The Big Sky (49 page)

The night came on so black he couldn't tell where earth left off and sky began. Lying under a buffalo robe with his saddle for a pillow, he couldn't see a wink overhead or the top of a hill round about. He might as well be blind, except for thinking the sun would rise again. He lay lost in darkness, with up and down and sideways all the same, and the torment swelling in him as his mind ran out, picking up things seen before and things heard and felt, making up things that hadn't happened yet. Jim talking. Damn if it ain't got a touch of red in its hair! Bear talking. Big Shield talking. It is for Red Hair to cry. When a man knows it does not matter. I cut off her nose and put her out of my lodge. Life was good again. Himself talking. You was nigh the only friend I had, Jim. Leastwise, I thought so. Don't see how you could treat me so, me as trapped and traveled and drunk and played with you and saved your hide to boot and trusted you with Teal Eye for all I knew you're horny. You done it, though, and now, goddam you! Himself talking. Wisht I would believe you, Teal Eye, but sayin' it ain't so don't make it not so. Wisht I could take you back like before and tell you all that was in me. I ain't been one to talk. Talkin' comes hard, but you knowed I was gone on you all along. You didn't have to go somewheres else to find a man as really wanted you. I catched you, though. No use to beg. Bear talking. Breeze talking. Night talking. Does the black eagle get the red hawk? So goddam dark tonight a man can't see a thing.

The wind woke him up, tearing at his robe. The sky had paled to a dead gray. In the east the sun showed it would be up directly. Boone ate and caught his horse and rode on.

The sun was straight overhead when he spied a horseman traveling toward him. Pointed as he was, the man would pass maybe a long rifle shot to the south of him. Boone angled his horse to the left behind a screen of willows growing along a little marsh, not trying to figure out why he did except for thinking he didn't want to talk to anybody. He dismounted and watched through the willows. It was plain the rider hadn't seen him for he kept coming straight on, sitting his horse bent-headed and letting the horse just laze along.

It could be Jim, from the looks of him, bound back to camp from McKenzie. It could be Jim, riding slumped over and off his guard and thinking about Teal Eye and all. After a while Boone saw it was Jim, sure enough.

A slick man would ride out and tell Jim he aimed to go to the fort and farther and wouldn't be back for a time. He would make double sure his trap was set. A slick man would see the red hair and smile just the same and maybe shake hands and never fear for what his hurt and hate might make him do. Boone stood and looked, and it was as if all feeling held still and tight-drawn, too, while Jim came on and passed and drew off to the west.

When Jim was a safe piece ahead, Boone climbed his horse and followed. The trap was set good enough already, and no long waiting to find out about the catch.
 
 

From the top of the ridge Jim barely could make out the village. A fire or two glimmered from the wide basin that the river had cut through years stretching back farther than any man could think. The lodges were like half-seen shadows against the deeper shadow of the land.

The dogs barked as he drew close to camp, and ran out toward him, coming dim into a sight like sound taking shape. He spoke to them and yelled his name to let the Piegans know who came. A squaw stood at the entrance to a lodge, making a lump of darkness against the firelight inside, and watched him pass by. Boone's tepee glowed from a built-up fire.

From in front of it Jim called, "Boone, I got a letter for you."

No answer came.

"Where's Strong Arm, Teal Eye?" He could see the shadow of her moving inside, and he dropped from his horse and poked his head in.

She straightened, standing near the baby lying on its holder. "He went to hunt. He will not come back tonight."

Jim stepped inside and set his rifle against a lodge pole and held up a little way from her. It came to him, seeing the firelight lying on her face, that he never could remember how like a girl she was, or how open her eyes were and how hurtful. She was a surprise each time he saw her. "I brought a letter for him, from Fort McKenzie."

She didn't reach for it, but took a long, slow look as if she could read it unopened in his hand. Her face lifted then to his, and he recognized the sadness in it, not sadness shown by a frown or wrinkles or the mouth turned down, but spoken from the heart. He felt his own heart fall, and swell with pity for her.

She asked, "It comes from his people?"

"I think so."

"It will take him away."

Jim fell back into English. "Hold on now, Teal Eye! And if he goes, he'll come back. He won't ever pull away from you."

