Beauty for Ashes Page 4

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean my wife put my goddam moccasins outside the tipi.”

  Sam supposed Third Wing used the English he heard, without a sense that some of it was profane. He raised an eyebrow quizzically at Third Wing.

  The Pawnee gave him a friendly smile. “When your woman puts your moccasins outside, that means you’re through. Take your weapons and go. Your kids aren’t even yours anymore.” There was an edge of bitterness in Third Wing’s voice.

  He drew deep on the pipe and let the smoke wander upward from his lips. “She went to live with her sister’s husband.” His eyes lit up wildly. “He likes having two women to jump on top of.”

  “Where have you been living?”

  Third Wing pretended to shrug lightly. “In a brush hut with the other young, single men.” The word single bristled with sarcasm.

  “What have you been eating?”

  Third Wing took a while to answer. “I’ve been feeling kind of off, haven’t hunted much.”

  Sam could see that. Coy whined like he also knew what it was like to be hungry.

  “Why haven’t you come around until now?”

  “I was off on a vision quest.”

  “Starving yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  Godawmighty, starving a starved man. Sam wanted to ask what Third Wing saw, but he didn’t dare.

  “Your wife, she leave you because of me?”

  “The whole tribe thinks I’m strange about whites. I like white people, and I’ve been waiting for you.” He looked into the night sky. Sam wondered what he saw there, among the pulsing stars, where some people saw stories. Third Wing was giving him the willies.

  “Maybe some day I’ll tell you why. Why I like you.”

  The guy was sweet. It was hard to be suspicious about him. “Tell me how you got such good English, too.”

  “Yip-YIP!” cried Coy, as though seconding the motion.

  Third Wing grunted, took his belt knife, and sliced at the roast again. “Maybe I better eat while I can.”

  When he had devoured another half pound of meat, Third Wing went on, “I speak English good because traders raised me.”

  So Sam poked at that conversationally. “What traders? How long were you among them?”

  Third Wing just waited until he’d finished eating and then said, “The traders out of Fort Osage found me alone on the river trail, near where Atkinson is now, it wasn’t then. I was maybe five years old. I didn’t remember anything about my family or my tribe, but the words I spoke were Pawnee. One of the traders, Gannett, he raised me, maybe, ten years. Not that he was much of a father. I more or less hung around Fort Osage like a stray dog. Seems Gannett didn’t think a whole lot of me, either. When I was about fifteen, I had some trouble getting a bridle on a horse, and Gannett said, ‘That boy’s as much use as a third wing.’ I figured a third wing would mess a bird up completely. Anyway, the name stuck.”

  “Why aren’t you working at one of the trading posts?”

  “Oh, not long after I got my name, Gannett took an outfit out to trade with the Loup Pawnees. Raven was curious about me, a red-skinned boy. When Gannett told him I spoke Pawnee, Raven checked but couldn’t find anyone who remembered me. Maybe I came from the other big Pawnee tribe. Anyhow, Raven got one of the families to trade a horse for me.” He laughed. “Hell, once I was worth a horse.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say to this outburst of information and feeling.

  Third Wing said, “Let’s make camp together here.”

  Sam looked at the sky. Swept clear by the winds, no rain or snow tonight. “I’ll get my blankets,” said Sam.

  When he got back, Third Wing had cleared an area for sleeping—the pebbles and little sticks were tossed away. He was bringing willows, their finger-shaped yellow leaves still on, and fashioning a hut from them. Sam cut the willows while Third Wing made them into a house. Sam had the teasing thought. Just like a good little woman.

  He ended up lending most of his blankets to Third Wing. The Pawnee slept like a baby. Coy spooned up close to him on the belly side. Sam sat up most of the night, feeling bad about Third Wing, and wondering.

  OVER THE NEXT few days Sam sometimes felt like he had two dogs tagging around with him, except that neither Coy nor Third Wing was a dog. Sam’s job was to help Ashley with the trading. The general set his trade goods out—beads, vermilion, kettles, knives, cotton cloth, wool strouding, tobacco, and lots of other items, including the blankets they sat on. The Indians surveyed all, trying to keep their faces impassive and prevent their eyes from lighting up. At length they made offers.

