The Big Sky (20 page)

Except for the men's breathing and the river forever talking to itself along the shores, there was hardly a sound tonight, bar the coyotes that sang at the sky. A man couldn't tell where a coyote was from his singing. His voice came from the hills somewhere, sharp-pitched and sorrowful, and threaded through the night like a needle. Closer, he heard the sound of a wing as a bird settled itself better for the night.

Boone lay on his side with his eyes half-open, looking down toward the
Mandan
and the water that caught the lights of the stars, looking and thinking and trying to drop into sleep. He saw himself shooting the white bear, and the bear turning as if to bite the ball out and falling and loosening away into death and Summers looking at him and smiling.

Sometimes bears sneaked into camps, looking for a piece of meat or a lick of sweetening. For a moment, through his widened eyes, Boone thought it was a bear he saw, waddling slow and quiet toward the boat. His hand went over to waken Jim, but Jim had rolled out of reach. Romaine was lying as flat as anyone now and as sound asleep. Boone felt for his rifle. He sat up, holding the weapon in his hands. The figure lengthened from its crouch as he looked and framed its upper part in the star shine of the river, and he saw it was a man, working down easy toward the keelboat. Boone brought his gun up and ran his eye along it, and then he thought about Teal Eye in her little lodge in the stern, and brought the weapon down. He rolled from his bed and started ahead on all fours, hearing his heart thump in his chest. It was an Indian -a Ree, maybe, or a Sioux, or a Blackfoot. There'd be others with him, though. He halted and hunted with his eyes, but saw no one except the man creeping to the boat. He was of a mind to let out a shout or to crawl to Summers and wake him up. For all he knew, though, the man was just one of the Frenchies. That was it -a Frenchie sneaking up on Teal Eye, going against the orders that Jourdonnais had given out many's the time. Goddam, a man would think they'd had enough for a spell! He'd learn him. He crawled faster, less careful now of making noise. The man inched along like sneaking on a goat and only one bullet to his name. Boone put his rifle aside, stood up and jumped. His weight brought a whoof of air from the man. Boone got his forearm under the neck and up on the other shoulder and levered the man's chin up, straining the neck bones while he held him flat on his stomach with his weight. The man was hitting behind himself with his right hand. The knife in it ran hot along Boone's thigh. He grabbed for the hand, and they rolled over, making a crackle among the dead twigs. The camp came to life all at once as Summers let out a whoop. Boone heard shouts and moving feet, and the crack of a gun stock against bone. "That'll tame him." Boone had the wrist in his hand. The two hands, his and the man's, made a wide circle. The man quit wrenching of a sudden and got his butt up and bucked like a horse, trying to free himself. Boone hung to a handhold on his hair as he would have hung to a mane. Another pair of hands worked on the arm. "You can let him up for air, I'm thinking," said Summers.

Pambrun had kicked the fire into life. The crew was milling around it. Summers had Boone's man by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his neck. He pushed him into the firelight like a man pushing a boy. "Now, by Jesus, well make out what kind of a varmint you are! Bring t'other'n, Jourdonnais."

The man said, "Son of a bitch," and Summers cuffed him on the back of the neck with his fist.

Jourdonnais and Romaine came dragging another man, Jourdonnais saying sharply, "You 'ave the nice sleep, I hope, Romaine," and Romaine answering, "For a minute only. Mon Dieu, a man gives out."

They let the second man fall on his face in the dirt. Summers was tying the other up with a length of hide. He was a small man, dressed in skins and with his hair in three plaits, but a white man for all that. His face was as sharp as a mole's. It turned about, first one way and then another, as if to find something to bite. His eyes were small and wicked.

The man lying on his face was coming to. He got his elbows under him and pushed up and rolled over on his butt. His eyes looked around, at the bound man by his side, at Jourdonnais and Summers and the crew gathered about. A slow understanding came into them. He rubbed his head where the gun stock had clubbed it. He looked at the hunter, and a little smile worked at his mouth. "Dick Summers. Heap time no see."

"You want a kiss?"

"We had a awful dry. We was tryin' to scout up a drink."

Summers said, "Snake shit!" He had another length of hide in his hands.

"All back to bed!" Jourdonnais yelled. "The party she's done for now. In the morning she goes on again. We see about it then." He turned. "Come, Caudill, we mend the scratch, with balsam and beaver."

