The High Missouri (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It was Red Sky at Morning, the younger sister, who was the clever one. She saw that Dylan the idealist would help, she arranged the meeting at the creek while the women were supposed to be gathering wild rice, and she came up with the plan.

Dylan’s plan would have been much more elaborate, or much more dramatic, or much more deceptive, or something. He wanted to cut his way into the lodge in the middle of the night, whack Chabono on the head, and make a dash for it. Unnecessary, Red Sky said.

Her plan was simple, with one or two fillips to make it elegant. This afternoon she would promise to make Chabono mukluks from moose hide. Tomorrow or the next day he and one or two of his cronies would go moose hunting. She would send along a quart of whiskey provided by Dylan to make sure they didn’t come back before dark. And the two sisters and Dylan would move out just after dawn, when the hunters left. That would give them a full day’s start.

Cree Medicine pitched in. The fillips, she said, were that they would not take the usual route, up the Assiniboine River to the west. Instead they would go south up Red River and up the Pembina River past Turtle Mountain, the road of the Turtle Mountain Indians.

“And we will not be a white man and two Piegan women,” put in Red Sky. “No, a white man, a Metis man, and a Minnetaree woman.” Cree Medicine showed him she had the moccasins to look Minnetaree, and would cover her dress with a blanket.

“You will get me some men’s clothing,” said Red Sky. “Yes, you will, and I am tall enough to wear it.” Corduroy trousers, she wanted, hip-high leggings, a deerskin shirt, one of those blue wool coats with hoods and brass buttons, and even a bright red sash with tasseled ends for her waist.

Red Sky’s eyes gleamed at the thought of this colorful disguise. Oh,
sacre
, she swore in her broken French, of course Dylan could come up with the whiskey and the clothes, and even some tobacco as gifts for her people. Was he not a rich trader?

Dylan looked at the two sisters. Yes, all right, he would deliver them out of slavery.

They were contrasting sisters, actually. Though Red Sky was younger, she was more assertive. Almost like a man, or so it seemed to Dylan, she knew her mind and spoke it. The spunky teenager precedes the compliant wife maybe, thought Dylan. He liked her fine as she was.

While Red Sky was the slender and firm-looking girl, Cree Medicine was round of body, with a languid and sensual way of moving. She said little, yet she seemed womanly. Her silence struck Dylan as maturity, not self-effacement. When Dylan looked into her eyes, he suspected depths in her, the blood wisdom of the feminine.

Yes, he would want them every night. His cod was hard and hungry all the time already. But he would stay away from them. And he knew they would help him in his propriety. The last thing Red Sky said as they left the talk by the creek was, with a hard, tight smile,
“Ça va dire, après ce soir Chabono pourrai plus nous tirez plus jamais.”
Meaning, after tonight Chabono can’t frig us anymore.

Dylan went off quietly to make the necessary preparations. Yes, damn, he was under the spell of Red Sky’s crisp assurance and Cree’s soft sensuality. And mad, as well, stealing the women of his fellow trader, stealing the canoe and equipment and trade goods of his own partners, his own trading company, his friend and mentor, and setting off on a risky trip across the Great Plains with winter coming on, going to the Piegans, who never welcomed whites.

He simply didn’t care if he was under the influence of enchantresses, or taken with lunar madness, or drunk on chivalry, or what. He went steadily about the business of getting ready. He had no more communication from the two girls—maybe if he called them girls in his head, it would be easier for him to pretend they were only little sisters. He put pemmican and
sagamité
into a
piece
, and blankets and extra clothes. He traded for some men’s clothes for Red Sky. He made sure his shooting pouch had a bar of lead and a ball mold, and his horns were full of powder. Feeling an obscure need, he sharpened his knives. Just after dark he slipped out and moved one of the two
canots du nord
to the hiding place on the creek where he’d meet the sisters, loaded it, and hid it under some brush.

He took ten minutes and smoked a pipe and thought about Dru and Saga. He told himself he was skipping out on his friends. Worse, he was robbing his partners. He told himself other, similar stories. He tried to make them matter. He failed.

