Fair Land, Fair Land (10 page)

Old Charlie had been rubbed out by the Arapahoes a
year later, and the traps would be long rusted now or lifted by other
hands, and all that was left was the trapper's remembered words.
Summers fell asleep hearing them.

They ate a late and scanty breakfast and rode on
until Summers spotted three bighorn sheep on a ridge above them. He
slipped from his horse. They were almost within rifle shot. He
sneaked closer, stooping for cover, and got a bead on the smallest
one and fired. The target made one jump and began rolling down the
hill toward him. For an instant the others stood, startled, and then
ran from sight.

When he got to the dead sheep, he found Higgins by
his side. Together they dragged it to the trail, bled and gutted it.

"
Wisht I had a hunter's eye like you, Dick,"
Higgins said.

"Good eatin', huh?"

"Next to buffalo by my thinkin'."

They started skinning, Summers telling Higgins, "See
the wool don't touch the meat. Makes it taste sheepy."

"
So my grandmammy told me down on the farm."

While he used his knife, Higgins asked, "You aim
to look in on that squaw we heard tell of?"
Summers
shrugged. "You gettin' ideas?"

"
Curious is all."

"
There's two ways to figure her. Either the
tribe kicked her out or she flew the coop."

"
Why would they kick her out?"

Summers shrugged again. "Maybe she couldn't keep
her skirt down. Indians are funny about that, some of them are. If
the man of the lodge agrees to it, then his woman can lay with
somebody else. If she sneaks off on her own and he finds out, then he
bobs off the tip of her nose."

"What if she does it again?"

"
I dunno. Maybe they turn her out on the
prairie."

Summers began wrapping the sheep carcass in a piece
of canvas. He went on, "Maybe she was just too ornery. Wouldn't
work, hands or tail either, though that strikes me unlikely."

"
Or maybe she just run off, things bein' not to
her taste."

"
I reckon."

They roped the canvased meat on a pack horse, leaving
the entrails and head on the trail. Looking at them, Higgins said,
"If that brute of a bear is on our tail, he'll have him a feast.
Figure he is, Dick?"

"
Was you sick and hurt, wouldn't you follow the
grub line?"

Higgins looked again at what they were leaving. "Not
to eat guts."

They went down to the creek to wash their hands.
Feather had leamed to stand when the reins were dropped. As they
mounted, Higgins said, "My mind keeps goin' to that squaw."

"
She sees your pecker, she'll shoot it off."

"
She'll have to shoot fine."

Well, Summers thought, kicking his horse, why not see
her? They weren't pushing to get any place in particular. He doubted,
though, that Higgins would get what he wanted, not from a squaw who
had pointed a gun at a man who wanted the same thing.

The sun moved in a sky that might never have known a
cloud. The aspens glowed yellow but were dropping their leaves. Here
and there chokecherries hung fat and black. The cottonwoods rose
higher, naked as skeletons now. Here and there a dwarf pine hung to
its hold on soil and rock. Except for the sounds of their gear there
was silence around them, not an animal cry or a wing flutter.
Overhead, an eagle soared, voiceless.

Feather lifted his head, his nose quivering. Off to
the right was the beginning of a gulch where aspens grew. Summers
looked for smoke but saw none. Neither did his nose find it. But a
horse knew what a man might not. Summers turned in his saddle.
"Visitin' time a-comin'. Put on your good manners."

They forded the creek and pushed through the growth
that grew along it, and there, half-hidden, rose a tepee, and, in
front of it, a woman who ran and picked up a gun. Behind her a child
sat on a piece of old robe.

Summers halted the string when he had ridden closer.
He said, "How." The woman stood unmoving, both hands on the
gun. Even at this distance he could see it was an old fusee, probably
a Hudson's Bay musket. He couldn't guess at the age of the woman
though she was probably pretty young. Even in her hide sack of a
dress he could tell she hadn't grown fat and squatty, as squaws did
often with age. Her eyes were big, not crowded by high cheekbones,
and her face was thin, made that way by nature or hunger. And damned
if the child behind her didn't have red hair.

Summers dismounted slowly, propped his Hawken against
a bush, and made the sign for peace, holding both hands in front of
his body, the back of his left hand turned down.

The woman stood and looked, unmoving.

He didn't know the sign for meat, if there was one,
and instead went to a pack horse and took the wrapped-up sheep. As he
did, Higgins said softly, "She's like to shoot you."

"Them old smooth bores ain't so scary."

He carried the meat toward her and unwrapped it and
stood, then closed his hand and brought it in front of his body, his
forefinger pointing up in the sign for "come."

She didn't come. She stayed where she was, looking at
him puzzled and questioning, as if there were more to him if she
could bring it to mind. Then she lowered the musket and said, "How."

Summers carried the meat to her, saying over his
shoulder,

"
You mind unpackiing the horses, Hig, and takin'
'em to grass? No bell on Feather. Just hobbles. This is Blackfoot
country."

She was Blackfoot herself, he felt sure. One thing,
her moccasins didn't match. By the fire were a couple of knives and a
kettle. Keeping the meat on the canvas, she carved off pieces, 
knowing how, and pitched them in the kettle. From a hide bucket she
added water. The child behind her sniffed like an animal. He cocked
an ear to listen. He might have been a fox. Summers saw then that he
was blind.

"Know white man's talk?" Summers asked as
she worked. She studied what he had said, the knife uplifted, as if
to find meaning in each word. Then with her free hand she brought her
thumb against her forefinger until only a bit of it showed. That was
the sign for "little."

In Blackfoot, he guessed, she asked what he knew of
her tongue, and he answered as she had.
Higgins
came from unpacking and loosing the horses. "Gettin' anywhere?"

"
Gettin' to a meal."

