Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (7 page)

Listening, Hugh hunkered down over the fire. First his eyes opened a little; then they closed. He nodded sagely. He understood it. He had heard of such things happening. He knew of a case where two men went into the mountains together to trap beaver, one of them having a bad case of the rheumatiz and the other not—and lo and behold, the one who'd always complained of the rheumatiz came back out of the mountains completely cured while the healthy one came back a cripple. The rheumatiz spirit or devil, or whatever rheumatiz was, had jumped across to the other.

It was as a result of the Rees respecting her contrary religion that Bending Reed got away. One day her husband, being of an amorous frame of mind, and she not, told her to come in under the bull buffalo robe with him. She refused; did the opposite. She ran out of the breast-shaped dirt-covered lodge. Then Man-Who-Wants-Many-Sons in his male frustration and rage leaped up and ran after her, yelling, “You she-dog, you she-wolf, you she-coyote, you mouse of a squaw, come back to my lodge and woman with me or I'll lodge-pole you!” His yelling, his scolding, only made her run the faster. By the time she reached the edge of the village, all the Ree braves and squaws and children were out of their dirt-mound lodges listening and laughing, the squaws especially delighting in the show. When Bending Reed vanished beyond the picket barricade, out past the guards, out over the last hill and finally out of sight, they suddenly understood, too late, that she'd played a ruse on them. And had escaped.

Old Hugh had to laugh. “That was some, Reed, that was. As good a peedoodle as any I ever heard of. But how come ye're still playin' this contrary fiddle, Reed? Now that Heyoka has helped ee get away, can't ee lay him to one side, Reed?”

Reed shut up.

Old Hugh laughed aloud. “Ho-ah! I see. It's a habit that's took hold, has it? Well, well. That's some, that is.”

Abruptly Bending Reed seemed to remember something. She bustled around in the tepee like one possessed. She grabbed up a fire-blacked pot and filled it with water from a leather bag and set it on the cookstone at the edge of the twig fire. She pushed the twig ends up into the pyramid fire all around and added a few small logs. She grabbed up a stone club, and a piece of savory meat, and rushed out through the doorflap. She whistled up the fort dogs. A moment later there was a short yelp and the punking sound of stone hitting skull. Then she came back in dragging a dead yellow-haired puppy. She gutted it and prepared it and dropped it into the pot. Next she got out the skin of pemmican and with an old worndown butcher knife cut off a few slices and laid them on some fresh green cottonwood leaves at Hugh's feet. She made some gruel out of hump fat and ground corn and berry pits. She dug out some buffalo marrow for butter.

Slowly the water warmed; became uneasy with heat; began to boil.

While the meat cooked, she slipped down the legging on Hugh's bad leg. She shook her head when she saw how red and angry the bullet wound was. It had begun to look like a big red boil. She put a hand over open mouth a moment and her paired blackcherry eyes rolled big and shiny. Then she pitched in. She made a fine paste out of powdered cedar-tree needles and rattlesnake oil. She rubbed the fragrant ointment gently but firmly into his leg around and over the touchy wound. And last she got out a bag of grizzly-bear grease and gave his entire body a rubdown with it. The grizzly grease gave her brave husband great power.

Old Hugh sighed. He lay back on the musky robe and enjoyed it all. It had been many a moon since he'd had a warm even urgent rubdown. He groaned both in pleasure and pain.

Presently the puppy meat was ready and she motioned for him to dip in.

And Hugh did. The meat was very tender. It fell off the bones at the least touch of his butcher knife. The pemmican, made of pounded buffalo-cow meat and tallow, was as sweet as fresh cheese. And the corn gruel went down like heated honey. It was a feast fit for the Great White Father himself.

Finished, Hugh jabbed his knife in the ground a few times and then wiped it clean on his leather sleeve. He lay back on the buffalo robe. He groaned with both pleasure and pain again. It was a great life.

He lit his pipe.

He watched Bending Reed take her turn at the pot and the pemmican. She ate demurely, even delicately, like a bunny nibbling grasstips. Hugh had always liked the way she ate. She was a bunny one, she was. Ae. She didn't chew with her mouth open like some squaws did.

