Beauty for Ashes (3 page)

“So he don't hate us while he kills us?” Beckwourth gave an ironic grin.

“No,” said Sam. “He doesn't hate us, period. Maybe he hates the Sioux and the Cheyennes—hostility there goes back generations. But he doesn't hate anybody else. We're just the others. To him we don't count.”

“All Indians be like zis,” put in Gideon.

Sam looked at his friends. Funny conversation this was, between a Pennsylvania backwoodsman like himself, an Irishman, a colored man, and a French-Canadian whose father was a Jew and mother an Indian.

Fitz pitched in. “Everybody's like this. Your father's people do it too. They're Jews and everyone else is a gentile.”

Gideon shrugged. “My mother's people, the Crees, ze same.”

“You white people are that way to us colored,” said Beckwourth.

Sam looked into his friend's face. Sometimes he couldn't tell Jim's moods.

Sam said, “It's crazy. Look here. I like Hannibal.” They'd all heard about the combination Delaware Indian and classical scholar more than once. “I like the Shawnees I've known, and despise General Harrison, who destroyed them for no reason. I love Meadowlark, a Crow, and like her brother. I didn't hate Two Stones, the Pawnee I killed, nor the ones I let go. But I'm damn mad at the Arickarees—they killed my friends.” He looked Beckwourth candidly in the face. “I would fight for you against any white man, or red man, or black man.” He turned his eyes to Gideon. “You too.”

Said Fitz, “Next you'll be wanting us to love prairie wolves.” He grinned and threw Coy his bone, too.

“Mine's different.”

“He probably thinks you're not bad either,
mi coyote,
” teased Fitz. “For a two-legged.”

“Sometimes we have to kill,” said Sam, “sometimes we choose to kill.” His head still hurt with the memory of Two Stones.

“Hmpf,” grunted Beckwourth loudly. “My pappy taught me something about that. Everything that lives, it kills and is killed.”

“I rode to St. Louis on the steamboat with a scientific Frenchman,” said Fitz. “He studies plants that grow in water. He had a microscope, showed me some Mississippi River water in it. Water's full of living creatures, little fellas, way too small to see with the naked eye. Every time you take a drink you kill a hundred or a thousand of them.”

“Every time I take a drink,” Sam pondered that.

“Every time,
mi coyote,
” repeated Fitz.

Sam broke the silence. “When I kill, I don't like me much.”

“Do it anyhow,” said Beckwourth.

“If you want to partner me,” said Gideon.

“But don't get to liking it,” added Fitz.

 

T
HIRD
W
ING DIDN'T
show up that afternoon, or the evening either. Sam looked for him the next day as the Crows formed a long line of horse-drawn travois and rode upriver. The young men policed the line and kept lookout, but Third Wing wasn't among them. The mountain men, riding behind, said they'd seen no sign of any straggler. It was the same story the next day, and the third day, when they reached the forks and made camp. Sam walked over and over from the beaver men's camp above the north fork and the tipis of Raven's people. No Third Wing.

For a week they rested and fed their horses and themselves. Every day they traded with the Indians. Each Pawnee who came to camp kept his eyes open, but none acted hostile. The trading went well. Ashley got fifteen horses and a lot of pemmican. Some of the men even got squaws for the night. But no sign of Third Wing, and Sam did not dare to ask Raven.

Still Raven managed, talking to Ashley, to roll a stone into the garden of Sam's hopes. The chief and two Big Bellies said the route up the south fork toward the mountains had plenty of feed for the horses and plenty of wood for fires. But the north fork, they claimed, did not.

Ashley sent Sam for Clyman and Fitzpatrick. None of them had been up the south fork. On his long walk Sam came down the north fork, never saw the south fork until he got right here.

The whites squatted and scratched rivers and mountains in the dirt until it looked like what they'd seen. The Pawnees added the south fork and showed how it ran straight at some other mountains to the south. The north fork looped around the end of the same range.

