The Yellowstone (9 page)

Chapter 12

December, 1843, Big freezing moon

Annemarie could not stop fondling her hair ornament. She rubbed her thumbs over the coral stones, and the oval pieces of onyx. Then she fingertipped the turquoise centerpiece gingerly, giggling foolishly with her mother, Lame Deer. The ornament was a showy work of the jeweler’s art and came from Santa Fe. Mac was damnably proud of it.

Even moonstruck, Annemarie was a Cheyenne maiden—eyes averted before a strange man, head down. Mac likewise was subtle in sneaking glances at her square face. He was brimful happy. Now he knew that during his months away he barely realized how much he loved her. She was to be his wife. Even a tough, hard Scots trader could get moony about that.

Right now the warmth in the lodge of the Shield society leader Strikes Foot was not just from the center fire. Everyone was aglow with Mac’s generosity. He had brought Strikes Foot a percussion-cap rifle, rare in the tribe. To Yellow Bird he had presented a bright yellow handkerchief of silk. To Lame Deer he had given a wide belt of Mexican hand-tooled leather. He had even provided for the family’s newly adopted waifs, a brother and sister about ten, giving them pieces of decorative ribbon.

Mac had been concerned about a gift for Calling Eagle—how do you take thought for a would-be woman? His solution was a wood-framed, brass-studded mirror. It obviously pleased her. Calling Eagle sometimes made herself up elaborately. The mirror satisfied Mac secretly because among Cheyennes mirrors were usually objects for men, and among whites for women.

He was still uncomfortable with Calling Eagle’s sexual mix-up. He had talked to Skinhead seriously about it on the boat. Skinhead said that
hemaneh
were revered by the Cheyennes—they were healers, creators of powerful love medicine, vital in the scalp dance and the medicine-lodge ceremony. Nevertheless, Mac would be glad to get Annemarie away from her.

Now Mac dug his last surprise out of his possibles sack and passed it to Strikes Foot.

“What’s this?” the warrior exclaimed. He had seen them before, but not up close. A horseshoe.

“For your hoof,” said Mac with a little smile. He held it to Strikes Foot’s substitute foot. It nearly fit—custom-made for the smaller hoof of the buffalo.

Strikes Foot was half-bewildered, half-delighted.

“Look at this.” Mac pointed out the extra touch. The front came to a point, and the edges were sharpened. The shoe was a nasty weapon for kicking.

Strikes Foot started to laugh. He was half out of control. He unstrapped the hoof. Mac got out the small hammer and the horseshoe nails. A few taps and it was done.

Strikes Foot strapped the thing on, stood, and took a kick at the tie-down rope.

Calling Eagle grabbed his arm and pulled him down with a frown, a wifely reprimand. Strikes Foot lay on the ground giggling.

Mac handed him a file. “This will keep the edges sharp.” Then he took out four more shoes and handed them over. “If you lose some.”

“My name will be Strikes Steel Foot!” the Cheyenne exclaimed, giddily happy. Mac was satisfied; he had done well.

The largesse of these gifts did not count what Mac had brought Strikes Foot in exchange for his five horses and two packs of buffalo robes. Lame Deer was already using the three-legged cooking pot. The blankets, tobacco, powder, lead, and beads sat in a pile at the rear of the lodge, where Strikes Foot slept with his wives. A mound of wealth.

Mac had not even built up the mound overgenerously, to make a point. He was giving dollar for dollar what he got for the horses and robes. He had done reasonably well for the horses at Fort Union, and splendidly for the robes in St. Louis. Strikes Foot and the family were dazzled. So the point was made: An alliance with a trader was a great advantage to the Cheyennes.

Strikes Foot reached for one of his social pipes. Mac quickly excused himself and stepped outside the lodge.

Matters looked in good order. Reshaw and Blue had the wall tent up beside Strikes Foot’s lodge, and the trade goods neatly stowed inside. Later this afternoon Mac would make some presents, and then do his trading. The trading wouldn’t take long—he didn’t have that much to trade.

All seven horses were picketed near the tent, with nose bags of corn, the last of the sacks Mac had brought. Blue and Reshaw were gone, evidently gathering the inner and outer bark of the sweet cottonwood, as Mac had asked. More feed for the horses.

