Far as the Eye Can See (25 page)

Finally Brisbin said, “I wonder what the army’s coming to.”

“I ain’t in the army no more,” I said.

“You keep two women in Bozeman,” he said. “You collected multiple enlisted bonuses, and skedaddled as soon as the opportunity presented itself.” I started to take him up on that last, but he said, “I know. You fought at Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. You got trapped in it before you could run, am I right?”

I said nothing.

“And now you’ve sold your services to us.”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “I ain’t been paid no bonus and I ain’t enlisted.”

“It’s a good thing,” Brisbin said. “You’d skedaddle on us too.”

“Bonus or not,” I said. “I didn’t come along on this here expedition to fight nobody.”

Garrison laughed. “Yes,” he said. “It’s a different army.”

“You want to know what I seen up ahead?” I asked.

He looked hard at me.

“What’d you see?” Garrison wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I said, still staring at Brisbin. “Not a dad-burned thing all the way to the Musselshell.”

Brisbin half smiled, but he didn’t say nothing to me. He sent Garrison on back to let General Gibbon know we didn’t find no hostiles yet.

Chapter 16

It was one hell of a campaign. We roamed all over the Yellowstone valley and down that river and the two Bighorns and in and out of small forests. We climbed hills and rode into snow-filled valleys beginning to turn green with heavy spring rain. By the time the weather commenced to get warmer, and the rain let up a bit, I had all my scouts camped together west of the Black Hills near the Powder River and I was really starting to worry about getting back in time to go to Oregon with Eveline. It didn’t seem like we was nowhere near finished what we come out to do, and it was already getting on into March.

General Gibbon and his infantry was somewhere back west of us, on the other side of the Yellowstone, and Colonel Brisbin was camped out on the Tongue River. So far we’d chased a few straggling Indians off their campground—some Piegans made a little noise but there wasn’t no shooting. We run into a “tribe” of half-breeds, mostly hunters with squaws traveling with them and plenty of whiskey, but they was not hostile and we even spent one day having horse races and cooking enough elk and venison to feed just about everybody.

I lost my travois betting in one of the horse races, so I was laying on a blanket under the spring sun, a little drunk from the whiskey, letting all the meat and corn bread I eat settle in my stomach, when a courier come up with the news that Brisbin wanted to see me. It was a long ride to where he was camped, and I said so. But the next day I rode on back to see what he wanted. He told me things was going to heat up pretty soon around there—that Reno and Custer was coming and we was going to round up all the Indians we could find.

“Well, ain’t that what we been trying to do?” I said.

“We’re going to turn south, to the Bighorn valley, and meet Custer and Reno there. General Gibbon wants to know what’s between us and the other two.”

Brisbin wanted me and my scouts to ride ahead in a kind of scattergun pattern, looking for signs of Indians. If we seen any kind of encampment, we was to move in close and get as good a look as we could and then double back and let Brisbin know what there was. He wanted us to count horses and tepees.

I spent the rest of that day riding slow along the trail back to my men. Near dark, I decided to set up camp and wait until morning to report back. I was regretting the loss of my travois. All I had now was a small army tent I got from Brisbin’s supply wagon. While I was looking for a place to camp, I killed a couple of rabbits and tied them to my saddle for dinner.

I found a place near a pretty swift stream and started to get things set up. I was putting up the blasted tent poles when it started to rain. It was steady, cold, needle kind of prickly rain. By the time I had everything set up, I was soaking wet. The buffalo chips I needed for the fire was wet, too, so I cut some brambles and branches from the dogberry and sagebrush near the river and brought them inside until they could dry out a little. In the meantime, I huddled in that damn tent sipping whiskey and shivering to beat all. I got so tired for the shivering, I lay down and before long fell asleep. I guess I kept my own self warm from being out of the rain and cold air. I never did eat nothing or build a fire. I dreamed I was running down a mountainside, racing a waterfall or some such, and then I heard something. When I opened my eyes, I realized it was the yipping of Indians in the distance. I opened the flap of the tent and looked out. The sun was just under a dark shelf of clouds, shining bright, and I could see my breath again. It got colder overnight. The rain had stopped. I heard the yipping again, so I got my carbine and my pistol and went out low to the ground, scurrying up to Cricket and the packhorse. They was looking off nervously to the east, but no one tampered with their ropes. I started walking toward the sound, cutting through sagebrush, down toward the river. Then I seen what it was.

