The Canyon of Bones (15 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: The Canyon of Bones
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S
kye wasn't going to have a night by himself after all. Victoria came for him and told him he was needed.
Reluctantly, for he was not comfortable with these people, he followed her into the village, where a great congregation had collected before the lodge of Chief Bear. The wrath of the earlier hour had melted away and he eyed Skye affably
“Ah, Mister Skye. Help me, please,” Mercer said. “They've inquired what I do, who I am, and I thought to tell them I am a storyteller. That's as close as I can come to a journalist. Victoria did the sign-talk. And now, nothing will do but stories. They're gathered here, whole bloody village, to hear me tell stories!”
“We will have stories!” Victoria said. “They have a young man who knows English.”
“Then why me?”
“Just a little English. He worked at Fort Benton a few moons.”
“Two sign-talkers and a translator?”
Victoria grinned.
Spread on robes in every direction was a great crowd, some wrapped in blankets against the chill, most of them eager for this delightful event to begin. A small fire cast up gray smoke and shot wavering light into the multitude.
“What'll you talk about, Mister Mercer?”
“I don't know a thing about stories but I can tell them where I've been, what I've seen. Monkeys. Zebras. Giraffes. Lions. Crocodiles. Anteaters.”
Chief Bear, seeing Skye at hand, rose and lifted an arm, gaining attention swiftly. He was going to orate first, and Skye hoped the young translator could convey the gist of it.
Bear began in a monotone that somehow projected outward to the farthest reaches of the crowd.
“He says, storytellers are the greatest of all people. He says storytellers bring us the rest of the world. They give us mighty lessons, and show us good and bad. They fill our minds with wonders. And here is a man who is said to be the greatest storyteller on earth, this man Mercer. So listen well my children, for there is no one else like him.”
The young man was converting the Gros Ventre tongue into English well enough, which relieved Skye. He had no idea how he would convey the idea of a giraffe or a hippopotamus to these Atsina people.
“Ready, Mister Skye?”
“No, but go ahead.”
Graves Duplessis Mercer stood gracefully among the Indians that cool night, lit only by the flames of a fire before him. He spoke in a loud sonorous voice, thanking them for inviting him, and expressing his wish that they would all profit from his talk.
Skye knew at once that Mercer possessed some sort of
magic. It would not matter what he said, but that he was there among the Gros Ventres, making a memorable night out of a fall evening.
“I have sailed across the great waters. I have been to lands we call Asia and Africa and South America. I have been to a vast land called Australia where there are strange animals. I have been far north to an island covered with ice called Greenland. I have been to small islands in the south seas, where the waves crash on white beaches, and everyone is beautiful.”
Skye intuitively followed the dialogue with his hands, even as the youth who knew a little English intoned his translation. No one consulted Mercer about the accuracy of any of it; it didn't matter. A good story did not need to be true.
“I have seen snakes called anacondas and boa constrictors so big that they are as thick as a tree trunk and five or seven paces long. I have seen animals called anteaters that have a long snout and dig up ants.”
“Ah!” said someone. People laughed politely. This man's stories were becoming more and more strange, and that made them all the better.
“There is a tribe in Africa that pierces the flesh below the lower lip of young women and puts a wooden plug in the hole. And then every little while they put a larger plug in, until the lower lip protrudes outward like a small platter. They think this is beautiful.”
Women clacked and giggled at that.
“I have been among people who tattoo their whole bodies. Do you know what a tattoo is? It is body art, pricked under the skin, and some people have covered all of themselves with body art. It cannot be washed off. It is their medicine forever,” Mercer said. Clearly, he was reaching for anything exotic, and was getting exactly the result he hoped for.
“Zebras! Horses with black and white stripes! Can you imagine it?”
No one could.
“And pygmies! Little people, only this high.” He gestured in the direction of his waist. “Little people, great warriors.”
“Some people in Africa have blowguns. I suppose I'll have to tell you what a blowgun is. It's a big reed. The little people put a poison dart into it and blow it toward their enemies and kill them with poison.”
Ah! That evoked a stir. Skye's fingers were incapable of telling these stories but he kept up manfully. The Gros Ventres were getting most of it from their translator. Whenever the fire flickered low, a young woman fed its flames, so all could see Skye's sign language and watch Mercer talk.
