Two young hunters, Tom Boggs and Lyle Lilburn, braced Skye while he was packing his duffel in the plaza.
“We hear you’re leaving us, Mister Skye,” Boggs said.
“Word gets around fast.”
“You going to help that crazy Cheyenne woman?”
Skye nodded.
“That’s a fine thing to do,” Boggs said.
That wasn’t what Skye had expected. He supposed they would all echo William Bent, and greet his decision with a horselaugh, or consider it a self-imposed death sentence.
Goddam Murray and the clerks had been talking, and it took only about two minutes for gossip to work through Bent’s Fort.
“You’re doing it for nothing, too,” Lyle said.
“No, I’m being paid,” Skye replied.
“Yeah, with that.” Lilburn pointed at the Cheyenne medicine bundle. “That don’t buy DuPont.”
Skye shrugged. “It’s just something I want to do. That’s pay enough.”
Boggs shook his head. “You’re likely going to get yourself killed, if not by a pack of mean Utes, then by some ornery greasers. You’re walking into the devil’s own lair.”
Skye nodded. There was no point in denying it.
“You’re doing it to help Standing Alone?”
Skye straightened, lifted his top hat and settled it. “I suppose I am.”
“You suppose you are!”
“Maybe help those children, then.”
Lilburn grinned. “Now that sounds more like the Skye I know. Help those young ‘uns escape from ten years of stoop labor and an early death. That wouldn’t have something to do with your sailor past, would it?”
Skye grinned.
Boggs eyed the heap of goods. “You outfitted proper?”
Skye evaded that. These boys were relatives by marriage to the Bents.
“No, you ain’t,” Boggs said, relentlessly. “I heard they wouldn’t even spare you powder.”
“I’ve enough,” Skye replied, tightly.
“It’s bad enough you going off on this grouse hunt, like you’re after the Holy Grail, but it’s worse you going off half fixed.”
“I can live like an Indian,” Skye said.
“Indians don’t live like Indians anymore; they get stuff from us. How long since you seen a stone arrowhead?”
Lilburn lifted Skye’s powderhorn and shook it. “Thought so,” he said. “A man going off into Ute country without spare powder is a man gonna push up flowers. Skye, you just stay right here.”
“I’m busy, mate.”
But Lilburn ran up the stairs and into the dormitory where the trappers and hunters bunked. Skye could hear him up there, and moments later half a dozen of his comrades and rowdies burst out the door, clattered down the stairs, and surrounded Skye. There was something afoot, and it made Skye uncomfortable.
Then Will Gibbs thrust a powderhorn at him. “This here’s for you, Mister Skye. I got me another. It’s full of DuPont.”
He hung the horn over Skye’s neck, and patted Skye’s arm.
“What a thing, helping that savage,” he said.
Johnny Case was next. “I got a spare bullet mold, fifty caliber like yours, and here’s a few pigs.” He dropped the one-pound lead bars into Skye’s duffel, and added the mold. “This’ll let you throw something that stings.”
“I think maybe we’d better get us a proper pen and paper so I can record what I owe,” Skye said.
“You don’t owe nothing,” Boggs said. “Not one in a thousand would do it. Risk his life like this for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing,” Skye said, uncomfortably.
“I seen that woman there at the gate all this time, and I feel bad for her, but you’re the one who’s doing something about it.”
“She chose me, mate.”
“So I heard, but you said yes.”
Skye felt itchy. He wasn’t used to anything like this. He saw Victoria watching quietly, approval in her face. The crowd grew, until most of the engaged men in Bent’s Fort crowded the plaza around Skye. And one by one, they brought him sustenance.
“Mister Skye,” said Walt Gillis, “this here’s cowhide shoe leather; real sole leather, tougher than any buffler hide you’ll ever find. You’ll need it.”
Skye accepted it gratefully. He and Victoria and Standing Alone would be walking because they lacked horses.
One by one they brought him valuable things: from the clerks in the store, some trading items, including the prized blue beads the tribes loved so much. From the cooks, some jerky, tallow, commeal, sugar, flour, salt, and tea. From the engagés, spare flints and steels, a spare blanket, soap, half a candlestick, a canvas poncho, thong.
