Jubal Sackett (1985) (25 page)

The buffalo had stopped and were feeding again not more than two hundred yards away. Just ahead of them was a stand of thick brush and trees. By following down a small watercourse I could slip into that patch and perhaps make another kill.

I took up my bow and looked around at her. "Will you stay with the meat?"

"I will stay. Have care."

As I moved toward the wolves they trotted off, and I went past them and down the shallow ravine. It was very still. I plodded steadily on until I reached the grove that began along the shallow watercourse I followed. Working up into the brush, I moved with care to make no sound. The buffalo were finding dried grass beneath the snow, and only an old bull stood guard. I was downwind of him, so he did not catch my scent. Nevertheless, he was uneasy.

Had he smelled the blood of our kill? Or was there something else about I had not seen?

Again I looked all around, my eyes searching close about me, then further out, and then further still. Each area I examined slowly, taking nothing for granted. If there was an enemy out there I wished to know it, but if he was nearby I must see him first. I found nothing.

Several buffalo fed nearby, two of them within thirty or forty yards of the trees that were my cover. Moving through the brush, careful to make no sound, I found an open place among the trees and crossed it. Now I was closer.

The big bull was not looking at me. Something off to my left held his attention. His head was up, his nostrils flared.

My eyes turned, swept the snow fields down the valley, and then stopped.

Several men were coming up along the edge of the woods, but it was a moment before I could pick the individuals out of the background. They were following close along the edge of the trees and may have just emerged from them. Three, four, ... five. Five men, whether Indians or not I could not say, but I was sure they were. The Spanishmen would not be out at this time of year. We needed another buffalo, and their coming would drive the animals away.

Turning, I glanced toward Itchakomi. She was making the meat into packs to be carried and her head was down. She was at least a hundred yards off, still concealed from the men below by the grove of trees that concealed me also. I hissed, but even in that still, cold air the sound was too low to carry. I waved my hand and then my bow, hoping the corner of her eye would catch the movement.

She looked up suddenly, looking at me. I pointed with the bow and she picked up the packs of meat and came toward me.

"There are five warriors," I said, "coming up the valley. If we stay hidden they may not see us."

"We leave tracks here. If they come, they will see."

Leading the way, I went into the woods and chose a place where we were well hidden yet could watch them.

"We have help soon."

"Help?"

"My people. Six men come to carry meat. I speak to them."

Well ... that was thinking. But would they arrive in time and would they see these warriors before they were seen? We could not let them walk into an ambush. Glancing back up the valley I saw nothing. Even if they came now they would not reach us in time.

Of course, the strange warriors down the valley might turn off, but if they were themselves hunting, as seemed likely, they would be attracted by the buffalo.

They did not turn aside. They were coming on. They were Indians. My guess was they were Conejeros.

"Keep down," I advised, "and leave the fighting to me."

"I can fight."

"I do not want you hurt. Leave it to me."

"There are five."

"Soon there will be less."

We waited, hidden by the tree trunks and brush. I had a good view of them now as they trudged toward us, single file.

The big bull did not like it. He snorted and pawed snow and then began moving off. The other buffalo had stopped pawing snow from the brown grass and were starting to move, too. I glanced around again. No help in sight, yet I saw something else.

The wolves were gone.

Chapter
Twenty-Three.

"No use to let them come too close," I said. "Do you stay back. This is for me."

I stepped from the brush and stood out upon the snow. I stood alone, waiting for them.

They saw me at once and stopped.

Those following closed up, and they stood staring at me. I knew their thoughts. Who was I? Was I alone? Would I dare to step out unless others were behind me? Was it a trap?

They could see my bow, and that I held it ready, an arrow in place but pointed down. There was a fine daring within me. Why was it that I, a peaceful man, always felt exhilarated at the thought of battle? Suddenly I was challenging, poised, ready. Everything in me invited them to come.

They shouted something I did not understand, but I did not attempt a reply. I did not think they would turn and go away. It was not their way, for these were warriors, these were fighting men.

They started forward and I waved them back. They stopped again. Then one among them, arguing fiercely with the others, suddenly stepped out and started toward me. My longbow would out-range theirs by thirty yards, perhaps more. I let him take three steps and motioned again. He came on, and my bow came up. I loosed an arrow.

The arrow went where I aimed, and struck through his thigh. A dead man they could leave, but a wounded man they must care for.

The warrior staggered and then fell. He tugged at the arrow, and I waited. The others gathered around him, shouting at me.

I stood my ground, another arrow in place. They were dark against the snow, perfect targets. One of them turned toward me and shouted again. I lifted my bow and he drew back. He had taken the arrow from the fallen man and he was looking at it. My arrows were black, with black feathers to aid their flight. The arrow was strange to them, and I was strange. At the distance they could not see that I was a white man, and my garb would tell them nothing.

They would not leave their wounded brother there to die in the snow, and to attack meant someone else would die. They were brave men but not foolish. Moreover they did not know who or what I was.

So far I had made no sound and they did not know what to make of me.

Taking up their wounded companion they began to move off. One of them turned and shook a spear at me, but I did not respond. That they would be back I had no doubt. When they had disappeared down the valley I went back into the woods and we gathered our meat. The burden I shouldered was enough for four men, but we had to be off, to find shelter for the night and a way in which to escape.