  The process was long, sometimes tedious and sometimes fun. The Pawnees treated the trading as a form of play. Back-and-forth banter wasn’t easy in signs.

  “Why don’t you let me do the translating?” asked Third Wing. He was lounging on the edge of a trade blanket in the noonday sun, which was weak, this near the solstice.

  Sam looked at Ashley. “Yes,” said the general to Sam, “but you stay and help too.”

  “Goddam,” said Third Wing, “my own people don’t trust me, and neither do you whites.” But he chuckled when he said it.

  Always the disciplinarian, Ashley frowned at the “goddam,” and the trading got started again. It went a lot faster with Third Wing making English out of Pawnee and then telling the people what Sam’s answer was. Sam was sure Third Wing spiced the answers up with humor, and sometimes a mocking edge. Now and then the women giggled like the banter was bawdy.

  At first they got a lot of buffalo robes, which would help the men stay warm at night. Then came jerked meat, which was welcome, because the winter was looking longer and hungrier to everyone. Trading for horseflesh, though, was slow and difficult. Only one animal the first day, three the second, two the third. Ashley wanted a pack horse for every man, twenty-five altogether.

  ON THE SECOND night Jim Beckwourth and Gideon made a change in everyone’s living arrangements. They dropped their bedrolls on the far side of Sam and Third Wing’s fire. “We want to be over here,” said the French-Canadian.

  “Where there’s some skin that ain’t white,” added Jim. He threw a shiny, big-toothed smile at Third Wing.

  “I’m kinda mixed up between white and red,” said Third Wing.

  “Me too,” said Gideon. “Born that way.”

  “I figure that makes us blood brothers,” said Jim. They all chortled at that.

  Jim told his story about what a gentleman his father, Sir Jennings Beckwourth, had been, a kind of aristocrat to hear Jim tell it. He didn’t know how Sir Jennings came to be with his mother, a slave, “But I can guess.” Sir Jennings even brought the family to St. Louis to get away from color prejudice and give the half-and-half children a decent chance in life.

  “How’d that work?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “May be better in the mountains,” put in Sam.

  “He’s an optimist,” said Gideon with a smile.

  “I think white people is white people wherever you go,” Jim said.

  Third Wing hopped back into the conversation. “What do you mean,” he asked Gideon, “born that way?”

  “My father was a French Jew, my mother a Cree,” said Gideon.

  “You aren’t much dark,” said Third Wing.

  “One of my sisters be light as cream,” said Jim, who was dark. One of the odd things about Jim, Sam had noticed, was that he could talk good English to the general, better English than Sam’s, and rough English to his fellow trappers. He also noticed that Jim wore a mustard seed in a drop of glass around his neck, an old way of warding off illness. Sam approved. Black folks, Indians, and country whites, he thought, knew some things fancy white people didn’t.

  “Here’s what my father told me,” said Jim, “and this child thinks it speaks to red as well as black. My father pointed at the piano where we gathered round to sing church songs, you know, hymns, and my father he says, ‘There are twelve tones on the piano. Som
e of them are white, and some of them are black. Each one strikes a pure and beautiful tone, and music is made equally of both.’”

  Third Wing cackled like that was one truly funny-peculiar story.

  Gideon said, “Except people don’t see it that way, do they?”

  TWO MORE DAYS work and they had nine horses. It was slow. Fortunately, the winter weather was fine, the hunting was good, and the men were happy here.

  Third Wing asked for a robe from Ashley for all the translating he was doing. He got a robe and a blanket.

  Sam wanted to sit around with Gideon and Jim and Fitz and Clyman and tell stories. He wanted to hunt. Mostly he wanted this boring work to be over. As long as they were trading, though, Ashley would pack up and ride the south fork toward that big range of mountains. Then they would be moving away from the camp of the girl whose name he wouldn’t speak, even to himself.

  That night across the fire—still plenty of buffalo meat to eat and all four friends were doing their best on it—Third Wing asked Sam, “Why do you act so glum?”

  Sam didn’t answer.

