The Big Sky (13 page)

Jourdonnais was singing now, singing alone while the crew waited.

The voices of the oarsmen blended with his.

Singing this way, rowing to the time, Boone almost forgot about himself, except when he pulled too hard and felt a quick little stab in his pants. When that happened, he remembered the smarting and the wet spot that touched his leg when he leaned back at the end of his stroke, and a cloud came into his mind. He wished he could take his jeans down and have a look, away from everybody. A man didn't have a chance to take stock of himself, working all day with the boat. And come night, he couldn't see. He had a pretty good notion what it was all right. He hadn't lived to be growing on eighteen without finding out a few things. It wasn't anything, or not anything much, and he wouldn't pay it any mind except that it worsened day by day and kept his thoughts down in his pants. Maybe he would ask Jim about it, or maybe Summers, just to ease himself. They were older; likely they could put a certain name to it and tell what to do. There were some things, though, that rightly were none of other people's knowing, like the scars he carried from the whip and finally let Jim see, he asked so much. It wasn't he was ashamed of it. A sight of men must have miseries like it, maybe some of the crew; maybe that was what they said their French jokes about at night, making funny faces to go along with their talk. But he hated to seem like a green 'un; and, more, he hated people to be sizing him up and maybe laughing, knowing there was something wrong. Already Summers looked at him sometimes, and Jim, too, and Jim asked questions when he walked stooped to favor himself as he had to when he first got up, now that it had grown so bad.

The Creoles' song floated out on the water, out to the shore and maybe farther, out to where maybe buffalo heard it, or elk or deer, standing quiet and out of sight, wondering, or maybe to where an Indian heard it and hid himself by the bank and watched while the boat pulled by. They were getting close to real game country, Summers had said. So far, the hunter had shot three deer and some turkeys and one evening a whole passel of pigeons that they had all had to help Pambrun ready for the pot. "Deer run sceerce from here on," Summers had said as they passed the Nadowa. "The brush thins out, that's why. But well find elk up a piece and then buffler, a galore of fat cow, more'n you could ever count."

The sun was farther down than Boone had thought, halfway from overhead already and aiming around to the west. It slanted at him, warming his neck and the peak of his right shoulder, darkening hands already as dark as a nigger's.

Thunder rumbled up the river and rolled down on them, and some of the crew looked over their shoulders to the dark cloud that was rearing in the sky. While they looked the wind changed, veering round to the side and then clear around. The big sail snapped to it, and the keelboat sat back, giving to the violent gust. The Creoles looked up, their eyes uneasy, while their arms weakened at the oars.

"
Halez fort! Halez fort!
" Jourdonnais was shouting, and they steadied to his order, looking toward him out of wide eyes while they grunted at their work.

The bank was slipping ahead. Boone could mark it, sighting past the corner of the cargo box. Jourdonnais had the sail hauled down, but still they lost ground, inch by inch, as the wind strengthened.

Summers stepped over Painter and peered up river, studying the cloud. He turned around, toward Jourdonnais, and gestured toward the bank. The
Mandan
angled for the shore and the Frenchmen began to sing again, but softly, relieved that the boat had quit her heeling, happy to be through with work.

When they got to the bank, though, Jourdonnais ordered them out with the cordelle, and they looked at him, disappointed and reproachful, like a dog scolded home, and went over the side with the line while the wind tugged at their clothes.

The dark cloud hung like a blanket in the sky. A bolt forked down from it, and, after a little, thunder rattled in the valley. The trees bowed before the wind, thrashing branches knobbed with bud.

The crew went upstream with the line, and came to the end of it and pulled. It was like pulling a balky horse. The
Mandan
settled back and then lunged to their heave and settled back again. After while the towers came to a thick patch of woods growing down to the water, and Jourdonnais motioned them in, moving his arm with a jerk like a man disgusted.

Jourdonnais and Romaine were snugging her in when the crew got back, and Pambrun was readying a fire. A few drops of rain fell, blown to spray by the wind. A rainbow curved from the edge of the cloud, which was moving east as if it would miss them, but the wind kept racing down the valley.

