Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction) (27 page)
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Authors: James Welch
BOOK: Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)
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“Wait,” said Fast Horse. “I recognize him.”
“Then we will greet him for you, near-man!”
Fast Horse stood and waited for the rider to see him. Bear Chief hesitated, looking at Fast Horse, then scrambled down the ridge after the others.
Crow Top hunkered down. “Who is this rider who trails us?”
Fast Horse did not answer. He wondered what Fools Crow wanted.
A short while later he saw the small party ride swiftly between two hills. The draw curved around behind Fools Crow, who had been riding with his head down. But now he stopped and stood in his stirrups, stretching his legs. His eyes swept the horizon until they locked on Fast Horse and Crow Top. He sat back in his saddle and lifted the horse’s head.
Then Fast Horse saw the riders come up behind him, riding fast, their rifles pointing in the air. He heard four small pops as the wind drove the explosions away from him. Fools Crow whirled his horse, but the men had surrounded him, their rifles pointing now in his direction. They all sat silently on their horses for a moment, then the riders put their guns away.
Fast Horse trotted down into the draw to wait for them. He could feel the pebbles of the blackhorn trail through his thin soles.
By the time Owl Child and the others returned with their guest, a light snow had begun to blow down from the north.
“This Fools Crow calls himself a friend to Fast Horse.” Owl Child’s voice had a mocking ring in the gusting wind. “He says you used to play dolls together, that you are ‘sonofabitch’ together.”
Fast Horse looked up at Fools Crow. He became angry at his old friend. “He is of the Lone Eaters.”
“Perhaps he wishes to make you new moccasins. We hear the Lone Eater men are good at women’s work.”
Fast Horse said nothing as the others laughed.
“We will camp tonight at Meat Strings. You and this Fools Crow can catch up. I’m sure you wish to gossip now.”
The snow came harder and the big flakes, after their swift horizontal flight, began to stick on the ground. Fast Horse and Fools Crow watched the men drive the horses to the top and over the ridge. Then the clattering of hooves was gone and the draw was silent again.
Fast Horse turned and said angrily, “What is it you want?”
Fools Crow didn’t answer right away. He studied his friend’s face and saw that they were truly not friends anymore. They had chosen different lives, and the burning eyes told him that the break was as final as death. He felt no sorrow inside himself.
“Your father sends me after you.”
Fast Horse turned and walked a few steps away, his back to Fools Crow and the blowing snow. “And what does my father want now that you have found me?”
“He would have you return to his lodge. He misses you.”
“I don’t miss him—or the Lone Eaters.”
“He is your father and he misses you,” repeated Fools Crow.
“Does he know what I do?”
“He knows you ride with Owl Child.”
“And what does he think?”
Fools Crow looked beyond Fast Horse to the spear-leaf tree and the blackhorn wallow. They had become hard-edged in the blowing white snow. “He thinks you should come home and learn the Beaver Medicine. He thinks that is more important than killing off the Napikwans and taking their horses.”
Fast Horse turned with a scornful look, but Fools Crow continued.
“I see what you and Owl Child and that gang do. Two sleeps ago I found the Napikwan ranch on Rocks Ridge Across. I found blood.”
Fast Horse laughed, but it was a thin dry laugh that did not carry far. “You feel sorry for the Napikwans? You think we make them cry too much?”
“Soon the Pikunis will cry—when news of this attack reaches the ears of the seizers.”
“Perhaps Owl Child is right. The Pikunis wear the dresses of women. They no longer have the heart to kill off these treacherous insects that steal their land.”
“You, Fast Horse, you have become the heartless insect, for you would betray your own people.”
“Ha! Who betrays who? Those who would seek to drive them from our land or those who would chew meat until there is nothing left?”
The two stood rigidly, their eyes locked for that moment. A gust of wind rattled the limbs of the spear-leaf tree, high up. Fools Crow, perhaps because he was tired and not thinking well, felt an unfamiliar hatred building in his chest, and he would have fought his childhood friend to the death if Fast Horse had given him an excuse. But Fast Horse suddenly laughed.
“It is not worth it, dog-lover. I see what is in your eyes and I tell you it would be foolish.”
The moment passed and the fight went out of Fools Crow. He was helpless and ashamed of his sudden rage. As he walked to his horse, he felt his fists unclench. He breathed deeply and let the air out slowly.
“What am I to tell Boss Ribs?”
Fast Horse followed him partway. He had his black hat pulled low against the wind. “Tell him you couldn’t find me,” he said almost kindly.
Fools Crow stepped into the stirrup and hoisted himself slowly into the saddle. He felt empty, and he was glad to be going home. He missed Red Paint. He longed for the peace of the lodge, the quiet of the winter camp.
