Beauty for Ashes Read online

  That December their luck was variable, but mostly good. Where the Sweetwater River flowed into the Platte, they spent a day and a half sitting out a snowstorm. A tent gets close when you’re in it all day—Sam spent the evening outside, watching the big flakes sift silently through the branches of cottonwood trees. Where they left the Sweetwater to cross over to Wind River, they got into deep snow in spots, and they huddled one afternoon and night below a cut bank, trying to get out of the screaming wind. Holding Coy to his front, Sam was not as shivery as his companions.

  The country was mostly open, though. Beckwourth said it was because the damn wind blew the snow all the way to the Missouri River.

  When wood failed them, they made fires of sagebrush and buffalo pies. The flames kept them warm, more or less, through the long nights. Thoughts of Meadowlark kept Sam nearly hot.

  When you ride day after day through Indian country, your mind should never wander. There are always ridges to be scoured with the eyes, brushy flats to be inspected. You watch for anything that’s out of place, a silhouette moving on a hilltop or a duck quacking up off the river for no reason.

  Sam was inexperienced, though, and young, and hot-blooded. His mind ran from Meadowlark walking to Meadowlark smiling to Meadowlark snuggled up…He had no promises from her, only this one gift, the gage d’amour he always wore around his neck. He thought again of the reason she’d given for declining his courting, that she wanted to be one of the girls who led the dancers in the goose egg dance. The leaders had to be virgins, others explained to Sam, completely above suspicion. Meadowlark spent time with no young man.

  But Sam couldn’t keep from wondering. Was she sincere? Was she stalling him to let someone else into her arms? Did she have that ceremony last summer? Some summers they visited the River Crows, and that’s when they did the ceremony. If she did, did she go berry-picking afterwards with some good-looking stranger and take the pleasures of the flesh? Is she being courted? Is she already married?

  These thoughts bounced off Elk Mountain and back into Sam’s mind, off the waters of the Sweetwater River and back to him, from the snowy world of the Wind River Mountains on the southwest to the red hills and gray, stony peaks of the steep Absarokas on the northeast and back, always, into Sam’s mind. When he woke in the middle of the night, these thoughts haunted him.

  On the day of Christmas Eve Sam rode with his mind in the past. It was his twentieth birthday, and the fourth anniversary of his father’s death. He didn’t call up many words about Lew Morgan, and none of the kinds of words people said at a burying. He just let pictures float into his mind. He and Lew playing cat’s cradle. The father teaching the child to milk the cow, shooting the warm milk into his boy’s face, and the sweet taste of that milk right out of the tit. Learning to measure his powder with care, both kinds of powder, for the pan and for the barrel. Easing through the Pennsylvania woods behind Lew, trying not to make a sound, and failing. Then finding a spot and spending the whole day watching to see what was there—what birds lived in these trees and when they sang and when they were silent; the deer, grazing quietly because they didn’t know human beings were around; the fish, and how you could build a dam and catch them with your hands and scoop them onto the bank. He stroked the stock of his rifle, where he’d had a brass plate put on and Celt engraved in a fancy script, surrounded by a circle of Celtic love knots, like the ones in a belt Sam’s mother had given his father. But the name and the circle had been scorched by the prairie fire, and were only half legible. Still, his memories of his father gleamed.

  That night, as they sat around the fire in the early dark, Third Wing said, “I have a treat for you.” The two great whacks of Sam’s hair, tied into Third Wing’s, glinted dramatically white in the firelight. “First this.” He disappeared into the darkness and brought back a tin cup filled with grease. Sam had noticed him rendering buffalo fat the last couple of days. Out of the grease hung a piece of patch cloth like a wick. Third Wing put the whole affair on the cold ground and used an ember to get the wick burning. It burned nicely because it was soaked in oil.

  “This is your birthday candle. We couldn’t make twenty of them,” said Third Wing. “Blow it out for good luck.”

  Sam made an immense gust and out went the candle. Gideon and Beckwourth applauded.

  “Now your very special surprise,” said Third Wing.

  He stepped into the dark again and brought back a tin bowl of…It looked sort of like…“Cherry ice cream,” said Third Wing proudly.