Coy whined to come forward and show the two-leggeds how to dig in the earth, but Sam staked him several steps away.

They looked hopefully at Raven and the Big Bellies. ‘On the north fork,' signed the Indians, ‘little for the horses to eat, little wood for the men to burn.'

‘Seemed like enough to me,' signed Sam.

‘No. Too many men, too many horses for winter on the north fork. Must use south fork.'

Then the Big Bellies showed them where to cross the mountains when the snow melted, a line from the south fork to the northwest.

“It's the long way around to the Siskadee,” Sam told Ashley.

The general looked at Clyman and Fitz.

“True enough,” said Clyman.

“But it's only way now,” said Fitz.

Sam made a face.

“What's wrong?” asked Ashley.

Sam just shook his head.

“Sam's counting on seeing Meadowlark this winter,” said Fitz in a kindly tone. To Ashley's questioning face he added, “Look at his
gage d'amour
.” Which meant the beautiful beaded pouch that hung inside his shirt. “Our coyote keeper has a Crow woman.”

Ashley gave the briefest glance at the pouch, normally a gift an Indian woman used to signal her affection. He said, “I'm sure these Indians are telling us the truth. It's the south fork for us.” He turned back to Raven and the Big Bellies. “Thank you.”

Sam hung his head while he made the signs.

Then he flashed his eyes into Raven's face. He signed, ‘Where's Third Wing?'

‘He has not been well,' Raven signed back. His smile was superior, his eyes amused. ‘Maybe he does not want to see you.'

 

S
AM KICKED A
snow-covered stone into the stream, the main river below the forks. Since it hurt, he kicked another one. “Very satisfying,” he told Coy, “but I'm damned if I know why.”

He looked through the graying evening at the western sky. It was the color of the mustard Katherine's mother made back home, and the lavender his mother grew to keep under your pillow for a calm mind and good sleep. Which seemed far away to Sam. His spirits felt the way the sky looked, battered and bruised.

He was well rid of Katherine—his brother Owen was welcome to her. And he didn't think he'd see his mother again. Pennsylvania was a long ways off, and he wanted to be in the mountains. Among the peaks and valleys that still lay to the west of these flat plains. He wished he could see the mountains from here.

Coy splashed into the river and lapped up the cold water. The sunset colors rippled with the colors of Sam's pain. He gazed at the western horizon. The lavender was a thin line of clouds hiding the last of the sun, not her mountains.

He seldom said the name Meadowlark, even in his thoughts. The picture of her, the touch of her, these came to his mind familiar as campfire smells, but he didn't let himself think her name.

“No Crow camp this winter,” he said to the pup bitterly. “Let her down again. ‘The white man can't be trusted,' her parents will tell her. She'll make a tipi for another man.”

That one hurt him sharply, right in the groin.

He stared at the horizon blankly. The sun was down, the light fading, like his chance with…her.

“Hnnn.”

He spun around. A voice. Whose? Where?

His hair prickled. If it wasn't a friendly voice, he would already be dead. Still…

“Hnnn.”

Then he saw. A man figure moved out of the grove of cottonwoods into the open. A scrawny, haggard Pawnee.

He gaped. He could hardly believe this was Third Wing.

S
AM BUILT THE
fire for the two of them on the riverbank, well away from camp. His companions might get grumpy about having both a coyote and Pawnee as dinner companions. He made the fire roar. Normally, he'd have built a smaller one, but he kept looking at Third Wing and wondering what had happened to…his friend?

Was “friend” the word for a man you'd only been around a few hours? But if he saved your life, what else could you call him?

Coy thought he was a friend too. Though the pup stayed clear of most people, he went to Third Wing right away and lay down against his foot like it was a corner of blanket, or a warm rock.