The sun was bright behind me, so I could not be seen, and in front of me was a pack of Sioux braves, maybe six or seven of them, prancing on horseback around a huge animal of some kind. They was circling around it, blocking my sight, and yip-yipping like crazy. Every now and then one of them would fire a arrow into it. I crept a little closer, my carbine loaded and ready, and then I realized it wasn’t no animal at all. It was Big Tree. He had four or five arrows sticking out of him and he was down on all fours. They kept shooting more wood into him. He refused to go all the way down. He got to his feet at one point, staggered there, blood all over him, and then I seen his face. I think he looked right at me.

He tried to fire his carbine at one of the braves, but the shot only went off high above everybody. He stood tall for a minute, seemed to draw in air to scream, then he fell to his knees again and dropped the rifle. He still held a sheath knife, and I seen him take a pistol out of his belt. Several warriors was dead on the ground around him. But he was done for. I watched him struggle and spit, and with every short, icy breath I took, I known there wasn’t nothing I could do for him. Even if I started shooting and got all of them, he was already dead. I don’t know what it was in him that kept fighting. I hated myself because I couldn’t save him. Hell, I hated the whole damn world and everybody in it.

Finally Big Tree raised up a little bit, then crashed down like a great oak. The Sioux jumped from their ponies and stood over him, some of them still putting arrows into him. Then one of them got down and scalped him. It was White Dog. I recognized him by his red scarf and scowling face. I remembered that day Morning Breeze and me crouched in the rain and watched Big Tree riding into White Dog’s band with my Evans repeater. Now he held Big Tree’s scalp up like he’d triumphed over something grand, something monstrous. He yipped for all of them. It was the third time I’d seen him, and I known as I watched him wave Big Tree’s scalp over his head and then climb back up on his horse that I was going to by God see him one more time in this life. He rode off with the others howling like a wild banshee. He raised Big Tree’s Spencer high in the air. I watched him disappear to the east, still yipping and carrying on, all the others howling after him.

I waited until I was sure they was gone, and then I looked around for Morning Breeze. I think I was fairly desperate to find her, but she wasn’t among all the bodies laying in the grass. They was Sioux braves, seven of them, and I calculated that White Dog would come back here with his women and the whole tribe to take up their dead. I had to get the hell out of there but I couldn’t leave Big Tree in that field. I known the Sioux women would cut him all to pieces so he couldn’t be a enemy in the afterlife, and I figured I owed him a decent burial, even if I couldn’t put him up on a scaffold high off the ground the way his people done with their dead. He wore only his leggings, a loincloth, and a leather vest. His arms was bare. His black eyes, rimmed with blood and spent fury, seemed to look coldly at me, like he could curse me from the other side of this life. I counted sixteen arrows in him. I took out the ones I could remove, and broke off those in his trunk, legs, and arms that had hit bone. I worked steady without thinking of nothing except the next arrow to get. I worked fast, as though pulling the arrows out somehow eased his pain. When I was done, I hauled his huge frame back to my tent. I laid him down in the rain-soaked snow and commenced to digging a grave. I had no shovel, so I used my hunting knife. The ground was still fairly thawed from the rain, but it took most of the day to scratch out a ditch about a foot deep and three foot wide and seven foot long. I ain’t never gonna forget the damp smell of that dirt. Twice while I was working I seen something over by where Big Tree was laying move in the corner of my eye and I turned quick and looked hard at him. I was damned sure he was dead, but still he seemed to move when I wasn’t looking over that way. Like he might sneak back from death and jump on me. I started talking to him. I told him I was sorry and I wish I got there sooner. “I might of shot a few of them,” I said. “I guess I never was too much good for you.” I hated the way he looked a-laying over there on his back, those spent black eyes looking at nothing and the high sun gleaming in them, like in still water. “God damn it all to hell,” I whispered. I am not ashamed to admit I found it hard to take. While I worked I kept hearing his voice in my mind saying “Wasichu” and “Death.” Those might of been the first words I ever heard him say.

