Rendezvous (28 page)

She saw the familiar rakish bird fly by, a flash of white and black with iridescent blue tones. Magpie alighted some distance away, danced on one foot and the other, and broke into the sky, raucous and arrogant. Magpie was like Many Quill Woman, harsh and rowdy and not a bit sweet.

“Blessed is my counselor,” she said. “You have come to share your wisdom with your daughter.”

She felt her power, her destiny, too. She would not be like other Absaroka women, for she would teach herself the ways of war. She might be small and light and fragile, but she would be deadly. She thought at first that she would make war for the People like the great warrior woman Pine Leaf, because the People had lost so many young men to the Siksika and Lakota. Yes, she would learn the ways of war for her tribe and village, but she would learn war for other, mistier reasons as yet unclear.

She stayed an afternoon more, trying to sort out what could not be described in words, and then trotted back to her lodge and sought out her father.

“I wish to have a bow and arrows, and I wish to be taught,” she said.

“You?”

“Yes, I have seen it. I must know how to fight.”

“If you have seen it, and if you know it is a true vision, we will do it.”

“I have seen it.”

“You will war for the People, because we have lost so many.”

She nodded.

“No woman may touch my bow or arrows or quiver or their war powers will wither. But I will get you a bow. The family of the one who was killed will give you one of his bows and will be pleased with your vision.”

“I must tell you there was more to the vision. Yes, I must learn the warrior skills, but it won't always be for the People.”

Her father eyed her sharply.

“For another Absaroka village?”

“No.”

“For another People?”

“No, for myself and the one who becomes my man.”

Her father stared a long while and nodded. “It is a good thing,” he said uncertainly.

“Yes. This one will need me,” she said.

Chapter 36

At first Skye saw nothing. He was examining the great mountain-girt basin from the top of a noble hill, looking for the Sublette brigade—and signs of danger. Puffball clouds plowed shadows across the giant land while zephyrs made the whole world vibrate and the late summer light shiver.

He knew he did not have keen eyes, or maybe he simply wasn't seeing what experienced trappers saw. During his brief sojourn with Sublette's men, he came to realize they read nature in ways he couldn't fathom. They saw meaning in the flight of birds or the way antelope fled. Silences meant a lot. The sudden cessation of birdsong could mean trouble. The scents on the wind told stories to them that Skye didn't grasp.

He lay in the shivering brown grass studying a panorama so vast he knew he could fathom only this small southwestern corner of it. But what he saw seemed a hunter's and trapper's paradise. Creeks and rivers laced this land. Broad meadows supported buffalo and elk and deer and antelope. Moose browsed the bogs. Willow brush and chokecherry thickets and copses of aspen or cottonwood gave shelter and food, and were the home of the beaver.

He waited patiently to make sense of all he saw as he squinted north and east. At last he spotted movement, small and dark and uncertain. But as he studied the faint motion, it came to him he was seeing a herd of running buffalo, maybe a hundred or so, and they seemed to be coming his way, although the distances made him uncertain. Yes, buffalo, black beasts over a mile distant, and more. Mounted riders among them, drawing alongside one. Sometimes a giant animal would stumble and fall, and the riders would leave it and race after another.

Indian hunters. Blackfeet.

The realization shot terror through him. The stampeding buffalo were heading in his direction, along with the hunters. He watched, mesmerized, not knowing what to do. He was in open country, grassy hills, without cover. Just behind him, his mare and foal stood in plain sight. He had been a fool to come here, throwing caution to the winds.

Sublette wouldn't be here in the heart of the Blackfoot hunting grounds—not yet. Not until the beaver were prime. They had explained it to him. Not until November, when the beaver had grown their winter pelts, were they worth taking. He was alone among hunters and warriors famous for casual butchery of any white man they encountered—sometimes with ritual torture to prolong the agony.

The herd grew closer and larger, and he was amazed by its speed. These big, clumsy beasts could run as fast as the fastest horse. He was trapped. All he could do was slip back below the ridge line along with his horses, and wait events. He retreated until he was out of sight of the herd, and clung tightly to the lead line of his excited mare.

