The Yellowstone (27 page)

Chapter 17

Plum moon

“I’m sorry,” Smith said.

Jim Sykes did not repeat those white-man words. He had left such words to white men all his life. He thought the body of his friend Mac Maclean, laid before the eyes of his wives, was enough.

Lisette walked to the body on the litter. She knelt in the dust of the courtyard, touched the place on the right breast where the wound was, and touched the hairline. Then she kissed the forehead lightly.

“Who?” said Annemarie, rigid where she stood, her voice soft and quaking, yet thunderous.

“Owen Mackenzie,” said Smith.

Jim saw that Smith’s head hung. Because he had gone off with Owen to fight, and that fighting had started this terrible pageant of blood, Smith felt responsible—shamed before his mothers and grandmother. This shame was something else Jim did not accept from white-man ways. A man did what he thought best and did not judge himself by what he couldn’t foresee.

Calling Eagle and Peddler came hurrying out of the trading room. Calling Eagle’s hand shot up to cover her mouth. Peddler came forward slowly. Jim saw tears flowing down his plump face.

“Tell the rest of it,” said Annemarie.

Smith hesitated.

Jim spoke steadily. “They killed Thomas, too, and took away his head. We made a scaffold for the body.”

Said flat, just like that. Thomas had turned against his father and should not be buried in the cemetery of Yellowstone House. He was more of a Cheyenne in the end anyway—that was Jim’s judgment. Annemarie nodded slightly. She understood and accepted.

“I’m sorry we were too late,” Smith said numbly.

Jim and Smith had tracked Thomas, tracked him right to Mackenzie’s camp. They had been less than a quarter mile away when they heard the shots, three quick ones, and then no more. They had come on in cautiously. In the dark they couldn’t see who was who. Then a rider galloped off into the night. Soon they found the youngster, whoever he was, shot in the throat. And then Thomas, headless. The marks left where Thomas was dragged from the river led them to Mac in the shallow water.

Jim spent twenty minutes pumping water out of Mac’s lungs, to no avail.

The next morning Jim put the pieces together from the signs. It was not difficult. Thomas had been shot by a pistol, the caliber too small for Mac. Mac had been shot by a heavy rifle, and only Owen had one. The kid was shot by Mac’s pistol, and there could be only one reason to take Thomas’s head.

Jim and Smith brought Mac home. There would be plenty of time for Owen Mackenzie.

They buried him on the bench above the fort, twenty feet from Skinhead and Blue. The autumn sky was opalescent, the wind still, the people numb. The little group—Annemarie and Lisette, Zach and Felice, Christine, Calling Eagle, and Peddler—all huddled together against the evening chill. No sound scratched the twilight but the crunch of the spade as Jim and Smith took turns digging the grave. Annemarie said words could wait until later—she would get Black Robe, Father De Smet, to speak some when he next passed, the right words.

Jim sniffed. De Smet had insisted for twenty years on saying the wrong words. Though ever cordial to Mac, he had never stopped insisting that Mac give up his second wife. Jim didn’t think the priest knew the right words.

Jim and Smith also used the spade to set the little head marker chiseled by one of the workmen, a blank of cottonwood stating simply:

ROBERT BURNS MACLEAN

“Dancer”

1819–1865

Annemarie said she was setting Mac a little away from Skinhead and Blue so his family could surround him later, his two wives, his four children. Coming from a woman of the Cheyennes, who normally formed a new family immediately, that remark touched Jim.

Zach hoisted Christine and carried her down the hill to the fort—she liked to walk, regardless of her palsy, but she was slow, and everyone felt the need to be inside by the big fire. On the way she played her ocarina, the one gift from her father she loved. She stayed in the alto register, where the hollow, fluting notes sounded dark and haunting.

As the burial party wended its way downhill, Jim Sykes dropped back. A pitiful little group it seemed from above, freighted with grief, its frail and pathetic song lifted by a crippled girl. He looked out over the plains of the Yellowstone country. Yes, he thought, it is the best buffalo country in the world, a place of perfection. What is wrong is what white men have brought to it. Themselves.

