The Yellowstone (14 page)

Chapter 18

Dust-in-the-face moon

“For God’s sake,” bitched Lisette, “don’t be shy about showing my tit.”

Dreyfuss did. The wound started in the lower outside region of the right breast and ran along the ribs. Plenty of blood, but it was a rake, not a puncture. “She’s lucky the horn didn’t penetrate and get a lung,” he said to the group at large. “And she’s so tiny the other horn went outside her. Very fortunate.”

“Fortunate! My God, I’m among crazy people,” Lisette moaned. In a lot of pain, she’d been just half-conscious coming in from the prairie. Being alert enough to complain was an improvement.

They were in the infirmary tent. Light came through a flap onto an odd assortment of human beings—Lisette and Strikes Foot, there as patients; Dreyfuss, De Smet, and Calling Eagle, there as healers; and Mac and Annemarie, there to fret and wring their hands.

Mac had to take a hand and rule that De Smet and Calling Eagle could help by praying, each to his own powers, but that the professor was in charge of the doctoring. It turned out Dreyfuss’s nursing during the war gave him lots of practical knowledge. Mac was continually surprised to find new areas of competence in this roly-poly, middle-aged man.

Calling Eagle and De Smet sat to the side, talking. They were using signs and gesturing too fast and too big, their hands nearly colliding in air. And they kept smiling and laughing like foolish women. Mac was tickled. Two men in dresses, one unknown to the other as a male, both priests, both prayer healers. Though they worshiped different gods, maybe it was logical that they’d get along.

Mac thought De Smet wouldn’t be so damn friendly if he knew Calling Eagle had testicles under that skirt.

The professor’s opinion was that Lisette was bad off but not in mortal danger. Aside from the big gouge, she had cracked ribs. Her foot had evidently been stepped on, too, and might have broken bones. And Dreyfuss thought she’d hit her head hard on the ground. She would be down awhile, if only to let the ribs heal. “Lucky,” he told her again.

She covered her face with her hands, and winced with pain. “Your arms move the ribs,” the professor pointed out with a chuckle.

“You’re lucky Strikes Foot was close by,” said Mac. “He saved your damn life.”

Little One opened her eyes at him and smiled as though she’d caught him. “My damn life,” she said with a wistful smile.

Mac was embarrassed. “He rode into the cow and knocked it down.”

Lisette sniffed a little laugh, and grabbed her ribs in pain, and squeaked at the movement. “Dreyfuss killed it,” Mac went on.

Dreyfuss took her hand and felt her pulse. She smiled softly at him. “Thank you,” she said, “for my damn life.”

“Thank me by being a good patient,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you, Strikes Foot,” she called across the tent in the Sioux language, her head back and eyes on the ceiling. “But it is a foolish warrior who cripples himself for a tiny Frenchwoman.”

Strikes Foot replied in the same language, “You are welcome, Little One.”

Strikes Foot had wrenched the knee on his clubfooted leg badly and wouldn’t be able to bear weight on his hoof for a few days.

The professor started to put something on Lisette’s ribs to stop the bleeding, the underbelly fur from a beaver—not something he’d learned in school, Mac would bet.

“Stop that!” Calling Eagle called out in Cheyenne. Mac translated. Dreyfuss raised an eyebrow. “The wound will get sick,” Calling Eagle said, coming forward with a horn. She unstoppered the big end, fingered out some sort of salve, and started rubbing it on.

Dreyfuss held the horn for her and sniffed at the salve. He looked at Mac. Mac shook his head. “She won’t tell you what it is unless you convert,” Mac said with a half smile. “But her poultices generally help.”

Dreyfuss just watched Calling Eagle work. Then he put on the fur and a clean dressing.

Relieved, Mac stepped outside the hospital tent and De Smet took his arm.

“I’m going on to see the Crows,” De Smet said. “With Jim Sykes.”

“Just Jim?”

“The Lord God cares for his children.” Seemed the priest went all over the plains and mountains with just one guide, or just another priest. He evidently was convinced the messenger of God was invincible. Well, thought Mac, the Lord God protects drunks, fools, and innocents.

“We’ll be gone a couple of weeks. In the meantime, will you speak to the Cheyennes for me?” De Smet wanted Mac to persuade the Cheyenne leaders to let him preach and baptize the children.

