The High Missouri (37 page)

He was finding out how a sits-beside-him wife, obliged to be outwardly submissive, could run her husband.

The trading was good. He got about the same prices as he would have at Fort Augustus. He thought about asking more—these people didn’t have to go all the way to Augustus—but with nods and glances, Cree kept his prices moderate. He was obliged to trade for those four horses, and Cree made them not just any four specimens of horseflesh. They were first-class animals, young, not yet trained as war-horses or buffalo runners, but splendid beasts. They were inordinately expensive.

His take wasn’t much. He hadn’t brought many trading goods to start with—he and the sisters traveled light—and the fine ponies cut far into it. He only hoped that he’d accomplished something much more important, establishing a valuable trading connection.

He walked as far as Owl Claw’s lodge with Cree to stake out the horses. A woman of middle age, whom Cree introduced as Elk-Crying-in-the-River, came out of the lodge, talked quietly with Cree, disappeared in the direction of the women’s lodge, and brought Owl Claw back.

Dylan really saw Owl Claw now for the first time. Though her face was wizened, her body was still plump and ripe-looking. She was huge-breasted. Her eyes seemed mysterious, and she spoke as though coming back to earth from a distant realm.

She accepted the horses gracefully, though the gift did not seem important to her. She seemed eager to be on her way.

As they walked back to their lodge, Cree explained that Owl Claw and Red Sky were alternately in the women’s lodge and the sweat lodge, purifying themselves and counseling.

“I have had a dream,” said Red Sky. She smiled broadly. Her quest for a vision had been fulfilled, she was telling them. It gave her a new confidence. Yet as she spoke around the center fire, after dinner in the lodge, she also felt tremulous.

“I do not see everything yet, but I want to tell you what I do see.” Bold words for a woman. Her message was as much her manner as her words.

“I will not be a mother,” Red Sky went on. “I will follow the way of the warrior.” Cree made a little closed-mouth cry and covered her face with both hands up to her eyes. “Understand, this is not the way of men. It is the way of the woman warrior, which is… its own. I will learn the arts of war and the hunt. As I do that, I will stop the every-month-bleeding. This much I know.”

Red Sky let the words be, and waited to see if her sister and the man who was half her husband had anything to say.

Dylan was flabbergasted.

“When the bleeding stops, I hope to grow muscular like a man, and strong and fast like a man. If I am greatly blessed, the people will sing of my coups.”

After a considerable wait, Red Sky at Morning went on. “I do not see all yet. Owl Claw and I have talked a lot, and I think I know the way, but she says to be patient and accept the guidance of my helping spirit, which is the calling eagle.” Red Sky waited a little, and spoke the next words with quiet clarity, even luminosity. “If ever I marry, many years from now, I will marry women. And perhaps, after my years of hunting and war, like Owl Claw in old age I will learn the mysteries of healing for the benefit of the people.”

She said all this with some of the eagerness of a teenager, yet with the serenity of someone much older and wiser.

“Owl Claw says all of this may yet change, that the ways of women like me are many. That my medicine may change. I don’t think so. I respect her word, but I don’t think so.”

Cree went forward on her knees and embraced her sister. Red Sky wiped away tears. When they parted, Dylan said the words of a blessing White Raven had spoken: “Napi, Father the Sun, give Red Sky light, that her path may be free from danger.”

Red Sky pressed his hand—it was good of the Frenchman to understand so well. She got up and said she wanted to tell her mother and father and would be back soon.

Dylan felt stupefied. Dru had hinted that on the Missouri he would see into the mysteries of life. What he seemed to see was only that life was a changeling, something unexpected, a shape shifter, the coyote-trickster of legend, always assuming mysterious forms in the blowing mists.

He asked Cree, “Owl Claw lives with a woman?”

Cree looked at him openly and nodded. “They live as man and woman.” She pondered a moment and murmured,
“sakwo’mapi akikwan.”
He supposed it meant something like “lesbians.”

After taking this amazement in, he asked, “Did Owl Claw ever marry? A man?”

Cree nodded. “She has four children. When she came to the age of the end of every-moon-bleeding, she left her husband to live with an older woman who lived as a man.” Cree let it sit for a moment. “Now she lives with a younger woman.”

As long as he was dealing in amazement, Dylan thought, he might as well plunge on recklessly. “Why did Red Sky say her every-moon-bleeding would stop?”

Cree spoke solemnly, a little as though explaining great things to a child. “It is a strong medicine, the every-moon-bleeding. Any bleeding is strong medicine. No one can hunt, or fight enemies, with the spirits deafened by the clamor of blood medicine, which interferes with the other medicine.”

