The Last Crossing (16 page)

The trail emerged from the trees; the party turned towards a slough where a stand of bulrushes poked through the snow.

They were heading directly west, into the low-riding winter sun that was stoking the frost particles hanging in the air with a stabbing brightness. He pressed the cat skin hard to him, giving thanks to his medicine for sending the blinding light into the eyes of the men at his back.

The bowmen were leaping their ponies through the high drifts, splashing snow, making trail. Potts tucked at his reins, slowing his horse, forcing the four Crow behind him to check their ponies to stay at his back. The bowmen were gaining ground on them fast, drawing farther and farther ahead.

He and the riflemen rode into the cat-tails; the dry stalks and leaves brushing their leggings made a low, sinister hiss. His ears strained for the sound he expected to come any moment. He took his hand out of his shirt, slid his forefinger into the trigger guard of the Henry carbine. The cold metal burned like fire.

Above the hiss of the rustling stalks he heard the click of a hammer cocking and flung himself from the back of his pony, crashing blindly into the cat-tails just as a rifle cracked and a bullet whined overhead.

He floundered to his knees amid a tumult of Crow war cries, flicking the lever of the Henry and firing up into the bellies of his enemy’s horses. A pony reared, hooves tearing sky. The rider fell an
arm’s-length from him. Still on his knees, he shot the Crow twice, his muzzle so close to the man’s chest that the barrel flame made the jacket burn and smoke.

Scrambling to his feet, he plunged through the bulrushes. A gut-shot pony spun in a crazed circle, blood spraying from its wound, sewing red beads on the snow. The whirling horse presented its rider’s back and Potts fired a single shot between the warrior’s shoulder blades.

He stumbled through the snow, chopping aside the bulrushes with his rifle barrel, chasing his nervous horse, snatching at the trailing reins. His fingers were about to close on them when he heard a bullet whistle over his shoulder. Swinging around he came face to face with a twisted, screaming red mask, with glittering, terrified eyes; a boy fumbling to jam another shell into the breech of his One Shot. Potts speared him in the ribs with the barrel of the Henry; the jolt snapped his finger down hard on the trigger and cast one more Crow into the darkness of The Without Fires.

He flung a glance over his shoulder and saw Broken Nose charging him, his pony trampling down the dry stalks in a storm of fluff, Broken Nose ducked low in the saddle, his breechloader aimed along the pony’s neck. Potts shifted his side to him, making a smaller target of himself, and cranked another shell into the chamber of the Henry. The war pony was coming at him hard, heaving through the heavy snow like it was swimming a fast river, the bulrushes tossing madly.

Broken Nose fired. There was a little gasp of fizzling flame in the mouth of the barrel and then it thumped and exploded. Potts stood his ground as the Crow brandished his gun like a club. When Broken Nose was almost on top of him, he snapped three shots off so quickly they ran together as one, lifting the Crow out of the saddle just as if a spirit hand had snatched him up by his long, wild hair.

He stepped aside and let the pony gallop past him. It was bound for the three bowmen who, summoned by the gunshots, had just topped a ridge two hundred yards off.

The power swelled in his chest, knotted in his throat. His cat medicine had caused Broken Nose’s carbine to misfire, had kept him safe
in the shimmer of a cold, radiant day. Today, no man’s hand could harm him. He shouted up the hill to the stupefied Crow, mocking them in their own tongue.

One of the Crow gave a despairing cry and loosed an arrow. It fell far short of him, the range was too great for a horn bow. Potts slowly, deliberately raised his rifle, and the Crow and the riderless horse wheeled, disappeared behind the brow of the hill.

With their going, he felt an insistent urge to make water. His urine rushed out of him, steaming in the frigid air, filling his nostrils with the smell of his own body, the smell of fear departing him in a cloud of steam.

A quick cut, a foot braced to the corpse, a sharp tug, and the hair ripped free. The blood froze dark to the blade of his skinning knife. He fashioned a bundle of bulrushes and draped it with the scalps. The stalks bent with the weight of his trophies.