After a while, thoroughly relaxed, and moved by a need to talk to someone, he began to gossip a little about the old days.

He told her a little of his adventures since he'd escaped from the Pawnees. She listened while she began to work on a new leather hunting shirt for him. Every now and then her wondering blackcherry eyes studied his old gray eyes and grizzled leathery face.

On his second pipe, Hugh went back a little further, before the time of his capture by the Pawnees, before he had met her while with them. He told of how as a young man he'd run away from home in Pennsylvania, from the very Lancaster County where his gun, Old Bullthrower, had been made; told how he had gone to sea on a ship out of Philadelphia, how he had sailed before the mast over most of the globe, to the East Indies, to China, to the great Northwest south of Alaska, to the Scandinavian countries, even to Scotland the land of his fathers, and to such ports as Antwerp, London, Amsterdam, Marseilles, New Orleans, Boston.

One day out on the seas of the Gulf of Mexico his ship was attacked and captured by the famous pirate Lafitte. He and his mates fought like men, but the pirates proved too much for them. Finally when only a half-dozen men were left, with the captain and first mate dead, Hugh and his comrades surrendered.

Lafitte was quick in his justice. Either join up as pirates or walk the plank. Hugh and a man named Clint decided to join up. The rest walked the plank into a watery blue death. Hugh and Clint had to swear a horrible oath of allegiance to pirate Lafitte. From then on Hugh's life was uncertain and bloody at most. Lafitte worked out of the Baratarian Coast south of New Orleans, and as a buccaneer Hugh had to help prey on Spanish shipping, had to help sell stolen goods through merchant contacts in New Orleans.

Hugh shivered as he remembered some of it: poor food, long hours, devilishly brutal and lawless companions, scurvy, cholera, cruel bloodlettings. For two years Hugh suffered it.

One day he had enough of it and refused to shoot down a captive. His companyero Clint refused too. Both were thrown in irons; were told that the next day it would be their turn to walk the plank.

During the night, however, the two of them managed to slip out of their chains, escape the ship, and swim to shore.

The land they found themselves in was the far free wild. They wandered through it, heading north, later northeast, hoping to come onto St. Louis. They lived off tree buds, green grass, mice, berries. Sometimes they even ate partly smoked snakemeat. And once they ate of flesh unmentionable.

They managed to get safely through the land of the fierce Comanches. Then their luck ran out. A raiding party of Pawnees caught them around a fire in a gully. The Pawnees took them back to the tribal headquarters on the Platte River. The chief of the Pawnees questioned them at length; condemned them to be burnt at the stake.

Tied to a tree, Hugh and Clint watched the preparations. A stake was driven into the earth; fagots were arranged around it; ceremonies were enacted; dances were danced.

Clint was the first. He was led to the stake and tied securely. The chief pierced Clint with the first pitchpine splinter, then backed off to let his sadistic braves finish the job. Accompanied by Clint's cries of pain and their own howls of triumph, the braves stuck Clint's skin so full of splinters he looked like a shaggy badger. The fagots at Clint's feet were lit and the final agony began. It didn't last long. Flames swept up over Clint's besplintered body, and with an awful scream in the midnight blackness, companyero Clint passed away into tomorrow.

Hugh's turn came then. Two scalplocked braves untied him from the tree; led him to the chief.

Just as the chief got ready to stick Hugh with the first splinter of pitchpine, Hugh, desperate, bethought himself of something. Hugh reached inside his buckskin shirt; pulled out a thin package. He handed it over to the proud and haughty chief with an air of affection and respect. There was not a trace of fear in Hugh's demeanor. Then he bowed a final farewell to life.

The chief opened the package, found it to be vermilion, an article the Pawnees, as well as all plains' savages, valued above all price. The chief started. He looked Hugh over carefully. Then, majestically, he stepped up to Hugh and embraced him. And with paternal regard and affection, and smiling, the chief declared Hugh free, out of respect for his great bravery and his gift, and led him to his lodge as his guest.

