Beauty for Ashes (11 page)

And they were thinking of adding two Crows to the party.

“I'm losing track of white,” said Sam.

In his buffalo robes through the night, Sam pondered on all of it. He didn't know. But he had to get the eight horses for Meadowlark.

 

“F
RIEND
.”

This was Blue Horse, with Bell Rock and Flat Dog right behind him, squatting at the open door of the tipi.

Sam drained his coffee. Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing were already out and about. Sam was lingering over the last of the coffee—he'd grown fond of the sweetness.

“Welcome.”

“We have an invitation for you.”

They came in and sat.

Sam waited.

“Would you like to be a Kit Fox?”

Sam really didn't know what the Kit Fox club was all about, or the other two main men's clubs, Knobby Sticks and Muddy Hands. They acted as police for the village, and in warm weather made war parties. He did know that almost every Crow man was a member of one club or the other.
If you want Meadowlark…

“Yes, thank you. I am honored.”

“Then you must spend today in the lodge,” said Bell Rock. Sam knew the club lodge well, an oversized one. “First we must teach you a song.”

The words were simple, but the feeling behind them was big:

Bell Rock's voice was passion, with strains of melancholy.

“It is the way of the Fox,” said Blue Medicine Horse. “We are made to die.”

“Old age is an evil, bedeviled by many ills,” said Bell Rock, in the tone of a ritualistic statement. “A man is lucky to die in his youth.”

Sam suppressed a smile. He suspected that this ideal was like chastity, honored more in word than deed.

“Sing with us,” said Bell Rock.

All four men lifted the song to the smoke hole and up to the sky.

The three Crows sang the words as though they were sacred. Sam did his best to bring conviction to them. He was willing to risk his life for his family, but he damn well didn't intend to die. The words “I want to live” rolled over and over in his head, tumbling with “I want to die.”

They sang the song, and sang it again, and again.

At last Bell Rock was satisfied. “When you're finished with Paladin come to the Kit Foxes lodge.”

Sam led Paladin to water first thing every morning.

“It's a big day,” said Flat Dog. For once the joker seemed excited.

Lots of men milled around outside the lodge. Blue Horse, Flat Dog, and Bell Rock came to Sam immediately. “You may come in,” said Bell Rock.

And just like that, without ceremony, it was done. Sam's mind teetered a little. Am I becoming a Crow?

He corrected himself.
When I marry Meadowlark, our children will be Crow. And white. Both. So I must be Crow
and
white.

The inside of the lodge looked ordinary, but the men did not. Red Roan and others wore the gray or yellow-brown hides of kit foxes as capes. Younger men carried long staffs, either straight or hooked, wrapped full length in otter skins, and otter skins also hanging from the shafts as decorations. Some of them had painted their faces, one side red and the other yellow.

“We'll explain everything,” said Blue Horse. “For now just go with Flat Dog.”

Instead of the usual seating pattern, a main circle around the fire pit with others seated behind, there were three clusters of men in the big lodge. Bell Rock went to one, Blue Horse to another, Flat Dog and Sam to the third.

They sat with the youngest group of men. Several looked at Sam oddly. He was the one man in the lodge, he supposed, who hadn't been born Crow.

“Blue Horse sits with the Little Foxes. They're second oldest. Bell Rock is a regular Kit Fox.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “That either means they're too old, too lazy, or too smart to do the fighting. They pick us young guys for that.

“We are the Naughty Ones,” Flat Dog went on. “We're younger, and we're not supposed to be able to think for ourselves.” He smiled slyly. “They actually assign older men to us to do the thinking. To humor them, sometimes we act like kids and play games. It's fun. Until it turns serious.”

Sam watched for a few minutes. Some of the older men were consulting. Aside from that, everyone just seemed to be gossiping. “No meetings all winter?”

“The clubs get going in the spring.”

“What's the purpose of today's meeting?”

“To choose leaders. For the summer action.”

