The Big Sky (46 page)

He went to the smaller animal and got it on his shoulder and straightened and started out, walking slow and careful, seeing the snowshoes sink deeper than before and the webs pull at the frames. The sun slanted low over his back, and some of the glitter was gone from the snow. His breath blew white in front of him. His nose felt plugged and stiff with the hairs in it frosted.
After a little he knew he couldn't go on with the whole carcass, even with the new strength in him, even with the going downhill now. His shoulder sank under the weight. The blade of it dug into him. He tried the other shoulder, but it sank, too, and the blade gouged him, and his whole side began to ache. He reckoned he could build a fire and eat more meat and go on and stop and eat again and so get to camp in hitches if the snowshoes held out, but a man could die waiting for him.

He halted long enough to rip open the carcass and tear the insides out. He cut the liver free and buried the rest of the entrails in the snow. Then he cut along the ribs to the backbone and broke and knifed the bone in two. He slitted the back legs and cut a stick and slung the hind quarters as high as he could on the limb of a twisted tree. The liver he tucked into the folds of his hunting shirt before lifting the forepiece to his shoulder. His load was lighter now by more than half. His back could stand it. His legs could keep moving. Maybe the snowshoes would hold together.

The sun sank behind a bank of clouds and a quick darkness came on. His feet were shadows making a riffled shadow of the snow. The breeze died with the darkness. Not a breath moved, and nothing sounded, not even the howl of a wolf. A man walked with darkness over him and the snow soft under his feet and his body tired but tough and patient now, and more than ever he came to wonder if he was real or only something dreamed.

The moon tipped over the hills. The snow shone in it and the trees stood black, and it was as if a friend had come. The world was deep and quiet as if waiting, the air still and the moon soft and not a sound on earth except the snow giving to his step. Out of the west where the clouds were banked a puff of air blew, a puff and then another and then a wind blowing warm as spring, a wind to thaw the snow and make a crust when the cold came on again. A man could walk and shoulder his load forever while the moon shone and the warm wind blew and the white land rolled away.

A yellow light rose from the snow. A voice called out, "Who's that? Who's there?" A whiff of wood smoke came to Boone's nose. He didn't answer. Let Peabody shoot if he wanted to. Let him shoot and be damned. He stood at the hole and let the goat slip from his shoulder and slide down the bank. "By thunder! come down, man! Here, I'll help." He felt Peabody plucking at the strings of his snowshoes, felt his hand on his arm, felt him easing him down the bank. He heard Beauchamp make an eager, animal noise in his throat.

"How's Jim?"

Peabody's eyes fixed on Boone's face were round as an owl's. "Alive. I think his mind's clear." Peabody stooped and threw some twigs on the fire as if to make sure Boone could see inside.

Jim's face was still and sunk in like a dead man's. Boone bent over and then he saw the eyes open and living yet. He pulled out the liver and cut a slice and held it over Jim's mouth. He saw the mouth work and heard the meat crushing and felt the lips moving against his fingers. He cut another slice and fed it in and then another while Jim's gaze never left his face.

Jim's voice said, "Obliged. Wouldn't no one do so much."

"Can't have no more now, or your stomach'll up and puke."

Jim's hand came up as if to touch Boone's arm. Boone backed away and turned from the shelter and saw Beauchamp crouched, sharp-eyed, while Peabody cut on the meat. "You'll git your share, Beauchamp," he said as if to a friend, and wondered at himself afterward. It made a man unnatural to see Jim crying.
 

Jim said, "I've et white-buffter meat until I've growed a hump on my back."

"I wouldn't say you had all you could stand, not the way you're goin' after that joint." Boone wiped his knife on his leggings.

"I could eat it from now on, for a fact. Seems like I don't more'n get filled up than my stomach asks if it ain't time to eat again."

Peabody swallowed a bite and licked his lips and paused before reaching out to cut another piece. "It's the same with all of us. I never would have thought men could eat so much. If we stayed here until spring, there would hardly be a beast of this kind left in the mountains, if Boone could keep on finding them. We've eaten four, almost, down to the hoofs and hair."

"It's part being starved," Jim explained while he chewed, "and part it's just that it's meat. Meat don't bloat a man or lie heavy in him but just sets natural."

