The Big Sky (23 page)

"Zeb," Summers said, "this here's secret as the grave. Wouldn't do for it to get out. It wouldn't now."

"My mouth don't run to them cayutes, drunk or sober."

"We got a little squaw, daughter of a Blackfoot chief, she says, that was stole by the Crows and made a getaway. A boat picked her up, nigh dead, and took her on to St. Louis last fall. We're takin' her back."

"Umm. Injuns don't set much store by squaws."

"Blackfeet like their young'ns more'n most."

"A squaw?"

"I know, but still?"

"Might be." Uncle Zeb was silent for what seemed a long time. "This nigger heerd something from the Rocks about that Crow party. Heavy Otter -ain't that the chief?"

"That's the name she gave. We're countin' on her a heap, Zeb."

"Umm."

"We make talk purty slick, what with her 1'arnin' a little white man's talk and me knowin' some Blackfoot. Me and her together, we don't need no interpreter."

"This nigger don't like it."

"Your stick wouldn't float that way? We'll cut you in, and handsome. Better'n bein' a fort hunter."

In the darkness Boone could see Uncle Zeb's head shake. "It ain't a go, Dick. It ain't now."

"I recollect when it would be."

It seemed to Boone that all of time was in Uncle Zeb's voice. "Not now, hoss. Not any more. This child ain't scared, like you know, but it ain't worth it. It's tolerable here, and whisky's plenty even if it costs a heap."

"What you hear about the Blackfeet?"

"The Rocks say they're away from the river, gone north and east to buffler. Me, now, I'd say go to Maria's River, or along there, and fort up, quicker'n scat."

"Too fur. Take a month, even with Jourdonnais blisterin' the crew. Buffler an' Blackfeet would be back afore we could set ourselves."

"Uh-huh. There's mostly some Injuns around Maria's River all the time. Anyways, get your fort up fast."

"That's how this child figgered. A little fort, quick, ready for 'em when they come back to the river."

"It's risky doin's, anyways you lay your sights."

"You figger the Company's like to take a hand in this game?"

"McKenzie's got plans for the Blackfeet. He's makin' medicine. He is, now. Come fall or winter, he'll p'int that way, or try to. But he'll let ye be, likely, thinkin' the Blackfeet and the British'll handle things. He's slick. He ain't wantin' a finger p'inted at him, now you're so fur up."

"He said he might send a boat up, to buck us."

"No sech. He ain't got the hands right now. If this nigger smells a stink afore you pass the Milk, he'll get word to you one way or t'other."

"Heap obliged, hoss."

Uncle Zeb got up unsteadily, his knees cracking as he straightened them out. "If it gits to talk, ask for Big Leg of the Piegans, and give a present, sayin' it's from me. We're brothers, he said onc't."

"That's some, now. Obliged again."

Uncle Zeb walked away, swaying some and not saying goodbye. The three others made off in the direction of the
Mandan
, waking the Indian dogs, which started barking all at once. They could hear loud voices and laughs and sometimes a whoop from inside the fort. "Liquorin' up," said Summers. The calf had stopped bawling.

Boone's head swam with the whisky. It was the first he had let himself drink much of in a long time. "I reckon old age just come on Uncle Zeb," he said. After a silence he added, "It's fair country yit." Summers was keeping them in the open, away from the river.

"It's fair, sure enough," Deakins agreed.

Summers said, "Watch out for them pesky prickly pear. They go right through a moccasin."
 
 

Already autumn was coming to the upper Missouri, the short northern autumn that was here and gone like a bird flying. Flecked in the green of the cottonwood trees, telltale leaves hung yellow, giving limply to the breeze. The bloodred berries of the
graisse de boeuf
sparkled along the silver limbs. It was often chill in the morning, warming as the sun got up and lay on the land in a golden glow, and cooling again as it finished its shortened arch and fell in flames among the hills.

The men were lean and hard, and brown as the Blackfeet who populated Jourdonnais' mind. Day on day he drove them, routing them out before the sun was up, keeping them at the line until the hills darkened and the light lay pale along the water like something remembered from the day. It was nearly always the line now, the line which was the last resort and main reliance, for the wind was seldom good. The men went half-naked along the soft shores, sinking to the knee, to the crotch, sometimes to the belly. They floundered in the mud, or waded out into the water or jumped from point to point among the drift, falling sometimes and coming up wet and sputtering but going on. Where the river permitted they splashed into it and pushed the
Mandan
with their hands; when they had to, they climbed along the bluffs like the
grossecorne
.

