The Big Sky (28 page)

They all moved around, talking, telling about the winter, filling the quiet air with sound, all except the big man who still sat his horse with no smile on his face and no word in his mouth.

"Where's Bridger and the rest?" Summers asked.

"Comin' along. We took out ahead."

"How's beaver?"

"We catched a few. The damn Blackfeet give us trouble again, a heap of it."

"Damn the goddam Injuns!" It was Streak speaking, speaking as he looked at Poordevil. "What's that one?"

Summers looked up but didn't answer right away, and Boone put in "Blackfoot" and looked afterward as if he knew he shouldn't have said it.

"What!"

"More like a Poordevil," Summers said. "Let's smoke."

Streak got down off the horse and stood holding his gun. It was a smart rifle, decorated with brass tacks and a pattern of vermilion, as if he had just done fancying it up.

"We got ourselves a few plews," Summers was saying, talking to the rest but keeping the tail of his eye on Streak. "Not so many, though. It's poor doin's, account of floodwater."

Boone stood a little apart, listening.

"A goddam Blackfoot, is he?"

Lanter said, "No need actin' like a sore-tailed bear, Streak."

"This child'll rub that bastard out."

"You'll get kilt yourself." Boone had stepped in front of Streak, between him and Poordevil. Poordevil just stood there, not quite understanding, his eyes going around and his mouth open showing his broken jaw, and his crazy deerskin shirt hanging comical on him.

"By God!" Streak turned his head around to look at the others, who fell silent one by one and shifted a little, expecting trouble. "You hear what I did? Leave 'im alone, he says, leave 'im alone, us as've been fighting Blackfeet all winter. Leave 'im alone, like as if the Blackfeet didn't send Bodah under, like as if the Blackfeet ain't dogged us all along and put lead in some of us."

He turned on Boone, and his finger pointed to the scar on his hairline. "Whar you think I got this? From old age?

Blackfeet, by God, four years ago. Knicked my mare and knocked her over, the devils did, and took me dead, lyin' there, but we raised runnin', me and my mare, afore they lifted my scalp."

"It wasn't Poordevil done it."

"One's like t'other, much as two peas."

Jim saw two of Bridger's men nodding as they agreed with Streak. The rest just stood there, waiting for what would happen next, their faces sober and their eyes sharp. Come a fight, he and Boone and Summers and Poordevil figured to get the worst of it, with eight on the other side.

Boone was looking Streak in the eye, giving him a sort of dark, wild look, the kind of look Jim had seen him give just before his temper broke. Boone was a sudden man, acting first and thinking after. Jim wondered that he held in so good now.

"This nigger can outrun, outdrink, outstud, and outfight any son of a bitch that sides with a Blackfoot. Stand out of my way! This hoss aims to raise h'ar."

Jim saw the look on Boone's face that meant he wouldn't stand any more. He saw the look and saw Summers slide between them, moving quick and easy like a young man. "Hold in, now. We aim to get along nice and sociable. I reckon we're plumb glad to see you. But we don't aim to have Poordevil kilt, not by anyone. Not by you, Streak, and not by any of the rest-you, Shutts, or you, Reeson, or Allen, or any of the rest if you're a mind to stand with Streak. If it's blood you want you'll have it, but some of it'll be yours, I'm thinkin'." His gaze fixed on Streak and then went to the others, and there wasn't anything in his face except quiet. Jim stepped over by him, his unloaded rifle in his hand, and there were the four of them together looking at the eight and waiting, four of them counting Poordevil, who had lost his foolish smile, Jim noticed as he moved, and stood quiet but sharp and alive, like an animal waiting for a man to make a move.

For a moment things seemed to hang, like a rock teetering on a slope, not knowing whether to roll or settle, and then Russell said easily, "I wouldn't fight Dick Summers for the whole damn Blackfoot Nation and the Rapahoes to boot." It was like the rock settling.

Lanter grunted. "Me neither. These here are friends. Y'hear, Streak?"

After a silence Streak gave in. "I wasn't fixin' to fight any but that Blackfoot. I'd like his scalp for my old leggin's. I would, now."

He let himself be turned around to the fire and sat down and by and by smoked with the rest, not like a man with a fright in him, but like one just waiting his time.

