Beauty for Ashes (29 page)

S
AM WOKE UP
when Paladin flabbered her lips. It wasn't just the sound, but the spray that came with it. When it was a fine night and he slept outside, she woke him like this. The other horses, including Pinto, were moved out of camp at first light and put on grass until the company was ready to get going. Not Paladin, though. Sam kept her staked right by his bedroll, wherever it was. She woke him because she got jealous of the other horses, or she wanted her treat, Sam didn't know which.

Coy raised his head and shook it. He'd caught the spray too.

Sam reached beneath his buffalo robe and got some bark of the sweet cottonwood, which he kept close at hand for these occasions. Paladin gulped it down greedily and flabbered her lips again.

Sam sat up and found Gideon sitting up too. “Time, I guess,” said the big man.

Sam looked around the camp. It was sizable, about thirty men. He, Gideon, Flat Dog, and Clyman had found this outfit easily. They came over the Southern Pass and trapped south along the Siskadee and then up Ham's Fork. They met these trappers, led by David Jackson, working their way down Ham's Fork after wintering in Cache Valley of the Bear River.

And with them, a friend. Jim Beckwourth, the strapping mulatto, was in the outfit. He'd gone clear to St. Louis with Jedediah Smith, and come back with Jedediah too. He was full of stories. As usual, Sam cut them down by half before he believed them.

Jackson, though, seemed like a man who considered the facts before he spoke. He spoke of one place so sweetly that Sam made up his mind he had to go see it.

“There's glorious country,” Jackson told Sam, “north of the Siskadee. At the top, where it bends back, you go on over the divide and come on the Hoback River, the one the Astorians followed. Go down that to where it joins the Lewis Fork and up that river, you come to the finest hole you'll ever see. Mountains on all four sides, on the west high ones that are always snowy. Creeks full of beaver rolling down from all four sides. Too high to winter, and needs a sharp eye when you're getting in and out, but a heaven of a place to trap.” He added with a reluctant smile, for David Jackson was a shy man, “The boys call it Jackson's Hole.”

Jackson's Hole. And the good news was, Jackson was headed back there right now.

Sam and his companions went up the Siskadee with the Jackson brigade. Tonight they'd camped on the river bank, right where it started a shepherd's-crook turn back into the Wind River Mountains. As usual with a big party, they made a square camp right on the river, divided into four messes. At night they staked the horses about ten steps apart, between their bedrolls and the river. Every morning the horse guard close-herded them out onto some grass.

Now Sam could see horses grazing on the top of a nearby hill, further away than usual.

The mess's fire was dead out.

“I have to put Paladin out to graze,” said Sam unnecessarily.

“I'll start the coffee,” said Gideon.

The other men of the mess, including Flat Dog and Beckwourth, were beginning to stir.

Sam restaked Paladin no more than twenty or thirty steps from camp. He didn't want her loose, and he didn't want her clear up on that hill. Some of the men thought he was peculiar, keeping a horse and a coyote right next to him at night, but they didn't know how special this horse and coyote were.

He wanted to check Pinto's hooves. Sam thought she was walking a little gingerly when they came into camp last night.

Sam started up the long hill, Coy at his heels. A dozen steps away they stopped. Sam realized he wasn't carrying The Celt. “It's all right,” he told Coy. The horses were guarded, and not far off.

He was huffing and puffing when he came up to Pinto. Coy ran ahead to the little mare. She was pulling up grass at the left edge of the herd, highest on the summit ridge. She had a way of snatching bunch grass hard out of the ground, throwing her head a little, like a kid taking a toy from a sibling.

Pinto grazed right where the ridge rose into its summit and the timber of the north slope bunched nearly to the crest. Sam walked right up to Pinto and dropped the halter on her head. Pinto didn't have a lot of virtues, in Sam's opinion, but one was that she let herself be caught easily.

Coy barked at something.

Sam knelt to check the left front hoof.

As his head dipped downward, an arrow furrowed his scalp.

Sam took a split second to breathe. He held tight to the reins and jumped toward Pinto's back.

Pinto crow-hopped and Sam missed. Coy yapped like hell.

The guard, where the hell is the guard?

He tried again to get on, but now Pinto was shying in every direction, way out of control. An arrow waved jauntily from her left hip.

