Cheyenne Winter (15 page)

That Dust Devil! How come she wanted more wives? Wasn’t he good enough for her? Didn’t he please her? Didn’t they have some find old times? Why was the pawning him off — gettin’ half rid o’ him? It was indecent. He never much thought o’ decency, not out hyar in the mountains, and the rendezvous. What — what would happen tonight?

He contemplated that awful prospect, a horror building in him, along with a wild thirst. He thought longingly about that rundlet of spirits back in the wagon — ah, just a nip. Enough to pull him through a day and a night. Enough to send him to oblivion until this ordeal passed. He’d rather wrestle a hibernating grizzly sow again and bust his other leg than face this. He’d rather ditch the Rocky Mountain Company, leave old Guy, abandon old Jamie, head into the wilds where no coon would ever find him.

Well, he knew what he’d do. Sweet Smoke — he’d give Sweet Smoke to Maxim. Same age almost. Hide Skinning Woman, why, just right for ol’ Trudeau. And Elk Tail, well, she was right pretty. He’d think about that. maybe two wives wouldn’t be so bad. Him and Elk Tail and Dust Devil, a snortin’ and hootin’ around at night. He’d be willing to try that arrangement. If it was poor doin’s, he’d lodgepole her and let Abner or Zach have a crack at her. That’s what he’d do  . . . 

Too late. The young ladies emerged solemnly from the lodge, one by one, each in festival dress, faces glowing. The crowd stirred and whispered. Even old Chief White Wolf stood there, watching the whole mess. Watching a poor defenseless white man git himself hooked like a catfish.

Well, the ladies were plumb purty, he’d allow that. They wore fringed doeskin dresses, each tanned and beaten to velvet, and bleached white. Fine dyed quillwork embroidered the bodice of each, and trade beads blazoned the hems. Each wore high moccasins, similarly embellished with beads and rabbit fur. Each had brushed her blue-tinted jet hair until it shone, and braided it, and tied yellow ribbons to each braid. Each had vermilioned her forehead. Each wore a magical necklace of sacred things, elk teeth, bear fangs, wolf ears, and the like, carefully strung together. Something in him melted. He had to admit he’d never seen such a sight, three dazzling Cheyenne maidens smiling shyly at him, a blush rising on their tawny cheeks, their black eyes bright with happiness.

He suddenly felt grubby. His calico shirt had been soiled by travel; he hadn’t been given time to scrub. The red hair of his beard and head lay matted and greasy. His boots were scuffed. His britches were black with grease and dirt. Some outfit to wear at such doings! But no one seemed to notice. He felt touched suddenly: These three were given to him by their father; they had little say in it, although a father usually heeded an unhappy daughter. But none were complaining. Their eyes shone; their faces revealed expectation. They were giving their whole lives to him. It struck him that that was some gift — their lives for a grubby, gimpy old white man. Not so old. He was barely into his thirties. But a year in the mountains aged a man more than five in the cities. He smiled back, worrying about the stink of his armpits and the grime on his flesh.

Dust Devil beamed malevolently, a mock in her eyes. What the devil was going to happen tonight? Did each o’ these ladies expect — he broke into a cold sweat. And all together? But he didn’t have time to think on these absorbing things. Instead, the ladies ducked into the lodge and brought out their truck. Each had tanned a bridal robe, and each robe was a masterpiece. Somebody — their brothers — had hunted down some cinnamon-colored buffalo, and the young ladies had tanned them until they were soft as velvet. These were gifts to him, and here he was, far from his wagon and not a trinket or foofaraw in hand. But no one minded. They brought their parfleches out, each dyed with geometric designs; each filled with their private things.

And then old One Leg Eagle stood, and addressed the rapt crowd and Brokenleg. “Welcome, son-in-law. Now I have given you all of my daughters. Now you are an honored member of our family and clan, and by marriage, a Suhtai. I hope my daughters will please you. They are fine women. They will lighten your burdens. They will give you many children.”

Fitzhugh blushed.

“You have no lodge; only the wagon. So my own Antelope and I will visit brothers this night and you will have our lodge.”

His ma-in-law smiled furtively. She wasn’t supposed to make eye contact with him.

“You have given our village the greatest gift, the white hide of the sacred buffalo. It will bring joy and fatness, power against our enemies and meat for the cold winters. Health for all the village. The smiles of the sky spirits. The blessings of Sweet Medicine, and the powers of Mateo, the all-everywhere one. Now I will call upon the great warriors of the village to take the robe away, and the old women to scrape and tan it, and in a few days we will tie it to a pole and give it to the ones above.

