Crossing Purgatory (11 page)

The following morning as they were yoking the teams, Upperdine let drop his tow-line and walked to the rear of his wagon and rummaged through some sacks.

“Got any tobacco?” he asked Thompson.

“A little. You have a need?”

“I do.” Upperdine found the sack he wanted and dug through the contents and brought out several strands of glass beads, a carved wooden horse, and a five-pound sack of coffee.

“For the Savages,” he added.

“What Savages?” Thompson asked, scanning the flat expanse. And suddenly before him rode a dozen or so Indians, appearing, like the first buffalo he'd seen, to have sprung full-fleshed from the prairie itself. Not there and then, there. The Welshman, Rice, pulled his fowling piece from the wagon but Upperdine motioned him to remain calm.

“What shall we do?” asked Thompson.

“Nothing. We welcome them and hope they do not decide to harass us. Show your weapons. Do not shoulder them, but let our friends know we are well armed.”

Thompson eased toward the Lights' wagon as the Captain walked to the mounted Indians and began conversing and signing. He took up his long rifle and rested the butt plate on the ground. Both the lead Indian and Upperdine appeared serious and at times sounded strident. Arms in pantomime, language a mix of English and incoherent guttural sounds, exaggerated facial expressions. The ponies shuffled in the dirt and dust rose from their hooves. The Indians were tall to a man, light-skinned and had what Thompson thought of as European noses, sharp and prominent. They looked sturdy and well-muscled with clean-shaven faces and skin more deeply copper than red. All appeared completely at ease on horseback. Only the spokesman dismounted to confer with Upperdine. They were armed with bows and lances, knives and hatchets at their belts. Two carried muskets. He noticed a few youngsters among the band, probably no older than Joseph. They concerned him most. No scars, hot blood. He watched them closely. He also found himself hoping that Joseph had not managed to procure additional rounds for the pistol he'd refused to yield up.

After a time, Upperdine turned from the Indians and walked to his men.

“Trouble?” Pauperbaugh asked.

“It's as I expected. They want tribute for the buffalo we've taken from them.”

“Nonsense,” Rice said. Upperdine ignored him.

“Thompson, I'll take that tobacco now, if it suits you.”

“I will fetch it up.”

“And Mr. Pauperbaugh, I'll trouble you for one bolt of that purple felt you are carrying.”

“If I must.”

“You must.” Upperdine turned to the Welshmen. “I'm afraid you don't have much in your wagon that would appeal to them. But they trade up and down the trail, and a little currency would sit well with them.”

“I'm thinking my buckshot would sit as well,” said Rice.

“There are twelve of them, and all able to fire off four arrows to your one load. I do not believe they wish to harm us, or they would have done so. But do not doubt that they are capable of it.” Upperdine spat in the dust. “Now, gather me a few coins.”

Upperdine presented the Indians with his trinkets and the other ransom. The lead Indian placed the coins in a leather pouch hanging from his neck and fingered the calico but made no motion to gather up the goods. He stood silently, arms crossed at his chest.

“No more,” Upperdine said, crossing his arms as well.

The mounted Indians began slowly to space out their ponies in a row, facing the wagons. Thompson took a deep breath to steady his nerves and calculated his first target should a skirmish ensue. His positioning, how best to protect Hanna and Joseph. For several moments, no one spoke and no one moved. A snort from one of the ponies, a twitching tail. Then, to his left, Hanna Light climbed from her wagon, walked over to Upperdine and the Indian fixed in impasse, and placed the turquoise egg on top of the calico bolt. The Indian picked up the rock and turned it in his hand, held it up to the sun. He watched Hanna return to her wagon, and, pointing toward her, spoke with Upperdine.

“No,” Upperdine said, and re-crossed his arms, set his feet apart, a wall.

The Indian stood in place a short time longer and then put the turquoise rock into his purse with the coins and motioned to one of the young Indians to collect the tribute.

The mood between Upperdine and the Indians seemed to lighten almost instantly, with Upperdine uncrossing his arms and motioning with his hands, take, take. The lead Indian adorned himself with one of Upperdine's bead necklaces, mounted, and led his men into the plains. The company watched until the ponies disappeared below a gradually sloping depression and up the far side, and down again. Captain Upperdine retrieved the tow-line and led his ox to the yoke. “Let's not tarry,” he ordered.

