Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (28 page)

5

S
OME WEEKS LATER
, refreshed by plenty of food and rest, and feeling as spry as a spring rooster again, Old Hugh volunteered to deliver an important message to Ft. Atkinson on the Missouri just above the Platte.

Major Henry accepted the offer.

Major Henry knew what he was doing. Hugh was tearing mad to go, was going to go anyway if an excuse weren't given him, because Hugh believed downer Fitz was at Ft. Atkinson. The major knew that revenge, or the Lord's vengeance as Hugh persisted in calling it, was still seething in Hugh's breast. And that need for revenge, plus Hugh's remarkable daring, was sure to get the message through.

The major had been talking to a friendly Crow chief. The chief told about beaver south of the Big Horn and Wind River Mountains. “So thick and so tame,” the Crow chief said, “your men won't have to set traps. They can club ‘em over the head and get all they want.” Major Henry trusted the Crow chief and decided to move his entire camp south. Spring trapping time was rapidly approaching and after that came trading time at the summer rendezvous. And General Ashley would have to know about the change in plans because the general was coming up with fresh supplies and provisions and trading materials for the rendezvous. So the urgent need for a competent messenger.

The major assigned four men to accompany Hugh: Dutton, More, Marsh, and Chapman. The major also made a private messenger out of Dutton. To Dutton he gave the job of warning General Ashley what Hugh had in mind for Fitz. Dutton was also told to put Fitz on guard should he get the chance. The major swore Dutton to secrecy and then sent him off with Hugh.

Hugh and his men put out for Platte early one balmy morning in March, the month of the Sore-eye Moon. They traveled straight south down the valley of the Little Big Horn, cut between the Wolf Mountains to the east and the dark shouldering Big Horn Mountains to the west, crossed over the highlands to the southeast until they came to Crazy Woman Creek, then took the Powder River straight south again. In the valleys the country was barren. When it wasn't white with late snow it was silver with sage. There was little game, less water, and only sparse patches of dead prairie grass. Up in the highlands the country was greened over with pine and greasewood. It was land red devils would avoid in the winter and, therefore, fairly safe.

Twice the men had the good luck to run onto small herds of lost buffalo in rolling bald country, once on the Salt River below Pumpkin Buttes and the other time, also on the Salt, below Teapot Rock. It was poor bull at the Pumpkins, but at the Teapot the lads had a fairly young cow.

“This cow beats painter,” young Chapman said with satisfaction. They were all seated around a fire, each working on a fine morsel of hump rib. Chapman was eating his carefully, like a St. Lou dandy might nibble at a quartermoon of melon. Chapman had black snapping eyes and a humorous manner. His hunting coat of fringed elkskin, compared with the greasy clothes of the others, was almost as spotless and yellow as the day he put it on. Chapman usually saw the light side of things.

Hugh nodded, smacking his lips and cleaning off his whiskers, “Good, that it is. But cow tastes better later in the spring. After she's had fresh sweetgrass for a month. Then you can't beat cow.”

Twice, too, the men had the good luck to find water just when they needed it most, once where the Powder River turned west and once near the source of the Salt. At the Salt the men had even given up trying to chop down through ice to get at water.

“She's frozen solid,” More announced, throwing his ax aside disgusted. More had the haunted look of the tall misfit, the look many mountain men had, except that where others had open faces like Jim Bridger's, he had a sinister-appearing face.

Hugh scoffed at More and got down on his knees in the snow and ice chips beside the green-edged hole. Hugh took out his skinning knife and with a downward stabbing motion plunged the knife into the very point of the hole. There was a slicing sound in the ice and then water welled up around Hugh's hand and in a moment the green hole was full of water.

“See,” Hugh said.

“Well I'll be a son to a mule if that don't beat all,” More exclaimed, smiling surprised from out of the hood of his gray woolen capote. “And here I thought I'd already dug up sand bottom.”

“You did,” Hugh said, “but that's just where the water sometimes still runs. Through the sand under the ice.”

When they hit the Platte below the Sweetwater River, just across from the Haystack Range—a range that kept rising like black doom as they approached it—they had more good luck. The weather turned warm and the snow vanished almost overnight, revealing that they'd moved from grayyellow land to land bright with pink outcroppings and green rabbit brush and tender bright-green sweetgrass. There was also budded cottonwood. After a long drygrass diet the ponies relished the sappy cottonwood bark.

