In the Season of the Sun (10 page)

“Not yet,” Jacob said, tightening his left-handed grip on the reins. In his right hand he thumbed the hammer of his Hawken .50-caliber and propped the rifle butt against his thigh as two thousand pounds of bison bore down on him like a locomotive gone berserk. The earth trembled underfoot. Both Otter Tail and Yellow Eagle called for their friend to escape while he could. Yellow Eagle, being a strong and agile young man, and at seventeen years the youngest of the three, dropped from his perch and limped through the remains of their camp to retrieve his rifle. He took up the weapon and realized to his dismay that he had no decent shot.

Otter Tail, with his bow in hand, shouted his challenge at the departing bull and took up the chase, hoping to keep his yellow-haired companion from committing suicide. Even as he gamely urged his horse to follow the maverick bull, it was too late to help Jacob Sun Gift. There would be a great weeping in the lodge of Sparrow Woman tonight. What madness, what evil spirit had so robbed her son of his senses?

Jacob Sun Gift knew exactly what he was doing. The animal was unpredictable. With most buffalo, a hunter could ride alongside and hang with the animal long enough to make a killing shot. But this maverick preferred fighting to the chase. So he'd have to be outsmarted.

Jacob stood his ground, knowing he'd have to make his first shot count, that at the last possible moment his pony must dart to the side.

And yet, as the bull closed on him, a strange feeling came over Jacob. An inner voice, perhaps a warning. The sensation was overpowering. Even as Jacob Sun Gift tried to make sense out of the premonition, the enraged bison was upon him. Jacob drove his heels into the flanks of his horse. The bull tried to turn with the horse, but its momentum was too great, though its horns raked the pony's rump. Jacob spun the rifle in his hands and took hold of the barrel. For a brief second he could have fired, straight down into the great beast's heart. Instead, Jacob slapped the animal's ribcage with the gun butt.

“Hai-ya Hai-ya
I count coup on you, buffalo brother,” Jacob shouted as he rode clear of the bull. The buffalo stopped in the middle of the meadow and Jacob drew up his mount some thirty feet away from the buffalo. The two adversaries stood motionless, facing each other across the sagebrush. By rights, the maverick should have been dead and awaiting the butcher's blade. Jacob was as surprised as anyone at his actions. Otter Tail halted a few yards behind him and called to his friend.

“Sun Gift, has some crazy spirit touched you?”

“Stay back,” Jacob said.

“Great is your courage. Yellow Eagle and I will tell of it in camp. Now use your long gun and we will roast hump meat tonight.”

“No,” Jacob replied.

“Then give me the gun and I will kill
Iniskim,”
Otter Tail said, returning his arrow to the quiver hanging behind him.

Jacob started his horse forward, slowly. The stallion warily eyed the bull. The buffalo snorted and shook its shaggy head and blew steam from its nostrils. Jacob stopped and raised his rifle in the air.

“Hai-ya Iniskim
. This day we part as brothers. As the Sun gave me life, so I give you life.” Jacob ended firing the Hawken into the air.

The report reverberated in the stillness and echoed throughout the valley and the surrounding hills, emerald in their mantle of fir and lodgepole pine, patched with the gold of quaking aspen. And as the sound of the gunshot returned from distant purple peaks, the maverick bull swung around and trotted up the valley. It splashed across a meandering rivulet of icy water, the runoff from a distant glacier whose snowy expanse had carved the valley aeons past. The buffalo paused yet again and glanced over its shoulder at Jacob, its body shuddered and the last of the obsidian-tipped arrows dropped from its scarred back.

Jacob reached up and touched his own face and the legacy of a Shoshoni bullet. Scar tissue, jagged as lightning, seared the flesh above his left eye and disappeared into his hairline. And as if indeed lightning had touched him, the hair from the healed wound had grown startling white, devoid of color.

Yes, he and the maverick had much in common. Both scarred. Both apart from the herd.

The buffalo bull continued across the meadow, crunching the sage and grass underhoof. Jacob turned about to ride back to camp when a glint of sunlight off metal alerted him to the presence of a stranger in the woods. He studied the expanse of aspen and there, watching motionless in the shadows of the grove, Jacob spied a hooded figure about fifty yards from the campsite. Jacob cursed himself for not watching his backtrail better. He grabbed a cartridge from his buckskin pouch and loaded his Hawken, setting the lead slug in place by rapping the rifle butt against his thigh. Otter Tail, riding alongside him, noticed his companion's concern and studied the line of forest until he spied the figure among the bone-white tree trunks.