He could hear the thunder of the herd just over the ridge, and once in a while he thought he heard the ululating howls of the hunters. They passed by. The herd had veered up the broad valley rather than boil over his ridge. He felt drained. Sweat soaked his leather tunic. He was not yet out of trouble and could not know whether a horseman would suddenly top the ridge and spot him.

Now Bug's Boys, as the trappers called them, were ahead and behind him, and his life wasn't worth a pence. He could think of nothing to do but wait for dark, which was a long time away. He didn't know which direction to go. He could run into the savages in any direction, at any time. He surveyed his situation, which wasn't bad, actually. He was simply high up the slope of a long grassy hill. Below, a creek ran somewhere. But he saw no cover other than a little scrub juniper. Well, that would have to do. He cautiously led his horses to a likely dark patch covering an acre and waited there. The mare grazed contently, no longer quivering with the sound of a stampede in her alert ears.

In the relative safety of the juniper, calm returned to him. For several months he had been transforming himself into a mountaineer. He had learned steadily, and now he would employ what he knew. He acknowledged he was afraid, and couldn't help the rush of fear every time he thought of the Blackfeet. And yet, the trappers dealt with that same fear day after day. They went about their daily toil with that fear never far from them. How did they do it? Skye marveled at their courage, and hoped to discover within himself the same fatalistic acceptance of danger along with their sharp, tough confidence that they could weather trouble.

He waited for several more hours and then, upon seeing no sign of danger, quietly walked eastward past giant foothills that guarded the towering peaks to the south. He knew from the crude maps drawn by Jedediah Smith and William Sublette that off to the east somewhere, over a high pass, lay the land of the Crow Indians and the Yellowstone River, the greatest tributary of the Missouri. There he might find safety, and maybe even Sublette. It would be the logical place for the brigade to wait for cold weather.

Two uneventful days later he reached what seemed to be the southeast corner of this giant basin, and beheld a sharp notch in the mountains, cut by a small creek. Signs of passage suggested the trail was heavily traveled, which worried him.

He turned into it, followed the creek beneath gloomy gray ramparts of limestone, and eventually topped the pass. At its crest he saw off to the southeast the most majestic mountains he had ever seen, jagged ramparts capped with new snow. He descended a long grassy valley and found himself a few days later on the bank of a large river he believed was the Yellowstone. It curved here, turning from its northward direction to an easterly one.

If he was right, this was Crow country, and while that didn't preclude the arrival of other tribes, including the Blackfeet, he began to feel less fearful. The river flowed at low ebb, and he found he could ride the mare through belly-deep water to a long semiwooded island that would offer him some concealment and protection.

He found a hollow near its eastern end where he could build a small fire that could not be seen from either bank, and settled down for the night, plagued by mosquitos. He rejoiced to be in Crow country. His thoughts turned to the girl he had renamed Victoria. Suddenly she was present in his mind. He wasn't going to Boston, at least not until next summer, and her image danced before him, slim and fierce and tender. He wondered if he could find her, and if her family would welcome him when the cold set in.

His larder was reduced to cattail roots again, and he spent an hour collecting the miserable food. He kept smelling roasting meat on the wind, and ascribed it to his all-too-familiar hunger, which often excited fantasies of banquets.

“Well, dammit old coon, if you're goin' to come all this way and not jine us, then the devil with ye.”

The voice behind Skye raised the hair on his neck. He whirled and peered into the dusk, discovering slope-shouldered Jim Bridger, old Gabe himself.

Skye roared. Bridger howled like a wolf. Trappers materialized out of the gloom and hugged Skye. The mare, picketed on grass nearby, reared back and broke her tether. Someone caught her. Skye fought back tears that welled unbidden.

“Why, old Mister Skye's a daddy, looks like,” said one, observing the horse colt.

They escorted Skye to the other end of the island, taking his horses and gear with them. There Skye discovered Sublette and the whole brigade, much to his relief and joy.

And meat. Buffalo roasted over two fires. These mountaineers weren't concealing their presence, and the fires threw light on the far shores.

