Beauty for Ashes (28 page)

“And I miss him.”

“Feels like he's here.” Sam felt the risk in his words, sharp as razors.

“He is as real to me as the warmth of the fire.”

“I'll never stop missing him.”

She just nodded.

Sam felt the guilt seep into his heart like chill water into a cellar. “I'll never stop feeling…”

She saw it and put a finger to his lips. “You were not to blame. Flat Dog said…”

“Flat Dog forgave me. I don't know if your parents did.” Then he said the hard part. “I don't know about you.”

She cocked her head like a doe, half-startled.

He made himself speak directly into her eyes. “I brought agony into your life.” Nothing abject in the words, only honesty and pain.

She shifted into a sitting position and looked down into his face. After a few moments, she asked him to put his head in her lap. He did.

“Did you ever have a big grief before?”

He looked like she'd slapped him. “I did. When I was a kid, my brother died. His name was Coy.”

She smiled in recognition of the name. She stroked his hair. “Tell me about Coy.”

As though misunderstanding, Coy the coyote slid up onto his haunches and began to howl softly. His cry took the shape of the word “ho-o-o-wl.”

Sam spoke as though content with the coyote's accompaniment. He remembered ramblings in the Pennsylvania forest. Turtles found and brought home. Rides on the family mule. Swims in the river. Fights. Watching the stars and giving them names, special names, names to be held only between two brothers. His words sounded childish as he spoke them, commonplaces, things all siblings shared, pennies without polish. But it felt good to say them.

Sam stopped. The coyote renewed his call, louder, more echoing. Sam pictured the sounds wandering in all the lonely places of the planet. Then, for whatever reason, the song ended.

“When he died, what did you…do with him?”

“We put him in the ground.” He thought that probably sounded barbarous to her. It felt barbarous to him.

“Did you sing?”

“Yes, hymns.” He took thought and added, “Songs to wish him well, songs to say good-bye. Dad got a preacher man—medicine man—out from Pittsburgh, first preacher I ever met, to say some words. Big words about the big things, living and dying.”

She stroked his face. “Do you remember any of the words?”

“Bible words, words from our…sacred stories. I wish I could bring them back clear. Maybe some day I'll learn to read and find them.”

She bent down and kissed his face lightly. Her long hair caressed him.

He flinched at the sudden memory. “‘Beauty for ashes'—that's what the preacher said. He said he'd come to comfort those of us that grieved, to give us beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for our mourning.”

He looked up between her small breasts into her face. There he witnessed, in the soft light of the fire, a radiance that was beyond all eloquence. He saw love. He saw the gift that passes understanding, peace.

Her fingers stroked his forehead and cheeks. “Sam,” she said, “the man known as Joins with Buffalo, my husband. For this death I forgive you. Accept my forgiveness. Beyond that, I offer you my heart. Find in my love beauty for the ashes of your grief, and the oil of joy for the pain in your heart.”

During that long night, their loving explored a universe far from the previous night's. Where there was play, now came tenderness. Where eagerness, deliberation. Where excitement, unity and completeness. Near dawn they slept as on a boat upon the great and mothering sea. They were lifted, eased, lifted, eased, and infinitely at rest.

 

S
AM LAY BACK
on his robes, beneath his blanket, Meadowlark sleeping next to him. Usually, when he was single, he woke up at first light, well before the sun rose. Maybe she liked to sleep in. Coy nestled by her head, choosing her way, not Sam's, which tickled him.

He knew damned well he'd never felt this good.

Three days, living in a new world. A life of discoveries ahead.

And a life of lovemaking ahead. He didn't want even to think any of those other words, not about what he and Meadowlark did. He'd had some experience of sex before, and for him it always had a flicker of aggression in it, sometimes of anger.

With Meadowlark it was…Even if he could read books, and quote Shakespeare like James Clyman, even then he wouldn't have the words for it.

For once he'd done the right thing. Finding the woman for his life and attaching her to him, that was the most momentous thing a man could accomplish. Doing the right thing, when you've done a lot of wrong ones, felt incredible.