Third Wing flaunted Sam's hair at the world, two big hanks of white draping down his gleaming sheet of black onto his shoulders. That had been the price of Sam's life. Sam had never understood what Third Wing wanted with the hair. But there was a lot he didn't understand about Third Wing, or any Pawnee, or any Indian. Maybe any person.

Coy licked Third Wing's hand and accepted a few pats.

Mountain life was strange, and Third Wing was Sam's strangest experience. Last summer he'd been walking down the Platte alone, the river the Indians called Shell River. A hard time—Sam had gotten separated from his brigade, and very lost. Then Arapahos took his horse. He had only eleven rifle balls left, so couldn't get much food. And he guessed—only
guessed
—that the settlements were a seven-hundred-mile walk down river.

After maybe six weeks of walking, he was training Coy one afternoon, teaching him to jump up and take a stick from the hand. Some young men of the Loup Pawnees sneaked up on him, captured him, and took him back to camp.

The people were very curious about Coy and his tricks, so they wanted to keep the pup. The council of Big Bellies decided, though, that Sam would be given a choice for tomorrow—die quickly, or show brave as you die. Showing brave meant demonstrating how much pain you could stand without complaint. Never moan, never ask for water, never beg for death. The women did the torturing, because they gave a man a chance to be very, very brave.

Third Wing rescued him. Third Wing spoke English, so he promised to watch the captive overnight. At his tipi Third Wing fed Sam and offered him a deal—give me your beautiful white hair and I'll help you escape. Sam wondered if the Indian was out of his mind. But that didn't matter. Sam let the Pawnee cut his hair off right down to the nubs. He also held out for taking Coy with him. In the darkest hours, a shorn Sam followed Third Wing out of camp and to the river.

But he couldn't keep going. Without his rifle he would starve. One of his young captors had stolen it. So the next night Sam crept back into camp, killed a sentry—dammit, Two Stones, not just a sentry—and stole his rifle back.

Then he had to spend several days running and hiding from the angry Pawnees.

At that time Third Wing was a stocky man in his mid-twenties. Four months later he looked like a half-starved, half-frozen relic.

They sliced meat off a spitted roast and ate in silence. Third Wing attacked food the way Coy did, like this was the last bite he'd ever get. Sam waited for him to say something. Maybe the fellow had gone the rest of the way crazy.

After a while, observing Sam feeding Coy fatty or gristly pieces, Third Wing did the same. He tossed the scraps with an odd smile, like he savored the irony of a half-starved man feeding a well-fatted coyote.

He ate for a long time after Sam quit, which was a good sign, but still said nothing.

When Third Wing let Coy lick the grease off his fingers and wiped his hands thoroughly on his hide leggings, Sam said, “I'm glad to see you. I thank you again for saving my life.”

Third Wing flashed that same crazy grin at him. “Dumbest goddam thing I ever did.”

Sam swallowed hard. To cover his feelings, he reached for the small white clay pipe in his
gage d'amour,
filled it with tobacco, and used sticks to get an ember and drop it onto the tobacco. When Sam had the pipe going, he handed it to Third Wing. The Pawnee took it shakily, overeager.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my wife put my goddam moccasins outside the tipi.”

Sam supposed Third Wing used the English he heard, without a sense that some of it was profane. He raised an eyebrow quizzically at Third Wing.

The Pawnee gave him a friendly smile. “When your woman puts your moccasins outside, that means you're through. Take your weapons and go. Your kids aren't even yours anymore.” There was an edge of bitterness in Third Wing's voice.

He drew deep on the pipe and let the smoke wander upward from his lips. “She went to live with her sister's husband.” His eyes lit up wildly. “He likes having two women to jump on top of.”

“Where have you been living?”

Third Wing pretended to shrug lightly. “In a brush hut with the other young, single men.” The word
single
bristled with sarcasm.

“What have you been eating?”

Third Wing took a while to answer. “I've been feeling kind of off, haven't hunted much.”

Sam could see that. Coy whined like he also knew what it was like to be hungry.

“Why haven't you come around until now?”