Old Hugh served the Pawnees well. They considered him a very brave warrior. They respected his strategies of battle. His feats of strength and his terrible rage in battle earned him the name of White Grizzly.

He lived like a king. And like a king, he was under constant watch, so that he often lamented that while he had women and food and gunpowder and horse galore, he actually was worse off than a slave.

Some months after his capture he met Bending Reed, just captured by a raiding party into Siouxland. Old Hugh and Bending Reed took to each other on the instant. Both were strangers amongst the Pawnees and both privately hated them and both longed for the day of their escape. They were married with the chief's blessing.

All the while that Hugh ruminated about the old days with the Pawnees, Bending Reed kept on working on his new elkskin hunting shirt. As he talked along, Hugh noted out of the corner of his eye that Reed was using an odd new stitch. It bent back on itself. Heyoka had apparently reversed her stitching style too.

Bending Reed asked suddenly, “My husband says he ran away from his father's tepee when he was a boy. Why did my husband run away?” Her paired blackcherry eyes were bright on him for a moment; then shied off.

Hugh started. His gray eyes clouded over.

Ae, why indeed?

Hugh shook his head. That was something he couldn't talk about. That belonged to a long and terrible time ago. And it was better left untold.

Hugh finally managed a laugh. “Wimmen! they always know how to ask you that one perticular question that brings blood on the run. Reed, red or no, ye're no better than the rest.”

Bending Reed laid aside her needlework and nestled against him and cast him sly slant eyes.

There was the smell of a clean washed mink about her. Hugh knew of her habit of taking a daily bath in the Missouri, summer or winter, a habit that not even the most elegant white woman practiced back in the settlements during the summer. The white women sometimes stank awful, Hugh remembered, especially the free and easy ones, while the most one could say against an Indian woman was that she sometimes was a little strong with prairie-root ointments and a little slippery from excessive use of wildrose-scented beargrease.

Hugh took a deep breath. He thought her animal smell peculiarly rich and stirring. He thought it a good thing that from birth on Indian women were taught to serve their lord and master. They knew exactly how to arouse the man in him. They knew how to keep a brave man brave.

Bending Reed said, “My husband is not afraid to tell of that time, is he?”

Hugh chuckled in his grizzled beard. He tugged at his beard a little. “Reed, an' now I suppose ye'll be holdin' me off until I tell ee?”

But Reed surprised him. Heyoka was still in her and she pressed him back on the musty brown buffalo-bull robe and became his wife again.

Afterward she lay smiling and contented beside him. Playfully she matched the redstone skin of her plump arm against the white of his lean biceps.

Hugh smiled. “Can't Father or no, my little squaw is still young and gentle and in first-rate order, I see.” Hugh nodded. “Yessiree, ye suit me longways and sideways both.”

Bending Reed laughed and rolled shy blackcherry eyes at him.

But their contentment was short-lived.

There was an etching sound behind them. She heard it after a while and sat up.

It came again,
etch-itch, etch-itch.

“Mouse!” she exclaimed and in a bound was up and after it with a broom. She was once again at war with the furtive pest of the prairies.

3

G
ENERAL
A
SHLEY
left word there would be a meeting before sundown. It would be held outside the fort on the banks of the Missouri out of earshot of the opposition's commander and under a huge cottonwood to which two keelboats were moored. The general and his mountain men had to decide whether to go on into the northwest or to go back to St. Louis.

Hugh had his afternoon nap and then got up from his warm buffalo robe and slipped on his moccasins and hobbled out through the flap of his tepee.

He stood stretching in the hot August sun. Shadows were tight and black along the foot of the south stockade wall. The dazzling summer sun on the bare white cottonwood boles in the north wall made them hard to look at. Even the gray beaten ground underfoot was hard on the eyes.