"It must be," Peabody agreed while his gaze went over Jim. "It's amazing. I never saw an invalid recover so fast."

"Mountain doin's. You never hear tell of sores runnin', nor delicate stomachs, nor heads achin' except from whisky -not in the mountaina, you don't."

"Empty belly ache," Beauchamp said, remembering, his mouth making a hole in his black tangle of whiskers. "Ache all time, by damn." It wasn't often he spoke; mostly he just looked, and you wouldn't know there was an opening in his face but for him feeding meat into it.

The sun was shining down into the camp hole. It lay with a touch of warmth on the back of Jim's head. Overhead he couldn't see a cloud; there was nothing there but the sky with its blue glitter and the sun far off and small and bright as brass. Standing up, though, where the wind could get at him, or moving out from the fire, a body knew well enough it was winter.

"Could starve still," Boone said. "It could snow deep over this here crust. For that part, it sure as hell will." His glance came over to Jim.

"Nee'n to look at me. I'm fit to travel, I am. Might be I'll have to poke, but I'll get there." Jim wasn't talking loose, or on the prairie, as they called it. His strength was growing fast as a weed. With every bite of meat and every nap he took, he felt it bigger in him, felt it rising up and reaching out into every little muscle. If only they hadn't run out of tobacco, he would be almost his old self again.

Peabody ran his fingers over the jaw he had scraped the hair from with a knife that Boone had sharpened on his stone. He was a sight different from Beauchamp; he and Boone and Jim all were, with their faces smooth now like sure-enough mountain men's. "We better go back," he said as if he wasn't sure.

Boone answered, "We been tellin' you, you're the one to say." When Peabody didn't answer right away, he added, "Me and Jim, now, we said we'd take you over." Jim knew Boone wasn't thinking about the promise so much. He was thinking about Red Horn and his old ones and the young Piegans that had run the horses off. Boone wasn't one to tuck his tail.

"But Deakins here! He needs rest and good food. It's out of the question for him to carry out his contract."

Jim said, "Out of the question, hell! Maybe I ain't a full man yet but I'm nigh to it. And babyin' won't help."

Peabody spread his hands. "We have no horses, no equipment, no supplies."

"We got two feet each," Boone reminded him. "We got two rifles and flint and steel. What you really think, Jim?"

"We got to travel, regardless. Time we get to Flathead House or McKenzie either one, I won't know I ever had a hole in me."

"Do you suppose they'll outfit us at Flathead House?"

"They'll put us up all right," Boone answered, "but maybe balk at fixin' us to go ahead."

"It isn't a matter of money. I can pay."

Jim said, "We could steal us some horses from the Flatheads, maybe, if the company acts ornery."

"I wouldn't want stolen horses. I wouldn't want that." Peabody's mouth tightened, as if honesty was a pain in him.

"No stealin', no cussin', no rollin' with women," Jim said, feeling a little smile twitch at his lips as he met Peabody's glance. "Just prayer is all. Peabody, damn if you won't torment yourself!"

Peabody smiled back, not getting his dander up as he might have earlier. "Everyone to his principles."

"We'd only borry the horses," Jim argued. "We'd only sneak us a ride, and what's a ride worth after it's took? You can't be fancy-fine about sin in the mountains."

"How far to Flathead House?" Peabody asked.

Boone answered. "Two camps, about, with Jim the way he is. Closer'n McKenzie by a far shoot."

"And all of you are willing to go on?" Peabody's eye went from Boone to Jim to Beauchamp. Beauchamp gnawed off another bite of meat.

"What kind of talk you think we been makin'?" Boone asked.

"I wouldn't want anything to happen." Peabody's voice was low as if he talked to himself. "Zenon on my conscience is enough."

"You're the damndest nigger!" Jim said, smiling again. "Got no business here, I say, with such a passel of principles and conscience. How you aim to get Oregon settled without accidents and men dyin' and all? It ain't as if you killed Zenon. The Injuns done that. Ease your mind, Peabody. There ain't nobody holds anything ag'in you, here or in heaven or hell, far as I know."

Peabody was silent. He got up after a while and climbed out of the hole. Jim could see him, gazing east first, and then west, and the wind streaming at him, and his thoughts like something you could read in his face, Already, Jim realized, he was beginning to get the look of the mountains in his eyes, the look of distance and weather and hard doings and hungers outside the stomach.

