Bendigo Shafter (1979) (46 page)

Mine was the last watch of the night. Ethan awakened me about two in the morning, judging by the Big Dipper, and I moved out from the camp, the better to listen.

The night was starlit with only a few wisps of very high cloud, and all was very still. For a few minutes my ears sorted the sounds of the night, which were few. Once the special sounds of a place are known, the ears are quick to discern any other, and each place does have sounds particular to it alone.

In this case there was a broken limb high in a cottonwood that had dead leaves. They whispered and scratched when slightly stirred by wind. The wind over the sage flats had a particular sound also, and I listened.

I had always loved these last hours before the dawn when the stars are unbelievably bright and the night is very still. I enjoyed what many men did not, rising long before daybreak to get the feel of the night and the land.

Ghosts of the old ones walked this land, ghosts of warriors long vanished, and the blood from ancient battles had sunk into the soil along with crumbled leaves, decaying roots, and the drift sand blown by the wind.

The hours went by swiftly. I heard the dead leaves stir, caught the faint scent of sage, and saw the light fade the darkness from the eastern sky and our campnre grow brighter as some early riser prepared a fire for our coffee. My eyes searched the dawn-light distance and found no smoke.

We drank our coffee and ate fresh venison killed by Short Bull, and then we straddled our horses and led off to the north.

Yonder's Black Butte Stacy pointed southeast and north of it lies Spanish Point, and there's a trail crosses the Big Horns yonder to the head of Soldier Crick. It's a fair way ... there's game an' water.

How many times had I heard that? So it was that men learned of the western lands, even as the Indians such as Uruwishi learned of a country where he had never ridden. Such things were filed away, remembered in times of need, passed on to others. There were few maps, no guidebooks, but there was information passed in saloons, over campfires, or by men exchanging comments on the trail somewhere.

When I closed my eyes I could hear the voices of long ago, when I was a boy, the dry, drawling voices speaking unconscious poetry, singing the magical names of the far-off mountains and canyons. Ten Sleep, Meeteetse, Sun-dance, and Dry Fork Ridge, Wagon-Box and the Little Big Horn, which headed not far from Medicine Mountain. And now I heard them speak of Lodge Grass and Bucking Mule Creeks, Powder River and Bobcat Draw, and I'd ridden through Six-Shooter Gap and in the Sweet Alice Hills.

That was music, the music of a land whose only music yet was the chant of Indian voices, the wind in the pines, and the flutter of cottonwood or aspen along with the sound of snow water trickling and the bugle of an elk or the call of a wotf. Yet it was music of a very special kind.

We avoided the easy way through Granite Pass and rode on to the Dry Fork of Horse Pass. Skirting a canyon that dropped off a thousand feet or more, we topped out on the mesa and crossed to Cottonwood Creek and followed it to the head of Hidden Tepee and on northwest to Little Baldy Pass. We could see Bald Mountain ahead, and we were nearing the Wheel, which lay on Medicine Mountain, a sort of shoulder of Bald.

We traveled a far piece, and we camped here and yonder, always with a watchful eye for the Shoshone who rode our trail. By now they'd be hungering for our scalps, although a scalp was secondary to counting coup, and some Indians set no store by scalps, as Stacy would say, or Ethan.

We were nine thousand feet up now, and it was cold and clear. We stopped often to rest our horses although they were mountain bred and accustomed to the wild, rough land. We found much snow here, and only at midday did it edge with dampness from melting. Icy winds made us duck our heads.

We were strung out along the ridge, five men and four packhorses, riding barren, rocky country with the ridge falling away into a stand of spruce. Timberline through this country edges up to ten thousand feet, and we rode over bare rock or rock covered with snow and ice, yet only a few yards away was the edge of the timber, a low-growing spruce, and some wild flowers already showing through the snow.

Ethan pulled up and waited until we had bunched around him. The wind was cold and raw and getting rapidly colder. We're not going to make it tonight, so why don't we go down off the rim into the trees and lay up?

