Stamping Ground (5 page)

“Do they all get that excited over white men?” I asked the marshal.

“What did you expect? They're more than half white themselves.”

The métis, I was to learn, were no less mongrel than their pets. Also called
bois brûlés
, or “burnt wood,” because of their swarthy complexions, most were descended from Huron or Algonquin women and foreign trappers who had come west in the middle of the last century and married into the tribes. Since then interbreeding had become a way of life, until now there was precious little to separate them from the equally dark French Canadians who were prevalent in the area. Nevertheless they retained their essentially Indian ways. They were nomadic and depended for their existence almost entirely upon the buffalo of which they were undisciplined butchers. They also knew every rock and bush in Dakota territory by its first name, which was the reason we were here.

Whatever was going on inside the circle of firelight, it was receiving the full-throated approval of the colorfully clad mob that surrounded it. Their shouted encouragement was a stew of English, French, and one or two other languages I couldn't identify. It was so loud it almost drowned out the sound of blows.

The free-for-all was well in progress by the time we got there. In the center of the circle, cheered on by the howling spectators, half-naked men shining with the sweat of their exertions wrestled and fought in a tangled throng, grunting, snarling and muttering oaths in a variety of tongues as colorful as their audience's garb. Kicking seemed to be in, as was biting and eye-gouging. It was an elimination contest. Every now and then a man battered and torn beyond his limits staggered or was carried from the action over the
outstretched forms of his predecessors, while in the middle the meiee raged on without flagging. Those left sported shiners and smeared lips like I hadn't seen since the bank runs in the early days of the Panic. All about their feet bloody teeth twinkled in the firelight.

One brawler in particular, a squat breed whose powerful build belied the iron-gray hair falling about his shoulders, looked to be giving more than he got, as he answered his opponents' blows with Helena Haymakers that sent them reeling back into the crowd of spectators. Little by little, as Hudspeth and I watched from the backs of our horses, the heaving mass dwindled until only a handful remained to slug it out among themselves, with the old man in the heart of it. The air was heavy with the rank smell of turned earth and sweat.

All in all, I reflected, this spectacle was playing hell with what I'd been told about the gentle ways of the métis. But then there are exceptions to every rule.

Down to the bare boards, the rules of combat underwent a subtle change. The younger men, apparently recognizing the threat to their reputations should they fall to someone thirty years their senior, stopped fighting each other and teamed up, at odds of six to one, to take out the old man. They whooped and hollered and charged headlong into a beehive.

He was a magnificent specimen, this old breed who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy-five but fought like a Blackfoot brave in his twenties. Muscles writhed beneath his naked torso like snakes beneath a sheet, and scars thick as cables crisscrossed his great chest and shoulders. He reminded me of a king buffalo I had once seen defending its throne. Old and grizzled though he was, he was still more than a match for the youngsters who challenged his authority. Besieged from all sides, he met them in silence, snaggled teeth bared in a determined grin as he felled this one with a blow and hooked that one viciously in the groin with the toe of a moccasin. Those lucky enough to connect found their best shots glancing off him like a blacksmith's
hammer bounding from an anvil. Then a clout from an axelike fist would bring their participation to an end. In this manner he disposed of four assailants in as many minutes.

He had both arms wrapped around a fifth and was bear-hugging him into unconsciousness when the sixth, a lean young breed with features more Indian than white, snatched up a chunk of wood from the fire and charged him from behind, swinging the glowing end above his head. I have no special love for rules, but this seemed to be going astray from the spirit of healthy competition. I drew my revolver and was debating whether I should drop him and risk the hostility of the tribe or gamble on a dime-novel try at shooting the club out of his hand, when a shot like the Fourth of July in Chinatown crashed within a foot of my left ear. The young breed shrieked, dropped his weapon, and clapped a hand to the side of his head. It came back bloody.

Every eye in the vicinity, including mine, swung to the big man astride the horse next to my own. A plume of metallic gray smoke wandered from the snout of the Smith & Wesson in Hudspeth's right hand while with the other he struggled to keep his startled mount under control. He had drawn the clumsy thing from its unlikely position beneath his left arm and fired while I was still figuring the angles. And he said he was slowing down.