“Crow? Maybe a whole war party?” Otter Tail speculated, his voice thick with tension. Nearly gored by a buffalo bull and now attacked by Crow … Kootenai … who?

“They would have struck by now,” Jacob said, hoping to calm his friend. “You not only eat enough for two men, you worry enough as well.”

“Then he is alone,” Otter Tail grumbled, offended. “And we will have some sport.” He studied the adopted son of Lone Walker. “Unless more crazy spirits are speaking to you.” His round belly growled and thinking of the bison he sighed. “So much meat to let walk away.”

Up ahead, Yellow Eagle, oblivious to the intruder, was restoring the campsite. He limped as he moved about the clearing. As Jacob, now twenty-four, still bore the scars from his parents' massacre, so Yellow Eagle suffered a similar reminder with every step. It had happened only a couple of years ago at a rendezvous down on the Yellowstone River. A number of Blackfeet braves had entered the white men's camp with the purpose of trading a winter's supply of pelts for rifles, powder, and shot. A drunken trapper had quarreled with Yellow Eagle. Without warning, the trapper had pulled his gun and shot Yellow Eagle through the ankle. Red men and white reached for their rifles. When the smoke cleared, Jacob, Otter Tail, Lone Walker, and a dozen other warriors brought Yellow Eagle away from the Yellowstone, leaving the trapper behind with a bullet in his skull.

From that day forth, Yellow Eagle had no use for
Apikuni
, the white men. Yet his closest friend was Jacob Sun Gift. For a long time Jacob had little use for Indians, yet he called Lone Walker “father” and Sparrow Woman “mother.”

Yellow Eagle straightened and waved, then he slapped his rifle, butt first, on the ground miming Jacob counting coup. Yellow Eagle danced in a circle, counting coup on the hard ground and laughing at Sun Gift's expense.

Jacob rode toward his friend and shouted a mock challenge, and young Yellow Eagle hooted and bent over and showed Jacob Sun Gift his backside, adding insult to derision. Jacob continued his act for another twenty yards. Then without warning he jerked savagely on the reins and rode at a gallop straight toward the watcher in the woods.

Otter Tail had to swerve to avoid a collision. The portly brave started after his friend, thought better of it, and rode on toward the campsite, intending to circle around behind their mysterious audience. Yellow Eagle stared at Jacob in surprise. He ceased his clowning and gathered his weapons, primed his rifle, and headed for the cover of a deadfall, uncertain what to make of his friend's behavior.

Jacob crouched low and forward as the trees skimmed past, and he angled to the left and guided his stallion among the trees. A few seconds later he reached the spot where the watcher had been. Jacob's stallion never broke stride as the animal charged through the settling dust and continued down a deer trail after the elusive visitor. The trail offered the quickest means of escape, and Jacob, without bothering to search for sign, gambled instead and in a matter of minutes was rewarded with a brief glimpse of a horse and rider dashing through timber. The horse was a spunky, fleet-footed dun. The rider was wrapped in a coat of otter pelts and wore a gray wolf-pelt and cowl and carried an elk horn bow, a weapon smaller than the ash bow Otter Tail carried. It had less range and wasn't as durable but could be fired from horseback with ease.

Once Jacob had sighted his prey, he knew it was only a matter of who had the quickest horse. He was already gaining on the gray wolf and had all the confidence in the animal beneath him. He'd raised this stallion from a colt. Although mountain bred and a good climber, the horse stood taller and had a longer gait than many of the horses to be found in Ever Shadow.

The trees began to thin and a few minutes later Jacob emerged onto a narrow, open valley bounded by serrated ridges topped with minarets of slate-gray granite. Ground squirrels scampered out of the way of the stallion's flashing hooves and hid themselves among the buffalo grass and brittle stalks of yarrow and Indian paintbrush. It was a race now, pure and simple, and the stallion was winning. Yet even as Jacob closed, the gap inexorably drew to within arm's reach of the mysterious rider, he could not make out the horseman's features other than a hasty glimpse of a boyish profile.

I'll learn his identity soon enough, Jacob told himself as he positioned himself to leap from the stallion and drag his prey to the ground. He thrust his Hawken into a rope catch that circled the stallion's neck, and with both hands free, he pushed up and away from the stallion's back and for a moment was airborne. In that same sickening moment the dun's rider had hauled back on the reins, slowing the animal's pace. The stallion sped past and Jacob, arms flailing, made a half-hearted grab for the dun mare's head. Jacob Sun Gift sailed in a graceless arc and landed face first in a rivulet of icy water, a ribbon of water no more than a foot and a half wide. Jacob knocked the wind out of himself and came up gasping for air and sputtering the water out of his lungs, his straw-colored braids blazed with white from his scar plastered to his cheeks and dripping water down his buckskin shirt.

