When the Legends Die (6 page)

The next morning the boy was halfway to his watching place above the man’s camp when he heard the thunder of a gun. He knew that sound because after his mother died he had got out his father’s rifle and fired it by mistake. It made a sound that seemed to lift the roof from the lodge. He put the rifle away and never touched it again. But after that he knew the voice of a gun. He heard it three more times, all from the man’s camp. Then there was silence.

He did not hurry. What had happened had happened and could not be changed. But soon he heard the man shouting anger-words. Then the boy reached his watching place and saw the man at the creek, his left arm red with blood from his neck to his fingers. He was trying to wash the blood away and he was still shouting. The boy knew some of the words. His father had spoken those words when he was angry.

The man washed his arm, but could not stop the blood. He came back to his camp, and then the boy saw the she-bear. She was a grizzled-brown heap beside the man’s fire, which was still burning. She was dead. The man walked around her, afraid even though she was dead. He tore a shirt into strips and wrapped them around his arm, but they were red with blood before he finished the wrapping. The man’s talk became fear-talk. He tied a strip of cloth around his arm and put a stick in it and twisted the stick, but the blood still ran from his fingers.

The man kicked the coffeepot, which sat steaming in the fire, and it rolled on the she-bear, spilling a wet brown stain on her fur. Then he went to his burro, grazing a little way upstream, and tried to lead the burro back to his camp. The burro was afraid of the bear and braced its legs. He went back to the camp and picked up his folded blanket and his rifle. He put the blanket on the burro’s back and he was so weak he almost fell before he got on the burro. His feet were close to the ground, the burro was so small, but he kicked the burro’s ribs and shouted and beat the burro’s ribs with his gun. The burro went around the bear and went down the valley at a slow trot.

The boy waited, listening to the man’s voice thin away in the distance. He wondered if the man was singing his song for going on the long journey. He knew it was a fear-song. The man had killed the she-bear. Now he was afraid the she-bear was going to kill him.

When the distance had swallowed the man’s voice the boy went down to the camp. He looked at the dead she-bear, and he saw the dead cub beside her. It was the smaller of the two cubs, the female. He said the song for a dead bear. Then he looked at the tracks, the signs, and knew what had happened. The she-bear and her cubs had been on the hillside, near his watching place. They had smelled the food the man was cooking. The cubs had gone down to the camp and the man had tried to drive them away. He had shot one cub. The she-bear had charged him, and he had shot her three times. Before she died she reached him with one angry paw that slashed down his arm. That was what had happened.

He looked for the other cub. It was nowhere in sight. He looked at the gear the man had left. It was of no use to him, the shovel, the battered coffeepot, the frying pan. Then he heard the other bear cub crying in the brush beyond the creek. He went there and found it, and he talked to it until it was not afraid of him. It went with him down to the man’s camp and cried when it nosed at the dead she-bear. He talked to it again, and he fed it the food the man had been cooking. Then he started back to his lodge. He told the bear cub to come with him, and it came.

That is how the boy and the bear cub became brothers and friends. That is how it happened.

After that the boy was not alone.

I
T WAS THE NOON
hour on a warm July day and Jim Thatcher was alone in the store, both his clerks having gone home for dinner. Jim always ate early and used this slack time to check invoices. He was at his desk when he heard the yelps and howls of a dogfight in the street. He glanced up but paid no more attention until some shouted, “Get a gun! It’s a bear!” Then he jumped to his feet, picked up a .30-30 from the rack, broke open a box of cartridges and jammed three of them into the magazine. He levered one into the chamber as he hurried to the door to the street. Deer and even bobcats, but few bears, had wandered into Pagosa on occasion.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and couldn’t believe his eyes. There in the street was a grizzly cub, hunkered back in the dust, with three dogs yelping and dancing around it. One dog darted in, the bear whipped a paw, and the dog went end over end, howling in pain. Then Jim heard the boy shouting, in Ute. The boy was standing at the curb, and he was as incredible as the bear cub. He was just a youngster, ten or eleven years old, and he was dressed in the old way, moccasins, leggings, clout, no shirt, and braids. He was shouting at the cub, and the cub looked at him, started to go to him, only to be attacked by the dogs again. It snarled, slapped another dog and knocked it sprawling with a gash along its ribs.

