The Big Sky (11 page)

"That makes three of us, for watches."

"Oui. We watch."

"B'God, we better, if we want a crew. It'll be better, away from the settlements. That is, if we git by Leavenworth."

"Pouff! They find no whisky on the
Mandan
, except what is permit' the crew."

"We got to be slick."

"A good wind, and night. Pouff!"

"Take away the whisky and we won't have but a smidgen of goods to trade with."

The patron stroked his black mustache. Under it his mouth eased into a grin. "Six cats, too."

"How much you figger for them?"

Jourdonnais shrugged. "One plew, two each. Maybe more if the mice are enough."

They talked quietly, like men spending time speaking of little things while a bigger one was in their thoughts. They reminded Boone of people around a body waiting for the preacher to get started.

"And you'd still have the Injun girl," Jim broke in. It was like him to speak up, trying to prize out information. In his mind's eye Boone saw the Indian child, a little splinter of a girl who was all eyes in a thin face. His gaze went to the stem of the
Mandan
, where Jourdonnais had rigged a buffalo-robe shelter for her against the cargo box. He heard again what Jourdonnais had said the first night out. "You men, you leave the Indian enfant alone. No talk. No play. No hands on her. Summers will shoot, by God, dead anyone who monkey. Leave alone! You understand?"

Answering Jim, Jourdonnais' voice was soft. "The little squaw. Ah! With an eye like the bluewing teal."

"We'll raise hell in the Blackfoot nation," said Summers. "Alcohol and guns and powder and ball."

"Good business. They want it."

"The other side of Leavenworth," the hunter went on, "all we have to bother ourselves with is the Company. And afterwards, if we slide by that new fort, Union, there's the Blackfeet and maybe the British."

"Business is danger. We lose, maybe. Maybe we make money."

"It ain't worth it, for the money."

"You go," said Jourdonnais. "You are my partner."

"Not for the money so much."

Jourdonnais' shoulders came up to his ears and fell back. "All hunters are crazy. You like the lonely fire, the danger, what you call the freedom and, sometime, the squaw. We like silver in the pocket, people, wine, song, women. We ascend the river only for the return."

"This child don't feel easy in his mind about them sick ones in the boat."

"We do what we can. Now it is up to God." Jourdonnais went back to his subject. "But you are not all mountain man, Summers. Half of you is grayback farmer."

"So?"

"Oh, not that you are not brave, my frien'.
Oui
, you are brave for a certainty. But you are not hard and rough and cruel, like some. You do not go off, like the hermit, to stay forever."

"Maybe so." Summers was silent for a minute. "You ascend the river only for the return. You ought to shine when the steamers run."

"Never!"

"They're on the Missouri a'ready."

"The
Duncan
! And to Leavenworth only!"

"They aim to try the whole distance."

Jourdonnais' dark head shook. "It is foolishness. The Missouri never know where she run, here today, over there tomorrow. Sandbanks, sawyers, towheads,
embarras
. The steamer be smash' before she start."

"You'll see," promised Summers and sucked on his pipe. The breeze died and the walnuts quit whispering. From the boat there came the sound of coughing and a long moan.

"If only we get there," said Jourdonnais.

"This child'll see about those poor bastards," the hunter said, rising.

The patron put out an arm to hold him back. His gaze was on the ruffled shimmer of the river. From it there came a shout.

"Ahoy!" shouted Jourdonnais. "Who is it?" Boone turned to Summers. "It's a raft, ain't it?"

"Pirogue."

"Bercier, Carpenter and La Farge: "

"
Mandan
, Jourdonnais." The patron had started for the bank. The others followed him. The pirogue was a black patch on the water. The paddles caught the moonlight as the men brought her in under the stern of the
Mandan
.

The steersman said, "We thought to be in St. Louis before now."

Jourdonnais caught the mooring rope. "The food is warm. Coffee we have. Beaucoup," he said, as if coffee was a rare thing on the Missouri.

The paddlers rested their oars. "The good God help me," said one, "but my ass aches!"

Boone's eye caught the barest movement on the
Mandan
and made out, by squinting, that it was a small head poking up, the head of the little squaw looking down on the pirogue.

Summers asked, "What's the cargo?"

