Read The Canyon of Bones Online
Authors: Richard S. Wheeler
The Canyon of Bones (17 page)
S
kye's party continued to cross broken prairie in autumnal weather, as if it were all a picnic. Maybe Graves Mercer was simply a lucky man, Skye thought. Everything seemed to go right, just because he wanted it to go right.
kye's party continued to cross broken prairie in autumnal weather, as if it were all a picnic. Maybe Graves Mercer was simply a lucky man, Skye thought. Everything seemed to go right, just because he wanted it to go right.
The man lost an outfit in the fire and won another one. The gods were smiling. It was as if Mercer, the great explorer, could conjure up whatever he needed. And now he needed a sensation. A bigger sensation than anything that other explorers might uncover. The man had rivals. Who could find the most exotic thing lurking in the unexplored world?
Skye thought about that as they pushed northward toward the great ditch of the Missouri River. What the man really meant by a sensation was something that would shock his English countrymen. Shock was in the air. In modern times the queen's men had radiated outward to the farthest reaches of the unknown world, penetrating into the Amazon jungles, pausing at South Sea islands, probing toward the poles, trekking up the Nile, climbing higher and higher toward the
peaks of the Himalayas. But it was the customs of foreign peoples that shocked the English. Wicked things. Erotic things. Cruel things. Sacrifice a virgin to the morning star and the civilized world would be duly horrified.
peaks of the Himalayas. But it was the customs of foreign peoples that shocked the English. Wicked things. Erotic things. Cruel things. Sacrifice a virgin to the morning star and the civilized world would be duly horrified.
Mercer was really engaged in shock. Whatever he could unearth that would rattle his countrymen, that's what would ensure his own fame. How different this was from other times, when people sought the comforts of orthodoxy, or the healing of faith, or the blessings of a strong crown.
Even as Skye mused, a good buffalo runner gotten from the Atsina chief was carrying him northward ahead of the rest of the party, the horse lithe and young under him. Skye never stopped scanning the open country, for it was his duty to keep his people safe, to spot trouble, to give those behind him time to regroup or defend. His women were riding now, thanks to the plenitude of horses. They kept the travois ponies and packhorses moving steadily along. Winding and Jawbone brought up the rear, keeping an eye on the wild bunch.
Mercer, also riding now, never seemed content and was forever spurring forward, or pulling off to one side or the other, or dashing somewhere to examine something. But now he urged his pony forward and joined Skye as they crossed an empty land.
“When you say forbidden, Mister Skye, what do you mean?”
“I meant that the Indians revere these bones, respect them, and would not want anything to damage them. In the case of the Absarokas, these are the bones of creation, the bones from which they derive their visions of where they came from, and who they are.”
“Ah, mythology! I suppose most people have some of that to explain themselves. The Greeks and Romans did. All those
stories were displaced by Christian religion but they linger on, half submerged, and one still sees villagers at the old pagan shrines. I've seen them myself. I suppose when Europeans settle this country, these old stories will linger in the hollows and hills.”
stories were displaced by Christian religion but they linger on, half submerged, and one still sees villagers at the old pagan shrines. I've seen them myself. I suppose when Europeans settle this country, these old stories will linger in the hollows and hills.”
“They are more than stories, Mister Mercer. The tribes feel a kinship to these bones. The bones are their ancestors. And I should tell you, there's never been warfare at the place of the bones. Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux, other tribes that fight each other, they gather here, enemies at all other times, but quiet and respectful and at peace. Parties come and go, camp there, sit for hours before these giants, and are perfectly safe. The next day, a mile away, they might kill each other but not there where the bones poke up from rock. That's how powerful this place is.”
“Well, I'm ready for it. There's nothing else around here. Of course I discount all the stories about the size of the bones. Those things get exaggerated, you know. The more sacred they are, the bigger they get. It'll be a guffaw or two when I start some measuring and find they're maybe as big as an ostrich. Now that's a big bird, an ostrich. And I'll probably end up writing about this very thing: the natives worship at a pile of fossilized ostrich bones and have turned them into the bones of giants.”
The man was saying he didn't believe Victoria or Skye, but there was no point in protesting it. He would see for himself. But Skye supposed that was all part of being a sensationalist writer. If you debunk a local legend that's quite as good as confirming it.
“I say, Skye, these bones. They're caught in sandstone?”
“Fossils, yes.”
“How do you suppose that happened?”
“They are very old, Mister Mercer.”
“How old?”
