All True Not a Lie in It (17 page)

There is only our breathing and the far echo of the horses’ stamping. Stewart and Squire stand where they are. Hill goes straight up the small incline towards Findley, brushing past him. I go to the left, to the other side of the tree whose branches make a thin awning over me. At the cliff edge I am the first of us to see it, the huge spreading plain below, a shimmering carpet of grasses with waves of treed hills rising behind. Peaceful but entirely living, a vast breathing thing with a rippling green heart and lungs. My own breath is puny.

A very light rain is beginning. I open my mouth and catch it on my tongue, it tastes marvellous, like a splinter of sky or like a secret, as I imagine.

—Kentucky.

As Findley says this word it seems to me that I have known it all my life. It seems to me that I have been dreaming of this place without knowing how to say it, without giving it a name. And it is the most beautiful name. Hill is breathing over my shoulder, the others are coming now, but I stare down over the spread of grasses, and I say:

—Empty. Is it?

Findley answers quiet:

—Buffalo enough, and bear and deer and beaver and all else you might want. Keep watching and you shall see.

—Indians, surely.

—Not to live. Some of them agreed with your good King to keep it as a hunting ground only. Of course your King did say you would keep out of it as well. I am proud to say that I supplied some of the silver chains and bangles he sent to seal the bargain, did you know it? But then my country does not recognize any English king’s authority, no. And perhaps he will not be your King for long. This country does as it pleases also.

He waves his hand at it.

I watch the grasses lift and shiver as if they are a thing stretching its back. I want to believe what Findley says. I want to believe that we are the first to see this place from this cliff. I want to believe it is its own place.

I want to believe that this is Heaven now just here, as Findley promised. Is there any great wrong in wanting Heaven now?

H
EAVEN SENDS
hornets to sting Hill’s throat and swell him to bullfrog proportions. He is forced to keep to his bed at the station camp we make at a grassy place on a wide creek near a salt lick. Findley and Hill make a quarrelsome household there in the lean-to. Squire and I privately agree he ought to stay as their hunter and keeper to make sure they remain alive. Stewart and I rig up a platform high between trees for the hides we will get.

From the tree he has dragged himself up, Stewart calls:

—Let the bears and wolves try to get them up here.

I say:

—Hill will keep them off.

Hill smiles fatly, deep in his flask, and answers in a rasping whisper:

—If I am to die, my spirit will contact you from the next world, Dan. It will come in search of you wherever you may be and give you word that I am safe. I am sure I will be safe. But my spirit will tell you so, you need not worry.

Hill, at this time it seems to me your spirit must be a wobbling lump of flesh somewhere in your entrails, something that will crawl about of its own accord whether you are living or not. I do not forget your words.

This speech costs him some effort and he lies back with his tongue out. I look at Findley to make sure he will be all right staying here. He is no hunter but is a fair enough cook. He crouches over Hill, patting the fattened head, and says:

—Go, go, Dan, and take your big Stewart. I can live in peace with any man who carries such a supply of rum and who has so birdlike a voice.

So Stewart and I continue on the Warrior’s Path, seeing no Indians. We cross the broad Kentucky River, which Findley said we would find, in a sandy shallows. I lose no pleasure in saying
Kentucky
. I say it to myself whenever it comes into my mind.

We keep to the woods at first. Stewart always says, After you, whenever we come to a narrowing of the path or a small ford on a creek. I tell him not to say so anymore and he says:

—All right then, Dan.

He is very happy now, though still not well, and I am happy for his silence. The sounds here catch at me. Birds calling and crying like water dripping, like thin strings and like bells. Insects buzz and crawl into our ears, and the wind has its own dry voice. We see a tree on fire with blossom, rustling and continually moving like the bright grass in the open meadows. I want to tie blankets about the horses’ hooves to muffle them. I want to hear everything.

We camp on the edge of the open meadows. We go out shoeless at dawn when the beautiful grasses and clover are wet and bluish, leaving the horses. We are the more silent, though we cannot help but leave footprints everywhere. Stewart’s shooting has calmed since the first buffalo, he follows my lead. We track the feeding deer early in the morning. The little camps we make as we progress are loaded with skins swinging in packs from the trees, all fine-haired spring skins ready for market. We pass deeper into the thick heart of the country.

The weather relaxes into summer, and we hunt in our breech-cloths only, greasing ourselves with bear oil against the insects. Our own skins deepen their colour in the sun. Stewart has regained of his health. It seems that we are transformed, that we are alive in some new manner.

The grass grows higher and thicker and has great sudden ripples of movement running through it, but the game does not escape us. Every evening we sit scraping and stretching yet more skins at our fires after we eat. We have been out for months.

Out of the quiet one night Stewart says:

—I cannot see how we will be able to pack all of this back to the station camp. But we will be rich, just as your friend Hill said.

His eyes flash like his knife as it scrapes the hair from another buckskin. I say:

—Well, Stewart, I am glad you are so sure.

I cannot help but think so myself, though. It is easy to feel a part of all of this richness and easy to feel ourselves lucky. We know the country well now, the terrain and all the paths of the creeks and rivers. We have gone north as far as a great grey river, which I believe to be the Ohio. We feel entirely at home.

