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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: The Canyon of Bones
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W
inding raced for the horses, which were tugging on the picket pins. Skye followed the teamster, grabbing a lead line just as a young stallion yanked free. Victoria and Mary each caught a mare before it bolted, and Mercer, last to act because he scarcely grasped what was happening, caught two yearlings. All the horses tugged and fought their lines in wild-eyed excitement.
“Hang on,” Winding yelled. The livestock man had taken charge. That mighty mustang stallion out there was fixing to pirate the whole herd and had sent shocks of terror through the horses in camp. There was something eerie about it; his screech on that distant ridge had galvanized the horses, as if lightning had struck nearby.
The mustang stallion danced on the ridge, its neck arched, its nostrils flared, looking to make all the trouble it could. With each of its bellows, the domestic horses reared and danced and snorted. It was all Victoria and Mary could do to hold on, and Skye feared that those braided lead lines would snap.
The world of wild horses was a cruel one. Stallions fought for mares; a powerful stallion acquired a harem. He killed rivals, kicking and biting them to death. He drove away yearlings and old horses. The lead mare, and every such mustang band had one, was his partner, leading the mares and younger animals to safety, disciplining the other horses with kicks and bites. But it was also nature's way of preserving the bands. Horses relied on flight, and everything in the behavior of the band was geared to flight.
Now Jawbone danced outward, his very soul reverted to the primitive instincts of a young stallion about to square off with an older one. This was not the Jawbone Skye knew, but some brute of a horse, murder in his eye, ready for deadly combat with the intruder. Skye could no more stop him than he could stop the sun in its tracks.
Skye's and Mercer's horses quieted suddenly. The boss mare of the wild band stopped, and nipped the rumps of the mares that didn't stop. They knew somehow to await the outcome. This was going to be war, horse against horse, to the death. The stallion, lit red by the setting sun, stood stock-still, a statue on a ridge, while Jawbone slowed to a mincing walk like a boxer circling around his opponent. The old stallion bore the scars of battle. Half an ear was missing. Its flesh was puckered. Its broom tail reached the grass. Its burr-choked mane rested in lumps on its neck. There was nothing beautiful about this wild animal, but rather something sinister and proud. Its tail switched back and forth as it waited patiently to slaughter yet another rival.
Jawbone slowed, and then walked up the ridge until the setting sun limned his gray body. The wild stallion watched almost quietly, except for the arch of its neck and an occasional shuffle of its feet. He was magnificent, far more handsome in
his raw fashion than Jawbone. The low sun glinted off the dun coat of the wild one, setting it afire or so it seemed to Skye's eye.
The two horses stood a few feet apart on the ridge, just out of kicking range, studying each other. Time stopped. Jawbone lifted his neck, bared his teeth, and sawed the air, his head bobbing up and down in some act of challenge known only to horses. The wild stallion did much the same, its lips forming a rictus, its head sawing the air, issuing his own challenge. And then things quieted. The two stallions stared at each other. Skye wondered if there would be a fight at all; whether Jawbone might turn tail and walk back to camp.
The wild mares and young ones stood two hundred yards distant, ready to bolt. High in the evening sky a large hawk of some sort rode the breeze. Skye found it easy now to hold on to the lead lines of the three horses under his control. They stood as quietly as the two rivals on the ridge.
Then the wild stallion slowly turned around until its rump was to Jawbone, and seemed to gaze into the deepening twilight, ignoring his rival. But Skye knew better.
Jawbone sawed the air again and stepped closer. The wild dun whirled, squealed, and planted rear hooves squarely into Jawbone's chest, with such shock that Jawbone staggered, seemed paralyzed a moment, and then righted himself just as the wild one's lethal teeth bit into Jawbone's neck. Now the mares stirred.
But Jawbone did not flee. That was the thing about Jawbone. He ran straight toward trouble. Instead of stumbling away, chastened and defeated, he sprang straight for the wild one, slamming the wild one with his chest, staggering the wild one. Now it was Jawbone's turn, in close, too tight to receive a lethal kick, slowly crowding the stallion off the ridge,
pushing forward steadily, impervious to the wild one's bites. Once the wild one reared upward, intending to crush Jawbone under falling forehooves, but instead, Jawbone plowed into the belly of the rearing wild horse and unbalanced him so he tumbled to earth, rolled, sprang to his feet even as Jawbone's own hooves crashed down on the wild one's rump.
