Rendezvous (38 page)

“Do you know the beauteous Pine Leaf?” Beckwourth asked.

“We have met.”

“Ah, behold a woman known across the Plains. She has counted coup more times than most warriors in the village. She has turned routs into victories. She has bestowed her favors on Beckwourth and no other. Beckwourth treads where no Crow chief or warrior treads.” Beckwourth laughed softly.

“I am honored to be in the presence of such a great one,” Skye replied slyly.

Pine Leaf obviously understood all this, and smiled. Scars laced her lean, hawkish face and bare arms, giving credence to her reputation as a warrior.

They bantered a while more, and then Skye turned to the issue that had brought him. “My colt has been accepted by Victoria's father. What happens next?” he asked.

“Accepted, eh? Why, you do what comes naturally.” Beckwourth grinned, his even white teeth gleaming in his dusky face.

“I need serious advice, sir.”

“If you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't get married.”

Skye stared at the lodge door. Beckwourth wasn't going to help him. The rogue would make a joke of it, turn something sacred into carnal humor.

But Pine Leaf intervened, and began talking quietly in the Absaroka tongue to Beckwourth. Skye could understand just enough to catch the drift.

“She says it's time to teach you about the customs of the Absaroka, so I'm delegated. She says Many Quill Woman's a mighty big catch because she's so pretty and has good medicine; half the young men in the village'd give every pony in their herds for her, but the other half think she's got a sharp tongue and don't want nothing to do with her. She's plumb mean to 'em. That mouth of hers is some.”

Skye laughed. Victoria's sharp tongue was one of the things he loved about her. She could gut a braggart faster than she could gut a deer, and one of her targets had been Gentleman Jim Beckwourth himself.

“Now, here's the way the stick floats. Many Quill Woman's gonna disappear until the big day. You won't lay eyes on her until then. Her daddy'll send word to you to fetch her at an appointed time—likely, sundown, day after tomorrah. And there she'll be, all dolled up in finery.”

“What do I do then?”

“Skye, is your brain solid wood?”

“It's Mister Skye, sir.”

Beckwourth grinned malevolently. “You haul her off to your lodge and honeymoon.”

“But what of the marriage ceremony?”

Beckwourth chortled. “It isn't like that. You get Many Quill Woman, you take up with her.”

“No ceremony?”

Beckwourth shook his head. “Oh, her pap'll have the town crier announce it and they'll have them a parade. And when you wander over to the lodge, he'll give you a few things—the family's gifts to the new couple.”

“Such as?”

“Well, it's traditional to give a small lodge, and some ponies to haul it, and the furnishings, along with the bride.”

“A lodge? Ponies? I just gave them my colt.”

“A bride's family don't stint to set her up, Skye.”

“Will there be a feast? Any formalities?”

“Mebbe so. They'll show her off to the whole village. Mebbe ride her through the village, her brothers leading her horse. Let all the village see her in her finery. And they'll show the whole village what they're gonna give you—the lodge, the ponies, and stuff. Mebbe stop at Arapooish's lodge for a little showing off.”

“I haven't anything but the clothing on my back. I'd hate to come to my own wedding looking like this.”

“Mebbe you should talk to Sublette. You should be looking your best.”

“Do I bring her parents a gift?”

“You already have. That little stud colt told 'em you want their daughter. Now, Skye, there's a custom you should know about. From now on, never speak to your mother-in-law, Digs the Roots, and she'll never speak to you. If you see her, look away. If you need to talk to her, send the message through someone else. Mothers-in-law got nothing to do with sons-in-law. Not ever. Except me, of course. I talk to Pine Leaf's maw all the time. These Absaroka let me do whatever I want because I'm a chief. Me and Pine Leaf, we run the wars around heah.”

“But you're not married.”

Beckwourth laughed gently. “You're bright sometimes, Mister Skye. When it comes to mothers-in-law, these Absaroka are a lot smarter than you white plantation owners.”

Skye shrugged. He knew nothing of that. In England he had been too young to consider such things, but he remembered his grandparents, and all the love they had bestowed upon his parents and himself and his sisters until his grandmother had died in her early fifties.

