The Yellowstone (3 page)

Maybe Mr. Home would give them enough to fend off starvation. Surely he wouldn’t turn white men out on the plains to starve. Jim had spoken of simply taking what they needed but it was idle talk.

What Mac wondered was, if Mr. Home rebuffed them, how were they to go on without powder and lead? Without a loaded gun in the Rocky Mountains, if you didn’t get scalped, you’d starve.

Mac also wondered why there were no lodges here, downriver from the fort. These bottoms were good camping—plenty of water, handsome meadows. Usually there were Blackfeet here, come to trade. Horse herds. Yelping dogs. Raucous children. Now there wasn’t even any sign.

They rounded a bend and saw the cultivated plots. Here the fort provided its staff with a little corn, some parsnips, beans, and even potatoes. The plots were overgrown with weeds, the fences down, the vegetables trampled.

Skinhead glowered at Mac, as though it were his fault, and kicked his horse to a lope. The four trappers clattered along the river bottom and then up onto the bench above the river.

Charred logs. Ashes. A blockhouse tilted onto its side. Most of the palisade lying flat.

Down at the landing the boats were gone.

The trappers rode into the yard of the outpost of the powerful American Fur Company. The fur press was taken away. The rooms—council room, trading room, dining room, quarters, lockup—were all destroyed. The smith’s gear was gone, water barrels gone, trade goods gone.

Skinhead, Mac, Jim, and Til, short of powder and ball, were in a hell of a fix. A mockery more insidious than Mac had imagined.

On the hot, dry breeze Mac heard a weird laugh. Skinhead, cackling. And Til’s high-pitched squeak, a parody of amusement. Even Jim was quietly shaking with laughter.

Mac considered it—the great Pierre Chouteau and the American Fur Company, their asses kicked back downriver. That was worth being in a fix for. Mac joined in the hooting and hollering.

It was an eerie, haunting sound, crazy. Jim opened his dark, Indian arms, taking in all the destruction, the desolation. He issued a mock-plummy cry, “Courtesy of the Blackfoot nation.”

“At’s right,” said a grainy voice in English.

Magpie, from beside the tilted blockhouse. His musket was steady on them. So the bugger did speak English.

The trappers said not a word. Seven Blackfeet stood behind the fallen palisades, surrounding the trappers, with guns on them. From this distance even muskets were deadly.

“You had no enough powder and balls shoot Magpie,” the Blood said. “We have plenty. Off horses!”

The trappers looked at each other.

“Not worry—you don’t shoot Magpie, we don’t shoot you.”

They swung slowly out of their saddles. Mac made up his mind to make a move. Dying by Blackfoot torture was unacceptable.

“Back away!” Magpie barked. Mac stayed within grabbing distance of his mount’s reins, on the ground.

Magpie made a sharp gesture. One Blackfoot, a teenage boy, came forward and took the reins and lead ropes of Skinhead’s horses and led them outside.

“Put down rifles!”

They all did. That left only their pistols. When the boy came to get his horses, Mac would grab the kid and use him as a shield. It wouldn’t work, but he had to do something.

The Blackfeet were easing closer with their muskets, to twenty feet.

“Not be afraid, Skinhead and friends, “Magpie said unctuously, gloating. “We not kill you now.”

Mac glanced sideways at Jim. The Delaware was still—too still. He was about to try something. Mac would be ready. He stepped sideways and put one moccasin on his mount’s rein.

“Magpie know you come to Mackenzie. And know what happen to fort. White men cannot live without powder and ball,” he sang sarcastically. “White men not Blackfoot hunters.”

He drew himself up. “Today we leave you on prairie like Magpie yesterday. No food, no knife, no tomahawk, no gun.” Now he barked, “Put down pistols!”

The trappers didn’t make a move. Magpie nodded curtly at one of his companions.

Suddenly Mac heard the ugly
whuh!-whuh!
of a tomahawk spinning through the air. Til cried,
“Hunh!”
and jerked forward onto his face. The hawk was buried in his back to the handle.

“Put down pistols,” repeated Magpie, “and you live! We leave you here!”

A short, ugly Blackfoot grabbed Til’s hair, made a quick, circular cut around the crown, put his foot on Til’s neck, and popped off the scalp with a plock sound. He turned the body over and started collecting Til’s belongings.

Sick, Mac played along with Magpie. He set his gun in the dirt. Skinhead and Jim did the same. The boy led Mac’s horses away.

