Beauty for Ashes Page 6

  Beyond him the river was easy to get to, and the water formed a pool. Every morning the mothers and grandmothers sent the young women here to get water. But no Meadowlark yet.

  When the weak winter sun had burned the fog off, Meadowlark’s mother, Needle, came down the trail carrying a bucket. Another trade item they need from us.

  Sam was miffed. The other young women must have told Meadowlark, or Needle, that the white man was waiting for her. I’m sure she wants to see me. Maybe it was her parents…Maybe she still hasn’t done the ceremony…

  Needle was usually merry. This time she walked with her eyes straight ahead, apparently seeing nothing but the path and the pool. Sam couldn’t even tell whether she knew he was there. When she was gone, he and Coy traipsed back to the village. There would be meat for breakfast at the tent, and coffee. Sam had gotten to where he loved black coffee with sugar in it.

  By midday the trappers had traded for a lodge cover and lodgepoles. Now they struggled to erect the tipi and get the cover on nice and tight, without wrinkles. Third Wing laughed a lot, Sam kept saying he didn’t know what to do, Beckwourth gave instructions despite knowing nothing about tipis, and Gideon kept saying, “This is women’s work.” Except for Third Wing, they’d never have gotten the lodge up.

  Sam remembered grumpily what happened last winter when he and Gideon put up their first lodge. Needle and her daughters came to help out, full of giggles at the white men’s ineptitude. Now we’re just as clumsy, so where are you? Why don’t you help?

  The four men stood back and looked at the small tipi, erect beside the brush huts of the young men. Altogether they’d done a half-assed job, but they would get by. Sam looked longingly toward the main circle. Like these men without families, the trappers weren’t part of the circle that made these people a village, where everyone was arranged according to their relationship with everyone else.

  Sam thought of what family he had. A brother who’d stolen Sam’s girl and married her, and now hated Sam. A mother who loved both her sons in an ineffectual way, and wouldn’t live long. Two sisters who loved Sam but were probably glad he was gone from the country and not causing trouble. Altogether, no one who wanted to see him coming.

  Sam didn’t see Meadowlark all day long.

  “LET’S GET GOING,” said Blue Horse, happy and proud to speak English again.

  “We’ll do it right here in front of the lodge,” said Gideon.

  Though the sun was about to drop behind the Wind River Mountains, they had a good while before dark—those mountains were high. It was a clear, windless afternoon, pleasantly cool before the plunge of the January night.

  The four trappers and Blue Horse spread the blankets in front of the lodge and laid the trade goods out for display. Coy curled on a corner of the blanket. Soon Crows were bumping shoulders to see.

  Sam had asked Blue Horse to help. Sam wasn’t quite that sure of his Crow language.

  The most popular item was a free cup of whiskey, as lubrication for the trade. Having neither Crow nor sign language, Beckwourth was assigned to play bartender and instructed to pour everyone a fair two fingers. “That don’t make sense,” Jim said with a laugh. “The cups are all different sizes.” These cups were occasionally tin (luxury items) but mostly made of horn.

  “Just do it,” said Sam. He and Gideon had prepared the whiskey as instructed by Ashley—one part raw alcohol to four parts creek water, seasoned with tobacco and pepper. The Crows were so avid for it, men and women alike, that Sam was glad it would soon run out. Gideon had told him tales about Indians when they were really drunk—daughters seducing their fathers, husbands raping their daughters-in-law, men fighting with knives or tomahawks until someone was hurt bad or dead—every sort of behavior that forgot they were one people, all related.

  Sam, Gideon, and Third Wing traded all manner of things for Crow beaver. Since the fur men had spent last winter with them, some Crows had taken to hunting beaver, not with traps but spears and clubs. General Ashley liked Crow beaver. He said the plews (the men’s common word for the hides) were thicker and heavier, so he got a better price for them. As the men put it, Crow beaver was some.

  The favorite Crow purchase was a blanket. The trappers had the good thick ones manufactured by Witney in England. Each small black stripe woven into the rug indicated a cost of one plew. The smallest blanket was three plews, and a really big one six.

