The Yellowstone (13 page)

“The boys want whiskey, Cap.” Skinhead’s voice, calling across the sagebrush.

Mac smiled. Sure, time to celebrate. “Okay, let’s tap a keg.”

Mac and Skinhead walked back from checking the horse guard. Four tents of white canvas gleamed in a row in the moonlight. They looked strange next to the buffalo-hide lodge. Odd, thought Mac—a row, a straight line, was the mark of the white man. Indians lived in circles.

Lord, thought Mac, I must own those tents, too. He found it oppressive.

The wind blew chill—September nights could be nippy. Mac put up his hood and tied his four-hole capote. Skinhead sat down by the fire. The fat man wore only a linsey-woolsey shirt—his insulation was under his skin. Mac felt like going to bed, but the two of them had lots to talk about.

“How was it?” Mac opened.

“I wanna be partners,” declared Skinhead.

Mac nodded. He’d been afraid of that.

“This nigger has did what you did, full shares. He—”

Mac waved it away. “I know.”

“Us two’uns hang out hide and hair together. Same risk—same reward.” Skinhead’s forehead vein looked popped out.

“I’ll think about it.” Mac wanted to be somewhere else.

“I taught you what way the stick floats.” Skinhead was pushing.

“True.”

“You ain’t gonna leapfrog over me?”

Mac sighed. “Doesn’t seem right.”

“So why ain’t you saying yes? Straight off?”

Mac drew a line in the dirt with his toe. He wanted to wait. He didn’t want Skinhead unhappy right now. But he couldn’t go the partners route. And waiting wouldn’t help.

“Skinhead, I want you around. I need you around. But running a business isn’t your piece of meat. Half the time I damn well don’t think it’s mine, and I know it isn’t yours. You’d get a wild hair up your ass and go hooting and hollering off to seduce some woman, and the business would go to seed.

“I’m not sure I wanna grow up. I’m pretty sure you don’t.

“But I want you around. I’ll pay you fine. You’ll probably make more dollars than I will.”

That forehead vein hadn’t gone back in at all. “What do you want this beaver around for?” The tone was only half-resentful.

“Right now I want you to take five of these men back to Union and pay ’em off. I’ll give you a letter. There’s nobody else here I can ask to do a job like that.”

“Mac,” Skinhead protested, “don’t send ’em back. You’re on a roll—let it all ride.”

Mac shook his head no. He knew going against Skinhead’s judgment would make the fat man mad in the long run, but he saw no choice. “Then I want you to find Strikes Foot and invite them in.”

“Cheyennes this child introduced you to!”

Mac ignored it. “Before winter.”

Skinhead heaved breath out. “Not so easy, beaver.”

Mac nodded. “I know. Take presents.” He hesitated. “I’ll give you a hundred-dollar bonus now, another hundred if you get Strikes Foot to come in, and another hundred if he comes in this fall. Tell them they can camp here for the winter if they want. There’s plenty of feed.” The Indian ponies ate the bark of the sweet cottonwood in the winter, and the river bottoms provided plenty.

“Whatever you say, Cap.”

Mac couldn’t tell if the title was sarcastic or not. He stood up and clapped his friend on the back. “Take a couple of days’ rest first.”

He headed for his lodge, the lodge with two women in it. He wondered if that bothered Skinhead, too. Skinhead and a baker’s dozen other hot-blooded men.

Praise Maheo, thought Mac, for Blue. Maheo seemed to be the principal Cheyenne deity, and Mac thought maybe here in the Yellowstone country, for the father of a Cheyenne daughter, the praise was due him.

Blue had the new men up and dragging logs at dawn the next morning. They breakfasted in the half light on jerky and were at work when the sun came up. Blue got a big bay gelding and black mare into the two collars they had and had them pulling untrimmed logs with ropes. Ferry and Dreyfuss were at work as a sawyer team, felling trees with the crosscut saw. The rest of the men were hefting logs more than a foot thick in pairs and carrying them to the site. Blue led by example. He put his big back into dragging logs by himself. The other men were then too ashamed to slack off.

“Pull, you ox,” Lisette yelled, grinning. Blue pretended not to hear. Mac noticed she seemed to appreciate Blue more from a distance.

She was working hard, too, helping Skinhead carry water from the river. It was a hot September day, and they could hardly keep up with the demand. Before noon she had Skinhead carrying a branch improvised into a yoke with two firkins of water.

Mac checked the guard and lookout and supervised and helped Annemarie get dinner ready. Laboring men consumed a lot of food.

Skinhead made a show of trying to pinch the bottom of either woman who strayed within reach. Mac took that to mean his heart was all right, which was damned good news.

