The Big Sky (34 page)

The moon got its edge over the world, and by and by the fat bulge of it, and then lay red and swollen, as if resting up before starting its journey across the sky. Even so, it cast a light, making big, deep patches on the land. Boone could see the red fires in it, could see it turning lazy like a ball turning. It climbed an inch or two, no longer resting on the line of earth but sailing, the flames going from red to yellow like a campfire getting hot. Things began to grow out of the darkness, a clump of bushes close at hand, the swell of a little hill, and the weaving black line the trees made yonder toward the river. After a while he saw the horse herd, moved in now toward camp.

He started the old horse then, letting it plod along like a stray coming back to the bunch while he hid himself at the side. He mustn't hurry; slow was the caper. Easy, hoss, easy. Goddam the cactus!

He knew without looking that he had come up to the horses. It was as if he could hear them staring at him, as if he could hear them standing with their ears pointed and their nostrils wide, though all he heard were the little sounds of the village and all he saw were the slow legs of Poky and the earth passing under his feet.

He looked under Poky's neck and saw a horse reared before him as if it had sprung out of the ground. The breath rattled in its nose. He stopped Poky and waited, not wanting to pass the horse and so give him his scent. The horse snorted again, shorter and lighter this time, and then turned and made off slowly.

Some of the horses lay flat. They rolled up as he neared, resting on their bellies with their heads high and watchful. He slowed his own horse to a bare creep, letting the herd look and listen and smell for him.

To the side of the others he spotted the red horse, spotted the fine line of his back and the high head, and he eased toward him, keeping behind Poky, peeking under the old neck. The red horse's nostrils fluttered in a little sound, and his feet moved nervously, but he didn't turn to run.

Poky knew the horse Boone wanted. Once pointed that way, he kept on, moving one heavy foot and then another, narrowing the distance as the red horse watched. They touched noses, the breath of the red horse drawing in in a long tremble. Boone slipped under Poky's neck, trying to move fast without seeming fast. His hand flipped the end of the rope over the arch of the neck. The red horse snorted loud and reared and tried to spin as Boone's other hand caught the end of the rope beneath the throat. Boone held on while the horse lunged. His breath said, "Whoa, now! Whoa! Ain't nothing going to hurt you, boy." His arms started from their sockets as his body jerked ahead. His legs leaped to keep up and then fell behind and dragged in the dirt. "Whoa, you snorty bastard!" The words came out in grunts. "Whoa, now!" He caught his feet and held still while the horse stood stiff and scared. "Whoa, boy!" His hand went out and stroked the neck, feeling the muscles quiver. After a minute the red horse let himself be pulled over to Poky.

The other horses had run and faced about. He could see the fronts of them, rising tall and stiff. He could hear their forefeet stamp a challenge and the breath snorting into their lungs. Even against the wind the village might have heard them. Maybe it could hear them now if it listened.

He stood quiet, letting his eyes pry into the darkness, letting his ears feel for sound. After a while, at the very end of his sight, he caught movement. It could be a wolf. It could be a Crow who had heard the noise of the horses and had come out alone, hoping maybe to get a scalp and so be able to brag on himself. It could be one of a parcel of Crows. Anyhow, he'd have to wait. There wasn't time for a getaway. With the moon higher now and the light touching things up, even a poor shot could knock him from his horse. Boone stepped the red horse around, so as to be in his shadow. He stooped and ran the free end of the lariat under the hobbles and, pulling strong and slow, brought the head down and tied a knot to hold it there. He carried a pistol in his belt, but if there was work to be done it was work for the knife. He brought the knife out, feeling the keen steel while he crouched in the shadow of the horse and squinted under its belly. He put his hand up and stroked the horse's shoulder, wanting to keep him from fighting the rope. The horse strained against it, not wild, though, but easy, as if trying the knot. The head came around then and took a long quivering smell of Boone.

The movement had stopped, and whatever had made it was melted into the darkness. When it came to Boone's eye again it was like the darkness dividing, like a piece breaking off and going on by itself. It was just one Indian walking, a bold Indian walking by himself, going slow and watchful. It could be he would pass by if Boone held still and the red horse behaved himself. The Crow stepped careful, his face showing vague against the shine of the moon, his heart hoping, likely, to find a Blackfoot and to kill him and take the hair.