Further down the Platte, across from the Laramie Range, they came upon bright red rimrock crested with green cedar. The contrast of green cedar against red soil raised involuntary sighs. There was hard work to be done, always, but as they rode along, the men sometimes couldn't resist looking for long moments at the green foliage growing out of red land. Faces brightened; voices lifted; blood pulsed sweet and clean. They were true men of the wilderness. They'd lived for the ever-new in the wild and their senses had become as sharp as a pregnant squaw's. The sky was blue—it hurt the eye like a bright light. The air was fresh—it stung the lungs like a sweet ether.

They crossed the Platte above the Guernsey Hills. And still they had good luck.

Dutton said, “This can't go on.” Dutton was a gaunt hollowcheeked blond with big floppy ears and big knuckles. He tended to look at the down side of things. Sudden greening spring seemed to gnaw at him instead of exhilarate him.

“What can't go on?” Hugh asked, looking up from where he rode along on swaying sure-step Skunk.

“This breeze of luck we're having, that's what.”

“‘Tain't luck,” Hugh said, wise old eyes looking out at the land by themselves.

“What is it then, a gift from somebody?”

Hugh's smile moved his whiskers. “‘Tain't exactly a gift, no. Though it's bein' given us. Because of who we are.”

Dutton stared at Hugh. “You're not arguin' we got this comin'?”

“I might. A child can't help but have good luck as long as he's doin' Lord's work.”

Dutton fell silent and his pale blue eyes slid to one side as if afraid that the private knowledge he had might be revealed in them.

“This child's been chosen, that's why. I've been gettin' sign all along.”

Dutton said nothing.

“‘Tis so,” Hugh said. “Spring grass can't shine too soon for me and the Lord.”

They followed the North Platte in a southeasterly direction, with always a wary eye out for Indian sign, always and ever studying the varying and lifting and falling horizons, the pinkish rimrock and bold Laramie Peak to the south and the Rawhide Buttes and Spoon Butte to the north.

They were well into the wide bowl of Goshen Hole, just above Scotts Bluff and Wild Cat Ridge, and the sun had ascended into April, the Moon of the Ducks Coming Back, when Hugh first noticed it. His throwback dun mare, Skunk, began to sniff the wind and act restless.

“Ho-ah,” Hugh said. “Skunk smells something.” Hugh held up his hand and the party trailing out behind him in single file immediately stopped.

“What? Hugh?” Marsh called out. Marsh was in charge of the pack horses heavy with beaver plew meant for General Ashley. Marsh was a laugher. His face was always either in the grip of a laugh or on the brink of a laugh. When he wasn't laughing there was a look on his face as if he expected to be told something that would make him laugh. The laugh, and the expectation of the laugh, had, over the years, finally creased his face with an indelible smile. Marsh resembled a merry gargoyle atop a medieval castle wall. Marsh considered Old Hugh one of the most comical men he'd ever seen. This annoyed Hugh. Hugh liked being a wag now and again, like any man, but at the moment he was all business.

“What? Hugh?” Marsh said again, face sobering down to a mute smile.

“Skunk's got her nozzle onto something.” Hugh stood up in his saddle and peered intently into the bowl of Goshen Hole. “And this child got a whiff too.”

Marsh looked around and studied the pack horses, some ten of them, each with a pair of balanced packs on its back. Marsh studied the horses of Dutton, More, and Chapman. Marsh's smile continued to fade a little. “The other horses are quiet. Skunk's probably just in heat, is all.”

“All the more reason to believe her,” Hugh said shortly, old gray eyes wild yet watchful on the bowl below. Hugh took off his wolfskin cap to hear the better.

Dutton rode up. “What's up, Hugh?”

“Shhh.”

