Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction) (26 page)

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Authors: James Welch

BOOK: Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)
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Ah, but this one! Running Fisher, the proud one—the one who never acknowledged Striped Face—satisfying his lust with his own father’s young wife! This was better, for in truth she liked Fools Crow.

 

And she pitied Rides-at-the-door; if the news got around camp he would lose much honor. To be betrayed by a wife was one thing; to be betrayed by a son was another. But together! Striped Face frowned. She too would lose honor to be married to such a man. They would all be talked about and laughed at. She thought of White Grass Woman’s great rolling laughter and became angry. And she grew angrier at the injustice of her own situation. She had been virtuous although it hadn’t been easy. When the drunken hunter of the Hard Topknots had carried her into the bushes, she had fought him. Her heart wasn’t in the fight —her struggle became a struggle against herself as well. And there were others, but she hadn’t allowed herself to submit. Her knee began to throb as the stinging lessened and she thought of those men, and she knew again the power she felt when she turned them away. Even her husband—when she was in the mood for teasing, she made him ask, almost beg to come to her. Oh, he treated her roughly when she finally yielded, but they both knew that she had the power.
And now she had real power over Kills-close-to-the-lake and Running Fisher. She was pleased with herself for having the cunning to follow the young wife when she left the lodge. She just had a feeling. Her face burned when she recalled the sounds of their lovemaking. She had stood outside the tipi, hidden in a thick stand of willows, scarcely three paces from where they carried on. She had felt her own legs grow weak, as though each moan and cry were her own. She had closed her eyes and imagined that she could see them, could smell the juices of their coupling. Suddenly it had become quiet and when she opened her eyes, she saw the warm glow of the tipi and heard a dog bark. She had felt heavy and weak as she picked her way through the willow to a clearing by the river. She was going down to wash her face when she stumbled over the river rock and hit her knee. That had brought her to her senses.

 

But now she was again filled with desire, and vaguely irritated that it should be so. As she neared the big lodge she wondered if Double Strike Woman would be sleeping with Rides-at-the-door. She grinned with heat. There would be no teasing tonight.
20
FOOLS CROW HAD TAKEN to traveling cautiously now, for he was in the country of the Napikwans. There were ranches along the Big River and others scattered on the bluffs above. Each year there were more, and they became harder to avoid. He stayed well away from the buildings, but sometimes he had to ride through the herds of whitehorns. They were scrawny things with wide horns and long faces. Sometimes they would run from him, but other times they would just look up, chewing thoughtfully, their dark eyes questioning this strange man. Most of the time he kept to the low points, the ravines and cutbanks, as he made his way south.
On the third day after leaving Mountain Chief’s camp, Fools Crow noticed a change in the air. The southwest wind vanished and the sky took on a hard, gray look. The sun seemed to move away from the land until it became a pale disk that one could look into without fear. It grew colder, and Fools Crow belted his capote tighter around his waist and put the hood up. He found his fur mittens and drew them over his icy fingers. The chinook was over and, all around, the land hardened up to a dirty yellow. Cold Maker had ended his brief nap.
That afternoon Fools Crow lay on his belly on a hill overlooking Rocks Ridge Across on the Big River. From here he could see far into the distance, but his eyes were trained on a small group of buildings some five hundred paces beyond the base of the hill. There is no life there, he thought. But still he waited, until Sun lay on the shoulders of the Backbone. He studied the corrals and the fields beyond them, but he saw no trace of animals. The buildings squatted dark and still in the weakening light.

 

And then it was dusk and Fools Crow rode his black horse down from the hill. He stopped between the house and the corral, his repeating rifle ready across his thighs. Then he rode over to the three steps leading up to the door of the house. The house was set back on an incline, the front of it propped up with logs. Antlers, bleached white, hung over the door. Off to his left, fifty paces away, he saw a long dark shape. He rode over to it. It was a black-and-white dog, his shoulder crushed and matted with dried blood. He lay with his mouth open and Fools Crow could see that most of his tongue was gone. He looked down at the dog’s cuts, which were hanging from his open belly. The long-tails had eaten most of them away.
When he finally figured out how to open the door latch, Fools Crow stepped inside the room. It was dark and he stood while his eyes adjusted. Then he saw hundreds of jagged white objects on the floor. He picked one up and it was smooth and slick on both sides, like a milky ice shard. He dropped it and it rang on the wood surface. He picked his way over to the sleeping platform. In the center of the white cloth he made out three dark stains. He bent over and smelled them. The odor was faint but unmistakably blood. There was also blood on the soft white headrest at the end of the platform. Fools Crow straightened up and looked around the room. Three large wooden objects lay on the floor, cloth things flung from them. Napikwan clothes. Then he saw the eating platform and the seats lying on their sides, some of the legs missing. He remembered Rides-at-the-door’s description of these objects from that time he had eaten with the Grandfather’s chief at the agency. He picked up another shard and noticed its round edge. Rides-at-the-door had also described the round shiny things they ate from.

