The Snake River (9 page)

It swung its head a little away from Web. Shifted its hindquarters toward him. Tore at other grass.

Web come-hithered the horse again. Messenger ignored him.

Web felt desperate, and his desperation felt crazy-funny.

Maybe he would have to move to get the reins. Shift, slide, roll, move somehow.

He would try to move and see if he could do it.

He waited. He held his breath.

He rolled his shoulders.

Pain raged.

He lay still and tremulous. He did not pass into the little death. He could not permit that now. He had to catch Messenger.

He watched the old horse.

His tongue parched in his mouth.

He watched and occasionally cooed.

He woke suddenly. Messenger was near. The reins lay an arm’s length out of reach.

He waited. He breathed deep and steeled himself against the pain.

He rolled and lunged.

He felt the leather of the reins.

Messenger jerked its head up.

Web clutched hard.

Messenger threw its head.

Web lurched into the dust.

The reins were gone.

He held himself and shook with dry tears. He noticed he had broken the scab on his left breast, and blood dripped. It was bright red and silky on his chest, dark red and glutinous in the dust.

When he woke from the little death, Messenger was standing near the river. Looking up the gully in Web’s direction. The horse stamped its hooves lightly, hesitated, and began to trot. Trotted out of sight.

Web dragged himself.

It couldn’t be called crawling.

He couldn’t use the right knee to crawl because of the pain. He threw himself onto the right hip while he brought the left knee up.

At first he dragged himself up the gully once or twice or at most three times, a foot or so each drag. Then he decided to count the drags and force himself, regardless of the pain, to make five drags before he rested.

Between rests, he advanced about the length of his own body. Once or twice, resting, he went into the little death.

He knew a man could go four days without food, water, or sleep. Men who sacrificed themselves in the drystanding dance did that. He thought he would die of thirst before he could get back to the seep.

When he rested, he asked for help from Duma Pia and Duma Apa, Mother Earth and Father Sky, from the directions of the four winds. He asked also mercy from the sun,
tapai
, that it not dry him out fast.

A simple thought rose in him: Rest during the day. Drag yourself at night. He thanked Duma Apa for the thought.

He dragged himself sideways into the shade of a big boulder. He lay back and let his body feel the cool of the shade. He turned his head and touched his lips to the cool rock, and imagined the cool was wet.

Now he would sleep until twilight. Then drag himself through the night. He knew he didn’t have the will, within himself alone, to drag himself to the seep. So he would ask Duma Apa for the will. He would ask aloud sometimes. At other times, when he rested or slept, he would make every breath a prayer. Tonight when he dragged himself, he would make two rhythmical efforts, alternating. He would exert his body to gain a few inches upward. Then he would ask the powers for the will to exert again, and again.

The thought of asking, the thought of giving his life into the hands of the powers, gave him sweet solace.

Sweetness. Thought of drink. Of putting his lips to the seep. A sweet fantasy.

After he drank, he would sink into the little death, or the big one—it did not seem to matter, they were the gifts of Owl—and he would dream.

Time came apart, loose fragments in his hands, like strands of a willow basket falling apart.

Night, day, dawn, sunset, noon, midnight, Web couldn’t tell one from another. Sometimes he dragged himself. Sometimes he slept. From time to time he would remember to ask for power. Then he would lie still and speak his prayer aloud, and then breathe it with every draft of air.

He dragged himself perhaps half of the first night, half the second day. After that he could not guess. Periods of light and dark passed at random, not in the magisterial half-day intervals dictated by Duma Apa, Our Father, but arbitrarily, nonsensically, in great shards and in tiny splinters.

He dragged himself. He prayed. He breathed.

His existence was nothing but this, his consciousness nothing but this. Glancingly, once in a while, he thought it odd that he suffered no thirst, no hunger. He hardly noticed.

He would have guessed it was on the sixth or seventh day, but it was in fact on the fourth, that Owl came to him.

Owl did not appear mysteriously, obliquely, glimmeringly. He flew up in a matter-of-fact way, perched on a rock close to Web’s ear, and spoke like a friend. “I will help you,” he said.

Web broke into sweet tears.

“You must heal. You must begin to walk again. Prepare yourself in the proper way. Then build a trap and bait it. Wait beneath the trap four nights without eating or drinking, or especially falling asleep. An owl will come to eat. Catch it by the feet with your bare hands. While you hold it, here is the song you must sing.”

Now Web was frightened. No Shoshone would touch an owl, a taboo bird that tells of death. If he must touch an owl, maybe he must never again be a Shoshone.

But an Owl went on. “First you will call in the animals of the four winds.

Hiyo koma wey, Hiyo koma wey

Hiyo koma wey sheni yo

Hiyotsoavitch, Hiyo tsaovitch

Hiyo tsoavitch sheni yo.

Then sing to the owl:

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Coming to me through pieces of light and dark.

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Coming to me through pieces of light and dark.

As Owl sang the song, he did a little dance on the ground, darting back and forth, fluttering his wings, hopping, weaving forward, circling, repeating the series of motions.

Web’s eyes were opened, his ears alert. Owl’s notes clanged like gongs, and his movements burst on the eyes like sun rays.

