The Big Sky (17 page)

Summers looked long, the knife idle in his hand. "I be dogged! Hold still now! It's brown skin, sure as I be, but maybe just Puncas." After what seemed to Boone a long time, he added, "Let's back up toward cover. We can cache, maybe. Here's a hoss as don't like it."

He peeled off his shirt and spread it on the ground and put on it the parts of the carcass he had cut out to save, folding the shirt over afterward. Boone narrowed his eyes against the glare. Those were horses under the dust cloud, with riders on them.

"Might be we can git back with this here," said Summers. "They seen us all right." He lifted his parcel. "Poor doin's, anyhow, to let Injuns think you're runnin'. Even the squaws get braved up then, and full of hell. Ease away, now." His voice was sure and quiet.

Boone scanned the river, looking for the Mandan. "Ain't hardly had time to pull this fur," said Summers, "with no breeze to help."
They dropped down behind the crest of the hills, out of sight of the Indians. "Hump it! Hump it some!" They broke for the thin timber two hundred yards and more away, with Summers holding his bundle out from him so as not to hinder his leg.

"I'll take 'er," Boone panted, but Summers only shook his head.

"All right." Summers slowed to an unhurried walk. The Indians came to the top of the hill and halted, outlined against the sky.

"We'll make peace sign." Summers put his parcel down and fired his rifle at the sky. Afterwards, he took his pipe out and held it high for the Indians to see.

The Indians looked and talked among themselves, until one of them yelled and all joined in, a kind of high, quavering yell. They sent their horses down the bluff, the hoofs making a clatter in a patch of stones.

"Gimme your Hawken and load this 'un." They were still a throw away from the fringe of woods along the river. Summers took the wiping stick from its slot while he watched. "Sioux, by beaver, or this nigger don't know Injun. They can't circle us here, anyways. Git ready, old hoss, but hold fire till I give the sign." He planted his wiping stick out before him and laid the rifle on its rest. "That's it, hoss, and line your sights on the belly, not the head."

A hundred and fifty yards away the Indians pulled up. Boone counted them. Twelve men. They were naked from the waist up, unless a man counted the feathers stuck in their hair. Their skin looked smooth and soft, like good used leather. It would make a better strop than the one he'd left in Louisville. Three or four had guns in their hands, and the others bows. Their horses minced around as they waited.

"It ain't a war party, anyhow," Summers said, as if he was making talk at night around the fire.

"How can a body tell?"

"No paint. No shields. They're huntin', I'm thinkin'."

Summers stood up. His voice went out, rough and steady and strong, in language Boone didn't understand, and his hands made movements in front of him.

The Indians listened, sitting their horses as if they were grown on them. Sometimes as the horses moved Boone could see the Indians' hair, hanging far down in plaits. The foremost of them, though, the one who seemed to be the leader, had chopped it off short.

Summers' voice came to a halt. To Boone he said, "A man never knows about Sioux."

The Indians sat their milling horses. Their heads moved, and their hands, as they talked to one another. The Indian with the short hair rode out. The tail of some animal hung from his moccasin. His voice was stronger than Summers' and came more from his chest.

"Asks if we're squaws, to run," Summers translated. "And what have we got for presents? His tongue is short but his arm is long, and he feels blood in his eye."

The Indian halted, waiting for Summers' reply. "I'm thinkin' they just met up with an enemy and got the worst of the tussle. That makes 'em mean as all hell. I'll tell 'em our tongues ain't so long either, but our guns is a heap longer'n them crazy fusees." His voice went out again.

Suddenly, while the rest watched, the Indian with the short hair let out a yell and put his horse to a gallop, coming straight at them. He was low on his horse, just the top of him showing and the legs at the sides.

Summers dropped to one knee again and leveled his gun, and nothing seemed to move about him except the end of the barrel bearing on the rider. Boone was down, too, with his rifle up, seeing the outflung hoofs of the horse and the flaring nostrils. He would be on them in a shake. The horse bore out a little, and the cropped head moved, and the black of a barrel came over the horse's neck. Summers' rifle spoke, and in a wink the horse was running free, shying out in a circle and going back. The Indian lay on his belly. He didn't move. "That's one for the wolves," Summers said. His hand came over and gave Boone the empty rifle and took the loaded one and drew away with it. "Load up!"

