The Big Sky (25 page)

"Grass can't shine too soon for me," said Boone. He brought his knife along the length of cottonwood he held between his knees. The bark peeled off in a long, limber shaving. He cut the shaving crosswise into small pieces and tossed the pieces onto a little pile to feed his horses in the morning. "Horses eat enough bark to keep one of them there steamboats going."
"We got to git somewheres ahead of the rest," Jim said.

"We'll git somewheres," Summers answered. "If it ain't the Wind or the Grey Bull or the Popo Agie, it'll be another."

"Might be they're trapped out."

"We'll find beaver. Always have."

If a man took his eyes away from the fire and kept them on the sky the stars seemed to come close, burning brighter all the while. The Big Dipper stood out plain, the sides of it pointing to the North Star, which was small but steadier than most, not winking like the others did. Boone brought his eyes back to his work. He picked up another stick and began shaving it. A man had to keep his horses fit. He had seen horses that had gnawed each other's tails down to a nub, they got that hungry. Right now when he listened he could hear their own horses stamping the snow out in the darkness, trying to get down to grass.

"I reckon beaver won't be no higher," said Jim, "and no thicker, neither."

Summers roused himself to say, "We won't be seein' any twelve-dollar plews, I'm thinkin', like they paid onc't at Fort Clark. Fat meat like that couldn't shine long."

"The damn Company's got us by the tail now, since Fitzpatrick and Bridger throwed in with 'em. Ain't none to bid ag'in 'em. That's what ails beaver."

"That," Summers said, nodding, "and them Londoners makin' hats out of silk, if what we hear tell is right."

"It'll come back," Boone put in. He had heard that kind of talk for two winters or more. "It ain't done. You'll see."

"I got a piece of land around Independence, Missouri State, if it's still there," Summers said as if he wasn't talking to them but just thinking to himself.

"It don't matter so much about the beaver. Not to me," said Boone. "Just so a man ketches enough for tobacco and powder and ball and sometimes some whisky."

To Summers Jim said, "All Boone hankers for is fat meat and a fire and to be away from folks."

It was good enough, Boone thought to himself. What did a man want as long as he had marrowbones and hump ribs and a fire to keep him warm and a free country to move around in? It took something to beat a place where you could kill a buffalo every day and not half try and take just the best of it and leave the rest to the wolves. What more could anyone want, unless maybe it was a good squaw to keep camp and to lie with him at night?

"A man gets a feeling when the years pile up on him," Summers went on, still as if he was talking to himself. "He ain't so spry sometimes in the mornin', and at night he has to keep rollin' out to let off water, and his bones hurt, and he figures he's certain sure to lose his scalp if he keeps on."

"You been talkin' thataway, Dick, since God knows when," Boone said.

Summers didn't answer.

"Git back there, and they couldn't tie you to stay. You're still sassy as a setter pup, pointin' anything that shakes its tail."

The mention of God set Jim off, like it always did. He locked his hands behind his head and leaned back against a stump. "I reckon God don't like a man to set his sights too high. Time he overaims, God sics something on him. Reckon He thinks nobody's got a right to feel big savin' Himself. Ain't room in the puddle but for one big frog. Maybe that's why we're still kickin'; we ain't aimin' at nothin' except keepin' our hair on and our bellies full, and havin' a time at rendezvous or maybe Taos. Ain't nothin' in that to git God's dander up."

Summers didn't seem to be listening. He was just looking into the fire with his eyes slitted as he did many a time now. Boone started on another length of cottonwood.

"Like Jourdonnais now," Jim argued. "He thought to be a mighty big nabob. He did, now, till God cut him down."

"McKenzie didn't do so bad."

"Only for a spell, Boone. Then the government found he was makin' whisky there at Union, and you ain't heered of McKenzie since. I reckon that was God workin' through the government."

"It was tolerable liquor, too," Summers said, stirring. "A sight better than some. Seems onlikely God had anything to do with it, though; He ain't in the liquor business. This nigger wishes he had a can of it now."

"It ain't so long till rendezvous." Jim ran his tongue around his mouth. "That's what I'm living for, is rendezvous. Whisky and playin' hand, and the Injun girls all purtied up, yours for a cut of cloth or a hawk's bell or a Green River knife for her man. Jesus!"