Dylan pondered. In Red Sky he had lost a wife he had never had. More pertinently, he felt he’d lost a friend. Maybe one day he’d gain a hunting partner. He was nonplussed.

In perhaps half an hour Red Sky came back from her parents’ lodge. She still looked radiant, and now her face was gleaming with tears. In silence she picked up her robes, rolled them, tied them, shouldered them and left the lodge.

Dylan and Cree stepped outside and watched her walk toward the lodge of Owl Claw and Elk Crying-in-the-River. In the early winter night she seemed to Dylan brave, lonely, and forlorn.

White Raven came later that evening and asked Dylan to come to his lodge tomorrow when the sun was high. He wanted to give Monsieur Dylan a name.

After White Raven left, before Dylan could ask why, Cree said it was an honor to have a name among the Piegans. White Raven had asked someone, an older person, someone of distinction, to choose a name. It would be bestowed with ritual and prayer.

Dylan looked askance at his wife. He wasn’t a complete ignoramus. When he thought about it, though, he wondered why he wasn’t being adopted. Then he supposed it was because he was her husband and already a member of the tribe.

White Raven sat in the place of honor directly behind the fire. Beside him, in the honored place to the host’s left, sat the old man who owned the beaver bundle. White Raven told Dylan to sit beside this white-haired and kind-faced man, Two Runners. Several other men sat to Dylan’s left, and he told himself to remember their names.

To White Raven’s right in the circle, Dylan saw women—Calf Robe first, Owl Claw next, White Raven’s three daughters, and others he didn’t know.

White Raven began by tweezing an ember from the fire and lighting the pipe. He blew smoke four times to the sun, and one each to the four winds. The pipe was passed clockwise, and each man smoked. As it passed, whether away from or toward White Raven, the bowl always pointed to him.

When all the men had smoked, White Raven set a coal from the fire on the ground in front of himself and burned sweetgrass on it. Dylan loved the sweet, incenselike smell it gave off. Then White Raven rubbed himself in the smoke rising from the grass, and chanted this prayer:

This morning Father Sun shines into the lodge.

His power is strong.

Last night Mother Moon shone into the lodge.

Her power is strong.

I pray that Morning Star, when he rises at dawn,

Will shine in and bless us and bring us long life.

Then all joined their voices in chorus:

Mother Earth, have pity on us

And give us food to eat.

Father Sun, bless all our children,

And may our paths be straight.

White Raven looked at Two Runners, and Dylan understood that it was time for the granting of a name. He swung between thrill and panic. What if he got a name that meant nothing to him, or was an embarrassment, like Dog Lifting His Hind Leg?

Cree had told him more of the basics of this name-choosing. Distinguished men were chosen to give names to infants. The men often chose names based on events out of their own lives, perhaps a time they counted coup, or something from a vision they had, perhaps paint they wore or something in their own medicine bundle. Girl children were likely to be named after war deeds of their fathers or other male ancestors, so many of their names mentioned blows—like Strikes Twice—or horses. Young men like Dylan often got new names based on their own exploits, their coups or their dreams. But Dylan had no coups or dreams.

Two Runners reached toward Cree. She took something concealed within her blanket. A string of hawk bells. Dylan hadn’t heard them because she was wearing the bells he’d given her.

Then Two Runners began to dance, and to cry out a song over the light tinkling of the bells. Though Dylan couldn’t understand all the words, stretched out over shifting notes, he soon understood that Two Runners was imitating what he saw the Frenchman do on the day of the fight, and what White Raven must have told everyone. Even though Dylan struck a Piegan, the old man was honoring his courage. Dylan watched more solemnly. Then, in the dance, Two Runners began to mime movements that had nothing to do with the fight. It took Dylan a while to understand what Two Runners was imitating. Then he got it: the old man was swinging on ropes. Dylan’s mind tilted. Time was suspended in dance, song, and the accompanying ting-a-ling of the bells.

When Two Runners stopped, he faced Dylan directly and spoke oratorically. “These are bells made by the medicine of Frenchmen. In a great lodge one day at sunset, in the village called Montreal, you rang the great bells there, bells tall as men, other bells big as lodges. As the bells rang, you had a vision that called you forth into the world, seeking coups. You followed that vision, and at last it has brought you to us. We welcome you, and offer you a home, a haven from wandering. From this day we will call you by the name His-Many-Bells-Ringing.”

He set the string of bells at the initiate’s feet.