“And now we will leave you to your happiness.”

“I shore do thank ye,” he said, lapsing into English, his throat parched. He wanted some mountain dew right fast.

He watched while four burly, scarred warriors lifted the corners of the white hide and carried it off somewhere. And then the crowd dissipated, the old crones last to go, their eyes knowing as they studied the white man and his brides. Brokenleg broke into a sweat. The lodge stood squarely in the middle of the village, within twenty yards of several other lodges. The ladies eyed him cheerfully, as if this was the fulfillment of design, of lengthy planning and machination. They toted their robes and parfleches inside while he tried to collect his rattled thoughts and do something, anything. He reckoned he ought to collect his wagon and put the horses to pasture, but even as he thought it, his brothers-in-law drove the wagon to the lodge, unharnessed the horses, and led them off to the tribal herd. The saddler went to, he noticed suspiciously. What was he: a Cheyenne prisoner of war? Well then, he’d fetch his Hawken and possibles. But before he limped a step, Hide Skinning Woman had snatched them and was toting them into the lodge. Well then, he’d like some chow, maybe some good buffler. But there was Elk Tail, building the evening fire, and Sweet Smoke preparing to roast some hump ribs that materialized from somewhere. Well then, maybe he ought to check on the cargo in the wagon; make sure it was all in place (and little boys hadn’t snatched any of it). But there was his own Dust Devil, drawing him into the lodge, smiling villainously.

He’d been in many lodges over the years, and this one was no different. Its cover had been rolled up. A rudimentary fire pit lay in the center, unused except for light this time of year. Just back of it lay a square patch of naked earth, devoid of debris. It was the altar, the breast of Mother Earth. Upon it, they would occasionally burn sweet grass or sage. The family wealth rested in parfleches around the perimeter. One Leg Eagle’s bow and arrows hung from the lodgepole along with a bull’s neck shield dyed with the owner’s own medicine symbols, a claw and beak. A medicine bundle hung also. Old robes covered the dry turf. Two finely woven reed backrests stood at the rear, in the place where his in-laws would receive guests. The pallets around the perimeter were raised and covered with ground robes, in the Cheyenne and Arapaho tradition. He counted five, the sons having left the lodge. He eyed the pallets suspiciously, wondering what they would hold this night.

Dust Devil motioned him down, and he eased to the earth, his stiff leg paining him as always. She began undoing his shirt, an evil grin on her. He growled. This was all going too fast to suit him. But she insisted, mewing at him to obey, and at last he surrendered. Why, the whole world could peer under that rolled-up lodge cover! By the time they’d wrestled his stained shirt off, the rest of his wives appeared bearing a kettle of hot water and some strange pulverized vegetable matter.

They began at once to wrestle his britches off, and he clung to them as if they were a fig leaf. But then he got the way of it. He was receiving a bath. Outside a lavender twilight settled, and inside it was plumb dark, except for the west side of the lodge, where a soft residual light snaked through the scraped cowhide. By gawd, they were going to wash his hair. The smiling ladies soaked his head and beard in hot water, rubbed that fiber — he remembered that they used yucca and various roots for soaps — until it lathered, and before he knew it they’d plumb scraped him clean. Most of him anyway. They vanished into the dark suddenly, letting him finish the job.

After that they rubbed his clean flesh with sage and sweet grass, hauled the waterpot out, and wiped him dry.

“Now you smell good,” said Dust Devil.

“Now what?” he demanded, not really as irritable as he sounded.

“Now we eat.”

The ladies materialized again, this time with bowls of good root stew and succulent chunks of roasted hump meat, dripping fat. He gorged himself and then they wiped his fingers and hands and cleaned his face.

“Here I am, buck naked and your sisters are waitin’ on me hand and foot,” he growled in English. “Now what?”

“You’ll see,” she said primly.

He sat in the dark and waited, while that gaggle of women whispered and muttered stuff and cleaned up out in the dusk. He had to admit he was plumb comfortable, leaning into the backrest, his carcass clean and his belly full of hump meat. The pungent smell of sagebrush lingered on his arms and chest. Maybe he could get used to it if he tried hard. But he drove that thought sternly out of his skull. This here excess of wives would be spread among deserving traders and engages.

The women were plain in no hurry, he thought. Maybe they were as shy of this hyar business as he was. But at last, in full darkness, he heard one of them slip into the lodge. Just one. He couldn’t make out who.