From behind, an Indian kicked Jim down. Jim started to jump up and fight, but a muzzle on his belly kept him still. One Blackfoot stripped off Jim’s hunting pouch, his hawk, and his knife while the other held the muzzle in his navel.

Mac put his own possessions on the ground. Skinhead did the same. In a moment everything they owned was gone.

Magpie glared at them, sneering, over the barrel of his musket. He cackled, “Is fair, huh, leave you like you left Magpie? One thing. Magpie Blackfoot hunter, live. You white men, die.”

Chapter 3

Moon when the horses get fat

They buried Til first. Having no shovel, they hefted him down to the river and piled rocks on him. Keep the scavengers off some.

Then they squatted in the shade a few minutes, waiting. Magpie and his gang didn’t come back.

“They buzzarded us,” said Jim at last.

“Picked clean as a burner carcass,” agreed Mac.

Skinhead was too glum to talk.

They put Til out of their minds and took inventory: Each man had his slouch hat, one pair of moccasins, a cloth shirt, a wide leather belt, and an empty scabbard. Skinhead and Jim had leggings made of skin, and cotton breechcloths. Since Mac wore dropfront pants of deerskin, he had more hide, which Jim said they’d need. Jim and Skinhead had hidden knives, Jim an extra patch knife and Skinhead a small dagger. Mac was embarrassed about not having a secret knife. Jim had some line for snares. All three men had extra flint and fire steel—you didn’t get caught in the mountains without a way to make fire. Mac had the lucifers he kept in his
gage d’amour
, the bag for his pipe.

They talked it over. Probably five hundred miles to Fort Union, down the Missouri, all the way through Blackfoot country. Similar distance to friendly Indians like the Cheyennes, with a chance of coming on Crows sooner, and less than half the route through Blackfoot territory. Long chance either way. Not a man wanted to try for Fort Union.

They rummaged through the ruined rooms of the fort and found some empty flour sacks, even some without holes. Skinhead took a couple and headed for the vegetable patch to scavenge. Jim said he had something to do and would be back in a minute to help Mac finish searching the wreckage of the fort.

Mac started hunting. It was hard, at first, to think what might be useful. In the smithy he found some headless nails and picked them up, unable to think how they might help, but…The scrap iron he left.

Jim reappeared looking sweaty, Til’s clothes over one arm. He gave Mac a crooked smile and said, “Too bad his pants are cloth. We need the hide.”

They checked the kitchen and were disappointed. One sack of flour, with a couple of pounds in the bottom. Jim thought flour useless, period. Mac grabbed it. In the storeroom off the kitchen Jim came up with a tin of something—smelled to Mac like a paste of meat.

“Let’s feast, niggers,” Skinhead called.

They hurried outside to see a sack and a half of fresh vegetables. More than fresh—underripe. The beans were embryos. But the potatoes and parsnips were ripe, some even half-rotten.

“This here beaver thinks they left these in the ground since last fall,” said Skinhead, chomping on a potato. Mac and Jim hastily helped themselves. Mac set the tin of meat paste in the middle.

“What’s that?” Skinhead said eagerly, reaching with his knife. “Mmmm. First time I ever ate the booshway’s fancy doin’s.”

“Booshway” was the way they said bourgeois, fort boss.

They ate hungrily, greedily. A feast of meat paste, crunchy potatoes, and tart, green tomatoes.

Mac, realizing it first, dried his juicy hands on his buckskin pants. “Maybe we should back off.”

Skinhead looked at him offended, ready to be outraged. Jim wiped off his own hands.

“Long way to go on not enough fuel,” said Mac gently.

Skinhead opened his mouth to protest but then stopped. “That child’s right,” he told Jim. “Let’s stretch it out.”

They packed up the garden stuff and kept the emptied tin to use as a cup. Jim stuffed a bunch of flour sacks into one sack, saying they’d come in handy. Mac made a thorough search of all the half-destroyed rooms and found one item of value, a tin kettle. It was half-crushed and had a hole on one side, but maybe it would work if, well…He would think of something.

They set out back across the basin of the Judith River, walking the hot dry plains of midsummer. They meant to strike for the Judith Gap, between the Big Snowy Mountains and the Little Belts, hit the headwaters of the Musselshell, and then head south along the Crazy Mountains for the Yellowstone. Not only would they find friendly Cheyennes downstream in Powder River country, they’d have a good chance with the Crows and Sioux. Anybody but the Blackfeet.

This was bizarre. None of the men knew whether he could make it. No one talked about failure, death by starvation. Skinhead said one hungry evening that they should have fattened up on Til. Mac didn’t know whether he meant it. Couldn’t have done it, Mac thought, but Skinhead was probably right.

