Medicine Road (17 page)

With his trophies, the one kicking and squealing
his innocence of the operation and end effects of
concentrating the sun's energy to pinpoint heat via
the focusing powers of a hand glass, and the other
still warm from its loving labors in the toasting of
Jesse's tailpiece, the naked mountain man returned
to the sand spit. Depositing the boy on a down log,
the slightly singed Mr. Callahan entered into exploratory peace talk.

"What's your name, young 'un?"

For answer, the boy slipped off the log and was
away through the brush. Jesse dove after him,
scooped him up, repaired to the log.

"We'll try it again." He nodded pleasantly. "What
do they call you?"

"You ain't the boss of me!"

The boy's claim, neither defiant nor surly, was just
plain statement. Jesse liked the way the kid said it
and he liked the way he looked at a man while he
was saying it.

"I ain't the boss of nobody." The mountain man
grinned. "I work for my living."

"You do?" Apparently the boy hadn't known anyone in this category. His round, blue eyes ceased
searching for a way off the log, started going over
Jesse's powerful body. "Gee, you really got the muscles, ain't you, mister?"

"Name's Jesse, boy," he said, grinning. "I don't
cotton to 'mister'. Makes it sound like you didn't
take to a man."

The big-eyed sprout was not to be so lightly
swung from the principal attraction of the moment.
"What kind of work do you do, mister? My golly, I
ain't never seed so many muscles!"

"You ain't seed much, then, young 'un." Jesse was
displaying no false modesty, many of the men in his
profession possessing frames of a heft that would
shame a boar grizzly. "I'm a mountain man. What
do you do?"

"Huh!" The youngster's snort was as wide open
as his admiring gaze. "You ain't no such thing.
Mountain men wear buckskin shirts with fringes all
on the arms and things."

"I allow they do," agreed Jesse, stepping over the
log and bringing his Sioux hunting shirt to view.
The boy watched him breathlessly, as he hauled on
the shirt, legged into the fringed leggings, toed-on
the beaded moccasins. Eying the youth slyly, he
asked: "Now then, what do you say?"

"Where's your gun? And your hunting knife?"
The skepticism, still on its feet, was wobbling badly.

"Yonder's the holy iron," averred Jesse, pointing
to the rifle where he had crotched it in a convenient
cottonwood, "and here's the knife."

With the latter phrase, he whipped the Green River
skinning blade out from under the buckskin shirt in a
lightning belly draw Waniyetula had bequeathed
him, whirled, and threw it with an underhanded
wrist flip nobody had given him. The razored steel
drove into the log between the boy's spread legs, vibrated there like a tail-wounded copperhead.

"What you say, boy?" the mountain man asked
quietly.

Mouth and eyes falling still farther open in the
frankest of salutes, the red-headed youngster
looked up at the narrow-eyed Jesse and announced,
admiringly: "I say you're a mountain man, sure as
my name's Johnny O'Mara!"

"I might've knowed it." The dark-faced mountain
man nodded thoughtfully.

"Knowed what?" the youngster queried, puzzled.

"That you was Lacey O'Mara's son. You've got
your mother's eyes, boy."

"Gosh, do you know my mother?"

"No, I just seen her in camp when I was talking
with your folks, back yonder," Jesse lied. "I don't recall seeing you, though, boy."

"Well, I seen you"-Johnny grinned-"but I didn't
think you was a real mountain man. Tim said you
was a squawman, and that you lived with the Injuns
and liked them a heap better than you did your own
white people. He said none of your kind was to be
trusted on account you was red clean through to the
middle once you'd lived with the Injuns. That's why
I snuck after you when I seed you coming out here. I
reckon most folks hates Injuns, but I love 'em. I
mean to fight 'em and sneak after 'em and smoke
the peace pipe and things like that."

"I allow every boy loves Injuns," said Jesse soberly. "I know I sure do, and I was raised amongst
them. Leastways, more or less, I was."

"Naw! You wasn't!" Johnny's denial was incredulous. It wasn't possible to imagine anybody being
that lucky, to be raised up and to run around with
real Indians.

