The Holy Warrior (7 page)

“Ah, you be much bettair soon, you bet!” Frenchie was sitting in the rear of the canoe, effortlessly steering the craft upstream with powerful strokes of his paddle. He paddled all day, and when they stopped for camp late that afternoon, Frenchie looked as fresh as he’d been at dawn.

After a quick supper of fish that had been caught by one of the Indians, Knox and Chris rolled into their blankets beside the fire. “Chris—I’m a goner!” Knox groaned. “Thought I was fairly used to work, but I ain’t worth a pin at this paddlin’.”

“You did better than me, Knox,” Chris said gloomily.

“Both you lads will do good,” Con encouraged them, speaking with an optimism that was unusual for him. He tempered it with his usual prophecy of gloom. “ ’Course, we’re probably gonna have bad weather tomorrow—but the good thing about that is that when the storms come, the pesky Indians won’t be out so much.”

Knox groaned and rolled over, hoping to find a position that would ease all his aching muscles at once. “I don’t know about that, Con—but I’m gonna keep up with that fool Indian tomorrow, or die trying!”

“You deed good for first time, Leetle Chicken,” Frenchie chuckled. “You, too, Chris. Every day you do a leetle more. By ze time we get to Cabanne’s Post—that ees on ze Platte—you be in good shape.”

Neither Knox nor Chris believed Frenchie, but the next morning they rolled out, ignoring muscles that screamed with pain and hands that blistered, broke, bled, then blistered again. Each day was a red-haze of pain for both of them, and the incredible boredom of twelve hours of sitting in a cramped position nearly drove them crazy. Day after day passed, and they made more progress than they knew.

By the end of the second week, Chris could sit upright, though he could not paddle a full day. His hands were no longer like raw meat, but had hardened with the beginnings of callouses. He was filling out, too, with stringy muscles on his arms and shoulders. Even the cough that had plagued him for so long was gone. Con noticed that the young man’s face was filling out. “You’re on your way back, Chris. Don’t reckon I’m gonna have the pleasure of makin’ your funeral speech,” he teased, adding, “at least, not till we get to Sioux country.”

Day after day passed, each day making Chris and Knox a
little tougher, a little wiser. He was going to enjoy this, Chris knew. The past few weeks had rekindled a spark inside of him. He could feel his instincts sharpening—and his love for the woods returning—even as his body regained its strength. Some days the group made as much as fifteen miles; other days, when the winds and currents were contrary, not more than three or four. But that did not matter; apart from the sun passing overhead, signaling them to make and break camp, there was no sense of the passage of time. Once they stopped at a little tributary just a few miles south of the Platte. Con knew of a little beaver stream that was thick with beaver, and he took Knox with him, hoping to get the best of him. Chris, already a fair woodsman, was left behind.

“There’s beaver here—see them cuttings and that li’l dam?” They were standing beside a small pond, and Knox spotted a wedge of ripples starting close to the bank. The point of the wedge came toward him and formed a whirling head, then turned and went the other way, sending more tiny ripples running out and whispering along the banks.

Knox followed as Con slipped along the shore, walking softly on the spring mud, keeping back from the water. Finally he found a spot that pleased him and laid his traps down. He leaned his rifle against a bush, cut and sharpened a long dry stick and cocked a trap, and then stepped into the water.

“That’s cold,” he commented. “Snow fed.” Stooping, he put the cocked trap in the water so that the surface came a hand above the trigger. Next he led the chain out into deeper water until he came to the end of it. Then he slipped the stick through the ring in the chain and pushed the stick into the mud, putting all his weight to it. He tapped it with his ax to make sure the stick was secure enough, and waded back to the bank. Cutting a willow twig, he peeled it, and from his belt took the point of an antelope horn.

The odor of the oil inside, strong and gamy, assaulted their noses as the trapper removed the stopper. He dipped the willow twig into the medicine, replaced the stopper, and
put the container back before he stooped again and thrust the dry end of the twig into the mud between the jaws of the trap. The baited end stuck about four inches above the surface of the water. Backing up, Con toed out the footprints his moccasins had left. With his hands he splashed water on the bank, drowning out his scent.

“Wal, that’s all there is to it,” he grinned at the boy who was carefully watching the trapper’s every move. “You take that fork, Knox, and I’ll take ’tother one. Let’s git the rest of them traps set ’fore dark.”