  “It’s that Crow woman,” Jim said. “Look at him fingering that gage d’amour, don’t even know he’s doing it.”

  Third Wing laughed.

  “If you don’t tell him,” said Gideon, “I will.”

  So Sam did, told Third Wing how he got to know her when the brigade lived at the Crow village led by Rides Twice last winter, how enchanting she was, how beautifully she moved.

  “Her name, it’s Meadowlark,” put in Gideon.

  “Yeah. She’s a virgin,” Sam went on, “because she wants to lead that ceremony reserved for virgins.”

  “You hope she hasn’t led it yet,” said Jim with a chuckle.

  “I didn’t know where I stood with her until she gave me this gage d’amour. Then I promised to come back last summer.”

  “Which you didn’t,” said Gideon.

  “Life got in the way,” said Sam. To Third Wing he added, “That’s when I got lost.”

  “And came wandering down the river, half-addled and half-starved, and I saved your silly ass,” said Third Wing.

  “Yeah.”

  “So now you’re worried,” Third Wing went on. “You didn’t show up last summer. If you don’t go back to her this winter, it will be no more kootchy-coo.” Sometimes Third Wing acted like his friend, sometimes his mother, and sometimes like a little kid.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is her village?”

  “Wind River,” said Gideon. “Up the north fork here a long way, up the Sweetwater, over a divide, follow Wind River upstream.”

  “So why don’t we just go see her? Leave straight from here. Right away. What are we waiting for?”

  Sam gawked at Third Wing.

  “Young love is supposed to be keen,” said Jim.

  Third Wing held out his arms in a what-are-you-waiting-for gesture.

  “You want to go?” Sam asked Third Wing, half-believing.

  “What would I sit around here for?”

  “You?” Sam asked Gideon.

  “I like Crow women.”

  Sam looked at Jim.

  “I like all women.”

  “Let’s go!” Sam shouted.

  Chapter Six

  THEY TOOK A week to get ready. Ashley insisted that Sam and Third Wing help him finish trading for those horses, and the general ended up with twenty-three new ones. Beckwourth shot a buffalo cow and a deer. Third Wing kept a low fire going all day, every day to dry the meat. Figuring the journey would take three weeks, they were taking a month’s worth of food. All four men knew that could be a recipe for starvation—anything could happen in the mountains.

  Third Wing contributed two pack horses.

  Fitzpatrick came to their fire by the river the night before they left. He settled on his haunches and looked one by one at the four of them. His mouth had an ironic set, but his Irish eyes were full of merriment. “You compañeros following mi coyote’s yen for poontang, you are lucky fellows. The general will not fire your arses. He will not even change your financial arrangements. You may chase skirts wherever you want to this winter, and make the same money—that’s if you turn up next spring for the hunt.”

  “Being generous, is he, the general?” Beckwourth said.

  “Why certainly,” said Fitz with mock melody.

  Coy crawled over between Third Wing’s feet and turned onto his back. The Pawnee rubbed the belly obligingly. He said, “Ashley wants you to bring your beaver to him. He don’t want you selling it to nobody else.”

  “He doesn’t mind if we shine up his relationship wit’ ze Crows either,” said Gideon.

  To Sam, Fitz added, “Meet us the day of the spring equinox, he says, on the Siskadee.”

  Third Wing gave Coy’s belly a playful pinch. The dog yipped and mouthed the fingers. The Pawnee made a loud flutter with his lips and tongue. The pup yipped.

  “Too early,” said Sam.

  “We’ll frostbite our tails in the Southern Pass in March,” said Gideon.

  “So will you,” said Sam.

  Sam, Gideon, and Fitzpatrick remembered well the howling winds and choking blizzards on the pass last March, right before they had mountain luck and stumbled on beaver paradise in the valley of the Siskadee. Along with Bill Sublette and James Clyman, Sam had nearly frozen to death one night on the pass because the wind kept scattering their pathetic attempts at a fire. Only the next morning’s discovery of a single live coal the size of a kernel of corn had saved them.

  Coy slithered to the fire and put his head on his paws like he remembered and was trying to get warm. “You weren’t even born when that happened,” Sam told him. The pup mewled a little and didn’t move.

