The High Missouri (36 page)

Of course, Ermine Head might kill Monsieur Dylan. In that case Monsieur Dylan was a man of foul spirit too, and the people would be well rid of him.

“Ermine Head has acted with ill spirit toward the people. Toward other young men and women. Toward my family. Toward my daughter.”

White Raven saw receptivity in Dylan’s eyes. He plunged forward now, seizing his opportunity. “It is not your will that Ermine Head should suffer for his actions, but ours. The will of the people and of the spirits. The will of life itself.

“When you raise your arm against him, it is not a personal act. It is not you who strikes down Ermine Head. It is us. It is spirit. It is life.” After a moment White Raven added, “We will merely act with your hands.”

When they stood up to go to the fray, Dylan jingled. His mind was far from the bells, and it brought him up short. He smiled to himself. If he was going to die, he wanted to go out ringing.

Dylan and White Raven stood in the middle of the great circle of tipis, with solemn bearing. Normally the circle would be full of children and dogs playing. Men would be crossing on their way here or there. Women would be sitting outside their lodges, watching the children while they worked on the hides from the recent hunt. The village would be a hubbub of shouts and laughter and complaints and yaps.

The circle was deserted as a graveyard.

Dylan had given White Raven his pistol, loaded and primed. He had his throwing knives strapped comfortably to the back of the brigade jacket. He had his belt knife on his hip. He had a trade knife tucked into his sash in back. He even had his patch knife in the little inside pocket of the jacket, a foolish thing to carry, but like the bells, it made him feel better. He didn’t know how fair a fight this was going to be. He didn’t even know where Weasel Head was. He looked at White Raven questioningly.

White Raven shrugged as though to say, Maybe he’s gone hunting.

Maybe he’s gone to steal some Crow women for Père Noël. Maybe the bastard is holding you in his sights from a tree.

Dylan would wait.

Weasel Head made them wait forever, probably over an hour. Then, suddenly, White Raven coughed softly and looked hard at the far end of the circle, opposite the horns. Weasel had simply materialized there. He was wrapped in a red blanket from eyebrow to toenail. Dylan couldn’t see what weapons he had.

“Wait,” White Raven said under his breath.

But that was not Dylan’s way. That was the way of sneaks and thieves and men of New Spain who fought with knives, and maybe the way of Piegans, but it was not a white-man way, or of a man brave enough to wear bells when he fought. Dylan walked steadily, almost quickly toward his opponent.

Weasel disappeared.

Dylan marched after him relentlessly. He could only be behind a lodge, sneaking and hiding. White Raven followed at a respectful distance. Dylan didn’t want to hear his warnings anyway. He wanted to meet this malevolence head-on and squash it.

A whirl of scarlet.

A blanket falling from a tree limb.

A scuffling sound from the other direction.

Dylan dodged sideways hard.

Weasel roared as he flew by, his knife hand arcing toward Dylan.

Dylan felt the pull on his shoulder and spun and ended on his feet, balanced, ready.

Weasel was grinning at him, also balanced and ready, knife held low. His face was painted in vertical halves, yellow on the left, red on the right. White dots the size of bird’s eggs speckled it. In some eerie way it made him more handsome and more cruel, like this was the appearance he was meant to have, seductive and repellent at once.

Weasel said something low and taunting. He cackled, like this was play. Dylan had decided not to let himself understand any Blackfoot words. There was no need to know anything but what the man’s hands and feet were doing.

Weasel backed away, then turned and walked away from the circle.

Dylan felt his shoulder, and his hand came away bloody. The first charge of the fray had nearly been serious. The thick jacket had saved him from a disabled left arm.

He watched Weasel a moment, and followed.

He supposed White Raven would keep him from getting shot. Or at least shoot the murderer. Dylan couldn’t afford to think about that. Or think at all. He needed his mind for feint, parry, and thrust.

Weasel let himself be seen intermittently. And be heard—he jabbered whatever it was he was jabbering, pointlessly. It was like following a noisy crow that would fly, land on a limb, and caw teasingly at you. But this crow would finally turn and attack.

Dylan walked slowly and steadily after his foe, jingling. He wondered if the jingling unnerved Weasel Head. Weasel led him west, upstream, along the bluffs that faced the river. The bastard stayed close to the bluffs, Dylan well away. He was wondering where Tail Feathers was.

