Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (80 page)

 
          
 
You could leave any time you wanted. Just take
a horse and ride south.

 
          
 
But here he sat, staring out at the smoothly
deceptive river. He took a deep breath, allowing tranquillity to soak into his
churning soul. To the river, he said, "Perhaps I'm afraid."

 
          
 
Was that it? Fear of the look in his father's
eyes when he reported the theft of more than a year's profit? Thirty thousand
dollars: more money than most people saw in a lifetime. Lost.

 
          
 
Until the river, he hadn't understood the real
value of that incredible sum. Money had simply been an abstract. Engages, solid
men like Toussaint, would labor for two years, their lives in peril, for a
total of two or three hundred dollars. To them, thirty thousand dollars was a
fantasy.

 
          
 
And I lost it through stupidity. He winced,
rubbing his bruised knees. How could I ever have been that naive?

 
          
 
On one thing Lightning Raven had been correct.
The time had come to choose. Richard smacked a mosquito and asked himself:
"So, what are you going to do, Richard? Head upriver to freeze to death,
or slip away and ride off to
Fort
Kiowa
and wait for a boat?"

 
          
 
At that moment, Travis and
Willow
stepped out of the trees and began climbing
the steep slope. From Travis's posture, something was wrong.

 
          
 
Willow
had a hard look on her face, too. But, now
that he thought about it, she'd been looking a bit grim ever since the night
they'd camped with Wah-Menitu's Sioux.

 
          
 
"Seen any Injun sign, coon?" Travis
called up. "Ain't no ambush atop the hill?"

 
          
 
"
Just ten thousand cussed Blackfeet waiting to lift yer hair, pilgrim.''

 
          
 
Travis and
Willow
continued their climb.

 
          
 
When they crested the bluff and walked over,
Richard asked, "What's the trouble?"

 
          
 
Travis settled on his haunches. "That
night we were with the Sioux? Wal, Green hid
Willow
in the cargo box. I'd sort of figgered
she's been a mite tight-jawed the last couple of days, and I finally got it out
of her. Some coon snuck in in the middle of the night."

 
          
 
"
What?" Richard shot an uneasy look at
Willow
.

 
          
 
"An engage,
"
she said, face expressionless. "I
heard him coming. I hid between the .. . how you say?"

 
          
 
"Barrels," Travis supplied

 
          
 
"
Barrels. I hid there, in a small place. Very dark. He couldn't see me—or
the knife and war club that would have killed him when he found me."

 
          
 
"Why didn't you scream?" Richard
asked.

 
          
 
"Why scream? He'd find me sure." She
continued to watch him with those probing dark eyes.

 
          
 
"
Well, because it's ..." He shrugged.
"
Someone would have done something about
it."

 
          
 
"And give myself away to Sioux?"

 
          
 
Richard frowned and turned to Travis.
"Who'd sneak after
Willow
?"

 
          
 
"Reckon any of 'em.
Willow
's a pretty woman." Travis shook his
head. "I didn't hire no saints fer this trip, Dick. I took men, no
questions asked. Hell, I'd a taken Francois and August given half the chance.
Even if'n I had ter kill 'em afore
Fort
Osage
, that would a been that much farther they
pulled the boat."

 
          
 
"The boat, the boat. . . yes, I
know." Richard sighed. "So, what now?"

 
          
 
"We keep
Willow
close."

 
          
 
"I take care of myself," she said
firmly, and patted the war club. "I come close that night."

 
          
 
"But ye shouldn't have ter," Travis
said softly. "Not on our boat, as our guest."

 
          
 
A faint smile curled her lip. "Trawis,
the time has come. I should go back to my people. I have been hyar too
long."

 
          
 
"
Don't." Richard laid a hand on her arm. "We haven't even had
the time to talk. I—I don't..." He lowered his head, surprised at his
sudden panic.

 
          
 
"
You don't? Don't what?"

 
          
 
"
Want you to go," he finished lamely. In his mind's eye he could see
Laura's eyes narrowing, her lips hardening.

 
          
 
Travis pulled a grass stem from its sheath.
"
Wal, I reckon that's some fer elocution.
Couldn't a done better meself, and me without a lick of philos'phy."

 
          
 
Richard felt himself redden and growled,
"I’ll
bet it was Trudeau. Was it him,
Willow
?"

 
          
 
"Don't know. Couldn't see. Very
dark." She shrugged.