Boone walked out from the water's edge, past Pambrun and his kettles, and pushed through the willows and came into larger growth -cottonwood and cedars, mostly, and here and there a small oak or ash. It was easier walking here than down river where the rushes that they called scrub grass grew so tall and thick a man could hardly pass. Through the trees he could see the greening hills that came down and leveled off for the river.

Boone looked around and then opened his jeans and let them drop. Goddam that woman at St. Louis! He saw her again, and felt her and smelt her, an old woman with a whiny voice who complained that he was rough. Rough! If he could get hold of her now she'd know what rough was.

"How."

It was Summers, the hunter, walking quiet as a cat. Jim lagged along behind him. Their eyes looked at him and flicked away. He buttoned his pants. The hunter's gaze was poking into the woods and scanning the hills. He had his rifle in his hand.

"It beats all," he said, while Jim sat down on a fallen log, "how game pulls back one year after another." He sat down alongside Jim and motioned Boone to a seat. There was a silence, as if no one knew what to say, and then Summers hitched around and looked straight at Boone while the beginning of a smile worked at the corners of his mouth. "It's the clap you've catched, I'm thinking."

He waited, his gaze still on Boone and the little smile still drawing at his lips.

Jim leaned over, to see past Summers. "Nee'n to think you're the only man ever catched it, Boone."

"I reckon it's a man's own business what he's got."

Jim said, "Don't get on the peck, Boone. We'll leave it your business if you say so."

The hunter looked at the ground and then up at the hills. His voice was old with things remembered. "Fifteen year, anyhow, since I put out for Platte first. This child was no older'n you be, and a greenhorn like you, too. We drank some, we did, the week afore we put out. I be dogged, I had a head! Come time to go I didn't know whether my rifle had hindsights or not. I was that close to the horrors I like to gave up the trip. Missed the boat, I did, and had to catch 'er at St. Charles." He leaned his rifle on the log and took the knife from his belt and began shaving a twig with it, as if it were important to pare off a shaving no thicker than a leaf. A few drops of rain sifted through on them. Summers scanned the sky. "Rain'll blow over. We won't move ag'in this day, though, with that wind."

"How fur'd you go?" Jim asked.

"To Platte and up it, tradin' with the Wolfs. This nigger was learnin' to clerk. That's a smart way to get dollars in your possibles, if a man can hold hisself to it. I didn't shine, clerkin', makin' figures and givin' out beads and vermilion and powder and takin' in plews and robes and packin' 'em while all the time a man could be outside, free as air, trappin' beaver and eatin' fleece fat and makin' camp when you wanted to and goin' on when you were a mind to, with none to hinder."

"No," Boone said.

The hunter smiled. His gray eyes were far away, seeing the Wolf Indians, Boone reckoned, and the trading, and then the beaver country and the buffalo, and himself, a greenhorn then like Boone, finding what it was like to be on his own, out where a man had elbow room.

"It was the first time," Summers said as if to himself, "that this child ever had a runnin' anywhere save his nose."

Jim asked, "What you mean?"

"A purty little whore at St. Louis, at a fofaraw house called a place of entertainment, she give it to me, a regular case."

Boone didn't say anything.

"Well, now, I figgered I was gone beaver, knowin' no better. I did, sure enough. I looked at it and cussed that little whore, wonderin' if I would end up no man at all and maybe broke down in the back to boot."

"How long before you got all right?" Boone asked.

"A man gets over it, like a cold. It ain't much, even if it drags on, some."

"I kin say amen to that," Jim put in.

"It's natural, like ager. This nigger's had it four or five times since, and like as not will have it again. Can't miss it and still shine as a man."

Summers went silent, whittling on his stick. His eyes would lift from the stick and look around and come to Jim and Boone and go to the stick again.

"A nigger wench p'izened me," Jim said, "but I don't recollect I worried my mind with it. I thought I was pretty slick, catchin' it so young. I made some brags about it."

"I mind the Rees afore their lodges burned, in eighteen twenty-three or four that was," Summers said after a while. "They're some punkins, them Ree squaws, best outside of a Taos woman, I'm thinkin'. Light-colored and tall and longlegged and purty as a young filly, and nigh every one of 'em willin', for beads and vermilion or a lookin' glass not as big as your hand. A man got calluses, handing the price to the bucks the squaws belonged to. Leastwise, I did them days. I could shine then. And nigh every squaw with the clap and every man catchin' it, and not payin' it no more mind than a sniffle."

