Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 Read online

  Willow dropped her blanket and gut container before she shed her robe, then quickly doffed her dress. Her warm skin prickled in the chill as she untied her moccasins. Cold burned into the bottoms of her feet. Sucking a deep breath, Willow waded out, gritted her teeth, and lowered herself into the cold rush, using handfuls of sand and gravel from the riverbed to scrub herself.

  Her flesh prickled from the shock of the icy water. Breath seemed to stick in her lungs as her heart raced against the cold.

  But at least I can feel something. Only my soul is dead . . . not my body.

  Ducking her head, she used a wet fingertip to clean her ears, and then wrung out her long black hair. Shivering and puffing, she scrambled back up onto the bank and found the blanket. She used it to dry herself as thoroughly as possible. Her hair had already frozen into a stiff black mass.

  "How's the water?" Red Calf's voice intruded.

  Willow looked up as White Hail's wife walked out of the dawn-shadowed trees. In the gray twilight, Red Calf's blanketed form blended with the rough bark of the cottonwoods.

  "Cold, just what you'd expect in the middle of the winter. Be careful. Don't slip on the ice."

  Red Calf walked forward and shrugged out of her blanket before she pulled her dress over her head. She shucked off her moccasins and straightened, rubbing her hands over her distended belly. Petite, thin-boned, with small hands and feet, she carried her child high under her pointed breasts. Secrets hid behind her large dark eyes, and her full lips looked poised for laughter, but more often produced bile. Men had always found her physically attractive, but White

  Hail had had no competition when he asked for her as a wife.

  Now she watched Willow suspiciously. "I'd rather you left. I don't trust you here, Willow. You might do something, send some evil up my vagina and into my baby."

  Willow laughed as she dressed. Before pulling on her moccasins, she stepped down to fill her section of buffalo gut with water. She quickly tied off the open end and wrapped her robe around her shoulders. She endured a bout of shivers as her body warmed within her clothing. "Go ahead and bathe in peace, Red Calf. I'm no threat to you."

  Willow slung the buffalo-gut water bag over her shoulder, and stopped to look back. Red Calf waded into the water and gasped at the piercing cold. She looked impish in the reddening light of dawn reflected off the ice.

  "Red Calf, why do you think I'm evil? Exactly what is it about me that makes you think I'm a witch, or that I'd hurt anyone?"

  Red Calf watched her warily, hands still held protectively over her belly. "You're different, Willow. Strange. You're not a proper woman. You don't know your place, and these other things, ideas about plants and animals. You make people worry. I wish ... I wish you were gone."

  "I will be. Just as soon as the trails clear."

  "I think you killed them."

  Willow stiffened, heart skipping. "I killed . . . You mean my husband and child? My own family?"

  "You meddle in things a woman shouldn't," Red Calf said smugly. "Slim Pole says so. Women aren't supposed to be healers. Not until after their bleeding stops. I think your husband found out you were a witch—so you killed him and your baby. A witch would do something like that." Red Calf waded out into the deeper water, lowering herself and splashing water over her arms, belly, and breasts. In the gaudy light, her skin looked as slick as the surrounding ice; then gooseflesh rose, spoiling the image.

  "A witch might, I suppose." A dead weight had settled in Willow's souls. "But I guess I'll never make a very good witch, will I? A witch would have killed cleanly, without remorse. Watching my husband and my boy die wounded my souls forever. I'd have done anything to save them. And if... if I were a witch, I'd have known how."

  "I don't believe you." Red Calf watched her warily.

  "Don't you? I would have gladly traded their souls for yours, Red Calf." She lifted an eyebrow. "But then... you're still alive. So, maybe I'm not a witch after all."

  At that, Willow turned and followed the trail toward the camp. Fool! You let her goad you into saying things you shouldn't! Anger began to drive off the last of the river water's chill. It doesn't matter. Soon you'll be gone from here.

  Morning was reaching out with gentle fingers. In the soft light, lodges were coming down, women and older children knocking loose the pegs that held the lodge skirts, then unpinning the flaps on the front before peeling the buffalo hide away from the poles.