  The prices of other items were not openly declared, and so depended on the bargaining skill of buyer and seller, and maybe the inebriation of the buyer. Gideon was fair and firm in his prices and didn’t bargain much. Since he spoke only a few words of Crow, it was mostly point, gesture, and shake your head yes or no. Sam was cordial and less particular about price. Blue Horse checked with Sam before he made a trade—he seemed to take pride in helping the trappers by getting good prices. Sam reflected again that everything about this young man seemed noble. He was going to be a leader.

  The Crows seemed uninterested in one item. At Atkinson Ashley had paid Indian women to sew the Witney blankets into coats with hoods—capotes, the men called them. Sam wore a beauty made of a blanket with narrow red stripes on a white background. But the Crows seemed to want the blankets as they were.

  It was Third Wing, oddly, who turned the trading into entertainment. He’d take a piece of calico cloth, hold it up in front of himself like a shirt, and do an ain’t-I-a-handsome-fellow strut. Then he showed them what the wool strouding, red with blue and yellow stripes down one edge, looked like when wrapped like leggings. He put vermilion on his cheeks as rosy makeup, modeled a string of sky-blue seed beads as a necklace, and did a sexy woman’s walk. This drew hoots from the women. He conducted a mock fight, butcher knife against cottonwood trunk, and threw a tomahawk into the trunk with a force and accuracy that scared Sam.

  Sam jumped up and added to the show. He got Coy to sit, roll over, and jump for a bite of meat held in Sam’s hand. Since the Crows hadn’t seen the coyote pup before, and had never seen even a dog obey commands, they were delighted.

  The women (most of the customers were women) soon ran out of beaver pelts to trade and started offering buffalo robes. Ashley wanted some of these, and the four trappers would use them as warm bedding against the rest of the cold winter. The Indians also brought forward river otter skins, a bear hide, and thick wolf hides, all worth something, but not as much as beaver plews. After a while they were mostly offering to trade jerked meat and pemmican, the sausage-like blend of fine-ground dried meat and buffalo fat, with berries or rose hips mixed in. It was a nourishing food and would last forever—the men were glad to trade for it.

  When dark came, the trading dropped off but continued slowly by the light of the nearby cook fires. Now Needle and Gray Hawk came. Needle was mostly interested in beads, which seemed more special as decoration than porcupine quills to the Crows, and in cloth, which was a complete novelty.

  Sam stared at the two with one thought: I haven’t seen Meadowlark at all. Even Blue Horse hadn’t mentioned her. For that matter, Sam hadn’t seen Meadowlark’s sister either, or her younger brothers. He felt a chill: She did the goose egg ceremony, married a River Crow, and is living with her husband far down the Missouri. And they don’t want to tell me.

  Carefully, he insisted to himself that this was irrational. He didn’t know anything about Meadowlark yet. Still, most of the tribe’s women and many of the men had stopped by to trade, but not her. She loved beads, vermilion, wool strouding for knee leggings, and other white-man aids to looking good. He peered at the top of Needle’s head as she bent over, lifting strings of different-colored beads. He looked into the impassive face of Gray Hawk. You aren’t about to tell me. So what’s going on?

  He decided to tie Coy in the lodge, slip away without Blue Horse, and find her. He took a string of Russian blue beads, the finest beads they had, as a gift. Something else General Ashley would take out of his pay.

  THE MAN WAS tall and well formed. Sam backed carefully betwe
en the tipis, outside the lodge circle and around it to another angle. When he came back into the circle, he saw the man’s face by firelight—it was Red Roan, the son of Chief Rides Twice. Damn. It was an unusually handsome face belonging to a splendidly built fellow in his mid-twenties. Sam remembered now, he was a widower—his wife and son were taken by the Blackfeet. Meadowlark stood next to him, although she didn’t let him wrap her in his blanket. Clearly, she had performed the goose egg ceremony and was accepting suitors. Red Roan was good-looking and much respected—a great catch. Damn.

  He still couldn’t see Meadowlark’s face. Though he felt sure, he had to make certain. But Red Roan’s big body blocked her features from behind, and from this direction the back of her head was to Sam. Maybe they aren’t courting. But Sam knew this was a silly hope.