“He looks poor bull, don't he?” said Beckwourth. “I guess we got to put some tallow on him.”

“He's been cavorting with Blackfeet women,” said Black Harris. “That'll thin down a coon in a week.”

Skye didn't argue. This outfit understood. Eat first and then talk. He ate. Succulent, dripping buffalo meat melted in his mouth. He wolfed down one cut, and another, eating with his fingers, juices running down his jaw and off his fingers. He had his fill and he kept on eating until he couldn't stuff another morsel into his mouth. Two additional quarters of a buffalo cow hung from thick limbs. He would soon tackle another pink, hot, dripping slab of the best meat he had ever tasted. But now he felt satiated, and that was an odd sensation.

They studied his plunder, what little there was of it, his mare and foal, his crudely patched moccasins, his mended tack.

“Hard doin's, eh, Mister Skye?” asked Sublette when Skye paused.

“I got here,” Skye said, pride welling in him. “Pretty good for a limey sailor.”

“Ye come over that pass?” Bridger asked.

Skye nodded.

“I don't suppose ye saw any Bug's Boys. Just limey luck.”

Skye wiped his mouth with his buckskin sleeve. “I saw them but they didn't see me.”

“Hull country's swarming with 'em. We come through at night, so damned many of 'em.”

Skye nodded. Apparently he had done something even more daring than he realized. At ease for the first time in days, he settled back into a tree trunk and told them his story, beginning with his departure from the rendezvous, his loss of everything to the Blackfeet, the bear that saved him, his indecision and fear and despair when he was lost, his desperate quest for food, his wild moment on the Madison River when he was caught between a village he couldn't identify and raiders who came within a few yards of him.

“Poor doin's. Probably Shoshones, maybe Bannacks,” someone volunteered. “Best not to tangle with Bannacks. Miracle you didn't get your ha'r raised.”

They questioned him at length, and he asked them about their journey, which had been uneventful until they reached the Three Forks and found Blackfeet everywhere. After that they had slipped over to Crow country, the great bend of the Yellowstone, and had been here a fortnight waiting for the weather to cool, feasting on buffalo.

Sublette raised the question on all their minds. “What are your plans, Mister Skye?”

“To enter your service, sir.”

“I thought so. We can use every man we can get. You'll need an outfit. We carry two or three spares; every year someone or other loses his plunder—traps, rifle, flint, and steel. We can outfit you.”

“How will all that earn out, sir?”

“Camp tenders earn two hundred a year. Your outfit'll cost about a hundred. That means you'll have a mountain rifle, pound of powder and a horn, lead balls, thirty-two to a pound, half a dozen traps, a good skinning knife, blankets, and some odds and ends including a few yards of flannel.”

“You'd make me a camp tender?”

“It's an apprenticeship, Mister Skye. Free trappers earn more, but you'll need to learn some things first. Beavers don't just come to you and offer themselves up. We try to have one camp tender for every two trappers but we're short. You'll skin and dress the pelts, dry 'em out, cook, keep the fires going, and herd the company horses and mules. It's hard work and these old coons'll give you all the grief they can. Next season, or maybe sooner if you're up and the beaver's coming, you can go out and trap and make a good living. You ever shot a rifle?”

“No, sir, except a few times at the rendezvous.”

“Not even in the Royal Navy?”

“I wasn't a marine, sir. I was a powder monkey mostly and then a seaman.”

“Well, you'll be getting some lessons in the mornin'. You'll learn the whole drill, from keeping your piece clean and dry to making meat. We'll burn a little du Pont. Old Fitzpatrick here, he's gonna turn you into a mountaineer. Let me tell you something, Mister Skye. Learn how to use that rifle. How to load fast and shoot slow and never waste a shot. A red man can pump six or seven arrows at you in the time it takes you to reload. So every shot counts. Believe me, before we're done with the Three Forks, you'll be put to the test.”

Chapter 37

When the grass gave out, Sublette took the brigade off the island and into a broad valley of the Yellowstone that was hemmed by majestic mountains.