"
Her nose ain't been bobbed, anyhow. Jesus
Christ, Dick, that young'n's blind."

"
I took notice."

"
How they make out, you reckon?"

"
Not too fat, I'm thinkin'. Likely she sets
snares for rabbits and maybe grouse. Close up, she could kill a
critter with that old musket."

Summers started to make a fire, but the woman waved
him away. All right. She was boss of her own household. The child set
up a thin wail like a bird peep in the great silence. She quieted him
with a pat on the head and a sound in her throat. He couldn't have
been more than three years old and maybe not that.

She had the fire going now. Young sheep didn't take
long to cook.

Summers sat back on the ground and with a twig from
the fire lighted his pipe. The real warmth of the day was over.
Shadows of the mountains were growing over the camp. Pretty soon the
coyotes would tune up. The woman took something from a small leather
sack and added it to the stew.

They ate with knives and their fingers, spearing
pieces of meat and letting them cool. When the piece was too big a
mouthful, Summers used his knife to cut the bite off in front of his
nose. He saw Higgins watching him. On a scrubbed stone the woman cut
small chunks and fed them to the child. Between bites the woman said,
"Plenty good." It was the first English she had spoken.

After eating they washed their hands and mouths with
water from the hide bucket. There was nothing to dry them on, nothing
but the soft air and the breeze that had sprung up.

Higgins said, "Ain't she got horses? I didn't
see any."

Catching her eye, Summers made the sign for horse and
raised his eyebrows. She held up two fingers.

"
Yep," Summers said to Higgins. "Two.
They're hid away somewhere."

Night came on, and Summers rolled out his bed, not
close to the tepee. Higgins did the same.

There was wind in the mountains, wind in the high
tree tops, but here they lay snug, hearing the long voice of it. Sure
enough, the coyotes started their hill-to-hill chorus, wind song and
coyote song and silence hanging over them both. And who was this
squaw, camping alone with her child? How come and why? It wasn't her
looks that had set her apart from her tribe. That was for sure. Had
she fled from it for reasons unknown? Would she go back? Would they,
he and Higgins, stay around for a while? There were questions and
questions and no answers that came to mind.

Higgins said, "You reckon, Dick? You reckon now
that we've got acquainted?"

"
This nigger wouldn't try it. Just go to sleep."

He drowsed off seeing the woman, seeing her slim and
big-eyed, her look puzzled, and seeing the blind child, too, the
red-headed child. Some white man had got to her all right. The hoarse
howls of wolves joined with the cries of coyotes.

Higgins woke him up, Higgins breathing loud and
shuffling again into his bed. As if to himself Higgins said, "I
be good goddamned!"

"
Told you so."

"
I wasn't forcin' myself on her, Dick. You know
I wouldn't.

I just stood by the tepee flap and made what I
thought was coaxin' sounds, and the flap flew open, and there was the
damn musket pointed at my belly button and her holdin' it. So I made
tracks."

"
I reckon you're wilted down."

"
Shrunk to nothin'."

"So forget it and go back to sleep."

Summers chuckled to himself. For no reason at all he
felt pleased.
 

14

SUMMERS was ready with two pack horses when the slow
sun came up. They had eaten at first light, and the woman had cleaned
up afterward and had turned to scraping the sheep hide while the
child sat sampling whatever smells the breeze brought. Now there was
nothing for him to do but take off.

Higgins stepped to his side. "Any orders for me,
general?"

Higgins was a knowing man. He understood without
being told that Summers wanted to be alone for a while. Still, it
seemed kind of unfair.

"
You could go down along the creek, I'm
thinkin', and shoot some ducks. Ought to be some teal and mallard in
the potholes. Bring back plenty meat, me."

"
You ain't talkin' to an Injun now."

Summers smiled at him. "I aim to get us a
buffalo. The woman will dry some of it and maybe make pemmican and
have something to tide her over the winter." Summers mounted
Feather and got the outfit moving.

The night had brought frost, but it was melting now,
and, touched by the sun, the tops of the grasses trembled with light.
Tiny pieces of mirrors, Summers thought, each flashing a message if a
man could read it.

He rode down a long hill and up and down another, and
the plains spread before him, sharp in the sun, and a butte rose and
another, and a small bunch of antelope, taking silly fright, bucketed
a few yards and stopped, their rumps showing white. Once antelopes
were called goats, he remembered, which was a put-down on the breed.
An antelope was pretty fair eating, what there was of it. He knew he
could bring them within shooting distance. Just get away from the
horses, lie down, hold the rifle up with a tatter of flag on it, and
curiosity would do the rest.

He went on, letting the air and the sky and the earth
sink into him. It was more than the lungs that this country filled.
It was the eye and the spirit and the whole of the body from topknot
on down. How many times had he just sat and looked? How many times,
seeing, had he felt part and partner of what he saw? Never enough
times. Each time was a new time, born fresh from the old, close kin
to it, showing likeness, but still new.

He passed through a thin thicket. Off to his left was
an old buffalo bull, its beard touching the ground. An old bull,
standing alone, cast out from the herd, horned out by younger ones
and left to remember the cows he had covered and wouldn't again. The
bull raised its great head and stared at him, its eyes sullen and
sad. Soon enough the wolves would disable it and, first thing, eat
its balls off. Small loss, considering.

He raised a hand and said to the bull, "Too bad,
old-timer." He led the string on. It wasn't the blue meat of an
old bull that he wanted to bring back to camp.

Over a swell of land he saw what he wanted — a
dozen or so buffalo in a hollow. They were the leavings of the great
winter migration to the south, some of the few that voted to stick
where they were. No bulls among them but one early-born calf, too
young to show much of a hump. The bulls, along with the big herds,
would come later and make thunder in the rutting season with their
bawlings and pawings.