Mac felt two ways about it. He’d been baptized himself and raised in the Church. He didn’t see that it would hurt anything, but he resented all the white men who came west to teach the Indians the true way. Which only meant their way. What they didn’t see, at all, was that the Indians had plenty to teach the whites—if white people weren’t too dumb to realize they still had anything to learn.

Hell, the Indians had sense enough to study white ways and pick up what was useful.

Mac supposed he would have to help the priest. And Mac felt guilty—because he himself wanted something from De Smet. “I’ll ask them, Father, and I’ll have Felice baptized.” They both knew that gesture would be the key.

“Thank you, my son.”

But Mac wasn’t listening. “Mac!” he heard again in a high voice he knew.

Skinhead came striding through the bottoms. “Where’s Little One?” he demanded without even a hello or how was Fort Union. “Blue won’t tell me.”

Blue was trailing agitatedly behind Skinhead. Mac hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

“I got somep’n to tell her.” He looked mad now, as did Blue.

“She’s laid up, in the infirmary.” He indicated the tent.

Calling Eagle stuck her head out to see what was happening. Skinhead brushed by her. Mac and Blue bumped in the doorway, keeping up.

The fat man squatted beside Lisette at the far end, where she lay on some robes. Lisette’s bare breast, which Dreyfuss was working on, embarrassed Mac.

Without hesitation Skinhead said, “Genet’s dead.”

Mac saw tears well in her eyes. She took Skinhead’s hand tenderly. “What happened?”

“They told me at Fort Union. He was coming upriver, to clerk for the Company at Fort Clark and bring you there. He just keeled over. Buried him on the riverbank.”

She squeezed his hand for a long time, eyes closed. “Thank you.”

“What you done to yourself?”

Blue was hovering nervously, like everyone else. Skinhead seemed too rough a presence.

“I let a buffalo cow run over me.”

“You gonna die?”

She gave a sudden, luminous smile. “Not yet.” She really looked beautiful sometimes, thought Mac.

“Then let’s go to Union and spend the winter. I hired on to hunt.”

Blue shot Mac a dark, bloody look. But Mac found Skinhead touching. He’d just given as close to a proposal of marriage as he could.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Little One murmured, and giggled a little, then gasped in pain, clutching her ribs.

Twilight at the trading post was a time Mac liked, particularly a nippy, salmon-colored twilight such as this one. Annemarie was down in the river, waist deep, holding the hammerheaded bay with a halter. Right now she was rubbing its muzzle, which the horse was holding still for. In a few minutes she would slide onto its back. This was how she started breaking a horse to ride. She did it marvelously well—fast, easily, with excellent results. Since Mac wanted to be a horse trader, he was lucky to be married to a good trainer.

Mac stirred the stew, keeping it from sticking. That was how he freed Annemarie to work with the horses a few minutes each evening.

Some of the hands were hanging targets—scraps of ticking—on the bottom round of a huge cottonwood. The throwers were aiming at the patches with knives or hawks. The stakes were small belongings, hard to come by in the mountains.

Other men were playing euchre. They had confiscated one of the two decks Skinhead brought from St. Louis—those cards weren’t going to be used for throwing-knife targets.

Blue was sitting on a stump sharpening his double-bitted ax. He would stick one blade in a crack in the stump while he filed the other. That ax was sharp as a knife. Sharper than some.

Mac wondered, Why do men go for sport with a tinge of risk? Why not do quillwork or some such? Or even break horses patiently? Mac liked that tinge, too, he admitted to himself.

Skinhead stepped off the seven steps from the big cottonwood round once more, to make sure. He took his stance, let the throwing knife drop behind his head, and hurled it hard. It thunked deep into the wood and quivered. Missed by more than a handspan. Truth was, Skinhead wasn’t particularly good with knife or hawk, though he’d never admit to that. He did make them fly fiercely, though.

Ferry missed, too. And Bass and Paddock. Looked like nobody would win whatever they had bet. Mac stirred the stew.

Dreyfuss tossed his knife softly and clumsily and hit close to the patch, but the knife didn’t stick. He laughed softly at himself. Dreyfuss was way behind on his skills of war. Despite his sophisticated upbringing, Dreyfuss was a determined student of woodsmanship. Strikes Foot was teaching him to track and said he was quick and subtle. From Strikes Foot, a high compliment.

Finally Skinhead won the wager, whatever it was. He had a way of coming out better than he looked.

“Hey, Blue, Paul the Blue,” called Skinhead. “Come throw with us.”

“You got naught I want,” said Blue without looking up.