The wild stallion staggered up and retreated. Jawbone followed relentlessly, crowding inside those brutal hooves, always chest to rump, chest to belly, chest to neck. And then the stallion fled. Jawbone followed, crowding the wild one with every bound, not letting him escape. The wild one would not walk away from this fight. Jawbone ran him hard, over the ridge and out of sight, and suddenly Skye and his party hadn't the faintest idea what was occurring out there in the twilight.
They stared at each other, still mesmerized by the drama they had witnessed. The sun vanished, leaving rosy light in its wake, and a cloud the color of blood. Silence crept over the land. Jawbone had disappeared. Minutes passed and they seemed longer to Skye; as if each were an hour. The mystery deepened. Wherever the stallions were, far to the south, their combat was veiled to Skye's party.
Then, as the day turned dusky, Jawbone reappeared alone, nipping at the wild mares, disciplining the boss mare with teeth planted in her neck, driving the wild one's entire harem straight toward Skye's party. They clearly didn't want to approach the human beings there but Jawbone was making them, doing it brutally, knowing he was king of the herd and intending to let every animal know it. The lead mare veered away from Skye's party, but Jawbone cut her off, his teeth snapping, until her fear of him was larger than her fear of the people watching this amazing spectacle.
Then, as swiftly as it had started, the run ceased. The wild
ones milled before the group, terrified of both the human beings and of Jawbone. The domesticated horses jerked on their tethers, excited by all of this.
Jawbone quietly circled them, a living corral that prevented escape. Proudly, calmly, he proclaimed his lordship over them, even while his sides still heaved from a long run.
“Mister Skye, I do believe that you are suddenly a rich man, if wealth is measured in horses,” Mercer said.
“It appears that way, if Mister Winding can gentle them.”
“I think I can,” said Winding. “Most, anyway.”
“You will be rewarded for it,” Skye said.
“Wasn't that something! Damn, Mister Skye, you should have ten wives, like Jawbone,” Victoria said.
“It appears that Jawbone is going to leave his progeny all over the northern plains, Mister Skye,” said Mercer.
Jawbone knew they were talking about him. He abandoned his guardianship of the harem for a moment, walked straight toward Skye, and gently butted Skye in the chest It was his way of giving Skye the gift of mares and foals and yearlings.
“Avast!”
“Ah, Mister Skye, he has more ladies than you do,” Mary said.
Mary was teasing him! He was used to it from Victoria, but now Mary was doing it too.
“I prefer quality to quantity,” he retorted.
“What do them damn words mean?” Victoria asked.
“They were compliments.” Skye was feeling testy.
All that evening the mares looked ready to bolt but Jawbone disciplined them. The slightest infraction won a nip or a kick. By deep dark, the wild bunch was grazing quietly. Everything depended on Jawbone. It would be a long time before
any human could touch that bunch or turn them into saddle horses. Skye's and Mercer's own horses were allowed to drift among the wild ones. The sooner they became acquainted, the better. As long as Jawbone remained the king of this herd, there would be little trouble.
They built an evening fire and roasted some antelope. The meat tasted just fine.
Every now and then the wild horses stirred in the darkness, and sometimes Jawbone's policing squeal drifted through the darkness.
“Jawbone has his work cut out for him,” Mercer said. “But I think he's equal to it.”
“He's a lucky stallion,” Winding said.
“Luckier than you, Mister Skye.” That was Mary, of all people, but Skye ignored the insult. The women were giggling. He lifted his top hat and settled it, contemplating whether to rebuke them. But their laughter dissolved his displeasure.
They put up the lodge by firelight and moved the robes and parfleches inside.
“I say, old boy, it's a fine night for sleeping out. I think Winding and I'll just catch our robes and hightail away for the evening,” Mercer said.
