Beauty for Ashes (33 page)

“I first performed it with my older brother, Elijah.” Micajah puts his head down, maybe remembering. Sam wonders…But all Micajah says is, “I miss him still. I have broken many of the commandments,” he goes on, “but one commandment I hold sacred, the eleventh. A man shall be true to his friend. In that spirit I shoot.”

Coy howls something to the skies.

Micajah primes his pan, lifts his rifle, and makes elaborate gestures of getting comfortable. At last, as he settles the barrel into position, Sam sees what he fears. A look of low cunning, peppered with blood lust, warps Micajah's face. It is unmistakable. Micajah cocks. His finger pressures the trigger.

Sam leaps forward. His hand knocks Micajah's barrel upwards.

At the same instant, Blam! The muzzle spits death.

Sam twists his neck toward Gideon, heart hollering that he has been too late.

The bear man stands, and the cup rests undisturbed on his head.

Slap! The open-handed blow knocks Sam to the ground.

Coy rushes Micajah, growling and barking. The big man kicks Coy in the belly, and the coyote goes tumbling.

Sam uses the moment to get to his feet. “I saw what you were going to do…”

“Bastard,” shouts Micajah.

“You were going to…”

Gideon is crutching toward them. A dozen men crowd close.

Micajah roars and lunges at Sam. A dozen hands restrain him.

Sam appeals to the crowd. “You all saw it, that look on Micajah's face. He was going to…”

“Reading a man's heart in his face, that's pretty tricky.” The voice is a soft drawl, Jim Bridger's.

Sam appeals to Gideon. “Didn't you see it?”

Gideon shrugs.

“I am INSULTED!” Micajah roars to the skies.

Bridger looks around. “What do y'all think?”

Some say the insult was bad, damned bad. Others say young Morgan was sincere. No one says he saw what Micajah was about to do.

“Morgan,” says Bridger, “maybe you ought to apologize.”

“Never on this earth,” says Sam. “He was about to kill my friend.”

Micajah roars again, and then with words shouts, “I'll beat an apology out of you.”

“Let 'em fight,” someone says.

“Yeah, let 'em fight.”

“May the honest man win.”

One hand keeping Micajah back, Bridger holds Sam's eyes. “Maybe you should.”

“It's not a fair fight,” says Gideon. When he had two legs, Gideon was probably the only man in camp who might whip Micajah bare-handed.

“The man who's right will win,” says a voice.

“True, that's the way of it,” someone else says.

Bridger still looks at Sam. Sam nods.

“No weapons,” says Bridger.

With preening movements, Micajah hands his rifle to another man, puts his pistol beside it, flings down his butcher knife, and sets down his hunting pouch, which probably has a patch knife in it.

“Morgan?”

“You see I have no weapons,” says Sam, holding his arms out. That's almost true.

“There will be no killing here tonight,” says Bridger. “This is a fight of honor, to see who is telling the truth. No gouging of eyes. Everything else goes. When one man can't go on, the fight is over.”

Grunts and nods indicate that satisfies most onlookers.

“Break 'ees arm, ze interferer, zat will show him,” cries someone.

Arm? Sam wonders if he'll escape with his life.

He gets onto the balls of his feet, ready.
Right now his mind, heart, feet, sinew—all of me must be a war.

The last of the light has dwindled. A gibbous moon is enough to cast shadows. Blackness infiltrates everywhere, including men's minds.

 

F
IRST COMES A
bull charge. Sam waits until the last moment, sidesteps, and flicks a kick at Micajah's head. His foot feels bone, and he smiles.

Micajah gets up rubbing his shoulder. The charge wasn't serious, the kick maybe more than Micajah expected.

Micajah belts out a war cry, sprints at Sam, leaps into the air, and kicks with both feet.

Sam rolls sideways. One of the heavy boots clips his head. For a moment he's dizzy.

Micajah, having caught his fall with one arm, is on his feet and launches himself in a huge flop toward Sam. Sam rolls. One of his arms gets caught.

But Micajah bounces a little, and Sam snatches the arm away.

Quick as can be, Sam jumps on Micajah's back, gets a forearm on his neck, and cranks it tight with the other hand.

Micajah's neck muscles are so strong that Sam is not getting a choke. Micajah lumbers to his feet, pauses mightily, and hurls himself onto his back.

Sam barely pushes himself clear, rolls, and comes up on his feet.

Avoiding is not enough. Attack.

Voices cry encouragement, mostly to Micajah. Despite one voice, Gideon's, Sam feels the blood lust of the mob. Coy is howling piteously.