The old man wasn't one to let the grass grow. While his would-be attacker was still hopping around and lamenting the loss of his right ear, he whirled and slung the limp breed he was holding six feet into the other's arms. One hundred and sixty pounds of métis struck him full in the chest, tore the wind from his lungs in a loud
woof
, and bore him, a tangle of arms and legs, to the ground on the other side of the fire.”

For a long moment there was silence. Then the air erupted and the crowd surged forward, closing in on the old breed, the women babbling excitedly, the men pumping his hands and slapping him on the back. Our presence was forgotten. A half-full whiskey bottle was produced from some hoarder's lodge and, after it had been admired for a
while, was presented to the victor with a flourish. He seized it in a bloodied right hand and tipped it up, letting the contents gurgle down his throat without seeming to swallow. Two more tilts and he slung the empty vessel away over his shoulder. It bounced once in the grass and rolled after the retreating form of the vanquished breed as if pursuing him. Everyone seemed to find that amusing. Everyone, that is, except the old man, who caught the eye of a dark-skinned young woman standing on the edge of the crowd and jerked his head toward the injured man. She nodded and moved off to follow him. The old man's will, it appeared, was law—rare among Indians, where a leader usually led by example only and would not presume to issue anything so harsh as an order.

“Hey, Pere Jac!” called Hudspeth, dismounting.

“A.C.!” The aged métis squinted through the gathering gloom. “A.C., is that you?”

“Who the hell else would waste a bullet on your worthless hide?” He started leading his buckskin in that direction. I stepped down to follow.

Pere Jac barked something in French to the man nearest him, who took the reins from Hudspeth and those of my bay and led them toward camp.

“They will be fed and rubbed down well,” the old man explained.

He had a French accent you couldn't suck through a straw. “How are you, A.C.? That was respectable shooting.” He seized the marshal's outstretched hand and shook it every bit as energetically as his own had been shaken moments before.

“Not as good as it looked,” said the other, wincing as he disengaged his hand from the other's grasp. “I was trying to put one between his eyes.”

“I am glad that you did not. He is my sister's only son.” He looked at me curiously. He was almost a foot shorter than I, but built like a warhorse. He had well-shaped features despite the numerous bruises and swellings, and eyes of washed-out blue in contrast to the mahogany hue of his
skin. His jaw was fine, almost delicate, his face shot through with tiny creases and wrinkles, as if it had been crumpled into a tight ball and then smoothed out again. His gray hair, dark with sweat, hung in lank strands to his shoulders. Perspiration glistened on his skin in the firelight and trickled down the cleft that divided his chest into twin slabs of lean meat. Yet he was not the least bit winded.

Hudspeth introduced us and we shook hands. His grip wasn't much, if you were used to sticking your hand inside a corn-sheller and turning the handle.

“Page Murdock,” he said, with unfeigned interest. “You are the man who brought Bear Anderson out of the Bitterroot Mountains last winter, one step ahead of the Flat-heads.”

I said that I was. I could see that those were the words someone was going to carve on my tombstone.

“And yet you do not look like a foolish man,” he observed.

I grinned. “Pere Jac,” I said, “you and I are going to get along.”

“My name is Jacques St. Jean. Marshal Hudspeth and these others insist upon calling me Pere Jac because for a brief period in my foolish youth I sought the clergy. The clergy, alas, did not share my enthusiasm. Now I content myself with reciting the Scriptures and instructing my people in the ways of the Lord.”

“That was some Bible-reading we caught just now,” said Hudspeth dryly.

“Man is an imperfect animal, full of hostility and sin. He must be given the opportunity to cleanse himself of both from time to time if he is ever to pass through Purgatory.”

“You do this often?”

“Every other Wednesday, without fail.”

“How about sin?”

“Sin is for Tuesday. But you have not come all this way to speak of religion, A.C.”

“We need an experienced tracker, Jac, and unless there's
someone around here who reads sign as good as you I guess you're it.”