"You are brave," Itchakomi said.

"If we had been taken we would have been tortured and killed. If they had come close they might have taken me from behind while others approached in front. My only chance was to stop them at a distance."

She knew. My explanation was more for me. We Englishmen, if such I was, must have reasons for our actions even when the reasons are not always good ones. What I thought now was true. The Conejeros had a bloody reputation, but it was the way of many Indians to attack strangers unless their curiosity got the better of them.

When we had cached the meat in a small cave near a fallen tree, we built a small fire and ate of the meat. Before nightfall I killed a deer, adding its meat to that from the buffalo.

Our camp was in a good spot near the mouth of a small canyon that provided access to the mountains and the forest. It was a small cave and not deep, but it offered shelter from the wind. I gathered fuel, of which much lay about, for the fire. Night came with a cluster of stars among scattered clouds, and our fire was warm.

"They will return," I said.

She nodded. "And more of them."

"When were your people coming?"

"Tonight ... tomorrow. Just to pick up the meat and take it back."

"You should have stayed in camp. We might have been killed today."

She was amused. "I moved about. I made them think there were more of us."

So that was why they had been staring. They had known somebody was back there but not how many. So it was not me who had frightened them off, after all.

They would come back, of course. Indians did not take defeat lightly, and one of their own had been wounded. I got up and went outside to listen. Far off, a wolf howled and another responded. There was no other sound in the night.

The smoke of our fire, small though it was, could be smelled if they were downwind of it, but tonight the fire could not be done without. Their return tonight was unlikely. They would be making medicine before they came again.

The cave was small but warm enough with the small fire. Itchakomi was seated at the back, her head leaning back against the wall. In the firelight, as in any light, she was a beautiful woman. I looked away, and sat down where I did not have to see her. I would have liked some chicory to drink, but had none with me.

"What is it like, in England? At night, I mean?"

We had been talking much and her English had gotten better. She had discarded the few French words she used and much of the Cherokee, but sometimes she still reverted to Indian talk, which I had to translate in my mind.

"People are in their homes at night. They talk, they read books, sometimes they play cards. If they are in taverns they do the same, but they drink more in taverns, I think. I only know from what I have heard."

"It is a good thing? To read?"

"We all read at home. I more than any of the others, I think. There are books about everything, and my father and mother both read, so we grew up with books about. If it were not for their books we would know nothing of the Greeks, the Romans, and many others. Nothing but some ruins. The people of England thought the Roman ruins had been built by giants, until their books were translated and brought to England."

"I would like to read!"

"I will teach you." I said it and then swore under my breath. Why was I such a fool? I wanted to get away when the grass grew green again, I wanted to walk the lonely buffalo trails and seek out the high places and lonely valleys. And here I was, promising to teach Itchakomi to read! What a double-dyed fool!

But she would forget about it. Spring was still a long time away. Or was it? I had lost count of the days. Anyway, it was probably just a notion. But I had better watch my tongue.

Crouching over our tiny fire in a cave far from anything in the world, I wondered about myself and those to come after. This was what I wanted, to come west, to seek, to find, to understand. Yet I was uneasy with my old feelings, the eerie sense that I walked in a world where others had walked, that I lived where others had lived. I did not believe in ghosts. I did not believe the dead lived beyond the grave. I did believe there was much we did not understand, but there had been a man in Virginia who had claimed he could communicate with the dead. The only messages from the dead that I'd heard had sounded as if they came from creatures that had lost their minds.

The uneasy sense of other beings having lived where I lived stayed with me. I did not know what to call the feelings I had. Second sight, some called it, but this went beyond that.

Itchakomi was watching me. "Of what you think?"

I shrugged. "I think others have been where we are. I think others have walked the trails, lived in the caves. And I do not speak of Indians."

"Your people?"

"No--not really. Just people from somewhere. I wished to come west to be the first but I am not the first."

"Does it matter?"

"No, I suppose not, only I would like to know who they were and how they got here and if they left behind any marks of their passing."

"You are not content to be. You ask who and why."

"And when."

"You are a strange one. And when you know, what then?"

"Perhaps I shall write a book. Or even a letter. Knowledge was meant to be shared. Do you not feel the same?"

"Knowledge is useful. Why share it? Use it for yourself. Why share it with others who will use it to defeat you?"

Sakim had shared his knowledge with me. So had my father's friends Jeremy Ring and Kane O'Hara. So had others. With whom would I share mine?

The night was icy cold. Several times I awakened to add fuel to our fire, and with dawn I was ready to move. If Itchakomi's people were coming to carry meat, it was meat we must have. I dragged some broken tree limbs to the cave and then took up my weapons. Itchakomi was awake, and when she started to rise I said, "Rest, if you like. I shall go where the game is."

Without saying more I started off, moving swiftly. I saw nothing on the wide expanse of snow but the tracks of yesterday. As I moved I thought of yesterday. Itchakomi had probably saved me from a fight by moving in the brush behind me. The Indians, of course, thought I was merely bait for a trap and they had backed off, not from any fear of me but of what might await them in the trees.

The buffalo were feeding further west and south near the mouth of the canyon I had seen where a stream came in from the west. I moved swiftly, keeping to low ground, and when I was within sight, I paused to select my target.