The Big Sky (48 page)

"What was behind it?"

"'Member that nigger Reese? Friend of Chardon's?"

"That real, black-skinned nigger?"

Harvey nodded. "The Bloods killed him. Made Chardon mad as all hell. It was me told him how to get even."

"Don't see how you can expect the Piegans to come here for trade."

"Didn't do anything to them."

"Doin' it to the Bloods was the same thing, to their way of thinkin'."

Harvey drained his cup. "They'll come back," he said, and sucked a drop of whisky from his lip. "What's Caudill doin'?"

"Trappin' a little. Huntin' buffler."

"How's he feel?"

"Got other things on his mind, I'm thinkin'."

"That's good."

"It is, now. He could make things bad if he took it into his head to lead the Piegans against you. They could rub you out, dead easy, firin' down from the hill acrost the river. Only I don't guess Boone'll do that way. It ain't like him to scheme a thing. He acts quick and sudden."

"Soon kill a man as look at him."

"He's all right."

Harvey refilled the cups. "Smart squaw he's got." The thick face had a far-off, searching look. "Prettiest anywhere." He switched at his moccasin with a stem of grass. The corner of his mouth made a little dent in one cheek. "Maybe you could tell how is it."

"You're a damn fool."

"About some things, maybe. Not about that. Not about you, Deakins. You and minks are turned the same."

"She ain't that kind."

"Good Jesus! I haven't heard that kind of talk since church let out. What squaw ain't?"

"All the same, she ain't."

"Me, I would like to have a chance, with Caudill maybe a thousand miles away. There isn't a squaw but would trade, offer her enough beads or red cloth or face paint."

"You got a surprise comin' if you try."

Harvey's face showed he was already trying in his mind. For a little, Jim's thought ran away from him, seeing Teal Eye and himself with her and nothing about but the shielding willows rustling in the breeze and the grass waiting. He jerked a leg straight and got out his pipe and tobacco. A man had some wild ideas when the spring sap ran in him.

"Reminds me," Harvey said. "Got a letter for Caudill. It come with the winter express from Pierre. You want to take it to him?"

"Might as well. You want any meat raised?"

"Ought to have enough when Chardon and the rest come in."

"I'll just take the night, then, and put out tomorrow. Pour another drink. I told you I got beaver to spare. And set a bottle by for mornin', for I look to have a head."

The next morning, riding back the way he had come, he was glad he had the bottle, or what was left of it after the first drink. He felt tired and beaten down. He had a thickness in the head and a slow ache behind his eyeballs that pulsed to the jog of his horse. The wind blowing out of the north with the sting of winter still in it made his eyes stream. He pulled up and wiped the water away and took the bottle from the overlapped folds of his buckskin shirt and poured a big drink into himself. He would feel better after a while with the whisky catching hold again and the air fanning his head clear.

The sun, just raised above the eastern sky line, shone flat across the plains. The dead grass bent to the steady wind, above the green that had started up from below. A halfdozen crows raised from down in the valley and shouted after a big hawk that flapped straight ahead as if all he wanted was to get away from their noise. Tatters of clouds blew out of the north.

It was a raw and lonesome day, with nothing in it but the rush and whistle of wind and the worn land standing to it. It was a day when a man felt small and out of kilter, and hankered for people and frolics and walls to keep the weather out. It was a day when he hankered to be close to somebody, to be understood and made over, so's the weight of loneliness would be lightened. Boone, now, liked weather. He didn't seem to need man or woman to keep his spirit strong. He didn't seem to need even little Teal Eye warming his lodge, and her voice soft and her manner gentle and her big eyes quick with feeling for him. He liked wind and storm and emptiness, as if they were company enough; but not many did. Not Jim Deakins, riding along with a case of whisky sickness and a low heart.