Hugh stood blinking. Out of the corner of his eye he could see buckskin-clad sentinels armed with Hawken rifles slowly pacing back and forth on the riflewalk along the top and inside the stockade wall. The riflewalk was some fifteen feet off the ground, just high enough to permit the sentinels to shoot over the twenty-foot wall. The cross-braced cottonwood palings shone like old dull teeth in a weathered jawbone. Behind him in the carpenter's shop someone was nailing together a wooden coffin, another in the meathouse was sawing up buffalo bones, and still another in the blacksmith shop was pounding out some crude horseshoes. The boss's house was silent, but from the men's quarters came the sound of trappers playing cards, with now and then a loud coarse voice saying, “By the eternal, this is one hand I'll put my pile on.” In the entrance to the warehouse Sioux squaws from tepees outside the fort were protesting shrilly to frail Clerk Bonner that he'd cheated them out of some fofurraw.

Hugh noticed that both blockhouses, the one on the northwest corner as well as the one on the southwest corner, rumbled as if men were rolling cannon balls in them. The blockhouses had been built at opposite corners of the stockade so that in case of sudden Indian attack the cannon in them could sweep all four walls of the fort with deadly grapeshot at the same time.

Hugh limped out through the wicket in the main gate, waving a gruff hello to bent Old Childress the gatekeeper. Outside the fort two drunken Sioux braves lay asleep in the shadow of the wall, mouths open and slack and crawling with flies. A few Sioux tepees, with skin pennants and bushy animal tails dangling in a slow breeze, stood well back west of the fort. The cone tepees made a sawtooth pattern against the horizon. Beyond the smoke-tipped tepees lifted lofty tan bluffs, rising up like massive shouldering waves of earth held back as if by the command of some Moses. A few stunted plum trees clung to the crests of the bluffs. Far to the north two hunters picked their way warily up a ravine, intent on a half-dozen white-tailed antelope. The land was dry on the tumbled bluffs, and the dead bunch grass glowed like mounds of rusted iron.

The footpath from Ft. Kiowa to the landing site at the base of the huge cottonwood was worn and deep. Gray dust in it ran like barley flour. Hugh walked to one side of it, but even on the untrodden ground his moccasins raised quick puffs of gray. Hugh coughed a couple of times.

The single cottonwood towered over them like a great dreamland mushroom. Below, the two gray keelboats rode easy and free in the wide rolling tan Missouri. The far east cutbank knifed up sharp and gray from the waterline. A small grove of oak and ash and cottonwood crested the cutbank. Behind it some wild rose and gooseberry and wolfberry brush spread all the way back to where the land sloped up onto the plateau of far prairies.

The meeting had already begun by the time Hugh got to the rendezvous. General Ashley, still wearing the blue uniform of the Missouri state militia, was haranguing the men from behind a storebox while Major Andrew Henry sat on a stump behind another box.

The sight of Major Henry made Hugh haul up short. Ae, then Prayin' Diah Smith had made it safe, after all, across wild Indian land to bring Major Henry down on the run from his post on the mouth of the Yellowstone. Good boy, Jedediah. Brave lad. Hugh swept the crowd of seated mountain men with a quick narrowed look and immediately recognized Diah. Prayin' Diah sat alone off to one side. He sat calm and reserved. Not a face muscle moved. Only Diah's grave gray eyes showed that he was holding himself in.

Looking around further Hugh spotted other newcomers: cautious book-learned John S. Fitzgerald, gaunt Allen, proud George Yount, and even the boy, slim redhaired Jim Bridger. Ho-ah. The major had taken along some of his best shots to help fight the Rees. No wonder everybody was mad that General Leavenworth had funked his attack on the villages. Hugh shook his head. Ae, a lot had happened since he'd taken to bed in Bending Reed's tepee.

Hugh sat on the grass well to the rear. Like all mountain men he sat crosslegged, knees out, feet folded inward. Sitting at the rear of the crowd he could watch the men to see what their mind might be before he himself made up his mind.

Some of the mountain men were smoking their pipes. Others sat with averted eyes. Still others, like Diah, sat with backbone erect and eyes flashing. Some of the boatmen were present too, and they lolled easy on their sides. There were some fifty men present, and all were armed with rifles and knives, and almost all, except the boatmen, wore skin suits. Some of the skin suits were so greased and weathered brown it took a close look to see what they were made of.