They were a crew now, such a crew as not even the Company could boast, wise in the ways of the Missouri and the keelboat, strong and long-enduring and not so timid as before, though the rattlesnake frightened them, and the great bear. Always with them he had Summers or Caudill or Deakins to kill the snake and shoot the bear, and to watch for the Pieds Noirs. Not an Indian had they seen all the way from Union to the Milk and beyond -not an Assiniboine, not a Blackfoot, not a man of any kind. It was as if the land was deserted, except for the elk and the deer and the buffalo and the bear. Everywhere one saw them, at every bend, on every island, on every bar -not the great herds of buffalo that made the earth tremble, but wanderers, three or four or a dozen, browsing on the bottom grass, drinking in the stream. The hunters killed enough meat for half a dozen crews, taking only the choice parts, spiking them to a great pair of elk antlers that had been placed in the prow. At night and in the early morning the wolves howled over what was left. Along the wild meadows bones were clustered, one skeleton and then another, where Indians and maybe the bold mountain men had butchered in their turn.
Mon Dieu
, what a place for game! The Kentucky hunters could not be restrained. They awakened eager every morning, to shoot more bear, more buffalo, more elk and deer and bighorn, coming in later with the red meat slung all around them and maybe with the head and claws of a bear or the rough roll of a rattlesnake with the head smashed flat.

The
Mandan
went on, the river lessening and the land rising into shapes that no one could believe, like castles and ruins that old folk remembered from France, like forts and battlements, like shapes a man would see only when he had the fever or a craziness in the head. Yellow, red, and white along the shores, and flashings like the mirrored sun and, above and beyond, the prairie, the so-big plains rolling on, yellow and dry now so that even the single wolf left a slow trail of dust. A raw, vast, lonesome land, too big, too empty. It made the mind small and the heart tight and the belly drawn, lying wild and lost under such a reach of sky as put a man in fear of heaven. It was the little things that made one at home in the world, that made him happy and forgetful; neighbors to hail and supper on a table and a good woman to love, and the tavern and fire and small talk, and walls and roofs to shut out the terrors of God, except for glimpse enough to keep the sinner Christian.

Often discouragement rode Jourdonnais, making his voice harsh and his way hard. It seemed to him then that not even the good God could help him. For success, all must turn right and in its time: the Indians must stay away until the fort was built; they must come when it was ready, and come with fine furs -beaver and otter and mink; he must do his business quickly and be gone, before ice closed the river. How could he know that the Blackfeet had furs? Maybe already they had been to Fort de Prairie and traded with the British. How long to build a fort? Two weeks? Three? More? How keep the Indians friendly? How keep them off the boat? How prevent them from overrunning the fort, if the fort really ever was built? How manage them drunk? How get word to them when all was ready? How make them hold back the shot or the arrow until they could hear about Teal Eye?

When his thoughts were dark he made himself think about Teal Eye, who was like a cricket now, happy and active, looking out, saying things as if to herself, with an expression on the little face of one coming home and seeing maybe the remembered gate, or the old fence, or the house in the trees after a long time away. The daughter of Heavy Otter coming to her father's lodge. The daughter being brought home by the white brother. Yes, if the nation wished, he, Jourdonnais, the white brother, would keep a post among them and send not one boat but two and maybe three every season, and perhaps build more posts so that the Blackfeet had not to travel far. Let them bring their beaver to him, and he would bring them strouding and paints and sky-blue beads and powder and ball and alcohol and all that made a nation happy and great.

Little Teal Eye, like a bird, like a fledgling hopping! It could be that this journey was not a single gamble for a few thousand dollars only, for one cargo of fine furs and then the end, but the beginning of a big trading house, like American or Hudson's Bay, dealing in fine furs and in course, in robes and buffalo tongues. Maybe he would wear a ruffled shirt and a fine suit, and people would stand back waiting on his words.
Peut-etre. Peut-etre.