They pushed the animals hard. They did not noon and they walked into the evening, covering eighteen miles, according to Upperdine's calculation. When they stopped for the night, he ordered the men to pull the wagons close and directed that they sleep on the ground between the back wheels. As was becoming their habit, Thompson and Upperdine supped together. Thompson mulled the events of the day, the Indians, but more, of course, than that.

“So, she is aware?” Thompson said.

Upperdine understood his question. “I'd guess as much.”

“She observed your negotiations. She understood the stakes, and she acted.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?” Thompson asked.

Upperdine picked a piece of grizzle from his teeth. “I do not pretend to know.”

“Perhaps she is recovering her wits,” Thompson said. Then, after a pause, “Perhaps she never lost them to begin with.”

“Perhaps,” Upperdine said.

“Yet still she will not speak.” Thompson used a rib as a pointer. “I attempted to talk with her, and it seemed like that mania just came back down over her face, like a widow's veil.”

“I ain't a physician,” Upperdine said. “I got no answers.”

Thompson shook his head, questions still buzzing, and changed subjects.

“What are they like, the savages?”

“That's like asking what's a white man like. All sorts, like we got Irishmen and Welshmen and Englishmen. All different sorts.” They ate in silence, Upperdine chewing on his meat, and then he went on.

“Take your Cheyenne, kind of like royalty, tall and quiet and never shows you what he's thinking. Crows, they like a good time. Seen a brave one time lift up his squaw's skirt and just plant his corn, right out in the open. The Crows can steal a horse right out from under you and you don't even realize it's gone until your feet hit the ground.”

“Thieves,” Thompson said.

“But, they're not too much for killing our kind,” Upperdine said. “Would rather keep us around to steal from. The Comanche, now that's another story. Bandy and mean and got no use for whites. Think we're disgusting creatures, all hairy and pale.” Upperdine laughed at his characterization.

“Who were they we met today?”

“Arapahoe.”

“They didn't give us too much trouble.”

“Not today. But they call themselves the ‘bison path people.' Them buffalo herds, that is their whole life out here, and I expect it makes them dead ripe nervous to see us laying waste to them.” Upperdine walked off into the night and Thompson could hear the stream of his piss, and then he returned. “Tell you this. They know how to make a living off them animals, food, shelter, clothing, everything. I once seen some winter-starved squaws drag a drowned buffalo calf from a tangle of deadfall in the river bend. I couldn't figure what they was going to do with that beast, all swelled up and putrefied. They ate it. Raw.”

Thompson tossed the rib bone into the fire. “How do you know what to expect when they come up on you like today?”

“Don't, and it don't much matter. It's a big land out here, and you ain't likely to see the savage often, and only then when they want you to. And they won't make theirselves known until they want something from you. Your life or a little sugar, hard to tell.” The Captain tossed a few dried chips on the embers, and sparks danced from the flame.

“I once passed a evening with a nice enough Indian. Had a little whiskey, a pipe, I slept easy. That very same Indian and his boys come up on a Texan riding alone not two days later. They took his horse and drug the man back to their camp and slit open his stomach and let the dogs chew on his guts while the Texan watched. Just never know.”

Thompson spat into the dirt.

“That is inhuman.”

Upperdine stood.

“Careful to judge. I heard that the Texan's kin came up on the Comanche camp when the men were out raiding. Laid waste, killed everyone in it. Mostly squaws and young ones. A few old men. One old boy skinned out a squaw's female parts, hung them from his saddle horn.” Thompson looked up at Upperdine, dumbfounded. Upperdine started to his bedroll and then turned back.

“I know you are tore up over what happened with the Lights. Those men. But you got to face up to it. This land is wild yet. A hard place. No civilizing influence, and men forget themselves.” Upperdine left Thompson to his thoughts.

Thompson wrapped himself in his bedroll and watched as the fire went to cinder and darkness crept in around him, blinded him to the vast beyond, and centered him to his own consciousness. Sound only. His heartbeat. The soft breeze riffling the short grass, the gentle agitations that went unnoticed during the day. Coyotes sounded, and were silent. What's to become of the Lights? Joseph, his instability and flashes of aggression so unlike the boy he knew a short month ago. Hanna, sweet, innocent, now damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Could she survive until returned to sanity, and to the states? The Indian had wanted to trade for her, of that he was certain. A man's domain, this western territory. How to protect them, from others, from themselves?