Mac wondered whether, if one of his companions died, he would be able to eat the meat. He didn’t think he could keep it down.

They soon consumed all the vegetables, even the ones far underripe. Mixing the dough with ash and water, they wrapped it around sticks and roasted bread. Then everything was gone.

Their days fell into clear divisions. At night they traveled, making miles in the safety of darkness. In those cool mountain nights, Mac suspected, he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, not without blankets. He wore a couple of flour sacks for warmth while walking. In the middle of the day they slept. Early and late in the day they sought food.

Some nights they made twenty miles, but as they got weaker, and their moccasins wore out, they covered half that. Skinhead judged it was a couple of hundred miles to the Yellowstone, and that was less than halfway.

Mac Maclean learned fast, looking to find Jerusalem artichokes and eating them gratefully. Likewise rose hips, breadroot, cattail root, red turnips, wild onions, and skunk cabbage. He came to regard serviceberries and chokecherries as manna from heaven.

He acquired new skills. He and Jim prowled through areas of giant sagebrush with long sticks, rousted out rattlesnakes, and smashed their heads with clubs. Mac came to think of the flesh of the rattlesnake as delicate and pleasing, like chicken. Mac even learned to snare prairie dogs. Sometimes they were able to bash sage hens on the head.

It was possible, even easy, to get food, but impossible to get enough.

At first he did not mind the hunger, that constant tug, a nag. He played with tolerating hunger, a game of the mind, and found it bearable. He was pleased by his self-control.

But it got worse. In the foothills of the Little Belts they could find almost no food at all. Sleep became a parade of visions of banquets, kings’ feasts once seen in pictures, imagined from books. After such dreams, waking was a torment.

One dawn they saw magpies feeding on the carcass of a buffalo calf, well stripped. Mac hoped for some edible meat. Skinhead and Jim insisted that the flesh would make him ill, and to get sick now was to die. There wasn’t a thimbleful of meat anyway.

Jim said they should, however, cut off the hooves. With their tiny knives it was hard getting through the joints. As he hacked, Mac nearly gagged on the smell—he knew he couldn’t have eaten any flesh.

Before they slept, Jim rigged a tripod over a small fire, hung the dented kettle with the holey side up, and boiled the hooves. Later, they drank the hoof soup. Then they cut off some thick hide, some sinew, and splintered a bone for an awl. Wearing out moccasin soles frequently, they had been tying new ones on uncomfortably. Now they could sew them on.

Mac’s days were desperation. His pants cut up, he was wearing flour sacks around his legs, to keep the sun off his fair skin, and a sack breechcloth. He felt like a beggar, or a leper, in rags. He no longer thought he would survive. He plodded onward merely from a sense of destiny, a destiny of infinite repetition, then final weakness, then madness, and then merciful death.

On one occasion he sat on an anthill, let the insects run all over him, and licked them off his arms and ate them. And cackled.

Sometimes Jim found eggshells, but here in June they were always cracked and empty, which was maddening.

Skinhead grew more and more silent, monstrously silent. That scared Mac. Jim said Skinhead was only brooding on the vengeance he would bring down on Magpie’s head.

Days passed in a trance. Mac put one foot in front of the other like a machine, his mind wandering to scenes of childhood, especially dinners his mother made in St. Louis. He yearned most for ham and eggs, which he hadn’t eaten since leaving civilization. Memory was more powerful than mountain, and he scarcely saw where he tread. He knew he was walking to his death, one step after the other, endlessly, pointlessly.

One morning Jim spotted a small, shallow pool with a downstream entrance. He planted Skinhead in midstream opposite the pool. Then he and Mac stomped upstream toward the pool, and the three chased a fat female cutthroat trout in. Quick as a flash Jim blocked the exit. Then he flipped her onto the bank, and then farther into the grass.

They boiled her in the squashed kettle and devoured her. Suddenly Mac felt new vigor and knew he could make it to Cheyenne country. Sleeping during the afternoon, Mac dreamt of the taste of that fish, and of trays of salmon, a fish he had never tasted, tendered by formally attired waiters in Scotland.

That evening they caught and ate another cutthroat, but they had to move on. They couldn’t spend much time hunting, fishing, and gathering—time was against them. All three men had lost too many pounds. Skinhead’s fat flesh was now slack, and Mac was gaunt beyond gaunt.

On the plains east of the Crazies they were bedding down for the day beneath some cottonwoods. A buffalo herd was grazing out on the flats. They all looked at it longingly, but that meat was as unattainable as a mirage.