A Crow scalp would be a pretty thing, now, to carry to the Blackfeet. It would help with them. The white hunter was a friend of the Blackfeet. He had fought their enemies and put them under. Here was a scalp to show that he spoke true.

Boone's hand felt in the grass and found a rock. He pitched it over the Crow's head and heard it thump and saw the Indian switch about. He ducked under the horse and heard it kick at him and felt the hoof grazing his hip. And then he was up, running soft and fast. He leaped as the Indian turned. His left arm went around the neck under the chin and clamped off the cry that struggled in the throat. His right arm drove the knife deep.

It was over almost before a man could say Godamighty. An Indian wasn't a match for a white man, not for a real man with two good arms. The Crow stiffened and went limp, and his knees folded under him. Boone let him sink. Before he ran the circle with his knife and ripped the scalp away, he studied the land again. The red horse had thrown himself, trying to run, and lay thrashing on his side. Poky hadn't stirred a step. The herd had galloped off. Boone seemed to remember that they had made quite a ruckus doing it. The wind blew steady, though, and the sounds from camp were the small sounds of calm. He stuffed the scalp under his belt. The hair on it was long, as Crows' hair was, reaching down, maybe, to the back of the knees.

He went to the red horse and untied the lariat and cut the hobbles. The horse struggled to his feet. "Steady, boy." He climbed on old Poky and headed west, leading the other horse, keeping to the shadows and the swales while his ears listened. The noises still were little noises. Even the dogs went silent after a while except for a halfhearted bark now and then. When a patch of timber closed him off from the village, Boone put Poky to a trot. It had all been dead easy, thanks to wind and luck and a pair of arms a man could take a rightful pride in. It wasn't safe to let him out alone, wasn't it? The Crows would get him, or come chasing after? Risky, Jim had said it was, and unnecessary; but his scalp was still on and no one trailed him, and at the end of the lead rope trotted such a piece of horseflesh as anyone would itch for.

The white hunter would be a son to Heavy Otter and would keep meat in his lodge and fight his enemies. The white hunter was a great warrior. Here was a scalp freshtaken from the Crows. And here was a buffalo horse as fast as the wind and stout and long-enduring as the moose deer. The buffalo horse was Heavy Otter's, it and the painter skin and the tobacco and the red earth for the face and the powder and ball. The white hunter wanted the daughter of Heavy Otter for his squaw.
 
 

It was stern country they traveled, pushing north along the Gallatin, a country high and chill at night, swept by western winds. Sometimes in the mornings the frost lay white-grained on the grass. The wild plums that hung rich and ready on the Yellowstone had petered out, along with the salt weed that kept the horses stout in wintertime. Already the chokecherries dripped black, soft and sweetened by the frost, and a man going along would strip himself a handful and chew the flesh loose and blow the seeds out, making a tube of his tongue, aiming at a leaf or a chip along the way.

Boone pulled up on a hill. "Whar's your brothers, Poordevil?"

Poordevil grinned. "All gone."

"Beats me," Jim put in. "Here we are, long acrost the Yellowstone and nigh to the Three Forks, and nary a Injun about."

"Ain't saw an Injun since I stoled the red horse." Boone looked back at the horse. With his mane roached and his tail combed he made a pretty sight. And he had got gentle, too, and trail-wise, and a man taking note of his quick ears and delicate nose and watching eyes would know when to go careful. "If it's Piegans hunt the Three Forks, where in hell are they, Poordevil?" Poordevil was a Blood, himself, but he ought to know where the Piegans hunted. They were all Blackfeet together.

"A man gets chilly quick," Jim said, "with that wind blowin'. Cools out the horses in a shake." His hand felt the neck of his horse, which was stiff where the sweat had dried.

"Be winter soon," Boone answered. He let an edge come into his voice. "We're behind time, what with all our foolin' around."

"It didn't help any, turnin' east to steal the red horse," Jim said quickly. "We could have hit straight up the Madison."

When Boone spoke again it was to say, "Blackfeet's bound to be around somewheres."

"Maybe north, gone to buffler. Or east."

"Time's past. They ought to be back on the river."