"Hell I wasn't," the mountain man countered.
"The Sioux got me when I was a cub not much bigger'n you."

"Gee! How'd it happen, huh, Jesse ... ?" Johnny
O'Mara, as would have been any Eastern boy of like
years, was purely fascinated by the wild look of the
long-haired, buckskinned figure beside him, and
with the thought that here was a real, live white man
who had lived with the hostiles and was still around
to tell about it. The youngster's eager voice trailed
off disappointedly, as he failed to see his own excitement mirrored in the mountain man's quiet face.
"Gosh, I reckon you wouldn't tell anybody about it.
Not just a little kid, anyways."

"Shucks, boy." Jesse grinned. "Not much to tell. I
never had no mother, leastways not to remember,
and the Sioux done my daddy in when they grabbed
me....

"Gee, that's turrible, Jesse. I ..."

"Not so much, young 'un," his companion interrupted. "I reckon my old man wasn't so good as all
that. Way I recall it, he wasn't against larruping me
rosy-butted whenever he could take the time to get
his nose outen the jug to do it. Raising a boy up
without no mother can be a tolerable problem, I allow. It sure was to my daddy, at any rate. I was fixing
to run off, regardless, when the Sioux jumped our
post and saved me the trouble. When you look at it
long and short, I figure some growed-up men can give a kid more trouble than he can properly handle.
I was coming twelve when them Hunkpapas killed
my daddy. That's old enough to remember that I
didn't shed no tears about it."

The mountain man's wide mouth had lost its
ready smile during the brief running back of memory's track, and, when he had finished, the boy beside him, taking his cue from the grim set of the
dark jaw, was silent. But youth isn't constructed to
hold a quiet very long when the topic on the table
happens to be Indians. Shortly Johnny gave in to his
growing curiosity.

"Was them the Sioux what brung you up, Jesse?
Them Hunkpapas? The ones that kilt your pap?"

"Nope, they wasn't, young 'un." The smile was
back now, the rim frost gone from the blue eyes. "I
was a puny-looking squirt, sort of on your cut. And
them Hunkpapas is great traders. They knowed a
white boy was worth somewhat amongst the Injuns,
more'n dang' near anything, far as that goes. But
their medicine man done looked me over and told
them I wasn't going to make it through the winter.
Said that come the new grass ... that's the springtime, boy ... I'd be done-in as a froze buffalo calf. So
them Hunkpapa up and traded me off to Long
Chin's Dakota Minniconjous, and they was the ones
brung me up. That's the whole gospel, Johnny.
Them Minniconjous took to me like they was my
own folks, only a mortal lot better, you can lay."

"Gosh all hemlocks!"

"Sure. They give me an Injun name and everything."

"Honest Injun?"

"Wowicake, boy. Honest Injun"

"Was that your name? Wowwy-Cake?

"Naw, naw. That means I'm telling the truth.
Their name for me was Tokeya Sha."

"What's that mean? In American, I mean."

"Red Fox."

"Gee! How come them to call you that?"

Two reasons, boy," chuckled the mountain man.
"First off, it was the red hair, see? That made the red
part of it easy. Then they hung the fox part onto that
after I fooled them all by growing up. Old Long
Chin, he said that any boy who could look as mangy
and raunchy and slat-ribbed as I did, and could even
manage to stay alive, let alone grow any, must be
smarter than the sly brother ... that's the fox,
boy ... himself. So they wound up giving me that
name."

Boy.

"Well, I guess. Say, young 'un, how'd you like an
Injun name? One you can be knowed by amongst us
Sioux?"

"Shucks, I couldn't never have no Injun name. I
don't even know any Injuns."

"Cripes, boy, you know me, and I'm the biggest
redskin in the business."

"Golly, maybe you could give me a name, then.
Just a little one, not too much. Nothing they'd ever
miss."

"Why, dammit boy, we'll give you a real tonguetwister. A chief's name. Regular Minniconjou, too.
None of your cussed tame Injuns. How's that?"

"Aw, you never would...," said Johnny, embarrassed by this windfall of good fortune, not yet
ready to believe any emigrant boy like him could be
as lucky as all this.