He heard laughter from a higher-pitched, melodic, and most assuredly feminine throat. He looked up and to his surprise saw a young woman sitting astride the dun, about thirty feet away. She was obviously greatly amused by his bungled attempt at unhorsing her. The wolf-pelt cowl dropped back on her shoulders and a luxuriant mane of long straight black hair spilled down to her waist.

“In-is-saht,”
Jacob said, speaking the Blackfoot command for “dismount.” He stood and wiped the moisture from his face. The girl's laughter was infectious and Jacob could not help himself, a grin spread across his face.

“Ki-tut saps,”
the girl called out, telling Jacob he was crazy. The dun pawed the earth and neighed. The girl swung the animal around, revealing a marking on its rump that Jacob hadn't noticed before. It was a spirit sign in the form of a wolf track, four charcoal dabs for the toes and a triangular one for the paw pad.

“Wait!” Jacob shouted. But the girl shielded her features once more with the wolf's-head cowl and started away.

“Where do you live?” Jacob asked and his question reverberated the length and breadth of the valley.

But the young woman continued down the valley until she reached a distant slope. Then, just as Jacob had given up hope, her voice drifted back to him: “Upon the backbone of the world.”

And with that she disappeared among the hill's mantle of stately spruce.

In the same instant, Otter Tail and Yellow Eagle rode out from the aspen, backtracking an earlier trail and finding Jacob's riderless horse contentedly grazing. A few anxious moments passed before they caught sight of Jacob standing by the narrow little rivulet of glacial runoff.

Yellow Eagle, mounted at last on a horse of his own, gathered the stallion's reins and followed Otter Tail across the meadow.

“Ai-ya
, brother Sun Gift, where is our enemy?” Otter Tail called out. He was close enough to notice Jacob's water-soaked buckskin shirt and the strands of hair plastered to his cheeks.

“Gone,” Jacob said, holding up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“How can it be so?”

“I stopped to bathe. And while I was so occupied, the cowardly dog crept away,” Jacob replied. He leapt astride the stallion as Yellow Eagle handed the reins to him. He decided to keep the gender of the “enemy” to himself.

“You count coup on a buffalo, then you bathe while an enemy escapes. Surely the long hunt has weakened your mind,” Otter Tail sagely observed. “It is time we return to our village.” Otter Tail shook his head, made a clucking sound beneath his breath, and started back to camp.

“I know why you are troubled,” Yellow Eagle said and his chest swelled. “Remember, I used to do crazy things. Then I took a wife. Now I am a man of purpose.”

“A man of purpose especially when you crawl under the blankets and reach for Little Plume Woman,” Jacob kidded.

The smaller man beside him shrugged and would not be convinced otherwise. Yellow Eagle was certain he had put his finger on the truth.

“Yet I say that I have a fine wife and it is good. And Otter Tail will soon have enough horses to ask for my own sister, Good Bear Woman, and it is good. Hear my words, Jacob Sun Gift. The snows are late this year, but Cold Maker will awake. It is time you took a wife to your blanket. Or else you
will
go crazy.” Yellow Eagle galloped away, holding his rifle over his head and crying,
“Kai-yi! Kai-yi!”
As if challenging the world.

Jacob watched his friend and thought, maybe you are right. And he glanced over his shoulder toward the hills and beyond, in the far and hazy distance, to where beckoned the cloud-swirled battlements of the Continental Divide, the backbone of the world.

11

L
one Walker's song rode on wings of prayer smoke to the All-Father. He added another lump of dry sage to the fire and a palmful of crushed ferns, a few stalks of bitterroot, and lastly he took a knife to his long black hair, sprinkled with silver now, and trimmed an inch from his braid. He tossed the length of hair onto the blazing embers. The shaman didn't often make such a sacrifice, but this day was special. From the hillside overlooking the Blackfoot village on the banks of Medicine Lake, Lone Walker had recognized the three riders returning home from a week-long hunt. Many young men had left to bring in fresh meat and furs and hides for the coming months of winter. Jacob Sun Gift, Otter Tail, and Yellow Eagle were the first to return. Lone Walker already knew his son had enjoyed good hunting from the clamorous welcome he received. The noise reverberated among the forested hills. From the granite ledge where Lone Walker watched, he made out a lanky, straw-haired rider leading the procession of pack animals through the village and saw the children, women, and elder chiefs emerge from their lodges to greet Jacob and his companions.