The trip was not particularly hard on them. Mac allowed ten days, and it took seven. The ground was almost bare the whole way, with one light snow of no consequence, so the horses didn’t have to struggle for their feed. The only hardship for them was covering a lot of ground in a short time. Mac thought they were in good shape. Which was fortunate. He intended to trade half of them, or all of them. In early winter he was lucky to get up here on horseback—he might have to go back via snowshoe.

He was eager to get alone with Strikes Foot and talk about his plan. He wanted to persuade these Cheyennes to come in to Fort Platte early in the summer. Strikes Foot would transport the hides Mac had traded for. And they would do more trading. And Mac would find a priest or a preacher man among the emigrants on the Oregon Trail and stage a wedding.

He had thought again of using the gifts he had brought to claim Annemarie now, and of taking her back to Fort Platte for the winter. His answer was still no. He wanted a wedding. A real wedding, white-man style. For that matter, Indian-style, too, at the same time. A real wedding, ecumenical-style.

Mac ducked back into the lodge. Strikes Foot lifted the packed pipe and raised one of the lucifers Mac had given him. Half-wild with amusement, he struck the match on his new horseshoe. Mac sat beside him and accepted the friendly pipe.

“So, Dancer,” said Strikes Foot, “tell us what happened since you left.”

“Reshaw,” said Mac low, “get your goddamn eyes off Yellow Bird.”

The little Frenchman didn’t answer, or even look back, but just walked on into the night.

Mac had considered it carefully. Reshaw was flirting with Strikes Foot’s youngest wife, no question. And that was big trouble. Mac didn’t know how to control the insolent trader, who thought he knew everything, but didn’t know any wild Indians, only hang-around-the-forts Indians. So Mac got him outside with the excuse of needing to feed the horses.

Mac hadn’t expected the little bastard to refuse even to answer. Mac took a couple of quick steps in the snow and grabbed the sleeve of Reshaw’s capote.

Reshaw patted Mac’s hand. Turning with an easy smile, as though Mac had not spoken harshly, Reshaw said, “You want her first,
non
?”

“No.” Mac felt flustered.

Reshaw made a loud smacking sound with his lips.

“Then the dusky maiden is mine.”

“Back off, Reshaw.”

“I slip into the tent with her after supper. A few minutes.” He was leering.

“Blue will be sleeping in the tent. The two of you.”

Mac could see Reshaw was taken aback, but he shrugged. “Then we’ll take turns on her. All night.”

Mac ignored the big talk. Reshaw was miffed at being put into the tent, which was damn well not as comfortable as a tipi. Strikes Foot had offered the lodge. But taking someone into your lodge was almost like making them family. Mac didn’t want Reshaw getting any illusions that he was Strikes Foot’s family through Mac’s influence.

They got to the rope corral and started throwing sweet cottonwood bark to the horses. Mac felt discombobulated. Reshaw’s designs on Yellow Bird were not so crazy, by his lights. She had been friendly to him. And the Sioux who hung around the forts, the ones Reshaw knew, traded the use of their wives and daughters for that Taos firewater. The Crows did it, too—not even for firewater, just for baubles. The Cheyennes did not, ever.

They finished the job in silence and started back to the lodge. “Reshaw, you’re going to ruin yourself with the Cheyennes.”

“You speak like a child.”

“Listen to me.” Mac grabbed Reshaw’s capote sleeve. This time Reshaw jerked it back and faced Mac pointedly.

“Cheyenne women are chaste,” he said hotly.

“Bah! They’re Indians! And you’re an old maid.”

Mac didn’t know how to get through to the peppery Frenchman. “Annemarie and I are going to get married,” he declared. “Notice how she acts toward me? Shy. That’s because I’m not family. I at least could be a suitor. So she doesn’t act familiar.”

Reshaw turned and stomped off toward the tipi.

Mac grabbed him again. The little man’s eyes looked full of fire. “If Annemarie laughed and played with me, she’d be treating me like a brother, or an uncle. Someone she’d never sleep with.” Mac felt like an idiot explaining Cheyenne sexual customs, when he himself didn’t understand about Calling Eagle. “That’s what Yellow Bird was doing with you. If you mistake her, we’re all in danger.”

Reshaw’s lips curled. “You Americans, you drop your disapproval all over the land like buffalo turds.” He spit at Mac’s feet, whirled, and headed for the lodge.

“Reshaw!” This time Mac didn’t grab. The Frenchman turned back, sneering. “You know what Cheyennes do to young girls who are seduced? The seducer mocks them in front of the whole tribe. Then everyone mocks them, almost unto death. They have to run off, or go to another band as nothing, a slave or a fourth wife or…” Mac was struggling for control.