“I found you. I told Boss Ribs I would find you and bring you back. But now I think he is better off not knowing what you have become.” Fools Crow turned his horse away, then stopped and looked back at Fast Horse. “Tell me—after the Crow raid you changed—what was it that made you—”
“Hateful?” Fast Horse tried a scornful laugh but he didn’t look at Fools Crow. A gust of wind flattened the hat brim against his cheek. “I will tell you the truth. Cold Maker betrayed me. He promised to make me a powerful one, but he didn’t keep his word.”
“But what of your dream?”
“I was sure I would find the ice spring. In my dream I saw it as plain as I see this snow. I knew if I drank from it I would become a powerful many-faces man, perhaps the most powerful one of all—Fast Horse, who makes Cold Maker do his bidding. It was all there in my dream. It was a power dream such as few men know.”
“And Cold Maker betrayed you?”
Fast Horse looked troubled, as though he still did not believe what had happened to his dream. “I did something—something to offend Cold Maker.”
“It was because of Yellow Kidney.”
“No! He walked into that camp. He was foolish to take such a risk. He caused his own bad luck.”
“But you yelled. You caused him to be discovered.” Fools Crow lifted the reins. “You caused him to become a pitiful man.”
“He shouldn’t have gone into the camp,” said Fast Horse bitterly.
“I will tell Boss Ribs I couldn’t find you.”
“He was a foolish man!” shouted Fast Horse.
But Fools Crow urged his horse up the trail to the ridgetop. He was tired of it all. He had found Fast Horse and now he could forget him as something important in his life. He turned his face into the folds of the capote. The driving snow burned his exposed cheek.
21
AS YELLOW KIDNEY STRUCK THE FLINT and steel into the small pile of moss, he remembered his father’s story of Seco-mo-muckon and the firehorn in the long-ago. At that time there was no flint and steel, and a young man was selected to carry the firehorn from camp to camp as the people moved. Seco-mo-muckon was such a young man. It had been in the season of the new-grass moon, right after the first thunder, at which time the keeper of the Sacred Pipe unwrapped his bundle and performed the ceremonies. As is the custom, the Sacred Pipe man prayed to the Above Ones to allow them good weather for traveling and hunting. He prayed to Sun Chief and to Thunder Chief to keep the people healthy and safe from the hazards that surrounded them. After the ceremony the people felt good and feasted for three days. Then they decided to move camp to a spot on the Yellow River where the game was plentiful.
On the morning of the move, Seco-mo-muckon packed the firehorn with moist, rotten wood. He found a good coal and placed it deep in the blackhorn receptacle. Then he filled it with damp moss and plugged it with a piece of wood. Four times that day he added moss to the firehorn to keep it burning. He was a good young man, and the people felt safe entrusting their fire to him. On this journey, Seco-mo-muckon ran ahead of the people, for he knew the camping spot on the Yellow River and he thought he would build a good hot fire before the rest arrived. As he hurried along, he thought to himself that one day he would be keeper of the Medicine Pipe and keep the people safe, just as Awunna now did—for in truth Awunna liked this young man and had hinted that he was destined for big things.
Seco-mo-muckon, with this thought in mind, entered a long shallow coulee not far from the Yellow River. Ahead of him, he could see a grove of big-leaf trees that drank from the deep waters of the earth. All about them he could see thousands of small yellow things. He thought they were last autumn’s leaves caught in a whirlwind, but as he approached, he saw they were butterflies. The trees were covered with yellow butterflies, and they flew out in their dipping, flitting arcs, only to return to land on the rough bark. Seco-mo-muckon thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. He stopped and lay down to rest and watch the butterflies. As he lay on the soft new grass, a butterfly landed on his nose and he fell into a deep happy sleep. He dreamed many dreams, but the one that appealed to him most was the one where he saw the Medicine Pipe bundle lashed above the entrance to his lodge.
When he woke up, the butterflies were gone. Sun Chief glowed in the western sky above the Backbone. Seco-mo-muckon jumped up and ran as fast as he could, but when he reached the bluffs above the Yellow River, he saw the people setting up their lodges on the other side. He was angry with himself for falling asleep and letting them pass him by. Then as he started down the bluff he felt the firehorn and noticed that it was cool. In panic he opened it and put his finger inside. The fire was out. He cursed and cried and beat his head with his fists.