Skye had no answer. “Older than anyone imagines; what else can one say?”
“Maybe a trick of God to fool the unfaithful? Wasn't the world created in six days, about six thousand years ago?”
There were things Skye did not feel he could respond to, and that was one. He scarcely grasped theology. But he had a few notions.
“Some things are written as poetry, Mister Mercer, because they were too much for the prophets to explain. Genesis is poetry, I imagine. I read Genesis once, and saw that it was fanciful.”
“Ah, you're a heretic, like me!”
“No, sir, not that. I am a faithful man in my own way. Let me put it this way. Most of the natural world has yet to be revealed to us. Someday maybe God will open our eyes.”
“That's a gracious response, Mister Skye. How did you get here, in this corner of the unknown world?”
“I was a pressed seaman, ended up in the Royal Navy, snatched as a boy right off the streets of London. I made my escape when I could.”
“Ah, a deserter.”
“Think what you will. I consider myself a freedman. My liberty was taken away; I took it back.”
“But you cannot return to England.”
“Never.”
“I've met wanderers like you from one end of the world to the other, Mister Skye. England has its exiles. Convicts sent to Van Diemen's Land, the refuse of the Napoleonic wars, criminals who fled the island, and republicans at war with monarchy, or Irish opposed to English rule. But mostly, Mister Skye,
outcasts. Social transgressors. Women who became enamored of another man and paid for it by fleeing from disgrace. Men who professed atheism and found themselves ostracized. Bigamous men. Banished men. Odd quacks who declare themselves nobility. I met a chap in Spain who said he was pretender to the throne and he was collecting a fleet to topple the queen. Of course most Englishmen flee to France, but there are exiled Englishmen in every corner of the world. And you're one.”
outcasts. Social transgressors. Women who became enamored of another man and paid for it by fleeing from disgrace. Men who professed atheism and found themselves ostracized. Bigamous men. Banished men. Odd quacks who declare themselves nobility. I met a chap in Spain who said he was pretender to the throne and he was collecting a fleet to topple the queen. Of course most Englishmen flee to France, but there are exiled Englishmen in every corner of the world. And you're one.”
“By accident, sir. I would probably be an import-export merchant like my father if a press gang of laughing sailors had not pinned my arms behind my back and dragged me over the cobbles to the wharf. I have no very great quarrel with England. It's still my land, my people. In fact, after meeting a few Yanks, I prefer Englishmen. I won't make myself a Yank. I'm a man without a country.”
“That answers my next question, Mister Skye. What a good day this is. We've been weeks on the trail, and only now do I sense that I know you.”
“I guard my privacy, Mister Mercer.”
“Out here, beyond society, beyond law? But why?”
“I'll respond with a question: Are you planning to write about your guide Skye in the North American wilds, the one with two Indian wives, one young and very beautiful?”
Mercer grinned. “You have me, Mister Skye.”
“And shock London with it?”
“Yes, but what difference does it make?”
“I have not seen my family for decades. I don't know whether my parents or my sister live. I don't know whether she married or has children. I haven't heard about my cousins, either. Would you make sport of me?”
“Probably. If it's true, and if it catches the eye, I would publish it.”
“Then say that I love my wives. Both of them. Say that it is the Indian custom. Say that when native women's burden is shared they are happier. Tell them that I was and am an Anglican And tell them that a man yanked off the streets and stuffed into a royal sloop deserves his liberty.”
“As you wish, Mister Skye.” Mercer's tone was earnest Somehow, he always managed to redeem himself.
They rode on in silence, though no antagonism remained between them. The land forms changed. Now great grassy gulches tumbled northward. Skye consulted with Victoria, who pointed westerly. Skye turned their caravan down a long trough where the grass was thicker in the bottom than on its sides.
The horses seemed eager, and pushed ahead almost without urging, so that sometimes the travois bounced. The walls of the great trench of the Missouri River rose higher and higher as they plunged into a giant ditch that seemed devoid of all life.
They came at last to narrow bottoms and beyond a slender flat the great cold river purled its way to its union with the Mississippi. Skye dismounted and let the buffalo runner poke his ugly nose in the icy, clear water. Skye studied the bluffs, looking for trouble, and found none.
The women dismounted and let their horses drink. And then, one by one, watered the packhorses and the draft horse and the spare mounts, while Winding ran a well-versed teamster's hand over pasterns and fetlocks and shins.
A narrow trail ran west here.