Boone asked, "Sure enough?"

"It didn't amount to nothin', not if you didn't have whisky and salt. Not up there. Ain't anything corrupts on the upper river."

"They just let 'er go?"

"Mostly. Tied a piece of beaver War on it and let her go. Some with bad cases, like maybe you'd catch from a white woman, they dug niggerhead roots and made tea. It lets up after a while, regardless."

The hunter straightened himself, as if the subject was closed. "Wisht we could raise some meat."

"Did the tea do good, for bad cases?"

"Maybe. Some said it did, but a man can't tell. When I first catched it, there on the Platte, the bourgeois had this child thinking it was mighty big medicine to bed with a squaw, like gettin' shet of a wart by givin' it to someone else. It ain't so, though."

"Sure enough?"

"Oh, it don't hurt any. I give it a good trial, nigh every night."

Summers flicked his nubbin of stick aside and put his knife back in his belt. His hand reached for his rifle. "I'll put some beaver out, for them as needs it," he said. "There's an old plew aboard. Beaver's mighty fine medicine, whatever's wrong. And maybe the niggerheads are coming up, and a man could find a root."

The hunter arose, as if to leave. Boone got up, too, saying,

"I ain't told nobody."

"We ain't heerd nothin' to tell, have we, Deakins?"

Jim said, "Nary word. On'y, Boone, it don't do any good to shy away. A man keeps hisself shut up, and by and by a p'izen gets into his head, like. I figger the mind needs air or she goes sour on you, and gits ideas that ain't natural."

"I reckon my mind's all right."

Summers said, "Rowin' hurt ye, boy, or strainin' on the line?"

"A mite."

"Make water all right?"

"Stings."

"It's clumb some, I'm thinking." Summers was silent for a minute. "Wrastlin' a boat's poor doin's, anyways, for an American. He don't shine there."

"We done our part, didn't we?"
 

"Sure. This child ain't belittlin'. Only we need more hunters, and it'll do ye good."

"You mean we can hunt?"

"You'll have to row and pole and pull some, too, short as we are, but the both of you can help me. One hunter ain't enough. Zephyr was going to hunt, too, only he went under. I'll take one of you out, then t'other, till ye 1'arn."

"Sure enough?" asked Boone. Jim's blue eyes were twinkling.

"It's the French ought to handle the boat. They're right for it, long as we feed 'em and watch 'em and keep the brown skin away. Me and Jourdonnais didn't figger on you two as boatmen so much. We took you on to help us in a fix. Come a fix, the Frenchies shout for God. Most of 'em, that is. I've knowed some, like Romaine, that don't scare much, and some, like that Jourdonnais, that don't scare any.

Canadians are worst that way."

Boone said, "I can shoot pretty good."

Summers had his rifle in the crook of his arm. "Time I moved along. This child's froze for meat. Even poor bull is rich doin's besides beans."

He started off. "I'll get the h'ar out." Farther on he called over his shoulder, "Cryin' over spilt milk just makes the nose run." Boone thought he heard him chuckling.

The storm cloud was a ridge on the far horizon, but the wind continued, hard and steady. The sun was down almost to the hills.

"It'll be pie to hunt," Jim said. His hand was on Boone's arm. Boone watched Summers move away, watched him moving, quiet and quick and alert, like a man who knew what he was about. Already the trouble in Boone's breeches seemed gone, or anyhow just about.
 
 

The Missouri was boiling. It overran its bed, clucking among the willow and the cottonwood. It gouged at the bluffs, undercutting the shore. Great sections of bank had slid into it or toppled over, making slow splashes which the current caught up and carried on and lost in its own hurry. Trees came down when the banks gave, falling slow at first and then faster, to the sound of torn air, and lying out in the water, anchored to the broken shore, making dams against which the drift piled. The water moved up against the dams, climbing as it felt for weaknesses, and turned and raced around, breaking white as it found its course again. Out in the channel the current rose, like the back of a snake.