Weasel climbed the rocks and showed himself about twenty feet up. Dylan stood out among the cottonwoods, waiting. He had no intention of giving Weasel an advantage with the high ground. To show his patience, he sat down twenty paces from the rocks and lit his white clay pipe. He got up and moved another twenty paces away and sat. White Raven stood nearby, eyes and ears alert.

Weasel stood and watched and cawed at them. Dylan could imagine the smirk on his face. It would do him no good. Dylan meant to make sure they would fight on level ground, and just the two of them. He was thinking that with self-satisfaction when he heard shouts from the river behind him, male and female cries.

White Raven ran toward the river. Dylan sat and kept an appearance of calm and watched Weasel.

In two minutes White Raven was back with Red Sky and Tail Feathers. The teenager who thought himself a warrior had his arms pinned with a rawhide rope, and Red Sky held the other end of it. Humiliation was splashed all over Tail Feathers’ face.

White Raven said briefly that Tail Feathers had been hiding behind a cutbank with an arrow notched. Red Sky said she’d gotten close to him by walking in the river, and roped him….

Dylan said he would hear the story later. He was watching Weasel fiercely now.

White Raven ordered Red Sky to take Tail Feathers to camp and tell everyone what he’d done. He said a woman would be plenty to march such a sneak and coward into camp, all trussed up.

“They would have shot you with an arrow and then stabbed through the wound to make it look like a knife thrust,” said White Raven.

Dylan just nodded, and waited.

Finally, out of choices, Weasel came into the cotton-wood bottom to have it out. Came in his style, braggadocio.

Dylan disregarded the boasts and the insults. He heard the Blackfoot words, but didn’t connect them into sentences or meanings in his mind. It was easy. He was keeping his mind on that knife and Weasel’s feet. Nothing else mattered.

Weasel sauntered toward him. Went to a tree. Stepped away from it. Until Weasel switched hands with his knife, Dylan didn’t notice that the other hand now held a spear. Weasel grinned maliciously.

White Raven eased away from Dylan. Maybe if Weasel did something that was out of bounds, White Raven would protect Dylan with the pistol. The advantage of a spear to a knife evidently wasn’t out of bounds.

Weasel dashed forward.

Dylan stepped behind a tree, and Weasel sent up a caterwaul of mockery.

Dylan didn’t know if the bastard would throw the spear or try to get close enough to thrust it. The hoop-and-pole game stuck in his mind. They didn’t throw the sticks—they thrust them.

Dylan didn’t mean to give the bastard a throwing target anyway. But maybe if he did, he could get the spear.

He stepped into the open, his eyes on Weasel’s feet. He would have to set his feet to throw hard. The feet didn’t move.

In slow, drawn-out Blackfoot, Dylan insulted Weasel. He deliberately did it white-man style because the Piegans didn’t use these sorts of insults. He said Weasel’s mother was a dog. The best part of Weasel ran down his father’s leg, Dylan said. This was a battle of wits, and Dylan claimed to be surprised Weasel came unarmed. Weasel didn’t seem to react to any of these taunts. The bastard waited.

Dylan thought of one good Piegan insult. He shouted out that Weasel’s real name was One-Unable-to-Marry. Weasel had no relatives, Dylan went on, or at least no Piegan would admit remembering he carried the same blood as Weasel.

Now the weaselly man came forward, sidewise, approaching his quarry obliquely.

Dylan’s throat vised. When he told himself this was what he wanted, an end to the matter, the spasm eased a little.

Weasel slipped his knife into his belt and reached into a rotten place at the base of a cottonwood. His arm came back with a shield made of buffalo hide. Which would do damn well, Dylan admitted to himself, at deflecting thrown knives.

Now Weasel came on more confidently. Dylan stood his ground. He didn’t think Weasel would throw the spear. Too much chance of losing it.

Dylan was going to have to get in close to cut his enemy. How would he get inside that spear point?

No, he realized. Not close. He stuck his belt knife into his sash, and put his right hand on the hilt of one of his throwing knives. He kept his left hand down. Didn’t want to give away his plan.

He thought of White Raven’s words: Not your hands, but ours.

That felt good. This man’s life should be ended. Life itself would strike the blow, with Dylan’s hands. Good.

Weasel circled. Dylan thought he was uncertain. Good.

Weasel circled. Dylan faced him.

Weasel circled.

And charged.

Weasel thrust the spear, but Dylan was already in the air, kicking the spear away, kicking the shield, kicking Weasel.

But Weasel didn’t go down.

