Sacajawea (156 page)

As the stakes in the game increased, Fontaine’s confidence increased, and he spoke aside to Sacajawea, who had come to sit beside him so the girls could watch the game. Bill Williams once in a while paused in his game to make laughing grimaces at the two little girls, who in turn hugged their knees in laughter.

“Madame Charbonneau, get St. Vrain. Tell him to bring something for higher stakes. This will be my day! Gray Thunder is finding he cannot stretch Bill Williams on the fence to dry!”

St. Vrain came back with Sacajawea. Both were laden with trinkets and a roll of white strouding. The Cheyennes began leaving the circle of the game to reappear carrying loads of furs. They could not resist the white man’s trinkets and cloth. The game resumed and new bettors arrived and others entered or withdrew as their luck prompted them. Besides quantities of foofaraw, Monsieur Fontaine was soon betting good three-point blankets to entice the Indians to risk their whole winter caches of beaver and fox.

Gray Thunder played it cautiously, sometimes sitting out a game or two and letting one of his warriors play. The games were now fairly even and the Indians were well satisfied until Old Bill had another run of luck and took three games in a row. “I gotter keep that white cloth for the two pretty little papooses here. They plumb took my fancy,” he said, closing down on one eye as if to wink at Suzanne and Crying Basket. Because of the number of Indians betting against him and also the size of the stakes, Old Bill’s winnings were beginning to make an impressive pile. St. Vrain lifted the pile of furs and skins off the blanket. “Nice easy way to trap,” he commented.

“Aw,” said Bill, “you all know I have no glory except in the woods, and my ambition is to kill more deer and catch more beaver than any other man. But these here I’m giving to this here Fontaine so’s he can give his papoose some book learnin’. I say it won’t do ‘em much good, but it won’t hurt ‘em, neither.”

Just then, Gray Thunder looked over at the huge pile of furs and skins. He stood up using hand signs as he talked. “Your winnings against what I have left.”

“Hi! Ti!
Good! Agreed!” shouted the Cheyennes behind him.

“One pile of furs,” Old Bill said. He broke a stick in two and set half of it, to represent the pile, at the edge of the blanket.

Gray Thunder matched the half stick and nodded to the Cheyennes to sing.

Old Bill nodded toward Gray Thunder’s left hand and missed, but when he, too, succeeded in concealing the bone, Gray Thunder lost the advantage. St. Vrain sat at the edge of the blanket letting himself be drawn into the merrymaking. Old Bill passed the bone to St. Vrain, and a new game was started. Old Bill withdrew his precious worn Bible from the blanket.

Gray Thunder placed a whole marker at the edge of the blanket. “A horse.” St. Vrain matched the bet. The round was deadlocked. The sticks increased until both St. Vrain and Gray Thunder had bet a fourth of their animals. Old Bill clapped his hands and yelped in a voice that left the hearers in doubt whether he was laughing or crying. Then St. Vrain guessed wrong and Gray Thunder guessed right and won the game. A riotous shout went up from the Cheyennes. They knew they could sell horses at their own price to the loser. The dancing gyrations became wild, and Monsieur Fontaine feared it could lead to mayhem. He looked at the Cheyennes’ dark faces and knew it would not take much to start trouble. Other traders had had their hair lifted for less. He shrugged and tossed the short length of polished bone to Gray Thunder.

“Start it off,
ami,”
said St. Vrain, who was determined not to be beaten. St. Vrain lost the round and was minus at least half his horses. Monsieur Fontaine shook his head. “That
enfant’
s a fool to even have started in a chance game,” he said to Old Bill.

Bill sniffed the air, and even though he appeared to look straight ahead, his eyes were everywhere. Gray Thunder resumed the game. St. Vrain won a round, and another. Then Gray Thunder won. The stalemate began again. The Cheyennes became as possessed, swaying back and forth, in and out, stamping their feet and raising their arms with the beat of the drummers. Some called to the players to move on more quickly. Bill Williams edged around beside Sacajawea and tweaked the nose of each little girl; then he whispered something to Sacajawea and moved his hands rapidly so that she’d be certain to understand. Her eyes rounded, and she caught her breath a moment. Then he seemed to reassure her with a touch of his hand, as he held the old Bible toward the heavens.

“Ai,”
she nodded and left to move inside the fort, leaving the girls watching the game.