As though Flat Dog's words were a cue, two of the oldest men got up, carrying tobacco-filled pipes in their left hands. Some younger men joined them. These groups went to two young men of the Little Foxes, particularly good-looking fellows, each of them. An older man presented each of them a pipe. Each chosen man took the pipe and smoked it ritually, first offering smoke to the four directions.

“Those two will be the leaders until cold weather comes again,” Flat Dog, “or as long as they live. In war they go first.” He sighed. “Luckily, neither of them refused the pipe.”

Sam soon saw what this meant. Next two old men approached other young men with pipes. “They are asking these men to be the straight staff bearers.” Flat Dog nodded at a man carrying a straight staff, also wrapped in otter skins and about three feet long.

Since one of the two was a Naughty One, Sam could hear what was said. The older man spun the pipe in a full circle and offered it to the young man.

Instead of taking the pipe, the young man looked the older full in the face and said, “Please do not bring me this responsibility. I'm afraid I'm weak. I might flee.”

“The bearer of a straight staff,” whispered Flat Dog, “is expected to plant it in the ground at the first sight of an enemy. Then, no matter what happens, he must make a stand there and not run away. If a fleeing friend pulls the staff up for him, then he may run. Otherwise he has to stay and fight.”

The older bearer of the pipe then offered it to another young man.

This man also declined the honor. But the pipe bearer did not take no for answer easily. He presented the pipe again and was again refused.

Now a younger man began to harangue the honoree. “Smoke the pipe,” he urged. “You're a brave man—smoke it.”

“That's his brother,” Flat Dog said softly.

A third time the pipe was presented, and a third time refused.

“You're the right age to die,” the brother went on. “You're handsome. All your friends will cry. Your family will mourn, they will fast, they'll cut their hair. Everyone will remember your courage.”

The pipe bearer offered the pipe the fourth time, holding the stem directly in front of the honoree's mouth.

“This is the last time they'll ask,” Flat Dog said.

The honoree looked at the pipe but didn't take it.

“He's afraid to die,” said Flat Dog.

Abruptly the brother reached out, pulled the young man's head down and forward by his hair, and forced his lips to the stem.

“Now he must smoke,” Flat Dog said.

The young man smoked.

“He thinks that if we encounter enemies,” Flat Dog said, “he is sure to die.”

Another young man, one of the Little Foxes, had accepted the pipe and was smoking.

“Ten altogether. Two who go in front,” said Flat Dog, “two straight staff bearers, two crooked staff bearers, two who come at the rear, and two who must be the bravest of all.”

During the smoking, which took a lot of time, Flat Dog explained the duties of each of these club officers. The front and rear men weren't marked by any special insignia, and their jobs were simply to lead and bring up the rear. The straight staff men had to sink their staffs into the ground the moment they spotted the enemy and make a stand there, not retreating. The crooked staff bearers had the same duty, except that they were allowed to run back a little before making their stands. “Those who are the bravest of all,” Flat Dog, “must throw their lives on the ground. Because of that, they get to pick their food first at any feast, and eat before others begin.”

Sam knew that among the Crow, warriors got killed far less often than their stories suggested. Even one death was a cause for the whole village to mourn extravagantly. He itched to know the odds of survival of a season as a club leader, but dared not ask.

Suddenly the pipe was put in front of Flat Dog. He looked up into the face of the pipe bearer, then quickly across at his brother. Blue Horse nodded.

“I am a Kit Fox,” Flat Dog said in a tone of sincere recitation. “I want to die. But I must say no to this pipe for this season. Blue Horse and I plan to go with the white men on the beaver hunt.”

A murmur swept through the Naughty Ones.

The pipe was proffered a second time, a third, and a fourth. It seemed the bearer held no expectation of a positive answer. Each time Flat Dog said a quiet no.

The Naughty Ones buzzed with the news, and many of them looked at Flat Dog and Blue Horse with surprise or amusement, admiration or disapproval.

Flat Dog didn't look at Sam.

Sam didn't know what to think.

