The Big Sky (39 page)

"I look for open weather for a while."

"Red Horn says no. Says it'll be cold as all hell."

"Some thinks one way, some another; God Hisself only knows. I look for an easy winter."

"How'd you travel -boat or horse or how?"

"Horse mostly. Steamboat to the Plate, and then traded two horses away from the Grand Pawnees and follered my nose to McKenzie. Chardon told me where you was."

"Any Indian doin's?"

"Cheyennes was all. A hunting party. I got one fair through my sights after he taken a shot at me, and give the others the slip. They pounded around a right smart, tryin' to get wind of me, but it weren't so much. Not like the old Blackfeet was. Not like them hornets."

"Cheyennes?"

"That was it, now. A man wouldn't expect it."

Sitting there in the dark of the lodge with the fire warming his feet and Jim's voice coming to his ears and reminding him of old things, Boone thought back to times he and Summers and Jim had had with the Blackfeet. They had killed more than a few, the three of them had, and come close to being killed more than once. There was no one fought like the old Blackfeet did, so fierce and unforgiving, until the smallpox came along and made good Indians of them. Put together all the Indians he and Summers and Jim had rubbed out, and it would make a fair village. "See Dick?" he asked.

"Married! Damn if he ain't! And to a white woman! He's farmin'. Corn and pigs and some tobacco."

"Pigs?"

"Pigs."

"I mind when he didn't like the notion of hog meat."

"Nor white women neither, for that part."

"How's he?"

"Good enough, I reckon. He 'lows it's better'n bein' dead, but of course he don't know about that. I allus figgured that bein' dead would save a man a sight of trouble."

"You never acted that way. Keen to keep your hair, you was."

"On account of maybe a man's got to go to hell yet. But if he don't, I mean if when he's dead he's dead and no more to it, why, then, bein' dead could be better than bein' deviled."

Teal Eye had fed the fire and seen there was plenty of meat in the pot and had sat down to work on a shirt. Boone saw her eyes go from one to the other of them as they talked, and quick understanding showing in them. She followed most things that a man might say in English, though she didn't use it much.

"The Piegan knows that he goes to the spirit land," she put in. "He does not fear dying like the white man does, because he knows."

Jim gave her a quick smile. "Some Indians think different. Some believe in the Great Medicine of the white man."

"The Flatheads," she said, "and the Pierced Noses. They have the black robes and the Book of Heaven. They are not warriors like the Piegans. They are not a great people."

Jim took a wooden bowl and filled it from the pot with a horn spoon and got his knife out and began eating again. After a while he said, "I went clean to Kentucky, Boone. Seed the place I was brung up and all."

Boone grunted.

"I left word to get to your kin, figurin' you wouldn't mind.

Someone said your pap was ailin'."

"Dead now and gone to hell I hope."

"It's a poor way of doin' back there, it is."

"Looks like you wouldn't always be a-goin', then."

"A man likes to get around." Jim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand while a little frown came over his eyes as if
he was studying what to say. "It's a sight, Boone, how people are pointin' west."

"Just talk, I reckon."

"A body wouldn't know the river any more, with the new forts on her and the Mandans all dead and the Rees gone. You wouldn't know her, Boone."

Boone grunted again. A grunt was a handy thing, saying much with little.

"And steamboats! Damn if ever you seed such boats, Boone, so many of 'em and so white and fancy."

"A heap get wrecked."

"That don't stop the building of 'em."

"In time it will, I'm thinkin'."

"Folks everywhere talk about Oregon and California. They aim to make up parties."

"What for?"

"To get to new land, Boone. To get where there's room to breathe, I reckon. To get away from the fever. Y'ever stop to think about the fever, Boone? How many's got ager and such? Nigh half has the shakes."

"They'll shake worse, time they hear a war whoop."

"The Piegans have sickness," Teal Eye put in, looking up from her awl. It was as if her eye didn't see them but looked into other lodges and watched the children that had caught fevers and cramps in the belly lately and had died, some of them, while the medicine men had made a racket over them trying to scare the bad spirits out. It was as if, for a little while, her ear heard only the shake of a rattle and the pound of a drum.