He argued the other side to himself. He was doing what was right. Dru’s attitude toward Indian slavery was far too casual. The abominable American institution was simply wrong. He would make it up to his partners later. Maybe the Piegans would make him welcome and open the door to rich trading. Somehow he didn’t believe that. Well, he didn’t know how, but he would make it up to his partners.

He never mentioned to himself his almost mystical yearning for the High Missouri, where the sisters’ people lived.

The first day they moved fast, all three of them paddling, working the eddies hard and forging their way upstream. Dylan figured this was their free day. They’d be missed about dark tonight. When the sun went down, they kept paddling by the light of the moon for an hour or two, slept briefly like
voyageurs
under the canoe, and hit the water before first light in the morning. During the day they saw one outfit of Metis coming downriver, and wondered if those fellows would give them away. Before nightfall they had made the turn into the Pembina River, named for the high cranberry bushes along its banks, more than fifty miles from the Red River settlements.

From now on they would see almost no one heading for the settlements. Dylan breathed easier.

For three days they kept moving fast. When no one caught up with them the fourth day, Dylan decided they’d gotten away clean. He realized with a start that he was surprised.

That night Cree unfolded the lodge covers she had brought, and Dylan got a laugh—it was Chabono’s lodge. They’d stolen the roof over the old man’s head. But Cree told Dylan that the lodge always belongs to the woman. Remember that, Red Sky said pointedly. Cree erected the short, light poles of the lodge for summer traveling by herself. Red Sky built a center fire. Her disguise as a man was so good it unsettled Dylan.

Cree told Dylan to sit behind the center fire, which he knew was the place of honor. He was supposed to sit still, he realized, and let his women take care of him. All right, he would smoke.

He noticed, as they got things ready, that Cree laid out the blankets in the lodge, Red Sky’s on one side, his own and hers as one pallet at the back center, where the father and mother always slept. He wondered if she intended to service him in bed as automatically as she fixed his meal. He wouldn’t accept, but he teased himself by imagining just what she had in mind. They ate. They said little or nothing. Dylan had the impression that Red Sky was out of sorts somehow. Too bad, he was enjoying himself hugely.

He stood up and went outside to pee. When he got back, he would tell Cree to move her blankets to one side. He knew she would obey.

Looking around as he peed, he saw a dark line against the night sky.

A person, stock-still. A person looking at him. “There’s trouble,” said Saga’s voice.

After Saga explained the trouble, and Dylan decided how they’d deal with it, the Metis delivered a written message from Dru. It began,

The fact that you’re reading this message means you know about the enemies on your trail. I like your attitude. You’re easy to track, though, even if Red Sky’s disguise helps a little. Idealism will get you killed unless you’re bloody good. And entirely merciless.

Dylan looked up at Saga, who was doing his impassive expression.

You didn’t take enough pemmican, here’s some more. Also more trade goods for the Piegans. We’re partners, remember?

Good luck and a warm cod. I’ll see you at the Mandan villages this winter if you make it, or at Red River in the spring. Find the holy grail and drink from it.

The Druid

Postscript: You fooled me. I didn’t know you were leaving. Saga did. When he claims it was a good way to get rid of you, you’re supposed to know it’s a joke.

Dylan, Saga, and Red Sky waited, crouched in the willows. It was past midnight. Soon the bastards would be creeping in. The three watched the bottomland carefully. They were waiting for human shadows to come, moving silently among the dapplings of moon shadows. To come menacingly, with malicious intent.

Which was fine. Cree would take care of the canoe. Dylan, Saga, and Red Sky had malicious intent of their own for this end.

Several hours ago, when Saga stepped into the lodge, Dylan had asked, “How’d you follow us?”

In a loquacious moment, for him, Saga had said, “Following you was easy. Not getting spotted by Chabono, also following you, that was the trick.”

They didn’t have time to talk about the whys and wherefores, Saga said. Chabono and four other Metis were a mile downstream, their canoe half hidden, the men waiting until Dylan and the women were asleep. When they left the settlements, they boasted they were going to take two slaves and one scalp.

Saga and Red Sky were both full of ideas. Dylan listened. Then, with an authority that surprised him, he said what they would do. That was why Cree was now down by the stalkers’ canoe with an ax, ready to tear hell out of it when Chabono left to do the dirty deeds. And Saga, Red Sky, and Dylan were waiting here in the dark.

