Treasure Mountain (1972) (19 page)

That night, a couple of hundred yards from town, we bedded down about a dozen feet back from the La Plata, unrolling our blankets on the green grass near some cottonwoods. We were cut off from sight of the town by a wall of cottonwood, aspen, and pine trees. We picketed our horses on the grass and settled down to sleep. Nell had gone to stay with the family who had been caring for her pa. He was feeling better now and figuring on a place of his own.

The four of us were asleep, eased to our comfort by the rustling leaves and the water running a few yards off. I don't know what it was made me wake up, but suddenlike in the middle of the night I was wide awake.

Our fire was down to red coals glowing, and beside it sat a man.

It took me a minute to adjust my mind to it, but sure enough, there he sat, cross-legged by the fire and still as death. My fingers took hold of the butt of my gun, but he seemed peaceful enough so I just lay and watched him for a moment.

It was an Indian, and he was old. His hair hung in two braids, and even at a distance I could see it was part gray. Indians have their ways and we have ours, but a guest at my fire is always welcome to coffee, so I threw back the covers, shoved my feet into the moccasins I keep handy for nightwork or for the woods, and went over to the fire.

He didn't look up or say anything. His hands were brown and old, with large veins, and his nails were cut flat across. He wore a knife and there was a Winchester alongside of him.

Poking some sticks into the coals, I edged the coffeepot a mite closer and got some biscuits we'd bought in the store a few hours earlier.

He had his own cup and I filled it, then filled mine. The wind juttered the fire a little and I added more fuel. The wind down that canyon could be right chill on occasion.

His eyes were old, but their gaze was sharp and level when he looked at me. "I am Tell Sackett," I said. "You are Powder-Face?"

"You look for your papa?"

The word sounded strange on his lips, and I said, "It has been twenty years. He is dead, I believe."

He tasted his coffee. "Good!" he said. "Good!"

"I want to know what happened to him, and to find where he lies, if that is possible."

"He was a good man--two times. I knew him two times. The first time we shot at him ourselves."

"Did you kill him?"

He looked up. "No! He was good man--good! The first time, long ago, I did not know him, or him me, We shot--we missed.

"I thought he dead. I waited long time. I went for his hair--he was gone.

"I went back--my horse was gone. Tied where my horse had been was a tomahawk and some red cloth. This is strange man--we shoot, we miss, he goes poof! Then my horse goes poof. But if he can take my horse, it is his. If I can get it back, it is mine.

"He takes it. The tomahawk is good, sharp edge. The cloth is good for squaw--maybe he needs horse.

"Seven suns. Day comes, the sun rises on my horse, tied near my head. How? I do not know. Why is horse quiet? I do not know. It is magic? Perhaps."

"My father brought him back?"

"It is so. Many suns, and one day when the people of our village are hungry, I see an elk. I stalk. I am lifting the bow and arrow ready to fly when from close under the bush where I am, another elk leaps up--all run. I miss.

"Suddenly there is a shot, the elk falls. I wait, nobody comes. I wait--nobody comes. I go to the elk. Then he stands up, this man who is your father. He lifts his hand to me, and then he turns his back and walks away. He has given us meat.

It is a good thing he has done, and my people are no longer hungry.

"At night I tell them of this man, and we wonder about him. Who has sent him?

What does he do here?

"His tracks are near our village. I think sometimes he watches us. We are not many braves, and there are too many young ones, too many women. I must hunt always, but the bow does not shoot far--hunting is hard.

"One morning when I leave my lodge there is a rifle there, lying upon a skin.

Beside it are powder and ball. Only he could have left it. Only he could come into our village and leave without being seen. But then we see him no more."

"No more?"

"Many moons, the snows come and they go--more than two times. Three? Four? We do not know. After a long time we are in village on back side of Beaver Mountain.

"In the night the dogs bark, we see nothing. In the morning we find a haunch of elk meat hanging from a tree. Our friend is back.

"We owe him much, for when the hunting was bad the rifle he left us kept our lodges with meat. This time we do not need the meat he has left us and he knows this. He has left it to tell us he is back.

"Often we see him then, but we do not like all we see, and he faces toward us one time and makes the signs not to come near, and the sign for bad heart."

We drank our coffee slowly. The old man was tired.

"Now we have young braves. They know of the white man who gave us meat. They are like small deer--very curious. They watch. They come back to village to tell what they have seen."

The firelight played upon the seamed brown face, and the old man lifted his cup in two hands and emptied it. Once more I filled the cup. This man had known my father. This man had watched him upon his last trail, had known how he thought, at least about some things. The white man of the mountains often fought the Indian, but there was understanding between them--rarely hatred. They fought as strong men fight, for the love of battle and because fighting is a part of the life they live.

The Indian lived a life that demanded courage, demanded strength, stamina, and the will to survive; and the white men who came first to the mountains had such qualities--or they would not have come in the first place, and they could not have lasted in the second.

Most mountain men were affiliated with one tribe or another, all had respect for Indians. Some found the only life they loved among the Indians. My father was a man of two worlds. Whether he walked among savages or among the civilized he was equally at home.

"I must know where my father died. I would like to know how he died, but to know where is enough. My mother grows old. She worries that the bones of her husband lie exposed to the wind and have been picked by coyotes. They must be buried, as is our custom."

He sat a long time. "I do not know where he died. I know he went away. He went to walk upon the mountains and he did not return. I can show you the trail he took."

"He went alone?"