Bill Williams sniffed the air and remarked boldly, “Do’ee hyar now, boys, thar’s sign about?” His high-pitched voice quavered. “This hoss feels like caching.”

“Don’t go off and hide now!” called Monsieur Fontaine. “The fun is just beginning.” But off he went to find his horse and then make himself scarce in the woods again. Though most mountain men sensibly believed there was safety in numbers, Bill was known to leave a large group when he sniffed the possibility of Indian attack.

“He’s crazy as a hoot owl,” said St. Vrain. “But nobody can say he’s not shrewd, generally acute, and original—and far from illiterate.”

Monsieur Fontaine, who was daydreaming again, felt a light touch on his shoulder. He turned, half expecting to see Bill Williams again, but it was Sacajawea, who hurriedly indicated that she wished to enter the game—on the side of Gray Thunder and his Cheyennes.

“Sauvage,”
he chuckled and nodded toward St. Vrain. He studied Sacajawea, wondering what had prompted her, a squaw, to get into a man’s game. There seemed no reason for her wanting to enter the play, but it certainly would do no harm. He and St. Vrain had lost much already. To lose a little face by having a squaw play opposite them and win a few rounds would please the Cheyennes and might be a way to finish the game more quickly. He shrugged. Sacajawea wedged in between St. Vrain and Gray Thunder.

She put several pairs of white moccasins on the blanket and touched the ones she wore so that the others could see their beauty and value. Gray Thunder gavea deep grunt of displeasure. This was no place for a foolish woman. Ignoring him, Sacajawea looked along the line of bettors opposite her. Her blanket slipped off her shoulders. Her eyes sparkled and there were red spots in the center of both cheeks.

“Against one fine horse of St. Vrain,” she said in her best Comanche English and fast hand signs.

“Ai,” Gray Thunder agreed, his face still dark.

“I will be the one who is hiding something,” she said and picked up the bone from Gray Thunder’s hands.

St. Vrain looked at the woman and then looked at the hoard of skins Gray Thunder had won back. “Go to it,
sauvage,”
he sighed, signaling for the Cheyennes to begin their song once again.

Gray Thunder shrugged, and Sacajawea manipulated the bone. The onlookers stood a moment, hypnotized, as St. Vrain successfully guessed the hand in which Sacajawea held it. Then she guessed his hand correctly.

Then he pointed to her left hand. It was empty. A rumble of disappointment arose from the Cheyennes. There would be no sale of horses. St. Vrain had won back all his animals.

Gray Thunder looked across at St. Vrain and began making arrangements for delivery of the horses, and Sacajawea sent for the one horse she had lost to St. Vrain. In the moments of going to pick out and deliver the horses, gunfire was heard beyond the fort in the direction of the Cheyennes’ horse herd. The alarm was relayed through the various Indian camps, and Sacajawea heard, “Horse thieves! Many horses stolen!” There was instant tumult. Monsieur Fontaine was forgotten as Gray Thunder and a group of his young men broke from St. Vrain and scattered for their camp. Sacajawea watched the Cheyennes leave, then she reached deep into her blanket. Only Monsieur Fontaine, who had been bundling up some of the peltries St. Vrain had won back, saw what she did. She had cheated Gray Thunder that last guess. The bone had not been in either hand.

Monsieur Fontaine’s eyes narrowed. A man did not always hanker to be beholden to any fool squaw, but sure as he was no drinking man—his tastes ran moreto horse liniment for horses—St. Vrain owed something to this
sauvage.
On second thought, maybe it was Bill Williams he owed it to—what had that old coot said to her just before he left, anyway?

Monsieur Fontaine watched while Sacajawea went leisurely in the direction of the fort, followed by the pair of little girls. Then he hoisted a bundle of furs to his shoulder and went toward the fort himself, thinking he’d better get his horses and hightail it inside the fort before they were raided out here.

Coming in from the horse races, Kit Carson turned toward the fort. With Cheyenne horses driven off by enemy raiders, there would be a chase and likely a fight. He would not miss that. Carson felt it lucky for his friend St. Vrain. If the white men could help the Cheyennes recover their horses, without a doubt Gray Thunder would not be reluctant to pay off his losses. And the Cheyennes would do more trading at St. Vrain’s Fort than at the others nearby. In the joy of victory, Cheyennes would do anything for brave warriors, red or white. Carson went off to saddle up and follow Gray Thunder’s men in search of the raiders.

