The Big Sky (15 page)

"He could kind of put 'em out of his mind, like. He had a way."

"They say this ain't nothin'. They get bigger and thicker all the way up, till they got a stinger like a pipe stem."

Boone rolled over on his side. Jourdonnais was making a fire. He pulled up a handful of dead grass, screwed it into a nest and put a piece of tinder in it. He struck fire into the tinder, brought the straggling ends of the nest into a handhold and swung it in a circle with a motion of his wrist. The grass broke into a blaze, and he pushed it under his little pile of shavings and bark.

"Why you reckon we tied up?" Boone heard himself asking, while in his mind he saw a fat buffalo cow and himself leveling on her, sighting just behind the shoulder. "We could be movin'."

"You can't work even a mule day and night. Don't you know that? They git mean and wore out." Jim pointed beyond Jourdonnais to the men who sprawled on the ground, or just dragged around, too tired to sing or even to rest, their voices no more than a mutter. "Time Jourdonnais gives 'em a drink and fills their stomach, they'll go again. We ain't done for the day."

"River's falling, or anyways not going up." Boone had just pulled the trigger on the cow and heard the punkiny sound of the ball as it went home.

"I was sayin' about my old man. When God got to him, he was mean to live with."

"Sure enough?"

"Oh, he'd git over it, until they was another meeting. But while God had him, He had him good. I was thinking, them days, that God rode a cloud and had lightning in both hands to throw at people just for being theirself." Jim paused and went on, "Sometimes I do yit."

"I reckon my pap was too mean even for God." The cow had lunged once and fallen forward and was kicking in the grass.

"You can't beat God for bein' picky. No, sir. If He catches you playin' cards or sayin' one swear word, or with your hand on a woman, even a nigger, it's to hell with you forever and ever, amen. Even thinkin' is mighty dangerous. As a man thinketh, that's how he is, and to hell with him ag'in. Why you reckon He gave us a thinker, then? It's a sight better to be a dumb critter and enjoy yourself, not thinkin', than to think and burn for it."

"I reckon."

"God is some busybody. You'd think He had enough to do, just mindin' the world and the stars and such and keepin' an eye on the devil, so's not to be tricked. But no. He pokes his nose into every piddlin' thing. Even go to the backhouse, and there's God, lookin' spang through the roof or peekin' through the moonhole, bein' almighty curious about what you're doin'."

Summers said you skinned a buffalo belly side down, planting his feet out to hold him right.

"My old man, now, I reckon he thought some mighty low thoughts to git tied up with God that way, every so often, and worryin' about hell and hereafter. We had to pray and read the Bible and repent the livin' day and some of the night, too, unless you could go to sleep and forgit God was watchin' you. I didn't know what repent was, but I done it. Yes, sir. I done my share of repentin'. Mostly, now, I just figger what the hell, and let 'er rip. So far, ain't no lightnin' struck." Jim looked at the sky. "You can't tell, though." He slapped at the mosquitoes and reached out and pulled a stem of grass and stuck it between his teeth. The tassel at the end of it danced when he spoke. "Mostly, my old man was all right. When he went on his own hook, without lookin' yonder"- Jim's thumb waggled at the sky -"he was a right clever body. He was right about trouble."

"Why you keep talkin' about trouble?"

"Nothin', Boone. Nothin' much, anyways. Only we git to the Platte tomorrow or next day, Summers says."

"Uh-huh."

Jim's eyes slid over to Boone, as if they were studying him on the sly. "Let's leave 'em have their fun. Shavin' and such."

"I ain't aimin' to kick," Boone answered, and saw the slow grin that came over Jim's face.

"Good for you. You're a sudden man sometimes, Boone."

"I'm feelin' better, a sight better. Reckon it's the beaver, or what?" He let himself smile, looking into Jim's mild blue eyes. A short growth of red beard was sprouting from Jim's cheeks, glinting like wire.

"Might be. Or not drinkin', or maybe she's wore herself out, natural-like."

Jourdonnais left the fire and started around with his jug. Pambrun began warming the pot. "Take a beeg wan," Jourdonnais was saying.

When the jug came to him Boone shook his head. "I kin drink for two, I reckon," Jim said and gulped deep. He wiped a splash of liquor from his chin.

Jourdonnais called back to them. "Over the line, greenhorns, into the upper river. We shave the head on you two,
parce que
you keep the whiskers close. Maybe tomorrow, eh?" His teeth were like corn under the sweep of his mustache.