True to his word, Jourdonnais waited for dawn. Then, as the light came up in one big streamer he walked over to the two visitors. Summers had untied them, and they sat rubbing their wrists and ankles. Boone squirmed up, feeling the shallow cut on his leg pull with his movement, and went over and sat down by Jourdonnais. He saw Deakins open his blue eyes and flop over on his belly to watch. The men were stirring, getting up and stretching and chafing their beards with the heels of their hands. They lounged over within earshot. Pambrun was striking another fire, away from the dead ashes in front of the two men, nearer the shore. Already the mosquitoes were making little clouds around each man.

Jourdonnais said, "Now, by the good God, you tell us."

He had a pistol in his hand. Summers sat at his side, his rifle across his knees. Boone wondered if he had sat that way all night. The bigger man spoke. "I told you, Frenchy. We was lookin' for a drink. We was tryin' to wet our dry." He had a head that bulged above the temples and came in and went out again, like the body of an ant. There was a bruise at the hairline where Summers had hit him. The little inquiring smile still curved the corners of his mouth.

"Tell the sons of bitches nothin'," said the smaller man out of the sharp face that seemed made for smelling. When Boone looked at him closer he was put in mind of a rattlesnake. The man had the same poisonous set of eye. When he talked it was like a snake striking.

"I've told 'em all."

"For a little," said Jourdonnais, wagging his pistol, "for a very little, I pull the trigger."

"No, you won't, Frenchie," the bigger man said. His gaze went around. "It would get back to St. Louis, sure as hell's afire. They'd raise your license and maybe stretch your neck." He put his head to one side, as if the hangman's rope were pulling it. "You're too smart for that, Frenchy. Think you could close all these mouths? The boys don't love you that much, Frenchy."

The smaller man snapped, "The
Vide Poche
bastard! Let's up and go."

"Not until we're ready and damn good and ready." It was Summers, talking soft.

Jourdonnais said, "You come from the new fort, Union yes?"

Boone could see the smiling man was thinking fast. "Yes, from there, but not for them."

"Zeb Calloway's there, Summers; he's a hunter for the fort." Summers' glance flicked to Boone.

"McKenzie, he send you,
n'est-ce-pas
?"

"No, we came on our own hook, I told you, nazpaw?"

"Who's McKenzie?" the little man asked.

"McKenzie," Summers said, "is the nigger that sent you here, to cut the boat loose or fire it, one, while we was asleep."

"You're an all-knowin' son of a bitch. Why'd you ask?"

Summers got up, took a step forward, seized the little man by his long hair and pulled him up. The man fought like a cat. Summers held him, waiting, and then hit him with his right fist, so hard a man would think it broke his neck. The little man thumped full length on his back and lay still, the teeth in his sharp snoot showing like a dead squirrel's.

"Your friend didn't have no mother, I'm thinkin', to teach him else but cuss words."

The other man shrugged, appearing hardly to notice. Summers said, "This child can give you some of the same, Long Face, if it'll make you shine."

Long Face still smiled. "When a nigger's froze for a drink he's like to do anything."

"Like cuttin' a boat loose or settin' it afire?"

"Like raisin' a keg, or even a jug."

Jourdonnais fanned at the mosquitoes. "We can make them tell," he half-whispered. "So many ways to make the talk come, if a man know how. Fire, or water, or rope, or maybe the live snake."

Jourdonnais and Summers waited, watching the man's face. The smile was still on it. The little man closed his mouth. By and by he moved and got himself up to a sitting position again. The side of his mouth was swollen, and a little trickle of blood worked down from it.

"Ain't no call for it, Jourdonnais," Summers said.

"What?"

"We know, by God. This is Company doin's. They ain't wantin' us to horn in." Suddenly Boone thought of Cabanne down at the post at Council Bluffs and the trouble in his face and his careful words, "Take care, my friend, of Indians, and other things, too."

"You would let them go?" Jourdonnais asked.

"You're comin' close. Let 'em go, but without the horses they came on and without guns or knives or flint."

"Yes?" asked Jourdonnais, for Summers' tone showed he wasn't through.

"And with nary stitch of clothes. Rich doin's for the sting flies and such."

"Yes," said Jourdonnais with no question in his voice. "How far to Union?"

"Hundred miles and more."

"Far enough for beaucoup bellyful to the gnat."

Summers looked at the two men as he might have looked at dumb brutes. "They'll git ganted up some, too, carryin'
empty paunches, and like as not have to dodge some Injuns or git their h'ar raised."