During the next couple of hours two or three young men did refuse the pipe successfully. As far as Sam could tell, this was no great shame.

At last all ten leaders were chosen. Each of the staff bearers now carried a bare stick as a symbol of his leadership to come. The straight staffs were peeled poles of pine tapered to a point. The hooked staffs had the same body, with willow limbs tied to the top and curved.

Finished choosing their leaders, all the Kit Foxes marched out of the lodge. First came the two who go in front, then the straight staff bearers, then the drummers. The rank and file, including Sam and Flat Dog, came next, then the most brave of all, the crooked staff bearers, and the rear ones.

They paraded through the camp, singing several Kit Fox songs. People came out of their tipis to watch. The families of those chosen darted back into their tipis to fetch otter skins, or offered their neighbors something in trade for the skins.

Flat Dog told Sam, “We can't quit dancing until they come up with one whole skin to cover each staff.”

After many songs had been sung, they sang the one Kit Fox song Sam knew—

He joined in enthusiastically, sending the words up to the sky over and over. He wasn't sure what they meant, but he swooned into them, and in a certain way meant them.

Then everyone went to their lodges. Blue Horse fell in with Sam and Flat Dog. “The men honored with staffs, at their parents' lodges a man will come who has carried that staff in the past. He will sew the otter skin on. Then they will all come back out dressed in their best clothes. Kit Foxes who have done well with the staffs in the past, they'll come up to these young bearers. Maybe they'll take the staff and smoke with it. Then they'll say something like, ‘When I carried this staff, I killed an enemy,' or ‘When I carried this staff, I went straight through the line of the Head Cutters and they weren't able to touch me,' and wish the new bearer the same good fortune.” “Head Cutters”—that was the Crow name for the Lakotas, the ones the white men called the Sioux.

At his lodge Sam invited Blue Horse and Flat Dog in to eat.

They helped themselves from the pot outside and sat by the fire inside.

“Let me understand this,” Sam said. “You've fixed things so I have to take you with me on the beaver hunt. Right?”

The two brothers smiled at him. “Exactly right,” said Flat Dog.

 

S
AM WAS PONDERING
things the next evening when he heard some scratching at the bottom of the lodge cover. The Crow young men played a game Sam thought was rude. They'd sneak up on the lodge of a girl they fancied at night, when she was sleeping. Then they'd worm a hand underneath the lodge cover and grope the girl, if possible in a private place. A touch meant victory.
No girls in this lodge,
thought Sam. And right now he regretted that.

A hand edged under the lodge cover. He started to whack it hard. Then he saw a feminine hand. A hand he knew.

He reached out and touched Meadowlark's fingers. She turned her hand over—yes, he knew this palm—and offered him a pouch. He picked it up. It was a medicine pouch, and beautifully beaded with the tiniest beads made. It was gorgeous.

He grasped the hand, but it slipped quickly back under the cover. He heard a giggle and quick footfalls.

He clutched the pouch to his chest.
She loves me.

Also, he now had a pouch for medicine that would always remind him of his real name, Samalo, or Joins with Buffalo. He would tie up a swatch of matted hair from a buffalo head and keep it in the pouch.

Suddenly he was filled with good thoughts. Maybe this whole thing was going to work out. Meadowlark loved him—she would wait for him. Next summer, with Blue Horse and Flat Dog's help, he would come back to the village like a hero, eight horses in hand, or more.

Meadowlark's parents had thrown a glove on the ground.

Sam took up their challenge.

B
LANK
. E
MPTY
. M
OUNTAINS
well off to the west, mountains well off to the east. Big river in the middle, with desert scrub all around it.

No sign of the brigade.

Sam was sure his count was right, or close. It was April 14, or maybe a day or two later. The phases of the moon, full, half, and new, had made it easy to keep track of the weeks on his counting stick. Sixteen weeks and a day since they left Ashley on the Platte.

Sam looked around. Desolation in every direction, including his heart.