Somehow Dylan was jabbed. When the spear jerked out, he fell heavily on his back.

He tried to roll to get up, and felt the agony. His inside right thigh, next to his balls.

He slapped at the spear. It raked his side.

He was on his back, the pain roaring, and he couldn’t roll, couldn’t get up, and now Weasel would come.

He sat up, both hands to his shoulder blades. Weasel smiled the smile of triumph.

The right-hand knife whisked toward Weasel’s groin.

The shield started down to block it.

The left-hand knife socketed in his throat.

It pierced to its handle, its point up.

Dylan vomited.

He looked at the wound on his inner thigh. It was bad. The flint spearhead had gone in at least an inch and been jerked out.

Then he saw the bright red blood pumping out. Pumping, then dribbling, then pumping again.

He knew what that blood was.

He was going to die.

It was all right. He had let the force of the people, or of life, flow through him. He rode that force to his death.

His eyesight glazed. He fell back toward the earth. The last thing he heard was the tinkling of his bells.

Chapter Thirty-Two

It was a thin and distant wail, a melodic arc singing no human scale, repeating and repeating, infinitely repeating.

He wondered if he was hearing the music of the spheres. On his way to hell.

But, no, he was being touched from time to time, touched in some sort of rhythm with the music, and he needed to pee.

It was clear, absolutely clear, that he couldn’t move. Immobility was a new and permanent condition of his life, like sinfulness. He couldn’t get up to pee. He let go where he lay. After a moment he heard a hollow sound that told him he was squirting into something.

He took a chance and let his eyes open.

Swirling impressions. Half darkness. Flickering shadows made by a fire. Hands. An ancient face. Thin and distant singing.

He passed out.

Hands on his leg. Something wet and cool on his inner thigh, like river mud.

A dry cloth wiping his wet forehead.

Oblivion.

The music again. Odd, illogical music, a soughing of the wind or voices, he couldn’t tell. It came to him that he was hearing the music of the other side. In his case it must be devil music. He smiled.

The music stopped. A voice murmured. The devil welcoming him to hell. He tried to think of something witty to say, and felt his lips moving clumsily, and heard a bestial sound from himself.

Two or three voices making sounds that were not words. Speak English, you devils, he thought to himself.

A cool, damp skin wiped his forehead and his face, and he realized he was feverish.

It was the strangest human face he’d ever seen. Very old, with webs of cracks, like the old porcelain his father had. Wizened, shrunk, full of hollows. Toothless. Hair black and thick as a young person’s. Eyes deeply recessed, black and fathomless.

It leaned forward, and he saw the foot of a big bird of some kind, perhaps an owl, thonged tight against the collarbone. If there was a person connected to the head, it was kneeling between his legs.

Then it opened its mouth, and he saw widely separated teeth, like splayed fingers, behind the lips. The maw opened, and the head bent toward his groin.

Panic fluttered him into unconsciousness.

Sharp pain brought him awake. The head was still between his thighs. Hands were holding his arms and legs down.

Pain again, and he bellowed.

Hands rose from between his thighs, and he saw a flake of obsidian with blood on the edge, and maybe pus mixed with the blood. His mind was better now—he knew pus and blood for what they were.

The ancient face was smiling. He knew now that it was the face of a woman, a very old woman.

Hands with skin thin as parchment brought a piece of bone, like a whistle, to the wrinkled lips. Her lips smiled at him, but her eyes were black and fathomless still. “I must suck the poison out,” her lips said.

Her head bent to his groin, and he floated away in pain.

Soon he heard from between his legs the sounds of spitting.

It came to him that she spoke the words in the Blackfoot language. All the words he’d been hearing were in the Blackfoot language. He smiled at himself. Speak English, you devils, he’d ordered mockingly. Or French, the language of fashionable demons.

He turned a quarter of the way over. His groin screamed when he moved. Then it throbbed. The only escape was sleep.

It was raining hot water. Unbelievable—it was raining hot water. He felt it on his face, his chest, which must be bare, his arms, his naked belly and groin and legs.

The thin, distant wailing again.

Drops again, almost too hot to stand.

He didn’t open his eyes—he was too scared. He was among devils. Or Piegans. He chuckled evilly. Piegans and devils, the same thing.

Her name was Owl Claw, she said. She wasn’t kneeling between his thighs now, and that was a relief. Cree was sitting beside him. He felt very lucid now, even able to understand Owl Claw’s Blackfoot words.