The wind kept up all day and was still blowing as he went on again next morning after he had made a lonesome camp and suppered on a chunk of meat that Harvey had given him. Time went so slow the mind could believe it stood still. The sun rose a little way in the eastern sky, shining on Jim's back, and stopped there as if dreading to come full into the wind. The plain crawled ahead of him, making tired-like for the mountains ridged far against the westen sky. His horse lagged over it, putting a few spears of grass or a sprinkle of rocks under him as he stepped, and facing, head down, to an ocean of grass and rocks enough to make a peak. Off to the side one gopher chased another -a he and a she, probably, working up to a family. By littles the shadows shortened and grew to nothing and by and by began to point the other way. The wind blew itself out except for scattered leavings that puffed along trying to catch up. By the time the sun went down, even the leavings were gone. A still twilight lay on the world, darkening slow to night.
 
 

Boone brought his lids down little by little, screening out the valley below him and the ridge that rose beyond it and at last the sun itself except for the red light that swam through. This was how it was to be blind, not to see the buttes and the mountains against the sky or the wooded line of the river, not to see the coyote trotting far off or the camp in the trees or Big Shield and Bear riding toward him, not to see even the hand held close before his face but only the red swimming and maybe not even that. Maybe only thick and steady darkness like in a cave or out on the plains at night with the clouds drawn low and not even one star peeking through. A man couldn't find a trail or sight a rifle; he would have to feel his way like a worm and hope someone would bring meat to him. He would have to learn the sun by its feel and the land by the touch of it under his feet and people by the pitch of their voices or the whispered way of their step. He would have to listen for things, as Boone listened to the soft plod of the horses that Big Shield and Bear rode.

"Strong Arm sleeps," Big Shield said, and then Boone let his eyes come open. The two Indians slid from their horses and sat down and lighted their pipes.

"The buffalo has gone away," Bear said after he had drawn deep. "Only old ones are left here -only wolves' meat. We have looked in the four directions, Big Shield and I, and the herds are far off toward the new sun. They have run before our hunters. It is time to move."

Big Shield bowed forward in the sign for yes. "We are here too long."

"Our trappers come back to the lodges without beaver."

"The beaver have been taken. The spring lift is small."

"The camp makes a bad stink because we stay too long."

Boone let them talk. They were warriors yet, but with years growing on them and a liking for slow palaver while they smoked in the sun. A blind man hearing them would wonder if the words were made by tongues and lips like his own working in faces like his hands told him his was itself. Boone shut his lids again, trying to figure what he would make out the two to be if he had only his ears to tell him. After a while he heard Bear say, "You cry inside, Strong Arm."

Bear's eyes were old and tracked around by wrinkles but still sharp as a hawk's. Boone dropped his own before them and picked up a rock and began digging at the ground with it. He was of a mind to laugh or say it wasn't so and to go on to something else, being as his feelings were nobody's business, but Indians were easier to talk to than whites and medium friends easier than close ones. He drew back from showing Jim what was inside him, as he drew back from showing Teal Eye, feeling weak and shamed for them to see, but it was different with two old Indians who wouldn't add to what he said or pry beyond for more.

He nodded slowly. "Is there medicine to make the blind eye see?"

Big Shield said, "Our medicine men make medicine, but blindness is too strong for them."

"It is better to go under," said Bear. "It is better to kill the blind."

"I cry for the blind one in my lodge."

Bear nodded. "I cry for my brother who cries. Does Red Hair cry?"

Boone nodded. "Jim cries. He is my brother, too."

Bear put more tobacco in his pipe. "It is for him to cry." His eyes went to Big Shield for a yes. "It is for Red Hair to cry."

For what seemed a long time Boone searched Bear's face, which was cut and puckered by time and thought. Bear's old lips sucked at the stem of his pipe. His breath pulled a whiff into his lungs. Then he met Boone's gaze and answered the question in it with another. "Does the black eagle father the red hawk?"

Boone heard his own voice like a crack in the long silence. "You make light talk."

Bear's gaze was roaming the valley again. "It is you that make light talk," he said. "You know. When a man knows it does not matter. I have given my wives for whisky and powder. I have given them to show I was a friend. It was all right. When a squaw sneaks out and her man does not know, then he feels blood in his eye."

Big Shield knocked the ash from his pipe and got up. "I had a wife, and she lay in secret with a man." He rested his finger above his nostrils. "I cut her hair off and her nose and put her out of my lodge. I took two buffalo horses from the man. I found other squaws. Life was good again."

They climbed on their horses and jogged down toward the village.
 