 

He walked down to the corral and entered the horse shed, but it was empty. He opened the back door and stood in the pasture full of frozen horse turds. He began to shake in the cold, dark night; he couldn’t stop it. He felt himself surrounded by ghosts of Napikwans and expected to be touched by them. He looked back to the horse shed and the house and they were filled with ghosts, waiting for him. The ghost of the dead dog sat not more than ten paces from him in the corral. The ghosts of horses watched him from beyond the poles. Fools Crow tried to move, couldn‘t, then could. His body felt light as he jumped the corral poles and raced toward his horse. Without breaking stride he leaped onto the horse, his feet already kicking the horse’s ribs. The black horse leaped forward and galloped away from that Napikwan ranch, his hooves beating loudly over the frozen ground, his neck stretched and his eyes wild. Fools Crow could see nothing ahead of them, he couldn’t remember the terrain, so he closed his eyes and hung on.
That night he slept in a rabbit run under a patch of rosebushes far from the Napikwan homestead.

 

Yellow Kidney sat at the back of the lodge and watched his sons, One Spot and Good Young Man, harden arrow shafts over the fire. They had peeled the sarvisberry sticks and trimmed and scraped them smooth with stones. Good Young Man was thirteen winters and his brother was eleven. They had learned much the past summer from Fools Crow, their brother-in-law. He had taught them to select the right woods for their bows and arrows. He had given each of them a horse, good strong horses, and they had learned to ride well. Good Young Man had killed his first blackhorn, a yearling calf, and had made a quiver and saddle from the hide. White men’s saddles had become popular among the men, but Fools Crow had taught the youth how to cut the wood frames and how to stretch and sew the rawhide over them. Then Fools Crow had taken the saddle down to the river and, with a laugh, had thrown it into the swift current. Good Young Man had jumped in right after the saddle hit the water, but it had taken him some time to catch up with it. They flung it over a dry-meat rack, and two days later the sun had shrunk it over the wood forms. Now Good Young Man was a hunter, but he looked forward to the many-drums moon when Fools Crow said he might take him on a horse raid against the Entrails People.

 

One Spot was envious but admired his older brother. He would have to wait until next summer to bring down his blackhorn. He hadn’t had the strength to drive an arrow deep into the thick-hided animals this past summer. So far all he had killed were fool hens, gophers and one porcupine. He was serious as he rubbed down a hardened shaft.
Yellow Kidney smoked his short-pipe, not aware that the stubs of his right hand were fondling the tobacco pouch that the Spotted Horse People had given him. Since he had returned, he handled the pouch often. It was greasy and soft and the painted designs were less distinct. As he watched his sons, he again thought of his leaving, and this time it did not fill him with so much pain. Fools Crow was good to them. He would see to their upbringing. As for Heavy Shield Woman, she was content in her role as Sacred Vow Woman. The young girls revered her and the men treated her with respect. Yellow Kidney felt the familiar tightening behind his eyes. They had not been man and wife since his return because he was a near-man. No longer did the sight of her body fill him with thick longing. When they slept together, it was only to keep each other warm.

 

Yellow Kidney no longer felt any desire toward women. He looked at them, the young pretty ones, with the eye of an old man, remembering what had once been. But he did not have the comfort of growing old. He had been young, and now he was old. His sons were like grandchildren. Because they were good boys, they talked to him, brought him things and sat near him, their eyes watching his face expectantly. But he had no stories for them. What had happened was over.
The only real memory he possessed was of those days and nights in the Spotted Horse camp, waiting, wishing to die. Many times, while sitting in the lodge or walking out on the prairies, he saw the faces of the spirit-people as they reached out to him; he heard his own voice cry out to Old Man to allow him to join his grandmother and eldest son in the Sand Hills. He would have gladly died then, a pitiful creature without honor.

