Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (52 page)

 
          
 
Richard helped him down. The grass prickled
against him, smelling of spring. Damn! Why did it have to be so cussed hot?
What I'd do fer a cup of water.

 
          
 
Heals Like A Willow leaned down, studying him.
By God, she was a smart-looking woman. Travis allowed his imagination to play
as he watched her full breasts sway while she checked his wound. He'd been too
long without a sits-beside woman. The whores in
Saint Louis
were just relief for a man's pizzle. Maybe
if this trip didn't kill him . . .

 
          
 
But he'd had his one great love: Calf in the
Moonlight. A young Crow. Her gaze, so like Willow's, haunted him from the past.
She smiled at him, that dancing twinkle in her eyes. How they'd loved through
that too short period. His heart twisted with the old familiar sorrow.

 
          
 
Hell, stop it. She's dead, damn ye. Ye damned
well knows ye cain f t live with no woman. Not after her.

 
          
 
Willow
hunched down beside him, making signs. 'T
must find medicine. Then I will be gone"—she held her hand to the sky,
making the sign—"two hands."

 
          
 
Two hands? Not long. The sun traveled that in
a couple of hours.

 
          
 
He closed his eyes, head spinning. So very
weary. The world had gone floaty, shimmery. Travis smiled, falling back into
the dream, seeing Calf in the Moonlight. That year had been like magic.
Everything had been new, heady as foam on cool ale. A man could come to like
living like that, his robes warm each night. And, unlike white women, she was
always willing to open herself to his need. How they'd loved, and shared, and
merged two lives into one.

 
          
 
And to think he'd always dreamed of having a
white wife. But why? White women were nothing but trouble. Stupid coon, how
come ye never understood that afore?

 
          
 
"Because us fools always bought the
notion that white women was fer successful men. Injun women, hell, they's fer
the mountains and plains." But a white woman, she had to be cared for, a
stay-at-home woman who lived in a cabin, baked bread, and raised children.

 
          
 
He could see Moonlight so clearly. He was
walking toward her and she looked up, laughing at him. Her white teeth gleamed,
that soft black hair streaming over her shoulder .. . Gone. Dead, lost in the
hazy past.

 
          
 
Voices. He knew them, coming from the haze
that had wrapped around him.

 
          
 
Someone leaned over him, blocking the
sunlight. He frowned up at Michael Immel. Tall and lanky, and so young. Yes,
that had to be Immel bending over him.

 
          
 
Travis chuckled hollowly. "Reckon ye had
her wrong, old coon. Thought ye'd be headed back ter Saint Loowee a rich man.
Figgered ye'd get yourself some fancy lady, all decked in rustling silks. Stick
ter the Crows, or maybe the Sioux, irn ye wants ter do it up right, I'd say
find ye a Cheyenne wife. She'll stick with ye through thick and thin."

 
          
 
"Travis?"

 
          
 
"Stay away from the Yellerstone, hoss. I
had me a dream that you and Jones went under. Dreamed ye were ketched by the
Blackfoot and kilt."

 
          
 
"Travis! Wake up!" A hand reached
out of the shimmering past and shook his head.

 
          
 
"Huh?" He blinked and asked,
"Dick? Whar'd Immel go? He's just hyar."

 
          
 
"Travis, listen. You're sick. Wounded.
This is Richard Hamilton.
Willow
brought in some cactus and peeled it. She tied it onto your wound. Then
she got on her horse and rode away. Travis? Travis! Listen to me! What do I
do?"

 
          
 
He frowned, mouth dry. "I got a terrible
dry on, Dick. Fetch me a tin of water, will ye?"

 
          
 
"Do you hear me?" Dick bent down,
eyes wide. "
Willow
took her mare and left! What do I do?"

 
          
 
"Serves ye right fer setting her free,
pilgrim. She's some woman, did ye know? Be a sight better fer ye than some
white gal who only wants to sit around a house and live on a feller's labor. An
Injun woman, Dick, she's more. Work side by side with ye, she will."

 
          
 
"I don't want a woman. I want you to tell
me what to do. You're raving, Travis. Out of your head. You just had to push
yourself, didn't you? Well, if you die out here, what am I going to do?"

 
          
 
"Foller the rivers, Dick. A feller cain't
get lost. Clear out to the
Black Hills
,
all the rivers run east to the
Missouri
. Beyond the
Black Hills
, the rivers run north to the
Missouri
. Any creek will take ye ter the
Missouri
. Foller the
Missouri
downstream to
Fort
Atkinson
."

 
          
 
"What about the whiskey?"

 
          
 
"We gotta get that ter Davey. Reckon
he'll go bust without her. We owe him, Dick. Kept us alive he did, nursed us
after Old Ephraim tried ter put us under. Davey's a good man. Got grit whar it
counts. That's all that matters in life— if n a feller's got. . . grit."