General Ashley was speaking. He had a high pleasant voice when aroused, and his little mouth worked furiously and eloquently. He sweat as he talked and sometimes he stopped to wipe his redblond brow and occasionally he swapped a light hand around at a passing fly. The general's light tenor voice was in sharp contrast to the rousting Missouri awash below the bank.

General Ashley said, yes, it was true that General Leavenworth had failed them all when he refused to press home his advantage after having successfully surrounded the Ree villages above the Grand River and after having killed Chief Grey Eyes on the very first cannon shot. Yes, it was true that the Rees had escaped in the night and that they now were all over the prairies like angry wild bees chased out of their hives and ready to sting anything that moved. Yes, it was true that the Rees' escape had encouraged even the friendly Mandans to go on the warpath against the whites. Yes, it was true that until the Rees had been taught a lesson the savages all up and down the Missouri would be twice, perhaps a hundred times, as treacherous as before.

But, General Ashley said, but, he was still of a mind to go on with the trapping expedition into the Rocky Mountains.

General Ashley pounded the storebox with a small hard fist, hit it so hard he made even the surly grumblers shut up.

General Ashley had a new plan. He was asking for two sets of volunteers. One set would return with Major Henry to the post on the Yellowstone and the Missouri, the other set under Diah would start directly west for the Black Hills and beyond, with the two companies trapping beaver all through the fall and eventually meeting somewhere near the Big Horn Mountains by the time the winter snows set in.

“Where'll we get the ponies, Gen'ral?” Jack Larrison called out. Jack Larrison could hardly be blamed for being cautious. During the slaughter on the sand bar before the Ree villages he had somehow become wedged between two dead mustangs and thus had been overlooked by the Rees when they came down to count coup on the dead after the battle. Despite a bad wound Jack didn't dare move until after dark. A ball had passed through one thigh and had lodged in the other. He bled badly. When darkness at last set in, Jack pried himself out from between the dead mustangs. He found the boats gone. They'd retreated far down the river. Jack saw no other chance of escape but to swim the river. He stripped himself of his clothes in the dark and bound up his wounds and took to water. Some Ree women spotted him just as he entered the river and they called out an alarm. Quickly some Ree warriors came out and fired at his bobbing head. But Jack got away. Four days later Jack appeared at the fort as naked as the day he was born. His skin was peeling off him in black strips.

“What was that?” General Ashley said, inclining his head in friendly manner.

“Where do we get the ponies?” Jack Larrison repeated. Jack's face was still haggard from the experience.

“From our friends the Sioux. They've agreed to bring me forty mounts. The horses'll be here by tomorrow morning. Fresh and frisky.”

“Indian promises,” crippled Joseph Monso grumbled. Ned-hearted Joe sat at Jack Larrison's left. Both were dead-set against any further adventures into the wild.

“They'll be here,” General Ashley said, “if I have to get them myself. That's the least of my worries.”

“What if some of us don't want to go nohow?” another voice called out from the other side of the crowd.

“I'm not holding any man here against his will. We're starting from scratch right here and now. What's happened so far is gone and done. You're free to return to St. Lou if that's your mind. One of the keelboats leaves tomorrow with some of Leavenworth's men, and you can ride down with them. And in another month I myself will take the second keelboat down to Fort Atkinson, and you can come along with me then if you can't make up your mind today.”

“Suppose we did quit now?” Jack Larrison asked. “Do we still get paid?”

General Ashley's mild blue eyes flashed. His face shone red in the mellow shade of the cottonwood. “Well . . . yes, I guess so. Though you actually agreed otherwise.”

Silence. Below the bank the Missouri washed rough and rolling. The lone cottonwood's glossy green leaves cliddered overhead. A single oriole darted silent and golden through the high branches. The sun shone dazzling and white on the dead yellow grass outside the cottonwood's wide round shadow. The cottonwood and the single bird in it and the men under it held against the sizzing vast wilderness.