"Things don't figure to shine so much," answered Summers. "Not with Bonneville back in the army and Wyeth in Boston. Be a plenty of Indians, but not so many packs and not so much money. Not so many mountain men, either, the way they been pullin' out."

"'Member how the Snakes looked at Bonneville's bald head, wonderin' if the hair had been left off apurpose so's he couldn't be scalped?" Jim chuckled.

Boone answered Summers. "We get beaver enough."

"By travelin' by ourself. By taking chances. Trappin' small and quiet, a man can ketch beaver yet, if he don't lose his scalp."

"And lose out on some fun, too," Jim said, his gaze fixed on Boone. "It wouldn't have hurt our ketch, nohow, to've rendevoused for winter with Bridger's men on the Yellowstone."

"This here suits me," Boone answered.

It had suited him for a long time now, this life along the streams and in the hills -so long it seemed like forever. Jim was always letting fret get into him and wanting to put out for St. Louis or Taos or anywhere that people were. Taos was all right when it came to that; he had followed along after Jim and Summers a time or two. And maybe St. Louis would be all right if a man took just long enough to wet his whistle and didn't let himself get tangled with the law; but once, when he had thought to go with Jim and Summers, he had turned back at the settlements, feeling strange and uneasy and caged in.

This life had suited him a long time, saving the weeks they had spent on foot dodging Blackfeet after Jourdonnais and the crew went under. Once in a while those days would come back to him yet, as real as if just happening, and he would hear the curlew's cry coming from across the river and would fear to answer it and would make his legs carry him upstream along the bank until he found a log and pushed off with it for the other side. Summers and Jim had watched him coming, and they fished him out of the river and half-carried him away, stopping after a while in a thicket where Summers had a look at the wound by his neck.

Summers' voice would come to him, low and friendly and with the edge of a joke in it. "One little musket ball won't put you under, hoss. This place ain't nothin'. I seen holes as bad made by a sticker bush." Summers' eyes were smiling. Boone looked up into the gray of them and over Summers' bent head saw the sky dulling off to night. He reckoned he ought to smile back but he didn't have the will for it.

The days ran together when he thought back to them, so that what he remembered wasn't time set off and divided, with this and that happening on such and such a day. What he remembered was the fear on him like a weight, the long hiding, the pushing ahead when his legs were limber and his breath dry and fast in his throat, the wound hurting steady, and Jim helping him, and Summers, and Jim looking anxious when he thought Boone didn't see. They walked one day after another, keeping when they could to the brush or the cuts the water had made, but always walking, step and step -always walking, each time putting a teensy bit of ground under them while they looked ahead on plains land that flowed on and on forever. Some places it was so bare that even a rabbit couldn't find a good place to hide, and a man got the feeling then that the Blackfeet were perched all around, watching from where the plains rimmed up to the sky. Their moccasins wore out, and the rawhide from the buffalo Summers had dared to shoot clung stiff and clumsy to the foot; and step and step they went on, the spines of cactus angry in the flesh, and their bellies drawn up in their ribs and the taste of wild-rose berries and raw prairie turnips in their mouths, for not often would Summers take the chance of striking a fire or shooting meat. The sun swam across the sky and went down early, and a keen chill flowed on the land, so that they shivered in their buckskins and slept close for warmth and roused early when the night was coldest and went on, heading east and south for the Yellowstone and the friendlier country beyond, heading across the endless tumble of plain, and lying one time in the grass when a party of Indians came into sight and passed by and grew into nothing. They kept on, joked and cheered and pushed along by Summers, and then -in the early morning, it was- they met up with six hunters from the Rocky Mounthin Fur Company and went with them to winter rendezvous on the Powder.

It wasn't so far, that rendezvous, from where they were camped now -not so far by miles, anyhow. By time it seemed a long way off.

