Powder River (7 page)

Billy Sun returned with his arms full of wood. Dixon noticed how Lorna's eyes brightened when he walked in, how they followed him as he tossed bits of the old stockade into the flames.

After a hot meal of cornmeal, water, and salt, boiled over the fire, along with coffee and canned milk, Billy and Dixon pitched the tent, a relic of Dixon's army days. Caleb and Lorna spread their blankets on the oilcloth floor and fell immediately into a deep, untroubled sleep. Despite the cold, Dixon and Billy lingered by the fire.

“Why were you on the road today, Billy, in this weather?” Dixon said.

Billy stirred the embers with a long stick and threw more wood on the fire. “I was coming for you,” he said. “The sickness is spreading quickly, and it respects no one; the strong and healthy die just as fast as the old and frail. I had been away from the village, so I knew nothing of it until my cousin came for me.” He prodded the flames. “The healers go without food and water for days, they hold the eagle fan and baaxpee bundle to the chests of the sick, but the people die anyway. Like I said, the sickness respects no one.”

Dixon suspected the village had fallen on hard and hungry times, which weakened the people and left them vulnerable to illness. Even Billy showed signs of poverty. He was thin and his buffalo coat bedraggled and moth-eaten, something he or one of his relatives must have bought or taken from a soldier years before. Nowadays, because of the dwindling of the buffalo herds, such a coat in a new condition was hard to come by.

“How many are afflicted?” Dixon said.

“Half the village, maybe more.”

“What are their symptoms?”

“Symptoms?”

“How does the sickness take them? Do they cough? How do they look?”

“They shake with cold though the skin burns, and their muscles tighten and bunch. At the end their skin goes blue and when they cough, there's a sound of water here.” He touched his chest. “A man fights to breathe, like he's drowning.”

Influenza,
Dixon said to himself,
and death by pneumonia.
Such a contagion could wipe out an entire village, and the accumulation of unburied corpses could lead to other problems. He had heard of cases where the villagers fled in terror, leaving the dead to rot on the ground and in their lodges.

“What happens to the dead?” Dixon said.

Billy hesitated, surprised by the question. This seemed a strange time for discussion of such matters. “After a period of time, the spirit moves on, to the world behind this one.”

“No,” Dixon said. “I mean, what do your people do with the bodies?”

“Oh.” Billy smiled, despite the grimness of the topic. “The dead person is wrapped in a blanket and removed by wagon to the burial ground. When I left this morning, there was a long line of wagons. Because they are so many, the people are talking of resting the bodies in the trees and burying the bones later.”

Dixon and Billy joined the twins in the tent, settling in their bedrolls on the crowded floor. The two men took the outside of the circle, affording the children the warmth of the center. The four bodies generated some heat, but even so the breaths of the sleepers produced little white clouds of vapor.

Tired as Dixon was, sleep would not come. He lay on his back, staring at the sloping canvas ceiling. In his mind's eye, he saw the terrible line of death wagons Billy had described, and bodies rotting in the trees. His people did not deserve this. When the U.S. Infantry had first come to this country, the Crows had been kind to the bluecoat soldiers and their families, sometimes fighting shoulder to shoulder with them against their mutual enemy, the Sioux. The whites had rewarded their friendship by imprisoning them on reservations and shorting their rations. Now the Crows were suffering and dying in their villages while the white world turned a blind eye.

Dixon would go to them in their mountain village. Chances were there was little he could do, but it was his duty to try.

The morning sky dawned clear, promising a sunny day and a warmer one. Dixon was impressed when Lorna, unasked, fried up a breakfast of the salty ham and eggs Mrs. MacGill had packed, while Cal toasted slabs of corn bread between a pair of green sticks. Billy struck the tent as Dixon made coffee. He was glad Mrs. MacGill had thought to include a can of condensed milk and packets of sugar. She teased him about the way he took his coffee—“white and sweet, just like a wee child”—but Dixon could not tolerate it any other way. He marveled at those who drank the stuff as it came, black and inky. Rose had taken hers that way, as did Billy Sun.

After breakfast he took Billy aside. “I want you to take the twins home. I'm going north to the village. If I can't do anything to help, at least I can triage the situation, see what's needed.”

Billy said, “The people may be gone when you arrive. You might need me to help you find them.”