She had a friendly but businesslike manner. She had labored several days against the foulness in him, she said, and now he was stronger than it. The foulness had made him hot and sweaty and cold and clammy, it had taken over his mind and made him crazy, but she had purged it.

She was folding things into hide wraps and putting them into a parfleche. Dylan supposed this was her medical kit, and he was glad to see the instruments of torture go away. Actually, he knew it was her medicine bundle, a collection of sacred objects that should be looked upon only with profound reverence.

As she stood, he looked at the owl foot thonged against her ancient neck. Owl Claw, he thought. This must be the woman Red Sky—his wife Red Sky—said she must see to decide her future. He wondered what this medical doctor could tell Red Sky.

She said she’d come back to see him this evening and left. Red Sky left with her.

Dylan looked around. Cree was still sitting next to him, looking at him. Looking at him fondly, perhaps.

“You’re going to get well,” she said.

Dylan nodded. He said, “Tell me exactly what Owl Claw did to me.”

Yes, she would tell him while she spooned broth into his mouth.

It was maddening. He was up against taboo again, against some Piegan custom where you weren’t allowed to know what was happening, or to admit you knew what was happening. Like you were supposed to pretend your mother-in-law wasn’t there, like you neither saw nor heard her, and certainly couldn’t speak to her. Like you weren’t allowed to know what was in a medicine bundle, and if you saw some item by accident, you were not supposed to look upon it or ever acknowledge you knew it existed.

The white people pretended ladies didn’t have legs or wear undergarments and got with child by divine intervention. Indians thought all of these pretenses beyond belief. They only pretended they didn’t have mothers-in-law, and made impenetrable secrets of healing methods, and diligently obscured the nature of their relationships with spirits that were only imaginings anyway.

Regardless, the story was that Owl Claw lanced his infected wound repeatedly with a piece of obsidian, used an eagle-wing bone to suck the pus out, spat out the poison, poulticed the wound with herbs and other substances known only to her, bathed him with cold water to keep his fever down, sprinkled hot water on him with a buffalo tail or by blowing through the hollow bone of an eagle wing. That was the practical part. The mystical part was that she blew the eagle-bone whistle over him, made the wing and head and body motions of her spiritual helper the owl, and sang magic songs to cast out the devils, songs given to her in visions.

Sorry, but Dylan was in an impatient, white-man mood. Now that he knew all was hidden behind veils of mystery, he didn’t feel like contemplating the magic Owl Claw worked, or even hearing any more about it.

But he was grateful. He didn’t doubt that the old woman saved his life. He felt most glad to have that life. He was not done adventuring.

It occurred to him that he didn’t know what he wanted. The only answer he could think of, immediately, was that he wanted what he felt at that dawn on the hill above camp, when he’d read Byron all night for the first time, and he watched the sun rise, and he knew things in a way beyond what thinking could help you know. It was like hearing the music that was always playing but not always audible, and feeling the miracle within it.

Or he wanted to swing again on the bell ropes, and soar up and down, and be inside the peals.

He thought about Ermine Head being gone to the sand hills, as the Piegans put it. His body would be up on a scaffold somewhere, protected from the birds only by a blanket, drying in the sun and wind, sightless, unable to hear, powerless to feel the rising sun or hear birdsong, to taste meat or feel the touch of a woman, or even to feel the warm winds and cold winds that would sough and sigh and whip and bluster and blast and finally turn that body into desiccated scraps.

Dylan felt very good to be alive.

He said so to Cree.

She put the bowl and the spoon down and took one of his hands in both of hers. She leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead.

“Do you know what Cree Medicine means in our language?” she asked him.

Dylan shook his head no. He was getting tired, but it was good to feel her hand, to hear her voice.

“I am named after one of my grandmothers,” Cree said. “This was a grandmother who had no children.” Cree took a deep breath and let it out. “Her sister was Owl Claw’s mother. The way of this first Cree Medicine was to live without a man, as Owl Claw does. She had strong dreams, and many animal spirits came to her to offer their power. She was revered among the people, as Owl Claw is.

“One of her powers was to make the medicine of love. If a young man asked her, she gave him a song that would charm his beloved, persuade her to stand in his blanket with him, or go to the willows with him. Or she could carve a love flute that would make music to enchant the girl.” Cree smiled mischievously.

Dylan was sleepy but attended carefully to Cree’s words. He felt her touch and her care as a refuge.

