Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (29 page)

“Wait up,” Hugh said, jumping down. “No shootin'. Let's see what they want first. See what they have to say.”

Presently two warriors came forward across the swilling ford. Their ponies came on splashing and prancing.

Hugh stepped to the shore to meet them. Gravel crunched under his moccasins. He held up his hand when the two braves were almost across.

Hugh instantly recognized the leading warrior. It was Stabbed, the same Ree brave who'd served as policeman with him the day General Ashley had parleyed with the Arikaree chiefs on the Missouri above the Grand. Hugh had killed his brother Bear Mouth for playing grizzly with Aaron Stephens' body.

Stabbed stared at Hugh; stared at the armed men behind Hugh; stared at Hugh. Stabbed's sensitive mobile mouth drew up into a ferocious poutlike grimace. The pennyskinned muscular giant's wild eyes wicked and glittered with hate. Stabbed's red-streaked cheeks moved menacingly with the grimace. Like his dead brother, Stabbed was high-shouldered and he went about naked save for breechcloth, hawkbone headdress, and a necklace of grizzly claws. An eagle feather in back fluttered in a light breeze.

Hugh began the parley, using the expressive ancient gestures of the Great Plains Indian sign-talk. Right hand lifted and waggling, Hugh said, “How.”

“How.”

Hugh waggled out the sign for peace pipe, then for bow and arrow. “What do you want? Smoke pipe? Make war?”

“Rees smoke pipe with Chief White Grizzly.”

Hugh then answered in Pawnee, sister language to the Arikaree. “Tell your chief I thank him very much. But we are in a hurry to see our Great White Father. Tell your chief we cannot visit him.”

Stabbed's eyebrows went up. He answered in Ree. The Ree sounded like Pawnee spoken with a twist of the tongue and with the syllables dragged out a little. “That is too bad. Chief Elk Tongue hopes you will not fork today. Chief Elk Tongue hopes his friend Chief White Grizzly will visit his lodge.”

“We thank Chief Elk Tongue. But we must hurry to visit our Great White Father.”

“Chief Elk Tongue says he loves his friend, Chief White Grizzly.”

Hugh shook his head. “Tell your great chief that we cannot visit him today.”

“Are you squaws to run? What have you got for presents?”

Hugh turned to his men. “I guess one of us had better go and hold a parley with the old red devil.” Hugh sighed massively. “And I guess that'll have to be this child. Maybe if I give him a few presents, some ‘bacca, pony beads, maybe he'll let us alone.”

Dutton said, worried, “Whatever you say, Hugh. You know them. We don't.”

Hugh said, “They're all great swimmers and horsemen. If we make a run for it they'll be after us like bees after a honey thief. And we can't run with all that beaver.”

Dutton said, “Whatever you say, Hugh.”

Hugh looked at his men. He wished he were alone. He'd know what to do then. But here he had men, beaver, and a message to worry about. Hugh had come to like his men. They were his first command and he had begun to feel an officer's, a mother's, love for them.

Hugh said, “I'll go over on Skunk. Keep me covered as best you can from here.” Hugh filled his pockets with tobacco and beads, jammed his horse pistol and skinning knife in his belt, saw to the priming of his flintlock, and climbed aboard.

Hugh motioned for Stabbed and the other Ree to lead the way across the river. He splashed after them through the shallow swilling ford.

When Hugh rode up the opposite sandy shore, Chief Elk Tongue had already gotten off his spotted pony. He was an old man, like Hugh, but also like Hugh he was still very spry. Hugh got down off his horse in the midst of howling swirling dogs and yelling berryeyed children. High-shouldered warriors looked at him with wild ferocious eyes. Squaws, old and young, watched silently.

But Old Elk Tongue seemed to mean what he said through his messengers. Long gray blanket rustling, he approached Hugh with a smile on his old mobile lips, a beautiful smile for even his old dark face, and embraced him as if Hugh actually were his brother.

Hugh suffered him. The smell of the old red devil suddenly made him homesick for Bending Reed. Hugh longed with a great longing to be back in her tepee at Ft. Kiowa.

Golden eagle feathers fluttering, Old Elk Tongue took Hugh kindly by the hand, led him toward a rocky knoll.

They crested the knoll and then Hugh saw the village. The knoll had been just big enough to hide the entire Ree village from view. Skunk had been right. Immediately behind the village jutted a low rimrock. It protected the lodges from cold north winds at the same time that it trapped the sun's heat. There was a huge blazing fire in the center of the village and around it flittered a few withered witchlike hags.

