Fair Land, Fair Land (11 page)

Summers tied Feather to a clump of brush, not
trusting him to stand ground-tied here. He pushed ahead, stooping,
then crawling, until he was within range. He didn't shoot yet. He
just lay there. Once he had found sport in killing things. That was
when the world was young. Now he shot for the pot, or was about to.
But men still hunted for sport. Men hunted for money. To hell with
both kinds! The one right a man had was killing for food.

A fly, on wing when it shouldn't be, touched his nose
and buzzed on. A pattern of wild geese honked overhead. He listened
to the lost, brave sound and his eye settled on a rattlesnake,
soaking up the sun four or five jumps away. It was too dull to know
it was there out of season. It just answered to warmth.

It was time to shoot, he knew. He had even picked out
the target — a young, fat cow. He listened to the fading calls of
the geese and watched the snake and lay still.

When the buffalo began to move off, he fired, and all
the still day was shaken. The sound of the shot rolled through the
hills and was thrown back by the mountains. The snake coiled and
rattled.

The cow fell over. The others smelled the blood, not
understanding, and stood dumbly about until Summers rose to his feet.
Then they galloped away.

Summers recharged his rifle. That was the first rule
of the country. Keep your gun loaded. Then he walked back and brought
up the horses. He bled the cow. Skinning was a considerable job, best
done, he thought, before he opened the carcass. He tied a rope to his
saddle horn and used Feather to help pull off the hide. He cut
through the belly tissue and raked out the entrails. With his knife
and a small ax he quartered the meat, wrapped it, lashed it to the
pack horses and started for camp.

It had taken longer than he expected. The sun had
begun to slant from the west. A gust of wind came at him, blowing
sand with it, and he had to wipe grit from his eyes. There now was
the tepee and the woman at the fire, Higgins standing nearby, the
child sitting. At the creek he washed his hands and fore-arms, using
sand for soap.

At the camp the woman came up, expecting to unpack
the horses. Summers gave her a look and said, "No." She
went back to the fire.

Higgins stepped close to help. He said, working with
a rope, "That squaw is as queer as fur on a snake. Won't let a
man do nothin', not even rustle up firewood. Wants to do it all by
her damn self. What's the reason for that, Dick?"

"
Trainin'. Squaws for the camp work, men for the
hunt."

"
Nice, if you like slaves. I got the best of
her, though. I shot ten ducks and picked and cleaned them myself, out
of her sight. She looked at me like I had two heads, both empty, but
she's cookin' the birds now."

They turned one pack horse loose and shooed it away.
It was then that Feather nickered. It was then that the child cried a
thin cry. Summers' eyes went from his work. Coming toward them, yon
side of the fire, were four mounted Indians. He said, "Stay
back, Hig. My move."

He stepped toward the Indians. The campfire was
between them. The woman had turned her back to attend to the child.
Summers slanted his rifle against a bush and made the peace sign. He
said, "How."

They were young bucks, not feathered or painted, and
Summers guessed they were out to steal horses, hoping maybe to spot a
Crow camp. They jerked their horses to a stop and sat silent and
unmoving. Summers said, "How," again.

A tatter — ass bunch, Summers thought, tatter-ass
but dangerous. Their saddles were wooden, hacked from tree trunks and
cushioned by pieces of fur. Their bridles and bits were single-rein
braided hide. Bows and arrows hung from the saddles and fastened to
one was a heavy musket. It might be, it could be, an old Harper's
Ferry, brought west by the Iroquois or Delawares that Hudson's Bay
had employed.

Watching them, Summers almost wished that he had his
rifle in hand.

The lead man held a bow and arrow. He got off his
horse and put them aside. The buck behind him dismounted, too. The
others remained on their horses, probably told by word or sign to do
so.

The first man said, "How." The one behind
him pushed for ward. He was a muscled young buck with the show,
Summers thought, of the animal in him.

The second man looked around and saw the woman, her
back still turned. He strode forward and yanked her around and then
slapped her face hard, saying something that sounded like "No
Man Woman."