  “Well, ice cream Athabascan style,” said Gideon.

  Third Wing thrust the bowl forward. “Everyone help yourself.”

  The four spooned the goop into their coffee cups.

  Sam scooped some up with his tongue, then kept himself from making a face.

  “Pas mal when you get used to it,” said Gideon. “I learned way north, when I spent the winter at Slave Lake.”

  Beckwourth did make a face.

  Sam tried again, and didn’t exactly dislike it. It was sweet.

  “I put lots of sugar in it,” Third Wing said, “to improve the taste.”

  “What is it?” Beckwourth asked.

  “Liquid buffalo fat,” said Gideon, “mushed up with snow.”

  “With lots of sugar,” repeated Third Wing, “and all the chokecherries we had left.”

  “Thanks,” said Sam.

  “Happy birthday,” said Third Wing.

  “Happy birthday,” the others chorused.

  “Oh to be twenty again,” chanted Gideon like he was in church.

  “Thanks, everyone!” said Sam. He meant it.

  Sneakily, later, he would give his cherry ice cream to Coy.

  “Now I’m going to give you a special birthday present,” said Third Wing.

  Everyone fell silent. Sam could tell Gideon and Beckwourth didn’t know about this.

  “I’m going to tell you why I like you so much.”

  This was strange.

  “I saw you in a dream before you ever came.”

  Sam felt weird. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw a white man with white hair in a dream. So I was expecting you. Some time.”

  “What happened in the dream?”

  “You came walking in the shape of buffalo, a red buffalo. Then you stopped, turned all the way around, and came walking as a yellow buffalo. Then you stopped, turned around, and came walking in a sacred way as a black buffalo. Then you stopped, turned around, and came toward us as a white buffalo.”

  Third Wing looked at his listeners as though expecting some reaction they didn’t give, maybe awe.

  “Just a minute,” said Sam. “If it was a buffalo, why do you think it was me?”

  “Your medicine, is it buffalo?”

  Sam thought of his own dream, and the cow he joined beings with. Still, he said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think it is buffalo, but…it was you that stood on the hill above the village.” Then he explained, as though to children, “You in your human shape and your beautiful white hair. You carried a deer skin tanned beautifully white, and in it was some gift for the people. You opened it, and it shone. You set it down on the crest of the hill and walked away in a sacred manner.”

  He stopped awkwardly. “But I never saw what it was. Others rushed up the hill to see the gift, but I woke up. I don’t know what you brought us.”

  The four men looked at each other, uncertain.

  “But I knew you had a gift. That’s why I saved you. You bore a gift.”

  “Third Wing, I honestly don’t have anything for the Pawnee.”

  The Pawnee shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know what it is, but you have it. The gift, that’s why I want to be with you.”

  Sam considered, and then knew what he wanted to do. He scooted over to Third Wing, made his eyes big as a demon’s, gave him a big smooch on the cheek, and said in a honeyed voice, “I like you, too.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Sam fell asleep t
hinking, He’s a strange friend, but I like him.

  SAM’S COUNTING STICK told him when New Year’s Eve was, and they broke open one of the two whiskey jugs and got uproariously drunk. Only Third Wing stayed mostly sober, so he could take care of the fools who overindulged, he said.

  That night Gideon and Beckwourth got into a storytelling contest Sam would never forget. His favorite was one Gideon told. “Me, ze first winter I am on Saskatchewan River, I walk sometimes from trading post to village, maybe one hour walk. I need, you know, a woman warm against ze long, long winter. Very cold, Saskatchewan, very much snow. I am lonesome on the walk, so I whistle along the way. This was my favorite song,

  As I strolled by,

  At the clear fountain,

  noticed the water was exquisite,

  And dipped myself in it.

  I’ve loved you so long—

  I will never forget you.

  “A young man in on ze far plains, during the long winter, he naturalement t’ink of his lady love back home, no?

  “Remember, I whistle this song as I walk, no did sing it, just whistle.

  “One winter day it is so cold. I remember my breath frosted my beard. The hairs in my nose, they crust with ice. My lungs hurt from drawing in ze air. But I whistle, always I whistle.