  Willow hesitated at the edge of the clearing. She could see old Two Half Moons, bent over and worrying the stakes loose from the frozen ground. A small herd of children charged past, giggling and screaming, camp dogs barking and yipping in their wake.

  Instead of hurrying to help Two Half Moons, Willow cut across the village, dodging as blanket-wrapped youths herded ponies around the lodges for packing. An infant squalled with displeasure. Mingled with the calls of people, buffalo hide rustled and flapped as lodge covers were folded. Tipi poles rattled as they were taken down and stacked. Horses snorted and stamped, some in anticipation, others in irritation. Woodsmoke hung low and blue, vying with the odors of lodge leather, horses, and earth.

  Willow marched up to the old man who carried brightly painted parfleches from inside the pole skeleton of a lodge. The Puhagan wore his gray hair in twin braids to either side of his head. Flank steak, left in the sun for days to dry, had the same look as his weather-burned face: dark, wrinkled, and parched. For some reason the old man's fleshy nose had grown with a bend in it. He looked up with obsidian-dark eyes, and watched her approach. He clung to one of the brightly painted parfleches with swollen fingers that looked like pemmican.

  Willow stopped before him, aware that Slim Pole's two wives had ceased their chatter as they folded the lodge cover into a big square. They watched her with wary inquisitive-ness.

  "Good morning, Willow." Slim Pole's voice sounded scratchy, belying the fact that he sang with deep rich tones during the ceremonies. "I had dreamed many things, but not that you would come seeking me this morning."

  Willow crossed her arms. "Could you walk with me for a moment?"

  Slim Pole grunted, turned, and carried his parfleche to the waiting stack. The squares of hard rawhide contained the medicine elder's healing herbs and paraphernalia for the Sun Dance and vision quests. He patted the stack as if making sure his sacred possessions were out of the way of trampling horses' feet. Then the old man turned and ambled out toward the west, away from the camp.

  Willow walked beside him, watching his short, shuffling steps, reading the pain in the old man's hip joints and the wobbly balance caused by his fading vision.

  "You wish to speak?" He glanced at her, his eyebrow raised. "My eyes are bad, but I see from the ice in your hair that you've come straight from your morning bath."

  "Red Calf is going to accuse me of being a witch."

  "I see." A pause. "Are you?" He slowed, staring out at the gray-brown buttes to the west. Snow-filled gullies streaked their sides like white veins. Beyond them, burning orange in the morning, the fir-covered slopes of the Warm

  Wind Mountains rose to white-capped majesty against the paling sky.

  "I am no witch—as you know, elder." Willow kicked at the hoof-flattened snow. Piles of frozen horse manure lay like black warts here and there in the scrubby sagebrush. "You have not approved of me, of my Dukurika ways. As a good elder should, you have sought to give me advice, to guide me to behave more like a proper Ku'chendikani. I have always listened with respect."

  "And continued doing things just as you did before."

  "That is true, elder. Each soul has its way. As Tarn Apo made us. Perhaps there is a little of Coyote in all of us. An urge to follow our desires because we must."

  "But there is also Wolf in us," Slim Pole replied. "To accept and do our duty. To act in a way which is responsible to the People."

  "I agree, Puhagan. That is why I came to you this morning, inconvenient though it may be. I wanted to tell you that Red Calf is going to make tro
uble. I have the responsibility to tell you about it in order that you may give the matter thought before trouble breaks out."

  He nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the distant mountains. Slim Pole could still see into distances with some clarity, but people said that even that sight was growing hazy. Only the bright colors of his parfleches allowed him to locate his things.

  "And what responsibility do you have to the People, Heals Like A Willow?" He cocked his head.

  "I also came to tell you that I will be leaving the Ku chendikani within the next moon. I would go now, but the snow is too deep and I might not be able to carry enough food to reach the Dukurika winter camps."

  "In another moon, the snow will have melted off the ridges. The ice will still be thick enough to allow you to cross the streams. But food will be a problem for another two moons at least."