When he rode into the Blackfoot camp on the Marias chanting his victory song, the people poured out excitedly from their lodges to heap insults on the Crow hair. Everyone but Mary, who turned back into their teepee when she saw what he waved aloft.

Strikes the Enemy at Night had given him a new name that day, Bear Child, because he had fought like a grizzly, clawing to pieces those who were foolish enough to attack him, snapping their bones in his powerful jaws. Around and around the village Potts rode as the warriors angrily shouted that the Crows must be punished for their evil tricks and lying ways.

Potts could feel his spirit sinking. With every round he made of the camp, the anger was passing out of him just as the fear had passed out of his body when he had made his water. All he could think was, Why does Mary shame me? Refuse to sing my bravery? His eye continually drifted to the door flap of his teepee that hung closed, a silent rebuke to him.

Although he wanted to be part of no more killing, he rode off with the rest of the Blackfoot warriors. They caught the Crow camp on the move, a straggling column hurrying to reach the safety of their own land and kind, making a panicked rush through the winter
dark, the butts of their travois poles slashing the pale skin of the snow.

It was a great slaughter. The Crow fought a stiff rearguard action, but bit by bit they were forced to give way. By the dozens, their broken bodies lay strewn on the plain. The coyotes and prairie wolves restlessly paced the horizon, howling to taste the freshly killed meat.

Nothing between him and his wife had ever been the same after that night. How could Mary forgive him for riding through the blue dusk, for seeking to turn even more of her people into shadows? How could he forgive her for betraying his honour, for refusing to celebrate his bravery?

For a long time neither spoke of it, the wound slowly turning bad, festering. One night when he was drunk, full of resentment, the bitter taste of buffalo gall sour at the root of his tongue, he had taunted Mary, asking, “If I die, will you keep the custom of your people, chop off a finger joint for me? Is Jerry Potts worth a finger joint to you?”

For a moment, she stirred the ashes of the fire with a smoking stick and then replied, “And what am I to call you now? Jerry Potts or Bear Child? What do you wish to be, White or Kanai?”

She knew his secret. He wanted to be both and could not pardon her for reminding him of the impossibility of it. For another year they floated in a wider, deeper silence. Then Johnny Healy proposed that Potts go to work for him supplying meat for the crew that was to build Healy’s big fort at the junction of the St. Mary and Belly rivers, in the very heart of Blackfoot country. Mary said she would not live in the midst of Crow-haters. He must not do this work for the white man Johnny Healy.

“I will,” he said.

“Then it is time for me to return to my people,” was her answer.

Burying his fury, he only smiled and said, “Do as you wish.”

Before Mary left for her father’s country, he had presented her with many gifts, bolts of calico, coils of brass wire, tea, sugar, jars of marmalade, a hundred weight of flour. He said to her, “I will not have the Crow say my son and wife came to them because I could not feed them. In a little while, you will think of how good life was in my lodge and bring Mitchell back.”

Mary did not bring Mitchell back. The leaves of the poplars yellowed and blew away, every morning a thick pelt of frost lay on the grass. Winter drew down and Potts sulked in his lodge, day after day drinking cheap “Indian whisky.” All that winter it seemed to him the sun was reluctant to rise in the morning and hurried out of sight as fast as it could, as if it was ashamed to be seen.

Spring came and still he loitered about Fort Benton, waiting for the Crow to come in to trade. They came, but there was no Mary, no Mitchell. The days were soft and sunny, the new grass light green. It would soon be time for him to leave with Healy and the bull train full of tools and supplies.

Be no more divided, he warned himself, then he saddled his horse and rode off. In a week he returned to Fort Benton with two new wives, Panther Woman and Spotted Killer, daughters of Sitting in the Middle. Blackfoot wives who would remind him with every word they spoke that he, too, was a Blackfoot, a Real Person. Good women who would help him settle the confusion in his blood that Mary had stirred up.

The rasp of someone moving through dry grass shakes him out of his thoughts. Turning, he sees Panther Woman approaching, a strong, squat girl in a man’s hat, a battered Trilby.

“Three riders coming,” she tells him. “Hairy Faces.”

