The Shirt On His Back (20 page)

Frye gasped,
'Fuck me . . .'

The second
scream was worse, like the bellowing of an animal trapped in burning barn.

The
Blackfeet.

Shaw
.

For a few
moments January felt as if he couldn't breathe.

'Downstream.'
Morning Star's voice was barely more than the siffle of the wind. Her small
hand touched January's elbow in the darkness, guiding him up the coulee and
away.

January pulled
his arm free. 'We have to get him.'

'You think he
will be in any state to run, should you do so?'

You'll
hear me hollerin'
. . .

'I won't leave
him.'

Her face was no
more than a blur in the shadow as she tilted her head. 'Will you die then, and
tell his ghost all about your friendship?'

She was
absolutely right, and January felt sick with shock.
Dear God, silence him! Dear God, let him die.

He knew damn
well that Abishag Shaw was too tough to die anytime soon. And the Blackfeet too
skilled.

'The least I can
do is shoot him from cover.'

'Hell, pilgrim,'
said Frye, when January told the young trapper in English what he planned to
do, 'I seen you shoot.' He puffed his chest a little in an attempt to sound
like Jim Bridger. It would have been laughable if January hadn't heard in his
voice how terrified he was. 'No man's gonna say Bo Frye left a feller to be
gutted an' minced by the Blackfeet. Waugh! Damn it,' he added, looking around
sharply, and when January followed his gaze he saw that Morning Star was gone.
'Where'd that squaw get to? You don't think she guided us here a-purpose—?'

'She's a Sioux.'
January didn't feel at all certain, now that
she was gone, of
his own words. 'And she's my partner's wife. Her uncle was killed by the
Blackfeet.'

Frye made a
little noise in his throat - 'Huh . . .' - but it was impossible now to see his
face. Only a pallid dapple of moonlight leaked through the boughs overhead; the
gulch below was like a lake of indigo and cool. They tied the horses
(what if a wolf comes along!)
and Frye led the way straight down toward the stream, where there was also a
little silvery light. 'Got to watch for the camp dogs,' Frye murmured. 'Billy
LeBleaux down on the Purgatoire snuck into a 'Rapahoe camp to get back his
rifle an' knife when they got stolen, an' ran into the dogs. Raised such a
ruckus he had to spend the next three days hidin' up in a rock crevice, while
the savages looked for him. It's gonna be a long shot.'

Moonlight cold
on water. Night wind in trees. Smells of pine and wet rock. Something dark on
the far side of the stream rose on its hind legs to half again January's
six-foot- three-inch height, snuffing the air.
Dear GOD
—! He guessed
the bears he'd seen near the camp had been black bears, scarcely taller than a
man.

He followed
Frye's shadow back a few feet into the deeper concealment of the trees. 'I
would have sworn Shaw would keep clear of them,' he breathed. 'Or at least that
he'd get off a shot—'

'Don't you think
it, pilgrim. Five years ago Tom Fitzpatrick walked smack into a Gros Ventre
village that he was tryin' to avoid one night, came within a huckleberry of
gettin' a prairie haircut.' Further down the coulee came another scream, and
behind it, bodiless in the darkness, a single, guttural voice lifted in a
chant. Frye's voice shook with the effort to sound nonchalant. 'Happens to the
best.'

Firelight
glimmered through the trees. The smell of horses, the reek of camp. With the
next scream came the howling of the camp dogs. Frye touched January's arm, and
they hopped from boulder to boulder across the creek. From there they worked
their way up the side of the draw, never losing sight of the orange glimmer of
the flames.

'All right,
hoss,' whispered Frye. 'Here's how it is.' His hands worked swiftly as he
spoke, drawing the ball from his rifle, adding powder to throw the ball an
extra distance. 'I only get one shot. That's all I can do, and all I'd expect
of any man in the like position—'

'I understand.'

'You ever kicked
a hornet's nest? You'll wish you was safe home rollin' on one in a minute. The
second 1 shoot, you go straight up-slope and back up the coulee. There's rocks
about a half-mile behind us, with crevices big enough that a man can get in
under 'em. You pull in whatever brush you can find in front of you and you lay
still, and if a rattlesnake's in there and bites you, you're still ahead of the
game.' The fear was gone from the young man's voice and, curiously, January
realized he felt none either, only a kind of chilly calm.

He recalled
being scared, marching with the Faubourg Treme Free Colored Militia down to
Chalmette Plantation behind Andrew Jackson, twenty years old and thinking about
what he'd seen bullets do to human flesh. But once crouched behind those
cotton-bale redoubts, straining his eyes through the fog and hearing the
British drums, there had been only this sense of cold, and of time standing
still.

'If one of 'em
tackles you in the woods, use your knife instead of your gun if you can. I'll
head down to the stream and try to get to the horses 'fore they do. I'll circle
back for you. If I don't come, don't you
move
from where
you're layin' until night comes again. They'll stop everything 'til they gets
us or we gets back to the camp. Understand?'

'All right.' His
mouth was so dry he could barely speak.

'And don't you
shoot. You won't be able to hit him, you can't reload in time and you may need
that shot later.'

'All right.' But
January knew he'd try, if he could get close enough.

Men's voices
raised in feral howling as Frye and January edged downslope.