“‘Tis now for the woolly wilds,” Hugh thought to himself, eyes alert for some sign as to what it might all lead to.

Old Elk Tongue surprised him then as they walked along. Old Elk Tongue spoke in Ree. “My people are happy that Chief White Grizzly has honored us. My brother, it was no small thing that you have done.”

“‘Honored'?” Hugh ejaculated in Pawnee. “You ‘honored'? How?”

Old Elk Tongue smiled benignly on Hugh, though the warriors behind the old chief continued to scowl with wild blackcherry eyes and to fumble nervously with their rifles and bows. Each warrior had the part in his hair painted with vermilion; each had his old wounds painted garishly.

“With the white man's burial ceremony. White Grizzly is our brother because he prayed as a holy man for the spirit of the mother of Chief Grey Eyes.”

“Ho-ah!” Hugh said then. “This child sees now, he does. Somebody spotted him on the Moreau with Grey Eyes' dyin' old she-rip then. Whaugh!” Hugh smiled and nodded, careful not to stare the old chief in the face.

Old Elk Tongue led Hugh toward his skin lodge, members of the band following. Skin streamers and the smoke flap fluttered from the tepee poles above the smoke hole. A medicine bundle hung over the door. The door faced east, the place of the long-winded sun, and the source of the light of the universe.

Old Elk Tongue held the leather flap aside for Hugh, beckoned for him to enter.

Hugh was about to do so when an old squaw grabbed him by the tail of his fringed elkskin hunting shirt and jerked him back with a yell. Before Old Elk Tongue could stop her, she spat in Hugh's grizzly face. She taunted him, saying, “Dogface, I throw filth at you. Coward. Squaw. Wait till the council with the great Chief Elk Tongue and Chief Stabbed is over. I shall dance over your scalp yet.” She broke into a long wailing lamentation.

Hugh managed to maintain his calm. He held still so that Old Elk Tongue could rebuke her and push her away.

Old Elk Tongue said, “The old mother is sad because White Grizzly killed her son. In the great battle by the Grand.”

“What was her son's medicine?” Hugh asked.

“The great spirit of the fierce grizzly. He ate enemy like grizzly.”

Old Hugh's eyes opened a little. “Bear Mouth. Brother to Stabbed. Sure. Mimicked a grizzly and carried what was left of Aaron Stephens around like he meant to tear him to bits.”

Hugh said, “Tell her White Grizzly is sorry. Tell her he has presents for her to help her forget her grief.”

The moment Hugh finished speaking, the old witch quit howling and held out her hand.

Hugh had to laugh inside his whiskers. With a chuckle he gave her a handful of bright pony beads, white and red and blue. She clutched the beads in her pale cracked palm and ran.

Again Old Elk Tongue beckoned for Hugh to enter his lodge. Hugh bent down and crawled in. Old Elk Tongue and a couple dozen braves followed. Each naked Ree brave, including Elk Tongue, deposited his weapons, both knife and gun, by the door. Hugh deposited his weapons too, his rifle and horse pistol, but in the bustling of each man finding his rank and place to sit, Hugh managed to hide his skinning knife in his shot pouch. Hugh was sure that one or another of the warriors had an extra knife hidden in his breechcloth. They sat in a circle against the wall, against the dew skin, and out of the reach of the cold draft coming in under the tepee's bottom edges. Hugh sat at Old Elk Tongue's right hand in the place of honor at the back. They sat with buttocks on the ground, knees out, and ankles crossed against the crotch.

A fire crackled in the middle, throwing warm blasts of air against their faces. A pipe of peace, a red pipestone affair with a long willow twig for pipestem, lay against a stone altar. Behind the circle of men stood twelve short poles, six on a side, with a sacred bundle hanging from each pole. The bundles represented the twelve tribes of the Ree nation. Hugh had once heard that the sacred bundles were the Book of Genesis of the Arikarees.

A holy man took up the tribal pipe of peace from the altar, lighted it with a coal from the fire, and performed a rite over it—offering the pipe to the six powers: the west, the north, the east, the south, the sky, the earth. Then he smoked it and embraced it and passed it on to Chief Elk Tongue. Elk Tongue offered the pipe to the six powers, too, and smoked it and embraced it and passed it on to Hugh. Hugh likewise offered it to the six powers and smoked and embraced it and handed it on to the naked warrior next in line.