“I need you to take Cal and Lorna back to Buffalo. If I don't return in three days, go to Fort McKinney and ask the post surgeon to come to the village with you. If he refuses,” and he will, Dixon thought, “then come alone.”

Dixon expected the twins to want to accompany him—after all, Biwi had been like a mother to them—but neither did. Cal kneeled by the fire toasting himself another piece of corn bread while Lorna helped Billy break camp. He fashioned a travois from tree branches, rope, and blankets, to pull the gear so the twins could ride double on Dixon's pack mule. Lorna was working industriously, Dixon noticed, something she never did at home. He threw the saddle over Alice's back and bent to tighten the cinch, wondering if Biwi was truly the reason Lorna took off for the village.

“I don't like Buffalo,” Cal announced from the fireside. “I wish we'd never moved there.”

Dixon straightened. “Why's that?”

Cal turned his toast. “Everybody's afraid.”

“What are they afraid of?”

“The cattlemen, especially Lord Faucett and his riders.” Cal fixed his eyes on his father. “Don't you know that?”

“I've met Faucett; he seems all right,” Dixon said. “What do people say?”

Cal settled back on his heels and popped a bit of toasted corn bread in his mouth. He chewed as he spoke, not looking at his father. “If they think you're stealing from them, they send one of those cowboys to hang you or shoot you.”

Dixon said, “Are you talking about Gus Schmidt?”

Cal nodded. “Him and others. They hung a woman and her husband a while back. Left them swinging till their faces turned black and the birds were eating them.” He took another bite of toast.

Dixon had heard about the hanging of a woman, though he didn't give the story much credence. No one seemed to know anything about her, or the man who died with her, or even if there was a man. Dixon did not want to believe he had put down stakes in corrupt soil, though the murder of Gus Schmidt did trouble him. The crime was still unsolved. There were rumors Lady Faucett had given Doriselaine a certain amount of money, how much no one knew. The widow didn't say and no one had the bad manners to ask. Last week, Dixon learned Doriselaine and Carl were leaving the Territory.

“Just because people say things doesn't make them true, Cal.” Dixon felt a sudden wave of sympathy for his pale, undersized son squatting by the fire. “Are you afraid?” he said. “Do you think someone might try to hurt you?”

Cal regarded his father with cool blue eyes. “I'm not afraid of anyone.”

They broke camp at nine o'clock. The sun shone brightly and a fair day beckoned. As they rode away, Cal, behind Lorna on the mule, turned in the saddle to wave to his father. Dixon waved back. Maybe he and his strange son had made some kind of connection. He hoped so.

He watched until they disappeared over a rise, then turned Alice's head north, toward the great lonely mountains.

The sun and warmth held through the morning, though by early afternoon Billy and the twins were traveling under a low, gray sky. They passed through a foggy valley, where thick black smoke, the product of a burning coal seam deep below, rose from fissures in the ground and corrupted the air with the smell of sulfur. Billy took the lead and Cal and Lorna followed, they and the mule blending into a single, shapeless black shadow trailing through the mist. Like a blanket, the smoke and fog muffled all sound. Billy raised his face to the dull gleam that was the sun and reckoned it to be about three o'clock. They should be in Buffalo by dinner.

Billy Sun had not been fully honest with Dixon when he told him why he was on the road. The Crow village was racked by illness, that was true, and Billy did plan to bring the doctor back to help them, but after that he was done with his Indian life. He was done with Montana Territory altogether. Nelson Story's cattle operation was winding down; now the boss man spent all his time in Bozeman where he was starting up a new bank, the Gallatin Valley National. He also had a flour mill on Bridger Creek. Story asked Billy to work for him at the mill and offered a handsome wage, but Billy had no interest. Wyoming was the place for a young man with plans, and Billy Sun had plenty of those.

Story nodded when Billy said he was leaving. “I've been expecting this,” Story said, motioning Billy toward an overstuffed leather armchair. “Sit a spell, son, let's talk this over. I don't want to see you make a big mistake.” Billy started to speak, but Story raised a hand. “Just listen to what I got to say, that's all I ask. There's trouble brewing down there, Billy, big trouble, and I'm not saying this only because I don't want to lose you—which I don't.”

Billy smiled. “There's trouble everywhere, Mr. Story. I ain't afraid of it.”