On their own Summers' legs moved. Of itself his arm
swung. His hand smacked against the Indian's cheek and knuckled it on
its return. The Indian's face showed shock, then glowing anger. He
ran to grab for Summers' rifle. Higgins stepped from behind a pack
horse, the Kentucky steady in his hands. He said, "Hold it right
there."

The horses began rearing and plunging, their eyes
white with fright. Before the Indian could clutch Summers' rifle, his
mouth fell open.

It wasn't Higgins or the Kentucky that did it. It was
Old Ephraim, raising his great shape, standing as high as a mounted
rider. Summers swiveled. The other Indians had clapped their hands
over their mouths. The men on foot managed to catch and mount their
horses. The four of them galloped away, their voices hoarse. Ephraim
let himself down and went out of sight.

Summers dropped to the ground and laughed.

Higgins, stepping close, said, "Close shave, and
you're gigglin'."

"
Old Ephraim, he won the war."

"
They scared mighty easy."

"
Not to their way of thinkin'. He was medicine,
bad medicine, our medicine, standin' there tall with only one paw on
him. Jesus!"

Summers rose to his feet. The woman was at the fire
again. Her face showed the mark of a hand. "Leave a front
quarter on that pack horse, Hig," he said. "Ephraim has
done sung enough for his supper."

He rode out in the direction from which the bear had
come. He left the meat a quarter of a mile away from camp. He watched
but didn't see Ephraim.

The night chill was coming on when he got back to
camp. They ate duck and a chokecherry paste the woman had ground up.

The moon swelled on the eastern skyline, orange —
red, ten times the size it would shrink to. Higgins, digesting his
supper, had run out of words. It was just as well. Words clouded
things, misting the moon, holding up the good feel of the breeze,
mixing wrong with the cries of coyotes.

It came on to bedtime or nigh to it. The woman had
gone to her tepee, taking the child with her. The boy could walk but
didn't dare to without his mother's hand in his. His name, she had
said, was Nocansee, which sounded Indian but wasn't when you spaced
it out. Summers smoked and let time slide by.

When he looked at the tepee again, he saw the woman
standing there, outlined, shining in the moonlight. Her gaze was on
him. She made a bare movement with her head. So it had been before.
So it had been with the Rees and Shoshones when he was young.

He rose and moved toward her, and the tepee flap
closed slowly, and Higgins said, "Christ sake."

The child was asleep, and she was under a robe when
he entered. Without words he took off his clothes. She turned down
the robe for him.

His hand found her bare skin and moved over and down.
She smelled a little of woodsmoke, as he must smell himself, but
mostly she smelled of clean, willing woman.

Desire rose hard in him, desire that he had thought
dying or dead and didn't care much if it was. Not now, though. Not
now. She was moist and in-taking, and he felt loved by her tissues,
and at the last she had clutched him and squirmed under him so as to
give him the best of the last.

He lay with her head on his arm and heard the cries
of the geese and the songs of coyotes and the wash of wild waters,
and he was on the keelboat Mandan again, back in time by fifteen
years, and the Missouri ran under them, coming from the Blackfoot
country to which they were bound. And on board was a little Indian
girl, a doll child with big eyes, and she was the daughter of a
Blackfoot chief, so it was said, whom the patron had found in St.
Louis after she had been stolen away from her parents. He would take
her, the patron would, back to her father and so make sure of
friendly and profitable trade with the tribe. But the girl, that wisp
of a girl, had slipped away just before they got there.

He hadn't thought of her in a long time. Fifteen
years gone by and all the trails traveled since then, the good years,
the empty years, the fun had and the miseries endured, and friends
dead and friends made while time flowed uncaring.

Her name fluttered at the edges of his mind and then
came in, and he knew it could not be. Over this great reach of
country for two to come together like this! It was as unlikely as
walking on water, as two needles coming point to point in a haystack.
But maybe there was some direction, some guidance, some reason
unknown to him. Maybe it was just chance, but one thing for sure:
there was magic in the world.