“I was off on a vision quest.”

“Starving yourself?”

“Yes.”

Godawmighty, starving a starved man. Sam wanted to ask what Third Wing saw, but he didn't dare.

“Your wife, she leave you because of me?”

“The whole tribe thinks I'm strange about whites. I like white people, and I've been waiting for you.” He looked into the night sky. Sam wondered what he saw there, among the pulsing stars, where some people saw stories. Third Wing was giving him the willies.

“Maybe some day I'll tell you why. Why I like you.”

The guy was sweet. It was hard to be suspicious about him. “Tell me how you got such good English, too.”

“Yip-YIP!” cried Coy, as though seconding the motion.

Third Wing grunted, took his belt knife, and sliced at the roast again. “Maybe I better eat while I can.”

When he had devoured another half pound of meat, Third Wing went on, “I speak English good because traders raised me.”

So Sam poked at that conversationally. “What traders? How long were you among them?”

Third Wing just waited until he'd finished eating and then said, “The traders out of Fort Osage found me alone on the river trail, near where Atkinson is now, it wasn't then. I was maybe five years old. I didn't remember anything about my family or my tribe, but the words I spoke were Pawnee. One of the traders, Gannett, he raised me, maybe, ten years. Not that he was much of a father. I more or less hung around Fort Osage like a stray dog. Seems Gannett didn't think a whole lot of me, either. When I was about fifteen, I had some trouble getting a bridle on a horse, and Gannett said, ‘That boy's as much use as a third wing.' I figured a third wing would mess a bird up completely. Anyway, the name stuck.”

“Why aren't you working at one of the trading posts?”

“Oh, not long after I got my name, Gannett took an outfit out to trade with the Loup Pawnees. Raven was curious about me, a red-skinned boy. When Gannett told him I spoke Pawnee, Raven checked but couldn't find anyone who remembered me. Maybe I came from the other big Pawnee tribe. Anyhow, Raven got one of the families to trade a horse for me.” He laughed. “Hell, once I was worth a horse.”

Sam didn't know what to say to this outburst of information and feeling.

Third Wing said, “Let's make camp together here.”

Sam looked at the sky. Swept clear by the winds, no rain or snow tonight. “I'll get my blankets,” said Sam.

When he got back, Third Wing had cleared an area for sleeping—the pebbles and little sticks were tossed away. He was bringing willows, their finger-shaped yellow leaves still on, and fashioning a hut from them. Sam cut the willows while Third Wing made them into a house. Sam had the teasing thought.
Just like a good little woman.

He ended up lending most of his blankets to Third Wing. The Pawnee slept like a baby. Coy spooned up close to him on the belly side. Sam sat up most of the night, feeling bad about Third Wing, and wondering.

 

O
VER THE NEXT
few days Sam sometimes felt like he had two dogs tagging around with him, except that neither Coy nor Third Wing was a dog. Sam's job was to help Ashley with the trading. The general set his trade goods out—beads, vermilion, kettles, knives, cotton cloth, wool strouding, tobacco, and lots of other items, including the blankets they sat on. The Indians surveyed all, trying to keep their faces impassive and prevent their eyes from lighting up. At length they made offers.

The process was long, sometimes tedious and sometimes fun. The Pawnees treated the trading as a form of play. Back-and-forth banter wasn't easy in signs.

“Why don't you let me do the translating?” asked Third Wing. He was lounging on the edge of a trade blanket in the noonday sun, which was weak, this near the solstice.

Sam looked at Ashley. “Yes,” said the general to Sam, “but you stay and help too.”

“Goddam,” said Third Wing, “my own people don't trust me, and neither do you whites.” But he chuckled when he said it.

Always the disciplinarian, Ashley frowned at the “goddam,” and the trading got started again. It went a lot faster with Third Wing making English out of Pawnee and then telling the people what Sam's answer was. Sam was sure Third Wing spiced the answers up with humor, and sometimes a mocking edge. Now and then the women giggled like the banter was bawdy.