  He hesitated, screwed up his courage, and walked up close. Yes, it’s Meadowlark. He studied her face past the big man’s shoulder. She was lovely, far lovelier even than he remembered. Sam shivered inside his red-and-white striped capote. He knew the custom. A girl would flirt with one suitor for a while, and others would patiently wait their turn. Sam was next. She was looking up into Red Roan’s face in a way that looked adoring. Oh, dammit, dammit.

  He stomped his cold feet, he fidgeted, and he fussed. In a few minutes—it was rude to monopolize a young woman’s attention unless you were promised to each other—Red Roan meandered away. He had the swagger of a man who expects to get what he wants in life.

  Meadowlark turned to go into her lodge, but Sam stepped forward and lightly took her elbow through the blanket. She turned to him, and he saw she was blushing a furious scarlet.

  “I love you,” Sam blurted. Since she couldn’t understand the English, he unwisely added, “apxisshe.” Though it meant “snubby nose,” in Crow it was a term of endearment used by a lover. He had declared himself.

  She lowered her head into her hands. When she looked back into his face, she reached out with one hand and touched the gage d’amour she’d given him, as though affirming something. Then she said in the Crow language, “I’m glad to see you.”

  That was enough for Sam. He was sure they’d be sharing a lodge within a couple of weeks.

  He fished the string of Russian blues out of his capote pocket. “For you,” he said.

  She gasped. She looked up at him, her eyes lighted in the way every man wants to see.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come to the village last summer.” In summer these Crows rode down the Wind River, through a canyon where for some reason it changed its name to the Big Horn River, and north to a river called the Gray Bull. This site they regarded as a summer paradise.

  She said nothing. Her face seemed to say, ‘A maiden knows she will be disappointed sometimes.’ He hated that. He couldn’t tell whether her face shone in the moonlight, or shone because she was looking up at him, or shone in his mind only.

  “I got lost,” Sam said. “My companions sent me ahead to scout and then didn’t come up. Some Arapahos stole my horse.” Arapahos were enemies of the Crows. “I walked all the way down the Shell River,” the one whites called the Platte, “to where we have a…”—he wondered what word to use for “fort”—“big house on the Muddy Water River.” The Missouri, if he was speaking English.

  He saw the question in her face. “I walked about seventy sleeps,” he told her, “alone.” He didn’t mention having only eleven balls for his rifle, not being able to hunt much, and damn near starving to death.

  “Seventy sleeps! You’re a hero,” she said.

  Now Sam blushed. Wanting to cover up with some words or other, he broke out with, “Did you lead the dancers in the goose egg ceremony?”

  Seemed everything either one of them said was embarrassing. “Yes, our relatives on the Muddy Waters River came to visit us and we danced.”

  The River Crows, Sam translated in his head, who lived on the upper Missouri in a village he’d never been to. Thank God, you didn’t marry one of your cousins. He blundered forward, “Do you ever go to visit your relatives on the Muddy Waters?”

  Now her eyes grew merry. “Rides Twice would never go down the Muddy Waters. One of our dogs, he likes to say, would not drink such water.”

  The eyes enchanted Sam. He wanted to kiss her—he was dizzy with wanting it. He reached out to draw her to him.

  Just then her father stuck his head out the flap. “Meadowlark, it’s time to come inside,” Gray Hawk said abruptly, almost harshly.

  With his hands on her upper arms, Sam felt Meadowlark stiffen. She turned away from him, then looked back over her shoulder. “Goodnight,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Chapter Eight

  SAM FUMBLED HIS way across their lodge, around the slumbering forms of Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing, and pushed open the flap to the outside world. In front of him stood a spirit horse—it reared and tossed its head. The rising sun shot off the white coat in dazzling beams, and turned the mane and tail into long, flowing strings of black silk.

  Suddenly, a dark figure darted from underneath. Sam flinched a little. Then he recognized the silhouette and, yes, the smile of Blue Horse. “Wake up, sleeping head,” Sam’s friend called loudly.

  “Sleepyhead,” corrected Beckwourth as he peered out over Sam’s shoulder.