The cold of the stream took Knox’s breath, but he set all the traps assigned to him, and the next day Con took him to run the line. The pond was still, but the stick from the trap Con had set was gone. “Ain’t never had a beaver pull my stick loose—though I s’pose they’s always a first time.” His keen eyes ran over the pond until he found what he was looking for. “There we be.” He led the boy to a clump of willows and Knox saw the end of the chain. Con stooped and seized it, pulling the beaver from the bushes. “It’s a she beaver—in her prime,” Con announced with satisfaction.

The animal crouched down where the trapper had yanked it into the clearing. It did not try to run, but just cowered there, trembling and shivering pitifully. Knox, who had never seen anything like this before, felt a little sick, and was thankful when the trapper killed the beaver.

“Been at work on her leg,” Con commented. Knox saw that a little more and the beaver would have chewed itself free. He recalled how his father had once told him that animals will sometimes save themselves by sacrificing a limb in this fashion.

Con showed him how to skin her, cutting off the tail and slashing the castor glands to remove the oil inside (to replenish his “medicine”) before they went on to the rest of the traps. They got two more, and only when they got back to the camp did Con say, “Took you a little bad, killin’ the critter?”

Knox had a sober look in his eye. “She was so... so...
alive!
Then we came out of nowhere, and now she’s just a pelt.”

Con nodded and said thoughtfully, “Don’t do to think about it too much, Knox. Man’s got jest a few days here to pleasure himself. Don’t do no good to think about the end of the line.”

Chris looked up from the broken trap he was fixing. “That’s what I’ve been saying for the last few years,” he observed. “But it’s a sorry way to live.”

“Wal, you can always go the way your pa went—and that Greene feller. Them Christians all say the best is yet to come—and sometimes I can believe it. Judgin’ by what I’ve seen so far, it won’t be hard for the good Lord to improve on’t!”

The trapping had depressed Knox; he noticed that his brother was also very thoughtful when they all pulled out three days later, burying the hides to be retrieved on the trip downriver.

They sighted Indians on rare occasions—shadowy figures in the distance—as they passed the mouth of the Platte, which Frenchie swore was ten miles wide and two inches deep. After that, progress was slower. The summer heat hit, bringing buffalo gnats, mosquitoes and sandflies. They passed through the Vermillion River country, and two weeks later came to the White River and then to what Frenchie called the Grand Detour—a weird corkscrew gorge in which two of their canoes nearly capsized. Only the weight of their gear stabilized the crafts.

When they were out of it, the party made camp. “Now,” sighed Frenchie, “she get a leetle bit dangerous.”

“Why’s that?” Chris asked.

“Thees ees Sioux country. Bad!”

“Lots of beaver,” Con commented, “but nobody’s had the guts to go get ’em.”

Chris lifted his head and stared at Con, but said nothing. Later he left the camp and walked along the bank, staring at the stars in the summer sky.

“Something’s bothering Chris,” Knox whispered.

“I’d say you’re right,” he replied. Lifting his voice enough so Chris would hear, he called, “Chris, you better not be wanderin’ around like you was back in Boston. Them Sioux is downright hostile.”

Chris acknowledged the man’s warning with a nod, then came and stood beside the fire, his face sober in the flickering firelight. He was silent, but the other men knew that he was struggling to say something.

He looks good,
Knox thought, watching his brother.
He’s filled out and seems strong and well.
But there was a strange look in Chris’s eyes that worried his younger brother.

Abruptly, Chris sat down by the fire. “I’m staying here,” he announced.

The three stared at each other, then back at Chris. Finally Con spoke. “Stayin’ here? What’s that mean, Chris?”

“Means just that.” Chris smiled at their stunned expressions and said, “Leave me a few traps. You three go on to the Yellowstone. You can pick me up when you come back next spring.”

“That’s crazy, Chris!” Knox cried loudly. “Ain’t you been listenin’? This is Sioux country!”

“Boy’s right about that,” Con agreed slowly. “Ah shore wouldn’t want to try an’ make it around them devils.”

They all began arguing with him, but he cut them off impatiently. “I’m staying here. You can’t keep me from it, so just give me what I’ll need.”

“But—why, Chris?” Knox pleaded. “Things have gone so good—here you’re almost well, and we’d thought you’d die. Now why do you want to stay here?”

