Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (24 page)

 
          
 
"Under the boards ... what's that
mean?"

 
          
 
"Means we got ter sneak. Like rats under
the floor. Means we ain't got no license fer trading. We're gonna have ter get
past
Fort
Atkinson
slicker'n fat on a Ree woman's rump. But I
reckon we'll do 'er."

 
          
 
"What do you mean—upriver?"

 
          
 
"Why, up the
Missouri
, Dick." Hartman sounded annoyed.
"We're gonna go trading with the Crow for plews, boy. Got this here boat
packed clean full of foofaraw."

 
          
 
"And you bought me?"

 
          
 
"Wal, way I hear'd it, it was that or
Francois and his crew of pirates was a gonna slit yer gullet and feed ye to the
fishes." Travis laughed. "Reckon, come down to it, yer hair's worth
passage."

 
          
 
"My hair?"

 
          
 
"Whar ye be from, boy, that they don't
talk no English?"

 
          
 
"
Boston
. I came here on business. Francois—and his
friends-—they robbed me and beat me up. They tortured me and . . . and you
simply must set me free! Let me go to the authorities. Travis, cut me loose.
Please, I need somebody to help me. I must get away from here."

 
          
 
"Nope," Travis stood up. "Can't
go a-doin' that. Reckon I done told ye 'null as 'tis. Ol' Dave Green needs all
the help he can get ler make her upriver. Yer in. Come low water or high. Best
cling to it. boy. Like I done told ye, sure beats what Francois had in store
far ye." Mailman fastened his callused fingers into Richard's shirt and
pulled him into a sitting position. "Reckon ye otta be sleeping, Dick.
Shore 'null, ye'll get a bellyful of boat work come sunup."

 
          
 
"Don't leave me, Travis."

 
          
 
"Best shut yer mouth now, boy. Git
yerself some sleep." Mailman stood, a black silhouette against the night
sky. He tilted the jug against his lips, and strolled down the juisse plank on
cat silent feet.

 
          
 
Cuddled in the blanket, warmth fought the
chill to a draw. The only sounds were the whisper of the breeze in the tires,
the muted slap of waves against the hull, and the haunting cries of the night
birds. Richard never fell the difference when he slipped from consciousness to
sleep

 
          
 
Meals Like A Willow walked steadfastly across
the Open plain, her moccasins crunching in the wet snow. The bright sun on the
virgin snowfields forced her to squint to protect her eyes. The day before,
she'd found shelter in the lee of a sandstone outcrop as a vicious spring storm
blew through. While the wind howled, and the snow drilled, she'd slept, eaten,
and recouped her strength.

 
          
 
She could see her destination to the north:
the snow-bright slopes of the
Powder River
Mountains
. The Dukurika, her people, were waiting
there, Camped somewhere up in the foothills. They had always clone it so,
hunting the south fating hillsides where sun and wind kept snow from the Winter
range so beloved by deer, elk, and mountain sheep.

 
          
 
"It won't be long," she promised the
distant mountains. "Mother, father, I'm coming home."

 
          
 
There, in the warm rock overhangs, and among
the tawny lodges of her kin, she'd find solace. The smiles of her brother and
cousins would blunt the keening ache of death. The jokes her people enjoyed
would help patch die gaping emptiness within her.

 
          
 
She could see it, the crackling fire casting
yellow light on weather-brown faces. Her father. High Wolf, his eyes crinkled,
spreading his arms wide as he told the Winter Tales of Wolf and Coyote, and
Pachti Goyo, the Bald One. Alder, her mother, would be smiling, her worn teeth
like stubby pegs behind her brown lips.
Willow
could almost smell the cooking mountain
sheep haunch roasting slowly over the coals of the cookfire, its aroma mingling
with the scents of juniper and limber pine on the crisp night air.

 
          
 
"Soon," she told herself as she
wound through the snow-crusted sagebrush, each with a tapered drift that
stippled the land.

 
          
 
The dazzling morning was already warming in
the wake of the storm. Spring was like that, bitterly cold one day, warm and
sunny the next. Within a day, the broad basin she crossed would became a
quagmire of sticky mud, pooling water, and rushing drainages.

 
          
 
lip in the mountains, rock and gravel on the
slopes would make travel less treacherous. It might take days to find a camp of
the Dukuriku. but find them she would. By the time the biscuit root, shooting
star, and desert paisley sent forth new shoots, shed have begun the long process
of healing herself.

 
          
 
Unbidden, her dead sou's voice gurgled in the
back of her memory, and an image of his round face tried to form, right-jawed,
Willow forced it away, focusing herself on the distant mountains and memories
of youth spent among the cool forests and sun -glazed meadows. Yes, it would be
like that again.

