The Yellowstone (23 page)

Chapter 8

Shiny moon

The Powder River camp was in an uproar. Some Lakotas were camped just upstream, and the Lakotas and Cheyennes were on a rampage. The Lakota leader Red Cloud had declared the Powder River road absolutely closed—no white people could come up the route John Bozeman was promoting to Montana Territory, none at all. Red Cloud even declared open season on parties on the old emigrant road, the Oregon Trail. Small trading posts, haying operations, telegraph stations were being burned out, and the people killed. The Indians liked to fight the bluecoats, but they would take on any whites available.

This was the reply of the Cheyennes, Lakotas, and Arapahoes to the treachery and slaughter at Sand Creek.

It was a time of endless war councils. The Cheyenne people held councils with each other, all the northern peoples with the Lakotas and Arapahoes. Mac sat in on these talks, as he was expected to. Though Smith and Thomas could come and go, Mac was an older man, respected, something of an adviser. He heard the leaders of the warrior societies speak their hostility, and individual warriors dedicate themselves to vengeance. He grew numb hearing how justified was their anger. He could not naysay them. The Sand Creek action was inexcusable.

Peddler turned out to have lots to contribute to the talks. The Cheyennes wanted to hear first hand what Peddler had seen at Sand Creek. He had been asleep in the lodge of Black Kettle, the chief. The firing started at first light, when the people were just arising. Black Kettle had hung an American flag in front of his lodge to show the band’s loyalty.

Peddler told the story simply, in a child-like Cheyenne vocabulary, and more in sorrow than in anger. The soldiers shot at women and children as much as at men from the start, he said. Later the soldiers told him the order had been, Take no prisoners. And some soldiers drove off the horse herd right away. There was no time to defend the village, really, only time for some people to scurry into the slight cover of the creek and run away, while others gave them a little protection with bows and arrows and guns.

Peddler himself was shot in the leg and could not flee. He lay in the middle of the village and watched the carnage. He estimated that seven or eight hundred slept in that village, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, a few visiting Lakotas, and a white trader and his family. Of those, Peddler said sadly, about half died. Then the soldiers burned the lodges and all the people’s belongings, and destroyed the horses that remained. For the rest of the day the soldiers, who were not soldiers at all but short-term volunteers from Denver City, prowled the grounds of the camp like scavengers, mutilating bodies, even cutting the breasts and genitals off women. But Peddler and two other whites escaped with their lives. At the time Peddler was sorry to live.

An investigation by the great white father condemned the leader of the soldiers, John Chivington, but the U. S. Army could not court-martial him because he had resigned his commission.

As Peddler sat down, the Cheyennes burst into a murmur of hot anger. They would be glad to punish Chivington themselves.

Chivington was said to be a king-sized preacher of fire and brimstone. Mac tried to imagine a man of God, even a warped one, who would create such an eruption of bloodlust. He couldn’t, but knew it was so.

So now it would be war. Blood and death, the fever-madness of the human species.

At least the tribes were saying in thunder that the Yellowstone country would still belong to the Indians, the great river and all the rivers that fed it, the land given them by the Laramie Treaty of 1851 for as long as the grass shall grow. That meant Mac’s life would stay the way he wanted it, the way he loved it, for yet a while.

Mac was forty-six years old. He might get to be an old man before things changed. His grandchildren might get to see the Yellowstone region as it was when he first saw it in ’40, the loveliest, most pristine land in the world, its high country magical with parks, geysers, hot springs, and stupendous waterfalls, its plains the best buffalo country in the world, and its lifeblood the river Mac loved.

Ninety-six are ye, lad, to be talking so memory-heavy? Mac had gotten into the habit of teasing himself in Skinhead’s voice. You don’t even got no grandkids yet.

If Zach succeeded with Felice, Mac might have some soon. He was wishing Zach luck, and thought the young giant would succeed when Owen left. Felice was a little distracted by Owen, and his flirting.

But love was not the order of the day. War was.

Late that afternoon Mac stood with Peddler as a half dozen young men came riding through camp, back from the war. They rode ceremonially, at a stately pace, their lances held forward, draped with scalps. Scalps not of a uniform black, but of the varied yellows, reds, duns, and mouse browns of the white race. The men stood and watched admiringly, and the women raised ululations of joy to the sacred sky that blessed those bloody deeds.

“Hatred,” murmured Peddler, “rampant upon a field of blood.”

Mac was back in the talks, wearied and bored. It was the third straight full day of talks he’d sat through. His body was stale with sitting.

