The Veteran (34 page)

“You spoke, holy one?”

The scout gave him the honorific title reserved for those of great age and wisdom. Where he came from, he could not guess. How he had climbed to these altitudes, he did not know. How he could survive the cold with no covering was not imaginable. Craig only knew that some vision-questers could defy all the known laws.

He felt the presence of Whispering Wind join him in the mouth of the cave.

“It is wrong in the eyes of Man, and of Meh-y-yah, the Everywhere Spirit,” said the old man.

The moon had not yet risen but the stars in the clean and bitter air were so bright that the wide rock ledge was bathed in a pale light. Craig could see the starlight glitter in the old eyes that fixed him from beneath the tree.

“Why so, holy one?”

“She is promised to another. Her intended fought bravely against the wasichu. He has much honour. He does not deserve to be treated like this.”

“But now she is my woman.”

“She will be your woman, man of the mountains. But not yet. The Everywhere Spirit speaks. She should go back to her people and her intended. If she does, you will one day be reunited and she will be your woman and you her man. For ever. So says Mehyyah.”

He took a stick from the ground beside him and used it to help him rise. His naked skin was dark and old, pinched by the cold, with only breechcloth and moccasins to protect him. He turned and slowly walked through the pines and down the track until he was gone from view.

Whispering Wind turned her face up to Craig. There were tears running down her cheeks but they did not fall, freezing before they touched her chin.

“I must go back to my people. It is my fate.”

There was no arguing. It would have served nothing. He prepared her pony while she slipped on her moccasins and wrapped her blanket around her. He took her in his arms one last time and swung her onto the pony’s back, handing her the rein. Silently she directed the pinto to the start of the track downwards.

“Wind That Talks Softly,” he called.

She turned and stared at him in the starlight.

“We will be together. One day. It was spoken so. While the grass grows and the rivers run, I will wait for you.”

“And I for you, Ben Craig.”

She was gone. Craig watched the sky until the cold bit too deep. He led Rosebud deep into the cave and prepared an armful of pine needles for her. Then he pulled the buffalo hide deeper into the darkness, rolled himself in its folds and fell asleep.

The moon rose. The braves saw her coming towards them across the stone plain. She saw two campfires burning below the rim of the gulch where the pines grew and heard the low call of an owl from the fire to her left. She made her way there.

They said nothing. That would be for her father. Tall Elk. But they still had their orders. The wasichu who had violated their lodges must die. They waited for dawn.

At one in the morning great clouds swept over the Beartooth Range and the temperature began to drop. The men round both campfires shivered and wrapped themselves tighter in their blankets, but it was no use. Soon they were all awake, hurling more wood onto the fires, but still the temperature fell.

Both the Cheyenne and white men had wintered in the fierce Dakotas and knew what midwinter could do, but this was the last day of October. Too early. Yet the temperature fell. At two o’clock the snow began to fall like a white wall. In the camp of the cavalry the Crow scouts rose.

“We would go,” they said to the officer.

He was in pain from his ankle but knew the bounty and the capture would transform his life in the army.

“It is cold, but dawn will soon come,” he told them.

“This is no ordinary cold,” they said.

“This is the Cold of the Long Sleep. No robe is proof against it. The wasichu you seek is already dead. Or he will die before the sun.”

“Then leave,” said the officer.

There was no more tracking to be done. His quarry was on the mountain he had seen shimmering in the moonlight before the snow came.

The Crow mounted up and left, heading back across the Silver Run Plateau and down the slopes to the valley. As they left, one gave the harsh call of a night bird.

The Cheyenne heard it and looked at each other. It was a warning cry. They too mounted up, threw snow on the fire and left, taking the girl with them. And still the temperature fell.

It was about four in the morning when the avalanche came. It fell from the mountains and moved a thick blanket of snow across the plateau. The advancing wall hissed as it slid towards Lake Fork, and when it fell into the ravine it took all before it. The remaining men and horses could not move; the cold had pinned them where they lay and stood. And the snow filled the creek until only the tops of the pines showed.