Web understood the challenge being given. He saw the danger if he lost the owl, even in pain from the pecking and jerking and beating. He saw the
poha
, animal-spirit power, being offered. He wept with gratitude.

“When you have sung and danced,” Owl went on, “you will wring its neck with your bare hands. You will cut its heart open and hold it high overhead and let the heart’s blood run down your arms. After that, when you fight, you will paint yourself with owl’s blood where it runs on your arms.

“You will cut off the owl’s feet,” he went on, “and tie one on each upper arm, between the chest and arm, claws into the arm.”

Web understood that he was being given the power to grip strongly.

“You will take the heart and the skin and keep them in a bundle.”

Web knew that if he lost the bundle, he would not only lose the power but also would become crippled or otherwise handicapped.

Owl began once more to sing the song:

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

Coming to me through pieces of light and dark.

He did the dance, weaving, hopping, fluttering his wings, going up the gully, back to the south, the home of the Owl. The moment he flapped his wings and lifted off the earth, Web saw him no more.

Seemingly, without lying down, sitting down, or even falling down, Web passed into a restful sleep, free of dreams.

Chapter Nine

Flare eyeballed it. He wondered why the others didn’t see it. He always wondered. The wondering stirred him to high-flown thoughts. The mission folk kept their heads so high in the sky, hunting for Truth, that they couldn’t see what was around them. Which was a bleedin’ horse with a bleedin’ saddle and. no rider standing a couple of hundred yards out.

To Flare the missionaries were a source of infinite variety and amusement.

The saddle was Indian. Flare couldn’t see what tribe it was this far away. But it meant trouble for some poor critter.

He looked around. They were all jawing away, as usual. Their eyes must be on heaven, ’cause they surely weren’t on earth. Mother of God, you run from the Holy Church in Ireland and get caught by Protestants in the deserts of the New World.

Funnier yet: There was no God in this forsaken country, that was clear enough. And Michael Devin O’Flaherty, who’d spent his life getting away from God-ridden people, who’d left civilization to live among the pagans, was bringing Jehovah to the country, in the form of superstition-bound missionaries. Mother of God, but it was rich.

He looked at Miss Jewel, who had some sense to go with her fine, plump bottom and fine, rounded bosom. Which made him want to get her into his blankets and jolly her good. He smiled ironically. Faint hope of that, me lad. She was discussing the doctrine of transubstantiation with Dr. Full.

He nodded slightly at her. “Miss Jewel, I’m going to get that horse.” Don’t explain, just inform.

She looked, saw. “Yes, Mr. O’Flaherty. Of course.”

She probably didn’t see the saddle. Well, it wouldn’t do its owner any good anymore. But it would tell a story. And someone would want to know.

Miss Jewel stopped her horse. Flare would never quite get over her forked there on the saddle—he’d seen no other white woman do that. The whole party stopped, wondering what was on the mind of the guide who pushed and pushed and never let them stop. He reined away and walked his horse. No sense spooking the lost critter.

Funny, though. The lost critter didn’t act spooked. Waggled its head back and forth, making the reins flip about. Trotted a few yards. Stopped and looked back at Flare. Trotted again, looked back, trotted. Finally headed for that gully.

“What
do
we have here?” asked Dr. Fool.

Flare just let it sit.

“A fallen child of nature, to be sure,” said Dr. Fool. “But aren’t they all fallen?”

He knelt over the boy and started mumbling. Over the weeks of the trip Dr. Full had become pure fool to Flare. Or sometimes Flare called him Dr. Full-of-Himself. Like the Brits, fundamentally not worth thinking about.

But Flare was not amused by Dr. Fool’s officiousness now. Time to do some doctoring.

The boy had a broke leg. Maybe Dr. Fool could set it and save the lad’s life. If they could get enough water in him in time, and fever didn’t get him. If Dr. Full would stop praying and start setting. If Dr. Full could get his mind out of his notions long enough to see not a child of God, a creature of Darkness, a fallen angel, or a sinner in need of grace, but a lad with a broke leg—Shoshone lad, surely a breed lad.

The lad moaned.

Flare squatted next to the lad and squeezed his wet handkerchief. Water dripped into the boy’s mouth. He didn’t react, didn’t move lips, tongue, anything. After a while Flare saw his Adam’s apple bobble. Flare squeezed a few drops onto his forehead, thinking ironically, I baptize thee, in the name of the Holy Mother-bleedin’ Church….He wiped the face and forehead and laid the handkerchief on the lad’s hair line to cool him a little.

Lad was in rough shape. Flare took the float stick he’d brought back, hacked it in half with a few swings of his tomahawk, and handed the two pieces to Dr. Full for splints. Tore up the flour sack for ties—now the flour these pork-eaters brought along was paying its way, anyhow.

Flare walked back to read the tracks. The boyo had dragged himself up the gully—plucky boyo, almost got up to his gear. Half mile uphill to here, tough going. Could have stayed alive for weeks up there, what with food and water. Didn’t make it, though, did he?

