Spirit Wolf (9 page)

But Uriah seemed not to hear. He broke open the gun and jammed two shells into the chambers. Then he opened the door and stepped out on the porch. Nash stood behind his father, almost in a state of shock. But stunned as he was, he noticed the tremor in his father's hands as the bore of the twelve-gauge swept up to encompass the people in the wagon.

“Git!” Uriah shouted. “Git, or so help me God, I'll kill you all.”

Nash heard the ugly
snick
as Uriah cocked the two hammers on the shotgun. The old Indian dropped to his seat and wheeled the wagon out of the yard. And through it all, there hadn't been a flicker of emotion on the faces of those others in the wagon. It was as though life and death held neither promise nor threat to them.

Uriah stood there on the porch long after the wagon had disappeared, and then Mary stepped up behind him. “You have to let it go, Uriah. You have to let it go.”

And Uriah's reply, wrenched out of his gut, “I can't, Mary. I can never forget.”

Nash didn't understand what happened that day. Neither his mother nor his father had spoken of it since. But he knew that his father had been afraid for Nash and his mother. And from that time on Nash knew, deep in his mind where nightmares dwell, that Indians were different and dangerous. The memory of that day was fresh in his mind as Nash forced himself to walk up to the figure crouched on the log.

“My dad said I should ask you if you wanted some meat,” Nash said. “Do you?”

The man shifted, and Nash found himself staring into a tunnel made by the hood over the stranger's face. Deep down in the darkness there, Nash saw the glint of light reflected from the man's eyes, like starlight bouncing off a black pool at night. Still the stranger said nothing.

“Well, uh, I've got to get some water now,” Nash said, and he fled toward the creek.

He filled the coffeepot through a hole chopped in the ice that lay in a rough sheet over the stream. And all the time he watched the icy water swirl into the pot, he was thinking about the trip back to the lean-to. If he walked any way but the way he had come, he would be showing the fear that he felt. But if he went back by the same path, he would walk past the Indian.

Nash shivered—and not with the cold—as he walked back toward the lean-to. He kept his head down, watching his feet as he neared the stranger. He didn't want to look at the man. He didn't want to meet those eyes again. He ignored the call the first time, but the second time it was more insistent. “Boy!”

Nash looked up. The man had slipped the robe off his head. He was Indian all right, but old, old past being a threat. His hair was white and sparse and combed back into two braids. His face was wrinkled as the bark of a cottonwood tree and dark as Nash's boots. The eyes were still dark pools glinting light, but Nash could see they held no malice.

“Boy, I would have some of the meat you offered.”

Suddenly, Nash wasn't frightened anymore. Instead, he was intrigued. He had listened enthralled as old-timers told about their brushes with “injuns.” Even at this late date, more than a decade into the twentieth century, cattlemen complained about Indians sneaking stock from ranches adjoining the reservations and then demanding a tariff before returning them to their owners. More than a few cattle disappeared into reservation cooking pots, too, without the benefit of a bill of sale.

“Boy,” the old man's breathy voice broke again into Nash's reverie. “My teeth are not so hard as they once were. Bring me soft meat.”

“We have liver,” Nash said.

The old man nodded.

Nash walked back to the lean-to with the trace of a skip in his step. It was a lucky day. He had talked to an Indian and gotten rid of some of that damn liver at the same time. Damn liver. People who palaver with Indians can spice up their speech a little—at least, if it isn't said out loud.

Uriah was standing over by Flynn's tent talking to the Irishman. Nash threw a couple more sticks of wood on the fire and sliced off a generous chunk of the liver. Nash had detested liver for as long as he could remember, and he ate the foul stuff only at his mother's insistence. He added a little more to the old man's share and carried it back to the newcomer's fire.

“We've got more if you want it,” Nash said.

The old man grunted, and as he reached toward Nash for the meat, a knife appeared from under the robe. Nash involuntarily stepped back. The knife wasn't a challenge, just an eating utensil. But the old man had been holding it under his robe, waiting. Old or not, this man wasn't to be taken for granted.