Mac laid a rope down and checked the length of the foundation for one wall, marked the rope, then checked its opposite. The same. He measured catty-corner distances. The same. Which meant the walls would be square, and the roof and inner walls would fit.

It was coming along well. The new hands were speeding up the work a lot. A solid and worthy structure, built to last for generations. What would he call it? Maybe Yellowstone House. He liked “house” better than “fort”—he was offering friendship, not war.

While most of the crew was still at breakfast, Skinhead left with the five men for Fort Union. Three hundred miles each way, just a walk to the barn for an old hand such as Skinhead. Getting the Cheyennes to come in might be trickier.

In half an hour the crew was hard at work, and in less than an hour someone hollered out for water. After five more minutes Blue came trotting up to Mac, who was learning to use the adze.

“Where’s Lisette with the water?”

“Don’t know. I’ll bring the water.” Mac took advantage of the trip to the river to splash his face. A nickering sorrel got his attention; something wasn’t right.

After delivering the firkins, he went to the horse herd and looked around. Both of Lisette’s mounts were missing.

He walked back and asked Annemarie when she had last seen Lisette. At bedtime. He remembered he hadn’t been able to lay his hands on his capote this morning at first light. He checked the lodge—Four-Holer was gone.

Damn.

He made his way through the bottom to where Blue was trimming with his double-bitted ax.

“She’s gone,” he said.

Blue looked at him oddly.

“Lisette is gone. With that damned Skinhead.”

Blue just looked at Mac, then stared blankly. And then he drew the long ax back straight over his head and hurled it—
whump-whump
—through the air. Til’s outcry rang across time in Mac’s head.

The ax stuck in a cottonwood trunk, buried to the handle, quivering.

Chapter 17

September, 1844, Plum moon

It couldn’t be Skinhead. He’d be coming alone, or with Lisette in tow, and the column of dust would be a wisp. Or if he was mad, he wouldn’t be coming at all.

Mac couldn’t figure if Skinhead took Little One off out of spite or lust or just craziness.

This column of dust was wide and dark, like a purple curtain of rain seen at a distance across the plains, but gray, and rising instead of falling. He lowered his telescope and looked at it with the naked eye.

Mac handed Dreyfuss the Dolland. “I better ride out to see who it is.” He didn’t say he hoped it was the Cheyennes. Skinhead had only been gone two weeks. Maybe he ran into them along the way and got them to come in. It had better be someone friendly. An entire village passing by wouldn’t bother the white men, but the young braves might have a little fun on their own, including running off the entire herd of horses.

“Your watch over?”

“Yess,” said Dreyfuss, his English littered with thick consonants.

“Want to ride out with me?”

“Sure.”

“Saddle up.”

Down where the crew was working, Mac told Blue to take watch himself while they were gone. They tripled the guard on the horses.

“Skinhead did it!” Mac said to Dreyfuss. Smiling his habitual and enigmatic smile, Dreyfuss put a hand over his ear. Mac hadn’t realized he was shouting.

The village on the move was Cheyennes, Leg-in-the-Water’s Cheyennes. Which meant Strikes Foot and Lame Deer, and lots of fussing over Felice, and a happy Annemarie. Her family. Hell, his own family. In-laws, at least.

He moved the telescope back along the line, the usual parade of men phalanxed in their warrior societies, women and children behind them dragging travois, dogs everywhere, and riders flanked to both sides for protection.

Something odd was sticking up among the warriors—white, on a long shaft, like a shirt on a clothesline. It bore some emblem. He handed the Holland to Dreyfuss. “There’s something queer near the front, like a flag, white. Can you make out the markings on it?”

Dreyfuss looked a long time, then shook his head. Mac put the telescope away.

Strikes Foot. Calling Eagle. Lame Deer. Wagh!

He kicked his horse to a run, across the low hills, through the sagebrush, across the coulee, breakneck toward the Cheyennes. Dreyfuss kept up, but he was bouncing around, just like a city man.

A hundred yards away Mac shot his rifle into the air, and Dreyfuss did the same. A way of going in unarmed, so a gesture of peace.

Mac brought his mare up short and walked the last twenty paces to Leg-in-the-Water.

“Hou!”

“
Hou
, Dancer!”

“Welcome,” Mac said in Cheyenne.

The chief inclined his head. Mac noticed Dreyfuss moving his lips silently, repeating the Cheyenne words. Smart beaver.

Where was Strikes Foot? Ordinarily he’d ride up and greet Mac.

But someone was coming up—Jim, Jim Sykes. Beside a man in a cassock. Wagh! A priest! Here in the wilds of Yellowstone country. And the shaft was a cross bearing a white, tasseled rectangle of silk with Our Lady encircled with stars embroidered on it—the banner of the Blessed Virgin.