Summers nosed the logs farther into the fire, which had been built Indian fashion, with the ends of the wood rather than the middle in the blaze. A little shower of sparks arose, until the wind woke up and sent them streaming. Flames licked at the logs and then came up in one tongue, lighting the camping place. Through the wide mouths of the skin lodges, set close against the shoulder of rock, Boone could make out robes and blankets and their small bags of fixings. The graining block stood behind him, a half-worked deerskin on it. Close by ran a pole, set in crotches, that they hung their meat on. There wasn't but a chunk or two of fresh meat on it now, and the meat they had dried for winter was all eaten up; tomorrow he'd kill a cow, and he and Summers and Jim would feast on the young one she carried in her. Farther out, he could see the white trunks of quaking asp glimmering as the fire flickered. A horse sneezed, unseen in the darkness, and out still farther, rumped on some bill, a wolf howled. Boone shivered inside his hunting shirt, feeling lonely and good with the darkness crowding around him and the spot of fire holding it back and the wind sad in the trees.

His gaze went to Summers and saw him tighten a little and grow still, as if all the strength of his eyes and ears was brought to one point. That was the way it was with Dick. He would seem to be drowsing, and then there would be a sound somewhere or a movement, and you would see that he was alive and quick all the time, quicker and more alive than anybody, as if his senses told him things even in his sleep. His hand went over and curled around his rifle and brought it, slanting out, across his knees.

Jim started to say something but fell silent as Summers let out a low hissing noise.

Boone heard it now, too, the sound of feet coming toward the fire, coming careless and loud, crunching in the snow, as if the man swinging them hadn't a fright in the world. He had his own rifle in his hands. The nose of Summers' weapon moved to the right and steadied.

Into the circle of firelight a top-heavy figure moved and grew to be an Indian carrying an antelope across his back. He dumped the carcass by the fire and straightened and looked around, first at Summers, then at Jim, and then at Boone. His ugly, bony face creased into a sudden smile that showed he had two teeth missing in front. He had a crooked nose that came down almost to his lip and seemed about to poke into the hole that the teeth had left. "How," he said, and began to laugh, a laugh that started deep in him and bubbled out, until a man hearing him had to laugh, too, it was so true and silly.

"How," said Summers.

The Indian brushed a tangle of hair out of his eyes and took the bow and quiver from his shoulder and let them drop. For a hunting shirt he had on an old deerskin that had been doubled over and a hole cut for his head. He had it tied with whangs under his arms. "Talk English, me," he announced. "Heap good. Plenty good."

"So?"

The Indian slapped himself on the chest. "Good."

"Talk it then, hoss."

"Eat. Drink. Piss. Goddam."

Jim got a surprised look in his face and then began to howl.

A little smile worked at Summers' mouth. "Dogged if that hoss don't run the circle," he said to Boone and Jim.

The Indian said "Son a bitch" as if it was a word he'd just thought of.

"You shore shine at trapper's talk. You do now. Who be ye, Injun?" -

The Indian squatted down by the fire, where Boone could see his leggings were old and thin with hardly a fringe left. The cloth shirt he wore under the deerskin was probably red once.

"Blackfoot, me." His words ran into Indian talk. Summers listened close, nodding that he understood.

When he was through Summers said, "Here's a nigger without a nation. Says he's a Blood, but had a set-to with them for some reason, and so he run off. Lived with the Kootenai for a spell, and the Flatheads and Shoshones. Looks more like a Poordevil Injun -no gun and nigh bareassed- but he don't act that way."

The Indian smiled again. The fire showed his tongue working behind the gap in his teeth. "Love Long Knives, me. Love whisky. Love whisky heap." He looked around, smiling a kind of baby smile under the long, hooked nose, as if he expected one of them to offer him a can. "Drink heap whisky, me."

"I'm thinkin' he's a true-blue Blackfoot." To the Indian Summers said, "No got whisky. No medicine water. All gone. Eat?" he invited, and pointed to a piece of meat still skewered on a stick that slanted over the fire. The Indian jerked the meat from the stick and set his jaws into it and took the knife from his waist and ran it in front of his nose, cutting a bite from the chunk. He gulped and laughed his strong, bubbling laugh again for no reason at all unless because he felt good.

"Ask him does he know Heavy Otter," Boone said to Summers.

Summers' voice went out, hoarse and choppy. The Indian stopped chewing and made a face and combed his greasy hand through his hair. Then he said "Goddam" and went on chewing.

Jim was watching him, his face screwed into a questioning grin as if he had never seen his like before. "Kin we keep him, Pap?" he asked as a young one would have asked it.