In the morning the clouds cleared and the sun returned. The landscape was a uniform white. In a million holes the animals of the mountain and forest knew that winter had come, and they should hibernate until the spring.

In his high cave, rolled in his buffalo robe, the frontiersman slept.

When he awoke he could not, as sometimes happens, recall where he was. In the village of Tall Elk? But he heard no sounds of the squaws preparing the morning meal. He opened his eyes and peered out from the folds of the buffalo fur. He took in the rough walls of the cave and the memories came back in a rush. He sat up and tried to clear his head of the last mists of sleep.

Outside he could see a white shelf of rock dusted with snow and it glittered in the sun. He emerged bare-chested and sucked in the morning air. It felt good.

Rosebud, still hobbled at the forelegs as he had left her, had come out of the cave and was nibbling at some young pine shoots at the edge of the shelf. The morning sun was to his right hand; he was staring north towards the distant plains of Montana.

He walked to the forward edge of the shelf, dropped to the ground and peered down towards Hellroaring Plateau. There were no signs of woodsmoke coming from Lake Fork. His pursuers seemed to have gone.

He returned to the cave, dressed in his buckskin suit and belt. Taking his bowie knife he went back to Rosebud and freed her front legs. She whinnied softly and nuzzled his shoulder with her velvet muzzle. Then he noticed something strange.

The soft green shoots upon which she fed were those of spring. He looked around. The last few hardy pines which survived this high were each pushing out pale green buds towards the sun. With a start of shock he realized that, like a creature of the wild, he must have hibernated through the bitter cold of winter.

He had heard it could be done. Old Donaldson had once mentioned a trapper who overwintered in a bear cave and did not die, but slept like the cubs beside him until winter passed.

In his saddlebags he found a last portion of wind-dried meat. It was hard to chew but he forced it down. For moisture he took a handful of powder snow, crushed it between his palms till it was water, then licked his hands dry. He knew better than to eat raw snow.

The bags also contained his round trapper hat of warm fox fur, and he pulled this onto his head. When he had saddled Rosebud he checked his Sharps rifle and the twenty cartridges that remained to him, slipped it into its sheath and prepared to leave. Heavy though it was, he rolled the buffalo robe that had saved his life and lashed it behind the saddle. When there was nothing left in the cave he took Rosebud’s bridle and began to walk her down the track to the plateau.

He was not quite decided what to do, but he knew there would be plenty of game in the lower forests. With traps alone a man could live well down there.

He crossed the first plateau at a slow walk, waiting for a sign of movement or even a ranging shot from the edge of the crevasse. None came. When he reached the cleft there was no sign of his pursuers returning to continue the hunt for him. He could not know that the Crow had reported that all the bluecoat soldiers were lost in the blizzard and their quarry also must have died.

He found again the track down into Lake Fork and up the other side. The sun rose higher as he walked across the Silver Run until it was a full thirty degrees above the horizon. He began to feel warm. He went down through the pine forests until the broadleaf trees began and there he made his first camp. It was noon. With springy twigs and a yard of twine from his saddlebag he made a rabbit snare. It took an hour until the first unsuspecting rodent came out of its hole. He killed and skinned it, used his small box of tinder and flint to make a fire and enjoyed the roasted meat.

He spent a week camping at the edge of the forest and recovering his strength. Fresh meat was plentiful, he could tickle trout from the numerous creeks and water was all he needed to drink. By the end of the week he decided he would leave for the plains, travelling by moonlight, hiding up in the day, and return to the Pryors, where he could build a shack and make a home. Then he could ask where the Cheyenne had gone and wait for Whispering Wind to be free. He had no doubt it would happen, for so it had been spoken.

On the eighth night he saddled up and left the forest. By the stars he headed north. It was the time of the high moon and the land was bathed in pale white light. After walking through the first night he camped by day in a dry creek where no-one would see him. He lit no more fires and ate meat he had smoked in the forest.