When he had settled down he looked across the river. Nobody had seen him yet, so he sneaked off, downstream. He swam across the river a little way from the shallow fording place. When he walked into camp, dripping wet, the people came out to greet him and were glad to see him alive, for there were many enemies around. The women fed him and brought him dry clothes. The men clapped him on the back and tousled his hair. Then they listened to the story of how Seco-mo-muckon had been captured by the Underwater People, how mischievous Otter had grabbed him by the leg as he forded Yellow River and pulled him down to the home of Underwater Chief. They became frightened when he told them that the Chief was angry because Awunna had not prayed to him during the Medicine Pipe ceremony. To make the Pikunis pay, he released the coal from the firehorn and warned Seco-mo-muckon that if his people did not treat the Underwater People with more respect, they would drown all the Pikuni fire and they would have to eat raw meat and freeze in the winter.
When he had finished his story, the people grew angry and cursed Awunna for being negligent and angering the spirits. That night Awunna stole out of his lodge and placed the Sacred Pipe bundle over the entrance to Seco-mo-muckon’s lodge. Then he left camp and was never seen again.
Yellow Kidney smiled to himself as he remembered his father’s manner of pretending to end the story here, despite the protests of Yellow Kidney and his sisters. He would grin at their indignation over Seco-mo-muckon’s treachery. When he became satisfied that they had learned the lesson, he would tell them how Seco-mo-muckon was killed that moon of ripe berries by a bolt of lightning thrown down by Thunder Chief.
Yellow Kidney finally got the punk to burn after several tries. He had gotten used to having no fingers, but most things were still difficult. He had learned to tie knots with his teeth and hands, but they were seldom tight enough. The trigger-puller he had rigged out of a curved bone worked, but it hampered his ability to reload quickly. Still, he was pleased that he could get along. Since leaving the Lone Eater camp, he had been finding more and more that he could do things if he did them deliberately and without haste. He had been gone for six days, two of them in this war lodge, waiting out the blizzard. As he listened to the wind rattle the limbs and pine boughs and the grainy snow sift through the dry leaves, he felt a contentment that had been lacking in the past several moons. And the thought occurred to him again, as it had the previous night, that he felt almost capable of going back to his wife and children. The few sleeps away had changed his thinking about himself. He no longer felt that it was necessary to go to the camp of the Spotted Horse People to die. He had lost much honor with his own people, but he no longer felt pitiful and worthless.
He put some larger sticks on the fire and it flamed higher. He placed his hands over the warmth, and the sight of his stubby fingers no longer filled him with hopelessness. He sat back on his bed of freshly cut pine boughs and undid the strings of the pemmican sack with little difficulty. He scooped out a handful and threw it into his mouth. The large drifts around the war lodge would keep it warm. He thought the wind had dropped. Perhaps by morning the blizzard would end. He lay back beneath the robe and watched the smoke rise. He was not far from Cutthroat country—four or five days at the most. He felt strong and cunning. He had always been one of the best horse-takers among his people.
He dozed off. His last thought was of the fire. He must not let it go out again. Then he dreamed of Seco-mo-muckon and the people who trusted him. The wind blew through the pines above the war lodge and Night Red Light showed her face briefly, then disappeared.
It was around midday of the second day since leaving Fort Benton on the Missouri River that the two riders began to worry. They had slept the first night at the ranch of a friend, and it was there that they learned of the death of Frank Standley. He had been killed and scalped a few days earlier by a party of Blackfeet. His wife had been beaten and raped and still did not have a clear idea how it happened. She and her children had been brought to the fort, but the two men hadn’t seen her there.
The wind had picked up again, bringing more of the low clouds down from the north. They were still a day and a half from their ranch on the Teton. Now it didn’t look like they would beat the weather home. The big one turned in his saddle and glanced back at the three packhorses. They walked with their heads down, exhausted from that last struggle with a drift. Their bellies were beaded with ice and their tails were heavy with frozen chunks of snow. One of the packs had begun to slip. The horse, a five-year-old with big bones, swayed to the right, grunting with each step.
The man swore and dismounted heavily. They were on a long table of land and the snow was not deep. He took off his buffalo coat and flung it over the saddle. Then he walked back and studied the pack. The load had shifted under the canvas. He lifted the covering and saw that a sack of flour had edged down too far. The pressure on the crosstree had caused it to bite into the horse’s side. With a great effort, the man lifted the frame and looked at the wound; it was bare and red and bleeding around the edges. The man looked through the supplies lashed under the rope. At last he found the flowery piece of cloth he had bought for his wife. He pulled it loose and ripped off two large squares. Then he folded them and squeezed them under the frame. The wind blew through his flannel shirt and long johns as he pulled the cinch tighter. They would have to find someplace to spend the night, then redo the pack in the morning.