Men were running up from all directions. Someone shouted, “Kill it! Jim, kill that damned bear before it kills all the dogs in town!”

The cub, having momentarily disposed of the dogs, went to the boy and licked his hand, then faced the crowd, frightening by the uproar, growling, ready to fight.

Jim said to the excited men, “Take it easy! Can’t you see it’s a pet cub? For God’s sake, don’t start anything!” He turned to the boy. “Tell your friend to behave himself, son.”

The boy looked at him, as bewildered as the bear cub. He said something in Ute, then caught the bear’s scruff in one hand, picked up a pack that was on the street beside him, and walked away. The crowd fell back, stumbling over one another’s feet. The boy and the cub went to Jim Thatcher’s store and walked in, both of them.

Two men came running up the street, rifles in their hands. “Where’s the bear?” one shouted.

“In Thatcher’s store!” someone answered.

The two armed men started to the store, but Jim Thatcher stepped in front of them. “Keep your shirts on, both of you,” he said firmly. “The bear’s just a cub and a pet. I’ll handle this. If anybody starts shooting, I’ll finish it! Understand?” Then he turned and went into the store, closing the door behind him. The crowd stayed outside in the street, watching through the windows.

The boy was at the counter, the cub sitting like a big shaggy dog beside him. Jim went back of the counter and the boy opened his pack, took out three baskets, and set them on the counter. Then he turned and looked around the store.

Jim said, “You want to trade?”

The boy looked at him, still not understanding a word he said. He went over to the knife case, glanced into it, moved to the case of fishing tackle, then to the shelves of canned goods. He paused at the bolts of cloth and the piles of overalls. Finally he found what he was looking for, the blankets. He went down through the pile until he found a red one exactly like the one Bessie had traded for the last time she was here. He pulled it from the pile and brought it back to the counter. The cub had been at his side everywhere he went. Now it stood beside him, watching the crowd outside the windows and lifting its forefeet nervously.

Jim asked again, “You want to trade?” and still the boy did not answer. Jim picked up one of the baskets and examined it. It was identical with the last ones Bessie had brought in, though of slightly better workmanship. He looked at the boy and asked, “Where is your mother? What are you doing here alone?”

There was no answer. The boy pushed the three baskets toward Jim and drew the red blanket toward himself.

“Your mother brought four baskets for a blanket the last time,” Jim said, then shook his head at himself. No use talking English to this boy. He was a throwback, right out of the old, old days. Either that or Bessie was trying a trick so clever Jim couldn’t believe it. She could be hiding in the brush. She could have sent the boy in with these three baskets and have told him to act dumb but to get another blanket. It could happen, but—well, it just didn’t make sense. The boy wasn’t dickering. He
couldn’t
dicker, not without at least a few words of English.

Jim looked at the other baskets. All of them were of superior workmanship, the best Bessie ever made. Actually, they more than covered the price of the blanket. But if he let the boy have the blanket for three baskets this time, next time he would come in and try to get a blanket for two baskets.

He asked, “Don’t you know any English at all?”

The blank look in the boy’s eyes said, truthfully, that he didn’t.

Jim glanced toward the street and saw Blue Elk, who had just arrived. Blue Elk seemed to be asking what had happened. Someone told him. Blue Elk approached the door, hesitated, looked in through the glass. Jim motioned to him, beckoned him in. Blue Elk opened the door and several others started to come in with him. “Just Blue Elk!” Jim ordered. “The rest of you stay outside.”

Blue Elk came in and closed the door behind him, beaming with importance at being so singled out. Then he saw the boy and the bear cub, which looked at him and raised its hackles. Blue Elk hesitated, his hand still on the knob. He was puffing as though he had hurried. Now he caught his breath in fear and surprise.

“Come on in,” Jim said, “but don’t come too close. And for God’s sake don’t touch the boy or the cub or there’ll be all hell to pay.”

Blue Elk came a few steps toward the counter. His shoes squeaked and the cub’s ears stiffened. Blue Elk stopped, took off his derby hat and wiped his forehead.