"Alone--but others followed."

There was a knot lying near, and I added it to the fire, for the night was cold.

Wind stirred the leaves, ruffled the flames. I gathered sticks and broke them with my hands and built more warmth for the old man, then I filled his cup with coffee and sat beside the fire again, waiting for whatever else he would say.

"A trail lies there, high upon the mountain, some call it the Ute Trail, but the trail was old before the Utes came to these mountains. I do not know where the trail leads, nor does any man, but there are harsh, cold winds and sudden, terrible storms. There are days with blue skies and tufts of cloud--but these days are few among the high peaks."

"Do you know the trail?"

"It lies there." He pointed toward the mountains. "I know where it is, not where it leads. I am an old man. I have no strength to follow such a trail, and when I was a young man, I was afraid."

"If my father went there, then I must go."

"He died there."

"We shall see." Again I added a chunk of wood to the fire. "Be warm, Old One.

There is fuel. Now I shall sleep. In the morning I will take the way you show me."

"I will go with you."

"No. I shall go alone. Rest here, Old One. My cousins have given your people a place. Stay with them, guide them."

"I think soon the Indian will walk no more upon the land. When I look into the fire, I think this."

"Some will," I said, "some will not. Civilization is a trap for some men, a place of glory for others. The mountains change with years, so must the Indian change. The old way is finished, for my father as well as for you, for the man of the wilderness whether he be Indian or white.

"I think it will come again. All things change. But if the Indian would live he must go the white man's way. There are too many white men and they will not be denied."

Powder-Face shrugged. "I know," he said simply. "We killed them and killed them and killed them, and still they came. It was not the horse soldiers that whipped us, it was not the death of the buffalo, nor the white man's cows. It was the people. It was the families.

"The rest we might conquer, but the people kept coming and they built their lodges where no Indian could live. They brought children and women, they brought the knife that cuts the earth. They built their lodges of trees, of sod cut from the earth, of boards, of whatever they could find.

"We burned them out, we killed them, we drove off their horses, and we rode away. When we came back others were there as if grown from the ground--and others, and others, and others.

"They were too many for us. We killed them, but our young men died, too, and we had not enough young men to father our children, so we must stop fighting."

"Remember this, Old One. The white man respects success. For the poor, the weak, and the inefficient, he has pity or contempt. Whatever the color of your skin, whatever country you come from, he will respect you if you do well what it is you do."

"You may be right. I am an old man, and I am confused. The trail is no longer clear."

"You brought your people to my cousins. You work for them now, so you are our people as well. You came to them when they needed you, and you will always have a home where they are."

The flames burned low, flickered, and went out. Red coals remained. The chill wind stirred the leaves again. Powder-Face sat silently, and I went to my blankets.

Nativity Pettigrew had led us to believe he had come right down the mountain and the others after him, but that had not happened. Somebody--maybe several of them--had followed pa. Somebody had come back, discovered Pierre's body gone and no sign of pa, so they'd followed, found Pierre's grave, and knew pa was alive.

Pa might return to New Orleans and tell Philip what happened in the mountains.

Or he might come back and get more gold. It must have been obvious from the tracks that pa's horses were carrying heavy. What they carried had to be gold.

Pa knew this country, and he knew old Powder-Face. He knew he could stay with him until he was rested and strong again, and he could hide the gold close by and Powder-Face would not disturb it. So he had come west, and he had been followed.

Lying there looking up at the clouds, I considered. I'd take my appaloosa, I'd take that buckskin pack-horse, and enough grub for two weeks, and I'd plan to stay in the mountains until I found what I was hunting or ran out of grub.

It began to spatter rain so I tugged my tarp over my head and just let her spatter. It was a good sound, that rain. Tyrel would be coming along from New Mexico soon and he would be bringing ma. They would bring cattle and take up land at the foot of the mountains somewhere. We were mountain folk, and we cottoned to the high-up hills.

There'd be Tyrel and me, Flagan and Galloway, and maybe Orrin would hang out his shingle down in Animas City or even in Shalako, although there was mighty little for a lawyer to do there. But just give folks time. You can't get two people together without soon or late they're lawin' at each other.

Far up there on the cold, gray rocks of the peaks where the last streaks of snow were melting off, up there would be strong, fierce winds blowing, weeping over the high plateaus, trimming the spruce to one level, driving the freezing rain into every crevice in the rock.

How could I find anything up there? If pa had died, what would be left of him now? Some scattered bones, his boot heels, maybe, and part of his holster and belt, chewed by wolves or other varmints.

It would be a lonely place to die, but maybe such a place as he'd want, for he was no stay-a-bed man. He'd always been up and doing, and when it came to that, what better way to go than on the trail somewhere, packing a gun and riding the high country?

The spattering rain made me think of Powder-Face. I raised up my head to look, but the old one was gone, vanished into the night and the rain as if he had never been.

For a moment he held in my thoughts, and I wondered how many times he or his kind had sat staring into the flames and feeling the rain fall and the wind blow?

Man had enemies, that was in the nature of things, but when it comes right down to it his battle to live is with that world out there, the cold, the rain, the wind, the heat, the drought, and the sun-parched pools where water had been.

Hunger, thirst, and cold--man's first enemies, and no doubt his last.

Chapter
XXI

That appaloosa and me had reached a kind of understanding. On a chilly morning he liked to buck the frost out of his system, so whenever I put a foot in the stirrup around daybreak I knew he was going to unwind.