Beauty for Ashes (4 page)

“Which you didn't,” said Gideon.

“Life got in the way,” said Sam. To Third Wing he added, “That's when I got lost.”

“And came wandering down the river, half-addled and half-starved, and I saved your silly ass,” said Third Wing.

“Yeah.”

“So now you're worried,” Third Wing went on. “You didn't show up last summer. If you don't go back to her this winter, it will be no more kootchy-coo.” Sometimes Third Wing acted like his friend, sometimes his mother, and sometimes like a little kid.

“Yeah.”

“Where is her village?”

“Wind River,” said Gideon. “Up the north fork here a long way, up the Sweetwater, over a divide, follow Wind River upstream.”

“So why don't we just go see her? Leave straight from here. Right away. What are we waiting for?”

Sam gawked at Third Wing.

“Young love is supposed to be keen,” said Jim.

Third Wing held out his arms in a what-are-you-waiting-for gesture.

“You want to go?” Sam asked Third Wing, half-believing.

“What would I sit around here for?”

“You?” Sam asked Gideon.

“I like Crow women.”

Sam looked at Jim.

“I like all women.”

“Let's go!” Sam shouted.

T
HEY TOOK A
week to get ready. Ashley insisted that Sam and Third Wing help him finish trading for those horses, and the general ended up with twenty-three new ones. Beckwourth shot a buffalo cow and a deer. Third Wing kept a low fire going all day, every day to dry the meat. Figuring the journey would take three weeks, they were taking a month's worth of food. All four men knew that could be a recipe for starvation—anything could happen in the mountains.

Third Wing contributed two pack horses.

Fitzpatrick came to their fire by the river the night before they left. He settled on his haunches and looked one by one at the four of them. His mouth had an ironic set, but his Irish eyes were full of merriment. “You
compañeros
following
mi coyote's
yen for poontang, you are lucky fellows. The general will not fire your arses. He will not even change your financial arrangements. You may chase skirts wherever you want to this winter, and make the same money—that's
if
you turn up next spring for the hunt.”

“Being generous, is he, the general?” Beckwourth said.

“Why certainly,” said Fitz with mock melody.

Coy crawled over between Third Wing's feet and turned onto his back. The Pawnee rubbed the belly obligingly. He said, “Ashley wants you to bring your beaver to him. He don't want you selling it to nobody else.”

“He doesn't mind if we shine up his relationship wit' ze Crows either,” said Gideon.

To Sam, Fitz added, “Meet us the day of the spring equinox, he says, on the Siskadee.”

Third Wing gave Coy's belly a playful pinch. The dog yipped and mouthed the fingers. The Pawnee made a loud flutter with his lips and tongue. The pup yipped.

“Too early,” said Sam.

“We'll frostbite our tails in the Southern Pass in March,” said Gideon.

“So will you,” said Sam.

Sam, Gideon, and Fitzpatrick remembered well the howling winds and choking blizzards on the pass last March, right before they had mountain luck and stumbled on beaver paradise in the valley of the Siskadee. Along with Bill Sublette and James Clyman, Sam had nearly frozen to death one night on the pass because the wind kept scattering their pathetic attempts at a fire. Only the next morning's discovery of a single live coal the size of a kernel of corn had saved them.

Coy slithered to the fire and put his head on his paws like he remembered and was trying to get warm. “You weren't even born when that happened,” Sam told him. The pup mewled a little and didn't move.

“Diah and Sublette be on the Siskadee?” asked Sam.

“Yeah,” said Fitz. “And I already told the general March is a hell-freezer-till-your-short-hairs-get-stiff. Make it the middle of April.”

“Good,” said Sam. He was eager to show cooperation with the general. Having an employer seemed proper.

“Now the general has a surprise for you.” He walked off into the dark and came back leading a horse bearing big panniers, sacks that hung heavy on each side. “
Mi coyote,
you aren't thinking of how you should treat the Crows.” He opened a pannier to show them. “This is tobacco, blankets, beads, strouding, all kind of foofuraw. You tell them these presents are from General Ashley.”

“Dammit,” said Sam, “we didn't think of presents.”

“Gideon did,” said Fitz, “that's how come you get all these nice things.”

Gideon managed a half bow. “I have a word with Ashley private,” he said. “I also have two jugs. One is for us on New Year's Eve, the ozzer for the Crows.”

“I'll pretend I didn't hear that,” said Fitz. The government forbade the use of whiskey in the Indian trade, but most traders disregarded this ban.