Everyone got up and went outside. There the camp crier waited. When he heard the new name, he walked ceremonially around the circle of lodges, crying it out to all the people. Over and over he repeated the words His-Many-Bells-Ringing.

Dylan watched, and tears ran down his face.

Part Five

AT ONE

Chapter Thirty-Three

Red Sky said eagerly, cockily, “Bells, I want to go after Père Noël. The two of us. I want his scalp.” She called him by the English word
Bells
for short. All the other Piegans called him by the one long Piegan word His-Many-Bells-Ringing.

Sometimes an adult, now she was a teenager again. She and Owl Claw came to the lodge after supper. Red Sky accepted Dylan’s offer of the pipe like a man, and afterward spoke solemnly of her dreams. She was dreaming, repeatedly, of striking coups. She and Owl Claw saw that for now her medicine was calling her to make coups. They didn’t see beyond that.

So now it was Père Noël she wanted. Dylan nodded. Yes, it was right. And it was like her. Too bold, too brazen, too…

He told her they didn’t know who Père Noël was. It was a silly name, he explained, calling yourself after a saint, one of the Frenchman spirits. He started to say it was like a Piegan calling himself Napi or Natosi, Sun or Moon, or Kakatoo-se Poka, Star Boy, or Scarface. Foolishness, or a macabre joke. But Dylan stopped himself halfway through. Calling yourself Santa Claus was merely naughty. The Blackfoot equivalents were sacrilegious.

“I want him,” said Red Sky, smiling.

He explained they didn’t know where the fellow was.

He built a fort at the Minnetaree villages, she said. Someone there will know.

It’s nearly winter, Dylan complained.

“Then the raid will bring us more honor,” said Red Sky.

He was stumped.

“Père Noël treated me like a slave,” Red Sky said. Dylan wondered if she meant especially a sexual slave. “I’m going to scalp his cod hairs.” There was an edge in this.

There was nothing bloodier than a woman, thought Dylan.

Owl Claw said quietly, “It is her medicine.”

Later Dylan talked with Cree about it. “She can only go with you,” Cree said. “Or alone. Our men won’t go with her. She might bleed.”

“What about me? Why would I go with her?”

Cree grinned. “You’re a Frenchman—you’re crazy.” She hesitated. “Really, your medicine is different. You’re a Frenchman.”

One day soon he would correct her to Welshman. She would explain to the others that it was a kind of Frenchman.

Yes, she wanted Dylan to help her sister. It was only the moon after the first snowfall, November. The river was icy, but the plains were open. The horses would go well now. The snows would come, true. She thought they should go to the Mandan villages first, then Dylan and Red Sky would go off and do their deeds, and all would spend the winter among the Mandans. With Dylan’s friend the Druid. Maybe the Druid would want to strike coups with them.

He suspected the sisters had worked it out beforehand.

True, she went on, it was nearly one moon to the Mandans, the way a village traveled. But they would travel light, without the furs he traded for, and go as men at war went, very swiftly. They could be at the Mandans in a week, she claimed. There they could find out about Père Noël.

She fell silent. Yes, she had it all worked out. He wondered if she had even more worked out.

“I’d like to spend the winter with the Druid,” admitted Dylan.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I will trade for good horses.” First-class animals, two per rider. “Tell Red Sky we leave at dawn the next day.”

Cree smiled. “You must keep Red Sky on a tight rein,” she said. “She may not want to wait to go to the Mandans and back to the Minnetarees.”

Dylan nodded. “Why does she talk about scalping his…?”

“Because she’s angry,” said Cree, sounding irritated at Dylan for not understanding. “She’s a woman not meant for men, and Père Noël frigged her.” Piegans spoke words about sex without hesitation or embarrassment, both men and women. Cree let that sit until Dylan nodded.

“Also,” Cree said wickedly, “she probably wants a pouch made of his scrotum.”

Dylan blinked at her.

“I’m serious,” said Cree, breaking into a grin now. “They make nice, soft pouches. But with human males you need three or four to get one big enough.”

Dru heard a scratch at the lodge door, called out “Come in,” and Dylan stepped through. It was emotional for Dru, but he restrained himself. They embraced, and then Dru pulled back, afraid he was embarrassing Dylan. Anastasie hugged him too, with less scruple. As they embraced, the two Piegan slave women came in behind. So.

Dylan introduced Cree Medicine as his wife. He seemed not to know how to speak of Red Sky, but Dru and Anastasie pretended not to notice his embarrassment, and made both women welcome as family.

If he hadn’t taken the girl to wife, how did Dylan come to be traveling with her? Well, the laddo had an attraction to sticky candy.