Stewart stretches his dirty toes and gives his barking laugh. He says:

—What will you do with all of your money?

I think for a time and I say:

—You remember the big bones we found at that big lick.

—Yes. But those are free for the taking. Going to build a house of them?

I chuckle and bite at the loose edge of a hide and taste the skin. I think of the huge piles of bones heaped all over the bare ground. We crawled into a great ribcage and rattled it as best we could. We thought at first that they were the bones of giants. Brobdingnag, I said, for Gulliver. Seeing the long curved teeth, Stewart decided
on elephants, saying he once saw a picture of one at a tavern. I have never seen an elephant, but they must have lived here once and gone there for the salt as all the animals do. Everything here seems to demand witnesses to its splendour. Even the dead want us to see their bones.

But I do not feel my dead here, I am free of them. I have not thought of them at all. I say:

—I might build myself an elephant. Take the little ones for rides.

Stewart’s laugh barks across the fire again. He says:

—I will as well. My little girl would like it. And Hannah would like one to go preaching on.

I chuckle thinking of Hannah, who has grown up severe, as if all the Quaker in our line has puddled down in her, the last-born. I say:

—Paint it scarlet for her.

Stewart laughs once more. When he is silent, a great moth bats the air overhead and near falls into our fire. I watch it veer off and vanish. I wonder where it goes in the dark.

We do not often talk of our wives. On some nights I miss Rebecca with sharp surprising digs in my chest as if her rough heels are drumming on it. I am sorry for it when I realize that I do not think of home more frequently. Now I can almost see her curled little mouth and hear her little laugh. I am struck with a fierce wish to give her something marvellous and surprising. An elephant would do. Rebecca, you would love Kentucky. Eventually you would. You will. So I think at this time.

Aloud I say:

—I do not suppose the women will object to being rich in any case. Even if they have only buckskin to wear for the rest of their days.

But Rebecca and the children seem half the world from this place. The wildness around us is black and huge, a great gullet
enclosing us. I think of a mother wolf carrying her pup along in her jaws or in her womb. Safe inside a danger. I wonder whether this is how a pup feels or indeed whether it feels anything, whether the minds of wolves are empty but for the yellow hunger that shows through their eyes.

I have never been fond of wolves. To turn my thoughts I begin to sing, and Stewart sings with me though he does not know the words.

In late autumn, Findley is singing alone in the camp. We hear him before we arrive, his voice cutting through the quiet. His singing is quite sweet. I call:

—Has an angel condescended to land in Kentucky?

Findley looks at us from where he lies, his feet outstretched and bare. Two pups are fighting beside him. My limbs tense when I see their shady fur. Well. Wolves. Findley smiles at us and says slowly:

—Angels have always walked here as they please. And fed upon buffalo tongue.

Stewart dumps a bale of skins at Findley’s bony toes and says:

—Where is Squire?

—And good day to you as well.

Findley cocks an eyebrow. He looks slow and pained. He says:

—I am not enough for you, I can see, fallen angel or no. But! I shall gratify your curiosity in telling you that your good Squire has seen fit to leave for Carolina for more shot and traps.

He gets up stiffly and makes one of his aggressive little bows, putting me in mind of a terrier holding itself back, waiting for something to reveal itself as a rat to worry and shake. He says:

—And have you no interest in your other friend?

—Have you killed him?

I say it jokingly but I would not be surprised to see Findley point to a mound: Here Lies Hill. Findley shakes his head. His eyes look tired. They are a flower-blue like those of the little wolves. He says:

—My compliments to you this beautiful day, Danny boy. Winter coming, and still so warm.

One of the wolves runs up and bites Findley’s ankle. I say:

—It is a beautiful day, Findley. What are you doing with such pets?

—Orphans. I thought I might train them up in the way they should go. I might trade them for something, who could resist a beast so trained? But they only bite me and fall in the fire when I am not looking. Still. They provide companionship.

The pup charges at me and clamps its milky teeth around the toe of my moccasin. I shake it off and grab it by the neck to return it to Findley. It bites him again and cocks its ears. He gives a tired chuckle as he swats it away.

I take him to see the horses packed with the skins we have brought in, and his jaw relaxes. He says:

—Good. That is money in the bank.

I say:

—Hill would like a look.

But Findley sets his mouth and goes back to the lean-to, where there is no Hill, and where Stewart has sat down. He plucks a turkey we shot on the way, which we roast on a rope over the fire for our meal. The wolf pups draw close to the turning meat. They whine and look to me and dart back to the shelter again, where they lay their heads upon their paws.

—No salt left.

Findley says so mournfully, but he brightens when Stewart offers the last of his little stock. I bring out mine also, which is less. In doing so I spill a little from the bag and I say:

—Clumsy. Bad luck.

Findley says:

—Ah then, our Boone is a mortal, only a mortal.

Stewart spits on the ground where the salt scattered. The sun makes it glitter. I say:

—That a remedy? Salt into gold?

Stewart grins and says:

—If you say so.

We sit under the lean-to. The wind ruffles the roof. The wolves tumble about and I move away. Among the bedding I catch a whiff of Hill. I have to ask: