Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (85 page)

 
          
 
A bead of sweat crept down the side of
Richard's head. A sinking feeling hollowed his gut, and his muscles tightened.
His rifle's wrist was damp where he clutched it.

 
          
 
One shot. Make it count. Remember, Travis saws
you can always bluff with a loaded rifle. He nodded to himself, mouth gone dry
as dust.

 
          
 
"Hold up!" Baptiste raised a hand.
"Somebody's a-coming."

 
          
 
Through a gap in the palisade, a lone Indian
man appeared. He wore nothing but a loincloth and short moccasins. In one hand
he carried a pipe, in the other a rifle. Behind him, Richard could see heads bobbing
as other Arikara took positions in the ditch behind the shattered palisade. Was
that sunlight glinting off a rifle?

 
          
 
The warrior walked bravely forward, head high,
the sun shining on his blunt brown features. Wide-set eyes seemed to pop out
from his face, giving him a frog look. His hair had been pulled into two long
braids intertwined with buffalo hair and his forelocks curled back over his
forehead. Stopping short, he called in passable English, "Who comes to the
villages of the Arikara?"

 
          
 
Baptiste smiled, urging his horse forward.
"Big Yellow, by God! It's Baptiste, coon. With me's Travis Hartman and
Dick Hamilton. Dave Green's coming up behind us with a boat."

 
          
 
Big Yellow cocked his head, but no smile of
greeting turned those hard lips. "Baptiste. Good to see you." And a
string of Arikara talk followed, helped along by flourishes of the pipe in his
right hand.

 
          
 
"What did he say?" Richard demanded.
Damn it all, he felt like a target sitting out here in the open. His skin
crawled, as if waiting for the impact of a bullet.

 
          
 
"Says he figured someone would come after
the army come through hyar a couple of weeks back," Travis said from the
side of his mouth. "Say's whites and Arikara are at peace, and he's got a
paper from General Atkinson ter prove it."

 
          
 
Baptiste had slipped off the side of his
horse, walking forward to hug Big Yellow like a long-lost brother.

 
          
 
Richard ran a nervous tongue along the edge of
his front teeth. "You believe that?"

 
          
 
Travis pulled at his beard, eyes squinted.
"Yep. So long's Atkinson's upriver. .. and we're armed. Won't be no
trouble, Dick. Not with Dave coming up ahind us. Reckon we're gonna be treated
like kings whilst we're hyar."

 
          
 
"Food's cooking," Baptiste called as
he turned away from Big Yellow. "What do you think, Travis?"

 
          
 
Hartman glanced warily at the heads watching
from the broken and scorched palisade. "Reckon we'll palaver out
hyar."

 
          
 
Big Yellow shrugged, a weary expression on his
broad face. "If you wish, Bear Man. Rees are at peace. I am Nes-anu. I
have given my word."

 
          
 
"And if they's another chief in
thar?" Travis jerked his head toward the village. "He give his word,
too?"

 
          
 
"I am the only Nesanu at this
place." Big Yellow offered up the pipe. "Ten lodges. All my people,
Bear Man. No one will harm you." His smile seemed forced and weary.
"Some of us have learned that no good will come of harming a White man.
Some of us know that
Leavenworth
was foolish—but soldier-chief Atkinson is not."

 
          
 
Travis pulled at his beard, and jerked a nod.
"All right, hoss, but if n something goes wrong, I'll kill ye."

 
          
 
Baptiste climbed into the saddle and rode
toward the gap in the palisade. Travis lingered long enough to ask, "Want
ter philosophy him fer a while?"

 
          
 
Richard shook his head.

 
          
 
"Best slip that fetish inside yer
britches, coon," Travis warned. "And if n anybody asks about it, ye
bought it down ter Saint Loowee, understand?"

 
          
 
Richard turned the fetish on his belt and
tucked it into his britches. "But, Travis, what do these people care about
skunk hide?"

 
          
 
Fat's in the fire now, Travis thought as he
passed through the palisade gap.

 
          
 
The Ree village lay in shambles. Here and
there, Travis could see the scars left by
Leavenworth
's cannon. As the army retreated, two of
Pilchefs men—or maybe it was the Sioux—had sneaked back and set fire to the
village. Big Yellow and his people had salvaged some timbers, and snagged
others from the river to rebuild a few of the large round houses. Each measured
about forty feet across and perhaps ten feet high at the top of the earthen
dome. Around them lay the collapsed wreckage of much larger homes, some sixty
feet across.

 
          
 
In silence, men, women, and children watched
them, and their simmering anger carried to him like a carrion breeze. He could
see it in their hard brown eyes, the hands clenching bows, old trade rifles,
and war clubs. In their wake, people closed in behind them. Unlike the old
days, the Rees wore tattered clothing: frayed, sun-bleached fabric; leather
worn full of holes and missing fringe; and scanty hanks of beads. The pitiful
garments seemed to hang on their bony flesh. But the hollow-eyed look of the
children bored into his very soul.

 
          
 
No way out but to shoot our way. Travis's gut
churned as he glanced back at the Arikara, who followed like a silent army.
This was a damn fool idea. But up ahead, Baptiste rode unconcerned, talking
easily with Big Yellow.

 
          
 
The place smelled. Old curled hides—once the
coverings for bull boats—had hardened in the sun. Broken pots lay scattered
about, including cracked iron and copper kettles. Scaffolding for meat racks
had been rebuilt, but from driftwood that looked rickety. Piles of horse manure
were drying in the sun, no doubt to be scooped up and thrown into the ever
hungry cookfires as soon as they cured. Old storage pits lay open, sides
crumbled, ready to trap the unwary passer-by in their yawning depths.

 
          
 
"This place is huge," Richard cried,
staring at a big house that had somehow remained standing. The long doorway
gaped like a black socket.

 
          
 
'This is the little village. Big one is a
rifle shot up ahead." Travis tried to calm his horse as a pack of village
dogs charged out to nip at the hocks.

 
          
 
"It looks pretty dismal," Richard
said sadly. "My God, how dirty they are."

 
          
 
"Comes of making war on whites,
coon."

 
          
 
"Travis, what Baptiste said? Is that
true? That they were just trying to save themselves?"

 
          
 
"Depends on how ye read sign. They's
other ways of saving yerself than killing traders."

 
          
 
They'd pulled up before one of the lodges and
Travis reluctantly dismounted. A sunshade of poles and woven cattail matting
cast a little square of shade. Big Yellow gestured, shouting orders, and a
gaunt woman hustled from the throng, ducked into the long entry, and emerged a
moment later carrying a buffalo hide. This she spread on the ground under the
sunshade.

 
          
 
Travis slapped at a fly that buzzed around his
nose. The whole place was curiously silent. How different from the days when
Lisa's boats had arrived here. Then the crowds had thronged about the boats;
feasting, dancing, and laying in the robes had followed. In those days, like
kings of old, the traders had been carried up from the river in buffalo robes
born by muscular warriors.

 
          
 
Travis kept his reins in his hand, noting that
Richard had learned his lesson—he kept his animal between him and the gathered
Rees.

 
          
 
At a gesture from Big Yellow, three boys came
to claim the horses. "Don't take them out of sight," Travis told them
in Arikara.

 
          
 
The skin on his back was crawling as he
motioned to Richard, and took a place on the buffalo robe in the shade. Tarnal
Hell, a coon could be shot in the back so easily. All a warrior had to do was
sneak around the side of the lodge, level his rifle, and she'd be Katy bar the
door.

 
          
 
Cattail leaves rattled in the hot breeze, the
sound like dry bones clacking. At the same time the rest of the Rees closed in,
seating themselves in the hot sun. For all the expression they showed, those
brown faces could have been modeled of clay.

 
          
 
Big Yellow filled his pipe, lit it with an
ember brought by a young man, and chanted the blessing to Nesanuto Atna t the
Corn Mother; and finally to Grandfather Stone. The pipe was offered to the
northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest, the four sacred directions of
the Arikara.

 
          
 
Baptiste puffed, and offered the pipe to the
directions. His brown eyes had softened as he stared out at the crowd. Then
Travis took the pipe, drawing the bittersweet tobacco into his lungs. To his
satisfaction, Richard copied every move correctly.

 
          
 
"It is good," Big Yellow began,
"to have traders in my village again. Our two peoples have had bad times.
Let us have no more." He made a wiping-out gesture with the flat of his
hand. 'The time for war between us is past."

 
          
 
"There has been trouble," Baptiste
agreed. "Big Yellow speaks the truth. We have come upriver with peace in
our hearts. We wish nothing more than to pass in peace."

 
          
 
Big Yellow sat thoughtfully, pulling on one of
his braids. He looked around at the people squatting in the sun, their empty
brown eyes fixed on him. "My people need many of the things the White
traders carry. We have no powder for our guns. No bullets to shoot. We are few
now. The village Medicine Bundles have been carried away to the four winds. The
Doctors' societies are all scattered everywhere. The White man has come like a
great wind, one that has broken Mother Corn, who we also know as the sacred
cedar— snapped her off clean. On every side, my people are surrounded by
enemies. The Sioux come and take what they wish. If we raise a hand in protest,
they kill us. We cannot stop them."

 
          
 
Big Yellow indicated his silent people.
"My friends can see my children. Their arms and legs are thin, their
bellies hang out. Look at the hunger in their eyes. Look at my women. They wear
only what the Sioux have left us. Their dresses are worn thin. The milk in
their breasts will not feed their children."

 
          
 
Big Yellow fixed Travis with level eyes.
"Is this what the White men wished? To see us so?"

 
          
 
"Reckon not," Travis said carefully.
"They's hard times ter go around fer everybody."

 
          
 
Big Yellow betrayed no expression. "We
have not seen hunger or want in the eyes of the Sioux."

 
          
 
"Them coons take what they want. It ain't
just the Rees that they've been raiding and stealing from."

 
          
 
"I do not worry about others," Big
Yellow stated. "I worry about my people, Bear Man."