His eyes said movement but his ears said silence. A disharmony. He waited. He told himself to breathe again. Yes, the creepers. The Big Dipper said halfway between midnight and dawn. They were so silent Dylan could hardly believe they were coming. He saw only shadows, moon shadows, undulating with the shape of the ground and the brush.

Dylan motioned with a hand. Saga and Red Sky crawled off in opposite directions, to their posts.

Soon four shadows slithered to the tipi. They spread out, two disappearing behind the wedge of darkness where the lodge stood, then reappearing and approaching the door. Dylan could tell Chabono’s silhouette by the shape of the two feathers stuck sideways into the soft toque on his head. The shadows massed for a moment. Dylan wondered whether they whispered, or communicated only with their eyes.

Dylan breathed shallowly. Only a dozen steps away, he was afraid of being heard.

One shadow shifted to the door. After a moment Dylan saw a blacker blackness in the side of the lodge, another darkness next to it, waiting. Then three dark blobs slid one by one into the tipi. Chabono’s silhouette stayed outside.

Dylan could not wait long. They would discover quickly that the forms sleeping inside were only clothes and trade goods wrapped in blankets.

He stood up and stepped toward old Chabono, tomahawk in hand. He would fell the old bastard with the blunt side.

Chabono bolted.

Dylan roared at Saga and Red Sky. He leapt after Chabono, swung the tomahawk. It glanced off the old man’s back and sailed out of Dylan’s hand. Chabono got his footing back and ran.

Automatically, Dylan grasped his right-hand knife and whicked it hard at the old man.

It stuck. Somewhere on the right side.

Yelling and bawling from the lodge.

A triumphant ululation from Red Sky.

Dylan looked back. Where the dark wedge had stood, there was nothing but the forms of Red Sky and Saga, beating the lumps under the lodge covers flat on the ground.

It had worked. It was a simple setup. They undid the top tie on the lodge poles and loosened the cover. When Saga and Red Sky heaved on their ropes, the lodge poles collapsed and the assassins were tangled up under the cover.

Saga and Red Sky were dealing out a beating with the flat sides of tomahawks.

Dylan lit the candle lantern he’d hung from a branch.

Chabono was moaning and groaning, making an awful racket. Dylan checked the knife. It was stuck in the flesh of the right armpit. Chabono would have a useless arm for a while.

Dylan put a foot on the old man’s back and jerked the knife out fast. Chabono bellowed.

Dylan looked at the blade. His first honest human blood with it. Never you mind, Mr. Stewart. Dylan rolled Chabono over briskly and tied his feet and hands with rawhide.

Saga was yelling at the assassins to come out crawling. In two minutes they had the whole crew bound tight. Saga took their moccasins.

Red Sky lit the cooking fire outside the tipi. Dylan noticed that she didn’t put the lodge back up. She made a fine-looking warrior, and her face was full of combat exhilaration.

Dylan looked at his knife blade in the light of the fire, gleaming red. He wiped it clean on the grass. Yes, first blood, good.

“We did it,” he said to both of them. Red Sky grinned big. Saga’s smile started in his eyes but didn’t get to his lips.

Dylan took the lead. “Saga wants to scalp you. He can get a price for the scalps over at Fort Snelling.”

The three Metis said nothing. Their aloof faces spoke all. They would never talk.

“He didn’t say kill you,” Dylan went on. “He wouldn’t do that to his countrymen. But you can cover your skulls with hats.”

Chabono started talking. Ceaselessly. He apologized, begged, and wheedled. He said it was all a joke, just a little fun between friends. He rolled around on the ground. He whined pitifully about his wound. He tried demanding, simpering, and pleading. He said a lot of things Dylan paid no attention to.

Dylan did pay attention to Cree, who walked quietly into camp and said she’d destroyed the assassins’ canoe. Then she set out quietly folding the lodge and lashing the poles together. They’d get no more sleep tonight.

Dylan laid down the law. He’d wrecked their canoe. He’d taken their footwear. He was also taking their guns, which were miserable
fusils
anyway. He was taking their pemmican, and everything else except the clothes on their backs and their knives.

Chabono fell into a song of lament. Dylan paid no attention to the words.