Skye visited a while more with the rogue, and then retreated into the cold twilight, enjoying its peace and the quiet of another winter's night. The earliest stars had punctured the veil of the heavens and glittered above. This aching, mysterious wilderness had become his world, and he was more familiar with the barking of a wolf than he was with the rumble of a passing hansom cab. The starkness of the land appealed to something wolfish in him, something lonely and uncivilized, something that could not be broken to harness. He hadn't known, when he slid into the Columbia long before, that he was saying good-bye not just to the Royal Navy, but to civilization. He grew aware of the necklace on his breast, a device imbued with mysterious power that made him a man among the Crow people. He touched the claws, feeling their sharp length, the violence in them, the sheer animal force they conveyed to him.

He thought of Victoria, as fierce as the land and as wild, the ferocity of her love and loyalty so bright and bold that it had blistered his pallid British ideals. She was a savage woman to match the savageness of his heart. Now she would be his mate. Once he would have chosen some oatmealy English girl, now he would be bored by any woman who hadn't lived close to death and starvation and war and the wild beasts of the fields and forests.

Skye looked into the darkening skies and saw Victoria. He peered into the shadowed cottonwoods and found her there. He studied the ridges where the wolves and coyotes and painters prowled, and saw her spirit striding beside them. He saw her in the icy haze, in the glowing lodges emitting sour cottonwood smoke from their nestled poles. He saw her in the sweetness of the village, in the umber faces around the lodgefires at night, in the exquisite quillwork on a bodice, in the rabbit-fur calf-high moccasins these people wore through their winters. He saw her in the ancients shuffling through their night errands, and in the children scurrying to their homes at the end of a day.

He did not know what would happen next, or when he might be permitted to carry her away with him, off to some private place, where he could hold her in ways sweet and sacred. But he would know soon.

Chapter 49

Skye found himself in a whirl of activity he little understood. Victoria simply vanished, and he wondered which of the many lodges hid her and why he could not see her. February petered out and March rushed in on cold winds and bold blue skies.

The old women of the village smiled at him now, and the children gawked as he passed by. Beckwourth told him that Victoria's family was prominent; her father was an important subchief who had counted many coups and was a leader of the Lumpwood Warrior Society.

Skye learned that Victoria's own mother, Kills the Deer, had died two winters earlier, that Victoria had a brother and two sisters, that Victoria belonged to the Otter Clan, and that her family was the caretaker of one of the village's most sacred medicine bundles, which was opened each spring at the first thunder.

He wondered why the family had accepted his single pony and not the lavish offerings of so many of the village's young men eager to win a beautiful maiden from an important family. He couldn't entirely ascribe it to the word of the shaman, Red Turkey Comb. There had to be more to it than that. Skye did not know and supposed he never would know. There would always be a gulf between the Absarokas and himself.

One afternoon he found William Sublette and sought the brigade leader's counsel.

“She'll be the only woman with the brigade, sir. Does that bother you?”

“Bother me? She'll make the work lighter, Mister Skye. And keep you in the mountains where you belong. She'll do what I couldn't do: give you a reason to be a mountaineer. Davey Jackson's brigade has a dozen Metis women in it. We put the Creole trappers with wives in his brigade because it would face less trouble over there among the Shoshone and Nez Perce. We're in dangerous country here, Skye. You and your bride know that.”

Skye grinned. “What we're getting is another warrior, sir. She's a good hand with a bow, and I aim to teach her how to shoot—after I learn.”

Sublette smiled. “I'm counting on it. Now, Skye, there's something all the old boys want to give you. Come along.”

Dutifully, Skye followed the brigade leaders to the council lodge that housed so many of the engagés. There they had all assembled, grinning mischievously as they lounged around the lodgefire, and Skye feared he'd get a hazing of the sort reserved for bridegrooms.

But they sat about awkwardly, even shyly, tongue-tied for once. Even the veterans, like Tom Fitzpatrick, suddenly looked awkward.

Finally Peter Ranne cleared his throat, looking like he was being led to the gallows.

“The coons reckoned a man should have himself some fancy duds for his wedding,” he began. “So, the outfit, we got you some skins sewn up by the women hyar. Weddin' skins, that's how we call 'em.”

They unfolded a fringed elkskin shirt, tanned to a soft gold, with quillwork across the chest. The shirt was wondrously crafted, and decorated with bear paw insignia.