“No, I know you're not, and that's one of the things I've always liked about you, Billy. You're a good man, but you're also a young one and there's things about the world you don't know. Now, hear me out. In Wyoming they got an outfit called the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. These are rich men who own all the cattle and the land, too—leastways they say they own it and they might as well. There's bad feeling between these fellows and the settlers and smaller ranchers, and that's especially true if a cowboy dreams of starting a ranch of his own. The cattlemen worry he'll turn to rustling to build up his herd. If he tries it, he's blackballed. He can't get work, he can't ride in the roundups. He's finished.” Billy knew about the spring and fall roundups, when the free-ranging animals were collected and counted. These were the times when a cowboy made his big money, thirty-five to forty dollars for only six weeks' work.

“Up here in Montana, we talked about doing that too,” Story continued, “but we decided against it. It won't stop the rustling, not like it's supposed to. In fact, letting a cowboy run his own stock will cut down on the stealing, because thataway he's invested. With his own ranch, he keeps a sharper eye out for the thievin', and hell, you fellas know more about what's happening on the range than we do.

“That ain't all. Down in Wyoming they're doing away with the Texas system of dealing with mavericks. Used to be, anyone who gets a rope on a unbranded calf owns it, but that's gonna change. Wyoming stockmen are fixing it so those motherless calves go to the man who owns the biggest herd on the range. I know for a fact the territorial legislature's gonna pass a law that does just that.”

Story leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers before his mouth. “So, you see, Billy, Wyoming ain't the place for a man like you. You want a ranch of your own, I know you do, and you ain't gonna be able to have it down there. You'd be better off here, workin' for me till you got the money to set up for yourself. Hell, I won't lie to you, Billy, I'd be better off, too. I never met your equal when it comes to breaking horses. You work for me at the mill and finish my mustangs, I'll make it worth your time. You won't never be sorry.”

Billy replayed this conversation in his mind as he and the twins rode toward Buffalo. Nelson Story was a good man who had always treated Billy well. His offer was generous, and he trusted Story to make good on it, but it didn't matter. Billy Sun had made up his mind to make his stake in Wyoming's Powder River country, Absaroka, the fabled land his mother used to tell him about when he was a boy, where buffalo, bear, elk, and antelope were plentiful, where wild strawberries and raspberries grew thick beside icy streams, where the air was cool and sweet and the people rich in pelts and furs. Those were fat and happy times, his mother said, when the people carried on a lively trade with the trappers, like his French father, and American frontiersmen. Those were the days of the great warrior Arapooish, whose words were passed down from mother to son for generations. He remembered them clearly, words his wife would one day teach his own son:

All his life, Billy Sun had dreamed of finding his place in that vanished world. Someday, by owning his own ranch on the very lands his mother and her people once called home, he would find it.

Sugarfoot stopped and raised his head, ears forward. Billy turned and lifted his hand, halting the mule behind him. Then he heard it, too, a man's voice, and the sound of walking horses. Whoever they were, they were heading his way. He figured there were at least two riders, though only one was talking. He waited motionless until finally they emerged from the fog; two horsemen on big, fine horses. When they saw Billy they reined in. After a pause, they kicked their horses forward until they were no more than ten feet apart. If they had dismounted, courtesy would have required that Billy do the same, but the strangers remained in their saddles.

“Identify yourself, boy, and declare your business.” The speaker was the smaller of the two. He looked to be in his late thirties and wore a well-made woolen overcoat, a brimless fur hat, and plaid muffler.

The word “boy” was an insult, and Billy did not answer. He heard a murmur from the twins behind him. They were still wrapped in the blankets they wore the night before, and the mule pulled the clumsily made travois.

“Well, chief?” the second man said. “Didn't you hear Sheriff Canton?” The second man was tall, well over six feet, with a powerful build, and he sat poker-straight in the saddle. His hair and mustache were dark and he wore range clothing, high-heeled boots, and a Mexican-style
sombrero
. “But maybe you only talk Injun.” His red lips parted in a smile. “Too bad he ain't Apache, Frank. If he was, I could translate for you. Hold on, maybe the nits understand me.” He craned his head to look beyond Billy at the twins. “Well, nits? You talk American?”

Lorna threw off the blanket, revealing her angry face and white-blond hair. “Me and Cal ain't Indians, mister,” she said.

Canton's mouth dropped open. “Damn me, it's the Dixon twins. What are you doing out here with this Indian? Where's your father?”

