The Big Sky (33 page)

"Don't be skeered," Jim said, and switched to Shoshone. "The Blackfoot has traveled far with us. He is a brother. He wants peace." Jim studied Poordevil as he spoke. Poordevil let up on his anxious look long enough to give a smile.

The Sheepeater studied Poordevil a while longer and then, as if his fright was over, began talking again. Did the white brother have tobacco? Did he have a knife or an awl? Would he trade ball and powder? Did he want the skins of the beaver or the otter? Beaver were few in the streams now because the Indians had had to make meat of them. They had saved a few skins.

The four dogs were haunched around the fire, smelling the elk meat while their tongues hung out dripping. The Indian went to one of them and from the travois to which it was hitched took a small bundle of furs. He dropped it at Jim's feet.

"Beaver and otter," Jim said to Boone.

The Indian said, "They belong to the white man. Give us what you like."

When they had traded and eaten they moved off, happy at having a butcher knife and an awl and a few rounds for the fusil. Their talk and the laugh of the little ones came to Jim after they were lost from sight, and by littles thinned to an echo and then were gone.

Afterward, when night had closed in, Jim lay on his back facing a sky prickled with stars. It was like the beginning of the world here, high and lonesome and far off from men's doings, and the Sheepeaters might have been the first people, shy and simple and full of trust when their fright was gone. The beginning of the world, with the fine singing filling the sky and the boiling water sounding low, and a man wondering how things got started, and was God sitting on one of the stars, looking down and maybe grinning or maybe frowning? A man felt lost if he let his mind run, lost under the sky, lost in the high hills, lost and as good as dead already while time flowed on and on forever.

"Boone," Jim asked, "you taken notice that Poordevil's got Streak's scalp?" But Boone already was asleep.

Jim wished he had a woman. It kept a man's mind close to himself.
 
 

Boone lay on his belly, screened by the quaking asp that grew on the nub of a hill. Before him rolled the great Yellowstone plain, dipping and rising and stretching on until the sky curved down and closed it off. Far away, so that it seemed like the ragged shadow of a cloud moving across the sun, he could see a herd of buffalo headed out from water to the rich brown grass of the slopes, now that the afternoon was cooling off. Closer, half a dozen antelopes played, moving quick and delicate like flutters in the wind. The sun bore down on the back of his neck and spread on out over the plain, making a warm tan of it like the summer coat of the weasel. Earlier, for all that the time was early fall and the wild plums ere ripening, the heat waves had danced out of the dust, and animals kept to the shade and water, but the sun had gentled now and a cool breath came off the mountains. Mosquitoes buzzed around him, and one big blue fly that acted as if it expected him to die any minute. He wondered whether, if he lay still enough, the fly would blow him. How did a fly know when a critter was dead? Maybe the fly was like Jim, figuring there was more than a chance he would go under, but not scolding over it the way Jim had done.

"It's risky, Boone," Jim had said, "and onnecessary to boot."

"I'll be all right, I said."

"Sure. Sure. You'll be all right, except maybe three . Or maybe the Crows hot on our tail, and us only strange to these here parts besides. Crows ain't squaws, you know, or dogs. They kin fight."

"Won't let 'em sight me. They can't fight what they don't see."

Jim shook his head. "I'll tag you you out alone."

"Don't want you along. This is one man's work."

Poordevil sat before the early-morning fire. His big nose squatted down at the tip as his mouth spread into a grin. "Me big thief,'' he said. "Damn fine thief. Catch 'im horse quick."

"Me catch 'im horse," Boone answered. "I'll be back, come dark," he said to Jim, and then left them camped snug where the Yellowstone began to come out of the mountains. He had known Jim's uneasy gaze followed him as he rode away.

Behind Boone, where the asp was thicker, his horse moved, cracking the twigs, and he looked around to make sure it was all right. The horse looked back at him, sleepy-eyed and dull, while its tail waved at the mosquitoes. It was Summers' old horse, Poky, a slow animal but a stayer and gentle as a pet dog. It was just the thing for what he aimed to do.

