The Big Sky (32 page)

Poordevil called back, "Heap, heap bad," and went off into Indian talk that Jim couldn't understand.

Jim turned around, so that his voice would carry to Boone at the head of the file. "What's he sayin', Boone?"

"Didn't hear," Boone answered over his shoulder.

"Say it again, Poordevil. Make loud talk."

The Indian raised his voice above the creaking of the leather, the clunk of the packs and the hollow thump of the horses' feet.

"Says it's the doin's of bad spirits," Boone translated.

"They put a proper name to it, all right, callin' it Colter's Hell."

Hell might lie underneath, sure enough, in the great unseen hole that echoed to the horses' feet, in the fire that burned under all the land and sent water boiling out of the ground and jets of steam that hissed up and trailed off in clouds on either side of the elk trail they were following. A low stink hung over everything. North and south and east and west the ground was crusted white, like a salt desert. Unless he looked beyond, to the line of hills or the trees sitting dark and hazy on the slopes, a man wouldn't think he was in the mountains. The sun blazed on the white crust, and the crust blazed back into the eyes, so that a rider went along with his face pinched and his lids narrowed.

Poordevil's voice came to Jim in a sudden throaty cry, and then the sucking of a hoof and the scramble of a startled horse, and, looking back, Jim saw the hole that the hoof had made in the crust and the blue steam coming from it.

"Devil nigh catched you that time, Poordevil," he said. "It's skeery, sure enough, Boone," he went on, knowing Boone couldn't hear him but talking all the same. "Almighty skeery."

Boone's hunched shoulders bobbed ahead of him, looking strong and bony under the slack cotton shirt. Beneath the red handkerchief he had tied on his head, his plaited black hair swung to the gait of his horse. His eye was always looking, to right and left and ahead, and his rifle was held crosswise and ready, but Jim knew it wasn't the devil Boone was watching for. Boone didn't worry about hell, or heaven either, but about Blackfeet and the thieving Crows and meat and beaver. He was a direct man, Boone was, and God didn't figure with him. What he could see and hear and feel and eat, and kill or be killed by, that was what counted. That, and sometimes a crazy idea, like this notion of going on beyond the Three Forks where the Blackfeet were thicker than gnats and always hungry for the Long Knives' scalps. Beaver, Boone said he was after, but Jim knew better. It was little Teal Eye, held secret in Boone's head all this time, and all the time growing and taking hold of him, until finally his mind was made up and God himself couldn't change him.

It was a crazy idea, all right, crazy as could be. Even Bridger, bound just for the upper Yellowstone and the Madison and the Gallatin and the Jefferson, was taking a parcel of men with him so's to be safe. Jim and Boone and Poordevil made only three. And what if Poordevil was a Blackfoot himself, as Boone argued? That didn't mean the Blackfeet would hold off. Jourdonnais had figured the same way, having Teal Eye with him, but he was dead just the same.

Sometimes Jim wondered why he hung along with Boone. There wasn't much fun in Boone. He was a sober man, and tight-mouthed, without any give in him unless it was with Summers. Go with Boone and you went his way. A man would think Boone would be satisfied now, having his own say-so about going north, but still he fretted because they took it slow and easy according to the promise Jim had finally pinched out of him. There was no sense in hurry, not with boiling springs to be seen and the great canyon of the Yellowstone and other doings that a body couldn't believe. It was only high summer, going on to fall, and the service berries were fat and purple on the lower slopes, and higher up the wild raspberries shone red along the ground. There was meat on hill and hollow, and the sun shone round and warm, and the wind had slackened, saving up for fall. It was a time to loaf, being as beaver wasn't good now anyhow.

Boone was a true man, regardless, cool and ready when there was danger about. He didn't know what it was to be affrighted. And you could depend on him, no matter what. There weren't many would stand as steady with a friend, or go with him as far, or stick through thick and thin. For all that he gave in to Boone, Jim felt older and a heap wiser and he knew that Boone depended on him. Some ways, Boone was like a boy still, needing just a careful word to be dropped to see things right and wise. Shooting buffalo or catching beaver or fighting bear, Boone was as good as the best, but with people it was different. He didn't know how to joke and give and take and see things from different sides and to find fun instead of trouble. All he knew was to drive ahead. Sometimes when he was about to get himself in a fix, on account of not taking time to think, a little piece of talk, said so as to seem offhand, would set him right and steady him or maybe hold him back. Jim reckoned Boone was grateful, as a boy would be grateful without having words to say so.