The man had a genius for it. He paused dramatically to let his interpreters translate. He gestured. He didn't try to tell stories, the kind with beginnings and endings, but simply described the wonders he had seen, and that was more than enough.
People edged closer, so they could study the sign language and hear the translator, who stumbled along, as taxed as Skye was. But somehow they got it, or something close to what Mercer was saying.
The explorer catalogued all the wonders of the world. Giant lizards, parrots as bright as sunsets, scorpions, camels with great humps on them that could walk across deserts and go for a while without water. He talked of fierce tribes of marauders in North Africa, blond people in Scandinavia, striped tigers that prowled the jungles. He talked of naval battles between big wooden ships with cannon on them. His talk roamed everywhere, the seas, the deserts, the woods, the mountaintops, the jungles, the rivers a mile wide.
Then, finally, as the chill turned to sharp cold, he stopped. By now, the whole village had edged close, jammed together for warmth.
The hour was late but one could not know that from watching Mercer, who had an odd glow about him. He was a storyteller, and he had recounted many of the wonders of the world.
Chief Bear stood. He seemed oddly animated, as if Mercer's great catalogue of wonders had triggered some excitement in the seamed old man. He spoke quietly in the Gros Ventre tongue to some youths who slipped away, and there was an air of expectation.
After a while, the boys returned leading two horses. These were handsome ponies, each equipped with a saddle and hackamore.
Chief Bear made the sign for a gift.
“These are gifts to you,” Skye said.
“A gift? I thought they were moochers. Isn't that what you told me?”
“A gift,” Skye said. “Accept them.”
Mercer stepped forward, accepted the reins, and nodded to the chief.
But more followed. Now others in the village brought three horses to Mercer and Skye and his women, two of them saddled. Others brought lodgepoles. Then a group of Gros Ventre women dragged a whole smoke-darkened lodge into the circle of light, and presented it to Skye's party. Others brought parfleches filled with pemmican or jerky. Young men brought bows and quivers and left them at Mercer's feet.
Mercer accepted them all gratefully, making his delight known to these people. Skye signaled his own great pleasure and offered the friendship sign to them all.
“What's the protocol, Mister Skye? How do I thank them? My Lord, what have I done?”
“All the world loves a storyteller, mate. They're honoring you. This night they heard of wonders they'd never imagined. Creatures beyond anything they'd heard of. People different from any they'd seen. Customs they never knew. Foods they never tasted. Weapons they sent shivers through them. But yes, you can return a gift or two. Good idea. It's called a potlatch, and it's very big among some of the tribes. Maybe the nags blistered by the fire. These people could use them after they're healed.”
“Done!” Mercer said.
Winding needed no instruction, but plunged off toward Skye's camp to collect the animals. They now had six new ones, all sound and saddled, and could surrender the blistered ones. And now they had a lodge and lodgepoles. They had gone in one evening from fire-chastened poor to rich.
Soon Winding returned with the nags, and Mercer gave them to Chief Bear, who was pleased to have them.
The evening was over. Skye's party lugged all their newfound wealth toward their own camp. Mary and Victoria swiftly spread the lodgepole pyramid, and laid lodgepoles into it, and then raised the soft, worn buffalo-hide cover. They would have shelter that chill night. It wasn't large, but it would house the five of them.
“What have I done? I still don't quite grasp all this,” Mercer said.
“You gave them wonders. You do just the same in England. Why do all those papers and journals pay you well? You give them, in your words, sensations. You even hunt for sensations to write about. This is no different. The person who
can tell stories is the most valued of all among many peoples.”
“Well, that's a bit of a twist, eh? I thought I was a talebearer to the English, but now I'm a tale-teller to the Indians. The only trouble is, there's hardly a blessed thing to write about in North America.”
Skye kept his thoughts about that to himself.
“I say, Skye, will we be intruding? There in the lodge with two women?” Mercer asked. “A little bit too close for comfort, eh?”
“You are gentlemen,” Skye responded.
“Not exactly, Mister Skye. When I'm pressed, or desperate, I can be a gentleman. But don't push your luck.”