“You can take the pack horse too,” said Fitz, “but remember, it's the general's.”

Third Wing got up, took the panniers off, led the pack horse a dozen steps, and staked it with their other horses.

“Now
mi coyote,
how are you going to know when the first week of April comes?” asked Fitz. “You can't go by the Indian way, the moon when the grass greens up.”

Sam just looked at him, stuck.

Fitzpatrick took out a stick stripped of bark, painted blue on one end, red on the other, and bare wood in the middle, which had lots of knife cuts on it, in lines. “This is my counting stick.” He held it out to Sam.

The moment Sam grasped it, Coy snatched the stick and scooted away. He sat with his back to the fire, looking straight at Sam, stick in his mouth. Though his tail didn't wag, his legs trembled.

Sam patted the ground.

Coy bounded forward and laid the stick on the ground. Then he leapt into Sam's lap. At six or seven months, he was getting big for the lap.

Fitz grabbed the stick and looked to see whether his cuts were spoiled by tooth marks. Apparently not. “I keep the time for the brigade in the ledger. But a man who doesn't read or write”—like Sam—“can do it like this. See here, make seven notches for each day in a week, then make one of these big rings all the way around the stick. Those are weeks, or quarters of the moon. Every four quarters, make a ring and paint it with vermilion—that's a month.” Sam nodded—he saw what the system was. “Today is December 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Tomorrow night's camp, make your own counting stick. When the rings say it's April, put your minds on moving out. Be on the Siskadee four moon from now.”

“Only white men count their days,” Beckwourth said with broad mockery.

“This should be long enough for even you boys to dip your wicks a lot of places,” answered Fitz.

Sam blushed.

“Middle of April we'll be looking for you. When you get to where the Sandy comes into the Siskadee, if you don't see lots of sign we've been there, wait. If we've come and gone, I'll leave a cairn. One rock on the side of the cairn, that points whether I went upriver or downriver.”

He looked all four of them in the eyes.

“Zis is easy,” said Gideon. “I find your outfit anywhere in the Rocky Mountains, maybe by the smell of your feet.”

Fitz grinned. “Don't end up walking back to civilization, boys.”

Sam, Gideon, and Fitzpatrick all grinned. That wasn't on the agenda again.

Suddenly, wraithlike, Fitz was gone.

Sam laid awake all night, thinking of Meadowlark. He was up before the sun the next morning making coffee. The party rode off earlier than his companions wanted to, and they were grumbling.

 

M
OUNTAIN LUCK SWINGS
big each way. Easy—alive—hard—dead. Gone under, as the trappers called it, in the lingo they were developing. One winter trip goes lickety-split, the next one is inch by inch, leading the horse through thigh-deep snow, pulling your leg out of one deep hole, pushing it across the snow in front of you, and shifting your weight awkwardly forward so you can plunge a foot down again. Naturally, if you have a dog with you, or in Sam's case, a coyote, the critter will trot blithely over the surface of the snow, look back at you, and give you a superior smile.

That December their luck was variable, but mostly good. Where the Sweetwater River flowed into the Platte, they spent a day and a half sitting out a snowstorm. A tent gets close when you're in it all day—Sam spent the evening outside, watching the big flakes sift silently through the branches of cottonwood trees. Where they left the Sweetwater to cross over to Wind River, they got into deep snow in spots, and they huddled one afternoon and night below a cut bank, trying to get out of the screaming wind. Holding Coy to his front, Sam was not as shivery as his companions.

The country was mostly open, though. Beckwourth said it was because the damn wind blew the snow all the way to the Missouri River.

When wood failed them, they made fires of sagebrush and buffalo pies. The flames kept them warm, more or less, through the long nights. Thoughts of Meadowlark kept Sam nearly hot.

When you ride day after day through Indian country, your mind should never wander. There are always ridges to be scoured with the eyes, brushy flats to be inspected. You watch for anything that's out of place, a silhouette moving on a hilltop or a duck quacking up off the river for no reason.

Sam was inexperienced, though, and young, and hot-blooded. His mind ran from Meadowlark walking to Meadowlark smiling to Meadowlark snuggled up…He had no promises from her, only this one gift, the
gage d'amour
he always wore around his neck. He thought again of the reason she'd given for declining his courting, that she wanted to be one of the girls who led the dancers in the goose egg dance. The leaders had to be virgins, others explained to Sam, completely above suspicion. Meadowlark spent time with no young man.