Sam decides to try something wildly unexpected. He charges Micajah, head lowered, intending to leap at the last moment and head-bash Micajah's face.

The giant lithely drops onto his back, raises his legs, catches Sam on his feet and hurls him straight the way he's going.

Sailing over, Sam thinks he sees Micajah's hand go to his boot, but he's not sure.

Sam rolls through the weeds, rages back, and launches a head kick.

Micajah's hand flicks, the kick is deflected, and Sam lands on his back. Oddly, Sam's calf is cut.

“A knife!” Gideon hollers. “He has a knife!”

“Don't see that,” says Bridger.

Sam can't see one either.

Micajah hurls himself through the air at the prone Sam. In the moonlight something in Micajah's hand flashes.

Sam rolls. Something slashes his ribs.

Quickly, Sam rolls straight back into Micajah.
Inside the knife,
he screams at himself.
Stay inside the knife.

He gets a wild idea.

Micajah rolls on top of Sam, and Sam lets it happen.

Sam blocks the knife arm with one hand. The bodies are too close. Micajah drops the knife and goes for the choke with both hands.

The choke is terrible. Sam will never get breath again.
Be quick or die.

He jerks the small, sharp blade out of his hair ornament and stabs Micajah's throat.

The choke still holds.

Sam rams the blade deep into the throat and slams it home with the palm of his hand. It almost disappears, even the handle, into the thick flesh.

Micajah gouts blood into Sam's face.

Bridger and another man roll Micajah off Sam.

Sam breathes. He breathes again. The second time he inhales blood and blows it back out.

He rolls over and vomits into the dust. He breathes. He vomits, and does both again.

Bridger picks up the knife Micajah dropped and inspects it. He waits for Sam to come back to this world. Gideon squats beside them with the help of the crutch.

Sam looks up into their faces.

“I'm sorry. My fault,” Bridger says. “You are
some
.”

Jim stands up. He calls to everyone, “Sam Morgan has won in a fair fight. Does any man say otherwise?”

Silence.

“Micajah drew the knife first. Everyone see it the same?”

Three or four yesses trot out.

“Then I say, by the rule of the mountains, Sam gets ever'thing Micajah owns. Rifle, pistol, horses, ever'thing.”

Bridger walks off. The dancing has started, and the other men head for that. In the mountains, blood doesn't stop the fun.

Sam props up on his elbows and looks into Micajah's horrible face. He tells Gideon, “I'll bury him in the morning.”

“Zat will be taken care of,” says Gideon.

Sam sits up.

“We should get to the river,” says Gideon.

Two half-wrecked men, one on a crutch, support each other in painful steps to the water. One coyote skitters along behind. Sam splashes into the shallows and lies face down. After a moment he looks into Gideon's face and says, “Who the hell am I?”

“A good man,” says Gideon.

But Sam doesn't seem to hear. “Who the hell am I?”

Coy howls, maybe asking the same question.

S
AM SHOOK HIMSELF
awake. He was lying face down, near his blankets but not on them. He sat up and brushed the dust off his face. He looked across at Gideon, lying tidily on his blankets, eyes taking Sam in. “I have blood and dust caked on my face?”

“Just dust.”

“I better get to the water and wash off.”

“I am been dreaming of last night.”

“Me too.” All night Sam had dreamt slivers and slashes of the fight. It gave him the chills.

He grimaced. Some sort of low, lower than Sam Morgan ever intended to get. A life where you fight with your fellow trapper, he tries to kill you, and you do kill him. Self-disgust flared up in Sam's belly like bile.

“Sam,” came the voice. Horses' hooves thumped.

Sam realized now that this was what had woken him up, this thumping. He saw movement behind a nearby sagebrush. Several horses and…

Beckwourth came out from behind the bush. “Good to see you, hoss.”

Sam stood slowly, looked gladly into the face of his black friend, and clapped him on the shoulders. He nearly felt teary. Beckwourth laughed.

“I got a present for Gideon.”

He brought his hand out from behind his back.

It was a peg leg. A wooden peg a couple of feet long, glowing with oil. A wooden bowl on top of the peg. Attached to that, a thick rawhide strap about half a foot high, long enough to wrap around twice, and with thongs to tie it.

Gideon crawled toward it. “You made this?”

“We did,” said Flat Dog, stepping out from behind the horses. “A man who can make an arrow shaft smooth and straight can make a peg smooth and straight.”

Sam clapped Flat Dog on both shoulders, and Flat Dog clapped Sam back. He felt dizzy—dizzy with pleasure, with change, with the whirl of the world…

“I got a present for Sam,” said Flat Dog, holding an arm out.

Out from behind the horses stepped Meadowlark, beaming.