Keeping Pinto between him and the timber, Sam ran.

“Yi-ii-yii!”
An Indian hollered, and charged toward them.

Damn. Sam couldn't run flat out leading Pinto, especially not with her acting up. He dived behind a bush.

Coy charged the Indian, and got kicked away for his trouble. Coy huddled behind the bush with Sam and Pinto.

The Indian started walking—sauntering, actually—and stopped about twenty steps away. He was grinning arrogantly.

Yeah, you caught me without a gun.
Sam felt of his scalp. Lots of blood. He stuck his long white hair to the bleeding spot.

The Indian squatted and eyed Sam like an animal he'd trapped.

Sam looked desperately toward the camp. Men were stirring. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “HE-E-ELP!”

No reaction. Too far.

The Indian made some signs. He looked Blackfeet, from his clothes. That language Sam didn't know a word of. ‘Give yourself up,' he signed, ‘and I won't hurt you.'

Sam's answer was to get out his belt knife, a good weapon, but not against arrows. Blackfeet were the worst.

‘I won't even eat your dog,' the Blackfeet signed.

The Indian waited. After a while he signed, ‘If you lay down your knife, I will lay down my bow and arrow. Then we can meet and talk and be friends.'

Sam tucked the reins under his arm and signed, ‘How many of you?'

The guards must be dead. Just like the Blackfeet not to stop at stealing the horses, but to want to kill some people too. Maybe all the people, and steal the furs, utensils, guns, the whole kit and caboodle.

The Blackfeet took a few steps closer. ‘Notice,' he signed, ‘I have already laid down my bow and arrow. Come out.'

The bastard sure wasn't aware of the way he walked or stood, like he was ready to pounce and drink blood.

Sam ran his brain hard to figure the situation. His summary was—worse than desperate. He couldn't run and expose his back. He couldn't attack. Eventually, the Blackfeet would tire of this game or his friends would come up.

On the hill the horses were gone, no doubt gathered up by Blackfeet.

Sam's knife hand felt wet and sticky. His blood had run all the way down the arm of his shirt. Thinking he ought to stanch that bleeding with a rifle patch, he reached for his hunting pouch.

Whack! An arrow broke a limb in front of Sam's face and glanced off.

Coy yipped and ran at the Blackfeet.

Instinctively, Sam jumped and ran after Coy.

The damn Indian got another arrow nocked and shot just as Sam came onto him bellowing.

Pain!
Sam's ribs screamed.

Sam screamed louder and drowned out the pain.

He embraced the Blackfeet. The man swung a tomahawk, and Sam felt its bite on his back.

Once Sam knifed the Blackfeet—twice!—and got solid flesh.

Cries rose from the hilltop like angry calls of a thousand geese.

Blackfeet charged down the hill, and a musket cracked the dawn silence.

Sam ignored Pinto and ran down hill pell-mell.

Maybe catching Pinto will distract them.

Pinto gave a loud whinny of protest. Sam pictured her kicking Blackfeet, fighting for her freedom, and maybe saving Sam's life.

Sam ran like a blue whistle.

Arrows shimmered through the air.

Sam nearly stepped on Coy, and almost lost his balance avoiding the coyote.

No more musket blasts. They must have had only one.

Sam sprinted across a spot that was nearly level and plunged onto steeper ground. It was tricky, getting sure footing on such a steep slope. Sam bounded, trying to make each foot placement exact, but…

He tumbled headlong and rolled, and rolled, and rolled…

Snap to! He wondered if he'd lost consciousness for a moment. The Blackfeet were too damn close.

Musket shots! A bunch!

No, rifle shots!

Gideon was charging up the hill on Paladin, Beckwourth and three or four men running hard behind him. Several others had stopped to reload.

The Blackfeet flocked back up the hill, two men helping their wounded comrade.

“Here's a chance at a fair fight, you bastards!” screamed Sam.

As though that was all the energy he had, his mind whirled and grayed out.

 

“T
HIS IS GONNA
hurt.”

It did. Sam's ribs barked at him again.

Flat Dog held up an arrow. “In your ribs. It was just hanging in the skin, almost clear of the ribs.”

