The Big Sky (50 page)

The oarsman put in, "The Assiniboines, they know to steal, too."

"Them Rocks! Piddlin' people if ever I see any. Ain't as good as plain niggers, be they, Sam?"

"Niggers is good at stealin'. They sho' is. Kin lift a hen off a roost and she never cluck." Boone shifted, seeing Sam at the left oar and his teeth flashing white in his black face. Half the time Sam sat with a sleepy smile on his mouth and the oar forgotten, thinking of hog meat, maybe, and sweet potatoes and corn bread, and maybe a black woman that waited for him. Sam was a free nigger whose five years were so near up at Fort Union that the company let him go, him and the other oarsman, a Frenchman who went by the name of Antoine. When they learned Mefford was fixing to put out from Fort Union and needed help with the two small dugouts he had hitched together and built a platform across to make a
pirogue
, they asked to go along, being so eager to get back to the settlements as to brave the fear of Indians.

"Piddlin' is what I say, eh, Caudill?"

Things changed in twelve years. Banks caved in, and bars and whole islands washed out, and the river gouged new beds, so that a man returning wouldn't know where he had been except for the hills lying as always and streams feeding in. He would look for a point or a growth of brush that had been fixed in his mind by something happening, but he never could be sure he saw it, the way the river ran. He never could say it was right here that such and such took place.

"Too bad your ma never 1'arn't you to talk, Caudill, so's we could pass the time of day. It's a comfort, talkin' is." Mefford's faded eyes half-smiled at Boone and went on to the Frenchman. "He don't hardly hear me. He needs to be with folks. Been in the hills so long he's growed dumb like one and his tongue no good but to lick with."

Old Mefford talking day and night, talking just to hear himself talking as if to make sure he was alive and not crazy, talking because at last there were ears to hear, old Mefford talking and sometimes the boatmen joining in, telling with a shine in their eyes what they would do back in the States, and sometimes Nigger Sam singing sad while the ragged banks streamed by and the dead land waited for spring. You couldn't stop old Mefford. A sharp look wouldn't still his tongue, or a sharp word, or anything this side of a killing.

"When was it I seen you last, Caudill? In 'thirty-seven, warn't it, on the Seeds-kee-dee there below Horse Creek? Was a redhead with you, and Dick Summers as was ready to leave the mountains. You rubbed a man out, I recollect, throwed his arm out of socket and stabbed him with his own knife. I remember that redhead for the fun in him. Where's he at, anyhow? What became of you atter 'thirtyseven? It's like you crawled in a hole."

"What if I did?"

The river looped through the long land of the Assiniboines, striking one way and another like a hurt snake that couldn't remember to make for a hole. It ran aimless and cold among the hills, leaving a muddy suds along the banks. It ran like a river lost, hunting a way to the sea, brown as old leather by day and black against the bleached slopes by night. Tied up at islands with the sun gone from the sky and the darkness thickening and the dim stars caught in the water, Boone listened to the worried mutter of it, listened to the talking-to-itself, to the sound of hunting along the shores, while Old Man Mefford clacked away and Sam and Antoine laughed and the wet wood popped in the smudge they had built. "Ain't hardly seen an Injun. Not hardly a nit, by Jesus. Safe as a church, it is. Safe as ary goddam church. Puts me in mind of a time-" Far overhead, out of sight in the dusk, Boone heard wild geese on the wing, making late for the north. Their voices carried down to him, the small honks of one to another, keeping up courage for the flight in the dark. "We never sighted even a moccasin track all that spell, or I'm a nigger." The moon rolled up and threw a long shine on the water. From the shore a hoof made a sucking sound as it pulled from the mud.

A man learned things in thirteen years -and went empty and numb with the learning except for the quick angers in him. He let the sun shine on him and the wind blow him and sights come to his eye and sounds to his ear, and never thought beyond. He was like a dumb brute, with yesterday lost behind him and tomorrow dim ahead and just this here, just this now, counting with him, just the sun and the wind and the river and trees and hills. Only he could play with the notion of evening a score, like with the sheriff at Paoli. He could think to get back at people and feel his jaw setting solid and his insides reaching for the time.