I don’t know why it was such a shock, but I never dreamed a force as big and able as Big Tree could actually die. He seemed so permanent and all. Like a feature of life and earth.

When I had the ditch deep and wide enough, I rolled him up in one of my best buffalo robes and shoved him into it. I said I was sorry again, then piled the dirt and the sagebrush and snow on top of him. I stood over the scar in the white snow, the pile of dirt and branches and leaves, and said a few words of praise. I told him I admired him and I didn’t mind that he took my woman. I said I was grateful for him teaching me how to live in this country.

When he was alive I never thanked him, never said nothing to him about it, but he did teach me most of everything I come to know outside what I learned from Theo. He was probably younger than me by a couple of years, but he was big and wise and kind of like a father to me for all he taught me. I had affection for him, and I always thought our paths would for sure cross again and we would not have the embarrassment of Morning Breeze between us.

I admit I was in a kind of state when she went to him. If I convinced him I didn’t really care, and I didn’t, then he’d see her as devalued and he might even be insulted. He might take it to mean he had won nothing from me. But if I pretended to be angry and jealous, he’d be done with me and I didn’t want that, neither. I thought the safest thing to do was to go off on my own for a while. I never dreamed I’d have to bury him.

Pretty soon I wasn’t thinking about the army, or Colonel Brisbin, or even Eveline. I felt tightly wound and something sharp burned and festered behind my eyes. I can’t explain the feeling, the sharpness that come down behind my brow and occupied my brain like a hot and mechanical device. It wasn’t nothing I wanted more than sweet revenge. I wanted to look down the barrel of my Evans repeater and shoot White Dog with all thirty-four rounds. I didn’t want nothing else, by God.

Chapter 17

I packed everything up and rode back to Brisbin’s camp. Two men serving as pickets was glad to see I wasn’t no Indian. I thrown them the two rabbits I’d killed the day before, and went on to Brisbin’s tent.

I told him about the Indians I seen. “White Dog seemed to be the one they was following,” I said.

“Why didn’t you go after them to see where they went?”

“They’re a day on horse from here,” I said. “I can find them.”

“How many were with him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe seven or eight.”

“That’s it?”

“It was a war party. There was more of them in the beginning, but when the killing was done, only seven or eight was left standing.” I told him about Big Tree, but I didn’t let on about how much I owed him or what kind of friends we was to each other. I just said I’d witnessed it and that he killed about half White Dog’s number. “Unless it’s a big war, the Sioux don’t send too many on a raid.”

“So it was maybe fifteen of them to start with. And you saw these people where?”

“Southeast of here. Near the east fork of the Powder River.”

“Seven or eight of them got away.”

“If they’ve got women and children with them, it may be twenty or so in the whole damn group.”

“Well, we’ll send a detachment to find them. And if it’s a smaller group, the general wants me to negotiate with them first. He doesn’t want any shooting until he’s sure we’ve got Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull in the main party. So we’ll talk first. You can take the lead on that.”

“I don’t speak the language. I never did learn it.”

“I’ll send somebody with you who can.”

What I got for my translator was Daniel, the young trooper that was Jake’s friend. I asked him what happened to Nate and he said his bucktoothed pal was back at Fort Ellis.

“He got a distemper of some kind. Had to put him in hospital.”

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t drink or eat nothing, was it?”

“No. He was down with a infection in his nose. Couldn’t breathe worth a damn.”