Fair Land, Fair Land (28 page)

Higgins said again, "Speakin' of notions, I kind
of got one in my bonnet."

"
Let it out."

"
Or me'n Little Wing have."

"
So?"

"
She hankers to see her folks."

Summers puffed on his pipe and found slow words to
say,

"
Can't blame her none."

"
Not to leave us," Teal Eye cried out.

"
Just for a spell," Higgins told her. "Long
enough to get there, visit a while and come back."

He meant it, Summers knew. He meant it, but who could
tell? Not even God himself.

"
It is for good," Teal Eye said to her
beadwork. A gust shook the cabin, carrying her words to wherever it
went.

Little Wing brought the pot over and nested it in the
fire.

Higgins said, "She's got a right to see her kin.
Been a long time. I figure we would take off when the first flowers
bloom so's to be back, Teal Eye, before frost sets in."

Little Wing was making happy noises in her throat.
Nocansee kept working the stiff from the hide. The mouse ducked back
in its hole, stirring up a trickle of dust. Things were closing in
and closing out, Summers thought. Life narrowed as the years grew. It
crowded and  narrowed.

With Higgins and Little Wing gone?

He puffed, but his pipe
had gone out.

* * *

They were ready to go, horses saddled and packed, one
tepee down, the cabin and grounds looked over again for items maybe
forgotten.

"
You should have picked better horses, 'stead of
these old pelters," Summers said. It was like Higgins to take
the four oldest of the nine horses they had.

"
They'll get us there, don't you worry,"
Higgins answered.

They were all standing around, waiting, holding the
parting off for this minute. Little Wing and Higgins just fiddled
with the reins in their hands, not up to goodbyes quite yet. The day
was good, at least. The spring sun was warm, lighting a sky without a
wisp of cloud in it. The trees were about to leaf out, their buds
swollen and sticky, soon to give birth. It was a time of birds and
bird songs.

Little Wing said, "We come back. Look for us.
Look before snow."

Sure, Summers thought, they'd come back maybe. Maybe
on some fair afternoon they'd return to pick up the life they were
leaving. Maybe.

The two women hugged each other, both crying. Little
Wing laid a hand on Nocansee's shoulder and said, "I hope good
things." She hugged Summers. Higgins helped her on to her horse
and turned. "You good old son of a bitch," he said and
swung around fast. "Goodbye, goddamnit."

"
Keep your scalp, old pardner."

As they rode off, turning once to wave, Teal Eye came
to Summers and put her head in the hollow of his shoulder, more for
his sake, he thought, than her own. He kept control of his voice.
"Hardest lesson of all is to learn to say goodbye."

Inside their tepee lay Higgins' cased fiddle. "Hell's
sake,"

Summers said. "He forgot. I'll have to catch up
with him." A scrap of tanned deerskin lay on the fiddle. It had
words on it, written in charcoal.

"
Nocansee you can lern to play it good."

35

DUST ROSE upstream across the river. It rose and hung
there, wavering just a little to the breath of air. Men would be
working there, working with big shovels drawn by horses, tearing up
the buffalo grass.

Summers had ridden once close enough to see. Loaded
wagons waited and running gears piled high with logs and raw lumber,
and the sounds of men reached him and the knock of axes and the
scrape-scrape of saws. Some soldiers moved around, doing nothing but
watch. There was to be the new agency. It was located about four
miles away from his camp, between the Teton and a small creek that
flowed at the far side of the valley and joined the Teton a short
piece lower down.

He sat his horse and watched the dust rising. Soon
enough the agency officers would arrive and probably more soldiers
and then a straggle of Indians coming to see if the white man lived
up to his promises. He wouldn't.

Put down another marker to judge time by. Let it
stand in the story. Big doings. A new agency, and it would give way
to time, too, though nobody thought so, not with change just taking
place. Everything was new as of its time. And everything was old, or
would be with the years. Nothing stayed put. Men came with their big
ideas, looking to a future that would laugh at their work. Why not
let things be? Why the hurry to play hell with what was? That was the
way of man. That was the way of men who bred and increased and
reached out.

He fingered his cold pipe and put one hand to his
knee, which didn't bother him so much in warm weather. Pretty soon
he'd make sure his loose horses hadn't strayed. In these long sunset
and twilighted days the workingmen would knock off long before dark,
and they and off-duty soldiers would be banging away with shotguns
and rifles, and the game would run and be lost or lie crippled and
dying with the men too eager for fresh targets to follow the blood
trails. Sport, they would call it.

No one could fault a man who shot meat for the kettle
or frying pan, but damn the man who shot to be shooting and killed to
be killing. While in camp they had been hearing shots, some too
close, where before there had been silence.

Lately he and the family had had to make do with
grouse and mallards and cottontails and the trout of the Teton. Once
in a while a deer. Once in a long while an elk. Never a buffalo now.
Not here. Not hereabouts.

From here he could see the tepee and the cabin.
Taking Nocansee with her, Teal Eye had gone down the river to see if
the June berries were ripe. She kept busy. She always had, but now it
was as if she moved so's not to think. She didn't complain, but some
of the sparkle had left her, some of the spirit.

Her eyes sometimes looked empty. He could understand.
Lije gone, and no word from him. Higgins and Little Wing far away
with the Shoshones. For company just himself and Nocansee, and mostly
it was only old talk they could talk, talk they'd talked before.
Often they were silent, the only sound the sad sound of the fiddle
that Nocansee practiced on. He watched the dust rising and thought
that for two bits he'd leave the Teton if he knew where to go.

