Beauty for Ashes Read online

  At his lodge Sam invited Blue Horse and Flat Dog in to eat.

  They helped themselves from the pot outside and sat by the fire inside.

  “Let me understand this,” Sam said. “You’ve fixed things so I have to take you with me on the beaver hunt. Right?”

  The two brothers smiled at him. “Exactly right,” said Flat Dog.

  SAM WAS PONDERING things the next evening when he heard some scratching at the bottom of the lodge cover. The Crow young men played a game Sam thought was rude. They’d sneak up on the lodge of a girl they fancied at night, when she was sleeping. Then they’d worm a hand underneath the lodge cover and grope the girl, if possible in a private place. A touch meant victory. No girls in this lodge, thought Sam. And right now he regretted that.

  A hand edged under the lodge cover. He started to whack it hard. Then he saw a feminine hand. A hand he knew.

  He reached out and touched Meadowlark’s fingers. She turned her hand over—yes, he knew this palm—and offered him a pouch. He picked it up. It was a medicine pouch, and beautifully beaded with the tiniest beads made. It was gorgeous.

  He grasped the hand, but it slipped quickly back under the cover. He heard a giggle and quick footfalls.

  He clutched the pouch to his chest. She loves me.

  Also, he now had a pouch for medicine that would always remind him of his real name, Samalo, or Joins with Buffalo. He would tie up a swatch of matted hair from a buffalo head and keep it in the pouch.

  Suddenly he was filled with good thoughts. Maybe this whole thing was going to work out. Meadowlark loved him—she would wait for him. Next summer, with Blue Horse and Flat Dog’s help, he would come back to the village like a hero, eight horses in hand, or more.

  Meadowlark’s parents had thrown a glove on the ground.

  Sam took up their challenge.

  Part Two

  Stalking Beaver

  Chapter Twelve

  BLANK. EMPTY. MOUNTAINS well off to the west, mountains well off to the east. Big river in the middle, with desert scrub all around it.

  No sign of the brigade.

  Sam was sure his count was right, or close. It was April 14, or maybe a day or two later. The phases of the moon, full, half, and new, had made it easy to keep track of the weeks on his counting stick. Sixteen weeks and a day since they left Ashley on the Platte.

  Sam looked around. Desolation in every direction, including his heart.

  Memory: Last June he went ahead alone, with a promise to meet Diah and Fitz and the boys where the river got deep enough to float. He waited eleven days. They never showed up.

  Then his imagination ran wild. They were all killed by Indians. They got lost and would never find their way home. In this vast, apparently endless landscape, desert horizoned by mountain followed by desert and again horizoned by mountain, a man could never find his way home. There was no such place as home, not anymore, not for the men who came out here to hunt beaver.

  On the twelfth day he’d set out downstream for the settlements. He had only eleven lead balls left, and so would seldom be able to hunt. He wasn’t sure whether this river was the Platte or the Arkansas, whether he would hit the Missouri four hundred miles above St. Louis or the Mississippi three hundred miles below it. In other words, he was good and lost.

  He damn near starved to death. He got captured by Indians who would have tortured and killed him, except for Third Wing. He got caught in a prairie fire and survived by hiding in a buffalo carcass with Coy. After more than two months of wandering, he stumbled into Fort Atkinson.

  Maybe in the end, the reality had been wilder than his imaginings.

  Here he was again, waiting for a brigade that didn’t come. He looked around at his five friends, Gideon, Beckwourth, Third Wing, Blue Medicine Horse, and Flat Dog. Coy, too, panting there in front of Paladin. Sam felt a throb of gladness next to his pang of fear.

  This time coming over the South Pass had been easy. Mid-April, mid-March, an entirely different story, new grass instead of deep snow and howling winds. They crested the continental divide, came onto the headwaters of the Sandy, a pathetic stand-in for a river, and followed it here to the Siskadee. All the way they looked for sign of Ashley’s horses, nearly fifty of them. Not a hoofprint. At the junction of rivers they looked for the cairn Fitz said he would leave. Nothing. No sign of human beings, not even Indians.