At first they got a lot of buffalo robes, which would help the men stay warm at night. Then came jerked meat, which was welcome, because the winter was looking longer and hungrier to everyone. Trading for horseflesh, though, was slow and difficult. Only one animal the first day, three the second, two the third. Ashley wanted a pack horse for every man, twenty-five altogether.

 

O
N THE SECOND
night Jim Beckwourth and Gideon made a change in everyone's living arrangements. They dropped their bedrolls on the far side of Sam and Third Wing's fire. “We want to be over here,” said the French-Canadian.

“Where there's some skin that ain't white,” added Jim. He threw a shiny, big-toothed smile at Third Wing.

“I'm kinda mixed up between white and red,” said Third Wing.

“Me too,” said Gideon. “Born that way.”

“I figure that makes us blood brothers,” said Jim. They all chortled at that.

Jim told his story about what a gentleman his father, Sir Jennings Beckwourth, had been, a kind of aristocrat to hear Jim tell it. He didn't know how Sir Jennings came to be with his mother, a slave, “But I can guess.” Sir Jennings even brought the family to St. Louis to get away from color prejudice and give the half-and-half children a decent chance in life.

“How'd that work?”

“Not a bit.”

“May be better in the mountains,” put in Sam.

“He's an optimist,” said Gideon with a smile.

“I think white people is white people wherever you go,” Jim said.

Third Wing hopped back into the conversation. “What do you mean,” he asked Gideon, “born that way?”

“My father was a French Jew, my mother a Cree,” said Gideon.

“You aren't much dark,” said Third Wing.

“One of my sisters be light as cream,” said Jim, who was dark. One of the odd things about Jim, Sam had noticed, was that he could talk good English to the general, better English than Sam's, and rough English to his fellow trappers. He also noticed that Jim wore a mustard seed in a drop of glass around his neck, an old way of warding off illness. Sam approved. Black folks, Indians, and country whites, he thought, knew some things fancy white people didn't.

“Here's what my father told me,” said Jim, “and this child thinks it speaks to red as well as black. My father pointed at the piano where we gathered round to sing church songs, you know, hymns, and my father he says, ‘There are twelve tones on the piano. Some of them are white, and some of them are black. Each one strikes a pure and beautiful tone, and music is made equally of both.'”

Third Wing cackled like that was one truly funny-peculiar story.

Gideon said, “Except people don't see it that way, do they?”

 

T
WO MORE DAYS
work and they had nine horses. It was slow. Fortunately, the winter weather was fine, the hunting was good, and the men were happy here.

Third Wing asked for a robe from Ashley for all the translating he was doing. He got a robe and a blanket.

Sam wanted to sit around with Gideon and Jim and Fitz and Clyman and tell stories. He wanted to hunt. Mostly he wanted this boring work to be over. As long as they were trading, though, Ashley would pack up and ride the south fork toward that big range of mountains. Then they would be moving away from the camp of the girl whose name he wouldn't speak, even to himself.

That night across the fire—still plenty of buffalo meat to eat and all four friends were doing their best on it—Third Wing asked Sam, “Why do you act so glum?”

Sam didn't answer.

“It's that Crow woman,” Jim said. “Look at him fingering that
gage d'amour,
don't even know he's doing it.”

Third Wing laughed.

“If you don't tell him,” said Gideon, “I will.”

So Sam did, told Third Wing how he got to know her when the brigade lived at the Crow village led by Rides Twice last winter, how enchanting she was, how beautifully she moved.

“Her name, it's Meadowlark,” put in Gideon.

“Yeah. She's a virgin,” Sam went on, “because she wants to lead that ceremony reserved for virgins.”

“You hope she hasn't led it yet,” said Jim with a chuckle.

“I didn't know where I stood with her until she gave me this
gage d'amour
. Then I promised to come back last summer.”