Memory: Last June he went ahead alone, with a promise to meet Diah and Fitz and the boys where the river got deep enough to float. He waited eleven days. They never showed up.

Then his imagination ran wild. They were all killed by Indians. They got lost and would never find their way home. In this vast, apparently endless landscape, desert horizoned by mountain followed by desert and again horizoned by mountain, a man could never find his way home. There was no such place as home, not anymore, not for the men who came out here to hunt beaver.

On the twelfth day he'd set out downstream for the settlements. He had only eleven lead balls left, and so would seldom be able to hunt. He wasn't sure whether this river was the Platte or the Arkansas, whether he would hit the Missouri four hundred miles above St. Louis or the Mississippi three hundred miles below it. In other words, he was good and lost.

He damn near starved to death. He got captured by Indians who would have tortured and killed him, except for Third Wing. He got caught in a prairie fire and survived by hiding in a buffalo carcass with Coy. After more than two months of wandering, he stumbled into Fort Atkinson.

Maybe in the end, the reality had been wilder than his imaginings.

Here he was again, waiting for a brigade that didn't come. He looked around at his five friends, Gideon, Beckwourth, Third Wing, Blue Medicine Horse, and Flat Dog. Coy, too, panting there in front of Paladin. Sam felt a throb of gladness next to his pang of fear.

This time coming over the South Pass had been easy. Mid-April, mid-March, an entirely different story, new grass instead of deep snow and howling winds. They crested the continental divide, came onto the headwaters of the Sandy, a pathetic stand-in for a river, and followed it here to the Siskadee. All the way they looked for sign of Ashley's horses, nearly fifty of them. Not a hoofprint. At the junction of rivers they looked for the cairn Fitz said he would leave. Nothing. No sign of human beings, not even Indians.

This was Snake country. Crows and Snakes were longtime enemies. Snakes had run Sam's outfit's horses off this time last spring, not far from here. Not a place to be wandering around carelessly in a small party.

They settled in to wait.

 

C
OY SENSED THEM
first. On the fourth day Sam was taking evening watch on top of a sandstone outcropping, stroking Coy's back. Suddenly the coyote pup jumped up and pointed ears, nose, and eyes up the Sandy. The wind was blowing down the little river.

Sam stood for long minutes before he saw anything.
But,
he thought,
twenty-two men and maybe forty horses make a lot of sound and smell.

Finally, one rider skylined on a ridge. By the silhouette Sam recognized Fitzpatrick.

In seconds, it seemed, all six of them were hightailing it up the river.

Whoa. Here came the outfit. But it was in poor shape, most of the men walking and leading heavily laden horses.

Still, the welcome was warm.

“Look who's still above ground.”

“This nigger thought them Crow women diddled you to death.”

“Glad to see you, hoss.”

“Look who's still got his hair!”

“'Bout missin' an ear, though.”

These greetings from Ashley, Fitzpatrick, Clyman, Zacharias Ham, and all the others, every man looking hale and hearty.

Blue Horse and Flat Dog hung back, uncertain. Sam waved to them to come up and meet the general.

After the introductions Ashley said, “Looks like you came through well.”

“You, too,” answered Sam.

Ashley shook his head. “Lost seventeen of my best horses to the Crows. Recently.” The general couldn't help throwing an odd glance at Blue Horse and Flat Dog.

“Wasn't our Crows,” said Gideon. “All of us been layin' 'round camp lazy all winter.”

Now Flat Dog showed off his English. “Some of our young men think, run horses off is most fun anything.”

Zacharias Ham threw a woolly look at the two Crows. “We'll learn 'em what's fun.”

“You men are welcome in camp,” said Ashley.

“They want to trap with us,” put in Sam.

“Welcome to that, too,” said the general.

So it was settled. Sam had never known he was nervous.

Quickly the camp settled into fires against the evening chill, roasting meat, and stories.