Thompson peered into the darkness, and then, slowly, eyes adjusting to the night, he detected the outline of his foot, then the ghostly arc of the wagon canvas. He surveyed the dim world reappearing before him and thought, “This is my life. A shadow.” The long night ahead. The yawning emptiness within. He reclined onto his back and stared up into the band of stars crossing the universe.

11

T
hey passed through washed-out prairie, bleached flats, cactus and bunchgrass growing in tight fists. Sand hills and low plateaus intruded on the horizon like sea swells. Heat still burdened the land and pressed into their skulls. But Thompson knew they had been gaining elevation as they moved west, and with higher ground came an easing coolness at end of day. Imperceptibly, a few feet a mile, but mile after mile. During the day, clear skies, white heat; at dusk, the hint of chill creeping in like the melancholy memory of a lost love. In the lengthening nights, his blanket became a close companion. The high plains seemed to Thompson a desolate, wondrous cathedral. The sky a towering arched ceiling of blue, the horizon an unapproachable altar, a solemn, quiet, endless space. The vast openness, a place to ponder, to pray, although he'd all but forsaken belief.

The days passed with affirmative sameness, so when the landmark known as Big Timbers first came into view it seemed a mirage. Cottonwood trees lining both banks of the river jutted into the sky and appeared almost simultaneously with the imposition of great billowing clouds advancing from the west. What for days had been a monotonous, faded background transfigured into a landscape of radiant whites, sharp blues, subtle greens, and almost infinite shades of brown as sunlight played through the clouds and threw shadows across the plains and against the bluffs that rose from the river flats.

The five wagons crested a small rise and caught sight of Bent's trading post, a collection of stone and wooden buildings sitting below the bluffs on a stretch of high ground. Horses grazed on the broad floodplain, and a dozen tepees occupied that same bottomland: conical, symmetrical shapes against the stark angles of the buildings. Rock and timber, hide and pole, civilization in the territory. People milled, miniature in the distance.

“A sight,” Thompson remarked to Captain Upperdine, who rode beside him next to the wagon.

“Nothing like the old fort,” Upperdine commented. “Upriver a ways. Adobe brick, walls taller than two men. Plaza could quarter a hundred-fifty men. A icehouse sunk deep beside the storage bin.”

“Plaza?” Thompson asked.

“A town square. Come in out of high country, a man could feel civilized again, for a bit. A bath, a woman if you wanted and had a coin or a pelt for trade. Conversation. Bent kept books, and periodicals.”

“What's become of it?”

“Mountains got trapped out. Fur trade slowed. In forty-nine, Bent offered to sell it to the Army. Army declined. Figured Mr. Bent would abandon and they'd have it for free. Mr. Bent was a businessman, and that notion did not set well with him. Blew it to rubble. Moved here and took up on a smaller scale.”

Blew it to rubble. The idea that someone would destroy something he'd built with his own hands struck Thompson as almost inconceivable. Then it occurred to him with such startling clarity that he stopped in place as the oxen plodded on. It's exactly what he had done with his own homestead, his family, his life. Blown it to rubble.

Coming into the perimeter of the trading post put Thompson ill at ease. Indians, of different ilk, distinct in skin coloring, dress, size. Mexican traders, brown like the earth. A scattering of free Negroes, scores of white men of various dress and deportment, all hard-lined and trail-worn. He noticed only three females as they came into the confines of the post, Indians, who were dressing hides in proximity of the tepees. Among the stone buildings, traders sat under lean-tos that sheltered wares and pelts. Several men squatted in the shade of a cottonwood, talking a bit too loudly, laughing, and passing a jug. Thompson's attention drew to a cock-fighting bout underway in the stone ring: men hollering, bills scattered, blood on the sand. One cock had an eye dangling from its socket, but fought on and the crowd yelled encouragement. The noise of greeting and barter and argument ebbing and flowing in the dust-stirred air. He felt on guard, the world closing in around him, his senses assaulted after too long in solitude. He tensed, and then relaxed a bit when Upperdine moved the company through the outpost without halting.