The Big Sky (18 page)

They stood watches that night and went on before the sun was up, their bellies working on catfish and roast liver and tenderloin that was half-raw and tough but full of strength. Great yellow-breasted larks sang as the sun came up, and with his fowling piece Summers shot half a dozen prairie hens that had watched them from an island, their heads up and turning until the bird shot knocked them over.

There was no wind at all in the early morning, and the river seemed to have a new strength, as if it had just awakened to find how far they had invaded her. The absence of a breeze, the renewed force of the current, the Indians maybe somewhere along the bank, all seemed to Jourdonnais, squirming at the helm, the proof of conspiracy against him.
Enfant de garce
, wasn't the river easier above the Jacques, always! He thought of distance as the enemy, as a slow and crawling thing that stood between him and a new house and money in pocket and the big men of St. Louis saying "Monsieur Jourdonnais." The left bank lay open, inviting him to tow. He motioned Summers to him.

"
The cordelle?
" He was asking for advice. He motioned toward the bare bank.

Summers' chin closed, so that his mouth was the thin mouth of thought. "Put in," he said at last. "This child'll scout. See me wave, send the crew out." He lifted his gun that seemed always in his hand now and refreshed the priming. "Better send a hunter with 'em, to boot." Before he started for the shore he studied it. "All right." Jourdonnais saw that they had scared up a heron, which flopped away with its legs out, using them for a rudder.

It seemed a long time before he saw Summers again, standing half a mile up on a little tongue of land, motioning them on. Jourdonnais said, "The
cordelle
. We tow," loud enough for the oarsmen in the bow to hear him. The men's eyes went to the bank and then to him. They got themselves up, as if they had weights in their pants. "
Non!
Not the guns.
Mon Dieu
, you think to pull with rifles in the hands?" They stood shifting from foot to foot, muttering to themselves. "Summers, he's looking ahead. I send Caudill with you, to lead. Here, all have a drink. It is all right."

The woods were still, but not too still. Things moved in them and made noises, a brown thrush flitting in a thicket of buffalo berry, a coyote trotting at the edge of the meadow that flowed out from the trees and led on up to the hills, a bunch of magpies cawing in a tangled cottonwood. Summers' eye caught the movement of the thrasher. It was no more than a shadow passing in shadows, but he saw it and identified the bird, and his eye climbed the bushes until it found the nest. The magpies were a brood. The young ones made an unsure clamor, like boys with their voices changing.

Summers went on, letting a part of his mind roam and keeping a part of it open for the messages of the woods. A man had to learn how to divide his mind that way, to think and remember in some far-off part of it and yet to note and feel what was going on about him, and to be ready to act without thinking. The far-off part of his mind saw Caudill aiming at the Indian, his face set and maybe a little pale but not scared. Caudill, for all he was an odd and silent boy, would make a mountain man. Maybe so would Deakins, though he didn't seem cut out so clear for it. Trading would suit him; he got along with people. It was something, what traders would do to make money -like Jourdonnais stewing over his nickels. Christ, even when you had a heap of beaver what did you have?

He went to the water line and motioned an "All right," waiting for Jourdonnais' answering wave, and then let the woods swallow him again and that far piece of his mind go on with its thinking. He knew he wasn't a mountain man as some men were. He liked to get to St. Louis once in a while and sleep in a sure-enough bed, with a white woman that smelled of perfume instead of grease and diamond-willow smoke. He didn't mind farming, too much. It was still getting outside. And he hadn't lost his taste for bread and salt and pies and such. They were a heap better than squaw meat, which men had been known to butcher and eat, probably after bedding with the squaws first.

Above him, out at the edge of the brush, a curlew was calling. Its sharp two-toned cry seemed to hang in the air. He caught a glimpse of it, with its wings outspread and just the tips of them fluttering as it glided. He waited for it to land, waited for the muted little trill that would tell him it was aground again and satisfied. The bird's shadow sped along the leaves over his head. It hadn't lighted. It wasn't going to light. The two-toned cry kept sounding, as if something had stumbled on the nest.

