All True Not a Lie in It (19 page)

O
NE WORKING GUN
, a little shot and powder. Two pairs of moccasins each and one doeskin for patching soles. It is snowing in fat light flakes when Captain Will gives these items to us and presses our palms.

—Now brothers, go home. Stay there. Black Fish would not like to hear of you here. This is our hunting ground, and all the animals and their skins and furs are ours.

He explains this gently, as if we are very young. Stewart chews his underlip, his jaw muscles twitch. He looks feverish again. I find myself not wanting Captain Will to leave us, and not only because we have nothing. I say:

—Black Fish. Your chief? We have heard of him. Perhaps he would like to hear of us. Perhaps we might interest him.

I think of Hill pulling terrible faces with his tongue lolling, playing the victims the terrible Black Fish has had burned over superb slow fires, so slow they almost go out. The burnings last all day. Hill acts this with moanings and eye-rollings if there are any children about to watch. I am done for, he moans.

The Captain only smiles briefly and goes on:

—Do not come back. You may be sure the wasps and yellow-jackets will sting you.

I point to his drained-looking colourless coat and say:

—Was your jacket ever yellow? Perhaps we could get you a better one. We know a trader.

He shows no interest, but I go on:

—Hornets stung our friend Hill here. He left. I do not think he will come back. You would not want him, but we are not so bad.

—You English brought the hornets and bees to this place. None came here before.

—You are fond of honey, surely. Not all that we have brought is bad, is it?

He turns away, and his eyes show no sign of knowing us when I say once more:

—Captain.

They are going. There is only the creak of the heavy packs on the horses moving off towards the Warrior’s Path, heading north. My guard with the red leggings gives me a nod. The soft chatter, the movement through the light snow, and the humming of a song drifting away.

—That is your song.

Stewart speaks wretchedly. He coughs and says:

—They have everything, even our songs.

We stay among the cold ruins of the station camp for two nights. Only now does my heart fail for a time. They have left us no horses. The real winter has begun to gnaw at last, and we are so far from anywhere. I try to shore up our spirits with talk of all we have seen, the beautiful lands and the abundant game, all of it like nothing else on the earth.

In talking of it, I feel myself like Findley, curiously free. Why not begin again? Why not? Another new life. I say so to Stewart, but he rolls over on his pine boughs and seems to sleep, though I can tell he does not.

Findley does not return.

—Likely gone over to the Indians. Could wait no longer for his Indian maids.

Stewart says so as he pisses steamily into the snow. Even his pissing has an angry sound. He cannot look at me for long. He lies down on his boughs again, his mouth set harder. He grieves the loss of his bearskin especially, among all the other skins and all his dreams of money. I know that I am to make up for every disappointment. I do not understand the luck Fate has given me, or that I took from my brother Israel. It perches hard and heavy on my shoulder, digging in its claws. It seems to think it is a help.

I go out, I shoot a scraggy turkey. Thank you, Fate. I carry it back and place it at Stewart’s angry feet. As though we were in the middle of a talk, I say:

—Well all right. We had best go after them, then.

The horses’ bells are easy to follow. The moon is thin but the snow reflects its cold light enough to see lines and shapes by. The horses are browsing in the white-powdered grass outside the camp the Shawnee have made. Their fire is a low red glow down by the creek. A few voices rise occasionally, then go quiet.

We wait in the trees.

We are happy again somehow. It is curious how happy we are.

We wait another quarter-hour in silence. I creep forward and crouch to unhobble two animals, working by feel. The silky cold grass and the bony forelegs and the cold stiff ties. My fingers work to loose the knots and I reach up to feel the horses’ necks. They are bridled. Good.

—How can we tell which are ours?

Stewart’s hiss explodes in the night. I speak as quietly as I can, through my teeth:

—Take any.

—I want my horse.

One of the animals whinnies, the others stir. Their bells tinkle, their warm smell rises with their movement. I go on working, I have the two loose, their reins in my fist. Stewart is feeling for me, grabbing at my arm:

—I want my horse.

His voice grows and his grip tightens, as if he is trying to keep himself from a fall. I shrug him off:

—Stewart, let me work, damn it—

A flare bursts up out of the thin dark behind a tree. Three Shawnee faces appear in the sudden snapping torchlight. One of them is my former guard. Stewart is squinting and crouching. I am still holding the reins.

They are smiling, they are delighted to see us again. For a moment I believe this to be true. Then my guard reaches out with his palm flat, he takes the bridles. He speaks in gentle crippled English:

—Steal horse, ha?

A thing is around my neck. A rope. A noose. My spine goes rigid up to my skull. Hold yourself still, hold your face still. The Shawnee man pulls at the rope and it chafes and burns my skin. A lump pushes against the side of my throat where the rope is tightest. It shakes and jingles. I reach for it, it is cold metal, a bell. Another of them sings something I cannot understand, and they are all looking at me, wanting something. Slowly I try to repeat the words:

—Pan pan fee?

They all laugh at my efforts. Stewart is still crouching, his eyes racing. One of the Shawnee pulls him up and begins to beat a rhythm on Stewart’s back with his gun butt. The horses circle and look interested, the other two men are clapping their hands and encouraging.

