The Big Sky (36 page)

Poordevil and the Indian talked again before Poordevil went on. "Long Knife bring sickness up river from big house. Big medicine. Big sickness. White man medicine too strong. Sickness come. Blackfoot run. Sickness run more. Blackfoot cry, know Great Spirit mad. Sickness rub out Blackfoot. All gone."

"Christ sake! He don't know they're all dead," Boone said to Jim, who sat slouched on his horse, listening. "He ain't dead hisself, is he?" To Poordevil he said, "Ask him where Heavy Otter's band ran to. Ask him was there a young squaw ran. A daughter of Heavy Otter. More whisky, by and by."

"Heavy Otter sick," Poordevil translated. "Him run."

"Run where?"

They talked again, and then Poordevil shrugged. His hands took hold of his breasts. "May be." Boone asked, "Titty River? Breast? Teton?"

"Titty." said Poordevil.

"Same as Tansy," Jim put in. "You recollect Summers told us?"

"Heavy Otter dead now sure. Goddam dead."

"He ain't seen him dead, has he? He thinks he is, is all."

The Piegan held out his hand, wanting the pipe, not snatching for it or making high and mighty talk, but asking for it humble. With it in his hand he squatted back on his heels and puffed, drawing each mouth of smoke deep into his lungs the way the Indians did. A man couldn't tell he had had even a little drink, his face was so set and quiet. A slow glow was in his eyes, though, under the rat's nest of hair.

"Ask him to write the way to the Titty, Poordevil." Boone picked up a stick and made a mark in the dirt, to show he wanted a map made.

When Poordevil had spoken the Indian took the stick and sighted around him and at the sun as if to get his directions. Then he drew a long line that bent off to Boone's right, talking to Poordevil while he did it. "River," said Poordevil.

"Missouri, him." He put his finger at one end of the line and brought it to the other, to show which way the stream
flowed.

"Curves off northeast," Jim said. He had got off his horse and come to stand over the map. North of the bend the Piegan drew another line, connecting with the first from the west.

"Dearborn," said Poordevil.

Boone nodded. Summers had mentioned the Dearborn, too.

Poordevil said, "Medicine," pointing to another line farther to the north.

"That's the same as the Sun River, Boone. 'Member?"

Poordevil was smiling a silly smile. That Indian could get himself drunk quicker than scat. "Poordevil know," he said putting his finger on the line. "Me know." He looked at a new mark the Piegan was making still farther north. He punched his finger on it. "Titty. Betcha."

"How far?"

Poordevil turned to the Piegan. When he looked at Boone again he held up two fingers, then added a third.

"Two-three camps?"

The Piegan tossed the stick aside. His gaze went to the bottle. Boone handed it over. Poordevil watched him drink and took the bottle from him and raised it to his mouth. When he put it down, the whisky was all gone.

"Ask him where the squaw is, Poordevil. Ask him about the daughter of Heavy Otter."

The Piegan handed the pipe to Boone and sat back with his arms folded and his head seeming to think. Boone had the feeling that the sadness had come over him again, as if the whisky had pushed it away for a while and then brought it on all the stronger. Poordevil talked to him, and the Piegan listened and then talked back, using just a few words and rounding them out with his hands. Boone could hear beyond his voice to the sounds the horses made cropping at the grass. Only old Poky stood quiet, wanting to rest instead of eat.

"Maybe dead," Poordevil said. "Heap die." He gestured toward the Piegan. "Don't know, him. No want talk now, him. Talk all gone."

Boone took a long look at the Piegan, then got out another twist of tobacco and put it on the prairie. "I reckon we can't dig any more out'n him. Let's git on." Riding away, he saw the Indian hunch forward and take the two twists of tobacco, his face still sad and dull, like the face of a critter that had lost its young.
 
 

They struck north out of the basin and camped in a chain of low mountains that night and went on, coming out of a canyon into foothills on which the pines grew dwarfed and crooked. The Missouri had swung off eastward, starting the bend, Boone reckoned, that the Piegan had traced in the dirt.

"This here must be the Dearborn," he said while they stopped and let the horses drink at a stream.