"We ain't fixed good for company," Summers said while he moved around the fire pushing wood into it.

"We got meat," Lanter said, "a sight of good bull meat a little blue, maybe, but not as blue as some I've et." He got up, and Robinson with him, and went to one of the pack horses and came back carrying cuts of it.

The others got out their knives and carved themselves pieces and speared them on roasting sticks. Lanter, who looked as old as time and as weather-beaten as any rock, yelled as one of them bent over the meat. "Don't be cuttin' that meat ag'in the grain! Other way saves the blood and juice. Y'hear?"

The dark little man he spoke to looked up, his great eyes seeming to swim in his head, and nodded and went to work with his knife again.

"No more sense'n a fool hen, that greenhorn Spaniard," Lanter muttered. "He'd sp'ile young cow, he would." He watched his own cut beginning to sizzle over the fire. "Treat it right, nigh any meat is good."

"Savin' snake meat," Hornsbeck put in. "This nigger's throat plumb shuts up at snake meat. I et it onc't, after wreckin' a bull boat and losin' everything 'cept my hair, an' I do declare it were a long fight 'twixt my pore paunch and that there snake."

Lanter turned his stick. "Meat's meat, I say, bull or cow or snake or whatever. But man meat ain't proper meat to this child's way of thinkin'." He took his knife and cut a slice from his roast and spoke while his jaws worked on it. "I put tooth to man meat onc't, down with the Diggers, who made out it was jerked goat when they traded. Stringy, it was, and kind of white, and it grew in the mouth while a man chewed on it." He swallowed his mouthful. "It ain't proper doin's. It ain't, now. This child's et skunk and goose cooked Injun style with the guts in and a roastin' stick pushed through from honker to hole, and raw fish and old moccasins when there was nothin' better, but my stomach is real delicate on man meat."

Poordevil had squatted by Boone, like a dog by its owner. His mouth was open, and through the hole in his teeth Jim could see his tongue lying pink and wet. As the meat browned, the men would carve off the outside, leaving the inside red and dripping to cook some more.

When the meat was gone Russell got up and stood waiting for the rest. "We best be getting on," he announced.

"How you pointin'?" Summers asked.

"To the Sweetwater and over. Come along."

Jim wanted to say "Sure," but Summers' gaze came to him and flicked on to Boone and Streak and Poordevil, and he said, "Reckon not, Russell. We can find us a few beaver yet, now the water's goin' down. Reckon we'll go up the Wind and over to Jackson's Hole and to rendezvous that way. We got time enough."

"We'll go on, then."

Streak turned in his saddle as they rode off and stared at Boone and then at Poordevil and hitched himself and went on. Jim figured he might as well have said he wasn't done yet.

Jim knew that Boone saw him, too, but Boone didn't say anything. He just watched the men ride away and by and by turned to Poordevil and put his finger to his eye and said, "No-waps-spa," and Poordevil bobbed his head.
 
 

Dick Summers pulled the hood over his head and brought his capote closer about him. There was no place in God's world where the wind blew as it did on the pass going over to Jackson's Hole. It came keen off the great high snow fields, wave on wave of it, tearing at a man, knocking him around, driving at his mouth and nose so that he couldn't breathe in or out and had to turn his head and gasp to ease the ache in his lungs. A bitter, stubborn wind that stung the face and watered the eye and bent the horses' heads and whipped their tails straight out behind them. A fierce, sad wind, crying in a crazy tumble of mountains that the Indians told many a tale about, tales of queer doings and spirit people and medicines strong and strange. The feel of it got into a man sometimes as he pushed deep into these dark hills, making him wonder, putting him on guard against things he couldn't lay his tongue to, making him anxious, in a way, for all that he didn't believe the Indians' stories. It flung itself on the traveler where the going was risky. It hit him in the face when he rounded a shoulder. It pushed against him like a wall on the reaches. Sometimes on a rise it seemed to come from everywhere at once, slamming at back and front and sides, so there wasn't a way a man could turn his head to shelter his face. But a body kept climbing, driving higher and farther into the wild heights of rock, until finally on the other side he would see the Grand Teton, rising slim and straight like a lodgepole pine, standing purple against the blue sky, standing higher than he could believe; and he would feel better for seeing it, knowing Jackson's Hole was there and Jackson's Lake and the dams he had trapped and the headwaters of the Seeds-kee-dee not so far away.