The river hunted through the hills and turned sharp as if it had found the way at last and streamed south to the old country of the Mandans and the Rees, past the Knife River, the Heart, the Cannonball. The Mandans were gone now, dead of the smallpox, and the Rees had pulled out before the Sioux, and the villages of both were fallen and rotted, with bushes growing where men had sat solemn in palaver and animals feeding where the
Mandan's
hot crew had groaned over Ree squaws in the dusk. It was only the hills that remained, only the river, and it too busy to remember except sometimes at night when the sky lay quiet in it and a man looking down jerked his eyes away, not wanting to see what was pictured from before. Past the Grand the river went, past the Moreau and the Cheyenne, deep into the country of the Sioux, past old forts weathered down and pulled apart for steamer wood, past new ones, past forts going up and the sound of hammers knocking and hails from the shore, and all sliding by and being lost to sight and hearing as if they never had been.

It wasn't often they saw Indians except around the forts. "Safe as ary church, I tell ye," old Mefford said out of his brush of white beard while Sam and Antoine nodded, their faces slack with feeling safe. "Red devils won't rub you out, will they, Sam?"

"No Injun gonna git this niggah. This niggah rollin' home."

Mefford's old eyes were always watchful, running quick along the river and the shore while his hand worked the rudder. "Maybe talked too soon, yestidday and afore." His gaze was slitted against the shine of the sun on the water. "Pawnees, ain't they, Caudill, and more'n a few?"

"Sioux."

The Indians stood on a point, a dozen or so of them, and waved for the pirogue to put in.

"Sioux or Pawnee or what the hell, we won't mess with 'em."

"Ah got no business with Sioux," Sam said, for once busy with his oar.

"Wave, you red bastards, and see what it gits you!" Mefford had pointed the pirogue toward the farther bank. "No cause to be skeered," he said to the boatmen. "Red men can't shoot for shucks -not with guns, they can't."

Antoine had better leather in him and more sense than most Frenchmen. His oar moved sure and steady, and his face had the cool look of figuring the danger and counting it small.

The Indians lined up along the bank, their hands hanging straight at their sides. As the
pirogue
drew abreast and kept to its course, two of them raised guns. Smoke puffed in little clouds, the two balls plopped into the water short of the target, and the crack of the musket shots came after. The Indians pranced on the point. Their cries carried sharp across the river.

"Couldn't hit the ground with them old smooth bores," Mefford said. "Howl, you brown skins! Squaws, are we, and afeared to fight? Since when did dogs git to talkin'?

"Red and thievin' bastards they all are," he went on as the Indians passed from sight around a bend. "A good Injun is a dead one, I say, for all that some mountaineers say different."

Sam was grinning, now the danger had passed. "Squaws is good," he said, his eyes remembering. "Sho' is."

"Not so much. A man comes to think they're some, on account of there's no whites about. Alcohol and river water and tobacco juice tastes good if a man can't get whisky. And roots is better'n to starve. Mountain men fool theirselves, braggin' on this and that, but all the time knowin' better inside. Ain't it so, Caudill? Answer up. By the look of you you know red meat."

"Answer for yourself. Your goddam tongue ain't happy without it's waggin'."

"'Scuse me. By Jesus, but you're a touchy man. Must be you et a cactus by mistake and got stickers in your gizzard. What a man in a fix like yours needs, now, is to open his bowels. Ain't nothin' cheers the spirit so. If you're beat down, squat down, I say, and get the load from your breeches." Antoine smiled as he brought the oar through. "Old men, too old for women, they think bowels."

"Lose his courage, old man do." Boone looked around, not knowing what Sam meant at first. "Kin only grunt." Sam shook his head as if the thought of his manhood gone made him sad.

"This child wouldn't know about that," Mefford answered. "Have to find someone older'n me by a damn sight. I'm fit, I am, as a young bull in rich grass. Nary ache or pain or failure nowhere." His mouth closed for a minute and his eyes fixed far off. "Know what? A nigger off by himself does a power of thinkin'. Wonders about things and builds up a sight of questions, and no answer to 'em. Why'n't the stomach feed on itself, you reckon? I was four days without meat when that pint come up, and damn if I know yet. Why ain't it fixed so's a man feels always like he does with a good cup of whisky in him? Why's men willin' but women mostly's got to be bought, with beads or paint or promises said before parsons, dependin' on their skin? Crow Nation says it's all right to steal, but not the government, by Jesus! Gimme the why to that."