Monsieur Fontaine, out of breath and panting from carrying the bundles of furs into the fort, began to hunt out his fast horse in the corral. Sacajawea could be counted on to look after Suzanne while he was gone, he was confident. Other men from the fort came for their horses to join the Cheyennes in their chase.

In the Cheyenne camp, the warriors hurriedly painted themselves and their horses; they were beginning to sing their war songs for courage. Then a wolf cried out. It was a long, quavering trill of sorrow, indescribably mournful.

The spell was not so easily broken. Monsieur Fontaine kicked his horse into motion and fell in beside St. Vrain. He seemed eager to be on his way as the great wolfs sobbing cry still echoed down the hills, and even riding his horse he remained in a tense attitude of listening long after the final eerie note trembled in the distance and was lost in the
kiyi-
ing of the warriors.

St. Vrain’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Monsieur Fontaine. “The wolf calls to you, monsieur? What does he say?” asked St. Vrain.

Monsieur Fontaine looked sharply at him. He was startled. “Do you ridicule me?”

“Of course not,
ami.
I only observe your reaction to the howl of a prairie wolf.”

“Some say the French are superstitious.” He returned to what seemed an endless gaze into the low hills. But he came back. “This day has been something so different from my usual days and I have felt so blessed to be alive and the wolf’s cry did seem to come directly to my ears. Gray Thunder would say, ‘It is a good day for dying.’” Monsieur Fontaine paused. “Céran, am I not truly blessed to have such a fine woman to care for my little Suzanne?”

St. Vrain smiled, then laughed, and rode past Louis Vasquez and Charley Bent to the front riders beside Gray Thunder.

Sacajawea stood just inside the gates to the adobe fort wondering how such a fine day could change so rapidly. She let her musings carry her to other summer celebrations with the white men. She could almost hear Cruzatte’s fiddle as Chief Red Hair danced and the tall pine crackled into a fiery blaze.

Tom Fitzpatrick remained inside the fort with his men to celebrate the fading Fourth of July with tin mugs half-filled with bacanora, a clear white liquor distilled from cactus juice. There were some Utes at the gate asking to buy the crazy-water. Fitzpatrick sent an order that the few barrels of bacanora his party had left could be sold to the Utes if it were watered half and half.

Sacajawea took the little girls back to the cell-like single room she had been given by St. Vrain the previous night. She left the door partially open so that there was some light so she could wash the children with water from the pump and put clean doeskin tunics on them. She washed their calico dresses at the pump and spread them over the single bench in the room for drying. She felt she needed a bath, but did not dare go outside the fort now. She let the pump water run over her face and arms and neck. In the room she removed her calico dress and petticoats and slipped on a simpletunic. She rinsed out her dress and laid it beside the girls’.

The bell announcing supper rang. She was not sure she should go into the dining hall without Monsieur Fontaine. The girls were hungry. She slipped to the courtyard and stood by the mess hall. A Cheyenne woman looked at her and made a clicking noise with her tongue. “You are not in the white woman’s dress, so you cannot go into the place of eating.” Sacajawea’s heart sank, but the woman came back almost immediately with a plate of pinto beans and corn bread and a mug of steaming black coffee with a layer of sugar syrup at the bottom.

“You hear
el lobo
? Señora, when the wolf cries before dark, it is a bad sign. It means someone is marked for death.” The woman walked away rustling her huaraches.

Sacajawea let the children eat the warm corn bread as she blew on the coffee to cool it for drinking. Suddenly she felt exhausted. This was a new life. Each day was so different, with so much to think about and put in the right place in her mind. To try thinking of tomorrow would surely fatigue her. She fell asleep with the coffee half-drunk beside her on the dirt floor. The little girls were already curled up together on a bright Navaho rug.

At sunrise, Sacajawea was up and standing by the mess-hall door. Someone told her to vamoose. She stepped a little way from the door, and someone else put a tin plate of steaming biscuits and a cup of black coffee in her hand. At that moment she saw St. Vrain come past on
her
pony, headed for the corral inside the fort. My horse, she thought—oh, no, it is his since yesterday. He was leading another horse with the rider thrown facedown across the saddle. There was a small hole in the rider’s back from which blood had oozed, but it was black and dried now.

“It’s a shame”—St. Vrain beckoned to her—“old Fontaine was shot in the back.”