Her voice wasn't much more than a whisper. "My baby blind, and Boone mad with me, and the white people's letter to take him away." Her face lifted to him. "I am afraid, Red Hair." Her head went down, and a little shudder ran over her, and she took a short, uncertain, turning step that seemed to Jim to have all of hopelessness in it. He didn't know when he went to her. He only knew his arms were around her and her head was on his chest.

Into her hair he murmured, "Now, punkin. Things'll come right."

She let him hold her, and pity ran in him and anger at Boone and at things, and then the pity and the anger drew back before something else. He felt her body against his, felt her breath hot and quick on his throat, felt her breasts on his chest and one slim leg touching his own. Harvey's words leaped before him, Harvey's words and the wild picture that had darted into his own head, and for just an instant the man in him reared, and it was as if this time, this doing, this having her was bound to happen all along and nothing and nobody on earth to stop it.

His hands came fierce to her arms and held her out while he searched her face. She was like a bird in his grasp, a caught bird that held quiet for what he would do, its heart racing inside the breast, its eyes wide and pitiful, with dark and secret waters flowing.
And then he felt her trembling and knew again the sadness in her face, and sense came to him and understanding, and the man in him melted. He bowed his head over the dark hair and held her easy, knowing he could never take her. It was the blind child that let him hold her, the child and the fear of losing Boone, and Boone so jailed inside himself she couldn't know his heart or show her heart to him.

"Teal Eye," he said while his hand patted her. "Pore Teal Eye."
 
 

Boone rounded to the south so as to approach the village against what little breeze there was. This way he wouldn't rouse the dogs. A hundred yards from the camp he dropped off his horse and went ahead on foot, picking his path and setting his feet down soft. He felt the blood beating in his head and his muscles tight and the whole of him strained and ready as if it was sure what he would find. He made himself stop and breathe deep and loosen up. He made himself remember it was just an off-chance his scheme had worked already. He tried to tell himself he could be wrong. But when he started walking again, the blood beat and the muscles tightened. Once among the tepees he stepped sure and confident, to show to anyone who watched that he was at home, but he still went quietly, not wanting the sound of his movements to reach into his own lodge. There was starlight around the tepees and dying fireglow from inside and the sounds of sleeping.

His lodge pointed up before him. He stopped at the side of it to listen, but all he heard at first was the heavy thumping of his heart. All he saw was one shadow standing dim against the wall of skins. Then a voice spoke, low and soft as a man might speak to a woman when heat was running in him. He heard it say "Teal Eye" and didn't wait for more. He cut around to the opening and ducked and shouldered inside.

They didn't see him right away. They didn't hear the brush of his clothes against the lodge. They stood there, making one shape, making the one shadow he had seen against the wall. He knew what was doing now. He knew what he had to do. No use to talk or think or wonder. No use to ask or plan. A man's body acted for him. He said, "By God, it's like I thought."

They fell apart, and Jim said, "Boone!" and didn't say more but stood trying to smile and the firelight showing guilt on his face as plain as day and flashing on the fear in Teal Eye's eyes. Jim's arm came out, stiff and clumsy as a stick, and Jim's mouth said, "I brung a letter for you."

The pistol was better than the rifle. Jim cried, "Boone! Boone!" as he saw it coming up, and Teal Eye tried, too late, to throw herself between and so to save her secret man. Closed in by walls, the pistol sounded big.
 
 

Jim staggered back, feeling as if his whole chest was empty, feeling as if it had been sunk in by a blow. He tried to straighten. He made his legs walk him toward the door for a breath of the air he was dying for. He fell on his face. It was all he could do to turn over. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to say it wasn't so. He wanted to own up that he had a crazy minute, but no harm done and Teal Eye not to blame. The words wouldn't come; he couldn't get the wind for them.

"I ought to cut your goddam nose off!" It was Boone, turned on Teal Eye. She didn't answer. She didn't move, except that the tears came to her eyes and glimmered in the firelight and started down her cheeks in two big drops.

Things seemed a far way off, so far away the voice couldn't reach, far away and fading farther. Jim saw legs at the entrance to the lodge and followed them up and came to the faces of Indians thrust inside and nothing showing in them but the asking look of animals. One of the faces said, "Him go under."

Boone stooped and whipped up the letter, and his voice lashed at Teal Eye. "No good to cry. By God, I catched you!"