Over dinner Dylan got down to business, which meant telling Dru he had some furs cached on the Musselshell and bragging that he had a good friendship with one village of Piegans. They’d be glad for the Welsh Indians to trap in their country, come spring, said Dylan.

The laddo was selling the notion of the friendship because he had but few furs, Dru guessed. Well, he didn’t realize how splendid the friendship would be, what a fine deed he’d done, what a risk he’d taken, and how glad his father in spirit was to see him hale and hearty.

Dylan also told about their trip here, from the village on the Musselshell across the plains to the Yellowstone, downstream, then across to the Little Missouri and down the Knife River to this village. Only ten days, the laddo said. Dru let his eyes acknowledge the difficulty to Dylan, and added, “Well done.”

After supper, when Dru got out the pipe, Cree spoke up, in French. “Monsieur Dylan has a new name,” she said. “His-Many-Bells-Ringing.” She gave it as she had memorized it in English and repeated the name in the Blackfoot language.

Dru took a long moment. It was fine to show gladness in your face, but not to become sentimental. He lit the pipe and handed it to Dylan. “A grand name,” he permitted himself to say. “A name you have earned. Anastasie and I will introduce you here, and among all Indian peoples, as His-Many-Bells-Ringing.”

He saw that Dylan was deeply pleased by this gesture. Yes, laddo, he thought, immerse yourself utterly.

To Dru’s surprise, Red Sky spoke up. She was bold. She wanted to know where Père Noël was.

Dru didn’t know how to answer. He wondered why she wanted to know about her captor, her slaver. He had not met this fellow of the silly name, this St. Nicholas. The man was out on the fall hunt now, imitating the new American practice of trapping beaver in addition to trading for them. He should be back soon—the season was late. Might be back already, for word from the Minnetarees wasn’t always quick, close as they were, just a day’s ride.

He told them this much. He didn’t add that he had told the men to make friends with the crew of this St. Nicholas, a flamboyant and energetic fellow who was admired by the Indians and might have made a worthy ally and friend.

“She wants to strike coup on him,” explained Dylan. “I will be going with her.”

Dru looked at Red Sky as though for the first time. Now he noticed certain touches in her dress, masculine touches, signs he might have picked out before but didn’t. Now Dru remembered her boldness in speaking out like a man, and looking him in the eye without deference. Now he understood why she was not Dylan’s wife.

He loved Indians. They represented so many more possibilities of living than conventional white people. And life is such a coyote, he thought, its energy expressed through forms myriad, forms strange, forms wondrous.

He glanced at Anastasie and saw awareness in her eyes. This would be a hard thing, going against this man, who now could only make a formidable enemy.

Yet the river flowed into this obstacle, and not some other way.

He looked at Red Sky, at His-Many-Bells-Ringing, back at Red Sky in understanding.

“I will send to the Minnetarees tomorrow to find out about Père Noël,” he said. He looked at Red Sky. “Would you accept another companion on this adventure?”

She smiled, and it was the wonderful smile of an innocent and exuberant child. “Gladly,” she said.

Fort Minnetaree was a fine place for its size, with a stout palisade and buildings in two corners. It was built a couple of miles from the Minnetaree villages, in a good location above the river, which might eventually provide pasture and tillable fields. As if to declare the owner’s style, the logs of the palisade were painted sky-blue, and the second stories of the buildings, where they stuck up like blockhouses, were edged in gold paint. A flamboyant style, Dylan judged. A tiny fort, but a declaration.

Then he saw the sign above the gate.
FORT ST. NICHOLAS
, it proclaimed. Dylan almost laughed out loud. Well, everyone called it Fort Minnetaree, which was an improvement.

The owner was absent. Gone until spring, said one of the engagés. The clerk, Mr. Harris, could say more, if he would.
Sacre
, a man never knew about Mr. Harris, a tight
mongol
, an idiot. Not like Père Noël.

When she heard the name Harris, Red Sky refused to go on. They would have to come back in a few days, she said. She absolutely insisted. She offered no explanation, except that Harris was with Père Noël when he took her.

Dylan fumbled for words and found none.

She was their comrade-in-arms; Dru and Dylan yielded, and rode toward home.

Suddenly she said, “Three men have had me. He’s one.” Which was blunt.

Dylan felt his cod hairs tingle.

Red Sky smiled wickedly at him. “Don’t worry,” she said, “your scalps are safe. Both of them.”