“This is Bessie Black Bull’s boy,” Jim said. “He came in here alone and he doesn’t savvy English. Find out why he came alone.”

Blue Elk spoke to the boy in the tongue. “We are of the people, we two. I am your friend. The man wants to know where is your mother.”

The boy said, “My mother is where I left her.” He lifted his chin in pride.

“Why did you come here alone?”

“I came to trade the baskets for the blanket.”

“What does he say?” Jim asked.

“He says his mother is at home. He says he came to trade for a blanket.”

“Why did he come alone? Why didn’t Bessie come?”

Blue Elk put the question. The boy shrugged and did not answer.

“Why did not your mother come to trade for the blanket?” Blue Elk asked again, his voice sharp this time.

The cub bristled at his tone. The boy put his hand on the cub’s head and it turned and licked his hand, then lifted its lip at Blue Elk. The boy said, “My mother—“ He made the cut-off sign. It could have meant that he was through with talk. He folded the blanket and put it in his pack.

Blue Elk said, “I speak of your mother, not your father. I know your father is dead. Where is your mother?”

The boy impatiently made the cut-off sign again.

“She is dead?”

The boy scowled and nodded his head.

“Where do you live, if she is dead?”

“I live in my lodge.”

“Where is your lodge?”

The boy shrugged off the question.

“What does he say?” Jim asked.

“He says his mother is dead.”

“Dead? I don’t believe it!”

“My people do not lie. He says she is dead.”

“But she made these baskets he just brought in! They are the best baskets she ever made. When did she die, anyway?”

Blue Elk turned to the boy again. “The man does not believe your mother is dead. Who do you live with?”

The boy said, “I will not talk of this thing,” and he made die cut-off sign, sharply, incisively.

“Boys do not speak to the old men of their people in this way!” Blue Elk said impatiently. And he asked again, “Who do you live with?”

The boy said, “ I live with my brother.” He shouldered his pack, then put his hand on the cub’s scruff. They started toward the door.

Blue Elk stepped aside to let them pass. The crowd at the doorway pushed back, making room. The boy opened the door, went out into the street and turned toward the hills and the road to Piedra Town, the cub trotting beside him.

Nobody tried to stop them, but before they reached the end of the street someone shouted, “I’m going to get that bear! Who’s coming with me?” Several shouted, “I’ll go!”

Jim Thatcher came out of the store into the street. “Let that boy alone,” he ordered. “And leave his bear alone. Understand?”

Then the sheriff appeared. He wanted to know what had happened, what the crowd was doing. Jim said, “They want to go kill an Indian kid’s pet bear. Put a stop to it, George. Right now!”

The sheriff said, “I don’t know what this is all about, but I’ll go along with Jim Thatcher. If anybody starts a posse, the whole posse will land in jail!”

The crowd began to break up. Jim started to tell the sheriff what had happened, and Blue Elk went down the street, puzzling over this matter. He had gone only a little way when the preacher caught up with him. “Who was that boy, Blue Elk?” he asked.

Blue Elk glanced at him. “Bessie Black Bull’s boy.”

“Bessie Black Bull? George Black Bull’s woman? He was the one who killed Frank No Deer, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s the boy you brought to me to have baptized.”

Blue Elk nodded.

“What’s he doing, running around in a clout like a savage? He should be in school.”

Blue Elk glanced at him again. “Yes,” he said.

“Where is he living?”

“Back in the mountains.”

“Have his parents got a permit to live off the reservation and keep him out of school?”

“His parents are dead.”

“Who is he living with, then?”

Blue Elk looked around. Several men were watching, listening. He motioned to the preacher and they crossed the street and walked down toward the river bridge where they could be alone.

“That boy,” the preacher said again, “should be in school. If he is left running around like this, with that bear, somebody is going to get hurt. Where did you say he lives?”

“Back in the mountains.”

“Who with?”

“His brother, he said.”

“I didn’t know he had a brother. Or does he mean an uncle?”

Blue Elk looked at him shrewdly. “I could find out these things,” he said.

“ I wish you would. I baptized that boy and I feel responsible for him.”