The talk went on, morning to dark, one day after another, steady like the churn of water along the banks, like the risen river that rushed the pirogue along, past the White and the Running Water, as if in a fever to be rid of its burden.

A steamboat stood to the current, her stacks pouring smoke and the wind screaming against her and the water boiling against her bow where a man worked with a pole, feeling for depth.

"Omega," said Mefford, watching the side wheels beat at the water, "and, by Jesus, she ain't makin' a inch. Losin' ground, be'int she? That wind'll blow her stacks down." He waved as the pirogue came on. "How there, you beavers."

From the decks men signaled back, and Boone could see their mouths round with words that wouldn't carry into the wind. It seemed as if she was there just for a flash, gleaming white in a shaft of sun that found a hole in the clouds, and then she lay astern and soon lost to sight. He said to Mefford, "Give me a keelboat any day. They'll find they wasn't so smart, goin' to steam."

The river boiled ahead, past the Jim, the Vermilion, the Big Sioux, out of buffalo country and on toward the settlements; the river and time brought them into spring. The sun lay warm and the air soft, and by night the frogs tried their voices. In a day, almost, the trees broke into leaf, not cottonwood and willow alone but trees strange to the sight after so long away. They reminded Boone of home, or what he had called home, of home and Pap and Ma and Dan. Cabin and kinfolks rose in his mind, plain as yesterday, as if he had no more than said goodbye before he started back and all the seasons since were made up in his head. He could see Ma's letter, could hear the young clerk at Union sounding out the words for him while his own eye followed the lines.

Der Boone Your pap has died and I only tolbul and likely not here long. If you get this I would like to see you before to late. The Napiers has gone away.
Ma.

The tired face rose before him, and the misty eyes and the body worn from doing. She had been gone from his thoughts for many a year, except for just a flash now and then, and she was back. He saw her in his mind without wanting much to see her sure enough. A man grew away from things, and feeling died in him, and he couldn't put himself back where he was even if he tried. It was another who had said goodbye to her long ago and had sniveled in a cow barn, remembering the twitching of her nose, remembering her "Good luck to ye, Boone."

Looking out at hills set small and close and the sky pale and low overhead and the trees thick enough to smother him, he was half a mind to turn about and strike out as he had struck out long before. Only it couldn't be the same again, the life couldn't -not any more, not for a while, no matter how much he wanted the world big again and the way clear and the air blue and deep above. A hard and aimless anger edged up in him, wanting something to take itself out on. He shifted himself on the
pirogue
.

A settler's cabin stood in a clearing, and the settler himself hung to the handles of a plow pulled by a team of mules. He whoaed the mules when he saw the
pirogue
and leaned on the plow to watch, a big man dressed in ragged linsey stained with walnut. His voice boomed out, "Hello, you mud cats."

"Hello, grayback."

"Grayback maybe I be, but I ain't never seed a mud cat I couldn't handle."

"You been foolin' with minners." To Boone, Mefford said, "What gits into these damn farmers makes 'em want to mix with river men?"

The man shouted, "Pull up, if you dast, and shake the water from your pants and stand up to an honest-to-God man."

"Where's he at?"

"You're lookin' at him."

"Don't see nothin' but a pair of mules and what one dropped behind him."

"They don't call me Bull for nothin'. Shut up or pull up and goddam to you either way."

"Bull, is it? I'd take you for a steer, now."

"I kin change your mind for you. Ain't fought since yesterday, and I'm full and splashin' over."

Boone said, "Pull to!"

Mefford peered out of his old eyes. "You want a go at him?"

"Ain't a man among the four o' ye," the farmer yelled.

"Pull to!" Boone said again.

Mefford ordered, "Put 'er in!" and moved the steering oar.

Boone jumped ashore. He saw a woman with a rag tied over her head come out of the cabin door carrying a cornshuck broom.

The man wrapped his line around the plow handle. He came to meet Boone. There was the fighter's light in his face and the fighter's loose ease in his movements. A grin came on his broad face. "Ain't many as'll stop any more. Stranger, ain't ye? Reckon it wouldn't be right to do my best."