Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (73 page)

 
          
 
The most unsettling sight for Richard had been
the skull. Baptiste pointed out where a coyote had dug out a den in the side of
a low earthen mound. Just inside the hole, half lodged in the soil, the skull
had lain watching with dirt-filled eye sockets.

 
          
 
To avoid his thoughts, he pointed at the
engages. "I cant believe the change in them."

 
          
 
The men struggled along the bank, dodging
around cot-tonwoods that hung out over the water. Instead of gay songs, jokes,
and good humor, they labored in silence, as if doom hung over their bobbing
heads instead of the bright late-spring sky.

 
          
 
"They's worried 'bout Sioux,"
Baptiste told him. They walked along, feet swishing the new grass. The horses
followed reluctantly on their lead ropes; they wound their way around the gray
boles of cottonwoods, and paused only long enough to crop a mouthful of grass.

 
          
 
Richard and Baptiste paralleled the bank,
staying close to the sweating men on the cordelle. Baptiste's gaze never rested
as he scanned the grassy bottoms, the branches overhead, the tangles of
deadfall and driftwood.

 
          
 
But what an odd dream. Not in his wildest
imagination had he ever been a cloud before. And what had he been looking for?

 
          
 
What have I always been looking for? Truth,
ultimate reality, an understanding of myself and the world around me.

 
          
 
"Want to talk about it?" Baptiste
asked suddenly. "If'n you got a sense of something, you tell ol* Baptiste.
In this country, a feller best heed his hunches."

 
          
 
"It's nothing. Honest. Just a dream I had
last night."

 
          
 
"You wasn't scalped and dead, was
you?"

 
          
 
"No. Nothing like that." And Richard
laughed to relax. "Oh, all right. I dreamed I was a cloud."

 
          
 
Baptiste grunted, and renewed his wary
inspection of the quiet trees around them.

 
          
 
Richard tightened his grip on the Hawken,
reassured by the slim rifle's weight. He'd loaded it the night before, careful
not to spill a single grain of powder. He could still feel the ramrod pushing
the half-inch ball down the smooth rifling, seating it against the powder. Knowing
his life might depend on it, he'd taken special care with that load.

 
          
 
He cast another glance at the engages.
"It doesn't make sense. I've seen them skip from log to log across a
flooded embarras. I mean, the slightest misstep, and they'd fall into the
torrent, be swept away before anyone could lend a hand. And they do it
singing!"

 
          
 
"French is curious coons," Baptiste
said with a shrug. "Way I figgers it, men got different fears. These
French . . . maybe it's something Catholic, about being scalped and cut up.
Killed in blood. I ain't Catholic, so I don't know. But a boatman, he don't
scare a hair over bad water that shivers my bones. Hunt up Injun sign, though,
and he plum turns to quivers."

 
          
 
"They didn't seem so nervous when we
crossed Osage, Kansa, and Maha country."

 
          
 
"Them's tame Injuns." Baptiste
pulled his big black hat off and wiped a sleeve across his sweaty forehead.

 
          
 
"Tame?"

 
          
 
"I tell ye, Dick, I been out heah nigh
onta fourteen years now. River's changing, and it's white men what's doing it.
Tame means broke, hear?"

 
          
 
"How's that?"

 
          
 
"
Missouri
, Oto,
Omaha
. . . they used to rule the river. Remember
Blackbird? That
Omaha
chief buried up on the mountain? Why, he's like most was. These Injuns,
they get their time with the coming of the whites. But it don't last. Think
back. How many Injuns did you see on the way up-river? Reckon not more than a
handful—and them in rags. Just like that drunk
Omaha
selling his squaw. The rest was all out
tthe spring huffier hunt. Used to be they'd hunt buffler within a couple of
days' ride of the village. Now they be gone fo' months. Buffler's plumb scarce
on the lower river, hoss. But so's the Injuns. I heard tales of the Kansa—the
Wind People, they called themselves. Them and the
Missouri
, they controlled the lower river a while
back. They's just a handful now."

 
          
 
"Why? The constant war?"

 
          
 
Baptiste squinted, a bitter twist on his lips.
"Maybe. But I figger it's more. It's white men. They's like a plague
rolling slow across the land. Like them locusts in
Egypt
. Look back, Dick. Ain't nothing atwixt us
and the frontier but a dead zone—just like that village we passed this morning—
and it's filling with whites. Farmers, you know. The great tribes, the Oto,
Ioway, the Big Osages, the Mahas . . . hell, they ain't shit now. Disease kilt
most ot 'em. Why, 1 seen piles of bodies after that pox come through. Whole
villages left standing empty—and nothing but dead bodies a-laying where they
fell. Biblical, I tell ye. Plumb biblical."

 
          
 
"You make it sound like the Apocalypse."