“That is what I thought. Come with me to the river.” He signaled for a torch to be brought. When one was handed him, he motioned the others to remain where they were and strode away, carrying the flaming instrument. As we hastened to catch up: “How much are you offering this time, A.C.?”

“I was thinking four cases.”

“A man's thoughts are his own,
mon ami
. But that one is beneath notice.”

“That's the price we agreed on last time!”

“The last time was four years ago. It costs much more to subsist in these days of revolution and expansion.”

“We're talking about whiskey, not money. And you got no more bellies to fill now than you had four years back. All right, six cases. But that's as high as I go. We're talking about taxpayers' money.”

“I do not think that ten cases would upset the economy.”

“Ten cases!” Hudspeth stopped walking. At the base of the grassy slope, the Red River hissed and gurgled at high water. But the métis kept walking, so he had to sprint to catch up.

“Seven cases,” he said.

Pere Jac made no reply.

“Eight, damn it! But you'd better guarantee results.”

We were at the river now. The old man handed me the torch and stepped off the bank, Levi's, moccasins and all. He dipped his swollen and bleeding hands into the water and splashed it over his face and chest.

“Eight it shall be,” he said at last. “But I guarantee nothing.” He dug a finger into his mouth, withdrew a loosened tooth, saw it was gold, and thrust it into a hip pocket. “Who are we going after, A.C.?”

“A Cheyenne by the name of Ghost Shirt.”

The dusky-skinned woman Jac had sent earlier to look after the wounded breed appeared bearing a bundle of clothing. She held out a calico shirt while he stepped out
of the water, and helped him on with it. I figured her for his granddaughter; she turned out later to be his squaw. He shook his head at her offer of a dry pair of leather leggings, accepted a military-style red sash instead, and knotted it about his waist. “I think, A.C.,” he said finally, “that you had better give us the whiskey in advance.”

We were Pere Jac's guests for the night, which meant that despite our protests, he, his woman and his three children slept outside and the lodge was ours. This was the same structure we had seen being repaired earlier by the boy who turned out to be Jac's son Lucien. Sleeping on buffalo robes didn't come easy after an extended period of city life, but I'd got along on worse and so had Hudspeth. We drifted off in short order—me from exhaustion after the unsettling activity of the past few days, the marshal after reacquainting himself with the flask in his pocket.

It rained sometime during the night without our knowing it. There were puddles on the ground the next morning and the air had that damp metallic smell, but the sultry and unseasonal heat that had dogged me since leaving Montana had not been washed away. If anything, the atmosphere was more oppressive than ever. It hung from last night's burned-out torches, beaded on the outside of the lodges in droplets of moisture, clung like moldy rags to our throats and the insides of our nostrils when we tried to breathe.
The very act of taking in oxygen was exhausting. Two steps outside the shelter I felt as if I hadn't slept at all.

Our host and his family were wet but cheerful—the métis' natural state—and greeted us warmly in order of rank. We muttered something in response and sat down on the ground to a breakfast of dried buffalo meat and herbs fresh from the soil. That finished, Hudspeth mounted his buckskin and took off to fetch supplies and the pack horse we had left in Fargo, and to make arrangements for the delivery of Pere Jac's eight cases of whiskey, while I stayed behind to get to know our guide. This was more important than it sounds. Armed men forced to travel in each other's company for an indefinite period are well advised to get acquainted before they set out, or the first argument on the trail could well be the last.

I had nothing to worry about in Jac. He packed no side arm but carried a Sharps carbine and rode an unprepossessing paint pony, and the confident but careful way he handled both as he made ready for the trip reflected a familiarity with the rugged life that earned my approval. One of his few concessions to the white man's way was a weatherbeaten McClellan saddle complete with a pair of army issue bags. Into these he packed a leatherbound copy of the Scriptures and enough pemmican to last three weeks on the trail—roughly an ounce and a half of dried buffalo, berries and sugar pounded into a hard cake the size of a cowboy's brass buckle. These were his only provisions.