 

But lately he had been thinking about the people in that Spotted Horse camp. There had been only nine lodges in that camp on the Elk River. Except for four or five hunters and their wives and children, all the other people were old. The camp itself was permanent, the hunter going out from there and always returning. It was pleasant in that camp; the old people sat around and told stories and made medicine. Yellow Kidney realized he had been sent to that camp to recover from his misfortunes. The old people had taken care of him and he gradually became one of them, sitting around day after day, learning enough of their tongue and signs to feel included. He had been at peace with himself, and with the people.
“Aaiii, you boys should be out in this weather. Your friends are in the small meadow, playing hoops and sticks!” Heavy Shield Woman had entered the lodge, a water bucket in one hand and a large piece of tripe in the other.
“We do not play anymore,” announced One Spot. “We make arrows for the hunt.”
“And when does this hunt take place, young man?”
“Next snow—when we can track the blackhorns.”
Heavy Shield Woman laughed. She set the bucket on a flat stone near the fire. Her gaunt cheeks were red. “And you, Good Young Man, do you wait for this fabled snow too?”
He had been notching one of the sticks. He looked up and was surprised to see how thin his mother looked in her bulky robe. “We will play,” he said.
“We will play,” said One Spot, as though he had just thought of the idea. He looked at his father. Then he jumped up and got his stick and hoop.

 

Yellow Kidney smiled as he watched the boys duck out through the flap. The lodge was suddenly quiet. As he watched his wife pound the tripe, he thought, I love them but I will not miss them.
That night Yellow Kidney gathered up his weapons and the pemmican bag he had stuffed and hidden earlier. He took from a lodgepole the parfleche which contained his war paints and owl feather medicine. He put his short-pipe and tobacco pouch into the parfleche. At the door he looked back and studied for the last time the sleeping forms of his wife and sons. One Spot was almost unnoticeable in his robe. Good Young Man slept with his bow and arrows within reach. He is well named, thought Yellow Kidney. He looked at his wife. Her dark loose hair was half hidden by her sleeping robe. She will comb and braid her hair as always in the morning, he thought. He hoped she would be happy that he was gone.

 

He walked quickly away from camp. He greeted Seven Persons and Night Red Light. He glanced at the Lost Children and a cold chill ran through his body. But he felt strong and alive and his pace was fast as he climbed up from the river bottom. For the first time in many moons he felt as young as his thirty-nine winters. He felt that he could walk all the way without stopping. The cold air made his teeth ache, and he realized that he was grinning. The nearly eighty horses he left behind would now be the property of his sons. White Man’s Dog—he laughed—Fools Crow would see to it that they became good warriors, just as he had shown Fools Crow how to take the Crow horses.
At the top of the bluff he began to run, a slow steady lope, over the smooth rolling prairies. His bad leg felt strong. He headed south and east, away from the Backbone, away from the camp of the Lone Eaters, the land of the Pikunis. He didn’t think of anything but his destination. He would find that camp of Spotted Horse People.

 

Crow Top spotted the rider first. He had been sitting on a ridge watching the horses, which grazed in a draw. A short way down the draw the men were resting beneath a single spear-leaf tree, its bare gray branches angling up to the sky. Beyond them the dark earth of a blackhorn wallow contrasted sharply with the yellow grass quivering in the steady north wind.

 

They were tired and they didn’t talk. They had ridden all the way down to Other-side-deep Creek, where they had picked up another nine horses to go with the sixteen they had taken from the redheaded Napikwan. None of them looked forward to the long journey to the trader’s fort on the Saskatchewan, but twenty-five horses would bring a good price.
Owl Child was dozing when he heard Crow Top’s shout. He had become irritable in the past two sleeps. Many in his party had wanted to go on south to the ranches around the White Stink Springs. There were many horses there and new country. Owl Child had made the mistake of telling them about the time he had gone there and saw the small gray animals with curly hair so thick a man lost sight of his hand before he touched the body. They had wanted to see these strange creatures, maybe eat one. Fast Horse had argued with him, and Owl Child didn’t like that. He didn’t like a lot of things about Fast Horse. He stirred, then stood, his legs stiff from all the riding.

 

“Saiyah! Saiyah!” Crow Top was motioning from the top of the ridge.
Now all the men were on their feet. The Cut Hand had a pained look in his eyes. He had been kicked in the thigh by one of the Napikwan horses. He wanted to kill them all.

 

Owl Child left Red Horn, Black Weasel and Under Bull to watch the herd; then he and the others climbed to the ridgetop. The wind was stronger and colder up here, and Crow Top stood with his robe pulled tightly around him.
“He’s down a draw now, over there.”
The men waited, and then they saw the dark figure appear over a swell. He was coming from the direction they had come. The herd had left a wide trail.
Bear Chief had the best eyes.

 

“Who is he?” said Owl Child.
“Not Napikwan. Ah, he wears a capote beneath his robe. His horse is black.” Bear Chief rubbed his eyes. “The wind makes my eyes wet.”
“We will greet him,” said Owl Child. “Crow Top will wait here and tell us which direction this rider takes. Keep low, you black Pikuni.”

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