Jim squirmed in his saddle to watch Poordevil. The grin was gone from the broad and foolish face. You wouldn't know he was a merry one to see him now. His mouth was tight shut, closing the hole in his upper jaw, and his black eyes kept moving, seeing a spirit underneath every squirt of water and every puff of steam. Jim bet if a man nudged his hind end unbeknownst, he would jump clear off his horse.

"I reckon God is just putting on," Jim said to his horse, watching one long ear slant back to listen. "Could be, don't you reckon? God must like to get off by Himself sometimes and caper. Must get mighty tiresome, keepin' tally on folks and gettin' the sun up and tuckin' it in bed and bringin' the rain on and all, and all the time actin' stiff and proper." That surely was it. God must like to throw Himself around some and be silly if He felt like it. So He came here, to the top of the world where the rivers met, and cavorted about and blew steam out of holes and squirted water just to show Himself what He could do, like a boy playing and no one to see him.

Thinking that way made a man feel friendlier toward God. Most folks made God out to be a mean somebody, putting notions in people's heads and sending them to hell if they acted according. God must have aimed for a man to enjoy himself, so He gave him a hankering for women and put women around him, and when a man pleasured himself, he was doing what God expected all along. Where was the sense in it otherwise? Why were squaws so many and so easy, if not for a purpose?

You couldn't tell, though, the different ideas there were. Maybe the folks were right who thought God just tempted men to be sinful, meaning to roast them forever and ever for doing what He had given them a weakness for. Maybe He aimed to trip them up. Or maybe it was the devil kept a man sinning. You couldn't tell where one left off and the other took up. Do what God gave you a taste for and the devil got you; don't do it and God took you to heaven. It all sounded against nature, but men believed it and a man couldn't tell.

After a while the white crust and the boiling water gave way to tangled pines, and the pines later to a plain with clumps of trees on it. To the south and west of them lay Yellowstone Lake, quiet in the late sun, with little circles running from the rising trout.
Boone checked his horse and raised his rifle and shot an elk that had just poked out of a clump of trees. The elk jumped once and fell and lay thrashing. "Likely place to camp," Boone said as he set about reloading his rifle.

"Heap bad," said Poordevil, his eyes fixed on another hot spring that sent up a feather of steam.

"Heap good, you goddam Injun," Boone said. "Love hell, me. Love hell heap. We got meat, and hot water to cook with, and we ain't like to be bothered with Blackfeet here, bein's they don't like it no better than you."

He got off his horse and went over to bleed the elk and came back and began to take off his saddle, looking around at Poordevil and grinning while his hands worked at the leather.

They tethered the horses and cooked elk meat and boiled a can of coffee, and afterward Jim sat back smoking and looking at the hills and the sky. The sun was gone, and dark was beginning to creep on the wooded slopes beyond the lake, but the sky was clear and light yet and the lake lay bright against its edging of earth and timber, like a piece fallen from above. To the east the sun lingered on the very tops of the mountains. Up there a man could see the ball of it yet and get some heat from its shine, but from where they sat Jim could see only a little cloud that it had set afire as it passed. He hunched his shoulders inside his shirt as he felt the evening chill coming on. Overhead, from somewhere or everywhere, there was a high, fine singing. Only when a man was quiet did he hear it, but there it was then, thin and coming on and fading and coming on again, and it might have been the high pines talking, or the mountains, or time humming, far off and old, so that a body felt little and short-lived, so that he felt lonesome and hungry for people so's to forget how big the world was, so's not to be thinking how long a mountain lived. The air was so quiet that the fire smoke climbed straight as a stem. Jim could hear the fire murmuring at the wood and once in a while the sound of a grazing horse, but that was all, except for the thin singing.