Hugh sized up the men. Of the hundred or so who had started out from St. Louis earlier in the year, only fifty were left. The other fifty were either dead, or wounded, or had deserted. Luckily Major Henry's brigade of fifteen tough hand-picked men with their bark still on were around to buck up what was left.

Hugh saw Jim Clyman near him and his eyes lighted. Hugh was glad to see Clyman had got through alive.

Hugh slid along the dry grass over to Clyman's side. “Well, lad, I see ye made it to the
Packet
after all.”

“I did.” Clyman gave a short snort and tossed his dark big head. “But not the way you think.”

“Ae? How's that?”

“I made it to the
Packet
the long way home, you might say. I missed the boat. And worse yet, got Gibson killed for tryin' to save me.”

“No! Tough, that is.”

Clyman told a little about it, small mouth grim, dark blue eyes looking right through Old Hugh. “Gibson jumped in to help me climb aboard a skiff the men had let go. I was still havin' trouble with my possibles and couldn't keep afloat. Gibson got me into the skiff all right but got shot doin' it. We got across the river, too, only to find four Ree braves swimmin' after us. So I had to leave him wounded in the skiff.”

“What happened then?”

“I started runnin' with three of the four Rees after me, one t'either side and one behind. Pretty soon I seen I wasn't goin' to make it, so when I spotted a little washout in some tall grass just as I come over the top of a hill, I rolled in it. They ran by. I hid out all that night. The next day I went back to the river, and some men aboard the
Packet
spotted me in the brush.”

“And Gibson?”

“Skulped by the other Ree.”

Hugh shook his head. “Another gone under.”

Clyman said, “Ye goin' to join up again, Hugh?”

“I might. I'm thinkin' on it.”

Clyman looked at the dark disgruntled faces around him, at the pork-eating boatmen and the grumbling river roughnecks, and then growled in Hugh's ear, “The gen'ral ought a take a club to ‘em. They'd soon come to their milk then.”

Old Hugh said slowly, “Wal, Jim, I'll allow to bein' a little offish myself since that fix.”

Clyman gave Hugh a disbelieving look.

“Oh, I'll join the lads all right when the lads need joinin',” Hugh said quietly. “But I allow myself the right to set on it a night or so.”

General Ashley finished his spieling, and then it was Major Henry's turn. General Ashley was glad to rest a few minutes. He sat down on his storebox and wiped his sweating face carefully and thoroughly. There were black patches of sweat under the armpits of his blue uniform.

Major Henry was tall, slender, slightly bent in the shoulders. He had a slow calm manner and a commanding presence. His hair was dark and his light eyes were inclined to blue. When he talked, his slightly buckset upper teeth flashed white. Except for his blue army cap, he wore buckskins like the rest of his men. Major Henry was a man of exceeding honesty. Some years back, some of his friends in St. Louis, for whom he had become surety, defaulted on their debts, and he lost a great sum of money. Advised beforehand to put his property in his wife's name, Major Henry angrily refused; said he preferred living like a poor man if it meant he couldn't live honest as a rich man. All the mountain men had heard the story and they respected him for it. Some of the men told too how they'd once heard Major Henry play the violin. He hadn't played it like a fiddle at a shindig either, but like it might be a voice. They told how it sang clear like a mourning dove.

Major Henry said, “While we're at it, I suppose I should tell you the latest news I've just got by runner from the post. All right, General?”

General Ashley nodded.

Major Henry went on. He had a baritone voice that went well with the rushing basso of the Missouri. His upper teeth flashed clean in the shadow of the cottonwood. “First off, I suppose I'd best give you men some of the worst news first. We've just got word that Jones and Immel and a small company of men from the opposition, the Missouri Fur Company, were caught in a ravine by Blackfeet. Twenty-nine whites against some four hundred red devils. Jones and Immel and all but five men were killed. The Blackfeet captured twenty-five packs of beaver, got all the horses and mules and all the traps. Bill Gordon and four others managed to get away and they made it through open country, some six hundred miles, back to the forks of the Yellowstone and Missouri.”