Rendezvous (22 page)

Skye nodded. “I don't expect to be back,” he said.

Chapter 28

The gifts touched Skye. He had not received a gift since he had been pressed into the Royal Navy, and now he could barely cope with the flood of feeling racing through him.

He tried on the moccasins that Many Quill Woman had fashioned for him and found they fit him perfectly. Somehow, she had gotten the measure of his feet. These had been cut and stitched from elkskin as soft as velvet, and felt as if he had worn them for years.

She looked at him expectantly, her gaze sharp as a hawk's, to ascertain his pleasure.

“These are beautiful, Victoria,” he said softly, rubbing the supple leather with his hands. “I don't know how you knew my size.”

She smiled. “I measure your feet. Do you like the beads?”

He admired the red-and-black geometric design she had patiently sewn into the leather, using trader's beads she had acquired at the rendezvous.

“Yes. These are beautiful.”

“The design is a prayer to the four winds to take you where you will go.”

She smiled, her brown eyes liquid with pleasure. He admired her lithe, taut figure, her sharp, angular features, and her hawkish gaze that seemed to penetrate into his soul and read his every thought. She had some way of fathoming everything around her with those remarkable eyes that saw through material things to the spirit that lay at the essence.

“I have more,” she said proudly, and handed him another gift even more precious. Ten arrows.

“Victoria—” He couldn't speak. So she had seen his quiver, counted the seven remaining arrows, and knew he needed more. These were handsome arrows, long, with iron trade points bound by sinew over the haft, and three gray feathers anchored also by sinew to the rear. Each arrow was dyed with stripes of color around its shaft.

“The blue—it is for sky. The yellow is for sun. The four black lines—for you. I do not make these. The arrow maker make these. Big medicine. Now you have Absaroka medicine. Eiee!”

He slid fingers along the smooth surface, admiring the way a shoot of wood or reed had been scraped and planed into a straight shaft that would fly true.

“Absaroka make best arrows,” she said proudly. “Now you eat, or go kill Siksika.”

“Maybe these will save my life,” he said.

She turned solemn. “Maybe so.”

He felt bad because he had nothing to give her. He had subsisted as a pauper all through the rendezvous, living upon the charity of others. But the need raced through him and he knew what he would do. He plucked up one of his new blankets and handed it to her. It was gray, with black bands at the ends, thick and well carded, of English manufacture and phenomenally warm. These blankets came in pairs, and he would spare one for this lithe young Crow woman who had taken a fancy to him.

“I want you to have this. It is warm and well made,” he said.

She took it, fondled it, her eyes alive with joy and delight. She wrapped it around herself, turning it into a robe or a capote even as she drew it tight under her crossed arms.

“See, Mister Skye? You make me happy.”

She did look happy. He felt bathed in it. Something in her reached out to him, touching his core. She radiated a quality that seemed mysterious to him, as if she had magical powers.

“It will keep you warm when it is cold,” he said.

“You make me warm,” she replied, her face alive with delight. “Why do you go away? Is this not the best place, the center of the world?”

She knew his answer; they had rehearsed his reasons several times on their walks, or in their quiet moments beside the Weber River. She wasn't really asking; she was begging him to stay.

“I must go. It is my destiny.” He felt uncomfortable. She had seen something in him and wanted him for a mate. She had made that plain. But he couldn't imagine himself tied to this dusky savage the rest of his life. He wanted a fair-skinned, blue-eyed English girl, or if not that, an American girl much like those across the Atlantic. She would be gracious and thoughtful and well schooled. She would be full of merriment and feeling and passion. She would become his wife gladly, and gladly she and he would raise a family. No … not this sharp-boned Crow woman, even if she seemed a cathedral in her own right.

He had tried to tell her about schooling, but without much success because the idea of formal education was outside of her ken. He had tried to tell her of his family, his father's business importing Chinese tea, silk, bamboo, rattan, copra, and ginseng while exporting British manufactured goods; of commissioning vessels to carry his cargoes halfway around the world; of a race of island geniuses who were dominating the sciences and arts.