“Don’t know.” Chris shifted, then shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. “I can only tell you I’ve got to find out what I am. If the Sioux get me, then I reckon that’s the way it was spelled out. If they don’t—why, maybe I’ll get a handle on some things. But live or die—I’m staying.”

Con looked across the fire, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
“Every feller has to go the way his stick floats,” he said. “I’d say you’ve picked a mighty rough way to find out about yourself, Chris, but if’n you make it through a season on these here Sioux grounds... wal, ah reckon there ain’t no quicker way to find out what you’re made of.”

At dawn the canoes were loaded, and Knox stared unbelievingly at Chris, who was standing alone next to the small pile of belongings they had left him. Pulling around a bend, Knox lost sight of the solitary figure, and the tears filled his eyes, blinding him to everything else.

Con was alongside, and he saw the boy bend his head, and he tried to assure him. “Don’t give up on that brother of yours, Knox! I been watchin’ him pretty close, and if he ain’t a first-class trapper, I never seen one. Moves around like a ghost, and that’s about half the secret in Injun country. If’n he keeps his hair, he’ll be a real mountain man.”

CHAPTER FIVE

WHITE INDIAN

Watching the last of the four canoes disappear from sight, Chris was filled with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. He had to fight an impulse to run after them.
Now’s not the time for second thoughts, I guess,
he decided. Instead, he set about moving his gear to higher ground. As he picked up his traps and his other gear and entered the thick grove of beech and oak that grew fifty yards away from the river, he mentally mapped out his next move.

He knew his only hope was to keep his presence a secret from the Indians. It was a miracle they hadn’t spotted him already. As he made his way toward the higher ground, the traps jingled, and he was sure he would never make it. From what Con and Frenchie had told him, the Sioux knew this territory better than he knew the back of his hand. Clearly, his chances of survival were small. By white man’s standards he was an adequate woodsman, but he was only visiting this wild country; the Sioux were immersed in it, as a fish is immersed in a stream or lake. If he wanted to survive, he must to do the same—forget everything he knew of “civilization” and join their world.

That would be difficult—just learning the wilderness lore was enough. At the same time, he was motivated by the fact that if the Sioux caught him, all was over. They were notorious for their cruelty to captives; his one firm resolve was to kill himself rather than fall captive to them.

As he went deeper into the wilderness, he grew strangely
elated, less fearful.
Must have lost my mind,
he grinned as he moved upward through the brush.
Probably going to get scalped by the Sioux—and I just don’t seem to be rightly scared.
Then again, he always had loved a challenge, reveling in competition with other men, just as he had loved to gamble—and this was the ultimate gamble. Everything was reduced to its simplest elements: live or die. None of society’s subtle pressures were important now. And despite his slender chances of survival, he was suddenly filled with the deepest sense of satisfaction he had ever known.

He buried the traps wrapped in a piece of deerskin he’d gotten from Con, carefully obliterating all signs of digging. Before he left, he took a quick inventory of his gear, including a fine bow and fifteen arrows he’d obtained from Bull Man in exchange for his own pistol. Although he was not an archer, Chris was determined to master this weapon, for here the sound of a pistol shot could very well bring his own death as well as his prey’s.

He picked up his sparse store of supplies and moved farther back from the river, in the direction of the small tributary where he’d seen Con and Knox go to trap the beaver. By noon he had scouted the terrain without catching sight of Indians. So he ate a piece of meat, washed it down with the cold water from the stream, and moved back into the deeper woods.
Got to learn to sit still and watch,
he thought, and was startled to discover how difficult it was to sit absolutely motionless for thirty minutes. His muscles grew stiff and it was a struggle to prevent involuntary movements. He’d still-hunted squirrels often, and had learned to stand motionless so long that they’d practically run over his boots. But this was different. Now it was not his dinner at stake; it was his life.

He made a fireless camp that night, finding a natural cave on the crest of a lofty knoll. He could lie in the mouth of the opening and catch a panoramic view of the woods that fell off toward the river bottoms. On the backside rose a sheer bluff of sandstone that afforded good cover from any
approaching enemy. He lay there long after the full silver moon rose, listening to the echoes of a wolf howling down by the river. The peacefulness around him soon lulled him into a dreamless sleep.