Fair Land, Fair Land (17 page)

He took the lead again. He stole a look back. Teal
Eye was firm in the saddle, the boys still astride. Higgins had let
loose of his pack horses. His voice rose hoarse, "Run, you
bastards! Hi-yi. Hi-yi."

It was all thunder and dust and wild throat sounds
now.

Summers shot into a running bunch that blocked the
way to the butte, and a cow fell and another fell over it, then
another. He rode through the gap, his head turned to the rear. They
had to make it. They were making it. Lije wore a big grin.

He reined around, poking a cow away with the muzzle
of his gun. Here in the rear was the danger now, more than in front.
The smell of sweating horses came to him, and a clot of horse lather
flew back in his face. They were straining uphill, the horses winded
but not slowing yet, and it seemed as if all of a sudden they were
shut of the buffalo, well up on a butte where they could watch
without risk.

The pack horses straggled up, their packs lopsided,
none lost or turned under belly. The horses stood hipshot, cooling
off.

Teal Eye gave him a smile. Lije yelled, "Hi-yi,"
and Higgins grinned.

Higgins said, "To think them brutes is good to
eat."

"
I never seen 'em
charge a butte yet."

* * *

Over pipes that night Summers told Higgins, "We
steer clear of the Big Horns."

"
If that's them I see yonder, I vote aye."

"
West of them is the place called Colter's Hell,
where I never been. But south of there is Jackson's Hole, where I
been more than once. Dave Jackson was a true mountain man."

Higgins blew out a stream of smoke. "Was? What
happened to him?"

"
Nobody knows. He was here and then he wasn't.
He's not the only one."

No, not the only one, Summers thought. They came, the
mountain men did, and some drowned and some starved and some froze.
Some got rubbed out by Indians or died in fights among themselves.
Some fell off passes or got kicked by a horse or killed by a bear,
like old Hugh Glass, who was too tough to die, though, and made it
back to the Missouri, wounds and all. It made a man wonder how come
anybody was left.

Some died. No doubt about that. Mostly they died
unbeknownst, with no graves to mark them, no signposts saying who,
what or why. But would they have done different, knowing ahead?
Likely not.

They rode on the next day.
It was a fair day, not bothersome hot, and birds sang and plants
bloomed, and after a while they would find Higgins a wife.

* * *

The sun was touching the western mountains when
Summers saw smoke. It could be the smoke of Crows or Blackfoot or
Sioux or who knew what. He reined in his horse. Higgins rode up
beside him. "I ain't of a mind to circle around," Summers
said. "We was bound to meet Indians when we took off. But we
ain't a war party and got nothin' much to fear unless losin' a
horse."

Teal Eye had come up to look. "A man we could
lose," she said. "Sioux mean people." She took
Summers' arm. "Please, we go round."

"
Now, little duck," he answered, "you
know me. I'm careful."

With his arm he squeezed her hand against his ribs.
"How else would I live so long?"

She shook her head, asking please without saying it,
and for a moment, moved by her concern, he thought of agreeing. But
there couldn't be any real danger, so he answered, "We'll be all
right."

It was a camp, he saw as they drew nearer, of maybe
thirty tepees. From the layout he guessed it was Blackfoot. The
Indian dogs began to bark.

A man walked toward them, unarmed. Summers got off
his horse and handed his Hawken to Higgins. He stepped toward the
man, making the peace sign. The man was Blackfoot all right. His
different beaded moccasins told that. He wore old buckskins. His hair
was plaited without so much as a feather in it, nor was there paint
on his face. He might be fifty or so years old.

Summers said, "How," as the man made the
peace sign.

"
How," the man answered. He put a pointing
finger to his chest, "Heavy Runner, me."

"
Dick Summers, me."

The man's dark, squinched-up eyes examined him. "You
are Bear Maker. No?" Summers nodded. "You have the
Blackfoot wife?"

"Teal Eye, her name."