His explanations had largely sailed past Many Quill Woman, and often her face darkened and softened when he spoke of it.

“We know nothing of these things,” she had replied quietly once, and he sensed she was feeling defeat.

Now that surrender was in her face again.

“I will not be coming back,” he said, not wanting it to sound so harsh, but not wanting her to have false hopes either. “But wherever I am, I will remember you, Victoria—do you like that name? Perhaps I shouldn't call you that.”

“A name is a gift, Mister Skye. I like the gift. If I am Victoria to you, then it pleases me.” She paused, squinting at him sternly. “You have eyes for your own kind. I see this. I have never seen a white woman. They must be big and strong, not small like me. I know about this. I have eyes for a good Absaroka man sometimes. A warrior with many honors. That would be good. Then I would be proud. My man would give to the People. Many scalps, many buffalo, many horses. He would feed the old and hungry. I have eyes for a man like that. But I have eyes for you, more than that.”

“I would like to visit your village someday.”

“Ah! The Kicked-in-the-Bellies. We have a strong village, and we have many Siksika scalps on our lances. You see only a few of us here. Many did not come. Just the ones with skins to trade for powder and guns and blankets and pots. We have many, and many children too. You will meet them.”

“I hope I do—someday.”

“Soon, Mister Skye. I have the inner eye. My spirit helper the magpie gives me the eye when I cry to see. I saw you with my inner eye. You go away and come back. The magpies are all around you, bringing you back. You have bear medicine, and someday you will wear the claws of the great bear—you call him grizzly—as your medicine. You will see. This I saw with my inner eye, so it will be.”

Skye didn't protest. Let the savage girl have her fancies. He had told her plainly what his future would be and what he expected from his life. He only hoped she would find some good Crow warrior and find happiness. But he doubted it. He didn't know much about these American Indians but he sensed that Many Quill Woman was not a typical young woman on the brink of marriage. Something set her apart. Her destiny would take her in some strange direction.

“When are you leaving?” he asked.

“Arapooish say in the morning if the medicine seers tell him this is the right time to go back to Absaroka.”

“I will see you off. And I will remember you because of the arrows and moccasins. How did you know my size?”

“You left a print in the dust. I make good moccasins. My father's wife makes good moccasins and I learn from her. You will take those moccasins into any Absaroka village and they will tell you what lodge they came from.”

“And who made the arrows?”

“My father's brother Sees the Wind is an arrow maker. A holy man. He goes to the river to look for the right stalks. He catches the hawk for feathers. He goes to the distant cliffs for dyes. He blesses each arrow to make it strong and true. But I must tell you something. Do not shoot at the bear; the bear is your friend and helper. Send your arrows into elk and deer and antelope. Pray to each four-legged that gave up life so you could eat. Thank each one—this is what you must do when you kill. You will not have much chance to kill a buffalo, except maybe an old bull waiting for the wolves. But that is poor meat.”

“I will remember.”

She smiled suddenly, threw her new blanket over them both, and laughed. He started to pull it off, but she stayed him. “No, no, this is how Absaroka boy and girl whisper to each other.”

Skye stood, astonished, half-embarrassed, under the small canopy of the blanket, while Victoria pressed close to him, their small world hidden from others, and yet all the more visible for being in plain sight of the whole encampment.

“There, Skye, this is how we do it.”

She hugged him. He crushed her close, absorbing her sweetness and tartness all at once, something heady and private, as fragrant as roses in their privacy. She laughed and then ran a gentle hand through his matted beard. “Hairy man,” she said. “We ain't got hair. You got more hair than a woman. Are all white men so hairy?”

Skye didn't quite know how to answer. The Crow warriors he had seen—for that matter, all the Indians he had seen—had little chest hair, and not much of a beard. “We're hairy people.”

“Are your women hairy all over, too?”

Skye laughed uncertainly.

“You don't know. You are in that damn boat too long. Damn, Skye, you need a woman.”

