The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again

—
Hamlet
, I.i

Silk poked his borrowed horse along beside the wash, heading for the spring. He and Hairy had found this spring, and a nice grove in a sheltered place, on the way to Fort Union. A good place to camp.

Silk was looking forward to eating big on the deer Hairy would have shot, lying about, and trading tales. Hairy would probably give a critique of Silk’s funeral sermon, they’d remember together how Silk had pried the coffin lid off, Hairy would tell about nicking a pony out of the big fort herd, and altogether they’d celebrate the outwitting of McKenzie and the vengeful Cheyennes. And then they’d move on to that spot Hairy talked about, the white sulphur hot springs. They’d take a week there, Hairy said, just being lazy. Hot springs were a luxury, in Silk’s eyes, big enough to get a man to take a bath.

Silk was proud of the tales he had to tell. It had gone off fine with McKenzie. Silk had buried the empty box, and spent three nights in the fort to make it look good. No, Mr. McKenzie, don’t believe I’ll accept employment. Yessir, I’m headed to Cass to meet my Crow friends. Yessir, I’d be pleased to take your letters along for fifty shinplasters. Nossir, I don’t need to rest up a while longer. Yessir, I will be careful. All this, naturally, with a long face, an ineffable, world-weary sadness.

Sometimes it had been hard not to laugh.

It would be good to see Hairy, and to rest. And then to rejoin Jim and Pine Leaf and the Crows. And Rosie—Silk missed the doughty old mule.

There had been one bad moment with the baron. “Our reports have it,” McKenzie ventured calculatingly, “that the Cheyennes mostly wanted Shakespeare, and not you.”

“Probably,” said Silk with a glare that added, “That’s what they got, ain’t it?”

“Our reports also have it that the Cheyennes are not in the country yet.” McKenzie waited.

“You might not know,” offered Silk.

“True enough. But let’s say that some other Indians were guilty in this case. The Cheyennes may turn their vengeance toward you.”

Silk hadn’t thought of that. Great to get the devils off Hairy’s tail. Not good to make them switch. Especially since Silk would lead them straight to the living Hairy. Whoa, hoss!

McKenzie asked the tale of the theft of the horse that wasn’t Leg-in-the-Water’s, and Silk gave it to him straight.

McKenzie pulled at his chin. “I shall send word to our Cheyenne friends that you were not responsible,” he said, “and that the real culprit is dead.”

With that he suddenly stood up, flashed his teeth, and nodded curtly. Leaving His Presence, Silk thought—that was the way of McKenzie, to make himself seem all-powerful, and you obliged to him.

As Silk went out the door, McKenzie added, “Still, I’d advise caution.”

Silk snapped out of his reverie.

Magpies by the spring. Lots of them—carrion birds, they were. Silk urged the mare to a lope. Then she shied off and he had to dismount to get a close look.

A horse, with Hairy’s hobbles on it. The magpies wouldn’t leave even when Silk got close, the darned critters. Silk couldn’t see how the horse was killed—maybe gutshot, since the birds had ripped that area open.

Silk knelt for a close look at…Yeah, that was the chestnut wig half pinned under the horse’s neck.

Haire-e-e.

Silk backed off to where the mare was grazing. Hairy.

There was sign everywhere—hoof prints and moccasin tracks, but Silk didn’t read sign well.

He sat down and put his head on his knees.

Why couldn’t he cry now? He cried when it was fake, but he didn’t have any tears now. He remembered the words he’d spoken over Hairy’s coffin: “The truth is, Lord, I didn’t always know if I liked him. But I loved him, and I think You do, too.”

For a few minutes he sat there, head down, not really thinking. He remembered sometimes. Remembered when Hairy pulled him to the ground that night after they stood up to Fitzpatrick. Remembered when Hairy painted himself so crazy for the Cheyenne affair. Remembered when he and Hairy and Jim hugged, after the fight. And heard under those memories a stately, measured music with a high, poignant obligatto of loss.

In half an hour he was up and reaching for the reins. He knew what he had to do.

“Blackfoot,” said Jim. “Not Cheyenne.”

Pine Leaf, still on her horse, nodded. “Siksika,” she hissed.

Yellow Foot got down and started checking out the ground more carefully. The horse was just bones now. Yellow Foot, with grief large in his soft eyes, picked up the chestnut wig and handed it to Silk.

It was Pine Leaf who found it. Hairy’s finger. It had been hacked off, and now lay covered with sandy soil. It was the left-hand little one with the ruined walnut nail.

“Where’s the rest of him?” Silk muttered.

So Jim explained that one sport of Blackfeet was dragging victims behind a horse until they died. Could be anywhere, any direction, within several miles. If it was close, the magpies would have marked it before.

This talk left everyone grim.

So the four of them looked the site over thoroughly and found, according to Jim, remarkably little. It had been a party of maybeso six or eight or ten men—hard to tell after all the walking around here, first by the men and then by the horses. A party out for ponies or scalps, looked like, from the light way they travelled. Came from the south—Crow or Cheyenne country—left to the north. Likely knew about this camping spot too, and just chanced on Hairy.