“If a wife commits adultery, they shun her, or her husband kicks her out, or even kills her. They are not like the Indians you know.”

“Stinking romance,” said Reshaw. “They’re Indians. They are animals. You take us to live with a queer and you romance about them?”

“Shut up, Reshaw.” He advanced on the Frenchman.

“What’s the matter, Maclean? You afraid I’ll corrupt your Annemarie? Your romantic virgin?” The word seethed mockery. “I’d be the last of a long line of herd bulls, but still in front of you, hah?”

Mac stopped, controlled himself, and spoke low. “If you touch Yellow Rird, Strikes Foot will kill you. If you touch any woman in this camp, the band will have your scalp. And I’ll help them take it.”

Mac watched Reshaw’s face. He saw nothing but defiance.

Mac was dreaming of the Sandwich Islands. Though he had never been to the islands, he recognized them. They were familiar in his dreams. He’d read a book with a seaman’s account of visiting the islands, and other places in the South Seas. The seaman made clear how compliant the women were. Voluptuous, bare-breasted, raven-haired, and compliant.

Mac’s dream was not explicit. In it he was in a reverie. A breeze was lulling him, palm branches were stroking him, and he heard soothing, exotic music. At other times he was being gently washed by the warm surf.

From time to time in the dream he was lying on cushions and sipping, as always, a turquoise liquid from a clear glass. He knew it was the essence of the coconut, a magical elixir. He did not open his eyes as he drank. He lowered his head. Dark hands stroked his fair skin softly, sensually. Desire waxed and waned enticingly.

Suddenly he was alert in the buffalo robes of Strikes Foot’s lodge. The hands were real. Someone was beside him, next to the center fire. He was momentarily afraid. A hand was stroking his chest. It teased his navel. It rose and played with his nipples. Annemarie, surely. He relaxed and enjoyed it.

But was it really Annemarie?

Mac and the two kids had made a pallet of robes at the feet of Strikes Foot, Calling Eagle, and Yellow Bird. Lame Deer and Annemarie were on the far side, at the head. Evidently Annemarie had made bold to creep around the fire and lie beside him.

But what if this wasn’t Annemarie?

Mac was alien here.

Tension prickled his forearms.

He knew one way to make sure.

Annemarie would be wearing a chastity belt. Pubescent, unmarried Cheyennes girls did. In this lodge only Annemarie would have one.

Mac slipped his hand to her belly. The hand on his chest stopped moving, and he heard a small intake of breath. He moved his hand up and caressed her breasts softly, both of them. He was relieved—his visitor was certainly a woman, a real woman. Then, in fear and want, he moved his hand down. Between her legs he did find hide, and beyond the hide, mysterious softness and wetness.

The legs squeezed his hand hard. He heard a tiny snort like a laugh. A hand grabbed his wrist and pulled it away. And a body slid away from him in the robe. After a moment he heard a faint slithering sound in the robes across the dark tipi.

He could feel with his hand on the robe where her warmth had been. So empty now. And beyond the robe the frozen ground of the hoop-and-stick game moon.

His hand out on the cold earth, Mac Maclean thought of the future. This moon was the first of the new year, 1844.

This was the year he would found his trading post. This was the year he would fill his robes with a good woman.

This was the year he would start his family. He was immensely pleased. And aroused.

Chapter 13

January, 1844, Hoop-and-stick-game moon

Everything drifts away. Sounds flicker and glance about, random ricochets. Faces drift by. A cork slides past, not tied to his fishing line, and floating not in a river but in the sky. A cue stick sails along stuck vertical in a cloud, leather tip up.

Mac reaches in slow motion for the cue, but it sails around his grasp. From time to time in this airy dreamland he stretches a hand toward other objects—an uninhabited woman’s dress, one of Lord Stewart’s ivory balls, a burning candle—but he reaches through them, as though they were clouds, and they drift away.

Mac was afraid. He was aware that he usually loved his dreams of flying, but this time he was afraid of falling. He floated a little toward a cloud, hand out. It rose above him. He looked up at it, more afraid. If he fell, he would be an empty garment shot full of holes, streaking down the sky, tatterdemalion.

The strong odor of the smoke of sweetgrass and cedar rose in his nostrils, thick and pungent, like incense. It was a comfort, something real in this drifting universe.