First the Ashley men caught Sam and the fellows up on what had happened since they left. January the brigade spent toiling up the South Platte until, at last, they got within sight of the Rocky Mountains—that brought a cheer. February was given mostly to waiting in a cottonwood grove and looking at the spectacle of snow and ice ahead. At the end of the month they forced a crossing of the main range, a bitter three days struggling through snow. Then they emerged onto the Laramie Plains, a fine country along the North Platte, full of game. The next range, the Medicine Bow Mountains, turned them back. But it was March now. They slowed down and moved northward, trapping the creeks of the east side of the range. The next pass led to a paradise of game, the valley of the North Platte River.

April now, time to head for the Siskadee. The Wind River Mountains lined the western horizon. Fitzpatrick, though, told how the horses got run off, and how he led a party to get them back. They came on two animals so weak the Indians had abandoned them, but never caught up with the rest.

That's how the brigade came to the Siskadee half worn-out. Plenty of smiles, though. The horses were loaded with plews aplenty.

Sam, Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing gave back their own stories. The favorite was about Paladin. Blue Horse told in good English how Sam trained her in the freezing river. He still chuckled about how cold Sam looked standing rib deep in that river.

“But his mind,” said Gideon, “it always point to the day he ride her against ze buffalo. When he shoot a buffalo riding her, he get new name. Medicine man, he promise, new name.”

Sam was embarrassed, so he took over the telling, and got as far as when the buffalo stampeded for the river. “I rode hard at those buffalo. I could hear bellowing as they went off that cliff ahead. And then…”

Abruptly, Beckwourth jumped in, “And then, he got the brightest of his bright ideas. I can shoot a cow right now. Riding hard, he takes aim, he gets her in his sights just perfect and…”

“Off the cliff goes!” hollered Gideon. “Cow, horse, and rider.”

The beaver men applauded.

Sam retreated to petting Coy.

“Sam, mare, cow, all topsy turvy over ze cliff.” Dramatic pause. “He lands in middle of the buffalo driven off ze cliff.”

“They ain't all hurt,” Beckwourth put in. “This one old bull, he lowered his horns and looked at Sam between 'em just like sights. He charged.”

“And ze mare,” interrupted Gideon, “she save his miserable life. She run at buffalo—boom—knock him off balance.”

“The bull,” Beckwourth burst in, “he gets his feet back under him and lowers that head.”

“Then Blue Horse, Flat Dog, and ze medicine man, they shoot him a little bit wit' arrows. We shoot him a little bit with lead. Ze mare, now she run up to ze bull and…”—Gideon opened his arms wide to his audience—“she bite him on the snout!”

The men cheered.

“So the one that earns the new name,” said Beckwourth, “is the mare. Paladin. But we oughta called her Save Your, short for Save Your Ass.”

The men roared.

After a while, in the following silence, Sam said, “I got a new name, too.”

“You did,” Gideon allowed. “Ze medicine man gave him a name.”

“What are you called now, Sam?”

“Joins with Buffalo,” said Sam.

Men made faces. One farted loudly, causing a bubble of laughter.

Fitzpatrick went up to Sam and clapped him on the shoulder. Sam kept his hands on Coy.

“To your fellow mountain men, lad, to us you will always be known as
mi coyote.
”

 

T
IME TO GET
serious about the spring hunt. Ashley divided them into four outfits. Fitzpatrick would take his south, to trap the mountains visible on the horizon. Zacharias Ham would lead men west to those mountains easy to see. James Clyman would lead his north along the Siskadee and trap its headwaters, right where they'd gone before.

Himself, Ashley would do a journey of exploration. He wanted to know whether this river was the Colorado, which flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, or the Multnomah, which emptied into the Columbia, or the Buenaventura, which emptied into the Pacific near Monterey, California. The men said nothing. Everyone knew that if this was the Buenaventura, the road was open to the Golden Clime—fur men would be the first to reach Alta California by land!

Sam quietly asked Clyman to choose him and his friends to make an outfit together. He knew Clyman wouldn't mind a multicolored brigade.

James just nodded.