  "I can find food in another moon. The first sprouts of wild parsley and shooting star will be up."

  "Ah, I forget, you are the one who thinks in terms of plants, and not of buffalo." He paused. "Perhaps this is for the best." He glanced at her. "I would have Heals Like A Willow know that Slim Pole, while he may have found her troublesome, enjoyed his talks with her."

  "And I with him."

  "I am sorry about your husband and son. Two Half Moons told me that you followed the rituals necessary for their souls to find their way across the sky. For that, I thank you. But, yes, I think perhaps it is better if you return to the mountains. White Hail wanted to marry you. Fast Black Horse may yet ask you to marry. And if he does?"

  "I will say no." Willow let her eyes search the mountains, tracing the jagged lines of peaks. "I gave all the love in my souls to my husband and my son. I have none left to give to anyone else."

  "Like a clay bowl? Poured out until there is nothing left?"

  "Yes, like that."

  He chuckled dryly. "Mostly you are a very clever woman, Heals Like A Willow. You surprise me by the questions you ask, and the things you know about life, about Tarn Apo and the way He created the world. But then you say something like that, and I realize that for everything that you know, parts of you are still secret to yourself."

  She stood silently, refusing to respond.

  "I think you are no witch," he said at last. "I have watched you work with the sick. A woman should not do such things until after her bleeding stops. Until that time, she is unclean. Woman's blood is offensive to Power."

  "Do we want to argue about this again, Puhagan?"

  "No. You and I have argued so many times we each know the other's words better than our own. I was just saying that I have never seen evil in you, and while the Spirits have come to me to complain about you, it was just to tell me that you were polluting them with your woman's blood, not doing evil."

  "We will disagree about that forever."

  "Yes, we will." He glanced at her. "Tarn Apo made women to bear children. If I would offer advice to Heals Like A Willow, I would say that she should stop worrying about Power, bear her children as Tarn Apo meant her to, and worry about puha and healing when her bleeding finally stops."

  Willow smiled wearily. "I will consider Slim Pole's words. In the meantime, I thank him for his understanding and consideration. Within a moon, Heals Like A Willow will be no more trouble to him, or to the Ku'chendikan!"

  "I wish you well," the elder said. "And ... I think it is best for you as well as for my people that you leave. In the meantime, Slim Pole will see that Red Calf makes no big trouble for anyone." He smiled then, the wrinkles on his face deepening. "However, Red Calf will continue to make a lot of little troubles. It is her nature to make people miserable; she is like cactus to a barefooted man."

  "I will miss you, Slim Pole. I will especially miss arguing late into the night about good and evil, and the nature of Tarn Apo, and about responsibility and life and death as we have done so often."

  His expression turned wistful. "Yes, well, who will challenge me from now on? Eh? Your souls see very clearly about many things, Willow. Your questions cut like obsidian. I have learned many things from you . .. and your irritating questions. For that, I thank you. And, I fear, for all the complaining I've done about you, I will find myself missing you, wishing for another of your annoying arguments."

  "May Tarn Apo guide your way, Slim Pole."

  "Yours, too, Heals Like A Willow."

  Richard shivered as Virgil nosed in toward the Saint Louis waterfront. He stood at the rail with the rest of the passengers, witnessing the end of the long journey. Below him, the bedraggled masses craned to see. Richard watched them in turn, nervously searching for Francois. Even the thought of him brought tickles of fear to Richard's stomach.

  A practical joke, the captain had said. A quick search that morning had produced no sign of the vicious Frenchman.

  After all, who else could it have been? And where had he disappeared to?

  Richard shuddered and tightened his hold on the grip containing the banknotes. At last he would be able to relieve himself of that albatross. Two days in Saint Louis, and then he'd be headed home. Home to Laura.

  French calls and jokes mixed with English and carried on the air as the men caught lines and waited. The Virgil strained one last time, her paddle churning as she drove into the muddy bank.

  Saint Louis didn't disappoint him. In the late afternoon light it looked as squalid as he'd anticipated. High on the bank stood an open-sided market building. The streets were mostly mud despite some attempts at brick paving. Along the shore, the men looked barely better than those he'd seen at Fort Massac.