The lines in Peabody's cheeks tightened, and his small chin set. "By thunder," he said through close lips while he faced into the west, "we'll go on! Well go on, then!"
 

Spring lay on the land, the first touch of spring, delicate as something that a breeze might break, or a sound. The sun sailed in a sky like deep water, touching the earth with a soft warmth. The pinched skin loosened in it and spread smooth over the flesh, and the muscles rested long and easy and the heart lifted, afraid, almost, to believe. Riding out of the canyon of the Medicine where flowers had begun to blow along the edges of old snowbanks, Boone saw that green had tipped the plains.

"Early," he said, "for spring. Way early."

"Can't come too quick for me," Jim answered, "not after the winter we been through." They let their horses stop after the climb. "Buffler country again. Look on it, Boonel Ain't it good for the eye?"

"Seems like my eye's been caged in by mountains and trees. Seems like it wants to run now, like a dog off a tie rope."

The plains rolled out below them, mile on mile of plains dipping away and meeting up with the sky at the edge of the world, and the air so clear and fine that the gaze ran dizzy. Not so far away a little bunch of buffalo grazed, ragged against the new green, and beyond them a band of antelopes streamed light and quick as if not bound to earth.

Jim said, "Jesus!" as he squinted into the distance, and after a pause went on, "Old Peabody wouldn't know to like this. It would drive him back on himself, being so Christly big and free."

"Wonder what he's doing now?"

"That little nigger was all right. Bet he does good. Bet he gets his chin set and his mind fixed and his mouth to making talk and does all right."

"He could talk a man out of his squaw, right enough. Look what he done at Flathead House."

"Wasn't talkin' alone. Part was just Peabody, honest and straight-speakin' and gritty, too. I can see him now, palaverin' with them British and bringin' them around to his way for all they wanted to shy from it. None could out-nabob him."

What Boone saw, though, when he thought back to the winter, was not Flathead House and the British and Peabody arguing himself into a new outfit, but Jim sick, and rock goats like scraps of cloud among the peaks and the snow so deep the tops of the young pines looked like grass above it. He called to mind the warm wind and then the cold and crust and the four of them going slow down the western slope and traveling Clark's Fork later and dropping down to the Great Plains of the Columbia and reaching the river and going on almost to where the Snake came in before Peabody allowed maybe he and Beauchamp could make it alone. He remembered Jim getting stronger and good-spirited and his red hair gleaming in the sun, and the weather fair enough, though sometimes bitter still, and he and Jim forted up, after Peabody and Beauchamp had gone on, waiting for the passes to open while the thought of Teal Eye and his young one kept working in his head.

"Nigh talked me into goin' plumb to the western ocean with him, Peabody did," Jim said. "Ain't no Teal Eye waitin' for me."

Boone turned and grinned. "I'm a growed man now. Reckon I could've made it back alone."

"Thought I best come along. Pups is quick to say they're full dogs." Jim kicked his horse as Boone's started up.

It was past the time when the great owl nested, past the moon of the big winds. Teal Eye looked for him, standing maybe at the entrance to the lodge and facing west, hoping to see, far off, the fleck that would come to be a horseman and the horseman coming to be her man. Red Horn would have seen there was meat in her tepee, and Red Horn and the young Piegans would be friendly enough. A thing done was a thing done, and no need to think more about it. He had a medicine glass for Red Horn, so's he could light his pipe from the sun, and shells for Teal Eye that had come from the sea. With his spurs he pricked his horse to a faster pace.

"Weather's so damn soft it can't go on," Jim said while he watched a bird sitting white-breasted on a bush. "Winter'll come back and nip growin' things and freeze the tail off that there early bird."

"Think so?"

"It's certain sure. Never knowed it to fail. Leave good days come, and a man better set hisself for bad. Only it's fat today, ain't it? So quiet and gentle-like, and grass shooting up and all."

"It is, now."

"If you listen, you can might' nigh hear things growing. I crave to unfork my horse and get my ass unsprung and just lie around and eat and sleep and let the sun shine on me. Hope Teal Eye'll be on the Teton, like you think, and not to hell and gone on the Judith or Musselshell or somewhere."