 
          
 
Richard fingered the wood on his rifle,
glancing down at the camp hidden in the trees. "If this happens again,
I'll beat the hell out of whoever's doing it."

 
          
 
She gave him that enigmatic smile, dimples
forming in her sleek bronzed skin. "So, Ritshard is a warrior now? And a
seeker as well?
"

 
          
 
He shrugged. And to think he'd just been
drowning in memories of
Boston
, and gentler days when men didn't sneak around in the dark after women.

 
          
 
From the very beginning, Trudeau had tormented
him, right up to the moment he drove that fist into Richard's gut. A lot of
payback was owed to Trudeau. But, if it comes down to it, can I take him? Or
will he just kill me like swatting a fly?

 
          
 
Man's initial feeling was of his very
existence, his first care

 
          
 
that of preserving it. The earth's produce
yielded him all he necessities he required, instinct prompted him to make use
of them. Hunger, and other appetites, made him at different times experience
different manners of existence; one of these excited him to perpetuate his
species; and this blind propensity, quite void of anything like pure love or
affection, produced an act that was nothing but animalistic. Once they had
gratified their needs, the sexes took no further notice of each other. . . .

 
          
 
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the
Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

 
          
 
Heals Like A Willow planted her moccasined
feet carefully on the trail, alert to the sights and sounds of the hot
afternoon. A woman couldn't be too careful in uncertain country like this.
Cuts-Off-A-Head warriors might be lurking, ready to take an unwary captive. Ritshard's
tracks had already imprinted the soft deer trail she followed down from the
flat ridge that made the narrow neck of the Grand Detour. The way led through
the green plum, hazel, and raspberry bushes to the sandy shore below. Lazy
cottonwoods stood just up from the sand, the leaves waxy in the heat.

 
          
 
The day was stifling, cloudless, and perfect
for a bath. The Maria was far away, struggling around the far bend of the Grand
Detour. On the narrow neck of land above, Travis and Baptiste were processing
buffalo meat. She had left them telling stories, waving lazily at flies, and
feeding wood to drying fires as the smoke and sun cured long bloody strips of
buffalo. They'd shot a young cow that morning.

 
          
 
Birds sang in the cottonwoods, and she caught
the gentle musk of the river on the breeze.

 
          
 
Willow
stepped out of the rushes and onto the
packed sand, seeing the pile of Ritshard's clothes. His rifle, bullet pouch,
and powder horn lay propped on a piece of driftwood He floated in a riffle of
current, no more than twenty paces out, lost in his thoughts, looking
downstream.

 
          
 
A crystal brook emptied into the river here.
The whims of current had left a sand spit separating the
Missouri
's muddy water from the clear mouth of the
creek. The pure water looked so inviting. For the first time in days, she could
really feel clean.

 
          
 
Willow
unlaced her moccasins and slipped her dress
over her head before taking one last look around. Placing her war club on the
folded leather, she waded slowly out into the water. She was within a body
length before he looked up, stunned. His mouth dropped open, but no words
formed.

 
          
 
"
What a good day," she said by way of greeting, stepping off into
the deeper water and seating herself on the gravelly bottom. She splashed water
over her hot skin, then used sand to scrub under her arms.

 
          
 
"What . . . What . . ." Ritshard had
huddled into a protective ball. His tanned neck and hands contrasted with the
stark white of the rest of him. How could skin be that glaringly pale?
Ritshard's chest wasn't covered by the dense mat of black hair she'd seen on
some of the engages, but rather with a mist of brown curls that gleamed in the
sunlight.

 
          
 
"
Bath
," she told him. "Doesn't it feel
good?" She used a thumbnail to chisel dried buffalo blood from her
cuticles.

 
          
 
His agonized expression betrayed growing
horror. What could possibly be causing him to panic so?

 
          
 
Willow
dipped her head in the water to wet her
hair before she lifted her face to the sun and wrung the water out.
Tarn
Apo
! He
hadn't been bitten by something poisonous, had he?
"
Are you all right?
"

 
          
 
"
You . . . you're naked!"

 
          
 
"
Naked. I don't know this word."

 
          
 
"B—Bare! No clothes!"

 
          
 
Her brown knees bobbed up as she lay back in
the water and gave him a curious glance. "Yes. Take off clothes for bath.
You did."