 
          
 
"Reckon you and I, we got different ideas
about white folks."

 
          
 
"How's that?"

 
          
 
"You ain't never been no slave."

 
          
 
Richard considered as he scanned the country
for lurking Sioux thieves. 44 Not all white people are bad. I told you about the
abolitionists. Some of us believe that all men have the same potential."

 
          
 
"In Boston."

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Wal, Dick, I tell ye, that ain't normal
fo' white folks. Most of 'em take, and take some more. Them farmers down to
Saint Loowee? I don't go there. They look at me and they sees a nigger, a man
what otta be a slave. Hell, them coons live in them dinky log huts, scratching
in the dirt, living in it. They don't know nothing but what's in their Bibles—
if'n they can even read at all. And they looks down on me. Me, what's seen the
Shining
Mountains
, taken a plew, and sat side by side with
warriors. Them's yor white folks, Dick."

 
          
 
"But here you are, partnered up with
white folks."

 
          
 
"Yep, but this is the wilderness. That's
a heap different. Men be free heah. Larn this, Dick. Out heah, it's what you
do, how you act, that gets you judged. Ain't no color of yor skin that counts a
damn when the Rees come a-fogging down on you, or the cordelle breaks. Yes,
sir, it's what's in a man's soul that makes him poor bull or fat beaver out
heah."

 
          
 
Baptiste threw his head back, broad nostrils
flared as if scenting the winds of freedom. "Won't last, though. Them
farmers, they gonna come and kill all this land. You'll see. But afore that,
this coon's gonna be gone under. That's some, it is. I reckon I'll go as a
warrior. Proud. This child's gonna die like a man."

 
          
 
Richard walked wide around a pile of debris
left by a long-past flood. He peered intently into the tangle of logs,
branches, and old brush, seeking any sign of a lurking Sioux.

 
          
 
"Yor a-larning," Baptiste said with
a smile. "Come cat scratch, a feller can hole up in a pile of junk like
that. Old John Colter, he hid under a mess of embarras that time the Blackfoot
cornered him. Always look to the holes come tough times. They can shore 'nuff
save yor life."

 
          
 
Richard licked his lips. "But getting
back to what you were saying. Whites don't ruin everything."

 
          
 
"Huh! Yor a white man what can go where
you wants, do what you wants. Try 'er as a black man, or an Injun. White folk
make things plumb shining fo' other white folk. But they sure as hell ruin
everything fo' everyone else."

 
          
 
"That's not so. They bring
civilization—" The words stuck in his throat.

 
          
 
"You was saying?"

 
          
 
Everything he'd said to Charles Eckhart on the
journey down the
Ohio
came back to haunt him. Those bitter tights with his father about
commerce defeating the higher callings of man, were they just words? The silly
ideas of a spoiled young man living in the land of plenty? "I was about to
argue against everything I've come to believe about civilization."

 
          
 
Baptiste seemed not to hear as he continued,
"I'll tell you about yor civilization. It's built on the ruin of others. I
had me a squaw one winter.
Shawnee
, she was. Died of fever that next spring. She's the last of her
family—a cousin to Tecumseh and the Prophet. Rest of her kin was killed of
smallpox, or shot dead by white soldiers."

 
          
 
Baptiste gripped his rifle in emphasis. 'The
Shawnee
, they owned that whole
Ohio
country, boy. And now, they ain't but
memories. I tell you, it'll be the same hear real soon. Nothing but memories of
the Injuns . . . and farms as far as the eye can see. Nothing free then, not
even the birds in the sky."

 
          
 
"And the Sioux? You think we'll destroy
them, too?"

 
          
 
"Yep. And the Rees, Arapaho, and
Blackfeet. Them and all the rest. Even the
Mandan
. Hell, probably the
Mandan
first. They likes white men. White man
always ruins his friends fust."

 
          
 
"What do Travis and Green say when you
talk like that?"

 
          
 
"Travis, he agrees. Reckon Green does,
too. They just figger a feller's gotta make what he can. You come cross country
from yor
Boston
, what did you see? White folks everywhere.
How're you gonna stop 'em, Dick? Spout a little philos'phy to them farmers?
Whar they gonna go? Back to
Virginia
, maybe back to yor
Boston
? Ain't no room fo' 'em all.

 
          
 
"Naw, Dick, it's just the way things is.
That said, all a coon can do is make his way whilst he can. That's what this
beaver's a-doing. Anything else is like trying to stop the wind."

 
          
 
They'd reached a place where the
Missouri
curved out in a wide loop. Maria had pulled
over to the shore, the engages hauling in the long cordelle and coiling it on
the deck before breaking out the poles. Richard could see
Willow
sitting cross-legged on the cargo box. She
held her bow in one hand. Even from here she looked regal. Perhaps it was the
way she held her head, proud and high.