He could remember someone’s touching him, particularly on the belly. He thought the hand belonged to Calling Eagle, but he wondered if that was a trick of his raging brain. The touch felt dangerous. He feared its return—it would make him throw up again.

Spoken words, bits of chant, thumps of drum, tatterect pieces of wailed song, floated through his mind. He held on to the earth. He felt nauseated, like once when he was on a raft on the Mississippi with his dad and the wind rose and the waves rocked them and he held on tight and was sick over the side.

The touch came again. He opened his eyes and saw Calling Eagle’s face looking into his. He drifted off.

Later he was more lucid. He knew he was in the tent. He had had vomiting and diarrhea—he had no idea how many days. Calling Eagle, yes, was witching over him, speaking, chanting, wailing. Someone occasionally beat a drum. A boy of ten or eleven was helping Calling Eagle. The boy’s gestures, movements, way of walking and moving his hands seemed an imitation of Calling Eagle’s, an exaggeration of the feminine.

Neither seemed to pay attention to Mac. Calling Eagle chanted, and the boy prepared something, like priest and acolyte.

Mac drew in the rich odor of sweetgrass and cedar bark, one of his favorite smells.

The boy gently opened Mac’s mouth and put in something mushy. It tasted bitter beyond bitter. With a finger the boy kept Mac from rejecting it. “Suck on that,” he said softly, singsong. “It will help your stomach.”

Calling Eagle took no notice. She was entranced in her song, fixed on a world of vision, mystically enraptured.

Mac wondered who the hell Calling Eagle was.

Mac leaned off his pallet and threw up into the cooking pot.

It was better now. He had time to aim when he threw up.

He lay back down, exhausted. This was maybe the third day after the healing ceremony, and he was worn-out from vomiting, worn-out from diarrhea, worn-out from fever. And weary, Lord, weary of his own stink.

He supposed that was a sign he was better. Yesterday he was too far gone to care how he reeked.

He smiled to himself. White men were infamous for bringing illness to the Indians—particularly influenza and smallpox, both devastating to the red man. Yet where did Mac get this malady if not from the Cheyennes?

Annemarie slipped through the tent flap. He remembered her off and on through the last few days. She had evidently appointed herself his nurse, which pleased him. She had broth again now, and water. He waved away the broth and reached for the water. He was desperately thirsty. He sipped it slowly, carefully. He hadn’t kept any food down yet.

He lay back down and gazed at Annemarie dazedly, gratefully.

She dipped a cloth in the rest of the water and put it on his forehead. It felt wonderful—so cool. She put her hand on his cheek. He covered her hand with his and closed his eyes. Soon he was slipping back into the warm lagoons of the Sandwich Islands.

Strikes Foot and Calling Eagle came through the tent flap. Calling Eagle stooped, and Strikes Foot squatted. Mac was always surprised how easily, as now, he balanced on that buffalo hoof.

“Annemarie tells me you are bored, Dancer,” said Calling Eagle. “That’s a good sign.”

“Calling Eagle has healed you,” said Strikes Foot with satisfaction.

Mac looked from one to the other, holding their eyes. “You are my friends,” he said.

Blue slipped in now—good, loyal Paul—and Annemarie followed. “How do you feel?” she asked.

Mac sat up and took the soup she offered. “Better,” he said thinly, feeling unsteady. Annemarie reached out and held the bowl for him.

“Want come back lodge?” Blue said in broken Cheyenne. The beaver had been working at it. A week and he spoke a bunch.

Annemarie shook her head.

“No,” said Mac. The lodge was full of tanned robes and elk hides, wool blankets, willow chairs, parfleche boxes, and other luxuries. Mac wanted to be sick here in the tent, in containers or on the bare ground.

He looked at Calling Eagle. “What did you do for me?”

“I chased off your bad dreams,” Calling Eagle said lightly.

“Come back soon,” said Strikes Foot, grinning. He stood up easily, poised on his hoof. “Then we can get rid of Reshaw.”

Mac had forgotten. “Is he causing trouble?”

“Such a fool could not cause trouble for Strikes Foot,” the Cheyenne said. “Maybe I cause trouble for him.” Strikes Foot seemed amused.

“He’s just sulky,” said Paul in English.

Mac nodded.

“I’ll stay here this afternoon and tell you some stories,” Annemarie said.

“I am the one he needs for stories,” said Calling Eagle, teasing.

Annemarie looked a little alarmed.