Good thinkin' Stacy agreed. What d'you say, Ben? Bald Mountain bulked ahead, and Medicine Mountain was a spur ... it could not be more than five or six miles further, but the weather was growing worse. Lead the way, Ethan, I told him. We'll hole up.

An hour later we were in a sheltered place among the boulders and fallen logs. Long ago some other seekers for shelter had chosen this place, using a corner of boulders and some fallen timbers. A sort of half corral had been made at the head of a canyon. The logs were very old, and there were evidences of ancient fires here as well as some more recent.

We grazed our horses on the wild flowers that grew in profusion nearby, and while Stacy put together a meal, watching the horses meanwhile, Ethan and I lifted dead logs into place to build a better corral and barricade for ourselves.

No tracks, Ethan said when we gathered around the fire to eat. Nobody's been up here since last fall, by the look of things.

Do you think we lost the Shoshone? I asked.

No, Ethan said.

They'll be some wrought up, Stacy commented. This is Crow country, and north and east of there you'll find Sioux aplenty. Them Shoshone are feelin' mighty skittish about now.

They ain't alone, Ethan commented dryly. My scalp's been itchin'.

The night was bitter cold. There was no wind, not at first, but the branches creaked stiffly in the freezing air. We slept feet to the fire, and from time to time one of us arose to add fuel.

Of wood there was no shortage. The tumbled old gray bodies of the trees lay broken by the snows of many seasons, and there were broken branches for the fires of an army. Streams were born here, and when we broke the ice the water was clear, cold, and sweet. Those small streams seemed to flow from some ancient and hidden wells here at the crest of the world.

The tons of snow that lay all winter upon these high ridges melted into secret hiding under the slide rock, and now all summer it would be running in streams down the mountain to a thirsty bottomland. Here began the Little Big Horn, which ran down through the forest and out into the shallow valleys of Montana.

It was bitter cold when Short Bull awakened me. He squatted close while I tugged on my boots and shouldered into my heavy coat.

He looked at me, nursing his cup in his hands. It is not a good night, he said, I do not like it.

Hear anything?

Nothing. He filled my cup with coffee and handed it to me. We must get off the mountain.

You think it will storm?

We must leave. The Old One is weak. It has been a ride.

A long ride. I sipped my coffee, chewing on a strip of jerky. He is a great man, the Old One.

There is death on the wind. I do not like it. A branch creaked in the cold, a faint wind stirred frozen particles of snow. I looked through the spruce at the icy dome of Bald Mountain.

Short Bull? If the Old One goes, will you stay with us? He was silent for a long time. I go back to my people. There are few left. I am needed.

I added sticks to the fire, listening to the night. He is a great man, I repeated. He has a home always among us.

Wind guttered the fire. The wind was rising, and it would be cold upon the mountain.

We will start early. In an hour we should be there, two hours at most. An hour or so there and we can be off the mountain by midday.

Rummaging about I found a couple of spruce knots and added them to the fire. I finished my coffee and edged the pot a little closer to the coals.

Standing up then, I took my Henry and turned abruptly into the night, moving away from the fire. The stars were less clear than they had been. A sort of haze, scarcely to be seen, lay between us. I moved out, melded my body with the dark body of a spruce, and listened.

The wind was rising, the sound was a faint moaning in the thickness of the spruce. The skeleton arms of a dead one drooped a shaggy web of dead-brown needles, and the wind there made a different sound. I shifted my hands on the Henry, then tucked my right hand under my armpit, then my left.

The skin of my face was stiff from the cold. After a few minutes I went back to the fire and added fuel. All were asleep.

Prowling about among the spruce, I paused to listen. The mountainside below where we camped fell steeply away into a thicker stand of trees, and above where we were it thinned rapidly. Along a low ridge near us the trees were low, barbered by the wind until they resembled a trimmed hedge such as I had seen in the east. For a moment, standing under one of the half-dead trees, I thought of going back and awakening them now, just to get a start. Or was it that? Was I not feeling what Short Bull felt? That there was death on the wind?