The dust rose and, closer, another weaker trail of it
that seemed to lead toward his camp. He made sure his Hawken was
loaded and rode down to meet it.

three Indians dragged up on their poor-flesh cayuses.
It was a time before he recognized Heavy Runner. He left the saddle
and made the peace sign and motioned for them to come forward.

Heavy Runner got off his horse and said in Blackfoot,
"We come in peace and to talk, Bear Maker." He looked tired
and drawn, and his buckskins weren't proud. "I bring two good
men."

"
Come, friends, and smoke. My lodge is yours."

The other two Indians dismounted, and Heavy Runner
named names that Summers didn't catch. One of them tied up the
horses.

The tepee was the proper place for sober palaver, and
Summers led the way to it and invited them to sit down. He lighted
his pipe, pointed it in the four directions and passed it around.
They sat and talked, as Indians did, avoiding and circling around the
point that was to be made. Summers told them,

"
My woman has gone to pick berries. The pot is
empty. But whiskey I have."

Heavy Runner shook his head. "It kills my
people."

"
It is not trade whiskey, not poison."

Heavy Runner took a long look at him. Summers rose
and got the jug. They were old men. They swallowed small. At last
Summers said, "You can tell me. My ear is open."

"
My people die," Heavy Runner said as if
measuring his words. "My young men go crazy. It is the
firewater."

"
From whiskey traders?"

Heavy Runner bowed, head and body, and his hand
moved, saying yes. "They travel the whiskey road, the traders,
from Fort Benton to Fort McLeod across the Medicine Line, and they
sell as they go. Sell to my people."

‘
°In the wind I have heard."

"
So many die. So many young braves drink it,
steal for it, steal horses, anything, for to trade."

"
I believe you."

"
The white soldiers, the white chiefs, hear of
stealing. They hear of white men rubbed out. They do not like it.
They hate us. But what to do with my young braves? A chief he is not
a general. He can speak but not order, and his words fly away."

Heavy Runner's friends hadn't spoken. They sat
listening, their hands folded unless used in the yes sign.

"
Why, friend, come to me?" Summers asked.

"
My village is friendly village. We do not want
the trouble. It is Mountain Chief whose men kill. They come across
the Medicine Line and steal and sometime kill, but to the white men
all Indians are Indians.

"
It is so. My heart is low because the white man
is foolish."

Summers waited and then put the question again. "But
why come? What can I do?"

Heavy Runner's tired face lifted, and his eyes met
Summers' square on. "Because we need you."

"
F or what, my friend?"

"
In our camp we need a white man, a good man, a
wise old man to tell us."

"
I wouldn't know wise words to say."

"
A good white man in our camp shows everybody we
are good people."

"
Don't bet on it. But is it protection my friend
thinks about?"

"
Someone to guide us the right way. Someone to
explain to the white chiefs before trouble comes. That is you, Bear
Maker, for we are poor in words."

"
I must talk in my mind, Heavy Runner. I think
no but maybe yes. If it is no, we are still friends."

"
My lodge is always yours."

"
Where is it?"

"On what is called the Marias. It is sometimes
good hunting. It is big land, far as the eye sees, and our people,
the Blackfeet, they be not so many."

"
I will think."

The Indians rose, shook hands, walked out to their
horses and rode away.

After they were gone, Summers climbed into the saddle
again. The sun was halfway past its high, and he hadn't yet seen to
the loose horses or shot anything for the pot. There was time for
both, if he didn't have to look too long for game. That was the
question, what with workers from the agency banging around.

Sometimes two or three of them rode by his camp, not
stopping, their eyes curious as if they saw the last of a race, as if
he were out of place in the world, something left over from the first
days. He reckoned they weren't so far off at that.

A shot sounded from behind a thicket. He put his
horse to a lope and rounded the edge of it. A man stood there, a
rifle dangling from his hand, and a horse lay thrashing in the grass.

"
Hold it!" Summers shouted.

The man turned, his eyes wide. "I didn't mean .
. ." The horse had climbed to its feet. It stood still with the
dull look of slow suffering.

"
G
oddamnit, kill it!"
Summers told the man. "You gut-shot it, now kill it."

The rifle still hung from the man's hand. "I
couldn't — I mean I can't — not a horse."

Summers lurched from the saddle. He took aim with the
Hawken, dropped it, grabbed the man's repeating rifle from his loose
hand and shot the horse in the forehead just above the eyes. The
horse went down, quivering, and lay still.

"You can still brag it was your gun that kilt
him," he said. He swung the man's rifle against a rock, then
swung it again. "You dumb son of a bitch. Best horse I own."

"
But I tell you, I didn't mean . . ."

He wasn't a man but a boy, a boy with fear and regret
in his l eyes. "It looked like an elk or maybe a deer, so . ."

"
So you just fired away, like a fool. Shoot at
anything that moves, just to be killin'."

"
It was a new rifle, a Henry repeater. I wanted
to see . . ."

"
To see if you could get yourself a prime horse.
I ought to give you a runnin' start and see do you like lead in your
ass."

"
I can pay you, in time, I mean. And I'm sorry,
sir. I acted the fool." The boy did look sorry, sorry and
pained, a boy at a loss.

Summers sat slow in the grass. It wasn't the bad leg
that let him down, not it alone. It was the weight on his shoulders,
the heaviness in his head and the let-down feeling that followed
rage.

"
Christ," he said, "there are too many
of you. Pick up your rifle and go."

"
I don't know that I understand."

"
I said you are too many just go, boy."

He sat with the dead horse and the live one and
watched the boy walk away. Likely the rifle wasn't damaged too much.
On the ride home, for lack of better meat, he shot the heads off two
jackass rabbits. They would be tough as bull hide but better than
nothing.