Then Jim said quietly, “We’ve got to try it.”

“Crazy,” said Skinhead.

“What’s your idea?” said Mac.

“Not much. Hoping you’ll have a better one. Tackle a calf, see if we can cut its throat with these little knives.”

“We’re too weak,” said Skinhead impatiently. “We’d get kicked or stomped or gored.”

Jim and Mac ignored him.

Mac had no better idea. Jim said they’d best wait until the heat of the afternoon, when the beasts would be sluggish.

Mac couldn’t really sleep. He dozed and woke, dozed and woke, tormented by incredibly vivid sensations of the taste of fresh meat, of raw liver, of blood—sensations without pictures, ripe in his mouth and nose. Before midday he couldn’t stand it any longer and nudged Jim awake.

Miffed at Skinhead’s skepticism, they left him there, sleeping, and took his dagger.

The worst time of Mac’s life was spent in trying to approach the animals. They spotted several cow-calf pairs on the edge of the big herd. Jim insisted that they move stealthily from downwind, walking down a wash, slipping from depression to depression, and slithering through the short grass to get close. It took a couple of hours. Jim was patient, relaxed, even looked content. Mac was raging with anxiety.

They got a bit of luck. Two cows and their calves, a bull calf and a heifer, were grazing near a sandy wash no more than a foot deep. Jim and Mac eased down the wash as close as they could get. Still, the beasts were twenty feet away, and there was only grass for cover. They lay in the sand, thinking. Mac finally whispered, “Maybe they’ll come this way.” Jim shrugged. They waited.

Suddenly Skinhead came scurrying toward them, crouching, but in clear sight of the animals. Mac glanced at the buffalo, hoping their backs were turned. They weren’t, but the heads were down, and neither cows nor calves seemed to take notice.

When Skinhead got close enough, Mac whispered, “You stupid son of a bitch!”

“We may as well all get stomped together,” Skinhead replied equably.

Jim and Mac talked it over, leaving Skinhead out. Mac was utterly, insanely angry at Skinhead.

They decided not to wait—Mac couldn’t wait. They would watch until all four animals had their backs turned and then step quietly but quickly toward the closest calf. Mac would grab it by a hind leg. He had to make the attempt himself, hold his fate literally in his own hands.

Jim would hamstring the critter.

Since both of Mac’s hands would be occupied, Skinhead took his little dagger back. He would come up after and cut the jugular, he said.

Minutes passed. Mac’s hands were sweaty and he kept wiping them on his flour-sack clothes. He could feel his heart raging in his chest.

Without warning Jim stood up and padded softly forward. The bull calf was nursing, the cow gazing the other way. Mac caught up to Jim, fixing his attention on the hind hock of that bull calf.

Closer. Closer.

Mac dove and grabbed the leg.

The calf kicked. Mac lost his grip.

He lunged and got it again and bellowed for Jim to hamstring it.

The calf kicked hard. Mac felt his fingers pried off the leg and the hoof clipped him in the head. The calf dashed off.

Mac sat up dizzily in the dust. He shook his head, then wiped blood out of his eye. He turned and looked at the bull calf. It was standing fifty feet off, head turned toward them. Its mother caught up, and the two of them trotted away.

There goes my life, Mac said to himself.

In grief, he looked around for Jim. He was running toward Skinhead.

Skinhead had one big paw around the heifer’s leg. She was already hamstrung and on the ground. The mother bawled at Skinhead, hesitated, then lowered her head.

On the ground, Skinhead observed, “She’ll stomp us or she won’t.”

Jim ran toward the cow, shouting and stomping. She dodged. He ran at her again. She sidled away gracefully.

“She won’t,” said Skinhead.

Jim circled, drawing alongside her. Maybe his wonderful agility would save him, Mac thought. Suddenly Jim bolted forward and kicked the cow in the muzzle.

She shook her monstrous, shaggy head, looking confused, and trotted off. Twenty yards away she stopped and bawled. Then she loped away to the other cow and calf. Some animals in the herd were looking toward the commotion. None seemed disturbed.

“That’s why they call them buffler-witted,” Jim said to Mac.

Skinhead was just lying beside the heifer calf with a huge, dumb grin on his face.

“By God, you did both jobs,” exclaimed Mac. Skinhead nodded happily.

Jim knelt beside the calf and opened the jugular with his patch knife. Bright blood pulsated onto the neck, matting the tawny hair. He watched it for a moment. Then he put his mouth to the wound and sucked.