"It ain't nothin', the Piegans' sickness ain't," Jim answered, smiling into her still face. He got up. "I brung you a present," he said as if he had just thought of it, and went to the old trap sack he had laid inside the lodge and brought out a looking glass with a wooden back and a wooden handle. Teal Eye made a little noise in her throat as she took it.

Boone caught Teal Eye's glance and made a gesture with his head. "I left a beaver outside."

Jim had turned back to the trap sack. He brought a bottle of whisky out of it and handed it to Boone. "Just so's you can wet your dry."

Teal Eye got up and went outside to skin the beaver.

"Huntin' ain't much?" Jim asked.

"I catch a few." Boone took a drink and offered the bottle to Jim. It was sure-enough whisky, not the alcohol and water that mostly passed for whisky. He felt Jim's mind studying him, as if there was something hadn't been brought to sight yet.

"There's better ways of making money."

"Could be ways of makin' more, but not better ways."

"Easier, anyhow."

Boone drank again and passed the bottle and refired his pipe.

"Teal Eye looks slick," Jim said, as if he was just making talk while his mind worked. Before he could go on, the entrance to the lodge was darkened and Red Horn came in, and after him Heavy Runner and Big Shield. They sat down, not speaking, and seeing it was a solemn visit, Boone passed around a bowl of dried meat and berries and got out his best pipe, which had the red head of a woodpecker fastened to the long stem and a big fan of feathers above the head. He loaded it and set the bowl on a chunk of dirt and blew up to the sun and down to the earth and passed it to Red Horn on his left.

Red Horn had dressed himself up for the meeting with Jim. He wore a scarlet uniform with blue facings on it that Chardon had given him and had a company medal hanging from his neck. There was red on his eyelids and red stripes on his cheeks and beads hanging from his ears, and he carried a swan's wing in his hand. Before he smoked he spit to the north and south because that was his medicine.

Boone started the half-empty bottle around then and sat back, waiting. Heavy Runner grunted the sting of the whisky from his throat and patted his bare belly with his hand. He was one Indian wouldn't dress up for anything, but would wear his old leggings and his dirty robe no matter what. He had let the robe drop around his hams, leaving the upper part of him naked and showing the two old scars he had cut crosswise on each arm. Boone guessed his squaw hadn't done such a good job on the lice; he could see one climbing out on a hair. After a while old Heavy Runner felt it moving and lifted one scarred arm and picked it off and put it in his mouth.

Big Shield let the whisky trickle slow into his mouth. His face, raised to the bottle, was red with vermilion mixed with grease. The light of the fire glistened on it and shone white on the new bighorn shirt be wore. The bottle had just a drop in it when it came back to Boone.

It was a time before they got their palavering done and even then the three stayed on looking at Jim and asking a question now and then while he took up his talk with Boone, though none of them, except for Red Horn, could follow a white man's words.

"A man runs on to some queer bosses," Jim said. "I met up with one aims to learn every pass across the mountains."

"Ain't so queer. We 1'arn't a few ourselves."

"That was for beaver."

Boone used a grunt again.

"This man ain't no trapper. I can't figure what he is, exactly. Says he's goin' to be ready when people really start to move. Maybe he aims to set up trading posts along the way or hire out to take people from the settlements. I don't guess he knows, himself, yet, but he's certain sure there'll be a galore of chances for a man as knows his way in the mountains. He's an educated man, he is, educated so high and fine a man can't make out more'n half he says."

"It's fool talk all the same."

"If there's a pass as'll do, he looks for steamboats to bring a pile of settlers and traders and such to Union, from where they'l head acrost to the Columbia. He's got a flock of notions flyin' around in his head."

Boone drew on his pipe and blew the smoke out in a thin jet while he looked at Jim. "When you startin'?"

Jim's eyelids flicked. "I didn't say nothin' about startin'."

"No need."

"He's been south and's headin' up this way. Lookin' for a couple of mountain men to show him a north pass. Dollar and a half a day he'll pay."

"It's a fool thing, a damn fool thing."

"Maybe so, maybe not. If people are bound to get to Oregon seems like a good way is from one boat to another, across the mountains. Anyhow, it's bein' a fool thing wouldn't make no difference to us."