He sent his eye back to the plains, seeing the buffalo again and the antelopes and the sunshine lying long on the grass, but mostly he kept his gaze on the Crow village that lay not a half-mile away. It was a fair-sized camp, being forty lodges, he figured, and it was coming to life now with the heat cooling. He saw squaws scraping skins and carrying wood, or chasing the no-good dogs that would pull the wood in if only you could catch one of them. Sometimes when the wind stilled he could hear the squaws screeching at the dogs like magpies. The smoke of fires was rising here and there and bending and going off with the breeze. Men moved from one lodge to another, making plans for a hunt, maybe, or for a war party, or bragging on themselves or maybe just talking. Greenhorns thought Indians always talked high and solemn, but that was just when they were holding palaver; around camp, with no nabob about, they talked small and sometimes so dirty that even a trapper noticed it. The men's hands moved as they talked. A bunch of horses was drifting out to grass, cropping on the way. Boone studied them, one by one, trying to search out the best. There were some smart horses in the herd, the smart ones mostly hobbled and having to walk short or to lift up and lunge to get anywheres.

After a while he settled on the horse he wanted. It was a red horse with a narrow blaze and a deep chest and legs quick and slender, and it carried itself proud. An Indian wouldn't trade off a horse like that, not for anything, even if the horse wasn't white or speckled. About the only way to get a war horse was to steal it.

Boone lay still, waiting on time. A man got so he could lie patient and quiet as a hunting cat, not pushing against time but letting it run while the sun shone on him and the breeze hummed by his ear. He was like a tree or a chunk of earth, except that his mind looked back and forward and made pictures inside his head. Old Chief Heavy Otter would prize that red horse, he reckoned. He saw himself offering it, with the painter skin he had got from the Utahs falling rich across its back. There was nobody knew how to dress skins like the Utahs. And he had vermilion, too, and tobacco aplenty, and powder and ball. He was a good hunter and a brave warrior, and his heart was good toward the Blackfeet. He would help the chief when he grew old and be a son to him and keep meat in his lodge when the chief's arm was weak with the arrow and his legs too stiff for the hunt. While he watched, the red horse took a sudden fright and shied out and ran lunging with the hobbles, but moving fast and easy just the same, and then stopping with his head high and turned, and the sun shining white on the blaze. He was a proud horse; Heavy Otter was bound to like him.

He could see Teal Eye, not like she was but grown and rounded now, but still with the big eyes and the slender face, and eagerness in her like in a bird. It was strange how a hankering got into a man and stayed with him and finally pointed him in a certain direction. Maybe it was that he wouldn't want Teal Eye now. Maybe it was only a notion that would go away when he saw her. Maybe Teal Eye had a man already, and a lodge full of young ones. Anyhow, he and Jim and Poordevil would find beaver, a many of them, in country that other trappers feared to hunt. The white hunter had brought the good red horse as a gift, and he had brought the painter skin and powder and lead to Heavy Otter to show he loved the Blackfeet.

The blue fly lit on his hand and flexed itself up and down while its fat tail looked for a place to lay. Boone brushed it away, and it arose with a little drone of wings and circled his head, not giving up. Could a fly know when a man was going to be meat and to lie for the wolves and worms and the quick gray bugs that worked deep in the stink?

That was something that Jim would think about and have an idea for. Jim thought a heap -too much for a good mountain man- going along sometimes and not seeing anything except what was in his head. Jim was a smart one, all right, only Boone didn't see any sense in pestering himself with things he couldn't do anything about. The mind dug into a thing and got itself tired and cranky and then had to back out the same hole it had gone in.

The slow afternoon wore on. The sun inched down, no longer shining on his neck but just peeking through the trees, making a speckle of light and dark. A striped squirrel, no bigger than a mouse, flirted along a log close to him, its eye big and moist and darkly shining. When he moved, it let out a surprised squeak and dived from sight and by and by came back to look at him again, as if to make sure he was real. Patches of shade appeared on the plain. Out from each lodge a pointed shadow lay. Nowhere in all the sky was there a cloud. The breeze had stopped. Even the nervous leaves of the quaking asp hung sleeping. A man having work to do tonight would want to get it done before the moon came out, if he could. He would want to get it done and be away, so's to meet up with Jim and Poordevil, waiting westward and ready for an early start in the morning. Likely Jim was thinking now about hot springs and mud boiling up and the great canyon of the Yellowstone and the yellow rock that gave the river its name; likely he was thinking about them and other queer doings and trying to find where God figured in it all.