  “Sleepyhead,” echoed Blue Horse dutifully. “Sam Morgan, rise up. I have brought you a gift.”

  Sam crawled out of the lodge, shivering in the dawn air.

  Blue Horse led the mount in a circle. Sam saw now that it was the finest-looking Indian pony he’d seen, white with extraordinary markings—a black cap around the ears, black blaze on the chest, and black mane and tail.

  “She’s what we call a medicine hat pony, from the black on her head.” The hat was almost a perfect, dark oval around the ears. “This blaze,” he indicated the blaze on her chest, “we call the shield. She has hat and shield.”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  Blue Horse put the reins in Sam’s hand. To the Crows reins meant a rope tied so it held the head and formed a loop around the lower jaw.

  “A gift?” murmured Sam.

  “I give Sam Morgan this horse,” Blue Horse said ceremoniously, “in thanks for saving my life.” He cocked an eye teasingly. “Or have you forgotten?”

  Last winter, hunting in a brushy draw, Sam came on Blue Horse and a gray-hair lounging half-exhausted in front of a sweat lodge. About ten steps away a coyote was slinking toward them, shaking and frothing at the mouth. Sam shot the rabid coyote. Scared the devil out of Blue Horse and the gray-hair until they understood why he did it.

  “Bell Rock also has a gift.” Now another man stepped forward smiling—the gray-hair. Sam hadn’t remembered his name. He had to be a medicine man, since he conducted sweat lodges. A medicine man built like a frog.

  Bell Rock spoke in Crow in a deep, commanding voice. “I give you teaching this horse, and its rider, how to run the buffalo.”

  After a hesitation, Blue Horse added, “That’s just as big a gift.”

  Sam took the reins of his horse and admired it. The mare was beautifully conformed, and from her teeth only two years old.

  Beside Sam, Gideon said softly, “Belle, zis horse, she is belle.”

  “You understand,” said Blue Horse in English, “Bell Rock is good rider and very good horse teacher. Our men, they give him robes so he teach horses run buffalo. You let him teach.”

  Sam ran his hands up and down the neck of the animal. Coy crept stiffly out of the tipi and nearly got under its hooves. Sam snatched up his pup. He fondled the horse’s muzzle. He checked all four hooves. The horse was sound. He thought of how he’d seen the Crow men ride their mounts right into the midst of the buffalo herd, both hands occupied with bow and arrow, guiding the horse with the knees only. The mounts made incredible adjustments, constantly saved the lives of horse and rider. “Good,” he said. “This mare and I will learn from you.”

  “You eat,” said Bell Rock in rough English, “we
go.”

  “THIS HORSE,” BELL Rock said, “is all raw. No human ever touch her back. Yesterday I teach her to lead.” He mixed Crow and English, with Blue Horse sometimes helping out. Just then Coy nipped underneath the mare’s hooves, and the pony skittered sideways. Sam nudged Coy off to one side and stayed between the pup and the horse. He was carrying his saddle and apishemore, a saddle pad made of buffalo calf skin—why, he didn’t know. No one was going to be riding this animal anytime soon.

  They walked toward the river, and the mare now followed on the lead rope docilely.

  “How’d you get her to lead so quick?” Back in Pennsylvania they taught horses to lead when they were still too small to pull you around.

  Bell Rock smiled enigmatically. “You have to be smarter than the horse, and sometimes quicker. When a horse fights, you can’t try to overpower it. But when it rears or crow-hops, you can use that moment. It’s off-balance. And more tricks, many more.”

  Sam looked at Blue Horse. “You coming along?”

  “I also learn to train a horse for buffalo,” said Blue Horse. His English was always pronounced slowly but well. Sam could hear the concentration on imitating each part of each word just right.

  They stopped at a deep pool in the river.

  “Give me the saddle and apishemore,” said Bell Rock. “Now lead her into the pool.” Bell Rock gave a sidewise grin and handed Sam the lead rope. “It’s cold for her too,” Bell Rock said. “That’s good.”

  The instant Sam pulled on the rope, the medicine hat reared. Blue Horse and Bell Rock shooed the upright, pawing animal, and the mare bounded into the pool.