I shook myself, warmed my right hand again, and looked carefully around. The whiteness of the snow patches added to the light, and there were bare, black stretches and the trees. Above us loomed the bulk of Bald Mountain, stark and cold in the freezing air.

Nothing moved ... nothing? My eyes shifted warily. No animal would be out, and what moved must move with the wind. It was not a night for an Indian attack, and yet ... the Shoshone had a hatred for me, and he believed his medicine was strong.

Like a shadow I ghosted from the spruce to another, and then another, beginning a circle of our camp. A horse stamped restlessly, and they came suddenly from the night in a soundless rush.

Chapter
46

They came up from the ground, ghostly and pale against the background of snow, trees, and rock, scarcely more than a mist of movement.

I fired my rifle from the hip, by instinct more than intent, and my shot seemed to strike and turn one of the attackers. My next shot knocked the legs from under another, but then they were too close, and I swung my clubbed rifle into the belly of the nearest.

He plunged face downward into the snow, but another closed in, cold steel winking in the starlight. Gripping my rifle by the barrel and the action in my two hands, I swung down and sidewise at the knife wrist, then brought the rifle to eye level and drove the butt against his skull. It struck with a solid thunk, and he fell beside me into the snow.

The Indian I had struck in the midriff was getting up, and I started to retreat when a sound from behind turned me, and I felt the brush of cold steel along my ribs as the turn saved me. Toppling back into the snow, I fell down the slope on the steep hill, and my attacker lit atop me. Lifting my legs high I turned a complete somersault, throwing him over me and down the slope beyond.

My rifle had been lost in the snow, but coming up I reached for my pistol. Something jerked at my sleeve, and a gun blossomed with fire. Crouching, I shot ... too low. The bullet struck him in the groin, and he gave a queer, froglike leap, and as he landed his legs crumpled under him.

Pistol in hand I scrambled up the slope toward our camp by the fire, keeping low. I could hear the heavy thud of a buffalo gun and the hammer of a six-shooter and realized I had fallen out of the fight.

Pausing a moment to get my bearings, I felt the cold wind at my shirt collar, ripped open in the downhill tumble, and the wetness of melting snow against my cheek. My hand gripped my gun, and I wished I dared handle it without a glove.

A gun is an extension of the hand, but with a glove it becomes awkward and less easy to the feel. I hesitated, trying to judge my next move, for I dared not walk into an attacked camp where anything that moved would be sure to attract a bullet. They had no choice, with enemies all about.

Suddenly the shooting ceased. The heavy concussion of Follett's buffalo gun first, then the others. Killed? Or the attack broken off?

I stood still in the snow, perhaps thirty yards from our fire, but downslope and out of sight. Against the snow, as long as I did not move, I resembled a broken-off tree, of which there were a number. If I moved I might attract a shot. Yet the night was still. My rifle ... I would need that rifle. Where had it fallen? I struck one man, then another, then was jumped from the side and fell ... over there, to my left. It must be in the snow, which was close to a foot deep, and our struggling might have kicked snow over it. My fingers were cold. A quiet lay across the face of the mountain. Above me the icy rocks of Bald Mountain were hard and black, brutal and bold against the sky. Moving my hands carefully against the darkness of my body, I shifted hands and now tucked my right hand under my arm.

Carefully, moving only my eyes, I surveyed the slope as far to the right and left as possible. The slope was snow-covered except in places sheltered by boulders, fallen trees, or clefts in the rock. It was a maze of deadfalls and the larger rock slabs that lay at the foot of the frost-created slide rock.

Sidestepping to my left, I waited, but nothing happened. I stepped over again, then crouched behind a deadfall, scanning the snow for any gleam of metal that might be my rifle. It had been still more to the left, for I remembered my shoulders had struck only snow when I toppled back.