The old man sliced a strip of meat from the cooled liver and started to raise it to his lips. Then he glanced at Nash, noting the boy's barely concealed distaste. The deeply eroded rock that was the old man's face softened with what might have been a grin. “Get me that willow, boy.”

Nash snipped off the willow wand where it broke through the snow and handed it to the old man, who, in turn, impaled a piece of liver on the stick and began roasting the meat over the fire. Cooking didn't take long. When the fire had painted the liver a light gray, the old man lifted it from the flame and popped it into his mouth. Nash knew the liver was still raw. The old man was aware of that. He chewed with great relish, watching the boy's face.

Nash broke the silence. “I better be going now.”

But the old man stopped him. “What are you called, boy?”

“Nash. That's short for Nashua, but only my mother calls me that. What's your name?”

“Oh, I have many names. When I was a boy, they called me Gopher, because I was always poking my nose into one thing or another. Then when I became a man, I was given another name. After I stole many horses from the Blackfeet, the people called me Rides Plenty. And now the traders at the post in Lame Deer have given me yet another name. I went in there one day and did not know that the skinny trader, who has so many hairs in his nose, was watching me. He stopped me on the way out and took the things I had hidden in my shirt. He was the first to call me by my new name, Light-fingered Old Buck. That is a strong name. The traders are afraid of me now. Every time I go to the post, they say, ‘Watch out, here comes that Light-fingered Old Buck.'”

A wheezing gasp that apparently passed for a chuckle shook the old man's frame. “But you can call me Grandfather.”

Grandfather sliced off another piece of liver, not bothering to pass it over the flames before popping it into his mouth. “You come back after you have eaten, Nash, and I will tell you a story.”

The old man studied Nash's face for a long moment, and then, apparently satisfied with what he saw, turned back to the fire.

Just then Uriah's voice floated up from below.

“Nash. Time to eat.”

Uriah had sliced the loin into what he called butterfly steaks, and was in the process of coating them liberally with flour, salt, and pepper, when Nash walked into camp.

“What took you so long?” Uriah asked with an odd edge to his voice. “That water will be a long time making coffee now.”

Nash poured out about half the water and set the pot and the can of coffee in front of his father. Uriah was not fussy about most things, but the making of coffee was a serious matter, not something to be entrusted to anyone who didn't drink the stuff.

Uriah had the coffeepot and the big cast-iron skillet heating over the fire by the time Flynn arrived.

“Ah, look at those steaks, will you,” Flynn said, rubbing his hands together. “Fresh meat for a hot meal in a cold camp. Can't ask for much more than that.”

Uriah took out three pieces of sidepork and threw them in the frying pan. When the pork began to sizzle, he sprinkled salt and pepper over it, turning the meat until it was cooked crisp. He took a piece of the sidepork and gave Flynn and Nash the last two, leaving enough grease in the frying pan for the steaks.

The smell of venison cooking began to fill the air, and all three stood watching the frying pan. After the steaks were well done, really well done—venison simply isn't eaten rare—they sat down to eat. Uriah took another loaf of Mary's bread out of the food sack, and they each tore off chunks and dipped them in the grease still left in the frying pan. They ate with a hunger only a day out in the cold could engender, and they spoke very little.

The coffee wasn't ready when the three had finished eating, but Uriah was somewhat mollified when Flynn hauled out a bottle of bourbon. Each man took a swig and sat for a moment, feeling the alcohol burn into his stomach, giving him the illusion of warmth, if not more.

Finally, Uriah spoke. “Who is he?” he asked, nodding toward the old Indian still sitting alone at his fire.

“Don't know,” Flynn said. “Never saw him before. Came in sometime after you left. He doesn't have a horse, so I guess he walked here. But I don't have any idea where he was heading or why he stopped here.”

“I'll tell you how he got here.” Nash and Uriah both jumped a little at the bark of the gruff voice behind them. “The son-of-a-bitch smelled food and came a-begging. It always amazes me how those bastards can smell food. The way they stink, you wouldn't think they would be able to smell anything but themselves.”

