The Big Sky (16 page)

Jourdonnais called back. "Do not leave the boat!
Non!
We go on quick. Let no one on, Summers."

A squaw with eyes as small as beans and hair hanging loose down her back pressed to the front, her hands out, putting one forefinger on top of the other and then the other on top of the first, making a sign. She pointed between her legs and looked up while she made the sign again, her little eyes asking a question. From the boat Romaine called "Hah!" and held up a coin, and then added another to it, but she shook her head, still making the sign with her fingers.

The men were jeering at Romaine, looking at the squaw and then at Romaine and jeering, their eyes sharp and hungry. Romaine pocketed the coins and pointed down at himself and then held his two hands out, a foot apart, like a man giving the size of a fish. His eyebrows lifted in a question. The men shouted, making little of his brag, but the squaw just looked at him, unsmiling, her fingers still fiddling.  Underneath the old skin dress that was pulled in at the middle Boone could see the fat of her breasts jiggle. He turned his head toward the boat and saw Teal Eye gazing out, her face for once lively and off guard.

An old Indian, with one eye and a face so pitted a man would think hawks had pecked at it, came up to Boone and Jim, who had jumped from the boat and stood at the edge of the water. His empty socket was sunken and red-lidded and weeping a thick yellow drop that he tried to brush away with the knuckle of one hand. In the other he held a long black pipe, ringed with circles of lead. Grunting, he put his finger in the bowl to show that it was empty. His hand reached out to them, begging.

Jourdonnais and Cabanne came from inside the post followed by four Indians. Jourdonnais said something to Lassereau, who went up the bank and returned carrying a skin bag and went back and got another. It was jerked buffalo or pemmican, Boone imagined. "Tobacco," Jourdonnais said to Summers, who undid a lashing on the cargo box. The Indians all crowded around Jourdonnais as he took the dark twists. They talked in their throats, as if it were the throat that shaped the sound, and held out their hands. Jourdonnais paid the four and looked around at the empty hands and dropped a twist into the palm of the old man with one eye.

Cabanne shrugged when the deal was done. "Better the Mahas and the Otos than the Blackfeet. No?" he said to Jourdonnais. "You get the beaver, maybe. More likely they take your scalp."

Jourdonnais ran his fingers through his thick head of hair. "I do not need so much."

Cabanne's face was troubled. "Take care, my friend, of Indians, and other things, too."

For an instant Jourdonnais' eyes searched his. "Yes?"

Cabanne looked away, shrugging again, saying nothing, as if what he had said was enough, and maybe too much.

"Allons!" cried Jourdonnais and shook hands with Cabanne.

The banks sliding again and the river winding on, past an old fort at Council Bluffs, where Summers said three hundred soldiers died from scurvy once; through a stretch of river thick with snags, through country low for a while and then hilly again, bare of trees but green with grass; past Wood's Hills where a million swallows had nested in the yellow rock.

"Buflier country yit?"

"Quick now. Purty quick."

To Blackbird Hill, where a chief was buried; to Floyd's Bluff, the river slackening and the banks lying low and the Big Sioux coming in; to Vermilion creek, where Summers pointed out the silver berry bush that the Creoles called the
graisse de baeuf
; on toward the Riviere & Jacques and the Running Water, on by stroke and pull and push and sail, day on day, while the sun came up and circled the sky and hid behind the hills.

   It was still dark when Summers prodded Boone. "Time to shine." Boone lay for an instant, blinking, seeing one star like a hole in the sky. "Buffler!" he said to himself and scrambled up.
 
 

Boone picked his way among the sleeping men. Jourdonnais' face, faintly horned with the spikes of his mustache, was a dark circle against his darker robe. He was snoring the long deep snore of a man worn out.

"I got you a Hawken," Summers said from the keelboat, keeping his voice low. He handed a gun and horn and pouch over the side to Boone. "It's the real beaver, for buffler or anything."

Boone hefted the rifle and tried it at his shoulder. It was heavier than Old Sure Shot, and it was a flintlock, not a cap and ball, but it felt good to him -well-balanced and stout, like a piece a man could depend on.