“Put her on,” yelled someone.

Skye did, marveling at the fit and the gentleness of the leather. They gave him fringed leggins, too, matching the golden shirt, and then a pair of high moccasins with bull-hide soles.

Suddenly Barnaby Skye was overwhelmed. These were friends. They had dug deep to offer him a treasure like this. These were the best friends he had ever known.

“I—thank you,” he said, hoarsely. He could not say more.

“You're a straight shooter, plumb center,” said Bridger. “You got a maiden a man'd die for. Hyar now, wear these skins—at least until ye get to your little honeymoon bower and take 'em off.”

Men laughed, and Skye sensed a yearning among them. Certain Crow women they could have for a bit of foofaraw. Love, marriage, ties to the tribe were something else, something large and tender and misty in their hearts. These mountaineers had opened their purses and wrought a miracle. He marveled that the village women could have sewn and quilled the shirt and leggins so swiftly.

“I've talked to Arapooish,” Sublette said. “Tomorrah, Mister Skye, you'll be married. The next day, we're off. Sorry to cut short your honeymoon, but the streams are thawing and there's beaver to trap.”

“It won't stop our honeymoon,” Skye said.

“Ye'll be plumb tuckered out,” volunteered Black Harris. “Tending Victoria and tending camp.”

Men laughed. One by one they stood, stretched, slapped Skye on the back or shook his hand. He had expected a rough and raucous hazing from these ruffians of the mountains, but they had celebrated his happiness tenderly and shyly, with a wistfulness in their manner.

“Well, old child, ye come a long way,” said Bridger.

Skye nodded. Could the man about to take a bride be the same man who had slipped into the icy waters of the Columbia, determined to escape slavery or die?

He wandered the village itchily that afternoon, trying to fathom its mysterious ways, sometimes lonely, sometimes angry that he couldn't find Victoria, sometimes feeling left out because no one told him anything, or what he should do, or where he should be, and when. Couldn't these Absarokas even tell him what to expect?

But then, in his restless wanderings, he discovered a small new lodge apart from the village, erected in a park surrounded by cottonwoods. The lodgepoles had been newly hewn and debarked. The lodge, of fine buffalo-hide, bore the track of the bear, brown prints around its lower perimeter. Skye knew, suddenly, that this was a gift, his new home. Tears welled up unbidden, and he was glad no one saw them.

He slept in fits that night, doubts crawling through him like worms. It wasn't too late to stop this. He could back out. He could finish up his time with the brigade and go east. He could hew to his ancient dream. What business had he with a savage woman and savage people? The dangerous wilderness would only murder him in time—or bore him, or leave him an outcast, forever cut off from his own kind.

But then in the deeps of the night, he knew he would not stop this wedding. The seaman, the deserter, the old Barnaby Skye, never had a life, and he was abandoning nothing important. The new Barnaby Skye would have everything a man could ever want.

That bracing morning, marred only by overcast, he washed in the bitter-cold creek, shuddering while he cleansed himself, and dressed in his new buckskins. He marveled at their golden beauty and warmth. Carefully, he lowered his bearclaw medicine necklace over his head and straightened it on his chest. The cruel claws fanned outward, emblematic of something that Red Turkey Comb, and all these Crows, had discerned in him. That something was what had won Victoria. The necklace seemed a heavy burden to him in a way, binding him to these people even as it required that he live up to the message embedded in those claws.

The men around him watched silently, somehow pleased by the sight of their new comrade Skye decked out in mountain finery and ready for his bride.

The morning ticked by and nothing much happened, although Skye discerned swift furtive activity in the village. He paced through the herd, checking up on his mare, walked the creek, and then returned to his lodge. A wan sun drove off the overcast, and by noon a bright warmth had settled on the village of the Kicked-in-the-Bellies. Then, midafternoon, the village crier, an old man with great bellows, rode among the lodges, bawling his message for all to hear. Skye stood before the council lodge, still uncertain. But even as he waited along with his mountaineering friends, who had all gauded themselves with red bandannas and ribbons for this occasion, Skye beheld a parade. At least it seemed like one. Victoria's father, Walks Alone, and brother in all their ceremonial regalia slowly rode by. Their groomed horses shone in the winter sun and danced proudly.