The Big Sky (45 page)

Peabody said, "Another day," again, as if maybe this day was the last one. The sky had cleared and over to the southeast the sun showed it was coming up. It would be a cold sun, far off and blinding-bright. A breeze ran along the snow and ducked into the hole and climbed out again, leaving the pinch of it behind.

Inside the lodge Jim was going on with his talk to Summers, to old Dick Summers who maybe might know what to do if he was around. For a flash Boone saw him, too, the keen face with the tracks of fun in it and the gray eyes glinting and the half-sad understanding. For a flash he saw him standing on the
Mandan's passe avant
above the Little Missouri, saw him pointing to a bighorn, saw him trying to talk, trying to say something, trying to come across the years with his voice. His words were a whisper lost in time, a murmuring lapped out by the water sliding along the keel Speak up, Dick. A man can't hear you, so much has come between. How's that? How's that? It's comin' now. Go onl Go on! "They ain't a buffalo proper, nor a white antelope
.. They keep to the high peaks, they do, the tiptop of the mountains, in the clouds and snow.... Come a fix in the mountains, I do believe I'd set out for one."

Beauchamp's head canted farther toward the shelter. "Die soon," he said.

Boone stepped to the bank and mounted it and stood in the breeze before he stooped to put his snowshoes on.
 

Out of his pinched mouth Peabody said, "You're a man, Caudill, by thunder! It's no use, though. You couldn't make
it to a fort, not with good snowshoes."

"Ain't headed for a fort."

"Where?"

Boone looked up toward the peaks, white-fired by the early sun. "Yonder, huntin'."

"Come back, man. You're out of your senses."

"My medicine's strong. It brung Summers back."

Peabody gave him a long look and then lowered his head. He moved the small hands lying in his lap and brought one of them up and let his eye travel over it. "I guess it doesn't matter. Zenon was the lucky one, lying out there already under the rocks and snow."

Beauchamp's eyes still bored at the shelter.

Of a sudden it came to Boone. Of a sudden he understood. He jerked himself straight. "Watch Beauchamp, the bastard! Keep your rifle handy. You ain't no match for him."

Peabody's face turned up, with trouble and a question in it. "Come back, Caudill. We can die warm, anyhow."

"Goddam you, Beauchamp! Keep to yourself or I'll gut you alive."

Peabody got up. "It's all right, Caudill. It's all right."

"Watch him close, Peabody."

"Why?"

"On account of Jim," Boone answered and saw the question fade from Peabody's face and a slow, unbelieving horror come into it. "Zenon ain't under the rocks and snow. Not any more. Ask Beauchamp."
 

When Boone was out a piece from camp, the sun lifted over a dip in the hills and threw its cold fire on the snow. Any way he looked, his eyes drew up and his eyeballs ached, seeing nothing but white and the shine so fierce on it that the tears came and drained through his nose and wet his upper lip, tasting salty to the tongue. He tilted his head and studied the steep lay of the mountains while the glare struck at him. Yonder, up a long gulch that led high between two peaks, maybe was a likely place. He pulled his gaze in and fixed it down in front of him where the shine was least, watching his clumsy snowshoes step and the snow pass slow under him while Peabody's last words kept running in his head. "Good luck, then! God be with you!"

The breeze wasn't more than a breath of air, but with the nip of dead of winter in it. Now and then it blew hard enough to carry a grain or so of snow; again it lay still, to wake up and lick around him as he passed. If God was with him he wished He'd tone things down. He wished He'd stop the breeze and warm the air and ease up on the shine and put meat where he could shoot it. If God was with him now, God must be almighty cold and emptypaunched. He put himself in mind of Jim, thinking about God. Let Jim figure and Peabody pray his head off; nothing would come of figuring and praying unless a man did for himself.

He watched the snowshoes shuffle ahead and bear on the snow and sink down a hand or two as he put his weight on them. They were poor doings, but they would get him there if they held out. They would get him there if he held out. He felt his heart tapping high in his chest and his breath blowing quick and shallow. A man long without meat got an idea his body wasn't his. It did things by itself that he could only watch, the poky foot coming out to set the shoe on the' snow, the hand curved around the rifle and the arm carrying it, and the wind wheezing in and out and the heart pounding in his ears. Only hunger was real, the deep hunger that gnawed at the belly and deviled the guts and haunted the mind. It was the only real thing, and by and by he came to take it as a regular part of him, as he would come to take an old ache in the joints.