“This kind of medicine, the power to make people love, we call Cree Medicine, because we used to get it from the Crees. It is a special feeling, this love, and sometimes a madness. Most of us bind ourselves to a man or a woman out of affection, but not this kind of love. It is power, brings either fortune or misfortune.” She fumbled for words. “It is power, is grand but dangerous.”

She bent over and kissed him lightly on the lips. “When I was born, Cree Medicine was a very old woman. My father asked her to choose my name. The honored people among us choose names for the newborn. She gave away her name to me. She told my parents the name would be fortunate for me, that I would feel this love and it would not make me mad. She also said I would be Cree Medicine in myself, that I would find a man who would be especially blessed and empowered, and I would love him….” His wife paused thoughtfully. “She also said that something about me would enchant a man and make him want me.”

He felt her hand get a little tense.

“I always knew that Ermine Head was not for me. Our fathers matched us when we were young, before I started the moon-bleeding. Often it turns out well to be matched with a man you respect and who treats you well but you feel only affection for. But I knew my medicine set me out to feel something grand. So I knew Ermine Head was not the one.”

She sighed. “I defied him. I provoked him. I was insolent to him. He was right to beat me. I deserved it. But,” she said, “I was trying to put an end to that marriage so I could go on to my calling.

“When we were kidnapped,” she went on, “I was glad. I knew the right man was not in our tribe. When I first saw you, I did not know you are the man. But when you sat down to talk to Red Sky and me about escape, I began to understand your heart. The day you told us the story of the day you rang the bells, I knew completely, thrillingly.

“I also saw that you were small-hearted for the time being, made sad by something. I heard that you had a child and no woman, that your woman died, and another child. You never spoke of this, but others told me. I knew you thought you could not yet love me, or any woman. But I knew I possessed the gift that could heal you, that had the power to revive your spirit, the Cree Medicine. This is the gift I bring to our marriage.

“My Cree Medicine is my way, my power, and now our power. Others are different. Each person has his way, his power.” She got an odd look in her eye. “The first woman of this name. Owl Claw. Red Sky. Each follows her own medicine—there is no choice.

“From the beginning I saw that you wanted me, and I saw that you fought against it. But I am Cree Medicine, and I felt the power of it. I knew you would take me for your woman, that you would love me. That is my power.”

She kissed him dryly on the lips, as she knew he liked in his white-man way, with a hint of lingering.

“Perhaps you don’t know even yet how much you love me, but I do,” said Cree. “It is the gift I bring to you, this Cree Medicine. It is a dangerous thing, and an ecstasy.”

When Dylan stopped sleeping most of the time, on the second evening, he realized he hadn’t seen Red Sky. He asked Cree where she was. With Owl Claw, Cree said, and changed the subject.

When he asked again the next evening, Cree expanded her answer to, “With Owl Claw, mostly in the sweat lodge.”

He wondered why the two women would sweat repeatedly. That normally meant getting purified for other ceremonies or deeds, but he knew of no ceremonies women would be purifying themselves for at the beginning of winter, not the beaver ceremonies, not the sun dance ceremonies, not any. He told himself that where Red Sky was concerned, there was no use asking because there was no understanding.

The next day, when Cree said Red Sky had gone to seek a vision in the traditional way, Dylan knew for sure there was no understanding. Women didn’t go on vision quests. Even men did not go in the winter. Exasperated, he gave up struggling to understand. He had Cree in his robes, and despite his injury, she was beginning to feel good again, and that was enough.

In four days Dylan was up and walking around and feeling chipper. He tired easily, though, and joked to Cree that Owl Claw had sucked not only the pus, but the strength out of him. Cree’s reaction told him he shouldn’t make that sort of joke.

Instead she brought up the subject of gifts to be made to Owl Claw. Normally, three horses would be about right, she thought. But Dylan needed to be seen as a generous man in the tribe, as all leaders were generous men. So four horses.

Dylan pointed out a little testily that he didn’t have any horses. Cree shrugged. He would, after he did some trading. And she would tell everyone that he would trade tomorrow morning. He started to protest. Rubbish, said Cree, you can trade sitting down.

She had another subject to bring up. Ermine Head’s family was finished with grief for now. They accepted what had happened, or accepted as much as they ever would. Shaking Plume had forbidden them firmly to seek revenge, and Cree believed Dylan was safe. But he was never to mention the event to the people of this village, much less boast of it. If ever he counted coup’s, he was not to mention his fight with Ermine Head. Her tone indicated that was all, and enough said.