  This was Snake country. Crows and Snakes were longtime enemies. Snakes had run Sam’s outfit’s horses off this time last spring, not far from here. Not a place to be wandering around carelessly in a small party.

  They settled in to wait.

  COY SENSED THEM first. On the fourth day Sam was taking evening watch on top of a sandstone outcropping, stroking Coy’s back. Suddenly the coyote pup jumped up and pointed ears, nose, and eyes up the Sandy. The wind was blowing down the little river.

  Sam stood for long minutes before he saw anything. But, he thought, twenty-two men and maybe forty horses make a lot of sound and smell.

  Finally, one rider skylined on a ridge. By the silhouette Sam recognized Fitzpatrick.

  In seconds, it seemed, all six of them were hightailing it up the river.

  Whoa. Here came the outfit. But it was in poor shape, most of the men walking and leading heavily laden horses.

  Still, the welcome was warm.

  “Look who’s still above ground.”

  “This nigger thought them Crow women diddled you to death.”

  “Glad to see you, hoss.”

  “Look who’s still got his hair!”

  “’Bout missin’ an ear, though.”

  These greetings from Ashley, Fitzpatrick, Clyman, Zacharias Ham, and all the others, every man looking hale and hearty.

  Blue Horse and Flat Dog hung back, uncertain. Sam waved to them to come up and meet the general.

  After the introductions Ashley said, “Looks like you came through well.”

  “You, too,” answered Sam.

  Ashley shook his head. “Lost seventeen of my best horses to the Crows. Recently.” The general couldn’t help throwing an odd glance at Blue Horse and Flat Dog.

  “Wasn’t our Crows,” said Gideon. “All of us been layin’ ’round camp lazy all winter.”

  Now Flat Dog showed off his English. “Some of our young men think, run horses off is most fun anything.”

  Zacharias Ham threw a woolly look at the two Crows. “We’ll learn ’em what’s fun.”

  “You men are welcome in camp,” said Ashley.

  “They want to trap with us,” put in Sam.

  “Welcome to that, too,” said the general.

  So it was settled. Sam had never known he was nervous.

  Quickly the camp settled into fires against the evening chill, roasting meat, and stories.

  First the Ashley men caught Sam and the fellows up on what had happened since they left. January the brigade spent toiling up the South Platte until, at last, they got within sight of the Rocky Mountains—that brought a cheer. February was given mostly to waiting in a cottonwood grove and looking at the spectacle of snow and ice ahead. At the end of the month they forced a crossing of the main range, a bitter three days struggling through snow. Then they emerged onto the Laramie Plains, a fine country along the North Platte, full of game. The next range, the Medicine Bow Mountains, turned them back. But it was March now. They slowed down and moved northward, trapping the creeks of the east side of the range. The next pass led to a paradise of game, the valley of the North Platte River.

  April now, time to head for the Siskadee. The Wind River Mountains lined the western horizon. Fitzpatrick, though, told how the horses got run off, and how he led a party to get them back. They came on two animals so weak the Indians had abandoned them, but never caught up with the rest.

  That’s how the brigade came to the Siskadee half worn-out. Plenty of smiles, though. The horses were loaded with plews aplenty.

  Sam, Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing gave back their own stories. T
he favorite was about Paladin. Blue Horse told in good English how Sam trained her in the freezing river. He still chuckled about how cold Sam looked standing rib deep in that river.

  “But his mind,” said Gideon, “it always point to the day he ride her against ze buffalo. When he shoot a buffalo riding her, he get new name. Medicine man, he promise, new name.”

  Sam was embarrassed, so he took over the telling, and got as far as when the buffalo stampeded for the river. “I rode hard at those buffalo. I could hear bellowing as they went off that cliff ahead. And then…”

  Abruptly, Beckwourth jumped in, “And then, he got the brightest of his bright ideas. I can shoot a cow right now. Riding hard, he takes aim, he gets her in his sights just perfect and…”

  “Off the cliff goes!” hollered Gideon. “Cow, horse, and rider.”