A kind of flush was coming into the sky, not light yet but not dark, either. The men lying in their blankets looked big, like horses or buffalo lying down. The mast of the keelboat, dripping with dew, glistened a little. Boone could hear the water lapping against the sides of the
Mandan
. Farther out, the river made a quiet, busy murmur, as if it were talking to itself of things seen upcountry. Once in a while one of the men groaned and moved, easing his muscles on the earth.

"It's winter ground mostly," said Summers, coming down from the boat, "but might be we can get our sights on one."

They started up the river, moving out from the fringe of trees to the open country at the base of the hills, hearing a sudden snort and the sound of flight from a thicket. "Elk," said Summers. "Poor doin's, to my way of thinking, if there's aught else about. We'll git one, if need be. They're plenty now."

"Poor? I was thinkin' they're tasty, the ones we shot so far."

"Nigh anything's better. Dog, for a case. Ever set your teeth in fat pup?" Summers made a noise with his lips. "Or horse? A man gets a taste for it. And beaver tail! I'm halffroze for beaver tail. And buffler, of course, fat fleece and hump rib and marrow bones too good to think of."

"That's best, I reckon."

"You reckon wrong. Painter meat, now, that's some. Painter meat, that's top, now." Summers' moccasined feet seemed to make no noise at all. "But meat's meat, snake meat or man meat or what."

Boone turned to study the hunter's lined and weathered face, wondering if he had eaten man meat, seeing an arm or leg browning and dripping over the fire.

"Injuns like dead meat. You'll see 'em, towin' drowned buffler to shore, buffler that would stink a man out of a skunk's nest. This nigger's et skunk, too. It ain't so bad, if he ain't squirted. The Canadians, now, they set a heap of store by it. It's painter meat to them."

The stars had gone out, and the sky was turning a dull white, like scraped horn. A low cloud was on fire to the east, where the sun would come up. Boone could make out the trees, separate from each other now and standing against the dark hills-short, squatty trees, big at the base, which could hold against the wind. They walked slow, just dragging along, while Summers' eyes kept poking ahead and the light came on and Boone could follow the Missouri with his eye, on and on until it got lost in a far tumble of hills. The ground was spotted in front of them with disks of old buffalo manure under which the grass and weeds grew white, as in a root house. When he turned one over with his toe, little black beetles scurried out into the grass.

"Ain't any fresh," he said. His eyes searched the hills and the gullies that wormed up through them from the river bottom. "Reckon we won't find any?"

Summers didn't answer right away. He would look east, up on the slope of the hills and west to the woods and river and beyond them to where other hills rose up, making a cradle for the Missouri, and sometimes his eyes would stop and fix on something, as if it might be game or Indians, and go on after a while and stop again. Boone tried to see what he was seeing, but there was only the river winding ahead and the slopes of the hills and the gullies cutting into them and here and there a low tree, flattened at the top, where birds were chirping.

Half the sun was showing, shining in the grass where the dew was beaded. There wasn't a cloud in all the sky, not even a piece of one now that the one to the east had burned out, and the air was still and waiting-like, as if it were wom out and resting up for a blow.

"Sight easier to kill game along the river, where a man don't have to tote it," Summers said, following the valley with his eyes. "Let's point our stick up, anyway." He turned and started uphill.

From the top Boone could see forever and ever, nearly any way he looked. It was open country, bald and open, without an end. It spread away, flat now and then rolling, going on clear to the sky. A man wouldn't think the whole world was so much. It made the heart come up. It made a man little and still big, like a king looking out. It occurred to Boone that this was the way a bird must feel, free and loose, with the world to choose from. Nothing moved from sky line to sky line. Only down on the river he could see the keelboat showing between the trees, nosing up river like a slow fish. He marked how she poked ahead. He looked on to the tumble of hills that closed in on the river and wondered if she could ever get that far.

Summers had halted, his nose stuck out, like a hound feeling for a scent. "Air's movin' west, if it's movin' at all, I'm thinkin'. All right." He stepped out again, walking with a loose, swift ease.

The sun got up, hot and bright as steel. Off a distance the air began to shimmer in it. Summers kept along the crest of the hills, going slow when they came in sight of a gully or a swale.