Summers waited and watched and after a while moved ahead again, going as softly as a man could. Except for the curlew and the magpies that were half a mile behind him now, the woods had no voice at all, and no movement. He came to a small open space and stood at the edge of it, unmoving except for his eyes. Through a screen of brush he could see a patch of the river shaded by the trees above him. The water seemed still as pond water, gathered in a small elbow in the bank. While he watched, a mallard hen came into the patch, swimming steadily downstream, watching for the string of ducklings that trailed behind her. They didn't make a sound.

Summers thought, "Injuns about, sure as God," but still he didn't move. A man couldn't run off yelling Injun without knowing where they were and who and how many. After a while he slipped ahead again, and stopped, and went on. A willow branch made a little whisking noise along his buckskin. He halted and put it back of him and waited again. The curlew was still circling, still crying about her nest.

The boats were stowed carefully in the brush, so as not to be seen from the river. There were seven of them in sight, the round bullboats of the upper Missouri, each made from the hide of a single bull stretched over a willow frame. They appeared old and were wet yet, but not dripping, as if they had been used the night before and hadn't had time to dry out there in the shade. Summers looked at them through a clump of low willow. He made out a moccasined track pointed upstream.

After what seemed a long time, he crouched down and sidled over toward the bank of the river. He thrust his head from the brush slowly, like a squirrel peeking from behind a limb, knowing it was movement and not shape that caught the eye. Up the current, less than an arrow shot away, the river made a slow turn. The willows grew lush there, probably where a tree had gone over and caught the sand and made a bank. The boat towers would have clear going until they got there.

Summers couldn't see anything among the willows, not so much as a branch bent out of shape or the grass trampled where a man might have gone through, but he knew the Sioux were there.

He brought his head back, still slowly, and turned about, to see an Indian screened in the brush only an arm's length away. Two black stripes ran down the Indian's cheeks. They pulled downward as the Indian caught his movement. There was one still instant -a flash of seeing, in which nothing moved or sounded- and then the Indian jerked up his battle-ax. Summers leaped to one side, hearing the empty whistle of the club before it thrashed the brush. There wasn't room or time for the rifle. Summers dropped it and leaped ahead, straight through the thin willows at the Indian, trying to beat the second swing of the club. The Sioux grunted and went down over a root, chopping with the bladed club as he fell. Summers felt the point of it stabbing his left shoulder. He got hold of the hand. His right hand went down for his knife. The Indian gave a sudden heave, snapping himself at the crotch. They rolled over, Summers underneath now, hugging the Indian to cramp his swing. He knew he ought to call out, to warn the crew oncoming with the cordelle. He felt the Indian's legs on either side of his knee and jerked the knee up. The force of it pounded the Indian ahead. The Indian let out a grunt that settled into a thin whine. Summers got his knife then, got it out and around and brought it down, feeling it hit and skid and go on. The Indian flopped from him and lay straining and got himself on his butt and sat, unable to do more. Summers was on his feet. He had his right hand back, with the knife in it.

The Sioux's fingers lay loose around the handle of his tomahawk. Summers thought his eyes were like a dog's, like a pitiful goddam dog's. He had to let him have it. The eyes followed Summers' arm up to the knife, waiting for it to come down. The far-off part of Summers' mind told him again he wasn't a real mountain man. Eyes like a goddam hound's. The knife went in easy this time.

Summers wrenched himself around and lurched through the brush to the shore. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back. The boatmen strung along the
cordelle
pulled up, their mouths dropping open, as he burst out almost on top of them. He made himself be deliberate. "Back!" he said. "Quick, but be careful!" He heard the Indians begin to shout behind him, from the clustered willow. Their arrows made a small fluttering noise, and their fusils boomed. He thought, "Injuns always use a heap too much powder," while he shouted at the Creoles, trying to put order in their flight. They had turned like sheep and started to run and fallen down and run again and fallen, as the fleeter overran the others. He was shouting, more to himself than to them, "Easy! You French sons of bitches." An arrow was sticking from Labadie's arm, but it didn't stop his running. It just made him yell. Christ, a man would think it had him in the heart!