Hugh studied the terrain carefully. They were riding on a south rim of land overlooking Goshen Hole. The North Platte drove straight across it from northwest to southeast. The whole of Goshen Hole looked like the scooped-out bed of an ancient lake. Across the river, some miles away, rose the whitegray chalk sides of the Box Butte tableland. A few wild cedars and scrubby pitch pine clung to the upper chalk edges. Black and gray sage and sweet cactus and rabbit brush dotted the bowl bottom like a poor man's scraggly beard. Below and ahead beside the river grew a thick grove of willows. The willows were already reddish brown with rising sap. Grama grass had just begun to green the baked sands and shakes of the shores and islands of the swift river. Tucked into the crevices and sunwarmed pockets of the ravines leading down to the river were the first yellowgreen sprouts of saxifrage and sour dock and windflower and beardtongue.

It was a clear day with occasional mare's tail clouds fanning by overhead. The sun had climbed to almost high noon and it fell warmly on the backs of Hugh's hands. A few hawks had come out and were riding the updrafts along the rim. A picket-pin gopher sat motionless. It too was busy looking out over the far country below in Goshen Hole.

Marsh said, “Nothin' north of us that I can see.”

Hugh got down off Skunk and took her nose in his hands. He had the feeling she was about to whinny. Her ears were flicking back and forth like a nervous mule's and she had her head up like a checked pacer's. Then she took a deep breath, fluttering her nose, and Hugh grabbed it just in time. “Damme,” Hugh said, “but there must be something.”

“Where, Hugh?” Chapman said, riding up, face for once concerned.

Hugh shhhed them.

Hugh studied the red willows along the river. Hugh said, “Ain't seen a single critter either, wing nor foot, except for that picket-pin gopher. And he's watchin' like Skunk is.”

“Hawks flyin' overhead,” More said, face drawn into a deeper scowl than usual.

Hugh snorted. “That don't mean nothin'. They'd fly in droves over a battlefield.”

They sat and looked and listened.

Presently other picket-pin gophers came out of their holes. Then a flock of wild geese V-ed in from the south. Hugh and the men watched the wild geese intently. The great longnecks drove straight for the river, made two long looping 8-shaped passes at it, and slanted in for a landing. They hit the water and kicked up sprays like falling shot. The men all heaved a huge sigh.

Dutton said, “Can't be anything down by the river at least.”

Hugh grunted. He watched Skunk and was relieved to see that when he let go of her nose she reached down and began to crop at sparse bits of spring-green bunch grass. “Maybe the wind's shifted and she can't smell it anymore.”

“But the geese hit the river, Hugh,” Dutton said.

Hugh put on his wolfskin cap again. “This child still don't like it. I mind me of the time I didn't heed Ol' Blue and the next thing I knew I was halfway down a she-grizzly gullet.”

The landing of the wild longnecks brought Marsh back to his accentuated smile again. “Well, Hugh, what'll it be, meat by water or meat up here on the hill?”

Hugh got on Skunk. “The ponies need water,” he said shortly. He patted Skunk's silver mane. “Hep-a,” he said, giving her a heel in the ribs, “hep-a.” And in a moment all the clopping hooves of the pack train were going again.

They rode down to a ford in the Platte where the water fanned and spilled across spreads of sand. Marsh and More unsaddled the horses and watered them in the ford and staked them out to green. Chapman and Dutton got up the chuck.

Old Hugh did sentinel duty. He climbed up on a nearby pink rock outcropping and sat looking north across the swilling fanning river. Behind him the red willows swayed in a soft south breeze. The willows were thick, and he cast an anxious eye at them now and again.

Hugh was repriming his rifle and checking the load and was in the act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick, when the opposite shore was suddenly red with Indians. The Indians saw Hugh and his party and commenced to gesticulate enough to frighten Old Nick himself. Individual braves could be made out very plainly across the running water. Hugh saw the familiar hawkbone headdress resembling paired horse ears and instantly knew them—the same Rees he'd seen on the Moreau the fall before while crawling to safety to Ft. Kiowa. Elk Tongue's band. Somehow they'd roved across Cheyenne Indian country below the Black Hills and through the Badlands.

Old Chief Elk Tongue sat easily on a spotted pony at the head of the band. He was dressed in full battle regalia, an honorable target for the enemy. Behind him sat some forty warriors all painted red for battle and armed with rifles and bows and tomahawks and shields. Despite the still chilly spring weather all were naked save for leathern breechcloth.

“Look up, men,” Hugh called down from his pink rock. “Red devils across the river.”

Every hand dived for his rifle.