"No," Boone said, turning the thing over in his mind. "We get our money and he gits his 1'arnin'."

"Where at you aim to take him?"

"Up the Medicine, maybe, and over. You know best."
 

"Best is up the Marias and yan way to the Flathead. The snow'll catch him, though, and the cold."

Heavy Runner scratched his head, and Big Shield picked at the ground with a stick. Red Horn sat quiet. Only his eyes moved. It was as if he followed the talk with his eyes.

Jim said, "It ain't such a big party, just him and a couple of pork eaters to help out, and us, if you throw in."

"And a pile of stuff to tote."

"Some."

"How far does he want us?"

"I ain't sure as to that. Boat Encampment, maybe."

"Christ! When'll he be ready?"

"Aims to get to McKenzie in about a moon."

"Late. Red Horn says it will be a mean winter."

Red Horn turned his deep eyes on Jim. "Heap cold. Heap snow."

"I ain't never knowed Boone Caudill to back away from a thing on account of weather or whatever," Jim said.

"On account it's a goddam fool thing." Boone felt the whisky giving a bite to his words. "You're bad as any greenhorn yourself, talkin' about people comin', people comin', people comin'. You seen enough to know the mountains ain't farmin' country, any of it, let alone this Piegan land. A farmer'd have frost on his whiskers before the dust settled from plowin'."

"It ain't Piegan land the man's pointin' to, except to get acrost. And I ain't sayin' it's farm country. I'm sayin' we can get us a dollar and a half a day, easy."

"I mind the time such money weren't nothin'."

"There ain't no money in rememberin'."

"A man don't need money so much."

"It don't hurt him. Look, Boone, it ain't money alone, nor anything alone. It's money and movin' around and havin' fun. It's a time since me and you had us some fun together -some new fun, anyhow- you been sittin' in Blackfoot country so much."

Red Horn had been waiting to speak. There was a steady, hard look under his red eyelids. He hunched forward and started slow, speaking in Blackfoot. "Our old ones fought to keep the white trader away from our enemies beyond the mountains. They watched the pass that leads along the waters the Long Knife calls Maria. They met the Flatheads there, and the Kootenai. They met the Hanging Ears and the Pierced Noses and the Snakes. They were brave. They fought many battles. They took many scalps. They drove the enemies back. The enemies no more tried to travel the pass. To go to the hunting grounds they had to turn south and travel by the River of the Road to the Buffalo and come down the Medicine River to the plains. The old ones kept the white trader away. They made him travel far to the north to get to the country of the Flatheads and Snakes. Our old ones were wise. They did not want the palefaces to give medicine irons and powder and lead to our enemies."

Red Horn stopped, as if to let the words sink in. His nose pointed at Jim like a beak, and then at Boone. Heavy Runner had quit his scratching to listen.

"The old ones were wise," Jim agreed, and added, "for their time."

"No one travels where the old ones fought," Red Horn went on. "The white man does not know the trail. The Flatheads and the Snakes have forgotten what they knew. Only the Piegan remembers -the Piegan and the people that are his brothers, the Bloods and Big Bellies."

"The old ones are dead," Jim said. "The nation comes to a new time."

"The faces of the Flatheads and the Snakes are still blacked toward us. It is not wise to let our enemies be armed."

Boone said. "It is not a trading party. The white men will not carry rifles and powder and ball across the mountains."

"The white trader goes to our enemies by other ways," Jim argued. "He travels the Southern Pass and the trail from the Athabasca."

Red Horn smoothed his uniform over his chest, his eye not looking at what he was doing but fixed sharp as an awl on Boone. The lines were so deep in his cheeks they seemed to set the mouth off by itself. "My young men will not like it. My young men will get mad. They will feel blood in their eyes, and Red Horn will have no power over them."

"Red Horn will not fight the Long Knife. He has said so himself." Boone felt anger stirring in him. Red Horn was a man right enough, no matter if he looked silly in his red suit, but there wasn't any man going to scare him off a thing or tell him what to do.

"My young men will get mad."

Boone held the anger back. "We are Piegans, Red Horn. We are your brothers."

"The young warriors will say that a Piegan would not show the secret of the pass."