Strikes Foot was behind the two of them, his face rigidly proper.

“Father De Smet,” said Jim formally in his mealy voice, “Robert Maclean.”

“Mac,” said Mac, stretching out his hand. He introduced Dreyfuss to Jim and De Smet. Mac wanted to clap Jim on the back, but it wouldn’t be fitting.

He couldn’t stop looking at De Smet. The priest had a powerful aura of vitality. He was a big man, athletic-looking, virile, a commanding presence.

“We’re glad to have you here, Father,” Mac murmured.

Suddenly a commotion behind Mac, sounds of horses bumping and hubbub…

He was halfway turned when it went dark. A damn blanket over his head. He fought the blanket. Someone had his arms around Mac and the blanket. And was giggling. And men were chuckling.

Mac threw himself sideways off his mare and thumped onto the hard ground.

Daylight, rocking back and forth.

Someone shrieked and fell right on him. He threw off the blanket and the person.

Lisette.

Eyes alight, hand over her mouth, spluttering with laughter. “Thought you’d like Four-Holer back.”

Yeah, the damn blanket, it was Four-Holer.

“Oh, lighten up, sourpuss.” She grabbed his head and kissed him square on the mouth.

Mac pushed her away. De Smet was giggling with laughter. Strikes Foot was grinning and shaking his head. “You Frenchmen are strange.”

Mac grabbed Lisette’s face. Her scarred face, full of beautiful, abused, defiant eyes. He dragged her onto his legs and began to whack her petite bottom, hard. She howled, half laughter and half real hurt.

The trading was tricky. The Cheyennes accepted Mac’s presents standoffishly, though he gave plenty and did not make the mistake of showing anxiety by giving too much. The men kept the women away from the wares and acted as if they only wanted essentials, such as powder and lead, not foofaraw, such as beads and ribbon and bells. Mac showed them items and talked deals a second day, and a third, before he struck most of his bargains.

Strikes Foot showed no more enthusiasm than the rest, and around the post he took an attitude of indifference toward Annemarie. But Lame Deer ruled out any such foolishness with a whooping welcome for her daughter and granddaughter. From the first moment, Annemarie and Felice were in Strikes Foot’s lodge playing and giggling and sewing, the baby fussed over by all three grandmothers. It would be all right. The basic fact was still that Cheyennes adored children.

They gave no indication Mac couldn’t be Felice’s father and apparently didn’t give a damn who was.

Mac still gave a damn. He’d even thought of asking Lame Deer and had made up his mind against it. He was going to make himself forget it.

One fine October morning the Cheyennes said they were headed across the river to hunt, to make meat for the winter. It was a splendid autumn day, cool and sunny. Plains, stretching in every direction. High, snow-topped mountain barriers to the south and west. Buffalo dark and thick on the prairies on the north bank, thousands of them in sight.

“Let’s go, too,” Mac said to Annemarie.

The little trading post needed to fill its larder for the long winter. This time they would jerk the meat—in future years they’d have an icehouse to keep it cool.

Mac thought of going off for a few days with Annemarie alone—what else are grandmothers for? But it would be too dangerous, a single pair on the prairie, one riding hither and yon chasing beasts, the other on her knees skinning and butchering. Any passing Blackfoot could count coup on them. So Mac asked Strikes Foot, Dreyfuss, Lame Deer, and Lisette to hunt with him and Annemarie. Mac could have chosen a different woman, but he wanted Lisette within sight. No telling when Skinhead would turn up, or what trouble he and Little One might get into.

She’d made it clear she didn’t intend to talk about why she and Skinhead had run off, or why he left her with the Cheyennes instead of taking her on to Fort Union. Frankly, Mac didn’t care.

Mac was liking Dreyfuss more and more. He was intelligent, spoke little, and was amiable, with a quirky sense of humor. Mac needed a clerk and thought Dreyfuss was the man. Today the pork-eater was going to learn to run buffalo, and skin and butcher them. Then he would be less of a pork-eater, in more ways than one.

Buffalo were slow thinkers, dumb enough to inspire the expression “buffler-witted.” You could get them in a surround and shoot as many as you wanted. You could drive them off a cliff. You could stand downwind and simply pick them off one by one. Today Mac intended to run them. Shooting buffalo at a gallop, alongside, was fun. William Drummond Stewart called it the most exhilarating sport in the world, but then Sir William was a fancy talker.

They sat their horses on a little rise, overlooking the huge herd. It really made no difference where they started. They could ride for days and never be out of sight of buffalo. “We are children of nature,” Mac murmured dryly to Dreyfuss, “and take what the Lord provides.”

“Wagh!” said Dreyfuss with a little smile. The professor was even learning a mountain man’s way of talking, with a German accent.