Across the creek
he could see horses grazing, bulky shadow and the round glint of eyes. Through
the trees, the dim white triangles of the lodges, strung out along the creek
bed just above where the waterside bushes got thick. Forty lodges, Morning Star
had said. Well over two hundred warriors. Small tires laid gauzy drifts of
smoke over the water. They followed the creek for another three-quarters of a
mile before coming to where the big fire was. The men were gathered around it,
naked shoulders jostling pale skin hunting-shirts, all gilded with the
firelight: beating drums, or with the butts of their rifles on the ground. Where
the warriors clustered thickest, between the tipis and over their heads January
could just see the ends of the lodgepole frame to which they'd lashed their
victim, and a single bleeding hand.

He brought up
his rifle.
Shaw,
he thought,
I did my best. . .

The men moved,
and January saw what they were doing - driving splinters of wood under the
bound man's skin, among a bleeding horror of gashes and burns. An impossible
shot at the distance, with the men moving back and forth, the firelight
wavering—

And the bound
man wasn't Abishag Shaw.

It was Manitou
Wildman.

There had been
no mistaking the heavy power of the frame, the cropped-off black hair hanging
down where his head lolled back, the harsh strong bones of the face under that
bestial beard. The first rush of relief made January feel almost faint, and
then, in the next moment, the horrible choice:
I would shoot, and take the consequences, for Shaw who saved
my life . . .

Will
I take those same consequences for a man I barely know?

No
man's gonna say Bo Frye left a feller to be gutted an' minced by Blackfeet . .
.

Even a relative
stranger, as Shaw was to Frye. Boaz Frye, January thought, would know that some
day he might easily be the one bound by firelight in a Blackfoot camp, in hell
already and looking at worse . . .

Are
you really going to get yourself killed - and possibly, killed THAT WAY - to
shorten Manitou Wildman's agony?

January didn't
hear the camp guard's approach, but Frye touched his shoulder, and the two men
drew back further into the trees. Willing himself to be willing, January
followed him, moccasins sliding in the pine straw, seeking another vantage
point for a shot. Like his companion, he'd double-shotted his gun - crammed in
as much powder as it could take without, he hoped, having the lock blow up in
his face - to speed the bullet over an impossible distance. But at that
distance it was anybody's guess if he could aim. Moonlight touched the sleek
dark hair of a warrior passing between the trees on the hill slope below, made
a ghostly ravel of the down on an eagle feather. Frye led him up on to an
outcrop of rocks, but still could get no clear view of the camp, and all the
while the
screaming
went on like a soul in hell. 'Them splinters is fatwood,' Frye whispered.
'Resin pine. Burns like lucifer matches. They lights 'em . . .'

Dear
God—

January
remembered the smack of the man's fist on his jaw, the animal glint of those
brown eyes and the trained, clean, careful way Wildman had moved.

Remembered how
the big man had pulled that Omaha girl from the men who'd held her, not knowing
then that he wouldn't have to fight January for her immediately thereafter and
maybe others as well, but half-throwing her to her own people, with a
let the girl go . . .

A second scout
came into the moonlight below, much too near the rocks. Frye and January drew
further upslope. The firelight leaped up among the tipis; Wildman's screams
passed beyond human, beyond animal even.

The moon's angle
changed above the draw. January saw the pale pattern of elk teeth on smoky buckskin,
moving on this side of the creek now. When Frye touched January's arm again to
signal a further retreat, January could feel the young man's hand shaking, as
were his own. Hating himself, he followed, keeping to the border zone of
darkness among the trees, as high up the side of the little canyon as they
could until they were well clear of the vicinity of the Blackfoot camp. Only
then did the mountaineer whisper, 'I'm sorry, hoss. We couldn't—'

'It's all
right.'

But it wasn't.

They hid among
the boulders Frye had told him about, far up the draw. Shared pemmican, which
January was almost too sick with shock to want until he'd tasted some and
realized he was famished and his head was pounding. When the wind backed a
little they could still hear the screaming. It didn't stop until past moonset.

Not long after
first light January heard the harsh scuffle of movement in the trees below
them. He put his head over the rocks and saw the Blackfeet moving out. Warriors
rode ahead, long dark hair hanging down their backs; women walked with bundles
among the horses that drew the lodgepole travois. Dogs and children, silent
alike, ghosts between the trees. Medicine bundles - feathers and bones twirling
- on the end of travois poles and spears. Rifles held upright and ready.

When the last of
the village was well out of sight, January and his companion slipped from
cover, almost ran downstream-

—and swung
around, rifles at ready, at movement in the green dawn shadows on the other
side of the creek. 'You tolerable, Maestro?' January let out his breath in a
sigh. 'Just.' Shaw came to the creek's edge as Frye and January waded across.
'Glad to see that warn't you they was settin' fire to.' Together the three
climbed the few yards up to where Goshen 'Beauty' Clarke waited with his horse
and his laden mules, nearly hidden among the trees. 'An' twice as glad to see
you had the good sense not to try an' put that poor bastard out'n his pain.'
Clarke had on his wolfskin hood, beneath which his long golden braids flowed
down almost to his waist. On his feet he wore a pair of well-cut, and
much-scuffed, black boots.

'You were
bug-struck loco to even think about tryin', Shaw,' snapped the Beauty. 'Waugh!
You near as dammit got us killed.'

'But I didn't,'
pointed out Shaw mildly.

'I told you it
couldn't have been Clem or any of the boys,' Clarke added grouchily. 'They's
all camped in the next draw over. You didn't see
them
riskin' their
tripes checkin' to see if that was me.'

'Well, don't
mean they didn't,' replied Shaw. 'I 'spects they'll meet us at the campsite,
if'fn the Dutchman wants see if they left your new boots behind.'