  “I mean I try. Zis time it is for nothing, it…Nothing comes out. My whistles, ze cold freezes ze sound. I keep whistling, I am superstitious. If I don’t send my song to my love, maybe she is, you know, infidel with another man.”

  “Infidel like you are, huh?” asked Sam, taking pleasure in catching on to a new word.

  “Yes, naturalement, I am a man. Two weeks later, maybe three, comes ze wind we call chinook. You know? Warm winter wind, melts ze snow, bares ze ground, makes you feel good. After three days of chinook I must walk to village, and now is much more pleasant, neh?

  “Oh, you don’t know how pleasant. Because my whistles, it is warm, now they thaw out. They sing to me from every wild rose bush, from every blue spruce tree. Even ze snow, dripping from the branches, serenades me. I pretend the thawing whistles, zey are ze voice of my lover.

  “I’ve loved you so long—

  I will never forget you.”

  “That’s horse puckey,” said Jim, with a big grin.

  “Says the world’s biggest maker of horse puckey,” said Sam.

  “Whoo-oop! Lookee here!” Jim mock-roared. “I am a grizzly b’ar crossed with a mountain lion. I can outrun, outshoot, and outride, and outfight any man what takes breath within a thousand miles of the Missouri River. And I am the world’s biggest maker of horse puckey,” he concluded triumphantly.

  “All right,” he went on with buttery charm, “now, I got a story….”

  IN THE FAR, wee middle of that night Third Wing asked to hear the tale of how Sam got Coy.

  “His medicine coyote,” said Gideon.

  “His familiar spirit,” said Beckwourth.

  “He’s just my friend,” said Sam.

  “You aren’t friends,” said Beckwourth. “You’re the master, he does what you say.”

  “We’re friends,” insisted Sam quietly. He thought a moment. He didn’t believe Coy was his medicine animal. If he had a medicine animal, or should claim one, it was that buffalo cow back on the Platte, the one he entered into and joined with. Though he wasn’t sure what a medicine animal was.

  He did think he could tell the story of how he got Coy. It was related to the buffalo story, but not the same story.

  “I was camped in a cottonwood grove on a little creek several miles north of the Platte. Alone—that was when I was doing my walk down the river to Atkinson.”

  “Baptism of fire, plains style,” said Gideon, a veteran of the same walk.

  “I shot a buffalo just before dark and got her gutted out. Woke up just before dawn, it looked like the sun was rising in the northwest, so bright and red it was. Until I smelled the smoke I didn’t figure out what was happening. Prairie fire coming my way.

  “I put it together fast as I could. Huge, huge prairie fire, wind whipping it straight toward me. Too wide to outrun to either side, too far to the river. I tried to get in the little creek, but there wasn’t enough water—left half of me sticking out. Did get good and wet, though. Pawing around with no place to go, I heard a mewling sound. It was this pup here, only smaller, and he was poking at the slit in the buffalo, like he wanted to get in.

  “Seemed crazy. I looked up at that fire. It was going to hit the grove right quick, and when it did the trees would turn into torches—you wouldn’t have to touch flame to get burnt, ‘All right,’ I said to myself, ‘It’s crazy but it’s the only chance.’ I crept right into the buffalo belly, took the pup with me. Hell, all of me didn’t even fit. Knees stuck out. When they got too hot, I turned over and my tail stuck out. Got burned pretty good.

  “When the sound eased away—you can’t imagine how loud a prairie fire roars—I waited and waited some more and finally crawled out.” He thought of telling them about the strange feeling he had, like being born, but decided against it. “Everything was turned black. Everything. The stink was beyond belief, and it stung your nose. Most places you couldn’t step, even in a moccasin—too hot.

  “Later I butchered out the buffalo—meat was good, even if it was toasted around the edges. Kept the pup. Fed him. Figured the pup saved my life.”

  He picked Coy and hugged, dog back to human chest. “This pup is my friend.”

  No one spoke, maybe out of respect, Sam thought, or maybe because the story wasn’t a stretcher like they wanted.