He wished for Summers, with his gray eye and slow smile and his easy, knowing way. A body never was so sad and lonesome like this with Summers around. Summers understood how a man felt, and he understood animals and nature, too, and they all seemed to fit together with him and make him at home wherever. Jim could tell that Boone missed him, too, being even silenter than usual and straight-mouthed, with no ear or tongue for small talk. It was as if something was lost to them when Summers left, something that helped to make a trapper's life good and satisfying. Jim asked himself why he should keep on hunting the rivers and being alone and half-starved for folks and sometimes at night having the deep, secret fear of death with him like something that shared his bed and pricked him away from sleep; but he knew he would keep on for a while anyway, no matter why. A hunter's life was a good-enough life if you weren't cut out especial for something else. After a spell you grew into it and just kept going, not knowing anything better. Probably people on farms or in stores or on the river levees got almighty sick of one another and wanted to get off by themselves. For all that he liked company, there wasn't anything could be more tiresome than people.
He sat half-dozing, letting his ears listen. And then he heard Boone say, "Sheepeaters, likely," and he sat up and saw four figures at the edge of the woods behind him. When Boone got up, his rifle in his hand, they melted back into the trees. Boone put his rifle down and stood silent, and after a while they came out again and stood in a line, all of them looking and all waiting.

"I'll see," Jim said. He arose and started toward them without his rifle, wondering if they knew the peace sign, wondering if they could understand his Shoshone talk. He kept a smile on his face and moved slow, and by and by motioned them to come to him. They were a man and a squaw, he saw now, and two young ones, and they stood uncertain and curious, wanting to dart back into the trees but wanting to see more, too. A little flutter of uneasiness went over them as he drew closer, and he stopped, waiting for them to get used to him, as a hunter would have waited to calm down his game.

"The white brother's heart is good," he said in Snake. "The white brother has but one mouth and one tongue."

They listened, understanding but still wary, standing pale in their bighorn skins against the dark of the woods. The man's bow dangled in his hand. Four dogs carrying packs slipped from behind them and saw Jim and growled and then sat down. After a while, as he stood silent, the dogs began to grin.

It all might have been a picture except for the little movement, the Indian's eyes going over him and the squaw watching and putting out her hands to stay the little ones, and the little ones, forgetting fright, making small, jerky motions like sandpipers.

"The white brother has meat. Will his brothers eat?"

Jim could see the thought working in their heads. Their eyes were still now, and fastened on him as a man might fasten a glass on a distant thing, but fastened inward, too, on the food that he offered.

"The red powder and tobacco and beads and a medicine glass to look in." Jim motioned behind him, toward the fire.

The squaw said something low-voiced to her man, and they took a forward step, still watchful and uneasy, but venturesome, too. Jim turned and made for the fire, and sat down there with Boone and Poordevil, and all of them looked away toward the lake in which a slow cloud floated. No one spoke or peeked until the Indian gave a little grunt, and they turned about to see them standing, open-faced and simple, the man on one side and the squaw on the other, with the two children in between.

Jim took a brand from the fire and touched it to his pipe and pointed the stem up and down and around and held it for the Indian. After he had puffed on it, the Indian held out an old and battered fusil, with the pan open and rusted, pointing to it to show he lacked powder and ball. A three-foot sheep's-horn bow ornamented with quills hung from his arm. Jim took lead from his pouch and poured powder from his horn into the Indian's chipped one. The man smiled then and began to make Snake talk. Pretty soon the squaw was talking, too, and the young ones chirping.

"That old musket wouldn't shoot, no matter what," Boone said. "And take a look at the arrer. These is Poordevils, sure enough. Got a stone head, it has." He dug into his possibles and brought out a small looking glass backed with paper, and handed it to the squaw. She looked into it and made a sudden little noise and smiled to see herself. The children crowded into her and gazed at themselves. Their eyes went to hers, asking questions; for no reason at all they broke out laughing, high and clear like bells. They darted around to the other side of the fire and smelled the meat and pointed to it, wanting some.

Not until then did the man seem to notice Poordevil, but when he did his eyes widened suddenly and narrowed, and he made a motion as if to push his family back.