The Shirt On His Back (33 page)
Read The Shirt On His Back Online
Authors: Barbara Hambly
'God willin' an'
the creek don't rise,' replied the medical student from Ingolstadt.
Manitou led them
down off the high mesa eastward, and into the rougher country along the New
Fork, watching the western skyline for the point at which they could swing west
again and come down near the site of William Bonneville's old fort. From there
they could follow the Green River to the rendezvous camps from the north. They
moved with a kind of swift deliberateness, Shaw and Manitou calling frequent
halts, to rest the tired animals or so that their tracks could be covered. On
these occasions January, Hannibal and Veinte-y- Cinco took turns foraging and
resting, for even riding the mule, January found it was difficult to keep going
for more than an hour at a time. He didn't like the way Hannibal and the woman
sometimes clung to the saddle, as if it was only with the greatest effort that
they kept from slipping off unconscious. Rough stretches of open grassland
alternated with thin lodgepole timber; in the stillness the drone of a bee, or
the far-off popping cry of a grouse, seemed loud as gunshots. Again and again
he turned to scan the horizons and the sky for the telltale dust of horses.
As Iron Heart,
he was sure, was watching for the dust they might raise.
'But now the
poison is gone,' said Veinte-y-Cinco, at one of these halts, 'and Boden is of
no more use to Iron Heart, will Iron Heart pursue us still?'
'Iron Heart's a
man of honor,' said Manitou. 'If he's made a vow to help Boden with his
vengeance, he'll do it . . . An' there's no tellin' what Boden'll feel
obligated to do to help
him,
in return.'
The dryness of
the hills was worsened by the thin dryness of the air, and though small game -
rabbits, ground squirrels and grouse - seemed everywhere in the sagebrush,
firing a gun was out of the question. In answer to Shaw's question, Manitou
confirmed that the winter before - 1835-36 - Iron Heart and his Omahas had
indeed camped near Fort Ivy, which was close enough to Manitou's own winter
hunting-grounds that he preferred to come down to trade there, rather than
going on to Laramie and dealing with the AFC.
'I trapped in
Company brigades for two years,' said Manitou. 'Hundred dollars a year, and
when time came to pay out, you found most of that hundred dollars, you owed 'em
for the cost of your traps an' the liquor you'd drunk at the last rendezvous.
Hudson's Bay gave me a better price, and after one good year I started trappin'
on my own. Preferred it, anyway. Longer I stay out here, seems like the shorter
fuse I got, when 1 come amongst my own kind.'
He only shook
his head over the machinations of the Hudson's Bay Company and the AFC, though
he agreed that it was probably Titus who'd set the AFC Crows on to January,
Shaw and Gil Wallach after the feast. 'Part of the game,' he said. 'Red Arm
don't really care who they scalp, long as Titus pays 'em in good knives an'
gunpowder. It's all White Men's Business. But if it comes to war,' he added
somberly, 'the tribes'll fight for the British, like they did back in '12. The
Brits keep their treaties. America'll back its settlers, an' there's more of
them every year.'
His voice held
an echo of sadness, as Sir William Stewart's had, back in the crowded
banquet-tent, when he'd said wistfully:
it'll all be gone . . .
The streets of
Independence, January recalled, had been crowded not only with trappers and
traders and bullwhackers and trail hands stocking up for the Santa Fe caravans,
but also with farmers, farmers' wives and their children. Ordinary
working-folk, who spoke with shining eyes of 'free land' in Oregon, as if the
United States already held uncontested title to those untouched miles - and as
if it were simply free for the taking.
'Will you go
back to the rendezvous at all?' asked Hannibal, later in the afternoon as they
sheltered among a few thin- trunked pines at the head of a draw.
'If you need
me.' Manitou spoke without turning his head, scanning the jumble of gullies
that fell away before them. 'Like I said, no tellin' what Boden'll get up to,
to keep Iron Heart on his good side - an Iron Heart'11 sure want somethin' from
him, to go off chasin' me through the mountains. I'd as soon go on, but if you
need bait, I'll stay.'
'It's good of
you.'