When the pipe got to the giant Stabbed, there was a silence.

Old Elk Tongue looked up from his musing. “What is wrong that Stabbed does not smoke the pipe of peace with our brother White Grizzly?”

Stabbed looked at the wild young warriors near him. Muted sunlight coming through the skin walls and the smoke hole above gave Stabbed's folded arms and ferocious face and raised knees a rich penny color. His eyes glittered and rolled. Stabbed said, “Stabbed feels very heavy in his heart. He has great grief.”

“Yes?” Old Elk Tongue said patiently.

“White Grizzly does not speak with a single tongue. He smokes the pipe of peace as a friend but his heart is black toward us. White Grizzly has killed many of our braves.”

“How! How!” The high-shouldered young braves grunted approvingly, sensitive lips scowling.

Old Elk Tongue gave Hugh a sad look. He shook his head, black-and-white eagle feathers at the back of his head rustling, gray blanket opening a little in front. “My young braves are angry because White Grizzly has no presents for them.” A louse chased down one of the long braids of the old wrinkled chief. “No presents no friends.”

Hugh smiled under his whiskers again. And once more he dug into his present sack, this time giving each brave in the tepee a handful of tobacco. Every brave except Stabbed accepted the gift.

Hugh said, “Let Stabbed tell White Grizzly truly what he wants to help him forget his grief.”

Stabbed said, blackcherry eyes darting with hate, “What present can White Grizzly give that will bring back to his lodge Bear Mouth my brother?”

Elk Tongue interposed. “White Grizzly, my braves are wild. It will take much to keep them from attacking White Grizzly. Maybe Elk Tongue should adopt White Grizzly as his blood brother.”

Hugh's old eyes whirled around, flashing graywhite. Blood brother to the Rees when he already had a Sioux squaw for wife?

Elk Tongue explained. “My brother, you have honored the Rees with your white man's burial ceremony and also our Ree ceremony for the mother of Grey Eyes. My brother, that was no small thing you have done. Chief Elk Tongue wishes to adopt you and make you his blood brother.”

Stabbed broke out with anger. “Stabbed can never look upon White Grizzly as the blood brother to Elk Tongue. Never. Never until blood has been shed for his brother Bear Mouth.”

“How! How!” The young braves grunted approvingly.

Elk Tongue explained further. “Bear Mouth and Stabbed both came from the belly of the same mother. Bear Mouth and Stabbed both came from the society of the same grizzly clan. Bear Mouth and Stabbed came from the same dog society.” Old Elk Tongue shook his head sadly. “Dog soldiers are our police. When the police are wild, the chief can not promise peace.”

The little arteries down each side of Hugh's big nose began to move. Stabbed was bent on trouble, that was certain. Quietly Hugh opened his shot pouch. If it came to a fight he'd whip out his skinning knife and bring down at least one brave with him.

Elk Tongue continued to shake his head sadly, his eagle feathers rustling. “My wild braves are hard to hold. My wild braves are not happy since the great battle on the Grand. Their heart aches with many bad memories.”

Hugh said slowly in a deep heavy bass monotone, “White Grizzly says it again. Let Stabbed tell truly what he wants to help him forget his grief.”

Stabbed looked toward the leather flap door where all the weapons lay. “Stabbed will take White Grizzly's rifle and pistol.”

Hugh slowly shook his head. “White Grizzly is sorry. White Grizzly must return the rifle and the pistol to his Great White Father. They are the Great White Father's to give and to take.”

Silence. The curving eaglebeak nose of every brave in the tepee quivered. Small eyes, already screwed up into gimlets by sun and wind, became smaller. Some of the braves slowly bared their teeth. The teeth, though yellow, looked white against the pipestone skin.

Stabbed suddenly gave the sign of his bear society. He grunted like a grizzly. “Whaugh.” Then he leaped up, knife in hand. Like Hugh, he too had secreted a skinning knife on his person.

And, as suddenly, Old Elk Tongue, despite old bones, was up on his feet too. He placed himself between Stabbed and Hugh. The two Rees glared at each other, each proud, haughty, imperious, like great noble eagle cocks.

Old Elk Tongue said, “White Grizzly is my blood brother. What he did was no small thing. He buried the mother of our great chief Grey Eyes. He spoke the white man's sacred ceremony over her. He prayed for her spirit like a Ree holy man. A great thing that was. He is my blood brother.”

Stabbed said, “White Grizzly's blood or his guns. Stabbed's tongue is short; his arm is long.”