"Well, let's see"-Jesse deliberately ignored his
small companion's doubts-"what'll it be? You want Little Dog? ... or Short Calf? ... or maybe White
Pony? Say, boy," the mountain man interrupted
himself with a flash of his quick smile, "how about
Red Eagle? You know, after that red hair of yours,
like the Minniconjous started my name. That's a real
Sioux monicker, too."

"Red Eagle." The boy breathed the name like he
was tailing off a prayer. "Red Eagle, the Minniconjou. The brother of Tokeya Sha, Red Fox. Oh, boy!"

"Ain't nothing to it." Red Eagle's new brother
smiled. "Let's get a move on back to camp, partner.
My wagons'll be rolling in pretty quick."

Tagging along, his freckled hand in Jesse's dangling paw, the boy kept quiet for twenty steps, finally found the courage to ask it.

"Say, Jesse, you know that Tim O'Mara? He
savvies a lot about Injuns, too. 'Most as much as you
do, I reckon."

"Yeah, boy." Jesse looked down at Johnny suspiciously, wondering what tricky side stream the
freckle-faced fingerling was figuring to wiggle up
this time. "I 'spose maybe he does. What about him?"

"Well," the youngster's query shuffled the feet of
its delivery a little uncertainly, "he said that, when
the Sioux Injuns give a name to a young warrior,
they always give him a weapon to go along with it.
He said it was a regular ceremony, called Canon
Kissy-cuppy. Leastways, something like that. I ain't
saying it's so, mind you. But that's what Tim
O'Mara, he said."

Jesse eyed the boy narrowly, caught his wistful
blue eyes wandering enviously to the soft-tanned
leather thong upon which, hidden beneath the
greasy buckskin shirt front, dangled the mountain
man's razor-edged skinning knife. His slow answer, not matching the quick twinkle in his lake-blue
eyes, was a miracle of Sioux soberness.

"Tim told you right, young 'un. The Sioux call that
ceremony Canounye Kicicupi. That means TheGiving-of-the-War-Weapons. You reckon you're
ready fora full-size weapon, boy?"

"Yes, sir!" Johnny's answer was prompt, his eyes
still fastened determinedly on Jesse's shirt front.

"I allow you are, at that." The mountain man nodded, easing the gleaming blade into view. "You
know the Sioux most generally starts a young 'un
off with a knife. Reckon you'd see your way to settling for this one? It's a genuine Green River, boy."

The boy's hands were on the blade's shaft almost
before Jesse could move to skin the thong free of his
neck. Watching the youngster stow the weapon
fumblingly inside his own hickory shirt, the mountain man took him by his thin shoulders, warned
him with the gravest of mock seriousness. "Now,
listen here, Johnny ... that blade's a Sioux secret
'twixt you and me. See that you keep it hid inside
your shirt, same as I did, and don't you never tell
nobody about it. Nobody. Not ever. You got that?"

"Cross my heart, Jesse. I won't never tell nobody.
I'll keep it so well hid not even a Injun could find it
on me. Gosh ... !"

Beyond a wide grin to show he was soaking up
his full share of the sprout's enjoyment, Jesse Callahan paid the pledge and the return promise no more
heed. Three days later, he was to know he had just
made the biggest dicker of his entire hard life.

Andy Hobbs rolled the wagons in shortly before
sundown, promptly put them in a tight box alongside the old fort ruins. Jesse pitched in with the
parking, seeing no more of the newly christened
Red Eagle, or of his sleeky blonde mother. By twilight everything was snug.

Waiting for the coffee water to boil up, he had his
talk with Choteau & Company's wagon master.

Leading off, Andy Hobbs sucked noisily on his
pipe, spat in the direction of the Arapaho camp.
"What you make of them Arapaho lodges? Purty big
bunch of them, I'd say."

"You'd say right." The mountain man's frown
deepened. "Bigger than you think, likely."

"How big?"

"Black Coyote big."

"The hell!"

"The hell, yes...."

"How you figure?"

"Number of lodges comes out right."

"That ain't no real clincher. Anything else?"

"Yeah. No warriors with them. Nothing over
there but squaws and kids and old people."