Bullsnake's voice was rising now. He was almost shouting, to be sure the old man could hear him. “Who
eee
. If the wind don't change, the smell of that old buck is going to drive us all out of camp. It's an awful thing when a white man has to live around his kind. Ain't that right, boy?” Bullsnake clapped a hand on Nash's shoulder and squeezed too hard for a friendly gesture. “Well, I gotta be going now, gents,” he said, stretching out the “gents” until it seemed to be a nasty word.

When Bullsnake called over his shoulder, “Be seeing you, boy,” there was just the hint of a threat in it; then he crunched away through the snow, trailing a plume of fogged air behind him.

“They see anything today?” Uriah asked.

“Hard to say,” Flynn replied. “They didn't leave camp, and I sure didn't see anything around here worth shooting—nothing wild, anyway. They sat around playing gin rummy a penny a point. Wanted me to sit in, but they're a little more liberal with the rules than I like. Don't know what they're up to, but you can bet it isn't any good.”

The coffee was ready, and Uriah poured a cup for Flynn and one for himself, and the two began talking about how the country was going to hell in a hand basket.

Nash interrupted. “Dad, I'm going to go up and talk to the old man for a while.”

Uriah stopped talking. Nash watched the cords knot in his father's neck, and then Uriah's voice came low and hard and cold. “You can go, boy. But make sure that he understands that I'm watching him. You tell him I never hesitate taking a hoe to a rattler. You tell him that, Nash.”

Nash knew the vehemence in his father's voice was not directed at him. Still, the sound of it sent shivers down his spine.

Flynn seemed not to have heard Uriah. He appeared to be utterly fascinated by his fingernails, studying them as an artist studies a canvas.

It was cold as Nash walked away from the campfire, but he felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. As he neared the old man's fire, he wondered again whether he should be there, whether it would not have been better for him to stay with Flynn and his father.

As Nash came up, the old man was staring into the flames, lost in the memories he saw flickering there. Nash stood for a long moment, then brushed the snow off a rock on the other side of the fire and sat down. Still the figure in the buffalo robe was silent. Finally, just as Nash was about to leave, the old man spoke. “Do you not smell the stink in the air?”

“No,” Nash said. “I don't smell anything.”

“I smell something,” the old man said. “It comes faintly on the wind as though from a far place, but I know it. I have smelled it many times.”

“What is it?” Nash asked.

“Fear,” the old man said. “I smell fear.”

“You shouldn't be afraid. Bullsnake is all talk. Dad told me,” Nash said, meaning to reassure the old man. But as he spoke he realized he was only reassuring himself.

The old man pulled his attention from the fire and laid it on Nash. “I am not afraid. I have not been afraid since I was a boy about your age. I smell fear on others. It burns in my nose and wrinkles the skin of the back of my neck. Fear is contagious, and as deadly as the white man's smallpox. But fear does not touch me.”

At that moment fear touched Nash. There was something strange about the old man, and Nash felt as though the whisper of something unseen had flitted through the camp when the Indian spoke.

“I will tell you why I am no longer afraid. When I was a boy,” the old man said in a brittle, reedy voice, “my father purified me in the sweat lodge and bathed me in the smoke of sage and took me to a secret place in the mountains where I was to await my spirit helper. We built a small shelter of brush and prayed and did as my father had been instructed to do by his father. And when all was complete, he left me there to await my vision.

“I held my arms up as though to embrace the sun. I opened myself to everything around me and watched the sun as it made its way across the heavens to its home in the west. And I rose before the sun the next morning, too, and greeted it with prayers on my lips and hope in my heart. I stood all day with no food or water, praying that the maheo would send a vision to me. I lay awake that night, my arms aching and my belly crying out for food, but my mind wanted a vision above all else. It is very important to have a vision.

“The third day was bad. My throat was so dry that I croaked when I tried to sing. My lips cracked and bled. But then I became one with the earth, with life. A deer walked by my camp and was not afraid of me. I had become part of him, and he had become part of me. I felt his life before I saw him. I felt the sun across his back and the taste of sage in his mouth, and he felt my pain. When the deer disappeared, bouncing away on stiff legs, I felt what had frightened him.