Under the blanket, the talk had taken a more intimate turn, and Skye was half enjoying it, half wondering how many dozen mountaineers were gathering silently around them, ready to hooraw him the moment the blanket came off.

“Good-bye, Mister Skye. You remember Victoria.” She squeezed him hard and pulled the blanket away. Just as he suspected, a solemn conclave, including that rascal Beckwourth, Gabe Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Bill Sublette, Davey Jackson, and even Jedediah Smith, stood in a circle and broke into applause.

Victoria squealed, glared at the impoliteness of these white barbarians, and ran toward her people.

“Them Snakes call me Blanket Jim,” Bridger said. “Looks like I'll have to defend the title.”

“Not for nothing did the Crows make me a chief among them,” said Beckwourth. “Last winter I multiplied their population by fifty.”

“Very touching, Mister Skye,” said Tom Virgin. “We allus knew you had the makin's of a mountaineer.”

Chapter 29

The rendezvous broke up under a heavy overcast that matched the mood of the seventy-odd mountaineers. Something joyous had fled, and now the trappers and the engagés of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette repaired their gear, looked over their horses, and waited for the command of their bourgeois, or brigade leader.

Their life had emptied suddenly, and even though it was high summer they were thinking of icy streams, shivering through unbearable cold, starvin' times and rough encounters with Indians. Skye sensed the change of mood and was glad he wasn't a part of all this. They might be as free as meadowlarks, but their lives were hollow, too, and filled with long stretches of sheer boredom. They might master the subtleties of nature, or learn the tongues of the tribes, but this was hardly the place to find progressive ideas or commerce or the arts, all of which Skye fully intended to pursue. Tempting as the life was, he could never be a mountaineer.

It was time to be off. He had waited to the last to see what sort of opportunity might arise, but none had. He would go east alone and almost unarmed. He had come this far from Fort Vancouver; he could find his way down the Platte if he had to, thanks to Fitzpatrick's careful description of the route. He found Jedediah Smith packing his camp gear into parfleches and making ready to leave.

“Mr. Smith, I'll be heading for St. Louis now,” Skye said tentatively. “When I get there I'll find employment and repay what's owed—over seventeen dollars, I believe. You have an account with General Ashley and I'll deposit it there.”

Smith smiled mildly. “The mountains aren't for you, eh?”

“No, sir.”

“You don't have the itch to see what lies in the next valley, or what a coon must do to get from here to there, or see some amazing sight never before witnessed by a white man?”

“Those are all absorbing things, sir. But I have other plans. It's a dream that sustained me for days and weeks and months in ships' brigs, a dream that kept me going when I holystoned the decks, or climbed the rigging, or gazed at a distant shore where I would not touch foot.”

Smith nodded. “I have strong business instincts myself. Hope to leave the mountains in comfortable circumstances in a few years.” He smiled. “But those aren't my only hopes. Here in America, Mister Skye, Yanks have a westering instinct. We settled the east and then pushed ever westward across an unknown land, always itchy to see what lay beyond the horizon. It's bred into us.”

Skye sighed. “I lack the instinct. But I'll never forget this, and the fine men I've met here. You're friends.”

“I won't try to dissuade you. But we're putting three brigades out and you could join one. We can outfit you and you could spend a year and come out ahead.”

“I've thought on it, and I'll just take my chances. I'd be grateful for some directions.”

“I'll draw a map.”

Smith extracted a sheet of paper—a precious item in the mountains—and a lead ball intended for his rifle, and began to draw with it, much to Skye's surprise. The lead left a clear mark on the paper.

Swiftly Smith drew rivers and mountain ranges, his hand replicating some vast map in his mind. Skye marveled that this quiet young man knew such a large part of a continent.

“We're here in Cache Valley. You need to get to the Platte, which'll take you to the Missouri, which'll take you to St. Louis and the Mississippi. You have several options. You can go over to Bear Lake, and then cut east to the Seedskedee, and cross a wasteland to South Pass, then to the headwaters of the Sweetwater, and down to the North Platte, like this.”

Smith sketched in a trail with dotted lines. Skye knew that sticking to it would be much harder.