S
uddenly they were affluent. Each had a saddle horse. The remaining draft horse pulled one travois bearing the buffalo-hide lodge; another horse pulled the lodgepoles. Spare horses carted the rest of the gear, the robes, the parfleches, on packsaddles.
They pulled out at dawn while the Gros Ventre camp slept. Those people were late risers and their village would not come to life until nearly noon. A few horse herders silently watched them leave. In the quiet chill, Skye led his party north through broken country, largely open range land, a paradise of deer, antelope, and elk.
“How far is it to Fort Benton, Mister Skye?” asked Mercer.
“I thought we were heading for the bones,” Skye said.
“But I am unequipped to write about them. I lack even a blank page and a pencil for my journal. Those pictographs won't do, you know.”
“The bones are not far now.”
“Oh, well, I'll have a glance.”
“I've seen them only once but I won't ever forget them.
You can't imagine how big. Victoria tells me they're the bones of giant birds, three times taller than a man.”
Mercer laughed. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I believe that's your motto?”
“We'll see,” said Skye. He didn't blame Mercer for doubting.
They were crossing an empty land where a man could watch cloud shadows scrape across the breeze-bent grasses, cured tan now by a hot summer's heat. The clouds sometimes took the form of animals, bizarre heads, homed creatures floating through the blue. There were shapes to heat the imagination, clouds to trigger campfire stories.
Victoria's people swore that some clouds reflected the world they were passing over, and one could see buffalo or a migration of some other tribe mirrored in the bottoms of the clouds. But Skye had never seen any such thing.
They nooned at a willow grove beside a slow spring that fed water into an algae-topped pool. The horses nuzzled the water but drank little.
Victoria approached Mercer with a request: “You let me shoot that bow a little?”
“You know how to shoot it?”
“Hell yes.”
“You're a warrior woman?”
“You want to bet? Make a match?”
“I should warn you. I'm very good with a bow and arrow,” Mercer said.
“Whoever wins gets the bow and quiver, eh?”
Skye watched all this with joy. Victoria coveted that bow and quiver that the Gros Ventres had given Mercer. It was a handsome reflex bow of yew wood, strung with buffalo sinew. The quilled quiver contained a dozen arrows wrought from reed and tipped with Hudson's Bay sheet-iron points. That
bow and its arrows could down an elk or deer; maybe a buffalo if the shooter was close enough to the heart-lung spot.
“And what'll you give me if you lose?”
“My robe.”
“Oh ho, this will be a contest.”
Victoria smiled. “You pick a target.”
Mercer studied her, noting the thin arms, the wiry frame, the feminine hand. “I think I will go for some distance,” he said. He selected a willow tree perhaps thirty yards distant and gashed an X in its bark. Ninety or a hundred feet, Skye judged. For a plains Indian bow, an ample distance.
“Three arrows apiece? Closest one wins?” Victoria asked.
“Do we practice first?”
She smiled. “Practice one arrow if you want.”
Winding finished watering and picketing the horses and watched quietly. Mary was digging into parfleches, extracting some jerky for their meal.
Mercer easily flexed the bow with his knee and slid the bowstring into its slot. He pulled back the string, getting some sense of the bow's power.
“It pulls easily, but I'll wager it'll put an arrow some distance,” he said. “Mister Skye, will you join the competition?”
“I couldn't hit an elephant,” Skye said. He hoped Victoria would win. She was a fine hunter and many a time made meat, especially when rain had ruined his powder.
Mercer slid an arrow from the quiver, eyed it, and frowned. “This shaft isn't exactly true,” he said.
Victoria smiled.
“I suppose you mastered a bow and arrow as a young woman,” Mercer said. “I shall have to redouble my effort. I learned, actually, in the Near East. No one thinks of that as a place of bowmen, but it is.”
He nocked his arrow, took a long time aiming, and let it fly. It buried itself in the old willow trunk only a foot above the center of the cross scraped in the bark. He smiled and handed her the bow.
“I will shoot four,” she said. “The first for practice. The rest will count.”