It was the glummest dinner Jim could remember—not just because of their grief for Mac, but because he would normally have sparked the fun at meals. The entire crew of Yellowstone House was at the table—hunters, domestics, blacksmith, and the rest. Ironically, the table was abundant with good food, not only fresh meat and fowl, but corn, beans, and tomatoes, the gardens of Yellowstone House were flourishing.

After dinner they sat in the council room. Annemarie tapped a keg, and everyone sipped at one of Mac’s good brandies. Lisette doodled at the clavichord Mac had found years before. Peddler stood up.

“When Mac sent me to Virginia City,” he said, “he asked me to see the acting governor and get his help to have the bounty taken off Thomas’s head.” Peddler let that sit a moment. “And something else. I was to ask the governor to arrange for entrance to Dartmouth College for Smith.”

No one knew what to say. Smith looked confused.

“It is done.” Peddler stepped across and handed Smith a telegram. “Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is for Indian boys. It is free. Mac deposited plenty of money in the Bank of St. Louis for living expenses for five years.”

Crinkling the telegram in his hands, Smith said halfheartedly, “It’s too far.”

His mother looked hard at him. “This is what he wanted. You will go.”

Smith looked at the telegram. It said he was welcome, and that the best time to start would be this autumn.

“You have time to get down before the river freezes over,” Annemarie said firmly.

Smith nodded.

“Besides, you love that stuff—science,” Annemarie said.

Suddenly Lisette struck a big chord on the keyboard. “I say,” she cried out, “let’s dance! What would Mac want to do? Dance!”

It seemed to Jim a dumb idea, a levity forced when everyone was miserable. But Lisette started banging out something, one of maybe three tunes she knew, and Annemarie extended her hand to Smith, and they began to dance. In a moment Valdez, his wife, and the two cooks, Crow women married to hunters, joined in. The smith struck up a fiddle. Lisette gave way to him and made Jim dance with her.

He danced. He swigged at the brandy. He danced some more. He flirted with both Mac’s wives, and both his daughters. And both the cooks. He lifted Christine clean off the ground and jigged a few steps with her. She giggled uncontrollably.

Jim even danced with Calling Eagle. The old woman, well, would-be woman, was wearing her infinitely knowing look. And before long Jim was happy—not forced happy but really happy, and no little drunk. He felt good. He felt liberated. He felt rip-roaringly ready to have a good time. He even slipped into one of the small rooms and had a quick good time on Valdez’s wife, Guadalupe. Valdez didn’t seem to notice. What the hell—women were in short supply. So Jim danced with Valdez. He danced over and over with Annemarie. He danced and drank till he couldn’t make his legs work and lay on the floor laughing at himself.

And he didn’t feel a bit guilty. “Bye, Dancer,” he said to himself, and passed out.

Chapter 18

October, 1865, Dust-in-the-face moon

Smith and Jim found the three women, Annemarie, Lisette, and Calling Eagle, where Guadalupe said, in the pantry, putting food into parfleches for the trip to Fort Laramie. Smith asked the foolish question, “What are you going to do?”

“Kill Owen Mackenzie. Ourselves.” As she said it, Annemarie gave her son a brook-no-back-talk look.

“My God,” Smith said. Even Jim was taken aback. Sometimes these women were white, and sometimes very Indian. Jim thought of a day twenty years past, when Skinhead warned Mac seriously that the women of the tribe he was marrying into were willing torturers.

Calling Eagle smiled a little at her grandson. “I killed a man before you were dreamt of,” she said. Jim watched her big, capable hands stuffing the bags with containers of pemmican, like sausages. He believed it.

“You can’t,” said Smith. “Let us.”

“You,” Annemarie said pointedly, “are leaving for St. Louis tomorrow.” In fact, Smith had built a bullboat today. Peddler would be going with him as far as Fort Union. “And we can. We will send you word. The message will be waiting at the Planter’s house in St. Louis: ‘Deed done.’”

Smith just shook his head.

“Owen Mackenzie will let me close,” Lisette said easily. “Plenty close.”