There it was, right out in public, but Skye didn't mind. “Get yourselves a good rest, mates,” he said.
The Briton and his teamster drifted into the night, laden with warm robes.
From out of the darkness, Jawbone squealed. Skye knew that squeal. So did his women.
Mary and Victoria were grinning at him and he thought that was just fine.
N
o one slept well that night, least of all Skye. The quiet was punctuated with squeals, the clatter of hooves, snorts, nickering, and the sounds of passage.
Jawbone spent the whole night patrolling his new harem, disciplining rebel mares, sinking teeth into rumps and necks, kicking the unruly, and above all circling the whole herd to keep it from bolting. The wild mares and yearlings and foals weren't used to the presence of human beings. Neither were they used to the domestic horses in their midst and spent the night taxing Jawbone's energies.
Skye and his two wives spent the night side by side in their buffalo robes, Victoria on his left, Mary on his right, his own arms catching them both. But the night did not turn out in the way of Mercer's imaginings. Skye and his women rested peacefully, protected from weather and cold by the Gros Ventre lodge, happy to share a quiet moment. It was, in that respect, a sweet night, except for the hubbub outside of the lodge as Jawbone established his command over his new family.
As always, Skye awakened at dawn when the first light shone in the smoke vent at the top of the lodge, silhouetting the poles where they collected together. His women breathed quietly. Skye slipped out of his robe and into the chill predawn, sucked cold air into his lungs, and studied the country. Off a few dozen yards, Mercer and Winding lay in their robes beside the ashes of a small fire they had built. Dew lay on the grass. Patches of fog blanketed the hollows. The air was cold indeed to have condensed moisture out of the air.
Jawbone stood guard over his herd but he was plainly exhausted. His head hung low. His alert and fierce gaze had vanished under the obligations he now faced. The wild mares shifted nervously as Skye drifted toward them, and Jawbone's head popped up. The mares didn't run but edged away from this alien thing in their lives, and Jawbone minced along beside them, each step taken as if on springs, his way of telling the mares that he would catch and punish any runaways.
All but one. A yearling stood awkwardly, and staggered when it tried to follow the drifting mares. Even in that soft gray light, Skye knew at once that its foreleg was broken. As he edged closer he could see that the shinbone had splintered and pierced flesh.
Skye knew what he had to do. It was never easy, but he never asked anyone else to do these things for him. It was a part of being a citizen of the wilds. He feared the day might come when he would have to do this very thing to Jawbone. It was why he tried not to love an animal, but he did anyway. He remembered horses he treasured, a dog he once owned, and his deep respect for Jawbone, whose mysterious medicine made him an animal he would honor all of his days.
The yearling tried to limp away as Skye approached, but finally stopped, quivering and in obvious pain. The night's
uproars had destroyed him. A night spent racing around on treacherous ground, a night bumping into fleeing mares, tumbling under Jawbone's onslaught, had finally snapped this fellow's leg. And there was nothing anyone could do except end its suffering.
Skye slipped his Green River knife from its sheath at his waist.
“Whoa, boy,” he said.
The yearling was too far gone to resist, but it trembled as Skye approached.
The wounded leg was terrible to look at. Splintered bone stabbed through flesh. Black blood soaked the pastern and hoof.
That didn't make it any easier.
Skye lifted a hand to the colt's mane. It trembled. Then swiftly, hoping to give swift peace and not lingering agony, he jammed his knife under the ear, sliced downward under the cheek and across the throat, feeling his keen blade sever life from death. The horse shook a moment, and then tumbled down.
“Well done, Mister Skye,” said Winding, who was standing ten yards away.
Death is never well done, Skye thought. But he nodded, acknowledging the teamster's expert opinion. The swift sharp knife had lessened the torment of the wounded animal, offering a merciful death, and that was what the teamster meant.
Skye wiped his blade on grass and restored it to its sheath. It was a rotten way to start a new day.
He would not ride Jawbone. The young stallion would be busy this day and many more herding his harem, and the task would draw on the horse's last reserves of strength. It would be good to put one of those fine Gros Ventre ponies under
saddle and see what sort of gift those people had given Mercer for the magical night he gave them.