"Bear oil. Lard for St. Louis."

"Bear oil, in March?"

"Cached it last season. It's sweet enough still."

"Climb ashore," Summers invited.

Stiffly the men started to rise. Half-risen, they stopped and listened. Their faces turned up to Jourdonnais. "Bellyache," he explained. "Two got the bellyache." The men at the paddles looked at each other and aft at the steersman. After a long silence the steersman said, "We are behind already."

"The moon she's up for long time," said one of the paddlers, and let himself sink back.

"Merci beaucoup," acknowledged the other. "We move along. The oil maybe spoil."

Jourdonnais tossed the painter back to them and with his foot started the pirogue into the current. The paddles glistened, the patch of black receded, until Boone could not tell what was boat and what was wave.

The patron's gaze was out on the water. "You watch camp," said Summers. "I'll see about the sick."

Boone and Deakins followed Summers to the fire, where he cut and lighted a spill. They went back to the keelboat with it, climbed the side and let themselves down in the bow. There was a smell there, a hot, sour smell that made Boone wrinkle his nose. The moaning had stopped. They heard, instead, a strangling, snoring breath. Summers handed the spill to Boone. "It's fever of some cut," he said.

Two men lay side by side on buffalo robes, half-covered by blankets. "Can't keep covers on 'em, but still I got an idee sweatin' is the ticket." One of the men had turned on his side and lay there without moving. The other was on his back. His eyes glistened in the light of the flame. "Water?" asked Summers. The man's hard breath caught at his cheeks, puffing and pulling them as he breathed in and out, changing his face from thin to fat. Boone heard the rattle of phlegm in his chest. He felt a movement on his leg and started from it. It was Painter, the black cat, rubbing against him. He put his free hand down and felt the cat's spine against it. The cat meowed once and began to purr, like a small imitation of the sick man. From the cargo box six pairs of green eyes looked out, the bodies behind them lost in the cage and the dark. Boone felt a little shiver along the back of his legs and up his spine, thinking they were wanting to get out to feed on man flesh. Painter arched ahead, purring.

Summers stood up. "Francois has gone under," he said, and stooped again and brought the blanket over the face. "Zephyr's nigh gone." He stood thoughtful and unafraid. "Come on. We'll tell Jourdonnais." First, though, he took the rag that had slipped from the sick man's forehead and wet it again in the river and smoothed it back. "All right. The poor bastards."

Jourdonnais met them at the bank.

"Frangois's dead, and Zephyr won't last till sunup, I'm thinking."

The patron thrust up his hands. "Quiet!" he whispered. "Quiet! Not one will be left. It is time enough in the morning.

His warning given, the patron crossed himself.
 
 

From the cargo box Jourdonnais shouted, "
A bas les perches!
" The wind took the words from his mouth and blew them away. It flattened his clothes against his ribs and caught hold of the left bar of his mustache and swept it to the other side, so that he looked almost as if the hair grew only on the right.

Jim Deakins lowered his ash pole and felt it catch on the river bed. He brought the ball of it into the hollow of his shoulder and set his legs to driving, feeling the boat give under his feet. Ahead of him on the walkway that the Creoles called the
passe avant
the men were bent low with strain. One of them clawed ahead with his hand and caught a cleat and with arm and legs drove against his pole. "
Fort
" Jourdonnais cried. "
Fort
!" The keelboat slid under Jim's feet. "
Levez les perches!
" The boatmen straightened, swung about and hurried forward. "
A bas-
." They caught her before the current stopped her, and it was push again, step by step, while the ball ground into a man's shoulder and his lungs wheezed.

Damn the wind! It hit at Jim, throwing him off balance when he went forward, trapping the breath in his lungs as he angled against his pole. It was a cold bully of a wind, full of devilment and power, letting up for a moment and coming on again, stronger than ever, just to plague a man. At that, it was better to be on the wind side where, if a man faltered, he was pushed against the cargo box. On the other side, where Boone was, a body could go overboard as easy as not. He could see Boone when the crew straightened, just the head and the straight neck and the strong shoulders of him over the box, moving forward to get a fresh hold with his pole. Boone didn't look much to right or left. He kept his eyes ahead of him and tended to business, unsmiling and silent. Jim reckoned Boone wasn't himself yet, from having his gun stole and being jailed and whipped. Once Boone had showed him the marks of the whip, which still lay long and dark on his back like old scars.