“Tell him stories for children,” said Strikes Foot to Annemarie, chuckling. “For babies. That’s all he has the stomach for.”

Mac came to consciousness gradually, like rising to the surface of water. It was warm, lulling water. He didn’t open his eyes, hovering just below the surface. Slowly he became aware of a presence beside him, partly on him.

He enclosed it in his arms. Annemarie. He floated there, eyes closed, nearly awake. He could feel her breath gentle on his ear.

He breathed deeply, in and out. Her arm lay across his chest, her leg over his legs. He raised a hand and wriggled his fingers through her coppery hair to her head and rubbed.

She kissed him on the cheek. His experience with Indian women was that they didn’t kiss much. Maybe she was doing it to please him.

She kissed him on the edges of his lips, teasing.

He kissed her back.

She slid on top of him. She nibbled at his nose, the corners of his mouth, his upper and lower lips, the whole of-his mouth. At his neck, which made him shiver.

He moved his hands against her back, her neck, her cheeks. He felt their groins pressed together. She thumped hers unmistakably.

She sat up, seeming in high glee. She snapped her dress over her head in one fluid motion. Mac felt as though he were in a trance. They made a game of the knots of her chastity belt. The knots weren’t
that
clever.

Mac Maclean was struggling to think. The woman he loved was dozing beside him, nude. He felt spent, and not only physically. He also felt at peace, profoundly at peace. She would awake soon and touch him again and touch his heart once more.

He did not know what made it so affecting. Her youth, yes, her vitality, her playfulness, her enthusiasm. But more than that. He felt something entirely new.

He grasped one difference. Mac Maclean. His attitude. Always before he was taking someone. Ravishing someone. Coming at someone. Always he felt on the attack.

This time he made love
with
someone.

And he felt wonderful.

Annemarie stirred. He rubbed her head. She opened her eyes, gazed at him blankly for a moment, then mischievously. She licked his ear, slid her hand inside his shirt, and teased his navel.

He would have to give more thought to his discovery later.

“Tie them carefully,” Annemarie said. “Lame Deer checks them sometimes.” Mac was putting Annemarie’s chastity belt back on, finding it absurdly embarrassing. “Put the knots right where they were—that’s what she looks at.”

Mac could see what she meant. It was clear where the old kinks were. It was not so clear how to wind and pull the thongs so they were intertwined in precisely the same way again.

After an eternity of red-faced fooling with them, he got it done. A chastity belt might be proof against force or haste, but not against patience.

“Feels right,” Annemarie said.

Immediately there came a scratching on the tent flap. Mac was frightened—surely whoever scratched had been listening and heard them finish, and knew. Annemarie scrambled into her dress and into a sitting position.

“Come,” he called.

Calling Eagle stuck her head in.

“Come in, mother,” Annemarie said softly.

Mac had difficulty getting used to usages like
mother
, and not because Calling Eagle had a man’s body. Annemarie called Lame Deer, Calling Eagle, even Yellow Bird, who was her own age, “mother” without hesitation.

“You’re better, son?”

He nodded.

“You still need rest.”

He nodded again, considering her voice, which was made by a man’s throat. It was a tinny voice, neither high nor low. If he heard it without knowing who spoke, he might think it the high wheeze of an old man. Yet he had accepted it without second thought as a woman’s voice.

“What did you do? I was crazy in the head that night and couldn’t tell.”

Calling Eagle smiled and said, “I chased the craziness out of your head.”

Mac knew she meant it. White people thought of the human body as a mechanism, to be treated mechanically. But the Indians didn’t—they thought sickness was a physical manifestation of a psychical problem. When Mac treated Til with camomile, even Jim Sykes told him he was attending to the symptom and forgetting the cause.

But Mac didn’t intend to argue with Calling Eagle, now or ever.

“Who was the boy with you?”

“I am training Buffalo Berry as a healer,” she said simply. A simple statement masking a complicated reality, Mac thought—maybe a sinister reality. He couldn’t help pondering the seduction of boys.

“I make you uneasy, son.” It was again a simple statement. Calling Eagle looked at Mac, and he felt she saw through him. “
Hemaneh
makes you uneasy.”

Dumbstruck, he nodded his head.

“We do not often speak of
hemaneh
to Frenchmen.” She paused sadly. “It is necessary now. Your friend Reshaw insulted me.”

She put it out that simply.

“Strikes Foot asked him to leave the camp. And he is gone. Far gone. You must accept this.”

Mac was terrified.