It was what did not happen this cold morning that worried Skye the most. Every dawn, for as long as Skye could remember, Jawbone had greeted him by butting his head into Skye’s chest. It was a ritual. Jawbone would butt him, and Skye would yell at the horse, and Jawbone would butt him again just to let him know who was boss. That was their communion. But not this gray dawn.
Skye ran his gloved hand under the old stallion’s mane. Something was terribly wrong. He studied Jawbone, realizing that the horse’s long winter coat concealed the great hollows along his spine. The horse was starving and cold and listless.
He remembered how Jawbone had come to him seventeen years earlier, an ugly little colt that didn’t behave the way horses behave, finding ways to be obnoxious. But in some mysterious way, Skye knew even then that this mustang that had appeared out of a wintry nowhere and he were mysteriously connected, and that they would share a life. For years, Jawbone had been a feared and admired sentinel, one-horse
army, and protector of Skye and his family. He had also become a legend among all the plains tribes; even the enemies of the Crows hallowed and dreaded Jawbone. The horse annoyed white men so much that several had tried to kill him, but Skye had growled them off. Other white men had simply laughed: never had they seen a horse so misshapen and degenerate, with such a stupid look in his eyes.
Now the horse stood quietly, its head lowered, its back to the wind. As usual, it had posted itself near Skye’s lodge. But the green cottonwood bark that Skye used to sustain Jawbone lay untouched in a scatter on the glazed snow.
Jawbone’s teeth were no good anymore. Seventeen years of ripping up sandy prairie grass and masticating rough bark and chewing on dirt had worn them down so that the incisors didn’t cut and the molars didn’t grind. The tools in his jaws were worthless. It was a common malady in old horses, and why they slowly starved to death. Skye pulled his gloves off and grasped Jawbone’s head. Usually the old horse would have snarled, but this time he just stood and let Skye run his finger between the horse’s lips. He probed the incisors and found them blunt and rounded. The molars were flat and worn. What teeth were left were almost useless. Jawbone was dying, not from disease but from hunger.
In settled places there were some remedies. In Skye’s own England an old horse could be fed warm sweet mash that could sustain an animal with bad teeth. But a good mash required rolled grains and molasses. There was nothing like that in this winter camp of the Crow people. There wasn’t even any prairie grass. Only the bark, painfully harvested each day.
Skye felt the clawing of anguish.
Jawbone was not very old, and had more good years in
him. He was a little lame, but eager and ornery as ever. Skye didn’t ride him much anymore. It was enough to have Jawbone with him, guarding the family, enjoying the life they had fashioned. Jawbone was as much a part of his family as his wives.
Skye ran his gnarled hands over the animal, discovering shocking hollows under the coat, feeling the corduroy of ribs. Jawbone stood stolidly, and that in itself alarmed him. Jawbone was not usually stolid about anything.
“You and I are old, mate,” Skye said.
He ducked into his lodge and found the women staring at him. They had heard him.
“I need a blanket for Jawbone,” he said.
Wordlessly the women set to work. But there wasn’t much to work with. Victoria found a large piece of buffalo hide that had been in the lodge cover until it grew too soft, and had saved it for moccasins. This would make some belly bands. There ought to be a breast band too. A blanket could be sewn to them. It would take a day.
Skye watched them cut the leather, cut thong, and fashion a blanket there in the confines of that small lodge. He kept the fire going, and tried to be helpful, but they ignored him.
“I’ll build a barn. I’ll build a stall for Jawbone. I’ll get some grain and molasses from Bozeman City,” he said. “He’ll be warm and he’ll have some sweet feed. I’ll keep him going just as long as I can.”
He caught Victoria staring coldly at him. The Crows would let a horse die, because death was a part of life and because it was good for old creatures to die. This was his white man’s instinct, keeping the old medicine horse alive.
All that wintry day the women made the horse blanket, using their awls on the leather and lacing the straps to the
blanket. Late in the afternoon when the cold was thickening and the twilight was vanishing, they finished. They nodded to Skye. Quietly he collected the blanket and carried it into the bitter twilight, and found the horse standing nearby, its head low, its legs locked. Victoria braved the cold, and between them, they threw the white and blue blanket over the old horse and tied the belly bands. It worked well enough. The blanket hung over Jawbone’s back, covered his withers, and tumbled over Jawbone’s hollowed croup. The chest band would keep it from sliding backward.
Jawbone lifted his head. Surely the horse would begin to feel some warmth now, a thin life-preserving warmth. Surely this great-hearted horse would survive the winter now, and never face a brutal winter like this one again.
It was growing dark. The winter night stole over them and drove them into their small lodge, and then Jawbone was outside alone. Skye glanced about the village, and saw not a soul out-of-doors. Smoke rose reluctantly from the lodges, and then lowered under the weight of heavy air. He felt almost as cold as Jawbone, and hurried in. There was not much firewood, but it was too dark to get some.