Skye watched the pile grow, wondering whether he could fit it all on his two remaining horses, wondering what he had done to earn this sudden outpouring of honor and esteem.
Now a silent crowd stood around him in the plaza. Skye saw Victoria standing proudly by; and there at the gate was Standing Alone herself, oddly isolated, as if this blanket squaw had no connection to the portentous events unfolding a few yards away.
Above, on the broad deck of the galleries, stood those in command: William Bent himself, his posture dour and his face furrowed. Beside him the chief factor, Alexander Barclay, exuding disapproval as only the English can disapprove. And the excitable Goddam Murray, rising up and down on his toes like a tottering barrel. The entire post had come to see the Skyes off.
The heap of offerings exceeded what his horses could carry. And offerings they were, as if a church’s collection plate had passed through this motley crowd of bearded men, and they had spilled their very substance into it. They were honoring him. He had never been so honored. These were a bold race of men, whose imaginations were fired by this quest for the Holy Grail, two imprisoned children; or more likely, the news of their deaths. Not for money was Skye setting out into dangerous lands, nor for fame, but only to help a woman whose presence had haunted the post for years.
Skye scarcely knew what to say, so he pulled off his top hat and bowed his head.
When he lifted his gaze again, he discovered Bent racing down the stairs, and that spelled trouble. He’d get out just as fast as he could.
Bent pushed through the silent crowd until he reached Skye.
“I’ll lend you the horse,” he said. “You’ll need it.”
Skye nodded. “I do need it.”
“And another. You need another.”
“Mr. Bent, I can’t assure you that I’ll ever—”
Bent wasn’t listening. “Get that horse, and the dun pack mule, rigged up.”
The stable man, Voller Campbell, leaped to the command.
“It’s yours. Skye, I can steer you a little, if you’re so determined to commit suicide. The Ute band you want isn’t the Mouache who live around here. Those were maybe Weeminuche or Capotes. We think Capotes, from the San Luis Valley. We don’t know. We looked hard, offered bribes and rewards. They’re trouble, the Utes. Treacherous buzzards. I don’t have to tell you what you’re facing. You know the Utes. Dangerous and unpredictable. All smiles and murder. Likely to sell these women into slavery if they can.”
Bent offered his hand, and Skye found the grip strong and affectionate. “I will remember this,” Skye said.
“We’ll remember you.”
The stable man brought the bay horse Skye had turned over to Bent to pay debts, and a mule, each rigged with a packsaddle.
Then, while Skye hastily wrapped and balanced his loads among the animals, Stands Alone slowly walked to the heart of the plaza, her gaze soft upon them all. She had seen the hunters and trappers, and finally the whole post, contribute something to this venture, and now she passed through them, touching each, mumbling something in her own tongue that Skye knew was a thanksgiving. She paused long before Bent; he understood the woman’s Cheyenne, and nodded.
Then the moment came.
Skye nodded to Victoria, who grabbed the halter rope of one horse.
“Thank you all,” he said. “With all these things, we’ll succeed.”
“It’ll take more than things, Mister Skye,” William Bent said. “My wife’s people will remember.”
Skye nodded. Nothing more needed saying. He beckoned to Standing Alone, who took up a halter rope, and he collected the other two, and they made their way out the gate and into the morning.
It seemed oddly silent. No breeze hummed through grass. No crows gossiped. No sounds emerged from the great yellow
fort. He led his bride, and Stands Alone, along the river trail west, scarcely knowing where to go.
They reached a point where cottonwoods and a slope threatened to conceal Bent’s Fort, and paused to look back. Skye had an odd, hollow feeling as he stared at that solemn walled city, a strange island of safety and comfort in a wild land. Something about the place tugged him back even if he had not had the happiest sojourn there.
He turned to Standing Alone, whose gaze was sharp upon the silent white man’s castle. But then she smiled, first at Victoria and then at Skye. Her few possessions had been heaped upon the old mule so she could walk beside them unburdened. But it was her face that caught his eye.
She had come alive. The woman who had huddled at the gate, awaiting her loved ones, had seemed ancient, but this majestic woman standing proudly beside Skye and Victoria had shed thirty years overnight, and her strong-boned face was alive with hope.