 
          
 
"
But—I mean—you're a woman!
"

 
          
 
She thought for a moment. "Ah! I see.
White women take bath with clothes on? How do they do that? I think it would be
hard to wash all over through clothes."

 
          
 
He swallowed hard. "
Willow
. Men and women . . . they don't bathe
together!"

 
          
 
She used a wet finger to clean out her ear,
then splashed her face, rubbing it vigorously. "They bath with clothes
on?"

 
          
 
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and
said, "Among whites, it is considered inappropriate to see each other
without clothes on."

 
          
 
"I'm not White."

 
          
 
His gaze kept straying to where her breasts
floated in the chest-deep water. In the end, he looked away, whispering,
"This isn't proper."

 
          
 
"I could go away." Willow began
scrubbing her long legs, then rinsed the sand from her muscular thighs and
calves. The current carried her closer to where he squatted, his feet solidly
planted under his tightly tucked body.

 
          
 
He rubbed his face with a wet hand and gave
her a worried smile. "No, it's all right. It's me. Not you."

 
          
 
"Ritshard, easy, coon." She gave him
an annoyed look.
"
Why do
Whites not bath together? They have separate rivers?"

 
          
 
"No, it's done inside. In a building.
It's just not proper, that's all."

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
"You're not supposed to see another
person's brea . . . body!"

 
          
 
"I did not know this. Among my people, we
bath together all the time. Why do Whites think this is bad? Are they all
ashamed of being so . . . white?"

 
          
 
He gave her a miserable look and shook his
head, still crouched, arms crossed tightly in his lap. "It's just not
proper, Willow. Because . . . because that's the way it is."

 
          
 
"You saw Trawis's body when you sewed it
up."

 
          
 
"That's different, I didn't see his . . .
uh . . . man part."

 
          
 
"
Are man parts not all the same? You know ..." She made a fist with
her left hand, dangling the index finger of her right over the top in a
semblance of a penis over a scrotum.

 
          
 
"
I suppose."

 
          
 
"
Then why are you so afraid I might see you?"

 
          
 
"
Because it makes a man think of things he shouldn't." He squeezed
his eyes shut.
"
And I'm
not thinking the things I'm thinking right now. I'm not. I'm really not
thinking them—not even a little bit."

 
          
 
A slow smile curled her lips.
"
Ah." This time she wrapped the fingers
of her left hand around the index finger of the right and made suggestive
sliding motions.
"
How
silly."
Willow
splashed him with water and shook her head.
"
I will never understand Whites."

 
          
 
"Well, don't try this with the engages.
At least, I'm a gentleman. And right now, I'm concentrating on Saint Jerome, on
Anselm, Aquinas, and thinking about what happened to Peter Abelard when he let
his carnal desires lead him astray."

 
          
 
"Ritshard," she said wearily,
"
I am Willow, clothes on or off. Do Whites
think a person changes with the clothes they wear? Where does this come
from?"

 
          
 
"From two thousand years of Christian
thought, from the Bible, from our scholars and teachers."

 
          
 
"
I don't know these words."

 
          
 
"I'm starting to wish I didn't
either." This time when she looked his way, he was watching her with
unabashed interest. His expression of wonder grew as his gaze traveled her
body. He wet his lips, taking a deep breath. Her heart skipped, her own
interest suddenly perked by his fascination. Not even her husband had ever
looked at her with such adoration and longing.

 
          
 
"I understand," she whispered,
staring down at her firm breasts. Crystal beads of water caught the sun,
contrasting with her smooth brown skin. "What the White man thinks is
forbidden, he desires most."

 
          
 
"We have stories about that. Adam and
Eve." He raised his hands. "And here I am in the Garden. I guess it's
pretty hard for you to understand." He slapped at the water with a cupped
palm. ''Thinking about it now, I guess I don't understand, either." He
paused. "Don't Dukurika men want women more when they see them
naked?"

 
          
 
She settled back in the water, excited by his
desire. "I don't think so, Ritshard. When a man desires a woman, he makes
signs that he's interested. She either agrees or not, as is her wish."

 
          
 
"Do your people—when they bathe—do they
stare at each other?"

 
          
 
"We grow up seeing each other at the
river. It isn't anything strange to us. Not like it is to you. I wouldn't have
come here if I'd known."

 
          
 
"But you've been on the boat. You
don't..."

 
          
 
"The engages are not my friends. I don't
trust them. When they look at me, I see lust in their eyes. That is the
word—lust?''