The Indians had sat, watching the one and yelling for him. They hushed when he fell and then all began to yell again, the voices rising shrill and falling. They set their horses to a run streaking to one side and then the other, not coming directly at Boone and Summers, but working closer as the line went back and forth. Sometimes one, bolder than the rest, would charge out of the line and come nearer, waving his gun or bow while he shouted, and then go back to the line again. "Hold your sights on one," said Summers, "the one on the speckled pony. Hold fire till I tell you. Then plumb center with it." He had taken his pistols from his belt and had them out before him, ready to his hand.

The Indians made themselves small on the horses, swinging to the off side as they turned. "Shoo!" Summers said. "They can't ride for nothin'. Can't shine with Comanches, or even Crows."

"Why'n't they charge, all of 'em?"

Summers' eye ran along the barrel of his gun. "They got no stummick for that kind of doings, save once in a while one likes to shine alone, like that nigger out there."

A rifle cracked, and in front of them the ground exploded in a little blast of dust. "Steady. Time to go ag'in." Out of the corner of his eye Boone saw smoke puff from the gun. A running horse stumbled and fell. The Indians shouted, higher and wilder. The fallen horse lay on its rider. Boone saw the rider, just the head and jerking hands of him beyond the horse, trying to pull his leg free. Summers handed over the empty rifle. Two Indians flew to the one who was down, slipped from the off sides of their horses, and, stooping behind the downed horse, rolled the withers up. The fallen rider tried to arise and went off crawling, dragging one leg.

The others, driven back a little by the shot, began to come in again, working to and fro. One of them bobbed up and swung his rifle over. The ball sang past Boone. He had the rifle primed again, and the Indian on the speckled pony on his sights. "Kin I shoot one?" He didn't wait. The sights seemed to steady of themselves and fix just above the pony's neck. His fingers bore on the trigger, like it had a mind of its own. The rifle jumped.

"I be dogged."

The speckled pony shied off. Behind him a man squirmed on the ground, squirmed and got up and went back, bent at the middle.

"Slicker'n ice, Caudill."

The Indians bunched up, talking and gesturing. "They had nigh enough, I'm thinkin'," said Summers, raising his cheek from his rifle. He added, "For now."

"That's the boat."

The trumpet had sounded, cutting through the still air, rolling up river and out to the hills and coming back on itself. Boone saw the
Mandan
. The oars made little even flashes as the men laid them back. Someone was busy in the bow. It looked like Jourdonnais. It was him, working at the swivel gun, which was a bar of light in the bow. The Indians looked, holding their horses tight, easing them backward away from the river. The swivel belched smoke, and the sound of it came to them, a rolling boom like thunder. Jourdonnais got busy with it again.

"First shot was just to skeer 'em. Second'll be business."

But the Sioux drew off, turning back and shouting and shaking their arms as they went. Boone watched them long enough to see that they picked up the two crippled warriors.

Summers put his pistols back in his belt and fitted his wiping stick to his rifle. He and Boone walked ahead, to the Indian who lay still in the grass. Summers stooped over. His knife cut into the scalp and made a rough circle, from which the blood beaded. He got hold of the Indian's short hair and tore the circle loose, leaving the piece of skull naked and raw. "Take his gun. This Injun's had a grief lately. Some of his kin's gone under -a brother, maybe. That's why he chopped his tails off. Looks recent, don't it? Like as not it just happened. That's why they was so froze for our scalps, so's they wouldn't have to go home beaten and with nary thing to shine with." He went back and picked up his bundle of meat, carrying scalp and bundle in one hand.

The
Mandan
pulled in, so close they could hop aboard. Jourdonnais' bold, dark face questioned Summers. The Creoles looked at him, too, their eyes big and watchful like the eyes of a frog ready to jump if a man took another step.

Summers said, "We put one under and winged two." The barrel of his rifle swung toward Boone. "There's a hoss as'll shoot plumb center." In tones that Boone barely overheard he went on, "We ain't seen the last of 'em, I'm thinkin'."
 