Boone clucked to his horse. Poky stepped slow, always taking his time while he kept his head down watching the footing. The red horse came along light and easy, hardly needing the line on his neck.

The country stayed empty, except for dumb brutes and varmints. There were deer and elk about and wolves and coyotes and, on the little prairies, rabbits big as jackasses that bounced away half-flying. Already they were changing from gray-brown to white, so's to be hard to see against the snow. The long-billed curlew had flocked and gone, leaving in Boone's head the echo of its rising cry. He would hear it in his mind and see the Indians running at him again, and Jourdonnais falling with the hole in his chest, and Painter clinging high and fuzzed up on the mast of the Mandan. He would see Teal Eye, too, not with the Indians but on the keelboat, her eyes warming on the bare hills of home. The great meadowlarks had ceased their autumn singing, though they flushed out from underfoot sometimes, big-bodied as the bobwhite he remembered from long ago. The young ducks swam four and five and six along the streams, waiting for the storm that would send them south. In the beaver ponds the winter's store of cottonwood and quaking asp stood ready, poked in the mud against the time ice held the beavers under. For all that beaver sign was plenty, they hadn't trapped much. Sometimes when they camped on the edge of dark Jim put traps out, and made his lift early in the morning, but mostly they passed by the ponds, Boone being set and pointed now and keeping the others on the go.

Not hide nor hair of an Indian anywhere, but they still traveled careful, wanting to choose their own time and way of meeting. Often they made cold camps after cooking when the sun was high and smoke and flame were harder to see. If they built a fire when dark was coming on, they pushed ahead afterward for a mile or so before making camp. Many a man had gone under because he wasn't careful that way.

The country climbed and fell and rolled away in such great sweeps that a man sometimes felt small as any ant. It was a country of stone and timber and quick, clear creeks and the Gallatin rushing through it, turning and twisting, and the noise of it beating steady against the ears. Lower down, the river slid into the mixed waters of the Madison and Jefferson, making the Missouri sure enough. Here was the heart of Blackfoot land, the Three Forks, where many a hunter had died, where even big parties didn't like to go, knowing war parties would be after them thick and fierce as hornets; but there were no Indians about them now, only signs of them, only cold campfires and gnawed bones where villages had stood and old clumps of sod the squaws had dug to hold the lodge skins down. Upstream to where the Madison and Jefferson came together and farther up along both streams it was the same.

"Might as well turn about and foller the Missouri north," Boone said. "Injuns are bound to be somewheres." Lying awake at night, hearing the sound of water and the wind in the trees, seeing the dipper sitting close and steady, he told himself the Piegans were sure to be about. A nation didn't just up and leave a country. He would find the Piegans and Heavy Otter's band. He would find Teal Eye, or learn what had happened to her. There wasn't anything hard about it or out of reason. The first Piegan they met would know where Heavy Otter was. A mountain man could find his way anywhere, to anybody. He could set out looking for a friend he hadn't seen in a coon's age, and he could point his way to him, over the mountains and across the rivers and through the timbers, as Boone had done himself more than once before. It was only time that made the hunt seem hard, only the seasons that had come between that made Teal Eye seem like someone he had built up in his head.

It was the red horse that took notice first, just a jump beyond the Three Forks. He pricked his ears and snorted softly. Slower to catch on, the others plodded along until by and by they lifted their heads, too, and looked and whiffed the air, and all of them slowed and came to a halt. Ahead of him Boone heard the cackling of magpies.

Jim said. "Probably no more'n a bear."

Poordevil's blunt nose was pointed up and his face was squeezed together as if all his senses were bent ahead. "Sick," he said. "Smell sick. Smell goddam dead."

Except for the magpies, though, there wasn't a sound. There wasn't a wisp of smoke. Boone's nose found nothing except the smell of horse and pine. "Easy!" he said, and started on.

Around a belt of trees the village came in sight, a village of fifty or so lodges and all seeming dead. Not so much as a dog moved among them, and no horses grazed about.

A puff of wind blew from the lodges and carried to Boone. "Holy Christ!" The stink on the wind was like a blow in the face. Jim's hand went up and closed his nose. "Whew!" he said, and spit over the shoulder of his horse as if the smell was in his mouth. The magpies, which had quieted at the first sight of them, took up their racket again when they saw the horses didn't come on.