As Jim said, after a while nothing hurt too bad. A body could stand it. He could sit and drink snow water and let things float crazy in his head while the strength slipped from him, not feeling like so much as raising a finger to scratch an itch. By and by he up and died, being too tired to live, as maybe Jim was dying now, with his breath weak in him and his cheeks sunk and his eyes big with starving.

It was queer, not thinking of the white buffalo before, only it wasn't a white buffalo exactly or a white deer but more like a rock goat. It had taken old Dick Summers to jar his mind -old Dick Summers yelling through the years, reminding him there was game high up that a hunter hardly ever saw from below, or hardly ever hunted, either, for the going was so rough.

Boone winked his sight clear. Yan way between the peaks and over the saddle, like as not a little valley hung. Like as not the white ones played there. He held up, waiting for wind, waiting for his heart to quit hammering at his ribs, while he saw Jim lying in the shelter and Peabody sitting bony-faced by the fire and Beauchamp staring with a crazy hunger. Sneaked out, Beauchamp did, and pawed the snow off and lifted the stones away and raised himself man meat. Must be he left it out afterward and a varmint got to it, so's he didn't get all the good out of Zenon, else he wouldn't be so hungry yet and the flesh melting off him and his eyes sharp as a weasel's. Peabody would have to watch. Beauchamp was two men now, himself and Zenon chewed to one, and Peabody less than half a man.

It was too cold to breathe, almost. The air caught at a man inside as if to freeze his pipes up, and his lungs. There wasn't any good in it; there wasn't any strength to it. The chest sucked it down and blew it out and had to suck quick for more, and the knee balked before a lift and trembled at the end of it. Boone didn't know him for himself. He was like another man, far off and dim to the senses. By and by he might wake up and find himself warm and Teal Eye lying by him and meat aplenty in the pot.

He watched his feet push out. Each step was something done. Every one was one behind him and one less lying ahead. He rested again, feeling the warmth die in his clothes and the cold come creeping in. A man not on the move would freeze stiff before he knew it.

He rested again when he topped the saddle, seeing ahead a valley cupped in the rocks. A lake lay in it, probably, but it was all snow now except for one patch of twisted trees, all snow walled in by steep faces of stone. His gaze traveled high up the side until rock and sky met and the dazzle brought the tears a-running. When his heart had quieted he set out again, pointing for the timber, while he made his eyes study the ledges and come down and explore the small basin. He could look just so long into the glitter and then his eyes blurred and he had to squeeze the water out with his lids.

The timber was no more than a spot of runty trees growing toward the head of the valley, probably where snow water fed into the lake. At the far edge of it, where the wind had scoured the snow thin, he halted, for ahead of him a set of tracks stepped along, a set of split-hoof tracks not neat and pointed like the big-horn's but splayed out at the front. He sent his eyes from one print to the next, seeing them veer off to the side and lose themselves among snow-covered rocks that had broken from the cliff. He studied the rocks and the sheer face of the cliff, taking a little piece at a time but seeing nothing anywhere except stone and snow and the blinding sky arched over.

He flexed his right hand to limber his finger. He made sure of his rifle. The he shuffled on, following the tracks, going slow and cautious as a cat on the hunt. It was movement that scared animals more than the thing itself. The tracks wound among the rocks. They led over a slanting shoulder butted up against the cliff. He saw where the snow had been pawed away and a bite of moss taken. And then he topped the shoulder and looked down, and it was like seeing two black wings up and nothing in between, two black wings thin and raised and barely moving, and then two spots as dark as coal, two spots like eyes under wings like horns. Lines swam and took shape around them, white as snow against the snow.

He heard his lips whispering. "Goddam it! Whoa, critter, whoa!" The rifle was too heavy for a man to lift. It came up hard and stubborn. He got the butt of it to his shoulder. The barrel raised and trembled so he couldn't hold an aim, close as the target was. He couldn't shoot offhand; he'd have to have a rest. He let the rifle down and lowered himself to one knee, going as slow as if he was sinking into the earth. Even so, the goat sensed danger. Its head lifted and its ears came up and its black eyes shone with looking. It was facing him, almost, but it didn't raise its gaze. It kept it lower, on the rim and cup of the valley, as if enemies always came from below.