 
          
 
Because of the sun's glare, Heals Like A
Willow kept her eyes in a narrow squint. As a result, she didn't see the rider
until too late. Perhaps it wouldn't have made any difference, out in the open
as she was. He crested the ridge, nothing more than a black dot sky lined
against the ceramic blue sky.

 
          
 
She slowed and watched. The man and two horses
picked their way down the snow-humpy sage slope. Their tracks dimpled the
pristine white. A heavy buffalo robe disguised his tribal identity, and the
horses wore Spanish tack from far to the south.

 
          
 
All right, what do I do now?
Willow
wet her lips and lowered her pack from her
shoulders, dropping it into the snow. Behind her, her tracks, winding through
the snowy sage, were the only visible break across the basin. Ahead of her,
still far away, the foothills of the
Powder River
Mountains
mocked her, white and gleaming in the
morning sun. No drainage, no prominence, nothing lay close enough to offer
protection. Even if she could outrun him, the snow would allow him to track
her.

 
          
 
You must face him,
Willow
. With your digging stick as your only
weapon, you y d better just hope he's Dukurika or Ku'chendikani.

 
          
 
As the rider reached the flat, he trotted his
horses forward. She could see him now, a young man, wearing moccasins. And yes,
she knew that style of decoration. For the most part, Pawnee hunted around the
forks of the Platte, preferring to raid south, into the Spanish lands and into the
territory now held by the Yamparika, who many now called Comanche—distant
cousins of the Ku 'chendikani.

 
          
 
A dryness settled in
Willow
's throat as she braced her feet and gripped
the heavy chokecherry-wood digging stick. Each end was fire-hardened and sharpened.

 
          
 
He pulled up on his horse and studied her,
head slightly cocked. As if he had all the time in the world, he glanced back
along her trail, then toward the mountains ahead.

 
          
 
Willow
swallowed hard and slowly tramped the snow
flat, feeling with her feet to learn the footing. She tightened her grip on her
digging stick, checking the balance. Everything would depend on the young
Pawnee. If he rode close enough, tried to brain her with the war club hanging
on his saddle, she had a chance. If he strung the bow hanging on his back and
shot at her from long range, she could dodge and try to deflect the arrows. If
he tried to ride her down, she could set her digging stick, leap out of the way
at the last moment, and hope the horse hit it at the right angle to impale
itself and throw the rider.

 
          
 
Long chances,
Willow
. He's going to kill you. And at that
thought, she chuckled, then laughed out loud.

 
          
 
To her ears it sounded like he said,
"Cheshay mowhat atshak ahat." But then,
Willow
didn't know the first thing about Pawnee
talk.

 
          
 
'Tm laughing because it is a good time to die,
you two-legged piece of filth. Do you hear? I'm not afraid. Come kill me! My
husband and son will thank you. Come on, you pus-infected penis, come kill
me!" But not without a fight, worm!

 
          
 
He grinned at the challenge in her voice and
threw back his robe to expose his head. Like many Pawnee, he'd chosen to shave
the sides of his head and leave a long roach that fell into a braid down his
back. With careless ease, he pulled the bow over his shoulder and artfully
strung it on the saddle.

 
          
 
He is too close! No dodging, no matter how
violent, would save her.

 
          
 
She started forward, desperate to distinguish
herself as a woman of the Dukurika with pride, attacking her enemy.

 
          
 
The Pawnee laughed, heeling his horse back. He
continued to jabber at her in Pawnee, but with one hand he motioned for her to
put her digging stick down.

 
          
 
Willow
slowed, seeing that no matter how she
charged, he'd circle and skip out of the way. When she glared into those bright
eyes, death didn't lurk there. Instead, she saw wry amusement.
Willow
hesitated, then used her hands to sign the
message: ''What do you want?"

 
          
 
He signed back, "You, woman. You are my
captive. Come with me."

 
          
 
She gave him the "It is finished"
sign, and gripped her digging stick. What would death be like? Would there be a
horrible pain as his arrows sliced into her? The initial fear had receded with
the realization that death brought relief from guilt, an end to the lonely
grief. She'd be with her husband and her son soon, a warrior returned to her
family.

 
          
 
The Pawnee shook his head, unhooked his war
club, and slipped nimbly off the side of his horse. He continued talking to her
in irritated tones the way he would to a fractious horse.

 
          
 
"So you think, corn eater." For good
measure,
Willow
took a swipe with her digging stick,
listening to it tear the air. "That's going to be your head, fool!"

 
          
 
He stopped no more than four paces in front of
her, gesturing again for her to put her stick down.

 
          
 
"You think I'm as silly as a sage
grouse?"

 
          
 
He didn't look more than a boy—barely old
enough to be a man by anyone's figuring. But the eyes broke the illusion; they
were wise in the ways of the world. In another time and place she would have considered
him a handsome boy, tall, muscular, with fine features and a mouth made for
laughter. His nose was broad and straight, his cheeks slanting to a strong jaw.