Victoria spotted the broken arrow and summoned Skye.
Directly ahead, on the trail they soon would take, was an arrow plunged point-down in the ground, with its back broken and the feathered part lying beside it.
Mercer hastened to the spot
“What's that about, Mister Skye?”
“It's a warning. It says, do not go farther.”
“For us?”
“Yes.”
“But we will, of course. I haven't come across an ocean and a continent just to be put off by this.”
“You would be risking your life, Mister Mercer,” Victoria said.
“Well, I'll just risk it. Missus Skye,” he said. “What tribe's arrow is this?”
She picked up the feathered end, and pulled the shaft out of the moist earth.
“I don't know,” she said. “I have never seen an arrow marked like this.”
T
he arrow was unlike any Skye had ever seen. The entire shaft was enameled bloodred. Large feathers, maybe hawk or falcon, adorned it. It lacked an arrowhead or iron point. A ceremonial arrow, then, and all the more ominous for it.
he arrow was unlike any Skye had ever seen. The entire shaft was enameled bloodred. Large feathers, maybe hawk or falcon, adorned it. It lacked an arrowhead or iron point. A ceremonial arrow, then, and all the more ominous for it.
“This is big medicine, Mister Mercer,” he said. “See how it's made. No point. All red. This is a medicine arrow, a message arrow.”
“Who made it?”
“Damned if I know,” said Victoria. “Makes me unhappy, I don't know. Maybe the spirits made it.”
“Spirits?”
“Stuff you and me don't know about.”
“Surely you don't ⦔ Mercer stopped himself.
Skye smiled. Mercer was dismissing Indian legend but was being polite about it.
Victoria studied the arrow, cussing softly. “Owl feathers. Owl feathers! That's what these are. This is very bad, owl feathers.”
“And what does it tell you, eh?”
Victoria squinted at him. “We better damn well stay away. That's what.”
Mercer studied the red arrow, turned it over and over. “A taboo. A message. Oh, this is delightful. I love a taboo! I shall record it on the backside of my robe tonight. This makes the whole trip over here much more promising. Something to scribble about. There's nothing like a good taboo to titillate a Londoner over his morning tea.”
Skye was growing restless. “I think maybe we should consider it a threat, Mister Mercer. Someone might have some rather lethal plans for you.”
“Oh, pshaw! This is legend, and legend is my meat! We shall carry on.”
“I think not. You should not take this lightly, sir.”
“Don't be a tiddlywink, Mister Skye. This is grand. I haven't seen the like since a human head the size of my fist was set in my path in the Mato Grosso of Brazil.” He turned to Winding. “Have you an opinion on it?”
“It would be more comfortable if we were armed, sir.”
“But I am armed in ways unknown to you. I know how to deal with all of this. Why, I've dealt with bushmen, cannibals, Zulus, and Lord Admirals of the Fleet. And never had to draw so much as a pocketknife. Here's the secret. We're big medicine ourselves. I make magic. My magic is bigger than their magic, eh?”
He thumped his head and then his skull as a sort of exclamation point or two. “I am the great Wazoo, Moomumba, Atlatl, Kitchikitchi Bugaboo, Lord of the Universe.”
“Wazoo, I ain't going,” said Victoria.
Mercer's smile was all teeth again. “Very well, then. The men will carry on.”
She glared at Mercer.
The explorer mounted his nag, nodded to Winding, and the pair of them proceeded upriver, past the threshold of warning. Skye knew he could either try to protect his client or turn back. There was no stopping Mercer. Uneasily, he climbed aboard the buffalo runner and followed. The women resolutely started their pack animals upriver too.
The going was peaceful enough. Here there was enough bottomland for a river road. Here and there the Missouri was hemmed by great cliffs, often weathered to odd formations, and at these points the trail climbed to the high plain and then down again to the bottoms.
Skye kept a sharp look for ambush, for a glint of metal along the bluffs, or movement around the crenellated rock, or the startled flight of a bird, or a sudden shadow. But he saw naught but silent bluffs and he was tempted to think the warning wasn't for his party. He knew better. He kept his old Hawken across his lap ready for use. But whatever befell them would be larger than a lone man with a lone rifle could cope with.
The river flowed quietly here, the icy water hurrying on its way to the Gulf of Mexico an impossible distance away. He saw an eagle floating above, an osprey, an otter, and something he couldn't identify. The canyon narrowed but a trail carried them to the plains above. The day was utterly peaceful. Mercer was enjoying himself; the thought of doing something forbidden had transformed the man into a daredevil, but also into a sort of invincible, invulnerable purveyor of magic.