No one spoke. The women drew their robes tight and lay quietly in the dusk, and when the fire threatened to go out, Skye added a few grudging sticks of cottonwood limb. Tomorrow, no matter what the weather, he would need to cut a generous supply.
Skye could not sleep that night. None of them had eaten, and none wanted to eat. Skye and Mary and Victoria lay wrapped in blankets wrapped in robes, and still the cold pierced to them, through the lodge cover, through the layered robes that protected them from Father Winter this subzero night. He knew as he lay in the darkness that the women
were awake too. If he had said something, they would have responded.
He heartened himself. He thought of that blanket warming Jawbone, good wool holding the heat in, protecting the vital areas, lungs and heart. Jawbone would be all right. Tomorrow he would try to grind up the cottonwood bark into tiny bits, the sort that Jawbone could swallow without grinding the bark with his useless old teeth. Tomorrow would be better. They had given Jawbone a lease on life.
It proved to be the longest and coldest night in Skye’s memory. Outside, there was only the silence. He itched to go out there, help the horse. He thought to bring the horse into the lodge, but the lodge was too small and the door hole too low. He dreaded the sound of a thump, the sound of Jawbone giving up and caving in. It was too black to find the bushes that night, so Skye did what he had to, just outside of the lodge. He did not see the horse.
Sometime in the small hours an understanding came to Skye, and he stared bleakly into the utter dark. He saw no stars up in the smoke hole, only unremitting blackness. There was Jawbone beside him, his flesh warm to the touch, his lopeared gaze upon Skye, his muscles rippling, his mocking joy at the very business of being alive. There was Jawbone, waging his war against rival mustang stallions, stealing their mares, dancing his victory dance on every ridge. There was Jawbone, his hooves murderous when white men collected around him.
“Stay away from him,” Skye warned.
“Does he kick?” they asked.
“No, he kills,” Skye said.
The gawkers had stayed away.
Dawn came reluctantly, and as soon as Skye could see, he
threw aside his robes, wrapped his capote around him, and plunged into the obscure light. He didn’t see Jawbone. The horse was not at his usual post a few dozen yards from the lodge. Where had Jawbone gone? He peered into the murk, discovering nothing. Impatiently he circled the lodge, feeling the snow squeak under him. He hunted for Jawbone, dreading to discover some dark lump sprawled on the white snow, and could not find him. Maybe the cottonwoods, then? Had the horse blanket revived Jawbone’s appetite? Was the medicine horse off in the thickets, gnawing at twigs, wolfing dead leaves and stalks and bark? Was Jawbone simply drinking from the steaming creek?
He could not know. It would be an hour before enough light would collect for him to find Jawbone. He squinted into the gloom, knowing he must wait, and that he must gather wood and stir the fire and blow on coals until the tinder caught, and warm the lodge and comfort his wives.
He slid into the lodge, more by instinct than by vision.
“He is gone,” Victoria said.
“He’s not there,” he said. “I think he’s in the woods.”
“He is dead,” she said.
“No, he’s warmed up and the blanket is helping him.”
She turned her back to him, which was always her way of saying that he wasn’t listening to her.
After a while it was light enough. A grudging fire was warming the lodge. Its smoke wasn’t rising, and they coughed now and then. It was time to find the horse. He pulled his capote over him, pulled the hood over his gray hair, and stepped into the deep silence of predawn. Now he could see. The woods were a dark blur. The village lay quiet in the menacing cold. The air stung Skye’s cheeks and burrowed into his moccasins and sliced at his legs.
He saw no living thing. The horse would be deep in the snow-drifted woods. It was a little warmer there than in the open. Skye hiked into the silent web of cottonwoods and willows, the skeletal branches patching his vision. But he saw not a glimpse of Jawbone. He did not see any of the village horses here, but he didn’t expect to. He wandered helplessly among the copses of trees, but Jawbone was not present.
Now at last the village was stirring. Old people, huddled deep in blankets and robes, were heading toward the willow brush. The sky blued, and then the rising sun caught the tops of the cottonwood trees, making them glow. But he did not discover Jawbone, and felt an odd and haunting worry.
Jawbone was gone.
Then Skye knew. The great horse wanted to do his dying alone. This was the stallion’s final gift. Skye would never see the husk of the great horse after life had fled.
Skye understood. He lifted his arms toward the distant bluff and acknowledged what he knew, and then turned slowly to the lodge. But not before the people of the village caught it all, knew that Jawbone was no longer among them, and knew that Skye and Victoria and Mary had lost a mighty friend. They watched, all of them bathed in morning light.
He stood at the lodge door, watching the sun illumine the ragged foothills, and then slid inside.
“Goddamn,” said Victoria, and threw her arms around Skye, and wept into his capote.