“Jim,” asked Annemarie, “will you do us a favor? Take care of Yellowstone House for us.”

Jim added it all up quickly. He understood. He nodded.

In the thinning light of October three squaws walked through the gate of Fort Laramie and went to the trading room. One was big as a sizable man, ageless as the prairie, with a weather-seamed face and work-gnarled hands. She carried herself with a certain pride, and some of the hang-around-the-fort Indians looked at her with deference, but the guard paid no attention.

The two others, one tiny, stood to the rear while the big one traded for sugar and coffee. They kept their faces deep in their blankets, so the clerk did not see their features. Nor did he wonder about them. Trade complete, the big one asked in Cheyenne if the clerk knew Owen Mackenzie.

The clerk sniffed out a laugh. “Everybody knows He Who Leaves His Enemies Headless.”

He did not notice the big woman’s reaction to that name, a flicker quickly controlled. “Where is he?” she asked evenly.

The clerk looked at the squaw, wondering why an Indian would ask after Mackenzie. Well, he decided, that’s what you got when you were half-red nigger yourself. He said the half-breed was a scout guiding patrols, in and out of the fort every day or two.

Annemarie, Lisette, and Calling Eagle walked back to the Lakota encampment where they had pitched their lodge. They talked little, for there was little to say.

Each evening Lisette, Little One, stood outside the fort, wrapped to her eyes in a blue blanket with four vermilion-circled bullet holes. She wet the folded edges of the blanket with whiskey, for she wanted to stink. She looked pitiable, and all too vulnerable. Several times rough-looking young white men approached her with libidinous gleams in their eyes. She simply shook her head firmly—and waited. No one else paid her any mind. Another whore, an unpredictable one. Nor did anyone pay any mind to the tall old woman who sat against the wall of the fort nearby.

On the fourth evening, in the early dark, a big scout wandered near the tiny squaw, slaking his thirst from a tin cup.

“Owen,” said Little One.

Mackenzie stopped. He came over to her, looking down from his height to her tininess. He had some difficulty making out her features. When he was sure who she was, he gave his roguish grin.

“I want to be with you,” Lisette said.

The big man looked at her curiously. Then he laughed softly. “I don’t want to be with you.”

Behind him Calling Eagle was ready, but she didn’t have to act yet.

Lisette made a lewd suggestion. Owen studied her face. It looked to him drawn, tense, abusable. Something appealed to Mackenzie—who knows what? Perhaps he wanted another triumph over Mac Maclean. Perhaps he merely felt lust. He nodded, once.

Lisette led the way to the willows a hundred yards off, not looking back. Owen watched her, intrigued, anticipating. He did not look behind him.

Little One walked in her measured way a few yards into the willows, turned to Owen, and dropped the blanket. She was wearing moccasins, leggings to her knees, and nothing more.

As Mackenzie eyed her nakedness, he felt heat rise in his loins. He started lowering his woolen trousers.

Annemarie Maclean waited until his trousers were halfway down. Then she stepped up softly behind him, raised her father’s heavy sheep-horn cane with both arms, and hammered Owen Mackenzie in the head.

Mackenzie staggered to his knees, lowing like a cow.

Calling Eagle grabbed him and jammed an oily rag into his mouth. Another outcry would not have been noticed anyway.

Calling Eagle took a knife out of her blanket and held it up in Owen’s face. Mackenzie was conscious, and frightened, eyes wild as a horse’s in a barn fire.

Calling Eagle had sharpened the boning knife well. While Annemarie and Little One held Mackenzie’s arms, Calling Eagle made a careful incision all the way around his penis and his scrotum. Then slowly and carefully, she pared them off.

Mackenzie’s eyes glazed at the beginning of this surgery and did not change. He moaned low two or three times. Calling Eagle held Owen’s genitals in front of the castrated man’s eyes, then rubbed the bloody mess in his face.

Mackenzie did not pass out. Good, thought Annemarie. He’s strong—he’s showing us he can stand this torture for hours and hours. Well, we will use his strength to make him hurt and hurt and hurt before he dies.

Hours later, when Owen Mackenzie was beyond feeling pain, they severed his head from his neck.