They had been talking partly with hands, partly with
voices. Summers went on, "You are chief. I know from the big
fort."

"
Come. My lodge. We will smoke."

Summers waved a come-on to his mates and waited for
them. When Teal Eye came up, she said, "It is Blackfoot camp.
Not my friends."

"
It's Chief Heavy Runner. He's got nothin'
against you."

Men, women and children, having word from the chief,
began moving toward them from the camp. Dogs trotted along with them.
Indians always had dogs.

After the business of getting acquainted and getting
settled was over, Summers and Higgins and a couple of head men smoked
in Heavy Runner's lodge that night. Summers said, asking, "It is
not yet the time of the hunt. It is not the chief' s hunting ground."

Heavy Runner considered before he spoke in words and
signs. "It is the hunting ground of nobody, so of everybody."
He drew on the pipe. "We were smoking with the Arapahoes, our
friends, but the young men got to fighting — "

"
It is the way of young men."

The head men were silent, waiting on the chief' s
words. Heavy Runner passed the pipe. "You are my friends. My
camp is your camp and my lodge your lodge."

"
And my tobacco your tobacco." Summers took
two plugs from his pocket and passed them over. From the smell of the
pipe, he reckoned their tobacco had been kinnikinnick or red-willow
bark, for lack of the real thing.

"
Tell me," Heavy Runner said after he had
put the plug on a board and got out his knife, "the Great Father
try to say this land is your land, that land those men's, and another
to another. I am friend of the paleface, but I do not understand."

"
I live the red man's life, and I do not know."

"
So the land is ours, but the white man still
comes. He builds his own lodges where we are owners. He kills our
buffalo. Sometimes he kills us. He moves on our land, scratching for
the yellow metal. It is part of the land. Yes? It belongs to us. I
cannot understand?"

The chief had the pipe going and took note with it of
the four directions before passing it on.

Summers thought God himself couldn't answer the
questions, much less the Great Father. "The white men are many,"
he said, "and I do not know what the moons will bring."

Lying with Teal Eye that night, Summers thought he
was anyhow partway a liar. He knew what the moons would bring, if not
the all of it. But if there was no all — out answer, there was a
downright fact. People. All of them wanting land or riches or maybe
just a handhold on life. Come down to it, he thought and grinned a
sour grin inside himself, he was a mite greedy himself, wanting the
land kept open and free just for his sake.

22

THE SWEETEATER and the Oregon Trail, winding plain to
the eye but untraveled yet, the season being early. Independence Rock
and the Devil's Gate, just as Summers remembered them, and then on to
South Pass, with the Wind River mountains rising high to the right.

It would be good to poke along the Popo Agie or the
Wind, thinking to be setting traps again and each one sprung soon,
each lift heavy with beaver. The water was cold enough to paralyze a
man's privates, but who cared? Who cared when the spring season was
good and rendezvous just around the corner, where a man could drink
around campfires and trade lies and find squaws? Who thought of age
then? Who gave a damn? Who saw. the end of a life?

But this thinking was wrong, this remembering, this
hankering. Would he trade the life he was leading for the life he had
led? Would he give up Teal Eye and the boys and Higgins in order to
turn back the years? Not by a damn sight. Teal Eye had changed him,
he thought, Teal Eye and family had changed him. If his mind was rich
and sad with remembering, it was rich and good with what he had.
Sure, things would change. But change, for better or worse, was the
damned order of life.

He hitched in the saddle to make sure the string was
all right. Yep. People were coming. He couldn't fight that. Every man
had the same rights that he did. Let every man make his mistakes, as
he had done when he was young. Looking at the wooded hills, at the
mountain meadows thick with grass, both empty now of all but
wildlife, he figured there weren't enough whites in the country to
ruin it all. Something would remain. A great deal of what he saw in
the shimmering distances would remain, hardly touched and unspoiled.
Teal Eye had softened him all right. Whatever fret he felt he would
keep to himself, knowing how useless it was. The buffalo would go.
That seemed likely, but the hills would still be in place and the
streams flowing.