 
          
 
Richard shook his head. "I've got to
figure out a way to move you. We can't just stay here. There's nothing to tie
the horses to."

 
          
 
"Back," Travis whispered. ''She'll
be back—in two hands. How long?"

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"
Willow
. She’ll be back."

 
          
 
"Maybe. If she comes, it will be a
miracle. I sure wouldn't."

 
          
 
"Reckon ye would, Dick. It's in ye. Yer
not the kind ter up and quit." Damn, when did it get so hot? "Reckon
I'd do fer a mite of water, Dick."

 
          
 
"I don't have any, Travis. The closest is
back at the spring."

 
          
 
"Wal, I reckon I done without water
afore. This child's just plumb tuckered, that's all." He swallowed hard.
"Let me close my eyes. Just fer a while."

 
          
 
In the hot blackness he floated, hearing
voices from far away. Firelight flickered, and the sparks formed into faces.
Immel, Jones, Keemle, Joshua Pilcher, Manuel Lisa. They sat joking, smoking
long-stemmed clay pipes. Four heavy log posts gleamed golden in the background,
upright to support a square smokehole.
Mandan
lodge. The fire popped and sparked.

 
          
 
Someone was singing "Yankee Doodle,"
while a squeeze box wheezed and tooted the notes. Along the southeast wall,
where the horses were sometimes stabled, engages danced and cavorted in their
heavy white canvas clothing. The red hats bobbed and swung with each merry
dancer's pirouetting steps.

 
          
 
"She is dying, Travis, " Manuel Lisa
said. The long-faced Spaniard watched him through those brooding dark eyes.
"The river, she will never be the same. Perhaps the
Omaha
chief, Blackbird, poisoned it like he did
all of his rivals. We had but a moment, a shining time. The river is going to
die soon, choked in steam and smoke. But I have suspicions about the mountains
beyond. They, too, will die. But for a time, the freedom will be there.' '

 
          
 
"The mountains?" Travis asked.
"We're a-headed thar. Me and Davey Green."

 
          
 
"Watch out fer the Blackfeet, coon,"
Immel warned. "Watch yer topknot, Travis. They'll hit ye when yer not
ready. ''

 
          
 
Jones puffed at his pipe, cheeks sucking in.
He lifted a lip in disgust, then broke off an inch of the stem, the white clay
discolored from the smoke. He puffed again, and smiled, saying, "Much
better. She smokes a mite sweeter now." Jones raised his eyes. li Yer
stars has always been lucky, Travis. Bug's Boys ain't whar ye expects 'em.
Light out south. They'll seek ye all along the river, a-figgering ye'll double
back fer the
Mandans
.''

 
          
 
"Ain't no Blackfoot down here near
Fort
Atkinson
/' He wished the fire wasn't so hot. Lord
God, he was hotter than a Doodle in a sweat lodge.

 
          
 
"Travis?"

 
          
 
"Huh?"

 
          
 
"Travis! Wake up!"

 
          
 
He felt something cool—water—passing his lips
in dribbles. He blinked, dazzled by the bright light of afternoon. A gut water
bag was placed to his lips. He sucked down more of the refreshing liquid. Not
Immel and Jones, not Lisa. He squinted up at Dick Hamilton and the Snake woman,
Heals Like A Willow.

 
          
 
"Travis," Dick told him, "we've
got to get you up.
Willow
made a .. . well, a thing. We can get you to the river."

 
          
 
Travis took a deep breath, hating the
lightheaded floating. Fevert It's still got ahold of me.

 
          
 
Willow
on one side, Hamilton on the other, eased
him to his feet. He stood on weak legs, the wound stinging and pulling. The
scrubby little mare waited, head down, a travois tied onto her withers. Travis
hobbled to the woven mat of willow and hazel branches. Then he settled back,
feeling the springy wood give under his weight.

 
          
 
Willow
lifted his shirt then, and checked the
split cactus on his wounds. She made the signs: "Cactus will keep the
wound from drying and cracking. At the river we will poke the wound, make it
flow. Then more spirit water."

 
          
 
"Whyn't ye just up and kill me?"
Tarnal Hell, that whiskey stung like rattlesnake poison.

 
          
 
He winced when the mare started forward. He
eased his side as best he could given the jolting and watched the trails of
bent grass made by the travois legs. The sky was clear this afternoon,
cloudless and wonderfully blue. The water had helped, but he felt so terribly
weak.

 
          
 
He reached into his possibles and brought oat
the scalp he'd carved from the young Pawnee's head that morning. With his patch
knife, he began to carefully scrape the bloody tissue from the skull side of
the hardening skin. As the knife scraped, dreams of Moonlight flitted through
his head like cottonwood down on warm morning breezes.