  "Mr. Hamilton?" the steward asked, working his way down the line of passengers crowding the gallery. "Would you like your baggage delivered, sir? And if so, to what address?"

  "Yes, thank you. The Hotel Le Barras, please."

  The plank was dropped and the deck fares crowded forward in a mass, pushing and shoving, their few belongings held high. Refugees fleeing Napoleon might have appeared thus, ragged and mindless.

  "Mr. Hamilton?" Charles Eckhart thrust out a hand, cigar puffing in the corner of his mouth. "It's been a pleasure, sir. I wish you all of the best."

  "And you, sir."

  Eckhart stared out over the throng, then up the slope toward the low brick buildings on the bluff. "I know Saint Louis will seem strange and savage to you, Mr. Hamilton, but opportunity often arises from the most unpromising of circumstances. More than one young man has come here to test his mettle. I hope you find yours."

  Eckhart touched a finger to the brim of his hat, smiled, and strode off. Richard glared at his departing back. How arrogantly Virginian, to think worth came from physically challenging the world. It was the keenness of a man's mind that made the real difference. All else was illusion.

  Richard returned his attention to the settlement and sniffed; the odor of rot—mixed liberally with woodsmoke and coke from the brick factory—carried to him. Then he followed the others down the stairway from the gallery and across the wagging plank. The muddy shore had been churned into a morass.

  "Carriage, sir?" a driver called to him.

  "I’ll walk, thank you," Richard returned. Dear Lord God, after all those weeks aboard the cramped boat, a walk was definitely in order. Besides, walking would give him a sense of the place, if only so that he might recall its crudity over the years.

  He set out, grip in hand, climbing up from the waterfront and reveling in the solid ground beneath his feet, even though most streets in Saint Louis consisted of ruts worn through the rich black soil and into the pale gray limestone. Horse and cow manure left a bluish-and-brown film on the puddles.

  Glancing back, he noticed Eckhart following along behind him. Wishing to avoid an unnecessary encounter, Richard slipped into the market, quickly crossed to the other side, and ducked behind a wagon trundling up the hill.

  French, English, and Spanish were spoken, the three languages often intermingled in a hodgepodge. There, right there, stood a real Indian dressed in cloth and skins, with feathers wov
en into his hair. Richard stopped to gawk. The Indian stared back, black eyes hard and wary.

  Following the Indian came two white men dressed entirely in skin clothing decorated with bright beadwork; the long fringes swayed with each step. They carried slim rifles and each had a belt pistol and large knife. Richard blushed as he came under their wolfish scrutiny. For the first time, he felt real excitement at the proximity of the untamed frontier. He climbed to Third Street, looking west along Olive.

  He tried to soak it all in, to remember it in detail to tell Laura. What would she make of his stories? That enchanting smile would curl her perfect lips, and her eyes would sparkle with wonder.

  He took a deep breath, swelling his chest, and looked westward. Out there, beyond the trees and rolling hills, not more than one hundred miles away, lay the last real toehold of civilization. Then, onward, across the plains and mountains, lay the vast emptiness—peopled only by the Indians and a few fearless traders. For the briefest of instants, the heady rush built. What would it be like out there? Pure and innocent, as Rousseau maintained? Or the brutality described by Hobbes?

  Richard forced himself to be sensible and let his steps carry him where they would. He marveled at the old French houses with their second-story verandas and whitewashed walls. The city evoked a feeling of rambunctious youth grappling with an older society—and the older was losing.

  The large Indian mounds, in perfect north-south and east-west alignment, piqued his interest. He climbed the tallest, well over seventy-five feet high and two hundred feet long, and tried to fathom its secrets. From the summit, he peered out at the river to the east, the forest to the west, and the city below. What ancient society had caused the construction of such piles of dirt, and what could their purpose have been?

  Rousseau, you would marvel.

  The gathering dusk finally overcame his thirst for exploration. He turned down Olive Street, holding the precious grip to his breast as he entered the shadows.