She took no time at all. Some ingrained instinct made her draw the string and loose the arrow all in one swift movement. The practice arrow was about as far from center as his; the next three grouped closer, within seven or eight inches. She had hardly squandered thirty seconds at it.
“Oh, my,” said Graves Mercer. “The lady can aim.”
“Let's mark her arrows,” Skye said. “Pull the practice arrow and tie a bit of something to these.”
They did that. Victoria tied a little doeskin thong cut from her skirt to each of her arrows.
“Ah, here goes your robe, madam,” Mercer said. “It'll keep me warm.”
He drew and aimed slowly, taking his time, settling his body into steadiness. He loosed the first arrow, and Skye saw at once that it was true. It plunked home only an inch farther out than the best of Victoria's.
“Two more,” he said. There he was, those even white teeth bared in a cheerful smile.
He aimed the next one carefully, taking all the time in the world, only to see it miss the target willow altogether.
“That means it all rides on this one,” he said. “I'll keep that in mind.”
He nocked that arrow after studying it, and took his time once again, lifting and lowering the bow, flexing it, studying that distant crude X clawed out of the gray bark of the tree.
Then, when the wind had died and the sun was burning down on them all, he loosed the arrow. It slapped squarely into the center of the X, easily the best shot.
“Oh, ho! You owe me a robe!” he said, unstringing the bow. They all walked to the willow tree where his final arrow had sunk true into the very place where the bars of the X joined. They patiently retrieved the valuable arrows, working the metal points loose, and restored them to the quilled quiver. Then Victoria headed for the packhorses, found her robe, folded it, and carried it to Mercer, who accepted it.
“Time for a little potlatch of my own,” he said. “These both belong to you.” He handed her robe back, and then added the quiver and the yew-wood bow.
“Sonofabitch!” she said, accepting the gifts.
“Well put, madam. You get right to the heart of it with your pithy remarks. The truth of it is that I'm no hunter. By the time I line up a shot the deer would be over the hill.”
That was true, Skye thought. It felt just fine to have Victoria armed and able to help defend them if need be.
They rested through some midday heat and then headed north once again, toiling through an empty, lonely land that seemed never to change. Some landscapes were boring. But Skye knew that the best hunting was often in the dullest country. The coulees ran north now, the dry washes steering their occasional charge of water toward the mighty river that had cut its way deep below the level of the tumbling plains to either side of it
They camped that night at a seep that supported a few cottonwoods. Winding cleared out some debris from a hollow and let the water form a tiny pool scarcely two feet in diameter. It would do. With a little patience, they could water all the stock
and themselves. The savvy teamster set to work, deepening the pool even as he brought the horses one by one to the cool water.
Skye could have used some real meat that night, but they made do with pemmican and some prairie turnips they roasted beside a fire. Not much of a meal, but a thousand times over the years Skye had fared worse. And it only made the promise of some buffalo boss rib all the more delicious.
Jawbone drank heartily in the twilight and began gnawing the short grass, making a meal of almost anything that grew. Then suddenly his head bobbed upward and he snorted softly. That was all Skye needed to grab his rifle and begin a slow, steady search of distant hills, soft in the twilight. He saw nothing. Victoria and Mary saw nothing either. Winding noticed that all the horses were pointed in one direction, their ears forward, and finally it was he who spotted whatever there was to see.
It was a mustang, plainly a wild stallion, standing erect, silhouetted by the fading blue of the day far to the northwest. And flowing below him as grazing dictated was a band of mares and foals and yearlings. The stallion lifted his head and sniffed the wind, a noble animal with an arched neck, a long broom tail, a proud demeanor. Now the mustang mares were alerted. The old lead mare stared squarely at the camp, her ears pricked forward, ready to run. That was how the mustangs lived. The king stallion would fight; the mares, under the old boss lady, would retreat.
Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. No animal moved. The stallion stood there, the setting sun dropping below the horizon behind him. The mares and young stuff stood stock-still, assessing trouble.
Then everything happened at once. Jawbone squealed and broke straight toward the mustang stallion. The mares saw
him coming, and bolted to the south, driving their young with them. But the stallion didn't move.
“No!” yelled Skye, but it was like bawling at the wind.
Jawbone loped straight at the old mustang, and Skye knew that blood would flow.

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