 

S
AM WANTED TO
borrow a tent instantly. She insisted on walking with him to the river and cleaning him up. They didn't talk. Words wouldn't carry what needed to be said. Stories could fill in the gaps later.

She insisted on putting up the small lodge she'd brought.

Sam and Meadowlark disappeared into the lodge and stayed all day. They discovered themselves again as lovers. As friends. As husband and wife.

After an hour or two, words overflowed like streams in the spring. Every tale of every struggle over three months of separation got told, at least in part. Still, the silences said more than the talk. Then words would bubble forth again, froth and spray down the mountain of their feeling, and fall once more into deep, still pools.

She had one essential statement for him:

“I am your woman.”

She saw the uncertainty in his face. “No man but you has ever touched me,” she said.

He wept. They both wept. They held each other. They rolled all over the ground holding each other.

She also made sure that Sam understood that coming to rendezvous was her idea. “Flat Dog, he not so sure. I already decided, and was ready.”

“I want to get married,” said Sam.

Then he had to translate for her the white notion of marriage into the Crow language and the Crow way of seeing.

In the end she said, “A ceremony,” and accepted gladly.

“A pledge to each other,” said Sam.

They smiled deep into each other's eyes, both knowing that the real pledges had already been made. Sam's when he took Meadowlark to Ruby Hawk Valley. Meadowlark's when she fled her village to come to rendezvous.

Nevertheless, Meadowlark now said in English, “I will marry you.”

Sam laughed. “Your English is way better.”

In English she replied, “I live no with my family, live with Bell Rock two moons. He and Flat Dog teach me English.”

Sam hugged her.

They didn't come out of the lodge until evening, and then they were famished.

Their last of feast of that day was hump ribs and friends.

 

G
ENERAL
A
SHLEY CAME
to Sam and Meadowlark's fire the next evening when he got word, and accepted coffee.

It was quickly done. Yes, the General would perform the marriage ceremony.

“Congratulations to you both,” he said.

Gideon pitched in. “Congratulations!” The big man's spirits had bounced upward since he got his peg leg. He'd stuffed the bowl with padding, wore it constantly, and had leaned a little weight on it. His friends encouraged him to try a few steps, but Gideon said the pain was still too great.

Then Sam took a chance. “Diah,” he began tentatively, “may be offended that we don't ask him to do it. With the Bible.”

Ashley nodded. “You don't want the solemnization of your vows to be over-solemn.”

Sam was tickled. General Ashley had a way of putting things. “We want it to be a party.”

“Day after tomorrow will be July the Fourth, Independence Day. Jedediah has decided to spend the day going to the cache and raising it. He's taking two others who don't like drunkenness.” The General looked at the couple benevolently. “And I've already announced that the whiskey will be free that day.”

Sam grinned. “That will make a party.” Then he frowned. “I've never been in church, but my two sisters were married by the traveling preacher when he came around. They gave him five dollars. I'm going to have to owe you that.”

“Your good work has given it to me a dozen times over.”

“Day after tomorrow's good with you?” Sam asked Meadowlark in the Crow language.

“What does Independence Day mean?”

Sam explained briefly why it was a huge ceremony day for Americans.

She risked speaking in English. “It is good. By this ceremony, I no more depend on my father, mother.” She said directly to Sam, “You tell me
all
about this ceremony.”

Sam agreed.

“And it is two days from now,” Meadowlark continued in her English. “Good. I need time to look my best.”

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, long after the usual hour for breakfast, they had a surprise visitor. Jedediah squatted in front of the coals. “May I have some coffee?”

Sam's heart sank.
Now we're going to get a lecture about the Good Book and how to be united in holy matrimony.
But he reached for the coffee pot, poured a round for everyone, and waited.

Diah threw Sam for a loop by addressing himself to Meadowlark.

“I want to say something to you in the strictest confidence. Strict for all of you,” he added quickly to Flat Dog and Gideon. Again he addressed himself especially to Meadowlark. “Have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean?” Flat Dog translated it as big-water-everywhere-to-the-west.

Sam felt a flicker of irritation. Diah knew the answer to that one.

But Meadowlark gasped. “No.”

“Would you like to?”

“I'd love to.”

Sam was drop-jawed.

Jedediah ran his eyes around the circle. “How about the rest of you?”

They all said they would, even Gideon.

Diah turned back to Sam. “Then I want you to come with my brigade. We're going to California. But we're not telling anyone that. Not
anyone
.”

Meadowlark gushed out, “Yes.” Then she gave her husband a look that meant, I'll explain later.

Sam chimed in with another yes.