"Good. Good. And nex' we make a call on Monsieur McKenzie."

Out of his broken mouth the little man spit, "You're some, you are, now. Goin' to fight Union, like a rabbit after a b'ar. We'll see your scalps, we will, hangin' in the wind."

"If you get there, little snake," Jourdonnais said softly.

The bigger man studied their faces, and there was only the leavings of a smile on his face now. "We just aimed to
raise a drink," he said.
 
 

When Boone thought back to that sneak-up on the camp he shook himself to set his senses right, remembering the heat that had come up in him when he thought one of the boatmen was stealing on Teal Eye. She was just a kitten, ten or twelve years at the outside, not truly old enough to interest a man that way. He pushed the thought of her away but still saw her, the face grave, the eyes big and noticing in a face too thin for an Indian, the front of her beginning to look like a woman sure enough when she didn't have her blanket folded across her. She put him in mind of some small, soft animal in a cage, watching, always watching, as if she had been taken out of a burrow or a woods into where everything was strange. She was more at home now than she had, been, though, and moved around the deck and sometimes came on shore while Jourdonnais watched the men out of his stern black eye. Often Boone felt her eyes on him and turned and looked at her, and sometimes there was a shadow of a smile on a mouth that was as straight and neat as a good seam, but not thin like a seam. There was some fullness to it that made a man wonder if she knew how to kiss. He had seen Jim Deakins watching her many a time, his blue eyes sharp and his mouth laughing and saying little things, but she hardly seemed to notice.

Now that the
Mandan
had got to the upcountry her eyes were always on the banks, as if she thought to see a known face. One hour after another she looked to right and left, searching the bald hills, until a man almost expected to see her pappy, the chief, come galloping down the slopes with his feathers flying. Or, seeing the eyes watching and the face still and waiting, Boone figured maybe there was a hunger in her that the eyes filled, a hunger for the big bare hills and the streams running through the cottonwood and, far off and fair, the blue of a mountain like something a body might see through closed lids when he first laid himself down at night. Even when the smoke from the prairie fires was rolling and the eye couldn't see to the tops of the ridges, she still looked. Once, late at night when the moon lay bright on the river, Boone had awakened and made out her head above the side of the keelboat, pointed out where the far flames licked as if the edge of the world was on fire.

Summers gestured, saying, "Lookee!"

"What?"

"On the top of the hill there. On the rimrock."

A wild creature stood there, gazing down at them from under an arch of horn that seemed too much to carry.

"Rocky Mountain sheep," said Summers. "Bighorn. What the French call a
grossecorne
. You'll see a heap of 'em farther up."

Boone and Summers stood on the passe avant. Jim was rowing with the crew, not rowing very hard because a fair wind was pushing them along.

"There's a galore of 'em beyond the Yellowstone," Summers went on. "What you ain't like to see, now, is a white buffter."

"White buffler?"

"It ain't a buffler, proper, nor a white antelope, neither, though you hear that name put to it and a sight of others. They keep to the high peaks, they do, the tiptop of the mountains, in the clouds and snow. This nigger seen one once -just a skin, though, not a live one. Not many's seen a live one. A man has to climb some for that. He does, now. Come a fix in the mountains, I do believe I'd set out for one."

The sheep turned and made off, walking with little, dainty steps. "He's got a weight of horn," Boone said.

"There's them as'll say he lights on 'em, jumpin' from the cliffs, but I got doubts. Don't stand to reason. Likely he chips his horns fightin'. Sheep meat is good doin's."

Summers made a fire in his pipe. The boat slid by a thicket in which a catbird was making a racket. It occurred to Boone that they didn't hear the whippoorwill any more at evening. A swan whiter than milk paddled ahead of the boat, straining to outdistance it, swimming with its front out and neck up as if it was proud of itself. It breasted to the bank as the
Mandan
came on, and in a sudden awkward hurry flopped ashore. After the boat had passed, it eased back into the water and got hold of its pride again. The river was low and lazy now, flowing shallow between gray rock ridges that were grained slantwise and gave way here and there to hills that might have been leveled off with a saw. Romaine kept sounding with his stick. At the foot of the slopes buffaloberry bushes shone like silver and juniper climbed in the rocks. Tongues of land ran out where the river turned, groved with cottonwood that grew from a tangle of undergrowth.