Summers bent his head into the wind, letting his horse make its own pace. Behind him plodded his pack horse, led by the lariat in his hand, and behind the pack horse came Boone and Jim and Poordevil and their animals.

It was known country to Summers, the Wind range was, and the everlasting snow fields and the Grand Teton that could come into sight soon, known country and old country to him now. He could remember when it was new, and a man setting foot on it could believe he was the first one, and a man seeing it could give names to it. That was back in the days of General Ashley and Provot and Jed Smith, the cool half-parson whom the Comanches had killed down on the Cimarron. It was as if everything was just made then, laid out fresh and good and waiting for a man to come along and find it.

It was all in the way a man thought, though, the way a young man thought. When the blood was strong and the heat high a body felt the earth was newborn like himself; but when he got some years on him he knew different; down deep in his bones he understood that everything was old, old as time, maybe -so old he wondered what folks had been on it before the Indians themselves, following up the waters and pitching their lodges on spots that he had thought were his alone and not shared by people who had gone before. It made a man feel old himself to know that younger ones coming along would believe the world was new, just as he had done, just as Boone and Jim were doing, though not so strong any more.

There rose the Grand Teton at last, so thin, seen from here, it didn't seem real. Summers pulled up to let the horses blow and felt the wind driving through to his skin and clear to his secret guts, with the keen touch of the snow fields in it. Boone yelled something to him, and Summers shook his head, and Boone cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled again, but sound wouldn't come against the wind; it blew backward down the pass, and Summers found himself wondering how far it would blow until it died out and was just one with the rush of air. He shook his head again, and Boone grinned and made a signal with his hand to show it didn't matter, and afterward tucked his chin around to the side to catch his breath. High to his left Summers could see a mountain sheep standing braced and looking, its head held high under the great load of horn. The trees grew twisted from cracks in the rock, grew leaning away from the wind, bowed and old-looking from the weight of it.

He let his gaze go to the back trail, to Boone and Jim and the horses standing hunched and sorry, their hair making patterns under the push of the wind. They were good boys, both, though different, brave and willing and wise to mountain ways. They were
hivernans
-winterers- who could smell an Indian as far as anybody and keep calm and shoot plumb center when the time came. Summers wondered, feeling a little foolish inside, that he still wanted to protect them, like an uncle or a pappy. or somebody. It was Boone he felt most like protecting, because Boone thought simple and acted straight and quick. He didn't know how to get around a thing, how to talk his way out or to laugh trouble off, the way Jim did. Not that Jim was scared; he just had a slick way with him. Come finally to a fight, he didn't shy off. Boone, now, was dead certain to get himself into a battle at rendezvous with the man called Streak, and not in a play battle, either. It would be one or t'other, Summers was sure, and shook his head to get shut of the small black cloud at the back of it.

When they were going again his thoughts went back. As a man got older he felt different about things in other ways. He liked rendezvous still and to see the hills and travel the streams and all, but half the pleasure was in the remembering mind. A place didn't stand alone after a man had been there once. It stood along with the times he had had, with the thoughts he had thought, with the men he had played and fought and drunk with, so when he got there again he was always asking whatever became of so-and-so, asking if the others minded a certain time. It stood with the young him and the former feelings. A river wasn't the same once a man had camped by it. The tree he saw again wasn't the same tree if he had only so much as pissed against it. There was the first time and the place alone, and afterwards there was the place and the time and the man he used to be, all mixed up, one with the other.

Summers could go back in his mind and see the gentler country in Missouri State, and it was rich, too, if different rich in remembered nests and squirrels and redbirds in the bush and fish caught and fowl shot, rich in soil turned and the corn rising higher than a boy's head, making a hideyhole for him. He could go back there and live and be happy, he reckoned, as happy as a hoss could be with the fire going out of him and remembered things coming stronger and stronger into the mind.

Anyhow, he had seen the best of the mountains when the time was best. Beaver was poor doings now, and rendezvous was pinching out, and there was talk about farms over on the Columbia. Had a mountain man best close out, too? Had he best go back to his patch of land and get himself a mule and eat bread and hog meat and, when he felt like it, just send his mind back to the mountains?