Jawbone was young. He had whipped a proud old mustang and driven him away. Skye wondered how that old horse must feel this dawn. Yesterday, he was king of his little herd. Yesterday he was a lord of all horses, breeding mares, stamping foals with his own nature, disdainfully chasing away all the young stallions who meant to steal his band from him. Today he was a broken old stallion, an outcast who had surrendered to the law of life: the young replace the old; the young conquer from the old.
Was he quietly grazing somewhere, nursing the wounds Jawbone had inflicted on him? Did horses have feelings? Was he bereft? Or was he merely a bundle of instincts, without understanding of his new and humbler condition? Skye didn't know, but he wished he might find the old stallion and wish peace and comfortable old age upon him. Maybe now, free of responsibility, the old fellow would graze peacefully, enjoy the warm sun, look upon his world as a good place, and think upon his own glory. It was a fanciful thought, so Skye set it aside. There was much to do this morning.
The light was quickening now. Mercer swung out of his robe and stretched. Skye's women emerged from the lodge and headed toward the seep. Skye remembered there was little water here; not enough for a herd of horses. They would need to move on.
“Didn't sleep. Not a bloody wink all night,” Mercer said. “Jawbone was breeding, I take it.”
“No, it was more than that,” Skye said. “He was making himself king.”
“A monarch! Well, whatever. It spoiled my night,” Mercer said. “The horse world is no democracy. God save the king.”
With that, he smiled, those even white teeth flashing again.
He caught up his robe and brought it to Skye, turning it over so the hair side was down. “Now, what'll I record for yesterday, eh? The day Jawbone captured a harem? And how do I paint that, eh?”
Mercer had indeed kept a pictograph journal of sorts on the fleshed side of his buffalo robe, very like the winter count of many a tribal elder. Mary had shown him how to make paints of grease and colored clay, usually ochre, and how to turn various fibrous reeds or twigs into brushes. She had even sewn a tiny bag for Mercer, so tightly done that he could store his greasepaint within it and tie it shut.
“Not much to record, Mister Skye. Nothing that would cause a sensation in London. Just horse doings. Anyone in England is entirely familiar with horses.”
“Wild horses, sir? You could make something of it. I'd be interested in reading it.”
“Well, it's not the stuff of a good story. I should have headed for Salt Lake. A piece or two on the Saints would've rocked London on its heels. This North America, sir, it's a bust. There's not a story in the whole continent.”
Skye had heard it all too many times.
Nonetheless, Mercer opened his little paint bag, softened the fibers of his stick brush, and began to draw some stick-figure mares and foals, and two stick-figure stallions rearing. It was not bad art. Mercer could be expressive with a few strokes of brown paint. There was, actually, an impressive collection of symbols and figures known only to the adventurer himself. But the saw-toothed fire symbols were plain enough.
“There now. I'll take this moth-eaten thing to London. But I'll write most of the stories on board ship across the Atlantic
and pop them onto desks when I get back. Not that my scribbling will ever pay for this trip.”
Mercer rolled up his robe and put away his little paint bag.
“I say, Mister Skye, what do the bones look like?”
“They're poking out of rock. There's a skull several feet long, teeth six or eight inches high.”
“What do the Indians think of them?”
“Hard to say, sir. Each tribe has its own stories. But Victoria's people think they are the bones of a huge bird, maybe the big black bird of their people, their namesake.”
“How big did you say?”
“Bigger than any animal known to modern man, sir. Maybe three times the height of a tall man.”
“These birds, did they fly?”
“I can't say. Ask her.”
“Well, bones are bones. I hardly think there's a sensation in them.”
“The tribes all have legends about them, Mister Mercer. The Crows do. I'll wager you'd get a different story from the Sioux or Blackfeet or Assiniboine. It's also a sacred place, sir. We won't touch those bones. The spirits of those animals are there, ready to destroy anyone who tampers with them. That's the story one gets from the people who live here. It's taboo. It's forbidden.”
“Forbidden! I have been to a hundred forbidden places in Asia and Africa. At last I might have a story, Mister Skye.”

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