Flat Dog started to speak and stopped.

“I want you, too,” said Diah.

“Yes.” Flat Dog grinned.

“What about Beckwourth?” Sam put in.

The captain shook his head. “Captain Sublette has asked him to go with an outfit toward Blackfeet country. They expect it to be lively.”

Jedediah plunged on. “I don't know how long we'll be gone. We may not find beaver in the dry country to the southwest. I'm told we'll find plenty in California.” Sam wondered if Diah had learned that from the Britishers when he went to Flathead Post. “We don't know whether the Mexicans will make us welcome.”

Sam reflected that dangers always seem an enticement to Jedediah.

“It's settled then?”

Sam couldn't believe it. Marriage and an adventure to California. His head spun. “It is,” he said.

Flat Dog nodded.

Gideon said, “I want to go.”

Jedediah looked at his peg leg.

Gideon hopped up on it. He caught his balance carefully and took his first steps, straight to Jedediah.

The obvious pain made even Jedediah flinch.

“I'll be able to ride,” he said, “and you know this child can shoot.”

Jedediah looked at the French-Canadian with a face drenched in sympathy.

“Poor Boy,” he said, “we leave in one moon. If you can ride a horse then, you're hired.”

The moment they were alone, Sam asked, “What did you want to tell me about the ocean?”

Meadowlark hesitated. “I dream about the water-everywhere-to-the-west. Often. In the dreams I dip myself into it, and the descend far, far down. I see strange and wonderful creatures…”

Sam grinned to bring them back into the light of day. “I'm wanting to jump into that thing myself. But not descend.”

G
ENERAL
A
SHLEY HOLDS
Diah's worn Bible open at his waist.

Sam waits in front of the General, looking back through the aisle created by the trappers. Behind him in the first row of onlookers is Jedediah Smith. Diah has hurried back from the cache to attend the wedding of his friend Sam. Next to Sam is his best man, Jim Beckwourth, also looking back.

At the end of the aisle stands Flat Dog, and on Flat Dog's arm is the love of Sam's life. The brother and sister have been persuaded that marching arm in arm is really the proper thing to do.

She is radiant. Sure of what she wanted, she spent weeks preparing to look splendid when she came to her husband. Her dress is made of two deer hides tanned very white, ornamented with bright beadwork on the cape and down the arms. The bodice sports a four winds wheel in the colors of the directions, red for east, yellow for south, black for west, and white for north, plus green for the earth and blue for the sky. The hem is fringed with bells that tinkle when she walks and will jingle-jangle when she dances. Her waist is girded by a wide belt woven of bright-colored yarns, the kind brought out from Taos, a special gift from Bell Rock and his wife. Ermine tails are wrapped around her braids, velvety white against glossy black, and her part is defined with a streak of vermilion. She has rouged her lips scarlet, and she wears a perfume she made herself from grasses, herbs, flower petals, and wild mint.

Gideon sits on a cottonwood log, peg sticking out jauntily, fiddle and bow in hand. Now he begins the entrance music he has asked to play. It is a traditional song of the Jewish people, based on a scripture from the
Song of Songs
and taught to him by his father. He puts the bow to the strings and lifts it into the air.

Flat Dog leads Meadowlark toward his friend, her husband. They do not walk but dance in the stately Crow ceremonial step, toe-heel, toe-heel.

Only Gideon knows the words to his song, and he sings them in his head.

As he fiddles, he weeps.

Meadowlark arrives in front of the General. Jedediah nudges Sam and gives him a surprise, a small gold ring for her finger. “A gift from Ashley-Smith,” he whispers.

Smiling tipsily, Ashley begins, “Dearly beloved, we are gazzered here together…”

Fitzpatrick and Clyman, standing close to this master of the ceremony, grin at each other and echo, “Gazzered.”

Sam smiles merrily at Flat Dog.

Soon Ashley is saying something about “not by any to be entered into…”

“Entered into,” says Fitz, “that's the thing.”

“…lightly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly…”

“We're past that point,” says Clyman.

“Wagh!” cry half a dozen drunken voices. “
Well
past.”

The General cannot suppress a smile. “…Now speak or forever hold his peace…”

“I'll speak, by God. I want her for my own self.” This is Beckwourth, the best man.

Ashley pushes forward, perhaps skipping sanctioned and esteemed passages. “…Forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

Sam turns and looks fiercely into the eyes of his beloved. “I will,” he roars.

Following Fitzpatrick's signal of a raised fist, fifty men holler, “Me, too!”

The General is blubbering with laughter.

Mercifully soon, he arrives at the point where he instructs Sam to say his crucial words.