The red horse had hobbled out a piece from the rest. While Boone watched he raised his head high and looked around. A good horse, he was, with strong, clean lines and a sure, high manner. A man came riding out from the camp and cast his eye around and saw nothing and after a while turned and went back, thinking all was well. Boone reckoned the Crows would bunch the horse herd closer before night, but it didn't seem likely they would stake them or post a guard, not while they felt so safe.

The sun fell behind a mountain, and the sky turned a deeper blue, and the mosquitoes began to swarm sure enough, but the big blue fly was gone, maybe hunting a likelier place or maybe chilled and discouraged and squatted down somewhere. Behind Boone the tail of old Poky kept up a steady swishing.

Boone put his head on his hands and slept a little, slept lightly as an animal, with his ear cocked for sound and his mind on the edge of wakefulness. He stirred at the time he had set and studied the camp and plain again. The dark was drifting down, so that all the horses looked of one color and the campfires winked red. He could make out the one horse, though, still off a ways from the rest and still nibbling at the grass. Three or four men, now, could make off with the whole herd, he reckoned, but he didn't want a war party on his tail. He wanted just one horse, and then to be away, across the Yellowstone and on towards the Missouri.
Three riders came out and rounded up the horses and headed them toward camp, yelling to make them move. Boone kept his eye on the red horse. He would know him now in the dark, as long as he could see the lines of him. With the riders gone, the bunch loosened while he watched, still nosing out for grass. The red horse pointed towards Boone, grazing independent of the rest. If he stayed where he was, or close by, Boone figured he could go to him in the deep dark, smelling him out like a hound, hunting for him like an owl. There was hardly a rock or a hump or a rabbit track he didn't know after lying there looking all afternoon. The horses grew into a darker blackness in the black of night and by and by were lost to sight. Overhead the stars began to shine, not bright and alive but sleepy, opening dim on the darkness.

Boone got up and stretched his muscles and went back to Poky. He stroked the bare back before he untied him. A saddle could give a man away. He led Poky down the slope, his moccasined feet feeling under him the trail he had marked while the sun was up.

At the bottom he halted, smelling for the wind. A breeze from the east, now, would be the thing, or no breeze at all. A west wind or a south one would take the smell of him to the horses and to the Indian dogs. The air played about him, coming first one way and then another, but then steadying, flowing from the north and east as he had wished. It was a good sign. The wind blowing as a man wanted it was a good sign. He held his old horse short and moved on, aiming toward where he had last been able to make out the red horse.

The night crowded thick all around; he hadn't a tree or a rock to go by, or the top of a hill against the sky, but only what he had put in his head while he had lain watching, only what his feet and his hands felt. Still, by a clump that raised out of the blackness when he was nearly on it, or a slope that dropped away under his moccasins, he knew that he was right. He pulled up his horse now and got to the off side of it, so's to be shielded from the herd, or from Crows if there were any about. The old horse stepped ahead, slow and easy like a free animal, answering to the hand under his neck as if he knew what to do without being told. The breeze blew steady, flowing out of the northeast and over the camp to Boone. The sounds of a dogfight came to him, and then a man's voice and the thump of a club and the keen yelp of hurt. Maybe he would have done better to wait until the camp slept, but maybe not; the Crows wouldn't be expecting company so soon after sundown.

It was here that the red horse should be, he told himself, but there was no horse about -only the grass whispering to his steps, only the dark and the emptiness. The herd had drifted after night settled down. He would have a time finding the red horse, with the bunch shuffled and the night so black a man couldn't see his hand.

He held up, thinking, trying to sharpen his eyes to the darkness, and then, eastward, he saw a pale bulge of light that told the moon was coming up, the moon that would show him the horses and that might show him to the Crows. He squatted down, holding the lead rope while old Poky stood quiet, waiting on him as if waiting was a proper part of life, too. A wolf was howling from the west, and closer by the coyotes yipped, and all at once the Indian dogs began to answer, barking deep and high-pitched and hoarse and shrill, and quieting all at once, too, while the wolf and the coyotes kept on.