to shout back and forth, he walked down to Vincent. “Impatient today, aren’t you?”
“We should have left at daybreak,” Vincent said.
“You weren’t ready at daybreak,” George reminded him.
Vincent scowled. “Well, I’m ready now.”
“So I see. Where is Gets up Early?”
“There.”
George looked where Vincent pointed and saw the Little Bowstring soldier helping others secure lodgepoles to a recalcitrant whistler.
“Gets up Early, are you ready?”
The Indian who had been so important to their success had also agreed to accompany them north to the borderlands. “Yes, One Who Flies,” he said. “I am ready.” He came over and with him came the five other men. The original mining crew stood before George: Howling Hawk of the Elkhorn Scraper society, Sharp Nose of the Red Shield soldiers, Grasshopper of the Wolf Men, Pine of the Kit Fox, Standing Motionless of the Crazy Dogs, and Gets up Early from the Little Bowstring society. Their pride showed in their smiling eyes and broad grins.
The other men who had been added to the crew this year stopped in their work and walked toward the group. Soon a crowd of a hundred men and more all stood in respectful silence around George, Vincent, and Gets up Early. They seemed to be waiting.
Vincent nudged George with an elbow. “Say something, Young Custer.”
George felt the blood rush to his cheeks and some of the men laughed at his embarrassment. He did not like making speeches and had not expected to make one now. Still, he felt as though he should say something. After all, they had all worked so hard to fulfill this dream.
No, he thought. Not a dream. A vision.
He fumbled at his belt pouch and took out the nugget that Speaks While Leaving had given him, the nugget that he carried with him always.
“This,” he said, holding the lustrous lump high for all to see. “This is what started it all. This and a vision. You have all worked very hard. You have all done your part. The result of your efforts is here behind me.” He waved a hand toward the sacks filled with hundreds of pounds of gold nugget and flake. “And for now, your work is done. Go home. Hunt. Eat good food. Dance. Kiss your wives.”
Grins flashed through the crowd of men and George and his companions mounted their whistlers. As the three whistlers stood and they readied to leave, George regarded the crew. Strong feeling swelled in his throat, but the People had no words for leave-taking—no “goodbye” or “farewell”—so George simply raised his hand, a sign that transcended language and culture. The men responded in kind.
“Nóheto,” he said, and he, Vincent, and Gets up Early all rode out of camp, followed by the five whistlers that carried the sacks that held the future.
During the next days they followed much the same course that George and Vincent had taken the previous winter. At Pembina, Gets up Early stayed hidden in nearby woods with the whistlers. George and Vincent walked on into the small frontier town that hung like a cocklebur stuck to the threads of the iron railroad tracks. In town they exchanged raw gold for coin and purchased horses, a wagon, some clothing, and four small heavy-sided chests. They drove the wagon and goods back out to where Gets up Early waited. The sacks of gold were put into the chests, the chests were locked, and then one by one each two-hundred pound chest was slid up onto the buckboard behind the driver’s bench.
The horses disliked being so close to the large, lizard-like whistlers, and the whistlers’ natural curiosity did not help matters. With small, almost mincing steps, George’s hen sidled closer to the hitched team. She crept up on the rearmost horse until she was close enough to properly inspect the mare by sticking her nose under the mare’s switching tail. The mare whinnied and bucked, the other h
orses stamped. The wagon shifted, the men cried out in alarm, and George’s hen retreated, her green eyes wide, her muzzle and neck alive with shifting bars of red and white. George grabbed the reins of the wagon team while Gets up Early calmed the whistler, scratching her withers until her colors calmed and her song fell from a shrill piccolo down to a throaty French horn.
With the gold all on the wagon and with George and Vincent both in new clothes more befitting their pretended station, they were ready to part from Gets up Early.
“We will meet at the trader-place, where Vincent used to live,” George said. “At the full of the Moon When the Cherries are Ripe.” He checked with Vincent. “That will be a month from now. Enough time?”
Vincent chewed on his mustache. “Oui,” he said. “Enough time.”
George felt giddy. It’s going to happen, he said to himself. It’s really going to happen.
Winnipeg was in full leaf when they arrived in town. The tree-lined avenues of the town’s west end formed enchanting green tunnels that invited all to stroll beneath their branched canopies. Toward the town center, churchyards and tiny parks with spreading maples made shaded oases among the bright, sun-filled streets. Children played in alleyways, women walked the boardwalks on their errands, and men, as in winter, stood in streetcorner conversations, but everyone was a bit slower, a bit less boisterous. The sun of summer and the humid air, even this far north, sapped the town of its vivacity and life, slowing it to a leisurely pace.
George, however, now fairly well-accustomed to the stronger summer of the lower latitudes, found the weather most pleasant, even in his heavier vé’ho’e clothing. He smiled as they passed through town, tipping his hat to pretty women and touching the brim as they passed businessmen and bankers on the street.
They turned onto Machray and sighted the Grand Pacific Hotel. The aged doorman recognized them immediately. He poked his head inside to tell of their arrival and by the time they had pulled the wagon up to the steps, the doorman, the bellboys, the clerk, manager, and even the cook were there, waiting to greet two of their very best customers.
The Spirit of Thunder Page 24