The little squaw, with an eye like the bluewing teal! How the young Caudill had fought when Chouquette had tried to slip into the bushes after her! There was a flame in his eye and a look like thunder in his face, for all that he hardly spoke. Chouquette was a thick and powerful man, wise at fighting with fists and knees and thumbs and, need be, the knife, but he was no match against the other's fury. Even his knife failed him, kicked away as he got it out and tried to arise. And at the end, before those flames in the eye and the storm in the face, he had cried out for mercy. It was good, Jourdonnais thought, to have another to protect Teal Eye, but it puzzled him still that one should have fought for her who seldom looked at her and then only with an unmoving face. He shrugged inwardly, telling himself the way of Americans was often strange.

For all the want of Indians, he and Summers were more careful than before. Two men stood each watch now, and at night the
Mandan
tied up on the south shore, away from the side the Blackfeet were thought to roam in. The swivel always was trained on the bank. The crew slept on board, lying crowded fore and aft except for a little space around Teal Eye's lodge, where he or Summers lay.

The men looked like corpses, with their blankets drawn over their faces as a protection against the mosquitoes that made a cloud about every man, day and night, unless the wind blew or the cold came. The mosquitoes flushed out of the willows in the daytime, out of the sedgy grass that the feet of the boatmen disturbed, in streams that ran like wisps of smoke and grew into wheeling circles around each head. Let a man stop to light his pipe or load his rifle and before he was 'done they covered his hands and face. They plagued the men at the
cordelle
, who rubbed mud thick on themselves and learned to fight with one hand and pull with the other without losing more than a little of their pace. Only the grasshoppers, a crawling carpet in the faded grass above the bluffs, were so many, and grasshoppers were no bother except when a stiff wind caught them and drove them hard against the face. They only crawled or flew away clacking, showing red or yellow wings spotted with black.

This place, Summers?
Non
? It is clear and behind it the wood is plenty for the fort.
Non
? You think the hill too close, so Indians could fire inside the palisades. Time passes, Summers. South bank or north? No matter? This place? It is beautiful.
Non
? This one then?
Mon Dieu
, we do not have eternity! It take time to build a fort and do the trading. Another day, you think? Two? How many?
Enfant de garce!
Here? Here? Ah, now, at last!

They were eighteen days out from Fort Union, above a stream that Summers thought was Teapot Creek. The hunter's hand had gestured toward a little flatland that ran back treeless for two hundred yards and more. "Good as we'll do. She's clear enough at the sides, and the trees at the back ain't too close but still close enough to give us timber. No hills near enough to bother."
"Good! Good!" Jourdonnais blew the breath from his lungs, letting himself relax for a moment, but only for a moment. He looked at the sun. "We 'ave time for a start."

Summers nodded. "Time to fort up some." He went forward and adjusted the swivel.

They pulled to and put the crew ashore, distributing powder and ball first. Afterwards Summers studied the hills with the glass. "I'll get 'em going. Caudill! Deakins! Take a look yonder." To the crew he said, "We'll stack the rifles where they're handy." He set the boatmen to dragging in fallen logs and piling them close to shore so as to make a low three-sided enclosure which opened on the river. "Injuns 1'arned me this. It's a help, come a fight."

It was growing dark when they finished. Pambrun was warming food in the fire he had set above the cargo box. "Best put her acrost," said Summers, scanning the hills. "Don't hurt to play safe." He whistled for Caudill and Deakins, giving the high two-toned cry of the curlew. "Tomorrow we can get to work on a sure-enough fort."

"
Oui
." Jourdonnais' heart was lighter than it had been in days. He felt assurance rising in him, as if he had had a big drink of good brandy. In two weeks, of a certainty, they could build the fort and be ready. He let himself see the Indians streaming down from the hills, shaking the hands of the white men who had brought one of the nation home. He saw quick and peaceful trading, much fine furs, money. As the Mandan moved into the south bank he looked down at Teal Eye and smiled. She was like one of them now. If not quite easy in their company, she had a kind of shy and watching confidence, like a wild thing nearly tamed. She would speak for the white man, that was sure, for the trader who had brought her all the long miles, who had seen that no harm came to her. She was a good child and a pretty one, with her black hair and oval face and fine eyes. Almost, he hated to give her up, even for beaver.