“My name is Billy Sun.” He spoke in a calm, measured voice. “The doctor asked me to take his children to Buffalo. He has gone to the Crow village because there is sickness. I am doing as he asked.”

“Bill Sun?” Canton said. “Nelson Story's man? Yes, I've heard of you; they say you got a gift for busting horses. I heard about that bunch from Red Wall country couple years back. First-rate cow ponies, the lot.”

Billy leaned forward to stroke Sugarfoot's neck. He called him that because of his sweet gait and disposition. “This buckskin was one of those. He can run all day, chase down a fast calf, and hold a nine-hundred-pound steer.”

The tall man gave a short laugh. “He sure don't look like much.” His eyes were dark and not friendly. They looked older than the rest of him. “Hell, he won't stand twelve hands. Hard to believe a pony that small could hold a nine-hundred-pound steer.” He spat on the ground, a tobacco-brown glob that just missed Sugarfoot's hoof. “But supposin' he could do those things, what's a Injun need with a pony like that anyhow? You think you're a cowboy, chief?” His eyes moved to the string of bear claws Billy wore around his neck.

“Shut up, Tom,” Canton said. He smiled at Billy, shaking his head. “Don't mind him, he's been working down in Arizona Territory, where they put no premium on manners. So, there's sickness in the Crow village? What kind of sickness?”

“He's gone to find out. If he's not back in three days, I'm supposed to ride to Fort McKinney for the surgeon.”

Canton smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Tell you what, Bill—you don't mind if I call you Bill, do you? Doesn't seem right to call a grown man Billy.”

“I don't care what you call me.”

Canton smiled. “So, how about this? Me and Tom, we'll take these two back to Buffalo. You can turn around, go back, and help Dr. Dixon with your people. Wouldn't you rather do that? Take care of your Indian people?”

Before Billy could answer, Lorna kicked the mule forward till he stood even with Sugarfoot. “No,” she said. “Pa told Billy to take us. I heard him.” She turned to Billy. “I don't want to go with them—especially him.” She pointed to Tom, who tipped his hat with a grin.

“Now who ain't got good manners?” he said.

“No, she's right,” Billy said. “I told the doctor I'd take his children to Buffalo, and I will.”

Canton shrugged. “Suit yourself. I thought you'd want to be with your own kind, but maybe that don't matter to you.”

“Me and Cal, we're Billy's people, too,” Lorna said. “Ain't that so, Cal?”

Cal nodded. “That's so.”

“And if Billy wants to work as a cowboy, he can. There's nothing wrong in it.” She looked directly at Tom as she said this. “Ain't that so, Cal?”

“Yes, that's so.”

Tom laughed. “That's so, that's so . . . you always say what she tells you, Cal?”

“Leave them alone,” Canton said. “They're children.”

“The boy is.” Tom winked at Lorna. “Her, I'm not so sure about. How about it? You just a child, darlin'?”

“Shut up.” Canton said. “All right, Bill, you go on ahead to Buffalo. I'll stop by your place tomorrow or the next day, make sure you and these young people make it all right.”

“We'll make it,” Billy said. “Don't trouble yourself.”

“Oh, I think I will.” Canton took up the reins that had gone slack in his gloved hands. “There's a low element about in these parts. Just yesterday a couple horse thieves made off with one of Lord Faucett's riding horses, the one Lady Odalie likes to ride, and we can't have that. No, sir. Lady Odalie, she is something special; she's got to be happy. Anyhow, I got a pretty good idea where that horse is. In fact, that's where me and Tom were headed when we run into you. You keep a sharp eye out, now Bill. Trash like that, there's no telling what they'll do.”

Canton and Tom kicked their horses and were already past them when Lorna said, “And what'll you do if you find them, Sheriff? Necktie party?”

The two men reined in and turned in their saddles.

“Frank, ain't she just the sassiest little thing?” Tom said. “Sassy as she can be. Why, if I was your daddy, darlin', I would put you right across my knee and—”

Canton interrupted. “Why, I'll bring them to justice, Miss Lorna, unless they give me some reason to do different. But I wonder . . .” he paused, a smile on his lips but not in his eyes, “what does a young lady like you know of such things?”

Lorna's eyes cut to Billy, who shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes. “I didn't mean nothing by it.”

“I will accept your apology, Miss Dixon,” Canton said, “but be careful. A young lady could get herself in trouble, running her mouth like that.”

The two men rode on, Tom's laughter trailing behind them.