Mac was looking at Blue’s hands and forearms as he worked. He was a really big man. His wrists seemed as big around as Mac’s knees.

“You bragged on what you can do with that ax. Why not try against this child?”

“You’ll not get your hands on my ax.”

Mac saw Annemarie lead the horse out of the river. She’d be wet and wanting to change. He started down to take the horse to the corral for her.

“Let him be, Skinhead,” said Dreyfuss.

“Let’s us think,” sang Skinhead. “What does this child have that Paul the Blue wants? What would he compete like a man for?”

Blue just worked harder at the blade.

“My rifle from Jake Hawken? Naw, Blue cain’t shoot.” He made a show of pondering the problem. “A…a sixteen-hide lodge? Wagh! Big improvement on a tent. But he don’t have nobody to share it with and is too shy to ask.”

“Skinheads—” started Dreyfuss, but the fat man squelched him with an angry look. Dreyfuss was the new man here.

“This child knows,” said Skinhead. “A kiss from Little One! A kiss is all that beaver’s ever gonna get from Lisette.” He cackled and looked around for men to join in. No one did, but Skinhead didn’t care. Blue was walking slowly toward him, the ax in one hand.

“You want it?” asked Blue soberly. “You deserve it. How? Bare hands? Knives?”

“Stop it, boze of you!” Dreyfuss shouted, and stepped between them. Blue flung him to the ground with one arm. But Blue stopped.

“Jealous are ye, coon? Jealous of Skinhead’s dallying with Little One?” Skinhead was just standing there, eyes fixed on Blue. No one knew what his move might be. “Course, ye be jealous. Blue wants a woman but has no balls.”

Skinhead began to circle now, circle to his right with snaky agility. Blue moved with him, opposite. “Skinhead has balls, and what goes with ’em. Skinhead puts it up her till she can feel it in her throat.”

They kept moving, each wary. Dreyfuss didn’t know if the game might stop in a laugh or move on to something deadly. Dreyfuss saw Mac start away from the river, leading the horse.

“Think on that, coon—up to her throat. She hollers out for it. Makes your balls shrivel up, hearing that, don’t it?”

Everyone backed off. Dreyfuss decided to do something. He strode toward Skinhead. “Stop it, damn you!” he yelled.

“Another step, pork-eater,” snarled Skinhead, his hand on his pistol, “and I’ll shoot you instead of him.”

Dreyfuss stopped. Now he was sure it was inevitable. No one could even make out what Mac was hollering through the trees.

Blue and Skinhead watched each other. Skinhead stopped in front of the round of the cottonwood. Blue stood opposite him, looking relaxed. Dreyfuss could feel it grow. He told himself Skinhead would charge, head down, like a bull, and they would grapple.

When Skinhead jerked the gun up, it seemed to happen slowly. The barrel first cleared the wide belt and then rose and then belched white smoke.

At that moment something glinted silver in the slant sunlight.

Blue was still standing, glaring at Skinhead.

Skinhead was standing—impaled on the cottonwood by the ax, his eyes bugged out.

Dreyfuss vomited.

Mac ran up to Skinhead. The forward blade was rammed all the way through his collarbone and throat, stuck deep into wood. The other blade gleamed maliciously under his chin. There was almost no blood. Mac looked across at Blue, and back at the hurled ax. “My God,” Mac muttered.

Blue strode up, grabbed the handle, and levered the ax out. Skinhead’s body started to pitch forward. Max grabbed it and Dreyfuss helped him. They lowered the fat man to the ground.

Mac turned toward Blue and said, “I don’t understand you.” Blue just kept walking away. Mac saw then that Blue was limping, and one pants leg was bloody.

Blue’s leg turned white first. After a few days it started turning black.

Mac knew that was why Dreyfuss called them all together in the infirmary tent. And he observed that Dreyfuss had built a fire in front.

The leg was exposed from the top of the thigh down, the ugly wound just above the knee. Blue was staring at the tent roof. He’d scarcely spoken since it happened, and then sullenly. Lisette attended him constantly, but he seemed not to notice.

“It’s gangrene.” Dreyfuss pointed at the black leg. The toes looked like bruised and swollen plums. The leg was dark nearly up to where Skinhead’s ball tore it up. “It’s got to come off.”

Mac made signs to Calling Eagle. The Cheyenne healer wanted to see what the Frenchman healer would do.

“Will that work?” asked Mac.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Dreyfuss. “But he dies for sure otherwise.”