Manitou
shrugged. 'Every book, every play I ever read 'bout vengeance, I never read one
of 'em that ends well . . . Every man I talked to that's done it, they say the
same.
A god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to
confound a house . .
. Was that Aeschylus as said that?
When he spoke of turnin' vengeance over to justice an' lettin' justice have its
way? I'll do as I can, to make an end.'
January glanced
back up to the top of the rocks behind them, where Shaw crouched, a tattered,
feral scarecrow, watching the sky to the south-west. Easy enough to speak of
making an end, when one had something to go back to. Without family to return
to - without a life beyond vengeance - he saw, suddenly, that the quest itself
became life. That Frankenstein needed his monster to chase, because without the
chase he, too, would be swallowed up in his own inner darkness.
And what do we
do,' asked Hannibal, getting stiffly up - Veinte-y-Cinco had to help him - from
the foot of the tree where he'd been sitting, 'if Iron Heart and his warriors
have gone back to the rendezvous, to make sure Boden comes up with another plan
of vengeance while we're out here?'
'Ain't much we
can do.'
'An' it ain't a
problem that's like to arise.' Shaw dropped lightly from the rocks, knocking
bark and pine needles from his bandaged hands. 'Supposin' that's their dust we
got, comin' up the draw from the east.'
'That wouldn't
be Sir William's hunting party,' inquired Hannibal wistfully, even as he
collected the last of the water- skins, 'heading back to the camp?'
'He'd be comin'
due west.' Manitou shaded his eyes against the slant of the sun. 'Dust's in the
south. Looks like, along our same route.'
'We split up?'
Shaw checked the loads on Mary and Martha, his long Kentucky rifles. When they'd
slipped away from the Omaha war camp, Veinte-y-Cinco had managed to retrieve
three rifles, but the warriors who'd taken the captives' knives had kept them.
Manitou was the only man who had powder and ball.
'Give 'em a
horse trail to follow.' Manitou tossed one of his knives to Shaw; pulled a
spare skinning-knife from his moccasin to hand to January. 'These poor beasts
are so tired, I doubt they could outrun 'em.'
'I'll take 'em
on north.' Shaw was already unwinding reins from trees. 'Those rocks we passed
at the top of the ridge 'bout four miles back—'
'We should make
it.'
'Once I turn the
horses loose I'll head for the camp,' went on Shaw. 'Let 'em know we need help
bad.' He held out one of his rifles to Manitou - January didn't even want to
think about the Kentuckian's chances of making it the ten miles back to the
Green River, after leading the Omahas several miles further along the ridge.
Hannibal - who
had shown a surprisingly adept touch in such things - scratched the tracks from
around their campsite with a branch.
Veinte-y-Cinco
touched Shaw's arm as he started to move off: 'You make it back to camp, you
tell Pia—'
She
hesitated.
Tell her what
? thought January.
That she's on her own, at age thirteen, in the middle of the
Rocky Mountains, with no home to go back to, dependent utterly on the likes of
Edwin Titus and Mick Seaholly
?
A slave cabin
shared with twenty other people, and a drunken lunatic master thrown in for
lagniappe, seemed like a sanctuary in comparison.
Veinte-y-Cinco's
voice was almost a whisper. 'Tell her that her mama loves her.'
Shaw put his
hand briefly to the woman's dirty cheek, then turned away. With the horse and
the mules he headed off up the ridge, clumsily dusting at the tracks to make it
look as if an effort at concealment had been made. Manitou led the way
downslope to where a deadfall made a sort of road toward stonier ground that
would hold no tracks. From there they doubled on their trail and moved back
south toward the nearest cover, a distant tangle of huckleberry in a dip of
ground. They went as swiftly as they could, but both Hannibal and Veinte-
y-Cinco lagged, despite themselves, and it felt to January as if the hoofbeats
of the Indians - still some miles off - hammered in his head. As if the sun was
nailed to the sky above the ridge, never to go down again. As soon as they
could, they went to ground - the thicket indefensible if they were discovered,
but enough, January prayed, to shield them from enemy eyes until the Indians
had ridden past.