“I don’ see his Shakespeare, either,” Pine Leaf put in.

“No, they took their time and scavenged good,” said Jim.

“What does a Blackfoot want with a book?” Silk asked, pouting. He’d hoped to keep the Shakespeare as a memento.

“End up at some trading post,” Jim allowed. “Not close by.”

He filled up with water, mounted, and led them off about half a mile, within sight of the spring but on higher ground. “Like Hairy shoulda done,” he commented to Silk.

So they did the chores of making camp. Silk felt melancholy. He tried to think about his future. He would have to leave the Crows now, but had no partner. He could hunt for Fort Cass, probably—maybe he and Ginny would…Or he could go to rendezvous, and try to hook on with Rocky Mountain Fur. But hymns kept pushing these plans out his head. Hymns and memories.

Over a supper of pemmican he finally asked: “So do we go after them?”

Antelope Jim shook his head. “Trail’s near three weeks cold now, and they were headed home. Have to hit the whole village.”

“We hit Siksikas all times, all places,” said Pine Leaf. “We take their blood. That’s how they pay for Hairy.”

“We’d never find them as done it,” said Jim.

That flat statement sat between the four of them for a long moment.

“But if you want to follow trail,” added Yellow Foot, “I go with you.”

Silk shook his head. It was pointless. Seemed everything was pointless.

After dark he sat and blew hymn after hymn on the love flute, his own requiem for Hairy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

One fair daughter and no more

—
Hamlet
, II.ii

It was the talk of the fort: Ginny was gone. Kidnapped, it seemed.

Tulloch swung from brooding to raging. “Right out of her own home!” he would say suddenly and crash his fist on the table. “My daughter taken…” Then silence. Ginny’s mother, the self-effacing Crow woman, said nothing but was not stoical—Silk saw her hauling water with tears on her face.

It was the Blackfeet apparently. A small band visited the fort for several days while the Rotten Belly band was camped there and Jim, Pine Leaf, Yellow Foot, and Silk were gone to see about Hairy’s death. Neutral ground or not, Tulloch had a bad time keeping the Crow outfit from rubbing those Blackfeet out. After a couple of days, Chief Rotten Belly led the Absaroka people off in a bad mood, unwilling even to be near the Siksikas.

Tulloch disliked and distrusted Blackfeet too, but this band had stopped to trade the previous fall, and the Blackfeet were being courted avidly by American Fur these days. So Tulloch really couldn’t turn them away. The baron ordered, Get the trade at all costs!

The cost in this case was Ginny.

In all the hullabaloo Silk found out some about Ginny he didn’t realize. She was an unusual breed girl—was born back in the U. S. somewhere and raised to be a real lady—had gone to Miss Somebody’s finishing school and had high-falutin notions. Dead game, though, Jim said. Wouldn’t stay back in the States like her dad wanted. Went with her adopted mother regular to live with the Pryor Mountain Crows. Treated Injuns like folks.
Negroes
, too—Jim caterpillared his lips as he said the word. She said she was an Abolitionist. Jim described that as an oh-so-generous organization of white people to give black people their freedom, which was already theirs for the taking. And Ginny could ride a horse agile and quick as a dust devil, and wouldn’t have her head turned by nobody.

So Silk figured she must be some.

Tulloch kept fuming. He blamed himself for not being more suspicious. Why was that lot—small, but arrogant as any Blackfeet—this far south anyway? Yes, a stop to trade a few robes the previous autumn, that was understandable. Exploratory, probably, and Tulloch had instructions to barter generously. But why’d they come back? The new trading post, Fort Piegan, was right in their back yard. Why, indeed, except to steal Ginny? His precious Ginny.

Why hadn’t he let the Crows massacre them? Thus Tulloch sent up fumes and smoke, but would not erupt. Mostly he retreated to his ledgers.

He’s a man who aims to live small, thought Silk. He’s not going to do a darn thing. Ginny’s gone (Silk already felt like her friend) but the sumbuck’s gonna do nothing. Silk sniffed his contempt.

“What are we waiting for?” Silk challenged Jim. The big black was stoking his little clay pipe after dinner. He took time to light it and offer the pipe to the four directions, the earth, and the sky before he answered.

“Maybeso for daylight to start after Rotten Belly,” Jim said evenly. But the gleam in his eye gave him away. They were camped just downriver from the fort. Rotten Belly had left word he would be hunting around the big bend of the Yellowstone, where he expected to find many buffalo.

“We got to get her,” Silk said flatly.

Pine Leaf and Antelope looked at each other thoughtfully. Silk guessed they’d been talking about it. Yellow Foot just gnawed on more roast, their first fresh meat in five days. Yellow Foot seemed to eat twice as much as Jim, yet still looked slim and smooth-skinned as a girl.

“Antoine be here pretty soon,” said Jim. Antoine was a breed who hunted for the fort. “That’s what he’s coming to talk about.”