Chapter 19

December, 1865, Big freezing moon

Lisette fooled Jim. Of Mac’s women, she seemed to grieve the most passionately, but she also seemed the least forlorn. Annemarie was so listless all fall and winter Jim worried about her. Christine, usually plucky, virtually stopped making the effort to walk and withdrew into morose silence.

Just before Christmas, on a bitter Montana night, Jim finally touched Lisette in a suggestive way. She touched him back, and he thought they were headed to his quarters for a rousing hour. But she took his hands and held them, looked him in the eye, and said, “Later.”

The next morning she asked him to make a midwinter trip to Fort Union to get supplies for the spring rise of the Yellowstone. That’s when he knew for sure the women did not expect him to play the part of Mac’s brother and take the family to his own bosom. Maybe Lisette wanted sex, but no more.

Jim did enjoy watching her get the affairs at Yellowstone House sorted out. It took months. First she got Zach Lawrence to realize Yellowstone House belonged to her and Annemarie, not to him. Before Thanksgiving Zach started building his own post on the Boulder River with Lisette’s backing, taking Felice there for good. Lisette also persuaded Annemarie wordlessly that she had a life at Yellowstone House. And instead of trying to haul Christine’s mind through the gates of numbness back into the world, Lisette stood aside and let Peddler and Calling Eagle do that slowly. Calling Eagle told her coyote stories, and Peddler showed her how to train a dog to do crazy tricks, including many of Punch’s.

The business part of Yellowstone House was less trouble for Lisette. She let the Company know that she was running the post, and that her credit was as good as Mac’s. Deciding the post must be made a major way station for gold-seekers, she invested two decades of savings in expansion. Jim acted as her right-hand man, making the necessary trips to Fort Union and Fort Benton.

Jim came back from Union in early March, during a warm spell. The plains of the Yellowstone country were bare of snow, the cricks were on the rise, and the air felt warm as spring. Some of the hands said this was just a chinook, and in a week the country would be ice-blasted again. Jim said nothing, but he knew it was an early spring. He could smell it—when the grass began to grow again, the country smelled kind of ripe.

Lisette was making a special dinner, splurging nearly the last of the post’s tinned vegetables on a go-away feast. Annemarie and Peddler were taking Christine on a trip to St. Louis, the palsied girl’s first venture out of her home country. Everyone was thrilled to see how excited she was.

Jim had something special to add, a letter from Smith, written from St. Louis. It was the first word from him since he left.

After dinner, over pie made with canned peaches, Lisette read Smith’s letter aloud to everyone. After an account of his downstream journey, Smith ended his letter with good news.

Robert Campbell continues to be a great good friend of our family. When I mentioned my interest in science, Campbell introduced me to a naturalist here. This man has gathered specimens of the plant life of the prairies of Missouri and Kansas, and he is classifying them and drawing watercolor pictures of them with a view to publication. I’ve spent a week with him, assisting in minor ways, and have learned how to classify plants according to genus and species. And I can tell you this: I have now come to believe that the white man’s science is the most beautiful and powerful medicine in the world. In it rests the power to transform human life. My goal at Dartmouth will be to master science in a small way, and its application to healing as well as I can. And then I shall return to you and minister to our people as a physician. The best thing that has happened to me since I left you is this perception of high purpose. It fills my every day with a special hope and makes me relish the future.

Yet my single great sadness is that I will not see you for several years. It is impossible for me to think of passing so much time without touching you.

As Jim was drifting off to sleep, Lisette came slipping onto his pallet naked. At least she said it was Lisette—she wouldn’t let him light a candle. They enjoyed each other in the utter darkness. Then she slipped out of bed, lit the candle, and let him see her tip to toe wearing only a crooked little smile. She still had a marvelous body, small but exquisitely shaped. Jim reached out and put an affectionate hand on her hip.

“So you didn’t guess,” she murmured.

“Guess what?”

“I was afraid you had seen.” She moved his hand to her belly. Jim began to count months in his head—yes, it would be more than halfway.

“Mac left me this gift. I’m with child.”