After what felt
like over an hour he heard the hooves, dim with distance as they swung on to
Shaw's trail. Manitou lay with his ear on the ground for a longer time yet,
waiting until they were far off before he signaled them to move on. It was
halfway
to darkness by then, and Hannibal was falling further and further behind, the
leg that he'd broken eighteen months before visibly weakening. They were in
timber now, the rocks Shaw had spoken of still some distance off. January
recalled they were a couple of boulders and a sort of granite elbow, close to
twenty feet tall, thrusting up from the ground amid a tangle of sagebrush and
laurel. He tried to picture where defenders could situate themselves to hold
off a determined attack and failed.
And it didn't
matter. Behind them he half-guessed, half- heard what might have been hooves,
glanced back - Manitou grabbed Hannibal by the arm and dragged him along,
though the rocks weren't even in sight in the slow-gathering twilight.
Veinte-y-Cinco fell back beside January, hurrying her steps to his, looking
back also . . .
Damn it, it's
not my imagination, she hears it, too
. . .
'I'll fire
first,' Manitou said. 'You others, keep your rifles pointed but don't shoot
'til I say. Indians they mostly don't have enough powder or ball to waste it on
a threat. You handle loading, Sun Mouse? Good. Winter Moon, you see anything
big enough to get our backs against?'
Every tree -
fallen or otherwise - in the dusky forest seemed uniformly less than a foot in
diameter . . .
The hooves were
definitely audible, and he could see movement behind them in the trees, on
both sides, too . . .
Christ, did they
get Shaw?
He'd heard no shots
—
'There!'
It didn't look
like much of a bastion - a dip in the ground formed when a lightning-struck
tree had fallen, the trunk itself small, but a tangle of branches still
relatively fresh. In the gloaming, it might be enough to confuse attackers'
aim. They ran for it, skidding and stumbling on the slope of the ground,
January thinking, in spite of himself:
Rose, I should never have left Rose by herself with a baby
coming . . .
The thought that
he'd never see her again was almost worse than the thought that he was going to
die.
Two painted
horses flashed past them as they neared the fallen tree, wheeled to cut them
off from it. Manitou raised his rifle and fired, one of the riders toppling and
two others swinging in from the other side. They were still twenty yards from
the log, and January knew that this was as good as they
were
going to get. He raised his rifle, put his back to Manitou's, covering the
horses that whirled close, then veered away, ghostly shapes in the lowering
dark. He recognized Iron Heart, and Dark Antlers, and other men who'd taken
them before. Recognized, too, Franz Bodenschatz, in his bright Mexican coat and
with his big American horse, riding at the back of the war party. Two riders
charged in from either side, January shifting aim to cover them both—
A rifle crashed
from somewhere in the dimness of the woods behind them, and the Indian Manitou
had called Left Hand fell somersaulting from his horse's bare back, struck the
ground with the pinwheeling confusion of a man already dead.
Two more rifles
spoke.
Shaw couldn't
have gotten to camp that fast. Stewart
?
And close to a
hundred other Indians emerged howling from the twilight.
At least ten of
the Omahas wheeled their horses and, shrieking war-cries, charged the
newcomers. Two others wheeled from the melee and rode at the little group of
fugitives by the fallen pine. There was just enough good light left for January
to shoot one and Manitou - whose rifle Hannibal had reloaded with a swiftness
Kit Carson himself would have commended - to shoot the other. Franz Bodenschatz
spurred in through what looked, to January, like a Renaissance battle-painting
of whirling horses and writhing half-naked bodies, brought up his pistol within
yards of Manitou's head, and Veinte-y-Cinco fired, her bullet tearing the
outside of Bodenschatz's left arm, but nearly knocking him out of the saddle
with its force. An Indian warrior - one of the newcomers - launched himself
from his own horse on to the trader, dragging him to the ground. Bodenschatz
screamed something - in the din, January didn't hear what - to Iron Heart, but
the pockmarked war-chief and the remaining members of his band only bunched
their milling horses tighter, spears and rifles pointing outward as they were
surrounded.