 

T
HE TRAPPING FELT
good to Sam. Up in the morning at first light, coffee, get mounted, move out. Ride with your partner up a creek coming down from the Wind River Mountains to the east. Watch for slides, dams, chewed cottonwoods, any beaver sign. Pick a likely spot to set a trap, especially one out from a slide. Move downstream, splash into the creek, which right now was snow run-off from some of the highest, coldest mountains in the nation. Wade up to the spot and set your trap. Put a big stick through the ring at the end of the chain, so the beaver can't swim off with it. Dip a small stick into your horn of castoreum and bait the trap with it. Attach a floating stick, in case the beaver, despite all, swims off with the trap. Move upstream to the next likely spot, keeping an eye out for Indians all the way.

Sam's partner was Blue Horse, which made “keeping an eye out for Indians” funny. Sam took Blue Horse, Gideon took Flat Dog, and Beckwourth took Third Wing, in each case an experienced hand showing the ways to a new man, what they called a pork-eater. Clyman kept the camp.

Later you would raise your traps and ride up the creek, or on to the next stream, depending. After you trapped the wily rodent and he drowned, you still had plenty of work to do. You skinned out your beaver, taking only the pelt and the tail. Back in camp you scraped the hide free of fat and stretched it on a hoop you made from willow branches. The tail you threw in the coals for eating, a delicacy. Your pack horse would bear your plews, or you'd cache them for retrieval later.

In this way the little Clyman outfit worked its way up the river they called the Siskadee. Sam knew that just across the mountains he was working, on the east side, was the winter camping place of the village led by Rides Twice, the village where lived his love, Meadowlark. By now, surely, the village had moved down the Wind River, made its big turn to the northeast, worked their way through the big canyon, and come to where it changed its name to the Big Horn. There they would do the spring buffalo hunt. There, sometime this summer, Sam would ride into the village leading eight horses and claim her hand.

For now, though, the creeks were running full, the pelts were prime, he had good comrades, and it was time to make a living.

 

S
AM THOUGHT IT
was the weirdest thing he ever saw.

They had worked their way north along the Siskadee to where she came out of the mountains, no longer a big, fat, slow snake of a river but a sprightly colt. He and Blue Horse trapped their way up a creek half the day and down it the second half. They were riding into camp an hour beyond sunset, in the very last of the light. And he distinctly saw three fires instead of the one there should have been. And the men around those fires, where Clyman and their friends should have been, were…

Indians!

He looked at Blue Horse guiltily.

“Snakes!” his friend hissed.

Sam dismounted. They tied the horses to a cedar and put Coy on a lead rope. Sam jerked his head to the left, and they eased up a sandstone outcropping.

When they got there, Sam chuckled. Beyond the Indian camp, clear enough to the eye, was the camp of the fur men. Sam counted five figures—everyone accounted for.

“We've got company,” he said to Blue Horse.

Just in case, they rode a wide circuit around the Indian camp.

“Snakes,” said Clyman.

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

“How many guns?” said Sam.

“Two that I saw.”

“They're friendly,” said Beckwourth.

“Say they are,” corrected Clyman. “Want to trade.”

“What can we trade them?” said Sam.

Everyone knew what was in their panniers—a few beads, a little jerked meat, some good twists of tobacco.

“We need horses,” said Clyman. “We gotta try.”

The entire brigade had been short of horses from the start.

“I will trade my pistol for a horse,” said Gideon.

Clyman shrugged. “We'll try.”

All the men looked at each other warily. From their expressions, Sam judged, the Crows trusted these Snakes even less than the mountain men did.

“We'll hobble the horses and make a rope corral too,” Clyman said. “We'll also set a double guard.”

“And tomorrow,” said Beckwourth, “we'll do some old-fashioned horse-trading.”

 

S
AM CLAMPED HIS
teeth together to keep them from chattering. He wiggled his toes, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot—the toes were likely to freeze. Damn Rocky Mountains in the springtime.