Coy sniffed the arrow, wanting the blood. Flat Dog grinned and pushed him away.

“Almost…,” said Sam through gritted teeth.
Why couldn't the damn arrow have
almost
hit me?

“You've lost a lot of blood. I'll help you onto Paladin. We'll go back to camp, but we're taking it slow.”

Sam pigeon-toed his way down the hill to his horse. He felt a gush of relief at seeing her unhurt.

Then he saw Gideon rolling around on the ground behind her. He was cussing and fooling with his foot. Suddenly, he held up an arrow triumphantly. “I got the devil, zis child did.” The arrow was bloody.

Beckwourth and another trapper helped Gideon to his feet.

“We gotta get back before they decide to attack,” said Beckwourth. But he walked and led Paladin. The two men supported Gideon, one-footing it slowly behind.

 

T
HEY BUILT A
breastwork. Brush, limbs, saddles, pack saddles, furs, kegs, blankets and other trade goods—everything went into their fort. It was three-sided, the river forming the fourth side. “If they want to charge across the Siskadee,” said Jackson, “they're welcome to it.”

The river was running full in spring flood.

All the men, nearly thirty, fit inside. What normally would have been seventy horses was one—Paladin. The Blackfeet had all the others.

Flat Dog said he was going to scout. Before Sam could say, “Hey, that's risky!” he disappeared.

Clyman poulticed Sam's scalp, back, and ribs as best he could. Sam lay resting on his bedroll, under orders to stay put. Coy crouched like a stone lion beside Sam's head. The back wounds were shallow cuts. The arrow didn't get inside the ribs, hadn't done any internal damage.

James seemed more concerned about Gideon's foot. “Lots of little bones in a foot,” he said. “You may not walk so good again.”

His hip had healed, only to give way to a bad foot.

Gideon rasped, “Next time I get hit in the leg. Then, if hits big artery, I die fast. If miss artery, am fine. But not a cripple.” He sighed. “Not a cripple.”

“My guess is,” Jackson said to the men's unspoken question, “they're a horse-stealing outfit meaning to go against the Snakes. Them Snakes have good horseflesh. If I'm right, there might be twenty or twenty-five Blackfeet.”

“I
seen
that many,” someone said.

“Flat Dog will tell us how many there are,” said Sam.

A voice came from behind where Sam lay—“If he don't sit down and eat breakfast with 'em.”

Sam was glad he couldn't see who said that.

“They won't want to attack us beavers with rifles behind a breastwork,” said Jackson.

“Not a chance,” someone chipped in, reassuring himself.

“Besides,” said Gideon, pain coppering his voice, “now they got our horses.”

The men laughed uneasily.

There was nothing to do but wait.

 

F
LAT
D
OG SAID
they were gone. “Cleared out.”

“Skedaddled,” a Kentuck said from behind Sam.

All the men gathered close. Sam and Gideon lay on their bedrolls at the front. Coy curled around Sam's feet.

“Got our horseflesh instead of the Snakes',” Jackson said.

“They stuck us good,” Beckwourth said.

“I want to go after them.” This was Flat Dog.

“What you gonna go after 'em with?” said Jackson sharply.

“I run,” said Flat Dog soberly. “I run and catch up with them.”

From the rear came laughs and raspberries.

Flat Dog's expression never changed.

“It ain't funny,” said Beckwourth loudly. “A man can run down a horse if he's good and has a lot of stick-to-it.”

Flat Dog gave Jim a look like, “You understand.”

Jim said, “Maybe I'll just go along with Flat Dog.”

“It ain't safe,” said Jackson. Seemed like he wanted more to measure them than keep them back.

“I'm going,” said Beckwourth.

Flat Dog gave him a small nod.

Silence. Coy snuggled closer to Sam's feet.

Jackson squatted down by Sam. Coy gave him a suspicious look, but Davey ignored it. “Morgan, I'm going to ask you for something. It's big, real big to you.” He looked Sam hard in the eyes. “Let them take Paladin.”

Beckwourth spoke up. “We don't need the horse. Sam loves that horse.”

Flat Dog watched Sam curiously.

“You're a member of my outfit. We take care of our own when they're hurt. I could order you. The safety of the whole outfit depends on them horses. But I'm asking you.”