It was in one of them that they saw the buffalo, standing quiet with its head down, as if its thoughts were away off. Summers' hand touched Boone's arm. "Old bull," he said, "but meat's meat." The bull lifted his great head and turned it toward them, looking, his beard hanging low.

"He seen us," Boone whispered. "He'll make off."

""Shoo!" said Summers, putting his hand on the lifted barrel of Boone's rifle. "They can't see for nothin', and hearin' don't mean a thing to 'em. It's all right, long as he don't get wind of us." He started forward, walking slow. "You kin shoot him."

"Now?"

"Wait a spell."

The bull didn't move. He stood with his head turned and down, as if for all his blindness he knew they were there. Boone's mind went back to his blind Aunt Minnie who could always tell when someone was around. Her head would pivot and her face would wait, while she looked out of eyes that didn't see.

"Take your wipin' stick. Make a rest. Like this." Summers put the stick out at arm's length and had Boone hold it with his left hand and let the rifle lie across his wrist. "Let 'im have it."

The rifle bucked against Boone's shoulder, cracking the silence. The ball made a gut-shot sound, and a little puff of dust came from the buffalo, as if he had been hit with a pebble. For an instant he stood there looking dull and sad, as if nothing had happened, and then he broke into a clumsy gallop, heading out of the gully. Boone watched him, and heard another crack by his side and saw the bull break down at the knees and fall ahead on his nose. He lay on his side, his legs waving, his breath making a snore in his nose.

   Summers was reloading, grinning as he did so. "Too high." Boone felt naked in the bright blue gaze of his eyes, as if what he felt in his mind was standing out for the hunter to see. Summers' face changed. "Don't think nothin' of it. Nigh everybody shoots high, first time. Just a hand and a half above the brisket, that's the spot. It's a lesson for you. Best to load up again, afore anything."

Quicker than Boone could believe, Summers charged his gun. He hitched his pouch and powder horn around, drew the stopper from the horn with his teeth, put the mouth of it in his left hand, and with his right turned the horn up. He was ramming down his load before Boone got his powder measured out.

The buffalo's eyes were fading. They looked soft now, deep and soft with the light going out of them. His legs still waved a little. Summers put his knife in his throat. "We'll roll him over, and this child'll show you how to get at good feedin'." He planted the four legs out at the sides, so that the buffalo seemed to have been squashed down from above. The hunter's knife flashed in the sun. It made a cut crosswise on the neck, and Summers grabbed the hair of the boss with his other hand and separated the skin from the shoulder. He laid the skin open to the tail and peeled it down the sides, spreading it out. "Can't take much," he said, chopping with his hatchet. "Tongue and liver and fleece fat and such. Or maybe one of us best go and git some help from the boat. Wisht we had a pack mule."

"There's a wolf."

Summers looked around at the grinning face that watched them from behind a little rise. "Buflier wolf. White wolf." He spoke in jerks while his knife worked. "I seen fifteentwenty of 'em circled round sometimes."

"Don't you never shoot 'em?"

"Have to be nigh gone for meat. Ain't enough powder and ball on the Missouri to shoot 'em all."

Boone found a rock and pitched it at the wolf. The head disappeared behind the rise and came into sight again a jump or two away.

Summers kept looking up from his butchering, turning to study every direction, and then going back to the bull again. "See them cayutes?" Boone watched them slink up, their feet moving as if they ran a twisting line, their eyes yellow and hungry. They came closer than the wolf and sat down. Their tongues came out and dripped on the grass. "Watch!" Summers threw a handful of gut toward them. The bigger one darted in, seized the gut, and made off, but he hadn't got far before the wolf jumped on him and took it away. The coyote came back and sat down again. "Happens every time," said Summers. He had the liver out, and the gall bladder. He cut a slice of liver and dipped it in the bladder and poked it in his mouth, chewing and gulping while he worked. "For poor bull, it ain't so bad. Want some?"

Boone took a slice. While he was making himself chew on it, he saw the cloud of dust. It came from behind a little pitch of land maybe two miles to the north, and it wasn't a cloud so much as a vapor, a wisp that he expected to disappear like a fleck in the eye. He wondered whether to point it out to Summers. The wisp came on to the top of the pitch. There was a movement under it. He said then, "Reckon you catched sight of that?"