Flare read the spot where it happened. Horse was walking, being led, broke into a run. Flare couldn’t see just what went wrong for the lad—it happened on a rock with a big crack. Maybe the boy stuck his foot in the crack and went over. Would fit his break, it would. Yes, blood on the uphill side of the crack.

The lad’s crawl, and all his resting spots, were clear to those as had their eyes on earth. Flare followed the marks back up. In one place the feathery marks of owl wings brushing the sand—damned peculiar, must have been made before or after. Nothing else here but a tale of struggle and pain. A plucky boyo in truth.

The boy was unchanged. Breathing easier, maybe. Dr. Full had the leg set. Looked reasonable enough. Nothing Flare couldn’t have done himself. The doctor was going on with his tongue, in his elaborate, Dr. Fullish way. He talked as a creek ran over a waterfall, because he had to.

Flare looked at the sides of the gully. Not too bad, but…he looked up the boulder-strewn gully. Not a job for a horse.

“Mr. O’Flaherty,” Dr. Full said, “I’d be obliged if you’d fetch the smith.” Muscles to heft the boy out of here.

Flare squatted again. One of the reasons the missionaries thought he was a barbarian was that he squatted comfortable as an Injun. Well, he was a barbarian. Flare wet his handkerchief from his flask again and dribbled water into the lad’s mouth and onto his forehead. An Irishman didn’t hop to another man’s order too quick.

Mind rose, and fell.
Mu-qua-yizikanzi
—soul fog flew up.

Mind rose toward consciousness, and fell.

Swayed, rose, drifted, drifted, swooned. Bumped.

So. I have passed through a little death. Maybe the big death. But I have passed through the death Owl brought me. I am here.

Where is here?

Lie still, feeling. Mouth. Mouth hurts, tongue hurts. Head—move neck slightly. Okay. Trunk, okay. Arms—wiggle one finger—okay. Legs. Yes, the leg hurts. Won’t move that. The pain is there, waiting.

Maybe I’ve passed through a little death. If it is the big death, leg would be perfect. It’s broken. I hope I am below the sky. I want to do as Owl told me.

Let the eyes flick open, closed. Glare. See nothing but Apa the sun spirit, glaring.

So, where am I? Beyond a little death.

Bump!

Ataa!
Ouch! Where am I?

Open yes. A horse’s behind. A woman. Unbelievably, a white woman. With red hair, the color of the sacred pipestone. Looking at me. Smiling at me.

I am with white people.

Mind-swoon.

Miracle. Owl sends me through a death and brings me out with white people, my new people. Not after a moon of travel. Now. Owl my guardian makes miracles. Soul fog lifts.

Lots of words. Booming. A man’s voice.
Divo-taik-wag.
White-man talk.

Yes, know some English, a little, but mind won’t work those words now.

A man rides into view, in front of the woman. The man has a big smile, too big. He is, he is…acting like my friend so he can talk me into something. Yes. Funny. He’s booming the words. He has on some sort of fancy black coat.

A few of the words are understandable. The man is telling his name, Doctor Full. Too many words.

Where am I? Who am I?

Tired. Want to see more of the miracle, but very tired, very sleepy, and the words are very many….

“Pehano.”

The voice is male, gentle, soothing. “Hello, how are you?”

Still in the Shoshone language: “You’re a brave boyo. You’re going to be all right.”

I am Sima Numah-divo.

I’m not as hot now. A man is speaking my language to me in a funny accent. Yes, one of those Americans, or Frenchmen. I passed through the little death and came out among the white people. Miracle from Owl.

Water dribbled into his mouth. Sweet, cooling water, wonderful water.

I will open my eyes in a moment and see where I am, beyond the little death, what country, and whether fair or foul to the eye.

Now am I truly Sima Numah-divo, the first Shoshone white man.

“I’ve brought him some broth.”

I am a new person, beyond the little death.

A woman’s voice. Speaking English. I will have to learn this language, really learn it.

“Sikkih, tain-apa tekkah.”
Here, boyo, eat.

Let eyes open. Flutter. Close. Sweet darkness. Open again.

Twilight. Faces close. Beyond, a camp with a few trees. Pleasant shade. Long shadows. A lovely scene. I want to draw it. With my colored pencils. Bright. New world.

Faces of a man and a woman.

“Sikkih, tain-apa tekkah.”

The man is smiling a little. His face looks like…He wears a circled cross. Miracle. Circled cross. Red road, black road, wholeness…

Bowl against my hands. Grasp. Smell of meat soup.

The woman is a vision. She has bright, bright pipe-stone hair. More strange, it’s piled on top of her head. Strange new world, where women do such things. She’s beaming. My new people like me. Love me.

Soup. Spoon. Take it and eat. Am lying down.

Look at the faces. Oh. The tastes in this new world are wonderful.

“You’ve had a bad time,” says the woman. “You’re going to be all right.”

Am lying on a travois.

“Hi-na en-nan-i-hai, tua.”
What’s your name, lad?

First, My name is First.

Throat doesn’t work.

Swallow some more soup. Swallow a couple of times.

Look into the faces.

“Sima.” My voice rasps. Say it clearly to these creatures. “My name is Sima Numah-divo.”