The mountains crowded high and close to the left but farther on, beyond the Dearborn valley, they veered to the west, standing blue and jagged against the sky. High along the slopes of the peaks the snow lay patched. Between the mountains and the Missouri was high, bare country, where a man on a rise saw buttes swimming in the distance and the distance itself rolling off so far that he lost himself looking into it. It was a dusty country where even the sage grew spare and short and wood was so wanting that they made their fires of buffalo chips. For all its dusty bareness there were a sight of buffalo on it, and antelope and wolves and foxes small and delicate as kittens. The big jackass rabbits started up from it, jumping short and then settling to a long, flying stride. When the sun was high enough to loosen them up, rattlesnakes buzzed from low bushes or breaks in the sandstone, and big, stone-gray grasshoppers rose clacking, and a man couldn't always tell whether it was a snake or a hopper that he heard. The prairie squirrels that Summers had called gophers stood straight as picket pins, piping shrill, and dived into their holes as the horses neared. They were big and fat now, ready for the winter sleep.

Overhead there was more sky than a man could think, curving deep and far and empty, except maybe for a hawk or an eagle sailing. The little watercourses that had cut into the dirt ran dry or stood still in little stinking pools that snipe and duck rose from. A little willow grew along them and sometimes a thirsty cottonwood. And nowhere was there an Indian or a lodge. The buffalo grazed peaceful, and the antelopes frisked as if they never knew a hunter. Going along one day on another, a man would think the world about had never seen the like of him.

The gophers and the sky and the rattlesnakes and the brown plains rolling put Boone in mind of the Missouri above Fort Union. It was a long time ago that he had seen it, a long time ago for a wishing to stay with a body and to drive him on. Maybe Jim was right, half-hinting he was crazy.

The plains slid down to a stream, shady with cottonwood from which the leaves were whirling. Poordevil, feeling big for what he knew, said it was the south fork of the Medicine. A wide, bare hump divided it from the north fork, which flowed clear and fast over clean stones, hardly giving the trees time to catch hold along its banks. They camped by it and feasted on fat buffalo and went on in the morning, climbing to the benchlands again. To their left the benches sloped off into a basin of red and yellow badlands, bare even of grass, that twisted and humped and finally climbed to foothills. To the north and east the land was better, growing a fuzz of grass that the buffalo fattened on. It was parched, though, and tan with the sun. A herd of buffalo making a little run raised a cloud of dust like smoke. Even the running rabbit left puffs of it behind him. It was toward evening that they came to the end of the benches and, standing close by the shoulder of a butte, looked down on a wide, green valley.

Poordevil grunted and filled his lungs and made a sweeping motion over the land with his arm and spoke out of pride in knowing. His two hands came up and took hold of his breasts.

"It's the Titty, Boone, I reckon," Jim said while his gaze took it in. "Seems like it's a whole world away from the Green. Seems like we been travelin' all our lives. Seems like we're certain sure to be in British country."

The eye could follow the river winding and see where canyons notched the blue mountains. One peak looked like an ear turned on its side. Trees and river and the wide valley and the brown hills on either side floated in the fall haze, lazy and comfortable and sleepy now with autumn. It was as pretty a place as a man could wish, a prime place except that the world seemed dying and a man's hankering was cold and foolish in him.

"Which way?" Jim asked.

"We'll aim upstream and come down if they ain't there."

Boone kicked his horse. The benches dropped and leveled off into the valley, where prairie hens rose drumming from under the horses' feet and birch brush grew clumped and black. Among the silver leaves buffalo berries sparkled red as beads. They let the horses drink at a small stream and went on to the Teton and followed it west and north toward a notch in the mountains, toward the ear that lay on its side.

"Purty water," Jim said where they crossed at a game trail. "Small, but purty as I ever see." He checked his horse.

Boone dropped off Poky and bellied down and drank, feeling the water flowing cool and sweet on his lips, seeing down in it as clear as air. Out from him, in the blue water of a hole, a fish floated. He could see the gills working, could have counted every spot if he set himself to it. On the far bank a cottontail rabbit sat as still as stone except for the tiny spread and close of its nose. A pretty little river. Pretty country. And the world empty and seeming to be dying to men. Maybe that was the way of it, that Indians and white men should die and the country go back to what it was before, with only the dumb brutes grazing and the birds flying under all the sky.