So he was pleased to see Felice come in and sit among the women listeners. At first she’d wanted to hear a council, which she’d never done. She said she didn’t care if it droned on endlessly. She understood the Cheyennes let every man speak his piece, however long a piece it was. She wanted to hear a full-bore war council. But Felice was restless as a creek, and she lasted just an hour.

Now Mac watched her sit. Watching his daughter was a lot more fun than listening to the speech. She was a beautiful woman, no question, beautiful in the way her mother was—sizable, robust, and bristling with energy. She wasn’t willowy, wan, and delicate in the way of many white women, but vibrant, strong, primal.

Every night the taller young men stood outside the lodge that used to belong to Strikes Foot, where Mac and his women were living with Strikes Foot’s women, and waited in silence in their blankets for a word with her. Every night Felice appeared not to notice.

Of course, they showed no interest in Christine. Not because they found her palsy disgusting. Rather they thought it a sign she was mysterious and holy, a woman set apart by the gods. The band’s men of vision came to speak with her and listen carefully. Calling Eagle had now taken Christine as her own special responsibility.

Calling Eagle. Mac should have known how it would come out. Calling Eagle was coming to live at Yellowstone House. Strikes Foot’s other wives, Yellow Bird and Corn, were going to the lodges of their sisters to be wives again. But Calling Eagle was aged and went to the lodge of her daughter—her daughter truly enough in the Cheyenne way.

Mac regretted that having a would-be woman in his home still wasn’t comfortable for him.

Across the big council lodge Felice was staring at him. No doubt about it, staring. That would be rude, unless…

Mac nodded.

Felice got up and went out. Now he realized she had the long face that meant she was scared.

A moment later Mac followed.

Outside all she said was “Mother wants you.”

“He said,” Annemarie blubbered, “he said…”

She stopped and cried on her husband’s shoulder. He waited, patient on the outside, on the inside jittery.

“He said,” she went on, “Owen said, ‘I’m going to disappear soon, and take something of yours with me.’ With that goddamn wolf grin of his.”

Mac couldn’t remember the last time his first wife had cussed. He looked into her eyes and spoke hard. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She bawled.

After a moment she said, “I feel so awful.” And bawled harder.

“Tell me,” Mac insisted.

Between heaves of sobs, she said, “He’s ignoring me, completely ignoring me. He’s flirting with Lisette so much. He’s…”

Mac waited.

“Even Felice,” murmured Annemarie. “Even Felice.”

Mac grabbed Annemarie by the shoulders and shook her. Even shaking her, he loved her. That’s why he was scared. “Say it!” he barked.

Annemarie waited a little and composed herself. She waved Felice out of the lodge and waited until the footpads grew faint. Annemarie looked at her husband with what seemed dignity. “Owen Mackenzie is Felice’s father. And he’s laughing at all of us.”

Then Mac knew that he had known all along. He sounded out Owen’s threat in his head: “I’m going to disappear soon, and take something of yours with me.”

“Where’s Lisette?” he snapped at Annemarie.

“Out teaching Red Hand to fish,” she said evenly. “That’s what she said.”

Mac headed for the river. Jittery had changed to panicked.

Chapter 9

Shiny moon

Mac never felt more of an idiot.

In a rage he had started to ride along the banks. In five minutes he was caught up in the flotsam, cutbanks, and thickets of high willows that tangle any Western river. A man could clamber through and over it, but not a horse. So he decided to ride right out in the river. A mile wide and an inch deep, they said of the Powder—why not?

He surged upstream into the current, once getting in belly-deep to his mare, the water not dampening his rage a bit.

Then he began to ask himself questions. Did he really want to come on them noisily? Maybe Owen Mackenzie would try to kill him. Maybe that was what Owen wanted all along. Who could tell what was on a man’s mind after twenty years of waiting? Maybe he was jealous.

Or did Mac want to come on them quietly, covered by the swooshing sound of the river? And risk seeing her topped?

That was a picture he’d had in his mind plenty over the years, Lisette forked. Yes, that was what he wanted, to burn it into his mind. Then maybe he would do the killing.

He picketed the mare and headed upstream on foot. Every sound he made sounded to him like dynamite blasting.

He would give away six inches and more than fifty pounds and whale the damned Mackenzie in front of everyone, send him home to Fort Union on foot and broke, humiliated in the eyes of the Cheyenne nation. He saw himself smashing Mackenzie’s beak nose flat against his face, all squishy.

Suddenly Mac felt that he was trapped. He had climbed into a jam of deadfall, left by high water in a big turn. He was spending more time going up and down than forward. He could see nothing.