Mac did wish they had better horses. Strikes Foot was on his buffalo runner, but Mac and the professor rode untried animals. In a buffalo horse you wanted speed to get alongside, agility to stay with the buffalo or avoid it, quick response, nerves that could stand the shooting, and surefootedness on the rough ground. A horse that stumbled would throw its rider into a storm of hooves.

Mac put four lead balls in his mouth and nodded at Strikes Foot. He had told Dreyfuss to watch the warrior carefully at the start. Strikes Foot strung his bow, held it up in one hand, yelled, and kicked his horse toward several cows and calves.

The buffalo started moving, slowly at first. Strikes Foot rode alongside a cow, leaned well out from his saddle, and placed an arrow deliberately, almost leisurely, behind and below the front shoulder. And was immediately ready to shoot again. Strikes Foot had the second cow down before Mac could catch him. A bow was a lot faster than a rifle.

The two of them rode at the great, shaggy beasts, hollered, dashed away a little, and charged again. The herd started to move, slowly at first, the stolid creatures becoming aware of a nuisance. Then more began to trot and more followed, and you could see a great tide beginning to wash across the prairie. Mac and Strikes Foot charged them once more. The leaders were running now, and this part of the herd was moving fast, and faster, and now stampeding blindly across the plains, raging forward like a flash flood.

Mac thrilled to the rumbling thunder of the hooves, the rank, thick smell of beast and dung, his horse at a gallop, the prairie rolling by like waves.

Mac pulled alongside a cow, which veered away at the last moment. He got nearly set on another, but both cow and horse jumped into a wash and upset his aim. He pulled alongside again and finally got a shot. Seemed well-placed.

He kicked the horse for more speed. This was the tricky part. He poured some powder down the barrel, spilling a bit, got some more down, fished a ball out of his mouth, set it in the muzzle, rammed it home, and seated it by whacking the butt on the saddle. These maneuvers were a hell of a stunt on the gallop, but you couldn’t leave the chase—you were right in the floodtide of animals.

Mac heard a shot behind him, and no more. Dreyfuss must have got a cow. Mac looked around and saw Strikes Foot in the melee of buffalo, shooting arrows. Another gunshot behind him—now the professor got the cow.

The race went on. Mac brought his horse alongside several cows and dropped two more, but it was hard work. His mare was fearful and would come close and then pull away.

Suddenly the mare grabbed the bit in her teeth and took off. Around sagebrushes, at a breakneck pace past bulls and cows and calves, into a wash and up the other side at a bound. The critter was crazed—Mac couldn’t control her.

He chose the least of several evils. He reached out alongside her muzzle and pulled the rein hard straight sideways. Head and neck came around, and Mac quickly eased up on the rein—but too late. The mare pitched sideways. Mac went head over heels through the sage.

Mac scrambled to his feet and roared at a bull that was almost on him. The brute veered off. He jumped for the horse and grabbed a rein. Everything hurt, but getting trampled would hurt a lot worse. He got up close to the mare and gentled her. Now the situation looked scarier than it was. Leading the animal out of the thick of things, he took inventory.

His shoulder hurt like hell where he’d landed on it, his face was scraped and bleeding, and his left hand was gashed. The mare limped on her left front foot. Probably they’d both be all right. Pulling on the saddle horn hurt sharply, but he got into the saddle.

Already the hunting party was strung out over a mile. Mac could see several buffalo down, and there must be a couple more. Human figures stood over three of them far back. Strikes Foot had pulled up.

The mare was calmer now. Mac wanted her to get this experience, to learn what buffalo do and don’t do. He mounted and headed her back at a walk.

Mac came up alongside Strikes Foot, and the two of them trotted on to Lisette and the professor. For some reason the skinners were just picketing their horses by a big cow Mac had shot. It made Little One look doll-like.

Lisette showed Dreyfuss how to get the cow’s legs arranged, propped out for stability. Buffalo were so big and cumbersome you couldn’t put them on their backs—you had to start by splitting the hide down the middle.

Lisette put her knife in at the nape of the neck. “Damn,” she cussed, “buffalo skin is so thick you—”

The goddamn critter started getting to its feet. Lisette and Dreyfuss backed off, half-stumbling, unbelieving. The beast charged Little One, horns lowered.

The cow knocked Lisette down, ran right over her, and turned back to do it again.

Before Mac could get a bead, Strikes Foot was in the way. He drove his horse right into the beast from the side. Man, horse, and buffalo went down in a heap, kicking and bellowing. Mac couldn’t get a clean shot.

Dreyfuss bolted forward, stuck his pistol in the cow’s mouth, and finished it.

Mac jumped off and ran for Lisette.