  “Up at Slave Lake, hell of a way to ze northwest and gone,” began Gideon, “I came across a sow grizzly, and sudden I wondered where her cubs were…”

  Third Wing egged on Gideon and Beckwourth, and they never stopped telling stories until the sun rose over the hills to the southeast. Then the four men and coyote slept all New Year’s day. Sam didn’t figure this country often brought in the new year so sunny and mild and pleasantly lazy.

  Chapter Seven

  SAM SPAT HIS freezing hair out of his mouth—the hair was crinkled with ice. The weather was so nasty he had Coy up in the saddle with him, curled against his belly and around the horn.

  It was three weeks and two days since they’d left the Ashley men at the forks of the Platte, according to his counting stick. He knew the tipis of the Crow village were in the cottonwoods along the river ahead. But on this bitter evening he couldn’t see even their silhouettes, or any hint of a fire. His left ear ached from the wind and sleet slashing that side of his face. The hand leading the pack horse was too stiff either to grip or let go—the rope was wound several times around the hand. And his white hair, now finally grown back to decent length, was whipping ice into his mouth and eyes.

  He had made it to Meadowlark’s village, but at the moment he didn’t give a damn.

  “Riders,” said Beckwourth.

  Sam held up a hand, and all four stopped. Odd, though the youngest, Sam was a sort of leader here. He and Gideon had lived in this village last winter, but Sam alone spoke the Crow language. (Gideon had a few words of amour.)

  Five horsemen came out of the lacing sleet and stopped facing Sam’s party. Sam thought he recognized one figure.

  “Ohchikaape.” It meant, “Greetings after a long absence.” “We come from General Ashley in friendship.”

  “Sam?” cried a voice in English. “Welcome back, Sam. I’m glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you Blue Horse!” chimed in Sam. He felt a twinge of guilt at always thinking of Meadowlark and seldom of her brother, his noble-looking friend. He wanted to say lots of things to this comrade, but he forced himself to stick with business. “We want to speak with Rides Twice.”

  The young men with Blue Horse held the horses of both groups. Sam stopped to put Coy on a leash, which got him strange looks from whites and Indians alike.

  The trappers limped into the village on numb feet that made them weave like drunke
n sailors. Their march had not a shred of dignity, but Gideon was still strong enough to lug the panniers, full of presents. “You can make a tent with the other young men,” offered Blue Horse in English. He was still keeping one wary eye on the coyote.

  “Pitch a tent,” said Sam. He was acknowledging their former pact to help each other, one with Crow, the other with English. “We will do that tonight. Thank you.”

  A tent, though, was not what he wanted. He longed for the coziness of a real tipi and a center fire, preferably with Meadowlark in the buffalo robes at the rear.

  As they approached the council lodge, Sam made himself remember the details of the Crow way of handling the sacred pipe, the proper Crow words to use in offering the smoke to the four directions. The presents would make the trappers welcome. These trade items were great luxuries to the Crows, who had no other access to them. He assumed the Crows would accept Third Wing. Both Crows and Pawnees were long-time enemies of the Sioux, and that should do it.

  The problem was Coy. When they got to the lodge, Sam regretfully tied him to a lodge stake outside. Then they waited until Rides Twice and several Big Bellies went in. Sam ducked through the flap behind them. The lodge was cold, but a good center fire was already started. He wanted to crawl into a corner, wrap up in a buffalo robe, and sleep. Right now I don’t even want Meadowlark there with me. He gave a crookedy smile. Well, maybe I do.

  Rides Twice sat in his accustomed place behind the center fire. He motioned for Sam to sit to his left, and the others in the trapping party to Sam’s left, and the Big Bellies to their left. He said in the Crow language, “Welcome, Sam, we are glad to see you again.”

  Sam lowered himself beside the chief. It was going to be a good winter.

  EARLY THE NEXT morning Sam was sitting quietly by the river, on a cottonwood felled by a beaver, rubbing Coy’s ears. The early morning fog half hid the two of them. His breath swirled up to join the fog. My breath, the earth’s breath, he thought. He took off his other glove and changed hands. Coy’s fur warmed his fingers better than the gloves. He watched the figures moving ghostly through the fog, to the river bank and back. He wasn’t interested, though, in any figure except one, Meadowlark, and she didn’t appear.