“Which one are you?” he whispered in Cheyenne.

“I am your woman,” whispered a voice back. He heard the rustle of clothing, and the hot presence of someone. And then a wild giggle — Dust Devil’s. “They will wait a few suns,” she said, sliding to him. “They will not take off the cord tonight.”

Ambrose Chatillon led Guy upriver through the summer heat, the days falling behind them like playing cards. Guy realized his clothing no longer fit. He was buckling his belt tighter. His shirts hung loose and his britches bagged. His body still ached at the end of a hard day’s ride but no longer tortured him. He’d browned and leaned and muscled up.

The endless transit of the Missouri fascinated him. The abstractions of St. Louis had become reality — and what reality. No man, back in the city, could fathom the length of the river as it sliced through endless prairies that extended some infinitude beyond horizons. The guide seemed uncanny. On two occasions he’d quietly steered Guy away from the river trace to let a passing party of hunters or warriors slide by.

They reached the country of the Arikaras, or Rees, who lived in fortified villages along the river. They’d defeated various fur companies and had even defeated the U.S. Army under Colonel Leavenworth. They had a reputation for treachery; friendliness by day, murder and theft by night. Chatillon did not wish to tackle them and chose instead a dangerous river crossing to evade the villagers. Chatillon advised him to remove his boots and britches and sling them over his back, along with anything in the packs that might be ruined by water. Guy eyed the broad river nervously. It may as well have been a sea, he thought, seeing the far bank a quarter of a mile away.

“Mostly we can walk across here. The river, it is low now,
oui?
See the bar, the ripples, extending so far out. Only a little will the horses swim. Just hang on and let the
cheval
work. Hang on when he crawls up the far side and shakes himself. He will shake you loose if he can.”

Chatillon drove the packhorses ahead of him as they splashed along a gravelly bar that transported them almost magically out upon the shimmering, glaring river. The swift water tugged at the horses. Guy could feel it pushing on his saddler. The water crept higher, above the hocks to the belly, where it took on renewed force, pressuring the horse broadside. Guy’s feet and ankles and calves hated the chill wetness. Then, ahead, the packhorses plunged off a hidden precipice and began drifting downstream alarmingly. They’d struck the main channel but were two-thirds across. The animals, burdened by their heavy packs, barely kept their heads out of water. But they splashed steadily, suddenly struck solid ground, and leaped to the far bank in a series of lunges. Chatillon followed. Guy felt his own horse lunge, as if diving off a cliff, and felt icy water boil about him. The horse sputtered and then heeled to the right, slowly toppling Guy, who felt himself going over. He hit the water, plunged under, collided with the horse, felt a flailing hoof smack his thigh and again on the small of his back, reached the surface, gasped, inhaled water and air, went under again, felt the horse flail past him, and broke the surface again.

The next moments spun by dizzily, a kaleidoscope of air, water, breathlessness, hurt, and terror. He surfaced again, heard Chatillon bawling at him, saw a rawhide line snake into the water nearby. He lunged for it, caught it, felt its blessed strength as it drew him out of the channel like a hooked catfish. He reached shallows, but was too winded and shaken to stand. Chatillon lifted him bodily and dragged him to the east shore. Guy, on all fours, coughed up water and felt the hot sun pry into the iciness of his clothing. He heard a shrill whickering downstream.

“You are all right. I will fetch the horse,” Chatillon said, trotting off.

All right. But his shoes and britches were gone. And his notebooks and the shipping records he’d used. The river had eaten them. He stared at that benign flow of river, half a mile wide, sparkling in the hot sun, and understood its power and terror. Ever since he’d left Bellevue he’d experienced a new world, unpredictable and unsafe, with menace exploding over him at unexpected moments. How could he have fashioned a fur trading company without grasping something so elemental?

Chatillon gathered their kit while the dripping horses dozed and swatted flies. Then he pulled the trigger of his Hawken. The cap snapped but nothing else happened. Using a worm that could be screwed into a rifle ball, he extracted the ball from his rifle and dug wet powder out. He reloaded, and then recharged Guy’s rifle as well. Guy found spare britches and some camp moccasins that would have to do until he could have something better cobbled at Fort Clark or Fort Union. They gave the Arikara villages wide berth and rode quietly north. Guy was acquiring mountain vision: he could see the things that city eyes missed, and it added to his confidence. Still, he never doubted that they were helpless and vulnerable in that sea of grass.