They ate -wild goose meat and eggs that Pambrun had gathered on an island and mush made rich with tallow and went on afterwards, using oars and poles and part of the time the sail, which bellied and went limp and bellied again with the breeze. The river was wide and still high, but quieter now along an open shore and almost free of drift there. The boatmen's songs went out again, while the sun fell behind the hills and a paring of moon came up, pale as the sail against the light. Snipe tilted along the banks, some dove gray, like Bedwell's coat, and others showing red underneath. Nighthawks made a whimper in the sky, like a thrown chip, and from the hills that were a flowing ridge to the west Boone heard the cry of some animal, thin and quavering and lonesome. A little shudder shook him, traveling up his back and tingling the hair on his neck. This made living worth a man's time. This, and buffalo ahead, ready to be shot. He felt the beaver hair in his jeans and he had to smile to himself while he put his shoulder to the pole, thinking how worried he had been. It wasn't nothin'. A man got over it, like a cold. "
L'on, ton, laridon, dai.
" Would it be a bull or a cow him and Summers would see first?

They struck the Platte when the sun was high and a good breeze blowing. The
Mandan
kept to the far side of the Missouri, but Boone could mark the Platte coming in, around both sides of an island that was almost covered with water now. Only the center of it stood dry. At the sides the river washed the branches of the trees. The Platte curved out of round green hills that. were bare as an egg except for a little tree here and there, standing stunted and alone. Boone imagined if a man got to the top of those hills he could look on and on forever, without anything to stop the eye, unless it was a herd of buffalo, or maybe a war party, all painted and feathered, raising the dust as they galloped.

The men who had been up river before had been busy all morning, busy whispering, busy going around, smiling at one another and looking at Boone and Jim and Labadie and Roi and the others who were crossing the Platte for the first time. And now that they were abreast of it Pambrun began yelling in his high, cracked voice and waving a razor, and Jourdonnais and Summers, Romaine and Fournier and Chouquette and Lassereau and the rest were grinning and rubbing their hands as if there was fun ahead. Jourdonnais turned the helm over to Menard and came down and sent little Teal Eye to the bow along with all the greenhorns. The wind pushed the boat along easy with only half the sail up. Teal Eye stood apart from the men, far up in the bow, looking at them out of her small, sober face and looking away. Boone met her gaze and let himself smile a little, while the men laughed and jabbered behind him and pushed one another around. Her eyes went away from his and came back for a long minute, but she didn't smile. Didn't she ever smile? Didn't she know what a smile was?

"Mister Deakins!" Summers stood on the p
asse avant
. "Are you willing, or do we come and git you?"

"Onwillin', but comin'." Boone watched Jim walk alongside the cargo box, toward the arms that reached for him. There was a scramble, and Jim went down and out of sight. Boone could hear him yelling, letting out regular war whoops, while the others yelled, too, and laughed fit to kill, setting up a racket that scared a wild duck off the water. Boone studied Teal Eye again. Would she be purty, older, like she was now? Purty as a Ree woman? And willing? Willing if a man was a sure-enough buffalo hunter?

Summers yelled, "Mister Caudill." His face was screwed up, fierce, but underneath his eyebrows his eyes had a twinkle. Boone jumped to the
passe avant
and walked along it. From behind, Summers gave him a push, and he lunged into the crowd, trying to keep his feet, while hands grabbed at him and an arm clenched around his neck and someone got him from behind in a bear hug. They surged around the little deck. Once he broke loose and caught a glimpse of Jim with his head shaved slick at the sides and the center of it hogged like the mane of a mule, and then they were on him again. He felt the weight and pressure of them all around him, felt the breaths panting on his neck and the hands reaching and grabbing. For a minute a crazy fright came up in him, and something else, something rising from deep down in him, a mad spell or a laughing spell, one, while voices shouted in his ears. He jerked and squirmed with a sudden, wild strength. Summers puffed, "This hoss be as strong as a young bull." He heard himself laughing then, hollering and laughing, while they pinned his arms and got him by the feet and bent him down on his butt on the deck. Jourdonnais said, "We initiate 1'enfant," and Summers answered, "This nigger feels like raisin' h'ar." Hands came from behind him and clamped over his eyes. "We made a Pawnee out of Deakins. We'll make a Maha papoose out of this hoss." It was Summers again. Boone felt the razor on his scalp, moving and catching and moving again while the blade sang. "There, by beaver!" He ran his loosened hand over his head. It was as bare as a stone, except for a tuft in front and one behind. They were circled around him, laughing. He looked up at the eyes on him and the mouths wide and tried to keep on laughing himself, but he felt the blood coming into his face and a notion came into his head to hit out at somebody or get up and clear out of sight. Then he saw Jim again, looking as funny as a body ever could with just the ridge of hair running down the middle. Jim was a mule himself, with a cut red mane, a mule with tears running down his face he was laughing so hard, and laughing all the harder, Boone realized, because now he was laughing, too.