They want me to dance.

Well, I dance. The bell jangles merry in the night as if it is Christmas. It
is
Christmas or thereabouts, as I realize now. Rebecca and the children in the warm dry Bryan house without me. I go on jingling and I say:

—Happy Christmas, boys. Happy Christmas, everyone.

They laugh again, watching me, and they do not kill us.

When Captain Will lays eyes on me once more, he looks at me as if I were a disobedient dog. In truth I have a queer wish to be one, to perform tricks and be forgiven and let back into the house. Into someone’s house, or perhaps anyone’s.

We walk and walk. I still have the bell on.

The sky looks colder every night, black with the stars like a windowpane shattered all over it. We are following the Kentucky River to the Ohio, towards the Indians’ winter town, as I assume.

Stewart’s eyes look stuck open. He watches me and he watches the Shawnee.

I say:

—Would you like to see their town?

He shrugs and asks:

—Have we any choice? Would you?

—I would not object. You, Stewart?

—I would not object either.

He takes a long breath and says:

—I was thinking of Hannah. I told her I would bring her money, but I have nothing for her now.

He stops. He says:

—I would like to see a house again, even if it is one of theirs.

He has begun to accept the way that life has turned. After walking along slowly for days, it is easy to accept the need for it, as
I find. The guards ride alongside us, holding our ties loose. I hear Stewart trying out a word or two in Shawnee on his keeper now and then. The Indians call him Bear in their tongue,
Makwa
, which pleases him, as I can see when I tell him what they say. He does smell of bear still, and it is a pleasanter name than Wide Mouth, which they call me in English at times.

When one of them shouts for us to sing, I oblige. I rack my brains for more music and find myself wishing Hill were present. They like “Over the Hills” and also “Come Butter Come,” which Jamesie and Israel like to clap and stamp to when their mother is churning. I learn a couple of Shawnee tunes, or learn them near enough. I will teach them to the children and scandalize Rebecca. The guards laugh and try to correct my words and my tone, but their music is so meandering that I cannot always see the path through it.

I allow myself a thought of the children’s bare feet dancing, hopping up and down before the cold fire, dipping their toes into the ash. I allow myself a thought of Jamesie’s feet in particular, I kissed their soles when he was just born and had never touched ground. He is a great boy now, his feet will have grown still more. Israel’s too, he will have grown, and Susannah no longer tiny. Time will have continued at home. In some fashion I have been picturing it as stopped there, as if everyone were keeping still. At once my bones ache violently.

I walk in silence for a half-mile. Under the jingling of my bell, I speak into Stewart’s good ear:

—Stewart. John.

—What?

Stewart looks as if I am a bedbug or some other distraction. His eyes are very fatigued. I say:

—You know the butter song.

—No.

—You do, I know. “Come Butter Come.” Be ready when you hear it.

—Why?

—Be ready. We have to go. Think again of your Hannah and your little one at home.

He stops walking. He says:

—I have thought. Look at me, look at how weak I am. Will she want me back?

He walks on and I carry on a pace behind. Two days more I take to ready myself. It is difficult to think of a way to leave, and to think of leaving at all. When the Shawnee are making camp in the evening, Captain Will says he can smell the Ohio. We will see its waters tomorrow, he says. Stewart and I are tied to one another but to no one else now. The Shawnee all loosen, they stretch out along the fire trench and talk as the dark comes down. They are easy at the thought of nearing their winter home and families.

I breathe in and smooth my face and sing a line:

Johnny wants a piece of cake
.

I will admit that I am curiously slow and sad in singing it. Stewart looks at me, his face also sorrowful and perplexed. For a moment we stand blinking at one another.

I jerk my head. He ducks his and follows me to take up a gun from the careless heap left near the packs and the horses. The cane here is high and thick, we move into it carefully at first, then we run with the guns out to push the stalks down before us. There will be an easy trail for them to follow, but it is winter dark already, the fast-falling dark, so we keep up a slow run and turn south, and though we listen all the time through our breathing, no one follows. We are not worth following, it seems. I keep my fist around the bell at first but after a time I let it ring out. I will keep it always.

He disappears soon after we make it to the station camp again. One morning he goes out alone and does not come back. I search
for him as I go out hunting. I find
JS
on a tree one afternoon, and I look at it for some time. The letters seem an insult, a wound on my own body. They remind me that Stewart was once here and has now gone, left on purpose, sick and disappointed at all he lost by following me. I wonder always what made him go. Could he not bear the thought of returning home penniless to his good Hannah? To have her gasp and step back from his filthy skin and beard?

Stewart, I brought you to Kentucky and to the Shawnee. Some will say I butchered and ate you, most likely. For my own purposes. What purposes? Keeping the furs and skins for myself? There are no furs and skins left. You were right, there is nothing. I am alone in the wilderness with a stiff-triggered, badly built gun and a paltry supply of shot and powder. I imagine Findley watching me from somewhere in the trees, laughing to himself and saying in Hill’s voice:
What will you do now?