Jim sucked for air. He had to speak. He had to explain. You're a hard man, Boone, and closed in on yourself, and Teal Eye sad with the blind baby and afeared of losing you, and no one to let it out on, no one but me. No harm done, Boone, no harm at all. I wasn't no more than a chest to cry on and a hand to pat her back.

He couldn't catch air enough for talk, not more than a drop of it before pain bore down and shut it off. He felt if he looked down he would see his chest blown open and the heart beating naked and the lungs twisting for air. He heard Boone's voice like a whip and Teal Eye trying to answer and heard the Indians grunting and saw them pushed in at the door and Teal Eye with her child's eyes wet and pleading.

It wasn't any use to try for words or breath or time; it wasn't any use but to lie quiet while the eye saw and the ear heard and the heart bled itself out. Far off, it seemed, Boone was moving, marching to the entrance with the letter unopened in his hand, marching with his head up and the braids swinging to his step while the Indians made way from him and he passed from sight. Jim brought his gaze to Teal Eye, standing as if too hurt to live and her girl's body drooping and the open, dark eyes crying as they looked the way that Boone had gone. "You no come back," she said in English, so low Jim hardly heard. "You no come back."

This was the way it was at the last. A man faced up to death alone, his sight dimming and his hearing dulling off, and he so lonesome the heart squeezed up to nothing and the mind drew back from thought. The world pulled away from him, the lodge and the air and the clouds and dark hills outside and folks that stood about, until only the ground he rested on seemed close. This was the way it was with Jim Deakins, laid out with a bullet hole in him and no one alongside to touch his hand and ease him over. This was the way it was with Deakins, who had been ready to wrong a friend and spoil a woman's life and had got hold of himself but messed things up all the same, and now no chance to set them right. He had to lie helpless and lonesome, but not much afraid any more, while over him and over the lodge that shut him in the deep sky deepened over the empty plains. He heard talk, breathed by the breath but not sounded by the voice. "I'll know about God, I reckon, now." After a while he realized that it was his lips that had spoken.
 

Winter was gone from the valley of the Missouri, but spring hung back. The time was an inbetween time of gray rains and angry spells of wind and a muggy chill that kept the clothes damp. Waking in the mornings, Boone felt his skin grained and stiff against the touch of his buckskins. Buffalo still hung to the shelter of the brush waiting for the sun, lunging in the mud along the shores as the pirogue startled them, staring after it with dull, bad-tempered eyes bushed about by winter hair. Overhead the mallards flew in pairs, their wings whistling, and slid down to the water and swam with their heads high as if on watch for nesting weather. Along the banks the leafless willows whipped and graytrunked cottonwoods waited, holding bare limbs up.

"Meanest by-Jesus time of all," said Old Man Mefford while he worked the steering oar and squinted down river out of a face frosted with white stubble. "She ain't winter or summer or spring or fall or foul or fair but just, by Jesus, nothin'. Savin' a spear or so of grass, everything's dead and bare as a fresh-skinned bull. I can stand cold and hot and snow and dust and all, but this here knots my guts. Makes a man down on his luck, it does. Almost wished I'd traded these here furs at Union, 'stead of boatin' 'em down to St. Louis for the extra in it. Beaver's lower than a snake's belly anyhow. How'd you do, Caudill? Done traded yours, I s'pose?"

Boone sat with his back against Mefford's two-year catch of furs. They were covered by buffalo hide drawn tight by lashings. He glanced at Mefford and at the river and at the right-hand boatman in the bow. The boatman looked up, expecting an answer.

"Them Crows," said old Mefford after giving Boone time to speak, "they're the thievin'est bastards this side of hell, I reckon. Don't know how I ever got out with the plews I did. And sharp, too. They can spot a cache a eagle couldn't. Five seasons ago, it was, me and another cached the purtiest fur a man ever see, dug out the ground careful and laid the sod back on top and toted the extra dirt to the river. Afterwards we scared a bunch of buffalo across the place and rode away sayin' there wasn't a nose or eye in man or brute as could tell there was beaver underneath. But, by Jesus, them Crows did! Warn't a hair left, come spring. You mixed with the Crows, Caudill. Ever see the beat of them for stealin'?"