Jim puffed on his pipe quietly until Antoine slipped in out of the night and sat down without a word. He was young, fit, and good-looking, except for a hint of sneer. Silk felt mistrustful of him. Jim tapped out the pipe and refilled it and handed it to Antoine.

The breed took a hasty puff and raised his eyebrows at Jim. “You go?” he asked.

“Maybeso Ginny want to be with them,” Pine Leaf offered. “Likes young warrior maybeso.”

“Not that kind of girl,” Jim said. “She’s a real lady-lady.”

“Besides, they’re too ugly,” Yellow Foot put in, grinning, and went back to eating.

“She wouldn’t go off and not tell her parents and break their hearts,” Silk added. He felt foolish.

Antoine eyed Silk strangely, then shook his head no. Turning to Pine Leaf, he said that if she was ever captured by the Siksikas, she would know why no woman should ever let herself be captured by those dogs. He snapped out curses on Blackfoot bodies and souls in three or four languages.

Antoine was so dark he might have been an Indian, except for the Frenchy accent in his English. The accent, which sounded sort of womanly, seemed queer coming from so fierce a face.

“And Ginny is Crow, hate Siksika,” Antoine added.

“What you think?” Jim said to Pine Leaf.

“Better to have the Lumpwoods,” she answered, meaning the men of that Crow warrior society.

Jim shrugged.

“I go,” Antoine said. “Simple.”

“Why not?” said Silk, a little irked.

So Jim, Pine Leaf, and Antoine spelled out the obstacles. The little band was headed north, maybeso anywhere into Blackfoot country, which was five hundred miles on a side. Being only three days old, the trail could be followed. Likely be easy to follow, in fact, and for that reason the girl would not be with the band. Some young men would be taking her another way—that trail likely hard to find, harder to follow. They’d be wary of being tracked from the fort. Worth a try, maybeso, but poor odds.

Antoine had an idea, though. For a couple or three weeks, the bands would be making the hunt of early summer. After that they would gather for the Sun Dance. Every bunch of Piegan and Kainah and Siksika from all over the north country would be there. Likely find out at Fort Piegan where the big doings were. Sure enough a place to spot the girl. Maybe tricky to march her off.

“We can’t wait a month,” Silk interjected.

Antoine shrugged. “Lots of riding good for a horse or a woman,” he said with a malicious smile.

Silk felt himself flush.

Jim waited. Waiting to see if I do anything dumb, Silk thought. Antoine, I’ll take care of you later.

“My problem here,” Jim allowed, “is our army. This one”—he jerked his head at Pine Leaf—“is a soldier. Yellow Foot too. Antoine’s an old hand. And you, Silk, are a gallant young recruit, but new to the game. Such as might go on a war party to hold the horses and watch.”

“I can fight,” Silk growled.

So what was that icicle he felt inside? “Such kid endangers us all,” Antoine said.

“Let me,” Jim said to Antoine pointedly.

“Maybeso you can fight—for sure you can shoot,” allowed Jim. “But we got a problem here. Goin’ far, far into enemy country, we don’t need no hotheads, no heroes, and no independent thinkers. There might be a way—just to get close and have a look-see, you cotton—but it has to be done easy and smart.

“This child don’t start out till everyone understands they’re soldiers and Antelope Jim is the general.”

Antoine said of course. Silk agreed, louder. Pine Leaf lay back and looked at the stars. Yellow Foot grunted and kept eating.

“This child promises to hogtie you and lash you to the saddle if you get out of line,” Jim said to Silk.

“I understand,” Silk answered. He sounded scared even to himself.

Jim looked at him. “Believe you do. Actual, the general is more worried about you, Antoine.”

“Me, my father, my grandfather all fight Siksikas,” Antoine growled.

“That’s how come I worry,” Jim said. “You ain’t scared, and you got reason. Besides, Tulloch says you been making eyes at Ginny for another wife. But you can’t keep the belly of the wife you got full. Either of her bellies. Tulloch says I ain’t supposed to let you close to his daughter.”

Antoine said nothing, though his face looked full of words and feelings. Pine Leaf was watching Silk with a little smile.

“Wagh! This child tells you simple, Antoine. You get outa line and I shoot you. Backshoot, if I have to.”

Antoine stood up and looked down at Jim. Finally he gave a little shrug. “First light,” he murmured, and walked off into the darkness.

The four shook out their blankets and spread them. They’d talked until the big dipper showed about midnight, but Silk couldn’t sleep. He stared at the night sky.

So. They were going to try to slip into an encampment of thousands of Blackfeet. They were going to try to ease Ginny out on the sly. And keep her away from Antoine.

A damsel in distress, and an antagonist for the lady’s hand. But not fairy-tale stuff. Real as an icy knife-edge.

Silk blinked and turned the Milky Way into a grand smear. He made funny little sounds, sort of like chuckles, in his throat. He’d never been so excited in his life. Or was it scared?