"
A bas ... levez ... fort
." The words were a chorus in Jim's head. He heard them at night and awoke to find his legs moving under his blanket. Or if it wasn't poling it was pulling, straining from the bank on a thousand-foot line that ran to the mast of the keelboat. It was like pulling in a fish, like pulling in a whale, except that a man never got her in until nightfall and had to scramble over the rocks and through the willows and in the mud from sunup to dark.

They had had just one easy day, when the wind was right, and Jourdonnais had the square sail put up, and the boat moved along so well that the rowers he had sent to the oars sang songs and only played at rowing.

That was the day Jim had tried to talk to Teal Eye, while Romaine was at the rudder and Jourdonnais up front in the bow. Remembering that day, Jim tried to get a look at her when he came to the end of his push and straightened up, but all he could see was a little of the top of the shelter Jourdonnais had made out of a couple of sticks and a buffalo robe. She was sitting down probably, with Painter near her and the caged cats close by, out of the wind. Mostly she sat by her makeshift tepee, quiet as a rabbit. She might be asleep, except that her eyes were never still. They looked big and fluid in the thin, dark face -too big for her, too big for the small shoulders over which she kept drawn a tatter of blanket, too big for the legs that came from under the white man's calico and ended in a small pair of worn moccasins. For all that Jourdonnais had said, the men rolled their eyes at her when they got a chance and showed their teeth in smiles, but she just looked at them and looked away, her face as straight and set as some little carving of wood. If any had a notion to go further, Jim reckoned the thought of Jourdonnais and his promise and of Summers with his cool gray eye was enough to hold them back. At night a guard was posted, to see the men didn't desert, to watch the boat, and, Jim imagined, to see no one tried to get with Teal Eye. She was mighty young and small, but still you couldn't tell what a man might try -a French boatman, anyway. Jim felt sorry for her, truly sorry, thinking of her as little and lonesomer than a man might believe. Later now, two or three years ahead, he might think of her as the boatmen did, but not now, not while she was so young and helpless and alone.

"Howdy," he had said on that day he tried to talk to her. He smiled. Her eyes flicked to his face and went on, as if they were seeing nothing and still had seen all. "Heap good day," he tried. He pointed toward the sun. "Heap good." The small face didn't change. He had a sudden notion that there was some old wisdom in her that found him not important enough to take notice of. Her eyes were liquid, as if dark water ran in them. Following her gaze, he saw Boone Caudill standing on the
passe avant
, standing still, looking west beyond the river. A man might have thought the country was saying something to him. It occurred to Jim, studying Boone's sharp, dark profile, that Boone might have been an Indian himself. Two men in the stern started singing a song, looking at Jim and laughing and singing in French. He'd ought to had better sense than to speak to her with the damn Creoles around. For a bluff he got out his knife and tried the blade with his thumb and looked at them again, and they stopped laughing.

Summers could get Teal Eye to talk, though, and even Jourdonnais a little. One or the other always took her plate to her, and sometimes on shore Jim heard murmurs from the stern where they were. He reckoned they set a high value on her, the way they fed her and watched her and scared everybody else away. Labadie said she was a Blackfoot -a daughter of a chief- that a boat had picked up half dead the year before and carried to St. Louis.

It would be good, Jim thought, as one foot felt for a cleat and his aching shoulder fought the pole, to be Jourdonnais, up there on the cargo box managing the rudder, or to be Romaine, the bosseman, who stood in the bow with his pole to fend off snags and help steer. Sometimes, lying awake under the stars, he wondered whether Frangois and Zephyr, back on the bank with dirt and rocks piled over them, didn't like it better, just resting and letting others do the work.

Against the wind Jourdonnais put the
Mandan
into shore beneath a cut-bank. Romaine went over the side with the painter and waded to the bank and tied her up.

"We rest," said the patron, "until dark and the moon." The sun was still up, slicing through the trees to the brown water that wrinkled to the wind. Here the wind only came by accident, in puffs that slid down the bluff or found a way around it. It made a noise, though -a hollow whining like hounds tied up.