Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (79 page)

 
          
 
"Reckon so." Travis made the
"It is finished" sign with his hand. "Dick, I figgered after
last night, ye'd come ter enjoy our company."

 
          
 
"Maybe we don't dance nigh enough,"
Baptiste said. "Tarnal Hell, Dick, I'll dance with yor sorry arse. Reckon
you gots to tie a rag on yor arm first, but I'll shake a leg with you."

 
          
 
"Why a rag?"

 
          
 
"Well, these coons up heah, when they
ain't got no women to dance with, they up and ties a rag on. The ones with rags
is the women."

 
          
 
"Charming," Richard growled.

 
          
 
"Maybe we should a traded foofawraw fer a
woman fer Dick last night?" Baptiste offered. "Yes, sir, we needs to
get his pizzle squeezed by some pert young squaw. That'd take some of the rough
off him.
"

 
          
 
Travis rubbed his sore eyes, then blinked hard
before squinting at a mirage to see if it were real. Or had his vision gone
blurry again? It wasn't real. "Naw, he's a-saving his-self fer
Willow."

 
          
 
'Travis!" Richard warned, glaring.

 
          
 
"Got a rise outa the coon, shore
'nuff," Baptiste observed, grinning.

 
          
 
Richard quickly asked, "Will the Sioux
really come steal the horses? I mean, after last night. We shared their hearth,
ate their food. Danced with them."

 
          
 
'Toss a coin," Travis growled. "Like
as not they will."

 
          
 
"But it wouldn't be fair. We're their
friends."

 
          
 
"Yesterday, Dick. Today's a different
day. Hell, hosses is hosses, white or red. Them what can take 'em, takes
'em."

 
          
 
"But you said they wouldn't steal from
people that had been in their village."

 
          
 
"Nope. I told ye they wouldn't steal from
ye while ye was in their village."

 
          
 
"Then, correct me if I'm wrong, but I get
the feeling that out here all ethics are situational."

 
          
 
"What'd he say?" Baptiste wondered.

 
          
 
"Cuss me if I know." Travis blinked
his eyes to clear the bleary image. "But if words could kill, Dick'd be
right deadly."

 
          
 
"My name is Richard."

 
          
 
"He keeps saying that," Baptiste
remarked.

 
          
 
"Coon's gotta flap his lips about
something. I reckon Dick figgers that's as good as anything around us ignoramuses
that don't savvy philos'phy.
"

 
          
 
"Ignoramuses!" Baptiste asked.
"I
don't know no word like that."

 
          
 
Travis pulled at his beard.
"
Wal, by God, Baptiste, yer hellacious living
proof of that. Ain't that so, Dick? Dick?"

 
          
 
Sounds of retching came from behind.

 
          
 
They wound down to the river, letting the horses
drink. Richard slid off his mare and doused his head in the murky water. Travis
noted that the engages had stippled the shore here. The boat was upstream.

 
          
 
Richard stayed on all fours, his hands in the
water, head down.
"
The
one-eyed wechashawakan ... do you think he really knows anything? I mean, do
you believe any of this power talk?"

 
          
 
Travis squinted up at the hot sun.
"
Reckon so. I seen some things, Dick. Old
One-Eye, the Sioux call him Wah-Kinyahdonwonpe Konhe, the Lightning Raven. They
say he can see things other folks can't. Chase souls into the Happy Hunting
Grounds. It sort of surprised me ter see his lights around a whiskey doings. He
don't hold with drinking whiskey."

 
          
 
"
What happened to his eye?" Dick sloshed a little farther out into
the water and drank deeply.

 
          
 
"Story is that he fought a monster
once—like a big rattlesnake, and it bit him in the eye. To kill the critter,
Lightning Raven plucked out his own eye and fed it ter the monster, and why,
sure 'nuff, it died on its own pizen."

 
          
 
"Damn!" Richard cried suddenly,
smacking the water with a fist.

 
          
 
"What's wrong, coon?" Travis
immediately went wary, eyes on the peaceful trees around them.

 
          
 
"I don't believe it!"

 
          
 
"Believe what?" Baptiste had also
stiffened, thumb going to the cock on his gun.

 
          
 
"There I was, right in the middle of a
Sioux camp! Surrounded by them!"

 
          
 
Travis shot Baptiste a wary glance. "Yep.
So?"

 
          
 
"I didn't ask a single one about how they
perceive the world! About their concept of good and evil, about God, or
principle, or the nature of reality!"

 
          
 
Travis took a deep breath.