Meadowlark was open about not being so sure they were doing the right thing. Maybe Rides Twice's village still wouldn't accept them. Maybe they'd have to live in another Crow village. Her mother's original village wintered well to the east, on the edge of the Wolf Mountains. Needle only saw her parents and brothers and sisters once a year, at the big fall hunt.

Or maybe, Sam said, we'll spend some of our time with a fur brigade, hunting.

“Maybe,” Meadowlark said.

What each of them knew was simple and clear. They would always be together, as close as back and belly when they slept, as close as mingled breath when they made love.

He cricked his neck and rolled his shoulders. He always felt energetic first thing in the morning. Two of the three days he'd made the morning trip to the creek to get water. Meadowlark protested sweetly—he mustn't do women's work, that was unseemly. He thought she'd get used to it.

He slipped from under the robes, looked at his sleeping wife, and at the pup asleep by her head. They loved each other, which was damn good. Sam looked at the fire, long since out. He would start it when he got back from the creek. Right now he was thirsty.

He slipped the pegs out of the lodge door, bent, and duck-walked outside. This time of year, near the equinox, the sun rose straight to the east, and lodge doors always faced that way. Just as he looked, the red-orange sun gathered itself from a sheet of light along the ridge top into a bright ball. It blinded Sam a little, and he laughed with pleasure at the light and warmth.

Yi-ii-ay!

Sam got slammed hard to the ground on his side, a body on top of him and pinning his arms to his ribs.

He screwed his head back and saw…

Flat Dog's face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam yelled nose to nose with his friend.

“Saving your life,” said Flat Dog mildly.

Half a dozen men stepped up, led by Red Roan. Several had arrows pulled back and pointed at Sam. Two had war clubs raised. Yellow Horn was holding a lance and growling.

“If you raped Meadowlark,” Red Roan told Sam, “I'll kill you.” Anger coiled in his voice like a rattler.

Meadowlark rose out of the doorway, protecting her modesty with their blanket. She bristled at Red Roan, and her eyes turned to fire. “Everything that was done, we did together. I wanted what he wanted.”

Red Roan slowly, very slowly, turned his eyes back to Sam. “What you've done is wrong,” the chief's son said, “and you will pay.”

 

S
AM RODE INTO
the village as he'd led Meadowlark away, his horse on a lead tied to another man's mount, hands lashed behind his back. He felt like Coy, who was slinking instead of trotting.

As Sam rode, he pondered something. Back there in Ruby Hawk Valley, he threw a lot of anger in Flat Dog's face. And his friend answered gently, as though he didn't notice the anger, or it flew by his face and didn't touch him.

Sam wanted to learn to do that.

On the ride back he found out what happened. They let him talk to Flat Dog, but not to Meadowlark, who was forced to ride in front next to Red Roan.

Flat Dog said they'd checked on one likely spot the first day, another the second, and on the late afternoon of the third, they saw the travel lodge in Ruby Hawk Valley. Flat Dog had told them places that were probable, areas he and Sam had hunted and Sam liked. Actually, this wide spot on Black Creek had been his first guess, but he misled them. They crept close in the middle of the night. Coy had gone into a barking fit, Sam remembered, but he assumed whatever noises the coyote heard were animals.

“I didn't lead the party there first because I hoped to give you enough time to be gone.”

“Why did you come at all?” Sam knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it.

“I thought they'd kill you if I wasn't there.”

Sam had never thought that warriors might come after him and Meadowlark. She hadn't either. He asked Flat Dog why they came.

“It's unusual,” Flat Dog admitted.

“Who got it started? Never mind, I know. Was Yellow Horn or Red Roan the loudest?”

“Yellow Horn,” said Flat Dog. “I think Red Roan would have let it go.”

“What happens now?”

“She'll be Red Roan's wife.”

Sam felt as though a lightning bolt cleaved him top to bottom. He'd meant, “What happens to me now?” But Flat Dog's answer told him that, too.

G
IDEON HAD THE
only sensible suggestion. “Let's find the brigade.”

The four men looked at each other, Sam and Clyman the white men, Gideon the French-Canadian (which in his case meant Cree and Jew), and Flat Dog the Crow.