They paused at a place where the trail dived downward into the gloomy valley, where the rock changed from chalky to tan, and then oddly blue. The bones were not far ahead. Victoria squinted at Skye.
“Maybe we will walk the star-path together,” she said.
She was saying she loved him and also saying good-bye. This plunge into the forbidden was tormenting her far more than she let on to Mercer or anyone else. Skye saw Mary sitting resolutely on her pony. She had kept her feelings to herself and would go wherever he went, be with him wherever and whenever she could be with him. Hers was utter faith.
He turned to Mercer. “The bones are close now. Maybe a mile ahead.”
“Good. And no lightning bolts have struck us yet, Mister Skye.”
But square on the trail before them was a blue arrow, this one unbroken, erect in the ground, made by the same arrow-maker as the red one. Skye dismounted and pulled it up. Its shaft was a deep blue, a dye not easily found in nature; maybe trading-post dye. It, too, had been fletched with owl feathers.
Victoria studied the arrow and sagged. “I don't know what the hell it means. It means something bad, but I don't know it.”
“Ah! More taboos! More mystery! Skye, old boy, this is getting better and better,” Mercer said.
“It's Mister Skye.”
Mary studied the arrow. “This is an arrow of respect,” she said. “We must honor what we see and maybe the spirits will not torment us.”
“How do you know that?” Mercer asked.
Mary shrugged and turned silent.
Skye didn't know. He thought he would need to know what blue meant to whoever fashioned the arrow. He liked the color. The Blackfeet used it a great deal on their lodges, in their clothing, beadwork, and quilling. For him, blue was the color of liberty. When he thought of himself as a freeman, it was always somehow associated with blue.
“There you have it,” Mercer said. “What does blue mean? Anything. We will be respectful.” He nudged his horse forward, and suddenly they were all descending a rough path down into the shadowed bottoms of the Missouri past layers of blue-tinted sandstone, dropping precipitously, so much so that Skye worried that the travois might topple or twist the ponies off the trail. But soon they were at the river and entering a broad flat south of the water, a delta that had been carved from a tributary canyon and deposited there.
This was the place. Skye recollected it now from his sole trip there years earlier. And he had the same eerie feeling now that he had then, a sense that indeed he was trespassing. It was quiet here, perhaps because no wind found its way into this sunken vault far below the high plains. There was blue sandstone layered up the south slopes, topped with tan sandstone streaked with red. He had the sense that this was an ancient place, one where the river itself was a newcomer, slowly sawing its way downward.
They paused. Victoria pulled up her pony, and Mary did too. They were alert for trouble even without having any real reason to be alert. A great and old serenity lay upon the land. Skye felt a sort of sadness in him, and couldn't say why. Maybe it was because he was about to experience the world's darkness, something in these primeval bones that spoke of blood and ferocity and struggle.
Mercer pulled up too, and Winding.
“This is it?” the explorer asked.
Skye nodded. He pointed toward a far blue escarpment.
They rode quietly across the flat, which was sparsely vegetated with a coarse grass, and came at last to the blue sandstone wall.
“I don't see a thing,” Mercer said.
“You will.”
Skye noted evidence of other visitors. There was a medicine bundle hanging from a stunted cottonwood. On closer examination he found several amulets and totems, each suspended from a limb.
He pointed these out to Mercer. “This is a holy place. This is a place the Indians come to when they are looking for guidance or needing the story of their people.”
“Medicine bundles. Why are they here?”
“They are put there in reverence,” Skye said. “They are offerings to the spirits that live here.”
They dismounted. The horses stood quietly, content to be in this sheltered flat. Skye led them slowly across the flat to the tumble of detritus that had fallen from the blue stone above. The strata were actually layered in stair steps, with the higher strata farther back from the river, and the lower strata closer.
Victoria knew the way better than Skye, and veered left toward a sector where the ancient tributary had cut its own passage through the sandstone.
She began climbing slowly, working past talus that erosion had tumbled from above. She reached a bench that lay at the foot of an overhang that sheltered everything that lay below it, paused, and decided to head right. The rest followed, somehow silent as they approached what amounted to a shrine carved out of a cliff.
Then she stopped, and stretched to the balls of her feet, proudly. The rest caught up and stared at what lay before them. Protruding from the rock was a long skull of unimaginable size, the head of a monster.
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