 
          
 
Baptiste slumped in the saddle. "Tarnal
Hell, fo' a minute I thought we's dead. And it's 'cause of what? What didn't
you do, Dick?"

 
          
 
"He didn't drive them coons half mad trying
ter figger out why the world's the world." Travis yawned.

 
          
 
"And I ate dog!"

 
          
 
"And liked it."

 
          
 
"Don't remind me.
"

 
          
 
Travis grinned to himself. And 'd go a mite if
ye knew ye done a scalp dance last night.

            
"
Then they called me a dog!
"

            
"A
what?
"

 
          
 
"O
h. they were drunk, Travis. I just forgot about it until now. Cannibals,
dogs, coyotes, wolves— and I could have asked about God, and truth, and
reality."

 
          
 
"Lif
e's like that.
"
Travis
glanced suspiciously at Baptiste.
"
That squaw, she warn't bad-looking."

 
          
 
"
Wal, For being nigh onta sixty years old, and fer as few teeth as she
had left, I'd say she's right pert, Travis."

 
          
 
From the lilt of Baptiste's eyebrow, Travis
could tell he might even be saying that kindly.

 
          
 
Go home. Die empty.

 
          
 
Richard sat in the thick green grass on a low
bluff overlooking the river, in the twilight, the water gleamed silver. Birds filled
the trees with their lilting evening songs. Around him, the grass waved beneath
the breeze blowing in from the west. Grasshoppers hung on gossamer wings. He
could hear occasional voices and the periodic clank of metal as the engages set
up camp in the trees below.

 
          
 
What art you? the voice whispered inside.

 
          
 
Surely, not a monster. When he looked inside
me, he saw a frightened white cloud dog looking back.

            
Confused, tricked by myself Am I a
dog or a wolf? What the hell did that mean?

            
No matter what he'd told himself,
Lightning Raven’s empty eye socket and his haunting words remained sharp as
splintered glass in Richard's memory. That eerie voice whispered in his mind;
the terrible chill lingered in his bones

 
          
 
Richard rubbed his arm. Stiff from where
Travis had thrown him in one of their "larning ter fight" sessions
The pain jarred in contrast to a mourning dove cooing in the trees.

            
How peaceful this was, the sun
setting behind him, its light burning yellow on the bluffs across the river.
Just to the north, he could see what they called the Grand Detour. A loop of
the river twenty-five miles around that would leave Maria within a half mile of
her starting place.

 
          
 
Richard caught movement to his right, and watched
as a pair of buffalo wolves—disturbed by the arrival of the humans—headed up
out of the trees and trotted westward toward the setting sun and a night's
hunt.

 
          
 
So, why didn't I slip away to
Fort
Kiowa
? He could have just sneaked off and ridden
hell-for-leather back to the log post. A French Fur Company boat would have
been along in a couple of weeks. Any boat would take a strong back in this
country.

 
          
 
And to think, I now have a trade with which I
can sell myself. He smiled, remembering the twinkle in Will Templeton's eyes.
He'd find the joke a grand one, indeed.

 
          
 
Boston
, and Laura, seemed farther away than
ever—and each step took him ever more distant from the lodestone of his dreams.
Already they were well into June, the days long and hot.

 
          
 
Were it not for Francis, he'd be home now.
Back in
Boston
, safely investigating the intricacies of
Hegel and Kant. I'd be spending my evenings with you, Laura, instead of
learning how to break an assailant's hold and cut his throat in the process.

 
          
 
But fate and perfidy had brought him here, to
this low bluff above a silver ribbon of winding river and beneath an eternal
dome of gold-lashed sky. To a place where all he could do was remember
Boston
, and ask himself why he hadn't escaped when
every opportunity in the world had presented itself.

 
          
 
The wechashawakan said that I'd be empty, like
a buffalo-gut bag with all the water poured out.

 
          
 
It's because you don't have any of the answers
anymore. Nothing works the way you thought it did.

 
          
 
Maybe it didn't, not here in the wilderness.
But in
Boston
, that was a different story. There, he
could stroll into Samuel Armstrong's bookshop on
Bullfinch Street
to search for the latest volumes from
Europe
. Armstrong kept all the new titles as well
as the translations of older works. From there, he could cross to John Putney's
fine clothes emporium at 51 Newbury, or the even finer clothes at Henry
Lienow's over at 3 Roebuck Passage. A far cry from the worn and stained
moccasins and the already tattered leather coat he now wore.

 
          
 
And afterward, decked in new finery, what a
delight it would be to step into John Atkins's tobacco shop on
Cross Street
for a tin of his latest find and a bit of
polite conversation while he smoked a good bowl.