  The beaver men applauded.

  Sam retreated to petting Coy.

  “Sam, mare, cow, all topsy turvy over ze cliff.” Dramatic pause. “He lands in middle of the buffalo driven off ze cliff.”

  “They ain’t all hurt,” Beckwourth put in. “This one old bull, he lowered his horns and looked at Sam between ’em just like sights. He charged.”

  “And ze mare,” interrupted Gideon, “she save his miserable life. She run at buffalo—boom—knock him off balance.”

  “The bull,” Beckwourth burst in, “he gets his feet back under him and lowers that head.”

  “Then Blue Horse, Flat Dog, and ze medicine man, they shoot him a little bit wit’ arrows. We shoot him a little bit with lead. Ze mare, now she run up to ze bull and…”—Gideon opened his arms wide to his audience—“she bite him on the snout!”

  The men cheered.

  “So the one that earns the new name,” said Beckwourth, “is the mare. Paladin. But we oughta called her Save Your, short for Save Your Ass.”

  The men roared.

  After a while, in the following silence, Sam said, “I got a new name, too.”

  “You did,” Gideon allowed. “Ze medicine man gave him a name.”

  “What are you called now, Sam?”

  “Joins with Buffalo,” said Sam.

  Men made faces. One farted loudly, causing a bubble of laughter.

  Fitzpatrick went up to Sam and clapped him on the shoulder. Sam kept his hands on Coy.

  “To your fellow mountain men, lad, to us you will always be known as mi coyote.”

  TIME TO GET serious about the spring hunt. Ashley divided them into four outfits. Fitzpatrick would take his south, to trap the mountains visible on the horizon. Zacharias Ham would lead men west to those mountains easy to see. James Clyman would lead his north along the Siskadee and trap its headwaters, right where they’d gone before.

  Himself, Ashley would do a journey of exploration. He wanted to know whether this river was the Colorado, which flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, or the Multnomah, which emptied into the Columbia, or the Buenaventura, which emptied into the Pacific near Monterey, California. The men said nothing. Everyone knew that if this was the Buenaventura, the road was open to the Golden Clime—fur men would be the first to reach Alta California by land!

  Sam quietly asked Clyman to choose him and his friends to make an outfit together. He knew Clyman wouldn’t mind a multicolored brigade.

  James just nodded.

  THE TRAPPING FELT good to Sam. Up in the morning at first light, coffee, get mounted, move out. Ride with your partner up a creek coming down from the Wind River Mountains to the east. Watch for slides, dams, chewed cottonwoods, any beaver sign. Pick a likely spot to set a trap, especially one out from a slide. Move downstream, splash into the creek, which right now was snow run-off from some of the highest, coldest mountains in the nation. Wade up to the spot and set your trap. Put a big stick through the ring at the end of the chain, so the beaver can’t swim off with it. Dip a small stick into your horn of castoreum and bait the trap with it. Attach a floating stick, in case the beaver, despite all, swims off with the trap. Move upstream to the next likely spot, keeping an eye out for Indians all the way.

  Sam’s partner was Blue Horse, which made “keeping an eye out for Indians” funny. Sam took Blue Horse, Gideon took Flat Dog, and Beckwourth took Third Wing, in each case an experienced hand showing the ways to a new man, what they called a pork-eater. Clyman kept the camp.

  Later you would raise your traps and ride up the creek, or on to the next stream, depending. After you trapped the wily rodent and he drowned, you still had plenty of work to do. You skinned out your beaver, taking only the pelt and the tail. Back in camp you scraped the hide free of fat and stretched it on a hoop you made from willow branches. The tail you threw in the coals for eating, a delicacy. Your pack horse would bear your plews, or you’d cache them for retrieval later.