  “Diah and Sublette be on the Siskadee?” asked Sam.

  “Yeah,” said Fitz. “And I already told the general March is a hell-freezer-till-your-short-hairs-get-stiff. Make it the middle of April.”

  “Good,” said Sam. He was eager to show cooperation with the general. Having an employer seemed proper.

  “Now the general has a surprise for you.” He walked off into the dark and came back leading a horse bearing big panniers, sacks that hung heavy on each side. “Mi coyote, you aren’t thinking of how you should treat the Crows.” He opened a pannier to show them. “This is tobacco, blankets, beads, strouding, all kind of foofuraw. You tell them these presents are from General Ashley.”

  “Dammit,” said Sam, “we didn’t think of presents.”

  “Gideon did,” said Fitz, “that’s how come you get all these nice things.”

  Gideon managed a half bow. “I have a word with Ashley private,” he said. “I also have two jugs. One is for us on New Year’s Eve, the ozzer for the Crows.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Fitz. The government forbade the use of whiskey in the Indian trade, but most traders disregarded this ban.

  “You can take the pack horse too,” said Fitz, “but remember, it’s the general’s.”

  Third Wing got up, took the panniers off, led the pack horse a dozen steps, and staked it with their other horses.

  “Now mi coyote, how are you going to know when the first week of April comes?” asked Fitz. “You can’t go by the Indian way, the moon when the grass greens up.”

  Sam just looked at him, stuck.

  Fitzpatrick took out a stick stripped of bark, painted blue on one end, red on the other, and bare wood in the middle, which had lots of knife cuts on it, in lines. “This is my counting stick.” He held it out to Sam.

  The moment Sam grasped it, Coy snatched the stick and scooted away. He sat with his back to the fire, looking straight at Sam, stick in his mouth. Though his tail didn’t wag, his legs trembled.

  Sam patted the ground.

  Coy bounded forward and laid the stick on the ground. Then he leapt into Sam’s lap. At six or seven months, he was getting big for the lap.

  Fitz grabbed the stick and looked to see whether his cuts were
spoiled by tooth marks. Apparently not. “I keep the time for the brigade in the ledger. But a man who doesn’t read or write”—like Sam—“can do it like this. See here, make seven notches for each day in a week, then make one of these big rings all the way around the stick. Those are weeks, or quarters of the moon. Every four quarters, make a ring and paint it with vermilion—that’s a month.” Sam nodded—he saw what the system was. “Today is December 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Tomorrow night’s camp, make your own counting stick. When the rings say it’s April, put your minds on moving out. Be on the Siskadee four moon from now.”

  “Only white men count their days,” Beckwourth said with broad mockery.

  “This should be long enough for even you boys to dip your wicks a lot of places,” answered Fitz.

  Sam blushed.

  “Middle of April we’ll be looking for you. When you get to where the Sandy comes into the Siskadee, if you don’t see lots of sign we’ve been there, wait. If we’ve come and gone, I’ll leave a cairn. One rock on the side of the cairn, that points whether I went upriver or downriver.”

  He looked all four of them in the eyes.

  “Zis is easy,” said Gideon. “I find your outfit anywhere in the Rocky Mountains, maybe by the smell of your feet.”

  Fitz grinned. “Don’t end up walking back to civilization, boys.”

  Sam, Gideon, and Fitzpatrick all grinned. That wasn’t on the agenda again.

  Suddenly, wraithlike, Fitz was gone.

  Sam laid awake all night, thinking of Meadowlark. He was up before the sun the next morning making coffee. The party rode off earlier than his companions wanted to, and they were grumbling.

  MOUNTAIN LUCK SWINGS big each way. Easy—alive—hard—dead. Gone under, as the trappers called it, in the lingo they were developing. One winter trip goes lickety-split, the next one is inch by inch, leading the horse through thigh-deep snow, pulling your leg out of one deep hole, pushing it across the snow in front of you, and shifting your weight awkwardly forward so you can plunge a foot down again. Naturally, if you have a dog with you, or in Sam’s case, a coyote, the critter will trot blithely over the surface of the snow, look back at you, and give you a superior smile.