“Crazy,” was Sam's immediate response.

“You no talk about crazy,” said Gideon, “considering.”

It was the very evening Sam had been brought back in shame and separated forever from Meadowlark. They were sitting around their fire.

“I don't think it's crazy,” said Clyman. “We sure got cause to get with 'em.”

The reason was that Clyman had six traps, and no other man had any. You couldn't make a spring hunt without traps. Also, four men might make a risky hunt, even if they stuck to the creeks here in Crow country. Being with a brigade would be safer, in any country.

Sam didn't feel a bit like talking about what they were going to do. His mind was strictly on how he'd been brought down.
What an idiot I was, thinking I'd “finally” done the right thing. I made the biggest mess of my messy life.

Gray Hawk had made that absolutely clear. First he and Needle went to Meadowlark and talked quietly with her. Then Needle led Meadowlark away. Gray Hawk walked up to Sam as he was leading his horses back to the lean-to, his head hanging. In a soft, lashing voice Gray Hawk said, “Get out of here. Get out of this village. I will never let you near my daughter again.”

Now Gideon and Clyman worked out how they would get a fall hunt. Probably the brigade would be along the Siskadee somewhere. “The sign, she will be easy to pick up,” said Gideon.

“If they're not on the Siskadee,” said Clyman, “we know where else they hunt.”

The conversation batted back and forth considerably. Flat Dog paid sharp attention, Sam none.

The conclusion was that Gideon and Clyman intended to look for the brigade. “I have no possibles,” said Gideon. “I need a fine spring hunt.”

“What you gonna do when you can't find the brigade?” challenged Sam.

“Meet up with all the coons at rendezvous,” said Clyman.

It was set for the Bear River this summer, north of Salt Lake.

“At ze worst,” Gideon said, “we will come together wit' zem at rendezvous.”

“Can't miss rendezvous—see everybody, trade. Ashley will bring lots of whiskey, he promised.”

“Diah and Fitzpatrick, they're inviting lots of Indians. Come and trade, they'll tell the Indians.” The bear man gave a huge grin. “Whiskey and Indian women…”

“Count me out,” said Sam.

“I want to go,” said Flat Dog.

Gideon and Clyman jerked their heads toward each other, taken by surprise. Then they nodded. “Welcome,” said Clyman

“I don't give a damn what any of you do,” said Sam.

 

T
HE THREE HUNTERS
spent the next morning packing up. They asked if they could trade Sam something for his travel lodge. He said he didn't care what they took.

Coy trotted from the departing group to Sam, and back, and back and forth, confused about what was going on.

In late morning they were packed and ready. The three looked at Sam.

“You sure you don't want something for this travel lodge?”

He didn't answer. He didn't want one thing on earth but what he couldn't have.

“You sure you want to stay here?”

No answer.

“You coming to rendezvous?”

No answer.

Flat Dog handed his reins to Clyman and walked over and sat down by Sam. He blew out a couple of big breaths. “You want me to talk to Meadowlark?”

Sam snapped his head toward Flat Dog.

“You want me to ask what she wants you to do?”

“I…” Sam stopped his foolish answer.

“I'll tell you exactly what she says, whatever it is.”

Sam thought. He had a feeling like a fish jumping in his heart. “Yes.”

Flat Dog stood up and spoke to Gideon and Clyman. “You mind waiting a while?”

“We're easy,” said Clyman.

Flat Dog disappeared for half an hour. He came back pursing his lips.

“Meadowlark says to tell you this. ‘I love you.' She said it in English. ‘If you stay here, you're throwing your life away. Someone will kill you. Then I couldn't live. Go, please go. I love you. Go.'”

Flat Dog stood up. The three swung up onto their horses, and Clyman took the pack horse lead.

Coy looked from Sam to the mounted men, back to Sam and back to the three, and gave one loud bark. He barked again.

“Go ahead,” said Sam. He took hold of Coy.

They went.

Before they rounded the first bend in the river, Flat Dog turned in the saddle and looked back. He could see the boulder where Sam sat and the trees behind. He wished he could see a rider coming their way.

Sam and Coy didn't catch up with them until they were ten miles downstream.