As he walked back to his horse he thought of the grove of pines on the south slope of Bad Horse Butte. It couldn’t be more than three hours away. He cursed again. He had wanted to make Sid Colby’s place by nightfall. His wife was a good cook. But there was an old war lodge in that pine grove, and they had plenty of hardtack and jerky and coffee. And some dried apples they had treated themselves to. He looked over at his son, who was nearly fifteen. Well, he can tell his kids that he slept one night in a war lodge—but not with Indians. There wouldn’t be anybody there this time of year. But it might be nice to run into some, after what they did to Frank Standley and his wife. He thought again of that red curly hair that always reminded him of St. Louis, of civilization. Now it was in some Blackfeet’s war bag. What a hell of a thing, he thought, as he urged his horse forward. He cursed as he felt the first snowflakes hit against his bearded cheek. He pulled the collar of his buffalo coat up. What a hell of a country.
They made better time than he would have guessed, and it was still light when they dropped off the table into a large basin. Less than half an hour away he could see the pine grove. It was more extensive than he had remembered, covering almost the entire length of Bad Horse Butte, but as they closed the distance, he could see the chimney in the gray face of the butte. The war lodge would be just below it. A swirl of wind blew snow in his face and under the collar of the coat. It was getting worse, and he was getting more and more grateful for that bit of shelter up ahead. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at his son, who was leading the packhorses. He had a scarf over the lower half of his face and a beaver cap pulled down low over his forehead. The big man could see the exhaustion in his son’s eyes. We’ll be home by tomorrow nightfall and then he can tell his mother all about the trip. She’ll be mighty relieved. Might even begin to make up for having to rip up her pretty cloth. Still, it’s a damn stupid thing to run out of supplies in the middle of winter.
Suddenly he reined up and motioned for his son to do the same. It couldn’t have been, he thought. It was just a gust of wind in the pines, blowing the powdery snow around. Then he saw it again, but he couldn’t believe that it was smoke. Not in this weather. A person would have to be a damn fool to be out here. But the man’s son pointed to the place where he had seen the smoke. It was there, all right—someone was in the war lodge.
They weren’t more than four hundred yards from the edge of the pine grove. The man pointed to a dark ravine that started low and led up into the trees. “Wait there,” he said. “Take the horses and stay put until I come for you.”
The son nodded and kicked his horse in the ribs. The pack animals lifted their heads in protest, but he got them moving. The lanky horse with the sores grunted in pain. Then the snow blew up around them and they disappeared from sight.
As the big man rode toward the war lodge, he gradually became aware of a thought that had been playing around the edges of his mind. It had started well over a year ago when he heard that Charles Ransom, a rancher over on the Sun River, had been killed out in his fields not six miles from Fort Shaw. He hadn’t known Ransom, but the incident concerned him, made him aware of his own family’s isolation. He had welcomed the move of the Blackfeet Agency from Fort Benton to the Teton River. It was only four miles from his place and there were white men there. Not many, but he believed in safety in numbers, no matter how small. Now, with the death of Frank Standley and the rape of his wife, the big man had been filled with dreadful thoughts. Standley had lived well south of Blackfeet country, among other whites. It had seemed they were beyond striking range.
Now the thought was centered in his mind. He pulled up just inside the pine grove and slid his rifle out of its scabbard. He levered a round into the chamber, then climbed down. He tied his horse to a sapling. I want to kill an Indian, he thought, as he began his stalk of the war lodge.
Yellow Kidney had been out that morning, during a rare lull when the wind let up and the snow had quit falling. He found a small clearing in the pines, filled with fresh elk tracks. They had been drifted in, but the imprints had been made only a short time before. A whole herd of elk had drifted through, probably while he was eating his pemmican before deciding whether he would move that day. He had followed the tracks a short way, but he knew he would not catch up with them. From the length of their stride, they had a destination and were in a hurry to get there. Yellow Kidney smiled ruefully, for he had missed a feast and enough meat to get him away to Cutthroat country. He had made up his mind to go there and take some horses, then return to his family. He wanted to watch his sons grow up, to help them become men. He knew that things would never be as good as they once were, but he did like to share the lodge with Heavy Shield Woman. They could live together, grow old together.
And he wanted to live to see his grandson. He wasn’t supposed to know that Red Paint would soon deliver a little one, but he had heard them talking. Sometimes, they seemed to forget that he was there. He wanted to give the infant a name, and he had the name picked out. The second day after leaving the camp, he had seen a blackhorn cow and her late calf grazing on a hillside a good distance away. His first thought was to sneak up on the animals and bring them down. But then he noticed that the calf was yellow and as big and strong as any he had seen. He found himself filled with admiration for the yellow calf—as though its strength and young life somehow embodied all that he had believed in before he became pitiful—and his own life suddenly seemed worth preserving. He thought he might kill the animal anyway and, with the right sacrifices, take a lock of hair for his war bag. He was certain that this calf had been presented to him by Sun Chief as a token of forgiveness. Perhaps the Great Spirit thought he had suffered enough for his transgressions in the Crow camp.
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