Jourdonnais tugged at him, offering a tin cup, not alcohol and water this time, but good French brandy. Boone tasted it, feeling his tongue tingle.

Labadie was on the
passe avant
, looking worried. "For this," he cried, "I get across. Yes? No?" He held up a bottle.

"Good! Oui!" They snatched the bottle from him, sucking at the mouth of it like men half-dead for a drink.

"For that," said Romaine, "we not shave you. We give you bath only. " His great arm flashed out and caught Labadie and yanked him down. Labadie squealed. "Easy now," Romaine said. "Easy." He dropped a loop of rope over Labadie and lifted him and lowered him over the side, dunking him like a piece of corn bread on a string. Labadie screamed in French and came back cursing and strangling, and Romaine beat him on the back until he flung free and fled to the bow.

"Next wan," said Jourdonnais.

When it was over, the Platte lay behind them, lost beyond its hills. Though the breeze kept up, Jourdonnais put in early and treated them to more brandy, looking relieved and almost happy now, while the boatmen drank and sang and wrestled on the bank. At dawn they went on, using the
cordelle
along the open banks, for the river turned and turned again, like a running snake.

"Buffler country yit?"

"Soon, now. Soon. I'll tell ye." Summers' eyes were always on the banks or the bluffs above them, seeing things maybe another man wouldn't see. The trees grew smaller and scarcer here, stringing along the bottoms as if they had given up the hills for good. They were cottonwoods mostly, with here and there an ash or a wild plum just beginning to break white with bloom.

Banks sliding by, sunup and noon and sundown, and the river leading on, flanked by the pale green of new leaves. Pelicans flapping over at twilight, a passel of them, flying wedge-shaped to the north. Wild geese along the shore in the cool mornings, with tiny goslings strung along behind, making quiet V's in the water. Whippoorwills calling. An eagle's nest high in an old tree, and Indian hunting wigwams, empty and falling down. And always the line or poles or oars and sometimes the sail, on and on, on a river without an end, on a river that flowed under them and led ahead, to Council Bluffs, to the Yellowstone, to the Blackfeet, to buffler, catching the sky at evening and winding on like a silver sheet.

"We put in at Cabanne's," Jourdonnais said at night, and Summers' eyes raised and asked a question, and Jourdonnais went on, "I know him for long time. He is all right. A friend."

"Works for the company, allasame."

Jourdonnais nodded. "We stop for a minute only, to say hello. Also, to find out what goes on above. We maybe get some jerked meat, from the Mahas."

"Meat aplenty soon. Just a jump or two to buffler. Caudill, here, aims to shine at makin' meat, eh?"

Boone said, "I aim to try."

"Meat ahead," said Jourdonnais. "Also Sioux and Rees. Better to have a little meat on board."

They went ahead under sail at dawn. On the left bank the poplars stood naked, dead from fire, their limbs reaching out at the sky like the bones of a hand. Beyond them, past a creek, a chain of green and wooded hills rolled up. There were huts on the bank along the river, and bigger buildings above them on the bluff. A half-dozen Indians stood on the bank watching. The boatmen yelled at them and waved, and they lifted their hands and let them come down slow, as if they were tired or disappointed because the boat didn't come in. A squaw in a blue dress that hung around her like a sack kept watching, her broad face turning with them, until she was only a patch of blue on the shore.

Cabanne's post stood white against the green, stores and cabins and a two-story house with a balcony overlooking the river.

"Mahas, Otos, and maybe a few Ioways," said Summers, sizing up the crowd on shore while Depuy blew on a trumpet to give notice that the
Mandan
was coming in. A few rifle shots sounded as a welcome from the post, and four guns from the
Mandan
answered. Some of the Indians were dressed in buffalo skins, hairy side out, and some had blankets striped with paint. Children stood among them, potbellied and chill-looking without a stitch of clothes on them. The Indians moved aside a little as the
Mandan
came in, to let through a man who walked importantly and put out his hand as Jourdonnais jumped ashore. They stood talking as Frenchmen did, with their eyes and hands as much as their mouths. Boone reckoned the man must be Cabanne. The Indians had their faces painted, some of them with red stripes that ran down their cheeks and others with raw blotches of red, still showing wet from the spit, on their foreheads and chins.