South Pass, an easy climb and drop with Pacific
Springs at the end of it. Sublette's Cutoff to the Seeds-kee-dee or
Prairie Hen River, which people were calling the Green. A long haul
and dry, that cutoff, but easier with saddle and pack horses than
with oxen and wagons. Discarded stuff along the way — an anvil, a
big cherry press, bins and boxes, an earthenware crock — the
plunder that made loads too heavy for sore-footed pullers.

One thing stuck in his gizzard, too heavy to pass
through his system. Jim Deakins dead and Boone Caudill the killer. He
had pieced the story together, from Birdwhistle there on the
Columbia's banks, from Higgins who told him the talk at Fort Benton,
from Teal Eye when she would speak of it. Caudill, the sudden and
unthinking man, had shot Deakins out of suspicion with no hold on
fact. He had killed his friend and deserted Teal Eye and the boy and
not set foot in Blackfoot country again. He had to be told the truth
somehow and somewhere. He had to live with his mistake. That was
fair. All men should live with the wrongs they had done.

It pricked him a little, thinking of Teal Eye
sleeping with Caudill. But Teal Eye was Teal Eye. Nothing could spoil
her. She had shut Caudill out of her mind, or tried to. When Summers
pushed her about him, she talked little and then in a half-strangled
voice.

Now down to the Bear, down the steep slope of it
where Oregon wagons had had to be wheel-locked and lowered with
ropes.

"
Shoshone country," Summers said to
Higgins. "You'll be took by surprise. They're lighter complected
than you would expect, nigh light as Mandans, them as was all killed
off by the smallpox. Watch out you don't flush up a bride."

"
Should I take a pot shot or shoot her on the
wing?"

"
Just smile a pretty smile."

"
I'm thinkin' brides is as skeerce as buffalo in
this country."

"
We'll trail up Smith's Fork. Time was, maybe
still is, that White Hawk liked to camp around there."

They came to an old camp where fires had burned, and
the grass grew different where tepees had stood. A couple of miles
farther on Summers spotted a horse herd on a hillside and two men
standing watch. The trail led down into a basin. In the center of it
tepees rose, rusty white in the sun. "I'm thinkin' we reached
the end of the trip," Summers said.

He led down toward the tepees, making the peace sign
as he went, and dogs barked and faces turned, and a man came out of
the biggest tepee and faced them, squinting.

He was White Hawk, Summers made out, White Hawk with
years on him and many moons in his face. Summers slid from his horse.
"White Hawk, my brother," he said. "I bring tobacco
and beads."

A slow look of knowing came into White Hawk's eyes,
and time seemed to shed from him.

"
My brother," he cried out. "Dick
Summers, my white brother." He stepped forward to shake hands
and, as if the shake wasn't enough, took Summers by the arm.

The Indians gathered around, men dressed in patches
of leather and cloth, women in their shapeless sacks save for a
couple in calico and children bare-assed as the day they were born.
They set up a clamor, merry as birds in a fresh-turned field.

White Hawk said, using signs but words, too, "All
belong you. The camp. My lodge. Meat in the pot." He kicked
lightly at a dog that was sniffing Summers.

"
I have my wife, my sons and my good friend.
Higgins his name."

"
We are happy. Come."

"Packs first, and the horses."

White Hawk turned to a couple of young men and spoke
in Shoshone. To Summers he said, "They take care. No steal from
you. I have spoken."

Seated by White Hawk's fire outside his lodge, they
ate deer meat seasoned with sage and other flavorings Summers
couldn't name. The chief' s two wives bustled around, making sure the
men were well fed, watching the fire to keep the pot hot. With them
was a young girl, pretty and uncommonly fair, who was too young to be
wife to old White Hawk. But maybe not. The sun winked out behind the
hills, and a mild chill came on. A coyote, singing, set the camp dogs
to barking.