He said softly, "Teal Eye."

She put a hand over his mouth. "Me know. Dick
Summers."
 

PART TWO

15

HALF a man's life, Higgins figured, was spent on a
horse. Well, not half, but enough that riding came as natural as
walking and made no call on the lungs.

He kicked his horse gently and pulled at the rope
that led to the two pack horses. The pack horses had slowed with age
and were likely to stumble. That was one reason for his trip — to
see about younger ones.

It was early spring. The wild geese had flown north,
honking their way through the skies. Wherever water was, the ducks
had paired off, the males bright in their courting clothes. No
flowers yet, but the first shoots had poked through the warming soil.
On the plains the blooms would grow low, knowing the wind. Only the
armies of grass dared to stand very high.

He turned and looked back. There was the wooded
valley of the Teton River, their home for more than three seasons
now. It was better country for game, for buffalo, than the upper
Dearborn. Sure, they had made a few sashays out from it, but it still
was home. Four Persons was the name of the place, so Teal Eye had
said, because four Crows had been killed in the valley. He took a
last look, seeing their tepees snug on the far bank of the stream.
Against the skyline the mountains thrust up, snow still on their
heads. One stood out. A man could imagine a great ear, its side
turned up to listen.

Two sleeps to Fort Benton. Two sleeps and the better
part of three days unless a man had a burr in his pants. More than
once he had bought whiskey there and tobacco and horseshoes when they
had them. And because he was randy he had laid up with squaws and
felt shitty afterward, not just because he might catch a dose. What
he needed was a woman like Teal Eye.

three winters, one hard, they had passed on the
Teton, with nothing to do but chop wood, kill meat and try to keep
warm. For a man who wanted to be footloose, Summers sure had hobbled
himself. Father to a boy more than two years old, guardian or
something to a blind one, near-husband of Teal Eye. Once in a while
still Higgins could see the far look in Summers' eyes, the look of
things undone maybe, the look of other times, other places, ahead or
behind. Who could tell?

When her time came on her, Teal Eye had ordered the
men away, pointing low to the westem sky for the hour of return.
Summers had fumed but obeyed. When they got back, there was Teal Eye
on her feet and a boy baby cozy under a blanket. Summers had watched
it and watched it and one day came out of the tepee with a smile on
his face and a choke in his voice.

"
Hig, he can see! My boy can see!"

So now here he was, one mateless Higgins, bound for
the fort with a hell's list of things to buy and to do if he could.
Trade in skins that Summers had gathered, buy supplies, buy horses if
he could, and, of all the damn things, get a stand on a preacher if
he could find one. Summers wanted to get married but not by a priest.

"
I got nothin' against Catholics," he had
said, "but it's not my religion."

Higgins had to grin. "Not mine either," he
answered and went on, knowing he spoke for both of them. "No
tellin' what is."

"
I'll take what I know against what I don't."

He rode on through the
spring day. It was all fresh — fresh sky, fresh earth, fresh
growth. The sun was kind and the west wind pushed him along. A
long-billed bird circled around him, crying alarm. An early nester,
he guessed. A couple of prairie chickens flushed up from some bushes.
Their chuckles might be those of a girl. To his left was a small
bunch of buffalo. One had calved. The skyline waved ahead of him,
unfixed and far off. He camped and ate jerky that Teal Eye had fixed
and had a pipe afterward and went to sleep counting the stars.

* * *

It was late afternoon when he wound down a long slope
and came in close sight of the fort. It rose there, gray, without
windows, and might have housed dead people. Two blockhouses with
loopholes rose above the walls and jutted out from them. The whole
building, he knew from before, had been made of mud shaped into big
bricks and then dried. It couldn't be burned down, that was for sure.
Close by, beyond some trees, the river ran. On the far side,
upstream, a bare bluff stood. A little dancing wind played with dust
there. A few tepees were scattered around the fort, the homes, he
reckoned, of fort loafers or sometime workers.