 

Summers was right; but for a day and part of another, while they went by the Riviere a Jacques and headed on toward the L'Eau Qui Court, Jourdonnais told himself that he wasn't. There wasn't one sign of Indian, not even to Summers, who watched the shores, hour after hour, searching with his trained gray eye. Summers' face was sober but not worried. Jourdonnais wondered if he ever worried, this big, loose-built man who was like a wise old dog. Watching him, gazing down from his place at the steering oar, Jourdonnais wondered that Summers had gone in with him. Summers didn't care for money or a nice house or pretties for a wife, if he had one. He lived like a wild thing, to eat and frolic and keep his scalp, not thinking from one day to another, not putting by against the future. If Jourdonnais hadn't found him fresh back from a good hunt in the country of the Arapahoes, Summers wouldn't have had money to put into cargo, the way he was spending it. As it was, Jourdonnais in his desperate need for funds had had to beg, holding out the possibilities of rich profits in the Trois Fourches. Looking at Summers, seeing the alert face that was untroubled by regrets or ambition, Jourdonnais thought that Summers had joined him for the fun rather than the profit. He was glad that Summers was an easy man, without the dark strain of violence that ran so often in mountain men.

He was thankful, too, for the favor of the wind, grudging and unreliable as it was. It would take a gun, almost, to drive the Creoles to the bank now. He wouldn't order them to tow unless he had to. A hundred Indians could hide in one small thicket and kill the crew to the last man as they pulled up to it. It was good that the river was down. The time was coming on to June, and the Missouri would flood again when the snow in the mountains ran off.

As much as he could, Jourdonnais kept the
Mandan
to the left bank, away from the side on which Summers and Caudill had come up against the Indians. Sometimes he put the crew out with the
cordelle
on the long sand bars that divided the current, lying in the water like the backs of hogs cooling off in the muck. The men rowed, each with a rifle by his side, and for all of Summers' looking, they looked, too, putting only half their attention on the oars and the other half on the bank, as if every bush hid an Indian. Sometimes Jourdonnais felt ashamed for his people, who had neither bravery nor pride like Americans.

"The Sioux go away, eh, Summers?"

Summers came over and leaned against the cargo box and gave a half-shake of his head. "They're like to pop up on a bank any time and rain arrers down on us. Now's when we need two boats, one on each side, the other lookin' out for us and us lookin' out for them. We can see the far shore a heap better'n this one. I'm thinkin' they're comin' along, maybe lookin' for a way acrost." The hunter looked down from his six feet and said something in Indian to little Teal Eye, who was standing by her lodge with one hand on the box letting the breeze blow her. She answered and let her gaze slide back to the shore.

"You sure about Sioux?" Jourdonnais asked. "They make no trouble for long time."

Summers' tone had a faint edge. "This child ought to know a Sioux."

Jourdonnais agreed, smiling to soften the other's irritation. "You have sleep with them enough? Maybe beaucoup Sioux babies by Summers?"

The hunter didn't answer at once, and when he did speak it was to explain. "Sioux or what, two white men alone make Injuns itchy."

"So?"

"They had blood in their eye to boot, I'm thinkin'." He pointed to the scalp that had been tucked under a lashing, raw side up, to dry. A big blue-green fly, shining with bloat, was working on it. "Hair's cut short. Means that hoss was grievin."

"Yes."

"Injuns ain't never so mean as when they've took a beatin'. They're half-froze to make up for it, don't matter on who."

They pulled up to a sand bar for the night. The river ran on both sides of it, making an island -a flat little island on which the willows had commenced to poke up. It might wash away with the next high water. The wind played among the willows and picked up the sand and threw it at them, so that there was sand in the eye and in the meat and in the beds. Pambrun had set up his stove on top of the cargo, in a box filled with sand. Here in the middle of the river the Creoles felt safe. Some of them took off their clothes an,' sported in the water. That was one thing about his people, Jourdonnais thought; they had the light heart. He let himself have one of the Spanish segars that he reserved for special occasions, though he hardly felt right in smoking it. A man could keep himself poor, letting small money get away from him. "By damn," he said to Romaine while he wiped an eye, "the wind blow the gnat off and the sand on. One damn thing or another." As the night began to close down Pambrun set out his fishlines, baited with bird gut.