The Indians shouted louder, but not from the willow any more and not like men standing still. Summers could hear them breaking through the brush, their cries broken by the jolt of their feet. The Creoles were a frantic tangle down the bank. Closer, Caudill stood, his dark eye fixed along the rifle barrel, and behind him was Deakins, unarmed but waiting. "Hump it!" cried Summers, humping it himself. The
Mandan
lay like a dead duck at the edge of the stream, her sail down and useless as a broken wing. Free from the towline, she was settling back with the current and pulling out, drawing away from them. While Summers watched, he saw Romaine splash into the water and run up on the bank and take a snub on a tree, and then splash back to the
Mandan
as if the devil was on his tail.

"Go on!" shouted Summers. "Hump it, you goddam fools!"

Caudill's rifle went off almost in his face, and then they were running at his sides, Caudill and Deakins were, running and looking back. An arrow whizzed over their heads and buried its head in a tree before them. A rifle spoke again, sounding as if it had been fired right behind their heads. "Goddam it, run, you boys!" Summers felt his legs playing out on him. His head was dauncy, as if it wasn't fixed rightly to his neck. All of a sudden he realized he was old. It was as if all his life he had run among the sleeping dogs of the years and now at last they had wakened all at once and seized on him. He knew he couldn't make it. "Git on, you two," he panted. Back of him he could see the Indians, running in the open now and yelling their heads off, sure that they would get him.
And then the swivel spoke. The black smoke belched out of it, cored at first with fire, and hung in a black cloud, tattering at the edges as the air played with it. The shot silenced the yells of the Indians and the footsteps. When Summers looked back he couldn't see a Sioux, except for two that lay there for the wolves. After a while, above the slowed sound of his own moccasins, he heard them again, but thin this time and lost in the brush. He called to Jourdonnais. "Let's move on up and get them scalps. They'll help a heap with the Rees and Blackfeet."
 
 

Boone lay on his back and looked at a night sky shot' with stars. They were sharp and bright as fresh-struck flames, like campfires that a traveler might sight on a far shore. Starlight was nearly as good as moonlight here on the upper river where blue days faded off into nights deeper than a man could believe. By day Boone could get himself on a hill and see forever, until the sky came down and shut off his eye. There was the sky above, blue as paint, and the brown earth rolling underneath, and himself between them with a free, wild feeling in his chest, as if they were the ceiling and floor of a home that was all his own.

Boone had his shirt close around his neck and a handkerchief half over his face to shut off the mosquitoes. They made a steady buzzing around his head, for all that he and Jim had built a smudge and bedded down close to it. He could hear Jim slapping his face and rubbing the itch afterwards.

"Worse'n chiggers," Jim said, "these damn gnats. Listen to 'em. It's their war whoop they're singing." Boone set his mind to listening. The whole night seemed filled with the small whining of their wings. "What's the good of a gnat, anyways?" Jim asked.

"They'll quiet down some, if it cools off."

"They don't serve no purpose, unless to remind a man he ain't such a somebody."

"I dunno," said Boone, knowing Jim was turning the question in his mind as he did with everything. When it came to an idea Jim was like Boone with a rock or a buffalo chip, tipping it over to see what was underneath. Boone figured it was better to take what came and not trouble the mind with questions there was no answer to. Under a rock or a chip, now, a man could spot bugs and sometimes a snake.

"Maybe the pesky little bastards is asking themselves what God wanted to put hands on a man for," Jim said after a while. "Maybe they're thinkin' everything would be slick, except their dinner can slap 'em. Maybe," he went on after another pause, "maybe they got as much business here as we have. You reckon?"

"I wouldn't say as much."

"They're here, ain't they?" Jim's hand made a whack against his cheek. "And we're here, ready for 'em to feed on. I bet they figure we're made special just for them. I bet they're sayin' thank you, God, for everything, only why did you have to put hands on a man, or a tail on a cow?"

Boone could look down along the shadows of his cheeks and see the Mandan's mast, standing sharp and black.

"Or maybe they're sayin', like my old man would, we know it's a punishment for our bein' so sinful and noaccount. Forgive us our trespasses, an' God's will be done."