When they came in to see Mr. Harris four days later, Dru traded half their horses for traps. There was plenty of horseflesh among the Piegans, he said, but they couldn’t have too many traps. Besides, he didn’t want Mr. Harris to think they were spies. Which they were.

Red Sky stood silent, far back, obscure, while Dru traded. She was dressed completely as a man, and her face painted starkly, solid black on the left side and solid red on the right. Dylan was surprised at how much it altered her appearance. It was a face to frighten children.

Harris seemed not to notice. He was a middle-aged man with a thick thatch of sandy hair and a grizzled beard, a pipe always between his teeth, and a sour aspect. If he had a first name, no one seemed to know it, and he referred to himself as Mr. Harris. A Scot now bilious, now gloomy, Dylan decided. Though he seldom appeared to look at the three of them, and seemed not to give a damn about them, Dylan thought Harris was observing everything, and marking in his mind all they said. Competitors, that was what Harris seemed to see, not allies.

Yes, Père Noël was among the Assiniboines. It sounded like Harris told them this in the tone of, The Assiniboines are taken, keep off. Yes, Dylan thought, he would be back in the spring, but Mr. Harris didn’t know for how long. Père Noël was the
bourgeois
, and Little Seven was his partisan. Harris was their clerk, not their confidant.

No, said the Druid, they couldn’t tell Mr. Harris their business. It would have to wait for Monsieur… Noël personally.

Harris didn’t offer the name Père Noël was born with.

During the interview, Dylan couldn’t keep his eyes off Red Sky. She held her blanket half over her face and peered out from within the folds. She said nothing. Dylan thought her eyes glared at Harris with hatred. Or contempt. Or something.

“It will be a good winter,” said Dru. “We’ll make one trip to Red River. At a good spot in the weather. Not unreasonable, as you see, if you’re careful.” They were walking the horses back toward the Mandans, the river in sight. Dru was smiling, relaxed, expansive. “We’ll both improve our Blackfoot. That’s where the future lies, with those Piegans of Shaking Plume’s. These women will teach us.”

“And I’ll read Byron,” said Dylan.

“Aye, laddo.” This appeared to amuse Dru. “You read your Byron. A Welshman reading a British bard.” Dylan knew—sing your own songs, Dru would say.

Dru pondered a moment. “Know what I used to do? Funny, it is. When I wanted to really get a new language down? I made up verses in it.”

He wheezed a laugh at himself, “verses, really. I’d make nursery ditties. Play with the rhymes, even. Indian languages are easy to rhyme.” He looked around at the fine winter day, enjoying himself. “When I worked on Cree, I put little troubadour stories into the Cree tongue for Anastasie and Saga.” Dru snorted. “They thought I was utterly mad and rhymes were a form of torture.

“That’s how far a Welshman falls, laddo. Instead of writing poesy, he copies off verses in barbarous tongues.”

Red Sky. Dylan looked around for her. She was back on the rise, horse and rider dark against the sky.

Dru noticed Dylan’s glance and looked tickled. He nodded at Dylan. They both looked back at Red Sky. She raised her hand. Dru raised his in salute. So did Dylan. She turned her pony and disappeared below the ridge line.

“A warrior,” said Dru.

“Where’s she going?” asked Dylan.

Dru shrugged. “Wherever her warrior spirit takes her,” said Dru.

She came back empty-handed, and Dylan was embarrassed at how relieved he felt.

Whatever she’d done, Red Sky hadn’t gained any patience. Dru gave her a throwing knife and she beat a tree trunk into a pulp with it. They let her shoot their rifles on occasion. She declared irritably that as soon as she could steal some ponies, she’d have her own gun powder and ball, and shooting pouch.

She sat to the side of the lodge a lot on sunny days and chipped away at the flint she’d brought—Dylan decided she must have pounds of it stashed away. You couldn’t walk in the chipping area for coming away with little pieces in your moccasin soles.

She built a small sweat lodge from willows in the manner of her people, declining to use the Mandan lodges, and purified herself often. Cree helped her. It was probably a sign of her trust in Dylan that sometimes he brought the hot rocks into the sweat for her, and she walked around nude in front of him. Naturally, she never went into the lodge where the menstruating women secluded themselves.

She practiced hand-to-hand fighting with Dylan, and insisted that he go at her hard. She was lithe and remarkably quick, but her slightness was a disadvantage. Dylan wondered if she’d muscle up, as she swore she would. Or stop bleeding. Could a woman stop bleeding because she decided to? Or was it Red Sky’s nature to become a man and not to bleed? Or would she pretend? What did she mean, being a woman warrior wasn’t an imitation of the ways of men but somehow its own way?