Boone got to the other knee and started to flatten out, and the knee slipped and he half-fell forward. The black eyes lifted then and bored straight at him. He lay still as a dead man, his rifle out before him but not raised to shoot. The goat would run. It would jump in a wink. It would be gone while his hands fumbled at the rifle and his arms tried to raise it and his blind eye searched for sights. Whoa, critter, whoa!

The goat sat down on its tail like a dog, its long face dull and curious under the spiked horns, the hair hanging in a beard from its chin, hanging in an apron across its front. It wasn't a buffalo or a deer or a goat. It wasn't a creature at all. It was something grown out of the snow; it was something a crazy mind made up; it was an old spirit man from the top of the world and a bullet wouldn't hurt it and it would fade from sight directly like a puff of smoke.

The rifle sounded loud as any swivel. The crack of it went out and struck the high rock and rattled up the mountains until, far off, Boone heard the dying echo of it. The goat sat back farther on its tail, a look of slow surprise on its face. After a while it just lay down and kicked once and was still except for the long hair that the breeze played with.

Boone lay watching it, hearing his lips make words, seeing himself bringing meat to Jim and Jim tickled and his jaws working on it and strength going into him. After a while he got up and reloaded, still talking while his hands poured out powder and patched the ball and drove it home with the wiping stick.

As he started ahead he caught a flash of movement and, turning, saw another goat high on a ledge where nothing but a bird could get. He pulled out his wiping stick to use as a rest and sank in the snow and tried to get it through his sights. It moved as he aimed, going along a face of stone a man couldn't hang to, but at last he had it on the bead. It fell when he fired, coming down slow like a diver to water and making a splash in the snow.

He reloaded while his mouth kept saying, "By God! Two of 'em. By God!" The first goat was still alive, for all it lay so still. Its eye looked at him with a sad look. He put his rifle down and drew out his knife, and of a sudden the knife seemed to slash of itself and the throat lay open and the blood pumped out and his nose was in the musky hair and his mouth was drinking. When the flow was down to a bare trickle he quit sucking and sat back and licked his lips. He didn't feel sick, but all at once his stomach jumped and the blood gushed from his mouth, staining a circle in the snow. He waited until the gagging was over and then, slowly so as not to upset himself again, he began eating the snow.

A man could do so much and then no more. When all of him was spent he could only sit while the cold worked into him and sleepiness came on, and him too tired to move. With meat to shoot, his spirit lifted for a little time and strength came to him, and then the weakness took hold again and the dead tiredness. He thought about moving his hand or foot but he didn't move it. He only looked at it and thought maybe he would move it after a while.

It was as if Boone's mind watched while his body got up and his feet took him to the timber and his hands broke off branches and piled them up and started a fire with a piece of punk and powder sprinkled from his horn. He sat close to the fire, letting the heat get into him and the blood he had drunk mix with his own. A man could do so much and then no more except let weakness wash over him and sleep come on. So much and then no more, and the muscles melting away and the mind dreaming and trouble so far off it didn't matter.

He roused with a start, not knowing how long he had drowsed. The fire had burned down to ash. The sun had crossed its high divide and shone at him now from Oregon. He felt a pulse of life in him and a tired beginning of strength, felt the cold and the dying breath of the fire and hunger so sharp he couldn't hold his thought on Jim, lying sick and starved below. He got to his feet, moving easier and surer than before, and went to the nearer goat and cut out its tongue and brought it back to the fire and ate it raw, making himself take a long time at it. Each swallow was like a little swallow of power. When he had taken the last one, he lifted himself again and went out from the fire to heft the goats. One was more than a load for a man in his full strength; maybe he could tote the other. He dragged the bigger one to the timber and hollowed out the snow with his hands and drew the carcass into the hole and packed the snow back over. Afterward he piled dead branches on top. Varmints would get to the meat if there were varmints about, but they wouldn't be so quick to find it, buried as it was.