The sun floated behind the ragged rim of mountains, and a stillness came on. A man speaking heard his voice like something that didn't belong there. It came out into the quiet, sounding hoarse and strange, and the quiet cracked to it as ice would crack to a step.

"Nigh time to camp," Jim said as they rode on, and at the same time Poordevil straightened and pointed. Ahead of them, through a screen of cottonwoods, a feather of smoke was rising.

They rode toward it and came out of the trees and, maybe a stone's throw away, saw three lodges standing and two men by them and two children and a squaw, faced about to watch them but with nothing in their faces except the slow look that a tame cow might give, seeing a man passing.

"Piegans," Poordevil announced. "Son bitch Piegans."

Boone said, "Go ahead, Poordevil. Ask 'em where at is Heavy Otter."

Jim's face turned toward Boone with a quick, queer look in it. Boone didn't explain. There wasn't any use explaining, no use telling why he hung back now, with the feeling of bad luck in him. Sometimes a man could push ahead, strong and cheerful, and then something would come into him and make his heart low and hold him where he was. It didn't stand to reason that Teal Eye was alive when so many had died.

He saw Poordevil dismount and walk ahead, and then he lighted his pipe and looked at the ground, waiting.

When Poordevil got back he said, "Heavy Otter dead. Big sickness."

"The squaw?"

"Red Horn chief," said Poordevil, motioning up river with his arm. "Talk Red Horn, you."

Jim's gaze was on Boone. He said, "That Injun finds out everything savin' what a man wants to know."

"We got time to go on a piece afore dark."

"Why'n't the Piegans camped together, you reckon? Afeard of the sickness, likely."

Half a mile farther they came on to two lodges. A man came out of one of them as they approached and stood still as a post after he spied them, with no musket in his hand and no bow.

Boone signaled for a halt and got off Poky and laid his rifle in the grass and his pistols by it. "Poordevil don't learn enough, damn him! I'll go my own self and call for him if need be," he said to Jim. With no weapon but the knife in his belt he walked toward the lodge, holding his hands together in the sign of peace. Then he closed his left hand and patted it with his right, as if loading a pipe.

When he had covered half the distance, he halted, waiting on the Indian, but the Indian didn't move. He was a young man with a look of age in his face and of the sadness Boone had seen before, and of something else, too, of high pride or anger held in. The hair on his head had been hacked short, to show he had had a grief. By the thin, curving nose and wide, hard mouth a man could see there was mettle in him.

Boone sounded the words he had learned from Poordevil, speaking loud so that they would carry. "The white hunter's heart is good."

If the Indian understood he gave no sign.

"The white hunter would make talk."

Still the Indian stood silent and unmoving, his mouth straight and strong under his beak of nose.

"Red Horn, you?"

A bare flicker of the eyes told Boone he had guessed right. He called over his shoulder. "Send Poordevil up, Jim.

Get him to leave his rifle and bring that there Crow scalp."

He turned back. "The white hunter is a friend of the Piegans. He is a brave warrior. He has a Crow scalp." He took the scalp from Poordevil and held it up. "Tell him the white men come in peace, Poordevil. Tell him the Long Knife looks for a young squaw, the daughter of Heavy Otter."

Poordevil said the Blackfoot words, but still the other Indian held his tongue, seeming to study whether to answer or not. When he spoke it was in a low voice for an Indian.

"White man bring whisky," Poordevil translated. "Make Injun crazy. White man sleep with squaw. Make sick here." His hand went to his crotch. "White man heart bad."

"Tell him that's Bad Medicines. Tell him it's the French and not the Long Knives."

Before Poordevil could speak, the Indian was talking again.

Poordevil bent his head, figuring the English of it. "Piegan fight. Piegan fight heap. Keep white man away. White man bring big medicine, big sickness. Kill Piegan. Piegan heart dead." Poordevil grinned at Boone. "Goddam dead. Piegan no fight now."

Boone let his glance travel around. From the other lodge, to the right of the Indian, two faces peered, a squaw's and a child's, solemn as owls. Just the heads showed, as if they had been pinned to the side of the opening.

"Ask him about the squaw."

Through the opened flap behind the Indian Boone's eye caught movement. It was a blur inside the darkened tepee, and then a face, a young squaw's face, and two eyes big and soft as any doe's.