Careful not to frighten her, he only nods. But he wonders why white men ride out to his camp. Two days ago he had gone on a spree in Fort Benton, nothing of it remembered. When the whisky gets hold of him, he often quarrels with the whites because of how they look at him and what they say. They call him Chamber Potts and laugh. They call him Mormon Jerry because he has two wives. He cannot remember, but maybe when he was drunk the other night he gave some white blowhard a lesson. Maybe the white man and his friends are coming to take revenge.

He gets to his feet and follows Panther Woman up the path worn in the river bluff by his horses. When his spacious teepee painted with the red grizzly cub comes into sight, he is filled with pleasure. A man who owns such a lodge, who owns a herd of a hundred horses, who
carries the name Bear Child, who has taken a dozen scalp locks, is a man of consequence. Let the white men see him as he really is.

The grey of the morning is almost gone. Spotted Killer is hanging thin strips of venison on the meat rack to dry in the sun.

In the distance, Potts sees three riders making little puffs of dust. Two ride strangely even for whites, bobbing like bull boats attempting to cross a choppy river. Spotted Killer hangs the last of the meat and joins Potts and Panther Woman. Spotted Killer tugs the blue calico dress he bought for her in Fort Benton into place, shapes it with her palms. He knows she is proud to welcome visitors in her fine new dress. Panther Woman straightens her hat.

Potts recognizes one of the horsemen. Custis Straw, on his big chestnut gelding. The others he does not know. But if they come with the horse dealer, they mean him no harm. He returns the pistol he has been holding behind his leg to his belt, and walks out to greet his guests.

CHARLES
Mr. Potts is hired and I am jubilant. No more excuses for Addington. The prospect of our departure after a few days of preparation invigorates me. It also causes me to reflect upon my missing brother’s deficiencies. Simon always had a weakness for madcap, pious schemes but, if it were not for Oxford, he might have restricted them to England and safer ground. It is the university I blame for sowing those romantic seeds in him that sprouted his ridiculous desire to uplift the Indian.

Oxford, “home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!” Matthew Arnold is not my cup of tea, but he certainly proved to be Simon’s favourite sugary, tepid beverage. Impossible loyalties, indeed. A very apt description for my brother’s willingness to sacrifice himself for primitives who never asked for his help, or could be improved by it.

I often think the university has ripened more mush-headed fruit than the rest of England’s orchards put together. Addle-headed dons and tutors jabbering bosh. Simon, a prime candidate for the catatonia induced by that “sweet city with her dreaming spires …” Dreaming so deeply as to be incapable of wakening to reality. The most preposterous dreamer of them all, Sir Henry Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine. Simple Sir Henry toddling off with the Prince Consort, uxorious Albert, on his grand tour of North America. And the good doctor insisting that he must visit the Indians to investigate
their habits, customs, and condition. Having had his wish granted, it seems Dr. Acland discoursed at length to a conclave of chiefs and supernumeraries upon the history, beauties, wonders, and wisdom of the doctor’s great alma mater, and concluded his peroration with a hearty invitation for any of those assembled to call upon him at Oxford the next time they happened to be in the vicinity.

How absurd, if the consequences had not been so disastrous for Simon. Once back home, Dr. Acland inaugurated his famous series of lectures, “The Myth of Hiawatha,” talks lavishly illustrated with his sketches and artifacts, and zealously attended by many Oxford boobies. Simon was among those entranced by Dr. Acland. Being of sounder mind, I eschewed this weekly entertainment, despite my brother’s entreaties.

A year later, word began to circulate that an individual arrayed in moccasins and deer hide had made his appearance at Dr. Acland’s house on Broad Street, announcing himself to the dismayed housekeeper as Dr. Acland’s good friend, Oronhyatekha. I could not contain my hilarity on hearing the story of how the doctor, summoned posthaste by the terrified domestic, was informed by Oronhyatekha that the professor’s description of Oxford had so filled him with a burning passion for learning that he had prevailed upon his tribesmen in Upper Canada to raise a collection for his journey to the seat of knowledge. Presto, he had arrived with exactly four shillings and a ha’penny in his pocket!