 

Teal Eye said, "Red Hair went to Fort McKenzie."

"Who told you?" Boone watched her fussing with the baby, her eyes dwelling on the blind eyes as if of a sudden they might see.

"He came to ask for you."

"For me, was it?" Boone asked and shut his mouth on what he might say next. There was puzzlement in her face, as if she couldn't make out what he aimed at. He looked at the baby and looked away and looked again. The red wasn't bright sorrel like Jim's hair, but it was red just the same -red crossed with Indian black and showing dark on the head like the bark of old spruce. Did the black eagle father the red hawk? He got up and stood for a while unseeing, feeling sick and swollen with suspecting, feeling like a man snake-bit, the pain small and sharp in the beginning and the mind numb but unbelieving, and then the bite spreading and the flesh puffing and hurt bursting the body. He would ask if he could believe the answer, but a woman that had tricked a man would lie to him.

To her back he said, "Better to kill a blind baby."

The words spun her around. She got up slow, her face showing shock over the sorrow that had been there before. "Boone!"

"He is better dead."

"You don't mean what your mouth says!"

"You heard. How long will Red Hair be gone?"

She lowered her face from his, as if she had looked for something and not found it, and turned back to the baby. Seeing her droop, he felt mean, but fierce and pleasured by meanness, too. He watched her out of the tail of his eye, wondering what secrets were in her, wondering what she kept from him. Morning, and his talk with Bear and Big Shield, seemed so long ago that he had lived a lifetime in it. There had been the pinch of pain and the unbelieving, and then the remembering, then the figuring, while the pain grew and the unbelieving littled and such a misery came in him as the spirit couldn't stand. He knew well enough that Jim was drawn by Teal Eye. He had seen a hundred things to make him know and heard a hundred more, though he hadn't believed that Jim would do him bad. It was Teal Eye he had misfigured, thinking it was no more than liking she felt. It was Teal Eye, bent over with her back to him and maybe the secret held dear in her and her body remembering the touch of Jim's.

All at once he couldn't stand to be there longer. "No tellin' when I'll be back." He threw the English of it at her. "Three or four sleeps."

She didn't answer, but he knew she followed him with her eyes as he went out. It occurred to him while he walked to his horse that maybe she was thinking that with him gone she would have a chance with Jim.

At first he rode just to ease himself, making his horse drive into the wind, feeling the good, hard lash of it against his cheeks and the honest push of it on his chest. Wind was something a man could stand to, and be goddamed to it. It was something he knew. It was something he could figure, and no doubt and no waiting and wondering about it, and no black poisoning of the blood. Later he noticed that he was making in the direction of Fort McKenzie, and a plan took shape in his head. Already Teal Eye believed he would be gone from the lodge for three or four nights. He would ride to McKenzie and make out to Jim that he would be out of the village for a time looking for buffalo and beaver-setting and a likely camping place. Then he would watch, and then he would follow. He would set his trap and see what came to it and so find out quick, maybe, whether Bear was right. It stood to reason he was, the more Boone brooded on it, remembering the smiles Jim had for Teal Eye and the long, slow looks and words like posies, and her face lighting up at the sight of him and the pleasure in it at his talk. Bear and Big Shield took it for sure he shared his squaw with Jim. More than likely the whole band did, and because of things they'd seen, being wrong only in thinking the sharing was his doing. Damn himself for a fool, going along blind while they played behind his back and made sport of him! All the time he had figured Teal Eye was his alone and never to be anybody else's. He had lain with her at night and felt richer than other men to have her and so deep satisfied he couldn't talk about it, even to her, for the feeling was like a weakness in him, like a secret that had to be kept in his own skull, hidden under his own ribs.

As the sun went down he hobbled his horse in a gully where a trickle of water ran and climbed out of it afterward and made toward the three antelopes he had seen from the other side. He tied his handkerchief to the end of his wiping stick and lay down with his rifle and held the stick up so that the flag fluttered in the wind. The antelopes danced in, darting back now and then and afterward dancing closer, until he had his sights on one and let his finger bear on the trigger. The two lit out like birds after the shot, their white rumps gleaming, but the one squirmed broken in the grass. Boone made his supper from it.