On the next night he turned to the east, where the Pryors lay, and soon crossed a long strip of hard black rock that ran away on each side. Just before dawn he crossed another one, but after that no more. Then he entered the badlands, hard country to ride but easy to hide in. Once he saw cattle standing silently in the moonlight and wondered at the stupidity of the settler who had left his herd untended. The Crow would feast well if they found them.

It was on the fourth morning of his trek that he saw the fort.

He had camped on a knoll and as the sun rose he saw the fort in the foothills of the West Pryor Mountain. He studied it for an hour, alert for signs of life, the blare of a bugle on the wind, the smoke rising from the troopers’ chow house. But there was no sign. As the sun rose he withdrew into the shade of a clump of bush and slept.

Over his evening meal he thought what he should do. This was still wild country and a man travelling alone was in constant danger. Clearly the fort was newly built. It had not been there the previous autumn. So the army was extending its control of the tribal lands of the Crow people. A year earlier the nearest forts had been Fort Smith to the east on the Bighorn river and Fort Ellis to the north-west on the Bozeman Trail. To the latter he could not go; they would recognize him there.

But if the new fort was not occupied by the Seventh, or men of Gibbon’s command, there was no reason anyone would know him by sight, and if he gave a false name ... He saddled Rosebud and decided to scout the new fort during the night and remain unseen.

He reached it in the moonlight. No unit flag flew from its pole, no chink of light came from within, no sound of human habitation. Made bolder by the silence, he rode to the front gate. Above it were two words. He recognized the first as ‘Fort’ because he had seen it before and knew its shape. The second word he could not recall. It began with a letter made of two vertical poles with a sort of crossbar. On the outside of the high double gates was a chain and padlock to keep them closed.

He walked Rosebud round the twelve-foot-high stockade walls. Why would the army build a fort and leave it? Had it been attacked and gutted? Were all inside dead? But if so, why the padlock? At midnight he stood on Rosebud’s saddle, reached up and locked fingers over the palisades. Seconds later he was on the walkway five feet below the parapet and seven feet above the ground inside. He looked down.

He could make out the quarters for the officers and the troopers, the livery stable and kitchens, the armoury and water barrel, the trade goods store and the forge. It was all there, but it was abandoned.

He came soft-footed down the steps inside, rifle at the ready, and began to explore. It was new, all right. He could tell by the joinery and the freshness of the sawcuts across the beams. The post commander’s office was locked, but everything else seemed to be open to the touch. There was a bunkhouse for the soldiers and another for travellers. He could find no earth latrines, which was odd. Against the back wall, away from the main gate, was a small chapel and beside it in the main wall a door secured on the inside with a timber bar.

He removed this, stepped outside, walked round the walls and led Rosebud inside. Then he rebarred the door. He knew he could never defend the fort alone. If a war party attacked, the braves would come over the walls with the same ease as he. But it would serve as a base for a while, until he could discover where the clan of Tall Elk had gone.

In daylight he explored the livery stable. There were stalls for twenty horses, all the tack and feed a man could need and fresh water in the trough outside. He unsaddled Rosebud and gave her a brisk rub with a stiff brush while she feasted off a bin of oats.

In the forge he found a tin of grease and cleaned his rifle until the metal and wooden stock shone. The trade store yielded hunter’s traps and blankets. With the latter he made a comfortable niche in the corner bunk of the cabin set aside for passing travellers. The only thing he was short of was food. But in the trade store he eventually found a jar of candies, so he ate them for his evening meal.

The first week seemed to fly by. In the mornings he rode out to trap and hunt, and in the afternoons he prepared the skins of the animals for future trade. He had all the fresh meat he needed and knew of several plants in the wilderness whose leaves made a nourishing soup. He found a bar of soap in the store and bathed naked in the nearby creek, whose water, though icy, was refreshing. There was fresh grass for his horse. In the chow kitchen he found bowls and tin plates. He brought in dry fallen winter-wood for his fire and boiled water in which to shave. One of the things he had taken from Donaldson’s cabin was his old cutthroat razor, which he kept in a slim steel case. With soap and hot water he was amazed at how easy it was. In the wilderness or on the march with the army he had perforce used cold water and no soap.