He was thrashing about pointlessly.

Panic flushed up his gullet. Could he get out of all this jumble?

Sure, he told himself. With patience. Back the way you got into it.

And then you can get the mare and go back to camp and get the Dolland telescope and search from the high ground. Sensibly. Patiently.

Lisette was casting off a spit of sand into a little hole. Left-handed, naturally. The fellow with her was Red Hand. After being married to one for two decades, Mac had theories about left-handers. He contended you could pick them out of a group picture, because they were weird.

He lowered the Dolland. She would be saying something like, “You reach-cast
before
it gets to the eddy.”

Sir George Gore, the touring Irish sportsman, had taught her this foolishness and given her that bamboo fly rod. Periodically over the last ten years she could be found in the smithy, using the vise to tie feathers on hooks.

Mac felt the harsh twist of anger ease in his belly, like a sigh.

“I thought you were gone again,” he said to her. Red Hand had agreed to take the mare back to camp. The two were walking through the giant sagebrush, holding hands like kids.

“Mmm,” she said helpfully.

“Were you tempted?”

She turned her head toward him with a little smile. “No.”

“You were tempted twice before.”

“That was more than ten years ago.”

“It seemed very like you.”

She shrugged. “My demons are quiet now.”

“I acted like a young idiot,” Mac moaned. “Crashing and thrashing about.”

“I like that.”

He looked sideways at her. She touched her head to the outside of his shoulder. He would never understand this tiny wife.

“I still feel like a pimple-faced idiot,” he said.

“Good.” Then she turned to him and slipped her arms around his back and tilted her head way back to be kissed. She got what she wanted.

She unbuttoned his shirt deliberately and took it off and spread it on the ground and pulled him down on it with her.

There in the shadow of the giant sagebrush they made love. It was warm and slow and deep and powerful, like equatorial tides.

Mac thought, this is what it feels like to be married. I like it.

They were still holding hands, and glowing, when they came into the circle of lodges.

They both saw Annemarie come running toward them through the litter of playing kids and yapping dogs. Then Annemarie stopped and walked, shambling, head down. And then broke into an awkward trot.

Mac and Lisette ran to her. Took her in their arms. She was blubbering again.

“He did it,” she wailed. “The bastard did it.”

Mac and Little One waited.

Annemarie looked at them and kissed each of them nervously on the cheek.

“Owen’s gone. He took Smith and Thomas with him.”

Hunk, the head of the fox society, explained simply and lightly that it was a war party like any other. Yellow Limb, a fox himself, had gotten it together. Blade—the Cheyennes’ name for Owen—and Smith and Thomas had asked to go.

No, of course no one had mentioned it to Mac.

Hunk didn’t need to explain that it was customary for young men to run off on their first war parties. Or to add that Smith and Thomas were nearly too old to be starting—they should have been initiated into a warrior society several years ago.

No, Hunk didn’t know where they were going. Yellow Limb would never divulge his plans. Probably to the emigrant road, a big place. White people aplenty would be there. Mac’s sons would fight, and if they were fortunate, get their first coups.

Hunk shrugged. Mac’s questions, and his anxiety, were out of place. He should have been silently proud.

Mac couldn’t tell his war comrade Hunk why he was afraid, couldn’t say a man with a claim on his daughter had taken his sons. So Mac got up and left. Besides, he was a fool for being jealous after twenty years. Annemarie’s fears were silly. Womanish.

But Mac might kill Owen Mackenzie. When he saw him. If he saw him.

My sons are gone, and there’s nothing I can do.

He felt as though the anxiety would split him like a dropped melon, its juices and seeds pathetic in the dust.

He heard the mournful tune come across the camp. He looked toward the lodge—Strikes Foot’s lodge, now his own. Christine was sitting cross-legged in front, by the tripod that now held his medicine bundle, playing her ocarina.

The melody was one of her own, and one of his favorites. First she played a phrase in the low register, breathy and plaintive, and then the same bit up high, piping shrilly. Like a moan, and then a wail.

He knew what her notes meant. Come home. I’ll help you.

Yes, his palsied daughter could help him, and would. She would sit by the evening fire, ask him to rub her reedlike limbs, and thank him over and over in a throaty voice, and by taking solace, give it.

Felice would help him, too—with her robust good humor she would tease him out of the doldrums. And his wives would help him. So would his mother-in-law Calling Eagle, from her store of ancient wisdom.

Mac crossed toward his tipi. He had a damnable collection of women in his life, intriguing and loving.