But Sam couldn't keep from wondering.
Was she sincere? Was she stalling him to let someone else into her arms? Did she have that ceremony last summer?
Some summers they visited the River Crows, and that's when they did the ceremony.
If she did, did she go berry-picking afterwards with some good-looking stranger and take the pleasures of the flesh? Is she being courted? Is she already married?

These thoughts bounced off Elk Mountain and back into Sam's mind, off the waters of the Sweetwater River and back to him, from the snowy world of the Wind River Mountains on the southwest to the red hills and gray, stony peaks of the steep Absarokas on the northeast and back, always, into Sam's mind. When he woke in the middle of the night, these thoughts haunted him.

On the day of Christmas Eve Sam rode with his mind in the past. It was his twentieth birthday, and the fourth anniversary of his father's death. He didn't call up many words about Lew Morgan, and none of the kinds of words people said at a burying. He just let pictures float into his mind. He and Lew playing cat's cradle. The father teaching the child to milk the cow, shooting the warm milk into his boy's face, and the sweet taste of that milk right out of the tit. Learning to measure his powder with care, both kinds of powder, for the pan and for the barrel. Easing through the Pennsylvania woods behind Lew, trying not to make a sound, and failing. Then finding a spot and spending the whole day watching to see what was there—what birds lived in these trees and when they sang and when they were silent; the deer, grazing quietly because they didn't know human beings were around; the fish, and how you could build a dam and catch them with your hands and scoop them onto the bank. He stroked the stock of his rifle, where he'd had a brass plate put on and Celt engraved in a fancy script, surrounded by a circle of Celtic love knots, like the ones in a belt Sam's mother had given his father. But the name and the circle had been scorched by the prairie fire, and were only half legible. Still, his memories of his father gleamed.

That night, as they sat around the fire in the early dark, Third Wing said, “I have a treat for you.” The two great whacks of Sam's hair, tied into Third Wing's, glinted dramatically white in the firelight. “First this.” He disappeared into the darkness and brought back a tin cup filled with grease. Sam had noticed him rendering buffalo fat the last couple of days. Out of the grease hung a piece of patch cloth like a wick. Third Wing put the whole affair on the cold ground and used an ember to get the wick burning. It burned nicely because it was soaked in oil.

“This is your birthday candle. We couldn't make twenty of them,” said Third Wing. “Blow it out for good luck.”

Sam made an immense gust and out went the candle. Gideon and Beckwourth applauded.

“Now your very special surprise,” said Third Wing.

He stepped into the dark again and brought back a tin bowl of…It looked sort of like…“Cherry ice cream,” said Third Wing proudly.

“Well, ice cream Athabascan style,” said Gideon.

Third Wing thrust the bowl forward. “Everyone help yourself.”

The four spooned the goop into their coffee cups.

Sam scooped some up with his tongue, then kept himself from making a face.

“
Pas mal
when you get used to it,” said Gideon. “I learned way north, when I spent the winter at Slave Lake.”

Beckwourth did make a face.

Sam tried again, and didn't exactly dislike it. It was sweet.

“I put lots of sugar in it,” Third Wing said, “to improve the taste.”

“What is it?” Beckwourth asked.

“Liquid buffalo fat,” said Gideon, “mushed up with snow.”

“With lots of sugar,” repeated Third Wing, “and all the chokecherries we had left.”

“Thanks,” said Sam.

“Happy birthday,” said Third Wing.

“Happy birthday,” the others chorused.

“Oh to be twenty again,” chanted Gideon like he was in church.

“Thanks, everyone!” said Sam. He meant it.

Sneakily, later, he would give his cherry ice cream to Coy.

“Now I'm going to give you a special birthday present,” said Third Wing.

Everyone fell silent. Sam could tell Gideon and Beckwourth didn't know about this.

“I'm going to tell you why I like you so much.”

This was strange.

“I saw you in a dream before you ever came.”

Sam felt weird. “What do you mean?”

“I saw a white man with white hair in a dream. So I was expecting you. Some time.”

“What happened in the dream?”

“You came walking in the shape of buffalo, a red buffalo. Then you stopped, turned all the way around, and came walking as a yellow buffalo. Then you stopped, turned around, and came walking in a sacred way as a black buffalo. Then you stopped, turned around, and came toward us as a white buffalo.”

Third Wing looked at his listeners as though expecting some reaction they didn't give, maybe awe.

“Just a minute,” said Sam. “If it was a buffalo, why do you think it was me?”

“Your medicine, is it buffalo?”