  In this way the little Clyman outfit worked its way up the river they called the Siskadee. Sam knew that just across the mountains he was working, on the east side, was the winter camping place of the village led by Rides Twice, the village where lived his love, Meadowlark. By now, surely, the village had moved down the Wind River, made its big turn to the northeast, worked their way through the big canyon, and come to where it changed its name to the Big Horn. There they would do the spring buffalo hunt. There, sometime this summer, Sam would ride into the village leading eight horses and claim her hand.

  For now, though, the creeks were running full, the pelts were prime, he had good comrades, and it was time to make a living.

  SAM THOUGHT IT was the weirdest thing he ever saw.

  They had worked their way north along the Siskadee to where she came out of the mountains, no longer a big, fat, slow snake of a river but a sprightly colt. He and Blue Horse trapped their way up a creek half the day and down it the second half. They were riding into camp an hour beyond sunset, in the very last of the light. And he distinctly saw three fires instead of the one there should have been. And the men around those fires, where Clyman and their friends should have been, were…

  Indians!

  He looked at Blue Horse guiltily.

  “Snakes!” his friend hissed.

  Sam dismounted. They tied the horses to a cedar and put Coy on a lead rope. Sam jerked his head to the left, and they eased up a sandstone outcropping.

  When they got there, Sam chuckled. Beyond the Indian camp, clear enough to the eye, was the camp of the fur men. Sam counted five figures—everyone accounted for.

  “We’ve got company,” he said to Blue Horse.

  Just in case, they rode a wide circuit around the Indian camp.

  “Snakes,” said Clyman.

  “How many?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “How many guns?” said Sam.

  “Two that I saw.”

  “They’re friendly,” said Beckwourth.

  “Say they are,” corrected Clyman. “Want to trade.”

  “What can we trade them?” said Sam.

  Everyone knew what was in their panniers—a few beads, a little jerked meat, some good twists of tobacco.

  “We need horses,” said Clyman. “We gotta try.”

  The entire brigade had been short of horses from the start.

  “I will trade my pistol for a horse,” said Gideon.

  Clyman shrugged. “We’ll try.”

  All the men looked at each other warily. From their expressions, Sam judged, the Crows trusted these Snakes even less than the mountain men did.

  “We’ll hobble the horses and make a rope corral too,” Clyman said. “We’ll also set a double guard.”

  “And tomorrow,” said Beckwourth, “we’ll do some old-fashioned horse-trading.”

  SAM CLAMPED HIS teeth together to keep them from chattering. He wiggled his toes, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot—the toes were likely to freeze. Damn Rocky Mountains in the springtime.

  The sky wasn’t any lighter than a few minutes ago. In an hour the world would be warmer, and his time on watch would be over.

  One by one, he poked each glove
d finger up and down, the left fingers on the barrel of The Celt, right fingers on the stock. He pulled the hood of his blanket capote tighter around his face. He wanted to stomp his feet, but didn’t dare. Guards were supposed to be absolutely silent.

  He reached down and patted Coy. While the others slept, Coy went with Sam on watch every time.

  His eyes probed the darkness. The half moon let patches of light through, but the cottonwoods threw big blotches of blackness. Chances were better for hearing an enemy than seeing one.

  Probably nothing will happen. Nothing had ever happened while Sam was on watch. Yet he took standing guard with complete seriousness. He would always take it seriously, and would always be scared.

  Tonight he was also worried about Third Wing, the other guard. His friend…Sam didn’t know. Maybe he thought Third Wing hadn’t spent enough time at this duty. Maybe he thought Third Wing had too motherly a way about him to fight hard. Maybe…

  Sam was worried.

  Third Wing’s job was to stay by the horses penned in the rope corral. Sam’s was to stand in different spots around the camp, each one with a good vantage point. To keep his eyes and ears wide open, and if he saw or heard anything, to yell like hell.

  The silence made Sam’s ears ache.

  Now the sky was a shade lighter. The half moon made only gray shadows. The world was no longer black but dark gray.

  “Hunnh!”

  Instantly, Sam yelled, “Indians! Indians! Indians!”